A Herzen Reader [Kathleen é] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 5

class="book">FREEDOM OF THE SERFS FROM THE LANDOWNERS

FREEDOM FROM CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

The editor would not limit himself, though, and "The Bell . . . will ring out from whatever touches it—absurd decrees or the foolish persecutions of religious dissidents, theft by high officials or the senate's ignorance. The comical and the criminal, the evil and the ignorant—all of these come un­der The Bell." He asks fellow countrymen who share his love for Russia "not only to listen to our Bell but to take their own turn in ringing it."

In reading the essays selected for A Herzen Reader—and in comparing them to other Herzen writing that appeared in The Bell—what is striking is the forcefulness of the style and the frequent mood swings, offering indignation, outrage, irony, sarcasm, satire (Docs. 11, 36, 43, 99), bitter scorn, wistfulness, and sympathy, alongside encouragement, civic prayers, and priceless puns (Docs. 27, 34, 57). In 1947, Ioann Novich spoke of the "assorted literary references, analogies, and comparisons" familiar to Herzen's readers, and goes on to say that the author's expressiveness was found in "the clash of naturally contrasting attributes, images and juxtapo­sitions."³⁸ The somewhat "extravagant vocabulary" was full of foreign words and phrases, but often no more than one would expect in the speech of an educated Russian member of the gentry who grew up in a trilingual house­hold and spent long years in Europe—what was different was the cause they served.³⁹ Herzen felt at home in other languages, but Engels, at least, complained that Herzen's French was "totally repulsive."⁴⁰ For the most part, the journalism translates with relative ease, although the title of a lead article (Doc. 33) from the April 15, 1861, issue posed a challenge. In the end, the English version of " 'Kolokol,' Kovalevskii, Kostomarov, kopiia, kanni- baly" preserved most, but not all, of the alliteration ("The Bell, Kovalevsky, Kostomarov, a Copy, and Cannibals").

Herzen's laughter is "no mere diversion," but "his alternative to doc­trinal or pedagogical fervor."⁴¹ In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin remarked on the way that Herzen was drawn to the power of laughter, al­though, as he notes, "Herzen was not acquainted with the laughing Middle Ages."⁴² Bakhtin's first chapter begins with an epigraph from "A Letter Crit­icizing The Bell" (Doc. 14), stating the need for a history of laughter.

Laughter is one of the most powerful weapons against something that is obsolete but is still propped up by God knows what. . . . I repeat what I said previously [in Letters from France and Italy]: "what a man cannot laugh about without falling into blasphemy or fearing the pangs of conscience is a fetish. . . ."

Laughter is no joking matter, and we will not give it up. . . . It would be extraordinarily interesting to write the history of laughter. . . . Laughter is a leveler, and people don't want that, afraid of being judged according to their individual merits.

Later in the same chapter Bakhtin refers to other "profound" comments on the subject by Herzen in the essay 'VERY DANGEROUS!!!" (Doc. 22).

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. . . . Without a doubt, laughter is one of the most powerful means of destruction. . . . From laughter idols fall. . . . 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.

Herzen exploited a number of comic possibilities in his writing, "from a brilliant joke to cruel sarcasm."⁴³ At times he offered skilled parody of the bombastic style (vysprennyi slog) of official communiques (Doc. 27). Irony was by far his favorite verbal weapon, a form of "controlled intensity."⁴⁴ In notebook entries on irony from 1970-71, Bakhtin described a kind of laughter that "lifts the barrier and clears the path," which was Herzen's aim, to make a more open political debate work for Russia's future.⁴⁵ His style in The Bell is remarkable for the "purposefulness" and "accuracy" of his rage.⁴⁶ Rejecting the "false monastic theory of passivity" that he saw in some of his fellow Russians in the early 1840s, Herzen boldly declared that he "loved" his anger as much as they loved a sense of peace.⁴⁷ Her- zen professed an interest in the further development of "our own native irony, irony-the-consoler and the avenger" (rodnaia nasha ironiia—ironiia uteshitel'nitsa, mstitel'nitsa).⁴⁸ In the midst of the public debate with Boris Chicherin, Herzen proclaimed his goal to be "not just Russia's revenge, but its irony" (Doc. 21).

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