A STUDY
We all settled down in a circle and our good friend
Alexandr Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German
but he was Russian to the marrow of his bones) began
as follows:
I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something
that happened to me in the ’thirties ... forty
years ago as you see. I will be brief—and
don’t you interrupt me.
I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only
just left the University. My brother was a lieutenant
in the horse-guard artillery. His battery was
stationed at Krasnoe Selo—it was summer
time. My brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself
but in one of the neighbouring villages; I stayed
with him more than once and made the acquaintance
of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly
decent cottage, together with another officer of his
battery, whose name was Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev.
I became particularly friendly with him.
Marlinsky is out of date now—no one reads
him—and even his name is jeered at; but
in the ’thirties his fame was above everyone’s—and
in the opinion of the young people of the day Pushkin
could not hold candle to him. He not only enjoyed
the reputation of being the foremost Russian writer;
but—something much more difficult and more
rarely met with—he did to some extent leave
his mark on his generation. One came across heroes
a la Marlinsky everywhere, especially in the
provinces and especially among infantry and artillery
men; they talked and corresponded in his language;
behaved with gloomy reserve in society—“with
tempest in the soul and flame in the blood”
like Lieutenant Byelosov in the “Frigate Hope.”
Women’s hearts were “devoured” by
them. The adjective applied to them in those
days was “fatal.” The type, as we
all know, survived for many years, to the days of
Petchorin. [Footnote: The leading character in
Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time.—Translator’s
Note.] All sorts of elements were mingled in that
type. Byronism, romanticism, reminiscences of
the French Revolution, of the Dekabrists—and
the worship of Napoleon; faith in destiny, in one’s
star, in strength of will; pose and fine phrases—and
a miserable sense of the emptiness of life; uneasy
pangs of petty vanity—and genuine strength
and daring; generous impulses—and defective
education, ignorance; aristocratic airs—and
delight in trivial foppery.... But enough of these
general reflections. I promised to tell you the
story.
