Gercen's Tragic Bildungsroman: Love, Autonomy, and Maturity in Aleksandr Gercen's Byloe i Dumy

As critics have noted, Herzen's Byloe i dumy (My Past and Thoughts) can be approached as a Bildungsroman describing the emergence of a self-conscious autonomous personality. But while the theme of spiritual growth and maturation is prominent in Herzen's autobiography, both the author's radical break with Hegel's rationalism, accomplished in the early 1850s, and the tragic mood of Part Five call into question the view that Herzen's autobiography is a Bildungsroman. In her essay, Lina Steiner argues that certain aspects of Hegel's thought – especially, his dialectical approach to individual emergence – remained crucial to Herzen's ideology. This essay tries to show that the maturation of Herzen's autobiographical hero follows a dialectical pattern, which is close to Hegel's description of love in his early essay ‘Die Liebe’. The relationship between Herzen and his wife Natalie tells a story of their mutual Bildung through love. However, this pivotal narrative, which unfolds throughout Parts Four and Five and transforms My Past and Thoughts into a double Bildungsroman, ends in a tragedy. Thus, instead of reading Herzen's autobiography purely as a Bildungsroman, we can treat it as an example of generic fusion: a tragic Bildungsroman.