Pečorin betook himself to Persia; Čaadaev consorted with Catholics; other writers became orthodox and slavophil. It was all the outcome of tedium vitae. In his Realists Pisarev gives a similar account of the effects of boredom.
The nihilists, therefore, attack romanticism on ethical grounds as well. "Oh why was I not a block of wood?"—thus Pisarev quizzically of the romanticists weary of life; their German romanticist colleagues à la Schlegel envied the quiet existence of the plants.
Against romanticist sentimentalism and extravagances of feeling, the nihilists entrench themselves with irony and cynicism. Concerning the irony and cynicism of Bazarov, Pisarev writes that irony, internal cynicism, is directed against sentimentality, gushes of feeling, and similar absurdities. Bazarov, he says, is animated by this cynicism. Pisarev likewise approves outward cynicism, a rough method of expressing this irony, extreme bluntness in general. But these characteristics do not constitute the essence of realism; they are mere ephemeral manifestations; and they are less formidable than they appear.[1]
The ultra-positivist impassivity of the nihilist was in fact a mere mask.
The nihilists were democrats (they used the familiar "thou" to all). In practice this meant that they were to work for the recently liberated mužik, and were themselves to work like the mužik. The liberation made the nihilists turn to the peasants; the movement "towards the people" began. The nihilist wished to enlighten the peasant. As a democrat and as a worker he would not distinguish himself from the peasant; assuming a peasant mode of life, he endeavoured to become simpler; outwardly, and in part inwardly, he grew to resemble the peasant. The nihilistic democrat therefore adopted plebeian manners and customs.
Pisarev recommends agricultural work to the member of the intelligentsia who, when he becomes for practical purposes a peasant, is thus best in a position for carrying on his work of enlightenment.
This utilitarian democratic movement therefore aimed at "annihilating" aesthetics. In times of social and political difficulty and oppression like the years which immediately followed the liberation of the peasants, excellent men incline
- ↑ This analysis of nihilist cynicism is found in the first essay on Bazarov.
