ACCORDING to information that I have obtained this morning respecting the disaster of the fête of Peterhof, its extent has exceeded my expectations. But we shall never ascertain the exact circumstances of the event. Every accident here is treated as an affair of state: it is God who has failed in His duty to the emperor!
Political superstition, which is the soul of the Russian community, exposes its chieftain to all the complaints that impotence may bring against power, that earth may urge against Heaven. If my dog is hurt, it is to me that he comes for the cure of his wound; if God afflicts the Russians, they immediately call upon their czar. This prince, who is responsible for nothing in politics, must answer for everything in Providence: a natural consequence of man’s usurpation of the rights of God. A man who allows himself to be considered as more than a mortal, takes upon himself all the evil that Heaven may send upon earth, during his reign. There result from this species of political fanaticism, a susceptibility and jealous delicacy, of which no idea can be formed in other lands. Nevertheless, the secrecy which the police believes it necessary to maintain on the subject of misfortunes the least dependent upon human will, fails in its object, inasmuch as it leaves the field open to imagination. Everyone relates the same transaction differently, according to his interest, his fears, his ambition, or his humor; according to his situation at court, or his position in the world. Hence it is, that truth in Petersburg is an imaginary thing, just as it has become in France, although from different causes. An arbitrary censorship and an unlimited liberty may lead to the same results, and render impossible the verification of the most simple fact.
Thus, some say that there were only thirty persons who perished the day before yesterday, while others speak of twelve hundred, others of two thousand, and others again of one hundred and fifty. Imagine the uncertainty in which everything must be involved when the circumstances of an event that took place, as it were, under our eyes, will always remain unknown, even to ourselves. I shall never cease to marvel at having seen a people exist, so thoughtless as to live and die tranquilly in the twilight which the police of its masters accords it. Hitherto I had been accustomed to believe that man could no more dispense with truth for his mind than with sun and air for his body; but my Russian journey has undeceived me. Truth is only needful to elevated minds or to advanced nations: the vulgar accommodate themselves to the falsehoods favorable to their passions and habits: here, to lie, is to protect society; to speak the truth, is to overthrow the state. The twilight of politics is less transparent than the polar sky.
For the authenticity of one of the accidents connected with the catastrophe of Peterhof I can vouch.
Three young Englishmen, the eldest of whom I know, had been some days in Petersburg. Their father is in England, and their mother awaits them at Karlsbad. On the day of the fête, the two youngest sailed for Peterhof without their brother, who constantly refused their solicitations to accompany them, alleging that he felt no curiosity. He saw them embark in their little vessel, and bade them adieu until the morrow. Three hours afterwards, both were corpses! They perished, together with several women and children, and two or three men, who were in the same boat: a sailor, who was a good swimmer, was alone saved. The unhappy surviving brother is plunged in a despair which would be difficult to describe. He is preparing to leave, to join his mother, and apprise her of the melancholy tidings. She had written to her sons desiring them not to omit seeing the fête of Peterhof, nor to hurry their departure, should their curiosity incline them to prolong their stay, intimating that she would wait patiently for them at Karlsbad. A little more urgency on her part would perhaps have saved their lives.
What numberless accounts, discussions, and proposals would not such a catastrophe have given rise to in any other land except this, and more especially in our own! How many newspapers would have said, and how many voices would have repeated, that the police never does its duty, that the boats were not seaworthy, the watermen greedy only of gain, and that the authorities, far from interfering, did but increase the danger by their indifference or their corruption! It would have been added that the marriage of the grand duchess had been celebrated under very gloomy auspices, like many other royal marriages; and then dates, allusions, and citations would have followed in great abundance. Nothing of the kind here. A silence more frightful than the evil itself everywhere reigns. Two lines in the gazette, without details, is all the information publicly given; and at court, in the city, in the drawing rooms of fashion, not a word is spoken. There are no coffeehouses in Petersburg where people comment upon the journals: there are, indeed, no journals upon which to comment. The petty employees are more timid than the great lords; what is not dared to be spoken of among the principals, is yet more carefully avoided by subordinates; and as to the merchants and shopkeepers, that wily caution necessary to all who would live and thrive in the land, is by them especially observed. If they speak on grave, and therefore dangerous subjects, it is only in strict and confidential privacy.
Russia has agreed to say nothing which could make the empress nervous, and thus is she left to live and die dancing! “She would be distressed, therefore hold your peace.” And hereupon, children, friends, relations, all who are loved, die, and no one dares even to weep for them. People here are too unfortunate to complain.
The Russians are all courtiers. Soldiers, spies, jailers, executioners, in this land, all do more than their duty; all ply their trade as parasites. Who shall tell me to what lengths a society may not go which is not built on the foundation of human dignity?
I repeat that everything must be undone here, before Russians can constitute a people.
On the present occasion the silence of the police is not merely the result of a desire to flatter, it is also the effect of fear. The slave dreads the angry mood of his master, and employs every effort to keep him in a state of benignity and good humor. The chain, the dungeon, the knout, and Siberia, are all within reach of an irritated czar; or at the best there is the Caucasus, a Siberia mitigated to the uses of a despotism softened in accordance with the spirit of the century.
