[转载]陀思妥耶夫斯基演讲《普希金》原文
2015-05-18 21:59阅读：
PUSHKIN is an extraordinary phenomenon, and,
perhaps, the unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit, said Gogol. I
will add, “and a prophetic phenomenon”. Yes, his arrival on the
scene contained for all us Russians, something incontestably
prophetic. Pushkin appeared exactly at the beginning of our true
self-consciousness, which was in its earliest beginnings a whole
century after Peter’s reforms . Pushkin’s came to us as a new
guiding light, a brilliant illumination of our dark way. In this
sense Pushkin is a presage and a prophecy.
I divide the activity
of our great poet into three periods. I speak now not as a literary
critic. I dwell on Pushkin’s creative activity only to illustrate
my conception of his prophetic significance to us and to give
meaning to my word prophecy. I would, however, observe in passing
that the periods of Pushkin’s activity do not seem to me to be
marke
d off from each other by firm boundaries. The beginning of
Evgenyi Onegin, for instance, in my opinion belongs still to
the first period even though
Onegin ends in the second
period, when Pushkin had already found his ideals in his native
land, had taken them to his heart and cherished them in his loving
and clairvoyant soul. It is said that in his first period Pushkin
imitated European poets, Parny and André Chénier, and, above all,
Byron. Without doubt the poets of Europe had a great influence upon
the development of his genius, and they maintained their influence
all through his life.
Nevertheless, even the very earliest poems of
Pushkin were not mere imitations, and in them the extraordinary
independence of his genius was expressed. In an imitation there
never appears such individual suffering and such depths of
self-consciousness as Pushkin displayed, for instance, in The
Gypsies, a poem which I ascribe in its entirety to his first
period; not to mention the creative force and impetuosity which
would never have been so evident had his work been only imitation.
Already the character Aleko, the hero of The Gypsies,
exhibits a powerful, profound, and purely Russian idea. Later that
idea would be expressed to harmonious perfection in Onegin.
There almost that same Aleko appears not in a fantastic light but
as tangible, real and comprehensible.
In Aleko Pushkin
had already discovered, and portrayed with genius, the unhappy
drifter in his native land, the Russian sufferer of history. The
unhappy drifter, uprooted from the people, was a historic necessity
in our society. The type is true and perfectly rendered, it is an
eternal type, long since settled in our Russian land.
These homeless Russian drifters are wandering
still, and the time will be long before they disappear. If in our
day they no longer go to gypsy camps to seek their universal ideals
in the wild life of the gypsies, if they no longer seek escape from
the confused and pointless life of our Russian intellectuals and
consolation in the bosom of nature, they launch into Socialism,
which did not exist in Aleko’s day. They march with a new faith
into another field, and they work there zealously, believing, like
Aleko, that they will by their fantastic endeavors reach their goal
and find happiness, not for themselves alone but for all mankind.
Indeed, the Russian drifter can find his own peace only in the
happiness of all men. He will not be satisfied by anything less
valuable than Socialism, at least while it is still a matter of
theory. It is the same Russian man appearing now at a different
time. This man, I repeat, was born just at the beginning of the
second century after Peter’s great reforms, in an intellectual
society, uprooted from the people. Oh, the vast majority of
intellectual Russians in Pushkin’s time were serving then as they
are serving now, as civil servants, in government appointments, in
railways or in banks, or earning money in whatever way they can, or
they are engaged in the sciences, delivering lectures -- all this
in a regular, leisurely, peaceful manner, receiving salaries,
playing whist, without any longing to escape into gypsy camps or
other places more in accordance with our modern times. They go only
so far as to play the liberal, ‘with a tinge of European
Socialism’, to which Socialism is given a certain benign Russian
character -- but it is only a matter of time. What happens if one
has not yet begun to be disturbed, while another has already come
up against a bolted door and violently beaten his head against it?
