Society at large knows nothing of the academic world beyond anecdotes about the grotesque absentmindedness of elderly professors, and two or three witticisms variously ascribed to Gruber, me or Babukhin. For an educated community this is rather poor. If society loved learning, scholars and students as Nicholas loves them, its literature would long ago have included whole epics, legends and chronicles such as it now unhappily lacks.
After telling me the news, Nicholas adopts a stem expression, and we proceed to discuss practical matters. If an outsider could observe the freedom with which Nicholas handles technical terminology at such times, he might take him for a scholar masquerading as an old soldier. Those stories of college porters' erudition are grossly exaggerated, by the way. True, Nicholas knows over a hundred Latin terms. True, he can put a skeleton together, he can prepare the occasional specimen, and he can amuse the students with some long, learned quotation. But a theory as straightforward as that of the circulation of the blood, say—it's as deep a mystery to him today as it was twenty years ago.
Hunched over a book or preparation, my demonstrator Peter Igna- tyevich sits at a desk in my study. This industrious, modest, not very bright person is about thirty-five years ofage, but already bald and potbellied. He slogs away morning noon and night, reads a great deal, and has a good memory for what he has read, in which respect he's a real treasure. But in all other respects he's an old hack—a dull pedant, in other words. The old hack's characteristic features—those which distinguish him from a reaUy able man—are as follows. His horizon's restricted and narrowly confmed to his subject—outside his o^ special field he's like a baby, he's so naive. I remember going into the study one morning.
'What terrible news!' say I. 'I'm told Skobelev's died!'
Nicholas crosses himself, but Peter Ignatyevich turns to me and asks who this Skobelev is!
Another time—this was somewhat earlier—I announce that Professor Perov has died, and dear old Peter Ignatyevich asks what he used to lecture on!
IfPatti sang in his very ear, if Chinese hordes invaded Russia, or if an earthquake struck, I don't think he'd move a muscle—he'd just go on squinting do^n his microscope, imperturbable as ever. 'What was Hecuba to him?' in other words. I'd have given a lot to see this fossilized specimen in bed with his wife.
Another feature is his fanatical faith in the infallibility of science, and above all in anything written by a German. He has confidence in himself and his preparations, he knows the purpose oflife, and is a total stranger to the doubts and disillusionments which tum more able heads grey. Then there's his grovelling deference to authority, his lack of any urge to original thought. It's hard to change his views on any subject, and there's no arguing with him. How can you argue with a man so deeply convinced that medicine is the queen of the sciences, that doctors are an йlite, that medical traditions are the finest of all? Only one tradition has survived from medicine's bad old days—the white tie still worn by doctors. For a scholar—for any educated man, indeed—the only possible traditions are those of the academic world as a whole, without any distinction between medicine, law and so on. But it's hard for Peter Ignatyevich to accept this, and he's prepared to argue about it till doomsday.
I can picture his future clearly. In the course ofhis life he'll have made several hundred preparations of exceptional purity, he'll write a number of dull but highly respectable articles, and he'll do a dozen conscientious translations. But he'll never make a real splash. For that you need imagination, inventiveness, flair—and Peter Ignatyevich has nothing of the kind. He's no master of science, in brief, he's its lackey.
Peter Ignatyevich, Nicholas and I speak in low voices. We feel a certain unease. It's a peculiar sensation, this, to hear your audience booming away like the sea on the other side of a door. Thirty years haven't hardened me to this sensation, I still feel it each morning. I nervously button up my frock-coat, ask Nicholas unnecessary questions, betray irritation.
Panic-stricken though I may look, this is no panic, but something else that I can neither name nor describe.
I look at my watch quite unnecessarily.
'How about it?' I say. 'Time to go.'
We parade in sequence. Nicholas walks in front with the preparations or charts, and I follow—while after me, his head modestly lowered, trudges the old hack. Or, if necessary, a corpse is carried in first on a stretcher, followed by Nicholas, and so on. At my appearance the students stand up, then they sit do^n and the sea's boom is suddenly hushed. We are becalmed.
I know what I shall lecture about, but just how I shall lecture, what I shall start with, where I shall end—that I don't know. I haven't a single sentence on the tip ofmy tongue. But I only have to glance round my lccture hall, built in the form of an amphitheatre, and utter the timeworn phrase 'last week we were discussing—', for sentences to surge out of my inner self in a long parade—and the fat is in the fire! I speak with overwhelming speed and enthusiasm, feeling as ifno power on earth could check the flow of words. To lecture well—interestingly, that is, and with some profit to the audience—you need other qualities besides ability of a high order: experience, a special knack, and the clearest possible conception ofyour o^n powers, ofyour audience, and ofthe subject ofyour lecture. Furthermore, you need to have your head screwed on, keep your wits about you, and never for one moment lose sight of your object.
When a good conductor interprets his composer, he does twenty things at once—reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer, motions sideways towards drum or French horn, and so on. My lecturing is the same. I have before mc a hundred and fifty faces, all different from each other, and three hundred eyes boring into my o^n. My aim is to vanquish this many-headed hydra. If I can keep its level of attention and comprehcnsion clearly in view throughout every minute ofmy lecture, then I have it in my power. My other adversary is within myself. This is an infinite variety offorms, phenomena and laws, and the welter of ideas—my own and other people's—thereby conditioned. I must maintain a constant facility for seizing out of this vast material the most significant and vital element, keeping time with the general flow of my lecture as I clothe my idea in a form suited to the hydra's understanding and calculated to stimulate its attention, remaining on the alert to convey my thoughts—not as they accumulate, but in a certain order essential to the proper grouping of the picture which I wish to paint. Furthermore, I try to make my language as elegant, my definitions as brief and precise, and my wording as simple and graceful as I can. Every moment I must check myselfand remember that I have a mere hour and forty minutes at my disposal. I have my work cut out, in other words. I have to play the scholar, the pedagogue and the orator at one and the same time, and it's a poor lookout if the orator in one preponderates over the pedagogue and scholar, or vice versa.
After a quarter or half an hour of lecturing, you notice the students looking up at the ceiling or at Peter Ignatyevich. One feels for his handkerchief, another shifts in his scat, a third smiles at his thoughts.
Their attention is flagging, in other words, and something must be done about it—so I seize the first chance to make some joke. The one hundred and fifty faces grin broadly, the eyes glitter merrily and the sea briefly booms.
I laugh too. Their attention has been revived, and I can go on.
No argument, no entertainment, no sport has ever given me such enjoyment as lecturing. Only when lecturing have I really been able to let myself go, appreciating that inspiration isn't an invention of the poets, but really docs exist. And I don't think that even the most exotic of Hercules' labours ever left him so voluptuously exhausted as I've always felt after lecturing.