In this extremity the thought came to me: why not try writing something myself? The indulgent reader already knows that I received a skimpy education and had no chance to acquire for myself what had once been neglected, having played with serf boys until I was sixteen, and then moving from province to province, from quarters to quarters, spending time with Jews and sutlers, playing on shabby billiard tables, and marching in the mud.
Besides that, being a writer seemed to me so complicated, so beyond the reach of the uninitiated, that the thought of taking up the pen frightened me at first. Could I dare hope to find myself someday numbered among the writers, when my ardent desire to meet even one of them had never been fulfilled? But this reminds me of an occasion which I intend to tell about as proof of my constant passion for our native literature.
In 1820, while still a cadet, I happened to be in Petersburg on official business. I lived there for a week, and despite the fact that I did not know a single person there, I had an extremely merry time of it: each day I slipped away to the theater, to the gallery of the fourth circle. I learned the names of all the actors and fell passionately in love with * * *, who one Sunday played with great artfulness the role of Amalia in the drama Misanthropy and Repentance.5 In the morning, returning from general headquarters, I usually went to a basement tearoom and read literary magazines over a cup of hot chocolate. Once I was sitting there immersed in a critical article in The Well-Intentioned; someone in a pea-green overcoat came over to me and quietly pulled a page of the Hamburg Gazette from under my journal.6 I was so taken up that I did not even raise my eyes. The stranger ordered himself a beefsteak and sat down facing me; I went on reading and paid no attention to him; meanwhile he finished his lunch, angrily scolded the waiter for negligence, drank half a bottle of wine, and left.
Two young men were there having lunch. “Do you know who that was?” one said to the other. “That was B., the writer.”
“The writer!” I exclaimed involuntarily and, abandoning the journal half read and the cup half drunk, I rushed to pay and, without waiting for the change, ran out to the street. Looking in all directions, I saw a pea-green overcoat in the distance and set out after it down Nevsky Prospect almost at a run. Having gone a few steps, I suddenly felt I was being stopped—I turned to look, an officer of the guards pointed out to me that I ought not to have shoved him off the sidewalk, but rather to have stopped and stood at attention. After this reprimand I became more careful; to my misfortune I kept meeting officers, I kept stopping, and the writer was getting further ahead of me. Never in my life was my soldier’s uniform so burdensome to me, never in my life had epaulettes seemed to me so enviable. By the Anichkin Bridge I finally caught up with the pea-green overcoat.
“Allow me to ask,” I said, putting my hand to my brow, “are you Mr. B., whose excellent articles I have had the good fortune to read in The Zealot for Enlightenment?”
“No, sir,” he replied, “I’m not a writer, I’m a lawyer, but I know B. very well. I met him a quarter of an hour ago at the Police Bridge.”
Thus my respect for Russian literature cost me thirty kopecks in forfeited change, an official reprimand, and a near arrest—and all for nothing.
Despite all the objections of my reason, the bold thought of becoming a writer kept running through my head. Finally, unable to resist the pull of nature any longer, I stitched together a thick notebook with the firm intention of filling it with whatever might come along. I investigated and evaluated all kinds of poetry (for I had yet to think about humble prose) and decided to venture upon an epic poem drawn from Russian history. It did not take me long to find a hero. I chose Rurik7—and set to work.
I had acquired a certain knack for verses by copying the notebooks that were handed around among our officers—namely: The Dangerous Neighbor, Critique of the Moscow Boulevard or of the Presnya Ponds, and so on. In spite of that my poem advanced slowly, and I abandoned it at the third verse. I thought that the epic genre was not my genre, and began a tragedy of Rurik. The tragedy didn’t get going. I tried turning it into a ballad—but the ballad somehow didn’t work out for me either. Finally inspiration dawned on me, I began and successfully finished an inscription for a portrait of Rurik.
Though my inscription was not entirely unworthy of attention, especially as the first production of a young versifier, I nevertheless felt that I was not born to be a poet, and satisfied myself with this first experience. But my creative endeavors so attached me to literary pursuits that I could no longer part with the notebook and the inkpot. I wanted to descend to prose. First off, not wishing to busy myself with doing preliminary research, laying out a plan, putting parts together, and so on, I conceived the idea of writing down separate thoughts, with no connection, with no order, just as they presented themselves to me. Unfortunately, thoughts did not enter my head, and in two whole days all I came up with was the following observation:
A man who does not obey the laws of reason and is used to following the promptings of passion, often errs and subjects himself to later remorse.
A correct thought, of course, but no longer a new one. Abandoning thoughts, I took up stories, but, having no habit of organizing fictional events, I chose some remarkable anecdotes I had heard formerly from various persons, and tried to adorn the truth by lively storytelling, and occasionally also by the flowers of my own imagination. In putting these stories together, I gradually formed my style and grew accustomed to expressing myself correctly, pleasantly, and freely. But my store soon ran out, and again I began to seek a subject for my literary activity.
The thought of abandoning trivial and dubious anecdotes for the recounting of true and great events had long stirred my imagination. To be the judge, observer, and prophet of epochs and nations seemed to me the greatest height a writer could attain. But what sort of history could I write with my pitiful education, where would I not have been preceded by men of great learning and conscientiousness? What genre of history have they not yet exhausted? I might start writing world history—but does the immortal work of the Abbé Millot not exist already? Should I turn to the history of our fatherland? But what can I say after Tatishchev, Boltin, and Golikov?8 And is it for me to rummage in chronicles and delve into the secret meaning of an obsolete language, when I could not even learn Slavonic numerals? I thought of a less voluminous history, for instance, the history of our provincial capital; but here, too, I faced so many insurmountable obstacles! The trip to the city, visits to the governor and the bishop, requests for admission to the archives and monastery storerooms, and so on. The history of our district town would have been more suitable for me, but it was of no interest either for the philosopher or for the pragmatist, and offered little food for eloquence: the village * * * was renamed a town in the year 17––, and the only remarkable event preserved in its chronicles was a terrible fire that had occurred ten years earlier and had destroyed the marketplace and the government buildings.