_ CHAPTER XXXI
One day Lavretsky was as usual at the Kalitines'. An overpoweringly hot afternoon had been followed by such a beautiful evening that Madame Kalitine, notwithstanding her usual aversion to a draught, ordered all the windows and the doors leading into the garden to be opened. Moreover, she announced that she was not going to play cards, that it would be a sin to do so in such lovely weather, and that it was a duty to enjoy the beauties of nature.
Panshine was the only stranger present. Influenced by the evening, and feeling a flow of artistic emotion, but not wishing to sing in Lavretsky's presence, he threw himself into poetry He read--and read well, only with too much consciousness, and with needlessly subtle distinctions--some of Lermontof's poems (Pushkin had not then succeeded in getting back into fashion). Suddenly, as if ashamed of his emotion, he began in reference to the well-known _Duma_,[A] to blame and attack the new generation, not losing the opportunity which the subject afforded him of setting forth how, if the power lay in his hands, he would alter everything his own way.
[Footnote A: For the poem, so-called, see note at end of chapter.]
"Russia," he said, "has lagged behind Europe, and must be driven up alongside of it. We are told that ours is a young country. That is all nonsense. Besides, we have no inventive power. Khomakof[A] himself admits that we have never invented so much as a mousetrap. Consequently we are obliged to imitate others, whether we like it or no."
[Footnote A: A poet, who was one of the leaders of the Slavophile party.]
"'We are ill,' says Lermontof, and I agree with him. But we are ill because we have only half become Europeans. With that which has wounded us we must be cured." ("_Le cadastre_" thought Lavretsky.) "Among us," he continued, "the best heads, _les meilleures tetes_, have long been convinced of this. In reality, all peoples are alike; only introduce good institutions, and the affair is settled. To be sure, one may make some allowance for the existing life of the nation; that is our business, the business of the people who are" (he all but said "statesmen") "in the public service; but if need arises, don't be uneasy. Those institutions will modify that life itself."
Maria Dmitrievna admiringly agreed with him. "What a clever man to have talking in my house!" she thought. Liza kept silence, leaning back in the recess of the window. Lavretsky kept silence too. Marfa Timofeevna, who was playing cards in a corner with her friend, grumbled something to herself. Panshine walked up and down the room, speaking well, but with a sort of suppressed malice. It seemed as if he was blaming, not so much a whole generation, as some individuals of his acquaintance. A nightingale had made its home in a large lilac bush which stood in the Kalitines' garden, and the first notes of its even-song made themselves heard during the pauses in the eloquent harangue; the first stars began to kindle in the rose-stained sky above the motionless tops of the lime trees. Presently Lavretsky rose and began to reply to Panshine. A warm dispute soon commenced.
Lavretsky spoke in defence of the youth of Russia, and of the capacity of the country to suffice for itself. He surrendered himself and his contemporaries, but he stood up for the new generation, and their wishes and convictions. Panshine replied incisively and irritably, declared that clever people were bound to reform every thing, and at length was carried away to such an extent that, forgetting his position as a chamberlain, and his proper line of action as a member of the civil service, he called Lavretsky a retrogade conservative, and alluded--very distantly it is true--to his false position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper, nor did he raise his voice; he remembered that Mikhalevich also had called him a retrograde, and, at the same time a disciple of Voltaire; but he calmly beat Panshine on every point. He proved the impracticability of reforming by sudden bounds, and of introducing changes haughtily schemed on the heights of official self-complacency--changes which were not justified by any intimate acquaintance with the country, nor by a living faith in any ideal, not even in one of negation, and in illustration of this he adduced his own education. He demanded before every thing else that the true spirit of the nation should be recognized, and that it should be looked up to with that humility without which no courage is possible, not even that wherewith to oppose falsehood. Finally he did not attempt to make any defence against what he considered a deserved reproach, that of giving way to a wasteful and inconsiderate expenditure of both time and strength.
"All that is very fine!" at last exclaimed Panshine with vexation. "But here are you, just returned to Russia; what do you intend to do?"
"To cultivate the soil," replied Lavretsky; "and to cultivate it as well as possible."
"No doubt that is very praiseworthy," answered Panshine, "and I hear you have already had great success in that line; but you must admit that every one is not fitted for such an occupation--"
"_Une nature poetique_," said Maria Dmitrievna, "certainly cannot go cultivating the soil--_et puis_, it is your vocation, Vladimir Nikolaevich, to do every thing _en grand_."
This was too much even for Panshine, who grew confused, and changed the conversation. He tried to turn it on the beauty of the starry heavens, on Schubert's music, but somehow his efforts did not prove successful. He ended by offering to play at piquet with Maria Dmitrievna. "What! on such an evening as this?" she feebly objected; but then she ordered the cards to be brought.
Panshine noisily tore open a new pack; and Liza and Lavretsky, as if by mutual consent, both rose from their seats and placed themselves near Marfa Timofeevna. They both suddenly experienced a great feeling of happiness, mingled with a sense of mutual dread, which made them glad of the presence of a third person; at the same time, they both felt that the uneasiness from which they had suffered during the last few days had disappeared, and would return no more.
The old lady stealthily tapped Lavretsky on the cheek, screwed up her eyes with an air of pleasant malice, and shook her head repeatedly, saying in a whisper, "You've done for the genius--thanks!" Then all became still in the room. Nothing was to be heard but the faint crackling of the wax lights, and sometimes the fall of a hand on the table, or an exclamation on the score of points, and the song of the nightingale which, powerful, almost insolently loud, flowed in a great wave through the window, together with the dewy freshness of the night.
* * * * *
NOTE.--The following is a tolerably literal translation of the poem of Lermontof's to which allusion is made on p. 208, and which created no slight sensation when it first appeared, in the year 1838:--
A THOUGHT.
Sorrowfully do I look upon the present generation! Its future seems either gloomy or meaningless, and meanwhile, whether under the burden of knowledge or of doubt, it grows old in idleness.
When scarcely out of the cradle, we reap the rich inheritance of the errors of our fathers, and the results of their tardy thoughts. Life soon grows wearisome for us, like a banquet at a stranger's festival, like a level road leading nowhere.
In the commencement of our career, we fall away without a struggle, shamefully careless about right and wrong, shamefully timid in the face of danger.
So does a withered fruit which has prematurely ripened--attractive neither to the eye nor to the palate--hang like an alien orphan among blossoms; and the hour of their beauty is that of its fall.
Our intellect has dried up in the pursuit of fruitless science, while we have been concealing the purest of hopes from the knowledge of those who are near and dear to us, and stifling the noble utterance of such sentiments as are ridiculed by a mocking spirit.
We have scarcely tasted of the cup of enjoyment, but for all that we have not husbanded our youthful strength. While we were always in dread of satiety, we have contrived to drain each joy of its best virtues.
No dreams of poetry, no creations of art, touch our hearts with a sweet rapture. We stingily hoard up within our breasts the last remnants of feeling--a treasure concealed by avarice, and which remains utterly unprofitable.
We love and we hate capriciously, sacrificing nothing either to our animosity or to our affection, a certain secret coldness possessing our souls, even while a fire is raging in our veins.
The sumptuous pleasures of our ancestors weary us, as well as their simple, childish diversions. Without enjoying happiness, without reaping glory, we hasten onwards to the grave, casting naught but unlucky glances behind us.
A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently pass away from the world and leave no trace behind, without having handed down to the ages to come a single work of genius, or even a solitary thought laden with meaning.
And our descendants, regarding our memory with the severity of citizens called to sit in judgment on an affair concerning the state, will allude to us with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he speaks of the father who has squandered away his patrimony. _