Fragment of a letter (c. 1835-1840)

PAN-SLAVISM Pan-Slavism is the order of the day in our official and unofficial world. It is the dominant idea of the present reign. After having emancipated our peasants, as they say, after having given them liberty and happiness, our generous benefactor, Czar Alexander II, no longer has any thought today but that of going to deliver the Slavic people, our brothers, who still groan under the yoke of the Germans and the Turks. They speak of nothing but this in the court at St. Petersburg, in the higher regions of the army and the bureaucracy. The salons of St. Petersburg […]

Letter to “La Réforme” (January 1845) Monsieur! The Gazette des Tribunaux has announced, together with other Paris newspapers, the ukase issued against Mr. Golowine and myself. I regard the proceedings, certainly not so delicate, of the Russian government against us as something so natural and above all so insignificant, in comparison with the enormous iniquities which it commits each day in our unfortunate homeland, that I certainly would not allow myself, Monsieur, to speak to you of myself, if I did not find myself forced to it by a letter that Mr. Golowine thought he should address to the Gazette […]

To be free and to liberate others, that is the secret of life. Women have this vocation just as much as men. I would even add, contrary to the generally accepted idea that only a subordinate position and activity, that they have this calling even more than men, for their life and their acts are neither abstract, nor simplistic; on the contrary, they constitute a living fullness that needs the free air to blossom in all its beauty, and because they understand and feel much more deeply than men the misfortune and the humiliation of their brothers. I have long […]