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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41495 ***
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/russiaitspeoplei00pardiala
+
+
+
+
+
+RUSSIA
+
+ITS PEOPLE AND ITS LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN
+
+Translated from the Spanish
+
+By FANNY HALE GARDINER
+
+CHICAGO
+
+A.C. McCLURG & CO.
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Emilia Pardo Bazán, the author of the following critical survey of
+Russian literature, is a Spanish woman of well-known literary
+attainments as well as wealth and position. Her life has been spent in
+association with men of mark, both during frequent sojourns at Madrid
+and at home in Galicia, "the Switzerland of Spain," from which province
+her father was a deputy to Cortes.
+
+Books and libraries were almost her only pleasures in childhood, as she
+was allowed few companions, and she says she could never apply herself
+to music. By the time she was fourteen she had read widely in history,
+sciences, poetry, and fiction, excepting the works of the French
+romanticists, Dumas, George Sand, and Victor Hugo, which were forbidden
+fruit and were finally obtained and enjoyed as such. At sixteen she
+married and went to live in Madrid, where, amid the gayeties of the
+capital, her love for literature suffered a long eclipse.
+
+Her father was obliged, for political reasons, to leave the country
+after the abdication of Amadeus, and she accompanied him in a long and
+to her profitable period of wandering, during which she learned French,
+English, and Italian, in order to read the literatures of those tongues.
+She also plunged deep into German philosophy, at first out of curiosity,
+because it was then in vogue; but she confesses a debt of gratitude to
+it nevertheless.
+
+While she was thus absorbed in foreign tongues and literatures, she
+remained almost entirely ignorant of the new movement in her own land,
+led by Valera, Galdos, and Alarcon. The prostration which characterized
+the reign of Isabella II. had been followed by a rejuvenation born of
+the Revolution of 1868. When this new literature was at last brought to
+her notice, she read it with delighted surprise, and was immediately
+struck by something resembling the spirit of Cervantes, Hurtado, and
+other Spanish writers of old renown. Inspired by the possibility of this
+heredity, she resolved to try novel-writing herself,--a thought which
+had never occurred to her when her idea of the novel had been bounded by
+the romantic limitations of Victor Hugo and his suite. But if the novel
+might consist of descriptions of places and customs familiar to us, and
+studies of the people we see about us, then she would dare attempt it.
+As yet, however, no one talked of realism or naturalism in Spain; the
+tendency of Spanish writers was rather toward a restoration of elegant
+Castilian, and her own first novel followed this line, although
+evidently inspired by the breath of realism as far as she was then aware
+of it. The methods and objects of the French realists became fully
+manifest to her shortly afterward; for, being in poor health, she went
+to Vichy, where in hours of enforced leisure she read for the first time
+Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. The result led her to see the
+importance of their aims and the force of their art, to which she added
+the idea that each country should cultivate its own tradition while
+following the modern methods. These convictions she embodied first in a
+prologue to her second novel, "A Wedding Journey," and then in a series
+of articles published in the "Epoca" at Madrid, and afterward in Paris;
+these she avers were the first echoes in Spain of the French realist
+movement.
+
+All of her novels have been influenced by the school of art to which she
+has devoted her attention and criticism, and her study of which has well
+qualified her for the essays contained in this volume. This work on
+Russian literature was published in 1887, but prior to its appearance
+in print the Señora de Bazán was invited to read selections from it
+before the Ateneo de Madrid,--an honor never before extended to a woman,
+I believe.
+
+Few Spanish women are accustomed to speaking in public, and she thus
+describes her own first attempt in 1885, when, during the festivities
+attending the opening of the first railway between Madrid and Coruña,
+the capital of her native province, she was asked to address a large
+audience invited to honor the memory of a local poet:--
+
+     "Fearful of attempting so unusual a performance, as well as
+     doubtful of the ability to make my voice heard in a large
+     theatre, I took advantage of the presence of my friend
+     Emilio Castelar to read to him my discourse and confide to
+     him my fears. On the eve of the performance, Castelar,
+     ensconced in an arm-chair in my library, puzzled his brains
+     over the questions whether I should read standing or
+     sitting, whether I should hold my papers in my hand or no,
+     and having an artist's eye to the scenic effect, I think he
+     would have liked to suggest that I pose before the mirror!
+     But I was less troubled about my attitude than by the
+     knowledge that Castelar was to speak also, and before me,
+     which would hardly predispose my audience in my favor....
+     The theatre was crowded to suffocation, but I found that
+     this rather animated than terrified me. I rose to read (for
+     it was finally decided that I should stand), and I cannot
+     tell how thin and hard and unsympathetic my voice sounded in
+     the silence. My throat choked with emotion; but I was
+     scarcely through the first paragraph when I heard at my
+     right hand the voice of Castelar, low and earnest, saying
+     over and over again, 'Very good, very good! That is the
+     tone! So, so! 'I breathed more freely, speaking became
+     easier to me; and my audience, far from becoming impatient,
+     gave me an attention and applause doubly grateful to one
+     whose only hope had been to avoid a fiasco. Castelar greeted
+     me at the close with a warm hand-grasp and beaming eyes,
+     saying, 'We ought to be well satisfied, Emilia; we have
+     achieved a notable and brilliant success; let us be happy,
+     then!'"
+
+Probably the Señora de Bazán learned her lesson well, and had no need of
+the friendly admonitions of Castelar when she came to address the
+distinguished audience at the Ateneo, for she is said to have "looked
+very much at ease," and to have been very well received, but a good deal
+criticised afterward, being the first Spanish woman who ever dared to
+read in the Ateneo.
+
+Turning from the authoress to the work, I will only add that I hope the
+American reader may find it to be what it seemed to me as I read it in
+Spanish,--an epitome of a vast and elaborate subject, and a guide to a
+clear path through this maze which without a guide can hardly be clear
+to any but a profound student of belles-lettres; for classicism,
+romanticism, and realism are technical terms, and the purpose of the
+modern novel is only just beginning to be understood by even fairly
+intelligent readers. In the belief that the interest awakened by Russian
+literature is not ephemeral, and that this great, young, and original
+people has come upon the world's stage with a work to perform before the
+world's eye, I have translated this careful, critical, synthetical study
+of the Russian people and literature for the benefit of my intelligent
+countrymen.
+
+F.H.G.
+
+Chicago, March, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+Book I.
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA.
+
+   I. Scope and Purpose of the Present Essay
+  II. The Russian Country
+ III. The Russian Race
+  IV. Russian History
+   V. The Russian Autocracy
+  VI. The Agrarian Communes
+ VII. Social Classes in Russia
+VIII. Russian Serfdom
+
+
+Book II.
+
+RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE.
+
+   I. The Word "Nihilism"
+  II. Origin of the Intellectual Revolution
+ III. Woman and the Family
+  IV. Going to the People
+   V. Herzen and the Nihilist Novel
+  VI. The Reign of Terror
+ VII. The Police and the Censor
+
+
+Book III.
+
+RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL.
+
+   I. The Beginnings of Russian Literature
+  II. Russian Romanticism.--The Lyric Poets
+ III. Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder
+
+
+Book IV.
+
+MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM.
+
+   I. Turguenief, Poet and Artist
+  II. Gontcharof and Oblomovism
+ III. Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary
+  IV. Tolstoï, Nihilist and Mystic
+   V. French Realism and Russian Realism
+
+
+
+
+Book I.
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Scope And Purpose of the Present Essay.
+
+
+The idea of writing something about Russia, the Russian novel, and
+Russian social conditions (all of which bear an intimate relationship to
+one another), occurred to me during a sojourn in Paris, where I was
+struck with the popularity and success achieved by the Russian authors,
+and especially the novelists. I remember that it was in the month of
+March, 1885, that the Russian novel "Crime and Punishment," by
+Dostoiëwsky, fell into my hands and left on my mind a deep impression.
+Circumstances prevented my following up at that time my idea of literary
+work on the subject; but the next winter I had nothing more important to
+do than to make my projected excursion into this new realm.
+
+My interest was quickened by all the reports I read of those who had
+done the same. They all declared that one branch of Russian literature,
+that which flourishes to-day in every part of Europe, namely, the novel,
+has no rival in any other nation, and that the so much discussed
+tendency to the pre-eminence of truth in art, variously called realism,
+naturalism, etc., has existed in the Russian novel ever since the
+Romantic period, a full quarter of a century earlier than in France. I
+saw also that the more refined and select portion of the Parisian
+public, that part which boasts an educated and exacting taste, bought
+and devoured the works of Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Dostoiëwsky with as
+much eagerness as those of Zola, Goncourt, and Daudet; and it was
+useless to ascribe this universal eagerness merely to a conspiracy
+intended to produce jealousy and humiliation among the masters and
+leaders of naturalism or realism in France, even though I may be aware
+that such a conspiracy tacitly exists, as well as a certain amount of
+involuntary jealousy, which, in fact, even the most illustrious artist
+is prone to display.
+
+I do not ignore the objections that might be urged against going to
+foreign lands in search of novelties, and I should decline to face them
+if Russian literature were but one of the many caprices of the exhausted
+Parisian imagination. I know very well that the French capital is a city
+of novelties, hungry for extravagances which may entertain for a moment
+and appease its yawning weariness, and that to this necessity for
+diversion the _decadent_ school (which has lately had such a revival,
+and claims the aberrations of the Spanish Gongora as its master), though
+aided by some talent and some technical skill, owes the favor it enjoys.
+Some years ago I attended a concert in Paris, where I heard an orchestra
+of Bohemians, or Zingaras, itinerant musicians from Hungary. I was
+asked my opinion of them at the close, and I frankly confessed that the
+orchestra sounded to me very like a jangling of mule-bells or a
+caterwauling; they were only a little more tolerable than a street band
+of my own country (Spain), and only because these were gypsies were
+their scrapings to be endured at all. Literary oddities are puffed and
+made much of by certain Parisian critics very much as the Bohemian
+musicians were, as, for example, the Japanese novel "The Loyal Ronins,"
+and certain romantic sketches of North American origin.
+
+It is but just, nevertheless, to acknowledge that in France the mania
+for the exotic has a laudable aim and obeys an instinct of equity. To
+know everything, to call nothing outlandish, to accord the highest right
+of human citizenship, the right of creating their own art and of
+sacrificing according to their own rites and customs on the altar sacred
+to Beauty, not only to the great nations, but to the decayed and obscure
+ones,--this surely is a generous act on the part of a people endowed
+with directive energies; the more so as, in order to do this, the French
+have to overcome a certain petulant vanity which naturally leads them to
+consider themselves not merely the first but the only people.
+
+But confining myself now to Russia, I do not deny that to my curiosity
+there were added certain doubts as to the value of her literary
+treasures. During my investigations, however, I have discovered that,
+apart from the intrinsic merit of her famous authors, her literature
+must attract our attention because of its intimate connections with
+social, political, and historical problems which are occupying the mind
+of Europe to-day, and are outcomes of the great revolutionary movement,
+unless it would be more correct to say that they inspired and directed
+that movement.
+
+I take this opportunity to confess frankly that I lack one almost
+indispensable qualification for my task,--the knowledge of the Russian
+language. It would have been easy for me, during my residence in Paris,
+to acquire a smattering of it perhaps, enough to conceal my ignorance
+and to enable me to read some selections in poetry and prose; but not so
+easy thus to learn thoroughly a language which for intricacy, splendid
+coloring, and marvellous flexibility and harmony can only be compared,
+in the opinion of philologists, to the ancient Greek. Of what use then a
+mere smattering, which would be insufficient to give to my studies a
+positive character and an indisputable authority? Two years would not
+have been too long to devote to such an accomplishment, and in that
+length of time new ideas, different lines of thought, and unexpected
+obstacles might perhaps arise; the opportunity would be gone and my plan
+would have lost interest.
+
+Still, I mentioned my scruples on this head to certain competent
+persons, and they agreed that ignorance of the Russian language, though
+an ignorance scarcely uncommon, would be an insuperable difficulty if I
+proposed to write a didactic treatise upon Russian letters, instead of
+a rapid review or a mere sketch in the form of a modest essay or two.
+They added that the best Russian books were translated into French or
+German, and that in these languages, and also in English and Italian,
+had been published several able and clever works relative to Muscovite
+literature and institutions, solid enough foundations upon which to
+build my efforts.
+
+It may be said, and with good reason, that if I could not learn the
+language I might at least have made a trip to Russia, and like Madame de
+Staël when she revealed to her countrymen the culture of a foreign land,
+see the places and people with my own eyes. But Russia is not just
+around the corner, and the women of my country, though not cowardly, are
+not accustomed to travel so intrepidly as for example the women of Great
+Britain. I have often envied the good fortune of that clever Scotchman,
+Mackenzie Wallace, who has explored the whole empire of Russia, ridden
+in sleighs over her frozen rivers, chatted with peasants and _popes_,
+slept beneath the tents of the nomadic tribes, and shared their offered
+refreshment of fermented mare's-milk, the only delicacy their
+patriarchal hospitality afforded. But I acknowledge my deficiencies, and
+can only hope that some one better qualified than I may take up and
+carry on this imperfect and tentative attempt.
+
+I have tried to supply from other sources those things which I lacked.
+Not only have I read everything written upon Russia in every language
+with which I am acquainted, but I have associated myself with Russian
+writers and artists, and noted the opinions of well-informed persons
+(who often, however, be it said in parenthesis, only served to confuse
+me by their differences and opposition). A good part of the books (a
+list of which I give at the end) were hardly of use to me, and I read
+them merely from motives of literary honesty. To save continual
+references I prefer to speak at once and now of those which I used
+principally: Mackenzie Wallace's work entitled "Russia" abounds in
+practical insight and appreciation; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's "The Empire
+of the Czars" is a profound, exact, and finished study, so acknowledged
+even by the Russians themselves in their most just and calm judgments;
+Tikomirov's "Russia, Political and Social" is clear and comprehensible,
+though rather radical and passionate, as might be expected of the work
+of an exile; Melchior de Voguié's "The Russian Novel" is a critical
+study of incomparable delicacy, though I do not always acquiesce in his
+conclusions. From these four books, to which I would add the remarkable
+"History of Russia" by Rambaud, I have drawn copious draughts; and
+giving them this mention, I may dispense with further reference to
+them.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The Russian Country.
+
+
+If we consider the present state of European nations, we shall observe a
+decided decline of the political fever which excited them from about the
+end of the last century to the middle of the present one. A certain
+calm, almost a stagnation with some, has followed upon the conquest of
+rights more craved than appreciated. The idea of socialistic reforms is
+agitated darkly and threateningly among the masses, openly declaring
+itself from time to time in strikes and riots; but on the other hand,
+the middle classes almost everywhere are anxious for a long respite in
+which to enjoy the new social conditions created by themselves and for
+themselves. The middle classes represent the largest amount of
+intellectual force; they have withdrawn voluntarily (through egoism,
+prudence, or indifference) from active political fields, and renounced
+further efforts in the line of experiment; the arts and letters, which
+are in the main the work of well-to-do people, cry out against this
+withdrawal, and, losing all social affinities, become likewise isolated.
+
+France possesses at this moment that form of government for which she
+yearned so long and so convulsively; yet she has not found in it the
+sort of well-being she most desired,--that industrial and economical
+prosperity, that coveted satisfaction and compensation which should
+restore to the Cock of Brenus his glittering spurs and scarlet crest.
+She is at peace, but doubtful of herself, always fearful of having to
+behold again the vandalism of the Commune and the catastrophes of the
+Prussian invasion. Italy, united and restored, has not regained her
+place as a European power, nor, in rising again from her glorious ashes,
+can she reanimate the dust of the heroes, the great captains and the
+sublime artists, that lie beneath her monuments. And it is not only the
+Latin nations that stand in more or less anxious expectation of the
+future. If France has established her much desired republic, and Italy
+has accomplished her union, England also has tasted all the fruits of
+the parliamentary system, has imparted her vigor to magnificent
+colonies, has succeeded in impressing her political doctrines and her
+positive ideas of life upon the whole continent; while Germany has
+obtained the military supremacy and the amalgamation of the fatherland
+once dismembered by feudalism, as well as the fulfilment of the old
+Teutonic dream of Cæsarian power and an imperial throne,--a dream
+cherished since the Middle Ages. For the Saxon races the hour of change
+has sounded too; in a certain way they have fulfilled their destinies,
+they have accomplished their historic work, and I think I see them like
+actors on the stage declaiming the closing words of their rôles.
+
+One plain symptom of what I have described seems to me to be the
+draining off of their creative forces in the domain of art. What
+proportion does the artistic energy of England and Germany bear to
+their political strength? None at all. No names nowadays cross the
+Channel to be put up beside--I will not say those of Shakspeare and
+Byron, but even those of Walter Scott and Dickens; there is no one to
+wear the mantle of the illustrious author of "Adam Bede," who was the
+incarnation of the moral sense and temperate realism of her country, and
+at the same time an eloquent witness to the extent and limit allowed by
+these two tendencies, both of puritanic origin, to the laws of æsthetics
+and poetry. On the other side of the Rhine the tree of Romance is dry,
+though its roots are buried in the mysterious sub-soil of legend, and
+beneath its branches pass and repass the heroes of the ballads of Bürger
+and Goethe, and within its foliage are crystallized the brilliant
+dialectics of Hegel. To put it plainly, Germany to-day produces nothing
+within herself, particularly if we compare this to-day with the not
+distant yesterday.
+
+But I would be less general, and set forth my idea in a clearer manner.
+It is not my purpose to sacrifice on the altar of my theme the genius of
+all Europe. I recognize willingly that there are in every nation writers
+worthy of distinction and praise, and not only in nations of the first
+rank but in some also of second and third, as witness those of Portugal,
+Belgium, Sweden, modern Greece, Denmark, and even Roumania, which can
+boast a queenly authoress, extremely talented and sympathetic. I merely
+say--and to the intelligent reader I need give but few reasons why--that
+it is easy to distinguish the period in which a people, without being
+actually sterile, and even displaying relatively a certain fecundity
+which may deceive the superficial observer, yet ceases to produce
+anything virile and genuine, or to possess vital and creative powers.
+
+To this general rule I consider France an exception, for she is really
+the only nation which, since the close of the Romantic period, has seen
+any spontaneous literary production great enough to traverse and
+influence all Europe,--a phenomenon which cannot be explained by the
+mere fact of the general use of the French tongue and customs. It will
+be understood that I refer to the rise and success of Realism, and that
+I speak of it in a large sense, not limiting my thoughts to the master
+minds, but considering it in its entirety, from its origin to its newest
+ramifications, from its antecedent encyclopedists to its latest echoes,
+the pessimists, _decadents_, and other fanatics. Looking at what are
+called French naturalists or realists in a group, as a unity which
+obliterates details, I cannot deny to France the glory of presenting to
+the world in the second half of this century a literary development,
+which, even if it carries within itself the germs of senility and
+decrepitude (namely, the very materialism which is its philosophic
+basis, its very extremes and exaggerations, and its erudite, and
+reflective character, a quality which however unapparent is nevertheless
+perfectly demonstrable), yet it shows also the vigor of a renaissance in
+its valiant affirmation of artistic truth, its zeal in maintaining this,
+in the faith with which it seeks this truth, and in the effectiveness
+of its occasional revelations thereof. When party feeling has somewhat
+subsided, French realism will receive due thanks for the impulse it has
+communicated to other peoples; not a lamentable impulse either, for
+nations endowed with robust national traditions always know how to give
+form and shape to whatever comes to them from without, and those only
+will accept a completed art who lack the true conditions of nationality,
+even though they figure as States on the map.
+
+There are two great peoples in the world which are not in the same
+situation as the Latin and Saxon nations of Europe,--two peoples which
+have not yet placed their stones in the world's historic edifice. They
+are the great transatlantic republic and the colossal Sclavonic
+empire,--the United States and Russia.
+
+What artistic future awaits the young North American nation? That land
+of material civilization, free, happy, with wise and practical
+institutions, with splendid natural resources, with flourishing commerce
+and industries, that people so young yet so vigorous, has acquired
+everything except the acclimatization in her vast and fertile territory
+of the flower of beauty in the arts and letters. Her literature, in
+which such names as Edgar Poe shine with a world-wide lustre, is yet a
+prolongation of the English literature, and no more. What would that
+country not give to see within herself the glorious promise of that
+spirit which produced a Murillo, a Cervantes, a Goethe, or a Meyerbeer,
+while she covers with gold the canvases of the mediocre painters of
+Europe!
+
+But that art and literature of a national character may be spontaneous,
+a people must pass through two epochs,--one in which, by the process of
+time, the myths and heroes of earlier days assume a representative
+character, and the early creeds and aspirations, still undefined by
+reflection, take shape in popular poetry and legend; the other in which,
+after a period of learning, the people arises and shakes off the outer
+crust of artificiality, and begins to build conscientiously its own art
+upon the basis of its never-forgotten traditions. The United States was
+born full-grown. It never passed through the cloudland of myth; it is
+utterly lacking in that sort of popular poetry which to-day we call
+folk-lore.
+
+But when a nation carries within itself this powerful and prolific seed,
+sooner or later this will sprout. A people may be silent for long years,
+for ages, but at the first rays of its dawning future it will sing like
+the sphinx of Egypt. Russia is a complete proof of this truth. Perhaps
+no other nation ever saw its æsthetic development unfold so
+unpromisingly, so cramped and so stunted. The stiff and unyielding
+garments of French classicism have compressed the spirit of its national
+literature almost to suffocation; German Romanticism, since the
+beginning of this century, has lorded it triumphantly there more than in
+any other land. But in spite of so many obstacles, the genius of Russia
+has made a way for itself, and to-day offers us a sight which other
+nations can only parallel in their past history; namely, the sudden
+revelation of a national literature.
+
+I do not mean to prophesy for others an irremediable sterility or
+decadence; I merely confine myself to noting one fact: Russia is at this
+moment the only young nation in Europe,--the last to arrive at the
+banquet. The rest live upon their past; this one sets out now
+impetuously to conquer the future. Over Russia are passing at present
+the hours of dawn, the golden days, the times that after a while will be
+called classic; some even of the men whom generations to come will call
+their glorious ancestors are living now. I insist upon this view in
+order to explain the curiosity which this empire of the North has
+aroused in Europe, and also to explain why so much thoughtful and
+serious study and attention is given to Russia by all foreigners; while
+every book or article on such a country as Spain, for instance, is full
+of so many careless and superficial errors. That elegant and subtle
+author, Voguié, in writing of Léon Tolstoï, says that this Russian
+novelist is so great that he seems to belong to the dead,--meaning to
+express in this wise the idea that the magnitude of Tolstoï's genius
+annuls the laws of temporal criticism by which we are accustomed to see
+the glory of our contemporaries less or more than the reality. I would
+apply Voguié's phrase to the Russian national literature as a whole.
+Though I see it arise before my very eyes, yet I view it amid the halo
+of prestige enjoyed only by things that have been.
+
+There is indeed no parallel to it anywhere. The modern phenomenon of the
+resurrection of local literatures, and the reappearance of forgotten or
+amalgamated races, bears no analogy to this Russian movement; for apart
+from the fact that the former represents a protest by race individualism
+against dominant nationalities, and the latter, on the contrary, bears
+the seal of strong unity of sentiment (which distinguishes Russia), it
+must be borne in mind that local literatures are reactionary in
+themselves,--restorers of traditions more or less forgotten and lost
+sight of,--while Russian literature is an innovation, which accepts the
+past, not as its ideal, but as its root.
+
+I have heard Émile Zola say, with his usual ingenuousness, that between
+his own spirit and that of the Russian novel there was something like a
+haze. This gray vapor may be the effect of the northern mist which is so
+asphyxiating to Latin brains, or it may be owing to the eccentricity
+which sometimes produces a work entirely independent of accepted social
+notions and historical factors. In order to dissipate this haze, this
+mist, I must devote a part of this essay to a study of the race, the
+natural conditions, the history, the institutions, the social and
+political state of Russia, especially to that revolutionary
+effervescence known as Nihilism. Without such a preliminary study I
+could scarcely give any idea of this literary phenomenon.
+
+Let us, then, cross the Russian frontier and enter her colossal expanse,
+without being too much abashed by its size, which, says Humboldt, is
+greater than that of the disk of the full moon. Really, when we cast our
+eyes upon the map, fancy refuses to believe or to conceive that so large
+an extent of territory can form but one nation and obey but one man. We
+are amazed by its geographical bigness, and a sentiment of respect
+involuntarily enters the mind, together with the instinctive conviction
+that God has not modelled the body of this Titan without having in view
+for it some admirable historical destiny to be achieved by the fine
+diplomacy of Providence. Truly it is God's handiwork, as is proved by
+its solid unity,--geographical as well as ethnographical,--and its
+duration as an independent empire. Russia is no artificial
+conglomeration, nor a federation of States,--each with distinct internal
+life and traditions,--the result of conquest or of the necessity of
+resistance to a common enemy; for while the strife against the nomadic
+Asiatics may have contributed to solidify her union, it was Nature that
+predisposed her to a community of aspirations and political existence.
+There are islands like Sicily, peninsulas like Spain, whose territory,
+though so small, is far more easily subdivided than Russia, which is
+intersected by no mountain chains, and which is everywhere connected by
+rivers,--water-ways of communication. The vast surface of Russia is like
+a piece of cloth which unfolds everywhere alike, seamless and level. The
+northern regions, which produce lumber, cannot exist without the
+southern regions, which produce cereals; the two halves of Russia are
+complementary; there is nowhere any conception of the provincialisms
+which honeycomb the Spanish peninsula; and in spite of the imposing
+magnitude of the nation, which at first glance would seem necessarily
+divided into different if not inimical provinces, especially those most
+distant, the cohesion is so strong that all Russia considers herself,
+not so much a state as a family, subject to the law of a father; and
+Father they call, with tender familiarity, the Autocrat of all the
+Russias. Even to-day the name of the famous Mazeppa, who tried to
+separate Ukrania from Russia, is a term of insult in the Ukranian
+dialect, and his name is cursed in their temples. To this sublime
+sentiment Russia owes that national independence which the other
+Sclavonic peoples have lost.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The Russian Race.
+
+
+It is no hindrance to Muscovite unity that within it there are two
+completely opposing elements, namely, the Germanic and the Semitic. The
+influence of the Germans is about as irritating to the Russians as was
+that of the Flemings to the Spaniards under Charles V. They are petted
+and protected by the government, especially in the Baltic provinces, all
+the while that the Russians accuse them of having introduced two
+abominations,--bureaucracy and despotism. But even more aggravating to
+the Russian is the Jewish usurer, who since the Middle Ages has fastened
+himself like a leach upon producer and consumer, and who, if he does not
+borrow or lend, begs; and if he does not beg, carries on some
+suspicious business. A nation within a nation, the Jews are sometimes
+made the victims of popular hatred; the usually gentle Russians
+sometimes rise in sudden wrath, and the newspapers report to us dreadful
+accounts of an assault and murder of Hebrews.
+
+Russian national unity is not founded, however, upon community of race;
+on the contrary, nowhere on the globe are the races and tribes more
+numerous than those that have spread over that illimitable territory
+like the waves of the sea; and as the high tide washes away the marks of
+every previous wave, and levels the sandy surface, these divers races
+have gone on stratifying, each forgetful of its distinct origin. Those
+who study Russian ethnography call it a chaos, and declare that at least
+twenty layers of human alluvium exist in European Russia alone, without
+counting the emigrations of prehistoric peoples whose names are lost in
+oblivion. And yet from these varied races and origins--Scythians,
+Sarmatians, Kelts, Germans, Goths, Tartars, and Mongols--has proceeded a
+most homogeneous people, a most solid coalescence, little given to
+treasuring up ancient rights and lost causes. Geographical oneness has
+superseded ethnographical variety, and created a moral unity stronger
+than all other.
+
+When so many races spread themselves over one country, it becomes
+necessary and inevitable that one shall exercise sovereignty. In Russia
+this directive and dominant race was the Sclav, not because of numerical
+superiority, but from a higher character more adaptable to European
+civilization, and perhaps by virtue of its capability for expansion.
+Compare the ethnographical maps of Russia in the ninth and nineteenth
+centuries. In the ninth the Sclavs occupy a spot which is scarcely a
+fifth part of European Russia; in the nineteenth the spot has spread
+like oil, covering two thirds of the Russian map. And as the Sclavonic
+inundation advances, the inferior races recede toward the frozen pole or
+the deserts of Asia. When the monk Nestor wrote the first account of
+Russia, the Sclavs lived hedged in by Lithuanians, Turks, and Finns;
+to-day they number above sixty million souls.
+
+Thus it is once more demonstrated that to the Aryan race, naturally and
+without violence, is reserved the pre-eminence in modern civilization. A
+thousand years ago northern Russia was peopled by Finnish tribes; in
+still more recent times the Asiatic fisherman cast his nets where now
+stands the capital of Peter the Great; and yet without any war of
+extermination, without any emigration of masses, without persecutions,
+or the deprivation of legal privileges, the aboriginal Finns have
+subsided, have been absorbed,--have become Russianized, in a word.
+
+This is not surprising, perhaps, to us who believe in the absolute
+superiority of the Indo-European race, noble, high-minded, capable of
+the loftiest and profoundest conceptions possible to the human
+intellect. I may say that the Russian ethnographical evolution may be
+compared with that of my own country, if we may trust recent and
+well-authenticated theories. The most remote peoples of Russia were,
+like those of Spain, of Turanian origin, with flattish faces, and high
+cheek-bones, speaking a soft-flowing language; and to this day, as in
+Spain also, one may see in some of the physiognomies clear traces of the
+old blood in spite of the predominance of the invading Aryan. In Spain,
+perhaps, the aboriginal Turanian bequeathed no proofs of intellectual
+keenness to posterity, and the famous Basque songs and legends of Lelo
+and Altobizkar may turn out to be merely clever modern tricks of
+imitation; but in Russia the Finnish element, whose influence is yet
+felt, shows great creative powers. One of the richest popular
+literatures known to the researches of folk-lore is the epic cycle of
+Finland called the Kalevala, which compares with the Sanscrit poems of
+old.
+
+A Castilian writer of note, absent at present from his country, in
+writing to me privately his opinions on Russia, said that the
+civilization which we behold has been created, so far as concerns its
+good points, exclusively by the Mediterranean race dwelling around that
+sea of inspiration which stretches from the Pillars of Hercules to Tyre
+and Sidon; that sea which brought forth prophets, incarnate gods, great
+captains and navigators, arch-philosophers, and the geniuses of mankind.
+Recently the most celebrated of our orators has stirred up in Paris some
+Greco-Latin manifestations whose political opportuneness is not to the
+point just here, but whose ethnographical significance, seeking to
+divide Europe into northern barbarians and civilized Latin folk,--just
+as happened at the fall of the Roman Empire,--is of no benefit to me.
+Who would listen without protest nowadays to the famous saying that the
+North has given us only iron and barbarism, or read tranquilly Grenville
+Murray's exclamation in an access of Britannic patriotism, "Russia will
+fall into a thousand pieces, the common fate of barbarous States!" The
+intelligence of the hearers would be offended, for they would recall the
+part played in universal civilization by Germans and Saxons,--Germany,
+Holland, England; but confining myself to the subject in hand, I cannot
+credit those who taunt the Sclav with being a barbarian, when he is as
+much an Aryan, a descendant of Japhet, as the Latin, descended as much
+as he from the sacred sources beside which lay the cradle of humanity,
+and where it first received the revelation of the light. Knowing their
+origin, are we to judge the Sclav as the Greeks, the contemporaries of
+Herodotus, did the Scythian and the Sarmatian, relegating him forever to
+the cold eternal night of Cimmerian regions?
+
+It is nothing remarkable that, in the varied fortunes of this great
+Indo-European family of races, if the Kelt came early to the front, the
+Sclav came correspondingly late. Who can explain the causes of this
+diversity of destiny between the two branches that most resemble each
+other on this great tree?
+
+In the study of Russian writings I was ofttimes surprised at the
+resemblances in the character, customs, and modes of thought of the
+Russian _mujik_ to those of the peasants of Gallicia (northern Spain),
+my native province. Then I read in various authors that the Sclav is
+more like the Kelt than like his other ancestors, which observation
+applied equally well to my own people. Perhaps the Kelt brought to Spain
+and France the first seeds of civilization; but the superiority of the
+Greek and the Latin obliterated the traces of that primitive culture
+which has left us no written monuments. More fortunate is the Sclav, the
+last to put his hand to the great work, for he is sure of leaving the
+marks of his footprints upon the sands of time.
+
+It is undeniable that he has come late upon the world's stage, and after
+the ages of inspiration and of brilliant historic action have passed. It
+sometimes seems now as though the brain of the world had lost its
+freshness and plastic quality, as though every possible phase of
+civilization had been seen in Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the
+Renaissance, and in the scientific and political development of our own
+day. But the backwardness of the Russian has been caused by no
+congenital inferiority of race; his quickness and aptitude are apparent,
+and sufficient to prove it is the rich treasure of popular poetry to be
+found among the peoples of Sclav blood,--Servians, Russians, and Poles.
+Such testimony is irrefutable, and is to groups of peoples what
+articulate speech is to the individual in the zoological scale. What the
+Romanceros are to the Spaniard, the Bilinas are to the Russian,--an
+immense collection of songs in which the people have immortalized the
+memory of persons and events indelibly engraved on their imagination; a
+copious spring, a living fountain, whither the future bards of Russia
+must return to drink of originality. What the poem of the Cid represents
+to Spain, and the Song of Roland to France, is symbolized for the
+Russian by the Song of the Tribe of Igor, the work of some anonymous
+Homer,--a pantheistic epic impregnated with the abounding and almost
+overwhelming sense of realism which seems to preponderate in the
+literary genius of Russia.
+
+History--and I use this word in the broadest sense known to us
+to-day--thrusts some nations to the fore, as the Latins, for example;
+others, like the Sclavs, she holds back, restraining their instinctive
+efforts to make themselves heard. We are accustomed to say that Russia
+is an Asiatic country, and that the Russian is a Tartar with a thin coat
+of European polish. The Mongolian element must certainly be taken into
+account in a study of Muscovite ethnography, in spite of the supremacy
+of the Byzantine and Tartar influence, and in order to understand
+Russia. In the interior of European Russia the ugly _Kalmuk_ is still to
+be seen, and who can say how many drops of Asiatic blood run in the
+veins of some of the most illustrious Russian families? Yet within this
+question of purity of race lies a scientific and social _quid_ easily
+demonstrable according to recent startling biological theories, and only
+the thoughtless will censure the old Spaniards for their efforts to
+prove their blood free of any taint of Moor or Jew. Russia, with her
+double nature of European and Asiatic, seems like a princess in a
+fairy-tale turned to stone by a malignant sorcerer's art, but restored
+to her natural and living form by the magic word of some valiant knight.
+Her face, her hands, and her beautiful figure are already warm and
+life-like, but her feet are still immovable as stone, though the damsel
+struggles for the fulness of reanimation; even so Imperial Russia
+strives to become entirely European, to free herself from Asiatic
+inertia to-day.
+
+Apart from the undeniable Asiatic influence, we must consider the
+extreme and cruel climate as among the causes of her backwardness. The
+young civilization flourishes under soft skies, beside blue seas whose
+soft waves lave the limbs of the new-born goddess. Where Nature
+ill-treats man he needs twice the time and labor to develop his vocation
+and tendencies. To us of a more temperate zone, the description of the
+rigorous and overpowering climate of Russia is as full of terrors as
+Dante's Inferno. The formation of the land only adds to the trying
+conditions of the atmosphere. Russia consists of a series of plains and
+table-lands without mountains, without seas or lakes worthy of the
+name,--for those that wash her coasts are considered scarcely navigable.
+The only fragments of a mountain system are known by the generic and
+expressive term _ural_, meaning a girdle; and in truth they serve only
+to engirdle the whole territory. To an inhabitant of the interior the
+sight of a mountainous country is entirely novel and surprising. Almost
+all the Russian poets and novelists exiled to the Caucasus have found an
+unexpected fountain of inspiration in the panorama which the mountains
+afforded to their view. The hero of Tolstoï's novel "The Cossacks," on
+arriving at the Caucasus for the first time, and finding himself face to
+face with a mountain, stands mute and amazed at its sublime beauty.
+
+"What is that?" he asked the driver of his cart.
+
+"The mountain," is the indifferent reply.
+
+"What a beautiful thing!" exclaims the traveller, filled with
+enthusiasm. "Nobody at home can imagine anything like it!" And he loses
+himself in the contemplation of the snow-covered crests rising abruptly
+above the surface of the steppes.
+
+The oceans that lie upon the boundaries of Russia send no refreshing
+breezes over her vast continental expanse, for the White Sea, the
+Arctic, the Baltic, and sometimes the Caspian, are often ice-bound,
+while the waves of the Sea of Asof are turbid with the slime of marshes.
+Neither does Russia enjoy the mild influence of the Gulf Stream, whose
+last beneficent waves subside on the shores of Scandinavia. The winds
+from the Arctic region sweep over the whole surface unhindered all the
+winter long, while in the short summer the fiery breath of the central
+Asian deserts, rolling over the treeless steppes, bring an intolerable
+heat and a desolating drought. Beyond Astrakan the mercury freezes in
+winter and bursts in the summer sun. Under the rigid folds of her winter
+shroud Russia sleeps the sleep of death long months at a time, and upon
+her lifeless body slowly and pauselessly fall the "white feathers" of
+which Herodotus speaks; the earth becomes marble, the air a knife. A
+snow-covered country is a beautiful sight when viewed through a
+stereopticon, or from the comfortable depths of a fur-lined,
+swift-gliding sleigh; but snow is a terrible adversary to human
+activity. If its effects are not as dissipating as excessive heat, it
+none the less pinches the soul and paralyzes the body. In extreme
+climates man has a hard time of it, and Nature proves the saying of
+Goethe: "It envelops and governs us; we are incapable of combating it,
+and likewise incapable of eluding its tyrannical power." Formidable in
+its winter sleep, Nature appears even more despotic perhaps in its
+violent resurrection, when it breaks its icy bars and passes at once
+from lethargy to an almost fierce and frenzied life. In the spring-time
+Russia is an eruption, a surprise; the days lengthen with magic
+rapidity; the plants leaf out, and the fruits ripen as though by
+enchantment; night comes hardly at all, but instead a dusky twilight
+falls over the land; vegetation runs wild, as though with impatience,
+knowing that its season of happiness will be short. The great writer,
+Nicolaï Gogol, depicts the spring-time on the Russian steppes in the
+following words:
+
+     "No plough ever furrowed the boundless undulations of this
+     wild vegetation. Only the unbridled herds have ever opened a
+     path through this impenetrable wilderness. The face of earth
+     is like a sea of golden verdure, broken into a thousand
+     shades. Among the thin, dry branches of the taller shrubs
+     climb the cornflowers,--blue, purple, and red; the broom
+     lifts its pyramid of yellow flowers; tufts of white clover
+     dot the dark earth, and beneath their poor shade glides the
+     agile partridge with outstretched neck. The chattering of
+     birds fills the air; the sparrow-hawk hangs motionless
+     overhead, or beats the air with the tips of his wings, or
+     swoops upon his prey with searching eyes. At a distance one
+     hears the sharp cry of a flock of wild duck, hovering like a
+     dark cloud over some lake lost or unseen in the immensity of
+     the plain. The prairie-gull rises with a rhythmic movement,
+     bathing his shining plumage in the blue air; now he is a
+     mere speck in the distance, once more he glistens white and
+     brilliant in the rays of the sun, and then disappears. When
+     evening begins to fall, the steppes become quite still;
+     their whole breadth burns under the last ardent beams; it
+     darkens quickly, and the long shadows cover the ground like
+     a dark pall of dull and equal green. Then the vapors
+     thicken; each flower, each herb, exhales its aroma, and all
+     the plain is steeped in perfume. The crickets chirp
+     vigorously.... At night the stars look down upon the
+     sleeping Cossack, who, if he opens his eyes, will see the
+     steppes illuminated with sparks of light,--the fireflies.
+     Sometimes the dark depths of the sky are lighted up by fires
+     among the dry reeds that line the banks of the little
+     streams and lakes, and long lines of swans, flying northward
+     and disclosed to view by this weird light, seem like bands
+     of red crossing the sky."
+
+Do we not seem to see in this description the growth of this impetuous,
+ardent, spasmodic life, goaded on to quick maturity by the knowledge of
+its own brevity?
+
+Without entirely accepting Montesquieu's theory as to climate, it is
+safe to allow that it contains a large share of truth. It is indubitable
+that the influence of climate is to put conditions to man's artistic
+development by forcing him to keep his gaze fixed upon the phenomena of
+Nature and the alternation and contrast of seasons, and helps to develop
+in him a fine pictorial sense of landscape, as in the case of the
+Russian writers. In our temperate zone we may live in relative
+independence of the outside world, and almost insensible to the
+transition from summer to winter. We do not have to battle with the
+atmosphere; we breathe it, we float in it. Perhaps for this reason good
+word-painters of landscape are few in our (Spanish) literature, and our
+descriptive poets content themselves with stale and regular phrases
+about the aurora and the sunset. But laying aside this parallel, which
+perhaps errs in being over-subtle, I will say that I agree with those
+who ascribe to the Russian climate a marked influence in the evolution
+of Russian character, institutions, and history.
+
+Enveloped in snow and beaten by the north wind, the Sclav wages an
+interminable battle; he builds him a light sleigh by whose aid he
+subjects the frozen rivers to his service; he strips the animals of
+their soft skins for his own covering; to accustom his body to the
+violent transitions and changes of temperature, he steams himself in hot
+vapors, showers himself with cold water, and then lashes himself with a
+whip of cords, and if he feels a treacherous languor in his blood he
+rubs and rolls his body in the snow, seeking health and stimulus from
+his very enemy. But strong as is his power of reaction and moral
+energy, put this man, overwrought and wearied, beside a genial fire, in
+the silence of the tightly closed _isba_, or hut, within his reach a jug
+of _kvass_ or _wodka_ (a terrible _fire-water_ more burning than any
+other), and, obeying the urgency of the long and cruel cold, he drinks
+himself into a drunken sleep, his senses become blunted, and his brain
+is overcome with drowsiness. Do not exact of him the persevering
+activity of the German, nor talk to him of the public life which is
+adapted to the Latin mind. Who can imagine a forum, an oracle, a
+tribune, in Russia? Study the effect of an inclement sky upon a Southern
+mind in the Elegies of Ovid banished to the Pontus; his reiterated
+laments inspire a profound pity, like the piping of a sick bird cowering
+in the harsh wind. The poet's greatest dread is that his bones may lie
+under the earth of Sarmatia; he, the Latin voluptuary, son of a race
+that desires for its dead that the earth may lie lightly on them,
+shrinks in anticipation of the cold beyond the tomb, when he thinks that
+his remains may one day be covered by that icy soil.
+
+The Sclav is the victim of his climate, which relaxes his fibres and
+clouds his spirit. The Sclav, say those who know him well, lacks
+tenacity, firmness; he is flexible and variable in his impressions; as
+easily enthusiastic as indifferent; fluctuating between opposite
+conclusions; quick to assimilate foreign ideas; as quick to rid himself
+of them; inclined to dreamy indolence and silent reveries; given to
+extremes of exaltation and abasement; in fact, much resembling the
+climate to which he has to adapt himself. It needs not be said that
+this description, and any other which pretends to sum up the
+characteristics of the whole people, must have numerous exceptions, not
+only in individual cases but in whole groups within the Russian
+nationality: the Southerner will be more lively and vivacious; the
+Muscovite (those properly answering to that name) more dignified and
+stable; the Finlander, serious and industrious, like the Swiss, to whose
+position his own is somewhat analogous. There is in every nation a
+psychical as well as physical type to which the rank and file more or
+less correspond, and it is only upon a close scrutiny that one notices
+differences. The influence of the Tropics upon the human race has never
+been denied; we are forced to admit the influence of the Pole also,
+which, while beneficial in those lands not too close upon it,
+invigorating both bodies and souls and producing those chaste and robust
+barbarians who were the regenerators of the effete Empire, yet too
+close, it destroys, it annihilates. Who can doubt the effect of the snow
+upon the Russian character when it is stated upon the authority of
+positive data and statistics that the vice of drunkenness increases in
+direct proportion to the degrees of latitude? There is a fine Russian
+novel, "Oblomof" (of which I shall speak again later), which is more
+instructive than a long dissertation. The apathy, the distinctively
+Russian enervation of the hero, puts the languor of the most indolent
+Creole quite in the shade, with the difference that in the case of the
+Sclav brain and imagination are at work, and his body, if well wrapped,
+is able to enjoy the air of a not unendurable temperature.
+
+Not only the rigors of climate but the aspect of the outside world has a
+marked influence on character. Ovid in exile lamented having to live
+where the fields produced neither fruits nor sweet grapes; he might have
+added, had he lived in Russia, where the fields are all alike, where the
+eye encounters no variety to attract and please it. Castile is flat and
+monotonous like Russia, but there the sky compensates for the nakedness
+of the earth, and one cannot be sad beneath that canopy of turquoise
+blue. In Russia the dark firmament seems a leaden vault instead of a
+silken canopy, and oppresses the breast. The only things to diversify
+the immense expanse of earth are the great rivers and the broad belts or
+zones of the land, which may be divided into the northern, covered with
+forests; the _black lands_, which have been the granary of the empire
+from time immemorial; the arable steppes, so beautifully described by
+Gogol, like the American prairies, the land of the wild horses of the
+Russian heroic age; and lastly, the sandy steppes, sterile deserts only
+inhabited by the nomadic shepherds and their flocks. Throughout this
+vast body four large arteries convey the life-giving waters: the Dnieper
+which brought to Russia the culture of old Byzantium; the Neva, beside
+which sits the capital of its modern civilization; the Don, legendary
+and romantic; and the Volga, the great _Mother Volga_, the marvellous
+river, whose waters produce the most delicious fish in the world.
+Without the advantage of these rivers, whose abundance of waters is
+almost comparable to an ocean, the plains of Russia would be
+uninhabitable. Land, land everywhere, an ocean of land, a uniformity of
+soil, no rocks, no hills, so that stone is almost unknown in Russia. St.
