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Documents in Russian History V.
G. Belinskii, Letter
to N. V. Gogol’
You
are only partly right in regarding my article as that of an angered
man: that epithet is too mild and inadequate to express
the state to which I was reduced on reading your book. But you are
entirely wrong in ascribing that state to your indeed none too
flattering references to the admirers of your talent. No, there was a
more important reason for this. One could endure an outraged sense of
self-esteem, and I should have had sense enough to let the matter pass
in silence were that the whole gist of the matter, but one cannot
endure an outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep
silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under
the guise of religion and the protection of the knout. Yes,
I loved you with all the passion with which a man, bound by ties of
blood to his native country, can love its hope, its honor, its glory,
one of its great leaders on the path toward consciousness, development,
and progress. And you had sound reason for losing your equanimity at
least momentarily when you forfeited that love. I say that not because
I believe my love to be an adequate reward for a great talent, but
because I do not represent a single person in this respect but a
multitude of men, most of whom neither you nor I have ever set eyes on,
and who, in their turn, have never set eyes on you. I find myself at a
loss to give you an adequate idea of the indignation your book has
aroused in all noble hearts, and of the wild shouts of joy that were
set up on its appearance by all your enemies, both the nonliterary –
the Chichikovs, the Nozdrevs, and the mayors...and by the literary,
whose names are well known to you. You see yourself that even those
people who are of one mind with your book have disowned it. Even if it
had been written as a result of deep and sincere conviction, it could
not have created any impression on the public other than the one it
did. And it is nobody’s fault but your own if everyone (except the 1
few
who must be seen and known in order not to derive pleasure from their
approval) received it as an ingenious but all too unceremonious
artifice for achieving a purely earthly aim by celestial means. Nor is
that in any way surprising; what is surprising is that you find it
surprising. I believe that is so because your profound knowledge of
Russia is only that of an artist, but not of a thinker, whose role you have so
ineffectually tried to play in your fantastic book. Not that you are
not a thinker, but that you have been accustomed for so many years to
look at Russia from your beautiful far-away; [2]
and who does not know that there is nothing easier than seeing things
from a distance the way we want to see them; for in that beautiful
far-away you live a life that is entirely alien to it; you
live in and within yourself or within a circle of the same mentality as
your own that is powerless to resist your influence on it. Therefore you failed to
realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism
or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and
humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!)
or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the
people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries
amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not to the
preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their
strictest possible observance. Instead of which she presents the dire
spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having
the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation owners
who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call
themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka,
Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for
individuality, honor and property, but even no police order, and where
there is nothing but vast corporations of official thieves and robbers
of various descriptions. The most vital national problems in Russia
today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment and the
strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already
exist. This is even realized by the government itself
(which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and how
many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is
proved by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of the
white Negroes and the comical substitution of the single-lash knout by
a cat-o-three tails.[3]
Such
are the problems that prey on the mind of Russia in her apathetic
slumber! And at such a time a great writer, whose astonishingly
artistic and deeply truthful works have so powerfully contributed
toward Russia’s awareness of herself, enabling her as they did to take
a look at herself as though in a mirror – publishes a book in which he
teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of
the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and
Church....And would you expect me not to become indignant?... Why, if
you had made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than
I do for these disgraceful lines.... And after this, you expect people
to believe the sincerity of your book’s intent! No! Had you really been inspired
by the truth of Christ and not by the teaching of the devil you would
certainly have written something entirely different in your new book.
You would have told the landowner that since his peasants are his
brethren in Christ, and since a brother cannot be a slave to his
brother, he should either give them their freedom or, at least, allow
them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor to their greatest possible
benefit, realizing, as he does, in the depths of his own conscience,
the false relationship in which he stands toward them. And
the expression “Oh, you unwashed snout, you!” From
what Nozdrev and Sobakevich did you overhear it, in order to present it
to the world as a great discovery for the edification and benefit of
the peasants, whose only 2.
reason for not washing is that they have let
themselves be persuaded
by their masters that they are not human beings? And your conception of the
national Russian system of trial and punishment, whose ideal you have
found in the foolish saying that both the guilty and innocent should be
flogged alike? [4]
That, indeed, is often the case with us, though more often than not it
is the man who is in the right who takes the punishment, unless he can
ransom himself, and for such occasions another proverb says: guiltlessly
guilty! And such a book is
supposed to have been the result of an arduous inner process, a lofty
spiritual enlightenment! Impossible! Either you are ill – and you must
hasten to take a cure, or...I am afraid to put my thought into words!