It cannot be denied that, in this instance, the first cause of the evil was the carelessness of the administration. If the authorities had prevented the boatmen of Petersburg from overloading their vessels, or from venturing on the gulf in craft too small or weak to ride the waves, no one would have perished; and yet, who knows? The Russians are generally bad seamen: wherever they are, there is danger. When Asiatics, with their long robes and long beards, are the sailors, there can be little surprise at hearing of shipwrecks.
On the day of the fête, one of the steamboats that generally run between Petersburg and Kronstadt, started for Peterhof. Although large and strong, it was in danger of foundering like the smaller vessels, and would have done so had it not been for a foreigner who was among the passengers. This man (who was an Englishman) seeing several vessels capsized around them, knowing the danger they were in, and observing, further, that the boat was badly served and badly commanded, conceived the happy idea of cutting, with his own knife, the cords which held the awning raised upon deck for the comfort and convenience of the passengers. The first thing that ought to have been done, upon the least sign of a squall, was to remove this pavilion. The Russians never dreamt of so simple a precaution, and had it not been for the foreigner’s presence of mind, the boat would have infallibly capsized. It was saved, though too much damaged to continue the voyage, and its crew only too happy in being able to return to Petersburg. If the Englishman who saved it had not been an acquaintance of another Englishman, who is one of my friends, I should not have known the fact. It was confirmed to me by other informed persons, to whom I mentioned it, but they requested that I would keep it secret!
It would not do to talk about the Deluge, if that catastrophe had happened under the reign of a Russian emperor.
Among all the intelligent faculties, the only one here valued is that of tact. Imagine a whole nation bending under the yoke of this drawing-room virtue. Picture to your minds an entire people, prudent as a diplomatist who has yet his fortune to make, and you will compass the idea of the substance and worth of conversation in Russia. If the atmosphere of the court oppresses us, even when at the court, how unfriendly to life must it not be when it pursues us into the very retirement of the family circle!
Russia is a nation of mutes. Some potent magician has transformed sixty millions of human beings into automata, who must await the wand of another enchanter before they can again enjoy life. Or it reminds me of the palace of Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,—it is bright and magnificent, but it lacks one thing, which is life, or, in other words, liberty.
The emperor must suffer from such a state of things. Whoever is born to command, no doubt loves obedience; but the obedience of a man is worth more than that of a machine. A prince surrounded by complaisant flatterers must always remain in ignorance of everything which it is wished he should not know; he is, therefore, necessarily condemned to doubt every word and to distrust every individual. Such is the lot of an absolute master. In vain would he be amiable, in vain would he live as a man; the force of circumstances makes him unfeeling in spite of himself; he occupies the place of a despot, and is obliged to submit to a despot’s destiny,—to adopt his sentiments, or, at least, to play his part.
The evils of dissimulation extend here further than may be imagined: the Russian police, so alert to torment people, is slow to help or enlighten them when they have recourse to its aid in doubtful situations.
The following is an example of this designed inertia. At the last carnival, a lady of my acquaintance had permitted her maid to go out on the Sunday. Night came, and she did not return. On the following morning, the lady, very uneasy, sent to obtain information from the police.
They replied that no accident had occurred in Petersburg on the preceding night, and that no doubt the femme de chambre had lost herself, and would soon return safe and sound.
The day passed in deceitful security. On the day following, a relation of the girl’s, a young man tolerably versed in the secrets of the police, conceived the idea of going to the Hall of Surgery, to which one of his friends procured him an admission. Scarcely had he entered, when he recognized the corpse of his cousin, which the pupils were just about to start dissecting. Being a good Russian, he preserved self-command sufficient to conceal his emotion, and asked,—“Whose body is this?”
“No one knows; it is that of a girl who was found dead the night before last, in ——— Street; it is believed that she has been strangled in attempting to defend herself against men who endeavored to rape her.”
“Who are the men?”
“We do not know; one can only form conjectures on the event; proofs are wanting.”
“How did you obtain the body?”
“The police sold it to us secretly; so we will not talk about it.”
This last is a common expression in the mouth of a Russian, or an acclimated foreigner.
The cousin was dead. The mistress of the victim dared not complain; and now, after a lapse of six months, I am, perhaps, the only person to whom she has related the death of her femme de chambre.
It will by this be seen how the subaltern agents of the Russian police perform their duties. These faithless servants gained a double advantage by selling the body of the murdered woman: they obtained a few rubles, and they also concealed the murder, which would have brought upon them severe blame, if the noise of the event had spread.
Reprimands addressed to men of this class are, I believe, accompanied with other demonstrations, of a character likely to engrave the words indelibly on the memories of the unfortunate hearers. A Russian of the lower class is as often beaten as saluted. The lifting of the rod (in Russia, the rod is a large split cane), and the lifting of the hat, are means employed in about equal measure, in the social education of this people. Beating in Russia can only be applied to certain classes, and by men of certain other classes. Here, ill-treatment is regulated like the tariff of a customhouse; it reminds us of the code of Ivan. The dignity of caste is admitted, but no one dreams of the dignity of man. The reader will recollect what I have already said of the politeness of the Russians of all ranks, and of its real value; I will now confine myself to relating one or two of the illustrative scenes that pass daily before my eyes.
