A Herzen Reader

Pure men of letters, people of sound and form, are tired of the civic di­rection in our literature; it has begun to offend them that so much is writ­ten about bribes and open discussion and there are so few Oblomovs and anthologized poems. If only the Oblomov that exists were not so completely boring one could forgive them their opinion. People are not to blame when they have no sympathy for the life around them that is breaking through and rushing ahead, and, realizing their frightening position, begin, let us say, to speak about it, however incoherently. In Germany we saw all sorts of Jean-Pauls, who, in light of the revolution and reaction, were overwhelmed, and composed lexicons or tales of the fantastic.² Here, however, things have taken a further turn. The journals that have built a pedestal of their noble indignation and almost a profession of their gloomy sympathy with those who suffer, split their sides laughing at investigative journalism and at unsuccessful attempts at open discussion. And this did not happen by accident; they set up a big booth to hiss at the first attempts of free speech in a literature whose hair has not yet grown back since its recent imprisonment. [. . .]

Laughter is convulsive, and if, during the first minute a man laughs at everything, during the second moment he blushes and despises his laugh­ter and that which caused it. It took all ofHeine's genius to make up for two or three repulsive jokes about the deceased writers Berne and Platen and a lady who was still alive.³ For a time the public shied away from him, and he made peace with them only through his extraordinary talent.

Without a doubt, laughter is one of the most powerful means of destruc­tion; Voltaire's laughter struck and burned like lightning. From laughter idols fall, as do wreaths and frames, and a wonder-working icon turns into a dark and badly drawn picture. With its revolutionary leveling power, laughter is terribly popular and catchy; having begun in a modest study, it moves in widening circles to the limits of literacy. To use such a weapon not against the absurd Trinity of censors—in which Timashev plays the Holy listener—but as its trident, means to join it in the poisoning of thought.

We ourselves saw very well the blunders and mistakes of investigative literature and the awkwardness of the first open discussion; what is surpris­ing in the fact that people who their whole lives were robbed by neighbor­hood police, judges, and governors now have a lot to say? And they have kept silent about even more!

When did our taste become so spoiled and refined? For ten years we put up with chatter about all the Petersburg camellias and courtesans, who, in the first place, are as alike as sisters the world over, and, second, have this in common with cutlets, that while one may from time to time enjoy them, there is simply nothing that need be said afterward.⁴

"But why are investigative writers such poor narrators, and why do their stories resemble court cases?" That comment may be relevant to individu­als, but not to a movement. Someone who poorly and dully conveys the tears of the peasant, the brutality of the landowner, and the thievery of the police, you can be sure will do an even poorer job describing how a golden- haired girl spilled the water she had scooped up from a pool, and how a dark-eyed youth, seeing the swift-flowing liquid, regretted that it was not flowing over his heart.⁵

There were outstanding works in "investigative literature." Do you fancy that you can now noisily throw all the stories by Shchedrin and others into the water with Oblomov's arms around their neck? Gentlemen, you are too extravagant!

You have no pity for these articles because the world about which they write is alien to you; it interests you only to the extent that one is forbidden to write about it. Plants native to the capital, you have sprung up between Gryaznaya Street and the Moyka Canal, and what lies beyond the city limits seems foreign to you. The coarse picture of a story like "Transport"—with carts stuck in the mud, and ruined peasants who gaze with despair at a ferry, waiting one day, and another, and a third—cannot interest you as much as the long odyssey of some half-wild, icy nature, which drags on, drifts off, and disintegrates into meaningless detail.⁶ You are prepared to sit at a microscope and analyze this rot (not looking for pathologies, which are contrary to the purity of art; art must have no use and while it may at times be somewhat harmful, base utilitarianism will kill it)—doing so stimulates your nerves. We, quite to the contrary, cannot—without yawning and dis­gust—follow physiological descriptions of some sort of Neva wood lice who have outlived that heroic period in which their ancestors—and there were many—were Onegins and Pechorins.