It is hard to say exactly what it was that put so much bitterness and spleen into his blood. Periods of passion, of great unhappiness, of mistakes and losses were completely absent from his life. I could never fully understand what was the origin of the spiteful mockery and irritability that filled his soul, the mistrustful unsociability and the vexation that consumed him.
Did he bear with him to the grave some memory which he confided to no one, or was this simply the result of the combination of two elements so absolutely opposed to each other as the eighteenth century and Russian life, with the intervention of a third, terribly conducive to the development of capricious humour: the idleness of the serf-owning landed gentlemanJ
Last century produced in the West, particularly in France, a wonderful lode of men endowed with all the weak points of the Regency and all the strong points of Rome and Sparta. These·
men, Faublas1 and Regulus together, opened wide the doors of the Revolution and were the first to rush in, crowding each other in their haste to reach the 'window' of the guillotine. Our age no longer produces these single-minded, violent natures; the eighteenth century, on the contrary, called them forth everywhere, even where they were not needed, even where they could not develop except into something grotesque. In Russia men exposed to the influence of this mighty \Vestern wind became eccentric, but not historical figures. Foreigners at home, foreigners abroad, idle spectators, spoilt for Russia by Western prejudices and for the \Vest by Russian habits, they were a sort of intellectual superfluity and were lost in artificial life, in sensual pleasure and in unbearable egoism.
To this circle belonged the Tatar Prince, N. B. Yusupov, a Russian grandee and a European grand seigneur, a foremost figurP in MoscO\v, conspicuous for his intelligence and his
\Walth. About him gathered a perfect galaxy of grey-headed gallants and esprits forts. They were all quite cultured, well
Pr!ucated people; having no work in life they flung themselves I The hero of La Vii' du Chn·alil'r dl' Faublas ( 1 78 7 ) . by Louvet de Couuay, is the type of the effeminate rake and fashionable exquisite of the period. (Tr.)
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upon pleasure, pampered themselves, loved themselves, goodnaturedly forgave themselves all transgressions, exalted their gastronomy to the level of a Platonic passion and reduced love for women to a sort of voracious gourmandise.
The old sceptic and epicurean Yusupov, a friend of Voltaire and Beaumarchais, of Diderot and Casti,2 really was gifted with artistic taste. To convince oneself of this, it is enough to make one visit to Arkhangelskoye and look at his galleries, that is, if they have not yet been sold bit by bit by his heir. He was magnificently fading out of life at eighty, surrounded by marble, painted and living beauty. In his house near Moscow Pushkin conversed with him, and dedicated to him a wonderful epistle, and Gonzagaa painted, to whom Yusupov dedicated his theatre.
By his education, by his service in the Guards, by position and connections, my father belonged to this circle, but neither his character nor his health permitted him to lead a frivolous life to the age of seventy: and he went to the opposite extreme. He tried to organise for himself a life of solitude, and there he found waiting for him a deadly dullness, the more because he tried to arrange it entirely for himself. His strength of will changed into obstinate caprice, and his unemployed energies spoilt his character, and made it disagreeable.
When he was being educated, European civilisation was still so new in Russia that to be educated meant being so much the less Russian. To the end of his days he wrote more fluently and correctly in French than in Russian. He had literally not read one single book in Russian, not even the Bible, though, indeed, he had not read the Bible in other languages either; he knew the subject-matter of the Holy Scriptures generally from hearsay and from extracts, and had no curio,sity to look further into it.
He had, it is true, a respect for Derzhavin4 and Krylov:5
2 Casti ( 1 721-1803) , an Italian poet, 'attached by habit and taste to the polished and frivolous society of the ancien regime, his sympathies were nevertheless liberal,' satirised Catherine II, and when exiled on that account from Vienna, had the spirit to resign his Austrian pension. The Talking Animals, a satire on the predominance of the foreigner in political life. is his best work. The influence of his poems on Byron is apparent in Don Juan. (Tr.)
3 Gonzaga was a Venetian painter who came to Petersburg in 1 792 to paint scenery for the Court Theatre. He planned the celebrated park at Pavlovsk. (Tr.)
4 Derzhavin, Gavril Romanovich ( 1 743-1 8 1 6 ) , was poet-laureate to Catherine I I, and wrote numerous patriotic and a few other odes. ( Tr.) 5 Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich ( 1 768- 1 8+4), was a very popular writer of fables in verse. ( Tr. )
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Derzhavin because he had written an ode on the death of his uncle, Prince Meshchersky, and Krylov because he had been a second with him a t N . N. Bakhmetev's duel. My father did once pick up Karamzin's History of the Russian State, having heard that the Emperor Alexander had read it, but he laid it aside, saying contemptuously : 'It is nothing but Izyaslaviches and Olgoviches : to whom can it be of interest?'
For people he had an open, undisguised contempt-for everyone. �ever under any circumstances did he count upon anybody, and I do not remember that he ever applied to any one with any consider·able requpst. He himself did nothing for any one. In his relations with outsiders he dPmanded one thing only, the observance of thP propri!'liPs; [,•s apfl{lf'CIICI'S. /es COIII '1'TUU1CCS made up thP \vhole of h i s moral religion. He was ready to forgive much, or rather to overlook it, but breaches of good form and good mannPrs put him beside himself, and in such cases he was without any tolerancl', without the slightest indulgence or compassion. I was rC'bellious so long against thi s injustice that at last I uml<>rstood it. Be was convinced beforehand that every man is capable of any evil act; and that, if he does not commit i t, i t is eitlwr tha t he has no need to, or that the opportunity does not present itself; in the disn•gard of formalities he saw a personal affi'Ont, a disrespect to himsel f; or a 'plebeian education,' which in his opinion excluded a man from all human society.
'The soul of man,' he used to say, 'is darknes-, and who knows what is in any man's soul? I have too much business of my own to be interested in other people's, much less to judge and criticise tht>ir intentions; but I cannot b(' in the same room with an illbrPd man : he offPnds me, il me froissc; of course he may be the IJpst-hearted man in the world and for that he will have a place in paradise, but I don't want him. "'hat is mosl important in life is esprit de conduite, it is more important than the most superior intPllect or any kind of learning. To know how to be al ease everywhere, to put yourself forward nowhere ; the utmost courtesy with all and no familiarity with any one.'