Voyage the coast of utop.., p.9
Voyage: The Coast of Utopia Part I,
p.9
MICHAEL My God, I'm surrounded by egoists! Hegel lived so that Belinsky could sleep at night!?—so that this scribbling kopeck-counter can squeak ‘Reality!’ at me when my spirit is in chains and the whole world conspires against me with agriculture and … oh, God, I have to get to Berlin! That's the sole meaning of my life! Who will be my saviour? Is there nobody who sees that the future of philosophy in Russia hangs on lending me a few miserable roubles? Then you'll see! I'll show you all … !
Michael blunders out of the room and is heard stumbling and shouting his way down the stairs.
JUNE 1840
In atrocious weather Michael stands by the guardrail of a tender—a riverboat—with rain sluicing down on him from a black sky. On the shore, Herzen watches him. Michael has to shout against the storm.
MICHAEL Goodbye! Goodbye, Herzen! Thank you! Goodbye, Russia! Goodbye.
JULY 1840
A street (St Petersburg).
Belinsky, hurrying away, crosses the path of Herzen, who carries a magazine journal.
HERZEN Are you Belinsky?
BELINSKY Yes.
HERZEN I am Herzen. Our friend Bakunin has perhaps spoken of me.
BELINSKY (flustered) Has he? Oh, yes, I see …
HERZEN St Petersburg is a lonely city for us Moscovites … Still, with National Notes … (He indicates his journal) you no longer have the cares of editorship. I'm sorry about the Moscow Observer, but to be honest, it made mental confusion uninteresting.
BELINSKY Did you like any of it?
HERZEN I liked the colour.
BELINSKY That was Bakunin's idea. He's on his way to Germany now, I don't know how he managed it.
HERZEN I saw him off on the tender to Kronstadt.
BELINSKY That would be it. How much did you lend him?
HERZEN A thousand.
BELINSKY (laughs) When I have to borrow a hundred, the humiliation makes me ill. For Michael a new friend is the means of recuperation.
HERZEN I met Bakunin at a charity ball where the guests were drinking toasts to the Hegelian categories, ‘to Essence,’ ‘to Idea’ … Six years ago when I went into exile, Hegel was hardly mentioned. Now you can't buy a bootlace without the shop-clerk asking your opinion of existence-in-itself. It was a fancy-dress ball. Until I'd seen a six-foot ginger cat raise its glass to Absolute Subjectivity, the full meaning of exile hadn't come home to me.
BELINSKY Have you read my article?
HERZEN And then there were your articles … To rail against the march of history was pointless and self-important, to deplore the unfortunate details was pedantic, and for art to concern itself was ridiculous … Evidently, Hegel was a philosopher I should study carefully. And what did I find? You've got Hegel's Dialectical Spirit of History upside down and so has he. People don't storm the Bastille because history proceeds by zigzags. History zigzags because when people have had enough, they storm the Bastille. When you turn him right way up, Hegel is the algebra of revolution. The Dialectical Spirit of History would be an extravagant redundancy even if one could imagine what sort of animal it was supposed to be … a gigantic ginger cat, for example. Belinsky! … Belinsky! We're not the plaything of an imaginative cosmic force, but of a Romanov with no imagination whatsoever, a mediocrity. He's the sort of person you see behind a post office counter who points to the clock at one minute past five and won't sell you a stamp … and he's got the whole country quaking like a schoolroom under a sadistic pedagogue. Nowhere does authority feel freer, nothing restrains it, not shame before our neighbours nor the judgement of history. In the vilest autocracies in the worst of times, Spinoza wasn't flogged. Heine wasn't sent to the mines for a poem, no one came for Rousseau in the night for singing revolutionary songs at a drunken party. In the taxonomy of despotism, Russia is a genus to itself. The English flog their sailors and soldiers, too, but here we have floggings in the Institute of Engineers! Oh yes, I've read your articles. You've committed intellectual suicide.
BELINSKY Well, you have the moral right. Exile is your badge of honour—(passionately)—but I also suffer for what I think and write. For me, suffering and thinking are the same thing!
