Steinberg Melancholy and Modernity

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Melancholy and Modernity: Emotions and Social Life in Russia between the Revolutions

Author(s): Mark D. SteinbergSource: Journal of Social History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Summer, 2008), pp. 813-841Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096558Accessed: 29-04-2015 15:58 UTC

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SECTION

I

SADNESS AND SOCIETY

MELANCHOLY

AND

MODERNITY: EMOTIONS

AND

SOCIAL LIFE

IN RUSSIA BETWEEN THE

REVOLUTIONS

By

Mark

D.

Steinberg

University

of

Illinois,

Urbana^Champaign

"The 'modern,' the time of hell." ?Walter Benjamin

In

the

years

of

uncertainty

and

drift

following

the 1905

revolution

in

Russia,

be

fore

the

country

entered

the

maelstrom

of total

war

and

revolution,

public

life

was

thick

with

talk

of emotions.

In

particular,

the

question

of the

obshchestvennoe

nastroenie?translatable

as

the "social

mood"

or

the

"public

mood"?became,

it

self,

a

public

emotional

obsession

as

at

no

time

before. Talk

about social

feeling

in

these

years

was

strongly

linked

to

thoughts

of

time?to

troubling

concerns

about the

nature

of

the

current

epoch

and the

possibilities

for

progress.

Every

one,

it

seemed,

shared these

worries.

The

literary

and

civic

"thick

journals"

of the

educated

as

well

as

mass

circulation

newspapers

and

magazines,

the

highly

cul

tured

poetry

of

this

"silver

age"

in

Russian

literature and the crudest

boulevard

fiction,

all

shared

a

quite

public

preoccupation

with the

meanings

and moods

of

"our times."

Indeed,

among

the

diagnosed

meanings

of

the

age

was

that

it

had

become

an

unprecedented "epoch

of moods"

(epokha

nastroenii)}

Like famil

iar

definitions

of

modernity

itself?a frame

in

which

these

emotions

were

often

interpreted?these

were

fractured and

heteroglot

moods,

ranging

from ecstatic

joy

to

suicidal

despair.

But

this

emotional disorder

was

overshadowed,

contem

poraries

felt,

by

a

vague

body

of

dark

feelings

that

viewed the

present

and the

future with

melancholy.

Few

contemporaries,

to

be

sure,

gave

these moods

so

precise

a

label.

Indeed,

though

the Russian

word melankholiia had been

popular

among

educated

Rus

sians

a

century

earlier,

it

was

now

rarely

heard.2

But

the

archaicization of the

term

itself did

not

make

it

any

less

apt.

Contemporary

Russian

commentators

on

the social mood

in

the

early

1900s

seemed

to

be

quoting

endlessly

from

defini

tions

of

"melancholy"

that had been

articulated

in

Western

Europe

over

several

centuries: "a

tendency

to

gloom

and

a

sense

of

futility

and

despair,"

a

mixture

of

"fear

and

sadness,"

a

"gloomy,

pensive,

discontented

temper,"

a

mixture

of

"world-loathing" and "self-loathing."3

In

contrast

with

these

classic

definitions,

Russian

melancholy

of

the

interrev

olutionary

years

was a

distinctly

social

melancholy.

It

was

social

feeling

in

both

its

unprecedented

reach

across

society

and

in

how

it

was

understood

as an

inter

pretive

category.

Traditional

definitions

of

melancholy

have

long

insisted

on

the

groundlessness

of this mood:

melancholy

as

"sadness

without

cause,"

as

despon

dency

"in

excess

of

what

is

justified

by

the

circumstances,"

as

about

nothing.4

Causation

lay

within?originally

in

the

imbalance

of

physical

"humors"; later,


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3/30

814

journal

of

social

history

summer

2008

in

the

inward

psyche

of the

self;

now

in

neurobiological

illness.

This

was a

mal

ady

of

individual bodies

more

than of

social

ones.

Russian

melancholy

of

the

early

twentieth

century

reversed these

assumptions.

It

was a

mood

understood

to

exist

primarily

in

the

public sphere (private

moods

existed,

of

course,

and

were

recognized,

but

they

attracted

much less

interest than

the

"social"

and

"public"

mood).

And

it

was

seen

as

social

in

its

causes,

as a

product

of

the

contemporary,

indeed

the

modern,

condition.

In

part,

this

social

melancholy

echoed

a

larger

and

older

history

of "modern"

melancholy,

defined

by

feelings

of

loss,

especially

of

"lost

good."

and

mourning.

In

Western

Europe

in

the

wake

of the

French

Revolution,

a

"melancholy

of his

tory"

arose,

as

Peter

Fritzsche

has

termed

it,

marked

by

a sense

of irreversible

loss

of the

past

and of

epistemological

certainty

about

the

present.

Educated

and

sen

sitive

Europeans

like

Fran?ois-Ren?

Chateaubriand

felt like

"strangers"

and

"ex

iles"

in

this

"new

time,"

wandering

amidst

"shapeless

ruins."

Madame de

Sta?l

felt that

a

new sense

of dread

had become

"the

illness

of

a

whole Continent"

in

the nineteenth

century,

a

mal-du-si?cle.5

In Russia

too,

Romantic

poets

like

Vasily

Zhukovsky

nurtured

a

pensive

melancholy

about

a

sick and

fragile

world

filledwith

loss. The

spread

of

modern

secular

science

and

culture

deepened

this

sense

of

aimless

wandering

among

ruins.

The

dominant

"mood" of

European

high

culture

in

the

nineteenth

century,

the

philosopher

and

historian

Robert

Pippin

has

argued,

was

shaded

by

death,

loss,

mourning,

and

melancholy, by

the

"Oedipal shadings

of

modernity

as

trauma."7

Sigmund

Freud would

similarly

diagnose

a

centrality

of loss and

mourning

in

melancholy,

which could result

from

not

only

the

"loss

of

a

loved

person"

but

also

the

"loss

of

some

abstraction

which has

taken the

place

of

one,

such

as

one's

country,

liberty,

an

ideal,

and

so

on."8

Elaborating

on

Freud's

brief

essay

on

this

theme,

the

philosopher

and

psychoanalyst

Julia

Kristeva

has

described

melancholy

arising

from the

"razing

of

symbolic

values,"

from

an

upheaval

in

meanings

and

significations,

such

as

often

accompanies

eras

of

"crisis."9

Russia between the revolutions

was

marked

by

a

comparable

sense

of

living

in

a

landscape

of

ruins,

but

with

a

significant

social

difference.

The

sense

of

dread

thatwriters likeMadame de Sta?l believed had been feltby "awhole Continent"

had

really

been the illness

of

an

educated

elite and

voiced

chiefly

in

private

correspondence,

diaries,

memoirs,

fiction,

and

poetry.

