Who He Is
Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky is the provincial professor whom the chronicler presents in the first chapter as an idealistic liberal, talented and much revered, who played a civic role in the town and loved it to the point of passion (chapter I of Part One). A widower of a first wife who left him a boy of five sent to aunts, and of a second, a German, whom he lost in less than a year, he has lived for more than twenty years supported by Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, who invented him and was the first to believe in the invention (chapter I of Part One). He was the tutor of Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, from the boy's eighth year, and of Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina, from eight to eleven, unpaid, and was the first teacher of Darya Pavlovna Shatova (chapter II of Part One). He was never exiled or under surveillance, though he believes the opposite; he wrote little, an allegorical poem that was seized and later printed abroad, a thesis on a German town, the beginning of a study he did not finish (chapter I of Part One). What he wants is to be feared by the authorities, because it is the only proof of importance he recognizes, and, at the same time, for someone to decide for him: when the bride he did not choose is imposed on him, what he asks of his son is that he come and save him (chapter III of Part One). What he fears is disgrace, more than Siberia: to be flogged, and even if pardoned to be suspected for life by the one who supports him (chapter IX of Part Two). What he knows is beauty, his religion, and he knows it with the lucidity of someone who lives by gestures (chapter I of Part Three). Where he errs is in taking the role for the act: he believes that the toast, the reading, and the departure on foot reconcile the generations and, when the room responds, what he discovers is that the room was never the youth he forgave (chapter I of Part Three). In the end he says that he lied all his life and that he believes himself when he lies (chapter VII of Part Three).
Trajectory
In chapter I of Part One the chronicler presents him through his pose, and the figure has a real model:
The professor of the chronicle is built on the historian Timofei Granovsky, with deliberate ironic displacements: Granovsky's real course was on the Gauls and not on the Arabs, and the thesis defended in Moscow was on the medieval city and not on Hanau.
The label that accompanies him comes from a line of Nekrasov:
Воплощенной укоризною [...] Ты стоял перед отчизною, Либерал-идеалист, as reproach incarnate [...] you stood before the fatherland, idealist-liberal.
Varvara Petrovna spends twenty-two years guarding him from every grain of dust that might touch his reputation, and that is why the chronicler sees, beneath the frequent hatred, a love:
что стал наконец для нее ее сыном, ее созданием, даже, можно сказать, ее изобретением [...] Она его выдумала и в свою выдумку сама же первая и уверовала, that he finally became for her her son, her creature, even, one might say, her invention [...] She invented him, and she was the first to believe in her own invention.
At the soirees of the circle that forms around him, with Liputin, Ivan Shatov, and Virginsky, the chronicler names what is practiced there:
«Высший либерализм» и «высший либерал», то есть либерал без всякой цели, возможны только в одной России, "higher liberalism" and the "higher liberal," that is, the liberal without any aim, are possible only in Russia.
When Stepan speaks of nationality as a fashion of gentry clubs and of God as a being that becomes conscious of itself only within him, Shatov explodes:
Нельзя любить то, чего не знаешь, а они ничего в русском народе не смыслили [...] А у кого нет народа, у того нет и бога, one cannot love what one does not know, and they understood nothing about the Russian people [...] And whoever has no people has no God.
In chapter II of Part One Varvara Petrovna tells him her plan to marry him to Darya, and he consents because his son warned that he would come to sell the estate at any price and Stepan, who sold the woodland in secret, has no way to settle the account except the eight thousand rubles of the dowry. The contradiction he formulates without knowing that he speaks of his son is Pyotr's:
почему это все эти отчаянные социалисты и коммунисты в то же время и такие неимоверные скряги, приобретатели, собственники, и даже так, что чем больше он социалист, чем дальше пошел, тем сильнее и собственник…, why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, proprietors, and to such a degree that the more of a socialist he is, the further he has gone, the stronger a proprietor he is...
In chapter III of Part One he spends a week without seeing the bride or Varvara Petrovna, goes out only at nightfall, supposes the whole town knows, rages over three notes about Karmazinov and, after Liputin tells him the story of Captain Lebyadkin, of the money sent from Switzerland by a most noble orphan and of Varvara Petrovna's question about her son's sanity, says in a whisper, with a smile of shame and despair and a strange enthusiasm:
Не могу же я жениться на «чужих грехах»!, I really cannot marry "other people's sins"!
Liza, who recognizes him after twelve years, treats him with unconditional tenderness, kisses his forehead from the saddle, and he weeps and says that he has finally had a minute of happiness. That night he shows the chronicler Varvara Petrovna's letter summoning him for Sunday at noon, confesses that he wrote the day before to Darya and five days earlier to Nicolas, asking about their hearts, so as not to be an obstacle, and calls on his son, the only one who can save him. In chapter V of Part One, in the drawing room, it is Pyotr who reads his father's letter and Varvara Petrovna hears the sins from him; Stepan bows with dignity and leaves, after hearing from Darya that she respects him.
