stepan trofimovič verxovenskij and the esthetics of his time

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Stepan Trofimovič Verxovenskij and the Esthetics of His TimeAuthor(s): Charles A. MoserSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 157-163Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307994 .

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STEPAN TROFIMOVIC VERXOVENSKIJ AND THE ESTHETICS OF HIS TIME*

Charles A. Moser, George Washington University

Stepan TrofimoviE Verxovenskij is a central figure of The Possessed. Not only is he the biological father of Petr Verxovenskij, the chief representative of the powers of chaos and political evil in the novel; he also speaks for his own generation, which brought the radicals of the 1860s into being. Thus he emerges as both progenitor and antagonist to the younger generation. Moreover, he is the first character to whom we are introduced and the last from whom we take our leave, if we exclude the novel's concluding chapter, which is primarily given over to tying up loose ends-and some very major ones-in good nineteenth-century style. Still, The Possessed could quite conceivably end with Stepan Trofimovic's peaceful death in the depths of the Russian countryside.

Those drawn to prototypes have often linked Stepan with the Moscow University historian Timofej Granovskij, a leading intellectual of the 1840s. Indeed, in his notebooks for the novel Dostoevskij refers to Stepan as Gra- novskij, and in the final text explicitly connects the two at the very begin- ing. Like Granovskij and several other men of the 1840s who dealt with medieval topics, both Russian and West European, Stepan in his youth had a strong interest in history, and wrote a "brilliant" dissertation on the subject of early fifteenth-century Hanau and the reasons why it never realized its historical potential.' Dostoevskij draws an unflattering parallel between Stepan and Granovskij-who did not publish much and influenced others largely through personal contact-when he remarks that Stepan, like many Russian scholars, had accomplished very little, and perhaps even nothing (8).

Ivan Turgenev was certainly the chief prototype of Karmazinov, but there are also connections between him and Stepan Trofimovic. They are almost precisely the same age, for example: Turgenev was born in 1818, Stepan a year earlier. Like Turgenev, Stepan spent some time in Berlin, the fountainhead of European Romanticism. The two men displayed strong literary interests. Finally, both were accused of pandering to the radical generation of the 1860s, and although they claimed to agree with many SEEJ, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1985) 157



158 Slavic and East European Journal

positions adopted by the radical intelligentsia, they still defended the pri- macy of the esthetic idea in human affairs.

Dostoevskij permitted himself certain anachronisms in creating Stepan Trofimovic. First we learn that Stepan returned from abroad to take up a university lectureship at the close of the 1840s. But shortly thereafter, in speaking of Stepan's unpublished poem, Dostoevskij realizes that its esthetics are rooted in a period ten to fifteen years preceding, and simply rescues himself with a parenthetic remark to that effect (9). For if intellectually Stepan belongs with Granovskij and the great generation of the 1840s, as a poet he fits in with Russian Romanticism of the 1830s, and most particu- larly with its extreme variant, which achieved prominence from about 1833 through 1835.

This extreme Romantic phase swept along not only minor and now often forgotten figures of the type discussed below, but also much more major writers. Examples of its influence would include the spooky horrors of Gogol"s "Vij" (begun in 1833 and published in 1835) and "A Terrible Ven- geance" (published in 1833), and the themes of incest and blood vengeance as well as the overblown rhetoric found in Lermontov's novel Vadim, which he worked on from 1832 to 1834. Even the sober Pu'kin paid tribute to the vogue of the fantastic and extraordinary in such works as "The Queen of Spades," written in 1833 and published the following year; and it is no accident that the suicide of the quintessential Romantic Il'ja Teglev in Turgenev's "Knock ... Knock ... Knock" (1870) occurs in 1834.

Aside from all this, Goethe in his late phase had a considerable influence on extreme Russian Romanticism, and Stepan is explicitly connected with him. Thus, at one point (72) we learn that Goethe's portrait hangs in Ste- pan's rooms; at another, in speaking of his attitudes toward religious belief, Stepan declares that he is "more like an ancient pagan, like the great Goethe or an ancient Greek" (33).

Dostoevskij also openly links Stepan with a prominent representative of extreme Russian Romanticism, though one now little remembered: Nestor Kukol'nik (1809-68). Stepan recalls Kukol'nik by his elegant appearance (19), and dresses to resemble the famous portrait of Kukol'nik with top hat and cane done by Karl Brjullov in 1836-the same portrait with which Varvara Petrovna was much taken. Certainly both Stepan Verxovenskij and Nestor Kukol'nik impressed those with whom they came into personal contact.

