Finally, when this year I was reading my latest note-books to a friend of my youth, I myself recognized the familiar features, and I stopped. My labour was over.
It is very possible that I have greatly overestimated it, that in 7 First translated into English by Humphrey Higgens, this early work occupies pp. 1 799-1857 of Volume IV of Mr Higgens's edi tion. I have had to omit it for space but readers curious about Herzen's literary development, which was remarkable--and sustained-should look it up. His 1 84{) reconstruction of his childhood is lively and detailed but rather a jumble that quite lacks the Proustian depth of focus, the ordering and enriching of experience in unhurried restrospection that characterizes his treatment, fifteen years later, of the same memories. ( D.M. )
D E D I C A T I O N
xlviii
these rough sketches there is much that is hidden away, but only for me ; perhaps I read into it much more than was written; what I have said inspires me \'\'ith dreams and works like hieroglyphs to which I hold the key. Perhaps I alone hear spirits knocking beneath these lines . . . perhaps: but the book is no less dear to me for that. For a long time it had taken the place for me both of people and of what I had lost. The time had come to part with the book, too.
All that is personal soon crumbles away, and to this destitution one has to submit. This is not despair, not senility, not coldness and not indifference: it is grey-haired youth, one of the forms of convalescence or, better, that process itself. Only by this means is it humanly possible to survive certain wounds.
In a monk, of whatever age he may be, one is continually meeting both an old man and a young man. By burying everything personal he has returned to his youth. He has begun to live easily, on a grand scale-sometimes too grand . . . . In reality a man now and again has a feeling of futility and loneliness among impersonal generalities, the elements of history, and the shapes of the future which pass across their surface like the shadows of clouds. But what follows from this? People would like to preserve e\·erything, both the roses and the snow; they would likE> the clusters of ripe grapes to be lapped round with May flowers. The monks used to escape from the temptation to murmur by means of prayer. We have no prayers: we have work.
Work is our prayer. It is possible that the fruit of both will be the same, but for the moment that is not what I am talking about.
Yes, in life there is a predilection for a recurring rhythm, for the repetition of a motif. Who does not know how close old age is to childhood ? Look closely, and vou will see that on both sides of the full climax of life, \�ith its. crowns of flowers and thorns, with i ts cradles and its graves, epochs often repeat themselves which are similar in their chief features. What youth has not had is already lost; what youth has dreamt of, without an actual sight of it, comes out brighter and more composed, likewise without being actually seen, from behind the clouds and the red glow in the sky .
. . . When I think how we two, now when we are nearly fifty, are standing at the first machine for the manufacture of free speech in Russia, 8 it seems that our childish Griitli9 on the 8 H.'s printing press in London, with a fount of Russian type. (R.) 9 According to tradition representatives of the Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden cantons took an oath in 1 307, in Grutli Meadow in Uri canton,
Dedication
Sparrow Hills were not thirty-three years ago. Even three seems a lot!
Life . . . lives, peoples, revolutions, beloved faces have appeared, changed and vanished between the Sparrow Hills and Primrose H ill; already their traces have almost been swept away by the pitiless whirhvind of events. Everything round me is changed: the Thames flo,vs instead of the Moscow River, and I am surrounded by a strange people . . . and there is no more a way for us back to our country . . . only the dream of two boys, one of thirteen, the other of eleven, has remained intact!
May My Past and Thoughts settle my account with my personal life and be its summary. My remaining thoughts belong to my work: my remaining powers, to the struggle!
Thus have we kept, we two, our [ lofty] league: We two again will tread the cheerless track,
Tell of the truth, unconscious of fatigue,
On fancies and on persons turn our back. to
to fight for the liberation of their country. The alliance of the three cantons laid the foundation of the actual independence of the Swiss State.
Herzen is comparing this legendary oath with the oath taken by himself and N. P. Ogarev on the Sparrow Hills at Moscow. ( A.S. ) IO The final lines of Ogarev's poem, To lskander: the word 'lofty' is omitted from the first line. (A.S. )
N U R S E R Y
A N D
U N I V E R S I T Y
( 1 8 1 2 - 1 8 3 4 )
When memories of the past return And the old road again we tread,
Slowly the feelings of old days
Come back to life within the soul;
Old griefs and joys are here unchanged,
Again the once familiar thrill
Stirs echoes in the troubled heart;
And for remembered woes we sigh.
N. P. OGARE:v, Humorous Verse
Clzildhood
'VERA ARTAMONOVNA, come tell me once more how the French came to Moscow,' I used to say, rolling myself up in the quilt and stretching in my crib, which was sewn round with canvas that I might not fall out.
'Oh! what's the use of telling you ? You've heard it so many times; besides it's time to go to sleep. You had better get up a little earlier to-morrow,' the old woman would usually answer, although she was as eager to repeat her favourite story as I was to hear it.
'But do tell me a little bit. How did you find out? How did it begin?'
'This was how it began. You know what your papa1 is-he is always putting things off; he was getting ready and getting ready, and all of a sudden he was ready! Ev<"ryone was saying
"It's time to set off; what is there to wait for? There's almost no one left in the town." But no: Pavel Ivanovich2 and he kept talking of how they would go together, and first one wasn't ready and then the other. At last we were packed and the carriage was ready; the family sat down to lunch, when all at once our head cook ran into the dining-room as pale as a sheet, and announced:
"The enemy has marched in at the Dragomilovsky Gate." How all hearts did sink! "The power of the Cross be vvith us!" we cried. What a panic there was! vVhile we were bustling about, sighing and groaning, we looked and down the street came galloping dragoons in those helmets with horses' tails streaming behind. The gates had all been shut, and here was your papa left behind, and a fine party there was going to be, and you with him; your wet nurse Darya still had you at the breast, you were so weak and delicate.'
1 Herzen's father, Ivan Alexeyevich Yakovlev ( 1 i67- 1 846) , was a very wealthy nobleman belonging to one of the most aristocratic families of Russia. In 1 8 1 1 . at the age of forty-two, he married nt S tuttgart a girl of sixteen, Luiza Haag-though in Russia she was always called Luiza Ivanovna as easil'r to pronounce. r she was the daught<'r of a minor Wurtt!'mberg official. (D.l\1. ) ] As he nf'@:lected to repeat the marriage ceremony in Russia, their son was there illegitimate. Y akovlcv is said to have given him 1he surname Herzen because he was the 'child of his heart.' ( Tr.)