I have seen, in the same street, two drivers of droshkies ceremoniously lift their hats in passing each other:—this is a common custom; if acquainted, they lift their hand to their mouth with an amicable smile, and kiss it, making at the same time a little expressive and intelligent sign with the eyes. So much for politeness.
A little farther on, I have seen a courier, a Feldjäger, or some other government servant, descend from his vehicle, and, running to one of these well-bred coachmen, strike him brutally and unmercifully with whip, stick, or fist, in the breast, the face, or on the head, which punishment the unlucky creature, who had not made way in sufficient haste, received without the least complaint or resistance, out of respect to the uniform and the caste of his tormentor, whose anger, however, is not always in such cases promptly disarmed by the submission of the delinquent.
I have seen one of these carriers of dispatches, the courier of some minister, or the valet de chambre of some aide-de-camp of the emperor’s, drag from his seat a young coachman, and never cease striking him until he had covered his face with blood. The victim submitted to the torture like a real lamb, without the least resistance, and in the same manner as one would yield to some inevitable commotion of nature. The passersby were in no degree moved or excited by the cruelty; and one of the comrades of the sufferer, who was watering his horses a few steps off, obedient to a sign of the enraged Feldjäger, approached to hold his horse’s bridle during the time that he was pleased to prolong the punishment. In what other country could a man of the lower orders be found who would assist in the infliction of an arbitrary punishment upon one of his companions?
The scene in question took place in the finest part of the city, and at the busiest hour. When the unfortunate man was released, he wiped away the blood, which streamed down his cheeks, remounted his seat, and recommenced his bows and salutations as usual. It should be recollected that this abomination was enacted in the midst of a silent crowd. A people governed in a Christian manner would protest against a social discipline which destroys all individual liberty. But here, the influence of the priest is confined to obtaining from the people and the nobles signs of the cross and genuflections.
Notwithstanding its worship of the Holy Spirit, this nation has always its god upon earth. Like Tamerlane, the emperor of Russia receives the idolatrous worship of his subjects; the Russian law has never been baptized.
I hear every day some encomium on the gentleness, politeness, and pacific humor of the people of St. Petersburg. Elsewhere, I should admire this calm; here I can only view it as the worst symptom of the evil of which I complain. The people are actuated by fear to a degree that urges them to dissimulate, and to assume the appearance of a content and tranquillity which conduces to the satisfaction of the oppressor, and the security of the oppressed. Your true tyrant likes to be surrounded with smiles. Under the terror which hovers over all heads, submission becomes the general rule of conduct; victims and executioners, all practice the obedience that perpetuates the evil which they inflict or to which they submit.
The intervention of the police between people who quarrel would expose the combatants to punishment yet more formidable than the blows they bear in silence, and they avoid therefore all noise that might call the executioner to the spot.
Of the following tumultuous scene, chance, however, rendered me a witness this morning:—
I was passing along a canal covered with boats laden with wood, which the men were carrying on shore. One of these porters got into a quarrel with his comrades, and they all started fighting, as they might have done among ourselves on a similar occasion. The aggressor, finding himself the weakest, took to flight: he climbed, with the agility of a squirrel, a large mast of the vessel, and perching himself upon a yard, set at defiance his less nimble adversaries. So far I found the scene amusing. The men, seeing themselves balked in their hope of vengeance, and forgetting that they were in Russia, manifested their fury by loud cries and savage menaces. There are found at certain distances, in all the streets of the city, policemen in uniform: two of these persons, attracted by the vociferations of the combatants, repaired to the scene of action, and commanded the chief offender to descend from his perch. This individual did not obey the summons; one of the policemen sprang on board; the refractory porter clung to the mast: the man of power reiterated his commands, and the rebel persisted in his disobedience. The former, infuriated, tried himself to climb the mast, and succeeded in seizing one of the feet of the fugitive, which, without troubling himself with any consideration as to the manner in which the unfortunate being was to descend, he pulled at with all his force. The other, hopeless of escaping the punishment that awaited him, at length yielded to his fate; he let go his hold, and fell from a height of about twelve feet upon a pile of wood, on which his body lay as motionless as a sack. The severity of the fall may be imagined. The head struck against the wood, and the sound of the concussion reached my ear, though I was about fifty paces off. I supposed the man was dead; his face was bathed in blood; nevertheless, on recovering from the first stunning effect of the fall, the unfortunate savage, thus taken in the snare, rose; his visage, wherever the blood allowed it to be seen, had a frightful paleness, and he began to bellow like an ox. His horrible cries diminished my compassion; he seemed to me as nothing more than a brute, and I could not therefore feel for him as for one of my fellows. The louder the man howled, the harder my heart grew; so true it is that the objects of our compassion must exhibit something of their proper dignity, ere we can deeply participate in their trouble. Pity is a sentiment of association, and who would mentally associate with that which he despises? They at length carried him off, although he continued to offer a desperate and protracted resistance. A small boat was brought alongside by other policemen; the prisoner was bound with cords, his hands were fastened behind his back, and he was thrown on his face into the boat. This second rude shock was followed by a shower of blows, nor did the torture end here; the sergeant who had seized the victim, no sooner saw him thus prostrate, than he jumped upon his body, and began to stamp upon him with all his force, trampling him under his feet as the grapes are trod in the winepress. I had then approached the spot, and was therefore witness of all that I relate. During this horrible torture, the frightful yells of the victim were at first redoubled, but when they began to grow fainter and fainter, I felt that I could no longer command myself, and, having no power to interfere, I hastened away.