+Petersburg was the first city not built entirely of wood, and it is an
+axiom, that Russian houses, as a rule, burn once in seven years. This
+dulness and desolation of Nature's aspect must of course influence brain
+and imagination, and consequently must be reflected in the literature,
+where melancholy predominates even in satire, and whence is derived a
+tendency to pessimism and a sort of religious devotion tinged with
+misery and sadness. Indolence, fatalism, inconstancy,--these are the
+defects of Russian character; resignation, patience, kindness,
+tolerance, humility, its better qualities. Its passive resignation may
+be readily transformed into heroism; and Count Léon Tolstoï, in his
+military narrative of the "Siege of Sevastopol," and his novel "War and
+Peace," studies and portrays in a wonderful way these traits of the
+national soul.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Russian History.
+
+
+History has been for Russia as inclement and hostile as Nature. A
+cursory glance will suffice to show this, and it is foreign to my
+purpose to devote more than slight attention to it.
+
+The Greeks, the civilizers of the world, brought their culture to
+Colchis and became acquainted with the very southernmost parts of Russia
+known as Sarmatia and Scythia. Herodotus has left us minute descriptions
+of the inhabitants of the Cimmerian plains, their ways, customs,
+religions, and superstitions, distinguishing between the industrious
+Scythians who produce and sell grain, and the nomadic Scythians, the
+Cossacks, who, depending on their pastures, neither sow nor work. The
+Sarmatian region was invaded and subjugated by the northern Sclavs, who
+in turn were conquered by the Goths, these by the Huns, and finally,
+upon the same field, Huns, Alans, and Bulgarians fought one another for
+the mastery. In this first confused period there is no historical
+outline of the Russia that was to be. Her real history begins in a, to
+us, strange event, whose authenticity historical criticism may question,
+but which is the basis of all tradition concerning the origin of Russian
+institutions; I mean the famous message sent by the Sclavs to those
+Norman or Scandinavian princes, those daring adventurers, the Vikings
+supposedly (but it matters not), saying to this effect, more or less:
+"Our land is broad and fertile, but there is neither law nor justice
+within it; come and possess it and govern it."
+
+Upon the foundation provided by this strange proceeding many very
+original theories and philosophical conclusions have been built
+concerning Russian history; and the partisans of autocracy and the
+ancient order of things consider it a sure evidence that Russia was
+destined by Heaven to acknowledge an absolute power of foreign
+derivation, and to bow voluntarily to its saving yoke. Whether the
+triumphal rulers were Normans or Scandinavians or the original Sclavs,
+it is certain that with their appearance on the scene as the element of
+military strength and of disciplined organization, the history of Russia
+begins: the date of this foreign admixture (which would be for us a day
+of mourning and shame) Russia to-day celebrates as a glorious
+millennium. Heroic Russia came into being with the Varangian or Viking
+chieftains, and it is that age which provides the subject of the
+_bilinas_; it was the ninth century after Christ, at the very moment
+when the epic and romantic life of Spain awoke and followed in the train
+of the Cid.
+
+With the establishment of order and good government among the Sclavs,
+Rurik founded the nation, as certainly as he founded later the legendary
+city of Novgorod, and his brother and successor, Olaf, that of Kief,
+mother of all the Russian cities. It fell to Rurik's race also to give
+the signal for that secular resistance which even to-day Russia
+maintains toward her perpetual enemy, Constantinople; the Russian fleets
+descended the Dnieper to the Byzantine seas to perish again and again
+under the Greek fire. Russia received also from this same Byzantium,
+against which her arms are ever turned, the Christian religion, which
+was delivered to Olga by Constantine Porfirogenitus. Who shall say what
+a change there might have been over the face of the earth if the
+Oriental Sclavs had received their religion from Rome, like the Poles?
+
+Olga was the Saint Clotilde of Russia; in Vladimir we see her
+Clodovicus. He was a sensuous and sanguinary barbarian, though at times
+troubled with religious anxieties, who at the beginning of his reign
+upheld paganism and revived the worship of idols, at whose feet he
+sacrificed the Christians. But his darkened conscience was tortured
+nevertheless by aspirations toward a higher moral light, and he opened a
+discussion on the subject of the best religion known to mankind. He
+dismissed Mahometanism because it forbade the use of the red wine which
+rejoiceth the heart of man; Judaism because its adherents were wanderers
+over the face of the earth; Catholicism because it was not sufficiently
+splendid and imposing. His childish and primitive mind was taken with
+the Asiatic splendors of the church of Constantinople, and being already
+espoused to the sister of the Byzantine emperor, he returned to his own
+country bringing its priests with him, cast his old idols into the
+river, and compelled his astonished vassals to plunge into the same
+waters and receive baptism perforce, while the divinity he venerated but
+yesterday was beaten, smeared with blood, and buried ignominiously.
+Happy the people upon whom the gospel has not been forced by a cruel
+tyrant, at the point of the sword and under threats of torture, but to
+whom it has been preached by a humble apostle, the brother of
+innumerable martyrs and saintly confessors! In the twelfth century, when
+Christianity inspired us to reconquer our country, Russia, more than
+half pagan, wept for her idols, and seemed to see them rising from the
+depths of the river demanding adoration. From this corrupt Byzantine
+source Russia derived her second civilization, counting as the first
+that proceeding from the colonization and commerce of the Greeks, as
+related by Herodotus. The dream of Yaroslaus, the Russian Charlemagne,
+was to make his capital, Kief, a rival and imitator of Byzantium. From
+Byzantium came the arts, customs, and ideas; and it seemed the fate of
+the Sclav race to get the pattern for its intellectual life from abroad.
+
+Some Russian thinkers deem it advantageous for their country to have
+received its Christianity from Byzantium, and consider it an element of
+greater independence that the national Church never arrogated to itself
+the supremacy and dominion over the State. Let such advantages be judged
+by the rule of autocracy and the nullity of the Greek Church. The
+Catholic nations, being educated in a more spiritual and exalted idea of
+liberty, have never allowed that the monarch could be lord of the human
+conscience, and have never known that monstrous confusion of attributes
+which makes the sovereign absolute dictator of souls. The Crusade, that
+fecund movement which was the work of Rome, never spread over Russia;
+and when the Sclavs fell under the Tartar yoke, the rest of Europe left
+her to her fate. Russia's choice of this branch of the Christian
+religion was fatal to her dominion over other kindred Sclavs; for it
+embittered her rivalry with the Poles, and raised an insurmountable
+barrier between Russia and European civilization which was inseparably
+intertwined with the Catholic faith even in such phenomena as the
+Renaissance, which seems at first glance laic and pagan.
+
+Nevertheless, so much of Christianity as fell to Russia through the
+accepted channel sufficed to open to her the doors of the civilized
+world, and to rouse her from the torpid sleep of the Oriental. It gave
+her the rational and proper form of family life as indicated by
+monogamy, whose early adoption is one of the highest and most
+distinguishing marks of the Aryan race; and instead of the savage
+chieftain surrounded by his fierce vassals always ready for rebellion
+and bloodshedding, it gave the idea of a monarch who lives as God's
+vicar upon the earth, the living incarnation of law and order,--an idea
+which, in times of anarchy and confusion, served to constitute the State
+and establish it upon a firm basis. Lastly, Russia owes to Christianity
+her ecclesiastical literature, the fount and origin of literary culture
+throughout Europe.
+
+In the thirteenth century--that bright and luminous age, the time of
+Saint Thomas, of Saint Francis of Assisi, of Dante, of Saint
+Ferdinand--Russia was suddenly invaded by the Mongols, and, like locusts
+in a corn-field, those hideous and demoniacal foes fell upon her and
+made all Christendom tremble, so that the French historian Joinville
+records it as a sign of the coming of Antichrist. "For our sins the
+unknown nations covered our land," say the Russian chroniclers. Genghis
+Khan, after subduing all Asia, drew around him an immense number of
+tribes, and fell upon Russia with irresistible force, sowing the land
+with skulls as the flower of the field sows it with seeds, and
+compelling the once free and wealthy native Boyars to bring grist to the
+mill and serve their conquerors as slaves. The Russian towns and princes
+performed miracles of heroism, but in vain. The Tartar hordes, let loose
+upon those vast plains where their horses found abundant pasture, rolled
+over the land like an inundation. In a more varied country, more densely
+populated and with better communication, the Tartars would have been
+beaten back, as they were from Moravia. Again Nature's hand was upon the
+destinies of Russia; the topographical conditions laid her under the
+power of the Golden Horde.
+
+This great misfortune not only isolated Russia from the Occident and
+left her under Asiatic sway, but it also subjugated her to the growing
+autocracy of the Muscovite princes who were becoming formidable
+oppressors of their subjects, and they in turn were victims,
+tributaries, and vassals of the great Khans. So the invasion came to
+exercise a decisive influence upon the institutions of the future
+empire, pernicious in consequence of the abnormal development allowed to
+monarchical authority, and beneficent inasmuch as it aided forcibly in
+the formation of the nationality. At the time of the Mongol irruption
+Russia was composed of various independent principalities governed by
+the descendants of Rurik; the necessity of opposing the invader
+demonstrated the necessity also of uniting all under one sceptre.
+
+Continually chafing at the bit, dissimulating and temporizing with the
+enemy by means of clever diplomatic envoys, the princes slowly cemented
+their power and prepared the land for a homogeneous state, until one day
+the chivalrous Donskoï, the victor at the battle of the Don, opened the
+era of reconquest, exclaiming in the exuberance of his first triumph
+over the Tartars, "Their day is past, and God is with us!" But Russia's
+evil star awoke one of the greatest captains named in history,
+Tamerlane, who ruined the work begun by Donskoï, and toward the end of
+the fourteenth century once more laid the Muscovite people under
+subjection.
+
+At the meeting of the Council of Florence, when the Greek Emperor John
+Paleologos agreed to the reunion of the two churches, the prince of
+Moscow, Basil the Blind, showed himself blind of soul as well as of eye,
+in obstinately opposing such a union, thus cutting off Russia again from
+the Occident. When the Turks took Constantinople and consummated the
+fall of the Byzantine empire, Moscow became the capital of the Greek
+world, the last bulwark of the schismatic church, the asylum of the
+remains of a depraved and perishing organism, of the senile decadence of
+the last of the Cæsars.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Russian Autocracy.
+
+
+Such was the sad situation in Russia at the opening of the period of
+European Renaissance, out of which grew the modern age which was to
+provide the remedy for her ills through her own tyrants. For without
+intending a paradox, I will say that tyranny is the liberator of Russia.
+Twice these tyrants who have forced life into her, who have impelled her
+toward the future, have been called _The Terrible_,--Ivan III., the
+uniter of the provinces, he whose very look made the women faint, and
+Ivan IV., the first to use the title of Czar. Both these despots cross
+the stage of history like spectres called up by a nightmare: the former
+morose, dissimulating, and hypocritical, like Louis XI. of France, whom
+he resembles; the latter demented, fanatical, epileptic, and
+hot-tempered, clutching his iron pike in hand, with which he transfixed
+Russia as one may transfix a fluttering insect with a pin. But these
+tyrants, gifted and guided by a saving instinct, created the nation.
+Ivan III. instituted the succession to the throne, thus suppressing the
+hurtful practice of partition among brothers, and it was he who finally
+broke the yoke of the Mongols. Ivan IV. did more yet; he achieved the
+actual separation of Europe from Asia, put down the anarchy of the
+nobles, and taught them submission to law; and not content with this,
+he put himself at the head of the scanty literature of his time, and
+while he widened the domains of Russia, he protected within her borders
+the establishment of the press, until then persecuted as sacrilegious.
+It is difficult to think what would have become of the Russian nation
+without her great tyrants. Therefore it is that the memory of Ivan IV.
+still lives in the popular imagination, and the Terrible Czar, like
+Pedro the Cruel of Spain, is neither forgotten nor abhorred.
+
+The consolidation of the autocratic idea is easily understood in the
+light of these historic figures. No wonder that the people accepted it,
+from a spirit of self-preservation, since it was despotism that
+sustained them, that formed them, so to speak. It is folly to consider
+the institutions of a nation as though they were extraneous to it, fruit
+of an individual will or of a single event; society obeys laws as exact
+as those which regulate the courses of the stars, and the historian must
+recognize and fix them.
+
+The autocracy and the unity of Russia were consolidated together by the
+genius of Ivan III., who made their emblem the double-headed eagle, and
+by Ivan IV., who sacrificed to them a sea of blood. The municipal
+autonomies and the petty independent princes frowned, but Russia became
+a true nation; at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the brilliant
+age of the monarchical principle, no European sovereign could boast of
+being so thoroughly obeyed as the sovereign prince of Moscow.
+
+The radical concept of omnipotent power, not tempered as in the West by
+the humanity of Catholicism, at once rushed headlong to oppression and
+slavery. The ambitious regent Boris Godonof was not long in attaching
+the serfs to the soil, and upon the heels of this unscrupulous act
+followed the dark and bloody days of the false Demetrii, in which the
+serf, irritated by the burden of his chains, welcomed, in every
+adventurer, in every impostor, a Messiah come to redeem him. Then the
+Poles, the eternal enemies of Russia, seized the Kremlin, the Swedes
+threatened to overcome her, and the nation seemed ready to perish had it
+not been for the heroism of a butcher and a prince; a suggestive example
+of the saving strength which at supreme moments rises up in every
+nation.
+
+But one more providential tyrant was needed, the greatest of all, the
+most extraordinary man of Russia's history, of the house of Romanoff,
+successor to the extinct dynasty of the Terrible Ivans. "Terrible" might
+also be applied to the name of the imperial carpenter whose character
+and destiny are not unlike those of Ivan IV. Both were precocious in
+intellect, both were self-educated, and both cooled their hot youth in
+the hard school of abandonment. Out of it came Peter the Great,
+determined at all costs to remodel his gigantic empire.
+
+Herodotus relates how the young Anacarsis, on returning from foreign
+lands wherein he had learned new arts and sciences, came to Scythia his
+native country, and wished to celebrate there a great feast, after the
+manner of the Greeks, in honor of the mother of the gods; hearing of
+which the king Sarillius impaled him with a lance. He tells also how
+another king who wearied of the Scythian mode of living, and craved the
+customs of the Greeks, among whom he had been educated, endeavored to
+introduce the Bacchanalian dances, himself taking part in them. The
+Scythians refused to conform to these novel ideas, and finally cut off
+the king's head; for, adds the historian, "The Scythians detest nothing
+so much as foreign customs." The tale of Herodotus was in danger of
+being repeated at the beginning of the reign of Peter Romanoff. With him
+began the battle, not yet ended, between old Russia, which calls itself
+Holy, and new Russia, cut after the Western pattern. While Peter
+travelled and studied the industry and progress of Europe with the idea
+of bringing them to his Byzantine empire, the rebels at home conspired
+to dethrone this daring innovator who threatened to use fire and sword,
+whips and scourges, the very implements of barbarism, against barbarism
+itself.
+
+It is a notable fact in Russian history that none of her mighty
+sovereigns was possessed of moral conditions in harmony with the vigor
+of their intelligence and will force. Russia has had great emperors but
+not good emperors. The halo that wreathes the head of Berenguela of
+Castile and Isabel the Catholic, Saint Ferdinand, or Saint Louis,--men
+and women in whom the ideal of justice seemed to become incarnate,--is
+lacking to Vladimir the Baptizer, to Ivan IV., to Peter the Great.
+Among Occidental peoples the monarchy owed its prestige and sacred
+authority to good and just kings, vicars of God on earth, who were
+impressed with a sense of being called to play a noble part in the drama
+of history, conscious of grave responsibilities, and sure of having to
+render an account of their stewardship to a Supreme Power. The Czars
+present quite a different aspect: they seem to have understood
+civilization rather by its externals than by its intrinsic doctrines,
+which demand first of all our inward perfecting, our gradual elevation
+above the level of the beast, and the continuous affirmation of our
+dignity. Therefore they used material force as their instrument, and
+spared no means to crown their efforts.
+
+But with all it is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration to
+Peter the Great. That fierce despot, gross and vicious, was not only a
+reformer but a hero. Pultowa, which beheld the fall of the power of
+Sweden, justified the reforms and the military organization instituted
+by the young emperor, and made Russia a European power,--a power
+respected, influential, and great. Whatever may be said against war,
+whatever sentimental comparisons may be made between the founder and the
+conqueror, it must still be admitted that the monarch who leads his
+people to victory will lead them _ipse facto_ to new destinies, to a
+more glorious and intense historic life.
+
+If Peter the Great had vacillated one degree, if he had squandered time
+and opportunity in studying prudent ways and means for planting his
+reforms, if his hand had trembled in laying the rod across the backs of
+his nobles, or had spared the lash upon the flesh of his own son,
+perhaps he would never have achieved the transformation of his Oriental
+empire into a European State, a transformation which embraced
+everything,--the navy, the army, public instruction, social relations,
+commerce, customs, and even the beards of his subjects, the much
+respected traditional long beards, mercilessly shaven by order of the
+autocrat. In his zeal for illimitable authority, and that his decrees
+might meet with no obstacles either in heaven or earth, this Czar
+conceived the bright idea of assuming the spiritual power, and having
+suppressed the Patriarchy and created the Synod, he held in his hands
+the conscience of his people, could count its every pulsation, and wind
+it up like a well-regulated clock. What considerations, human or divine,
+will check a man who, like Abraham, sacrifices his first-born to an
+idea, and makes himself the executioner of his own son?
+
+The race sign was not obliterated from the Russian culture produced by
+immoral and short-sighted reformers. A woman of low extraction and
+obscure history, elevated to the imperial purple, was the one to
+continue the work of Peter the Great; his daughter's favorite became the
+protector of public instruction and the founder of the University of
+Moscow; a frivolous and dissolute Czarina, Elisabeth Petrowna, modified
+the customs, encouraged intellectual pleasures and dramatic
+representations, and put Russia in contact with the Latin mind as
+developed in France; another empress, a parricide, a usurper and
+libertine, who deserves the perhaps pedantic name of the Semiramis of
+the North given her by Voltaire, hid her delinquencies under the
+splendor of her intellect, the refined delicacy of her artistic tastes,
+her gifts as a writer, and her magnificence as a sovereign.
+
+It was the profound and violent shock administered by the hard hand of
+Peter the Great that impelled Russia along the road to French culture,
+and with equal violence she retraced her steps at the invasion of the
+armies of Napoleon. The nobility and the patriots of Russia cursed
+France in French,--the language which had been taught them as the medium
+of progress; and the nation became conscious of its own individuality in
+the hour of trial, in the sudden awakening of its independent instincts.
+But in proportion as the nationality arose in its might, the low murmur
+of a growing revolution made itself heard. This impulse did not burst
+first from the hearts of the people, ground down by the patriarchal
+despotism of Old Russia, but from the brain of the educated classes,
+especially the nobility. The first sign of the strife, predestined from
+the close of the war with the French, was the political repression of
+the last years of the reign of Alexander I., and the famous republican
+conspiracy of December against Nicholas,--an aristocratic outbreak
+contrived by men in whose veins ran the blood of princes. Of these
+events I shall speak more fully when I come to the subject of Nihilism;
+I merely mention it here in this general glimpse of Russian history.
+
+Menaced by Asia, Russia had willingly submitted to an absolute power,
+because, as we have seen, she lacked the elements that had concurred in
+the formation of modern Europe. Classic civilization never entered her
+veins; she had no other light than that which shone from Byzantium, nor
+any other model than that offered by the later empire; she had no place
+in the great Catholic fraternity which had its law and its focus in
+Rome, and the Mongolian invasion accomplished her complete isolation.
+Spain also suffered an invasion of a foreign race, but she pulled
+herself together and sustained herself on a war-footing for seven
+centuries. Russia could not do this, but bent her neck to the yoke of
+the conqueror. Our national character would have chafed indeed to see
+the kings of Asturias and Castile, instead of perpetually challenging
+the Moors, become their humble vassals, as the Muscovite princes were to
+the Khans. With us the struggle for re-conquest, far from exhausting us,
+redoubled our thirst for independence,--a thirst born farther back than
+that time, in spite of Leroy-Beaulieu's statement, although it was
+indeed confirmed and augmented during the progress of that
+Hispano-Saracenic Iliad. The Russians being obliged to lay down their
+arms, to suffer and to wait, assumed, instead of our ungovernable
+vehemence, a patient resignation. But they none the less considered
+themselves a nation, and entertained a hope of vindicating their rights,
+which they accomplished finally in the overthrow of the Tartars, and in
+later days in rising against the French with an impetuosity and
+spontaneity almost as savage as Spain had shown in her memorable days.
+Moreover, Russia lacked the elements of historic activity necessary to
+enable her to play an early part in the work of modern civilization. She
+had no feudalism, no nobility (as we understand the term), no chivalry,
+no Gothic architecture, no troubadours, no knights. She lacked the
+intellectual impetus of mediæval courts, the sturdy exercise of
+scholastic disputations, the elucidations of the problems of the human
+race, which were propounded by the thirteenth century. She lacked the
+religious orders, that network which enclosed the wide edifice of
+Catholicism; and the military, uniting in mystic sympathy the ascetic
+and chivalric sentiments. She lacked the councils of the laws of modern
+rights; and that her lack might be in nothing lacking, she lacked even
+the brilliant heresies of the West, the subtle rationalists and
+pantheists, the Abelards and Amalrics, whose followers were brilliant
+ignoramuses or rank bigots roused by a question of ritual. Lastly, she
+lacked the sunny smile of Pallas Athene and the Graces, the Renaissance,
+which brightened the face of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages.
+
+And as the civilization brought at last to Russia was the product of
+nations possessed of all that Russia lacked, and as finally, it was
+imposed upon her by force, and without those gradual transitions and
+insensible modifications as necessary to a people as to an individual,
+she could not accept it in the frank and cordial manner indispensable to
+its beneficent action. A nation which receives a culture ready made, and
+not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at
+most it can only hope to imitate well. And so it happened with Russia.
+Her development does not present the continuous bent, the gentle
+undulations of European history in which yesterday creates to-day, and
+to-day prepares for to-morrow, without an irregular or awkward halt, or
+ever a trace broken. In the social order of Russia primitive
+institutions coexist with products of our spick and span new sociology,
+and we see the deep waters of the past mixed with the froth of the
+Utopia that points out the route of the unknown future. This confusion
+or inharmoniousness engenders Russian dualism, the cause of her
+political and moral disturbances. Russia contains an ancient people,
+to-day an anachronism, and a society in embryo struggling to burst its
+bounds.
+
+But above all it is evident there is a people eager to speak, to come
+forth, to have a weight in the world, because its long-deferred time has
+come; a race which, from an insignificant tribe mewed in around the
+sources of the Dnieper, has spread out into an immense nation, whose
+territory reaches from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the
+borders of Turkey, Persia, and China; a nation which has triumphed over
+Sweden, Poland, the Turks, the Mongols, and the French; a nation by
+nature expansive, colonizing, mighty in extent, most interesting in the
+qualities of the genius it is developing day by day, and which is more
+astonishing than its material greatness, because it is the privilege of
+intellect to eclipse force. Half a dozen brains and spirits who are now
+spelling out their race for us, arrest and captivate all who contemplate
+this great empire. Out of the poverty of traditions and institutions
+which Russian history bewails, two characteristic ones appear as bases
+of national life: the autocracy, and the agrarian commune,--absolute
+imperial power and popular democracy.
+
+The geography of Russia, which predisposes her both to unity and to
+invasion, which obliges her to concentrate herself, and to seek in a
+vigorous autocratic principle the consciousness of independent being as
+a people, created the formidable dominion of the Muscovite Czars, which
+has no equal in the world. Like all primordial Russian ideas, the plan
+of this Cæsarian sovereignty proceeded from Byzantium, and was founded
+by Greek refugee priests, who surrounded it with the aureole of divinity
+indispensable to the establishment of advantageous superstitions so
+fecund in historical results. Since the twelfth century the autocracy
+has been a fixed fact, and has gone on assuming all the prerogatives,
+absorbing all the power, and symbolizing in the person of one man this
+colossal nation. The sovereign princes, discerning clearly the object
+and end of these aims, have spared no means to attain to it. They began
+by checking the proud Boyars in their train, reducing them from
+companions and equals to subjects; later on they devoted themselves to
+the suppression of all institutions of democratic character.
+
+For the sake of those who judge of a race by the political forms it
+uses, it should be observed that Russia has not only preserved latent in
+her the spirit of democracy, but that she possessed in the Middle Ages
+republican institutions more liberal and radical than any in the rest of
+Europe. The Italian republics, which at bottom were really oligarchies,
+cannot compare with the municipal and communist republics of Viatka,
+Pskof, and especially the great city of Novgorod, which called itself
+with pride Lord Novgorod the Great. The supreme power there resided in
+an assembly of the citizens; the prince was content to be an
+administrator or president elected by free suffrage, and above all an
+ever-ready captain in time of war; on taking his office he swore
+solemnly to respect the laws, customs, and privileges of the republic;
+if he committed a perjury, the assembly convened in the public square at
+the clang of an ancient bell, and the prince, having been declared a
+traitor, was stripped, expelled, and _cast into the mud_, according to
+the forcible popular expression. This industrious republic reached the
+acme of its prosperity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after
+which the rising principality of Moscow, now sure of its future, came
+and took down the bells of Novgorod the Great, and so silenced their
+voices of bronze and the voice of Russian liberties, though not without
+a bloody battle, as witnesseth the whirlpool--which is still pointed out
+to the curious traveller--under the bridge of the ancient republican
+city, whose inhabitants were drowned there by Ivan the Terrible. Upon
+their dead bodies he founded the unity of the empire. Nor are the free
+towns the only tradition of autonomy which disturbed the growing
+autocratic power. The Cossacks for a long time formed an independent and
+warlike aristocracy, proud and indomitable; and to subdue and
+incorporate these bellicose tribes with the rest of the nation it was
+necessary to employ both skill and force.
+
+We may say without vanity that although the Spaniards exalted
+monarchical loyalty into a cult, they never depreciated human dignity.
+Amongst us the king is he who makes right (_face derecho_), and if he
+makes it not, we consider him a tyrant, a usurper of the royal
+prerogative; in acknowledging him lord of life and property, we protest
+(by the mouth of Calderon's honest rustic) against the idea that he can
+arrogate to himself also the dominion over conscience and soul; and the
+smallest subject in Spain would not endure at the king's hand the blows
+administered by Peter the Great for the correction of his nobles,
+themselves descendants of Rurik. In Russia, where the inequalities and
+extremes of climate seem to have been communicated to its institutions,
+there was nothing between the independent republics and the autocracy.
+In Spain, the slightest territorial disaffection, the fruit of partial
+conquests or insignificant victories, was an excuse for some upstart
+princeling, our instinctive tendencies being always monarchical and
+anything like absolute authority and Cæsarism, so odious that we never
+allowed it even in our most excellent kings; a dream of imperial power
+would almost have cost them the throne. In Russia, absolutism is in the
+air,--one sole master, one lord omnipotent, the image of God himself.
+
+Read the Muscovite code. The Czar is named therein _the autocrat whose
+power is unlimited_. See the catechism which is taught in the schools of
+Poland; it says that the subject owes to the Czar, not love or loyalty,
+but adoration. Hear the Russian hymn; amid its harmonies the same idea
+resounds. In all the common forms of salutation to the Czar we shall
+find something that excites in us a feeling of rebellion, something that
+represents us as unworthy to stand before him as one mortal before
+another. Paul I. said to a distinguished foreigner, "You must know that
+in Russia there is no person more important than the person to whom I
+speak and while I speak." A Czar who directs by means of _ukases_ not
+only the dress but even the words of the language which his subjects
+must use, and changes the track of a railroad by a stroke of his pen,
+frightens one even more than when he signs a sentence of proscription;
+for he reaches the high-water mark of authority when he interferes in
+these simple and unimportant matters, and demonstrates what one may call
+the micrography of despotism. If anything can excuse or even commend to
+our eyes this obedience carried to an absurdity, it is its paternal
+character. There are no offences between fathers and sons, and the Czar
+never can insult a subject. The serf calls him _thou_ and _Father_, and
+on seeing him pass he takes off his cap though the snow falls, crossing
+his hands over his breast with religious veneration. For him the Czar
+possesses every virtue, and is moved only by the highest purposes; he
+thinks him impeccable, sacred, almost immortal. If we abide by the
+judgment of those who see a symbol of the Russian character in the call
+of Rurik and the voluntary placing of the power in his hands, the
+autocracy will not seem a secular abuse or a violent tyranny, but rather
+an organic product of a soil and a race; and it will inspire the respect
+drawn forth by any spontaneous and genuine production.
+
+There exists in Russia a small school of thinkers on public affairs,
+important by reason of the weight they have had and still have upon
+public opinion. They are called Sclavophiles,--people enamoured of their
+ancient land, who affirm that the essence of Russian nationality is to
+be found in the customs and institutions of the laboring classes who are
+not contaminated by the artificial civilization imported from the
+corrupt West; who make a point of appearing on occasions in the national
+dress,--the red silk blouse and velvet jacket, the long beard and the
+clumsy boots. According to them, the only independent forces on which
+Russia can count are the people and the Czar,--the immense herd of
+peasants, and, at the top, the autocrat. And in fact the Russian empire,
+in spite of official hierarchies, is a rural state in which the
+sentiment of democratic equality predominates so entirely that the
+people, not content with having but yesterday taken the Czar's part
+against the rich and mighty Boyars, sustains him to-day against the
+revolution, loves him, and cannot conceive of intermediaries between him
+and his subjects, between lord and vassal, or, to put it still more
+truly, between father and son. And having once reduced the nobles, with
+the consent of the people, to the condition of inoffensive hangers-on of
+the court, many thinkers believe that the Czar need only lean upon the
+rude hand of the peasant to quell whatever political disaffection may
+arise. So illimitable is the imperial power, that it becomes impotent
+against itself if it would reduce itself by relegating any of its
+influence to a class, such as, for instance, the aristocracy. If
+turbulent magnates or sullen conspirators manage to get rid of the
+person of the Czar, the principle still remains inviolate.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The Agrarian Communes.
+
+
+At the right hand of the imperial power stands the second Russian
+national institution, the municipal commune known as the _mir_, which is
+arresting the attention of European statesmen and sociologists, since
+they have learned of its existence (thanks to the work of Baron
+Haxsthausen on the internal life of Russia). Who is not astonished at
+finding realized in the land of the despots a large number of the
+communist theories which are the terror of the middle classes in
+liberal countries, and various problems, of the kind we call formidable,
+there practically solved? And why should not a nation often called
+barbarous swell with pride at finding itself, suddenly and without noise
+or effort, safely beyond what in others threatens the extremity of
+social revolution? Therefore it happens that since the discovery of the
+_mir_, the Russians have one argument more, and not a weak one, against
+the corrupt civilization of the Occident. The European nations, they
+say, are running wildly toward anarchy, and in some, as England, the
+concentration of property in a few hands creates a proletariat a
+thousand times more unhappy than the Russian serf ever was, a hungry
+horde hostile to the State and to the wealthy classes. Russia evades
+this danger by means of the _mir_. In the Russian village the land
+belongs to the municipality, amongst whose members it is distributed
+periodically; each able-bodied individual receives what he needs, and is
+spared hunger and disgrace.
+
+Foreigners have not been slow to examine into the advantages of such an
+arrangement. Mackenzie Wallace has pronounced it to be truly
+constitutional, as the phrase is understood in his country; not meaning
+a sterile and delusive law, written upon much paper and enwrapped in
+formulas, but a traditional concept which came forth at the bidding of
+real and positive necessities. What an eloquent lesson for those who
+think they have improved upon the plan of the ages! History, scouting
+our thirst for progress, offers us again in the _mir_ the picture of the
+serpent biting his own tail. This institution, so much lauded by the
+astonished traveller and the meditative philosopher, is really a
+sociological fossil, remains of prehistoric times, preserved in Russia
+by reason of the suspension or slow development of the history of the
+race. Students of law have told me that in the ancient forms of
+Castilian realty, those of Santander, for example, there have been
+discovered traces of conditions analogous to the Russian _mir_. And when
+I have seen the peasants of my own province assembled in the
+church-porch after Mass, I have imagined I could see the remains of this
+Saturnian and patriarchal type of communist partition. Common possession
+of the land is a primitive idea as remote as the prehistoric ages; it
+belongs to the paleontology of social science, and in those countries
+where civilization early flourished, gave way before individual interest
+and the modern idea of property. "Happy age and blessed times were
+those," exclaimed Don Quixote, looking at a handful of acorns, "which
+the ancients called golden, and not because gold which in our iron age
+has such a value set on it, not because gold could be got without any
+trouble, but because those who lived in it were ignorant of those two
+words, _mine_ and _thine_! In that blessed age everything was in common;
+nobody needed to take any more trouble for his necessities than to
+stretch forth his hand and take from the great oak-trees the sweet and
+savory fruit so liberally offered!" Gone long ago for us is the time
+deplored by the ingenious knight, but it has reappeared there in the
+North, where, according to our information, it is still recent; for it
+is thought that the _mir_ was established about the sixteenth century.
+
+The character of the _mir_ is entirely democratic; the oldest peasant
+represents the executive power in the municipal assembly, but the
+authority resides in the assembly itself, which consists of all the
+heads of families, and convenes Sundays in the open air, in the public
+square or the church-porch. The assembly wields a sacred power which no
+one disputes. Next to the Czar the Russian peasant loves his _mir_,
+among whose members the land is in common, as also the lake, the mills,
+the canals, the flocks, the granary, the forest. It is all re-divided
+from time to time, in order to avoid exclusive appropriation. Half the
+cultivable land in the empire is subject to this system, and no
+capitalist or land-owner can disturb it by acquiring even an inch of
+municipal territory; the laborer is born invested with the right of
+possession as certainly as we are all entitled to a grave. In spite of a
+feeling of distrust and antipathy against communism, and of my own
+ignorance in these matters which precludes my judgment of them, I must
+confess to a certain agreement with the ardent apologists of the Russian
+agrarian municipality. Tikomirov says that in Russia individual and
+collective property-rights still quarrel, but that the latter has the
+upper hand; this seems strange, since the modern tendency is decidedly
+toward individualism, and it is hard to conceive of a return to
+patriarchal forms; but there is no reason to doubt the vitality of the
+_mir_ and its generation and growth in the heart of the fatherland, and
+this is certainly worthy of note, especially in a country like Russia,
+so much given to the imitation of foreign models. Mere existence and
+permanence is no _raison d'être_ for any institution, for many exist
+which are pernicious and abominable; but when an institution is found to
+be in harmony with the spirit of the people, it must have a true merit
+and value. It is said that the tendency to aggregate, either in agrarian
+municipalities or in trades guilds and corporations, is born in the
+blood and bred in the bone of the Sclavs, and that they carry out these
+associations wherever they go, by instinct, as the bee makes its cells
+always the same; and it is certainly true that as an ethnic force the
+communistic principle claims a right to develop itself in Russia. It is
+certain that the _mir_ fosters in the poor Russian village habits of
+autonomous administration and municipal liberty, and that in the shadow
+of this humble and primitive institution men have found a common home
+within the fatherland, no matter how scattered over its vast plains.
+"The heavens are very high, and the Czar is far off," says the Russian
+peasant sadly, when he is the victim of any injustice; his only refuge
+is the _mir_, which is always close at hand. The _mir_ acts also as a
+counterbalance to a centralized administration, which is an inevitable
+consequence of the conformation of Russian territory; and it creates an
+advantageous solidarity among the farmers, who are equal owners of the
+same heritages and subject to the same taxes.
+
+Since 1861 the rural governments, released from all seignorial
+obligations, elect their officers from among themselves, and the smaller
+municipal groups, still preserving each its own autonomy, meet together
+in one larger municipal body called _volost_, which corresponds to the
+better-known term _canton_. No institution could be more democratic:
+here the laboring man discusses his affairs _en famille_, without
+interference from other social classes; the _mir_ boasts of it, as also
+of the fact that it has never in its corporate existence known head or
+chief, even when its members were all serfs. In fine, the _mir_ holds
+its sessions without any presiding officer; rooted in the communist and
+equal-rights idea, it acknowledges no law of superiority; it votes by
+unanimous acclamation; the minority yields always to the general
+opinion, to oppose which would be thought base obstinacy. "Only God
+shall judge the _mir_" says the proverb; the word _mir_, say the
+etymological students and admirers of the institution, means, "world,"
+"universe," "complete and perfect microcosm," which is sufficient unto
+itself and is governed by its own powers.
+
+To what does the _mir_ owe its vitality? To the fact that it did not
+originate in the mind of the Utopian or the ideologist, but was produced
+naturally by derivation from the family, from which type the whole
+Russian state organization springs. It should be understood, however,
+that the peasant family in Russia differs from our conception of the
+institution, recalling as it does, like all purely Russian institutions,
+the most ancient or prehistoric forms. The family, or to express it in
+the language of the best writers on the subject, _the great Russian
+family_, is an association of members submitted to the absolute
+authority of the eldest, generally the grandfather,--a fact personally
+interesting to me because of the surprising resemblance it discloses
+between Russia and the province of Gallicia, where I perceive traces of
+this family power in the _petrucios_, or elders. In this association
+everything is in common, and each individual works for all the others.
+To the head of the house is given a name which may be translated as
+administrator, major-domo, or director of works, but conveys no idea of
+relationship. The laws of inheritance and succession are understood in
+the same spirit, and very differently from our custom. When a house or
+an estate is to be settled, the degree of relationship among the heirs
+is not considered; the whole property is divided equally between the
+male adults, including natural or adopted sons if they have served in
+the family the same as legitimate sons, while the married daughter is
+considered as belonging to the family of her husband, and she and the
+son who has separated himself from the parent house are excluded from
+the succession, or rather from the final liquidation or settlement
+between the associates. Although there is a law of inheritance written
+in the Russian Code, it is a dead letter to a people opposed to the idea
+of individual property.
+
+Intimately connected with this communist manner of interpreting the
+rights of inheritance and succession are certain facts in Russian
+history. For a long time the sovereign authority was divided among the
+sons of the ruler; and as the Russian nobility rebelled against the
+establishment of differences founded upon priority in birth, entail and
+primogeniture took root with difficulty, in spite of the efforts made by
+the emperors to import Occidental forms of law. Their idea of succession
+is so characteristic that, like the Goths, they sometimes prefer the
+collateral to the immediate branch, and the brother instead of the son
+will mount the steps of the throne. It is important to note these
+radical differences, because a race which follows an original method in
+the matter of its laws has a great advantage in setting out upon genuine
+literary creations.
+
+But while the family, understood as a group or an association, offers
+many advantages from the agrarian point of view, its disadvantages are
+serious and considerable because it annuls individual liberty. It
+facilitates agricultural labors, it puts a certain portion of land at
+the service of each adult member, as well as tools, implements, fuel,
+and cattle; helps each to a maintenance; precludes hunger; avoids legal
+exactions (for the associated family cannot be taxed, just as the _mir_
+cannot be deprived of its lands); but on the other hand it puts the
+individual, or rather the true family, the human pair, under an
+intolerable domestic tyranny. According to traditional usage, the
+authority of the head of the family was omnipotent: he ordered his
+house, as says an old proverb, like a Khan of the Crimea; his gray hairs
+were sacred, and he wielded the power of a tribal chieftain rather than
+of a head of a house. In our part of the world marriage emancipates; in
+Russia, it was the first link in a galling chain. The oppression lay
+heaviest upon the woman: popular songs recount the sorrows of the
+daughters-in-law subjected to the maltreatment of mothers-in-law and
+sisters-in-law, or the victims of the vicious appetites of the chief,
+who in a literally Biblical spirit thought himself lord of all that
+dwelt beneath his roof. Truly those institutions which sometimes elicit
+our admiration for their patriarchal simplicity hide untold iniquities,
+and develop a tendency to the abuse of power which seems inherent in the
+human species.
+
+At first sight nothing could be more attractive than the great Russian
+family, nothing more useful than the rural communes; and nowadays, when
+we are applying the laws and technicism of physiology to the study of
+society, this primordial association would seem the cell from which the
+true organism of the State may be born; the family is a sort of lesser
+municipality, the municipality is a larger family, and the whole Russian
+people is an immense agglomeration, a great ant-hill whose head is the
+emperor. In the popular songs we see the Oriental idea of the nation
+expressed as the family, when the peasant calls the Czar _father_. But
+this primitive machinery can never prevail against the notion of
+individualism entertained among civilized peoples. Our way of
+understanding property, which the admirers of the Russian commune
+consider fundamentally vicious, is the only way compatible with the
+independence and dignity of work and the development of industries and
+arts. The Russian _mir_ may prevent the growth of the proletariat, but
+it is by putting mankind in bonds. It may be said that agrarian
+communism only differs from servitude in that the latter provides one
+master and the former many; and that though the laboring man
+theoretically considers himself a member of a co-operative agricultural
+society, he is in reality a slave, subject to collective
+responsibilities and obligations, by virtue of which he is tied to the
+soil the same as the vassals of our feudal epochs. Perhaps the new
+social conditions which are the fruit of the emancipation of the serfs,
+which struck at and violated the great associated family, will at last
+undermine the _mir_, unless the _mir_ learns some way to adapt itself to
+any political mutations. What is most important to the study of the
+historical development and the social ideas as shown in modern Russian
+literature, is to understand how by means of the great family and the
+agrarian municipality, communism and socialism run in the veins of the
+people of Russia, so that Leroy-Beaulieu could say with good reason,
+that if they are to be preserved from the pernicious effects of the
+Occidental proletariat it must be by inoculation, as vaccination exempts
+from small-pox.
+
+The socialist leaven may be fairly said to lie in the most important
+class in the Russian State,--important not alone by reason of numerical
+superiority, but because it is the depositary of the liveliest national
+energies and the custodian of the future: I mean the peasants. There
+are some who think that this _mitjik_, this _little man_ or _black man_,
+tiller of still blacker soil, holds the future destinies of Europe in
+his hands; and that when this great new Horde becomes conscious some day
+of its strength and homogeneity, it will rise, and in its concentrated
+might fall upon some portion of the globe, and there will be no defence
+or resistance possible. In the rest of Europe it is the cities, the
+urban element, which regulates the march of political events. Certainly
+Spain is not ignorant of this fact, since she has a vivid remembrance of
+civil wars in which the rustic element, representing tradition, was
+vanquished. In Russia, the cities have no proportionate influence, and
+that which demands the special attention of the governor or the
+revolutionist is the existence, needs, and thoughts of the innumerable
+peasant communities, who are the foundation and material of an empire
+justly termed rural. From this is derived a sort of cult, an apotheosis
+which is among the most curious to be found in Russian modern
+literature. Of the peasant, wrapped in badly cured sheepskins, and
+smelling like a beast; the humble and submissive peasant, yesterday
+laden with the chains of servitude; the dirty, cabbage-eating peasant,
+drunk with _wodka_, who beats his wife and trembles with fright at
+ghosts, at the Devil, and at thunder,--of this peasant, the charity of
+his friends and the poetic imagination of Russian writers has made a
+demi-god, an ideal. So great is the power of genius, that without
+detriment to the claims of truth, picturing him with accurate and even
+brutal realism (which we shall find native to the Russian novel),
+Russian authors have distilled from this peasant a poetic essence which
+we inhale involuntarily until we, aristocratic by instinct, disdainful
+of the rustic, given to ridicule the garlic-smelling herd, yield to its
+power. And not content with seeing in this peasant a brother, a
+neighbor, whom, according to the word of Christ, we ought to love and
+succor, Russian literature discovers in him a certain indefinable
+sublimity, a mysterious illumination which other social classes have
+not. Not merely because of the introduction of the picturesque element
+in the description of popular customs has it been said that Russian
+contemporary literature smells of the peasant, but far rather because it
+raises the peasant to the heights of human moral grandeur, marks in him
+every virtue, and presupposes him possessed of powers which he never
+puts forth. From Turguenief, fine poet as he is, to Chtchédrine, the
+biting satirist, all paint the peasant with loving touch, always find a
+ready excuse for his defects, and lend him rare qualities, without ever
+failing to show faithfully his true physiognomy. Corruption, effeminacy,
+and vice characterize the upper classes, particularly the employees of
+government, or any persons charged with public trusts; and to make these
+the more odious, they are attributed with a detestable hypocrisy made
+more hateful by apparent kindliness and culture.
+
+There is a humorous little novel by Chtchédrine (an author who merits
+especial mention) entitled "The Generals[1] and the _Mujik_," which
+represents two generals of the most ostentatious sort, transported to a
+desert island, unable either to get food or to get away, until they meet
+with a _mujik_, who performs all sorts of services for them, even to
+_making broth in the hollow of his hand_, and then, after making a raft,
+conveys them safely to St. Petersburg; whereupon these knavish generals,
+after recovering back pay, send to their deliverer a glass of whiskey
+and a sum amounting to about three cents. But this bitter allegory is a
+mild one compared with the mystical apotheosis of the _mujik_ as
+conceived by Tolstoï. In one of his works, "War and Peace," the hero,
+after seeking vainly by every imaginable means to understand all human
+wisdom and divine revelation, finds at last the sum of it in a common
+soldier, imperturbable and dull of soul, and poor in spirit, a prisoner
+of the French, who endures with calm resignation ill treatment and death
+without once entertaining the idea of taking the life of his foreign
+captors. This poor fellow, who, owing to his rude, uncouth mode of life,
+suffers persecution by other importunate lesser enemies which I forbear
+to name, is the one to teach Pierre Besukof the alpha and omega of all
+philosophy, wherein he is wise by intuition, and, in virtue of his
+condition as the peasant, fatalistic and docile.
+
+I have had the good fortune to see with my own eyes this idol of Russian
+literature, and to satisfy a part of my curiosity concerning some
+features of Holy Russia. Twenty or thirty peasants from Smolensk who had
+been bitten by a rabid wolf were sent to Paris to be treated by M.
+Pasteur. In company with some Russian friends I went to a small hotel,
+mounted to the fourth floor, and entered a narrow sleeping apartment.