The same fate awaits all men in their turn unless they walk in the
saving road of humble communion with the people. But suppose that
this fate does not await them all. Let ‘the chosen’ suffice, let
only a tenth part be disturbed lest the vast majority remaining
should find no rest through them.
Aleko, of course, is still unable to express
his anguish rightly. With him everything is still somehow abstract.
He has only a yearning after nature, a grudge against high society,
aspirations for all men, lamentations for a truth that someone has
lost somewhere, and he can by no means find it. Of course, he
cannot say where this truth is, where and in what way it might
reappear, and when exactly it was lost, but he suffers
sincerely.
In the
meantime the fantastic and impatient person seeks for salvation
above all in external phenomena, and so it should be. Truth is, as
it were, somewhere beyond this person, perhaps in some other
European land with firm historical political institutions and an
established social and civic life. Such a person will never
understand that the truth is first of all within himself. How could
he understand this? For a whole century he has not been able to be
himself in his own land. He has forgotten how to work. He has no
culture. He has grown up like a convent schoolgirl within closed
walls. He has fulfilled strange and unaccountable duties in
accordance with his rank, his position on the fourteen rungs [of
the Table of Ranks, the backbone of official Russian social/service
hierarchies] according to which educated Russian society is
partitioned.
For the time being he is only a blade of grass
torn up by his roots and blown through the air. And he feels it,
and suffers for it, suffers often acutely! Well, what if he perhaps
belonged by birth to the nobility and [in an earlier time (ID)]
perhaps possessed serfs. He could then [like Aleko] have allowed
himself a nobleman’s liberty, the pleasant fancy of being charmed
by people who live ‘without laws’, and began to serve as trainer of
a performing bear in a gypsy camp?
[NB! -- Dostoevsky here employs a painful
metaphor to describe the condition of Russian elite social
formations, “grass torn up by its roots”. He here puts an
exclamation point to the widely felt “superfluous”, deracinated
condition of the Russian “nobility” (Dostoevsky was himself a very
lowly member of that social estate and lived, from that point of
view, the life of an uprooted “drifter”). Nobles occupied the
second position, after “clergy”, in the traditional hierarchy of
semi-feudal Russian social estates (ID).
Nobles were ostensibly the “well-born” flesh on the backbone of
official Russian social/service hierarchies. Clearly those
hierarchies were breaking down. Blades of grass were swirling in
the air. And Pushkin caught the deep truth of all this and
bequeathed that truth to Russian culture.]
Of course a woman, ‘a wild woman’, as a
certain poet says, would be most likely to give him hope of a way
out of his anguish. With an easy-going but passionate belief, he
throws himself into the arms of Zemphira. “Here is my way of
escape. Here I can find happiness, here in the bosom of nature far
from the world, here with people who have neither civilization nor
law.” And what happens? He cannot endure his first collision with
conditions in this wild nature, and his hands are stained with
blood. The wretched dreamer was not only unfit for universal
harmony but also for gypsies, and they drive him away—without
vengeance, without malice, with simple dignity.
Leave us, proud man,
We are wild and without law,
We torture not, neither do we punish.
This is, of course, all fantastic, but the
proud man is real, his image sharply caught. Pushkin was the first
to seize the type, and we should remember this. Should anything
happen that is not to his liking in the least degree, he is ready
to apply cruel torment and punishment for the wrong done to him,
or, more comfortable still, he will remember that he belongs on one
of the fourteen rungs and will himself call down -- this has
happened often -- torture and punishment sanctioned by
law.