By

the

early

twentieth

century,

at

least

in

Russia,

this

lingering philosophic

dread

had

become

urgent

daily

news.

It

broke

out

of the

confines

of

literature and

letters

to

become

a

remarkably

public

language

reproduced

by

newspaper

reporters,

ournalists,

and

other

writers

for

n

increasingly

broad

readership.

Translated

and

reinvented

for

public

discussion,

and

rethought

against

the

background

of

Russia's

own

intense

experience

with

modern

loss

and

uncertainty,

the

melancholy

malady

of

the

sensitive intellectual, which had not been without its aesthetic pleasures, was

reborn

as

a

dangerous

popular

epidemic.

This

melancholy

was

also

distinctly

less

hopeful

as an

emotional

interpre

tation

of

time?and

the

question

of

time

was

persistently

attached

to

talk

of

public

emotions.

For

many

Europeans

in

the

nineteenth

century

the

loss of

the

past

and

of

certain

meaning

opened

the

possibility

of

alternative

subjectivities

and

itineraries

in

the

present

and

into

the future.

As

Fritzsche

has

written,

"the

ruins

of

the

past

were

taken

to

be

the

foundations

for

an

alternative

present."




4/30

MELANCHOLY

AND

MODERNITY

815

To

be

"stranded"

in

a

perpetual

present

meant to

be liberated from

the

weight

of

the

past,

and thus

to turn

loss

into

possibility.10

In

the

early

twentieth

century,

Russian

commentators

read the

melancholy

of their

times

much

less

optimisti

cally; at least, they could not convince themselves that their readers would be

persuaded

by

optimistic

pleas

to

live

boldly

in

the

present

and

to

look

to

the

future with

imagination

and

hope.

Theirs

was a

melancholy

of

modern

time,

I

will

suggest,

closer

to

Walter

Benjamin's

reading

of Paul

Klee's

painting

?ngelus

Novus: the

angel

of

history

thrown

forward

by

the

storm

of

progress,

its

gaze

turned

backward,

its

eyes

staring

in

alarm

at

the

mounting

debris

and

ruin.11

Worse,

it

seemed

that

when

many

Russians turned their

gaze

forward

in

time,

they

also

saw

catastrophe

and

ruin:

the loss of the future

as

well

as

the

past.

That

Russian

society

was

in

fact

approaching

a

catastrophic

rupture

makes this

sen

sibility

not

only

a

telling signof troubled times, and of the painful acuitywith

which

they

were

apprehended,

but

also

perhaps

an

emotional force that itself

helped

to

undermine

the

strength

of the old.

-The social life of emotions

Historians of

society

are

coming

to

recognize

the

importance

of

interpreting

emotional

perception

and

expression?of

examining

emotions

as

a

text

that

can

yield

meaning,

as a

subjectivity

situated

in

time

and

place,

and

as

a

form

of

so

cial

practice

with real

causative

effect

in

theworld. Often

in

dialogue

with work

by

social-psychologists, anthropologists,

and

literary

scholars,

some

historians

have

been

looking

more

intently

at

the

role of

sentiment

and

feelings

in

the

political

and social life of

communities

and individuals.

Especially

influential

has

been the

view,

developed

in

psychology

and

anthropology

since the

1960s,

that

emotions

are

not

a

separate,

private,

and visceral

sphere

that

occasion

ally

seethes

over

into

the world

of consciousness

but

are

inseparably

entwined

with

culture,

language,

and

thought.

Emotion,

in

this

view,

is

a

social

practice

organized

by

stories

and

images,

an

experience

inseparable

from

the

culturally

situated

language

and

gestures

in

which

it is

conveyed.

The

"old and

vicious

di

chotomy

between intellect and emotion" is

longer

tenable,12

failing along

with

such

similarly

insidious

binaries

as

biology

and

culture,

feeling

and

reason,

self

and

society.

Although

some

social

constructivists

argue

that

no

emotion

exists

apart

from

its

cultural and

social

production,

most

recognize

that

the

biological

cannot

be

completely

effaced. The

emphasis,

however,

focuses

on

emotion

as

a

conceptual

construction,

as

perception,

and

as

interpretation,

but

also,

and

it is

this

side of

new

emotion

theory

that

deserves still

more

emphasis,

as

so

cial

and

cultural

practice.

As

Lila

Abu-Lughod

and

Catherine

Lutz

argue

in

an

influential

collection

of

essays

by

anthropologists,

"emotion

discourse

is

only

ap

parently

about internal state." More

deeply,

it is a discourse about "social

life,"

about social

"problems,"

and

especially

about

power.

Nor

is it

merely

interpre

tive.

Emotion

discourse

can

help produce

experience

and

constitute

reality;

it is

"a

form of

social

action

that

creates

effects

in

the

world."13

Until

quite

recently

only

a

handful

of

historians

have

seriously

examined

emotions

in

social,

cultural,

and

political

history.14

Lucien

Febvre's

appeal

to

historians

in

1941

to

work

to

"reconstitute the

emotional life

of the

past"

had

relatively

little

immediate

effect.15

An

early

sign

of

new

attention

to

emotions




5/30

816

journal

of

social

history

summer

2008

in

history

was

the

appeal

in

1985

by

Peter Steams

and Carol

Steams

for

an

historical

"emotionology,"

followed

by

their

own

work

on

histories of

particular

emotions

in

theAmerican

past.16

Among

recent

historians,

William

Reddy

has

most

systematically

worked with

the

newer

anthropological

and

psychological

theories

of the

emotions.

Concerned

that radical social

constructivism

can

ef

face

human

agency

and

lose

sight

of the

persistent

power

of the

unconscious,

of

the

protean

unpredictability

of

feeling,Reddy

has

argued

for

view

of emotional

expression

as a

performative speech

act

that "translates" diverse

types

of mental

material used

to

engage

the

world,

that

interprets experience

but also defines

it,

that

reflects

but also alters

the

self,

that

is

shaped by

a

community's

developed

emotional

"cultures" but also

gives

these form and

content.17

Notwithstanding

differences

of

emphasis

among

recent

scholars and theorists

of

affect

and

emo

tion,

historians

can

take from this work the useful

encouragement

to

explore

emotion

as

social

practice:

as

grounded

in

dialogues

of self and

society;

as

reflec

tion,

performance,

and

action;

as

instrument

and

influence;

as

both

meaning

fullyordering

and

disruptively

heteroglossic.

Russians

writing

in

the

early

twentieth

century

about the

meaning

of their

times

did

not

need

convincing

that

emotions

were

embedded

in

social life.

