Two days afterwards, getting more and more angry and more and more believing in his invulnerability, he began to “maul” his judges. This second letter to his wife can be divided up into points: 1) I told you in connection with the rumors about my possible arrest that I was not mixed up in any affair and that the government would be forced to apologize if it arrested me. 2) I assumed this because I knew they were following me—they boasted that they were doing it very well, and I relied on their boast, for my calculation was that, knowing how I lived and what I did, they would know that their suspicions were groundless. 3) It was a stupid calculation. For I also knew that in our country, people are incapable of doing anything properly. 4) Thus by my arrest they have compromised the government. 5) What can “we” do? Apologize? But what if “he” doesn’t accept the apology, but says: You have compromised the government, it is my duty to explain this to the government. 6) Therefore “we” shall postpone the unpleasantness. 7) But the government asks from time to time whether Chernyshevski is guilty—and finally the government will obtain an answer. 8) It is that answer I am waiting for.
“The copy of a rather curious letter from Chernyshevski,” added Potapov in pencil. “But he is mistaken: no one will have to apologize.”
A few days after that he began to write his novel, What to Do?— and by January 15th he had sent the first portion to Pypin; a week later he sent a second, and Pypin handed both to Nekrasov for The Contemporary, which had again been permitted (beginning with February). At the same time The Russian Word was also allowed after a similar eight-month suspension; and in the impatient expectation of journalistic profit, the dangerous fezzed neighbor had already dipped his pen.
It is gratifying to be able to state that at this juncture some mysterious force resolved to try and save Chernyshevski at least from this mess. He was having a particularly hard time—how could one fail to have compassion? On the 28th, because the government, exasperated by his attacks, had refused him permission to see his wife, he began a hunger strike: hunger strikes were then a novelty in Russia and the exponent they found was clumsy. The guards noticed that he was wasting, but the food seemed to be getting eaten…. When, however, four days later, struck by the putrid smell in the cell, the warders searched it, they established that the solid food had been hidden among the books while the cabbage soup had been poured into cracks. On Sunday, February 3, at about one P.M., the military doctor attached to the fortress examined the prisoner and found that he was pale, his tongue fairly clear, his pulse a little weak—and on that same day at that same hour Nekrasov, on his way home (corner of Liteynaya and Basseynaya streets) in a hackney sleigh, lost the pink-paper package containing two manuscripts, each threaded through at the corners and entitled What to Do? While remembering with the lucidity of despair the whole of his route, he did not recall the fact that when nearing his house he had laid the package beside him in order to take out his purse—and just then the sleigh had turned… a crunch as it skidded… and What to Do? rolled off unnoticed: this was the attempt of the mysterious force—in this case centrifugal—to confiscate the book whose success was destined to have such a disastrous effect upon the fate of its author. But the attempt failed: on the snow near the Maryinski Hospital the pink package was picked up by a poor clerk burdened with a large family. Having plodded home, he donned his spectacles and examined his find… he saw that it was the beginning of some kind of literary work and without a tremor, and not burning his sluggish fingers, he put it aside. “Destroy it!” begged a hopeless voice: in vain. A notice of its loss was printed in the Saint Petersburg Police Gazette. The clerk carried the package to the indicated address, for which he received the promised reward: fifty silver rubles.
In the meantime his jailers had begun to give Nikolay Gavrilovich appetite-stimulating drops; twice he took them and then, suffering greatly, he announced that he would take no more, for he was refusing to eat not from absence of appetite but from caprice. On the morning of the 6th, “owing to lack of experience in discerning the symptoms of suffering,” he ended his hunger strike and had breakfast. On the 12th, Potapov informed the commandant that the commission could not permit Chernyshevski to see his wife until he had completely recovered. The following day the commandant reported that Chernyshevski was well and writing at full blast. Olga Sokratovna came with loud complaints—about her health, about the Pypins, about the shortage of money, and then through her tears began to laugh at the little beard her husband had grown, finally getting even more upset and commencing to embrace him.
“That will do, my dear, that will do,” he kept saying quite calmly—using the tepid tone he invariably maintained in his relations with her: actually he loved her passionately, hopelessly. “Neither I nor anyone else can have any grounds for thinking I shall not be set free,” he told her in parting, with particular emphasis.
