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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/33005-0.txt b/33005-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e50a00e --- /dev/null +++ b/33005-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6457 @@ +Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Outline of Russian Literature + +Author: Maurice Baring + +Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #33005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +A single Greek word appears in this book. If it does not display +correctly, you may need to adjust your font settings. + + + + + HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + + AN OUTLINE + OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + By the Hon. MAURICE BARING + + + LONDON + WILLIAMS & NORGATE + + HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK + CANADA: RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO + INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD. + + + + + HOME + UNIVERSITY + LIBRARY + + OF + + MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + _Editors:_ + + HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D. + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + + Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D. + + Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + (Columbia University, U.S.A.) + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + + AN OUTLINE OF + RUSSIAN + LITERATURE + + BY THE HON. + MAURICE BARING + + AUTHOR OF "WITH THE RUSSIANS IN + MANCHURIA," "A YEAR IN RUSSIA," "THE + RUSSIAN PEOPLE," ETC. + + LONDON + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + + + _First printed 1914/15_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The chief difficulty which Englishmen have experienced in writing +about Russia has, up till quite lately, been the prevailing ignorance +of the English public with regard to all that concerns Russian +affairs. A singularly intelligent Russian, who is connected with the +Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he feared the new interest +taken by English intellectuals with regard to Russian literature and +Russian art. He was delighted, of course, that they should be +interested in Russian affairs, but he feared their interest was in +danger of being crystallized in a false shape and directed into +erroneous channels. + +This ignorance will always remain until English people go to Russia +and learn to know the Russian people at first hand. It is not enough +to be acquainted with a certain number of Russian writers; I say a +certain number advisedly, because, although it is true that such +writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev have long been naturalized in England, +it is equally true that some of the greatest and most typical of +Russian authors have not yet been translated. + +There is in England no complete translation of Pushkin. This is much +the same as though there were in Russia no complete translation of +Shakespeare or Milton. I do not mean by this that Pushkin is as great +a poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean that he is the most +national and the most important of all Russian writers. There is no +translation of Saltykov, the greatest of Russian satirists; there is +no complete translation of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists, +while Russian criticism and philosophy, as well as almost the whole of +Russian poetry, is completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge +of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit of literature, +consists in, is still a sealed book so far as England is concerned. + + M. B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I THE ORIGINS 9 + + II THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN 30 + + III LERMONTOV 101 + + IV THE AGE OF PROSE 126 + + V THE EPOCH OF REFORM 159 + + VI TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY 196 + + VII THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY 226 + + CONCLUSION 243 + + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 251 + + INDEX 254 + + + + + _The following volumes of kindred interest have already been + published in the Library:_ + + 27. English Literature: Mediæval. By W. P. Ker. + + 43. English Literature: Modern. G. H. Mair. + + 35. Landmarks of French Literature. G. L. Strachey. + + 65. The Literature of Germany. Prof. J. G. Robertson, Ph.D. + + + + +AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ORIGINS + + +For the purposes of the average Russian, and still more for the +purposes of the foreigner, Russian literature begins with the +nineteenth century, that is to say with the reign of Alexander I. It +was then that the literary fruits on which Russia has since fed were +born. The seeds were sown, of course, centuries earlier; but the +history of Russian literature up to the nineteenth century is not a +history of literature, it is the history of Russia. It may well be +objected that it is difficult to separate Russian literature from +Russian history; that for the understanding of Russian literature an +understanding of Russian history is indispensable. This is probably +true; but, in a sketch of this dimension, it would be quite +impossible to give even an adequate outline of all the vicissitudes in +the life of the Russian people which have helped and hindered, +blighted and fostered the growth of the Russian tree of letters. All +that one can do is to mention some of the chief landmarks amongst the +events which directly affected the growth of Russian literature until +the dawn of that epoch when its fruits became palpable to Russia and +to the world. + +The first of these facts is the existence of a Slav race on the banks +of the Dnieper in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the growth of +cities and trade centres such as Kiev, Smolensk, and Novgorod, which +seem already to have been considerable settlements when the earliest +Russian records were written. Of these, from the point of view of +literature, Kiev was the most important. Kiev on the Dnieper was the +mother of Russian culture; Moscow and St. Petersburg became afterwards +the heirs of Kiev. + +Another factor of vital historical importance which had an indirect +effect on the history of Russian literature was the coming of the +Norsemen into Russia at the beginning of the ninth century. They came +as armed merchants from Scandinavia; they founded and organized +principalities; they took Novgorod and Kiev. The Scandinavian Viking +became the Russian _Kniaz_, and the Varanger principality of Kiev +became the kernel of the Russian State. In the course of time, the +Norsemen became merged in the Slavs, but left traces of their origin +in the Sagas, the _Byliny_, which spread from Kiev all over Russia, +and still survive in some distant governments. Hence the Norse names +Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga), Igor (Ingvar). The word Russian, _Rus_, +the origin and etymology of which are shrouded in obscurity, was first +applied to the men-at-arms who formed the higher class of society in +the early Varanger states. + +The next determining factor in the early history of Russian literature +is the Church. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, married the sister of the +Emperor of Byzantium and was baptized; henceforward Christianity began +to spread (987-8), but the momentous fact is that it was the +Christianity of the East. The pearl of the Gospels, says Soloviev, was +covered over with the dust of Byzantium, and Russia was committed to +the Greek tradition, the Greek rivalry with the West and was +consequently excluded from the civilization of the West and the great +intellectual community of which Rome was the centre. This fact is of +far-reaching and momentous importance. No less important was the +introduction of the Slavonic liturgy, which was invented by two Greek +brothers from Saloniki, in the ninth century, who tried to force their +Macedonian dialect on all the Slavs, and succeeded in the case of +Bulgaria and Servia. A century or so later it reached the Russian +Slavs. Through Bulgaria, the Russians acquired a ready-made literature +and a written language in a dialect which was partly Bulgarian and +partly Macedonian, or rather Macedonian with Bulgarian modifications. +The possession of a written language acted as a lever as far as +culture was concerned. In the eleventh century, Kiev was one of the +most enlightened cities in Europe. + +The rulers of Kiev were at this time related to the Kings of France, +Hungary, Norway, and even England. The Russian MSS. of the eleventh +century equal the best MSS. of Western Europe of the same period. The +city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, and art. Byzantine +artists went to Kiev, and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West. +There seemed at this time to be no barrier between East and West. +Nothing could be more promising than such a beginning; but the course +of Russian history was not destined to run smooth. In the middle of +the eleventh century, the foundations of a durable barrier between +Russia and Western Europe were laid. This was brought about by the +schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The schism arose out of +the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry +which ever since then has continued to exist between Rome and +Byzantium. The Slavs, whom the matter did not concern, and who were +naturally tolerant, were the victims of a racial hatred and a rivalry +wholly alien to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell upon what some +may regard as an ancient and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in +its effects and in its results, this "Querelle de Moine," as Leo X +said when he heard of Luther's action, was as momentous for the East +as the Reformation was for the West. Sir Charles Eliot says the schism +of the Churches ranks in importance with the foundation of +Constantinople and the Coronation of Charlemagne as one of the turning +points in the relations of West and East. He says that for the East it +was of doleful import, since it prevented the two great divisions from +combining against the common enemy, the Turk. It was of still more +doleful import for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, which +soon became formidable, between it and the civilizing influences of +Western Europe. + +But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the existence of this +growing barrier was not yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth +centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and "Byliny," already clearly +stamped with the democratic character and ideal that is at the root of +all Russian literature, and which offer so sharp a contrast to Greek +and Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the most popular hero is the +peasant's son, who is despised and rejected, but at the critical +moment displays superhuman strength and saves his country from the +enemy; and in return for his services is allowed to drink his fill for +three years in a tavern. + +But by far the most interesting remains of the literature of Kiev +which have reached posterity are the _Chronicle of Kiev_, often called +the _Chronicle of Nestor_, finished at the beginning of the twelfth +century, and the _Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_. The _Chronicle of +Kiev_, written in a cloister, rich in that epic detail and democratic +quality that characterize the Sagas, is the basis of all later +chronicles dealing with the early history of Russia. _The Story of the +Raid of Prince Igor_, which also belongs to the twelfth century, a +prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable memorials of the +ancient written language of Russia; but by virtue of its originality, +its historical truth, its vividness, it holds a unique place in the +literary history of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast to the +_Chanson de Roland_. + +_The Story of the Raid of Igor_ tells of an expedition made in the +year 1185 against the Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son of +Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together with other Princes. The story +tells how the Princes set out and raid the enemy's country; how, +successful at first, they are attacked by overwhelming numbers and +defeated; how Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end he escapes +and returns home. The story is written in rhythmical prose, with +passages where the rhythm has a more strongly accentuated quality as +of unrhymed verse. All the incidents recorded in the epic agree in +every respect with the narrative of the same events which is to be +found in the _Chronicle of Kiev_. It is only the manner of presenting +them which is different. What gives the epic a unique interest is that +the author must indubitably have belonged to the militia of +Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of +the events he describes with such wealth of detail, his knowledge was +at any rate first-hand and intimate. + +But the epic is as remarkable for the quality of its style as it is +for the historical interest of its subject-matter. It plunges, after a +short introduction, _in medias res_, and the narrative is concentrated +on the dramatic moments which give rise to the expression of lyrical +feeling, pathos and description--such as the battle, the defeat, the +ominous dream of the Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of Igor on +the walls of Putivl-- + + "I will fly"--she says-- + "Like the cuckoo down the Don; + I will wet my beaver sleeve + In the river Kayala; + I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince, + The wounds of his strong body." + + * * * * * + + "O Wind, little wind, + Why, Sir, + Why do you blow so fiercely? + Why, on your light wings + Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband's warriors? + Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds, + To rock the ships on the blue sea? + Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?" + +Throughout the poem, Nature plays an active part in the events. When +Igor is defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the trees are bowed +to the earth with grief. When Igor escapes, he talks with the river +Don as he fords it, and when the bandits follow him, the woodpeckers +tell them the way with their tapping. The poem, which contains much +lamentation over the quarrels of the Princes and the injury ensuing +from them to the Russian people, ends in the major key. Igor is +restored to his native soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the +Church, and the people acclaim the old Princes and then the young +Princes with song. + +A transcript of the poem, made probably at the end of the fourteenth +century, was first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, and +first published in 1800, when it made the same kind of impression as +the publication of the _Songs of Ossian_. It was not, however, open to +Dr. Johnson's objection--"Show me the originals"--for the fourteenth +century transcript of the original then existed and was inspected and +considered unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and others, but was +unfortunately burnt in the fire of Moscow.[1] The poem has been +translated into English, French and German, and has given rise to a +whole literature of commentaries. + +Up to the twelfth century, Russian life was concentrated in the +splendid and prosperous centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth century +came a crushing blow which was destined to set back the clock of +Russian culture for three hundred years, namely, the Tartar invasion. +Kiev was destroyed in 1240. After this, the South was abandoned; +Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated from the East; the +Eastern principalities centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of Kiev +transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; and by the fourteenth century +Moscow had taken the place of Kiev, and had become the kernel of +Russian life and culture. Russia under the dominion of the Tartar yoke +was intellectually stagnant. The Church alone retained its +independence, and when Constantinople fell, Moscow declared itself to +be the third and last Rome: but the independence of the Church, +although it kept national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, made +for stagnation rather than progress, and the barrier between Russia +and the culture of the West was now solid and visible. + +From the fourteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth +century, Russian literature, instead of being a panorama of various +and equally splendid periods of production, such as the Elizabethan +epoch, the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, or, as in France, +the Renaissance, the _Grand Siècle_, and the philosophic era of the +eighteenth century, has nothing to show at all to the outward world; +for during all this time the soil from which it was to grow was merely +being prepared, and gradually, with difficulty and delay, gaining +access to such influences as would make any growth possible. All that +is important, as far as literature is concerned, in this period, are +those events and factors which had the effect of making breaches in +the wall which shut Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting in +that light which was necessary for any literary plants to grow, and in +removing those obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying her +rightful heritage among the rest of her sister European nations: a +heritage which she had well employed in earlier days, and which she +had lost for a time owing to the barbarian invasion. + +The first event which made a breach in the wall was the marriage of +Ivan III, Tsar of Moscow, to Sophia Palæologa, the niece of the last +of the Byzantine Emperors. She brought with her Italian architects and +other foreigners, and the work of Peter the Great, of opening a window +in Russia on to Europe, was begun. + +The first printing press was established in Moscow during the reign of +Ivan the Terrible, and the first book was printed in 1564. But +literature was still under the direct control of the Church, and the +Church looked upon all innovations and all foreign learning with the +deepest mistrust. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Peter +the Great had a strange forerunner in the shape of that enigmatic +historical personage, the false Demetrius, who claimed to be the +murdered son of Ivan the Terrible, and who, in spite of his western +ideas, Polish manners, and Latin culture, succeeded in occupying the +throne of Moscow for a year. His ideal was one of progress; but he +came too soon, and paid for his prematurity with his life. + +But it was from Kiev and Poland that the fruitful winds of +enlightenment were next to blow. Kiev, re-risen from its ruins and +recovered from its long slumber, became a centre of learning, and +possessed a college whose curriculum was modelled on the Jesuit +schools; and although Moscow looked upon Kiev with mistrust, an +imperative demand for schools arose in Moscow. In the meantime a +religious question had arisen fraught with consequences for Russia: +namely that of the revision of the Liturgical books, into the text of +which, after continuous copying and recopying, errors had crept. The +demand for revision met with great opposition, and ended ultimately in +producing a great schism in the Russian Church, which has never been +healed. But, with the exception of the Little Russians, there was no +one at Moscow capable of preparing texts for printing or of conducting +schools. The demand for schools and the decision to revise the texts +were simultaneous. The revision was carried out between 1653-7, and a +migration of Kiev scholars to Moscow came about at the same time. In +1665 Latin was taught in Moscow by SIMEON POLOTSKY, who was the first +Russian verse-maker. It is impossible to call him a poet; he wrote +what was called syllabic verse: the number of syllables taking the +place of rhythm. As a pioneer of culture, he deserves fame; but in the +interest of literature, it was a misfortune that his tradition was +followed until the middle of the eighteenth century. + +In the latter half of the seventeenth century, another influence +besides that of Kiev and Poland made itself felt. A fresh breach in +the wall came from another quarter. The German suburb in Moscow in the +seventeenth century, called the _Sloboda_, became a centre of European +culture. Here dwelt the foreign officers and soldiers, capitalists and +artisans, who brought with them the technical skill and the culture of +Western Europe. It was here that the Russian stage was born. The +Protestant pastor of the _Sloboda_, Gregory, was commanded to write a +comedy by the Tsar Alexis, in 1672, on the occasion of the birth of +the Tsarevitch. A theatre was built in the village of Preobrazhenskoe +(Transfiguration), and a play on the subject of Esther and Ahasuerus +was produced there. It was here also in 1674 that the ballet was +introduced. A regular company was formed; several plays translated +from the German were produced, and the first original play written in +Russia was _The Prodigal Son_, by Simeon Polotsky. + +Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, Russia was ready for any +one who should be able to give a decisive blow to the now crumbling +wall between herself and the West. For, by the end of the seventeenth +century, Russia, after having been centralized in Moscow by Ivan III, +and enlarged by Ivan IV, had thrown off the Tartar yoke. She had +passed through a period of intestine strife, trouble, anarchy, and +pretenders, not unlike the Wars of the Roses; she had fought Poland +throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, from her darkest hour +of anarchy, when the Poles occupied Moscow. It was then that Russia +had arisen, expelled the invaders, reasserted her nationality and her +independence, and finally emerged out of all these vicissitudes, the +great Slavonic state; while Poland, Russia's superior in culture and +civilization, had sunk into the position of a dependency. + +The man whom the epoch needed was forthcoming. His name was Peter. He +carried on the work which had been begun, but in quite an original +manner, and gave it a different character. He not only made a breach +in the wall, but he forced on his stubborn and conservative subjects +the habits and customs of the West. He revolutionized the government +and the Church, and turned the whole country upside down with his +explosive genius. He abolished the Russian Patriarchate, and crushed +the power of the Church once and for all, by making it entirely depend +on the State, as it still does. He simplified the Russian script and +the written language; he caused to be made innumerable translations of +foreign works on history, geography, and jurisprudence. He founded the +first Russian newspaper. But Peter the Great did not try to draw +Russia into an alien path; he urged his country with whip, kick, and +spur to regain its due place, which it had lost by lagging behind, on +the path it was naturally following. Peter the Great's reforms, his +manifold and superhuman activity, produced no immediate fruits in +literature. How could it? To blame him for this would be like blaming +a gardener for not producing new roses at a time when he was relaying +the garden. He was completely successful in opening a window on to +Europe, through which Western influence could stream into Russia. This +was not slow in coming about; and the foreign influence from the end +of the reign of Peter the Great onwards divided directly into two +different currents: the French and the German. The chief +representatives of the German influence in the eighteenth century were +TATISHCHEV, the founder of Russian history, and MICHAEL LOMONOSOV. + +Michael Lomonosov (1714-1765), a man with an incredibly wide +intellectual range, was a mathematician, a chemist, an astronomer, a +political economist, a historian, an electrician, a geologist, a +grammarian and a poet. The son of a peasant, after an education +acquired painfully in the greatest privation, he studied at Marburg +and Freiburg. He was the Peter the Great of the Russian language; he +scratched off the crust of foreign barbarisms, and still more by his +example than his precepts--which were pedantic--he displayed it in its +native purity, and left it as an instrument ready tuned for a great +player. He fought for knowledge, and did all he could to further the +founding of the University of Moscow, which was done in 1755 by the +Empress Elizabeth. This last event is one of the most important +landmarks in the history of Russian culture. + +The foremost representative of French influence was PRINCE KANTEMIR +(1708-44), who wrote the first Russian literary verse--satires--in the +pseudo-classic French manner, modelled on Boileau. But by far the most +abundant source of French ideas in Russia during the eighteenth +century was Catherine II, the German Princess. During Catherine's +reign, French influence was predominant in Russia. The Empress was the +friend of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Diderot came to St. +Petersburg, and the Russian military schools were flooded with French +teachers. Voltaire and Rousseau were the fashion, and cultured society +was platonically enamoured of the _Rights of Man_. Catherine herself, +besides being a great ruler and diplomatist, was a large-minded +philosopher, an elegant and witty writer. But the French Revolution +had a damping effect on all liberal enthusiasm, for the one thing an +autocrat, however enlightened, finds difficulty in understanding, is a +revolution. + +This change of point of view proved disastrous for the writer of what +is the most thoughtful book of the age: namely RADISHCHEV, an official +who wrote a book in twenty-five chapters called _A Journey from St. +Petersburg to Moscow_. Radishchev gave a simple and true account of +the effects of serfdom, a series of pictures drawn without +exaggeration, showing the appalling evils of the system, and appealing +to the conscience of the slave-owners; the book contained also a +condemnation of the Censorship. It appeared in 1790, with the +permission of the police. It was too late for the times; for in 1790 +the events in France were making all the rulers of Europe pensive. +Radishchev was accused of being a rebel, and was condemned to death. +The sentence was commuted to one of banishment to Eastern Siberia. He +was pardoned by the Emperor Paul, and reinstated by the Emperor +Alexander; but he ultimately committed suicide on being threatened in +jest with exile once more. Until 1905 it was very difficult to get a +copy of this book. Thus Radishchev stands out as the martyr of Russian +literature; the first writer to suffer for expressing opinions at the +wrong moment: opinions which had they been stated in this case twenty +years sooner would have coincided with those published by the Empress +herself. + +Catherine's reign, which left behind it many splendid results, and +had the effect of bestowing European culture on Russia, produced +hardly a single poet or prose-writer whose work can be read with +pleasure to-day, although a great importance was attached to the +writing of verse. There were poets in profusion, especially writers of +Odes, the best known of whom was DERZHAVIN (1743-1816), a brilliant +master of the pseudo-classical, in whose work, in spite of its +antiquated convention, elements of real poetical beauty are to be +found, which entitle him to be called the first Russian poet. But so +far no national literature had been produced. French was the language +of the cultured classes. Literature had become an artificial +plaything, to be played with according to French rules; but the +Russian language was waiting there, a language which possessed, as +Lomonosov said, "the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the +softness of Italian, the richness and powerful conciseness of Greek +and Latin"--waiting for some one who should have the desire and the +power to use it. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Another copy of it was found in 1864 amongst the papers of +Catherine I. Pushkin left a remarkable analysis of the epic. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN + + +The value of Russian literature, its peculiar and unique message to the +world, would not be sensibly diminished, had everything it produced +from the twelfth to the beginning of the nineteenth century perished, +with the exception of _The Raid of Prince Igor_. With the beginning of +the nineteenth century, and the accession of Alexander I, the New Age +began, and the real dawn of Russian literature broke. It was soon to be +followed by a glorious sunrise. The literature which sprang up now and +later, was profoundly affected by public events; and public events +during this epoch were intimately linked with the events which were +happening in Western Europe. It was the epoch of the Napoleonic wars, +and Russia played a vital part in that drama. Public opinion, after +enthusiasm had been roused by the deeds of Suvorov, was exasperated +and humiliated by Napoleon's subsequent victories over Russian arms. +But when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, a wave of patriotism swept +over the country, and the struggle resulted in an increased sense of +unity and nationality. Russia emerged stronger and more solid from the +struggle. As far as foreign affairs were concerned, the Emperor +Alexander I--on whom everything depended--played his national part +well, and he fitly embodied the patriotic movement of the day. At the +beginning of his reign he raised great hopes of internal reform which +were never fulfilled. He was a dreamer of dreams born out of his due +time; a pupil of La Harpe, the Swiss Jacobin, who instilled into him +aspirations towards liberty, truth and humanity, which throughout +remained his ideals, but which were too vague to lead to anything +practical or definite. His reign was thus a series of more or less +undefined and fitful struggles to put the crooked straight. He desired +to give Russia a constitution, but the attempts he made to do so proved +fruitless; and towards the end of his life he is said to have been +considerably influenced by Metternich. It is at any rate a fact that +during these years reaction once more triumphed. + +Nevertheless windows had been opened which could not be shut, and the +light which had streamed in produced some remarkable fruits. + +When Alexander I came to the throne, the immediate effect of his +accession was the ungagging of literature, and the first writer of +importance to take advantage of this new state of things was KARAMZIN +(1726-1826). In 1802 he started a new review called the _Messenger of +Europe_. This was not his _début_. In the reign of Catherine, Karamzin +had been brought to Moscow from the provinces, and initiated into +German and English literature. In 1789-90 he travelled abroad and +visited Switzerland, London and Paris. On his return, he published his +impressions in the shape of "Letters of a Russian Traveller" in the +_Moscow Journal_, which he founded himself. His ideals were +republican; he was an enthusiastic admirer of England and the Swiss, +and the reforms of Peter the Great. But his importance in Russian +literature lies in his being the first Russian to write unstudied, +simple and natural prose, Russian as spoken. He published two +sentimental stories in his _Journal_, but the reign of Catherine II +which now came to an end (1796) was followed by a period of +unmitigated censorship, which lasted throughout the reign of the +Emperor Paul, until Alexander I came to the throne. The new review +which Karamzin then started differed radically from all preceding +Russian reviews in that it dealt with politics and made _belles +lettres_ and criticism a permanent feature. As soon as Karamzin had +put this review on a firm basis, he devoted himself to historical +research, and the fruit of his work in this field was his _History of +the Russian Dominion_, in twelve volumes; eight published in 1816, the +rest in 1821-1826. The Russian language was, as has been said, like an +instrument waiting for a great player to play on it, and to make use +of all its possibilities. Karamzin accomplished this, in the domain of +prose. He spoke to the Russian heart by speaking Russian, pure and +unmarred by stilted and alien conventionalisms. + +The publication of Karamzin's history was epoch-making. In the first +place, the success of the work was overwhelming. It was the first +time in Russian history that a prose work had enjoyed so immense a +success. Not only were the undreamed-of riches of the Russian language +revealed to the Russians in the style, but the subject-matter came as +a surprise. Karamzin, as Pushkin put it, revealed Russia to the +Russians, just as Columbus discovered America. He made the dry bones +of history live, he wrote a great and glowing prose epic. His +influence on his contemporaries was enormous. His work received at +once the consecration of a classic, and it inspired Pushkin with his +most important if not his finest achievement in dramatic verse (_Boris +Godunov_). + +The first Russian poet of national importance belongs likewise to this +epoch, namely KRYLOV (1769[2]-1844), although he had written a great +deal for the stage in the preceding reigns, and continued to write for +a long time after the death of Alexander I. Krylov is also a Russian +classic, of quite a different kind. The son of an officer of the line, +he started by being a clerk in the provincial magistrature. Many of +his plays were produced with success, though none of them had any +durable qualities. But it was not until 1805 that he found his +vocation which was to write fables. The first of these were published +in 1806 in the _Moscow Journal_; from that time onward he went on +writing fables until he died in 1844. + +His early fables were translations from La Fontaine. They imitate La +Fontaine's free versification and they are written in iambics of +varying length. They were at once successful, and he continued to +translate fables from the French, or to adapt from Æsop or other +sources. But as time went on, he began to invent fables of his own; +and out of the two hundred fables which he left at his death, forty +only are inspired by La Fontaine and seven suggested by Æsop: the +remainder are original. Krylov's translations of La Fontaine are not +so much translations as re-creations. He takes the same subject, and +although often following the original in every single incident, he +thinks out each _motif_ for himself and re-creates it, so that his +translations have the same personal stamp and the same originality as +his own inventions. + +This is true even when the original is a masterpiece of the highest +order, such as La Fontaine's _Deux Pigeons_. You would think the +opening lines-- + + "Deux pigeons s'amoient d'amour tendre, + L'un d'eux s'ennuyant au logis + Fut assez fou pour entreprendre + Un voyage en lointain pays"-- + +were untranslatable; that nothing could be subtracted from them, and +that still less could anything be added; one ray the more, one shade +the less, you would think, would certainly impair their nameless +grace. But what does Krylov do? He re-creates the situation, expanding +La Fontaine's first line into six lines, makes it his own, and stamps +on it the impress of his personality and his nationality. Here is a +literal translation of the Russian, in rhyme. (I am not ambitiously +trying a third English version.) + + "Two pigeons lived like sons born of one mother. + Neither would eat nor drink without the other; + Where you see one, the other's surely near, + And every joy they halved and every tear; + They never noticed how the time flew by, + They sighed, but it was not a weary sigh." + +This gives the sense of Krylov's poem word for word, except for what +is the most important touch of all in the last line. The trouble is +that Krylov has written six lines which are as untranslatable as La +Fontaine's four; and he has made them as profoundly Russian as La +Fontaine's are French. Nothing could be more Russian than the last +line, which it is impossible to translate; because it should run-- + + "They were sometimes sad, but they never felt _ennui_"-- + +literally, "it was never _boring_ to them." The difficulty is that the +word for _boring_ in Russian, _skuchno_, which occurs with the utmost +felicity in contradistinction to _sad_, _grustno_, cannot be rendered +in English in its poetical simplicity. There are no six lines more +tender, musical, wistful, and subtly poetical in the whole of Russian +literature. + +Krylov's fables, like La Fontaine's, deal with animals, birds, fishes +and men; the Russian peasant plays a large part in them; often they +are satirical; nearly always they are bubbling with humour. A writer +of fables is essentially a satirist, whose aim it is sometimes to +convey pregnant sense, keen mockery or scathing criticism in a veiled +manner, sometimes merely to laugh at human foibles, or to express +wisdom in the form of wit, yet whose aim it always is to amuse. But +Krylov, though a satirist, succeeded in remaining a poet. It has been +said that his images are conventional and outworn--that is to say, he +uses the machinery of Zephyrs, Nymphs, Gods and Demigods,--and that +his conceptions are antiquated. But what splendid use he makes of this +machinery! When he speaks of a Zephyr you feel it is a Zephyr blowing, +for instance, as when the ailing cornflower whispers to the breeze. +Sometimes by the mere sound of his verse he conveys a picture, and +more than a picture, as in the Fable of the Eagle and the Mole, in the +first lines of which he makes you see and hear the eagle and his mate +sweeping to the dreaming wood, and swooping down on to the oak-tree. +Or again, in another fable, the Eagle and the Spider, he gives in a +few words the sense of height and space, as if you were looking down +from a balloon, when the eagle, soaring over the mountains of the +Caucasus, sees the end of the earth, the rivers meandering in the +plains, the woods, the meadows in all their spring glory, and the +angry Caspian Sea, darkling like the wing of a raven in the distance. +But his greatest triumph, in this respect, is the fable of the Ass and +the Nightingale, in which the verse echoes the very trills of the +nightingale, and renders the stillness and the delighted awe of the +listeners,--the lovers and the shepherd. Again a convention, if you +like, but what a felicitous convention! + +The fables are discursive like La Fontaine's, and not brief like +Æsop's; but like La Fontaine, Krylov has the gift of summing up a +situation, of scoring a sharp dramatic effect by the sudden evocation +of a whole picture in a terse phrase: as, for instance, in the fable +of the Peasants and the River: the peasants go to complain to the +river of the conduct of the streams which are continually overflowing +and destroying their goods, but when they reach the river, they see +half their goods floating on it. "They looked at each other, and +shaking their heads," says Krylov, "went home." The two words "went +home" in Russian (_poshli domoi_) express their hopelessness more +than pages of rhetoric. This is just one of those terse effects such +as La Fontaine delights in. + +Krylov in his youth lived much among the poor, and his language is +peculiarly native, racy, nervous, and near to the soil. It is the +language of the people and of the peasants, and it abounds in humorous +turns. He is, moreover, always dramatic, and his fables are for this +reason most effective when read aloud or recited. He is dramatic not +only in that part of the fable which is narrative, but in the +prologue, epilogue, or moral--the author's commentary; he adapts +himself to the tone of every separate fable, and becomes himself one +of the _dramatis personæ_. Sometimes his fables deal with political +events--the French Revolution, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the +Congress of Vienna; the education of Alexander I by La Harpe, in the +well-known fable of the Lion who sends his son to be educated by the +Eagle, of whom he consequently learns how to make nests. Sometimes +they deal with internal evils and abuses: the administration of +justice, in fables such as that of the peasant who brings a case +against the sheep and is found guilty by the fox; the censorship is +aimed at in the fable of the nightingale bidden to sing in the cat's +claws; the futility of bureaucratic regulations in the fable of the +sheep who are devoured by their superfluous watchdogs, or in that of +the sheep who are told solemnly and pompously to drag any offending +wolf before the nearest magistrate; or, again, in that of the high +dignitary who is admitted immediately into paradise because on earth +he left his work to be done by his secretaries--for being obviously a +fool, had he done his work himself, the result would have been +disastrous to all concerned. Sometimes they deal merely with human +follies and affairs, and the idiosyncrasies of men. + +Krylov's fables have that special quality which only permanent +classics possess of appealing to different generations, to people of +every age, kind and class, for different reasons; so that children can +read them simply for the story, and grown-up people for their +philosophy; their style pleases the unlettered by its simplicity, and +is the envy and despair of the artist in its supreme art. Pushkin +calls him "le plus national et le plus populaire de nos poètes" (this +was true in Pushkin's day), and said his fables were read by men of +letters, merchants, men of the world, servants and children. His work +bears the stamp of ageless modernity just as _The Pilgrim's Progress_ +or Cicero's letters seem modern. It also has the peculiarly Russian +quality of unexaggerated realism. He sees life as it is, and writes +down what he sees. It is true that although his style is finished and +polished, he only at times reaches the high-water mark of what can be +done with the Russian language: his style, always idiomatic, pregnant +and natural, is sometimes heavy, and even clumsy; but then he never +sets out to be anything more than a fabulist. In this he is supremely +successful, and since at the same time he gives us snatches of +exquisite poetry, the greater the praise to him. But, when all is said +and done, Krylov has the talisman which defies criticism, baffles +analysis, and defeats time: namely, charm. His fables achieved an +instantaneous popularity, which has never diminished until to-day. + +Internal political events proved the next factor in Russian +literature; a factor out of which the so-called romantic movement was +to grow. + +During the Napoleonic wars a great many Russian officers had lived +abroad. They came back to Russia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, +teeming with new ideas and new ideals. They took life seriously, and +were called by Pushkin the Puritans of the North. Their aim was +culture and the public welfare. They were not revolutionaries; on the +contrary, they were anxious to co-operate with the Government. They +formed for their purpose a society, in imitation of the German +_Tugendbund_, called _The Society of Welfare_: its aims were +philanthropic, educational, and economic. It consisted chiefly of +officers of the Guard, and its headquarters were at St. Petersburg. +All this was known and approved of by the Emperor. But when the +Government became reactionary, this peaceful progressive movement +changed its character. The Society of Welfare was closed in 1821, and +its place was taken by two new societies, which, instead of being +political, were social and revolutionary. The success of the +revolutionary movements in Spain and in Italy encouraged these +societies to follow their example. + +The death of Alexander I in 1825 forced them to immediate action. The +shape it took was the "Decembrist" rising. Constantine, the Emperor's +brother, renounced his claim to the throne, and was succeeded by his +brother Nicholas. December 14 (O.S.) was fixed for the day on which +the Emperor should receive the oath of allegiance of his troops. An +organized insurrection took place, which was confined to certain +regiments. The Emperor was supported by the majority of the Guards +regiments, and the people showed no signs of supporting the rising, +which was at once suppressed. + +One hundred and twenty-five of the conspirators were condemned. Five +of them were hanged, and among them the poet RYLEEV (1795-1826). But +although the political results of the movement were nil, the effect of +the movement on literature was far-reaching. Philosophy took the place +of politics, and liberalism was diverted into the channel of +romanticism; but out of this romantic movement came the springtide of +Russian poetry, in which, for the first time, the soul of the Russian +people found adequate expression. And the very fact that politics +were excluded from the movement proved, in one sense, a boon to +literature: for it gave Russian men of genius the chance to be +writers, artists and poets, and prevented them from exhausting their +whole energy in being inefficient politicians or unsuccessful +revolutionaries. I will dwell on the drawbacks, on the dark side of +the medal, presently. + +As far as the actual Decembrist movement is concerned, its concrete +and direct legacy to literature consists in the work of Ryleev, and +its indirect legacy in the most famous comedy of the Russian stage, +_Gore ot Uma_, "The Misfortune of being Clever," by GRIBOYEDOV +(1795-1829). + +Ryleev's life was cut short before his poetical powers had come to +maturity. It is idle to speculate what he might have achieved had he +lived longer. The work which he left is notable for its pessimism, but +still suffers from the old rhetorical conventions of the eighteenth +century and the imitation of French models; moreover he looked on +literature as a matter of secondary importance. "I am not a poet," he +said, "I am a citizen." In spite of this, every now and then there are +flashes of intense poetical inspiration in his work; and he struck +one or two powerful chords--for instance, in his stanzas on the vision +of enslaved Russia, which have a tense strength and fire that remind +one of Emily Brontë. He was a poet as well as a citizen, but even had +he lived to a prosperous old age and achieved artistic perfection in +his work, he could never have won a brighter aureole than that which +his death gained him. The poems of his last days in prison breathe a +spirit of religious humility, and he died forgiving and praying for +his enemies. His name shines in Russian history and Russian +literature, as that of a martyr to a high ideal. + +Griboyedov, the author of _Gore ot Uma_, a writer of a very different +order, although not a Decembrist himself, is a product of that period. +His comedy still remains the unsurpassed masterpiece of Russian +comedy, and can be compared with Beaumarchais' _Figaro_ and Sheridan's +_School for Scandal_. + +Griboyedov was a Foreign Office official, and he was murdered when +Minister Plenipotentiary at Teheran, on January 30, 1829. He conceived +the plot of his play in 1816, and read aloud some scenes in St. +Petersburg in 1823-24. They caused a sensation in literary circles, +and the play began to circulate rapidly in MSS. Two fragments of the +drama were published in one of the almanacs, which then took the place +of literary reviews. But beyond this, Griboyedov could neither get his +play printed nor acted. Thousands of copies circulated in MSS., but +the play was not produced on the stage until 1831, and then much +mutilated; and it was not printed until 1833. + +_Gore ot Uma_ is written in verse, in iambics of varying length, like +Krylov's fables. The unities are preserved. The action takes place in +one day and in the same house--that of Famusov, an elderly gentleman +of the Moscow upper class holding a Government appointment. He is a +widower and has one daughter, Sophia, whose sensibility is greater +than her sense; and the play opens on a scene where the father +discovers her talking to his secretary, Molchalin, and says he will +stand no nonsense. Presently, the friend of Sophia's childhood, +Chatsky, arrives after a three years' absence abroad; Chatsky is a +young man of independent ideas whose misfortune it is to be clever. He +notices that Sophia receives him coldly, and later on he perceives +that she is in love with Molchalin,--a wonderfully drawn type, the +perfect climber, time-server and place-seeker, and the incarnation of +convention,--who does not care a rap for Sophia. Chatsky declaims to +Famusov his contempt for modern Moscow, for the slavish worship by +society of all that is foreign, for its idolatry of fashion and +official rank, its hollowness and its convention. Famusov, the +incarnation of respectable conventionality, does not understand one +word of what he is saying. + +At an evening party given at Famusov's house, Chatsky is determined to +find out whom Sophia loves. He decides it is Molchalin, and lets fall +a few biting sarcasms about him to Sophia; and Sophia, to pay him back +for his sarcasm, lets it be understood by one of the guests that he is +mad. The half-spoken hint spreads like lightning; and the spreading of +the news is depicted in a series of inimitable scenes. Chatsky enters +while the subject is being discussed, and delivers a long tirade on +the folly of Moscow society, which only confirms the suspicions of the +guests; and he finds when he gets to the end of his speech that he is +speaking to an empty room. + +In the fourth act we see the guests leaving the house after the +party. Chatsky is waiting for his carriage. Sophia appears on the +staircase and calls Molchalin. Chatsky, hearing her voice, hides +behind a pillar. Liza, Sophia's maid, comes to fetch Molchalin, and +knocks at his door. Molchalin comes out, and not knowing that Sophia +or Chatsky are within hearing, makes love to Liza and tells her that +he only loves Sophia out of duty. Then Sophia appears, having heard +everything. Molchalin falls on his knees to her: she is quite +inexorable. Chatsky comes forward and begins to speak his mind--when +all is interrupted by the arrival of Famusov, who speaks his. Chatsky +shakes the dust of the house and of Moscow off his feet, and Sophia is +left without Chatsky and without Molchalin. + +The _Gore ot Uma_ is a masterpiece of satire rather than a masterpiece +of dramatic comedy. That is to say that, as a satire of the Moscow +society of the day and of the society of yesterday, and of to-morrow, +it is immortal, and forms a complete work: but as a comedy it does +not. Almost every scene separately is perfect in itself, but +dramatically it does not group itself round one central idea or one +mainspring of action. Judged from the point of view of dramatic +propriety, the behaviour of the hero is wildly improbable throughout; +there is no reason for the spectator to think he should be in love +with Sophia; if he is, there is no reason for him to behave as he +does; if a man behaved like that, declaiming at an evening party long +speeches on the decay of the times, the most frivolous of societies +would be justified in thinking him mad. + +Pushkin hit on the weak point of the play as a play when he wrote: "In +_The Misfortune of being Clever_ the question arises, Who is clever? +and the answer is Griboyedov. Chatsky is an honourable young man who +has lived for a long time with a clever man (that is to say with +Griboyedov), and learnt his clever sarcasms; but to whom does he say +them? To Famusov, to the old ladies at the party. This is +unforgivable, because the first sign of a clever man is to know at +once whom he is dealing with." + +But what makes the work a masterpiece is the naturalness of the +characters, the dialogue, the comedy of the scenes which represent +Moscow society. It is extraordinary that on so small a scale, in four +short acts, Griboyedov should have succeeded in giving so complete a +picture of Moscow society, and should have given the dialogue, in +spite of its being in verse, the stamp of conversational familiarity. +The portraits are all full-length portraits, and when the play is +produced now, the rendering of each part raises as much discussion in +Russia as a revival of one of Sheridan's comedies in England. + +As for the style, nearly three-quarters of the play has passed into +the Russian language. It is forcible, concise, bitingly sarcastic, it +is as neat and dry as W. S. Gilbert, as elegant as La Fontaine, as +clear as an icicle, and as clean as the thrust of a sword. But perhaps +the crowning merit of this immortal satire is its originality. It is a +product of Russian life and Russian genius, and as yet it is without a +rival. + +Outside the current of politics and political aspirations, there +appeared during this same epoch a poet who exercised a considerable +influence over Russian literature, and who devoted himself exclusively +to poetry. This was BASIL ZHUKOVSKY (1783-1852). He opened the door +of Russian literature on the fields of German and English poetry. The +first poem he published in 1802 was a translation of Gray's _Elegy_; +this, and an imitation of Bürger's _Leonore_, which affected all Slav +literatures, brought him fame. Later, he translated Schiller's _Maid +of Orleans_, his ballads, some of the lyrics of Uhland, Goethe, +Hebbel, and a great quantity of other foreign poems. His translations +were faithful, but in spite of this he gave them the stamp of his own +dreamy personality. He was made tutor to the Tsarevitch +Alexander--afterwards Alexander II,--and for a time his production +ceased; but when this task was finished, he braced himself in his old +age to translate _The Odyssey_, and this translation appeared in +1848-50. In this work he obeyed the first great law of translation, +"Thou shalt not turn a good poem into a bad one." He produced a +beautiful work; but he also did what all other translators of Homer +have done; he took the Homer out and left the Zhukovsky, and with it +something sentimental, elegiac, and didactic. + +Zhukovsky's greatest service to Russian literature consisted in his +exploding the superstition that the literature of France was the only +literature that counted, and introducing literary Russia to the poets +of England and Germany rather than of France. But apart from this, he +is the first and best translator in European literature, for what +Krylov did with some of La Fontaine's fables, he did for all the +literature he touched--he re-created it in Russian, and made it his +own. In his translation of Gray's _Elegy_, for instance, he not only +translates the poet's meaning into musical verse, but he conveys the +intangible atmosphere of dreamy landscape, and the poignant accent +which makes that poem the natural language of grief. It is +characteristic of him that, thirty-seven years after he translated the +poem, he visited Stoke Poges, re-read Gray's _Elegy_ there, and made +another translation, which is still more faithful than the first. + +The Russian language was by this time purified from all outward +excrescences, released from the bondage of convention and the +pseudo-classical, open to all outside influences, and only waiting, +like a ready-tuned instrument, on which Krylov and Zhukovsky had +already sounded sweet notes and deep tones, and which Karamzin had +proved to be a magnificent vehicle for musical and perspicuous prose, +for a poet of genius to come and sound it from its lowest note to the +top of its compass, for there was indeed much music and excellent +voice to be plucked from it. At the appointed hour the man came. It +was PUSHKIN. He arrived at a time when a battle of words was raging +between the so-called classical and romantic schools. The +pseudo-classical, with all its mythological machinery and conventional +apparatus, was totally alien to Russia, and a direct and slavish +imitation of the French. On the other hand, the utmost confusion +reigned as to what constituted romanticism. To each single writer it +meant a different thing: "Enfonçez Racine," and the unities, in one +case; or ghosts, ballads, legends, local colour in another; or the +defiance of morality and society in another. Zhukovsky, in introducing +German romanticism into Russia, paved the way for its death, and for +the death of all exotic fashions and models; for he paved the way for +Pushkin to render the whole quarrel obsolete by creating models of his +own and by founding a national literature. + +Pushkin was born on May 26, 1799, at Moscow. He was of ancient +lineage, and inherited African negro blood on his mother's side, his +mother's grandmother being the daughter of Peter the Great's negro, +Hannibal. Until he was nine years old, he did not show signs of any +unusual precocity; but from then onwards he was seized with a passion +for reading which lasted all his life. He read Plutarch's _Lives_, the +_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ in a translation. He then devoured all the +French books he found in his father's library. Pushkin was gifted with +a photographic memory, which retained what he read immediately and +permanently. His first efforts at writing were in French,--comedies, +which he performed himself to an audience of his sisters. He went to +school in 1812 at the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, a suburb of St. +Petersburg. His school career was not brilliant, and his leaving +certificate qualifies his achievements as mediocre, even in Russian. +But during the six years he spent at the Lyceum, he continued to read +voraciously. His favourite poet at this time was Voltaire. He began to +write verse, first in French and then in Russian; some of it was +printed in 1814 and 1815 in reviews, and in 1815 he declaimed his +_Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_ in public at the Lyceum examination, +in the presence of Derzhavin the poet. + +The poems which he wrote at school afterwards formed part of his +collected works. In these poems, consisting for the greater part of +anacreontics and epistles, although they are immature, and imitative, +partly of contemporary authors such as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, and +partly of the French anacreontic school of poets, such as Voltaire, +Gresset and Parny, the sound of a new voice was unmistakable. Indeed, +not only his contemporaries, but the foremost representatives of the +Russian literature of that day, Derzhavin, Karamzin and Zhukovsky, +made no mistake about it. They greeted the first notes of this new +lyre with enthusiasm. Zhukovsky used to visit the boy poet at school +and read out his verse to him. Derzhavin was enthusiastic over the +recitation of his _Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_. Thus fame came to +Pushkin as easily as the gift of writing verse. He had lisped in +numbers, and as soon as he began to speak in them, his contemporaries +immediately recognized and hailed the new voice. He did not wake up +and find himself famous like Byron, but he walked into the Hall of +Fame as naturally as a young heir steps into his lawful inheritance. +If we compare Pushkin's school-boy poetry with Byron's _Hours of +Idleness_, it is easy to understand how this came about. In the _Hours +of Idleness_ there is, perhaps, only one poem which would hold out +hopes of serious promise; and the most discerning critics would have +been justified in being careful before venturing to stake any great +hopes on so slender a hint. But in Pushkin's early verse, although the +subject-matter is borrowed, and the style is still irregular and +careless, it is none the less obvious that it flows from the pen of +the author without effort or strain; and besides this, certain coins +of genuine poetry ring out, bearing the image and superscription of a +new mint, the mint of Pushkin. + +When the first of his poems to attract the attention of a larger +audience, _Ruslan and Ludmila_, was published, in 1820, it was greeted +with enthusiasm by the public; but it had already won the suffrages of +that circle which counted most, that is to say, the leading men of +letters of the day, who had heard it read out in MSS. For as soon as +Pushkin left school and stepped into the world, he was received into +the literary circle of the day on equal terms. After he had read aloud +the first cantos of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ at Zhukovsky's literary +evenings, Zhukovsky gave him his portrait with this inscription: "To +the pupil, from his defeated master"; and BATYUSHKOV, a poet who, +after having been influenced, like Pushkin, by Voltaire and Parny, had +gone back to the classics, Horace and Tibullus, and had introduced the +classic anacreontic school of poetry into Russia, was astonished to +find a young man of the world outplaying him without any trouble on +the same lyre, and exclaimed, "Oh! how well the rascal has started +writing!" + +The publication of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ sealed Pushkin's reputation +definitely, as far as the general public was concerned, although some +of the professional critics treated the poem with severity. The +subject of the poem was a Russian fairy-tale, and the critics blamed +the poet for having recourse to what they called Russian folk-lore, +which they considered to be unworthy of the poetic muse. One review +complained that Pushkin's choice of subject was like introducing a +bearded unkempt peasant into a drawing-room, while others blamed him +for dealing with national stuff in a flippant spirit. But the curious +thing is that, while the critics blamed him for his choice of subject, +and his friends and the public defended him for it, quoting all sorts +of precedents, the poem has absolutely nothing in common, either in +its spirit, style or characterization, with native Russian folk-lore +and fairy-tales. Much later on in his career, Pushkin was to show what +he could do with Russian folk-lore. But _Ruslan and Ludmila_, which, +as far as its form is concerned, has a certain superficial resemblance +to Ariosto, is in reality the result of the French influence, under +which Pushkin had been ever since his cradle, and which in this poem +blazes into the sky like a rocket, and bursts into a shower of sparks, +never to return again. + +There is no passion in the poem and no irony, but it is young, fresh, +full of sensuous, not to say sensual images, interruptions, +digressions, and flippant epigrams. Pushkin wondered afterwards that +nobody noticed the coldness of the poem; the truth was that the eyes +of the public were dazzled by the fresh sensuous images, and their +ears were taken captive by the new voice: for the importance of the +poem lies in this--that the new voice which the literary pundits had +already recognized in the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo was now speaking to +the whole world, and all Russia became aware that a young man was +among them "with mouth of gold and morning in his eyes." _Ruslan and +Ludmila_ has just the same sensuous richness, fresh music and +fundamental coldness as Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_. After finishing +the poem, Pushkin added a magnificent and moving Epilogue, written +from the Caucasus in the year of its publication (1820); and when the +second edition was published in 1828, he added a Prologue in his +finest manner which tells of Russian fairy-land. + +After leaving school in 1817, until 1820, Pushkin plunged into the gay +life of St. Petersburg. He wanted to be a Hussar, but his father could +not afford it. In default he became a Foreign Office official; but he +did not take this profession seriously. He consorted with the +political youth and young Liberals of the day; he scattered stinging +epigrams and satirical epistles broadcast. He sympathized with the +Decembrists, but took no part in their conspiracy. He would probably +have ended by doing so; but, luckily for Russian literature, he was +transferred in 1820 from the Foreign Office to the Chancery of General +Inzov in the South of Russia; and from 1820 to 1826 he lived first at +Kishinev, then at Odessa, and finally in his own home at Pskov. This +enforced banishment was of the greatest possible service to the poet; +it took him away from the whirl and distractions of St. Petersburg; it +prevented him from being compromised in the drama of the Decembrists; +it ripened and matured his poetical genius; it provided him, since it +was now that he visited the Caucasus and the Crimea for the first +time, with new subject-matter. + +During this period he learnt Italian and English, and came under the +influence of André Chénier and Byron. André Chénier's influence is +strongly felt in a series of lyrics in imitation of the classics; but +these lyrics were altogether different from the anacreontics of his +boyhood. Byron's influence is first manifested in a long poem _The +Prisoner of the Caucasus_. It is Byronic in the temperament of the +hero, who talks in the strain of the earlier Childe Harold; he is +young, but feels old; tired of life, he seeks for consolation in the +loneliness of nature in the Caucasus. He is taken prisoner by mountain +tribesmen, and set free by a girl who drowns herself on account of her +unrequited love. Pushkin said later that the poem was immature, but +that there were verses in it that came from his heart. There is one +element in the poem which is by no means immature, and that is the +picture of the Caucasus, which is executed with much reality and +simplicity. Pushkin annexed the Caucasus to Russian poetry. The Crimea +inspired him with another tale, also Byronic in some respects, _The +Fountain of Baghchi-Sarai_, which tells of a Tartar Khan and his +Christian slave, who is murdered out of jealousy by a former +favourite, herself drowned by the orders of the Khan. Here again the +descriptions are amazing, and Pushkin draws out a new stop of rich and +voluptuous music. + +In speaking of the influence of Byron over Pushkin it is necessary to +discriminate. Byron helped Pushkin to discover himself; Byron +revealed to him his own powers, showed him the way out of the French +garden where he had been dwelling, and acted as a guide to fresh woods +and pastures new. But what Pushkin took from the new provinces to +which the example of Byron led him was entirely different from what +Byron sought there. Again, the methods and workmanship of the two +poets were radically different. Pushkin is never imitative of Byron; +but Byron opened his eyes to a new world, and indeed did for him what +Chapman's _Homer_ did for Keats. It frequently happens that when a +poet is deeply struck by the work of another poet he feels a desire to +write something himself, but something different. Thus Pushkin's +mental intercourse with Byron had the effect of bracing the talent of +the Russian poet and spurring him on to the conquest of new worlds. + +Pushkin's six years' banishment to his own country had the effect of +revealing to him the reality and seriousness of his vocation as a +poet, and the range and strength of his gifts. It was during this +period that besides the works already mentioned he wrote some of his +finest lyrics, _The Conversation between the Bookseller and the +Poet_--perhaps the most perfect of his shorter poems--it contains four +lines to have written which Turgenev said he would have burnt the +whole of his works--a larger poem called _The Gypsies_; his dramatic +chronicle _Boris Godunov_, and the beginning of his masterpiece +_Onegin_; several ballads, including _The Sage Oleg_, and an +unfinished romance, the _Robber Brothers_. + +Not only is the richness of his output during this period remarkable, +but the variety and the high level of art maintained in all the +different styles which he attempted and mastered. _The Gypsies_ +(1827), which was received with greater favour by the public than any +of his poems, either earlier or later, is the story of a disappointed +man, Aleko, who leaves the world and takes refuge with gypsies. A +tragically ironical situation is the result. The anarchic nature of +the Byronic misanthrope brings tragedy into the peaceful life of the +people, who are lawless because they need no laws. Aleko loves and +marries the gypsy Zemfira, but after a time she tires of him, and +loves a young gypsy. Aleko surprises them and kills them both. Then +Zemfira's father banishes him from the gypsies' camp. He, too, had +been deceived. When his wife Mariula had been untrue and had left him, +he had attempted no vengeance, but had brought up her daughter. + +"Leave us, proud man," he says to Aleko. "We are a wild people; we +have no laws, we torture not, neither do we punish; we have no use for +blood or groans; we will not live with a man of blood. Thou wast not +made for the wild life. For thyself alone thou claimest licence; we +are shy and good-natured; thou art evil-minded and presumptuous. +Farewell, and peace be with thee!" + +The charm of the poem lies in the descriptions of the gypsy camp and +the gypsy life, the snatches of gypsy song, and the characterization +of the gypsies, especially of the women. It is not surprising the poem +was popular; it breathes a spell, and the reading of it conjures up +before one the wandering life, the camp-fire, the soft speech and the +song; and makes one long to go off with "the raggle-taggle gypsies O!" + +Byron's influence soon gave way to that of Shakespeare, who opened a +still larger field of vision to the Russian poet. In 1825 he writes: +"Quel homme que ce Shakespeare! Je n'en reviens pas. Comme Byron le +tragique est mesquin devant lui! Ce Byron qui n'a jamais conçu qu'un +seul caractère et c'est le sien ... ce Byron donc a partagé entre ses +personages tel et tel trait de son caractère: son orgeuil à l'un, sa +haine à l'autre, sa mélancolie au troisième, etc., et c'est ainsi d'un +caractère plein, sombre et énergique, il a fait plusieurs caractères +insignifiants; ce n'est pas là de la tragédie. On a encore une manie. +Quand on a conçu un caractère, tout ce qu'on lui fait dire, même les +choses les plus étranges, en porte essentiellement l'empreinte, comme +les pédants et les marins dans les vieux romans de Fielding. Voyez le +haineux de Byron ... et là-dessus lisez Shakespeare. Il ne craint +jamais de compromettre son personage, il le fait parler avec tout +l'abandon de la vie, car il est sûr en temps et lieu, de lui faire +trouver le langage de son caractère. Vous me demanderez: votre +tragédie est-elle une tragédie de caractère ou de costume? J'ai choisi +le genre le plus aisé, mais j'ai tâché de les unir tous deux. J'écris +et je pense. La plupart des scènes ne demandent que du raisonnement; +quand j'arrive à une scène qui demande de l'inspiration, j'attends ou +je passe dessus." + +I quote this letter because it throws light, firstly, on Pushkin's +matured opinion of Byron, and, secondly, on his methods of work; for, +like Leonardo da Vinci, he formed the habit, which he here describes, +of leaving unwritten passages where inspiration was needed, until he +felt the moment of _bien être_ when inspiration came; and this not +only in writing his tragedy, but henceforward in everything that he +wrote, as his note-books testify. + +The subject-matter of _Boris Godunov_ was based on Karamzin's history: +it deals with the dramatic episode of the Russian Perkin Warbeck, the +false Demetrius who pretended to be the murdered son of Ivan the +Terrible. The play is constructed on the model of Shakespeare's +chronicle plays, but in a still more disjointed fashion, without a +definite beginning or end: when Mussorgsky made an opera out of it, +the action was concentrated into definite acts; for, as it stands, it +is not a play, but a series of scenes. Pushkin had not the power of +conceiving and executing a drama which should move round one idea to +an inevitable close. He had not the gift of dramatic architectonics, +and still less that of stage carpentry. On the other hand, the scenes, +whether they be tragic and poetical, or scenes of common life, are as +vivid as any in Shakespeare; the characters are all alive, and they +speak a language which is at the same time ancient, living, and +convincing. + +In saying that Pushkin lacks the gift of stage architectonics and +stage carpentry, it is not merely meant that he lacked the gift of +arranging acts that would suit the stage, or that of imagining stage +effects. His whole play is not conceived as a drama; a subject from +which a drama might be written is taken, but the drama is left +unwritten. We see Boris Godunov on the throne, which he has unlawfully +usurped; we know he feels remorse; he tells us so in monologues; we +see his soul stripped before us, bound upon a wheel of fire, and we +watch the wheel revolve; and that is all the moral and spiritual +action that the part contains; he is static and not dynamic, he never +has to make up his mind; his will never has to encounter the shock of +another will during the whole play. Neither does the chronicle centre +round the Pretender. It is true that we see the idea of impersonating +the Tsarevitch dawning in his mind; and it is also true that in one +scene with his Polish love, Marina, we see him dynamically moving in a +dramatic situation. She loves him because she thinks he is the son of +an anointed King. He loves her too much to deceive her, and tells her +the truth. She then says she will have nothing of him; and then he +rises from defeat and shame to the height of the situation, becomes +great, and, not unlike Browning's Sludge, says: "Although I am an +impostor, I am born to be a King all the same; I am one of Nature's +Kings; and I defy you to oust me from the situation. Tell every one +what I have told you. Nobody will believe you." And Marina is +conquered once more by his conduct and bearing. + +This scene is sheer drama; it is the conflict of two wills and two +souls. But there the matter ends. The kaleidoscope is shaken, and we +are shown a series of different patterns, in which the heroine plays +no part at all, and in which the hero only makes a momentary +appearance. The fact is there is neither hero nor heroine in the play. +It is not a play, but a chronicle; and it would be foolish to blame +Pushkin for not accomplishing what he never attempted. As a chronicle, +a series of detached scenes, it is supremely successful. There are +certain scenes which attain to sublimity: for instance, that in the +cell of the monastery, where the monk is finishing his chronicle; and +the monologue in which Boris speaks his remorse, and his dying speech +to his son. The verse in these scenes is sealed with the mark of that +God-gifted ease and high seriousness, which belong only to the +inspired great. They are Shakespearean, not because they imitate +Shakespeare, but because they attain to heights of imaginative truth +to which Shakespeare rises more often than any other poet; and the +language in these scenes has a simplicity, an inevitableness, an +absence of all conscious effort and of all visible art and artifice, a +closeness of utterance combined with a width of suggestion which +belong only to the greatest artists, to the Greeks, to Shakespeare, to +Dante. + +_Boris Godunov_ was not published until January 1, 1831, and passed, +with one exception, absolutely unnoticed by the critics. Like so many +great works, it came before its time; and it was not until years +afterwards that the merits of this masterpiece were understood and +appreciated. + +In 1826 Pushkin's banishment to the country came to an end; in that +year he was allowed to go to Moscow, and in 1827 to St. Petersburg. In +1826 his poems appeared in one volume, and the second canto of +_Onegin_ (the first had appeared in 1825). In 1827 _The Gypsies_, and +the third canto of _Onegin_; in 1828 the fourth, fifth, and sixth +cantos of _Onegin_; in 1829 _Graf Nulin_, an admirably told _Conte_ +such as Maupassant might have written, of a deceived husband and a +wife who, finding herself in the situation of Lucretia, gives the +would-be Tarquin a box on the ears, but succeeds, nevertheless, in +being unfaithful with some one else--the _Cottage of Kolomna_ is +another story in the same vein--and in the same year _Poltava_. + +This poem was written in one month, in St. Petersburg. The subject is +Mazepa, with whom the daughter of his hereditary enemy, Kochubey, whom +he afterwards tortures and kills, falls in love. But it is in reality +the epic of Peter the Great.[3] When the poem was published, it +disconcerted the critics and the public. It revealed an entirely new +phase of Pushkin's style, and it should have widened the popular +conception of the poet's powers and versatility. But at the time the +public only knew Pushkin through his lyrics and his early tales; +_Boris Godunov_ had not yet been published; moreover, the public of +that day expected to find in a poem passion and the delineation of the +heart's adventures. This stern objective fragment of an epic, falling +into their sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses and cupids, +like a bas-relief conceived by a Titan and executed by a god, met with +little appreciation. The poet's verse which, so far as the public +knew it, had hitherto seemed like a shining and luscious fruit, was +exchanged for a concentrated weighty tramp of ringing rhyme, _martelé_ +like steel. It is as if Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a +style as concise as that of Pope and as concentrated as that of +Browning's dramatic lyrics. The poem is a fit monument to Peter the +Great, and the great monarch's impetuous genius and passion for +thorough craftsmanship seem to have entered into it. + +In 1829 Pushkin made a second journey to the Caucasus, the result of +which was a harvest of lyrics. On his return to St. Petersburg he +sketched the plan of another epic poem, _Galub_, dealing with the +Caucasus, but this remained a fragment. + +In 1831 he finished the eighth and last canto of _Onegin_. Originally +there were nine cantos, but when the work was published one of the +cantos dealing with Onegin's travels was left out as being irrelevant. +Pushkin had worked at this poem since 1823. It was Byron's _Beppo_ +which gave him the idea of writing a poem on modern life; but here +again, he made of the idea something quite different from any of +Byron's work. _Onegin_ is a novel. Eugene Onegin is the name of the +hero. It is, moreover, the first Russian novel; and as a novel it has +never been surpassed. It is as real as Tolstoy, as finished in +workmanship and construction as Turgenev. It is a realistic novel; not +realistic in the sense that Zola's work was mis-called realistic, but +realistic in the sense that Miss Austen is realistic. The hero is the +average man about St. Petersburg; his father, a worthy public servant, +lives honourably on debts and gives three balls a year. Onegin is +brought up, not too strictly, by "Monsieur l'Abbé"; he goes out in the +world clothed by a London tailor, fluent in French, and able to dance +the Mazurka. + +Onegin can touch on every subject, can hold his tongue when the +conversation becomes too serious, and make epigrams. He knows enough +Latin to construe an epitaph, to talk about Juvenal, and put "Vale!" +at the end of his letters, and he can remember two lines of the +_Æneid_. He is severe on Homer and Theocritus, but has read Adam +Smith. The only art in which he is proficient is the _ars amandi_ as +taught by Ovid. He is a patron of the ballet; he goes to balls; he +eats beef-steaks and _paté de foie gras_. In spite of all +this--perhaps because of it--he suffers from spleen, like Childe +Harold, the author says. His father dies, leaving a lot of debts +behind him, but a dying uncle summons him to the country; and when he +gets there he finds his uncle dead, and himself the inheritor of the +estate. In the country, he is just as much bored as he was in St. +Petersburg. A new neighbour arrives in the shape of Lensky, a young +man fresh from Germany, an enthusiast and a poet, and full of Kant, +Schiller, and the German writers. Lensky introduces Onegin to the +neighbouring family, by name Larin, consisting of a widow and two +daughters. Lensky is in love with the younger daughter, Olga, who is +simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face, as Onegin says, like the +foolish moon. The elder sister, Tatiana, is less pretty; shy and +dreamy, she conceals under her retiring and wistful ways a clean-cut +character and a strong will. + +Tatiana is as real as any of Miss Austen's heroines; as alive as +Fielding's Sophia Western, and as charming as any of George Meredith's +women; as sensible as Portia, as resolute as Juliet. Turgenev, with +all his magic, and Tolstoy, with all his command over the colours of +life, never created a truer, more radiant, and more typically Russian +woman. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman; that +is to say, of all that is best in Russia; and it is a type taken +straight from life, and not from fairy-land--a type that exists as +much to-day as it did in the days of Pushkin. She is the first of that +long gallery of Russian women which Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky +have given us, and which are the most precious jewels of Russian +literature, because they reflect the crowning glory of Russian life. +Tatiana falls in love with Onegin at first sight. She writes to him +and confesses her love, and in all the love poetry of the world there +is nothing more touching and more simple than this confession. It is +perfect. If Pushkin had written this and this alone, his place among +poets would be unique and different from that of all other poets. + +Possibly some people may think that there are finer achievements in +the love poetry of the world; but nothing is so futile and so +impertinent as giving marks to the great poets, as if they were +passing an examination. If a thing is as good as possible in itself, +what is the use of saying that it is less good or better than +something else, which is as good as possible in itself also. +Nevertheless, placed beside any of the great confessions of love in +poetry--Francesca's story in the _Inferno_, Romeo and Juliet's +leavetaking, Phèdre's declaration, Don Juan Tenorio's letter--the +beauty of Tatiana's confession would not be diminished by the +juxtaposition. Of the rest of Pushkin's work at its best and highest, +of the finest passages of _Boris Godunov_, for instance, you can say: +This is magnificent, but there are dramatic passages in other works of +other poets on the same lines and as fine; but in Tatiana's letter +Pushkin has created something unique, which has no parallel, because +only a Russian could have written it, and of Russians, only he. It is +a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous as a +blackbird's song. + +Onegin tells Tatiana he is not worthy of her, that he is not made for +love and marriage; that he would cease to love her at once; that he +feels for her like a brother, or perhaps a little more tenderly. It +then falls out that Onegin, by flirting with Olga at a ball, makes +Lensky jealous. They fight a duel, and Lensky is killed. Onegin is +obliged to leave the neighbourhood, and spends years in travel. +Tatiana remains true to her first love; but she is taken by her +relatives to Moscow, and consents at last under their pressure to +marry a rich man of great position. In St. Petersburg, Onegin meets +her again. Tatiana has become a great lady, but all her old charm is +there. Onegin now falls violently in love with her; but she, although +she frankly confesses that she still loves him, tells him that it is +too late; she has married another, and she means to remain true to +him. And there the story ends. + +_Onegin_ is, perhaps, Pushkin's most characteristic work; it is +undoubtedly the best known and the most popular; like _Hamlet_, it is +all quotations. Pushkin in his _Onegin_ succeeded in doing what +Shelley urged Byron to do--to create something new and in accordance +with the spirit of the age, which should at the same time be +beautiful. He did more than this. He succeeded in creating for Russia +a poem that was purely national, and in giving his country a classic, +a model both in construction, matter, form, and inspiration for +future generations. Perhaps the greatest quality of this poem is its +vividness. Pushkin himself speaks, in taking leave, of having seen the +unfettered march of his novel in a magic prism. This is just the +impression that the poem gives; the scenes are as clear as the shapes +in a crystal; nothing is blurred; there are no hesitating notes, +nothing _à peu près_; every stroke comes off; the nail is hit on the +head every time, only so easily that you do not notice the strokes, +and all labour escapes notice. Apart from this the poem is amusing; it +arrests the attention as a story, and it delights the intelligence +with its wit, its digressions, and its brilliance. It is as witty as +Don Juan and as consummately expressed as Pope; and when the occasion +demands it, the style passes in easy transition to serious or tender +tones. _Onegin_ has been compared to Byron's _Don Juan_. There is this +likeness, that both poems deal with contemporary life, and in both +poems the poets pass from grave to gay, from severe to lively, and +often interrupt the narrative to apostrophize the reader. But there +the likeness ends. On the other hand, there is a vast difference. +_Onegin_ contains no adventures. It is a story of everyday life. +Moreover, it is an organic whole: so well constructed that it fits +into a stage libretto--Tchaikovsky made an opera out of it--without +difficulty. There is another difference--a difference which applies to +Pushkin and Byron in general. There is no unevenness in Pushkin; his +work, as far as craft is concerned, is always on the same high level. +You can admire the whole, or cut off any single passage and it will +still remain admirable; whereas Byron must be taken as a whole or not +at all--the reason being that Pushkin was an impeccable artist in form +and expression, and that Byron was not. + +In the winter of 1832 Pushkin sought a new field, the field of +historical research; and by the beginning of 1833 he had not only +collected all the materials for a history of Pugachev, the Cossack who +headed a rising in the reign of Catherine II; but his literary +activity was so great that he had also written the rough sketch of a +long story in prose dealing with the same subject, _The Captain's +Daughter_, another prose story of considerable length, _Dubrovsky_, +and portions of a drama, _Rusalka_, The Water Nymph, which was never +finished. Besides _Boris Godunov_ and the _Rusalka_, Pushkin wrote a +certain number of dramatic scenes, or short dramas in one or more +scenes. Of these, one, _The Feast in the Time of Plague_, is taken +from the English of John Wilson (_The City of the Plague_), with +original additions. In _Mozart and Salieri_ we see the contrast +between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does +what it can. The story is based on the unfounded anecdote that Mozart +was poisoned by Salieri out of envy. This dramatic and beautifully +written episode has been set to music as it stands by Rimsky-Korsakov. + +_The Covetous Knight_, which bears the superscription, "From the +tragi-comedy of Chenstone"--an unknown English original--tells of the +conflict between a Harpagon and his son: the delineation of the +miser's imaginative passion for his treasures is, both in conception +and execution, in Pushkin's finest manner. This scene has been +recently set to music by Rakhmaninov. _The Guest of Stone_, the story +of Don Juan and the _statua gentilissima del gran Commendatore_, makes +Don Juan life. A scene from _Faust_ between Faust and Mephistopheles +is original and not of great interest; _Angelo_ is the story of +_Measure for Measure_ told as a narrative with two scenes in dialogue. +_Rusalka_, The Water Maid, is taken from the genuine and not the sham +province of national legend, and it is tantalizing that this poetic +fragment remained a fragment. + +Pushkin's prose is in some respects as remarkable as his verse. Here, +too, he proved a pioneer. _Dubrovsky_ is the story of a young officer +whose father is ousted, like Naboth, from his small estate by his +neighbour, a rich and greedy landed proprietor, becomes a highway +robber so as to revenge himself, and introduces himself into the +family of his enemy as a French master, but forgoes his revenge +because he falls in love with his enemy's daughter. In this extremely +vivid story he anticipates Gogol in his lifelike pictures of country +life. _The Captain's Daughter_ is equally vivid; the rebel Pugachev +has nothing stagey or melodramatic about him, nothing of Harrison +Ainsworth. Of his shorter stories, such as _The Blizzard_, _The Pistol +Shot_, _The Lady-Peasant_, the most entertaining, and certainly the +most popular, is _The Queen of Spades_, which was so admirably +translated by Mérimée, and formed the subject of one of Tchaikovsky's +most successful operas. As an artistic work _The Egyptian Nights_, +written in 1828, is the most interesting, and ranks among Pushkin's +masterpieces. It tells of an Italian _improvisatore_ who, at a party +in St. Petersburg, improvises verses on Cleopatra and her lovers. The +story is written to lead up to this poem, which gives a gorgeous +picture of the pagan world, and is another example of Pushkin's +miraculous power of assimilation. Pushkin's prose has the same +limpidity and ease as his verse; the characters have the same vitality +and reality as those in his poems and dramatic scenes, and had he +lived longer he might have become a great novelist. As it is, he +furnished Gogol (whose acquaintance he made in 1832) with the subject +of two of his masterpieces--_Dead Souls_ and _The Revisor_. + +The province of Russian folk-lore and legend from which Pushkin took +the idea of _Rusalka_ was to furnish him with a great deal of rich +material. It was in 1831 that in friendly rivalry with Zhukovsky he +wrote his first long fairy-tale, imitating the Russian popular style, +_The Tale of Tsar Saltan_. Up till now he had written only a few +ballads in the popular style. This fairy-tale was a brilliant success +as a _pastiche_; but it was a _pastiche_ and not quite the real thing, +as cleverness kept breaking in, and a touch of epigram here and there, +which indeed makes it delightful reading. He followed it by another in +the comic vein, _The Tale of the Pope and his Man Balda_, and by two +more _Märchen_, _The Dead Tsaritsa_ and _The Golden Cock_; but it was +not until two years later that he wrote his masterpiece in this vein, +_The Story of the Fisherman and the Fish_. It is the same story as +Grimm's tale of the Fisherman's wife who wished to be King, Emperor, +and then Pope, and finally lost all by her vaulting ambition. The tale +is written in unrhymed rhythmical, indeed scarcely rhythmical, lines; +all trace of art is concealed; it is a tale such as might have been +handed down by oral tradition in some obscure village out of the +remotest past; it has the real _Volkston_; the good-nature and +simplicity and unobtrusive humour of a real fairy-tale. The subjects +of all these stories were told to Pushkin by his nurse, Anna +Rodionovna, who also furnished him with the subject of his ballad, +_The Bridegroom_. In Pushkin's note-books there are seven fairy-tales +taken down hurriedly from the words of his nurse; and most likely all +that he wrote dealing with the life of the people came from the same +source. Pushkin called Anna Rodionovna his last teacher, and said that +he was indebted to her for counteracting the effects of his first +French education. + +In 1833 he finished a poem called _The Brazen Horseman_, the story of +a man who loses his beloved in the great floods in St. Petersburg in +1834, and going mad, imagines that he is pursued by Falconet's +equestrian statue of Peter the Great. The poem contains a magnificent +description of St. Petersburg. During the last years of his life, he +was engaged in collecting materials for a history of Peter the Great. +His power of production had never run dry from the moment he left +school, although his actual work was interrupted from time to time by +distractions and the society of his friends. + +All the important larger works of Pushkin have now been mentioned; but +during the whole course of his career he was always pouring out a +stream of lyrics and occasional pieces, many of which are among the +most beautiful things he wrote. His variety and the width of his range +are astonishing. Some of them have a grace and perfection such as we +find in the Greek anthology; others--"Recollections," for instance, in +which in the sleepless hours of the night the poet sees pass before +him the blotted scroll of his past deeds, which he is powerless with +all the tears in the world to wash out--have the intensity of +Shakespeare's sonnets. This poem, for instance, has the same depth of +feeling as "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry," or "The +expense of spirit in a waste of shame." Or he will write an elegy as +tender as Tennyson; or he will draw a picture of a sledge in a +snow-storm, and give you the plunge of the bewildered horses, the +whirling demons of the storm, the bells ringing on the quiet spaces of +snow, in intoxicating rhythms which E. A. Poe would have envied; or +again he will write a description of the Caucasus in eleven short +lines, close in expression and vast in suggestion, such as "The +Monastery on Kazbek"; or he will bring before you the smell of the +autumn morning, and the hoofs ringing out on the half-frozen earth; or +he will write a patriotic poem, such as _To the Slanderers of +Russia_, fraught with patriotic indignation without being offensive; +in this poem Pushkin paints an inspired picture of Russia: "Will not," +he says, "from Perm to the Caucasus, from Finland's chill rocks to the +flaming Colchis, from the shaken Kremlin to the unshaken walls of +China, glistening with its bristling steel, the Russian earth arise?" +Or he will write a prayer, as lordly in utterance and as humble in +spirit as one of the old Latin hymns; or a love-poem as tender as +Musset and as playful as Heine: he will translate you the spirit of +Horace and the spirit of Mickiewicz the Pole; he will secure the +restraint of André Chénier, and the impetuous gallop of Byron. + +Perhaps the most characteristic of Pushkin's poems is the poem which +expresses his view of life in the elegy-- + + "As bitter as stale aftermath of wine + Is the remembrance of delirious days; + But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs + The past more sorely, as my days decline. + My path is dark. The future lies in wait, + A gathering ocean of anxiety, + But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create, + That is my prayer; to live and not to die! + I know that ecstasy shall still lie there + In sorrow and adversity and care. + Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine, + Be moved to tears by musings that are mine; + And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh + Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky." + +But the greatest of his short poems is probably "The Prophet." This is +a tremendous poem, and reaches a height to which Pushkin only attained +once. It is Miltonic in conception and Dantesque in expression; the +syllables ring out in pure concent, like blasts from a silver clarion. +It is, as it were, the Pillars of Hercules of the Russian language. +Nothing finer as sound could ever be compounded with Russian vowels +and consonants; nothing could be more perfectly planned, or present, +in so small a vehicle, so large a vision to the imagination. Even a +rough prose translation will give some idea of the imaginative +splendour of the poem-- + +"My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, and I was astray in the dark +wilderness. And the Seraphim with six wings appeared to me at the +crossing of the ways: And he touched my eyelids, and his fingers were +as soft as sleep: and like the eyes of an eagle that is frightened my +prophetic eyes were awakened. He touched my ears and he filled them +with noise and with sound: and I heard the Heavens shuddering and the +flight of the angels in the height, and the moving of the beasts that +are under the waters, and the noise of the growth of the branches in +the valley. He bent down over me and he looked upon my lips; and he +tore out my sinful tongue, and he took away that which is idle and +that which is evil with his right hand, and his right hand was dabbled +with blood; and he set there in its stead, between my perishing lips, +the tongue of a wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder with a +sword, and he plucked out my trembling heart, and in my cloven breast +he set a burning coal of fire. Like a corpse in the desert I lay, and +the voice of God called and said unto me, 'Prophet, arise, and take +heed, and hear; be filled with My will, and go forth over the sea and +over the land and set light with My word to the hearts of the +people.'" + +In 1837 came the catastrophe which brought about Pushkin's death. It +was caused by the clash of evil tongues engaged in frivolous gossip, +and Pushkin's own susceptible and violent temperament. A guardsman, +Heckeren-Dantes, had been flirting with his wife. Pushkin received an +anonymous letter, and being wrongly convinced that Heckeren-Dantes was +the author of it, wrote him a violent letter which made a duel +inevitable. A duel was fought on the 27th of February, 1837, and +Pushkin was mortally wounded. Such was his frenzy of rage that, after +lying wounded and unconscious in the snow, on regaining consciousness, +he insisted on going on with the duel, and fired another shot, giving +a great cry of joy when he saw that he had wounded his adversary. It +was only a slight wound in the hand. It was not until he reached home +that his anger passed away. He died on the 29th of February, after +forty-five hours of excruciating suffering, heroically borne; he +forgave his enemies; he wished no one to avenge him; he received the +last sacraments; and he expressed feelings of loyalty and gratitude +to his sovereign. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old. + +Pushkin's career falls naturally into two divisions: his life until he +was thirty, and his life after he was thirty. Pushkin began his career +with liberal aspirations, and he disappointed some in the loyalty to +the throne, the Church, the autocracy, and the established order of +things which he manifested later; in turning to religion; in remaining +in the Government service; in writing patriotic poems; in holding the +position of Gentleman of the Bed Chamber at Court; in being, in fact, +what is called a reactionary. But it would be a mistake to imagine +that Pushkin was a Lost Leader who abandoned the cause of liberty for +a handful of silver and a riband to stick in his coat. The liberal +aspirations of Pushkin's youth were the very air that the whole of the +aristocratic youth of that day breathed. Pushkin could not escape +being influenced by it; but he was no more a rebel then, than he was a +reactionary afterwards, when again the very air which the whole of +educated society breathed was conservative and nationalistic. It may +be a pity that it was so; but so it was. There was no liberal +atmosphere in the reign of Nicholas I, and the radical effervescence +of the Decembrists was destroyed by the Decembrists' premature action. +It is no good making a revolution if you have nothing to make it with. +The Decembrists were in the same position as the educated élite of one +regiment at Versailles would have been, had it attempted to destroy +the French monarchy in the days of Louis XIV. The Decembrists by their +premature action put the clock of Russian political progress back for +years. The result was that men of impulse, aspiration, talent and +originality had in the reign of Nicholas to seek an outlet for their +feelings elsewhere than in politics, because politics then were simply +non-existent. + +But apart from this, even if the opportunities had been there, it may +be doubted whether Pushkin would have taken them. He was not born with +a passion to reform the world. He was neither a rebel nor a reformer; +neither a liberal nor a conservative; he was a democrat in his love +for the whole of the Russian people; he was a patriot in his love of +his country. He resembled Goethe rather than Socrates, or Shelley, or +Byron; although, in his love of his country and in every other +respect, his fiery temperament both in itself and in its expression +was far removed from Goethe's Olympian calm. He was like Goethe in his +attitude towards society, and the attitude of the social and official +world towards him resembles the attitude of Weimar towards Goethe. + +During the first part of his career he gave himself up to pleasure, +passion, and self-indulgence; after he was thirty he turned his mind +to more serious things. It would not be exact to say he _became_ +deeply religious, because he was religious by nature, and he soon +discarded a fleeting phase of scepticism; but in spite of this he was +a victim of _amour-propre_; and he wavered between contempt of the +society around him and a petty resentment against it which took the +shape of scathing and sometimes cruel epigrams. It was this dangerous +_amour-propre_, the fact of his being not only passion's slave, but +petty passion's slave, which made him a victim of frivolous gossip and +led to the final catastrophe. + +"In Pushkin," says Soloviev, the philosopher, "according to his own +testimony there were two different and separate beings: the inspired +priest of Apollo, and the most frivolous of all the frivolous children +of the world." It was the first Pushkin--the inspired priest--who +predominated in the latter part of his life; but who was unable to +expel altogether the second Pushkin, the frivolous _Weltkind_, who was +prone to be exasperated by the society in which he lived, and when +exasperated was dangerous. There is one fact, however, which accounts +for much. The more serious Pushkin's turn of thought grew, the more +objective, purer, and stronger his work became, the less it was +appreciated; for the public which delighted in the comparatively +inferior work of his youth was not yet ready for his more mature work. +What pleased the public were the dazzling colours, the sensuous and +sometimes libidinous images of his early poems; the romantic +atmosphere; especially anything that was artificial in them. They had +not yet eyes to appreciate the noble lines, nor ears to appreciate the +simpler and more majestic harmonies of his later work. Thus it was +that they passed _Boris Godunov_ by, and were disappointed in the +later cantos of _Onegin_. This was, of course, discouraging. +Nevertheless, it is laughable to rank Pushkin amongst the +misunderstood, among the Shelleys, the Millets, of Literature and Art; +or to talk of his sad fate. To talk of him as one of the victims of +literature is merely to depreciate him. + +He was exiled. Yes: but to the Caucasus, which gave him inspiration: +to his own country home, which gave him leisure. He was censored. Yes: +but the Emperor undertook to do the work himself. Had he lived in +England, society--as was proved in the case of Byron--would have been +a far severer censor of his morals and the extravagance of his youth, +than the Russian Government. Besides which, he won instantaneous fame, +and in the society in which he moved he was surrounded by a band not +only of devoted but distinguished admirers, amongst whom were some of +the highest names in Russian literature--Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Gogol. + +Pushkin is Russia's national poet, the Peter the Great of poetry, who +out of foreign material created something new, national and Russian, +and left imperishable models for future generations. The chief +characteristic of his genius is its universality. There appeared to be +nothing he could not understand nor assimilate. And it is just this +all-embracing humanity--Dostoyevsky calls him πανάνθρωπος--this +capacity for understanding everything and everybody, which makes him so +profoundly Russian. He is a poet of everyday life: a realistic poet, +and above all things a lyrical poet. He is not a dramatist, and as an +epic writer, though he can mould a bas-relief and produce a noble +fragment, he cannot set crowds in motion. He revealed to the Russians +the beauty of their landscape and the poetry of their people; and they, +with ears full of pompous diction, and eyes full of rococo and romantic +stage properties, did not understand what he was doing: but they +understood later. For a time he fought against the stream, and all in +vain; and then he gave himself up to the great current, which took him +all too soon to the open sea. + +He set free the Russian language from the bondage of the conventional; +and all his life he was still learning to become more and more +intimate with the savour and smell of the people's language. Like +Peter the Great, he spent his whole life in apprenticeship, and his +whole energies in craftsmanship. He was a great artist; his style is +perspicuous, plastic, and pure; there is never a blurred outline, +never a smear, never a halting phrase or a hesitating note. His +concrete images are, as it were, transparent, like Donne's description +of the woman whose + + "... pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her face, and so distinctly wrought, + That you might almost think her body thought." + +His diction is the inseparable skin of the thought. You seem to hear +him thinking. He was gifted with divine ease and unpremeditated +spontaneity. His soul was sincere, noble, and open; he was frivolous, +a child of the world and of his century; but if he was worldly, he was +human; he was a citizen as well as a child of the world; and it is +that which makes him the greatest of Russian poets. + +His career was unromantic; he was rooted to the earth; an aristocrat +by birth, an official by profession, a lover of society by taste. At +the same time, he sought and served beauty, strenuously and +faithfully; he was perhaps too faithful a servant of Apollo; too +exclusive a lover of the beautiful. In his work you find none of the +piteous cries, no beauty of soaring and bleeding wings as in Shelley, +nor the sound of rebellious sobs as in Musset; no tempest of defiant +challenge, no lightnings of divine derision, as in Byron; his is +neither the martyrdom of a fighting Heine, that "brave soldier in the +war of the liberation of humanity," nor the agonized passion of a +suffering Catullus. He never descended into Hell. Every great man is +either an artist or a fighter; and often poets of genius, Byron and +Heine for instance, are more pre-eminently fighters than they are +artists. Pushkin was an artist, and not a fighter. And this is what +makes even his love-poems cold in comparison with those of other +poets. Although he was the first to make notable what was called the +romantic movement; and although at the beginning of his career he +handled romantic subjects in a more or less romantic way, he was +fundamentally a classicist--a classicist as much in the common-sense +and realism and solidity of his conceptions and ideas, as in the +perspicuity and finish of his impeccable form. And he soon cast aside +even the vehicles and clothes of romanticism, and exclusively followed +reality. "He strove with none, for none was worth his strife." And +when his artistic ideals were misunderstood and depreciated, he +retired into himself and wrote to please himself only; but in the +inner court of the Temple of Beauty into which he retired he created +imperishable things; for he loved nature, he loved art, he loved his +country, and he expressed that love in matchless song. + +For years, Russian criticism was either neglectful of his work or +unjust towards it; for his serene music and harmonious design left the +generations which came after him, who were tossed on a tempest of +social problems and political aspirations, cold; but in 1881, when +Dostoyevsky unveiled Pushkin's memorial at Moscow, the homage which he +paid to the dead poet voiced the unanimous feeling of the whole of +Russia. His work is beyond the reach of critics, whether favourable or +unfavourable, for it lives in the hearts of his countrymen, and +chiefly upon the lips of the young. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] Not 1763, as generally stated in his biographies. + +[3] The poem was originally called _Mazepa_: Pushkin changed the title +so as not to clash with Byron. It is interesting to see what Pushkin +says of Byron's poem. In his notes there is the following passage-- + +"Byron knew Mazepa through Voltaire's history of Charles XII. He was +struck solely by the picture of a man bound to a wild horse and borne +over the steppes. A poetical picture of course; but see what he did +with it. What a living creation! What a broad brush! But do not expect +to find either Mazepa or Charles, nor the usual gloomy Byronic hero. +Byron was not thinking of him. He presented a series of pictures, one +more striking than the other. Had his pen come across the story of the +seduced daughter and the father's execution, it is improbable that +anyone else would have dared to touch the subject." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +LERMONTOV + + +The romantic movement in Russia was, as far as Pushkin was concerned, +not really a romantic movement at all. Still less was it so in the +case of the Pléiade which followed him. And yet, for want of a better +word, one is obliged to call it the _romantic_ movement, as it was a +new movement, a renascence that arose out of the ashes of the +pseudo-classical eighteenth century convention. Pushkin was followed +by a Pléiade. + +The claim of his friend and fellow-student, BARON DELVIG, to fame, +rests rather on his friendship with Pushkin (to whom he played the +part of an admirable critic) than on his own verse. He died in 1831. +YAZYKOV, PRINCE BARIATINSKY, VENEVITINOV, and POLEZHAEV, can all be +included in the Pléiade; all these are lyrical poets of the second +order, and none of them--except Polezhaev, whose real promise of +talent was shattered by circumstances (he died of drink and +consumption after a career of tragic vicissitudes)--has more than an +historical interest. + +Pushkin's successor to the throne of Russian letters was Lermontov: no +unworthy heir. The name Lermontov is said to be the same as the Scotch +Learmonth. The story of his short life is a simple one. He was born at +Moscow in 1814. He visited the Caucasus when he was twelve. He was +taught English by a tutor. He went to school at Moscow, and afterwards +to the University. He left in 1832 owing to the disputes he had with +the professors. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Guards' Cadet +School at St. Petersburg; and two years later he became an officer in +the regiment of the Hussars. In 1837 he was transferred to Georgia, +owing to the scandal caused by the outspoken violence of his verse; +but he was transferred to Novgorod in 1838, and was allowed to return +to St. Petersburg in the same year. In 1840 he was again transferred +to the Caucasus for fighting a duel with the son of the French +Ambassador; towards the end of the year, he was once more allowed to +return to St. Petersburg. In 1841 he went back for a third time to +the Caucasus, where he forced a duel on one of his friends over a +perfectly trivial incident, and was killed, on the 15th of July of the +same year. + +In all the annals of poetry, there is no more curious figure than +Lermontov. He was like a plant that above all others needed a +sympathetic soil, a favourable atmosphere, and careful attention. As +it was, he came in the full tide of the régime of Nicholas I, a régime +of patriarchal supervision, government interference, rigorous +censorship, and iron discipline,--a grey epoch absolutely devoid of +all ideal aspirations. Considerable light is thrown on the +contradictory and original character of the poet by his novel, _A Hero +of Our Days_, the first psychological novel that appeared in Russia. +The hero, Pechorin, is undoubtedly a portrait of the poet, although he +himself said, and perhaps thought, that he was merely creating a type. + +The hero of the story, who is an officer in the Caucasus, analyses his +own character, and lays bare his weaknesses, follies, and faults, with +the utmost frankness. "I am incapable of friendship," he says. "Of two +friends, one is always the slave of the other, although often neither +of them will admit it; I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a +tiring business." Or he writes: "I have an innate passion for +contradiction.... The presence of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and +intercourse with a phlegmatic temperament would turn me into a +passionate dreamer." Speaking of enemies, he says: "I love enemies, +but not after the Christian fashion." And on another occasion: "Why do +they all hate me? Why? Have I offended any one? No. Do I belong to +that category of people whose mere presence creates antipathy?" Again: +"I despise myself sometimes, is not that the reason that I despise +others? I have become incapable of noble impulses. I am afraid of +appearing ridiculous to myself." + +On the eve of fighting a duel Pechorin writes as follows-- + +"If I die it will not be a great loss to the world, and as for me, I +am sufficiently tired of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, who +does not go home to bed because the carriage is not there, but as soon +as the carriage is there, Good-bye!" + +"I review my past and I ask myself, Why have I lived? Why was I born? +and I think there was a reason, and I think I was called to high +things, for I feel in my soul the presence of vast powers; but I did +not divine my high calling; I gave myself up to the allurement of +shallow and ignoble passions; I emerged from their furnace as hard and +as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble +aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have I +played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of +the executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often +without malice, always without pity. My love has never brought +happiness, because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed +myself for those whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own +pleasure.... And if I die I shall not leave behind me one soul who +understood me. Some think I am better, others that I am worse than I +am. Some will say he was a good fellow; others he was a blackguard." + +It will be seen from these passages, all of which apply to Lermontov +himself, even if they were not so intended, that he must have been a +trying companion, friend, or acquaintance. He had, indeed, except for +a few intimate friends, an impossible temperament; he was proud, +overbearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a savage +_amour-propre_; and he took a childish delight in annoying; he +cultivated "le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire"; he was envious of +what was least enviable in his contemporaries. He could not bear not +to make himself felt, and if he felt that he was unsuccessful in +accomplishing this by pleasant means, he resorted to unpleasant means. +And yet, at the same time, he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and +kindness, and capable of giving himself up to love--if he chose. + +During his period of training at the Cadet School, he led a wild life; +and when he became an officer, he hankered after social and not after +literary success. He did not achieve it immediately; at first he was +not noticed, and when he was noticed he was not liked. His looks were +unprepossessing, and one of his legs was shorter than the other. His +physical strength was enormous--he could bend a ramrod with his +fingers. Noticed he was determined to be; and, as he himself says in +one of his letters, observing that every one in society had some sort +of pedestal--wealth, lineage, position, or patronage--he saw that if +he, not pre-eminently possessing any of these,--though he was, as a +matter of fact, of a good Moscow family,--could succeed in engaging +the attention of one person, others would soon follow suit. This he +set about to do by compromising a girl and then abandoning her: and he +acquired the reputation of a Don Juan. Later, when he came back from +the Caucasus, he was treated as a lion. All this does not throw a +pleasant light on his character, more especially as he criticized in +scathing tones the society in which he was anxious to play a part, and +in which he subsequently enjoyed playing a part. But perhaps both +attitudes of mind were sincere. He probably sincerely enjoyed society, +and hankered after success in it; and equally sincerely despised +society and himself for hankering after it. + +As he grew older, his pride and the exasperating provocativeness of +his conduct increased to such an extent that he seemed positively +seeking for serious trouble, and for some one whose patience he could +overtax, and on whom he could fasten a quarrel. And this was not slow +to happen. + +At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated disgust with +himself and with the world in general, and a complete indifference to +life, resulting from large aspirations which could not find an outlet, +and so recoiled upon himself. The epoch, the atmosphere and the +society were the worst possible for his peculiar nature; and the only +fruitful result of the friction between himself and the society and +the established order of his time, was that he was sent to the +Caucasus, which proved to be a source of inspiration for him, as it +had been for Pushkin. One is inclined to say, "If only he had lived +later or longer"; yet it may be doubted whether, had he been born in a +more favourable epoch, either earlier in the milder régime of +Alexander I, or later, in the enthusiastic epoch of the reforms, he +would have been a happier man and produced finer work. + +The curious thing is that his work does not reveal an overwhelming +pessimism like Leopardi's, an accent of revolt like Musset's, or of +combat like Byron's; but rather it testifies to a fundamental +indifference to life, a concentrated pride. If it be true that you can +roughly divide the Russian temperament into two types--the type of +the pure fool, such as Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_, and a type of +unconquerable pride, such as Lucifer--then Lermontov is certainly a +fine example of the second type. You feel that he will never submit or +yield; but then he died young; and the Russian poets often changed, +and not infrequently adopted a compromise which was the same thing as +submission. + +Lermontov was, like Pushkin, essentially a lyric poet, still more +subjective, and profoundly self-centred. His attempts at the drama +(imitations of Schiller and an attempt at the manner of Griboyedov) +were failures. But, unlike Pushkin, he was a true romantic; and his +work proves to us how essentially different a thing Russian +romanticism is from French, German or English romanticism. He began +with astonishing precocity to write verse when he was twelve. His +earliest efforts were in French. He then began to imitate Pushkin. +While at the Cadet School he wrote a series of cleverly written, more +or less indecent, and more or less Byronic--the Byron of +_Beppo_--tales in verse, describing his love adventures, and episodes +of garrison life. What brought him fame was his "Ode on the Death of +Pushkin," which, although unjustified by the actual facts--he +represents Pushkin as the victim of a bloodthirsty society--strikes +strong and bitter chords. Here, without any doubt, are "thoughts that +breathe and words that burn"-- + + "And you, the proud and shameless progeny + Of fathers famous for their infamy, + You, who with servile heel have trampled down + The fragments of great names laid low by chance, + You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne, + Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory, + You hide behind the shelter of the law, + Before you, right and justice must be dumb! + But, parasites of vice, there's God's assize; + There is an awful court of law that waits. + You cannot reach it with the sound of gold; + It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds; + And vainly you shall call the lying witness; + That shall not help you any more; + And not with all the filth of all your gore + Shall you wash out the poet's righteous blood." + +He struck this strong chord more than once, especially in his +indictment of his own generation, called "A Thought"; and in a poem +written on the transfer of Napoleon's ashes to Paris, in which he +pours scorn on the French for deserting Napoleon when he lived and +then acclaiming his ashes. + +But it is not in poems such as these that Lermontov's most +characteristic qualities are to be found. Lermontov owed nothing to +his contemporaries, little to his predecessors, and still less to +foreign models. It is true that, as a school-boy, he wrote verses full +of Byronic disillusion and satiety, but these were merely echoes of +his reading. The gloom of spirit which he expressed later on was a +permanent and innate feature of his own temperament. Later, the +reading of Shelley spurred on his imagination to emulation, but not to +imitation. He sought his own path from the beginning, and he remained +in it with obdurate persistence. He remained obstinately himself, +indifferent as a rule to outside events, currents of thought and +feeling. And he clung to the themes which he chose in his youth. His +mind to him a kingdom was, and he peopled it with images and fancies +of his own devising. The path which he chose was a narrow one. It was +a romantic path. He chose for the subject of the poem by which he is +perhaps most widely known, _The Demon_, the love of a demon for a +woman. The subject is as romantic as any chosen by Thomas Moore; but +there is nothing now that appears rococo in Lermontov's work. The +colours are as fresh to-day as when they were first laid on. The +heroine is a Circassian woman, and the action of the poem is in the +Caucasus. + +The Demon portrayed is not the spirit that denies of Goethe, nor +Byron's Lucifer, looking the Almighty in His face and telling him that +His evil is not good; nor does he cherish-- + + "the study of revenge, immortal hate," + +of Milton's Satan; but he is the lost angel of a ruined paradise, who +is too proud to accept oblivion even were it offered to him. He dreams +of finding in Tamara the joys of the paradise he has foregone. "I am +he," he says to her, "whom no one loves, whom every human being +curses." He declares that he has foresworn his proud thoughts, that he +desires to be reconciled with Heaven, to love, to pray, to believe in +good. And he pours out to her one of the most passionate love +declarations ever written, in couplet after couplet of words that glow +like jewels and tremble like the strings of a harp, Tamara yields to +him, and forfeits her life; but her soul is borne to Heaven by the +Angel of Light; she has redeemed her sin by death, and the Demon is +left as before alone in a loveless, lampless universe. The poem is +interspersed with descriptions of the Caucasus, which are as glowing +and splendid as the impassioned utterance of the Demon. They put +Pushkin's descriptions in the shade. Lermontov's landscape-painting +compared with Pushkin's is like a picture of Turner compared with a +Constable or a Bonnington. + +Lermontov followed up his first draft of _The Demon_ (originally +planned in 1829, but not finished in its final form until 1841) with +other romantic tales, the scene of which for the most part is laid in +the Caucasus: such as _Izmail Bey_, _Hadji-Abrek_, _Orsha the +Boyar_--the last not a Caucasian tale. These were nearly all of them +sketches in which he tried the colours of his palette. But with +_Mtsyri_, _the Novice_, in which he used some of the materials of the +former tales, he produced a finished picture. + +_Mtsyri_ is the story of a Circassian orphan who is educated in a +convent. The child grows up home-sick at heart, and one day his +longing for freedom becomes ungovernable, and he escapes and roams +about in the mountains. He loses his way in the forest and is brought +back to the monastery after three days, dying from starvation, +exertion, and exhaustion. Before he dies he pours out his confession, +which takes up the greater part of the poem. He confesses how in the +monastery he felt his own country and his own people forever calling, +and how he felt he must seek his own people. He describes his +wanderings: how he scrambles down the mountain-side and hears the song +of a Georgian woman, and sees her as she walks down a narrow path with +a pitcher on her head and draws water from the stream. At nightfall he +sees the light of a dwelling-place twinkling like a falling star; but +he dares not seek it. He loses his way in the forest, he encounters +and kills a panther. In the morning, he finds a way out of the woods +when the daylight comes; he lies in the grass exhausted under the +blinding noon, of which Lermontov gives a gorgeous and detailed +description-- + + "And on God's world there lay the deep + And heavy spell of utter sleep, + Although the landrail called, and I + Could hear the trill of the dragonfly + Or else the lisping of the stream ... + Only a snake, with a yellow gleam + Like golden lettering inlaid + From hilt to tip upon a blade, + Was rustling, for the grass was dry, + And in the loose sand cautiously + It slid, and then began to spring + And roll itself into a ring, + Then, as though struck by sudden fear, + Made haste to dart and disappear." + +Perishing of hunger and thirst, fever and delirium overtake him, and +he fancies that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream, where +speckled fishes are playing in the crystal waters. One of them nestles +close to him and sings to him with a silver voice a lullaby, +unearthly, like the song of Ariel, and alluring like the call of the +Erl King's daughter. In this poem Lermontov reaches the high-water +mark of his descriptive powers. Its pages glow with the splendour of +the Caucasus. + +To his two masterpieces, _The Demon_ and _Mtsyri_, he was to add a +third: _The Song of the Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, the Oprichnik +(bodyguardsman), and the Merchant Kalashnikov_. The Oprichnik insults +the Merchant's wife, and the Merchant challenges him to fight with his +fists, kills him, and is executed for it. This poem is written as a +folk-story, in the style of the _Byliny_, and it in no way resembles a +_pastiche_. It equals, if it does not surpass, Pushkin's _Boris +Godunov_ as a realistic vision of the past; and as an epic tale, for +simplicity, absolute appropriateness of tone, vividness, truth to +nature and terseness, there is nothing in modern Russian literature to +compare with it. Besides these larger poems, Lermontov wrote a +quantity of short lyrics, many of which, such as "The Sail," "The +Angel," "The Prayer," every Russian child knows by heart. + +When we come to consider the qualities of Lermontov's romantic work, +and ask ourselves in what it differs from the romanticism of the +West--from that of Victor Hugo, Heine, Musset, Espronceda--we find +that in Lermontov's work, as in all Russian work, there is mingled +with his lyrical, imaginative, and descriptive powers, a bed-rock of +matter-of-fact common-sense, a root that is deeply embedded in +reality, in the life of everyday. He never escapes into the "intense +inane" of Shelley. Imaginative he is, but he is never lost in the dim +twilight of Coleridge. Romantic he is, but one note of Heine takes us +into a different world: for instance, Heine's quite ordinary +adventures in the Harz Mountains convey a spell and glamour that takes +us over a borderland that Lermontov never crossed. + +Nothing could be more splendid than Lermontov's descriptions; but they +are, compared with those of Western poets, concrete, as sharp as views +in a camera obscura. He never ate the roots of "relish sweet, the +honey wild and manna dew" of the "Belle Dame Sans Merci"; he wrote of +places where Kubla Khan might have wandered, of "ancestral voices +prophesying war," but one has only to quote that line to see that +Lermontov's poetic world, compared with Coleridge's, is solid fact +beside intangible dream. + +Compared even with Musset and Victor Hugo, how much nearer the earth +Lermontov is than either of them! Victor Hugo dealt with just the +same themes; but in Lermontov, the most splendid painter of mountains +imaginable, you never hear + + "Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne," + +and you know that it will never drive the Russian poet to frenzy. On +the other hand, you never get Victor Hugo's extravagance and +absurdities. Or take Musset; Musset dealt with romantic themes _si +quis alius_; but when he deals with a subject like Don Juan, which of +all subjects belonged to the age of Pushkin and Lermontov, he writes +lines like these-- + + "Faible, et, comme le lierre, ayant besoin d'autrui; + Et ne le cachant pas, et suspendant son âme, + Comme un luth éolien, aux lèvres de la nuit." + +Here again we are confronted with a different kind of imagination. Or +take a bit of sheer description-- + + "Pâle comme l'amour, et de pleurs arrosée, + La nuit aux pieds d'argent descend dans la rosée." + +You never find the Russian poet impersonating nature like this, and +creating from objects such as the "yellow bees in the ivy bloom" forms +more real than living man. The objects themselves suffice. Lermontov +sang of disappointed love over and over again, but never did he create +a single image such as-- + + "Elle aurait aimé, si l'orgueil + Pareil à la lampe inutile + Qu'on allume près d'un cercueil, + N'eut veillé sur son coeur stérile." + +In his descriptive work he is more like Byron; but Byron was far less +romantic and far less imaginative than Lermontov, although he invented +Byronism, and shattered the crumbling walls of the eighteenth century +that surrounded the city of romance, and dallied with romantic themes +in his youth. All his best work, the finest passages of _Childe +Harold_, and the whole of _Don Juan_, were slices of his own life and +observation, _choses vues_; he never created a single character that +was not a reflection of himself; and he never entered into the city +whose walls he had stormed, and where he had planted his flag. + +This does not mean that Lermontov is inferior to the Western romantic +poets. It simply means that the Russian poet is--and one might add +the Russian poets are--different. And, indeed, it is this very +difference,--what he did with this peculiar realistic paste in his +composition,--that constitutes his unique excellence. So far from its +being a vice, he made it into his especial virtue. Lermontov +sometimes, in presenting a situation and writing a poem on a fact, +presents that situation and that fact without exaggeration, emphasis, +adornment, imagery, metaphor, or fancy of any kind, in the language of +everyday life, and at the same time he achieves poetry. This was +Wordsworth's ideal, and he fulfilled it. + +A case in point is his long poem on the Oprichnik, which has been +mentioned; and some of the most striking examples of this unadorned +and realistic writing are to be found in his lyrics. In the +"Testament," for example, where a wounded officer gives his last +instructions to his friend who is going home on leave-- + + "I want to be alone with you, + A moment quite alone. + The minutes left to me are few, + They say I'll soon be gone. + And you'll be going home on leave, + Then say ... but why? I do believe + There's not a soul, who'll greatly care + To hear about me over there. + + And yet if some one asks you there, + Let us suppose they do-- + Tell them a bullet hit me here, + The chest,--and it went through. + And say I died and for the Tsar, + And say what fools the doctors are;-- + And that I shook you by the hand, + And thought about my native land. + + My father and my mother, too! + They may be dead by now; + To tell the truth, it wouldn't do + To grieve them anyhow. + If one of them is living, say + I'm bad at writing home, and they + Have sent us to the front, you see,-- + And that they needn't wait for me. + + We had a neighbour, as you know, + And you remember I + And she ... How very long ago + It is we said good-bye! + She won't ask after me, nor care, + But tell her ev'rything, don't spare + Her empty heart; and let her cry;-- + To her it doesn't signify." + +The language is the language of ordinary everyday conversation. Every +word the officer says might have been said by him in ordinary life, +and there is not a note that jars; the speech is the living speech of +conversation without being slang: and the result is a poignant piece +of poetry. Another perhaps still more beautiful and touching example +is the cradle-song which a mother sings to a Cossack baby, in which +again every word has the native savour and homeliness of a Cossack +woman's speech, and every feeling expressed is one that she would have +felt. A third example is "Borodino," an account of the famous battle +told by a veteran, as a veteran would tell it. Lermontov's fishes +never talk like big whales. + +All Russian poets have this gift of reality of conception and +simplicity of treatment in a greater or a lesser degree; perhaps none +has it in such a supreme degree as Lermontov. The difference between +Pushkin's style and Lermontov's is that, when you read Pushkin, you +think: "How perfectly and how simply that is said! How in the world +did he do it?" You admire the "magic hand of chance." In reading +Lermontov at his simplest and best, you do not think about the style +at all, you simply respond to what is said, and the style escapes +notice in its absolute appropriateness. Thus, what Matthew Arnold said +about Byron and Wordsworth is true about Lermontov--there are moments +when Nature takes the pen from his hand and writes for him. + +In Lermontov there is nothing slovenly; but there is a great deal that +is flat and sullen. But if one reviews the great amount of work he +produced in his short life, one is struck, not by its variety, as in +the case of Pushkin,--it is, on the contrary, limited and monotonous +in subject,--but by his authentic lyrical inspiration, by the +strength, the intensity, the concentration of his genius, the richness +of his imagination, the wealth of his palette, his gorgeous colouring +and the high level of his strong square musical verse. And perhaps +more than by anything else, one is struck by the blend in his nature +and his work which has just been discussed, of romantic imagination +and stern reality, of soaring thought and earthly common-sense, as +though we had before us the temperament of a Thackeray with the wings +of a Shelley. Lermontov is certainly, whichever way you take him, one +of the most astonishing figures, and certainly the greatest purely +lyrical _Erscheinung_ in Russian literature. + +With the death of Lermontov in 1841, the springtide of national song +that began in the reign of Alexander I comes to an end; for the only +poet he left behind him did not survive him long. This was his +contemporary KOLTSOV (1809-42), the greatest of Russian folk-poets. +The son of a cattle-dealer, after a fitful and short-lived primary +education at the district school of Voronezh, he adopted his father's +trade, and by a sheer accident a cultivated young man of Moscow came +across him and his verses, and raised funds for their publication. + +Koltsov's verse paints peasant life as it is, without any +sentimentality or rhetoric; it is described from the inside, and not +from the outside. This is the great difference between Koltsov and +other popular poets who came later. Moreover, he caught and +reproduced the true _Volkston_ in his lyrics, so that they are +indistinguishable in accent from real folk-poetry. Koltsov sings of +the woods, and the rustling rye, of harvest time and sowing; the song +of the love-sick girl reaping; the lonely grave; the vague dreams and +desires of the peasant's heart. His pictures have the dignity and +truth of Jean François Millet, and his "lyrical cry" is as authentic +as that of Burns. His more literary poems are like Burns' English +poems compared with his work in the Scots. But he died the year after +Lermontov, of consumption, and with his death the curtain was rung +down on the first act of Russian literature. When it was next rung up, +it was on the age of prose. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AGE OF PROSE + + +When the curtain again rose on Russian literature it was on an era of +prose; and the leading protagonist of that era, both by his works of +fiction and his dramatic work, was NICHOLAS GOGOL [1809-52]. It is +true that in the thirties Russia began to produce home-made novels. In +Pushkin's story _The Queen of Spades_, when somebody asks the old +Countess if she wishes to read a Russian novel, she says "A Russian +novel? Are there any?" This stage had been passed; but the novels and +the plays that were produced at this time until the advent of Gogol +have been--deservedly for the greater part--forgotten. And, just as +Lermontov was the successor of Pushkin in the domain of poetry, so in +the domain of satire Gogol was the successor of Griboyedov; and in +creating a national work he was the heir of Pushkin. + +Gogol was a Little Russian. He was born in 1809 near Poltava, in the +Cossack country, and was brought up by his grandfather, a Cossack; but +he left the Ukraine and settled in 1829 in St. Petersburg, where he +obtained a place in a Government office. After an unsuccessful attempt +to go on the stage, and a brief career as tutor, he was given a +professorship of History; but he failed here also, and finally turned +to literature. The publication of his first efforts gained him the +acquaintance of the literary men of the day, and he became the friend +of Pushkin, who proved a valuable friend, adviser, and critic, and +urged him to write on the life of the people. He lived in St. +Petersburg from 1829 to 1836; and it was perhaps home-sickness which +inspired him to write his Little Russian sketches--_Evenings on a Farm +on the Dikanka_,--which appeared in 1832, followed by _Mirgorod_, a +second series, in 1834. + +Gogol's temperament was romantic. He had a great deal of the dreamer +in him, a touch of the eerie, a delight in the supernatural, an impish +fancy that reminds one sometimes of Hoffmann and sometimes of R. L. +Stevenson, as well as a deep religious vein which was later on to +dominate and oust all his other qualities. But, just as we find in the +Russian poets a curious mixture of romanticism and realism, of +imagination and common-sense, so in Gogol, side by side with his +imaginative gifts, which were great, there is a realism based on +minute observation. In addition to this, and tempering his penetrating +observation, he had a rich streak of humour, a many-sided humour, +ranging from laughter holding both its sides, to a delicate and half +melancholy chuckle, and in his later work to biting irony. + +In the very first story of his first book, "The Fair of Sorochinetz," +we are plunged into an atmosphere that smells of Russia in a way that +no other Russian book has ever yet savoured of the soil. We are +plunged into the South, on a blazing noonday, when the corn is +standing in sheaves and wheat is being sold at the fair; and the fair, +with its noise, its smell and its colour, rises before us as vividly +as Normandy leaps out of the pages of Maupassant, or Scotland from the +pages of Stevenson. And just as Andrew Lang once said that probably +only a Scotsman, and a Lowland Scotsman, could know how true to life +the characters in _Kidnapped_ were, so it is probable that only a +Russian, and indeed a Little Russian, appreciates to the full how true +to life are the people, the talk, and the ambient air in the tales of +Gogol. And then we at once get that hint of the supernatural which +runs like a scarlet thread through all these stories; the rumour that +the _Red Jacket_ has been observed in the fair; and the _Red Jacket_, +so the gossips say, belongs to a little Devil, who being turned out of +Hell as a punishment for some misdemeanour--probably a good +intention--established himself in a neighbouring barn, and from +home-sickness took to drink, and drank away all his substance; so that +he was obliged to pawn his red jacket for a year to a Jew, who sold it +before the year was out, whereupon the buyer, recognizing its unholy +origin, cut it up into bits and threw it away, after which the Devil +appeared in the shape of a pig every year at the fair to find the +pieces. It is on this Red Jacket that the story turns. + +In this first volume, the supernatural plays a predominant part +throughout; the stories tell of water-nymphs, the Devil, who steals +the moon, witches, magicians, and men who traffic with the Evil One +and lose their souls. In the second series, _Mirgorod_, realism comes +to the fore in the stories of "The Old-Fashioned Landowners" and "The +Quarrel of the Two Ivans." These two stories contain between them the +sum and epitome of the whole of one side of Gogol's genius, the +realistic side. In the one story, "The Old-Fashioned Landowners," we +get the gentle good humour which tells the charming tale of a South +Russian Philemon and Baucis, their hospitality and kindliness, and the +loneliness of Philemon when Baucis is taken away, told with the art of +La Fontaine, and with many touches that remind one of Dickens. The +other story, "The Quarrel of the Two Ivans," who are bosom friends and +quarrel over nothing, and are, after years, on the verge of making it +up when the mere mention of the word "goose" which caused the quarrel +sets alight to it once more and irrevocably, is in Gogol's richest +farcical vein, with just a touch of melancholy. + +And in the same volume, two _nouvelles_, _Tarass Bulba_ and _Viy_, sum +up between them the whole of the other side of Gogol's genius. _Tarass +Bulba_, a short historical novel, with its incomparably vivid picture +of Cossack life, is Gogol's masterpiece in the epic vein. It is as +strong and as direct as a Border ballad. _Viy_, which tells of a +witch, is the most creepy and imaginative of his supernatural stories. + +Later, he published two more collections of stories: _Arabesques_ +(1834) and _Tales_ (1836). In these, poetry, witches, water-nymphs, +magicians, devils, and epic adventure are all left behind. The element +of the fantastic still subsists, as in the "Portrait," and of the +grotesque, as in the story of the major who loses his nose, which +becomes a separate personality, and wanders about the town. But his +blend of realism and humour comes out strongly in the story of "The +Carriage," and his blend of realism and pathos still more strongly in +the story of "The Overcoat," the story of a minor public servant who +is always shivering and whose dream it is to have a warm overcoat. +After years of privation he saves enough money to buy one, and on the +first day he wears it, it is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his +ghost haunts the streets. This story is the only begetter of the large +army of pathetic figures of failure that crowd the pages of Russian +literature. + +While Gogol had been writing and publishing these tales, he had also +been steadily writing for the stage; but here the great difficulty and +obstacle was the Censorship, which was almost as severe as it was in +England at the end of the reign of Edward VII. But, by a curious +paradox, the play, which you would have expected the Censorship to +forbid before all other plays, _The Revisor_, or _Inspector-General_, +was performed. This was owing to the direct intervention of the +Emperor. _The Revisor_ is the second comic masterpiece of the Russian +stage. The plot was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. The officials of an +obscure country town hear the startling news that a Government +Inspector is arriving incognito to investigate their affairs. A +traveller from St. Petersburg--a fine natural liar--is taken for the +Inspector, plays up to the part, and gets away just before the arrival +of the real Inspector, which is the end of the play. The play is a +satire on the Russian bureaucracy. Almost every single character in it +is dishonest; and the empty-headed, and irrelevant hero, with his +magnificent talent for easy lying, is a masterly creation. The play +at once became a classic, and retains all its vitality and comic force +to-day. There is no play which draws a larger audience on holidays in +St. Petersburg and Moscow. + +After the production of _The Revisor_, Gogol left Russia for ever and +settled in Rome. He had in his mind a work of great importance on +which he had already been working for some time. This was his _Dead +Souls_, his most ambitious work, and his masterpiece. It was Pushkin +who gave him the idea of the book. The hero of the book, Chichikov, +conceives a brilliant idea. Every landlord possessed so many serfs, +called "souls." A revision took place every ten years, and the +landlord had to pay for poll-tax on the "souls" who had died during +that period. Nobody looked at the lists between the periods of +revision. Chichikov's idea was to take over the dead souls from the +landlord, who would, of course, be delighted to be rid of the +fictitious property and the real tax, to register his purchases, and +then to mortgage at a bank at St. Petersburg or Moscow, the "souls," +which he represented as being in some place in the Crimea, and thus +make money enough to buy "souls" of his own. The book tells of the +adventures of Chichikov as he travels over Russia in search of dead +"souls," and is, like Mr. Pickwick's adventures, an Odyssey, +introducing us to every kind and manner of man and woman. The book was +to be divided in three parts. The first part appeared in 1842. Gogol +went on working at the second and third parts until 1852, when he +died. He twice threw the second part of the work into the fire when it +was finished; so that all we possess is the first part, and the second +part printed from an incomplete manuscript. The second part was +certainly finished when he destroyed it, and it is probable that the +third part was sketched. He had intended in the second part to work +out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, and to give to the world his +complete message. Persecuted by a dream he was unable to realize and +an ambition which he was not able to fulfil, Gogol was driven inwards, +and his natural religious feeling grew more intense and made him into +an ascetic and a recluse. This break in the middle of his career is +characteristic of Russia. Tolstoy, of course, furnishes the most +typical example of the same thing. But it is a common Russian +characteristic for men midway in a successful career to turn aside +from it altogether, and seek consolation in the things which are not +of this world. + +Gogol's _Dead Souls_ made a deep impression upon educated Russia. It +pleased the enthusiasts for Western Europe by its reality, its +artistic conception and execution, and by its social ideas; and it +pleased the Slavophile Conservatives by its truth to life, and by its +smell of Russia. When the first chapter was read aloud to Pushkin, he +said, when Gogol had finished: "God, what a sad country Russia is!" +And it is certainly true, that amusing as the book is, inexpressibly +comic as so many of the scenes are, Gogol does not flatter his country +or his countrymen; and when Russians read it at the time it appeared, +many must have been tempted to murmur "_doux pays!_"--as they would, +indeed, now, were a writer with the genius of a Gogol to appear and +describe the adventures of a modern Chichikov; for, though +circumstances may be entirely different, although there are no more +"souls" to be bought or sold, Chichikov is still alive--and as Gogol +said, there was probably not one of his readers who after an honest +self-examination, would not wonder if he had not something of +Chichikov in him, and who if he were to meet an acquaintance at that +moment, would not nudge his companion and say: "There goes Chichikov." +"And who and what is Chichikov?" The answer is: "A scoundrel." But +such an entertaining scoundrel, so abject, so shameless, so utterly +devoid of self-respect, such a magnificent liar, so plausible an +impostor, so ingenious a cheat, that he rises from scoundrelism almost +to greatness. + +There is, indeed, something of the greatness of Falstaff in this +trafficker of dead "souls." His baseness is almost sublime. He in any +case merits a place in the gallery of humanity's typical and human +rascals, where Falstaff, Tartuffe, Pecksniff, and Count Fosco reign. +He has the great saving merit of being human; nor can he be accused of +hypocrisy. His coachman, Selifan, who got drunk with every "decent +man," is worthy of the creator of Sam Weller. But what distinguishes +Gogol in his _Dead Souls_ from the great satirists of other nations, +and his satire from the _saeva indignatio_ of Swift, for instance, is +that, after laying bare to the bones the rascality of his hero, he +turns round on his audience and tells them that there is no cause for +indignation; Chichikov is only a victim of a ruling passion--gain; +perhaps, indeed, in the chill existence of a Chichikov, there may be +something which will one day cause us to humble ourselves on our knees +and in the dust before the Divine Wisdom. His irony is lined with +indulgence; his sleepless observation is tempered by fundamental +charity. He sees what is mean and common clearer than any one, but he +does not infer from it that life, or mankind, or the world is common +or mean. He infers the opposite. He puts Chichikov no lower morally +than he would put Napoleon, Harpagon, or Don Juan--all of them victims +of a ruling passion, and all of them great by reason of it--for +Chichikov is also great in rascality, just as Harpagon was great in +avarice, and Don Juan great in profligacy. And this large charity +blent with biting irony is again peculiarly Russian. + +_Dead Souls_ is a deeper book than any of Gogol's early work. It is +deep in the same way as _Don Quixote_ is deep; and like _Don Quixote_ +it makes boys laugh, young men think, and old men weep. Apart from +its philosophy and ideas, _Dead Souls_ had a great influence on +Russian literature as a work of art. Just as Pushkin set Russian +poetry free from the high-flown and the conventional, so did Gogol set +Russian fiction free from the dominion of the grand style. He carried +Pushkin's work--the work which Pushkin had accomplished in verse and +adumbrated in prose--much further; and by depicting ordinary life, and +by writing a novel without any love interest, with a Chichikov for a +hero, he created Russian realism. He described what he saw without +flattery and without exaggeration, but with the masterly touch, the +instinctive economy, the sense of selection of a great artist. + +This, at the time it was done, was a revolution. Nobody then would +have dreamed it possible to write a play or a novel without a +love-motive; and just as Pushkin revealed to Russia that there was +such a thing as Russian landscape, Gogol again, going one better, +revealed the fascination, the secret and incomprehensible power that +lay in the flat monotony of the Russian country, and the inexhaustible +source of humour, absurdity, irony, quaintness, farce, comedy in the +everyday life of the ordinary people. So that, however much his +contemporaries might differ as to the merits or demerits, the harm or +the beneficence, of his work, he left his nation with permanent and +classic models of prose and fiction and stories, just as Pushkin had +bequeathed to them permanent models of verse. + +Gogol wrote no more fiction after _Dead Souls_. In 1847 _Passages from +a Correspondence with a Friend_ was published, which created a +sensation, because in the book Gogol preached submission to the +Government, both spiritual and temporal. The Western enthusiasts and +the Liberals in general were highly disgusted. One can understand +their disgust; it is less easy to understand their surprise; for Gogol +had never pretended to be a Liberal. He showed up the evils of +Bureaucracy and the follies and weaknesses of Bureaucrats, because +they were there, just as he showed up the stinginess of misers and the +obstinacy of old women. But it is quite as easy for a Conservative to +do this as it is for a Liberal, and quite as easy for an orthodox +believer as for an atheist. But Gogol's contemporaries had not +realized the tempest that had been raging for a long time in Gogol's +soul, and which he kept to himself. He had always been religious, and +now he became exclusively religious; he made a pilgrimage to the Holy +Land; he spent his substance in charity, especially to poor students; +and he lived in asceticism until he died, at the age of forty-three. +What a waste, one is tempted to say--and how often one is tempted to +say this in the annals of Russian literature--and yet, one wonders! + +What we possess of the second part of _Dead Souls_ is in Gogol's best +vein, and of course one cannot help bitterly regretting that the rest +was destroyed or possibly never written; but one wonders whether, had +he not had within him the intensity of feeling which led him +ultimately to renounce art, he would have been the artist that he was; +whether he would have been capable of creating so many-coloured a +world of characters, and whether the soil out of which those works +grew was not in reality the kind of soil out of which religious +renunciation was at last bound to flower. However that may be, Gogol +left behind him a rich inheritance. He is one of the great humorists +of European literature, and whoever gives England a really fine +translation of his work, will do his country a service. Mérimée places +Gogol among the best _English_ humorists. His humour and his pathos +were closely allied; but there is no acidity in his irony. His work +may sometimes sadden you, but (as in the case of Krylov's two pigeons) +it will never bore you, and it will never leave you with a feeling of +stale disgust or a taste as of sharp alum, for his work is based on +charity, and it has in its form and accent the precious gift of charm. +Gogol is an author who will always be loved even as much as he is +admired, and his stories are a boon to the young; to many a Russian +boy and girl the golden gates of romance have been opened by Gogol, +the destroyer of Russian romanticism, the inaugurator of Russian +realism. + +Side by side with fiction, another element grew up in this age of +prose, namely criticism. Karamzin in the twenties had been the first +to introduce literary criticism, and critical appreciations of +Pushkin's work appeared from time to time in the _European Messenger_. +PRINCE VYAZEMSKY, whose literary activity lasted from 1808-78, was a +critic as well as a poet and a satirist, a fine example of the type of +great Russian nobles so frequent in Russian books, who were not only +saturated with culture but enriched literature with their work, and +carried on the tradition of cool, clear wit, clean expression, and +winged phrase that we find in Griboyedov. POLEVOY, a self-educated man +of humble extraction, was the first professional journalist, and +created the tradition of violent and fiery polemics, which has lasted +till this day in Russian journalism. But the real founder of Russian +æsthetic, literary, and journalistic criticism was BELINSKY +(1811-1847). + +Like Polevoy, he was of humble extraction and almost entirely +self-educated. He lived in want and poverty and ill-health. His life +was a long battle against every kind of difficulty and obstacle; his +literary production was more than hampered by the Censorship, but his +influence was far-reaching and deep. He created Russian criticism, and +after passing through several phases--a German phase of Hegelian +philosophy, Gallophobia, enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Goethe and for +objective art, a French phase of enthusiasm for art as practised in +France, ended finally in a didactic phase of which the watchword was +that Life was more important than Art. + +The first blossoms of the new generation of writers, Goncharov, +Dostoyevsky, Herzen, and others, grew up under his encouragement. He +expounded Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Griboyedov, Zhukovsky and the +writers of the past. His judgments have remained authoritative; but +some of his final judgments, which were unshaken for generations, such +as for instance his estimates of Pushkin and Lermontov, were much +biassed and coloured by his didacticism. He burnt what he had adored +in the case of Gogol, who, like Pushkin, became for him too much of an +artist, and not enough of a social reformer. Whatever phase Belinsky +went through, he was passionate, impulsive, and violent, incapable of +being objective, or of doing justice to an opponent, or of seeing two +sides to a question. He was a polemical and fanatical knight errant, +the prophet and propagandist of Western influence, the bitter enemy of +the Slavophiles. + +The didactic stamp which he gave to Russian æsthetic and literary +criticism has remained on it ever since, and differentiates it from +the literary and æsthetic criticism of the rest of Europe, not only +from that school of criticism which wrote and writes exclusively under +the banner of "Art for Art's Sake," but from those Western critics who +championed the importance of moral ideas in literature, just as +ardently as he did himself, and who deprecated the theory of Art for +Art's sake just as strongly. Thus it is that, from the beginning of +Russian criticism down to the present day, a truly objective criticism +scarcely exists in Russian literature. Æsthetic criticism becomes a +political weapon. "Are you in my camp?" if so, you are a good writer. +"Are you in my opponent's camp?" then your god-gifted genius is mere +dross. + +The reason of this has been luminously stated by Professor Brückner: +"To the intelligent Russian, without a free press, without the liberty +of assembly, without the right to free expression of opinion, +literature became the last refuge of freedom of thought, the only +means of propagating higher ideas. He expected of his country's +literature not merely æsthetic recreation; he placed it at the service +of his aspirations.... Hence the striking partiality, nay unfairness, +displayed by the Russians towards the most perfect works of their own +literature, when they did not respond to the aims or expectations of +their party or their day." And speaking of the criticism that was +produced after 1855, he says: "This criticism is often, in spite of +all its giftedness, its ardour and fire, only a mockery of all +criticism. The work only serves as an example on which to hang the +critics' own views.... This is no reproach; we simply state the fact, +and fully recognize the necessity and usefulness of the method. With a +backward society, ... this criticism was a means which was sanctified +by the end, the spreading of free opinions.... Unhappily, Russian +literary criticism has remained till to-day almost solely +journalistic, _i. e._ didactic and partisan. See how even now it +treats the most interesting, exceptional, and mighty of all Russians, +Dostoyevsky, merely because he does not fit into the Radical mould! +How unjust it has been towards others! How it has extolled to the +clouds the representatives of its own camp!" I quote Professor +Brückner, lest I should be myself suspected of being partial in this +question. The question, perhaps, may admit of further expansion. It +is not that the Russian critics were merely convinced it was +all-important that art should have ideas at the roots of it, and had +no patience with a merely shallow æstheticism. They went further; the +ideas had to be of one kind. A definite political tendency had to be +discerned; and if the critic disagreed with that political tendency, +then no amount of qualities--not artistic excellence, form, skill, +style, not even genius, inspiration, depth, feeling, philosophy--were +recognized. + +Herein lies the great difference between Russian and Western critics, +between Sainte-Beuve and Belinsky; between Matthew Arnold and his +Russian contemporaries. Matthew Arnold defined the highest poetry as +being a criticism of life; but that would not have prevented him from +doing justice either to a poet so polemical as Byron, or to a poet so +completely unpolitical, so sheerly æsthetic as Keats; to Lord +Beaconsfield as a novelist, to Mr. Morley or Lord Acton as historians, +because their "tendency" or their "politics" were different from his +own. The most biassed of English or French critics is broad-minded +compared to a Russian critic. Had Keats been a Russian poet, Belinsky +would have swept him away with contempt; Wordsworth would have been +condemned as reactionary; and Swinburne's politics alone would have +been taken into consideration. At the present day, almost ten years +after Professor Brückner wrote his _History of Russian Literature_, now +that the press is more or less free, save for occasional pin-pricks, +now that literary output is in any case unfettered, and the stage freer +than it is in England, the same criticism still applies. Russian +literary criticism is still journalistic. There are and there always +have been brilliant exceptions, of course, two of the most notable of +which are VOLYNSKY and MEREZHKOVSKY; but as a rule the political camp +to which the writer belongs is the all-important question; and I know +cases of Russian politicians who have been known to refuse to write, +even in foreign reviews, because they disapproved of the "tendency" of +those reviews, the tendency being non-existent--as is generally the +case with English reviews,--and the review harbouring opinions of every +shade and tendency. You would think that narrow-mindedness could no +further go than to refuse to let your work appear in an impartial +organ, lest in that same organ an opinion opposed to your own might +appear also. But the cause of this is the same now as it used to be, +namely that, in spite of there being a greater measure of freedom in +Russia, political liberty does not yet exist. Liberty of assembly does +not exist; liberty of conscience only partially exists; the press is +annoyed and hampered by restrictions; and the great majority of Russian +writers are still engaged in fighting for these things, and therefore +still ready to sacrifice fairness for the greater end,--the achievement +of political freedom. + +Thus criticism in Russia became a question of camps, and the question +arises, what were these camps? From the dawn of the age of pure +literature, Russia was divided into two great camps: The Slavophiles +and the Propagandists of Western Ideas. + +The trend towards the West began with the influence of Joseph Le +Maistre and the St. Petersburg Jesuits. In 1836, CHAADAEV, an +ex-guardsman who had served in the Russian campaign in France and +travelled a great deal in Western Europe, and who shared Joseph Le +Maistre's theory that Russia had suffered by her isolation from the +West and through the influence of the former Byzantine Empire, +published the first of his _Lettres sur la Philosophie de l'Histoire_ +in the _Telescope_ of Moscow. This letter came like a bomb-shell. He +glorified the tradition and continuity of the Catholic world. He said +that Russia existed, as it were, outside of time, without the +tradition either of the Orient or of the Occident, and that the +universal culture of the human race had not touched it. "The +atmosphere of the West produces ideas of duty, law, justice, order; we +have given nothing to the world and taken nothing from it; ... we have +not contributed anything to the progress of humanity, and we have +disfigured everything we have taken from that progress. Hostile +circumstances have alienated us from the general trend in which the +social idea of Christianity grew up; thus we ought to revise our +faith, and begin our education over again on another basis." The +expression of these incontrovertible sentiments resulted in the exile +of the editor of the _Telescope_, the dismissal of the Censor, and in +the official declaration of Chaadaev's insanity, who was put under +medical supervision for a year. + +Chaadaev made disciples who went further than he did, PRINCESS +VOLKONSKY, the authoress of a notable book on the Orthodox Church, and +PRINCE GAGARIN, who both became Catholics. This was one branch of +Westernism. Another branch, to which Belinsky belonged, had no +Catholic leanings, but sought for salvation in socialism and atheism. +The most important figure in this branch is ALEXANDER HERZEN +(1812-1870). His real name was Yakovlev; his father, a wealthy +nobleman, married in Germany, but did not legalize his marriage in +Russia, so his children took their mother's name. + +Herzen's career belongs rather to the history of Russia than to the +history of Russian literature; were it not that, besides being one of +the greatest and most influential personalities of his time, he was a +great memoir-writer. He began, after a mathematical training at the +University, with fiction, of which the best example is a novel _Who is +to Blame?