From the 1850s until well into the 1890s Russian literary criticism followed the example of social and literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811–48), seeing the principal role of criticism as that of a mediator between literature and society.
These critics generally agreed that literature had a social responsibility. Their position as critics of the regime tended to determine their theoretical views on art.
Using caustic and combative literary criticism they “advocated the anthropological principle that man was not divisible into soul and body but should be interpreted solely as a physical organism” (Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel 130).
[Ill. 2-2] Th e Map of Russia published in Amsterdam in 1614 (Moskovyia, Tabula Russiae ex autographo, quod delineandum curavit Foedor fi lius Tzaris Boris desumta)
The four major literary critics were Nikolai Dobrolyubov (1836–61), Dmitri Pisarev (1840–68), Belinsky, and Nikolai Chernyshevski (1828–89). The fi rst and the last were sons of priests and former seminary students; Pisarev was a member of the gentry. Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, who were principally critics, died quite young, while Chernyshevski, who lived on almost to the last decade of the nineteenth century, was also a novelist. Dobrolyubov “enjoyed the respect and admiration of his older colleagues for his unfl agging revolutionary zeal, moral purity, amazing energy and remarkable talent” (Terras 300). His manner is “less arid, doctrinaire, and self-righteous than Chernyshevski’s, but his style is awkward and prolix, in part because he was writing ‘around’ the censorship, using elaborate circumlocutions and Aesopian language to camoufl age his message”
(Ibid.). Pisarev was the enfant terrible amongst the Civic critics. He “served time in prison (as did Chernyshevski)” and once hypothesized that “the intellectual brilliance of the eighteenth century was due to the widespread drinking of tea and coffee (Voltaire is reported to have drunk seventy-fi ve cups of coffee a day)”
(Stacy 55). He was also one of the few Russian critics who have dared to challenge Pushkin. “Here is the ultimatum of our camp,” Pisarev proclaimed, “What can be smashed should be smashed; what will stand the blow is good . . . at any rate hit out left and right” (Yarmolinsky 120). He condemned Pushkin despite the fact that Belinsky regarded Eugene Onegin as a realistic guide, as Russia’s great national poem, calling it an “encyclopedia of Russian life,” and indeed also of Russian history. According to Pisarev, as a painter may make himself most useful by illustrating a book on insect pests, so the writer best fulfi lls his calling by expounding positivist and scientifi c knowledge. “With all this, Pisarev was a lucid thinker, an elegant stylist, and a witty and entertaining writer” (Terras 304).
Equally adept within utilitarianism, rationalism, and materialism, Pisarev died (by drowning or possibly by suicide) when he was twenty-eight.
Chernyshevski, whose aesthetics Pisarev accepted, “maintained that all art is subordinate to life, that it is dependent on the external world for both its content and its form” (Brown, “Pisarev and the Transformation” 152). Art, however imperfectly, does refl ect life:
Moreover, Russian novelists themselves seem to have accepted this notion without reflection. Gogol, who knew very little about Russia, believed that he was holding a mirror up to her, and that if the image seemed cracked or distorted, the fault was with the subject. Turgenev felt obliged to justify his behavior as a writer of novels by insisting on their importance as a kind of historical record. (Ibid.) Young intellectuals were infl uenced by Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov.
Determined “to remake the world through reason, they turned enthusiastically to radicalism” (MacKenzie, Curran 349). These radical activists “gath ered around a journal, The Contemporary. Soviet scholars regarded Chernyshevski, a leading
con tributor, as the chief precursor of Bolshevism and praised his materialism and his scorn for liberalism. Chernyshevski dreamed of changing his tory’s course by building a perpetual motion machine to abolish poverty” (Ibid.). Pisarev, too,
“believed that an educated elite with modern science and European technology would uplift the masses and destroy autocracy”; though they were ardent Westernizers, these intellectual revolutionaries posited that “Russia, unlike Europe, could avoid capitalism and move directly to socialism” (Ibid.).
The Confl ict of Fathers and Sons
The theme of the father-and-son bond is one of the cornerstones of Nabokov’s The Gift. It relies on a solid tradition that originated long before in the European epos (cf. Odysseus and Telemachus), and developed in a particular way in nineteenth-century Russian prose. While the intellectual history of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century can be summarized through some aspects of Russian radicalism of the 1860s and 1870s, it has become customary to speak of the generation of the sixties as the “sons” (or “nihilists”) and to contrast them with the “fathers” of the forties. The transformation in Russia was part of a broader change in Europe which has been associated with a transition from romanticism to realism. In Russian conditions the shift acquired an exaggerated and violent dimension.