Another month passed. On March 23rd there was the confrontation with Kostomarov. Vladislav Dmitrievich glowered and obviously got tangled up in his own lies. Chernyshevski, with a slight smile of disgust, replied abruptly and contemptuously. His superiority was striking. “And to think,” exclaims Steklov, “that at this time he was writing the buoyant What to Do?”
Alas! To write What to Do? in the fortress was not so much surprising as reckless—even for the very reason that the authorities attached it to his case. In general the history of this novel’s appearance is extremely interesting. The censorship permitted it to be published in The Contemporary,” reckoning on the fact that a novel which was “something in the highest degree anti-artistic” would be certain to overthrow Chernyshevski’s authority, that he would simply be laughed at for it. And indeed, what worth, for example, are the “light” scenes in the novel? “Verochka was supposed to drink half a glass for her wedding, half a glass for her shop and half a glass for the health of Julie [a redeemed Parisian prostitute who is now the girl friend of one of the characters!] She and Julie started a romp, with screams and clamor…. They began to wrestle and both fell on the sofa… and they no longer wanted to get up, but only continued screaming and laughing and both fell asleep.” Sometimes the turn of phrase smacks of folksy barrack lore and sometimes of… Zoshchenko: “After tea… she went to her room and lay down. So there she is, reading in her comfy bed, but the book sinks away from her eyes and now Vera Pavlovna is thinking, Why is it that somehow I feel lately somewhat dull sometimes?” There are also many charming solecisms—here is a specimen: when one of the characters, a doctor, has pneumonia and calls in a colleague: “For a long time they palpated the sides of one of them.”
But nobody laughed. Not even the great Russian writers laughed. Even Herzen, who found it “vilely written,” immediately qualified this with: “On the other hand there is much that is good and healthy.” Still, he could not resist remarking that the novel ends not simply with a phalanstery but with “a phalanstery in a brothel.” For of course the inevitable happened: the eminently pure Chernyshevski (who had never been to a brothel), in his artless aspiration to equip communal love with especially beautiful trappings, involuntarily and unconsciously, out of the simplicity of his imagination, had worked his way through to those very ideals that had been evolved by tradition and routine in houses of ill repute; his gay “evening ball,” based on freedom and equality in relations between the sexes (first one and then another couple disappears and returns again), is extremely reminiscent of the concluding dances in Mme. Tellier’s Establishment.
And nevertheless it is impossible to handle this old magazine (March, 1863), containing the first installment of the novel, without a certain thrill; here also is Nekrasov’s poem “Green Noise” (“Endure while you can still endure …”), and the derisive dressing down of Aleksey Tolstoy’s romance Prince Serebryanyy…. Instead of the expected sneers, an atmosphere of general, pious worship was created around What to Do? It was read the way liturgical books are read—not a single work by Turgenev or Tolstoy produced such a mighty impression. The inspired Russian reader understo
od the good that the talentless novelist had vainly tried to express. It would seem that, having realized its miscalculation, the government should have interrupted the serialization of What to Do? It behaved much more cleverly.
Chernyshevski’s neighbor had now also done some writing. He had been receiving The Contemporary and on October 8th, he sent The Russian Word an article from the fortress, “Thoughts about Russian Novels,” at which the Senate informed the Governor-General that this was nothing else but an analysis of Chernyshevski’s novel, with praise for this work and a detailed exposition of the materialistic ideas in it. In order to characterize Pisarev it was indicated that he was subject to “dementia melancholica,” for which he had been treated: in 1859 he had spent four months in a lunatic asylum.
Just as, in his boyhood, he had arrayed all his notebooks in rainbow covers, so, as a grown man, Pisarev would suddenly abandon some urgent work in order to painstakingly color woodcuts in books, or when going off to the country, would order a red-and-blue summer suit of sarafan calico from his tailor. This professed utilitarian’s mental illness was distinguished by a kind of perverted aesthetic-ism. Once at a student gathering he suddenly stood up, gracefully raised his curved arm, as if requesting permission to speak, and in this sculpturesque pose fell down unconscious. Another time, to the alarm of his hostess and fellow guests, he began to undress, throwing off with gay alacrity his velvet jacket, motley vest, checkered trousers—At this point they overpowered him. Amusingly enough there are commentators who call Pisarev an “epicure,” referring, for example, to his letters to his mother—unbearable, bilious, teeth-clenching phrases about life being beautiful; or else: to illustrate his “sober realism” they quote his outwardly sensible and clear—but actually completely insane—letter from the fortress to an unknown maiden, with a proposal of marriage: “The woman who agrees to lighten and warm my life will receive from me all the love which was spurned by Raissa when she threw herself at the neck of her handsome eagle.”