They

were

preoccupied

with the

ubiquitous

evidence of

feeling

in

public

life

and viewed

these

emotions

as

signs

to

be read

in

order

to

diagnose

the

state

of their

society,

culture,

and

polity (though explicit

talk of the

political

order

was

much

restricted

by

censorship). Psyche

and self

were not

ignored.

After

all,

this was an

age

in which attention to the

self,

in both literature and

public

dis

courses,

was

rampant.18

And

yet,

though

this

analytical

language

was

available,

public

"emotion talk"

(as

some

psychologists

and

anthropologists

call

it)

over

whelmingly

concerned

not

the

inward emotional self

as a

separate

sphere

but the

intercourse

between

self and

society.

Historians,

it

has

recently

been

observed,

have for

too

long

tended

to

"privilege

...

emotions

as

inward

rather

than social

phenomena."19

For

the

same

reason,

historians have tended

simply

to

ignore

them

as

beside the

point

or

too

elusive

to

study.

Russian

writers

were

inclined

in

the

opposite

direction.

At

a

time

in

the

history

of

interpreting

emotions

when

biological and individual explanations predominated, itsaysa greatdeal that the

Russian

commentators

whose

voices

filled

the

public sphere

(whether

literati

or

journalists

or even

medical

doctors

writing

for the

public)

were

inclined

to

look

instead

mainly

to

the

perceptual

and the social.

That

looking

at

emotions

re

vealed

truths about the

psyche

or

the

body

seemed less

compelling

than

that

looking

at

emotions

allowed

one

to see

social,

public,

and existential

truth?or,

at

least,

to

make claims

about

such

truth.

Consequently,

my

focus

here

is

less

on

the

actual

feelings

of

individuals

than

on

the

double

mirror

of

public

discourse

about

public

emotions,

the

social and

philosophical meanings, but also emotional meanings, that emotions evoked,

and

the

interpretive (including

social-critical

and

political)

uses

to

which

talk

of

emotions

were

put.

Whether

Russian

commentators

correctly

read the

emo

tional

worlds

of their

contemporaries

is

not

the

question

here. That

they

viewed

their

times

as an

extraordinary "epoch

of

moods"

and

obsessively

tried

to

read

emotions

and

to

write

them

into

a

story

and

an

interpretation

of these

times is.

The

location

of this

emotion

talk

was

ambiguous?a

point

important

for

un

derstanding

its

objects

and

sources.

These

stories

of

public

emotions

developed




6/30

MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY

817

at

a

particular,

and

particularly fraught,

time

and

place:

the

imperial capital

St.

Petersburg

in

the

years

between the

1905

revolution and the

outbreak ofWorld

War

I,

as

reported

and

examined

in

the

periodical

press

of

the

capital.

This

speci

ficity, however,

was

far from

absolute.

On

the

one

hand,

the

moodiness of the

age

spoke

of

particular

Russian

conditions:

an

autocratic

monarchy

reluctant

to

continue

on

the

path

of

democratization

it

had

largely

been forced

to

follow,

disturbingly

rapid

economic

development

amidst

persistent

economic

and

so

cial

backwardness,

and

growing

social

tensions

and rebellion.

These

conditions

were

enough

to

make

any

thoughtful

Russian

anxious

or

depressed.

But talk

of emotion

also

concerned the

whole "modern"

condition,

addressing

not

only

Russia's modern time of

troubles

but

modernity

itself.

Even

more

specifically,

the

"epoch

ofmoods" described

in

the

Petersburg

press

seemed

at

times

to

be

a

uniquely Petersburg

story,

an

echo of

the

city's

distinctiveness

as an

economic

and

political capital,

as a

deliberately

modern urban creation

(and

hence the

leading

symbol

of

Russian

modernity),

and

as

the

object

of

nearly

a

century

of

poetic

and

literary

writing

about the

city

that

wove

together

the

symbolic

pol

itics

of

place

with canonical

images

of bad

weather,

dark

moods,

and

sensitive

souls

into

a

cultural

myth

known

as

the

"Petersburg

Text."20

But

commentators

well knew that

there

were

other modern

metropolises

in

the

empire

(Moscow,

Warsaw,

and

Odessa,

for

example),

and

beyond

the

Russian

empire

(London,

Paris,

and

Berlin

were

particularly interesting

to

Russian

writers),

about

which

similar

stories

were

being

told.

Literate

Russians well

knew

that

modern

anxiety

was not

theirs

alone,

that

Western

Europeans

also felt

a

pervasive

Gleitende,

an

unsettling

existential

moving

and

slippage,

such

as

Carl

Schorske

described of

fin-de-si?cle

Vienna.21

In

this

light,

the

Russian

capital

often

functioned

as a

metonym

with

which

speak

o?

larger

questions.

The

specific

temporality

of

this

"epoch"

of

moods

was

also

ambiguous.

Com

mentators

liked

to

insist

on

the

novelty

of

the

public

mood

in

the

wake of

1905,

on a

sense

of

crisis

not

seen

before.

But

while

1905

gave

dramatic

stimulus

to

such talk

and

a

new

narrative

frame

(revolution,

mass

upheavals,

repressions)

in

which

to

position

talk of

moods,

similar

feelings

can

be

traced back

into

the

nineteenth century. Peter Chaadaev (an influentialphilosopher and critic in

the

early

1800s)

or

Fyodor

Dostoevsky,

to

name

only

two,

would

have

recog

nized

their

own

thoughts

and

feelings

in

much of

the

early

twentieth-century

epoch

of

moods.

What would have

startled

them

was

the

social

ubiquity

of

these

moods?their

newsworthiness,

as

it

were?and,

perhaps,

the

sense

that this

was

the

surest

sign

of

some

approaching

collapse.

We

cannot

ignore

the

particularities

of

this Russian

story;

it is

more

than

an

eastern

echo

of

Western

fin-de-si?cle

angst.

But

we

cannot

reduce

it

to

Russian

particularity.

Conditions

in

Russia

focused

people's

thoughts

and

feelings,

with

distinct intensity and urgency, on what they often explicitly understood to be

"the

conditions

of

modernity."22

The

sensation

of

crisis

and

an

approaching

end

was

stronger

than

in

the

West?justifiably,

it

would

seem.

But

this

remained

a

local

story

steeped

in

a

larger

history

of

experiencing

the

unsettling

disruptions

of

modern

times.

Contemporary

commentators

looked

explicitly

to

the

social

landscape

of

emo

tions

to

interpret

ussian

and

modern life.

They

claimed

to

find the

meaning

of

these

times

not

in

people's superficial

"consciousness"

(a

favored

term on

the

po




7/30

818

journal

of

social

history

summer

2008

litical

Left)

or

"worldview"

(mirovozzrenie),

but

in

their

"moods,"

their

"subjec

tive

and

instinctive

feelings,"

their

"psychological

experiences,"

the

"subjective

emotional" side

of

everyday

life,

their

"world-feeling"

(mirooshchushchenie)P

Emotion

was seen as an

essential

category

of

contemporary

analysis

not

least

because

it

was

among

the

defining

features of the

contemporary

age.

