Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

by Astolphe De Custine

  208

  GOD IN NATURE.

  that I admire, every place in which I recognise God in his works; and of all the works of God, that which I understand the most easily is the aspect of nature, and its affinities with the creations of art. God there reveals himself to my soul through the indefinable relations established between His eternal Word and the fugitive thoughts of man. This contemplation, ever the same, yet ever new, is the food of my mind, the secret and the apology of my life ; it employs both my moral and my intellectual powers ; it occupies my time, and absorbs my spirit. Yes, in the melancholy yet delicious isolation to which my vocation as pilgrim condemns me, curiosity takes the place of ambition, power, standing and career. These reveries, lam aware, do not belong to my years. M. de Chateaubriand was too great a poet to describe to us a Rene growing old. The lassitudes of youth excite sympathy: its future supplies the place of energy and of hope; but the resignation of Réné* grown hoary would scarcely add to eloquence. The Site of myself, an humble gleaner in the field of poetry, is to show how a man grows old who was born to die young : a subject more sad than interesting, an ungrateful task. Nevertheless, I will say everything without timidity and without scruple, because I affect nothing. Called by my character, which has made my destiny, to contemplate the life of others rather than to live myself, if I were to be refused the privilege of reverie, under pretext that I have enjoyed too long this intoxication of children and of poets, I should be robbed before the time of the gift which God had imparted for my existence. But what would become of society, it may be said, if every one acted

  THE SP1EIT OF THE WORLD.209

  as I do ? Strange fear of the votaries of the age ! They are ever dreading lest their idol should be abandoned. I do not propose to preach to them, and yet I would recal to the minds of these enlightened beings, that the worst of all the forms of intolerance is the intolerance of philosophy.

  I cannot live the life of the world because its interests, its objects, or, at least, the means it employs to defend and to attain them, present nothing that might inspire me with that salutary emulation without which a man is conquered in the very outset of those struggles of ambition or of virtue which consti-tute the life of society. There, success is involved in the working out of two conflicting problems ; to conquer our rivals, and to make those rivals proclaim our victory. Herein lies the difficulty of obtaining a conquest, and the, almost, impossibility of maintaining it.

  I renounced the aim even before the age of discouragement. Since the day for ceasing to struggle must soon close, I had better not commence it. It was thus that my heart spake, as I called to mind the beautiful expression, ¢£ All that ends is short." Under this feeling I suffered to pass by, without envy as without contempt, the train of bold and ardent jostlers who believe that the world is theirs because they are the world's.

  Suffer me then to make my escape, without allowing yourselves to fear that eager combatants will ever be wanted in the struggles of this world, and allow me to extract all the advantage that I am able out of my leisure and my indifference ; besides, may not inaction be only apparent,, and may not the intellect profit by

  210

  LITERARY CANDOUR.

  its liberty to observe more attentively, and to refleet with less distraction ?

  The man who observes society from a distance is more lucid in his judgments than he who exposes himself, throughout his life, to the rough contact of the political machine. Men of action observe only by memory, and think only of describing when they have retired from the scene; and then, soured by disappointment, or feeling their end approaching, fatigued, or still a prey to fits of hope, the futile return of which is an inexhaustible source of deception, they almost always keep to themselves the treasures of their experience.

  Had I been taken to Petersburg by the course of business, should I have seen in so short a time the reverse of things as I now see it ? Shut up in the circles of diplomatists, I should have surveyed this land from their point of view, I should have devoted all my thoughts to the affair in hand, I should have been interested in conciliating their good will by the utmost facility of manners; and all this management could not have operated for any length of time without reacting upon the judgment of him who was under its constraint. I should have ended by persuading myself that on many points I thought as they thought, were it only to excuse myself in my own eyes for the weakness of speaking as they spoke. Opinions that you dare not refute, however ill-founded you may find them at first, will finally modify your own; when politeness is carried so far as to become blindly tolerant, it is a treason against self; it perverts the views of the observer, whose business it is to represent persons and things not as he would have

  LITERARY CANDOUR.

  211

  them to be, but as he actually sees them. And yet, notwithstanding all the independence on which I plume myself, I am often forced, for the sake of my personal safety, to sooth the rude self-love of this jealous nation, for all semi-barbarous people are suspicious. Let it not be supposed that my opinions on Russia and the Russians will surprise the diplomatic strangers who have had the leisure or the taste to study this empire: their opinions are the same as mine, though they will not confess it openly. Happy is the observer who is so situated that no one may have the right of reproaching him with an abuse of confidence ! At the same time, I do not disguise from myself the inconveniences of my liberty: to labour in the cause of truth, it is not sufficient that we perceive it; we must manifest it also to others. The fault of hermit minds is that they are too much influenced by their emotions while changing at each moment their point of view, for the solitude of the mind is favorable to the power of imagination, and this power causes it to be easily moved.

