Philosophy
and the Poet
How long
since I've written to you, dear brother ! That hateful
examination it prevented me from writing to
you and Papa, and from looking up I. N.
Schidlovsky. And what came of it all ? I have not yet been
promoted. O horror ! to live another whole year in
this misery ! I should not have been so furious
did I not know that I am the victim of the sheerest
baseness. The failure would not have worried me so
very much, if our poor father's tears had not
burned into my soul. I had not hitherto known the
sensation of wounded vanity. If such a feeling had
got hold of me, I might well have blushed for myself. .
. . But now you must know that I should like
to crush the whole world at one blow. . . . I lost so
much time before the examination, and was ill and
miserable besides ; but underwent it in the fullest and most
literal sense of the word, and yet have failed. ...
It is the decree of the Professor of Algebra, to
whom, in the course of the year, I had been somewhat cheek, and who was base enough to remind me of
it today, while ostensibly explaining to me the reason
for my failure. Out of ten full marks I got an
average of nine and a half, and yet I'm left. . . .
But hang it all, if I must suffer, I will. . . . I'll waste no
more paper on this topic, for I so seldom have an
opportunity to talk with you.
My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more, one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is feather-headed it is a delirium of the heart. What do you mean precisely by the word know ? Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, and not through the reason. Were we spirits, we could dwell in that region of ideas over which our souls hover, seeking the solution. But we are earth-born beings, and can only guess at the Idea not grasp it by all sides at once. The guide for our intelligences through the temporary illusion into the innermost centre of the soul is called Reason. Now, Reason is a material capacity, while the soul or spirit lives on the thoughts which are whispered by the heart. Thought is born in the soul. Reason is a tool, a machine, which is driven by the spiritual fire.
When human reason (which would demand a chapter for itself) penetrates into the domain of knowledge, it works independently of the feeling, and consequently of the heart. But when our aim is the understanding of love or of nature, we march towards the very citadel of the heart. I don't want to vex you, but I do want to
say that I
don't share your views on poetry or philosophy.
Philosophy cannot be regarded as a mere equation
where nature is the unknown quantity ! Remark that
the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends
God, and consequently does the philosopher's
work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less
than philosophical inspiration. Consequently
philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher
degree of
poetry ! It is odd that you reason quite in the sense of
our contemporary philosophy. What a lot of crazy
systems have been born of late in the cleverest and
most ardent brains ! To get a right result from
this motley troop one would have to
subject them
all to a mathematical formula. And yet they are
the " laws " of our contemporary philosophy ! I
have jabbered enough. And if I look upon your
flabby system as impossible, I think it quite likely
that my objections are no less flabby, so
I won't
bother you with any more of them.
Brother, it is so sad to live without hope ! When I look forward I shudder at the future. I move in a cold arctic atmosphere, wherein no sunlight ever pierces. For a long time I have not had a single outbreak of inspiration. . . . Hence I feel as the Prisoner of Chillon felt after his brother's death. The Paradise-bird of poetry will never, never visit me again never again warm my frozen soul. You say that I am reserved; but all my former dreams have long since forsaken me, and from those glorious arabesques that I once could fashion all the gilding has disappeared. The thoughts that used to kindle my soul and heart have lost their glow and ardency;
or else my
heart is numbed, or else. ... I am afraid to go
on with that sentence. I won't admit that all the
past was a dream, a bright golden dream.
Brother, I have read your poem. It urged some tears from my soul, and lulled it for a while by the spell of memories. You say that you have an idea for a drama. I am glad of that. Write your drama, then. If you had not these last crumbs from the Elysiaijt feast, what would be left you in life ? I am so sorry that these last few weeks I have not been able to look up Ivan Nikolayevitch (Schidlovsky) ; I was ill. Now listen. I think that the poet's inspiration is increased by success. Byron was an egoist ; his longing for fame was petty. But the mere thought that through one's inspiration there will one day lift itself from the dust to heaven's heights some noble, beautiful human soul; the thought that those lines over which one has wept are consecrated as by a heavenly rite through one's inspiration, and that over them the coming generations will weep in echo . . . that thought, I am convinced, has come to many a poet in the very moment of his highest creative rapture. But the shouting of the mob is empty and vain. There occur to me those lines of Pushkin, where he describes the mob and the poet :
" So let the foolish crowd, thy work despising, scream,
And spit upon
the shrine where burns thy fire supreme,
Let them in
childish arrogance thy tripod set a-tremble. . . ."
Wonderful, isn't it ? Farewell.
Letter to his brother Michael,
Petersburg, October 31, 1838
Translated by
Ethel Goldburn Wayne
Petersburg, October 31, 1838
Translated by
Ethel Goldburn Wayne
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