Literature,

journalists

and

other

public

commentators

argued,

no

longer sought

truth

in

the

visible and

narrative

world but

in

"emotional

feeling"

(chuvtsvovanie),

"pas

sions, sensations,

and

moods."24

The visual

arts

were

turning

decisively

toward

"the world of

feelings,

love,

and

dreams,"

toward

"intuitive

perception,"

"in

stinct,"

and the

new

"psychologism [psikhologizm]"

aid

to

characterize all "mod

ern

creativity."25

Even

popular

public

entertainments,

such

as

the

stage

work of

the

actress

Vera

Kommissarzhevskaia and the

singing

of Anastasia Vial'tseva?

whose deaths

in

1910 and

1913

evoked

an

outpouring

of

emotion,

particularly

feelings

of

loss,

and talk about all this emotion?reflected the

reigning

emo

tionality

of

the

day.

Kommissarzhevskaia

expressed

the

"subjectivism,"

"inner

truth,"

and

"new

moods"

of "modern

life,"26

while

Vial'tseva

sang

with such

"au

thenticity"

(iskrennost')

of

feeling

that

even

"the

cold

northerner"

was

moved

to

tears.27

The

upheaval

of

religion

and

spirituality

in

Russia

was

also viewed

as

less

a

phenomenon

built

on

dogma

or

belief and

more

a

movement

of

"in

stincts,"

"aesthetic-psychological"

aspirations,

"unmediated

feeling,"

and

nas

troennost'

state

ofmind and

feeling).

Indeed,

emotion

itself

ad

become

a

prime

tenet

of

revived and

new

belief.28

Urban public lifewas central to this story.Following years of economic and

urban

development,

the

civic

mobilization of the 1905

revolution,

with

its

re

sulting legal

and social

reforms,

including

a

loosening

of

the

reins

of

censorship

and

greater

allowances

for

civic

organizations

and

the

public

expression

of

opin

ion,

profoundly

stimulated

the

Russian

public sphere

(and

concerns

about the

social and

emotional

state

of

civic

life).29

As

such,

the

range

of

voices

speaking

publicly

about

emotion

was

strikingly

broad:

not

only

the

familiar

cohorts

of

poets,

artists,

philosophers,

and

literati,

but also

a

small

army

of

writers,

many

of them

nearly

anonymous,

for

newspapers

and

magazines.

These

writers

(both

professional journalists and professionals in other fields, such as education or

medicine,

who

wrote

periodically

for

the

public)

were

conscious

of

being

at

the

center

of

a

bourgeoning

network of

public

knowledge

and

communication.

They

wrote

for

a

wide

range

of

publications

in

the

capital,

from

commercial,

mass-circulation,

boulevard

newspapers

like The

Petersburg

Sheet

(Peterburgskii

listok,

ublished

since

1864)

or

the

new

penny

tabloid

The

KopeckNews

(Gazeta

kopeika,

founded

in

1908),

which

tried

to

appeal

to

workers

and other

common

readers

by speaking

their

language

and

voicing

their

interests

and

concerns,

to

more

upscale

dailies

like

the

ideologically

conservative

New Times

(Novoe

vremia) or the liberal Speech (Rech\ associated with theConstitutional Demo

cratic

Party),

from

popular

illustrated

magazines

of

"contemporary

life"

or

humor

like

The

Field

(Niva)

or

Springtime

Vesna),

to

popular

journals

with

enlighten

ing

missions

like The New

Magazine for

Everyone (Novyi

zhurnal

dlia

vsekh)

or

Life for

Everyone

(Zhizn

dlia

vsekh),

to

periodicals

with

a

religious

message

like

the St.

Petersburg

Theological

Academy's

Church

Herald

(Tserkovnyi

estnik),

to

intellectual

"thick

journals"

like the

political

and

progressive

The

Contemporary

(Sovremennik)

or

the

apolitically

artistic

Apollo

(Apollon).




8/30

MELANCHOLY

AND

MODERNITY

819

Though

quite

distinct

from

one

another

in

cultural

style

and social reader

ship,

all these

publications

were

filled with talk of

nastroenie,

of

mood,

feeling,

emotion.

Writers

across

the

social,

political,

and

philosophical

spectrum

seemed

to

agree

that the

prevailing emotionality

of the

age

was

pensive, anxious,

disen

chanted,

tragic,

debilitating,

and

uncertain.

At

the heart of this

reading

of the

public

mood?in

part,

of

course,

a

reflection

of

their

own

moods?lies

a

percep

tion

of

modern

time

as

bringing

more

loss than

gain,

as

moving

into

an

uncertain

future,

if

moving

at

all.

This

melancholy sensibility

was never

abstracted from

the social:

in

its

public

volubility,

in

the social

variety

of

its

voice,

in

its

iden

tification of

causes.

This

was

not

classic

"sadness

without

cause,"

but

a

social

melancholy

arising

less

from

a

disordered mind than from

a

disordered

world,

less from

private

loss and

sorrow

than from shared

experience,

and less

to

be

suffered

privately

than

expressed

aloud

in

public.30

-Toska

In

pondering

the

emotional

state

of the

times,

and

seeking

a

vocabulary

to

speak

of

it,

Russian

writers

continually

talked of tosk?.

Like

theWestern

notion

of

melancholy,

this

has

long

been

an

elusive and

ambiguous

category

in

Russian

culture?hence,

like

melancholy,

an

especially

useful

one.

Vladimir

Nabokov,

who

spent

his

childhood

and

youth

in

St.

Petersburg

in

the

years

before the

revolution

(he

was

born

in

1899),

in

commenting

on

Alexander

Pushkin's

re

peated

use of the term in the

early

nineteenth

century,

defined toska

complexly

("no

single

word

in

English

renders all the

shades of

toska,"

he

noted).

"At

its

deepest

and

most

painful,"

he

wrote,

"it

is

a

sensation

of

great

spiritual

anguish,

often

without

any

specific

cause.

At less

morbid

levels,

it is

a

dull ache of the

soul,

a

longing

with

nothing

to

long

for,

a

sick

pining,

a

vague restlessness,

men

tal

throes,

yearning

...

a

feeling

of

physical

or

metaphysical

dissatisfaction_

In

particular

cases

it

may

be the desire

for

somebody

or

something

specific,

nos

talgia,

lovesickness.

