Authors: Malcolm Bradbury
‘Even in the bad times, I was like all Russian children, I was taught to love Pushkin and to remember the books. Maybe it mattered to me more than ever, because in that time there was nowhere to go but disappear into the books. You remember what the Underground Man of Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells us? “It’s better in books, that’s where life makes more sense.” For me it was better in books, so I read very many. Not just Russian books, from my mother I spoke other languages, French and German. When they began to put back the city and try to bring it to life again, to put back the things there before, I went to work in the public library. And because my French was so good I was asked to look after the special collection, the famous library of the Enlightenment, the collection of Voltaire-Didro, which I think is why you are here.’
‘Some of us,’ says Bo. ‘But go on, Galina, it’s fascinating . . .’
‘Well, maybe you can remember just how those libraries came here to Russia? As you can see from this place, Catherine just acquired everything she could think of that would make her Russia seem powerful or civilized, part of the new world of Europe. What she wanted she asked for, and what she asked for she got. But from the moment they crowned her in the Kremlin, she knew what she would like most, to be a philosophical empress. She called for support from the philosophes,
les lumières
, and told them Russia would now become the land of freedom, where they could hold on to any ideas they liked. They could bring their philosophical speculations. The censor would not interfere, the church would not be allowed to oppress them. Like everyone in Europe, she had come to love the great Voltaire. She corresponded with him her whole life, sending the first letter within a month of her crowning. She wrote it with a pseudonym, pretending it came from one of her courtiers who wished him to know how the Empress admired him so. At first Voltaire didn’t trust her, but she never stopped. She sent him admiring letters, great delegations, wonderful gifts. She knew some of his works were banned in France and he lived as an exile, so she offered to print everything in Russia.’
‘Diderot’s
Encyclopedia
too,’ says Bo.
‘The Empress had many charms. After a time Voltaire was quite seduced. Soon he was writing her admiring letters and poems, some of them here on display, I will show you. They never met; I think she made sure of that. She knew the illusion was better than the reality. I think he would like to come, but she warned him he might be unhappy. In the end he offered to come after he was dead, a perfect arrangement: the grave of the world’s greatest philosopher here at the court of the world’s greatest empress. “I would rather end my days in a greater empire,” he had written in a letter which she kept very carefully. Voltaire died, you know, in May 1778. So she ordered a court mourning, and distributed hundreds of copies of his works. By this time Melchior Grimm was her agent all over Europe, and she told him to go to Ferney and buy up the library, and all the letters he could acquire.
‘At this time she had bought already the library of Didro, but he was alive and allowed to keep it in his apartment. Voltaire’s library was bigger; it was three times bigger. He could afford everything; he was a rich man, while Didro was really most of his life a poor hack. Voltaire lived like a king in his own palace near Geneva, Didro had a small apartment in Paris. Voltaire had published hundreds of books, more than almost anyone ever; Didro preferred talking, and could never remember where all his papers and writings were. Grimm talked to Madame Denis, who was Voltaire’s niece and also his mistress, and a very greedy woman. He bought the library, at a very high price – 135,000 livres, maybe ten times what was paid for Didro’s. He tried to buy the papers, but most of them had already been sold to the publisher Panckoucke, who had had the idea that he would purchase all the great philosophical papers – Rousseau’s in Neuchâtel, Buffon’s – and publish them in Paris. But in the end he gave so much money to all the writers’ widows and nieces he had to sell Voltaire’s papers on to someone else, Beaumarchais.’
‘Of Figaro?’ asks Birgitta Lindhorst.
‘
Da
, that’s right. But Grimm was also told to get hold of something else; he was supposed to buy Voltaire’s body too. Then she meant to build a complete copy of Ferney, here at Tzarskoye Selo, and place Voltaire’s own tomb in the middle of the grounds. Unfortunately for Catherine, at the very end of his life Voltaire decided to make a visit to Paris, where he had his famous apotheosis at the theatre, when all Paris hailed him as a great man. He died just after, and his body had to be smuggled upright out of Paris in a carriage at night, because the church wanted to throw him into the lime-pits as a wicked atheist. In the end, maybe you remember, he was buried outside Paris in a disused chapel, and later brought back to the Pantheon. So Voltaire never came here, and the new Ferney was never built. But you can see it if you like to; the plans are all here, in the Hermitage.