+The air being breathed by ten or twelve human beings was scarcely
+endurable, and the fumes of carbolic acid failed to purify it; but while
+my companions were talking with their compatriots, and a Russian
+young-lady medical student dressed their wounds, I studied to my heart's
+content these men from a distant land. I frankly confess that they made
+a profound impression upon me which I can only describe by saying that
+they seemed to me like Biblical personages. It gave me a certain
+pleasure to see in them the marks of an ancient people, rude and rough
+in outward appearance, but with something majestic and monumental about
+them, and yet with a suggestion of latent juvenility, the grave and
+religious air of dreamer or seer, different from really Oriental
+peoples. Their features, as well as their limbs (which bearing the marks
+of the wild beast's teeth they held out to be washed and dressed with
+tranquil resignation), were large and mighty like a tree. One old man
+took my attention particularly, because he presented a type of the
+patriarchs of old, and might have served the painter as a model for
+Abraham or Job,--a wide skull bald at the top, fringed about with
+yellowish white hair like a halo; a long beard streaked with white also;
+well-cut features, frontal development very prominent, his eyes half
+hidden beneath bushy eyebrows. The arm which he uncovered was like an
+old tree-trunk, rough and knotty, the thick sinuous network of veins
+reminding one of the roots; his enormous hands, wrinkled and horny,
+bespoke a life of toil, of incessant activity, of daily strife with the
+energies of Mother Nature. I heard with delight, though without
+understanding a word, their guttural speech, musical and harmonious
+withal, and I needed not to heat my imagination overmuch to see in those
+poor peasants the realization of the great novelists' descriptions, and
+an expression of patience and sadness which raised them above vulgarity
+and coarseness. The sadness may have been the result of their unhappy
+situation; nevertheless it seemed sweet and poetic.
+
+The attraction which _the people_ exercises upon refined and cultivated
+minds is not surprising. Who has not sometimes experienced with terrible
+keenness what may be called the æsthetic effect of collectivity? A
+regiment forming, the crew of a ship about to weigh anchor, a
+procession, an angry mob,--these have something about them that is epic
+and sublime; so any peasant, if we see in him an epitome of race or
+class, with his historic consequence and his unconscious majesty, may
+and ought to interest us. The _payo_ of Avila who passes me
+indifferently in the street; the beggar in Burgos who asks an alms with
+courteous dignity, wrapped in his tattered clothes as though they were
+garments of costly cloth; the Gallician lad who guides his yoke of oxen
+and creaking cart,--these not only stir in my soul a sentiment of
+patriotism, but they have for me an æsthetic charm which I never feel in
+the presence of a dress-coat and a stiff hat. Perhaps this effect
+depends rather on the spectator, and it may be our fancy that produces
+it; for, as regards the Russian peasant, those who know him well say
+that he is by nature practical and positive, and not at all inclined to
+the romantic and sentimental. The Sclav race is a rich poetic
+wellspring, but it depends upon what one means by poetry. For example,
+in love matters, the Russian peasant is docile and prosaic to the last
+degree. The hardy rustic is supposed to need two indispensable
+accessories for his work,--a woman and a horse; the latter is procured
+for him by the head or _old man_ of the house, the former by the _old
+woman_; the wedding is nothing more than the matriculation of the
+farmer; the pair is incorporated with the great family, the agricultural
+commune, and that is the end of the idyl. Amorous and gallant conduct
+among peasants would be little fitting, given the low estimation in
+which women are held. Although the Russian peasant considers the woman
+independent, subject neither to father nor husband, invested with equal
+rights with men; and although the widow or the unmarried woman who is
+head of the house takes part in the deliberations of the _mir_ and may
+even exercise in it the powers of a mayor (and in order to preserve this
+independence many peasant-women remain unmarried), this consideration is
+purely a social one, and individually the woman has no rights whatever.
+A song of the people says that seven women together have not so much as
+one soul, rather none at all, for their soul is smoke. The theory of
+marriage relations is that the husband ought to love his wife as he does
+his own soul, to measure and treasure her as he does his sheepskin coat:
+the rod sanctions the contract. In some provinces of Finnish or Tartar
+origin the bride is still bought and sold like a head of cattle; it is
+sometimes the custom still to steal her, or to feign a rape, symbolizing
+indeed the idea of woman as a slave and the booty of war. So rigorous is
+the matrimonial yoke, that parricides are numerous, and the jury,
+allowing attenuating circumstances, generally pardons them.
+
+Tikomirov, who, though a radical, is a wise and sensible man, says, that
+far from considering the masses of the people as models worthy of
+imitation, he finds them steeped in absolute ignorance, the victims of
+every abuse and of administrative immorality; deprived for many
+centuries of intercourse with civilized nations, they have not outgrown
+the infantile period, they are superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan, as
+shown by their legends and popular songs. They believe blindly in
+witchcraft, to the extent that to discredit a political party with them
+one has only to insinuate that it is given to the use of sorcery and the
+black arts. The peasant has also an unconquerable propensity to
+stealing, lying, servility, and drunkenness. Wherefore, then, is he
+judged superior to the other classes of society?
+
+In spite of the puerile humility to which the Russian peasant is
+predisposed by long years of subjection, he yet obeys a democratic
+impulse toward equality, which servitude has not obliterated; the
+Russian does not understand the English peasant's respect for the
+_gentleman_, nor the French reverence for the _chevalier_ well-dressed
+and decorated. When the government of Poland ordered certain Cossack
+executions of the nobility, these children of the steppes asked one
+another, "Brother, has the shadow of my body increased?" Taught to
+govern himself, thanks to the municipal regimen, the Russian peasant
+manifests in a high degree the sentiment of human equality, an idea both
+Christian and democratic, rather more deeply rooted in those countries
+governed by absolute monarchy and municipal liberty, than in those of
+parliamentary institutions. The Spaniard says, "None lower than the
+King;" the Russian says the same with respect to the Czar. Primitive and
+credulous, a philosopher in his way, the dweller on the Russian steppes
+wields a dynamic force displayed in history by collectivities, be the
+moral value of the individual what it may. In nations like Russia, in
+which the upper classes are educated abroad, and are, like water,
+reflectors and nothing more, the originality, the poetry, the epic
+element, is always with the masses of the people, which comes out strong
+and beautiful in supreme moments, a faithful custodian of the national
+life, as for example when the butcher Minine saved his country from the
+yoke of Sweden, or when, before the French invasion of 1812, they
+organized bands of guerillas, or set fire to Moscow.
+
+Hence in Russia, as in France prior to the Revolution, many thinkers
+endeavor to revive the antiquated theory of the Genevan philosopher, and
+proclaim the superiority of the natural man, by contact with whom
+society, infected with Occidental senility, must be regenerated.
+Discouraged by the incompatibility between the imported European
+progress and the national tradition, unable to still the political
+strife of a country where pessimist solutions are most natural and
+weighty, their patriotism now uplifts, now shatters their hopes, even in
+the case of those who disclaim and condemn individual patriotism, such
+as Count Tolstoï; and then ensues the apotheosis of the past, the
+veneration of national heroes and of the people. "The people is great,"
+says Turguenief in his novel "Smoke;" "we are mere ragamuffins." And so
+_the people_, which still bears traces of the marks of servitude, has
+been converted into a mysterious divinity, the inspiration of
+enthusiastic canticles.
+
+
+[1] Voguié explains this title of "General" to be both in the civil and
+military order with the qualification of "Excellency." Without living in
+Russia one can hardly understand the prestige attached to this title, or
+the facilities it gives everywhere for everything. To attain this
+dignity is the supreme ambition of all the servants of the State. The
+common salutation by way of pleasantry among friends is this line from
+the comedy of Griboiëdof, which has become a proverb: "I wish you health
+and the tchin of a General."--TR.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Social Classes in Russia.
+
+
+Properly speaking, there are no social classes in Russia, a phenomenon
+which explains to some extent the political life and internal
+constitution; there is no co-ordinate proportion between the rural and
+the urban element, and at first sight one sees in this vast empire only
+the innumerable mass of peasants, just as on the map one sees only a
+wide and monotonous plain. Although it is true that a rural and
+commercial aristocracy did arise and flourish in old Moscow in the
+twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the era of invasions, yet the passions
+of the wars that followed gave it the death-blow. The middle classes in
+the rich and independent republics lost their wealth and influence, and
+the people, being unable of themselves to reorganize the State,
+sustained the princes, who soon became autocrats, ready at the first
+chance to subdue the nobles and unite the disintegrated and war-worn
+nation. With the sub-division into independent principalities and the
+institution of democratic municipalities the importance of the cities
+decreased, and the privileged classes were at an end. The middle class
+is the least important. In the same districts where formerly it was most
+powerful it has been dissolved by the continuous infusion of the
+peasant element, owing to the curious custom of emigration, which is
+spontaneous with this nomadic and colonizing people. Many farmers,
+although enrolled in the rural villages, spend a large part of the year
+in the city, filling some office, and forming a hybrid class between the
+rural and artisan classes, thus sterilizing the natural instincts of the
+laboring proletariat by the enervation of city life. The emperors were
+not blind to the disproportion between the civic and rural elements, and
+have endeavored to remedy it. The industrial and commercial population
+fled from the cities to escape the taxes; therefore they promulgated
+laws prohibiting emigration and the renunciation of civic rights, under
+severe penalties. Yet with all these the cities have taken but a second
+place in Russian history. Western annals are full of sieges, defences,
+and mutinies of cities; in Russia we hear only of the insurrection of
+wandering tribes or hordes of peasants. Russian cities exist and live
+only at the mandate or protection of the emperor. Every one knows what
+extraordinary means were taken by Peter the Great to build St.
+Petersburg upon the swamps along the Neva; in twenty-three years that
+remarkable woman called the Semiramis of the North founded no less than
+two hundred and sixteen cities, determined to create a mesocratic
+element, to the lack of which she attributed the ignorance and misery of
+her empire. Whenever we see any rapid advancement in Russia we may be
+sure it is the work of autocracy, a beneficence of despotism (that word
+so shocking to our ears). It was despotism which created the modern
+capital opposite the old Byzantine, legendary, retrogressive town,--the
+new so different from the old, so full of the revolutionary spirit, its
+streets undermined by conspirators, its pavements red with the blood of
+a murdered Czar. These cities, colleges, schools, universities,
+theatres, founded by imperial and autocratic hands, were the cradle of
+the political unrest that rebels against their power; were there no
+cities, there would be no revolutions in Russia. Although they do not
+harbor crowds of famishing authors like those of London and Paris, who
+lie in wait for the day of sack and ruin, yet they are full of a strange
+element composed of people of divers extraction and condition, and of
+small intellect, but who call themselves emphatically _the intelligence
+of Russia_.
+
+I have felt compelled to render justice to the good will of the
+autocrats; and to be equally just I must say that whatever has advanced
+culture in Russia has proceeded from the nobility, and this without
+detriment to the fact that the larger energies lie with the masses of
+the people. The enlightenment and thirst for progress manifested by the
+nobility is everywhere apparent in Russian history. They are descended
+from the retinues of the early Muscovite Czars, to whom were given
+wealth and lands on condition of military service, and they are
+therefore in their origin unlike any other European nobility; they have
+known nothing of feudalism, nor the Germanic symbolism of blazons, arms,
+titles, and privileges, pride of race and notions of caste: these have
+had no influence over them. The Boyars, who are the remnants of the
+ancient territorial aristocracy, on losing their sovereign rights,
+rallied round the Czar in the quality of court councillors, and received
+gold and treasure in abundance, but never the social importance of the
+Spanish grandee or the French baron. Hence the Russian aristocracy was
+an instrument of power, but without class interests, replenished
+continually by the infusion of elements from other social classes, for
+no barrier prevented the peasant from becoming a merchant and the
+merchant from becoming a noble, if the fates were kind. There are
+legally two classes of aristocracy in Russia,--the transmissible, or
+hereditary, and the personal, which is not hereditary. If the latter
+surprise us for a moment, it soon strikes us with favor, since we all
+acknowledge to an occasional or frequent protest against the idea of
+hereditary nobility, as when we lament that men of glorious renown are
+represented by unworthy or insignificant descendants. In Russia, Krilof,
+the Æsop of Moscow, as he is called, put this protest into words in the
+fable of the peasant who was leading a flock of geese to the city to
+sell. The geese complained of the unkindness with which they were
+treated, adding that they were entitled to respect as being the
+descendants of the famous birds that saved the Capitol, and to whom Rome
+had dedicated a feast. "And what great thing have _you_ done?" asked the
+peasant. "We? Oh, nothing." "Then to the oven!" he replied.
+
+The only title of purely national origin in Russia is that of
+prince;[1] all others are of recent importation from Europe; in the
+family of the prince, as in that of the humblest _mujik_, the sons are
+equals in rights and honors, and the fortune of the father, as well as
+his title, descends equally to all. Feudalism, the basis of nobility as
+a class, never existed in Russia: according to Sclavophiles, because
+Russia never suffered conquest in those ancient times; according to
+positivist historians, by reason of geographical structure which did not
+favor seignorial castles and bounded domains, or any other of those
+appurtenances of feudalism dear to romance and poetry, and really
+necessary to its existence,--the moated wall, the mole overhanging some
+rocky precipice washed by an angry torrent, and below at its foot, like
+a hen-roost beneath a vulture's nest, the clustered huts of the vassals.
+But we have seen that the Russian nobility acknowledges no law of
+superiority; like the people, they hold the idea of divisible and common
+property. Hence this aristocracy, less haughty than that of Europe,
+ruled by imperial power, subject until the time of Peter III. to
+insulting punishment by whip or rod, and which, at the caprice of the
+Czar, might at any time be degraded to the quality of buffoons for any
+neglect of a code of honor imposed by the traditions of their
+race,--never drew apart from the life of the nation, and, on the
+contrary, was always foremost in intellectual matters. Russian
+literature proves this, for it is the work of the Russian nobility
+mainly, and the ardent sympathy for the people displayed in it is
+another confirmation. Tolstoï, a noble, feels an irrepressible
+tenderness, a physical attraction toward the peasant; Turguenief, a
+noble and a rich man, in his early years consecrated himself by a sort
+of vow to the abolition of servitude.
+
+The same lack of class prejudices has made the Russian nobility a quick
+soil for the repeated ingrafting of foreign culture according to the
+fancy of the emperors. Catherine II. found little difficulty in
+modelling her court after that of Versailles; but the same aristocracy
+that powdered and perfumed itself at her behest adopted more important
+reforms to a degree that caused Count Rostopchine to exclaim, "I can
+understand the French citizen's lending a hand in the revolution to
+acquire his rights, but I cannot understand the Russian's doing the same
+to lose his." They are so accustomed to holding the first place in
+intellectual matters, that no privilege seems comparable to that of
+standing in the vanguard of advanced thought. They had been urged to
+frequent the lyceums and debating societies, to take up serious studies
+and scientific education by the word of rulers who were enlightened, and
+friends to progress (as were many of them), when all at once sciences
+and studies, books and the press, began to be suspected, the censorship
+was established, and the conspiracy of December was the signal for the
+rupture between authority and the liberal thought of the country. But
+the nobles who had tasted of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
+did not resign themselves easily to the limited horizon offered by the
+School of Pages or the antechamber of the palace; their hand was upon
+the helm, and rather than let it go they generously immolated their
+material interests and social importance. The aristocracy is everywhere
+else the support of the throne, but in Russia it is a destroying
+element; and while the people remains attached to the autocrat, the
+nobles learn in the very schools founded by the emperors to pass
+judgment upon the supreme authority and to criticise the sovereign.
+Nicholas I. did not fail to realize that these establishments of
+learning were focuses of revolutionary ardor, and he systematically
+reduced the number of students and put limits to scientific education.
+
+It follows that the most reactionary class, or the most unstable class
+in Russia, the class painted in darkest colors by the novelists and used
+as a target for their shafts by the satirists, is not the noble but the
+bureaucratic, the office-holders, the members of the _tchin_ (an
+institution Asiatic in form, comparable perhaps to a Chinese
+mandarinate). Peter the Great, in his zeal to set everything in order,
+drew up the famous categories wherein the Russian official microcosm is
+divided into a double series of fourteen grades each, from
+ecclesiastical dignitaries to the military. This Asiatic sort of
+machinery (though conceived by the great imitator of the West) became
+generally abhorred, and excited a national antipathy, less perhaps for
+its hollow formalism than on account of the proverbial immorality of the
+officers catalogued in it. Mercenariness, pride, routine, and indolence
+are the capital sins of the Russian office-holder, and the first has so
+strong a hold upon him that the people say, "To make yourself understood
+by him you must talk of rubles;" adding that in Russia everybody robs
+but Christ, who cannot because his hands are nailed down. Corruption is
+general; it mounts upward like a turbid wave from the humblest clerk to
+the archduke, generalissimo, or admiral. It is a tremendous ulcer, that
+can only be cured by a cautery of literary satire, the avenging muse of
+Gogol, and the dictatorial initiative of the Czars. In a country
+governed by parliamentary institutions it would be still more difficult
+to apply a remedy.
+
+The contrast is notable between the odium inspired by the bureaucracy
+and the sympathy that greets the municipal institutions,--not only those
+of a patriarchal character such as the _mir_, but those too of a more
+modern origin. Among the latter may be mentioned the _zemstvo_, or
+territorial assembly, analogous to our provincial deputations, but of
+more liberal stripe, and entirely decentralized. In this all classes are
+represented, and not, as in the _mir_, the peasants merely. The form of
+this local parliament is extremely democratic; the cities, the peasants,
+and the property-holders elect separate representatives, and the
+assembly devotes itself to the consideration of plain but interesting
+practical questions of hygiene, salubrity, safety, and public
+instruction. This offers another opportunity to the nobility, for this
+body engages itself particularly with the well-being and progress of the
+poorer classes, in providing physicians for the villages in place of the
+ignorant herb-doctors, in having the _mujiks_ taught to read, and in
+guarding their poor wooden houses from fire.
+
+While the Russian nobility has never slept, the Russian clergy, on the
+contrary, has been permanently wrapped in lethargy. The rôle accorded to
+the Greek Church is dull and depressing, a petrified image, fixed and
+archaic as the _icons_, or sacred pictures, which still copy the
+coloring and design of the Byzantine epoch. Ever since it was rent by
+schism from the parent trunk of Catholicism, life has died in its roots
+and the sap has frozen in its veins. Since Peter the Great abolished the
+Patriarchy, the ecclesiastical authority resides in a Synod composed of
+prelates elected by the government. According to the ecclesiastical
+statutes, the emperor is Head of the church, supreme spiritual chief;
+and though there has been promulgated no dogma of his infallibility, it
+amounts to the same in effect, for he may bind and loose at will. At the
+Czar's command the church anathematizes, as when for example to-day the
+_popes_ are ordered to preach against the growing desire for partition
+of land, against socialism, and against the political enemies of the
+government; the priest is given a model sermon after which he must
+pattern his own; and such is his humiliation that sometimes he is
+obliged by order of the Synod to send information, obtained through his
+office as confessor, to the police, thus revealing the secrets of
+confiding souls. What a loss of self-respect must follow such a
+proceeding! Is it a marvel that some independent schismatics called
+_raskolniks_, revivalists and followers of ancient rites and truths,
+should thrive upon the decadence of the official clergy, who are
+subjected to such insulting servitude and must give to Cæsar what
+belongs to God?
+
+In view of these facts it is in vain to boast of spiritual independence
+and say that the Greek church knows no head but Christ. The government
+makes use of the clergy as of one arm more, which, however, is now
+almost powerless through corruption. The Oriental church has no
+conception of the noble devotion which has honored Catholicism in the
+lives of Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Cardinal Cisneros.
+
+The Russian clergy is divided into _black_ and _white_, or regular and
+secular; the former, powerful and rich, rule in ecclesiastical
+administration; the latter vegetate in the small villages, ill paid and
+needy, using their wits to live at the expense of their parishioners,
+and to wheedle them out of a dozen eggs or a handful of meal. Is it
+strange that the parishioner respects them but little? Is it strange
+that the _pope_ lives in gross pride or scandalous immorality, and that
+we read of his stealing money from under the pillow of a dying man, of
+one who baptized a dog, of another who was ducked in a frozen pond by
+his _barino_, or landlord, for the amusement of his guests? It is true
+that a few occasional facts prove nothing against a class, and that
+malice will produce from any source hurtful anecdotes and more or less
+profane details touching sacred things; but to my mind, that which tells
+most strongly against the Russian clergy is its inanity, its early
+intellectual death, which shut it out completely from scientific
+reflection, controversy, and apology, and therefore from all
+philosophy,--realms in which the Catholic clergy has excelled. Like a
+stripped and lifeless trunk the Oriental church produces no theologians,
+thinkers, or _savants_. There are none to elaborate, define, and ramify
+her dogmas; the human mind in her sounds no depths of mystery. If there
+are no conflicts between religion and science in Russia, it is because
+the Muscovite church weighs not a shadow with the free-thinkers.
+
+Certainly the adherents and members of the earlier church bear away the
+palm for culture and spiritual independence. At the close of the
+seventeenth century, after the struggles with Sweden and Poland, the
+schismatic church aroused the national conscience, and satisfied, to a
+certain extent, the moral needs of a race naturally religious by
+temperament It began to discuss liturgical minutiæ, and persecuted
+delinquents so fiercely that it infused all dissenters with a spirit of
+protest against an authority which was disposed to treat them like
+bandits or wild beasts. Such persecution demonstrates the fact that not
+only ecclesiastical but secular power is irritated by heterodoxy. In
+Russia, whose slumbering church is unmoved even by a thunder-bolt, an
+instinct of orderliness led the less devout of the emperors against the
+schismatics. To-day there are from twelve to fifteen millions of
+schismatics and sects; and many among them are given to the coarsest
+superstitions, practise obscene and cruel rites, worship the Devil, and
+mutilate themselves in their insane fervors. Probably Russia is the only
+country in the civilized world to-day where superstition, quietism, and
+mysticism, without law or limit, grow like poisonous trees; and in my
+work on Saint Francis of Assisi I have remarked how the communist
+heresies of the Middle Ages have survived there in the North. Some
+authors affirm that the clergy shut their eyes and open their hands to
+receive hush-money for their tolerance of heterodoxy. But let us not be
+too ready always to believe the worst. Only lately there fell into my
+hands an article written by that much respected author, Melchior de
+Voguié, who assures us that he has observed signs of regeneration in
+many Russian parishes.
+
+From this review of social classes in Russia it may be deduced that the
+peasant masses are the repository of national energies, while the
+nobility has until now displayed the most apparent activity. The proof
+of this is to be found in the consideration of a memorable historical
+event,--the greatest perhaps that the present century has known,--the
+emancipation of the serfs.
+
+
+[1] "The term translated 'prince' perhaps needs some explanation. A
+Russian prince may be a bootblack or a ferryman. The word _kniaz_
+denotes a descendant of any of the hundreds of petty rulers, who before
+the time of the unification of Russia held the land. They all claim
+descent from the semi-mythical Rurik; and as every son of a _kniaz_
+bears the title, it may be easily imagined how numerous they are. The
+term 'prince,' therefore, is really a too high-sounding title to
+represent it."--Nathan Haskell Dole.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Russian Serfdom.
+
+
+Russia boasts of never having known that black stain upon ancient
+civilizations, slavery; but the pretension, notwithstanding many
+allegations thereto in her own chronicles, is refuted by Herodotus, who
+speaks of the inhuman treatment inflicted by the Scythians on their
+slaves, even putting out their eyes that they might better perform
+certain tasks; and the same historian refers to the treachery of the
+slaves to their masters in raping the women while they were at war with
+the Medes, and to the insurrection of these slaves which was put down by
+the Scythians by means of the whip alone,--the whip being in truth a
+characteristic weapon of a country accustomed to servitude. Herodotus
+does say in another place that "among the Scythians the king's servants
+are free youths well-born, for it is not the custom in Scythia to buy
+slaves;" from which it may be inferred that the slaves were prisoners of
+war. Howbeit, Russian authors insist that in their country serfs were
+never slaves, and serfdom was rather an abuse of the power of the
+nobility and the government than an historic natural result.
+
+To my mind this is not so; and I must say that I think servitude had an
+actual beginning, and that there was a cause for it. The Muscovite
+empire was but sparsely populated, and the population was by
+temperament adventurous, nomadic, restless, and expansive. We have
+observed that the limitless plains of Russia offer no climatic
+antagonisms, for the reason that there are no climatic boundaries; but
+it was not merely the love of native province that was lacking in the
+Russian, but the attachment to the paternal roof and to the home
+village. It is said that the origin of this sentiment is embedded in
+rock; where dwellings are built of wood and burn every seven years on an
+average, there is no such thing as the paternal roof, there is no such
+thing as home. With his hatchet in his belt the Russian peasant will
+build another house wherever a new horizon allures him. But if the
+scanty rural population scatters itself over the steppes, it will be
+lost in it as the sand drinks in the rain, and the earth will remain
+unploughed and waste; there will be nothing to tax, and nobody to do
+military service. Therefore, about the end of the sixteenth century,
+when all the rest of Europe was beginning to feel the stirrings of
+political liberty and the breath of the Renaissance, the Regent, Boris
+Godonof, riveted the chains of slavery upon the wrists of many millions
+of human beings in Russia. It is very true that Russian servitude does
+not mean the subjection of man to man, but to the soil; for the decree
+of Godonof converted the peasant into a slave merely by abrogating the
+traditional right of the "black man" to change his living-place on Saint
+George's day. The peasant perceived no other change in his condition
+than that of finding himself fastened, chained, bound to the soil. The
+Russian word which we translate "serf" means "consolidated,"
+"adherent."
+
+It is easy to see the historical transition from the free state to that
+of servitude. The military and political organization of the Russian
+State in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries hedged in the peasant's
+liberty of action, and his situation began to resemble that of the Roman
+_colonus_, or husbandman, who was neither "bond nor free." When the
+nation was constituted upon firmer bases, it seemed indispensable to fix
+every man's limitation, to range the population in classes, and to lay
+upon them obligations consistent with the needs of the empire. These
+bonds were imposed just as the other peoples of Europe were breaking
+away from theirs.
+
+Servitude, or serfdom, did not succeed throughout the empire, however.
+Siberia and the independent Cossacks of the South rejected it; only
+passive consent could sanction a condition that was not the fruit of
+conquest nor had as an excuse the right of the strongest. Even in the
+rest of Russia the peasant never was entirely submissive, never
+willingly bent his neck to the yoke, and the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries witnessed bitter and sanguinary uprisings of the serfs, who
+were prompt to follow the first impostor who pronounced words of
+promise; and, strange to say, what was most galling was his entail upon
+the land rather than the deprivation of his own liberty. He imagined
+that the lord of the whole earth was the Czar, that by his favor it was
+temporarily in possession of the nobles, but that in truth and justice
+it belonged to him who tilled it. Pugatchef, the pretender to the title
+of Peter III., in order to rally to his standard an innumerable host of
+peasants, called himself the rural emperor, and declared that no sooner
+should he gain the throne of his ancestors than he would shower treasure
+upon the nobles and restore the land to the tillers of it.
+
+Those who forged the fetters of serfdom had little faith in the
+stability of it, however. And although the abuses arising out of it were
+screened and tacitly consented to,--and never more so than during the
+reign of the humane philosopher, friend, and correspondent of Voltaire,
+the Empress Catherine II.,--yet law and custom forever refused to
+sanction them. Russian serfdom assumed rather a patriarchal character,
+and this softened its harshness. It was considered iniquitous to
+alienate the serfs, and it was only lawful in case of parting with the
+land whereon those serfs labored; in this way was preserved the thin
+line of demarcation between agrarian servitude and slavery.
+
+There were, however, serfs in worse condition, true helots, namely, the
+domestic servants, who were at the mercy of the master's caprice, like
+the fowls in his poultry-yard. Each proprietor maintained a numerous
+household below stairs, useless and idle as a rule, whose children he
+brought up and had instructed in certain ways in order to hire them out
+or sell them by and by. The players in the theatres were generally
+recruited from this class, and until Alexander I. prohibited such
+shameless traffic, it was not uncommon to see announced in the papers
+the sale of a coachman beside that of a Holstein cow. But like every
+other institution which violates and offends human conscience, Russian
+serfdom could not exist forever, in spite of some political and social
+advantages to the empire.
+
+Certain Russian writers affirm that the assassination of masters and
+proprietors was of frequent occurrence in the days of serfdom, and that
+even now the peasant is disposed to quarrels and acts of violence
+against the nobles. Yet, on the whole, I gather from my reading on the
+subject that the relations in general between the serf and the master
+were, on the one side, humble, reverent, and filial; on the other, kind,
+gentle, and protecting. The important question for the peasant is that
+of the practical ownership of the land. It is not his freedom but his
+agrarian rights that have been restored to him; and this must be borne
+in mind in order to understand why the recent emancipation has not
+succeeded in pacifying the public mind and bringing about a new and
+happy Russia.
+
+Given the same problem to the peasant and the man of mind, it will be
+safe to say that they will solve it in very different ways, if not in
+ways diametrically opposed. The peasant will be guided by the positive
+and concrete aspect of the matter; the man of mind by the speculative
+and ideal. The peasant calculates the influence of atmospheric phenomena
+upon his crops, while the other observes the beauty of the sunset or
+the tranquillity of the night. In social questions the peasant demands
+immediate utility, no matter how small it may be, while the other
+demands the application of principles and the triumph of ideas. Under
+the care of a master the Russian serf enjoyed a certain material
+welfare, and if he fell to the lot of a good master--and Russian masters
+have the reputation of being in general excellent--his situation was not
+only tolerable but advantageous. On the other hand, the intelligent
+could not put up with the monstrous and iniquitous fact of human liberty
+being submitted to the arbitrary rule of a master who could apply the
+lash at will, sell men like cattle, and dispose as he would of bodies
+and souls. Where this exists, since Christ came into the world, either
+there is no knowledge, or the ignominy must be stamped out.
+
+We all know that celebrated story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the famous
+Abolitionist novel by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. There were also
+novelists in Russia who set themselves to plead for the emancipation of
+the serfs. But there is a difference between them and the North American
+authoress, in that the Russians, in order to achieve their object, had
+no need to exaggerate the reality, to paint sensitive slaves and
+children that die of pity, but, with an artistic instinct, they appealed
+to æsthetic truth to obtain human justice. "Dead Souls," by Gogol, or
+one of the poetical and earnest _brochures_ of Turguenief, awakens a
+more stirring and permanent indignation than the sentimental allegory
+of Mrs. Stowe; and neither Gogol nor Turguenief misrepresented the serf
+or defamed the master, but rather they present to us both as they were
+in life, scorning recourse to bad taste for the sake of capturing tender
+hearts. The noblest sentiments of the soul, divine compassion, equity,
+righteous vengeance, the generous pity that moves to sacrifice, rise to
+the inspired voice of great writers; we see the abuse, we feel it, it
+hurts us, it oppresses us, and by a spontaneous impulse we desire the
+good and abhor the evil. This enviable privilege has been granted to the
+Russian novelists; had they no greater glory, this would suffice to save
+them from oblivion.
+
+The Abolitionist propaganda subtly and surely spread through the
+intelligent classes, created an opinion, communicated itself naturally
+to the press in as far as the censor permitted, and little by little the
+murmur grew in volume, like that raised against the administrative
+corruption after the Crimean War. And it is but just to add that the
+Czars were never behind in this national movement. Had it not been for
+their omnipotent initiative, who knows if even now slavery would not
+stain the face of Europe? There is reason to believe it when one sees
+the obstacles that hinder other reforms in Russia in which the autocrat
+takes no part. Doubtless the mind of the emperor was influenced by the
+words of Alexander II., in 1856, to the Muscovite nobles: "It is better
+to abolish serfdom by decrees from above than to wait for it to be
+destroyed by an impulse from below." A purely human motive; yet in every
+generous act there may be a little egotistical leaven. Let us not judge
+the unfortunate Emancipator too severely.
+
+The Crimean War and its grave internal consequences aided to undermine
+the infamous institution of serfdom, at the same time that it disclosed
+the hidden cancer of the administration, the misgovernment and ruin of
+the nation. With the ill success of the campaign, Russia clearly saw the
+need for self-examination and reorganization. Among the many and
+pressing questions presented to her, the most urgent was that of the
+serfs, and the impossibility of re-forming a prosperous State, modern
+and healthy, while this taint existed within her. Alexander II., whose
+variability and weakness are no bar to his claim of the honored title of
+the Liberator, exhorted the aristocracy to consummate this great work,
+and (a self-abnegation worthy of all praise, and which only a blind
+political passion can deny them) the nobles coincided and co-operated
+with him with perfect good faith, and even with the electrical
+enthusiasm characteristic of the Sclavic race. One cannot cease to extol
+this noble act, which, taken as a whole, is sublime, although, being the
+work of large numbers, it may be overloaded with details and incidents
+in which the interest flags. It may be easy to preach a reform whose
+aims do not hurt our pride, shatter our fortunes, alter our way of
+living, or conflict with the ideas inculcated upon us in childhood by
+our parents; but to do this to one's own detriment deserves especial
+recognition. The nobility on this occasion only put into practice
+certain theories which had stirred in their hearts of old. The first
+great Russian poet, Prince Kantemire, wrote in 1738, in his satires,
+that Adam did not beget nobles, nor did Noah save in the ark any but his
+equals,--humble husbandmen, famous only for their virtues. To my mind
+the best praise to the Russian nobility is for having offered less
+hindrance to the emancipation of the serfs than the North American
+democracy to the liberation of the slaves; and I solicit especial
+applause for this self-sacrificing, redeeming aristocracy.
+
+The fruits of the emancipation were not what desire promised. The
+peasants, from their positivist point of view, set little value on
+liberty itself, and scarcely understood it. "We are yours," they were
+accustomed to say to their masters; "but the soil is ours." When it
+became known that they must go on paying even for the goods of the
+community, they rebelled; they declared that emancipation was a farce, a
+lie, and that true emancipation ought to abolish rent and distribute the
+land in equal parts. Did not the proclamation of the Czar read that they
+were free? Well, freedom, in their language, meant emancipation from
+labor, and the possession of the land. One _mir_ even sent a deputation
+to the governor, announcing that as he had been a good master he would
+still be allowed the use and profit of his house and farm. The peasant
+believed himself free from all obligation, and even refused to work
+until the government forced him to do so; and the result was that the
+lash and the rod were never so frequently laid across Russian shoulders
+as in the first three years of emancipation and liberty.
+
+What cared they--"the little black men"--for the dignity of the freeman
+or the rights of citizenship? That which laid strongest hold of their
+primitive imagination was the desire to possess the whole land,--the old
+dream of what they called the _black partition_, the national Utopia.
+One Russian revolutionary journal adopted the name of "Land and
+Liberty," a magic motto to a peasant country, giving the former the
+first place, or at least making the two synonymous. The Russian
+people ask no political rights, but rather the land which is watered
+by the sweat of their brow; and if some day the anarchists--the
+agitators who go from village to village propagating their sanguinary
+doctrines--succeed in awakening and stirring this Colossus to action, it
+will be by touching this tender spot and alluring by the promise of this
+traditional dream. The old serf lives in hopes of a Messiah, be he
+emperor or conspirator, who shall deliver the earth into his hands; and
+at times the vehemence of this insatiable desire brings forth popular
+prophets, who announce that the millennium is at hand, and that by the
+will of Heaven the land is to be divided among the cultivators thereof.
+From his great love to the autocrat the peasant believes that _he_ also
+desires this distribution, but being hampered by his counsellors and
+menaced by his courtiers, he cannot authorize it yet. "For," says the
+peasant, "the land never belonged to the lords, but first to the
+sovereign and then to the _mir_." The idea of individual proprietorship
+is so repugnant to this people that they say that even death is
+beautiful shared in common.
+
+All the schismatic sects in Russia preach community of possessions. Some
+among them live better than the orthodox Greeks; some are voluntarily
+consecrated to absolute poverty, such as characterized the early orders
+of mendicants, and literally give their cloak to him who asks; but both
+the more temperate and the fanatics agree in the faith of the general
+and indisputable right of man to possess the land he cultivates.
+
+With society as with the individual, after great effort comes
+prostration, after a sudden change, inevitable uneasiness. So with
+Russian emancipation. Although in some localities the condition of the
+peasants was ameliorated, in others their misery and retrogression
+seemed only to increase, and led them to pine for the old bonds. The
+abuse, arbitrariness, and cruelty which are cited, and which shock the
+nerves of Westerners, caused no alarm to the Russian peasant, who was
+well used to baring his back in payment for any delinquency. The worst
+extent to which the master allowed his anger to spend itself was an
+unlimited number of stripes; and this very punishment, which to-day no
+master would inflict, and which the law expressly forbids, is still
+frequently imposed by the peasant tribunals of the _volost_ or
+_canton_; their confidence in its efficacy is well grounded, and it is
+well authorized by custom and experience. What the peasant fears and
+hates most is not the rod or the whip, but the rent-collector, the
+tax-gatherer, the burden of the taxes themselves, and hunger.
+
+What must be the æsthetic and political determination of this race,
+which prefers the possession of the soil to the liberty of the
+individual? In literature, toward a plain and candid realism; in form of
+government, a communist absolutism. The abstract constitutional idea,
+which, in spite of its Anglo-Saxon origin, meets perfectly the ideal
+entertained by Latin minds, has no charm for the Sclav. Yet at the same
+time the Russian combines, with his practical and concrete notions of
+life and his preponderating sense of realism, a dreamy and childlike
+imagination, which acts upon him like a dangerous dose of opium.
+
+In the next essay I propose to show how there has grown up within this
+patient and submissive rural people, and has finally burst forth, that
+most terrible of revolutionary volcanoes, nihilism.
+
+
+
+
+Book II.
+
+RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The Word "Nihilism."
+
+
+I have scarcely realized until now the difficulties in the way of the
+subject I am treating. To talk of nihilism is an audacious undertaking,
+and in spite of all my endeavors to hold the balance true, and to
+consider calmly the social phenomena and the literature into which it
+has infiltrated, I shall perhaps not be able to avoid a note of
+partiality or emotion. To some I shall seem too indulgent with the
+Russian revolutionaries, and they may say of me, as of M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu, that my opinions are imbibed from official sources and
+my words taken from the mouth of reactionaries.
+
+The first stumbling-block is the word "nihilism." In Tikomirov's work on
+Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of
+the use of the expressions "nihilism" and "nihilist," Nevertheless, at
+the risk of offending my friend the author, I must make use of them,
+since, as he himself allows, they are employed universally, and all the
+world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative
+way. I do not reject the term proposed by Tikomirov, who would call
+nihilism "the militant intelligence;" but this is much too long and
+obscure, and before accepting it, it behooves one to understand what is
+meant by _Russian intelligence_. The nihilists call themselves by a
+variety of names,--democrats, socialists, propagandists, _new men_, or
+sometimes by the title of some organ of their clandestine press. This
+war of names seems puerile, and I prefer to face the fury of Tikomirov
+against those who not only use the objectionable term but dedicate a
+chapter to what it represents, and study nihilism as a doctrine or
+tendency distinct among all that have arisen until now. I cannot agree
+to the idea that nihilism is merely a Russian intellectual movement, nor
+do I think that all Europe is mistaken in judging that the nihilist
+explosions are characteristic of the great Sclav empire. On the
+contrary, I believe that if Russia were to-morrow blotted from the map,
+and her history and every trace of her national individuality
+obliterated, only a few pages of her romances and a few fragments of her
+revolutionary literature being left to us, a philosopher or a critic
+could reconstruct, without other data, the spirit of the race in all its
+integrity and completeness.
+
+Now, to begin, how did this much-discussed word originate? It was a
+novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time
+_new men_. It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the
+characters in his celebrated novel, "Fathers and Sons," gave the young
+generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage;
+Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the
+negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre
+had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary
+generations; but it was reserved for the author of "Virgin Soil" to
+bring to light and make famous this word, which after making a great
+stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world.
+
+The reign of Nicholas I. was an epoch of hard oppression. When he
+ascended the throne, the conspiracy of the Decembrists broke out, and
+this sudden revelation of the revolutionary spirit steeled the already
+inflexible soul of the Czar. Nicholas, although fond of letters and an
+assiduous reader of Homer, was disposed to throttle his enemies, and
+would not have hesitated to pluck out the brains of Russia; he was very
+near suppressing all the universities and schools, and inaugurating a
+voluntary retrocession to Asiatic barbarism. He did mutilate and reduce
+the instruction, he suppressed the chair of European political laws, and
+after the events of 1848 in France he seriously considered the idea of
+closing his frontiers with a cordon of troops to beat back foreign
+liberalism like the cholera or the plague. Those who have had a near
+view of this Iron Czar have described him to me as tall, straight,
+stiff, always in uniform, a slave to his duties as sovereign, the
+living personification of the autocrat, and called, not without reason,
+the Quixote of absolutism. At the close of a life devoted to the
+fanatical inculcation of his convictions, this inflexible emperor, who
+believed himself to be guided by the Divine hand, saw only the
+dilapidation and ruin of his country, which then started up dismayed and
+raised a cry of reprobation, a chorus of malediction against the emperor
+and the order of things established by him. Satire cried out in strident
+and indignant tones, and spit in the face of the Czar with terrible
+anathemas. "Oh, Emperor," it said to him, "Russia confided the supreme
+power to you; you were as a god upon the earth. What have you done?
+Blinded by ignorance and selfishness, you longed for power and forgot
+Russia; you spent your life in reviewing troops, in changing uniforms,
+in signing decrees. You created the vile race of press-censors, so that
+you might sleep in peace, that you might ignore the needs of the people,
+and turn a deaf ear to their cries; and the truth you buried deep, and
+rolled a great stone over the door of the sepulchre, and put a guard
+over it, so that you might think in your proud heart that it would never
+rise again. But the light of the third day is breaking, and truth will
+come forth from among the dead." And so the great autocrat heard the
+crash of the walls that he had built with callous hands and cemented
+with the blood and tears of two millions of human beings whom he had
+exiled to Siberia. Perhaps the inflexible principles, the mainspring of
+his hard soul, gave way then; but it was indeed too late to give the
+lie to his whole life, and according to well-authenticated reports he
+sought a sure and speedy death by wilful exposure to the rigors of the
+terrible climate. "I cannot go back," were the dying words of this
+upright and consistent man, who, notwithstanding his hardness, was yet
+not a tyrant.
+
+However, it was under his sceptre, under his systematic suppression,
+that, by confession of the great revolutionary statesman Herzen, Russian
+thought developed as never before; that the emancipation of the
+intelligence, which this very statesman calls a tragic event, was
+accomplished, and a national literature was brought to light and began
+to flourish. When Alexander II. succeeded to the throne, when the bonds
+of despotism were loosened and the blockade with which Nicholas vainly
+tried to isolate his empire was raised, the field was ready for the
+intellectual and political strife.
+
+Russia is prone to violent extremes in everything. No social changes are
+brought about in her with the slow gradations which make transitions
+easy and avoid shocks and collisions. In the rest of Europe modern
+scientific progress was due to numerous coincident causes, such as the
+Renaissance, the art of printing, the discovery of America; but in
+Russia the will of the autocrat was the motor, and the country was
+forced and surprised into it. And when this drowsy land one day shakes
+off its lethargy and takes note of the latent political effervescence
+within itself, it will be with the same fiery earnestness, the same
+exaggeration, the same logical directness, straight to the end, even
+though that end culminate in absurdity.
+
+Before explaining how nihilism is the outcome of intelligence, we must
+understand what is meant by intelligence in Russia. It means a class
+composed of all those, of whatever profession or estate, who have at
+heart the advancement of intellectual life, and contribute in every way
+toward it. It may be said, indeed, that such a class is to be found in
+every country; but there is this difference,--in other countries the
+class is not a unit; there are factions, or a large number of its
+members shun political and social discussion in order to enjoy the
+serene atmosphere of the world of art, while in Russia _the
+intelligence_ means a common cause, a homogeneous spirit, subversive and
+revolutionary withal. To write a history of modern literature,
+particularly of the novel, in Russia, is equivalent to writing the
+history of the revolution.
+
+The subversive, dissolvent character of this intelligence--working now
+tacitly, now openly, and with a candor surprising in a country subjected
+to such suspicious censorship--explains why the czars, once the
+protectors of the arts, have become since the middle of this century so
+out of humor with authors, books, and the press. We have heard of one
+emperor--the cleverest of them all--who in the interest of his reforms
+had his own son whipped to death. Russian art, also son of the czars,
+figuratively speaking, received scarcely better treatment when it
+signified a desire to stand on its own feet.
+
+Long and painful is the list of persecutions directed against the
+growth of Thought, in prose and verse, and above all against illustrious
+men. But we must make a distinction, so as not to be unjust. Herzen,
+exiled and deprived of all his possessions, and the famous martyr
+Tchernichewsky, confined twenty and odd years in a Siberian prison or
+fortress, do not arouse our astonishment, for they suffered the common
+fate of the political agitator; but it seems a pity that such artists as
+Dostoiëwsky and Turguenief should suffer any such infliction at all. All
+Russian literature is charged with a revolutionary spirit; but there is
+the same difference between those authors whose aim is political and
+those who merely speak of Russia's wounds when occasion offers, that
+there is between those who are licentious and those who are simply open
+and candid. And by this I do not mean to compare the nihilist writers
+with licentious ones, nor to convey any stigma by my words. I merely say
+that when literature deliberately attacks established society, the
+instinct of self-preservation obliges the latter to defend itself even
+to persecuting its adversary.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Origin of the Intellectual Revolution.
+
+
+Whence came the revolutionary element in Russia? From the Occident, from
+France, from the negative, materialist, sensualist philosophy of the
+Encyclopædia imported into Russia by Catherine II. and later from
+Germany, from Kantism and Hegelianism, imbibed by Russian youth at the
+German universities, and which they diffused throughout their own
+country with characteristic Sclav impetuosity. By "Pure Reason" and
+transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of
+nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia
+soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental
+element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest
+and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a
+philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and
+revolutionary movement. Since the beginning of this century Europe has
+seen mobs and revolutions, dynasties wrecked and governments overturned;
+but these were political disturbances, and not the result of mind
+diseased or anguish of soul.
+
+Nihilism had no political color about it at the beginning. During the
+decade between 1860 and 1870 the youth of Russia was seized with a sort
+of fever for negation, a fierce antipathy toward everything that
+was,--authorities, institutions, customary ideas, and old-fashioned
+dogmas. In Turguenief's novel, "Fathers and Sons," we meet with Bazarof,
+a froward, ill-mannered, intolerable fellow, who represents this type.
+After 1871 the echo of the Paris Commune and emissaries of the
+Internationals crossed the frontier, and the nihilists began to bestir
+themselves, to meet together clandestinely, and to send out propaganda.
+Seven years later they organized an era of terror, assassination, and
+explosions. Thus three phases have followed upon one another,--thought,
+word, and deed,--along that road which is never so long as it looks, the
+road that leads from the word to the act, from Utopia to crime.
