Chapter VII

The first moments of Chaadaev's return to Russian soil were most unpleasant. At the customs house in Brest-Litovsk by order of the Grand Duke Constantine, who had acted with the direct approval of Nicholas I, Petr and his luggage were closely searched. His books and papers were taken away for examination. On July 19, a detailed report of the suspicious nature of his possessions--among which had been found seventy-one forbidden books, and papers which appeared to be "scandalous works directed against our fatherland"--was sent to Warsaw. From the Polish capital on July 21, Constantine passed on to Nicholas further details of Chaadaev's possessions: two letters written by Nikolai Turgenev, that contained "traces of ties to the Murav'ev's and Prince Trubetskoi"; a poem entitled "Death"; a letter of recommendation from an Englishman named Cook; and a certificate of the eighth degree from a Masonic lodge in St. Petersburg. Constantine added that he had ordered Chaadaev detained indefinitely at Brest.

On August 1, 1826 Petr wrote to his brother explaining what had happened to him and promising that as soon as he was released he would go directly to Mikhail at Khripunovo, a journey which would take six days. Nearly three more weeks passed before a letter dated August 11, and written by the Chief of the General Staff, Ivan Ivanovich Dibich, reached Brest with the orders that the Emperor himself commanded that Chaadaev be interrogated. This interrogation was carried out on August 26.

By the time that his interrogation began, Petr surely realized that he was suspected of direct involvement in the conspiracies which had resulted in the insurrection of December 14, 1825, and with this in mind he gave only brief and very general written answers to the questions that were posed. He explained that the only reasons for his retirement from the service in 1821 were those related to "the circumstances of [his] private life," and asserted that at the time of his retirement he had no plans to go abroad. To the questions of the origin and duration of his friendships with Iakushkin, Prince Trubetskoi, and the Murav'ev's, he offered answers that carefully avoided anything that could be related to the Decembrist movement. Asked directly if he had any knowledge of the "evil intentions" of these people, he naturally said that he had none. If by "evil intentions" his interrogators meant the use of forcible means to overthrow the government, Chaadaev's answer that he had no such knowledge was probably completely honest, considering the fact that the leadership of the Decembrist movement did not seriously turn toward this direction until after he had left Russia in 1823. Petr stated that the poem entitled "Death" ("Smert'") and several others in possession were "by the well-known poet, Pushkin" and asserted that these had been given him in Switzerland by Prince Fedor Aleksandrovich Shcherbatov. To this he added: "I preserved them solely for their literary value, not paying any attention to their contents."

Chaadaev's books were next to fall under the scrutiny of his investigators, who noted that the majority concerned religion and asked why he was more concerned with this area of learning than with others. Although there is very little information available which could serve to substantiate a serious religious interest on Chaadaev's part before his trip abroad, he answered:

For a long time before my journey abroad I was interested in Christian literature, not having for this any aim besides the increase of my knowledge of religion and the strengthening of my faith in Christianity. In Russia I have a major collection of books on this subject; during my visit to Dresden I tried to increase this collection as much as I could.

To the question of why he had attempted to bring back certain books that were forbidden in Russia, he replied that he had acted in innocence since he had no way of knowing what the government did not allow. Here Chaadaev lied, for Nikolai Turgenev's November 20, 1825 letter from Paris had told him that a great number of books which he had tried to send back to Russia were forbidden and were being returned to him. However, it seems that only two of the five letters that Chaadaev received from Turgenev were taken from him and since this was not either of the two, Petr's answer went unchallenged.

The remaining points of the interrogation concerned freemasonry and Chaadaev's knowledge of secret societies. Informed that when Alexander I had forbidden masonry in 1822 a subscription of intent had been required of those who did belong or at one time had belonged to a Masonic lodge, he answered that he had not given one because he assumed that it was not required of people who had retired from the service. He then made it very clear that he had severed all his relations with masonry in 1821, at the time of his retirement. Declaring that he had never belonged to any secret society, Petr stated that the authorities should have found in his papers a speech which he had made about masonry in 1818 and in which he had expressed his views on "the senselessness and harmful activities of secret societies in general."

