§11
The period that followed the suppression of the Polish revolt in 1830 was a period of rapid enlightenment. We soon perceived with inward horror that things were going badly in Europe and especially in France—France to which we looked for a political creed and a banner; and we began to distrust our own theories.
The simple liberalism of 1826, which by degrees took, in France, the form sung by Béranger and preached by men like La Fayette and Benjamin Constant, lost its magic power over us after the destruction of Poland.
It was then that some young Russians, including Vadim, took refuge in the profound study of Russian history, while others took to German philosophy.
But Ogaryóv and I did not join either of these groups. Certain ideals had become so much a part of us that we could not lightly give them up. Our belief in the sort of dinner-table revolution dear to Béranger was shaken; but we sought something different, which we could not find either in Nestor’s Chronicle[[56]] or in the transcendentalism of Schelling.
[56]. The earliest piece of literature in Russian.