ART-CRITICISM; CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS 263
POLITICAL LITERATURE--Difficulties of censorship--The circles:
Westerners and Slavophiles--Political literature abroad:
Herzen--Ogaryóff--Bakunin--Lavróff--Stepniak--_The Contemporary_ and
Tchernyshévskiy--SATIRE: Schedrin (Saltykoff)--ART-CRITICISM--Its
importance in Russia--Byelinskiy--Dobrolúboff--Písareff--Mihailóvskiy--
Tolstóy’s _What is Art?_--CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS:
Oertel--Korolenko--Present drift of literature--Merezhovskiy--
Boborykin--Potápenko--Tchehoff.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 319
INDEX 321
PART I
Introduction: The Russian Language
CHAPTER I
The Russian Language--Early folk literature:
Folk-lore--Songs--Sagas--_Lay of Igor’s Raid_--Annals--The
Mongol Invasion; its consequences--Correspondence between
John IV. and Kúrbiskíy--Split in the Church--Avvakúm’s
_Memoirs_--The eighteenth century: Peter I. and his
contemporaries--Tretiakóvsky--Lomonósoff--Sumarókoff--The times
of Catherine II.--Derzhávin--Von Wízin--The Freemasons: Nóvikoff;
Radíscheff--Early nineteenth century: Karamzín and Zhukóvskiy--The
Decembrists--Ryléeff.
One of the last messages which Turguéneff addressed to Russian writers
from his death-bed was to implore them to keep in its purity “that
precious inheritance of ours--the Russian language.” He who knew in
perfection most of the languages spoken in Western Europe had the
highest opinion of Russian as an instrument for the expression of
all possible shades of thought and feeling, and he had shown in his
writings what depth and force of expression, and what melodiousness of
prose, could be obtained in his native tongue. In his high appreciation
of Russian, Turguéneff--as will often be seen in these pages--was
perfectly right. The richness of the Russian language in words is
astounding: many a word which stands alone for the expression of a
given idea in the languages of Western Europe has in Russian three or
four equivalents for the rendering of the various shades of the same
idea. It is especially rich for rendering various shades of human
feeling--tenderness and love, sadness and merriment--as also various
degrees of the same action. Its pliability for translation is such that
in no other language do we find an equal number of most beautiful,
correct, and truly poetical renderings of foreign authors. Poets of
the most diverse character, such as Heine and Béranger, Longfellow
and Schiller, Shelley and Goethe--to say nothing of that favourite
with Russian translators, Shakespeare--are equally well turned into
Russian. The sarcasm of Voltaire, the rollicking humour of Dickens,
the good-natured laughter of Cervantes are rendered with equal ease.
Moreover, owing to the musical character of the Russian tongue, it
is wonderfully adapted for rendering poetry in the same metres as
those of the original. Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” (in two different
translations, both admirable), Heine’s capricious lyrics, Schiller’s
ballads, the melodious folk-songs of different nationalities, and
Béranger’s playful _chansonnettes_, read in Russian with exactly the
same rhythms as in the originals. The desperate vagueness of German
metaphysics is quite as much at home in Russian as the matter-of-fact
style of the eighteenth century philosophers; and the short, concrete
and expressive, terse sentences of the best English writers offer no
difficulty for the Russian translator.
Together with Czech and Polish, Moravian, Serbian and Bulgarian,
as also several minor tongues, the Russian belongs to the great
Slavonian family of languages which, in its turn--together with the
Scandinavo-Saxon and the Latin families, as also the Lithuanian,
the Persian, the Armenian, the Georgian--belongs to the great
Indo-European, or Aryan branch. Some day--soon, let us hope: the sooner
the better--the treasures of both the folk-songs possessed by the South
Slavonians and the many centuries old literature of the Czechs and the
Poles will be revealed to Western readers. But in this work I have to
concern myself only with the literature of the Eastern, _i. e._, the
Russian, branch of the great Slavonian family; and in this branch I
shall have to omit both the South-Russian or Ukraïnian literature and
the White or West-Russian folk-lore and songs. I shall treat only of
the literature of the Great-Russians; or, simply, the Russians. Of all
the Slavonian languages theirs is the most widely spoken. It is the
language of Púshkin and Lérmontoff, Turguéneff and Tolstóy.
Like all other languages, the Russian has adopted many foreign words:
Scandinavian, Turkish, Mongolian, and, lately, Greek and Latin. But
notwithstanding the assimilation of many nations and stems of the
Ural-Altayan or Turanian stock which has been accomplished in the
course of ages by the Russian nation, her language has remained
remarkably pure. It is striking indeed to see how the translation
of the Bible which was made in the ninth century into the language
currently spoken by the Moravians and the South Slavonians remains
comprehensible, down to the present time, to the average Russian.
Grammatical forms and the construction of sentences are indeed quite
different now. But the roots, as well as a very considerable number
of words, remain the same as those which were used in current talk a
thousand years ago.
It must be said that the South-Slavonian had attained a high degree of
perfection, even at that early time. Very few words of the Gospels had
to be rendered in Greek--and these are names of things unknown to the
South Slavonians; while for none of the abstract words, and for none of
the poetical images of the original, had the translators any difficulty
in finding the proper expressions. Some of the words they used are,
moreover, of a remarkable beauty, and this beauty has not been lost
even to-day. Everyone remembers, for instance, the difficulty which the
learned Dr. Faust, in Goethe’s immortal tragedy, found in rendering the
sentence: “In the beginning was the Word.” “Word,” in modern German,
seemed to Dr. Faust to be too shallow an expression for the idea of
“the Word being God.” In the old Slavonian translation we have “Slóvo,”
which also means “Word,” but has at the same time, even for the modern
Russian, a far deeper meaning than that of _das Wort_. In old Slavonian
“Slóvo” included also the meaning of “Intellect”--German _Vernunft_;
and consequently it conveyed to the reader an idea which was deep
enough not to clash with the second part of the Biblical sentence.
I wish that I could give here an idea of the beauty of the structure
of the Russian language, such as it was spoken early in the eleventh
century in North Russia, a sample of which has been preserved in the
sermon of a Nóvgorod bishop (1035). The short sentences of this sermon,
calculated to be understood by a newly christened flock, are really
beautiful; while the bishop’s conceptions of Christianity, utterly
devoid of Byzantine gnosticism, are most characteristic of the manner
in which Christianity was and is still understood by the masses of the
Russian folk.
At the present time, the Russian language (the Great-Russian) is
remarkably free from _patois_. Little-Russian, or Ukraïnian,[1]
which is spoken by nearly 15,000,000 people, and has its own
literature--folk-lore and modern--is undoubtedly a separate language,
in the same sense as Norwegian and Danish are separate from Swedish, or
as Portuguese and Catalonian are separate from Castilian or Spanish.
White-Russian, which is spoken in some provinces of Western Russia, has
also the characteristics of a separate branch of the Russian, rather
than those of a local dialect. As to Great-Russian, or Russian, it is
spoken by a compact body of nearly eighty million people in Northern,
Central, Eastern, and Southern Russia, as also in Northern Caucasia and
Siberia. Its pronunciation slightly varies in different parts of this
large territory; nevertheless the literary language of Púshkin, Gógol,
Turguéneff, and Tolstóy is understood by all this enormous mass of
people. The Russian classics circulate in the villages by millions of
copies, and when, a few years ago, the literary property in Púshkin’s
works came to an end (fifty years after his death), complete editions
of his works--some of them in ten volumes--were circulated by the
hundred-thousand, at the almost incredibly low price of three shillings
(75 cents) the ten volumes; while millions of copies of his separate
poems and tales are sold now by thousands of ambulant booksellers
in the villages, at the price of from one to three farthings each.
Even the complete works of Gógol, Turguéneff, and Goncharóff, in
twelve-volume editions, have sometimes sold to the number of 200,000
sets each, in the course of a single year. The advantages of this
intellectual unity of the nation are self-evident.
EARLY FOLK-LITERATURE: FOLK-LORE--SONGS--SAGAS
The early folk-literature of Russia, part of which is still preserved
in the memories of the people alone, is wonderfully rich and full of
the deepest interest. No nation of Western Europe possesses such an
astonishing wealth of traditions, tales, and lyric folk-songs--some
of them of the greatest beauty--and such a rich cycle of archaic epic
songs, as Russia does. Of course, all European nations have had, once
upon a time, an equally rich folk-literature; but the great bulk of
it was lost before scientific explorers had understood its value or
begun to collect it. In Russia, this treasure was preserved in remote
villages untouched by civilisation, especially in the region round Lake
Onéga; and when the folk-lorists began to collect it, in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, they found in Northern Russia and in Little
Russia old bards still going about the villages with their primitive
string instruments, and reciting poems of a very ancient origin.
Besides, a variety of very old songs are sung still by the village folk
themselves. Every annual holiday--Christmas, Easter, Midsummer Day--has
its own cycle of songs, which have been preserved, with their melodies,
even from pagan times. At each marriage, which is accompanied by a very
complicated ceremonial, and at each burial, similarly old songs are
sung by the peasant women. Many of them have, of course, deteriorated
in the course of ages; of many others mere fragments have survived;
but, mindful of the popular saying that “never a word must be cast out
of a song,” the women in many localities continue to sing the most
antique songs in full, even though the meaning of many of the words has
already been lost.
There are, moreover, the _tales_. Many of them are certainly the
same as we find among all nations of Aryan origin: one may read them
in Grimm’s collection of fairy tales; but others came also from the
Mongols and the Turks; while some of them seem to have a purely Russian
origin. And next come the songs recited by wandering singers--the
_Kalíki_--also very ancient. They are entirely borrowed from the
East, and deal with heroes and heroines of other nationalities than
the Russian, such as “Akib, the Assyrian King,” the beautiful Helen,
Alexander the Great, or Rustem of Persia. The interest which these
Russian versions of Eastern legends and tales offer to the explorer of
folk-lore and mythology is self-evident.
Finally, there are the epic songs: the _bylíny_, which correspond to
the Icelandic _sagas_. Even at the present day they are sung in the
villages of Northern Russia by special bards who accompany themselves
with a special instrument, also of very ancient origin. The old singer
utters in a sort of recitative one or two sentences, accompanying
himself with his instrument; then follows a melody, into which each
individual singer introduces modulations of his own, before he resumes
next the quiet recitative of the epic narrative. Unfortunately, these
old bards are rapidly disappearing; but some five-and-thirty years
ago a few of them were still alive in the province of Olónets, to
the north-east of St. Petersburg, and I once heard one of them, whom
A. Hilferding had brought to the capital, and who sang before the
Russian Geographical Society his wonderful ballads. The collecting of
the epic songs was happily begun in good time--during the eighteenth
century--and it has been eagerly continued by specialists, so
that Russia possesses now perhaps the richest collection of such
songs--about four hundred--which has been saved from oblivion.
The heroes of the Russian epic songs are knights-errant, whom popular
tradition unites round the table of the Kieff Prince, Vladímir the
Fair Sun. Endowed with supernatural physical force, these knights,
Ilyiá of Múrom, Dobrýnia Nikítich, Nicholas the Villager, Alexéi the
Priest’s Son, and so on, are represented going about Russia, clearing
the country of giants, who infested the land, or of Mongols and Turks.
Or else they go to distant lands to fetch a bride for the chief of
their _schola_, the Prince Vladímir, or for themselves; and they meet,
of course, on their journeys, with all sorts of adventures, in which
witchcraft plays an important part. Each of the heroes of these sagas
has his own individuality. For instance, Ilyiá, the Peasant’s Son, does
not care for gold or riches: he fights only to clear the land from
giants and strangers. Nicholas the Villager is the personificatlon
of the force with which the tiller of the soil is endowed: nobody can
pull out of the ground his heavy plough, while he himself lifts it with
one hand and throws it above the clouds; Dobrýnia embodies some of the
features of the dragon-fighters, to whom belongs St. George; Sádko is
the personification of the rich merchant, and Tchurílo of the refined,
handsome, urbane man with whom all women fall in love.