+
+And yet nihilism never became a political party as we understand the
+term. It has no defined creed or official programme. The fulness of its
+despair embraces all negatives and all acute revolutionary forms.
+Anarchists, federalists, cantonalists, covenanters, terrorists, all who
+are unanimous in a desire to sweep away the present order, are grouped
+under the ensign of _nihil_.
+
+The frenzy which thus moves a whole people to tear their hair and rend
+their garments has at bottom an element of passionate melancholy born of
+just and noble aspirations crushed by fatal circumstances. We have seen
+what Nature and history have made of Russia,--a nation civilized by
+violence, whose natural and harmonious development was checked, and
+which was isolated from Europe as soon as the ruling powers perceived
+the dangers likely to ensue from communication therewith. The impulse of
+youth toward the unknown and the new, toward vague dreams and
+abstractions, was thus exasperated; and from out the seminaries,
+universities, and schools, from the ranks of the nobility and from the
+bosom of the literature, there arose a host composed of women hungering
+for the ideal, and young students, poor in pocket and position, who gave
+themselves up to a Bohemian sort of life well calculated to set at
+nought society and the world in general. A Russian friend once told me
+that seeing a _mujik_ looking very dejected and melancholy he asked what
+was the matter, and received answer, "Sir, we are a sick people." His
+reply defines the whole race; and of all the explanations of nihilism,
+that which describes it as a pathological condition of the nation is
+perhaps the most accurate.
+
+One must be prudent, however, in calling an intellectual phenomenon
+based upon historical reasons a sickness or dementia; and above all one
+must not confound the mental exaltation of the enthusiast with the
+vagaries of the unsound mind. We do not allow ourselves to call him a
+fool who does not think as we do, nor even him who leaves the beaten
+common track for dizzy heights above our ken. No reformer or other great
+man, however, has escaped the insinuation of foolishness, not even Saint
+Francis of Assisi, who openly professed idiocy. But we have a kind of
+sympathy for madness of a speculative character,--the sort of lunacy
+which makes mankind dream sometimes that material good does not entirely
+satisfy, that makes it yearn anxiously for something that it may never
+obtain on this earth.
+
+To begin with, is nihilism pure negation? No. Pure negation conceives
+nothing further, and whatever it denies it affirms at the same time.
+Nihilism, or to use their own term, Russian _intelligence_, contains the
+germs of social renovation; and before referring to its political
+history I will explain some of its strange and curious doctrines.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Woman and the Family.
+
+
+Among the most important of the nihilist doctrines is that which refers
+to the condition of woman and the constitution of the family; and the
+attempt radically to modify things so guarded and so sacred presupposes
+an extraordinary power in the moving principle. The state of woman in
+Russia has been far more bitter and humiliating than in the rest of
+Europe; she wore her face covered with the Oriental veil until an
+empress dared to cast it aside,--to the great horror of the court; among
+the peasants she was a beast of burden; among the nobles an odalisque;
+in the most enlightened classes of society the whip hung at the head of
+the bed as a symbol of the husband's authority. The law did not keep her
+perpetually a minor, as with us, but allowed her to administer her
+property freely; yet the invisible and unwritten bonds of custom made
+this freedom illusory. The new ideas have changed all this, however, and
+to-day the Russian woman is more nearly equal to the man in condition,
+more free, intelligent, and respected than elsewhere in Europe. Even the
+peasants, accustomed to bestow a daily allowance of the lash upon their
+women, are beginning to treat them with more gentleness and regard, for
+they realize, tardily though certainly, the worth of the ideas of
+justice deduced from the Gospels, which once planted can never be rooted
+out. Their conquests are final. A few years hence the conjugal relation
+in Russia will be based on ideas of equality, fraternity, and mutual
+respect. I have never gone about preaching emancipation or demanding
+rights, but I am nevertheless quite capable of appreciating everything
+that savors of equity.
+
+The great Russian romantic poet, Lermontof, lamented the moral
+inferiority of the women of his country. "Man," said this Russian Byron,
+"should not be satisfied with the submission of his slave or the
+devotion of his dog; he needs the love of a human being who will repay
+insight for insight, soul for soul." This noble aspiration, derived from
+the profound Platonic allegory of the two soul-halves that seek each
+other and thereby find completion, the Russian intelligence desired to
+realize, and as a step toward it procured participation for woman in
+intellectual and political life; she, on her part, proved her worth by
+bringing to nihilism a passionate devotion, absolute faith, and
+initiative energy. When the early Christians rehabilitated the pagan
+woman, somewhat the same thing happened, and a tender gratitude toward
+the gentle Nazarene led virgins and matrons to vie with strong men in
+the heroism displayed in the amphitheatre.
+
+But in our times the systematic efforts toward female emancipation have
+a tendency to stumble into absurdities. To show to what an extent
+conjugal equality has been carried in certain Russian families of
+humble position, I was told that the wife cooks one day and the husband
+the next! At the beginning of the reign of Alexander II. the longing for
+feminine independence was expressed in the wearing of short hair, blue
+spectacles, and extraordinary dress; in smoking, in scorn of neatness,
+and the assumption of viragoish and disgusting manners. The serious side
+of the movement led them on the other hand to study, to throw themselves
+into every career open to them, to show a brave front in the hospitals
+of typhus and the plague, to win honors in the clinics, and to practise
+medicine in the small villages with noble self-abnegation, seriousness,
+and sagacity.
+
+It is worthy of note, in examining Russian revolutionary tendencies,
+that political rights are a secondary consideration, and that they go
+down to the root of the matter, and seek first to reclaim natural
+rights. In countries that are under parliamentary regimen, half of the
+human race is judicially and civilly the servant of the other half;
+while in the classic land of absolutism all parts are equal before the
+law, especially among the reformatory class, the nobility.
+
+There is one fact in this connection which, though rather dubious on the
+face of it, is yet so original and typical that it ought not to be
+omitted. Owing to these modifications in the social condition of women,
+and also to political circumstances, we are told that one frequently
+hears in Russia--among the _intelligent_ class particularly--of a sort
+of free unions, having no other bond than the mutual willingness of the
+contracting parties, and marked by singular characteristics. Some of
+these unions may be compared to the espousals of Saint Cecilia and her
+husband, Saint Valerian, or to the nuptials of the legendary hero
+separated by a naked sword from the bride. The Russians call this a
+fictitious marriage. It sometimes happens that a young girl, bold,
+determined, and full of a longing for life,--in the social sense of the
+word,--leaves the paternal roof and takes up her abode under that of
+another man. Having obtained the liberty and individuality enjoyed by
+the married woman, the protector and the _protégée_ maintain a fraternal
+friendship mutually and willingly agreed to. In Turguenief's novel,
+"Virgin Soil," a young lady runs away from her uncle's house with the
+tutor, a young nihilist poet, with whom she believes herself to be
+deeply in love; but she finds out that what she really loved and craved
+was liberty, and the chance to practise her politico-social principles;
+and as these two runaways live in chastity, the heroine finally, and
+without any conscientious scruples, marries another poet, also a
+nihilist, but more practical and intelligent, who has really succeeded
+in interesting her heart.
+
+Is such a voluntary restriction the result of a hyperæsthesia of the
+fancy, natural to an age of persecution, in which those who fight for
+and defend an idea are ready at any moment to go to the gallows for its
+sake? Is it mere woman's pride demanding for her sex liberty and
+franchises which she scorns to make use of? Is it a manifestation of an
+idealist sentiment which is always present in revolutionary outbursts?
+Is it a consequence of the theory which Schopenhauer preached, but did
+not practise? Is it Malthusian pessimism which would refuse to provide
+any more subjects for despotism? Is it a result of the natural coldness
+of the Scythian? There seems to be no doubt, according to the statement
+of trustworthy authors, that there are nihilist virgins living
+promiscuously with students, helping them like sisters, united by this
+strange understanding. Solovief, who made a criminal attempt on the life
+of Alexander II., was thus _married_, as was shown at his trial.
+
+Among the young generation of nihilists this sort of union was really an
+affiliation in devotion to their party. The bride's dower went into the
+party treasury, her body was consecrated to the worship of the unknown
+God; and being but slightly bound to his or her nominal spouse, each one
+went his or her way, sometimes to distant provinces, to propagate and
+disseminate the good news.
+
+Tikomirov (from whose interesting book I have taken most of my
+information concerning the constitution of the Russian revolutionary
+family) seems to think that French authors have not done full justice to
+the austerity and purity of nihilist customs, and he depicts a charming
+scene in the home of intelligence, whose members are united and
+affectionate, where moral and intellectual equality produce solid
+friendship, precluding tyranny on the one hand and treason on the other;
+adding that in Russia everybody is convinced of the superiority of this
+sort of family, and only foreigners think that nihilism undermines the
+foundations of conjugal union. Is this really true? In any case it seems
+possible that such a beautiful ideal might be attained to in our Latin
+societies, given the elevated conception of the Catholic marriage, which
+makes it a sacrament, were there only a little more equity, toward which
+it is evident, however, that laws and customs are ever tending.
+
+In speaking of nihilist marriages, it is well to add that in general the
+Russian revolutionary movement has a pronounced flavor of mysticism,
+although at first sight it seems an explosion of free-thinking and
+blasphemy. It is true that nihilist youth laughs at the supernatural,
+and has been steeped in the crudities of German materialism and in the
+pliant philosophies of the clinic and the laboratory; but at the same
+time, whether because of the religious character of the race, or because
+of a certain exaltation which may be the fruit of a period of stress,
+the nihilist young people are mystics in their own way, and talk about
+the martyrs to the cause with an inspired voice and with the unction of
+a devotee invoking the saints. In proof of this I will give here a
+nihilist madrigal dedicated to the young heroine in a political trial,
+Lydia Figuier, who had studied medicine in Zurich and Paris.
+
+     "Deep is the impression, O maiden, left by thy enchanting
+     beauty; but more powerful than the charm of thy face is the
+     purity of thy soul. Full of pity is the image of the
+     Saviour, and his divine features are full of compassion; but
+     in the unfathomable depths of thine eyes there is still more
+     love and suffering."
+
+The extremes of this rare sort of fanaticism are still better shown in a
+famous novel of Tchernichewsky, the hero of which outdoes the Hindu
+fakirs and Christian anchorites in point of macerations, penances, and
+austerities. He is offered several kinds of fruit, but he will taste
+only the apple, which is what the people eat; he fasts in grief and
+anguish, and one day, in order to accustom himself to bear any sort of
+trial, he lays himself down upon a cloth thickly studded with nails an
+inch long, points upward, and there he remains until his blood saturates
+the ground. Not content with mortifying the flesh in this way, he
+disposes of all his worldly goods among the poor, and vows never to
+touch a drop of wine or the lips of woman. This is only the hero of a
+story-book; yes, but this story endeavors to present a type, an ideal
+pattern, to which the _new men_, or nihilists, try to conform
+themselves.
+
+It must be understood that when I say mysticism, I use the word in a
+generic and not in a theological sense. It seems contradictory to say
+that an atheist can do and feel like the most fervent believer; but a
+man may pass a whole lifetime in parrying logic, and yet sometimes what
+his reason refuses his imagination accepts. There is something in
+nihilism that recalls the transcendental contradictions of the Hindu
+philosophies and religions, especially Buddhism; and in Russian brains
+there is a fermentation of heterodox illumination which is manifested
+among the common people by sects of tremblers, jumpers, and others, and
+among the more learned classes by revolutionary mysticism, amorphism,
+anarchy, and a gloomy and rebellious pessimism. The prophets of the
+ignorant sects among the people preach many of the revolutionary dogmas,
+teaching disobedience to all authority, community of goods, social
+liquidation and free love, yet without political intention; and better
+educated nihilists, even reactionary minds like Dostoiëwsky, feel the
+pulse of mystic enthusiasm which runs in the blood. The people are so
+predisposed to color the language of the political devotee that they
+were quite satisfied with the answer given by the propagandist Rogatchef
+to the peasants who asked what he sought among them. He replied, "The
+true faith."
+
+To the honor of humanity be it said that the most profound emotions it
+has experienced have been produced by its own thirst for the ideal, and
+caused by the need of belief, and of feeling in one form or another a
+religious excitement. It is this element which conquers our sympathy for
+nihilism; this shows us a young and enthusiastic people given to visions
+and sublime ardors. To put it more explicitly, I am not passing judgment
+upon the only revolutionaries just now extant in the world. I have very
+little liking for political upheavals; but, to the egotistical
+indifference that afflicts some nations, I believe that I prefer the
+passionate extremes of nihilism. In politics as in art we want the
+living.
+
+It will be seen therefore that the people were not irrelevant in
+confounding nihilism with a religions sect. As far as our rationalist
+age will admit, the nihilist dissenter resembles the great heretics of
+the Middle Ages; he has traces of the Millenarian, of Sakya Muni, and of
+the German pantheists; and he has the blind faith, the hazy transports,
+the dogmatical and absolute affirmation of the persecuted religious
+sects, and of esoteric and subterranean beliefs. He adores a divinity
+without feelings, deaf and primitive, and this adoration is the
+corner-stone of the nihilist temple. The _mujik_ sublimated by Russian
+literature is the god of nihilism.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Going to the People.
+
+
+Here is a passage from Tikomirov's book to illustrate this aspect of
+Russian revolution:--
+
+     "Where is there any sociological theory that can explain the
+     crusade taken up in 1873 by thousands of young men and women
+     determined to _go to the people_? The word crusade is
+     appropriate. Our youths left the bosom of their families;
+     our maidens abandoned the worldly pleasures of life. Nobody
+     thought of his own welfare; the great cause absorbed all
+     attention, and the nervous tension was such that many were
+     able to endure, without injury to health, unusual and
+     dreadful privations. They gave up their past life and all
+     their property, and if any vacillated in offering his
+     fortune to the cause, he was looked upon with pity and
+     contempt. Some renounced official positions and gave all
+     their means, even to thousands of rubles; others, like
+     Prince Krapotkine, from being _savants_, diplomats and
+     opulent, became humble artisans. The prince took to painting
+     doors and windows. Rich heiresses sought occupation as
+     factory operatives, even some who had reigned as belles in
+     aristocratic salons. It was as though, exiled from other
+     classes of society, they found, in turning to the people,
+     their souls' true country."
+
+Do not these words almost seem to describe the beginnings of
+Christianity in Rome?
+
+The idol takes no notice of his fanatical adorers, nor perhaps does he
+understand them any better than the peasant-woman of Toboso understood
+the amorous suit with which Don Quixote wooed her malformed and
+dishevelled person. The Russian peasant cannot make anything of theories
+and apotheoses evolved from an intellectual condition amounting to
+rapturous frenzy. "Oh that I might die," exclaims a devout nihilist,
+"and that my blood like a drop of hot lead could burn and arouse the
+people!" This thirst for martyrdom is common, but above all is the
+anxiety to be amalgamated with the people, to know them, and if possible
+to infuse them with the enthusiasm they feel themselves.
+
+It requires more courage to do what Russians call _going to the people_,
+than to bear exile or the gallows. In our society, which boasts of its
+democracy, the very equalization of classes has strengthened the
+individual instinct of difference, and especially the aristocrats of
+mind, the writers and thinkers, have become terribly nervous, finicky,
+and inimical to the plebeian smell, to the extent that even novels which
+describe the common people with sincerity and truth displease the public
+taste. Yet the nihilists, a select company from the point of view of
+intellectual culture, go, like apostles, in search of the poor in
+spirit, the ignorant and the humble. The sons of families belonging to
+the highest classes, alumni of universities, leave fine clothes and
+books, dress like peasants, and mix with factory hands, so as to know
+them and to teach them; young ladies of fine education return from a
+foreign tour and accept with the utmost contentment situations as cooks
+in manufacturers' houses, so as to be able to study the labor question
+in their workshops. We find very curious instances of this in
+Turguenief's novel "Virgin Soil." The heroine, Mariana, a nihilist, in
+order to learn how the people live, and to _simplify herself_ (this is a
+sacramental term), helps a poor peasant-woman in her domestic duties.
+Here we have the way of the world reversed: the educated learns of the
+ignorant, and in all that the peasant-woman does or says the young lady
+finds a crumb of grace and wisdom. "We do not wish to teach the people,"
+she explains, "we wish to serve them." "To serve them?" replies the
+woman, with hard practicality. "Well, the best way to serve them is to
+teach them." Equally fruitless are the efforts of Mariana's _fictitious
+husband_, or _husband by free grace_, as the peasant-woman calls
+him,--the poet and dreamer Nedjanof, who thinks himself a nihilist, but
+in the bottom of his soul has the aristocratic instincts of the artist.
+Here is the passage where he presents himself to Mariana dressed in
+workman's clothes:--
+
+     "Mariana uttered an exclamation of surprise. At first she
+     did not know him. He wore an old caftan of yellowish drill,
+     short-waisted, and buttoned with small buttons; his hair was
+     combed in the Russian style, with the part in the middle; a
+     blue kerchief was tied around his neck; he held in his hand
+     an old cap with a torn visor, and his feet were shod with
+     undressed calfskin."
+
+Mariana's first act on seeing him in this guise is to tell him that he
+is indeed ugly, after which disagreeable piece of information, and a
+shudder of repugnance at the smell of his greasy cap and dirty sleeves,
+they provide themselves with pamphlets and socialist proclamations and
+start out on their Odyssey among the people, hoping to meet with
+ineffable sufferings. He would be no less glad than she of a heroic
+sacrifice, but he is not content with a grotesque farce; and the girl is
+indignant when Solomine, her professor in nihilism, tells her that her
+duty actually compels her to wash the children of the poor, to teach
+them the alphabet, and to give medicine to the sick. "That is for
+Sisters of Charity," she exclaims, inadvertently recognizing a truth;
+the Catholic faith contains all ways of loving one's neighbor, and none
+can ever be invented that it has not foreseen. But the human type of the
+novel is Nedjanof, although the nihilists have sought to deny it. There
+is one very sad and real scene in which he returns drunk from one of
+his propagandist excursions, because the peasants whom he was
+haranguing compelled him to drink as much as they. The poor fellow
+drinks and drinks, but he might as well have thrown himself upon a file
+of bayonets. He comes home befuddled with _wodka_, or perhaps more so
+with the disgust and nausea which the brutish and mal-odorous people
+produced in him. He had never fully believed in the work to which he had
+consecrated himself: now it is no longer scepticism, it is invincible
+disgust that takes hold upon his soul, urging him to despair and
+suicide. The lament of his lost revolutionary faith is contained in the
+little poem entitled "Dreaming," which I give literally, as follows:--
+
+     "It was long since I had seen my birthplace, but I found it
+     not at all changed. The deathlike sleep, intellectual
+     inertia, roofless houses, ruined walls, mire and stench,
+     scarcity and misery, the insolent looks of the oppressed
+     peasants,--all the same! Only in sleeping, we have
+     outstripped Europe, Asia, and the whole world. Never did my
+     dear compatriots sleep a sleep so terrible!
+
+      "Everything sleeps: wherever I turn, in the fields, in the
+      cities, in carnages, in sleighs, day and night, sitting or
+      walking; the merchant and the functionary, and the watchman
+      in the tower, all sleep in the cold or in the heat! The
+      accused snores and the judge dozes; the peasants sleep the
+      sleep of death; asleep they sow and reap and grind the
+      corn; father, mother, and children sleep! The oppressed and
+      the oppressor sleep equally well!
+
+      "Only the gin-shop is awake, with eyes ever open! And
+      hugging to her breast a jug of fire-water, her face to the
+      pole, her feet to the Caucasus, thus sleeps and dreams on
+      forever our Mother, Holy Russia!"
+
+To all nihilist intents and purposes, particularly to those of a
+political character, the masses are apparently asleep. Many eloquent
+anecdotes refer to their indifference. A young lady propagandist, who
+served as cook on a farm, confesses that the peasants spitefully accused
+her of taking bread from the poor. In order to get them to take their
+pamphlets and leaflets, the nihilists present them as religious tracts,
+adorning the covers with texts of Scripture and pious mottoes and signs.
+Only by making good use of the antiquated idea of distribution (of
+goods) have they any chance of success; it is of no use to talk of
+autonomous federations, or to attack the emperor, who has the people on
+his side.
+
+The active nihilists are always young people, and this is reason enough
+why they are not completely discouraged by the sterility of their
+efforts. Old age abhors fruitless endeavors, and better appreciating the
+value of life, will not waste it in tiresome experiments. And this
+contrast between the ages, like that between the seasons, is nowhere so
+sharp as in Russia; nowhere else is the difference of opinions and
+feelings between two generations so marked. Some one has called nihilism
+a disease of childhood, like measles or diphtheria; perhaps this is not
+altogether erroneous, not only as regards individuals but also as
+regards society, for vehemence and furious radicalism are the fruit of
+historical inexperience, of the political youth of a nation. The
+precursor of nihilism, Herzen, said, with his brilliant imagery and
+vigor of expression, that the Russia of the future lay with a few
+insignificant and obscure young folks who could easily hide between the
+earth and the soles of the autocrat's boots; and the poet Mikailof, who
+was sentenced to hard labor in 1861, and subsequently died under the
+lash, exclaimed to the students, "Even in the darkness of the dungeon I
+shall preserve sacredly in my heart of hearts the incomparable faith
+that I have ingrafted upon the new generation."
+
+It is sad to see youth decrepit and weary from birth, without enthusiasm
+or ambition for anything. It is more natural that the sap should
+overflow, that a longing for strife and sacrifice, even though foolish
+and vain, should arise in its heart. This truth cannot be too often
+repeated: to be enthusiastic, to be full of life, is not ridiculous; but
+our pusillanimous doctrine of disapproval is ridiculous indeed,
+especially in life's early years,--as ridiculous as baldness at twenty,
+or wrinkles and palsy at thirty. Besides, we must recognize something
+more than youthful ardor in nihilism, and that is, sympathetic
+disinterestedness. The path of nihilism does not lead to brilliant
+position or destiny: it may lead to Siberia or to the gibbet.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Herzen and the Nihilist Novel.
+
+
+But it is time to mention some of the precursors of nihilism. First of
+all there is Alexander Herzen, a brilliant, paradoxical writer, a great
+visionary, a keen satirist, the poet of denial, a romanticist and
+idealist to his own sorrow, and, in the bottom of his soul, sceptical
+and melancholy. Herzen was born in Moscow in the year of the Fire, and
+his mind began to mature about the time the December conspirators forced
+Nicholas I. into trembling retirement. He was wont to say that he had
+seen the most imposing personification of imperial power, had grown up
+under the shadow of the secret police and panted in its clutches.
+Charmed by the philosophical doctrines of Hegel and Feuerbach, which
+were then superseding the French, he became a socialist and a
+revolutionary. Just at the time when to have a constitution was the
+ideal and the dream of the Latin peoples, who were willing to tear
+themselves to pieces to obtain it, this Sclav was writing that a
+constitution was a miserable contract between a master and his slaves!
+Herzen was but a little more than twenty years old when he was sent to
+Siberia. On his return from exile he found at home a mental
+effervescence, a Germanic and idealist current in the wake of the
+eminent critic Bielinsky, Sclavophiles singing hymns in praise of
+national life and repudiating European civilization which was in turn
+defended by the so-called Occidentals; and lastly he found a set of
+literary, innovators who formed the famous _natural school_, at the head
+of which was the great Gogol. Herzen fell into this whirl of ideas, and
+his æsthetic doctrines and advanced Hegelianism had great influence, and
+after some more serious works he published his celebrated novel, "Who is
+to Blame?"--a masterly effort, which gained him immense renown in
+Russia. It was masterly more by reason of the popularity it achieved
+than by its literary merit, for Herzen is, after all, not to be counted
+among the chief novel-writers of Russia. Herzen was born to point the
+way to a social Utopia rather than the road to pure Beauty. He invented
+new phases of civilization, societies transformed by the touch of a
+magic wand. The star of Proudhon was at this time in the ascendant, and
+Herzen, attracted by its brilliancy, left his country never to return;
+but he did not on this account cease to exercise a great influence upon
+her destinies, so great, indeed, that some profess to think that had
+Herzen never lived, nihilism would have perished in the bud.
+
+Herzen hailed with delight the French revolution of 1848. He expected to
+behold a social liquidation, but he saw instead only a conservative
+republic,--a change of form. Then he cried out in savage despair, and
+his words have become the true nihilist war-cry: "Let the old world
+perish! Let chaos and destruction come upon it! Hail, Death! Welcome to
+the Future!"
+
+To sweep away the past with one stroke became his perennial aspiration.
+He drew a vivid picture of a secret tribunal which every _new man_
+carries within himself, to judge, condemn, and guillotine the past; he
+described how a man, fearful of following up his logical conclusions,
+after citing before this tribunal the Church, the State, the family, the
+good, and the evil, might make an effort to save a rag of the worn-out
+yesterday, unable to see that the lightest weight would prove a
+hindrance to his passage from the old world to the new. "There is a
+remarkable likeness between logic and terror," he said. "It is not for
+us to pluck the fruits of the past, but to destroy them, to persecute
+them, to judge them, to unmask them, and to immolate them upon the
+altars of the future. Terror sentenced human beings; it concerns us to
+judge institutions, demolish creeds, put no faith in old things,
+unsettle every interest, break every bond, without mercy, without
+leniency, without pity."
+
+This was his programme: Not to civilize or to progress, but to
+obliterate, to demolish; to replace what he called the senile barbarity
+of the world with a juvenile barbarity; "to go to the very limits of
+absurdity,"--these are his own words. They contain the sum of nihilism;
+they include the pessimist despair, and the foolish proscription of art,
+beauty, and culture, which to an artistic mind is the greatest crime
+that can be laid at the door of any political or philosophical doctrine.
+A tendency that aspires to overthrow the altar sacred to the Muses and
+the Graces can never prevail.
+
+Herzen went to London, established a press for the dissemination of
+political writings in Russia, and organized a secret society for Russian
+refugees, among whom he counted Bakunine; and having refused to return
+to his country, he founded a singular paper called "The Bell"
+(_Kolokol_), of which thousands of copies, though strictly prohibited by
+the censor, crossed the frontier. They were distributed and read on
+every hand, and a copy was regularly placed, by invisible hands, in the
+chamber of the emperor, who devoured it no less eagerly than his
+faithful subjects. From the pages of this illegal publication the
+sovereign learned of secret intrigues in his palace, of plots among his
+high officials, and scandalous stories reported by the socialist refugee
+with incredible accuracy. By the side of these evidences of dexterity
+and cleverness, some of the stratagems recounted of the times of our own
+Carlist war seem mere child's play.
+
+As the precursor of nihilism Herzen excites great interest, but there is
+much to be said of Tchernichewsky and Bakunine. It is said that the
+latter's influence was more felt abroad than at home, and that he fanned
+the activity of the Internationalist societies, and of the Swiss,
+Italian, and Spanish laboring classes. Be that as it may, Bakunine was a
+classic type of the conspirator by profession,--in love with his
+dangerous work. He adopted as his motto that to destroy is to create.
+Caussidière saw him and watched him during the insurrections in Paris,
+and exclaimed, "What a man! The first day of the revolution he is a
+treasure; on the second we must shoot him!" Paris was not the only
+witness of his feats; he fought like a lion at the barricades in
+Dresden, and was elected dictator; he took an active part in the Polish
+insurrection; he quite outshone Carl Marx in the International, and with
+him originated the anarchist faction, and that last grade of revolution,
+amorphism. As for Tchernichewsky, he is considered the great master and
+inspirer of contemporary nihilism, his principal claim to such a place
+being based on a novel; and at the bottom of the Russian revolution we
+shall always find the epic fictions of our day exerting a powerful
+influence.
+
+With Herzen's novel the tendencies of nihilism were first revealed; with
+Tchernichewsky's they became fixed and decisive. Novels of Gogol and
+Turguenief overthrew serfdom, and novels of Turguenief, Dostoiëwsky,
+Tolstoï, Gontcharof, and Tchedrine are the documents which historians
+will consult hereafter when the great contest between the revolution and
+the old society shall be written. When Tchernichewsky wrote his famous
+novel, he had already tried his hand at various public questions, had
+made a compilation from the "Political Economy" of John Stuart Mill, and
+was a prisoner on the charge of organizing the revolutionary propaganda
+in Russia along with Herzen, Ogaref, and Bakunine, who were refugees in
+London. Before setting out to suffer his sentence of fifteen years'
+imprisonment and perpetual residence in Siberia, he was tied to a stake
+in a public square of St. Petersburg, and after the reading of the
+sentence a sword was broken over his head. What a blow was dealt at
+absolute power by this man, shut up, annihilated, suppressed, and
+civilly dead! Happy the cause that hath martyrs!
+
+His novel produced an indescribable sensation. The nihilists were
+inclined to resent Turguenief's "Fathers and Sons," whose hero, the
+materialist Bazarof, represented the new generation, or, according to
+them, caricatured it. Tchernichewsky's book was considered to be a
+faithful picture, and a model besides for the party; it was the
+nihilists painted by one of themselves, so to speak. Although it is
+tedious and inconsistent in its arguments, the book shows much talent
+and a fertile imagination; the author declares that it is his purpose to
+stereotype the personality of the _new man_, who is but an evanescent
+type, a sign of the times, destined to disappear with the epoch he has
+initiated. Writing about the year 1850, he says, "Six years ago there
+were no such men; three years ago they were little noticed, and now--but
+what matters what is thought of them now? Soon enough they will hear the
+cry, Save us! and whatever they command shall be done." Farther on he
+says that these _new men_ in turn shall disappear to the last man; and
+after a long time men shall say, "Since the days of those men things go
+on better, although not entirely well yet." Then the type shall reappear
+again in larger numbers and in greater perfection, and this will
+continue to happen until men say, "Now we are doing well!" And when this
+hour arrives, there will be no special types of humanity, there will be
+no _new men_, for all shall realize the largest sum of perfection
+possible. Such is the theory of this famous martyr, and it is certainly
+as original as it is curious.
+
+The admirers of Tchernichewsky's novel compare it to "The City of the
+Sun," by Campanella, "Utopia," by Sir Thomas More, "The Journey to
+Icaria," by Cabet, and the phalansterian sketches by Fourier's
+disciples. This comparison is alone sufficient to decide the rivalry in
+favor of Turguenief; for the Siberian exile wrought only in the interest
+of socialist propaganda, while the author of "Virgin Soil," whether
+accurate or not in detail, was a consummate artist. Only political
+excitement can dictate certain judgments and decisions. If I speak now
+more at length of the exile's novel, it is for the sake of its
+representative value, and as a reflection of nihilism in literature. The
+title is, "What to do?" The author wishes to solve the problem put by
+Herzen in the title to his novel, "Who is to blame?" and under the guise
+of a love-quarrel he delineates the ideal of the contemporary generation
+represented by two favorite characters, the two classic types of the
+nihilist novel,--the student of medicine, a _new man_, saturated with
+science and German metaphysics, and a brave girl longing to be
+_initiated_ and thirsting to consecrate herself to some lofty cause.
+Among other curiosities there is a nihilist husband, who, on discovering
+that his wife is enamoured of somebody else, calculates his moral
+sufferings as equivalent to the excitement produced by four cupfuls of
+strong coffee, and he therefore takes two morphine pills and declares
+that he feels better! In spite of being prohibited by the censor, this
+novel, as might be expected, had a great success; the editions
+multiplied clandestinely; the heroine's type became immensely popular;
+the young girls took to the study of medicine with an enthusiasm and a
+will to which I can personally testify; and if report be true, a part of
+the new ideas concerning conjugal equality and the constitution of the
+family proceeded from this novel. The popularity of the author,
+glorified by the halo of his sufferings and imprisonment, far superseded
+that of Herzen.
+
+Materialism and positivism soon came also to replace the visions of
+Herzen; for when Alexander II. opened the frontiers which the inflexible
+Nicholas had closed, the students brought home new idols from the German
+universities. Schopenhauer and Buchner superseded Hegel and Feuerbach.
+Schopenhauer, with his pessimism, his theory of Nirvana and universal
+annihilation, arrived just in time to foster the germs of fatalism
+dormant within the Russian soul; and Buchner, by means of his very
+superficial but eloquent book, was also in season to offer an
+accessible, clear, and popular formula to unthinking minds and negative
+or indolent temperaments; "Force and matter" was for a time the Bible of
+Russian students. It will be readily seen that the revolutionary formula
+and methods in Russia always came from abroad; but they met with
+tendencies which were unexpected, even though they proved favorable to
+development. The philosophy of nihilism was drawn from Western sources,
+no doubt; yet this phenomenon made its appearance only in Russia, a land
+predisposed to realism and mysticism, to brutality and languor, and
+above all to melancholy limitless as its plains.
+
+We are told of the now famous saying of a nihilist, who, being asked his
+doctrines, replied, "To see earth and heaven, Church and State, God and
+king, and to spit upon them all!" Although the verb to _spit_ is not so
+offensive in Russia as here, and is rather a sign of repugnance than of
+insult, such a reply contains the sum of negative nihilism; and
+negation, the critical period, cannot last longer than the despairing
+sigh of the dying. The active phase of nihilism, the reign of terror,
+passed by quickly, and now the party is beginning to lay aside its
+ferocious radicalism and deal with realities.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The Reign of Terror.
+
+
+The reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen that the active
+nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced youths without position or
+social influence, armed only with leaflets and tracts. This handful of
+boys furiously threw down the gauntlet of defiance at the government
+when they saw themselves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with
+such sincerity that almost all the associates who bound themselves to
+execute what they called _the people's will_ have died in prison or on
+the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword _man for man_. When the
+sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one end to the other, the
+frightened people imagined an immense army of terrorists, rich, strong,
+and in command of untold resources, covering the empire. In reality, the
+twenty offences committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under
+the two capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the
+palace at St. Petersburg, the many assassinations, and the marvellous
+organization which could get them performed with circumstances so
+dramatic and create a mysterious terror against which the power of the
+government was broken in pieces,--all this was the work of a few dozens
+of men and women seemingly endowed with ubiquitousness, so rapid and
+unceasing their journeys, and so varied the disguises, names, and
+stratagems they made use of to bewilder and confound the police. It was
+whispered that millions of money were sent in from abroad, that there
+were members of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy, that
+there was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed the
+threads of a terrible executive committee which passed judgment in the
+dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly. Yet there were only
+a few enthusiastic students, a few young girls ready to perform any
+service, like the heroine of Turguenief's "Shadows;" a few thousand
+rubles, each contributing his share; and, after all, a handful of
+determined people, who, to use the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a
+covenant with death. For a strong will, like intelligence or
+inspiration, is the patrimony of the few; and so, just as ten or twelve
+artist heads can modify the æsthetic tendency of an age, six or eight
+intrepid conspirators are enough to stir up an immense empire.
+
+After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the first spark of
+discontent), the government augmented the police and endowed Muravief,
+who was nicknamed _the Hangman_, with dictatorial powers. In 1871 the
+first notable political trial was held upon persons affiliated with a
+secret society. Persecutions for political offences are a great mistake.
+Maltreatment only inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors
+had to be closed; the public had become deeply interested in the
+accused, who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the
+acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved at the
+sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising modestly and
+explaining before an audience tremulous with compassion her
+revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family, anarchy, property,
+and law? Power is almost always blind and stupid in the first moments of
+revolutionary disturbances. In Russia men risked life and security as
+often by acts of charity toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In
+Odessa, which was commanded by General Totleben, the little blond heads
+of two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the children
+of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a collection for
+political exiles, and these two little ones were sentenced to the
+deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet Mikailof chides the
+revolutionaries with the words: "Why not let your indignation speak, my
+brothers? Why is love silent? Is our horrible misfortune worthy of
+nothing more than a vain tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to
+threaten and to wound?"
+
+The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political rights by
+means of terror. The executive committee of the revolutionary
+socialists--if in truth such a committee existed or was anything more
+than a triumvirate--favored this idea. Spies and fugitives were quickly
+executed. The era of sanguinary nihilism was opened by a woman, the
+Charlotte Corday of nihilism,--Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper
+that a political prisoner had been whipped, contrary to law,--for
+corporal punishment had been already abolished,--and for no worse cause
+than a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and fired
+a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her friends
+seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited her away lest
+she should fall into the hands of the police; the emperor thereupon
+decreed that henceforth political prisoners should not be tried by jury.
+Shortly after this the substitute of the imperial deputy at Kief was
+fired upon in the street; suspicion fell upon a student; all the others
+mutinied; sixteen of them were sent into exile. As they were passing
+through Moscow their fellow-students there broke from the lecture-halls
+and came to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the
+University of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair, was
+found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an officer of the
+_gendarmerie_, was mortally stabbed in a crowded street. The clandestine
+press declared this to have been done by order of the executive
+committee; and it was not long before the chief of secret police of St.
+Petersburg received a very polite notice of his death-sentence, which
+was accomplished by another dagger, and the clandestine paper, "Land and
+Liberty," said by way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave
+warning of it." Months passed without any new assassinations; but in
+February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the hand
+of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled, and no trace of him was
+to be found, though sentence of death against him was announced upon the
+walls of all the large towns of Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine
+was a furious revolutionary, and conducted a socialist paper in Geneva
+at that time. In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the
+_gendarmerie_, who was assassinated in his own house, and beside him was
+found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive Committee. So
+will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices." A pretty nihilist girl
+killed a man at a ball; it was at first thought to be a love-affair, but
+it was afterward found out that the murderess did the deed by order of
+the executive committee, or whatever the hidden power was which inspired
+such acts. On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of
+the new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated, and the walls
+of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary justice was
+about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons. It rained
+crimes,--against the governor of Kief, against Captain Hubbenet, against
+Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was riddled with wounds in his own
+room; and lastly on the 14th of April Solovief attempted the life of the
+Czar, firing five shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the
+would-be assassin swallowed a dose of poison, but his suicide was also
+unsuccessful. Solovief, however, had reached the heights of nihilism; he
+had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the ideal
+nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to _go with the
+people_, and became a locksmith, wearing the artisan's dress; he was
+married _mystically_, and by _free grace_ or _free will_, and it was
+said that he was a member of the terrible executive committee. He
+suffered death on the gallows with serenity and composure, and without
+naming his accomplices. "Land and Liberty" approved his acts by saying,
+"We should be as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when
+assassination must be counted as a political motor." From that day
+Alexander II. was a doomed man, and his fatal moment was not far off.
+The revolutionaries were determined to strike the government with
+terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred emperor was a man
+like any other, and that no supernatural charm shielded his life. At the
+end of 1879 and the beginning of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were
+forced upon the emperor: first, the mine which wrecked the imperial
+train, and then the explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace
+in ruins, which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time
+the office of a surreptitious paper was attacked, the editors and
+printers of which defended themselves desperately; alarmed by this
+significant event, the emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof, who was a
+liberal, an almost omnipotent dictatorship. The conciliatory measures of
+Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind; but just as the Czar had
+convened a meeting for the consideration of reforms solicited by the
+general opinion, his own sentence was carried out by bombs.
+
+It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and the
+revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of having been
+the first to inflict the death-penalty, which was contrary to Russian
+custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so appropriately as
+Spain to be called the country of _vice versas_, it is nevertheless
+worth while to note how she long ago solved the great juridical problem
+upon which we are still employing tongue and pen so busily. Not only is
+capital punishment unknown to the Russian penal code, but since 1872
+even perpetual confinement has been abolished, twenty years being the
+maximum of imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon
+political criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity
+than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist
+lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisabeth
+Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punishment. The
+terrible Muscovite whip probably equalled the gibbet, but aside from the
+fact that it had been seldom used, it was abolished by Nicholas I. If we
+judge of a country by its penal laws, Russia stands at the head of
+European civilization. The Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of
+the scaffold, that when the first one for the conspirators was to be
+built, there were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The Police and the Censor.
+
+
+It is not easy to say whether the government was ill-advised in
+confronting the terrors of nihilism with the terrors of authority.
+Public executions are contageous in their effect, and blood intoxicates.
+The nihilists, even in the hour of death, did not neglect their
+propaganda, and held up to the people their dislocated wrists as
+evidences of their tortures. One must put one's self in the place of a
+government menaced and attacked in so unusual a manner. Certain extreme
+measures which are the fruit of the stress of the moment are more
+excusable than the vacillating system commonly practised from time
+immemorial; and which is foster-mother to professional demagogues, and
+dynamiters by vocation and preference.
+
+The police as organized in Russia seem to inspire greater horror even
+than the nihilist atrocities. In the face of judicial reforms there
+exists an irresponsible tribunal, called the Third Section of the
+Imperial Chancellorship. The worst of this kind of arbitrary and
+antipathetic institutions is that imagination attributes many more
+iniquities to them than they in reality commit. Russian written law
+declares that no subject of the Czar can be condemned without a public
+trial; but the special police has the right to arrest, imprison, and
+make way with, rendering no account to any one. Thus absolute power
+leaps the barriers of justice. It must be acknowledged that the dark
+ways of the special police only reflected those of their nihilist
+adversary. Nowhere in the world, however, is the police so hated;
+nowhere do they perform their work in so irritating a manner as in
+Russia; and the public, far from assisting them, as in England and
+France, fights and circumvents them. The proneness to secret societies
+in Russia is the result of the perpetual and odious tyranny of the
+police. The Russian lives in clandestine association like a fish in
+water; so much so that after the fall of Loris Melikof the reactionaries
+were no less eager for it than the nihilists, and bound themselves
+together under the name of the Holy League, taking as a model the
+revolutionary executive committee, and even including the death-sentence
+in their rules.
+
+War without quarter was declared, and the police organized a
+counter-terror characterized by impeachment, suspicion, espionage, and
+inquisition. There were domiciliary visitations; every one was obliged
+to take notice whether any illegal meetings were held in his
+neighborhood, or any proscribed books or explosive materials were to be
+seen; no posters were allowed to be put on the walls, and every one was
+expected to aid the arrest of any suspicious person; a vigilant watch
+was kept upon Russian refugees; the rigors of confinement were enforced;
+and all this made the police utterly abhorred, even in a country
+accustomed to endure them as a traditional institution since the last of
+the Ruriks and the first of the Romanoffs.
+
+The chief of the Third Section became a power in the land. The Section
+worked secretly and actively. The chief and the emperor maintained
+incessant communication, and the former was made a member of the
+cabinet, and could arrest, imprison, exile, and put out of the way,
+whomever he pleased. During the reign of the kind-hearted Alexander II.
+his power declined for a while, until nihilist plots and manoeuvres
+caused it to be redoubled. There was a struggle unto death between two
+powers of darkness, from which the police came out beaten, having been
+unable to save the lives of their chief and the sovereign.
+
+While the Third Section attacked personal security and liberty, the
+censorship, more intolerable still, hemmed in the spirit and condemned
+to a death by inanition a young people hungry for literature and
+science, for plays, periodicals, and books. Mutilated as it is, the
+newspaper is bread to the soul of the Russian. The Russian press, like
+all the obstacles that absolute power finds in its way, was founded by
+one of their imperial civilizers, Peter the Great, and it maintained a
+purely literary character until the reign of Alexander II., when it took
+a political form. Under the iron hand of the censor, the Russian press
+has learned the manner and artifices of the slave; in allusions,
+insinuations, retentions, and half-meanings it is an adept, for only so
+can it convey all that it is forbidden to speak. It must emigrate and
+recross the frontier as contraband in order to speak freely.
+
+The censor lies ever in ambush like a mastiff ready to bite; and
+sometimes its teeth clinch the most inoffensive words on the page, the
+most innocent page in the book, the librettos of operas, as for example
+"The Huguenots" and "William Tell." In 1855 certain literary works were
+exempted from the previous censure, but this beneficence was not
+extended to the periodical press. The newspapers of St. Petersburg and
+Moscow were open to a choice between the new and old systems, between
+submitting to the rule of the censor and a deluge of denunciations,
+seizures, suspensions, and suppressions; and they willingly chose the
+former. So the Russian press exists under an entirely arbitrary
+sufferance, and according as the political scales rise and fall they are
+allowed to-day what was prohibited yesterday, and sometimes their very
+means of sustenance are cut off by an embargo on certain numbers or the
+proscription of advertisements. If a liberal minister is to the fore,
+times are prosperous; if there is a reaction, they are crushed to death.
+This accounts for the popularity of the secret press, which is at work
+even in buildings belonging to the crown, in seminaries and convents,
+and in the very laboratory of dynamite bombs.
+
+Books are as much harassed as periodicals. The Russians, being very fond
+of everything foreign, sigh for books from abroad, especially those that
+deal with political and social questions; but the censor has
+custom-houses at the frontier, and the officials, with the usual
+perspicacity of literary monitors, finally let slip that which may prove
+most dangerous and subversive, and exercise their zeal upon the most
+ingenuous. They have even cut off the _feuilletines_ of thousands of
+French papers,--what patience it must have required to do it!--while
+Madame Gagneur's novel, "The Russian Virgins," passed unmutilated. I
+wonder what would be the fate of my peaceful essays should they receive
+the unmerited honor of translation and reach the frontiers of Muscovy!
+
+As to the foreign reviews, they are submitted to a somewhat amusing
+process, called the _caviar_. Suspicious passages, if they escape the
+scissors, get an extra dash of printing-ink. Thus the Russian is not
+even free to read till he goes from home, and by force of dieting he
+suffers from frequent mental indigestion, and the weakest sort of
+_spirits_ goes to his head!
+
+All this goes to prove that if speculative nihilism is a moral
+infirmity congenital to the soul of the Russian, active and political
+nihilism is the fruit of the peculiar situation of the empire. The
+phrase is stale, but in the present case accurate. Russia is passing
+through a period of transition. She goes forward to an uncertain future,
+stumbles and falls; her feet bleed, her senses swim; she has fits of
+dementia and even of epilepsy. Good intention goes for nought, whether
+the latent generosity of revolutionaries, or of government and Czar.
+Where is there a person of nobler desires and projects than Alexander
+II.? But his great reforms seemed rather to accelerate than to calm the
+revolutionary fever.
