p However, let us return to our play.

p The bourgeois, who regards the working masses through the prism of his deeply rooted prejudices, sees in them nothing but the faceless “crowd”, and in the psychological motifs of their struggle 477 nothing but crude, almost animal impulses. For who has not heard that the class viewpoint being adopted by conscious proletarians is characterised by extreme narrowness and precludes all love of "man in general"? Maxim Gorky, who himself comes from a working-class background, knows how untrue that is, and as a writer shows us this by means of an interesting literary character. His Levshin looks upon everyone with the kind, all-forgiving eyes of the semi-mythical martyr who, it is said, prayed for his mortal enemies: "they know not what they do”. When the police officer shouts at Levshin in connection with his arrest: "Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You old devil!" and when the worker Grekov objects to the police officer: "Why should you use such language?" Levshin for his part remarks calmly: "That’s his job ... to insult people!" Even people’s insults do not make him spiteful.  The struggle for existence in capitalist society produces the painful impression of inhuman crushing on him. He says to his master’s niece Nadya: "Everything human carries the taint of copper, miss. That’s why your young heart is heavy. All people are chained to a copper kopek—all but you, and so you don’t fit in. To every man on this earth the kopek jingles its message: ’Love me as you love yourself.’ But that doesn’t mean you!" The worker Yagodin remarks to him not without mockery: "You’re sowing your seed on stony soil, Levshin.... No sense in trying to teach them anything.... As though they could understand. What you say would reach the heart of a working man, but not of the gentlefolk.” But he does not yield to this argument: "That’s as may be,” he says, "but everyone’s got to face the same thing.” He had evidently reached the firm conclusion even before he came across the socialists that evil is not in people, but in the “kopek”. His uncomplicated, but original and profoundly humane view of life is vividly expressed in his conversation with the selfsame Nadya and the actress Tatyana Lugovaya with whom we are already familiar.

p After the murder of Mikhail Skrobotov, when the dead man’s body is still lying in the house in expectation of a funeral and ... inquest, the impressionable Nadya asks Tatyana: "Aunty Tanya! Why does everyone speak in whispers when there’s a dead body in the house?" Tatyana replies: "I don’t know.” But Levshin, who has appeared in the role of sentry, hastens to say his sad word:

p Levshin (smiling). Because we’re all guilty before the dead, miss. Guilty on every count.

p Nadya.  But it isn’t always like this, that the dead man’s been—been killed. But people speak in whispers anyway.

p Levshin.  We kill them all, miss. Some with bullets, others with words. We kill everybody with our doings. We drive people from the sun into the ground without even knowing it. But we begin to sense our guilt, once we’ve thrown a man into the arms of death. We begin to feel sorry for the dead one and to feel ashamed of ourselves, and a great fear rises up

r

478 in us. Because, don’t you see, we ourselves are being driven the same way; we ourselves are headed for the grave.

p Nadya.  That’s a dreadful thought.

p Levshin.  Don’t let it worry you. Today it’s dreadful, tomorrow it’s forgotten. And people begin pushing each other about again. When one of them falls down everybody is quiet and ashamed for a moment. Then they give a sigh and begin all over again, in the same old way. It’s all their ignorance. It’s the same way for everyone—rather crowded, it is. But you need feel no shame, miss. Dead people won’t disturb you. You can talk as loud as you like in front of them.

p Tatyana.  How do you think we ought to change our way of living, Levshin?

p Levshin (mysteriously). We’ve got to do away with the kopek. Got to bury it. Once the kopek’s gone, why should we push each other about? Why be enemies?

p Tatyana.  And that’s all?

p Levshin.  It’s enough to begin with.

p Tatyana.  Wouldn’t you like to take a walk in the garden, Nadya?

p Nadya (pensively). Perhaps.

p The end of the conversation seems to me typical of Tatyana. Levshin’s peculiar "economic materialism" could at first merely arouse in her the desire "to take a walk in the garden”. We already know that she needs passion and heroism, but arguments about the kopek do not seem to leave even the tiniest place for either passion or heroism. The kopek is something so prosaic that all talk about it is bound, at least from lack of habit, to fill the " sensitive" “cultured” person with the most excruciating boredom. But the point is precisely that Levshin sees this question in an entirely different light. And this is fully explained by the fact that he regards the prosaic kopek from his special, proletarian, viewpoint.

p Here I will permit myself to make a slight digression. The late Nekrasov describes in one of his poems an old peasant woman lamenting the death of her son and makes her wail:

p Who, when my winter coat is worn threadbare,
Will slay some new hares for another one?