At the same time, in each of these heroes, there are doubtless
mythological features. Consequently, the early Russian explorers of
the _bylíny_, who worked under the influence of Grimm, endeavoured to
explain them as fragments of an old Slavonian mythology, in which the
forces of Nature are personified in heroes. In Iliyá they found the
features of the God of the Thunders. Dobrýnia the Dragon-Killer was
supposed to represent the sun in its passive power--the active powers
of fighting being left to Iliyá. Sádko was the personification of
navigation, and the Sea-God whom he deals with was Neptune. Tchurílo
was taken as a representative of the demoniacal element. And so on.
Such was, at least, the interpretation put upon the _sagas_ by the
early explorers.
V. V. STÁSOFF, in his _Origin of the Russian Bylíny_ (1868), entirely
upset this theory. With a considerable wealth of argument he proved
that these epic songs are not fragments of a Slavonic mythology, but
represent borrowings from Eastern tales. Iliyá is the Rustem of the
Iranian legends, placed in Russian surroundings. Dobrýnia is the
Krishna of Indian folk-lore; Sádko is the merchant of the Eastern
tales, as also of a Norman tale. All the Russian epic heroes have an
Eastern origin. Other explorers went still further than Stásoff. They
saw in the heroes of Russian epics insignificant men who had lived
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Iliyá of Múrom is really
mentioned as a historic person in a Scandinavian chronicle), to whom
the exploits of Eastern heroes, borrowed from Eastern tales, were
attributed. Consequently, the heroes of the _bylíny_ could have had
nothing to do with the times of Vladímir, and still less with the
earlier Slavonic mythology.
The gradual evolution and migration of myths, which are successively
fastened upon new and local persons as they reach new countries,
may perhaps aid to explain these contradictions. That there are
mythological features in the heroes of the Russian epics may be taken
as certain; only, the mythology they belong to is not Slavonian but
Aryan altogether. Out of these mythological representations of the
forces of Nature, human heroes were gradually evolved in the East.
At a later epoch when these Eastern traditions began to spread in
Russia, the exploits of their heroes were attributed to Russian
men, who were made to act in Russian surroundings. Russian
folk-lore assimilated them; and, while it retained their deepest
semi-mythological features and leading traits of character, it endowed,
at the same time, the Iranian Rustem, the Indian dragon-killer, the
Eastern merchant, and so on, with new features, purely Russian. It
divested them, so to say, of the garb which had been put upon their
mystical substances when they were first appropriated and humanised
by the Iranians and the Indians, and dressed them now in a Russian
garb--just as in the tales about Alexander the Great, which I heard
in Transbaikalia, the Greek hero is endowed with Buryate features and
his exploits are located on such and such a Transbaikalian mountain.
However, Russian folk-lore did not simply change the dress of the
Persian prince, Rustem, into that of a Russian peasant, Iliyá. The
Russian _sagas_, in their style, in the poetical images they resort to,
and partly in the characteristics of their heroes, were new creations.
Their heroes are thoroughly Russian: for instance, they never seek
for blood-vengeance, as Scandinavian heroes would do; their actions,
especially those of “the elder heroes,” are not dictated by personal
aims, but are imbued with a communal spirit, which is characteristic of
Russian popular life. They are as much Russians as Rustem was Persian.
As to the time of composition of these sagas, it is generally believed
that they date from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, but
that they received their definite shape--the one that has reached
us--in the fourteenth century. Since that time they have undergone but
little alteration.
In these _sagas_ Russia has thus a precious national inheritance of a
rare poetical beauty, which has been fully appreciated in England by
Ralston, and in France by the historian Rambaud.
“LAY OF IGOR’S RAID”
And yet Russia has not her Iliad. There has been no poet to inspire
himself with the exploits of Iliyá, Dobrýnia, Sádko, Tchurílo, and the
others, and to make out of them a poem similar to the epics of Homer,
or the “Kalevála” of the Finns. This has been done with only one cycle
of traditions: in the poem, _The Lay of Igor’s Raid_ (_Slóvo o Polkú
Igoreve_).
This poem was composed at the end of the twelfth century, or early in
the thirteenth (its full manuscript, destroyed during the conflagration
of Moscow in 1812, dated from the fourteenth or the fifteenth century).
It was undoubtedly the work of one author, and for its beauty and
poetical form it stands by the side of the _Song of the Nibelungs_,
or the _Song of Roland_. It relates a real fact that did happen in
1185. Igor, a prince of Kíeff, starts with his _drúzhina_ (_schola_)
of warriors to make a raid on the Pólovtsi, who occupied the prairies
of South-eastern Russia, and continually raided the Russian villages.
All sorts of bad omens are seen on the march through the prairies--the
sun is darkened and casts its shadow on the band of Russian warriors;
the animals give different warnings; but Igor exclaims: “Brothers
and friends: Better to fall dead than be prisoners of the Pólovtsi!
Let us march to the blue waters of the Don. Let us break our lances
against those of the Pólovtsi. And either I leave there my head, or I
will drink the water of the Don from my golden helmet.” The march is
resumed, the Pólovtsi are met with, and a great battle is fought.
The description of the battle, in which all Nature takes part--the
eagles and the wolves, and the foxes who bark after the red shields of
the Russians--is admirable. Igor’s band is defeated. “From sunrise to
sunset, and from sunset to sunrise, the steel arrows flew, the swords
clashed on the helmets, the lances were broken in a far-away land--the
land of the Pólovtsi.” “The black earth under the hoofs of the horses
was strewn with bones, and out of this sowing affliction will rise in
the land of the Russians.”
Then comes one of the best bits of early Russian poetry--the
lamentations of Yaroslávna, Igor’s wife, who waits for his return in
the town of Putívl:
“The voice of Yaroslávna resounds as the complaint of a cuckoo; it
resounds at the rise of the sunlight.
“I will fly as a cuckoo down the river. I will wet my beaver sleeves
in the Káyala; I will wash with them the wounds of my prince--the deep
wounds of my hero.
“Yaroslávna laments on the walls of Putívl.
“Oh, Wind, terrible Wind! Why dost thou, my master, blow so strong?
Why didst thou carry on thy light wings the arrows of the Khan against
the warriors of my hero? Is it not enough for thee to blow there, high
up in the clouds? Not enough to rock the ships on the blue sea? Why
didst thou lay down my beloved upon the grass of the Steppes?
“Yaroslávna laments upon the walls of Putívl.
“Oh, glorious Dniéper, thou hast pierced thy way through the rocky
hills to the land of Pólovtsi. Thou hast carried the boats of
Svyatosláv as they went to fight the Khan Kobyák. Bring, oh, my
master, my husband back to me, and I will send no more tears through
thy tide towards the sea.
“Yaroslávna laments upon the walls of Putívl.
“Brilliant Sun, thrice brilliant Sun! Thou givest heat to all, thou
shinest for all. Why shouldest thou send thy burning rays upon my
husband’s warriors? Why didst thou, in the waterless steppe, dry up
their bows in their hands? Why shouldest thou, making them suffer from
thirst, cause their arrows to weigh so heavy upon their shoulders?”
This little fragment gives some idea of the general character and
beauty of the _Saying about Igor’s Raid_.[2]
Surely this poem was not the only one that was composed and sung in
those times. The introduction itself speaks of bards, and especially
of one, Bayán, whose recitations and songs are compared to the wind
that blows in the tops of the trees. Many such Bayáns surely went
about and sang similar “Sayings” during the festivals of the princes
and their warriors. Unfortunately, only this one has reached us. The
Russian Church, especially in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, pitilessly proscribed the singing of all the epic songs
which circulated among the people: it considered them “pagan,” and
inflicted the heaviest penalties upon the bards and those who sang old
songs in their rings. Consequently, only small fragments of this early
folk-lore have reached us.
And yet even these few relics of the past have exercised a powerful
influence upon Russian literature, ever since it has taken the liberty
of treating other subjects than purely religious ones. If Russian
versification took the rhythmical form, as against the syllabic, it was
because this form was imposed upon the Russian poets by the folk-song.
Besides, down to quite recent times, folk-songs constituted such an
important item in Russian country life, in the homes alike of the
landlord and the peasant, that they could not but deeply influence
the Russian poets; and the first great poet of Russia, Púshkin, began
his career by re-telling in verse his old nurse’s tales to which he
used to listen during the long winter nights. It is also owing to our
almost incredible wealth of most musical popular songs that we have
had in Russia, since so early a date as 1835, an opera (Verstóvskiy’s
_Askóld’s Grave_), based upon popular tradition, of which the purely
Russian melodies at once catch the ear of the least musically-educated
Russian. This is also why the operas of Dargomýzhsky and the younger
composers are now successfully sung in the villages to peasant
audiences and with local peasant choirs.
The folk-lore and the folk-song have thus rendered to Russia an
immense service. They have maintained a certain unity of the spoken
language all over Russia, as also a unity between the literary language
and the language spoken by the masses; between the music of Glínka,
Tchaykóvsky, Rímsky Kórsakoff, Borodín, etc., and the music of the
peasant choir--thus rendering both the poet and the composer accessible
to the peasant.
THE ANNALS
And finally, whilst speaking of the early Russian literature, a few
words, at least, must be said of the Annals.
No country has a richer collection of them. There were, in the tenth,
eleventh and twelfth centuries, several centres of development in
Russia, Kíeff, Nóvgorod, Pskov, the land of Volhýnia, the land of
Súzdal (Vladímir, Moscow[3]), Ryazán, etc., represented at that
time independent republics, linked together only by the unity of
language and religion, and by the fact that all of them elected their
Princes--military defenders and judges--from the house of Rúrik. Each
of these centers had its own annals, bearing the stamp of local life
and local character. The South Russian and Volhýnian annals--of which
the so-called _Nestor’s Annals_ are the fullest and the best known,
are not merely dry records of facts: they are imaginative and poetical
in places. The annals of Nóvgorod bear the stamp of a city of rich
merchants: they are very matter-of-fact, and the annalist warms to his
subject only when he describes the victories of the Nóvgorod republic
over the Land of Súzdal. The Annals of the sister-republic of Pskov, on
the contrary, are imbued with a democratic spirit, and they relate with
democratic sympathies and in a most picturesque manner the struggles
between the poor of Pskov and the rich--the “black people” and the
“white people.” Altogether, the annals are surely not the work of
monks, as was supposed at the outset; they must have been written for
the different cities by men fully informed about their political life,
their treaties with other republics, their inner and outer conflicts.
Moreover, the annals, especially those of Kíeff, or _Nestor’s Annals_,
are something more than mere records of events; they are, as may be
seen from the very name of the latter (_From whence and How came to
be the Land of Russia_), attempts at writing a history of the country,
under the inspiration of Greek models. Those manuscripts which have
reached us--and especially is this true of the Kíeff annals--have
thus a compound structure, and historians distinguish in them several
superposed “layers” dating from different periods. Old traditions;
fragments of early historical knowledge, probably borrowed from the
Byzantine historians; old treaties; complete poems relating certain
episodes, such as Igor’s raid; and local annals from different periods,
enter into their composition. Historical facts, relative to a very
early period and fully confirmed by the Constantinople annalists and
historians, are consequently mingled together with purely mythical
traditions. But this is precisely what makes the high literary value
of the Russian annals, especially those of Southern and South-western
Russia, which contain most precious fragments of early literature.
Such, then, were the treasuries of literature which Russia possessed at
the beginning of the thirteenth century.
MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE
The Mongol invasion, which took place in 1223, destroyed all this young
civilisation, and threw Russia into quite new channels. The main cities
of South and Middle Russia were laid waste. Kíeff, which had been a
populous city and a centre of learning, was reduced to the state of a
straggling settlement, and disappeared from history for the next two
centuries. Whole populations of large towns were either taken prisoners
by the Mongols, or exterminated, if they had offered resistance to the
invaders. As if to add to the misfortunes of Russia, the Turks soon
followed the Mongols, invading the Balkan peninsula, and by the end of
the fifteenth century the two countries from which and through which
learning used to come to Russia, namely Servia and Bulgaria, fell under
the rule of the Osmanlis. All the life of Russia underwent a deep
transformation.
