BRACERS Record Detail for 19655
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"This is a strange world into which I have come."
This was number 6 in a sequence of eight Russia letters. In the Autobiography, however, it became number 2 as the letters that Malleson wrote are not published there.
The "strange world" BR refers to is Petrograd, Soviet Russia, although the letter was not written there or on the date written on the letter. The letter was written after his return from Russia on 30 June 1920.
The number "6" was added in ink to this ts. carbon, which is paginated 3-4.
The original letter ended up in the possession of Ottoline Morrell. It is number 1564 in the numbered sequence of letters to her (document .001564, record 18771.)
There are three other transcriptions of this letter:
Document .052468, record 99954 (ribbon copy of this transcription);
Document .052459, record 99935 (different typing);
Autobiography chapter "Russia", document .007050-F2, pp. 150-1, record 116402.
BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 13 MAY 1920
BRACERS 19655. AL. Morrell papers, Texas. Auto. 2: 106–7; App. V.3, Papers 15
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell
6.3
My Dear
This is a strange world into which I have come, a world of dying beauty and harsh life. I am troubled at every moment by fundamental questions, the terrible insoluble questions that wise men never ask. Empty palaces and full eating-houses, ancient splendours destroyed, or mummified in museums, while the sprawling self-confidence of returned Americanized refugees spreads throughout the city. Everything is to be systematic: there is to be organization and distributive justice. The same education for all, the same clothes for all, the same kind of houses for all, the same books for all, and the same creed for all — it is very just, and leaves no room for envy, except of the fortunate victims of injustice in other countries.
And then I begin upon the other side of the argument. I remember Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment, Gorki’s In the World, Tolstoy’s Resurrection.4 I reflect upon the destruction and cruelty upon which the ancient splendour was built: the poverty, drunkenness, prostitution, in which the life and health were uselessly wasted; I think of all the lovers of freedom who suffered in Peter and Paul;5 I remember the knoutings and pogroms and massacres. By hatred of the old, I become tolerant of the new; but I cannot like the new on its own account.
Yet I reproach myself for not liking it. It has all the characteristics of vigorous beginnings. It is ugly and brutal, but full of constructive energy and faith in the value of what it is creating. In creating a new machinery for social life, it has no time to think of anything beyond machinery. When the body of the new society has been built, there will be time enough to think about giving it a soul — at least so I am assured. “We have no time for a new art or a new religion”, they tell me with a certain impatience. I wonder whether it is possible to build a body first, and then afterwards inject the requisite amount of soul. Perhaps — but I doubt it.
I do not find any theoretical answer to these questions, but my feelings answer with terrible insistence. I am infinitely unhappy in this atmosphere — stifled by its utilitarianism, its indifference to love and beauty and the life of impulse. I cannot give that importance to man’s merely animal needs that is given here by those in power. No doubt that is because I have not spent half my life in hunger and want, as many of them have. But do hunger and want necessarily bring wisdom? Do they make men more or less capable of conceiving the ideal society that should be the inspiration of every reformer? I cannot avoid the belief that they narrow the horizon more than they enlarge it. But an uneasy doubt remains, and I am torn in two ...
- 1
[document] Document200650. The handwritten letter was in the possession of Lady Ottoline Morrell (Letter no. 1564, Rec. Acq. 69), even though BR writes in The Autobiography that this and other letters were “antedated letters to Colette”. When Julian Vinogradoff (Ottoline’s daughter) wanted to publish the letters in 1955, BR refused permission, writing that “These were not personal letters to your mother, but were sent to various people” (1 April 1955; BRACERS 13763).
- 2
Petrograd. May 13, 1920. This letter was not written from Russia but after BR returned on 30 June 1920. The only letter he wrote to Colette from Russia was on 22 May 1920 (BRACERS 19661). He did, however, write a journal while in Russia and there is an entry for this day; but he did not draw on to write this letter (33 in Papers 15).
- 3
6. Handwritten addition. This is the third letter written by BR in the Russian sequence of letters. Letters numbered 2–4 were written by Colette.
- 4
Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment, Gorki’s In the World, Tolstoy’s Resurrection Two of these works are classic Russian novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). The third work is the second volume of autobiography by Maxim Gorki (1868–1936). BR visited Gorki, who was ill, on 14 May, recounting the visit in his Journal (33 in Papers 15) and later corresponded with him.
- 5
Peter and Paul The former prison which during BR’s visit to Russia was being used as the army headquarters.