The Russian solution of the question -- “the
accursed question” -- has already been whispered in accordance with
the faith and justice of the people. “Humble yourself, proud man,
and first of all break down your pride. Humble yourself, idle man,
and first of all labor on your native land.” That is the solution
according to the wisdom and justice of the people. “Truth is not
outside thee, but in thyself. Find thyself in thyself, subdue
thyself to thyself, be master of thyself and thou wilt see the
truth. Not in things is this truth, not outside thee or abroad, but
first of all in thine own labor upon thyself. If thou conquer and
subdue thyself, then thou wilt be freer than thou hast ever
dreamed, and thou wilt begin a great work and make others free, and
thou wilt see happiness, for thy life will be fulfilled and thou
wilt at the last understand thy people and its sacred truth. Not
with the Gypsies nor elsewhere else is universal harmony to be
found so long as thou thyself art first unworthy of truth,
malicious and proud, and thou dost demand life as a gift, not even
thinking, that man must pay for truth.”
This solution
of the question is strongly foreshadowed in Pushkin’s poem
[“Gypsies”]. Still more dearly is it expressed in Evgenyi
Onegin. It is not a fantasy, but a tangible and realistic poem,
in which real Russian life is embodied with a creative power and a
perfection such as had not been achieved before Pushkin and perhaps
never after him.
Onegin comes from Petersburg, of course from
Petersburg. This is beyond all doubt necessary to the poem, and
Pushkin could not omit that all-important realistic trait in the
life of his hero. I repeat, he is the same Aleko, particularly when
later on in the poem he cries in anguish:
Why am I not, like the assessor of Tula,
Stricken with palsy?
But now at the beginning of the poem he is
still half a coxcomb and a man of the world. He had lived too
little to be utterly disappointed in life. But he is already
visited and disturbed by
The demon lord of hidden
weariness.
In a remote place, in the heart of his mother
country, Onegin is of course an exile in a foreign land. He does
not know what to do and is somehow conscious of his own quest.
Afterwards, wandering over his native country and over foreign
lands, he is beyond doubt clever and sincere but feels himself
among strangers, still more a stranger to himself. True, he loves
his native land, but he does not trust it. Of course he has heard
of national ideals, but he does not believe in them. He only
believes in the utter impossibility of any work whatsoever in his
native land. He looks upon those who believe in this possibility --
then, as now, only a few do -- with sorrowful derision. He kills
Lenskii out of spleen, perhaps from spleen born of yearning for the
universal ideal -- that is quite like us, quite
probable.
Tatyana is
different. She is a strong character, strongly standing on her own
ground. She is deeper than Onegin and certainly wiser than he. With
a noble instinct she divines where and what is truth, and her
thought finds expression in the finale of the poem. Perhaps Pushkin
would even have done better to call his poem Tatyana, and
not Onegin, for she is indubitably the chief character. She
is positive and not negative, a type of positive beauty, the
apotheosis of the Russian woman, and the poet destined her to
express the idea of his poem in the famous scene of the final
meeting of Tatyana with Onegin. One may even say that so beautiful
or positive a type of the Russian woman has never been created
since in our literature, save perhaps the figure of Liza in
Turgenev’s A Nest of Gentlefolk.
But because of his way of looking down upon
people, Onegin did not even understand Tatyana when he met her for
the first time, in a remote place, under the modest guise of a
pure, innocent girl, who was at first so shy of him. He could not
see the completeness and perfection of the poor girl, and perhaps
he really took her for a ‘moral embryo’. She, the embryo! She,
after her letter to Onegin! If there is a moral embryo in the poem,
it is he himself, Onegin, beyond all debate. And he could not
comprehend her. Does he know the human soul? He has been an
abstract person, a restless dreamer, all his life long. Nor does he
comprehend her later in Petersburg, as a grand lady, when in the
words of his own letter to her “he in his soul understood all her
perfections”. But these are only words. She passed through his life
unrecognized by him and unappreciated: therein is the tragedy of
their love.
But if, at his first meeting with her in the
village, Childe Harold had arrived from England, or even, by a
miracle, Lord Byron himself, and if he had noticed her timid,
modest beauty and pointed her out to Onegin, oh, he would have been
instantly struck with admiration, for in these universal sufferers
there is sometimes so much spiritual servility! But this did not
happen, and the seeker after universal harmony, having read her a
sermon, and having done very honestly by her, set off with his
universal anguish and the blood of his friend spilt in foolish
anger and on his hands, to wander over his mother country, blind to
her. Bubbling over with health and strength, he exclaims with an
oath:
I am yet young and life is strong in me, Yet
what awaits me?—anguish, anguish, anguish.