... Proponent
of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and
Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals – what are you about!
Look beneath your feet – you are standing on the brink of an abyss!...
That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand: it
has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of
despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it? What have you found
in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church?
He was the
first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and
brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom.
And this teaching was men’s salvation only
until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of
Orthodoxy for its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a
hierarchy, consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of
authority, an enemy and persecutor of brotherhood among men – and so it
has remained to this day. But the meaning of Christ’s
message has been revealed by the philosophical movement of the
preceding century. And that is why a man like Voltaire who stamped out
the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule, is, of
course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his
bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs –
Eastern or Western. Do you really mean to say you do not
know that! Now it is not even a novelty to a schoolboy...Hence, can it
be that you, the author of The Inspector General and
Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the
bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom
you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Let us assume
that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the
former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular
powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy
is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian
people? About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? Of the
priest, the priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm
hand. Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of
gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians? Do
you mean to say that you do not know all this? Strange! According to
you the Russian people is the most religious in the world. That is a
lie! The basis of religiousness is pietism, reverence, fear of God.
Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching
himself somewhere. He says of the icon: If it works, pray to
it; if it doesn’t, it’s good for
covering pots. Take
a closer look and you will see that it is by nature a profoundly
atheistic people. It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not
a trace of religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of
civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too; we
have a living example of this in France, where even today there are
many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where
many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to
some sort of god. The
Russian people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it
has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein,
perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future.
Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a
few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for 3.
such cold
ascetic contemplation
prove nothing. But the majority of our clergy has always been
distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage
ignorance.
It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism;
instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of
faith. Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who
formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were
numerically so insignificant in comparison with it. I
shall not expatiate on your panegyric to the affectionate relations
existing between the Russian people and its lords and masters. I shall
say point-blank that panegyric has met sympathy nowhere and has lowered
you even in the eyes of people who in other respects are very close to
you in their views. As far as I am concerned, I leave it to your
conscience to admire the divine beauty of the autocracy (it is both
safe and profitable), but continue to admire it judiciously from your beautiful
far-away: at close quarters it is not so attractive, and not
so safe....I would remark but this: when a European, especially a
Catholic, is seized with religious ardor he becomes a denouncer of
iniquitous authority, similar to the Hebrew prophets who denounced the
iniquities of the great ones of the earth. We do quite the contrary: no
sooner is a person (even a reputable person) afflicted with the malady
that is known to psychiatrists as religiosa mania than
he begins to burn more incense to the earthly god than to the heavenly
one, and so overshoots the mark in doing so that the former would fain
reward him for his slavish zeal did he not perceive that he would
thereby be compromising himself in society’s eyes.... What a rogue our
fellow the Russian is!... Another
thing I remember you saying in your book, claiming it to be a great and
incontrovertible truth, is that literacy is not merely useless but
positively harmful to the common people. What can I say to this? May
your Byzantine God forgive you that Byzantine thought, unless, in
committing it to paper, you knew not what you were saying...But perhaps
you will say: “Assuming that I have erred and that all my ideas are
false, but why should I be denied the right to err and why should
people doubt the sincerity of my errors?” Because, I would say in
reply, such a tendency has long ceased to be a novelty in Russia. Not
so very long ago it was drained to the lees by Burachok [an advocate of
“official nationality"] and his fraternity. Of course, your book shows
a good deal more intellect and talent (though neither of these elements
is very richly represented) than their works; but then they have
developed your common doctrine with greater energy and greater
consistence; they have boldly reached its ultimate conclusions, have
rendered all to the Byzantine God and left nothing for Satan; whereas
you, wanting to light a taper to each of them, have fallen into
contradiction, upholding, for example, Pushkin, literature, and the
theater, all of which, in your opinion, if you were only conscientious
enough to be consistent, can in no way serve the salvation of the soul
but can do a lot toward its damnation...Whose head could have digested
the idea of Gogol’s identity with Burachok? You have placed yourself
too high in the regard of the Russian public for it to be able to
believe you sincere in such convictions. What seems natural in fools
cannot seem so in a man of genius. Some people have been inclined to
regard your book as the result of mental derangement verging on sheer
madness. But they soon rejected such a supposition, for clearly that
book was not written in a single day or week or month, but very likely
in one, two, or three years; it shows coherence; through its careless
exposition one glimpses premeditation, and the hymn to the
powers-that-be nicely arranges the earthly affairs of the devout
author. That is why a rumor has been current in St. Petersburg to the
effect that you have written this book with the aim of securing a
position as tutor to the son 4.
