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History V. G. Belinskii, Letter
to N. V. Gogol’
You are only partly right in
regarding my article as that of an angered man: that epithet is too
mild and inadequate to express the state to which I was reduced on reading
your book. But you are entirely wrong in ascribing that state to your indeed
none too flattering references to the admirers of your talent. No, there was
a more important reason for this. One could endure an outraged sense of
self-esteem, and I should have had sense enough to let the matter pass in
silence were that the whole gist of the matter, but one cannot endure an
outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep silent when lies
and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion
and the protection of the knout. Yes, I loved you with all the
passion with which a man, bound by ties of blood to his native country, can
love its hope, its honor, its glory, one of its great leaders on the path
toward consciousness, development, and progress. And you had sound reason for
losing your equanimity at least momentarily when you forfeited that love. I
say that not because I believe my love to be an adequate reward for a great
talent, but because I do not represent a single person in this respect but a
multitude of men, most of whom neither you nor I have ever set eyes on, and
who, in their turn, have never set eyes on you. I find myself at a loss to
give you an adequate idea of the indignation your book has aroused in all
noble hearts, and of the wild shouts of joy that were set up on its
appearance by all your enemies, both the nonliterary – the Chichikovs, the
Nozdrevs, and the mayors...and by the literary, whose names are well known to
you. You see yourself that even those people who are of one mind with your
book have disowned it. Even if it had been written as a result of deep and
sincere conviction, it could not have created any impression on the public
other than the one it did. And it is nobody’s fault but your own if everyone
(except the 1
few who must be seen and known in
order not to derive pleasure from their approval) received it as an ingenious
but all too unceremonious artifice for achieving a purely earthly aim by
celestial means. Nor is that in any way surprising; what is surprising is that
you find it surprising. I believe that is so because your profound knowledge
of Russia is only that of an artist, but not of a thinker, whose role you have so
ineffectually tried to play in your fantastic book. Not that you are not a
thinker, but that you have been accustomed for so many years to look at
Russia from your beautiful far-away; [2]
and who does not know that there is nothing easier than seeing things from a
distance the way we want to see them; for in that beautiful far-away you
live a life that is entirely alien to it; you live in and within yourself or
within a circle of the same mentality as your own that is powerless to resist
your influence on it. Therefore you failed to realize that
Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in
the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is
not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them
too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human
dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and
laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and
justice, and their strictest possible observance. Instead of which she
presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without
even having the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation
owners who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call
themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka,
Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for individuality,
honor and property, but even no police order, and where there is nothing but
vast corporations of official thieves and robbers of various descriptions.
The most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom
and corporal punishment and the strictest possible observance of at least
those laws that already exist. This is even realized by the government
itself (which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and
how many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is proved
by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of the white Negroes
and the comical substitution of the single-lash knout by a cat-o-three tails.[3]
Such are the problems that prey on
the mind of Russia in her apathetic slumber! And at such a time a great
writer, whose astonishingly artistic and deeply truthful works have so
powerfully contributed toward Russia’s awareness of herself, enabling her as
they did to take a look at herself as though in a mirror – publishes a book
in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out
of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and
Church....And would you expect me not to become indignant?... Why, if you had
made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than I do for
these disgraceful lines.... And after this, you expect people to believe the
sincerity of your book’s intent! No! Had you really
been inspired by the truth of Christ and not by the teaching of the devil you
would certainly have written something entirely different in your new book.
You would have told the landowner that since his peasants are his brethren in
Christ, and since a brother cannot be a slave to his brother, he should
either give them their freedom or, at least, allow them to enjoy the fruits
of their own labor to their greatest possible benefit, realizing, as he does,
in the depths of his own conscience, the false relationship in which he
stands toward them. And the expression “Oh, you
unwashed snout, you!” From what Nozdrev and Sobakevich did you overhear
it, in order to present it to the world as a great discovery for the
edification and benefit of the peasants, whose only reason for not washing is
that they have let themselves be 2.
persuaded by their masters that
they are not human beings? And your conception of the
national Russian system of trial and punishment, whose ideal you have found
in the foolish saying that both the guilty and innocent should be flogged
alike? [4]
That, indeed, is often the case with us, though more often than not it is the
man who is in the right who takes the punishment, unless he can ransom
himself, and for such occasions another proverb says: guiltlessly guilty!