This Tatyana understood. In the immortal lines
of the romance the poet represented her coming to see the house of
the man who is so wonderful and still so incomprehensible to her. I
do not speak of the unattainable artistic beauty and profundity of
the lines. She is in his study. She looks at his books and
possessions. She tries through them to understand his soul, to
solve her enigma. This “moral embryo” at last pauses thoughtfully,
with a foreboding that her riddle is solved, and gently
whispers:
Perhaps he is only a parody?
Yes, she had to whisper this. She had had
figured him out. Later, long afterwards in Petersburg, when they
meet again, she knows him perfectly.
By the way, who was it that said that the life
of the court and society had affected her soul for the worse, and
that her new position as a lady of fashion and her new ideas were
in part the reason for her refusing Onegin? This is not true. No,
she is the same Tanya, the same country Tanya as before! She is not
spoiled. On the contrary, she is tormented by the splendid life of
Petersburg. She is worn down by it and suffers. She hates her
position as a lady of society, and whoever thinks otherwise of her,
has no understanding of what Pushkin wanted to say.
Now she says firmly to Onegin:
Now am I to another given: To him I will be
faithful unto death.
She said this as a Russian woman, indeed, and
herein is her apotheosis. She expresses the truths of the poem. I
shall not say a word of her religious convictions, her views on the
sacrament of marriage -- no, I shall not touch upon that. But then,
did she refuse to follow him although she herself had said to him
“I love you”? Did she refuse because she, “as a Russian woman” (and
not a Southern or a French woman), is incapable of a bold step or
has not the power to sacrifice the fascination of honors, riches,
position in society, the conventions of virtue? No, a Russian woman
is brave. A Russian woman will boldly follow what she believes, and
she has proved it. But she “is to another given: To him she will be
faithful unto death”.
To whom, to what will she be true? To what
obligations be faithful? Is it to that old General whom she cannot
possibly love, whom she married only because “with tears and
adjurations her mother did beseech her”, and in her wronged and
wounded soul was there then only despair and neither hope nor ray
of light at all? Yes, she is true to that General, to her husband,
to an honest man who loves her, respects her, and is proud of her.
Her mother “did beseech her” but it was she and she alone who
consented, she herself swore an oath to be his faithful wife. She
married him out of despair. But now he is her husband, and her
perfidy [should she succumb to Onegin] would cover him with
disgrace and shame and kill him. Can anyone build his happiness on
the unhappiness of another? Happiness is not in the delights of
love alone, but also in the spirit’s highest harmony. How could the
spirit be appeased if behind it stood a dishonorable, merciless,
inhuman action? Should she run away merely because her happiness
lay therein? What kind of happiness would that be, based on the
unhappiness of another?
Imagine that you yourself are
building a palace of human destiny for the final end of making all
men happy and giving them peace and rest at last. And imagine also
that for that purpose it is necessary and inevitable to torture to
death one single human being, and him not a great soul, but even in
someone’s eyes a ridiculous being, not a Shakespeare but simply an
honest old man, the husband of a young wife in whom he believes
blindly. He is proud of her and respects her, although he does not
know her heart at all. He is happy and at rest. Your palace can be
built only if he is disgraced, dishonored, and tortured. On his
dishonored suffering, your palace can be built! Would you consent
to be the architect on this condition? That is the question. Can
you for one moment admit the thought that those for whom the
building had been built would agree to receive that happiness from
you if its source was suffering. It could perhaps be thought of as
the suffering of an insignificant being, but a being who had been
cruelly and unjustly put to death. Would they agree even if when
they attained that happiness they would be happy forever? Could
Tatyana’s great soul, which had so deeply suffered, have chosen
otherwise?
