Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/49

Rh practical culture. "None of the Oblomovians have transmuted into their own blood and marrow the principles that have been instilled into them; they have never carried them out to their ultimate logical consequences; they have never attained the boundary line where word becomes deed, where principle becomes fused with the innermost need of the soul, is dissolved into that need, and is transformed into the single energy that moves the man. This is why such persons never cease lying; this is why they are so inconsistent in the individual manifestations of their activity. This is why abstract opinions are dearer to them than living facts, why general principles seem more important to them than the simple truths of life. They read useful books to learn what is written therein; they write well-meaning essays in order to luxuriate in the logical constructions of their own phraseology; they utter bold speeches in order to enjoy the sound of their own periods and in order to secure applause. But all that lies beyond, all that is the goal of reading, writing, and oratory, if not utterly beyond their ken, is at least a matter about which they are little concerned."

The reader will not fail to recall Bakunin's analysis of the liberals. In Dobroljubov's characterisation, the liberals appear as "superfluous persons," who begin with Puškin's Onegin and are subsequently represented by Turgenev's types and by Goncharov's Oblomov—dragging out a miserable existence whether in literature or in real life. These cultured and hypercultured individuals are affected with the malady of Oblomovism, they suffer from the paralysis and morbidity of civilisation. Dobroljubov here succumbs to a paroxysm of Rousseauism, and accuses Puškin of remaining too much aloof from the folk. The peasant, says Dobroljubov, is physically and mentally vigorous and healthy, in contrast with the "superfluous" weaklings. Černyševskii by no means shared this favourable opinion of the mužik, and would have rejected it as romanticist. Nor do we find the theory consistently carried out by Dobroljubov; but we have to remember that the mercantile "kingdom of darkness" was peopled for him by "living corpses" (Katerina's husband being among the number), and that he looked upon these Russians of the mercantile classes as persons remote from civilisation.

In this criticism and analysis of literary and socio-political types, Dobroljubov is one-sided and lacking in precision.