Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

by Irina Reyfman

  Beginning with so philosophical a consideration of language in general, based on the very nature of our bodily constitution, Lomonosov sets out the rules of the Russian language. How could they be mediocre if the mind that sketched them was led through grammatical thickets by the torch of ingenuity? Do not scorn this praise, great man. Your Grammar alone did not build your fame among your fellow citizens. Your services to the Russian language are manifold; and in this unglamorous labor you are venerated as the first founder of the veritable rules of our language and as the explorer of the natural arrangement of every kind of word. Your Grammar is the antechamber of your Rhetoric, and both of them are guides to grasping the beauties of the way your creations are uttered. Proceeding to teach the rules, Lomonosov intended to guide his fellow citizens on the thorny paths of Helicon, showing them the road to eloquence by outlining the rules of rhetoric and poetry. But the brevity of his life allowed him to complete only half of the undertaken labor.

  Born with tender feelings, endowed with a powerful imagination, prompted by love of honor, a man erupts from the milieu of the people. He ascends the Tribune. All eyes are on him, everyone waits impatiently for his oration. Applause or mockery bitterer than death itself awaits him. How could he be mediocre? Such a man was Demosthenes, such a man was Cicero; such was Pitt; such now are Burke, Fox, Mirabeau, and others.125 The rules of their speeches derive from circumstances, the sweetness of enunciation derives from their feelings, the power of arguments derives from their wit. Marveling at men so outstanding in the art of speech and analyzing their speeches, coolheaded critics thought that it was possible to outline rules for wit and imagination, thought that the path to enticement could be set out with laborious prescripts. Here is the origin of rhetoric. In following unwittingly his imagination, improved as it was by his conversation with ancient writers, Lomonosov similarly thought that he could communicate to his fellow citizens the ardor that filled his soul. And although the labor he undertook for this was in vain, yet the examples adduced by him to reinforce and explain his rules can undoubtedly guide anyone bent on pursuing the glory to be gained through the literary arts.

  But however vain his work proved in teaching the rules of what is better felt than learned by rote, to those who love the Russian language Lomonosov left proper examples in his compositions. In them, the lips that sucked the sweetness of Cicero and Demosthenes flowered into grandiloquence. In them, in every line, in every punctuation mark, in every syllable (why can I not say in every letter?) can be heard the harmonious and concordant sound of a euphony that is so rare, so inimitable, so natural for Lomonosov.

  Endowed by nature with the invaluable right to influence his contemporaries, endowed by nature with the power of creation, immersed in the thick of the popular mass, a great man acts upon it but not always in the same direction. He is similar to natural forces that, acting from the center, by extending their action to all points of the circumference, make their effect perpetual everywhere. So, too, Lomonosov who, affecting his fellow citizens variously, opened the collective mind to various pathways of knowledge. Enticing the collective mind to follow him, unweaving an entangled language into grandiloquence and euphony, he did not leave it as a scant source of literature lacking ideas. He would tell the imagination: soar to the limitlessness of dreams and possibilities, collect bright flowers of inspiration, and, guided by taste, decorate with them even the intangible. And so again Pindar’s trumpet that resounded during the Olympic games, like the psalmodist, emitted praise to the Supreme Being. On a trumpet, Lomonosov announced the greatness of the Everlasting One sitting on the wings of wind, preceded by thunder and lightning bolts and revealing to mortals His essence, life, in the sun.126 Moderating the voice of Pindar’s trumpet, he used it to sing the fragility of man and the narrow confines of his understanding. In the infinite abyss of the worlds, like a small speck of sand in the sea waves, like a spark barely scintillating amid the never melting ice, like the finest dust in the fiercest whirlwind—what is the human mind?127—It is you, O Lomonosov! my raiment cannot disguise you.