Before the invasion the land was covered with independent republics,
similar to the mediæval city-republics of Western Europe. Now, a
military State, powerfully supported by the Church, began to be
slowly built up at Moscow, which conquered, with the aid of the
Mongol Khans, the independent principalities that surrounded it. The
main effort of the statesmen and the most active men of the Church
was now directed towards the building up of a powerful kingdom which
should be capable of throwing off the Mongol yoke. State ideals were
substituted for those of local autonomy and federation. The Church,
in its effort to constitute a Christian nationality, free from all
intellectual and moral contact with the abhorred pagan Mongols, became
a stern centralised power which pitilessly persecuted everything that
was a reminder of a pagan past. It worked hard, at the same time, to
establish upon Byzantine ideals the unlimited authority of the Moscow
princes. Serfdom was introduced in order to increase the military
power of the State. All Independent local life was destroyed. The
idea of Moscow becoming a centre for Church and State was powerfully
supported by the Church, which preached that Moscow was the heir to
Constantinople--“a third Rome,” where the only true Christianity was
now to develop. And at a later epoch, when the Mongol yoke had been
thrown off, the work of consolidating the Moscow monarchy was continued
by the Tsars and the Church, and the struggle was against the intrusion
of Western influences, in order to prevent the “Latin” Church from
extending its authority over Russia.
These new conditions necessarily exercised a deep influence upon
the further development of literature. The freshness and vigorous
youthfulness of the early epic poetry was gone forever. Sadness,
melancholy, resignation became the leading features of Russian
folk-lore. The continually repeated raids of the Tartars, who
carried away whole villages as prisoners to their encampments in the
South-eastern Steppes; the sufferings of the prisoners in slavery; the
visits of the _baskáks_, who came to levy a high tribute and behaved
as conquerors in a conquered land; the hardships inflicted upon the
populations by the growing military State--all this impressed the
popular songs with a deep note of sadness which they have never since
lost. At the same time the gay festival songs of old and the epic songs
of the wandering bards were strictly forbidden, and those who dared to
sing them were cruelly persecuted by the Church, which saw in these
songs not only a reminiscence of a pagan past, but also a possible link
of union with the Tartars.
Learning was gradually concentrated in the monasteries, every one of
which was a fortress built against the invaders; and it was limited,
of course, to Christian literature. It became entirely scholastic.
Knowledge of nature was “unholy,” something of a witchcraft. Asceticism
was preached as the highest virtue, and became the dominant feature
of written literature. Legends about the saints were widely read and
repeated verbally, and they found no balance in such learning as had
been developed In Western Europe in the mediæval universities. The
desire for a knowledge of nature was severely condemned by the Church,
as a token of self-conceit. All poetry was a sin. The annals lost their
animated character and became dry enumerations of the successes of the
rising State, or merely related unimportant details concerning the
local bishops and superiors of monasteries.
During the twelfth century there had been, in the northern republics
of Nóvgorod and Pksov, a strong current of opinion leading, on the
one side, to Protestant rationalism, and on the other side to the
development of Christianity on the lines of the early Christian
brotherhoods. The apocryphal Gospels, the books of the Old Testament,
and various books in which true Christianity was discussed, were
eagerly copied and had a wide circulation. Now, the head of the Church
in Central Russia violently antagonised all such tendencies towards
reformed Christianity. A strict adherence to the very letter of the
teachings of the Byzantine Church was exacted from the flock. Every
kind of interpretation of the Gospels became heresy. All intellectual
life in the domain of religion, as well as every criticism of the
dignitaries of the Moscow Church, was treated as dangerous, and those
who had ventured this way had to flee from Moscow, seeking refuge in
the remote monasteries of the far North. As to the great movement
of the Renaissance, which gave a new life to Western Europe, it did
not reach Russia: the Church considered it a return to paganism, and
cruelly exterminated its forerunners who came within her reach, burning
them at the stake, or putting them to death on the racks of her
torture-chambers.
I will not dwell upon this period, which covers nearly five centuries,
because it offers very little interest for the student of Russian
literature; I will only mention the two or three works which must not
be passed by in silence.
One of them is the letters exchanged between the Tsar John the Terrible
(John IV.), and one of his chief vassals, Prince Kúrbskiy, who had left
Moscow for Lithuania. From beyond the Lithuanian border he addressed to
his cruel, half-lunatic ex-master long letters of reproach, which John
answered, developing in his epistles the theory of the divine origin
of the Tsar’s authority. This correspondence is most characteristic of
the political ideas that were current then, and of the learning of the
period.
After the death of John the Terrible (who occupies in Russian history
the same position as Louis XI. in French, since he destroyed by
fire and sword--but with a truly Tartar cruelty--the power of the
feudal princes), Russia passed, as is known, through years of great
disturbance. The pretender Demetrius, who proclaimed himself a son of
John, came from Poland and took possession of the throne at Moscow.
The Poles invaded Russia, and were the masters of Moscow, Smolénsk,
and all the western towns; and when Demetrius was overthrown, a few
months after his coronation, a general revolt of the peasants broke
out, while all Central Russia was invaded by Cossack bands, and
several new pretenders made their appearance. These “Disturbed Years”
must have left traces in popular songs, but all such songs entirely
disappeared in Russia during the dark period of serfdom which followed,
and we know of them only through an Englishman, RICHARD JAMES, who was
in Russia in 1619, and who wrote down some of the songs relating to
this period. The same must be said of the folk-literature, which must
have come into existence during the later portion of the seventeenth
century. The definite introduction of serfdom under the first Romanoff
(Mikhail, 1612-1640); the wide-spread revolts of the peasants which
followed--culminating in the terrific uprising of Stepán Rázin, who
has become since then a favourite hero with the oppressed peasants;
and finally the stern and cruel persecution of the Non-conformists
and their migrations eastward into the depths of the Uráls--all these
events must have found their expression in folk-songs; but the State
and the Church so cruelly hunted down everything that bore trace of a
spirit of rebellion that no works of popular creation from that period
have reached us. Only a few writings of a polemic character and the
remarkable autobiography of an exiled priest have been preserved by the
Non-conformists.
SPLIT IN THE CHURCH--MEMOIRS OF AVVAKÚM
The first Russian Bible was printed in Poland in 1580. A few years
later a printing office was established at Moscow, and the Russian
Church authorities had now to decide which of the written texts then
in circulation should be taken for the printing of the Holy Books.
The handwritten copies which were in use at that time were full of
errors, and it was evidently necessary to revise them by comparing
them with the Greek texts before committing any of them to print. This
revision was undertaken at Moscow, with the aid of learned men brought
over partly from Greece and partly from the Greco-Latin Academy of
Kieff; but for many different reasons this revision became the source
of a widely spread discontent, and in the middle of the seventeenth
century a formidable split (_raskól_) took place in the Church. It
hardly need be said that this split was not a mere matter of theology,
nor of Greek readings. The seventeenth century was a century when the
Moscow Church had attained a formidable power in the State. The head
of it, the Patriarch Níkon, was, moreover, a very ambitious man, who
intended to play in the East the part which the Pope played in the
West, and to that end he tried to impress the people by his grandeur
and luxury--which meant, of course, heavy impositions upon the serfs
of the Church and the lower clergy. He was hated by both, and was soon
accused by the people of drifting into “Latinism”; so that the split
between the people and the clergy--especially the higher clergy--took
the character of a wide-spread separation of the people from the Greek
Church.
Most of the Non-conformist writings of the time are purely scholastic
in character and consequently offer no literary interest. But the
memoirs of a Non-conformist priest, AVVAKÚM (died 1681), who was exiled
to Siberia and made his way on foot, with Cossack parties, as far as
the banks of the Amúr, deserve to be mentioned. By their simplicity,
their sincerity, and absence of all sensationalism, they have remained
the prototype of Russian memoirs, down to the present day. Here are a
few quotations from this remarkable work:
“When I came to Yeniséisk,” Avvakúm wrote, “another order came from
Moscow to send me to Daúria, 2,000 miles from Moscow, and to place
me under the orders of Páshkoff. He had with him sixty men, and in
punishment of my sins he proved to be a terrible man. Continually
he burnt, and tortured, and flogged his men, and I had often spoken
to him, remonstrating that what he did was not good, and now I fell
myself into his hands. When we went along the Angará river he ordered
me, ‘Get out of your boat, you are a heretic, that is why the boats
don’t get along. Go you on foot, across the mountains.’ It was hard
to do. Mountains high, forests impenetrable, stony cliffs rising like
walls--and we had to cross them, going about with wild beasts and
birds; and I wrote him a little letter which began thus: ‘Man, be
afraid of God. Even the heavenly forces and all animals and men are
afraid of Him. Thou alone carest nought about Him.’ Much more was
written in this letter, and I sent it to him. Presently I saw fifty
men coming to me, and they took me before him. He had his sword in his
hand and shook with fury. He asked me: ‘Art thou a priest, or a priest
degraded?’ I answered, ‘I am Avvakúm, a priest, what dost thou want
from me?’ And he began to beat me on the head and he threw me on the
ground, and continued to beat me while I was lying on the ground, and
then ordered them to give me seventy-two lashes with the knout, and
I replied: ‘Jesus Christ, son of God, help me!’ and he was only the
more angered that I did not ask for mercy. Then they brought me to a
small fort, and put me in a dungeon, giving me some straw, and all the
winter I was kept in that tower, without fire. And the winter there is
terribly cold; but God supported me, even though I had no furs. I lay
there as a dog on the straw. One day they would feed me, another not.
Rats were swarming all around. I used to kill them with my cap--the
poor fools would not even give me a stick.”
Later on Avvakúm was taken to the Amúr, and when he and his wife had
to march, in the winter, over the ice of the great river, she would
often fall down from sheer exhaustion. “Then I came,” Avvakúm writes,
“to lift her up, and she exclaimed in despair: ‘How long, priest, how
long will these sufferings continue?’ And I replied to her: ‘Until
death even’; and then she would get up saying: ‘Well, then, priest; let
us march on.’” No sufferings could vanquish this great man. From the
Amúr he was recalled to Moscow, and once more made the whole journey on
foot. There he was accused of resistance to Church and State, and was
burned at the stake in 1681.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The violent reforms of Peter I., who created a military European State
out of the semi-Byzantine and semi-Tartar State which Russia had been
under his predecessors, gave a new turn to literature. It would be out
of place to appreciate here the historical significance of the reforms
of Peter I., but it must be mentioned that in Russian literature one
finds, at least, two forerunners of Peter’s work.
One of them was KOTOSHÍKHIN (1630-1667), an historian.[4] He ran away
from Moscow to Sweden, and wrote there, fifty years before Peter
became Tsar, a history of Russia, in which he strenuously criticised
the condition of ignorance prevailing at Moscow, and advocated wide
reforms. His manuscript was unknown till the nineteenth century, when
it was discovered at Upsala. Another writer, imbued with the same
ideas, was a South Slavonian, KRYZHÁNITCH, who was called to Moscow in
1659, in order to revise the Holy Books, and wrote a most remarkable
work, in which he also preached the necessity of thorough reforms. He
was exiled two years later to Siberia, where he died.
Peter I., who fully realised the importance of literature, and was
working hard to introduce European learning amongst his countrymen,
understood that the old Slavonian tongue, which was then in use among
Russian writers, but was no longer the current language of the nation,
could only hamper the development of literature and learning. Its
forms, its expressions, and grammar were already quite strange to the
Russians. It could be used still in religious writings, but a book on
geometry, or algebra, or military art, written in the Biblical Old
Slavonian, would have been simply ridiculous. Consequently, Peter
removed the difficulty in his usual trenchant way. He established a new
alphabet, to aid in the introduction into literature of the spoken but
hitherto unwritten language. This alphabet, partly borrowed from the
Old Slavonian, but very much simplified, is the one now in use.
