Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

ALEXAND E R H E RZEN

him all his life. Driven by it he became, as everyone knows who has

any acquaintance with the modern history of Russia, perhaps the

greatest of European publicists of his day, and founded the first freethat is i:o say, anti-tsarist- Russian press in Europe, thereby laying the foundation of revolutionary agitation in his country.

In his most celebrated periodical, which he called The Bell ( KDIDkol),

he dealt with anything that seemed to be of topical interest. He exposed,

he denounced, he derided, he preached, he became a kind of Russian

Voltaire of the mid-nineteenth century. He was a journalist of genius,

and his articles, written with brilliance, gaiety and passion, although,

of course, officially forbidden, circulated in Russia and were read by

radicals and conservatives alike. Indeed it was said that the Emperor

himself read them; certainly some among his officials did so; during

the heyday of his fame Herzen exercised a genuine influence within

Russia itself-an unheard of phenomenon for an tmtigre-by exposing

abuses, naming names, but, above all, by appealing to liberal sentiment

which had not completely died, even at the very heart of the tsarist

bureaucracy, at any rate during the I 8 50s and I 86os.

Unlike many who find themselves only on paper, or on a public

platform, Herzen was an entrancing talker. Probably the best descri�

tion of him is to be found in the essay from which I have taken my

title-'A Remarkable Decade', by his friend Annenkov. It was written

some twenty years after the events that it records.

I must own [ Annenkov wrote] that I was puzzled and overwhelmed,

when I first came to know Herzen-by this extraordinary mind

which daned from one topic to another with unbelievable swiftness,

with inexhaustible wit and brilliance; which could see in the tum

of somebody's talk, in some simple incident, in some abstract idea,

that vivid feature which gives expression and life. He had a most

astonishing capacity for instantaneous, unexpected juxtaposition of

quite dissimilar things, and this gift he had in a very high degree,

fed as it was by the powers of the most subtle observation and a

very solid fund of encyclopedic knowledge. He had it to such a

. degree that, in the end, his listeners were sometimes exhausted by

the inextinguishable fireworks of his speech, the inexhaustible

fantasy and invention, a kind of prodigal opulence of intellect

which astonished his audience.

After the always ardent but remorselessly severe Belinsky, the

glancing, gleaming, perpetually changing and often paradoxical

and irritating, always wonderfully clever, talk of Herzen demanded

of those who were with him not only intense concentration, but

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also perpetual alertness, because you had always to be prepared to

respond instantly. On the other hand, nothing cheap or tawdry

could stand even half an hour of contact with him. All pretentiousness, all pompousness, all pedantic self-importance, simply Red from him or melted like wax before a fire. I knew people, many of them

what are called serious and practical men, who could not bear

Herzen's presence. On the other hand, there were others . . . who

gave him the most blind and passionate adoration . . .

He had a natural gift for cr:ticism-a capacity for exposing and

denouncing the dark sides of life. And he showed this trait very

early, during the Moscow period of his life of which I am speaking.

Even then Herzen's mind was in the highest degree rebellious and

unmanageable, with a kind of innate, organic detestation of anything which seemed to him to be an accepted opinion sanctified by general silence about some unverified fact. In such cases the

predatory powers of his intellect would rise up in force and come

into the open, sharp, cunning, resourceful.

He lived in Moscow . . . still unknown to the public, but in his

own familiar circle he was already known as a witty and a dangerous

observer of his friends. Of course, he could not altogether conceal

the fact that he kept secret dossiers, secret protocols of his own,

about his dearest friends and distant acquaintances within the

privacy of his own thoughts. People who stood by his side, all

innocence and trustfulness, were invariably amazed, and sometimes extremely annoyed, when they suddenly came on one or other side of this involuntary activity of his mind. Strangely enough,

Herzen combined with this the tenderest, most loving relations with

his chosen intimates, although even they could never escape his

pungent analyses. This is explained by another side of his character.

As if to restore the equilibrium of his moral organism, nature took

care to place in his soul one unshakeable belief, one unconquerable

inclination. Herzen believed in the noble instincts of the human

heart. His analysis grew silent and reverent before the instinctive

impulses of the moral organism as the sole, indubitable truth of

existence. He admired anything which he thought to be a noble or

passionate impulse, however mistaken; and he never amused himself at its expense.

This ambivalent, contradictory play of his nature-suspicion and

denial on the one hand and blind faith on the other-often led to

perplexity and misunderstandings between him and his friends, and

sometimes to quarrels and scenes. But it is precisely in this crucible

of argument, in its Rames, that up to the very day of his departure

for Europe, people's devotion to him used to be tested and

strengthened instead of disintegrating. And this is perfectly intelli-

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gible. In all that Herzen did and all that Herzen thought at this

time there never was the slightest trace of anything false, no

malignant feeling nourished in darkness, no calculation, no treachery.

On the contrary, the whole of him was always there, in every one

of his words and deeds. And there was another reason which made

one sometimes forgive him even insults, a reason which may seem

unplausible to people who did not know him.

With all this proud, strong, energetic intellect, Herzen had a

wholly gentle, amiable, almost feminine character. Beneath the stem

outward aspect of the sceptic, the :>atirist, under the cover of a most

unceremonious, and exceedingly unreticent humour, there dwelt

the heart of a child. He had a curious, angular kind of charm, an

angular kind of delicacy . . . [but it was given] particularly to those

who were beginning, who were seeking after something, people who

were trying out their powers. They found a source of strength and

confidence in his advice. He took them into the most intimate communion with himself and with his ideas-which, nevertheless, did not stop him, at times, from using his full destructive, analytic

powers, from performing exceedingly painful, psychological experiments on these very same people at the very same time.

This vivid and sympathetic vignette tallies with the descriptions

left to us by Turgenev, Belinsky and others of Herzen's friends.

It is borne out, above all, by the impression which the reader

gains if he reads his own prose, his essays or the autobiographical

memoirs collected under the title My Post and Thoughts. The impression that it leaves is not conveyed even by Annenkov's devoted words.