  I do not envy you the fact that you flattered Elizabeth with encomium in verse. This was consistent with the common practice of flattering tsars who, not infrequently, far from deserving the praises sung in harmonious voice, scarcely deserve the plinking of a gudok.128 And if it were possible without giving offence to truth and posterity, I would forgive you for the sake of a soul grateful for her generosity to you. But he will envy you, the writer of odes who cannot follow your tracks, he will envy a delightful picture of popular calm and peace, this strong defense of towns and villages, solace of tsardoms and tsars;129 he will envy the innumerable beauties of your language; even if someday he happened to equal the constant euphony of your poetry, although nobody has yet managed this. And so what if everyone succeeds in outdoing you for sweet singing, so what if your thoughts in the eyes of our descendants seem disordered, your poetry not overabundant in essence! … But look: on the expansive tiltyard to the end of which the eye cannot reach, among the crowding multitudes, in the lead, in front of everyone, opening the gates to the tiltyard—it is you. Anyone can be famed for their achievements, but you were the first. Even the Almighty cannot take away what He gave you. He begat you before everyone else, begat you to become a leader, and your glory is the fame of a leader. O! you who labored fruitlessly thus far to understand the essence of the soul and how the soul acts upon our corporality, this task that lies before you as a test is difficult. Tell us how the soul acts upon another soul, what kind of connection is there between minds? If we know how the body acts upon a body by touch, tell us how the intangible acts upon the intangible, producing substance; or what kind of contact there is between nonsubstantial entities. That it exists, this you know. But if you know what kind of action a great man’s mind has upon the collective mind, then you also know that a great man can beget another great man. There is the laurel crown of victory. O! Lomonosov, you created Sumarokov.

  But if the influence of Lomonosov’s poems could achieve a majestic advance in the education of his contemporaries’ poetic understanding, his eloquence made no perceptible or obvious mark. The flowers picked by him in Athens and Rome and so successfully transplanted in his words—the force of Demosthenes’s expression, the eloquence of Cicero—he used in vain, since they remain cloaked in the murkiness of the future. And who, satiated on the prolific grandiloquence of your laudatory orations, will thunder in a style that is not even yours yet will be your disciple? This moment can be distant or near, the wandering gaze, straying in the uncertainty of the future, finds no footing where to stop. While we may not find a direct heir to Lomonosov’s rhetoric, the impact of his euphony and the resonant pauses of his nonpoetic speech was pervasive, nonetheless. Even if his civic oratory may have had no disciple, its influence was felt on the general character of writing. Compare what was written before Lomonosov and what was written after him, and the impact of his prose will be evident to everyone.

  But do not we err in our conclusion? Long before Lomonosov, we find in Russia eloquent shepherds of the Church who by preaching the word of God to their flock taught it and themselves were renowned for their sermons. It is true that they existed, but their language was not Russian. They wrote the way it was possible to write before the Tatar invasion, before Russians entered into contact with the European peoples. They wrote in the Slavonic language. But you who saw Lomonosov himself, and perhaps learned eloquence from his works, shall not be forgotten by me. When in defeating the proud Ottomans the Russian army surpassed the expectations of everyone who cast an indifferent or envious eye over its exploits—you, summoned to give solemn thanks to the God of war, the God of strength, O! you, in the rapture of your soul, invoked Peter at his grave that he come to contemplate the fruits of his planting: “Arise, Peter, arise!” When you charmed my hearing, and my hearing then enchanted my sight, that was when it seemed to everyone that in coming to Peter’s grave you, invested with higher powers, wanted to resu
rrect him. That would be the moment when I, too, would have declared to Lomonosov: “Look, look, even here we see your cultivation.” But if he could teach you language…. In Platon there is Plato’s soul, and how to charm and to understand us his own heart taught him.130

  Servile gestures are incompatible not only with what may arouse our veneration but even when we love. While doing justice to the great man, we shall, therefore, not consider him God the creator of all, we shall not cherish him as an idol to be worshipped by society, and we shall not collude in implanting any kind of prejudice or false assumption. Truth is the highest divinity to us, and if the Almighty should want to change its image by revealing Himself not through truth, our face will be averted from Him.