of the heir apparent. Before that, your
letter to [Minister of Education] Uvarov became known in St. Petersburg,
wherein you say that you are grieved to find that your works about
Russia are misinterpreted; then you evince dissatisfaction with your
previous works and declare that you will be pleased with your own works
only when the Tsar is pleased with them. Now judge for yourself. Is it
to be wondered at that your book has lowered you in the eyes of the
public both as a writer and still more as a man?... You,
as far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public.
Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in
which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but
weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce
merely dejection, weariness, and apathy. Only literature, despite the
Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement. That
is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us; that is why
literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent.
The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of
epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every
so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by
universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that
sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy,
autocracy, and nationality declines so quickly. A striking
example is Pushkin who had merely to write two of three verses in a
loyal strain and don the kammer-iunker’s livery
to forfeit popular affection immediately! And you are greatly mistaken
if you believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not
because of its bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to
have been expressed by you about all and sundry. Assuming you could
think that of the writing fraternity, but then how do you account for
the public? Did you tell it less bitter home truths less harshly and
with less truth and talent in The Inspector General and
Dead Souls? Indeed, the old school was worked
up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector
General and Dead Souls were not
affected by it, whereas your latest book has been an utter and
disgraceful failure. And here the public is right, for it looks upon
Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against
Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore, while
always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him
a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition,
albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise
proves that it has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the
failure of your book!... I
would tell you, not without a certain feeling of self-satisfaction,
that I believe I know the Russian public a little. Your book alarmed me
by the possibility of its exercising a bad influence on the government
and the censorship, but not on the public. When it was rumored in St.
Petersburg that the government intended to publish your book in many
thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low price, my
friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the book,
despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be
forgotten. In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that
have been written about it than for the book itself. Yes, the Russian
has a deep, though still undeveloped, instinct for truth. Your
conversion may conceivably have been sincere, but your idea of bringing
it to the notice of the public was a most unhappy one. The days of
naive piety have long since passed, even in our society. It already
understands that it makes no difference where one prays and that the
only people who seek Christ and Jerusalem [5]
are those who have never carried Him in their breasts or who have lost
Him. He who is capable of suffering at the sight of other people’s
sufferings and who is pained at the sight of other people’s oppression
bears Christ within his 5.
