A Herzen Reader

34. The Abuse of a Fiftieth Anniversary [1861]

132 A Herzen Reader hundred members of the audience who attended the university and the retention of those who could prove that they did not attend it. It is remarkable that in all of this the loser was not Kovalevsky, Kostomarov , The Bell, the Copy, or the Cannibals, but Alexander Nikolaevich. Now the censorship will not allow a single word about him. We did him more justice than Aksakov, and even without that, we allowed no abuse of him. So when is Pletnev’s jubilee? Notes Source: “‘Kolokol,’ Kovalevskii, Kostomarov, kopiia, kannibaly,” Kolokol, l. 96, April 15, 1861; 15:72–73, 336. 1. Mischief. 2. Petr A. Pletnev (1792–1865), critic, poet, professor, friend of Pushkin, editor of The Contemporary from 1838 to 1846, and rector of St. Petersburg University from 1840 to 1861.  34  The Bell, No. 96, April 15, 1861. Herzen reacts to the new fashion of celebrating the jubilees of reactionary officials. This essay displays the familiar use of puns and unexpected descriptive phrases.  The Abuse of a Fiftieth Anniversary [1861] For us every kind of public declaration of joy, grief, sympathy, and repugnance is still so new that like children, we do not know when to stop and we make the most innocent game offensive. After the imperial journey through Russia of Alexander Dumas and the election of Molinari into the company of genuinely secret great men1 —we have flung ourselves into fiftieth anniversaries . Grech imitates the old men, Grech reads to the old men, with old lips Grech chews the jubilee victuals, and then describes the dishes and the old men in his own gray speeches.2 The appearance of Grech at the table will soon inspire horror in a family, reminding them that someone is past seventy. We hardly had time to recover from the delightful feelings aroused in us by Grech’s story of how, fifty years earlier, at the entry guardhouse to St. Petersburg, there arrived a young student from Kazan, poor in money The Abuse of a Fiftieth Anniversary 133 but rich in pure mathematics, how he became a professor, despite the fact that he knew what his field was, that he—more an artist and poet—could not for long be satisfied with pure mathematics and entered the ministry of impure mathematics, and now has himself become minister and is now celebrating his jubilee, and all the same—the old Nestor of jubilees could have said—he is repelled by everything pure and because of that hindered the emancipation of the serfs.3 Thus we hardly had time to recover from the story of the young student from Kazan arriving fifty years ago at the entry guardhouse to St. Petersburg , when Grech presented a new old fellow, P. A. Vyazemsky, for a jubilee . What did he do fifty years ago with no Petersburg guardhouse? What is meant by the beginning of his literary activity fifty years ago?4 But this question would have been unimportant, had he done anything sensible during these fifty years. His literary activity, as well as his service record, is known to everyone except the troubadour singing his praises in frightfully poor verse. What thought or thoughts did this anniversary prince give to the younger generation, what task did he accomplish in his half-century? To be “Karamzin’s brother and Pushkin’s friend” and the deputy Minister of Education does not give one the right to such recognition. We don’t know what kind of brother or friend he was but he did a poor job as the deputy Minister of Education. Why all this agitation—the man barely had time to eat his dinner and listen to the singing poet, when he, the old man, was summoned to tea at Yelena Pavlovna’s where the tsar drank to his health. Pogodin himself came from Moscow. What could be added for the fiftieth anniversary of Pushkin—would they really only add Grech’s prose and Sollogub ’s verse?5 Notes Source: “Zloupotreblenie piatidesiatiletiia,” Kolokol, l. 96, April 15, 1861; 15:74–75, 336–39. 1. The elder Dumas traveled to Russia in 1858 and published a book of his impressions ; the Third Department kept an account of honors bestowed on him by aristocrats and local officials. Gustave de Molinari, the Belgian editor of Journal des Économistes, contributed to the reactionary journalist Mikhail Katkov’s publications; in 1860, he traveled to Moscow and was received with great honor by Katkov and his circle...