+
+As long as the revolution does not descend from the cultivated classes
+upon the masses of the people, it must be content with occasional
+spurts, chimerical attempts, and a few homicides; but if some day the
+socialist propaganda, which now begins to take effect in the workshops,
+shall make itself heard in the country villages, and the peasant lend an
+ear to those who say to him, "Rise, make the sign of the Cross and take
+thy hatchet with thee," then Russia will show us a most formidable
+insurrection, and that world of country-folk, patient as cattle, but
+fanatical and overwhelming in their fury, once let loose, will sweep
+everything before it. Nothing will appease or satisfy it. The
+constitutions of Western lands they have already torn in pieces without
+perusal. Even the revolutionaries would prefer to those illusory
+statutes a Czar standing at the head of the peasants, and institutions
+born within their own land. It is said that now, just as the nihilist
+frenzy is beginning to subside, one can perceive a smouldering agitation
+among the people manifesting itself occasionally in conflagrations,
+anti-Semitic outbreaks, and frequent agrarian crimes. What a clouded
+horizon! What volcanic quakings beneath all that snow! On the one hand
+the autocratic power, the secular arm, consecrated by time, tradition,
+and national life; on the other the far-reaching revolution, fanatical
+and impossible to appease with what has satisfied other nations; and at
+bottom the cry of the peasants, like the sullen roar of the ocean,
+for--it is a little thing--the land!
+
+
+
+
+Book III.
+
+RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The Beginnings of Russian Literature.
+
+
+From this state of anguish, of unrest, of uncertainty, has been brought
+forth, like amber from the salt sea, a most interesting literature. Into
+this relatively peaceful domain we are about to penetrate. But before
+speaking of the novel itself I must mention as briefly as possible the
+sources and vicissitudes of Russian letters up to the time when they
+assumed a national and at the same time a social and political
+character.
+
+I will avoid tiresome details, and the repetition of Russian names which
+are formidable and harsh to our senses, besides being confusing and at
+first sight all very much alike, and much given to terminating in
+_of_,--a syllable which on Russian lips is nevertheless very euphonious
+and sweet. I will also avoid the mention of books of secondary
+importance; for as this is not a course of Russian literature, it would
+be pedantry to refer to more than those I have read from cover to
+cover. I will mention in passing only a few authors of lesser genius
+than the four whom Melchior de Voguié very correctly estimates as the
+perfect national types; namely, Gogol, Turguenief, Dostoiëwsky, and
+Tolstoï, and I will give only a succinct review of the primitive period,
+the classicism and romanticism, the satire and comedy antecedent to
+Gogol, this much being necessary in order to bring out the
+transformation due to the prodigious genius of this founder of realism,
+and consummated in the contemporary novel.
+
+Literature, considered not as rhetorical feats or as the art of speaking
+and writing well, but as a manifestation of national life or of the
+peculiar inclinations of a people, exists from the time when the spirit
+of the people is spontaneously revealed in legends, traditions,
+proverbs, and songs. The fertility of Russian popular literature is well
+known to students of folk-lore. Critics have demonstrated to us that
+between the primitive oral, mythical, and poetical literature of Russia
+and the present novel (which is profoundly philosophical in character,
+and inspired by that austere muse, the Real) there is as close a
+relationship as between the gray-haired grandfather who has all his life
+followed the plough, and his offspring who holds a chair in a
+university. Russian literature was born beside the Danube, in the
+fatherland of the Sclavonic people. The various tribes dispersed
+themselves over the Black Sea, and the Russian Sclavs, following the
+course of the Dnieper, began to elaborate their heroic mythology with
+feats of gods and demi-gods against the forces of Nature, and monsters
+and other fantastic beings. A warlike mode of life and a semi-savage
+imagination are reflected in their legends and songs. All this period is
+covered by the _bilinas_, a word which is explained by Russian etymology
+to mean _songs of the past_. These epics tell of the exploits of ancient
+warriors who personify the blind and chaotic forces of Nature and the
+elements. _Esviatogor_, for example, represents a mountain; _Volk_ may
+mean a wolf, a bull, or an ant; there is a godlike tiller of the soil
+who stands for Russian agriculture, and who is the popular and
+indigenous hero, in opposition to the fighting and adventurous hero
+_Volga_, who stands for the ruling classes. Perhaps these _bilinas_ and
+the Finnish Kalevala are the only primitive epics in which the laborer
+plays a first part and puts the fighting hero into the shade. In these
+national poems of a people descended from the Scythians, who in the days
+of Herodotus were proud of calling themselves _farmers_ or _laborers_,
+the two most attractive figures are the heroes of the plough, Mikula and
+Ilia; it is as though the singers of long ago started the worship of the
+peasant, which is the dogma of the present novel, or as though the
+apotheosis of agriculture were an idea rooted in the deepest soil of the
+national thought of Russia.
+
+Next after this primitive cycle comes the age of chivalry, known under
+the name of Kief cycle, which has its focus in the Prince Vladimir
+called the Red Sun; but even in this Round Table epic we find the
+heroic _mujik_, the giant Cossack, Ilias de Moron. The splendor of the
+hero-mythical epoch faded after the advent of Christianity, and the
+heroes of Kief and Novgorod fell into oblivion; one _bilina_ tells now
+"the paladins of Holy Russia disappeared; a great new force that was not
+of this world came upon them," and the paladins, unable to conquer it,
+and seeing that it multiplied and became only more powerful with every
+stroke, were afraid, and ran and hid themselves in the caverns, which
+closed upon them forever. Since that day there are no more paladins in
+Holy Russia.
+
+In every _bilina_, and also in songs which celebrate the seed-time, the
+pagan feast of the summer solstice, and the spring-time, we notice the
+two characteristics of Russian thought,--a lively imagination and a
+dreamy sadness, which is most evident in the love-songs. On coming in
+contact with Christianity the pagan tale became a legend, and the
+clergy, brought from Byzantium by Valdimir the Baptizer, gave the people
+the Gospel in the Sclavonic tongue, translated by two Greek brothers,
+Cyril and Methodius, and the day of liturgical and sacred literature was
+at hand. The apostles of Christianity arranged the alphabet of
+thirty-eight letters, which represent all the sounds in the Sclav
+language, and founded also the grammar and rhetoric. As in every other
+part of Christendom, these early preachers were the first to enlighten
+the people, bringing ideas of culture entirely new to the barbarous
+Sclavonic tribes; and the poor monk, bent over his parchment, writing
+with a sharp-pointed reed, was the first educator of the nation. In the
+eleventh century the first Russian literary efforts began to take shape,
+being, like all early-written literature, of essentially clerical origin
+and character,--such as epistles, sermons, and moral exhortations. The
+chief writers of that time were the monk Nestor, the metropolitan
+Nicephorous, and Cyril the Golden-Mouthed, who imitated the florid
+Byzantine eloquence. At the side of ecclesiastical literature history
+was born; the lives of the saints prepared the ground for the
+chroniclers, and Nestor's Chronicle, the first book on Russian history,
+was written. The early essays in profane history, which took the form of
+fables and trenchant sayings disclosing a vein of satire, still smack of
+the ecclesiastical flavor, although they contain the instincts of a laic
+and civil literature.
+
+The people had their epic, the clergy accumulated their treasures, but
+the warriors and knights, who with the sovereign formed a separate
+society, must have their heroic cycle also; and bards and singers were
+found to give it to them in fragmentary pieces, among which the most
+celebrated is the "Song of the Host of Igor," which relates the
+victories of a prince over the savage tribes of the steppes. The poem is
+a mixture of pagan and Christian wonders, which is only natural, since
+in the twelfth century (the era of its composition) Christianity, while
+triumphant in fact, had not yet succeeded in driving out the old
+Sclavonic deities.
+
+In the eighth century the Tartar invasion interrupted the course of
+civil literature. Russia then had no time for the remembrance of
+anything but her disasters, and the Church became again the only
+depository of the civilization brought from Byzantium, and of the
+intellectual riches of the nation; for the Khans, who destroyed
+everything else, regarded the churches and images with superstitious
+respect. The little then written expresses the grief of Russia over her
+catastrophe, but in sermon form, presenting it as a punishment from
+Heaven, and a portent of the end of the world; it was the universal
+panic of the Middle Ages arrived in Russia three centuries late. Until
+the fourteenth century there was no revival of historical narrations in
+sufficient numbers to show the preponderance of the epic spirit in the
+Russian people. In the fifteenth century, for the first time, oral
+literature really penetrated into the domain of the written; but the
+inevitable and tiresome mediæval stories of Alexander the Great and the
+Siege of Troy, the Thousand and One Nights, and others, entering by way
+of Servia and Bulgaria, appear among the literature of the southern
+Sclavs; and tales of chivalry from Byzantium are also rearranged and
+copied,--an element of imitation and artificiality which never took deep
+root in Russia, however. Aside from some few tales, the only germs of
+vitality are to be found in the apocryphal religious narratives, which
+were an early expression of the spirit of mysticism and exegesis,
+natural to Muscovite thought; and in the songs, also religious, chanted
+by pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines, and by the people also,
+but probably the work of the monks. These are still sung by beggars on
+the streets, and the people listen with delight.
+
+In the sixteenth century there were Maximus the Greek (the Savonarola of
+Russia), the priest Silvester, author of "Domostrof," a book which was
+held to contain the model of ancient Russian society, and lastly the
+Czar, Ivan the Terrible himself, who wrote many notable epistles, models
+of irony. The songs of the people still flourished, and they were
+provided with subject-matter by the awful figure and actions of the
+emperor, who was beloved by the people, because, like Pedro the Cruel of
+Castile, he dared to bridle the nobles. The popular poet describes him
+as giving to a potter the insignia and dignity of a Boyar. This tyrant,
+the most ferocious that humanity ever endured, busied himself with
+establishing the art of printing in Russia, with the help of Maximus the
+Greek, who was a great friend of Aldus the Venetian, the famous printer.
+According to the Metropolitan Macarius, God himself from his high throne
+put this thought into the heart of the Czar. On the 1st of May, 1564,
+the first book printed in Russia, "The Acts of the Apostles," made its
+appearance.
+
+The Russian theatre grew out of the symbolic ceremonies of the church
+and the representations given by the Polish Jesuits in the colleges; and
+through Poland, in the seventeenth century, by means of translations or
+imitations, came also that kind of literary recreations known in France
+and Italy during the fourteenth century under the name of novels and
+facetias. But these did not intercept the natural course of the
+national spirit, nor drown the popular voice,--the _duma_, or
+meditation, the religious canticle, the satire, and especially the
+incessant reiteration of the _bilinas_, which were now devoted to
+relating the heroic conquests of the Cossacks. The impulse communicated
+to Russian thought by Peter the Great at last obliterated the chasm
+between popular and written literature. Peter established in Russia a
+school of translators; whatever he thought useful and beneficial he had
+correctly translated, and then he established the academy. He set up the
+first regular press and founded the first periodical paper. Not having
+much confidence in ecclesiastical literature, he commanded that the
+monks should be deprived of pen, ink, and paper; and on the other hand
+he revived the theatre, which was apparently dead, and under the
+influence of his reforms there arose the first Russian writer who can
+properly be called such,--Lomonosof, the personification of academical
+classicism, who wrote because he thought it his business, in a
+well-ordered State, to write incessantly, to polish and perfect the
+taste, the speech, and even the characters of his fellow-countrymen; he
+was always a rhetorician, a censor, a corrector, and we seem to see him
+always armed with scissors and rule, pruning and shaping the myrtles in
+the garden of literature. The Czar pensioned this ornamental poet, after
+the fashion of French monarchs, and he in turn bequeathed to his
+country, of course, a heroic poem entitled "Petriada." His best service
+to the national literature was in the line of philology; he found a
+language unrefined and hampered by old Sclavonic forms, and he refined
+it, softened it, made it more flexible, and ready to yield sweeter
+melody to those who played upon it thereafter.
+
+Semiramis, in her turn, was not less eager to forward the cause of
+letters; she had also her palace poet, Derjavine, the Pindar of her
+court; and not being satisfied with this, her imperial hands grasped the
+foils and fought out long arguments in the periodicals, to which she
+contributed for a long time. Woman, just at that time emerging from
+Oriental seclusion, as during the Renaissance in Europe, manifested an
+extraordinary desire to learn and to exercise her mind. Catherine became
+a journalist, a satirist, and a dramatic author; and a lady of her
+court, the Princess Daschkof, directed the Academy of Sciences, and
+presided over the Russian Academy founded by Catherine for the
+improvement and purification of the language, while three letters in the
+new dictionary are the exclusive work of this learned princess.
+
+Catherine effectively protected her literary men, being convinced that
+letters are a means of helping the advancement of a barbarous people, in
+fact the highways of communication; and under her influence a literary
+Pleiad appeared, among whom were Von-Vizine, the first original Russian
+dramatist; Derjavine, the official bard and oracle; and Kerakof, the
+pseudo-classic author of the "Rusiada." Court taste prevailed, and
+Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot ruled as intellectual
+masters of a people totally opposed to the French in their inmost
+thoughts.
+
+The thing most grateful to the Russian poet in Catherine's time was to
+be called the Horace or the Pindar of his country; the nobles hid their
+Muscovite ruggedness under a coat of Voltairian varnish, and even the
+seminaries resounded with denunciations of _fanaticism_ and _horrid
+superstition_. Other nations have been known to go thus masked unawares.
+But new currents were undermining the possessions of the Encyclopedists.
+During the last years of Catherine's reign the theosophical doctrines
+from Sweden and Germany infiltrated Russia; mysticism brought
+free-masonry, which finally mounted the throne with Alexander I., the
+tender friend of the sentimental Valeria; and even had Madame Krudener
+never appeared to shape in her visions the protest of the Russian soul
+against the dryness and frivolity of the French philosophers, the fresh
+lyric quality of Rousseau, Florian, and Bernardin Saint-Pierre would
+still have flowed in upon the people of the North by means of that
+eminent man and historian, Karamzine.
+
+Before achieving the title of the Titus Livius of Russia, Karamzine,
+being a keen intellectual observer of what was going on abroad, founded,
+by means of a novel, the _emotional school_, declaring that the aim of
+art is "to pour out floods of grateful impressions upon the realms of
+the sentimental." This sounds like mere jargon, but such was their mode
+of speech at the time; and that their spirits demanded just such food is
+proved by the general use of it, and by the tears that rained upon the
+said novel, in which the Russian _mujik_ appears in the disguise of a
+shepherd of Arcadia. These innocent absurdities, which were the delight
+of our own grandmothers, prepared the way for Romanticism, and the
+appearance of Lermontof and Puchkine.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Russian Romanticism.--the Lyric Poets.
+
+
+The period of lyric poetry represented by these two excellent poets,
+Lermontof and Puchkine, was considered the most glorious in Russian
+literature, and there are yet many who esteem it as such in spite of the
+contemporary novel. Undoubtedly rhyme can do wonders with this rich
+tongue in which words are full of color, melody, and shape, as well as
+ideas. A fine critic has said that Russian poetry is untranslatable, and
+that one must feel the beauty of certain stanzas of Lermontof and
+Puchkine sensually, to realize why they are beyond even the most
+celebrated verses in the world.
+
+At the beginning of the century classicism was in its decline; Russia
+was leaving her youth behind her, and after 1812 she became totally
+changed. The Napoleonic wars caused the alliance with Germany, and
+secret societies of German origin flourished under the favor of the
+versatile Alexander I. Weary of the artificial literature imposed by
+the iron will of Peter the Great, and stirred by a great desire for
+independence, like all the other nations awakened by Napoleon, Russia
+held her breath and listened to the birdlike song of the harbingers of a
+new era, to the great romantic poets who, almost simultaneously and with
+marvellous accord, burst forth in England, Italy, France, Spain, and
+Russia. The air was full of melody like the sudden twang of harp-strings
+in the darkness of the night; and perhaps the autocratic severity of
+Nicholas I. by forcing attention from public affairs and concentrating
+it upon literature, was a help rather than a hindrance to this
+revelation and development.
+
+Alexander Puchkine, the demi-god of Russian verse, carried African as
+well as Sclavonic blood in his veins, being the grandson of an
+Abyssinian named Abraham Hannibal, a sort of Othello upon whom Peter the
+Great bestowed the rank of general and married him to a lady of the
+court. During the poet's childhood an old servant beguiled him with
+legends, fables, and popular tales, and the seed fell upon good ground.
+He left home at the age of fourteen, having quarrelled with all his
+family and become an out-and-out Voltairian; his professor at the
+Lyceum--of whom no more needs be said than that he was a brother of
+Marat--had instilled into his youthful mind the superficial atheism then
+the fashion; his other tutors declared that this impetuous and fanciful
+child was throwing away body and soul; yet, when the occasion came,
+Puchkine remembered all that his old nurse had told him, and found
+himself with an exquisite æsthetic instinct, in touch with the popular
+feeling.
+
+When Nicholas I., in December, 1825, mounted the throne vacated by the
+death of Alexander I. and the renunciation of the Grand-Duke
+Constantine, Puchkine, then scarcely more than twenty-six years of age,
+found himself in exile for the second time. His first appearance in
+public life coincided with the reactionary mood of Alexander I. and the
+favoritism of the retrogressive minister, Count Arakschef; and the young
+men from the Lyceum, who had been steeping their souls in liberalism,
+found themselves defrauded of their expectations of active life,
+discussions closed, meetings prohibited, and Russia again in a trance of
+Asiatic immobility. The young nobility began to entertain themselves
+with conspiracy; and those who had no talent for that, spent their time
+in drinking and dissipation. Puchkine was as much inclined toward the
+one as the other. His passionate temperament led him into all sorts of
+adventures; his eager imagination and his literary tastes incited him to
+political essays, though under pain of censure. Living amid a whirl of
+amusement, and coveting an introduction to aristocratic circles, he
+launched his celebrated poem of "Russia and Ludmilla," which placed him
+at once at the head of the poets of his day, who had formed themselves
+into a society called "Arzamas," which was to Russian Romanticism what
+the Cénacle was to the French,--a centre of attack and defence against
+classicism; but at length their literary discussions overstepped the
+forbidden territory of politics, and certain ideas were broached which
+ended in the conspiracy of December. If Puchkine was not himself a
+conspirator, he was at least acquainted with the movement; his ode to
+liberty alarmed the police, and the Czar said to the director of the
+Lyceum, "Your former pupil is inundating Russia with revolutionary
+verses, and every boy knows them by heart." That same afternoon the Czar
+signed the order for Puchkine's banishment,--a great good-fortune for
+the poet; for had he not been banished he might have been implicated in
+the conspiracy about to burst forth, and sent to Siberia or to the
+quicksilver mines. He was expelled from Odessa, which was his first
+place of confinement, because his Byronic bravado had a pernicious
+influence upon the young men of the place, and he was sent home to his
+father, with whom he could come to no understanding whatever. While
+there he heard of the death of Alexander and the events of December.
+Upon knowing that his friends were all compromised and under arrest, he
+started for St. Petersburg, but having met a priest and seen a hare
+cross his path, he considered these ill omens, and, yielding to
+superstition, he turned back. Soon afterward he wrote to the new Czar
+begging reprieve of banishment, which was granted. The Iron Czar sent
+for him to come to the palace, and held with him a conversation or
+dialogue which has become famous in the annals of the historians:
+
+"If you had found yourself in St. Petersburg on the 25th of December,
+where would you have been?" asked Nicholas.
+
+"Among the rebels," answered the poet.
+
+Far from being angry, the sovereign was pleased with his reply, and he
+embraced Puchkine, saying: "Your banishment is at an end; and do not let
+fear of the censors spoil your poetry, Alexander, son of Sergius, for I
+myself will be your censor."
+
+This is not the only instance of this inflexible autocrat's
+warm-heartedness. More than once his imperial hand stayed the sentence
+of the censors and gave the wing to genius. Nicholas was not afraid of
+art, and was, besides, an intelligent amateur of literature. We shall
+see how he protected even the satire of Gogol. And so, with a royal
+suavity which softens the most selfish character, Nicholas gained to his
+side the first poet of Russia, and forever alienated him from the cause
+for which his friends suffered in gloomy fortresses and in exile, or
+perished on the scaffold. Puchkine had no other choice than to accept
+the situation or forfeit his freedom,--to make peace with the emperor or
+to go and vegetate in some village and bury his talent alive. He chose
+his vocation as poet, accepted the imperial favor, and returned to St.
+Petersburg, where he found a remnant of the Arzamas, but now languid and
+without creative fire. Being restored to his place in high society, he
+tasted the delights of living in a sphere with which his refined and
+aristocratic nature was in harmony. He was a poet; he enjoyed the
+privileges and immunities of a demi-god, the just tribute paid to the
+productive genius of beauty. And yet at times the pride and independence
+hushed within his soul stirred again, and he thought with horror upon
+the hypocrisy of his position as imperial oracle. But he found himself
+at the height of his glory, doing his best work, seldom annoyed by the
+censorial scissors, thanks to the Czar; and so, flattered by the throne,
+the court, and the public, he led to the altar his "brown-skinned
+virgin," his beautiful Natalia, with whom he was so deeply in love.
+Having satisfied every earthly desire, he must needs, like Polycrates,
+throw his ring into the sea.
+
+All his happiness came to a sudden end, and not only his happiness, but
+his life, went to pay his debt to that high society which had received
+him with smiles and fair promises. Puchkine's end is as dramatic as any
+novel. A certain French Legitimist who had been well received by the
+nobility at St. Petersburg took advantage of the chivalrous customs then
+in vogue there, to pay court to the poet's beautiful wife, electing her
+as the lady of his thoughts without disguise. Society protected this
+little skirmish, and assisted the gallant to meet his lady at every
+entertainment and in every _salon_; and as Puchkine, though quite
+unsuspicious, showed plainly that he did not enjoy the game, they amused
+themselves with exciting and annoying him, ridiculing him, and making
+him the butt of epigrams and anonymous verses. The marriage of
+"Dante"--as the adorer of his wife was called--with his wife's sister,
+far from calming his nerves, only irritated him the more, and he
+believed it to be a stratagem on the lover's part, a means of
+approaching the nearer to his desires. Becoming desperate, he sought and
+obtained a challenge to a duel, and fell mortally wounded by a ball from
+his adversary. Two days later he died, having just received a letter
+from the emperor, saying:--
+
+     "Dear Alexander, Son of Sergius,--If it is the will of
+     Providence that we should never meet again in this world, I
+     counsel you to die like a Christian. Give yourself no
+     anxiety for your wife and children; I will care for them."
+
+Russia cried out with indignation at the news of his death, accusing
+polite society in round terms of having taken the part of the
+professional libertine against the husband,--of the French adventurer
+against their illustrious compatriot; and Lermontof voiced the national
+anger in some celebrated lines to this effect:--
+
+     "Thy last days were poisoned by the vicious ridicule of low
+     detractors; thou hast died thirsting for vengeance, moaning
+     bitterly to see thy most beautiful hopes vanished; none
+     understood the deep emotion of thy last words, and the last
+     sigh of thy dying lips was lost."
+
+But I agree with those who, in spite of this fine elegy, do not regret
+the premature end of the romantic poet. His life, exuberant, brilliant,
+fecund, passionate, like that of Byron, could have no more appropriate
+termination than a pistol-shot. He died before the end of
+romanticism--his tragic history lent him a halo which lifts his figure
+above the mists of time. I have seen Victor Hugo and our own Zorilla in
+their old age, and I was not guilty of wishing them anything but long
+life and prosperity; but, æsthetically speaking, it seemed to me that
+both of them had lived forty years too long, and that Alfred de Musset,
+Espronceda, and Byron were well off in their glorious tombs.
+
+Puchkine belongs undeniably to the great general currents of European
+literature; only now and then does he manifest the peculiar genius of
+his country which was so strongly marked in Gogol. But it would be
+unjust to consider him a mere imitator of foreign romanticists, and some
+even claim that he always had one foot upon the soil of classicism,
+taking the phrase in the Helenic sense, as particularly shown in his
+"Eugene Oneguine," and that, were he to live again, his talents would
+undergo a transformation and shine forth in the modern novel and the
+national theatre. Besides being a lyric poet of first rank, Puchkine
+must also be considered a superb prose writer, having learned from
+Voltaire a harmony of arrangement, a discreet selection of details, and
+a concise, clear, and rapid phrasing. His novel, "The Captain's
+Daughter," is extremely pretty and interesting, at times amusing, or
+again very touching, and in my opinion preferable in its simplicity to
+the interminable narratives of Walter Scott. But Puchkine has one
+remarkable peculiarity, which is, that while he had a keen sympathy
+with the popular poetry, and was fully sensible of the revelation of it
+by Gogol, which he applauded with all his heart, yet the author of
+"Boris Godonof" was so caught in the meshes of romanticism that he never
+could employ his faculties in poetry of a national character. Puchkine's
+works have no ethnical value at all. His melancholy is not the
+despairing sadness of the Russian, but the romantic _morbidezza_
+expressed often in much the same words by Byron, Espronceda, and de
+Musset. The phenomenon is common, and easily explained. It lies in the
+fact that romanticism was always and everywhere prejudicial to the
+manifestation of nationality, and made itself a nation apart, composed
+of half-a-dozen persons from every European country. Realism, with its
+principles--whether tacitly or explicitly accepted--of human verities,
+heredity, atavism, race and place influences, etc., became a necessity
+in order that writers might follow their natural instincts and speak in
+their own mother tongue.
+
+Within the restricted circle of poets who hovered around Puchkine, one
+deserves especial mention, namely, Lermontof. He is the second lyric
+poet of Russia, and perhaps embodies the spirit of romanticism even more
+than Puchkine; he is the real Russian Byron. His life is singularly like
+that of Puchkine, he having also been banished to the Caucasus, and for
+the very reason of having written the elegy upon Puchkine's death; like
+him he was also killed in a duel, but still earlier in life, and before
+he had reached the plenitude of his powers.
+
+Lermontof became the singer of the Caucasian region. At that time it was
+really a great favor to send a poet to the mountains, for there he came
+in contact with things that reclaimed and lifted his fancy,--air, sun,
+liberty, a wooded and majestic landscape, picturesque and charming
+peasant-maidens, wild flowers full of new and virginal perfume like the
+Haydees and Fior d'Alizas sung of by our Western poets. There they
+forgot the deceits of civilization and the weariness of mind that comes
+of too much reading; there the brain was refreshed, the nerves calmed,
+and the moral fibre strengthened. Puchkine, Lermontof, and Tolstoï, each
+in his own way, have lauded the regenerative virtue of the snow-covered
+mountains. But Lermontof in particular was full of it, lived in it, and
+died in it, after his fatal wound at the age of twenty-six, when public
+opinion had just singled him out as Puchkine's successor. He had drunk
+deeply of Byron's fountain, and even resembled Byron in his discontent,
+restlessness, and violent passions, which more than Byron's were tinged
+with a stripe of malice and pride, so that his enemies used to say that
+to describe Lucifer he needed only to look at himself in the glass.
+There is an unbridled freedom, a mocking irony, and at times a deep
+melancholy at the bottom of his poetic genius; it is inferior to
+Puchkine's in harmony and completeness, but exceeds it in an almost
+painful and thrilling intensity; there was more gall in his soul, and
+therefore more of what has been called subjectivity, even amounting to
+a fierce egoism. Lermontof is the high-water mark of romanticism, and
+after his death it necessarily began to ebb; it had exhausted curses,
+fevers, complaints, and spleens, and now the world of literature was
+ready for another form of art, wider and more human, and that form was
+realism.
+
+I am sorry to have to deal in _isms_, but the fault is not mine; we are
+handling ideas, and language offers no other way. The transition came by
+means of satire, which is exceptionally fertile in Russia. A genius of
+wonderful promise arose in Griboiëdof, a keen observer and moralist, who
+deserves to be mentioned after Puchkine, if only for one comedy which is
+considered the gem of the Russian stage, and is entitled (freely
+rendered) "Too Clever by Half." The hero is a misanthropic patriot who
+sighs for the good old times and abuses the mania for foreign education
+and imitation. This shows the first impulse of the nation to know and to
+assert itself in literature as in everything else. Being prohibited by
+the censor, the play circulated privately in manuscript; every line
+became a proverb, and the people found their very soul reflected in it.
+Five years later, when Puchkine was returning from the Caucasus, he met
+with a company of Georgians who were drawing a dead body in a cart: it
+was the body of Griboiëdof, who had been assassinated in an
+insurrection.
+
+Between the decline of the romantic period and the appearance of new
+forms inspired by a love of the truth, there hovered in other parts of
+Europe undefined and colorless shapes, sterile efforts and shallow
+aspirations which never amounted to anything. But not so in Russia.
+Romanticism vanished quickly, for it was an aristocratic and artificial
+condition, without root and without fruit conducive to the well-being of
+a nation which had as yet scarcely entered on life, and which felt
+itself strong and eager for stimulus and aim, eager to be heard and
+understood; realism grew up quickly, for the very youth of the nation
+demanded it. Russia, which until then had trod with docile steps upon
+the heels of Europe, was at last to take the lead by creating the
+realistic novel.
+
+She had not to do violence to her own nature to accomplish this. The
+Russian, little inclined to metaphysics, unless it be the fatalist
+philosophy of the Hindus, more quick at poetic conceptions than at
+rational speculations, carries realism in his veins along with
+scientific positivism; and if any kind of literature be spontaneous in
+Russia it is the epic, as shown now in fragmentary songs and again in
+the novels. Before ever they were popular in their own country, Balzac
+and Zola were admired and understood in Russia.
+
+The two great geniuses of lyric poetry, Puchkine and Lermontof, confirm
+this theory. Though both perished before the descriptive and observing
+faculties of their countrymen were matured, they had both instinctively
+turned to the novel, and perhaps the possible direction of their genius
+was thus shadowed forth as by accident. Puchkine seems to me endowed
+with qualities which would have made him a delightful novel-writer. His
+heroes are clearly and firmly drawn and very attractive; he has a
+certain healthy joyousness of tone which is quite classic, and a
+brightness and freedom of coloring that I like; in the short historic
+narrative he has left us we never see the slightest trace of the lyric
+poet. As to Lermontof, is it not marvellous that a man who died at the
+age of twenty-six years should have produced anything like a novel? But
+he left a sort of autobiography, which is extremely interesting,
+entitled "A Contemporary Hero," which hero, Petchorine by name, is
+really the type of the romantic period, exacting, egotistical, at war
+with himself and everybody else, insatiable for love, yet scorning life,
+a type that we meet under different forms in many lands; now swallowing
+poison like De Musset's Rolla, now refusing happiness like Adolfo, now
+consumed with remorse like Réné, now cocking his pistol like Werther,
+and always in a bad humor, and to tell the truth always intolerable. "My
+hero," writes Lermontof, "is the portrait of a generation, not of an
+individual." And he makes that hero say, "I have a wounded soul, a fancy
+unappeased, a heart that nothing can ease. Everything becomes less and
+less to me. I have accustomed myself to suffering and joy alike, and I
+have neither feelings nor impressions; everything wearies me." But there
+are many fine pages in the narratives of Lermontof besides these
+poetical declamations. Perhaps the novel might also have offered him a
+brilliant future.
+
+The sad fate of the writers during the reign of Nicholas I. is
+remarkable, when we consider how favorable it was to art in other
+respects. Alexander Herzen calculated that within thirty years the three
+most illustrious Russian poets were assassinated or killed in a duel,
+three lesser ones died in exile, two became insane, two died of want,
+and one by the hand of the executioner. Alas! and among these dark
+shadows we discern one especially sad; it is that of Nicholas Gogol, a
+soul crushed by its own greatness, a victim to the noblest infirmity and
+the most generous mania that can come upon a man, a martyr to love of
+country.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder.
+
+
+Gogol was born in 1809; he was of Cossack blood, and first saw the light
+of this world amid the steppes which he was afterward to describe so
+vividly. His grandfather, holding the child upon his knee, amused him
+with stories of Russian heroes and their mighty deeds, not so very long
+past either, for only two generations lay between Gogol and the Cossack
+warriors celebrated in the _bilinas_. Sometimes a wandering minstrel
+sang these for him, accompanying himself on the _bandura_. In this
+school was his imagination taught. We may imagine the effect upon
+ourselves of hearing the Romance of the Cid under such circumstances.
+When Gogol went to St. Petersburg with the intention of joining the
+ranks of Russian youth there, though ostensibly to seek employment, he
+carried a light purse and a glowing fancy. He found that the great city
+was a desert more arid than the steppes, and even after obtaining an
+office under the government he endured poverty and loneliness such as no
+one can describe so well as himself. His position offered him one
+advantage which was the opportunity of studying the bureaucratic world,
+and of drawing forth from amid the dust of official papers the material
+for some of his own best pages. On the expiration of his term of office
+he was for a while blown about like a dry leaf. He tried the stage but
+his voice failed him; he tried teaching but found he had no vocation for
+it. Nor had he any aptitude for scholarship. In the Gymnasium of Niejine
+his rank among the pupils was only medium; German, mathematics, Latin,
+and Greek were little in his line; he was an illiterate genius. But in
+his inmost soul dwelt the conviction that his destiny held great things
+in store for him. In his struggle with poverty, the remembrance of the
+hours he had passed at school reading Puchkine and other romantic poets
+began to urge him to try his fortune at literature. One day he knocked
+with trembling hand at Puchkine's door; the great poet was still asleep,
+having spent the night in gambling and dissipation, but on waking, he
+received the young novice with a cordial welcome, and with his
+encouragement Gogol published his first work, called "Evenings at the
+Farm." It met with amazing success; for the first time the public found
+an author who could give them a true picture of Russian life. Puchkine
+had hit the mark in advising him to study national scenes and popular
+customs; and who knows whether perhaps his conscience did not reproach
+him with shutting his own eyes to his country and the realities she
+offered him, and stopping his ears against the voice of tradition and
+the charms of Nature?
+
+Gogol's "Evenings at the Farm" is the echo of his own childhood; in
+these pages the Russia of the people lives and breathes in landscapes,
+peasants, rustic customs, dialogues, legends, and superstitions. It is a
+bright and simple work, not yet marked with the pessimism which later on
+darkened the author's soul; it has a strong smell of the soil; it is
+full of dialect and colloquial diminutive and affectionate terms, with
+now and then a truly poetical passage. Is it not strange that the
+intellect of a nation sometimes wanders aimlessly through foreign lands
+seeking from without what lies handier at home, and borrowing from
+strangers that of which it has a super-abundance already? And how sweet
+is the surprise one feels at finding so beautiful the things which were
+hidden from our understanding by their very familiarity!
+
+"The Tales of Mirgorod," which followed the "Evenings at the Farm,"
+contain one of the gems of Gogol's writings, the story of "Taras
+Boulba." Gogol has the quality of the epic poet, though he is generally
+noted only for his merits as a novelist; but judging from his greatest
+works, "Taras Boulba" and "Dead Souls," I consider his epic power to be
+of the first class, and in truth I hold him to be, rather more than a
+modern novelist, a master poet who has substituted for the lyric poetry
+brought into favor by romanticism the epic form, which is much more
+suited to the Russian spirit. He is the first who has caught the
+inspiration of the _bilinas_, the hero-songs, the Sclavonic poetry
+created by the people. The novel, it is true, is one manifestation of
+epic poetry, and in a certain way every novelist is a rhapsodist who
+recites his canto of the poem of modern times; but there are some
+descriptive, narrative fictions, which, imbued with a greater amount of
+the poetic element united to a certain large comprehensive character,
+more nearly resemble the ancient idea of the epopee; and of this class I
+may mention "Don Quixote," and perhaps "Faust," as examples. By this I
+do not mean to place Gogol on the same plane as Goethe and Cervantes;
+yet I associate them in my mind, and I see in Gogol's books the
+transition from the lyric to the epic which is to result in the true
+novel that begins with Turguenief.
+
+All the world is agreed that "Taras Boulba" is a true prose poem,
+modelled in the Homeric style, the hero of which is a people that long
+preserved a primitive character and customs. Gogol declared that he
+merely allowed himself to reproduce the tales of his grandfather, who
+thus becomes the witness and actor in this Cossack Iliad.
+
+One charming trait in Gogol is his love for the past and his fidelity
+to tradition; they have as strong an attraction for him certainly as the
+seductions of the future, and both are the outcome of the two sublime
+sentiments which divide every heart,--retrospection and anticipation.
+Gogol, who is so skilful in sketching idyllic scenes of the tranquil
+life of country proprietors, clergy, and peasants, is no less skilful in
+his descriptions of the adventurous existence of the Cossack; sometimes
+he is so faithful to the simple grandeur of his grandfather's style,
+that though the action in "Taras Boulba" takes place in recent times, it
+seems a tale of primeval days.
+
+The story of this novel--I had almost said this poem--unfolds among the
+Cossacks of the Don and the Dnieper, who were at that time a
+well-preserved type of the ancient warlike Scythians that worshipped the
+blood-stained sword. Old Taras Boulba is a wild animal, but a very
+interesting wild animal; a rude and majestic warrior-like figure cast in
+Homeric mould. There is, I confess, just a trace of the leaven of
+romanticism in Taras. Not all in vain had Gogol hidden Puchkine's works
+under his pillow in school-days; but the whole general tone recalls
+inevitably the grand naturalism of Homer, to which is added an Oriental
+coloring, vivid and tragical. Taras Boulba is an Ataman of the Cossacks,
+who has two young sons, his pride and his hope, studying at the
+University of Kief. On a declaration of war between the savage Cossack
+republic and Poland, the old hawk calls his two nestlings and commands
+them to exchange the book for the sword. One of the sons, bewitched by
+the charms of a Polish maiden, deserts from the Cossack camp and fights
+in the ranks of the enemy; he at length falls into the power of his
+enraged father, who puts him to death in punishment for his treason.
+After dreadful battles and sieges, starvation and suffering, Taras dies,
+and with him the glory and the liberty of the Cossacks. Such is the
+argument of this simple story, which begins in a manner not unlike the
+Tale of the Cid. The two sons of Taras arrive at their father's house,
+and the father begins to ridicule their student garb.
+
+     "'Do not mock at us, father,' says the elder.
+
+      "'Listen to the gentleman! And why should I not mock at
+      you, I should like to know?'
+
+      "'Because, even though you are my father, I swear by the
+      living God, I will smite you.'
+
+      "'Hi! hi! What? Your father?' cries Taras, receding a step
+      or two.
+
+      "'Yes, my own father; for I will take offence from nobody
+      at all.'
+
+      "'How shall we fight then,--with fists?' exclaims the
+      father in high glee.
+
+      "'However you like.'
+
+      "'With fists, then,' answers Taras, squaring off at him.
+      'Let us see what sort of fellow you are, and what sort of
+      fists you have.'"
+
+And so father and son, instead of embracing after a long absence, begin
+to pommel one another with naked fists, in the ribs, back, and chest,
+each advancing and receding in turn.
+
+     "'Why, he fights well,' exclaims Taras, stopping to take
+     breath. 'He is a hero,' he adds, readjusting his clothes. 'I
+     had better not have put him to the proof. But he will be a
+     great Cossack! Good! my son, embrace me now.'"
+
+This is like the delight of Diego Lainez in the Spanish Romanceros, when
+he says, "Your anger appeases my own, and your indignation gives me
+pleasure."
+
+Could Gogol have been acquainted with the Tale of the Cid and the other
+Spanish Romanceros? I do not think it too audacious to believe it
+possible, when we know that this author was a delighted reader of "Don
+Quixote," and really drew inspiration from it for his greatest work. But
+let us return to "Taras Boulba." Another admirable passage is on the
+parting of the mother and sons. The poor wife of Taras is the typical
+woman of the warlike tribes, a gentle and miserable creature amid a
+fierce horde of men who are for the most part celibates,--a creature
+once caressed roughly for a few moments by her harsh husband, and then
+abandoned, and whose love instincts have concentrated themselves upon
+the fruits of his early fugitive affection. She sees again her beloved
+sons who are to spend but one night at home,--for at break of day the
+father leads them forth to battle, where perhaps at the first shock some
+Tartar may cut off their heads and hang them by the hair at his
+saddle-girths. She watches them while they sleep, kept awake herself by
+hope and fear.
+
+     "'Perhaps,' she says to herself, 'when Boulba awakes he will
+     put off his departure one or two days; perhaps he was drunk,
+     and did not think how soon he was taking them away from
+     me.'"
+
+But at dawn her maternal hopes vanish; the old Cossack makes ready to
+set off.
+
+     "When the mother saw her sons leap to horse, she rushed
+     toward the younger, whose face showed some trace of
+     tenderness; she grasped the stirrup and the saddle-girth,
+     and would not let go, and her eyes were wide with agony and
+     despair. Two strong Cossacks seized her with firm but
+     respectful hands, and bore her away to the house. But
+     scarcely had they released her upon the threshold, when she
+     sprang out again quicker than a mountain-goat, which was the
+     more remarkable in a woman of her age; with superhuman
+     effort she held back the horse, gave her son a wild,
+     convulsive embrace, and again was carried away. The young
+     Cossacks rode off in silence, choking their tears for fear
+     of their father; and the father, too, had a queer feeling
+     about his heart, though he took care that it should not be
+     noticed."
+
+In another place I have translated his magnificent description of the
+steppe, and I should like to quote the admirable paragraphs on
+starvation, on the killing of Ostap Boulba, and the death of Taras. As
+an example of the extreme simplicity with which Gogol manages his most
+dramatic passages and yet obtains an intense and powerful effect, I will
+give the scene in which Taras takes the life of his son by his own
+hand,--a scene which Prosper Mérimée imitated in his celebrated sketch
+of "Mateo Falcone."
+
+Andry comes out of the city, which was attacked by the Cossacks.
+
+     "At the head of the squadron galloped a horseman, handsomer
+     and haughtier than the others. His black hair floated from
+     beneath his bronze helmet; around his arm was bound a
+     beautifully embroidered scarf. Taras was stupefied on
+     recognizing in him his son Andry. But the latter, inflamed
+     with the ardor of combat, eager to merit the prize which
+     adorned his arm, threw himself forward like a young hound,
+     the handsomest, the fleetest, the strongest of the pack....
+     Old Taras stood a moment, watching Andry as he cut his way
+     by blows to the right and the left, laying the Cossacks
+     about him. At last his patience was exhausted.
+
+      "'Do you strike at your own people, you devil's whelp?' he
+      cried.
+
+      "Andry, galloping hard away, suddenly felt a strong hand
+      pulling at his bridle-rein. He turned his head and saw
+      Taras before him. He grew pale, like a child caught idling
+      by his master. His ardor cooled as though it had never
+      blazed; he saw only his terrible father, motionless and
+      calm before him.
+
+      "'What are you doing?' exclaimed Taras, looking at the
+      young man sharply. Andry could not reply, and his eyes
+      remained fixed upon the ground.
+
+      "'How now, my son? Have your Polish friends been of much
+      use to you?' Andry was dumb as before.
+
+      "'You commit felony, you barter your religion, you sell
+      your own people.... But wait, wait.... Get down.' Like an
+      obedient child Andry alighted from his horse, and, more
+      dead than alive, stood before his father.
+
+      "'Stand still. Do not move. I gave you life, I will take
+      your life away,' said Taras then; and going back a step he
+      took the musket from his shoulder. Andry was white as wax.
+      He seemed to move his lips and to murmur a name. But it
+      was not his country's name, nor his mother's, nor his
+      brother's; it was the name of the beautiful Polish maiden.
+      Taras fired. As the wheat-stalk bends after the stroke of
+      the sickle, Andry bent his head and fell upon the grass
+      without uttering a word. The man who had slain his son
+      stood a long time contemplating the body, beautiful even in
+      death. The young face, so lately glowing with strength and
+      winsome beauty, was still wonderfully comely, and his
+      eyebrows, black and velvety, shaded his pale features.
+
+      "'What was lacking to make him a true Cossack?' said
+      Boulba. 'He was tall, his eyebrows were black, he had a
+      brave mien, and his fists were strong and ready to fight.
+      And he has perished, perished without glory, like a
+      cowardly dog.'"
+
+In the opinion of Guizot there is perhaps no true epic poem in the
+modern age besides "Taras Boulba," in spite of some defects in it and
+the temptation to compare it with Homer to its disadvantage. But Gogol's
+glory is not derived solely from his epopee of the Cossacks. His
+especial merit, or at least his greatest service to the literature of
+his country, lies in his having been what neither Lermontof nor Puchkine
+could be; namely, the centre at which romanticism and realism join
+hands, the medium of a smooth and easy transition from lyric poetry,
+more or less imported from abroad, and the national novel; the founder
+of the _natural school_, which was the advance sentinel of modern art.
+
+This tendency is first exhibited in a little sketch inserted in the same
+volume with Taras Boulba, and entitled "The Small Proprietors of Former
+Times," also translated as "Old-fashioned Farmers," or "Old-time
+Proprietors,"--a story of the commonplace, full of keen observations and
+wrought out in the methods of the great contemporary novelists. About
+the year 1835, at the height of the romantic period, Gogol gave up his
+official employment forever, exclaiming, "I am going to be a free
+Cossack again; I will belong to nobody but myself." He then published a
+little volume of _Arabesques_,--a collection of disconnected articles,
+criticisms, and sketches, chiefly interesting because by him. His short
+stories of this period are the stirrings of his awakening realism; and
+among them the one most worthy of notice is "The Cloak," which is filled
+with a strain of sympathy and pity for the poor, the ignorant, the
+plain, and the dull people,--social zeros, so different from the proud
+and aristocratic ideal of romanticism, and who owe their title of
+citizenship in Russian literature to Gogol. The hero of the story is an
+awkward, half-imbecile little office-clerk, who knows nothing but how to
+copy, copy, copy; a martyr to bitter cold and poverty, and whose dearest
+dream is to possess a new cloak, for which he saves and hoards sordidly
+and untiringly. The very day on which he at last fulfils his desire,
+some thieves make off with his precious cloak. The police, to whom he
+carries his complaint, laugh in his face, and the poor fellow falls a
+victim to the deepest melancholy, and dies of a broken heart shortly
+after.
+
+     "And," says Gogol, "St. Petersburg went on its way without
+     Acacio, son of Acacio, just exactly as though it had never
+     dreamed of his existence. This creature that nobody cared
+     for, nobody loved, nobody took any interest in,--not even
+     the naturalist who sticks a pin through a common fly and
+     studies it attentively under a microscope,--this poor
+     creature disappeared, vanished, went to the other world
+     without anything in particular ever having happened to him
+     in this.... But at least once before he died he had welcomed
+     that bright guest, Fortune, whom we all hope to see; to his
+     eyes she appeared under the form of a cloak. And then
+     misfortune fell upon him as suddenly and as darkly as it
+     ever falls upon the great ones of the earth."