And such a book is supposed to have been the result of an arduous inner
process, a lofty spiritual enlightenment! Impossible! Either you are ill – and
you must hasten to take a cure, or...I am afraid to put my thought into
words! ... Proponent of the
knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness,
panegyrist of Tartar morals – what are you about! Look beneath your feet – you
are standing on the brink of an abyss!... That you base such teaching on the
Orthodox Church I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the
knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it?
What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the
Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring to people
the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of
truth to that teaching by martyrdom. And this teaching was men’s salvation
only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of
Orthodoxy for its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy,
consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of authority, an enemy and
persecutor of brotherhood among men – and so it has remained to this day.
But the meaning of Christ’s message has been revealed by
the philosophical movement of the preceding century. And that is why a man
like Voltaire who stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe
by ridicule, is, of course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and
bone of his bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and
patriarchs – Eastern or Western. Do you really mean to say you do not
know that! Now it is not even a novelty to a schoolboy...Hence, can it be
that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have
in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious
Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy?
Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something,
while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the
secular powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy
is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people?
About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? Of the priest, the
priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm hand. Does not
the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility,
and shamelessness for all Russians? Do you mean to say that you do not know
all this? Strange! According to you the Russian people is the most religious
in the world. That is a lie! The basis of religiousness is pietism,
reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord
while scratching himself somewhere. He says of the icon: If it works, pray
to it; if it doesn’t, it’s good for covering pots. Take
a closer look and you will see that it is by nature a profoundly atheistic
people. It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of
religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but
religiousness often keeps company with them too; we have a living example of
this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among
enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected
Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god. The Russian
people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much
common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the
vastness of its historic destinies in the future. Religiousness has not even
taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional
personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic 3.
contemplation prove nothing. But the majority of our
clergy has always been distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic
pedantry, and savage ignorance.
It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism; instead
it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith.
Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who formed such a
contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so
insignificant in comparison with it. I shall not expatiate on your
panegyric to the affectionate relations existing between the Russian people
and its lords and masters. I shall say point-blank that panegyric has met
sympathy nowhere and has lowered you even in the eyes of people who in other
respects are very close to you in their views. As far as I am concerned, I
leave it to your conscience to admire the divine beauty of the autocracy (it
is both safe and profitable), but continue to admire it judiciously from your
beautiful far-away: at close quarters it is not so attractive, and not
so safe....I would remark but this: when a European, especially a Catholic,
is seized with religious ardor he becomes a denouncer of iniquitous
authority, similar to the Hebrew prophets who denounced the iniquities of the
great ones of the earth. We do quite the contrary: no sooner is a person
(even a reputable person) afflicted with the malady that is known to
psychiatrists as religiosa mania than he begins to burn more incense
to the earthly god than to the heavenly one, and so overshoots the mark in
doing so that the former would fain reward him for his slavish zeal did he
not perceive that he would thereby be compromising himself in society’s
eyes.... What a rogue our fellow the Russian is!... Another
thing I remember you saying in your book, claiming it to be a great and
incontrovertible truth, is that literacy is not merely useless but positively
harmful to the common people. What can I say to this? May your Byzantine God
forgive you that Byzantine thought, unless, in committing it to paper, you
knew not what you were saying...But perhaps you will say: “Assuming that I
have erred and that all my ideas are false, but why should I be denied the
right to err and why should people doubt the sincerity of my errors?” Because,
I would say in reply, such a tendency has long ceased to be a novelty in
Russia. Not so very long ago it was drained to the lees by Burachok [an
advocate of “official nationality"] and his fraternity. Of course, your
book shows a good deal more intellect and talent (though neither of these
elements is very richly represented) than their works; but then they have
developed your common doctrine with greater energy and greater consistence;
they have boldly reached its ultimate conclusions, have rendered all to the
Byzantine God and left nothing for Satan; whereas you, wanting to light a
taper to each of them, have fallen into contradiction, upholding, for
example, Pushkin, literature, and the theater, all of which, in your opinion,
if you were only conscientious enough to be consistent, can in no way serve
the salvation of the soul but can do a lot toward its damnation...Whose head
could have digested the idea of Gogol’s identity with Burachok? You have
placed yourself too high in the regard of the Russian public for it to be
able to believe you sincere in such convictions. What seems natural in fools
cannot seem so in a man of genius. Some people have been inclined to regard
your book as the result of mental derangement verging on sheer madness. But
they soon rejected such a supposition, for clearly that book was not written
in a single day or week or month, but very likely in one, two, or three
years; it shows coherence; through its careless exposition one glimpses
premeditation, and the hymn to the powers-that-be nicely arranges the earthly
affairs of the devout author. That is why a rumor has been current in St.