What most disgusts me is the refined elegance which is exhibited in the same picture with such revolting barbarity. If there were less luxury and delicacy among the higher orders, the condition of the lower would inspire me with less indignation. Such occurrences, with all that they involve, would make me hate the most delightful country in the world; how much more, then, a heath of plaster—a painted marsh!
“What exaggeration!” the Russians would say. “What strong expressions, for so trifling a matter!!” I know you call it trifling, and it is for that I reproach you. Your familiarity with these horrors explains your indifference without justifying it: you make no more account of the cords with which you bind a man, than of the collar which you put on your dog.
In broad daylight, in the open street, to beat a man to death before he is tried, appears a very simple matter in the eyes of the public and of the constables of Petersburg. Merchants, lords, and soldiers, the poor and the rich, the great and small, the polite and the vulgar, the clowns and the fops, the Russians of every class, consent to let such things quietly go on in their presence, without troubling themselves about their legality. Elsewhere, the citizen is protected by the whole community against the agent of unjust power; here the public agent is protected against the just accusations of the injured individual. The serf never accuses.
The Emperor Nicholas has made a code! If the facts I have related are in accordance with the laws of that code, so much the worse for the legislator; if they are illegal, so much the worse for the administrator of the law. The emperor is, in both cases, responsible. What a misfortune to be no more than a man in accepting the office of a god, and yet to be forced to accept it! Absolute government should be confided only to angels.
I pledge myself to the accuracy of the facts that are here related. I have neither added nor retrenched one circumstance in the story, and I recount it while the slightest features of the scene continue present to my mind.[1]
If such details could be published at Petersburg, with the commentaries indispensable to make them noticed by minds inured to all kinds of brutality and injustice, they would not effect the good that might be expected. The Russian administration would so order matters, that the police of Petersburg should henceforth seem to be more mild in its treatment of the people, were it only out of respect for the squeamish sentiments of foreigners; but this would be all.
The manners of a people are gradually formed by the reciprocal action of the laws upon the customs, and of the customs upon the laws; they do not change as by the stroke of a wand. Those of the Russians, in spite of the pretensions of these half savages, are, and will yet long remain cruel. It is little more than a century since they were true Tartars: it was Peter the Great who first compelled the men to admit females into their social meetings; and under all their modern elegance, several of these parvenus of civilization cannot still altogether conceal the bearskin. They simply turn it inside out.
Seeing that they can now no longer avail themselves of the age of chivalry—that age by whose spirit the nations of western Europe were so much benefited in their youth—all that can remain for the Russians is an independent and influential religion. Russia has a faith, but a political faith does not emancipate the human mind; it shuts it up in the narrow circle of its natural interests. With the Catholic faith, the Russians would soon acquire general ideas, based on a rational course of instruction, and on a liberty proportioned to their state of enlightenment. Could they but obtain this elevation, I am persuaded that they might rule the world. The evil of their system is deeply seated, and the remedies hitherto employed have only acted upon the surface—they have healed the wound over without curing it. A genuine civilization spreads from the center to the circumference, that of Russia tends from the circumference towards the center; it is a barbarism plastered over, and nothing more.
Because a savage may have the vanity of a man of the world, does it follow that his mind is cultivated? I repeat, and may, perhaps, repeat again, that the Russians care much less for being civilized than for making us believe that they are civilized. So long as this public disease of vanity shall continue to prey upon their hearts and corrupt their minds, they will have certain great lords who will be able to make a display of refinement, both among themselves and us; but they will remain barbarians at heart. Unfortunately, however, savages understand the use of firearms.
The endeavors of the Emperor Nicholas justify my views. He has thought, before I did, that the time for the display of appearances is past in Russia, and that the entire, edifice of civilization in that land has to be reconstructed.
Peter the Great would have overthrown it a second time in order to rebuild it. Nicholas is more skillful. I am filled with respect for this, man, who, with the whole energy of his mind, struggles in secret against the work of the genius of Peter the Great. While continuing to deify that mighty reformer, he is, all the while, bringing back to their proper position a nation led astray among the paths of imitation for upwards of a hundred years. The views of the present emperor manifest themselves even in the streets of Petersburg. He does not amuse himself with erecting, in haste, colonnades of stuccoed bricks; he is everywhere replacing appearance with reality; stone is everywhere superseding plaster, and buildings of a strong and massive architecture are rising above the showy monuments of a false splendor. It is by first bringing back a people to their primitive character, that they are rendered capable and worthy of true civilization, without which a nation cannot know how to work for posterity. If a people would rear a monument to their own power and greatness, they must not copy foreigners,—they must study to develop the national genius instead of thwarting it. That which in this creation most nearly approaches to Deity, is Nature. Nature calls the Russians to great things, while they, under their pretended civilization, have been occupied with trifles. The Emperor Nicholas has appreciated their capabilities better than his predecessors, and under his reign, by a general return to truth, everything is becoming great. In Petersburg stands a pillar, which is the largest piece of granite that has ever been cut by the hands of man, not excepting the Egyptian monuments. Seventy thousand soldiers, the court, the city, and the surrounding country, gathered together, without inconvenience or pressure, in the square of the Imperial Palace, to witness, in a religious silence, the miraculous erection of this monument, conceived, executed, and placed by a Frenchman, M. de Montferrand; for the French are still necessary to the Russians. The prodigious machines worked successfully, and at the moment when the column, rising from its fetters, lifted itself up as if animated with a life of its own, the army, the crowd, the emperor himself, fell on their knees to thank God for so great a miracle, and to praise him for the stupendous achievements which he permitted them to accomplish. This I call a real national fête; not a flattery that might, like the masquerade of Peterhof, have been also taken for a satire, but a grand historical picture. The great, the little, the bad, the sublime, and all other opposites, enter into the constitution of this singular country, while silence perpetuates the prodigy, and prevents the machine from breaking.
