Six weeks had not passed before I saw that things were going badly with my poor Orson. He was terribly depressed, corrected his proofs carelessly, never finished his article on 'The Migrati�n 6. Herzen himself was a very tall, large man.
7· The word means in Russian 'not a woman'.
P R I S O N A N D E X I L E
271
of Birds', and could not fix his attention on anything ; at times it seemed to me that his eyes were red and swollen. This state of things did not last long. One day as I was going home, I noticed a crowd of boys and shopkeepers running towards the churchyard. I walked after them.
Nebaba's body was lying near the church wall, and a rifle lay beside him. He had shot himself opposite the windows of his own bouse ; the string with which he had pulled the trigger was still attached to his foot. The police-surgeon blandly assured the crowd that the deceased had suffered no pain ; and the police prepared to carry his body to the station.
Nature is cruel to the individual. What dark foreboding filled the breast of this poor sufferer, before be made up his mind to use his piece of string and stop the pendulum which measured out nothing to him but insult and suffering ? And why was it so ? Because his father was consumptive or his mother dropsical ? Likely enough. But what right have we to ask for reasons or for justice ?
What is it that we seek to call to account ? Will the whirling hurricane of life answer our questions ?
9
At the same time there began for me a new epoch in my life pure and bright, youthful but earnest ; it was the life of a hermit, but a hermit thoroughly in love.
But this belongs to another part of my narrative.
AL S O IN PAPERB A C K FR O M O X F O R D
ALEXANDER HERZEN
From the Other Shore and
The Russian People and Socialism
with an Introduction by Isaiah Berlin
Herzen wrote From the Other Shore as a memorial to his disenchantment with the European revolutions of 1 848 and 1 849. It is a great polemical masterpiece, constituting his profession of faith and his political testament. In The Russian People and Socialism he expressed his Utopian hopes for the communal organisation of the uncorrupted Russian peasants.
'From the Other Shore is a magnificent prose poem of disillusionment, and Miss Moura Budberg's brilliant translation retains its passion and poetry . . . There is hardly a page in this extraordinary book which does not stimulate and excite. There is the additional pleasure of an introduction by Sir Isaiah Berlin, whose essays on 19th-century Russia are the fmest critical writing of this century . . . Now that the Oxford University Press is producing these reasonably priced publications, our leading critics should escape for once from their deep, worn ruts and encourage the public to enjoy a writer, baffling, delightful, contradictory whoM: brilliance will shine as long as books are read.' Lord Lambton, Spectator
Oxford Paperbacks
Document Outline
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
About the Translator
Translator's Foreword by J. D. Duff
Introduction by Isaiah Berlin
Part I. Nursery and University, 1812-1834
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Part II. Prison and Exile, 1834-1838
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Endpage