  Consonant with the truth, we shall not search in Lomonosov for a great historian, we shall not compare him to Tacitus, Raynal, or Robertson; we shall not put him on the level of Marggraf or Rüdiger since he worked in chemistry.131 If he liked this science, if he spent many days of his life in studying the truths of natural science, his pathway was but the pathway of a follower. He roamed along well-worn ways and in the innumerable riches of nature found not a single blade of grass that eyes better than his had not looked at. He did not scrutinize even the crudest catalyst in matter that his predecessors had not discovered.

  Can we juxtapose him with someone who merited the most flattering inscription that a man can see beneath his portrait? The inscription, etched not in flattery but a truth daring to be powerful: “Here is one who wrested thunder from heaven and the scepter from the hand of tyrants.” Do we place Lomonosov next to him because he researched the power of electricity in its effects; and that he was not repelled from its study after seeing how his teacher was mortally struck down by its power?132 Lomonosov knew how to produce electrical power, knew how to deflect thunderbolts, but in this science the architect is Franklin, Lomonosov just a craftsman.

  But if Lomonosov did not achieve greatness in his investigations of Nature, he depicted its magnificent works in a style both pure and articulate. And while we do not find in his works about the natural sciences a graceful teacher of natural philosophy, we nonetheless find a teacher of language and a permanent model worthy of imitation.

  And thus, by giving the great man his due, by placing Lomonosov’s name in an aura worthy of him, we do not seek to arrogate for him merit for what he did not do and what he did not influence; or only to get carried away by frenzy and enthusiasm by using uninhibited language. This is not our goal. We want to show that in the domain of Russian literature the one who blazed a path to the temple of fame is the prime mover in the achievement of glory, even when he could not enter the temple. Is not Bacon of Verulam worthy of remembrance solely because he was able to say how to multiply branches of learning? Are brave writers who rise up against ruin and dominion not deserving of appreciation even if they were unable to deliver humanity from chains and captivity? And we do not reverence Lomonosov because he could not understand the rules of theatrical poetry and languished in epic; because he was out of his depths in the poetry of sensibility; because he was not always discerning in his judgment; and because even in his odes he sometimes put more words than thoughts. But listen: before the beginning of time when existence had no foundation and everything was lost in eternity and immeasurability, everything was possible for the Source of power, all the beauty of the universe existed in His thought since there was no action, no beginning. And then when the all-powerful hand intruded matter into space set it in motion. The sun shone forth, the moon took light, and rotating celestial bodies formed on high. The first jolt of creation was omnipotent. All the wonders of the world, all its beauty are only consequences. This is how I understand the action of a great soul upon the souls of contemporaries or descendants; this is how I understand the action of mind upon mind. In the trajectory of Russian literature, Lomonosov is the first. Envious crowd, be gone; it is for posterity to judge him, it is not hypocritical.

  But, dear reader, I have got carried away chatting with you…. Here already is Vsesvyatskoye…. If I have not bored you, wait for me by the city boundary and we can see each other upon my return journey. For now, farewell.—Coachman, drive on.

  MOSCOW! MOSCOW!!! …

  * Ozerki

  † June

  NOTES

  DEDICATION

  The line is adapted by Radishchev from the narrative poem Tilemakhida by V. K. Trediakovsky (1703–1769), a poetic version of the French writer and educationalist Cardinal Fénelon’s didactic novel Télémaque (1699), widely read as a conduct book and used as a manual for teaching virtue to princes and kings. The line comes from a part of the poem in which evil rulers in hell see themselves in the mirror of Truth. Trediakovsky rendered Fénelon’s Télémaque in the equivalent he devised to the classical hexameter: a line that combined trochees and spondees and had six stresses. It can be interpreted as a dolnik. Trediakovsky’s hexameter was later adopted by Nikolai Gnedich (1784–1833) in his seminal translation of the Iliad (1829) and by Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) in his translation of the Odyssey (1842–46).

  A.M.K.