Literature proper little interested Peter I.: he looked upon printed
matter from the strictly utilitarian point of view, and his chief
aim was to familiarise the Russians with the first elements of the
exact sciences, as well as with the arts of navigation, warfare, and
fortification. Accordingly, the writers of his time offer but little
interest from the literary point of view, and I need mention but a very
few of them.
The most interesting writer of the time of Peter I. and his immediate
successors was perhaps PROCOPÓVITCH, a priest, without the slightest
taint of religious fanaticism, a great admirer of West-European
learning, who founded a Greco-Slavonian academy. The courses of
Russian literature also make mention of KANTEMIR (1709-1744), the son
of a Moldavian prince who had emigrated with his subjects to Russia.
He wrote satires, in which he expressed himself with a freedom of
thought that was quite remarkable for his time.[5] TKRETIAÓVSKIY
(1703-1769) offers a certain melancholy interest. He was the son of a
priest, and in his youth ran away from his father, in order to study
at Moscow. Thence he went to Amsterdam and Paris, travelling mostly
on foot. He studied at the Paris University and became an admirer of
advanced ideas, about which he wrote in extremely clumsy verses. On
his return to St. Petersburg he lived all his after-life in poverty
and neglect, persecuted on all sides by sarcasms for his endeavours
to reform Russian versification. He was himself entirely devoid of
any poetical talent, and yet he rendered a great service to Russian
poetry. Up to that date Russian verse was syllabic; but he understood
that syllabic verse does not accord with the spirit of the Russian
language, and he devoted his life to prove that Russian poetry should
be written according to the laws of rhythmical versification. If he
had had even a spark of talent, he would have found no difficulty in
proving his thesis; but he had none, and consequently resorted to the
most ridiculous artifices. Some of his verses were lines of the most
incongruous words, strung together for the sole purpose of showing
how rhythm and rhymes may be obtained. If he could not otherwise
get his rhyme, he did not hesitate to split a word at the end of a
verse, beginning the next one with what was left of it. In spite of
his absurdities, he succeeded in persuading Russian poets to adopt
rhythmical versification, and its rules have been followed ever since.
In fact, this was only the natural development of the Russian popular
song.
There was also a historian, TATÍSCHEFF (1686-1750), who wrote a history
of Russia, and began a large work on the geography of the Empire--a
hard-working man who studied a great deal in many sciences, as well
as in Church matters, was superintendent of mines in the Uráls, and
wrote a number of political works as well as history. He was the
first to appreciate the value of the annals, which he collected and
systematised, thus preparing materials for future historians, but he
left no lasting trace in Russian literature. In fact, only one man of
that period deserves more than a passing mention. It was LOMONÓSOFF
(1712-1765). He was born in a village on the White Sea, near Archángel,
in a fisherman’s family. He also ran away from his parents, came on
foot to Moscow, and entered a school in a monastery, living there in
indescribable poverty. Later on he went to Kíeff, also on foot, and
there he very nearly became a priest. It so happened, however, that at
that time the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences applied to the Moscow
Theological Academy for twelve good students who might be sent to study
abroad. Lomonósoff was chosen as one of them. He went to Germany, where
he studied natural sciences under the best natural philosophers of the
time, especially under Christian Wolff,--always in terrible poverty,
almost on the verge of starvation. In 1741 he came back to Russia, and
was nominated a member of the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg.
The Academy was then in the hands of a few Germans who looked upon all
Russian scholars with undisguised contempt, and consequently received
Lomonósoff in a most unfriendly manner. It did not help him that the
great mathematician, Euler, wrote that the work of Lomonósoff in
natural philosophy and chemistry revealed a man of genius, and that
any Academy might be happy to possess him. A bitter struggle soon
began between the German members of the Academy and the Russian who,
it must be owned, was of a very violent character, especially when he
was under the influence of drink. Poverty, his salary being confiscated
as a punishment; detention at the police station; exclusion from the
Senate of the Academy; and, worst of all, political persecution--such
was the fate of Lomonósoff, who had joined the party of Elizabeth, and
consequently was treated as an enemy when Catharine II. came to the
throne. It was not until the nineteenth century that Lomonósoff was
duly appreciated.
“Lomonósoff was himself a university,” was Púshkin’s remark, and this
remark was quite correct: so varied were the directions in which he
worked. Not only was he a distinguished natural philosopher, chemist,
physical geographer, and mineralogist: he laid also the foundations
of the grammar of the Russian language, which he understood as
part of a general grammar of all languages, considered in their
natural evolution. He also worked out the different forms of Russian
versification, and he created quite a new literary language, of which
he could say that it was equally appropriate for rendering “the
powerful oratory of Cicero, the brilliant earnestness of Virgil and the
pleasant talk of Ovid, as well as the subtlest imaginary conceptions
of philosophy, or discussing the various properties of matter and the
changes which are always going on in the structure of the universe and
in human affairs.” This he proved by his poetry, by his scientific
writings, and by his “Discourses,” in which he combined Huxley’s
readiness to defend science against blind faith with Humboldt’s
poetical conception of Nature.
His odes were, it is true, written in the pompous style which was dear
to the pseudo-classicism then reigning, and he retained Old Slavonian
expressions “for dealing with elevated subjects”, but in his scientific
and other writings he used the commonly spoken language with great
effect and force. Owing to the very variety of sciences which he had
to acclimatise in Russia, he could not give much time to original
research; but when he took up the defence of the ideas of Copernicus,
Newton, or Huyghens against the opposition which they met with on
theological grounds, a true philosopher of natural science, in the
modern sense of the term, was revealed in him. In his early boyhood
he used to accompany his father--a sturdy northern fisherman--on his
fishing expeditions, and there he got his love of Nature and a fine
comprehension of natural phenomena, which made of his Memoir on Arctic
Exploration a work that has not lost its value even now. It is well
worthy of note that in this last work he had stated the mechanical
theory of heat in such definite expressions that he undoubtedly
anticipated by a full century this great discovery of our own time--a
fact which has been entirely overlooked, even in Russia.
A contemporary of Lomonósoff, SUMARÓKOFF (1717-1777,) who was described
in those years as a “Russian Racine,” must also be mentioned in this
place. He belonged to the higher nobility, and had received an entirely
French education. His dramas, of which he wrote a great number, were
entirely imitated from the French pseudo-classical school; but he
contributed very much, as will be seen from a subsequent chapter, to
the development of the Russian theatre. Sumarókoff wrote also lyrical
verses, elegies, and satires--all of no great importance; but the
remarkably good style of his letters, free of the Slavonic archaisms,
which were habitual at that time, deserves to be mentioned.
THE TIMES OF CATHERINE II.
With Catherine II., who reigned from 1752 till 1796, commenced a
new era in Russian literature. It began to shake off its previous
dulness, and although the Russian writers continued to imitate French
models--chiefly pseudo-classical--they began also to introduce into
their writings various subjects taken from direct observation of
Russian life. There is, altogether, a frivolous youthfulness in the
literature of the first years of Catherine’s reign, when the Empress,
being yet full of progressive ideas borrowed from her intercourse with
French philosophers, composed--basing it on Montesquieu--her remarkable
_Instruction_ (_Nakáz_) to the deputies she convoked; wrote several
comedies, in which she ridiculed the old-fashioned representatives of
Russian nobility; and edited a monthly review in which she entered
into controversy both with some ultra-conservative writers and with
the more advanced young reformers. An academy of belles-lettres was
founded, and Princess VORONTSÓVA-DÁSHKOVA (1743-1819)--who had aided
Catherine II. in her _coup d’état_ against her husband, Peter III.,
and in taking possession of the throne--was nominated president of the
Academy of Sciences. She assisted the Academy with real earnestness in
compiling a dictionary of the Russian language, and she also edited
a review which left a mark in Russian literature; while her memoirs,
written in French (_Mon Histoire_) are a very valuable, though not
always impartial, historical document.[6] Altogether there began at
that time quite a literary movement, which produced a remarkable poet,
DERZHÁVIN (1743-1816); the writer of comedies, VON WÍZIN (1745-1792);
the first philosopher, NÓVIKOFF (1742-1818); and a political writer,
RADÍSCHFEF(1749-1802).
The poetry of Derzhávin certainly does not answer our modern
requirements. He was the poet laureate of Catherine, and sang in
pompous odes the virtues of the ruler and the victories of her generals
and favourites. Russia was then taking a firm hold on the shores
of the Black Sea, and beginning to play a serious part in European
affairs; and occasions for the inflation of Derzhávin’s patriotic
feelings were not wanting. However, he had some of the marks of the
true poet; he was open to the feeling of the poetry of Nature, and
capable of expressing it in verses that were positively good (_Ode to
God_, _The Waterfall_). Nay, these really poetical verses, which are
found side by side with unnatural, heavy lines stuffed with obsolete
pompous words, are so evidently better than the latter, that they
certainly were an admirable object-lesson for all subsequent Russian
poets. They must have contributed to induce our poets to abandon
mannerism. Púshkin, who in his youth admired Derzhávin, must have
felt at once the disadvantages of a pompous style, illustrated by his
predecessor, and with his wonderful command of his mother-tongue he was
necessarily brought to abandon the artificial language which formerly
was considered “poetical,”--he began to write as we speak.
The comedies of VON WÍZIN (or FONVIZIN), were quite a revelation for
his contemporaries. His first comedy, _The Brigadier_, which he wrote
at the age of twenty-two, created quite a sensation, and till now it
has not lost its interest; while his second comedy, _Nédorosl_ (1782),
was received as an event in Russian literature, and is occasionally
played even at the present day. Both deal with purely Russian subjects,
taken from every-day life; and although Von Wízin too freely borrowed
from foreign authors (the subject of _The Brigadier_ is borrowed from
a Danish comedy of Holberg, _Jean de France_), he managed nevertheless
to make his chief personages truly Russian. In this sense he certainly
was a creator of the Russian national drama, and he was also the first
to introduce into our literature the realistic tendency which became
so powerful with Púshkin, Gógol and their followers. In his political
opinions he remained true to the progressive opinions which Catherine
II. patronised in the first years of her reign, and in his capacity of
secretary to Count Pánin he boldly denounced serfdom, favouritism, and
want of education in Russia.
I pass in silence several writers of the same epoch, namely,
BOGDANÓVITCH (1743-1803), the author of a pretty and light poem,
_Dushenka_; HEMNITZER (1745-1784), a gifted writer of fables, who
was a forerunner of Krylóff; KAPNÍST (1757-1829), who wrote rather
superficial satires in good verse; Prince SCHERBÁTOFF (1733-1790), who
began with several others the scientific collecting of old annals and
folk-lore, and undertook to write a history of Russia, in which we find
a scientific criticism of the annals and other sources of information;
and several others. But I must say a few words upon the masonic
movement which took place on the threshold of the nineteenth century.
THE FREEMASONS: FIRST MANIFESTATION OF POLITICAL THOUGHT.
The looseness of habits which characterised Russian high society in
the eighteenth century, the absence of ideals, the servility of the
nobles, and the horrors of serfdom, necessarily produced a reaction
amongst the better minds, and this reaction took the shape, partly of
a widely spread Masonic movement, and partly of Christian mysticism,
which originated in the mystical teachings that had at that time
widely spread in Germany. The freemasons and their Society of Friends
undertook a serious effort for spreading moral education among the
masses, and they found in NÓVIKOFF (1744-1818) a true apostle of
renovation. He began his literary career very early, in one of those
satirical reviews of which Catherine herself took the initiative at
the beginning of her reign, and already in his amiable controversy
with “the grandmother” (Catherine) he showed that he would not remain
satisfied with the superficial satire in which the empress delighted,
but that, contrary to her wishes, he would go to the root of the evils
of the time: namely, serfdom and its brutalising effects upon society
at large. Nóvikoff was not only a well-educated man: he combined
the deep moral convictions of an idealist with the capacities of an
organiser and a business man; and although his review (from which the
net income went entirely for philanthropic and educational purposes)
was soon stopped by “the grandmother,” he started in Moscow a most
successful printing and book-selling business, for editing and
spreading books of an ethical character. His immense printing office,
combined with a hospital for the workers and a chemist’s shop, from
which medicine was given free to all the poor of Moscow, was soon
in business relations with booksellers all over Russia; while his
influence upon educated society was growing rapidly, and working in
an excellent direction. In 1787, during a famine, he organised relief
for the starving peasants--quite a fortune having been put for this
purpose at his disposal by one of his pupils. Of course, both the
Church and the Government looked with suspicion upon the spreading
of Christianity, as it was understood by the freemason Friends; and
although the metropolitan of Moscow testified that Nóvikoff was “the
best Christian he ever knew,” Nóvikoff was accused of political
conspiracy.
