121

p In the story The Scholar we find a similar phenomenon: a peasant’s awakened sense of his human dignity does not survive the clash with the harsh reality around him; the spark of thought is extinguished under the influence of painful moral insult.

p This time we are dealing with a “villager” who has chosen the most reliable way to put his mind in “order”. Uncle Ivan, also a Parashkino “villager”, has an unusual thirst for knowledge and a passionate love of books. In spite of his advanced years, he went to school where he stoically endured the ridicule of the mischievous children who mocked the slips and errors of their grown-up schoolmate mercilessly. But the schoolteacher was a bad one, and in any case thanks to the Zemstvo the school was soon closed down completely. So Ivan remained semi-literate, a man who could only just read the printed text and regarded the art of writing as the highest wisdom well beyond his grasp. Nevertheless his passion for reading remained just as strong as before. For him there was no greater delight than to buy a book in the town and settle down with it in the time that remained to him after his work on the land. The only trouble was that he by no means always understood everything in the books he purchased. Sometimes he came across a word that, for all his efforts, he could not understand without outside help. In such cases Ivan would visit the clerk Semyonych and in return for an appropriate fee. in the form of a small glass of vodka, would obtain an explanation of the strange word. True, the clerk’s delinitions did not always correspond to the true meaning of the word by a long chalk, but Ivan could not manage without his help. Semyonych was the most educated man in the village. With time Ivan began to turn to him not only in the case of words, but every time his head was troubled by questions that had not been solved by the “strange” philosophy of his forefathers. And such questions began to arise with increasing frequency in the mind of the ignorant reader.

_p “Where does water come from? And land too?... W^Thy? Where do rain-clouds go?" There even appeared the question "Where does the peasant come from?" Ivan’s talk with Semyonych on this question is brilliantly portrayed by the author.

_p j

_p “’Take the peasant, for example....’ Uncle Ivan stopped and stared hard at Semyonych.

p “’There’s no end of peasants in our land,’ said the latter.

_p “’Wait a minute, Semyonych.... Don’t be angry.... Well, for example, I’m a peasant, thick, that is, ignorant.... But why?’

_p “A tormented look appeared in Uncle Ivan’s eyes.

_p “Semyonych oven forgot about the half-bottle of vodka; he even spat.

122

_p “’Well, a peasant’s a peasant and that’s that! Ee, you stupid tiling!’

p “’What I ask myself is why?’

_p “’Because a peasant’s ignorant—Ugh, you stupid thing!’ Semyonych spat in surprise and began to laugh.

_p “’Does that mean there are peasants in other kingdoms too?’

_p ’"In other kingdoms?’

p “’Yes.’

_p ’"They don’t have peasants there—There’s none of that filth there! Peasants are not allowed there! Everything’s clean and educated there, brother.’

_p “’So there aren’t any peasants....’

_p ’"Oh, no.’

p ’"What about education?’

p “•There? Let’s make no bones about it. If you were to stick your ugly mug in there, they’d set the dogs on you! Because you’re nothing but an animal!’"

p Stupid though Semyonych’s lies were, in this case they were probably enough to add fuel to the fire and set Ivan’s restless mind a new task.

p On learning that peasants were not “allowed” in other states and that this was because there was "education there”, Ivan was naturally bound to go further and wonder whether the Russian working populace could not achieve a similar degree of education. And from there it was but a short step to some very radical conclusions.

p In the seventies in Berlin the writer of these lines happened to meet an artel of Russian peasants from Nizhni Novgorod Gubernia. who were working at one of the fulling mills in the Prussian capital. We remember what an impression their acquaintance with foreign ways and with the material position of the German workers made on them. "There is no country worse than Russia!" they exclaimed with a kind of sad bitterness and agreed readily with us when we said that it was time the Russian peasants rose up against their oppressors.

p Ivan too might have come to the same conclusion, but he was prevented from doing so by an unexpected happening. For some time his head had been working, as the author puts it, more than his hands. His simple homestead began to show signs of neglect, and he found himself in arrears. The elder had already reminded him about this several times, but Ivan continued to occupy himself willi questions. A sad ending was becoming inevitable. During one of the visits of the police superintendent Ivan was called to the volost and reminded of his civic obligations with a flogging. This fatherly punishment came as a thunderbolt to him. On the way home "he kept looking round, afraid of meeting someone,—he would have died of shame, if he had met anyone; yes, of 123 shame! Because all that the wonderful thoughts had given him was shame, bitter, mortal shame".

_p Under the influence of the first impression Ivan wanted to drown himself. He even ran up to the river bank and was about to jump into the water, but ... he was caught by the elder who desperately needed men to repair the bridge that had most inopportunely collapsed just before the superintendent’s visit. "Where’s your conscience, you devil, what in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing here!" shouted the custodian of village law and order. And this bellowing really seemed to wake up Ivan’s “conscience”, the old conscience bequeathed by his forebears of the two-legged beast of burden condemned to eternal hard labour. He set to work without a murmur.

p But ever since then his line new conscience, acquired from books, disappeared.

p “Uncle Ivan no longer remembered about books and wonderful thoughts. He thought only about arrears.... He no longer carried five-kopek books around with him in the top of his boot. He buried them in a hole that he had dug specially in the kitchen garden__ If he had an attack of melancholy, he would drop in on

p Semyonych and go off to the tavern with him. Thirty minutes or an hour later the two bosom friends would come out plastered—"

Subsequently Uncle Ivan took part in the exodus of the entire Parashkino “commoon”, with which we are already acquainted.