Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, by Alexander Radishchev (chapters 1 and 2)

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DEPARTURE

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01

fter supping with my friends, I settled in the carriage.

As was his habit, the coachman drove the horses at full pelt, and within a few minutes I was already outside the city. Parting from one who has become essential to every minute of our existence is difficult, even for a short time. Parting is difficult.

But blessed is he who is able to take his leave without smiling: love or friendship secure his comfort. As you pronounce “farewell,” you weep. But remember that you will return and let your tears at this imagining vanish like dew before the face of the sun. Blessed is he who weeps while hoping for a consoler;1 blessed is he who sometimes lives in the future; blessed is he who lives in a reverie. His being is enriched, his joys multiply, and tranquility preempts the gloom of sadness by placing images of rejoicing in the mirrors of the imagination.—I lie in the carriage. At last the din of the postal carriage’s bell, grown wearisome to my ears, summoned beneficent Morpheus.

The sorrow of my departure, pursuing me into my deathlike state, represented me to my imagination on my own. I beheld myself in an expansive valley that had lost all pleasantness and variety of greenery owing to the heat of the sun. No source of freshness could be

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Departure

found here, there were no shady trees for the alleviation of the heat.

Alone, abandoned, a hermit in the middle of nature! I shuddered.

“Wretch,” I cried, “where are you? Where has everything that used to entice you vanished? Where is that which made your life pleasant?

Could it be that the enjoyments of which you partook were a dream and fancy?” When the carriage hit the rut that happened to be in the road and woke me up it was a lucky stroke.—The carriage stopped.

I lifted my head a bit. I see: in a deserted place stands a house of three stories. “What have we here?” I asked my driver. “The postal station.”

“Where then are we?” “In Sofia.” He was meanwhile unharnessing the horses.

SOFIA

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02

ilence everywhere. Plunged as I was in my ruminations, I failed to note that my carriage had long been standing without horses. The coachman who took me there drew me out of my pensiveness. “Sir, Master, a tip!” Although such a collection is not legal, everyone pays willingly in order not to travel according to the decrees.2 The twenty kopecks served me well. Anyone who has traveled by post coach knows that а voucher for horses is an indemnifying letter without which there is a cost to every purse (excepting that of a general, possibly). Taking it out of my pocket, I walked with it in the way people sometimes walk holding a cross to protect themselves.

The stationmaster was snoring when I lightly took him by the shoulder. “Who the devil is pestering me? What an idea it is to travel out of the city at night. There are no horses; it is still very early. Why don’t you go over, then, to the tavern, drink some tea or have a sleep?” Once he spoke, Mr. Stationmaster turned to the wall and again began to snore. What to do? I shook him again by the shoulder.3 “Damn it, as I’ve already said there are no horses,” and Mr. Stationmaster covered his head in the blanket and turned away

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Sofia

from me.—“If the horses are all in use,” I reflected, “then it is unfair to be disturbing the sleep of the stationmaster. But if the horses are in the stable. . . .”—I decided to find out whether Mr. Stationmaster was telling the truth. I went out to the courtyard, found the stable, and there discovered up to twenty horses; and while it is true that their bones were showing, they would have dragged me as far as the next station. From the stable, I returned to the stationmaster, shook him much harder. It seemed to me that I had the right to do so after discovering that the stationmaster had lied. He jumped up hastily and before he managed to force his eyes open asked, “Who has arrived? It isn’t. . . .” But he came to his senses when he saw me and said, “Apparently, young fellow, in the past you acquired the habit of treating drivers this way. They used to be beaten with sticks.

Times have changed.” The stationmaster lay down in the bed angrily.

I wanted to treat him like those drivers of olden times were treated when they were exposed as liars. But the generosity I had exercised in giving a gratuity to the city driver aroused the drivers of Sofia to harness horses for me as fast as possible, and just as I was planning to take it out on the back of the stationmaster, a little harness bell chimed in the courtyard. I remained a good citizen. That is how twenty copper kopecks spared a peace-loving man from prosecution, my children from the example of intemperance in anger; and from this I learned that reason is a slave to impatience.

The horses hurry me along. My coachman has launched into song, a mournful one, as usual. Anyone who knows the melodies of Russian folk songs will admit that they contain something that expresses spiritual anguish of the soul. Practically all the melodies of songs of this kind have a soft tone.—One could learn from the people’s ear for music how to govern. You can find the composition

of our nation’s soul in these songs.4 Consider the Russian person: you will find him to be thoughtful. If he wants to dispel boredom or if, as he himself calls it, he wants to have good time, he goes to a tavern. When in his cups he is spontaneous, bold, disagreeable.

Should something cross him, he will quickly begin an argument or a fight.—The barge-hauler who visits a tavern with his head hanging and returns bloodied from fisticuffs is able to explain a lot of the Russian history that until now was enigmatic.

My coachman sings.—It was the third hour of the morning. Just like the little bell earlier, now his song effected sleep in me.—O Nature, having wrapped man at birth in the swaddling cloth of bitter sorrow, dragging him through the length of his entire life span across the harsh ridges of fear, grief, and sadness, you gave him sleep as a joy.—One goes to sleep, and everything has ended.—To an unhappy man waking up is unbearable. Oh, how pleasant death is for him. If it truly is an end to bitter sorrow.—All-benevolent Father, would you really avert your gaze from a man who bravely ends a troubled life? To you who are the source of all blessings a sacrifice of this kind is proffered. You alone give strength when one’s nature, shaken, falters. This is the voice of the Father summoning His child to Him. You gave me life, to You I return it, it has already become futile in this world.

Sofia

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P R A I S E F O R Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is an outstanding monument of Enlightenment thought in Russia. The distinguished scholars Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman have skillfully translated Radishchev’s archaic high style to heighten the emotional pathos and to contrast official rhetoric to the reality of human suffering.

That this important work is again available in English is cause for celebration.”

—M ARCUS C. L EVITT, author of The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow offers a troubling account of Russian civilization at the end of the eighteenth century, a critique both deliberately archaic in its style and eminently resonant with the political and social anxieties of our contemporary moment. Kahn and Reyfman could not have found a better time to revive Radishchev’s classic in their remarkably lucid and readable translation.”—LUBA G OLBURT, author of The First Epoch: The Eighteenth Century and the Russian Cultural Imagination

“Combining profound linguistic sophistication with enviable literary style, Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman, two of today’s most esteemed scholars of Russian literature, have produced the definitive translation of Radishchev’s classic revolutionary cri de coeur.”—D OUGLAS S MITH, author of Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs “This is a much needed and long overdue new translation with a highly informative introduction and helpful annotations of Radishchev’s influential book, masterfully done by two premier specialists in eighteenth-century Russian literature. The translation preserves elements of Radishchev’s idiosyncratic style without sounding overly archaic, a notable achievement.”

—VALE RIA S OBOL, author of Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination

ISBN: 978-0-231-18590-5