No, a pure, Russian soul decides thus: Let me,
let me alone be deprived of happiness, even if my happiness be
infinitely greater than the unhappiness of this old man. Finally,
let no one, not even this old man, know and appreciate my
sacrifice: I will not be happy through having ruined
another.
Here is a tragedy ??in fact, the line cannot
be passed, and Tatyana sends Onegin away. The following may be
said: But Onegin too is unhappy. She has saved one [the General],
and ruined the other [Onegin]. But that is another question,
perhaps the most important in the poem.
By the way, the question about why Tatyana did
not go away with Onegin has with us, in our literature at least, a
very characteristic history, and therefore I allow myself to dwell
upon it. The most characteristic thing is that the moral solution
of the question should have been so long subject to doubt. I think
that even if Tatyana had been free and her old husband had died and
she become a widow, even then she would not have gone away with
Onegin. But one must understand the essential substance of the
character. She sees what he is. The eternal drifter has suddenly
seen the woman whom he had previously scorned in a new and
unattainable setting. In this setting is perhaps the essence of the
matter. The girl whom he almost despised is now adored by all
society -- society, the awful authority over Onegin, despite his
universal aspirations. That is why he throws himself dazzled at her
feet. Here is my ideal, he cries, here is my salvation, here is the
escape from my anguish. I did not see her then, when ‘happiness was
so possible, so near’. And as before Aleko turned to Zemphira, so
does Onegin turn to Tatyana, seeking in his new, capricious fancy
the solution of all his questions. But does not Tatyana see this in
him, had she not seen it long ago? She knows beyond a doubt that at
bottom he loves his new caprice, and not her, the humble Tatyana as
of old. She knows that he takes her for something else, and not for
what she is, that it is not her whom he loves, that perhaps he does
not love any one, is incapable of loving any one, although he
suffers so acutely. He loves a caprice, but he himself is a
caprice. If she were to follow him, then tomorrow he would be
disillusioned and look with mockery upon his
infatuation.
He is not rooted in any soil at all. He is a
blade of grass, borne on the wind. She is not like that. Even in
her despair, in the painful consciousness that her life has been
ruined, she still has something solid and unshakable on which she
can fix her soul. These are the memories of her childhood, the
reminiscences of her country, her remote village, in which her pure
and humble life began.
Ay, of that burial ground so quiet
Where my poor nurse reposes now
Beneath her cross and shadowing bough
Oh, these memories and the pictures of the
past are most precious to her now; these alone are left to her, but
they do save her soul from final despair. And this is not a little,
but rather much, for there is here a whole foundation, unshakable
and indestructible. Here is contact with her own land, with her own
people, and with their sanctities. And he -- what has he and what
is he? Nothing, that she should follow him out of compassion, to
amuse him, to give him a moment’s gift of a mirage of happiness out
of the infinite pity of her love, knowing well beforehand that
tomorrow he would look on his happiness with mockery. No, these are
deep, firm souls, which cannot deliberately give their sanctities
to dishonor, even from infinite compassion. No, Tatyana could not
follow Onegin.
Thus in
Onegin, that immortal and unequalled poem, Pushkin was
revealed as a great national writer, unlike any before him. In one
stroke, with the extreme of exactness and insight, he defined the
very inmost essence of our high-ranking society, standing above the
level of the people. He defined the past and present type of
Russian drifter. He was the first to identify him with the flair of
genius, to identify his historical destiny and his enormous
significance in our future. Side by side he placed a type of
positive and indubitable beauty in the person of a Russian
woman.