The classic fi ctional exposition of the debate between the older moderate Westernizers and the younger militant ones is Turgenev’s masterpiece Fathers and Children (1862; often translated, less accurately, as Fathers and Sons), with its portrait of the “nihilist” Evgenii Bazarov. Turgenev described Bazarov with a term that was not new but that was gaining currency at this time — nihilist — “on which the enemies of the younger generation and of democracy soon seized in order to give it an almost pejorative connotation” (Miliukov et al. 49). But Turgenev strove for impartiality: he depicted at once the virtues and the faults of the
“son” (Bazarov) and of the “father” (Kirsanov).
Later he was to explain that, “if Bazarov is called a nihilist, it is revolutionary that is meant” — indeed, it was at the same time as this novel was fi rst published that the fi rst revolutionary current stirred among the Russian youth (Ibid.). Alexander Herzen, a brilliant spokesperson of the old civilization, refused to consider these young men the representatives of true democracy:
[Ill. 2-3] Ivan Turgenev
The fates of the fathers and sons are strange! Clearly Turgenev did not introduce Bazarov to pat him on the head; it is also clear that he had wanted to do something for the benefit of the fathers. But, juxtaposed with such pitiful and insignificant fathers as the Kirsanovs, the stern Bazarov captivated Turgenev and, instead of spanking the son, he flogged the fathers.
This is why it happened that a portion of the younger generation recognized itself in Bazarov. But we do not recognize ourselves at all in the Kirsanovs . . .
There is no lack of moral abortions living at the same time in different strata of society, and in its different tendencies; without doubt, they represent more or less general types, but they do not present the sharpest and most characteristic aspects of their generation — the aspects which most express its intensiveness.
(Herzen 222; see also Malia)
The nihilists’ revolt began within their own family — they “questioned paternal authority, challenged social conventions and good manners, broke away from homes, and adopted brusque, often coarse ways of speech and behavior”
(Slonim 115). Above all else “nihilism” meant a fundamental rebellion against received authority and accepted values: against abstract thought and family control, against structured lyric poetry and school discipline, against religion and romantic idealism. The term ‘nihilism’ soon became the symbol of anarchy and depravity. As Nabokov’s émigré contemporary and his wife’s distant relative, Marc Slonim, graphically put it: “Horrifi ed mothers and fathers saw girls cut their hair, smoke cigarettes and treat males as equals, while boys wore peasant boots and Russian blouses, grew long whiskers, talked loudly without mincing their words and spoke of religion as ‘a lot of trash.’ The new fashion called for the strangest kind of attire: a bespectacled student with bobbed hair (if female) and with long hair (if male) represented the nihilist in the eyes of polite society; but for the authorities, nihilist meant ‘an enemy of the established order’” (Slonim 116).
Although nihilism was initially apolitical — under its disguise of rudeness and exaggeration lay a desire for work and practical action — the Russian government looked at this movement with unconcealed suspicion.
The key issue for Alexander ii, the last royal ruler to make a concerted attempt to transform Russia, remained serfdom. This system of enslaved labor was decreasingly effective at meeting the economic needs of the Russian Empire, and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia occurred in 1861. However, “the government failed to resolve the fundamental dilemma of change: where to stop.
The ‘great reforms,’ together with the general development of Russia and the intellectual climate of the time, led to pressure for further reform” (Riasanovsky 378). Dmitri Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate the emperor in 1866 led to further reaction, which continued under Alexander iii and Nicholas ii at least until the revolution of 1905 (Ibid.). Nabokov’s father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was among the Russian intellectuals who believed that the creation of
a constitutional monarchy would have satisfi ed most of the demand and provided stability for the nation.
Despite the fact that the portrait of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev’s father in The Gift was considered to be a very true likeness of V. D. Nabokov (assassinated in 1924 in Berlin), there is an important difference: one major area of his life that his author-son eliminated was Vladmir Dmitrievich Nabokov’s lifelong dedication to legal reform, governmental service and constitutional law (Greenleaf 149). Boris Godunov’s political battles in the Time of Troubles are replaced in the novel by Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev’s apolitical naturalism and exaggerated contempt for everything merely historical and human. Unlike his fi ctional refl ection, as an editor of the émigré newspaper Rudder Nabokov’s father continued to lead the politically fractured Russian Diaspora. Godunov-Cherdyntsev’s professional and intellectual life inverts each of these details:
a scholarly naturalist and explorer, he avoids the war in order to continue his monumental scientifi c quest.
