A cry of anguish and astonishment greeted this article, it frightened people, it wounded even those who shared these feelings, and all the same it merely stated what was vaguely agitating each of our souls. Who among us has not had such moments of anger, in which he hated this country that responds to all generous human aspirations with torment, which hastens to wake us up in order to torture us. Who among us has not wished to break away forever from this prison which occupies a quarter of the earthly sphere, from this monstrous empire where every police superintendent is a sovereign and the sovereign is a crowned superintendent of police? Who among us has not indulged in all the temptations to forget this frozen hell, to achieve a few moments of drunkenness and distraction? We see things now in a different way, we envisage Russian history in a different manner, but there is no reason to recant or repent of those moments of despair; we paid too dearly for them to yield them up; they are our right, our protest, they saved us.
Chaadaev went silent but he did not leave us in peace. The Petersburg aristocrats—those Benkendorfs and Kleinmikhels13—were offended for Russia. A sober-minded German, Vigel, the chief—evidently Protestant— of the department for religious congregations, protested on behalf of Russian Orthodoxy. The emperor had it announced that Chaadaev suffered a mental breakdown. This tasteless joke brought even his enemies to Chaa- daev's side, and his influence in Moscow increased. Even the aristocracy bowed their heads before this thinker and surrounded him with respect and attention, thus giving lie to the imperial joke.
Chaadaev's letter was a sounding trumpet; the signal had been given and from all sides new voices were heard; young fighters entered the arena, giving evidence of the silent work that had taken place during these ten years.
The 14 (26) December had too deeply cut off the past for the literature that preceded it to be able to continue in the same way. Right after this great day, a young man full of the fantasies and ideas of 1825, Veneviti- nov,14 could appear. Despair, like the ache after a wound, did not come immediately. But hardly had he pronounced a few noble words when he disappeared like the flowers of a more gentle sky, which expire from the icy breath of the Baltic.
Venevitinov was not viable in the new Russian atmosphere. In order to tolerate the air of that sinister epoch a different constitution was required, and it was necessary from childhood to get used to that ever-present harsh north wind, to become acclimated to insoluble doubts, to the bitterest truths, to one's own weakness, to daily insults; the habit must be ingrained from earliest childhood to conceal everything that disturbs the soul but not to lose any of what has been buried there; on the contrary, to ripen in quiet anger all that has deposited itself in the heart. It was necessary to know how to hate out of love, to despise for humanity's sake, to have unlimited pride in order to raise one's head high while shackled hand and foot.
Every chapter of Onegin, which appeared after 1825, was more and more profound. The poet's original plan was light and serene, he had sketched it out in a different time; he was surrounded then by a world which enjoyed this ironic, friendly, and playful laughter. The first chapters of Onegin remind us a lot of the sharp but robust comedy of Griboedov.15 Tears and laughter—everything changed.
The two poets we have in mind who convey the new era in Russian poetry are Lermontov and Koltsov.16 These two strong voices come from opposite sides. Nothing can demonstrate with greater clarity the change brought about in people's minds since 1825 than a comparison between Pushkin and Lermontov. Pushkin, often dissatisfied and sad, offended and full of indignation, was, however, ready to make his peace. He desired it, and did not despair of it; a chord of remembrance from the times of the emperor Alexander did not cease to resonate in his heart. Lermontov was so used to despair, to antagonism, that not only did he not look for a way out, he could not conceive of the possibility of either a battle or an accommodation. Lermontov never learned to hope, he never sacrificed himself because there was nothing to call forth such a sacrifice. He did not hold his head with pride in the noose, like Pestel and Ryleev,17 because he could not see the usefulness of sacrifice; he flung himself to the side and died for nothing.
The pistol shot that killed Pushkin aroused Lermontov's soul. He wrote an energetic ode in which, branding the vile intrigues which preceded the duel, intrigues carried out by literary ministers and spying journalists, he cried out with the indignation of a young man: "Vengeance, emperor, vengeance!" The poet paid for this single act of defiance with exile to the Caucasus. This took place in 1837; in 1841, Lermontov's body was placed in a grave at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.
And what you said before your death, None among those present understood...
...your final words Their profound and bitter meaning Is lost.18
Fortunately, we have not lost what Lermontov wrote during the last four years of his life. He belonged entirely to our generation. All of us were too young to take part on the 14th of December. Awakened by that great day, we saw only executions and banishments. Reduced to a forced silence, suppressing our tears, we learned to retire within ourselves, to prepare our thoughts in secret, and what were those thoughts? These were no longer ideas of a civilizing liberalism, ideas of progress; they were doubts, negations, and thoughts full of fury. Used to such sentiments, Lermontov could not save himself in lyricism the way Pushkin had done. He dragged a ball and chain of skepticism through all his fantasies and all his pleasures. A manly and melancholy thought never left his face and broke through to all his poetry. It was not an abstract thought that sought to adorn itself with poetic flowers; no, Lermontov's meditation is his poetry, his torment, his strength. He had deep feelings for Byron, which Pushkin did not share. To the misfortune of too much insight, he added another, the boldness of saying a great many things without varnish or discretion. Weak creatures, bruised by this, never forgive such sincerity. One spoke of Lermontov as a spoiled child from an aristocratic house, like one of those idle creatures who perish in boredom and excess. One did not wish to see how much this man had struggled, how much he had suffered before daring to express his thoughts. People accept with greater indulgence insults and ill-will than a certain maturity of thought and an alienation which desires to share neither hopes nor fears and which dares to speak openly of this rupture. When Ler- montov left Petersburg for a second period of exile in the Caucasus he was quite weary and he told his friends that he would attempt to die as quickly as possible. He kept his word.
What, in the end, is this monster that calls itself Russia, which needs so many victims and which permits its children only the sad alternative of either losing themselves morally in a setting hostile to all that is human, or of dying at the dawn of their life? It is a bottomless abyss, where the best oarsmen will perish, where the greatest efforts, the greatest talents, the greatest minds will be swallowed up before having succeeded at anything.