T H E WO R L D'S C L A S S I C S
CHILDHOOD, YOUTIJ AND EXILE
ALEXANDER HERZEN (1812-70) was bor n in Moscow, an illegitimate ch ild of an aristocrat. He early chose a socialist path, an d becam e the greatest social thinker that Russia has ever produced. His view s led h im into exile within Russia in 1835, an d in 1847 lie left hi s ct>untry for goo d, living thereafter mainly in Lon don. Herzen's major work is his memoirs , My Past and Thoughts, which Isaiah Berlin ha s calle d 'an autobiography of the first order of genius .. . a ma jor classic, comparable in scope with War and Peace'; and he has described th is translation of its first two parts by J. D. Duff as 'among the best ren derings of Russian prose into English to be found anywhere' .
J. D. DuFF (186o-I940) was a Classical Fellow of Trinit y College, Cambri dge, an d is best known for his e dition of Juvenal.
I SArAH BERLIN is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Oth er essays by him on Her zen appear in his Russian Thinkers an d Against the Current. He has also written an int ro duction to Herzen's From the Other Shore an d The Russian People and Socialism (Oxford, 1979: Oxford Un iversit y Press ).
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS
ALEXANDER HERZEN
Childhood, Youth and Exile
PARTS I AND II OF
My Past and Thoughts
il'ranslated from the Russian by
J.D. DUFF
With an introduction by
ISAIAH BERLIN
Oxford New York Toronto Melbourne
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1980
Oxford University Press, Walton Street, OxfordoJa. 6op OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONI'O MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
IWALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE 1AKARTA HONG KONG TOKYO
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUITA MADRAS KARACHI NAIROBI DARES SALAAM CAPE TOWN
Introduction copyright Isaiah Berlin 1956
Translation first published 1923 by Yale University Press 08
The Memoirs of Alexander H erzen, Parts I and U
Introduction first published by Encounter Ltd, May 1956
Introduction and translation first published as a World's Classks paperback, 1980
All rights reserved. No part of this publ/catl•n may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, In any farm or by any means, electronic, mechonlcal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University �
This book is sold subject to the condition that It shall not, by w.zy a/trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise drculated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that In whkh It Is published and without a similar condition including this condition being Imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing In PubllcaJion Data Herzen, AleXlUider
Childhood, youth and exile. -(The world's ciiJssica).
J. Herzen, AleXlUider
2. Intellectuals - Russia - Biography I. Title
891.7'8'308
DK209.6.H4
79-4I036
ISBN 0.19-28IS05-9
Printed In Great Britain by
Hazell Watson & Viney Limited
AJ-Iesbur;y, Bucks
CONTENTS
Note on the Translator by P. W. Duff
vii
Translator's Foreword by J. D. Duff
ix
Introduction by Isaiah Berlin
:xili
PART I: N U R S E RY AND UNIVERSITY
1812-1834
C H A P T E R I
3
My Nurse and the Grande Armee- Moscow in Flames- My Father and Napoleon - General Ilovaysky - A Journey with French Prisoners - Patriotism - Calot - Property Managed in Common- The Division- The Senator
C H A P T E R II
20
Gossip of Nurses and Conversation of Generals - A False Position - Boredom - The Servants' Hall - Two Germans -
Lessons and Reading- Catechism and the Gospel C H APT E R III
43
Death of Alexander I - The Fourteenth of December - Moral Awakening- Bouchot - My Cousin
C H A P T E R IV
6o
My Friend Nick and the Sparrow Hills
C H A P T E R V
66
Details of Horne Life - Men of the Eighteenth Century in Russia - A Day at Home - Guests and Visitors -Sonnenberg - Servants
C H A P T E R VI
84
The Kremlin Offices - Moscow University - The Chemist -
The Cholera - Filaret - Passek
C H APT E R VII
122
End of College Life -The 'Schiller' Stage - Youth - The Artistic Life- Saint-Simonianism and N.Polevoy - Polezhayev
vi
C O N T E NTS
PA R T II: P R I S O N AND E X I L E
1834-1838
C H A P T E R I
143
A Prophecy -Ogarev's t Arrest - The Fires - A Moscow Liberal- Mikhail Orlov - The Churchyard CH A P T E R I I
152
Arrest - The Independent Witness - A Police-Station -
Patriarchal Justice
C H A P T E R I I I
157
Under the Belfry- A Travelled Policeman - The Incendiaries C H A P T E R I V
166
The Krutitsky Barracks - A Policeman's Story - The Officers C H A P T E R V
173
The Enquiry - Golitsyn Senior - Golitsyn Junior - General Staal- The Sentence- Sokolovsky
C H A P T E R V I
187
E xile - A Chief Constable-The Volga- Perm C H A P T E R V I I
200
Vyatka - The Office and Dinner-table of His Excellency -
Tyufyayev
C H A P T E R V I II
217
Officials - Siberian Governors - A Bird of Prey - A Gentle Judge - An Inspector Roasted - The Tatar - A Boy of the Female Sex - The Potato Revolt- Russian Justice C H A P T E R IX
Alexander Vitberg
C H A P T E R X
254
The Crown Prince at Vyatka- The Fall of Tyufyayev - Transferred to Vladimir- The Inspector's Enquiry C H A P T E R X I
The Beginning of my Life at Vladimir
1. 'e' is used to represent the sound 'yo', and always receives th e stress, thus: Ogary6v.
THE TRANSLATOR
JAMES DuFF DuFF was hom on 20 November 186o, the son of a retired army officer living in Aberdeenshire. He and his twin brother were among the first boys at Fettes College, Edinburgh. He carne as a scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1 878, and was elected a Classical Fellow in 1 883. Teaching Latin and Greek at Trinity, and also at Girton, was the main work of his life; and he is best known to classical scholars for what A. E. Housman praised as his 'unpretending school edition' of JuvenaL
He was over forty when he taught himself Russian, in order to read in the original the novels of Tolstoy and especially Turgenev, which he had greatly admired in French translations. He never visited Russia, but had Russian friends, with whom he talked and corresponded in their own language : notably Aleksandra Grigory·
evna Pashkova, the wife of a Russian land-owner, whose two sons were Trinity undergraduates.
His admiration for the autobiographical writings of Sergei Aksakov led him to translate them, in three volumes: Years of Childhood, A Russian Gentleman, and A Russian Schoolboy, published by Edward Arnold in 1916 and 1917, and later re-published by Oxford University Press in The World's Classics. A Russian Schoolboy was reissued in a larger format by Oxford University Press in 1978.
The idea of translating Alexander Herzen's My Past and Thoughts seems to have come from George Parrnly Day, of the Yale University Press; and the translation, here reissued, was first published by that press in 1923, as The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, Parts I and II.
The translator died on 25 April 1940·
October 1978
P. W.D U FF