Petersburg to the effect that you have written this book with the aim of
securing a position as tutor to the son of the heir apparent. Before that, your
letter to [Minister of Education] Uvarov became known in St. 4.
Petersburg, wherein you say that
you are grieved to find that your works about Russia are misinterpreted; then
you evince dissatisfaction with your previous works and declare that you will
be pleased with your own works only when the Tsar is pleased with them. Now
judge for yourself. Is it to be wondered at that your book has lowered you in
the eyes of the public both as a writer and still more as a man?... You,
as far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public. Its
character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh
forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy
oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness,
and apathy. Only literature, despite the Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and
progressive movement. That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem
among us; that is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little
talent. The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of
epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every so-called
liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice,
and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give
themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality declines
so quickly. A striking example is Pushkin who had merely to write two
of three verses in a loyal strain and don the kammer-iunker’s livery
to forfeit popular affection immediately! And you are greatly mistaken if you
believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not because of its
bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to have been expressed by
you about all and sundry. Assuming you could think that of the writing
fraternity, but then how do you account for the public? Did you tell it less
bitter home truths less harshly and with less truth and talent in The
Inspector General and Dead Souls? Indeed, the old school was
worked up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector
General and Dead Souls were not affected by it, whereas your
latest book has been an utter and disgraceful failure. And here the public is
right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and
saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore,
while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him
a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit
still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise proves that it
has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your
book!... I would tell you, not without a
certain feeling of self-satisfaction, that I believe I know the Russian
public a little. Your book alarmed me by the possibility of its exercising a
bad influence on the government and the censorship, but not on the public.
When it was rumored in St. Petersburg that the government intended to publish
your book in many thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low
price, my friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the
book, despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be
forgotten. In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that have
been written about it than for the book itself. Yes, the Russian has a deep,
though still undeveloped, instinct for truth. Your conversion may conceivably
have been sincere, but your idea of bringing it to the notice of the public
was a most unhappy one. The days of naive piety have long since passed, even
in our society. It already understands that it makes no difference where one
prays and that the only people who seek Christ and Jerusalem [5]
are those who have never carried Him in their breasts or who have lost Him.
He who is capable of suffering at the sight of other people’s sufferings and
who is pained at the sight of other people’s oppression bears Christ within
his bosom and has no 5.
need to make a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. The humility you preach is, first of all, not novel, and, second,
it savors on the one hand of prodigious pride, and on the other of the most
shameful degradation of one’s human dignity. The idea of becoming a sort of
abstract perfection, of rising above everyone else in humility, is the fruit
of either pride or imbecility, and in either case leads inevitably to
hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and incomprehensibility. Moreover, in your book
you have taken the liberty of expressing yourself with gross cynicism not
only of other people (that would be merely impolite) but of yourself -- and
that is vile, for if a man who strikes his neighbor on the cheek evokes indignation,
the sight of a man striking himself on the cheek evokes contempt. No, you are
not illuminated; you are simply beclouded; you have failed to grasp either
the spirit or the form of Christianity of our time. Your book breathes not
the true Christian teaching but the morbid fear of death, of the devil and of
hell! And what language, what phrases!