At

the

lowest level

it

grades

into

ennui,

boredom,

s/cu/ca."31

That this

was

largely

an

inward

psychic

malaise

was

characteristic of

nineteenth

century usages, as itwas of the classic

meanings

of

melancholy.32

By

the

early

1900s

this

would

change:

toska

would

acquire

social

causation

and

a

public place.

Observers of

the

public

mood

in

the

years

after 1905

were

struck

by

the

ubiq

uity

of

toska?3

The

writer

and

philosopher

Dmitry

Merezhkovsky,

walking

the

streets

of St.

Petersburg

after

returning

from

abroad

in

1908?he

had left

at

the end of

1905?noted the "terrible toska

on

people's

faces.34

He

echoed what

many

were

saying.

The Marxist

philosopher Georgy

Plekhanov,

for

example,

in

1910,

put

the

increasingly

familiar

observation

tersely:

"There

are now

many

melancholy

[toskuiushchie]

eople

in

Russia,

and

still

more are

being

led

to

ward toska."35 Contemporary literature was said to echo?and, many accusingly

added,

to

encourage?toska.

"Pain,"

"hopelessness,"

"cold and

decay

wafts from

almost

everything"

written

today,

one

critic

wrote.36

The

same was

said about

the

boulevard

fiction

so

despised

by high-minded

intellectuals.

The

best-selling

work of

Mikhail

Artsybashev,

for

example,

was

said

to

be

marked

by

"something

nightmarish,

painful,

full of

gloom

and

despair,"

and

with

"the color

black,"

in

deed

with

a

vision

of the

world

as a

"black

room,

in

which

someone

languishes

and

cries."37

Newspapers

also

conveyed

this

mood,

and

newspaper

columnists




9/30

820

journal

of

social

history

summer

2008

had

to

defend

themselves

against

accusations

that

they

were

demoralizing

the

public

with

their

daily

reporting

of

life's

dark side: "The

mirror

isnot

to

blame,"

arguedOl'ga

Gridina,

an

influential

columnist

with

the

mass-circulation

tabloid

Gazeta-kopeika,

but

merely

reflects

"life such

as

it

is,"

which

is

full of

"horror,

cold,

and

egoism."38

A

particularly troubling

sign

of

this

contemporary

mood of black

melancholy

was

the

"epidemic"

of

suicides that broke

out

in

the

years

between 1906 and

the

war.39

Suicide

was

defined

not

merely

as

a

personal

tragedy

or

a

pathology

afflicting

many

individuals,

but

as a

sign

of

the

age:

as

"one

of

the

most

crying

de

formities

[vopiiushchikh

rodlivostei]"

of

a

"fractured"

(raz

'edinennyi),

deformed"

(urodlivyi),

and

"psychically

abnormal

age."40

Widespread public

toska

was

of

ten

cited

as

encouraging

suicide

(though

the

act

of

taking

one's

life

was

also

understood

to

be

a

step

that

most

melancholies

were

too

debilitated

to

take).

Interpreting

the fact that those who committed suicide

were

disproportionately

young,

writers

argued

that this

was

because the

young

generation

is

"the

barome

ter

of

the

public

mood,"

which

is

"depressed"

(ugnetennyi)

nd

filled

with

feelings

o? "toska and ache." Of

course,

not

only

the

young

took their lives

in

these

years.

But the

reasoning

was

the

same:

all

generations

and all

classes

breathed the

same

fatal

emotional

atmosphere,

filled

with toska

and

sorrow

(unynie),

"shrouded

in

a

dark

veil of

melancholia

[melankholii]"

"exhausted,

worn

out

from think

ing,

at a

dead

end."41

In

their

final

notes,

suicides themselves often

spoke,

as

one

student did

in

a note

repeatedly quoted

in

the

press,

of

"toska,

limitless

toska"*2

-Thoughts

of

time

As

a

social

phenomenon,

melancholy

often

expressed

a

troubled

sense

of

time.

As

mourning

for lost values

and

hopes

or,

at

least,

a

yearning

for

the unreach

able

and

even

the

unnamable,

melancholy

underscores

a

disillusionment with

the

promise,

presumed

in

a

culture influenced

by

the

enlightenment

notion

of

progress,

that

time's

passage

is

forward.

The annual

turn

of the old

year

into

the

new naturally evoked thoughts and talkof time,of itspassage but also itsdirec

tion

and

purpose.

The

hope

that the

new

would

bring

the better

was

explicit

in

the traditional

new

year's

wish "For

a

new

year

and

new

happiness"

(S novym

godom,

s

novym

schast'em).

In

this

spirit,

as

each

old

year

was

drawing

to

a

close

or

just

after the

start

of

a new

one,

editorial

writers

and columnists

offered

their

own

thoughts

about the

"contemporary

moment"

"at

the

threshold"

(naporoge)

o? the

new.

Very

often

they expressed

a

troubling

sense

that

time

was

somehow

trapped,

that

the

new

and

the better refused

to

appear.

In

quite startling

terms,

new

year's

commentators

described

the

promises

of

"new

happiness"

as

broken

and crushed. "Time," itwas said, "has shattered the foundations" for hope, such

that

there

was no

"exit

from

the

dead

end

into

which the

deformed

conditions

of

our

contemporary

life have

led

us."43

New

year's

editorialists and

columnists

regularly

tried

to

appeal

to

readers

to

be

more

hopeful

and

optimistic,

to

resist

the

melancholy

of the

age.44

But

most

also

recognized

that

they

were

shouting

into the

gale.

The

"social mood"

was

too

"depressed"

and

"despondent"

to

respond

to

mere

appeals.45

Some

newspaper

and

journal

writers

admitted

to

sharing

these

moods.

In

1908,

the

journalist




10/30

MELANCHOLY

AND MODERNITY

821

and

author

Mikhail

Engel'gardt,

writing

in

the

new

year's

issue

of

the

weekly

Free

thoughts

Svobodnye

mysli), opened

an

essay

characteristically

titled

"No

Exit" with

an

epigraph

from the

Lamentations

of

Jeremiah,

"Our

eyes

failed,

looking invain forhelp."46What followed was his own jeremiad inwhich he

saw

only

a

dark future:

"Before

us

lies

a

long,

black,

stinking

corridor,

the

end

of

which

cannot

be

seen."47

Similar

was

the

new

year's

day

essay

in

1913

by

one

of

the

mostly

widely

read

columnists

of the tabloid The

Kopeck

Gazette,

O.

Blotermants,

who

wrote

under the

pseudonym

"The

Wanderer"

(Skitalets).

The

previous

year's

wishes

for

"new

happiness,"

he

observed,

produced

not

only

no

"new"

happiness

but

no

happiness

as

all,

nothing

besides

"a

bitter aftertaste

and

disillusionment"

(gorechi

i

razocharovanie).