bosom and has no need
to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The humility you preach is, first of
all, not novel, and, second, it savors on the one hand of prodigious
pride, and on the other of the most shameful degradation of one’s human
dignity. The idea of becoming a sort of abstract perfection, of rising
above everyone else in humility, is the fruit of either pride or
imbecility, and in either case leads inevitably to hypocrisy,
sanctimoniousness, and incomprehensibility. Moreover, in your book you
have taken the liberty of expressing yourself with gross cynicism not
only of other people (that would be merely impolite) but of yourself --
and that is vile, for if a man who strikes his neighbor on the cheek
evokes indignation, the sight of a man striking himself on the cheek
evokes contempt. No, you are not illuminated; you are simply beclouded;
you have failed to grasp either the spirit or the form of Christianity
of our time. Your book breathes not the true Christian teaching but the
morbid fear of death, of the devil and of hell! And
what language, what phrases! “Every man hath now become trash and a
rag” -do you really believe that in saying hath
instead of has you are expressing yourself
biblically? How eminently true it is that when a man gives himself
wholly up to lies, intelligence and talent desert him. If this book did
not bear your name, who would have thought that this turgid and squalid
bombast was the work of the author of Inspector General
and Dead Souls? As
far as I myself am concerned, I repeat: You are mistaken in taking my
article to be an expression of vexation at your comment on me as one of
your critics. Were this the only thing to make me angry I would have
reacted with annoyance to it alone and would have dealt with all the
rest with unruffled impartiality. But it is true that your criticism of
your admirers is doubly bad. I understand the necessity of sometimes
having to rap a silly man whose praises and ecstasies make the object
of his worship look ridiculous, but even this is a painful necessity,
since, humanly speaking, it is somehow awkward to reward even false
affection with enmity. But you had in view men who, though not
brilliantly clever, are not quite fools. These people, in their
admiration of your works, have probably uttered more ejaculations than
talked sense about them; still, their enthusiastic attitude toward you
springs from such a pure and noble source that you ought not to have
betrayed them completely to your common enemies and accused them, into
the bargain, of wanting to misinterpret your works. [6]
You, of course, did that while carried away by the main idea of your
book and through indiscretion, while Viazemskii, that prince in
aristocracy and helot in literature, developed your idea and printed a
denunciation against your admirers (and consequently mostly against
me). [7]
He probably did this to show his gratitude to you for having exalted
him, the poetaster, to the rank of great poet, if I remember rightly
for his “pithless, dragging verse.” [8]
That is all very bad. That you were merely biding your time in order to
give the admirers of your talent their due as well (after having given
it with proud humility to your enemies)- I was not aware; I could not,
and, I must confess, did not want to know it. It was your book that lay
before me and not your intentions: I read and reread it a hundred
times, but I found nothing in it that was not there, and what was there
deeply offended and incensed my soul. Were
I to give free rein to my feelings this letter would probably grow into
a voluminous notebook. I never thought of writing you on this subject,
though I longed to do so and though you gave all and sundry printed
permission to write you without ceremony with an eye to the truth
alone. [9]
Were I in Russia I would not be able 6.
to do it, for the local “Shpekins”
open other people’s
letters not merely for their own pleasure but as a matter of official
duty, for the sake of informing. This summer incipient consumption has
driven me abroad, [and Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to
Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today with Annenkov for Paris via
Frankfort-on-Main]. [10]
The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my
soul of what has accumulated there against you on account of your book.
I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in
my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my
conclusions. I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not
repent what I have told you. This is not a question of your or my
personality; it concerns a matter that is of greater importance than
myself or even you; it is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian
society, Russia. And this is my last concluding word: If you have had
the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works,
you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone
for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be
reminiscent of your old ones. Salzbrunn,
July 15, 1847. 1.
The publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence,
with Friends was not a complete surprise for Belinsky. Six
months before Gogol had published in the Sovremennik,
Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Mosk-vityanin an
article entitled Odyssey, which was later embodied
as a separate chapter in Selected Passages. Belinsky
claimed that this article, by its paradoxicalness and “high-flown
pretensions to prophetic tone,” distressed “all the friends and
admirers of Gogol’s talent and gladdened all his enemies.” Following
this article Gogol published a second edition of Dead Souls with
a foreword which filled Belinsky with “keen apprehensions regarding the
future reputation... of the author of Inspector General and
Dead Souls.” In his review on this second
edition Belinsky said that among the most important defects of the poem
were those passages in which “the author tries to rise from a poet and
artist to an oracle and descends instead to a somewhat turgid and
pompous lyricism.” Belinsky, however, reconciled himself with these
defects, since such passages were few in the poem and “they can be
omitted in reading without diminishing the pleasure which the novel
itself affords.” Of much greater importance was the fact that “these
mystico-lyrical sallies in Dead Souls were not
simple and accidental errors on the part of the author, but the germ of
the perhaps utter deterioration of his talent and its loss for Russian
literature.” Thus,
Belinsky was prepared for the Selected Passages from
Correspondence with Friends. Their publication nevertheless
profoundly shocked him. In a big article dealing with this publication
Belinsky, for reasons of censorship, was able to give no more than a
mild expression of the indignation which the appearance of this “vile”
book aroused in him. In a letter to V. P. Botkin, who had disapproved
of his article, Belinsky wrote: “I am... obliged to act against my
nature and character: Nature has condemned me to bark like a dog and
howl like a jackal but circumstances compel me to mew like a cat and
wave my tail like a fox. You say that the article is ‘written without
sufficient premeditation and straight from the shoulder, whereas the
matter should have been handled with subtlety.’ My dear friend, but my
article, on the contrary, could never have done justice to such an
important theme (albeit of negative importance) as the book it deals
with precisely because I premeditated it. How little you know me! All
my best articles are unpremeditated, just improvizations; in sitting
down to them I 7.
