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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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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."
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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
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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
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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
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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).
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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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