The results of the August 26 interrogation were delivered to the Grand Duke Constantine in Warsaw by an officer of the navy named Kolzakov. Seeing that Chaadaev had not given the subscription which had been ordered in 1822, Constantine commanded that one be obtained. Thus, on August 29, 1826 Petr offered, as a postscript to his interrogation, a brief written history of his participation in freemasonry and a promise to have no further contacts with masonry or with secret societies. Having received Chaadaev's subscription, on the first of September Constantine wrote to Nicholas and informed him that, although from his papers it was evident that Chaadaev "had a deplorable frame of mind," he had been candid, seemed to regret his errors, and saw the terrible consequences of any future ties like those which he had once possessed. In view of this, Constantine informed Nicholas I that he proposed to free Chaadaev from further police surveillance and permit him to return to Moscow. Thus on September 2, the Grand Duke ordered that Chaadaev be allowed to depart from Brest, and on September 4, 1826, after a deIay of nearly two months, Chaadaev finally set out for Moscow.

Petr intended to spend only a day or so in Moscow before continuing on to the long-planned reunion with his brother at Khripunovo. However, when he reached the city, either late in the day on September 8, or early in the morning of September 9, one of the first things he heard was the news that Pushkin had suddenly been pardoned and had just arrived in Moscow. Chaadaev quickly decided that his reunion with Mikhail could wait a few more days, and on the evening of September 10, at the Moscow home of the young poet and literary critic, Dmitrii Vladimirovich Venevitinov, he warmly embraced his old friend. Pushkin and Chaadaev had been separated for six and one-half years. When they parted in the spring of 1820 in St. Petersburg, Pushkin had been the pupil of the dashing and sophisticated Chaadaev, but by the time of their reunion in the autumn of 1826, the achievements of the pupil had far outstripped those of the master. Thus, on that cool September evening, Petr found himself listening to Pushkin's first reading of his tragedy in verse, Boris Godunov, before an audience that, besides himself and Venevitinov, included Sergei Aleksandrovich Sobolevskii, Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev, Ivan Vasilevich Kireevskii, Matvei Iur'evich Viel'gorskii, and other former associates of Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevskii's philosophical circle, the Lovers of Wisdom. It is not difficult to guess that as Chaadaev listened to Pushkin's portrayal of one of the most dramatic moments of Russian history he became troubled by the fact that while his former pupil was now recognized as the foremost living Russian author, he himself had accomplished relatively little besides the alienation of his brother. He had come to understand how highly German idealism valued artistic creation and he now felt the power of the work by the young poet over whom he believed that he had once exerted a considerable influence. Now the student, it seemed, had outclassed his master.

Chaadaev was to become ever more depressed by the atmosphere of repression and suspicion in Russia, which, as a result of the failure of the Decembrist revolt, had become at times overwhelming. And it seems probable that as time passed Petr gradually began to wonder if by writing he too might not gain, besides personal satisfaction, some of the recognition which Pushkin so clearly enjoyed and to which Chaadaev had always thought himself entitled. Similar thoughts were on the mind of at least one other person with whom he found himself in contact. For only a few months later Ivan Kireevsky would write to his friend Aleksandr Koshelev: "I can be a man of letters. Is not working for the enlightenment of the people the greatest service I can perform for them. . . . Can I not be a force in literature?"

On the evening of September 10, 1826 these thoughts had just begun to enter Chaadaev's mind; at least eighteen more months filled with personal crises would pass before they grew to maturity. For the present, all that he would do was to open his mind to what those who gathered at Venevitinov's could tell him about the development of Russian politics, literature and criticism during the time of his absence, and the likely direction of the movement of critical ideas in the future. Those who, eight to ten years earlier, might have been attracted by hopes of reforming the Russian political system, in 1826 and even before that began to turn their interests toward the continued development of Russian literature. By 1818 some literary critics had come to see their roles as ones that extended to the realm of social criticism. By 1826, these critics and others like them were the only persons in Russia who could even pretend to have any right to speak out on themes related to social or political development.

Dmitrii Venevitinov and Ivan Kireevskii, two of the major literary critics of the first years of the reign of Nicholas I, were present on that evening when Pushkin first read his Boris Godunov. In 1825 Venevitinov had written a brief essay entitled "Neskol'ko myslei v plan zhurnala" ("Several thoughts on a Plan for a Journal"). The similarities between Venevitinov's view of Russian culture and history in this short unpublished work and the critique that Chaadaev would express in his First Philosophical Letter are so striking that they point to a strong possibility that Venevitinov may have given Chaadaev a copy of his manuscript. Venevitinov may also have called Petr's attention to the critical reviews by Aleksandr Bestuzhev which had been published in the almanac Poliarnaia zvezda during the former's absence from Russia and which were filled with many ideas that later found their way into Chaadaev's critique. Kireevskii, who was just at the beginning of his journalistic career, would also express many ideas similar to those of Petr although, in this case, the influence may well have been reciprocal rather than one way.

