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78 woman. The opponents of the nihilists fail to recognise how great was the service which Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, and Pisarev rendered in this field. Even Saltykov, as has been shown, was so short-sighted and old-fashioned that he could not judge the big words of the nihilist spokesmen in accordance with their real significance, in accordance with their actuality. The utterance of Černyševskii's Rahmetov concerning the community of wives is still quoted shudderingly against the nihilists.

v. It was a logical development that nihilistic ethics with an aspiration towards the practical should bring the nihilists into politics. The criticism and negation of authority, scientific and artistic individualism, the spirit of independence, the struggle against theological and theocratic idealism, necessarily led to social and before long to political rebellions, revolts, and revolutions. The horror which Gogol had voiced in Dead Souls, affected persons of conspicuous intelligence; and in a society based upon serfdom it was natural that vigorous nihilism, a nihilism eager for deeds, should originate. The inadequate reforms of the sixties did not convert Černyševskii into a professor, but made it essential for him to become the tribune, the advocate of the mužik. What happened to Černyševskii happened to all the others; absolutism precipitated the younger generation in the direction of revolution.

The nihilists followed Rylěev, and gave ear to his appeal on behalf of civic duty. When Nekrasov, in his Poets and Citizens, fulminated the phrase, "Thou canst not be a poet, but it is thy duty to be a citizen," the nihilists took the matter quite in earnest, regulating their theories in accordance therewith, and devoting their leisure to politics and other practical work on behalf of the people. It was for this reason that Pisarev "annihilated aesthetics"; it was for this reason that Bazarov was hostile to poesy and art; it was for this reason that, somewhat earlier, Bělinskii had given utterance to his heretical judgment concerning the Sixtine Madonna,

In actual fact, nihilism embodied an endeavour to introduce poesy into life, or, to put it in another way, to transfigure life poetically. From the time of Puškin and Bělinskii, Russian literature and literary criticism had been so intimately concerned with Russian life, and had so vigorously endeavoured to fathom its meaning, that the day naturally came for men to attempt the practical, ethical, and political realisation of