never knew what I was going to write...The
article on Gogol’s vile book might have turned out to be a splendid one
had I been able to shut my eyes and let myself go to the full range of
my indignation and fury...But I had premeditated this article, and I
knew beforehand that it would not be brilliant, for I merely struggled
to make it business-like and to show the baseness of an infamous
wretch. And such it has come from under my pen, and not in the way you
have read it. You people live in the country and know nothing. The
effect of this book was such that Nikitenko, who passed it, deleted
some of my quotations from the book, and trembled for those he bad left
in my article. At least a third of my own copy was deleted...You
reproach me for having lost my temper. But I did not try to keep it.
Tolerance to error I can well understand and appreciate, at least in
others if not in myself, but tolerance to villainy 1 will not stand.
You have .utterly failed to understand this book if you regard it only
as an error ar;d do not see it as studied villainy
besides. Gogol is not at all K. S. Ak-sakov. It is Talleyrand, Cardinal
Fesch, who deceived God all his life and fooled Satan at his death.” Belinsky’s
article, such as it appeared, created a strong impression on Gogol,
though he failed to grasp its import. It struck him that Belinsky was
angered with him only because he took personal exception to the attacks
against the critics and journalists scattered throughout the Correspondence.
In this connection Gogol wrote to Prokopovich on June
20, 3847: “This irritation grieves me very much.... Please have a talk
with Belinsky and let me know in what frame of mind he now is with
regard to me. If his bile is stirred up let him vent it against me in
the Sovremennik in whatever terms he pleases, but
let him not harbour it in his breast against me. If his wrath has
abated give him the enclosed epistle.” Prokopovich handed over the
“epistle” to the editorial office of the Sovremennik, and
N. A. Nekrasov forwarded it on to Salzbrunn where Belinsky was then
sojourning. Gogol, inter alia, wrote Belinsky: “I
was grieved to read your article about me in the 2nd issue of the Sovremennik.
Not that I deplored the degradation in which you wanted
to place me before everyone, but because it betrays the voice of a man
who is angry with me. And I would not like to make even a man who did
not like me angry with me, still less you, of whom I had always thought
as of a man who loved me. I had no intention of causing you distress in
a single place of my book. How it has happened that I have roused the
anger of every single man in Russia I cannot for the time being
understand.” After scanning Gogol’s letter, Belinsky, in the words of
P. V. Annenkov, flushed and murmured: “Ah, he does not understand why
people are angry with him – he must have that explained to him – I
shall answer him.” Three days later his reply was ready. Belinsky read
it to P. V. 8.
Annenkov. The latter, writing of the impression
which this reply made on him, said: “I was alarmed both by the tone and
tenor of this reply, and, of course, not for Belinsky’s sake, since no
special consequences of foreign correspondence among acquaintances
could have been anticipated at the time. I was alarmed for Gogol’s
sake, who was to have received this reply, and I could vividly imagine
his position the minute he began to read this scathing indictment. The
letter did not merely contain a denunciation of his views and opinions;
the letter revealed the emptiness and ugliness of all Gogol’s ideals,
of all his conceptions of goodness and honour, of all the moral
principles of his life, together with the egregious position of those
circles whose defender he professed himself to be. I wanted to explain
to Belinsky the whole scope of his passionate speech, but he knew that,
it appears, better than I, ‘But what else was to be done’.-” he said.