The essence of Stepan's esthetic of the 1830s is incorporated in his unpublished subversive poem, which the narrator summarizes in some detail and with considerable irony. It is, we are told, "some sort of allegory, in a lyrico-dramatic form reminiscent of Part Two of Faust." There are various choruses, including a chorus of "souls which have not yet lived but would very much like to live a bit." Then follows a "Festival of Life," dur-



Stepan Trofimovi' Verxovenskij 159

ing which various objects, including a "mineral," sing about matters of lofty significance. A young man appears who first declares that he wishes to lose his mind, a reference to the Romantic theme of madness. Then we encoun- ter another young man, the embodiment of death, who appears before a concourse of all the nations. And finally, "humanity, taking [God's] place, immediately begins a new life with a new order of things" (9-10), in a satiri- cal slash at the notion of a divinized humanity, also very prevalent during the Romantic period.

The closest sources in Russian literature for Stepan's poem are certain writings called "fantasies" or "mysteries," very fashionable during the hey- day of extreme Romanticism from 1833 to 1835, which were produced by forgotten poets whom Soviet specialists now patronizingly call the "vulgar Romantics."2 One such writer was Evdokija Petrovna Rostop'ina (1811-58), who in 1835 published "Nezivsaja duma. Fantastiteskaja oratorija."3 Like Stepan's poem, this work includes a chorus of souls which have never lived, as well as choruses of sinners who have finished their days and poets who have done the same. At the poem's center is a soul which very much wishes to live a full-blooded "passionate and wondrous" life. At the poem's conclusion it sets out to take on earthly existence despite attempts at dissuasion.

The most typical extreme Russian Romantic of this period, however, was Aleksej Vasil'eviE Timofeev (1812-83), whose meteoric career began in 1832.4 Hailed by Osip Senkovskij as Pu'kin's heir, a new Byron, he reached the zenith of his fame precisely when "fantasies" and "mysteries" were so much in vogue. His narrative poem of 1835 Elizaveta Kul'man was just such a fantasy.5 The heroine is a strange girl, obviously not meant for this world below, who consorts regularly with her "Genius" and departs with him for the heavens upon her death at the work's conclusion. In the course of the poem Elizaveta converses with such things as flowers, trees, butterflies, grass, grains of sand; sometimes she talks with apparitions; and in the poem's fifth scene (of 15) there appear clouds "in the form of a fantastic woman, in the form of a cliff, in the form of an enormous lion, in the form of a fantastic maiden."

Timofeev's other works include "Zizn' i smert'" (1834) and most especial- ly "Poslednij den'" (1834), which describes a feast held on the last day of creation.6 The fashionable choruses are there: choruses of fiery spirits, choruses of black spirits, choruses of righteous men. At the conclusion the poet describes the end of the world as he imagines it. The final prose passage is worth quoting, since not many poets have had the temerity of a Timofeev in describing creation's final moment:

The sky falls in an entire shroud. There is a remarkable brilliance from all sides. The earth is destroyed in the twinkling of an eye and hurtles into the nether abysses in millions of flaming fragments. In the illuminated air are visible millions of people, and with a thunderous echo, in the empty space left by the destroyed universe, there ring out the sounds of the last trump.7




In a curious way what might be called the "eschatological Romanticism" of the years 1833-35 left its imprint on The Possessed. For one thing, the extreme Romantics chose only the grandest of topics, neglecting matters of less than cosmic or at least national significance. Thus Timofeev, after ceas- ing to publish entirely in 1843, reappeared thirty-three years later with an immense poem entitled Mikula Seljaninovic, which dealt with the origin of the Slavs and the entire history of Russia. But Stepan TrofimoviE had even more grandiose pretensions than a Timofeev: when he began tutoring Liza, "he would recite to her some sorts of poems about the creation of the universe and the earth, about the history of humankind" (59).