Now, condemned to a four-year imprisonment for his small part in the general disturbances of the time (which were based in a way on a blind belief in the printed word, especially the secretly printed word), Pisarev wrote about What to Do?, reviewing it bit by bit for The Russian Word as the installments appeared in The Contemporary. Although in the beginning the Senate was puzzled by the novel’s being praised for its ideas instead of being ridiculed because of its style, and expressed the fear that the praises might have a deleterious effect on the younger generation, the authorities soon realized how important it was in the present case to obtain by this method a complete picture of Chernyshevski’s perniciousness, which Kostomarov had only outlined in the list of his “special devices.” “The government,” says Strannolyubski “on the one hand permitting Chernyshevski to produce a novel in the fortress and on the other permitting Pisarev, his fellow captive, to produce articles explaining the intentions of this novel, acted with complete awareness, waiting curiously for Chernyshevski to babble himself out and watching what would come of it—in connection with the abundant discharges of his incubator neighbor.”
The business went smoothly and promised a great deal, but it was necessary to put pressure on Kostomarov since one or two definite proofs of guilt were needed, while Chernyshevski continued to boil and jeer in great detail, branding the commission as “clowns” and “an incoherent quagmire which is completely stupid.” Therefore Kostomarov was taken to Moscow and there the citizen Yakovlev, his former copyist, a drunkard and a rowdy, gave important testimony (for this he received an overcoat which he drank away so noisily in Tver that he was put in a strait-jacket): while doing his copying “on account of the summer weather in a garden pavilion,” he allegedly heard Nikolay Gavrilovich and Vladislav Dmitrievich as they were strolling arm-in-arm (a not implausible detail), talking about greetings from well-wishers to the serfs (it is difficult to find one’s way in this mixture of truth and promptings). At a second interrogation in the presence of a replenished Kostomarov, Chernyshevski said somewhat unfortunately that he had visited him only once and not found him in; then he added forcefully: “I’ll go gray, I’ll die, but I will not change my testimony.” The testimony of his not being the author of the proclamation is written by him in a trembling hand—trembling with rage rather than fright.
However that may have been, the case was coming to an end. There followed the Senate’s “definition”: very nobly it found Chernyshevski’s unlawful dealings with Herzen unproved (for Herzen’s “definition” of the Senate see below, at the end of this paragraph). As for the appeal “To the Serfs of Landowners”… here the fruit had already ripened on the espaliers of forgery and bribes: the absolute moral conviction of the senators that Chernyshevski was the author thereof was transformed into judicial proof by the letter to “Aleksey Nikolaevich” (meaning, apparently, A. N. Pleshcheev, a peaceful poet, dubbed by Dostoevski “an all-round blond”—but for some reason no one insisted too much on Pleshcheev’s part, if any, in the matter). Thus in Chernyshevski’s person they condemned a phantasm closely resembling him; an invented guilt was wonderfully rigged up to look like the real one. The sentence was comparatively light—compared with what one is generally able to devise in this line: he was to be exiled for fourteen years of penal servitude and then to live in Siberia forever. The “definition” went from the “savage ignoramuses” of the Senate to the “gray villains” of the State Council, who completely subscribed to it, and then went on to the sovereign, who confirmed it but reduced the term of penal servitude by half. On May 4, 1864, the sentence was announced to Chernyshevski, and on the 19th, at 8 o’clock in the morning, on Mytninski Square, he was executed.