Looking

over

the

past

year,

he

concluded that

"our

reality

is

dismal,

the

year's

results

are

nil,

and

hope

flew

away

from

us."

Rather than

offer

new

wishes

for

happiness,

he

suggested,

"better

to

be

silent."48

In

fact,

few

were

silent.

Russian

melancholy

in

these

years

tended

to

be

garrulous.

-Disenchantment

Notions

of

disillusionment,

disenchantment,

and

disaffection?of

razocharo

vanie*9?helped

describe

the

texture,

and hint

at

the

possible

causes,

of

contem

porary

melancholy.

In

the

late

summer

of

1907,

the

summer

that

began

with

the

government closing

the troublesome

parliament

and

rewriting

the electoral

laws?political

acts

many

viewed

as

marking

the decisive end

of

the brief

era

of revolution

and

reform?a

newspaper

essay

noticed the

recent

appearance

of this

"special

term,"

razocharovanie,

for

talking

about

the

spreading

"social

depression."

Disenchantment could

be

understood

as

political

disillusionment

and

disaffection,

as

the loss of the

political

enthusiasms and

ideals

that

inspired

so

many

in

1905.

But

the

"prevailing

disenchantment"

of

the

age51

was

not

confined

to

mourning

for

recently

shattered

political

dreams and

ideologies.

In

quite sweeping

terms,

diverse observers

described

people

as

wandering

"lost

in

the darkness without

any

ideals,"52

understanding

"all

the senselessness and

pur

poselessness

of

life,"53

feeling

"no

solid

ground

to

stand

on,

no

clear

perspectives,

no

defined

hopes

and

dreams."54

In

this

sense,

disenchantment

denoted

a

strong

sense

of

loss

and

of

being

lost?loss of

bearings,

loss

of

meanings,

loss

of

ideals,

loss of

faith?or

perhaps

the failure

ever

to

have found what

was

desired:

ra

zocharovanie

as an

"emotional" failure

to

find

any

"ideal"

in

life,55

to

believe

in

the future.

In

a

word?and

note

the

reluctance

to

limit

this

despair

to

Russia

alone?"humanity

has

lost

hope,"

leaving

in

the

human soul

only

a

sense

of

"the

emptiness

and

pointlessness

of

life."56

Religious

writers,

concerned with

the

spiritual

state

of

society,

were

espe

cially sensitive to the spreading "disillusionment of the heart" (razocharovanie

serdtsa).51

he loss

of

religious

faith

was

sometimes

viewed,

even

by

non-Church

writers,

as

a

major

component

of this existential

despair.

People

seek

God but

they

cannot

find

Him,

argued

the

essayist

"Ashkinazi"

in

The

New

Magazine

for

Everyone

(Novyi

zhurnal

dlia

vsekh).58

But

even

many

religious

writers

felt

this

loss of faith

to

be

more

profound

than

mere

theological

disillusionment.

A

deep

existential

skepticism

seemed

to

have

infected

the

public

mind. An

editorial

in

the

theological academy's journal

in

1913

described the "mood" of

the

present




11/30

822

Journal

f social

history

summer

2008

"epoch"

as

the

most

"skeptical"

in

the

history

of

humanity,

as an

essential

part

of

the

"disorder of

contemporary

life."

No less

important,

unlike

the

skepticism

(skepsis)

o?

old,

which

was

largely

theoretical

and

speculative,

contemporary

skepticism

entailed

a

"deep

lack of faith

in

anybody

or

anything,

a

complete

dis

enchantment

with

everything

around

one,

and

hopelessness

in

what

will

be."

This mood

was

the

"ruling"

one

"for

people

of

our

epoch."

For

"modern

man,"

this

was

the

chief

way

of

emotionally

perceiving

theworld

(mirooshchushchenie).

In

consequence,

the

"fateful mark" of

"skepticism,

disenchantment,

and

hope

lessness"

was

now

everywhere.59

Secular liberals

offered

much

the

same

diagnoses.

Nicholas

Rubakin,

for

ex

ample,

a

well-known

specialist

on

popular

reading,

reflected

in

1912

on

the

many

letters

he

had

received

in

response

to

his

recent

articles

on

self-education.

What

especially

struck

him

were

the

widespread feelings

that

life

ad lost

mean

ing,

sense,

and

purpose.

As

a

result,

people

no

longer

truly

live

but,

as

his

cor

respondents

often said of

themselves,

watch

as

"life

passes

by"

(zhizn

prokhodit),

an

expression

in

which

Rubakin

found

"inward

horror."60

Even

mass commer

cial culture

reflected,

however

crudely,

the

atmosphere

of

disenchantment.

A

fragment

from

a

"novel of

moods,"

published

in

a

cinema

paper,

presented,

in

suitably

clich?d

form,

a

hero

characteristic

of

the

times:

"tormented

by

the

toska

of

solitude,

by

bitter

feelings

of

disenchantment,

by

the

consciousness

that

all

is

vanity

and of

no

use,

by

the

pettiness

of

everything

around

him."61

-Tragizm,

crisis,

and

catastrophe

This disenchanted

and

skeptical

view

of

time

tended toward the

tragic

and

even

catastrophic.

An

essay

on

the mood

among

Petersburg

intellectuals

at

the

beginning

of

1909

spoke

of their

constant

talk

of

"the

tragic"

(tragizm).62

ut

this

mood

was

not

limited

to

intellectuals.

An

article

in

the

left-wing

ournal

Sovre

mennik

in

January

1912

described

"a

deep

sense

of

tragizm

n

the

air."63

An

edito

rial

in

the

journal

of

the

theological academy

likewise

argued

that the "modern

cultural world

view

of

the

majority"

was an

essentially

"tragic"

one

of

"collapse

and bewilderment" (raspad i rasteriannost'), a mood marked by what Dostoevsky

had

called

unadryv"

(tormented,

damaged,

hysterical

feelings).64

This

"tragic

mark of

the

times"

was

reflected

in

literatureand the

arts.65

But

it

was

also found

in

everyday

life.

In

an

article

on

poverty

and homelessness

in

St.

Petersburg,

for

example,

Ol'ga

Gridina,

the columnist for

Gazeta-kopeika, argued

that

ordinary

metropolitan

life

offered

a

greater

expression

of

tragizm

than

any

tragic

actors

or

theater could

convey.

Artistic

tragedy,

she

argued,

"is

only

a

pale

shadow,

only

child's

play

before that

which

life

creates."66

A

redemptive

sense

of

the

tragic

can

be

seen

in

some

of

this

talk

about

mod

ern tragizm?the classic view that suffering is inescapable and inevitable but also

elevates the human

spirit

and

deepens

the

soul,

and

perhaps

points

toward

tran

scendence.