+
+"The Cloak" and his celebrated comedy, "The Inspector," also translated
+as "The Revizor," are the result of his official experiences. Men who
+have been a good deal tossed about, who have drunk of life's cup of
+bitterness, who have been bruised by its sharp corners and torn by its
+thorns, if they have an analytical mind and a magnanimous heart, human
+kindness and a spark of genius, become the great satirists, great
+humorists, and great moralists. "The Inspector" is a picture of Russian
+public customs painted by a master hand; it is a laugh, a fling of
+derision, at the baseness of a society and a political regimen under
+which bureaucracy and official formalism can descend to incredible vice
+and corruption. It seems at first a mere farce, such as is common enough
+on the Russian or any stage; but the covert strength of the satire is so
+far-reaching that the "Inspector" is a symbolical and cruel work. The
+curtain rises at the moment when the officials of a small provincial
+capital are anxiously awaiting the Inspector, who is about to make them
+a visit incognito. A traveller comes to the only hotel or inn of the
+town, and all believe him to be the dreaded governmental attorney. It
+turns out that the traveller who has given them such a fright is neither
+more nor less than an insignificant employee from St. Petersburg, a
+madcap fellow, who, having run short of money, is obliged to cut his
+vacation journey short. When he is apprised of a visit from the
+governor, he thinks he is about to be arrested. What is his astonishment
+when he finds that, instead of being put in prison, a purse of five
+hundred rubles is slipped into his hand, and he is conducted with great
+ceremony to visit hospitals and schools. As soon as he smells the _quid
+pro quo_ he adapts himself to the part, dissimulates, and plays the
+protector, puts on a majestic and severe demeanor, and after having
+fooled the whole town and received all sorts of obsequious attentions,
+he slips out with a full purse. A few minutes afterward the real
+Inspector appears and the curtain falls.
+
+Gogol frankly confesses that in this comedy he has tried to put together
+and crystallize all the evil that he saw in the administrative affairs
+of Russia. The general impression it gave was that of a satire, as he
+desired; the nation looked at itself in the glass, and was ashamed. "In
+the midst of my own laughter, which was louder than ever," says Gogol,
+"the spectator perceived a note of sorrow and anger, and I myself
+noticed that my laugh was not the same as before, and that it was no
+longer possible to be as I used to be in my works; the need to amuse
+myself with innocent fictions was gone with my youth." This is the
+sincere confession of the humorist whose laughter is full of tears and
+bitterness.
+
+This rough satire on the government of the autocrat Nicholas, this
+terrible flagellation of wickedness in high places raised to a venerated
+national institution, was represented before the court and applauded by
+it, and the satirical author of it was subjected to no censor but the
+emperor himself, who read the play in manuscript, burst into roars of
+laughter over it, and ordered his players to give it without delay; and
+on the first night Nicholas appeared in his box, and his imperial hands
+gave the signal for applause. The courtiers could not do otherwise than
+swallow the pill, but it left a bad taste and a bitter sediment in their
+hearts, which they treasured up against Gogol for the day of revenge.
+
+On this occasion the terrible autocrat acted with the same exquisite
+delicacy and truly royal munificence which he had shown toward Puchkine.
+On allowing Gogol a pension of five thousand rubles, he said to the
+person who presented the petition, "Do not let your protégé know that
+this gift is from me; he would feel obliged to write from a government
+standpoint, and I do not wish him to do that." Several times afterward
+the Emperor secretly sent him such gifts under cover of his friend
+Joukowsky the poet, by which means he was able to defray his journeys to
+Europe.
+
+Without apparent cause Gogol's character became soured about the year
+1836; he became a prey to hypochondria, probably, as may be deduced
+from a passage in one of his letters, on account of the atmosphere of
+hostility which had hung over him since the publication of "The
+Inspector." "Everybody is against me," he says, "officials, police,
+merchants, literary men; they are all gnashing and snapping at my
+comedy! Nowadays I hate it! Nobody knows what I suffer. I am worn out in
+body and soul." He determined to leave the country, and he afterward
+returned to it only occasionally, until he went back at last to languish
+and die there. Like Turguenief, and not without some, truth, he declared
+that he could see his country, the object of his study, better from a
+distance; it is the law of the painter, who steps away from his picture
+to a certain distance in order to study it better. He went from one
+place to another in Europe, and in Rome he formed a close friendship
+with the Russian painter Ivanof, who had retired to a Capuchin convent,
+where he spent twenty years on one picture, "The Apparition of Christ,"
+and left it at last unfinished. Some profess to believe that Gogol was
+converted to Catholicism, and with his friend devoted himself to a life
+of asceticism and contemplation of the hereafter, toward which vexed and
+melancholy souls often feel themselves irresistibly drawn.
+
+Gogol felt a strong desire to deal with the truth, with realities; he
+longed to write a book that would tell _the whole truth_, which should
+show Russia as she was, and which should not be hampered by influences
+that forced him to temporize, attenuate, and weigh his words,--a book
+in which he might give free vent to his satirical vein, and put his
+faculties of observation to consummate use. This book, which was to be a
+_résumé_ of life, a _chef d'oeuvre_, a lasting monument (the
+aspiration of every ambitious soul that cannot bear to die and be
+forgotten), at last became a fixed idea in Gogol's mind; it took
+complete possession of him, gave him no repose, absorbed his whole life,
+demanded every effort of his brain, and finally remained unfinished. And
+yet what he accomplished constitutes the most profoundly human book that
+has ever been written in Russia; it contains the whole programme of the
+school initiated by Gogol, and compels us to count the author of it
+among the descendants of Cervantes. "Don Quixote" was in fact the model
+for "Dead Souls," which put an end to romanticism, as "Quixote" did to
+books of chivalry. That none may say that this supposition is dictated
+by my national pride, I am going to quote literally two paragraphs, one
+by Gogol himself, the other by Melchior de Voguié, the intelligent
+French critic whose work on the Russian novel has been so useful to me
+in these studies.
+
+     "Puchkine," says Gogol, "has been urging me for some time to
+     undertake a long and serious work. One day he talked to me
+     of my feeble health, of the frequent attacks which may cause
+     my premature death; he mentioned as an example Cervantes,
+     the author of some short stories of excellent quality, but
+     who would never have held the place he is awarded among the
+     writers of first rank, had he not undertaken his 'Don
+     Quixote.' And at last he suggested to me a subject of his
+     own invention on which he had thought of making a poem, and
+     said he would tell it to nobody but me. The subject was 'The
+     Dead Souls.' Puchkine also suggested to me the idea of 'The
+     Inspector.'"
+
+      "In spite of this frank testimony," adds Voguié, "equally
+      honorable to both friends, I must continue to believe that
+      the true progenitor of 'Dead Souls' was Cervantes himself.
+      On leaving Russia Gogol turned toward Spain, and studied at
+      close quarters the literature of this country, especially
+      'Don Quixote,' which was always his favorite book. The
+      Spanish humorist held up to him a subject marvellously
+      suited to his plans, the adventures of a hero with a mania
+      which leads him into all regions of society, and who serves
+      as the pretext to show to the spectator a series of
+      pictures, a sort of human magic-lantern. The near
+      relationship of these two works is indicated at all
+      points,--the cogitative, sardonic spirit, the sadness
+      underlying the laughter, and the impossibility of
+      classifying either under any definite literary head. Gogol
+      protested against the application of the word 'novel' to
+      his book, and himself called it a poem, dividing it, not
+      into chapters but into cantos. Poem it cannot be called in
+      any rigorous sense of the term; but classify 'Don Quixote,'
+      and Gogol's masterpiece will fall into the same category."
+
+I read "Dead Souls" before reading Voguié's criticism, and my impression
+coincided exactly with his. I said to myself, "This book is the nearest
+like 'Don Quixote' of any that I have ever read." There are important
+differences--how could it be otherwise?--and even discounting the loss
+to Gogol by means of translation, a marked inferiority of the Russian
+to Cervantes; but they are writers of the same species, and even at the
+distance of two centuries they bear a likeness to each other. And the
+intention to take "Don Quixote" as a model is evident, even though Gogol
+had never set foot in Spain, as some of his compatriots affirm.
+
+"Dead Souls" may be divided into three parts: the first, which was
+completed and published in 1842; the second, which was incomplete and
+rudimentary, and cast into the flames by the author in a fit of
+desperation, but published after his death from notes that had escaped
+this holocaust; and the third, which never took shape outside the
+author's mind.
+
+Even the contrast between the heroes of Cervantes and Gogol--the
+Ingenious Knight Avenger of Wrongs, and the clever rascal who goes from
+place to place trying to carry out his extravagant schemes--illustrates
+still more clearly the Cervantesque affiliation of the book. Undoubtedly
+Gogol purposely chose a contrast, because he wished to embody in the
+story the wrath he felt at the social state of Russia, more lamentable
+and hateful even than that of Spain in Cervantes' time. No more profound
+diatribe than "Dead Souls" has ever been written in Russia, though it is
+a country where satire has flourished abundantly. Sometimes there is a
+ray of sunshine, and the poet's tense brows relax with a hearty laugh.
+In the first chapter is a description of the Russian inns, drawn with no
+less graceful wit than that of the inns of La Mancha. It is not
+difficult to go on with the parallel.
+
+In "Dead Souls," as in "Don Quixote," the hero's servants are important
+personages, and so are their horses, which have become typical under the
+names of Rocinante and Rucio; the dialogues between the coachman Selifan
+and his horses remind one of some of the passages between Sancho and his
+donkey. As in "Don Quixote," the infinite variety of persons and
+episodes, the physiognomy of the places, the animated succession of
+incidents, offer a panorama of life. As in "Don Quixote," woman occupies
+a place in the background; no important love-affair appears in the whole
+book. Gogol, like Cervantes, shows less dexterity in depicting feminine
+than masculine types, except in the case of the grotesque, where he also
+resembles the creator of Maritornes and Teresa Panza. As in "Don
+Quixote," the best part of the book is the beginning; the inspiration
+slackens toward the middle, for the reason, probably, that in both the
+poetic instinct supersedes the prudent forecasting of the idea, and
+there is in both something of the sublime inconsistency common to
+geniuses and to the popular muse. And in "Don Quixote," as in "Dead
+Souls," above the realism of the subject and the vulgarity of many
+passages there is a sort of ebullient, fantastic life, something
+supersensual, which carries us along under full sail into the bright
+world of imagination; something which enlivens the fancy, takes hold
+upon the mind, and charms the soul; something which makes us better,
+more humane, more spiritual in effect.
+
+The subject of "Dead Souls"--so strange as never to be forgotten--gives
+Gogol a wide range for his pungent satire. Tchitchikof--there's a name,
+indeed!--an ex-official, having been caught in some nefarious affair,
+and ruined and dishonored by the discovery, conceives a bright idea as
+to regaining his fortune. He knows that the serfs, called in Russia by
+the generic name of _souls_, can be pawned, mortgaged, and sold; and
+that on the other hand the tax-collector obliges the owners to pay a
+_per capita_ tax for each soul. He remembers also that the census is
+taken on the Friday before Easter, and in the mean time the lists are
+not revised, seeing that natural processes compensate for losses by
+death. But in case of epidemic the owner loses more, yet continues to
+pay for hands that no longer toil for him; so it occurs to Tchitchikof
+to travel over the country buying at a discount a number of _dead souls_
+whose owners will gladly get rid of them, the buyer having only to
+promise to pay the taxes thereon; then, having provided these dead souls
+(though to all legal intents still living) with this extraordinary
+nominal value, he will register them as purchased, take the deed of sale
+to a bank in St. Petersburg, mortgage them for a good round sum, and
+with the money thus obtained, buy real live serfs of flesh and blood,
+and by this clever trick make a fortune. No sooner said than done. The
+hero gives orders to harness his _britchka_, takes with him his coachman
+and his lackey,--two delicious characters!--and goes all over Russia,
+ingratiating himself everywhere, finding out all about the people and
+the estates, meeting with all sorts of proprietors and functionaries,
+and falling into many adventures which, if not quite as glorious as
+those of the Knight of La Mancha, are scarcely less entertaining to read
+about. And where is such another diatribe on serfdom as this lugubrious
+burlesque furnishes, or any spectacle so painfully ironical as that of
+these wretched corpses, who are neither free nor yet within the narrow
+liberty of the tomb,--these poor bones ridiculed and trafficked for even
+in the precincts of death?
+
+This remarkable book, which contains a most powerful argument against
+the inveterate abuses of slavery, unites to its value as a social and
+humanitarian benefactor that of being the corner-stone of Russian
+realism,--the realism which, though already perceptible in the prose
+writings of the romantic poets, appears in Gogol, not as a confused
+precursory intuition, nor as an instinctive impulsion of a national
+tendency, but as a rational literary plan, well based and firmly
+established. A few quotations from "Dead Souls," and some passages also
+from Gogol's Letters, will be enough to prove this.
+
+     "Happy is the writer,"[1] he says sarcastically, "who
+     refrains from depicting insipid, disagreeable, unsympathetic
+     characters without any charms whatever, and makes a study of
+     those more distinguished, refined, and exquisite; the writer
+     who has a fine tact in selecting from the vast and muddy
+     stream of humanity, and devoting his attention to a few
+     honorable exceptions to the average human nature; who never
+     once lowers the clear, high tone of his lyre; who never puts
+     his melodies to the ignoble use of singing about folk of no
+     importance and low quality; and who, in fact, taking care
+     never to descend to the too commonplace realities of life,
+     soars upward bright and free toward the ethereal regions of
+     his poetic ideal!... He soothes and flatters the vanity of
+     men, casting a veil over whatever is base, sombre, and
+     humiliating in human nature. All the world applauds and
+     rejoices as he passes by in his triumphal chariot, and the
+     multitude proclaims him a great poet, a creative genius, a
+     transcendent soul. At the sound of his name young hearts
+     beat wildly, and sweet tears of admiration shine in gentle
+     eyes.... Oh, how different is the lot of the unfortunate
+     writer who dares to present in his works a faithful picture
+     of social realities, exactly as they appear to the naked
+     eye! Who bade him pay attention to the muddy whirlpool of
+     small miseries and humiliations, in which life is perforce
+     swallowed up, or take notice of the crowd of vulgar,
+     indifferent, bungling, corrupt characters, that swarm like
+     ants under our feet? If he commit a sin so reprehensible,
+     let him not hope for the applause of his country; let him
+     not expect to be greeted by maidens of sixteen, with heaving
+     bosom and bright, enthusiastic eyes.... Nor will he be able
+     to escape the judgment of his contemporaries, a tribunal
+     without delicacy or conscience, which pronounces the works
+     it devours in secret to be disgusting and low, and with
+     feigned repugnance enumerates them among the writings which
+     are hurtful to humanity; a tribunal which cynically imputes
+     to the author the qualities and conditions of the hero whom
+     he describes, allowing him neither heart nor soul, and
+     belittling the sacred flame of talent which is his whole
+     life.
+
+      "Contemporary judgment is not yet able or willing to
+      acknowledge that the lens which discloses the habits and
+      movements of the smallest insect is worthy the same
+      estimation as that which reaches to the farthest limits of
+      the firmament. It seems to ignore the fact that it needs a
+      great soul indeed to portray sincerely and accurately the
+      life that is stigmatized by public opinion, to convert clay
+      into precious pearls through the medium of art.
+      Contemporary judgment finds it hard to realize that frank,
+      good-natured laughter may be as full of merit and dignity
+      as a fine outburst of lyric passion. Contemporary judgment
+      pretends ignorance, and bestows only censure and
+      depreciation upon the sincere author,--knows him not,
+      disdains him; and so he is left wretched, abandoned,
+      without sympathy, like the lonely traveller who has no
+      companion but his own indomitable heart.
+
+      "I understand you, dear readers; I know very well what you
+      are thinking in your hearts; you curse the means that shows
+      you palpable, naked human misery, and you murmur within
+      yourselves, 'What is the use of such an exhibition? As
+      though we did not already know enough of the absurd and
+      base actions that the world is always full of! These things
+      are annoying, and one sees enough of them without having
+      them set before us in literature. No, no; show us the
+      beautiful, the charming; that which shall lift us above the
+      levels of reality, elevate us, fill us with enthusiasm.'
+      And this is not all. The author exposes himself to the
+      anger of a class of would-be patriots, who, at the least
+      indication of injury to the country's decorum, at the first
+      appearance of a book that dwells on some bitter truths,
+      raise a dreadful outcry. 'Is it well that such things
+      should be brought to light?' they say; 'this description
+      may apply to a good many people we know; it might be you,
+      or I, or our friend there. And what will foreigners say? It
+      is too bad to allow them to form so poor an opinion of us.'
+      Hypocrites! The motive of their accusations is not
+      patriotism, that noble and beautiful sentiment; it is mean,
+      low calculation, wearing the mask of patriotism. Let us
+      tear off the mask and tread it under foot. Let us call
+      things by their names; it is a sacred duty, and the author
+      is under obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth."
+
+These passages just quoted are sufficiently explicit; but the following,
+taken from one of Gogol's letters concerning "Dead Souls," is still more
+so.
+
+     "Those who have analyzed my talents as a writer have not
+     been able to discover my chief quality. Only Puchkine
+     noticed it, and he used to say that no author had, so much
+     as I, the gift of showing the reality of the trivialities of
+     life, of describing the petty ways of an insignificant
+     creature, of bringing out and revealing to my readers
+     infinitesimal details which would otherwise pass unnoticed.
+     In fact, there is where my talent lies. The reader revolts
+     against the meanness and baseness of my heroes; when he
+     shuts the book he feels as though he had come up from a
+     stifling cellar into the light of day. They would have
+     forgiven me if I had described some picturesque theatrical
+     knave, but they cannot forgive my vulgarity. The Russians
+     are shocked to see their own insignificance."
+
+      "My friend," he writes again, "if you wish to do me the
+      greatest favor that I can expect from a Christian, make a
+      note of every small daily act and fact that you may come
+      across anywhere. What trouble would it be to you to write
+      down every night in a sort of diary such notes as
+      these,--To-day I heard such an opinion expressed, I spoke
+      with such a person, of such a disposition, such a
+      character, of good education or not; he holds his hands
+      thus, or takes his snuff so,--in fact, everything that you
+      see and notice from the greatest to the least?"
+
+What more could the most modern novelist say,--the sort that carries a
+memorandum-book under his arm and makes sketches, after the fashion of
+the painters?
+
+Thus we see that a man gifted with epic genius became in 1843, before
+Zola was dreamt of, and when Edmond de Goncourt was scarcely twenty, the
+founder of realism, the first prophet of the doctrine not inexactly
+called by some the doctrine of literary microbes, the poet of social
+atoms whose evolution at length overturns empires, changes the face of
+society, and weaves the subtle and elaborate woof of history. I will not
+go so far as to affirm with some of the critics that this light
+proceeded from the Orient, and that French realism is an outcome of
+distant Russian influence; for certainly Balzac had a large influence in
+his turn upon his Muscovite admirers. But it is undeniable that Gogol
+did anticipate and feel the road which literature, and indeed all forms
+of art, were bound to follow in the latter half of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+Certain critics see, in this doctrine of literary microbes preached by
+Gogol in word and deed, nothing less than an immense evolution,
+characteristic of and appropriate to our age. It is the advent of
+literary democracy, which was perhaps foreseen by the subtle genius of
+those early novelists who described the beggar, the lame, halt, and
+blind, thieves and robbers, and creatures of the lowest strata of
+society; with the difference that to-day, united to this spirit of
+æsthetic demagogy, there is a shade of Christian charity, compassion,
+and sympathy for wretchedness and misery which sometimes degenerates, in
+less virile minds than Gogol's, into an affected sentimentality. George
+Eliot, that great author and great advocate of Gogol's own theories, and
+the patroness of realism of humblest degree, speaks in words very like
+those used by the author of "Taras," of the strength of soul which a
+writer needs to interest himself in the vulgar commonplaces of life, in
+daily realities, and in the people around us who seem to have nothing
+picturesque or extraordinary about them. If there be any who could carry
+out this rehabilitation of the miserable with charity and tenderness, it
+would be the Saxon and the Sclav rather than the refined and haughty
+Latin, and in both these the seed scattered by Gogol has brought forth
+fruit abundantly. Modern Russian literature is filled with pity and
+sincere love toward the poorer classes; one might almost term it
+evangelical unction; at the voice of the poet (I cannot refuse this
+title to the author of "Taras") Russia's heart softened, her tears fell,
+and her compassion, like a caressing wave, swept over the toiling
+_mujik_, the ill-clad government clerk, the ragged, ignorant beggar, the
+political convict in the grasp of the police, and even the criminal, the
+vulgar assassin with shaven head, mangled shoulders, blood-stained
+hands, and manacled wrists. And more; their pity extends even to the
+dumb beasts, and the death of a horse mentioned by one great Russian
+novelist is more touching than that of any emperor.
+
+Gogol is the real ancestor of the Russian novel; he contained the germs
+of all the tendencies developed in the generation that came after him;
+in him even Turguenief the poet and artist, Tolstoï the philosopher, and
+Dostoiëwsky the visionary, found inspiration. There are writers who seem
+possessed of the exalted privilege of uniting and accumulating all the
+characteristics of their race and country; their brain is like a cave
+filled with wonderful stalactites formed by the deposits of ages and
+events. Gogol is one of these. The peculiarities of the Russian soul,
+the melancholy dreaminess, the satire, the suppressed and resigned
+soul-forces, are all seen in him for the first time.
+
+To quote from "Dead Souls" would be little satisfaction. One must read
+it to understand the deep impression it made in Russia. After looking it
+through, Puchkine exclaimed, "How low is our country fallen!" and the
+people, much against their will, finally acknowledged the same
+conviction. After a hard fight with the censors, the work of art came
+off at last victorious; it captured all classes of minds, and became,
+like "Don Quixote," the talk of every drawing-room, the joke of every
+meeting-place, and a proverb everywhere. The serfs were now virtually
+set free by force of the opinion created, and the whole nation saw and
+knew itself in this æsthetic revelation.
+
+But the man who dares to make such a revelation must pay for his
+temerity with his life. Gogol returned from Rome intent upon the
+completion of the fatal book; but his nerves, which were almost worn
+out, failed him utterly at times, his soul overflowed with bitterness
+and gall, and at last in a fit of rage and desperation he burned the
+manuscript of the Second Part, together with his whole library. His
+darkened mind was haunted by the question in Hamlet's monologue, the
+problem concerning "that bourn from which no traveller returns;" his
+meditations took a deeply religious hue, and his last work, "Letters to
+my Friends," is a collection of edifying epistles, urging the necessity
+of the consideration of the hereafter. To these exhortations he added
+one on Sclavophile nationalism, exaggerated by a fanatical devotion; and
+in the same breath he heralds the spirit of the Gospels and
+anathematizes the theories imported from the Occident, and declares that
+he has given up writing for the sake of dedicating his time to
+self-introspection and the service of his neighbor, and that henceforth
+he recognizes nothing but his country and his God. The public was
+exasperated; it was Gogol's fate to rouse the tiger. Who ever heard of a
+satirist turning Church father? It began to be whispered that Gogol had
+become a devotee of mysticism; and it is quite true that on his return
+from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem he lived miserably, giving all he had to
+the poor. He was hypochondriac and misanthropic, excepting when with
+children, whose innocent ways brought back traces of his former
+good-nature. His death is laid to two different causes. The general
+story is that during the Revolution of 1848 he lost what little
+intelligence remained to him, under the conviction that there was no
+remedy for his country's woes; and at last, weighed down by an incurable
+melancholy and despair, and terrified by visions of universal
+destruction and other tremendous catastrophes, he fell on his knees and
+fasted for a whole day before the holy pictures that hung at the head of
+his bed, and was found there dead. Recent writers modify this statement,
+and claim to know on good authority that Gogol died of a typhoid fever,
+which, with his chronic infirmities, was a fatal complication. Whatever
+may have been the illness which took him out of the world, it is certain
+that the part of Gogol most diseased was his soul, and his sickness was
+a too intense love of country, which could not see with indifferent
+optimism the ills of the present or the menace of the future. Gogol had
+no heart-burdens except the suffering he endured for the masses; he was
+unmarried, and was never known to have any passion but a love of country
+exaggerated to a dementia.
+
+It is a strange thing that Gogol--the sincere reactionist, the admirer
+of absolutism and of autocracy, the Pan-Sclavophile, the habitual enemy
+of Western paganism and liberal theories--should have been the one to
+throw Russian letters into their present mad whirl, into the path of
+nihilism and into the currents of revolution,--a course which he seems
+to have described once in allegory, in one of the most admirable pages
+of "Dead Souls," where he compares Russia to a _troïka_. I will quote
+it, and so take my farewell of this Russian Cervantes:--
+
+     "Rapidity of motion [in travel] is like an unknown force, a
+     hidden power which seizes us and carries us on its wings; we
+     skim through the air, we fly, and everything else flies too;
+     the verst-stones fly; the tradesmen's carts fly past on one
+     side and the other; forests with dark patches of pines rush
+     by, and the noise of destroying axes and the cawing of
+     hungry crows; the road flies by and is lost in the distance
+     where we can distinguish neither object nor form nor color,
+     unless it be a bit of the sky or the moon continually
+     crossed by patches of flying cloud. O troïka, troïka,
+     bird-troïka! There is no need to ask who invented thee! Thou
+     couldst not have been conceived save in the breast of a
+     quick, active people, in the midst of a gigantic territory
+     that covers half the globe, and where nobody dares count the
+     verst-stones on the roads for fear of vertigo! Thou art not
+     graceful in thy form, O telega, rustic britchka, kibitka,
+     thou carriage for all roads in winter or summer! No, thou
+     art not an object of art made to please the eye; dry wood, a
+     hatchet, a chisel, a clever arm,--with these thou art set
+     up; there is not a peasant in Yaroslaf that knows not how to
+     construct thee. Now the troïka is harnessed. And where is
+     the man? What man? The driver? Aha! it is this same peasant!
+     Very well, let him put on his boots and get up on his seat.
+     Did you say his boots? This is no German postilion; he needs
+     no boots nor any foot-gear at all. All that he needs is
+     mittens for his hands and a beard on his chin! See him
+     balancing himself; hear him sing. Now he pulls away like a
+     whirlwind; the wheels seem a smooth circle from centre to
+     circumference, and the tires are invisible; the ground
+     rushes to meet the clattering hoofs; the foot-traveller
+     leaps to one side with a cry of fright, then stops and opens
+     his mouth in astonishment; but the vehicle has passed, and
+     on it flies, on it flies, and far away a little whirl of
+     dust rises, spreads out, divides, and disappears in gauzy
+     patches, falling gently upon the sides of the road. It is
+     all gone; nothing remains of it.
+
+      "Thou art like the troïka, O Russia, my beloved country!
+      Dost thou not feel thyself carried onward toward the
+      unknown like this impetuous bird which nobody can overtake?
+      The road is invisible under thy feet, the bridges echo and
+      groan, and thou leavest everything behind thee in the
+      distance. Men stop and gaze surprised at this celestial
+      portent. Is it the lightning? Is it the thunderbolt from
+      heaven itself? What causes this movement of universal
+      terror? What mysterious and incomprehensible force spurs on
+      thy steeds? They are Russian steeds, good steeds. Doth the
+      whirlwind sometimes nestle in their manes? The signal is
+      given: three bronze breasts expand; twelve ready feet start
+      with simultaneous impetus, their light hoofs scarce
+      striking the ground; three horses are changed before, our
+      very eyes into three parallel lines which fly like a streak
+      through the tremulous air. The troïka flies, sails, bright
+      as a spirit of God. O Russia, Russia! whither goest thou?
+      Answer! But there is no response; the bell clangs with a
+      supernatural tone; the air, beaten and lashed, whistles and
+      whirls, and rushes off in wide currents; the troïka cuts
+      them all on the wing, and nations, monarchies, and empires
+      stand aside and let her pass."
+
+
+[1] I could take this passage bodily from the translation of "Dead
+Souls" made by Isabella Hapgood directly from the Russian, but there are
+some discrepancies in which the Spanish writer seems to be in the right,
+as in the use of the word _writer_ for _reader_.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+Book IV.
+
+MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Turguenief, Poet and Artist.
+
+
+In reviewing the development of the School of Realists founded by
+Nicholas Gogol, I shall begin with the one among his followers and
+descendants who is not merely the first in chronological order, but the
+most intelligible and sympathetic of the Russian novelists, Ivan
+Turguenief.
+
+The name of Turguenief has long been well known in Russia. In 1854,
+before the novelist made his appearance, Humboldt said to a member of
+this family, "The name you bear commands the highest respect and esteem
+in this country." Alexander Turguenief was a savant, and the originator
+of a new style of historiography, in which he revealed traces of the
+communicative and cosmopolitan instincts that distinguish his nephew
+beyond other novelists of his country, for he--the uncle--courted
+acquaintance with many of the most eminent men of Europe, among them
+Walter Scott. Another member of the family, Nicholaï Turguenief, was a
+statesman who found himself obliged to reside in foreign lands on
+account of political vicissitudes; he had the honor of preceding his
+nephew Ivan in the advocacy of serf-emancipation.
+
+Ivan was the son of a country gentleman, and his real education began
+among the heathery hills and in the company of indefatigable hunters,
+whose stories, colored by the blaze of the camp-fire, were transcribed
+afterward by Ivan's wonderful pen. His intellect was awakened and formed
+in Berlin, where he ranged through the philosophies of Kant and Hegel,
+and, as he expresses it, threw himself head-first into the ocean of
+German thought and came out purified and regenerated for the rest of his
+life. Is it not wonderful,--the power of this German philosophy, which,
+though it seems but a chilly and lugubrious labyrinth, gives a new
+temper to a mind of fine and artistic quality, like the Toledo blade
+thrust into the cold bath, or Achilles after washing in the waters of
+the Styx? As scholasticism gave a strange power to the poetry of Dante,
+so German metaphysics seems to give wings to the imagination in our
+times. Those artist writers (like Zola, for example) who have not
+wandered through this dark forest seem to lack a certain tension in
+their mental vigor, a certain tone in their artistic spectrum!
+
+Russian youth, about the year 1838, had their Mecca in the Faculty of
+Philosophy at Berlin, of which Hegel held one chair; and there the
+future celebrities of Russia were wont to meet. On leaving that radiant
+atmosphere of ideas and returning to his country home in Russia,
+Turguenief was overcome by the inevitable melancholy which attacks the
+man who leaves civilization behind with its intellectual brightness and
+activity, and enters a land where, according to the words of the hero of
+"Virgin Soil," "everything sleeps but the wine-shop." This feeling of
+nostalgia the novelist has analyzed with a master hand in the pages of
+"The Nobles' Nest."[1]
+
+Hungry for wider horizons and for a literary life and atmosphere,
+Turguenief went to St. Petersburg. All the intellect of the time was
+grouped about Bielinsky, who was a rare critic, and its sentiments were
+voiced by a periodical called the "Contemporary." Bielinsky, who had
+adopted the pessimist theory that Russian art could never exist until
+there was political emancipation, was obliged to acknowledge the
+indisputable worth of Turguenief's first efforts, and encouraged him to
+publish some excellent sketches in a collection entitled "Papers of a
+Sportsman." Contrary to Bielinsky's prediction, Turguenief's success was
+the greater because, with that exquisite artistic intuition which he
+alone of all Russian writers possesses, he preached no moral and taught
+no lesson in it, which was the fashion or rather the pest of the novel
+in those days.
+
+Turguenief again went abroad soon after and spent some time in Paris,
+where he finished the "Diary" and wrote "The Nobles' Nest." On his
+return to Russia he wrote a clever criticism on the "Dead Souls," of
+Gogol, whom he ventured to call a great man; and this called down upon
+his head the ire of the police and banishment to his estates, which
+punishment was not reprieved until the death of Nicholas and the war of
+the Crimea changed the aspect of everything in Russia.
+
+Notwithstanding the unjustifiable severity with which he was treated on
+this occasion, Turguenief cherished no grievance or thought of revenge
+in his heart. It is one of the most beautiful and attractive traits in
+the amiable character of this man, that he could always preserve his
+serenity of soul in the midst of the distractions occasioned him by two
+equally violent parties each equally determined to embitter his life if
+he did not consent to embrace it. He stood in the gulf that separates
+the two halves of Russia, yet he maintained that contemplative and
+thoughtful attitude which Victor Hugo ascribes to all true thinkers and
+poets. Urged by family traditions and by the natural equilibrium of his
+mind to give the preference (in comparing Russia with the rest of
+Europe) to Western civilization, he protested, with the courage born of
+conviction, against the blind vanity of the so-called National Party of
+Moscow, which, while it demanded the liberation of the serfs, was
+determined to create a new national condition which should be wholly
+Sclavonic, and would tread under foot every vestige of foreign culture.
+With equal vigor, but with a fine tact and nothing of effeminacy or
+æsthetic repugnance, he protested also against the vandalism of the
+nihilists, whose propositions were set forth in a clever caricature in a
+satirical paper shortly after the explosion in the Winter Palace at St.
+Petersburg. It represented the meeting of two nihilists amid a heap of
+ruins. One asks, "Is everything gone up?" "No," replies the other, "the
+planet still exists." "Blow it to pieces, then!" exclaims the first. Yet
+Turguenief, who was by no means what we should call a conservative,
+seeing that he lent his aid to the emancipation of the serfs, was far
+from approving the new revolutionary barbarism.
+
+Those of Turguenief's works which are best known and most discussed are
+consequently those which attack the ignominy of serfdom or the threats
+of revolutionary terror. In the first category may be mentioned "The
+Diary of a Hunter" and most of his exquisite short stories; in the
+second, "Fathers and Sons," a view of speculative nihilism, "Virgin
+Soil," the active side of the same, and "Smoke," a harsh satire on the
+exclusiveness and fanaticism of the Nationals, which cost him his
+popularity and made him innumerable enemies. I will speak more at length
+of each of these, and it is in no sense a digression from Turguenief's
+biography to do so; for the life of this amiable dreamer and delicate
+poet is to be found in his books, and in the trials which he endured on
+their account.
+
+The first lengthy novel of Turguenief is "Demetrius Rudine," a type
+which might have served as the model for Alphonse Daudet's "Numa
+Roumestan," a study of one of those complex characters, endowed with
+great aspirations and apparently rich faculties, but who lack force of
+will, and have no definite aim or career in view. "The Nobles' Nest" is
+to the rest of Turguenief's works what the hour of supreme and tenderest
+emotion that even the hardest hearts must bow to some time is to human
+life as a whole; in none of his works, save perhaps in "Living Relics,"
+has Turguenief shown more depth of sentiment. The latter is a tear of
+compassion crystallized and set in gold; the former is a tragedy of
+happiness held before the eyes and then lost sight of, like the blue sky
+seen through a rent in the clouds and then covered over with a leaden
+and interminable veil. The hero is a Russian gentleman or small
+proprietary nobleman, named Lawretsky, who, deceived and betrayed by his
+wife, returns to his patrimonial estates, there to hide his dejection
+and loneliness. Amid these scenes of honest, simple provincial life he
+meets with a cousin who is young, beautiful, and open-hearted, and who
+captures his heart. There is a rumor that his wife has died, and a hope
+of future happiness begins to revive in him; but the aforesaid deceased
+lady resuscitates, and makes her appearance, demanding with hypocritical
+humility her place beneath the conjugal roof, and the other poor girl
+retires to a convent. It is almost a sacrilege to extract the bare plot
+of the story in this way, for it is thus made to seem a mere vulgar
+complication, feeble and colorless. But the charm lies in the manner of
+presenting this simple drama; the novelist seems to hold a glass before
+our eyes through which we see the palpitations of these bruised and
+suffering hearts. The background is worthy of the figures on it. The
+description of provincial customs, the country, and the last chapter
+especially, are the perfection of art in the way of novel-writing. It is
+said that "The Nobles' Nest" produced in Russia an effect comparable
+only to that of "Paul and Virginia" in France.
+
+Then came the great change in Russia: serfdom was no more! and
+Turguenief, leaving these touching love-stories, threw himself into the
+new turmoil, and gave himself up to the study of the struggle between
+the new state of society and the old, which resulted in the novel,
+"Fathers and Sons." This book contains the pictures of two generations,
+and each one, says Mérimée, shrewdly, found the portrait of the other
+well drawn, but called Heaven to witness that that of himself was a
+caricature; and the cry of the fathers was exceeded by that of the sons,
+personified in the character of the positivist, Bazarof.
+
+Two old country gentlefolk, a physician and his wife, represent the
+elder generation, the society of yesterday, and two students the society
+and generation of to-day. Bazarof is the leader, the ruling spirit of
+the two latter; the novelist has given him so much vivacity that we seem
+to hear him, to see his long, withered face, his broad brows, his great
+greenish eyes, and the prominent bulges on his heavy skull. I have seen
+such types as this many a time in the streets and alleys of the Latin
+Quarter, which is the lurking-place of Russian refugees in Paris, and I
+have said to myself, "There goes a Bazarof, exiled and half dead with
+hunger, and yet perhaps more eager to set off a few pounds of dynamite
+under the Grand Opera-House than to breakfast!"
+
+Bazarof, however, is not yet the nihilist who wishes to make a political
+system out of robbery and assassination, and to defend his theory in
+learned treatises; he is a young fellow smarting and burning under the
+contemplation of his country's sad state, and whom the knowledge got by
+his studies in medicine, natural sciences, and German materialist dogmas
+has made the bitterest and most intolerable of mortals, throwing away
+his gifts of intellect and his heart's best and most generous impulses.
+By reason of his energy of character and intellectual force, he takes
+the lead over his companion Arcadio, an enthusiastic and unsophisticated
+boy; and the novel begins with the return of the latter to his father's
+country-house in company with his adored leader. The two generations
+then find themselves face to face, two atheistical and demagogic young
+students, and Arcadio's father and uncle, conservative and ceremonious
+old men; the shock is immediate and terrible. Bazarof, with his mania
+for dissecting frogs, his negligent dress, his harsh and dogmatic
+replies, his coarse frankness, and his odor of drugs and cheap tobacco,
+inspires antipathy from the first moment, and he is himself made more
+captious than usual by the appearance of the uncle, Paul, an elegant and
+distinguished-looking man, who preserves the traditions of French
+culture, dresses with the utmost care, has a taste for all that is
+refined and poetical, and wears such finger-nails as, says Bazarof,
+"would be worth sending to the Exposition." The contrast is as lively as
+it is curious; every motion, every breath, produces conflict and
+augments the discord. Arcadio, under his friend's influence, finds a
+thousand ways to annoy his elders; he sees his father reading a volume
+of Puchkine, and snatches it out of his hands, giving him instead the
+ninth edition of "Force and Matter." And after all the poor boy really
+cannot follow the hard, harsh ideas of Bazarof; but he is so completely
+under the latter's control, and looks upon him with so much respect and
+awe, and stands in such fear of his ridicule, that he hides his most
+innocent and natural sentiments as though they were sinful, and dares
+not even confess the pleasure he feels at sight of the country and his
+native village.
+
+"What sort of fellow is your friend Bazarof?" Arcadio's father and uncle
+inquire of him.
+
+"He is a nihilist," is the response.
+
+"That word must come from the Latin _nihil_," says the father, "and must
+mean a man that acknowledges and respects nothing."
+
+"It means a man who looks at everything from a critical point of view,"
+says Arcadio, proudly.
+
+Criticism, pitiless analysis, barren and overwhelming,--this is an
+epitome of Bazarof, the spirit of absolute negation, the contemporary
+Mephistopheles who begins by taking himself off to the Inferno.
+
+The punishment falls in the right place. Consistently with his
+physiological theories, Bazarof denies the existence of love, calls it a
+mere natural instinct, and women _females_; but scarcely does he find
+himself in contact with a beautiful, interesting, clever woman--somewhat
+of a coquette too, perhaps--than he falls into her net like a clumsy
+idealogue that he is, and suffers and curses his fate like the most
+ardent romanticist. Quite as curious as the antithesis of the two
+generations in the house of Arcadio's aristocratic father, is the
+contrast shown in that of the more humble village physician, the father
+of Bazarof, who is an altogether pathetic personage. He, too, is
+possessed of a certain pedantic and antiquated culture, and an
+excellent, kind heart; he adores his son, thinks him a demi-god, and yet
+cannot by any means understand him. Arcadio's father, on hearing an
+exposition of the new theories, shrugs his shoulders and exclaims, "You
+turn everything inside out nowadays. God give you health and a general's
+position!" The physician, quite non-plussed, murmurs sadly, "I confess
+that I idolize my son, but I dare not tell him so, for he would be
+displeased;" and he adds with ridiculous pathos, "What comforts me most
+is to think that some day men will read in the biography of my son these
+lines: 'He was the son of an obscure regiment physician who nevertheless
+had the wisdom to discern his talents from the first, and spared no
+pains to give him an excellent education.' Here the voice of the old man
+died away," says the writer. Such details bespeak the great poet. Again
+when Bazarof is seized with typhus fever and dies, it is not his fate
+which affects us, but the grief of his old father and mother, who
+believe that one light of their country has been put out, and that they
+have lost the best treasure of their uncontaminated and tender old
+hearts. The death of this atheist makes an admirable page. When, as he
+is losing consciousness, extreme unction is administered to him, the
+shudder of horror that passes over his face at sight of the priest in
+his robes, the smoking incense, the candles burning before the images,
+is communicated to our own souls.
+
+From 1860 Turguenief remained in France, bound by ties that shaped his
+course of life. He enjoyed there a reputation not inferior to that which
+he possessed in his own country; his works were all translated, and his
+soul was soothed by an almost fraternal intimacy with the greatest
+French writers, notably Gustave Flaubert and George Sand; and yet his
+thoughts were never absent from his far-away fatherland, and as a
+reproof to his fruitless longings he wrote "Smoke," which put the
+capital of Russia almost in revolt. But Turguenief was no bilious
+satirist after the style of Gogol, much less a habitual vilifier of
+existing classes and institutions like Tchedrine; on the contrary, he
+had a keen observation like Alphonse Daudet, and the sweeping
+artist-glance which takes in the moral weaknesses as well as physical
+deformities. The scene of "Smoke" is laid in Baden-Baden, the resort of
+rich people who go there to enjoy themselves, to gossip, to intrigue,
+and to throw themselves aimlessly into the maelstrom of frivolous and
+idle life. The Russian world passes rapidly before our eyes, and last of
+all the hero, weary and blasé, who with bitter words compares his
+country to the thin, feathery smoke that rises in the distance.
+Everything in Russia is smoke,--smoke, and nothing more!
+
+Turguenief was one of those who loved his country well enough to tell
+her the truth, and to warn her--in an indirect and artistic manner, of
+course--persistently and incessantly. His was the jealous love of the
+master for the favorite pupil, of the confessor for the soul under his
+guidance, of the ardent patriot for his too backward and unambitious
+nation. Turguenief compared himself, away from his country, to a dead
+fish kept sound in the snow, but spoiling in time of thaw. He said that
+in a strange land one lives isolated, without any real props or profound
+relation to anything whatever, and that he felt his own creative
+faculties decay for lack of inspiration from his native air; he
+complained of feeling the chill of old age upon him, and an incurable
+vacuity of soul. While he thus pined with homesickness, in Russia his
+books wrought a wholesome change in criticism; the new generation turned
+its back upon him, and after a general scandal followed an oblivious
+silence, of the two perhaps the harder to bear.
+
+In 1876 the novel "Virgin Soil" appeared, first in French in the columns
+of "Le Temps," and then in Russian. It dealt with the same ideas as
+"Fathers and Sons," save that the nihilism described in it was of the
+active rather than the speculative sort. It was said at the time that
+as Turguenief had been fifteen years away from his own country, he was
+not capable of seeing the nihilist world in its true aspect, a thing to
+be felt rather than seen, difficult enough to describe near at hand, and
+much more difficult at a distance; but one must not expect of the
+novelist what would be impossible even to the political student. To us
+who are not too learned in revolutionary mysteries, Turguenief's novel
+is delightful. I believe that there is more or less of political warmth
+in the judgments expressed upon this "Virgin Soil," and that if the book
+errs in any particular, it is on the side of the truthfulness of its
+representative and symbolic qualities. Otherwise, how explain the fact
+that certain nihilists thought themselves personally portrayed in the
+character of the hero, or that Turguenief was accused of having received
+notices and information provided by the police? Yet it seems to me that
+this book, which gave such offence to the nihilists, shows a lively
+sympathy with them. All the revolutionary characters are grand,
+interesting, sincere, and poetic; on the other hand, the official world
+is made up of egoists, hypocrites, knaves, and fools. In reality,
+"Virgin Soil," like all the other writings of Turguenief, is the product
+of a gentle and serene mind, independent of political bias, although
+both his artistic and his Sclavonic nature weigh the balance in favor of
+the visionaries who represent the spirit rather than the letter.
+
+"Virgin Soil" was the last of Turguenief's long novels. Another Russian
+novelist, Isaac Paulowsky, who knew him intimately, has given us some
+curious information concerning one he had in project, and which he
+believed would be found among his papers; but it has not yet come to
+light, and there remains only to speak of his short stories. Perhaps his
+best claim to reputation and glory rests upon these admirable sketches;
+and it is Zola's opinion that Turguenief depreciated and wasted his
+proper talent when he left off making these fine cameo-like studies.
+Perhaps this is true, as it is certainly undeniable that Turguenief had
+a master touch in delicate work of this sort, and it suited his
+intensity of sentiment, his graceful style, and his skill in shading,
+which distinguish him above his contemporaries. Of his short stories,
+his episodes of Russian life, I know not which to select; they are
+filigree and jewels, wrought by the Benvenuto of his trade; brass is
+gold in his hands, and his chisel excels at every point. But I must
+mention a few of the most important.
+
+"The Knight of the Steppes," in which the horse tells the story of the
+love and disappointment which leads his master to despair and suicide,
+is one of my favorites. The hero resembles Taras Boulba, perhaps, in his
+savage grandeur; he is a remnant of Asiatic times, brave, proud,
+generous, uncultured; ruined, thirsting for battle, and perhaps for
+pillage, bloodshed, and violence.
+
+Beside this I would put the first one in the collection translated and
+published under the title of "Strange Stories." It is a sketch of
+mysticism and religious mania peculiar, though not too common, to the
+Russian temperament. Sophia, a young girl at a ball, while dancing the
+mazurka with a stranger, speaks to him seriously concerning miracles,
+ghosts, the immortality of the soul, and the theory of Quietism, and
+manifests a wish to mortify and subdue her nature and taste martyrdom;
+next day she carries out her desires by running away,--not with her
+partner in the dance, but with a demented fanatic, a man of the lowest
+condition, with whom she lives in chastity, and to whose infirmities she
+ministers like a mother, and serves him like a slave. Such a picture
+could only have been conceived in a land that cradled the heroine of
+"The Threshold," and many another enthusiastic nihilist girl who was
+ready to lay down her life for her ideals.
+
+The whole volume of "Strange Stories" fascinates us with a superstitious
+horror. Elias Teglevo, the hero of one of the best of these tales,
+although a pronounced sceptic, yet believes in the influence of his
+star, thinks he is predestined to a tragic death, and under this
+persuasion works himself into a state of mind and body that becomes a
+hallucination strong enough to lead to suicide, in obedience to what he
+considers a supernatural mandate. In another tale, "King Lear of the
+Steppes," the gigantic Karlof has a presentiment of his death on seeing
+a black colt in his dreams. The great artist reproduced the souls of his
+characters with laudable fidelity. If supernatural terror is a real and
+genuine sentiment, the novel should not overlook it in its delineations
+of the truth.
+
+But perhaps the jewel of Turguenief's narratives is that entitled
+"Living Relics." In this simple story he excels himself. The novel has
+no plot, and is nothing more than a silver lake which reflects a
+beautiful soul, calm and clear as the moon; and the crippled form of
+Lukeria is only the pretext for the detention of such a soul in this
+world. Who has not sometimes entered a convent church on leaving a
+ball-room,--in the early morning hours of Ash-Wednesday, for instance?
+The ears still echo the voluptuous and stirring sounds of the military
+band; one is ready to drop with fatigue, dizziness, glare of lights, and
+the unseasonable hour. But the church is dark and empty; the nuns in the
+choir are chanting the psalms; above the altar flickers a dim light, by
+whose aid one discerns a picture or a statue, though at a distance one
+cannot make out details of face or figure, only an expression of vague
+sweetness and mysterious peace. After a moment's contemplation of it,
+the body forgets its weariness and the soul is rocked in tranquillity.
+Read some novel of the world's life, and then read "Living Relics": it
+is like going from the ball-room to the chapel of a convent.
+
+This faculty of putting the reader in contact with the invisible world
+is not the talent of Turguenief exclusively, for all the great Russian
+novelists possess it in some degree; but Turguenief uses it with such
+exquisite tact and poetic charm that he seems to look serenely upon the
+strange psychical phenomenon he has produced in the soul of the reader,
+who is roused to a state of excitement that reflects the vision evoked
+by the artist's words. Other instances of his power in this direction
+are "The Dog," "Apparitions," and "Clara Militch," a confession from
+beyond the tomb.
+
+The last page written by Turguenief bore the title of "Despair,"--the
+voice of the Russian soul whose depths he had searched for forty years,
+says Voguié. He was then laboring under an incurable disease, cancer of
+the brain, which, after causing him horrible sufferings, ended his life.
+But though worn-out, dying, and stupefied by doses of opium and
+injections of morphine, his artistic faculties died hard; and he related
+his dreams and hallucinations with wonderful vividness, only regretting
+his lack of strength to put them on paper. It is said that some of these
+feverish visions are preserved in his "Prose Poems," which are examples
+of the adaptability of Turguenief's talent to miniature, condensed,
+bird's-eye pictures. Like Meissonier, Turguenief saw the light upon
+small surfaces, enhanced rather than lessened in brilliancy. I will
+translate one of these prose-poems, so that the reader may see how
+Turguenief cuts his medallions. This one is entitled "Macha":--
+
+     "When I was living in St. Petersburg, some time ago, I was
+     in the habit of entering into conversation with the
+     sleigh-driver, whenever I hired one.
+
+      "I particularly liked to chat with those who were engaged
+      at night,--poor peasants from the surrounding country, who
+      came to town with their old-fashioned rattling vehicles,
+      besmeared with yellow mud and drawn by one poor horse, to
+      earn enough for bread and taxes.
+
+      "On a certain day I called one of these to me. He was a lad
+      of perhaps twenty years, strong and robust-looking, with
+      blue eyes and red cheeks. Ringlets of reddish hair escaped
+      from under his patched cap, which was pressed down over his
+      eyebrows, and a torn caftan, too small for him, barely
+      covered his broad shoulders.
+
+      "It seemed to me that this handsome, beardless young
+      driver's face was sad and gloomy; we fell to chatting, and
+      I noticed that his voice had a sorrowful tone.
+
+      "Why so sad, brother?' I asked. 'Are you in trouble?'
+
+      "At first he did not reply.
+
+      "'Yes, barino, I am in trouble,' he said at last,--'a
+      trouble so great that there is no other like it,--my wife
+      is dead.'
+
+      "'By this I judge that you were very fond of her.'
+
+      "The lad, without turning, nodded his head.
+
+      "'Barino, I loved her. It is now eight months, and I cannot
+      get my thoughts away from her. There is something gnawing
+      here at my heart continually. I do not understand why she
+      died; she was young and healthy. In twenty-four hours she
+      was carried off by the cholera.'
+
+      "'And was she good?'
+
+      "'Ah, barino!' the poor fellow sighed deeply, 'we were such
+      good friends! And she died while I was away. As soon as I
+      heard up here that--that they had buried her--that very
+      moment I started on foot to my village, to my home. I
+      arrived; it was past midnight. I entered my _isba_; I stood
+      still in the middle of it, and called very low, "Macha, oh
+      Macha!" No answer,--nothing but the chirp of a cricket in a
+      corner. Then I burst into tears; I sat down on the ground
+      and beat it with my hand, saying, "O thou greedy earth,
+      thou hast swallowed her! thou must swallow me too! Macha,
+      oh Macha!" I repeated hoarsely.'
+
+      "Without loosening his hold on the reins, he caught a
+      falling tear on his leather glove, shook it off at one
+      side, shrugged his shoulders, and said not another word.
+
+      "On alighting from the sleigh I gave him a good fee; he
+      bowed himself to the ground before me, taking off his cap
+      with both hands, turned again to his sleigh, and started
+      off at a weary trot down the frozen and deserted street,
+      which was fast filling with a cold, gray, January fog."
+
+Is it a mistake to say that in this commonplace little episode there is
+more of poetry than in many elegies and innumerable sonnets? I believe
+there is no Spanish or French writer who would know how to gather up and
+thread like a pearl the tear of a common coachman. There is something in
+the Latin character that makes us hard toward the lower classes and the
+vulgar professions.
+
+Like many another author, Turguenief was not a good judge of his own
+merits, and gave great importance to his longer novels in preference to
+his admirable shorter ones, in which he scarcely has a rival. He had
+great expectations of "Smoke," and the dislike it met with in Russia
+surprised him painfully. So keen was his disappointment that he
+determined to write no more original novels, but devote himself to his
+early cherished plan of translating "Don Quixote." He also suffered in
+one way like most souls who hang upon the lips of public opinion,--the
+slightest censure hurt him like a mortal wound. The cordial and
+enthusiastic reception which, in spite of past indignation, he was
+accorded in Russia in 1878, and the homage and attentions of the
+students of Moscow, renewed his courage and reanimated his soul.... But
+his strong constitution failed him at last, and his physical and mental
+abilities weakened. "The saddest thing that has happened to me," he said
+to Paulowsky, "is that I take no more pleasure in my work. I used to
+love literary labor, as one loves to caress a woman; now I detest it. I
+have many plans in my head, but I can do nothing at all with them." But
+after all, what posthumous work of Turguenief would bear with a deeper
+meaning on his literary life than the admirable words of his letter to
+Count Léon Tolstoï:--
+
+     "It is time I wrote you; for, be it said without the least
+     exaggeration, I have been, I am, on my death-bed. I have no
+     false hopes. I know there is no cure. Let this serve to tell
+     you that I rejoice to have been your contemporary, and to
+     make of you one supreme last request to which you must not
+     turn a deaf ear. Go back, dear friend, to your literary
+     work. The gift you have is from above, whence comes every
+     good gift we possess. How happy I should be if I could
+     believe that my entreaty would have the effect I desire!
+
+      "As for myself, I am a drowning man. The physicians have
+      not come to any conclusion about my disease. They say it
+      may be gouty neuralgia of the stomach. I cannot walk, nor
+      eat, nor sleep; but it would be tiresome to enter into
+      details. My friend, great and beloved writer in Russian
+      lands, hear my prayer. With these few lines receive a warm
+      embrace for yourself, your wife, and all your family. I
+      can write no more. I am tired."
+
+This pathetic document contains the essence of the writer's life, the
+synthesis of a soul that loved art above all things else, and believed
+that of the three divine attributes, truth, goodness, and beauty, the
+last is the one especially revealed to the artist, and the one it is his
+especial duty to show forth; and that he who allows his sacred flame to
+go out, commits a sin which is great in proportion to his talents, and a
+sin incalculable when commensurate with the genius of Tolstoï.
+
+Turguenief is the supreme type of the artist, for he had the
+tranquillity and equipoise of soul, the bright serenity, and the
+æsthetic sensibility which should distinguish it. According to able
+critics, such as Taine, Turguenief was one of the most artistic natures
+that has been born among men since classic times. Those who can read his
+works in the Russian sing marvellous praises of his style, and even
+through the haze of translation we are caught by its charms. Let me
+quote some lines of Melchior de Voguié:
+
+     "Turguenief's periods flow on with a voluptuous languor,
+     like the broad expanse of the Russian rivers beneath the
+     shadows of the trees athwart them, slipping melodiously
+     between the reeds and rushes, laden with floating blossoms
+     and fallen bird's-nests, perfumed by wandering odors,
+     reflecting sky and landscape, or suddenly darkened by a
+     lowering cloud. It catches all, and gives each a place; and
+     its melody is blended with the hum of bees, the cawing of
+     the crows, and the sighing of the breeze. The most fugitive
+     sounds of Nature's great organ he can echo in the infinite
+     variety of the tones of the Russian speech,--flexible and
+     comprehensive epithets, words strung together to please a
+     poet's fancy, and bold popular sallies."
+
+Such is the effect produced by a thorough reading of Turguenief's works;
+it is a symphony, a sweet and solemn music like the sounds of the
+forest. Turguenief is, without exaggeration, the best word-painter of
+landscape that ever wrote. His descriptions are neither very long nor
+very highly colored; there is a charming sobriety about them that
+reminds one of the saving strokes with which the skilful painter puts
+life into his trees and skies without stopping over the careful
+delineation of leaf and cloud after the manner of the Japanese. The
+details are not visible, but felt. He rarely lays stress on minor
+points; but if he does so, it is with the same sense of congruity that a
+great composer reiterates a motive in music. Turguenief's enemies make
+ground of this very dexterity, which is displayed in all his works, for
+denying him originality,--as though originality must need be independent
+of the eternal laws of proportion and harmony which are the natural
+measures of beauty.
+
+Ernest Renan pronounced quite another opinion, however, when, according
+to the custom of the French, he delivered a discourse over the tomb that
+was about to receive the mortal remains of Turguenief, on the 1st of
+October, 1883. He said that Turguenief was not the conscience of one
+individual, but in a certain sense that of a whole people,--the
+incarnation of a race, the voice of past generations that slept the
+sleep of ages until he evoked them. For the multitude is silent, and the
+poet or the prophet must serve as its interpreter; and Turguenief holds
+this attitude to the great Sclavonic race, whose entrance upon the
+world's stage is the most astounding event of our century. Divided by
+its own magnitude, the Sclav race is united in the great soul and the
+conciliatory spirit of Turguenief, Genius having accomplished in a day
+that which Time could not do in ages. He has created an atmosphere of
+beautiful peace, wherein those who fought as mortal enemies may meet and
+clasp each other by the hand.
+
+It was just this impartiality and universality, which Renan praises so
+highly, that alienated from Turguenief many of his contemporaries and
+compatriots. Where ideas are at war, whoever takes a neutral position
+makes himself the enemy to both parties. Turguenief knew this, and he
+used sometimes to say, on hearing the bitter judgments passed upon him,
+"Let them do what they like: my soul is not in their hands." Not only
+the revolutionaries took it ill that he did not explicitly cast his
+adhesion with them, but the country at large, whose national pride
+spurned foreign civilization, was offended at the candor and realism of
+his observations. And Turguenief, though Russian every inch of him,
+loved Latin culture, and had developed and perfected by association with
+French writers, such as Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert, those
+qualities of precision, clearness, and skill in composition, which
+distinguish him above all his countrymen; yet this was a serious
+offence to the most of these latter.
+
+Among modern French novelists, those who, to my mind, most resemble
+Turguenief in the nature of their talents, are, first, Daudet, for
+intensity of emotion and richness of design, and then the brothers
+Goncourt in some, though not very many, pages. Yet there is a notable
+difference in all. Daudet is less the epic poet than Turguenief, because
+he devotes himself to the study of certain special aspects of Parisian
+fife, while Turguenief takes in the whole physiognomy of his immense
+country. From the laboring peasants and the nihilist students to the
+generals and government clerks, he depicts every condition,--except the
+highest society, which has been reserved for Léon Tolstoï. And
+everything is vivid, interesting, fascinating,--the poor paralytic of
+"Living Relics," as well as the courageous heroine of "Virgin
+Soil,"--everything is real as well as poetical. Truth and poetry are
+united in him as closely as soul and body. Though he is an indefatigable
+observer, he never tires the reader; his heart overflowed with
+sentiment, yet his good taste never permitted him to utter a false note
+either of brutality or cant; he was a most eloquent advocate of
+emancipation, moderation, and peace, yet no diatribe of either a social
+or political character ever ruffled the celestial calm of his muse.
+Puchkine and Turguenief are, to my mind, the two Russian spirits worthy
+to be called _classic_.
+
+Those who knew him and associated with him speak of his goodness as one
+speaks of a mountain's height when gazing upward from its foot. Voguié
+calls him a heavenly soul, one of the poor in spirit burning with the
+fire of inspiration, one who seemed, amid the hard and selfish world,
+the vain and jealous world of French letters, a visionary with gaze
+distraught and heart unsullied, a member of some shepherd tribe or
+patriarchal family. Every Russian that arrived penniless in Paris went
+straight to his house for protection and assistance.
+
+
+[1] This work is better known to American readers in a translation
+entitled "Lisa."--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Gontcharof and Oblomovism.
+
+
+The rival and competitor of Turguenief--not in Europe, but in
+Russia--was a novelist of whom I must say something at least, though I
+do not consider that he holds a place among the great masters; I mean
+Gontcharof. This author's talents were fostered under the influence of
+the famous critic Bielinsky, who professed and taught the principles
+promulgated by Gogol,--demanded that art should be a faithful
+representation of life, and its principal object the study of the
+people.
+
+Ivan Gontcharof was not of the nobility, like Turguenief, but came of a
+family of traders, and was born in the critical year of 1812. His life
+was humble and laborious; he was a tutor, and then a government
+employee, and made a tour of the world aboard the frigate "Pallas." He
+began his literary career in the middle of that most glorious decade for
+Russian letters known as "the forties." His first novel, entitled "A
+Vulgar History," attracted public attention, and it is said that a
+secret notice from the imperial censor in consequence was the cause of
+the long silence of twelve years which the author maintained until the
+time when he wrote "Oblomof," which is, to my mind, one of the most
+pleasing and characteristic Russian novels. I must admit that I am
+acquainted with only the first volume of it, for the simple reason that
+it is the only one translated; and I must add that this volume begins
+with the moment when the hero awakes from sleep, and ends with his
+resolve to get up and dress and go out into the street! Yet this odd
+little volume has an indescribable charm, an intensity of feeling which
+takes the place of action, and incidents as easily invented by the
+idealist as observed by the realist. In these days the art of
+story-telling has undergone a great change; the hero no longer keeps a
+dagger, a cup of poison, rope-ladders, and rivals at hand, but he runs
+to the other extreme, not less trivial and puerile perhaps, of
+exaggerating small incidents that are uninteresting, and irrelevant to
+the subject or the essential thought of the work from an artistic point
+of view. But in "Oblomof," whose hero does nothing but lie still in bed,
+there is not a detail or a line that is superfluous to the harmonious
+effect of the whole. Of course I can only speak of the one volume I have
+read. One may imagine that the author would like to portray the state
+of enervation and disorganization to which the essence of autocratic
+despotism had brought Russian society; or perhaps it is one aspect of
+the Russian soul, the dreamy indolence and insuperable apathy of the
+body, which weighs down the active work of the imagination. It is only a
+study of a psychical condition, yet what intense life throbs in its
+pages!
+
+Perhaps this admirable and original novel was not translated in its
+entirety for fear of offending French taste, which demands more
+excitement, and could not stand a long analytical narrative full of
+detail, mere intellectual filigree. Turguenief was undeniably a greater
+artist than his rival; but he never attained to the precision, lucidity,
+and singular strength of "Oblomof" in any of his novels.
+
+As the character of the hero was drawn to the life, the nation
+recognized it at once, and the word _oblomovism_ became incorporated
+into the language, implying the typical indolence of the Sclav. On some
+accounts I find Turguenief's "Living Relics" more comparable to this
+novel than any others of his. Both present one single phase or state of
+the soul; both are purely psychological studies; the chief character of
+both does not change position, the position in which he has been fixed
+by the will of the novelist,--I had almost said the dissecting surgeon.
+
+"Oblomof" is in reality a type of the Sclav who chases the butterfly of
+his dreams through the still air. Study he regards, from his pessimist
+point of view, as useless, because it will not lead him to earthly
+happiness; and yet his soul is full of poetry and his heart of
+tenderness; he reaches out toward illimitable horizons, and his
+imagination is hard at work, but all his other faculties are asleep.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary.
+
+
+Now let us turn to that visionary novelist whom Voguié introduces to his
+readers in these words:
+
+     "Here comes the Scythian, the true Scythian, who puts off
+     the habiliments of our modern intellect, and leads us by the
+     hand to the centre of Moscow, to the monstrous Cathedral of
+     St. Basil, wrought and painted like a Chinese pagoda, built
+     by Tartar architects, and yet consecrated to the God whom
+     the Christians adore. Dostoiëwsky was educated at the same
+     school, led by the same current of thought, and made his
+     first appearance in the same year as Turguenief and Tolstoï;
+     but the latter are opposite poles, and have but one ground
+     in common, which is the sympathy for humanity, which was
+     incarnate and expanded in Dostoiëwsky to the highest degree
+     of piety, to pious despair, if such a phrase is possible."
+
+Dostoiëwsky is really the barbarian, the primitive type, whose
+heart-strings still reverberate certain motive tones of the Russian soul
+that were incompatible with the harmonious and tranquil spirit of
+Turguenief. Dostoiëwsky has the feverish, unreasoning, abnormal
+psychological intensity of the cultivated minds of his country. Let no
+one of tender heart and weak nerves read his books; and those who cling
+to classic serenity, harmony, and brightness should not so much as touch
+them. He leads us into a new region of æsthetics, where the horrible is
+beautiful, despair is consoling, and the ignoble has a halo of
+sublimity: where guilty women teach gospel truths, and men are
+regenerated by crimes; where the prison is the school of compassion, and
+fetters are a poetic element. Much against our will we are forced to
+admire a novelist whose pages almost excite to assassination and
+nightmare horrors, this Russian Dante who will not allow us to omit a
+single circle of the Inferno.
+
+Feodor, son of Michael Dostoiëwsky, was born in Moscow in 1821, in a
+hospital at which his father was a medical attendant. There is
+frequently a strange connection between the environment of great writers
+and the development and direction of their genius, not always evident to
+the general public, but apparent to the careful critic; in Dostoiëwsky's
+case it seems plain enough to all, however. His family belonged to the
+country gentlefolk from whom the class of government employees are
+drawn; Feodor, with his brother Alexis, whom he dearly loved, entered
+the school of military engineers, though his tastes were rather for
+belles-lettres and the humanities than for dry and unartistic details.
+His literary education was therefore reduced to fitful readings of
+Balzac, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and especially of Gogol, whose works
+first inspired him with tenderness toward the humble, the outcast, and
+the miserable. Shortly after leaving college he abandoned his career
+for a literary life, and began the usual struggle with the difficulties
+of a young writer's precarious condition. The struggle lasted almost to
+the end of his life; for forty years he was never sure of any other than
+prison bread. Proud and suspicious by nature, the humiliations and
+bitterness of poverty must have contributed largely to unsettle his
+nerves, disconcert his mind, and undermine his health, which was so
+precarious that he used sometimes to leave on his table before going to
+sleep a paper with the words: "I may fall into a state of insensibility
+to-night; do not bury me until some days have passed." He was sometimes
+afflicted with epilepsy, cruelly aggravated later in Siberia under the
+lashes laid upon his bleeding shoulders.
+
+Like one of his own heroes he dreamed of fame; and without having read
+or shown his manuscripts to any one, alone with his chimeras and
+vagaries, he passed whole nights in imaginary intercourse with the
+characters he created, loving them as though they had been his relatives
+or his friends, and weeping over their misfortunes as though they had
+been real. These were hours of pure emotion, ideal love, which every
+true artist experiences some time in his life. Dostoiëwsky was hen
+twenty-three years old. One day he begged a friend to take a few
+chapters of his first novel called "The Poor People" to the popular poet
+Nekrasof; his friend did so, and in the early hours of the morning the
+famous poet called at the door of the unknown writer and clasped him in
+his arms under the excitement of the emotion caused by perusal of the
+story. Nekrasof did not remit his attentions; he at once sought the
+dreaded critic Bielinsky, the intellectual chief and lawgiver of the
+glorious company of writers to which Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Gontcharof
+belonged, the Russian Lessing, who died of consumption at the age of
+thirty-eight years, just when others are beginning to acquire
+discernment and tranquillity,--the great Bielinsky, who had formed two
+generations of great artists and pushed forward the national literature
+to a complete development. A man in his position, more prone to meet
+with the sham than the genuine in art, would naturally be not
+over-delighted to receive people armed with rolls of manuscript. When
+Nekrasof entered his room exclaiming, "A new Gogol is born to us!" the
+critic replied in a bad humor, "Gogols are born nowadays as easily as
+mushrooms in a cellar." But when the author came in a tremor to learn
+the dictum of the judge, the latter cried out impetuously, "Young man,
+do you understand how much truth there is in what you have written? No,
+for you are scarcely more than twenty years old, and it is impossible
+that you should understand. It is a revelation of art, a gift of Heaven.
+Respect this gift, and you will be a great writer!" The success achieved
+by this novel on its publication in the columns of a review did not
+belie Bielinsky's prophecy.
+
+It is easy to understand the surprise of the critic on reading this work
+of a scarcely grown man, who yet seemed to have observed life with a
+vivid and deep sense of realism, and an unequivocal minuteness that is
+generally learned only through the bitter experience of prosaic
+sufferings, and comes forth after the illusions and vague
+sentimentalities of youth have been dispelled and practical life has
+begun. I said once, and I repeat it, that a true artist under
+twenty-five would be a marvel; Dostoiëwsky was indeed such a marvel.
+
+This first novel was the humble drama of two lonely souls, wounded and
+ground down by poverty, but not spoiled by it; a case such as one might
+meet with on turning the very next corner, and never think worthy of
+attention or study, and which, even in the midst of modern currents of
+thought, the novelist is quite likely to pass by. Yet the book is a work
+of art,--of the new and the old art compounded, classic art infused with
+the new warm blood of truth. This work of Dostoiëwsky, this touching,
+tearful story, had a model in Gogol's "The Cloak," but it goes beyond
+the latter in energy and depth of sadness. If Dostoiëwsky ever invoked a
+muse, it must have been the muse of Hypochondria.
+
+It was not likely that Dostoiëwsky would escape the political fatality
+which pursued the generality of Russian writers. During those memorable
+_forties_ the students were wont to meet more or less secretly for the
+purpose of reading and discussing Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon.
+About 1847 these circles began to expand, and to admit public and
+military men; they were moved by one desire, and what began as an
+intellectual effervescence ended in a conspiracy. Dostoiëwsky was good
+material for any revolutionary cabal, being easily disposed thereto by
+his natural enmity to society, his continuous poverty, his nervous
+excitement, his Utopian dreams, and his inordinate and fanatical
+compassion for the outcast classes. The occasion was ill-timed, and the
+hour a dangerous one, being just at the time of the French outbreak,
+which seemed a menace to every throne in Europe. The police got wind of
+it, and on the 23rd of April, 1849, thirty-four suspected persons were
+arrested, the brothers Feodor and Alexis Dostoiëwsky among them. The
+novelist was thrown into a dungeon of the citadel, and when at last he
+came forth, it was to mount the scaffold in a public square with some of
+his companions. They stood there in shirt-sleeves, in an intense cold,
+expecting at first only to hear read the sentence of the Council of War.
+While they waited, Dostoiëwsky began to relate to a friend the plan of a
+new novel he had been thinking about in prison; but he suddenly
+exclaimed, as he heard the officer's voice, "Is it possible we are to be
+executed?" His friend pointed to a car-load of objects which, though
+covered with a cloth, were shaped much like coffins. The suspicion was
+soon confirmed; the prisoners were all tied to posts, and the soldiers
+formed in line ready to fire. Suddenly, as the order was about to be
+given, word arrived from the emperor commuting the death-sentence to
+exile to Siberia. The prisoners were untied. One of them had lost his
+reason.
+
+Dostoiëwsky and the others then set out upon their sad journey; on
+arriving at Tobolsk they were each shaved, laden with chains, and sent
+to a different station. During this painful experience a pathetic
+incident occurred which engraved itself indelibly upon the mind of the
+novelist, and is said to have largely influenced his works. The wives of
+the "Decembrists" (conspirators of twenty-five years before), most of
+them women of high rank who had voluntarily exiled themselves in order
+to accompany their husbands, came to visit in prison the new generation
+of exiles, and having nothing of material value to offer them, they gave
+each one a copy of the Gospels. During his four years of imprisonment,
+Dostoiëwsky never slept without this book under his pillow; he read it
+incessantly, and taught his more ignorant fellow-prisoners to read it
+also.
+
+He now found himself among outcasts and convicts, and his ears were
+filled with the sounds of unknown languages and dialects, and speech
+which, when understood, was profane and abhorrent, and mixed with yells
+and curses more dreadful than all complaints. What horrible martyrdom
+for a man of talent and literary vocation,--reckoned with evil-doers,
+compelled to grind gypsum, and deprived of every means of satisfying the
+hunger and activity of his mind! Why did he not go mad? Some may answer,
+because he was that already,--and perhaps they would not be far wrong;
+for no writer in Russia, not excepting even Gogol and Tolstoï, so
+closely approaches the mysterious dividing line, thin as a hair, which
+separates insanity and genius. The least that can be said is, that if
+Dostoiëwsky was not subject to mental aberration from childhood, he had
+a violent form of neurosis. He was a bundle of nerves, a harp with
+strings too tense; he was a victim of epilepsy and hallucinations, and
+the results are apparent in his life and in his books. But it is a
+strange fact that he himself said that had it not been for the terrible
+trials he endured, for the sufferings of the prison and the scaffold, he
+certainly _would have gone mad_, and he believed that these experiences
+fortified his mind; for, the year previous to his captivity, he declared
+that he suffered a terrible temptation of the Devil, was a victim to
+chimerical infirmities, and overwhelmed with an inexplicable terror
+which he calls _mystic fear_, and thus describes in one of his novels:
+"On the approach of twilight I was attacked by a state of soul which
+frequently comes upon me in the night; I will call it _mystic fear_. It
+is an overwhelming terror of _something_ which I can neither define nor
+imagine, which has no existence in the natural order of things, but
+which I feel may at any moment become real, and appear before me as an
+inexorable and horrible _thing_." It seems then quite possible that the
+writer was cured of his imaginary ills by real ones.
+
+I have remarked that Gogol's "Dead Souls" reminded me of "Don Quixote"
+more than any book I know; let me add that the book inspired by the
+prison-life of Dostoiëwsky--"The Dead House"--reminds me most strongly
+of Dante's Inferno. There is no exact likeness or affinity of literary
+style; for "The Dead House" is not a poem, but a plain tale of the
+sufferings of a few prisoners in a miserable Siberian fort. And yet it
+is certainly _Dantesque_. Instead of the laurel-crowned poet in
+scholar's gown, led by the bright genius of antiquity, we see the
+wistful-eyed, tearful Sclav, his compressed lips, his attitude of
+resignation,--and in his hands a copy of the Gospels; but the Florentine
+and the Russian manifest the same melancholy energy, use the same burin
+to trace their burning words on plates of bronze, and unite a prophetic
+vision with a brutal realism of miserable and sinful humanity.
+
+"The Dead House" also has the merit of being perhaps the most profound
+study written in Europe upon the penitentiary system and criminal
+physiology; it is a more powerful teacher of jurists and legislators
+than all didactic treatises. Dostoiëwsky shows especially, and with
+implacable clearness, the effect produced on the minds of the prisoners
+by the cruel penalty of the lash. The complacency of narration, the
+elaborateness of detail, the microscopic precision with which he notes
+every phase of this torture, inflict positive pain upon the nervous
+system of the reader. It is fascinating, it is the refinement of
+barbarism, but it was also a work of charity, for it finally brought
+about the abolition of that kind of punishment, and wiped out a foul
+stain upon the Russian Code. It makes one turn cold and shudder to read
+those pages which describe this torture,--so calmly and carefully
+related without one exclamation of pity or comment, and even sometimes
+painfully humorous. The trepidation of the condemned for days before it
+is inflicted, his frenzy after it is over, his subterfuges to avoid it,
+the blind fury with which sometimes he yields to it, throwing himself
+under the painful blows as a despairing man throws himself into the
+sea,--these are word-pictures never to be forgotten.
+
+Voguié makes a striking comparison of the different fates awarded to
+certain books, and says that while "My Prisons," by Silvio Pellico, went
+all over the world, this autobiographical fragment by Dostoiëwsky was
+unknown to Europe until very recently; yet it is far superior in
+sincerity and energy to that of the Italian prisoner. The most
+interesting and moving stories of captivity that I know of are Russian,
+and chief among them I would mention "Memories of a Nihilist," by
+Paulowsky. The tone of resignation, of melancholy simplicity, in all
+these tales, however, is sure to touch all hearts. I will not quote a
+line from "The Dead House;" it must be read, attentively and patiently,
+and, like most Russian books, it has not the merit of brevity. But the
+style is so shorn of artifice and rhetorical pretension, and the story
+runs along so unaffectedly, that I cannot select any one page as an
+example of excellence; for the excellence of the book depends on the
+whole,--on the accumulated force of observation, on the complete aspect
+of a soul that feels deeply and sees clearly,--and we must not break the
+icy ring of Siberian winter which encloses it. It is enhanced by the
+apparent serenity of the writer, by his sweetness, his half-Christian,
+half-Buddhist resignation. With the Gospels in his hand, Dostoiëwsky at
+last leaves his house of pain, without rancor or hatred or choleric
+protests; more than this, he leaves it declaring that the trial has been
+beneficial to him, that it has regenerated body and soul; that in prison
+he has learned to love the brethren, and to find the spark of goodness
+and truth lighted by God's hand even in the souls of reprobates and
+criminals; to know the charity that passes understanding and the pity
+that is foolishness to the wise; he has learned, in fact, _to
+love_,--the only learning that can redeem the condemned.
+
+Although he had been (at the time of writing this) four years released
+from prison, he delayed still six years longer before returning to
+Europe to publish his works. When he began his labors for the press, he
+did not unite himself to the liberal party, but, erratic as usual, he
+turned to the Sclavophiles,--the blind lovers of old usages and customs,
+the bitter enemies of the civilization of the Occident. Fate was not yet
+weary in persecuting him. After the death of his wife and brother he was
+obliged to flee the country on account of his creditors. His sorrows
+were not exactly of the sublime nature of Puchkine's and the melancholy
+poet's; they were on the contrary very prosaic,--lack of money, combined
+with terrible fits of epilepsy. To understand the mortifications of
+poverty to a proud and sensitive man, one must read Dostoiëwsky's
+correspondence,--so like Balzac's in its incessant complaints against
+pecuniary affairs. He exclaims, "The details of my poverty are shameful.
+I cannot relate them. Sometimes I spend the whole night walking my room
+like a caged beast, tearing my hair in despair. I must have such or such
+a sum to-morrow, without fail!" Gloomy and ill, he wandered through
+Germany, France, and Italy, caring nothing for the wonders of
+civilization, and impressed by no sights except the guillotine. He wrote
+during this time his three principal novels, whose very names are
+nightmares,--"Possessed with Devils," "The Idiot," and "Crime and
+Punishment."
+
+I know by experience the diabolical power of Dostoiëwsky's psychological
+analysis. His books make one ill, although one appear to be well. No
+wonder that they exercise a perturbing influence on Russian
+imaginations, which are only too prone to hallucination and mental
+ecstasy. I will briefly mention his best and most widely known book,
+"Crime and Punishment," of which the following is the argument: A
+student commits a crime, and then voluntarily confesses it to the
+magistrate. This seems neither more nor less than an ordinary notice in
+the newspaper, but what an analysis is conveyed by means of it! It is
+horrible to think that the sentiments so studiously wrought out can be
+human, and that we all carry the germs of them hidden in some corner of
+the soul; and not only human, but possessed even by a person of great
+intellectual culture, like the hero, whose crime is the result of great
+reading reduced to horrible sophisms. Those two Parisian students who,
+after saturating their minds with Darwin and Haeckel, cut a woman to
+pieces with their histories, must have been prototypes of Rodion
+Romanovitch, the hero of this novel of Dostoiëwsky. This young man is
+not only clever, but possesses really refined sentiments; one of the
+motives that lead to his crime is that one of his sisters, the most
+dearly loved, may have to marry an unworthy man in order to insure the
+welfare of the family. Such a _sale_ as this poor girl's marriage would
+be seems to the student a greater wrong than the assassination of the
+old money-lender. The first seed of the crime falls upon his soul on
+overhearing at a wine-shop a dialogue between another student and an
+officer. "Here you have on the one hand," says the student, "an old
+woman, sick, stupid, wicked, useful to nobody, and only doing harm to
+all the world about her, who does not know what she lives for, and who,
+when you least expect it, will die a natural death; you have on the
+other hand a young creature whose strength is being wasted for lack of
+sustenance, a hundred lives that might be guided into a right path,
+dozens of families that might be saved from destitution, dissolution,
+ruin, and vice if that old woman's money were only available. If
+somebody were to kill her and use her fortune for the good of humanity,
+do you not think that a thousand good deeds would compensate for the
+crime? It is a mathematical question. What weight has a stupid,
+evil-minded old shrew in the social scale? About as much as a bed-bug."
+
+"Without doubt," replies the officer, "the old woman does not deserve to
+live. But--what can you do? Nature--"
+
+"My friend," the other replies, "Nature can be corrected and amended.
+If it were not so we should all be buried to the neck in prejudices, and
+there would not be a great man amongst us."
+
+This atrocious ratiocination takes hold upon Rodion's mind, and he
+carries it out to terribly logical consequences. Napoleon sacrificed
+thousands of men on the altar of his genius; why had he not the right to
+sacrifice one ridiculous old woman to his own great needs? The ordinary
+man must not infringe the law; but the extraordinary man may authorize
+his conscience to do away with certain obstacles in his path.
+
+It has been said that Dostoiëwsky's talents were influenced in some
+measure by the fascinating personality of Edgar Poe. The analogies are
+apparent; but the author of "The Gold Beetle," with all his suggestive
+intensity and his feverish imagination, never achieved any such
+tremendous psychological analyses as those of "Crime and Punishment." It
+is impossible to select an example from it; every page is full of it.
+The temptation that precedes the assassination, the horrible moment of
+committing it, the manner of disposing of the traces of it, the
+agonizing terror of being discovered, the instinct which leads him back
+to the scene of the crime with no motive but to yield to a desire as
+irresistible as inexplicable, his fearful visit to the place where he
+lives over again the moment when he plunged the knife into the old
+woman's skull,--examining all the furniture, laying his hand upon the
+bell again, with a fiendish enjoyment of the sound of it, and looking
+again for the marks of blood on the floor,--it is too well done; it
+makes one excited, nervous, and ill.
+
+"Is this beautiful?" some will ask. All that Dostoiëwsky has written
+bears the same character; it wrings the soul, perverts the imagination,
+overturns one's ideas of right and wrong to an incredible degree.
+Sometimes one is lost in abysms of gloomy uncertainty, like Hamlet;
+again one sees the struggle of the evil genius against Providence, like
+Faust, or a soul lacerated by remorse like Macbeth; and all his heroes
+are fools, madmen, maniacs, and philosophers of hypochondria and
+desperation. And yet I say that this is beauty,--tortured, twisted,
+Satanic, but intense, grand, and powerful. Dostoiëwsky's are bad books
+to read during digestion, or on going to bed at night, when every dim
+object takes an unusual shape, and every breath stirs the window
+curtains; they are not good books to take to the country, where one sits
+under the spreading trees with a fresh and fragrant breeze and a soul
+expanded with contentment, and one thanks God only to be alive. But they
+are splendid books for the thinker who devours them with reflective
+attention,--his brow furrowed under the light of the student-lamp, and
+feeling all around him the stir and excitement of a great city like
+Paris or St. Petersburg.
+
+But there is a drop of balm in the cup of absinthe to which we may liken
+Dostoiëwsky's books; it is the Christianity which appears in them when
+and where its consoling presence is least expected. Face to face with
+the student who becomes a criminal through pride and injudicious
+reading, we see the figure of a pure, modest, pious girl, who redeems
+him by her love. This unfortunate girl is a flower that fades before its
+time; it is she who, being sacrificed to provide bread for her family,
+comes in time to convince the criminal of his sin, enlightens his mind
+with the lamp of the Gospels, and brings him to repentance, resignation,
+and the joy of regeneration, in the expiation of his crime by
+chastisement and the dungeon.
+
+There is one marked difference between "Crime and Punishment" and "The
+Dead House." The novel is feverish, the autobiography is calm.
+Dostoiëwsky is a madman who owes his lucid intervals to tribulations and
+torture. Suffering clears his mind and alleviates his pain; tears
+sweeten his bitterness, and sorrow is his supreme religion; like his
+student hero, he prostrates himself before human suffering.
+
+The best way of taking the measure of Dostoiëwsky's personality is to
+compare him with his competitor and rival, and perhaps his enemy, Ivan
+Turguenief. There could be no greater contrast. Turguenief is above all
+an artist, almost classic in his serenity, master of the arts of form,
+delicate, refined, exquisite, a perfect scene-painter, an always
+interesting narrator, reasonable and temperately liberal in his
+opinions, optimist, or, if I may be allowed the word, Olympic, to the
+extent that he could boast of being able to die tranquilly because he
+had enjoyed all that was truly beautiful in life. Dostoiëwsky is a rabid
+psychologist, almost an enemy to Nature and the sensuous world, a
+furious and implacable painter of prisons, hospitals, public houses and
+by-streets of great cities, awkward in his style, taking only a
+one-sided view of character, a revolutionary and yet a reactionary in
+politics, and not only adverse to every sort of paganism, but hazily
+mystical,--the apostle of redemption through suffering, and of the
+compassion which seeks wounds to cure with its healing lips. Their two
+lives are correlative to their characters,--Turguenief in the Occident,
+famous and fortunate; Dostoiëwsky in the Orient, a barbarian, the
+plaything of destiny, fighting with poverty shoulder to shoulder. It was
+only natural that sooner or later the two novelists should know each
+other as enemies. It is sad to relate that Dostoiëwsky attacked
+Turguenief in so furious a manner that it can only be attributed to envy
+and malice.
+
+In his own country, however, and in respect to his popularity and
+influence with young people, the author of "Crime and Punishment" ranked
+higher than the author of "Virgin Soil." Just in proportion as
+Turguenief was attractive to us in the West, Dostoiëwsky fascinated the
+people of his country. "Crime and Punishment" was an event in Russia.
+Dostoiëwsky had the honor--if honor it may be called--of dealing a blow
+upon the soul of his compatriots, and on this account, as he himself
+used sometimes to say, especially after his epileptic attacks, he felt
+himself to be a great criminal, and the guilt of a villanous act weighed
+upon his soul; and it happened that a certain student, after reading his
+book, thought himself possessed by the same impulses as the hero, and
+committed a murder with the same circumstances and details.
+
+After writing "Crime and Punishment," Dostoiëwsky's talent declined; his
+defects became more marked, his psychology more and more involved and
+painful, his heroes more insensate, lunatic, epileptic, and overwrought,
+absorbed in inexplicable contemplations, or wandering, rapt in delirious
+dreams, through the streets. His novels are, in fact, the antechamber to
+the madhouse. But we may once more notice the influence of Cervantes on
+Russian minds; for the most important character created by Dostoiëwsky,
+after the hero of "Crime and Punishment," is a type, imitated after
+Quixote, in "The Idiot,"--a righter of wrongs, a fool, or rather a
+sublime innocent.
+
+As much as Dostoiëwsky excels in originality, he lacks in rhythm and
+harmony. His way of looking at the world is the way of the
+fever-stricken. No one has carried realism so far; but his may be called
+a mystic realism. Neither he nor his heroes belong to our light-loving
+race or our temperate civilization; they are the outcome of Russian
+exuberance, to us almost incomprehensible. He is at one moment an
+apostle, at another a maniac, now a philosopher, then a fanatic. Voguié,
+in describing his physiognomy, says: "Never have I seen in any other
+face such an expression of accumulated suffering; all the agonies of
+flesh and spirit were stamped upon it; one read in it, better than in
+any book, the recollection of the prison, the long habits of terror,
+torture, and anguish. When he was angry, one seemed to see him in the
+prisoner's dock. At other times his countenance had the sad meekness of
+the aged saints in Russian sacred pictures."
+
+In his last years Dostoiëwsky was the idol of the youth of Russia, who
+not only awaited his novels most eagerly, but ran to consult him as they
+would a spiritual director, entreating his advice or consolation. The
+prestige of Turguenief was for the moment eclipsed. Tolstoï found his
+audience chiefly among _the intelligence_, and Dostoiëwsky of the
+lacerated heart was the object of the love and devotion of the new
+generation. When the monument to Puchkine was unveiled, in 1880, the
+popularity of Dostoiëwsky was at its height; when he spoke, the people
+sobbed in sympathy; they carried him in triumph; the students assaulted
+the drawing-rooms that they might see him near by, and one even fainted
+with ecstasy on touching him.
+
+He died, February 10, 1881, almost crazed with patriotic love and
+enthusiasm, like Gogol. The multitudes fought for the flowers that were
+strewn over his grave, as precious relics. His obsequies were an
+imposing manifestation. In a land without liberty this novelist was the
+Messiah of the new generations.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Tolstoï, Nihilist and Mystic.
+
+
+The youngest of the four great Russian novelists, the only one living
+to-day, and in general opinion the most excellent, is Léon, son of
+Nicholas Count Tolstoï. His biography may be put into a few lines; it
+has no element of the dramatic or curious. He was born in 1828; he was
+brought up, like most Russian noblemen of his class, in the country, on
+his patrimonial estates; he pursued his studies at the University of
+Kazan, receiving the cosmopolitan education--half French, half
+German--which is the nursery of the Russian aristocracy; he entered the
+military career, spent some years in the Caucasus attached to a regiment
+of artillery, was transferred to Sevastopol at his own desire, and
+witnessed there the memorable siege, the heroes of which he has
+immortalized in three of his volumes; on the conclusion of the peace he
+dedicated some time to travel; he resided by turns at both Russian
+capitals, frequenting the best society, his congenial atmosphere, yet
+without being captivated by it; he finally renounced the life of the
+world, married in 1860, and retired to his possessions near Toula, where
+he has lived in his own way for twenty-five years or more, and where
+to-day the famous novelist, the gentleman, the scholar, the
+sceptic,--after falling like Saul on the road to Damascus, blinded by a
+heavenly vision, and being converted, as he himself says,--shows
+himself, to all who go to visit him, dressed in peasant's garb, swinging
+the scythe or drawing the sickle.
+
+The more important biography of Count Tolstoï is that which pertains to
+his soul, always restless, always in pursuit of absolute truth and the
+divine essence,--a noble aspiration which ameliorates even error. There
+is no book of Tolstoï's but reveals himself, particularly so the
+autobiography entitled "My Memories," and certain passages of his
+novels, and lastly, his theologico-moral works. Tolstoï belongs to the
+class of souls that without God lose their hold on life; and yet, by his
+own confession, the novelist lived without any sort of faith or creed
+from his youth to maturity.
+
+Ever since the time when Tolstoï saw the dreams of his childhood
+vanish,--began to think for himself, and to experience the religious
+crisis which usually arrives between the ages of fifteen and
+twenty-five,--his soul, like a storm-tossed bark, has oscillated between
+pantheism and the blackest pessimism. What depths of despair a soul like
+that of Tolstoï can know, unable to rest upon the pillow of doubt, when
+it abnegates the noblest of human faculties,--thought and
+intelligence,--and makes choice of a merely vegetative life in
+preference to that of the rational being! Lost in the gloom of this dark
+wilderness, he falls into the region of absolute nihilism. He admits
+this in his confessions ("My Religion") when he says: "For thirty-five
+years of my life I have been a nihilist in the rigorous acceptation of
+the term; that is to say, not merely a revolutionary socialist, but a
+man who believes in nothing whatever."
+
+In fact, since the age of sixteen, as we read in his "Memoirs," his mind
+summoned to judgment all accepted and consecrated doctrines and
+philosophical opinions, and that which most suited the boy was
+scepticism, or rather a sort of transcendental egoism; he allows himself
+to think that nothing exists in the world but himself; that exterior
+objects are vain apparitions, no longer real to his mind; impressed and
+persuaded by this fixed idea, he believes he sees, materially, behind
+and all around him, the abyss of nothingness, and under the effect of
+this hallucination he falls into a state of mind that might be called
+truly motor madness, though it was transitory and momentary,--a state
+proper to the visionary peoples of the North, and to which they give an
+involved appellation difficult to pronounce; to translate it exactly,
+with all its shades of signification, I should have to mix and mingle
+together many words of ours, such as despair, fatalism, asceticism,
+intractability, brief delirium, lunacy, mania, hypochondria, and
+frenzy,--a species of dementia, in fine, which, snapping the mainspring
+of human will, induces inexplicable acts, such as throwing one's self
+into an abyss, setting fire to a house for the pleasure of it, holding
+the muzzle of a pistol to one's forehead and thinking, "Shall I pull the
+trigger?" or, on seeing a person of distinction, to pull him by the nose
+and shake him like a child. This momentary but real dementia--from which
+nobody is perhaps entirely exempt, and which Shakespeare has so
+admirably analyzed in some scenes of "Hamlet"--is to the individual what
+panic is to the multitude, or like _epidemia chorea_, or a suicidal
+monomania which sometimes seems to be in the air; its origin lies deep
+in the mysterious recesses of our moral being, where other strange
+psychical phenomena are hidden, such as, for example, the fascination of
+seeing blood flow, and the innate love of destruction and death.