It was drizzling, umbrellas undulated, the square was beslushed, and everything was wet; gendarmes’ uniforms, the darkened wood of the scaffold, the smooth, black pillar with chains, glossy from the rain. Suddenly the prison carriage appeared. From it emerged, with extraordinary celerity, as if they had rolled out, Chernyshevski in an overcoat and two peasant-like executioners; all three walked with swift steps along a line of soldiers to the scaffold. The crowd lurched forward and the gendarmes pressed back the front ranks; restrained cries sounded here and there: “Close the umbrellas!” While an official read the sentence, Chernyshevski, who already knew it, sulkily looked around him; he fingered his beard, adjusted his spectacles and spat several times. When the reader stumbled and barely got out “soshulistic ideas” Chernyshevski smiled and then, recognizing someone in the crowd, nodded, coughed, shifted his stance: from beneath the overcoat his black trousers concertinaed over his rubbers. People standing near could see on his chest an oblong plaque with an inscription in white: STATE CRIMIN (the last syllable had not gone in). At the conclusion of the reading the executioners lowered him to his knees; the elder one, with a backhander, knocked the cap off his long, combed-back, light auburn hair. The face, tapering chinward, its large forehead shining, was now bent down, and with a resounding crack they managed to break an insufficiently incised sword over him. Then they took his hands, which seemed unusually white and weak, and put them in black irons secured to the pillar: he had to stand that way for a quarter of an hour. The rain increased: the younger executioner picked up Chernyshevski’s cap and jammed it on his inclined head—and slowly, with difficulty, the chains got in his way—Chernyshevski straightened it. Behind a fence to the left one could see the scaffolding of a house under construction; workmen climbed onto the fence from the other side, one could hear the scrape of their boots; they climbed up, hung there, and abused the criminal from afar. The rain fell; the elder executioner consulted his silver watch. Chernyshevski kept turning his wrists slightly without looking up. Suddenly, out of the better-off part of the crowd, bouquets began to fly. The gendarmes, jumping, tried to intercept them in midair. Roses exploded in the air; fleetingly one was able to see a rare combination: a policeman, wreathed. Bobbed-haired ladies in black burnouses threw racemes of lilac. Meanwhile Chernyshevski was hastily released fro
m his chains and his dead body borne away. No—a slip of the pen; alas, he was alive, he was even cheerful! Students ran beside the carriage with cries of “Farewell, Chernyshevski! Au revoir!” He thrust his head out of the window, laughed and shook his finger at the most zealous runners.
“Alas, alive,” we exclaimed, for how could one not prefer the death penalty, the convulsions of the hanged man in his hideous cocoon, to that funeral which twenty-five insipid years later fell to Chernyshevski’s lot. The paw of oblivion began slowly to gather in his living image as soon as he had been removed to Siberia. Oh yes, oh yes, no doubt students for years sang the song: “Let us drink to him who wrote What to Do? …” But it was to the past they drank, to past glamour and scandal, to a great shade… but who would drink to a tremulous little old man with a tic, making clumsy paper boats for Yakut children somewhere in those fabulous backwoods? We affirm that his book drew out and gathered within itself all the heat of his personality—a heat which is not to be found in its helplessly rational structures but which is concealed as it were between the words (as only bread is hot) and it was inevitably doomed to be dispersed with time (as only bread knows how to go stale and hard). Today, it seems, only Marxists are still capable of being interested by the ghostly ethics contained in this dead little book. To follow easily and freely the categorical imperative of the general good, here is the “rational egoism” which researchers have found in What to Do? Let us recall for comic relief Kautski’s conjecture that the idea of egoism is connected with the development of commodity production, and Plekhanov’s conclusion that Chernyshevski was nevertheless an “idealist,” since it comes out in his book that the masses must catch up with the intelligentsia out of calculation—and calculation is an opinion. But the matter is simpler than that: the idea that calculation is the foundation of every action (or heroic accomplishment) leads to absurdity: in itself calculation can be heroic! Anything which comes into the focus of human thinking is spiritualized. Thus the “calculation” of the materialists was ennobled; thus, for those in the know, matter turns into an incorporeal play of mysterious forces. Chernyshevski’s ethical structures are in their own way an attempt to construct the same old “perpetual motion” machine, where matter moves other matter. We would very much like this to revolve: egoism-altruism-egoism-altruism… but the wheel stops from friction. What to do? Live, read, think. What to do? Work at one’s own development in order to achieve the aim of life, which is happiness. What to do? (But Chernyshevski’s own fate changed the businesslike question to an ironic exclamation.)
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