More important than this, however, was the fact that the eschatological Romantics were given to imagining the most fantastically cataclysmic events, and then writing about them with a genuinely Gogolian "lightness of mind." That master creator the poet could envision and in a sense effect the most radical transformations of reality. Stepan TrofimoviE shares this approach, not only in his writing but in his opinions on contemporary affairs. At one stage the narrator comments that "higher liberals" like Stepan believed that fundamental social changes could occur with the great- est of ease. "We had long ago foretold for the Pope," the narrator recalls,

the role of a simple metropolitan in a united Italy, and we were entirely convinced that this whole problem of a thousand years' standing, in our humanitarian age of industry and rail- roads, could be resolved with a snap of the fingers. (30)

Beyond this, Dostoevskij himself-though he does not share Timofeev's sense of the transitoriness of the physical universe-incorporated into The Possessed a Realist modification of the Romantic eschatology by emphasiz- ing uncomfortably the uncertainty of the social order, which to most people seems nearly as firm as the physical universe. In Dostoevskij's world that order can be seriously threatened by the movement of ideas, even by the distribution of stupid leaflets. The novel leaves us with a disturbingly mod- ern sense of the uncertainty of social reality and the unknowability of truth, the incipient chaos just underneath all civilization.

As Stepan TrofimoviE lies dying, his mind on the eternal things of the spirit, he cries: The measureless and the infinite are just as necessary to man as the small planet on which he lives.... [L]ong live the Great Thought! The eternal, measureless Thought! (506)

Thus at his life's end, though on a more exalted plane, he returned to his experiences in Berlin years before, when, as he wrote to Varvara Petrovna, he stayed up late at night discussing such things as the "idea of eternal beauty" (ideja vec'noj krasoty) (25). That phrase contains the key to Stepan TrofimoviE's philosophy.



Stepan TrofimoviE Verxovenskij 161

Aside from the metaphysical notion of the eternal, the phrase "idea of eternal beauty" has two components: the intellectual (idea) and the esthetic (beauty). Dostoevskij is more skeptical about Stepan's commitment to ideas than his dedication to beauty, although, to be sure, his attitude toward Stepan is nowhere entirely free of irony, and much of the time his irony is thick indeed.

Stepan views himself as an intellectual, a man of ideas, one who seeks to comprehend everything with which he comes in contact. While complaining bitterly to the narrator about his son, Stepan berates his fellow Russians for their inability to produce an idea: it is "the easiest thing of all to cut people's heads off," he says, "and the hardest thing of all to have an idea!" (172). Stepan believes it his duty as a "higher liberal"--"that is, a liberal without any aim," in the narrator's sarcastic gloss-to "propagandize ideas" (30). But, as the narrator comments elsewhere, it will not do to have just any idea: it must be "some higher and extraordinarily noble thought" (9). That is why, at the end, Stepan strikes out on foot on the highroad with no destination, for there is an idea in the highroad which vanishes once one settles upon such a practical thing as a destination (481).

Beyond his devotion to the life of the mind, however, Stepan possesses a fine esthetic sense. Early on the narrator refers (though not entirely posi- tively) to the "artistic quality of his nature" (22); near the conclusion he attributes Stepan's receptivity to religious experience to the "artistic suscep- tibility of his nature" (505). Certainly his autobiography as he recounts it to Sofja Matveevna has been much altered for internal esthetic reasons.

Although superficially it might seem that Stepan Trofimovi' and the radical generation should agree on many things, in fact his dedication to esthetics creates a great gulf between them. When in the St. Petersburg of the early 1860s he defends the proposition, to invert that widespread cliche of the day, that "boots are inferior to Pu'kin, and even very much inferior" (23); when he argues that the actress Elisabeth Rachel stands above any peasant, or even the peasantry as a whole (31-32); when he even holds his own against Varvara Petrovna, who, infected by the new ideas, maintains that a simple pencil is more important than the Sistine Madonna (265); when he does all these things he is defending an entire worldview with extensive philosophical and political ramifications. At the explicit level ordinary people may lack any understanding of this, but the uproar which engulfs the fete when Stepan mounts his strenuous defense of esthetics demonstrates their grasp of the point at an unarticulated level.