Saying all this is not to argue that this entire exchange of ideas took place in one evening. Chaadaev remained in the old capital for a short time before going to Khripunovo to see his brother, and, long before the end of 1826, he had returned to Moscow. Early in 1827, he departed for Alekseevskoe, the estate of his aunt, and finally, a few months later, he moved into an apartment within Moscow itself. Thus there would be many other occasions when these influences could have been transmitted before Chaadaev began to write his Philosophical Letters in late 1828.

What is most important about the night of September 10, 1826 is that it was a dramatic and emotional occasion which marked Petr's first real participation in the intellectual life of his country since his retirement from the service in St. Petersburg. In the five years that followed his retirement he had discovered a whole philosophical world that had made the experience of hearing Pushkin's new poem even more meaningful. He began to understand the joy and personal fulfillment that could be offered by artistic creation. When Pushkin finished reading, Chaadaev must have felt emotions very similar to those described by Nikolai Pogodin, who attended another reading a month later.

It was as though we had simply lost our minds. We grew hot and cold. Our hair stood on end . . . . The reading ended. For a long time, we looked at one another and then we threw ourselves on Pushkin. Embraces began, a commotion arose, and amid congratulations, laughter resounded and tears flowed.

Not long after this dramatic evening, Chaadaev left Moscow for Khripunovo. As he set out to rejoin his brother, the memories and emotions which had been stirred up by his reunion with Pushkin must have given Petr strong reason to doubt his ability to live out his life in the isolation of his family estate.

Although there is no specific record of Chaadaev's reunion with Mikhail, it appears from what happened later that, if it began with cordiality, this cordiality did not last for long. The initial euphoria of meeting Pushkin in Moscow quickly wore off and Petr began to realize the disastrous effects of the Decembrist insurrection. Mikhail gave him a detailed description of the execution two months earlier of the five leaders of the Decembrist revolt. Three of them, Pestel', Bestuzhev-Riumin and Sergei Ivanovich Murav'ev-Apostol, had been Petr's friends. He portrayed the grisly details of how the ropes of three of the five had broken and how they had been forced to drag themselves out again to be hanged a second time. And finally, he described how on the same morning more than a hundred men were taken from the Peter Paul Fortress to begin their journey to exile in Siberia. Among these men were: Ivan Iakushkin, Prince Sergei Trubetskoi, Nikita Murav'ev, Matvei Murav'ev-Apostol, and Mikhail Fonvizin. Iakushkin was Petr's closest friend and the remaining four were also all friends of Chaadaev. In addition, Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov, his cousin and companion since childhood, had been sent into exile in the Caucasus on February 27, 1826. Finally, Nikolai Turgenev, who was abroad, had no hope of ever again being allowed to return to Russia. Suddenly in the autumn of 1826 Chaadaev, who had never possessed many close friends or even acquaintances, realized that nearly all those people to whom he had been close were lost to him, probably forever.

Again, it is not difficult to guess that at Khripunovo, Petr began to feel more alone and isolated than he had ever felt during more than three years of solitary existence in Western Europe. He had promised Mikhail obedience and the acceptance of the lonely life of a gentleman farmer. Abruptly, he realized that he had deceived himself and his brother by his promises to return to Khripunovo. Driven by a compulsive desire to return to Moscow and to try to put down new social roots to replace those that had been torn asunder, he quarreled with Mikhail over the money that he had spent already and the additional funds which he needed for the future. Only a few days after arriving at Khripunovo, he packed his luggage and, very likely laden with guilt over his broken promises to Mikhail, returned to Moscow.

There he met Stepan Petrovich Zhikharev, a former member of the Arzamas Society, who in 1826 was the public procurator of Moscow and, in his spare time, the manager of Aleksandr Turgenev's financial affairs. Zhikharev invited Petr to stay with his family until the latter could find permanent living quarters. Finally, according to Zhikharev, soon after Chaadaev's return to Moscow, Chaadaev was invited to reenter the government service; he refused to make an immediate decision.

