Page:Chernyshevsky - What's to be done? A romance.djvu/13



This romance, the last work and only novel from Tchernychewsky's pen, originally appeared in 1863 in a St. Petersburg magazine, the author writing it at that time in a St. Petersburg dungeon, where he was confined for twenty-two months prior to being sent into exile in Siberia by the cruel Czar who has since paid the penalty of this crime and many others. This martyr-hero of the modern Revolution still languishes in a remote corner of that cheerless country, his health ruined and—if report be true—his mind shattered by his long solitude and enforced abstention from literary and revolutionary work. The present Czar, true son of his father, persistently refuses to mitigate his sentence, despite the petition for Tchernychewsky's freedom sent not long ago to Alexander III. by the literary celebrities of the world gathered in international congress at Vienna.

The Russian Nihilists regard the present work as a faithful portraiture of themselves and their movement, and as such they contrast it with the celebrated "Fathers and Sons" of Tourguéneff, which they consider rather as a caricature. The fundamental idea of Tchernychewsky's work is that woman is a human being and not an animal created for man's benefit, and its chief purpose is to show the superiority of free unions between men and women over the indissoluble marriage sanctioned by Church and State. It may almost be considered a continuation of the great Herzen's novel, "Who Is To Blame?" written fifteen years before on the same subject. If the reader should find the work singular in form and sometimes obscure, he must remember that it was written under the eye of an autocrat, who punished with terrific severity any one who wrote against "the doctrines of the Orthodox Church, its traditions and ceremonies, or the truths and dogmas of Christian faith in general," against "the inviolability of the Supreme Autocratic Power or the respect due to the Imperial Family," anything contrary to "the fundamental regulations of the State," or anything tending to "shock good morals and propriety."

As a work of art "What's To Be Done?" speaks for itself. Nevertheless, the words of a European writer regarding it may not be amiss. "In the authors view the object of art is