In chapter IV of Part Two Pyotr finds him lying down, with the novel What Is to Be Done? on the table, studied in secret to refute those who squeal, and tells him that he was a hanger-on, a voluntary lackey; the old man answers with a curse in a theatrical gesture. In chapter V of Part Two Varvara Petrovna has it out with him at Skvoreshniki, offers him three thousand rubles a year to live wherever he likes except with her, and he recognizes in her words those of his son:
Боже, сколько чужих слов! Затверженные уроки! И на вас уже надели они свой мундир! Вы тоже в радости, вы тоже на солнце; chère, chère, за какое чечевичное варево продали вы им вашу свободу!, my God, how many borrowed words! Memorized lessons! And they have already put their uniform on you! You too are in joy, you too are in the sun; chère, chère, for what mess of lentil pottage have you sold them your freedom!
In the list of grievances she opens, he admits the fact and rejects the word:
Да, я вас объедал; я говорю языком нигилизма; но объедать никогда не было высшим принципом моих поступков [...] Я всегда думал, что между нами остается нечто высшее еды, и — никогда, никогда не был я подлецом!, yes, I lived at your table; I speak the language of nihilism; but eating at others' expense was never the supreme principle of my actions. [...] I always thought that something higher than food remained between us, and I was never, never a scoundrel!
He takes leave with Alea jacta est and announces that, win or lose at the reading, he will leave on foot, with a beggar's bag, to die of hunger under a fence. In chapter IX of Part Two, when Blum takes away his papers, it is the police he fears, and the lamp he orders lit before the icon is calculation:
Это я давеча распорядился, только что те ушли, — пробормотал Степан Трофимович, хитро посмотрев на меня, — quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu’on vient vous arrêter, то это внушает, и должны же они доложить, что видели, I gave that order a while ago, just as they left, murmured Stepan Trofimovich, looking at me slyly, quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu'on vient vous arrêter, it makes an impression, and they will have to report what they saw.
What terrifies him is not Siberia:
Высекут, they will flog me.
And even being released would ruin him:
Но пусть даже меня простят, пусть опять сюда привезут и ничего не сделают— и вот тут-то я и погиб. Elle me soupçonnera toute sa vie, but even if they forgive me, even if they bring me back here and do nothing to me, that is where I am lost. Elle me soupçonnera toute sa vie.
In chapter X of Part Two he goes to the governor to demand his rights, amid the workers whom Lembke orders to kneel, points his finger at the commissioner Flibusterov, and hears from Lembke a plea for compassion. Karmazinov embraces him in Yulia Mikhailovna's drawing room, and he is obliged to kiss the cheek the writer offers, and tells the chronicler what he thought:
я подумал в ту минуту: кто из нас подлее? Он ли, обнимающий меня с тем, чтобы тут же унизить, я ли, презирающий его и его щеку и тут же ее лобызающий, хотя и мог отвернуться… тьфу!, I thought at that moment: which of us is baser? He, who embraces me in order to humiliate me on the spot, or I, who despise him and his cheek and kiss it on the spot, though I could have turned away... pah!
In chapter I of Part Three, at the matinée, he climbs onto the platform with an olive branch: he proposes a toast to stupidity and says that the spirit of youth is as pure as that of his own generation, and that the question of our time is which is more beautiful, Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum.
без англичанина еще можно прожить человечеству, без Германии можно, без русского человека слишком возможно, без науки можно, без хлеба можно, без одной только красоты невозможно, ибо совсем нечего будет делать на свете, without the Englishman humanity can still live, without Germany it can, without the Russian it is only too possible, without science it can, without bread it can, only without beauty it is impossible, for there would be absolutely nothing left to do in the world.
Joseph Frank reads Stepan as a portrait of Granovsky and, indirectly, of Herzen, and his last public speech repeats words Herzen had written against the nihilist sons.
The room answers that it is easy for someone who has always had his bread guaranteed, and the seminarian, at the moment he loses control and pounds the table, collects from him what aesthetics does not pay:
Здесь в городе и в окрестностях бродит теперь Федька Каторжный, беглый с каторги. Он грабит и недавно еще совершил новое убийство. Позвольте спросить: если б вы его пятнадцать лет назад не отдали в рекруты в уплату за карточный долг, то есть попросту не проиграли в картишки, скажите, попал бы он в каторгу? резал бы людей, как теперь, в борьбе за существование? Что скажете, господин эстетик?, Fedka Katorzhny, a fugitive from penal servitude, is roaming here in the town and the surrounding area. He robs and recently committed a new murder. Allow me to ask: if fifteen years ago you had not given him up as a recruit to pay a card debt, that is, simply had not lost him at cards, tell me, would he have ended up in penal servitude? Would he have slit people's throats, as now, in the struggle for existence? What do you say, Mr. Aesthete?