“Every man hath now become trash and a rag” -do you really believe that in
saying hath instead of has you are expressing yourself
biblically? How eminently true it is that when a man gives himself wholly up
to lies, intelligence and talent desert him. If this book did not bear your
name, who would have thought that this turgid and squalid bombast was the
work of the author of Inspector General and Dead Souls? As far as I myself am concerned, I
repeat: You are mistaken in taking my article to be an expression of vexation
at your comment on me as one of your critics. Were this the only thing to
make me angry I would have reacted with annoyance to it alone and would have
dealt with all the rest with unruffled impartiality. But it is true that your
criticism of your admirers is doubly bad. I understand the necessity of
sometimes having to rap a silly man whose praises and ecstasies make the
object of his worship look ridiculous, but even this is a painful necessity,
since, humanly speaking, it is somehow awkward to reward even false affection
with enmity. But you had in view men who, though not brilliantly clever, are
not quite fools. These people, in their admiration of your works, have
probably uttered more ejaculations than talked sense about them; still, their
enthusiastic attitude toward you springs from such a pure and noble source
that you ought not to have betrayed them completely to your common enemies and
accused them, into the bargain, of wanting to misinterpret your works. [6]
You, of course, did that while carried away by the main idea of your book and
through indiscretion, while Viazemskii, that prince in aristocracy and helot
in literature, developed your idea and printed a denunciation against your
admirers (and consequently mostly against me). [7]
He probably did this to show his gratitude to you for having exalted him, the
poetaster, to the rank of great poet, if I remember rightly for his
“pithless, dragging verse.” [8]
That is all very bad. That you were merely biding your time in order to give
the admirers of your talent their due as well (after having given it with
proud humility to your enemies)- I was not aware; I could not, and, I must
confess, did not want to know it. It was your book that lay before me and not
your intentions: I read and reread it a hundred times, but I found nothing in
it that was not there, and what was there deeply offended and incensed my
soul. Were I to give free rein to my
feelings this letter would probably grow into a voluminous notebook. I never
thought of writing you on this subject, though I longed to do so and though
you gave all and sundry printed permission to write you without ceremony with
an eye to the truth alone. [9]
Were I in Russia I would not be able to do it, for the local “Shpekins” open
other 6.
people’s letters not merely for
their own pleasure but as a matter of official duty, for the sake of
informing. This summer incipient consumption has driven me abroad, [and
Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today
with Annenkov for Paris via Frankfort-on-Main]. [10]
The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my soul of
what has accumulated there against you on account of your book. I cannot
express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature. Let
you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions. I shall
be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you.
This is not a question of your or my personality; it concerns a matter that
is of greater importance than myself or even you; it is a matter that
concerns the truth, Russian society, Russia. And this is my last concluding
word: If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your
truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last
book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that
would be reminiscent of your old ones. Salzbrunn, July 15, 1847. 1. The publication of Selected Passages from
Correspondence, with Friends was not a complete surprise for Belinsky.
Six months before Gogol had published in the Sovremennik, Moskovskiye
Vedomosti and Mosk-vityanin an article entitled Odyssey, which
was later embodied as a separate chapter in Selected Passages. Belinsky
claimed that this article, by its paradoxicalness and “high-flown pretensions
to prophetic tone,” distressed “all the friends and admirers of Gogol’s
talent and gladdened all his enemies.” Following this article Gogol published
a second edition of Dead Souls with a foreword which filled Belinsky
with “keen apprehensions regarding the future reputation... of the author of Inspector
General and Dead Souls.” In his review on this second edition
Belinsky said that among the most important defects of the poem were those passages
in which “the author tries to rise from a poet and artist to an oracle and
descends instead to a somewhat turgid and pompous lyricism.” Belinsky,
however, reconciled himself with these defects, since such passages were few
in the poem and “they can be omitted in reading without diminishing the
pleasure which the novel itself affords.” Of much greater importance was the
fact that “these mystico-lyrical sallies in Dead Souls were not simple
and accidental errors on the part of the author, but the germ of the perhaps
utter deterioration of his talent and its loss for Russian literature.” Thus, Belinsky was prepared for
the Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Their
publication nevertheless profoundly shocked him. In a big article dealing with
this publication Belinsky, for reasons of censorship, was able to give no
more than a mild expression of the indignation which the appearance of this
“vile” book aroused in him. In a letter to V. P. Botkin, who had disapproved
of his article, Belinsky wrote: “I am... obliged to act against my nature and
character: Nature has condemned me to bark like a dog and howl like a jackal
but circumstances compel me to mew like a cat and wave my tail like a fox.