He was arrested, and in accordance with the personal wish of Catherine,
though to the astonishment of all those who knew anything about him,
was condemned to death in 1792. The death-sentence, however, was not
fulfilled, but he was taken for fifteen years to the terrible fortress
of Schüsselberg, where he was put in the secret cell formerly occupied
by the Grand Duke Ivan Antonovitch, and where his freemason friend,
Doctor Bagryánskiy, volunteered to remain imprisoned with him. He
remained there till the death of Catherine. Paul I. released him, in
1796, on the very day that he became emperor; but Nóvikoff came out of
the fortress a broken man, and fell entirely into mysticism, towards
which there was already a marked tendency in several lodges of the
freemasons.
The Christian mystics were not happier. One of them, LÁBZIN
(1766-1825), who exercised a great influence upon society by his
writings against corruption, was also denounced, and ended his days in
exile. However, both the mystical Christians and the freemasons (some
of whose lodges followed the Rosenkreuz teachings) exercised a deep
influence on Russia. With the advent of Alexander I. to the throne
the freemasons obtained more facilities for spreading their ideas;
and the growing conviction that serfdom must be abolished, and that
the tribunals, as well as the whole system of administration, were in
need of complete reform, was certainly to a great extent a result
of their work. Besides, quite a number of remarkable men received
their education at the Moscow Institute of the Friends--founded by
Nóvikoff--including the historian Karamzín, the brothers Turguéneff,
uncles of the great novelist, and several political men of mark.
RADÍSCHEFF (1749-1802), a political writer of the same epoch, had a
still more tragic end. He received his education in the Corps of Pages,
and was one of those young men whom the Russian Government had sent
in 1766 to Germany to finish there their education. He followed the
lectures of Hellert and Plattner at Leipzig, and studied very earnestly
the French philosophers. On his return, he published, in 1790, a
_Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow_, the idea of which seems to
have been suggested to him by Sterne’s _Sentimental Journey_. In this
book he very ably intermingled his impressions of travel with various
philosophical and moral discussions and with pictures from Russian life.
He insisted especially upon the horrors of serfdom, as also upon the
bad organisation of the administration, the venality of the law-courts,
and so on, confirming his general condemnations by concrete facts
taken from real life. Catherine, who already before the beginning of
the revolution in France, and especially since the events of 1789, had
come to regard with horror the liberal ideas of her youth, ordered
the book to be confiscated and destroyed at once. She described the
author as a revolutionist, “worse than Pugatchóff”; he ventured to
“speak with approbation of Franklin” and was infected with French
ideas! Consequently, she wrote herself a sharp criticism of the book,
upon which its prosecution had to be based. Radíscheff was arrested,
confined to the fortress, later on transported to the remotest portions
of Eastern Siberia, on the Olenek. He was released only in 1801. Next
year, seeing that even the advent of Alexander the First did not mean
the coming of a new reformatory spirit, he put an end to his life by
suicide. As to his book, it still remains forbidden in Russia. A new
edition of it, which was made in 1872, was confiscated and destroyed,
and in 1888 the permission was given to a publisher to issue the work
in editions of a hundred copies only, which were to be distributed
among a few men of science and certain high functionaries.[7]
THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
These were, then, the elements out of which Russian literature had
to be evolved in the nineteenth century. The slow work of the last
five hundred years had already prepared that admirable, pliable, and
rich instrument--the literary language in which Púshkin would soon
be enabled to write his melodious verses and Turguéneff his no less
melodious prose. From the autobiography of the Non-conformist martyr,
Avvakúm, one could already guess the value of the spoken language of
the Russian people for literary purposes.
Tretiakóvskiy, by his clumsy verses, and especially Lomonósoff and
Derzhávin by their odes, had definitely repelled the syllabic form that
had been introduced from France and Poland, and had established the
tonic, rhythmical form which was indicated by the popular song itself.
Lomonósoff had created a popular scientific language; he had invented
a number of new words, and had proved that the Latin and Old Slavonian
constructions were hostile to the spirit of Russian, and quite
unnecessary. The age of Catherine II. further introduced into written
literature the forms of familiar everyday talk, borrowed even from
the peasant class; and Nóvikoff had created a Russian philosophical
language--still heavy on account of its underlying mysticism, but
splendidly adapted, as it appeared a few decades later, to abstract
metaphysical discussions. The elements for a great and original
literature were thus ready. They required only a vivifying spirit which
should use them for higher purposes. This genius was Púshkin. But
before speaking of him, the historian and novelist Karamzín and the
poet Zhukóvskiy[8] must be mentioned, as they represent a link between
the two epochs.
KARAMZÍN (1766-1826), by his monumental work, _The History of the
Russian State_, did in literature what the great war of 1812 had done
in national life. He awakened the national consciousness and created
a lasting interest in the history of the nation, in the making of
the empire, in the evolution of national character and institutions.
Karamzín’s _History_ was reactionary in spirit. He was the historian
of the Russian State, not of the Russian people; the poet of the
virtues of monarchy and the wisdom of the rulers, but not an observer
of the work that had been accomplished by the unknown masses of the
nation. He was not the man to understand the federal principles which
prevailed in Russia down to the fifteenth century, and still less the
communal principles which pervaded Russian life and had permitted the
nation to conquer and to colonise an immense continent. For him, the
history of Russia was the regular, organic development of a monarchy,
from the first appearance of the Scandinavian _varingiar_ down to the
present times, and he was chiefly concerned with describing the deeds
of monarchs in their conquests and their building up of a State; but,
as it often happens with Russian writers, his foot-notes were a work
of history in themselves. They contained a rich mine of information
concerning the sources of Russia’s history, and they suggested to the
ordinary reader that the early centuries of mediæval Russia, with
her independent city-republics, were far more interesting than they
appeared in the book.[9] Karamzín was not the founder of a school, but
he showed to Russia that she has a past worth knowing. Besides, his
work was a work of art. It was written in a brilliant style, which
accustomed the public to read historical works. The result was, that
the first edition of his eight-volume _History_--3,000 copies--was sold
in twenty-five days.
However, Karamzín’s influence was not limited to his _History_: it
was even greater through his novels and his _Letters of a Russian
Traveller Abroad_. In the latter he made an attempt to bring the
products of European thought, philosophy, and political life into
circulation amidst a wide public; to spread broadly humanitarian
views, at a time when they were most needed as a counterpoise to the
sad realities of political and social life; and to establish a link of
connection between the intellectual life of our country and that of
Europe. As to Karamzín’s novels, he appeared in them as a true follower
of sentimental romanticism; but this was precisely what was required
then, as a reaction against the would-be classical school. In one of
his novels, _Poor Liza_ (1792), he described the misfortunes of a
peasant girl who fell in love with a nobleman, was abandoned by him,
and finally drowned herself in a pond. This peasant girl surely would
not answer to our present realistic requirements. She spoke in choice
language and was not a peasant girl at all; but all reading Russia
cried about the misfortune of “poor Liza,” and the pond where the
heroine was supposed to have been drowned became a place of pilgrimage
for the sentimental youths of Moscow. The spirited protest against
serfdom which we shall find later on in modern literature was thus
already born in Karamzín’s time.
ZHUKÓVSKIY (1783-1852) was a romantic poet in the true sense of the
word, and a true worshipper of poetry, who fully understood its
elevating power. His original productions were few. He was mainly a
translator and rendered in most beautiful Russian verses the poems of
Schiller, Uhland, Herder, Byron, Thomas Moore, and others, as well as
the Odyssey, the Hindu poem of Nal and Ramayanti, and the songs of the
Western Slavonians. The beauty of these translations is such that I
doubt whether there are in any other language, even in German, equally
beautiful renderings of foreign poets. However, Zhukóvskiy was not
a mere translator: he took from other poets only what was agreeable
to his own nature and what he would have liked to sing himself. Sad
reflections about the unknown, an aspiration towards distant lands, the
sufferings of love, and the sadness of separation--all lived through by
the poet--were the distinctive features of his poetry. They reflected
his inner self. We may object now to his ultra-romanticism, but this
direction, at that time, was an appeal to the broadly humanitarian
feelings, and it was of first necessity for progress. By his poetry,
Zhukóvskiy appealed chiefly to women, and when we deal later on with
the part that Russian women played half a century later in the general
development of their country, we shall see that his appeal was not made
in vain. Altogether, Zhukóvskiy appealed to the best sides of human
nature. One note, however, was missing entirely in his poetry: it was
the appeal to the sentiments of freedom and citizenship. This appeal
came from the “Decembrist” poet, Ryléeff.
THE “DECEMBRISTS”
The Tsar Alexander I. went through the same evolution as his
grandmother, Catherine II. He was educated by the republican, La Harpe,
and began his reign as a quite liberal sovereign, ready to grant to
Russia a constitution. He did it in fact for Poland and Finland, and
made a first step towards it in Russia. But he did not dare to touch
serfdom, and gradually he fell under the influence of German mystics,
became alarmed at liberal ideas, and surrendered his will to the
worst reactionaries. The man who ruled Russia during the last ten or
twelve years of his reign was General Arakchéeff--a maniac of cruelty
and militarism, who maintained his influence by means of the crudest
flattery and simulated religiousness.
A reaction against these conditions was sure to grow up, the more
so as the Napoleonic wars had brought a great number of Russians in
contact with Western Europe. The campaigns made in Germany, and the
occupation of Paris by the Russian armies, had familiarised many
officers with the ideas of liberty which reigned still in the French
capital, while at home the endeavours of Nóvikoff were bearing fruit,
and the freemason Friends continued his work. When Alexander I., having
fallen under the influence of Madame Krüdener and other German mystics,
concluded in 1815 the Holy Alliance with Germany and Austria, in order
to combat all liberal ideas, secret societies began to be formed in
Russia--chiefly among the officers--in order to promote the ideas of
liberty, of abolition of serfdom, and of equality before the law, as
the necessary steps towards the abolition of absolute rule. Everyone
who has read Tolstóy’s _War and Peace_ must remember “Pierre” and the
impression produced upon this young man by his first meeting with an
old freemason. “Pierre” is a true representative of many young men
who later on became known as “Decembrists.” Like “Pierre,” they were
imbued with humanitarian ideas; many of them hated serfdom, and they
wanted the introduction of constitutional guarantees; while a few of
them (Péstel, Ryléef), despairing of monarchy, spoke of a return to
the republican federalism of old Russia. With such ends in view, they
created their secret societies.
It is known how this conspiracy ended. After the sudden death of
Alexander I. in the South of Russia, the oath of allegiance was given
at St. Petersburg to his brother Constantine, who was proclaimed his
successor. But when, a few days later, it became known in the capital
that Constantine had abdicated, and that his brother Nicholas was going
to become emperor, and when the conspirators learned that they had
been denounced in the meantime to the State police, they saw nothing
else to do but to proclaim their programme openly in the streets, and
to fall in an unequal fight. They did so, on December 14 (26), 1825,
in the Senate Square of St. Petersburg, followed by a few hundred
men from several regiments of the guard. Five of the insurgents were
hanged by Nicholas I., and the remainder, _i. e._, about a hundred
young men who represented the flower of Russian intelligence, were
sent to hard labour in Siberia, where they remained till 1856. One can
hardly imagine what it meant, in a country which was not over-rich
in educated and well-intentioned men, when such a number of the
best representatives of a generation were taken out of the ranks
and reduced to silence. Even in a more civilised country of Western
Europe the sudden disappearance of so many men of thought and action
would have dealt a severe blow to progress. In Russia the effect was
disastrous--the more so as the reign of Nicholas I. lasted thirty
years, during which every spark of free thought was stifled as soon as
it appeared.