As the autumn of 1826 wore on, Chaadaev's existence in Moscow progressed in a satisfactory manner, and the very fact that he could even consider a return to government service showed the extent to which he was struggling to accommodate to the new reality in which he found himself. Meanwhile, Elena Grigorievna Pushkina had returned to Moscow with her daughter Ol'ga and Sergei Turgenev who was seriously ill. Madame Pushkina had apparently been considerably charmed by Chaadaev when they met a year earlier in Dresden and she lost no time in calling his attention to her return. In an undated note, she confided to Petr:

I have not been able to resist the pleasure of conveying to you a word of friendship and recalling myself to your memory. I hope and desire that your trip has been a happy one and that your reunion with your family will have contributed to your health. I miss you a great deal . . . even though [in Dresden] I knew you hardly well enough to appreciate you . . . . Farewell, my dear Mr. Chaadaev . . . .

Chaadaev evidently responded favorably to this inquiry for some time later Madame Pushkina wrote again.

Would you be so kind, dear sir, as to accept dinner at my house today? . . . . Two months ago I would have feared being brazen in making a suggestion of this kind . . . but at last I dare allow myself this tone of confidence, a tone that is never far from one of friendship.

These notes indicate that Petr in the final months of 1826 was making some progress in establishing new friendships and showed no signs Or the crisis that he would eventually undergo.

Additional evidence of Chaadaev's outlook in late 1826 may be found in his attempt to renew his friendship with Dmitrii Obleukhov. Early in December he wrote to Obleukhov indicating that he would like to visit him at Felshovo, the latter's estate not far from Moscow. On December 22, 1826 Obleukhov replied:

I learned a month ago through a letter from my mother that you were in Moscow, and I was very much annoyed to find out that you had returned there at a time when I had just left my old abode and to find myself unable to see you, a fact which I regret very much. Imagine what joy your desire of coming here to spend a few days gave me . . . . However, I must not find my unique pleasure in this. Our house is small and somewhat uncomfortable. I fear that you would find yourself in poor lodgings here, especially in the winter, and that in the end your stay with us would appear as disagreeable to you as it is agreeable to us. This thought grieves me and I would rather renounce the joy of seeing you than have it at the risk of depriving you for some time of the comfort to which I know very well that you have been accustomed since childhood. I also know that the fragility of your health makes this comfort indispensable and that its absence would make your stay disagreeable . . . . However, when the great colds of winter have passed, it will not be so difficult for me to provide you with more comfortable lodgings in our house. Then we will have at our disposal two sizable rooms which are now too cold for you to occupy . . . . If then, you could come for the month of March, the fear about which I have spoken will not poison any more the sweet pleasure that I will have of embracing you.

By January 1827 Chaadaev was still in the process of reaching out and trying to reestablish old ties. He had hoped to live for a while with Obleukhov, but his friend's answer to his inquiry foreclosed at least temporarily this possibility. Since he realized that he could not rely on the hospitality of Stepan Zhikharev indefinitely, Petr began early in 1827 to consider the possibility of moving to the estate of his aunt Princess Shcherbatova. Having decided that a return to any kind of government service would be incompatible with his increasingly pessimistic attitude toward the society in which he lived, he realized that a Moscow residence would no longer be necessary.

Chaadaev arrived at Alekseevskoe early in February 1827 and had hardly settled himself there before he received another letter from Obleukhov. Dmitrii informed Petr that he would be coming to Moscow in late March or early April to visit his sick mother and hoped that Chaadaev could meet him in the city at this time. While Obleukhov awaited a reply, Petr struggled to straighten out his finances. The previous October he had borrowed money from Stepan Zhikharev and by February 1827 he was late in repaying his debt. Consequently, he wrote to Zhikharev to explain that he had hoped to obtain the necessary funds for payment of all his debts by "laying my hands on the estate." Presumably he had been trying to sell Likhacha, and had run into unforeseen difficulties. He complained: "Contrary to my expectations problems have occurred; the affair has become drawn out and perhaps will drag on for six more months. And so, regretfully I need to . . . ask you to permit me to write a promissory note." Having expressed his desire to come to Moscow, Petr admitted that "circumstances prevented" him from leaving the country for the present and concluded that he did not know how much more time would pass before he could settle in the city. Evidently, he was still trying to find acceptable living quarters in Moscow, not to mention the money necessary to support himself there. Also Petr's apparent reluctance to set a date for his return to the city may have been caused by the fact that he had recently met two young women to whom he found himself very much attracted.