_ which paints the _génie sans portefeuille_ of the period +that Turgenev was so fond of depicting. Herzen was exiled on account +of his oral propaganda, first to Perm, and then to Vyatka. In 1847, he +left Russia for ever, and lived abroad for the rest of his life, at +first in Paris, and afterwards in London, where he edited a newspaper +called _The Bell_. + +Herzen was a Socialist. Western Europe he considered to be played out. +He looked upon Socialism as a new religion and a new form of +Christianity, which would be to the new world what Christianity had +been to the old. The Russian peasants would play the part of the +Invasion of the Barbarians; and the functions of the State would be +taken over by the Russian Communes on a basis of voluntary and mutual +agreement--the principle of the Commune, of sharing all possessions in +common, being so near the fundamental principle of Christianity. + +"A thinking Russian," he wrote, "is the most independent being in the +world. What can stop him? Consideration for the past? But what is the +starting-point of modern Russian history if it be not a total negation +of nationalism and tradition?... What do we care, disinherited minors +that we are, for the duties you have inherited? Can your worn-out +morality satisfy us? Your morality which is neither Christian nor +human, which is used only in copybooks and for the ritual of the +law?" Again: "We are free because we begin with our own liberation; we +are independent; we have nothing to lose or to honour. A Russian will +never be a protestant, or follow the _juste milieu_ ... our +civilization is external, our corrupt morals quite crude." + +The great point Herzen was always making was that Russia had escaped +the baleful tradition of Western Europe, and the hereditary infection +of Western corruption. Thus, in his disenchantment with Western +society and his enthusiasm for the communal ownership of land, he was +at one with the Slavophiles; where he differed from them was in +accepting certain Western ideas, and in thinking that a new order of +things, a new heaven and earth, could be created by a social +revolution, which should be carried out by the Slavs. His +influence--he was one of the precursors of Nihilism, for the seed he +sowed, falling on the peculiar soil where it fell, produced the +whirlwind as a harvest--belongs to history. What belongs to literature +are his memoirs, _My Past and my Thoughts_ (_Byloe i Dumy_), which +were written between 1852 and 1855. These memoirs of everyday life +and encounters with all sorts and conditions of extraordinary men are +in their subject-matter as exciting as a novel, and, in their style, +on a level with the masterpieces of Russian prose, through their +subtle psychology, interest, wit, and artistic form. + +Herzen lived to see his ideas bearing fruit in the one way which of +all others he would have sought to avoid, namely in "militancy" and +terrorism. When in 1866, an attempt was made by Karakozov to +assassinate Alexander II, and Herzen wrote an article repudiating all +political assassinations as barbarous, the revolutionary parties +solemnly denounced him and his newspaper. _The Bell_, which had +already lost its popularity owing to Herzen's pro-Polish sympathies in +1863, ceased to have any circulation. Thus he lived to see his vast +hopes shattered, the seed he had sown bearing a fruit he distrusted, +his dreams of regeneration burst like a bubble, his ideals exploited +by unscrupulous criminals. He died in 1870, leaving a name which is as +great in Russian literature as it is remarkable in Russian history. + +Turning now to the _Slavophiles_, their idea was that Russia was +already in possession of the best possible institutions,--orthodoxy, +autocracy, and communal ownership, and that the West had everything to +learn from Russia. They pointed to the evils arising from the feudal +and aristocratic state, the system of primogeniture in the West, the +higher legal status of women in Russia, and the superiority of a +communal system, which leads naturally to a Consultative National +Assembly with unanimous decisions, over the parliaments and party +systems of the West. + +The leader of the Slavophiles was HOMYAKOV, a man of great culture; a +dialectician, a poet, and an impassioned defender of orthodoxy. The +best of his lyrics, which are inspired by a profound love of his +country and belief in it, have great depth of feeling. Besides +Homyakov, there were other poets, such as TYUTCHEV and IVAN AKSAKOV. +Just as the camp of Reform produced in Herzen a supreme writer of +memoirs, that of the Slavophiles also produced a unique memoir writer +in the SERGE AKSAKOV, the father of the poet (1791-1859), who +published his _Family Chronicle_ in 1856, and who describes the life +of the end of the eighteenth century, and the age of Alexander. This +book, one of the most valuable historical documents in Russian, and a +priceless collection of biographical portraits, is also a gem of +Russian prose, exact in its observation, picturesque and perfectly +balanced in its diction. + +Aksakov remembered with unclouded distinctness exactly what he had +seen in his childhood, which he spent in the district of Orenburg. He +paints the portraits of his grandfather and his great-aunt. We see +every detail of the life of a backwoodsman of the days of Catherine +II. We see the noble of those days, simple and rustic in his habits as +a peasant, almost entirely unlettered, and yet a gentleman through and +through, unswerving in maintaining the standard of morals and +traditions which he considers due to his ancient lineage. We see every +hour of the day of his life in the country; we hear all the details of +the family life, the marriage of his son, the domestic troubles of his +sister. + +What strikes one most, perhaps, besides the contrast between the +primitive simplicity of the habits and manners of the life described, +and the astoundingly gentlemanlike feelings of the man who leads this +quiet and rustic life in remote and backward conditions, is that there +is not a hint or suspicion of anything antiquated in the sentiments +and opinions we see at play. The story of Aksakov's grandfather might +be that of any country gentleman in any country, at any epoch, making +allowances for a certain difference in manners and customs and +conditions which were peculiar to the epoch in question, the existence +of serfdom, for instance--although here, too, the feeling with regard +to manners described is startlingly like the ideal of good manners of +any epoch, although the _mœurs_ are sometimes different. The story +is as vivid and as interesting as that of any novel, as that of the +novels of Russian writers of genius, and it has the additional value +of being true. And yet we never feel that Aksakov has a thought of +compiling a historical document for the sake of its historical +interest. He is making history unawares, just as Monsieur Jourdain +talked prose without knowing it; and, whether he was aware of it or +not, he wrote perfect prose. No more perfect piece of prose writing +exists. The style flows on like a limpid river; there is nothing +superfluous, and not a hesitating touch. It is impossible to put down +the narrative after once beginning it, and I have heard of children +who read it like a fairy-tale. One has the sensation, in reading it, +of being told a story by some enchanting nurse, who, when the usual +question, "Is it true?" is put to her, could truthfully answer, "Yes, +it is true." The pictures of nature, the portraits of the people, all +the good and all the bad of the good and the bad old times pass before +one with epic simplicity and the magic of a fairy-tale. One is +spellbound by the charm, the dignity, the good-nature, the gentle, +easy accent of the speaker, in whom one feels convinced not only that +there was nothing common nor mean, but to whom nothing was common or +mean, who was a gentleman by character as well as by lineage, one of +God's as well as one of Russia's nobility. + +There is no book in Russian which, for its entrancing interest as well +as for its historical value, so richly deserves translation into +English; only such a translation should be made by a stylist--that is, +by a man who knows how to speak and write his mother tongue +perspicuously and simply. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE EPOCH OF REFORM + + +For seven years after the death of Belinsky in 1848, all literary +development ceased. This period was the darkest hour before the dawn +of the second great renascence of Russian literature. Criticism was +practically non-existent; the Slavophiles were forbidden to write; the +Westernizers were exiled. An increased severity of censorship, an +extreme suspicion and drastic measures on the part of the Government +were brought about by the fears which the Paris revolution of 1848 had +caused. The Westernizers felt the effects of this as much as the +Slavophiles; a group of young literary men, schoolmasters and +officers, the Petrashevtsy, called after their leader, a Foreign +Office official PETRASHEVSKY, met together on Fridays and debated on +abstract subjects; they discussed the emancipation of the serfs, read +Fourier and Lamennais, and considered the establishment of a secret +press: the scheme of a popular propaganda was thought of, but nothing +had got beyond talk--and the whole thing was in reality only +talk--when the society was discovered by the police and its members +were punished with the utmost severity. Twenty-one of them were +condemned to death, among whom was Dostoyevsky, who, being on the army +list, was accused of treason. They were reprieved on the scaffold; +some sent into penal servitude in Siberia, and some into the army. +This marked one of the darkest hours in the history of Russian +literature. And from this date until 1855, complete stagnation +reigned. In 1855 the Emperor Nicholas died during the Crimean War; and +with the accession of his son Alexander II, a new era dawned on +Russian literature, the Era of the Great Reforms. The Crimean War and +the reforms which followed it--the emancipation of the serfs, the +creation of a new judicial system, and the foundation of local +self-government--stabbed the Russian soul into life, relieved it of +its gag, produced a great outburst of literature which enlarged and +enriched the literature of the world, and gave to the world three of +its greatest novelists: Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. + +IVAN TURGENEV (1816-83), whose name is of Tartar origin, came of an +old family which had frequently distinguished itself in the annals of +Russian literature by a fearless outspokenness. He began his literary +career by writing verse (1843); but, like Maupassant, he soon +understood that verse was not his true vehicle, and in 1847 gave up +writing verse altogether; in that year he published in _The +Contemporary_ his first sketch of peasant life, _Khor and Kalinych_, +which afterwards formed part of his _Sportsman's Sketches_, +twenty-four of which he collected and published in 1852. The +Government rendered Turgenev the same service as it had done to +Pushkin, in exiling him to his own country estate for two years. When, +after the two years, this forced exile came to an end, he went into +another kind of exile of his own accord; he lived at first at Baden, +and then in Paris, and only reappeared in Russia from time to time; +this accounts for the fact that, although Turgenev belongs +chronologically to the epoch of the great reforms, the Russia which he +paints was really more like the Russia before that epoch; and when he +tried to paint the Russia that was contemporary to him his work gave +rise to much controversy. + +His _Rudin_ was published in 1856, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_ in 1859, +_On the Eve_ in 1860, _Fathers and Sons_ in 1862, _Smoke_ in 1867. +Turgenev did for Russian literature what Byron did for English +literature; he led the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout all +Europe. And in Europe his work reaped a glorious harvest of praise. +Flaubert was astounded by him, George Sand looked up to him as to a +Master, Taine spoke of his work as being the finest artistic +production since Sophocles. In Turgenev's work, Europe not only +discovered Turgenev, but it discovered Russia, the simplicity and the +naturalness of the Russian character; and this came as a revelation. +For the first time, Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin +was the first to paint; for the first time Europe came into contact +with the Russian soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation +which accounts for the fact of Turgenev having received in the West an +even greater meed of praise than he was perhaps entitled to. + +In Russia, Turgenev attained almost instant popularity. His +_Sportsman's Sketches_ made him known, and his _Nest of Gentlefolk_ +made him not only famous but universally popular. In 1862 the +publication of his masterpiece _Fathers and Sons_ dealt his reputation +a blow. The revolutionary elements in Russia regarded his hero, +Bazarov, as a calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary elements in +Russia looked upon _Fathers and Sons_ as a glorification of Nihilism. +Thus he satisfied nobody. He fell between two stools. This, perhaps, +could only happen in Russia to this extent; and for the same reason as +that which made Russian criticism didactic. The conflicting elements +of Russian society were so terribly in earnest in fighting their +cause, that any one whom they did not regard as definitely for them +was at once considered an enemy, and an impartial delineation of any +character concerned in the political struggle was bound to displease +both parties. If a novelist drew a Nihilist, he must either be a hero +or a scoundrel, if either the revolutionaries or the reactionaries +were to be pleased. If in England the militant suffragists suddenly +had a huge mass of educated opinion behind them and a still larger +mass of educated public opinion against them, and some one were to +draw in a novel an impartial picture of a suffragette, the same thing +would happen. On a small scale, as far as the suffragettes are +concerned, it has happened in the case of Mr. Wells. But, if +Turgenev's popularity suffered a shock in Russia from which it with +difficulty recovered, in Western Europe it went on increasing. +Especially in England, Turgenev became the idol of all that was +eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a hall-mark of good taste. + +In Russia, Turgenev's work recovered from the unpopularity caused by +his _Fathers and Sons_ when Nihilism became a thing of the past, and +revolution took an entirely different shape; but, with the growing up +of new generations, his popularity suffered in a different way and for +different reasons. A new element came into Russian literature with +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and later with Gorky, and Turgenev's work began +to seem thin and artificial beside the creations of these stronger +writers; but in Russia, where Turgenev's work has the advantage of +being read in the original, it had an asset which ensured it a +permanent and safe harbour, above and beyond the fluctuations of +literary taste, the strife of political parties, and the conflict of +social ideals; and that was its art, its poetry, its style, which +ensured it a lasting and imperishable niche among the great classics +of Russian literature. And there it stands now. Turgenev's work in +Russia is no longer disputed or a subject of dispute. It is taken for +granted; and, whatever the younger generation will read and admire, +they will always read and admire Turgenev first. His work is a +necessary part of the intellectual baggage of any educated man and, +especially, of the educated adolescent. + +The position of Tennyson in England offers in a sense a parallel to +that of Turgenev in Russia. Tennyson, like Turgenev, enjoyed during +his lifetime not only the popularity of the masses, but the +appreciation of all that was most eclectic in the country. Then a +reaction set in. Now I believe the young generation think nothing of +Tennyson at all. And yet nothing is so sure as his permanent place in +English literature; and that permanent place is secured to him by his +incomparable diction. So it is with Turgenev. One cannot expect the +younger generation to be wildly excited about Turgenev's ideas, +characters, and problems. They belong to an epoch which is dead. At +the same time, one cannot help thinking that the most advanced of the +symbolist writers would not have been sorry had he happened by chance +to write _Bezhin Meadow_ and the _Poems in Prose_. Just so one cannot +help thinking that the most modern of our poets, had he by accident +written _The Revenge_ or _Tears, Idle Tears_, would not have thrown +them in the fire! + +There is, indeed, something in common between Tennyson and Turgenev. +They both have something mid-Victorian in them. They are both idyllic, +and both of them landscape-lovers and lords of language. They neither +of them had any very striking message to preach; they both of them +seem to halt, except on rare occasions, on the threshold of passion; +they both of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and in both of them +there is an element of banality. They both seem to a certain extent to +be shut off from the world by the trees of old parks, where cultivated +people are enjoying the air and the flowers and the shade, and where +between the tall trees you get glimpses of silvery landscapes and +limpid waters, and soft music comes from the gliding boat. Of course, +there is more than this in Turgenev, but this is the main impression. + +Pathos he has, of the finest, and passion he describes beautifully +from the outside, making you feel its existence, but not convincing +you that he felt it himself; but on the other hand what an artist he +is! How beautifully his pictures are painted; and how rich he is in +poetic feeling! + +Turgenev is above all things a poet. He carried on the work of +Pushkin, and he did for Russian prose what Pushkin did for Russian +poetry; he created imperishable models of style. His language has the +same limpidity and absence of any blur that we find in Pushkin's work. +His women have the same crystal radiance, transparent simplicity, and +unaffected strength; his pictures of peasant life, and his country +episodes have the same truth to nature; as an artist he had a severe +sense of proportion, a perfect purity of outline, and an absolute +harmony between the thought and the expression. Now that modern Europe +and England have just begun to discover Dostoyevsky, it is possible +that a reaction will set in to the detriment of Turgenev. Indeed, to a +certain extent this reaction has set in in Western Europe, as M. +Haumant, one of Turgenev's ablest critics and biographers, pointed out +not long ago. And, as the majority of Englishmen have not the +advantage of reading him in the original, they will be unchecked in +this reaction, if it comes about, by their appreciation of what is +perhaps most durable in his work. Yet to translate Turgenev +adequately, it would require an English poet gifted with a sense of +form and of words as rare as that of Turgenev himself. However this +may be, there is no doubt about the importance of Turgenev in the +history of Russian literature, whatever the future generations in +Russia or in Europe may think of his work. He was a great novelist +besides being a great poet. Certainly he never surpassed his early +_Sportsman's Sketches_ in freshness of inspiration and the perfection +of artistic execution. + +His _Bezhin Meadow_, where the children tell each other bogey stories +in the evening, is a gem with which no other European literature has +anything to compare. _The Singers_, _Death_, and many others are +likewise incomparable. _The Nest of Gentlefolk_, to which Turgenev +owed his great popularity, is quite perfect of its kind, with its +gallery of portraits going back to the eighteenth century and to the +period of Alexander I; its lovable, human hero Lavretsky, and Liza, a +fit descendant of Pushkin's Tatiana, radiant as a star. All Turgenev's +characters are alive; but, with the exception of his women and the +hero of _Fathers and Sons_, they are alive in bookland rather than in +real life. + +George Meredith's characters, for instance, are alive, but they belong +to a land or rather a planet of his own making, and we should never +recognize Sir Willoughby Patterne in the street, but we do meet women +sometimes who remind us of Clara Middleton and Carinthia Jane. The +same is true with regard to Turgenev, although it is not another +planet he created, but a special atmosphere and epoch to which his +books exclusively belong, and which some critics say never existed at +all. That is of no consequence. It exists for us in his work. + +But perhaps what gave rise to accusations of unreality and caricature +against Turgenev's characters, apart from the intenser reality of +Tolstoy's creations, by comparison with which Turgenev's suffered, was +that Turgenev, while professing to describe the present, and while +believing that he was describing the present, was in reality painting +an epoch that was already dead. _Rudin_, _Smoke_, and _On the Eve_ +have suffered more from the passage of time. _Rudin_ is a pathetic +picture of the type that Turgenev was so fond of depicting, the _génie +sans portefeuille_, a latter-day Hamlet who can only unpack his heart +with words, and with his eloquence persuade others to believe in him, +and succeed even in persuading himself to believe in himself, until +the moment for action comes, when he breaks down. The subjects of +_Smoke_ and _Spring Waters_ are almost identical; but, whereas _Spring +Waters_ is one of the most poetical of Turgenev's achievements, +_Smoke_ seems to-day the most banal, and almost to deserve Tolstoy's +criticism: "In _Smoke_ there is hardly any love of anything, and very +little pity; there is only love of light and playful adultery; and +therefore the poetry of that novel is repulsive." _On the Eve_, which +tells of a Bulgarian on the eve of the liberation of his country, +suffers from being written at a time when real Russians were hard at +work at that very task; and it was on this account that the novel +found little favour in Russia, as the fiction paled beside the +reality. + +It was followed by Turgenev's masterpiece, for which time can only +heighten one's admiration. _Fathers and Sons_ is as beautifully +constructed as a drama of Sophocles; the events move inevitably to a +tragic close. There is not a touch of banality from beginning to end, +and not an unnecessary word; the portraits of the old father and +mother, the young Kirsanov, and all the minor characters are perfect; +and amidst the trivial crowd, Bazarov stands out like Lucifer, the +strongest--the only strong character--that Turgenev created, the first +Nihilist--for if Turgenev was not the first to invent the word, he was +the first to apply it in this sense. + +Bazarov is the incarnation of the Lucifer type that recurs again and +again in Russian history and fiction, in sharp contrast to the meek +humble type of Ivan Durak. Lermontov's Pechorin was in some respects +an anticipation of Bazarov; so were the many Russian rebels. He is +the man who denies, to whom art is a silly toy, who detests +abstractions, knowledge, and the love of Nature; he believes in +nothing; he bows to nothing; he can break, but he cannot bend; he does +break, and that is the tragedy, but, breaking, he retains his +invincible pride, and + + "not cowardly he puts off his helmet," + +and he dies "valiantly vanquished." + +In the pages which describe his death Turgenev reaches the high-water +mark of his art, his moving quality, his power, his reserve. For manly +pathos they rank among the greatest scenes in literature, stronger +than the death of Colonel Newcome and the best of Thackeray. Among +English novelists it is, perhaps, only Meredith who has struck such +strong, piercing chords, nobler than anything in Daudet or Maupassant, +more reserved than anything in Victor Hugo, and worthy of the great +poets, of the tragic pathos of Goethe and Dante. The character of +Bazarov, as has been said, created a sensation and endless +controversy. The revolutionaries thought him a caricature and a libel, +the reactionaries a scandalous glorification of the Devil; and +impartial men such as Dostoyevsky, who knew the revolutionaries at +first hand, thought the type unreal. It is possible that Bazarov was +not like the Nihilists of the sixties; but in any case as a figure in +fiction, whatever the fact may be, he lives and will continue to live. + +In _Virgin Soil_, Turgenev attempted to paint the underground +revolutionary movement; here, in the opinion of all Russian judges, he +failed. The revolutionaries considered their portraits here more +unreal than that of Bazarov; the Conservatives were grossly +caricatured; the hero Nezhdanov was a type of a past world, another +Rudin, and not in the least like--so those who knew them tell us--the +revolutionaries of the day. Solomin, the energetic character in the +book, was considered as unreal as Nezhdanov. The wife of the +reactionary Sipyagin is a _pastiche_ of the female characters of that +type in his other books; cleverly drawn, but a completely conventional +book character. The redeeming feature in the book is Mariana, the +heroine, one of Turgenev's finest ideal women; and it is full, of +course, of gems of descriptive writing. The book was a complete +failure, and after this Turgenev went back to writing short stories. +The result was a great disappointment to Turgenev, who had thought +that, by writing a novel dealing with actual life, he would please and +reconcile all parties. To this later epoch belong his matchless _Poems +in Prose_, one of the latest melodies he sounded, a melody played on +one string of the lyre, but whose sweetness contained the essence of +all his music. + +Turgenev's work has a historic as well as an artistic value. He +painted the Russian gentry, and the type of gentry that was +disappearing, as no one else has done. His landscape painting has been +dwelt on; one ought, perhaps, to add that, beautiful as it is, it +still belongs to the region of conventional landscape painting; his +landscape is the orthodox Russian landscape, and is that of the age of +Pushkin, in which no bird except a nightingale is mentioned, no flower +except a rose. This convention was not really broken in prose until +the advent of Gorky. + +Reviewing Turgenev's work as a whole, any one who goes back to his +books after a time, and after a course of more modern and rougher, +stormier literature, will, I think, be surprised at its excellence +and perhaps be inclined to heave a deep sigh of relief. Some of it +will appear conventional; he will notice a faint atmosphere of +rose-water; he will feel, if he has been reading the moderns, as a +traveller feels who, after an exciting but painful journey, through +dangerous ways and unpleasant surroundings, suddenly enters a cool +garden, where fountains sob between dark cypresses, and swans float +majestically on artificial lakes. There is an aroma of syringa in the +air; the pleasaunce is artistically laid out, and full of fragrant +flowers. But he will not despise that garden for its elegance and its +tranquil seclusion, for its trees cast large shadows; the nightingale +sings in its thickets, the moon silvers the calm statues, and the +sound of music on the waters goes to the heart. Turgenev reminds one +of a certain kind of music, beautiful in form, not too passionate and +yet full of emotion, Schumann's music, for instance; if Pushkin is the +Mozart of Russian literature, Turgenev is the Schumann; not amongst +the very greatest, but still a poet, full of inspired lyrical feeling; +and a great, a classic artist, the prose Virgil of Russian literature. + +What Turgenev did for the country gentry, GONCHAROV (1812-91) did for +the St. Petersburg gentry. The greater part of his work deals with the +forties. Goncharov, a noble (_dvoryanin_) by education, and according +to his own account by descent, though according to another account he +was of merchant extraction, entered the Government service, and then +went round the world in a frigate, a journey which he described in +letters. Of his three novels, _The Everyday Story_, _Oblomov_, and +_The Landslip_, _Oblomov_ is the most famous: in it he created a type +which became immortal; and Oblomov has passed into the Russian +language just as Tartuffe has passed into the French language, or +Pecksniff into the English language. A chapter of the book appeared in +1849, and the whole novel in 1859. + +Oblomov is the incarnation of what in Russia is called _Halatnost_, +which means the propensity to live in dressing-gown and slippers. It +is told of Krylov, who was an Oblomov of real life, and who spent most +of his time lying on a sofa, that one day somebody pointed out to him +that the nail on which a picture was hanging just over the sofa on +which he was lying, was loose, and that the picture would probably +fall on his head. "No," said Krylov, not getting up, "the picture will +fall just beyond the sofa. I know the angle." The apathy of Oblomov, +although to the outward eye it resembles this mere physical inertness, +is subtly different. Krylov's apathy was the laziness of a man whose +brain brought forth concrete fruits; and who feels neither the +inclination nor the need of any other exercise, either physical or +intellectual. Oblomov's apathy is that of a brain seething with the +burning desires of a _vie intime_, which all comes to nothing owing to +a kind of spiritual paralysis, "une infirmité morale." It is true he +finds it difficult to put on his socks, still more to get up, when he +is awake, impossible to change his rooms although the ceiling is +falling to bits, and impossible not to lie on the sofa most of the +day; but the reason of this obstinate inertia is not mere physical +disinclination, it is the result of a mixture of seething and +simmering aspirations, indefinite disillusions and apprehensions, that +elude the grasp of the will. Oblomov is really the victim of a dream, +of an aspiration, of an ideal as bright and mobile as a +will-o'-the-wisp, as elusive as thistledown, which refuses to +materialize. + +The tragedy of the book lies in the effort he makes to rise from his +slough of apathy, or rather the effort his friends encourage him to +make. Oblomov's heart is made of pure gold; his soul is of transparent +crystal; there is not a base flaw in the paste of his composition; yet +his will is sapped, not by words, words, words, but by the inability +to formulate the shadows of his inner life. His friend is an energetic +German-Russian. He introduces Oblomov to a charming girl, and together +they conspire to drag him from his apathy. The girl, Olga, at first +succeeds; she falls in love with him, and he with her; he wants to +marry her, but he cannot take the necessary step of arranging his +affairs in a manner which would make that marriage possible; and +gradually he falls back into a new stage of apathy worse than the +first; she realizes the hopelessness of the situation, and they agree +to separate. She marries the energetic friend, and Oblomov sinks into +the comforts of a purely negative life of complete inaction and +seclusion, watched over by a devoted housekeeper, whom he ultimately +marries. + +The extraordinary subtlety of the psychology of this study lies, as +well as in other things, in the way in which we feel that Olga is not +really happy with her excellent husband; he is the man whom she +respects; but Oblomov is the man whom she loves, till the end; and she +would give worlds to respect him too if he would only give her the +chance. Oblomov often defends his stagnation, while realizing only too +well what a misfortune it is; and we sometimes feel that he is not +altogether wrong. The chapter that tells of his dream in which his +past life and childhood arise before him in a haze of serene laziness +is one of the masterpieces of Russian prose. The book is terribly +real, and almost intolerably sad. + +Goncharov's third and last novel deals with the life of a landed +proprietor on the Volga, and its main idea is the contrast between the +old generation before the reforms and the new generation of Alexander +II's day--a paler _Fathers and Sons_. + +To go back to criticism, the name of BAKUNIN, the apostle of +destruction and the incarnation of Russian Nihilism, belongs to +history; that of GRIGORIEV must be mentioned as founding a school of +thought which preached the union of arts with the national soil; he +exercised a strong influence over Dostoyevsky. KATKOV, whose influence +was at one time immense, originally belonged to the circle of Herzen +and Bakunin; he became a professor of philosophy, but was driven from +his chair in the reaction of '48, and, being banished from erudition, +he took up a journalistic career and became the Editor of the _Moscow +News_. He was a Slavophile, and when the rising in Poland broke out, +he headed the great wave of nationalist feeling which passed over the +country at that time; he doubled the number of his subscribers, and +dealt a death-blow to Herzen's _Bell_. After 1866, he headed +reactionary journalism and became a Nationalist of the narrowest kind; +but he was of a higher calibre than the Nationalists of later days. +Slavophile critics of another kind were STRAKHOV and DANILEVSKY, like +Dostoyevsky, disciples of Grigoriev, who preached the last word of +Slavophilism and were opposed to all foreign innovations. + +On the Radical side the leaders were CHERNYSHEVSKY, DOBROLYUBOV and +PISAREV. Chernyshevsky, who translated John Stuart Mill, and +published a treatise on the æsthetic relations of art and reality, +served a sentence of seven years' hard labour and of twenty years' +exile. His criticism--socialist propaganda, and an attack on all +metaphysics--does not belong to literature, but his novel _Shto +dielat_--"What is to be done?"--had an immense influence on his +generation. It deals with Nihilism. Dobrolyubov, who died when he was +twenty-four, belonged to the same realistic school. His main theory +was that Russian literature is dominated by Oblomov; that Chatsky, +Pechorin, and Rudin are all Oblomovs. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +followed Chernyshevsky in his realistic philosophy, in his rejection +of metaphysics, in his theory that beauty is to be sought in life +only, and that the sole duty of art is to help to illustrate life. +Pisarev recognized that Turgenev's Bazarov was a picture of himself, +and he was pleased with the portrait. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +died young. + +VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV (1853-1900), critic as well as poet, moral +philosopher, and theologian, is one of the most interesting figures in +Russian literature. What is most remarkable about him, and what makes +him stand out, a radiant exception in Russian criticism, is his +absolute independence. He belonged to no camp; he was a slave to no +party cry; utterly unselfish, his sole aim was to seek after the truth +for the sake of truth, and to proclaim it. In an age of positivism, he +was a believing Christian, and the dream of his life was a union of +the Eastern and Western Churches. He deals with this idea in a book +which he wrote in French and published in Paris: _L'Église Russe et +l'Église Universelle_. He admired the older Slavophiles, but he +severely attacked the Nationalists, such as Katkov. His range of +subjects was great, and his style was brilliant; like many great +thinkers, he was far ahead of his time, and in his criticism of the +_Intelligentsia_ anticipated some tendencies, which have become +visible since the revolution of 1905. He reminds one at times of Mr. +A. J. Balfour, and even of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with whose +"orthodoxy" he would have much sympathy; and he deals with questions +such as Woman's Suffrage in a way which exactly fits the present day. +He never became a Catholic, holding that the Eastern Church _qua_ +Church had never been cut off from the West, and that only one +definite schism had been condemned; but he believed in the necessity +of a universal Church. He was the first intellectual Russian to point +out to a generation which took atheism as a matter of course that they +were possibly inferior instead of superior to religion. He believed in +Russia; he had nothing against the Slavophile theory that Russia had a +divine mission; only he wished to see that mission divinely performed. +He believed in the East of Christ, and not in that of Xerxes. He died +in 1900, before he had finished his _Magnum Opus_, a work on moral +philosophy written on a religious basis. He preached self-effacement; +pity towards one's fellow men; and reverence towards the supernatural. +His whole work is a defence of moral principles, written with the soul +of a poet, the knowledge of a scholar, and the brilliance of a +dialectician. It is only lately that his books have gained the +appreciation which they deserve; they are certainly more in harmony +with the present generation than with that of the sixties and the +seventies. His _Three Conversations_ has been translated into English. +Vladimir Soloviev stands in a niche of his own, isolated from the +crowd by his own originality, his brilliance, and his prematurity; he +was _intempestivus_. + +To the same epoch belong four other important writers, each occupying +a place apart from the current stream of literary or political +influences: one because he was a satirist, one because he wrote for +the stage, and the two others because one impartially, and the other +bitterly, dared to criticize the Radicals. + +MICHAEL SALTYKOV (1826-89), who wrote under the name of Shchedrin, +holds a unique place in Russian literature, not only because he is a +writer of genius, but because he is one of the world's great +satirists. Unlike Russian satirists before him, Krylov, Gogol, and +Griboyedov, good-humoured irony or sharp rapier thrusts of wit do not +suffice him; he has in himself the _saeva indignatio_, and he +expresses it with all the concentrated spite that he can muster, which +is all the more deadly from being used with perfect control. His work +is bulky, and fills eleven thick volumes; some of it is quite out of +date and at the present day almost unintelligible; but all that deals +with the fundamental essentials of the Russian character, and not with +the passing episodes of the day, has the freshness of immortality. At +the outset of his career, he was banished to Vyatka, where he remained +from 1848-56, an exile, which gave him a rich store of priceless +material. His experiences appeared in his _Sketches of Provincial +Life_ in 1886-7. + +He describes the good old times and the officials of the good old +times, with diabolic malice and with an unequalled eye for the +ironical, the comic, the topsy-turvy, and the true; and while he is as +observant as Gogol, he is as bitter as Swift. He puts his characters +on the stage and makes them relate their experiences; thus we hear how +the collector of the dues manages to combine the maximum amount of +robbery with the minimum amount of inconvenience. In his pictures of +prison life, the prisoners tell their own stories, sometimes with +unaffected frankness, sometimes with startling cynicism, and sometimes +the story is obscured by a whole heap of lies. The prisoners are of +different classes; one is an ex-official who states that he was a +statistician who got into trouble over his figures; wishing to levy +dues on a peasant's property, he had demanded the number, not of +their bee-hives, but of their bees, and wrote in his list: "The +peasant Sidorov possesses two horses, three cows, nine sheep, one +calf, and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven bees." +Unfortunately he was betrayed by the police inspector. + +Saltykov's satire deals entirely with the middle class, the high +officials, the average official, and the minor public servants; and +his best-known work, and one that has not aged any more than Swift has +aged, is his _History of a City according to the original documents_. + +In this he tells of the city of _Glupov_, _Fool-City_, where the +people were such fools that they were not content until they found +some one to rule them who was stupider than they were themselves. The +various phases Russia had gone through are touched off; the mania for +regulations, the formalism, the official red-tape, the persecution of +independent thought, and the oppression of original thinkers and +writers; the ultimate ideal is that introduced by the last ruler of +Glupov (the history lasts from 1731 to 1826), of turning the country +into barracks and reducing every one and everything to one level--in +which the régime of the period of Nicholas I is satirized; until in +the final picture, as fine in its way as Pope's close of the +_Dunciad_, the stream rises, and refusing to be stopped by the dam, +carries everything away. The style parodies that of the ancient +chroniclers; and its chief intent lies not in the satirizing of any +particular events or person, but in the shafts of light, sometimes +bitter, and sometimes inexpressibly droll, it throws on the Russian +system of administration and on the Russian character. + +In his _Pompaduri_, Saltykov dissects and vivisects the higher +official,--the big-wig,--and in his sketches from the "Domain of +Moderation and Accuracy," he writes, in little, the epic of the minor +public servant--the man who is never heard of, who is included in the +term of "the rest," but who, nevertheless, is a cogwheel in the +machinery, without which the big-wigs cannot act or execute. No more +supreme piece of art than this piece of satire exists. The typical +minor official is drawn in all the variations of his miserable and +pitiable species, and in all the phases of his ignoble and sometimes +tragical career, with a pen dipped in scorn and stinging malice, not +unblent with a grave pity, which always exists in the work of the +greatest satirists--"Peace to all such, but there was one ..." for +instance--and wielded with terrible certainty of touch. This epic of +the _Molchalins_ of life--the typical officials who cease to be +men--was the story of a great part of the Russian population; and in +its essence, a great deal of it remains true to-day, while all of it +remains artistically enjoyable. + +Saltykov continued to write during the whole of his long life. His +field of satire ranges from the days before serfdom to the epoch of +the reforms, extends to the days of the Russo-Turkish War, and passes +the frontier into the West. It is impossible here even to name all his +works; but there is one, written in the decline of his life, which has +a solid historical as well as a rich and varied artistic interest. +This is his _Poshenkhonskaya Starina_; it is practically the history +of his childhood, his upbringing, and the state of affairs which +existed at that time, the life lived by his parents and their +neighbours, the landed proprietors and their serfs. With amazing +impartiality, without exaggeration, and yet with evidences of deep +feeling and passionate indignation, all the more striking from being +both rare and expressed with reserve, he paints on a large and crowded +canvas the life of the masters and their serfs. A long gallery of men +and women is opened to one; tragedy, comedy, farce, all are here--in +fact, life--life as it was then in a remote corner of the country. +Here Saltykov's spite and malice give way to higher strokes of tragic +irony and pity; and the work has dignity as well as power In the bulk +of Saltykov's early work there is much dross, much venom, and much +ephemeral tinsel that has faded; the stuff of this book is stern and +enduring; its subject-matter would not lose a particle of interest in +translation. The Russians have been ungrateful towards Saltykov, and +have been inclined to neglect his work, the lasting element of which +is one of the most original, precious, and remarkable possessions of +Russian literature. + +The complement of Saltykov is LESKOV (or, as he originally called +himself, _Stebnitsky_). The character of his work, its reception by +the reading public on the one hand, and by the professional critics on +the other, is one of the most striking object-lessons in the history +of Russian literature and Russian literary criticism. Leskov has been +long ago recognized by educated Russia as a writer of the first rank; +what is best in his work, which is bulky and unequal, has the +unmistakable hall-mark of the classics; he is with Gogol and Saltykov, +and the novelists of the first rank. Educated Russia is fully aware of +this. Nobody disputes Leskov his place, nor denies him his supreme +artistic talent, his humour, his vividness, his colour, his satire, +the depth of his feeling, the richness of his invention. In spite of +this, there is no Russian writer who has so acutely suffered from the +didactic and partisan quality of Russian criticism. + +His literary career began in 1860. Like Saltykov, he paints the period +of transition that followed the epoch of the great Reforms. In spite +of this, as late as 1902, no critical biography, no serious work of +criticism, had been devoted to his books. All Russia had read him, but +literary criticism had ignored him. It is as if English literary +criticism had ignored Dickens until 1900. + +The reason of this neglect is not far to seek. Saltykov was an +independent thinker; he belonged to no literary or political camp; he +criticized the partisans of both camps with equal courage; and the +partisans could not and did not forgive him. Like Saltykov, Leskov saw +what was going on in Russia; with penetrating insight and observation +he realized the evils of the old order; like Saltykov, he was filled +with indignation, and perhaps to a greater degree than Saltykov, he +was filled with pity. But, whereas Saltykov's work was purely +destructive--an onslaught of brooms in the Augean stables--Leskov +begins where Saltykov ends. Like Saltykov and like Gogol before him, +the old order inspires him with laughter, sometimes with bitter +laughter, at the absurdities of the old régime and its results; but he +does not confine himself to destructive irony and sapping satire. With +PISEMSKY, another writer of first-class talent, of the same epoch, +Leskov was the first Russian novelist--Griboyedov had already +anticipated such criticism in _Gore ot Uma_, in his delineation of +Chatsky,--to have the courage to criticize the reformers, the men of +the new epoch; and his criticism was not only negative but creative; +he realized that everything must be "reformed altogether." He then +asked himself whether the new men, who were engaged in the task of +reform, were equal to their task. He came to the conclusion not only +that they were inadequate, but that they were setting about the +business the wrong way, and he had the courage to say so. He was the +first Russian novelist to say he disbelieved in Liberals, although he +believed in Liberalism; and this was a sentiment which no Liberal in +Russia could admit then, and one which they can scarcely admit now. + +His criticism of the Liberals was creative, and not negative, in this: +that, instead of confining himself to pointing out their weakness and +the mistaken course they were taking, he did his best to point out the +right path. Dostoyevsky was likewise subjected to the same ostracism. +Turgenev suffered from it; but the genius of Dostoyevsky and the art +of Turgenev overstepped the limits of all barriers and frontiers. +Europe acclaimed them. Leskov's criticism being more local, the +ostracism, although powerless to prevent the popularity of his work in +Russia, succeeded for a time in keeping him from the notice of +Western Europe. This barrier is now being broken down. One of Leskov's +masterpieces, _The Sealed Angel_, was lately translated into English; +but he is one of the most difficult authors to translate because he is +one of the most native. + +A far bitterer and more pessimistic note is heard in the work of +Pisemsky. He attacks the new democracy mercilessly, and not from any +predilection towards the old. His most important work, _The Troubled +Sea_ (1862), was a terrific onslaught on Radical Russia; and Pisemsky +paid the same price for his pessimistic analysis as Leskov did for his +impartiality, namely social ostracism. + +The work of OSTROVSKY (1823-86) belongs to the history of the Stage, +to which he brought slices of real life from the middle class; the +townsmen, the minor public servants, merchants great and small, and +rogues, a _milieu_ which he had observed in his youth, his father +having been an attorney to a Moscow merchant. Ostrovsky may be called +the founder of modern Russian realistic comedy and drama. In spite of +the epoch at which his plays were written (the fifties and the +sixties), there is not a trace of _Scribisme_, no tricks, no effective +exits or curtains; he thus anticipated the form of the quite modern +drama by about seventy years. His plays hold the stage now in Russia, +and form part of the stock repertories every season. They give, +moreover, just the same lifelike impression whether read or seen +acted; and they are as interesting from a literary as they are from a +historical or dramatic point of view, interesting because they are +intensely national, and as Russian as beer is English. + +This brief summary of the epoch would be still more incomplete than it +is without the mention of yet another novelist, GRIGOROVICH. Although +on a lower level of art and creative power than Pisemsky and Leskov, +he was the pioneer in Russian literature of peasant literature. He +anticipated Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_, and for the first time +made Russian readers cry with sympathy over the annals of the peasant. +Like Turgenev, he was a great landscape painter. In his "Fishermen" he +paints the peasant and the artisan's life, and in his "Country Roads" +he gives a picture of the good old times--replete with rich humour, +and in sharp contrast to Saltykov's sunless and trenchant etching of +the same period. Humour, the pathos of the poor, landscape--these are +his chief qualities. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY + + +With TOLSTOY and DOSTOYEVSKY, we come not only to the two great +pillars of modern Russian literature which tower above all others like +two colossal statues in the desert, but to two of the greatest figures +in the literature of the world. Russia has not given the world a +universal poet, a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Goethe, or a Molière; for +Pushkin, consummate artist and inspired poet as he was, lacks that +peculiar greatness which conquers all demarcations of frontier and +difference of language, and produces work which becomes a part of the +universal inheritance of all nations; but Russia has given us two +prose-writers whose work has done this very thing. And between them +they sum up in themselves the whole of the Russian soul, and almost +the whole of the Russian character; I say almost the whole of the +Russian _character_, because although between them they sum up all +that is greatest, deepest, and all that is weakest in the Russian +_soul_, there is perhaps one element of the Russian _character_, +which, although they understood it well enough, their genius forbade +them to possess. If you take as ingredients Peter the Great, +Dostoyevsky's Mwyshkin--the idiot, the pure fool who is wiser than the +wise--and the hero of Gogol's _Revisor_, Hlestyakov the liar and +wind-bag, you can, I think, out of these elements, reconstitute any +Russian who has ever lived. That is to say, you will find that every +single Russian is compounded either of one or more of these elements. + +For instance, mix Peter the Great with a sufficient dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Boris Godunov and Bakunin; leave the Peter the +Great element unmixed, and you get Bazarov, and many of Gorky's +heroes; mix it slightly with Hlestyakov, and you get Lermontov; let +the Hlestyakov element predominate, and you get Griboyedov's +Molchalin; let the Mwyshkin element predominate, with a dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Father Gapon; let it predominate without the +dose of Hlestyakov, and you get Oblomov; mix it with a dose of Peter +the Great, you get Herzen, Chatsky; and so on. Mix all the elements +equally, and you get Onegin, the average man. I do not mean that there +are necessarily all these elements in every Russian, but that you will +meet with no Russian in whom there is not to be found either one or +more than one of them. + +Now, in Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element dominates, with a dose of +Mwyshkin, and a vast but unsuccessful aspiration towards the complete +characteristics of Mwyshkin; while in Dostoyevsky the Mwyshkin +predominates, blent with a fiery streak of Peter the Great; but in +neither of them is there a touch of Hlestyakov. In Russia, it +constantly happens that a man in any class, be he a soldier, sailor, +tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, plough-boy, or thief, will +suddenly leave his profession and avocation and set out on the search +for God and for truth. These men are called _Bogoiskateli_, Seekers +after God. The one fact that the whole world knows about Tolstoy is +that, in the midst of his great and glorious artistic career, he +suddenly abjured literature and art, denounced worldly possessions, +and said that truth was to be found in working like a peasant, and +thus created a sect of Tolstoyists. The world then blamed him for +inconsistency because he went on writing, and lived as before, with +his family and in his own home. But in reality there was no +inconsistency, because there was in reality no break. Tolstoy had been +a _Bogoiskatel_, a seeker after truth and God all his life; it was +only the manner of his search which had changed; but the quest itself +remained unchanged; he was unable, owing to family ties, to push his +premises to their logical conclusion until just before his death; but +push them to their logical conclusion he did at the last, and he died, +as we know, on the road to a monastery. + +Tolstoy's manner of search was extraordinary, extraordinary because he +was provided for it with the eyes of an eagle which enabled him to see +through everything; and, as he took nothing for granted from the day +he began his career until the day he died, he was always subjecting +people, objects, ideas, to the searchlight of his vision, and testing +them to see whether they were true or not; moreover, he was gifted +with the power of describing what he saw during this long journey +through the world of fact and the world of ideas, whether it were the +general or the particular, the mass or the detail, the vision, the +panorama, the crowd, the portrait or the miniature, with the strong +simplicity of a Homer, and the colour and reality of a Velasquez. This +made him one of the world's greatest writers, and the world's greatest +artist in narrative fiction. Another peculiarity of his search was +that he pursued it with eagle eyes, but with blinkers. + +In 1877 Dostoyevsky wrote: "In spite of his colossal artistic talent, +Tolstoy is one of those Russian minds which only see that which is +right before their eyes, and thus press towards that point. They have +not the power of turning their necks to the right or to the left to +see what lies on one side; to do this, they would have to turn with +their whole bodies. If they do turn, they will quite probably maintain +the exact opposite of what they have been hitherto professing; for +they are rigidly honest." It is this search carried on by eyes of +unsurpassed penetration between blinkers, by a man who every now and +then did turn his whole body, which accounts for the many apparent +changes and contradictions of Tolstoy's career. + +Another source of contradiction was that by temperament the Lucifer +element predominated in him, and the ideal he was for ever seeking was +the humility of Mwyshkin, the pure fool, an ideal which he could not +reach, because he could not sufficiently humble himself. Thus when +death overtook him he was engaged on his last and his greatest voyage +of discovery; and there is something solemn and great about his having +met with death at a small railway station. + +Tolstoy's works are a long record of this search, and of the memories +and experiences which he gathered on the way. There is not a detail, +not a phase of feeling, not a shade or mood in his spiritual life that +he has not told us of in his works. In his _Childhood, Boyhood and +Youth_, he re-creates his own childhood, boyhood and youth, not always +exactly as it happened in reality; there is _Dichtung_ as well as +_Wahrheit_; but the _Dichtung_ is as true as the _Wahrheit_, because +his aim was to recreate the impressions he had received from his early +surroundings. Moreover, the searchlight of his eyes even then fell +mercilessly upon everything that was unreal, sham and conventional. + +As soon as he had finished with his youth, he turned to the life of a +grown-up man in _The Morning of a Landowner_, and told how he tried to +live a landowner's life, and how nothing but dissatisfaction came of +it. He escapes to the Caucasus, and seeks regeneration, and the result +of the search here is a masterpiece, _The Cossacks_. He goes back to +the world, and takes part in the Crimean war; he describes what he saw +in a battery; his eagle eye lays bare the _splendeurs et misères_ of +war more truthfully perhaps than a writer on war has ever done, but +less sympathetically than Alfred de Vigny--the difference being that +Alfred de Vigny is innately modest, and that Tolstoy, as he wrote +himself, at the beginning of the war, "had no modesty." + +After the Crimean war, he plunges again into the world and travels +abroad; and on his return to Russia, he settles down at Yasnaya +Polyana and marries. The hero of his novel _Domestic Happiness_ +appears to have found his heart's desire in marriage and country life. +It was then that he wrote _War and Peace_, which he began to publish +in 1865. He always had the idea of writing a story on the Decembrist +movement, and _War and Peace_ was perhaps the preface to that +unwritten work, for it ends when that movement was beginning. In _War +and Peace_, he gave the world a modern prose epic, which did not +suffer from the drawback that spoils most historical novels, namely, +that of being obviously false, because it was founded on his own +recollection of his parents' memories. He gives us what we feel to be +the very truth; for the first time in an historical novel, instead of +saying "this is very likely true," or "what a wonderful work of +artistic reconstruction," we feel that we were ourselves there; that +we knew those people; that they are a part of our very own past. He +paints a whole generation of people; and in Pierre Bezukhov, the new +landmarks of his own search are described. Among many other episodes, +there is nowhere in literature such a true and charming picture of +family life as that of the Rostovs, and nowhere a more vital and +charming personality than Natasha; a creation as living as Pushkin's +Tatiana, and alive with a reality even more convincing than Turgenev's +pictures of women, since she is alive with a different kind of life; +the difference being that while you have read in Turgenev's books +about noble and exquisite women, you are not sure whether you have +not known Natasha yourself and in your own life; you are not sure she +does not belong to the borderland of your own past in which dreams and +reality are mingled. _War and Peace_ eclipses all other historical +novels; it has all Stendhal's reality, and all Zola's power of dealing +with crowds and masses. Take, for instance, a masterpiece such as +Flaubert's _Salammbô_; it may and very likely does take away your +breath by the splendour of its language, its colour, and its art, but +you never feel that, even in a dream, you had taken part in the life +which is painted there. The only bit of unreality in _War and Peace_ +is the figure of Napoleon, to whom Tolstoy was deliberately unfair. +Another impression which Tolstoy gives us in _War and Peace_ is that +man is in reality always the same, and that changes of manners are not +more important than changes in fashions of clothes. That is why it is +not extravagant to mention _Salammbô_ in this connection. One feels +that, if Tolstoy had written a novel about ancient Rome, we should +have known a score of patricians, senators, scribblers, clients, +parasites, matrons, courtesans, better even than we know Cicero from +his letters; we should not only feel that we _know_ Cicero, but that +we had actually known him. This very task--namely, that of +reconstituting a page out of Pagan history--was later to be attempted +by Merezhkovsky; but brilliant as his work is, he only at times and by +flashes attains to Tolstoy's power of convincing. + +_Anna Karenina_ appeared in 1875-76. And here Tolstoy, with the touch +of a Velasquez and upon a huge canvas, paints the contemporary life of +the upper classes in St. Petersburg and in the country. Levin, the +hero, is himself. Here, again, the truth to nature and the reality is +so intense and vivid that a reader unacquainted with Russia will in +reading the book probably not think of Russia at all, but will imagine +the story has taken place in his own country, whatever that may be. He +shows you everything from the inside, as well as from the outside. You +feel, in the picture of the races, what Anna is feeling in looking on, +and what Vronsky is feeling in riding. And with what reality, what +incomparable skill the gradual dawn of Anna's love for Vronsky is +described; how painfully real is her pompous and excellent husband; +and how every incident in her love affair, her visit to her child, her +appearance at the opera, when, after having left her husband, she +defies the world, her gradual growing irritability, down to the final +catastrophe, bears on it the stamp of something which must have +happened just in that very way and no other. + +But, as far as Tolstoy's own development is concerned, Levin is the +most interesting figure in the book. This character is another +landmark in Tolstoy's search after truth; he is constantly putting +accepted ideas to the test; he is haunted by the fear of sudden death, +not the physical fear of death in itself, but the fear that in the +face of death the whole of life may be meaningless; a peasant opens a +new door for him and furnishes him with a solution to the problem--to +live for one's soul: life no longer seems meaningless. + +Thus Levin marks the stage in Tolstoy's evolution of his abandoning +materialism and of seeking for the truth in the Church. But the Church +does not satisfy him. He rejects its dogmas and its ritual; he turns +to the Gospel, but far from accepting it, he revises it. He comes to +the conclusion that Christianity as it has been taught is mere +madness, and that the Church is a superfluous anachronism. Thus +another change comes about, which is generally regarded as _the_ +change cutting Tolstoy's life in half; in reality it is only a fresh +right-about-turn of a man who is searching for truth in blinkers. In +his _Confession_, he says: "I grew to hate myself; and now all has +become clear." He came to believe that property was the source of all +evil; he desired literally to give up all he had. This he was not able +to do. It was not that he shrank from the sacrifice at the last; but +that circumstances and family ties were too strong for him. But his +final flight from home in the last days of his life shows that the +desire had never left him. + +Art was also subjected to his new standards and found wanting, both in +his own work and in that of others. Shakespeare and Beethoven were +summarily disposed of; his own masterpieces he pronounced to be +worthless. This more than anything shows the pride of the man. He +could admire no one, not even himself. He scorned the gifts which were +given him, and the greatest gifts of the greatest men. But this +landmark of Tolstoy's evolution, his turning his back on the Church, +and on his work, is a landmark in Russian history as well as in +Russian art. For far less than this Russian thinkers and writers of +high position had been imprisoned and exiled. Nobody dared to touch +Tolstoy. He fearlessly attacked all constituted authority, both +spiritual and temporal, in an epoch of reaction, and such was his +prestige that official Russia raised no finger. His authority was too +great, and this is perhaps the first great victory of the liberty of +individual thought over official tyranny in Russia. There had been +martyrs in plenty before, but no conquerors. + +After _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy, who gave up literature for a time, but +for a time only, nevertheless continued to write; at first he only +wrote stories for children and theological and polemical pamphlets; +but in 1886 he published the terribly powerful peasant drama: _The +Powers of Darkness_. Later came the _Kreutzer Sonata_, the _Death of +Ivan Ilitch_, and _Resurrection_. Here the hero Nehludov is a lifeless +phantom of Tolstoy himself; the episodes and details have the reality +of his early work, so has Maslova, the heroine; but in the squalor +and misery of the prisons he shows no precious balms of humanity and +love, as Dostoyevsky did; and the book has neither the sweep and epic +swing of _War and Peace_, nor the satisfying completeness of _Anna +Karenina_. Since his death, some posthumous works have been published, +among them a novel, and a play: _The Living Corpse_. He died, as he +had lived, still searching, and perhaps at the end he found the object +of his quest. + +Tolstoy, even more than Pushkin, was rooted to the soil; all that is +not of the soil--anything mystic or supernatural--was totally alien to +him. He was the oak which could not bend; and being, as he was, the +king of realistic fiction, an unsurpassed painter of pictures, +portraits, men and things, a penetrating analyst of the human heart, a +genius cast in a colossal mould, his work, both by its substance and +its artistic power, exercised an influence beyond his own country, +affected all European nations, and gives him a place among the great +creators of the world. Tolstoy was not a rebel but a heretic, a +heretic not only to religion and the Church, but in philosophy, +opinions, art, and even in food; but what the world will remember of +him are not his heretical theories but his faithful practice, which is +orthodox in its obedience to the highest canons, orthodox as Homer and +Shakespeare are orthodox, and like theirs, one of the greatest earthly +examples of the normal and the sane. + +To say that DOSTOYEVSKY is the antithesis to Tolstoy, and the second +great pillar of Russian prose literature, will surprise nobody now. +Had one been writing ten years ago, the expression of such an opinion +would have met with an incredulous smile amongst the majority of +English readers of Russian literature, for Dostoyevsky was practically +unknown save for his _Crime and Punishment_, and to have compared him +with Turgenev would have seemed sacrilegious. Now when Dostoyevsky is +one of the shibboleths of our _intelligentsia_, one can boldly say, +without fear of being misunderstood, that, as a creator and a force in +literature, Dostoyevsky is in another plane than that of Turgenev, and +as far greater than him as Leonardo da Vinci is greater than Vandyke, +or as Wagner is greater than Gounod, while some Russians consider him +even infinitely greater than Tolstoy. Let us say he is his equal and +complement. He is in any case, in almost every respect, his +antithesis. Tolstoy was the incarnation of health, and is above all +things and pre-eminently the painter of the sane and the earthly. +Dostoyevsky was an epileptic, the painter of the abnormal, of +criminals, madmen, degenerates, mystics. Tolstoy led an even, +uneventful life, spending the greater part of it in his own country +house, in the midst of a large family. Dostoyevsky was condemned to +death, served a sentence of four years' hard labour in a convict +settlement in Siberia, and besides this spent six years in exile; when +he returned and started a newspaper, it was prohibited by the +Censorship; a second newspaper which he started came to grief; he +underwent financial ruin; his first wife, his brother, and his best +friend died; he was driven abroad by debt, harassed by the authorities +on the one hand, and attacked by the liberals on the other; abused and +misunderstood, almost starving and never well, working under +overwhelming difficulties, always pressed for time, and ill requited +for his toil. That was Dostoyevsky's life. + +Tolstoy was a heretic; at first a materialist, and then a seeker after +a religion of his own; Dostoyevsky was a practising believer, a +vehement apostle of orthodoxy, and died fortified by the Sacraments of +the Church. Tolstoy with his broad unreligious opinions was +narrow-minded. Dostoyevsky with his definite religious opinions was +the most broad-minded man who ever lived. Tolstoy hated the +supernatural, and was alien to all mysticism. Dostoyevsky seems to get +nearer to the unknown, to what lies beyond the flesh, than any other +writer. In Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element of the Russian +character predominated; in Dostoyevsky that of Mwyshkin, the pure +fool. Tolstoy could never submit and humble himself. Submission and +humility and resignation are the keynotes and mainsprings of +Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy despised art, and paid no homage to any of the +great names of literature; and this was not only after the so-called +change. As early as 1862, he said that Pushkin and Beethoven could not +please because of their absolute beauty. Dostoyevsky was catholic and +cosmopolitan, and admired the literature of foreign countries--Racine +as well as Shakespeare, Corneille as well as Schiller. The essence of +Tolstoy is a magnificent intolerance. The essence of Dostoyevsky is +sweet reasonableness. Tolstoy dreamed of giving up all he had to the +poor, and of living like a peasant; Dostoyevsky had to share the hard +labour of the lowest class of criminals. Tolstoy theorized on the +distribution of food; but Dostoyevsky was fed like a beggar. Tolstoy +wrote in affluence and at leisure, and re-wrote his books; Dostoyevsky +worked like a literary hack for his daily bread, ever pressed for time +and ever in crying need of money. + +These contrasts are not made in disparagement of Tolstoy, but merely +to point out the difference between the two men and between their +circumstances. Tolstoy wrote about himself from the beginning of his +career to the end; nearly all his work is autobiographical, and he +almost always depicts himself in all his books. We know nothing of +Dostoyevsky from his books. He was an altruist, and he loved others +better than himself. + +Dostoyevsky's first book, _Poor Folk_, published in 1846, is a +descendant of Gogol's story _The Cloak_, and bears the influence, to a +slight extent, of Gogol. In this, the story of a minor public servant +battling against want, and finding a ray of light in corresponding +with a girl also in poor circumstances, but who ultimately marries a +rich middle-aged man, we already get all Dostoyevsky's peculiar +sweetness; what Stevenson called his "lovely goodness," his almost +intolerable pathos, his love of the disinherited and of the failures +of life. His next book, _Letters from a Dead House_, has a far more +universal interest. It is the record of his prison experiences, which +is of priceless value, not only on account of its radiant moral +beauty, its perpetual discovery of the soul of goodness in things +evil, its human fraternity, its complete absence of egotism and pose, +and its thrilling human interest, but also on account of the light it +throws on the Russian character, the Russian poor, and the Russian +peasant. + +In 1866 came _Crime and Punishment_, which brought Dostoyevsky fame. +This book, Dostoyevsky's _Macbeth_, is so well known in the French and +English translations that it hardly needs any comment. Dostoyevsky +never wrote anything more tremendous than the portrayal of the anguish +that seethes in the soul of Raskolnikov, after he has killed the old +woman, "mechanically forced," as Professor Brückner says, "into +performing the act, as if he had gone too near machinery in motion, +had been caught by a bit of his clothing and cut to pieces." And not +only is one held spellbound by every shifting hope, fear, and doubt, +and each new pang that Raskolnikov experiences, but the souls of all +the subsidiary characters in the book are revealed to us just as +clearly: the Marmeladov family, the honest Razumikhin, the police +inspector, and the atmosphere of the submerged tenth in St. +Petersburg--the steaming smell of the city in the summer. There is an +episode when Raskolnikov kneels before Sonia, the prostitute, and says +to her: "It is not before you I am kneeling, but before all the +suffering of mankind." That is what Dostoyevsky does himself in this +and in all his books; but in none of them is the suffering of all +mankind conjured up before us in more living colours, and in none of +them is his act of homage in kneeling before it more impressive. + +This book was written before the words "psychological novel" had been +invented; but how all the psychological novels which were written +years later by Bourget and others pale before this record written in +blood and tears! _Crime and Punishment_ was followed by _The Idiot_ +(1868). The idiot is Mwyshkin, who has been alluded to already, the +wise fool, an epileptic, in whom irony and arrogance and egoism have +been annihilated; and whose very simplicity causes him to pass +unscathed through a den of evil, a world of liars, scoundrels, and +thieves, none of whom can escape the influence of his radiant +personality. He is the same with every one he meets, and with his +unsuspicious sincerity he combines the intuition of utter goodness, so +that he can see through people and read their minds. In this +character, Dostoyevsky has put all his sweetness; it is not a portrait +of himself, but it is a portrait of what he would have liked to be, +and reflects all that is best in him. In contrast to Mwyshkin, +Rogozhin, the merchant, is the incarnation of undisciplined passion, +who ends by killing the thing he loves, Nastasia, also a creature of +unbridled impulses,--because he feels that he can never really and +fully possess her. The catastrophe, the description of the night after +Rogozhin has killed Nastasia, is like nothing else in literature; +lifelike in detail and immense, in the way in which it makes you +listen at the keyhole of the soul, immense with the immensity of a +great revelation. The minor characters in the book are also all of +them remarkable; one of them, the General's wife, Madame Epanchin, has +an indescribable and playful charm. + +_The Idiot_ was followed by _The Possessed_, or _Devils_, printed in +1871-72, called thus after the Devils in the Gospel of St. Luke, that +left the possessed man and went into the swine; the Devils in the book +are the hangers-on of Nihilism between 1862 and 1869. The book +anticipated the future, and in it Dostoyevsky created characters who +were identically the same, and committed identically the same crimes, +as men who actually lived many years later in 1871, and later still. +The whole book turns on the exploitation by an unscrupulous, +ingenious, and iron-willed knave of the various weaknesses of a crowd +of idealist dupes and disciples. One of them is a decadent, one of +them is one of those idealists "whom any strong idea strikes all of a +sudden and annihilates his will, sometimes for ever"; one of them is a +maniac whose single idea is the production of the Superman which he +thinks will come, when it will be immaterial to a man whether he lives +or dies, and when he will be prepared to kill himself not out of fear +but in order to kill fear. That man will be God. Not the God-man, but +the Man-God. The plan of the unscrupulous leader, Peter Verkhovensky, +who was founded on Nechaev, a Nihilist of real life, is to create +disorder, and amid the disorder to seize the authority; he imagines a +central committee of which he pretends to be the representative, +organizes a small local committee, and persuades his dupes that a +network of similar small committees exist all over Russia; his aim +being to create them gradually, by persuading people in every plot of +fresh ground that they exist everywhere else. + +Thus the idea of the book was to show that the strength of Nihilism +lay, not in high dogmas and theories held by a large and +well-organized society, but in the strength of the will of one or two +men reacting on the weaker herd and exploiting the strength, the +weakness, and the one-sidedness of its ideals, a herd which was +necessarily weak owing to that very one-sidedness. In order to bind +his disciples with a permanent bond, Verkhovensky exploits the _idée +fixe_ of suicide and the superman, which is held by one of his dupes, +to induce him to commit a crime before he kills himself, and thus make +away with another member of the committee who is represented as being +a spy. Once this is done, the whole committee will be jointly +responsible, and bound to him by the ties of blood and fear. But +Verkhovensky is not the hero of the book. The hero is Stavrogin, whom +Verkhovensky regards as his trump card, because of the strength of his +character, which leads him to commit the most outrageous +extravagances, and at the same time to remain as cold as ice; but +Verkhovensky's whole design is shattered on Stavrogin's character, all +the murders already mentioned are committed, the whole scheme comes to +nothing, the conspirators are discovered, and Peter escapes abroad. + +When _Devils_ appeared in 1871, it was looked upon as a gross +exaggeration, but real life in subsequent years was to produce +characters and events of the same kind, which were more startling than +Dostoyevsky's fiction. The book is the least well-constructed of +Dostoyevsky's; the narrative is disconnected, and the events, +incidents, and characters so crowded together, that the general effect +is confused; on the other hand, it contains isolated scenes which +Dostoyevsky never surpassed; and in its strength and in its +limitations it is perhaps his most characteristic work. + +From 1873-80 Dostoyevsky went back to journalism, and wrote his _Diary +of a Writer_, in which he commented on current events. In 1880, he +united all conflicting and hostile parties and shades of public +opinion, by the speech he made at the unveiling of Pushkin's memorial, +in one common bond of enthusiasm. At the end of the seventies, he +returned to a work already begun, _The Brothers Karamazov_, which, +although it remains the longest of his books, was never finished. It +is the story of three brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, and Alyosha; their +father is a cynical sensualist. The eldest brother is an +undisciplined, passionate character, who expiates his passions by +suffering; the second brother is a materialist, the tragedy of whose +inner life forms a greater part of the book; the third brother, +Alyosha, is a lover of humanity, and a believer in God and man. He +seeks a monastery, but his spiritual father sends him out into the +world, to live and to suffer. He is to go through the furnace of the +world and experience many trials; for the microbe of lust that is in +his family is dormant in him also. The book was called the _History of +a Great Sinner_, and the sinner was to be Alyosha. But Dostoyevsky +died before this part of the subject is even approached. + +He died in January 1881; the crowds of men and women of all sorts and +conditions of life that attended his funeral, and the extent and the +sincerity of the grief manifested, gave it an almost mythical +greatness. The people gave him a funeral such as few kings or heroes +have ever had. Without fear of controversy or contradiction one can +now say that Dostoyevsky's place in Russian literature is at the top, +equal and in the opinion of some superior to that of Tolstoy in +greatness. He is also one of the greatest writers the world has ever +produced, not because, like Tolstoy, he saw life steadily and saw it +whole, and painted it with the supreme and easy art of a Velasquez; +nor because, like Turgenev, he wove exquisite pictures into musical +words. Dostoyevsky was not an artist; his work is shapeless; his books +are like quarries where granite and dross, gold and ore are mingled. +He paid no attention to style, and yet so strong and vital is his +spoken word that when the Moscow Art Theatre put some scenes in _The +Brothers Karamazov_ and _Devils_ on the stage, they found they could +not alter one single syllable; and sometimes his words have a power +beyond that of words, a power that only music has. There are pages +where Dostoyevsky expresses the anguish of the soul in the same manner +as Wagner expressed the delirium of dying Tristram. I should indeed +put the matter the other way round, and say that in the last act of +Tristram, Wagner is as great as Dostoyevsky. But Dostoyevsky is great +because of the divine message he gives, not didactically, not by +sermons, but by the goodness that emanates, like a precious balm, from +the characters he creates; because more than any other books in the +world his books reflect not only the teaching and the charity, but the +accent and the divine aura of love that is in the Gospels. + +"I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, +conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that +addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave, +and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!" These words, spoken by +Charlotte Brontë's _Jane Eyre_, express what Dostoyevsky's books do. +His spirit addresses our spirit. "Be no man's judge; humble love is a +terrible power which effects more than violence. Only active love can +bring out faith. Love men, and do not be afraid of their sins; love +man in his sin; love all the creatures of God, and pray God to make +you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the birds." This was +Father Zosima's advice to Alyosha. And that is the gist of +Dostoyevsky's message to mankind. "Life," Father Zosima also says to +Alyosha, "will bring you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on +account of them, and you will bless life and cause others to bless +it." Here we have the whole secret of Dostoyevsky's greatness. He +blessed life, and he caused others to bless it. + +It is objected that his characters are abnormal; that he deals with +the diseased, with epileptics, neurasthenics, criminals, sensualists, +madmen; but it is just this very fact which gives so much strength and +value to the blessing he gave to life; it is owing to this fact that +he causes others to bless life; because he was cast in the nethermost +circle of life's inferno; he was thrown together with the refuse of +humanity, with the worst of men and with the most unfortunate; he saw +the human soul on the rack, and he saw the vilest diseases that +afflict the human soul; he faced the evil without fear or blinkers; +and there, in the inferno, in the dust and ashes, he recognized the +print of divine footsteps and the fragrance of goodness; he cried from +the abyss: "Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just!" and he blessed life. +It is true that his characters are taken almost entirely from the +_Despised and Rejected_, as one of his books was called, and often +from the ranks of the abnormal; but when a great writer wishes to +reveal the greatest adventures and the deepest experiences which the +soul of man can undergo, it is in vain for him to take the normal +type; it has no adventures. The adventures of the soul of Fortinbras +would be of no help to mankind; but the adventures of Hamlet are of +help to mankind, and the adventures of Don Quixote; and neither Don +Quixote nor Hamlet are normal types. + +Dostoyevsky wrote the tragedy of life and of the soul, and to do this +he chose circumstances as terrific as those which unhinged the reason +of King Lear, shook that of Hamlet, and made Œdipus blind himself. +His books resemble Greek tragedies by the magnitude of the spiritual +adventures they set forth; they are unlike Greek Tragedies in the +Christian charity and the faith and the hope which goes out of them; +they inspire the reader with courage, never with despair, although +Dostoyevsky, face to face with the last extremities of evil, never +seeks to hide it or to shun it, but merely to search for the soul of +goodness in it. He did not search in vain, and just as, when he was on +his way to Siberia, a conversation he had with a fellow-prisoner +inspired that fellow-prisoner with the feeling that he could go on +living and even face penal servitude, so do Dostoyevsky's books come +to mankind as a message of hope from a radiant country. That is what +constitutes his peculiar greatness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY + + +The fifties, the sixties, and the seventies were, all over Europe, the +epoch of Parnassian poetry. In England, Tennyson was pouring out his +"fervent and faultless melodies," Matthew Arnold was playing his +plaintive harp, and the Pre-Raphaelites were weaving their tapestried +dreams; in France, Gautier was carving his cameos, Banville's +Harlequins and Columbines were dancing on a Watteau-like stage in the +silver twilight of Corot, Baudelaire was at work on his sombre bronze, +Sully-Prudhomme twanged his ivory lyre, and Leconte de Lisle was +issuing his golden coinage. It was, in poetry, the epoch of art for +art's sake. + +Russian poetry did not escape the universal tendency; but in Russia +everything was conspiring to put poetry, and especially that kind of +poetry, in the shade. In the first place, events of great magnitude +were happening--the wide reforms, the emancipation of the serfs, the +growth of Nihilism, which was the product of the disillusion at the +result of the reforms: in the second place, criticism under the +influence of Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, and Dobrolyubov was entirely +realistic and positivist, preaching not art for life's sake only, but +the absolute futility of poetry; and, in the third place, work of the +supremest kind was being done in narrative fiction; in the fourth +place, no prophet-poet was forthcoming whose genius was great enough +to voice national aspirations. All this tended to put poetry in the +shade, especially as such poets as did exist were, with one notable +exception, Parnassians, whose talent dwelt aloof from the turbid +stream of life, and who sought to express the adventures of their +souls, which were emotional and artistic, either in dreamy music or in +exquisite shapes and colours. This neglect of verse lasted right up +until the end of the seventies. When, however, in the eighties, the +wave of political crisis reached its climax and, after the +assassination of Alexander II, rolled back into a sea of stagnant +reaction, the poets, who had been hitherto neglected, and quietly +singing all the while, were discovered once more, and the shares in +poetry continued to rise as time went on; thus the poets of the +sixties reaped their due meed of appreciation. + +A proof of how widespread and deep this neglect was is that TYUTCHEV, +whose work attracted no attention whatever until 1854, and met with no +wide appreciation until a great deal later, was four years younger +than Pushkin, and a man of thirty when Goethe died. He went on living +until 1873, and can be called the first of the Parnassians. +Politically, he was a Slavophile, and sang the "resignation" and +"long-suffering" of the Russian people, which he preferred to the +stiff-neckedness of the West. But the value of his work lies less in +his Slavophile aspirations than in its depth of thought and lyrical +feeling, in the contrast between the gloomy forebodings of his +imagination and the sunlike images he gives of nature. His verse is +like a spring day, dark with ominous thunderclouds, out of which a +rainbow and a shaft of sunlight fall on a dewy orchard and light it +with a silvery smile. His verse is, on the one hand, full of +foreboding and terror at the fate of man and the shadow of +nothingness, and, on the other hand, it twitters like a bird over the +freshness and sunshine of spring. He sings the spring again and again, +and no Russian poet has ever sung the glory, the mystery, the wonder, +and the terror of night as he has done; his whole work is compounded +of glowing pictures of nature and a world of longing and of +unutterable dreams. + +The dreamy dominion of the Parnassian age, on whose threshold Tyutchev +stood, was to be disturbed by the notes of a harsher and stronger +music. + +NEKRASOV (1821-77), Russia's "sternest painter," and certainly one of +her best, drew his inspiration direct from life, and sang the +sufferings, the joys, and the life of the people. He is a Russian +Crabbe; nature and man are his subjects, but nature as the friend and +foe of man, as a factor, the most important factor in man's life, and +not as an ideal storehouse from which a Shelley can draw forms more +real than living man, nurslings of immortality, or a Wordsworth reap +harvests of the inward eye. He called his muse the "Muse of Vengeance +and of Grief." He is an uncompromising realist, like Crabbe, and +idealizes nothing in his pictures of the peasant's life. Like Crabbe, +he has a deep note of pathos, and a keen but not so minute an eye for +landscape. + +On the other hand, he at times attains to imaginative sublimity in his +descriptions, as, for instance, in his poem called _The Red-nosed +Frost_, where King Frost approaches a peasant widow who is at work in +the winter forest, and freezes her to death. As Daria is gradually +freezing to death, the frost comes to her like a warrior; and his +semblance and attributes are drawn in a series of splendid stanzas. He +sings to her of his riches that no profusion can decrease, and of his +kingdom of silver and diamonds and pearls: then, as she freezes, she +dreams of a hot summer's day, and of the rye harvest and of the +familiar songs-- + + "Away with the song she is soaring, + She surrenders herself to its stream, + In the world there is no such sweet singing + As that which we hear in a dream." + +His longest and most ambitious work was a kind of popular epic, _Who +is Happy in Russia?_ written in short lines which have the popular +ring and accent. Some peasants start on a pilgrimage to find out who +is happy in Russia. They fly on a magic carpet, and interview +representatives of the different classes of society, the pope, the +landowner, the peasant woman, each new interview producing a whole +series of stories, sometimes idyllic and sometimes tragic, and all +showing their genius as intimate pictures of various phases of Russian +life. Here, again, the analogy with Crabbe suggests itself, for +Nekrasov's tales, taking into consideration the difference between the +two countries, have a marked affinity, both in their subject matter, +their variety, their stern realism, their pathos, their bitterness, +and their observation of nature, with Crabbe's stories in verse. + +Two of Nekrasov's long poems tell the story in the form of +reminiscence,--and here again the naturalness and appropriateness of +the diction is perfect,--of the Russian women, Princess Volkonsky and +Princess Trubetzkoy, who followed their husbands, condemned to penal +servitude for taking part in the Decembrist rising, to Siberia. Here, +again, Nekrasov strikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, all the +more poignant from the absolute simplicity with which the tales are +told. Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of the time and has only +one rival, whom we shall describe presently. + +The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET +(1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write +about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic, +and all three remained aloof from political or social questions. + +Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old +ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and +his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an +exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy. + +The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete +plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and +impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his +verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as +delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between +words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo. + + "The world in shadow slipped away + And, like a silent dream took flight, + Like Adam, I in Eden lay + Alone, and face to face with night." + +He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the +dawn-- + + "A whisper, a breath, a shiver, + The trills of the nightingale, + A silver light and a quiver + And a sunlit trail. + The glimmer of night and the shadows of night + In an endless race, + Enchanted changes, flight after flight, + On the loved one's face. + The blood of the roses tingling + In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey, + And tears and kisses commingling-- + The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!" + +Polonsky's verse, in contrast to Fet's gentle epicurean temperament, +his delicate half-tones and illusive whispers, is made of sterner +stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov's sculptural lines, it is +pre-eminently musical, and reflects a fine and charming personality. +His area of subjects is wide; he can write a child's poem as +transparent and simple as Hans Andersen--as in his conversation +between the sun and the moon--or call up the "glory that was Greece," +as in the poem when his "Aspasia" listens to the crowds acclaiming +Pericles, and waits in rapturous suspense for his return--an evocation +that Browning would have envied for its life and Swinburne for its +sound. + +But neither Maikov, Fet, nor Polonsky, exquisite as much of their +writing is, produced anything of the calibre of Nekrasov, even in +their own province; that is to say, they were none of them as great in +the artistic field as he was in his didactic field. Compared with him, +they are minor poets. There is one poet of this epoch who does rival +Nekrasov in another field, and that is COUNT ALEXIS TOLSTOY (1817-75), +who was also a Parnassian and remained aloof from didactic literature; +yet, under the pseudonym of Kuzma Prutkov, he wrote a satire, a +collection of platitudes, that are household words in Russia; also a +short history of Russia in consummately neat and witty satirical +verse. As well as his satires, he wrote an historical novel, _Prince +Serebryany_, and more important still, a trilogy of plays, dealing +with the most dramatic epoch of Russian history, that of Ivan the +Terrible. The trilogy, written in verse, consists of the "Death of +Ivan the Terrible," "The Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch" and "Tsar Boris." +They are all of them acting plays, form part of the current classical +repertory, and are effective, impressive and arresting when played on +the stage. + +But it is as a poet and as a lyrical poet that Alexis Tolstoy is most +widely known. Versatile with a versatility that recalls Pushkin, he +writes epical ballads on Russian, Northern, and even Scottish themes, +and dramatic poems on Don Juan, St. John Damascene, and Mary +Magdalene; and, besides these, a whole series of personal lyrics, +which are full of charm, tenderness, music and colour, harmonious in +form and transparent. No Russian poet since Pushkin has written such +tender love lyrics, and nobody has sung the Russian spring, the +Russian summer, and the Russian autumn with such tender lyricism. His +poem on the early spring, when the fern is still tightly curled, the +shepherd's note still but half heard in the morning, and the birch +trees just green, is one of the most tender, fresh, and perfect +expressions of first love, morning, spring, dew, and dawn in the +world's literature. His songs have inspired Tchaikovsky and other +composers. The strongest and highest chord he struck is in his St. +John Damascene; this contains a magnificent dirge for the dead which +can bear comparison even with the _Dies Iræ_ for majesty, solemn +pathos, and plangent rhythm. + +His pictures of landscapes have a peculiar charm. The following is an +attempt at a translation-- + + "Through the slush and the ruts of the highway, + By the side of the dam of the stream, + Where the fisherman's nets are drying, + The carriage jogs on, and I dream. + + I dream, and I look at the highway, + At the sky that is sullen and grey, + At the lake with its shelving reaches, + And the curling smoke far away. + + By the dam, with a cheerless visage + Walks a Jew, who is ragged and sere. + With a thunder of foam and of splashing, + The waters race over the weir. + + A boy over there is whistling + On a hemlock flute of his make; + And the wild ducks get up in a panic + And call as they sweep from the lake. + + And near the old mill some workmen + Are sitting upon the green ground, + With a wagon of sacks, a cart horse + Plods past with a lazy sound. + + It all seems to me so familiar, + Although I have never been here, + The roof of that house out yonder, + And the boy, and the wood, and the weir. + + And the voice of the grumbling mill-wheel, + And that rickety barn, I know, + I have been here and seen this already, + And forgotten it all long ago. + + The very same horse here was dragging + Those sacks with the very same sound, + And those very same workmen were sitting + By the rickety mill on the ground. + + And that Jew, with his beard, walked past me, + And those waters raced through the weir; + Yes, all this has happened already, + But I cannot tell when or where." + +The people also produced a poet during this epoch and gave Koltsov a +successor, in the person of NIKITIN; his themes are taken straight +from life, and he became known through his patriotic songs written +during the Crimean War; but he is most successful in his descriptions +of nature, of sunset on the fields, and dawn, and the swallow's nest +in the grumbling mill. Two other poets, whose work became well known +later, but passed absolutely unnoticed in the sixties, were +SLUCHEVSKY, a philosophical poet, whose verse, excellent in +description, suffers from clumsiness in form, and APUKHTIN, whose +collected poems and ballads, although he began to write in 1859, were +not published until 1886. Apukhtin is a Parnassian. The bulk of his +work, though perfect in form, is uninteresting; but he wrote one or +two lyrics which have a place in any Russian Golden Treasury, and his +poems are largely read now. + +In the eighties, a reaction against the anti-poetical tendency set in, +and poets began to spring up like mushrooms. Of these, the most +popular and the most remarkable is NADSON (1862-87); he died when he +was twenty-four, of consumption. Since then his verse has gone through +twenty-one editions, and 110,000 copies have been sold; ten editions +were published in his own lifetime. And there are innumerable musical +settings by various composers to his lyrics. His verse inaugurates a +new epoch in Russian poetry, the distinguishing features of which are +a great attention to form and _technique_, a Parnassian love of colour +and shape, and a deep melancholy. + +Nadson sings the melancholy of youth, the dreams and disillusions of +adolescence, and the hopelessness of the stagnant atmosphere of +reaction to which he belonged. This last fact accounted in some +measure for his extraordinary popularity. But it was by no means its +sole cause; his verse is not only exquisite but magically musical, to +an extent which makes the verse of other poets seem a stuff of coarser +clay, and his pictures of nature, of spring, of night, and especially +of night in the Riviera (with a note of passionate home-sickness), +have the aromatic, intoxicating sweetness of syringa. Verse such as +this, sensitive, ultra-delicate, morbid, nervous, and pessimistic, is +bound to have the defects of its qualities, in a marked degree; one is +soon inclined to have enough of its sultry, oppressive atmosphere, its +delicate perfume, its unrelieved gloom and its music, which is nearly +always not only in a minor key but in the same key. Nobody was more +keenly aware of this than Nadson himself, and one of his most +beautiful poems begins thus-- + + "Dear friend, I know, I know, I only know too well + That my verse is barren of all strength, and pale, and delicate, + And often just because of its debility I suffer + And often weep in secret in the silence of the night." + +And in another poem he writes his apology. He has never used verse as +a toy to chase tedium; the blessed gift of the singer has often been +to him an unbearable cross, and he has often vowed to keep silent; +but, if the wind blows, the Æolian harp must needs respond, and +streams of the hills cannot help rushing to the valley if the sun +melts the snow on the mountain tops. This apologia more than all +criticism defines his gift. His temperament is an Æolian harp, which, +whether it will or no, is sensitive to the breeze; its strings are +few, and tuned to one key; nevertheless some of the strains it has +sobbed have the stamp of permanence as well as that of ethereal magic. + +The poets that come after Nadson belong to the present day; there are +many, and they increase in number every year. The so-called "decadent" +school were influenced by Shelley, Verlaine, and the French +symbolists; but there is nothing which is decadent in the ordinary +sense of the word in their verse. Their influence may not be lasting, +but they are factors in Russian literature, and some of them, SOLOGUB, +BRUSOV, BALMONT, and IVANOV, have produced work which any school would +be glad to claim. This is also true of ALEXANDER BLOCH, one of the +most original as well as one of the most exquisite of living Russian +poets. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +With the death of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, the great epoch of Russian +literature came to an end. A period of literary as well as of +political stagnation began, which lasted until the Russo-Japanese War. +This was followed by the revolutionary movement, which, in its turn, +produced a literary as well as a political chaos, the effect of which +and of the manifold reactions it brought about are still being felt. +It was only natural, if one considers the extent and the quality of +the productions of the preceding epoch, that the soil of literary +Russia should require a rest. + +As it is, one can count the writers of prominence which the epoch of +stagnation produced on one's fingers--CHEKHOV, GARSHIN, KOROLENKO, and +at the end of the period MAXIME GORKY, and apart from them, in a +by-path of his own, MEREZHKOVSKY. Of these Chekhov and Gorky tower +above the others. Chekhov enlarged the range of Russian literature by +painting the middle-class and the _Intelligentsia_, and brought back +to Russian literature the note of humour; and Gorky broke altogether +fresh ground by painting the vagabond, the artisan, the tramp, the +thief, the flotsam and jetsam of the big town and the highway, and by +painting in a new manner. + +Gorky's work came like that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling to England, as a +revelation. Not only did his subject matter open the doors on +dominions undreamed of, but his attitude towards life and that of his +heroes towards life seemed to be different from that of all Russian +novelists before his advent; and yet the difference between him and +his forerunners is not so great as it appears at first sight. It is +true that his rough and rebellious heroes, instead of playing the +Hamlet, or of finding the solution of life in charity and humility or +submission, are partisans of the survival of the fittest with a +vengeance, the survival of the strongest fist and the sharpest knife; +yet are these new heroes really so different from the uncompromising +type that we have already seen sharing one half of the Russian stage, +right through the story of Russian literature, from Bazarov back to +Peter the Great, and on whose existence was founded the remark that +Peter the Great was one of the ingredients in the Russian character? +Put Bazarov on the road, or Lermontov, or even Peter the Great, and +you get Gorky's barefooted hero. + +Where Gorky created something absolutely new was in the surroundings +and in the manner of life which he described, and in the way he +described them; this is especially true of his treatment of nature: +for the first time in Russian prose literature, we get away from the +"orthodox" landscape of convention, and we are face to face with the +elements. We feel as if a new breath of air had entered into +literature; we feel as people accustomed to the manner in which the +poets treated nature in England in the eighteenth century must have +felt when Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Coleridge began to write. + +Chekhov worked on older lines. He descends directly from Turgenev, +although his field is a different one. He, more than any other writer +and better than any other writer, painted the epoch of stagnation, +when Russia, as a Russian once said, was playing itself to death at +_vindt_ (an older form of _Bridge_). The tone of his work is grey, and +indeed resembles, as Tolstoy said, that of a photographer, by its +objective realism as well as by its absence of high tones; yet if +Chekhov is a photographer, he is at the same time a supreme artist, an +artist in black and white, and his pessimism is counteracted by two +other factors, his sense of humour and his humanity; were it not so, +the impression of sadness one would derive from the sum of misery +which his crowded stage of merchants, students, squires, innkeepers, +waiters, schoolmasters, magistrates, popes, officials, make up between +them, would be intolerable. Some of Chekhov's most interesting work +was written for the stage, on which he also brought Scenes of Country +Life, which is the sub-title of the play _Uncle Vanya_. There are the +same grey tints, the same weary, amiable, and slack people, bankrupt +of ideals and poor in hope, whom we meet in the stories; and here, +too, behind the sordid triviality and futility, we hear the "still sad +music of humanity." But in order that the tints of Chekhov's delicate +living and breathing photographs can be effective on the stage, very +special acting is necessary, in order to convey the quality of +atmosphere which is his special gift. Fortunately he met with exactly +the right technique and the appropriate treatment at the Art Theatre +at Moscow. + +Chekhov died in 1904, soon after the Russo-Japanese War had begun. +Apart from the main stream and tradition of Russian fiction and +Russian prose, Merezhkovsky occupies a unique place, a place which +lies between criticism and imaginative historical fiction, not unlike, +in some respects--but very different in others--that which is occupied +by Walter Pater in English fiction. His best known work, at least his +best known work in Europe, is a prose trilogy, "The Death of the Gods" +(a study of Julian the apostate), "The Resurrection of the Gods" (the +story of Leonardo da Vinci), and "The Antichrist" (the story of Peter +the Great and his son Alexis), which has been translated into nearly +every European language. This trilogy is an essay in imaginative +historical reconstitution; it testifies to a real and deep culture, +and it is lit at times by flashes of imaginative inspiration which +make the scenes of the past live; it is alive with suggestive thought; +but it is not throughout convincing, there is a touch of Bulwer +Lytton as well as a touch of Goethe and Pater in it. Merezhkovsky is +perhaps more successful in his purely critical work, his books on +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Gogol, which are infinitely stimulating, +suggestive, and original, than in his historical fiction, although, +needless to say, his criticism appeals to a far narrower public. He is +in any case one of the most brilliant and interesting of Russian +modern writers, and perhaps the best known outside Russia. + +During the war, a writer of fiction made his name by a remarkable +book, namely KUPRIN, who in his novel, _The Duel_, gave a vivid and +masterly picture of the life of an officer in the line. Kuprin has +since kept the promise of his early work. At the same time, LEONID +ANDREEV came forward with short stories, plays, a description of war +(_The Red Laugh_), moralities, not uninfluenced by Maeterlinck, and a +limpid and beautiful style in which pessimism seemed to be speaking +its last word. + +In 1905 the revolutionary movement broke out, with its great hopes, +its disillusions, its period of anarchy on the one hand and +repression on the other; out of the chaos of events came a chaos of +writing rather than literature, and in its turn this produced, in +literature as well as in life, a reaction, or rather a series of +reactions, towards symbolism, æstheticism, mysticism on the one hand, +and towards materialism--not of theory but of practice--on the other. +But since these various reactions are now going on, and are vitally +affecting the present day, the revolutionary movement of 1905 seems +the right point to take leave of Russian literature. In 1905 a new era +began, and what that era will ultimately produce, it is too soon even +to hazard a guess. + +Looking back over the record of Russian literature, the first thing +which must strike us, if we think of the literature of other +countries, is its comparatively short life. There is in Russian +literature no Middle Ages, no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no +Renaissance, no _Grand Siècle_. Literature begins in the nineteenth +century. The second thing which will perhaps strike us is that, in +spite of its being the youngest of all the literatures, it seems to be +spiritually the oldest. In some respects it seems to have become +over-ripe before it reached maturity. But herein, perhaps, lies the +secret of its greatness, and this may be the value of its contribution +to the soul of mankind. It is-- + + "Old in grief and very wise in tears": + +and its chief gift to mankind is an expression, made with a +naturalness and sincerity that are matchless, and a love of reality +which is unique,--for all Russian literature, whether in prose or +verse, is rooted in reality--of that grief and that wisdom; the grief +and wisdom which come from a great heart; a heart that is large enough +to embrace the world and to drown all the sorrows therein with the +immensity of its sympathy, its fraternity, its pity, its charity, and +its love. + + + + +CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + + 1113. _The Chronicle of Nestor._ + + 1692. First play produced in Russia, Gregory. + Simeon Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted. + + 1703. The first Russian newspaper, _The Russian News_, appears. + + 1725. Death of Peter the Great. + Foundation of the Academy of Science. + + 1744. Death of Kantemir. + + 1750. Death of Tatishchev. + + 1755. University of Moscow founded. + + 1762. Accession of Catherine the Great. + + 1765. Death of Lomonosov. + + 1790. Radishchev's _Journey Through Russia_ published. + + 1796. Death of Catherine the Great. + + 1800. First edition of _The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_ + published. + + 1802. Zhukovsky translates Gray's _Elegy_. + Death of Radishchev. + + 1806. Krylov's first fables published. + + 1816. Death of Derzhavin. + _History of the Russian State_, by Karamzin, published. + + 1819. University of St. Petersburg founded. + + 1820. Pushkin's _Ruslan and Ludmila_ published. + + 1823. Griboyedov's _Misfortune of Being Clever_ circulated. + First Canto of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1825. The Decembrist Attempt. + + 1826. Rileev hanged. + Death of Karamzin. + + 1827. Pushkin's _Gypsies_ published. + + 1829. Death of Griboyedov. + Pushkin's _Poltava_ published. + + 1831. Pushkin's _Boris Godunov_ published. + Complete version of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1832. Gogol's _Evening on the Farm near the Dikanka_ published. + + 1834. Gogol's _Mirgorod_ published. + + 1835. Gogol's _Revisor_ produced on the stage. + + 1836. Chaadaev's letters published. + + 1837. Death of Pushkin. + + 1841. Death of Lermontov. + + 1842. Death of Koltsov. + Gogol's _Dead Souls_ published. + + 1844. Death of Krylov. + + 1847. Gogol's correspondence published. + Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_ published. + Death of Belinsky. + + 1849. Dostoyevsky imprisoned. + + 1856-7. Saltykov's _Government Sketches_ appear. + + 1859. Ostrovsky's _Storm_ produced. + Goncharov's _Oblomov_ published. + + 1860. Turgenev's _Fathers and Sons_ published. + + 1861. Emancipation of the Serfs. + + 1862. Pisemsky's _Troubled Sea_ published. + + 1863. Chernyshevsky's _What is to be Done?_ published. + + 1865. Leskov's _No Way Out_ published. + + 1865-1872. Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ appeared. + + 1866. Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ published. + + 1868. Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_ published. + + 1875. Death of Count Alexis Tolstoy. + + 1875-6. Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_ published. + + 1877. Death of Nekrasov. + + 1881. Death of Dostoyevsky. + + 1883. Death of Turgenev. + + 1886. Death of Ostrovsky. + + 1887. Death of Nadson. + + 1889. Death of Saltykov. + + 1900. Death of Soloviev. + Production of Chekhov's _Chaika_ (Seagull). + + 1904. Production of Chekhov's _Cherry Orchard_. + Death of Chekhov. + + 1910. Death of Tolstoy. + + + + +INDEX + + + Acton, Lord, 146 + + Ainsworth, Harrison, 82 + + Aksakov, Ivan, 154 + + ----, Serge, 154 f. + + Alexander I, 9, 30 f., 44, 124, 169 + + ---- II, 52, 153, 160, 179, 227 + + Alexis, Tsar, 23 + + Andreev, Leonid, 248 + + _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy's, 205 f. + + Apukhtin, 238 + + Arnold, Matthew, 123, 146, 226 + + Atheism and Socialism, 150 f. + + + Bakunin, 179, 180 + + Balfour, Mr. A. J., 182 + + Balmont, 242 + + Bariatinsky, Prince, 101 + + Batyushkov, 58 + + Baudelaire, 226 + + Beaconsfield, Lord, 146 + + Belinsky, 142, 150 + + _Bell, The_, Herzen edits, 151, 153, 180 + + Bloch, Alexander, 242 + + _Bogoiskateli_, 198, 199 + + Brontë, Charlotte, 222 + + ----, Emily, 46 + + Brückner, Prof., 144, 145, 147, 214 + + Brusov, 242 + + Bulgaria, 12 + + Bulgaria, liberation of, 170, 171 + + Bürger's _Leonore_ translated into Russian, 52 + + Burns, Robert, 125 + + Byron, 61 f., 66, 67, 71, 72 (footnotes), 73, 98, 119, 123, 146 + + Byzantium, Emperor of, 11 + + + Catherine I, 18 (footnote) + + ---- II, 27, 32, 33, 80, 155 + + Chaadaev, 148 + + Chekhov, 243, 244 f. + + Chernyshevsky, 180, 181, 227 + + Chesterton, Mr. G. K., 182 + + Christianity of the East, 11 + + _Chronicle of Kiev_, the, 15 f. + + _Chronicle of Nestor_, the, 15 f. + + Church, the, influence on Russian literature, 11, 21 + + Constantine, 44 + + Corot, 226 + + Crabbe, Nekrasov and, 229 f. + + Crimean War, the, 160, 202, 238 + + + Danilevsky, 180 + + Daudet, 172 + + "Decembrist" rising, the, 44, 45, 61, 92 + + Delvig, Baron, 101 + + Demetrius, 21, 67 + + Derzhavin, 29, 56 + + Diderot, 27 + + Dobrolyubov, 180, 181, 227 + + Donne, John, 97 + + Dostoyevsky, 96, 99, 109, 143, 145, 160, 161, 164, 167, 173, 180, + 192, 196 f., 200, 210 f., 220 f. + + + Eastern and Western Churches, schism of, 13, 22, 182, 183 + + Eliot, Sir Charles, 13 + + Elizabeth, Empress, 26 + + Emancipation of the serfs, the, 160, 227 + + + Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter the Great, 85 + + Fet, 232 f. + + Flaubert, 162, 204 + + French influence in Russia, 26 + + French Revolution, the, 27, 40, 159 + + + Gagarin, Prince, 150 + + Garshin, 243 + + Gautier, 226 + + German influence in Russia, 26 + + Goethe, death of, 228 + + ----, Pushkin's resemblance to, 92 f. + + Gogol, Nicholas, 126 f., 190 + + Goncharov, 143, 176 f. + + Gorky, Maxime, 164, 243, 244 f. + + Gray's _Elegy_, Russian translations of, 52, 53 + + Gregory, Protestant pastor of the Sloboda, 23 + + Griboyedov, 45 f., 126, 191 + + Grigoriev, 179, 180 + + Grigorovich, 194, 195 + + Grimm's Fairy Tales, 84 + + + Haumant, M., 168 + + Heckeren-Dantes' duel with Pushkin, 90 + + Heine, 98 + + Herzen, Alexander, 143, 150 f., 180 + + Hoffmann, 127 + + Homyakov, 154 + + Hugo, Victor, 117, 118, 172 + + + Ivan III, 20, 21, 24 + + ---- IV ("The Terrible"), 24, 67, 235 + + Ivanov, 242 + + + _Jane Eyre_ cited, 222 + + + Kantemir, Prince, 27 + + Karakozov, 153 + + Karamzin, 18, 32 f., 141 + + Katkov, 180, 182 + + Keats, 146 + + _Kidnapped_ (Stevenson's), 129 + + Kiev, destruction of, 19; + rebuilding of, 21 + + ----, the mother of Russian culture, 10 f. + + Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, 244 + + Koltsov, 124 f. + + Korolenko, 243 + + Krylov, 34 f., 176 f. + + Kuprin, 248 + + + La Fontaine, 35 f. + + Lang, Andrew, 128 + + Latin language taught in Moscow, 22 + + Le Maistre, Joseph, 148, 149 + + Leo X, 13 + + Lermontov, 102 f., 126 + + Leskov, vi, 189 f. + + Lisle, Leconte de, 226 + + Literary criticism, 141 + + Liturgical books, revision of, 22 + + Lomonosov, Michael, 26, 29 + + Luther, 13 + + Lytton, Bulwer, 248 + + + Maikov, 232 + + Maupassant, 128, 172 + + Meredith, George, 169, 172 + + Merezhkovsky, 147, 205, 243, 247 f. + + Mérimée, 83, 141 + + Mill, John Stuart, 181 + + Mickiewicz, the Pole, 87 + + Montesquieu, 27 + + Morley, John, 146 + + Moscow, 10, 19, 21 + + Moscow Art Theatre, the, v, 221, 222, 247 + + ----, European culture in, 23 + + _Moscow Journal_ founded by Karamzin, 32 + + Moscow, Pushkin's memorial at, 99, 220 + + ----, schools in, 22 + + ----, the fire of, 18 + + ----, University of, 26 + + Mozart of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Musin-Pushkin, Count. _See_ Pushkin. + + Musset, 118, 119 + + Mussorgsky, 67 + + + Nadson, 239 f. + + Napoleon, 30 f., 40, 111, 204 + + Nechaev, 218 + + Nekrasov, 229 f., 234 + + Nicholas, 44 + + Nicholas, Emperor, 160 + + Nicholas I, 103 + + Nihilism, 152, 163, 171, 173, 179, 217, 218, 227 + + Nikitin, 238 + + Norsemen in Russia, 10 + + + _Odyssey_, the, Russian translation of, 52 + + Ostrovsky, 193 f. + + + Palæologa, Sophia, 21 + + Paris revolution of 1848, the, 159 + + Parnassian poetry, the epoch of, 226 f. + + Pater, Walter, 247, 248 + + Paul, Emperor, 33 + + Peter the Great, 21, 24 f., 71, 85, 97 + + ---- ---- of Poetry, the, 95 + + Petrashevsky and his followers, 159, 160 + + Pisarev, 180, 181, 227 + + Pisemsky, 191, 193 + + Poe, E. A., 86 + + Poland, 21, 24 + + Poland, the rising in, 180 + + Poles occupy Moscow, 24 + + Polevoy, 142 + + Polezhaev, 101 + + Polonsky, 232, 233 f. + + Polotsky, Simeon, 22 f. + + Preobrazhenskoe and its theatre, 23 + + Pre-Raphaelites, the, 226 + + Printing press, the first, 21 + + Propagandists of Western Ideas the, 148 f. + + Prutkov, Kuzma. _See_ Tolstoy, Count Alexis. + + Pugachev and the Cossack rising, 80 + + Pushkin vi, 18, 34, 41, 43, 50, 54 f., 109, 110, 123, 126, 132, + 135, 138, 143, 162, 167, 220 + + + Radishchev, 27 f. + + Rakhmaninov, 81 + + Rimsky-Korsakov, 81 + + Rodionovna, Anna, 84, 85 + + Rome, Gogol settles in, 133 + + Rousseau, 27 + + Russia and political liberty, 148 + + ----, Norsemen in, 10, 11 + + ----, Tartar invasion of, 19, 24 + + ----, the revolutionary movement of 1905, 243, 248, 249 + + Russian literature, beginnings of, 9 f. + + ---- ----, dawn of, 30 f. + + ---- ----, second renascence of, 159 + + ---- ----, the age of prose, 126 f. + + ---- ----, the second age of poetry, 226 f. + + ---- newspaper, the first, 25 + + ---- Nihilism. _See_ Nihilism. + + ---- trade centres, 10 + + Russia's national poet, 95 + + Russo-Japanese War, the, 243 + + Ryleev, 44 + + + Sainte-Beuve, 146 + + St. Petersburg, 10 + + ---- Jesuits, the, 148 + + ----, the great floods of 1834, 85 + + Saltykov, Michael, vi, 184 f., 190 f. + + Sand, George, 162 + + Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_, Russian translation of, 52 + + Schumann of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Seekers after God, 198 + + Serfs, emancipation of the, 160, 227 + + Shakespeare, Pushkin on, 65, 66 + + Shchedrin. _See_ Saltykov. + + Siberia, Dostoyevsky at, 160, 213, 225 + + ----, Radishchev at, 28 + + Slav race, the, 10 f. + + Slavonic liturgy, introduction of, 12 + + Slavophiles, the, 143, 148, 152, 154, 159, 180, 228 + + Sluchevsky, 238 + + Socialism and Atheism, 150 f. + + Society of Welfare, the, 43 + + Sologub, 242 + + Soloviev, Vladimir, 11, 93, 181 f. + + Stebnitsky. _See_ Leskov. + + Stendhal, 204 + + Stevenson, R. L., 127, 128, 129, 214 + + Strakhov, 180 + + Suffragettes, 163, 164 + + Sully-Prudhomme, 226 + + Suvorov, 30 + + Sviatoslav, 15, 16 + + + Taine, 162 + + Tartar invasion of Russia, the, 19; + the Tartar yoke thrown off, 24 + + Tatishchev, 26 + + Tchaikovsky, 80, 236 + + Tennyson, Lord, 165, 166, 226 + + Thackeray, 172 + + Tolstoy, Count Alexis, 234 f. + + ----, Count Leo, 134, 161, 164, 170, 196 f., 211, 246 + + Turgenev, Ivan, 64, 161 f., 192 + + Tyutchev, 154, 228 + + + Universal church, Soloviev's views on, 182-183 + + University of Moscow, the, 26, 251 + + + Venevitinov, 101 + + Vienna, Congress of, 40, 43 + + Vigny, Alfred de, 202 + + Vinci, Leonardo da, 67 + + Virgil of Russian prose, the, 175 + + Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, 11 + + Volkonsky, Princess, 150 + + Voltaire, 27 + + Volynsky, 147 + + Vyatka, Saltykov banished to, 185 + + Vyazemsky, Prince, 141 + + + _War and Peace_, publication of, 202 f. + + Wells, Mr., 164 + + Wilson, John, 81 + + Woman's Suffrage, 182. _Cf._ Suffragettes. + + Wordsworth, 120, 123 + + + Yakovlev. _Cf._ Herzen, Alexander. + + Yazykov, 101 + + + Zhukovsky, Basil, 51 f., 83 + + Zola, 74, 204 + + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + + The + Home University + Library of Modern Knowledge + + _A Comprehensive Series of New + and Specially Written Books_ + + EDITORS: + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A. + Prof. J. 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No better little book is available."--_School World._ + +32. _INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE_ + +By J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, +Aberdeen University. "Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is +well known; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods +of science and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and +practical life."--_Aberdeen Journal._ + +36. _CLIMATE AND WEATHER_ + +By Prof. H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the +Royal Meteorological Society. (With Diagrams.) "The author has +succeeded in presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner the +causes of the movements of the atmosphere and of the more stable +winds."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +41. _ANTHROPOLOGY_ + +By R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford +University. "An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child +could understand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction +'to a frazzle.'"--_Morning Leader._ + +44. _THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY_ + +By Prof. J. G. MCKENDRICK, M.D. "Upon every page of it is stamped the +impress of a creative imagination."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +46. _MATTER AND ENERGY_ + +By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. "Prof. Soddy has successfully accomplished +the very difficult task of making physics of absorbing interest on +popular lines."--_Nature._ + +49. _PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR_ + +By Prof. W. MCDOUGALL, F.R.S., M.B. "A happy example of the +non-technical handling of an unwieldy science, suggesting rather than +dogmatising. It should whet appetites for deeper study."--_Christian +World._ + +53. _THE MAKING OF THE EARTH_ + +By Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.) "A +fascinating little volume.... Among the many good things contained in +the series this takes a high place."--_The Athenæum._ + +57. _THE HUMAN BODY_ + +By A. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., Conservator of Museum and Hunterian +Professor, Royal College of Surgeons. (Illustrated.) "It literally +makes the 'dry bones' to live. It will certainly take a high place +among the classics of popular science."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +58. _ELECTRICITY_ + +By GISBERT KAPP, D.Eng., Professor of Electrical Engineering in the +University of Birmingham. (Illustrated.) "It will be appreciated +greatly by learners and by the great number of amateurs who are +interested in what is one of the most fascinating of scientific +studies."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +62. _THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE_ + +By Dr BENJAMIN MOORE, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, +Liverpool. "Stimulating, learned, lucid."--_Liverpool Courier._ + +67. _CHEMISTRY_ + +By RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury +Technical College, London. Presents clearly, without the detail +demanded by the expert, the way in which chemical science has +developed, and the stage it has reached. + +72. _PLANT LIFE_ + +By Prof. J. B. FARMER, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Illustrated.) "Professor Farmer +has contrived to convey all the most vital facts of plant physiology, +and also to present a good many of the chief problems which confront +investigators to-day in the realms of morphology and of +heredity."--_Morning Post._ + +78. _THE OCEAN_ + +A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By Sir JOHN MURRAY, +K.C.B. F.R.S. (Colour plates and other illustrations.) + +79. _NERVES_ + +By Prof. D. FRASER HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc. (Illustrated.) A description, +in non-technical language, of the nervous system, its intricate +mechanism and the strange phenomena of energy and fatigue, with some +practical reflections. + +86. _SEX_ + +By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, LL.D. (Illus.) + +88. _THE GROWTH OF EUROPE_ + +By Prof. GRENVILLE COLE, (Illus.) + + +_Philosophy and Religion_ + +15. _MOHAMMEDANISM_ + +By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt. "This generous shilling's +worth of wisdom.... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible +tractate by an illuminative professor."--_Daily Mail._ + +40. _THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY_ + +By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. "A book that the 'man in the +street' will recognise at once to be a boon.... Consistently lucid and +non-technical throughout."--_Christian World._ + +47. _BUDDHISM_ + +By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. "The author presents very attractively as +well as very learnedly the philosophy of Buddhism."--_Daily News._ + +50. _NONCONFORMITY: Its ORIGIN and PROGRESS_ + +By Principal W. B. SELBIE, M.A. "The historical part is brilliant in +its insight, clarity, and proportion."--_Christian World._ + +54. _ETHICS_ + +By G. E. MOORE, M.A., Lecturer in Moral Science in Cambridge +University. "A very lucid though closely reasoned outline of the logic +of good conduct."--_Christian World._ + +56. _THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. B. W. BACON, LL.D., D.D. "Professor Bacon has boldly, and +wisely, taken his own line, and has produced, as a result, an +extraordinarily vivid, stimulating, and lucid book."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +60. _MISSIONS: THEIR RISE and DEVELOPMENT_ + +By Mrs CREIGHTON. "Very interestingly done.... Its style is simple, +direct, unhackneyed, and should find appreciation where a more +fervently pious style of writing repels."--_Methodist Recorder._ + +68. _COMPARATIVE RELIGION_ + +By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt., Principal of Manchester +College, Oxford. "Puts into the reader's hand a wealth of learning and +independent thought."--_Christian World._ + +74. _A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT_ + +By J. B. BURY, Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at +Cambridge. "A little masterpiece, which every thinking man will +enjoy."--_The Observer._ + +84. _LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. GEORGE MOORE, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard. A detailed examination +of the books of the Old Testament in the light of the most recent +research. + +90. _THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_ + +By Canon E. W. WATSON, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at +Oxford. + +94. _RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS_ + +By Canon R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt. + + +_Social Science_ + +1. _PARLIAMENT_ + +Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT, +G.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The best book on the +history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's +'Constitution.'"--_Yorkshire Post._ + +5. _THE STOCK EXCHANGE_ + +By F. W. HIRST, Editor of "The Economist." "To an unfinancial mind +must be a revelation.... The book is as clear, vigorous, and sane as +Bagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no higher +compliment."--_Morning Leader._ + +6. _IRISH NATIONALITY_ + +By Mrs J. R. GREEN. "As glowing as it is learned. No book could be +more timely."--_Daily News._ + +10. _THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT_ + +By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. "Admirably adapted for the purpose of +exposition."--_The Times._ + +11. _CONSERVATISM_ + +By LORD HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P. "One of those great little books which +seldom appear more than once in a generation."--_Morning Post._ + +16. _THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH_ + +By J. A. HOBSON, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among +living economists.... Original, reasonable, and illuminating."--_The +Nation._ + +21. _LIBERALISM_ + +By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of +London. "A book of rare quality.... We have nothing but praise for the +rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles +which form a large part of this book."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +24. _THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY_ + +By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the +University of Leeds. "A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read with +profit by all interested in the present state of unrest."--_Aberdeen +Journal._ + +26. _AGRICULTURE_ + +By Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S. "It makes the results of laboratory work +at the University accessible to the practical farmer."--_Athenæum._ + +30. _ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW_ + +By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at +Oxford. "Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles +underlying the rules of English Law."--_Scots Law Times._ + +38. _THE SCHOOL: An Introduction to the Study of Education._ + +By J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester +University. "An amazingly comprehensive volume.... It is a remarkable +performance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well +as its inclusiveness of subject-matter."--_Morning Post._ + +59. _ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY_ + +By S. J. CHAPMAN, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester +University. "Its importance is not to be measured by its price. +Probably the best recent critical exposition of the analytical method +in economic science."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +69. _THE NEWSPAPER_ + +By G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A. (Illustrated.) The best account extant of +the organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad. + +77. _SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE_ + +By H. N. BRAILSFORD, M.A. "Mr Brailsford sketches vividly the +influence of the French Revolution on Shelley's and Godwin's England; +and the charm and strength of his style make his book an authentic +contribution to literature."--_The Bookman._ + +80. _CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING_ + +By ANEURIN WILLIAMS, M.A. "A judicious but enthusiastic history, with much +interesting speculation on the future of Co-partnership."--_Christian +World._ + +81. _PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE_ + +By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. Discusses the leading aspects of the British +land problem, including housing, small holdings, rural credit, and the +minimum wage. + +83. _COMMON-SENSE IN LAW_ + +By Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L. + +85. _UNEMPLOYMENT_ + +By Prof. A. C. PIGOU, M.A. + +96. _POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM BACON TO HALIFAX_ + +By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ANCIENT EGYPT._ By F. LL. GRIFFITH, M.A. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE._ By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D. + +_THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE._ By NORMAN H. BAYNES. + +_THE REFORMATION._ By President LINDSAY, LL.D. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA._ By Prof. MILYOUKOV. + +_MODERN TURKEY._ By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. + +_FRANCE OF TO-DAY._ By ALBERT THOMAS. + +_HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN._ By J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, F.B.A., + Litt.D. + +_LATIN LITERATURE._ By Prof. J. S. PHILLIMORE. + +_ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE._ By ROGER E. FRY. + +_LITERARY TASTE._ By THOMAS SECCOMBE. + +_SCANDINAVIAN HISTORY & LITERATURE._ By T. C. SNOW. + +_THE MINERAL WORLD._ By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., D.Sc. + +_A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY._ By CLEMENT WEBB, M.A. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. Mill._ By Prof. + W. L. DAVIDSON. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer to To-day._ By + ERNEST BARKER, M.A. + +_THE CRIMINAL AND THE COMMUNITY._ By Viscount ST. CYRES. + +_THE CIVIL SERVICE._ By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. + +_THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT._ By JANE ADDAMS and R. A. WOODS. + +_GREAT INVENTIONS._ By Prof. J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A. + +_TOWN PLANNING._ By RAYMOND UNWIN. + + + London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + _And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._ + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +Minor punctuation errors and printer errors (omitted or transposed +letters) have been repaired. Hyphenation has been made consistent. + +The following amendments have also been made: + + Page 22--mas amended to was--"... but in the interest of + literature, it was a misfortune ..." + + Page 192--be amended to he--"... disbelieved in + Liberals, although he believed in Liberalism; ..." + + Page 222--Brönte's amended to Brontë's--"These words, + spoken by Charlotte Brontë's _Jane Eyre_, ..." + + Page 251--Simon amended to Simeon--"1692. ... Simeon + Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted." + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 33005-0.txt or 33005-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/0/0/33005/ + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/33005-8.txt b/33005-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42b74dd --- /dev/null +++ b/33005-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6457 @@ +Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Outline of Russian Literature + +Author: Maurice Baring + +Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #33005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +A single Greek word appears in this book. It has been transliterated +and is marked with plus symbols, like +this+. + + + + + HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + + AN OUTLINE + OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + By the Hon. MAURICE BARING + + + LONDON + WILLIAMS & NORGATE + + HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK + CANADA: RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO + INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD. + + + + + HOME + UNIVERSITY + LIBRARY + + OF + + MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + _Editors:_ + + HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D. + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + + Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D. + + Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + (Columbia University, U.S.A.) + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + + AN OUTLINE OF + RUSSIAN + LITERATURE + + BY THE HON. + MAURICE BARING + + AUTHOR OF "WITH THE RUSSIANS IN + MANCHURIA," "A YEAR IN RUSSIA," "THE + RUSSIAN PEOPLE," ETC. + + LONDON + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + + + _First printed 1914/15_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The chief difficulty which Englishmen have experienced in writing +about Russia has, up till quite lately, been the prevailing ignorance +of the English public with regard to all that concerns Russian +affairs. A singularly intelligent Russian, who is connected with the +Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he feared the new interest +taken by English intellectuals with regard to Russian literature and +Russian art. He was delighted, of course, that they should be +interested in Russian affairs, but he feared their interest was in +danger of being crystallized in a false shape and directed into +erroneous channels. + +This ignorance will always remain until English people go to Russia +and learn to know the Russian people at first hand. It is not enough +to be acquainted with a certain number of Russian writers; I say a +certain number advisedly, because, although it is true that such +writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev have long been naturalized in England, +it is equally true that some of the greatest and most typical of +Russian authors have not yet been translated. + +There is in England no complete translation of Pushkin. This is much +the same as though there were in Russia no complete translation of +Shakespeare or Milton. I do not mean by this that Pushkin is as great +a poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean that he is the most +national and the most important of all Russian writers. There is no +translation of Saltykov, the greatest of Russian satirists; there is +no complete translation of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists, +while Russian criticism and philosophy, as well as almost the whole of +Russian poetry, is completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge +of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit of literature, +consists in, is still a sealed book so far as England is concerned. + + M. B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I THE ORIGINS 9 + + II THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN 30 + + III LERMONTOV 101 + + IV THE AGE OF PROSE 126 + + V THE EPOCH OF REFORM 159 + + VI TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY 196 + + VII THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY 226 + + CONCLUSION 243 + + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 251 + + INDEX 254 + + + + + _The following volumes of kindred interest have already been + published in the Library:_ + + 27. English Literature: Medival. By W. P. Ker. + + 43. English Literature: Modern. G. H. Mair. + + 35. Landmarks of French Literature. G. L. Strachey. + + 65. The Literature of Germany. Prof. J. G. Robertson, Ph.D. + + + + +AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ORIGINS + + +For the purposes of the average Russian, and still more for the +purposes of the foreigner, Russian literature begins with the +nineteenth century, that is to say with the reign of Alexander I. It +was then that the literary fruits on which Russia has since fed were +born. The seeds were sown, of course, centuries earlier; but the +history of Russian literature up to the nineteenth century is not a +history of literature, it is the history of Russia. It may well be +objected that it is difficult to separate Russian literature from +Russian history; that for the understanding of Russian literature an +understanding of Russian history is indispensable. This is probably +true; but, in a sketch of this dimension, it would be quite +impossible to give even an adequate outline of all the vicissitudes in +the life of the Russian people which have helped and hindered, +blighted and fostered the growth of the Russian tree of letters. All +that one can do is to mention some of the chief landmarks amongst the +events which directly affected the growth of Russian literature until +the dawn of that epoch when its fruits became palpable to Russia and +to the world. + +The first of these facts is the existence of a Slav race on the banks +of the Dnieper in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the growth of +cities and trade centres such as Kiev, Smolensk, and Novgorod, which +seem already to have been considerable settlements when the earliest +Russian records were written. Of these, from the point of view of +literature, Kiev was the most important. Kiev on the Dnieper was the +mother of Russian culture; Moscow and St. Petersburg became afterwards +the heirs of Kiev. + +Another factor of vital historical importance which had an indirect +effect on the history of Russian literature was the coming of the +Norsemen into Russia at the beginning of the ninth century. They came +as armed merchants from Scandinavia; they founded and organized +principalities; they took Novgorod and Kiev. The Scandinavian Viking +became the Russian _Kniaz_, and the Varanger principality of Kiev +became the kernel of the Russian State. In the course of time, the +Norsemen became merged in the Slavs, but left traces of their origin +in the Sagas, the _Byliny_, which spread from Kiev all over Russia, +and still survive in some distant governments. Hence the Norse names +Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga), Igor (Ingvar). The word Russian, _Rus_, +the origin and etymology of which are shrouded in obscurity, was first +applied to the men-at-arms who formed the higher class of society in +the early Varanger states. + +The next determining factor in the early history of Russian literature +is the Church. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, married the sister of the +Emperor of Byzantium and was baptized; henceforward Christianity began +to spread (987-8), but the momentous fact is that it was the +Christianity of the East. The pearl of the Gospels, says Soloviev, was +covered over with the dust of Byzantium, and Russia was committed to +the Greek tradition, the Greek rivalry with the West and was +consequently excluded from the civilization of the West and the great +intellectual community of which Rome was the centre. This fact is of +far-reaching and momentous importance. No less important was the +introduction of the Slavonic liturgy, which was invented by two Greek +brothers from Saloniki, in the ninth century, who tried to force their +Macedonian dialect on all the Slavs, and succeeded in the case of +Bulgaria and Servia. A century or so later it reached the Russian +Slavs. Through Bulgaria, the Russians acquired a ready-made literature +and a written language in a dialect which was partly Bulgarian and +partly Macedonian, or rather Macedonian with Bulgarian modifications. +The possession of a written language acted as a lever as far as +culture was concerned. In the eleventh century, Kiev was one of the +most enlightened cities in Europe. + +The rulers of Kiev were at this time related to the Kings of France, +Hungary, Norway, and even England. The Russian MSS. of the eleventh +century equal the best MSS. of Western Europe of the same period. The +city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, and art. Byzantine +artists went to Kiev, and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West. +There seemed at this time to be no barrier between East and West. +Nothing could be more promising than such a beginning; but the course +of Russian history was not destined to run smooth. In the middle of +the eleventh century, the foundations of a durable barrier between +Russia and Western Europe were laid. This was brought about by the +schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The schism arose out of +the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry +which ever since then has continued to exist between Rome and +Byzantium. The Slavs, whom the matter did not concern, and who were +naturally tolerant, were the victims of a racial hatred and a rivalry +wholly alien to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell upon what some +may regard as an ancient and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in +its effects and in its results, this "Querelle de Moine," as Leo X +said when he heard of Luther's action, was as momentous for the East +as the Reformation was for the West. Sir Charles Eliot says the schism +of the Churches ranks in importance with the foundation of +Constantinople and the Coronation of Charlemagne as one of the turning +points in the relations of West and East. He says that for the East it +was of doleful import, since it prevented the two great divisions from +combining against the common enemy, the Turk. It was of still more +doleful import for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, which +soon became formidable, between it and the civilizing influences of +Western Europe. + +But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the existence of this +growing barrier was not yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth +centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and "Byliny," already clearly +stamped with the democratic character and ideal that is at the root of +all Russian literature, and which offer so sharp a contrast to Greek +and Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the most popular hero is the +peasant's son, who is despised and rejected, but at the critical +moment displays superhuman strength and saves his country from the +enemy; and in return for his services is allowed to drink his fill for +three years in a tavern. + +But by far the most interesting remains of the literature of Kiev +which have reached posterity are the _Chronicle of Kiev_, often called +the _Chronicle of Nestor_, finished at the beginning of the twelfth +century, and the _Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_. The _Chronicle of +Kiev_, written in a cloister, rich in that epic detail and democratic +quality that characterize the Sagas, is the basis of all later +chronicles dealing with the early history of Russia. _The Story of the +Raid of Prince Igor_, which also belongs to the twelfth century, a +prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable memorials of the +ancient written language of Russia; but by virtue of its originality, +its historical truth, its vividness, it holds a unique place in the +literary history of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast to the +_Chanson de Roland_. + +_The Story of the Raid of Igor_ tells of an expedition made in the +year 1185 against the Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son of +Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together with other Princes. The story +tells how the Princes set out and raid the enemy's country; how, +successful at first, they are attacked by overwhelming numbers and +defeated; how Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end he escapes +and returns home. The story is written in rhythmical prose, with +passages where the rhythm has a more strongly accentuated quality as +of unrhymed verse. All the incidents recorded in the epic agree in +every respect with the narrative of the same events which is to be +found in the _Chronicle of Kiev_. It is only the manner of presenting +them which is different. What gives the epic a unique interest is that +the author must indubitably have belonged to the militia of +Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of +the events he describes with such wealth of detail, his knowledge was +at any rate first-hand and intimate. + +But the epic is as remarkable for the quality of its style as it is +for the historical interest of its subject-matter. It plunges, after a +short introduction, _in medias res_, and the narrative is concentrated +on the dramatic moments which give rise to the expression of lyrical +feeling, pathos and description--such as the battle, the defeat, the +ominous dream of the Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of Igor on +the walls of Putivl-- + + "I will fly"--she says-- + "Like the cuckoo down the Don; + I will wet my beaver sleeve + In the river Kayala; + I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince, + The wounds of his strong body." + + * * * * * + + "O Wind, little wind, + Why, Sir, + Why do you blow so fiercely? + Why, on your light wings + Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband's warriors? + Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds, + To rock the ships on the blue sea? + Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?" + +Throughout the poem, Nature plays an active part in the events. When +Igor is defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the trees are bowed +to the earth with grief. When Igor escapes, he talks with the river +Don as he fords it, and when the bandits follow him, the woodpeckers +tell them the way with their tapping. The poem, which contains much +lamentation over the quarrels of the Princes and the injury ensuing +from them to the Russian people, ends in the major key. Igor is +restored to his native soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the +Church, and the people acclaim the old Princes and then the young +Princes with song. + +A transcript of the poem, made probably at the end of the fourteenth +century, was first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, and +first published in 1800, when it made the same kind of impression as +the publication of the _Songs of Ossian_. It was not, however, open to +Dr. Johnson's objection--"Show me the originals"--for the fourteenth +century transcript of the original then existed and was inspected and +considered unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and others, but was +unfortunately burnt in the fire of Moscow.[1] The poem has been +translated into English, French and German, and has given rise to a +whole literature of commentaries. + +Up to the twelfth century, Russian life was concentrated in the +splendid and prosperous centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth century +came a crushing blow which was destined to set back the clock of +Russian culture for three hundred years, namely, the Tartar invasion. +Kiev was destroyed in 1240. After this, the South was abandoned; +Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated from the East; the +Eastern principalities centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of Kiev +transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; and by the fourteenth century +Moscow had taken the place of Kiev, and had become the kernel of +Russian life and culture. Russia under the dominion of the Tartar yoke +was intellectually stagnant. The Church alone retained its +independence, and when Constantinople fell, Moscow declared itself to +be the third and last Rome: but the independence of the Church, +although it kept national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, made +for stagnation rather than progress, and the barrier between Russia +and the culture of the West was now solid and visible. + +From the fourteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth +century, Russian literature, instead of being a panorama of various +and equally splendid periods of production, such as the Elizabethan +epoch, the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, or, as in France, +the Renaissance, the _Grand Sicle_, and the philosophic era of the +eighteenth century, has nothing to show at all to the outward world; +for during all this time the soil from which it was to grow was merely +being prepared, and gradually, with difficulty and delay, gaining +access to such influences as would make any growth possible. All that +is important, as far as literature is concerned, in this period, are +those events and factors which had the effect of making breaches in +the wall which shut Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting in +that light which was necessary for any literary plants to grow, and in +removing those obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying her +rightful heritage among the rest of her sister European nations: a +heritage which she had well employed in earlier days, and which she +had lost for a time owing to the barbarian invasion. + +The first event which made a breach in the wall was the marriage of +Ivan III, Tsar of Moscow, to Sophia Palologa, the niece of the last +of the Byzantine Emperors. She brought with her Italian architects and +other foreigners, and the work of Peter the Great, of opening a window +in Russia on to Europe, was begun. + +The first printing press was established in Moscow during the reign of +Ivan the Terrible, and the first book was printed in 1564. But +literature was still under the direct control of the Church, and the +Church looked upon all innovations and all foreign learning with the +deepest mistrust. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Peter +the Great had a strange forerunner in the shape of that enigmatic +historical personage, the false Demetrius, who claimed to be the +murdered son of Ivan the Terrible, and who, in spite of his western +ideas, Polish manners, and Latin culture, succeeded in occupying the +throne of Moscow for a year. His ideal was one of progress; but he +came too soon, and paid for his prematurity with his life. + +But it was from Kiev and Poland that the fruitful winds of +enlightenment were next to blow. Kiev, re-risen from its ruins and +recovered from its long slumber, became a centre of learning, and +possessed a college whose curriculum was modelled on the Jesuit +schools; and although Moscow looked upon Kiev with mistrust, an +imperative demand for schools arose in Moscow. In the meantime a +religious question had arisen fraught with consequences for Russia: +namely that of the revision of the Liturgical books, into the text of +which, after continuous copying and recopying, errors had crept. The +demand for revision met with great opposition, and ended ultimately in +producing a great schism in the Russian Church, which has never been +healed. But, with the exception of the Little Russians, there was no +one at Moscow capable of preparing texts for printing or of conducting +schools. The demand for schools and the decision to revise the texts +were simultaneous. The revision was carried out between 1653-7, and a +migration of Kiev scholars to Moscow came about at the same time. In +1665 Latin was taught in Moscow by SIMEON POLOTSKY, who was the first +Russian verse-maker. It is impossible to call him a poet; he wrote +what was called syllabic verse: the number of syllables taking the +place of rhythm. As a pioneer of culture, he deserves fame; but in the +interest of literature, it was a misfortune that his tradition was +followed until the middle of the eighteenth century. + +In the latter half of the seventeenth century, another influence +besides that of Kiev and Poland made itself felt. A fresh breach in +the wall came from another quarter. The German suburb in Moscow in the +seventeenth century, called the _Sloboda_, became a centre of European +culture. Here dwelt the foreign officers and soldiers, capitalists and +artisans, who brought with them the technical skill and the culture of +Western Europe. It was here that the Russian stage was born. The +Protestant pastor of the _Sloboda_, Gregory, was commanded to write a +comedy by the Tsar Alexis, in 1672, on the occasion of the birth of +the Tsarevitch. A theatre was built in the village of Preobrazhenskoe +(Transfiguration), and a play on the subject of Esther and Ahasuerus +was produced there. It was here also in 1674 that the ballet was +introduced. A regular company was formed; several plays translated +from the German were produced, and the first original play written in +Russia was _The Prodigal Son_, by Simeon Polotsky. + +Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, Russia was ready for any +one who should be able to give a decisive blow to the now crumbling +wall between herself and the West. For, by the end of the seventeenth +century, Russia, after having been centralized in Moscow by Ivan III, +and enlarged by Ivan IV, had thrown off the Tartar yoke. She had +passed through a period of intestine strife, trouble, anarchy, and +pretenders, not unlike the Wars of the Roses; she had fought Poland +throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, from her darkest hour +of anarchy, when the Poles occupied Moscow. It was then that Russia +had arisen, expelled the invaders, reasserted her nationality and her +independence, and finally emerged out of all these vicissitudes, the +great Slavonic state; while Poland, Russia's superior in culture and +civilization, had sunk into the position of a dependency. + +The man whom the epoch needed was forthcoming. His name was Peter. He +carried on the work which had been begun, but in quite an original +manner, and gave it a different character. He not only made a breach +in the wall, but he forced on his stubborn and conservative subjects +the habits and customs of the West. He revolutionized the government +and the Church, and turned the whole country upside down with his +explosive genius. He abolished the Russian Patriarchate, and crushed +the power of the Church once and for all, by making it entirely depend +on the State, as it still does. He simplified the Russian script and +the written language; he caused to be made innumerable translations of +foreign works on history, geography, and jurisprudence. He founded the +first Russian newspaper. But Peter the Great did not try to draw +Russia into an alien path; he urged his country with whip, kick, and +spur to regain its due place, which it had lost by lagging behind, on +the path it was naturally following. Peter the Great's reforms, his +manifold and superhuman activity, produced no immediate fruits in +literature. How could it? To blame him for this would be like blaming +a gardener for not producing new roses at a time when he was relaying +the garden. He was completely successful in opening a window on to +Europe, through which Western influence could stream into Russia. This +was not slow in coming about; and the foreign influence from the end +of the reign of Peter the Great onwards divided directly into two +different currents: the French and the German. The chief +representatives of the German influence in the eighteenth century were +TATISHCHEV, the founder of Russian history, and MICHAEL LOMONOSOV. + +Michael Lomonosov (1714-1765), a man with an incredibly wide +intellectual range, was a mathematician, a chemist, an astronomer, a +political economist, a historian, an electrician, a geologist, a +grammarian and a poet. The son of a peasant, after an education +acquired painfully in the greatest privation, he studied at Marburg +and Freiburg. He was the Peter the Great of the Russian language; he +scratched off the crust of foreign barbarisms, and still more by his +example than his precepts--which were pedantic--he displayed it in its +native purity, and left it as an instrument ready tuned for a great +player. He fought for knowledge, and did all he could to further the +founding of the University of Moscow, which was done in 1755 by the +Empress Elizabeth. This last event is one of the most important +landmarks in the history of Russian culture. + +The foremost representative of French influence was PRINCE KANTEMIR +(1708-44), who wrote the first Russian literary verse--satires--in the +pseudo-classic French manner, modelled on Boileau. But by far the most +abundant source of French ideas in Russia during the eighteenth +century was Catherine II, the German Princess. During Catherine's +reign, French influence was predominant in Russia. The Empress was the +friend of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Diderot came to St. +Petersburg, and the Russian military schools were flooded with French +teachers. Voltaire and Rousseau were the fashion, and cultured society +was platonically enamoured of the _Rights of Man_. Catherine herself, +besides being a great ruler and diplomatist, was a large-minded +philosopher, an elegant and witty writer. But the French Revolution +had a damping effect on all liberal enthusiasm, for the one thing an +autocrat, however enlightened, finds difficulty in understanding, is a +revolution. + +This change of point of view proved disastrous for the writer of what +is the most thoughtful book of the age: namely RADISHCHEV, an official +who wrote a book in twenty-five chapters called _A Journey from St. +Petersburg to Moscow_. Radishchev gave a simple and true account of +the effects of serfdom, a series of pictures drawn without +exaggeration, showing the appalling evils of the system, and appealing +to the conscience of the slave-owners; the book contained also a +condemnation of the Censorship. It appeared in 1790, with the +permission of the police. It was too late for the times; for in 1790 +the events in France were making all the rulers of Europe pensive. +Radishchev was accused of being a rebel, and was condemned to death. +The sentence was commuted to one of banishment to Eastern Siberia. He +was pardoned by the Emperor Paul, and reinstated by the Emperor +Alexander; but he ultimately committed suicide on being threatened in +jest with exile once more. Until 1905 it was very difficult to get a +copy of this book. Thus Radishchev stands out as the martyr of Russian +literature; the first writer to suffer for expressing opinions at the +wrong moment: opinions which had they been stated in this case twenty +years sooner would have coincided with those published by the Empress +herself. + +Catherine's reign, which left behind it many splendid results, and +had the effect of bestowing European culture on Russia, produced +hardly a single poet or prose-writer whose work can be read with +pleasure to-day, although a great importance was attached to the +writing of verse. There were poets in profusion, especially writers of +Odes, the best known of whom was DERZHAVIN (1743-1816), a brilliant +master of the pseudo-classical, in whose work, in spite of its +antiquated convention, elements of real poetical beauty are to be +found, which entitle him to be called the first Russian poet. But so +far no national literature had been produced. French was the language +of the cultured classes. Literature had become an artificial +plaything, to be played with according to French rules; but the +Russian language was waiting there, a language which possessed, as +Lomonosov said, "the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the +softness of Italian, the richness and powerful conciseness of Greek +and Latin"--waiting for some one who should have the desire and the +power to use it. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Another copy of it was found in 1864 amongst the papers of +Catherine I. Pushkin left a remarkable analysis of the epic. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN + + +The value of Russian literature, its peculiar and unique message to the +world, would not be sensibly diminished, had everything it produced +from the twelfth to the beginning of the nineteenth century perished, +with the exception of _The Raid of Prince Igor_. With the beginning of +the nineteenth century, and the accession of Alexander I, the New Age +began, and the real dawn of Russian literature broke. It was soon to be +followed by a glorious sunrise. The literature which sprang up now and +later, was profoundly affected by public events; and public events +during this epoch were intimately linked with the events which were +happening in Western Europe. It was the epoch of the Napoleonic wars, +and Russia played a vital part in that drama. Public opinion, after +enthusiasm had been roused by the deeds of Suvorov, was exasperated +and humiliated by Napoleon's subsequent victories over Russian arms. +But when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, a wave of patriotism swept +over the country, and the struggle resulted in an increased sense of +unity and nationality. Russia emerged stronger and more solid from the +struggle. As far as foreign affairs were concerned, the Emperor +Alexander I--on whom everything depended--played his national part +well, and he fitly embodied the patriotic movement of the day. At the +beginning of his reign he raised great hopes of internal reform which +were never fulfilled. He was a dreamer of dreams born out of his due +time; a pupil of La Harpe, the Swiss Jacobin, who instilled into him +aspirations towards liberty, truth and humanity, which throughout +remained his ideals, but which were too vague to lead to anything +practical or definite. His reign was thus a series of more or less +undefined and fitful struggles to put the crooked straight. He desired +to give Russia a constitution, but the attempts he made to do so proved +fruitless; and towards the end of his life he is said to have been +considerably influenced by Metternich. It is at any rate a fact that +during these years reaction once more triumphed. + +Nevertheless windows had been opened which could not be shut, and the +light which had streamed in produced some remarkable fruits. + +When Alexander I came to the throne, the immediate effect of his +accession was the ungagging of literature, and the first writer of +importance to take advantage of this new state of things was KARAMZIN +(1726-1826). In 1802 he started a new review called the _Messenger of +Europe_. This was not his _dbut_. In the reign of Catherine, Karamzin +had been brought to Moscow from the provinces, and initiated into +German and English literature. In 1789-90 he travelled abroad and +visited Switzerland, London and Paris. On his return, he published his +impressions in the shape of "Letters of a Russian Traveller" in the +_Moscow Journal_, which he founded himself. His ideals were +republican; he was an enthusiastic admirer of England and the Swiss, +and the reforms of Peter the Great. But his importance in Russian +literature lies in his being the first Russian to write unstudied, +simple and natural prose, Russian as spoken. He published two +sentimental stories in his _Journal_, but the reign of Catherine II +which now came to an end (1796) was followed by a period of +unmitigated censorship, which lasted throughout the reign of the +Emperor Paul, until Alexander I came to the throne. The new review +which Karamzin then started differed radically from all preceding +Russian reviews in that it dealt with politics and made _belles +lettres_ and criticism a permanent feature. As soon as Karamzin had +put this review on a firm basis, he devoted himself to historical +research, and the fruit of his work in this field was his _History of +the Russian Dominion_, in twelve volumes; eight published in 1816, the +rest in 1821-1826. The Russian language was, as has been said, like an +instrument waiting for a great player to play on it, and to make use +of all its possibilities. Karamzin accomplished this, in the domain of +prose. He spoke to the Russian heart by speaking Russian, pure and +unmarred by stilted and alien conventionalisms. + +The publication of Karamzin's history was epoch-making. In the first +place, the success of the work was overwhelming. It was the first +time in Russian history that a prose work had enjoyed so immense a +success. Not only were the undreamed-of riches of the Russian language +revealed to the Russians in the style, but the subject-matter came as +a surprise. Karamzin, as Pushkin put it, revealed Russia to the +Russians, just as Columbus discovered America. He made the dry bones +of history live, he wrote a great and glowing prose epic. His +influence on his contemporaries was enormous. His work received at +once the consecration of a classic, and it inspired Pushkin with his +most important if not his finest achievement in dramatic verse (_Boris +Godunov_). + +The first Russian poet of national importance belongs likewise to this +epoch, namely KRYLOV (1769[2]-1844), although he had written a great +deal for the stage in the preceding reigns, and continued to write for +a long time after the death of Alexander I. Krylov is also a Russian +classic, of quite a different kind. The son of an officer of the line, +he started by being a clerk in the provincial magistrature. Many of +his plays were produced with success, though none of them had any +durable qualities. But it was not until 1805 that he found his +vocation which was to write fables. The first of these were published +in 1806 in the _Moscow Journal_; from that time onward he went on +writing fables until he died in 1844. + +His early fables were translations from La Fontaine. They imitate La +Fontaine's free versification and they are written in iambics of +varying length. They were at once successful, and he continued to +translate fables from the French, or to adapt from sop or other +sources. But as time went on, he began to invent fables of his own; +and out of the two hundred fables which he left at his death, forty +only are inspired by La Fontaine and seven suggested by sop: the +remainder are original. Krylov's translations of La Fontaine are not +so much translations as re-creations. He takes the same subject, and +although often following the original in every single incident, he +thinks out each _motif_ for himself and re-creates it, so that his +translations have the same personal stamp and the same originality as +his own inventions. + +This is true even when the original is a masterpiece of the highest +order, such as La Fontaine's _Deux Pigeons_. You would think the +opening lines-- + + "Deux pigeons s'amoient d'amour tendre, + L'un d'eux s'ennuyant au logis + Fut assez fou pour entreprendre + Un voyage en lointain pays"-- + +were untranslatable; that nothing could be subtracted from them, and +that still less could anything be added; one ray the more, one shade +the less, you would think, would certainly impair their nameless +grace. But what does Krylov do? He re-creates the situation, expanding +La Fontaine's first line into six lines, makes it his own, and stamps +on it the impress of his personality and his nationality. Here is a +literal translation of the Russian, in rhyme. (I am not ambitiously +trying a third English version.) + + "Two pigeons lived like sons born of one mother. + Neither would eat nor drink without the other; + Where you see one, the other's surely near, + And every joy they halved and every tear; + They never noticed how the time flew by, + They sighed, but it was not a weary sigh." + +This gives the sense of Krylov's poem word for word, except for what +is the most important touch of all in the last line. The trouble is +that Krylov has written six lines which are as untranslatable as La +Fontaine's four; and he has made them as profoundly Russian as La +Fontaine's are French. Nothing could be more Russian than the last +line, which it is impossible to translate; because it should run-- + + "They were sometimes sad, but they never felt _ennui_"-- + +literally, "it was never _boring_ to them." The difficulty is that the +word for _boring_ in Russian, _skuchno_, which occurs with the utmost +felicity in contradistinction to _sad_, _grustno_, cannot be rendered +in English in its poetical simplicity. There are no six lines more +tender, musical, wistful, and subtly poetical in the whole of Russian +literature. + +Krylov's fables, like La Fontaine's, deal with animals, birds, fishes +and men; the Russian peasant plays a large part in them; often they +are satirical; nearly always they are bubbling with humour. A writer +of fables is essentially a satirist, whose aim it is sometimes to +convey pregnant sense, keen mockery or scathing criticism in a veiled +manner, sometimes merely to laugh at human foibles, or to express +wisdom in the form of wit, yet whose aim it always is to amuse. But +Krylov, though a satirist, succeeded in remaining a poet. It has been +said that his images are conventional and outworn--that is to say, he +uses the machinery of Zephyrs, Nymphs, Gods and Demigods,--and that +his conceptions are antiquated. But what splendid use he makes of this +machinery! When he speaks of a Zephyr you feel it is a Zephyr blowing, +for instance, as when the ailing cornflower whispers to the breeze. +Sometimes by the mere sound of his verse he conveys a picture, and +more than a picture, as in the Fable of the Eagle and the Mole, in the +first lines of which he makes you see and hear the eagle and his mate +sweeping to the dreaming wood, and swooping down on to the oak-tree. +Or again, in another fable, the Eagle and the Spider, he gives in a +few words the sense of height and space, as if you were looking down +from a balloon, when the eagle, soaring over the mountains of the +Caucasus, sees the end of the earth, the rivers meandering in the +plains, the woods, the meadows in all their spring glory, and the +angry Caspian Sea, darkling like the wing of a raven in the distance. +But his greatest triumph, in this respect, is the fable of the Ass and +the Nightingale, in which the verse echoes the very trills of the +nightingale, and renders the stillness and the delighted awe of the +listeners,--the lovers and the shepherd. Again a convention, if you +like, but what a felicitous convention! + +The fables are discursive like La Fontaine's, and not brief like +sop's; but like La Fontaine, Krylov has the gift of summing up a +situation, of scoring a sharp dramatic effect by the sudden evocation +of a whole picture in a terse phrase: as, for instance, in the fable +of the Peasants and the River: the peasants go to complain to the +river of the conduct of the streams which are continually overflowing +and destroying their goods, but when they reach the river, they see +half their goods floating on it. "They looked at each other, and +shaking their heads," says Krylov, "went home." The two words "went +home" in Russian (_poshli domoi_) express their hopelessness more +than pages of rhetoric. This is just one of those terse effects such +as La Fontaine delights in. + +Krylov in his youth lived much among the poor, and his language is +peculiarly native, racy, nervous, and near to the soil. It is the +language of the people and of the peasants, and it abounds in humorous +turns. He is, moreover, always dramatic, and his fables are for this +reason most effective when read aloud or recited. He is dramatic not +only in that part of the fable which is narrative, but in the +prologue, epilogue, or moral--the author's commentary; he adapts +himself to the tone of every separate fable, and becomes himself one +of the _dramatis person_. Sometimes his fables deal with political +events--the French Revolution, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the +Congress of Vienna; the education of Alexander I by La Harpe, in the +well-known fable of the Lion who sends his son to be educated by the +Eagle, of whom he consequently learns how to make nests. Sometimes +they deal with internal evils and abuses: the administration of +justice, in fables such as that of the peasant who brings a case +against the sheep and is found guilty by the fox; the censorship is +aimed at in the fable of the nightingale bidden to sing in the cat's +claws; the futility of bureaucratic regulations in the fable of the +sheep who are devoured by their superfluous watchdogs, or in that of +the sheep who are told solemnly and pompously to drag any offending +wolf before the nearest magistrate; or, again, in that of the high +dignitary who is admitted immediately into paradise because on earth +he left his work to be done by his secretaries--for being obviously a +fool, had he done his work himself, the result would have been +disastrous to all concerned. Sometimes they deal merely with human +follies and affairs, and the idiosyncrasies of men. + +Krylov's fables have that special quality which only permanent +classics possess of appealing to different generations, to people of +every age, kind and class, for different reasons; so that children can +read them simply for the story, and grown-up people for their +philosophy; their style pleases the unlettered by its simplicity, and +is the envy and despair of the artist in its supreme art. Pushkin +calls him "le plus national et le plus populaire de nos potes" (this +was true in Pushkin's day), and said his fables were read by men of +letters, merchants, men of the world, servants and children. His work +bears the stamp of ageless modernity just as _The Pilgrim's Progress_ +or Cicero's letters seem modern. It also has the peculiarly Russian +quality of unexaggerated realism. He sees life as it is, and writes +down what he sees. It is true that although his style is finished and +polished, he only at times reaches the high-water mark of what can be +done with the Russian language: his style, always idiomatic, pregnant +and natural, is sometimes heavy, and even clumsy; but then he never +sets out to be anything more than a fabulist. In this he is supremely +successful, and since at the same time he gives us snatches of +exquisite poetry, the greater the praise to him. But, when all is said +and done, Krylov has the talisman which defies criticism, baffles +analysis, and defeats time: namely, charm. His fables achieved an +instantaneous popularity, which has never diminished until to-day. + +Internal political events proved the next factor in Russian +literature; a factor out of which the so-called romantic movement was +to grow. + +During the Napoleonic wars a great many Russian officers had lived +abroad. They came back to Russia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, +teeming with new ideas and new ideals. They took life seriously, and +were called by Pushkin the Puritans of the North. Their aim was +culture and the public welfare. They were not revolutionaries; on the +contrary, they were anxious to co-operate with the Government. They +formed for their purpose a society, in imitation of the German +_Tugendbund_, called _The Society of Welfare_: its aims were +philanthropic, educational, and economic. It consisted chiefly of +officers of the Guard, and its headquarters were at St. Petersburg. +All this was known and approved of by the Emperor. But when the +Government became reactionary, this peaceful progressive movement +changed its character. The Society of Welfare was closed in 1821, and +its place was taken by two new societies, which, instead of being +political, were social and revolutionary. The success of the +revolutionary movements in Spain and in Italy encouraged these +societies to follow their example. + +The death of Alexander I in 1825 forced them to immediate action. The +shape it took was the "Decembrist" rising. Constantine, the Emperor's +brother, renounced his claim to the throne, and was succeeded by his +brother Nicholas. December 14 (O.S.) was fixed for the day on which +the Emperor should receive the oath of allegiance of his troops. An +organized insurrection took place, which was confined to certain +regiments. The Emperor was supported by the majority of the Guards +regiments, and the people showed no signs of supporting the rising, +which was at once suppressed. + +One hundred and twenty-five of the conspirators were condemned. Five +of them were hanged, and among them the poet RYLEEV (1795-1826). But +although the political results of the movement were nil, the effect of +the movement on literature was far-reaching. Philosophy took the place +of politics, and liberalism was diverted into the channel of +romanticism; but out of this romantic movement came the springtide of +Russian poetry, in which, for the first time, the soul of the Russian +people found adequate expression. And the very fact that politics +were excluded from the movement proved, in one sense, a boon to +literature: for it gave Russian men of genius the chance to be +writers, artists and poets, and prevented them from exhausting their +whole energy in being inefficient politicians or unsuccessful +revolutionaries. I will dwell on the drawbacks, on the dark side of +the medal, presently. + +As far as the actual Decembrist movement is concerned, its concrete +and direct legacy to literature consists in the work of Ryleev, and +its indirect legacy in the most famous comedy of the Russian stage, +_Gore ot Uma_, "The Misfortune of being Clever," by GRIBOYEDOV +(1795-1829). + +Ryleev's life was cut short before his poetical powers had come to +maturity. It is idle to speculate what he might have achieved had he +lived longer. The work which he left is notable for its pessimism, but +still suffers from the old rhetorical conventions of the eighteenth +century and the imitation of French models; moreover he looked on +literature as a matter of secondary importance. "I am not a poet," he +said, "I am a citizen." In spite of this, every now and then there are +flashes of intense poetical inspiration in his work; and he struck +one or two powerful chords--for instance, in his stanzas on the vision +of enslaved Russia, which have a tense strength and fire that remind +one of Emily Bront. He was a poet as well as a citizen, but even had +he lived to a prosperous old age and achieved artistic perfection in +his work, he could never have won a brighter aureole than that which +his death gained him. The poems of his last days in prison breathe a +spirit of religious humility, and he died forgiving and praying for +his enemies. His name shines in Russian history and Russian +literature, as that of a martyr to a high ideal. + +Griboyedov, the author of _Gore ot Uma_, a writer of a very different +order, although not a Decembrist himself, is a product of that period. +His comedy still remains the unsurpassed masterpiece of Russian +comedy, and can be compared with Beaumarchais' _Figaro_ and Sheridan's +_School for Scandal_. + +Griboyedov was a Foreign Office official, and he was murdered when +Minister Plenipotentiary at Teheran, on January 30, 1829. He conceived +the plot of his play in 1816, and read aloud some scenes in St. +Petersburg in 1823-24. They caused a sensation in literary circles, +and the play began to circulate rapidly in MSS. Two fragments of the +drama were published in one of the almanacs, which then took the place +of literary reviews. But beyond this, Griboyedov could neither get his +play printed nor acted. Thousands of copies circulated in MSS., but +the play was not produced on the stage until 1831, and then much +mutilated; and it was not printed until 1833. + +_Gore ot Uma_ is written in verse, in iambics of varying length, like +Krylov's fables. The unities are preserved. The action takes place in +one day and in the same house--that of Famusov, an elderly gentleman +of the Moscow upper class holding a Government appointment. He is a +widower and has one daughter, Sophia, whose sensibility is greater +than her sense; and the play opens on a scene where the father +discovers her talking to his secretary, Molchalin, and says he will +stand no nonsense. Presently, the friend of Sophia's childhood, +Chatsky, arrives after a three years' absence abroad; Chatsky is a +young man of independent ideas whose misfortune it is to be clever. He +notices that Sophia receives him coldly, and later on he perceives +that she is in love with Molchalin,--a wonderfully drawn type, the +perfect climber, time-server and place-seeker, and the incarnation of +convention,--who does not care a rap for Sophia. Chatsky declaims to +Famusov his contempt for modern Moscow, for the slavish worship by +society of all that is foreign, for its idolatry of fashion and +official rank, its hollowness and its convention. Famusov, the +incarnation of respectable conventionality, does not understand one +word of what he is saying. + +At an evening party given at Famusov's house, Chatsky is determined to +find out whom Sophia loves. He decides it is Molchalin, and lets fall +a few biting sarcasms about him to Sophia; and Sophia, to pay him back +for his sarcasm, lets it be understood by one of the guests that he is +mad. The half-spoken hint spreads like lightning; and the spreading of +the news is depicted in a series of inimitable scenes. Chatsky enters +while the subject is being discussed, and delivers a long tirade on +the folly of Moscow society, which only confirms the suspicions of the +guests; and he finds when he gets to the end of his speech that he is +speaking to an empty room. + +In the fourth act we see the guests leaving the house after the +party. Chatsky is waiting for his carriage. Sophia appears on the +staircase and calls Molchalin. Chatsky, hearing her voice, hides +behind a pillar. Liza, Sophia's maid, comes to fetch Molchalin, and +knocks at his door. Molchalin comes out, and not knowing that Sophia +or Chatsky are within hearing, makes love to Liza and tells her that +he only loves Sophia out of duty. Then Sophia appears, having heard +everything. Molchalin falls on his knees to her: she is quite +inexorable. Chatsky comes forward and begins to speak his mind--when +all is interrupted by the arrival of Famusov, who speaks his. Chatsky +shakes the dust of the house and of Moscow off his feet, and Sophia is +left without Chatsky and without Molchalin. + +The _Gore ot Uma_ is a masterpiece of satire rather than a masterpiece +of dramatic comedy. That is to say that, as a satire of the Moscow +society of the day and of the society of yesterday, and of to-morrow, +it is immortal, and forms a complete work: but as a comedy it does +not. Almost every scene separately is perfect in itself, but +dramatically it does not group itself round one central idea or one +mainspring of action. Judged from the point of view of dramatic +propriety, the behaviour of the hero is wildly improbable throughout; +there is no reason for the spectator to think he should be in love +with Sophia; if he is, there is no reason for him to behave as he +does; if a man behaved like that, declaiming at an evening party long +speeches on the decay of the times, the most frivolous of societies +would be justified in thinking him mad. + +Pushkin hit on the weak point of the play as a play when he wrote: "In +_The Misfortune of being Clever_ the question arises, Who is clever? +and the answer is Griboyedov. Chatsky is an honourable young man who +has lived for a long time with a clever man (that is to say with +Griboyedov), and learnt his clever sarcasms; but to whom does he say +them? To Famusov, to the old ladies at the party. This is +unforgivable, because the first sign of a clever man is to know at +once whom he is dealing with." + +But what makes the work a masterpiece is the naturalness of the +characters, the dialogue, the comedy of the scenes which represent +Moscow society. It is extraordinary that on so small a scale, in four +short acts, Griboyedov should have succeeded in giving so complete a +picture of Moscow society, and should have given the dialogue, in +spite of its being in verse, the stamp of conversational familiarity. +The portraits are all full-length portraits, and when the play is +produced now, the rendering of each part raises as much discussion in +Russia as a revival of one of Sheridan's comedies in England. + +As for the style, nearly three-quarters of the play has passed into +the Russian language. It is forcible, concise, bitingly sarcastic, it +is as neat and dry as W. S. Gilbert, as elegant as La Fontaine, as +clear as an icicle, and as clean as the thrust of a sword. But perhaps +the crowning merit of this immortal satire is its originality. It is a +product of Russian life and Russian genius, and as yet it is without a +rival. + +Outside the current of politics and political aspirations, there +appeared during this same epoch a poet who exercised a considerable +influence over Russian literature, and who devoted himself exclusively +to poetry. This was BASIL ZHUKOVSKY (1783-1852). He opened the door +of Russian literature on the fields of German and English poetry. The +first poem he published in 1802 was a translation of Gray's _Elegy_; +this, and an imitation of Brger's _Leonore_, which affected all Slav +literatures, brought him fame. Later, he translated Schiller's _Maid +of Orleans_, his ballads, some of the lyrics of Uhland, Goethe, +Hebbel, and a great quantity of other foreign poems. His translations +were faithful, but in spite of this he gave them the stamp of his own +dreamy personality. He was made tutor to the Tsarevitch +Alexander--afterwards Alexander II,--and for a time his production +ceased; but when this task was finished, he braced himself in his old +age to translate _The Odyssey_, and this translation appeared in +1848-50. In this work he obeyed the first great law of translation, +"Thou shalt not turn a good poem into a bad one." He produced a +beautiful work; but he also did what all other translators of Homer +have done; he took the Homer out and left the Zhukovsky, and with it +something sentimental, elegiac, and didactic. + +Zhukovsky's greatest service to Russian literature consisted in his +exploding the superstition that the literature of France was the only +literature that counted, and introducing literary Russia to the poets +of England and Germany rather than of France. But apart from this, he +is the first and best translator in European literature, for what +Krylov did with some of La Fontaine's fables, he did for all the +literature he touched--he re-created it in Russian, and made it his +own. In his translation of Gray's _Elegy_, for instance, he not only +translates the poet's meaning into musical verse, but he conveys the +intangible atmosphere of dreamy landscape, and the poignant accent +which makes that poem the natural language of grief. It is +characteristic of him that, thirty-seven years after he translated the +poem, he visited Stoke Poges, re-read Gray's _Elegy_ there, and made +another translation, which is still more faithful than the first. + +The Russian language was by this time purified from all outward +excrescences, released from the bondage of convention and the +pseudo-classical, open to all outside influences, and only waiting, +like a ready-tuned instrument, on which Krylov and Zhukovsky had +already sounded sweet notes and deep tones, and which Karamzin had +proved to be a magnificent vehicle for musical and perspicuous prose, +for a poet of genius to come and sound it from its lowest note to the +top of its compass, for there was indeed much music and excellent +voice to be plucked from it. At the appointed hour the man came. It +was PUSHKIN. He arrived at a time when a battle of words was raging +between the so-called classical and romantic schools. The +pseudo-classical, with all its mythological machinery and conventional +apparatus, was totally alien to Russia, and a direct and slavish +imitation of the French. On the other hand, the utmost confusion +reigned as to what constituted romanticism. To each single writer it +meant a different thing: "Enfonez Racine," and the unities, in one +case; or ghosts, ballads, legends, local colour in another; or the +defiance of morality and society in another. Zhukovsky, in introducing +German romanticism into Russia, paved the way for its death, and for +the death of all exotic fashions and models; for he paved the way for +Pushkin to render the whole quarrel obsolete by creating models of his +own and by founding a national literature. + +Pushkin was born on May 26, 1799, at Moscow. He was of ancient +lineage, and inherited African negro blood on his mother's side, his +mother's grandmother being the daughter of Peter the Great's negro, +Hannibal. Until he was nine years old, he did not show signs of any +unusual precocity; but from then onwards he was seized with a passion +for reading which lasted all his life. He read Plutarch's _Lives_, the +_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ in a translation. He then devoured all the +French books he found in his father's library. Pushkin was gifted with +a photographic memory, which retained what he read immediately and +permanently. His first efforts at writing were in French,--comedies, +which he performed himself to an audience of his sisters. He went to +school in 1812 at the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, a suburb of St. +Petersburg. His school career was not brilliant, and his leaving +certificate qualifies his achievements as mediocre, even in Russian. +But during the six years he spent at the Lyceum, he continued to read +voraciously. His favourite poet at this time was Voltaire. He began to +write verse, first in French and then in Russian; some of it was +printed in 1814 and 1815 in reviews, and in 1815 he declaimed his +_Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_ in public at the Lyceum examination, +in the presence of Derzhavin the poet. + +The poems which he wrote at school afterwards formed part of his +collected works. In these poems, consisting for the greater part of +anacreontics and epistles, although they are immature, and imitative, +partly of contemporary authors such as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, and +partly of the French anacreontic school of poets, such as Voltaire, +Gresset and Parny, the sound of a new voice was unmistakable. Indeed, +not only his contemporaries, but the foremost representatives of the +Russian literature of that day, Derzhavin, Karamzin and Zhukovsky, +made no mistake about it. They greeted the first notes of this new +lyre with enthusiasm. Zhukovsky used to visit the boy poet at school +and read out his verse to him. Derzhavin was enthusiastic over the +recitation of his _Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_. Thus fame came to +Pushkin as easily as the gift of writing verse. He had lisped in +numbers, and as soon as he began to speak in them, his contemporaries +immediately recognized and hailed the new voice. He did not wake up +and find himself famous like Byron, but he walked into the Hall of +Fame as naturally as a young heir steps into his lawful inheritance. +If we compare Pushkin's school-boy poetry with Byron's _Hours of +Idleness_, it is easy to understand how this came about. In the _Hours +of Idleness_ there is, perhaps, only one poem which would hold out +hopes of serious promise; and the most discerning critics would have +been justified in being careful before venturing to stake any great +hopes on so slender a hint. But in Pushkin's early verse, although the +subject-matter is borrowed, and the style is still irregular and +careless, it is none the less obvious that it flows from the pen of +the author without effort or strain; and besides this, certain coins +of genuine poetry ring out, bearing the image and superscription of a +new mint, the mint of Pushkin. + +When the first of his poems to attract the attention of a larger +audience, _Ruslan and Ludmila_, was published, in 1820, it was greeted +with enthusiasm by the public; but it had already won the suffrages of +that circle which counted most, that is to say, the leading men of +letters of the day, who had heard it read out in MSS. For as soon as +Pushkin left school and stepped into the world, he was received into +the literary circle of the day on equal terms. After he had read aloud +the first cantos of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ at Zhukovsky's literary +evenings, Zhukovsky gave him his portrait with this inscription: "To +the pupil, from his defeated master"; and BATYUSHKOV, a poet who, +after having been influenced, like Pushkin, by Voltaire and Parny, had +gone back to the classics, Horace and Tibullus, and had introduced the +classic anacreontic school of poetry into Russia, was astonished to +find a young man of the world outplaying him without any trouble on +the same lyre, and exclaimed, "Oh! how well the rascal has started +writing!" + +The publication of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ sealed Pushkin's reputation +definitely, as far as the general public was concerned, although some +of the professional critics treated the poem with severity. The +subject of the poem was a Russian fairy-tale, and the critics blamed +the poet for having recourse to what they called Russian folk-lore, +which they considered to be unworthy of the poetic muse. One review +complained that Pushkin's choice of subject was like introducing a +bearded unkempt peasant into a drawing-room, while others blamed him +for dealing with national stuff in a flippant spirit. But the curious +thing is that, while the critics blamed him for his choice of subject, +and his friends and the public defended him for it, quoting all sorts +of precedents, the poem has absolutely nothing in common, either in +its spirit, style or characterization, with native Russian folk-lore +and fairy-tales. Much later on in his career, Pushkin was to show what +he could do with Russian folk-lore. But _Ruslan and Ludmila_, which, +as far as its form is concerned, has a certain superficial resemblance +to Ariosto, is in reality the result of the French influence, under +which Pushkin had been ever since his cradle, and which in this poem +blazes into the sky like a rocket, and bursts into a shower of sparks, +never to return again. + +There is no passion in the poem and no irony, but it is young, fresh, +full of sensuous, not to say sensual images, interruptions, +digressions, and flippant epigrams. Pushkin wondered afterwards that +nobody noticed the coldness of the poem; the truth was that the eyes +of the public were dazzled by the fresh sensuous images, and their +ears were taken captive by the new voice: for the importance of the +poem lies in this--that the new voice which the literary pundits had +already recognized in the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo was now speaking to +the whole world, and all Russia became aware that a young man was +among them "with mouth of gold and morning in his eyes." _Ruslan and +Ludmila_ has just the same sensuous richness, fresh music and +fundamental coldness as Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_. After finishing +the poem, Pushkin added a magnificent and moving Epilogue, written +from the Caucasus in the year of its publication (1820); and when the +second edition was published in 1828, he added a Prologue in his +finest manner which tells of Russian fairy-land. + +After leaving school in 1817, until 1820, Pushkin plunged into the gay +life of St. Petersburg. He wanted to be a Hussar, but his father could +not afford it. In default he became a Foreign Office official; but he +did not take this profession seriously. He consorted with the +political youth and young Liberals of the day; he scattered stinging +epigrams and satirical epistles broadcast. He sympathized with the +Decembrists, but took no part in their conspiracy. He would probably +have ended by doing so; but, luckily for Russian literature, he was +transferred in 1820 from the Foreign Office to the Chancery of General +Inzov in the South of Russia; and from 1820 to 1826 he lived first at +Kishinev, then at Odessa, and finally in his own home at Pskov. This +enforced banishment was of the greatest possible service to the poet; +it took him away from the whirl and distractions of St. Petersburg; it +prevented him from being compromised in the drama of the Decembrists; +it ripened and matured his poetical genius; it provided him, since it +was now that he visited the Caucasus and the Crimea for the first +time, with new subject-matter. + +During this period he learnt Italian and English, and came under the +influence of Andr Chnier and Byron. Andr Chnier's influence is +strongly felt in a series of lyrics in imitation of the classics; but +these lyrics were altogether different from the anacreontics of his +boyhood. Byron's influence is first manifested in a long poem _The +Prisoner of the Caucasus_. It is Byronic in the temperament of the +hero, who talks in the strain of the earlier Childe Harold; he is +young, but feels old; tired of life, he seeks for consolation in the +loneliness of nature in the Caucasus. He is taken prisoner by mountain +tribesmen, and set free by a girl who drowns herself on account of her +unrequited love. Pushkin said later that the poem was immature, but +that there were verses in it that came from his heart. There is one +element in the poem which is by no means immature, and that is the +picture of the Caucasus, which is executed with much reality and +simplicity. Pushkin annexed the Caucasus to Russian poetry. The Crimea +inspired him with another tale, also Byronic in some respects, _The +Fountain of Baghchi-Sarai_, which tells of a Tartar Khan and his +Christian slave, who is murdered out of jealousy by a former +favourite, herself drowned by the orders of the Khan. Here again the +descriptions are amazing, and Pushkin draws out a new stop of rich and +voluptuous music. + +In speaking of the influence of Byron over Pushkin it is necessary to +discriminate. Byron helped Pushkin to discover himself; Byron +revealed to him his own powers, showed him the way out of the French +garden where he had been dwelling, and acted as a guide to fresh woods +and pastures new. But what Pushkin took from the new provinces to +which the example of Byron led him was entirely different from what +Byron sought there. Again, the methods and workmanship of the two +poets were radically different. Pushkin is never imitative of Byron; +but Byron opened his eyes to a new world, and indeed did for him what +Chapman's _Homer_ did for Keats. It frequently happens that when a +poet is deeply struck by the work of another poet he feels a desire to +write something himself, but something different. Thus Pushkin's +mental intercourse with Byron had the effect of bracing the talent of +the Russian poet and spurring him on to the conquest of new worlds. + +Pushkin's six years' banishment to his own country had the effect of +revealing to him the reality and seriousness of his vocation as a +poet, and the range and strength of his gifts. It was during this +period that besides the works already mentioned he wrote some of his +finest lyrics, _The Conversation between the Bookseller and the +Poet_--perhaps the most perfect of his shorter poems--it contains four +lines to have written which Turgenev said he would have burnt the +whole of his works--a larger poem called _The Gypsies_; his dramatic +chronicle _Boris Godunov_, and the beginning of his masterpiece +_Onegin_; several ballads, including _The Sage Oleg_, and an +unfinished romance, the _Robber Brothers_. + +Not only is the richness of his output during this period remarkable, +but the variety and the high level of art maintained in all the +different styles which he attempted and mastered. _The Gypsies_ +(1827), which was received with greater favour by the public than any +of his poems, either earlier or later, is the story of a disappointed +man, Aleko, who leaves the world and takes refuge with gypsies. A +tragically ironical situation is the result. The anarchic nature of +the Byronic misanthrope brings tragedy into the peaceful life of the +people, who are lawless because they need no laws. Aleko loves and +marries the gypsy Zemfira, but after a time she tires of him, and +loves a young gypsy. Aleko surprises them and kills them both. Then +Zemfira's father banishes him from the gypsies' camp. He, too, had +been deceived. When his wife Mariula had been untrue and had left him, +he had attempted no vengeance, but had brought up her daughter. + +"Leave us, proud man," he says to Aleko. "We are a wild people; we +have no laws, we torture not, neither do we punish; we have no use for +blood or groans; we will not live with a man of blood. Thou wast not +made for the wild life. For thyself alone thou claimest licence; we +are shy and good-natured; thou art evil-minded and presumptuous. +Farewell, and peace be with thee!" + +The charm of the poem lies in the descriptions of the gypsy camp and +the gypsy life, the snatches of gypsy song, and the characterization +of the gypsies, especially of the women. It is not surprising the poem +was popular; it breathes a spell, and the reading of it conjures up +before one the wandering life, the camp-fire, the soft speech and the +song; and makes one long to go off with "the raggle-taggle gypsies O!" + +Byron's influence soon gave way to that of Shakespeare, who opened a +still larger field of vision to the Russian poet. In 1825 he writes: +"Quel homme que ce Shakespeare! Je n'en reviens pas. Comme Byron le +tragique est mesquin devant lui! Ce Byron qui n'a jamais conu qu'un +seul caractre et c'est le sien ... ce Byron donc a partag entre ses +personages tel et tel trait de son caractre: son orgeuil l'un, sa +haine l'autre, sa mlancolie au troisime, etc., et c'est ainsi d'un +caractre plein, sombre et nergique, il a fait plusieurs caractres +insignifiants; ce n'est pas l de la tragdie. On a encore une manie. +Quand on a conu un caractre, tout ce qu'on lui fait dire, mme les +choses les plus tranges, en porte essentiellement l'empreinte, comme +les pdants et les marins dans les vieux romans de Fielding. Voyez le +haineux de Byron ... et l-dessus lisez Shakespeare. Il ne craint +jamais de compromettre son personage, il le fait parler avec tout +l'abandon de la vie, car il est sr en temps et lieu, de lui faire +trouver le langage de son caractre. Vous me demanderez: votre +tragdie est-elle une tragdie de caractre ou de costume? J'ai choisi +le genre le plus ais, mais j'ai tch de les unir tous deux. J'cris +et je pense. La plupart des scnes ne demandent que du raisonnement; +quand j'arrive une scne qui demande de l'inspiration, j'attends ou +je passe dessus." + +I quote this letter because it throws light, firstly, on Pushkin's +matured opinion of Byron, and, secondly, on his methods of work; for, +like Leonardo da Vinci, he formed the habit, which he here describes, +of leaving unwritten passages where inspiration was needed, until he +felt the moment of _bien tre_ when inspiration came; and this not +only in writing his tragedy, but henceforward in everything that he +wrote, as his note-books testify. + +The subject-matter of _Boris Godunov_ was based on Karamzin's history: +it deals with the dramatic episode of the Russian Perkin Warbeck, the +false Demetrius who pretended to be the murdered son of Ivan the +Terrible. The play is constructed on the model of Shakespeare's +chronicle plays, but in a still more disjointed fashion, without a +definite beginning or end: when Mussorgsky made an opera out of it, +the action was concentrated into definite acts; for, as it stands, it +is not a play, but a series of scenes. Pushkin had not the power of +conceiving and executing a drama which should move round one idea to +an inevitable close. He had not the gift of dramatic architectonics, +and still less that of stage carpentry. On the other hand, the scenes, +whether they be tragic and poetical, or scenes of common life, are as +vivid as any in Shakespeare; the characters are all alive, and they +speak a language which is at the same time ancient, living, and +convincing. + +In saying that Pushkin lacks the gift of stage architectonics and +stage carpentry, it is not merely meant that he lacked the gift of +arranging acts that would suit the stage, or that of imagining stage +effects. His whole play is not conceived as a drama; a subject from +which a drama might be written is taken, but the drama is left +unwritten. We see Boris Godunov on the throne, which he has unlawfully +usurped; we know he feels remorse; he tells us so in monologues; we +see his soul stripped before us, bound upon a wheel of fire, and we +watch the wheel revolve; and that is all the moral and spiritual +action that the part contains; he is static and not dynamic, he never +has to make up his mind; his will never has to encounter the shock of +another will during the whole play. Neither does the chronicle centre +round the Pretender. It is true that we see the idea of impersonating +the Tsarevitch dawning in his mind; and it is also true that in one +scene with his Polish love, Marina, we see him dynamically moving in a +dramatic situation. She loves him because she thinks he is the son of +an anointed King. He loves her too much to deceive her, and tells her +the truth. She then says she will have nothing of him; and then he +rises from defeat and shame to the height of the situation, becomes +great, and, not unlike Browning's Sludge, says: "Although I am an +impostor, I am born to be a King all the same; I am one of Nature's +Kings; and I defy you to oust me from the situation. Tell every one +what I have told you. Nobody will believe you." And Marina is +conquered once more by his conduct and bearing. + +This scene is sheer drama; it is the conflict of two wills and two +souls. But there the matter ends. The kaleidoscope is shaken, and we +are shown a series of different patterns, in which the heroine plays +no part at all, and in which the hero only makes a momentary +appearance. The fact is there is neither hero nor heroine in the play. +It is not a play, but a chronicle; and it would be foolish to blame +Pushkin for not accomplishing what he never attempted. As a chronicle, +a series of detached scenes, it is supremely successful. There are +certain scenes which attain to sublimity: for instance, that in the +cell of the monastery, where the monk is finishing his chronicle; and +the monologue in which Boris speaks his remorse, and his dying speech +to his son. The verse in these scenes is sealed with the mark of that +God-gifted ease and high seriousness, which belong only to the +inspired great. They are Shakespearean, not because they imitate +Shakespeare, but because they attain to heights of imaginative truth +to which Shakespeare rises more often than any other poet; and the +language in these scenes has a simplicity, an inevitableness, an +absence of all conscious effort and of all visible art and artifice, a +closeness of utterance combined with a width of suggestion which +belong only to the greatest artists, to the Greeks, to Shakespeare, to +Dante. + +_Boris Godunov_ was not published until January 1, 1831, and passed, +with one exception, absolutely unnoticed by the critics. Like so many +great works, it came before its time; and it was not until years +afterwards that the merits of this masterpiece were understood and +appreciated. + +In 1826 Pushkin's banishment to the country came to an end; in that +year he was allowed to go to Moscow, and in 1827 to St. Petersburg. In +1826 his poems appeared in one volume, and the second canto of +_Onegin_ (the first had appeared in 1825). In 1827 _The Gypsies_, and +the third canto of _Onegin_; in 1828 the fourth, fifth, and sixth +cantos of _Onegin_; in 1829 _Graf Nulin_, an admirably told _Conte_ +such as Maupassant might have written, of a deceived husband and a +wife who, finding herself in the situation of Lucretia, gives the +would-be Tarquin a box on the ears, but succeeds, nevertheless, in +being unfaithful with some one else--the _Cottage of Kolomna_ is +another story in the same vein--and in the same year _Poltava_. + +This poem was written in one month, in St. Petersburg. The subject is +Mazepa, with whom the daughter of his hereditary enemy, Kochubey, whom +he afterwards tortures and kills, falls in love. But it is in reality +the epic of Peter the Great.[3] When the poem was published, it +disconcerted the critics and the public. It revealed an entirely new +phase of Pushkin's style, and it should have widened the popular +conception of the poet's powers and versatility. But at the time the +public only knew Pushkin through his lyrics and his early tales; +_Boris Godunov_ had not yet been published; moreover, the public of +that day expected to find in a poem passion and the delineation of the +heart's adventures. This stern objective fragment of an epic, falling +into their sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses and cupids, +like a bas-relief conceived by a Titan and executed by a god, met with +little appreciation. The poet's verse which, so far as the public +knew it, had hitherto seemed like a shining and luscious fruit, was +exchanged for a concentrated weighty tramp of ringing rhyme, _martel_ +like steel. It is as if Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a +style as concise as that of Pope and as concentrated as that of +Browning's dramatic lyrics. The poem is a fit monument to Peter the +Great, and the great monarch's impetuous genius and passion for +thorough craftsmanship seem to have entered into it. + +In 1829 Pushkin made a second journey to the Caucasus, the result of +which was a harvest of lyrics. On his return to St. Petersburg he +sketched the plan of another epic poem, _Galub_, dealing with the +Caucasus, but this remained a fragment. + +In 1831 he finished the eighth and last canto of _Onegin_. Originally +there were nine cantos, but when the work was published one of the +cantos dealing with Onegin's travels was left out as being irrelevant. +Pushkin had worked at this poem since 1823. It was Byron's _Beppo_ +which gave him the idea of writing a poem on modern life; but here +again, he made of the idea something quite different from any of +Byron's work. _Onegin_ is a novel. Eugene Onegin is the name of the +hero. It is, moreover, the first Russian novel; and as a novel it has +never been surpassed. It is as real as Tolstoy, as finished in +workmanship and construction as Turgenev. It is a realistic novel; not +realistic in the sense that Zola's work was mis-called realistic, but +realistic in the sense that Miss Austen is realistic. The hero is the +average man about St. Petersburg; his father, a worthy public servant, +lives honourably on debts and gives three balls a year. Onegin is +brought up, not too strictly, by "Monsieur l'Abb"; he goes out in the +world clothed by a London tailor, fluent in French, and able to dance +the Mazurka. + +Onegin can touch on every subject, can hold his tongue when the +conversation becomes too serious, and make epigrams. He knows enough +Latin to construe an epitaph, to talk about Juvenal, and put "Vale!" +at the end of his letters, and he can remember two lines of the +_neid_. He is severe on Homer and Theocritus, but has read Adam +Smith. The only art in which he is proficient is the _ars amandi_ as +taught by Ovid. He is a patron of the ballet; he goes to balls; he +eats beef-steaks and _pat de foie gras_. In spite of all +this--perhaps because of it--he suffers from spleen, like Childe +Harold, the author says. His father dies, leaving a lot of debts +behind him, but a dying uncle summons him to the country; and when he +gets there he finds his uncle dead, and himself the inheritor of the +estate. In the country, he is just as much bored as he was in St. +Petersburg. A new neighbour arrives in the shape of Lensky, a young +man fresh from Germany, an enthusiast and a poet, and full of Kant, +Schiller, and the German writers. Lensky introduces Onegin to the +neighbouring family, by name Larin, consisting of a widow and two +daughters. Lensky is in love with the younger daughter, Olga, who is +simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face, as Onegin says, like the +foolish moon. The elder sister, Tatiana, is less pretty; shy and +dreamy, she conceals under her retiring and wistful ways a clean-cut +character and a strong will. + +Tatiana is as real as any of Miss Austen's heroines; as alive as +Fielding's Sophia Western, and as charming as any of George Meredith's +women; as sensible as Portia, as resolute as Juliet. Turgenev, with +all his magic, and Tolstoy, with all his command over the colours of +life, never created a truer, more radiant, and more typically Russian +woman. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman; that +is to say, of all that is best in Russia; and it is a type taken +straight from life, and not from fairy-land--a type that exists as +much to-day as it did in the days of Pushkin. She is the first of that +long gallery of Russian women which Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky +have given us, and which are the most precious jewels of Russian +literature, because they reflect the crowning glory of Russian life. +Tatiana falls in love with Onegin at first sight. She writes to him +and confesses her love, and in all the love poetry of the world there +is nothing more touching and more simple than this confession. It is +perfect. If Pushkin had written this and this alone, his place among +poets would be unique and different from that of all other poets. + +Possibly some people may think that there are finer achievements in +the love poetry of the world; but nothing is so futile and so +impertinent as giving marks to the great poets, as if they were +passing an examination. If a thing is as good as possible in itself, +what is the use of saying that it is less good or better than +something else, which is as good as possible in itself also. +Nevertheless, placed beside any of the great confessions of love in +poetry--Francesca's story in the _Inferno_, Romeo and Juliet's +leavetaking, Phdre's declaration, Don Juan Tenorio's letter--the +beauty of Tatiana's confession would not be diminished by the +juxtaposition. Of the rest of Pushkin's work at its best and highest, +of the finest passages of _Boris Godunov_, for instance, you can say: +This is magnificent, but there are dramatic passages in other works of +other poets on the same lines and as fine; but in Tatiana's letter +Pushkin has created something unique, which has no parallel, because +only a Russian could have written it, and of Russians, only he. It is +a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous as a +blackbird's song. + +Onegin tells Tatiana he is not worthy of her, that he is not made for +love and marriage; that he would cease to love her at once; that he +feels for her like a brother, or perhaps a little more tenderly. It +then falls out that Onegin, by flirting with Olga at a ball, makes +Lensky jealous. They fight a duel, and Lensky is killed. Onegin is +obliged to leave the neighbourhood, and spends years in travel. +Tatiana remains true to her first love; but she is taken by her +relatives to Moscow, and consents at last under their pressure to +marry a rich man of great position. In St. Petersburg, Onegin meets +her again. Tatiana has become a great lady, but all her old charm is +there. Onegin now falls violently in love with her; but she, although +she frankly confesses that she still loves him, tells him that it is +too late; she has married another, and she means to remain true to +him. And there the story ends. + +_Onegin_ is, perhaps, Pushkin's most characteristic work; it is +undoubtedly the best known and the most popular; like _Hamlet_, it is +all quotations. Pushkin in his _Onegin_ succeeded in doing what +Shelley urged Byron to do--to create something new and in accordance +with the spirit of the age, which should at the same time be +beautiful. He did more than this. He succeeded in creating for Russia +a poem that was purely national, and in giving his country a classic, +a model both in construction, matter, form, and inspiration for +future generations. Perhaps the greatest quality of this poem is its +vividness. Pushkin himself speaks, in taking leave, of having seen the +unfettered march of his novel in a magic prism. This is just the +impression that the poem gives; the scenes are as clear as the shapes +in a crystal; nothing is blurred; there are no hesitating notes, +nothing _ peu prs_; every stroke comes off; the nail is hit on the +head every time, only so easily that you do not notice the strokes, +and all labour escapes notice. Apart from this the poem is amusing; it +arrests the attention as a story, and it delights the intelligence +with its wit, its digressions, and its brilliance. It is as witty as +Don Juan and as consummately expressed as Pope; and when the occasion +demands it, the style passes in easy transition to serious or tender +tones. _Onegin_ has been compared to Byron's _Don Juan_. There is this +likeness, that both poems deal with contemporary life, and in both +poems the poets pass from grave to gay, from severe to lively, and +often interrupt the narrative to apostrophize the reader. But there +the likeness ends. On the other hand, there is a vast difference. +_Onegin_ contains no adventures. It is a story of everyday life. +Moreover, it is an organic whole: so well constructed that it fits +into a stage libretto--Tchaikovsky made an opera out of it--without +difficulty. There is another difference--a difference which applies to +Pushkin and Byron in general. There is no unevenness in Pushkin; his +work, as far as craft is concerned, is always on the same high level. +You can admire the whole, or cut off any single passage and it will +still remain admirable; whereas Byron must be taken as a whole or not +at all--the reason being that Pushkin was an impeccable artist in form +and expression, and that Byron was not. + +In the winter of 1832 Pushkin sought a new field, the field of +historical research; and by the beginning of 1833 he had not only +collected all the materials for a history of Pugachev, the Cossack who +headed a rising in the reign of Catherine II; but his literary +activity was so great that he had also written the rough sketch of a +long story in prose dealing with the same subject, _The Captain's +Daughter_, another prose story of considerable length, _Dubrovsky_, +and portions of a drama, _Rusalka_, The Water Nymph, which was never +finished. Besides _Boris Godunov_ and the _Rusalka_, Pushkin wrote a +certain number of dramatic scenes, or short dramas in one or more +scenes. Of these, one, _The Feast in the Time of Plague_, is taken +from the English of John Wilson (_The City of the Plague_), with +original additions. In _Mozart and Salieri_ we see the contrast +between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does +what it can. The story is based on the unfounded anecdote that Mozart +was poisoned by Salieri out of envy. This dramatic and beautifully +written episode has been set to music as it stands by Rimsky-Korsakov. + +_The Covetous Knight_, which bears the superscription, "From the +tragi-comedy of Chenstone"--an unknown English original--tells of the +conflict between a Harpagon and his son: the delineation of the +miser's imaginative passion for his treasures is, both in conception +and execution, in Pushkin's finest manner. This scene has been +recently set to music by Rakhmaninov. _The Guest of Stone_, the story +of Don Juan and the _statua gentilissima del gran Commendatore_, makes +Don Juan life. A scene from _Faust_ between Faust and Mephistopheles +is original and not of great interest; _Angelo_ is the story of +_Measure for Measure_ told as a narrative with two scenes in dialogue. +_Rusalka_, The Water Maid, is taken from the genuine and not the sham +province of national legend, and it is tantalizing that this poetic +fragment remained a fragment. + +Pushkin's prose is in some respects as remarkable as his verse. Here, +too, he proved a pioneer. _Dubrovsky_ is the story of a young officer +whose father is ousted, like Naboth, from his small estate by his +neighbour, a rich and greedy landed proprietor, becomes a highway +robber so as to revenge himself, and introduces himself into the +family of his enemy as a French master, but forgoes his revenge +because he falls in love with his enemy's daughter. In this extremely +vivid story he anticipates Gogol in his lifelike pictures of country +life. _The Captain's Daughter_ is equally vivid; the rebel Pugachev +has nothing stagey or melodramatic about him, nothing of Harrison +Ainsworth. Of his shorter stories, such as _The Blizzard_, _The Pistol +Shot_, _The Lady-Peasant_, the most entertaining, and certainly the +most popular, is _The Queen of Spades_, which was so admirably +translated by Mrime, and formed the subject of one of Tchaikovsky's +most successful operas. As an artistic work _The Egyptian Nights_, +written in 1828, is the most interesting, and ranks among Pushkin's +masterpieces. It tells of an Italian _improvisatore_ who, at a party +in St. Petersburg, improvises verses on Cleopatra and her lovers. The +story is written to lead up to this poem, which gives a gorgeous +picture of the pagan world, and is another example of Pushkin's +miraculous power of assimilation. Pushkin's prose has the same +limpidity and ease as his verse; the characters have the same vitality +and reality as those in his poems and dramatic scenes, and had he +lived longer he might have become a great novelist. As it is, he +furnished Gogol (whose acquaintance he made in 1832) with the subject +of two of his masterpieces--_Dead Souls_ and _The Revisor_. + +The province of Russian folk-lore and legend from which Pushkin took +the idea of _Rusalka_ was to furnish him with a great deal of rich +material. It was in 1831 that in friendly rivalry with Zhukovsky he +wrote his first long fairy-tale, imitating the Russian popular style, +_The Tale of Tsar Saltan_. Up till now he had written only a few +ballads in the popular style. This fairy-tale was a brilliant success +as a _pastiche_; but it was a _pastiche_ and not quite the real thing, +as cleverness kept breaking in, and a touch of epigram here and there, +which indeed makes it delightful reading. He followed it by another in +the comic vein, _The Tale of the Pope and his Man Balda_, and by two +more _Mrchen_, _The Dead Tsaritsa_ and _The Golden Cock_; but it was +not until two years later that he wrote his masterpiece in this vein, +_The Story of the Fisherman and the Fish_. It is the same story as +Grimm's tale of the Fisherman's wife who wished to be King, Emperor, +and then Pope, and finally lost all by her vaulting ambition. The tale +is written in unrhymed rhythmical, indeed scarcely rhythmical, lines; +all trace of art is concealed; it is a tale such as might have been +handed down by oral tradition in some obscure village out of the +remotest past; it has the real _Volkston_; the good-nature and +simplicity and unobtrusive humour of a real fairy-tale. The subjects +of all these stories were told to Pushkin by his nurse, Anna +Rodionovna, who also furnished him with the subject of his ballad, +_The Bridegroom_. In Pushkin's note-books there are seven fairy-tales +taken down hurriedly from the words of his nurse; and most likely all +that he wrote dealing with the life of the people came from the same +source. Pushkin called Anna Rodionovna his last teacher, and said that +he was indebted to her for counteracting the effects of his first +French education. + +In 1833 he finished a poem called _The Brazen Horseman_, the story of +a man who loses his beloved in the great floods in St. Petersburg in +1834, and going mad, imagines that he is pursued by Falconet's +equestrian statue of Peter the Great. The poem contains a magnificent +description of St. Petersburg. During the last years of his life, he +was engaged in collecting materials for a history of Peter the Great. +His power of production had never run dry from the moment he left +school, although his actual work was interrupted from time to time by +distractions and the society of his friends. + +All the important larger works of Pushkin have now been mentioned; but +during the whole course of his career he was always pouring out a +stream of lyrics and occasional pieces, many of which are among the +most beautiful things he wrote. His variety and the width of his range +are astonishing. Some of them have a grace and perfection such as we +find in the Greek anthology; others--"Recollections," for instance, in +which in the sleepless hours of the night the poet sees pass before +him the blotted scroll of his past deeds, which he is powerless with +all the tears in the world to wash out--have the intensity of +Shakespeare's sonnets. This poem, for instance, has the same depth of +feeling as "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry," or "The +expense of spirit in a waste of shame." Or he will write an elegy as +tender as Tennyson; or he will draw a picture of a sledge in a +snow-storm, and give you the plunge of the bewildered horses, the +whirling demons of the storm, the bells ringing on the quiet spaces of +snow, in intoxicating rhythms which E. A. Poe would have envied; or +again he will write a description of the Caucasus in eleven short +lines, close in expression and vast in suggestion, such as "The +Monastery on Kazbek"; or he will bring before you the smell of the +autumn morning, and the hoofs ringing out on the half-frozen earth; or +he will write a patriotic poem, such as _To the Slanderers of +Russia_, fraught with patriotic indignation without being offensive; +in this poem Pushkin paints an inspired picture of Russia: "Will not," +he says, "from Perm to the Caucasus, from Finland's chill rocks to the +flaming Colchis, from the shaken Kremlin to the unshaken walls of +China, glistening with its bristling steel, the Russian earth arise?" +Or he will write a prayer, as lordly in utterance and as humble in +spirit as one of the old Latin hymns; or a love-poem as tender as +Musset and as playful as Heine: he will translate you the spirit of +Horace and the spirit of Mickiewicz the Pole; he will secure the +restraint of Andr Chnier, and the impetuous gallop of Byron. + +Perhaps the most characteristic of Pushkin's poems is the poem which +expresses his view of life in the elegy-- + + "As bitter as stale aftermath of wine + Is the remembrance of delirious days; + But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs + The past more sorely, as my days decline. + My path is dark. The future lies in wait, + A gathering ocean of anxiety, + But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create, + That is my prayer; to live and not to die! + I know that ecstasy shall still lie there + In sorrow and adversity and care. + Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine, + Be moved to tears by musings that are mine; + And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh + Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky." + +But the greatest of his short poems is probably "The Prophet." This is +a tremendous poem, and reaches a height to which Pushkin only attained +once. It is Miltonic in conception and Dantesque in expression; the +syllables ring out in pure concent, like blasts from a silver clarion. +It is, as it were, the Pillars of Hercules of the Russian language. +Nothing finer as sound could ever be compounded with Russian vowels +and consonants; nothing could be more perfectly planned, or present, +in so small a vehicle, so large a vision to the imagination. Even a +rough prose translation will give some idea of the imaginative +splendour of the poem-- + +"My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, and I was astray in the dark +wilderness. And the Seraphim with six wings appeared to me at the +crossing of the ways: And he touched my eyelids, and his fingers were +as soft as sleep: and like the eyes of an eagle that is frightened my +prophetic eyes were awakened. He touched my ears and he filled them +with noise and with sound: and I heard the Heavens shuddering and the +flight of the angels in the height, and the moving of the beasts that +are under the waters, and the noise of the growth of the branches in +the valley. He bent down over me and he looked upon my lips; and he +tore out my sinful tongue, and he took away that which is idle and +that which is evil with his right hand, and his right hand was dabbled +with blood; and he set there in its stead, between my perishing lips, +the tongue of a wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder with a +sword, and he plucked out my trembling heart, and in my cloven breast +he set a burning coal of fire. Like a corpse in the desert I lay, and +the voice of God called and said unto me, 'Prophet, arise, and take +heed, and hear; be filled with My will, and go forth over the sea and +over the land and set light with My word to the hearts of the +people.'" + +In 1837 came the catastrophe which brought about Pushkin's death. It +was caused by the clash of evil tongues engaged in frivolous gossip, +and Pushkin's own susceptible and violent temperament. A guardsman, +Heckeren-Dantes, had been flirting with his wife. Pushkin received an +anonymous letter, and being wrongly convinced that Heckeren-Dantes was +the author of it, wrote him a violent letter which made a duel +inevitable. A duel was fought on the 27th of February, 1837, and +Pushkin was mortally wounded. Such was his frenzy of rage that, after +lying wounded and unconscious in the snow, on regaining consciousness, +he insisted on going on with the duel, and fired another shot, giving +a great cry of joy when he saw that he had wounded his adversary. It +was only a slight wound in the hand. It was not until he reached home +that his anger passed away. He died on the 29th of February, after +forty-five hours of excruciating suffering, heroically borne; he +forgave his enemies; he wished no one to avenge him; he received the +last sacraments; and he expressed feelings of loyalty and gratitude +to his sovereign. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old. + +Pushkin's career falls naturally into two divisions: his life until he +was thirty, and his life after he was thirty. Pushkin began his career +with liberal aspirations, and he disappointed some in the loyalty to +the throne, the Church, the autocracy, and the established order of +things which he manifested later; in turning to religion; in remaining +in the Government service; in writing patriotic poems; in holding the +position of Gentleman of the Bed Chamber at Court; in being, in fact, +what is called a reactionary. But it would be a mistake to imagine +that Pushkin was a Lost Leader who abandoned the cause of liberty for +a handful of silver and a riband to stick in his coat. The liberal +aspirations of Pushkin's youth were the very air that the whole of the +aristocratic youth of that day breathed. Pushkin could not escape +being influenced by it; but he was no more a rebel then, than he was a +reactionary afterwards, when again the very air which the whole of +educated society breathed was conservative and nationalistic. It may +be a pity that it was so; but so it was. There was no liberal +atmosphere in the reign of Nicholas I, and the radical effervescence +of the Decembrists was destroyed by the Decembrists' premature action. +It is no good making a revolution if you have nothing to make it with. +The Decembrists were in the same position as the educated lite of one +regiment at Versailles would have been, had it attempted to destroy +the French monarchy in the days of Louis XIV. The Decembrists by their +premature action put the clock of Russian political progress back for +years. The result was that men of impulse, aspiration, talent and +originality had in the reign of Nicholas to seek an outlet for their +feelings elsewhere than in politics, because politics then were simply +non-existent. + +But apart from this, even if the opportunities had been there, it may +be doubted whether Pushkin would have taken them. He was not born with +a passion to reform the world. He was neither a rebel nor a reformer; +neither a liberal nor a conservative; he was a democrat in his love +for the whole of the Russian people; he was a patriot in his love of +his country. He resembled Goethe rather than Socrates, or Shelley, or +Byron; although, in his love of his country and in every other +respect, his fiery temperament both in itself and in its expression +was far removed from Goethe's Olympian calm. He was like Goethe in his +attitude towards society, and the attitude of the social and official +world towards him resembles the attitude of Weimar towards Goethe. + +During the first part of his career he gave himself up to pleasure, +passion, and self-indulgence; after he was thirty he turned his mind +to more serious things. It would not be exact to say he _became_ +deeply religious, because he was religious by nature, and he soon +discarded a fleeting phase of scepticism; but in spite of this he was +a victim of _amour-propre_; and he wavered between contempt of the +society around him and a petty resentment against it which took the +shape of scathing and sometimes cruel epigrams. It was this dangerous +_amour-propre_, the fact of his being not only passion's slave, but +petty passion's slave, which made him a victim of frivolous gossip and +led to the final catastrophe. + +"In Pushkin," says Soloviev, the philosopher, "according to his own +testimony there were two different and separate beings: the inspired +priest of Apollo, and the most frivolous of all the frivolous children +of the world." It was the first Pushkin--the inspired priest--who +predominated in the latter part of his life; but who was unable to +expel altogether the second Pushkin, the frivolous _Weltkind_, who was +prone to be exasperated by the society in which he lived, and when +exasperated was dangerous. There is one fact, however, which accounts +for much. The more serious Pushkin's turn of thought grew, the more +objective, purer, and stronger his work became, the less it was +appreciated; for the public which delighted in the comparatively +inferior work of his youth was not yet ready for his more mature work. +What pleased the public were the dazzling colours, the sensuous and +sometimes libidinous images of his early poems; the romantic +atmosphere; especially anything that was artificial in them. They had +not yet eyes to appreciate the noble lines, nor ears to appreciate the +simpler and more majestic harmonies of his later work. Thus it was +that they passed _Boris Godunov_ by, and were disappointed in the +later cantos of _Onegin_. This was, of course, discouraging. +Nevertheless, it is laughable to rank Pushkin amongst the +misunderstood, among the Shelleys, the Millets, of Literature and Art; +or to talk of his sad fate. To talk of him as one of the victims of +literature is merely to depreciate him. + +He was exiled. Yes: but to the Caucasus, which gave him inspiration: +to his own country home, which gave him leisure. He was censored. Yes: +but the Emperor undertook to do the work himself. Had he lived in +England, society--as was proved in the case of Byron--would have been +a far severer censor of his morals and the extravagance of his youth, +than the Russian Government. Besides which, he won instantaneous fame, +and in the society in which he moved he was surrounded by a band not +only of devoted but distinguished admirers, amongst whom were some of +the highest names in Russian literature--Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Gogol. + +Pushkin is Russia's national poet, the Peter the Great of poetry, who +out of foreign material created something new, national and Russian, +and left imperishable models for future generations. The chief +characteristic of his genius is its universality. There appeared to be +nothing he could not understand nor assimilate. And it is just this +all-embracing humanity--Dostoyevsky calls him +pananthrpos+--this +capacity for understanding everything and everybody, which makes him so +profoundly Russian. He is a poet of everyday life: a realistic poet, +and above all things a lyrical poet. He is not a dramatist, and as an +epic writer, though he can mould a bas-relief and produce a noble +fragment, he cannot set crowds in motion. He revealed to the Russians +the beauty of their landscape and the poetry of their people; and they, +with ears full of pompous diction, and eyes full of rococo and romantic +stage properties, did not understand what he was doing: but they +understood later. For a time he fought against the stream, and all in +vain; and then he gave himself up to the great current, which took him +all too soon to the open sea. + +He set free the Russian language from the bondage of the conventional; +and all his life he was still learning to become more and more +intimate with the savour and smell of the people's language. Like +Peter the Great, he spent his whole life in apprenticeship, and his +whole energies in craftsmanship. He was a great artist; his style is +perspicuous, plastic, and pure; there is never a blurred outline, +never a smear, never a halting phrase or a hesitating note. His +concrete images are, as it were, transparent, like Donne's description +of the woman whose + + "... pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her face, and so distinctly wrought, + That you might almost think her body thought." + +His diction is the inseparable skin of the thought. You seem to hear +him thinking. He was gifted with divine ease and unpremeditated +spontaneity. His soul was sincere, noble, and open; he was frivolous, +a child of the world and of his century; but if he was worldly, he was +human; he was a citizen as well as a child of the world; and it is +that which makes him the greatest of Russian poets. + +His career was unromantic; he was rooted to the earth; an aristocrat +by birth, an official by profession, a lover of society by taste. At +the same time, he sought and served beauty, strenuously and +faithfully; he was perhaps too faithful a servant of Apollo; too +exclusive a lover of the beautiful. In his work you find none of the +piteous cries, no beauty of soaring and bleeding wings as in Shelley, +nor the sound of rebellious sobs as in Musset; no tempest of defiant +challenge, no lightnings of divine derision, as in Byron; his is +neither the martyrdom of a fighting Heine, that "brave soldier in the +war of the liberation of humanity," nor the agonized passion of a +suffering Catullus. He never descended into Hell. Every great man is +either an artist or a fighter; and often poets of genius, Byron and +Heine for instance, are more pre-eminently fighters than they are +artists. Pushkin was an artist, and not a fighter. And this is what +makes even his love-poems cold in comparison with those of other +poets. Although he was the first to make notable what was called the +romantic movement; and although at the beginning of his career he +handled romantic subjects in a more or less romantic way, he was +fundamentally a classicist--a classicist as much in the common-sense +and realism and solidity of his conceptions and ideas, as in the +perspicuity and finish of his impeccable form. And he soon cast aside +even the vehicles and clothes of romanticism, and exclusively followed +reality. "He strove with none, for none was worth his strife." And +when his artistic ideals were misunderstood and depreciated, he +retired into himself and wrote to please himself only; but in the +inner court of the Temple of Beauty into which he retired he created +imperishable things; for he loved nature, he loved art, he loved his +country, and he expressed that love in matchless song. + +For years, Russian criticism was either neglectful of his work or +unjust towards it; for his serene music and harmonious design left the +generations which came after him, who were tossed on a tempest of +social problems and political aspirations, cold; but in 1881, when +Dostoyevsky unveiled Pushkin's memorial at Moscow, the homage which he +paid to the dead poet voiced the unanimous feeling of the whole of +Russia. His work is beyond the reach of critics, whether favourable or +unfavourable, for it lives in the hearts of his countrymen, and +chiefly upon the lips of the young. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] Not 1763, as generally stated in his biographies. + +[3] The poem was originally called _Mazepa_: Pushkin changed the title +so as not to clash with Byron. It is interesting to see what Pushkin +says of Byron's poem. In his notes there is the following passage-- + +"Byron knew Mazepa through Voltaire's history of Charles XII. He was +struck solely by the picture of a man bound to a wild horse and borne +over the steppes. A poetical picture of course; but see what he did +with it. What a living creation! What a broad brush! But do not expect +to find either Mazepa or Charles, nor the usual gloomy Byronic hero. +Byron was not thinking of him. He presented a series of pictures, one +more striking than the other. Had his pen come across the story of the +seduced daughter and the father's execution, it is improbable that +anyone else would have dared to touch the subject." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +LERMONTOV + + +The romantic movement in Russia was, as far as Pushkin was concerned, +not really a romantic movement at all. Still less was it so in the +case of the Pliade which followed him. And yet, for want of a better +word, one is obliged to call it the _romantic_ movement, as it was a +new movement, a renascence that arose out of the ashes of the +pseudo-classical eighteenth century convention. Pushkin was followed +by a Pliade. + +The claim of his friend and fellow-student, BARON DELVIG, to fame, +rests rather on his friendship with Pushkin (to whom he played the +part of an admirable critic) than on his own verse. He died in 1831. +YAZYKOV, PRINCE BARIATINSKY, VENEVITINOV, and POLEZHAEV, can all be +included in the Pliade; all these are lyrical poets of the second +order, and none of them--except Polezhaev, whose real promise of +talent was shattered by circumstances (he died of drink and +consumption after a career of tragic vicissitudes)--has more than an +historical interest. + +Pushkin's successor to the throne of Russian letters was Lermontov: no +unworthy heir. The name Lermontov is said to be the same as the Scotch +Learmonth. The story of his short life is a simple one. He was born at +Moscow in 1814. He visited the Caucasus when he was twelve. He was +taught English by a tutor. He went to school at Moscow, and afterwards +to the University. He left in 1832 owing to the disputes he had with +the professors. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Guards' Cadet +School at St. Petersburg; and two years later he became an officer in +the regiment of the Hussars. In 1837 he was transferred to Georgia, +owing to the scandal caused by the outspoken violence of his verse; +but he was transferred to Novgorod in 1838, and was allowed to return +to St. Petersburg in the same year. In 1840 he was again transferred +to the Caucasus for fighting a duel with the son of the French +Ambassador; towards the end of the year, he was once more allowed to +return to St. Petersburg. In 1841 he went back for a third time to +the Caucasus, where he forced a duel on one of his friends over a +perfectly trivial incident, and was killed, on the 15th of July of the +same year. + +In all the annals of poetry, there is no more curious figure than +Lermontov. He was like a plant that above all others needed a +sympathetic soil, a favourable atmosphere, and careful attention. As +it was, he came in the full tide of the rgime of Nicholas I, a rgime +of patriarchal supervision, government interference, rigorous +censorship, and iron discipline,--a grey epoch absolutely devoid of +all ideal aspirations. Considerable light is thrown on the +contradictory and original character of the poet by his novel, _A Hero +of Our Days_, the first psychological novel that appeared in Russia. +The hero, Pechorin, is undoubtedly a portrait of the poet, although he +himself said, and perhaps thought, that he was merely creating a type. + +The hero of the story, who is an officer in the Caucasus, analyses his +own character, and lays bare his weaknesses, follies, and faults, with +the utmost frankness. "I am incapable of friendship," he says. "Of two +friends, one is always the slave of the other, although often neither +of them will admit it; I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a +tiring business." Or he writes: "I have an innate passion for +contradiction.... The presence of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and +intercourse with a phlegmatic temperament would turn me into a +passionate dreamer." Speaking of enemies, he says: "I love enemies, +but not after the Christian fashion." And on another occasion: "Why do +they all hate me? Why? Have I offended any one? No. Do I belong to +that category of people whose mere presence creates antipathy?" Again: +"I despise myself sometimes, is not that the reason that I despise +others? I have become incapable of noble impulses. I am afraid of +appearing ridiculous to myself." + +On the eve of fighting a duel Pechorin writes as follows-- + +"If I die it will not be a great loss to the world, and as for me, I +am sufficiently tired of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, who +does not go home to bed because the carriage is not there, but as soon +as the carriage is there, Good-bye!" + +"I review my past and I ask myself, Why have I lived? Why was I born? +and I think there was a reason, and I think I was called to high +things, for I feel in my soul the presence of vast powers; but I did +not divine my high calling; I gave myself up to the allurement of +shallow and ignoble passions; I emerged from their furnace as hard and +as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble +aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have I +played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of +the executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often +without malice, always without pity. My love has never brought +happiness, because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed +myself for those whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own +pleasure.... And if I die I shall not leave behind me one soul who +understood me. Some think I am better, others that I am worse than I +am. Some will say he was a good fellow; others he was a blackguard." + +It will be seen from these passages, all of which apply to Lermontov +himself, even if they were not so intended, that he must have been a +trying companion, friend, or acquaintance. He had, indeed, except for +a few intimate friends, an impossible temperament; he was proud, +overbearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a savage +_amour-propre_; and he took a childish delight in annoying; he +cultivated "le plaisir aristocratique de dplaire"; he was envious of +what was least enviable in his contemporaries. He could not bear not +to make himself felt, and if he felt that he was unsuccessful in +accomplishing this by pleasant means, he resorted to unpleasant means. +And yet, at the same time, he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and +kindness, and capable of giving himself up to love--if he chose. + +During his period of training at the Cadet School, he led a wild life; +and when he became an officer, he hankered after social and not after +literary success. He did not achieve it immediately; at first he was +not noticed, and when he was noticed he was not liked. His looks were +unprepossessing, and one of his legs was shorter than the other. His +physical strength was enormous--he could bend a ramrod with his +fingers. Noticed he was determined to be; and, as he himself says in +one of his letters, observing that every one in society had some sort +of pedestal--wealth, lineage, position, or patronage--he saw that if +he, not pre-eminently possessing any of these,--though he was, as a +matter of fact, of a good Moscow family,--could succeed in engaging +the attention of one person, others would soon follow suit. This he +set about to do by compromising a girl and then abandoning her: and he +acquired the reputation of a Don Juan. Later, when he came back from +the Caucasus, he was treated as a lion. All this does not throw a +pleasant light on his character, more especially as he criticized in +scathing tones the society in which he was anxious to play a part, and +in which he subsequently enjoyed playing a part. But perhaps both +attitudes of mind were sincere. He probably sincerely enjoyed society, +and hankered after success in it; and equally sincerely despised +society and himself for hankering after it. + +As he grew older, his pride and the exasperating provocativeness of +his conduct increased to such an extent that he seemed positively +seeking for serious trouble, and for some one whose patience he could +overtax, and on whom he could fasten a quarrel. And this was not slow +to happen. + +At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated disgust with +himself and with the world in general, and a complete indifference to +life, resulting from large aspirations which could not find an outlet, +and so recoiled upon himself. The epoch, the atmosphere and the +society were the worst possible for his peculiar nature; and the only +fruitful result of the friction between himself and the society and +the established order of his time, was that he was sent to the +Caucasus, which proved to be a source of inspiration for him, as it +had been for Pushkin. One is inclined to say, "If only he had lived +later or longer"; yet it may be doubted whether, had he been born in a +more favourable epoch, either earlier in the milder rgime of +Alexander I, or later, in the enthusiastic epoch of the reforms, he +would have been a happier man and produced finer work. + +The curious thing is that his work does not reveal an overwhelming +pessimism like Leopardi's, an accent of revolt like Musset's, or of +combat like Byron's; but rather it testifies to a fundamental +indifference to life, a concentrated pride. If it be true that you can +roughly divide the Russian temperament into two types--the type of +the pure fool, such as Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_, and a type of +unconquerable pride, such as Lucifer--then Lermontov is certainly a +fine example of the second type. You feel that he will never submit or +yield; but then he died young; and the Russian poets often changed, +and not infrequently adopted a compromise which was the same thing as +submission. + +Lermontov was, like Pushkin, essentially a lyric poet, still more +subjective, and profoundly self-centred. His attempts at the drama +(imitations of Schiller and an attempt at the manner of Griboyedov) +were failures. But, unlike Pushkin, he was a true romantic; and his +work proves to us how essentially different a thing Russian +romanticism is from French, German or English romanticism. He began +with astonishing precocity to write verse when he was twelve. His +earliest efforts were in French. He then began to imitate Pushkin. +While at the Cadet School he wrote a series of cleverly written, more +or less indecent, and more or less Byronic--the Byron of +_Beppo_--tales in verse, describing his love adventures, and episodes +of garrison life. What brought him fame was his "Ode on the Death of +Pushkin," which, although unjustified by the actual facts--he +represents Pushkin as the victim of a bloodthirsty society--strikes +strong and bitter chords. Here, without any doubt, are "thoughts that +breathe and words that burn"-- + + "And you, the proud and shameless progeny + Of fathers famous for their infamy, + You, who with servile heel have trampled down + The fragments of great names laid low by chance, + You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne, + Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory, + You hide behind the shelter of the law, + Before you, right and justice must be dumb! + But, parasites of vice, there's God's assize; + There is an awful court of law that waits. + You cannot reach it with the sound of gold; + It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds; + And vainly you shall call the lying witness; + That shall not help you any more; + And not with all the filth of all your gore + Shall you wash out the poet's righteous blood." + +He struck this strong chord more than once, especially in his +indictment of his own generation, called "A Thought"; and in a poem +written on the transfer of Napoleon's ashes to Paris, in which he +pours scorn on the French for deserting Napoleon when he lived and +then acclaiming his ashes. + +But it is not in poems such as these that Lermontov's most +characteristic qualities are to be found. Lermontov owed nothing to +his contemporaries, little to his predecessors, and still less to +foreign models. It is true that, as a school-boy, he wrote verses full +of Byronic disillusion and satiety, but these were merely echoes of +his reading. The gloom of spirit which he expressed later on was a +permanent and innate feature of his own temperament. Later, the +reading of Shelley spurred on his imagination to emulation, but not to +imitation. He sought his own path from the beginning, and he remained +in it with obdurate persistence. He remained obstinately himself, +indifferent as a rule to outside events, currents of thought and +feeling. And he clung to the themes which he chose in his youth. His +mind to him a kingdom was, and he peopled it with images and fancies +of his own devising. The path which he chose was a narrow one. It was +a romantic path. He chose for the subject of the poem by which he is +perhaps most widely known, _The Demon_, the love of a demon for a +woman. The subject is as romantic as any chosen by Thomas Moore; but +there is nothing now that appears rococo in Lermontov's work. The +colours are as fresh to-day as when they were first laid on. The +heroine is a Circassian woman, and the action of the poem is in the +Caucasus. + +The Demon portrayed is not the spirit that denies of Goethe, nor +Byron's Lucifer, looking the Almighty in His face and telling him that +His evil is not good; nor does he cherish-- + + "the study of revenge, immortal hate," + +of Milton's Satan; but he is the lost angel of a ruined paradise, who +is too proud to accept oblivion even were it offered to him. He dreams +of finding in Tamara the joys of the paradise he has foregone. "I am +he," he says to her, "whom no one loves, whom every human being +curses." He declares that he has foresworn his proud thoughts, that he +desires to be reconciled with Heaven, to love, to pray, to believe in +good. And he pours out to her one of the most passionate love +declarations ever written, in couplet after couplet of words that glow +like jewels and tremble like the strings of a harp, Tamara yields to +him, and forfeits her life; but her soul is borne to Heaven by the +Angel of Light; she has redeemed her sin by death, and the Demon is +left as before alone in a loveless, lampless universe. The poem is +interspersed with descriptions of the Caucasus, which are as glowing +and splendid as the impassioned utterance of the Demon. They put +Pushkin's descriptions in the shade. Lermontov's landscape-painting +compared with Pushkin's is like a picture of Turner compared with a +Constable or a Bonnington. + +Lermontov followed up his first draft of _The Demon_ (originally +planned in 1829, but not finished in its final form until 1841) with +other romantic tales, the scene of which for the most part is laid in +the Caucasus: such as _Izmail Bey_, _Hadji-Abrek_, _Orsha the +Boyar_--the last not a Caucasian tale. These were nearly all of them +sketches in which he tried the colours of his palette. But with +_Mtsyri_, _the Novice_, in which he used some of the materials of the +former tales, he produced a finished picture. + +_Mtsyri_ is the story of a Circassian orphan who is educated in a +convent. The child grows up home-sick at heart, and one day his +longing for freedom becomes ungovernable, and he escapes and roams +about in the mountains. He loses his way in the forest and is brought +back to the monastery after three days, dying from starvation, +exertion, and exhaustion. Before he dies he pours out his confession, +which takes up the greater part of the poem. He confesses how in the +monastery he felt his own country and his own people forever calling, +and how he felt he must seek his own people. He describes his +wanderings: how he scrambles down the mountain-side and hears the song +of a Georgian woman, and sees her as she walks down a narrow path with +a pitcher on her head and draws water from the stream. At nightfall he +sees the light of a dwelling-place twinkling like a falling star; but +he dares not seek it. He loses his way in the forest, he encounters +and kills a panther. In the morning, he finds a way out of the woods +when the daylight comes; he lies in the grass exhausted under the +blinding noon, of which Lermontov gives a gorgeous and detailed +description-- + + "And on God's world there lay the deep + And heavy spell of utter sleep, + Although the landrail called, and I + Could hear the trill of the dragonfly + Or else the lisping of the stream ... + Only a snake, with a yellow gleam + Like golden lettering inlaid + From hilt to tip upon a blade, + Was rustling, for the grass was dry, + And in the loose sand cautiously + It slid, and then began to spring + And roll itself into a ring, + Then, as though struck by sudden fear, + Made haste to dart and disappear." + +Perishing of hunger and thirst, fever and delirium overtake him, and +he fancies that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream, where +speckled fishes are playing in the crystal waters. One of them nestles +close to him and sings to him with a silver voice a lullaby, +unearthly, like the song of Ariel, and alluring like the call of the +Erl King's daughter. In this poem Lermontov reaches the high-water +mark of his descriptive powers. Its pages glow with the splendour of +the Caucasus. + +To his two masterpieces, _The Demon_ and _Mtsyri_, he was to add a +third: _The Song of the Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, the Oprichnik +(bodyguardsman), and the Merchant Kalashnikov_. The Oprichnik insults +the Merchant's wife, and the Merchant challenges him to fight with his +fists, kills him, and is executed for it. This poem is written as a +folk-story, in the style of the _Byliny_, and it in no way resembles a +_pastiche_. It equals, if it does not surpass, Pushkin's _Boris +Godunov_ as a realistic vision of the past; and as an epic tale, for +simplicity, absolute appropriateness of tone, vividness, truth to +nature and terseness, there is nothing in modern Russian literature to +compare with it. Besides these larger poems, Lermontov wrote a +quantity of short lyrics, many of which, such as "The Sail," "The +Angel," "The Prayer," every Russian child knows by heart. + +When we come to consider the qualities of Lermontov's romantic work, +and ask ourselves in what it differs from the romanticism of the +West--from that of Victor Hugo, Heine, Musset, Espronceda--we find +that in Lermontov's work, as in all Russian work, there is mingled +with his lyrical, imaginative, and descriptive powers, a bed-rock of +matter-of-fact common-sense, a root that is deeply embedded in +reality, in the life of everyday. He never escapes into the "intense +inane" of Shelley. Imaginative he is, but he is never lost in the dim +twilight of Coleridge. Romantic he is, but one note of Heine takes us +into a different world: for instance, Heine's quite ordinary +adventures in the Harz Mountains convey a spell and glamour that takes +us over a borderland that Lermontov never crossed. + +Nothing could be more splendid than Lermontov's descriptions; but they +are, compared with those of Western poets, concrete, as sharp as views +in a camera obscura. He never ate the roots of "relish sweet, the +honey wild and manna dew" of the "Belle Dame Sans Merci"; he wrote of +places where Kubla Khan might have wandered, of "ancestral voices +prophesying war," but one has only to quote that line to see that +Lermontov's poetic world, compared with Coleridge's, is solid fact +beside intangible dream. + +Compared even with Musset and Victor Hugo, how much nearer the earth +Lermontov is than either of them! Victor Hugo dealt with just the +same themes; but in Lermontov, the most splendid painter of mountains +imaginable, you never hear + + "Le vent qui vient travers la montagne," + +and you know that it will never drive the Russian poet to frenzy. On +the other hand, you never get Victor Hugo's extravagance and +absurdities. Or take Musset; Musset dealt with romantic themes _si +quis alius_; but when he deals with a subject like Don Juan, which of +all subjects belonged to the age of Pushkin and Lermontov, he writes +lines like these-- + + "Faible, et, comme le lierre, ayant besoin d'autrui; + Et ne le cachant pas, et suspendant son me, + Comme un luth olien, aux lvres de la nuit." + +Here again we are confronted with a different kind of imagination. Or +take a bit of sheer description-- + + "Ple comme l'amour, et de pleurs arrose, + La nuit aux pieds d'argent descend dans la rose." + +You never find the Russian poet impersonating nature like this, and +creating from objects such as the "yellow bees in the ivy bloom" forms +more real than living man. The objects themselves suffice. Lermontov +sang of disappointed love over and over again, but never did he create +a single image such as-- + + "Elle aurait aim, si l'orgueil + Pareil la lampe inutile + Qu'on allume prs d'un cercueil, + N'eut veill sur son coeur strile." + +In his descriptive work he is more like Byron; but Byron was far less +romantic and far less imaginative than Lermontov, although he invented +Byronism, and shattered the crumbling walls of the eighteenth century +that surrounded the city of romance, and dallied with romantic themes +in his youth. All his best work, the finest passages of _Childe +Harold_, and the whole of _Don Juan_, were slices of his own life and +observation, _choses vues_; he never created a single character that +was not a reflection of himself; and he never entered into the city +whose walls he had stormed, and where he had planted his flag. + +This does not mean that Lermontov is inferior to the Western romantic +poets. It simply means that the Russian poet is--and one might add +the Russian poets are--different. And, indeed, it is this very +difference,--what he did with this peculiar realistic paste in his +composition,--that constitutes his unique excellence. So far from its +being a vice, he made it into his especial virtue. Lermontov +sometimes, in presenting a situation and writing a poem on a fact, +presents that situation and that fact without exaggeration, emphasis, +adornment, imagery, metaphor, or fancy of any kind, in the language of +everyday life, and at the same time he achieves poetry. This was +Wordsworth's ideal, and he fulfilled it. + +A case in point is his long poem on the Oprichnik, which has been +mentioned; and some of the most striking examples of this unadorned +and realistic writing are to be found in his lyrics. In the +"Testament," for example, where a wounded officer gives his last +instructions to his friend who is going home on leave-- + + "I want to be alone with you, + A moment quite alone. + The minutes left to me are few, + They say I'll soon be gone. + And you'll be going home on leave, + Then say ... but why? I do believe + There's not a soul, who'll greatly care + To hear about me over there. + + And yet if some one asks you there, + Let us suppose they do-- + Tell them a bullet hit me here, + The chest,--and it went through. + And say I died and for the Tsar, + And say what fools the doctors are;-- + And that I shook you by the hand, + And thought about my native land. + + My father and my mother, too! + They may be dead by now; + To tell the truth, it wouldn't do + To grieve them anyhow. + If one of them is living, say + I'm bad at writing home, and they + Have sent us to the front, you see,-- + And that they needn't wait for me. + + We had a neighbour, as you know, + And you remember I + And she ... How very long ago + It is we said good-bye! + She won't ask after me, nor care, + But tell her ev'rything, don't spare + Her empty heart; and let her cry;-- + To her it doesn't signify." + +The language is the language of ordinary everyday conversation. Every +word the officer says might have been said by him in ordinary life, +and there is not a note that jars; the speech is the living speech of +conversation without being slang: and the result is a poignant piece +of poetry. Another perhaps still more beautiful and touching example +is the cradle-song which a mother sings to a Cossack baby, in which +again every word has the native savour and homeliness of a Cossack +woman's speech, and every feeling expressed is one that she would have +felt. A third example is "Borodino," an account of the famous battle +told by a veteran, as a veteran would tell it. Lermontov's fishes +never talk like big whales. + +All Russian poets have this gift of reality of conception and +simplicity of treatment in a greater or a lesser degree; perhaps none +has it in such a supreme degree as Lermontov. The difference between +Pushkin's style and Lermontov's is that, when you read Pushkin, you +think: "How perfectly and how simply that is said! How in the world +did he do it?" You admire the "magic hand of chance." In reading +Lermontov at his simplest and best, you do not think about the style +at all, you simply respond to what is said, and the style escapes +notice in its absolute appropriateness. Thus, what Matthew Arnold said +about Byron and Wordsworth is true about Lermontov--there are moments +when Nature takes the pen from his hand and writes for him. + +In Lermontov there is nothing slovenly; but there is a great deal that +is flat and sullen. But if one reviews the great amount of work he +produced in his short life, one is struck, not by its variety, as in +the case of Pushkin,--it is, on the contrary, limited and monotonous +in subject,--but by his authentic lyrical inspiration, by the +strength, the intensity, the concentration of his genius, the richness +of his imagination, the wealth of his palette, his gorgeous colouring +and the high level of his strong square musical verse. And perhaps +more than by anything else, one is struck by the blend in his nature +and his work which has just been discussed, of romantic imagination +and stern reality, of soaring thought and earthly common-sense, as +though we had before us the temperament of a Thackeray with the wings +of a Shelley. Lermontov is certainly, whichever way you take him, one +of the most astonishing figures, and certainly the greatest purely +lyrical _Erscheinung_ in Russian literature. + +With the death of Lermontov in 1841, the springtide of national song +that began in the reign of Alexander I comes to an end; for the only +poet he left behind him did not survive him long. This was his +contemporary KOLTSOV (1809-42), the greatest of Russian folk-poets. +The son of a cattle-dealer, after a fitful and short-lived primary +education at the district school of Voronezh, he adopted his father's +trade, and by a sheer accident a cultivated young man of Moscow came +across him and his verses, and raised funds for their publication. + +Koltsov's verse paints peasant life as it is, without any +sentimentality or rhetoric; it is described from the inside, and not +from the outside. This is the great difference between Koltsov and +other popular poets who came later. Moreover, he caught and +reproduced the true _Volkston_ in his lyrics, so that they are +indistinguishable in accent from real folk-poetry. Koltsov sings of +the woods, and the rustling rye, of harvest time and sowing; the song +of the love-sick girl reaping; the lonely grave; the vague dreams and +desires of the peasant's heart. His pictures have the dignity and +truth of Jean Franois Millet, and his "lyrical cry" is as authentic +as that of Burns. His more literary poems are like Burns' English +poems compared with his work in the Scots. But he died the year after +Lermontov, of consumption, and with his death the curtain was rung +down on the first act of Russian literature. When it was next rung up, +it was on the age of prose. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AGE OF PROSE + + +When the curtain again rose on Russian literature it was on an era of +prose; and the leading protagonist of that era, both by his works of +fiction and his dramatic work, was NICHOLAS GOGOL [1809-52]. It is +true that in the thirties Russia began to produce home-made novels. In +Pushkin's story _The Queen of Spades_, when somebody asks the old +Countess if she wishes to read a Russian novel, she says "A Russian +novel? Are there any?" This stage had been passed; but the novels and +the plays that were produced at this time until the advent of Gogol +have been--deservedly for the greater part--forgotten. And, just as +Lermontov was the successor of Pushkin in the domain of poetry, so in +the domain of satire Gogol was the successor of Griboyedov; and in +creating a national work he was the heir of Pushkin. + +Gogol was a Little Russian. He was born in 1809 near Poltava, in the +Cossack country, and was brought up by his grandfather, a Cossack; but +he left the Ukraine and settled in 1829 in St. Petersburg, where he +obtained a place in a Government office. After an unsuccessful attempt +to go on the stage, and a brief career as tutor, he was given a +professorship of History; but he failed here also, and finally turned +to literature. The publication of his first efforts gained him the +acquaintance of the literary men of the day, and he became the friend +of Pushkin, who proved a valuable friend, adviser, and critic, and +urged him to write on the life of the people. He lived in St. +Petersburg from 1829 to 1836; and it was perhaps home-sickness which +inspired him to write his Little Russian sketches--_Evenings on a Farm +on the Dikanka_,--which appeared in 1832, followed by _Mirgorod_, a +second series, in 1834. + +Gogol's temperament was romantic. He had a great deal of the dreamer +in him, a touch of the eerie, a delight in the supernatural, an impish +fancy that reminds one sometimes of Hoffmann and sometimes of R. L. +Stevenson, as well as a deep religious vein which was later on to +dominate and oust all his other qualities. But, just as we find in the +Russian poets a curious mixture of romanticism and realism, of +imagination and common-sense, so in Gogol, side by side with his +imaginative gifts, which were great, there is a realism based on +minute observation. In addition to this, and tempering his penetrating +observation, he had a rich streak of humour, a many-sided humour, +ranging from laughter holding both its sides, to a delicate and half +melancholy chuckle, and in his later work to biting irony. + +In the very first story of his first book, "The Fair of Sorochinetz," +we are plunged into an atmosphere that smells of Russia in a way that +no other Russian book has ever yet savoured of the soil. We are +plunged into the South, on a blazing noonday, when the corn is +standing in sheaves and wheat is being sold at the fair; and the fair, +with its noise, its smell and its colour, rises before us as vividly +as Normandy leaps out of the pages of Maupassant, or Scotland from the +pages of Stevenson. And just as Andrew Lang once said that probably +only a Scotsman, and a Lowland Scotsman, could know how true to life +the characters in _Kidnapped_ were, so it is probable that only a +Russian, and indeed a Little Russian, appreciates to the full how true +to life are the people, the talk, and the ambient air in the tales of +Gogol. And then we at once get that hint of the supernatural which +runs like a scarlet thread through all these stories; the rumour that +the _Red Jacket_ has been observed in the fair; and the _Red Jacket_, +so the gossips say, belongs to a little Devil, who being turned out of +Hell as a punishment for some misdemeanour--probably a good +intention--established himself in a neighbouring barn, and from +home-sickness took to drink, and drank away all his substance; so that +he was obliged to pawn his red jacket for a year to a Jew, who sold it +before the year was out, whereupon the buyer, recognizing its unholy +origin, cut it up into bits and threw it away, after which the Devil +appeared in the shape of a pig every year at the fair to find the +pieces. It is on this Red Jacket that the story turns. + +In this first volume, the supernatural plays a predominant part +throughout; the stories tell of water-nymphs, the Devil, who steals +the moon, witches, magicians, and men who traffic with the Evil One +and lose their souls. In the second series, _Mirgorod_, realism comes +to the fore in the stories of "The Old-Fashioned Landowners" and "The +Quarrel of the Two Ivans." These two stories contain between them the +sum and epitome of the whole of one side of Gogol's genius, the +realistic side. In the one story, "The Old-Fashioned Landowners," we +get the gentle good humour which tells the charming tale of a South +Russian Philemon and Baucis, their hospitality and kindliness, and the +loneliness of Philemon when Baucis is taken away, told with the art of +La Fontaine, and with many touches that remind one of Dickens. The +other story, "The Quarrel of the Two Ivans," who are bosom friends and +quarrel over nothing, and are, after years, on the verge of making it +up when the mere mention of the word "goose" which caused the quarrel +sets alight to it once more and irrevocably, is in Gogol's richest +farcical vein, with just a touch of melancholy. + +And in the same volume, two _nouvelles_, _Tarass Bulba_ and _Viy_, sum +up between them the whole of the other side of Gogol's genius. _Tarass +Bulba_, a short historical novel, with its incomparably vivid picture +of Cossack life, is Gogol's masterpiece in the epic vein. It is as +strong and as direct as a Border ballad. _Viy_, which tells of a +witch, is the most creepy and imaginative of his supernatural stories. + +Later, he published two more collections of stories: _Arabesques_ +(1834) and _Tales_ (1836). In these, poetry, witches, water-nymphs, +magicians, devils, and epic adventure are all left behind. The element +of the fantastic still subsists, as in the "Portrait," and of the +grotesque, as in the story of the major who loses his nose, which +becomes a separate personality, and wanders about the town. But his +blend of realism and humour comes out strongly in the story of "The +Carriage," and his blend of realism and pathos still more strongly in +the story of "The Overcoat," the story of a minor public servant who +is always shivering and whose dream it is to have a warm overcoat. +After years of privation he saves enough money to buy one, and on the +first day he wears it, it is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his +ghost haunts the streets. This story is the only begetter of the large +army of pathetic figures of failure that crowd the pages of Russian +literature. + +While Gogol had been writing and publishing these tales, he had also +been steadily writing for the stage; but here the great difficulty and +obstacle was the Censorship, which was almost as severe as it was in +England at the end of the reign of Edward VII. But, by a curious +paradox, the play, which you would have expected the Censorship to +forbid before all other plays, _The Revisor_, or _Inspector-General_, +was performed. This was owing to the direct intervention of the +Emperor. _The Revisor_ is the second comic masterpiece of the Russian +stage. The plot was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. The officials of an +obscure country town hear the startling news that a Government +Inspector is arriving incognito to investigate their affairs. A +traveller from St. Petersburg--a fine natural liar--is taken for the +Inspector, plays up to the part, and gets away just before the arrival +of the real Inspector, which is the end of the play. The play is a +satire on the Russian bureaucracy. Almost every single character in it +is dishonest; and the empty-headed, and irrelevant hero, with his +magnificent talent for easy lying, is a masterly creation. The play +at once became a classic, and retains all its vitality and comic force +to-day. There is no play which draws a larger audience on holidays in +St. Petersburg and Moscow. + +After the production of _The Revisor_, Gogol left Russia for ever and +settled in Rome. He had in his mind a work of great importance on +which he had already been working for some time. This was his _Dead +Souls_, his most ambitious work, and his masterpiece. It was Pushkin +who gave him the idea of the book. The hero of the book, Chichikov, +conceives a brilliant idea. Every landlord possessed so many serfs, +called "souls." A revision took place every ten years, and the +landlord had to pay for poll-tax on the "souls" who had died during +that period. Nobody looked at the lists between the periods of +revision. Chichikov's idea was to take over the dead souls from the +landlord, who would, of course, be delighted to be rid of the +fictitious property and the real tax, to register his purchases, and +then to mortgage at a bank at St. Petersburg or Moscow, the "souls," +which he represented as being in some place in the Crimea, and thus +make money enough to buy "souls" of his own. The book tells of the +adventures of Chichikov as he travels over Russia in search of dead +"souls," and is, like Mr. Pickwick's adventures, an Odyssey, +introducing us to every kind and manner of man and woman. The book was +to be divided in three parts. The first part appeared in 1842. Gogol +went on working at the second and third parts until 1852, when he +died. He twice threw the second part of the work into the fire when it +was finished; so that all we possess is the first part, and the second +part printed from an incomplete manuscript. The second part was +certainly finished when he destroyed it, and it is probable that the +third part was sketched. He had intended in the second part to work +out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, and to give to the world his +complete message. Persecuted by a dream he was unable to realize and +an ambition which he was not able to fulfil, Gogol was driven inwards, +and his natural religious feeling grew more intense and made him into +an ascetic and a recluse. This break in the middle of his career is +characteristic of Russia. Tolstoy, of course, furnishes the most +typical example of the same thing. But it is a common Russian +characteristic for men midway in a successful career to turn aside +from it altogether, and seek consolation in the things which are not +of this world. + +Gogol's _Dead Souls_ made a deep impression upon educated Russia. It +pleased the enthusiasts for Western Europe by its reality, its +artistic conception and execution, and by its social ideas; and it +pleased the Slavophile Conservatives by its truth to life, and by its +smell of Russia. When the first chapter was read aloud to Pushkin, he +said, when Gogol had finished: "God, what a sad country Russia is!" +And it is certainly true, that amusing as the book is, inexpressibly +comic as so many of the scenes are, Gogol does not flatter his country +or his countrymen; and when Russians read it at the time it appeared, +many must have been tempted to murmur "_doux pays!_"--as they would, +indeed, now, were a writer with the genius of a Gogol to appear and +describe the adventures of a modern Chichikov; for, though +circumstances may be entirely different, although there are no more +"souls" to be bought or sold, Chichikov is still alive--and as Gogol +said, there was probably not one of his readers who after an honest +self-examination, would not wonder if he had not something of +Chichikov in him, and who if he were to meet an acquaintance at that +moment, would not nudge his companion and say: "There goes Chichikov." +"And who and what is Chichikov?" The answer is: "A scoundrel." But +such an entertaining scoundrel, so abject, so shameless, so utterly +devoid of self-respect, such a magnificent liar, so plausible an +impostor, so ingenious a cheat, that he rises from scoundrelism almost +to greatness. + +There is, indeed, something of the greatness of Falstaff in this +trafficker of dead "souls." His baseness is almost sublime. He in any +case merits a place in the gallery of humanity's typical and human +rascals, where Falstaff, Tartuffe, Pecksniff, and Count Fosco reign. +He has the great saving merit of being human; nor can he be accused of +hypocrisy. His coachman, Selifan, who got drunk with every "decent +man," is worthy of the creator of Sam Weller. But what distinguishes +Gogol in his _Dead Souls_ from the great satirists of other nations, +and his satire from the _saeva indignatio_ of Swift, for instance, is +that, after laying bare to the bones the rascality of his hero, he +turns round on his audience and tells them that there is no cause for +indignation; Chichikov is only a victim of a ruling passion--gain; +perhaps, indeed, in the chill existence of a Chichikov, there may be +something which will one day cause us to humble ourselves on our knees +and in the dust before the Divine Wisdom. His irony is lined with +indulgence; his sleepless observation is tempered by fundamental +charity. He sees what is mean and common clearer than any one, but he +does not infer from it that life, or mankind, or the world is common +or mean. He infers the opposite. He puts Chichikov no lower morally +than he would put Napoleon, Harpagon, or Don Juan--all of them victims +of a ruling passion, and all of them great by reason of it--for +Chichikov is also great in rascality, just as Harpagon was great in +avarice, and Don Juan great in profligacy. And this large charity +blent with biting irony is again peculiarly Russian. + +_Dead Souls_ is a deeper book than any of Gogol's early work. It is +deep in the same way as _Don Quixote_ is deep; and like _Don Quixote_ +it makes boys laugh, young men think, and old men weep. Apart from +its philosophy and ideas, _Dead Souls_ had a great influence on +Russian literature as a work of art. Just as Pushkin set Russian +poetry free from the high-flown and the conventional, so did Gogol set +Russian fiction free from the dominion of the grand style. He carried +Pushkin's work--the work which Pushkin had accomplished in verse and +adumbrated in prose--much further; and by depicting ordinary life, and +by writing a novel without any love interest, with a Chichikov for a +hero, he created Russian realism. He described what he saw without +flattery and without exaggeration, but with the masterly touch, the +instinctive economy, the sense of selection of a great artist. + +This, at the time it was done, was a revolution. Nobody then would +have dreamed it possible to write a play or a novel without a +love-motive; and just as Pushkin revealed to Russia that there was +such a thing as Russian landscape, Gogol again, going one better, +revealed the fascination, the secret and incomprehensible power that +lay in the flat monotony of the Russian country, and the inexhaustible +source of humour, absurdity, irony, quaintness, farce, comedy in the +everyday life of the ordinary people. So that, however much his +contemporaries might differ as to the merits or demerits, the harm or +the beneficence, of his work, he left his nation with permanent and +classic models of prose and fiction and stories, just as Pushkin had +bequeathed to them permanent models of verse. + +Gogol wrote no more fiction after _Dead Souls_. In 1847 _Passages from +a Correspondence with a Friend_ was published, which created a +sensation, because in the book Gogol preached submission to the +Government, both spiritual and temporal. The Western enthusiasts and +the Liberals in general were highly disgusted. One can understand +their disgust; it is less easy to understand their surprise; for Gogol +had never pretended to be a Liberal. He showed up the evils of +Bureaucracy and the follies and weaknesses of Bureaucrats, because +they were there, just as he showed up the stinginess of misers and the +obstinacy of old women. But it is quite as easy for a Conservative to +do this as it is for a Liberal, and quite as easy for an orthodox +believer as for an atheist. But Gogol's contemporaries had not +realized the tempest that had been raging for a long time in Gogol's +soul, and which he kept to himself. He had always been religious, and +now he became exclusively religious; he made a pilgrimage to the Holy +Land; he spent his substance in charity, especially to poor students; +and he lived in asceticism until he died, at the age of forty-three. +What a waste, one is tempted to say--and how often one is tempted to +say this in the annals of Russian literature--and yet, one wonders! + +What we possess of the second part of _Dead Souls_ is in Gogol's best +vein, and of course one cannot help bitterly regretting that the rest +was destroyed or possibly never written; but one wonders whether, had +he not had within him the intensity of feeling which led him +ultimately to renounce art, he would have been the artist that he was; +whether he would have been capable of creating so many-coloured a +world of characters, and whether the soil out of which those works +grew was not in reality the kind of soil out of which religious +renunciation was at last bound to flower. However that may be, Gogol +left behind him a rich inheritance. He is one of the great humorists +of European literature, and whoever gives England a really fine +translation of his work, will do his country a service. Mrime places +Gogol among the best _English_ humorists. His humour and his pathos +were closely allied; but there is no acidity in his irony. His work +may sometimes sadden you, but (as in the case of Krylov's two pigeons) +it will never bore you, and it will never leave you with a feeling of +stale disgust or a taste as of sharp alum, for his work is based on +charity, and it has in its form and accent the precious gift of charm. +Gogol is an author who will always be loved even as much as he is +admired, and his stories are a boon to the young; to many a Russian +boy and girl the golden gates of romance have been opened by Gogol, +the destroyer of Russian romanticism, the inaugurator of Russian +realism. + +Side by side with fiction, another element grew up in this age of +prose, namely criticism. Karamzin in the twenties had been the first +to introduce literary criticism, and critical appreciations of +Pushkin's work appeared from time to time in the _European Messenger_. +PRINCE VYAZEMSKY, whose literary activity lasted from 1808-78, was a +critic as well as a poet and a satirist, a fine example of the type of +great Russian nobles so frequent in Russian books, who were not only +saturated with culture but enriched literature with their work, and +carried on the tradition of cool, clear wit, clean expression, and +winged phrase that we find in Griboyedov. POLEVOY, a self-educated man +of humble extraction, was the first professional journalist, and +created the tradition of violent and fiery polemics, which has lasted +till this day in Russian journalism. But the real founder of Russian +sthetic, literary, and journalistic criticism was BELINSKY +(1811-1847). + +Like Polevoy, he was of humble extraction and almost entirely +self-educated. He lived in want and poverty and ill-health. His life +was a long battle against every kind of difficulty and obstacle; his +literary production was more than hampered by the Censorship, but his +influence was far-reaching and deep. He created Russian criticism, and +after passing through several phases--a German phase of Hegelian +philosophy, Gallophobia, enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Goethe and for +objective art, a French phase of enthusiasm for art as practised in +France, ended finally in a didactic phase of which the watchword was +that Life was more important than Art. + +The first blossoms of the new generation of writers, Goncharov, +Dostoyevsky, Herzen, and others, grew up under his encouragement. He +expounded Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Griboyedov, Zhukovsky and the +writers of the past. His judgments have remained authoritative; but +some of his final judgments, which were unshaken for generations, such +as for instance his estimates of Pushkin and Lermontov, were much +biassed and coloured by his didacticism. He burnt what he had adored +in the case of Gogol, who, like Pushkin, became for him too much of an +artist, and not enough of a social reformer. Whatever phase Belinsky +went through, he was passionate, impulsive, and violent, incapable of +being objective, or of doing justice to an opponent, or of seeing two +sides to a question. He was a polemical and fanatical knight errant, +the prophet and propagandist of Western influence, the bitter enemy of +the Slavophiles. + +The didactic stamp which he gave to Russian sthetic and literary +criticism has remained on it ever since, and differentiates it from +the literary and sthetic criticism of the rest of Europe, not only +from that school of criticism which wrote and writes exclusively under +the banner of "Art for Art's Sake," but from those Western critics who +championed the importance of moral ideas in literature, just as +ardently as he did himself, and who deprecated the theory of Art for +Art's sake just as strongly. Thus it is that, from the beginning of +Russian criticism down to the present day, a truly objective criticism +scarcely exists in Russian literature. sthetic criticism becomes a +political weapon. "Are you in my camp?" if so, you are a good writer. +"Are you in my opponent's camp?" then your god-gifted genius is mere +dross. + +The reason of this has been luminously stated by Professor Brckner: +"To the intelligent Russian, without a free press, without the liberty +of assembly, without the right to free expression of opinion, +literature became the last refuge of freedom of thought, the only +means of propagating higher ideas. He expected of his country's +literature not merely sthetic recreation; he placed it at the service +of his aspirations.... Hence the striking partiality, nay unfairness, +displayed by the Russians towards the most perfect works of their own +literature, when they did not respond to the aims or expectations of +their party or their day." And speaking of the criticism that was +produced after 1855, he says: "This criticism is often, in spite of +all its giftedness, its ardour and fire, only a mockery of all +criticism. The work only serves as an example on which to hang the +critics' own views.... This is no reproach; we simply state the fact, +and fully recognize the necessity and usefulness of the method. With a +backward society, ... this criticism was a means which was sanctified +by the end, the spreading of free opinions.... Unhappily, Russian +literary criticism has remained till to-day almost solely +journalistic, _i. e._ didactic and partisan. See how even now it +treats the most interesting, exceptional, and mighty of all Russians, +Dostoyevsky, merely because he does not fit into the Radical mould! +How unjust it has been towards others! How it has extolled to the +clouds the representatives of its own camp!" I quote Professor +Brckner, lest I should be myself suspected of being partial in this +question. The question, perhaps, may admit of further expansion. It +is not that the Russian critics were merely convinced it was +all-important that art should have ideas at the roots of it, and had +no patience with a merely shallow stheticism. They went further; the +ideas had to be of one kind. A definite political tendency had to be +discerned; and if the critic disagreed with that political tendency, +then no amount of qualities--not artistic excellence, form, skill, +style, not even genius, inspiration, depth, feeling, philosophy--were +recognized. + +Herein lies the great difference between Russian and Western critics, +between Sainte-Beuve and Belinsky; between Matthew Arnold and his +Russian contemporaries. Matthew Arnold defined the highest poetry as +being a criticism of life; but that would not have prevented him from +doing justice either to a poet so polemical as Byron, or to a poet so +completely unpolitical, so sheerly sthetic as Keats; to Lord +Beaconsfield as a novelist, to Mr. Morley or Lord Acton as historians, +because their "tendency" or their "politics" were different from his +own. The most biassed of English or French critics is broad-minded +compared to a Russian critic. Had Keats been a Russian poet, Belinsky +would have swept him away with contempt; Wordsworth would have been +condemned as reactionary; and Swinburne's politics alone would have +been taken into consideration. At the present day, almost ten years +after Professor Brckner wrote his _History of Russian Literature_, now +that the press is more or less free, save for occasional pin-pricks, +now that literary output is in any case unfettered, and the stage freer +than it is in England, the same criticism still applies. Russian +literary criticism is still journalistic. There are and there always +have been brilliant exceptions, of course, two of the most notable of +which are VOLYNSKY and MEREZHKOVSKY; but as a rule the political camp +to which the writer belongs is the all-important question; and I know +cases of Russian politicians who have been known to refuse to write, +even in foreign reviews, because they disapproved of the "tendency" of +those reviews, the tendency being non-existent--as is generally the +case with English reviews,--and the review harbouring opinions of every +shade and tendency. You would think that narrow-mindedness could no +further go than to refuse to let your work appear in an impartial +organ, lest in that same organ an opinion opposed to your own might +appear also. But the cause of this is the same now as it used to be, +namely that, in spite of there being a greater measure of freedom in +Russia, political liberty does not yet exist. Liberty of assembly does +not exist; liberty of conscience only partially exists; the press is +annoyed and hampered by restrictions; and the great majority of Russian +writers are still engaged in fighting for these things, and therefore +still ready to sacrifice fairness for the greater end,--the achievement +of political freedom. + +Thus criticism in Russia became a question of camps, and the question +arises, what were these camps? From the dawn of the age of pure +literature, Russia was divided into two great camps: The Slavophiles +and the Propagandists of Western Ideas. + +The trend towards the West began with the influence of Joseph Le +Maistre and the St. Petersburg Jesuits. In 1836, CHAADAEV, an +ex-guardsman who had served in the Russian campaign in France and +travelled a great deal in Western Europe, and who shared Joseph Le +Maistre's theory that Russia had suffered by her isolation from the +West and through the influence of the former Byzantine Empire, +published the first of his _Lettres sur la Philosophie de l'Histoire_ +in the _Telescope_ of Moscow. This letter came like a bomb-shell. He +glorified the tradition and continuity of the Catholic world. He said +that Russia existed, as it were, outside of time, without the +tradition either of the Orient or of the Occident, and that the +universal culture of the human race had not touched it. "The +atmosphere of the West produces ideas of duty, law, justice, order; we +have given nothing to the world and taken nothing from it; ... we have +not contributed anything to the progress of humanity, and we have +disfigured everything we have taken from that progress. Hostile +circumstances have alienated us from the general trend in which the +social idea of Christianity grew up; thus we ought to revise our +faith, and begin our education over again on another basis." The +expression of these incontrovertible sentiments resulted in the exile +of the editor of the _Telescope_, the dismissal of the Censor, and in +the official declaration of Chaadaev's insanity, who was put under +medical supervision for a year. + +Chaadaev made disciples who went further than he did, PRINCESS +VOLKONSKY, the authoress of a notable book on the Orthodox Church, and +PRINCE GAGARIN, who both became Catholics. This was one branch of +Westernism. Another branch, to which Belinsky belonged, had no +Catholic leanings, but sought for salvation in socialism and atheism. +The most important figure in this branch is ALEXANDER HERZEN +(1812-1870). His real name was Yakovlev; his father, a wealthy +nobleman, married in Germany, but did not legalize his marriage in +Russia, so his children took their mother's name. + +Herzen's career belongs rather to the history of Russia than to the +history of Russian literature; were it not that, besides being one of +the greatest and most influential personalities of his time, he was a +great memoir-writer. He began, after a mathematical training at the +University, with fiction, of which the best example is a novel _Who is +to Blame?_ which paints the _gnie sans portefeuille_ of the period +that Turgenev was so fond of depicting. Herzen was exiled on account +of his oral propaganda, first to Perm, and then to Vyatka. In 1847, he +left Russia for ever, and lived abroad for the rest of his life, at +first in Paris, and afterwards in London, where he edited a newspaper +called _The Bell_. + +Herzen was a Socialist. Western Europe he considered to be played out. +He looked upon Socialism as a new religion and a new form of +Christianity, which would be to the new world what Christianity had +been to the old. The Russian peasants would play the part of the +Invasion of the Barbarians; and the functions of the State would be +taken over by the Russian Communes on a basis of voluntary and mutual +agreement--the principle of the Commune, of sharing all possessions in +common, being so near the fundamental principle of Christianity. + +"A thinking Russian," he wrote, "is the most independent being in the +world. What can stop him? Consideration for the past? But what is the +starting-point of modern Russian history if it be not a total negation +of nationalism and tradition?... What do we care, disinherited minors +that we are, for the duties you have inherited? Can your worn-out +morality satisfy us? Your morality which is neither Christian nor +human, which is used only in copybooks and for the ritual of the +law?" Again: "We are free because we begin with our own liberation; we +are independent; we have nothing to lose or to honour. A Russian will +never be a protestant, or follow the _juste milieu_ ... our +civilization is external, our corrupt morals quite crude." + +The great point Herzen was always making was that Russia had escaped +the baleful tradition of Western Europe, and the hereditary infection +of Western corruption. Thus, in his disenchantment with Western +society and his enthusiasm for the communal ownership of land, he was +at one with the Slavophiles; where he differed from them was in +accepting certain Western ideas, and in thinking that a new order of +things, a new heaven and earth, could be created by a social +revolution, which should be carried out by the Slavs. His +influence--he was one of the precursors of Nihilism, for the seed he +sowed, falling on the peculiar soil where it fell, produced the +whirlwind as a harvest--belongs to history. What belongs to literature +are his memoirs, _My Past and my Thoughts_ (_Byloe i Dumy_), which +were written between 1852 and 1855. These memoirs of everyday life +and encounters with all sorts and conditions of extraordinary men are +in their subject-matter as exciting as a novel, and, in their style, +on a level with the masterpieces of Russian prose, through their +subtle psychology, interest, wit, and artistic form. + +Herzen lived to see his ideas bearing fruit in the one way which of +all others he would have sought to avoid, namely in "militancy" and +terrorism. When in 1866, an attempt was made by Karakozov to +assassinate Alexander II, and Herzen wrote an article repudiating all +political assassinations as barbarous, the revolutionary parties +solemnly denounced him and his newspaper. _The Bell_, which had +already lost its popularity owing to Herzen's pro-Polish sympathies in +1863, ceased to have any circulation. Thus he lived to see his vast +hopes shattered, the seed he had sown bearing a fruit he distrusted, +his dreams of regeneration burst like a bubble, his ideals exploited +by unscrupulous criminals. He died in 1870, leaving a name which is as +great in Russian literature as it is remarkable in Russian history. + +Turning now to the _Slavophiles_, their idea was that Russia was +already in possession of the best possible institutions,--orthodoxy, +autocracy, and communal ownership, and that the West had everything to +learn from Russia. They pointed to the evils arising from the feudal +and aristocratic state, the system of primogeniture in the West, the +higher legal status of women in Russia, and the superiority of a +communal system, which leads naturally to a Consultative National +Assembly with unanimous decisions, over the parliaments and party +systems of the West. + +The leader of the Slavophiles was HOMYAKOV, a man of great culture; a +dialectician, a poet, and an impassioned defender of orthodoxy. The +best of his lyrics, which are inspired by a profound love of his +country and belief in it, have great depth of feeling. Besides +Homyakov, there were other poets, such as TYUTCHEV and IVAN AKSAKOV. +Just as the camp of Reform produced in Herzen a supreme writer of +memoirs, that of the Slavophiles also produced a unique memoir writer +in the SERGE AKSAKOV, the father of the poet (1791-1859), who +published his _Family Chronicle_ in 1856, and who describes the life +of the end of the eighteenth century, and the age of Alexander. This +book, one of the most valuable historical documents in Russian, and a +priceless collection of biographical portraits, is also a gem of +Russian prose, exact in its observation, picturesque and perfectly +balanced in its diction. + +Aksakov remembered with unclouded distinctness exactly what he had +seen in his childhood, which he spent in the district of Orenburg. He +paints the portraits of his grandfather and his great-aunt. We see +every detail of the life of a backwoodsman of the days of Catherine +II. We see the noble of those days, simple and rustic in his habits as +a peasant, almost entirely unlettered, and yet a gentleman through and +through, unswerving in maintaining the standard of morals and +traditions which he considers due to his ancient lineage. We see every +hour of the day of his life in the country; we hear all the details of +the family life, the marriage of his son, the domestic troubles of his +sister. + +What strikes one most, perhaps, besides the contrast between the +primitive simplicity of the habits and manners of the life described, +and the astoundingly gentlemanlike feelings of the man who leads this +quiet and rustic life in remote and backward conditions, is that there +is not a hint or suspicion of anything antiquated in the sentiments +and opinions we see at play. The story of Aksakov's grandfather might +be that of any country gentleman in any country, at any epoch, making +allowances for a certain difference in manners and customs and +conditions which were peculiar to the epoch in question, the existence +of serfdom, for instance--although here, too, the feeling with regard +to manners described is startlingly like the ideal of good manners of +any epoch, although the _moeurs_ are sometimes different. The story +is as vivid and as interesting as that of any novel, as that of the +novels of Russian writers of genius, and it has the additional value +of being true. And yet we never feel that Aksakov has a thought of +compiling a historical document for the sake of its historical +interest. He is making history unawares, just as Monsieur Jourdain +talked prose without knowing it; and, whether he was aware of it or +not, he wrote perfect prose. No more perfect piece of prose writing +exists. The style flows on like a limpid river; there is nothing +superfluous, and not a hesitating touch. It is impossible to put down +the narrative after once beginning it, and I have heard of children +who read it like a fairy-tale. One has the sensation, in reading it, +of being told a story by some enchanting nurse, who, when the usual +question, "Is it true?" is put to her, could truthfully answer, "Yes, +it is true." The pictures of nature, the portraits of the people, all +the good and all the bad of the good and the bad old times pass before +one with epic simplicity and the magic of a fairy-tale. One is +spellbound by the charm, the dignity, the good-nature, the gentle, +easy accent of the speaker, in whom one feels convinced not only that +there was nothing common nor mean, but to whom nothing was common or +mean, who was a gentleman by character as well as by lineage, one of +God's as well as one of Russia's nobility. + +There is no book in Russian which, for its entrancing interest as well +as for its historical value, so richly deserves translation into +English; only such a translation should be made by a stylist--that is, +by a man who knows how to speak and write his mother tongue +perspicuously and simply. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE EPOCH OF REFORM + + +For seven years after the death of Belinsky in 1848, all literary +development ceased. This period was the darkest hour before the dawn +of the second great renascence of Russian literature. Criticism was +practically non-existent; the Slavophiles were forbidden to write; the +Westernizers were exiled. An increased severity of censorship, an +extreme suspicion and drastic measures on the part of the Government +were brought about by the fears which the Paris revolution of 1848 had +caused. The Westernizers felt the effects of this as much as the +Slavophiles; a group of young literary men, schoolmasters and +officers, the Petrashevtsy, called after their leader, a Foreign +Office official PETRASHEVSKY, met together on Fridays and debated on +abstract subjects; they discussed the emancipation of the serfs, read +Fourier and Lamennais, and considered the establishment of a secret +press: the scheme of a popular propaganda was thought of, but nothing +had got beyond talk--and the whole thing was in reality only +talk--when the society was discovered by the police and its members +were punished with the utmost severity. Twenty-one of them were +condemned to death, among whom was Dostoyevsky, who, being on the army +list, was accused of treason. They were reprieved on the scaffold; +some sent into penal servitude in Siberia, and some into the army. +This marked one of the darkest hours in the history of Russian +literature. And from this date until 1855, complete stagnation +reigned. In 1855 the Emperor Nicholas died during the Crimean War; and +with the accession of his son Alexander II, a new era dawned on +Russian literature, the Era of the Great Reforms. The Crimean War and +the reforms which followed it--the emancipation of the serfs, the +creation of a new judicial system, and the foundation of local +self-government--stabbed the Russian soul into life, relieved it of +its gag, produced a great outburst of literature which enlarged and +enriched the literature of the world, and gave to the world three of +its greatest novelists: Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. + +IVAN TURGENEV (1816-83), whose name is of Tartar origin, came of an +old family which had frequently distinguished itself in the annals of +Russian literature by a fearless outspokenness. He began his literary +career by writing verse (1843); but, like Maupassant, he soon +understood that verse was not his true vehicle, and in 1847 gave up +writing verse altogether; in that year he published in _The +Contemporary_ his first sketch of peasant life, _Khor and Kalinych_, +which afterwards formed part of his _Sportsman's Sketches_, +twenty-four of which he collected and published in 1852. The +Government rendered Turgenev the same service as it had done to +Pushkin, in exiling him to his own country estate for two years. When, +after the two years, this forced exile came to an end, he went into +another kind of exile of his own accord; he lived at first at Baden, +and then in Paris, and only reappeared in Russia from time to time; +this accounts for the fact that, although Turgenev belongs +chronologically to the epoch of the great reforms, the Russia which he +paints was really more like the Russia before that epoch; and when he +tried to paint the Russia that was contemporary to him his work gave +rise to much controversy. + +His _Rudin_ was published in 1856, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_ in 1859, +_On the Eve_ in 1860, _Fathers and Sons_ in 1862, _Smoke_ in 1867. +Turgenev did for Russian literature what Byron did for English +literature; he led the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout all +Europe. And in Europe his work reaped a glorious harvest of praise. +Flaubert was astounded by him, George Sand looked up to him as to a +Master, Taine spoke of his work as being the finest artistic +production since Sophocles. In Turgenev's work, Europe not only +discovered Turgenev, but it discovered Russia, the simplicity and the +naturalness of the Russian character; and this came as a revelation. +For the first time, Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin +was the first to paint; for the first time Europe came into contact +with the Russian soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation +which accounts for the fact of Turgenev having received in the West an +even greater meed of praise than he was perhaps entitled to. + +In Russia, Turgenev attained almost instant popularity. His +_Sportsman's Sketches_ made him known, and his _Nest of Gentlefolk_ +made him not only famous but universally popular. In 1862 the +publication of his masterpiece _Fathers and Sons_ dealt his reputation +a blow. The revolutionary elements in Russia regarded his hero, +Bazarov, as a calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary elements in +Russia looked upon _Fathers and Sons_ as a glorification of Nihilism. +Thus he satisfied nobody. He fell between two stools. This, perhaps, +could only happen in Russia to this extent; and for the same reason as +that which made Russian criticism didactic. The conflicting elements +of Russian society were so terribly in earnest in fighting their +cause, that any one whom they did not regard as definitely for them +was at once considered an enemy, and an impartial delineation of any +character concerned in the political struggle was bound to displease +both parties. If a novelist drew a Nihilist, he must either be a hero +or a scoundrel, if either the revolutionaries or the reactionaries +were to be pleased. If in England the militant suffragists suddenly +had a huge mass of educated opinion behind them and a still larger +mass of educated public opinion against them, and some one were to +draw in a novel an impartial picture of a suffragette, the same thing +would happen. On a small scale, as far as the suffragettes are +concerned, it has happened in the case of Mr. Wells. But, if +Turgenev's popularity suffered a shock in Russia from which it with +difficulty recovered, in Western Europe it went on increasing. +Especially in England, Turgenev became the idol of all that was +eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a hall-mark of good taste. + +In Russia, Turgenev's work recovered from the unpopularity caused by +his _Fathers and Sons_ when Nihilism became a thing of the past, and +revolution took an entirely different shape; but, with the growing up +of new generations, his popularity suffered in a different way and for +different reasons. A new element came into Russian literature with +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and later with Gorky, and Turgenev's work began +to seem thin and artificial beside the creations of these stronger +writers; but in Russia, where Turgenev's work has the advantage of +being read in the original, it had an asset which ensured it a +permanent and safe harbour, above and beyond the fluctuations of +literary taste, the strife of political parties, and the conflict of +social ideals; and that was its art, its poetry, its style, which +ensured it a lasting and imperishable niche among the great classics +of Russian literature. And there it stands now. Turgenev's work in +Russia is no longer disputed or a subject of dispute. It is taken for +granted; and, whatever the younger generation will read and admire, +they will always read and admire Turgenev first. His work is a +necessary part of the intellectual baggage of any educated man and, +especially, of the educated adolescent. + +The position of Tennyson in England offers in a sense a parallel to +that of Turgenev in Russia. Tennyson, like Turgenev, enjoyed during +his lifetime not only the popularity of the masses, but the +appreciation of all that was most eclectic in the country. Then a +reaction set in. Now I believe the young generation think nothing of +Tennyson at all. And yet nothing is so sure as his permanent place in +English literature; and that permanent place is secured to him by his +incomparable diction. So it is with Turgenev. One cannot expect the +younger generation to be wildly excited about Turgenev's ideas, +characters, and problems. They belong to an epoch which is dead. At +the same time, one cannot help thinking that the most advanced of the +symbolist writers would not have been sorry had he happened by chance +to write _Bezhin Meadow_ and the _Poems in Prose_. Just so one cannot +help thinking that the most modern of our poets, had he by accident +written _The Revenge_ or _Tears, Idle Tears_, would not have thrown +them in the fire! + +There is, indeed, something in common between Tennyson and Turgenev. +They both have something mid-Victorian in them. They are both idyllic, +and both of them landscape-lovers and lords of language. They neither +of them had any very striking message to preach; they both of them +seem to halt, except on rare occasions, on the threshold of passion; +they both of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and in both of them +there is an element of banality. They both seem to a certain extent to +be shut off from the world by the trees of old parks, where cultivated +people are enjoying the air and the flowers and the shade, and where +between the tall trees you get glimpses of silvery landscapes and +limpid waters, and soft music comes from the gliding boat. Of course, +there is more than this in Turgenev, but this is the main impression. + +Pathos he has, of the finest, and passion he describes beautifully +from the outside, making you feel its existence, but not convincing +you that he felt it himself; but on the other hand what an artist he +is! How beautifully his pictures are painted; and how rich he is in +poetic feeling! + +Turgenev is above all things a poet. He carried on the work of +Pushkin, and he did for Russian prose what Pushkin did for Russian +poetry; he created imperishable models of style. His language has the +same limpidity and absence of any blur that we find in Pushkin's work. +His women have the same crystal radiance, transparent simplicity, and +unaffected strength; his pictures of peasant life, and his country +episodes have the same truth to nature; as an artist he had a severe +sense of proportion, a perfect purity of outline, and an absolute +harmony between the thought and the expression. Now that modern Europe +and England have just begun to discover Dostoyevsky, it is possible +that a reaction will set in to the detriment of Turgenev. Indeed, to a +certain extent this reaction has set in in Western Europe, as M. +Haumant, one of Turgenev's ablest critics and biographers, pointed out +not long ago. And, as the majority of Englishmen have not the +advantage of reading him in the original, they will be unchecked in +this reaction, if it comes about, by their appreciation of what is +perhaps most durable in his work. Yet to translate Turgenev +adequately, it would require an English poet gifted with a sense of +form and of words as rare as that of Turgenev himself. However this +may be, there is no doubt about the importance of Turgenev in the +history of Russian literature, whatever the future generations in +Russia or in Europe may think of his work. He was a great novelist +besides being a great poet. Certainly he never surpassed his early +_Sportsman's Sketches_ in freshness of inspiration and the perfection +of artistic execution. + +His _Bezhin Meadow_, where the children tell each other bogey stories +in the evening, is a gem with which no other European literature has +anything to compare. _The Singers_, _Death_, and many others are +likewise incomparable. _The Nest of Gentlefolk_, to which Turgenev +owed his great popularity, is quite perfect of its kind, with its +gallery of portraits going back to the eighteenth century and to the +period of Alexander I; its lovable, human hero Lavretsky, and Liza, a +fit descendant of Pushkin's Tatiana, radiant as a star. All Turgenev's +characters are alive; but, with the exception of his women and the +hero of _Fathers and Sons_, they are alive in bookland rather than in +real life. + +George Meredith's characters, for instance, are alive, but they belong +to a land or rather a planet of his own making, and we should never +recognize Sir Willoughby Patterne in the street, but we do meet women +sometimes who remind us of Clara Middleton and Carinthia Jane. The +same is true with regard to Turgenev, although it is not another +planet he created, but a special atmosphere and epoch to which his +books exclusively belong, and which some critics say never existed at +all. That is of no consequence. It exists for us in his work. + +But perhaps what gave rise to accusations of unreality and caricature +against Turgenev's characters, apart from the intenser reality of +Tolstoy's creations, by comparison with which Turgenev's suffered, was +that Turgenev, while professing to describe the present, and while +believing that he was describing the present, was in reality painting +an epoch that was already dead. _Rudin_, _Smoke_, and _On the Eve_ +have suffered more from the passage of time. _Rudin_ is a pathetic +picture of the type that Turgenev was so fond of depicting, the _gnie +sans portefeuille_, a latter-day Hamlet who can only unpack his heart +with words, and with his eloquence persuade others to believe in him, +and succeed even in persuading himself to believe in himself, until +the moment for action comes, when he breaks down. The subjects of +_Smoke_ and _Spring Waters_ are almost identical; but, whereas _Spring +Waters_ is one of the most poetical of Turgenev's achievements, +_Smoke_ seems to-day the most banal, and almost to deserve Tolstoy's +criticism: "In _Smoke_ there is hardly any love of anything, and very +little pity; there is only love of light and playful adultery; and +therefore the poetry of that novel is repulsive." _On the Eve_, which +tells of a Bulgarian on the eve of the liberation of his country, +suffers from being written at a time when real Russians were hard at +work at that very task; and it was on this account that the novel +found little favour in Russia, as the fiction paled beside the +reality. + +It was followed by Turgenev's masterpiece, for which time can only +heighten one's admiration. _Fathers and Sons_ is as beautifully +constructed as a drama of Sophocles; the events move inevitably to a +tragic close. There is not a touch of banality from beginning to end, +and not an unnecessary word; the portraits of the old father and +mother, the young Kirsanov, and all the minor characters are perfect; +and amidst the trivial crowd, Bazarov stands out like Lucifer, the +strongest--the only strong character--that Turgenev created, the first +Nihilist--for if Turgenev was not the first to invent the word, he was +the first to apply it in this sense. + +Bazarov is the incarnation of the Lucifer type that recurs again and +again in Russian history and fiction, in sharp contrast to the meek +humble type of Ivan Durak. Lermontov's Pechorin was in some respects +an anticipation of Bazarov; so were the many Russian rebels. He is +the man who denies, to whom art is a silly toy, who detests +abstractions, knowledge, and the love of Nature; he believes in +nothing; he bows to nothing; he can break, but he cannot bend; he does +break, and that is the tragedy, but, breaking, he retains his +invincible pride, and + + "not cowardly he puts off his helmet," + +and he dies "valiantly vanquished." + +In the pages which describe his death Turgenev reaches the high-water +mark of his art, his moving quality, his power, his reserve. For manly +pathos they rank among the greatest scenes in literature, stronger +than the death of Colonel Newcome and the best of Thackeray. Among +English novelists it is, perhaps, only Meredith who has struck such +strong, piercing chords, nobler than anything in Daudet or Maupassant, +more reserved than anything in Victor Hugo, and worthy of the great +poets, of the tragic pathos of Goethe and Dante. The character of +Bazarov, as has been said, created a sensation and endless +controversy. The revolutionaries thought him a caricature and a libel, +the reactionaries a scandalous glorification of the Devil; and +impartial men such as Dostoyevsky, who knew the revolutionaries at +first hand, thought the type unreal. It is possible that Bazarov was +not like the Nihilists of the sixties; but in any case as a figure in +fiction, whatever the fact may be, he lives and will continue to live. + +In _Virgin Soil_, Turgenev attempted to paint the underground +revolutionary movement; here, in the opinion of all Russian judges, he +failed. The revolutionaries considered their portraits here more +unreal than that of Bazarov; the Conservatives were grossly +caricatured; the hero Nezhdanov was a type of a past world, another +Rudin, and not in the least like--so those who knew them tell us--the +revolutionaries of the day. Solomin, the energetic character in the +book, was considered as unreal as Nezhdanov. The wife of the +reactionary Sipyagin is a _pastiche_ of the female characters of that +type in his other books; cleverly drawn, but a completely conventional +book character. The redeeming feature in the book is Mariana, the +heroine, one of Turgenev's finest ideal women; and it is full, of +course, of gems of descriptive writing. The book was a complete +failure, and after this Turgenev went back to writing short stories. +The result was a great disappointment to Turgenev, who had thought +that, by writing a novel dealing with actual life, he would please and +reconcile all parties. To this later epoch belong his matchless _Poems +in Prose_, one of the latest melodies he sounded, a melody played on +one string of the lyre, but whose sweetness contained the essence of +all his music. + +Turgenev's work has a historic as well as an artistic value. He +painted the Russian gentry, and the type of gentry that was +disappearing, as no one else has done. His landscape painting has been +dwelt on; one ought, perhaps, to add that, beautiful as it is, it +still belongs to the region of conventional landscape painting; his +landscape is the orthodox Russian landscape, and is that of the age of +Pushkin, in which no bird except a nightingale is mentioned, no flower +except a rose. This convention was not really broken in prose until +the advent of Gorky. + +Reviewing Turgenev's work as a whole, any one who goes back to his +books after a time, and after a course of more modern and rougher, +stormier literature, will, I think, be surprised at its excellence +and perhaps be inclined to heave a deep sigh of relief. Some of it +will appear conventional; he will notice a faint atmosphere of +rose-water; he will feel, if he has been reading the moderns, as a +traveller feels who, after an exciting but painful journey, through +dangerous ways and unpleasant surroundings, suddenly enters a cool +garden, where fountains sob between dark cypresses, and swans float +majestically on artificial lakes. There is an aroma of syringa in the +air; the pleasaunce is artistically laid out, and full of fragrant +flowers. But he will not despise that garden for its elegance and its +tranquil seclusion, for its trees cast large shadows; the nightingale +sings in its thickets, the moon silvers the calm statues, and the +sound of music on the waters goes to the heart. Turgenev reminds one +of a certain kind of music, beautiful in form, not too passionate and +yet full of emotion, Schumann's music, for instance; if Pushkin is the +Mozart of Russian literature, Turgenev is the Schumann; not amongst +the very greatest, but still a poet, full of inspired lyrical feeling; +and a great, a classic artist, the prose Virgil of Russian literature. + +What Turgenev did for the country gentry, GONCHAROV (1812-91) did for +the St. Petersburg gentry. The greater part of his work deals with the +forties. Goncharov, a noble (_dvoryanin_) by education, and according +to his own account by descent, though according to another account he +was of merchant extraction, entered the Government service, and then +went round the world in a frigate, a journey which he described in +letters. Of his three novels, _The Everyday Story_, _Oblomov_, and +_The Landslip_, _Oblomov_ is the most famous: in it he created a type +which became immortal; and Oblomov has passed into the Russian +language just as Tartuffe has passed into the French language, or +Pecksniff into the English language. A chapter of the book appeared in +1849, and the whole novel in 1859. + +Oblomov is the incarnation of what in Russia is called _Halatnost_, +which means the propensity to live in dressing-gown and slippers. It +is told of Krylov, who was an Oblomov of real life, and who spent most +of his time lying on a sofa, that one day somebody pointed out to him +that the nail on which a picture was hanging just over the sofa on +which he was lying, was loose, and that the picture would probably +fall on his head. "No," said Krylov, not getting up, "the picture will +fall just beyond the sofa. I know the angle." The apathy of Oblomov, +although to the outward eye it resembles this mere physical inertness, +is subtly different. Krylov's apathy was the laziness of a man whose +brain brought forth concrete fruits; and who feels neither the +inclination nor the need of any other exercise, either physical or +intellectual. Oblomov's apathy is that of a brain seething with the +burning desires of a _vie intime_, which all comes to nothing owing to +a kind of spiritual paralysis, "une infirmit morale." It is true he +finds it difficult to put on his socks, still more to get up, when he +is awake, impossible to change his rooms although the ceiling is +falling to bits, and impossible not to lie on the sofa most of the +day; but the reason of this obstinate inertia is not mere physical +disinclination, it is the result of a mixture of seething and +simmering aspirations, indefinite disillusions and apprehensions, that +elude the grasp of the will. Oblomov is really the victim of a dream, +of an aspiration, of an ideal as bright and mobile as a +will-o'-the-wisp, as elusive as thistledown, which refuses to +materialize. + +The tragedy of the book lies in the effort he makes to rise from his +slough of apathy, or rather the effort his friends encourage him to +make. Oblomov's heart is made of pure gold; his soul is of transparent +crystal; there is not a base flaw in the paste of his composition; yet +his will is sapped, not by words, words, words, but by the inability +to formulate the shadows of his inner life. His friend is an energetic +German-Russian. He introduces Oblomov to a charming girl, and together +they conspire to drag him from his apathy. The girl, Olga, at first +succeeds; she falls in love with him, and he with her; he wants to +marry her, but he cannot take the necessary step of arranging his +affairs in a manner which would make that marriage possible; and +gradually he falls back into a new stage of apathy worse than the +first; she realizes the hopelessness of the situation, and they agree +to separate. She marries the energetic friend, and Oblomov sinks into +the comforts of a purely negative life of complete inaction and +seclusion, watched over by a devoted housekeeper, whom he ultimately +marries. + +The extraordinary subtlety of the psychology of this study lies, as +well as in other things, in the way in which we feel that Olga is not +really happy with her excellent husband; he is the man whom she +respects; but Oblomov is the man whom she loves, till the end; and she +would give worlds to respect him too if he would only give her the +chance. Oblomov often defends his stagnation, while realizing only too +well what a misfortune it is; and we sometimes feel that he is not +altogether wrong. The chapter that tells of his dream in which his +past life and childhood arise before him in a haze of serene laziness +is one of the masterpieces of Russian prose. The book is terribly +real, and almost intolerably sad. + +Goncharov's third and last novel deals with the life of a landed +proprietor on the Volga, and its main idea is the contrast between the +old generation before the reforms and the new generation of Alexander +II's day--a paler _Fathers and Sons_. + +To go back to criticism, the name of BAKUNIN, the apostle of +destruction and the incarnation of Russian Nihilism, belongs to +history; that of GRIGORIEV must be mentioned as founding a school of +thought which preached the union of arts with the national soil; he +exercised a strong influence over Dostoyevsky. KATKOV, whose influence +was at one time immense, originally belonged to the circle of Herzen +and Bakunin; he became a professor of philosophy, but was driven from +his chair in the reaction of '48, and, being banished from erudition, +he took up a journalistic career and became the Editor of the _Moscow +News_. He was a Slavophile, and when the rising in Poland broke out, +he headed the great wave of nationalist feeling which passed over the +country at that time; he doubled the number of his subscribers, and +dealt a death-blow to Herzen's _Bell_. After 1866, he headed +reactionary journalism and became a Nationalist of the narrowest kind; +but he was of a higher calibre than the Nationalists of later days. +Slavophile critics of another kind were STRAKHOV and DANILEVSKY, like +Dostoyevsky, disciples of Grigoriev, who preached the last word of +Slavophilism and were opposed to all foreign innovations. + +On the Radical side the leaders were CHERNYSHEVSKY, DOBROLYUBOV and +PISAREV. Chernyshevsky, who translated John Stuart Mill, and +published a treatise on the sthetic relations of art and reality, +served a sentence of seven years' hard labour and of twenty years' +exile. His criticism--socialist propaganda, and an attack on all +metaphysics--does not belong to literature, but his novel _Shto +dielat_--"What is to be done?"--had an immense influence on his +generation. It deals with Nihilism. Dobrolyubov, who died when he was +twenty-four, belonged to the same realistic school. His main theory +was that Russian literature is dominated by Oblomov; that Chatsky, +Pechorin, and Rudin are all Oblomovs. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +followed Chernyshevsky in his realistic philosophy, in his rejection +of metaphysics, in his theory that beauty is to be sought in life +only, and that the sole duty of art is to help to illustrate life. +Pisarev recognized that Turgenev's Bazarov was a picture of himself, +and he was pleased with the portrait. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +died young. + +VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV (1853-1900), critic as well as poet, moral +philosopher, and theologian, is one of the most interesting figures in +Russian literature. What is most remarkable about him, and what makes +him stand out, a radiant exception in Russian criticism, is his +absolute independence. He belonged to no camp; he was a slave to no +party cry; utterly unselfish, his sole aim was to seek after the truth +for the sake of truth, and to proclaim it. In an age of positivism, he +was a believing Christian, and the dream of his life was a union of +the Eastern and Western Churches. He deals with this idea in a book +which he wrote in French and published in Paris: _L'glise Russe et +l'glise Universelle_. He admired the older Slavophiles, but he +severely attacked the Nationalists, such as Katkov. His range of +subjects was great, and his style was brilliant; like many great +thinkers, he was far ahead of his time, and in his criticism of the +_Intelligentsia_ anticipated some tendencies, which have become +visible since the revolution of 1905. He reminds one at times of Mr. +A. J. Balfour, and even of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with whose +"orthodoxy" he would have much sympathy; and he deals with questions +such as Woman's Suffrage in a way which exactly fits the present day. +He never became a Catholic, holding that the Eastern Church _qua_ +Church had never been cut off from the West, and that only one +definite schism had been condemned; but he believed in the necessity +of a universal Church. He was the first intellectual Russian to point +out to a generation which took atheism as a matter of course that they +were possibly inferior instead of superior to religion. He believed in +Russia; he had nothing against the Slavophile theory that Russia had a +divine mission; only he wished to see that mission divinely performed. +He believed in the East of Christ, and not in that of Xerxes. He died +in 1900, before he had finished his _Magnum Opus_, a work on moral +philosophy written on a religious basis. He preached self-effacement; +pity towards one's fellow men; and reverence towards the supernatural. +His whole work is a defence of moral principles, written with the soul +of a poet, the knowledge of a scholar, and the brilliance of a +dialectician. It is only lately that his books have gained the +appreciation which they deserve; they are certainly more in harmony +with the present generation than with that of the sixties and the +seventies. His _Three Conversations_ has been translated into English. +Vladimir Soloviev stands in a niche of his own, isolated from the +crowd by his own originality, his brilliance, and his prematurity; he +was _intempestivus_. + +To the same epoch belong four other important writers, each occupying +a place apart from the current stream of literary or political +influences: one because he was a satirist, one because he wrote for +the stage, and the two others because one impartially, and the other +bitterly, dared to criticize the Radicals. + +MICHAEL SALTYKOV (1826-89), who wrote under the name of Shchedrin, +holds a unique place in Russian literature, not only because he is a +writer of genius, but because he is one of the world's great +satirists. Unlike Russian satirists before him, Krylov, Gogol, and +Griboyedov, good-humoured irony or sharp rapier thrusts of wit do not +suffice him; he has in himself the _saeva indignatio_, and he +expresses it with all the concentrated spite that he can muster, which +is all the more deadly from being used with perfect control. His work +is bulky, and fills eleven thick volumes; some of it is quite out of +date and at the present day almost unintelligible; but all that deals +with the fundamental essentials of the Russian character, and not with +the passing episodes of the day, has the freshness of immortality. At +the outset of his career, he was banished to Vyatka, where he remained +from 1848-56, an exile, which gave him a rich store of priceless +material. His experiences appeared in his _Sketches of Provincial +Life_ in 1886-7. + +He describes the good old times and the officials of the good old +times, with diabolic malice and with an unequalled eye for the +ironical, the comic, the topsy-turvy, and the true; and while he is as +observant as Gogol, he is as bitter as Swift. He puts his characters +on the stage and makes them relate their experiences; thus we hear how +the collector of the dues manages to combine the maximum amount of +robbery with the minimum amount of inconvenience. In his pictures of +prison life, the prisoners tell their own stories, sometimes with +unaffected frankness, sometimes with startling cynicism, and sometimes +the story is obscured by a whole heap of lies. The prisoners are of +different classes; one is an ex-official who states that he was a +statistician who got into trouble over his figures; wishing to levy +dues on a peasant's property, he had demanded the number, not of +their bee-hives, but of their bees, and wrote in his list: "The +peasant Sidorov possesses two horses, three cows, nine sheep, one +calf, and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven bees." +Unfortunately he was betrayed by the police inspector. + +Saltykov's satire deals entirely with the middle class, the high +officials, the average official, and the minor public servants; and +his best-known work, and one that has not aged any more than Swift has +aged, is his _History of a City according to the original documents_. + +In this he tells of the city of _Glupov_, _Fool-City_, where the +people were such fools that they were not content until they found +some one to rule them who was stupider than they were themselves. The +various phases Russia had gone through are touched off; the mania for +regulations, the formalism, the official red-tape, the persecution of +independent thought, and the oppression of original thinkers and +writers; the ultimate ideal is that introduced by the last ruler of +Glupov (the history lasts from 1731 to 1826), of turning the country +into barracks and reducing every one and everything to one level--in +which the rgime of the period of Nicholas I is satirized; until in +the final picture, as fine in its way as Pope's close of the +_Dunciad_, the stream rises, and refusing to be stopped by the dam, +carries everything away. The style parodies that of the ancient +chroniclers; and its chief intent lies not in the satirizing of any +particular events or person, but in the shafts of light, sometimes +bitter, and sometimes inexpressibly droll, it throws on the Russian +system of administration and on the Russian character. + +In his _Pompaduri_, Saltykov dissects and vivisects the higher +official,--the big-wig,--and in his sketches from the "Domain of +Moderation and Accuracy," he writes, in little, the epic of the minor +public servant--the man who is never heard of, who is included in the +term of "the rest," but who, nevertheless, is a cogwheel in the +machinery, without which the big-wigs cannot act or execute. No more +supreme piece of art than this piece of satire exists. The typical +minor official is drawn in all the variations of his miserable and +pitiable species, and in all the phases of his ignoble and sometimes +tragical career, with a pen dipped in scorn and stinging malice, not +unblent with a grave pity, which always exists in the work of the +greatest satirists--"Peace to all such, but there was one ..." for +instance--and wielded with terrible certainty of touch. This epic of +the _Molchalins_ of life--the typical officials who cease to be +men--was the story of a great part of the Russian population; and in +its essence, a great deal of it remains true to-day, while all of it +remains artistically enjoyable. + +Saltykov continued to write during the whole of his long life. His +field of satire ranges from the days before serfdom to the epoch of +the reforms, extends to the days of the Russo-Turkish War, and passes +the frontier into the West. It is impossible here even to name all his +works; but there is one, written in the decline of his life, which has +a solid historical as well as a rich and varied artistic interest. +This is his _Poshenkhonskaya Starina_; it is practically the history +of his childhood, his upbringing, and the state of affairs which +existed at that time, the life lived by his parents and their +neighbours, the landed proprietors and their serfs. With amazing +impartiality, without exaggeration, and yet with evidences of deep +feeling and passionate indignation, all the more striking from being +both rare and expressed with reserve, he paints on a large and crowded +canvas the life of the masters and their serfs. A long gallery of men +and women is opened to one; tragedy, comedy, farce, all are here--in +fact, life--life as it was then in a remote corner of the country. +Here Saltykov's spite and malice give way to higher strokes of tragic +irony and pity; and the work has dignity as well as power In the bulk +of Saltykov's early work there is much dross, much venom, and much +ephemeral tinsel that has faded; the stuff of this book is stern and +enduring; its subject-matter would not lose a particle of interest in +translation. The Russians have been ungrateful towards Saltykov, and +have been inclined to neglect his work, the lasting element of which +is one of the most original, precious, and remarkable possessions of +Russian literature. + +The complement of Saltykov is LESKOV (or, as he originally called +himself, _Stebnitsky_). The character of his work, its reception by +the reading public on the one hand, and by the professional critics on +the other, is one of the most striking object-lessons in the history +of Russian literature and Russian literary criticism. Leskov has been +long ago recognized by educated Russia as a writer of the first rank; +what is best in his work, which is bulky and unequal, has the +unmistakable hall-mark of the classics; he is with Gogol and Saltykov, +and the novelists of the first rank. Educated Russia is fully aware of +this. Nobody disputes Leskov his place, nor denies him his supreme +artistic talent, his humour, his vividness, his colour, his satire, +the depth of his feeling, the richness of his invention. In spite of +this, there is no Russian writer who has so acutely suffered from the +didactic and partisan quality of Russian criticism. + +His literary career began in 1860. Like Saltykov, he paints the period +of transition that followed the epoch of the great Reforms. In spite +of this, as late as 1902, no critical biography, no serious work of +criticism, had been devoted to his books. All Russia had read him, but +literary criticism had ignored him. It is as if English literary +criticism had ignored Dickens until 1900. + +The reason of this neglect is not far to seek. Saltykov was an +independent thinker; he belonged to no literary or political camp; he +criticized the partisans of both camps with equal courage; and the +partisans could not and did not forgive him. Like Saltykov, Leskov saw +what was going on in Russia; with penetrating insight and observation +he realized the evils of the old order; like Saltykov, he was filled +with indignation, and perhaps to a greater degree than Saltykov, he +was filled with pity. But, whereas Saltykov's work was purely +destructive--an onslaught of brooms in the Augean stables--Leskov +begins where Saltykov ends. Like Saltykov and like Gogol before him, +the old order inspires him with laughter, sometimes with bitter +laughter, at the absurdities of the old rgime and its results; but he +does not confine himself to destructive irony and sapping satire. With +PISEMSKY, another writer of first-class talent, of the same epoch, +Leskov was the first Russian novelist--Griboyedov had already +anticipated such criticism in _Gore ot Uma_, in his delineation of +Chatsky,--to have the courage to criticize the reformers, the men of +the new epoch; and his criticism was not only negative but creative; +he realized that everything must be "reformed altogether." He then +asked himself whether the new men, who were engaged in the task of +reform, were equal to their task. He came to the conclusion not only +that they were inadequate, but that they were setting about the +business the wrong way, and he had the courage to say so. He was the +first Russian novelist to say he disbelieved in Liberals, although he +believed in Liberalism; and this was a sentiment which no Liberal in +Russia could admit then, and one which they can scarcely admit now. + +His criticism of the Liberals was creative, and not negative, in this: +that, instead of confining himself to pointing out their weakness and +the mistaken course they were taking, he did his best to point out the +right path. Dostoyevsky was likewise subjected to the same ostracism. +Turgenev suffered from it; but the genius of Dostoyevsky and the art +of Turgenev overstepped the limits of all barriers and frontiers. +Europe acclaimed them. Leskov's criticism being more local, the +ostracism, although powerless to prevent the popularity of his work in +Russia, succeeded for a time in keeping him from the notice of +Western Europe. This barrier is now being broken down. One of Leskov's +masterpieces, _The Sealed Angel_, was lately translated into English; +but he is one of the most difficult authors to translate because he is +one of the most native. + +A far bitterer and more pessimistic note is heard in the work of +Pisemsky. He attacks the new democracy mercilessly, and not from any +predilection towards the old. His most important work, _The Troubled +Sea_ (1862), was a terrific onslaught on Radical Russia; and Pisemsky +paid the same price for his pessimistic analysis as Leskov did for his +impartiality, namely social ostracism. + +The work of OSTROVSKY (1823-86) belongs to the history of the Stage, +to which he brought slices of real life from the middle class; the +townsmen, the minor public servants, merchants great and small, and +rogues, a _milieu_ which he had observed in his youth, his father +having been an attorney to a Moscow merchant. Ostrovsky may be called +the founder of modern Russian realistic comedy and drama. In spite of +the epoch at which his plays were written (the fifties and the +sixties), there is not a trace of _Scribisme_, no tricks, no effective +exits or curtains; he thus anticipated the form of the quite modern +drama by about seventy years. His plays hold the stage now in Russia, +and form part of the stock repertories every season. They give, +moreover, just the same lifelike impression whether read or seen +acted; and they are as interesting from a literary as they are from a +historical or dramatic point of view, interesting because they are +intensely national, and as Russian as beer is English. + +This brief summary of the epoch would be still more incomplete than it +is without the mention of yet another novelist, GRIGOROVICH. Although +on a lower level of art and creative power than Pisemsky and Leskov, +he was the pioneer in Russian literature of peasant literature. He +anticipated Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_, and for the first time +made Russian readers cry with sympathy over the annals of the peasant. +Like Turgenev, he was a great landscape painter. In his "Fishermen" he +paints the peasant and the artisan's life, and in his "Country Roads" +he gives a picture of the good old times--replete with rich humour, +and in sharp contrast to Saltykov's sunless and trenchant etching of +the same period. Humour, the pathos of the poor, landscape--these are +his chief qualities. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY + + +With TOLSTOY and DOSTOYEVSKY, we come not only to the two great +pillars of modern Russian literature which tower above all others like +two colossal statues in the desert, but to two of the greatest figures +in the literature of the world. Russia has not given the world a +universal poet, a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Goethe, or a Molire; for +Pushkin, consummate artist and inspired poet as he was, lacks that +peculiar greatness which conquers all demarcations of frontier and +difference of language, and produces work which becomes a part of the +universal inheritance of all nations; but Russia has given us two +prose-writers whose work has done this very thing. And between them +they sum up in themselves the whole of the Russian soul, and almost +the whole of the Russian character; I say almost the whole of the +Russian _character_, because although between them they sum up all +that is greatest, deepest, and all that is weakest in the Russian +_soul_, there is perhaps one element of the Russian _character_, +which, although they understood it well enough, their genius forbade +them to possess. If you take as ingredients Peter the Great, +Dostoyevsky's Mwyshkin--the idiot, the pure fool who is wiser than the +wise--and the hero of Gogol's _Revisor_, Hlestyakov the liar and +wind-bag, you can, I think, out of these elements, reconstitute any +Russian who has ever lived. That is to say, you will find that every +single Russian is compounded either of one or more of these elements. + +For instance, mix Peter the Great with a sufficient dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Boris Godunov and Bakunin; leave the Peter the +Great element unmixed, and you get Bazarov, and many of Gorky's +heroes; mix it slightly with Hlestyakov, and you get Lermontov; let +the Hlestyakov element predominate, and you get Griboyedov's +Molchalin; let the Mwyshkin element predominate, with a dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Father Gapon; let it predominate without the +dose of Hlestyakov, and you get Oblomov; mix it with a dose of Peter +the Great, you get Herzen, Chatsky; and so on. Mix all the elements +equally, and you get Onegin, the average man. I do not mean that there +are necessarily all these elements in every Russian, but that you will +meet with no Russian in whom there is not to be found either one or +more than one of them. + +Now, in Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element dominates, with a dose of +Mwyshkin, and a vast but unsuccessful aspiration towards the complete +characteristics of Mwyshkin; while in Dostoyevsky the Mwyshkin +predominates, blent with a fiery streak of Peter the Great; but in +neither of them is there a touch of Hlestyakov. In Russia, it +constantly happens that a man in any class, be he a soldier, sailor, +tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, plough-boy, or thief, will +suddenly leave his profession and avocation and set out on the search +for God and for truth. These men are called _Bogoiskateli_, Seekers +after God. The one fact that the whole world knows about Tolstoy is +that, in the midst of his great and glorious artistic career, he +suddenly abjured literature and art, denounced worldly possessions, +and said that truth was to be found in working like a peasant, and +thus created a sect of Tolstoyists. The world then blamed him for +inconsistency because he went on writing, and lived as before, with +his family and in his own home. But in reality there was no +inconsistency, because there was in reality no break. Tolstoy had been +a _Bogoiskatel_, a seeker after truth and God all his life; it was +only the manner of his search which had changed; but the quest itself +remained unchanged; he was unable, owing to family ties, to push his +premises to their logical conclusion until just before his death; but +push them to their logical conclusion he did at the last, and he died, +as we know, on the road to a monastery. + +Tolstoy's manner of search was extraordinary, extraordinary because he +was provided for it with the eyes of an eagle which enabled him to see +through everything; and, as he took nothing for granted from the day +he began his career until the day he died, he was always subjecting +people, objects, ideas, to the searchlight of his vision, and testing +them to see whether they were true or not; moreover, he was gifted +with the power of describing what he saw during this long journey +through the world of fact and the world of ideas, whether it were the +general or the particular, the mass or the detail, the vision, the +panorama, the crowd, the portrait or the miniature, with the strong +simplicity of a Homer, and the colour and reality of a Velasquez. This +made him one of the world's greatest writers, and the world's greatest +artist in narrative fiction. Another peculiarity of his search was +that he pursued it with eagle eyes, but with blinkers. + +In 1877 Dostoyevsky wrote: "In spite of his colossal artistic talent, +Tolstoy is one of those Russian minds which only see that which is +right before their eyes, and thus press towards that point. They have +not the power of turning their necks to the right or to the left to +see what lies on one side; to do this, they would have to turn with +their whole bodies. If they do turn, they will quite probably maintain +the exact opposite of what they have been hitherto professing; for +they are rigidly honest." It is this search carried on by eyes of +unsurpassed penetration between blinkers, by a man who every now and +then did turn his whole body, which accounts for the many apparent +changes and contradictions of Tolstoy's career. + +Another source of contradiction was that by temperament the Lucifer +element predominated in him, and the ideal he was for ever seeking was +the humility of Mwyshkin, the pure fool, an ideal which he could not +reach, because he could not sufficiently humble himself. Thus when +death overtook him he was engaged on his last and his greatest voyage +of discovery; and there is something solemn and great about his having +met with death at a small railway station. + +Tolstoy's works are a long record of this search, and of the memories +and experiences which he gathered on the way. There is not a detail, +not a phase of feeling, not a shade or mood in his spiritual life that +he has not told us of in his works. In his _Childhood, Boyhood and +Youth_, he re-creates his own childhood, boyhood and youth, not always +exactly as it happened in reality; there is _Dichtung_ as well as +_Wahrheit_; but the _Dichtung_ is as true as the _Wahrheit_, because +his aim was to recreate the impressions he had received from his early +surroundings. Moreover, the searchlight of his eyes even then fell +mercilessly upon everything that was unreal, sham and conventional. + +As soon as he had finished with his youth, he turned to the life of a +grown-up man in _The Morning of a Landowner_, and told how he tried to +live a landowner's life, and how nothing but dissatisfaction came of +it. He escapes to the Caucasus, and seeks regeneration, and the result +of the search here is a masterpiece, _The Cossacks_. He goes back to +the world, and takes part in the Crimean war; he describes what he saw +in a battery; his eagle eye lays bare the _splendeurs et misres_ of +war more truthfully perhaps than a writer on war has ever done, but +less sympathetically than Alfred de Vigny--the difference being that +Alfred de Vigny is innately modest, and that Tolstoy, as he wrote +himself, at the beginning of the war, "had no modesty." + +After the Crimean war, he plunges again into the world and travels +abroad; and on his return to Russia, he settles down at Yasnaya +Polyana and marries. The hero of his novel _Domestic Happiness_ +appears to have found his heart's desire in marriage and country life. +It was then that he wrote _War and Peace_, which he began to publish +in 1865. He always had the idea of writing a story on the Decembrist +movement, and _War and Peace_ was perhaps the preface to that +unwritten work, for it ends when that movement was beginning. In _War +and Peace_, he gave the world a modern prose epic, which did not +suffer from the drawback that spoils most historical novels, namely, +that of being obviously false, because it was founded on his own +recollection of his parents' memories. He gives us what we feel to be +the very truth; for the first time in an historical novel, instead of +saying "this is very likely true," or "what a wonderful work of +artistic reconstruction," we feel that we were ourselves there; that +we knew those people; that they are a part of our very own past. He +paints a whole generation of people; and in Pierre Bezukhov, the new +landmarks of his own search are described. Among many other episodes, +there is nowhere in literature such a true and charming picture of +family life as that of the Rostovs, and nowhere a more vital and +charming personality than Natasha; a creation as living as Pushkin's +Tatiana, and alive with a reality even more convincing than Turgenev's +pictures of women, since she is alive with a different kind of life; +the difference being that while you have read in Turgenev's books +about noble and exquisite women, you are not sure whether you have +not known Natasha yourself and in your own life; you are not sure she +does not belong to the borderland of your own past in which dreams and +reality are mingled. _War and Peace_ eclipses all other historical +novels; it has all Stendhal's reality, and all Zola's power of dealing +with crowds and masses. Take, for instance, a masterpiece such as +Flaubert's _Salammb_; it may and very likely does take away your +breath by the splendour of its language, its colour, and its art, but +you never feel that, even in a dream, you had taken part in the life +which is painted there. The only bit of unreality in _War and Peace_ +is the figure of Napoleon, to whom Tolstoy was deliberately unfair. +Another impression which Tolstoy gives us in _War and Peace_ is that +man is in reality always the same, and that changes of manners are not +more important than changes in fashions of clothes. That is why it is +not extravagant to mention _Salammb_ in this connection. One feels +that, if Tolstoy had written a novel about ancient Rome, we should +have known a score of patricians, senators, scribblers, clients, +parasites, matrons, courtesans, better even than we know Cicero from +his letters; we should not only feel that we _know_ Cicero, but that +we had actually known him. This very task--namely, that of +reconstituting a page out of Pagan history--was later to be attempted +by Merezhkovsky; but brilliant as his work is, he only at times and by +flashes attains to Tolstoy's power of convincing. + +_Anna Karenina_ appeared in 1875-76. And here Tolstoy, with the touch +of a Velasquez and upon a huge canvas, paints the contemporary life of +the upper classes in St. Petersburg and in the country. Levin, the +hero, is himself. Here, again, the truth to nature and the reality is +so intense and vivid that a reader unacquainted with Russia will in +reading the book probably not think of Russia at all, but will imagine +the story has taken place in his own country, whatever that may be. He +shows you everything from the inside, as well as from the outside. You +feel, in the picture of the races, what Anna is feeling in looking on, +and what Vronsky is feeling in riding. And with what reality, what +incomparable skill the gradual dawn of Anna's love for Vronsky is +described; how painfully real is her pompous and excellent husband; +and how every incident in her love affair, her visit to her child, her +appearance at the opera, when, after having left her husband, she +defies the world, her gradual growing irritability, down to the final +catastrophe, bears on it the stamp of something which must have +happened just in that very way and no other. + +But, as far as Tolstoy's own development is concerned, Levin is the +most interesting figure in the book. This character is another +landmark in Tolstoy's search after truth; he is constantly putting +accepted ideas to the test; he is haunted by the fear of sudden death, +not the physical fear of death in itself, but the fear that in the +face of death the whole of life may be meaningless; a peasant opens a +new door for him and furnishes him with a solution to the problem--to +live for one's soul: life no longer seems meaningless. + +Thus Levin marks the stage in Tolstoy's evolution of his abandoning +materialism and of seeking for the truth in the Church. But the Church +does not satisfy him. He rejects its dogmas and its ritual; he turns +to the Gospel, but far from accepting it, he revises it. He comes to +the conclusion that Christianity as it has been taught is mere +madness, and that the Church is a superfluous anachronism. Thus +another change comes about, which is generally regarded as _the_ +change cutting Tolstoy's life in half; in reality it is only a fresh +right-about-turn of a man who is searching for truth in blinkers. In +his _Confession_, he says: "I grew to hate myself; and now all has +become clear." He came to believe that property was the source of all +evil; he desired literally to give up all he had. This he was not able +to do. It was not that he shrank from the sacrifice at the last; but +that circumstances and family ties were too strong for him. But his +final flight from home in the last days of his life shows that the +desire had never left him. + +Art was also subjected to his new standards and found wanting, both in +his own work and in that of others. Shakespeare and Beethoven were +summarily disposed of; his own masterpieces he pronounced to be +worthless. This more than anything shows the pride of the man. He +could admire no one, not even himself. He scorned the gifts which were +given him, and the greatest gifts of the greatest men. But this +landmark of Tolstoy's evolution, his turning his back on the Church, +and on his work, is a landmark in Russian history as well as in +Russian art. For far less than this Russian thinkers and writers of +high position had been imprisoned and exiled. Nobody dared to touch +Tolstoy. He fearlessly attacked all constituted authority, both +spiritual and temporal, in an epoch of reaction, and such was his +prestige that official Russia raised no finger. His authority was too +great, and this is perhaps the first great victory of the liberty of +individual thought over official tyranny in Russia. There had been +martyrs in plenty before, but no conquerors. + +After _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy, who gave up literature for a time, but +for a time only, nevertheless continued to write; at first he only +wrote stories for children and theological and polemical pamphlets; +but in 1886 he published the terribly powerful peasant drama: _The +Powers of Darkness_. Later came the _Kreutzer Sonata_, the _Death of +Ivan Ilitch_, and _Resurrection_. Here the hero Nehludov is a lifeless +phantom of Tolstoy himself; the episodes and details have the reality +of his early work, so has Maslova, the heroine; but in the squalor +and misery of the prisons he shows no precious balms of humanity and +love, as Dostoyevsky did; and the book has neither the sweep and epic +swing of _War and Peace_, nor the satisfying completeness of _Anna +Karenina_. Since his death, some posthumous works have been published, +among them a novel, and a play: _The Living Corpse_. He died, as he +had lived, still searching, and perhaps at the end he found the object +of his quest. + +Tolstoy, even more than Pushkin, was rooted to the soil; all that is +not of the soil--anything mystic or supernatural--was totally alien to +him. He was the oak which could not bend; and being, as he was, the +king of realistic fiction, an unsurpassed painter of pictures, +portraits, men and things, a penetrating analyst of the human heart, a +genius cast in a colossal mould, his work, both by its substance and +its artistic power, exercised an influence beyond his own country, +affected all European nations, and gives him a place among the great +creators of the world. Tolstoy was not a rebel but a heretic, a +heretic not only to religion and the Church, but in philosophy, +opinions, art, and even in food; but what the world will remember of +him are not his heretical theories but his faithful practice, which is +orthodox in its obedience to the highest canons, orthodox as Homer and +Shakespeare are orthodox, and like theirs, one of the greatest earthly +examples of the normal and the sane. + +To say that DOSTOYEVSKY is the antithesis to Tolstoy, and the second +great pillar of Russian prose literature, will surprise nobody now. +Had one been writing ten years ago, the expression of such an opinion +would have met with an incredulous smile amongst the majority of +English readers of Russian literature, for Dostoyevsky was practically +unknown save for his _Crime and Punishment_, and to have compared him +with Turgenev would have seemed sacrilegious. Now when Dostoyevsky is +one of the shibboleths of our _intelligentsia_, one can boldly say, +without fear of being misunderstood, that, as a creator and a force in +literature, Dostoyevsky is in another plane than that of Turgenev, and +as far greater than him as Leonardo da Vinci is greater than Vandyke, +or as Wagner is greater than Gounod, while some Russians consider him +even infinitely greater than Tolstoy. Let us say he is his equal and +complement. He is in any case, in almost every respect, his +antithesis. Tolstoy was the incarnation of health, and is above all +things and pre-eminently the painter of the sane and the earthly. +Dostoyevsky was an epileptic, the painter of the abnormal, of +criminals, madmen, degenerates, mystics. Tolstoy led an even, +uneventful life, spending the greater part of it in his own country +house, in the midst of a large family. Dostoyevsky was condemned to +death, served a sentence of four years' hard labour in a convict +settlement in Siberia, and besides this spent six years in exile; when +he returned and started a newspaper, it was prohibited by the +Censorship; a second newspaper which he started came to grief; he +underwent financial ruin; his first wife, his brother, and his best +friend died; he was driven abroad by debt, harassed by the authorities +on the one hand, and attacked by the liberals on the other; abused and +misunderstood, almost starving and never well, working under +overwhelming difficulties, always pressed for time, and ill requited +for his toil. That was Dostoyevsky's life. + +Tolstoy was a heretic; at first a materialist, and then a seeker after +a religion of his own; Dostoyevsky was a practising believer, a +vehement apostle of orthodoxy, and died fortified by the Sacraments of +the Church. Tolstoy with his broad unreligious opinions was +narrow-minded. Dostoyevsky with his definite religious opinions was +the most broad-minded man who ever lived. Tolstoy hated the +supernatural, and was alien to all mysticism. Dostoyevsky seems to get +nearer to the unknown, to what lies beyond the flesh, than any other +writer. In Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element of the Russian +character predominated; in Dostoyevsky that of Mwyshkin, the pure +fool. Tolstoy could never submit and humble himself. Submission and +humility and resignation are the keynotes and mainsprings of +Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy despised art, and paid no homage to any of the +great names of literature; and this was not only after the so-called +change. As early as 1862, he said that Pushkin and Beethoven could not +please because of their absolute beauty. Dostoyevsky was catholic and +cosmopolitan, and admired the literature of foreign countries--Racine +as well as Shakespeare, Corneille as well as Schiller. The essence of +Tolstoy is a magnificent intolerance. The essence of Dostoyevsky is +sweet reasonableness. Tolstoy dreamed of giving up all he had to the +poor, and of living like a peasant; Dostoyevsky had to share the hard +labour of the lowest class of criminals. Tolstoy theorized on the +distribution of food; but Dostoyevsky was fed like a beggar. Tolstoy +wrote in affluence and at leisure, and re-wrote his books; Dostoyevsky +worked like a literary hack for his daily bread, ever pressed for time +and ever in crying need of money. + +These contrasts are not made in disparagement of Tolstoy, but merely +to point out the difference between the two men and between their +circumstances. Tolstoy wrote about himself from the beginning of his +career to the end; nearly all his work is autobiographical, and he +almost always depicts himself in all his books. We know nothing of +Dostoyevsky from his books. He was an altruist, and he loved others +better than himself. + +Dostoyevsky's first book, _Poor Folk_, published in 1846, is a +descendant of Gogol's story _The Cloak_, and bears the influence, to a +slight extent, of Gogol. In this, the story of a minor public servant +battling against want, and finding a ray of light in corresponding +with a girl also in poor circumstances, but who ultimately marries a +rich middle-aged man, we already get all Dostoyevsky's peculiar +sweetness; what Stevenson called his "lovely goodness," his almost +intolerable pathos, his love of the disinherited and of the failures +of life. His next book, _Letters from a Dead House_, has a far more +universal interest. It is the record of his prison experiences, which +is of priceless value, not only on account of its radiant moral +beauty, its perpetual discovery of the soul of goodness in things +evil, its human fraternity, its complete absence of egotism and pose, +and its thrilling human interest, but also on account of the light it +throws on the Russian character, the Russian poor, and the Russian +peasant. + +In 1866 came _Crime and Punishment_, which brought Dostoyevsky fame. +This book, Dostoyevsky's _Macbeth_, is so well known in the French and +English translations that it hardly needs any comment. Dostoyevsky +never wrote anything more tremendous than the portrayal of the anguish +that seethes in the soul of Raskolnikov, after he has killed the old +woman, "mechanically forced," as Professor Brckner says, "into +performing the act, as if he had gone too near machinery in motion, +had been caught by a bit of his clothing and cut to pieces." And not +only is one held spellbound by every shifting hope, fear, and doubt, +and each new pang that Raskolnikov experiences, but the souls of all +the subsidiary characters in the book are revealed to us just as +clearly: the Marmeladov family, the honest Razumikhin, the police +inspector, and the atmosphere of the submerged tenth in St. +Petersburg--the steaming smell of the city in the summer. There is an +episode when Raskolnikov kneels before Sonia, the prostitute, and says +to her: "It is not before you I am kneeling, but before all the +suffering of mankind." That is what Dostoyevsky does himself in this +and in all his books; but in none of them is the suffering of all +mankind conjured up before us in more living colours, and in none of +them is his act of homage in kneeling before it more impressive. + +This book was written before the words "psychological novel" had been +invented; but how all the psychological novels which were written +years later by Bourget and others pale before this record written in +blood and tears! _Crime and Punishment_ was followed by _The Idiot_ +(1868). The idiot is Mwyshkin, who has been alluded to already, the +wise fool, an epileptic, in whom irony and arrogance and egoism have +been annihilated; and whose very simplicity causes him to pass +unscathed through a den of evil, a world of liars, scoundrels, and +thieves, none of whom can escape the influence of his radiant +personality. He is the same with every one he meets, and with his +unsuspicious sincerity he combines the intuition of utter goodness, so +that he can see through people and read their minds. In this +character, Dostoyevsky has put all his sweetness; it is not a portrait +of himself, but it is a portrait of what he would have liked to be, +and reflects all that is best in him. In contrast to Mwyshkin, +Rogozhin, the merchant, is the incarnation of undisciplined passion, +who ends by killing the thing he loves, Nastasia, also a creature of +unbridled impulses,--because he feels that he can never really and +fully possess her. The catastrophe, the description of the night after +Rogozhin has killed Nastasia, is like nothing else in literature; +lifelike in detail and immense, in the way in which it makes you +listen at the keyhole of the soul, immense with the immensity of a +great revelation. The minor characters in the book are also all of +them remarkable; one of them, the General's wife, Madame Epanchin, has +an indescribable and playful charm. + +_The Idiot_ was followed by _The Possessed_, or _Devils_, printed in +1871-72, called thus after the Devils in the Gospel of St. Luke, that +left the possessed man and went into the swine; the Devils in the book +are the hangers-on of Nihilism between 1862 and 1869. The book +anticipated the future, and in it Dostoyevsky created characters who +were identically the same, and committed identically the same crimes, +as men who actually lived many years later in 1871, and later still. +The whole book turns on the exploitation by an unscrupulous, +ingenious, and iron-willed knave of the various weaknesses of a crowd +of idealist dupes and disciples. One of them is a decadent, one of +them is one of those idealists "whom any strong idea strikes all of a +sudden and annihilates his will, sometimes for ever"; one of them is a +maniac whose single idea is the production of the Superman which he +thinks will come, when it will be immaterial to a man whether he lives +or dies, and when he will be prepared to kill himself not out of fear +but in order to kill fear. That man will be God. Not the God-man, but +the Man-God. The plan of the unscrupulous leader, Peter Verkhovensky, +who was founded on Nechaev, a Nihilist of real life, is to create +disorder, and amid the disorder to seize the authority; he imagines a +central committee of which he pretends to be the representative, +organizes a small local committee, and persuades his dupes that a +network of similar small committees exist all over Russia; his aim +being to create them gradually, by persuading people in every plot of +fresh ground that they exist everywhere else. + +Thus the idea of the book was to show that the strength of Nihilism +lay, not in high dogmas and theories held by a large and +well-organized society, but in the strength of the will of one or two +men reacting on the weaker herd and exploiting the strength, the +weakness, and the one-sidedness of its ideals, a herd which was +necessarily weak owing to that very one-sidedness. In order to bind +his disciples with a permanent bond, Verkhovensky exploits the _ide +fixe_ of suicide and the superman, which is held by one of his dupes, +to induce him to commit a crime before he kills himself, and thus make +away with another member of the committee who is represented as being +a spy. Once this is done, the whole committee will be jointly +responsible, and bound to him by the ties of blood and fear. But +Verkhovensky is not the hero of the book. The hero is Stavrogin, whom +Verkhovensky regards as his trump card, because of the strength of his +character, which leads him to commit the most outrageous +extravagances, and at the same time to remain as cold as ice; but +Verkhovensky's whole design is shattered on Stavrogin's character, all +the murders already mentioned are committed, the whole scheme comes to +nothing, the conspirators are discovered, and Peter escapes abroad. + +When _Devils_ appeared in 1871, it was looked upon as a gross +exaggeration, but real life in subsequent years was to produce +characters and events of the same kind, which were more startling than +Dostoyevsky's fiction. The book is the least well-constructed of +Dostoyevsky's; the narrative is disconnected, and the events, +incidents, and characters so crowded together, that the general effect +is confused; on the other hand, it contains isolated scenes which +Dostoyevsky never surpassed; and in its strength and in its +limitations it is perhaps his most characteristic work. + +From 1873-80 Dostoyevsky went back to journalism, and wrote his _Diary +of a Writer_, in which he commented on current events. In 1880, he +united all conflicting and hostile parties and shades of public +opinion, by the speech he made at the unveiling of Pushkin's memorial, +in one common bond of enthusiasm. At the end of the seventies, he +returned to a work already begun, _The Brothers Karamazov_, which, +although it remains the longest of his books, was never finished. It +is the story of three brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, and Alyosha; their +father is a cynical sensualist. The eldest brother is an +undisciplined, passionate character, who expiates his passions by +suffering; the second brother is a materialist, the tragedy of whose +inner life forms a greater part of the book; the third brother, +Alyosha, is a lover of humanity, and a believer in God and man. He +seeks a monastery, but his spiritual father sends him out into the +world, to live and to suffer. He is to go through the furnace of the +world and experience many trials; for the microbe of lust that is in +his family is dormant in him also. The book was called the _History of +a Great Sinner_, and the sinner was to be Alyosha. But Dostoyevsky +died before this part of the subject is even approached. + +He died in January 1881; the crowds of men and women of all sorts and +conditions of life that attended his funeral, and the extent and the +sincerity of the grief manifested, gave it an almost mythical +greatness. The people gave him a funeral such as few kings or heroes +have ever had. Without fear of controversy or contradiction one can +now say that Dostoyevsky's place in Russian literature is at the top, +equal and in the opinion of some superior to that of Tolstoy in +greatness. He is also one of the greatest writers the world has ever +produced, not because, like Tolstoy, he saw life steadily and saw it +whole, and painted it with the supreme and easy art of a Velasquez; +nor because, like Turgenev, he wove exquisite pictures into musical +words. Dostoyevsky was not an artist; his work is shapeless; his books +are like quarries where granite and dross, gold and ore are mingled. +He paid no attention to style, and yet so strong and vital is his +spoken word that when the Moscow Art Theatre put some scenes in _The +Brothers Karamazov_ and _Devils_ on the stage, they found they could +not alter one single syllable; and sometimes his words have a power +beyond that of words, a power that only music has. There are pages +where Dostoyevsky expresses the anguish of the soul in the same manner +as Wagner expressed the delirium of dying Tristram. I should indeed +put the matter the other way round, and say that in the last act of +Tristram, Wagner is as great as Dostoyevsky. But Dostoyevsky is great +because of the divine message he gives, not didactically, not by +sermons, but by the goodness that emanates, like a precious balm, from +the characters he creates; because more than any other books in the +world his books reflect not only the teaching and the charity, but the +accent and the divine aura of love that is in the Gospels. + +"I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, +conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that +addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave, +and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!" These words, spoken by +Charlotte Bront's _Jane Eyre_, express what Dostoyevsky's books do. +His spirit addresses our spirit. "Be no man's judge; humble love is a +terrible power which effects more than violence. Only active love can +bring out faith. Love men, and do not be afraid of their sins; love +man in his sin; love all the creatures of God, and pray God to make +you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the birds." This was +Father Zosima's advice to Alyosha. And that is the gist of +Dostoyevsky's message to mankind. "Life," Father Zosima also says to +Alyosha, "will bring you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on +account of them, and you will bless life and cause others to bless +it." Here we have the whole secret of Dostoyevsky's greatness. He +blessed life, and he caused others to bless it. + +It is objected that his characters are abnormal; that he deals with +the diseased, with epileptics, neurasthenics, criminals, sensualists, +madmen; but it is just this very fact which gives so much strength and +value to the blessing he gave to life; it is owing to this fact that +he causes others to bless life; because he was cast in the nethermost +circle of life's inferno; he was thrown together with the refuse of +humanity, with the worst of men and with the most unfortunate; he saw +the human soul on the rack, and he saw the vilest diseases that +afflict the human soul; he faced the evil without fear or blinkers; +and there, in the inferno, in the dust and ashes, he recognized the +print of divine footsteps and the fragrance of goodness; he cried from +the abyss: "Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just!" and he blessed life. +It is true that his characters are taken almost entirely from the +_Despised and Rejected_, as one of his books was called, and often +from the ranks of the abnormal; but when a great writer wishes to +reveal the greatest adventures and the deepest experiences which the +soul of man can undergo, it is in vain for him to take the normal +type; it has no adventures. The adventures of the soul of Fortinbras +would be of no help to mankind; but the adventures of Hamlet are of +help to mankind, and the adventures of Don Quixote; and neither Don +Quixote nor Hamlet are normal types. + +Dostoyevsky wrote the tragedy of life and of the soul, and to do this +he chose circumstances as terrific as those which unhinged the reason +of King Lear, shook that of Hamlet, and made Oedipus blind himself. +His books resemble Greek tragedies by the magnitude of the spiritual +adventures they set forth; they are unlike Greek Tragedies in the +Christian charity and the faith and the hope which goes out of them; +they inspire the reader with courage, never with despair, although +Dostoyevsky, face to face with the last extremities of evil, never +seeks to hide it or to shun it, but merely to search for the soul of +goodness in it. He did not search in vain, and just as, when he was on +his way to Siberia, a conversation he had with a fellow-prisoner +inspired that fellow-prisoner with the feeling that he could go on +living and even face penal servitude, so do Dostoyevsky's books come +to mankind as a message of hope from a radiant country. That is what +constitutes his peculiar greatness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY + + +The fifties, the sixties, and the seventies were, all over Europe, the +epoch of Parnassian poetry. In England, Tennyson was pouring out his +"fervent and faultless melodies," Matthew Arnold was playing his +plaintive harp, and the Pre-Raphaelites were weaving their tapestried +dreams; in France, Gautier was carving his cameos, Banville's +Harlequins and Columbines were dancing on a Watteau-like stage in the +silver twilight of Corot, Baudelaire was at work on his sombre bronze, +Sully-Prudhomme twanged his ivory lyre, and Leconte de Lisle was +issuing his golden coinage. It was, in poetry, the epoch of art for +art's sake. + +Russian poetry did not escape the universal tendency; but in Russia +everything was conspiring to put poetry, and especially that kind of +poetry, in the shade. In the first place, events of great magnitude +were happening--the wide reforms, the emancipation of the serfs, the +growth of Nihilism, which was the product of the disillusion at the +result of the reforms: in the second place, criticism under the +influence of Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, and Dobrolyubov was entirely +realistic and positivist, preaching not art for life's sake only, but +the absolute futility of poetry; and, in the third place, work of the +supremest kind was being done in narrative fiction; in the fourth +place, no prophet-poet was forthcoming whose genius was great enough +to voice national aspirations. All this tended to put poetry in the +shade, especially as such poets as did exist were, with one notable +exception, Parnassians, whose talent dwelt aloof from the turbid +stream of life, and who sought to express the adventures of their +souls, which were emotional and artistic, either in dreamy music or in +exquisite shapes and colours. This neglect of verse lasted right up +until the end of the seventies. When, however, in the eighties, the +wave of political crisis reached its climax and, after the +assassination of Alexander II, rolled back into a sea of stagnant +reaction, the poets, who had been hitherto neglected, and quietly +singing all the while, were discovered once more, and the shares in +poetry continued to rise as time went on; thus the poets of the +sixties reaped their due meed of appreciation. + +A proof of how widespread and deep this neglect was is that TYUTCHEV, +whose work attracted no attention whatever until 1854, and met with no +wide appreciation until a great deal later, was four years younger +than Pushkin, and a man of thirty when Goethe died. He went on living +until 1873, and can be called the first of the Parnassians. +Politically, he was a Slavophile, and sang the "resignation" and +"long-suffering" of the Russian people, which he preferred to the +stiff-neckedness of the West. But the value of his work lies less in +his Slavophile aspirations than in its depth of thought and lyrical +feeling, in the contrast between the gloomy forebodings of his +imagination and the sunlike images he gives of nature. His verse is +like a spring day, dark with ominous thunderclouds, out of which a +rainbow and a shaft of sunlight fall on a dewy orchard and light it +with a silvery smile. His verse is, on the one hand, full of +foreboding and terror at the fate of man and the shadow of +nothingness, and, on the other hand, it twitters like a bird over the +freshness and sunshine of spring. He sings the spring again and again, +and no Russian poet has ever sung the glory, the mystery, the wonder, +and the terror of night as he has done; his whole work is compounded +of glowing pictures of nature and a world of longing and of +unutterable dreams. + +The dreamy dominion of the Parnassian age, on whose threshold Tyutchev +stood, was to be disturbed by the notes of a harsher and stronger +music. + +NEKRASOV (1821-77), Russia's "sternest painter," and certainly one of +her best, drew his inspiration direct from life, and sang the +sufferings, the joys, and the life of the people. He is a Russian +Crabbe; nature and man are his subjects, but nature as the friend and +foe of man, as a factor, the most important factor in man's life, and +not as an ideal storehouse from which a Shelley can draw forms more +real than living man, nurslings of immortality, or a Wordsworth reap +harvests of the inward eye. He called his muse the "Muse of Vengeance +and of Grief." He is an uncompromising realist, like Crabbe, and +idealizes nothing in his pictures of the peasant's life. Like Crabbe, +he has a deep note of pathos, and a keen but not so minute an eye for +landscape. + +On the other hand, he at times attains to imaginative sublimity in his +descriptions, as, for instance, in his poem called _The Red-nosed +Frost_, where King Frost approaches a peasant widow who is at work in +the winter forest, and freezes her to death. As Daria is gradually +freezing to death, the frost comes to her like a warrior; and his +semblance and attributes are drawn in a series of splendid stanzas. He +sings to her of his riches that no profusion can decrease, and of his +kingdom of silver and diamonds and pearls: then, as she freezes, she +dreams of a hot summer's day, and of the rye harvest and of the +familiar songs-- + + "Away with the song she is soaring, + She surrenders herself to its stream, + In the world there is no such sweet singing + As that which we hear in a dream." + +His longest and most ambitious work was a kind of popular epic, _Who +is Happy in Russia?_ written in short lines which have the popular +ring and accent. Some peasants start on a pilgrimage to find out who +is happy in Russia. They fly on a magic carpet, and interview +representatives of the different classes of society, the pope, the +landowner, the peasant woman, each new interview producing a whole +series of stories, sometimes idyllic and sometimes tragic, and all +showing their genius as intimate pictures of various phases of Russian +life. Here, again, the analogy with Crabbe suggests itself, for +Nekrasov's tales, taking into consideration the difference between the +two countries, have a marked affinity, both in their subject matter, +their variety, their stern realism, their pathos, their bitterness, +and their observation of nature, with Crabbe's stories in verse. + +Two of Nekrasov's long poems tell the story in the form of +reminiscence,--and here again the naturalness and appropriateness of +the diction is perfect,--of the Russian women, Princess Volkonsky and +Princess Trubetzkoy, who followed their husbands, condemned to penal +servitude for taking part in the Decembrist rising, to Siberia. Here, +again, Nekrasov strikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, all the +more poignant from the absolute simplicity with which the tales are +told. Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of the time and has only +one rival, whom we shall describe presently. + +The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET +(1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write +about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic, +and all three remained aloof from political or social questions. + +Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old +ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and +his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an +exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy. + +The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete +plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and +impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his +verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as +delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between +words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo. + + "The world in shadow slipped away + And, like a silent dream took flight, + Like Adam, I in Eden lay + Alone, and face to face with night." + +He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the +dawn-- + + "A whisper, a breath, a shiver, + The trills of the nightingale, + A silver light and a quiver + And a sunlit trail. + The glimmer of night and the shadows of night + In an endless race, + Enchanted changes, flight after flight, + On the loved one's face. + The blood of the roses tingling + In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey, + And tears and kisses commingling-- + The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!" + +Polonsky's verse, in contrast to Fet's gentle epicurean temperament, +his delicate half-tones and illusive whispers, is made of sterner +stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov's sculptural lines, it is +pre-eminently musical, and reflects a fine and charming personality. +His area of subjects is wide; he can write a child's poem as +transparent and simple as Hans Andersen--as in his conversation +between the sun and the moon--or call up the "glory that was Greece," +as in the poem when his "Aspasia" listens to the crowds acclaiming +Pericles, and waits in rapturous suspense for his return--an evocation +that Browning would have envied for its life and Swinburne for its +sound. + +But neither Maikov, Fet, nor Polonsky, exquisite as much of their +writing is, produced anything of the calibre of Nekrasov, even in +their own province; that is to say, they were none of them as great in +the artistic field as he was in his didactic field. Compared with him, +they are minor poets. There is one poet of this epoch who does rival +Nekrasov in another field, and that is COUNT ALEXIS TOLSTOY (1817-75), +who was also a Parnassian and remained aloof from didactic literature; +yet, under the pseudonym of Kuzma Prutkov, he wrote a satire, a +collection of platitudes, that are household words in Russia; also a +short history of Russia in consummately neat and witty satirical +verse. As well as his satires, he wrote an historical novel, _Prince +Serebryany_, and more important still, a trilogy of plays, dealing +with the most dramatic epoch of Russian history, that of Ivan the +Terrible. The trilogy, written in verse, consists of the "Death of +Ivan the Terrible," "The Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch" and "Tsar Boris." +They are all of them acting plays, form part of the current classical +repertory, and are effective, impressive and arresting when played on +the stage. + +But it is as a poet and as a lyrical poet that Alexis Tolstoy is most +widely known. Versatile with a versatility that recalls Pushkin, he +writes epical ballads on Russian, Northern, and even Scottish themes, +and dramatic poems on Don Juan, St. John Damascene, and Mary +Magdalene; and, besides these, a whole series of personal lyrics, +which are full of charm, tenderness, music and colour, harmonious in +form and transparent. No Russian poet since Pushkin has written such +tender love lyrics, and nobody has sung the Russian spring, the +Russian summer, and the Russian autumn with such tender lyricism. His +poem on the early spring, when the fern is still tightly curled, the +shepherd's note still but half heard in the morning, and the birch +trees just green, is one of the most tender, fresh, and perfect +expressions of first love, morning, spring, dew, and dawn in the +world's literature. His songs have inspired Tchaikovsky and other +composers. The strongest and highest chord he struck is in his St. +John Damascene; this contains a magnificent dirge for the dead which +can bear comparison even with the _Dies Ir_ for majesty, solemn +pathos, and plangent rhythm. + +His pictures of landscapes have a peculiar charm. The following is an +attempt at a translation-- + + "Through the slush and the ruts of the highway, + By the side of the dam of the stream, + Where the fisherman's nets are drying, + The carriage jogs on, and I dream. + + I dream, and I look at the highway, + At the sky that is sullen and grey, + At the lake with its shelving reaches, + And the curling smoke far away. + + By the dam, with a cheerless visage + Walks a Jew, who is ragged and sere. + With a thunder of foam and of splashing, + The waters race over the weir. + + A boy over there is whistling + On a hemlock flute of his make; + And the wild ducks get up in a panic + And call as they sweep from the lake. + + And near the old mill some workmen + Are sitting upon the green ground, + With a wagon of sacks, a cart horse + Plods past with a lazy sound. + + It all seems to me so familiar, + Although I have never been here, + The roof of that house out yonder, + And the boy, and the wood, and the weir. + + And the voice of the grumbling mill-wheel, + And that rickety barn, I know, + I have been here and seen this already, + And forgotten it all long ago. + + The very same horse here was dragging + Those sacks with the very same sound, + And those very same workmen were sitting + By the rickety mill on the ground. + + And that Jew, with his beard, walked past me, + And those waters raced through the weir; + Yes, all this has happened already, + But I cannot tell when or where." + +The people also produced a poet during this epoch and gave Koltsov a +successor, in the person of NIKITIN; his themes are taken straight +from life, and he became known through his patriotic songs written +during the Crimean War; but he is most successful in his descriptions +of nature, of sunset on the fields, and dawn, and the swallow's nest +in the grumbling mill. Two other poets, whose work became well known +later, but passed absolutely unnoticed in the sixties, were +SLUCHEVSKY, a philosophical poet, whose verse, excellent in +description, suffers from clumsiness in form, and APUKHTIN, whose +collected poems and ballads, although he began to write in 1859, were +not published until 1886. Apukhtin is a Parnassian. The bulk of his +work, though perfect in form, is uninteresting; but he wrote one or +two lyrics which have a place in any Russian Golden Treasury, and his +poems are largely read now. + +In the eighties, a reaction against the anti-poetical tendency set in, +and poets began to spring up like mushrooms. Of these, the most +popular and the most remarkable is NADSON (1862-87); he died when he +was twenty-four, of consumption. Since then his verse has gone through +twenty-one editions, and 110,000 copies have been sold; ten editions +were published in his own lifetime. And there are innumerable musical +settings by various composers to his lyrics. His verse inaugurates a +new epoch in Russian poetry, the distinguishing features of which are +a great attention to form and _technique_, a Parnassian love of colour +and shape, and a deep melancholy. + +Nadson sings the melancholy of youth, the dreams and disillusions of +adolescence, and the hopelessness of the stagnant atmosphere of +reaction to which he belonged. This last fact accounted in some +measure for his extraordinary popularity. But it was by no means its +sole cause; his verse is not only exquisite but magically musical, to +an extent which makes the verse of other poets seem a stuff of coarser +clay, and his pictures of nature, of spring, of night, and especially +of night in the Riviera (with a note of passionate home-sickness), +have the aromatic, intoxicating sweetness of syringa. Verse such as +this, sensitive, ultra-delicate, morbid, nervous, and pessimistic, is +bound to have the defects of its qualities, in a marked degree; one is +soon inclined to have enough of its sultry, oppressive atmosphere, its +delicate perfume, its unrelieved gloom and its music, which is nearly +always not only in a minor key but in the same key. Nobody was more +keenly aware of this than Nadson himself, and one of his most +beautiful poems begins thus-- + + "Dear friend, I know, I know, I only know too well + That my verse is barren of all strength, and pale, and delicate, + And often just because of its debility I suffer + And often weep in secret in the silence of the night." + +And in another poem he writes his apology. He has never used verse as +a toy to chase tedium; the blessed gift of the singer has often been +to him an unbearable cross, and he has often vowed to keep silent; +but, if the wind blows, the olian harp must needs respond, and +streams of the hills cannot help rushing to the valley if the sun +melts the snow on the mountain tops. This apologia more than all +criticism defines his gift. His temperament is an olian harp, which, +whether it will or no, is sensitive to the breeze; its strings are +few, and tuned to one key; nevertheless some of the strains it has +sobbed have the stamp of permanence as well as that of ethereal magic. + +The poets that come after Nadson belong to the present day; there are +many, and they increase in number every year. The so-called "decadent" +school were influenced by Shelley, Verlaine, and the French +symbolists; but there is nothing which is decadent in the ordinary +sense of the word in their verse. Their influence may not be lasting, +but they are factors in Russian literature, and some of them, SOLOGUB, +BRUSOV, BALMONT, and IVANOV, have produced work which any school would +be glad to claim. This is also true of ALEXANDER BLOCH, one of the +most original as well as one of the most exquisite of living Russian +poets. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +With the death of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, the great epoch of Russian +literature came to an end. A period of literary as well as of +political stagnation began, which lasted until the Russo-Japanese War. +This was followed by the revolutionary movement, which, in its turn, +produced a literary as well as a political chaos, the effect of which +and of the manifold reactions it brought about are still being felt. +It was only natural, if one considers the extent and the quality of +the productions of the preceding epoch, that the soil of literary +Russia should require a rest. + +As it is, one can count the writers of prominence which the epoch of +stagnation produced on one's fingers--CHEKHOV, GARSHIN, KOROLENKO, and +at the end of the period MAXIME GORKY, and apart from them, in a +by-path of his own, MEREZHKOVSKY. Of these Chekhov and Gorky tower +above the others. Chekhov enlarged the range of Russian literature by +painting the middle-class and the _Intelligentsia_, and brought back +to Russian literature the note of humour; and Gorky broke altogether +fresh ground by painting the vagabond, the artisan, the tramp, the +thief, the flotsam and jetsam of the big town and the highway, and by +painting in a new manner. + +Gorky's work came like that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling to England, as a +revelation. Not only did his subject matter open the doors on +dominions undreamed of, but his attitude towards life and that of his +heroes towards life seemed to be different from that of all Russian +novelists before his advent; and yet the difference between him and +his forerunners is not so great as it appears at first sight. It is +true that his rough and rebellious heroes, instead of playing the +Hamlet, or of finding the solution of life in charity and humility or +submission, are partisans of the survival of the fittest with a +vengeance, the survival of the strongest fist and the sharpest knife; +yet are these new heroes really so different from the uncompromising +type that we have already seen sharing one half of the Russian stage, +right through the story of Russian literature, from Bazarov back to +Peter the Great, and on whose existence was founded the remark that +Peter the Great was one of the ingredients in the Russian character? +Put Bazarov on the road, or Lermontov, or even Peter the Great, and +you get Gorky's barefooted hero. + +Where Gorky created something absolutely new was in the surroundings +and in the manner of life which he described, and in the way he +described them; this is especially true of his treatment of nature: +for the first time in Russian prose literature, we get away from the +"orthodox" landscape of convention, and we are face to face with the +elements. We feel as if a new breath of air had entered into +literature; we feel as people accustomed to the manner in which the +poets treated nature in England in the eighteenth century must have +felt when Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Coleridge began to write. + +Chekhov worked on older lines. He descends directly from Turgenev, +although his field is a different one. He, more than any other writer +and better than any other writer, painted the epoch of stagnation, +when Russia, as a Russian once said, was playing itself to death at +_vindt_ (an older form of _Bridge_). The tone of his work is grey, and +indeed resembles, as Tolstoy said, that of a photographer, by its +objective realism as well as by its absence of high tones; yet if +Chekhov is a photographer, he is at the same time a supreme artist, an +artist in black and white, and his pessimism is counteracted by two +other factors, his sense of humour and his humanity; were it not so, +the impression of sadness one would derive from the sum of misery +which his crowded stage of merchants, students, squires, innkeepers, +waiters, schoolmasters, magistrates, popes, officials, make up between +them, would be intolerable. Some of Chekhov's most interesting work +was written for the stage, on which he also brought Scenes of Country +Life, which is the sub-title of the play _Uncle Vanya_. There are the +same grey tints, the same weary, amiable, and slack people, bankrupt +of ideals and poor in hope, whom we meet in the stories; and here, +too, behind the sordid triviality and futility, we hear the "still sad +music of humanity." But in order that the tints of Chekhov's delicate +living and breathing photographs can be effective on the stage, very +special acting is necessary, in order to convey the quality of +atmosphere which is his special gift. Fortunately he met with exactly +the right technique and the appropriate treatment at the Art Theatre +at Moscow. + +Chekhov died in 1904, soon after the Russo-Japanese War had begun. +Apart from the main stream and tradition of Russian fiction and +Russian prose, Merezhkovsky occupies a unique place, a place which +lies between criticism and imaginative historical fiction, not unlike, +in some respects--but very different in others--that which is occupied +by Walter Pater in English fiction. His best known work, at least his +best known work in Europe, is a prose trilogy, "The Death of the Gods" +(a study of Julian the apostate), "The Resurrection of the Gods" (the +story of Leonardo da Vinci), and "The Antichrist" (the story of Peter +the Great and his son Alexis), which has been translated into nearly +every European language. This trilogy is an essay in imaginative +historical reconstitution; it testifies to a real and deep culture, +and it is lit at times by flashes of imaginative inspiration which +make the scenes of the past live; it is alive with suggestive thought; +but it is not throughout convincing, there is a touch of Bulwer +Lytton as well as a touch of Goethe and Pater in it. Merezhkovsky is +perhaps more successful in his purely critical work, his books on +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Gogol, which are infinitely stimulating, +suggestive, and original, than in his historical fiction, although, +needless to say, his criticism appeals to a far narrower public. He is +in any case one of the most brilliant and interesting of Russian +modern writers, and perhaps the best known outside Russia. + +During the war, a writer of fiction made his name by a remarkable +book, namely KUPRIN, who in his novel, _The Duel_, gave a vivid and +masterly picture of the life of an officer in the line. Kuprin has +since kept the promise of his early work. At the same time, LEONID +ANDREEV came forward with short stories, plays, a description of war +(_The Red Laugh_), moralities, not uninfluenced by Maeterlinck, and a +limpid and beautiful style in which pessimism seemed to be speaking +its last word. + +In 1905 the revolutionary movement broke out, with its great hopes, +its disillusions, its period of anarchy on the one hand and +repression on the other; out of the chaos of events came a chaos of +writing rather than literature, and in its turn this produced, in +literature as well as in life, a reaction, or rather a series of +reactions, towards symbolism, stheticism, mysticism on the one hand, +and towards materialism--not of theory but of practice--on the other. +But since these various reactions are now going on, and are vitally +affecting the present day, the revolutionary movement of 1905 seems +the right point to take leave of Russian literature. In 1905 a new era +began, and what that era will ultimately produce, it is too soon even +to hazard a guess. + +Looking back over the record of Russian literature, the first thing +which must strike us, if we think of the literature of other +countries, is its comparatively short life. There is in Russian +literature no Middle Ages, no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no +Renaissance, no _Grand Sicle_. Literature begins in the nineteenth +century. The second thing which will perhaps strike us is that, in +spite of its being the youngest of all the literatures, it seems to be +spiritually the oldest. In some respects it seems to have become +over-ripe before it reached maturity. But herein, perhaps, lies the +secret of its greatness, and this may be the value of its contribution +to the soul of mankind. It is-- + + "Old in grief and very wise in tears": + +and its chief gift to mankind is an expression, made with a +naturalness and sincerity that are matchless, and a love of reality +which is unique,--for all Russian literature, whether in prose or +verse, is rooted in reality--of that grief and that wisdom; the grief +and wisdom which come from a great heart; a heart that is large enough +to embrace the world and to drown all the sorrows therein with the +immensity of its sympathy, its fraternity, its pity, its charity, and +its love. + + + + +CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + + 1113. _The Chronicle of Nestor._ + + 1692. First play produced in Russia, Gregory. + Simeon Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted. + + 1703. The first Russian newspaper, _The Russian News_, appears. + + 1725. Death of Peter the Great. + Foundation of the Academy of Science. + + 1744. Death of Kantemir. + + 1750. Death of Tatishchev. + + 1755. University of Moscow founded. + + 1762. Accession of Catherine the Great. + + 1765. Death of Lomonosov. + + 1790. Radishchev's _Journey Through Russia_ published. + + 1796. Death of Catherine the Great. + + 1800. First edition of _The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_ + published. + + 1802. Zhukovsky translates Gray's _Elegy_. + Death of Radishchev. + + 1806. Krylov's first fables published. + + 1816. Death of Derzhavin. + _History of the Russian State_, by Karamzin, published. + + 1819. University of St. Petersburg founded. + + 1820. Pushkin's _Ruslan and Ludmila_ published. + + 1823. Griboyedov's _Misfortune of Being Clever_ circulated. + First Canto of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1825. The Decembrist Attempt. + + 1826. Rileev hanged. + Death of Karamzin. + + 1827. Pushkin's _Gypsies_ published. + + 1829. Death of Griboyedov. + Pushkin's _Poltava_ published. + + 1831. Pushkin's _Boris Godunov_ published. + Complete version of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1832. Gogol's _Evening on the Farm near the Dikanka_ published. + + 1834. Gogol's _Mirgorod_ published. + + 1835. Gogol's _Revisor_ produced on the stage. + + 1836. Chaadaev's letters published. + + 1837. Death of Pushkin. + + 1841. Death of Lermontov. + + 1842. Death of Koltsov. + Gogol's _Dead Souls_ published. + + 1844. Death of Krylov. + + 1847. Gogol's correspondence published. + Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_ published. + Death of Belinsky. + + 1849. Dostoyevsky imprisoned. + + 1856-7. Saltykov's _Government Sketches_ appear. + + 1859. Ostrovsky's _Storm_ produced. + Goncharov's _Oblomov_ published. + + 1860. Turgenev's _Fathers and Sons_ published. + + 1861. Emancipation of the Serfs. + + 1862. Pisemsky's _Troubled Sea_ published. + + 1863. Chernyshevsky's _What is to be Done?_ published. + + 1865. Leskov's _No Way Out_ published. + + 1865-1872. Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ appeared. + + 1866. Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ published. + + 1868. Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_ published. + + 1875. Death of Count Alexis Tolstoy. + + 1875-6. Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_ published. + + 1877. Death of Nekrasov. + + 1881. Death of Dostoyevsky. + + 1883. Death of Turgenev. + + 1886. Death of Ostrovsky. + + 1887. Death of Nadson. + + 1889. Death of Saltykov. + + 1900. Death of Soloviev. + Production of Chekhov's _Chaika_ (Seagull). + + 1904. Production of Chekhov's _Cherry Orchard_. + Death of Chekhov. + + 1910. Death of Tolstoy. + + + + +INDEX + + + Acton, Lord, 146 + + Ainsworth, Harrison, 82 + + Aksakov, Ivan, 154 + + ----, Serge, 154 f. + + Alexander I, 9, 30 f., 44, 124, 169 + + ---- II, 52, 153, 160, 179, 227 + + Alexis, Tsar, 23 + + Andreev, Leonid, 248 + + _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy's, 205 f. + + Apukhtin, 238 + + Arnold, Matthew, 123, 146, 226 + + Atheism and Socialism, 150 f. + + + Bakunin, 179, 180 + + Balfour, Mr. A. J., 182 + + Balmont, 242 + + Bariatinsky, Prince, 101 + + Batyushkov, 58 + + Baudelaire, 226 + + Beaconsfield, Lord, 146 + + Belinsky, 142, 150 + + _Bell, The_, Herzen edits, 151, 153, 180 + + Bloch, Alexander, 242 + + _Bogoiskateli_, 198, 199 + + Bront, Charlotte, 222 + + ----, Emily, 46 + + Brckner, Prof., 144, 145, 147, 214 + + Brusov, 242 + + Bulgaria, 12 + + Bulgaria, liberation of, 170, 171 + + Brger's _Leonore_ translated into Russian, 52 + + Burns, Robert, 125 + + Byron, 61 f., 66, 67, 71, 72 (footnotes), 73, 98, 119, 123, 146 + + Byzantium, Emperor of, 11 + + + Catherine I, 18 (footnote) + + ---- II, 27, 32, 33, 80, 155 + + Chaadaev, 148 + + Chekhov, 243, 244 f. + + Chernyshevsky, 180, 181, 227 + + Chesterton, Mr. G. K., 182 + + Christianity of the East, 11 + + _Chronicle of Kiev_, the, 15 f. + + _Chronicle of Nestor_, the, 15 f. + + Church, the, influence on Russian literature, 11, 21 + + Constantine, 44 + + Corot, 226 + + Crabbe, Nekrasov and, 229 f. + + Crimean War, the, 160, 202, 238 + + + Danilevsky, 180 + + Daudet, 172 + + "Decembrist" rising, the, 44, 45, 61, 92 + + Delvig, Baron, 101 + + Demetrius, 21, 67 + + Derzhavin, 29, 56 + + Diderot, 27 + + Dobrolyubov, 180, 181, 227 + + Donne, John, 97 + + Dostoyevsky, 96, 99, 109, 143, 145, 160, 161, 164, 167, 173, 180, + 192, 196 f., 200, 210 f., 220 f. + + + Eastern and Western Churches, schism of, 13, 22, 182, 183 + + Eliot, Sir Charles, 13 + + Elizabeth, Empress, 26 + + Emancipation of the serfs, the, 160, 227 + + + Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter the Great, 85 + + Fet, 232 f. + + Flaubert, 162, 204 + + French influence in Russia, 26 + + French Revolution, the, 27, 40, 159 + + + Gagarin, Prince, 150 + + Garshin, 243 + + Gautier, 226 + + German influence in Russia, 26 + + Goethe, death of, 228 + + ----, Pushkin's resemblance to, 92 f. + + Gogol, Nicholas, 126 f., 190 + + Goncharov, 143, 176 f. + + Gorky, Maxime, 164, 243, 244 f. + + Gray's _Elegy_, Russian translations of, 52, 53 + + Gregory, Protestant pastor of the Sloboda, 23 + + Griboyedov, 45 f., 126, 191 + + Grigoriev, 179, 180 + + Grigorovich, 194, 195 + + Grimm's Fairy Tales, 84 + + + Haumant, M., 168 + + Heckeren-Dantes' duel with Pushkin, 90 + + Heine, 98 + + Herzen, Alexander, 143, 150 f., 180 + + Hoffmann, 127 + + Homyakov, 154 + + Hugo, Victor, 117, 118, 172 + + + Ivan III, 20, 21, 24 + + ---- IV ("The Terrible"), 24, 67, 235 + + Ivanov, 242 + + + _Jane Eyre_ cited, 222 + + + Kantemir, Prince, 27 + + Karakozov, 153 + + Karamzin, 18, 32 f., 141 + + Katkov, 180, 182 + + Keats, 146 + + _Kidnapped_ (Stevenson's), 129 + + Kiev, destruction of, 19; + rebuilding of, 21 + + ----, the mother of Russian culture, 10 f. + + Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, 244 + + Koltsov, 124 f. + + Korolenko, 243 + + Krylov, 34 f., 176 f. + + Kuprin, 248 + + + La Fontaine, 35 f. + + Lang, Andrew, 128 + + Latin language taught in Moscow, 22 + + Le Maistre, Joseph, 148, 149 + + Leo X, 13 + + Lermontov, 102 f., 126 + + Leskov, vi, 189 f. + + Lisle, Leconte de, 226 + + Literary criticism, 141 + + Liturgical books, revision of, 22 + + Lomonosov, Michael, 26, 29 + + Luther, 13 + + Lytton, Bulwer, 248 + + + Maikov, 232 + + Maupassant, 128, 172 + + Meredith, George, 169, 172 + + Merezhkovsky, 147, 205, 243, 247 f. + + Mrime, 83, 141 + + Mill, John Stuart, 181 + + Mickiewicz, the Pole, 87 + + Montesquieu, 27 + + Morley, John, 146 + + Moscow, 10, 19, 21 + + Moscow Art Theatre, the, v, 221, 222, 247 + + ----, European culture in, 23 + + _Moscow Journal_ founded by Karamzin, 32 + + Moscow, Pushkin's memorial at, 99, 220 + + ----, schools in, 22 + + ----, the fire of, 18 + + ----, University of, 26 + + Mozart of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Musin-Pushkin, Count. _See_ Pushkin. + + Musset, 118, 119 + + Mussorgsky, 67 + + + Nadson, 239 f. + + Napoleon, 30 f., 40, 111, 204 + + Nechaev, 218 + + Nekrasov, 229 f., 234 + + Nicholas, 44 + + Nicholas, Emperor, 160 + + Nicholas I, 103 + + Nihilism, 152, 163, 171, 173, 179, 217, 218, 227 + + Nikitin, 238 + + Norsemen in Russia, 10 + + + _Odyssey_, the, Russian translation of, 52 + + Ostrovsky, 193 f. + + + Palologa, Sophia, 21 + + Paris revolution of 1848, the, 159 + + Parnassian poetry, the epoch of, 226 f. + + Pater, Walter, 247, 248 + + Paul, Emperor, 33 + + Peter the Great, 21, 24 f., 71, 85, 97 + + ---- ---- of Poetry, the, 95 + + Petrashevsky and his followers, 159, 160 + + Pisarev, 180, 181, 227 + + Pisemsky, 191, 193 + + Poe, E. A., 86 + + Poland, 21, 24 + + Poland, the rising in, 180 + + Poles occupy Moscow, 24 + + Polevoy, 142 + + Polezhaev, 101 + + Polonsky, 232, 233 f. + + Polotsky, Simeon, 22 f. + + Preobrazhenskoe and its theatre, 23 + + Pre-Raphaelites, the, 226 + + Printing press, the first, 21 + + Propagandists of Western Ideas the, 148 f. + + Prutkov, Kuzma. _See_ Tolstoy, Count Alexis. + + Pugachev and the Cossack rising, 80 + + Pushkin vi, 18, 34, 41, 43, 50, 54 f., 109, 110, 123, 126, 132, + 135, 138, 143, 162, 167, 220 + + + Radishchev, 27 f. + + Rakhmaninov, 81 + + Rimsky-Korsakov, 81 + + Rodionovna, Anna, 84, 85 + + Rome, Gogol settles in, 133 + + Rousseau, 27 + + Russia and political liberty, 148 + + ----, Norsemen in, 10, 11 + + ----, Tartar invasion of, 19, 24 + + ----, the revolutionary movement of 1905, 243, 248, 249 + + Russian literature, beginnings of, 9 f. + + ---- ----, dawn of, 30 f. + + ---- ----, second renascence of, 159 + + ---- ----, the age of prose, 126 f. + + ---- ----, the second age of poetry, 226 f. + + ---- newspaper, the first, 25 + + ---- Nihilism. _See_ Nihilism. + + ---- trade centres, 10 + + Russia's national poet, 95 + + Russo-Japanese War, the, 243 + + Ryleev, 44 + + + Sainte-Beuve, 146 + + St. Petersburg, 10 + + ---- Jesuits, the, 148 + + ----, the great floods of 1834, 85 + + Saltykov, Michael, vi, 184 f., 190 f. + + Sand, George, 162 + + Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_, Russian translation of, 52 + + Schumann of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Seekers after God, 198 + + Serfs, emancipation of the, 160, 227 + + Shakespeare, Pushkin on, 65, 66 + + Shchedrin. _See_ Saltykov. + + Siberia, Dostoyevsky at, 160, 213, 225 + + ----, Radishchev at, 28 + + Slav race, the, 10 f. + + Slavonic liturgy, introduction of, 12 + + Slavophiles, the, 143, 148, 152, 154, 159, 180, 228 + + Sluchevsky, 238 + + Socialism and Atheism, 150 f. + + Society of Welfare, the, 43 + + Sologub, 242 + + Soloviev, Vladimir, 11, 93, 181 f. + + Stebnitsky. _See_ Leskov. + + Stendhal, 204 + + Stevenson, R. L., 127, 128, 129, 214 + + Strakhov, 180 + + Suffragettes, 163, 164 + + Sully-Prudhomme, 226 + + Suvorov, 30 + + Sviatoslav, 15, 16 + + + Taine, 162 + + Tartar invasion of Russia, the, 19; + the Tartar yoke thrown off, 24 + + Tatishchev, 26 + + Tchaikovsky, 80, 236 + + Tennyson, Lord, 165, 166, 226 + + Thackeray, 172 + + Tolstoy, Count Alexis, 234 f. + + ----, Count Leo, 134, 161, 164, 170, 196 f., 211, 246 + + Turgenev, Ivan, 64, 161 f., 192 + + Tyutchev, 154, 228 + + + Universal church, Soloviev's views on, 182-183 + + University of Moscow, the, 26, 251 + + + Venevitinov, 101 + + Vienna, Congress of, 40, 43 + + Vigny, Alfred de, 202 + + Vinci, Leonardo da, 67 + + Virgil of Russian prose, the, 175 + + Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, 11 + + Volkonsky, Princess, 150 + + Voltaire, 27 + + Volynsky, 147 + + Vyatka, Saltykov banished to, 185 + + Vyazemsky, Prince, 141 + + + _War and Peace_, publication of, 202 f. + + Wells, Mr., 164 + + Wilson, John, 81 + + Woman's Suffrage, 182. _Cf._ Suffragettes. + + Wordsworth, 120, 123 + + + Yakovlev. _Cf._ Herzen, Alexander. + + Yazykov, 101 + + + Zhukovsky, Basil, 51 f., 83 + + Zola, 74, 204 + + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + + The + Home University + Library of Modern Knowledge + + _A Comprehensive Series of New + and Specially Written Books_ + + EDITORS: + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A. + Prof. J. 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"There is not a page in it that is not suggestive."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +33. _THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND_ + +_A Study in Political Evolution_ + +By Prof. A. F. POLLARD, M.A. With a Chronological Table. "It takes +its place at once among the authoritative works on English +history."--_Observer._ + +34. _CANADA_ + +By A. G. BRADLEY. "The volume makes an immediate appeal to the man who +wants to know something vivid and true about Canada."--_Canadian +Gazette._ + +37. _PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA_ + +By Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS, K.C.S.I., Permanent Under-Secretary of State +of the India Office. "Just the book which newspaper readers require +to-day, and a marvel of comprehensiveness."--_Pall Mall Gazette._ + +42. _ROME_ + +By W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A. "A masterly sketch of Roman character and of +what it did for the world."--_The Spectator._ + +48. _THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR_ + +By F. L. PAXSON, Professor of American History, Wisconsin University +(With Maps.) 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"No one will put it down without a sense of +having taken a tonic or received a series of electric shocks."--_The +Times._ + +73. _THE WRITING OF ENGLISH_ + +By W. T. BREWSTER, A.M., Professor of English in Columbia University. +"Sensible, and not over-rigidly conventional."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +75. _ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL_ + +By JANE E. HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt. "Charming in style and learned in +manner."--_Daily News._ + +76. _EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE_ + +By GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek +at Oxford. "A beautiful piece of work.... Just in the fulness of time, +and exactly in the right place.... Euripides has come into his +own."--_The Nation._ + +87. _CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES_ + +By GRACE E. HADOW. + +89. _WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE_ + +By A. CLUTTON BROCK. + +93. _THE RENAISSANCE_ + +By EDITH SICHEL. + +95. _ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE_ + +By J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. + +99. _AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE_ + +By Hon. 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GAMBLE, F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver +Lodge. (Many Illustrations.) "A fascinating and suggestive +survey."--_Morning Post._ + +20. _EVOLUTION_ + +By Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON and Professor PATRICK GEDDES. "A +many-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no other book we +know, a rational vision of world-development."--_Belfast News-Letter._ + +22. _CRIME AND INSANITY_ + +By Dr C. A. MERCIER. "Furnishes much valuable information from one +occupying the highest position among medico-legal psychologists."--_Asylum +News._ + +28. _PSYCHICAL RESEARCH_ + +By Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of +Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. "What he has to say on thought-reading, +hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spiritualism, divinings, and so +on, will be read with avidity."--_Dundee Courier._ + +31. _ASTRONOMY_ + +By A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory. +"Original in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in +treatment.... No better little book is available."--_School World._ + +32. _INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE_ + +By J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, +Aberdeen University. "Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is +well known; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods +of science and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and +practical life."--_Aberdeen Journal._ + +36. _CLIMATE AND WEATHER_ + +By Prof. H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the +Royal Meteorological Society. (With Diagrams.) "The author has +succeeded in presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner the +causes of the movements of the atmosphere and of the more stable +winds."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +41. _ANTHROPOLOGY_ + +By R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford +University. "An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child +could understand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction +'to a frazzle.'"--_Morning Leader._ + +44. _THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY_ + +By Prof. J. G. MCKENDRICK, M.D. "Upon every page of it is stamped the +impress of a creative imagination."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +46. _MATTER AND ENERGY_ + +By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. "Prof. Soddy has successfully accomplished +the very difficult task of making physics of absorbing interest on +popular lines."--_Nature._ + +49. _PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR_ + +By Prof. W. MCDOUGALL, F.R.S., M.B. "A happy example of the +non-technical handling of an unwieldy science, suggesting rather than +dogmatising. It should whet appetites for deeper study."--_Christian +World._ + +53. _THE MAKING OF THE EARTH_ + +By Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.) "A +fascinating little volume.... Among the many good things contained in +the series this takes a high place."--_The Athenum._ + +57. _THE HUMAN BODY_ + +By A. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., Conservator of Museum and Hunterian +Professor, Royal College of Surgeons. (Illustrated.) "It literally +makes the 'dry bones' to live. It will certainly take a high place +among the classics of popular science."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +58. _ELECTRICITY_ + +By GISBERT KAPP, D.Eng., Professor of Electrical Engineering in the +University of Birmingham. (Illustrated.) "It will be appreciated +greatly by learners and by the great number of amateurs who are +interested in what is one of the most fascinating of scientific +studies."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +62. _THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE_ + +By Dr BENJAMIN MOORE, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, +Liverpool. "Stimulating, learned, lucid."--_Liverpool Courier._ + +67. _CHEMISTRY_ + +By RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury +Technical College, London. Presents clearly, without the detail +demanded by the expert, the way in which chemical science has +developed, and the stage it has reached. + +72. _PLANT LIFE_ + +By Prof. J. B. FARMER, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Illustrated.) "Professor Farmer +has contrived to convey all the most vital facts of plant physiology, +and also to present a good many of the chief problems which confront +investigators to-day in the realms of morphology and of +heredity."--_Morning Post._ + +78. _THE OCEAN_ + +A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By Sir JOHN MURRAY, +K.C.B. F.R.S. (Colour plates and other illustrations.) + +79. _NERVES_ + +By Prof. D. FRASER HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc. (Illustrated.) A description, +in non-technical language, of the nervous system, its intricate +mechanism and the strange phenomena of energy and fatigue, with some +practical reflections. + +86. _SEX_ + +By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, LL.D. (Illus.) + +88. _THE GROWTH OF EUROPE_ + +By Prof. GRENVILLE COLE, (Illus.) + + +_Philosophy and Religion_ + +15. _MOHAMMEDANISM_ + +By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt. "This generous shilling's +worth of wisdom.... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible +tractate by an illuminative professor."--_Daily Mail._ + +40. _THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY_ + +By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. "A book that the 'man in the +street' will recognise at once to be a boon.... Consistently lucid and +non-technical throughout."--_Christian World._ + +47. _BUDDHISM_ + +By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. "The author presents very attractively as +well as very learnedly the philosophy of Buddhism."--_Daily News._ + +50. _NONCONFORMITY: Its ORIGIN and PROGRESS_ + +By Principal W. B. SELBIE, M.A. "The historical part is brilliant in +its insight, clarity, and proportion."--_Christian World._ + +54. _ETHICS_ + +By G. E. MOORE, M.A., Lecturer in Moral Science in Cambridge +University. "A very lucid though closely reasoned outline of the logic +of good conduct."--_Christian World._ + +56. _THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. B. W. BACON, LL.D., D.D. "Professor Bacon has boldly, and +wisely, taken his own line, and has produced, as a result, an +extraordinarily vivid, stimulating, and lucid book."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +60. _MISSIONS: THEIR RISE and DEVELOPMENT_ + +By Mrs CREIGHTON. "Very interestingly done.... Its style is simple, +direct, unhackneyed, and should find appreciation where a more +fervently pious style of writing repels."--_Methodist Recorder._ + +68. _COMPARATIVE RELIGION_ + +By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt., Principal of Manchester +College, Oxford. "Puts into the reader's hand a wealth of learning and +independent thought."--_Christian World._ + +74. _A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT_ + +By J. B. BURY, Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at +Cambridge. "A little masterpiece, which every thinking man will +enjoy."--_The Observer._ + +84. _LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. GEORGE MOORE, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard. A detailed examination +of the books of the Old Testament in the light of the most recent +research. + +90. _THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_ + +By Canon E. W. WATSON, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at +Oxford. + +94. _RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS_ + +By Canon R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt. + + +_Social Science_ + +1. _PARLIAMENT_ + +Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT, +G.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The best book on the +history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's +'Constitution.'"--_Yorkshire Post._ + +5. _THE STOCK EXCHANGE_ + +By F. W. HIRST, Editor of "The Economist." "To an unfinancial mind +must be a revelation.... The book is as clear, vigorous, and sane as +Bagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no higher +compliment."--_Morning Leader._ + +6. _IRISH NATIONALITY_ + +By Mrs J. R. GREEN. "As glowing as it is learned. No book could be +more timely."--_Daily News._ + +10. _THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT_ + +By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. "Admirably adapted for the purpose of +exposition."--_The Times._ + +11. _CONSERVATISM_ + +By LORD HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P. "One of those great little books which +seldom appear more than once in a generation."--_Morning Post._ + +16. _THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH_ + +By J. A. HOBSON, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among +living economists.... Original, reasonable, and illuminating."--_The +Nation._ + +21. _LIBERALISM_ + +By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of +London. "A book of rare quality.... We have nothing but praise for the +rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles +which form a large part of this book."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +24. _THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY_ + +By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the +University of Leeds. "A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read with +profit by all interested in the present state of unrest."--_Aberdeen +Journal._ + +26. _AGRICULTURE_ + +By Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S. "It makes the results of laboratory work +at the University accessible to the practical farmer."--_Athenum._ + +30. _ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW_ + +By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at +Oxford. "Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles +underlying the rules of English Law."--_Scots Law Times._ + +38. _THE SCHOOL: An Introduction to the Study of Education._ + +By J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester +University. "An amazingly comprehensive volume.... It is a remarkable +performance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well +as its inclusiveness of subject-matter."--_Morning Post._ + +59. _ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY_ + +By S. J. CHAPMAN, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester +University. "Its importance is not to be measured by its price. +Probably the best recent critical exposition of the analytical method +in economic science."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +69. _THE NEWSPAPER_ + +By G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A. (Illustrated.) The best account extant of +the organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad. + +77. _SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE_ + +By H. N. BRAILSFORD, M.A. "Mr Brailsford sketches vividly the +influence of the French Revolution on Shelley's and Godwin's England; +and the charm and strength of his style make his book an authentic +contribution to literature."--_The Bookman._ + +80. _CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING_ + +By ANEURIN WILLIAMS, M.A. "A judicious but enthusiastic history, with much +interesting speculation on the future of Co-partnership."--_Christian +World._ + +81. _PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE_ + +By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. Discusses the leading aspects of the British +land problem, including housing, small holdings, rural credit, and the +minimum wage. + +83. _COMMON-SENSE IN LAW_ + +By Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L. + +85. _UNEMPLOYMENT_ + +By Prof. A. C. PIGOU, M.A. + +96. _POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM BACON TO HALIFAX_ + +By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ANCIENT EGYPT._ By F. LL. GRIFFITH, M.A. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE._ By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D. + +_THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE._ By NORMAN H. BAYNES. + +_THE REFORMATION._ By President LINDSAY, LL.D. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA._ By Prof. MILYOUKOV. + +_MODERN TURKEY._ By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. + +_FRANCE OF TO-DAY._ By ALBERT THOMAS. + +_HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN._ By J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, F.B.A., + Litt.D. + +_LATIN LITERATURE._ By Prof. J. S. PHILLIMORE. + +_ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE._ By ROGER E. FRY. + +_LITERARY TASTE._ By THOMAS SECCOMBE. + +_SCANDINAVIAN HISTORY & LITERATURE._ By T. C. SNOW. + +_THE MINERAL WORLD._ By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., D.Sc. + +_A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY._ By CLEMENT WEBB, M.A. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. Mill._ By Prof. + W. L. DAVIDSON. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer to To-day._ By + ERNEST BARKER, M.A. + +_THE CRIMINAL AND THE COMMUNITY._ By Viscount ST. CYRES. + +_THE CIVIL SERVICE._ By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. + +_THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT._ By JANE ADDAMS and R. A. WOODS. + +_GREAT INVENTIONS._ By Prof. J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A. + +_TOWN PLANNING._ By RAYMOND UNWIN. + + + London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + _And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._ + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +Minor punctuation errors and printer errors (omitted or transposed +letters) have been repaired. Hyphenation has been made consistent. + +The following amendments have also been made: + + Page 22--mas amended to was--"... but in the interest of + literature, it was a misfortune ..." + + Page 192--be amended to he--"... disbelieved in + Liberals, although he believed in Liberalism; ..." + + Page 222--Brnte's amended to Bront's--"These words, + spoken by Charlotte Bront's _Jane Eyre_, ..." + + Page 251--Simon amended to Simeon--"1692. ... Simeon + Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted." + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 33005-8.txt or 33005-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/0/0/33005/ + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Outline of Russian Literature + +Author: Maurice Baring + +Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #33005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="bbox"> +<p><b>Transcriber's Note</b></p> + +<p>There is a single Greek word in this text, which may require adjustment of your +browser settings to display correctly. Hover your mouse over the word underlined +with a faint red dotted line to see a transliteration, e.g. +<ins class="greek" title="biblos">βιβλος</ins>.</p> +</div> + + + + + +<p class="booklist padtop">HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY<br /> +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE</p> + +<h1 class="padtop">AN OUTLINE<br /> +OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE</h1> + +<p class="center lrgfont smcap padbase">By the Hon. MAURICE BARING</p> + +<p class="center padtop smcap">London<br /> +WILLIAMS & NORGATE</p> + +<p class="center smcap">HENRY HOLT & Co., New York<br /> +Canada: RYERSON PRESS, Toronto<br /> +India: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, Ltd.</p> + + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="bord01" style="margin-top: 3em;" summary="Decorative title page"> +<tr> +<td> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /> + +<p class="imgpad"><span class="xlrgfont">HOME<br /> +UNIVERSITY<br /> +LIBRARY</span><br /> +<span class="vsmlfont">OF</span><br /> +<span class="vlrgfont">MODERN KNOWLEDGE</span></p> + +<p class="center">——<br /> +<i>Editors:</i></p> + +<p class="imgpad hang smlfont">HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.</p> + +<p class="imgpad hang smlfont smcap">Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.</p> + +<p class="imgpad hang smlfont smcap">Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.</p> + +<p class="imgpad hang smlfont"><span class="smcap">Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.</span> +(Columbia University, U.S.A.)</p> + +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="bord02" style="margin-top: 3em;" summary="Decorative title page"> +<tr> +<td> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + +<p class="center xlrgfont"> +AN OUTLINE OF<br /> +RUSSIAN<br /> +LITERATURE</p> + + +<p class="center smlpadt"><span class="smlfont">BY THE HON.</span><br /> +<span class="vlrgfont">MAURICE BARING</span></p> + +<p class="center vsmlfont">AUTHOR OF “WITH THE RUSSIANS IN<br /> +MANCHURIA,” “A YEAR IN RUSSIA,” “THE<br /> +RUSSIAN PEOPLE,” ETC.</p> + +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + + + + +<p class="center padtop padbase"><i>First printed 1914/15</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>v]</a></span></p> + +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>The chief difficulty which Englishmen have +experienced in writing about Russia has, up +till quite lately, been the prevailing ignorance +of the English public with regard to all that +concerns Russian affairs. A singularly intelligent +Russian, who is connected with the +Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he +feared the new interest taken by English +intellectuals with regard to Russian literature +and Russian art. He was delighted, of course, +that they should be interested in Russian +affairs, but he feared their interest was in +danger of being crystallized in a false shape +and directed into erroneous channels.</p> + +<p>This ignorance will always remain until +English people go to Russia and learn to +know the Russian people at first hand. It +is not enough to be acquainted with a certain +number of Russian writers; I say a certain +number advisedly, because, although it is true +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>vi]</a></span> +that such writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev +have long been naturalized in England, it is +equally true that some of the greatest and +most typical of Russian authors have not yet +been translated.</p> + +<p>There is in England no complete translation +of Pushkin. This is much the same +as though there were in Russia no complete +translation of Shakespeare or Milton. I do +not mean by this that Pushkin is as great a +poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean +that he is the most national and the most +important of all Russian writers. There is +no translation of Saltykov, the greatest of +Russian satirists; there is no complete translation +of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists, +while Russian criticism and philosophy, as +well as almost the whole of Russian poetry, is +completely beyond the ken of England. The +knowledge of what Russian civilisation, with +its glorious fruit of literature, consists in, is still +a sealed book so far as England is concerned.</p> + +<p class="sig">M. B.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>vii]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of contents"> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"><small>CHAP.</small></td> + <td class="tdl"> </td> + <td class="tdrt"><small>PAGE</small></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">I</td> + <td class="tdl">THE ORIGINS</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">II</td> + <td class="tdl">THE NEW AGE—PUSHKIN</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">III</td> + <td class="tdl">LERMONTOV</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV</td> + <td class="tdl">THE AGE OF PROSE</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">V</td> + <td class="tdl">THE EPOCH OF REFORM</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI</td> + <td class="tdl">TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII</td> + <td class="tdl">THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">CONCLUSION</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">INDEX</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"><!-- unnumbered page --></a></span></p> + +<div class="booklist"> +<p class="padtop"><i>The following volumes of kindred interest have already +been published in the Library</i>:</p> + +<p>27. English Literature: Mediæval. By W. P. Ker.</p> + +<p>43. English Literature: Modern. G. H. Mair.</p> + +<p>35. Landmarks of French Literature. G. L. Strachey.</p> + +<p class="padbase">65. The Literature of Germany. Prof. J. G. Robertson, Ph.D.</p> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>9]</a></span></p> + +<h1 class="padtop">AN OUTLINE OF<br /> +RUSSIAN LITERATURE</h1> + + + +<h2 class="padtop">CHAPTER I<br /> +<br /> +<small>THE ORIGINS</small></h2> + + +<p>For the purposes of the average Russian, +and still more for the purposes of the foreigner, +Russian literature begins with the nineteenth +century, that is to say with the reign of +Alexander I. It was then that the literary +fruits on which Russia has since fed were +born. The seeds were sown, of course, +centuries earlier; but the history of Russian +literature up to the nineteenth century is not +a history of literature, it is the history of +Russia. It may well be objected that it is +difficult to separate Russian literature from +Russian history; that for the understanding +of Russian literature an understanding of +Russian history is indispensable. This is +probably true; but, in a sketch of this dimension, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>10]</a></span> +it would be quite impossible to give even +an adequate outline of all the vicissitudes in +the life of the Russian people which have +helped and hindered, blighted and fostered +the growth of the Russian tree of letters. +All that one can do is to mention some of +the chief landmarks amongst the events which +directly affected the growth of Russian +literature until the dawn of that epoch when +its fruits became palpable to Russia and to +the world.</p> + +<p>The first of these facts is the existence of +a Slav race on the banks of the Dnieper in +the seventh and eighth centuries, and the +growth of cities and trade centres such as +Kiev, Smolensk, and Novgorod, which seem +already to have been considerable settlements +when the earliest Russian records were +written. Of these, from the point of view +of literature, Kiev was the most important. +Kiev on the Dnieper was the mother of +Russian culture; Moscow and St. Petersburg +became afterwards the heirs of Kiev.</p> + +<p>Another factor of vital historical importance +which had an indirect effect on the history +of Russian literature was the coming of +the Norsemen into Russia at the beginning of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>11]</a></span> +the ninth century. They came as armed merchants +from Scandinavia; they founded and +organized principalities; they took Novgorod +and Kiev. The Scandinavian Viking became +the Russian <i>Kniaz</i>, and the Varanger principality +of Kiev became the kernel of the Russian +State. In the course of time, the Norsemen +became merged in the Slavs, but left traces +of their origin in the Sagas, the <i>Byliny</i>, which +spread from Kiev all over Russia, and still +survive in some distant governments. Hence +the Norse names Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga), +Igor (Ingvar). The word Russian, <i>Rus</i>, the +origin and etymology of which are shrouded +in obscurity, was first applied to the men-at-arms +who formed the higher class of society +in the early Varanger states.</p> + +<p>The next determining factor in the early +history of Russian literature is the Church. +Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, married the sister +of the Emperor of Byzantium and was baptized; +henceforward Christianity began to +spread (987-8), but the momentous fact is +that it was the Christianity of the East. The +pearl of the Gospels, says Soloviev, was +covered over with the dust of Byzantium, +and Russia was committed to the Greek +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>12]</a></span> +tradition, the Greek rivalry with the West +and was consequently excluded from the +civilization of the West and the great intellectual +community of which Rome was the +centre. This fact is of far-reaching and +momentous importance. No less important +was the introduction of the Slavonic liturgy, +which was invented by two Greek brothers +from Saloniki, in the ninth century, who +tried to force their Macedonian dialect on +all the Slavs, and succeeded in the case +of Bulgaria and Servia. A century or so +later it reached the Russian Slavs. Through +Bulgaria, the Russians acquired a ready-made +literature and a written language in a +dialect which was partly Bulgarian and +partly Macedonian, or rather Macedonian +with Bulgarian modifications. The possession +of a written language acted as a lever +as far as culture was concerned. In the +eleventh century, Kiev was one of the most +enlightened cities in Europe.</p> + +<p>The rulers of Kiev were at this time related +to the Kings of France, Hungary, Norway, +and even England. The Russian MSS. of the +eleventh century equal the best MSS. of +Western Europe of the same period. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>13]</a></span> +city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, +and art. Byzantine artists went to Kiev, +and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West. +There seemed at this time to be no barrier +between East and West. Nothing could be +more promising than such a beginning; but the +course of Russian history was not destined to +run smooth. In the middle of the eleventh +century, the foundations of a durable barrier +between Russia and Western Europe were +laid. This was brought about by the schism +of the Eastern and Western Churches. The +schism arose out of the immemorial rivalry +between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry +which ever since then has continued to exist +between Rome and Byzantium. The Slavs, +whom the matter did not concern, and who +were naturally tolerant, were the victims of +a racial hatred and a rivalry wholly alien +to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell +upon what some may regard as an ancient +and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in +its effects and in its results, this “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Querelle +de Moine</span>,” as Leo X said when he heard of +Luther’s action, was as momentous for the +East as the Reformation was for the West. +Sir Charles Eliot says the schism of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>14]</a></span> +Churches ranks in importance with the +foundation of Constantinople and the Coronation +of Charlemagne as one of the turning +points in the relations of West and East. He +says that for the East it was of doleful import, +since it prevented the two great divisions +from combining against the common enemy, +the Turk. It was of still more doleful import +for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, +which soon became formidable, between it +and the civilizing influences of Western +Europe.</p> + +<p>But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, +the existence of this growing barrier was not +yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth +centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and +“Byliny,” already clearly stamped with the +democratic character and ideal that is at +the root of all Russian literature, and which +offer so sharp a contrast to Greek and +Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the +most popular hero is the peasant’s son, who +is despised and rejected, but at the critical +moment displays superhuman strength and +saves his country from the enemy; and in +return for his services is allowed to drink his +fill for three years in a tavern.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>15]</a></span> +But by far the most interesting remains of +the literature of Kiev which have reached +posterity are the <i>Chronicle of Kiev</i>, often +called the <i>Chronicle of Nestor</i>, finished at the +beginning of the twelfth century, and the <i>Story +of the Raid of Prince Igor</i>. The <i>Chronicle of +Kiev</i>, written in a cloister, rich in that epic +detail and democratic quality that characterize +the Sagas, is the basis of all later +chronicles dealing with the early history of +Russia. <i>The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor</i>, +which also belongs to the twelfth century, a +prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable +memorials of the ancient written +language of Russia; but by virtue of its +originality, its historical truth, its vividness, +it holds a unique place in the literary history +of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast +to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Chanson de Roland</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The Story of the Raid of Igor</i> tells of an +expedition made in the year 1185 against the +Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son +of Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together +with other Princes. The story tells how the +Princes set out and raid the enemy’s country; +how, successful at first, they are attacked by +overwhelming numbers and defeated; how +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>16]</a></span> +Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end +he escapes and returns home. The story is +written in rhythmical prose, with passages +where the rhythm has a more strongly +accentuated quality as of unrhymed verse. +All the incidents recorded in the epic agree +in every respect with the narrative of the +same events which is to be found in the +<i>Chronicle of Kiev</i>. It is only the manner of +presenting them which is different. What +gives the epic a unique interest is that the +author must indubitably have belonged to +the militia of Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of +Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of +the events he describes with such wealth of +detail, his knowledge was at any rate first-hand +and intimate.</p> + +<p>But the epic is as remarkable for the quality +of its style as it is for the historical interest of +its subject-matter. It plunges, after a short +introduction, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in medias res</i>, and the narrative +is concentrated on the dramatic moments +which give rise to the expression of lyrical +feeling, pathos and description—such as the +battle, the defeat, the ominous dream of the +Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of +Igor on the walls of Putivl—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>17]</a></span> +<span class="i2">“I will fly”—she says—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">“Like the cuckoo down the Don;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will wet my beaver sleeve<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the river Kayala;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wounds of his strong body.”<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">·<span class="space"> </span>·<span class="space"> </span>·<span class="space"> </span>·<span class="space"> </span>·<span class="space"> </span>·<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">“O Wind, little wind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, Sir,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why do you blow so fiercely?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, on your light wings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband’s warriors?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To rock the ships on the blue sea?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Throughout the poem, Nature plays an +active part in the events. When Igor is +defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the +trees are bowed to the earth with grief. +When Igor escapes, he talks with the river +Don as he fords it, and when the bandits +follow him, the woodpeckers tell them the +way with their tapping. The poem, which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>18]</a></span> +contains much lamentation over the quarrels +of the Princes and the injury ensuing from +them to the Russian people, ends in the +major key. Igor is restored to his native +soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the +Church, and the people acclaim the old +Princes and then the young Princes with +song.</p> + +<p>A transcript of the poem, made probably +at the end of the fourteenth century, was +first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, +and first published in 1800, when it +made the same kind of impression as the +publication of the <i>Songs of Ossian</i>. It was +not, however, open to Dr. Johnson’s objection—“Show +me the originals”—for the +fourteenth century transcript of the original +then existed and was inspected and considered +unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and +others, but was unfortunately burnt in the +fire of Moscow.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The poem has been translated +into English, French and German, and +has given rise to a whole literature of commentaries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>19]</a></span> +Up to the twelfth century, Russian life +was concentrated in the splendid and prosperous +centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth +century came a crushing blow which was +destined to set back the clock of Russian +culture for three hundred years, namely, the +Tartar invasion. Kiev was destroyed in +1240. After this, the South was abandoned; +Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated +from the East; the Eastern principalities +centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of +Kiev transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; +and by the fourteenth century Moscow had +taken the place of Kiev, and had become the +kernel of Russian life and culture. Russia +under the dominion of the Tartar yoke was +intellectually stagnant. The Church alone +retained its independence, and when Constantinople +fell, Moscow declared itself to be +the third and last Rome: but the independence +of the Church, although it kept +national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, +made for stagnation rather than progress, +and the barrier between Russia and the +culture of the West was now solid and visible.</p> + +<p>From the fourteenth century until the +beginning of the nineteenth century, Russian +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>20]</a></span> +literature, instead of being a panorama of +various and equally splendid periods of +production, such as the Elizabethan epoch, +the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, +or, as in France, the Renaissance, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Grand +Siècle</i>, and the philosophic era of the eighteenth +century, has nothing to show at all +to the outward world; for during all this +time the soil from which it was to grow +was merely being prepared, and gradually, +with difficulty and delay, gaining access to +such influences as would make any growth +possible. All that is important, as far as +literature is concerned, in this period, are +those events and factors which had the effect +of making breaches in the wall which shut +Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting +in that light which was necessary for any +literary plants to grow, and in removing those +obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying +her rightful heritage among the rest of her +sister European nations: a heritage which +she had well employed in earlier days, and +which she had lost for a time owing to the +barbarian invasion.</p> + +<p>The first event which made a breach in the +wall was the marriage of Ivan III, Tsar of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>21]</a></span> +Moscow, to Sophia Palæologa, the niece of the +last of the Byzantine Emperors. She brought +with her Italian architects and other foreigners, +and the work of Peter the Great, of opening +a window in Russia on to Europe, was begun.</p> + +<p>The first printing press was established in +Moscow during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, +and the first book was printed in 1564. But +literature was still under the direct control +of the Church, and the Church looked upon +all innovations and all foreign learning with +the deepest mistrust. At the beginning of +the seventeenth century, Peter the Great +had a strange forerunner in the shape of that +enigmatic historical personage, the false +Demetrius, who claimed to be the murdered +son of Ivan the Terrible, and who, in spite +of his western ideas, Polish manners, and +Latin culture, succeeded in occupying the +throne of Moscow for a year. His ideal was +one of progress; but he came too soon, and +paid for his prematurity with his life.</p> + +<p>But it was from Kiev and Poland that the +fruitful winds of enlightenment were next to +blow. Kiev, re-risen from its ruins and recovered +from its long slumber, became a +centre of learning, and possessed a college +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>22]</a></span> +whose curriculum was modelled on the Jesuit +schools; and although Moscow looked upon +Kiev with mistrust, an imperative demand for +schools arose in Moscow. In the meantime a +religious question had arisen fraught with +consequences for Russia: namely that of the +revision of the Liturgical books, into the text +of which, after continuous copying and recopying, +errors had crept. The demand for +revision met with great opposition, and ended +ultimately in producing a great schism in the +Russian Church, which has never been healed. +But, with the exception of the Little Russians, +there was no one at Moscow capable of preparing +texts for printing or of conducting +schools. The demand for schools and the +decision to revise the texts were simultaneous. +The revision was carried out between +1653-7, and a migration of Kiev scholars +to Moscow came about at the same time. In +1665 Latin was taught in Moscow by <span class="smcap">Simeon +Polotsky</span>, who was the first Russian verse-maker. +It is impossible to call him a poet; +he wrote what was called syllabic verse: the +number of syllables taking the place of rhythm. +As a pioneer of culture, he deserves fame; but +in the interest of literature, it was a misfortune +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>23]</a></span> +that his tradition was followed until the +middle of the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>In the latter half of the seventeenth century, +another influence besides that of Kiev +and Poland made itself felt. A fresh breach +in the wall came from another quarter. The +German suburb in Moscow in the seventeenth +century, called the <i>Sloboda</i>, became a centre +of European culture. Here dwelt the foreign +officers and soldiers, capitalists and artisans, +who brought with them the technical skill +and the culture of Western Europe. It was +here that the Russian stage was born. The +Protestant pastor of the <i>Sloboda</i>, Gregory, +was commanded to write a comedy by the +Tsar Alexis, in 1672, on the occasion of the +birth of the Tsarevitch. A theatre was built +in the village of Preobrazhenskoe (Transfiguration), +and a play on the subject of Esther and +Ahasuerus was produced there. It was here +also in 1674 that the ballet was introduced. +A regular company was formed; several +plays translated from the German were produced, +and the first original play written in +Russia was <i>The Prodigal Son</i>, by Simeon +Polotsky.</p> + +<p>Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>24]</a></span> +Russia was ready for any one who should +be able to give a decisive blow to the +now crumbling wall between herself and the +West. For, by the end of the seventeenth +century, Russia, after having been centralized +in Moscow by Ivan III, and enlarged by +Ivan IV, had thrown off the Tartar yoke. +She had passed through a period of intestine +strife, trouble, anarchy, and pretenders, not +unlike the Wars of the Roses; she had fought +Poland throughout the whole of the seventeenth +century, from her darkest hour of +anarchy, when the Poles occupied Moscow. +It was then that Russia had arisen, expelled +the invaders, reasserted her nationality and +her independence, and finally emerged out +of all these vicissitudes, the great Slavonic +state; while Poland, Russia’s superior in +culture and civilization, had sunk into the +position of a dependency.</p> + +<p>The man whom the epoch needed was forthcoming. +His name was Peter. He carried +on the work which had been begun, but in +quite an original manner, and gave it a +different character. He not only made a +breach in the wall, but he forced on his +stubborn and conservative subjects the habits +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>25]</a></span> +and customs of the West. He revolutionized +the government and the Church, and turned +the whole country upside down with his +explosive genius. He abolished the Russian +Patriarchate, and crushed the power of the +Church once and for all, by making it entirely +depend on the State, as it still does. +He simplified the Russian script and the +written language; he caused to be made +innumerable translations of foreign works on +history, geography, and jurisprudence. He +founded the first Russian newspaper. But +Peter the Great did not try to draw Russia +into an alien path; he urged his country with +whip, kick, and spur to regain its due place, +which it had lost by lagging behind, on the +path it was naturally following. Peter the +Great’s reforms, his manifold and superhuman +activity, produced no immediate fruits +in literature. How could it? To blame him +for this would be like blaming a gardener for +not producing new roses at a time when he +was relaying the garden. He was completely +successful in opening a window on to Europe, +through which Western influence could stream +into Russia. This was not slow in coming +about; and the foreign influence from the end +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>26]</a></span> +of the reign of Peter the Great onwards divided +directly into two different currents: the +French and the German. The chief representatives +of the German influence in the +eighteenth century were <span class="smcap">Tatishchev</span>, the +founder of Russian history, and <span class="smcap">Michael +Lomonosov</span>.</p> + +<p>Michael Lomonosov (1714-1765), a man +with an incredibly wide intellectual range, +was a mathematician, a chemist, an astronomer, +a political economist, a historian, an +electrician, a geologist, a grammarian and +a poet. The son of a peasant, after an +education acquired painfully in the greatest +privation, he studied at Marburg and Freiburg. +He was the Peter the Great of the +Russian language; he scratched off the crust +of foreign barbarisms, and still more by his +example than his precepts—which were pedantic—he +displayed it in its native purity, +and left it as an instrument ready tuned for +a great player. He fought for knowledge, +and did all he could to further the founding +of the University of Moscow, which was done +in 1755 by the Empress Elizabeth. This last +event is one of the most important landmarks +in the history of Russian culture.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>27]</a></span> +The foremost representative of French +influence was <span class="smcap">Prince Kantemir</span> (1708-44), +who wrote the first Russian literary verse—satires—in +the pseudo-classic French manner, +modelled on Boileau. But by far the most +abundant source of French ideas in Russia +during the eighteenth century was Catherine +II, the German Princess. During Catherine’s +reign, French influence was predominant in +Russia. The Empress was the friend of +Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Diderot +came to St. Petersburg, and the Russian +military schools were flooded with French +teachers. Voltaire and Rousseau were the +fashion, and cultured society was platonically +enamoured of the <i>Rights of Man</i>. Catherine +herself, besides being a great ruler and diplomatist, +was a large-minded philosopher, an +elegant and witty writer. But the French +Revolution had a damping effect on all liberal +enthusiasm, for the one thing an autocrat, +however enlightened, finds difficulty in understanding, +is a revolution.</p> + +<p>This change of point of view proved disastrous +for the writer of what is the most +thoughtful book of the age: namely <span class="smcap">Radishchev</span>, +an official who wrote a book in twenty-five +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>28]</a></span> +chapters called <i>A Journey from St. +Petersburg to Moscow</i>. Radishchev gave a +simple and true account of the effects of serfdom, +a series of pictures drawn without +exaggeration, showing the appalling evils of +the system, and appealing to the conscience +of the slave-owners; the book contained +also a condemnation of the Censorship. It +appeared in 1790, with the permission of the +police. It was too late for the times; for in +1790 the events in France were making all +the rulers of Europe pensive. Radishchev was +accused of being a rebel, and was condemned +to death. The sentence was commuted to +one of banishment to Eastern Siberia. He was +pardoned by the Emperor Paul, and reinstated +by the Emperor Alexander; but he ultimately +committed suicide on being threatened in jest +with exile once more. Until 1905 it was very +difficult to get a copy of this book. Thus +Radishchev stands out as the martyr of Russian +literature; the first writer to suffer for +expressing opinions at the wrong moment: +opinions which had they been stated in this +case twenty years sooner would have coincided +with those published by the Empress herself.</p> + +<p>Catherine’s reign, which left behind it many +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>29]</a></span> +splendid results, and had the effect of bestowing +European culture on Russia, produced +hardly a single poet or prose-writer +whose work can be read with pleasure to-day, +although a great importance was attached to +the writing of verse. There were poets in +profusion, especially writers of Odes, the best +known of whom was <span class="smcap">Derzhavin</span> (1743-1816), +a brilliant master of the pseudo-classical, in +whose work, in spite of its antiquated convention, +elements of real poetical beauty are +to be found, which entitle him to be called the +first Russian poet. But so far no national +literature had been produced. French was +the language of the cultured classes. Literature +had become an artificial plaything, to be +played with according to French rules; but +the Russian language was waiting there, a +language which possessed, as Lomonosov +said, “the vivacity of French, the strength of +German, the softness of Italian, the richness +and powerful conciseness of Greek and Latin”—waiting +for some one who should have the +desire and the power to use it.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +Another copy of it was found in 1864 amongst the +papers of Catherine I. Pushkin left a remarkable analysis +of the epic.</p> +</div> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>30]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER II<br /> +<br /> +<small>THE NEW AGE—PUSHKIN</small></h2> + + +<p>The value of Russian literature, its peculiar +and unique message to the world, would not +be sensibly diminished, had everything it +produced from the twelfth to the beginning +of the nineteenth century perished, with the +exception of <i>The Raid of Prince Igor</i>. With +the beginning of the nineteenth century, +and the accession of Alexander I, the New +Age began, and the real dawn of Russian +literature broke. It was soon to be followed +by a glorious sunrise. The literature which +sprang up now and later, was profoundly +affected by public events; and public events +during this epoch were intimately linked with +the events which were happening in Western +Europe. It was the epoch of the Napoleonic +wars, and Russia played a vital part in that +drama. Public opinion, after enthusiasm had +been roused by the deeds of Suvorov, was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>31]</a></span> +exasperated and humiliated by Napoleon’s +subsequent victories over Russian arms. But +when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, a +wave of patriotism swept over the country, +and the struggle resulted in an increased sense +of unity and nationality. Russia emerged +stronger and more solid from the struggle. +As far as foreign affairs were concerned, +the Emperor Alexander I—on whom everything +depended—played his national part +well, and he fitly embodied the patriotic +movement of the day. At the beginning of +his reign he raised great hopes of internal +reform which were never fulfilled. He was +a dreamer of dreams born out of his due time; +a pupil of La Harpe, the Swiss Jacobin, who +instilled into him aspirations towards liberty, +truth and humanity, which throughout remained +his ideals, but which were too vague +to lead to anything practical or definite. His +reign was thus a series of more or less +undefined and fitful struggles to put the +crooked straight. He desired to give Russia +a constitution, but the attempts he made to +do so proved fruitless; and towards the end +of his life he is said to have been considerably +influenced by Metternich. It is at any rate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>32]</a></span> +a fact that during these years reaction once +more triumphed.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless windows had been opened +which could not be shut, and the light which +had streamed in produced some remarkable +fruits.</p> + +<p>When Alexander I came to the throne, the +immediate effect of his accession was the ungagging +of literature, and the first writer of +importance to take advantage of this new +state of things was <span class="smcap">Karamzin</span> (1726-1826). +In 1802 he started a new review called the +<i>Messenger of Europe</i>. This was not his <i>début</i>. +In the reign of Catherine, Karamzin had been +brought to Moscow from the provinces, and +initiated into German and English literature. +In 1789-90 he travelled abroad and visited +Switzerland, London and Paris. On his +return, he published his impressions in the +shape of “Letters of a Russian Traveller” +in the <i>Moscow Journal</i>, which he founded +himself. His ideals were republican; he was +an enthusiastic admirer of England and +the Swiss, and the reforms of Peter the +Great. But his importance in Russian +literature lies in his being the first Russian +to write unstudied, simple and natural prose, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>33]</a></span> +Russian as spoken. He published two sentimental +stories in his <i>Journal</i>, but the reign +of Catherine II which now came to an +end (1796) was followed by a period of unmitigated +censorship, which lasted throughout +the reign of the Emperor Paul, until +Alexander I came to the throne. The new +review which Karamzin then started differed +radically from all preceding Russian reviews +in that it dealt with politics and made <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">belles +lettres</i> and criticism a permanent feature. +As soon as Karamzin had put this review on +a firm basis, he devoted himself to historical +research, and the fruit of his work in this +field was his <i>History of the Russian Dominion</i>, +in twelve volumes; eight published in 1816, +the rest in 1821-1826. The Russian language +was, as has been said, like an instrument waiting +for a great player to play on it, and to make +use of all its possibilities. Karamzin accomplished +this, in the domain of prose. He +spoke to the Russian heart by speaking +Russian, pure and unmarred by stilted and +alien conventionalisms.</p> + +<p>The publication of Karamzin’s history was +epoch-making. In the first place, the success +of the work was overwhelming. It was the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>34]</a></span> +first time in Russian history that a prose work +had enjoyed so immense a success. Not only +were the undreamed-of riches of the Russian +language revealed to the Russians in the style, +but the subject-matter came as a surprise. +Karamzin, as Pushkin put it, revealed Russia +to the Russians, just as Columbus discovered +America. He made the dry bones of history +live, he wrote a great and glowing prose epic. +His influence on his contemporaries was +enormous. His work received at once the +consecration of a classic, and it inspired +Pushkin with his most important if not his +finest achievement in dramatic verse (<i>Boris +Godunov</i>).</p> + +<p>The first Russian poet of national importance +belongs likewise to this epoch, namely +<span class="smcap">Krylov</span> (1769<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>-1844), although he had +written a great deal for the stage in the preceding +reigns, and continued to write for a +long time after the death of Alexander I. +Krylov is also a Russian classic, of quite a +different kind. The son of an officer of the +line, he started by being a clerk in the provincial +magistrature. Many of his plays +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>35]</a></span> +were produced with success, though none of +them had any durable qualities. But it was +not until 1805 that he found his vocation +which was to write fables. The first of these +were published in 1806 in the <i>Moscow +Journal</i>; from that time onward he went on +writing fables until he died in 1844.</p> + +<p>His early fables were translations from La +Fontaine. They imitate La Fontaine’s free +versification and they are written in iambics +of varying length. They were at once successful, +and he continued to translate fables from +the French, or to adapt from Æsop or other +sources. But as time went on, he began to +invent fables of his own; and out of the two +hundred fables which he left at his death, +forty only are inspired by La Fontaine and +seven suggested by Æsop: the remainder +are original. Krylov’s translations of La +Fontaine are not so much translations as +re-creations. He takes the same subject, and +although often following the original in every +single incident, he thinks out each <i>motif</i> +for himself and re-creates it, so that his translations +have the same personal stamp and +the same originality as his own inventions.