The Coast of Utopia

‘Salvage’

Act II

1. May 1859 Fulham, Herzen’s Garden

· The scene is reminiscent of Herzen’s dream which opened the play. This time he is speaking to Sasha (age 20) while Tata (age 15) and Olga (9) are being difficult.. Liza (a newborn) is in the perambulator.

· Herzen is explaining to Sasha the brand of socialism that he and Ogarev are promoting in The Bell:

o From Proudhon: the abolition of central authority

o From Rousseau: the nobility of man in the state of nature (without the right to property)

o From Fourier: the harmonious community (phalanastery) and the abolition of competition

o From Blanc: the central role of the worker.

o From Saint-Simon: the development of man’s whole nature: moral, intellectual, artistic, sensual… the rehabilitation of the body

· How is the love triangle going? Not well. Ogarev is drinking himself to death, and Natalie is coming apart emotionally. She blames herself for Ogarev’s alcoholism, and she blames Herzen for loving her only physically. Herzen is open and honest with Ogarev, but Ogarev will have none of it: “must I be spared nothing?”

· Herzen has been advocating the emancipation of the serfs, and the movement has gotten the Tsar to appoint a commission to negotiate the details.

· Herzen believes in reform, but he must threaten ‘the axe’ even though he believes that revolution would lead to social catastrophe.

· Turgenev enters, decked out for his tony aristocratic club where he will hob-nob with Macaulay, Carlyle, Disraeli and Thackeray.

· Turgenev criticizes the new generation of activists emerging in Russia, personified by the new editors of The Contemporary: Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, disciples of Belinsky: “Liberals are now the enemy and the pursuit of peaceful reform is treasonous. Art itself has been deemed useless: you can’t eat a painted apple. Only positive action is useful. They strike Turgenev as fanatics.

· Turgenev criticizes Herzen for his sentimental belief in the goodness of the peasants. He reminds him that Russian peasants are like peasants anywhere: conservatives par excellence: illiterate, alcoholic and mystic.

· Herzen, Natalie and Ogarev discuss their situation: Natalie wants out. She is disappointed in the limits of Herzen’s love and she cannot get over her guilt at cheating so openly before Ogarev. She does not get along well with tata and Olga. She lets her emotions get out of control at the slightest disturbance. She is pregnant (w/ twins). She wants to go home, but she has not realized that she will not be allowed back in Russia because of her marriage to a known radical.

· The scene ends with Turgenev testing out his new shotgun by firing at Sasha’s kite.

2. June 1859 West End slum… gaslight

· Ogarev with Mary Sutherland, a working class ‘fancy woman’ .

· He has convinced her to give up the trade and move to a house in Putney with her son Henry. Ogarev has convinced her by making the idea a business deal.

· Ogarev laughs off his childlessness by telling Mary that he fed his children to wolves.

3. July 1859 Fulham Herzen’s Garden

· Nikolai Chernyshevsky is discussing Herzen’s recent article in The Bell entitled “Very Dangerous”. In it, Herzen criticizes the new radicals for their ‘lack of grace’ towards their predecessors. They ‘excommunicate’ those radicals among the nobility for enjoying dinner, pictures, music and gaiety.

· Chernyshevsky tells Herzen that he admired his earlier writing for its grief, fury and style, but now he is unreadable. You lament the sacrifice you have made to work for social justice, but that injustice is my situation: cholera, crop failure, horse thieves, brigands, wolves… I want my black bread of facts and figures, analysis and projection

· Chernyshevsky refuses to believe in the good intentions of the tsar or the govt. The serfs are being exploited now more than ever. The axe is needed, not reform and then organization.

· Herzen: That means dictatorship by YOU and the other members of the revolutionary elite. Forced to be free until the enemy is liguideated? Haha. It will never end.

· Of the Bell called for revolution, that would drive all the reformers into the arms of the conservatives.

· Chernyshevsky: Your muck raking exposes of corruption only serve to safeguard and prolong the regime.

· Ogarev: on the contradictions of English liberalism: the police actually serve the public, but they also tidy up the homeless when they drop dead on the streets.

· Civil rights yet a large impoverished class

· What’s best for everyone everywhere?

· Herzen: There is no such thing. Communal socialism is best.

· Chernyshevsky: Communistic Socialism

· Herzen: Hah! The utopia of the ant heap.

· Natalie demands that Herzen decide whether they will accept Mary and her son as a guest…

· Herzen: I always feared the gulf between the intelligentsia and the people would be unbridgeable. I never thought that the intelligentsia would be come divided.

· Chernyshevsky: The Tsar will let you down and you are betting The Bell on it.

4. August 1860 Ventnot Seaside The Isle of Wight

· Malwida and Olga are collecting shells and shrimping.

· Turgenev speaks with the Doctor who is a radical empiricist. He insists that he has no time for novels and novelists. He only reads books with practical utility. Nature is no more than the sum of the facts. Artists are romantic egoists. “A good plumber is worth twenty poets. Negation is the thing that is best for Russia now. The people themselves are worse than useless.

· Turgenev: I have been looking for you without knowing it. The future has arrived before its time. Bazarov!

5. March 1861 Herzen’s Garden News of Emancipation

· Liza (2) is bawling. Tata (17) is drawing.

· Ogarev is living in Putney now.

· Jones , Blanc , chanpgne! We’ve won!”

6. December 1861

· Natalie and Herzen with newborn twins.

· The reality of emancipation’s limits are now clear: nothing belongs to the peasants except unpayable debt.

· Repercussions for The Bell: reduced submissions

· Bakunin enters and immediately rejuvenates the entire operation. “Oysters! Where’s the revolution?”

7. Bakunin’s Office

· Hubub: letters to Belgrade, Constantinople and Russia

· Vetoshnikov, Korf, Semlov, and Perotkin: Who is the double agent?

· Turgenev has published Fathers and Sons.

· Bakunin needs money: ‘it is beneath me to write for money.’

· Ogarev: ‘Land and Liberty’

· Herzen does not want to support a revolutionary cell, but he does.

· Herzen lets Tata go to Italy.

8. August 1862

· The police have infiltrated Herzen’s circle and arrested all the Russians who returned from the meeting.

· Cheryshevsky has been arrested… due to Herzen’s note to him.

· The Bell is kaput. Liberals lost for backing the Poles, the radicals for this ‘perfidy’.

9. September 1864

· Natalie on the move to Switzerland: we must visit Paris

10. October 1864

· Ogarev and Mary on the move to Switzerland

11. May 1866 Geneva

· Sleptsov wants money to aid the defense of Karakazov who attempted to assassinate the Tsar.

· Sleptsov speech: we have left you behind.

12. August 1868 Switzerland

· Liza is now 10; Sasha is 29 and married.

· Natalie tells of the death of the twins from diphtheria in Paris.

· Bakunin v. Marx for control of the international revolutionary movement.

· Olga returns.

· In his dream Turgenev and Marx debate.

· Herzen has the final word. History has no culmination. There is no libretto.