You say that the article is ‘written without sufficient premeditation and
straight from the shoulder, whereas the matter should have been handled with
subtlety.’ My dear friend, but my article, on the contrary, could never have
done justice to such an important theme (albeit of negative importance) as the
book it deals with precisely because I premeditated it. How little you know
me! All my best articles are unpremeditated, just improvizations; in sitting
down to them I never knew what I was going to 7.
write...The article on Gogol’s
vile book might have turned out to be a splendid one had I been able to shut
my eyes and let myself go to the full range of my indignation and fury...But
I had premeditated this article, and I knew beforehand that it would not be
brilliant, for I merely struggled to make it business-like and to show the
baseness of an infamous wretch. And such it has come from under my pen, and
not in the way you have read it. You people live in the country and know
nothing. The effect of this book was such that Nikitenko, who passed it,
deleted some of my quotations from the book, and trembled for those he bad
left in my article. At least a third of my own copy was deleted...You
reproach me for having lost my temper. But I did not try to keep it.
Tolerance to error I can well understand and appreciate, at least in others
if not in myself, but tolerance to villainy 1 will not stand. You have
.utterly failed to understand this book if you regard it only as an
error ar;d do not see it as studied villainy besides. Gogol is not at all K.
S. Ak-sakov. It is Talleyrand, Cardinal Fesch, who deceived God all his life
and fooled Satan at his death.” Belinsky’s article, such as it
appeared, created a strong impression on Gogol, though he failed to grasp its
import. It struck him that Belinsky was angered with him only because he took
personal exception to the attacks against the critics and journalists
scattered throughout the Correspondence. In this connection Gogol
wrote to Prokopovich on June 20, 3847: “This irritation grieves me very
much.... Please have a talk with Belinsky and let me know in what frame of
mind he now is with regard to me. If his bile is stirred up let him vent it
against me in the Sovremennik in whatever terms he pleases, but let
him not harbour it in his breast against me. If his wrath has abated give him
the enclosed epistle.” Prokopovich handed over the “epistle” to the editorial
office of the Sovremennik, and N. A. Nekrasov forwarded it on to
Salzbrunn where Belinsky was then sojourning. Gogol, inter alia, wrote
Belinsky: “I was grieved to read your article about me in the 2nd issue of
the Sovremennik. Not that I deplored the degradation in which you
wanted to place me before everyone, but because it betrays the voice of a man
who is angry with me. And I would not like to make even a man who did not
like me angry with me, still less you, of whom I had always thought as of a
man who loved me. I had no intention of causing you distress in a single
place of my book. How it has happened that I have roused the anger of every
single man in Russia I cannot for the time being understand.” After scanning
Gogol’s letter, Belinsky, in the words of P. V. Annenkov, flushed and
murmured: “Ah, he does not understand why people are angry with him – he must
have that explained to him – I shall answer him.” Three days later his reply
was ready. Belinsky read it to P. V. Annenkov. The latter, 8.