</p> + +<p>This is true even when the original is a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>36]</a></span> +masterpiece of the highest order, such as La +Fontaine’s <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Deux Pigeons</i>. You would think +the opening lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> +<span class="i0">“Deux pigeons s’amoient d’amour tendre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">L’un d’eux s’ennuyant au logis<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fut assez fou pour entreprendre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Un voyage en lointain pays”—<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>were untranslatable; that nothing could be +subtracted from them, and that still less +could anything be added; one ray the more, +one shade the less, you would think, would +certainly impair their nameless grace. But +what does Krylov do? He re-creates the +situation, expanding La Fontaine’s first line +into six lines, makes it his own, and stamps +on it the impress of his personality and his +nationality. Here is a literal translation of +the Russian, in rhyme. (I am not ambitiously +trying a third English version.)</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Two pigeons lived like sons born of one mother.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Neither would eat nor drink without the other;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where you see one, the other’s surely near,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every joy they halved and every tear;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>37]</a></span> +<span class="i0">They never noticed how the time flew by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They sighed, but it was not a weary sigh.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>This gives the sense of Krylov’s poem word +for word, except for what is the most important +touch of all in the last line. The trouble +is that Krylov has written six lines which +are as untranslatable as La Fontaine’s four; +and he has made them as profoundly Russian +as La Fontaine’s are French. Nothing could +be more Russian than the last line, which it +is impossible to translate; because it should +run—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“They were sometimes sad, but they never felt <i>ennui</i>”—<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>literally, “it was never <em>boring</em> to them.” +The difficulty is that the word for <em>boring</em> in +Russian, <i>skuchno</i>, which occurs with the +utmost felicity in contradistinction to <em>sad</em>, +<i>grustno</i>, cannot be rendered in English in its +poetical simplicity. There are no six lines +more tender, musical, wistful, and subtly +poetical in the whole of Russian literature.</p> + +<p>Krylov’s fables, like La Fontaine’s, deal with +animals, birds, fishes and men; the Russian +peasant plays a large part in them; often +they are satirical; nearly always they are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>38]</a></span> +bubbling with humour. A writer of fables +is essentially a satirist, whose aim it is +sometimes to convey pregnant sense, keen +mockery or scathing criticism in a veiled +manner, sometimes merely to laugh at human +foibles, or to express wisdom in the form of +wit, yet whose aim it always is to amuse. +But Krylov, though a satirist, succeeded in +remaining a poet. It has been said that his +images are conventional and outworn—that +is to say, he uses the machinery of Zephyrs, +Nymphs, Gods and Demigods,—and that +his conceptions are antiquated. But what +splendid use he makes of this machinery! +When he speaks of a Zephyr you feel it is +a Zephyr blowing, for instance, as when +the ailing cornflower whispers to the breeze. +Sometimes by the mere sound of his verse +he conveys a picture, and more than a +picture, as in the Fable of the Eagle and +the Mole, in the first lines of which he +makes you see and hear the eagle and his +mate sweeping to the dreaming wood, and +swooping down on to the oak-tree. Or again, +in another fable, the Eagle and the Spider, +he gives in a few words the sense of +height and space, as if you were looking down +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>39]</a></span> +from a balloon, when the eagle, soaring over +the mountains of the Caucasus, sees the end +of the earth, the rivers meandering in the +plains, the woods, the meadows in all their +spring glory, and the angry Caspian Sea, +darkling like the wing of a raven in the +distance. But his greatest triumph, in this +respect, is the fable of the Ass and the Nightingale, +in which the verse echoes the very trills +of the nightingale, and renders the stillness and +the delighted awe of the listeners,—the lovers +and the shepherd. Again a convention, if +you like, but what a felicitous convention!</p> + +<p>The fables are discursive like La Fontaine’s, +and not brief like Æsop’s; but like La Fontaine, +Krylov has the gift of summing up a +situation, of scoring a sharp dramatic effect +by the sudden evocation of a whole picture in +a terse phrase: as, for instance, in the fable of +the Peasants and the River: the peasants go +to complain to the river of the conduct of the +streams which are continually overflowing +and destroying their goods, but when they +reach the river, they see half their goods +floating on it. “They looked at each other, +and shaking their heads,” says Krylov, +“went home.” The two words “went home” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>40]</a></span> +in Russian (<i>poshli domoi</i>) express their hopelessness +more than pages of rhetoric. This is +just one of those terse effects such as La +Fontaine delights in.</p> + +<p>Krylov in his youth lived much among the +poor, and his language is peculiarly native, +racy, nervous, and near to the soil. It is the +language of the people and of the peasants, +and it abounds in humorous turns. He is, +moreover, always dramatic, and his fables +are for this reason most effective when read +aloud or recited. He is dramatic not only +in that part of the fable which is narrative, +but in the prologue, epilogue, or moral—the +author’s commentary; he adapts himself +to the tone of every separate fable, and becomes +himself one of the <i>dramatis personæ</i>. +Sometimes his fables deal with political +events—the French Revolution, Napoleon’s +invasion of Russia, the Congress of Vienna; +the education of Alexander I by La Harpe, +in the well-known fable of the Lion who sends +his son to be educated by the Eagle, of whom +he consequently learns how to make nests. +Sometimes they deal with internal evils and +abuses: the administration of justice, in fables +such as that of the peasant who brings a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>41]</a></span> +case against the sheep and is found guilty +by the fox; the censorship is aimed at in +the fable of the nightingale bidden to sing +in the cat’s claws; the futility of bureaucratic +regulations in the fable of the sheep +who are devoured by their superfluous watchdogs, +or in that of the sheep who are told +solemnly and pompously to drag any offending +wolf before the nearest magistrate; or, again, +in that of the high dignitary who is admitted +immediately into paradise because on earth +he left his work to be done by his secretaries—for +being obviously a fool, had he done his +work himself, the result would have been +disastrous to all concerned. Sometimes they +deal merely with human follies and affairs, +and the idiosyncrasies of men.</p> + +<p>Krylov’s fables have that special quality +which only permanent classics possess of +appealing to different generations, to people +of every age, kind and class, for different +reasons; so that children can read them +simply for the story, and grown-up people for +their philosophy; their style pleases the +unlettered by its simplicity, and is the envy +and despair of the artist in its supreme +art. Pushkin calls him “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le plus national et +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>42]</a></span> +le plus populaire de nos poètes</span>” (this was +true in Pushkin’s day), and said his fables +were read by men of letters, merchants, +men of the world, servants and children. +His work bears the stamp of ageless modernity +just as <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i> or Cicero’s +letters seem modern. It also has the peculiarly +Russian quality of unexaggerated realism. +He sees life as it is, and writes down +what he sees. It is true that although his +style is finished and polished, he only at +times reaches the high-water mark of what +can be done with the Russian language: his +style, always idiomatic, pregnant and natural, +is sometimes heavy, and even clumsy; but +then he never sets out to be anything more +than a fabulist. In this he is supremely +successful, and since at the same time he +gives us snatches of exquisite poetry, the +greater the praise to him. But, when all is +said and done, Krylov has the talisman which +defies criticism, baffles analysis, and defeats +time: namely, charm. His fables achieved +an instantaneous popularity, which has never +diminished until to-day.</p> + +<p>Internal political events proved the next +factor in Russian literature; a factor out of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>43]</a></span> +which the so-called romantic movement was +to grow.</p> + +<p>During the Napoleonic wars a great many +Russian officers had lived abroad. They came +back to Russia after the Congress of Vienna +in 1815, teeming with new ideas and new +ideals. They took life seriously, and were +called by Pushkin the Puritans of the North. +Their aim was culture and the public welfare. +They were not revolutionaries; on the contrary, +they were anxious to co-operate with +the Government. They formed for their purpose +a society, in imitation of the German +<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Tugendbund</i>, called <i>The Society of Welfare</i>: +its aims were philanthropic, educational, and +economic. It consisted chiefly of officers of +the Guard, and its headquarters were at St. +Petersburg. All this was known and approved +of by the Emperor. But when the Government +became reactionary, this peaceful progressive +movement changed its character. The +Society of Welfare was closed in 1821, and its +place was taken by two new societies, which, +instead of being political, were social and revolutionary. +The success of the revolutionary +movements in Spain and in Italy encouraged +these societies to follow their example.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>44]</a></span> +The death of Alexander I in 1825 forced +them to immediate action. The shape it took +was the “Decembrist” rising. Constantine, +the Emperor’s brother, renounced his claim to +the throne, and was succeeded by his brother +Nicholas. December 14 (O.S.) was fixed +for the day on which the Emperor should +receive the oath of allegiance of his troops. +An organized insurrection took place, which +was confined to certain regiments. The +Emperor was supported by the majority of +the Guards regiments, and the people showed +no signs of supporting the rising, which was at +once suppressed.</p> + +<p>One hundred and twenty-five of the conspirators +were condemned. Five of them +were hanged, and among them the poet +<span class="smcap">Ryleev</span> (1795-1826). But although the +political results of the movement were nil, +the effect of the movement on literature was +far-reaching. Philosophy took the place of +politics, and liberalism was diverted into +the channel of romanticism; but out of this +romantic movement came the springtide of +Russian poetry, in which, for the first time, the +soul of the Russian people found adequate +expression. And the very fact that politics +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>45]</a></span> +were excluded from the movement proved, in +one sense, a boon to literature: for it gave +Russian men of genius the chance to be writers, +artists and poets, and prevented them from +exhausting their whole energy in being inefficient +politicians or unsuccessful revolutionaries. +I will dwell on the drawbacks, on +the dark side of the medal, presently.</p> + +<p>As far as the actual Decembrist movement +is concerned, its concrete and direct legacy +to literature consists in the work of Ryleev, +and its indirect legacy in the most famous +comedy of the Russian stage, <i>Gore ot Uma</i>, +“The Misfortune of being Clever,” by +<span class="smcap">Griboyedov</span> (1795-1829).</p> + +<p>Ryleev’s life was cut short before his +poetical powers had come to maturity. It is +idle to speculate what he might have achieved +had he lived longer. The work which he +left is notable for its pessimism, but still +suffers from the old rhetorical conventions +of the eighteenth century and the imitation +of French models; moreover he looked on +literature as a matter of secondary importance. +“I am not a poet,” he said, “I am +a citizen.” In spite of this, every now and +then there are flashes of intense poetical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>46]</a></span> +inspiration in his work; and he struck one +or two powerful chords—for instance, in his +stanzas on the vision of enslaved Russia, +which have a tense strength and fire that +remind one of Emily Brontë. He was a poet +as well as a citizen, but even had he lived to +a prosperous old age and achieved artistic +perfection in his work, he could never have +won a brighter aureole than that which his +death gained him. The poems of his last +days in prison breathe a spirit of religious +humility, and he died forgiving and praying +for his enemies. His name shines in Russian +history and Russian literature, as that of a +martyr to a high ideal.</p> + +<p>Griboyedov, the author of <i>Gore ot Uma</i>, a +writer of a very different order, although not +a Decembrist himself, is a product of that +period. His comedy still remains the unsurpassed +masterpiece of Russian comedy, +and can be compared with Beaumarchais’ +<i>Figaro</i> and Sheridan’s <i>School for Scandal</i>.</p> + +<p>Griboyedov was a Foreign Office official, +and he was murdered when Minister Plenipotentiary +at Teheran, on January 30, 1829. +He conceived the plot of his play in 1816, +and read aloud some scenes in St. Petersburg +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>47]</a></span> +in 1823-24. They caused a sensation in +literary circles, and the play began to circulate +rapidly in MSS. Two fragments of the drama +were published in one of the almanacs, which +then took the place of literary reviews. But +beyond this, Griboyedov could neither get +his play printed nor acted. Thousands of +copies circulated in MSS., but the play was +not produced on the stage until 1831, and +then much mutilated; and it was not printed +until 1833.</p> + +<p><i>Gore ot Uma</i> is written in verse, in iambics +of varying length, like Krylov’s fables. The +unities are preserved. The action takes place +in one day and in the same house—that of +Famusov, an elderly gentleman of the Moscow +upper class holding a Government appointment. +He is a widower and has one daughter, +Sophia, whose sensibility is greater than her +sense; and the play opens on a scene where +the father discovers her talking to his secretary, +Molchalin, and says he will stand no nonsense. +Presently, the friend of Sophia’s childhood, +Chatsky, arrives after a three years’ absence +abroad; Chatsky is a young man of independent +ideas whose misfortune it is to be +clever. He notices that Sophia receives him +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>48]</a></span> +coldly, and later on he perceives that she is +in love with Molchalin,—a wonderfully drawn +type, the perfect climber, time-server and +place-seeker, and the incarnation of convention,—who +does not care a rap for Sophia. +Chatsky declaims to Famusov his contempt +for modern Moscow, for the slavish worship +by society of all that is foreign, for its +idolatry of fashion and official rank, its +hollowness and its convention. Famusov, the +incarnation of respectable conventionality, does +not understand one word of what he is saying.</p> + +<p>At an evening party given at Famusov’s +house, Chatsky is determined to find out whom +Sophia loves. He decides it is Molchalin, and +lets fall a few biting sarcasms about him to +Sophia; and Sophia, to pay him back for his +sarcasm, lets it be understood by one of the +guests that he is mad. The half-spoken hint +spreads like lightning; and the spreading of +the news is depicted in a series of inimitable +scenes. Chatsky enters while the subject +is being discussed, and delivers a long tirade +on the folly of Moscow society, which only +confirms the suspicions of the guests; and he +finds when he gets to the end of his speech +that he is speaking to an empty room.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>49]</a></span> +In the fourth act we see the guests leaving +the house after the party. Chatsky is waiting +for his carriage. Sophia appears on the staircase +and calls Molchalin. Chatsky, hearing +her voice, hides behind a pillar. Liza, Sophia’s +maid, comes to fetch Molchalin, and knocks at +his door. Molchalin comes out, and not knowing +that Sophia or Chatsky are within hearing, +makes love to Liza and tells her that he only +loves Sophia out of duty. Then Sophia appears, +having heard everything. Molchalin +falls on his knees to her: she is quite inexorable. +Chatsky comes forward and begins to +speak his mind—when all is interrupted by the +arrival of Famusov, who speaks his. Chatsky +shakes the dust of the house and of Moscow +off his feet, and Sophia is left without Chatsky +and without Molchalin.</p> + +<p>The <i>Gore ot Uma</i> is a masterpiece of satire +rather than a masterpiece of dramatic comedy. +That is to say that, as a satire of the Moscow +society of the day and of the society of +yesterday, and of to-morrow, it is immortal, +and forms a complete work: but as a comedy +it does not. Almost every scene separately +is perfect in itself, but dramatically it does +not group itself round one central idea or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>50]</a></span> +one mainspring of action. Judged from the +point of view of dramatic propriety, the +behaviour of the hero is wildly improbable +throughout; there is no reason for the spectator +to think he should be in love with Sophia; +if he is, there is no reason for him to behave +as he does; if a man behaved like that, declaiming +at an evening party long speeches on +the decay of the times, the most frivolous of +societies would be justified in thinking him +mad.</p> + +<p>Pushkin hit on the weak point of the play +as a play when he wrote: “In <i>The Misfortune +of being Clever</i> the question arises, +Who is clever? and the answer is Griboyedov. +Chatsky is an honourable young man who +has lived for a long time with a clever man +(that is to say with Griboyedov), and learnt +his clever sarcasms; but to whom does he +say them? To Famusov, to the old ladies +at the party. This is unforgivable, because +the first sign of a clever man is to know at +once whom he is dealing with.”</p> + +<p>But what makes the work a masterpiece +is the naturalness of the characters, the +dialogue, the comedy of the scenes which +represent Moscow society. It is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>51]</a></span> +extraordinary that on so small a scale, in four short +acts, Griboyedov should have succeeded in +giving so complete a picture of Moscow +society, and should have given the dialogue, +in spite of its being in verse, the stamp of +conversational familiarity. The portraits are +all full-length portraits, and when the play +is produced now, the rendering of each part +raises as much discussion in Russia as a +revival of one of Sheridan’s comedies in +England.</p> + +<p>As for the style, nearly three-quarters of +the play has passed into the Russian language. +It is forcible, concise, bitingly sarcastic, it is +as neat and dry as W. S. Gilbert, as elegant +as La Fontaine, as clear as an icicle, and as +clean as the thrust of a sword. But perhaps +the crowning merit of this immortal satire is +its originality. It is a product of Russian +life and Russian genius, and as yet it is without +a rival.</p> + +<p>Outside the current of politics and political +aspirations, there appeared during this same +epoch a poet who exercised a considerable +influence over Russian literature, and who +devoted himself exclusively to poetry. This +was <span class="smcap">Basil Zhukovsky</span> (1783-1852). He +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>52]</a></span> +opened the door of Russian literature on the +fields of German and English poetry. The +first poem he published in 1802 was a translation +of Gray’s <i>Elegy</i>; this, and an imitation +of Bürger’s <i>Leonore</i>, which affected all Slav +literatures, brought him fame. Later, he +translated Schiller’s <i>Maid of Orleans</i>, his +ballads, some of the lyrics of Uhland, Goethe, +Hebbel, and a great quantity of other foreign +poems. His translations were faithful, but +in spite of this he gave them the stamp of +his own dreamy personality. He was made +tutor to the Tsarevitch Alexander—afterwards +Alexander II,—and for a time his production +ceased; but when this task was finished, he +braced himself in his old age to translate <i>The +Odyssey</i>, and this translation appeared in +1848-50. In this work he obeyed the first +great law of translation, “Thou shalt not +turn a good poem into a bad one.” He produced +a beautiful work; but he also did what +all other translators of Homer have done; +he took the Homer out and left the Zhukovsky, +and with it something sentimental, elegiac, +and didactic.</p> + +<p>Zhukovsky’s greatest service to Russian +literature consisted in his exploding the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>53]</a></span> +superstition that the literature of France was +the only literature that counted, and introducing +literary Russia to the poets of England +and Germany rather than of France. But +apart from this, he is the first and best +translator in European literature, for what +Krylov did with some of La Fontaine’s fables, +he did for all the literature he touched—he +re-created it in Russian, and made it his own. +In his translation of Gray’s <i>Elegy</i>, for instance, +he not only translates the poet’s meaning +into musical verse, but he conveys the +intangible atmosphere of dreamy landscape, +and the poignant accent which makes that +poem the natural language of grief. It is +characteristic of him that, thirty-seven years +after he translated the poem, he visited Stoke +Poges, re-read Gray’s <i>Elegy</i> there, and made +another translation, which is still more +faithful than the first.</p> + +<p>The Russian language was by this time +purified from all outward excrescences, released +from the bondage of convention and +the pseudo-classical, open to all outside influences, +and only waiting, like a ready-tuned +instrument, on which Krylov and Zhukovsky +had already sounded sweet notes and deep +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>54]</a></span> +tones, and which Karamzin had proved to be +a magnificent vehicle for musical and perspicuous +prose, for a poet of genius to come +and sound it from its lowest note to the top +of its compass, for there was indeed much +music and excellent voice to be plucked from +it. At the appointed hour the man came. +It was <span class="smcap">Pushkin</span>. He arrived at a time when +a battle of words was raging between the so-called +classical and romantic schools. The +pseudo-classical, with all its mythological +machinery and conventional apparatus, was +totally alien to Russia, and a direct and slavish +imitation of the French. On the other hand, +the utmost confusion reigned as to what constituted +romanticism. To each single writer it +meant a different thing: “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Enfonçez Racine</span>,” +and the unities, in one case; or ghosts, +ballads, legends, local colour in another; or +the defiance of morality and society in another. +Zhukovsky, in introducing German romanticism +into Russia, paved the way for its death, +and for the death of all exotic fashions and +models; for he paved the way for Pushkin to +render the whole quarrel obsolete by creating +models of his own and by founding a national +literature.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>55]</a></span> +Pushkin was born on May 26, 1799, at +Moscow. He was of ancient lineage, and +inherited African negro blood on his mother’s +side, his mother’s grandmother being the +daughter of Peter the Great’s negro, Hannibal. +Until he was nine years old, he did not show +signs of any unusual precocity; but from then +onwards he was seized with a passion for +reading which lasted all his life. He read +Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>, the <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i> +in a translation. He then devoured all the +French books he found in his father’s library. +Pushkin was gifted with a photographic memory, +which retained what he read immediately +and permanently. His first efforts at writing +were in French,—comedies, which he performed +himself to an audience of his sisters. +He went to school in 1812 at the Lyceum of +Tsarskoe Selo, a suburb of St. Petersburg. His +school career was not brilliant, and his leaving +certificate qualifies his achievements as +mediocre, even in Russian. But during the +six years he spent at the Lyceum, he continued +to read voraciously. His favourite poet at +this time was Voltaire. He began to write +verse, first in French and then in Russian; +some of it was printed in 1814 and 1815 in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>56]</a></span> +reviews, and in 1815 he declaimed his <i>Recollections +of Tsarskoe Selo</i> in public at the +Lyceum examination, in the presence of +Derzhavin the poet.</p> + +<p>The poems which he wrote at school afterwards +formed part of his collected works. In +these poems, consisting for the greater part of +anacreontics and epistles, although they are +immature, and imitative, partly of contemporary +authors such as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, +and partly of the French anacreontic +school of poets, such as Voltaire, Gresset and +Parny, the sound of a new voice was unmistakable. +Indeed, not only his contemporaries, +but the foremost representatives of the +Russian literature of that day, Derzhavin, +Karamzin and Zhukovsky, made no mistake +about it. They greeted the first notes of this +new lyre with enthusiasm. Zhukovsky used +to visit the boy poet at school and read out +his verse to him. Derzhavin was enthusiastic +over the recitation of his <i>Recollections of +Tsarskoe Selo</i>. Thus fame came to Pushkin +as easily as the gift of writing verse. He had +lisped in numbers, and as soon as he began +to speak in them, his contemporaries immediately +recognized and hailed the new voice. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>57]</a></span> +He did not wake up and find himself famous +like Byron, but he walked into the Hall of +Fame as naturally as a young heir steps into +his lawful inheritance. If we compare +Pushkin’s school-boy poetry with Byron’s +<i>Hours of Idleness</i>, it is easy to understand +how this came about. In the <i>Hours of +Idleness</i> there is, perhaps, only one poem +which would hold out hopes of serious promise; +and the most discerning critics would +have been justified in being careful before +venturing to stake any great hopes on so +slender a hint. But in Pushkin’s early verse, +although the subject-matter is borrowed, +and the style is still irregular and careless, +it is none the less obvious that it flows +from the pen of the author without effort +or strain; and besides this, certain coins of +genuine poetry ring out, bearing the image +and superscription of a new mint, the mint of +Pushkin.</p> + +<p>When the first of his poems to attract the +attention of a larger audience, <i>Ruslan and +Ludmila</i>, was published, in 1820, it was +greeted with enthusiasm by the public; but +it had already won the suffrages of that +circle which counted most, that is to say, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>58]</a></span> +the leading men of letters of the day, who +had heard it read out in MSS. For as soon +as Pushkin left school and stepped into the +world, he was received into the literary circle +of the day on equal terms. After he had read +aloud the first cantos of <i>Ruslan and Ludmila</i> +at Zhukovsky’s literary evenings, Zhukovsky +gave him his portrait with this inscription: +“To the pupil, from his defeated master”; +and <span class="smcap">Batyushkov</span>, a poet who, after having +been influenced, like Pushkin, by Voltaire and +Parny, had gone back to the classics, Horace +and Tibullus, and had introduced the classic +anacreontic school of poetry into Russia, was +astonished to find a young man of the world +outplaying him without any trouble on the +same lyre, and exclaimed, “Oh! how well +the rascal has started writing!”</p> + +<p>The publication of <i>Ruslan and Ludmila</i> +sealed Pushkin’s reputation definitely, as far +as the general public was concerned, although +some of the professional critics treated the +poem with severity. The subject of the poem +was a Russian fairy-tale, and the critics blamed +the poet for having recourse to what they +called Russian folk-lore, which they considered +to be unworthy of the poetic muse. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>59]</a></span> +One review complained that Pushkin’s choice +of subject was like introducing a bearded +unkempt peasant into a drawing-room, while +others blamed him for dealing with national +stuff in a flippant spirit. But the curious +thing is that, while the critics blamed him +for his choice of subject, and his friends and +the public defended him for it, quoting all +sorts of precedents, the poem has absolutely +nothing in common, either in its spirit, style +or characterization, with native Russian +folk-lore and fairy-tales. Much later on in +his career, Pushkin was to show what he +could do with Russian folk-lore. But <i>Ruslan +and Ludmila</i>, which, as far as its form is concerned, +has a certain superficial resemblance +to Ariosto, is in reality the result of the +French influence, under which Pushkin had +been ever since his cradle, and which in this +poem blazes into the sky like a rocket, and +bursts into a shower of sparks, never to +return again.</p> + +<p>There is no passion in the poem and no +irony, but it is young, fresh, full of sensuous, +not to say sensual images, interruptions, +digressions, and flippant epigrams. Pushkin +wondered afterwards that nobody noticed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>60]</a></span> +the coldness of the poem; the truth was that +the eyes of the public were dazzled by the +fresh sensuous images, and their ears were +taken captive by the new voice: for the importance +of the poem lies in this—that the +new voice which the literary pundits had +already recognized in the Lyceum of Tsarskoe +Selo was now speaking to the whole world, +and all Russia became aware that a young +man was among them “with mouth of gold +and morning in his eyes.” <i>Ruslan and +Ludmila</i> has just the same sensuous richness, +fresh music and fundamental coldness as +Marlowe’s <i>Hero and Leander</i>. After finishing +the poem, Pushkin added a magnificent and +moving Epilogue, written from the Caucasus +in the year of its publication (1820); and when +the second edition was published in 1828, he +added a Prologue in his finest manner which +tells of Russian fairy-land.</p> + +<p>After leaving school in 1817, until 1820, +Pushkin plunged into the gay life of St. +Petersburg. He wanted to be a Hussar, but +his father could not afford it. In default +he became a Foreign Office official; but he did +not take this profession seriously. He consorted +with the political youth and young +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>61]</a></span> +Liberals of the day; he scattered stinging +epigrams and satirical epistles broadcast. +He sympathized with the Decembrists, but +took no part in their conspiracy. He would +probably have ended by doing so; but, luckily +for Russian literature, he was transferred in +1820 from the Foreign Office to the Chancery +of General Inzov in the South of Russia; +and from 1820 to 1826 he lived first at Kishinev, +then at Odessa, and finally in his own +home at Pskov. This enforced banishment +was of the greatest possible service to the +poet; it took him away from the whirl and +distractions of St. Petersburg; it prevented +him from being compromised in the drama +of the Decembrists; it ripened and matured +his poetical genius; it provided him, since it +was now that he visited the Caucasus and the +Crimea for the first time, with new subject-matter.</p> + +<p>During this period he learnt Italian and +English, and came under the influence of +André Chénier and Byron. André Chénier’s +influence is strongly felt in a series of lyrics +in imitation of the classics; but these +lyrics were altogether different from the +anacreontics of his boyhood. Byron’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>62]</a></span> +influence is first manifested in a long poem +<i>The Prisoner of the Caucasus</i>. It is Byronic +in the temperament of the hero, who talks in +the strain of the earlier Childe Harold; he is +young, but feels old; tired of life, he seeks for +consolation in the loneliness of nature in the +Caucasus. He is taken prisoner by mountain +tribesmen, and set free by a girl who +drowns herself on account of her unrequited +love. Pushkin said later that the poem was +immature, but that there were verses in it +that came from his heart. There is one +element in the poem which is by no means +immature, and that is the picture of the +Caucasus, which is executed with much +reality and simplicity. Pushkin annexed the +Caucasus to Russian poetry. The Crimea +inspired him with another tale, also Byronic +in some respects, <i>The Fountain of Baghchi-Sarai</i>, +which tells of a Tartar Khan and his +Christian slave, who is murdered out of +jealousy by a former favourite, herself drowned +by the orders of the Khan. Here again the +descriptions are amazing, and Pushkin draws +out a new stop of rich and voluptuous music.</p> + +<p>In speaking of the influence of Byron over +Pushkin it is necessary to discriminate. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>63]</a></span> +Byron helped Pushkin to discover himself; +Byron revealed to him his own powers, +showed him the way out of the French +garden where he had been dwelling, and acted +as a guide to fresh woods and pastures new. +But what Pushkin took from the new provinces +to which the example of Byron led him was +entirely different from what Byron sought +there. Again, the methods and workmanship +of the two poets were radically different. +Pushkin is never imitative of Byron; but +Byron opened his eyes to a new world, +and indeed did for him what Chapman’s +<i>Homer</i> did for Keats. It frequently happens +that when a poet is deeply struck by the +work of another poet he feels a desire to +write something himself, but something different. +Thus Pushkin’s mental intercourse +with Byron had the effect of bracing the +talent of the Russian poet and spurring him +on to the conquest of new worlds.</p> + +<p>Pushkin’s six years’ banishment to his own +country had the effect of revealing to him +the reality and seriousness of his vocation +as a poet, and the range and strength of his +gifts. It was during this period that besides +the works already mentioned he wrote some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>64]</a></span> +of his finest lyrics, <i>The Conversation between +the Bookseller and the Poet</i>—perhaps the most +perfect of his shorter poems—it contains four +lines to have written which Turgenev said he +would have burnt the whole of his works—a +larger poem called <i>The Gypsies</i>; his dramatic +chronicle <i>Boris Godunov</i>, and the beginning +of his masterpiece <i>Onegin</i>; several ballads, +including <i>The Sage Oleg</i>, and an unfinished +romance, the <i>Robber Brothers</i>.</p> + +<p>Not only is the richness of his output +during this period remarkable, but the variety +and the high level of art maintained in all +the different styles which he attempted and +mastered. <i>The Gypsies</i> (1827), which was +received with greater favour by the public +than any of his poems, either earlier or later, +is the story of a disappointed man, Aleko, +who leaves the world and takes refuge with +gypsies. A tragically ironical situation is the +result. The anarchic nature of the Byronic +misanthrope brings tragedy into the peaceful +life of the people, who are lawless because +they need no laws. Aleko loves and marries +the gypsy Zemfira, but after a time she tires +of him, and loves a young gypsy. Aleko +surprises them and kills them both. Then +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>65]</a></span> +Zemfira’s father banishes him from the +gypsies’ camp. He, too, had been deceived. +When his wife Mariula had been untrue and +had left him, he had attempted no vengeance, +but had brought up her daughter.</p> + +<p>“Leave us, proud man,” he says to Aleko. +“We are a wild people; we have no laws, +we torture not, neither do we punish; we +have no use for blood or groans; we will not +live with a man of blood. Thou wast not +made for the wild life. For thyself alone +thou claimest licence; we are shy and good-natured; +thou art evil-minded and presumptuous. +Farewell, and peace be with thee!”</p> + +<p>The charm of the poem lies in the descriptions +of the gypsy camp and the gypsy life, +the snatches of gypsy song, and the characterization +of the gypsies, especially of the women. +It is not surprising the poem was popular; it +breathes a spell, and the reading of it conjures +up before one the wandering life, the camp-fire, +the soft speech and the song; and makes +one long to go off with “the raggle-taggle +gypsies O!”</p> + +<p>Byron’s influence soon gave way to that +of Shakespeare, who opened a still larger +field of vision to the Russian poet. In 1825 +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>66]</a></span> +he writes: “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Quel homme que ce Shakespeare! +Je n’en reviens pas. Comme Byron le tragique +est mesquin devant lui! Ce Byron qui +n’a jamais conçu qu’un seul caractère et c’est +le sien ... ce Byron donc a partagé entre +ses personages tel et tel trait de son caractère: +son orgeuil à l’un, sa haine à l’autre, +sa mélancolie au troisième, etc., et c’est +ainsi d’un caractère plein, sombre et énergique, +il a fait plusieurs caractères insignifiants; ce +n’est pas là de la tragédie. On a encore une +manie. Quand on a conçu un caractère, tout +ce qu’on lui fait dire, même les choses les plus +étranges, en porte essentiellement l’empreinte, +comme les pédants et les marins dans les +vieux romans de Fielding. Voyez le haineux +de Byron ... et là-dessus lisez Shakespeare. +Il ne craint jamais de compromettre son +personage, il le fait parler avec tout l’abandon +de la vie, car il est sûr en temps et lieu, de +lui faire trouver le langage de son caractère. +Vous me demanderez: votre tragédie est-elle +une tragédie de caractère ou de costume? +J’ai choisi le genre le plus aisé, mais j’ai tâché +de les unir tous deux. J’écris et je pense. La +plupart des scènes ne demandent que du +raisonnement; quand j’arrive à une scène qui +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>67]</a></span> +demande de l’inspiration, j’attends ou je +passe dessus.</span>”</p> + +<p>I quote this letter because it throws light, +firstly, on Pushkin’s matured opinion of +Byron, and, secondly, on his methods of +work; for, like Leonardo da Vinci, he formed +the habit, which he here describes, of leaving +unwritten passages where inspiration was +needed, until he felt the moment of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bien +être</i> when inspiration came; and this not +only in writing his tragedy, but henceforward +in everything that he wrote, as his note-books +testify.</p> + +<p>The subject-matter of <i>Boris Godunov</i> was +based on Karamzin’s history: it deals with +the dramatic episode of the Russian Perkin +Warbeck, the false Demetrius who pretended +to be the murdered son of Ivan the Terrible. +The play is constructed on the model of +Shakespeare’s chronicle plays, but in a still +more disjointed fashion, without a definite +beginning or end: when Mussorgsky made an +opera out of it, the action was concentrated +into definite acts; for, as it stands, it is not +a play, but a series of scenes. Pushkin had +not the power of conceiving and executing +a drama which should move round one idea to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>68]</a></span> +an inevitable close. He had not the gift +of dramatic architectonics, and still less that +of stage carpentry. On the other hand, the +scenes, whether they be tragic and poetical, +or scenes of common life, are as vivid as any +in Shakespeare; the characters are all alive, +and they speak a language which is at the +same time ancient, living, and convincing.</p> + +<p>In saying that Pushkin lacks the gift of +stage architectonics and stage carpentry, it +is not merely meant that he lacked the gift +of arranging acts that would suit the stage, +or that of imagining stage effects. His whole +play is not conceived as a drama; a subject +from which a drama might be written is taken, +but the drama is left unwritten. We see +Boris Godunov on the throne, which he has +unlawfully usurped; we know he feels remorse; +he tells us so in monologues; we see his soul +stripped before us, bound upon a wheel of +fire, and we watch the wheel revolve; and +that is all the moral and spiritual action that +the part contains; he is static and not dynamic, +he never has to make up his mind; his will +never has to encounter the shock of another +will during the whole play. Neither does the +chronicle centre round the Pretender. It is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>69]</a></span> +true that we see the idea of impersonating +the Tsarevitch dawning in his mind; +and it is also true that in one scene with his +Polish love, Marina, we see him dynamically +moving in a dramatic situation. She loves him +because she thinks he is the son of an anointed +King. He loves her too much to deceive her, +and tells her the truth. She then says she +will have nothing of him; and then he rises +from defeat and shame to the height of the +situation, becomes great, and, not unlike +Browning’s Sludge, says: “Although I am +an impostor, I am born to be a King all the +same; I am one of Nature’s Kings; and I +defy you to oust me from the situation. Tell +every one what I have told you. Nobody will +believe you.” And Marina is conquered once +more by his conduct and bearing.</p> + +<p>This scene is sheer drama; it is the conflict +of two wills and two souls. But there the +matter ends. The kaleidoscope is shaken, +and we are shown a series of different patterns, +in which the heroine plays no part at all, and +in which the hero only makes a momentary +appearance. The fact is there is neither hero +nor heroine in the play. It is not a play, but +a chronicle; and it would be foolish to blame +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>70]</a></span> +Pushkin for not accomplishing what he never +attempted. As a chronicle, a series of detached +scenes, it is supremely successful. +There are certain scenes which attain to +sublimity: for instance, that in the cell of +the monastery, where the monk is finishing +his chronicle; and the monologue in which +Boris speaks his remorse, and his dying +speech to his son. The verse in these scenes +is sealed with the mark of that God-gifted +ease and high seriousness, which belong only +to the inspired great. They are Shakespearean, +not because they imitate Shakespeare, +but because they attain to heights of imaginative +truth to which Shakespeare rises more +often than any other poet; and the language +in these scenes has a simplicity, an inevitableness, +an absence of all conscious effort and of +all visible art and artifice, a closeness of +utterance combined with a width of suggestion +which belong only to the greatest artists, to +the Greeks, to Shakespeare, to Dante.</p> + +<p><i>Boris Godunov</i> was not published until +January 1, 1831, and passed, with one +exception, absolutely unnoticed by the critics. +Like so many great works, it came before its +time; and it was not until years afterwards +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>71]</a></span> +that the merits of this masterpiece were +understood and appreciated.</p> + +<p>In 1826 Pushkin’s banishment to the +country came to an end; in that year he was +allowed to go to Moscow, and in 1827 to St. +Petersburg. In 1826 his poems appeared in +one volume, and the second canto of <i>Onegin</i> +(the first had appeared in 1825). In 1827 +<i>The Gypsies</i>, and the third canto of <i>Onegin</i>; +in 1828 the fourth, fifth, and sixth cantos of +<i>Onegin</i>; in 1829 <i>Graf Nulin</i>, an admirably +told <i>Conte</i> such as Maupassant might have +written, of a deceived husband and a wife who, +finding herself in the situation of Lucretia, +gives the would-be Tarquin a box on the +ears, but succeeds, nevertheless, in being unfaithful +with some one else—the <i>Cottage of +Kolomna</i> is another story in the same vein—and +in the same year <i>Poltava</i>.</p> + +<p>This poem was written in one month, +in St. Petersburg. The subject is Mazepa, +with whom the daughter of his hereditary +enemy, Kochubey, whom he afterwards tortures +and kills, falls in love. But it is in +reality the epic of Peter the Great.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> When +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>72]</a></span> +the poem was published, it disconcerted the +critics and the public. It revealed an entirely +new phase of Pushkin’s style, and it +should have widened the popular conception +of the poet’s powers and versatility. But at +the time the public only knew Pushkin +through his lyrics and his early tales; <i>Boris +Godunov</i> had not yet been published; moreover, +the public of that day expected to find +in a poem passion and the delineation of +the heart’s adventures. This stern objective +fragment of an epic, falling into their sentimental +world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses and +cupids, like a bas-relief conceived by a Titan +and executed by a god, met with little appreciation. +The poet’s verse which, so far as the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>73]</a></span> +public knew it, had hitherto seemed like +a shining and luscious fruit, was exchanged +for a concentrated weighty tramp of ringing +rhyme, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">martelé</i> like steel. It is as if Tennyson +had followed up his early poems in a style +as concise as that of Pope and as concentrated +as that of Browning’s dramatic lyrics. The +poem is a fit monument to Peter the Great, +and the great monarch’s impetuous genius +and passion for thorough craftsmanship seem +to have entered into it.</p> + +<p>In 1829 Pushkin made a second journey to +the Caucasus, the result of which was a +harvest of lyrics. On his return to St. +Petersburg he sketched the plan of another +epic poem, <i>Galub</i>, dealing with the Caucasus, +but this remained a fragment.</p> + +<p>In 1831 he finished the eighth and last +canto of <i>Onegin</i>. Originally there were nine +cantos, but when the work was published one +of the cantos dealing with Onegin’s travels +was left out as being irrelevant. Pushkin +had worked at this poem since 1823. It +was Byron’s <i>Beppo</i> which gave him the +idea of writing a poem on modern life; but +here again, he made of the idea something +quite different from any of Byron’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>74]</a></span> +work. <i>Onegin</i> is a novel. Eugene Onegin +is the name of the hero. It is, moreover, +the first Russian novel; and as a novel it +has never been surpassed. It is as real as +Tolstoy, as finished in workmanship and +construction as Turgenev. It is a realistic +novel; not realistic in the sense that Zola’s +work was mis-called realistic, but realistic in +the sense that Miss Austen is realistic. The +hero is the average man about St. Petersburg; +his father, a worthy public servant, lives +honourably on debts and gives three balls a +year. Onegin is brought up, not too strictly, +by “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Monsieur l’Abbé</span>”; he goes out in the +world clothed by a London tailor, fluent in +French, and able to dance the Mazurka.</p> + +<p>Onegin can touch on every subject, can +hold his tongue when the conversation becomes +too serious, and make epigrams. He knows +enough Latin to construe an epitaph, to talk +about Juvenal, and put “Vale!” at the end +of his letters, and he can remember two lines +of the <i>Æneid</i>. He is severe on Homer and +Theocritus, but has read Adam Smith. The +only art in which he is proficient is the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ars +amandi</i> as taught by Ovid. He is a patron +of the ballet; he goes to balls; he eats +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>75]</a></span> +beef-steaks and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">paté de foie gras</i>. In spite of all +this—perhaps because of it—he suffers from +spleen, like Childe Harold, the author says. +His father dies, leaving a lot of debts behind +him, but a dying uncle summons him to the +country; and when he gets there he finds his +uncle dead, and himself the inheritor of the +estate. In the country, he is just as much +bored as he was in St. Petersburg. A new +neighbour arrives in the shape of Lensky, a +young man fresh from Germany, an enthusiast +and a poet, and full of Kant, Schiller, +and the German writers. Lensky introduces +Onegin to the neighbouring family, by name +Larin, consisting of a widow and two daughters. +Lensky is in love with the younger daughter, +Olga, who is simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a +round face, as Onegin says, like the foolish +moon. The elder sister, Tatiana, is less +pretty; shy and dreamy, she conceals under +her retiring and wistful ways a clean-cut +character and a strong will.</p> + +<p>Tatiana is as real as any of Miss Austen’s +heroines; as alive as Fielding’s Sophia Western, +and as charming as any of George Meredith’s +women; as sensible as Portia, as resolute as +Juliet. Turgenev, with all his magic, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>76]</a></span> +Tolstoy, with all his command over the colours +of life, never created a truer, more radiant, +and more typically Russian woman. She is +the type of all that is best in the Russian +woman; that is to say, of all that is best in +Russia; and it is a type taken straight from +life, and not from fairy-land—a type that +exists as much to-day as it did in the days +of Pushkin. She is the first of that long +gallery of Russian women which Turgenev, +Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky have given us, and +which are the most precious jewels of Russian +literature, because they reflect the crowning +glory of Russian life. Tatiana falls in love +with Onegin at first sight. She writes to him +and confesses her love, and in all the love +poetry of the world there is nothing more +touching and more simple than this confession. +It is perfect. If Pushkin had written this and +this alone, his place among poets would be +unique and different from that of all other +poets.</p> + +<p>Possibly some people may think that there +are finer achievements in the love poetry of +the world; but nothing is so futile and so +impertinent as giving marks to the great +poets, as if they were passing an examination. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>77]</a></span> +If a thing is as good as possible in itself, what +is the use of saying that it is less good or +better than something else, which is as good +as possible in itself also. Nevertheless, placed +beside any of the great confessions of love in +poetry—Francesca’s story in the <i>Inferno</i>, +Romeo and Juliet’s leavetaking, Phèdre’s +declaration, Don Juan Tenorio’s letter—the +beauty of Tatiana’s confession would not be +diminished by the juxtaposition. Of the rest +of Pushkin’s work at its best and highest, of +the finest passages of <i>Boris Godunov</i>, for +instance, you can say: This is magnificent, +but there are dramatic passages in other +works of other poets on the same lines and +as fine; but in Tatiana’s letter Pushkin has +created something unique, which has no +parallel, because only a Russian could have +written it, and of Russians, only he. It is +a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as +spontaneous as a blackbird’s song.</p> + +<p>Onegin tells Tatiana he is not worthy of +her, that he is not made for love and marriage; +that he would cease to love her at once; that +he feels for her like a brother, or perhaps a +little more tenderly. It then falls out that +Onegin, by flirting with Olga at a ball, makes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>78]</a></span> +Lensky jealous. They fight a duel, and +Lensky is killed. Onegin is obliged to leave +the neighbourhood, and spends years in travel. +Tatiana remains true to her first love; but she +is taken by her relatives to Moscow, and +consents at last under their pressure to marry +a rich man of great position. In St. Petersburg, +Onegin meets her again. Tatiana has +become a great lady, but all her old charm +is there. Onegin now falls violently in love +with her; but she, although she frankly confesses +that she still loves him, tells him that +it is too late; she has married another, and +she means to remain true to him. And there +the story ends.</p> + +<p><i>Onegin</i> is, perhaps, Pushkin’s most characteristic +work; it is undoubtedly the best +known and the most popular; like <i>Hamlet</i>, +it is all quotations. Pushkin in his <i>Onegin</i> +succeeded in doing what Shelley urged +Byron to do—to create something new +and in accordance with the spirit of the age, +which should at the same time be beautiful. +He did more than this. He succeeded +in creating for Russia a poem that was purely +national, and in giving his country a classic, +a model both in construction, matter, form, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>79]</a></span> +and inspiration for future generations. Perhaps +the greatest quality of this poem is its +vividness. Pushkin himself speaks, in taking +leave, of having seen the unfettered march +of his novel in a magic prism. This is just +the impression that the poem gives; the scenes +are as clear as the shapes in a crystal; nothing +is blurred; there are no hesitating notes, nothing +<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à peu près</i>; every stroke comes off; the nail +is hit on the head every time, only so easily +that you do not notice the strokes, and all +labour escapes notice. Apart from this the +poem is amusing; it arrests the attention as +a story, and it delights the intelligence with +its wit, its digressions, and its brilliance. It +is as witty as Don Juan and as consummately +expressed as Pope; and when the occasion +demands it, the style passes in easy transition +to serious or tender tones. <i>Onegin</i> has been +compared to Byron’s <i>Don Juan</i>. There is +this likeness, that both poems deal with +contemporary life, and in both poems the +poets pass from grave to gay, from severe to +lively, and often interrupt the narrative to +apostrophize the reader. But there the likeness +ends. On the other hand, there is a +vast difference. <i>Onegin</i> contains no adventures. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>80]</a></span> +It is a story of everyday life. Moreover, +it is an organic whole: so well constructed +that it fits into a stage libretto—Tchaikovsky +made an opera out of it—without difficulty. +There is another difference—a difference +which applies to Pushkin and Byron in +general. There is no unevenness in Pushkin; +his work, as far as craft is concerned, is always +on the same high level. You can admire the +whole, or cut off any single passage and it +will still remain admirable; whereas Byron +must be taken as a whole or not at all—the +reason being that Pushkin was an impeccable +artist in form and expression, and that Byron +was not.</p> + +<p>In the winter of 1832 Pushkin sought a +new field, the field of historical research; and +by the beginning of 1833 he had not only +collected all the materials for a history of +Pugachev, the Cossack who headed a rising +in the reign of Catherine II; but his literary +activity was so great that he had also written +the rough sketch of a long story in prose dealing +with the same subject, <i>The Captain’s Daughter</i>, +another prose story of considerable length, +<i>Dubrovsky</i>, and portions of a drama, <i>Rusalka</i>, +The Water Nymph, which was never finished. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>81]</a></span> +Besides <i>Boris Godunov</i> and the <i>Rusalka</i>, +Pushkin wrote a certain number of dramatic +scenes, or short dramas in one or more scenes. +Of these, one, <i>The Feast in the Time of Plague</i>, +is taken from the English of John Wilson (<i>The +City of the Plague</i>), with original additions. +In <i>Mozart and Salieri</i> we see the contrast +between the genius which does what it must +and the talent which does what it can. The +story is based on the unfounded anecdote +that Mozart was poisoned by Salieri out of +envy. This dramatic and beautifully written +episode has been set to music as it stands by +Rimsky-Korsakov.</p> + +<p><i>The Covetous Knight</i>, which bears the +superscription, “From the tragi-comedy of +Chenstone”—an unknown English original—tells +of the conflict between a Harpagon and +his son: the delineation of the miser’s imaginative +passion for his treasures is, both in +conception and execution, in Pushkin’s finest +manner. This scene has been recently set to +music by Rakhmaninov. <i>The Guest of Stone</i>, +the story of Don Juan and the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">statua gentilissima +del gran Commendatore</i>, makes Don +Juan life. A scene from <i>Faust</i> between +Faust and Mephistopheles is original and not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>82]</a></span> +of great interest; <i>Angelo</i> is the story of +<i>Measure for Measure</i> told as a narrative with +two scenes in dialogue. <i>Rusalka</i>, The Water +Maid, is taken from the genuine and not the +sham province of national legend, and it is +tantalizing that this poetic fragment remained +a fragment.</p> + +<p>Pushkin’s prose is in some respects as +remarkable as his verse. Here, too, he +proved a pioneer. <i>Dubrovsky</i> is the story of +a young officer whose father is ousted, like +Naboth, from his small estate by his neighbour, +a rich and greedy landed proprietor, +becomes a highway robber so as to revenge +himself, and introduces himself into the family +of his enemy as a French master, but forgoes +his revenge because he falls in love with his +enemy’s daughter. In this extremely vivid +story he anticipates Gogol in his lifelike +pictures of country life. <i>The Captain’s +Daughter</i> is equally vivid; the rebel Pugachev +has nothing stagey or melodramatic about +him, nothing of Harrison Ainsworth. Of his +shorter stories, such as <i>The Blizzard</i>, <i>The +Pistol Shot</i>, <i>The Lady-Peasant</i>, the most +entertaining, and certainly the most popular, +is <i>The Queen of Spades</i>, which was so admirably +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>83]</a></span> +translated by Mérimée, and formed the subject +of one of Tchaikovsky’s most successful +operas. As an artistic work <i>The Egyptian +Nights</i>, written in 1828, is the most interesting, +and ranks among Pushkin’s masterpieces. It +tells of an Italian <i>improvisatore</i> who, at a +party in St. Petersburg, improvises verses on +Cleopatra and her lovers. The story is +written to lead up to this poem, which gives +a gorgeous picture of the pagan world, and +is another example of Pushkin’s miraculous +power of assimilation. Pushkin’s prose has +the same limpidity and ease as his verse; the +characters have the same vitality and reality +as those in his poems and dramatic scenes, +and had he lived longer he might have +become a great novelist. As it is, he furnished +Gogol (whose acquaintance he made +in 1832) with the subject of two of his masterpieces—<i>Dead +Souls</i> and <i>The Revisor</i>.</p> + +<p>The province of Russian folk-lore and +legend from which Pushkin took the idea of +<i>Rusalka</i> was to furnish him with a great +deal of rich material. It was in 1831 that +in friendly rivalry with Zhukovsky he wrote +his first long fairy-tale, imitating the Russian +popular style, <i>The Tale of Tsar Saltan</i>. Up +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>84]</a></span> +till now he had written only a few ballads +in the popular style. This fairy-tale was a +brilliant success as a <i>pastiche</i>; but it was a +<i>pastiche</i> and not quite the real thing, as +cleverness kept breaking in, and a touch of +epigram here and there, which indeed makes +it delightful reading. He followed it by another +in the comic vein, <i>The Tale of the Pope and +his Man Balda</i>, and by two more <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Märchen</i>, +<i>The Dead Tsaritsa</i> and <i>The Golden Cock</i>; but +it was not until two years later that he wrote +his masterpiece in this vein, <i>The Story of the +Fisherman and the Fish</i>. It is the same +story as Grimm’s tale of the Fisherman’s +wife who wished to be King, Emperor, and +then Pope, and finally lost all by her vaulting +ambition. The tale is written in unrhymed +rhythmical, indeed scarcely rhythmical, lines; +all trace of art is concealed; it is a tale such +as might have been handed down by oral +tradition in some obscure village out of the +remotest past; it has the real <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Volkston</i>; the +good-nature and simplicity and unobtrusive +humour of a real fairy-tale. The subjects of +all these stories were told to Pushkin by his +nurse, Anna Rodionovna, who also furnished +him with the subject of his ballad, <i>The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>85]</a></span> +Bridegroom</i>. In Pushkin’s note-books there +are seven fairy-tales taken down hurriedly +from the words of his nurse; and most likely +all that he wrote dealing with the life of the +people came from the same source. Pushkin +called Anna Rodionovna his last teacher, +and said that he was indebted to her for +counteracting the effects of his first French +education.</p> + +<p>In 1833 he finished a poem called <i>The +Brazen Horseman</i>, the story of a man who +loses his beloved in the great floods in St. +Petersburg in 1834, and going mad, imagines +that he is pursued by Falconet’s equestrian +statue of Peter the Great. The poem contains +a magnificent description of St. Petersburg. +During the last years of his life, he was +engaged in collecting materials for a history +of Peter the Great. His power of production +had never run dry from the moment he left +school, although his actual work was interrupted +from time to time by distractions and +the society of his friends.</p> + +<p>All the important larger works of Pushkin +have now been mentioned; but during the +whole course of his career he was always +pouring out a stream of lyrics and occasional +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>86]</a></span> +pieces, many of which are among the most +beautiful things he wrote. His variety and +the width of his range are astonishing. Some +of them have a grace and perfection such as +we find in the Greek anthology; others—“Recollections,” +for instance, in which in the +sleepless hours of the night the poet sees pass +before him the blotted scroll of his past deeds, +which he is powerless with all the tears in the +world to wash out—have the intensity of +Shakespeare’s sonnets. This poem, for instance, +has the same depth of feeling as +“Tired with all these, for restful death I +cry,” or “The expense of spirit in a waste +of shame.” Or he will write an elegy as +tender as Tennyson; or he will draw a picture +of a sledge in a snow-storm, and give you the +plunge of the bewildered horses, the whirling +demons of the storm, the bells ringing on the +quiet spaces of snow, in intoxicating rhythms +which E. A. Poe would have envied; or again +he will write a description of the Caucasus +in eleven short lines, close in expression and +vast in suggestion, such as “The Monastery +on Kazbek”; or he will bring before you the +smell of the autumn morning, and the hoofs +ringing out on the half-frozen earth; or he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>87]</a></span> +will write a patriotic poem, such as <i>To the +Slanderers of Russia</i>, fraught with patriotic +indignation without being offensive; in this +poem Pushkin paints an inspired picture of +Russia: “Will not,” he says, “from Perm to +the Caucasus, from Finland’s chill rocks to the +flaming Colchis, from the shaken Kremlin to +the unshaken walls of China, glistening with +its bristling steel, the Russian earth arise?” +Or he will write a prayer, as lordly in utterance +and as humble in spirit as one of the old +Latin hymns; or a love-poem as tender as +Musset and as playful as Heine: he will +translate you the spirit of Horace and the +spirit of Mickiewicz the Pole; he will secure +the restraint of André Chénier, and the +impetuous gallop of Byron.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most characteristic of Pushkin’s +poems is the poem which expresses his view +of life in the elegy—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“As bitter as stale aftermath of wine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is the remembrance of delirious days;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The past more sorely, as my days decline.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My path is dark. The future lies in wait,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A gathering ocean of anxiety,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>88]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That is my prayer; to live and not to die!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I know that ecstasy shall still lie there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In sorrow and adversity and care.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be moved to tears by musings that are mine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But the greatest of his short poems is probably +“The Prophet.” This is a tremendous +poem, and reaches a height to which Pushkin +only attained once. It is Miltonic in conception +and Dantesque in expression; the syllables +ring out in pure concent, like blasts from a +silver clarion. It is, as it were, the Pillars of +Hercules of the Russian language. Nothing +finer as sound could ever be compounded +with Russian vowels and consonants; nothing +could be more perfectly planned, or present, +in so small a vehicle, so large a vision to the +imagination. Even a rough prose translation +will give some idea of the imaginative splendour +of the poem—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>89]</a></span> +“My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, +and I was astray in the dark wilderness. +And the Seraphim with six wings appeared +to me at the crossing of the ways: And he +touched my eyelids, and his fingers were as +soft as sleep: and like the eyes of an eagle +that is frightened my prophetic eyes were +awakened. He touched my ears and he filled +them with noise and with sound: and I +heard the Heavens shuddering and the +flight of the angels in the height, and the +moving of the beasts that are under the +waters, and the noise of the growth of the +branches in the valley. He bent down over +me and he looked upon my lips; and he tore +out my sinful tongue, and he took away that +which is idle and that which is evil with his +right hand, and his right hand was dabbled +with blood; and he set there in its stead, +between my perishing lips, the tongue of a +wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder +with a sword, and he plucked out my trembling +heart, and in my cloven breast he set +a burning coal of fire. Like a corpse in the +desert I lay, and the voice of God called +and said unto me, ‘Prophet, arise, and take +heed, and hear; be filled with My will, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>90]</a></span> +go forth over the sea and over the land and +set light with My word to the hearts of the +people.’”</p> + +<p>In 1837 came the catastrophe which brought +about Pushkin’s death. It was caused by +the clash of evil tongues engaged in frivolous +gossip, and Pushkin’s own susceptible and violent +temperament. A guardsman, Heckeren-Dantes, +had been flirting with his wife. +Pushkin received an anonymous letter, and +being wrongly convinced that Heckeren-Dantes +was the author of it, wrote him a +violent letter which made a duel inevitable. +A duel was fought on the 27th of February, +1837, and Pushkin was mortally wounded. +Such was his frenzy of rage that, after lying +wounded and unconscious in the snow, on +regaining consciousness, he insisted on going on +with the duel, and fired another shot, giving a +great cry of joy when he saw that he had +wounded his adversary. It was only a slight +wound in the hand. It was not until he reached +home that his anger passed away. He died +on the 29th of February, after forty-five hours +of excruciating suffering, heroically borne; +he forgave his enemies; he wished no one to +avenge him; he received the last sacraments; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>91]</a></span> +and he expressed feelings of loyalty and +gratitude to his sovereign. He was thirty-seven +years and eight months old.</p> + +<p>Pushkin’s career falls naturally into two +divisions: his life until he was thirty, and +his life after he was thirty. Pushkin began +his career with liberal aspirations, and he +disappointed some in the loyalty to the throne, +the Church, the autocracy, and the established +order of things which he manifested later; +in turning to religion; in remaining in the +Government service; in writing patriotic +poems; in holding the position of Gentleman +of the Bed Chamber at Court; in being, in +fact, what is called a reactionary. But it +would be a mistake to imagine that Pushkin +was a Lost Leader who abandoned the cause +of liberty for a handful of silver and a riband +to stick in his coat. The liberal aspirations +of Pushkin’s youth were the very air that the +whole of the aristocratic youth of that day +breathed. Pushkin could not escape being +influenced by it; but he was no more a rebel +then, than he was a reactionary afterwards, +when again the very air which the whole of +educated society breathed was conservative +and nationalistic. It may be a pity that it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>92]</a></span> +was so; but so it was. There was no liberal +atmosphere in the reign of Nicholas I, and +the radical effervescence of the Decembrists +was destroyed by the Decembrists’ premature +action. It is no good making a revolution +if you have nothing to make it with. The +Decembrists were in the same position as +the educated élite of one regiment at Versailles +would have been, had it attempted to destroy +the French monarchy in the days of Louis +XIV. The Decembrists by their premature +action put the clock of Russian political progress +back for years. The result was that +men of impulse, aspiration, talent and originality +had in the reign of Nicholas to seek +an outlet for their feelings elsewhere than in +politics, because politics then were simply +non-existent.</p> + +<p>But apart from this, even if the opportunities +had been there, it may be doubted +whether Pushkin would have taken them. +He was not born with a passion to reform the +world. He was neither a rebel nor a reformer; +neither a liberal nor a conservative; +he was a democrat in his love for the whole of +the Russian people; he was a patriot in his +love of his country. He resembled Goethe +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>93]</a></span> +rather than Socrates, or Shelley, or Byron; +although, in his love of his country and in +every other respect, his fiery temperament +both in itself and in its expression was far +removed from Goethe’s Olympian calm. He +was like Goethe in his attitude towards society, +and the attitude of the social and official +world towards him resembles the attitude of +Weimar towards Goethe.</p> + +<p>During the first part of his career he gave +himself up to pleasure, passion, and self-indulgence; +after he was thirty he turned his +mind to more serious things. It would not +be exact to say he <em>became</em> deeply religious, +because he was religious by nature, and he +soon discarded a fleeting phase of scepticism; +but in spite of this he was a victim of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">amour-propre</i>; +and he wavered between contempt +of the society around him and a petty resentment +against it which took the shape of +scathing and sometimes cruel epigrams. It +was this dangerous <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">amour-propre</i>, the fact of +his being not only passion’s slave, but petty +passion’s slave, which made him a victim of +frivolous gossip and led to the final catastrophe.</p> + +<p>“In Pushkin,” says Soloviev, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>94]</a></span> +philosopher, “according to his own testimony +there were two different and separate beings: +the inspired priest of Apollo, and the most +frivolous of all the frivolous children of the +world.” It was the first Pushkin—the inspired +priest—who predominated in the latter +part of his life; but who was unable to expel +altogether the second Pushkin, the frivolous +<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Weltkind</i>, who was prone to be exasperated +by the society in which he lived, and when +exasperated was dangerous. There is one +fact, however, which accounts for much. +The more serious Pushkin’s turn of thought +grew, the more objective, purer, and stronger +his work became, the less it was appreciated; +for the public which delighted in the comparatively +inferior work of his youth was not +yet ready for his more mature work. What +pleased the public were the dazzling colours, +the sensuous and sometimes libidinous images +of his early poems; the romantic atmosphere; +especially anything that was artificial in +them. They had not yet eyes to appreciate +the noble lines, nor ears to appreciate the +simpler and more majestic harmonies of his +later work. Thus it was that they passed <i>Boris +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>95]</a></span> +Godunov</i> by, and were disappointed in the +later cantos of <i>Onegin</i>. This was, of course, +discouraging. Nevertheless, it is laughable +to rank Pushkin amongst the misunderstood, +among the Shelleys, the Millets, of Literature +and Art; or to talk of his sad fate. To talk +of him as one of the victims of literature is +merely to depreciate him.</p> + +<p>He was exiled. Yes: but to the Caucasus, +which gave him inspiration: to his own +country home, which gave him leisure. He +was censored. Yes: but the Emperor undertook +to do the work himself. Had he lived +in England, society—as was proved in the +case of Byron—would have been a far severer +censor of his morals and the extravagance of +his youth, than the Russian Government. +Besides which, he won instantaneous fame, +and in the society in which he moved he was +surrounded by a band not only of devoted but +distinguished admirers, amongst whom were +some of the highest names in Russian literature—Karamzin, +Zhukovsky, Gogol.</p> + +<p>Pushkin is Russia’s national poet, the Peter +the Great of poetry, who out of foreign +material created something new, national +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>96]</a></span> +and Russian, and left imperishable models for +future generations. The chief characteristic +of his genius is its universality. There +appeared to be nothing he could not understand +nor assimilate. And it is just this all-embracing +humanity—Dostoyevsky calls him +<ins class="greek" title="pananthrôpos">πανάνθρωπος</ins> —this capacity for understanding +everything and everybody, which makes him +so profoundly Russian. He is a poet of everyday +life: a realistic poet, and above all things +a lyrical poet. He is not a dramatist, and as +an epic writer, though he can mould a bas-relief +and produce a noble fragment, he cannot set +crowds in motion. He revealed to the Russians +the beauty of their landscape and the poetry +of their people; and they, with ears full of +pompous diction, and eyes full of rococo and +romantic stage properties, did not understand +what he was doing: but they understood +later. For a time he fought against the +stream, and all in vain; and then he gave +himself up to the great current, which took +him all too soon to the open sea.</p> + +<p>He set free the Russian language from the +bondage of the conventional; and all his life +he was still learning to become more and more +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>97]</a></span> +intimate with the savour and smell of the +people’s language. Like Peter the Great, +he spent his whole life in apprenticeship, and +his whole energies in craftsmanship. He was +a great artist; his style is perspicuous, plastic, +and pure; there is never a blurred outline, +never a smear, never a halting phrase or a +hesitating note. His concrete images are, as +it were, transparent, like Donne’s description +of the woman whose</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“... pure and eloquent blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spoke in her face, and so distinctly wrought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That you might almost think her body thought.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>His diction is the inseparable skin of the +thought. You seem to hear him thinking. +He was gifted with divine ease and unpremeditated +spontaneity. His soul was sincere, +noble, and open; he was frivolous, a child +of the world and of his century; but if he +was worldly, he was human; he was a citizen +as well as a child of the world; and it is that +which makes him the greatest of Russian +poets.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>98]</a></span> +His career was unromantic; he was rooted +to the earth; an aristocrat by birth, an official +by profession, a lover of society by taste. At +the same time, he sought and served beauty, +strenuously and faithfully; he was perhaps +too faithful a servant of Apollo; too exclusive +a lover of the beautiful. In his work you find +none of the piteous cries, no beauty of soaring +and bleeding wings as in Shelley, nor the +sound of rebellious sobs as in Musset; no +tempest of defiant challenge, no lightnings +of divine derision, as in Byron; his is neither +the martyrdom of a fighting Heine, that +“brave soldier in the war of the liberation +of humanity,” nor the agonized passion of a +suffering Catullus. He never descended into +Hell. Every great man is either an artist or +a fighter; and often poets of genius, Byron +and Heine for instance, are more pre-eminently +fighters than they are artists. Pushkin was +an artist, and not a fighter. And this is what +makes even his love-poems cold in comparison +with those of other poets. Although he was +the first to make notable what was called the +romantic movement; and although at the +beginning of his career he handled romantic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>99]</a></span> +subjects in a more or less romantic way, he +was fundamentally a classicist—a classicist +as much in the common-sense and realism and +solidity of his conceptions and ideas, as in the +perspicuity and finish of his impeccable form. +And he soon cast aside even the vehicles +and clothes of romanticism, and exclusively +followed reality. “He strove with none, for +none was worth his strife.” And when his +artistic ideals were misunderstood and depreciated, +he retired into himself and wrote +to please himself only; but in the inner court +of the Temple of Beauty into which he retired +he created imperishable things; for he loved +nature, he loved art, he loved his country, +and he expressed that love in matchless +song.</p> + +<p>For years, Russian criticism was either +neglectful of his work or unjust towards it; +for his serene music and harmonious design +left the generations which came after him, who +were tossed on a tempest of social problems and +political aspirations, cold; but in 1881, when +Dostoyevsky unveiled Pushkin’s memorial at +Moscow, the homage which he paid to the +dead poet voiced the unanimous feeling of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>100]</a></span> +the whole of Russia. His work is beyond +the reach of critics, whether favourable or +unfavourable, for it lives in the hearts of +his countrymen, and chiefly upon the lips of +the young.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> +Not 1763, as generally stated in his biographies.</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> +The poem was originally called <i>Mazepa</i>: Pushkin +changed the title so as not to clash with Byron. It is +interesting to see what Pushkin says of Byron’s poem. +In his notes there is the following passage—</p> + +<p>“Byron knew Mazepa through Voltaire’s history of +Charles XII. He was struck solely by the picture of a +man bound to a wild horse and borne over the steppes. +A poetical picture of course; but see what he did with it. +What a living creation! What a broad brush! But do +not expect to find either Mazepa or Charles, nor the usual +gloomy Byronic hero. Byron was not thinking of him. +He presented a series of pictures, one more striking than +the other. Had his pen come across the story of the +seduced daughter and the father’s execution, it is improbable +that anyone else would have dared to touch +the subject.”</p> +</div> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>101]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER III<br /> +<br /> +<small>LERMONTOV</small></h2> + + +<p>The romantic movement in Russia was, as +far as Pushkin was concerned, not really a +romantic movement at all. Still less was it +so in the case of the Pléiade which followed +him. And yet, for want of a better word, one +is obliged to call it the <em>romantic</em> movement, as +it was a new movement, a renascence that +arose out of the ashes of the pseudo-classical +eighteenth century convention. Pushkin was +followed by a Pléiade.</p> + +<p>The claim of his friend and fellow-student, +<span class="smcap">Baron Delvig</span>, to fame, rests rather on his +friendship with Pushkin (to whom he played +the part of an admirable critic) than on his +own verse. He died in 1831. <span class="smcap">Yazykov</span>, +<span class="smcap">Prince Bariatinsky</span>, <span class="smcap">Venevitinov</span>, and +<span class="smcap">Polezhaev</span>, can all be included in the Pléiade; +all these are lyrical poets of the second order, +and none of them—except Polezhaev, whose +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>102]</a></span> +real promise of talent was shattered by circumstances +(he died of drink and consumption +after a career of tragic vicissitudes)—has +more than an historical interest.</p> + +<p>Pushkin’s successor to the throne of Russian +letters was Lermontov: no unworthy heir. +The name Lermontov is said to be the same +as the Scotch Learmonth. The story of his +short life is a simple one. He was born at +Moscow in 1814. He visited the Caucasus +when he was twelve. He was taught English +by a tutor. He went to school at Moscow, +and afterwards to the University. He left +in 1832 owing to the disputes he had with the +professors. At the age of eighteen, he entered +the Guards’ Cadet School at St. Petersburg; +and two years later he became an officer in +the regiment of the Hussars. In 1837 he was +transferred to Georgia, owing to the scandal +caused by the outspoken violence of his verse; +but he was transferred to Novgorod in 1838, +and was allowed to return to St. Petersburg +in the same year. In 1840 he was again +transferred to the Caucasus for fighting a duel +with the son of the French Ambassador; +towards the end of the year, he was once more +allowed to return to St. Petersburg. In 1841 +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>103]</a></span> +he went back for a third time to the Caucasus, +where he forced a duel on one of his friends +over a perfectly trivial incident, and was killed, +on the 15th of July of the same year.</p> + +<p>In all the annals of poetry, there is no more +curious figure than Lermontov. He was like +a plant that above all others needed a sympathetic +soil, a favourable atmosphere, and +careful attention. As it was, he came in the +full tide of the régime of Nicholas I, a régime +of patriarchal supervision, government interference, +rigorous censorship, and iron discipline,—a +grey epoch absolutely devoid of all +ideal aspirations. Considerable light is thrown +on the contradictory and original character of +the poet by his novel, <i>A Hero of Our Days</i>, the +first psychological novel that appeared in +Russia. The hero, Pechorin, is undoubtedly +a portrait of the poet, although he himself +said, and perhaps thought, that he was merely +creating a type.</p> + +<p>The hero of the story, who is an officer in +the Caucasus, analyses his own character, +and lays bare his weaknesses, follies, and +faults, with the utmost frankness. “I am +incapable of friendship,” he says. “Of two +friends, one is always the slave of the other, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>104]</a></span> +although often neither of them will admit it; +I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a +tiring business.” Or he writes: “I have an +innate passion for contradiction.... The +presence of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and +intercourse with a phlegmatic temperament +would turn me into a passionate dreamer.” +Speaking of enemies, he says: “I love +enemies, but not after the Christian fashion.” +And on another occasion: “Why do they +all hate me? Why? Have I offended any +one? No. Do I belong to that category of +people whose mere presence creates antipathy?” +Again: “I despise myself sometimes, +is not that the reason that I despise +others? I have become incapable of noble +impulses. I am afraid of appearing ridiculous +to myself.”</p> + +<p>On the eve of fighting a duel Pechorin writes +as follows—</p> + +<p>“If I die it will not be a great loss to the +world, and as for me, I am sufficiently tired +of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, +who does not go home to bed because the +carriage is not there, but as soon as the carriage +is there, Good-bye!”</p> + +<p>“I review my past and I ask myself, Why +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>105]</a></span> +have I lived? Why was I born? and I think +there was a reason, and I think I was called +to high things, for I feel in my soul the presence +of vast powers; but I did not divine my high +calling; I gave myself up to the allurement +of shallow and ignoble passions; I emerged +from their furnace as hard and as cold as iron, +but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble +aspirations, the flower of life. And since then +how often have I played the part of the axe +in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of the +executioner I have fallen on the necks of the +victims, often without malice, always without +pity. My love has never brought happiness, +because I have never in the slightest degree +sacrificed myself for those whom I loved. I +loved for my own sake, for my own pleasure.... +And if I die I shall not leave behind me one +soul who understood me. Some think I am +better, others that I am worse than I am. +Some will say he was a good fellow; others he +was a blackguard.”</p> + +<p>It will be seen from these passages, all of +which apply to Lermontov himself, even if +they were not so intended, that he must have +been a trying companion, friend, or acquaintance. +He had, indeed, except for a few +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>106]</a></span> +intimate friends, an impossible temperament; +he was proud, overbearing, exasperated and exasperating, +filled with a savage <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">amour-propre</i>; +and he took a childish delight in annoying; +he cultivated “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">le plaisir aristocratique de +déplaire</span>”; he was envious of what was least +enviable in his contemporaries. He could +not bear not to make himself felt, and if he +felt that he was unsuccessful in accomplishing +this by pleasant means, he resorted to unpleasant +means. And yet, at the same time, +he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and +kindness, and capable of giving himself up +to love—if he chose.</p> + +<p>During his period of training at the Cadet +School, he led a wild life; and when he +became an officer, he hankered after social +and not after literary success. He did not +achieve it immediately; at first he was not +noticed, and when he was noticed he was not +liked. His looks were unprepossessing, and +one of his legs was shorter than the other. His +physical strength was enormous—he could +bend a ramrod with his fingers. Noticed he +was determined to be; and, as he himself +says in one of his letters, observing that +every one in society had some sort of pedestal—wealth, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>107]</a></span> +lineage, position, or patronage—he +saw that if he, not pre-eminently possessing +any of these,—though he was, as a matter of +fact, of a good Moscow family,—could succeed +in engaging the attention of one person, +others would soon follow suit. This he set +about to do by compromising a girl and +then abandoning her: and he acquired the +reputation of a Don Juan. Later, when +he came back from the Caucasus, he was +treated as a lion. All this does not throw a +pleasant light on his character, more especially +as he criticized in scathing tones the society +in which he was anxious to play a part, and +in which he subsequently enjoyed playing +a part. But perhaps both attitudes of mind +were sincere. He probably sincerely enjoyed +society, and hankered after success in it; and +equally sincerely despised society and himself +for hankering after it.</p> + +<p>As he grew older, his pride and the exasperating +provocativeness of his conduct +increased to such an extent that he seemed +positively seeking for serious trouble, and for +some one whose patience he could overtax, and +on whom he could fasten a quarrel. And +this was not slow to happen.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>108]</a></span> +At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a +deep-seated disgust with himself and with the +world in general, and a complete indifference +to life, resulting from large aspirations which +could not find an outlet, and so recoiled upon +himself. The epoch, the atmosphere and the +society were the worst possible for his peculiar +nature; and the only fruitful result of the +friction between himself and the society and +the established order of his time, was that he +was sent to the Caucasus, which proved to be +a source of inspiration for him, as it had +been for Pushkin. One is inclined to say, +“If only he had lived later or longer”; yet +it may be doubted whether, had he been born +in a more favourable epoch, either earlier in +the milder régime of Alexander I, or later, +in the enthusiastic epoch of the reforms, he +would have been a happier man and produced +finer work.</p> + +<p>The curious thing is that his work does not +reveal an overwhelming pessimism like Leopardi’s, +an accent of revolt like Musset’s, or of +combat like Byron’s; but rather it testifies to +a fundamental indifference to life, a concentrated +pride. If it be true that you can +roughly divide the Russian temperament into +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>109]</a></span> +two types—the type of the pure fool, such as +Dostoyevsky’s <i>Idiot</i>, and a type of unconquerable +pride, such as Lucifer—then Lermontov +is certainly a fine example of the +second type. You feel that he will never +submit or yield; but then he died young; and +the Russian poets often changed, and not +infrequently adopted a compromise which was +the same thing as submission.</p> + +<p>Lermontov was, like Pushkin, essentially +a lyric poet, still more subjective, and profoundly +self-centred. His attempts at the +drama (imitations of Schiller and an attempt +at the manner of Griboyedov) were failures. +But, unlike Pushkin, he was a true romantic; +and his work proves to us how essentially +different a thing Russian romanticism is from +French, German or English romanticism. +He began with astonishing precocity to write +verse when he was twelve. His earliest +efforts were in French. He then began to +imitate Pushkin. While at the Cadet School +he wrote a series of cleverly written, more or +less indecent, and more or less Byronic—the +Byron of <i>Beppo</i>—tales in verse, describing +his love adventures, and episodes of garrison +life. What brought him fame was his “Ode +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>110]</a></span> +on the Death of Pushkin,” which, although +unjustified by the actual facts—he represents +Pushkin as the victim of a bloodthirsty +society—strikes strong and bitter chords. +Here, without any doubt, are “thoughts +that breathe and words that burn”—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“And you, the proud and shameless progeny<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of fathers famous for their infamy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You, who with servile heel have trampled down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The fragments of great names laid low by chance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You hide behind the shelter of the law,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before you, right and justice must be dumb!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, parasites of vice, there’s God’s assize;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is an awful court of law that waits.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You cannot reach it with the sound of gold;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And vainly you shall call the lying witness;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shall not help you any more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And not with all the filth of all your gore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall you wash out the poet’s righteous blood.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>111]</a></span> +He struck this strong chord more than once, +especially in his indictment of his own generation, +called “A Thought”; and in a poem +written on the transfer of Napoleon’s ashes +to Paris, in which he pours scorn on the +French for deserting Napoleon when he lived +and then acclaiming his ashes.</p> + +<p>But it is not in poems such as these that +Lermontov’s most characteristic qualities are +to be found. Lermontov owed nothing to +his contemporaries, little to his predecessors, +and still less to foreign models. It is true +that, as a school-boy, he wrote verses full of +Byronic disillusion and satiety, but these +were merely echoes of his reading. The +gloom of spirit which he expressed later on +was a permanent and innate feature of his +own temperament. Later, the reading of +Shelley spurred on his imagination to emulation, +but not to imitation. He sought his +own path from the beginning, and he remained +in it with obdurate persistence. He remained +obstinately himself, indifferent as a rule to +outside events, currents of thought and +feeling. And he clung to the themes which +he chose in his youth. His mind to him a +kingdom was, and he peopled it with images +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>112]</a></span> +and fancies of his own devising. The path +which he chose was a narrow one. It was a +romantic path. He chose for the subject of +the poem by which he is perhaps most widely +known, <i>The Demon</i>, the love of a demon for +a woman. The subject is as romantic as any +chosen by Thomas Moore; but there is nothing +now that appears rococo in Lermontov’s work. +The colours are as fresh to-day as when they +were first laid on. The heroine is a Circassian +woman, and the action of the poem is in the +Caucasus.</p> + +<p>The Demon portrayed is not the spirit that +denies of Goethe, nor Byron’s Lucifer, looking +the Almighty in His face and telling him that +His evil is not good; nor does he cherish—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“the study of revenge, immortal hate,”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>of Milton’s Satan; but he is the lost angel of +a ruined paradise, who is too proud to accept +oblivion even were it offered to him. He +dreams of finding in Tamara the joys of the +paradise he has foregone. “I am he,” he +says to her, “whom no one loves, whom +every human being curses.” He declares +that he has foresworn his proud thoughts, +that he desires to be reconciled with Heaven, +to love, to pray, to believe in good. And he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>113]</a></span> +pours out to her one of the most passionate +love declarations ever written, in couplet after +couplet of words that glow like jewels and +tremble like the strings of a harp, Tamara +yields to him, and forfeits her life; but her +soul is borne to Heaven by the Angel of +Light; she has redeemed her sin by death, +and the Demon is left as before alone in a +loveless, lampless universe. The poem is +interspersed with descriptions of the Caucasus, +which are as glowing and splendid as the +impassioned utterance of the Demon. They +put Pushkin’s descriptions in the shade. +Lermontov’s landscape-painting compared +with Pushkin’s is like a picture of Turner +compared with a Constable or a Bonnington.</p> + +<p>Lermontov followed up his first draft of +<i>The Demon</i> (originally planned in 1829, but +not finished in its final form until 1841) with +other romantic tales, the scene of which for +the most part is laid in the Caucasus: such as +<i>Izmail Bey</i>, <i>Hadji-Abrek</i>, <i>Orsha the Boyar</i>—the +last not a Caucasian tale. These were nearly all +of them sketches in which he tried the colours +of his palette. But with <i>Mtsyri</i>, <i>the Novice</i>, +in which he used some of the materials of the +former tales, he produced a finished picture.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>114]</a></span> +<i>Mtsyri</i> is the story of a Circassian orphan +who is educated in a convent. The child grows +up home-sick at heart, and one day his longing +for freedom becomes ungovernable, and he +escapes and roams about in the mountains. +He loses his way in the forest and is brought +back to the monastery after three days, dying +from starvation, exertion, and exhaustion. +Before he dies he pours out his confession, +which takes up the greater part of the poem. +He confesses how in the monastery he felt +his own country and his own people forever +calling, and how he felt he must seek his own +people. He describes his wanderings: how +he scrambles down the mountain-side and +hears the song of a Georgian woman, and +sees her as she walks down a narrow path with a +pitcher on her head and draws water from the +stream. At nightfall he sees the light of a +dwelling-place twinkling like a falling star; +but he dares not seek it. He loses his way +in the forest, he encounters and kills a +panther. In the morning, he finds a way out +of the woods when the daylight comes; he +lies in the grass exhausted under the blinding +noon, of which Lermontov gives a gorgeous +and detailed description—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>115]</a></span> +<span class="i0">“And on God’s world there lay the deep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And heavy spell of utter sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Although the landrail called, and I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could hear the trill of the dragonfly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or else the lisping of the stream ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only a snake, with a yellow gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like golden lettering inlaid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From hilt to tip upon a blade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was rustling, for the grass was dry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in the loose sand cautiously<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It slid, and then began to spring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And roll itself into a ring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then, as though struck by sudden fear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made haste to dart and disappear.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Perishing of hunger and thirst, fever and +delirium overtake him, and he fancies that +he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream, +where speckled fishes are playing in the +crystal waters. One of them nestles close to +him and sings to him with a silver voice a +lullaby, unearthly, like the song of Ariel, and +alluring like the call of the Erl King’s +daughter. In this poem Lermontov reaches +the high-water mark of his descriptive powers. +Its pages glow with the splendour of the +Caucasus.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>116]</a></span> +To his two masterpieces, <i>The Demon</i> +and <i>Mtsyri</i>, he was to add a third: <i>The +Song of the Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, the Oprichnik +(bodyguardsman), and the Merchant +Kalashnikov</i>. The Oprichnik insults the +Merchant’s wife, and the Merchant challenges +him to fight with his fists, kills him, and +is executed for it. This poem is written as a +folk-story, in the style of the <i>Byliny</i>, and it +in no way resembles a <i>pastiche</i>. It equals, if +it does not surpass, Pushkin’s <i>Boris Godunov</i> +as a realistic vision of the past; and as an +epic tale, for simplicity, absolute appropriateness +of tone, vividness, truth to nature and +terseness, there is nothing in modern Russian +literature to compare with it. Besides these +larger poems, Lermontov wrote a quantity +of short lyrics, many of which, such as “The +Sail,” “The Angel,” “The Prayer,” every +Russian child knows by heart.</p> + +<p>When we come to consider the qualities of +Lermontov’s romantic work, and ask ourselves +in what it differs from the romanticism of the +West—from that of Victor Hugo, Heine, +Musset, Espronceda—we find that in Lermontov’s +work, as in all Russian work, there +is mingled with his lyrical, imaginative, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>117]</a></span> +descriptive powers, a bed-rock of matter-of-fact +common-sense, a root that is deeply +embedded in reality, in the life of everyday. +He never escapes into the “intense inane” +of Shelley. Imaginative he is, but he is never +lost in the dim twilight of Coleridge. Romantic +he is, but one note of Heine takes us into +a different world: for instance, Heine’s quite +ordinary adventures in the Harz Mountains +convey a spell and glamour that takes us +over a borderland that Lermontov never +crossed.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more splendid than +Lermontov’s descriptions; but they are, compared +with those of Western poets, concrete, +as sharp as views in a camera obscura. He +never ate the roots of “relish sweet, the +honey wild and manna dew” of the “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Belle +Dame Sans Merci</span>”; he wrote of places where +Kubla Khan might have wandered, of “ancestral +voices prophesying war,” but one has +only to quote that line to see that Lermontov’s +poetic world, compared with Coleridge’s, is +solid fact beside intangible dream.</p> + +<p>Compared even with Musset and Victor +Hugo, how much nearer the earth Lermontov +is than either of them! Victor Hugo dealt +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>118]</a></span> +with just the same themes; but in Lermontov, +the most splendid painter of mountains +imaginable, you never hear</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> +<span class="i0">“Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne,”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>and you know that it will never drive the +Russian poet to frenzy. On the other hand, +you never get Victor Hugo’s extravagance +and absurdities. Or take Musset; Musset +dealt with romantic themes <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">si quis alius</i>; but +when he deals with a subject like Don Juan, +which of all subjects belonged to the age of +Pushkin and Lermontov, he writes lines like +these—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> +<span class="i0">“Faible, et, comme le lierre, ayant besoin d’autrui;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et ne le cachant pas, et suspendant son âme,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Comme un luth éolien, aux lèvres de la nuit.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Here again we are confronted with a different +kind of imagination. Or take a bit of sheer +description—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> +<span class="i0">“Pâle comme l’amour, et de pleurs arrosée,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">La nuit aux pieds d’argent descend dans la rosée.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>You never find the Russian poet impersonating +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>119]</a></span> +nature like this, and creating from objects +such as the “yellow bees in the ivy bloom” +forms more real than living man. The objects +themselves suffice. Lermontov sang of disappointed +love over and over again, but never +did he create a single image such as—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> +<span class="i0">“Elle aurait aimé, si l’orgueil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pareil à la lampe inutile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Qu’on allume près d’un cercueil,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">N’eut veillé sur son coeur stérile.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In his descriptive work he is more like Byron; +but Byron was far less romantic and far less +imaginative than Lermontov, although he +invented Byronism, and shattered the crumbling +walls of the eighteenth century that +surrounded the city of romance, and dallied +with romantic themes in his youth. All his +best work, the finest passages of <i>Childe +Harold</i>, and the whole of <i>Don Juan</i>, were +slices of his own life and observation, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">choses +vues</i>; he never created a single character that +was not a reflection of himself; and he never +entered into the city whose walls he had +stormed, and where he had planted his flag.</p> + +<p>This does not mean that Lermontov is +inferior to the Western romantic poets. It +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>120]</a></span> +simply means that the Russian poet is—and +one might add the Russian poets are—different. +And, indeed, it is this very difference,—what +he did with this peculiar realistic paste in his +composition,—that constitutes his unique excellence. +So far from its being a vice, he made it +into his especial virtue. Lermontov sometimes, +in presenting a situation and writing a poem +on a fact, presents that situation and that +fact without exaggeration, emphasis, adornment, +imagery, metaphor, or fancy of any +kind, in the language of everyday life, and at +the same time he achieves poetry. This was +Wordsworth’s ideal, and he fulfilled it.</p> + +<p>A case in point is his long poem on the +Oprichnik, which has been mentioned; and +some of the most striking examples of this +unadorned and realistic writing are to be +found in his lyrics. In the “Testament,” for +example, where a wounded officer gives his +last instructions to his friend who is going +home on leave—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I want to be alone with you,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A moment quite alone.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The minutes left to me are few,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">They say I’ll soon be gone.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>121]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And you’ll be going home on leave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then say ... but why? I do believe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There’s not a soul, who’ll greatly care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To hear about me over there.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And yet if some one asks you there,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let us suppose they do—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell them a bullet hit me here,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The chest,—and it went through.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say I died and for the Tsar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say what fools the doctors are;—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that I shook you by the hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thought about my native land.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My father and my mother, too!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">They may be dead by now;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To tell the truth, it wouldn’t do<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To grieve them anyhow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If one of them is living, say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I’m bad at writing home, and they<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have sent us to the front, you see,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that they needn’t wait for me.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">We had a neighbour, as you know,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And you remember I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she ... How very long ago<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It is we said good-bye!<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>122]</a></span> +<span class="i0">She won’t ask after me, nor care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But tell her ev’rything, don’t spare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her empty heart; and let her cry;—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To her it doesn’t signify.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The language is the language of ordinary +everyday conversation. Every word the officer +says might have been said by him in ordinary +life, and there is not a note that jars; the speech +is the living speech of conversation without +being slang: and the result is a poignant +piece of poetry. Another perhaps still more +beautiful and touching example is the cradle-song +which a mother sings to a Cossack baby, +in which again every word has the native +savour and homeliness of a Cossack woman’s +speech, and every feeling expressed is one +that she would have felt. A third example is +“Borodino,” an account of the famous battle +told by a veteran, as a veteran would tell it. +Lermontov’s fishes never talk like big whales.</p> + +<p>All Russian poets have this gift of reality +of conception and simplicity of treatment in +a greater or a lesser degree; perhaps none has +it in such a supreme degree as Lermontov. +The difference between Pushkin’s style and +Lermontov’s is that, when you read Pushkin, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>123]</a></span> +you think: “How perfectly and how simply +that is said! How in the world did he +do it?” You admire the “magic hand of +chance.” In reading Lermontov at his +simplest and best, you do not think about +the style at all, you simply respond to what +is said, and the style escapes notice in +its absolute appropriateness. Thus, what +Matthew Arnold said about Byron and Wordsworth +is true about Lermontov—there are +moments when Nature takes the pen from +his hand and writes for him.</p> + +<p>In Lermontov there is nothing slovenly; +but there is a great deal that is flat and +sullen. But if one reviews the great amount +of work he produced in his short life, one is +struck, not by its variety, as in the case of +Pushkin,—it is, on the contrary, limited and +monotonous in subject,—but by his authentic +lyrical inspiration, by the strength, the intensity, +the concentration of his genius, the +richness of his imagination, the wealth of +his palette, his gorgeous colouring and the +high level of his strong square musical verse. +And perhaps more than by anything else, +one is struck by the blend in his nature +and his work which has just been discussed, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>124]</a></span> +of romantic imagination and stern reality, of +soaring thought and earthly common-sense, as +though we had before us the temperament of +a Thackeray with the wings of a Shelley. +Lermontov is certainly, whichever way you +take him, one of the most astonishing figures, +and certainly the greatest purely lyrical +<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Erscheinung</i> in Russian literature.</p> + +<p>With the death of Lermontov in 1841, the +springtide of national song that began in the +reign of Alexander I comes to an end; for +the only poet he left behind him did not +survive him long. This was his contemporary +<span class="smcap">Koltsov</span> (1809-42), the greatest of Russian +folk-poets. The son of a cattle-dealer, after +a fitful and short-lived primary education at +the district school of Voronezh, he adopted +his father’s trade, and by a sheer accident a +cultivated young man of Moscow came across +him and his verses, and raised funds for their +publication.</p> + +<p>Koltsov’s verse paints peasant life as it is, +without any sentimentality or rhetoric; it is +described from the inside, and not from the +outside. This is the great difference between +Koltsov and other popular poets who came +later. Moreover, he caught and reproduced +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>125]</a></span> +the true <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Volkston</i> in his lyrics, so that they are +indistinguishable in accent from real folk-poetry. +Koltsov sings of the woods, and the +rustling rye, of harvest time and sowing; the +song of the love-sick girl reaping; the lonely +grave; the vague dreams and desires of the +peasant’s heart. His pictures have the dignity +and truth of Jean François Millet, and his +“lyrical cry” is as authentic as that of Burns. +His more literary poems are like Burns’ +English poems compared with his work in the +Scots. But he died the year after Lermontov, +of consumption, and with his death the curtain +was rung down on the first act of Russian +literature. When it was next rung up, it was +on the age of prose.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>126]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV<br /> +<br /> +<small>THE AGE OF PROSE</small></h2> + + +<p>When the curtain again rose on Russian +literature it was on an era of prose; and +the leading protagonist of that era, both +by his works of fiction and his dramatic +work, was <span class="smcap">Nicholas Gogol</span> [1809-52]. It is +true that in the thirties Russia began to +produce home-made novels. In Pushkin’s +story <i>The Queen of Spades</i>, when somebody +asks the old Countess if she wishes to read a +Russian novel, she says “A Russian novel? +Are there any?” This stage had been +passed; but the novels and the plays that +were produced at this time until the advent +of Gogol have been—deservedly for the +greater part—forgotten. And, just as Lermontov +was the successor of Pushkin in the +domain of poetry, so in the domain of satire +Gogol was the successor of Griboyedov; and +in creating a national work he was the heir +of Pushkin.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>127]</a></span> +Gogol was a Little Russian. He was born +in 1809 near Poltava, in the Cossack country, +and was brought up by his grandfather, a +Cossack; but he left the Ukraine and settled +in 1829 in St. Petersburg, where he obtained +a place in a Government office. After an +unsuccessful attempt to go on the stage, and +a brief career as tutor, he was given a professorship +of History; but he failed here also, +and finally turned to literature. The publication +of his first efforts gained him the acquaintance +of the literary men of the day, and he +became the friend of Pushkin, who proved a +valuable friend, adviser, and critic, and urged +him to write on the life of the people. He +lived in St. Petersburg from 1829 to 1836; +and it was perhaps home-sickness which +inspired him to write his Little Russian +sketches—<i>Evenings on a Farm on the Dikanka</i>,—which +appeared in 1832, followed by <i>Mirgorod</i>, +a second series, in 1834.</p> + +<p>Gogol’s temperament was romantic. He +had a great deal of the dreamer in him, a +touch of the eerie, a delight in the supernatural, +an impish fancy that reminds one +sometimes of Hoffmann and sometimes of +R. L. Stevenson, as well as a deep religious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>128]</a></span> +vein which was later on to dominate and oust +all his other qualities. But, just as we find +in the Russian poets a curious mixture of +romanticism and realism, of imagination and +common-sense, so in Gogol, side by side with +his imaginative gifts, which were great, there +is a realism based on minute observation. +In addition to this, and tempering his penetrating +observation, he had a rich streak +of humour, a many-sided humour, ranging +from laughter holding both its sides, to a +delicate and half melancholy chuckle, and in +his later work to biting irony.</p> + +<p>In the very first story of his first book, +“The Fair of Sorochinetz,” we are plunged into +an atmosphere that smells of Russia in a way +that no other Russian book has ever yet +savoured of the soil. We are plunged into the +South, on a blazing noonday, when the corn is +standing in sheaves and wheat is being sold at +the fair; and the fair, with its noise, its smell +and its colour, rises before us as vividly as +Normandy leaps out of the pages of Maupassant, +or Scotland from the pages of Stevenson. +And just as Andrew Lang once said that +probably only a Scotsman, and a Lowland +Scotsman, could know how true to life the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>129]</a></span> +characters in <i>Kidnapped</i> were, so it is probable +that only a Russian, and indeed a Little Russian, +appreciates to the full how true to life are +the people, the talk, and the ambient air in the +tales of Gogol. And then we at once get that +hint of the supernatural which runs like a +scarlet thread through all these stories; the +rumour that the <i>Red Jacket</i> has been observed +in the fair; and the <i>Red Jacket</i>, so the gossips +say, belongs to a little Devil, who being turned +out of Hell as a punishment for some misdemeanour—probably +a good intention—established +himself in a neighbouring barn, and +from home-sickness took to drink, and drank +away all his substance; so that he was obliged +to pawn his red jacket for a year to a Jew, +who sold it before the year was out, whereupon +the buyer, recognizing its unholy origin, +cut it up into bits and threw it away, +after which the Devil appeared in the shape +of a pig every year at the fair to find the +pieces. It is on this Red Jacket that the +story turns.</p> + +<p>In this first volume, the supernatural plays +a predominant part throughout; the stories +tell of water-nymphs, the Devil, who steals +the moon, witches, magicians, and men who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>130]</a></span> +traffic with the Evil One and lose their souls. +In the second series, <i>Mirgorod</i>, realism comes +to the fore in the stories of “The Old-Fashioned +Landowners” and “The Quarrel +of the Two Ivans.” These two stories contain +between them the sum and epitome of +the whole of one side of Gogol’s genius, the +realistic side. In the one story, “The Old-Fashioned +Landowners,” we get the gentle +good humour which tells the charming tale +of a South Russian Philemon and Baucis, +their hospitality and kindliness, and the loneliness +of Philemon when Baucis is taken away, +told with the art of La Fontaine, and with +many touches that remind one of Dickens. +The other story, “The Quarrel of the Two +Ivans,” who are bosom friends and quarrel +over nothing, and are, after years, on the +verge of making it up when the mere mention +of the word “goose” which caused the quarrel +sets alight to it once more and irrevocably, +is in Gogol’s richest farcical vein, with just a +touch of melancholy.</p> + +<p>And in the same volume, two <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">nouvelles</i>, +<i>Tarass Bulba</i> and <i>Viy</i>, sum up between them +the whole of the other side of Gogol’s genius. +<i>Tarass Bulba</i>, a short historical novel, with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>131]</a></span> +its incomparably vivid picture of Cossack life, +is Gogol’s masterpiece in the epic vein. It is +as strong and as direct as a Border ballad. +<i>Viy</i>, which tells of a witch, is the most +creepy and imaginative of his supernatural +stories.</p> + +<p>Later, he published two more collections of +stories: <i>Arabesques</i> (1834) and <i>Tales</i> (1836). +In these, poetry, witches, water-nymphs, +magicians, devils, and epic adventure are all +left behind. The element of the fantastic +still subsists, as in the “Portrait,” and of the +grotesque, as in the story of the major who +loses his nose, which becomes a separate +personality, and wanders about the town. +But his blend of realism and humour comes +out strongly in the story of “The Carriage,” +and his blend of realism and pathos still +more strongly in the story of “The Overcoat,” +the story of a minor public servant +who is always shivering and whose dream +it is to have a warm overcoat. After years +of privation he saves enough money to +buy one, and on the first day he wears it, it +is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his +ghost haunts the streets. This story is the +only begetter of the large army of pathetic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>132]</a></span> +figures of failure that crowd the pages of +Russian literature.</p> + +<p>While Gogol had been writing and publishing +these tales, he had also been steadily writing +for the stage; but here the great difficulty +and obstacle was the Censorship, which was +almost as severe as it was in England at the +end of the reign of Edward VII. But, by a +curious paradox, the play, which you would +have expected the Censorship to forbid before +all other plays, <i>The Revisor</i>, or <i>Inspector-General</i>, +was performed. This was owing to +the direct intervention of the Emperor. <i>The +Revisor</i> is the second comic masterpiece of the +Russian stage. The plot was suggested to +Gogol by Pushkin. The officials of an obscure +country town hear the startling news that a +Government Inspector is arriving incognito +to investigate their affairs. A traveller from +St. Petersburg—a fine natural liar—is taken +for the Inspector, plays up to the part, +and gets away just before the arrival of the +real Inspector, which is the end of the play. +The play is a satire on the Russian bureaucracy. +Almost every single character in it +is dishonest; and the empty-headed, and +irrelevant hero, with his magnificent talent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>133]</a></span> +for easy lying, is a masterly creation. The +play at once became a classic, and retains all +its vitality and comic force to-day. There is +no play which draws a larger audience on +holidays in St. Petersburg and Moscow.</p> + +<p>After the production of <i>The Revisor</i>, Gogol +left Russia for ever and settled in Rome. He +had in his mind a work of great importance +on which he had already been working for +some time. This was his <i>Dead Souls</i>, his +most ambitious work, and his masterpiece. It +was Pushkin who gave him the idea of the +book. The hero of the book, Chichikov, +conceives a brilliant idea. Every landlord +possessed so many serfs, called “souls.” +A revision took place every ten years, and +the landlord had to pay for poll-tax on +the “souls” who had died during that period. +Nobody looked at the lists between the +periods of revision. Chichikov’s idea was to +take over the dead souls from the landlord, +who would, of course, be delighted to be rid +of the fictitious property and the real tax, +to register his purchases, and then to mortgage +at a bank at St. Petersburg or Moscow, the +“souls,” which he represented as being in +some place in the Crimea, and thus make +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>134]</a></span> +money enough to buy “souls” of his own. +The book tells of the adventures of Chichikov +as he travels over Russia in search of dead +“souls,” and is, like Mr. Pickwick’s adventures, +an Odyssey, introducing us to every kind and +manner of man and woman. The book was +to be divided in three parts. The first +part appeared in 1842. Gogol went on +working at the second and third parts until +1852, when he died. He twice threw the +second part of the work into the fire when it +was finished; so that all we possess is the +first part, and the second part printed from an +incomplete manuscript. The second part was +certainly finished when he destroyed it, and +it is probable that the third part was sketched. +He had intended in the second part to work +out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, and +to give to the world his complete message. +Persecuted by a dream he was unable to realize +and an ambition which he was not able to +fulfil, Gogol was driven inwards, and his natural +religious feeling grew more intense and made +him into an ascetic and a recluse. This break +in the middle of his career is characteristic of +Russia. Tolstoy, of course, furnishes the most +typical example of the same thing. But it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>135]</a></span> +a common Russian characteristic for men +midway in a successful career to turn aside +from it altogether, and seek consolation in +the things which are not of this world.</p> + +<p>Gogol’s <i>Dead Souls</i> made a deep impression +upon educated Russia. It pleased the enthusiasts +for Western Europe by its reality, +its artistic conception and execution, and by its +social ideas; and it pleased the Slavophile +Conservatives by its truth to life, and by its +smell of Russia. When the first chapter was +read aloud to Pushkin, he said, when Gogol +had finished: “God, what a sad country +Russia is!” And it is certainly true, that +amusing as the book is, inexpressibly comic +as so many of the scenes are, Gogol does +not flatter his country or his countrymen; +and when Russians read it at the time it +appeared, many must have been tempted +to murmur “<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">doux pays!</i>”—as they would, +indeed, now, were a writer with the genius +of a Gogol to appear and describe the adventures +of a modern Chichikov; for, though +circumstances may be entirely different, although +there are no more “souls” to be +bought or sold, Chichikov is still alive—and +as Gogol said, there was probably not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>136]</a></span> +one of his readers who after an honest self-examination, +would not wonder if he had +not something of Chichikov in him, and who +if he were to meet an acquaintance at that +moment, would not nudge his companion and +say: “There goes Chichikov.” “And who +and what is Chichikov?” The answer is: “A +scoundrel.” But such an entertaining scoundrel, +so abject, so shameless, so utterly devoid +of self-respect, such a magnificent liar, so +plausible an impostor, so ingenious a cheat, +that he rises from scoundrelism almost to +greatness.</p> + +<p>There is, indeed, something of the greatness +of Falstaff in this trafficker of dead “souls.” +His baseness is almost sublime. He in any +case merits a place in the gallery of humanity’s +typical and human rascals, where Falstaff, +Tartuffe, Pecksniff, and Count Fosco reign. +He has the great saving merit of being human; +nor can he be accused of hypocrisy. His +coachman, Selifan, who got drunk with every +“decent man,” is worthy of the creator of +Sam Weller. But what distinguishes Gogol +in his <i>Dead Souls</i> from the great satirists of +other nations, and his satire from the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">saeva +indignatio</i> of Swift, for instance, is that, after +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>137]</a></span> +laying bare to the bones the rascality of his +hero, he turns round on his audience and tells +them that there is no cause for indignation; +Chichikov is only a victim of a ruling passion—gain; +perhaps, indeed, in the chill existence +of a Chichikov, there may be something +which will one day cause us to humble ourselves +on our knees and in the dust before the +Divine Wisdom. His irony is lined with +indulgence; his sleepless observation is tempered +by fundamental charity. He sees what +is mean and common clearer than any one, +but he does not infer from it that life, or mankind, +or the world is common or mean. He +infers the opposite. He puts Chichikov no +lower morally than he would put Napoleon, +Harpagon, or Don Juan—all of them victims +of a ruling passion, and all of them great by +reason of it—for Chichikov is also great in +rascality, just as Harpagon was great in +avarice, and Don Juan great in profligacy. +And this large charity blent with biting irony +is again peculiarly Russian.</p> + +<p><i>Dead Souls</i> is a deeper book than any of +Gogol’s early work. It is deep in the same +way as <i>Don Quixote</i> is deep; and like <i>Don +Quixote</i> it makes boys laugh, young men +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>138]</a></span> +think, and old men weep. Apart from its +philosophy and ideas, <i>Dead Souls</i> had a great +influence on Russian literature as a work of +art. Just as Pushkin set Russian poetry free +from the high-flown and the conventional, so +did Gogol set Russian fiction free from the +dominion of the grand style. He carried +Pushkin’s work—the work which Pushkin +had accomplished in verse and adumbrated +in prose—much further; and by depicting +ordinary life, and by writing a novel without +any love interest, with a Chichikov for a +hero, he created Russian realism. He described +what he saw without flattery and +without exaggeration, but with the masterly +touch, the instinctive economy, the sense of +selection of a great artist.</p> + +<p>This, at the time it was done, was a revolution. +Nobody then would have dreamed it +possible to write a play or a novel without +a love-motive; and just as Pushkin revealed +to Russia that there was such a thing as +Russian landscape, Gogol again, going one +better, revealed the fascination, the secret +and incomprehensible power that lay in the +flat monotony of the Russian country, and the +inexhaustible source of humour, absurdity, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>139]</a></span> +irony, quaintness, farce, comedy in the +everyday life of the ordinary people. So +that, however much his contemporaries might +differ as to the merits or demerits, the harm +or the beneficence, of his work, he left his +nation with permanent and classic models of +prose and fiction and stories, just as Pushkin +had bequeathed to them permanent models +of verse.</p> + +<p>Gogol wrote no more fiction after <i>Dead +Souls</i>. In 1847 <i>Passages from a Correspondence +with a Friend</i> was published, which +created a sensation, because in the book +Gogol preached submission to the Government, +both spiritual and temporal. The +Western enthusiasts and the Liberals in +general were highly disgusted. One can +understand their disgust; it is less easy to +understand their surprise; for Gogol had +never pretended to be a Liberal. He showed +up the evils of Bureaucracy and the follies and +weaknesses of Bureaucrats, because they were +there, just as he showed up the stinginess +of misers and the obstinacy of old women. +But it is quite as easy for a Conservative +to do this as it is for a Liberal, and quite as +easy for an orthodox believer as for an atheist. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>140]</a></span> +But Gogol’s contemporaries had not realized +the tempest that had been raging for a long +time in Gogol’s soul, and which he kept to +himself. He had always been religious, and +now he became exclusively religious; he made +a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; he spent his +substance in charity, especially to poor +students; and he lived in asceticism until he +died, at the age of forty-three. What a waste, +one is tempted to say—and how often one is +tempted to say this in the annals of Russian +literature—and yet, one wonders!</p> + +<p>What we possess of the second part of +<i>Dead Souls</i> is in Gogol’s best vein, and of +course one cannot help bitterly regretting that +the rest was destroyed or possibly never +written; but one wonders whether, had he +not had within him the intensity of feeling +which led him ultimately to renounce art, +he would have been the artist that he was; +whether he would have been capable of creating +so many-coloured a world of characters, +and whether the soil out of which those works +grew was not in reality the kind of soil out +of which religious renunciation was at last +bound to flower. However that may be, +Gogol left behind him a rich inheritance. He +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>141]</a></span> +is one of the great humorists of European +literature, and whoever gives England a +really fine translation of his work, will do +his country a service. Mérimée places Gogol +among the best <em>English</em> humorists. His +humour and his pathos were closely allied; +but there is no acidity in his irony. His work +may sometimes sadden you, but (as in the +case of Krylov’s two pigeons) it will never +bore you, and it will never leave you with a +feeling of stale disgust or a taste as of sharp +alum, for his work is based on charity, and it +has in its form and accent the precious gift +of charm. Gogol is an author who will always +be loved even as much as he is admired, and +his stories are a boon to the young; to +many a Russian boy and girl the golden gates +of romance have been opened by Gogol, the +destroyer of Russian romanticism, the inaugurator +of Russian realism.</p> + +<p>Side by side with fiction, another element +grew up in this age of prose, namely criticism. +Karamzin in the twenties had been the first +to introduce literary criticism, and critical +appreciations of Pushkin’s work appeared +from time to time in the <i>European Messenger</i>. +<span class="smcap">Prince Vyazemsky</span>, whose literary activity +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>142]</a></span> +lasted from 1808-78, was a critic as well +as a poet and a satirist, a fine example of the +type of great Russian nobles so frequent in +Russian books, who were not only saturated +with culture but enriched literature with +their work, and carried on the tradition of +cool, clear wit, clean expression, and winged +phrase that we find in Griboyedov. <span class="smcap">Polevoy</span>, +a self-educated man of humble extraction, +was the first professional journalist, and +created the tradition of violent and fiery +polemics, which has lasted till this day in +Russian journalism. But the real founder of +Russian æsthetic, literary, and journalistic +criticism was <span class="smcap">Belinsky</span> (1811-1847).</p> + +<p>Like Polevoy, he was of humble extraction +and almost entirely self-educated. He lived +in want and poverty and ill-health. His life +was a long battle against every kind of +difficulty and obstacle; his literary production +was more than hampered by the Censorship, +but his influence was far-reaching and +deep. He created Russian criticism, and +after passing through several phases—a German +phase of Hegelian philosophy, Gallophobia, +enthusiasm for Shakespeare and +Goethe and for objective art, a French +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>143]</a></span> +phase of enthusiasm for art as practised in +France, ended finally in a didactic phase of +which the watchword was that Life was more +important than Art.</p> + +<p>The first blossoms of the new generation +of writers, Goncharov, Dostoyevsky, Herzen, +and others, grew up under his encouragement. +He expounded Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, +Griboyedov, Zhukovsky and the writers of the +past. His judgments have remained authoritative; +but some of his final judgments, which +were unshaken for generations, such as for +instance his estimates of Pushkin and Lermontov, +were much biassed and coloured by his +didacticism. He burnt what he had adored +in the case of Gogol, who, like Pushkin, became +for him too much of an artist, and not enough +of a social reformer. Whatever phase Belinsky +went through, he was passionate, impulsive, +and violent, incapable of being objective, or of +doing justice to an opponent, or of seeing two +sides to a question. He was a polemical and +fanatical knight errant, the prophet and +propagandist of Western influence, the bitter +enemy of the Slavophiles.</p> + +<p>The didactic stamp which he gave to Russian +æsthetic and literary criticism has remained +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>144]</a></span> +on it ever since, and differentiates it from the +literary and æsthetic criticism of the rest of +Europe, not only from that school of criticism +which wrote and writes exclusively under the +banner of “Art for Art’s Sake,” but from +those Western critics who championed the +importance of moral ideas in literature, just as +ardently as he did himself, and who deprecated +the theory of Art for Art’s sake just as strongly. +Thus it is that, from the beginning of Russian +criticism down to the present day, a truly +objective criticism scarcely exists in Russian +literature. Æsthetic criticism becomes a +political weapon. “Are you in my camp?” +if so, you are a good writer. “Are you in +my opponent’s camp?” then your god-gifted +genius is mere dross.</p> + +<p>The reason of this has been luminously stated +by Professor Brückner: “To the intelligent +Russian, without a free press, without the +liberty of assembly, without the right to free +expression of opinion, literature became the +last refuge of freedom of thought, the only +means of propagating higher ideas. He expected +of his country’s literature not merely +æsthetic recreation; he placed it at the service +of his aspirations.... Hence the striking +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>145]</a></span> +partiality, nay unfairness, displayed by the +Russians towards the most perfect works of +their own literature, when they did not respond +to the aims or expectations of their +party or their day.” And speaking of the +criticism that was produced after 1855, he +says: “This criticism is often, in spite of all +its giftedness, its ardour and fire, only a +mockery of all criticism. The work only +serves as an example on which to hang the +critics’ own views.... This is no reproach; we +simply state the fact, and fully recognize the +necessity and usefulness of the method. With +a backward society, ... this criticism was a +means which was sanctified by the end, the +spreading of free opinions.... Unhappily, +Russian literary criticism has remained till +to-day almost solely journalistic, <i>i. e.</i> didactic +and partisan. See how even now it treats +the most interesting, exceptional, and mighty +of all Russians, Dostoyevsky, merely because +he does not fit into the Radical mould! How +unjust it has been towards others! How it +has extolled to the clouds the representatives +of its own camp!” I quote Professor Brückner, +lest I should be myself suspected of being +partial in this question. The question, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>146]</a></span> +perhaps, may admit of further expansion. It is +not that the Russian critics were merely convinced +it was all-important that art should +have ideas at the roots of it, and had no +patience with a merely shallow æstheticism. +They went further; the ideas had to be of +one kind. A definite political tendency had +to be discerned; and if the critic disagreed +with that political tendency, then no amount +of qualities—not artistic excellence, form, +skill, style, not even genius, inspiration, depth, +feeling, philosophy—were recognized.</p> + +<p>Herein lies the great difference between +Russian and Western critics, between Sainte-Beuve +and Belinsky; between Matthew Arnold +and his Russian contemporaries. Matthew +Arnold defined the highest poetry as being a +criticism of life; but that would not have +prevented him from doing justice either to +a poet so polemical as Byron, or to a poet so +completely unpolitical, so sheerly æsthetic +as Keats; to Lord Beaconsfield as a novelist, +to Mr. Morley or Lord Acton as historians, +because their “tendency” or their “politics” +were different from his own. The most +biassed of English or French critics is broad-minded +compared to a Russian critic. Had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>147]</a></span> +Keats been a Russian poet, Belinsky would +have swept him away with contempt; Wordsworth +would have been condemned as reactionary; +and Swinburne’s politics alone +would have been taken into consideration. +At the present day, almost ten years after Professor +Brückner wrote his <i>History of Russian +Literature</i>, now that the press is more or less +free, save for occasional pin-pricks, now that +literary output is in any case unfettered, and +the stage freer than it is in England, the same +criticism still applies. Russian literary criticism +is still journalistic. There are and there +always have been brilliant exceptions, of +course, two of the most notable of which are +<span class="smcap">Volynsky</span> and <span class="smcap">Merezhkovsky</span>; but as a rule +the political camp to which the writer belongs +is the all-important question; and I know +cases of Russian politicians who have been +known to refuse to write, even in foreign reviews, +because they disapproved of the “tendency” +of those reviews, the tendency being +non-existent—as is generally the case with +English reviews,—and the review harbouring +opinions of every shade and tendency. You +would think that narrow-mindedness could no +further go than to refuse to let your work +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>148]</a></span> +appear in an impartial organ, lest in that same +organ an opinion opposed to your own might +appear also. But the cause of this is the same +now as it used to be, namely that, in spite of +there being a greater measure of freedom in +Russia, political liberty does not yet exist. +Liberty of assembly does not exist; liberty of +conscience only partially exists; the press is +annoyed and hampered by restrictions; and +the great majority of Russian writers are still +engaged in fighting for these things, and +therefore still ready to sacrifice fairness for +the greater end,—the achievement of political +freedom.</p> + +<p>Thus criticism in Russia became a question +of camps, and the question arises, what were +these camps? From the dawn of the age of +pure literature, Russia was divided into two +great camps: The Slavophiles and the +Propagandists of Western Ideas.</p> + +<p>The trend towards the West began with +the influence of Joseph Le Maistre and the +St. Petersburg Jesuits. In 1836, <span class="smcap">Chaadaev</span>, +an ex-guardsman who had served in the +Russian campaign in France and travelled a +great deal in Western Europe, and who shared +Joseph Le Maistre’s theory that Russia had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>149]</a></span> +suffered by her isolation from the West and +through the influence of the former Byzantine +Empire, published the first of his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Lettres sur +la Philosophie de l’Histoire</i> in the <i>Telescope</i> of +Moscow. This letter came like a bomb-shell. +He glorified the tradition and continuity of the +Catholic world. He said that Russia existed, +as it were, outside of time, without the tradition +either of the Orient or of the Occident, and that +the universal culture of the human race had +not touched it. “The atmosphere of the +West produces ideas of duty, law, justice, +order; we have given nothing to the world +and taken nothing from it; ... we have +not contributed anything to the progress of +humanity, and we have disfigured everything +we have taken from that progress. Hostile +circumstances have alienated us from the +general trend in which the social idea of +Christianity grew up; thus we ought to revise +our faith, and begin our education over again +on another basis.” The expression of these +incontrovertible sentiments resulted in the +exile of the editor of the <i>Telescope</i>, the dismissal +of the Censor, and in the official +declaration of Chaadaev’s insanity, who was +put under medical supervision for a year.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>150]</a></span> +Chaadaev made disciples who went further +than he did, <span class="smcap">Princess Volkonsky</span>, the +authoress of a notable book on the Orthodox +Church, and <span class="smcap">Prince Gagarin</span>, who both became +Catholics. This was one branch of Westernism. +Another branch, to which Belinsky +belonged, had no Catholic leanings, but +sought for salvation in socialism and atheism. +The most important figure in this branch is +<span class="smcap">Alexander Herzen</span> (1812-1870). His real +name was Yakovlev; his father, a wealthy +nobleman, married in Germany, but did not +legalize his marriage in Russia, so his children +took their mother’s name.</p> + +<p>Herzen’s career belongs rather to the history +of Russia than to the history of Russian literature; +were it not that, besides being one of the +greatest and most influential personalities of +his time, he was a great memoir-writer. He +began, after a mathematical training at the +University, with fiction, of which the best +example is a novel <i>Who is to Blame?</i> which +paints the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">génie sans portefeuille</i> of the +period that Turgenev was so fond of depicting. +Herzen was exiled on account of his oral propaganda, +first to Perm, and then to Vyatka. +In 1847, he left Russia for ever, and lived +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>151]</a></span> +abroad for the rest of his life, at first in Paris, +and afterwards in London, where he edited a +newspaper called <i>The Bell</i>.</p> + +<p>Herzen was a Socialist. Western Europe +he considered to be played out. He looked +upon Socialism as a new religion and a new +form of Christianity, which would be to the +new world what Christianity had been to the +old. The Russian peasants would play the +part of the Invasion of the Barbarians; and +the functions of the State would be taken +over by the Russian Communes on a basis of +voluntary and mutual agreement—the principle +of the Commune, of sharing all possessions +in common, being so near the fundamental +principle of Christianity.</p> + +<p>“A thinking Russian,” he wrote, “is the +most independent being in the world. What +can stop him? Consideration for the past? +But what is the starting-point of modern +Russian history if it be not a total negation +of nationalism and tradition?... What do +we care, disinherited minors that we are, for +the duties you have inherited? Can your +worn-out morality satisfy us? Your morality +which is neither Christian nor human, which +is used only in copybooks and for the ritual +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>152]</a></span> +of the law?” Again: “We are free because +we begin with our own liberation; we are +independent; we have nothing to lose or to +honour. A Russian will never be a protestant, +or follow the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">juste milieu</i> ... our civilization +is external, our corrupt morals quite +crude.”</p> + +<p>The great point Herzen was always making +was that Russia had escaped the baleful tradition +of Western Europe, and the hereditary +infection of Western corruption. Thus, in his +disenchantment with Western society and +his enthusiasm for the communal ownership +of land, he was at one with the Slavophiles; +where he differed from them was in accepting +certain Western ideas, and in thinking that a +new order of things, a new heaven and +earth, could be created by a social revolution, +which should be carried out by the Slavs. +His influence—he was one of the precursors +of Nihilism, for the seed he sowed, falling on +the peculiar soil where it fell, produced the +whirlwind as a harvest—belongs to history. +What belongs to literature are his memoirs, +<i>My Past and my Thoughts</i> (<i>Byloe i Dumy</i>), +which were written between 1852 and 1855. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>153]</a></span> +These memoirs of everyday life and encounters +with all sorts and conditions of extraordinary +men are in their subject-matter as exciting +as a novel, and, in their style, on a level with +the masterpieces of Russian prose, through +their subtle psychology, interest, wit, and +artistic form.</p> + +<p>Herzen lived to see his ideas bearing fruit +in the one way which of all others he would +have sought to avoid, namely in “militancy” +and terrorism. When in 1866, an attempt was +made by Karakozov to assassinate Alexander +II, and Herzen wrote an article repudiating +all political assassinations as barbarous, the +revolutionary parties solemnly denounced him +and his newspaper. <i>The Bell</i>, which had +already lost its popularity owing to Herzen’s +pro-Polish sympathies in 1863, ceased to have +any circulation. Thus he lived to see his vast +hopes shattered, the seed he had sown bearing +a fruit he distrusted, his dreams of regeneration +burst like a bubble, his ideals exploited +by unscrupulous criminals. He died in 1870, +leaving a name which is as great in Russian +literature as it is remarkable in Russian +history.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>154]</a></span> +Turning now to the <em>Slavophiles</em>, their idea +was that Russia was already in possession of +the best possible institutions,—orthodoxy, +autocracy, and communal ownership, and +that the West had everything to learn from +Russia. They pointed to the evils arising +from the feudal and aristocratic state, the +system of primogeniture in the West, the +higher legal status of women in Russia, and +the superiority of a communal system, which +leads naturally to a Consultative National +Assembly with unanimous decisions, over +the parliaments and party systems of the +West.</p> + +<p>The leader of the Slavophiles was <span class="smcap">Homyakov</span>, +a man of great culture; a dialectician, +a poet, and an impassioned defender of +orthodoxy. The best of his lyrics, which are +inspired by a profound love of his country +and belief in it, have great depth of feeling. +Besides Homyakov, there were other poets, +such as <span class="smcap">Tyutchev</span> and <span class="smcap">Ivan Aksakov</span>. Just +as the camp of Reform produced in Herzen +a supreme writer of memoirs, that of the +Slavophiles also produced a unique memoir +writer in the <span class="smcap">Serge Aksakov</span>, the father of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>155]</a></span> +the poet (1791-1859), who published his +<i>Family Chronicle</i> in 1856, and who describes +the life of the end of the eighteenth century, +and the age of Alexander. This book, one of +the most valuable historical documents in +Russian, and a priceless collection of biographical +portraits, is also a gem of Russian +prose, exact in its observation, picturesque +and perfectly balanced in its diction.</p> + +<p>Aksakov remembered with unclouded distinctness +exactly what he had seen in his childhood, +which he spent in the district of Orenburg. +He paints the portraits of his grandfather and +his great-aunt. We see every detail of the +life of a backwoodsman of the days of +Catherine II. We see the noble of those days, +simple and rustic in his habits as a peasant, +almost entirely unlettered, and yet a gentleman +through and through, unswerving in +maintaining the standard of morals and +traditions which he considers due to his ancient +lineage. We see every hour of the day of his +life in the country; we hear all the details of +the family life, the marriage of his son, the +domestic troubles of his sister.</p> + +<p>What strikes one most, perhaps, besides +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>156]</a></span> +the contrast between the primitive simplicity +of the habits and manners of the life described, +and the astoundingly gentlemanlike feelings of +the man who leads this quiet and rustic life in +remote and backward conditions, is that there +is not a hint or suspicion of anything antiquated +in the sentiments and opinions we see +at play. The story of Aksakov’s grandfather +might be that of any country gentleman in +any country, at any epoch, making allowances +for a certain difference in manners and +customs and conditions which were peculiar +to the epoch in question, the existence of +serfdom, for instance—although here, too, the +feeling with regard to manners described is +startlingly like the ideal of good manners of +any epoch, although the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mœurs</i> are sometimes +different. The story is as vivid and as interesting +as that of any novel, as that of the +novels of Russian writers of genius, and it +has the additional value of being true. And +yet we never feel that Aksakov has a thought +of compiling a historical document for the +sake of its historical interest. He is making +history unawares, just as Monsieur Jourdain +talked prose without knowing it; and, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>157]</a></span> +whether he was aware of it or not, he wrote +perfect prose. No more perfect piece of +prose writing exists. The style flows on like +a limpid river; there is nothing superfluous, +and not a hesitating touch. It is impossible +to put down the narrative after once beginning +it, and I have heard of children who +read it like a fairy-tale. One has the sensation, +in reading it, of being told a story by +some enchanting nurse, who, when the usual +question, “Is it true?” is put to her, could +truthfully answer, “Yes, it is true.” The +pictures of nature, the portraits of the people, +all the good and all the bad of the good and +the bad old times pass before one with epic +simplicity and the magic of a fairy-tale. One +is spellbound by the charm, the dignity, the +good-nature, the gentle, easy accent of the +speaker, in whom one feels convinced not only +that there was nothing common nor mean, +but to whom nothing was common or mean, +who was a gentleman by character as well +as by lineage, one of God’s as well as one of +Russia’s nobility.</p> + +<p>There is no book in Russian which, for its +entrancing interest as well as for its historical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>158]</a></span> +value, so richly deserves translation into +English; only such a translation should be +made by a stylist—that is, by a man who +knows how to speak and write his mother +tongue perspicuously and simply.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>159]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER V<br /> +<br /> +<small>THE EPOCH OF REFORM</small></h2> + + +<p>For seven years after the death of Belinsky +in 1848, all literary development ceased. This +period was the darkest hour before the dawn +of the second great renascence of Russian +literature. Criticism was practically non-existent; +the Slavophiles were forbidden to +write; the Westernizers were exiled. An +increased severity of censorship, an extreme +suspicion and drastic measures on the part +of the Government were brought about by +the fears which the Paris revolution of 1848 +had caused. The Westernizers felt the +effects of this as much as the Slavophiles; +a group of young literary men, schoolmasters +and officers, the Petrashevtsy, called after +their leader, a Foreign Office official <span class="smcap">Petrashevsky</span>, +met together on Fridays and debated +on abstract subjects; they discussed +the emancipation of the serfs, read Fourier +and Lamennais, and considered the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>160]</a></span> +establishment of a secret press: the scheme of a +popular propaganda was thought of, but +nothing had got beyond talk—and the whole +thing was in reality only talk—when the +society was discovered by the police and its +members were punished with the utmost +severity. Twenty-one of them were condemned +to death, among whom was Dostoyevsky, +who, being on the army list, was accused +of treason. They were reprieved on the scaffold; +some sent into penal servitude in Siberia, +and some into the army. This marked one of +the darkest hours in the history of Russian +literature. And from this date until 1855, +complete stagnation reigned. In 1855 the +Emperor Nicholas died during the Crimean +War; and with the accession of his son +Alexander II, a new era dawned on Russian +literature, the Era of the Great Reforms. +The Crimean War and the reforms which +followed it—the emancipation of the serfs, +the creation of a new judicial system, and +the foundation of local self-government—stabbed +the Russian soul into life, relieved +it of its gag, produced a great outburst of +literature which enlarged and enriched the +literature of the world, and gave to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>161]</a></span> +world three of its greatest novelists: Turgenev, +Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Ivan Turgenev</span> (1816-83), whose name is +of Tartar origin, came of an old family which +had frequently distinguished itself in the +annals of Russian literature by a fearless +outspokenness. He began his literary career +by writing verse (1843); but, like Maupassant, +he soon understood that verse was not his +true vehicle, and in 1847 gave up writing +verse altogether; in that year he published +in <i>The Contemporary</i> his first sketch of +peasant life, <i>Khor and Kalinych</i>, which afterwards +formed part of his <i>Sportsman’s Sketches</i>, +twenty-four of which he collected and published +in 1852. The Government rendered +Turgenev the same service as it had done to +Pushkin, in exiling him to his own country +estate for two years. When, after the two +years, this forced exile came to an end, he +went into another kind of exile of his own +accord; he lived at first at Baden, and then +in Paris, and only reappeared in Russia from +time to time; this accounts for the fact that, +although Turgenev belongs chronologically +to the epoch of the great reforms, the Russia +which he paints was really more like the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>162]</a></span> +Russia before that epoch; and when he tried +to paint the Russia that was contemporary to +him his work gave rise to much controversy.</p> + +<p>His <i>Rudin</i> was published in 1856, <i>The +Nest of Gentlefolk</i> in 1859, <i>On the Eve</i> in 1860, +<i>Fathers and Sons</i> in 1862, <i>Smoke</i> in 1867. +Turgenev did for Russian literature what +Byron did for English literature; he led +the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout +all Europe. And in Europe his work +reaped a glorious harvest of praise. Flaubert +was astounded by him, George Sand looked +up to him as to a Master, Taine spoke of his +work as being the finest artistic production +since Sophocles. In Turgenev’s work, Europe +not only discovered Turgenev, but it discovered +Russia, the simplicity and the naturalness +of the Russian character; and this came +as a revelation. For the first time, Europe +came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin +was the first to paint; for the first time +Europe came into contact with the Russian +soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation +which accounts for the fact of Turgenev +having received in the West an even greater +meed of praise than he was perhaps entitled +to.