  Aleksei Mikhailovich Kutuzov (1749–1797), a friend from youth and Leipzig, known for his philosophical character and involvement in Freemasonry.

  1. DEPARTURE

  1. Cf. Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”

  2. SOFIA

  2. Radishchev refers here to the decrees of 1782 that regulated the order of dispensing horses at the post stations.

  3. The stationmaster, fourteenth class in the Table of Ranks, organized the provision of postal coaches and horse relays. This provincial petty clerk stuck in a backwater was made famous in Pushkin’s story “The Stationmaster” (1831). For more on the Table of Ranks, see endnote 9.

  4. Folk songs became prized in the eighteenth century as genuine expressions of popular culture. A number of important collections of ethnographic materials, folklore, and popular songs were published in Russia.

  3. TOSNA

  5. Radishchev is referring to Catherine’s 1787 journey to Crimea and Ukraine.

  6. The Service Archive (razriadnyi arkhiv), established in 1711, contained the service records of all service people (sluzhilye liudi) for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Service records of eighteenth-century servitors were kept in the Heraldry Office.

  7. Rurik was the legendary founder of the Rurikid dynasty, who, according to Russian chronicles, ruled in Novgorod beginning in 862. His descendants ruled in Kiev beginning in the early tenth century. Vladimir Monomakh reigned in the twelfth century and was famed for his wisdom and advice to princes.

  8. Mestnichestvo was the Muscovite system of precedence governing ritual occasions and reflecting individual and family status among the nobility from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. A reform introduced in 1682 by Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich, the older brother of Peter the Great, abolished mestnichestvo, shifting power to military interests away from the landed nobility. The law eliminated the superiority of Moscow nobility over that of the provinces.

  9. The Table of Ranks was a list of positions in the military, civil, and court services introduced by a 1722 law to govern state servitors’ promotion through the ranks. It played a critical role in overhauling the service class and allowed Peter to replace the Muscovite service elite with a new class of servitors. It forcefully reconfirmed every nobleman’s obligation to serve the Crown and the state. Divided into fourteen grades or classes, from the first (highest) to the fourteenth (lowest), the Table defined the status of every servitor and his position vis-à-vis his peers. It also made it possible for commoners to be ennobled through ascending the hierarchy of ranks, making the hereditary nobles resentful.

  10. According to Catherine the Great’s legislation of 1785, which instituted fundamental reforms in the nature of service to the Crown and the treatment of nobles, a register was to be kept in every province of the genealogy of the local nobility, with the ancient aristo
cracy (as distinct from the newer service nobles) listed in the final part.

  11. Piter remains a familiar name for St. Petersburg; the usage first emerged in the late eighteenth century.

  12. Prostrations or small bows from the waist were part of the etiquette of respect and deference as well as shows of piety in church.

  4. LYUBANI

  13. Quitrent (obrok): a tax imposed on a serf for using the land allocated to him by the landowner. It was considered a lighter obligation than the corvée.

  14. Schismatic or Old Believer (raskol’nik or starover): a member of a movement of religious purists that arose in Russia in the middle of the seventeenth century. Schismatics rejected the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, which aimed to bring Russian religious practices closer to Greek. Radishchev refers here to the Schismatics’ refusal to keep religious holidays, including Sunday.

  15. One point of contention between the Schismatics and the Orthodox believers was how to make the sign of the cross, with two fingers or three. Here the peasant indicates that he is an Orthodox believer by claiming that he uses three fingers to cross himself.

  16. The peasant is referring here to corvée (barshchina), unpaid work on the landowner’s land. It was considered to be the more onerous obligation.

  17. Poll tax (podushnye): a tax that peasants had to pay to the state; it was calculated according the number of male members (souls or dushi) in the household.

  18. State peasants worked on lands owned by the state. Although they, too, had to pay various taxes, they enjoyed many freedoms (most importantly, personal) denied to peasants belonging to an individual landowner.

  5. CHUDOVO

  19. Sisterbek: presently Sestroretsk, a town to the north of St. Petersburg on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland.