The Duel

Superfluous Men: A Grand Russian Tradition

Laevsky’s Zeitgeist

“I understood Laevsky from the very first month of our acquaintance,” he continued, addressing the Deacon. “We arrived here at the same time. People like him love to make friends, establish intimacy, solidarity and the like, because they always need company for Vint, drinks and a bite to eat. What’s more, they’re garrulous and they require listeners. We became friends, that is, he would hang around my place every day, disturbing my work and confiding way too much about his concubine. In the beginning, I was dumbstruck by his extraordinary mendacity, which I found simply nauseating. In my capacity as a friend, I scolded him about his way of life, about how he drinks too much, how he does not live according to his means and incurs debts, how he has done nothing and has read nothing, how he is so uncultured and knows so little—and in reply to all of my questions he would smile bitterly, sigh and say, “I’m a good-for-nothing, a superfluous man,” or “What do you, old chap, want from the splinters of serfdom?” or “We are degenerating …” Or he would begin to wax on about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov, of who he would say: “These are our fathers in flesh and in spirit.” Meaning something along the lines of, it’s not he that is guilty of letting bureaucratic packets lie unopened for weeks or that he himself drinks, and gets others drunk, but that Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for creating the good-for-nothing and the superfluous man. The principle cause for this lack of discipline and grace isn’t with him, you see, but somewhere out there, in the periphery. And what’s more—here’s a good joke for you!—it’s not him alone that’s guilty of being licentious, mendacious and vile but all of us … “We are people of the eighties. We are the inert, neurotic offspring of the age of serfdom. We have been crippled by civilization.” In a word, we are expected to understand, that a great man like Laevsky is also great in his collapse; that his debauchery, ignorance and defilement are a naturally occurring phenomena based in history, consecrated by necessity, the cause of which is global, spontaneous and that we should hang a sconce before Laevsky, since he—is the victim of the times, the spirit of the times, our inheritance and so forth. All the functionaries and ladies that listened to him, all oohed and aahed, but for the longest time I couldn’t understand who I was dealing with: a cynic or a skilled mazurka dancer? Subjects such as he, who have the appearance of intelligence, are a tad well-manner and drone on about their own honorable pedigrees are capable of pretending to have unusually complicated natures.”

—from Von Koren’s first assessment of Laevsky in Chekhov’s The Duel.

In the beginning, Byron created Cain

CAIN: And this is Life?—Toil!

And wherefore should I toil?—because

My father could not keep his place in Eden?

What had I done in this?—I was unborn:

I sought not to be born; nor love the state

To which that birth has brought me. Why did he

Yield to the Serpent and the woman? or

Yielding—why suffer? What was there in this?

The tree planted, and why not for him?

If not, why place him near it, where it grew

The fairest in the center? They have but

One answer to all questions, “ ’Twas his will,

And he is good.” How know I that? Because

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?

I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter—

Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

Why do I exist? Why art all things wretched?

Ev’n he who made us must be, as the maker

Of things unhappy! To produce destruction

Can surely never be the task of joy,

And yet my sire says he’s omnipotent:

Then why is Evil—he being Good? I asked

This question of my father; and he said,

Because this Evil only was the path

To Good. Strange good, that must arise from out

Its deadly opposite. I lately saw

A lamb stung by a reptile: the poor suckling

Lay foaming on the earth, beneath the vain

And piteous bleating of its restless dam;

My father plucked some herbs, and laid them to

The wound; and by degrees the helpless wretch

Resumed its careless life, and rose to drain

The mother’s milk, who o’er it tremulous

Stood licking its reviving limbs with joy.

Behold, my son! said Adam, how from Evil springs Good!

But I thought, that ’twere a better portion for the animal

Never to have been stung at all than to

Purchase renewal of its little life

With agonies unutterable, though

Dispelled by antidotes.

—from Cain by Lord George Gordon Byron (1788–1824). Byron’s 1821 play centers around the character of Cain and his view of life and the world. Both the character of Cain as well as Childe Harold from the epic narrative poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, served as foundational archetypes for what would come to be known as the “Byronic hero.” Typically a Byronic hero would be extremely intelligent, most often physically strong, and generally quite capable The hero is held back, however, by an innate flaw or disdain for authority, quotidian life or societal norms. Thus, the Byronic hero must struggle to either overcome his defect or to endure despite it. The idea of the Byronic hero was a major influence on 19^th century literature, and particularly on the Russian concept of the “superfluous man.”

The Rake’s Progress

“A quarter of an hour later Pechorin returned from the chase. Bela ran to meet him and threw her arms around his neck, and not a single complaint, not a single reproach for his long absence did I hear … Even I had lost patience with him. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘Kazbich was on the other side of the river just now and we fired at him; you could easily have run into him too. These mountaineers are vengeful people, and do you think he does not suspect you helped Azamat? I’ll wager he saw Bela here. And I happen to know that a year ago he was very much attracted by her—told me so himself in fact. Had he had any hope of raising a substantial kalym he surely would have asked for her in marriage …’ Pechorin was grave now. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we have to be more careful … Bela, after today you must not go out on the rampart anymore.’

“That evening I had a long talk with him; it grieved me that he had changed toward the poor girl, for besides being out hunting half the time, he began to treat her coldly, rarely showing her any affection. She began to waste away visibly, her face grew drawn, and her big eyes lost their luster. Whenever I asked her, ‘Why are you sighing, Bela? Are you sad?’ she would reply, ‘No.’ ‘Do you want anything’ ‘No!’ ‘Are you grieving your kinsfolk?’ ‘I have no kinsfolk.’ For days on end you couldn’t get more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ out of her.

“I resolved to have a talk with him about this. ‘Listen, Maxim Maximych,’ he replied, ‘I have an unfortunate character; whether it is my upbringing that made me like that or God who created me so, I do not know. I know only that if I cause unhappiness to others I myself am no less unhappy. I realize this is poor consolation for them—but the fact remains that it is so. In my early youth after leaving the guardianship of my parents, I plunged into all the pleasures money could buy, and naturally these pleasures grew distasteful to me. Then I went into society, but soon enough grew tired of it; I fell in love with beautiful society women and was loved by them, but their love only spurred on my ambition and vanity while my heart remained desolate. I began to read and to study, but wearied of learning too; I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on it in the slightest, for the happiest people were the ignorant and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be shrewd. And I grew bored … Soon I was transferred to the Caucasus; this was the happiest time of my life. I hoped that boredom would not survive under Chechen bullets—but in vain; in a month I had become so accustomed to their whine and the proximity of death that, to tell the truth, the mosquitoes bothered me more, and life became more boring than ever because I had now lost practically my last hope. When I saw Bela at my home, when I held her on my lap and first kissed her raven locks, I foolishly thought she was an angel sent down to me by a compassionate Providence. Again I erred: the love of a barbarian girl is little better than that of a well-born lady; the ignorance and simplicity of the one are as boring as the coquetry of the other. I still love her, if you wish, I am grateful to her for a few rather blissful moments, I am ready to five my life for her, but I am bored with her. I don’t know whether I am a fool or a scoundrel; but the fact is that I am to be pitied as much, if not more than she. My soul has been warped by the world, my mind is restless, my heart insatiable; nothing suffices me: I grow accustomed to sorrow as readily as to joy, and my life becomes emptier from day to day. Only one expedient is left for me, and that is to travel. As soon as possible I shall set out—not for Europe, God forbid—but for America, Arabia, India—and perhaps I shall die somewhere on the road! At least I am sure that with the help of storms and bad roads this last resort will not soon cease to be a consolation.’ He talked long in this vein and words seared themselves in my memory for it was the first time I had heard such talk from a man of twenty-five, and I hope to God, the last. Amazing! You probably were in the capital recently; perhaps you can tell me,” the captain went on, addressing me, “whether the young people there are all like that?”

I replied that there are many who say the same, and that most likely some of them are speaking the truth; that, on the whole, disillusionment, having begun like all vogues in the upper strata of society, had descended to the lower which wear it threadbare, and that now those who are really bored the most endeavour to conceal that misfortune as if it were a vice. The captain did not understand these subtleties, and he shook his head and smiled slyly:

“It was the French, I suppose, who made boredom fashionable?”

“No, the English.”

“Ah, so that’s it!” he replied. “Of course, they’ve always been inveterate drunkards!”

—from A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. Written in 1839 and published in 1841, Lermontov’s celebrated novel of the adventures of a Byronic hero named Pechorin, is considered one of 19th century Russia’s most influential works. Pechorin’s character is a man of extremes, alternating between moments of great daring, melancholy brooding and moral cravenness. He clearly defined the temperament of 19^th century Russian literature’s “superfluous man.” The character of Pechorin is drawn in contrast to the older, more traditional character of Captain Maxim Maximych, who, despite disapproving of Pechorin’s behavior, believes him to be, at heart, a good man.

Ivan Turgenev’s names the leitmotiv

Winter again. The snow is falling in flakes. Superfluous, superfluous.… That’s a capital word I have hit on. The more deeply I probe into myself, the more intently I review all my past life, the more I am convinced of the strict truth of this expression. Superfluous—that’s just it. To other people that term is not applicable.… People are bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous … no. Understand me, though: the universe could get on without those people too … no doubt; but uselessness is not their prime characteristic, their most distinctive attribute, and when you speak of them, the word ‘superfluous’ is not the first to rise to your lips. But I … there’s nothing else one can say about me; I’m superfluous and nothing more. A supernumerary, and that’s all. Nature, apparently, did not reckon on my appearance, and consequently treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest. A facetious gentleman, a great devotee of preference, said very happily about me that I was the forfeit my mother had paid at the game of life. I am speaking about myself calmly now, without any bitterness.… It’s all over and done with!

Throughout my whole life I was constantly finding my place taken, perhaps because I did not look for my place where I should have done. I was apprehensive, reserved, and irritable, like all sickly people. Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analyzed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to ‘be like every one else,’—and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before—went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise. Well now, tell me, if you please, to whom and for what is such a man of use? Why did this happen to me? what was the reason of this trivial fretting at myself?—who knows? who can tell?

I remember I was driving once from Moscow in the diligence. It was a good road, but the driver, though he had four horses harnessed abreast, hitched on another, alongside of them. Such an unfortunate, utterly useless, fifth horse—fastened somehow on to the front of the shaft by a short stout cord, which mercilessly cuts his shoulder, forces him to go with the most unnatural action, and gives his whole body the shape of a comma—always arouses my deepest pity. I remarked to the driver that I thought we might on this occasion have got on without the fifth horse.… He was silent a moment, shook his head, lashed the horse a dozen times across his thin back and under his distended belly, and with a grin responded: ‘Ay, to be sure; why do we drag him along with us? What the devil’s he for?’ And here am I too dragged along. But, thank goodness, the station is not far off.

Superfluous.… I promised to show the justice of my opinion, and I will carry out my promise. I don’t think it necessary to mention the thousand trifles, everyday incidents and events, which would, however, in the eyes of any thinking man, serve as irrefutable evidence in my support—I mean, in support of my contention. I had better begin straight away with one rather important incident, after which probably there will be no doubt left of the accuracy of the term superfluous. I repeat: I do not intend to indulge in minute details, but I cannot pass over in silence one rather serious and significant fact, that is, the strange behaviour of my friends (I too used to have friends) whenever I met them, or even called on them. They used to seem ill at ease; as they came to meet me, they would give a not quite natural smile, look, not into my eyes nor at my feet, as some people do, but rather at my cheeks, articulate hurriedly, ‘Ah! how are you, Tchulkaturin!’ (such is the surname fate has burdened me with) or ‘Ah! here’s Tchulkaturin!’ turn away at once and positively remain stockstill for a little while after, as though trying to recollect something. I used to notice all this, as I am not devoid of penetration and the faculty of observation; on the whole I am not a fool; I sometimes even have ideas come into my head that are amusing, not absolutely commonplace. But as I am a superfluous man with a padlock on my inner self, it is very painful for me to express my idea, the more so as I know beforehand that I shall express it badly. It positively sometimes strikes me as extraordinary the way people manage to talk, and so simply and freely.… It’s marvellous, really, when you think of it. Though, to tell the truth, I too, in spite of my padlock, sometimes have an itch to talk. But I did actually utter words only in my youth; in riper years I almost always pulled myself up. I would murmur to myself: ‘Come, we’d better hold our tongue.’ And I was still. We are all good hands at being silent; our women especially are great in that line. Many an exalted Russian young lady keeps silent so strenuously that the spectacle is calculated to produce a faint shudder and cold sweat even in any one prepared to face it. But that’s not the point, and it’s not for me to criticize others. I proceed to my promised narrative.

A few years back, owing to a combination of circumstances, very insignificant in themselves, but very important for me, it was my lot to spend six months in the district town O——. This town is all built on a slope, and very uncomfortably built, too. There are reckoned to be about eight hundred inhabitants in it, of exceptional poverty; the houses are hardly worthy of the name; in the chief street, by way of an apology for a pavement, there are here and there some huge white slabs of rough-hewn limestone, in consequence of which even carts drive round it instead of through it. In the very middle of an astoundingly dirty square rises a diminutive yellowish edifice with black holes in it, and in these holes sit men in big caps making a pretense of buying and selling. In this place there is an extraordinarily high striped post sticking up into the air, and near the post, in the interests of public order, by command of the authorities, there is kept a cartload of yellow hay, and one government hen struts to and fro. In short, existence in the town of O——is truly delightful. During the first days of my stay in this town, I almost went out of my mind with boredom. I ought to say of myself that, though I am, no doubt, a superfluous man, I am not so of my own seeking; I’m morbid myself, but I can’t bear anything morbid.… I’m not even averse to happiness— indeed, I’ve tried to approach it right and left.… And so it is no wonder that I too can be bored like any other mortal. I was staying in the town of O——on official business.

Terentyevna has certainly sworn to make an end of me. Here’s a specimen of our conversation:—

TERENTYEVNA. Oh—oh, my good sir! what are you for ever writing for? it’s bad for you, keeping all on writing.

I. But I’m dull, Terentyevna.

SHE. Oh, you take a cup of tea now and lie down. By God’s mercy you’ll get in a sweat and maybe doze a bit.

I. But I’m not sleepy.

SHE. Ah, sir! why do you talk so? Lord have mercy on you! Come, lie down, lie down; it’s better for you.

I. I shall die any way, Terentyevna!

SHE. Lord bless us and save us! … Well, do you want a little tea?

I. I shan’t live through the week, Terentyevna!

SHE. Eh, eh! good sir, why do you talk so? … Well, I’ll go and heat the samovar.

Oh, decrepit, yellow, toothless creature! Am I really, even in your eyes, not a man?

—from The Diary of A Superfluous Man by Ivan Turgenev. Published in 1850, Turgenev’s novel provided a term for the soon to be ubiquitous concept of the superfluous man. The disdain the protagonist shows toward his caretaker, Terentyevna, is a hallmark of the superfluous character type. He is both dependent and resentful of her ministrations.

Oblomovism

With Oblomov, lying in bed was neither a necessity (as in the case of an invalid or of a man who stands badly in need of sleep) nor an accident (as in the case of a man who is feeling worn out) nor a gratification (as in the case of a man who is purely lazy). Rather, it represented his normal condition. Whenever he was at home and almost always he was at home—he would spend his time in lying on his back. Likewise he used but the one room—which was combined to serve both as bedroom, as study, and as reception-room—in which we have just discovered him. True, two other rooms lay at his disposal, but seldom did he look into them save on mornings (which did not comprise by any means every morning) when his old valet happened to be sweeping out the study. The furniture in them stood perennially covered over, and never were the blinds drawn up.

At first sight the room in which Oblomov was lying was a well-fitted one. In it there stood a writing-table of redwood, a couple of sofas, upholstered in some silken material, and a handsome screen that was embroidered with birds and fruits unknown to Nature. Also the room contained silken curtains, a few mats, some pictures, bronzes, and pieces of china, and a multitude of other pretty trifles. Yet even the most cursory glance from the experienced eye of a ma of taste would have detected no more than a tendency to observe les convenances while escaping their actual observance. Without doubt that was all that Oblomov had thought of when furnishing his study. Taste of a really refined nature would never have remained satisfied with such ponderous, ungainly redwood chairs, with such rickety whatnots. Moreover, the back of one of the sofas had sagged, and here and there the wood had come way from the glue. Much the same thing was to be seen in the case of the pictures, the vases, and certain other trifles of the apartment. Nevertheless, its master was accustomed to regard its appurtenances with the cold, detached eye of one who would ask, “Who has dared to bring this stuff here?” The same indifference on his part, added to, perhaps, an even greater indifference on the part of his servant, Zakhar, caused the study, when contemplated with attention, to strike the beholder with an impression of all-prevailing carelessness and neglect. On the walls and around the pictures there hung cobwebs coated with dust; the mirrors, instead of reflecting, would more usefully have served as tablets for recording memoranda; every mat was freely spotted with stains; on the sofa there lay a forgotten towel, and on the table (as on most mornings) a plate, a salt-cellar, a half-eaten crust of bread, and some scattered crumbs—all of which had failed to be cleared away after last night’s supper. Indeed, were it not for the plate, for a recently smoked pipe that was propped against the bed, and for the recumbent form of Oblomov himself, one might have imagined that the place contained not a single living soul, so dusty and discoloured did everything look, and so lacking were any active traces of the presence of a human being. True, on the whatnots there were two or three open books, while a newspaper was tossing about, and the bureau bore on its top an inkstand and a few pens; but the pages at which the books were lying open were covered with dust and beginning to turn yellow (thus proving that they had long been tossed aside), the date of the newspaper belonged to the previous year, and from the inkstand, whenever a pen happened to be dipped therein, there arose, with a frightened buzz, only a derelict fly.

Famously, the protagonist of Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov fails to leave bed for the first 150 pages and rarely does so beyond that point. Nearly paralyzed with ennui, Goncharov’s antihero is incapable of action, even when it comes to pursing a woman he loves. Unlike other examples of superfluous men, Oblomov does not engage in daring exploits or selfish hedonism in order to stave off his boredom. Instead, he lives in a state of complete apathy. In a speech given in 1922, Vladimir Lenin stated that, “Russia has made three revolutions, and still the Oblomovs have remained … and he must be washed, cleaned, pulled about, and flogged for a long time before any kind of sense will emerge.”