Besides that, of course, in his other works of
that period, Pushkin was the first Russian writer to show us a
whole gallery of positively beautiful Russian types found among the
Russian people. The paramount beauty of these lies in their truth,
their tangible and indubitable truth. It is impossible to deny
them, they stand as though sculptured. I would remind you again. I
speak not as a literary critic, and therefore do not intend to
elucidate my idea by a particular and detailed literary discussion
of these works of the poet’s genius. Concerning the type of the
Russian monkish chronicler, for instance, a whole book might be
written to show the importance and meaning for us of this lofty
Russian figure, discovered by Pushkin in the Russian land,
portrayed and sculptured by him, and now eternally set before us in
its humble, exalted, indubitable spiritual beauty. It is evidence
of that mighty spirit of national life which can send forth from
itself figures of such certain loveliness. This type is now given
to us. He exists. He cannot be disputed. It cannot be said that he
is only the poet’s fancy and ideal. You yourself see and agree:
Yes, he exists, therefore the spirit of the nation which created
him exists also. Therefore the vital power of this spirit exists
and is mighty and vast. Throughout Pushkin sounds a belief in the
Russian character, in its spiritual might. And if there is belief,
there is hope also, the great hope for the man of
Russia.
With hope for all the good and glory,
I look ahead, devoid of fear,
said the poet himself on another occasion.
Those words may be applied directly to the whole of his national,
creative activity. And yet no single Russian writer, before or
after him, did ever associate himself so intimately and fraternally
with his people as Pushkin. Oh, we have a multitude of experts on
the people among our writers. They have written about the people
with talent and knowledge and love. Yet, if we compare them with
Pushkin, then, with one or at most two exceptions among his latest
followers [?? who does Dst have in mind?], they will be found
actually to be only “gentlemen” writing about the masses. Even in
the most gifted of them, even in the two exceptions I have just
mentioned, sometimes appears a sudden flash of something haughty,
something from another life and world, something which desires to
raise the people up to the writer, and in that way to make them
happy. But in Pushkin there is something allied indeed to
the people, which in him rises on occasion to some of the most
naive emotions. Take his story The Bear, and how a peasant
killed the bear’s mate. Or remember the verses, “Kinsman John, when
we start drinking”, and you will understand what I
mean.
All these treasures of art and artistic insight
are left by our great poet as it were a landmark for the writers
who should come after him, for future laborers in the same field.
One may say positively that if Pushkin had not existed, there would
not have been the gifted writers who came after him. At least they
would not have displayed themselves with such power and clarity, in
spite of the great gifts with which they have succeeded in
expressing themselves in our day. But not in poetry alone, not in
artistic creation alone. If Pushkin had not existed, there would
not have been expressed with the irresistible force with which it
appeared after him (not in all writers, but in a chosen few), our
belief in our Russian individuality, our now conscious faith in the
people’s powers, and finally the belief in our future individual
destiny among the family of European nations. This achievement of
Pushkin’s is particularly displayed if one examines what I call the
third period of his activity.
I repeat, there are no fixed divisions between
the periods. Some of the works of even the third period might have
been written at the very beginning of the poet’s artistic activity,
for Pushkin was always a complete whole, as it were a perfect
organism carrying within itself at once every one of its
principles, not receiving them from beyond. The beyond only
awakened in him that which was already in the depths of his soul.
But this organism developed and the phases of this development
could really be marked and defined, each of them by its peculiar
character and the regular generation of one phase from another.
Thus to the third period can be assigned those of his works in
which universal ideas were pre-eminently reflected, in which the
poetic conceptions of other nations were mirrored and their genius
reincarnated.
Some of these appeared after Pushkin’s death.
