CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SYNTHESIS OF WESTERNISM AND SLAVOPHILISM.APOLLON GRIGOR'EV.
§ 77.
PECULIAR interest attaches to Apollon Aleksandrovič Grigor'ev the critic. His first literary works were produced in the middle of the forties. By the close of the fifties his leading views had already been elaborated. Shortly after 1860 he gave a comprehensive exposition of these, writing now chiefly in the two reviews edited by the brothers Dostoevskii.[1]
Grigor'ev is frequently classed among the "younger" slavophils, but some prefer to consider him a conservative. His outlook was really a modification of slavophilism, and at the same time he attempted a synthesis of slavophil and westernist views.
Dostoevskii spoke of Grigor'ev and his supporters as počvenniki. The root of this world is počva, signifying soil, ground. foundation. The počvenniki were considered to be established upon the solid basis of the Russian folk, but the double significance of the term počva is reflected in the philosophical foundations of the počvenniks' programme.
By 1861 the contrast between the slavophils and the westernisers had in Grigor'ev's view been transcended. The distinct trends no longer existed, or at any rate lacked justification for existence, now that Puškin had succeeded in effecting the organic synthesis of the two cultural elements. Art, said Grigor'ev, is the instrument of nationality, of the national spirit, whilst the nation is the instrument of mankind, for mankind exists only in distinct nations. Men of genius are the spokesmen of the nations. The author is a prophet; he creates out of his thoughts and feelings; in sorrow doth he bring forth his children. The truly great author invariably speaks a "new word." Puškin was such a genius and prophet of the Russian people. Puškin had had personal experience of the contrasts between Russian and Europeanism, but had transcended these contrasts, and, being a great genius, had created a new and perfectly independent type, a genuinely Russian type which must be counterposed to the European.[2] Grigor'ev considers that full and accurate expression of the Russian folk-spirit is given in the figure of Bělkin and similar characters in Puškin's works—Dubrovskii, for instance, and the captain's daughter. The Russian soul first secured complete expression through Puškin. Pečorin, on the other hand, the central figure of Lermontov's book The Hero of our own Time, was an unrussian, an antirussian type, such as Europe, or rather European romanticism, had forced upon the Russians. The Russian type was the peaceful, good-natured, unassuming man, with his simple healthy mind and sound sentiments. Pečorin, the brilliant, passionate hero, seemed to Grigor'ev an embodiment of the predatory type. But among Lermontov's figures Grigor'ev finds that of Maksim Maksimyč congenial. Puškin's Tatjana, he considered, incorporated at once the positive feminine type and the positive Russian ideal.
It will thus be seen that Grigor'ev does not look upon art as the mirror of life, but as an instrument for the guidance of life, presenting positive ideals in the types it creates. In conformity with this view Grigor'ev assigns a constructive and positive task to literary criticism. Criticism must be "organic," the word being used in much the same sense as that in which Homjakov spoke of the church as an organism, being used as it was employed by Saint-Simon and above all by Carlyle. We trace here, too, an idea of Carlyle, a writer who exercised much influence on Grigor'ev, and even on the Russian's literary style. Grigor'ev elaborates Carlyle's distinction between two historical epochs, the healthy, positive epoch based on faith and imagination, and the retrograde, negative epoch of decadence based on thought and reason. It is true that Grigor'ev opposed romanticism, but his own philosophy was romanticist through and through. He gave emotion the preference over reason; in the name of mysticism he condemned rationalism; in common with the romanticists he conceived the ideal of humanity in a nationalist sense. To him, as to l the romanticists, art was the leading instrument in the movement of nationality, for unawares he identified art with religion and religious ardour. Grigor'ev's political outlook and his Carlylean hero-worship were likewise romanticist. Since great geniuses are the leaders of mankind, there is no justification for parliamentary democracy or for the revolutionary struggle to secure progress. It was logical that Grigor'ev, holding these views, should oppose the westernisers, and especially that he should oppose the commencing political propaganda.
This organic criticism is, properly speaking, conceived by Grigor'ev as a philosophy of history, or as philosophy in general. He employs it to counteract the "historical" criticism of Bělinskii, whilst he is still more strongly opposed to "theoretical" criticism, using this term to denote the political and utilitarian trend of Černyševskii's school. Grigor'ev ranks Pisarev above Černyševskii and Dobroljubov, but he censures Pisarev for one-sidedness and undue devotion to abstract logic, whereby, says Grigor'ev, Pisarev was led into the error of describing art, nationality, history, science, thought itself, as nonentities.
Despite these differences there are points of contact and agreement. His subsequent analysis of Ostrovskii reminds us in many respects of Dobroljubov, whilst Grigor'ev is at one with Pisarev in his anti-historical outlook. Grigor'ev rejects Hegelianism, historism, and relativism. The human spirit has eternal energies attaching to it as an organism. These energies manifest themselves in thought, science, art, nationality, and history (the omission of religion from the enumeration is characteristic); they are not ephemeral results and stages of development; once more, they are everlasting.