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>163]</a></span> +In Russia, Turgenev attained almost instant +popularity. His <i>Sportsman’s Sketches</i> +made him known, and his <i>Nest of Gentlefolk</i> +made him not only famous but universally +popular. In 1862 the publication of his +masterpiece <i>Fathers and Sons</i> dealt his reputation +a blow. The revolutionary elements +in Russia regarded his hero, Bazarov, as a +calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary +elements in Russia looked upon <i>Fathers and +Sons</i> as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he +satisfied nobody. He fell between two stools. +This, perhaps, could only happen in Russia +to this extent; and for the same reason as +that which made Russian criticism didactic. +The conflicting elements of Russian society +were so terribly in earnest in fighting their +cause, that any one whom they did not regard +as definitely for them was at once considered +an enemy, and an impartial delineation of +any character concerned in the political +struggle was bound to displease both parties. +If a novelist drew a Nihilist, he must either be +a hero or a scoundrel, if either the revolutionaries +or the reactionaries were to be pleased. +If in England the militant suffragists suddenly +had a huge mass of educated opinion behind +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>164]</a></span> +them and a still larger mass of educated public +opinion against them, and some one were to +draw in a novel an impartial picture of a +suffragette, the same thing would happen. +On a small scale, as far as the suffragettes +are concerned, it has happened in the case +of Mr. Wells. But, if Turgenev’s popularity +suffered a shock in Russia from which it with +difficulty recovered, in Western Europe it +went on increasing. Especially in England, +Turgenev became the idol of all that was +eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a +hall-mark of good taste.</p> + +<p>In Russia, Turgenev’s work recovered from +the unpopularity caused by his <i>Fathers and +Sons</i> when Nihilism became a thing of the +past, and revolution took an entirely different +shape; but, with the growing up of new +generations, his popularity suffered in a +different way and for different reasons. A +new element came into Russian literature with +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and later with Gorky, +and Turgenev’s work began to seem thin and +artificial beside the creations of these stronger +writers; but in Russia, where Turgenev’s +work has the advantage of being read in the +original, it had an asset which ensured it a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>165]</a></span> +permanent and safe harbour, above and +beyond the fluctuations of literary taste, the +strife of political parties, and the conflict of +social ideals; and that was its art, its poetry, +its style, which ensured it a lasting and imperishable +niche among the great classics of +Russian literature. And there it stands now. +Turgenev’s work in Russia is no longer disputed +or a subject of dispute. It is taken +for granted; and, whatever the younger +generation will read and admire, they will +always read and admire Turgenev first. His +work is a necessary part of the intellectual +baggage of any educated man and, especially, +of the educated adolescent.</p> + +<p>The position of Tennyson in England offers +in a sense a parallel to that of Turgenev in +Russia. Tennyson, like Turgenev, enjoyed +during his lifetime not only the popularity +of the masses, but the appreciation of all that +was most eclectic in the country. Then a +reaction set in. Now I believe the young +generation think nothing of Tennyson at all. +And yet nothing is so sure as his permanent +place in English literature; and that permanent +place is secured to him by his incomparable +diction. So it is with Turgenev. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>166]</a></span> +One cannot expect the younger generation +to be wildly excited about Turgenev’s ideas, +characters, and problems. They belong to an +epoch which is dead. At the same time, one +cannot help thinking that the most advanced +of the symbolist writers would not have been +sorry had he happened by chance to write +<i>Bezhin Meadow</i> and the <i>Poems in Prose</i>. +Just so one cannot help thinking that the +most modern of our poets, had he by accident +written <i>The Revenge</i> or <i>Tears, Idle Tears</i>, +would not have thrown them in the fire!</p> + +<p>There is, indeed, something in common +between Tennyson and Turgenev. They both +have something mid-Victorian in them. They +are both idyllic, and both of them landscape-lovers +and lords of language. They neither of +them had any very striking message to preach; +they both of them seem to halt, except on rare +occasions, on the threshold of passion; they +both of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and +in both of them there is an element of banality. +They both seem to a certain extent to be shut +off from the world by the trees of old parks, +where cultivated people are enjoying the air +and the flowers and the shade, and where +between the tall trees you get glimpses of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>167]</a></span> +silvery landscapes and limpid waters, and +soft music comes from the gliding boat. Of +course, there is more than this in Turgenev, +but this is the main impression.</p> + +<p>Pathos he has, of the finest, and passion he +describes beautifully from the outside, making +you feel its existence, but not convincing you +that he felt it himself; but on the other hand +what an artist he is! How beautifully his +pictures are painted; and how rich he is in +poetic feeling!</p> + +<p>Turgenev is above all things a poet. He +carried on the work of Pushkin, and he did +for Russian prose what Pushkin did for +Russian poetry; he created imperishable +models of style. His language has the same +limpidity and absence of any blur that we +find in Pushkin’s work. His women have +the same crystal radiance, transparent simplicity, +and unaffected strength; his pictures +of peasant life, and his country episodes +have the same truth to nature; as an artist +he had a severe sense of proportion, a perfect +purity of outline, and an absolute harmony +between the thought and the expression. +Now that modern Europe and England +have just begun to discover Dostoyevsky, it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>168]</a></span> +possible that a reaction will set in to the +detriment of Turgenev. Indeed, to a certain +extent this reaction has set in in Western +Europe, as M. Haumant, one of Turgenev’s +ablest critics and biographers, pointed out not +long ago. And, as the majority of Englishmen +have not the advantage of reading +him in the original, they will be unchecked +in this reaction, if it comes about, by their +appreciation of what is perhaps most durable +in his work. Yet to translate Turgenev adequately, +it would require an English poet +gifted with a sense of form and of words as +rare as that of Turgenev himself. However +this may be, there is no doubt about the +importance of Turgenev in the history of +Russian literature, whatever the future generations +in Russia or in Europe may think of his +work. He was a great novelist besides being +a great poet. Certainly he never surpassed +his early <i>Sportsman’s Sketches</i> in freshness +of inspiration and the perfection of artistic +execution.</p> + +<p>His <i>Bezhin Meadow</i>, where the children +tell each other bogey stories in the evening, +is a gem with which no other European literature +has anything to compare. <i>The Singers</i>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>169]</a></span> +<i>Death</i>, and many others are likewise incomparable. +<i>The Nest of Gentlefolk</i>, to which +Turgenev owed his great popularity, is quite +perfect of its kind, with its gallery of portraits +going back to the eighteenth century and to +the period of Alexander I; its lovable, human +hero Lavretsky, and Liza, a fit descendant of +Pushkin’s Tatiana, radiant as a star. All +Turgenev’s characters are alive; but, with +the exception of his women and the hero of +<i>Fathers and Sons</i>, they are alive in bookland +rather than in real life.</p> + +<p>George Meredith’s characters, for instance, +are alive, but they belong to a land or rather +a planet of his own making, and we should +never recognize Sir Willoughby Patterne in the +street, but we do meet women sometimes who +remind us of Clara Middleton and Carinthia +Jane. The same is true with regard to +Turgenev, although it is not another planet +he created, but a special atmosphere and epoch +to which his books exclusively belong, and +which some critics say never existed at all. +That is of no consequence. It exists for us +in his work.</p> + +<p>But perhaps what gave rise to accusations +of unreality and caricature against Turgenev’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>170]</a></span> +characters, apart from the intenser reality +of Tolstoy’s creations, by comparison with +which Turgenev’s suffered, was that Turgenev, +while professing to describe the present, and +while believing that he was describing the +present, was in reality painting an epoch +that was already dead. <i>Rudin</i>, <i>Smoke</i>, and +<i>On the Eve</i> have suffered more from the +passage of time. <i>Rudin</i> is a pathetic picture +of the type that Turgenev was so fond +of depicting, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">génie sans portefeuille</i>, a +latter-day Hamlet who can only unpack his +heart with words, and with his eloquence +persuade others to believe in him, and succeed +even in persuading himself to believe +in himself, until the moment for action +comes, when he breaks down. The subjects +of <i>Smoke</i> and <i>Spring Waters</i> are almost +identical; but, whereas <i>Spring Waters</i> is one +of the most poetical of Turgenev’s achievements, +<i>Smoke</i> seems to-day the most banal, +and almost to deserve Tolstoy’s criticism: +“In <i>Smoke</i> there is hardly any love of anything, +and very little pity; there is only love +of light and playful adultery; and therefore +the poetry of that novel is repulsive.” <i>On the +Eve</i>, which tells of a Bulgarian on the eve of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>171]</a></span> +the liberation of his country, suffers from +being written at a time when real Russians +were hard at work at that very task; and it +was on this account that the novel found little +favour in Russia, as the fiction paled beside +the reality.</p> + +<p>It was followed by Turgenev’s masterpiece, +for which time can only heighten one’s +admiration. <i>Fathers and Sons</i> is as beautifully +constructed as a drama of Sophocles; +the events move inevitably to a tragic close. +There is not a touch of banality from beginning +to end, and not an unnecessary word; the +portraits of the old father and mother, the +young Kirsanov, and all the minor characters +are perfect; and amidst the trivial +crowd, Bazarov stands out like Lucifer, the +strongest—the only strong character—that +Turgenev created, the first Nihilist—for if +Turgenev was not the first to invent the word, +he was the first to apply it in this sense.</p> + +<p>Bazarov is the incarnation of the Lucifer +type that recurs again and again in Russian +history and fiction, in sharp contrast to the +meek humble type of Ivan Durak. Lermontov’s +Pechorin was in some respects an +anticipation of Bazarov; so were the many +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>172]</a></span> +Russian rebels. He is the man who denies, +to whom art is a silly toy, who detests abstractions, +knowledge, and the love of Nature; +he believes in nothing; he bows to nothing; +he can break, but he cannot bend; he does +break, and that is the tragedy, but, breaking, +he retains his invincible pride, and</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“not cowardly he puts off his helmet,”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>and he dies “valiantly vanquished.”</p> + +<p>In the pages which describe his death Turgenev +reaches the high-water mark of his art, +his moving quality, his power, his reserve. +For manly pathos they rank among the +greatest scenes in literature, stronger than the +death of Colonel Newcome and the best of +Thackeray. Among English novelists it is, +perhaps, only Meredith who has struck such +strong, piercing chords, nobler than anything +in Daudet or Maupassant, more reserved than +anything in Victor Hugo, and worthy of the +great poets, of the tragic pathos of Goethe and +Dante. The character of Bazarov, as has been +said, created a sensation and endless controversy. +The revolutionaries thought him a +caricature and a libel, the reactionaries a +scandalous glorification of the Devil; and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>173]</a></span> +impartial men such as Dostoyevsky, who knew +the revolutionaries at first hand, thought the +type unreal. It is possible that Bazarov was +not like the Nihilists of the sixties; but in +any case as a figure in fiction, whatever the +fact may be, he lives and will continue to live.</p> + +<p>In <i>Virgin Soil</i>, Turgenev attempted to +paint the underground revolutionary movement; +here, in the opinion of all Russian +judges, he failed. The revolutionaries considered +their portraits here more unreal than +that of Bazarov; the Conservatives were +grossly caricatured; the hero Nezhdanov +was a type of a past world, another Rudin, +and not in the least like—so those who knew +them tell us—the revolutionaries of the day. +Solomin, the energetic character in the book, +was considered as unreal as Nezhdanov. +The wife of the reactionary Sipyagin is a +<i>pastiche</i> of the female characters of that type +in his other books; cleverly drawn, but a +completely conventional book character. The +redeeming feature in the book is Mariana, the +heroine, one of Turgenev’s finest ideal women; +and it is full, of course, of gems of descriptive +writing. The book was a complete failure, +and after this Turgenev went back to writing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>174]</a></span> +short stories. The result was a great disappointment +to Turgenev, who had thought +that, by writing a novel dealing with actual +life, he would please and reconcile all parties. +To this later epoch belong his matchless +<i>Poems in Prose</i>, one of the latest melodies +he sounded, a melody played on one string +of the lyre, but whose sweetness contained the +essence of all his music.</p> + +<p>Turgenev’s work has a historic as well as +an artistic value. He painted the Russian +gentry, and the type of gentry that was disappearing, +as no one else has done. His +landscape painting has been dwelt on; one +ought, perhaps, to add that, beautiful as it +is, it still belongs to the region of conventional +landscape painting; his landscape is the +orthodox Russian landscape, and is that +of the age of Pushkin, in which no bird +except a nightingale is mentioned, no flower +except a rose. This convention was not +really broken in prose until the advent of +Gorky.</p> + +<p>Reviewing Turgenev’s work as a whole, +any one who goes back to his books after a +time, and after a course of more modern and +rougher, stormier literature, will, I think, be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>175]</a></span> +surprised at its excellence and perhaps be +inclined to heave a deep sigh of relief. Some +of it will appear conventional; he will notice +a faint atmosphere of rose-water; he will +feel, if he has been reading the moderns, as a +traveller feels who, after an exciting but +painful journey, through dangerous ways and +unpleasant surroundings, suddenly enters a +cool garden, where fountains sob between +dark cypresses, and swans float majestically +on artificial lakes. There is an aroma of +syringa in the air; the pleasaunce is artistically +laid out, and full of fragrant flowers. +But he will not despise that garden for its +elegance and its tranquil seclusion, for its +trees cast large shadows; the nightingale +sings in its thickets, the moon silvers the calm +statues, and the sound of music on the waters +goes to the heart. Turgenev reminds one of +a certain kind of music, beautiful in form, not +too passionate and yet full of emotion, Schumann’s +music, for instance; if Pushkin is the +Mozart of Russian literature, Turgenev is the +Schumann; not amongst the very greatest, +but still a poet, full of inspired lyrical feeling; +and a great, a classic artist, the prose Virgil +of Russian literature.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>176]</a></span> +What Turgenev did for the country gentry, +<span class="smcap">Goncharov</span> (1812-91) did for the St. +Petersburg gentry. The greater part of his +work deals with the forties. Goncharov, a +noble (<i>dvoryanin</i>) by education, and according +to his own account by descent, though according +to another account he was of merchant +extraction, entered the Government service, +and then went round the world in a frigate, +a journey which he described in letters. Of +his three novels, <i>The Everyday Story</i>, <i>Oblomov</i>, +and <i>The Landslip</i>, <i>Oblomov</i> is the most +famous: in it he created a type which became +immortal; and Oblomov has passed into the +Russian language just as Tartuffe has passed +into the French language, or Pecksniff into +the English language. A chapter of the book +appeared in 1849, and the whole novel in +1859.</p> + +<p>Oblomov is the incarnation of what in +Russia is called <i>Halatnost</i>, which means the +propensity to live in dressing-gown and +slippers. It is told of Krylov, who was an +Oblomov of real life, and who spent most of his +time lying on a sofa, that one day somebody +pointed out to him that the nail on which +a picture was hanging just over the sofa +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>177]</a></span> +on which he was lying, was loose, and that the +picture would probably fall on his head. “No,” +said Krylov, not getting up, “the picture will +fall just beyond the sofa. I know the angle.” +The apathy of Oblomov, although to the outward +eye it resembles this mere physical inertness, +is subtly different. Krylov’s apathy was +the laziness of a man whose brain brought +forth concrete fruits; and who feels neither +the inclination nor the need of any other +exercise, either physical or intellectual. Oblomov’s +apathy is that of a brain seething +with the burning desires of a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vie intime</i>, +which all comes to nothing owing to a kind +of spiritual paralysis, “<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">une infirmité morale</span>.” +It is true he finds it difficult to put on +his socks, still more to get up, when he +is awake, impossible to change his rooms +although the ceiling is falling to bits, and +impossible not to lie on the sofa most of the +day; but the reason of this obstinate inertia +is not mere physical disinclination, it is the +result of a mixture of seething and simmering +aspirations, indefinite disillusions and apprehensions, +that elude the grasp of the will. +Oblomov is really the victim of a dream, of +an aspiration, of an ideal as bright and mobile +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>178]</a></span> +as a will-o’-the-wisp, as elusive as thistledown, +which refuses to materialize.</p> + +<p>The tragedy of the book lies in the effort +he makes to rise from his slough of apathy, +or rather the effort his friends encourage him +to make. Oblomov’s heart is made of pure +gold; his soul is of transparent crystal; there +is not a base flaw in the paste of his composition; +yet his will is sapped, not by words, +words, words, but by the inability to formulate +the shadows of his inner life. His friend +is an energetic German-Russian. He introduces +Oblomov to a charming girl, and together +they conspire to drag him from his apathy. +The girl, Olga, at first succeeds; she falls in +love with him, and he with her; he wants to +marry her, but he cannot take the necessary +step of arranging his affairs in a manner +which would make that marriage possible; and +gradually he falls back into a new stage of +apathy worse than the first; she realizes the +hopelessness of the situation, and they agree +to separate. She marries the energetic friend, +and Oblomov sinks into the comforts of a +purely negative life of complete inaction and +seclusion, watched over by a devoted housekeeper, +whom he ultimately marries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>179]</a></span> +The extraordinary subtlety of the psychology +of this study lies, as well as in other +things, in the way in which we feel that Olga +is not really happy with her excellent husband; +he is the man whom she respects; but Oblomov +is the man whom she loves, till the end; and +she would give worlds to respect him too if he +would only give her the chance. Oblomov +often defends his stagnation, while realizing +only too well what a misfortune it is; and +we sometimes feel that he is not altogether +wrong. The chapter that tells of his dream +in which his past life and childhood arise +before him in a haze of serene laziness is +one of the masterpieces of Russian prose. +The book is terribly real, and almost intolerably +sad.</p> + +<p>Goncharov’s third and last novel deals +with the life of a landed proprietor on the +Volga, and its main idea is the contrast +between the old generation before the reforms +and the new generation of Alexander II’s +day—a paler <i>Fathers and Sons</i>.</p> + +<p>To go back to criticism, the name of +<span class="smcap">Bakunin</span>, the apostle of destruction and the +incarnation of Russian Nihilism, belongs to +history; that of <span class="smcap">Grigoriev</span> must be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>180]</a></span> +mentioned as founding a school of thought which +preached the union of arts with the national +soil; he exercised a strong influence over +Dostoyevsky. <span class="smcap">Katkov</span>, whose influence was +at one time immense, originally belonged +to the circle of Herzen and Bakunin; he +became a professor of philosophy, but was +driven from his chair in the reaction of ’48, +and, being banished from erudition, he took up +a journalistic career and became the Editor +of the <i>Moscow News</i>. He was a Slavophile, +and when the rising in Poland broke out, +he headed the great wave of nationalist +feeling which passed over the country at that +time; he doubled the number of his subscribers, +and dealt a death-blow to Herzen’s +<i>Bell</i>. After 1866, he headed reactionary +journalism and became a Nationalist of the +narrowest kind; but he was of a higher +calibre than the Nationalists of later days. +Slavophile critics of another kind were <span class="smcap">Strakhov</span> +and <span class="smcap">Danilevsky</span>, like Dostoyevsky, +disciples of Grigoriev, who preached the last +word of Slavophilism and were opposed to all +foreign innovations.</p> + +<p>On the Radical side the leaders were +<span class="smcap">Chernyshevsky</span>, <span class="smcap">Dobrolyubov</span> and <span class="smcap">Pisarev</span>. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>181]</a></span> +Chernyshevsky, who translated John Stuart +Mill, and published a treatise on the æsthetic +relations of art and reality, served a sentence +of seven years’ hard labour and of twenty +years’ exile. His criticism—socialist propaganda, +and an attack on all metaphysics—does +not belong to literature, but his novel +<i>Shto dielat</i>—“What is to be done?”—had +an immense influence on his generation. It +deals with Nihilism. Dobrolyubov, who died +when he was twenty-four, belonged to the +same realistic school. His main theory was +that Russian literature is dominated by +Oblomov; that Chatsky, Pechorin, and Rudin +are all Oblomovs. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +followed Chernyshevsky in his +realistic philosophy, in his rejection of metaphysics, +in his theory that beauty is to be +sought in life only, and that the sole duty of +art is to help to illustrate life. Pisarev recognized +that Turgenev’s Bazarov was a picture +of himself, and he was pleased with the portrait. +Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov died young.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Vladimir Soloviev</span> (1853-1900), critic as +well as poet, moral philosopher, and theologian, +is one of the most interesting figures in +Russian literature. What is most remarkable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>182]</a></span> +about him, and what makes him stand out, a +radiant exception in Russian criticism, is his +absolute independence. He belonged to no +camp; he was a slave to no party cry; utterly +unselfish, his sole aim was to seek after the +truth for the sake of truth, and to proclaim +it. In an age of positivism, he was a believing +Christian, and the dream of his life +was a union of the Eastern and Western +Churches. He deals with this idea in a book +which he wrote in French and published in +Paris: <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’Église Russe et l’Église Universelle</i>. +He admired the older Slavophiles, but he +severely attacked the Nationalists, such as +Katkov. His range of subjects was great, +and his style was brilliant; like many great +thinkers, he was far ahead of his time, and +in his criticism of the <i>Intelligentsia</i> anticipated +some tendencies, which have become visible +since the revolution of 1905. He reminds one +at times of Mr. A. J. Balfour, and even of +Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with whose “orthodoxy” +he would have much sympathy; and +he deals with questions such as Woman’s +Suffrage in a way which exactly fits the present +day. He never became a Catholic, holding +that the Eastern Church <i>qua</i> Church had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>183]</a></span> +never been cut off from the West, and that +only one definite schism had been condemned; +but he believed in the necessity of a universal +Church. He was the first intellectual +Russian to point out to a generation which +took atheism as a matter of course that they +were possibly inferior instead of superior to +religion. He believed in Russia; he had +nothing against the Slavophile theory that +Russia had a divine mission; only he wished +to see that mission divinely performed. He +believed in the East of Christ, and not in that +of Xerxes. He died in 1900, before he had +finished his <i>Magnum Opus</i>, a work on moral +philosophy written on a religious basis. He +preached self-effacement; pity towards one’s +fellow men; and reverence towards the supernatural. +His whole work is a defence of +moral principles, written with the soul of +a poet, the knowledge of a scholar, and +the brilliance of a dialectician. It is only +lately that his books have gained the appreciation +which they deserve; they are certainly +more in harmony with the present generation +than with that of the sixties and the +seventies. His <i>Three Conversations</i> has been +translated into English. Vladimir Soloviev +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>184]</a></span> +stands in a niche of his own, isolated from the +crowd by his own originality, his brilliance, +and his prematurity; he was <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">intempestivus</i>.</p> + +<p>To the same epoch belong four other important +writers, each occupying a place apart +from the current stream of literary or political +influences: one because he was a satirist, +one because he wrote for the stage, and the +two others because one impartially, and the +other bitterly, dared to criticize the Radicals.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Michael Saltykov</span> (1826-89), who wrote +under the name of Shchedrin, holds a unique +place in Russian literature, not only because +he is a writer of genius, but because he is one +of the world’s great satirists. Unlike Russian +satirists before him, Krylov, Gogol, and +Griboyedov, good-humoured irony or sharp +rapier thrusts of wit do not suffice him; he +has in himself the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">saeva indignatio</i>, and he +expresses it with all the concentrated spite +that he can muster, which is all the more +deadly from being used with perfect control. +His work is bulky, and fills eleven thick +volumes; some of it is quite out of date and +at the present day almost unintelligible; but +all that deals with the fundamental essentials +of the Russian character, and not with the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>185]</a></span> +passing episodes of the day, has the freshness +of immortality. At the outset of his career, +he was banished to Vyatka, where he remained +from 1848-56, an exile, which gave him a rich +store of priceless material. His experiences +appeared in his <i>Sketches of Provincial Life</i> +in 1886-7.</p> + +<p>He describes the good old times and the +officials of the good old times, with diabolic +malice and with an unequalled eye for the +ironical, the comic, the topsy-turvy, and the +true; and while he is as observant as Gogol, +he is as bitter as Swift. He puts his characters +on the stage and makes them relate +their experiences; thus we hear how the +collector of the dues manages to combine +the maximum amount of robbery with the +minimum amount of inconvenience. In his +pictures of prison life, the prisoners tell +their own stories, sometimes with unaffected +frankness, sometimes with startling cynicism, +and sometimes the story is obscured by +a whole heap of lies. The prisoners are of +different classes; one is an ex-official who +states that he was a statistician who got into +trouble over his figures; wishing to levy dues +on a peasant’s property, he had demanded +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>186]</a></span> +the number, not of their bee-hives, but of +their bees, and wrote in his list: “The +peasant Sidorov possesses two horses, three +cows, nine sheep, one calf, and thirty-nine +thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven +bees.” Unfortunately he was betrayed by +the police inspector.</p> + +<p>Saltykov’s satire deals entirely with the +middle class, the high officials, the average +official, and the minor public servants; and his +best-known work, and one that has not aged +any more than Swift has aged, is his <i>History +of a City according to the original documents</i>.</p> + +<p>In this he tells of the city of <i>Glupov</i>, <i>Fool-City</i>, +where the people were such fools that +they were not content until they found some +one to rule them who was stupider than they +were themselves. The various phases Russia +had gone through are touched off; the mania +for regulations, the formalism, the official red-tape, +the persecution of independent thought, +and the oppression of original thinkers and +writers; the ultimate ideal is that introduced +by the last ruler of Glupov (the history lasts +from 1731 to 1826), of turning the country into +barracks and reducing every one and everything +to one level—in which the régime of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>187]</a></span> +the period of Nicholas I is satirized; until in +the final picture, as fine in its way as Pope’s +close of the <i>Dunciad</i>, the stream rises, and +refusing to be stopped by the dam, carries +everything away. The style parodies that +of the ancient chroniclers; and its chief +intent lies not in the satirizing of any particular +events or person, but in the shafts of light, +sometimes bitter, and sometimes inexpressibly +droll, it throws on the Russian system of +administration and on the Russian character.</p> + +<p>In his <i>Pompaduri</i>, Saltykov dissects and +vivisects the higher official,—the big-wig,—and +in his sketches from the “Domain of +Moderation and Accuracy,” he writes, in +little, the epic of the minor public servant—the +man who is never heard of, who is included +in the term of “the rest,” but who, nevertheless, +is a cogwheel in the machinery, without +which the big-wigs cannot act or execute. +No more supreme piece of art than this piece +of satire exists. The typical minor official +is drawn in all the variations of his miserable +and pitiable species, and in all the phases +of his ignoble and sometimes tragical career, +with a pen dipped in scorn and stinging +malice, not unblent with a grave pity, which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>188]</a></span> +always exists in the work of the greatest +satirists—“Peace to all such, but there was +one ...” for instance—and wielded with +terrible certainty of touch. This epic of the +<i>Molchalins</i> of life—the typical officials who +cease to be men—was the story of a great +part of the Russian population; and in its +essence, a great deal of it remains true to-day, +while all of it remains artistically enjoyable.</p> + +<p>Saltykov continued to write during the +whole of his long life. His field of satire +ranges from the days before serfdom to +the epoch of the reforms, extends to the +days of the Russo-Turkish War, and passes +the frontier into the West. It is impossible +here even to name all his works; but there +is one, written in the decline of his life, which +has a solid historical as well as a rich and +varied artistic interest. This is his <i>Poshenkhonskaya +Starina</i>; it is practically the +history of his childhood, his upbringing, and +the state of affairs which existed at that +time, the life lived by his parents and +their neighbours, the landed proprietors and +their serfs. With amazing impartiality, without +exaggeration, and yet with evidences +of deep feeling and passionate indignation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>189]</a></span> +all the more striking from being both rare and +expressed with reserve, he paints on a large +and crowded canvas the life of the masters +and their serfs. A long gallery of men and +women is opened to one; tragedy, comedy, +farce, all are here—in fact, life—life as it was +then in a remote corner of the country. Here +Saltykov’s spite and malice give way to higher +strokes of tragic irony and pity; and the +work has dignity as well as power In the +bulk of Saltykov’s early work there is much +dross, much venom, and much ephemeral +tinsel that has faded; the stuff of this book is +stern and enduring; its subject-matter would +not lose a particle of interest in translation. +The Russians have been ungrateful towards +Saltykov, and have been inclined to neglect +his work, the lasting element of which is one +of the most original, precious, and remarkable +possessions of Russian literature.</p> + +<p>The complement of Saltykov is <span class="smcap">Leskov</span> (or, +as he originally called himself, <i>Stebnitsky</i>). +The character of his work, its reception by +the reading public on the one hand, and by +the professional critics on the other, is one +of the most striking object-lessons in the +history of Russian literature and Russian +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>190]</a></span> +literary criticism. Leskov has been long +ago recognized by educated Russia as a writer +of the first rank; what is best in his work, +which is bulky and unequal, has the unmistakable +hall-mark of the classics; he is with +Gogol and Saltykov, and the novelists of the +first rank. Educated Russia is fully aware +of this. Nobody disputes Leskov his place, +nor denies him his supreme artistic talent, +his humour, his vividness, his colour, his +satire, the depth of his feeling, the richness +of his invention. In spite of this, there is no +Russian writer who has so acutely suffered +from the didactic and partisan quality of +Russian criticism.</p> + +<p>His literary career began in 1860. Like +Saltykov, he paints the period of transition +that followed the epoch of the great Reforms. +In spite of this, as late as 1902, no critical +biography, no serious work of criticism, had +been devoted to his books. All Russia had +read him, but literary criticism had ignored +him. It is as if English literary criticism had +ignored Dickens until 1900.</p> + +<p>The reason of this neglect is not far to +seek. Saltykov was an independent thinker; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>191]</a></span> +he belonged to no literary or political camp; +he criticized the partisans of both camps +with equal courage; and the partisans could +not and did not forgive him. Like Saltykov, +Leskov saw what was going on in Russia; +with penetrating insight and observation +he realized the evils of the old order; like +Saltykov, he was filled with indignation, +and perhaps to a greater degree than Saltykov, +he was filled with pity. But, whereas Saltykov’s +work was purely destructive—an onslaught +of brooms in the Augean stables—Leskov +begins where Saltykov ends. Like +Saltykov and like Gogol before him, the old +order inspires him with laughter, sometimes +with bitter laughter, at the absurdities of the +old régime and its results; but he does not confine +himself to destructive irony and sapping +satire. With <span class="smcap">Pisemsky</span>, another writer of first-class +talent, of the same epoch, Leskov was +the first Russian novelist—Griboyedov had +already anticipated such criticism in <i>Gore ot +Uma</i>, in his delineation of Chatsky,—to have +the courage to criticize the reformers, the +men of the new epoch; and his criticism was +not only negative but creative; he realized +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>192]</a></span> +that everything must be “reformed altogether.” +He then asked himself whether the +new men, who were engaged in the task of +reform, were equal to their task. He came +to the conclusion not only that they were +inadequate, but that they were setting about +the business the wrong way, and he had the +courage to say so. He was the first Russian +novelist to say he disbelieved in Liberals, +although he believed in Liberalism; and this +was a sentiment which no Liberal in Russia +could admit then, and one which they can +scarcely admit now.</p> + +<p>His criticism of the Liberals was creative, +and not negative, in this: that, instead of +confining himself to pointing out their weakness +and the mistaken course they were taking, +he did his best to point out the right path. +Dostoyevsky was likewise subjected to the +same ostracism. Turgenev suffered from it; +but the genius of Dostoyevsky and the art +of Turgenev overstepped the limits of all +barriers and frontiers. Europe acclaimed +them. Leskov’s criticism being more local, +the ostracism, although powerless to prevent +the popularity of his work in Russia, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>193]</a></span> +succeeded for a time in keeping him from the +notice of Western Europe. This barrier is now +being broken down. One of Leskov’s masterpieces, +<i>The Sealed Angel</i>, was lately translated +into English; but he is one of the most difficult +authors to translate because he is one of the +most native.</p> + +<p>A far bitterer and more pessimistic note is +heard in the work of Pisemsky. He attacks +the new democracy mercilessly, and not +from any predilection towards the old. His +most important work, <i>The Troubled Sea</i> (1862), +was a terrific onslaught on Radical Russia; +and Pisemsky paid the same price for his +pessimistic analysis as Leskov did for his +impartiality, namely social ostracism.</p> + +<p>The work of <span class="smcap">Ostrovsky</span> (1823-86) belongs +to the history of the Stage, to which he brought +slices of real life from the middle class; the +townsmen, the minor public servants, merchants +great and small, and rogues, a <i>milieu</i> +which he had observed in his youth, his father +having been an attorney to a Moscow merchant. +Ostrovsky may be called the founder of +modern Russian realistic comedy and drama. +In spite of the epoch at which his plays were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>194]</a></span> +written (the fifties and the sixties), there is +not a trace of <i>Scribisme</i>, no tricks, no effective +exits or curtains; he thus anticipated the +form of the quite modern drama by about +seventy years. His plays hold the stage now +in Russia, and form part of the stock repertories +every season. They give, moreover, just +the same lifelike impression whether read or +seen acted; and they are as interesting from +a literary as they are from a historical or +dramatic point of view, interesting because +they are intensely national, and as Russian +as beer is English.</p> + +<p>This brief summary of the epoch would be +still more incomplete than it is without the +mention of yet another novelist, <span class="smcap">Grigorovich</span>. +Although on a lower level of art and creative +power than Pisemsky and Leskov, he was +the pioneer in Russian literature of peasant +literature. He anticipated Turgenev’s <i>Sportsman’s +Sketches</i>, and for the first time made +Russian readers cry with sympathy over the +annals of the peasant. Like Turgenev, he +was a great landscape painter. In his +“Fishermen” he paints the peasant and the +artisan’s life, and in his “Country Roads” +he gives a picture of the good old +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>195]</a></span> +times—replete with rich humour, and in sharp contrast +to Saltykov’s sunless and trenchant +etching of the same period. Humour, the +pathos of the poor, landscape—these are his +chief qualities.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>196]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI<br /> +<br /> +<small>TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY</small></h2> + + +<p>With <span class="smcap">Tolstoy</span> and <span class="smcap">Dostoyevsky</span>, we +come not only to the two great pillars of +modern Russian literature which tower above +all others like two colossal statues in the +desert, but to two of the greatest figures in the +literature of the world. Russia has not given +the world a universal poet, a Shakespeare, +a Dante, a Goethe, or a Molière; for Pushkin, +consummate artist and inspired poet as he +was, lacks that peculiar greatness which +conquers all demarcations of frontier and +difference of language, and produces work +which becomes a part of the universal inheritance +of all nations; but Russia has given +us two prose-writers whose work has done +this very thing. And between them they sum +up in themselves the whole of the Russian +soul, and almost the whole of the Russian +character; I say almost the whole of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>197]</a></span> +Russian <em>character</em>, because although between +them they sum up all that is greatest, deepest, +and all that is weakest in the Russian <em>soul</em>, +there is perhaps one element of the Russian +<em>character</em>, which, although they understood it +well enough, their genius forbade them to +possess. If you take as ingredients Peter the +Great, Dostoyevsky’s Mwyshkin—the idiot, +the pure fool who is wiser than the wise—and +the hero of Gogol’s <i>Revisor</i>, Hlestyakov the liar +and wind-bag, you can, I think, out of these +elements, reconstitute any Russian who has +ever lived. That is to say, you will find that +every single Russian is compounded either of +one or more of these elements.</p> + +<p>For instance, mix Peter the Great with a +sufficient dose of Hlestyakov, and you get +Boris Godunov and Bakunin; leave the +Peter the Great element unmixed, and you +get Bazarov, and many of Gorky’s heroes; +mix it slightly with Hlestyakov, and you get +Lermontov; let the Hlestyakov element predominate, +and you get Griboyedov’s Molchalin; +let the Mwyshkin element predominate, +with a dose of Hlestyakov, and you get Father +Gapon; let it predominate without the dose +of Hlestyakov, and you get Oblomov; mix +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>198]</a></span> +it with a dose of Peter the Great, you get +Herzen, Chatsky; and so on. Mix all the +elements equally, and you get Onegin, the +average man. I do not mean that there are +necessarily all these elements in every Russian, +but that you will meet with no Russian in +whom there is not to be found either one or +more than one of them.</p> + +<p>Now, in Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element +dominates, with a dose of Mwyshkin, and a +vast but unsuccessful aspiration towards the +complete characteristics of Mwyshkin; while +in Dostoyevsky the Mwyshkin predominates, +blent with a fiery streak of Peter the Great; +but in neither of them is there a touch of +Hlestyakov. In Russia, it constantly happens +that a man in any class, be he a soldier, sailor, +tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, plough-boy, +or thief, will suddenly leave his profession and +avocation and set out on the search for God +and for truth. These men are called <i>Bogoiskateli</i>, +Seekers after God. The one fact that +the whole world knows about Tolstoy is that, +in the midst of his great and glorious artistic +career, he suddenly abjured literature and art, +denounced worldly possessions, and said that +truth was to be found in working like a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>199]</a></span> +peasant, and thus created a sect of Tolstoyists. +The world then blamed him for inconsistency +because he went on writing, and lived as before, +with his family and in his own home. But in +reality there was no inconsistency, because +there was in reality no break. Tolstoy had +been a <i>Bogoiskatel</i>, a seeker after truth and +God all his life; it was only the manner of +his search which had changed; but the quest +itself remained unchanged; he was unable, +owing to family ties, to push his premises to +their logical conclusion until just before his +death; but push them to their logical conclusion +he did at the last, and he died, as we +know, on the road to a monastery.</p> + +<p>Tolstoy’s manner of search was extraordinary, +extraordinary because he was provided +for it with the eyes of an eagle which +enabled him to see through everything; and, +as he took nothing for granted from the day +he began his career until the day he died, he +was always subjecting people, objects, ideas, to +the searchlight of his vision, and testing them +to see whether they were true or not; moreover, +he was gifted with the power of describing +what he saw during this long journey +through the world of fact and the world of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>200]</a></span> +ideas, whether it were the general or the +particular, the mass or the detail, the vision, +the panorama, the crowd, the portrait or the +miniature, with the strong simplicity of a +Homer, and the colour and reality of a +Velasquez. This made him one of the world’s +greatest writers, and the world’s greatest +artist in narrative fiction. Another peculiarity +of his search was that he pursued it with +eagle eyes, but with blinkers.</p> + +<p>In 1877 Dostoyevsky wrote: “In spite of +his colossal artistic talent, Tolstoy is one of +those Russian minds which only see that which +is right before their eyes, and thus press towards +that point. They have not the power +of turning their necks to the right or to the +left to see what lies on one side; to do this, +they would have to turn with their whole +bodies. If they do turn, they will quite +probably maintain the exact opposite of what +they have been hitherto professing; for they +are rigidly honest.” It is this search carried +on by eyes of unsurpassed penetration between +blinkers, by a man who every now and +then did turn his whole body, which accounts +for the many apparent changes and contradictions +of Tolstoy’s career.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>201]</a></span> +Another source of contradiction was that +by temperament the Lucifer element predominated +in him, and the ideal he was for +ever seeking was the humility of Mwyshkin, +the pure fool, an ideal which he could not +reach, because he could not sufficiently humble +himself. Thus when death overtook him +he was engaged on his last and his greatest +voyage of discovery; and there is something +solemn and great about his having met with +death at a small railway station.</p> + +<p>Tolstoy’s works are a long record of this +search, and of the memories and experiences +which he gathered on the way. There is not a +detail, not a phase of feeling, not a shade or +mood in his spiritual life that he has not told +us of in his works. In his <i>Childhood, Boyhood +and Youth</i>, he re-creates his own childhood, +boyhood and youth, not always exactly as it +happened in reality; there is <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Dichtung</i> as well +as <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Wahrheit</i>; but the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Dichtung</i> is as true as +the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Wahrheit</i>, because his aim was to recreate +the impressions he had received from his early +surroundings. Moreover, the searchlight of +his eyes even then fell mercilessly upon everything +that was unreal, sham and conventional.</p> + +<p>As soon as he had finished with his youth, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>202]</a></span> +he turned to the life of a grown-up man in +<i>The Morning of a Landowner</i>, and told how +he tried to live a landowner’s life, and +how nothing but dissatisfaction came of it. +He escapes to the Caucasus, and seeks regeneration, +and the result of the search here +is a masterpiece, <i>The Cossacks</i>. He goes back +to the world, and takes part in the Crimean +war; he describes what he saw in a battery; +his eagle eye lays bare the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">splendeurs et +misères</i> of war more truthfully perhaps than +a writer on war has ever done, but less sympathetically +than Alfred de Vigny—the difference +being that Alfred de Vigny is innately +modest, and that Tolstoy, as he wrote himself, +at the beginning of the war, “had no +modesty.”</p> + +<p>After the Crimean war, he plunges again +into the world and travels abroad; and on his +return to Russia, he settles down at Yasnaya +Polyana and marries. The hero of his novel +<i>Domestic Happiness</i> appears to have found his +heart’s desire in marriage and country life. +It was then that he wrote <i>War and Peace</i>, +which he began to publish in 1865. He always +had the idea of writing a story on the Decembrist +movement, and <i>War and Peace</i> was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>203]</a></span> +perhaps the preface to that unwritten work, +for it ends when that movement was beginning. +In <i>War and Peace</i>, he gave the world a modern +prose epic, which did not suffer from the +drawback that spoils most historical novels, +namely, that of being obviously false, because +it was founded on his own recollection of his +parents’ memories. He gives us what we feel +to be the very truth; for the first time in an +historical novel, instead of saying “this is +very likely true,” or “what a wonderful work +of artistic reconstruction,” we feel that we +were ourselves there; that we knew those +people; that they are a part of our very own +past. He paints a whole generation of people; +and in Pierre Bezukhov, the new landmarks +of his own search are described. Among +many other episodes, there is nowhere in +literature such a true and charming picture +of family life as that of the Rostovs, and nowhere +a more vital and charming personality +than Natasha; a creation as living as Pushkin’s +Tatiana, and alive with a reality even +more convincing than Turgenev’s pictures +of women, since she is alive with a different +kind of life; the difference being that while +you have read in Turgenev’s books about +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>204]</a></span> +noble and exquisite women, you are not +sure whether you have not known Natasha +yourself and in your own life; you are not +sure she does not belong to the borderland of +your own past in which dreams and reality +are mingled. <i>War and Peace</i> eclipses all +other historical novels; it has all Stendhal’s +reality, and all Zola’s power of dealing with +crowds and masses. Take, for instance, a +masterpiece such as Flaubert’s <i>Salammbô</i>; +it may and very likely does take away your +breath by the splendour of its language, its +colour, and its art, but you never feel that, +even in a dream, you had taken part in the +life which is painted there. The only bit of +unreality in <i>War and Peace</i> is the figure of +Napoleon, to whom Tolstoy was deliberately +unfair. Another impression which Tolstoy +gives us in <i>War and Peace</i> is that man is in +reality always the same, and that changes +of manners are not more important than +changes in fashions of clothes. That is why +it is not extravagant to mention <i>Salammbô</i> +in this connection. One feels that, if Tolstoy +had written a novel about ancient Rome, we +should have known a score of patricians, +senators, scribblers, clients, parasites, matrons, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>205]</a></span> +courtesans, better even than we know Cicero +from his letters; we should not only feel that +we <i>know</i> Cicero, but that we had actually +known him. This very task—namely, that of +reconstituting a page out of Pagan history—was +later to be attempted by Merezhkovsky; +but brilliant as his work is, he only at times +and by flashes attains to Tolstoy’s power of +convincing.</p> + +<p><i>Anna Karenina</i> appeared in 1875-76. And +here Tolstoy, with the touch of a Velasquez and +upon a huge canvas, paints the contemporary +life of the upper classes in St. Petersburg and +in the country. Levin, the hero, is himself. +Here, again, the truth to nature and the reality +is so intense and vivid that a reader unacquainted +with Russia will in reading the book +probably not think of Russia at all, but will +imagine the story has taken place in his own +country, whatever that may be. He shows +you everything from the inside, as well as +from the outside. You feel, in the picture of +the races, what Anna is feeling in looking on, +and what Vronsky is feeling in riding. And +with what reality, what incomparable skill +the gradual dawn of Anna’s love for Vronsky +is described; how painfully real is her pompous +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>206]</a></span> +and excellent husband; and how every incident +in her love affair, her visit to her child, her +appearance at the opera, when, after having +left her husband, she defies the world, her +gradual growing irritability, down to the final +catastrophe, bears on it the stamp of something +which must have happened just in that +very way and no other.</p> + +<p>But, as far as Tolstoy’s own development +is concerned, Levin is the most interesting +figure in the book. This character is another +landmark in Tolstoy’s search after truth; he +is constantly putting accepted ideas to the +test; he is haunted by the fear of sudden +death, not the physical fear of death in +itself, but the fear that in the face of death +the whole of life may be meaningless; a peasant +opens a new door for him and furnishes him +with a solution to the problem—to live for +one’s soul: life no longer seems meaningless.</p> + +<p>Thus Levin marks the stage in Tolstoy’s +evolution of his abandoning materialism and +of seeking for the truth in the Church. But +the Church does not satisfy him. He rejects +its dogmas and its ritual; he turns to the +Gospel, but far from accepting it, he revises it. +He comes to the conclusion that Christianity +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>207]</a></span> +as it has been taught is mere madness, and +that the Church is a superfluous anachronism. +Thus another change comes about, which is +generally regarded as <em>the</em> change cutting +Tolstoy’s life in half; in reality it is only +a fresh right-about-turn of a man who is +searching for truth in blinkers. In his +<i>Confession</i>, he says: “I grew to hate myself; +and now all has become clear.” He came to +believe that property was the source of all +evil; he desired literally to give up all he had. +This he was not able to do. It was not that +he shrank from the sacrifice at the last; but +that circumstances and family ties were too +strong for him. But his final flight from home +in the last days of his life shows that the +desire had never left him.</p> + +<p>Art was also subjected to his new standards +and found wanting, both in his own work and +in that of others. Shakespeare and Beethoven +were summarily disposed of; his own +masterpieces he pronounced to be worthless. +This more than anything shows the pride of +the man. He could admire no one, not even +himself. He scorned the gifts which were +given him, and the greatest gifts of the +greatest men. But this landmark of Tolstoy’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>208]</a></span> +evolution, his turning his back on the Church, +and on his work, is a landmark in Russian +history as well as in Russian art. For far +less than this Russian thinkers and writers +of high position had been imprisoned and +exiled. Nobody dared to touch Tolstoy. He +fearlessly attacked all constituted authority, +both spiritual and temporal, in an epoch of +reaction, and such was his prestige that +official Russia raised no finger. His authority +was too great, and this is perhaps the first +great victory of the liberty of individual +thought over official tyranny in Russia. +There had been martyrs in plenty before, but +no conquerors.</p> + +<p>After <i>Anna Karenina</i>, Tolstoy, who gave +up literature for a time, but for a time only, +nevertheless continued to write; at first he only +wrote stories for children and theological and +polemical pamphlets; but in 1886 he published +the terribly powerful peasant drama: +<i>The Powers of Darkness</i>. Later came the +<i>Kreutzer Sonata</i>, the <i>Death of Ivan Ilitch</i>, and +<i>Resurrection</i>. Here the hero Nehludov is a +lifeless phantom of Tolstoy himself; the +episodes and details have the reality of +his early work, so has Maslova, the heroine; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>209]</a></span> +but in the squalor and misery of the prisons +he shows no precious balms of humanity and +love, as Dostoyevsky did; and the book has +neither the sweep and epic swing of <i>War and +Peace</i>, nor the satisfying completeness of +<i>Anna Karenina</i>. Since his death, some posthumous +works have been published, among +them a novel, and a play: <i>The Living Corpse</i>. +He died, as he had lived, still searching, and +perhaps at the end he found the object of his +quest.</p> + +<p>Tolstoy, even more than Pushkin, was +rooted to the soil; all that is not of the soil—anything +mystic or supernatural—was totally +alien to him. He was the oak which could not +bend; and being, as he was, the king of realistic +fiction, an unsurpassed painter of pictures, +portraits, men and things, a penetrating analyst +of the human heart, a genius cast in a colossal +mould, his work, both by its substance and +its artistic power, exercised an influence beyond +his own country, affected all European +nations, and gives him a place among the great +creators of the world. Tolstoy was not a rebel +but a heretic, a heretic not only to religion and +the Church, but in philosophy, opinions, art, +and even in food; but what the world will +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>210]</a></span> +remember of him are not his heretical theories +but his faithful practice, which is orthodox in +its obedience to the highest canons, orthodox +as Homer and Shakespeare are orthodox, and +like theirs, one of the greatest earthly examples +of the normal and the sane.</p> + +<p>To say that <span class="smcap">Dostoyevsky</span> is the antithesis +to Tolstoy, and the second great pillar of +Russian prose literature, will surprise nobody +now. Had one been writing ten years ago, +the expression of such an opinion would have +met with an incredulous smile amongst the +majority of English readers of Russian literature, +for Dostoyevsky was practically unknown +save for his <i>Crime and Punishment</i>, +and to have compared him with Turgenev +would have seemed sacrilegious. Now when +Dostoyevsky is one of the shibboleths of our +<i>intelligentsia</i>, one can boldly say, without fear +of being misunderstood, that, as a creator +and a force in literature, Dostoyevsky is in +another plane than that of Turgenev, and as +far greater than him as Leonardo da Vinci +is greater than Vandyke, or as Wagner is +greater than Gounod, while some Russians +consider him even infinitely greater than +Tolstoy. Let us say he is his equal and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>211]</a></span> +complement. He is in any case, in almost +every respect, his antithesis. Tolstoy was the +incarnation of health, and is above all things +and pre-eminently the painter of the sane and +the earthly. Dostoyevsky was an epileptic, the +painter of the abnormal, of criminals, madmen, +degenerates, mystics. Tolstoy led an even, +uneventful life, spending the greater part of +it in his own country house, in the midst of +a large family. Dostoyevsky was condemned +to death, served a sentence of four years’ +hard labour in a convict settlement in +Siberia, and besides this spent six years in +exile; when he returned and started a newspaper, +it was prohibited by the Censorship; +a second newspaper which he started came to +grief; he underwent financial ruin; his first +wife, his brother, and his best friend died; +he was driven abroad by debt, harassed by the +authorities on the one hand, and attacked by +the liberals on the other; abused and misunderstood, +almost starving and never well, working +under overwhelming difficulties, always +pressed for time, and ill requited for his +toil. That was Dostoyevsky’s life.</p> + +<p>Tolstoy was a heretic; at first a materialist, +and then a seeker after a religion of his own; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>212]</a></span> +Dostoyevsky was a practising believer, a +vehement apostle of orthodoxy, and died +fortified by the Sacraments of the Church. +Tolstoy with his broad unreligious opinions +was narrow-minded. Dostoyevsky with his +definite religious opinions was the most +broad-minded man who ever lived. Tolstoy +hated the supernatural, and was alien to all +mysticism. Dostoyevsky seems to get nearer +to the unknown, to what lies beyond the +flesh, than any other writer. In Tolstoy, the +Peter the Great element of the Russian +character predominated; in Dostoyevsky that +of Mwyshkin, the pure fool. Tolstoy could +never submit and humble himself. Submission +and humility and resignation are the keynotes +and mainsprings of Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy +despised art, and paid no homage to any of +the great names of literature; and this was +not only after the so-called change. As early +as 1862, he said that Pushkin and Beethoven +could not please because of their absolute +beauty. Dostoyevsky was catholic and cosmopolitan, +and admired the literature of +foreign countries—Racine as well as Shakespeare, +Corneille as well as Schiller. The +essence of Tolstoy is a magnificent intolerance. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>213]</a></span> +The essence of Dostoyevsky is sweet reasonableness. +Tolstoy dreamed of giving up all he +had to the poor, and of living like a peasant; +Dostoyevsky had to share the hard labour +of the lowest class of criminals. Tolstoy +theorized on the distribution of food; but +Dostoyevsky was fed like a beggar. Tolstoy +wrote in affluence and at leisure, and re-wrote +his books; Dostoyevsky worked like a literary +hack for his daily bread, ever pressed for time +and ever in crying need of money.</p> + +<p>These contrasts are not made in disparagement +of Tolstoy, but merely to point out the +difference between the two men and between +their circumstances. Tolstoy wrote about +himself from the beginning of his career to the +end; nearly all his work is autobiographical, +and he almost always depicts himself in all +his books. We know nothing of Dostoyevsky +from his books. He was an altruist, and +he loved others better than himself.</p> + +<p>Dostoyevsky’s first book, <i>Poor Folk</i>, published +in 1846, is a descendant of Gogol’s +story <i>The Cloak</i>, and bears the influence, to +a slight extent, of Gogol. In this, the story +of a minor public servant battling against +want, and finding a ray of light in corresponding +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>214]</a></span> +with a girl also in poor circumstances, but +who ultimately marries a rich middle-aged +man, we already get all Dostoyevsky’s peculiar +sweetness; what Stevenson called his “lovely +goodness,” his almost intolerable pathos, his +love of the disinherited and of the failures +of life. His next book, <i>Letters from a Dead +House</i>, has a far more universal interest. It +is the record of his prison experiences, which +is of priceless value, not only on account of +its radiant moral beauty, its perpetual discovery +of the soul of goodness in things evil, +its human fraternity, its complete absence +of egotism and pose, and its thrilling human +interest, but also on account of the light it +throws on the Russian character, the Russian +poor, and the Russian peasant.</p> + +<p>In 1866 came <i>Crime and Punishment</i>, +which brought Dostoyevsky fame. This book, +Dostoyevsky’s <i>Macbeth</i>, is so well known in +the French and English translations that it +hardly needs any comment. Dostoyevsky +never wrote anything more tremendous than +the portrayal of the anguish that seethes in the +soul of Raskolnikov, after he has killed the old +woman, “mechanically forced,” as Professor +Brückner says, “into performing the act, as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>215]</a></span> +if he had gone too near machinery in motion, +had been caught by a bit of his clothing and +cut to pieces.” And not only is one held +spellbound by every shifting hope, fear, and +doubt, and each new pang that Raskolnikov +experiences, but the souls of all the subsidiary +characters in the book are revealed to us just +as clearly: the Marmeladov family, the honest +Razumikhin, the police inspector, and the +atmosphere of the submerged tenth in St. +Petersburg—the steaming smell of the city +in the summer. There is an episode when +Raskolnikov kneels before Sonia, the prostitute, +and says to her: “It is not before you +I am kneeling, but before all the suffering of +mankind.” That is what Dostoyevsky does +himself in this and in all his books; but in +none of them is the suffering of all mankind +conjured up before us in more living colours, +and in none of them is his act of homage in +kneeling before it more impressive.</p> + +<p>This book was written before the words +“psychological novel” had been invented; +but how all the psychological novels which +were written years later by Bourget and +others pale before this record written in blood +and tears! <i>Crime and Punishment</i> was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>216]</a></span> +followed by <i>The Idiot</i> (1868). The idiot is +Mwyshkin, who has been alluded to already, +the wise fool, an epileptic, in whom irony +and arrogance and egoism have been annihilated; +and whose very simplicity causes him +to pass unscathed through a den of evil, a +world of liars, scoundrels, and thieves, none +of whom can escape the influence of his +radiant personality. He is the same with +every one he meets, and with his unsuspicious +sincerity he combines the intuition of utter +goodness, so that he can see through people +and read their minds. In this character, +Dostoyevsky has put all his sweetness; it is +not a portrait of himself, but it is a portrait +of what he would have liked to be, and +reflects all that is best in him. In contrast +to Mwyshkin, Rogozhin, the merchant, is the +incarnation of undisciplined passion, who +ends by killing the thing he loves, Nastasia, +also a creature of unbridled impulses,—because +he feels that he can never really and fully +possess her. The catastrophe, the description +of the night after Rogozhin has killed Nastasia, +is like nothing else in literature; lifelike in +detail and immense, in the way in which it +makes you listen at the keyhole of the soul, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>217]</a></span> +immense with the immensity of a great revelation. +The minor characters in the book are +also all of them remarkable; one of them, +the General’s wife, Madame Epanchin, has an +indescribable and playful charm.</p> + +<p><i>The Idiot</i> was followed by <i>The Possessed</i>, +or <i>Devils</i>, printed in 1871-72, called thus after +the Devils in the Gospel of St. Luke, that +left the possessed man and went into the +swine; the Devils in the book are the hangers-on +of Nihilism between 1862 and 1869. The +book anticipated the future, and in it +Dostoyevsky created characters who were +identically the same, and committed identically +the same crimes, as men who actually +lived many years later in 1871, and later +still. The whole book turns on the exploitation +by an unscrupulous, ingenious, and iron-willed +knave of the various weaknesses of a +crowd of idealist dupes and disciples. One of +them is a decadent, one of them is one of those +idealists “whom any strong idea strikes all of +a sudden and annihilates his will, sometimes for +ever”; one of them is a maniac whose single +idea is the production of the Superman which +he thinks will come, when it will be immaterial +to a man whether he lives or dies, and when +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>218]</a></span> +he will be prepared to kill himself not out of +fear but in order to kill fear. That man will be +God. Not the God-man, but the Man-God. +The plan of the unscrupulous leader, Peter +Verkhovensky, who was founded on Nechaev, a +Nihilist of real life, is to create disorder, and +amid the disorder to seize the authority; he +imagines a central committee of which he +pretends to be the representative, organizes +a small local committee, and persuades his +dupes that a network of similar small committees +exist all over Russia; his aim being +to create them gradually, by persuading people +in every plot of fresh ground that they exist +everywhere else.</p> + +<p>Thus the idea of the book was to show that +the strength of Nihilism lay, not in high +dogmas and theories held by a large and well-organized +society, but in the strength of the +will of one or two men reacting on the weaker +herd and exploiting the strength, the weakness, +and the one-sidedness of its ideals, a +herd which was necessarily weak owing to +that very one-sidedness. In order to bind his +disciples with a permanent bond, Verkhovensky +exploits the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">idée fixe</i> of suicide and the +superman, which is held by one of his dupes, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>219]</a></span> +to induce him to commit a crime before he +kills himself, and thus make away with another +member of the committee who is represented +as being a spy. Once this is done, the whole +committee will be jointly responsible, and +bound to him by the ties of blood and fear. +But Verkhovensky is not the hero of the book. +The hero is Stavrogin, whom Verkhovensky +regards as his trump card, because of the +strength of his character, which leads him to +commit the most outrageous extravagances, +and at the same time to remain as cold as +ice; but Verkhovensky’s whole design is shattered +on Stavrogin’s character, all the murders +already mentioned are committed, the whole +scheme comes to nothing, the conspirators are +discovered, and Peter escapes abroad.</p> + +<p>When <i>Devils</i> appeared in 1871, it was looked +upon as a gross exaggeration, but real life in +subsequent years was to produce characters +and events of the same kind, which were more +startling than Dostoyevsky’s fiction. The +book is the least well-constructed of Dostoyevsky’s; +the narrative is disconnected, and the +events, incidents, and characters so crowded +together, that the general effect is confused; +on the other hand, it contains isolated scenes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>220]</a></span> +which Dostoyevsky never surpassed; and in +its strength and in its limitations it is perhaps +his most characteristic work.</p> + +<p>From 1873-80 Dostoyevsky went back to +journalism, and wrote his <i>Diary of a Writer</i>, +in which he commented on current events. +In 1880, he united all conflicting and hostile +parties and shades of public opinion, by the +speech he made at the unveiling of Pushkin’s +memorial, in one common bond of enthusiasm. +At the end of the seventies, he returned +to a work already begun, <i>The Brothers +Karamazov</i>, which, although it remains the +longest of his books, was never finished. It +is the story of three brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, +and Alyosha; their father is a cynical sensualist. +The eldest brother is an undisciplined, +passionate character, who expiates his +passions by suffering; the second brother is +a materialist, the tragedy of whose inner life +forms a greater part of the book; the third +brother, Alyosha, is a lover of humanity, and +a believer in God and man. He seeks a +monastery, but his spiritual father sends him +out into the world, to live and to suffer. He +is to go through the furnace of the world and +experience many trials; for the microbe of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>221]</a></span> +lust that is in his family is dormant in him +also. The book was called the <i>History of a +Great Sinner</i>, and the sinner was to be Alyosha. +But Dostoyevsky died before this part of the +subject is even approached.</p> + +<p>He died in January 1881; the crowds of +men and women of all sorts and conditions of +life that attended his funeral, and the extent +and the sincerity of the grief manifested, +gave it an almost mythical greatness. The +people gave him a funeral such as few kings +or heroes have ever had. Without fear of +controversy or contradiction one can now say +that Dostoyevsky’s place in Russian literature +is at the top, equal and in the opinion of some +superior to that of Tolstoy in greatness. He +is also one of the greatest writers the world has +ever produced, not because, like Tolstoy, he +saw life steadily and saw it whole, and painted +it with the supreme and easy art of a Velasquez; +nor because, like Turgenev, he wove exquisite +pictures into musical words. Dostoyevsky +was not an artist; his work is shapeless; his +books are like quarries where granite and +dross, gold and ore are mingled. He paid no +attention to style, and yet so strong and vital +is his spoken word that when the Moscow Art +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>222]</a></span> +Theatre put some scenes in <i>The Brothers +Karamazov</i> and <i>Devils</i> on the stage, they +found they could not alter one single syllable; +and sometimes his words have a power beyond +that of words, a power that only music has. +There are pages where Dostoyevsky expresses +the anguish of the soul in the same manner +as Wagner expressed the delirium of dying +Tristram. I should indeed put the matter the +other way round, and say that in the last act +of Tristram, Wagner is as great as Dostoyevsky. +But Dostoyevsky is great because of +the divine message he gives, not didactically, +not by sermons, but by the goodness that +emanates, like a precious balm, from the +characters he creates; because more than any +other books in the world his books reflect not +only the teaching and the charity, but the +accent and the divine aura of love that is in +the Gospels.</p> + +<p>“I am not talking to you now through the +medium of custom, conventionalities, or even +of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses +your spirit, just as if both had passed through +the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal—as +we are!” These words, spoken by +Charlotte Brontë’s <i>Jane Eyre</i>, express what +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>223]</a></span> +Dostoyevsky’s books do. His spirit addresses +our spirit. “Be no man’s judge; humble +love is a terrible power which effects more +than violence. Only active love can bring +out faith. Love men, and do not be afraid +of their sins; love man in his sin; love all +the creatures of God, and pray God to make +you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and +as the birds.” This was Father Zosima’s +advice to Alyosha. And that is the gist of +Dostoyevsky’s message to mankind. “Life,” +Father Zosima also says to Alyosha, “will +bring you many misfortunes, but you will be +happy on account of them, and you will bless +life and cause others to bless it.” Here we +have the whole secret of Dostoyevsky’s greatness. +He blessed life, and he caused others +to bless it.</p> + +<p>It is objected that his characters are +abnormal; that he deals with the diseased, +with epileptics, neurasthenics, criminals, sensualists, +madmen; but it is just this very fact +which gives so much strength and value to +the blessing he gave to life; it is owing to +this fact that he causes others to bless life; +because he was cast in the nethermost circle +of life’s inferno; he was thrown together with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>224]</a></span> +the refuse of humanity, with the worst of men +and with the most unfortunate; he saw the +human soul on the rack, and he saw the vilest +diseases that afflict the human soul; he faced +the evil without fear or blinkers; and there, +in the inferno, in the dust and ashes, he +recognized the print of divine footsteps and +the fragrance of goodness; he cried from the +abyss: “Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just!” +and he blessed life. It is true that his characters +are taken almost entirely from the +<i>Despised and Rejected</i>, as one of his books +was called, and often from the ranks of the +abnormal; but when a great writer wishes to +reveal the greatest adventures and the deepest +experiences which the soul of man can undergo, +it is in vain for him to take the normal type; +it has no adventures. The adventures of the +soul of Fortinbras would be of no help to mankind; +but the adventures of Hamlet are of +help to mankind, and the adventures of Don +Quixote; and neither Don Quixote nor Hamlet +are normal types.</p> + +<p>Dostoyevsky wrote the tragedy of life and +of the soul, and to do this he chose circumstances +as terrific as those which unhinged +the reason of King Lear, shook that of Hamlet, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>225]</a></span> +and made Œdipus blind himself. His books +resemble Greek tragedies by the magnitude +of the spiritual adventures they set forth; +they are unlike Greek Tragedies in the +Christian charity and the faith and the hope +which goes out of them; they inspire the +reader with courage, never with despair, +although Dostoyevsky, face to face with the +last extremities of evil, never seeks to hide it +or to shun it, but merely to search for the +soul of goodness in it. He did not search in +vain, and just as, when he was on his way to +Siberia, a conversation he had with a fellow-prisoner +inspired that fellow-prisoner with the +feeling that he could go on living and even +face penal servitude, so do Dostoyevsky’s +books come to mankind as a message of hope +from a radiant country. That is what constitutes +his peculiar greatness.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>226]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII<br /> +<br /> +<small>THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY</small></h2> + + +<p>The fifties, the sixties, and the seventies +were, all over Europe, the epoch of Parnassian +poetry. In England, Tennyson was pouring +out his “fervent and faultless melodies,” +Matthew Arnold was playing his plaintive +harp, and the Pre-Raphaelites were weaving +their tapestried dreams; in France, Gautier +was carving his cameos, Banville’s Harlequins +and Columbines were dancing on a +Watteau-like stage in the silver twilight of +Corot, Baudelaire was at work on his sombre +bronze, Sully-Prudhomme twanged his ivory +lyre, and Leconte de Lisle was issuing his +golden coinage. It was, in poetry, the epoch +of art for art’s sake.</p> + +<p>Russian poetry did not escape the universal +tendency; but in Russia everything was conspiring +to put poetry, and especially that kind +of poetry, in the shade. In the first place, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>227]</a></span> +events of great magnitude were happening—the +wide reforms, the emancipation of the +serfs, the growth of Nihilism, which was the +product of the disillusion at the result of the +reforms: in the second place, criticism under +the influence of Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, and +Dobrolyubov was entirely realistic and positivist, +preaching not art for life’s sake only, +but the absolute futility of poetry; and, in +the third place, work of the supremest kind +was being done in narrative fiction; in the +fourth place, no prophet-poet was forthcoming +whose genius was great enough to +voice national aspirations. All this tended +to put poetry in the shade, especially as such +poets as did exist were, with one notable +exception, Parnassians, whose talent dwelt +aloof from the turbid stream of life, and who +sought to express the adventures of their +souls, which were emotional and artistic, either +in dreamy music or in exquisite shapes and +colours. This neglect of verse lasted right +up until the end of the seventies. When, however, +in the eighties, the wave of political crisis +reached its climax and, after the assassination +of Alexander II, rolled back into a sea +of stagnant reaction, the poets, who had been +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>228]</a></span> +hitherto neglected, and quietly singing all the +while, were discovered once more, and the +shares in poetry continued to rise as time +went on; thus the poets of the sixties reaped +their due meed of appreciation.</p> + +<p>A proof of how widespread and deep this +neglect was is that <span class="smcap">Tyutchev</span>, whose work +attracted no attention whatever until 1854, +and met with no wide appreciation until a +great deal later, was four years younger than +Pushkin, and a man of thirty when Goethe +died. He went on living until 1873, and can +be called the first of the Parnassians. Politically, +he was a Slavophile, and sang the +“resignation” and “long-suffering” of the +Russian people, which he preferred to the +stiff-neckedness of the West. But the value +of his work lies less in his Slavophile aspirations +than in its depth of thought and lyrical +feeling, in the contrast between the gloomy +forebodings of his imagination and the sunlike +images he gives of nature. His verse is +like a spring day, dark with ominous thunderclouds, +out of which a rainbow and a shaft +of sunlight fall on a dewy orchard and light +it with a silvery smile. His verse is, on the +one hand, full of foreboding and terror at the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>229]</a></span> +fate of man and the shadow of nothingness, +and, on the other hand, it twitters like a bird +over the freshness and sunshine of spring. +He sings the spring again and again, and no +Russian poet has ever sung the glory, the +mystery, the wonder, and the terror of night +as he has done; his whole work is compounded +of glowing pictures of nature and a +world of longing and of unutterable dreams.</p> + +<p>The dreamy dominion of the Parnassian +age, on whose threshold Tyutchev stood, was +to be disturbed by the notes of a harsher and +stronger music.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Nekrasov</span> (1821-77), Russia’s “sternest +painter,” and certainly one of her best, drew +his inspiration direct from life, and sang the +sufferings, the joys, and the life of the people. +He is a Russian Crabbe; nature and man are +his subjects, but nature as the friend and foe +of man, as a factor, the most important factor +in man’s life, and not as an ideal storehouse +from which a Shelley can draw forms more +real than living man, nurslings of immortality, +or a Wordsworth reap harvests of the inward +eye. He called his muse the “Muse of +Vengeance and of Grief.” He is an uncompromising +realist, like Crabbe, and idealizes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>230]</a></span> +nothing in his pictures of the peasant’s life. +Like Crabbe, he has a deep note of pathos, +and a keen but not so minute an eye for +landscape.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, he at times attains to +imaginative sublimity in his descriptions, as, +for instance, in his poem called <i>The Red-nosed +Frost</i>, where King Frost approaches a peasant +widow who is at work in the winter forest, +and freezes her to death. As Daria is gradually +freezing to death, the frost comes to her +like a warrior; and his semblance and attributes +are drawn in a series of splendid stanzas. +He sings to her of his riches that no profusion +can decrease, and of his kingdom of silver and +diamonds and pearls: then, as she freezes, she +dreams of a hot summer’s day, and of the rye +harvest and of the familiar songs—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Away with the song she is soaring,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">She surrenders herself to its stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the world there is no such sweet singing<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As that which we hear in a dream.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>His longest and most ambitious work was +a kind of popular epic, <i>Who is Happy in +Russia?</i> written in short lines which have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>231]</a></span> +the popular ring and accent. Some peasants +start on a pilgrimage to find out who is happy +in Russia. They fly on a magic carpet, and +interview representatives of the different +classes of society, the pope, the landowner, +the peasant woman, each new interview +producing a whole series of stories, sometimes +idyllic and sometimes tragic, and all +showing their genius as intimate pictures of +various phases of Russian life. Here, again, +the analogy with Crabbe suggests itself, for +Nekrasov’s tales, taking into consideration the +difference between the two countries, have a +marked affinity, both in their subject matter, +their variety, their stern realism, their pathos, +their bitterness, and their observation of +nature, with Crabbe’s stories in verse.</p> + +<p>Two of Nekrasov’s long poems tell the story +in the form of reminiscence,—and here again +the naturalness and appropriateness of the +diction is perfect,—of the Russian women, +Princess Volkonsky and Princess Trubetzkoy, +who followed their husbands, condemned to +penal servitude for taking part in the Decembrist +rising, to Siberia. Here, again, Nekrasov +strikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>232]</a></span> +all the more poignant from the absolute +simplicity with which the tales are told. +Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of +the time and has only one rival, whom we +shall describe presently.</p> + +<p>The Parnassians are represented by three +poets, <span class="smcap">Maikov</span> (1821-97), <span class="smcap">Fet</span> (1820-98), +and <span class="smcap">Polonsky</span> (1820-98), all three of whom +began to write about the same time, in 1840; +none of these three poets was didactic, and +all three remained aloof from political or +social questions.</p> + +<p>Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by +Italy and also by old ballads, but his strength +lies in his plastic form, his colour, and his +pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for +instance, an exquisite reminiscence of a day’s +fishing when he was a boy.</p> + +<p>The quality of Fet’s muse, in contrast to +Maikov’s concrete plasticity, is illusiveness; +his lyrics express intangible dreams and impressions; +delicate tints and shadows tremble +and flit across his verse, which is soft as the +orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as delicate as +a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland +between words and music, and catches +the vague echoes of that limbo.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>233]</a></span> +<span class="i0">“The world in shadow slipped away<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And, like a silent dream took flight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Adam, I in Eden lay<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Alone, and face to face with night.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>He sings about the southern night amidst +the hay; or again about the dawn—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A whisper, a breath, a shiver,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The trills of the nightingale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A silver light and a quiver<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And a sunlit trail.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The glimmer of night and the shadows of night<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In an endless race,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enchanted changes, flight after flight,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On the loved one’s face.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blood of the roses tingling<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tears and kisses commingling—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Polonsky’s verse, in contrast to Fet’s gentle +epicurean temperament, his delicate half-tones +and illusive whispers, is made of sterner +stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov’s sculptural +lines, it is pre-eminently musical, and reflects +a fine and charming personality. His area +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>234]</a></span> +of subjects is wide; he can write a child’s poem +as transparent and simple as Hans Andersen—as +in his conversation between the sun and +the moon—or call up the “glory that was +Greece,” as in the poem when his “Aspasia” +listens to the crowds acclaiming Pericles, and +waits in rapturous suspense for his return—an +evocation that Browning would have +envied for its life and Swinburne for its +sound.</p> + +<p>But neither Maikov, Fet, nor Polonsky, +exquisite as much of their writing is, produced +anything of the calibre of Nekrasov, even in +their own province; that is to say, they were +none of them as great in the artistic field as +he was in his didactic field. Compared with +him, they are minor poets. There is one +poet of this epoch who does rival Nekrasov +in another field, and that is <span class="smcap">Count Alexis +Tolstoy</span> (1817-75), who was also a Parnassian +and remained aloof from didactic +literature; yet, under the pseudonym of +Kuzma Prutkov, he wrote a satire, a collection +of platitudes, that are household words in +Russia; also a short history of Russia in +consummately neat and witty satirical verse. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>235]</a></span> +As well as his satires, he wrote an historical +novel, <i>Prince Serebryany</i>, and more important +still, a trilogy of plays, dealing with the most +dramatic epoch of Russian history, that of +Ivan the Terrible. The trilogy, written in +verse, consists of the “Death of Ivan the +Terrible,” “The Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch” +and “Tsar Boris.” They are all of them +acting plays, form part of the current classical +repertory, and are effective, impressive and +arresting when played on the stage.</p> + +<p>But it is as a poet and as a lyrical poet that +Alexis Tolstoy is most widely known. Versatile +with a versatility that recalls Pushkin, +he writes epical ballads on Russian, Northern, +and even Scottish themes, and dramatic +poems on Don Juan, St. John Damascene, +and Mary Magdalene; and, besides these, a +whole series of personal lyrics, which are full +of charm, tenderness, music and colour, +harmonious in form and transparent. No +Russian poet since Pushkin has written such +tender love lyrics, and nobody has sung the +Russian spring, the Russian summer, and +the Russian autumn with such tender +lyricism. His poem on the early spring, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>236]</a></span> +when the fern is still tightly curled, the shepherd’s +note still but half heard in the morning, +and the birch trees just green, is one of the +most tender, fresh, and perfect expressions +of first love, morning, spring, dew, and dawn +in the world’s literature. His songs have +inspired Tchaikovsky and other composers. +The strongest and highest chord he struck is +in his St. John Damascene; this contains +a magnificent dirge for the dead which can +bear comparison even with the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Dies Iræ</i> +for majesty, solemn pathos, and plangent +rhythm.</p> + +<p>His pictures of landscapes have a peculiar +charm. The following is an attempt at a +translation—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Through the slush and the ruts of the highway,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By the side of the dam of the stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the fisherman’s nets are drying,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The carriage jogs on, and I dream.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I dream, and I look at the highway,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">At the sky that is sullen and grey,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>237]</a></span> +<span class="i0">At the lake with its shelving reaches,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the curling smoke far away.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By the dam, with a cheerless visage<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Walks a Jew, who is ragged and sere.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a thunder of foam and of splashing,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The waters race over the weir.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A boy over there is whistling<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On a hemlock flute of his make;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the wild ducks get up in a panic<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And call as they sweep from the lake.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And near the old mill some workmen<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Are sitting upon the green ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a wagon of sacks, a cart horse<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Plods past with a lazy sound.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">It all seems to me so familiar,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Although I have never been here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The roof of that house out yonder,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the boy, and the wood, and the weir.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And the voice of the grumbling mill-wheel,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And that rickety barn, I know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have been here and seen this already,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And forgotten it all long ago.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>238]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The very same horse here was dragging<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Those sacks with the very same sound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And those very same workmen were sitting<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By the rickety mill on the ground.<br /></span> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And that Jew, with his beard, walked past me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And those waters raced through the weir;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yes, all this has happened already,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But I cannot tell when or where.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The people also produced a poet during +this epoch and gave Koltsov a successor, in +the person of <span class="smcap">Nikitin</span>; his themes are taken +straight from life, and he became known +through his patriotic songs written during the +Crimean War; but he is most successful in +his descriptions of nature, of sunset on the +fields, and dawn, and the swallow’s nest in +the grumbling mill. Two other poets, whose +work became well known later, but passed +absolutely unnoticed in the sixties, were +<span class="smcap">Sluchevsky</span>, a philosophical poet, whose +verse, excellent in description, suffers from +clumsiness in form, and <span class="smcap">Apukhtin</span>, whose +collected poems and ballads, although he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>239]</a></span> +began to write in 1859, were not published +until 1886. Apukhtin is a Parnassian. The +bulk of his work, though perfect in form, is +uninteresting; but he wrote one or two lyrics +which have a place in any Russian Golden +Treasury, and his poems are largely read +now.</p> + +<p>In the eighties, a reaction against the anti-poetical +tendency set in, and poets began to +spring up like mushrooms. Of these, the +most popular and the most remarkable is +<span class="smcap">Nadson</span> (1862-87); he died when he was +twenty-four, of consumption. Since then his +verse has gone through twenty-one editions, +and 110,000 copies have been sold; ten editions +were published in his own lifetime. And +there are innumerable musical settings by +various composers to his lyrics. His verse +inaugurates a new epoch in Russian poetry, +the distinguishing features of which are a +great attention to form and <em>technique</em>, a +Parnassian love of colour and shape, and a +deep melancholy.</p> + +<p>Nadson sings the melancholy of youth, the +dreams and disillusions of adolescence, and +the hopelessness of the stagnant atmosphere +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>240]</a></span> +of reaction to which he belonged. This last +fact accounted in some measure for his +extraordinary popularity. But it was by no +means its sole cause; his verse is not only +exquisite but magically musical, to an extent +which makes the verse of other poets seem +a stuff of coarser clay, and his pictures of +nature, of spring, of night, and especially of +night in the Riviera (with a note of passionate +home-sickness), have the aromatic, +intoxicating sweetness of syringa. Verse such +as this, sensitive, ultra-delicate, morbid, +nervous, and pessimistic, is bound to have +the defects of its qualities, in a marked degree; +one is soon inclined to have enough +of its sultry, oppressive atmosphere, its delicate +perfume, its unrelieved gloom and its +music, which is nearly always not only in +a minor key but in the same key. Nobody +was more keenly aware of this than Nadson +himself, and one of his most beautiful poems +begins thus—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Dear friend, I know, I know, I only know too well<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That my verse is barren of all strength, and pale, and delicate,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>241]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And often just because of its debility I suffer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And often weep in secret in the silence of the night.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And in another poem he writes his apology. +He has never used verse as a toy to chase +tedium; the blessed gift of the singer has +often been to him an unbearable cross, and +he has often vowed to keep silent; but, if +the wind blows, the Æolian harp must needs +respond, and streams of the hills cannot help +rushing to the valley if the sun melts the snow +on the mountain tops. This apologia more +than all criticism defines his gift. His temperament +is an Æolian harp, which, whether +it will or no, is sensitive to the breeze; its +strings are few, and tuned to one key; nevertheless +some of the strains it has sobbed have +the stamp of permanence as well as that of +ethereal magic.</p> + +<p>The poets that come after Nadson belong +to the present day; there are many, and +they increase in number every year. The so-called +“decadent” school were influenced by +Shelley, Verlaine, and the French symbolists; +but there is nothing which is decadent in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>242]</a></span> +ordinary sense of the word in their verse. +Their influence may not be lasting, but they +are factors in Russian literature, and some +of them, <span class="smcap">Sologub</span>, <span class="smcap">Brusov</span>, <span class="smcap">Balmont</span>, and +<span class="smcap">Ivanov</span>, have produced work which any school +would be glad to claim. This is also true of +<span class="smcap">Alexander Bloch</span>, one of the most original +as well as one of the most exquisite of living +Russian poets.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>243]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CONCLUSION</h2> + + +<p>With the death of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, +the great epoch of Russian literature +came to an end. A period of literary as well +as of political stagnation began, which lasted +until the Russo-Japanese War. This was +followed by the revolutionary movement, +which, in its turn, produced a literary as well +as a political chaos, the effect of which and +of the manifold reactions it brought about are +still being felt. It was only natural, if one +considers the extent and the quality of the +productions of the preceding epoch, that the +soil of literary Russia should require a rest.</p> + +<p>As it is, one can count the writers of +prominence which the epoch of stagnation +produced on one’s fingers—<span class="smcap">Chekhov</span>, <span class="smcap">Garshin</span>, +<span class="smcap">Korolenko</span>, and at the end of the period +<span class="smcap">Maxime Gorky</span>, and apart from them, in a +by-path of his own, <span class="smcap">Merezhkovsky</span>. Of +these Chekhov and Gorky tower above the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>244]</a></span> +others. Chekhov enlarged the range of Russian +literature by painting the middle-class +and the <i>Intelligentsia</i>, and brought back to +Russian literature the note of humour; and +Gorky broke altogether fresh ground by painting +the vagabond, the artisan, the tramp, the +thief, the flotsam and jetsam of the big town +and the highway, and by painting in a new +manner.</p> + +<p>Gorky’s work came like that of Mr. Rudyard +Kipling to England, as a revelation. Not +only did his subject matter open the doors +on dominions undreamed of, but his attitude +towards life and that of his heroes towards life +seemed to be different from that of all Russian +novelists before his advent; and yet the difference +between him and his forerunners is not +so great as it appears at first sight. It is +true that his rough and rebellious heroes, instead +of playing the Hamlet, or of finding the +solution of life in charity and humility or submission, +are partisans of the survival of the +fittest with a vengeance, the survival of the +strongest fist and the sharpest knife; yet are +these new heroes really so different from the +uncompromising type that we have already +seen sharing one half of the Russian stage, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>245]</a></span> +right through the story of Russian literature, +from Bazarov back to Peter the Great, and +on whose existence was founded the remark +that Peter the Great was one of the ingredients +in the Russian character? Put Bazarov on the +road, or Lermontov, or even Peter the Great, +and you get Gorky’s barefooted hero.</p> + +<p>Where Gorky created something absolutely +new was in the surroundings and in the manner +of life which he described, and in the way +he described them; this is especially true of +his treatment of nature: for the first time in +Russian prose literature, we get away from +the “orthodox” landscape of convention, +and we are face to face with the elements. +We feel as if a new breath of air had entered +into literature; we feel as people accustomed +to the manner in which the poets treated +nature in England in the eighteenth century +must have felt when Wordsworth, Byron, +Shelley and Coleridge began to write.</p> + +<p>Chekhov worked on older lines. He descends +directly from Turgenev, although his +field is a different one. He, more than any +other writer and better than any other writer, +painted the epoch of stagnation, when Russia, +as a Russian once said, was playing itself to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>246]</a></span> +death at <i>vindt</i> (an older form of <em>Bridge</em>). +The tone of his work is grey, and indeed +resembles, as Tolstoy said, that of a photographer, +by its objective realism as well as by +its absence of high tones; yet if Chekhov is a +photographer, he is at the same time a supreme +artist, an artist in black and white, and his +pessimism is counteracted by two other factors, +his sense of humour and his humanity; +were it not so, the impression of sadness one +would derive from the sum of misery which +his crowded stage of merchants, students, +squires, innkeepers, waiters, schoolmasters, +magistrates, popes, officials, make up between +them, would be intolerable. Some of Chekhov’s +most interesting work was written for +the stage, on which he also brought Scenes of +Country Life, which is the sub-title of the play +<i>Uncle Vanya</i>. There are the same grey tints, +the same weary, amiable, and slack people, +bankrupt of ideals and poor in hope, whom we +meet in the stories; and here, too, behind +the sordid triviality and futility, we hear +the “still sad music of humanity.” But +in order that the tints of Chekhov’s delicate +living and breathing photographs can be effective +on the stage, very special acting is necessary, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>247]</a></span> +in order to convey the quality of atmosphere +which is his special gift. Fortunately +he met with exactly the right technique and +the appropriate treatment at the Art Theatre +at Moscow.</p> + +<p>Chekhov died in 1904, soon after the Russo-Japanese +War had begun. Apart from the +main stream and tradition of Russian fiction +and Russian prose, Merezhkovsky occupies a +unique place, a place which lies between +criticism and imaginative historical fiction, +not unlike, in some respects—but very different +in others—that which is occupied by Walter +Pater in English fiction. His best known +work, at least his best known work in Europe, +is a prose trilogy, “The Death of the Gods” +(a study of Julian the apostate), “The +Resurrection of the Gods” (the story of +Leonardo da Vinci), and “The Antichrist” (the +story of Peter the Great and his son Alexis), +which has been translated into nearly every +European language. This trilogy is an essay +in imaginative historical reconstitution; it +testifies to a real and deep culture, and it is +lit at times by flashes of imaginative inspiration +which make the scenes of the past live; +it is alive with suggestive thought; but it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>248]</a></span> +not throughout convincing, there is a touch +of Bulwer Lytton as well as a touch of Goethe +and Pater in it. Merezhkovsky is perhaps more +successful in his purely critical work, his books +on Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Gogol, which +are infinitely stimulating, suggestive, and +original, than in his historical fiction, although, +needless to say, his criticism appeals to a far +narrower public. He is in any case one of +the most brilliant and interesting of Russian +modern writers, and perhaps the best known +outside Russia.</p> + +<p>During the war, a writer of fiction made his +name by a remarkable book, namely <span class="smcap">Kuprin</span>, +who in his novel, <i>The Duel</i>, gave a vivid and +masterly picture of the life of an officer in +the line. Kuprin has since kept the promise +of his early work. At the same time, <span class="smcap">Leonid +Andreev</span> came forward with short stories, +plays, a description of war (<i>The Red Laugh</i>), +moralities, not uninfluenced by Maeterlinck, +and a limpid and beautiful style in which +pessimism seemed to be speaking its last +word.</p> + +<p>In 1905 the revolutionary movement broke +out, with its great hopes, its disillusions, its +period of anarchy on the one hand and repression +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>249]</a></span> +on the other; out of the chaos of events +came a chaos of writing rather than literature, +and in its turn this produced, in literature +as well as in life, a reaction, or rather a series +of reactions, towards symbolism, æstheticism, +mysticism on the one hand, and towards +materialism—not of theory but of practice—on +the other. But since these various reactions +are now going on, and are vitally affecting +the present day, the revolutionary movement +of 1905 seems the right point to take leave +of Russian literature. In 1905 a new era +began, and what that era will ultimately +produce, it is too soon even to hazard a +guess.</p> + +<p>Looking back over the record of Russian +literature, the first thing which must strike +us, if we think of the literature of other +countries, is its comparatively short life. +There is in Russian literature no Middle Ages, +no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no Renaissance, +no <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Grand Siècle</i>. Literature begins +in the nineteenth century. The second thing +which will perhaps strike us is that, in spite +of its being the youngest of all the literatures, +it seems to be spiritually the oldest. +In some respects it seems to have become +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>250]</a></span> +over-ripe before it reached maturity. But +herein, perhaps, lies the secret of its greatness, +and this may be the value of its contribution +to the soul of mankind. It is—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Old in grief and very wise in tears”:<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>and its chief gift to mankind is an expression, +made with a naturalness and sincerity that +are matchless, and a love of reality which is +unique,—for all Russian literature, whether +in prose or verse, is rooted in reality—of that +grief and that wisdom; the grief and wisdom +which come from a great heart; a heart that +is large enough to embrace the world and to +drown all the sorrows therein with the immensity +of its sympathy, its fraternity, its +pity, its charity, and its love.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>251]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronological table"> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1113.</td> + <td class="tdl"><i>The Chronicle of Nestor.</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1692.</td> + <td class="tdl">First play produced in Russia, Gregory.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Simeon Polotsky’s <i>The Prodigal Son</i> acted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1703.</td> + <td class="tdl">The first Russian newspaper, <i>The Russian News</i>, appears.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1725.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Peter the Great.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Foundation of the Academy of Science.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1744.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Kantemir.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1750.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Tatishchev.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1755.</td> + <td class="tdl">University of Moscow founded.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1762.</td> + <td class="tdl">Accession of Catherine the Great.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1765.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Lomonosov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1790.</td> + <td class="tdl">Radishchev’s <i>Journey Through Russia</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1796.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Catherine the Great.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1800.</td> + <td class="tdl">First edition of <i>The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1802.</td> + <td class="tdl">Zhukovsky translates Gray’s <i>Elegy</i>.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Radishchev.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1806.</td> + <td class="tdl">Krylov’s first fables published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1816.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Derzhavin.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl"><i>History of the Russian State</i>, by Karamzin, published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1819.</td> + <td class="tdl">University of St. Petersburg founded.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1820.</td> + <td class="tdl">Pushkin’s <i>Ruslan and Ludmila</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1823.</td> + <td class="tdl">Griboyedov’s <i>Misfortune of Being Clever</i> circulated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">First Canto of <i>Eugene Onegin</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1825.</td> + <td class="tdl">The Decembrist Attempt.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>252]</a></span>1826.</td> + <td class="tdl">Rileev hanged.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Karamzin.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1827.</td> + <td class="tdl">Pushkin’s <i>Gypsies</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1829.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Griboyedov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Pushkin’s <i>Poltava</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1831.</td> + <td class="tdl">Pushkin’s <i>Boris Godunov</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Complete version of <i>Eugene Onegin</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1832.</td> + <td class="tdl">Gogol’s <i>Evening on the Farm near the Dikanka</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1834.</td> + <td class="tdl">Gogol’s <i>Mirgorod</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1835.</td> + <td class="tdl">Gogol’s <i>Revisor</i> produced on the stage.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1836.</td> + <td class="tdl">Chaadaev’s letters published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1837.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Pushkin.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1841.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Lermontov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1842.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Koltsov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Gogol’s <i>Dead Souls</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1844.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Krylov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1847.</td> + <td class="tdl">Gogol’s correspondence published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Turgenev’s <i>Sportsman’s Sketches</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Belinsky.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1849.</td> + <td class="tdl">Dostoyevsky imprisoned.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1856-7.</td> + <td class="tdl">Saltykov’s <i>Government Sketches</i> appear.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1859.</td> + <td class="tdl">Ostrovsky’s <i>Storm</i> produced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Goncharov’s <i>Oblomov</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1860.</td> + <td class="tdl">Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1861.</td> + <td class="tdl">Emancipation of the Serfs.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1862.</td> + <td class="tdl">Pisemsky’s <i>Troubled Sea</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1863.</td> + <td class="tdl">Chernyshevsky’s <i>What is to be Done?</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1865.</td> + <td class="tdl">Leskov’s <i>No Way Out</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1865-1872.</td> + <td class="tdl">Tolstoy’s <i>War and Peace</i> appeared.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1866.</td> + <td class="tdl">Dostoyevsky’s <i>Crime and Punishment</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1868.</td> + <td class="tdl">Dostoyevsky’s <i>Idiot</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1875.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Count Alexis Tolstoy.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1875-6.</td> + <td class="tdl">Tolstoy’s <i>Anna Karenina</i> published.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1877.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Nekrasov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1881.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Dostoyevsky.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1883.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Turgenev.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1886.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Ostrovsky.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>253]</a></span>1887.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Nadson.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1889.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Saltykov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1900.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Soloviev.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Production of Chekhov’s <i>Chaika</i> (Seagull).</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1904.</td> + <td class="tdl">Production of Chekhov’s <i>Cherry Orchard</i>.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"> </td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Chekhov.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">1910.</td> + <td class="tdl">Death of Tolstoy.</td> + </tr> +</table> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>254]</a></span></p> + +<h2>INDEX</h2> + + +<p class="center"> +<a href="#A">A</a> <a href="#B">B</a> <a href="#C">C</a> +<a href="#D">D</a> <a href="#E">E</a> <a href="#F">F</a> +<a href="#G">G</a> <a href="#H">H</a> <a href="#I">I</a> +<a href="#J">J</a> <a href="#K">K</a> <a href="#L">L</a> +<a href="#M">M</a> <a href="#N">N</a> <a href="#O">O</a> +<a href="#P">P</a> <a href="#R">R</a> <a href="#S">S</a> +<a href="#T">T</a> <a href="#U">U</a> <a href="#V">V</a> +<a href="#W">W</a> <a href="#Y">Y</a> <a href="#Z">Z</a> +</p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="A" id="A"></a> +Acton, Lord, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p>Ainsworth, Harrison, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></p> + +<p>Aksakov, Ivan, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></p> + +<p>——, Serge, <a href="#Page_154">154</a> f.</p> + +<p>Alexander I, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> f., <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, +<a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></p> + +<p>—— II, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, +<a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Alexis, Tsar, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></p> + +<p>Andreev, Leonid, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></p> + +<p><i>Anna Karenina</i>, Tolstoy’s, <a href="#Page_205">205</a> f.</p> + +<p>Apukhtin, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></p> + +<p>Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Atheism and Socialism, <a href="#Page_150">150</a> f.</p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="B" id="B"></a> +Bakunin, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Balfour, Mr. A. J., <a href="#Page_182">182</a></p> + +<p>Balmont, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></p> + +<p>Bariatinsky, Prince, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></p> + +<p>Batyushkov, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></p> + +<p>Baudelaire, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Beaconsfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p>Belinsky, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></p> + +<p><i>Bell, The</i>, Herzen edits, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, +<a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Bloch, Alexander, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></p> + +<p><i>Bogoiskateli</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></p> + +<p>Brontë, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></p> + +<p>——, Emily, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></p> + +<p>Brückner, Prof., <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, +<a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></p> + +<p>Brusov, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></p> + +<p>Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></p> + +<p>Bulgaria, liberation of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></p> + +<p>Bürger’s <i>Leonore</i> translated into Russian, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></p> + +<p>Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></p> + +<p>Byron, <a href="#Page_61">61</a> f., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, +<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a> (footnotes), <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, +<a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, +<a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p>Byzantium, Emperor of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="C" id="C"></a> +Catherine I, <a href="#Page_18">18</a> (footnote)</p> + +<p>—— II, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, +<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></p> + +<p>Chaadaev, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></p> + +<p>Chekhov, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a> f.</p> + +<p>Chernyshevsky, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Chesterton, Mr. G. K., <a href="#Page_182">182</a></p> + +<p>Christianity of the East, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></p> + +<p><i>Chronicle of Kiev</i>, the, <a href="#Page_15">15</a> f.</p> + +<p><i>Chronicle of Nestor</i>, the, <a href="#Page_15">15</a> f.</p> + +<p>Church, the, influence on Russian literature, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></p> + +<p>Constantine, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></p> + +<p>Corot, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Crabbe, Nekrasov and, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> f.</p> + +<p>Crimean War, the, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="D" id="D"></a> +Danilevsky, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Daudet, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></p> + +<p>“Decembrist” rising, the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, +<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></p> + +<p>Delvig, Baron, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></p> + +<p>Demetrius, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></p> + +<p>Derzhavin, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></p> + +<p>Diderot, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></p> + +<p>Dobrolyubov, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Donne, John, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></p> + +<p>Dostoyevsky, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, +<a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, +<a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, +<a href="#Page_196">196</a> f., <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a> f., +<a href="#Page_220">220</a> f.</p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="E" id="E"></a> +Eastern and Western Churches, schism of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, +<a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></p> + +<p>Eliot, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></p> + +<p>Elizabeth, Empress, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></p> + +<p>Emancipation of the serfs, the, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="F" id="F"></a> +Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the Great, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></p> + +<p>Fet, <a href="#Page_232">232</a> f.</p> + +<p>Flaubert, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></p> + +<p>French influence in Russia, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></p> + +<p>French Revolution, the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="G" id="G"></a> +Gagarin, Prince, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></p> + +<p>Garshin, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></p> + +<p>Gautier, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>German influence in Russia, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></p> + +<p>Goethe, death of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></p> + +<p>——, Pushkin’s resemblance to, <a href="#Page_92">92</a> f.</p> + +<p>Gogol, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_126">126</a> f., <a href="#Page_190">190</a></p> + +<p>Goncharov, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a> f.</p> + +<p>Gorky, Maxime, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a> f.</p> + +<p>Gray’s <i>Elegy</i>, Russian translations of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></p> + +<p>Gregory, Protestant pastor of the Sloboda, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></p> + +<p>Griboyedov, <a href="#Page_45">45</a> f., <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></p> + +<p>Grigoriev, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Grigorovich, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></p> + +<p>Grimm’s Fairy Tales, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="H" id="H"></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>255]</a></span> +Haumant, M., <a href="#Page_168">168</a></p> + +<p>Heckeren-Dantes’ duel with Pushkin, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></p> + +<p>Heine, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></p> + +<p><a name="herzen" id="herzen"></a>Herzen, Alexander, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, +<a href="#Page_150">150</a> f., <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Hoffmann, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></p> + +<p>Homyakov, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></p> + +<p>Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="I" id="I"></a> +Ivan III, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></p> + +<p>—— IV (“The Terrible”), <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, +<a href="#Page_235">235</a></p> + +<p>Ivanov, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="J" id="J"></a> +<i>Jane Eyre</i> cited, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="K" id="K"></a> +Kantemir, Prince, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></p> + +<p>Karakozov, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></p> + +<p>Karamzin, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a> f., <a href="#Page_141">141</a></p> + +<p>Katkov, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></p> + +<p>Keats, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p><i>Kidnapped</i> (Stevenson’s), <a href="#Page_129">129</a></p> + +<p>Kiev, destruction of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;<br /> +<span class="in1">rebuilding of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></span></p> + +<p>——, the mother of Russian culture, <a href="#Page_10">10</a> f.</p> + +<p>Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></p> + +<p>Koltsov, <a href="#Page_124">124</a> f.</p> + +<p>Korolenko, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></p> + +<p>Krylov, <a href="#Page_34">34</a> f., <a href="#Page_176">176</a> f.</p> + +<p>Kuprin, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="L" id="L"></a> +La Fontaine, <a href="#Page_35">35</a> f.</p> + +<p>Lang, Andrew, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></p> + +<p>Latin language taught in Moscow, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></p> + +<p>Le Maistre, Joseph, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></p> + +<p>Leo X, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></p> + +<p>Lermontov, <a href="#Page_102">102</a> f., <a href="#Page_126">126</a></p> + +<p><a name="leskov" id="leskov"></a>Leskov, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a> f.</p> + +<p>Lisle, Leconte de, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Literary criticism, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></p> + +<p>Liturgical books, revision of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></p> + +<p>Lomonosov, Michael, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></p> + +<p>Luther, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></p> + +<p>Lytton, Bulwer, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="M" id="M"></a> +Maikov, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></p> + +<p>Maupassant, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></p> + +<p>Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></p> + +<p>Merezhkovsky, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, +<a href="#Page_247">247</a> f.</p> + +<p>Mérimée, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></p> + +<p>Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></p> + +<p>Mickiewicz, the Pole, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></p> + +<p>Montesquieu, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></p> + +<p>Morley, John, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p>Moscow, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></p> + +<p>Moscow Art Theatre, the, <a href="#Page_v">v</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, +<a href="#Page_247">247</a></p> + +<p>——, European culture in, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></p> + +<p><i>Moscow Journal</i> founded by Karamzin, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></p> + +<p>Moscow, Pushkin’s memorial at, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></p> + +<p>——, schools in, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></p> + +<p>——, the fire of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></p> + +<p>——, University of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></p> + +<p>Mozart of Russian literature, the, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></p> + +<p>Musin-Pushkin, Count. <i>See</i> <a href="#pushkin">Pushkin</a>.</p> + +<p>Musset, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></p> + +<p>Mussorgsky, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="N" id="N"></a> +Nadson, <a href="#Page_239">239</a> f.</p> + +<p>Napoleon, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> f., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, +<a href="#Page_204">204</a></p> + +<p>Nechaev, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></p> + +<p>Nekrasov, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> f., <a href="#Page_234">234</a></p> + +<p>Nicholas, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></p> + +<p>Nicholas, Emperor, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></p> + +<p>Nicholas I, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></p> + +<p><a name="nihilism" id="nihilism"></a>Nihilism, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, +<a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, +<a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Nikitin, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></p> + +<p>Norsemen in Russia, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="O" id="O"></a> +<i>Odyssey</i>, the, Russian translation of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></p> + +<p>Ostrovsky, <a href="#Page_193">193</a> f.</p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="P" id="P"></a> +Palæologa, Sophia, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></p> + +<p>Paris revolution of 1848, the, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></p> + +<p>Parnassian poetry, the epoch of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a> f.</p> + +<p>Pater, Walter, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></p> + +<p>Paul, Emperor, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></p> + +<p>Peter the Great, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a> f., <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, +<a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></p> + +<p>—— —— of Poetry, the, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></p> + +<p>Petrashevsky and his followers, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></p> + +<p>Pisarev, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Pisemsky, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></p> + +<p>Poe, E. A., <a href="#Page_86">86</a></p> + +<p>Poland, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></p> + +<p>Poland, the rising in, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p>Poles occupy Moscow, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></p> + +<p>Polevoy, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></p> + +<p>Polezhaev, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></p> + +<p>Polonsky, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a> f.</p> + +<p>Polotsky, Simeon, <a href="#Page_22">22</a> f.</p> + +<p>Preobrazhenskoe and its theatre, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></p> + +<p>Pre-Raphaelites, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Printing press, the first, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></p> + +<p>Propagandists of Western Ideas the, <a href="#Page_148">148</a> f.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>256]</a></span> +Prutkov, Kuzma. <i>See</i> <a href="#tolstoy">Tolstoy, Count Alexis</a>.</p> + +<p>Pugachev and the Cossack rising, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></p> + +<p><a name="pushkin" id="pushkin"></a>Pushkin <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, +<a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, +<a href="#Page_54">54</a> f., <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, +<a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, +<a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, +<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="R" id="R"></a> +Radishchev, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> f.</p> + +<p>Rakhmaninov, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></p> + +<p>Rimsky-Korsakov, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></p> + +<p>Rodionovna, Anna, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></p> + +<p>Rome, Gogol settles in, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></p> + +<p>Rousseau, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></p> + +<p>Russia and political liberty, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></p> + +<p>——, Norsemen in, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></p> + +<p>——, Tartar invasion of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></p> + +<p>——, the revolutionary movement of 1905, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, +<a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></p> + +<p>Russian literature, beginnings of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a> f.</p> + +<p>—— ——, dawn of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> f.</p> + +<p>—— ——, second renascence of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></p> + +<p>—— ——, the age of prose, <a href="#Page_126">126</a> f.</p> + +<p>—— ——, the second age of poetry, <a href="#Page_226">226</a> f.</p> + +<p>—— newspaper, the first, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></p> + +<p>—— Nihilism. <i>See</i> <a href="#nihilism">Nihilism</a>.</p> + +<p>—— trade centres, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></p> + +<p>Russia’s national poet, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></p> + +<p>Russo-Japanese War, the, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></p> + +<p>Ryleev, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="S" id="S"></a> +Sainte-Beuve, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></p> + +<p>St. Petersburg, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></p> + +<p>—— Jesuits, the, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></p> + +<p>——, the great floods of 1834, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></p> + +<p><a name="saltykov" id="saltykov"></a>Saltykov, Michael, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a>, +<a href="#Page_184">184</a> f., <a href="#Page_190">190</a> f.</p> + +<p>Sand, George, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></p> + +<p>Schiller’s <i>Maid of Orleans</i>, Russian translation of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></p> + +<p>Schumann of Russian literature, the, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></p> + +<p>Seekers after God, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></p> + +<p>Serfs, emancipation of the, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></p> + +<p>Shakespeare, Pushkin on, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></p> + +<p>Shchedrin. <i>See</i> <a href="#saltykov">Saltykov</a>.</p> + +<p>Siberia, Dostoyevsky at, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></p> + +<p>——, Radishchev at, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></p> + +<p>Slav race, the, <a href="#Page_10">10</a> f.</p> + +<p>Slavonic liturgy, introduction of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></p> + +<p>Slavophiles, the, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, +<a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, +<a href="#Page_228">228</a></p> + +<p>Sluchevsky, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></p> + +<p>Socialism and Atheism, <a href="#Page_150">150</a> f.</p> + +<p>Society of Welfare, the, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></p> + +<p>Sologub, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></p> + +<p>Soloviev, Vladimir, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a> f.</p> + +<p>Stebnitsky. <i>See</i> <a href="#leskov">Leskov</a>.</p> + +<p>Stendhal, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></p> + +<p>Stevenson, R. L., <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, +<a href="#Page_214">214</a></p> + +<p>Strakhov, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></p> + +<p><a name="suffragettes" id="suffragettes"></a>Suffragettes, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, +<a href="#Page_164">164</a></p> + +<p>Sully-Prudhomme, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Suvorov, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></p> + +<p>Sviatoslav, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="T" id="T"></a> +Taine, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></p> + +<p>Tartar invasion of Russia, the, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;<br /> +<span class="in1">the Tartar yoke thrown off, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></span></p> + +<p>Tatishchev, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></p> + +<p>Tchaikovsky, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></p> + +<p>Tennyson, Lord, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></p> + +<p>Thackeray, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></p> + +<p><a name="tolstoy" id="tolstoy"></a>Tolstoy, Count Alexis, <a href="#Page_234">234</a> f.</p> + +<p>——, Count Leo, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, +<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a> f., +<a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></p> + +<p>Turgenev, Ivan, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a> f., <a href="#Page_192">192</a></p> + +<p>Tyutchev, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="U" id="U"></a> +Universal church, Soloviev’s views on, <a href="#Page_182">182-183</a></p> + +<p>University of Moscow, the, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="V" id="V"></a> +Venevitinov, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></p> + +<p>Vienna, Congress of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></p> + +<p>Vigny, Alfred de, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></p> + +<p>Vinci, Leonardo da, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></p> + +<p>Virgil of Russian prose, the, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></p> + +<p>Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></p> + +<p>Volkonsky, Princess, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></p> + +<p>Voltaire, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></p> + +<p>Volynsky, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></p> + +<p>Vyatka, Saltykov banished to, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></p> + +<p>Vyazemsky, Prince, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="W" id="W"></a> +<i>War and Peace</i>, publication of, <a href="#Page_202">202</a> f.</p> + +<p>Wells, Mr., <a href="#Page_164">164</a></p> + +<p>Wilson, John, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></p> + +<p>Woman’s Suffrage, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>. <i>Cf.</i> <a href="#suffragettes">Suffragettes</a>.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="Y" id="Y"></a> +Yakovlev. <i>Cf.</i> <a href="#herzen">Herzen, Alexander</a>.</p> + +<p>Yazykov, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></p> + + +<p class="index"><a name="Z" id="Z"></a> +Zhukovsky, Basil, <a href="#Page_51">51</a> f., <a href="#Page_83">83</a></p> + +<p>Zola, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></p> + + +<p class="center padtop padbase smlfont"><i>Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.</i></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>1]</a></span></p> + +<table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Advertising title"> + <tr> + <td class="tdl" width="30%"> </td> + <td class="tdl" width="20%"> </td> + <td class="tdl" width="20%"> </td> + <td class="tdl" width="30%"> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc bt bl br xxlrgfont" colspan="4">The</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc bl xxlrgfont" colspan="2">Home</td> + <td class="tdc br xxlrgfont" colspan="2">University</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc bl xxlrgfont" colspan="2" rowspan="2">Library</td> + <td class="tdc br xlrgfont" colspan="2">of Modern</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc br xlrgfont" colspan="2">Knowledge</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc bl br lrgfont" colspan="4"><i>A Comprehensive Series of New<br /> +and Specially Written Books</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc bt bl br smlfont" colspan="4">EDITORS:</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl lpad bl br" colspan="4"><span class="smcap">Prof.</span> GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl lpad bl br" colspan="4">HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl lpad bl br" colspan="4"><span class="smcap">Prof.</span> J. 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Hon. <span class="smcap">James Bryce</span> writes: “I have read it +with much interest and pleasure, admiring the skill with which you have +managed to compress so many facts and views into so small a volume.”</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">8. <i>POLAR EXPLORATION</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Dr <span class="smcap">W. S. Bruce</span>, F.R.S.E., Leader of the “Scotia” Expedition. (With +Maps.) “A very freshly written and interesting narrative.”—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">12. <i>THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Sir <span class="smcap">H. H. Johnston</span>, G.C.M.G., F.Z.S. (With Maps.) “The Home +University Library is much enriched by this excellent work.”—<i>Daily Mail.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">13. <i>MEDIÆVAL EUROPE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">H. W. C. Davis</span>, M.A. (With Maps.) “One more illustration of the +fact that it takes a complete master of the subject to write briefly upon +it.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">14. <i>THE PAPACY & MODERN TIMES (1303-1870)</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">William Barry</span>, D.D. “Dr Barry has a wide range of knowledge +and an artist’s power of selection.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>2]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">23. <i>HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885-1911)</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. P. Gooch</span>, M.A. “Mr Gooch contrives to breathe vitality into his story, +and to give us the flesh as well as the bones of recent happenings.”—<i>Observer.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">25. <i>THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">H. A. Giles</span>, LL.D., Professor of Chinese at Cambridge. “In all the +mass of facts, Professor Giles never becomes dull. He is always ready with a +ghost story or a street adventure for the reader’s recreation.”—<i>Spectator.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">29. <i>THE DAWN OF HISTORY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. L. Myres</span>, M.A., F.S.A., Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford. +“There is not a page in it that is not suggestive.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">33. <i>THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind"><i>A Study in Political Evolution</i><br /> +By Prof. <span class="smcap">A. F. Pollard</span>, M.A. With a Chronological Table. “It takes its +place at once among the authoritative works on English history.”—<i>Observer.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">34. <i>CANADA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">A. G. Bradley</span>. “The volume makes an immediate appeal to the man who +wants to know something vivid and true about Canada.”—<i>Canadian Gazette.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">37. <i>PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Sir <span class="smcap">T. W. Holderness</span>, K.C.S.I., Permanent Under-Secretary of State +of the India Office. “Just the book which newspaper readers require to-day, +and a marvel of comprehensiveness.”—<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">42. <i>ROME</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">W. Warde Fowler</span>, M.A. “A masterly sketch of Roman character and +of what it did for the world.”—<i>The Spectator.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">48. <i>THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">F. L. Paxson</span>, Professor of American History, Wisconsin University +(With Maps.) “A stirring study.”—<i>The Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">51. <i>WARFARE IN BRITAIN</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Hilaire Belloc</span>, M.A. “Rich in suggestion for the historical student.”—<i>Edinburgh +Evening News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">55. <i>MASTER MARINERS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. R. Spears</span>. “A continuous story of shipping progress and adventure.... +It reads like a romance.”—<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">61. <i>NAPOLEON</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Herbert Fisher</span>, LL.D., F.B.A., Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. +(With Maps.) The story of the great Bonaparte’s youth, his career, and his +downfall, with some sayings of Napoleon, a genealogy, and a bibliography.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">66. <i>THE NAVY AND SEA POWER</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">David Hannay</span>. The author traces the growth of naval power from early +times, and discusses its principles and effects upon the history of the Western world.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">71. <i>GERMANY OF TO-DAY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Charles Tower</span>. “It would be difficult to name any better summary.”—<i>Daily +News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">82. <i>PREHISTORIC BRITAIN</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Robert Munro</span>, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. (Illustrated.)</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">91. <i>THE ALPS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Arnold Lunn</span>, M.A. (Illustrated.)</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">92. <i>CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Professor W. R. Shepherd</span>. (Maps.)</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>3]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">97. <i>THE ANCIENT EAST</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">D. G. Hogarth</span>, M.A. (Maps.)</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">98. <i>THE WARS between ENGLAND and AMERICA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">T. C. Smith</span>.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">100. <i>HISTORY OF SCOTLAND</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">R. S. Rait</span>.</p> + + +<p class="center pad booklist dbord xlrgfont"><i>Literature and Art</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">2. <i>SHAKESPEARE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">John Masefield</span>. “We have had more learned books on Shakespeare +in the last few years, but not one so wise.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">27. <i>ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. H. Mair</span>, M.A. “Altogether a fresh and individual book.”—<i>Observer.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">35. <i>LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. L. Strachey</span>. “It is difficult to imagine how a better account of +French Literature could be given in 250 small pages.”—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">39. <i>ARCHITECTURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. R. Lethaby</span>. (Over forty Illustrations.) “Delightfully bright +reading.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">43. <i>ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIÆVAL</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. P. Ker</span>, M.A. “Prof. Ker’s knowledge and taste are unimpeachable, +and his style is effective, simple, yet never dry.”—<i>The Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">45. <i>THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">L. Pearsall Smith</span>, M.A. “A wholly fascinating study of the different +streams that make the great river of the English speech.”—<i>Daily News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">52. <i>GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. Erskine</span> and Prof. <span class="smcap">W. P. Trent</span>. “An admirable summary, from +Franklin to Mark Twain, enlivened by a dry humour.”—<i>Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">63. <i>PAINTERS AND PAINTING</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Sir <span class="smcap">Frederick Wedmore</span>. (With 16 half-tone illustrations.) From the +Primitives to the Impressionists.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">64. <i>DR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">John Bailey</span>, M.A. “A most delightful essay.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">65. <i>THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Professor <span class="smcap">J. G. Robertson</span>, M.A., Ph.D. “Under the author’s skilful +treatment the subject shows life and continuity.”—<i>Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">70. <i>THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. K. Chesterton</span>. “No one will put it down without a sense of having +taken a tonic or received a series of electric shocks.”—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">73. <i>THE WRITING OF ENGLISH</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">W. T. Brewster</span>, A.M., Professor of English in Columbia University. +“Sensible, and not over-rigidly conventional.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">75. <i>ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Jane E. Harrison</span>, LL.D., D.Litt. “Charming in style and learned in +manner.”—<i>Daily News.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>4]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">76. <i>EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Gilbert Murray</span>, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek at +Oxford. “A beautiful piece of work.... Just in the fulness of time, and +exactly in the right place.... Euripides has come into his own.”—<i>The Nation.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">87. <i>CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Grace E. Hadow</span>.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">89. <i>WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">A. Clutton Brock</span>.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">93. <i>THE RENAISSANCE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Edith Sichel</span>.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">95. <i>ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. M. Robertson</span>, M.P.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">99. <i>AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Hon. <span class="smcap">Maurice Baring</span>.</p> + + +<p class="center pad booklist dbord xlrgfont"><i>Science</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">7. <i>MODERN GEOGRAPHY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Dr <span class="smcap">Marion Newbigin</span>. (Illustrated.) “Geography, again: what a dull, +tedious study that was wont to be!... But Miss Marion Newbigin invests its +dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic interest.”—<i>Daily Telegraph.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">9. <i>THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Dr <span class="smcap">D. H. Scott</span>, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory, +Kew. (Fully illustrated.) “Dr Scott’s candid and familiar style makes the +difficult subject both fascinating and easy.”—<i>Gardeners’ Chronicle.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">17. <i>HEALTH AND DISEASE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">W. Leslie Mackenzie</span>, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">18. <i>INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">A. N. Whitehead</span>, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) “Mr Whitehead +has discharged with conspicuous success the task he is so exceptionally qualified +to undertake. For he is one of our great authorities upon the foundations of +the science.”—<i>Westminster Gazette.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">19. <i>THE ANIMAL WORLD</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Professor <span class="smcap">F. W. Gamble</span>, F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge. +(Many Illustrations.) “A fascinating and suggestive survey.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">20. <i>EVOLUTION</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Professor <span class="smcap">J. Arthur Thomson</span> and Professor <span class="smcap">Patrick Geddes</span>. “A +many-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no other book we +know, a rational vision of world-development.”—<i>Belfast News-Letter.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">22. <i>CRIME AND INSANITY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Dr <span class="smcap">C. A. Mercier</span>. “Furnishes much valuable information from one occupying +the highest position among medico-legal psychologists.”—<i>Asylum News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">28. <i>PSYCHICAL RESEARCH</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Sir <span class="smcap">W. F. Barrett</span>, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of +Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. “What he has to say on thought-reading, +hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spiritualism, divinings, and so on, will be +read with avidity.”—<i>Dundee Courier.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>5]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">31. <i>ASTRONOMY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">A. R. Hinks</span>, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory. “Original +in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in treatment.... No better +little book is available.”—<i>School World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">32. <i>INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. Arthur Thomson</span>, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen +University. “Professor Thomson’s delightful literary style is well known; and +here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods of science and its relations +with philosophy, art, religion, and practical life.”—<i>Aberdeen Journal.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">36. <i>CLIMATE AND WEATHER</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">H. N. Dickson</span>, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the +Royal Meteorological Society. (With Diagrams.) “The author has succeeded +in presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner the causes of the movements +of the atmosphere and of the more stable winds.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">41. <i>ANTHROPOLOGY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">R. R. Marett</span>, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford University. +“An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child could understand it, so +fascinating and human that it beats fiction ‘to a frazzle.’”—<i>Morning Leader.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">44. <i>THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. G. McKendrick</span>, M.D. “Upon every page of it is stamped +the impress of a creative imagination.”—<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">46. <i>MATTER AND ENERGY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">F. Soddy</span>, M.A., F.R.S. “Prof. Soddy has successfully accomplished +the very difficult task of making physics of absorbing interest on popular +lines.”—<i>Nature.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">49. <i>PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. McDougall</span>, F.R.S., M.B. “A happy example of the non-technical +handling of an unwieldy science, suggesting rather than dogmatising. +It should whet appetites for deeper study.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">53. <i>THE MAKING OF THE EARTH</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. W. Gregory</span>, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.) “A +fascinating little volume.... Among the many good things contained in the +series this takes a high place.”—<i>The Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">57. <i>THE HUMAN BODY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">A. Keith</span>, M.D., LL.D., Conservator of Museum and Hunterian Professor, +Royal College of Surgeons. (Illustrated.) “It literally makes the ‘dry bones’ +to live. It will certainly take a high place among the classics of popular +science.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">58. <i>ELECTRICITY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Gisbert Kapp</span>, D.Eng., Professor of Electrical Engineering in the University +of Birmingham. (Illustrated.) “It will be appreciated greatly by learners +and by the great number of amateurs who are interested in what is one of the +most fascinating of scientific studies.”