The Emperor Nicholas extends his reforms even to the language of those who surround him; he requires Russian to be spoken at court. The greater number of the women of the highest circles, especially those who have been born at Petersburg, are ignorant of their native language; but they learn a few Russian phrases, which they utter through obedience to the emperor, when he passes into the rooms of the palace where their duties may retain them. One of them acts always as a sentinel, to announce to the others, by some conventional sign, the arrival of the monarch, on whose appearance French conversation immediately ceases, and Russian phrases, destined to flatter the Imperial ear, are heard on every side. The prince observes, with self-complacency, the extent of his power as a reformer; and the fair rebels begin to laugh as soon as he has passed.
However, like every reformer, the emperor is endowed with an obstinacy which must ultimately produce success.
At the extremity of that square, vast as a mighty region, in which stands the column, is to be seen a mountain of granite,—the church of St. Isaac of Petersburg. This edifice, though less stately, less beautiful in design, and less rich in ornaments than that of St. Peter’s at Rome, is quite as extraordinary. It is not finished, and one cannot therefore judge of the whole, which will be a work whose gigantic proportions will far exceed those which the spirit of the age has produced among other nations. Its materials are granite, bronze, and iron, and no other. Its color is imposing, though somber.
The marvelous temple was commenced under Alexander, and will soon be completed under the reign of Nicholas, by the same Frenchman (M. de Montferrand) who raised the column.
And such efforts for the benefit of a church crippled by the civil power! Alas! the Word of God will never be heard under this roof. The temples of the Greek church no longer serve as roofs for the pulpits of truth. In scorn of the memories of the Athanasiuses and the Chrysostoms, religion is not taught publicly to the Russians. The Greek Muscovites suppress the word of preaching, unlike the Protestants, whose religion consists of nothing but that word.
The emperor, aided by his armies of soldiers and of artists, exerts himself in vain. He will never invest the Greek church with a power which God has not given it: it may be rendered a persecuting, but it cannot be rendered an apostolical, church,— a church, that is to say, which is a civilizer, and a conqueror in the moral world. To discipline men is not to convert souls. This political and national church has neither moral nor spiritual life: where independence is wanting, there can be nothing else that is good. Schism, in separating the priest from his independent head, immediately throws him into the hands of his temporal prince; and thus revolt is punished by slavery. In the most bloody periods of history, the Catholic church labored to emancipate the nations: the adulterous priest sold the God of heaven to the god of the world, to enable him to tyrannize over men in the name of Christ; but that impious priest, while even killing the body, enlightened the mind: for, altogether turned from the right way as he was, he nevertheless formed part of a church which possessed life and light. The Greek priest imparts neither life nor death—he is himself a dead body.
Signs of the cross, salutations in the streets, bowing of the knees before the chapels, prostrations of old devotees upon the pavements of the churches, kissings of the hands, a wife, children, and universal contempt,—such are the fruits of the priest’s abdication,—such is all that he has been able to obtain from the most superstitious people in the world. What a lesson! and what a punishment! In the midst of the triumph of his schism, the schismatic priest is struck with impotence. A priest, when he wishes to engross temporal power, perishes for the want of views sufficiently elevated to enable him to see the road that God has appointed for him;—a priest who allows himself to be dethroned by the king for the want of courage to follow that road, equally fails in his high calling.
I cannot apologize for the wandering character of my thoughts and disquisitions, for, in passing freely from object to object, from idea to idea, I describe Russia as a whole, and show the truth as it appears to me, better than if, with a more methodical style, I purposely endeavored to avoid the reproach of inconsistencies, digressions, or confusion of subjects. The state of the people, the greatness of the emperor, the aspect of the streets, the beauty of the public buildings, the degraded state of minds consequent upon the degeneration of the religious principle, all strike my eyes at the same moment, and pass, so to speak, at once under my pen; and all constitute Russia, the principles of whose life reveal themselves to my thoughts in the contemplation of objects the least significant in appearance.
Yesterday, I walked out with a Frenchman, an intelligent person, well acquainted with Petersburg, where he resides as tutor in the family of a great nobleman. He has consequently opportunities for attaining a knowledge of the truth, entirely beyond the reach of passing travelers. He considered my views of Russia too favorable. I laugh at this reproach when I think of those which the Russians will make against me, and I maintain that I am impartial, seeing that I hate only that which appears to me evil, and that I admire all which appears good, in this, as in other lands.