Stepan cries out that he shakes the dust from his feet and flees weeping backstage. In chapter II of Part Three, locked in at home, he answers through the door that he is finished with men, good and bad, writes to Darya, and takes leave of the chronicler with a merci, like Karmazinov with the public. In chapter III of Part Three he sets out on foot, in high boots, a scarf, a small, stuffed bag, and an open umbrella, and meets Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevich on their way to the Lebyadkins' house: he kneels before her, weeping, and says that one must forgive, forgive and forgive, in order to be free; she blesses him with the sign of the cross.
In chapter VII of Part Three the chronicler explains why on foot: the road, unlike the passport, is something long, without end, like human life, and it is the motto of the flight, Vive la grande route. Seated under a willow, umbrella open, he thinks that, if he meets Fedka, he will tell him the whole truth and give him the purse of forty rubles, and that Fedka will kill him all the same. He follows a cart with a peasant, a woman, and a cow, says he is the head professor, reaches Khatovo and meets Sofya Matveyevna Ulitina, a thirty-four-year-old widow, a former nurse at Sevastopol, who sells Gospels along the roads; he buys one, not having read the book in thirty years. In the britzka to Spasov he talks without stopping, falls asleep with a fever and, in the village by the lake, tells her for hours his life since childhood, the dark one and the fair one who stayed silent for twenty years, exhausted by mutual generosity. At dawn he falls at her feet, calling himself a scoundrel:
Главное в том, что я сам себе верю, когда лгу. Всего труднее в жизни жить и не лгать… и… и собственной лжи не верить, да, да, вот это именно, the main thing is that I believe myself when I lie. The hardest thing in life is to live and not lie... and... and not believe one's own lie, yes, yes, that is exactly it.
Sick, he asks at random for a page of the Gospel and falls on the letter to the angel of Laodicea, to those who are neither cold nor hot, and says that they will be tested. He then asks for the passage of the pigs, to recall it literally:
Тут же на горе паслось большое стадо свиней [...] Бесы, вышедши из человека, вошли в свиней; и бросилось стадо с крутизны в озеро и потонуло. [...] нашли человека, из которого вышли бесы, сидящего у ног Иисусовых, одетого и в здравом уме, there, on the mountain, a great herd of pigs was feeding [...] The demons, having come out of the man, entered the pigs; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned. [...] they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.
Agitated, he makes the comparison that deciphers the epigraph:
Эти бесы, выходящие из больного и входящие в свиней, — это все язвы, все миазмы, вся нечистота, все бесы и все бесенята, накопившиеся в великом и милом нашем больном, в нашей России, за века, за века, these demons that come out of the sick man and enter the pigs are all the sores, all the miasmas, all the filth, all the demons and little demons that have accumulated, over the centuries, the centuries, in our great and dear sick man, in our Russia.
And he includes himself in it, naming his son and himself:
Это мы, мы и те, и Петруша [...] и я, может быть, первый, во главе, и мы бросимся, безумные и взбесившиеся, со скалы в море и все потонем, и туда нам дорога, потому что нас только на это ведь и хватит, it is we, we and those, and Petrusha [...] and I, perhaps the first, at the head, and we will throw ourselves, mad and raging, from a cliff into the sea and all drown, and that is the road for us, because it is only for that that we are good enough.
Varvara Petrovna arrives on the third day, with Darya and two footmen, expels Sofya Matveyevna, shouts at him, and only then notices the illness; she sends for the doctor and brings back the woman she had just expelled. He says, for the first time in his life, that he loved her all his life, twenty years; she answers in the whisper of old grievances, the perfume, the new cravat, the cigar in the arbor, and calls him empty and cowardly before restraining herself. He confesses and takes communion willingly and, when the priest speaks of faith as the only refuge, smiles finely and is cut off by Varvara Petrovna. Then he makes his profession of faith:
Мое бессмертие уже потому необходимо, что бог не захочет сделать неправды и погасить совсем огонь раз возгоревшейся к нему любви в моем сердце. И что дороже любви? Любовь выше бытия, любовь венец бытия, и как же возможно, чтобы бытие было ей неподклонно? Если я полюбил его и обрадовался любви моей — возможно ли, чтоб он погасил и меня и радость мою и обратил нас в нуль? Если есть бог, то и я бессмертен! Voilà ma profession de foi, my immortality is necessary for this reason alone: God will not want to commit an injustice and extinguish entirely the fire of love once kindled for him in my heart. And what is dearer than love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and how can it be possible for being not to be subject to it? If I have loved him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible that he would extinguish me and my joy and reduce us to zero? If there is a God, then I too am immortal! Voilà ma profession de foi.