The first of these women was Avdotiia Sergeevna Norova, the twenty-seven year-old daughter of a neighboring family. According to Mikhail Zhikharev, she was "so sick and feeble that she could not even think about marriage." Nevertheless, she "loved" Chaadaev and "did not hide her feelings but freely and openly abandoned herself to them." The second, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Panova, who had been married at seventeen and six years later still had no children, also lived near Alekseevskoe. According to Longinov, "Chaadaev saw that she was eaten away by the emptiness of her surroundings, unconsciously understanding that her life was perverted and instinctively looking for an escape from the bewitched circle that enveloped her." In Ekaterina Panova Petr had apparently met a very intelligent, sensitive woman who felt an estrangement from her surroundings similar to that which was beginning to take shape in his own mind.

Chaadaev could not help but have a concern for this woman; he was carried away by an undefined wish to give her a helping hand, to reveal to her that which she lacked, that for which she was striving. unsuccessfully to attain, in a way such that she would not be aware of what he was doing. The home of this woman was almost the only place of attraction for him in the countryside, and these candid discussions with her poured into Chaadaev's heart a joy that came to be inseparable from the company of this woman and was sincerely given over to a feeling of friendship.

Although it is difficult to give a precise evaluation of the beginning of Chaadaev's friendship with Panova, it is probable that their discussions gave Petr the opportunity to begin to think systematically about those qualities of Russian society and culture which troubled him and were beginning to drive him to the point of complete alienation. By the time of these discussions, he had lived through the experiences and assimilated most of the ideas which would become the building blocks of the critique of Russian culture in his First Philosophical Letter. I All that was needed was a catalyst to set these ideas in motion.

While Chaadaev was visiting Panova and occasionally seeing Norova, Dmitrii Obleukhov was still trying to arrange a reunion with his old friend. On March 18, 1827, he wrote to Petr to tell him that he had been forced to postpone his springtime visit to his mother in Moscow. His wife was pregnant and since the baby was due in May, he told Chaadaev that he would come to Moscow early in June. There Obleukhov had a house with three rooms and an attic and he informed Petr that two of the rooms would be at his disposal if he could come to Moscow to stay with them for a time. Apparently Chaadaev replied favorably to this invitation, for on June 15 Obleukhov wrote to inform him of his safe arrival in Moscow and assert that he awaited Petr's "coming with impatience.' However, for reasons which are not clear, Chaadaev did not go to Moscow in June, and after a silence of several weeks, wrote to inform his friend that in the autumn he would come to Moscow and settle there permanently. On August 8, Obleukhov wrote:

I am glad to learn . . . that our old friendship will be renewed. Moreover, on the subject of this friendship, I have found a pleasant remembrance that you gave me before our separation in the year 1812 a sheet of your album on which you asked that I write an explanation as clear and succinct as possible, of differential calculus. I have this and I keep it at present. Nothing is written as yet. I am no longer able to fulfill your request, for it has been a long time since 1 have occupied myself with mathematics. But I must write something on this sheet anyway, for it was for such a reason that I received it. Tell me then, dear friend, what you want me to write. This I would like, but if you do not designate anything in particular, I shall write whatever occurs to me. There is much in my head-- that is to say, I write an essay on higher metaphysics which will be for philosophy what differential calculus is for mathematics.

Obleukhov's desire to write an essay on higher metaphysics struck a responsive chord in Chaadaev's mind. Petr had observed the fame that Pushkin's works had brought to his close friend. Never having been a person whose ego could withstand being surpassed by the achievements of his friends, Petr, in the coming months, may have become attracted by the possibility of writing a work which might combine an evaluation of Russian history with the type of essay on higher metaphysics that Obleukhov had proposed.