  But there are readers who can and ought to extract advantage out of my apparent contradictions, by discerning, through my capricious and movable pictures, the exact shapes of persons and of things. Few writers are courageous enough to leave the reader to perform a part of their task; few dare brave the reproach of inconsistency rather than charge their conscience with an affected merit. When the experience of the day has falsified the conclusions of the previous evening, I do not fear to show it. With the sincerity which I profess, my travels become my confessions. The men whose opinions are formed in

  212 THE BRIDGE OF THE NEVA.

  advance, are all method, all order, and they consequently escape minute criticism ; but those who like me, say what they feel without troubling themselves as regards what they have felt, must expect to pay the penalty of their careless candour. This ingenuous and superstitious respect for truth is no doubt a flattery to the reader, but it is a flattery dangerous in the present day; and I sometimes, therefore, fear that the world in which Ave live cannot be worthy of the compliment.

  I shall, in this case, have risked everything to satisfy the love of truth, a virtue which no one possesses, and by my imprudent zeal in sacrificing to a divinity which has no longer a temple, in taking an allegory for a reality, I shall miss the glory of the martyr and pass only for a simpleton. In a society where falsehood always obtains its reward, good faith is necessarily punished. The world has its crosses on which to nail every truth.

  To meditate on these and many other matters, I stopped for a long time on the middle of the great bridge of the Neva. I wished to engrave in my memory the two different pictures which, by simply turning round, without leaving my place, I could enjoy. In the east was the dark sky and the bright earth, in the west the clear sky and the earth involved in shade: in the opposition of these two faces of Petersburg there was a symbolic meaning, into which I fancied I could penetrate. In the west I saw the ancient, in the east, the modern Petersburg; the past, the old city, was shrouded in night—the new, the future city, was revealed in radiance.

  Petersburg appears to me less beautiful than Ve-

  PETERSBURG AND VENICE.213

  nice, but more extraordinary. They are both colossi raised by fear. Venice was the work of unmixed
fear; the last Romans preferred flight to death, and the fruit of their fear became one of the world's wonders. Petersburg is equally the result of terror, but of a pious terror, for Russian policy has known how to convert obedience into a dogma. The Russian people are accounted very religious ; it may be so : but what kind of religion can that be which is forbidden to be taught ? They never preach in the Russian churches. The gospel would proclaim liberty to the Slavonians.

  This fear of things being understood, which they desire should be believed, seems to me suspicious. The more reason and knowledge contract the sphere of faith, and the brighter that divine light, thus concentrated in its focus, becomes; the less people believe, the more fervent is their belief. Sm`ns of the cross

  О

  are no proofs of devotion ; and, notwithstanding their genuflexions and other external evidences of piety, the Russians, in their prayers, seem to me to think more of their emperor than their God. " Awake me when you come to the subject of God," said an ambassador, about to be put to sleep in a Russian church by the imperial liturgy.

  Sometimes I feel ready to participate in the superstition of this people. Enthusiasm become» contagious when it is or appears to be general; but the moment the symptoms lay hold of me, I think of Siberia, that indispensable auxiliary of Muscovite civilisation, and immediately I recover my calmness and independence.

  Political faith is more firm here than religious faith; the unity of the Greek church is only apparent: the sects, reduced to silence, dig their way under-

  214RELIGION IN RUSSIA.

  ground; but nations will only remain mutes for a time; sooner or later the day of discussion must arrive, religion, politics, all will speak and explain themselves at last. Whenever the right of speech shall be restored to this muzzled people, the astonished world will hear so many disputes arise, that it will believe the confusion of Babel again returned. It is by religious dissensions that a social revolution will be one day brought about in Russia.

  "When I approach the emperor and see his dignity and beauty, I admire the marvel. A man like him is rarely seen any where, but on the throne he is a phœnix. I rejoice in living at a time when such a prodigy exists, for I take as much pleasure in showing respect as others do in offering insult.

  Nevertheless, I examine, with scrupulous care, the objects of my respect, from whence it results that when I closely consider this personage, distinguished from all others upon earth, I fancy that his head has two faces like that of Janus, and that the words violence, exile, oppression, or their full equivalent — Siberia, are engraved on the face which is not presented towards me. This idea haunts mc unceasingly, even when I speak to him. It is in vain that I strive only to think of what I say to him; my imagination, in spite of myself, travels from Warsaw to Tobolsk, and that single word, Warsaw, revives all my distrust.

  Does the world know that, at the present hour, the roads of Asia arc once again covered with exiles, torn from their hearths and proceeding on foot to their tomb, as the herds leave their pastures for the slaughter-house ? This revival of wrath is attributable to

  POLAND—THE FUTURE.21ò

  a pretended Polish conspiracy, a conspiracy of youthful madmen, who would have been heroes had they succeeded ; and who, their attempt being desperate, only appear to ine the more generously devoted. My heart bleeds for the exiles, their families, and their country. What will be the resiút when the oppressors of this corner of the earth, where chivalry once flourished, shall have peopled Tartary with all that was most noble and courageous amongst the sons of ancient Europe? When they have thus crowned their icy policy, let them enjoy their success. Siberia will have become the kingdom and Poland the desert.

