Shipwreck. Tom Stoppard
the result? Scepticism. Materialism. Triviality.
Ogarev, still furious and agitated, leaps up.
OGAREV Repeat what you said!
AKSAKOV Scepticism—materialism—
OGAREV Before!
AKSAKOV Censorship is not all bad for a writer—it teaches precision and Christian patience.
OGAREV (to Aksakov) Chasing after a false what?
AKSAKOV (ignoring) France is a moral cesspit, but you can publish anything you like, so you’re all dazzled—blinded to the fact that the Western model is a bourgeois monarchy for philistines and profiteers.
HERZEN Don’t tell me, tell them.
Ogarev goes out.
AKSAKOV (to Herzen) Oh, I’ve heard about your socialist utopianism. What use is that to us? This is Russia … (to Granovsky) We haven’t even got a bourgeoisie.
GRANOVSKY Don’t tell me, tell him.
AKSAKOV It’s all of you. Jacobins and German sentimentalists. Destroyers and dreamers. You’ve turned your back on your own people, the real Russians abandoned a hundred and fifty years ago by Peter the Great Westerniser!—but you can’t agree on the next step.
Ogarev enters.
OGAREV I demand that you finish what you were going to say!
AKSAKOV I’m afraid I can’t remember what it was.
OGAREV Yes, you can!
AKSAKOV A false beard …? No … A false passport …?
Ogarev goes out.
AKSAKOV (cont.) We have to reunite ourselves with the masses from whom we became separated when we put on silk breeches and powdered wigs. It’s not too late. From our village communes we can still develop in a Russian way, without socialism or capitalism, without a bourgeoisie, yes, and with our own culture unpolluted by the Renaissance, and our own Church unpolluted by the Popes or by the Reformation. It can even be our destiny to unite the Slav nations and lead Europe back to the true path. It will be the age of Russia.
KETSCHER You’ve left out our own astronomy unpolluted by Copernicus.
HERZEN Why don’t you wear a peasant’s shirt and bast shoes if you want to advertise the real Russia, instead of dressing it up like you in your costume? Russia before Peter had no culture. Life was ugly, poor and savage. Our only tradition was submitting ourselves to invaders. The history of other nations is the history of their emancipation. The history of Russia goes the opposite way, to serfdom and obscurantism. The Church of your infatuated iconpainter’s imagination is a conspiracy of pot-house priests and anointed courtiers in trade with the police. A country like this will never see the light if we turn our backs to it, and the light is over there. (He points.) West. (He points the other way.) There is none there.
AKSAKOV Then you that way, we this way. Farewell.
Leaving, Aksakov meets Ogarev storming in.
AKSAKOV (cont.) We lost Pushkin—(He ‘shoots’ with his finger.)—we lost Lermontov. (He ‘shoots’ again.) We cannot lose Ogarev. I ask your forgiveness.
He bows to Ogarev and leaves. Herzen puts his arm around Ogarev.
HERZEN He’s right, Nick.
GRANOVSKY It’s not the only thing he’s right about.
HERZEN Granovsky … let’s not be quarrelling when Natalie comes back.
GRANOVSKY I’m not quarrelling. He’s right about us having no ideas of our own, that’s all.
HERZEN Where would they come from when we have no history of thought, when nothing has been handed on because nothing can be written or read or discussed? No wonder Europe regards us as a barbarian horde at the gates. This huge country, so vast it takes in fur-trappers, camelherders, pearl-fishers … and yet not a single original philosopher, not one contribution to political discourse …
KETSCHER Yes—one! The intelligentsia!
GRANOVSKY What’s that?
KETSCHER It’s the new word I was telling you about.
OGAREV Well, it’s a horrible word.
KETSCHER I agree, but it’s our own, Russia’s debut in the lexicon.
HERZEN What does it mean?
KETSCHER It means us. A uniquely Russian phenomenon, the intellectual opposition considered as a social force.
GRANOVSKY Well … !
HERZEN The … intelligentsia! …
OGAREV Including Aksakov?
KETSCHER That’s the subtlety of it, we don’t have to agree with each other.
GRANOVSKY The Slavophiles are not entirely wrong about the West, you know.
HERZEN I’m sure they’re entirely right.
GRANOVSKY Materialism …
HERZEN Triviality.
GRANOVSKY Scepticism above all.
HERZEN Above all. I’m not arguing with you.
GRANOVSKY But—don’t you see?—it doesn’t follow that our own bourgeoisie has to adopt the same values as in the West.
HERZEN No. Yes.
GRANOVSKY How would you know, anyway?
HERZEN I wouldn’t. It’s you and Turgenev who’ve been there. I still can’t get a passport. I’ve applied again.
KETSCHER For your health?
HERZEN (laughs) It’s for little Kolya … Natalie and I want to consult the best doctors …
OGAREV (looking) Where is Kolya …?
KETSCHER I’m a doctor. He’s deaf. (Shrugs.) I’m sorry.
Ogarev, unheeded, leaves to look for Kolya.
TURGENEV It’s not all philistines, either. The only thing that’ll save Russia is Western culture transmitted by … people like us.
KETSCHER No, it’s the Spirit of History, the ceaseless March of Progress …
HERZEN (venting his anger) Oh, a curse on your capital letters! We’re asking people to spill their blood—at least spare them your conceit that they’re acting out the biography of an abstract noun!
KETSCHER Oh, it’s my conceit? (to the others) There was nothing wrong with that coffee, either.
HERZEN (to Granovsky, conciliatory) I’m not starry-eyed about France. To sit in a café with Louis Blanc, Leroux, Ledru-Rollin … to buy La Réforme with the ink still wet, and walk in the Place de la Concorde … the thought excites me like a child, I admit that, but Aksakov is right—I don’t know the next step. Where are we off to? Who’s got the