One of the most brilliant literary representatives of the “Decembrists”
was RYLÉEF (1795-1826), one of the five who were hanged by Nicholas I.
He had received a good education, and in 1814 was already an officer.
He was thus by a few years the elder of Púshkin. He twice visited
France, in 1814 and 1815, and after the conclusion of peace became a
magistrate at St. Petersburg. His earlier productions were a series
of ballads dealing with the leading men of Russian history. Most of
them were merely patriotic, but some already revealed the sympathies
of the poet for freedom. Censorship did not allow these ballads
to be printed, but they circulated all over Russia in manuscript.
Their poetical value was not great; but the next poem of Ryléef,
_Voinaróvsky_, and especially some fragments of unfinished poems,
revealed in him a powerful poetical gift, which Ryléef’s great friend,
Púshkin, greeted with effusion. It is greatly to be regretted that the
poem _Voinaróvsky_ has never been translated into English. Its subject
is the struggle of Little Russia for the recovery of its independence
under Peter I. When the Russian Tsar was engaged in a bitter struggle
against the great northern warrior, Charles XII., then the ruler of
Little Russia, the _hétman_ Mazépa conceived the plan of joining
Charles XII. against Peter I. for freeing his mother country from the
Russian yoke. Charles XII., as is known, was defeated at Poltáva, and
both he and the _hétman_ had to flee to Turkey. As to Voinaróvsky, a
young patriot friend of Mazépa, he was taken prisoner, and transported
to Siberia. There, at Yakútsk, he was visited by the historian Müller,
and Ryléeff makes him tell his story to the German explorer. The
scenes of nature in Siberia, at Yakútsk, with which the poem begins;
the preparations for the war in Little Russia and the war itself; the
flight of Charles XII. and Mazépa; then the sufferings of Voinaróvsky
at Yakútsk, when his young wife came to rejoin him in the land of
exile, and died there--all these scenes are most beautiful, while in
places the verses, by their simplicity and the beauty of their images,
evoked the admiration even of Púshkin. Two or three generations have
now read this poem, and it continues to inspire each new one with the
same love of liberty and hatred of oppression.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pronounce _Ook-ra-ee-nian_.
[2] English readers will find the translation of this poem in full
in the excellent _Anthology of Russian Literature from the Earliest
Period to the Present Time_, by Leo Wiener, published in two volumes,
in 1902, by G. P. Putnam & Sons, at New York. Professor Wiener knows
Russian literature perfectly well, and has made a very happy choice of
a very great number of the most characteristic passages from Russian
writers, beginning with the oldest period (911), and ending with our
contemporaries, Górkiy and Merezhkóvskiy.
[3] The Russian name of the first capital of Russia is Moskvà. However,
“Moscow,” like “Warsaw,” etc., is of so general a use that it would be
affectation to use the Russian name.
[4] In all names the vowels _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_ have to be
pronounced as in Italian (_father_, _then_, _in_, _on_, _push_).
[5] In the years 1730-1738 he was ambassador at London.
[6] In 1775-1782 she spent a few years at Edinburgh for the education
of her son.
[7] Two free editions of it were made, one by Herzen at London:
_Prince Scherbátoff and A. Radíscheff_, 1858; and another at Leipzig:
_Journey_, in 1876. See A. Pypin’s _History of Russian Literature_,
vol. iv.
[8] Pronounce _Zh_ as a French _j_ (_Joukóvskiy_ in French).
[9] It is now known how much of the preparatory work which rendered
Karamzín’s _History_ possible was done by the Academicians Schlötzer,
Müller, and Stritter, as well as by the above-mentioned historian
Scherbátoff, who had thoroughly studied the annals and whose views
Karamzín closely followed in his work.
PART II
Púshkin--Lérmontoff
CHAPTER II
PÚSHKIN AND LÉRMONTOFF
Púshkin: Beauty of form--Púshkin and Schiller--His youth; his exile;
his later career and death--Fairy tales: _Ruslán and Ludmíla_--His
lyrics--“Byronism”--Drama--_Evghéniy Onyéghin_--LÉRMONTOFF: Púshkin or
Lérmontoff?--His life--The Caucasus--Poetry of Nature--Influence of
Shelley--_The Demon_--_Mtsyri_--Love of freedom--His death--Púshkin
and Lérmontoff as prose-writers--Other poets and novelists of the same
epoch.
PÚSHKIN
Púshkin is not quite a stranger to English readers. In a valuable
collection of review articles dealing with Russian writers which
Professor Coolidge, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, put at my disposal,
I found that in 1832, and later on in 1845, Púshkin was spoken of as
a writer more or less familiar in England, and translations of some
of his lyrics were given in the reviews. Later on Púshkin was rather
neglected in Russia itself, and the more so abroad, and up to the
present time there is no English translation, worthy of the great poet,
of any of his works. In France, on the contrary--owing to Turguéneff
and Prosper Mérimée, who saw in Púshkin one of the great poets of
mankind--as well as in Germany, all the chief works of the Russian
poet are known to literary men in good translations, of which some are
admirable. To the great reading public the Russian poet is, however,
nowhere well known outside his own mother country.
The reason why Púshkin has not become a favourite with West European
readers is easily understood. His lyric verse is certainly inimitable:
it is that of a great poet. His chief novel in verse, _Evghéniy
Onyéghin_, is written with an easiness and a lightness of style, and
a picturesqueness of detail, which makes it stand unique in European
literature. His renderings in verses of Russian popular tales are
delightful reading. But, apart from his very latest productions in
the dramatic style, there is in whatever Púshkin wrote none of the
depth and elevation of ideas which characterised Goethe and Schiller,
Shelley, Byron, and Browning, Victor Hugo and Barbier. The beauty
of form, the happy ways of expression, the incomparable command of
verse and rhyme, are his main points--not the beauty of his _ideas_.
And what we look for in poetry is always the higher inspiration, the
noble ideas which can help to make us better. In reading Púshkin’s
verses the Russian reader is continually brought to exclaim: “How
beautifully this has been told! It could not, it ought not, to be told
in a different way.” In this beauty of form Púshkin is inferior to
none of the greatest poets. In his ways of expressing even the most
insignificant remarks, and describing the most insignificant details of
everyday life; in the variety of human feeling that he has expressed,
and the delicate expression of love under a variety of aspects which is
contained in his poetry; and finally, in the way he deeply impressed
his own personality upon everything he wrote--he is certainly a great
poet.
It is extremely interesting to compare Púshkin with Schiller, in
their lyrics. Leaving aside the greatness and the variety of subjects
touched upon by Schiller, and comparing only those pieces of poetry
in which both poets speak of themselves, one feels at once that
Schiller’s personality is infinitely superior, in depth of thought and
philosophical comprehension of life, to that of the bright, somewhat
spoiled and rather superficial child that Púshkin was. But, at the
same time, the individuality of Púshkin is more deeply impressed upon
his writings than that of Schiller upon his. Púshkin was full of vital
intensity, and his own self is reflected in everything he wrote; a
human heart, full of fire, is throbbing intensely in all his verses.
This heart is far less sympathetic than that of Schiller, but it is
more intimately revealed to the reader. In his best lyrics Schiller did
not find either a better expression of feeling, or a greater variety
of expression, than Púshkin did. In that respect the Russian poet
decidedly stands by the side of Goethe.
Púshkin was born in an aristocratic family at Moscow. Through his
mother he had African blood in his veins: she was a beautiful creole,
the granddaughter of a negro who had been in the service of Peter
I. His father was a typical representative of the noblemen of those
times: squandering a large fortune, living all his life anyhow and
anyway, amidst feasts, in a house half-furnished and half-empty;
fond of the lighter French literature of the time, fond of entering
into a discussion upon anything that he had just learned from the
encyclopædists, and bringing together at his house all possible
notabilities of literature, Russian and French, who happened to be at
Moscow.
Púshkin’s grandmother and his old nurse were the future poet’s best
friends in his childhood. From them he got his perfect mastership
of the Russian language; and from his nurse, with whom he used to
spend, later on, the long winter nights at his country house, when he
was ordered by the State police to reside on his country estate, he
borrowed that admirable knowledge of Russian folk-lore and Russian
ways of expression which rendered his poetry and prose so wonderfully
Russian. To these two women we thus owe the creation of the modern,
easy, pliable Russian language which Púshkin introduced into our
literature.
He was educated at St. Petersburg, at the Tsárskoe Seló Lyceum, and
even before he left school he became renowned as a most extraordinary
poet, in whom Derzhávin recognised more than a mere successor, and
whom Zhukóvskiy presented was his portrait bearing the following
inscription: “To a pupil, from his defeated teacher.” Unfortunately,
Púshkin’s passionate nature drew him away from both the literary
circles and the circles of his best friends--the Decembrists Púschin
and Küchelbecker--into the circles of the lazy, insignificant
aristocrats, amongst whom he spent his vital energy in orgies.
Something of the shallow, empty sort of life he lived then he has
himself described in _Evghéniy Onyéghin_.
Being friendly with the political youth who appeared six or seven years
later, on the square of Peter I. at St. Petersburg, as insurgents
against autocracy and serfdom, Púshkin wrote an _Ode to Liberty_, and
numbers of small pieces of poetry expressing the most revolutionary
ideas, as well as satires against the rulers of the time. The result
was that in 1820, when he was only twenty years old, he was exiled
to Kishinyóff, a very small town at that time, in newly annexed
Bessarabia, where he led the most extravagant life, eventually joining
a party of wandering gypsies. Happily enough he was permitted to leave
for some time this dusty and uninteresting little spot, and to make,
in company with the charming and educated family of the Rayévskys, a
journey to the Crimea and the Caucasus, from which journey he brought
back some of his finest lyrical works.
In 1824, when he had rendered himself quite impossible at Odessa
(perhaps also from fear that he might escape to Greece, to join Byron),
he was ordered to return to Central Russia and to reside at his small
estate, Mikhaílovskoye, in the province of Pskov, where he wrote his
best things. On December 14, 1825, when the insurrection broke out at
St. Petersburg, Púshkin was at Mikhaílovskoye; otherwise, like so many
of his Decembrist friends, he would most certainly have ended his life
in Siberia. He succeeded in burning all his papers before they could be
seized by the secret police.
Shortly after that he was allowed to return to St. Petersburg: Nicholas
I. undertaking to be himself the censor of his verses, and later on
making Púshkin a chamberlain of his Court. Poor Púshkin had thus to
live the futile life of a small functionary of the Winter Palace, and
this life he certainly hated. The Court nobility and bureaucracy could
never pardon him that he, who did not belong to their circle, was
considered such a great man in Russia, and Púshkin’s life was full of
little stings to his self-respect, coming from these classes. He had
also the misfortune to marry a lady who was very beautiful but did not
in the least appreciate his genius. In 1837 he had to fight on her
account a duel, in which he was killed, at the age of thirty-five.
One of his earliest productions, written almost immediately after he
left school, was _Ruslán and Ludmíla_, a fairy tale, which he put into
beautiful verse. The dominating element of this poem is that wonderland
where “a green oak stands on the sea-beach, and a learned cat goes
round the oak,--to which it is attached by a golden chain,--singing
songs when it goes to the left, and telling tales when it goes to the
right.” It is the wedding day of Ludmíla, the heroine; the long bridal
feast comes at last to an end, and she retires with her husband; when
all of a sudden comes darkness, thunder resounds, and in the storm
Ludmíla disappears. She has been carried away by the terrible sorcerer
from the Black Sea--a folk-lore allusion, of course, to the frequent
raids of the nomads of Southern Russia. Now, the unhappy husband, as
also three other young men, who were formerly suitors of Ludmíla,
saddle their horses and go in search of the vanished bride. From their
experiences the tale is made up, and it is full of both touching
passages and very humorous episodes. After many adventures, Ruslán
recovers his Ludmíla, and everything ends to the general satisfaction,
as folk-tales always do.[10]
This was a most youthful production of Púshkin, but its effect in
Russia was tremendous. Classicism, _i. e_. the pseudo-classicism which
reigned then, was defeated for ever. Everyone wanted to have the poem,
everyone retained in memory whole passages and even pages from it, and
with this tale the modern Russian literature--simple, realistic in its
descriptions, modest in its images and fable, earnest and slightly
humouristic--was created. In fact, one could not imagine a greater
simplicity in verse than that which Púshkin had already obtained in
this poem. But to give an idea of this simplicity to English readers
remains absolutely impossible so long as the poem is not translated by
some very gifted English poet. Suffice it to say that, while its verses
are wonderfully musical, it contains not one single passage in which
the author has resorted to unusual or obsolete words--to any words,
indeed, but those which everyone uses in common conversation.