Nabokov identifi ed himself with the values of the “fathers.” Asked once what he thought of the so-called “student revolution,” his fi rm rejoinder was: “Rowdies are never revolutionary, they are always reac tionary. It is among the young that the greatest conformists and Philistines are found, e.g., the hippies with their group beards and group protests. Demonstrators at American universities care as little about education as football fans who smash up subway stations in England care about soccer” (Strong Opinions 139).
The theme of the father-son relationship continues to play a role in the Chernyshevski biography, in which Fyodor “adopts an unusual compositional stance: he treats Chernyshevski almost as if the historical fi gure were a literary character” (Connolly 146). Fyodor does not fabricate events, but traces instead subtle repetitions in Chernyshevski’s life and treats them as one would follow the “themes” found in fi ction (the theme of “nearsightedness,” the theme of “angelic clarity,” and so on; G214-15). As Julian Connolly contends, the portrait of Chernyshevski emerging from this treatment is complex: “While Fyodor is unsparing in his criticism of the contradictions and confusion he fi nds in Chernyshevski’s pronouncements on art, the reader also senses a certain degree of sympathy for Chernyshevski’s consistent lack of good fortune in life”
(Connolly 146). Connolly highlights several aspects of Chernyshevski’s biography resonating with corresponding elements in Fyodor’s life: they share a birthday (July 12, 1828 for Chernyshevski, and July 12, 1900 for Fyodor); Chernyshevski has a “mysterious ‘something’” (G264) that recalls a trait Fyodor had perceived in his own father: “In and around my father . . . there was something diffi cult to convey in words, a haze, a mystery . . . ” (G114; ibid.).
Nikolai Chernyshevski
In their views on society the radicals of the 1860s differed from the “fathers,”
refl ecting the progressive democratization of the educated public in Russia (Riasanovsky 382). Many of them belonged to a group known in Russian as raznochintsy (pl.; usually translated as “commoners” or literally “of different ranks”), that is, people of mixed background below the gentry, such as sons of priests who did not follow the calling of their fathers, offspring of low-ranking offi cials, or individuals from the masses who made their way up through education and effort (Ibid.). For instance, Innokentiy, the protagonist of Nabokov’s short story “The Circle,” possesses traits linking him with this group.
A typical raznochinets (sing.), Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevski, may have had a greater influence on the course of Russian history than any other major figure from Russian literature. The son of a parish priest in Saratov on the Volga, Chernyshevski earned a scholarship at Petersburg University.
His master’s thesis, “On the Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality” (1855) was an attack on idealist aesthetics and charted the course of the new literature of the sixties. His Essays in the Gogolian Period of Russian Literature (1856) inaugurated the age of a socially conscious realism in Russian literature.
[Ill. 2-4] Chernyshevski and Herzen pictured by a Soviet artist
[Ill. 2-5, 2-6] Chernyshevski’s civil execution (St. Petersburg, 1864)
Chernyshevski’s aesthetic was based on the premise that healthy art was no more and no less than imitation of nature, a substitute for real objects, useful for when those real objects were absent. He insisted that even the greatest work of art was inherently inferior to the real object it represented and saw the role of art in utilitarian terms.
Chernyshevski attacked the 1861 settlement that emancipated the serfs as grossly inadequate and mockingly cruel to the hopeful peasants (most peasants hardly understood the issues and were apolitical). He called himself a “socialist,”
a term and a doctrine that he picked up not from Marx but from the Utopian Socialists of France and Britain. The socialist future, according to Chernyshevski, would be provided by a free, democratic, republican state, strengthened by a network of cooperatives and communes (Randall 9).
In July 1862 Chernyshevski was arrested on suspicion of subversive activities and authorship of an infl ammatory revolutionary pamphlet. He was held at Saint Peter and Paul Fortress for two years, during which he wrote his socialist Utopian novel What to Do?
After his trial in May 1864, he was subjected to a so-called civil execution in St. Petersburg: Chernyshevski was placed upon a scaffold and a placard reading
“State Criminal” was hung from his neck. Then a policeman broke a sword over the convict’s head and read his sentence aloud. Deprived of his civil rights, Chernyshevski was transported to Siberia to serve seven years of hard labor. He was allowed to return to European Russia in 1883 and to his native Saratov in 1889, just four months before his death. Chernyshevski was revered as a martyr by the radical Russian intelligentsia, which embraced his materialist, rationalist, and positivist philosophy.
