Pastry, Champagne, and Unshared Happiness

{The Little Red Blog has been invited to Buffalo this week to help assess the recent draft picks made by the Buffalo Bills, and (maybe) to appear as a guest on the Buffalo Plus podcast! Oh, and there's also a granddaughter's wedding to attend, and a great grandson to chat with about current events; and don't even get me started on the fact that I will just miss (by three days!) a live show by Alison Pipitone, whose sister Natalie still owes me a date night because I have the same birthday (but not birth year) as her husband.}  

What does it say about me that the book I have chosen to bring along when I travel this week from Montana to Buffalo (with lengthy airport layovers in both directions) is Arthur Mendel’s “Dilemmas of Progress in Tsarist Russia”? Couldn’t I have found something by Stephen King? Is Russian history normally considered good cross-country travel reading?

Whatever, as they say. I have made my choice and I look forward to reading about “Legal Marxism and Legal Populism” in 19^th-century Russia. The Little Red Blog will be closed, of course, while I am away; Pascal the existential Russian blue cat refuses to take responsibility for maintaining it in my absence. Expect no further activity from us for the next two weeks.

As a parting gift before I go, I offer the following quotes, all from Russian authors, which Arthur Mendel used as epigraphs for his book:

What is it to me that there is a world opened to me of ideas in art, in religion, in history, when I cannot share this with all who should be my brothers? A man’s inner life is incomplete if it does not take upon itself the interests of society and humanity. A living person bears in his spirit, in his heart, in his blood, the life of society. He is hurt by its misfortune, tormented by its suffering, flourishes in its health. (Vissarion Belinsky, 1811-1848)

Remember how things were: the educated minority, having long enjoyed its privileged position, its aristocratic, literary, artistic, governmental ambience, at last felt a pang of conscience and remembered its forgotten brothers—for it is they, none other, who are dying of hunger, of cold, it is their muttering we hear above us and below us, in garrets and in the cellars, while we sit on the ‘piano nobile,’ over pastry and champagne, talking of socialism. (Alexander Herzen, 1812-1870)

Human life is characterized by two movements: ascent and descent. Man dares to climb upwards, to transcend himself and his environment; on this path he gains spiritual strength and creates new life and new values. Yet he cannot forget those left below, those incapable of reaching the summits of creative knowledge and vision; he must descend so that he may attend to the needs of his brothers, who are all destined for a high calling. Even as he soars upward, man does not, or ought not, disregard the world and humanity outside and excuse himself from responsibility for others. (Nikolai Berdyaev, 1874-1948)

How can one reconcile the striving for absolute truth and beauty with the absolute postulate of equality, of the equal value of all people? (Peter Struve, 1870-1944)

I have an incredible, passionate desire to live, and to live always means to strive to move higher, toward perfection, and to achieve it. Yet only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life. An unshared happiness is not happiness. The two basic ideals of modern man, without which he is unthinkable, are the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice. (Boris Pasternak, 1890-1960)

I cannot explain why the pathos and tragedy of Russian history affects me as it does. The quotes above illustrate how the best and most sensitive Russian minds of the 19^th (and the early 20^th) century wanted so much more and so much better for their countrymen than what was ultimately delivered: in Alexander Pushkin’s words, “the Russian riot, senseless and cruel.” But maybe it’s not just Russia; maybe it’s the crooked timber of humanity. 

I will be reflecting on such things as I travel and as I read Mendel’s Dilemmas of Progress.

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What can a poor boy do?