Herzen is chastened.
HERZEN In exile I lived the life of a minor official. My duties included countersigning the police reports on my supervision—I see why you insist that Gogol is a realist. I also fell in love, by letter post, and got married after a midnight elopement as romantic as anything in George Sand, and now our firstborn is a year old. I never had a better year in my life than my last year of exile. You have nothing to learn from me about suffering. But about the Cat … the Cat has no plan, no favourites or resentments, no memory, no mind, no rhyme or reason. It kills without purpose, and spares without purpose, too. So, when it catches your eye, what happens next is not up to the Cat, it's up to you. (He nods farewell.)
BELINSKY I saw you once before. It was in the Zoo Gardens, you were with Stankevich … just before you were arrested.
HERZEN That was the last time I saw Stankevich. We parted almost on a quarrel. That's a lesson to us. Forgive me if I spoke harshly about your …
BELINSKY He's not dead, is he?
Pause. Belinsky cries out.
HERZEN I'm sorry … yes … Granovsky's had a letter from … Berlin. Stankevich died in Italy a month ago.
Belinsky looks up at the sky and shakes his fists at it.
BELINSKY Who is this Moloch that eats his children?
HERZEN (Pause.) It's the Ginger Cat. (Herzen leaves.)
A GINGER CAT, smoking a cigar and holding a glass of champagne, watches Belinsky from a little distance. There is music.
SPRING 1843
The stage fills with dancers and party guests passing through. ‘Fancy dress’ is de rigueur but in the main lightly honoured (a Shepherdess, a Spanish Lady, a Byron, a Cossack) rather than concealing identity, as in the case of the Ginger Cat, who really is a huge, upright disreputable cat … who soon moves out of view along with the throng, without Belinsky having noticed him.
Tatiana, Alexandra and Natalie are in an agitated, anxious huddle over a letter of several pages. Natalie reads and passes pages to Alexandra, who reads and gives them to Tatiana, who has already read the letter.
Varenka is dancing with Dyakov. Varvara enters, encountering Turgenev as a masked Harlequin. She cuts him, intent on intercepting Varenka. Turgenev leaves.
VARVARA (to Varenka) Alexandra's dancing too many dances.
VARENKA But she's dancing with her husband.
VARVARA You don't know everything, you know.
VARENKA You mean—? (pleased) Oh … !
Varenka abandons Dyakov, whom Varvara belatedly acknowledges.
VARVARA (to Varenka) You don't know, you don't know!
Varenka hurries away. Dyakov offers his arm to Varvara.
VARVARA (cont. ) (to Dyakov) Well, I said all would be well, didn't I?—Varenka's back and you're together.
DYAKOV I'm the happiest man in the world.
They leave together.
Chaadaev enters with Belinsky.
CHAADAEV What is your costume, by the way?
BELINSKY Sackcloth and ashes.
CHAADAEV There's no shame in changing your opinion.
BELINSKY Yes, I'm good at that, it's one of my best things. How is it that everybody but me knows what he thinks and sticks to it! I was wrestling with my angel while he whispered in my ear, ‘Belinsky, Belinsky, the life and death of a single child weighs more than your whole construction of historical necessity.’ I couldn't keep it up. I was broken by it.
CHAADAEV But I meant changing your mind about Pushkin. You told me when he was still alive that it was over with him.
BEINSKY I didn't know what he was going to give us from the grave. But his time was up just the same. It's the age of Pushkin which is over: that's why we all remember where we were when we heard he was dead. I always believed that the artist expresses his age by singing with no more purpose than a bird. But now we need a new kind of song, a different singer. Pushkin's Tatiana loves Onegin but stays faithful to the dullard she married, a heroine to her creator. Put her into George Sand and she'd be a joke, a dullard herself, faithful to a moribund society—this from a man who was once exiled for his poetry, and said if he hadn't been in exile he would have joined the Decembrists! Well, the man and the artist can no longer pass each other in the doorway taking turns to be at home: there's only one person under the roof, he can't be separated from himself, and must be judged all together …
CHAADAEV If I could bring Pushkin back to life by reducing George Sand to a fine powder and sprinkling it on his grave, I'd leave for Paris tonight with a coffee grinder in my luggage.
