Сборник статей - И время и место: Историко-филологический сборник к шестидесятилетию Александра Львовича Осповата

18Ср. в пародии на «Бесов» детей Насти, восторженно демонстрирующих «взрослость» («мы все понимаем» [366]).

19 Чернышевский Н.Г. Что делать? Из рассказов о новых людях. Л., 1975. С. 123–124.

20Там же. С. 206.

21Ср. эпиграмматический отклик Майкова (1888) на поэму уже давно почившего Толстого «Иоанн Дамаскин»: «Свел житие он на что? На протест за „свободное слово" / Против цензуры, и вышел памфлет вместо чудной легенды. / Все оттого, что лица говорящего он не видал пред собою» ( Майков А.Н. Соч.: В 2 т. М., 1984. Т. 2. С. 353). Майков, вероятно, не знал, что наслышавшийся сходных укоризн Толстой в письме Маркевичу от 4 февраля 1859 года утверждал: «Пусть они откроют Четьи-Минеи – они увидят, что все было точно так, как я описал» (107).

В связи с запретом «Царя Федора Иоанновича» Толстой писал ему же 13 декабря 1868 года: «В произведении литературы я презираю всякую тенденцию <���…>. Не моя вина, если из того, что я писал ради любви к искусству, явствует, что деспотизм никуда не годится» (246).

22«Ах, кстати, что это за сказка о Лорелее? Ведь это ее скала виднеется? Говорят, она прежде всех топила, а как полюбила, сама бросилась в воду» ( Тургенев И. С. Собр. соч.: В 12 т. М., 1955. Т. 6. С. 251).

23Там же. Т. 3. С. 92–94, 82, 84–86,104.

24Ср. в письме Рудина Наталье: «Мне природа дала много – я это знаю и из ложного стыда не стану скромничать перед вами <���…> но я умру, не сделав ничего достойного сил моих, не оставив за собою никакого благотворного следа <���…>. Я остаюсь одинок на земле для того, чтобы предаться, как вы сказали мне сегодня поутру с жестокой усмешкой, другим, более свойственным мне занятиям <���…>. Если б я по крайней мере принес мою любовь в жертву моему будущему делу, моему призванию; но я просто испугался ответственности, которая на меня падала…» (Там же. С. 107, 108).

25В концовке возникает еще один отзвук русалочьей темы. Простившись, Перекопин «выпрыгнул из лодки и, по колено в зеленой тине, быстро зашагал к усадьбе». Герой не утонул (не погиб от любви), но замарался. «Зеленая тина» ассоциируется с лягушками, которых потрошат нынешние поповичи и прочие нигилисты.

26Толстой не принял обвинений в безнравственности, которые через Маркевича предъявил балладе Катков. Отстаивая автономию искусства (которое не может и не должно быть «учебником жизни»), поэт, однако, взял под защиту богатыря-певца в письме Маркевичу от 9 октября 1871 года: «Впрочем, с уверенностью могу Вам сказать, что, по сведениям, которые я собирал насчет описываемого происшествия, Попович и девица, проплыв 25 минут на лодке, сошли на берег в деревне по названию Папусевка, Авсеевы лозы тож, где их повенчал добрый священник отец Герасим Помдамурский, в чем ему содействовал благочинный Сократ Борисович Гермафродитов, случайно находившийся там» (379–380).

27Стихотворение «То было раннею весной…» тоже посвящено прошлому, «утру наших лет», когда поэт был счастлив, а не вспоминал о счастье.

Afanasij Fet’s memoirs lovingly memorialize the non-occurrence of events of no obvious significance, non-episodes that are punctuated with narrative codas about people readers have never heard of. So, for example, “in the course of my three-year stay [at boarding-school, 1835-37]… there was not a single fatality among the 70 pupils. And even illnesses were very rare. Not only was the word ‘doctor’ not mentioned at the school, there was not even a place called an infirmary” [Fet 1893: 98]. The text goes on to introduce “one of the most learned of the institution’s teachers, Eisenschmidt,” who did get ill and (presumably for lack of a place called an infirmary) suffered his illness in his room, where he was ministered to overnight by the pupils. Keeping the patient’s pipe lit for the duration while taking a chance to smoke it themselves, the boys turned his room into a veritable smokehouse. And there the chapter ends.