Yet

for

many,

as

the

journalist

and

philosopher

Vasily

Rozanov

put

it,

no

salvation could

be

found,

only

a

permanent

"hell of

anxiety,

torment,

and

perplexity."67

Tragizm,

in

this

use,

became less

a

philosophical

or

aesthetic

sys

tem

than

a

mood,

specifically

a

way

of

perceiving

the

deep

crisis

all

around,

and

it

became

less

a

thing

in motion

carrying

one

through anguish

toward cathar

sis,

sublime

pleasure,

and

redemption,

than

a

feeling

of life

in

infernal

stasis.




12/30

MELANCHOLY

AND

MODERNITY 823

This

tragic

sense

easily

shaded

into notions

of

"crisis."

A

"crisis

of the

spirit"

(krizis

ushi)

was

described

as

especially

strong

among

the

intelligentsia

who

ei

ther

languished

in

"boredom and

confusion"

or

lost

themselves

in

"decadence,

anarcho-mysticism, pessimism,

and

pornography."68

But the

crisis

of

the

cultural

elite

was

only

one

of

many

faces

of

an

"intense

internal

crisis"69

that

afflicted

everything?science,

art,

social

life,

religion.70

"We

live

in

an

epoch

of

crises,"

an

essayist

wrote

in

the

"progressive" journal

Sovremennik

in

1912,

"of

the

visi

ble

and

complete

collapse

of

principles,

systems,

and

programs,"

of

a

"huge

gulf

between

what

exists

and what

not

so

long

ago

we

so

fervently

believed."71

This

was an

age,

a

conservative commentator

agreed,

marked

by

"dissatisfaction

and

discontent"

with

everything

from

the

past,

all

of

which

seemed

to

have

"passed

into

decrepitude

and

worthlessness,"

and

by

the failure

to

find

anything

satisfy

ing

in

the

new.72

The

approach

of

apocalypse

was

part

of

this

vocabulary

of crisis.

Petersburg

intellectuals,

a

newspaper

article

in

1909

commented

(mockingly,

in

this

case,

and

impatience

with the

ubiquitous melancholy

was

also

part

of the

discourse

about

it),

never

stopped

talking

about

"Apocalypse

and the

end of

the

world."73

Essays

about

contemporary

literature

similarly

noted that

many

leading

writers,

such

as

Merezhkovsky,

Fyodor

Sologub,

and

Leonid

Andreev,

along

with

leading

modernist

painters,

regularly

offered

"apocalyptic"

moods and

visions.74

As

one

critic

described this

mood,

contemporary

writers

and

artists

were

"crying

out

'We

are on

the

eve

of

a

great

shock.'

"

Although

public

life

seemed

outwardly

calm,

compared

notably

to 1905, the creative

intelligentsia

seemed to feel that this

was

the "calm

before

the

storm."7

Or

worse.

Merezhkovsky,

in

an

essay

in

the

liberal

newspaper

Speech

at

the end

of

1908,

reported

that he

felt "the

famous

'feeling

of

the end'"

as

he

walked

through

the

streets

of the

capital

and

read

the

daily

papers.76

For

religious

believers,

of

course,

among

whom

apocalyptic

expectations

were

widespread

and

growing

in

these

years,77 catastrophic

time

was

redemptive

time.

Deeper

and

deeper

crises

would

culminate

in

a new

heaven

and

a

new

earth.

Many

shared this

sense

of

deepening

crisis,

though

they

often

found

it

difficult

to

have

faith that

it

was

leading

to

a

new

world.

-Uncertainty

The

darkness

of

melancholy

was

also

epistemological.

The

absence

of

"clar

ity"

(iasnostJ,

iarkost')

was

repeatedly

observed,

always

with

alarm.79

Nearly

trau

matic

"uncertainty"

was

seen

at

the

heart

of

the

"ruling

mood

today."80

In

ev

ery

area

of

modern

"mental"

life

"nothing

[was]

vividly

clear

or

defined."81

"All

objective

marks

of truth"

vanished,

leaving

only

the

"hopeless

'apotheosis

of

groundlessness.'

"82

Even

everyday

life,

as

portrayed

in

the

daily

papers,

seemed

"wild, frightening, nd incomprehensible."83All that issolidmelts intoair, they

might

have

said,

but

with

far

more

emotional

resonance,

pessimism,

and

panic

than

Marx

ever

intended

in

this

classic

trope

defining capitalist

modernity.84

Not

surprisingly,

n

the

many

letters

that

Nikolai

Rubakin

received

from

read

ers,

the

question

"what

am

I

living

for?"

nd

the

answer

"for

what,

I

don't under

stand

...

I

can

find

no

purpose"

was

heard

again

and

again.85

Metaphorically,

as we

have

seen,

people

felt

themselves

to

be

"wandering

in

the

darkness,"86

treading

on

unsolid

ground,87

and

finding

that

the

"founda




13/30

824

journal

of social

history

summer

2008

tions" had

been

so

"shattered"

by

"time"

as

to

have left

only "indeterminacy"

(neopredelennost').8S

he words

just

quoted

came

from

religious

writers,

but

the

secular

Left

shared these

views.

In

an

essay

in

the

journal

The

Contemporary

(Sovremennik) in 1912, the liberalMarxist Ekaterina Kuskova found truth in

the

cri de

coeur

o?

a

character

in

a

story

published

the

previous

year

in

the

same

journal

by

Maxim

Gorky:

"Everything

stands

on

sand,

everything

floats

in

the

air,

in

Russia

there

is

no

spiritual

foundation,

no

ground

on

which

one

might

build

temples

and

palaces

of

reason,

fortresses

f

faith

and

hope?everything

is

unstable

and

crumbly,

there

is

only

sand?and

it is

barren."89

The

same

views

were

expressed

in

the

daily

papers.

All

around,

a

columnist

wrote

about

contem

porary

culture

in

1908,

there

was

"more

and

more

disintegration

[razlozhenie]."

Everyone

was

feeling

"unstable."90

"Suddenly

everyone

is

frightened"

and feel

ing

the

ground unsteady

beneath their

feet,

a

newspaper essayist

wrote

in

1910,

"as

in

a

time

of natural disaster

such

as

plague,

earthquake,

or

flood."91

If

one

turned

to

literature

for the truths

that

seemed

so

elusive

in

these

times,

as

Russians often

did,

one

would be

disappointed. Contemporary

literature,

crit

ics

warned,

was

full

of the

same

"emptiness

or

confusion,"92

the

same

"shifting

chaos" and

"muddle,"93

the

same

"anarchy

of

values"94

as

contemporary

life.

The

fiction

and

plays

of

Leonid

Andreev,

who

was

among

the

most

widely

read

and influential

writers

of

the

era,

seemed

especially

characteristic

of

this

uncer

tain

Zeitgeist.

