A Herzen Reader

And besides, the Onegins and Pechorins were completely authentic, and expressed the real grief and destructiveness of Russian life at that time. The sad fate of the superfluous person, a casualty only because he had devel­oped into a human being, revealed itself then not only in narrative poems and novels, but on the streets and in drawing rooms, in villages and in cit­ies. Our most recent literary recruits needle these delicate dreamers who were broken without a fight, idle people who could not find their way in the environment in which they lived. It's a shame they do not come to any conclusions—I happen to think that had Onegin and Pechorin been able— like many others—to make peace with the Nicholaevan era, Onegin would be Viktor Petrovich Panin, and Pechorin would not have perished on the way to Persia, but would, like Kleinmikhel, be running the transportation system and interfering with railway construction.⁷

The era of Onegins and Pechorins has passed. In Russia now there are no more superfluous people; now, to the contrary, there are not enough peo­ple for the work that is required. Anyone who cannot find something to do now has no one to blame—he is in fact an empty person, a piece of wood or a lazybones. And that is why Onegins and Pechorins naturally become Oblomovs.

Public opinion, pampering the Onegins and Pechorins because it sensed in them its own suffering, turns away from Oblomovs.

It is complete nonsense to say that we have no public opinion, as a learned commentator recently said, thus demonstrating that we had no need of open discussion because we had no public opinion, and we had no public opinion because we had no bourgeoisie!⁸

Public opinion has shown its tact, its sympathies, and its implacable se­verity, even during times of public silence. Where did all that uproar come from over Chaadaev's letter, over The Inspector General and Dead Souls, the Tales of a Hunter, Belinsky's articles, and Granovsky's lectures? And, on the other hand, how viciously it fell upon its idols for civic treachery or lack of firmness. Gogol died from its sentence, and Pushkin himself experienced what it means to strike a chord in praise of Nicholas.⁹ Our men of letters were more likely than the public to forgive praises sung to an inhuman, barracks despot, as their conscience had been dulled by a refinement of the aesthetic palate!

The example of Senkovsky is even more striking. What did he do with all his wit, his Semitic languages, his seven literatures, his lively memory, and his sharp exposition?. At first the rockets, flashes, crackling, sparklers, whistles, noise, merry atmosphere, and free-and-easy laughter attracted ev­eryone to his journal—they looked and looked and laughed and then, little by little, they went away to their homes. Senkovsky was forgotten, like St. Thomas week when they forget about some bespangled acrobat, who the previous week had interested the whole town, as people packed his booth and hung about him in crowds...¹⁰

What did he lack? It was the quality that Belinsky and Granovsky had in such abundance—that eternally troubling demon of love and indignation, visible in tears and laughter. He lacked the kind of conviction that would have been his life's work, a map on which everything would have been laid out with passion and pain. In the words that come from such conviction there remains a trace of the magnetic demonism under which the speaker worked, which explains why his speeches disturb, alarm, and awaken. be­coming a force and a power that sometimes moves entire generations.

But we are far from judging Senkovsky unconditionally; he is vindicated by the leaden era in which he lived. He might have become a cold skeptic, an indifferent blase, laughing at good and evil and believing in nothing— the same way that others shaved the top of their head, became Jesuit priests, and believe everything in the world.¹¹ It was all an escape from Nicholas— and how could one not try to escape at that time? The only people we do not forgive are those who ran to the Third Department.