The Frenchman of whom I speak passes his life among Russian aristocrats.
We were walking leisurely along the beautiful promenade of the Nevsky Prospect, when suddenly a black or dark green coach passed before us. It was long, low built, and closed on all sides, and much resembled an enormous coffin raised upon wheels. Four little apertures of about six inches square, crossed with iron bars, gave air and light to this moving tomb; a child of eight, or, at the most, ten years, guided the two horses attached to the machine; and, to my surprise, a considerable number of soldiers escorted it. I had scarcely time to ask my companion the use of so singular an equipage, when my question was answered by a ghastly face, which appeared at one of the air holes, and at once informed me that the carriage served to transport prisoners to the place of their destination.
“It is the traveling cell of the Russians,” said my companion; “elsewhere, no doubt, they have similar odious objects; but then they seek to hide them as much as they can from the public; here, they make as much display of them as possible. What a government!”
“Think,” I replied, “of the difficulties it has to encounter!”
“Ah! you are still the dupe of their gilded words. I see the Russian authorities impose upon you whatever they please.”
“I endeavor to place myself as much as possible in their situation; nothing requires more candid consideration than the position of those who govern, for it is not they who have created the existing state of things; their business is to defend it even while prudently reforming it. If the iron rod which governs this debased people were to be removed but for one moment, society would be overturned.”
“They tell you that; but, trust me, they delight in this pretended necessity. Those who most complain of the severities they are obliged, as they say, to put in force, would renounce them with regret. In the bottom of their hearts they love a government without check or counterpoise; such a government works more easily than any other. No man willingly gives up anything which makes his task more easy. Could you expect a preacher to dispense with the terrors of hell, in his efforts to convert hardened sinners? Hell is the capital punishment of the theologians[2]; at first they make use of it with regret, as of a necessary evil, but they soon acquire a taste for dealing out damnation upon the greater part of mankind. It is the same thing with severe measures in politics; they are feared before they are tried, but after their success is witnessed, they are admired; and such, you may depend upon it, is the feeling too general in this country. I often think that they take pleasure in creating circumstances, under which it is necessary to inflict punishment, for fear they should get out of practice. Are you ignorant of what is now passing on the Volga?”
“I heard of serious troubles there, but they say that they were promptly repressed.”
“No doubt: but at what price? And what should you say, were I to tell you that those frightful disorders were the result of a word of the emperor’s.”
“Never will you induce me to believe that he can have approved such horrors.”
“Neither do I say he has. Nevertheless, a word pronounced by him—innocently, I believe—has caused the evil. The fact is as follows: notwithstanding the injustice of the overseers of the crown, the lot of the peasants of the emperor is still preferable to that of other serfs; and whenever the sovereign becomes proprietor of some new domain, its inhabitants are the envy of all their neighbors. The crown lately purchased a considerable estate in the district that has since revolted. Immediately, the peasants sent deputies from every part of the surrounding country to the new superintendents of the Imperial lands, to supplicate the emperor to purchase them also. The serfs chosen as ambassadors were sent on to Petersburg. The emperor received them and treated them with kindness; but, to their great regret, he did not buy them. ‘I cannot,’ he said to them, ‘purchase all Russia, but a time will come, I hope, when each peasant of this empire will be free: if it depended only upon me, the Russians should enjoy, from this day forth, the independence which I wish for them; and to procure them which at a future period, I am laboring with all my power.’ ”
“Well, this answer seems to me full of reason, candor, and humanity.”
“No doubt: but the emperor should have known the men to whom he addressed such words; and not have murdered his noblemen out of tenderness towards his serfs. These words, interpreted by barbarous and envious peasants, have set a whole province on fire; and thus has it become necessary to punish a people for crimes which they were instigated to commit. ‘Our father desires our deliverance,’ cried the returned deputies on the borders of the Volga; ‘he wishes for nothing but our happiness; he said so to us, himself: it is, then, only the nobles and their agents who are our enemies, and who oppose the good designs of our father! Let us avenge the emperor!’ After this, the peasants believed they were performing a pious work in rising upon their masters, and thus all the nobles of a canton, and all their agents were massacred, together with their families. They spitted one, and roasted him alive; they boiled another in a cauldron; they disemboweled, and killed, in various other ways, the stewards and agents of the estates; they murdered all they met, burnt whole towns, and, in short, devastated a province; not in the name of liberty, for they do not know what liberty means, but in the name of deliverance and of the emperor.”
“It was perhaps some of these savages whom we saw passing in the prisoners’ conveyance. How could such beings be influenced by the gentle means employed by the governments of western Europe?”
“It would be necessary gradually to change the ideas of the people; instead of which they find it more convenient to change their location. After every scene of this kind, villages and entire counties are transported. No population is sure of preserving its territory, the result of which is, that men who have become naturally attached to the soil, are deprived, in their slavery, of the only compensation which could comport with their condition. By an infernal combination, they are made moveable without being made free. A word from the monarch roots them up as though they were trees, tears them from their native soil, and sends them to perish or to languish at the world’s end. The peasant, exposed to these storms of supreme power, loves not his cabin, the only thing in this world that he could love; he detests his life, and ill understands its duties; for it is necessary to impart some happiness to a man in order to make him feel his obligations; misery only instructs him in hypocrisy and revolt. If self-interest, when well understood, is not the foundation of morals, it is at least their support.”
