The Romantic Exiles

After rereading Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, I needed to read E.H. Carr’s The Romanitic Exiles, the source that inspired Stoppard to write his trilogy.

Carr’s historical account, written in 1933, reads very much like a Russian novel, yet he relies heavily on primary sources, especially diaries and correspondence of the principal individual Alexander Herzen and his wife Natalie. Just in the seven months that Natalie was writing to her lover, George Herwegh, she sent him over 150 letters, most of which still exist. Carr also emphasizes the long, detailed interviews he had with Herzen and Natalie’s oldest daughter Tata and Herwegh and Emma’s son Marcel.

Carr provides immensely valuable explanations and historical context throughout. For instance, while reading The Coast of Utopia, I questioned the moral behavior of all the characters with their affairs and dysfunctional relationships. Carr demonstrates that Herzen’s background, for instance, contributes to his behavior. Herzen was an illegitimate son of the aristocratic, wealthy father and a serf woman. His father never married, yet he had numerous children by different serf mothers. Just prior to Herzen’s father’s death, he wanted to prevent his brother and other family members from taking over his land and wealth, so he named Alexander as his sole heir—Alexander inherited a fortune.

Alexander falls in love with his first cousin Natalie. Their fathers were brothers, and Natalie’s father also did not marry, yet he kept what he called a “harem” of serf women. However, once the children were born, he would move them into his estate homes while he kept the women in their separate rural villages. The children, essentially, did not have mothers and were cared for by servants.
When Natalie was young, her father’s sister who was a princess (she had married a Russian prince), wanted to raise the violet-eyed, fair-skinned, dark-haired Natalie. Natalie was raised in a home with every luxury, yet her aunt was cold and unapproachable. No wonder Natalie is always searching for love.

Carr provides many insights into Alexander’s and Natalie’s marriage and family life. They both wanted a strong family, and they worked hard towards it, but they both had affairs, yet always returned to each other. They had six children, three of whom died at birth. The three surviving children were Tata (Natalie), Sasha (Alexander), and Kolya who was a deaf mute tragically killed with his grandmother on a steamship that sank. Natalie has another child Olga who has Herzen’s last name, but is the child of Herwegh and Natalie.

After Kolya’s death, Natalie’s health soon fails, and she dies. The children are raised by a couple of German governesses until Natalie’s best friend Natalie (Natasha) Tuchov who is the mistress to Herzen’s best friend Nicholas Ogarev. Herzen and Natalie have an ongoing affair and have Liza and twins (a boy and a girl) who die of diptheria in Paris.

While the focus of The Romantic Exiles is on Alexander Herzen, there are equally interesting and involved stories of Alexander Bakunin and Nicholas Ogarev and their personal lives and affairs. And of course, equally detailed are accounts of these individuals’ political lives as they live in exile from their beloved Russia.

Carr’s book helps me to get even a more full portrait of these individuals and their real-to-life yet sad lives. At one point, I questioned whether I should continue to use The Coast of Utopia in my class because the reading is so difficult, but now, I want to help make it more accessible to my students as they get glimpses into these fascinating people’s lives.

Horace Robedaux

I’ve added a new person to my favorite character list—it’s Horace Robedaux. Over the last two weeks I’ve been able to read the nine plays in Horton Foote’s The Orphans’ Home Cycle. These plays begin in 1902 in Harrison, Texas when Horace is twelve years old and his father dies.

Although Horace isn’t an orphan, his parents were separated, and his mother remarries and leaves Horace on his own. He does have kind aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but Horton does not receive any breaks in life. He quits school in the sixth grade to support himself by running a rural country store for convicts. However, through it all, Horace remains steady and good. Through his own determination and resources he does complete a business course in Houston.

One of the most poignant moments in the entire cycle is when Horace finally saves enough money over the years to buy a tombstone for his father. His father seems to have been the only individual who expresses concern, love, and guidance for Horace—the rest of the time Horace seems to be on his own.

Yet, we see the maturing Horace fall in love with Elizabeth Vaughn, and these two unlikely pair develop a strong, loving, enduring relationship, and the two of them continue to struggle together. These two are the only two solid, stable, consistent characters in the entire cycle. They just continue to do their best and to be good no matter what heartache or challenge comes their way.

At one point in an interview, Horton Foote said, “I believe very deeply in the human spirit, and I have a sense of awe about it.”

The cycle ends in 1928, again in Harrison, Texas, at the death of Elizabeth’s father. This cycle bookends are the deaths of good fathers and the impact on Horace. Horace has grown from a lost, wandering son to be a strong, solid, loving father who has established with Elizabeth a home refuge to meet whatever storm comes their way. He is a good, good man.

The nine plays in the chronological cycle include the following:
Roots in a Parched Ground
Convicts
Lily Dale
The Widow Claire
Courtship
Valentine’s Day
1918
Cousins
The Death of Papa

Coast of Utopia

This week I’ve reread Tom Stoppard’s trilogy play The Coast of Utopia. This nine-hour play won a Tony award in 2007 for best drama, but it’s a very complicated play. There are over seventy characters, most with Russian names, so it’s very hard keeping everyone straight. Without a doubt, this play is the most challenging reading my students do all semester. It’s so tough that only a few make it through the plays.

However, upon rereading the plays, I’m recognizing more and more the power of these individuals and the message. The play focuses on real-life Russian intellectuals from 1830-1870. These well-educated, aristocratic, incredibly wealthy philosophers and doers rejected their privileged lives of czarist Russia to fight for political and economic freedom of enslaved serfs. Some of the characters came from families that owned 4,000 male serfs, but they gave it all up to fight these freedoms.

Most of these characters were imprisoned in work camps simply for speaking or writing against the czar. Because of their views, their writing weren’t allowed to be published, or if they did get published, they were banned. All of the characters in the play are exiled and find themselves still fighting for these freedoms in Germany, France, Italy, and England. From these hidings, they continued to write and influence both the landed class and laborers which eventually won freedom for the serfs in 1861 under Czar Alexander I.

Despite the noble intentions of these characters seeking the betterment of others, their own personal lives continued to spiral out of control. As they were seeking for others’ freedom, they did not found their own actions in personal morality—they used liberty as an excuse for any type of personal restraint. Their personal relationships were fluid and unhappy. They always were searching, but they failed to have a strong moral foundation.

They are trying to sail to an ideal, utopian existence, but because they don't have the moral direction, they just don't seem to reach happiness and peace.

Again and again, I’m reminded that through commandments and doing what’s right do we really find freedom and liberty and happiness.

So we need to keep doing the work that we’re doing and remember who we are. Our Heavenly Father has a great work for us, and we are preparing for that.