The well-known socialist

literary

critic V

L.

L'vov-Rogachevsky

described

Andreev's

work,

with

dismay

and

even

disgust,

as

filled

with "vacilla

tion

and

doubt,

with

spiritual

uncertainty,

confusion,

and

chaos."95

Generally,

it

seemed

to

many

observers of the culture of

the

era

that

the

necessity

of

living

in

a

"multiple

chaos

of

trends

so

divergent

as

to

reach the

point

of

contradic

tor

iness"

was

the essential

"tragedy

of modern

culture."96

-Laughter

in

a

time

of

plague

No

one was

much

surprised

when

the silent

film

comic

Max

Linder,

dubbed

in

Russia

the

"king

of

laughter,"

told

a

Russian

newspaper

reporter,

after

visiting

St.

Petersburg

in

1913, that,

unlike Western

European

metropolises,

the Rus

sian

capital

was

a

"city

without fun"

(neveselyi

gorod),

without

"any

real,

sincere,

happy

[zhizneradostnaia]

aughter."97

inder

was

likely only

repeating

what

ten

dentious

locals

had told

him.

The

well-known

poet

Alexander

Blok

recorded

in

his

diary

a

melancholy

conversation

about

the

fact

that

"Russians

don't

know

how

to

have fun"

(v

Rossii

ne

umeiut

veselit'sia).98

More

grimly,

n

1910,

the

news

paper

columnist

Ol'ga

Gridina,

commenting

on

the

recent

death

of Mark

Twain,

observed

that,

as

an

American,

he

had faced

the

hardships

of

his

lifewith humor.

Had

Twain

been

a

Russian,

she

argued,

he

would have

hanged

or

shot

himself.99

Russians did

laugh,

of course

(including

about theirownmelancholy). News

papers

and

magazines

regularly

included

humor,

and

some were

almost

entirely

devoted

to

it.

Press

stories

of

city

life,

especially

nightlife,

were

filled

with

ac

counts

of

restaurants,

miniature

theaters,

"pleasure

gardens,"

spectator sports

(from

wrestling

bouts

at

the

circus

to

spectacular

air

shows),

sports

clubs,

roller

skating

rinks,

cinemas,

cabarets,

caf?-chantants,

balls

and

parties,

and

other

lo

cales

where

one

could

find

what,

in

the

capital,

was

called

"fun-loving

Peters




14/30

MELANCHOLY

AND

MODERNITY

825

burg"

(Veseliashchiisia

eterburg).100

he

motto

of

a

masquerade

ball

at

the

Malyi

theater

in

January

1914?a

time,

with

war

looming,

that

many

would

view

as

old

Russia's final

days?was typical:

"Down

with Boredom and

Spleen

Long

Live

Fun and Laughter."101

Laughter

was,

in

fact,

pervasive

in

city

life and attracted

its

share

of

interpre

tive

attention.

A

journalist

in

1912

observed that

"suddenly

all

Russia

is

...

shaking

with

gay,

uncontrollable

laughter

[khokhot]"

uch that

one

"might

think that

we

have

finally

reached the

kingdom

of

bright

joy

and

tranquil

well

being."102

As this

comment

suggests,

however,

many

felt

that this

laughter

was

not

as

light-hearted

as

it

seemed.

Freud,

in

his

1915

essay

on

melancholia,

warned

against

thinking

that "manic"

states

of

"joy

and

exultation"

were

as

dif

ferent

as

they

appeared

from "the

depression

and inhibition of

melancholia."

It

was a common but false view "that a person in a manic state of this kind finds

such

delight

in

movement

and

action

because he

is

so

'cheerful.'

"103

Russians

made similar

observations,

though

often

more

darkly.

One

essayist,

for

example,

writing

in

1912

in

the

magazine

Life for

Everyone,

warned that the

manic

laugh

ter

f

the

day

should

not

be

confused

with real

joy

and

happiness.

The

ubiquitous

"modern

guffawing,"

he

warned,

was

only

a

superficial "appearance"

(vidimost')

o?

gaiety

masking

a

dark

abyss

of

"suffering"

and

"sadness."

In

modern

Russia

"suffering

flows

into

a

smile

and

a

bitter smile

is

transformed

into

an

outburst

of

trembling,

terrible,

hysterical

laughter."

Indeed,

he

concluded,

"laughter

and

sadness

are

the

two

leitmotifs

of

the

modern mood."

But, sadly,

there

was

noth

ing

redemptive

in

this

laughter,

for

no

true

humor

produced

this

manic

laughter.

Instead,

this

writer

concluded,

laughter

in

these

years

was

"pessimistic"

and

"re

actionary,"

without

direction

or

hope.104

The

mood

of

"fun-loving

Petersburg"

struck

many

observers

as

another

sad

example

of what

Pushkin had

famously

called "feast

in

the

time

of

plague" (pir

vo

vremia

chumy).105

Laughter

and

fun,

much like

religion

and

politics

(which

were

also

seeing

new

vitality),

looked

away

from

the

darkness,

but did

not

deny

its

presence.

In

this

spirit,

ironic

laughter

seemed the

most

fitting.

And

it

was

on

the

rise,

at

least

among

the

educated.

In

an

essay

entitled

"Irony,"

which

appeared

in

the liberal

newspaper

Speech

in

1908,

Blok described a "terrible illness"

among

"the

most

alive and

sensitive

children

or

our

age."

Its

symptoms

were

"fits of

exhausting laughter,

which

begin

with

devilishly

mocking

and

provocateurial

smiles and end with

riotous

behavior and

blasphemy."

One

might fight

against

such

a

mood but for

being

infected with

it

oneself:

"I

too

am

locked

up

in

a

fortress,

n

a

stuffy

oom,

where the

incredibly

repulsive

and

incredibly

beautiful

prostitute

Irony

brazenly

undresses

herself

in

front

of

me."106

The

writer

and

literary

ritic

Kornei

Chukovsky,

also

writing

in

Speech,

went

further,

laiming

to see

in

both

recent

literature nd

in

everyday

life

nothing

but

an

endless

"ironic

?107

grimace.

'

Irony

arose

from

the

same sources as

disenchantment and

melancholy.

What

has

been said of

Western

Europe

could

be

said

of Russia:

"irony

...

seemed

to

be the

fundamental characteristic

of modern

life,

an

aspect

of

the

breakdown

of

a

fixed

cosmos

and

a

language

linked

to

it."108

But

irony,

like

laughter

and

fun,

also

lightened

the

weight

of

melancholy

and

disenchantment.

This

was

laughter

made

poignant

not

simply

because

it

occurred

during

"a

time

of

plague"

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Steinberg Melancholy and Modernity