+
+But let us turn to the real literary work of Tolstoï before referring to
+the actual cause of his perturbed conscience. After the beautiful story
+called "The Cossacks," he prepared himself, by other short novels, for
+works of larger importance. Among the former should be mentioned the
+sweet story of "Katia," which already reveals the profound reader of the
+human heart and the great realist writer. For Tolstoï, who knows how to
+cover vast canvases with vivid colors, is no less successful in small
+pictures; and his short novels, "The Death of Ivan Illitch" and the
+first part of "The Horse's Romance," for example, are hardly to be
+excelled. But his fame was chiefly assured by two great works,--"War and
+Peace" and "Anna Karénina." The former is a sort of cosmorama of Russian
+society before and during the French invasion, a series of pictures that
+might be called Russian national episodes. Like our own Galdos, Tolstoï
+studied the formative epoch of modern society, the heroic age in which
+the Great Captain of the century awoke in the nations of Europe, while
+endeavoring to subjugate them, a national conscience, just as he
+transmitted to them, though unwittingly, the impetus of the French
+Revolution. Russia heroically resisting the outsider is Tolstoï's hero.
+
+The action of the novel merely serves as a pretext to intertwine
+chapters of history, politics, and philosophy; it is rather a general
+panorama of Russian life than an artistic fiction. "War and Peace" is a
+complement to the poetic satire of Gogol, delineating the new society
+which was to rise upon the ruins of the past. If we apply the rules of
+composition in novel-writing, "War and Peace" cannot be defended; there
+is neither unity, nor hero, nor hardly plot; so loose and careless is
+the thread that binds the story together, and so slowly does the
+argument develop, that sometimes the reader has already forgotten the
+name of a character when he meets with it again ten chapters farther on.
+The vast incoherence of the Russian soul, its lack of mental discipline,
+its vagueness and liking for digressions, could have no more complete
+personification in literature.
+
+One therefore needs resolution to plunge into the perusal of works in
+which art mimics Nature, copying the inimitable extension of the Russian
+plains. I once asked a very clever friend how she was occupying herself.
+She replied, "I have fallen to the bottom of a Russian novel, and I
+cannot get out!" But scarcely has one finished the first two hundred
+pages, as a first mouthful, when one's interest begins to awaken,--not a
+mere vulgar curiosity as to events, but a noble interest of mind and
+heart. It is the stream of life, grand and majestic, which passes before
+our eyes like the expanse of a mighty flowing river. Tolstoï--more than
+Turguenief, who is always and first of all the artist, and more than
+Dostoiëwsky, who sees humanity from the point of view of his own
+turbulent mind and confused soul--Tolstoï produces a supreme and
+absolute impression of the truth, although, in the light of his
+harmonious union of faculties, it is impossible to say whether he hits
+the mark by means of external or internal realism,--whether he is more
+perfect in his descriptions, his dialogues, or his studies of character.
+In reading Tolstoï, we feel as though we were looking at the spectacle
+of the universe where nothing seems to us unreal or invented.
+
+Tolstoï's fictitious characters are not more vivid than his historical
+ones,--Napoleon or Alexander I., for example; he is as careful in the
+expression of a sublime sentiment as in a minute and vulgar detail.
+Every touch is wonderful. His description of a battle is amazing (and
+who else can describe a battle like Tolstoï!), but he is charming when
+he gives us the day-dreams and love-fancies of a child still playing
+with her dolls. And what a clear intuition he has of the motives of
+human actions! What a penetrating, unwavering, scrutinizing glance that
+"trieth the hearts and the reins," as saith the Scripture! Tolstoï does
+not exhaust his perspicacity in the study of instinct alone; with eagle
+eye he pierces the most complex souls, refined and enveloped in the veil
+of education,--courtiers, diplomats, princes, generals, ladies of high
+rank, and famous statesmen. No one else has described the drawing-room
+so exquisitely and so truly as Tolstoï; and it must be admitted that
+the picture of official good society is terribly embarrassing. Some
+chapters of "Anna Karénina" and "War and Peace" seem to exhale the warm
+soft air that greets us as we enter the door of a luxurious,
+aristocratic mansion. The master-painter controls the collectivity as
+well as the individual; he dissects the soul of the multitude, the
+spirit of the nation, with the same energy and dexterity as that of one
+man. The wonderful pictures of the invasion and burning of Moscow are
+continual examples of this.
+
+Is "War and Peace" a historical novel in the limited, archæological,
+false, and conventional conception? Certainly not. Tolstoï's historical
+novel has realized the conjunction of the novel and the epic, with the
+good qualities of both. In this novel--so broad, so deep, so human, and
+at times so patriotic, as Tolstoï understands patriotism--there is a
+subtle breath of nihilism, an essence of euphorbia, a poison of
+_ourare_, which colors the whole drift of Russian literature. This
+tendency is personified in the hero (if the book may be said to have one
+at all), Pierre Besukof, a true Sclavonic soul, expansive, full of
+unrest and disquietude, passionate, unstable, the character of a child
+united to the investigating intelligence of a philosopher,--a
+pre-nihilist (to coin a word) who goes in search of certainty and
+repose, and finds them not until he meets at last with one "poor in
+spirit," a wretched common soldier, a type of meek resignation and
+inconsequent fatalism, who shows him how to attain to his desires
+through a mystic indifferentism, a voluntary abrogation of the body,
+and a vegetative form of existence, in fact, a form of quietism, of
+Indian Nirvana.
+
+This same philosophical concept inspires all of Tolstoï's writings. Once
+a nihilist and now converted, culture and the exercise of reason are to
+him lamentable gifts; his ideal is not progression, but retrogression;
+the final word of human wisdom is to return to pure Nature, the eternal
+type of goodness, beauty, and truth. The Catholic Church has also
+honored the saintly lives of the poor in spirit, such as Pascual Bailon
+and Fray Junipero, _the Idiot_; but assuredly it has never presented
+them as models worthy of imitation in general, only as living examples
+of grace; and on the contrary, it is the intelligence of great thinkers,
+like Augustine, Thomas, and Buenaventura, that is revered and written
+about. In the whole catalogue of sins there is perhaps none more
+blasphemous than that of spurning the light given by the Creator to
+every creature. But to return to Tolstoï.
+
+His literary testament is to be found in "Anna Karénina," a novel but
+little less prolix than "War and Peace," published in 1877. While "War
+and Peace" pictured society at the beginning of the century, "Anna
+Karénina" pictures contemporary society,--a more difficult task, because
+it lacks perspective, yet an easier one, because one can better
+understand the mode of thought of one's contemporaries; therefore in
+"Anna Karénina" the epic quality is inferior to the lyric. The principal
+character is amply developed, and the study of passion is complete and
+profound.
+
+The argument in "Anna Karénina" is upon an illicit love, young, sincere,
+and overpowering. Tolstoï does not justify it; the whole tone of the
+book is austere. It would seem as though he proposed to
+demonstrate--indirectly, and according to the demands of art--that a
+generous soul cannot live outside the moral law; and that even when
+circumstances seem entirely favorable, and those obstacles which society
+and custom oppose to his passion have disappeared, the discord within
+him is enough to poison happiness and make life intolerable.
+
+In both of Tolstoï's novels there is much insistence on the necessity of
+believing and contemplating religious matters, the thirst of faith.
+Although Tolstoï observes the canon of literary impersonality with a
+rigorous care that is equal to that of Flaubert himself, yet it is
+plainly to be seen that Pierre Besukof in "War and Peace," and Levine in
+"Anna Karénina" are one and the same with the author, with his doubts,
+his painful anxiety to get away from indifferentism and to solve the
+eternal problem whose explanation Heine demanded of the waves of the
+North Sea. Tolstoï cannot consent to the idea of dying an atheist and a
+nihilist, or to living without knowing why or for what.
+
+Referring to the autobiography called "Memoirs," we see that from
+childhood he was troubled and tortured by the mystery of things about
+him and the hereafter. He tells there how his mind reasoned with,
+penetrated, and passed in review the diverse solutions offered to the
+great enigma; once he thought, like the Stoics, that happiness depends
+not upon circumstances, but upon our manner of accepting them, and that
+a man inured to suffering could not be afflicted by misfortunes;
+possessed with this idea he held a heavy dictionary upon his
+outstretched hand for five minutes, enduring frightful pains; he
+disciplined himself with a whip until his tears started. Then he turned
+to Epicurus; he remembered that life is short; that to man belongs only
+the disposition of the present; and under the influence of these ideas
+he abandoned his lessons for three days, and spent the time lying on his
+bed reading novels or eating sweets. He sees a horse, and at once
+inquires, "When this animal dies, where will his spirit go? Into the
+body of another horse? Into the body of a man?" And he wearies himself
+with questionings, with struggling over knotty problems, with thoughts
+upon thoughts, and all the while his ardent imagination conjures before
+him dreams of love, happiness, and fame.
+
+Beneath the restless effervescence of fancy and youth the religious
+sentiment was pulsating,--the strongest and most deeply rooted sentiment
+in his soul. One episode from the "Memoirs" will prove to us the innate
+religious nature of the novelist. He tells us that once, when he was
+still a child in his father's country-house, a certain beggar came to
+the door, a poor vagabond, one-eyed and pock-marked, half idiot and
+foolish,--one of those coarse clay vessels in which, according to
+contemporaneous Russian literature, the divine light is wont to be
+enclosed. He was offered shelter and hospitality, though none knew
+whence he came, nor why he followed a mysterious wandering life, always
+going from place to place, barefooted and poor, visiting the convents,
+distributing religious objects, murmuring incoherent words, and sleeping
+wherever a handful of straw was thrown down for him. Within the house,
+at supper-time, they fall to discussing him. Tolstoï's mother pities
+him, his father abuses him; the latter thinks him little better than a
+cheat and a sluggard, the former reveres him as one inspired of God, a
+holy man, who earns glory and reward every minute by wearing around his
+body a chain sixty pounds in weight. Nevertheless, the vagabond obtains
+shelter and food, and the children, whose curiosity has been excited by
+the discussion, go and hide in a dark room next to his, so as "to see
+Gricha's chain." Tolstoï was filled with awe in his dark corner to hear
+the beggar pray, to see him throw himself upon the floor and writhe in
+mystic transports amid the clanking of his chain. "Many things have
+happened since then," he exclaims, "many other memories have lost all
+importance for me; Gricha, the wanderer, has long since reached the end
+of his last journey, but the impression which he produced upon me will
+never fade; I shall never forget the feelings that he awoke in my soul.
+O Gricha! O great Christian! Thy faith was so ardent that thou couldst
+feel God near; thy love was so great that the words flowed of themselves
+from thy lips, and thou hadst not to ask thy reason for an examination
+of them. And how magnificently didst thou praise the Almighty when,
+words failing to express the feelings of thy heart, thou threwest
+thyself weeping upon the floor!" This episode of childhood will indeed
+never fade from the memory or the heart of Tolstoï. After seeking
+conviction and repose in arrogant human science and in philosophy,
+Tolstoï, like his two heroes, finds them at last in the meekness and
+simplicity of the most abject classes. Like his own Pierre Besukof, who
+receives the mystic illumination at the mouth of a common soldier who is
+to be shot by the French, or like his own Levine, who gets the same from
+a poor laboring peasant stacking hay, Tolstoï was converted by one
+Sutayef, one of those innumerable _mujiks_ who go about the country
+announcing the good tidings of the day of communist fraternity. "Five
+years ago," says Tolstoï in "My Religion," "my faith was given to me; I
+believed in the teachings of Jesus, and my whole life suddenly changed;
+I abhorred what I had loved, and loved what I had abhorred; what before
+seemed bad to me, now seemed good, and _vice versa_."
+
+It was a sad day for art when this change of spirit came upon Count
+Tolstoï. Its immediate effect was to suspend the publication of a novel
+he had begun, to make him despise his master-works, call them empty
+vanities, and accuse himself of having speculated with the public in
+arousing evil passions and fanning the fires of sensuality. A heretic
+and a rationalist (Tolstoï is clearly both; for what he calls his
+conversion is neither to Catholicism nor to the Greek Church), he now
+abuses the novel, like some persons nearer home with better intentions
+than intelligence, as being an incentive to loose actions, the Devil's
+bait, and agrees with Saint Francis de Sales that "novels are like
+mushrooms,--the best of them are good for nothing." Tolstoï has not cast
+aside the pen; he continues to write, but no more such superb pages as
+we find in "War and Peace" and "Anna Karénina," no more masterly
+silhouettes of fine society or the high ranks of the military, not the
+imperial profile of Alexander I. or the charming figure of the Princess
+Marie; he writes edifying apologies, Biblical parables dedicated to the
+enlightenment of village-folk; exegeses and religious controversies,
+professions of faith and dramas for the people. Has the great writer
+died? Nay, I believe that he still lives and breathes beneath the coarse
+tunic and rope girdle of the peasant-dress he wears, and which I have
+seen in his portraits; for in these same books, written with a moral and
+religious purpose, such as, for instance, that called "What to do?" in
+which he has endeavored to dispense with elegance and suppress beauty of
+rhetoric and style, the grace of the artist flows from his pen in spite
+of him; his descriptions are word-paintings, and the hand of the master
+is revealed in the admirable conciseness of diction; he controls every
+resource of art, and is inspired, will-he, nill-he. Tolstoï was right in
+reminding himself that genius is a divine gift, and there is no law that
+can annul it or cast it out.
+
+I cannot believe that Count Tolstoï will persevere in his present path.
+In the first place, I have little confidence in conversion to a
+rationalist faith; in the second place, from what I have heard of the
+disposition of the incomparable novelist, I think it impossible that he
+should long remain stationary and satisfied. In his vigorous, passionate
+nature imagination has the strongest part; he is enthusiastic, and given
+to extremes, like Prince Besukof in "War and Peace;" he is like a fiery
+charger dashing on at full gallop, that leaps and plunges, and stays not
+even upon the edge of the precipice. To-day, under the influence of an
+unbridled sentiment of compassion, he is playing the part of redeemer
+and apostle; he imitates in his proprietary mansion and in the
+neighboring towns the primitive fraternal customs of the early
+Christians; he follows the plough and swings the scythe, and waits on
+himself, rejecting every offer of service and everything that refines
+life. To-morrow, perhaps, his lofty understanding will tell him that he
+was not born to make shoes but novels, and he will perhaps regret having
+thrown away his best years, the prime of life and creative activity.
+
+At present, he has abandoned himself to the grace of God; and to those
+of us who are interested in intellectual phenomena, his religious ideas,
+which are closely interwoven with his imaginative creations, are
+extremely attractive. "My Religion" contains the fullest exposition of
+them. He states in it that the whole teaching of Jesus Christ is
+revealed in one single principle,--that of non-resistance to evil; it is
+to turn the other cheek, not to judge one's neighbor, not to be angry,
+not to kill. Tolstoï's experience with the Gospels is like that of the
+uninitiated who goes into a physical laboratory, and without having any
+previous instruction wishes to understand at once the management of this
+or that apparatus or machinery. The sublime and compendious message of
+the Son of Man has been for nineteen hundred years explained and defined
+by the loftiest minds in theology and philosophy, who have elucidated
+every real and profound phase of it as far as is compatible with human
+needs and laws; but Tolstoï, extracting at pleasure that passage from
+the sacred Book which most strikes his poetic imagination, deduces
+therefrom a social state impossible and superhuman; declares tribunals,
+prisons, authorities, riches, art, war, and armies, iniquitous and
+reprehensible.
+
+In his earliest years Tolstoï dwelt much on thoughts of the tragedy of
+war, and in "War and Peace" he gives utterance to some very original and
+extraordinary, and sometimes even most ingenious opinions concerning it.
+No historian that I know of can be compared to Tolstoï on this point;
+none has succeeded in putting in relief the mysterious moral force, the
+blind and irresistible impulse which determines the great collisions
+between two peoples independently of the external and trivial causes to
+which history attributes them. Nor has any one else brought out as
+clearly as Tolstoï the part played in war by the army, the anonymous
+mass always sacrificed to the personality of two or three celebrated
+chiefs,--not only in the campaign bulletins but in the narratives of
+Clio herself. I believe it will be long before such another man as
+Tolstoï will arise, not only in the realms of the art of depicting great
+battle-scenes, but so rich in the gifts of military psychology and
+physiology; one who can describe the trembling fear in the recruit as
+well as the strategic calculations of the commander; one who can
+transfer the impression made upon the soul by the whistling of the bombs
+carrying death through the air, as well as the sudden impulse that at a
+certain decisive moment seizes upon thousands of souls that were before
+vacillating and unstable, lifts them up to a heroic temperature, and
+decides, in spite of all strategic combinations, the fate of the battle.
+Though the strenuous enemy of war, Tolstoï is perhaps the man who has
+written about it better than any other in the world; in every other
+respect I can compare him to some one else, but not in this. In French
+writings I recall only one page that could be placed beside Tolstoï's;
+it is the admirable description of the battle of Waterloo, by Stendhal.
+
+In the name of his own gospel Tolstoï condemns not only human
+institutions in general, but the Church in particular (the Greek Church,
+of course), accusing it of having substituted the letter for the spirit,
+the word of the world for the word of God.
+
+It is not to our purpose to point out Tolstoï's theological errors, but
+his artistic and social errors fall within the scope of our
+investigations. We know that, applying the principle of non-resistance
+in the most rigorous acceptation, he proscribes war, and, as a logical
+consequence, he disapproves the sacred love of country, which he
+qualifies as an absurd prejudice, and reproaches himself whenever his
+own instincts lead him to wish for the triumph of Russia over other
+nations. In the light of his theory of non-resistance he condemns the
+revolution, and yet he is forwarding it all the while by his own radical
+socialism. Tolstoï's social ideal is, not to lift up and instruct the
+ignorant, nor even to suppress pauperism, but to create a state entirely
+composed of the poor, to annihilate wealth, luxury, the arts, all
+delicacy and refinement of custom, and lastly--the lips almost refuse to
+utter it--even cleanliness and care of the body. Yes, cleanliness and
+instruction, to wash and to learn, are, in Tolstoï's eyes, great sins,
+the cause of separation and estrangement among mankind.
+
+Besides this book in which he has set forth his religious ideas, he has
+written another called "My Confession" and "A Commentary on the
+Gospels." In "My Confession" he says that having lost faith when very
+young and given himself up for a time to the vanities of life, and to
+making literature in which he taught others what he himself knew nothing
+about, and then turning to science for light upon the enigma of life, he
+became at last inclined to suicide, when it suddenly occurred to him to
+look and see how the humbler classes lived, who suffer and toil and know
+the object of life; and it was borne in upon him that he must follow
+their example and embrace their simple faith.
+
+Thus Tolstoï formulated the principle enunciated by Gogol, and which is
+dominant in Russian literature,--the principle of a return to Nature,
+for which the way was prepared by Schopenhauer, and the sort of modern
+Buddhism which leads to a subjection of the reason to the animal and the
+idiot, and a feeling of unbounded tenderness and reverence for inferior
+creatures.
+
+I have devoted thus much attention to Tolstoï's social and religious
+ideas, not only because they are interlaced with his novels, and to a
+certain extent complement and explain them, but because Tolstoï, though
+he has allied himself with no political party, not even with the
+Sclavophiles, like Dostoiëwsky, is yet a representative of an order of
+ideas and sentiments common in his country and proper to it; he is the
+supreme artist of nihilism and pessimism, and at the same time the
+apostle of a Christian socialism newly derived from certain theories,
+dear to the Middle Ages, concerning the eternal Gospels; he is the
+interpreter, to the world of culture, society, letters, and arts, of
+that feverish mysticism which manifests itself in more violent forms
+among certain Russian sects, independent preachers, voluntary mortifiers
+of the body, the direct inheritors of those who, in dark ages past,
+declared themselves under the influence of spirits. The spectacle of the
+socialist fanatic united to the great writer, of the Quietist almost
+exceeding the limits of evangelical charity joined to the novelist of
+realism almost _à la_ Zola, is so interesting from an intellectual point
+of view, that it is hard to say which most attracts the attention,
+Tolstoï or his books.
+
+He has made great mistakes, not the least of which is his renunciation
+of novel-writing, if indeed that be his intention, though I have heard
+some Russians affirm the contrary. By condemning the arts and luxuries
+of urban life, and admitting only the good of the agricultural, for the
+sake of its simplicity and laboriousness, instead of helping on the
+Golden Age, he compels a retrogression to the age of the animal, as
+described by the Roman poet,--"the troglodyte snores, being satisfied
+with acorns." By anathematizing letters, poetry, theatres, balls,
+banquets, and all the pleasures of intelligence and civilization, he
+condemns the most delicate instincts that we possess, sanctions
+barbarism, justifies a new irruption of Huns and Vandals, and endeavors
+to arrest the faculty of the perception of the Beautiful, which is a
+glorious attribute of God himself. And all this for what? To find at the
+end of this harsh penance not the love of Jesus Christ, who bids us lean
+on his breast and rest after our labors, but a pantheistic numen, a
+blind and deaf deity hidden behind a gray mist of abstractions. With
+sorrow we hear Tolstoï, the great artist, blaspheme when he would pray;
+hear him spurn the gifts of Heaven, condemn that form of art in which
+his name shone brightest and shed lustre on his country and all the
+world,--calling the novel oil poured upon the flames of sensual love, a
+licentious pastime, food for the senses, and a noxious diversion. We see
+him, under the hallucination of his mysticism, making shoes and drawing
+water with the hands that God gave him for weaving forms and designs of
+artistic beauty into the texture of his marvellous narratives.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+French Realism and Russian Realism.
+
+
+The Russian naturalistic school seems to have reached its culmination in
+Tolstoï. Concerning Russian naturalism I would say a few words more
+before leaving the subject. The opinions expressed are impartial, though
+long confirmed in my own mind.
+
+In recapitulating half a century of Russian literature, we see that this
+_natural school_ followed close upon an imitation of foreign style and
+an effervescence of romanticism; it was founded by Gogol, and defended
+by Bielinsky, the estimable critic who did for Russia what Lessing did
+for Germany. The _natural school_ professed the principle of adhering
+with strict fidelity to the reality, and of copying life exactly in all
+its humblest and most trivial details. And this new school, born before
+romanticism was well worn-out, grew and prospered quickly, producing a
+harvest of novelists even more fertile than the poets of the antecedent
+school. The date of its appearance was the period denominated _the
+forties_,--the decade between 1840 and 1850.
+
+The general European political agitation, not being able to manifest
+itself in Russia by means of insurrections, tumults, and proclamations,
+took an intellectual form; and young Russia, returning from German
+universities intoxicated with metaphysics, saturated with liberalism and
+philanthropy, was eager to pour out its soul, and give vent to its
+plethora of ideas. A country without lecture-halls, free-press, or
+political liberty of any sort, had to recur to art as the only refuge.
+And making use of the sort of subterfuge that love employs when it hides
+itself under the veil of friendship, the political radical called
+himself in Russia a sort of left-handed Hegelian, to invent a phrase.
+
+Thus Russian letters, in assuming a national character, showed a strong
+social and political bias, which contains the clew to its qualities and
+defects, and especially to its originality. The academic idea of
+literature as a gentle solace and noble recreation has been for the last
+half-century less applicable in Russia than anywhere else in the world;
+never has literature in Russia become a profession as in France, where
+the writer is prone to become more or less the skilful artisan, quick to
+observe the variations of public taste, what sort of condiment most
+tickles its palate, and straightway takes advantage of it,--an artisan
+satisfied, with honorable exceptions, to sell his wares, and to snap his
+fingers at the world, at humanity, at France, and even at Paris,
+exclusive of that strip of asphalt which runs from the Madeleine to the
+Porte St. Martin. Russian literature stands for more than this;
+persuaded of the importance of its task, and that it is charged with a
+great social work and the conduct of the progress of its country,--Holy
+Russia, which is itself called to regenerate the world,--neither glory
+nor gold will satisfy it; its object is to enlighten and to teach the
+generations. It is but a short step from this to an admonitory and
+directive literature; and the noblest Russian geniuses have stumbled
+over this propensity at the end of their literary career. Gogol finished
+by publishing edificatory epistles, believing them more advantageous
+than "Dead Souls;" an analogous condition has to-day befallen Tolstoï.
+
+In spite of the severity of Nicholas I., literature enjoyed a relative
+ease and freedom under his sceptre, either because the Autocrat had a
+fondness for it, or was not afraid of it. Under the shelter afforded by
+literature, political Utopias, nihilistic germs, subversive
+philosophies, and dreams of social regeneration were fostered. The
+novel--more directly, actively, and efficaciously than the most careful
+treatises or occasional articles--propagated the seeds of revolution,
+and being filled with sociological ideas, was devoted to the study of
+the poor and humble classes, and was marked by realism and sincerity of
+design; while the flood of indignation consequent upon repressive and
+violent measures broke forth into copious satire.
+
+In this development of a literature aspiring to transform society, the
+love of beauty for beauty's sake plays a secondary part, though it is
+the proper end and aim of all forms of art. Therefore that which
+receives least attention in the Russian novel is perfection of
+form,--plot and method best revealing the æsthetic conception. It
+abounds in superb pages, admirable passages, prodigies of observation,
+and truth; but, except in the case of Turguenief, the composition is
+always defective, and there is a sort of incoherence, of palpable and
+fearful obscurity, amid which we seem to discover gigantic shapes,
+vaguer but grander than those we are accustomed to see about us.
+
+During a period of twenty or thirty years the novel and the critic were
+everything to Russia; the national intelligence lived in them, and
+within their precincts it elaborated a free world after its own heart.
+Like a maiden perpetually shut away from the outside world, dreaming of
+some romantic lover whom she has never known or seen, consoling herself
+with novels, and fancying that all the fine adventures in them have
+happened to herself, Russia has written into the national novel her own
+visionary nature, her thirst for political adventures, and her eagerness
+for transcendental reforms. One most important reform may be said to be
+directly the work of the novel, namely, the emancipation of the serfs.
+
+When the more clement Alexander II. succeeded the austere Nicholas I.,
+and the restraints laid upon the political press were loosened so that
+it could spread its wings, the novel suffered in consequence. The hope
+of great events to come, the approaching liberation of the serfs, the
+formation of a sort of liberal cabinet, the efflorescence of new
+illusions that bud under every new régime, concurred to infuse the
+literature with civic and social tendencies. Beautiful and bright and
+poetical is art for art's sake, and as Puchkine understood it; but at
+the hour of doubt and strife we ask even art for positive service and
+practical solutions. Who stops to see whether the life-preservers thrown
+to drowning men struggling with death are of elegant workmanship?
+
+In speaking of nihilism I have mentioned the most important one of the
+directive Russian novels, called "What to Do?" by the martyr
+Tchernichewsky,--a work of no great literary merit, but which was the
+gospel of young Russia. In his wake followed a host of novelists of this
+tendency, but inferior, obscure, and without even the inventive power of
+their leader in dressing up their ideas as symbolic personages, like his
+ascetic socialist Rakmetof, who laid himself down upon a board stuck
+through with nail-points. In their turn came the reactionaries, or
+rather the conservatives, and in novels as absurd as those of their
+predecessors they clothed the nihilists in purple and gold; it finally
+resulted that everybody was as ready to produce a novel as to write a
+serious article, or to handle a gun at a barricade. If any one of the
+neophytes of the school of directive novels possessed genius, it was
+swallowed up in the froth of political passion.
+
+As an accomplice in guilt, criticism did not weigh these works of art in
+the golden scales of Beauty, but in the leaden ones of Utility. There
+were critics who went so far as to declare war upon art, undertaking to
+ruin the fame of great authors, because they wrought not in the
+interests of transcendentalism; their motive was like that which
+impelled the early Christians to destroy the great works of paganism.
+The popular novelists condemned the verses of Puchkine and the music of
+Glinka, in the name of the down-trodden and suffering people, just as
+Tolstoï, in remembrance of the hungry family he had just visited,
+refused to partake of the appetizing meal offered him by servants in
+livery. As art had not achieved the amelioration of the people's
+condition, they considered it not merely a futile recreation, but
+actually an obnoxious thing. Bielinsky, with a taint of this same mania,
+at last entertained scruples against the pure pleasure enjoyed in
+contemplation of the beautiful, and was almost inclined to stop his ears
+and shut his eyes so as not to fall into æsthetic sins.
+
+Are the authors and critics the only ones responsible for this directive
+character of most Russian novels? No. Two factors are requisite to the
+work of art,--the artist and the public. The Russians exact more of the
+novel than we; the Latins, at least, regard the novel as a means of
+beguiling a few evening hours, or a summer siesta,--a way to kill time.
+Not so the Russians. They demand that the novelist shall be a prophet, a
+seer of a better future, a guide of new generations, a liberator of the
+serf, able to face tyranny, to redeem the country, to reveal the ideal,
+in fine, an evangelist and an apostle. Given this conception, it ought
+not to astonish us that the students drag Turguenief's carriage through
+the streets, that they faint with emotion at Dostoiëwsky's touch, nor
+that the enthusiasm of the multitude--in itself contagious--should
+sometimes fill the heads of the novelists themselves. The novelists are,
+in reality and truth, a faithful echo of the aspirations and needs of
+the souls that feed upon their works. The Occidentalism of Turguenief,
+the mysticism of Dostoiëwsky, the pessimism of Tolstoï, the charity, the
+revolutionary spirit,--each is a manifestation of the national
+atmosphere condensed in the brains of two or three foremost geniuses.
+Who can doubt the reflex action which the anonymous multitude exercises
+on eminent persons, when he contemplates the great Russian novelists?
+
+There is a difference, however, between the novel which is purposely
+directive, the novel with a moral, so to speak, and the novel which is
+guided by a social drift, by "the spirit of the times." The former is
+liable to mediocrity and flatness, the latter is the patrimony of the
+loftiest minds. This spirit, this social sympathy, issued from every
+pore of Ivan Turguenief, the most able and exquisite of them all,
+indirectly and without detriment to his impersonality, and with the full
+conviction that it ought to be so; and novel-writing is useful in this
+way and no other. He says as much in a sort of autobiographical
+fragment, in which he explains how and why he left his country: "I felt
+that I must at all costs get away from my enemy in order the better to
+deal him a telling blow. And my enemy bore a well-known name; it was
+serfdom, slavery. Under the name of slavery I included everything that I
+proposed to fight without truce and to the death. This was my oath, and
+I was not alone in subscribing thereto. And in order to be faithful to
+it I came to the Occident."
+
+If I am not mistaken, the great difference between French and Russian
+naturalism lies in this predominant characteristic of social expression.
+The defects and merits of French naturalism are bound up with its
+condition as a purely literary insurrection and protest against the
+rhetoric of romanticism. In vain Zola exerts his Titanic energies to
+impress on his works this social significance, whose invigorating power
+is not unheeded by his perspicacious mind. He fights against egoism
+without and perhaps within; but only in the two which he conceives to be
+his master works, "L'Assommoir" and "Germinal," has he approached the
+desired mark.
+
+The condition of France is diametrically opposed to that of Russia. I am
+only repeating the opinion of a large number of illustrious Frenchmen
+who have judged themselves without any great amount of optimism. They
+say, "We are an old people, depraved and worn-out, our illusions
+vanished, our hopes faded. We have proved all things, and now we cannot
+be moved either by military glory which has undone and ruined us, or by
+revolutions which have discredited us and made Europe look upon us with
+suspicion. We have no religious faith, nor even social faith. We desire
+peace, and, if possible, that industry and commerce may flourish; we are
+not yet bereft of patriotism, and we expect art to entertain us, which
+is difficult,--for what new thing remains for the artist to discover?
+Criticism, spread abroad among the multitudes, has killed inspiration;
+the generative forces are exhausted. We demand so much of the novelists
+that they are at a loss how to whet our appetites, and neither ugliness,
+nor unnatural crime, nor monstrous aberrations are sufficient to
+stimulate our cloyed palates. They are touched with our coldness, and,
+like ourselves, spiritless and inert, sick and disgusted, they feel
+beforehand the irremediable and fatal decadence that is coming upon us,
+and they believe that art in the Latin races will die with the century."
+Thus mourn some of the men of France, and to my mind they have a basis
+of truth.
+
+The artist never goes beyond the line marked out by his epoch. And how
+should he? Of course there is, in every work of art, something that is
+the exclusive property of the individual, something of his own genius;
+but as the nature of the fish is to swim, but swim it cannot out of the
+water, and the nature of the bird is to fly, but lacking air it flies
+not, so, given a social atmosphere, the artist modifies and adapts
+himself to it. The novelist cannot have an ideal different from the
+society which reads him; and if one but perceives the rigor and
+inflexibility of this law, one may avoid many foolish sentiments
+expressed with the intent to censure the immorality of the novel. Take
+any one of them, Tolstoï's, Zola's, Goncourt's, Dostoiëwsky's, look at
+it well, study it closely, and you will find in it the exact expression
+and even the artistic interpretation of a tendency of his epoch, his
+nation, and his race. This is as evident as that two and two make four.
+Novelists are what they must be rather than what they would be, and it
+is not in their power to make a world after their own hearts or
+according to any ideal pattern.
+
+Melchior de Voguié, it seems to me, has not recognized this truth in
+accusing French novelists of materialism, dryness, egoism, and paganism,
+and has not taken into account the fact that the reflex action of the
+public upon the novelist is greater than that of the latter upon the
+former, or at least that the novelist is the first to be influenced,
+although afterward his works have an influence in turn, and in lesser
+proportion.
+
+"The French realists," says Voguié, "ignore the better part of humanity,
+which is the spirit." This is true; and I have said and thought for a
+long time that realism, to realize to the full its own program, must
+embrace matter and spirit, earth and heaven, human and superhuman. I
+entirely agree with Voguié in believing that naturalism--or to call it
+by a more comprehensive name, the School of Truth or Realism--should not
+close its eyes to the mystery that is beyond rational explanations, nor
+deny the divine as a known quantity. And so entirely is this my opinion,
+that I could never consent to the narrow and short-sighted idea of some
+who imagine that a Catholic, by the act of admitting the supernatural,
+the miraculous, and the verity of revelation, is incapacitated for
+writing a profound, serious, and good novel, a realistic novel, a novel
+that shall breathe a fragrant essence of truth. Aside from the fact that
+literary as well as scientific methods do not presuppose a negation of
+religion, when did it ever happen that Catholicism, in the days of
+liveliest faith, impeded the production of the best of realist novels,
+as for example "Don Quixote"? The truth is that the novel, given the
+epic element, will be neither Catholic nor religious in those societies
+which are neither one nor the other. The lyric element does not demand
+this harmony with society: a great Catholic poet may be found in a most
+agnostic country, but not a Catholic novelist.
+
+The novel is a clear mirror, a faithful expression of society, and the
+actual conditions of the novel in Europe are a proof of it. I think I
+have shown that the Russian novel reflects the dreams, sentiments, and
+changes of that country; it appears revolutionary and subversive,
+because the spirit of both Russian _intelligence_ and Russian educated
+people is so. In France, where to-day, in spite of the efforts of the
+spiritual and eclectic school, the traditions of the Encyclopædia have
+prevailed together with a frivolous sensualist materialism, the novel
+follows this road also, and without meaning to strike up Béranger's
+famous refrain,--
+
+    "C'est la faute de Rousseau,
+     C'est la faute de Voltaire,"
+
+I affirm that _animalism_, determined materialism, pessimism, and
+_decadentism_ may be explained by the light of the great writers of the
+eighteenth century, not only through their literary influence, but
+because the society which pores over the novels of the present day is
+the daughter of the French Revolution, and the latter is the daughter of
+the Encyclopædia. Who does not know the relation which exists between
+the novel and the fashion in England, and how the former is conditioned,
+shaped, and limited exclusively by the latter? In Germany another
+curious phenomenon is apparent. The novel in vogue is historical,--a
+condition appropriate to a country where everybody is interested only in
+epic life and the contingency of war.
+
+On account of this interdependence, or, in fact, unity, of the novel and
+society, I cannot agree with Voguié when he says that the books that are
+influencing and stimulating the multitudes, the general ideas that are
+transforming Europe, are proceeding nowadays not from France but from
+Russia. It may be true of the Northern races, but of Latin races it
+cannot be more than partially and indirectly so. Does Voguié find in the
+French novel as in the Russian the latent fermentation of the
+evangelical spirit, or are the currents of mysticism that impregnate
+Russia circulating through France?
+
+Russia is Christian, in spite of German materialist philosophers who for
+a time set her brains in a whirl, but whom she has finally rejected, as
+the sea gives up a dead body; and if I have succeeded in showing clearly
+the forms adopted by the social revolution in Russia, and the strange
+analogies these sometimes bear to the actions of the early Christians,
+if I have shown the love of sacrifice, the ardent charity, the
+sympathetic pity and tenderness not only toward the oppressed but toward
+even the criminal, the despised, the idiot, and the outcast, which
+characterize this society and this literature; if I have shown the
+degrees of mystic fervor by which it is permeated and consumed,--no one
+need be surprised at my statement and conclusion that although Buddha
+and Schopenhauer have a goodly share in the present condition of Russian
+thought, the larger part is nevertheless Christian. It is my opinion
+that the world is more Christian now than in the Middle Ages, not as to
+faith, but as to sentiments and customs; and if in hours of despondency
+I were sometimes inclined to doubt the efficiency of the word of Christ,
+the sight of its prodigious effects in Russia would certainly correct my
+doubts. The heterodox nature of the Russian faith is not a nullification
+of it. The most heretical heretic, if he be a sincere Christian, has
+more of truth than error in his faith. But error is like sin: one drop
+of poison is enough to permeate a glass of pure water; yet it is certain
+that there is more water than poison in the glass.
+
+To return to the literary question, the Russian novel demonstrates, if
+such demonstration be necessary, the futility of the censures directed
+against naturalism, and which confound general principles with the
+circumstances and social conditions which environ the novelist. The
+Russian novel proves that all the precepts of the art of naturalism may
+be realized and fulfilled without committing any of those sins of which
+it is accused by those who know it through the medium of half a dozen
+French novels. The charge that is oftenest made against the French
+realist is the having painted pictures of passion and vice too nakedly
+and with too much candor,--and the charge is certainly not without
+foundation; and it may be added that some novelists overload the canvas
+and go to the extreme of making humanity out to be more sinful than even
+physical possibilities admit; but they must not be made to bear the
+responsibility alone; the public that gloats and feeds on these comfits,
+and grumbles when they are not provided,--the public, I say, must share
+it. In Russia, where the readers do not ask the novelist for intricate
+plot or high-colored sketches, the novel is chaste: I do not mean in the
+English sense of being moral with an air of affectation, and frowns and
+false modesty; I mean chaste without effort, like an ancient marble
+statue. In "Anna Karénina" Tolstoï depicts an illicit passion,
+extravagant, vehement, full of youthful ardor; yet there is not a page
+of "Anna Karénina" which cannot be read aloud and without a blush. In
+"War and Peace" the most candid pages are models of decorum, of true
+decorum, such as education, reason, and the dignity of man approve. In
+"Crime and Punishment" Dostoiëwsky introduces the character of a
+prostitute; but this character is no such romantic creature as Marie
+Gautier or Nana. She is not made poetical, nor is she embellished or
+exaggerated; yet she produces an impression (let him read the novel who
+doubts) of purity, of suffering, of austerity. In Turguenief, by far the
+most sensual of the great Russian novelists, and in Pisemsky, of
+secondary rank, there is so much art in the disposition and harmony of
+detail and description, that the definitive impression, while less
+severe than in the case of the two others mentioned, is equally noble
+and lofty.
+
+Are they any the less Realists for this? They are rather more so, in my
+opinion. In order to carry out the great precept of modern art, the
+novelist must copy life,--the life that we live and that unfolds about
+us every day. But life does not unfold as it is represented in many
+novels that are the product of French naturalism. The Zola school makes
+use of abstraction and accumulation in uniting in one scene and one
+character all the aberrations, abominations, and vices that only a
+collection of profligates could be capable of, with the result offered
+us in pictures such as the house in "Pot-Bouille," that should be
+handled with tongs for fear of soiling one's fingers. We turn to the
+reality, and we find that all these colors exist, that all these vices
+are actual,--yes, but one at a time, intermingled with a thousand good
+or commonplace things; then we are in a rage with the novelist, and ever
+after bear him a grudge for having a mania for ugliness. The impression
+which life makes upon us is quite different; the alternative of good is
+evil, of poetry is vulgarity; we demand a recognition of this from the
+novelist, and this the Russian novelists have given us, yet without
+leaving the firm ground of realist art. They present the material, the
+bestial, the trivial, the vile, the obscene, the passionate, as they
+appear in life, in due proportion and no more.
+
+We have also to thank them for having recognized the psychical life, and
+the spiritual, moral, and religious needs of mankind. And I would make a
+distinction between the moral spirit of the English novel and the
+Russian. The English judge of human actions according to preconceived
+notions derived from a general standard accepted by society and
+officially imposed by custom and the Protestant religion. The Russian
+moralist feels deeper and thinks higher; morality is not for him a
+system of narrow and inalterable rules, but the aspiration of a creature
+advancing toward a higher plane, and learning his lessons in the hard
+school of truth and the great theatre of art.
+
+The spiritual element in the Russian novel is to me one of its most
+singular merits. The novel should not teach the supernatural, nor be the
+instrument of any religious propaganda. But from this premise to a
+condition of mutilation and mere dry chronicle of physiological
+functions is a long way. There are countless facts of our existence that
+cannot be explained by the most determined materialist; it is not the
+duty of art to explain them, but art cannot justly ignore them. Émile
+Zola is both a thinker and an artist. As an artist he is admirable, and
+is hardly behind Tolstoï either in poetic or descriptive faculties; but
+with the artist he combines the philosopher--may I call it so?--the
+philosopher of the lowest and coarsest fibre, whose influence upon
+French naturalism has been most pernicious, and has greatly limited the
+scope of the novel in his country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In conclusion, it is my opinion that the only way to understand the
+naturalistic movement is in connection with its social environment; the
+impulse of our age toward a representation of truth in art everywhere
+prevails, and everywhere the novel has become a result of observation,
+an analytical study, as we notice in a general view of European
+literature for the last forty years. The century which began with lyric
+poetry is closing with a triumphant novel.
+
+But the great principle of reality is differently applied in different
+countries. Why was romanticism so much the same in England, Germany,
+Spain, and Russia? Because it was chiefly rhetoric,--a literary protest,
+an artistic insurrection. And why the differences between French
+naturalism, the Russian _natural school_, English and Spanish realism,
+and Italian _verismo_? Because each one of these phases of the religion
+of truth is adequate to the country that conceived it, and to the hour
+and the occasion upon which it is focused. It is no objection that
+between these various forms there is close communication and relation.
+Edmund de Goncourt once remarked to me that the Russian novel is not so
+original as people think, for besides the marked influence of Hoffmann
+and Edgar Poe upon the genius of Dostoiëwsky, it would not be difficult
+to trace in the other great writers the inspiration of Balzac, Flaubert,
+Stendhal, and George Sand. Pie was right; and yet Russian literature is
+not the less indigenous.
+
+I should always prefer the art that is disinterested, that carries
+within itself its aim and object, to the art that is directive, with a
+moral purpose; between the art that is pagan and the art that is
+imbecile, I should choose the pagan. If we Spaniards, who are like the
+Russians, at once an ancient and a young people, still ignorant of what
+the future may lead us to, and never able to make our traditions
+harmonize with our aspirations,--if we could succeed in incorporating in
+our novel not merely bits of fragmentary reality, artistic
+individualisms, but the spirit, the heart, the blood of our country,
+what we are doing, what we are feeling as a whole,--it would indeed be
+well. Yet I think this impossible, not for lack of talent but for lack
+of preparation on the part of the public, upon whom at present the novel
+exercises no influence at all. The novel is read neither quantitatively
+nor qualitatively in Spain. As to quantity, let the authors who publish,
+and the booksellers who sell, speak what they know; of the quality, let
+the numerous lovers of Montepin and the eager readers of the
+translations in the _feuilletines_ tell us. The serious and profound
+novel dies here without an echo; criticism makes no comment upon it, and
+the public ignores its appearance. Is there a single modern novel that
+is popular, in the true meaning of the word, among us? Has any novel had
+any influence at all in Spanish political, social, or moral life?
+
+On coming from France, I have often noticed a significant fact, which
+is, that at the French station of Hendaye there is a stand for the sale
+of all the popular and celebrated novels; while at Irun, just across the
+frontier, only a few steps away, but Spanish, there is nothing to be had
+but a few miserable, trashy books, and not a sign of even our own best
+novelists' works. From the moment we set foot on Spanish soil the
+novel, as a social element, disappears. It is sad to say, but it is so
+true that it would be madness to build any illusions on this matter. And
+yet the instinct, the desire, the inexplicable anxiety of the artist to
+embody and transmit the great truths of life, the impulse that lifts men
+to great deeds, and to desire to be the voice of the people, is secretly
+stimulating the Spanish novelists to break the ice of general
+indifference, to put themselves in communication with the sixty million
+souls and intelligences that to-day speak our language. Is the goal
+which we desire to attain inaccessible? Perhaps; but as the immense
+difficulties in the way of penetrating to the Arctic regions and the
+discovery of the open Polar Sea are but an incentive to the explorer, so
+the impossible in this undertaking should incite and spur on the masters
+of the Iberian novel.
+
+A few words of humble confession, and I have done.
+
+I feel that there is a certain indecision and ambiguity running through
+these essays of mine. I could not quite condemn the revolution in
+Russia, nor could I altogether approve its doctrines and discoveries. A
+book must reflect an intellectual condition which, in my case, is one of
+uncertainty, vacillation, anxiety, surprise, and interest. My vision has
+not been perfectly clear, therefore I have offered no conclusive
+judgments,--for conviction and affirmation can only proceed from the
+mind they have mastered. Russia is an enigma; let those solve it who
+can,--I could not. The Sphinx called to me; I looked into the depths of
+her eyes, I felt the sweet and bewildering attraction of the unknown, I
+questioned her, and like the German poet I wait, with but moderate hope,
+for the answer to come to me, borne by voices of the ocean of Time.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41495 ***