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diff --git a/33005.txt b/33005.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e907000 --- /dev/null +++ b/33005.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: 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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"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.... 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"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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