‘But something
was
built, in these corridors here, near where we are, in a gallery overlooking the waters of the Neva. Catherine made a beautiful library. Voltaire’s secretary came all the way from Ferney, bringing his books, and they were arranged in the same order as they had been in his own house. In an alcove at one end of the library, Catherine placed a seated statue of Voltaire, the famous one that had been commissioned from Houdon. Before the library was built, she had kept it here in the Hermitage next to the Apollo Belvedere. She said it was important that Voltaire looked out only on equals. At the other end of the library, there was another statue, done by Marie-Anne Collot. She was Falconet’s assistant, and she married his son. She finished off the face of the bronze horseman, and many people thought she was the better sculptor. The other bust was Didro, who died six years after. So his books too came, his papers also, and they went into the same library. So right here, overlooking the Neva, was created the library of Enlightenment, the
libraire des lumières
.’
‘And now are we going to see it?’ asks Sven Sonnenberg, who is tightly holding Agnes Falkman’s hand.
‘Ah no,
mon ami
, not quite. Because nothing in this world is that simple. Nothing is where you think it is, and if it was once it has often gone. Times change, and everything happens. All that is solid melts into air. Only a little time after the library was finished the world turned upside down. The Revolution and Terror came to France. By now Catherine was getting old and frightened. She felt sure the revolution would spread to Russia. It didn’t, of course, not then, it would take more than another century. But now she thought the philosophers were dangerous. She told Grimm it was necessary to identify the culprits who had caused this evil. She banned French clothes, French books, and sent all the French who supported the Revolution home from Russia. And she turned against Voltaire. When his body was taken from the chapel at Sellières, and delivered by Beaumarchais in a great parade to the Pantheon, she locked up the library. She sent the Houdon statue up to the attics and forbade anyone to look at it again. And not too long after this she died herself, here on her privy at the Hermitage—’
‘But the library—’ says Anders Manders.
‘What happened to it? Well, in Tzarist times, it was nearly always the rule a good tzar was followed by a very bad one. Catherine was succeeded by her son, the Archduke Paul, who made such a bad tzar he was murdered four years after by his own courtiers. Paul hated his mother and the philosophes. What was surprising was he didn’t destroy the whole library. But when his son Alexander succeeded, he began as a great reformer, and opened up the library and restored the Voltaire statue. That was until the armies of Napoleon invaded Russia. Now the French were Russia’s enemy, so the library was closed once more. Alexander was succeeded by his brother, Tzar Nicholas, not a good tzar. He began by firing on the Decembrists, and he ran a reign of terror. It was bad for all the writers. Pushkin was driven into exile, Dostoyevsky was put in front of a firing squad at the Peter and Paul Fortress, and pardoned at the last minute. Nicholas especially hated Voltaire. Maybe you remember what he said when he saw the Houdon statue? “Destroy that grinning old monkey.”’
‘Was it destroyed?’ asks Agnes Falkman.
‘
Non, non, ma cherie.
It was just at the very beginning of its great adventures. Someone hid it, in the library, the one place Nicholas never went. Then came the fire, and everything was moved again. The next tzar, Alexander the Second, the liberator of Finland, the man who freed the serfs, decided to use the library for other things, because the collection of paintings and
objets
was now so big. He was the one who decided the library should move. It would have to go to the fine Petersburg Public Library, the place where I work now, the Saltykov-Shchedrin. He decided the Philosopher would have to go too, so they put the statue on runners and off he rode, right down the Nevsky Prospekt. Now maybe you remember what happened to Alexander? He was assassinated, by some anarchists who worked from a little cake shop, also on the Nevsky Prospekt. His successor was another Alexander, and he acquired another great library, the library of Didro’s good friend, Dmitry Golitsyn, who had been ambassador in Paris and the Hague. He thought it was best if those books too went to the Saltykov-Shchedrin. But he asked one present in return. He wanted the statue of Voltaire. Out into Nevsky Prospekt the philosopher went again. Off he rolled on his runners, all the way to the Hermitage.