BELINSKY Oh God, you're right, you're right!
In his fervour he embraces Chaadaev, unsteadying him.
CHAADAEV Your changes of opinion are gaining speed, I think I must go home before I fall over … and there's another Tatiana waiting her turn …
Chaadaev bows to Tatiana as he leaves and she enters.
TATIANA Vissarion … we thought Moscow had lost you forever.
BELINSKY No, I … I'm just back to … To tell you the truth, I'm getting married … No one you know. A young woman.
TATIANA But you're in love!
BELINSKY I wouldn't go so far as to say that.
TATIANA Then you must be lonely in St Petersburg.
BELINSKY I heard you'd been ill.
TATIANA Ill? … Yes … He's over there, on the balcony, can you see him? The Harlequin. He knew Michael in Berlin. He wants to be a poet.
BELINSKY Too tall, I'm afraid. Have you heard from Michael? He's discovered revolution!
TATIANA We never used to care about politics.
BELINSKY He doesn't care about them now. Revolution is his new philosophy of self-fulfilment.
TATIANA Will you wait for me?
Tatiana goes to Turgenev. Belinsky waits.
TATIANA (cont.) I only want to ask you something.
TURGENEV I am very glad to see you. Are you all right now?
TATIANA Yes. My letters must have been … tiresome.
TURGENEV You will always be …
TATIANA Your sister, your muse, yes … Well, it was just a fevered imagination. But even now it's a joy to remember. I lived with my whole heart and soul. Everything around me was transfigured. I will never be so happy, there's no philosophy which prepared me for it, so tell anybody you like that I loved you and laid my unasked-for love at your feet.
TURGENEV What did you … ?
TATIANA It's Michael. He's going to go to prison unless someone helps, and I don't know where else to …
TURGENEV How much?
TATIANA Four thousand roubles. I know you have already …
TURGENEV I can't pay it all.
TATIANA What should I write to him?
TURGENEV Half.
TATIANA Thank you.
TURGENEV (shrugs) Simplicity is always welcome. More and more. (Pause.) There's a miller's wife … I met her when I was out shooting in the country outside Petersburg … She would never accept anything from me. But one day she said to me, ‘You ought to give me a present.’ ‘What would you like?’ I said. ‘Bring me some scented soap from St Petersburg,’ she replied. So, next time, I did. She ran off with it, and came back presently all pink in the face, and, with her lightly scented hands stretched out to me, she said, ‘Kiss my hands as you kiss the hands of your fine Petersburg ladies …’ I knelt before her … I don't think I've experienced a lovelier moment in the whole of my life.
Tatiana runs away in tears. Turgenev sees Belinsky waiting and approaches him.
TURGENEV (cont.) Are you Belinsky? Forgive me … I would be honoured if you would accept …
Turgenev takes a small book from his pocket and presents it with a small bow. Belinsky takes it and looks at it.
BELINSKY You are a poet?
TURGENEV That's for you to say. As you see, I am perhaps unnecessarily shy about meeting my readers in my true identity …
BELINSKY But … surely you don't always go about in … ?
TURGENEV I mean on the title page.
BELINSKY Of course. (He opens the book.) ‘Parasha’ … (He turns to the first lines.) ‘I do not like ecstatic young women … I dislike their pale round faces …’
TURGENEV It's the first thing in my own voice. (He bows.) Ivan Turgenev. You are our only critic.
Turgenev leaves.
The Ginger Cat, smoking a cigar, is left behind by a group of guests who cross the stage. Belinsky and the Ginger Cat look at each other for a long moment.
BELINSKY Belinsky.
The Ginger Cat takes the cigar from his mouth.
GINGER CAT Of course.
They continue to look at each other.
AUTUMN 1844
Premukhino, before sunset.
Semyon and Servants place chairs to face the sunset. Alexander, aged seventy-six, enters from the house.