‘All measures should be taken to protect people against a rabid man,
even though it were Homer himself. As for insulting Gogol, I could
never insult him as he has insulted me in my soul and in my faith in
him.’ “ A. I. Herzen, to whom Belinsky read his letter to Gogol, told
Annenkov: “It is a work of genius – and, I believe, his testament as
well.” This letter to Gogol, which was “the epitome of Belinsky’s
literary activity,” Lenin considered to be “one of the finest works of
the uncensored democratic press, which has preserved its great and
vital importance to this day.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian
edition, Vol. XVII, p. 341.) In this letter Belinsky not only subjected
Gogol’s reactionary book to devastating criticism, he exposed the
entire feudal and autocratic system of Russia, and only death saved him
from severe punishment for this remarkable document. The superintendent
of the Third Section, L. V. Dubelt, “regretted” that he was not able to
make the great critic “rot in prison. It is known that the Russian
writer Dostoyevsky was condemned to death, the sentence later being
commuted to penal servitude, for having read Belinsky’s letter in a
circle of Petrashevsky adherents. The government’s cruel reprisals,
however, could do nothing to prevent Belinsky’s letter from being
circulated in thousands of copies. I. S. Aksakov wrote to his father on
October 9, 1856, i.e., nine odd years after
Belinsky’s letter first appeared: “I have travelled much about Russia:
the name of Belinsky is known to every youth who is at’ all given to
thinking, to everyone who longs for a breath of fresh air amid the
stinking quagmire of provincial life. There is not a single high-school
teacher in the gubernia towns who does not know Belinsky’s letter to
Gogol by heart.” Belinsky’s
famous letter was first published by A. I. Herzen in The
Polar Star in 1855 (2nd ed., London, 1858, pp. 66-76), from
which text it was reprinted several times abroad. The full text of this
letter appeared in several editions of Belinsky’s works as well as in
his Letters published in 1914. The original has
not come down to us. The text here given is a reprint from that
published in The Polar Star. 2.
Gogol went abroad in 1836 where, with short intermissions, he lived for
many years. 3.
The knout with a single lash used as an instrument of punishment in
Russia was substituted by the cat-o’-three tails in accordance with the
criminal code of 1845. 4.
Gogol had said all this in a letter to Count S. S. Uvarov in April 1845. 5.
Gogol in Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends had
written of his intention of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 6.
Gogol had not mentioned Belinsky by name in his Correspondence,
but it was obvious to all that it was him he had in
mind when speaking of the critics. Thus in Chapter VII he wrote that Odyssey
... would refreshen criticism.
Criticism was tired and confused from dealing with the baffling works
of modern literature, it had flown off at a tangent, and, waiving
literary topics, was “beginning to dote.” 7.
Refers to P. A. Vyazemsky’s article Yazikov and Gogol. 8.
In an article On the “’sovremennik”
Gogol -wrote: “Thank God, two of our... first-class poets are still
alive and well – Prince Vyazemsky and Yazikov.” Furthermore, having in
view a new edition of his Correspondence Gogol
asked Prince Vyazemsky: “read, acquaint yourself, strictly examine and
set right my book... . Regard the manuscript,” he wrote? “as you would
your own cherished property .. And so, dear Prince, 9.
do not forsake me,
and may God reward you for it, for that
will be a truly Christian act of charity.” The praise and this plea
apparently had their effect, for Prince Vyazemsky wrote his article Yazikov
and Gogol in defence of Gogol’s book. 9.
In the foreword to the second edition of Dead Souls Gogol
wrote: “Much in this book has been written wrongly, not as things are
really happening in the land of Russia. I ask yon, dear reader, to
correct me. Do not spurn this matter. I ask you to do it.” 10.
The words in brackets were, of course deliberately omitted by Herzen in
The Polar Star to avoid giving publicity to
the names of Nekrasov and Annenkov mentioned in Belinsky’s letter. 10.
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