The Secret of Poushkin's "inner harmony."--To Poushkin nothing was hopeless. Nay, he saw hopeful signs in everything. It is agreeable to sin, and it is just as delightful to repent. It is good to doubt, but it is still better to believe. It is jolly "with feet shod in steel" to skate the ice, it is pleasant to wander about with gypsies, to pray in church, to quarrel with a friend, to make peace with an enemy, to swoon on waves of harmony, to weep over a passing fancy, to recall the past, to peep into the future. Poushkin could cry hot tears, and he who can weep can hope. "I want to live, so that I may think and suffer," he says; and it seems as if the word "to suffer," which is so beautiful in the poem, just fell in accidentally, because there was no better rhyme in Russian for "to die." The later verses, which are intended to amplify _to think and to suffer,_ prove this. Poushkin might repeat the words of the ancient hero: "danger is dangerous to others, but not to me." Therein lies the secret of his harmonious moods. 16 The well-trodden field of contemporary thought should be dug up. Therefore, on every possible occasion, in season and out, the generally-accepted truths must be ridiculed to death, and paradoxes uttered in their place. Then we shall see.... 17 What is a Weltanschauung, a world-conception, a philosophy? As we all know, Turgenev was a realist, and from the first he tried to portray life truthfully. Although we had had no precise exponents of realism, yet after Poushkin it was impossible for a Russian writer to depart too far from actuality. Even those who did not know what to do with "real life" had to cope with it as best they could. Hence, in order that the picture of life should not prove too depressing, the writer must provide himself in due season with a philosophy. This philosophy still plays the part of the magic wand in literature, enabling the author to turn anything he likes into anything else. Most of Turgenev's works are curious in respect of philosophy. But most curious is his _Diary of a Superfluous Man_. Turgenev was the first to introduce the term "a superfluous man" into Russian literature. Since then an endless amount has been written about superfluous people, although up till now nothing important has been added to what was already said fifty years ago. There are superfluous people, plenty of them. But what is to be done with them? No one knows. There remains only to invent philosophies on their behalf. In 1850 Turgenev, then a young man, thus solved the problem. He ends the _Diary_--with a humorous postscript, supposed to have been scribbled by an impertinent reader on the last fly-leaf of the MS. _This MS. was ready and contents thereof disapproved_, _by Peter Zudotyeshin. M.M.M.M_. _Dear Sir, Peter Zudotyeshin, My dear Sir_.