In the autumn of 1826 1'\icholas, a fter hanging Peste!, Muravev, and their friends, celebrated his coronation in :Moscow. For other sovereigns these ceremonies are occasions for amnesties and pardons: Nicholas, after celebrating his apotheosis, proceeded again to 'strike do\vn the foes of the father-land,' like Robespierre after his Fctc-Dieu.
The secret police brought him Polezhayev's poem.
And so at three o'clock one night the Rector woke Polezhayev, told him to put on his uniform and go to the office. There the Director was a\vaiting him. After looking to see that all the necessary buttons \vere on his uniform and no unnecessary ones, he, invited Polezhayev without any explanation to get i�to his carriage and drove cff with him.
He conducted him to thP Minister of Public Instruction. The latter put Polezhayev imo his carriage and he too drove him off-but this time straight to the Tsar.
12 A translation of La Jeune Sibh-ienne ( 1 825 ) by Xavier de 1\Iaistre, who had known Parasha in St. Petersburg. ( R. from private information.)
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Prince Lieven1 left Polezhayev in the great room-where several courtiers and higher officials were already waiting although it was only between five and six in the morning-and went into the inner apartments. The courtiers imagined that the young man had distinguished himself in some way and at once entered into conversation with him. A senator suggested that he might give lessons to his son.
Polezhayev was summoned to the study. The Tsar was standing leaning on his desk and talking to Lieven. He flung an angry, searching glance at the newcomer; there was a manuscript-book in his hand.
'Did you write these verses?' he inquired.
'Yes,' answered Polezhayev.
'Here, prince,' the Tsar continued, 'I will give you a specimen of university education. I wi ll show you what young men learn there. Read the manuscript aloud,' he added, addressing Polezhayev again.
The agitation of Polezhayev was so great that he could not read. Nicholas's eyes were fixed immovably upon him. I know them and know nothing so terrifying, so hopeless, as those greyish, colourless, cold, pewtery eyes.
'I cannot,' said Polezhayev.
'Read ! ' shouted the imperial sergeant-major.
That shout restored Polezhayev's facultiPs; he opened the book. Never, he told us, had he seen Sashka so carefully copied and on such splendid paper.
At first it was hard for him to read; then as he got more and more into the spirit of the thing, he read the poem to the end in a loud and lively voice. At particularly cutting passages the Tsar made a sign with his hand to the Minister and the latter covered his Pyes with horror.
'What do you say to that?' Nicholas inquired at the end of the reading. 'I shall put a stop to this corruption ; these are the last traces, the last remnants; I shall root them out. \'Vhat has his conduct been? '
The Minister, o f course, knew nothing o f his conduct, but somP human fPeling must ha vp stirred in him, for he said:
'His conduct has bPPn Pxcel lent, your :Ylajesty.'
'That testimonial has sawd you, but you must be punished, as an example to otlwrs. \Vould you likP to go into the army?'
1 Th,• :\IinistPr of Public I nstnu lion n t this time was not K . A. LiPven hut A. S. Shishkov. (/I.S. )
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Polezhayev was silent.
'I give you a means of purging yourself by sernce m the army. Well?'
'I must obey,' answered Polezhayev.
The Tsar went up to him, laid his hand on his shoulder, and saying to him,
'Your fate is in your own hands; if I forget you you may write to me,' kissed him on the forehead.
I made Polezhayev repeat the story of the kiss a dozen times, it seemed to me so incredible. He swore that it was true.
From the Tsar he was led off to Dibich, ,.,·ho lived on the spot in the palace. Dibich was asleep; he was awakened, came out yawning, and, after reading the paper, asked the aide-de-camp:
'Is this he?'
'Yes, your Excellency.'
'Well! it's a capital thing; you will serve in the army. I have ah.,·ays been in the army, and you see what I've risen to, and maybe you'll be a field-marshal.'
This misplaced, feeble, German joke was Dibich's equivalent of a kiss. Polezhayev was led off to the camp and enlisted.
Three years passed. Polezhayev remembered the Tsar's words and wrote him a letter. No answer came. A few months later he wrote a second; again there was no answer. Convinced that his letters did not reach the Tsar, he ran away, and ran away in order to present his petition in person. He behaved carelessly, his old friends in Moscow and was entertained by them ; of course, that could not be kept secret. In Tver he was seized and sent back to his regiment as a deserter, on foot and in chains.
The court-martial condemned him to run the gauntlet ; the sentence was despatched to the Tsar for confirmation.
Polezhayev wanted to kill himself before the punishment.
After searching in vain in his prison for a sharp instrument, he confided in an old soldier who liked him. The soldier understood him and respected his wishes. When the old man learned that the answer had come, he brought him a bayonet and, as he gave him it, said through his tears:
'I have sharpened it myself.'
The Tsar ordered Polezhayev not to be punished.
Then it was that he wrote his fine poem beginning: I perished lonely,
No help was nigh.
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My evil genius
Passed mocking by.2
Polezhayev was sent to the Caucasus. There for distinguished service he was promoted to be a non-commissioned officer. Years and years passed ; his inescapable, dreary situation broke him down; become a police poet and sing the glories of Nicholas he could not, and that was the only way of getting rid of the knapsack.
There was, however, another means of escape, and he preferred it; he drank to win forgetfulness. There is a frightening poem of his, 'To John Barleycorn.'
He succeeded in getting transferred to a regiment of the Carabineers stationed in Moscow. This was a considerable alleviation of his lot, but a malignant consumption was already eating away his chest. It was at this period that I made his acquaintance, about 1 833. He languished for another four years and died in a military hospital.
When one of his friends appeared to ask for the body for burial, no one knew where it was; a military hospital traffics in corpses-sells them to the university and to the Medical Academv, boils them down to skeletons, and so on. At last he found po�r Polezhayev's body in a cellar; it was lying under a heap of others and the rats had gnawed off one foot.
After his death his poems were published, and his portrait in a private's uniform was to have been included in the edition. The censor thought this unseemly, and the poor martyr was portrayed with the epaulettes of an officer-he had been promoted in the hospital.
2 Translated by Juliet Soskice.
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