And in this period the poet reveals something almost miraculous,
never seen or heard at any time or in any nation before. There had
been in the literatures of Europe men of colossal artistic genius
-- a Shakespeare, a Cervantes, a Schiller. But show me one of these
great geniuses who possessed such a capacity for universal sympathy
as our Pushkin. This capacity, the pre-eminent capacity of our
nation, he shares with our nation, and by that above all he is our
national poet. The greatest of European poets could never so
powerfully embody in themselves the genius of a foreign, even a
neighboring, people, its spirit in all its hidden depth, and all
its yearning after its appointed end, as Pushkin could. On the
contrary, when they turned to foreign nations European poets most
often made them one with their own people, and understood them
after their own fashion. Even Shakespeare’s Italians, for instance,
are almost always Englishmen. Pushkin alone of all world poets
possessed the capacity of fully identifying himself with an alien
nationality. Take his Scenes from Faust, take The Miserly
Knight, take the ballad Once there Lived a Poor Young
Knight. Read his Don Juan again. Had Pushkin not signed
them, you would never know that they were not written by a
Spaniard. How profound and fantastic is the imagination in the poem
A Feast in Time of Plague. But in this fantastic imagination
is the genius of England; and in the hero’s wonderful song about
the plague, and in Mary’s song,
Our children’s cheerful voices
In the noisy school were heard...
These are English songs. This is the yearning
of the British genius, its lament, its painful presentiment of its
future. Remember the strange lines:
While wandering once in a valley
wild....
It is almost a literal transposition of the
first three pages of a strange mystical book, written in prose by
an old English sectarian -- but is it only a transposition? In the
sad and rapturous music of these verses is the very soul of
Northern Protestantism, of the English heresiarch, of the
illimitable mystic with his dull, somber, invincible aspiration,
and the impetuous power of his mystical dreaming. As you read these
strange verses, you seem to hear the spirit of the times, of the
Reformation. You understand the warlike fire of early
Protestantism, and finally history herself. You do this not merely
intellectually but as one who passes through the armed sectarian
camp, sings psalms with them, weeps with them in their religious
ecstasies, and believes with them in their belief.
Then set religious verses from the Koran or
Imitations from the Koran beside Pushkin’s Protestant
religious mysticism. Is he not here a Mohammedan? Has he not
captured the very spirit of the Koran and its sword, the naive
grandeur of faith and her terrible, bloody power?
And here is the ancient world. Here are
Egyptian Nights. Here sit the gods of earth. They sit on the backs
of their people and despise the genius of the people and their
aspirations. They no longer believed in that genius. They became
gods in isolation and went mad in their isolation, in the anguish
of their weariness unto death. They diverted themselves with
fanatic brutalities, with the voluptuousness of creeping things or
of a she-spider devouring her male.
No, I will say deliberately, there had never
been a poet with a universal sympathy like Pushkin’s. And it is not
his sympathy alone, but his amazing profundity, the reincarnation
of his spirit in the spirit of foreign nations. It is a
reincarnation almost perfect and therefore also miraculous, because
the phenomenon has never been repeated in any poet in all the
world. It is only in Pushkin. And by this, I repeat, he is a
phenomenon never seen and never heard of before, and in my opinion,
a prophetic phenomenon, because ... because herein was expressed
the national spirit of his poetry, the national spirit in its
future development, the national spirit of our future, which is
already implicit in the present, and it was expressed
prophetically. For what is the power of the spirit of Russian
nationality if not its aspiration after the final goal of
universality and pan-humanity [vsechelovechestvo]? No sooner
had he become a completely national poet, no sooner had he come
into contact with the national power, than he already anticipated
the great future of that power. In this he was a Seer, in this a
Prophet.
For what is the reform of Peter the Great to
us, not merely for the future but in the past and already in full
view? What did that reform mean to us? Surely it was not only the
adoption of European clothes, customs, inventions and science. Let
us examine how it was, let us look more steadily. Surely, it was
not a simple adoption by us of European dress, habits, inventions
and science. We need to scrutinize the matter, to examine it more
closely.
