A Herzen Reader

Herzen's use of irony is bound up with his awareness of the pain (bol) experienced by a Russian people yearning for liberty. In "Ends and Begin­nings," a series of open letters to Turgenev from the early 1860s, he charac­terized the preliminary nature of work that he and Ogaryov had undertaken.

Consciousness . . . is a very different thing from practical applica­tions. Pain does not give treatment but calls for it. The pathology may be good, but the therapy may be bad. . . . To demand medicine from a man who points out some evil is exceedingly precipitate. . . . We are not the doctors, we are the pain; what will come of our moaning and groaning we do not know; but the pain has been declared.⁴⁹

Isaiah Berlin, who valued the Russian intelligentsia's passion for thrash­ing ideas out in spontaneous discussion, acknowledged Herzen as a "vigor­ous" presence in his life, with his "wit, malice, imagination."⁵⁰ While many admired Herzen's targeted witticisms in his own time and afterward and refer to his hearty and infectious laughter, even his friends encouraged him to show some restraint, and his ideological opponents attributed his verbal humor to a lack of basic decency and even of emotional balance.⁵¹ Ivan Aksakov spoke for many when he complained of Herzen's "morbid desire to be witty at all times," and an article about the intelligentsia in The News (Vesti) mentioned Herzen's high-spirited sarcasm, while adding that he was a poor philosopher and an even worse political thinker.⁵²

When government officials considered in late 1857 the possibility of launching a specifically anti-Herzen magazine, the head of the Third De­partment reminded the minister of enlightenment that it would be difficult to achieve the same level of popularity with a public that voraciously read "reprimands, abuse, and mockery. . . . But what would prevent an opposing sexton from ringing out sharply, amusingly, and cleverly in answer to this? Those who read the London Bell—or at least half of them—will be curious about finding out what his rival has to say."⁵³ A successful journalistic chal­lenge to The Bell would have to come from one or more equally formidable writers who would be free to speak their minds. This proposal by the poet and censor Fyodor Tyutchev was rebuffed by the head of the Third Depart­ment, who said that it was the equivalent of killing oneself out of a fear of being killed.⁵⁴ Another suggestion, to reprint articles from The Bell in order to refute them, was also judged unworkable.⁵⁵ In the end, the decision was made not to try matching Herzen's approach, but to find a way of stopping him, whether by bribery, threats, or some other means.⁵⁶

For Herzen, nothing leisurely or long-winded could be permitted in the printed messages sent back to Russia. In a letter to Ogaryov, Herzen insisted that in publitsistika "one must sharply cut, throw out, and, most importantly, one must compress phrases." This remark conveys the energy of Herzen's writing, by means of which he launched phrases like missiles in order to strike the enemy.⁵⁷ Vasily Rozanov wrote bitterly in pre-revolutionary years of Herzen's introduction of "a whole stream of expressions into Russia," of being the "founder of political nonsense," and a bad influence on high- school students.⁵⁸ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a newspaper article of i965, noted that in Herzen "we find a great number of bold formations which firmed the step of Russian letters and reached out for the unexpected, con­cise, and energetic control of words."⁵⁹ Brevity and well-aimed wit become strategies, with each phrase and punctuation mark playing a role in his journalism. There is a decided preference for the exclamation, which ap­pears in the titles of Herzen essays (e.g., "St. George's Day! St. George's Day!" "Forward! Forward!" "Down with Birch Rods!", "Russian Blood Is Flowing!" "A Giant is Awakening!" "Order Triumphs!"), and even more frequently within the body of his essays.⁶⁰