“Yet it is difficult to change the spirit of a people: it is the work neither of a day, nor of a reign.”
“Is it a work at which they sincerely labor?”
“I think so, but with prudence.”
“What you call prudence, I call insincerity; you do not know the emperor.”
“Reproach him with being inflexible, but not with being false; in a prince, inflexibility is often a virtue.”
“Do you believe the character of the emperor to be sincere? Remember his conduct at the death of Pushkin.”
“I do not know the circumstances of that event.”
Thus talking, we arrived at the Champ de Mars, a vast square, which appears a desert, though it occupies the middle of the city. A man may converse there with less danger of being overheard than in his chamber. My cicerone continued:—
“Pushkin was, as you are aware, the greatest of Russian poets.”
“We are no judges of that.”
“We are, at least, of his reputation. Whether well founded or not, his reputation was great. He was yet young, and of an irascible temper. You know he had Moorish blood on his mother’s side. His wife, a very handsome woman, inspired him with more passion than confidence. His poetical temperament, and his African blood, made him easily jealous; and it was thus, exasperated by appearances and by false reports, envenomed with a perfidy which calls to mind the conception of Shakespeare, that this Russian Othello lost all reason, and sought to force the man by whom he believed himself injured, to fight with him. This person was a Frenchman, and, unfortunately, his brother-in-law; his name was M. d’Antès. A duel in Russia is a serious affair, the more so, because, instead of according, as among us, with ideas and customs in opposition to laws, it militates against all preconceived notions: this nation is more Oriental than chivalrous. Dueling is illegal here as elsewhere; but, besides this, it is less supported by public opinion than in other lands. M. d’Antès did all he could to avoid the difficulty. Urged vehemently by the unhappy husband, he refused him satisfaction, though in a manner that was dignified: but, notwithstanding, he continued his assiduities. Pushkin became almost mad. The constant presence of the man whose death he wished, appeared to him a permanent insult, and in order to rid himself of him, he acted in a way that made a duel inevitable. The two brothers-in-law fought, and M. d’Antès killed Pushkin. The man whom public opinion accused, triumphed; and the injured husband, the national poet, the innocent party, fell.
“This death excited public indignation. Pushkin, the Russian poet, par excellence, the author of the finest odes in the language, the glory of the country, the restorer of Slavic poetry, in short, the pride of the age, the hope of the future, to fall by the hand of a Frenchman! was an event that roused public passion to the highest pitch. Petersburg, Moscow, the whole empire was in excitement. The emperor, who knows the Russians better than any man in Russia, took care to join in the public affliction. He ordered a service to be performed, and I am not sure that he did not carry his pious affectation so far as to assist in person at the ceremony, in order to publish his regret by taking God to witness his admiration of the national genius removed too soon for the nation’s glory.
“However this may be, the sympathy of the sovereign so flattered the Muscovite spirit as to awake a generous patriotism in the breast of a young man, endowed with considerable talent. This too credulous poet was so enraptured by the august protection accorded to the first of all arts, that he grew bold enough to believe himself inspired! In the ingenuous yearnings of his gratitude, he ventured even to write an ode— a patriotic ode, to thank the emperor for becoming the protector of literature. He concluded his remarkable production by singing the praises of the departed bard. This was all he did; I have read the verses, and I can attest the innocent intentions of the author: unless at least it might be a crime to conceal in the depths of his bosom a hope, perhaps, of becoming one day a second Pushkin,—a hope very pardonable, it seems to me, in a youthful imagination.
“Audacious youth! to aim at renown, to betray a passion for glory under a despotism! It was the same as if Prometheus had said to Jupiter,—‘Take care of yourself, I am going to rob you of your thunderbolts.’
“The recompense which this young aspirant received for having thus publicly shown his confidence in his master’s love for the fine arts and the belles lettres, was a SECRET order to go and pursue his poetical studies on the Caucasus, a chapel of ease to the ancient Siberia.
“After having remained there two years, he has returned, his health destroyed, his spirit broken, and his imagination radically cured of its chimeras. After this trait, will you yet put trust in the official words or the public acts of the emperor?”
“The emperor is a man; he shares human weaknesses. Something must have shocked him in the allusions of the young poet. Perhaps they were European rather than national. The emperor proceeds on a principle the very opposite to that of Catherine II, he braves Europe instead of flattering it. This is wrong, I admit; for studied opposition is in itself a species of dependence, since under it, a man is only influenced by contradiction; but it is pardonable, especially if you reflect on the evil caused to Russia by princes who were possessed all their life with the mania of imitation.”
“You are incorrigible!” exclaimed the advocate of the ancient boyars. “You believe, then, in the possibility of Russian civilization? It promised well before the time of Peter the Great, but that prince destroyed the fruit in its germ. Go to Moscow, it is the center of the ancient empire; yet you will see that all minds are turned towards speculations of industry, and that the national character is as much effaced there as at St. Petersburg. The Emperor Nicholas commits today, though with different views, a fault analogous to that of Peter the Great. He does not take into account the history of an entire age, the age of the Emperor Peter: history has its fatalities,—the fatalities of faits accomplis. Woe to the prince who does not submit to these!”
