Potugin scratched his head.
‘The exception, you know, only proves the rule, but even in that instance we could not dispense with bragging. If we’d said, for example, that Glinka was really a remarkable musician, who was only prevented by circumstances—outer and inner—from becoming the founder of the Russian opera, none would have disputed it; but no, that was too much to expect! They must at once raise him to the dignity of commander-in-chief, of grand-marshal, in the musical world, and disparage other nations while they were about it; they have nothing to compare with him, they declare, then quote you some marvellous home-bred genius whose compositions are nothing but a poor imitation of second-rate foreign composers, yes, second-rate ones, for they’re the easiest to imitate. Nothing to compare with him? Oh, poor benighted barbarians, for whom standards in art are non-existent, and artists are something of the same species as the strong man Rappo: there’s a foreign prodigy, they say, can lift fifteen stone in one hand, but our man can lift thirty! Nothing to compare with us, indeed! I will venture to tell you some thing I remember, and can’t get out of my head. Last spring I visited the Crystal Palace near London; in that Palace, as you’re aware, there’s a sort of exhibition of everything that has been devised by the ingenuity of man—an encyclopædia of humanity one might call it. Well, I walked to and fro among the machines and implements and statues of great men; and all the while I thought, if it were decreed that some nation or other should disappear from the face of the earth, and with it everything that nation had invented, should disappear from the Crystal Palace, our dear mother, Holy Russia, could go and hide herself in the lower regions, without disarranging a single nail in the place: everything might remain undisturbed where it is; for even the samovar, the woven bast shoes, the yoke-bridle, and the knout—these are our famous products—were not invented by us. One could not carry out the same experiment on the Sandwich islanders; those islanders have made some peculiar canoes and javelins of their own; their absence would be noticed by visitors. It’s a libel! it’s too severe, you say perhaps.... But I say, first, I don’t know how to roar like any sucking dove; and secondly, it’s plain that it’s not only the devil no one dares to look straight in the face, for no one dares to look straight at himself, and it’s not only children who like being soothed to sleep. Our older inventions came to us from the East, our later ones we’ve borrowed, and half spoiled, from the West, while we still persist in talking about the independence of Russian art! Some bold spirits have even discovered an original Russian science; twice two makes four with us as elsewhere, but the result’s obtained more ingeniously, it appears.’
‘But wait a minute, Sozont Ivanitch,’ cried Litvinov. ‘Do wait a minute! You know we send something to the universal exhibitions, and doesn’t Europe import something from us.’
‘Yes, raw material, raw products. And note, my dear sir: this raw produce of ours is generally only good by virtue of other exceedingly bad conditions; our bristles, for instance, are large and strong, because our pigs are poor; our hides are stout and thick because our cows are thin; our tallow’s rich because it’s boiled down with half the flesh.... But why am I enlarging on that to you, though; you are a student of technology, to be sure, you must know all that better than I do. They talk to me of our inventive faculty! The inventive faculty of the Russians! Why our worthy farmers complain bitterly and suffer loss because there’s no satisfactory machine for drying grain in existence, to save them from the necessity of putting their sheaves in ovens, as they did in the days of Rurik; these ovens are fearfully wasteful—just as our bast shoes and our Russian mats are,—and they are constantly getting on fire. The farmers complain, but still there’s no sign of a drying-machine. And why is there none? Because the German farmer doesn’t need them; he can thrash his wheat as it is, so he doesn’t bother to invent one, and we ... are not capable of doing it! Not capable—and that’s all about it! Try as we may! From this day forward I declare whenever I come across one of those rough diamonds, these self-taught geniuses, I shall say: “Stop a minute, my worthy friend! Where’s that drying-machine? let’s have it!” But that’s beyond them! Picking up some old cast-off shoe, dropped ages ago by St. Simon or Fourier, and sticking it on our heads and treating it as a sacred relic—that’s what we’re capable of; or scribbling an article on the historical and contemporary significance of the proletariat in the principal towns of France—that we can do too; but I tried once, asking a writer and political economist of that sort—rather like your friend, Mr. Voroshilov—to mention twenty towns in France, and what do you think came of that? Why the economist in despair at last mentioned Mont-Fermeuil as one of the French towns, remembering it probably from some novel of Paul de Kock’s. And that reminds me of the following anecdote. I was one day strolling through a wood with a dog and a gun——’
‘Are you a sportsman then?’ asked Litvinov.
‘I shoot a little. I was making my way to a swamp in search of snipe; I’d been told of the swamp by other sportsmen. I saw sitting in a clearing before a hut a timber merchant’s clerk, as fresh and smooth as a peeled nut, he was sitting there, smiling away—what at, I can’t say. So I asked him: “Whereabouts was the swamp, and were there many snipe in it?” “To be sure, to be sure,” he sang out promptly, and with an expression of face as though I’d given him a rouble; “the swamp’s first-rate, I’m thankful to say; and as for all kinds of wild fowl,—my goodness, they’re to be found there in wonderful plenty.” I set off, but not only found no wild fowl, the swamp itself had been dry for a long time. Now tell me, please, why is the Russian a liar? Why does the political economist lie, and why the lie about the wild fowl too?’
Litvinov made no answer, but only sighed sympathetically.
‘But turn the conversation with the same political economist,’ pursued Potugin, ‘on the most abstruse problems of social science, keeping to theory, without facts...!—he takes flight like a bird, a perfect eagle. I did once succeed, though, in catching one of those birds. I used a pretty snare, though an obvious one, as you shall see if you please. I was talking with one of our latter-day “new young men” about various questions, as they call them. Well, he got very hot, as they always do. Marriage among other things he attacked with really childish exasperation. I brought forward one argument after another.... I might as well have talked to a stone wall! I saw I should never get round him like that. And then I had a happy thought! “Allow me to submit to you,” I began,—one must always talk very respectfully to these “new young men”—“I am really surprised at you, my dear sir; you are studying natural science, and your attention has never up till now been caught by the fact that all carnivorous and predatory animals—wild beasts and birds—all who have to go out in search of prey, and to exert themselves to obtain animal food for themselves and their young ... and I suppose you would include man in the category of such animals?” “Of course, I should,” said the “new young man,” “man is nothing but a carnivorous animal.” “And predatory?” I added. “And predatory,” he declared. “Well said,” I observed. “Well, then I am surprised you’ve never noticed that such animals live in monogamy.” The “new young man” started. “How so?” “Why, it is so. Think of the lion, the wolf, the fox, the vulture, the kite; and, indeed, would you condescend to suggest how they could do otherwise. It’s hard work enough for the two together to get a living for their offspring.” My “new young man” grew thoughtful. “Well,” says he, “in that case the animal is not a rule for man.” Thereupon I called him an idealist, and wasn’t he hurt at that! He almost cried. I had to comfort him by promising not to tell of him to his friends. To deserve to be called an idealist is no laughing matter! The main point in which our latter-day young people are out in their reckoning is this. They fancy that the time for the old, obscure, underground work is over, that it was all very well for their old-fashioned fathers to burrow like moles, but that’s too humiliating a part for us, we will take action in the light of day, we will take action.... Poor darlings! why your children even won’t take action; and don’t you care to go back to burrowing, burrowing underground again in the old tracks?’