—<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">62. <i>THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Dr <span class="smcap">Benjamin Moore</span>, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, +Liverpool. “Stimulating, learned, lucid.”—<i>Liverpool Courier.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">67. <i>CHEMISTRY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Raphael Meldola</span>, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury Technical +College, London. Presents clearly, without the detail demanded by the expert, +the way in which chemical science has developed, and the stage it has reached.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">72. <i>PLANT LIFE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. B. Farmer</span>, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Illustrated.) “Professor Farmer has +contrived to convey all the most vital facts of plant physiology, and also to +present a good many of the chief problems which confront investigators to-day +in the realms of morphology and of heredity.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>6]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">78. <i>THE OCEAN</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By Sir <span class="smcap">John Murray</span>, K.C.B. +F.R.S. (Colour plates and other illustrations.)</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">79. <i>NERVES</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">D. Fraser Harris</span>, M.D., D.Sc. (Illustrated.) A description, in +non-technical language, of the nervous system, its intricate mechanism and the +strange phenomena of energy and fatigue, with some practical reflections.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">86. <i>SEX</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Patrick Geddes</span> and Prof. <span class="smcap">J. Arthur Thomson</span>, LL.D. (Illus.)</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">88. <i>THE GROWTH OF EUROPE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Grenville Cole</span>, (Illus.)</p> + + +<p class="center pad booklist dbord xlrgfont"><i>Philosophy and Religion</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">15. <i>MOHAMMEDANISM</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">D. S. Margoliouth</span>, M.A., D.Litt. “This generous shilling’s +worth of wisdom.... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible tractate +by an illuminative professor.”—<i>Daily Mail.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">40. <i>THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By the Hon. <span class="smcap">Bertrand Russell</span>, F.R.S. “A book that the ‘man in the +street’ will recognise at once to be a boon.... Consistently lucid and non-technical +throughout.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">47. <i>BUDDHISM</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Mrs <span class="smcap">Rhys Davids</span>, M.A. “The author presents very attractively as well +as very learnedly the philosophy of Buddhism.”—<i>Daily News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">50. <i>NONCONFORMITY: Its ORIGIN and PROGRESS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Principal <span class="smcap">W. B. Selbie</span>, M.A. “The historical part is brilliant in its +insight, clarity, and proportion.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">54. <i>ETHICS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. E. Moore</span>, M.A., Lecturer in Moral Science in Cambridge University. +“A very lucid though closely reasoned outline of the logic of good conduct.”—<i>Christian +World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">56. <i>THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">B. W. Bacon</span>, LL.D., D.D. “Professor Bacon has boldly, and +wisely, taken his own line, and has produced, as a result, an extraordinarily +vivid, stimulating, and lucid book.”—<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">60. <i>MISSIONS: THEIR RISE and DEVELOPMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Mrs <span class="smcap">Creighton</span>. “Very interestingly done.... Its style is simple, +direct, unhackneyed, and should find appreciation where a more fervently +pious style of writing repels.”—<i>Methodist Recorder.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">68. <i>COMPARATIVE RELIGION</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. Estlin Carpenter</span>, D.Litt., Principal of Manchester College, Oxford. +“Puts into the reader’s hand a wealth of learning and independent thought.”—<i>Christian +World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">74. <i>A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. B. Bury</span>, Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at +Cambridge. “A little masterpiece, which every thinking man will enjoy.”—<i>The +Observer.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">84. <i>LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">George Moore</span>, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard. A detailed examination +of the books of the Old Testament in the light of the most recent research.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>7]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">90. <i>THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Canon <span class="smcap">E. W. Watson</span>, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at +Oxford.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">94. <i>RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE +OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Canon <span class="smcap">R. H. Charles</span>, D.D., D.Litt.</p> + + +<p class="center pad booklist dbord xlrgfont"><i>Social Science</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">1. <i>PARLIAMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir <span class="smcap">Courtenay P. Ilbert</span>, +G.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. “The best book on the +history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot’s ‘Constitution.’”—<i>Yorkshire +Post.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">5. <i>THE STOCK EXCHANGE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">F. W. Hirst</span>, Editor of “The Economist.” “To an unfinancial mind must +be a revelation.... The book is as clear, vigorous, and sane as Bagehot’s ‘Lombard +Street,’ than which there is no higher compliment.”—<i>Morning Leader.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">6. <i>IRISH NATIONALITY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Mrs <span class="smcap">J. R. Green</span>. “As glowing as it is learned. No book could be more +timely.”—<i>Daily News.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">10. <i>THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. Ramsay MacDonald</span>, M.P. “Admirably adapted for the purpose of +exposition.”—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">11. <i>CONSERVATISM</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Lord Hugh Cecil</span>, M.A., M.P. “One of those great little books which +seldom appear more than once in a generation.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">16. <i>THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. A. Hobson</span>, M.A. “Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among +living economists.... Original, reasonable, and illuminating.”—<i>The Nation.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">21. <i>LIBERALISM</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">L. T. Hobhouse</span>, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of London. +“A book of rare quality.... We have nothing but praise for the rapid and +masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles which form a large +part of this book.”—<i>Westminster Gazette.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">24. <i>THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">D. H. Macgregor</span>, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the University +of Leeds. “A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read with profit by all +interested in the present state of unrest.”—<i>Aberdeen Journal.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">26. <i>AGRICULTURE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. Somerville</span>, F.L.S. “It makes the results of laboratory work +at the University accessible to the practical farmer.”—<i>Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">30. <i>ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">W. M. Geldart</span>, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at +Oxford. “Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles underlying +the rules of English Law.”—<i>Scots Law Times.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">38. <i>THE SCHOOL: An Introduction to the Study of Education.</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">J. J. Findlay</span>, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester +University. “An amazingly comprehensive volume.... It is a remarkable +performance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well as its +inclusiveness of subject-matter.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[<span class="hidden">Pg </span>8]</a></span></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">59. <i>ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">S. J. Chapman</span>, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester +University. “Its importance is not to be measured by its price. Probably +the best recent critical exposition of the analytical method in economic +science.”—<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">69. <i>THE NEWSPAPER</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. Binney Dibblee</span>, M.A. (Illustrated.) +The best account extant of the +organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">77. <i>SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">H. N. Brailsford</span>, M.A. “Mr Brailsford sketches vividly the influence of +the French Revolution on Shelley’s and Godwin’s England; and the charm and +strength of his style make his book an authentic contribution to literature.”—<i>The +Bookman.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">80. <i>CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">Aneurin Williams</span>, M.A. “A judicious but enthusiastic history, with much +interesting speculation on the future of Co-partnership.”—<i>Christian World.</i></p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">81. <i>PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">E. N. Bennett</span>, M.A. Discusses the leading aspects of the British land +problem, including housing, small holdings, rural credit, and the minimum wage.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">83. <i>COMMON-SENSE IN LAW</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">P. Vinogradoff</span>, D.C.L.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">85. <i>UNEMPLOYMENT</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By Prof. <span class="smcap">A. C. Pigou</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="lrgfont u">96. <i>POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM +BACON TO HALIFAX</i></p> + +<p class="smlfont ind">By <span class="smcap">G. P. Gooch</span>, M.A.</p> + + +<p class="center lrgfont smcap">In Preparation</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>ANCIENT EGYPT.</i> By <span class="smcap">F. Ll. Griffith</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE.</i> By <span class="smcap">Herbert Fisher</span>, LL.D.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.</i> By <span class="smcap">Norman H. Baynes</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE REFORMATION.</i> By President <span class="smcap">Lindsay</span>, LL.D.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA.</i> By Prof. <span class="smcap">Milyoukov</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>MODERN TURKEY.</i> By <span class="smcap">D. G. Hogarth</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>FRANCE OF TO-DAY.</i> By <span class="smcap">Albert Thomas</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN.</i> By <span class="smcap">J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly</span>, +F.B.A., Litt.D.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>LATIN LITERATURE.</i> By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. S. Phillimore</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE.</i> By <span class="smcap">Roger E. Fry</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>LITERARY TASTE.</i> By <span class="smcap">Thomas Seccombe</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>SCANDINAVIAN HISTORY & LITERATURE.</i> By <span class="smcap">T. C. Snow</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE MINERAL WORLD.</i> By Sir <span class="smcap">T. H. Holland</span>, K.C.I.E., D.Sc.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.</i> By <span class="smcap">Clement Webb</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. Mill.</i> +By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. L. Davidson</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer to +To-day.</i> By <span class="smcap">Ernest Barker</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE CRIMINAL AND THE COMMUNITY.</i> By Viscount <span class="smcap">St. Cyres</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE CIVIL SERVICE.</i> By <span class="smcap">Graham Wallas</span>, M.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.</i> By <span class="smcap">Jane Addams</span> and <span class="smcap">R. A. Woods</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>GREAT INVENTIONS.</i> By Prof. <span class="smcap">J. L. Myres</span>, M.A., F.S.A.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>TOWN PLANNING.</i> By <span class="smcap">Raymond Unwin</span>.</p> + + +<p class="center padbase"><span class="lrgfont">London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE</span><br /> +<i>And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls.</i></p> + + + +<div class="bbox"> +<p><b>Transcriber's Note</b></p> + +<p>Minor punctuation errors and printer errors (omitted or transposed letters) +have been repaired. Hyphenation has been made consistent.</p> + +<p>The following amendments have also been made:</p> + +<div class="amends"> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_22">22</a>—mas amended to was—"... but in the interest of literature, it was a +misfortune ..."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_192">192</a>—be amended to he—"... disbelieved in Liberals, although he believed in +Liberalism; ..."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_222">222</a>—Brönte’s amended to Brontë’s—"These words, spoken by Charlotte Brontë’s +<i>Jane Eyre</i>, ..."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_251">251</a>—Simon amended to Simeon—"1692. ... Simeon Polotsky’s <i>The Prodigal +Son</i> acted."</p> +</div> + +<p>Alphabetic links have been added to the beginning of the index for ease of navigation.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 33005-h.htm or 33005-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/0/0/33005/ + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Outline of Russian Literature + +Author: Maurice Baring + +Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #33005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +A single Greek word appears in this book. It has been transliterated +and is marked with plus symbols, like +this+. + + + + + HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + + AN OUTLINE + OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + By the Hon. MAURICE BARING + + + LONDON + WILLIAMS & NORGATE + + HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK + CANADA: RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO + INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD. + + + + + HOME + UNIVERSITY + LIBRARY + + OF + + MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + _Editors:_ + + HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D. + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + + Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D. + + Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + (Columbia University, U.S.A.) + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + + AN OUTLINE OF + RUSSIAN + LITERATURE + + BY THE HON. + MAURICE BARING + + AUTHOR OF "WITH THE RUSSIANS IN + MANCHURIA," "A YEAR IN RUSSIA," "THE + RUSSIAN PEOPLE," ETC. + + LONDON + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + + + _First printed 1914/15_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The chief difficulty which Englishmen have experienced in writing +about Russia has, up till quite lately, been the prevailing ignorance +of the English public with regard to all that concerns Russian +affairs. A singularly intelligent Russian, who is connected with the +Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he feared the new interest +taken by English intellectuals with regard to Russian literature and +Russian art. He was delighted, of course, that they should be +interested in Russian affairs, but he feared their interest was in +danger of being crystallized in a false shape and directed into +erroneous channels. + +This ignorance will always remain until English people go to Russia +and learn to know the Russian people at first hand. It is not enough +to be acquainted with a certain number of Russian writers; I say a +certain number advisedly, because, although it is true that such +writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev have long been naturalized in England, +it is equally true that some of the greatest and most typical of +Russian authors have not yet been translated. + +There is in England no complete translation of Pushkin. This is much +the same as though there were in Russia no complete translation of +Shakespeare or Milton. I do not mean by this that Pushkin is as great +a poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean that he is the most +national and the most important of all Russian writers. There is no +translation of Saltykov, the greatest of Russian satirists; there is +no complete translation of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists, +while Russian criticism and philosophy, as well as almost the whole of +Russian poetry, is completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge +of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit of literature, +consists in, is still a sealed book so far as England is concerned. + + M. B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I THE ORIGINS 9 + + II THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN 30 + + III LERMONTOV 101 + + IV THE AGE OF PROSE 126 + + V THE EPOCH OF REFORM 159 + + VI TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY 196 + + VII THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY 226 + + CONCLUSION 243 + + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 251 + + INDEX 254 + + + + + _The following volumes of kindred interest have already been + published in the Library:_ + + 27. English Literature: Mediaeval. By W. P. Ker. + + 43. English Literature: Modern. G. H. Mair. + + 35. Landmarks of French Literature. G. L. Strachey. + + 65. The Literature of Germany. Prof. J. G. Robertson, Ph.D. + + + + +AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ORIGINS + + +For the purposes of the average Russian, and still more for the +purposes of the foreigner, Russian literature begins with the +nineteenth century, that is to say with the reign of Alexander I. It +was then that the literary fruits on which Russia has since fed were +born. The seeds were sown, of course, centuries earlier; but the +history of Russian literature up to the nineteenth century is not a +history of literature, it is the history of Russia. It may well be +objected that it is difficult to separate Russian literature from +Russian history; that for the understanding of Russian literature an +understanding of Russian history is indispensable. This is probably +true; but, in a sketch of this dimension, it would be quite +impossible to give even an adequate outline of all the vicissitudes in +the life of the Russian people which have helped and hindered, +blighted and fostered the growth of the Russian tree of letters. All +that one can do is to mention some of the chief landmarks amongst the +events which directly affected the growth of Russian literature until +the dawn of that epoch when its fruits became palpable to Russia and +to the world. + +The first of these facts is the existence of a Slav race on the banks +of the Dnieper in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the growth of +cities and trade centres such as Kiev, Smolensk, and Novgorod, which +seem already to have been considerable settlements when the earliest +Russian records were written. Of these, from the point of view of +literature, Kiev was the most important. Kiev on the Dnieper was the +mother of Russian culture; Moscow and St. Petersburg became afterwards +the heirs of Kiev. + +Another factor of vital historical importance which had an indirect +effect on the history of Russian literature was the coming of the +Norsemen into Russia at the beginning of the ninth century. They came +as armed merchants from Scandinavia; they founded and organized +principalities; they took Novgorod and Kiev. The Scandinavian Viking +became the Russian _Kniaz_, and the Varanger principality of Kiev +became the kernel of the Russian State. In the course of time, the +Norsemen became merged in the Slavs, but left traces of their origin +in the Sagas, the _Byliny_, which spread from Kiev all over Russia, +and still survive in some distant governments. Hence the Norse names +Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga), Igor (Ingvar). The word Russian, _Rus_, +the origin and etymology of which are shrouded in obscurity, was first +applied to the men-at-arms who formed the higher class of society in +the early Varanger states. + +The next determining factor in the early history of Russian literature +is the Church. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, married the sister of the +Emperor of Byzantium and was baptized; henceforward Christianity began +to spread (987-8), but the momentous fact is that it was the +Christianity of the East. The pearl of the Gospels, says Soloviev, was +covered over with the dust of Byzantium, and Russia was committed to +the Greek tradition, the Greek rivalry with the West and was +consequently excluded from the civilization of the West and the great +intellectual community of which Rome was the centre. This fact is of +far-reaching and momentous importance. No less important was the +introduction of the Slavonic liturgy, which was invented by two Greek +brothers from Saloniki, in the ninth century, who tried to force their +Macedonian dialect on all the Slavs, and succeeded in the case of +Bulgaria and Servia. A century or so later it reached the Russian +Slavs. Through Bulgaria, the Russians acquired a ready-made literature +and a written language in a dialect which was partly Bulgarian and +partly Macedonian, or rather Macedonian with Bulgarian modifications. +The possession of a written language acted as a lever as far as +culture was concerned. In the eleventh century, Kiev was one of the +most enlightened cities in Europe. + +The rulers of Kiev were at this time related to the Kings of France, +Hungary, Norway, and even England. The Russian MSS. of the eleventh +century equal the best MSS. of Western Europe of the same period. The +city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, and art. Byzantine +artists went to Kiev, and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West. +There seemed at this time to be no barrier between East and West. +Nothing could be more promising than such a beginning; but the course +of Russian history was not destined to run smooth. In the middle of +the eleventh century, the foundations of a durable barrier between +Russia and Western Europe were laid. This was brought about by the +schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The schism arose out of +the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry +which ever since then has continued to exist between Rome and +Byzantium. The Slavs, whom the matter did not concern, and who were +naturally tolerant, were the victims of a racial hatred and a rivalry +wholly alien to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell upon what some +may regard as an ancient and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in +its effects and in its results, this "Querelle de Moine," as Leo X +said when he heard of Luther's action, was as momentous for the East +as the Reformation was for the West. Sir Charles Eliot says the schism +of the Churches ranks in importance with the foundation of +Constantinople and the Coronation of Charlemagne as one of the turning +points in the relations of West and East. He says that for the East it +was of doleful import, since it prevented the two great divisions from +combining against the common enemy, the Turk. It was of still more +doleful import for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, which +soon became formidable, between it and the civilizing influences of +Western Europe. + +But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the existence of this +growing barrier was not yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth +centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and "Byliny," already clearly +stamped with the democratic character and ideal that is at the root of +all Russian literature, and which offer so sharp a contrast to Greek +and Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the most popular hero is the +peasant's son, who is despised and rejected, but at the critical +moment displays superhuman strength and saves his country from the +enemy; and in return for his services is allowed to drink his fill for +three years in a tavern. + +But by far the most interesting remains of the literature of Kiev +which have reached posterity are the _Chronicle of Kiev_, often called +the _Chronicle of Nestor_, finished at the beginning of the twelfth +century, and the _Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_. The _Chronicle of +Kiev_, written in a cloister, rich in that epic detail and democratic +quality that characterize the Sagas, is the basis of all later +chronicles dealing with the early history of Russia. _The Story of the +Raid of Prince Igor_, which also belongs to the twelfth century, a +prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable memorials of the +ancient written language of Russia; but by virtue of its originality, +its historical truth, its vividness, it holds a unique place in the +literary history of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast to the +_Chanson de Roland_. + +_The Story of the Raid of Igor_ tells of an expedition made in the +year 1185 against the Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son of +Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together with other Princes. The story +tells how the Princes set out and raid the enemy's country; how, +successful at first, they are attacked by overwhelming numbers and +defeated; how Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end he escapes +and returns home. The story is written in rhythmical prose, with +passages where the rhythm has a more strongly accentuated quality as +of unrhymed verse. All the incidents recorded in the epic agree in +every respect with the narrative of the same events which is to be +found in the _Chronicle of Kiev_. It is only the manner of presenting +them which is different. What gives the epic a unique interest is that +the author must indubitably have belonged to the militia of +Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of +the events he describes with such wealth of detail, his knowledge was +at any rate first-hand and intimate. + +But the epic is as remarkable for the quality of its style as it is +for the historical interest of its subject-matter. It plunges, after a +short introduction, _in medias res_, and the narrative is concentrated +on the dramatic moments which give rise to the expression of lyrical +feeling, pathos and description--such as the battle, the defeat, the +ominous dream of the Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of Igor on +the walls of Putivl-- + + "I will fly"--she says-- + "Like the cuckoo down the Don; + I will wet my beaver sleeve + In the river Kayala; + I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince, + The wounds of his strong body." + + * * * * * + + "O Wind, little wind, + Why, Sir, + Why do you blow so fiercely? + Why, on your light wings + Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband's warriors? + Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds, + To rock the ships on the blue sea? + Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?" + +Throughout the poem, Nature plays an active part in the events. When +Igor is defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the trees are bowed +to the earth with grief. When Igor escapes, he talks with the river +Don as he fords it, and when the bandits follow him, the woodpeckers +tell them the way with their tapping. The poem, which contains much +lamentation over the quarrels of the Princes and the injury ensuing +from them to the Russian people, ends in the major key. Igor is +restored to his native soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the +Church, and the people acclaim the old Princes and then the young +Princes with song. + +A transcript of the poem, made probably at the end of the fourteenth +century, was first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, and +first published in 1800, when it made the same kind of impression as +the publication of the _Songs of Ossian_. It was not, however, open to +Dr. Johnson's objection--"Show me the originals"--for the fourteenth +century transcript of the original then existed and was inspected and +considered unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and others, but was +unfortunately burnt in the fire of Moscow.[1] The poem has been +translated into English, French and German, and has given rise to a +whole literature of commentaries. + +Up to the twelfth century, Russian life was concentrated in the +splendid and prosperous centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth century +came a crushing blow which was destined to set back the clock of +Russian culture for three hundred years, namely, the Tartar invasion. +Kiev was destroyed in 1240. After this, the South was abandoned; +Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated from the East; the +Eastern principalities centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of Kiev +transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; and by the fourteenth century +Moscow had taken the place of Kiev, and had become the kernel of +Russian life and culture. Russia under the dominion of the Tartar yoke +was intellectually stagnant. The Church alone retained its +independence, and when Constantinople fell, Moscow declared itself to +be the third and last Rome: but the independence of the Church, +although it kept national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, made +for stagnation rather than progress, and the barrier between Russia +and the culture of the West was now solid and visible. + +From the fourteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth +century, Russian literature, instead of being a panorama of various +and equally splendid periods of production, such as the Elizabethan +epoch, the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, or, as in France, +the Renaissance, the _Grand Siecle_, and the philosophic era of the +eighteenth century, has nothing to show at all to the outward world; +for during all this time the soil from which it was to grow was merely +being prepared, and gradually, with difficulty and delay, gaining +access to such influences as would make any growth possible. All that +is important, as far as literature is concerned, in this period, are +those events and factors which had the effect of making breaches in +the wall which shut Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting in +that light which was necessary for any literary plants to grow, and in +removing those obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying her +rightful heritage among the rest of her sister European nations: a +heritage which she had well employed in earlier days, and which she +had lost for a time owing to the barbarian invasion. + +The first event which made a breach in the wall was the marriage of +Ivan III, Tsar of Moscow, to Sophia Palaeologa, the niece of the last +of the Byzantine Emperors. She brought with her Italian architects and +other foreigners, and the work of Peter the Great, of opening a window +in Russia on to Europe, was begun. + +The first printing press was established in Moscow during the reign of +Ivan the Terrible, and the first book was printed in 1564. But +literature was still under the direct control of the Church, and the +Church looked upon all innovations and all foreign learning with the +deepest mistrust. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Peter +the Great had a strange forerunner in the shape of that enigmatic +historical personage, the false Demetrius, who claimed to be the +murdered son of Ivan the Terrible, and who, in spite of his western +ideas, Polish manners, and Latin culture, succeeded in occupying the +throne of Moscow for a year. His ideal was one of progress; but he +came too soon, and paid for his prematurity with his life. + +But it was from Kiev and Poland that the fruitful winds of +enlightenment were next to blow. Kiev, re-risen from its ruins and +recovered from its long slumber, became a centre of learning, and +possessed a college whose curriculum was modelled on the Jesuit +schools; and although Moscow looked upon Kiev with mistrust, an +imperative demand for schools arose in Moscow. In the meantime a +religious question had arisen fraught with consequences for Russia: +namely that of the revision of the Liturgical books, into the text of +which, after continuous copying and recopying, errors had crept. The +demand for revision met with great opposition, and ended ultimately in +producing a great schism in the Russian Church, which has never been +healed. But, with the exception of the Little Russians, there was no +one at Moscow capable of preparing texts for printing or of conducting +schools. The demand for schools and the decision to revise the texts +were simultaneous. The revision was carried out between 1653-7, and a +migration of Kiev scholars to Moscow came about at the same time. In +1665 Latin was taught in Moscow by SIMEON POLOTSKY, who was the first +Russian verse-maker. It is impossible to call him a poet; he wrote +what was called syllabic verse: the number of syllables taking the +place of rhythm. As a pioneer of culture, he deserves fame; but in the +interest of literature, it was a misfortune that his tradition was +followed until the middle of the eighteenth century. + +In the latter half of the seventeenth century, another influence +besides that of Kiev and Poland made itself felt. A fresh breach in +the wall came from another quarter. The German suburb in Moscow in the +seventeenth century, called the _Sloboda_, became a centre of European +culture. Here dwelt the foreign officers and soldiers, capitalists and +artisans, who brought with them the technical skill and the culture of +Western Europe. It was here that the Russian stage was born. The +Protestant pastor of the _Sloboda_, Gregory, was commanded to write a +comedy by the Tsar Alexis, in 1672, on the occasion of the birth of +the Tsarevitch. A theatre was built in the village of Preobrazhenskoe +(Transfiguration), and a play on the subject of Esther and Ahasuerus +was produced there. It was here also in 1674 that the ballet was +introduced. A regular company was formed; several plays translated +from the German were produced, and the first original play written in +Russia was _The Prodigal Son_, by Simeon Polotsky. + +Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, Russia was ready for any +one who should be able to give a decisive blow to the now crumbling +wall between herself and the West. For, by the end of the seventeenth +century, Russia, after having been centralized in Moscow by Ivan III, +and enlarged by Ivan IV, had thrown off the Tartar yoke. She had +passed through a period of intestine strife, trouble, anarchy, and +pretenders, not unlike the Wars of the Roses; she had fought Poland +throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, from her darkest hour +of anarchy, when the Poles occupied Moscow. It was then that Russia +had arisen, expelled the invaders, reasserted her nationality and her +independence, and finally emerged out of all these vicissitudes, the +great Slavonic state; while Poland, Russia's superior in culture and +civilization, had sunk into the position of a dependency. + +The man whom the epoch needed was forthcoming. His name was Peter. He +carried on the work which had been begun, but in quite an original +manner, and gave it a different character. He not only made a breach +in the wall, but he forced on his stubborn and conservative subjects +the habits and customs of the West. He revolutionized the government +and the Church, and turned the whole country upside down with his +explosive genius. He abolished the Russian Patriarchate, and crushed +the power of the Church once and for all, by making it entirely depend +on the State, as it still does. He simplified the Russian script and +the written language; he caused to be made innumerable translations of +foreign works on history, geography, and jurisprudence. He founded the +first Russian newspaper. But Peter the Great did not try to draw +Russia into an alien path; he urged his country with whip, kick, and +spur to regain its due place, which it had lost by lagging behind, on +the path it was naturally following. Peter the Great's reforms, his +manifold and superhuman activity, produced no immediate fruits in +literature. How could it? To blame him for this would be like blaming +a gardener for not producing new roses at a time when he was relaying +the garden. He was completely successful in opening a window on to +Europe, through which Western influence could stream into Russia. This +was not slow in coming about; and the foreign influence from the end +of the reign of Peter the Great onwards divided directly into two +different currents: the French and the German. The chief +representatives of the German influence in the eighteenth century were +TATISHCHEV, the founder of Russian history, and MICHAEL LOMONOSOV. + +Michael Lomonosov (1714-1765), a man with an incredibly wide +intellectual range, was a mathematician, a chemist, an astronomer, a +political economist, a historian, an electrician, a geologist, a +grammarian and a poet. The son of a peasant, after an education +acquired painfully in the greatest privation, he studied at Marburg +and Freiburg. He was the Peter the Great of the Russian language; he +scratched off the crust of foreign barbarisms, and still more by his +example than his precepts--which were pedantic--he displayed it in its +native purity, and left it as an instrument ready tuned for a great +player. He fought for knowledge, and did all he could to further the +founding of the University of Moscow, which was done in 1755 by the +Empress Elizabeth. This last event is one of the most important +landmarks in the history of Russian culture. + +The foremost representative of French influence was PRINCE KANTEMIR +(1708-44), who wrote the first Russian literary verse--satires--in the +pseudo-classic French manner, modelled on Boileau. But by far the most +abundant source of French ideas in Russia during the eighteenth +century was Catherine II, the German Princess. During Catherine's +reign, French influence was predominant in Russia. The Empress was the +friend of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Diderot came to St. +Petersburg, and the Russian military schools were flooded with French +teachers. Voltaire and Rousseau were the fashion, and cultured society +was platonically enamoured of the _Rights of Man_. Catherine herself, +besides being a great ruler and diplomatist, was a large-minded +philosopher, an elegant and witty writer. But the French Revolution +had a damping effect on all liberal enthusiasm, for the one thing an +autocrat, however enlightened, finds difficulty in understanding, is a +revolution. + +This change of point of view proved disastrous for the writer of what +is the most thoughtful book of the age: namely RADISHCHEV, an official +who wrote a book in twenty-five chapters called _A Journey from St. +Petersburg to Moscow_. Radishchev gave a simple and true account of +the effects of serfdom, a series of pictures drawn without +exaggeration, showing the appalling evils of the system, and appealing +to the conscience of the slave-owners; the book contained also a +condemnation of the Censorship. It appeared in 1790, with the +permission of the police. It was too late for the times; for in 1790 +the events in France were making all the rulers of Europe pensive. +Radishchev was accused of being a rebel, and was condemned to death. +The sentence was commuted to one of banishment to Eastern Siberia. He +was pardoned by the Emperor Paul, and reinstated by the Emperor +Alexander; but he ultimately committed suicide on being threatened in +jest with exile once more. Until 1905 it was very difficult to get a +copy of this book. Thus Radishchev stands out as the martyr of Russian +literature; the first writer to suffer for expressing opinions at the +wrong moment: opinions which had they been stated in this case twenty +years sooner would have coincided with those published by the Empress +herself. + +Catherine's reign, which left behind it many splendid results, and +had the effect of bestowing European culture on Russia, produced +hardly a single poet or prose-writer whose work can be read with +pleasure to-day, although a great importance was attached to the +writing of verse. There were poets in profusion, especially writers of +Odes, the best known of whom was DERZHAVIN (1743-1816), a brilliant +master of the pseudo-classical, in whose work, in spite of its +antiquated convention, elements of real poetical beauty are to be +found, which entitle him to be called the first Russian poet. But so +far no national literature had been produced. French was the language +of the cultured classes. Literature had become an artificial +plaything, to be played with according to French rules; but the +Russian language was waiting there, a language which possessed, as +Lomonosov said, "the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the +softness of Italian, the richness and powerful conciseness of Greek +and Latin"--waiting for some one who should have the desire and the +power to use it. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Another copy of it was found in 1864 amongst the papers of +Catherine I. Pushkin left a remarkable analysis of the epic. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN + + +The value of Russian literature, its peculiar and unique message to the +world, would not be sensibly diminished, had everything it produced +from the twelfth to the beginning of the nineteenth century perished, +with the exception of _The Raid of Prince Igor_. With the beginning of +the nineteenth century, and the accession of Alexander I, the New Age +began, and the real dawn of Russian literature broke. It was soon to be +followed by a glorious sunrise. The literature which sprang up now and +later, was profoundly affected by public events; and public events +during this epoch were intimately linked with the events which were +happening in Western Europe. It was the epoch of the Napoleonic wars, +and Russia played a vital part in that drama. Public opinion, after +enthusiasm had been roused by the deeds of Suvorov, was exasperated +and humiliated by Napoleon's subsequent victories over Russian arms. +But when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, a wave of patriotism swept +over the country, and the struggle resulted in an increased sense of +unity and nationality. Russia emerged stronger and more solid from the +struggle. As far as foreign affairs were concerned, the Emperor +Alexander I--on whom everything depended--played his national part +well, and he fitly embodied the patriotic movement of the day. At the +beginning of his reign he raised great hopes of internal reform which +were never fulfilled. He was a dreamer of dreams born out of his due +time; a pupil of La Harpe, the Swiss Jacobin, who instilled into him +aspirations towards liberty, truth and humanity, which throughout +remained his ideals, but which were too vague to lead to anything +practical or definite. His reign was thus a series of more or less +undefined and fitful struggles to put the crooked straight. He desired +to give Russia a constitution, but the attempts he made to do so proved +fruitless; and towards the end of his life he is said to have been +considerably influenced by Metternich. It is at any rate a fact that +during these years reaction once more triumphed. + +Nevertheless windows had been opened which could not be shut, and the +light which had streamed in produced some remarkable fruits. + +When Alexander I came to the throne, the immediate effect of his +accession was the ungagging of literature, and the first writer of +importance to take advantage of this new state of things was KARAMZIN +(1726-1826). In 1802 he started a new review called the _Messenger of +Europe_. This was not his _debut_. In the reign of Catherine, Karamzin +had been brought to Moscow from the provinces, and initiated into +German and English literature. In 1789-90 he travelled abroad and +visited Switzerland, London and Paris. On his return, he published his +impressions in the shape of "Letters of a Russian Traveller" in the +_Moscow Journal_, which he founded himself. His ideals were +republican; he was an enthusiastic admirer of England and the Swiss, +and the reforms of Peter the Great. But his importance in Russian +literature lies in his being the first Russian to write unstudied, +simple and natural prose, Russian as spoken. He published two +sentimental stories in his _Journal_, but the reign of Catherine II +which now came to an end (1796) was followed by a period of +unmitigated censorship, which lasted throughout the reign of the +Emperor Paul, until Alexander I came to the throne. The new review +which Karamzin then started differed radically from all preceding +Russian reviews in that it dealt with politics and made _belles +lettres_ and criticism a permanent feature. As soon as Karamzin had +put this review on a firm basis, he devoted himself to historical +research, and the fruit of his work in this field was his _History of +the Russian Dominion_, in twelve volumes; eight published in 1816, the +rest in 1821-1826. The Russian language was, as has been said, like an +instrument waiting for a great player to play on it, and to make use +of all its possibilities. Karamzin accomplished this, in the domain of +prose. He spoke to the Russian heart by speaking Russian, pure and +unmarred by stilted and alien conventionalisms. + +The publication of Karamzin's history was epoch-making. In the first +place, the success of the work was overwhelming. It was the first +time in Russian history that a prose work had enjoyed so immense a +success. Not only were the undreamed-of riches of the Russian language +revealed to the Russians in the style, but the subject-matter came as +a surprise. Karamzin, as Pushkin put it, revealed Russia to the +Russians, just as Columbus discovered America. He made the dry bones +of history live, he wrote a great and glowing prose epic. His +influence on his contemporaries was enormous. His work received at +once the consecration of a classic, and it inspired Pushkin with his +most important if not his finest achievement in dramatic verse (_Boris +Godunov_). + +The first Russian poet of national importance belongs likewise to this +epoch, namely KRYLOV (1769[2]-1844), although he had written a great +deal for the stage in the preceding reigns, and continued to write for +a long time after the death of Alexander I. Krylov is also a Russian +classic, of quite a different kind. The son of an officer of the line, +he started by being a clerk in the provincial magistrature. Many of +his plays were produced with success, though none of them had any +durable qualities. But it was not until 1805 that he found his +vocation which was to write fables. The first of these were published +in 1806 in the _Moscow Journal_; from that time onward he went on +writing fables until he died in 1844. + +His early fables were translations from La Fontaine. They imitate La +Fontaine's free versification and they are written in iambics of +varying length. They were at once successful, and he continued to +translate fables from the French, or to adapt from AEsop or other +sources. But as time went on, he began to invent fables of his own; +and out of the two hundred fables which he left at his death, forty +only are inspired by La Fontaine and seven suggested by AEsop: the +remainder are original. Krylov's translations of La Fontaine are not +so much translations as re-creations. He takes the same subject, and +although often following the original in every single incident, he +thinks out each _motif_ for himself and re-creates it, so that his +translations have the same personal stamp and the same originality as +his own inventions. + +This is true even when the original is a masterpiece of the highest +order, such as La Fontaine's _Deux Pigeons_. You would think the +opening lines-- + + "Deux pigeons s'amoient d'amour tendre, + L'un d'eux s'ennuyant au logis + Fut assez fou pour entreprendre + Un voyage en lointain pays"-- + +were untranslatable; that nothing could be subtracted from them, and +that still less could anything be added; one ray the more, one shade +the less, you would think, would certainly impair their nameless +grace. But what does Krylov do? He re-creates the situation, expanding +La Fontaine's first line into six lines, makes it his own, and stamps +on it the impress of his personality and his nationality. Here is a +literal translation of the Russian, in rhyme. (I am not ambitiously +trying a third English version.) + + "Two pigeons lived like sons born of one mother. + Neither would eat nor drink without the other; + Where you see one, the other's surely near, + And every joy they halved and every tear; + They never noticed how the time flew by, + They sighed, but it was not a weary sigh." + +This gives the sense of Krylov's poem word for word, except for what +is the most important touch of all in the last line. The trouble is +that Krylov has written six lines which are as untranslatable as La +Fontaine's four; and he has made them as profoundly Russian as La +Fontaine's are French. Nothing could be more Russian than the last +line, which it is impossible to translate; because it should run-- + + "They were sometimes sad, but they never felt _ennui_"-- + +literally, "it was never _boring_ to them." The difficulty is that the +word for _boring_ in Russian, _skuchno_, which occurs with the utmost +felicity in contradistinction to _sad_, _grustno_, cannot be rendered +in English in its poetical simplicity. There are no six lines more +tender, musical, wistful, and subtly poetical in the whole of Russian +literature. + +Krylov's fables, like La Fontaine's, deal with animals, birds, fishes +and men; the Russian peasant plays a large part in them; often they +are satirical; nearly always they are bubbling with humour. A writer +of fables is essentially a satirist, whose aim it is sometimes to +convey pregnant sense, keen mockery or scathing criticism in a veiled +manner, sometimes merely to laugh at human foibles, or to express +wisdom in the form of wit, yet whose aim it always is to amuse. But +Krylov, though a satirist, succeeded in remaining a poet. It has been +said that his images are conventional and outworn--that is to say, he +uses the machinery of Zephyrs, Nymphs, Gods and Demigods,--and that +his conceptions are antiquated. But what splendid use he makes of this +machinery! When he speaks of a Zephyr you feel it is a Zephyr blowing, +for instance, as when the ailing cornflower whispers to the breeze. +Sometimes by the mere sound of his verse he conveys a picture, and +more than a picture, as in the Fable of the Eagle and the Mole, in the +first lines of which he makes you see and hear the eagle and his mate +sweeping to the dreaming wood, and swooping down on to the oak-tree. +Or again, in another fable, the Eagle and the Spider, he gives in a +few words the sense of height and space, as if you were looking down +from a balloon, when the eagle, soaring over the mountains of the +Caucasus, sees the end of the earth, the rivers meandering in the +plains, the woods, the meadows in all their spring glory, and the +angry Caspian Sea, darkling like the wing of a raven in the distance. +But his greatest triumph, in this respect, is the fable of the Ass and +the Nightingale, in which the verse echoes the very trills of the +nightingale, and renders the stillness and the delighted awe of the +listeners,--the lovers and the shepherd. Again a convention, if you +like, but what a felicitous convention! + +The fables are discursive like La Fontaine's, and not brief like +AEsop's; but like La Fontaine, Krylov has the gift of summing up a +situation, of scoring a sharp dramatic effect by the sudden evocation +of a whole picture in a terse phrase: as, for instance, in the fable +of the Peasants and the River: the peasants go to complain to the +river of the conduct of the streams which are continually overflowing +and destroying their goods, but when they reach the river, they see +half their goods floating on it. "They looked at each other, and +shaking their heads," says Krylov, "went home." The two words "went +home" in Russian (_poshli domoi_) express their hopelessness more +than pages of rhetoric. This is just one of those terse effects such +as La Fontaine delights in. + +Krylov in his youth lived much among the poor, and his language is +peculiarly native, racy, nervous, and near to the soil. It is the +language of the people and of the peasants, and it abounds in humorous +turns. He is, moreover, always dramatic, and his fables are for this +reason most effective when read aloud or recited. He is dramatic not +only in that part of the fable which is narrative, but in the +prologue, epilogue, or moral--the author's commentary; he adapts +himself to the tone of every separate fable, and becomes himself one +of the _dramatis personae_. Sometimes his fables deal with political +events--the French Revolution, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the +Congress of Vienna; the education of Alexander I by La Harpe, in the +well-known fable of the Lion who sends his son to be educated by the +Eagle, of whom he consequently learns how to make nests. Sometimes +they deal with internal evils and abuses: the administration of +justice, in fables such as that of the peasant who brings a case +against the sheep and is found guilty by the fox; the censorship is +aimed at in the fable of the nightingale bidden to sing in the cat's +claws; the futility of bureaucratic regulations in the fable of the +sheep who are devoured by their superfluous watchdogs, or in that of +the sheep who are told solemnly and pompously to drag any offending +wolf before the nearest magistrate; or, again, in that of the high +dignitary who is admitted immediately into paradise because on earth +he left his work to be done by his secretaries--for being obviously a +fool, had he done his work himself, the result would have been +disastrous to all concerned. Sometimes they deal merely with human +follies and affairs, and the idiosyncrasies of men. + +Krylov's fables have that special quality which only permanent +classics possess of appealing to different generations, to people of +every age, kind and class, for different reasons; so that children can +read them simply for the story, and grown-up people for their +philosophy; their style pleases the unlettered by its simplicity, and +is the envy and despair of the artist in its supreme art. Pushkin +calls him "le plus national et le plus populaire de nos poetes" (this +was true in Pushkin's day), and said his fables were read by men of +letters, merchants, men of the world, servants and children. His work +bears the stamp of ageless modernity just as _The Pilgrim's Progress_ +or Cicero's letters seem modern. It also has the peculiarly Russian +quality of unexaggerated realism. He sees life as it is, and writes +down what he sees. It is true that although his style is finished and +polished, he only at times reaches the high-water mark of what can be +done with the Russian language: his style, always idiomatic, pregnant +and natural, is sometimes heavy, and even clumsy; but then he never +sets out to be anything more than a fabulist. In this he is supremely +successful, and since at the same time he gives us snatches of +exquisite poetry, the greater the praise to him. But, when all is said +and done, Krylov has the talisman which defies criticism, baffles +analysis, and defeats time: namely, charm. His fables achieved an +instantaneous popularity, which has never diminished until to-day. + +Internal political events proved the next factor in Russian +literature; a factor out of which the so-called romantic movement was +to grow. + +During the Napoleonic wars a great many Russian officers had lived +abroad. They came back to Russia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, +teeming with new ideas and new ideals. They took life seriously, and +were called by Pushkin the Puritans of the North. Their aim was +culture and the public welfare. They were not revolutionaries; on the +contrary, they were anxious to co-operate with the Government. They +formed for their purpose a society, in imitation of the German +_Tugendbund_, called _The Society of Welfare_: its aims were +philanthropic, educational, and economic. It consisted chiefly of +officers of the Guard, and its headquarters were at St. Petersburg. +All this was known and approved of by the Emperor. But when the +Government became reactionary, this peaceful progressive movement +changed its character. The Society of Welfare was closed in 1821, and +its place was taken by two new societies, which, instead of being +political, were social and revolutionary. The success of the +revolutionary movements in Spain and in Italy encouraged these +societies to follow their example. + +The death of Alexander I in 1825 forced them to immediate action. The +shape it took was the "Decembrist" rising. Constantine, the Emperor's +brother, renounced his claim to the throne, and was succeeded by his +brother Nicholas. December 14 (O.S.) was fixed for the day on which +the Emperor should receive the oath of allegiance of his troops. An +organized insurrection took place, which was confined to certain +regiments. The Emperor was supported by the majority of the Guards +regiments, and the people showed no signs of supporting the rising, +which was at once suppressed. + +One hundred and twenty-five of the conspirators were condemned. Five +of them were hanged, and among them the poet RYLEEV (1795-1826). But +although the political results of the movement were nil, the effect of +the movement on literature was far-reaching. Philosophy took the place +of politics, and liberalism was diverted into the channel of +romanticism; but out of this romantic movement came the springtide of +Russian poetry, in which, for the first time, the soul of the Russian +people found adequate expression. And the very fact that politics +were excluded from the movement proved, in one sense, a boon to +literature: for it gave Russian men of genius the chance to be +writers, artists and poets, and prevented them from exhausting their +whole energy in being inefficient politicians or unsuccessful +revolutionaries. I will dwell on the drawbacks, on the dark side of +the medal, presently. + +As far as the actual Decembrist movement is concerned, its concrete +and direct legacy to literature consists in the work of Ryleev, and +its indirect legacy in the most famous comedy of the Russian stage, +_Gore ot Uma_, "The Misfortune of being Clever," by GRIBOYEDOV +(1795-1829). + +Ryleev's life was cut short before his poetical powers had come to +maturity. It is idle to speculate what he might have achieved had he +lived longer. The work which he left is notable for its pessimism, but +still suffers from the old rhetorical conventions of the eighteenth +century and the imitation of French models; moreover he looked on +literature as a matter of secondary importance. "I am not a poet," he +said, "I am a citizen." In spite of this, every now and then there are +flashes of intense poetical inspiration in his work; and he struck +one or two powerful chords--for instance, in his stanzas on the vision +of enslaved Russia, which have a tense strength and fire that remind +one of Emily Bronte. He was a poet as well as a citizen, but even had +he lived to a prosperous old age and achieved artistic perfection in +his work, he could never have won a brighter aureole than that which +his death gained him. The poems of his last days in prison breathe a +spirit of religious humility, and he died forgiving and praying for +his enemies. His name shines in Russian history and Russian +literature, as that of a martyr to a high ideal. + +Griboyedov, the author of _Gore ot Uma_, a writer of a very different +order, although not a Decembrist himself, is a product of that period. +His comedy still remains the unsurpassed masterpiece of Russian +comedy, and can be compared with Beaumarchais' _Figaro_ and Sheridan's +_School for Scandal_. + +Griboyedov was a Foreign Office official, and he was murdered when +Minister Plenipotentiary at Teheran, on January 30, 1829. He conceived +the plot of his play in 1816, and read aloud some scenes in St. +Petersburg in 1823-24. They caused a sensation in literary circles, +and the play began to circulate rapidly in MSS. Two fragments of the +drama were published in one of the almanacs, which then took the place +of literary reviews. But beyond this, Griboyedov could neither get his +play printed nor acted. Thousands of copies circulated in MSS., but +the play was not produced on the stage until 1831, and then much +mutilated; and it was not printed until 1833. + +_Gore ot Uma_ is written in verse, in iambics of varying length, like +Krylov's fables. The unities are preserved. The action takes place in +one day and in the same house--that of Famusov, an elderly gentleman +of the Moscow upper class holding a Government appointment. He is a +widower and has one daughter, Sophia, whose sensibility is greater +than her sense; and the play opens on a scene where the father +discovers her talking to his secretary, Molchalin, and says he will +stand no nonsense. Presently, the friend of Sophia's childhood, +Chatsky, arrives after a three years' absence abroad; Chatsky is a +young man of independent ideas whose misfortune it is to be clever. He +notices that Sophia receives him coldly, and later on he perceives +that she is in love with Molchalin,--a wonderfully drawn type, the +perfect climber, time-server and place-seeker, and the incarnation of +convention,--who does not care a rap for Sophia. Chatsky declaims to +Famusov his contempt for modern Moscow, for the slavish worship by +society of all that is foreign, for its idolatry of fashion and +official rank, its hollowness and its convention. Famusov, the +incarnation of respectable conventionality, does not understand one +word of what he is saying. + +At an evening party given at Famusov's house, Chatsky is determined to +find out whom Sophia loves. He decides it is Molchalin, and lets fall +a few biting sarcasms about him to Sophia; and Sophia, to pay him back +for his sarcasm, lets it be understood by one of the guests that he is +mad. The half-spoken hint spreads like lightning; and the spreading of +the news is depicted in a series of inimitable scenes. Chatsky enters +while the subject is being discussed, and delivers a long tirade on +the folly of Moscow society, which only confirms the suspicions of the +guests; and he finds when he gets to the end of his speech that he is +speaking to an empty room. + +In the fourth act we see the guests leaving the house after the +party. Chatsky is waiting for his carriage. Sophia appears on the +staircase and calls Molchalin. Chatsky, hearing her voice, hides +behind a pillar. Liza, Sophia's maid, comes to fetch Molchalin, and +knocks at his door. Molchalin comes out, and not knowing that Sophia +or Chatsky are within hearing, makes love to Liza and tells her that +he only loves Sophia out of duty. Then Sophia appears, having heard +everything. Molchalin falls on his knees to her: she is quite +inexorable. Chatsky comes forward and begins to speak his mind--when +all is interrupted by the arrival of Famusov, who speaks his. Chatsky +shakes the dust of the house and of Moscow off his feet, and Sophia is +left without Chatsky and without Molchalin. + +The _Gore ot Uma_ is a masterpiece of satire rather than a masterpiece +of dramatic comedy. That is to say that, as a satire of the Moscow +society of the day and of the society of yesterday, and of to-morrow, +it is immortal, and forms a complete work: but as a comedy it does +not. Almost every scene separately is perfect in itself, but +dramatically it does not group itself round one central idea or one +mainspring of action. Judged from the point of view of dramatic +propriety, the behaviour of the hero is wildly improbable throughout; +there is no reason for the spectator to think he should be in love +with Sophia; if he is, there is no reason for him to behave as he +does; if a man behaved like that, declaiming at an evening party long +speeches on the decay of the times, the most frivolous of societies +would be justified in thinking him mad. + +Pushkin hit on the weak point of the play as a play when he wrote: "In +_The Misfortune of being Clever_ the question arises, Who is clever? +and the answer is Griboyedov. Chatsky is an honourable young man who +has lived for a long time with a clever man (that is to say with +Griboyedov), and learnt his clever sarcasms; but to whom does he say +them? To Famusov, to the old ladies at the party. This is +unforgivable, because the first sign of a clever man is to know at +once whom he is dealing with." + +But what makes the work a masterpiece is the naturalness of the +characters, the dialogue, the comedy of the scenes which represent +Moscow society. It is extraordinary that on so small a scale, in four +short acts, Griboyedov should have succeeded in giving so complete a +picture of Moscow society, and should have given the dialogue, in +spite of its being in verse, the stamp of conversational familiarity. +The portraits are all full-length portraits, and when the play is +produced now, the rendering of each part raises as much discussion in +Russia as a revival of one of Sheridan's comedies in England. + +As for the style, nearly three-quarters of the play has passed into +the Russian language. It is forcible, concise, bitingly sarcastic, it +is as neat and dry as W. S. Gilbert, as elegant as La Fontaine, as +clear as an icicle, and as clean as the thrust of a sword. But perhaps +the crowning merit of this immortal satire is its originality. It is a +product of Russian life and Russian genius, and as yet it is without a +rival. + +Outside the current of politics and political aspirations, there +appeared during this same epoch a poet who exercised a considerable +influence over Russian literature, and who devoted himself exclusively +to poetry. This was BASIL ZHUKOVSKY (1783-1852). He opened the door +of Russian literature on the fields of German and English poetry. The +first poem he published in 1802 was a translation of Gray's _Elegy_; +this, and an imitation of Buerger's _Leonore_, which affected all Slav +literatures, brought him fame. Later, he translated Schiller's _Maid +of Orleans_, his ballads, some of the lyrics of Uhland, Goethe, +Hebbel, and a great quantity of other foreign poems. His translations +were faithful, but in spite of this he gave them the stamp of his own +dreamy personality. He was made tutor to the Tsarevitch +Alexander--afterwards Alexander II,--and for a time his production +ceased; but when this task was finished, he braced himself in his old +age to translate _The Odyssey_, and this translation appeared in +1848-50. In this work he obeyed the first great law of translation, +"Thou shalt not turn a good poem into a bad one." He produced a +beautiful work; but he also did what all other translators of Homer +have done; he took the Homer out and left the Zhukovsky, and with it +something sentimental, elegiac, and didactic. + +Zhukovsky's greatest service to Russian literature consisted in his +exploding the superstition that the literature of France was the only +literature that counted, and introducing literary Russia to the poets +of England and Germany rather than of France. But apart from this, he +is the first and best translator in European literature, for what +Krylov did with some of La Fontaine's fables, he did for all the +literature he touched--he re-created it in Russian, and made it his +own. In his translation of Gray's _Elegy_, for instance, he not only +translates the poet's meaning into musical verse, but he conveys the +intangible atmosphere of dreamy landscape, and the poignant accent +which makes that poem the natural language of grief. It is +characteristic of him that, thirty-seven years after he translated the +poem, he visited Stoke Poges, re-read Gray's _Elegy_ there, and made +another translation, which is still more faithful than the first. + +The Russian language was by this time purified from all outward +excrescences, released from the bondage of convention and the +pseudo-classical, open to all outside influences, and only waiting, +like a ready-tuned instrument, on which Krylov and Zhukovsky had +already sounded sweet notes and deep tones, and which Karamzin had +proved to be a magnificent vehicle for musical and perspicuous prose, +for a poet of genius to come and sound it from its lowest note to the +top of its compass, for there was indeed much music and excellent +voice to be plucked from it. At the appointed hour the man came. It +was PUSHKIN. He arrived at a time when a battle of words was raging +between the so-called classical and romantic schools. The +pseudo-classical, with all its mythological machinery and conventional +apparatus, was totally alien to Russia, and a direct and slavish +imitation of the French. On the other hand, the utmost confusion +reigned as to what constituted romanticism. To each single writer it +meant a different thing: "Enfoncez Racine," and the unities, in one +case; or ghosts, ballads, legends, local colour in another; or the +defiance of morality and society in another. Zhukovsky, in introducing +German romanticism into Russia, paved the way for its death, and for +the death of all exotic fashions and models; for he paved the way for +Pushkin to render the whole quarrel obsolete by creating models of his +own and by founding a national literature. + +Pushkin was born on May 26, 1799, at Moscow. He was of ancient +lineage, and inherited African negro blood on his mother's side, his +mother's grandmother being the daughter of Peter the Great's negro, +Hannibal. Until he was nine years old, he did not show signs of any +unusual precocity; but from then onwards he was seized with a passion +for reading which lasted all his life. He read Plutarch's _Lives_, the +_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ in a translation. He then devoured all the +French books he found in his father's library. Pushkin was gifted with +a photographic memory, which retained what he read immediately and +permanently. His first efforts at writing were in French,--comedies, +which he performed himself to an audience of his sisters. He went to +school in 1812 at the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, a suburb of St. +Petersburg. His school career was not brilliant, and his leaving +certificate qualifies his achievements as mediocre, even in Russian. +But during the six years he spent at the Lyceum, he continued to read +voraciously. His favourite poet at this time was Voltaire. He began to +write verse, first in French and then in Russian; some of it was +printed in 1814 and 1815 in reviews, and in 1815 he declaimed his +_Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_ in public at the Lyceum examination, +in the presence of Derzhavin the poet. + +The poems which he wrote at school afterwards formed part of his +collected works. In these poems, consisting for the greater part of +anacreontics and epistles, although they are immature, and imitative, +partly of contemporary authors such as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, and +partly of the French anacreontic school of poets, such as Voltaire, +Gresset and Parny, the sound of a new voice was unmistakable. Indeed, +not only his contemporaries, but the foremost representatives of the +Russian literature of that day, Derzhavin, Karamzin and Zhukovsky, +made no mistake about it. They greeted the first notes of this new +lyre with enthusiasm. Zhukovsky used to visit the boy poet at school +and read out his verse to him. Derzhavin was enthusiastic over the +recitation of his _Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo_. Thus fame came to +Pushkin as easily as the gift of writing verse. He had lisped in +numbers, and as soon as he began to speak in them, his contemporaries +immediately recognized and hailed the new voice. He did not wake up +and find himself famous like Byron, but he walked into the Hall of +Fame as naturally as a young heir steps into his lawful inheritance. +If we compare Pushkin's school-boy poetry with Byron's _Hours of +Idleness_, it is easy to understand how this came about. In the _Hours +of Idleness_ there is, perhaps, only one poem which would hold out +hopes of serious promise; and the most discerning critics would have +been justified in being careful before venturing to stake any great +hopes on so slender a hint. But in Pushkin's early verse, although the +subject-matter is borrowed, and the style is still irregular and +careless, it is none the less obvious that it flows from the pen of +the author without effort or strain; and besides this, certain coins +of genuine poetry ring out, bearing the image and superscription of a +new mint, the mint of Pushkin. + +When the first of his poems to attract the attention of a larger +audience, _Ruslan and Ludmila_, was published, in 1820, it was greeted +with enthusiasm by the public; but it had already won the suffrages of +that circle which counted most, that is to say, the leading men of +letters of the day, who had heard it read out in MSS. For as soon as +Pushkin left school and stepped into the world, he was received into +the literary circle of the day on equal terms. After he had read aloud +the first cantos of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ at Zhukovsky's literary +evenings, Zhukovsky gave him his portrait with this inscription: "To +the pupil, from his defeated master"; and BATYUSHKOV, a poet who, +after having been influenced, like Pushkin, by Voltaire and Parny, had +gone back to the classics, Horace and Tibullus, and had introduced the +classic anacreontic school of poetry into Russia, was astonished to +find a young man of the world outplaying him without any trouble on +the same lyre, and exclaimed, "Oh! how well the rascal has started +writing!" + +The publication of _Ruslan and Ludmila_ sealed Pushkin's reputation +definitely, as far as the general public was concerned, although some +of the professional critics treated the poem with severity. The +subject of the poem was a Russian fairy-tale, and the critics blamed +the poet for having recourse to what they called Russian folk-lore, +which they considered to be unworthy of the poetic muse. One review +complained that Pushkin's choice of subject was like introducing a +bearded unkempt peasant into a drawing-room, while others blamed him +for dealing with national stuff in a flippant spirit. But the curious +thing is that, while the critics blamed him for his choice of subject, +and his friends and the public defended him for it, quoting all sorts +of precedents, the poem has absolutely nothing in common, either in +its spirit, style or characterization, with native Russian folk-lore +and fairy-tales. Much later on in his career, Pushkin was to show what +he could do with Russian folk-lore. But _Ruslan and Ludmila_, which, +as far as its form is concerned, has a certain superficial resemblance +to Ariosto, is in reality the result of the French influence, under +which Pushkin had been ever since his cradle, and which in this poem +blazes into the sky like a rocket, and bursts into a shower of sparks, +never to return again. + +There is no passion in the poem and no irony, but it is young, fresh, +full of sensuous, not to say sensual images, interruptions, +digressions, and flippant epigrams. Pushkin wondered afterwards that +nobody noticed the coldness of the poem; the truth was that the eyes +of the public were dazzled by the fresh sensuous images, and their +ears were taken captive by the new voice: for the importance of the +poem lies in this--that the new voice which the literary pundits had +already recognized in the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo was now speaking to +the whole world, and all Russia became aware that a young man was +among them "with mouth of gold and morning in his eyes." _Ruslan and +Ludmila_ has just the same sensuous richness, fresh music and +fundamental coldness as Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_. After finishing +the poem, Pushkin added a magnificent and moving Epilogue, written +from the Caucasus in the year of its publication (1820); and when the +second edition was published in 1828, he added a Prologue in his +finest manner which tells of Russian fairy-land. + +After leaving school in 1817, until 1820, Pushkin plunged into the gay +life of St. Petersburg. He wanted to be a Hussar, but his father could +not afford it. In default he became a Foreign Office official; but he +did not take this profession seriously. He consorted with the +political youth and young Liberals of the day; he scattered stinging +epigrams and satirical epistles broadcast. He sympathized with the +Decembrists, but took no part in their conspiracy. He would probably +have ended by doing so; but, luckily for Russian literature, he was +transferred in 1820 from the Foreign Office to the Chancery of General +Inzov in the South of Russia; and from 1820 to 1826 he lived first at +Kishinev, then at Odessa, and finally in his own home at Pskov. This +enforced banishment was of the greatest possible service to the poet; +it took him away from the whirl and distractions of St. Petersburg; it +prevented him from being compromised in the drama of the Decembrists; +it ripened and matured his poetical genius; it provided him, since it +was now that he visited the Caucasus and the Crimea for the first +time, with new subject-matter. + +During this period he learnt Italian and English, and came under the +influence of Andre Chenier and Byron. Andre Chenier's influence is +strongly felt in a series of lyrics in imitation of the classics; but +these lyrics were altogether different from the anacreontics of his +boyhood. Byron's influence is first manifested in a long poem _The +Prisoner of the Caucasus_. It is Byronic in the temperament of the +hero, who talks in the strain of the earlier Childe Harold; he is +young, but feels old; tired of life, he seeks for consolation in the +loneliness of nature in the Caucasus. He is taken prisoner by mountain +tribesmen, and set free by a girl who drowns herself on account of her +unrequited love. Pushkin said later that the poem was immature, but +that there were verses in it that came from his heart. There is one +element in the poem which is by no means immature, and that is the +picture of the Caucasus, which is executed with much reality and +simplicity. Pushkin annexed the Caucasus to Russian poetry. The Crimea +inspired him with another tale, also Byronic in some respects, _The +Fountain of Baghchi-Sarai_, which tells of a Tartar Khan and his +Christian slave, who is murdered out of jealousy by a former +favourite, herself drowned by the orders of the Khan. Here again the +descriptions are amazing, and Pushkin draws out a new stop of rich and +voluptuous music. + +In speaking of the influence of Byron over Pushkin it is necessary to +discriminate. Byron helped Pushkin to discover himself; Byron +revealed to him his own powers, showed him the way out of the French +garden where he had been dwelling, and acted as a guide to fresh woods +and pastures new. But what Pushkin took from the new provinces to +which the example of Byron led him was entirely different from what +Byron sought there. Again, the methods and workmanship of the two +poets were radically different. Pushkin is never imitative of Byron; +but Byron opened his eyes to a new world, and indeed did for him what +Chapman's _Homer_ did for Keats. It frequently happens that when a +poet is deeply struck by the work of another poet he feels a desire to +write something himself, but something different. Thus Pushkin's +mental intercourse with Byron had the effect of bracing the talent of +the Russian poet and spurring him on to the conquest of new worlds. + +Pushkin's six years' banishment to his own country had the effect of +revealing to him the reality and seriousness of his vocation as a +poet, and the range and strength of his gifts. It was during this +period that besides the works already mentioned he wrote some of his +finest lyrics, _The Conversation between the Bookseller and the +Poet_--perhaps the most perfect of his shorter poems--it contains four +lines to have written which Turgenev said he would have burnt the +whole of his works--a larger poem called _The Gypsies_; his dramatic +chronicle _Boris Godunov_, and the beginning of his masterpiece +_Onegin_; several ballads, including _The Sage Oleg_, and an +unfinished romance, the _Robber Brothers_. + +Not only is the richness of his output during this period remarkable, +but the variety and the high level of art maintained in all the +different styles which he attempted and mastered. _The Gypsies_ +(1827), which was received with greater favour by the public than any +of his poems, either earlier or later, is the story of a disappointed +man, Aleko, who leaves the world and takes refuge with gypsies. A +tragically ironical situation is the result. The anarchic nature of +the Byronic misanthrope brings tragedy into the peaceful life of the +people, who are lawless because they need no laws. Aleko loves and +marries the gypsy Zemfira, but after a time she tires of him, and +loves a young gypsy. Aleko surprises them and kills them both. Then +Zemfira's father banishes him from the gypsies' camp. He, too, had +been deceived. When his wife Mariula had been untrue and had left him, +he had attempted no vengeance, but had brought up her daughter. + +"Leave us, proud man," he says to Aleko. "We are a wild people; we +have no laws, we torture not, neither do we punish; we have no use for +blood or groans; we will not live with a man of blood. Thou wast not +made for the wild life. For thyself alone thou claimest licence; we +are shy and good-natured; thou art evil-minded and presumptuous. +Farewell, and peace be with thee!" + +The charm of the poem lies in the descriptions of the gypsy camp and +the gypsy life, the snatches of gypsy song, and the characterization +of the gypsies, especially of the women. It is not surprising the poem +was popular; it breathes a spell, and the reading of it conjures up +before one the wandering life, the camp-fire, the soft speech and the +song; and makes one long to go off with "the raggle-taggle gypsies O!" + +Byron's influence soon gave way to that of Shakespeare, who opened a +still larger field of vision to the Russian poet. In 1825 he writes: +"Quel homme que ce Shakespeare! Je n'en reviens pas. Comme Byron le +tragique est mesquin devant lui! Ce Byron qui n'a jamais concu qu'un +seul caractere et c'est le sien ... ce Byron donc a partage entre ses +personages tel et tel trait de son caractere: son orgeuil a l'un, sa +haine a l'autre, sa melancolie au troisieme, etc., et c'est ainsi d'un +caractere plein, sombre et energique, il a fait plusieurs caracteres +insignifiants; ce n'est pas la de la tragedie. On a encore une manie. +Quand on a concu un caractere, tout ce qu'on lui fait dire, meme les +choses les plus etranges, en porte essentiellement l'empreinte, comme +les pedants et les marins dans les vieux romans de Fielding. Voyez le +haineux de Byron ... et la-dessus lisez Shakespeare. Il ne craint +jamais de compromettre son personage, il le fait parler avec tout +l'abandon de la vie, car il est sur en temps et lieu, de lui faire +trouver le langage de son caractere. Vous me demanderez: votre +tragedie est-elle une tragedie de caractere ou de costume? J'ai choisi +le genre le plus aise, mais j'ai tache de les unir tous deux. J'ecris +et je pense. La plupart des scenes ne demandent que du raisonnement; +quand j'arrive a une scene qui demande de l'inspiration, j'attends ou +je passe dessus." + +I quote this letter because it throws light, firstly, on Pushkin's +matured opinion of Byron, and, secondly, on his methods of work; for, +like Leonardo da Vinci, he formed the habit, which he here describes, +of leaving unwritten passages where inspiration was needed, until he +felt the moment of _bien etre_ when inspiration came; and this not +only in writing his tragedy, but henceforward in everything that he +wrote, as his note-books testify. + +The subject-matter of _Boris Godunov_ was based on Karamzin's history: +it deals with the dramatic episode of the Russian Perkin Warbeck, the +false Demetrius who pretended to be the murdered son of Ivan the +Terrible. The play is constructed on the model of Shakespeare's +chronicle plays, but in a still more disjointed fashion, without a +definite beginning or end: when Mussorgsky made an opera out of it, +the action was concentrated into definite acts; for, as it stands, it +is not a play, but a series of scenes. Pushkin had not the power of +conceiving and executing a drama which should move round one idea to +an inevitable close. He had not the gift of dramatic architectonics, +and still less that of stage carpentry. On the other hand, the scenes, +whether they be tragic and poetical, or scenes of common life, are as +vivid as any in Shakespeare; the characters are all alive, and they +speak a language which is at the same time ancient, living, and +convincing. + +In saying that Pushkin lacks the gift of stage architectonics and +stage carpentry, it is not merely meant that he lacked the gift of +arranging acts that would suit the stage, or that of imagining stage +effects. His whole play is not conceived as a drama; a subject from +which a drama might be written is taken, but the drama is left +unwritten. We see Boris Godunov on the throne, which he has unlawfully +usurped; we know he feels remorse; he tells us so in monologues; we +see his soul stripped before us, bound upon a wheel of fire, and we +watch the wheel revolve; and that is all the moral and spiritual +action that the part contains; he is static and not dynamic, he never +has to make up his mind; his will never has to encounter the shock of +another will during the whole play. Neither does the chronicle centre +round the Pretender. It is true that we see the idea of impersonating +the Tsarevitch dawning in his mind; and it is also true that in one +scene with his Polish love, Marina, we see him dynamically moving in a +dramatic situation. She loves him because she thinks he is the son of +an anointed King. He loves her too much to deceive her, and tells her +the truth. She then says she will have nothing of him; and then he +rises from defeat and shame to the height of the situation, becomes +great, and, not unlike Browning's Sludge, says: "Although I am an +impostor, I am born to be a King all the same; I am one of Nature's +Kings; and I defy you to oust me from the situation. Tell every one +what I have told you. Nobody will believe you." And Marina is +conquered once more by his conduct and bearing. + +This scene is sheer drama; it is the conflict of two wills and two +souls. But there the matter ends. The kaleidoscope is shaken, and we +are shown a series of different patterns, in which the heroine plays +no part at all, and in which the hero only makes a momentary +appearance. The fact is there is neither hero nor heroine in the play. +It is not a play, but a chronicle; and it would be foolish to blame +Pushkin for not accomplishing what he never attempted. As a chronicle, +a series of detached scenes, it is supremely successful. There are +certain scenes which attain to sublimity: for instance, that in the +cell of the monastery, where the monk is finishing his chronicle; and +the monologue in which Boris speaks his remorse, and his dying speech +to his son. The verse in these scenes is sealed with the mark of that +God-gifted ease and high seriousness, which belong only to the +inspired great. They are Shakespearean, not because they imitate +Shakespeare, but because they attain to heights of imaginative truth +to which Shakespeare rises more often than any other poet; and the +language in these scenes has a simplicity, an inevitableness, an +absence of all conscious effort and of all visible art and artifice, a +closeness of utterance combined with a width of suggestion which +belong only to the greatest artists, to the Greeks, to Shakespeare, to +Dante. + +_Boris Godunov_ was not published until January 1, 1831, and passed, +with one exception, absolutely unnoticed by the critics. Like so many +great works, it came before its time; and it was not until years +afterwards that the merits of this masterpiece were understood and +appreciated. + +In 1826 Pushkin's banishment to the country came to an end; in that +year he was allowed to go to Moscow, and in 1827 to St. Petersburg. In +1826 his poems appeared in one volume, and the second canto of +_Onegin_ (the first had appeared in 1825). In 1827 _The Gypsies_, and +the third canto of _Onegin_; in 1828 the fourth, fifth, and sixth +cantos of _Onegin_; in 1829 _Graf Nulin_, an admirably told _Conte_ +such as Maupassant might have written, of a deceived husband and a +wife who, finding herself in the situation of Lucretia, gives the +would-be Tarquin a box on the ears, but succeeds, nevertheless, in +being unfaithful with some one else--the _Cottage of Kolomna_ is +another story in the same vein--and in the same year _Poltava_. + +This poem was written in one month, in St. Petersburg. The subject is +Mazepa, with whom the daughter of his hereditary enemy, Kochubey, whom +he afterwards tortures and kills, falls in love. But it is in reality +the epic of Peter the Great.[3] When the poem was published, it +disconcerted the critics and the public. It revealed an entirely new +phase of Pushkin's style, and it should have widened the popular +conception of the poet's powers and versatility. But at the time the +public only knew Pushkin through his lyrics and his early tales; +_Boris Godunov_ had not yet been published; moreover, the public of +that day expected to find in a poem passion and the delineation of the +heart's adventures. This stern objective fragment of an epic, falling +into their sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses and cupids, +like a bas-relief conceived by a Titan and executed by a god, met with +little appreciation. The poet's verse which, so far as the public +knew it, had hitherto seemed like a shining and luscious fruit, was +exchanged for a concentrated weighty tramp of ringing rhyme, _martele_ +like steel. It is as if Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a +style as concise as that of Pope and as concentrated as that of +Browning's dramatic lyrics. The poem is a fit monument to Peter the +Great, and the great monarch's impetuous genius and passion for +thorough craftsmanship seem to have entered into it. + +In 1829 Pushkin made a second journey to the Caucasus, the result of +which was a harvest of lyrics. On his return to St. Petersburg he +sketched the plan of another epic poem, _Galub_, dealing with the +Caucasus, but this remained a fragment. + +In 1831 he finished the eighth and last canto of _Onegin_. Originally +there were nine cantos, but when the work was published one of the +cantos dealing with Onegin's travels was left out as being irrelevant. +Pushkin had worked at this poem since 1823. It was Byron's _Beppo_ +which gave him the idea of writing a poem on modern life; but here +again, he made of the idea something quite different from any of +Byron's work. _Onegin_ is a novel. Eugene Onegin is the name of the +hero. It is, moreover, the first Russian novel; and as a novel it has +never been surpassed. It is as real as Tolstoy, as finished in +workmanship and construction as Turgenev. It is a realistic novel; not +realistic in the sense that Zola's work was mis-called realistic, but +realistic in the sense that Miss Austen is realistic. The hero is the +average man about St. Petersburg; his father, a worthy public servant, +lives honourably on debts and gives three balls a year. Onegin is +brought up, not too strictly, by "Monsieur l'Abbe"; he goes out in the +world clothed by a London tailor, fluent in French, and able to dance +the Mazurka. + +Onegin can touch on every subject, can hold his tongue when the +conversation becomes too serious, and make epigrams. He knows enough +Latin to construe an epitaph, to talk about Juvenal, and put "Vale!" +at the end of his letters, and he can remember two lines of the +_AEneid_. He is severe on Homer and Theocritus, but has read Adam +Smith. The only art in which he is proficient is the _ars amandi_ as +taught by Ovid. He is a patron of the ballet; he goes to balls; he +eats beef-steaks and _pate de foie gras_. In spite of all +this--perhaps because of it--he suffers from spleen, like Childe +Harold, the author says. His father dies, leaving a lot of debts +behind him, but a dying uncle summons him to the country; and when he +gets there he finds his uncle dead, and himself the inheritor of the +estate. In the country, he is just as much bored as he was in St. +Petersburg. A new neighbour arrives in the shape of Lensky, a young +man fresh from Germany, an enthusiast and a poet, and full of Kant, +Schiller, and the German writers. Lensky introduces Onegin to the +neighbouring family, by name Larin, consisting of a widow and two +daughters. Lensky is in love with the younger daughter, Olga, who is +simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face, as Onegin says, like the +foolish moon. The elder sister, Tatiana, is less pretty; shy and +dreamy, she conceals under her retiring and wistful ways a clean-cut +character and a strong will. + +Tatiana is as real as any of Miss Austen's heroines; as alive as +Fielding's Sophia Western, and as charming as any of George Meredith's +women; as sensible as Portia, as resolute as Juliet. Turgenev, with +all his magic, and Tolstoy, with all his command over the colours of +life, never created a truer, more radiant, and more typically Russian +woman. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman; that +is to say, of all that is best in Russia; and it is a type taken +straight from life, and not from fairy-land--a type that exists as +much to-day as it did in the days of Pushkin. She is the first of that +long gallery of Russian women which Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky +have given us, and which are the most precious jewels of Russian +literature, because they reflect the crowning glory of Russian life. +Tatiana falls in love with Onegin at first sight. She writes to him +and confesses her love, and in all the love poetry of the world there +is nothing more touching and more simple than this confession. It is +perfect. If Pushkin had written this and this alone, his place among +poets would be unique and different from that of all other poets. + +Possibly some people may think that there are finer achievements in +the love poetry of the world; but nothing is so futile and so +impertinent as giving marks to the great poets, as if they were +passing an examination. If a thing is as good as possible in itself, +what is the use of saying that it is less good or better than +something else, which is as good as possible in itself also. +Nevertheless, placed beside any of the great confessions of love in +poetry--Francesca's story in the _Inferno_, Romeo and Juliet's +leavetaking, Phedre's declaration, Don Juan Tenorio's letter--the +beauty of Tatiana's confession would not be diminished by the +juxtaposition. Of the rest of Pushkin's work at its best and highest, +of the finest passages of _Boris Godunov_, for instance, you can say: +This is magnificent, but there are dramatic passages in other works of +other poets on the same lines and as fine; but in Tatiana's letter +Pushkin has created something unique, which has no parallel, because +only a Russian could have written it, and of Russians, only he. It is +a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous as a +blackbird's song. + +Onegin tells Tatiana he is not worthy of her, that he is not made for +love and marriage; that he would cease to love her at once; that he +feels for her like a brother, or perhaps a little more tenderly. It +then falls out that Onegin, by flirting with Olga at a ball, makes +Lensky jealous. They fight a duel, and Lensky is killed. Onegin is +obliged to leave the neighbourhood, and spends years in travel. +Tatiana remains true to her first love; but she is taken by her +relatives to Moscow, and consents at last under their pressure to +marry a rich man of great position. In St. Petersburg, Onegin meets +her again. Tatiana has become a great lady, but all her old charm is +there. Onegin now falls violently in love with her; but she, although +she frankly confesses that she still loves him, tells him that it is +too late; she has married another, and she means to remain true to +him. And there the story ends. + +_Onegin_ is, perhaps, Pushkin's most characteristic work; it is +undoubtedly the best known and the most popular; like _Hamlet_, it is +all quotations. Pushkin in his _Onegin_ succeeded in doing what +Shelley urged Byron to do--to create something new and in accordance +with the spirit of the age, which should at the same time be +beautiful. He did more than this. He succeeded in creating for Russia +a poem that was purely national, and in giving his country a classic, +a model both in construction, matter, form, and inspiration for +future generations. Perhaps the greatest quality of this poem is its +vividness. Pushkin himself speaks, in taking leave, of having seen the +unfettered march of his novel in a magic prism. This is just the +impression that the poem gives; the scenes are as clear as the shapes +in a crystal; nothing is blurred; there are no hesitating notes, +nothing _a peu pres_; every stroke comes off; the nail is hit on the +head every time, only so easily that you do not notice the strokes, +and all labour escapes notice. Apart from this the poem is amusing; it +arrests the attention as a story, and it delights the intelligence +with its wit, its digressions, and its brilliance. It is as witty as +Don Juan and as consummately expressed as Pope; and when the occasion +demands it, the style passes in easy transition to serious or tender +tones. _Onegin_ has been compared to Byron's _Don Juan_. There is this +likeness, that both poems deal with contemporary life, and in both +poems the poets pass from grave to gay, from severe to lively, and +often interrupt the narrative to apostrophize the reader. But there +the likeness ends. On the other hand, there is a vast difference. +_Onegin_ contains no adventures. It is a story of everyday life. +Moreover, it is an organic whole: so well constructed that it fits +into a stage libretto--Tchaikovsky made an opera out of it--without +difficulty. There is another difference--a difference which applies to +Pushkin and Byron in general. There is no unevenness in Pushkin; his +work, as far as craft is concerned, is always on the same high level. +You can admire the whole, or cut off any single passage and it will +still remain admirable; whereas Byron must be taken as a whole or not +at all--the reason being that Pushkin was an impeccable artist in form +and expression, and that Byron was not. + +In the winter of 1832 Pushkin sought a new field, the field of +historical research; and by the beginning of 1833 he had not only +collected all the materials for a history of Pugachev, the Cossack who +headed a rising in the reign of Catherine II; but his literary +activity was so great that he had also written the rough sketch of a +long story in prose dealing with the same subject, _The Captain's +Daughter_, another prose story of considerable length, _Dubrovsky_, +and portions of a drama, _Rusalka_, The Water Nymph, which was never +finished. Besides _Boris Godunov_ and the _Rusalka_, Pushkin wrote a +certain number of dramatic scenes, or short dramas in one or more +scenes. Of these, one, _The Feast in the Time of Plague_, is taken +from the English of John Wilson (_The City of the Plague_), with +original additions. In _Mozart and Salieri_ we see the contrast +between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does +what it can. The story is based on the unfounded anecdote that Mozart +was poisoned by Salieri out of envy. This dramatic and beautifully +written episode has been set to music as it stands by Rimsky-Korsakov. + +_The Covetous Knight_, which bears the superscription, "From the +tragi-comedy of Chenstone"--an unknown English original--tells of the +conflict between a Harpagon and his son: the delineation of the +miser's imaginative passion for his treasures is, both in conception +and execution, in Pushkin's finest manner. This scene has been +recently set to music by Rakhmaninov. _The Guest of Stone_, the story +of Don Juan and the _statua gentilissima del gran Commendatore_, makes +Don Juan life. A scene from _Faust_ between Faust and Mephistopheles +is original and not of great interest; _Angelo_ is the story of +_Measure for Measure_ told as a narrative with two scenes in dialogue. +_Rusalka_, The Water Maid, is taken from the genuine and not the sham +province of national legend, and it is tantalizing that this poetic +fragment remained a fragment. + +Pushkin's prose is in some respects as remarkable as his verse. Here, +too, he proved a pioneer. _Dubrovsky_ is the story of a young officer +whose father is ousted, like Naboth, from his small estate by his +neighbour, a rich and greedy landed proprietor, becomes a highway +robber so as to revenge himself, and introduces himself into the +family of his enemy as a French master, but forgoes his revenge +because he falls in love with his enemy's daughter. In this extremely +vivid story he anticipates Gogol in his lifelike pictures of country +life. _The Captain's Daughter_ is equally vivid; the rebel Pugachev +has nothing stagey or melodramatic about him, nothing of Harrison +Ainsworth. Of his shorter stories, such as _The Blizzard_, _The Pistol +Shot_, _The Lady-Peasant_, the most entertaining, and certainly the +most popular, is _The Queen of Spades_, which was so admirably +translated by Merimee, and formed the subject of one of Tchaikovsky's +most successful operas. As an artistic work _The Egyptian Nights_, +written in 1828, is the most interesting, and ranks among Pushkin's +masterpieces. It tells of an Italian _improvisatore_ who, at a party +in St. Petersburg, improvises verses on Cleopatra and her lovers. The +story is written to lead up to this poem, which gives a gorgeous +picture of the pagan world, and is another example of Pushkin's +miraculous power of assimilation. Pushkin's prose has the same +limpidity and ease as his verse; the characters have the same vitality +and reality as those in his poems and dramatic scenes, and had he +lived longer he might have become a great novelist. As it is, he +furnished Gogol (whose acquaintance he made in 1832) with the subject +of two of his masterpieces--_Dead Souls_ and _The Revisor_. + +The province of Russian folk-lore and legend from which Pushkin took +the idea of _Rusalka_ was to furnish him with a great deal of rich +material. It was in 1831 that in friendly rivalry with Zhukovsky he +wrote his first long fairy-tale, imitating the Russian popular style, +_The Tale of Tsar Saltan_. Up till now he had written only a few +ballads in the popular style. This fairy-tale was a brilliant success +as a _pastiche_; but it was a _pastiche_ and not quite the real thing, +as cleverness kept breaking in, and a touch of epigram here and there, +which indeed makes it delightful reading. He followed it by another in +the comic vein, _The Tale of the Pope and his Man Balda_, and by two +more _Maerchen_, _The Dead Tsaritsa_ and _The Golden Cock_; but it was +not until two years later that he wrote his masterpiece in this vein, +_The Story of the Fisherman and the Fish_. It is the same story as +Grimm's tale of the Fisherman's wife who wished to be King, Emperor, +and then Pope, and finally lost all by her vaulting ambition. The tale +is written in unrhymed rhythmical, indeed scarcely rhythmical, lines; +all trace of art is concealed; it is a tale such as might have been +handed down by oral tradition in some obscure village out of the +remotest past; it has the real _Volkston_; the good-nature and +simplicity and unobtrusive humour of a real fairy-tale. The subjects +of all these stories were told to Pushkin by his nurse, Anna +Rodionovna, who also furnished him with the subject of his ballad, +_The Bridegroom_. In Pushkin's note-books there are seven fairy-tales +taken down hurriedly from the words of his nurse; and most likely all +that he wrote dealing with the life of the people came from the same +source. Pushkin called Anna Rodionovna his last teacher, and said that +he was indebted to her for counteracting the effects of his first +French education. + +In 1833 he finished a poem called _The Brazen Horseman_, the story of +a man who loses his beloved in the great floods in St. Petersburg in +1834, and going mad, imagines that he is pursued by Falconet's +equestrian statue of Peter the Great. The poem contains a magnificent +description of St. Petersburg. During the last years of his life, he +was engaged in collecting materials for a history of Peter the Great. +His power of production had never run dry from the moment he left +school, although his actual work was interrupted from time to time by +distractions and the society of his friends. + +All the important larger works of Pushkin have now been mentioned; but +during the whole course of his career he was always pouring out a +stream of lyrics and occasional pieces, many of which are among the +most beautiful things he wrote. His variety and the width of his range +are astonishing. Some of them have a grace and perfection such as we +find in the Greek anthology; others--"Recollections," for instance, in +which in the sleepless hours of the night the poet sees pass before +him the blotted scroll of his past deeds, which he is powerless with +all the tears in the world to wash out--have the intensity of +Shakespeare's sonnets. This poem, for instance, has the same depth of +feeling as "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry," or "The +expense of spirit in a waste of shame." Or he will write an elegy as +tender as Tennyson; or he will draw a picture of a sledge in a +snow-storm, and give you the plunge of the bewildered horses, the +whirling demons of the storm, the bells ringing on the quiet spaces of +snow, in intoxicating rhythms which E. A. Poe would have envied; or +again he will write a description of the Caucasus in eleven short +lines, close in expression and vast in suggestion, such as "The +Monastery on Kazbek"; or he will bring before you the smell of the +autumn morning, and the hoofs ringing out on the half-frozen earth; or +he will write a patriotic poem, such as _To the Slanderers of +Russia_, fraught with patriotic indignation without being offensive; +in this poem Pushkin paints an inspired picture of Russia: "Will not," +he says, "from Perm to the Caucasus, from Finland's chill rocks to the +flaming Colchis, from the shaken Kremlin to the unshaken walls of +China, glistening with its bristling steel, the Russian earth arise?" +Or he will write a prayer, as lordly in utterance and as humble in +spirit as one of the old Latin hymns; or a love-poem as tender as +Musset and as playful as Heine: he will translate you the spirit of +Horace and the spirit of Mickiewicz the Pole; he will secure the +restraint of Andre Chenier, and the impetuous gallop of Byron. + +Perhaps the most characteristic of Pushkin's poems is the poem which +expresses his view of life in the elegy-- + + "As bitter as stale aftermath of wine + Is the remembrance of delirious days; + But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs + The past more sorely, as my days decline. + My path is dark. The future lies in wait, + A gathering ocean of anxiety, + But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create, + That is my prayer; to live and not to die! + I know that ecstasy shall still lie there + In sorrow and adversity and care. + Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine, + Be moved to tears by musings that are mine; + And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh + Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky." + +But the greatest of his short poems is probably "The Prophet." This is +a tremendous poem, and reaches a height to which Pushkin only attained +once. It is Miltonic in conception and Dantesque in expression; the +syllables ring out in pure concent, like blasts from a silver clarion. +It is, as it were, the Pillars of Hercules of the Russian language. +Nothing finer as sound could ever be compounded with Russian vowels +and consonants; nothing could be more perfectly planned, or present, +in so small a vehicle, so large a vision to the imagination. Even a +rough prose translation will give some idea of the imaginative +splendour of the poem-- + +"My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, and I was astray in the dark +wilderness. And the Seraphim with six wings appeared to me at the +crossing of the ways: And he touched my eyelids, and his fingers were +as soft as sleep: and like the eyes of an eagle that is frightened my +prophetic eyes were awakened. He touched my ears and he filled them +with noise and with sound: and I heard the Heavens shuddering and the +flight of the angels in the height, and the moving of the beasts that +are under the waters, and the noise of the growth of the branches in +the valley. He bent down over me and he looked upon my lips; and he +tore out my sinful tongue, and he took away that which is idle and +that which is evil with his right hand, and his right hand was dabbled +with blood; and he set there in its stead, between my perishing lips, +the tongue of a wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder with a +sword, and he plucked out my trembling heart, and in my cloven breast +he set a burning coal of fire. Like a corpse in the desert I lay, and +the voice of God called and said unto me, 'Prophet, arise, and take +heed, and hear; be filled with My will, and go forth over the sea and +over the land and set light with My word to the hearts of the +people.'" + +In 1837 came the catastrophe which brought about Pushkin's death. It +was caused by the clash of evil tongues engaged in frivolous gossip, +and Pushkin's own susceptible and violent temperament. A guardsman, +Heckeren-Dantes, had been flirting with his wife. Pushkin received an +anonymous letter, and being wrongly convinced that Heckeren-Dantes was +the author of it, wrote him a violent letter which made a duel +inevitable. A duel was fought on the 27th of February, 1837, and +Pushkin was mortally wounded. Such was his frenzy of rage that, after +lying wounded and unconscious in the snow, on regaining consciousness, +he insisted on going on with the duel, and fired another shot, giving +a great cry of joy when he saw that he had wounded his adversary. It +was only a slight wound in the hand. It was not until he reached home +that his anger passed away. He died on the 29th of February, after +forty-five hours of excruciating suffering, heroically borne; he +forgave his enemies; he wished no one to avenge him; he received the +last sacraments; and he expressed feelings of loyalty and gratitude +to his sovereign. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old. + +Pushkin's career falls naturally into two divisions: his life until he +was thirty, and his life after he was thirty. Pushkin began his career +with liberal aspirations, and he disappointed some in the loyalty to +the throne, the Church, the autocracy, and the established order of +things which he manifested later; in turning to religion; in remaining +in the Government service; in writing patriotic poems; in holding the +position of Gentleman of the Bed Chamber at Court; in being, in fact, +what is called a reactionary. But it would be a mistake to imagine +that Pushkin was a Lost Leader who abandoned the cause of liberty for +a handful of silver and a riband to stick in his coat. The liberal +aspirations of Pushkin's youth were the very air that the whole of the +aristocratic youth of that day breathed. Pushkin could not escape +being influenced by it; but he was no more a rebel then, than he was a +reactionary afterwards, when again the very air which the whole of +educated society breathed was conservative and nationalistic. It may +be a pity that it was so; but so it was. There was no liberal +atmosphere in the reign of Nicholas I, and the radical effervescence +of the Decembrists was destroyed by the Decembrists' premature action. +It is no good making a revolution if you have nothing to make it with. +The Decembrists were in the same position as the educated elite of one +regiment at Versailles would have been, had it attempted to destroy +the French monarchy in the days of Louis XIV. The Decembrists by their +premature action put the clock of Russian political progress back for +years. The result was that men of impulse, aspiration, talent and +originality had in the reign of Nicholas to seek an outlet for their +feelings elsewhere than in politics, because politics then were simply +non-existent. + +But apart from this, even if the opportunities had been there, it may +be doubted whether Pushkin would have taken them. He was not born with +a passion to reform the world. He was neither a rebel nor a reformer; +neither a liberal nor a conservative; he was a democrat in his love +for the whole of the Russian people; he was a patriot in his love of +his country. He resembled Goethe rather than Socrates, or Shelley, or +Byron; although, in his love of his country and in every other +respect, his fiery temperament both in itself and in its expression +was far removed from Goethe's Olympian calm. He was like Goethe in his +attitude towards society, and the attitude of the social and official +world towards him resembles the attitude of Weimar towards Goethe. + +During the first part of his career he gave himself up to pleasure, +passion, and self-indulgence; after he was thirty he turned his mind +to more serious things. It would not be exact to say he _became_ +deeply religious, because he was religious by nature, and he soon +discarded a fleeting phase of scepticism; but in spite of this he was +a victim of _amour-propre_; and he wavered between contempt of the +society around him and a petty resentment against it which took the +shape of scathing and sometimes cruel epigrams. It was this dangerous +_amour-propre_, the fact of his being not only passion's slave, but +petty passion's slave, which made him a victim of frivolous gossip and +led to the final catastrophe. + +"In Pushkin," says Soloviev, the philosopher, "according to his own +testimony there were two different and separate beings: the inspired +priest of Apollo, and the most frivolous of all the frivolous children +of the world." It was the first Pushkin--the inspired priest--who +predominated in the latter part of his life; but who was unable to +expel altogether the second Pushkin, the frivolous _Weltkind_, who was +prone to be exasperated by the society in which he lived, and when +exasperated was dangerous. There is one fact, however, which accounts +for much. The more serious Pushkin's turn of thought grew, the more +objective, purer, and stronger his work became, the less it was +appreciated; for the public which delighted in the comparatively +inferior work of his youth was not yet ready for his more mature work. +What pleased the public were the dazzling colours, the sensuous and +sometimes libidinous images of his early poems; the romantic +atmosphere; especially anything that was artificial in them. They had +not yet eyes to appreciate the noble lines, nor ears to appreciate the +simpler and more majestic harmonies of his later work. Thus it was +that they passed _Boris Godunov_ by, and were disappointed in the +later cantos of _Onegin_. This was, of course, discouraging. +Nevertheless, it is laughable to rank Pushkin amongst the +misunderstood, among the Shelleys, the Millets, of Literature and Art; +or to talk of his sad fate. To talk of him as one of the victims of +literature is merely to depreciate him. + +He was exiled. Yes: but to the Caucasus, which gave him inspiration: +to his own country home, which gave him leisure. He was censored. Yes: +but the Emperor undertook to do the work himself. Had he lived in +England, society--as was proved in the case of Byron--would have been +a far severer censor of his morals and the extravagance of his youth, +than the Russian Government. Besides which, he won instantaneous fame, +and in the society in which he moved he was surrounded by a band not +only of devoted but distinguished admirers, amongst whom were some of +the highest names in Russian literature--Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Gogol. + +Pushkin is Russia's national poet, the Peter the Great of poetry, who +out of foreign material created something new, national and Russian, +and left imperishable models for future generations. The chief +characteristic of his genius is its universality. There appeared to be +nothing he could not understand nor assimilate. And it is just this +all-embracing humanity--Dostoyevsky calls him +pananthropos+--this +capacity for understanding everything and everybody, which makes him so +profoundly Russian. He is a poet of everyday life: a realistic poet, +and above all things a lyrical poet. He is not a dramatist, and as an +epic writer, though he can mould a bas-relief and produce a noble +fragment, he cannot set crowds in motion. He revealed to the Russians +the beauty of their landscape and the poetry of their people; and they, +with ears full of pompous diction, and eyes full of rococo and romantic +stage properties, did not understand what he was doing: but they +understood later. For a time he fought against the stream, and all in +vain; and then he gave himself up to the great current, which took him +all too soon to the open sea. + +He set free the Russian language from the bondage of the conventional; +and all his life he was still learning to become more and more +intimate with the savour and smell of the people's language. Like +Peter the Great, he spent his whole life in apprenticeship, and his +whole energies in craftsmanship. He was a great artist; his style is +perspicuous, plastic, and pure; there is never a blurred outline, +never a smear, never a halting phrase or a hesitating note. His +concrete images are, as it were, transparent, like Donne's description +of the woman whose + + "... pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her face, and so distinctly wrought, + That you might almost think her body thought." + +His diction is the inseparable skin of the thought. You seem to hear +him thinking. He was gifted with divine ease and unpremeditated +spontaneity. His soul was sincere, noble, and open; he was frivolous, +a child of the world and of his century; but if he was worldly, he was +human; he was a citizen as well as a child of the world; and it is +that which makes him the greatest of Russian poets. + +His career was unromantic; he was rooted to the earth; an aristocrat +by birth, an official by profession, a lover of society by taste. At +the same time, he sought and served beauty, strenuously and +faithfully; he was perhaps too faithful a servant of Apollo; too +exclusive a lover of the beautiful. In his work you find none of the +piteous cries, no beauty of soaring and bleeding wings as in Shelley, +nor the sound of rebellious sobs as in Musset; no tempest of defiant +challenge, no lightnings of divine derision, as in Byron; his is +neither the martyrdom of a fighting Heine, that "brave soldier in the +war of the liberation of humanity," nor the agonized passion of a +suffering Catullus. He never descended into Hell. Every great man is +either an artist or a fighter; and often poets of genius, Byron and +Heine for instance, are more pre-eminently fighters than they are +artists. Pushkin was an artist, and not a fighter. And this is what +makes even his love-poems cold in comparison with those of other +poets. Although he was the first to make notable what was called the +romantic movement; and although at the beginning of his career he +handled romantic subjects in a more or less romantic way, he was +fundamentally a classicist--a classicist as much in the common-sense +and realism and solidity of his conceptions and ideas, as in the +perspicuity and finish of his impeccable form. And he soon cast aside +even the vehicles and clothes of romanticism, and exclusively followed +reality. "He strove with none, for none was worth his strife." And +when his artistic ideals were misunderstood and depreciated, he +retired into himself and wrote to please himself only; but in the +inner court of the Temple of Beauty into which he retired he created +imperishable things; for he loved nature, he loved art, he loved his +country, and he expressed that love in matchless song. + +For years, Russian criticism was either neglectful of his work or +unjust towards it; for his serene music and harmonious design left the +generations which came after him, who were tossed on a tempest of +social problems and political aspirations, cold; but in 1881, when +Dostoyevsky unveiled Pushkin's memorial at Moscow, the homage which he +paid to the dead poet voiced the unanimous feeling of the whole of +Russia. His work is beyond the reach of critics, whether favourable or +unfavourable, for it lives in the hearts of his countrymen, and +chiefly upon the lips of the young. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] Not 1763, as generally stated in his biographies. + +[3] The poem was originally called _Mazepa_: Pushkin changed the title +so as not to clash with Byron. It is interesting to see what Pushkin +says of Byron's poem. In his notes there is the following passage-- + +"Byron knew Mazepa through Voltaire's history of Charles XII. He was +struck solely by the picture of a man bound to a wild horse and borne +over the steppes. A poetical picture of course; but see what he did +with it. What a living creation! What a broad brush! But do not expect +to find either Mazepa or Charles, nor the usual gloomy Byronic hero. +Byron was not thinking of him. He presented a series of pictures, one +more striking than the other. Had his pen come across the story of the +seduced daughter and the father's execution, it is improbable that +anyone else would have dared to touch the subject." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +LERMONTOV + + +The romantic movement in Russia was, as far as Pushkin was concerned, +not really a romantic movement at all. Still less was it so in the +case of the Pleiade which followed him. And yet, for want of a better +word, one is obliged to call it the _romantic_ movement, as it was a +new movement, a renascence that arose out of the ashes of the +pseudo-classical eighteenth century convention. Pushkin was followed +by a Pleiade. + +The claim of his friend and fellow-student, BARON DELVIG, to fame, +rests rather on his friendship with Pushkin (to whom he played the +part of an admirable critic) than on his own verse. He died in 1831. +YAZYKOV, PRINCE BARIATINSKY, VENEVITINOV, and POLEZHAEV, can all be +included in the Pleiade; all these are lyrical poets of the second +order, and none of them--except Polezhaev, whose real promise of +talent was shattered by circumstances (he died of drink and +consumption after a career of tragic vicissitudes)--has more than an +historical interest. + +Pushkin's successor to the throne of Russian letters was Lermontov: no +unworthy heir. The name Lermontov is said to be the same as the Scotch +Learmonth. The story of his short life is a simple one. He was born at +Moscow in 1814. He visited the Caucasus when he was twelve. He was +taught English by a tutor. He went to school at Moscow, and afterwards +to the University. He left in 1832 owing to the disputes he had with +the professors. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Guards' Cadet +School at St. Petersburg; and two years later he became an officer in +the regiment of the Hussars. In 1837 he was transferred to Georgia, +owing to the scandal caused by the outspoken violence of his verse; +but he was transferred to Novgorod in 1838, and was allowed to return +to St. Petersburg in the same year. In 1840 he was again transferred +to the Caucasus for fighting a duel with the son of the French +Ambassador; towards the end of the year, he was once more allowed to +return to St. Petersburg. In 1841 he went back for a third time to +the Caucasus, where he forced a duel on one of his friends over a +perfectly trivial incident, and was killed, on the 15th of July of the +same year. + +In all the annals of poetry, there is no more curious figure than +Lermontov. He was like a plant that above all others needed a +sympathetic soil, a favourable atmosphere, and careful attention. As +it was, he came in the full tide of the regime of Nicholas I, a regime +of patriarchal supervision, government interference, rigorous +censorship, and iron discipline,--a grey epoch absolutely devoid of +all ideal aspirations. Considerable light is thrown on the +contradictory and original character of the poet by his novel, _A Hero +of Our Days_, the first psychological novel that appeared in Russia. +The hero, Pechorin, is undoubtedly a portrait of the poet, although he +himself said, and perhaps thought, that he was merely creating a type. + +The hero of the story, who is an officer in the Caucasus, analyses his +own character, and lays bare his weaknesses, follies, and faults, with +the utmost frankness. "I am incapable of friendship," he says. "Of two +friends, one is always the slave of the other, although often neither +of them will admit it; I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a +tiring business." Or he writes: "I have an innate passion for +contradiction.... The presence of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and +intercourse with a phlegmatic temperament would turn me into a +passionate dreamer." Speaking of enemies, he says: "I love enemies, +but not after the Christian fashion." And on another occasion: "Why do +they all hate me? Why? Have I offended any one? No. Do I belong to +that category of people whose mere presence creates antipathy?" Again: +"I despise myself sometimes, is not that the reason that I despise +others? I have become incapable of noble impulses. I am afraid of +appearing ridiculous to myself." + +On the eve of fighting a duel Pechorin writes as follows-- + +"If I die it will not be a great loss to the world, and as for me, I +am sufficiently tired of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, who +does not go home to bed because the carriage is not there, but as soon +as the carriage is there, Good-bye!" + +"I review my past and I ask myself, Why have I lived? Why was I born? +and I think there was a reason, and I think I was called to high +things, for I feel in my soul the presence of vast powers; but I did +not divine my high calling; I gave myself up to the allurement of +shallow and ignoble passions; I emerged from their furnace as hard and +as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble +aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have I +played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of +the executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often +without malice, always without pity. My love has never brought +happiness, because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed +myself for those whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own +pleasure.... And if I die I shall not leave behind me one soul who +understood me. Some think I am better, others that I am worse than I +am. Some will say he was a good fellow; others he was a blackguard." + +It will be seen from these passages, all of which apply to Lermontov +himself, even if they were not so intended, that he must have been a +trying companion, friend, or acquaintance. He had, indeed, except for +a few intimate friends, an impossible temperament; he was proud, +overbearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a savage +_amour-propre_; and he took a childish delight in annoying; he +cultivated "le plaisir aristocratique de deplaire"; he was envious of +what was least enviable in his contemporaries. He could not bear not +to make himself felt, and if he felt that he was unsuccessful in +accomplishing this by pleasant means, he resorted to unpleasant means. +And yet, at the same time, he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and +kindness, and capable of giving himself up to love--if he chose. + +During his period of training at the Cadet School, he led a wild life; +and when he became an officer, he hankered after social and not after +literary success. He did not achieve it immediately; at first he was +not noticed, and when he was noticed he was not liked. His looks were +unprepossessing, and one of his legs was shorter than the other. His +physical strength was enormous--he could bend a ramrod with his +fingers. Noticed he was determined to be; and, as he himself says in +one of his letters, observing that every one in society had some sort +of pedestal--wealth, lineage, position, or patronage--he saw that if +he, not pre-eminently possessing any of these,--though he was, as a +matter of fact, of a good Moscow family,--could succeed in engaging +the attention of one person, others would soon follow suit. This he +set about to do by compromising a girl and then abandoning her: and he +acquired the reputation of a Don Juan. Later, when he came back from +the Caucasus, he was treated as a lion. All this does not throw a +pleasant light on his character, more especially as he criticized in +scathing tones the society in which he was anxious to play a part, and +in which he subsequently enjoyed playing a part. But perhaps both +attitudes of mind were sincere. He probably sincerely enjoyed society, +and hankered after success in it; and equally sincerely despised +society and himself for hankering after it. + +As he grew older, his pride and the exasperating provocativeness of +his conduct increased to such an extent that he seemed positively +seeking for serious trouble, and for some one whose patience he could +overtax, and on whom he could fasten a quarrel. And this was not slow +to happen. + +At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated disgust with +himself and with the world in general, and a complete indifference to +life, resulting from large aspirations which could not find an outlet, +and so recoiled upon himself. The epoch, the atmosphere and the +society were the worst possible for his peculiar nature; and the only +fruitful result of the friction between himself and the society and +the established order of his time, was that he was sent to the +Caucasus, which proved to be a source of inspiration for him, as it +had been for Pushkin. One is inclined to say, "If only he had lived +later or longer"; yet it may be doubted whether, had he been born in a +more favourable epoch, either earlier in the milder regime of +Alexander I, or later, in the enthusiastic epoch of the reforms, he +would have been a happier man and produced finer work. + +The curious thing is that his work does not reveal an overwhelming +pessimism like Leopardi's, an accent of revolt like Musset's, or of +combat like Byron's; but rather it testifies to a fundamental +indifference to life, a concentrated pride. If it be true that you can +roughly divide the Russian temperament into two types--the type of +the pure fool, such as Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_, and a type of +unconquerable pride, such as Lucifer--then Lermontov is certainly a +fine example of the second type. You feel that he will never submit or +yield; but then he died young; and the Russian poets often changed, +and not infrequently adopted a compromise which was the same thing as +submission. + +Lermontov was, like Pushkin, essentially a lyric poet, still more +subjective, and profoundly self-centred. His attempts at the drama +(imitations of Schiller and an attempt at the manner of Griboyedov) +were failures. But, unlike Pushkin, he was a true romantic; and his +work proves to us how essentially different a thing Russian +romanticism is from French, German or English romanticism. He began +with astonishing precocity to write verse when he was twelve. His +earliest efforts were in French. He then began to imitate Pushkin. +While at the Cadet School he wrote a series of cleverly written, more +or less indecent, and more or less Byronic--the Byron of +_Beppo_--tales in verse, describing his love adventures, and episodes +of garrison life. What brought him fame was his "Ode on the Death of +Pushkin," which, although unjustified by the actual facts--he +represents Pushkin as the victim of a bloodthirsty society--strikes +strong and bitter chords. Here, without any doubt, are "thoughts that +breathe and words that burn"-- + + "And you, the proud and shameless progeny + Of fathers famous for their infamy, + You, who with servile heel have trampled down + The fragments of great names laid low by chance, + You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne, + Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory, + You hide behind the shelter of the law, + Before you, right and justice must be dumb! + But, parasites of vice, there's God's assize; + There is an awful court of law that waits. + You cannot reach it with the sound of gold; + It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds; + And vainly you shall call the lying witness; + That shall not help you any more; + And not with all the filth of all your gore + Shall you wash out the poet's righteous blood." + +He struck this strong chord more than once, especially in his +indictment of his own generation, called "A Thought"; and in a poem +written on the transfer of Napoleon's ashes to Paris, in which he +pours scorn on the French for deserting Napoleon when he lived and +then acclaiming his ashes. + +But it is not in poems such as these that Lermontov's most +characteristic qualities are to be found. Lermontov owed nothing to +his contemporaries, little to his predecessors, and still less to +foreign models. It is true that, as a school-boy, he wrote verses full +of Byronic disillusion and satiety, but these were merely echoes of +his reading. The gloom of spirit which he expressed later on was a +permanent and innate feature of his own temperament. Later, the +reading of Shelley spurred on his imagination to emulation, but not to +imitation. He sought his own path from the beginning, and he remained +in it with obdurate persistence. He remained obstinately himself, +indifferent as a rule to outside events, currents of thought and +feeling. And he clung to the themes which he chose in his youth. His +mind to him a kingdom was, and he peopled it with images and fancies +of his own devising. The path which he chose was a narrow one. It was +a romantic path. He chose for the subject of the poem by which he is +perhaps most widely known, _The Demon_, the love of a demon for a +woman. The subject is as romantic as any chosen by Thomas Moore; but +there is nothing now that appears rococo in Lermontov's work. The +colours are as fresh to-day as when they were first laid on. The +heroine is a Circassian woman, and the action of the poem is in the +Caucasus. + +The Demon portrayed is not the spirit that denies of Goethe, nor +Byron's Lucifer, looking the Almighty in His face and telling him that +His evil is not good; nor does he cherish-- + + "the study of revenge, immortal hate," + +of Milton's Satan; but he is the lost angel of a ruined paradise, who +is too proud to accept oblivion even were it offered to him. He dreams +of finding in Tamara the joys of the paradise he has foregone. "I am +he," he says to her, "whom no one loves, whom every human being +curses." He declares that he has foresworn his proud thoughts, that he +desires to be reconciled with Heaven, to love, to pray, to believe in +good. And he pours out to her one of the most passionate love +declarations ever written, in couplet after couplet of words that glow +like jewels and tremble like the strings of a harp, Tamara yields to +him, and forfeits her life; but her soul is borne to Heaven by the +Angel of Light; she has redeemed her sin by death, and the Demon is +left as before alone in a loveless, lampless universe. The poem is +interspersed with descriptions of the Caucasus, which are as glowing +and splendid as the impassioned utterance of the Demon. They put +Pushkin's descriptions in the shade. Lermontov's landscape-painting +compared with Pushkin's is like a picture of Turner compared with a +Constable or a Bonnington. + +Lermontov followed up his first draft of _The Demon_ (originally +planned in 1829, but not finished in its final form until 1841) with +other romantic tales, the scene of which for the most part is laid in +the Caucasus: such as _Izmail Bey_, _Hadji-Abrek_, _Orsha the +Boyar_--the last not a Caucasian tale. These were nearly all of them +sketches in which he tried the colours of his palette. But with +_Mtsyri_, _the Novice_, in which he used some of the materials of the +former tales, he produced a finished picture. + +_Mtsyri_ is the story of a Circassian orphan who is educated in a +convent. The child grows up home-sick at heart, and one day his +longing for freedom becomes ungovernable, and he escapes and roams +about in the mountains. He loses his way in the forest and is brought +back to the monastery after three days, dying from starvation, +exertion, and exhaustion. Before he dies he pours out his confession, +which takes up the greater part of the poem. He confesses how in the +monastery he felt his own country and his own people forever calling, +and how he felt he must seek his own people. He describes his +wanderings: how he scrambles down the mountain-side and hears the song +of a Georgian woman, and sees her as she walks down a narrow path with +a pitcher on her head and draws water from the stream. At nightfall he +sees the light of a dwelling-place twinkling like a falling star; but +he dares not seek it. He loses his way in the forest, he encounters +and kills a panther. In the morning, he finds a way out of the woods +when the daylight comes; he lies in the grass exhausted under the +blinding noon, of which Lermontov gives a gorgeous and detailed +description-- + + "And on God's world there lay the deep + And heavy spell of utter sleep, + Although the landrail called, and I + Could hear the trill of the dragonfly + Or else the lisping of the stream ... + Only a snake, with a yellow gleam + Like golden lettering inlaid + From hilt to tip upon a blade, + Was rustling, for the grass was dry, + And in the loose sand cautiously + It slid, and then began to spring + And roll itself into a ring, + Then, as though struck by sudden fear, + Made haste to dart and disappear." + +Perishing of hunger and thirst, fever and delirium overtake him, and +he fancies that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream, where +speckled fishes are playing in the crystal waters. One of them nestles +close to him and sings to him with a silver voice a lullaby, +unearthly, like the song of Ariel, and alluring like the call of the +Erl King's daughter. In this poem Lermontov reaches the high-water +mark of his descriptive powers. Its pages glow with the splendour of +the Caucasus. + +To his two masterpieces, _The Demon_ and _Mtsyri_, he was to add a +third: _The Song of the Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, the Oprichnik +(bodyguardsman), and the Merchant Kalashnikov_. The Oprichnik insults +the Merchant's wife, and the Merchant challenges him to fight with his +fists, kills him, and is executed for it. This poem is written as a +folk-story, in the style of the _Byliny_, and it in no way resembles a +_pastiche_. It equals, if it does not surpass, Pushkin's _Boris +Godunov_ as a realistic vision of the past; and as an epic tale, for +simplicity, absolute appropriateness of tone, vividness, truth to +nature and terseness, there is nothing in modern Russian literature to +compare with it. Besides these larger poems, Lermontov wrote a +quantity of short lyrics, many of which, such as "The Sail," "The +Angel," "The Prayer," every Russian child knows by heart. + +When we come to consider the qualities of Lermontov's romantic work, +and ask ourselves in what it differs from the romanticism of the +West--from that of Victor Hugo, Heine, Musset, Espronceda--we find +that in Lermontov's work, as in all Russian work, there is mingled +with his lyrical, imaginative, and descriptive powers, a bed-rock of +matter-of-fact common-sense, a root that is deeply embedded in +reality, in the life of everyday. He never escapes into the "intense +inane" of Shelley. Imaginative he is, but he is never lost in the dim +twilight of Coleridge. Romantic he is, but one note of Heine takes us +into a different world: for instance, Heine's quite ordinary +adventures in the Harz Mountains convey a spell and glamour that takes +us over a borderland that Lermontov never crossed. + +Nothing could be more splendid than Lermontov's descriptions; but they +are, compared with those of Western poets, concrete, as sharp as views +in a camera obscura. He never ate the roots of "relish sweet, the +honey wild and manna dew" of the "Belle Dame Sans Merci"; he wrote of +places where Kubla Khan might have wandered, of "ancestral voices +prophesying war," but one has only to quote that line to see that +Lermontov's poetic world, compared with Coleridge's, is solid fact +beside intangible dream. + +Compared even with Musset and Victor Hugo, how much nearer the earth +Lermontov is than either of them! Victor Hugo dealt with just the +same themes; but in Lermontov, the most splendid painter of mountains +imaginable, you never hear + + "Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne," + +and you know that it will never drive the Russian poet to frenzy. On +the other hand, you never get Victor Hugo's extravagance and +absurdities. Or take Musset; Musset dealt with romantic themes _si +quis alius_; but when he deals with a subject like Don Juan, which of +all subjects belonged to the age of Pushkin and Lermontov, he writes +lines like these-- + + "Faible, et, comme le lierre, ayant besoin d'autrui; + Et ne le cachant pas, et suspendant son ame, + Comme un luth eolien, aux levres de la nuit." + +Here again we are confronted with a different kind of imagination. Or +take a bit of sheer description-- + + "Pale comme l'amour, et de pleurs arrosee, + La nuit aux pieds d'argent descend dans la rosee." + +You never find the Russian poet impersonating nature like this, and +creating from objects such as the "yellow bees in the ivy bloom" forms +more real than living man. The objects themselves suffice. Lermontov +sang of disappointed love over and over again, but never did he create +a single image such as-- + + "Elle aurait aime, si l'orgueil + Pareil a la lampe inutile + Qu'on allume pres d'un cercueil, + N'eut veille sur son coeur sterile." + +In his descriptive work he is more like Byron; but Byron was far less +romantic and far less imaginative than Lermontov, although he invented +Byronism, and shattered the crumbling walls of the eighteenth century +that surrounded the city of romance, and dallied with romantic themes +in his youth. All his best work, the finest passages of _Childe +Harold_, and the whole of _Don Juan_, were slices of his own life and +observation, _choses vues_; he never created a single character that +was not a reflection of himself; and he never entered into the city +whose walls he had stormed, and where he had planted his flag. + +This does not mean that Lermontov is inferior to the Western romantic +poets. It simply means that the Russian poet is--and one might add +the Russian poets are--different. And, indeed, it is this very +difference,--what he did with this peculiar realistic paste in his +composition,--that constitutes his unique excellence. So far from its +being a vice, he made it into his especial virtue. Lermontov +sometimes, in presenting a situation and writing a poem on a fact, +presents that situation and that fact without exaggeration, emphasis, +adornment, imagery, metaphor, or fancy of any kind, in the language of +everyday life, and at the same time he achieves poetry. This was +Wordsworth's ideal, and he fulfilled it. + +A case in point is his long poem on the Oprichnik, which has been +mentioned; and some of the most striking examples of this unadorned +and realistic writing are to be found in his lyrics. In the +"Testament," for example, where a wounded officer gives his last +instructions to his friend who is going home on leave-- + + "I want to be alone with you, + A moment quite alone. + The minutes left to me are few, + They say I'll soon be gone. + And you'll be going home on leave, + Then say ... but why? I do believe + There's not a soul, who'll greatly care + To hear about me over there. + + And yet if some one asks you there, + Let us suppose they do-- + Tell them a bullet hit me here, + The chest,--and it went through. + And say I died and for the Tsar, + And say what fools the doctors are;-- + And that I shook you by the hand, + And thought about my native land. + + My father and my mother, too! + They may be dead by now; + To tell the truth, it wouldn't do + To grieve them anyhow. + If one of them is living, say + I'm bad at writing home, and they + Have sent us to the front, you see,-- + And that they needn't wait for me. + + We had a neighbour, as you know, + And you remember I + And she ... How very long ago + It is we said good-bye! + She won't ask after me, nor care, + But tell her ev'rything, don't spare + Her empty heart; and let her cry;-- + To her it doesn't signify." + +The language is the language of ordinary everyday conversation. Every +word the officer says might have been said by him in ordinary life, +and there is not a note that jars; the speech is the living speech of +conversation without being slang: and the result is a poignant piece +of poetry. Another perhaps still more beautiful and touching example +is the cradle-song which a mother sings to a Cossack baby, in which +again every word has the native savour and homeliness of a Cossack +woman's speech, and every feeling expressed is one that she would have +felt. A third example is "Borodino," an account of the famous battle +told by a veteran, as a veteran would tell it. Lermontov's fishes +never talk like big whales. + +All Russian poets have this gift of reality of conception and +simplicity of treatment in a greater or a lesser degree; perhaps none +has it in such a supreme degree as Lermontov. The difference between +Pushkin's style and Lermontov's is that, when you read Pushkin, you +think: "How perfectly and how simply that is said! How in the world +did he do it?" You admire the "magic hand of chance." In reading +Lermontov at his simplest and best, you do not think about the style +at all, you simply respond to what is said, and the style escapes +notice in its absolute appropriateness. Thus, what Matthew Arnold said +about Byron and Wordsworth is true about Lermontov--there are moments +when Nature takes the pen from his hand and writes for him. + +In Lermontov there is nothing slovenly; but there is a great deal that +is flat and sullen. But if one reviews the great amount of work he +produced in his short life, one is struck, not by its variety, as in +the case of Pushkin,--it is, on the contrary, limited and monotonous +in subject,--but by his authentic lyrical inspiration, by the +strength, the intensity, the concentration of his genius, the richness +of his imagination, the wealth of his palette, his gorgeous colouring +and the high level of his strong square musical verse. And perhaps +more than by anything else, one is struck by the blend in his nature +and his work which has just been discussed, of romantic imagination +and stern reality, of soaring thought and earthly common-sense, as +though we had before us the temperament of a Thackeray with the wings +of a Shelley. Lermontov is certainly, whichever way you take him, one +of the most astonishing figures, and certainly the greatest purely +lyrical _Erscheinung_ in Russian literature. + +With the death of Lermontov in 1841, the springtide of national song +that began in the reign of Alexander I comes to an end; for the only +poet he left behind him did not survive him long. This was his +contemporary KOLTSOV (1809-42), the greatest of Russian folk-poets. +The son of a cattle-dealer, after a fitful and short-lived primary +education at the district school of Voronezh, he adopted his father's +trade, and by a sheer accident a cultivated young man of Moscow came +across him and his verses, and raised funds for their publication. + +Koltsov's verse paints peasant life as it is, without any +sentimentality or rhetoric; it is described from the inside, and not +from the outside. This is the great difference between Koltsov and +other popular poets who came later. Moreover, he caught and +reproduced the true _Volkston_ in his lyrics, so that they are +indistinguishable in accent from real folk-poetry. Koltsov sings of +the woods, and the rustling rye, of harvest time and sowing; the song +of the love-sick girl reaping; the lonely grave; the vague dreams and +desires of the peasant's heart. His pictures have the dignity and +truth of Jean Francois Millet, and his "lyrical cry" is as authentic +as that of Burns. His more literary poems are like Burns' English +poems compared with his work in the Scots. But he died the year after +Lermontov, of consumption, and with his death the curtain was rung +down on the first act of Russian literature. When it was next rung up, +it was on the age of prose. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AGE OF PROSE + + +When the curtain again rose on Russian literature it was on an era of +prose; and the leading protagonist of that era, both by his works of +fiction and his dramatic work, was NICHOLAS GOGOL [1809-52]. It is +true that in the thirties Russia began to produce home-made novels. In +Pushkin's story _The Queen of Spades_, when somebody asks the old +Countess if she wishes to read a Russian novel, she says "A Russian +novel? Are there any?" This stage had been passed; but the novels and +the plays that were produced at this time until the advent of Gogol +have been--deservedly for the greater part--forgotten. And, just as +Lermontov was the successor of Pushkin in the domain of poetry, so in +the domain of satire Gogol was the successor of Griboyedov; and in +creating a national work he was the heir of Pushkin. + +Gogol was a Little Russian. He was born in 1809 near Poltava, in the +Cossack country, and was brought up by his grandfather, a Cossack; but +he left the Ukraine and settled in 1829 in St. Petersburg, where he +obtained a place in a Government office. After an unsuccessful attempt +to go on the stage, and a brief career as tutor, he was given a +professorship of History; but he failed here also, and finally turned +to literature. The publication of his first efforts gained him the +acquaintance of the literary men of the day, and he became the friend +of Pushkin, who proved a valuable friend, adviser, and critic, and +urged him to write on the life of the people. He lived in St. +Petersburg from 1829 to 1836; and it was perhaps home-sickness which +inspired him to write his Little Russian sketches--_Evenings on a Farm +on the Dikanka_,--which appeared in 1832, followed by _Mirgorod_, a +second series, in 1834. + +Gogol's temperament was romantic. He had a great deal of the dreamer +in him, a touch of the eerie, a delight in the supernatural, an impish +fancy that reminds one sometimes of Hoffmann and sometimes of R. L. +Stevenson, as well as a deep religious vein which was later on to +dominate and oust all his other qualities. But, just as we find in the +Russian poets a curious mixture of romanticism and realism, of +imagination and common-sense, so in Gogol, side by side with his +imaginative gifts, which were great, there is a realism based on +minute observation. In addition to this, and tempering his penetrating +observation, he had a rich streak of humour, a many-sided humour, +ranging from laughter holding both its sides, to a delicate and half +melancholy chuckle, and in his later work to biting irony. + +In the very first story of his first book, "The Fair of Sorochinetz," +we are plunged into an atmosphere that smells of Russia in a way that +no other Russian book has ever yet savoured of the soil. We are +plunged into the South, on a blazing noonday, when the corn is +standing in sheaves and wheat is being sold at the fair; and the fair, +with its noise, its smell and its colour, rises before us as vividly +as Normandy leaps out of the pages of Maupassant, or Scotland from the +pages of Stevenson. And just as Andrew Lang once said that probably +only a Scotsman, and a Lowland Scotsman, could know how true to life +the characters in _Kidnapped_ were, so it is probable that only a +Russian, and indeed a Little Russian, appreciates to the full how true +to life are the people, the talk, and the ambient air in the tales of +Gogol. And then we at once get that hint of the supernatural which +runs like a scarlet thread through all these stories; the rumour that +the _Red Jacket_ has been observed in the fair; and the _Red Jacket_, +so the gossips say, belongs to a little Devil, who being turned out of +Hell as a punishment for some misdemeanour--probably a good +intention--established himself in a neighbouring barn, and from +home-sickness took to drink, and drank away all his substance; so that +he was obliged to pawn his red jacket for a year to a Jew, who sold it +before the year was out, whereupon the buyer, recognizing its unholy +origin, cut it up into bits and threw it away, after which the Devil +appeared in the shape of a pig every year at the fair to find the +pieces. It is on this Red Jacket that the story turns. + +In this first volume, the supernatural plays a predominant part +throughout; the stories tell of water-nymphs, the Devil, who steals +the moon, witches, magicians, and men who traffic with the Evil One +and lose their souls. In the second series, _Mirgorod_, realism comes +to the fore in the stories of "The Old-Fashioned Landowners" and "The +Quarrel of the Two Ivans." These two stories contain between them the +sum and epitome of the whole of one side of Gogol's genius, the +realistic side. In the one story, "The Old-Fashioned Landowners," we +get the gentle good humour which tells the charming tale of a South +Russian Philemon and Baucis, their hospitality and kindliness, and the +loneliness of Philemon when Baucis is taken away, told with the art of +La Fontaine, and with many touches that remind one of Dickens. The +other story, "The Quarrel of the Two Ivans," who are bosom friends and +quarrel over nothing, and are, after years, on the verge of making it +up when the mere mention of the word "goose" which caused the quarrel +sets alight to it once more and irrevocably, is in Gogol's richest +farcical vein, with just a touch of melancholy. + +And in the same volume, two _nouvelles_, _Tarass Bulba_ and _Viy_, sum +up between them the whole of the other side of Gogol's genius. _Tarass +Bulba_, a short historical novel, with its incomparably vivid picture +of Cossack life, is Gogol's masterpiece in the epic vein. It is as +strong and as direct as a Border ballad. _Viy_, which tells of a +witch, is the most creepy and imaginative of his supernatural stories. + +Later, he published two more collections of stories: _Arabesques_ +(1834) and _Tales_ (1836). In these, poetry, witches, water-nymphs, +magicians, devils, and epic adventure are all left behind. The element +of the fantastic still subsists, as in the "Portrait," and of the +grotesque, as in the story of the major who loses his nose, which +becomes a separate personality, and wanders about the town. But his +blend of realism and humour comes out strongly in the story of "The +Carriage," and his blend of realism and pathos still more strongly in +the story of "The Overcoat," the story of a minor public servant who +is always shivering and whose dream it is to have a warm overcoat. +After years of privation he saves enough money to buy one, and on the +first day he wears it, it is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his +ghost haunts the streets. This story is the only begetter of the large +army of pathetic figures of failure that crowd the pages of Russian +literature. + +While Gogol had been writing and publishing these tales, he had also +been steadily writing for the stage; but here the great difficulty and +obstacle was the Censorship, which was almost as severe as it was in +England at the end of the reign of Edward VII. But, by a curious +paradox, the play, which you would have expected the Censorship to +forbid before all other plays, _The Revisor_, or _Inspector-General_, +was performed. This was owing to the direct intervention of the +Emperor. _The Revisor_ is the second comic masterpiece of the Russian +stage. The plot was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. The officials of an +obscure country town hear the startling news that a Government +Inspector is arriving incognito to investigate their affairs. A +traveller from St. Petersburg--a fine natural liar--is taken for the +Inspector, plays up to the part, and gets away just before the arrival +of the real Inspector, which is the end of the play. The play is a +satire on the Russian bureaucracy. Almost every single character in it +is dishonest; and the empty-headed, and irrelevant hero, with his +magnificent talent for easy lying, is a masterly creation. The play +at once became a classic, and retains all its vitality and comic force +to-day. There is no play which draws a larger audience on holidays in +St. Petersburg and Moscow. + +After the production of _The Revisor_, Gogol left Russia for ever and +settled in Rome. He had in his mind a work of great importance on +which he had already been working for some time. This was his _Dead +Souls_, his most ambitious work, and his masterpiece. It was Pushkin +who gave him the idea of the book. The hero of the book, Chichikov, +conceives a brilliant idea. Every landlord possessed so many serfs, +called "souls." A revision took place every ten years, and the +landlord had to pay for poll-tax on the "souls" who had died during +that period. Nobody looked at the lists between the periods of +revision. Chichikov's idea was to take over the dead souls from the +landlord, who would, of course, be delighted to be rid of the +fictitious property and the real tax, to register his purchases, and +then to mortgage at a bank at St. Petersburg or Moscow, the "souls," +which he represented as being in some place in the Crimea, and thus +make money enough to buy "souls" of his own. The book tells of the +adventures of Chichikov as he travels over Russia in search of dead +"souls," and is, like Mr. Pickwick's adventures, an Odyssey, +introducing us to every kind and manner of man and woman. The book was +to be divided in three parts. The first part appeared in 1842. Gogol +went on working at the second and third parts until 1852, when he +died. He twice threw the second part of the work into the fire when it +was finished; so that all we possess is the first part, and the second +part printed from an incomplete manuscript. The second part was +certainly finished when he destroyed it, and it is probable that the +third part was sketched. He had intended in the second part to work +out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, and to give to the world his +complete message. Persecuted by a dream he was unable to realize and +an ambition which he was not able to fulfil, Gogol was driven inwards, +and his natural religious feeling grew more intense and made him into +an ascetic and a recluse. This break in the middle of his career is +characteristic of Russia. Tolstoy, of course, furnishes the most +typical example of the same thing. But it is a common Russian +characteristic for men midway in a successful career to turn aside +from it altogether, and seek consolation in the things which are not +of this world. + +Gogol's _Dead Souls_ made a deep impression upon educated Russia. It +pleased the enthusiasts for Western Europe by its reality, its +artistic conception and execution, and by its social ideas; and it +pleased the Slavophile Conservatives by its truth to life, and by its +smell of Russia. When the first chapter was read aloud to Pushkin, he +said, when Gogol had finished: "God, what a sad country Russia is!" +And it is certainly true, that amusing as the book is, inexpressibly +comic as so many of the scenes are, Gogol does not flatter his country +or his countrymen; and when Russians read it at the time it appeared, +many must have been tempted to murmur "_doux pays!