It need hardly be said that Grigor'ev will have nothing to do with the æstheticists and their cult of art for art's sake.
Grigor'ev was obviously right in his insistence upon the point that the thoughtful Russian's great task must be, not merely to take over novelties from Europe, but to elaborate these acquisitions and to build upon the new foundation. Grigor'ev's "organic" criticism was a formulation of this task. The demand had been made before; Bělinskii in his ultimate phase had entered the same path, and had largely anticipated Grigor'ev'; almost all Grigor'ev's ideas may, separately considered, be deduced from Bělinskii; but Grigor'ev's peculiar service was the unified formulation of his fundamental idea, that of the organic.
Grigor'ev attempted with notable discernment to indicate the positively new in Russian literature. The false judgment which made him rank Ostrovskii beside Puškin, and the injustice he displayed towards Gogol, must not induce us to underestimate his own excellence and originality. He gave his approval to some of Turgenev's work (A Nobleman’s Retreat), and greatly esteemed that of Tolstoi. It was necessary that an attempt should be made to delimit the idea of nationality more precisely. Grigor'ev made such an attempt, and was guided in it by modern ideas, differing here from the slavophils, who built upon the foundations laid by the Greek fathers of the church.
Grigor'ev displayed moderation, too, in his attempts at synthesis. He had more approval for the westernisers than for the slavophils. He was extremely sympathetic towards Čaadaev, and he recognised Bělinskii's merits; but he condemned the extravagances of the westernisers and their negation of all that was Russian. He had full confidence, likewise, in Homjakov and Kirěevskii, though he considered their views extravagant. To the later slavophils, with their petty ideals, he was definitely opposed.
Since he himself had a strong mystical trend, Homjakov's and Kirěevskii's insistence upon the mystical factor was agreeable to him. His philosophy was largely based upon that of Schelling, whose influence was reinforced by Carlyle's. But in the case of his European teachers he effected a synthesis similar to that which he demanded for Russia; Schelling and Carlyle were rationalised by Hegel. He was especially adverse to the realists, and to the nihilists, with their positivist aridity. In this respect Dostoevskii appealed to him, and in co-operation with the latter he made the two reviews edited by the brothers Dostoevskii into an organ of antinihilism.
Grigor'ev's personal life, ill-regulated, romantic, and brilliant, gave expression to his antipositivist mood and outlook. Considering himself animated by peculiarly genuine Russian sentiments, Russian life seemed to him a synthesis of very remarkable elements. In the drunkard, for instance, he would discover the manifestation of the pure soul, and his judgments were characterised by numerous similar aberrations. He once delineated himself aptly as a "turbulent" humanist—the Russian word naglyi has the connotation of impetuosity or brutality. There was a morbid element in Grigor'ev, an element we shall find more fully developed in Dostoevskii. Grigor'ev spoke of "irrational happiness," of the "pride of sorrow," of the "repellent sweetness" of certain spiritual troubles, and so on.
Grigor'ev did not found a school, for he lacked energy and endurance. His thought was aphoristic in character; his ideas were not sharply or clearly formulated. Grigor'ev had no love for logic-choppers who reason simply for reasoning's sake. In fact his own mysticism was often on extremely bad terms with logic. Nevertheless Grigor'ev moved amid kindred spirits, and through their intermediation exercised enhanced influence. The most notable among his associates was Dostoevskii, who learned much and borrowed much from Grigor'ev. In his whole nature Dostoevskii had much in common with Grigor'ev. In addition to Dostoevskii I may mention Strahov, the editor of Grigor'ev's works.[3]
- ↑ Grigor'ev was born in Moscow in the year 1822, and left Moscow university in 1842. In the southern capital he was exposed to the same influences as his westernist and slavophil friends and contemporaries. He died in 1864.
- ↑ Grigor'ev describes the creative process more or less in the following way. The great writer becomes acquainted with the figures depicted by foreign poets, but he does not take these over to make them his own, for they serve merely to arouse kindred images in his mind. The Byronic types became part of Puškin's mental experience, but these were not the types he gave to the world as his own; he fought with them, and his own Russian types were the issue of the struggle.
- ↑ Strahov (1828–1896) was one of the chief contributors to the Dostoevskiis' reviews. He wrote a number of philosophical and literary works (The World as a Whole; the Fundamental Concepts of Psychology and Physiology; The Struggle with the West; Critical Essays on Turgenev and Tolstoi; etc.), and be translated portions of Kuno Fischer's History of Philosophy and of Lange's History of Materialism. Strahov was a diligent worker, and so amiable was his disposition that only in the form of mechanical compromises could he effect the synthesis demanded by Grigor'ev. Thus it was that Tolstoi became his mentor as well as Danilevskii and Dostoevskii. Of Dostoevskii, Strahov has given us reminiscences.