The day was advanced; we separated, and I continued my walk, musing upon the energetic feeling of opposition which must spring up in minds accustomed to reflect under the silence of despotism. Characters which such a government does not debase, it steels and fortifies.
On my return, I sat down to read again some translations of the poems of Pushkin. They confirmed me in the opinion that a previous reading had imparted. This author has borrowed much of his coloring from the new poetical school of western Europe. Not that he has adopted the antireligious opinions of Lord Byron, the social notions of our poets, or the philosophy of those of Germany; but he has adopted their manner of describing. I therefore do not recognize him as a real Muscovite poet. The Pole, Mickiewicz, strikes me as being much more Slavic, although he, like Pushkin, has bowed to the influence of occidental literature.
The real Russian poet, did one exist, could, in the present day address only the people; he would neither be understood nor read in the salons. Where there is no language, there is no poetry; neither indeed are there any thinkers. The Emperor Nicholas has begun to require that Russian be spoken at court; they laugh at present at a novelty which is viewed as merely a caprice of their master’s; the next generation will thank him for this victory of good sense over fashion.
How could the national genius develop itself in a society where people speak four languages without knowing one? Originality of thought has a nearer connection than is imagined with purity of idiom. This fact has been forgotten in Russia for a century, and in France for some years. Our children will feel the effects of the rage for English nurses which has, among us, taken possession of all fashionable mothers.
In France formerly, the first, and I believe the best French tutor, was the wet nurse. A man should study his native language throughout his whole life, but the child should not be formally taught it; he should receive it in the cradle, without study. Instead of this, our little Frenchmen of the present day lisp English, and stammer German from their birth, and are afterwards taught French as a foreign language.
Montaigne congratulated himself on having learned Latin previously to French. It is perhaps to the advantage in which the author of the Essays thus glories, that we owe the most pure and national style in our ancient literature; he had a right to rejoice, for Latin is the root of our language; but all purity and spontaneity of expression is lost among a people who do not respect the language of their fathers. Our children speak English, just as our footmen wear powder! I am persuaded that the want of originality in modern Slavic literature is attributable to the custom, which the Poles and Russians adopted during the eighteenth century, of introducing into their families foreign tutors and preceptors. When the Russians turn their thoughts again into their own language, they translate; and this borrowed style checks the flow of thought, at the same time that it destroys the simplicity of expression.
How is it that the Chinese have hitherto done more for the human race in literature, in philosophy, in morals, and in legislation than the Russians? It is, perhaps, because these men have not ceased to entertain a strong affection for their primitive dialect.
The confusion of languages does not injure mediocre minds; on the contrary, it aids them in their efforts. Superficial instruction, the only kind which is suited to such minds, is facilitated by a study, equally superficial, of the living languages—an easy study, or rather a mental recreation perfectly suited to indolent faculties, or to faculties devoted to material aims. But whenever, by mischance, this system is applied to the education of superior talent, it checks the work of nature, leads genius astray, and prepares for it either a future source of fruitless regrets,—or efforts which few even of the most distinguished men have the leisure or the courage, after the period of early youth is passed, to undertake. All great writers are not Rousseaus. Rousseau studied our language as a foreigner, and it would require his genius of expression and his susceptibility of imagination, joined to his tenacity of character, and also his isolation in society, in order to learn French as he learned it. Still the French of the Genevese is less at variance with that of Fénelon, than the jargon, mixed with English and German, which is now taught in Paris to the children of the highest classes. Perhaps the labored artifices that too often appear in the sentences of Rousseau would not have existed, if the great writer had been born in France at a time when (as was then the case) the children spoke French.
The study of the ancient languages, then in vogue, far from being attended with a mischievous result, afforded us the only means of attaining a profound knowledge of our own, which is derived from them. This study led us back to the pure waters of our source, and there strengthened our national genius, independently of its advantages as being the most appropriate to the development of the faculties of childhood, into whose mind, before all else, should be instilled the power of language as the instrument of thought.
Whilst Russia, slowly regenerated by the sovereign who now governs her, from the errors entailed by former monarchs, may hope to attain a language, the poets, the prose writers, the refined and soi-disant enlightened people amongst ourselves, are preparing for France a generation of scribbling imitators, of readers without independence of mind; people who understand Shakespeare and Goethe so well in the original, that they can neither appreciate the prose of Bossuet and of Chateaubriand, the winged poetry of Hugo, the classic periods of Racine, the originality and boldness of Molière and of La Fontaine, the refined wit and taste of Madame de Sévigné, nor the sentiment and the divine harmony of Lamartine! Thus it is that they will be rendered incapable of producing anything sufficiently original to perpetuate the glory of their language, and to attract, as formerly, the men of all countries to France, there to study and to appreciate the mysteries of taste.
[1]It may not be useless to repeat that this chapter, like almost all the others, was preserved and concealed with care during my sojourn in Russia.
[2]I would beg the reader to remember that it is not I who thus speak.