157

p Mr. Volynsky’s discourses on "true criticism" are distinguished by the same lack of meaning as all his other philosophical exercises.

p “In studying the activity of Russian critics,” he proclaims right in the preface, "I have adhered, as will be seen from the book itself, to the opinion that the criticism of artistic works should be philosophical, not publicistic, and should rest on a sound system of philosophical concepts of a certain idealist type. It should trace how the poetic idea, after emerging in the mysterious depths of the human spirit, passes through the variegated material of the author’s ideas and views of life. This poetic idea either refashions the facts of external experience and presents them in a light which enables one to measure their true significance, or, if the writer’s natural talent is limited, disintegrates under the influence of his psychological characteristics and the false tendencies of his world outlook. And real literary criticism should be competent at both assessing poetic ideas, which are always of an abstract nature, and revealing the creative process, which is the interaction of the artist’s conscious and unconscious powers. Art can yield up.its secrets only to the inquiring mind of the philosopher, who, in contemplative ecstasy, unites the finite and the infinite, connects the psychological moods which take the form of poetic images with the eternal laws of world development."

p Phew! Let’s have a breather.... We have quoted this long passage because we wanted to acquaint you, the reader, with "true criticism" at one go.

_p Now, even if you read Mr. Volynsky’s book five times over, you would still not be able to add any new features to the revered, 158 if somewhat pedantic picture of this old woman, Criticism. Everything that our author says about her further on is but eloquent variations (you are already familiar with his lofty eloquence) on the theme of the need to reveal the creative process and assess abstract poetic ideas, and also on the use of contemplative ecstasy. All these variations exude a quite deadly boredom, and when Mr. Volynsky, speaking about some individual poetic work, expresses a correct view of it, this view turns out on closer inspection to have been borrowed from the selfsame Belinsky, who "was incapable of searching quietly for the truth" and did not show "any original philosophical talent”. We do not propose to torment the reader by quoting any new passages, but will simply point out how Mr. Volynsky administers judgment and metes out punishment to his predecessors in the sphere of literary criticism.

p Summoning them one by one to his philosophical tribunal^ he asks:

p 1) Has the accused always recognised certain philosophical concepts of a "certain idealist type"?

p 2) Was he always sufficiently firmly convinced that criticism should be philosophical and not publicistic?

p If it transpires that the accused is guilty of certain misdemeanours in this respect, our author immediately has a fit of hysterics. He raves on about God, heaven, eternity, truth, beauty, the poetic idea and other elevated subjects.

p Having raved to his heart’s content, he calms down and hastens to reassure the alarmed readers, by giving them to understand that although poor Russian thought has indeed been guilty of a great deal in the person of the accused, there is no need to despair as long as we have such a fine literary fellow as him, Mr. Volynsky, who, after rendering to each man his just deserts, will, with God’s help, rectify, settle and sort everything out, give a proper assessment of all abstract poetic ideas, and even unite the finite with the infinite in contemplative ecstasy. Filled with this heartening conviction, the reader looks all the more contemptuously on all the Belinskys and Dobrolyubovs, who seem such wretched pygmies by comparison to the great author of the book Russian Critics,

p Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and the author of The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality" incur Mr. Volynsky’s greatest wrath. This is understandable. They are guilty of allowing themselves to become famous before him. In addition, each of them has committed certain misdemeanours. Belinsky did not understand Hegel’s expression that all that is real is rational and later betrayed idealism, berated Gogol’s Selected Passages from a Correspondence with Friends^^48^^ and so on. The author of The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality was the author of The Aesthetic Relation of Art 159 to Reality and moreover strongly disagreed with Yurkevich in philosophy. Dobrolyubov was not inclined to "a tumult of all emotions”; had a "narrow view of the needs of social life, the aims of progress”; engaged in publicistic, and certainly not philosophical criticism; was the main contributor to the Svistok,^^49^^ etc., etc. In short, it is impossible to even name all the misdemeanours and crimes of these unpleasant people in whom thinking Russia decided for some reason to take pride, without previously consulting Mr. Volynsky on the matter!

p In the following articles we shall have occasion to speak of these people’s views. We shall deal there with at least some of the accusations made against them by our self-styled Hegelian. For the time being, however, we shall merely make a few individual comments in connection with them.

p Can there be anybody in our country today who does not know that Belinsky misunderstood Hegel’s famous proposition about the rational nature of all that is real? So much has been said and written about this mistake of our great writer that every schoolchild knows about it. But it by no means follows from this that every schoolchild possesses more "original, philosophical talent" than Belinsky had. One can be mistaken in various ways, just as one can express correct ideas in various ways. One man reveals a great mind even in his errors, while another repeats correct ideas parrot-fashion. We shall show that this is precisely the case with Belinsky, on the one hand, and Mr. Volynsky, on the other. The conservative conclusions which Belinsky drew from Hegel’s philosophy, although totally incorrect, at the same time do him great honour by showing that he was perhaps the finest of all the minds that have ever entered the field of literature in our country; the idealist liberalism of Mr. Volynsky, however, is nothing but phrasemongery of the lowest kind.

p One more word. When the "man who conceived eternity" set about portraying any process of development he really did succeed in pinpointing and recording its main elements. In this respect Mr. Volynsky differs from the "man who conceived eternity”. He undertook to show us the main periods in the history of the development of Russian criticism, but it transpired that there were no such “periods” at all, only chaos, and masses of misconceptions, the black cloud of which grew bigger and bigger, making the already overcast Russian sky darker and darker, until our critical Messiah appeared at last and the bright sun of reason shone out over our land in the person of Mr. Volynsky. The appearance of Mr. Volynsky thus constitutes the first “period” in the history of Russian thought.

_p The "man who conceived eternity" would hardly have accepted this result of our author’s “labours”.

•Hill