Yes, it is very probable that at the outset
Peter began his reform in this narrowly utilitarian sense. But in
the course of time, as his idea developed, Peter undoubtedly obeyed
some hidden instinct which oriented him and his work toward future
purposes undoubtedly grander than narrow utilitarianism. In the
same way, the Russian people did not accept the reform in the
utilitarian spirit alone. A distant and incomparably higher goal
was undoubtedly revealed to them and instantly warned them against
mere utilitarianism. I repeat, the people felt that purpose
unconsciously, but the feeling was direct and very vital. Indeed,
we then impetuously applied ourselves to the most vital universal
pan-humanist fellowship! Not in a spirit of enmity (as one might
have expected) but in friendliness and perfect love, we received
into our soul the genius of foreign nations, all equally, without
preference of race, able by instinct from almost the very first
step to discern, to discount distinctions, to excuse and reconcile
them. Therein we already showed what had only just become manifest
to us -- our readiness and inclination for a common and universal
union with all the races of the great Aryan family.
Yes, beyond all doubt, the destiny of a
Russian is pan-European and universal. To become a true Russian, to
become fully Russian (and you should remember this), means only to
become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a
universal man. Oh, all our Slavophilism and Westernism [ID]
is only a great misunderstanding, even though historically
necessary. To a true Russian, Europe and the destiny of all the
mighty ??Aryan race is as dear as Russia herself, as dear as the
destiny of his own native country. This is so because our destiny
is universality, won not by the sword, but by the strength of
brotherhood and our fraternal aspiration to reunite
mankind.
If you go deep into our history since Peter’s
reform, you will already find traces and indications of this idea,
of this fantasy [??dream] of mine, if you will, in the character of
our intercourse with European nations, even in the policy of the
state. For what has Russian policy been doing for these two
centuries if not serving Europe, perhaps, far more than she has
served herself. I do not believe this came to pass through the
inability of our statesmen.
Oh, the nations of Europe know how dear they
are to us. And in course of time I believe that we -- not we, of
course, but our children to come -- will all without exception
understand that to be a true Russian does indeed mean to aspire
finally to reconcile the contradictions of Europe, to find
resolution of European yearning in our pan-human and all-uniting
Russian soul, to include within our soul by brotherly love all our
brethren. At last it may be that Russia pronounces the final Word
of the great general harmony, of the final brotherly communion of
all nations in accordance with the law of the gospel of
Christ!
I know, I know too well, that my words may
appear ecstatic, exaggerated and fantastic. Let them be so, I do
not repent having uttered them. They ought to be uttered, above all
now, at the moment that we honor our great genius who by his
artistic power embodied this idea. The idea has been expressed many
times before. I say nothing new. But chiefly it will appear
presumptuous. “Is this our destiny, the destiny of our poor, brutal
land? Are we predestined among mankind to utter the new
word?”
Do I speak of economic glory, of the glory of
the sword or of science? I speak only of the brotherhood of man. I
say that the heart of Russia, perhaps more than that of all other
nations, is chiefly predestined for this universal, pan-human
union. I see its traces in our history, our men of genius, in the
artistic genius of Pushkin. Let our country be poor, but this poor
land “Christ traversed with blessing, in the garb of a serf”. Why
then should we not contain His final word? Was not He Himself born
in a manger?
I say again, we at least can already point to
Pushkin, to the universality and pan-humanity of his genius. He
surely could contain the genius of foreign lands in his soul as his
own. In art at least, in artistic creation, he undeniably revealed
this universality of the aspiration of the Russian spirit, and
therein is a great promise. If our thought is a dream, then in
Pushkin at least this dream has solid foundation. Had he lived
longer, he would perhaps have revealed great and immortal
embodiments of the Russian soul, which would then have been
intelligible to our European brethren. He would have attracted them
much more and closer than they are attracted now. Perhaps he would
have succeeded in explaining to them all the truth of our
aspirations. And they would understand us more than they do now.
They would have begun to have insight into us, and would have
ceased to look at us so suspiciously and presumptuously as they
still do. Had Pushkin lived longer, then among us too there would
perhaps be fewer misunderstandings and quarrels than we see now.
But God saw otherwise. Pushkin died in the full maturity of his
powers, and undeniably bore away with him a great secret into the
grave. And now we, without him, are seeking to divine his
secret.