And at the end:
J’ai menti toute ma vie, всю, всю жизнь!, I have lied all my life, all, all my life! And, later on, to everyone:да здравствует Великая Мысль! Вечная, безмерная Мысль, long live the Great Thought! The eternal, immeasurable Thought.
He asks to see Petrusha and Shatov, whose fate no one there knows, speaks of the need for the infinitely great, and three days later dies, already unconscious, snuffed out like a candle. Varvara Petrovna buries him in the churchyard at Skvoreshniki and, when the doctor reminds her that she has a son, answers that she has none.
Themes Embodied
Stepan is the Truth and Lies of idealistic liberalism, and for that reason the starting point of the Family the book deals with: the children he educated and the son he fathered come out of him in two ways. Throughout the novel what he says has the form of a gesture (the toast to stupidity, the reading about the Madonna, the departure on foot, the merci) and the form is his truth, the only one he manages to sustain: in chapter V of Part Two he refuses to be called a scoundrel, but does not deny having lived at another's table; in chapter IX of Part Two he lights the lamp to seem what he is not; in chapter VII of Part Three he says he believes himself when he lies. His symbols are the icon and the lamp, the main road, and the pigs and the epigraph, of which he is the interpreter.
The book gives him, at the end, what it denies him at the beginning: an act. Over three parts he threatens to leave, writes letters he does not send, and falls into nervous crises, and only in chapter III of Part Three does he leave the house. The departure is the act of a man left with no role, and the road the chronicler describes as endless is where he finds what he did not find in the drawing room: someone who listens to him without an audience, Sofya Matveyevna, and the deciphering of the epigraph that the narrator had left unexplained at the start. This does not make him another man. He recognizes the lie and goes on needing a Great Thought in order to die in peace (chapter VII of Part Three).
Divergent Readings
The final confession has two readings in the text itself. In one, Stepan converts: he confesses, takes communion, and argues for immortality from love, and Varvara Petrovna, who implores him to say that God exists, does not quite understand the profession of faith. In the other, it is the last reasoning of someone who always argued from affection, and the content changes without the form changing (chapter VII of Part Three):
He is the same man the book presents as a drawing-room liberal, with a civic pose sustained by Varvara Petrovna and never turned into act; the final confession does not belie the portrait, it closes it from within. He recognizes the lie and goes on needing a Great Thought in order to die in peace: he changes content (from liberalism to the Gospel) without changing form, and never becomes a man of a single act.
The same division holds for the defense he makes of himself before Varvara Petrovna in chapter V of Part Two: the true dignity of a weak man who refuses to see himself as a hanger-on, or a last refuge in form, as empty as the Latin he cites. And it holds for the deciphering of the epigraph, which may be fever's lucidity or an orator's last speech (chapter VII of Part Three):
Stepan Trofimovich not only deciphers the epigraph, but includes himself in it, beside his son, among those who will throw themselves into the sea; and even so he ends by betting that the sick man will be cured and "will sit at the feet of Jesus." It is the only time the book has a character give the key that the narrator left, unexplained, at the start, and he gives it in delirium. It may be fever's lucidity or an orator's last speech.
Relationships
- Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina: the one who invented him and supports him, who expels him from the house after hearing the letter (chapter V of Part One), offers him three thousand rubles to live far away (chapter V of Part Two) and arrives at his bedside to call him empty (chapter VII of Part Three).
- Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky: the son he did not raise, who humiliates him (chapter IV of Part Two), who exposes him (chapter V of Part One) and whom he names among the pigs (chapter VII of Part Three).
- Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin: the pupil he educated, invoked as Prince Harry to soothe his mother (chapter II of Part One).
- Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina: the former pupil, who treats him with tenderness (chapter III of Part One) and blesses him on the road (chapter III of Part Three).
- Darya Pavlovna Shatova: the bride imposed on him, who tells him she respects him (chapter V of Part One) and to whom he writes before leaving (chapter II of Part Three).
- Ivan Shatov: the former pupil, who tells him that whoever has no people has no God (chapter I of Part One) and for whom he asks on his deathbed (chapter VII of Part Three).
- Liputin: the regular at the soirees, who brings him the worst news (chapter III of Part One).
- Karmazinov: the writer who embraces him in order to humiliate him (chapter X of Part Two).
- Andrei Antonovich von Lembke: the governor to whom he goes to demand his rights (chapter X of Part Two).
- The Chronicler: the confidant who accompanies him in almost every scene and to whom Stepan confesses what he thought (chapter IX of Part Two, chapter X of Part Two).