Then they faded before their summer, knowing no free scope, nothing of frank speech. They bore on their countenances deep traces of a soul roughly handled and wounded. Every one of them had some tic, and apart from that personal tic they all had one in common, a devouring, irritable and distorted vanity. The denial of every personal right, the insults, the humiliations they had endured evolved a secret claim to admiration; these undeveloped prodigies, these unsuccessful geniuses, concealed themselves under a mask of humility and modt>sty. All of them were hypochondriacs and physically ill, did not drink wine, and were afraid of open windows; all looked with studied despair at the present; they reminded one of monks who from love for their neighbour came to hating all humanity and cursed everything in the world from desire to bless something.
One half of them were constantly repenting, the other half constantly chastising.
Yes, deep scars had been left on their souls. The world of Petersburg in which they had lived was reflected in themselves; it was thence they took their restless tone, their languagesaccade, yet suddenly deliquescing into bureaucratic twaddletheir shuffling meekness and haughty fault-finding, their intentional aridity and readiness on any occasion to blackguard one,
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their offensive acceptance of accusations in front of everyone, and the uneasy intolerance of the director of a department.
This knack of administering a reprimand in the style of a director, uttered contemptuously with eyes screwed up, is more repugnant to us than the husky shout of a general, which is like the deep bark of a steady old dog, who growls in deference to his social position rather than from spite.
Tone is not a matter of no importance.
Das was innen--das ist draussen!
Extremely kind at heart and noble in tendency, they-l mean our jaundiced men-might by their tone drive an angel to fighting and a saint to cursing. Moreover, they exaggerate everything in the world with such aplomb-and not to amuse but to mortify-that there is simply no bearing it. Every time anyone mentions a mole-hill they will start talking darkly about mountains.
''-Vh.y do you defend these sluggards' (a jaundiced friend, sehr ausgeziechnet in seine Fache, said to us lately) , 'parasites, drones, white-handed spongers a la Oneghine? . . . They were formed differently, please observe, and the world surrounding them is too dirty for them, not polished enough ; they will dirty their hands, they will dirty their feet. It was much nicer to go on moaning over their unhappy situation and at the same time eat and drink in comfort.'
We put in a word for our classification of the superfluous men into those of the Old Dispensation and those of the New. But our Daniel would not hear of a distinction: he would have nothing to say to the Oblomovs nor to the fact that Nicholas cast in bronze had been gathered to his fathers, and just for that reason had been cast in bronze. On the contrary, he attacked us for our defence and, shrugging his shoulders, said that he looked upon us as on the fine skeleton of a mammoth, as at an interesting bone that had been dug up and belonged to a world with a different sun and different trees.
'Allow me on that ground and in the character of a Homo Benckendorfi testis to defend my fellow-fossils. Surely you do not really think that these men did nothing, or did something absurd, of their own choice?'
'Without any doubt; they were romantics and aristocrats ; they hated work, they would have thought themselves degraded if they had taken up an axe or an awl, and i t is true they would not have known how to use them.'
'In that case I will quote names: for instance, Chaadayev. He did not know how to use an axe but he knew how to write an
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article which jolted the whole of Russia, and was a turning-point in our understanding of ourselves.11 That article was his first step in the literary career. You know what came of it. A German, Wiegel, took offence on behalf of Russia, the Protestant and future Catholic Benckendorf took offence on behalf of Orthodoxy, and by the lie of the Most High, Chaadayev was declared mad and forced to sign an undertaking not to write. Nadezhdin, who published the article in the Telescope, was banished to Ust
Sysolsk; Boldyrev, the old rector, was dismissed: Chaadayev became an idle man. I grant that Ivan Kireyevsky could not make boots, yet he could publish a magazine; he published two numbers and the magazine was forbidden; he contributed an article to the Dennitsa, and the censor, Glinka, was put in custody: Kireyevsky became a superfluous man. N. Polevoy cannot, of course, be charged with idleness; he was a resourceful man, and yet the wings of the Telegraph were clipped, and, I confess my feebleness, when I read how Polevoy told Panayev that he, as a married man, handicapped by a family, was afraid of the police, I did not laugh but almost cried.'
'But Belinsky could write and Granovsky could give lectures; they did not sit idle.'
'If there were men of such energy that they could write or give lectures within sight of the police-troika and the fortress, is it not clear that there were many others of less strength who were paralysed and suffered deeply from it?'
'Why did they not actually take to making boots or splitting logs? It would have been better than nothing.'
'Probably because they had money enough not to be obliged to do such dull work; I have never heard of anyone taking to cobbling for pleasure. Louis XVI is the only example of a king by trade and a locksmith for the love of it. However, you are not the first to observe this lack of practical labour in superfluous men; in order to correct it, our watchful government sent them to hard labour.'
'My fossil friend, I see that you still look down upon work.'
'As on a far from gay necessity.'
'Why should they not have shared in the general necessity?'
'No doubt they should, but in the first place they were born not in North America but in Russia, and unluckily were not brought up to it.'
'Why were they not brought up to it?'
11 For H.'s appraisal of P. Ya. Chaadayev's 'Philosophical Letter,' which appeared in the Telescope, 1 836, No. 1 5, see pp. 29�. (R. )
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'Because they were born not in the tax-paying classes of Russia but in the gentry; perhaps that really is reprehensible, but being at that period in the inexperienced condition of cercaria they cannot, owing to their tender years, be responsible for their conduct. And having once made this mistake in the choice of their parents, they were bound to submit to the education of the time. By the way, what right have you to demand of men that they should do one thing or another? This is some new compulsory organisation of labour; something in the style of socialism transferred to the methods of the Ministry of State Property.'
'I don't compel anyone to work; I simply state the fact that they were idle, futile aristocrats who led an easy and comfortable life, and I see no reason for sympathising ,.,.ith them.'
'Whether they deserve sympathy or not let each person decide for himself. All human suffering, especially if it is inevitable, awakens our sympathy, and there is no sort of suffering to \'lihich one could refuse it. The martyrs of the early centuries of Christendom believed in redemption and in a future life. The Roman Mukhanovs, Timashevs and Luzhins tried to compel the Christians to bow down in the dust before the august image of the Caesar; the Christians would not make this trivial concession and they were hunted down by beasts. They were mad; the Romans were half-witted, and there is no place here for sympathy or surprise . . . . But then farewell, not only to Thermopylae and Golgotha but also to Sophocles and Shakespeare, and incidentally to the whole long, endless epic poem which is continually ending in frenzied tragedies and continually going on again under the title of history.'