Read Online Shipwreck by Tom Stoppard - Free Book Online Page B

dialectic of history, and he blames me. … It’s very hard on Emma, losing her allowance. But what can I do? I’m a poet of revolution between revolutions.
    Herzen takes up a few newly arrived letters and looks through them
.
    HERZEN    Write an ode to Prince Louis Napoleon on his election as President of the Republic. In a free vote, the French public renounced freedom.
    GEORGE    ‘Bonaparte Plumbers, a name you can trust.’
    HERZEN    How naive we were at Sokolovo that last summer in Russia, do you remember, Natalie?
    NATALIE    I remember you quarrelling with everyone.
    HERZEN    Arguing, yes. Because we were agreed that there was only one thing worth arguing about—France! France, the sleeping bride of revolution. What a joke. All she wanted was to be the kept woman of a bourgeois … Cynicism fills the air like ash and blights the leaves on the freedom trees.
    Herzen gives one of the letters to Natalie
.
    NATALIE    Thank you … Oh, from Natasha! I miss her so, since she went home.
    GEORGE    One must learn to be a stoic. Look at me.
    HERZEN    You’re a stoic?
    GEORGE    What does it look like?
    HERZEN    Apathy?
    GEORGE    Exactly. But apathy is misunderstood.
    HERZEN    I’m very fond of you, George.
    GEORGE    
Apatheia!
To the ancient stoics there was nothing irresolute about apathy, it required strenuous effort and concentration.
    HERZEN    
Very
fond of you.
    GEORGE    Because being a stoic didn’t mean a sort of uncomplaining putting up with misfortune, that’s only how it looks on the outside—inside, it’s all about achieving apathy …
    HERZEN    (
laughs
) No, I love you.
    GEORGE    (
hardening
) … which
meant:
a calming of the spirit. Apathy isn’t passive, it’s the freedom that comes from recognising new borders, a new country called Necessity … it comes from accepting that things are what they are, and not some other thing, and can’t for the moment be altered … which people find quite difficult. We’ve had a terrible shock. We discovered that history has no respect for intellectuals. History is more like the weather. You never know what it’s going to do. God, we were busy!—bustling about under the sky, shouting directions to the winds, remonstrating with the clouds in German, Russian, French … and hailing every sunbeam as proof of the power of words, some of which rhymed and scanned. Well … would you like to share my umbrella? It’s not too bad under here. Political freedom is a rather banal ambition, after all … all that can’t-sit-still about voting and assembling and controlling the means of production.
Stoical
freedom is nothing but not wasting your time berating the weather when it’s bucketing down on your picnic.
    HERZEN    George … George … (
to Natalie
) He’s the only real Russian left in Paris. Bakunin’s in Saxony under a falsename—he wrote and told me! Turgenev is guess where, and Sazonov has disappeared into an aviary of Polish conspirators who are planning a demonstration. We should go to live in … Italy, perhaps, or Switzerland. The best school for Kolya is in Zurich. When he’s a little older, my mother’s going to move there to be with him.
    NATALIE    (
to George
) They’ve got a new system. Put your hands on my face.
    GEORGE    Like that?
    George touches her face lightly. Natalie stammers M’s and pops P’s
.
    NATALIE    Can you feel? That’s how you learn if you’re doing it right. Mama … Papa … Baby … Ball … George … George …
    Herzen jumps up with his letter
.
    HERZEN    Ogarev’s engaged to Natasha!
    Natalie cries out and opens her letter. They both read
.
    GEORGE