730
VISSARION BELINSKY
is today, and, in truth, I don't know whether I am fortunate or
unfortunate
in
being so constituted that for me to
think
and to
feel, to understand and to suffer are one and the same thing. And
this
is where fanaticism comes in. Do you know that my present
self hates my past self and that
if
I had the power it would surely
go ill with those who are today what I was a year ago. In finding
oneself alive in a coffin with hands tied behind one's back how
can one help seeing the devil's tail everywhere! What is it to me
that some day reason will triumph, that the future will be
good,
when fate
has
consigned me
to
be the witness of chance, unreasoo
and brute force? What is it to me that your
children
and mine will
enjoy
the good when through no fault of my own I am so badly off
now? Shall I simply retreat into myself? No, far better to die, to be
a living corpse! The promise of recovery is nothing but words, mere
words! You write me that you have outlived your love and have
lost the capacity of loving. . . . I feel the same; philistines, men
meanly concerned with immediate reality alone, are laughing at us
and celebrating their victory. Ah, woe, woe, woe! But of all that
later....
A fine Prussian government,
in
which we fancied to see the
ideal of a rational State! What is there to say?-scoundrels,
tyrants
lording
it
over mankind! A member of the triple alliance of the
executioners of liberty and reason. So that's your Hegel. ... The
most rational government is that of the North American States,
and right below it I rank the governments of England and
France....
II
St. Petersburg, June 28, 1841
. . . On your advice I have bought Destunis's
Plutarch
and
read it.
It
has driven me wild. Good God, how much life is still
stirring in me that will go to waste! Of all the heroes of antiquity
three have won all my love, adoration and enthusiasm-Timeleon
and the Gracchuses. The life of Cato (of Utica and not the Elder
prute) exhales the sombre grandeur of tragedy: what a noble
per–
sonality! Pericles and Alcibiades have exacted from me the full
tribute of wonder and delight. What about Caesar?-you will ask.
My friend, let me tell you that at present I am utterly absorbed