Thunders came upon Púshkin from the classical camp when this poem
made its appearance. We have only to think of the Daphnes and the
Chloes with which poetry used to be embellished at that time, and
the sacerdotal attitude which the poet took towards his readers, to
understand how the classical school was offended at the appearance of a
poet who expressed his thoughts in beautiful images, without resorting
to any of these embellishments, who spoke the language which everyone
speaks, and related adventures fit for the nursery. With one cut of his
sword Púshkin had freed literature from the ties which were keeping it
enslaved.
The tales which he had heard from his old nurse gave him the matter,
not only for _Ruslán and Ludmíla_, but also for a series of popular
tales, of which the verses are so natural that as soon as you have
pronounced one word that word calls up immediately the next, and this
the following, because you cannot say the thing otherwise than in the
way in which Púshkin has told it. “Is it not exactly so that tales
should be told?” was asked all over Russia; and, the reply being in the
affirmative, the fight against pseudo-classicism was won forever.
This simplicity of expression characterised Púshkin in everything he
afterwards wrote. He did not depart from it, even when he wrote about
so-called elevated subjects, nor in the passionate or philosophical
monologues of his latest dramas. It is what makes Púshkin so difficult
to translate into English; because, in the English literature of the
nineteenth century, Wordsworth is the only poet who has written with
the same simplicity. But, while Wordsworth applied this simplicity
mainly to the description of the lovely and quiet English landscape,
Púshkin spoke with the same simplicity of human life, and his verses
continued to flow, as easy as prose and as free from artificial
expressions, even when he described the most violent human passions.
In his contempt of everything exaggerated and theatrical, and in his
determination to have nothing to do with “the lurid tragic actor who
wields a cardboard sword,” he was thoroughly Russian: and at the same
time he powerfully contributed towards establishing, in both the
written literature and on the stage, that taste for simplicity and
honest expression of feeling of which so many examples will be given in
the course of this book.
The main force of Púshkin was in his lyric poetry, and the chief
note of his lyrics was love. The terrible contradictions between the
ideal and the real, from which deeper minds, like those of Goethe, or
Byron, or Heine, have suffered, were strange to him. Púshkin was of
a more superficial nature. It must also be said that a West-European
poet has an inheritance which the Russian has not. Every country of
Western Europe has passed through periods of great national struggle,
during which the great questions of human development were at stake.
Great political conflicts have produced deep passions and resulted
in tragical situations; but in Russia the great struggles and the
religious movements which took place in the seventeenth century, and
under Pugatchóff in the eighteenth, were uprisings of peasants, in
which the educated classes took no part. The intellectual horizon of a
Russian poet is thus necessarily limited. There is, however, something
in human nature which always lives and appeals to every mind. This is
love, and Púshkin, in his lyric poetry, represented love under so many
aspects, in such beautiful forms, and with such a variety of shades,
as one finds in no other poet. Besides, he often gave to love an
expression so refined, so high, that his higher comprehension of love
left as deep a stamp upon subsequent Russian literature as Goethe’s
refined types of women left in the world’s literature. After Púshkin
had written, it was impossible for Russian poets to speak of love in a
lower sense than he did.
In Russia Púshkin has sometimes been described as a Russian Byron.
This appreciation, however, is hardly correct. He certainly imitated
Byron in some of his poems, although the imitation became, at least in
_Evghéniy Onyéghin_, a brilliant original creation. He certainly was
deeply impressed by Byron’s spirited protest against the conventional
life of European society, and there was a time when, if he only could
have left Russia, he probably would have joined Byron in Greece.
But, with his light character, Púshkin could not fathom, and still less
share, the depth of hatred and contempt towards post-revolutionary
Europe which consumed Byron’s heart. Púshkin’s “Byronism” was
superficial; and, while he was ready to defy “respectable” society,
he knew neither the longings for freedom nor the hatred of hypocrisy
which inspired Byron.
Altogether, Púshkin’s force was not in his elevating or
freedom-inspiring influence. His epicureanism, his education received
from French _emigrés_, and his life amidst the high and frivolous
classes of St. Petersburg society, prevented him from taking to heart
the great problems which were already ripening in Russian life. This
is why, towards the end of his short life, he was no longer in touch
with those of his readers who felt that to glorify the military power
of Russia, after the armies of Nicholas I. had crushed Poland, was
not worthy of a poet; and that to describe the attractions of a St.
Petersburg winter-season for a rich and idle gentleman was not to
describe Russian life, in which the horrors of serfdom and absolutism
were being felt more and more heavily.
Púshkin’s real force was in his having created in a few years the
Russian literary language, and having freed literature from the
theatrical, pompous style which was formerly considered necessary in
whatever was printed in black and white. He was great in his stupendous
powers of poetical creation: in his capacity of taking the commonest
things of everyday life, or the commonest feelings of the most ordinary
person, and of so relating them that the reader lived them through;
and, on the other side, constructing out of the scantiest materials,
and calling to life, a whole historical epoch--a power of creation
which, of those coming after him, only Tolstóy has to the same extent.
Púshkin’s power was next in his profound realism--that realism,
understood in its best sense, which he was the first to introduce in
Russia, and which, we shall see, became afterwards characteristic of
the whole of Russian literature. And it is in the broadly humanitarian
feelings with which his best writings are permeated, in his bright love
of life, and his respect for women. As to beauty of form, his verses
are so “easy” that one knows them by heart after having read them twice
or thrice. Now that they have penetrated into the villages, they are
the delight of millions of peasant children, after having been the
delight of such refined and philosophical poets as Turguéneff.
Púshkin also tried his hand at the drama; and, so far as may be
judged from his latest productions, _Don Juan_ and _The Miser-Knight_,
he surely would have achieved great results had he lived to continue
them. His _Mermaid_ (_Rusálka_) unfortunately remained unfinished, but
its dramatic qualities can be judged from what Darmýzhsky has made of
it in his opera. His historical drama, _Boris Godunóff_, taken from
the times of the pretender Demetrius, is enlivened here and there by
most beautiful scenes, some of them very amusing, and some of them
containing a delicate analysis of the sentiments of love and ambition;
but it remains rather a dramatic chronicle than a drama. As to _The
Miser-Knight_, it shows an extraordinary power of mature talent, and
contains passages undoubtedly worthy of Shakespeare; while _Don Juan_,
imbued with a true Spanish atmosphere, gives a far better comprehension
of the Don Juan type than any other representation of it in any
literature, and has all the qualities of a first-rate drama.
Towards the end of his very short life a note of deeper comprehension
of human affairs began to appear in Púshkin’s writings. He had had
enough of the life of the higher classes; and, when he began to write a
history of the great peasant uprising which took place under Pugatchóff
during the reign of Catherine II., he began also to understand and
to feel the inner springs of the life of the Russian peasant-class.
National life appeared to him under a much broader aspect than before.
But at this stage of the development of his genius his career came to
a premature end. He was killed, as already stated, in a duel with a
society man.
The most popular work of Púshkin is his novel in verse, _Evghéniy
Onyéghin_. In its form it has much in common with Byron’s _Childe
Harold_, but it is thoroughly Russian, and contains perhaps the best
description of Russian life, both in the capitals and on the smaller
estates of noblemen in the country, that has ever been written in
Russian literature. Tchaykóvsky, the musician, has made of it an
opera which enjoys a great success on the Russian stage. The hero
of the novel, Onyéghin, is a typical representative of what society
people were at that time. He has received a superficial education,
partly from a French _emigré_, partly from a German teacher, and has
learned “something and anyhow.” At the age of nineteen he is the
owner of a great fortune--consisting, of course, of serfs, about whom
he does not care in the least--and he is engulfed in the “high-life”
of St. Petersburg. His day begins very late, with reading scores of
invitations to tea-parties, evening parties, and fancy balls. He is,
of course, a visitor at the theatre, in which he prefers ballet to the
clumsy productions of the Russian dramatists; and he spends a good
deal of his day in fashionable restaurants, while his nights are given
to balls, where he plays the part of a disillusioned young man, who
is tired of life, and wraps himself in the mantle of Byronism. For
some reason or other he is compelled to spend a summer on his estate,
where he has for a neighbour a young poet, educated in Germany and
full of German romanticism. They become great friends, and they make
acquaintance with a squire’s family in their neighbourhood. The head of
the family--the old mother--is admirably described. Her two daughters,
Tatiána and Olga, are very different in nature: Olga is a quite artless
girl, full of the joy of living, who worries herself with no questions,
and the young poet is madly in love with her; they are going to marry.
As to Tatiána, she is a poetical girl, and Púshkin bestows on her all
the wonderful powers of his talent, describing her as an ideal woman:
intelligent, thoughtful, and inspired with vague aspirations towards
something better than the prosaic life which she is compelled to live.
Onyéghin produces upon her, from the first, a deep impression: she
falls in love with him; but he, who has made so many conquests in the
high circles of the capital, and now wears the mask of disgust of
life, takes no notice of the naïve love of the poor country girl. She
writes to him and tells him her love with great frankness and in most
pathetic words; but the young snob finds nothing better to do than to
lecture her about her rashness, and seems to take great pleasure in
turning the knife in her wound. At the same time, at a small country
ball Onyéghin, moved by some spirit of mischief, begins to flirt in
the most provoking way with the other sister, Olga. The young girl
seems to be delighted with the attention paid to her by the gloomy
hero, and the result is that the poet provokes his friend to a duel.
An old retired officer, a true duelist, is mixed up in the affair, and
Onyéghin, who cares very much about what the country gentlemen, whom
he pretends to despise, may say about him, accepts the provocation and
fights the duel. He kills his poet friend and is compelled to leave the
country. Several years pass. Tatiána, recovered from an illness, goes
one day to the house where formerly Onyéghin stayed and, making friends
with an old keeper, spends days and months reading in his library; but
life has no attraction for her. After insistent supplication from her
mother, she goes to Moscow, and there she marries an old general. This
marriage brings her to St. Petersburg, where she plays a prominent part
in the Court circles. In these surroundings Onyéghin meets her once
more, and hardly recognises his Tánya in the worldly lady whom he sees
now; he falls madly in love with her. She takes no notice of him, and
his letters remain unanswered. At last one day he goes, at an unseemly
hour, into her house. He finds her reading his letters, her eyes full
of tears, and makes her a passionate declaration of his love. To this
Tatiána replies by a monologue which is so beautiful that it ought to
be quoted here, if there existed an English translation which rendered
at least the touching simplicity of Tatiána’s words, and consequently
the beauty of the verses. A whole generation of Russian women have
cried over this monologue, as they were reading these lines:
“Onyéghin, I was younger then, and better looking, I suppose; and I
loved you” ... but the love of a country girl offered nothing new to
Onyéghin. He paid no attention to her.... “Why then does he follow her
now at every step? Why such display of his attention? Is it because she
is now rich and belongs to the high society, and is well received at
Court?
“_Because my fall, in such condition,
Would be well noted ev’rywhere,
And bring to you an envied reputation?_”
And she continues:
“_For me, Onyéghin, all this wealth,
This showy tinsel of Court life,
All my successes in the world,
My well-appointed house and balls ...