ALEXANDER Another sunset, another season nearer God.
Varvara appears and calls from the house.
VARVARA What are you doing? You'll catch your death!
ALEXANDER We're going to see the sun go down. Vasilly says it's tomorrow the weather's due to turn.
VARVARA Come inside—I never heard such nonsense.
ALEXANDER What's nonsense about it?
Semyon moves a chair out of Alexander's path just in time.
ALEXANDER (cont.) Who's there? Semyon?
SEMYON Yes, sir.
ALEXANDER Good man.
He puts out his hand. Semyon kisses it.
ALEXANDER (cont.) No, you fool, where is it?
Semyon guides Alexander into one of the chairs.
VARVARA I'll tell you what's nonsense about it. First, there's no sun, and second, if there were any sun, you couldn't see it. And to top it off, Vasilly's been dead for years.
ALEXANDER He stocked up when he knew the end was near. (Pause.) Has he? Of course. Who's our forester now?
VARVARA You sold the forest.
ALEXANDER Sit by me.
Varvara returns to the house.
ALEXANDER (cont.) The moon is up and yet it is not night…’ Who's there?
SEMYON May I beg your honour the favour to ask you, sir … There's talk there's a levy ordered from the Army, sir. No one wants to go for a soldier, your honour—our young lads are in a terror of it, and the mothers are worse … if it's true, sir … ?
ALEXANDER (angrily) Too proud to serve their country, is it? If I hear any more I'll volunteer the lot of them, levy or no levy!—If they stole less and worked more, I could afford the redemption ticket when the levy comes round, and let my neighbours send their souls to go soldiering instead.
Semyon kneels and hugs Alexander's legs.
SEMYON Forgiveness, your honour! Have pity!
Tatiana comes from the house with a rug.
TATIANA What now? Mother says put this round you. (Tatiana puts the rug round him.)
ALEXANDER Snooping at my letters! (to Semyon) That's enough.
TATIANA You know he can't read. What is it, Semyon … ?
Semyon leaves, bowing his way backwards.
ALEXANDER It was the eagle. Wasn't it?—the eagle embossed on the envelope, and none of your wood-pulp paper—fine linen, heavy as cream. They're like children, the bogeyman is everywhere come to get them. Go on with you, old friend … and tell those gossips it wasn't the levy, the Emperor has worse to communicate to their innocent master.
TATIANA Semyon's gone, Father. I'll tell him. (Tatiana gets up, but her attention is caught.) Oh—look! The cloud's lifting …
Sunshine—weak and nearly red.
TATIANA (cont.) Just in time!
ALEXANDER I can see it.
TATIANA What was the letter?
ALEXANDER Like the bonfire.
TATIANA Was it about Michael?
ALEXANDER Michael isn't coming home again. Premukhino knows it, too. The spirit has left it. You grew up in Paradise, all of you children, in harmony that was the wonder of all who came here. Then, in the time of Liubov's betrothal to that cavalry officer—what was his name? … and what was the point in the end? Michael … (Pause.) Or a new spirit, which is worse … (Pause.) I got the priest to read it to me, so to be ready when I tell your mother. Michael was invited to the Russian Legation in Berne to receive an official summons to return home … for getting mixed up with some socialist rabble-rouser they had there in Switzerland. Fancy! Among all those pretty cows and mountains and cheese. Michael's in Paris now, it seems. Criminal proceedings were started against him in St Petersburg. No one told me. By imperial decree, former Ensign Michael Bakunin has been condemned to loss of his noble rank and to banishment to Siberia for an indefinite period, with hard labour … and his property is declared confiscated to the State. What can they mean by that?
Tatiana takes his hand and after a moment wipes her eyes with it.
ALEXANDER (cont.) Sun's gone. Has it?
Tatiana nods.
ALEXANDER (cont.) I saw it go down.
TATIANA Yes.
ALEXANDER Has it Set?
TATIANA Yes. I said yes.
Fade to black.
Tom Stoppard, Voyage: The Coast of Utopia Part I
