Tom Stoppard: A Life

by Hermione Lee

Berlin is always reminding us that for Herzen “personal liberty” comes first, “liberty today, the liberty of living individuals” as “an end in itself.” Often a scathing writer, Herzen was contemptuous of those who were prepared to sacrifice present happiness and liberty for the sake of “some remote and intangible Utopia.” In his essay From the Other Shore (on the events of 1848), a major source for Stoppard, Herzen says: If progress is the goal, for whom are we working? Who is this Moloch who…as a consolation to the exhausted and doomed multitudes…can only give the mocking answer that after their deaths all will be beautiful on earth?…If humanity marched straight towards some result, there would be no history, only logic…History is all improvisation, all will, all extempore. For Herzen, “nature obeys no plan…history follows no libretto.” Berlin celebrates his gaiety, his wit and the delight he took “in independence, variety, the free play of individual temperament.” This, Stoppard says, is “what bound Isaiah Berlin to him heart and soul.” It is at the heart of Herzen’s political philosophy, of Berlin’s writings and of Stoppard’s play.