INTRODUCTION

ALEXANDER HERZEN was born in Moscow on March 25,[1]1812, six months before Napoleon arrived at the gates of the city with what was left of his Grand Army. He died in Paris on January 9, 1870. Down to his thirty-fifth year he lived in Russia, often in places selected for his residence by the Government; he left Russia, never to return, on January 10, 1847.

1.The dates given here are those of the Russian calendar.

He was the elder son of Iván Yákovlev, a Russian noble, and Luise Haag, a German girl from Stuttgart. It was a runaway match; and as the Lutheran marriage ceremony was not supplemented in Russia, the child was illegitimate. “Herzen” was a name invented for him by his parents. Surnames, however, are little used in Russian society; and the boy would generally be called, from his own Christian name and his father’s, Alexander Ivánovich. His parents lived together in Moscow, and he lived with them and was brought up much like other sons of rich nobles. It was quite in Herzen’s power to lead a life of selfish ease and luxury; but he early chose a different path and followed it to the end. Yet this consistent champion of the poor and humble was himself a typical aristocrat-generous,indeed, and stoical in misfortune, but bold to rashness and proud as Lucifer.

The story of his early life is told fully in these pages—his solitary boyhood and romantic friendship with his cousin, Nikolai Ogaryóv; his keen enjoyment of College life, and the beginning of his long warfare with the police of that other aristocrat, Nicholas, Tsar of all the Russias, who was just as much in earnest as Herzen but kept a different object in view.

Charged with socialistic propaganda, Herzen spent nine months of 1834-1835 in a Moscow prison and was then sent, by way of punishment, to Vyatka. The exiles were often men of exceptional ability, and the Government made use of their talents. So Herzen was employed for three years in compiling statistics and organizing an exhibition at Vyatka. He was then allowed to move to Vladímir, near Moscow, where he edited the official gazette; and here, on May 9, 1838, he married his cousin, Natálya Zakhárin, a natural daughter of one of his uncles. Receiving permission in 1839 to live, under supervision of the police, where he pleased, he spent some time in Moscow and Petersburg, but he was again arrested on a charge of disaffection and sent off this time to Novgorod, where he served in the Government offices for nearly three years. In 1842 he was allowed to retire from his duties and to settle with his wife and family in Moscow. In 1846 his father’s death made him a rich man.

For twelve years past, Herzen, when he was not in prison, had lived the life of a ticket-of-leave man. He was naturally anxious to get away from Russia; but a passport was indispensable, and the Government would not give him a passport. At last the difficulties were overcome; andin the beginning of 1847 Herzen, with his wife and children and widowed mother, left Russia for ever.

Twenty-three years, almost to a day, remained for him to live. The first part of that time was spent in France, Italy, and Switzerland; but the suburbs of London, Putney and Primrose Hill, were his most permanent place of residence. He was safe there from the Russian police; but he did not like London. He spoke English very badly;[2]he made few acquaintances there; and he writes with some asperity of the people and their habits.

2.Herzen is mentioned in letters of Mrs. Carlyle. She notes (1) that his English was unintelligible; and (2) that of all the exiles who came to Cheyne Walk he was the only one who had money.

His own family party was soon broken up by death. In November, 1851, his mother and his little son, Nikolai (still called Kólya) were drowned in an accident to the boat which was bringing them from Marseilles to Nice, where Herzen and his wife were expecting them. The shock proved fatal to his wife: she died at Nice in the spring of 1852. The three surviving children were not of an age to be companions to him.

For many years after thecoup d’étatof Louis Napoleon, Herzen, who owned a house in Paris, was forbidden to live in France. He settled in London and was joined there by Ogaryóv, the friend of his childhood. Together they started a printing press, in order to produce the kind of literature which Nicholas and his police were trying to stamp out in Russia. In 1857, after the death of the great Autocrat, they began to issue a fortnightly paper, called Kólokol (The Bell); and thisBell, probably inaudible in London, made an astonishing noise in Russia. Its circulation and influence there were unexampled: it is said thatthe new Tsar, Alexander, was one of its regular readers. Alexander and Herzen had met long before, at Vyatka. February 19, 1861, when Alexander published the edict abolishing slavery throughout his dominions, must have been one of the brightest days in Herzen’s life. There was little brightness in the nine years that remained. When Poland revolted in 1863, he lost his subscribers and his popularity by his courageous refusal to echo the prevailing feeling of his countrymen; and he gave men inferior to himself, such as Ogaryóv and Bakúnin, too much influence over his journal.

He was on a visit to Paris, when he died rather suddenly of inflammation of the lungs on January 9, 1870. At Nice there is a statue of Herzen on the grave where he and his wife are buried.

The collected Russian edition of Herzen’s works—no edition was permitted by the censorship till 1905—extends to seven thick volumes. These are: one volume of fiction; one of letters addressed to his future wife; two of memoirs; and three of what may be called political journalism.

About 1842 he began to publish articles on scientific and social subjects in magazines whose precarious activity was constantly interrupted or arrested by the censorship. His chief novel,Who Was To Blame?was written in 1846. From the time when he left Russia he was constantly writing on European politics and the shifting fortunes of the cause which he had at heart. When he was publishinghis Russian newspapers in London, firstThe Pole-Starand thenThe Bell, he wrote most of the matter himself.

To readers who are not countrymen or contemporaries of Herzen’s, theMemoirsare certainly the most interesting part of his production. They paint for us an astonishing picture of Russian life under the grim rule of Nicholas, the life of the rich man in Moscow, and the life of the exile near the Ural Mountains; and they are crowded with figures and incidents which would be incredible if one were not convinced of the narrator’s veracity. Herzen is a supreme master of that superb instrument, the Russian language. With a force of intellect entirely out of Boswell’s reach, he has Boswell’s power of dramatic presentation: his characters, from the Tsar himself to the humblest old woman, live and move before you on the printed page. His satire is as keen as Heine’s, and he is much more in earnest. Nor has any writer more power to wring the heart by pictures of human suffering and endurance. TheMemoirshave, indeed, one fault—that they are too discursive, and that successive episodes are not always clearly connected or well proportioned. But this is mainly due to the circumstances in which they were produced. Different parts were written at considerable intervals and published separately. The narrative is much more continuous in the earlier parts: indeed, Part V is merely a collection of fragments. But Herzen’sMemoirsare among the noblest monuments of Russian literature.

TheMemoirs, called by Herzen himselfPast and Thoughts, are divided into five Parts. This translation,made six years ago from the Petersburg edition of 1913, contains Parts I and II. These were written in London in 1852-1853, and printed in London, at 36 Regent’s Square, in the Russian journal calledThe Pole-Star.

Part I has not, I believe, been translated into English before. A translation of Part II was published in London during the Crimean war;[3]but this was evidently taken from a German version by someone whose knowledge of German was inadequate. The German translation of theMemoirsby Dr. Buek[4]seems to me very good; but it is defective: whole chapters of the original are omitted without warning.

3.My Exile in Siberia, by Alexander Herzen. (Hurst and Blackett, London, 1855). Herzen was not responsible for the misleading title, which caused him some annoyance.

4.Erinnerungen von Alexander Herzen, by Dr. Otto Buek (Berlin, 1907).

To make the narrative easier to follow, I have divided it up into numbered sections, which Herzen himself did not use. I have added a few footnotes.

June 5, 1923.

J. D. Duff.

PART INURSERY AND UNIVERSITY(1812-1834)

PART I

NURSERY AND UNIVERSITY

(1812-1834)

Back to Index Next