  Ought not Ave to blush with shame to pronounce the name of liberalism, when we think that there exists in Europe a people who were independent, and who now know no other liberty but that of apostasy ? The Russians, when they turn against the west the arms which they employ successfully against Asia, forget that the same mode of action which aids their progress against the Calmues, becomes an outrage of humanity when directed against a people that have been long civilised.

  The scenes on the Volga continue; and these horrors are attributed to instigations of Polish emissaries ; an imputation that reminds one of the justice of the wolf of La Fontaine. These cruelties and reciprocal iniquities are preludes to the convidsions of the coming result, and suffiee to apprise us of its character. But in a nation governed like this, passions boil a long time before they explode; the peril may be increasing, yet the crisis is still distant, and the evil meanwhile continues: perhaps our grandchildren will not see the explosion; which, notwithstanding,

  216ТПЕ PIUNCESS TROUBETZKOI.

  we can now prognosticate as inevitable, though we cannot predict the time and the season.

  We may not cease to repeat that the Russian revolution, when it does come, will be the more terrible, because it will be in the name of religion. The Russian policy has melted the church into the state, and confounded heaven and earth : a man who sees a god in his master, scarcely hopes for paradise, except through the favour of the emperor.

  I shall never get away. Fate seems to interfere. Once more a delay — yet, this time, it is a legitimate one. I was just preparing to enter my carriage when a friend insisted upon seeing me. He brought a letter, which he would have me read at the very moment. But what a letter, gracious God ! It is from the Princess Troubctzkoi, who addresses it to a member of her family charged to show it to the emperor. I wished to copy it in order to print it without changing a syllable, but this I was not permitted to do. " It would go the round of the whole earth," said my friend, alarmed by the effect winch it produced upon me.

  " The greater reason to make it known," I replied.

  " Impossible. The safety of several individuals would be compromised; besides, it has only been lent me in order to show you on your word of honour, and on condition that it shall be returned in half an hour."

  Unhappy land, where every stranger appears as a saviour in the eyes of a herd of oppressed beings, merely because he represents truth, publicity, and liberty among a people deprived of all these blessings.

  Before alluding to the contents of this letter, it will be necessary to recount, in a few words, a lamentable

  THE PRINCE TROUBETZKOI.217

  history. The principal facts will be known to many, yet vaguely, like every thing else that is known of a distant country, in which people only take a cold interest. Let the public read and blush, — yes, blush; for whoever has not found means to protest, with his utmost power, against the policy of a country where such acts arc possible, is to a certain extent an accomplice and a responsible party. I sent back the horses by my fcldjäger, under pretext of indisposition, and told him to state at the establishment of the Posts that I should not leave until the morrow. Once rid of this officious spy, I sat down to write.

  The Prince Troubetzkoi was condemned as a convict to hard labour, fourteen years ago. He was at that time young, and had taken a very active part in the revolt of the fourteenth December.

  The first object of the conspirators on that occasion was to deceive the soldiers s regards the legitimacy of the Emperor Nicholas. They hoped, by the error of the troops, to produce a military revolt, and to profit by this, in order to work a political revolution, of which, fortunately or unfortunately for Russia, they alone at that time felt the necessity. The number of these reformers was too limited to afford any chance that the troubles excited by them could end in the result proposed. The conspiracy was defeated by the presence of mind of the Emperor, or rather by the intrepidity of his countenance. That prince, on the first day of his authority, drew from the energy of his bearing all the future power of his reign.

  The revolution thus crushed, it was necessary to

  VOL. II.L

  218THE PRINCE TROUBETZKOI.

  proceed to the punishment of the culpable. The Prince Troubetzkoi, one of the most deeply implicated, unable to exculpate him
self, was sentenced to labour in the Uralian mines for fourteen or fifteen years, and for the remainder of his life was exiled to Siberia, among one of those distant colonies that malefactors are destined to people.

  The prince had a wife whose family was among the most distinguished in the land. This princess could not be dissuaded from following her husband to his tomb. " It is my duty," she said, " and I will fulfil it; no human power has a right to separate a wife from her husband; I will share the fate of mine."

  This noble wife obtained the favour of being buried alive with her unhappy partner. I am astonished, since I have seen Russia and the spirit of its government, that, influenced by a lingering relic of shame, they have thought it right to respect this act of devotion during a period of fourteen years. That they should favour patriotic heroism is very natural, for they profit by it; but to tolerate a sublime virtue that does not accord with the views of the sovereign was an act of remissness for which they must have often reproached themselves. They feared the friends of Troubetzkoi; an aristocracy, however enervated it may be, always preserves a shadow of its independence,— a shadow that serves to cast a cloud over despotism. Contrasts abound in this dreadful society; many men speak among themselves as freely as if they lived in France: this secret liberty consoles them for the publie slavery which forms the shame and the eurse of their land.