RUSSIAN
LITERATURE
BY
P. KROPOTKIN
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMV
_Copyright, 1905, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
_Published, April, 1905_
PREFACE
This book originated in a series of eight lectures on Russian
Literature during the Nineteenth Century which I delivered in March,
1901, at the Lowell Institute, in Boston.
In accepting the invitation to deliver this course, I fully realised
the difficulties which stood in my way. It is by no means an easy task
to speak or to write about the literature of a country, when this
literature is hardly known to the audience or to the readers. Only
three or four Russian writers have been properly and at all completely
translated into English; so that very often I had to speak _about_
a poem or a novel, when it could have been readily characterised by
simply reading a passage or two _from_ it.
However, if the difficulties were great, the subject was well worth
an effort. Russian literature is a rich mine of original poetic
thought. It has a freshness and youthfulness which is not found to
the same extent in older literatures. It has, moreover, a sincerity
and simplicity of expression which render it all the more attractive
to the mind that has grown sick of literary artificiality. And it has
this distinctive feature, that it brings within the domain of Art--the
poem, the novel, the drama--nearly all those questions, social and
political, which in Western Europe and America, at least in our present
generation, are discussed chiefly in the political writings of the day,
but seldom in literature.
In no other country does literature occupy so influential a position
as it does in Russia. Nowhere else does it exercise so profound and so
direct an influence upon the intellectual development of the younger
generation. There are novels of Turguéneff, and even of the less-known
writers, which have been real stepping stones in the development of
Russian youth within the last fifty years.
The reason why literature exercises such an influence in Russia is
self-evident. There is no open political life, and with the exception
of a few years at the time of the abolition of serfdom, the Russian
people have never been called upon to take an active part in the
framing of their country’s institutions.
The consequence has been that the best minds of the country have chosen
the poem, the novel, the satire, or literary criticism as the medium
for expressing their aspirations, their conceptions of national life,
or their ideals. It is not to blue-books, or to newspaper leaders, but
to its works of Art that one must go in Russia in order to understand
the political, economical, and social ideals of the country--the
aspirations of the history-making portions of Russian society.
As it would have been impossible to exhaust so wide a subject as
Russian Literature within the limits of this book, I have concentrated
my chief attention upon the modern literature. The early writers, down
to Púshkin and Gógol--the founders of the modern literature--are dealt
with in a short introductory sketch. The most representative writers in
poetry, the novel, the drama, political literature, and art criticism,
are considered next, and round them I have grouped the less prominent
writers, of whom the most important are mentioned in short notes. I am
fully aware that every one of the latter presents something individual
and well worth knowing; and that some of the less-known authors have
even succeeded occasionally in better representing a given current
of thought than their more famous colleagues; but in a book which is
intended to give only a broad, general idea of the subject, the plan I
have pursued was necessary.
Literary criticism has always been well represented in Russia, and the
views taken in this book must needs bear traces of the work of our
great critics--Byelínskiy, Tchernyshévskiy, Dobrolúboff, and Písareff,
and their modern followers, Mikhailóvsky, Arsénieff, Skabitchévskiy,
Venguéroff, and others. For biographical data concerning contemporary
writers I am indebted to the excellent work on modern Russian
literature by the last named author, and to the eighty volumes of the
admirable _Russian Encyclopædic Dictionary_.
I take this opportunity to express my hearty thanks to my old friend,
Mr. Richard Heath, who was kind enough to read over all this book, both
in manuscript and in proof.
BROMLEY, KENT,
_January, 1905_.
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1
The Russian Language--Early folk literature:
Folklore--Songs--Sagas--_Lay of Igor’s Raid_--Annals--Mongolian
Invasion; its consequences--Correspondence between John
IV. and Kúrbskiy--Religious splitting--Avvakúm’s _Memoirs_--The
eighteenth century--Peter I. and his contemporaries:
Tretiakóvskiy--Lomonósoff--Sumarókoff--The
times of Catherine II: Derzhávin--Von Wízin--The
Freemasons: Nóvikoff--Radíscheff--Early nineteenth century:
Karamzin and Zhukóvskiy--The Decembrists--Ryléeff.