The well-known passage in which Stepan discusses What Is to Be Done? (the narrator informs us that he has been studying it in order to do battle with the younger generation on its own terms) sets forth an important point: "I agree that the author's basic idea is correct," he would say to me feverishly. "But that makes it all the worse! It's our idea, all right, ours to be sure; we, we were the first to plant it, nurture




it, prepare it-and then what more that was new could they have said after what we said! But Lord, how all this is expressed, distorted, twisted!" he would exclaim, drumming his fingers on the book. "Were these the conclusions we sought? Who can recognize the original thought here?" (238)

At the core of these remarks lies a combination of the intellectual and the esthetic: the conclusions which the radicals have drawn from the original idea have destroyed not only its intellectual unity, but its esthetic whole- ness as well (perhaps the two cannot be easily separated); everything has become "distorted" and "twisted." Stepan seems to argue that in the intellectual sense the idea had been thoroughly investigated by his generation, but the younger generation's twisted esthetic sense had led it to distort both the original idea and the conclusions drawn from it. As he puts it at the f8te: "Just one thing has happened: a dislocation of purpose, a replacement of one beauty by another!" (372). The new ideal of beauty which has won out among intellectuals is a false one: it is propagated by individuals who are by nature simply incapable of recognizing true beauty.

In the course of his great argument before the fete with Varvara Petrovna on radical doctrine, Stepan declares that at the f8te he will speak

about that vicious slave, that stinking and degenerate lackey who will first clamber up onto a ladder with scissors in hand to rip apart the divine countenance of the great ideal [the Sistine Madonna], in the name of equality, envy, and ... good digestion [pixevarenie]. Let my curse thunder forth. . . . (265-66)

The "lackey" whom Stepan imagines destroying the Madonna will raise his hand against the embodiment of an esthetic ideal. He will do so in the name of another ideal, but that ideal will have nothing to do with beauty. Instead, he will act in the name of "equality, envy, and good digestion"- and certainly the latter two ideals, in Stepan's eyes, are squalid and ugly, the very exemplars of spiritual degradation. The lackey will act in the name of an ideal which does not exalt man to the spiritual heights, but rather reduces him to the lowest common denominator.

The esthetic ideas of the 1840s had in fact been redefined in a similar way by Cerny'evskij in his Esthetic Relations of Art to Reality of 1855. Cernysev- skij rejected the Romantic notion of the sublime in art as that which reminds us of the infinite, redefining it as that which depicts something very large, but still within our mundane experience rather than leading beyond it. In like manner he described the beautiful as something of which we form our conceptions only through observation of real life. In short, Cerny'evskij removed the ideal from a metaphysical plane to an entirely natural one. No place remained for either the infinite or the eternal, two conceptions of central importance to Stepan Trofimovic.

Thus Stepan TrofimoviE differs philosophically with the radicals in a fundamental way. True, he shares with them a devotion to ideas, and he is



Stepan Trofimoviv Verxovenskij 163

generally progressive and humane; but beyond that his path diverges from theirs. He believes strongly in the importance of the idea of the infinite and the eternal for human life, and he has an inborn sense of the beautiful which the younger generation no longer possesses. And as he approaches death, it is in part his generally esthetic conviction that mankind requires a notion of the infinitely great which leads him to a species of religious belief, though one he accepts largely on his own terms. Dostoevskij recognizes Stepan TrofimoviE's many weaknesses, but he feels that ultimately he is on the right track. The younger generation in the novel ends almost uniformly badly, but to Stepan TrofimoviE it is given to renew his contact with the Russian people in the person of the Bible-seller Sof'ja Matveevna and to arrive at an acceptance of God. In Dostoevskij's eyes Stepan's life could scarcely have had a more satisfactory conclusion.

NOTES

* A version of this paper was presented to the Fifth International Dostoevsky Symposium at Cerisy-La-Salle (France) in August 1983.

1 F.M. Dostoevskij, Polnoe sobranie socinenij (30 vols.; L.: Nauka, 1972-), X, 8. Page references to the novel included in the text will be to this volume

2 See L.Ja. Ginzburg, "Russkaja pobzija 1820-1830-x godov," in L.Ja. Ginzburg, ed., Potty 1820-1830-x godov (2 vols.; L.: Sovetskij pisatel', 1972), I, 47.

3 E.P Rostop'ina, Socinenija (2 vols.; SPb.: Tip. I.N. Skoroxodova, 1890), I, 29-34. 4 See his biography in Russkij biografileskij slovar' (25 vols.; SPb. [Petrograd]: Izdanie

Imperatorskogo russkogo istorideskogo ob?6estva, 1896-1918), XX, 533-35. 5 I have used the text in the first volume of Timofeev's Socinenija v stixax i proze (SPb.: V

Tip. X. Gince, 1837), [167]-262. 6 See the text in Timofeev, 305-47. 7 Timofeev, 346-47.



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