While Chaadaev was still living in the country, he wrote to Stepan Zhikharev and apologized that he could not communicate with him in person. But he did expect that his situation would change before long and he informed Zhikharev that "in a very short time circumstances would allow" him "to leave this emptiness." Still unable to repay his loan, Chaadaev sent him 500 rubles--"the interest for the past year," and offered a promissory note for an additional year. Finally, Chaadaev mentioned that he had read with interest in the Moscow Telegraph (Moskovskii Telegraf) a letter from Aleksandr Turgenev to Prince Petr Viazemskii, and asked Zhikharev to thank Viazemskii for having it published. Thus, even though Petr had written Zhikharev: "I live alone or almost alone," he appears not to have been cut off from the journals which carried the news of the current developments of Russian intellectual life and in which widely scattered remarks critical of Russian culture and history had appeared during his European travels.

Not long after he had written to Zhikharev, Chaadaev left Alekseevskoe and during November 1827 moved into a house on Novaia Basmannaia street in the merchants' section of Moscow about two miles northeast of the Kremlin. At about the same time, Dmitrii Sverbeev and his new wife, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, also moved into a house not far from Petr. Ekaterina Sverbeeva's maiden name was Shcherbatova; she was a distant cousin of Chaadaev and from 1830 onward her home became one of the principal intellectual gathering places of Moscow. Also, in the autumn of 1827, there had been still another new arrival in this part of Moscow -- Ekaterina Panova and her husband.

According to Shakhovskoi, one of the first things that Chaadaev did in Moscow was to see Obleukhov, whose fragile health had deteriorated seriously. It is not known how many times the two friends were able to see each other before, on December 13, 1827, Obleukhov died. The death of Obleukhov, who had been Chaadaev's only surviving close friend from his days at the University of Moscow, was a severe emotional blow to Petr. No one remained in Moscow who was as close to him as Obleukhov had been. Petr must have deeply regretted the fact that he had postponed his planned reunion with Obleukhov for so long. In the weeks to come his friend's unfilled promise: to "write an essay on higher metaphysics which would be for philosophy what differential calculus is for mathematics would often be on his mind.

In addition to the stress of Obleukhov's death, Petr received, at some time during the weeks that followed, a harsh and reproachful letter from Anastasiia Vasil'evna Iakushkina, the wife of Ivan lakushkin. In her critical letter, Iakushkina also confided her own deep depression to Chaadaev--"my spirit . . . is crushed, it does not want to accept a life full of bitterness and weakness . . . ." It is possible that Anastasiia Vasil'evna was grieved that Petr had not come to Iaroslavl in November of 1827 where Ivan had been taken from a local prison to join a group of men en route to Siberian exile. Mikhail Chaadaev had accompanied Iakushkin's wife to Iaroslavl, although he had not stayed there long enough to be present for the brief meeting that took place before Iakushkin was sent to exile in Irkutsk and later Chita.

Thus, at the beginning of 1828, Chaadaev was virtually alone in Moscow. There was no one there to whom he was really close and he suffered greatly from the loss of yet another dear friend. At this point, according to Zhikharev, Petr's health deteriorated and, becoming "gloomy and unsociable," he "abandoned himself to despair." "Chaadaev passed this time surrounded by doctors who treated him without letup. He began an endless battle of words (slovoprenie) with his physicians and would see only his brother and a few other relatives." There is very little specific information available about this crucial period of Chaadaev's life. In view of the fact that he did not begin to write his Philosophical Letters until very late in 1828, it seems quite likely that this phase of his illness and depression may have lasted for six months or even longer. During this time, he undoubtedly discussed his critical financial situation with Mikhail. His brother also very likely played a role in introducing him to the Levashov family that lived just down the street, and during the coming months Petr gradually became an extremely close friend of "the mother of this family,' Katerina Gavrilovna Levasheva.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, as he struggled with these problems, Chaadaev received a letter from Ekaterina Panova. He had visited Panova often after his move to Moscow and had continued with her the discussions that had begun in the country early in 1827. At some point near the end of the year, Panova's husband had asked Petr for a loan of one thousand rubles to which, in view of his own strained financial circumstances, Chaadaev surprisingly agreed. When Panova's letter arrived, probably in the summer of 1828, the loan was long overdue and his conversations with her had long since ceased. The letter itself began:

For quite a long time, sir, I longed to write to you, the fear of being troublesome, the idea that you no longer have any interest in what concerns me, made me hesitate, but at last, I have, nonetheless, resolved to send you this letter . . . .