It was perhaps reasonable for Fet to mention that pupils did not often die at his school, since deaths of young people were proportionately commoner then, while preceding text stresses the physical rigors of school discipline. And if the learned teacher Eisenschmidt came to Fet’s mind only in this medical connection, then this would be the passage where we would most naturally make his acquaintance. And yet readers can be forgiven for seeing the passage as evidence of the ageing poet’s garrulousness. Do we really need to know this? What purpose can be served by Fet’s saying that while at school he never so much as heard the word ‘doctor’? Of all the words Fet never heard at school, why does this one bubble up?

Fet’s school was located in what is today an Estonian town of some 14,500 inhabitants. The town is called Vôru in Estonian (and in the local language – Vôro) but was known to both Russians and Germans in Fet’s day by its German name Werro (Russian Beppo). 1 In English both names are still used. The town is not one of the region’s oldest centers, or one with an especially rich cultural tradition. It was founded in 1784, by order of Catherine II, 2for the purpose of creating a population center linking Baltic Dorpat (Tartu), about 70 km away, with Russian Pskov, from which Werro lies some 80 km distant. 3

The general area, wasted and then acquired by Peter I in his Great Northern War, was still relatively under-populated in the latter eighteenth century, and the foundation of the town was an early initiative among the many intended by Catherine and her successors to improve the administration of the region and, eventually, to russify it (a project of which Catherine herself was, at least in the short term, unhopeful). 4Werro registered 242 inhabitants in 1787 and by 1825 had nearly tripled in size: its population of 708 represented a gain of about 12 people a year. 5From 1825 to 1849, the rate of growth rose to about 32 people a year, more than doubling the 1825 population, to 1481. As the population grew, its ethnic composition also changed: over three quarters of the founding population was ethnically German, and Estonians (who were then generally serfs) constituted under 10 %. According to a count made in 1817 (in the midst of the 1816-19 process of manumitting serfs, first in Estland and then in Livland), the proportion of Estonians in Werro had increased to 17.5 % and the proportion of Germans had fallen to about two thirds. This ethnic shift persisted across the nineteenth century. 6Fet’s three-year stay in Werro thus took place during a time of burgeoning growth, albeit on a modest provincial scale. This growth and the accompanying change in ethnicity entailed changes in culture and social class, and sometimes, as will appear below, conflicting perspectives on issues of local importance. The demographic picture also suggests that the town stood in need of increasing social services – schools such as the one Fet attended and medical services such as those the word for which Fet says he never heard.

When Fet was brought to Werro as a teenager, he happened upon a kind of serendipitous Golden Age in local education. The head of his school, Heinrich Krümmer (i796-1873), had come to the Russian Baltic region in 1825 for the purpose of establishing a boys’ school there, but he originally intended to carry out his plan in Dorpat. 7For various reasons, including not only the demographics of Werro but also the government’s new suspicions about Krümmer’s foreign religious sponsorship, 8the government decided not to allow him to work in Dorpat, but did permit him to open a new school in Werro, which stood in need of one. The Werro school was finally established in 1832. Although not the first German-language school for boys in the town, Krümmer’s school immediately became the best, and for about a decade it was a virtual machine for preparing boys from the Baltic German upper classes to enter the university at Dorpat and then embark on successful careers, often in the service of the Russian government. Once Werro had got a reputation as a strong educational center, other schools also competed, and in 1840 there were 29 schoolteachers (of whom six were women) working at seven schools in Werro. Between 1830 and 1840, the number of schools more than doubled, while the number of pupils rose from 48 to 245. While the growth in schooling to some extent corresponds simply to population growth, it was also specific to the cultural context in Werro. When that context changed, Krümmer’s school declined, and its founder retired from it in 1849; the number of pupils in Werro schools was smaller in 1850 than it had been a decade before. According to H. Eisenschmidt [Eisenschmidt: 74–78], the decline was precipitated by russifying government policies, demanding Russian language preparation at a higher level than corresponded to the availability of good teachers, but a number of other factors also contributed. 9The growth of the town meant that demand for land and services rose, and with them – prices. Locals blamed Krümmer for bringing in “outsiders,” while Krümmer himself, in an effort to cope financially, tried various undertakings to bring in more money, but they all took time and energy, and they all failed [Eisenschmidt: 74–78]. He found himself at odds with the local powers and even with some of his own senior teaching staff, and by 1847 Krümmer, in unpublished correspondence (Herrnhut Archive R19 G aa 24 a 15), talks about Werro as a kind of hell populated by a narrow-minded and short-sighted citizenry.