‘There he stayed for a long while, and then it was 1917. The Tzar had created the Provisional Government and was trying to lead his own armies, the Germans were advancing on the city. It was like the age of Napoleon all over again, and the government decided it must once more protect the Hermitage treasures. In his marble armchair the philosopher set off once more, this time even further along Nevsky Prospekt to the Moscow railway station. He took the train to Moscow and spent the rest of the war in the Kremlin. By the time he returned to the Hermitage, everything was different. This building had been taken, now it belonged to the people, and the city was no longer Petersburg, or Petrograd, it was Leningrad. In 1941 the Germans were back again. Naturally Voltaire realized he had better go to the station yet again. He sat opposite Rastrelli’s famous waxwork of Peter the Great in the very last train to leave Leningrad before the siege started. If you wonder where he spent the war, it was in Sverdlovsk, which used to be Yekaterinburg, and which is where the Tzar and his family were murdered. By the way, a famous party official came from there later on; his name was Boris Yeltsin.’
‘So where is the statue now?’ asks Sven Sonnenberg, looking a little confused.
‘It’s here, you can see it if you like. Except I thought you really came here for Didro.’
‘Well, that is perfectly true,’ says Bo.
‘And of course his story was not the same at all. Voltaire and Didro were very different people. Voltaire was sharp and cunning, always guarding his fame, protecting his ideas, thinking about his editions. Didro was kind, and open, a noisy man. He liked to talk first and write after. What he wrote he changed, so in the end he had no idea which version of his writing was correct, or the one he liked best. Didro outlived the others. He survived Voltaire by six years, Rousseau by the same, and they were six very important years. He lived almost to the end of the age of reason. When his life was near the end, he recalled his promise to the Tzarina. He hired three copyists, and asked them to copy out all his papers, so there would be copies in France and others in Russia. The only problem was there were so many drafts the copyists found themselves copying different versions of the same book.’
‘How very confusing,’ says Lars Person.
‘It was just the beginning of many more confusions. When she heard her friend Didro was dying, Catherine arranged for him to move to a more comfortable apartment. And she sent Grimm to make sure she got not only his books but his papers. “Take care nothing goes astray,” she said. “Not even the least scrap.” He died in the summer of 1784. The next year his daughter, Madame de Vandeul, sent his library to the Hermitage. With it came all his papers, in thirty-two volumes and packets. The Tzarina had them put under triple key, because they revealed many details of his interesting relationship with her—’
‘They were lovers?’ asks Birgitta Lindhorst.
‘Were they? Do you know? But there were also the other copies. One set was kept by Melchior Grimm. Some more copies went to the young philosopher Naigeon, who later published them. The daughter kept the originals for herself. And everyone assumed the moment had come for his papers to be put in order, his works sorted, and everything published, given to Posterity, exactly as he wished. Except now came the Storming of the Bastille, then the Revolution, then the Terror. Reason had turned into revolution, light had turned into torches. So was Didro a revolutionary spirit or not? Was he a founder of the new order, or its enemy? Didro was such a clever butterfly no one was sure, and they never can be. Of course, he said, he supported the American Revolution, and he spoke of wanting to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest. But it was obvious he didn’t believe in terror and violence, he believed in sense and reason.
‘So some of his works were released, but many others were hidden. The daughter stored most of the originals away and they weren’t found again for a hundred years. By then they had already started to rot. Of course there were still the copies. The ones that belonged to Grimm, for instance. But in the revolution Grimm was in great trouble too. He’d been the friend of every king, prince and tyrant right across Europe. He’d arranged to marry most of them, so he was the inventor of all the dynasties now in trouble. He took the messages of Catherine the Great to the hands of Marie Antoinette. No wonder he thought it was time to pack up his things and take the coach off to Gotha in Germany, taking with him all the letters he’d had from Catherine – her letters to the Grimmalians, she called them. We know he took some of Didro’s papers too, because some appeared in Gotha. But which? What about
Rameau’s Nephew
, for instance?’