Unfortunately I see that I have lost the good will which you showed to me before; you believe, I know, that there was some fakery on my part in the desire which I manifested to you to instruct myself in religious matters: I find this thought intolerable. Undoubtedly, I have many faults, but never, I assure you, has the idea of pretending ever had a place in my heart for a moment. I saw you so absorbed in religious ideas that it was my admiration, my profound esteem for your character, which inspired in me the need to devote myself to the same thoughts as you . . . . In hearing you speak, I believed; and it seemed to me in these moments that nothing was missing for my complete belief, but then, when I found myself alone, my doubts returned . . . . Believe me, sir, when I assure you that all these different emotions which I do not have the strength to abate have considerably altered my health. I was in a continual state of agitation and always dissatisfied with myself. I must have, very often, appeared extravagant and exaggerated to you--you, naturally have a lot of severity in your character. I have noted that lately you have removed yourself even more from our society, but I do not [know why] . . . . It is time to finish this letter; may it be able to attain its goal, that of convincing you that . . . I did not play a role in order to merit your friendship, that if I lost your esteem, nothing in the world could compensate me for this loss, not even the feeling that I have done nothing which could have brought this misfortune upon me. Farewell, Sir; if you would write me a few words in response, I would be very happy, but I really do not dare to expect any.

P. S.. My husband is sorry that he cannot return the money to you right away, he is doing all that he can to obtain it, but I doubt whether he will succeed before a month or six; weeks pass.

Panova's letter surprised and pleased Chaadaev. This warm statement of admiration, which pleaded for his help and guidance, distracted his attention from his own troubles. It helped to reestablish his self-confidence, which had been badly shaken by his strained relations with his brother, his failure to keep his promises to Mikhail, the death of Obleukhov, his lonely environment and his uncertain future.

On the very day that he received Panova's letter, Chaadaev took up his pen and began to write:

Madame, it is your frankness and your candor that I love and respect most of all. Judge how much your letter surprised me! These are precisely the agreeable qualities which charmed me when I made your acquaintance and which led me to speak to you about religion . . . . This is all I have to say to you, Madame, about the opinion that you presume that I have about your character. Let us say no more about it and go at once to the serious part of your letter.

First, what causes this trouble which is agitating you and exhausting you to the point of ruining your health? Could it be that this was the sad result of our conversations instead of the calm and peace that you should have received from this newly awakened feeling in your heart . . . . Yet, should I have been surprised? It is only the natural result of this terrible state of things which has invaded and struck every heart in this country and every soul too. You have only given way to the strength of those forces which have dominated every one in this place of misery, from the very high in our society to the slave who exists only for the pleasure of his master. Besides, how could you have resisted it ? The same qualities which distinguish you from the mob must make you all the more susceptible to all the bad influences coming from the air which you are breathing.

Chaadaev had probably not written much more of what was to become his First Philosophical Letter than this brief introduction when he became "absorbed in distressing and fatiguing preoccupations" that he had "to get rid of" before he would talk further "about such serious things." The exact nature of Petr's "preoccupations" is not known, but it is very likely that they included a partial settlement of his financial problems. This occurred when Mikhail agreed to continue to send him an annual sum of money even though he had long since repaid the 70,000 rubles and interest that he owed Petr as a result of the division of property which the two brothers carried out in 1822.

While Chaadaev was involved with these "preoccupations" it is not difficult to guess that the letter which he had begun writing to Panova was often on his mind. What would he go on to say about "those forces which dominate every one in this place of misery?" How would he finish the letter? While he was pondering the problems posed by these questions, it is probable that the ideas of Schelling, whose works he had been reading on and off at least since the time of his stay in Dresden, began to take on a new significance.

Schelling's philosophy existed in a hazy world constructed, it seemed at times, solely by the activity of the human intellect. This world was based on a reality in which the ego, or "subject," was "regarded as ultimately real and as the condition for everything called 'objective'." This reality Schelling called idealism and its driving force he saw as "the Ego" or in other words "the Subject." "The Ego contains all being, all reality;" everything exists only as perceived by the subject, he concluded.

Before the completion of his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur in 1797 Schelling believed in the existence of "a free, all encompassing, yet fundamentally human ego." But by 1800, when he wrote his System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, he had ceased to believe in a separate identity between subjective and objective being. The two now became merged and the object was seen as something whose reality grew out of the subject's awareness of it. Schelling's concern centered on "the question of the nature of all forms of objectivity" in all their possible manifestations, that is to say, "in natural science, morality, history, religion and art." Also he found that the ego could know an object in three different ways: "Theoretical, practical, and aesthetic," and he devised a level of philosophy for each of these.