_"--as they would, +indeed, now, were a writer with the genius of a Gogol to appear and +describe the adventures of a modern Chichikov; for, though +circumstances may be entirely different, although there are no more +"souls" to be bought or sold, Chichikov is still alive--and as Gogol +said, there was probably not one of his readers who after an honest +self-examination, would not wonder if he had not something of +Chichikov in him, and who if he were to meet an acquaintance at that +moment, would not nudge his companion and say: "There goes Chichikov." +"And who and what is Chichikov?" The answer is: "A scoundrel." But +such an entertaining scoundrel, so abject, so shameless, so utterly +devoid of self-respect, such a magnificent liar, so plausible an +impostor, so ingenious a cheat, that he rises from scoundrelism almost +to greatness. + +There is, indeed, something of the greatness of Falstaff in this +trafficker of dead "souls." His baseness is almost sublime. He in any +case merits a place in the gallery of humanity's typical and human +rascals, where Falstaff, Tartuffe, Pecksniff, and Count Fosco reign. +He has the great saving merit of being human; nor can he be accused of +hypocrisy. His coachman, Selifan, who got drunk with every "decent +man," is worthy of the creator of Sam Weller. But what distinguishes +Gogol in his _Dead Souls_ from the great satirists of other nations, +and his satire from the _saeva indignatio_ of Swift, for instance, is +that, after laying bare to the bones the rascality of his hero, he +turns round on his audience and tells them that there is no cause for +indignation; Chichikov is only a victim of a ruling passion--gain; +perhaps, indeed, in the chill existence of a Chichikov, there may be +something which will one day cause us to humble ourselves on our knees +and in the dust before the Divine Wisdom. His irony is lined with +indulgence; his sleepless observation is tempered by fundamental +charity. He sees what is mean and common clearer than any one, but he +does not infer from it that life, or mankind, or the world is common +or mean. He infers the opposite. He puts Chichikov no lower morally +than he would put Napoleon, Harpagon, or Don Juan--all of them victims +of a ruling passion, and all of them great by reason of it--for +Chichikov is also great in rascality, just as Harpagon was great in +avarice, and Don Juan great in profligacy. And this large charity +blent with biting irony is again peculiarly Russian. + +_Dead Souls_ is a deeper book than any of Gogol's early work. It is +deep in the same way as _Don Quixote_ is deep; and like _Don Quixote_ +it makes boys laugh, young men think, and old men weep. Apart from +its philosophy and ideas, _Dead Souls_ had a great influence on +Russian literature as a work of art. Just as Pushkin set Russian +poetry free from the high-flown and the conventional, so did Gogol set +Russian fiction free from the dominion of the grand style. He carried +Pushkin's work--the work which Pushkin had accomplished in verse and +adumbrated in prose--much further; and by depicting ordinary life, and +by writing a novel without any love interest, with a Chichikov for a +hero, he created Russian realism. He described what he saw without +flattery and without exaggeration, but with the masterly touch, the +instinctive economy, the sense of selection of a great artist. + +This, at the time it was done, was a revolution. Nobody then would +have dreamed it possible to write a play or a novel without a +love-motive; and just as Pushkin revealed to Russia that there was +such a thing as Russian landscape, Gogol again, going one better, +revealed the fascination, the secret and incomprehensible power that +lay in the flat monotony of the Russian country, and the inexhaustible +source of humour, absurdity, irony, quaintness, farce, comedy in the +everyday life of the ordinary people. So that, however much his +contemporaries might differ as to the merits or demerits, the harm or +the beneficence, of his work, he left his nation with permanent and +classic models of prose and fiction and stories, just as Pushkin had +bequeathed to them permanent models of verse. + +Gogol wrote no more fiction after _Dead Souls_. In 1847 _Passages from +a Correspondence with a Friend_ was published, which created a +sensation, because in the book Gogol preached submission to the +Government, both spiritual and temporal. The Western enthusiasts and +the Liberals in general were highly disgusted. One can understand +their disgust; it is less easy to understand their surprise; for Gogol +had never pretended to be a Liberal. He showed up the evils of +Bureaucracy and the follies and weaknesses of Bureaucrats, because +they were there, just as he showed up the stinginess of misers and the +obstinacy of old women. But it is quite as easy for a Conservative to +do this as it is for a Liberal, and quite as easy for an orthodox +believer as for an atheist. But Gogol's contemporaries had not +realized the tempest that had been raging for a long time in Gogol's +soul, and which he kept to himself. He had always been religious, and +now he became exclusively religious; he made a pilgrimage to the Holy +Land; he spent his substance in charity, especially to poor students; +and he lived in asceticism until he died, at the age of forty-three. +What a waste, one is tempted to say--and how often one is tempted to +say this in the annals of Russian literature--and yet, one wonders! + +What we possess of the second part of _Dead Souls_ is in Gogol's best +vein, and of course one cannot help bitterly regretting that the rest +was destroyed or possibly never written; but one wonders whether, had +he not had within him the intensity of feeling which led him +ultimately to renounce art, he would have been the artist that he was; +whether he would have been capable of creating so many-coloured a +world of characters, and whether the soil out of which those works +grew was not in reality the kind of soil out of which religious +renunciation was at last bound to flower. However that may be, Gogol +left behind him a rich inheritance. He is one of the great humorists +of European literature, and whoever gives England a really fine +translation of his work, will do his country a service. Merimee places +Gogol among the best _English_ humorists. His humour and his pathos +were closely allied; but there is no acidity in his irony. His work +may sometimes sadden you, but (as in the case of Krylov's two pigeons) +it will never bore you, and it will never leave you with a feeling of +stale disgust or a taste as of sharp alum, for his work is based on +charity, and it has in its form and accent the precious gift of charm. +Gogol is an author who will always be loved even as much as he is +admired, and his stories are a boon to the young; to many a Russian +boy and girl the golden gates of romance have been opened by Gogol, +the destroyer of Russian romanticism, the inaugurator of Russian +realism. + +Side by side with fiction, another element grew up in this age of +prose, namely criticism. Karamzin in the twenties had been the first +to introduce literary criticism, and critical appreciations of +Pushkin's work appeared from time to time in the _European Messenger_. +PRINCE VYAZEMSKY, whose literary activity lasted from 1808-78, was a +critic as well as a poet and a satirist, a fine example of the type of +great Russian nobles so frequent in Russian books, who were not only +saturated with culture but enriched literature with their work, and +carried on the tradition of cool, clear wit, clean expression, and +winged phrase that we find in Griboyedov. POLEVOY, a self-educated man +of humble extraction, was the first professional journalist, and +created the tradition of violent and fiery polemics, which has lasted +till this day in Russian journalism. But the real founder of Russian +aesthetic, literary, and journalistic criticism was BELINSKY +(1811-1847). + +Like Polevoy, he was of humble extraction and almost entirely +self-educated. He lived in want and poverty and ill-health. His life +was a long battle against every kind of difficulty and obstacle; his +literary production was more than hampered by the Censorship, but his +influence was far-reaching and deep. He created Russian criticism, and +after passing through several phases--a German phase of Hegelian +philosophy, Gallophobia, enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Goethe and for +objective art, a French phase of enthusiasm for art as practised in +France, ended finally in a didactic phase of which the watchword was +that Life was more important than Art. + +The first blossoms of the new generation of writers, Goncharov, +Dostoyevsky, Herzen, and others, grew up under his encouragement. He +expounded Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Griboyedov, Zhukovsky and the +writers of the past. His judgments have remained authoritative; but +some of his final judgments, which were unshaken for generations, such +as for instance his estimates of Pushkin and Lermontov, were much +biassed and coloured by his didacticism. He burnt what he had adored +in the case of Gogol, who, like Pushkin, became for him too much of an +artist, and not enough of a social reformer. Whatever phase Belinsky +went through, he was passionate, impulsive, and violent, incapable of +being objective, or of doing justice to an opponent, or of seeing two +sides to a question. He was a polemical and fanatical knight errant, +the prophet and propagandist of Western influence, the bitter enemy of +the Slavophiles. + +The didactic stamp which he gave to Russian aesthetic and literary +criticism has remained on it ever since, and differentiates it from +the literary and aesthetic criticism of the rest of Europe, not only +from that school of criticism which wrote and writes exclusively under +the banner of "Art for Art's Sake," but from those Western critics who +championed the importance of moral ideas in literature, just as +ardently as he did himself, and who deprecated the theory of Art for +Art's sake just as strongly. Thus it is that, from the beginning of +Russian criticism down to the present day, a truly objective criticism +scarcely exists in Russian literature. AEsthetic criticism becomes a +political weapon. "Are you in my camp?" if so, you are a good writer. +"Are you in my opponent's camp?" then your god-gifted genius is mere +dross. + +The reason of this has been luminously stated by Professor Brueckner: +"To the intelligent Russian, without a free press, without the liberty +of assembly, without the right to free expression of opinion, +literature became the last refuge of freedom of thought, the only +means of propagating higher ideas. He expected of his country's +literature not merely aesthetic recreation; he placed it at the service +of his aspirations.... Hence the striking partiality, nay unfairness, +displayed by the Russians towards the most perfect works of their own +literature, when they did not respond to the aims or expectations of +their party or their day." And speaking of the criticism that was +produced after 1855, he says: "This criticism is often, in spite of +all its giftedness, its ardour and fire, only a mockery of all +criticism. The work only serves as an example on which to hang the +critics' own views.... This is no reproach; we simply state the fact, +and fully recognize the necessity and usefulness of the method. With a +backward society, ... this criticism was a means which was sanctified +by the end, the spreading of free opinions.... Unhappily, Russian +literary criticism has remained till to-day almost solely +journalistic, _i. e._ didactic and partisan. See how even now it +treats the most interesting, exceptional, and mighty of all Russians, +Dostoyevsky, merely because he does not fit into the Radical mould! +How unjust it has been towards others! How it has extolled to the +clouds the representatives of its own camp!" I quote Professor +Brueckner, lest I should be myself suspected of being partial in this +question. The question, perhaps, may admit of further expansion. It +is not that the Russian critics were merely convinced it was +all-important that art should have ideas at the roots of it, and had +no patience with a merely shallow aestheticism. They went further; the +ideas had to be of one kind. A definite political tendency had to be +discerned; and if the critic disagreed with that political tendency, +then no amount of qualities--not artistic excellence, form, skill, +style, not even genius, inspiration, depth, feeling, philosophy--were +recognized. + +Herein lies the great difference between Russian and Western critics, +between Sainte-Beuve and Belinsky; between Matthew Arnold and his +Russian contemporaries. Matthew Arnold defined the highest poetry as +being a criticism of life; but that would not have prevented him from +doing justice either to a poet so polemical as Byron, or to a poet so +completely unpolitical, so sheerly aesthetic as Keats; to Lord +Beaconsfield as a novelist, to Mr. Morley or Lord Acton as historians, +because their "tendency" or their "politics" were different from his +own. The most biassed of English or French critics is broad-minded +compared to a Russian critic. Had Keats been a Russian poet, Belinsky +would have swept him away with contempt; Wordsworth would have been +condemned as reactionary; and Swinburne's politics alone would have +been taken into consideration. At the present day, almost ten years +after Professor Brueckner wrote his _History of Russian Literature_, now +that the press is more or less free, save for occasional pin-pricks, +now that literary output is in any case unfettered, and the stage freer +than it is in England, the same criticism still applies. Russian +literary criticism is still journalistic. There are and there always +have been brilliant exceptions, of course, two of the most notable of +which are VOLYNSKY and MEREZHKOVSKY; but as a rule the political camp +to which the writer belongs is the all-important question; and I know +cases of Russian politicians who have been known to refuse to write, +even in foreign reviews, because they disapproved of the "tendency" of +those reviews, the tendency being non-existent--as is generally the +case with English reviews,--and the review harbouring opinions of every +shade and tendency. You would think that narrow-mindedness could no +further go than to refuse to let your work appear in an impartial +organ, lest in that same organ an opinion opposed to your own might +appear also. But the cause of this is the same now as it used to be, +namely that, in spite of there being a greater measure of freedom in +Russia, political liberty does not yet exist. Liberty of assembly does +not exist; liberty of conscience only partially exists; the press is +annoyed and hampered by restrictions; and the great majority of Russian +writers are still engaged in fighting for these things, and therefore +still ready to sacrifice fairness for the greater end,--the achievement +of political freedom. + +Thus criticism in Russia became a question of camps, and the question +arises, what were these camps? From the dawn of the age of pure +literature, Russia was divided into two great camps: The Slavophiles +and the Propagandists of Western Ideas. + +The trend towards the West began with the influence of Joseph Le +Maistre and the St. Petersburg Jesuits. In 1836, CHAADAEV, an +ex-guardsman who had served in the Russian campaign in France and +travelled a great deal in Western Europe, and who shared Joseph Le +Maistre's theory that Russia had suffered by her isolation from the +West and through the influence of the former Byzantine Empire, +published the first of his _Lettres sur la Philosophie de l'Histoire_ +in the _Telescope_ of Moscow. This letter came like a bomb-shell. He +glorified the tradition and continuity of the Catholic world. He said +that Russia existed, as it were, outside of time, without the +tradition either of the Orient or of the Occident, and that the +universal culture of the human race had not touched it. "The +atmosphere of the West produces ideas of duty, law, justice, order; we +have given nothing to the world and taken nothing from it; ... we have +not contributed anything to the progress of humanity, and we have +disfigured everything we have taken from that progress. Hostile +circumstances have alienated us from the general trend in which the +social idea of Christianity grew up; thus we ought to revise our +faith, and begin our education over again on another basis." The +expression of these incontrovertible sentiments resulted in the exile +of the editor of the _Telescope_, the dismissal of the Censor, and in +the official declaration of Chaadaev's insanity, who was put under +medical supervision for a year. + +Chaadaev made disciples who went further than he did, PRINCESS +VOLKONSKY, the authoress of a notable book on the Orthodox Church, and +PRINCE GAGARIN, who both became Catholics. This was one branch of +Westernism. Another branch, to which Belinsky belonged, had no +Catholic leanings, but sought for salvation in socialism and atheism. +The most important figure in this branch is ALEXANDER HERZEN +(1812-1870). His real name was Yakovlev; his father, a wealthy +nobleman, married in Germany, but did not legalize his marriage in +Russia, so his children took their mother's name. + +Herzen's career belongs rather to the history of Russia than to the +history of Russian literature; were it not that, besides being one of +the greatest and most influential personalities of his time, he was a +great memoir-writer. He began, after a mathematical training at the +University, with fiction, of which the best example is a novel _Who is +to Blame?_ which paints the _genie sans portefeuille_ of the period +that Turgenev was so fond of depicting. Herzen was exiled on account +of his oral propaganda, first to Perm, and then to Vyatka. In 1847, he +left Russia for ever, and lived abroad for the rest of his life, at +first in Paris, and afterwards in London, where he edited a newspaper +called _The Bell_. + +Herzen was a Socialist. Western Europe he considered to be played out. +He looked upon Socialism as a new religion and a new form of +Christianity, which would be to the new world what Christianity had +been to the old. The Russian peasants would play the part of the +Invasion of the Barbarians; and the functions of the State would be +taken over by the Russian Communes on a basis of voluntary and mutual +agreement--the principle of the Commune, of sharing all possessions in +common, being so near the fundamental principle of Christianity. + +"A thinking Russian," he wrote, "is the most independent being in the +world. What can stop him? Consideration for the past? But what is the +starting-point of modern Russian history if it be not a total negation +of nationalism and tradition?... What do we care, disinherited minors +that we are, for the duties you have inherited? Can your worn-out +morality satisfy us? Your morality which is neither Christian nor +human, which is used only in copybooks and for the ritual of the +law?" Again: "We are free because we begin with our own liberation; we +are independent; we have nothing to lose or to honour. A Russian will +never be a protestant, or follow the _juste milieu_ ... our +civilization is external, our corrupt morals quite crude." + +The great point Herzen was always making was that Russia had escaped +the baleful tradition of Western Europe, and the hereditary infection +of Western corruption. Thus, in his disenchantment with Western +society and his enthusiasm for the communal ownership of land, he was +at one with the Slavophiles; where he differed from them was in +accepting certain Western ideas, and in thinking that a new order of +things, a new heaven and earth, could be created by a social +revolution, which should be carried out by the Slavs. His +influence--he was one of the precursors of Nihilism, for the seed he +sowed, falling on the peculiar soil where it fell, produced the +whirlwind as a harvest--belongs to history. What belongs to literature +are his memoirs, _My Past and my Thoughts_ (_Byloe i Dumy_), which +were written between 1852 and 1855. These memoirs of everyday life +and encounters with all sorts and conditions of extraordinary men are +in their subject-matter as exciting as a novel, and, in their style, +on a level with the masterpieces of Russian prose, through their +subtle psychology, interest, wit, and artistic form. + +Herzen lived to see his ideas bearing fruit in the one way which of +all others he would have sought to avoid, namely in "militancy" and +terrorism. When in 1866, an attempt was made by Karakozov to +assassinate Alexander II, and Herzen wrote an article repudiating all +political assassinations as barbarous, the revolutionary parties +solemnly denounced him and his newspaper. _The Bell_, which had +already lost its popularity owing to Herzen's pro-Polish sympathies in +1863, ceased to have any circulation. Thus he lived to see his vast +hopes shattered, the seed he had sown bearing a fruit he distrusted, +his dreams of regeneration burst like a bubble, his ideals exploited +by unscrupulous criminals. He died in 1870, leaving a name which is as +great in Russian literature as it is remarkable in Russian history. + +Turning now to the _Slavophiles_, their idea was that Russia was +already in possession of the best possible institutions,--orthodoxy, +autocracy, and communal ownership, and that the West had everything to +learn from Russia. They pointed to the evils arising from the feudal +and aristocratic state, the system of primogeniture in the West, the +higher legal status of women in Russia, and the superiority of a +communal system, which leads naturally to a Consultative National +Assembly with unanimous decisions, over the parliaments and party +systems of the West. + +The leader of the Slavophiles was HOMYAKOV, a man of great culture; a +dialectician, a poet, and an impassioned defender of orthodoxy. The +best of his lyrics, which are inspired by a profound love of his +country and belief in it, have great depth of feeling. Besides +Homyakov, there were other poets, such as TYUTCHEV and IVAN AKSAKOV. +Just as the camp of Reform produced in Herzen a supreme writer of +memoirs, that of the Slavophiles also produced a unique memoir writer +in the SERGE AKSAKOV, the father of the poet (1791-1859), who +published his _Family Chronicle_ in 1856, and who describes the life +of the end of the eighteenth century, and the age of Alexander. This +book, one of the most valuable historical documents in Russian, and a +priceless collection of biographical portraits, is also a gem of +Russian prose, exact in its observation, picturesque and perfectly +balanced in its diction. + +Aksakov remembered with unclouded distinctness exactly what he had +seen in his childhood, which he spent in the district of Orenburg. He +paints the portraits of his grandfather and his great-aunt. We see +every detail of the life of a backwoodsman of the days of Catherine +II. We see the noble of those days, simple and rustic in his habits as +a peasant, almost entirely unlettered, and yet a gentleman through and +through, unswerving in maintaining the standard of morals and +traditions which he considers due to his ancient lineage. We see every +hour of the day of his life in the country; we hear all the details of +the family life, the marriage of his son, the domestic troubles of his +sister. + +What strikes one most, perhaps, besides the contrast between the +primitive simplicity of the habits and manners of the life described, +and the astoundingly gentlemanlike feelings of the man who leads this +quiet and rustic life in remote and backward conditions, is that there +is not a hint or suspicion of anything antiquated in the sentiments +and opinions we see at play. The story of Aksakov's grandfather might +be that of any country gentleman in any country, at any epoch, making +allowances for a certain difference in manners and customs and +conditions which were peculiar to the epoch in question, the existence +of serfdom, for instance--although here, too, the feeling with regard +to manners described is startlingly like the ideal of good manners of +any epoch, although the _moeurs_ are sometimes different. The story +is as vivid and as interesting as that of any novel, as that of the +novels of Russian writers of genius, and it has the additional value +of being true. And yet we never feel that Aksakov has a thought of +compiling a historical document for the sake of its historical +interest. He is making history unawares, just as Monsieur Jourdain +talked prose without knowing it; and, whether he was aware of it or +not, he wrote perfect prose. No more perfect piece of prose writing +exists. The style flows on like a limpid river; there is nothing +superfluous, and not a hesitating touch. It is impossible to put down +the narrative after once beginning it, and I have heard of children +who read it like a fairy-tale. One has the sensation, in reading it, +of being told a story by some enchanting nurse, who, when the usual +question, "Is it true?" is put to her, could truthfully answer, "Yes, +it is true." The pictures of nature, the portraits of the people, all +the good and all the bad of the good and the bad old times pass before +one with epic simplicity and the magic of a fairy-tale. One is +spellbound by the charm, the dignity, the good-nature, the gentle, +easy accent of the speaker, in whom one feels convinced not only that +there was nothing common nor mean, but to whom nothing was common or +mean, who was a gentleman by character as well as by lineage, one of +God's as well as one of Russia's nobility. + +There is no book in Russian which, for its entrancing interest as well +as for its historical value, so richly deserves translation into +English; only such a translation should be made by a stylist--that is, +by a man who knows how to speak and write his mother tongue +perspicuously and simply. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE EPOCH OF REFORM + + +For seven years after the death of Belinsky in 1848, all literary +development ceased. This period was the darkest hour before the dawn +of the second great renascence of Russian literature. Criticism was +practically non-existent; the Slavophiles were forbidden to write; the +Westernizers were exiled. An increased severity of censorship, an +extreme suspicion and drastic measures on the part of the Government +were brought about by the fears which the Paris revolution of 1848 had +caused. The Westernizers felt the effects of this as much as the +Slavophiles; a group of young literary men, schoolmasters and +officers, the Petrashevtsy, called after their leader, a Foreign +Office official PETRASHEVSKY, met together on Fridays and debated on +abstract subjects; they discussed the emancipation of the serfs, read +Fourier and Lamennais, and considered the establishment of a secret +press: the scheme of a popular propaganda was thought of, but nothing +had got beyond talk--and the whole thing was in reality only +talk--when the society was discovered by the police and its members +were punished with the utmost severity. Twenty-one of them were +condemned to death, among whom was Dostoyevsky, who, being on the army +list, was accused of treason. They were reprieved on the scaffold; +some sent into penal servitude in Siberia, and some into the army. +This marked one of the darkest hours in the history of Russian +literature. And from this date until 1855, complete stagnation +reigned. In 1855 the Emperor Nicholas died during the Crimean War; and +with the accession of his son Alexander II, a new era dawned on +Russian literature, the Era of the Great Reforms. The Crimean War and +the reforms which followed it--the emancipation of the serfs, the +creation of a new judicial system, and the foundation of local +self-government--stabbed the Russian soul into life, relieved it of +its gag, produced a great outburst of literature which enlarged and +enriched the literature of the world, and gave to the world three of +its greatest novelists: Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. + +IVAN TURGENEV (1816-83), whose name is of Tartar origin, came of an +old family which had frequently distinguished itself in the annals of +Russian literature by a fearless outspokenness. He began his literary +career by writing verse (1843); but, like Maupassant, he soon +understood that verse was not his true vehicle, and in 1847 gave up +writing verse altogether; in that year he published in _The +Contemporary_ his first sketch of peasant life, _Khor and Kalinych_, +which afterwards formed part of his _Sportsman's Sketches_, +twenty-four of which he collected and published in 1852. The +Government rendered Turgenev the same service as it had done to +Pushkin, in exiling him to his own country estate for two years. When, +after the two years, this forced exile came to an end, he went into +another kind of exile of his own accord; he lived at first at Baden, +and then in Paris, and only reappeared in Russia from time to time; +this accounts for the fact that, although Turgenev belongs +chronologically to the epoch of the great reforms, the Russia which he +paints was really more like the Russia before that epoch; and when he +tried to paint the Russia that was contemporary to him his work gave +rise to much controversy. + +His _Rudin_ was published in 1856, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_ in 1859, +_On the Eve_ in 1860, _Fathers and Sons_ in 1862, _Smoke_ in 1867. +Turgenev did for Russian literature what Byron did for English +literature; he led the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout all +Europe. And in Europe his work reaped a glorious harvest of praise. +Flaubert was astounded by him, George Sand looked up to him as to a +Master, Taine spoke of his work as being the finest artistic +production since Sophocles. In Turgenev's work, Europe not only +discovered Turgenev, but it discovered Russia, the simplicity and the +naturalness of the Russian character; and this came as a revelation. +For the first time, Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin +was the first to paint; for the first time Europe came into contact +with the Russian soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation +which accounts for the fact of Turgenev having received in the West an +even greater meed of praise than he was perhaps entitled to. + +In Russia, Turgenev attained almost instant popularity. His +_Sportsman's Sketches_ made him known, and his _Nest of Gentlefolk_ +made him not only famous but universally popular. In 1862 the +publication of his masterpiece _Fathers and Sons_ dealt his reputation +a blow. The revolutionary elements in Russia regarded his hero, +Bazarov, as a calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary elements in +Russia looked upon _Fathers and Sons_ as a glorification of Nihilism. +Thus he satisfied nobody. He fell between two stools. This, perhaps, +could only happen in Russia to this extent; and for the same reason as +that which made Russian criticism didactic. The conflicting elements +of Russian society were so terribly in earnest in fighting their +cause, that any one whom they did not regard as definitely for them +was at once considered an enemy, and an impartial delineation of any +character concerned in the political struggle was bound to displease +both parties. If a novelist drew a Nihilist, he must either be a hero +or a scoundrel, if either the revolutionaries or the reactionaries +were to be pleased. If in England the militant suffragists suddenly +had a huge mass of educated opinion behind them and a still larger +mass of educated public opinion against them, and some one were to +draw in a novel an impartial picture of a suffragette, the same thing +would happen. On a small scale, as far as the suffragettes are +concerned, it has happened in the case of Mr. Wells. But, if +Turgenev's popularity suffered a shock in Russia from which it with +difficulty recovered, in Western Europe it went on increasing. +Especially in England, Turgenev became the idol of all that was +eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a hall-mark of good taste. + +In Russia, Turgenev's work recovered from the unpopularity caused by +his _Fathers and Sons_ when Nihilism became a thing of the past, and +revolution took an entirely different shape; but, with the growing up +of new generations, his popularity suffered in a different way and for +different reasons. A new element came into Russian literature with +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and later with Gorky, and Turgenev's work began +to seem thin and artificial beside the creations of these stronger +writers; but in Russia, where Turgenev's work has the advantage of +being read in the original, it had an asset which ensured it a +permanent and safe harbour, above and beyond the fluctuations of +literary taste, the strife of political parties, and the conflict of +social ideals; and that was its art, its poetry, its style, which +ensured it a lasting and imperishable niche among the great classics +of Russian literature. And there it stands now. Turgenev's work in +Russia is no longer disputed or a subject of dispute. It is taken for +granted; and, whatever the younger generation will read and admire, +they will always read and admire Turgenev first. His work is a +necessary part of the intellectual baggage of any educated man and, +especially, of the educated adolescent. + +The position of Tennyson in England offers in a sense a parallel to +that of Turgenev in Russia. Tennyson, like Turgenev, enjoyed during +his lifetime not only the popularity of the masses, but the +appreciation of all that was most eclectic in the country. Then a +reaction set in. Now I believe the young generation think nothing of +Tennyson at all. And yet nothing is so sure as his permanent place in +English literature; and that permanent place is secured to him by his +incomparable diction. So it is with Turgenev. One cannot expect the +younger generation to be wildly excited about Turgenev's ideas, +characters, and problems. They belong to an epoch which is dead. At +the same time, one cannot help thinking that the most advanced of the +symbolist writers would not have been sorry had he happened by chance +to write _Bezhin Meadow_ and the _Poems in Prose_. Just so one cannot +help thinking that the most modern of our poets, had he by accident +written _The Revenge_ or _Tears, Idle Tears_, would not have thrown +them in the fire! + +There is, indeed, something in common between Tennyson and Turgenev. +They both have something mid-Victorian in them. They are both idyllic, +and both of them landscape-lovers and lords of language. They neither +of them had any very striking message to preach; they both of them +seem to halt, except on rare occasions, on the threshold of passion; +they both of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and in both of them +there is an element of banality. They both seem to a certain extent to +be shut off from the world by the trees of old parks, where cultivated +people are enjoying the air and the flowers and the shade, and where +between the tall trees you get glimpses of silvery landscapes and +limpid waters, and soft music comes from the gliding boat. Of course, +there is more than this in Turgenev, but this is the main impression. + +Pathos he has, of the finest, and passion he describes beautifully +from the outside, making you feel its existence, but not convincing +you that he felt it himself; but on the other hand what an artist he +is! How beautifully his pictures are painted; and how rich he is in +poetic feeling! + +Turgenev is above all things a poet. He carried on the work of +Pushkin, and he did for Russian prose what Pushkin did for Russian +poetry; he created imperishable models of style. His language has the +same limpidity and absence of any blur that we find in Pushkin's work. +His women have the same crystal radiance, transparent simplicity, and +unaffected strength; his pictures of peasant life, and his country +episodes have the same truth to nature; as an artist he had a severe +sense of proportion, a perfect purity of outline, and an absolute +harmony between the thought and the expression. Now that modern Europe +and England have just begun to discover Dostoyevsky, it is possible +that a reaction will set in to the detriment of Turgenev. Indeed, to a +certain extent this reaction has set in in Western Europe, as M. +Haumant, one of Turgenev's ablest critics and biographers, pointed out +not long ago. And, as the majority of Englishmen have not the +advantage of reading him in the original, they will be unchecked in +this reaction, if it comes about, by their appreciation of what is +perhaps most durable in his work. Yet to translate Turgenev +adequately, it would require an English poet gifted with a sense of +form and of words as rare as that of Turgenev himself. However this +may be, there is no doubt about the importance of Turgenev in the +history of Russian literature, whatever the future generations in +Russia or in Europe may think of his work. He was a great novelist +besides being a great poet. Certainly he never surpassed his early +_Sportsman's Sketches_ in freshness of inspiration and the perfection +of artistic execution. + +His _Bezhin Meadow_, where the children tell each other bogey stories +in the evening, is a gem with which no other European literature has +anything to compare. _The Singers_, _Death_, and many others are +likewise incomparable. _The Nest of Gentlefolk_, to which Turgenev +owed his great popularity, is quite perfect of its kind, with its +gallery of portraits going back to the eighteenth century and to the +period of Alexander I; its lovable, human hero Lavretsky, and Liza, a +fit descendant of Pushkin's Tatiana, radiant as a star. All Turgenev's +characters are alive; but, with the exception of his women and the +hero of _Fathers and Sons_, they are alive in bookland rather than in +real life. + +George Meredith's characters, for instance, are alive, but they belong +to a land or rather a planet of his own making, and we should never +recognize Sir Willoughby Patterne in the street, but we do meet women +sometimes who remind us of Clara Middleton and Carinthia Jane. The +same is true with regard to Turgenev, although it is not another +planet he created, but a special atmosphere and epoch to which his +books exclusively belong, and which some critics say never existed at +all. That is of no consequence. It exists for us in his work. + +But perhaps what gave rise to accusations of unreality and caricature +against Turgenev's characters, apart from the intenser reality of +Tolstoy's creations, by comparison with which Turgenev's suffered, was +that Turgenev, while professing to describe the present, and while +believing that he was describing the present, was in reality painting +an epoch that was already dead. _Rudin_, _Smoke_, and _On the Eve_ +have suffered more from the passage of time. _Rudin_ is a pathetic +picture of the type that Turgenev was so fond of depicting, the _genie +sans portefeuille_, a latter-day Hamlet who can only unpack his heart +with words, and with his eloquence persuade others to believe in him, +and succeed even in persuading himself to believe in himself, until +the moment for action comes, when he breaks down. The subjects of +_Smoke_ and _Spring Waters_ are almost identical; but, whereas _Spring +Waters_ is one of the most poetical of Turgenev's achievements, +_Smoke_ seems to-day the most banal, and almost to deserve Tolstoy's +criticism: "In _Smoke_ there is hardly any love of anything, and very +little pity; there is only love of light and playful adultery; and +therefore the poetry of that novel is repulsive." _On the Eve_, which +tells of a Bulgarian on the eve of the liberation of his country, +suffers from being written at a time when real Russians were hard at +work at that very task; and it was on this account that the novel +found little favour in Russia, as the fiction paled beside the +reality. + +It was followed by Turgenev's masterpiece, for which time can only +heighten one's admiration. _Fathers and Sons_ is as beautifully +constructed as a drama of Sophocles; the events move inevitably to a +tragic close. There is not a touch of banality from beginning to end, +and not an unnecessary word; the portraits of the old father and +mother, the young Kirsanov, and all the minor characters are perfect; +and amidst the trivial crowd, Bazarov stands out like Lucifer, the +strongest--the only strong character--that Turgenev created, the first +Nihilist--for if Turgenev was not the first to invent the word, he was +the first to apply it in this sense. + +Bazarov is the incarnation of the Lucifer type that recurs again and +again in Russian history and fiction, in sharp contrast to the meek +humble type of Ivan Durak. Lermontov's Pechorin was in some respects +an anticipation of Bazarov; so were the many Russian rebels. He is +the man who denies, to whom art is a silly toy, who detests +abstractions, knowledge, and the love of Nature; he believes in +nothing; he bows to nothing; he can break, but he cannot bend; he does +break, and that is the tragedy, but, breaking, he retains his +invincible pride, and + + "not cowardly he puts off his helmet," + +and he dies "valiantly vanquished." + +In the pages which describe his death Turgenev reaches the high-water +mark of his art, his moving quality, his power, his reserve. For manly +pathos they rank among the greatest scenes in literature, stronger +than the death of Colonel Newcome and the best of Thackeray. Among +English novelists it is, perhaps, only Meredith who has struck such +strong, piercing chords, nobler than anything in Daudet or Maupassant, +more reserved than anything in Victor Hugo, and worthy of the great +poets, of the tragic pathos of Goethe and Dante. The character of +Bazarov, as has been said, created a sensation and endless +controversy. The revolutionaries thought him a caricature and a libel, +the reactionaries a scandalous glorification of the Devil; and +impartial men such as Dostoyevsky, who knew the revolutionaries at +first hand, thought the type unreal. It is possible that Bazarov was +not like the Nihilists of the sixties; but in any case as a figure in +fiction, whatever the fact may be, he lives and will continue to live. + +In _Virgin Soil_, Turgenev attempted to paint the underground +revolutionary movement; here, in the opinion of all Russian judges, he +failed. The revolutionaries considered their portraits here more +unreal than that of Bazarov; the Conservatives were grossly +caricatured; the hero Nezhdanov was a type of a past world, another +Rudin, and not in the least like--so those who knew them tell us--the +revolutionaries of the day. Solomin, the energetic character in the +book, was considered as unreal as Nezhdanov. The wife of the +reactionary Sipyagin is a _pastiche_ of the female characters of that +type in his other books; cleverly drawn, but a completely conventional +book character. The redeeming feature in the book is Mariana, the +heroine, one of Turgenev's finest ideal women; and it is full, of +course, of gems of descriptive writing. The book was a complete +failure, and after this Turgenev went back to writing short stories. +The result was a great disappointment to Turgenev, who had thought +that, by writing a novel dealing with actual life, he would please and +reconcile all parties. To this later epoch belong his matchless _Poems +in Prose_, one of the latest melodies he sounded, a melody played on +one string of the lyre, but whose sweetness contained the essence of +all his music. + +Turgenev's work has a historic as well as an artistic value. He +painted the Russian gentry, and the type of gentry that was +disappearing, as no one else has done. His landscape painting has been +dwelt on; one ought, perhaps, to add that, beautiful as it is, it +still belongs to the region of conventional landscape painting; his +landscape is the orthodox Russian landscape, and is that of the age of +Pushkin, in which no bird except a nightingale is mentioned, no flower +except a rose. This convention was not really broken in prose until +the advent of Gorky. + +Reviewing Turgenev's work as a whole, any one who goes back to his +books after a time, and after a course of more modern and rougher, +stormier literature, will, I think, be surprised at its excellence +and perhaps be inclined to heave a deep sigh of relief. Some of it +will appear conventional; he will notice a faint atmosphere of +rose-water; he will feel, if he has been reading the moderns, as a +traveller feels who, after an exciting but painful journey, through +dangerous ways and unpleasant surroundings, suddenly enters a cool +garden, where fountains sob between dark cypresses, and swans float +majestically on artificial lakes. There is an aroma of syringa in the +air; the pleasaunce is artistically laid out, and full of fragrant +flowers. But he will not despise that garden for its elegance and its +tranquil seclusion, for its trees cast large shadows; the nightingale +sings in its thickets, the moon silvers the calm statues, and the +sound of music on the waters goes to the heart. Turgenev reminds one +of a certain kind of music, beautiful in form, not too passionate and +yet full of emotion, Schumann's music, for instance; if Pushkin is the +Mozart of Russian literature, Turgenev is the Schumann; not amongst +the very greatest, but still a poet, full of inspired lyrical feeling; +and a great, a classic artist, the prose Virgil of Russian literature. + +What Turgenev did for the country gentry, GONCHAROV (1812-91) did for +the St. Petersburg gentry. The greater part of his work deals with the +forties. Goncharov, a noble (_dvoryanin_) by education, and according +to his own account by descent, though according to another account he +was of merchant extraction, entered the Government service, and then +went round the world in a frigate, a journey which he described in +letters. Of his three novels, _The Everyday Story_, _Oblomov_, and +_The Landslip_, _Oblomov_ is the most famous: in it he created a type +which became immortal; and Oblomov has passed into the Russian +language just as Tartuffe has passed into the French language, or +Pecksniff into the English language. A chapter of the book appeared in +1849, and the whole novel in 1859. + +Oblomov is the incarnation of what in Russia is called _Halatnost_, +which means the propensity to live in dressing-gown and slippers. It +is told of Krylov, who was an Oblomov of real life, and who spent most +of his time lying on a sofa, that one day somebody pointed out to him +that the nail on which a picture was hanging just over the sofa on +which he was lying, was loose, and that the picture would probably +fall on his head. "No," said Krylov, not getting up, "the picture will +fall just beyond the sofa. I know the angle." The apathy of Oblomov, +although to the outward eye it resembles this mere physical inertness, +is subtly different. Krylov's apathy was the laziness of a man whose +brain brought forth concrete fruits; and who feels neither the +inclination nor the need of any other exercise, either physical or +intellectual. Oblomov's apathy is that of a brain seething with the +burning desires of a _vie intime_, which all comes to nothing owing to +a kind of spiritual paralysis, "une infirmite morale." It is true he +finds it difficult to put on his socks, still more to get up, when he +is awake, impossible to change his rooms although the ceiling is +falling to bits, and impossible not to lie on the sofa most of the +day; but the reason of this obstinate inertia is not mere physical +disinclination, it is the result of a mixture of seething and +simmering aspirations, indefinite disillusions and apprehensions, that +elude the grasp of the will. Oblomov is really the victim of a dream, +of an aspiration, of an ideal as bright and mobile as a +will-o'-the-wisp, as elusive as thistledown, which refuses to +materialize. + +The tragedy of the book lies in the effort he makes to rise from his +slough of apathy, or rather the effort his friends encourage him to +make. Oblomov's heart is made of pure gold; his soul is of transparent +crystal; there is not a base flaw in the paste of his composition; yet +his will is sapped, not by words, words, words, but by the inability +to formulate the shadows of his inner life. His friend is an energetic +German-Russian. He introduces Oblomov to a charming girl, and together +they conspire to drag him from his apathy. The girl, Olga, at first +succeeds; she falls in love with him, and he with her; he wants to +marry her, but he cannot take the necessary step of arranging his +affairs in a manner which would make that marriage possible; and +gradually he falls back into a new stage of apathy worse than the +first; she realizes the hopelessness of the situation, and they agree +to separate. She marries the energetic friend, and Oblomov sinks into +the comforts of a purely negative life of complete inaction and +seclusion, watched over by a devoted housekeeper, whom he ultimately +marries. + +The extraordinary subtlety of the psychology of this study lies, as +well as in other things, in the way in which we feel that Olga is not +really happy with her excellent husband; he is the man whom she +respects; but Oblomov is the man whom she loves, till the end; and she +would give worlds to respect him too if he would only give her the +chance. Oblomov often defends his stagnation, while realizing only too +well what a misfortune it is; and we sometimes feel that he is not +altogether wrong. The chapter that tells of his dream in which his +past life and childhood arise before him in a haze of serene laziness +is one of the masterpieces of Russian prose. The book is terribly +real, and almost intolerably sad. + +Goncharov's third and last novel deals with the life of a landed +proprietor on the Volga, and its main idea is the contrast between the +old generation before the reforms and the new generation of Alexander +II's day--a paler _Fathers and Sons_. + +To go back to criticism, the name of BAKUNIN, the apostle of +destruction and the incarnation of Russian Nihilism, belongs to +history; that of GRIGORIEV must be mentioned as founding a school of +thought which preached the union of arts with the national soil; he +exercised a strong influence over Dostoyevsky. KATKOV, whose influence +was at one time immense, originally belonged to the circle of Herzen +and Bakunin; he became a professor of philosophy, but was driven from +his chair in the reaction of '48, and, being banished from erudition, +he took up a journalistic career and became the Editor of the _Moscow +News_. He was a Slavophile, and when the rising in Poland broke out, +he headed the great wave of nationalist feeling which passed over the +country at that time; he doubled the number of his subscribers, and +dealt a death-blow to Herzen's _Bell_. After 1866, he headed +reactionary journalism and became a Nationalist of the narrowest kind; +but he was of a higher calibre than the Nationalists of later days. +Slavophile critics of another kind were STRAKHOV and DANILEVSKY, like +Dostoyevsky, disciples of Grigoriev, who preached the last word of +Slavophilism and were opposed to all foreign innovations. + +On the Radical side the leaders were CHERNYSHEVSKY, DOBROLYUBOV and +PISAREV. Chernyshevsky, who translated John Stuart Mill, and +published a treatise on the aesthetic relations of art and reality, +served a sentence of seven years' hard labour and of twenty years' +exile. His criticism--socialist propaganda, and an attack on all +metaphysics--does not belong to literature, but his novel _Shto +dielat_--"What is to be done?"--had an immense influence on his +generation. It deals with Nihilism. Dobrolyubov, who died when he was +twenty-four, belonged to the same realistic school. His main theory +was that Russian literature is dominated by Oblomov; that Chatsky, +Pechorin, and Rudin are all Oblomovs. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +followed Chernyshevsky in his realistic philosophy, in his rejection +of metaphysics, in his theory that beauty is to be sought in life +only, and that the sole duty of art is to help to illustrate life. +Pisarev recognized that Turgenev's Bazarov was a picture of himself, +and he was pleased with the portrait. Both Pisarev and Dobrolyubov +died young. + +VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV (1853-1900), critic as well as poet, moral +philosopher, and theologian, is one of the most interesting figures in +Russian literature. What is most remarkable about him, and what makes +him stand out, a radiant exception in Russian criticism, is his +absolute independence. He belonged to no camp; he was a slave to no +party cry; utterly unselfish, his sole aim was to seek after the truth +for the sake of truth, and to proclaim it. In an age of positivism, he +was a believing Christian, and the dream of his life was a union of +the Eastern and Western Churches. He deals with this idea in a book +which he wrote in French and published in Paris: _L'Eglise Russe et +l'Eglise Universelle_. He admired the older Slavophiles, but he +severely attacked the Nationalists, such as Katkov. His range of +subjects was great, and his style was brilliant; like many great +thinkers, he was far ahead of his time, and in his criticism of the +_Intelligentsia_ anticipated some tendencies, which have become +visible since the revolution of 1905. He reminds one at times of Mr. +A. J. Balfour, and even of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with whose +"orthodoxy" he would have much sympathy; and he deals with questions +such as Woman's Suffrage in a way which exactly fits the present day. +He never became a Catholic, holding that the Eastern Church _qua_ +Church had never been cut off from the West, and that only one +definite schism had been condemned; but he believed in the necessity +of a universal Church. He was the first intellectual Russian to point +out to a generation which took atheism as a matter of course that they +were possibly inferior instead of superior to religion. He believed in +Russia; he had nothing against the Slavophile theory that Russia had a +divine mission; only he wished to see that mission divinely performed. +He believed in the East of Christ, and not in that of Xerxes. He died +in 1900, before he had finished his _Magnum Opus_, a work on moral +philosophy written on a religious basis. He preached self-effacement; +pity towards one's fellow men; and reverence towards the supernatural. +His whole work is a defence of moral principles, written with the soul +of a poet, the knowledge of a scholar, and the brilliance of a +dialectician. It is only lately that his books have gained the +appreciation which they deserve; they are certainly more in harmony +with the present generation than with that of the sixties and the +seventies. His _Three Conversations_ has been translated into English. +Vladimir Soloviev stands in a niche of his own, isolated from the +crowd by his own originality, his brilliance, and his prematurity; he +was _intempestivus_. + +To the same epoch belong four other important writers, each occupying +a place apart from the current stream of literary or political +influences: one because he was a satirist, one because he wrote for +the stage, and the two others because one impartially, and the other +bitterly, dared to criticize the Radicals. + +MICHAEL SALTYKOV (1826-89), who wrote under the name of Shchedrin, +holds a unique place in Russian literature, not only because he is a +writer of genius, but because he is one of the world's great +satirists. Unlike Russian satirists before him, Krylov, Gogol, and +Griboyedov, good-humoured irony or sharp rapier thrusts of wit do not +suffice him; he has in himself the _saeva indignatio_, and he +expresses it with all the concentrated spite that he can muster, which +is all the more deadly from being used with perfect control. His work +is bulky, and fills eleven thick volumes; some of it is quite out of +date and at the present day almost unintelligible; but all that deals +with the fundamental essentials of the Russian character, and not with +the passing episodes of the day, has the freshness of immortality. At +the outset of his career, he was banished to Vyatka, where he remained +from 1848-56, an exile, which gave him a rich store of priceless +material. His experiences appeared in his _Sketches of Provincial +Life_ in 1886-7. + +He describes the good old times and the officials of the good old +times, with diabolic malice and with an unequalled eye for the +ironical, the comic, the topsy-turvy, and the true; and while he is as +observant as Gogol, he is as bitter as Swift. He puts his characters +on the stage and makes them relate their experiences; thus we hear how +the collector of the dues manages to combine the maximum amount of +robbery with the minimum amount of inconvenience. In his pictures of +prison life, the prisoners tell their own stories, sometimes with +unaffected frankness, sometimes with startling cynicism, and sometimes +the story is obscured by a whole heap of lies. The prisoners are of +different classes; one is an ex-official who states that he was a +statistician who got into trouble over his figures; wishing to levy +dues on a peasant's property, he had demanded the number, not of +their bee-hives, but of their bees, and wrote in his list: "The +peasant Sidorov possesses two horses, three cows, nine sheep, one +calf, and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven bees." +Unfortunately he was betrayed by the police inspector. + +Saltykov's satire deals entirely with the middle class, the high +officials, the average official, and the minor public servants; and +his best-known work, and one that has not aged any more than Swift has +aged, is his _History of a City according to the original documents_. + +In this he tells of the city of _Glupov_, _Fool-City_, where the +people were such fools that they were not content until they found +some one to rule them who was stupider than they were themselves. The +various phases Russia had gone through are touched off; the mania for +regulations, the formalism, the official red-tape, the persecution of +independent thought, and the oppression of original thinkers and +writers; the ultimate ideal is that introduced by the last ruler of +Glupov (the history lasts from 1731 to 1826), of turning the country +into barracks and reducing every one and everything to one level--in +which the regime of the period of Nicholas I is satirized; until in +the final picture, as fine in its way as Pope's close of the +_Dunciad_, the stream rises, and refusing to be stopped by the dam, +carries everything away. The style parodies that of the ancient +chroniclers; and its chief intent lies not in the satirizing of any +particular events or person, but in the shafts of light, sometimes +bitter, and sometimes inexpressibly droll, it throws on the Russian +system of administration and on the Russian character. + +In his _Pompaduri_, Saltykov dissects and vivisects the higher +official,--the big-wig,--and in his sketches from the "Domain of +Moderation and Accuracy," he writes, in little, the epic of the minor +public servant--the man who is never heard of, who is included in the +term of "the rest," but who, nevertheless, is a cogwheel in the +machinery, without which the big-wigs cannot act or execute. No more +supreme piece of art than this piece of satire exists. The typical +minor official is drawn in all the variations of his miserable and +pitiable species, and in all the phases of his ignoble and sometimes +tragical career, with a pen dipped in scorn and stinging malice, not +unblent with a grave pity, which always exists in the work of the +greatest satirists--"Peace to all such, but there was one ..." for +instance--and wielded with terrible certainty of touch. This epic of +the _Molchalins_ of life--the typical officials who cease to be +men--was the story of a great part of the Russian population; and in +its essence, a great deal of it remains true to-day, while all of it +remains artistically enjoyable. + +Saltykov continued to write during the whole of his long life. His +field of satire ranges from the days before serfdom to the epoch of +the reforms, extends to the days of the Russo-Turkish War, and passes +the frontier into the West. It is impossible here even to name all his +works; but there is one, written in the decline of his life, which has +a solid historical as well as a rich and varied artistic interest. +This is his _Poshenkhonskaya Starina_; it is practically the history +of his childhood, his upbringing, and the state of affairs which +existed at that time, the life lived by his parents and their +neighbours, the landed proprietors and their serfs. With amazing +impartiality, without exaggeration, and yet with evidences of deep +feeling and passionate indignation, all the more striking from being +both rare and expressed with reserve, he paints on a large and crowded +canvas the life of the masters and their serfs. A long gallery of men +and women is opened to one; tragedy, comedy, farce, all are here--in +fact, life--life as it was then in a remote corner of the country. +Here Saltykov's spite and malice give way to higher strokes of tragic +irony and pity; and the work has dignity as well as power In the bulk +of Saltykov's early work there is much dross, much venom, and much +ephemeral tinsel that has faded; the stuff of this book is stern and +enduring; its subject-matter would not lose a particle of interest in +translation. The Russians have been ungrateful towards Saltykov, and +have been inclined to neglect his work, the lasting element of which +is one of the most original, precious, and remarkable possessions of +Russian literature. + +The complement of Saltykov is LESKOV (or, as he originally called +himself, _Stebnitsky_). The character of his work, its reception by +the reading public on the one hand, and by the professional critics on +the other, is one of the most striking object-lessons in the history +of Russian literature and Russian literary criticism. Leskov has been +long ago recognized by educated Russia as a writer of the first rank; +what is best in his work, which is bulky and unequal, has the +unmistakable hall-mark of the classics; he is with Gogol and Saltykov, +and the novelists of the first rank. Educated Russia is fully aware of +this. Nobody disputes Leskov his place, nor denies him his supreme +artistic talent, his humour, his vividness, his colour, his satire, +the depth of his feeling, the richness of his invention. In spite of +this, there is no Russian writer who has so acutely suffered from the +didactic and partisan quality of Russian criticism. + +His literary career began in 1860. Like Saltykov, he paints the period +of transition that followed the epoch of the great Reforms. In spite +of this, as late as 1902, no critical biography, no serious work of +criticism, had been devoted to his books. All Russia had read him, but +literary criticism had ignored him. It is as if English literary +criticism had ignored Dickens until 1900. + +The reason of this neglect is not far to seek. Saltykov was an +independent thinker; he belonged to no literary or political camp; he +criticized the partisans of both camps with equal courage; and the +partisans could not and did not forgive him. Like Saltykov, Leskov saw +what was going on in Russia; with penetrating insight and observation +he realized the evils of the old order; like Saltykov, he was filled +with indignation, and perhaps to a greater degree than Saltykov, he +was filled with pity. But, whereas Saltykov's work was purely +destructive--an onslaught of brooms in the Augean stables--Leskov +begins where Saltykov ends. Like Saltykov and like Gogol before him, +the old order inspires him with laughter, sometimes with bitter +laughter, at the absurdities of the old regime and its results; but he +does not confine himself to destructive irony and sapping satire. With +PISEMSKY, another writer of first-class talent, of the same epoch, +Leskov was the first Russian novelist--Griboyedov had already +anticipated such criticism in _Gore ot Uma_, in his delineation of +Chatsky,--to have the courage to criticize the reformers, the men of +the new epoch; and his criticism was not only negative but creative; +he realized that everything must be "reformed altogether." He then +asked himself whether the new men, who were engaged in the task of +reform, were equal to their task. He came to the conclusion not only +that they were inadequate, but that they were setting about the +business the wrong way, and he had the courage to say so. He was the +first Russian novelist to say he disbelieved in Liberals, although he +believed in Liberalism; and this was a sentiment which no Liberal in +Russia could admit then, and one which they can scarcely admit now. + +His criticism of the Liberals was creative, and not negative, in this: +that, instead of confining himself to pointing out their weakness and +the mistaken course they were taking, he did his best to point out the +right path. Dostoyevsky was likewise subjected to the same ostracism. +Turgenev suffered from it; but the genius of Dostoyevsky and the art +of Turgenev overstepped the limits of all barriers and frontiers. +Europe acclaimed them. Leskov's criticism being more local, the +ostracism, although powerless to prevent the popularity of his work in +Russia, succeeded for a time in keeping him from the notice of +Western Europe. This barrier is now being broken down. One of Leskov's +masterpieces, _The Sealed Angel_, was lately translated into English; +but he is one of the most difficult authors to translate because he is +one of the most native. + +A far bitterer and more pessimistic note is heard in the work of +Pisemsky. He attacks the new democracy mercilessly, and not from any +predilection towards the old. His most important work, _The Troubled +Sea_ (1862), was a terrific onslaught on Radical Russia; and Pisemsky +paid the same price for his pessimistic analysis as Leskov did for his +impartiality, namely social ostracism. + +The work of OSTROVSKY (1823-86) belongs to the history of the Stage, +to which he brought slices of real life from the middle class; the +townsmen, the minor public servants, merchants great and small, and +rogues, a _milieu_ which he had observed in his youth, his father +having been an attorney to a Moscow merchant. Ostrovsky may be called +the founder of modern Russian realistic comedy and drama. In spite of +the epoch at which his plays were written (the fifties and the +sixties), there is not a trace of _Scribisme_, no tricks, no effective +exits or curtains; he thus anticipated the form of the quite modern +drama by about seventy years. His plays hold the stage now in Russia, +and form part of the stock repertories every season. They give, +moreover, just the same lifelike impression whether read or seen +acted; and they are as interesting from a literary as they are from a +historical or dramatic point of view, interesting because they are +intensely national, and as Russian as beer is English. + +This brief summary of the epoch would be still more incomplete than it +is without the mention of yet another novelist, GRIGOROVICH. Although +on a lower level of art and creative power than Pisemsky and Leskov, +he was the pioneer in Russian literature of peasant literature. He +anticipated Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_, and for the first time +made Russian readers cry with sympathy over the annals of the peasant. +Like Turgenev, he was a great landscape painter. In his "Fishermen" he +paints the peasant and the artisan's life, and in his "Country Roads" +he gives a picture of the good old times--replete with rich humour, +and in sharp contrast to Saltykov's sunless and trenchant etching of +the same period. Humour, the pathos of the poor, landscape--these are +his chief qualities. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY + + +With TOLSTOY and DOSTOYEVSKY, we come not only to the two great +pillars of modern Russian literature which tower above all others like +two colossal statues in the desert, but to two of the greatest figures +in the literature of the world. Russia has not given the world a +universal poet, a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Goethe, or a Moliere; for +Pushkin, consummate artist and inspired poet as he was, lacks that +peculiar greatness which conquers all demarcations of frontier and +difference of language, and produces work which becomes a part of the +universal inheritance of all nations; but Russia has given us two +prose-writers whose work has done this very thing. And between them +they sum up in themselves the whole of the Russian soul, and almost +the whole of the Russian character; I say almost the whole of the +Russian _character_, because although between them they sum up all +that is greatest, deepest, and all that is weakest in the Russian +_soul_, there is perhaps one element of the Russian _character_, +which, although they understood it well enough, their genius forbade +them to possess. If you take as ingredients Peter the Great, +Dostoyevsky's Mwyshkin--the idiot, the pure fool who is wiser than the +wise--and the hero of Gogol's _Revisor_, Hlestyakov the liar and +wind-bag, you can, I think, out of these elements, reconstitute any +Russian who has ever lived. That is to say, you will find that every +single Russian is compounded either of one or more of these elements. + +For instance, mix Peter the Great with a sufficient dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Boris Godunov and Bakunin; leave the Peter the +Great element unmixed, and you get Bazarov, and many of Gorky's +heroes; mix it slightly with Hlestyakov, and you get Lermontov; let +the Hlestyakov element predominate, and you get Griboyedov's +Molchalin; let the Mwyshkin element predominate, with a dose of +Hlestyakov, and you get Father Gapon; let it predominate without the +dose of Hlestyakov, and you get Oblomov; mix it with a dose of Peter +the Great, you get Herzen, Chatsky; and so on. Mix all the elements +equally, and you get Onegin, the average man. I do not mean that there +are necessarily all these elements in every Russian, but that you will +meet with no Russian in whom there is not to be found either one or +more than one of them. + +Now, in Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element dominates, with a dose of +Mwyshkin, and a vast but unsuccessful aspiration towards the complete +characteristics of Mwyshkin; while in Dostoyevsky the Mwyshkin +predominates, blent with a fiery streak of Peter the Great; but in +neither of them is there a touch of Hlestyakov. In Russia, it +constantly happens that a man in any class, be he a soldier, sailor, +tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, plough-boy, or thief, will +suddenly leave his profession and avocation and set out on the search +for God and for truth. These men are called _Bogoiskateli_, Seekers +after God. The one fact that the whole world knows about Tolstoy is +that, in the midst of his great and glorious artistic career, he +suddenly abjured literature and art, denounced worldly possessions, +and said that truth was to be found in working like a peasant, and +thus created a sect of Tolstoyists. The world then blamed him for +inconsistency because he went on writing, and lived as before, with +his family and in his own home. But in reality there was no +inconsistency, because there was in reality no break. Tolstoy had been +a _Bogoiskatel_, a seeker after truth and God all his life; it was +only the manner of his search which had changed; but the quest itself +remained unchanged; he was unable, owing to family ties, to push his +premises to their logical conclusion until just before his death; but +push them to their logical conclusion he did at the last, and he died, +as we know, on the road to a monastery. + +Tolstoy's manner of search was extraordinary, extraordinary because he +was provided for it with the eyes of an eagle which enabled him to see +through everything; and, as he took nothing for granted from the day +he began his career until the day he died, he was always subjecting +people, objects, ideas, to the searchlight of his vision, and testing +them to see whether they were true or not; moreover, he was gifted +with the power of describing what he saw during this long journey +through the world of fact and the world of ideas, whether it were the +general or the particular, the mass or the detail, the vision, the +panorama, the crowd, the portrait or the miniature, with the strong +simplicity of a Homer, and the colour and reality of a Velasquez. This +made him one of the world's greatest writers, and the world's greatest +artist in narrative fiction. Another peculiarity of his search was +that he pursued it with eagle eyes, but with blinkers. + +In 1877 Dostoyevsky wrote: "In spite of his colossal artistic talent, +Tolstoy is one of those Russian minds which only see that which is +right before their eyes, and thus press towards that point. They have +not the power of turning their necks to the right or to the left to +see what lies on one side; to do this, they would have to turn with +their whole bodies. If they do turn, they will quite probably maintain +the exact opposite of what they have been hitherto professing; for +they are rigidly honest." It is this search carried on by eyes of +unsurpassed penetration between blinkers, by a man who every now and +then did turn his whole body, which accounts for the many apparent +changes and contradictions of Tolstoy's career. + +Another source of contradiction was that by temperament the Lucifer +element predominated in him, and the ideal he was for ever seeking was +the humility of Mwyshkin, the pure fool, an ideal which he could not +reach, because he could not sufficiently humble himself. Thus when +death overtook him he was engaged on his last and his greatest voyage +of discovery; and there is something solemn and great about his having +met with death at a small railway station. + +Tolstoy's works are a long record of this search, and of the memories +and experiences which he gathered on the way. There is not a detail, +not a phase of feeling, not a shade or mood in his spiritual life that +he has not told us of in his works. In his _Childhood, Boyhood and +Youth_, he re-creates his own childhood, boyhood and youth, not always +exactly as it happened in reality; there is _Dichtung_ as well as +_Wahrheit_; but the _Dichtung_ is as true as the _Wahrheit_, because +his aim was to recreate the impressions he had received from his early +surroundings. Moreover, the searchlight of his eyes even then fell +mercilessly upon everything that was unreal, sham and conventional. + +As soon as he had finished with his youth, he turned to the life of a +grown-up man in _The Morning of a Landowner_, and told how he tried to +live a landowner's life, and how nothing but dissatisfaction came of +it. He escapes to the Caucasus, and seeks regeneration, and the result +of the search here is a masterpiece, _The Cossacks_. He goes back to +the world, and takes part in the Crimean war; he describes what he saw +in a battery; his eagle eye lays bare the _splendeurs et miseres_ of +war more truthfully perhaps than a writer on war has ever done, but +less sympathetically than Alfred de Vigny--the difference being that +Alfred de Vigny is innately modest, and that Tolstoy, as he wrote +himself, at the beginning of the war, "had no modesty." + +After the Crimean war, he plunges again into the world and travels +abroad; and on his return to Russia, he settles down at Yasnaya +Polyana and marries. The hero of his novel _Domestic Happiness_ +appears to have found his heart's desire in marriage and country life. +It was then that he wrote _War and Peace_, which he began to publish +in 1865. He always had the idea of writing a story on the Decembrist +movement, and _War and Peace_ was perhaps the preface to that +unwritten work, for it ends when that movement was beginning. In _War +and Peace_, he gave the world a modern prose epic, which did not +suffer from the drawback that spoils most historical novels, namely, +that of being obviously false, because it was founded on his own +recollection of his parents' memories. He gives us what we feel to be +the very truth; for the first time in an historical novel, instead of +saying "this is very likely true," or "what a wonderful work of +artistic reconstruction," we feel that we were ourselves there; that +we knew those people; that they are a part of our very own past. He +paints a whole generation of people; and in Pierre Bezukhov, the new +landmarks of his own search are described. Among many other episodes, +there is nowhere in literature such a true and charming picture of +family life as that of the Rostovs, and nowhere a more vital and +charming personality than Natasha; a creation as living as Pushkin's +Tatiana, and alive with a reality even more convincing than Turgenev's +pictures of women, since she is alive with a different kind of life; +the difference being that while you have read in Turgenev's books +about noble and exquisite women, you are not sure whether you have +not known Natasha yourself and in your own life; you are not sure she +does not belong to the borderland of your own past in which dreams and +reality are mingled. _War and Peace_ eclipses all other historical +novels; it has all Stendhal's reality, and all Zola's power of dealing +with crowds and masses. Take, for instance, a masterpiece such as +Flaubert's _Salammbo_; it may and very likely does take away your +breath by the splendour of its language, its colour, and its art, but +you never feel that, even in a dream, you had taken part in the life +which is painted there. The only bit of unreality in _War and Peace_ +is the figure of Napoleon, to whom Tolstoy was deliberately unfair. +Another impression which Tolstoy gives us in _War and Peace_ is that +man is in reality always the same, and that changes of manners are not +more important than changes in fashions of clothes. That is why it is +not extravagant to mention _Salammbo_ in this connection. One feels +that, if Tolstoy had written a novel about ancient Rome, we should +have known a score of patricians, senators, scribblers, clients, +parasites, matrons, courtesans, better even than we know Cicero from +his letters; we should not only feel that we _know_ Cicero, but that +we had actually known him. This very task--namely, that of +reconstituting a page out of Pagan history--was later to be attempted +by Merezhkovsky; but brilliant as his work is, he only at times and by +flashes attains to Tolstoy's power of convincing. + +_Anna Karenina_ appeared in 1875-76. And here Tolstoy, with the touch +of a Velasquez and upon a huge canvas, paints the contemporary life of +the upper classes in St. Petersburg and in the country. Levin, the +hero, is himself. Here, again, the truth to nature and the reality is +so intense and vivid that a reader unacquainted with Russia will in +reading the book probably not think of Russia at all, but will imagine +the story has taken place in his own country, whatever that may be. He +shows you everything from the inside, as well as from the outside. You +feel, in the picture of the races, what Anna is feeling in looking on, +and what Vronsky is feeling in riding. And with what reality, what +incomparable skill the gradual dawn of Anna's love for Vronsky is +described; how painfully real is her pompous and excellent husband; +and how every incident in her love affair, her visit to her child, her +appearance at the opera, when, after having left her husband, she +defies the world, her gradual growing irritability, down to the final +catastrophe, bears on it the stamp of something which must have +happened just in that very way and no other. + +But, as far as Tolstoy's own development is concerned, Levin is the +most interesting figure in the book. This character is another +landmark in Tolstoy's search after truth; he is constantly putting +accepted ideas to the test; he is haunted by the fear of sudden death, +not the physical fear of death in itself, but the fear that in the +face of death the whole of life may be meaningless; a peasant opens a +new door for him and furnishes him with a solution to the problem--to +live for one's soul: life no longer seems meaningless. + +Thus Levin marks the stage in Tolstoy's evolution of his abandoning +materialism and of seeking for the truth in the Church. But the Church +does not satisfy him. He rejects its dogmas and its ritual; he turns +to the Gospel, but far from accepting it, he revises it. He comes to +the conclusion that Christianity as it has been taught is mere +madness, and that the Church is a superfluous anachronism. Thus +another change comes about, which is generally regarded as _the_ +change cutting Tolstoy's life in half; in reality it is only a fresh +right-about-turn of a man who is searching for truth in blinkers. In +his _Confession_, he says: "I grew to hate myself; and now all has +become clear." He came to believe that property was the source of all +evil; he desired literally to give up all he had. This he was not able +to do. It was not that he shrank from the sacrifice at the last; but +that circumstances and family ties were too strong for him. But his +final flight from home in the last days of his life shows that the +desire had never left him. + +Art was also subjected to his new standards and found wanting, both in +his own work and in that of others. Shakespeare and Beethoven were +summarily disposed of; his own masterpieces he pronounced to be +worthless. This more than anything shows the pride of the man. He +could admire no one, not even himself. He scorned the gifts which were +given him, and the greatest gifts of the greatest men. But this +landmark of Tolstoy's evolution, his turning his back on the Church, +and on his work, is a landmark in Russian history as well as in +Russian art. For far less than this Russian thinkers and writers of +high position had been imprisoned and exiled. Nobody dared to touch +Tolstoy. He fearlessly attacked all constituted authority, both +spiritual and temporal, in an epoch of reaction, and such was his +prestige that official Russia raised no finger. His authority was too +great, and this is perhaps the first great victory of the liberty of +individual thought over official tyranny in Russia. There had been +martyrs in plenty before, but no conquerors. + +After _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy, who gave up literature for a time, but +for a time only, nevertheless continued to write; at first he only +wrote stories for children and theological and polemical pamphlets; +but in 1886 he published the terribly powerful peasant drama: _The +Powers of Darkness_. Later came the _Kreutzer Sonata_, the _Death of +Ivan Ilitch_, and _Resurrection_. Here the hero Nehludov is a lifeless +phantom of Tolstoy himself; the episodes and details have the reality +of his early work, so has Maslova, the heroine; but in the squalor +and misery of the prisons he shows no precious balms of humanity and +love, as Dostoyevsky did; and the book has neither the sweep and epic +swing of _War and Peace_, nor the satisfying completeness of _Anna +Karenina_. Since his death, some posthumous works have been published, +among them a novel, and a play: _The Living Corpse_. He died, as he +had lived, still searching, and perhaps at the end he found the object +of his quest. + +Tolstoy, even more than Pushkin, was rooted to the soil; all that is +not of the soil--anything mystic or supernatural--was totally alien to +him. He was the oak which could not bend; and being, as he was, the +king of realistic fiction, an unsurpassed painter of pictures, +portraits, men and things, a penetrating analyst of the human heart, a +genius cast in a colossal mould, his work, both by its substance and +its artistic power, exercised an influence beyond his own country, +affected all European nations, and gives him a place among the great +creators of the world. Tolstoy was not a rebel but a heretic, a +heretic not only to religion and the Church, but in philosophy, +opinions, art, and even in food; but what the world will remember of +him are not his heretical theories but his faithful practice, which is +orthodox in its obedience to the highest canons, orthodox as Homer and +Shakespeare are orthodox, and like theirs, one of the greatest earthly +examples of the normal and the sane. + +To say that DOSTOYEVSKY is the antithesis to Tolstoy, and the second +great pillar of Russian prose literature, will surprise nobody now. +Had one been writing ten years ago, the expression of such an opinion +would have met with an incredulous smile amongst the majority of +English readers of Russian literature, for Dostoyevsky was practically +unknown save for his _Crime and Punishment_, and to have compared him +with Turgenev would have seemed sacrilegious. Now when Dostoyevsky is +one of the shibboleths of our _intelligentsia_, one can boldly say, +without fear of being misunderstood, that, as a creator and a force in +literature, Dostoyevsky is in another plane than that of Turgenev, and +as far greater than him as Leonardo da Vinci is greater than Vandyke, +or as Wagner is greater than Gounod, while some Russians consider him +even infinitely greater than Tolstoy. Let us say he is his equal and +complement. He is in any case, in almost every respect, his +antithesis. Tolstoy was the incarnation of health, and is above all +things and pre-eminently the painter of the sane and the earthly. +Dostoyevsky was an epileptic, the painter of the abnormal, of +criminals, madmen, degenerates, mystics. Tolstoy led an even, +uneventful life, spending the greater part of it in his own country +house, in the midst of a large family. Dostoyevsky was condemned to +death, served a sentence of four years' hard labour in a convict +settlement in Siberia, and besides this spent six years in exile; when +he returned and started a newspaper, it was prohibited by the +Censorship; a second newspaper which he started came to grief; he +underwent financial ruin; his first wife, his brother, and his best +friend died; he was driven abroad by debt, harassed by the authorities +on the one hand, and attacked by the liberals on the other; abused and +misunderstood, almost starving and never well, working under +overwhelming difficulties, always pressed for time, and ill requited +for his toil. That was Dostoyevsky's life. + +Tolstoy was a heretic; at first a materialist, and then a seeker after +a religion of his own; Dostoyevsky was a practising believer, a +vehement apostle of orthodoxy, and died fortified by the Sacraments of +the Church. Tolstoy with his broad unreligious opinions was +narrow-minded. Dostoyevsky with his definite religious opinions was +the most broad-minded man who ever lived. Tolstoy hated the +supernatural, and was alien to all mysticism. Dostoyevsky seems to get +nearer to the unknown, to what lies beyond the flesh, than any other +writer. In Tolstoy, the Peter the Great element of the Russian +character predominated; in Dostoyevsky that of Mwyshkin, the pure +fool. Tolstoy could never submit and humble himself. Submission and +humility and resignation are the keynotes and mainsprings of +Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy despised art, and paid no homage to any of the +great names of literature; and this was not only after the so-called +change. As early as 1862, he said that Pushkin and Beethoven could not +please because of their absolute beauty. Dostoyevsky was catholic and +cosmopolitan, and admired the literature of foreign countries--Racine +as well as Shakespeare, Corneille as well as Schiller. The essence of +Tolstoy is a magnificent intolerance. The essence of Dostoyevsky is +sweet reasonableness. Tolstoy dreamed of giving up all he had to the +poor, and of living like a peasant; Dostoyevsky had to share the hard +labour of the lowest class of criminals. Tolstoy theorized on the +distribution of food; but Dostoyevsky was fed like a beggar. Tolstoy +wrote in affluence and at leisure, and re-wrote his books; Dostoyevsky +worked like a literary hack for his daily bread, ever pressed for time +and ever in crying need of money. + +These contrasts are not made in disparagement of Tolstoy, but merely +to point out the difference between the two men and between their +circumstances. Tolstoy wrote about himself from the beginning of his +career to the end; nearly all his work is autobiographical, and he +almost always depicts himself in all his books. We know nothing of +Dostoyevsky from his books. He was an altruist, and he loved others +better than himself. + +Dostoyevsky's first book, _Poor Folk_, published in 1846, is a +descendant of Gogol's story _The Cloak_, and bears the influence, to a +slight extent, of Gogol. In this, the story of a minor public servant +battling against want, and finding a ray of light in corresponding +with a girl also in poor circumstances, but who ultimately marries a +rich middle-aged man, we already get all Dostoyevsky's peculiar +sweetness; what Stevenson called his "lovely goodness," his almost +intolerable pathos, his love of the disinherited and of the failures +of life. His next book, _Letters from a Dead House_, has a far more +universal interest. It is the record of his prison experiences, which +is of priceless value, not only on account of its radiant moral +beauty, its perpetual discovery of the soul of goodness in things +evil, its human fraternity, its complete absence of egotism and pose, +and its thrilling human interest, but also on account of the light it +throws on the Russian character, the Russian poor, and the Russian +peasant. + +In 1866 came _Crime and Punishment_, which brought Dostoyevsky fame. +This book, Dostoyevsky's _Macbeth_, is so well known in the French and +English translations that it hardly needs any comment. Dostoyevsky +never wrote anything more tremendous than the portrayal of the anguish +that seethes in the soul of Raskolnikov, after he has killed the old +woman, "mechanically forced," as Professor Brueckner says, "into +performing the act, as if he had gone too near machinery in motion, +had been caught by a bit of his clothing and cut to pieces." And not +only is one held spellbound by every shifting hope, fear, and doubt, +and each new pang that Raskolnikov experiences, but the souls of all +the subsidiary characters in the book are revealed to us just as +clearly: the Marmeladov family, the honest Razumikhin, the police +inspector, and the atmosphere of the submerged tenth in St. +Petersburg--the steaming smell of the city in the summer. There is an +episode when Raskolnikov kneels before Sonia, the prostitute, and says +to her: "It is not before you I am kneeling, but before all the +suffering of mankind." That is what Dostoyevsky does himself in this +and in all his books; but in none of them is the suffering of all +mankind conjured up before us in more living colours, and in none of +them is his act of homage in kneeling before it more impressive. + +This book was written before the words "psychological novel" had been +invented; but how all the psychological novels which were written +years later by Bourget and others pale before this record written in +blood and tears! _Crime and Punishment_ was followed by _The Idiot_ +(1868). The idiot is Mwyshkin, who has been alluded to already, the +wise fool, an epileptic, in whom irony and arrogance and egoism have +been annihilated; and whose very simplicity causes him to pass +unscathed through a den of evil, a world of liars, scoundrels, and +thieves, none of whom can escape the influence of his radiant +personality. He is the same with every one he meets, and with his +unsuspicious sincerity he combines the intuition of utter goodness, so +that he can see through people and read their minds. In this +character, Dostoyevsky has put all his sweetness; it is not a portrait +of himself, but it is a portrait of what he would have liked to be, +and reflects all that is best in him. In contrast to Mwyshkin, +Rogozhin, the merchant, is the incarnation of undisciplined passion, +who ends by killing the thing he loves, Nastasia, also a creature of +unbridled impulses,--because he feels that he can never really and +fully possess her. The catastrophe, the description of the night after +Rogozhin has killed Nastasia, is like nothing else in literature; +lifelike in detail and immense, in the way in which it makes you +listen at the keyhole of the soul, immense with the immensity of a +great revelation. The minor characters in the book are also all of +them remarkable; one of them, the General's wife, Madame Epanchin, has +an indescribable and playful charm. + +_The Idiot_ was followed by _The Possessed_, or _Devils_, printed in +1871-72, called thus after the Devils in the Gospel of St. Luke, that +left the possessed man and went into the swine; the Devils in the book +are the hangers-on of Nihilism between 1862 and 1869. The book +anticipated the future, and in it Dostoyevsky created characters who +were identically the same, and committed identically the same crimes, +as men who actually lived many years later in 1871, and later still. +The whole book turns on the exploitation by an unscrupulous, +ingenious, and iron-willed knave of the various weaknesses of a crowd +of idealist dupes and disciples. One of them is a decadent, one of +them is one of those idealists "whom any strong idea strikes all of a +sudden and annihilates his will, sometimes for ever"; one of them is a +maniac whose single idea is the production of the Superman which he +thinks will come, when it will be immaterial to a man whether he lives +or dies, and when he will be prepared to kill himself not out of fear +but in order to kill fear. That man will be God. Not the God-man, but +the Man-God. The plan of the unscrupulous leader, Peter Verkhovensky, +who was founded on Nechaev, a Nihilist of real life, is to create +disorder, and amid the disorder to seize the authority; he imagines a +central committee of which he pretends to be the representative, +organizes a small local committee, and persuades his dupes that a +network of similar small committees exist all over Russia; his aim +being to create them gradually, by persuading people in every plot of +fresh ground that they exist everywhere else. + +Thus the idea of the book was to show that the strength of Nihilism +lay, not in high dogmas and theories held by a large and +well-organized society, but in the strength of the will of one or two +men reacting on the weaker herd and exploiting the strength, the +weakness, and the one-sidedness of its ideals, a herd which was +necessarily weak owing to that very one-sidedness. In order to bind +his disciples with a permanent bond, Verkhovensky exploits the _idee +fixe_ of suicide and the superman, which is held by one of his dupes, +to induce him to commit a crime before he kills himself, and thus make +away with another member of the committee who is represented as being +a spy. Once this is done, the whole committee will be jointly +responsible, and bound to him by the ties of blood and fear. But +Verkhovensky is not the hero of the book. The hero is Stavrogin, whom +Verkhovensky regards as his trump card, because of the strength of his +character, which leads him to commit the most outrageous +extravagances, and at the same time to remain as cold as ice; but +Verkhovensky's whole design is shattered on Stavrogin's character, all +the murders already mentioned are committed, the whole scheme comes to +nothing, the conspirators are discovered, and Peter escapes abroad. + +When _Devils_ appeared in 1871, it was looked upon as a gross +exaggeration, but real life in subsequent years was to produce +characters and events of the same kind, which were more startling than +Dostoyevsky's fiction. The book is the least well-constructed of +Dostoyevsky's; the narrative is disconnected, and the events, +incidents, and characters so crowded together, that the general effect +is confused; on the other hand, it contains isolated scenes which +Dostoyevsky never surpassed; and in its strength and in its +limitations it is perhaps his most characteristic work. + +From 1873-80 Dostoyevsky went back to journalism, and wrote his _Diary +of a Writer_, in which he commented on current events. In 1880, he +united all conflicting and hostile parties and shades of public +opinion, by the speech he made at the unveiling of Pushkin's memorial, +in one common bond of enthusiasm. At the end of the seventies, he +returned to a work already begun, _The Brothers Karamazov_, which, +although it remains the longest of his books, was never finished. It +is the story of three brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, and Alyosha; their +father is a cynical sensualist. The eldest brother is an +undisciplined, passionate character, who expiates his passions by +suffering; the second brother is a materialist, the tragedy of whose +inner life forms a greater part of the book; the third brother, +Alyosha, is a lover of humanity, and a believer in God and man. He +seeks a monastery, but his spiritual father sends him out into the +world, to live and to suffer. He is to go through the furnace of the +world and experience many trials; for the microbe of lust that is in +his family is dormant in him also. The book was called the _History of +a Great Sinner_, and the sinner was to be Alyosha. But Dostoyevsky +died before this part of the subject is even approached. + +He died in January 1881; the crowds of men and women of all sorts and +conditions of life that attended his funeral, and the extent and the +sincerity of the grief manifested, gave it an almost mythical +greatness. The people gave him a funeral such as few kings or heroes +have ever had. Without fear of controversy or contradiction one can +now say that Dostoyevsky's place in Russian literature is at the top, +equal and in the opinion of some superior to that of Tolstoy in +greatness. He is also one of the greatest writers the world has ever +produced, not because, like Tolstoy, he saw life steadily and saw it +whole, and painted it with the supreme and easy art of a Velasquez; +nor because, like Turgenev, he wove exquisite pictures into musical +words. Dostoyevsky was not an artist; his work is shapeless; his books +are like quarries where granite and dross, gold and ore are mingled. +He paid no attention to style, and yet so strong and vital is his +spoken word that when the Moscow Art Theatre put some scenes in _The +Brothers Karamazov_ and _Devils_ on the stage, they found they could +not alter one single syllable; and sometimes his words have a power +beyond that of words, a power that only music has. There are pages +where Dostoyevsky expresses the anguish of the soul in the same manner +as Wagner expressed the delirium of dying Tristram. I should indeed +put the matter the other way round, and say that in the last act of +Tristram, Wagner is as great as Dostoyevsky. But Dostoyevsky is great +because of the divine message he gives, not didactically, not by +sermons, but by the goodness that emanates, like a precious balm, from +the characters he creates; because more than any other books in the +world his books reflect not only the teaching and the charity, but the +accent and the divine aura of love that is in the Gospels. + +"I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, +conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that +addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave, +and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!" These words, spoken by +Charlotte Bronte's _Jane Eyre_, express what Dostoyevsky's books do. +His spirit addresses our spirit. "Be no man's judge; humble love is a +terrible power which effects more than violence. Only active love can +bring out faith. Love men, and do not be afraid of their sins; love +man in his sin; love all the creatures of God, and pray God to make +you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the birds." This was +Father Zosima's advice to Alyosha. And that is the gist of +Dostoyevsky's message to mankind. "Life," Father Zosima also says to +Alyosha, "will bring you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on +account of them, and you will bless life and cause others to bless +it." Here we have the whole secret of Dostoyevsky's greatness. He +blessed life, and he caused others to bless it. + +It is objected that his characters are abnormal; that he deals with +the diseased, with epileptics, neurasthenics, criminals, sensualists, +madmen; but it is just this very fact which gives so much strength and +value to the blessing he gave to life; it is owing to this fact that +he causes others to bless life; because he was cast in the nethermost +circle of life's inferno; he was thrown together with the refuse of +humanity, with the worst of men and with the most unfortunate; he saw +the human soul on the rack, and he saw the vilest diseases that +afflict the human soul; he faced the evil without fear or blinkers; +and there, in the inferno, in the dust and ashes, he recognized the +print of divine footsteps and the fragrance of goodness; he cried from +the abyss: "Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just!" and he blessed life. +It is true that his characters are taken almost entirely from the +_Despised and Rejected_, as one of his books was called, and often +from the ranks of the abnormal; but when a great writer wishes to +reveal the greatest adventures and the deepest experiences which the +soul of man can undergo, it is in vain for him to take the normal +type; it has no adventures. The adventures of the soul of Fortinbras +would be of no help to mankind; but the adventures of Hamlet are of +help to mankind, and the adventures of Don Quixote; and neither Don +Quixote nor Hamlet are normal types. + +Dostoyevsky wrote the tragedy of life and of the soul, and to do this +he chose circumstances as terrific as those which unhinged the reason +of King Lear, shook that of Hamlet, and made Oedipus blind himself. +His books resemble Greek tragedies by the magnitude of the spiritual +adventures they set forth; they are unlike Greek Tragedies in the +Christian charity and the faith and the hope which goes out of them; +they inspire the reader with courage, never with despair, although +Dostoyevsky, face to face with the last extremities of evil, never +seeks to hide it or to shun it, but merely to search for the soul of +goodness in it. He did not search in vain, and just as, when he was on +his way to Siberia, a conversation he had with a fellow-prisoner +inspired that fellow-prisoner with the feeling that he could go on +living and even face penal servitude, so do Dostoyevsky's books come +to mankind as a message of hope from a radiant country. That is what +constitutes his peculiar greatness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY + + +The fifties, the sixties, and the seventies were, all over Europe, the +epoch of Parnassian poetry. In England, Tennyson was pouring out his +"fervent and faultless melodies," Matthew Arnold was playing his +plaintive harp, and the Pre-Raphaelites were weaving their tapestried +dreams; in France, Gautier was carving his cameos, Banville's +Harlequins and Columbines were dancing on a Watteau-like stage in the +silver twilight of Corot, Baudelaire was at work on his sombre bronze, +Sully-Prudhomme twanged his ivory lyre, and Leconte de Lisle was +issuing his golden coinage. It was, in poetry, the epoch of art for +art's sake. + +Russian poetry did not escape the universal tendency; but in Russia +everything was conspiring to put poetry, and especially that kind of +poetry, in the shade. In the first place, events of great magnitude +were happening--the wide reforms, the emancipation of the serfs, the +growth of Nihilism, which was the product of the disillusion at the +result of the reforms: in the second place, criticism under the +influence of Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, and Dobrolyubov was entirely +realistic and positivist, preaching not art for life's sake only, but +the absolute futility of poetry; and, in the third place, work of the +supremest kind was being done in narrative fiction; in the fourth +place, no prophet-poet was forthcoming whose genius was great enough +to voice national aspirations. All this tended to put poetry in the +shade, especially as such poets as did exist were, with one notable +exception, Parnassians, whose talent dwelt aloof from the turbid +stream of life, and who sought to express the adventures of their +souls, which were emotional and artistic, either in dreamy music or in +exquisite shapes and colours. This neglect of verse lasted right up +until the end of the seventies. When, however, in the eighties, the +wave of political crisis reached its climax and, after the +assassination of Alexander II, rolled back into a sea of stagnant +reaction, the poets, who had been hitherto neglected, and quietly +singing all the while, were discovered once more, and the shares in +poetry continued to rise as time went on; thus the poets of the +sixties reaped their due meed of appreciation. + +A proof of how widespread and deep this neglect was is that TYUTCHEV, +whose work attracted no attention whatever until 1854, and met with no +wide appreciation until a great deal later, was four years younger +than Pushkin, and a man of thirty when Goethe died. He went on living +until 1873, and can be called the first of the Parnassians. +Politically, he was a Slavophile, and sang the "resignation" and +"long-suffering" of the Russian people, which he preferred to the +stiff-neckedness of the West. But the value of his work lies less in +his Slavophile aspirations than in its depth of thought and lyrical +feeling, in the contrast between the gloomy forebodings of his +imagination and the sunlike images he gives of nature. His verse is +like a spring day, dark with ominous thunderclouds, out of which a +rainbow and a shaft of sunlight fall on a dewy orchard and light it +with a silvery smile. His verse is, on the one hand, full of +foreboding and terror at the fate of man and the shadow of +nothingness, and, on the other hand, it twitters like a bird over the +freshness and sunshine of spring. He sings the spring again and again, +and no Russian poet has ever sung the glory, the mystery, the wonder, +and the terror of night as he has done; his whole work is compounded +of glowing pictures of nature and a world of longing and of +unutterable dreams. + +The dreamy dominion of the Parnassian age, on whose threshold Tyutchev +stood, was to be disturbed by the notes of a harsher and stronger +music. + +NEKRASOV (1821-77), Russia's "sternest painter," and certainly one of +her best, drew his inspiration direct from life, and sang the +sufferings, the joys, and the life of the people. He is a Russian +Crabbe; nature and man are his subjects, but nature as the friend and +foe of man, as a factor, the most important factor in man's life, and +not as an ideal storehouse from which a Shelley can draw forms more +real than living man, nurslings of immortality, or a Wordsworth reap +harvests of the inward eye. He called his muse the "Muse of Vengeance +and of Grief." He is an uncompromising realist, like Crabbe, and +idealizes nothing in his pictures of the peasant's life. Like Crabbe, +he has a deep note of pathos, and a keen but not so minute an eye for +landscape. + +On the other hand, he at times attains to imaginative sublimity in his +descriptions, as, for instance, in his poem called _The Red-nosed +Frost_, where King Frost approaches a peasant widow who is at work in +the winter forest, and freezes her to death. As Daria is gradually +freezing to death, the frost comes to her like a warrior; and his +semblance and attributes are drawn in a series of splendid stanzas. He +sings to her of his riches that no profusion can decrease, and of his +kingdom of silver and diamonds and pearls: then, as she freezes, she +dreams of a hot summer's day, and of the rye harvest and of the +familiar songs-- + + "Away with the song she is soaring, + She surrenders herself to its stream, + In the world there is no such sweet singing + As that which we hear in a dream." + +His longest and most ambitious work was a kind of popular epic, _Who +is Happy in Russia?_ written in short lines which have the popular +ring and accent. Some peasants start on a pilgrimage to find out who +is happy in Russia. They fly on a magic carpet, and interview +representatives of the different classes of society, the pope, the +landowner, the peasant woman, each new interview producing a whole +series of stories, sometimes idyllic and sometimes tragic, and all +showing their genius as intimate pictures of various phases of Russian +life. Here, again, the analogy with Crabbe suggests itself, for +Nekrasov's tales, taking into consideration the difference between the +two countries, have a marked affinity, both in their subject matter, +their variety, their stern realism, their pathos, their bitterness, +and their observation of nature, with Crabbe's stories in verse. + +Two of Nekrasov's long poems tell the story in the form of +reminiscence,--and here again the naturalness and appropriateness of +the diction is perfect,--of the Russian women, Princess Volkonsky and +Princess Trubetzkoy, who followed their husbands, condemned to penal +servitude for taking part in the Decembrist rising, to Siberia. Here, +again, Nekrasov strikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, all the +more poignant from the absolute simplicity with which the tales are +told. Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of the time and has only +one rival, whom we shall describe presently. + +The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET +(1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write +about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic, +and all three remained aloof from political or social questions. + +Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old +ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and +his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an +exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy. + +The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete +plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and +impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his +verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as +delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between +words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo. + + "The world in shadow slipped away + And, like a silent dream took flight, + Like Adam, I in Eden lay + Alone, and face to face with night." + +He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the +dawn-- + + "A whisper, a breath, a shiver, + The trills of the nightingale, + A silver light and a quiver + And a sunlit trail. + The glimmer of night and the shadows of night + In an endless race, + Enchanted changes, flight after flight, + On the loved one's face. + The blood of the roses tingling + In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey, + And tears and kisses commingling-- + The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!" + +Polonsky's verse, in contrast to Fet's gentle epicurean temperament, +his delicate half-tones and illusive whispers, is made of sterner +stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov's sculptural lines, it is +pre-eminently musical, and reflects a fine and charming personality. +His area of subjects is wide; he can write a child's poem as +transparent and simple as Hans Andersen--as in his conversation +between the sun and the moon--or call up the "glory that was Greece," +as in the poem when his "Aspasia" listens to the crowds acclaiming +Pericles, and waits in rapturous suspense for his return--an evocation +that Browning would have envied for its life and Swinburne for its +sound. + +But neither Maikov, Fet, nor Polonsky, exquisite as much of their +writing is, produced anything of the calibre of Nekrasov, even in +their own province; that is to say, they were none of them as great in +the artistic field as he was in his didactic field. Compared with him, +they are minor poets. There is one poet of this epoch who does rival +Nekrasov in another field, and that is COUNT ALEXIS TOLSTOY (1817-75), +who was also a Parnassian and remained aloof from didactic literature; +yet, under the pseudonym of Kuzma Prutkov, he wrote a satire, a +collection of platitudes, that are household words in Russia; also a +short history of Russia in consummately neat and witty satirical +verse. As well as his satires, he wrote an historical novel, _Prince +Serebryany_, and more important still, a trilogy of plays, dealing +with the most dramatic epoch of Russian history, that of Ivan the +Terrible. The trilogy, written in verse, consists of the "Death of +Ivan the Terrible," "The Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch" and "Tsar Boris." +They are all of them acting plays, form part of the current classical +repertory, and are effective, impressive and arresting when played on +the stage. + +But it is as a poet and as a lyrical poet that Alexis Tolstoy is most +widely known. Versatile with a versatility that recalls Pushkin, he +writes epical ballads on Russian, Northern, and even Scottish themes, +and dramatic poems on Don Juan, St. John Damascene, and Mary +Magdalene; and, besides these, a whole series of personal lyrics, +which are full of charm, tenderness, music and colour, harmonious in +form and transparent. No Russian poet since Pushkin has written such +tender love lyrics, and nobody has sung the Russian spring, the +Russian summer, and the Russian autumn with such tender lyricism. His +poem on the early spring, when the fern is still tightly curled, the +shepherd's note still but half heard in the morning, and the birch +trees just green, is one of the most tender, fresh, and perfect +expressions of first love, morning, spring, dew, and dawn in the +world's literature. His songs have inspired Tchaikovsky and other +composers. The strongest and highest chord he struck is in his St. +John Damascene; this contains a magnificent dirge for the dead which +can bear comparison even with the _Dies Irae_ for majesty, solemn +pathos, and plangent rhythm. + +His pictures of landscapes have a peculiar charm. The following is an +attempt at a translation-- + + "Through the slush and the ruts of the highway, + By the side of the dam of the stream, + Where the fisherman's nets are drying, + The carriage jogs on, and I dream. + + I dream, and I look at the highway, + At the sky that is sullen and grey, + At the lake with its shelving reaches, + And the curling smoke far away. + + By the dam, with a cheerless visage + Walks a Jew, who is ragged and sere. + With a thunder of foam and of splashing, + The waters race over the weir. + + A boy over there is whistling + On a hemlock flute of his make; + And the wild ducks get up in a panic + And call as they sweep from the lake. + + And near the old mill some workmen + Are sitting upon the green ground, + With a wagon of sacks, a cart horse + Plods past with a lazy sound. + + It all seems to me so familiar, + Although I have never been here, + The roof of that house out yonder, + And the boy, and the wood, and the weir. + + And the voice of the grumbling mill-wheel, + And that rickety barn, I know, + I have been here and seen this already, + And forgotten it all long ago. + + The very same horse here was dragging + Those sacks with the very same sound, + And those very same workmen were sitting + By the rickety mill on the ground. + + And that Jew, with his beard, walked past me, + And those waters raced through the weir; + Yes, all this has happened already, + But I cannot tell when or where." + +The people also produced a poet during this epoch and gave Koltsov a +successor, in the person of NIKITIN; his themes are taken straight +from life, and he became known through his patriotic songs written +during the Crimean War; but he is most successful in his descriptions +of nature, of sunset on the fields, and dawn, and the swallow's nest +in the grumbling mill. Two other poets, whose work became well known +later, but passed absolutely unnoticed in the sixties, were +SLUCHEVSKY, a philosophical poet, whose verse, excellent in +description, suffers from clumsiness in form, and APUKHTIN, whose +collected poems and ballads, although he began to write in 1859, were +not published until 1886. Apukhtin is a Parnassian. The bulk of his +work, though perfect in form, is uninteresting; but he wrote one or +two lyrics which have a place in any Russian Golden Treasury, and his +poems are largely read now. + +In the eighties, a reaction against the anti-poetical tendency set in, +and poets began to spring up like mushrooms. Of these, the most +popular and the most remarkable is NADSON (1862-87); he died when he +was twenty-four, of consumption. Since then his verse has gone through +twenty-one editions, and 110,000 copies have been sold; ten editions +were published in his own lifetime. And there are innumerable musical +settings by various composers to his lyrics. His verse inaugurates a +new epoch in Russian poetry, the distinguishing features of which are +a great attention to form and _technique_, a Parnassian love of colour +and shape, and a deep melancholy. + +Nadson sings the melancholy of youth, the dreams and disillusions of +adolescence, and the hopelessness of the stagnant atmosphere of +reaction to which he belonged. This last fact accounted in some +measure for his extraordinary popularity. But it was by no means its +sole cause; his verse is not only exquisite but magically musical, to +an extent which makes the verse of other poets seem a stuff of coarser +clay, and his pictures of nature, of spring, of night, and especially +of night in the Riviera (with a note of passionate home-sickness), +have the aromatic, intoxicating sweetness of syringa. Verse such as +this, sensitive, ultra-delicate, morbid, nervous, and pessimistic, is +bound to have the defects of its qualities, in a marked degree; one is +soon inclined to have enough of its sultry, oppressive atmosphere, its +delicate perfume, its unrelieved gloom and its music, which is nearly +always not only in a minor key but in the same key. Nobody was more +keenly aware of this than Nadson himself, and one of his most +beautiful poems begins thus-- + + "Dear friend, I know, I know, I only know too well + That my verse is barren of all strength, and pale, and delicate, + And often just because of its debility I suffer + And often weep in secret in the silence of the night." + +And in another poem he writes his apology. He has never used verse as +a toy to chase tedium; the blessed gift of the singer has often been +to him an unbearable cross, and he has often vowed to keep silent; +but, if the wind blows, the AEolian harp must needs respond, and +streams of the hills cannot help rushing to the valley if the sun +melts the snow on the mountain tops. This apologia more than all +criticism defines his gift. His temperament is an AEolian harp, which, +whether it will or no, is sensitive to the breeze; its strings are +few, and tuned to one key; nevertheless some of the strains it has +sobbed have the stamp of permanence as well as that of ethereal magic. + +The poets that come after Nadson belong to the present day; there are +many, and they increase in number every year. The so-called "decadent" +school were influenced by Shelley, Verlaine, and the French +symbolists; but there is nothing which is decadent in the ordinary +sense of the word in their verse. Their influence may not be lasting, +but they are factors in Russian literature, and some of them, SOLOGUB, +BRUSOV, BALMONT, and IVANOV, have produced work which any school would +be glad to claim. This is also true of ALEXANDER BLOCH, one of the +most original as well as one of the most exquisite of living Russian +poets. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +With the death of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, the great epoch of Russian +literature came to an end. A period of literary as well as of +political stagnation began, which lasted until the Russo-Japanese War. +This was followed by the revolutionary movement, which, in its turn, +produced a literary as well as a political chaos, the effect of which +and of the manifold reactions it brought about are still being felt. +It was only natural, if one considers the extent and the quality of +the productions of the preceding epoch, that the soil of literary +Russia should require a rest. + +As it is, one can count the writers of prominence which the epoch of +stagnation produced on one's fingers--CHEKHOV, GARSHIN, KOROLENKO, and +at the end of the period MAXIME GORKY, and apart from them, in a +by-path of his own, MEREZHKOVSKY. Of these Chekhov and Gorky tower +above the others. Chekhov enlarged the range of Russian literature by +painting the middle-class and the _Intelligentsia_, and brought back +to Russian literature the note of humour; and Gorky broke altogether +fresh ground by painting the vagabond, the artisan, the tramp, the +thief, the flotsam and jetsam of the big town and the highway, and by +painting in a new manner. + +Gorky's work came like that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling to England, as a +revelation. Not only did his subject matter open the doors on +dominions undreamed of, but his attitude towards life and that of his +heroes towards life seemed to be different from that of all Russian +novelists before his advent; and yet the difference between him and +his forerunners is not so great as it appears at first sight. It is +true that his rough and rebellious heroes, instead of playing the +Hamlet, or of finding the solution of life in charity and humility or +submission, are partisans of the survival of the fittest with a +vengeance, the survival of the strongest fist and the sharpest knife; +yet are these new heroes really so different from the uncompromising +type that we have already seen sharing one half of the Russian stage, +right through the story of Russian literature, from Bazarov back to +Peter the Great, and on whose existence was founded the remark that +Peter the Great was one of the ingredients in the Russian character? +Put Bazarov on the road, or Lermontov, or even Peter the Great, and +you get Gorky's barefooted hero. + +Where Gorky created something absolutely new was in the surroundings +and in the manner of life which he described, and in the way he +described them; this is especially true of his treatment of nature: +for the first time in Russian prose literature, we get away from the +"orthodox" landscape of convention, and we are face to face with the +elements. We feel as if a new breath of air had entered into +literature; we feel as people accustomed to the manner in which the +poets treated nature in England in the eighteenth century must have +felt when Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Coleridge began to write. + +Chekhov worked on older lines. He descends directly from Turgenev, +although his field is a different one. He, more than any other writer +and better than any other writer, painted the epoch of stagnation, +when Russia, as a Russian once said, was playing itself to death at +_vindt_ (an older form of _Bridge_). The tone of his work is grey, and +indeed resembles, as Tolstoy said, that of a photographer, by its +objective realism as well as by its absence of high tones; yet if +Chekhov is a photographer, he is at the same time a supreme artist, an +artist in black and white, and his pessimism is counteracted by two +other factors, his sense of humour and his humanity; were it not so, +the impression of sadness one would derive from the sum of misery +which his crowded stage of merchants, students, squires, innkeepers, +waiters, schoolmasters, magistrates, popes, officials, make up between +them, would be intolerable. Some of Chekhov's most interesting work +was written for the stage, on which he also brought Scenes of Country +Life, which is the sub-title of the play _Uncle Vanya_. There are the +same grey tints, the same weary, amiable, and slack people, bankrupt +of ideals and poor in hope, whom we meet in the stories; and here, +too, behind the sordid triviality and futility, we hear the "still sad +music of humanity." But in order that the tints of Chekhov's delicate +living and breathing photographs can be effective on the stage, very +special acting is necessary, in order to convey the quality of +atmosphere which is his special gift. Fortunately he met with exactly +the right technique and the appropriate treatment at the Art Theatre +at Moscow. + +Chekhov died in 1904, soon after the Russo-Japanese War had begun. +Apart from the main stream and tradition of Russian fiction and +Russian prose, Merezhkovsky occupies a unique place, a place which +lies between criticism and imaginative historical fiction, not unlike, +in some respects--but very different in others--that which is occupied +by Walter Pater in English fiction. His best known work, at least his +best known work in Europe, is a prose trilogy, "The Death of the Gods" +(a study of Julian the apostate), "The Resurrection of the Gods" (the +story of Leonardo da Vinci), and "The Antichrist" (the story of Peter +the Great and his son Alexis), which has been translated into nearly +every European language. This trilogy is an essay in imaginative +historical reconstitution; it testifies to a real and deep culture, +and it is lit at times by flashes of imaginative inspiration which +make the scenes of the past live; it is alive with suggestive thought; +but it is not throughout convincing, there is a touch of Bulwer +Lytton as well as a touch of Goethe and Pater in it. Merezhkovsky is +perhaps more successful in his purely critical work, his books on +Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Gogol, which are infinitely stimulating, +suggestive, and original, than in his historical fiction, although, +needless to say, his criticism appeals to a far narrower public. He is +in any case one of the most brilliant and interesting of Russian +modern writers, and perhaps the best known outside Russia. + +During the war, a writer of fiction made his name by a remarkable +book, namely KUPRIN, who in his novel, _The Duel_, gave a vivid and +masterly picture of the life of an officer in the line. Kuprin has +since kept the promise of his early work. At the same time, LEONID +ANDREEV came forward with short stories, plays, a description of war +(_The Red Laugh_), moralities, not uninfluenced by Maeterlinck, and a +limpid and beautiful style in which pessimism seemed to be speaking +its last word. + +In 1905 the revolutionary movement broke out, with its great hopes, +its disillusions, its period of anarchy on the one hand and +repression on the other; out of the chaos of events came a chaos of +writing rather than literature, and in its turn this produced, in +literature as well as in life, a reaction, or rather a series of +reactions, towards symbolism, aestheticism, mysticism on the one hand, +and towards materialism--not of theory but of practice--on the other. +But since these various reactions are now going on, and are vitally +affecting the present day, the revolutionary movement of 1905 seems +the right point to take leave of Russian literature. In 1905 a new era +began, and what that era will ultimately produce, it is too soon even +to hazard a guess. + +Looking back over the record of Russian literature, the first thing +which must strike us, if we think of the literature of other +countries, is its comparatively short life. There is in Russian +literature no Middle Ages, no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no +Renaissance, no _Grand Siecle_. Literature begins in the nineteenth +century. The second thing which will perhaps strike us is that, in +spite of its being the youngest of all the literatures, it seems to be +spiritually the oldest. In some respects it seems to have become +over-ripe before it reached maturity. But herein, perhaps, lies the +secret of its greatness, and this may be the value of its contribution +to the soul of mankind. It is-- + + "Old in grief and very wise in tears": + +and its chief gift to mankind is an expression, made with a +naturalness and sincerity that are matchless, and a love of reality +which is unique,--for all Russian literature, whether in prose or +verse, is rooted in reality--of that grief and that wisdom; the grief +and wisdom which come from a great heart; a heart that is large enough +to embrace the world and to drown all the sorrows therein with the +immensity of its sympathy, its fraternity, its pity, its charity, and +its love. + + + + +CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + + 1113. _The Chronicle of Nestor._ + + 1692. First play produced in Russia, Gregory. + Simeon Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted. + + 1703. The first Russian newspaper, _The Russian News_, appears. + + 1725. Death of Peter the Great. + Foundation of the Academy of Science. + + 1744. Death of Kantemir. + + 1750. Death of Tatishchev. + + 1755. University of Moscow founded. + + 1762. Accession of Catherine the Great. + + 1765. Death of Lomonosov. + + 1790. Radishchev's _Journey Through Russia_ published. + + 1796. Death of Catherine the Great. + + 1800. First edition of _The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_ + published. + + 1802. Zhukovsky translates Gray's _Elegy_. + Death of Radishchev. + + 1806. Krylov's first fables published. + + 1816. Death of Derzhavin. + _History of the Russian State_, by Karamzin, published. + + 1819. University of St. Petersburg founded. + + 1820. Pushkin's _Ruslan and Ludmila_ published. + + 1823. Griboyedov's _Misfortune of Being Clever_ circulated. + First Canto of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1825. The Decembrist Attempt. + + 1826. Rileev hanged. + Death of Karamzin. + + 1827. Pushkin's _Gypsies_ published. + + 1829. Death of Griboyedov. + Pushkin's _Poltava_ published. + + 1831. Pushkin's _Boris Godunov_ published. + Complete version of _Eugene Onegin_ published. + + 1832. Gogol's _Evening on the Farm near the Dikanka_ published. + + 1834. Gogol's _Mirgorod_ published. + + 1835. Gogol's _Revisor_ produced on the stage. + + 1836. Chaadaev's letters published. + + 1837. Death of Pushkin. + + 1841. Death of Lermontov. + + 1842. Death of Koltsov. + Gogol's _Dead Souls_ published. + + 1844. Death of Krylov. + + 1847. Gogol's correspondence published. + Turgenev's _Sportsman's Sketches_ published. + Death of Belinsky. + + 1849. Dostoyevsky imprisoned. + + 1856-7. Saltykov's _Government Sketches_ appear. + + 1859. Ostrovsky's _Storm_ produced. + Goncharov's _Oblomov_ published. + + 1860. Turgenev's _Fathers and Sons_ published. + + 1861. Emancipation of the Serfs. + + 1862. Pisemsky's _Troubled Sea_ published. + + 1863. Chernyshevsky's _What is to be Done?_ published. + + 1865. Leskov's _No Way Out_ published. + + 1865-1872. Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ appeared. + + 1866. Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ published. + + 1868. Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_ published. + + 1875. Death of Count Alexis Tolstoy. + + 1875-6. Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_ published. + + 1877. Death of Nekrasov. + + 1881. Death of Dostoyevsky. + + 1883. Death of Turgenev. + + 1886. Death of Ostrovsky. + + 1887. Death of Nadson. + + 1889. Death of Saltykov. + + 1900. Death of Soloviev. + Production of Chekhov's _Chaika_ (Seagull). + + 1904. Production of Chekhov's _Cherry Orchard_. + Death of Chekhov. + + 1910. Death of Tolstoy. + + + + +INDEX + + + Acton, Lord, 146 + + Ainsworth, Harrison, 82 + + Aksakov, Ivan, 154 + + ----, Serge, 154 f. + + Alexander I, 9, 30 f., 44, 124, 169 + + ---- II, 52, 153, 160, 179, 227 + + Alexis, Tsar, 23 + + Andreev, Leonid, 248 + + _Anna Karenina_, Tolstoy's, 205 f. + + Apukhtin, 238 + + Arnold, Matthew, 123, 146, 226 + + Atheism and Socialism, 150 f. + + + Bakunin, 179, 180 + + Balfour, Mr. A. J., 182 + + Balmont, 242 + + Bariatinsky, Prince, 101 + + Batyushkov, 58 + + Baudelaire, 226 + + Beaconsfield, Lord, 146 + + Belinsky, 142, 150 + + _Bell, The_, Herzen edits, 151, 153, 180 + + Bloch, Alexander, 242 + + _Bogoiskateli_, 198, 199 + + Bronte, Charlotte, 222 + + ----, Emily, 46 + + Brueckner, Prof., 144, 145, 147, 214 + + Brusov, 242 + + Bulgaria, 12 + + Bulgaria, liberation of, 170, 171 + + Buerger's _Leonore_ translated into Russian, 52 + + Burns, Robert, 125 + + Byron, 61 f., 66, 67, 71, 72 (footnotes), 73, 98, 119, 123, 146 + + Byzantium, Emperor of, 11 + + + Catherine I, 18 (footnote) + + ---- II, 27, 32, 33, 80, 155 + + Chaadaev, 148 + + Chekhov, 243, 244 f. + + Chernyshevsky, 180, 181, 227 + + Chesterton, Mr. G. K., 182 + + Christianity of the East, 11 + + _Chronicle of Kiev_, the, 15 f. + + _Chronicle of Nestor_, the, 15 f. + + Church, the, influence on Russian literature, 11, 21 + + Constantine, 44 + + Corot, 226 + + Crabbe, Nekrasov and, 229 f. + + Crimean War, the, 160, 202, 238 + + + Danilevsky, 180 + + Daudet, 172 + + "Decembrist" rising, the, 44, 45, 61, 92 + + Delvig, Baron, 101 + + Demetrius, 21, 67 + + Derzhavin, 29, 56 + + Diderot, 27 + + Dobrolyubov, 180, 181, 227 + + Donne, John, 97 + + Dostoyevsky, 96, 99, 109, 143, 145, 160, 161, 164, 167, 173, 180, + 192, 196 f., 200, 210 f., 220 f. + + + Eastern and Western Churches, schism of, 13, 22, 182, 183 + + Eliot, Sir Charles, 13 + + Elizabeth, Empress, 26 + + Emancipation of the serfs, the, 160, 227 + + + Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter the Great, 85 + + Fet, 232 f. + + Flaubert, 162, 204 + + French influence in Russia, 26 + + French Revolution, the, 27, 40, 159 + + + Gagarin, Prince, 150 + + Garshin, 243 + + Gautier, 226 + + German influence in Russia, 26 + + Goethe, death of, 228 + + ----, Pushkin's resemblance to, 92 f. + + Gogol, Nicholas, 126 f., 190 + + Goncharov, 143, 176 f. + + Gorky, Maxime, 164, 243, 244 f. + + Gray's _Elegy_, Russian translations of, 52, 53 + + Gregory, Protestant pastor of the Sloboda, 23 + + Griboyedov, 45 f., 126, 191 + + Grigoriev, 179, 180 + + Grigorovich, 194, 195 + + Grimm's Fairy Tales, 84 + + + Haumant, M., 168 + + Heckeren-Dantes' duel with Pushkin, 90 + + Heine, 98 + + Herzen, Alexander, 143, 150 f., 180 + + Hoffmann, 127 + + Homyakov, 154 + + Hugo, Victor, 117, 118, 172 + + + Ivan III, 20, 21, 24 + + ---- IV ("The Terrible"), 24, 67, 235 + + Ivanov, 242 + + + _Jane Eyre_ cited, 222 + + + Kantemir, Prince, 27 + + Karakozov, 153 + + Karamzin, 18, 32 f., 141 + + Katkov, 180, 182 + + Keats, 146 + + _Kidnapped_ (Stevenson's), 129 + + Kiev, destruction of, 19; + rebuilding of, 21 + + ----, the mother of Russian culture, 10 f. + + Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, 244 + + Koltsov, 124 f. + + Korolenko, 243 + + Krylov, 34 f., 176 f. + + Kuprin, 248 + + + La Fontaine, 35 f. + + Lang, Andrew, 128 + + Latin language taught in Moscow, 22 + + Le Maistre, Joseph, 148, 149 + + Leo X, 13 + + Lermontov, 102 f., 126 + + Leskov, vi, 189 f. + + Lisle, Leconte de, 226 + + Literary criticism, 141 + + Liturgical books, revision of, 22 + + Lomonosov, Michael, 26, 29 + + Luther, 13 + + Lytton, Bulwer, 248 + + + Maikov, 232 + + Maupassant, 128, 172 + + Meredith, George, 169, 172 + + Merezhkovsky, 147, 205, 243, 247 f. + + Merimee, 83, 141 + + Mill, John Stuart, 181 + + Mickiewicz, the Pole, 87 + + Montesquieu, 27 + + Morley, John, 146 + + Moscow, 10, 19, 21 + + Moscow Art Theatre, the, v, 221, 222, 247 + + ----, European culture in, 23 + + _Moscow Journal_ founded by Karamzin, 32 + + Moscow, Pushkin's memorial at, 99, 220 + + ----, schools in, 22 + + ----, the fire of, 18 + + ----, University of, 26 + + Mozart of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Musin-Pushkin, Count. _See_ Pushkin. + + Musset, 118, 119 + + Mussorgsky, 67 + + + Nadson, 239 f. + + Napoleon, 30 f., 40, 111, 204 + + Nechaev, 218 + + Nekrasov, 229 f., 234 + + Nicholas, 44 + + Nicholas, Emperor, 160 + + Nicholas I, 103 + + Nihilism, 152, 163, 171, 173, 179, 217, 218, 227 + + Nikitin, 238 + + Norsemen in Russia, 10 + + + _Odyssey_, the, Russian translation of, 52 + + Ostrovsky, 193 f. + + + Palaeologa, Sophia, 21 + + Paris revolution of 1848, the, 159 + + Parnassian poetry, the epoch of, 226 f. + + Pater, Walter, 247, 248 + + Paul, Emperor, 33 + + Peter the Great, 21, 24 f., 71, 85, 97 + + ---- ---- of Poetry, the, 95 + + Petrashevsky and his followers, 159, 160 + + Pisarev, 180, 181, 227 + + Pisemsky, 191, 193 + + Poe, E. A., 86 + + Poland, 21, 24 + + Poland, the rising in, 180 + + Poles occupy Moscow, 24 + + Polevoy, 142 + + Polezhaev, 101 + + Polonsky, 232, 233 f. + + Polotsky, Simeon, 22 f. + + Preobrazhenskoe and its theatre, 23 + + Pre-Raphaelites, the, 226 + + Printing press, the first, 21 + + Propagandists of Western Ideas the, 148 f. + + Prutkov, Kuzma. _See_ Tolstoy, Count Alexis. + + Pugachev and the Cossack rising, 80 + + Pushkin vi, 18, 34, 41, 43, 50, 54 f., 109, 110, 123, 126, 132, + 135, 138, 143, 162, 167, 220 + + + Radishchev, 27 f. + + Rakhmaninov, 81 + + Rimsky-Korsakov, 81 + + Rodionovna, Anna, 84, 85 + + Rome, Gogol settles in, 133 + + Rousseau, 27 + + Russia and political liberty, 148 + + ----, Norsemen in, 10, 11 + + ----, Tartar invasion of, 19, 24 + + ----, the revolutionary movement of 1905, 243, 248, 249 + + Russian literature, beginnings of, 9 f. + + ---- ----, dawn of, 30 f. + + ---- ----, second renascence of, 159 + + ---- ----, the age of prose, 126 f. + + ---- ----, the second age of poetry, 226 f. + + ---- newspaper, the first, 25 + + ---- Nihilism. _See_ Nihilism. + + ---- trade centres, 10 + + Russia's national poet, 95 + + Russo-Japanese War, the, 243 + + Ryleev, 44 + + + Sainte-Beuve, 146 + + St. Petersburg, 10 + + ---- Jesuits, the, 148 + + ----, the great floods of 1834, 85 + + Saltykov, Michael, vi, 184 f., 190 f. + + Sand, George, 162 + + Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_, Russian translation of, 52 + + Schumann of Russian literature, the, 175 + + Seekers after God, 198 + + Serfs, emancipation of the, 160, 227 + + Shakespeare, Pushkin on, 65, 66 + + Shchedrin. _See_ Saltykov. + + Siberia, Dostoyevsky at, 160, 213, 225 + + ----, Radishchev at, 28 + + Slav race, the, 10 f. + + Slavonic liturgy, introduction of, 12 + + Slavophiles, the, 143, 148, 152, 154, 159, 180, 228 + + Sluchevsky, 238 + + Socialism and Atheism, 150 f. + + Society of Welfare, the, 43 + + Sologub, 242 + + Soloviev, Vladimir, 11, 93, 181 f. + + Stebnitsky. _See_ Leskov. + + Stendhal, 204 + + Stevenson, R. L., 127, 128, 129, 214 + + Strakhov, 180 + + Suffragettes, 163, 164 + + Sully-Prudhomme, 226 + + Suvorov, 30 + + Sviatoslav, 15, 16 + + + Taine, 162 + + Tartar invasion of Russia, the, 19; + the Tartar yoke thrown off, 24 + + Tatishchev, 26 + + Tchaikovsky, 80, 236 + + Tennyson, Lord, 165, 166, 226 + + Thackeray, 172 + + Tolstoy, Count Alexis, 234 f. + + ----, Count Leo, 134, 161, 164, 170, 196 f., 211, 246 + + Turgenev, Ivan, 64, 161 f., 192 + + Tyutchev, 154, 228 + + + Universal church, Soloviev's views on, 182-183 + + University of Moscow, the, 26, 251 + + + Venevitinov, 101 + + Vienna, Congress of, 40, 43 + + Vigny, Alfred de, 202 + + Vinci, Leonardo da, 67 + + Virgil of Russian prose, the, 175 + + Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, 11 + + Volkonsky, Princess, 150 + + Voltaire, 27 + + Volynsky, 147 + + Vyatka, Saltykov banished to, 185 + + Vyazemsky, Prince, 141 + + + _War and Peace_, publication of, 202 f. + + Wells, Mr., 164 + + Wilson, John, 81 + + Woman's Suffrage, 182. _Cf._ Suffragettes. + + Wordsworth, 120, 123 + + + Yakovlev. _Cf._ Herzen, Alexander. + + Yazykov, 101 + + + Zhukovsky, Basil, 51 f., 83 + + Zola, 74, 204 + + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + + The + Home University + Library of Modern Knowledge + + _A Comprehensive Series of New + and Specially Written Books_ + + EDITORS: + + Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. + HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A. + Prof. J. 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"A stirring study."--_The Guardian._ + +51. _WARFARE IN BRITAIN_ + +By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. "Rich in suggestion for the historical +student."--_Edinburgh Evening News._ + +55. _MASTER MARINERS_ + +By J. R. SPEARS. "A continuous story of shipping progress and +adventure.... It reads like a romance."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +61. _NAPOLEON_ + +By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A., Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield +University. (With Maps.) The story of the great Bonaparte's youth, his +career, and his downfall, with some sayings of Napoleon, a genealogy, +and a bibliography. + +66. _THE NAVY AND SEA POWER_ + +By DAVID HANNAY. The author traces the growth of naval power from +early times, and discusses its principles and effects upon the history +of the Western world. + +71. _GERMANY OF TO-DAY_ + +By CHARLES TOWER. "It would be difficult to name any better +summary."--_Daily News._ + +82. _PREHISTORIC BRITAIN_ + +By ROBERT MUNRO, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. (Illustrated.) + +91. _THE ALPS_ + +By ARNOLD LUNN, M.A. (Illustrated.) + +92. _CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA_ + +By PROFESSOR W. R. SHEPHERD. (Maps.) + +97. _THE ANCIENT EAST_ + +By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. (Maps.) + +98. _THE WARS between ENGLAND and AMERICA_ + +By Prof. T. C. SMITH. + +100. _HISTORY OF SCOTLAND_ + +By Prof. R. S. RAIT. + + +_Literature and Art_ + +2. _SHAKESPEARE_ + +By JOHN MASEFIELD. "We have had more learned books on Shakespeare in +the last few years, but not one so wise."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +27. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN_ + +By G. H. MAIR, M.A. "Altogether a fresh and individual +book."--_Observer._ + +35. _LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE_ + +By G. L. STRACHEY. "It is difficult to imagine how a better account of +French Literature could be given in 250 small pages."--_The Times._ + +39. _ARCHITECTURE_ + +By Prof. W. R. LETHABY. (Over forty Illustrations.) "Delightfully +bright reading."--_Christian World._ + +43. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIAEVAL_ + +By Prof. W. P. KER, M.A. "Prof. Ker's knowledge and taste are +unimpeachable, and his style is effective, simple, yet never +dry."--_The Athenaeum._ + +45. _THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_ + +By L. PEARSALL SMITH, M.A. "A wholly fascinating study of the +different streams that make the great river of the English +speech."--_Daily News._ + +52. _GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA_ + +By Prof. J. ERSKINE and Prof. W. P. TRENT. "An admirable summary, from +Franklin to Mark Twain, enlivened by a dry humour."--_Athenaeum._ + +63. _PAINTERS AND PAINTING_ + +By Sir FREDERICK WEDMORE. (With 16 half-tone illustrations.) From the +Primitives to the Impressionists. + +64. _DR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE_ + +By JOHN BAILEY, M.A. "A most delightful essay."--_Christian World._ + +65. _THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY_ + +By Professor J. G. ROBERTSON, M.A., Ph.D. "Under the author's skilful +treatment the subject shows life and continuity."--_Athenaeum._ + +70. _THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE_ + +By G. K. CHESTERTON. "No one will put it down without a sense of +having taken a tonic or received a series of electric shocks."--_The +Times._ + +73. _THE WRITING OF ENGLISH_ + +By W. T. BREWSTER, A.M., Professor of English in Columbia University. +"Sensible, and not over-rigidly conventional."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +75. _ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL_ + +By JANE E. HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt. "Charming in style and learned in +manner."--_Daily News._ + +76. _EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE_ + +By GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek +at Oxford. "A beautiful piece of work.... Just in the fulness of time, +and exactly in the right place.... Euripides has come into his +own."--_The Nation._ + +87. _CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES_ + +By GRACE E. HADOW. + +89. _WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE_ + +By A. CLUTTON BROCK. + +93. _THE RENAISSANCE_ + +By EDITH SICHEL. + +95. _ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE_ + +By J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. + +99. _AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE_ + +By Hon. MAURICE BARING. + + +_Science_ + +7. _MODERN GEOGRAPHY_ + +By Dr MARION NEWBIGIN. (Illustrated.) "Geography, again: what a dull, +tedious study that was wont to be!... But Miss Marion Newbigin invests +its dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic interest."--_Daily +Telegraph._ + +9. _THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS_ + +By Dr D. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell +Laboratory, Kew. (Fully illustrated.) "Dr Scott's candid and +familiar style makes the difficult subject both fascinating and +easy."--_Gardeners' Chronicle._ + +17. _HEALTH AND DISEASE_ + +By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh. + +18. _INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS_ + +By A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) "Mr Whitehead has +discharged with conspicuous success the task he is so exceptionally +qualified to undertake. For he is one of our great authorities upon +the foundations of the science."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +19. _THE ANIMAL WORLD_ + +By Professor F. W. GAMBLE, F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver +Lodge. (Many Illustrations.) "A fascinating and suggestive +survey."--_Morning Post._ + +20. _EVOLUTION_ + +By Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON and Professor PATRICK GEDDES. "A +many-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no other book we +know, a rational vision of world-development."--_Belfast News-Letter._ + +22. _CRIME AND INSANITY_ + +By Dr C. A. MERCIER. "Furnishes much valuable information from one +occupying the highest position among medico-legal psychologists."--_Asylum +News._ + +28. _PSYCHICAL RESEARCH_ + +By Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of +Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. "What he has to say on thought-reading, +hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spiritualism, divinings, and so +on, will be read with avidity."--_Dundee Courier._ + +31. _ASTRONOMY_ + +By A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory. +"Original in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in +treatment.... No better little book is available."--_School World._ + +32. _INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE_ + +By J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, +Aberdeen University. "Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is +well known; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods +of science and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and +practical life."--_Aberdeen Journal._ + +36. _CLIMATE AND WEATHER_ + +By Prof. H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the +Royal Meteorological Society. (With Diagrams.) "The author has +succeeded in presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner the +causes of the movements of the atmosphere and of the more stable +winds."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +41. _ANTHROPOLOGY_ + +By R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford +University. "An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child +could understand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction +'to a frazzle.'"--_Morning Leader._ + +44. _THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY_ + +By Prof. J. G. MCKENDRICK, M.D. "Upon every page of it is stamped the +impress of a creative imagination."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +46. _MATTER AND ENERGY_ + +By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. "Prof. Soddy has successfully accomplished +the very difficult task of making physics of absorbing interest on +popular lines."--_Nature._ + +49. _PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR_ + +By Prof. W. MCDOUGALL, F.R.S., M.B. "A happy example of the +non-technical handling of an unwieldy science, suggesting rather than +dogmatising. It should whet appetites for deeper study."--_Christian +World._ + +53. _THE MAKING OF THE EARTH_ + +By Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.) "A +fascinating little volume.... Among the many good things contained in +the series this takes a high place."--_The Athenaeum._ + +57. _THE HUMAN BODY_ + +By A. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., Conservator of Museum and Hunterian +Professor, Royal College of Surgeons. (Illustrated.) "It literally +makes the 'dry bones' to live. It will certainly take a high place +among the classics of popular science."--_Manchester Guardian._ + +58. _ELECTRICITY_ + +By GISBERT KAPP, D.Eng., Professor of Electrical Engineering in the +University of Birmingham. (Illustrated.) "It will be appreciated +greatly by learners and by the great number of amateurs who are +interested in what is one of the most fascinating of scientific +studies."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +62. _THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE_ + +By Dr BENJAMIN MOORE, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, +Liverpool. "Stimulating, learned, lucid."--_Liverpool Courier._ + +67. _CHEMISTRY_ + +By RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury +Technical College, London. Presents clearly, without the detail +demanded by the expert, the way in which chemical science has +developed, and the stage it has reached. + +72. _PLANT LIFE_ + +By Prof. J. B. FARMER, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Illustrated.) "Professor Farmer +has contrived to convey all the most vital facts of plant physiology, +and also to present a good many of the chief problems which confront +investigators to-day in the realms of morphology and of +heredity."--_Morning Post._ + +78. _THE OCEAN_ + +A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By Sir JOHN MURRAY, +K.C.B. F.R.S. (Colour plates and other illustrations.) + +79. _NERVES_ + +By Prof. D. FRASER HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc. (Illustrated.) A description, +in non-technical language, of the nervous system, its intricate +mechanism and the strange phenomena of energy and fatigue, with some +practical reflections. + +86. _SEX_ + +By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, LL.D. (Illus.) + +88. _THE GROWTH OF EUROPE_ + +By Prof. GRENVILLE COLE, (Illus.) + + +_Philosophy and Religion_ + +15. _MOHAMMEDANISM_ + +By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt. "This generous shilling's +worth of wisdom.... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible +tractate by an illuminative professor."--_Daily Mail._ + +40. _THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY_ + +By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. "A book that the 'man in the +street' will recognise at once to be a boon.... Consistently lucid and +non-technical throughout."--_Christian World._ + +47. _BUDDHISM_ + +By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. "The author presents very attractively as +well as very learnedly the philosophy of Buddhism."--_Daily News._ + +50. _NONCONFORMITY: Its ORIGIN and PROGRESS_ + +By Principal W. B. SELBIE, M.A. "The historical part is brilliant in +its insight, clarity, and proportion."--_Christian World._ + +54. _ETHICS_ + +By G. E. MOORE, M.A., Lecturer in Moral Science in Cambridge +University. "A very lucid though closely reasoned outline of the logic +of good conduct."--_Christian World._ + +56. _THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. B. W. BACON, LL.D., D.D. "Professor Bacon has boldly, and +wisely, taken his own line, and has produced, as a result, an +extraordinarily vivid, stimulating, and lucid book."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +60. _MISSIONS: THEIR RISE and DEVELOPMENT_ + +By Mrs CREIGHTON. "Very interestingly done.... Its style is simple, +direct, unhackneyed, and should find appreciation where a more +fervently pious style of writing repels."--_Methodist Recorder._ + +68. _COMPARATIVE RELIGION_ + +By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt., Principal of Manchester +College, Oxford. "Puts into the reader's hand a wealth of learning and +independent thought."--_Christian World._ + +74. _A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT_ + +By J. B. BURY, Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at +Cambridge. "A little masterpiece, which every thinking man will +enjoy."--_The Observer._ + +84. _LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT_ + +By Prof. GEORGE MOORE, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard. A detailed examination +of the books of the Old Testament in the light of the most recent +research. + +90. _THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_ + +By Canon E. W. WATSON, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at +Oxford. + +94. _RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS_ + +By Canon R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt. + + +_Social Science_ + +1. _PARLIAMENT_ + +Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT, +G.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The best book on the +history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's +'Constitution.'"--_Yorkshire Post._ + +5. _THE STOCK EXCHANGE_ + +By F. W. HIRST, Editor of "The Economist." "To an unfinancial mind +must be a revelation.... The book is as clear, vigorous, and sane as +Bagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no higher +compliment."--_Morning Leader._ + +6. _IRISH NATIONALITY_ + +By Mrs J. R. GREEN. "As glowing as it is learned. No book could be +more timely."--_Daily News._ + +10. _THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT_ + +By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. "Admirably adapted for the purpose of +exposition."--_The Times._ + +11. _CONSERVATISM_ + +By LORD HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P. "One of those great little books which +seldom appear more than once in a generation."--_Morning Post._ + +16. _THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH_ + +By J. A. HOBSON, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among +living economists.... Original, reasonable, and illuminating."--_The +Nation._ + +21. _LIBERALISM_ + +By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of +London. "A book of rare quality.... We have nothing but praise for the +rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles +which form a large part of this book."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +24. _THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY_ + +By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the +University of Leeds. "A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read with +profit by all interested in the present state of unrest."--_Aberdeen +Journal._ + +26. _AGRICULTURE_ + +By Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S. "It makes the results of laboratory work +at the University accessible to the practical farmer."--_Athenaeum._ + +30. _ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW_ + +By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at +Oxford. "Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles +underlying the rules of English Law."--_Scots Law Times._ + +38. _THE SCHOOL: An Introduction to the Study of Education._ + +By J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester +University. "An amazingly comprehensive volume.... It is a remarkable +performance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well +as its inclusiveness of subject-matter."--_Morning Post._ + +59. _ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY_ + +By S. J. CHAPMAN, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester +University. "Its importance is not to be measured by its price. +Probably the best recent critical exposition of the analytical method +in economic science."--_Glasgow Herald._ + +69. _THE NEWSPAPER_ + +By G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A. (Illustrated.) The best account extant of +the organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad. + +77. _SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE_ + +By H. N. BRAILSFORD, M.A. "Mr Brailsford sketches vividly the +influence of the French Revolution on Shelley's and Godwin's England; +and the charm and strength of his style make his book an authentic +contribution to literature."--_The Bookman._ + +80. _CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING_ + +By ANEURIN WILLIAMS, M.A. "A judicious but enthusiastic history, with much +interesting speculation on the future of Co-partnership."--_Christian +World._ + +81. _PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE_ + +By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. Discusses the leading aspects of the British +land problem, including housing, small holdings, rural credit, and the +minimum wage. + +83. _COMMON-SENSE IN LAW_ + +By Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L. + +85. _UNEMPLOYMENT_ + +By Prof. A. C. PIGOU, M.A. + +96. _POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM BACON TO HALIFAX_ + +By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. + + +IN PREPARATION + +_ANCIENT EGYPT._ By F. LL. GRIFFITH, M.A. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE._ By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D. + +_THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE._ By NORMAN H. BAYNES. + +_THE REFORMATION._ By President LINDSAY, LL.D. + +_A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA._ By Prof. MILYOUKOV. + +_MODERN TURKEY._ By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. + +_FRANCE OF TO-DAY._ By ALBERT THOMAS. + +_HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN._ By J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, F.B.A., + Litt.D. + +_LATIN LITERATURE._ By Prof. J. S. PHILLIMORE. + +_ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE._ By ROGER E. FRY. + +_LITERARY TASTE._ By THOMAS SECCOMBE. + +_SCANDINAVIAN HISTORY & LITERATURE._ By T. C. SNOW. + +_THE MINERAL WORLD._ By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., D.Sc. + +_A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY._ By CLEMENT WEBB, M.A. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. Mill._ By Prof. + W. L. DAVIDSON. + +_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer to To-day._ By + ERNEST BARKER, M.A. + +_THE CRIMINAL AND THE COMMUNITY._ By Viscount ST. CYRES. + +_THE CIVIL SERVICE._ By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. + +_THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT._ By JANE ADDAMS and R. A. WOODS. + +_GREAT INVENTIONS._ By Prof. J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A. + +_TOWN PLANNING._ By RAYMOND UNWIN. + + + London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + _And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._ + + + + +Transcriber's Note + +Minor punctuation errors and printer errors (omitted or transposed +letters) have been repaired. Hyphenation has been made consistent. + +The following amendments have also been made: + + Page 22--mas amended to was--"... but in the interest of + literature, it was a misfortune ..." + + Page 192--be amended to he--"... disbelieved in + Liberals, although he believed in Liberalism; ..." + + Page 222--Broente's amended to Bronte's--"These words, + spoken by Charlotte Bronte's _Jane Eyre_, ..." + + Page 251--Simon amended to Simeon--"1692. ... Simeon + Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted." + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Outline of Russian Literature, by Maurice Baring + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 33005.txt or 33005.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/0/0/33005/ + +Produced by Brian Foley, Sam W. and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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