II
The collected Russian edition of Herzen’s works—no edition was permitted by the censorship till 1905—extends to seven thick volumes. These are: one volume of fiction; one of letters addressed to his future wife; two of memoirs; and three of what may be called political journalism.
About 1842 he began to publish articles on scientific and social subjects in magazines whose precarious activity was constantly interrupted or arrested by the censorship. His chief novel, Who Was To Blame? was written in 1846. From the time when he left Russia he was constantly writing on European politics and the shifting fortunes of the cause which he had at heart. When he was publishing his Russian newspapers in London, first The Pole-Star and then The Bell, he wrote most of the matter himself.
To readers who are not countrymen or contemporaries of Herzen’s, the Memoirs are certainly the most interesting part of his production. They paint for us an astonishing picture of Russian life under the grim rule of Nicholas, the life of the rich man in Moscow, and the life of the exile near the Ural Mountains; and they are crowded with figures and incidents which would be incredible if one were not convinced of the narrator’s veracity. Herzen is a supreme master of that superb instrument, the Russian language. With a force of intellect entirely out of Boswell’s reach, he has Boswell’s power of dramatic presentation: his characters, from the Tsar himself to the humblest old woman, live and move before you on the printed page. His satire is as keen as Heine’s, and he is much more in earnest. Nor has any writer more power to wring the heart by pictures of human suffering and endurance. The Memoirs have, indeed, one fault—that they are too discursive, and that successive episodes are not always clearly connected or well proportioned. But this is mainly due to the circumstances in which they were produced. Different parts were written at considerable intervals and published separately. The narrative is much more continuous in the earlier parts: indeed, Part V is merely a collection of fragments. But Herzen’s Memoirs are among the noblest monuments of Russian literature.
III
The Memoirs, called by Herzen himself Past and Thoughts, are divided into five Parts. This translation, made six years ago from the Petersburg edition of 1913, contains Parts I and II. These were written in London in 1852-1853, and printed in London, at 36 Regent’s Square, in the Russian journal called The Pole-Star.
Part I has not, I believe, been translated into English before. A translation of Part II was published in London during the Crimean war;[[3]] but this was evidently taken from a German version by someone whose knowledge of German was inadequate. The German translation of the Memoirs by Dr. Buek[[4]] seems to me very good; but it is defective: whole chapters of the original are omitted without warning.
[3]. My Exile in Siberia, by Alexander Herzen. (Hurst and Blackett, London, 1855). Herzen was not responsible for the misleading title, which caused him some annoyance.
[4]. Erinnerungen von Alexander Herzen, by Dr. Otto Buek (Berlin, 1907).
To make the narrative easier to follow, I have divided it up into numbered sections, which Herzen himself did not use. I have added a few footnotes.