To begin with, he asserted that theoretical philosophy was concerned with ego's perception of and reflection on an object found in nature. But when the ego's attention was centered on the object, the ego was not free to realize its maximum potential. To achleve its potential it had to "elevate itself above all that is object," and, in doing so, it became conscious "for the first time of its power over the object. It became self-conscious rather than object-conscious." By becoming self-conscious the ego achieved a state of self-determination and became aware of its character as Will.

At the next level, which Schelling called the practical, philosophy, having become conscious of itself as Will, could affirm the power of the idea to affect the real. In Schelling's words: "representations, which originate in us freely and without necessity, can pass over from the world of thought into the real world and attain objective reality." This was an attractive prospect for Chaadaev and other Russian intellectuals of his time. It seemed to promise that the self-cultivated man could create in his mind a representation of reality which could to some extent be realized-in the world of objective reality. It seemed also to say that, if the world of objective reality proved distasteful, a man could find consolation by a retreat to an ideal reality created by his ego acting as Will.

If the goal of man on this level of philosophy were to achieve a state where his ego could become conscious of itself as Will, there had to be created a condition that, according to Schelling, would require "all rational beings to limit their activity through the possibility of the free activity of all the rest." Such a condition could be created only through the concept of right or justice that was attainable solely through "the system of legality which universal constitutional government demands and which, as a federation of all states, stands as the realization of moral law in its objective form."

Schelling considered all history to be the chronicle of the progression of mankind toward this goal of a supra-national unity of world-wide constitutional governments and a federation of nations. In part it was this goal of Schelling's thought which had caused the Russian government to turn with considerable wrath against those suspected of teaching his doctrines in the 1820s. But these ideas were also some of the most attractive which Schelling had to offer Chaadaev who, in his Philosophical Letters, would praise those ideas or institutions which lowered barriers between nations and furthered unity among them.

In both the theoretical and practical levels of philosophy Schelling had spoken of the goal of the unity of the ego and the object. But it was in the philosophy of art that the highest level of this synthesis, or identity between subjective and objective, could be attained. The man who engaged in artistic creation, be he a painter, a sculptor, a musician, a writer or a philosopher, could raise himself ever closer to this level of perfect identity and approach what Schelling perceived as "the highest goal for all rational beings-- identity with God." These were certainly some of the ideas which caused Chaadaev to believe that out of Schelling's thought there would someday come that for which he, himself was striving: "the fusion of religion and philosophy." Finally, Schelling asserted that through artistic creation man could best portray his soul, or "that whereby he [is capable of raising] himself above all egoism, whereby he becomes capable Or self-sacrifice, unselfish love and, the most-exalted of all, of the contemplation and cognizance of the essence of things and precisely thereby of art." For Schelling, the soul "does not know, but it is knowledge, it is not good, but it is goodness, it is not beautiful as the body too may be, but it is beauty itself."

Thus, as the summer of 1828 turned to autumn, Chaadaev began to desire to describe the full extent and nature of the "bad influences coming from the air" that Panova was breathing. He began to think of committing to paper everything which alienated him from the Russian reality in which he found himself and he hoped that by so doing, he could, somehow, accommodate himself to the environment in which he seemed fated to live. Furthermore, he wanted to express more than what was wrong with his world. He would be a critic, but he would also show where a path to future progress lay. If he could understand something about the source of his troubles and alienation, perhaps he might be able to achieve another more satisfying way of looking at the world. For this aim of finding his own way, and a way that might be useful to others, he would mix a philosophical analysis with a religious prescription in the creation of a world view that could serve as some alternative for the depressing reality in which he found himself. Pushkin had found satisfaction in artistic creativity, Obleukhov had wanted to find it but it had eluded him, and now Chaadaev determined to set out to gain through artistic creativity a new personal identity as a critic. In the conclusion of his First Philosophical Letter, Petr acknowledged what had happened: "At the outset I thought that I could tell you what I had to say in a few words. In thinking it over some more, I find that there is enough here for a book." And so as he returned to what would become his First Philosophical Letter and began to write again there poured forth all his bitter feelings against the society which had offered to him and his friends the glorious exploits of the Napoleonic campaigns and the liberal ideas that they had engendered, only to dash the very hopes that it had raised.