- Project Runeberg -  Impressions of Russia /
268

(1889) [MARC] Author: Georg Brandes Translator: Samuel Coffin Eastman - Tema: Russia
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The work was intended and was received as a gospel
for the modern Russia. It was intended to point the
way out of the conflicts which are occasioned in one
direction by the regulation of the sexual relations, and
in another direction by the whole economical disorder of
society. “What is to be done?” is a sort of a bastard
between a novel and a treatise on political economy; it
descends on the female side from George Sand and on
the male from Karl Marx.

Books of this kind have apparently been written
before. In tendency it has a resemblance to the
“Jacques” of George Sand, in its story it also reminds
one strongly of a much older romance, namely Jean
Paul Richter’s Leben, Tod und Ehrestand des
Armenadvokaten Siebenkäs
. But still there is no book of this
kind in the literature of the world, and no work in the
whole Russian literature is more Russian.

The argument can be stated in a few lines: The
medical student Lopukhóf marries Viera Pávlovna for love.
They live happily together for a long time. After the
lapse of some years she falls in love with his comrade,
Kirsánof. Lopukhóf, with whose notions it does not
agree to stand in the way of two lovers, apparently
commits suicide and disappears; he travels under another
name to America, returns home some years later, marries
another woman, and continues to live in friendly
relations to his former wife and her husband.

There are many most excellently drawn subsidiary
characters, who take part in the story, who are grouped
around the leading persons. The form of the narrative
is personal to the highest degree. Every moment the
author addresses himself directly to the reader,
humorously makes the ordinary excitement of a novel
impossible, by telling far in advance everything which is going

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