To Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov

DRESDEN,
May 18 [30], 1871.

MUCH-ESTEEMED NIKOLAY NIKOLAYEVITCH,

So you really have begun your letter with
Bielinsky, as I foresaw. But do reflect on Paris and
the Commune. Will you perchance maintain, as
others do, that the whole thing failed simply because
of the lack of men, and as a result of unfavourable
circumstances ? Through the whole of this igih
century, that school has dreamed of the setting-up of
earthly paradises (for instance, the phalansteries), and
then, directly it came to action (as in the years 1848,
1849, and now), has shown a contemptible incapacity
for any practical expression of itself. At bottom, the
entire movement is but a repetition of the Russian
delusion that men can reconstruct the world by reason
and experience (Positivism) . But we have seen enough
of it by now to be entitled to declare that such im-
potence as is displayed can be no chance phenomenon.
Why do they cut off heads ? Simply because it's the
easiest of all things to do. To say something sensible
is far more difficult. Effort is, after all, a lesser
thing than attainment. They desire the common
good, but when it comes to defining " good," can
only reiterate Rousseau's aphorism that " good " is
a fantasy never yet ratified by experience. The
burning of Paris is something utterly monstrous:
" Since we have failed, let the whole world perish !"
for the Commune is more important than the world's
weal, and France's ! Yet they (and many others) see
in that madness not monstrosity, but only beauty.
Since that is so, the aesthetic idea must be completely
clouded over in the modern mind. A moral basis
(taken from Positivist teachings) for society is not
only incapable of producing any results whatever, but
can't possibly even define itself to itself, and so must
always lose its way amid aspirations and ideals.
Have we not sufficient evidence by this time to be
able to prove that a society is not thus to be built up,
that quite otherwhere lie the paths to the common
good, and that this common good reposes on things
different altogether from those hitherto accepted ?
On what, then, does it repose ? Men write and write,
and overlook the principal point. In Western Europe
the peoples have lost Christ (Catholicism is to blame),
and therefore Western Europe is tottering to its fall.
Ideas have changed how evidently ! And the fall
of the Papal power, together with that of the whole
Romano-German world (France, etc.) what a co-
incidence !

All this would take long wholly to express, but
what I really want to say to you is: If Bielinsky,
Granovsky, and all the rest of the gang, had lived to
see this day, they would have said: " No, it was not
to this that we aspired ! No, this is a mistake; we
must wait a while, the light will shine forth, progress
will win, humanity will build on new and healthier
foundations, and be happy at last !" They would
never admit that their way can lead at best but to the
Commune or to Felix Pyat. That crew was so obtuse
that even now, after the event, they would not be
able to see their error, they would persist in their
fantastic dreaming. I condemn Bielinsky less as a
personality than as a most repulsive, stupid, and
humiliating phenomenon of Russian life. The best
one can say for it is that it's inevitable. I assure you
that Bielinsky would have been moved, to-day, to
take the following attitude : " The Commune has
accomplished nothing, because before all things it was
French that is to say, was steeped in nationalism.
Therefore we must now seek out another people,
which will not have the tiniest spark of national
feeling, but will be ready, like me, to box its mother's
(Russia's) ears." Wrathfully he would continue to
foam forth his wretched articles; he would go on
reviling Russia, denying Russia's greatest phenomena
(such as Pushkin), so that he might thus make Russia
seem to turn into an empty nation, which might take
the lead in universal human activities. The Jesuitry
and insincerity of our prominent public men, he would
regard as great good fortune. And then, for another
thing: you never knew him; but I had personal
intercourse with him, and now can give his full
measure. The man, talking with me once, reviled
the Saviour, and yet surely he could never have
undertaken to compare himself and the rest of the
gentry who move the world, with Christ. He was
not capable of seeing how petty, angry, impatient,
base, and before all else covetous and vain, they,
every one of them, are. He never asked himself the
question: " But what can we put in His place ? Of
a surety not ourselves, so evil as we are ?" No; he
never reflected in any sort of way upon the possibility
that he might be evil; he was to the last degree
content with himself, and in that alone is expressed
his personal, petty, pitiable stupidity.

You declare that he was gifted. He was not, in
any way. My God, what nonsense Grigoryev did
write about him ! I can still remember my youthful
amazement when I read some of his purely aesthetic
efforts (as, for instance, on " Dead Souls ") ; he treated
Gogol's characters with incredible superficiality and
lack of comprehension, and merely rejoiced insanely
that Gogol had accused somebody. In the four years
of my sojourn here abroad, I have re-read all his
critical writings. He reviled Pushkin, when Pushkin
dropped his false note, and produced such works as
the " Tales of Bielkin," and " The Negro of Peter
the Great." He pronounced the " Tales of Bielkin "
to be entirely valueless. In Gogol's " Carriage/' he
perceived not an artistic creation, but a mere comic
tale. *He wholly abjured the conclusion of " Eugene
Onegin." He was the first to speak of Pushkin as a
courtier. He said that Turgenev would never make
an artist ; and he said that after he had read Turge-
nev's very remarkable tale of " The Three Portraits."
I could give you, on the spur of the moment, count-
less proofs that he had not an atom of critical sense,
nor that " quivering sensibility " of which Grigoryev
babbled (simply because he too was a poet) .

We regard Bielinsky and many another of our
contemporaries through the still enduring glamour of
fantastic judgments.