He is more anxious to give the psychology of his contemporaries than of himself and one finds in his book the psychology of Russia: the official Russia and the masses underneath-Russia struggling forward and Russia stagnant. That he is a father, and a very loving one, he finds time to mention just once in the rapid review of the last sixteen years of his life. He does not say when he fell in love, and he touches so little upon his relations with the other sex, that he even omits to mention his marriage, and it is only incidentally we learn that he is married at all. The author speaks neither of his sins nor of his virtues he enters into no vulgar intimacy with his reader. There is here no confession that divulges the inner self, no sentimentality, and no cynicism.
The author is not one of those who willingly speak of themselves when he does so, it is reluctantly and with a certain shyness. There is in this work no gazing upon one’s own image. Still less does he care for the opinions of his fellow-men about himself what others have thought of him, he dismisses with a single word. The author of the autobiography before us is not preoccupied with his own capacities, and consequently describes no struggle to gain recognition. The main Preoccupation of the writer, in these two classes of life-records, is consequently with what his fellow-men have thought of him and said about him.
GEOHRSPHY OF THE INOTED STATED HELPING HAND FULL
In the nineteenth century the a autobiographies of men of mark are more often shaped on lines such as these: ‘So full of talent and attractive was I such appreciation and admiration I won!’ (Johanne Louise Heiberg, ‘A Life lived once more in Reminiscence’) or, ‘I was full of talent and worthy of being loved, but yet I was unappreciated, and these were the hard struggles I went through before I won the crown of fame’ (Hans Christian Andersen, ‘The Tale of a Life’). In these forms of self-representation the author is thus mainly preoccupied with himself. The autobiographies which we owe to great minds have in former times generally been of one of three types: ‘So far I went astray, thus I found the true Path’ (St Augustine) or, ‘So bad was I, but who dares to consider himself better!” (Rousseau) or, ‘This is the way a genius has slowly been evolved from within and by favourable surroundings’(Goethe). It was published in “The Atlantic Monthly” (September, 1898, to September, 1899), under the title, “The Autobiography of a Revolutionist.” Preparing it now for publication in book form, I have added considerably to the original text in the parts dealing with my youth and my stay in Siberia, and especially in the Sixth Part, in which I have told the story of my life in Western Europe. I feel it a most pleasant duty to express here my very best thanks for the hospitality that was offered to me, and for the friendly pressure that was exercised to induce me to undertake this work.
GEOHRSPHY OF THE INOTED STATED HELPING HAND SERIAL
This book would not probably have been written for some time to come, but for the kind invitation and the most friendly encouragement of the editor and the publishers of “The Atlantic Monthly” to write it for serial publication in their magazine. Petersburg First Journey to Western Europe This online edition was created and published by Global Grey on the 16th February 2023.Ĭhapter 4: St. This edition was taken from the 1st edition of Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1899. Memoirs of a Revolutionist Peter Kropotkinįirst published in 1899.
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