Nabokov was aware of the episode tying his own family to Chernyshevski’s ill-fated story. It was Dmitri Nabokov, the writer’s grandfather, who, as a Minister of Justice in the Tsar’s cabinet, made the report on which Alexander iii acted in allowing Chernyshevski to transfer to Astrakhan (Boyd, Russian Years 22).
Chernyshevski and the Literary Scandal
The book that Chernyshevski wrote “so laboriously in his cell in the fortress, on parsimoniously doled out sheets of paper” (Randall 104), was entitled Chto delat’?. This is usually translated as What Is To Be Done?, but the implied message of the title is better rendered by Nabokov’s choice: What to Do?, which is “more literal, save for dropping the question mark, which did not imply any genuine doubt on Chernyshevski’s part” (Ibid.). Coming from such an author in such a place, the title heightened political expectations; this was reinforced by the subtitle, From Stories about the New People, “for everyone knew that the ‘new people’ were the revolutionary youth” (Ibid.).
Nabokov playfully inserts the title of Chernyshevski’s novel early in the narrative (“What am I doing! [Chto ia sobstvenno delaiu!] he thought, abruptly coming to his senses”; G6), in the middle of the long sentence, in which the
“syntactic fl ow, ecstasy, foam, and creamy white cover, ends with a verbal ejaculation” (Naiman 167). This exclamation by Fyodor is a rephrasing of the title of Chernyshevski’s novel, and “as such this is just one of many moments that link Fyodor to the somewhat abject target of his own work — either by direct opposition or through parodic similarity. The adverb sobstvenno (‘as a matter of fact,’ but literally meaning ‘properly,’ with reference to the self, sebia) emphasizes further that here the action is all Fyodor’s; this is not, as with Chernyshevski’s title, a question for everyone” (Ibid.). To Naiman’s contemplative remark we should add that Tolstoy’s War and Peace provides an even closer utterance: in the very fi nale of the novel (just before the epilogue) the two protagonists repeat the same existential self-inquiry using an infi nitive construction as in Chernyshevski’s title: “But what shall I do?” [Pierre: No chto zhe mne delat’?] and “But what’s to be done?” [Princess Mary: No chto zhe delat’!] (Tolstoy 414-15).
Few novels have been written in circumstances as dramatic as those in which Chernyshevski produced What to Do?. It is easy to understand why he would want to write when imprisoned in the fortress; there was little else that he could do, and fi ction stood a far better chance of seeing the light of day than any other form of writing by a prisoner. The mere fact that Chernyshevski “was able to write the entire novel in under four months suggests that the ideas and concerns expressed therein had been germinating in his mind for a long time and had, at the fi rst opportunity, spilled forth in a veritable torrent of verbal images. His arrest effectively removed the main constraint on [his] creativity” (Pereira 76).
There is “no direct reference in the novel to the burning political questions of the day” and, although the clever reader can fi nd a number of Aesopian comments on public events (such as Negro slavery in the usa and Brazil and, thus, apparently the author’s denunciation of Russian serfdom), by and large, What to Do? “is not even covertly a novel about politics” (Randall 104). Nonetheless, as Francis B. Randall admits, it is still surprising that the censorship passed the work when it was known to have been written by a political prisoner (Ibid. 105).
The story of the novel’s publication seems to be a spectacular but typical example of tsarist bureaucratic bungling: in late 1862 Chernyshevski asked the prison commandant for per mission to begin work on a novel. His request granted, Chernyshevski set to work and “the fi rst part of the manuscript was then submitted to the prison censor, who, whether carelessly or for devious purposes, passed it to the literary censor” with a letter to the effect that the manuscript had no bearing on the legal case at hand (Katz, Wagner 22). It appears the censor
“assumed that the police had thereby approved the manuscript for publication for reasons of their own. Not daring to overrule so dreaded a body, the [second]
censor passed the manuscript, thinking he was merely rubber-stamping a high-level bureaucratic decision” (Randall 105).
Passed again, the novel was forwarded to the journal’s editor, Nikolai Nekrasov,
“who promptly lost it in a cab. He man aged to recover the manuscript only after advertising in the offi cial gazette of the St. Petersburg police. In what is perhaps the greatest irony of Russian letters, the novel that the police helped to retrieve turned out to be the most subversive and revolutionary work of nine teenth-century Russian literature” (Katz, Wagner 22-23). So, after this series of missed signals,
[Ill. 2-7] Th e manuscript of What to Do?
the novel was actually published in the March, April, and May (1863) issues of The Contemporary. Only when permission was sought later to publish it in book form
the novel was actually published in the March, April, and May (1863) issues of The Contemporary. Only when permission was sought later to publish it in book form