p Then the old woman tearfully remembers her son, saying that her house is falling down, etc. This was not to the liking of certain critics of the day. They found it “crude”. How can she think about her house and her winter coat, they cried, when her beloved son has died! If my memory does not deceive me, someone even accused Nekrasov of slandering the people. And indeed it does seem at first glance as if Nekrasov is being too “materialistic”—The old woman seems to be lamenting not so much the death of her son, as the loss of an opportunity to get a new "winter coat”. And if one compares this work of the Russian "muse of vengeance and grief" with, for example, a poem written by Victor Hugo on the death of his child the accusation levelled at Nekrasov by the above– 479 mentioned critics seems even more just. In the famous French Romantic there is no mention not only of a house and a winter coat, but of anything material at all. He speaks only of feelings and, of course, of the most sincere and worthy feelings. The poet recalls how, resting from work on an evening, he would take his child on to his lap, hand him toys, etc. I am very sorry that I do not have these two poems at hand and that I do not remember them by heart. It would be enough to compare one or two passages from them to see clearly how strongly Hugo’s method of portraying grief differs from Nekrasov’s method of portraying the same feeling. However, this by no means shows that the critics who accused Nekrasov’s unfortunate old woman of crude materialism were right. How exactly does Hugo’s grief differ from that of Nekrasov’s old woman? In that Hugo’s memory of the dear departed one is combined with ideas quite different from those of the old woman’s. And only in that. The feeling is the same, but the association of ideas that accompanies it is quite different. What accounts for this difference in the association of ideas? Circumstances quite independent of the feeling. Firstly, a child simply could not build a house or kill hares. Secondly, and this is the main thing here, of course, Victor Hugo was so materially secure that he did not connect the question of means of subsistence with the question of the life of his children. It is this latter circumstance which I call a circumstance entirely independent of the feeling: we know that a person’s material security is not causally connected with his feelings in general and with his parental feelings in particular. A person’s material security depends on his economic position in society; and this position is determined not by psychological but by quite different causes.

p But if people’s economic position does not depend in the slightest on the depth of their feelings, what does depend on this position im Grossen und Ganzen  [479•*  are the circumstances in which people live; and these circumstances determine the nature of the ideas with which their idea of their dear ones is combined ( associated). Thus, a society’s economy determines the psychology of its members.

p The conditions of Victor Hugo’s life were not similar to those of a Russian peasant’s life. It is not surprising that his idea of his lost child was associated with ideas quite unlike those which the peasants associated with dear ones they had lost. Therefore also the grief produced by this loss was bound to be expressed differently by him than it was by people in the position of Nekrasov’s old woman. It follows, therefore, that Nekrasov was perhaps not as wrong as it seems at first glance. But the main thing is that he did not make the slightest attempt to slander the people. Grief 480 aroused by the loss of someone dear does not cease to be profound because the idea of such a loss is combined with ideas related to socalled material requirements. Nekrasov’s old woman remembers the hares and the house that is falling down not because the satisfaction of her material requirements is dearer to her than her son’s love, but because her son’s love, which was probably dearer to her than anything else in the world, manifested itself in her son’s concern about the satisfaction of his mother’s material requirements. With rich people a child’s love manifests itself in concerns of a different kind, because the material requirements of “gentlefolk” are satisfied by the services of hired servants, earlier by those of bonded servants.  This is why "gentlefolk’s" feelings may appear at first glance to be more refined and elevated. The critics who condemned Nekrasov were accustomed to observing "gentlefolk’s" outwardly more refined and elevated feelings. That is why they attacked the completely innocent “new” hares of Nekrasov’s poor old woman. And that is why they shouted about slander.

I am saying all this in order to present in a proper light the question advanced by Levshin about the “kopek”. People who in one way or other belong to the "upper classes" of society are accustomed to regard this question as very prosaic. And they are right in the sense that once a person enjoys material security for him the question of a larger or smaller number of kopeks in his possession amounts in the vast majority of cases to the question of the possibility of obtaining a larger or smaller amount of material enjoyments: "putting a couch next to the hearth, having friends round for a meal”, etc. And the person who belongs "to the upper classes" and is not interested in conversations about the “kopek” is rightly regarded as a person of more refined aspirations. But for people who belong to the so-called lower classes, particularly for the proletariat with its awakening desire for knowledge, the “kopek” has a completely different meaning. One could prove statistically that the higher the wage of a given stratum of workers, the larger a part of it goes on satisfying the worker’s spiritual requirements. Thus, for the proletarian the struggle for the " kopek" is in itself a struggle to preserve and develop his human dignity. The people of the "upper classes" who scornfully shrug their shoulders at the “crudity” of the aims pursued by the liberation struggle of the working class usually do not want to understand this. And that is perfectly understandable to thinking proletarians like Levshin. But Levshin’s aspirations, it must be noted, are by no means limited to increasing the number of “kopeks” that make up the worker’s wage. For him the “kopek” is a symbol of a whole system. His loving heart has become wretched with suffering at the sight of the fierce fight that takes place for the “kopek” in capitalist society. This fight makes him “ashamed” of himself and his near ones. And he joins the socialists who desire that for 481 which his honest and sensitive heart is striving: "to destroy the kopek”, i.e., to abolish the present economic system. As a result of this the question of the “kopek”, which arouses such boredom in people from the "upper classes" who are not without noble aspirations, acquires the greatest social significance in his eyes: "to destroy the kopek" means for him to destroy all the evil that is being done today by people in the economic struggle for subsistence. And this, as you can see, is not prose; enthusiasm for this is the noblest poetry which only a morally developed person is capable of attaining.