writing of the impression which this reply
made on him, said: “I was alarmed both by the tone and tenor of this reply,
and, of course, not for Belinsky’s sake, since no special consequences of
foreign correspondence among acquaintances could have been anticipated at the
time. I was alarmed for Gogol’s sake, who was to have received this reply,
and I could vividly imagine his position the minute he began to read this
scathing indictment. The letter did not merely contain a denunciation of his
views and opinions; the letter revealed the emptiness and ugliness of all
Gogol’s ideals, of all his conceptions of goodness and honour, of all the
moral principles of his life, together with the egregious position of those
circles whose defender he professed himself to be. I wanted to explain to
Belinsky the whole scope of his passionate speech, but he knew that, it
appears, better than I, ‘But what else was to be done’.-” he said. ‘All
measures should be taken to protect people against a rabid man, even though
it were Homer himself. As for insulting Gogol, I could never insult him as he
has insulted me in my soul and in my faith in him.’ “ A. I. Herzen, to whom Belinsky
read his letter to Gogol, told Annenkov: “It is a work of genius – and, I
believe, his testament as well.” This letter to Gogol, which was “the epitome
of Belinsky’s literary activity,” Lenin considered to be “one of the finest
works of the uncensored democratic press, which has preserved its great and
vital importance to this day.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian
edition, Vol. XVII, p. 341.) In this letter Belinsky not only subjected
Gogol’s reactionary book to devastating criticism, he exposed the entire
feudal and autocratic system of Russia, and only death saved him from severe
punishment for this remarkable document. The superintendent of the Third
Section, L. V. Dubelt, “regretted” that he was not able to make the great
critic “rot in prison. It is known that the Russian writer Dostoyevsky was
condemned to death, the sentence later being commuted to penal servitude, for
having read Belinsky’s letter in a circle of Petrashevsky adherents. The
government’s cruel reprisals, however, could do nothing to prevent Belinsky’s
letter from being circulated in thousands of copies. I. S. Aksakov wrote to
his father on October 9, 1856, i.e., nine odd years after Belinsky’s
letter first appeared: “I have travelled much about Russia: the name of
Belinsky is known to every youth who is at’ all given to thinking, to
everyone who longs for a breath of fresh air amid the stinking quagmire of
provincial life. There is not a single high-school teacher in the gubernia
towns who does not know Belinsky’s letter to Gogol by heart.” Belinsky’s famous letter was first
published by A. I. Herzen in The Polar Star in 1855 (2nd ed., London,
1858, pp. 66-76), from which text it was reprinted several times abroad. The
full text of this letter appeared in several editions of Belinsky’s works as
well as in his Letters published in 1914. The original has not come
down to us. The text here given is a reprint from that published in The
Polar Star. 2. Gogol went abroad in 1836 where, with short
intermissions, he lived for many years. 3. The knout with a single lash used as an instrument of
punishment in Russia was substituted by the cat-o’-three tails in accordance
with the criminal code of 1845. 4. Gogol had said all this in a letter to Count S. S. Uvarov
in April 1845. 5. Gogol in Selected Passages from Correspondence with
Friends had written of his intention of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 6. Gogol had not mentioned Belinsky by name in his Correspondence,
but it was obvious to all that it was him he had in mind when speaking of
the critics. Thus in Chapter VII he wrote that Odyssey ... would
refreshen criticism. Criticism was tired and confused from dealing with the
baffling works of modern literature, it had flown off at a tangent, and,
waiving literary topics, was “beginning to dote.” 7. Refers to P. A. Vyazemsky’s article Yazikov and Gogol. 8. In an article On the “’sovremennik” Gogol
-wrote: “Thank God, two of our... first-class poets are still alive and well –
Prince Vyazemsky and Yazikov.” Furthermore, having in view a new edition of
his Correspondence Gogol asked Prince Vyazemsky: “read, acquaint
yourself, strictly examine and set right my book... . Regard the manuscript,”
he wrote? “as you would your own cherished property .. And so, dear Prince,
do not forsake me, and may God reward you for it, for 9.
that will be a truly Christian act
of charity.” The praise and this plea apparently had their effect, for Prince
Vyazemsky wrote his article Yazikov and Gogol in defence of Gogol’s
book. 9. In the foreword to the second edition of Dead Souls Gogol
wrote: “Much in this book has been written wrongly, not as things are really
happening in the land of Russia. I ask yon, dear reader, to correct me. Do
not spurn this matter. I ask you to do it.” 10. The words in brackets were, of course deliberately
omitted by Herzen in The Polar Star to avoid giving publicity to the
names of Nekrasov and Annenkov mentioned in Belinsky’s letter. 10.
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