For me are nought!--I gladly would
Give up these rags, this masquerade,
And all the brilliancy and din,
For a small shelf of books, a garden wild,
Our weather-beaten house so poor--
Those very places where I met
With you, Onyéghin, that first time;
And for the churchyard of our village,
Where now a cross and shady trees
Stand on the grave of my poor nurse._
* * * * *
_And happiness was possible then!
It was so near!_” ...
She supplicates Onyéghin to leave her. “I love you,” she says:
“_Why should I hide from you the truth?
But I am given to another,
And true to him I shall remain._”[11]
How many thousands of young Russian women have later on repeated these
same verses, and said to themselves: “I would gladly give up all these
rags and all this masquerade of luxurious life for a small shelf of
books, for life in the country, amidst the peasants, and for the grave
of my old nurse in our village.” How many have done it! And we shall
see how this same type of Russian girl was developed still further in
the novels of Turguéneff--and in Russian life. Was not Púshkin a great
poet to have foreseen and predicted it?
LÉRMONTOFF
It is said that when Turguéneff and his great friend, Kavélin, came
together--Kavélin was a very sympathetic philosopher and a writer
upon law--a favourite theme of their discussions was: “Púshkin or
Lérmontoff?” Turguéneff, as is known, considered Púshkin one of the
greatest poets, and especially one of the greatest artists, among
men; while Kavélin must have insisted upon the fact that in his best
productions Lérmontoff was but slightly inferior to Púshkin as an
artist, that his verses were real music, while at the same time the
inspiration of his poetry was of a much higher standard than that of
Púshkin. When it is added that eight years was the entire limit of
Lérmontoff’s literary career--he was killed in a duel at the age of
twenty-six--the powers and the potentialities of this poet will be seen
at once.
Lérmontoff had Scotch blood in his veins. At least, the founder of the
family was a Scotchman, George Learmonth, who, with sixty Scotchmen
and Irishmen, entered the service of Poland first, and afterwards, in
1613, of Russia. The inner biography of the poet remains still but
imperfectly known. It is certain that his childhood and boyhood were
anything but happy. His mother was a lover of poetry--perhaps a poet
herself; but he lost her when he was only three years old--she was only
twenty-one. His aristocratic grandmother on the maternal side took him
from his father--a poor army officer, whom the child worshipped--and
educated him, preventing all intercourse between the father and the
son. The boy was very gifted, and at the age of fourteen had already
begun to write verses and poems--first in French, (like Púshkin), and
soon in Russian. Schiller and Shakespeare and, from the age of sixteen,
Byron and Shelley were his favourites. At the age of sixteen Lérmontoff
entered the Moscow University, from which he was, however, excluded
next year for some offence against a very uninteresting professor. He
then entered a military school at St. Petersburg, to become at the age
of eighteen an officer of the hussars.
A young man of twenty-two, Lérmontoff suddenly became widely known
for a piece of poetry which he wrote on the occasion of Púshkin’s
death (1837). A great poet, as well as a lover of liberty and a foe of
oppression, was revealed at once in this passionate production of the
young writer, of which the concluding verses were especially powerful.
“But you,” he wrote, “who stand, a haughty crowd, around the throne,
You hang men of genius, of liberty, and fame! You have now the law to
cover you, And justice must close her lips before you! But there is a
judgment of God,--you, dissolute crowd! There is a severe judge who
waits for you. You will not buy him by the sound of your gold.... And,
with all your black blood, You will not wash away the stain of the
poet’s pure blood!” In a few days all St. Petersburg, and very soon all
Russia, knew these verses by heart; they circulated in thousands of
manuscript copies.
For this passionate cry of his heart, Lérmontoff was exiled at once.
Only the intervention of his powerful friends prevented him from being
marched straight to Siberia. He was transferred from the regiment
of guards to which he belonged to an army regiment in the Caucasus.
Lérmontoff was already acquainted with the Caucasus: he had been taken
there as a child of ten, and he had brought back from this sojourn
an ineffaceable impression. Now the grandeur of the great mountain
range impressed him still more forcibly. The Caucasus is one of the
most beautiful regions on earth. It is a chain of mountains much
greater than the Alps, surrounded by endless forests, gardens, and
steppes, situated in a southern climate, in a dry region where the
transparency of the air enhances immensely the natural beauty of the
mountains. The snow-clad giants are seen from the Steppes scores of
miles away, and the immensity of the chain produces an impression which
is equalled nowhere in Europe. Moreover, a half-tropical vegetation
clothes the mountain slopes, where the villages nestle, with their
semi-military aspect and their turrets, basking in all the gorgeous
sunshine of the East, or concealed in the dark shadows of the narrow
gorges, and populated by a race of people among the most beautiful of
Europe. Finally, at the time Lérmontoff was there the mountaineers were
fighting against the Russian invaders with unabated courage and daring
for each valley of their native mountains.
All these natural beauties of the Caucasus have been reflected in
Lérmontoff’s poetry, in such a way that in no other literature are
there descriptions of nature so beautiful, or so impressive and
correct. Bodenstedt, his German translator and personal friend, who
knew the Caucasus well, was quite right in observing that they are
worth volumes of geographical descriptions. The reading of many
volumes about the Caucasus does not add any concrete features to those
which are impressed upon the mind by reading the poems of Lérmontoff.
Turguéneff quotes somewhere Shakespeare’s description of the sea as
seen from the cliffs of Dover (in _King Lear_), as a masterpiece of
objective poetry dealing with nature. I must confess, however, that
the concentration of attention upon small details in this description
does not appeal to my mind. It gives no impression of the immensity of
the sea as seen from the Dover cliffs, nor of the wonderful richness
of colour displayed by the waters on a sunny day. No such reproach
could ever be made against Lérmontoff’s poetry of nature. Bodenstedt
truly says that Lérmontoff has managed to satisfy at the same time
both the naturalist and the lover of art. Whether he describes the
gigantic chain, where the eye loses itself--here in snow clouds, there
in the unfathomable depths of narrow gorges; or whether he mentions
some detail: a mountain stream, or the endless woods, or the smiling
valleys of Georgia covered with flowers, or the strings of light
clouds floating in the dry breezes of Northern Caucasia,--he always
remains so true to nature that his picture rises before the eye in
life-colours, and yet it is imbued with a poetical atmosphere which
makes one feel the freshness of these mountains, the balm of their
forests and meadows, the purity of the air. And all this is written in
verses wonderfully musical. Lérmontoff’s verses, though not so “easy”
as Púshkin’s, are very often even more musical. They sound like a
beautiful melody. The Russian language is always rather melodious, but
in the verses of Lérmontoff it becomes almost as melodious as Italian.
The intellectual aspect of Lérmontoff is nearer to Shelley than to
any other poet. He was deeply impressed by the author of _Prometheus
Bound_; but he did not try to imitate Shelley. In his earliest
productions he did indeed imitate Púshkin and Púshkin’s Byronism; but
he very soon struck a line of his own. All that can be said is, that
the mind of Lérmontoff was disquieted by the same great problems of
Good and Evil struggling in the human heart, as in the universe at
large, which disquieted Shelley. Like Shelley among the poets, and
like Schopenhauer among the philosophers, he felt the coming of that
burning need of a revision of the moral principles now current, so
characteristic of our own times. He embodied these ideas in two poems,
_The Demon_ and _Mtsýri_, which complete each other. The leading idea
of the first is that of a fierce soul which has broken with both earth
and heaven, and looks with contempt upon all who are moved by petty
passions. An exile from paradise and a hater of human virtues, he knows
these petty passions, and despises them with all his superiority. The
love of this demon towards a Georgian girl who takes refuge from his
love in a convent, and dies there--what more unreal subject could be
chosen? And yet, on reading the poem, one is struck at every line
by its incredible wealth of purely realistic, concrete descriptions
of scenes and of human feelings, all of the most exquisite beauty.
The dance of the girl at her Georgian castle before the wedding, the
encounter of the bridegroom with robbers and his death, the galloping
of his faithful horse, the sufferings of the bride and her retirement
to a convent, nay, the love itself of the demon and every one of the
demon’s movements--this is of the purest realism in the highest sense
of the word: that realism with which Púshkin had stamped Russian
literature once and for all.
_Mtsýri_ is the cry of a young soul longing for liberty. A boy, taken
from a Circassian village, from the mountains, is brought up in a small
Russian monastery. The monks think that they have killed in him all
human passions and longings; but the dream of his childhood is--be it
only once, be it only for a moment--to see his native mountains where
his sisters sang round his cradle, and to press his burning bosom
against the heart of one who is not a stranger. One night, when a storm
rages and the monks are praying in fear in their church, he escapes
from the monastery, and wanders for three days in the woods. For once
in his life he enjoys a few moments of liberty; he feels all the
energy and all the forces of his youth: “As for me, I was like a wild
beast,” he says afterwards, “and I was ready to fight with the storm,
the lightning, the tiger of the forest.” But, being an exotic plant,
weakened by education, he does not find his way to his native country.
He is lost in the forests which spread for hundreds of miles round him,
and is found a few days later, exhausted, not far from the monastery.
He dies from the wounds which he has received in a fight with a leopard.
“The grave does not frighten me,” he says to the old monk who attends
him. “Suffering, they say, goes to sleep there in the eternal cold
stillness. But I regret to part with life.... I am young, still
young.... hast thou ever known the dreams of youth? Or hast thou
forgotten how thou once lovedst and hatedst? Maybe, this beautiful
world has lost for thee its beauty. Thou art weak and grey; thou hast
lost all desires. No matter! Thou hast lived once; thou hast something
to forget in this world. Thou hast lived--I might have lived, too!” And
he tells about the beauty of the nature which he saw when he had run
away, his frantic joy at feeling free, his running after the lightning,
his fight with a leopard. “Thou wishest to know what I did while I was
free?--I lived, old man! I lived! And my life, without these three
happy days, would have been gloomier and darker than thy powerless old
age!” But it is impossible to _tell_ all the beauties of this poem. It
must be read, and let us hope that a good translation of it will be
published some day.
Lérmontoff’s demonism or pessimism was not the pessimism of despair,
but a militant protest against all that is ignoble in life, and in
this respect his poetry has deeply impressed itself upon all our
subsequent literature. His pessimism was the irritation of a strong
man at seeing others round him so weak and so base. With his inborn
feeling of the Beautiful, which evidently can never exist without
the True and the Good, and at the same time surrounded--especially
in the worldly spheres he lived in, and on the Caucasus--by men and
women who could not or did not dare to understand him, he might
easily have arrived at a pessimistic contempt and hatred of mankind;
but he always maintained his faith in the higher qualities of man.
It was quite natural that in his youth--especially in those years of
universal reaction, the thirties--Lérmontoff should have expressed his
discontent with the world in such a general and abstract creation
as is _The Demon_. Something similar we find even with Schiller. But
gradually his pessimism took a more concrete form. It was not mankind
altogether, and still less heaven and earth, that he despised in his
latter productions, but the negative features of his own generation. In
his prose novel, _The Hero of our Own Time_, in his _Thoughts (Duma)_,
etc., he perceived higher ideals, and already in 1840--_i. e._, one
year before his death--he seemed ready to open a new page in his
creation, in which his powerfully constructive and critical mind would
have been directed towards the real evils of actual life, and real,
positive good would apparently have been his aim. But it was at this
very moment that, like Púshkin, he fell in a duel.
Lérmontoff was, above all, a “humanist,”--a deeply humanitarian poet.
Already at the age of twenty-three, he had written a poem from the
times of John the Terrible, _Song about the Merchant Kaláshnikoff_,
which is rightly considered as one of the best gems of Russian
literature, both for its powers, its artistic finish, and its wonderful
epic style. The poem, which produced a great impression when it became
known in Germany in Bodenstedt’s translation, is imbued with the
fiercest spirit of revolt against the courtiers of the Terrible Tsar.
Lérmontoff deeply loved Russia, but not the official Russia: not the
crushing military power of a fatherland, which is so dear to the
so-called patriots, and he wrote:
_I love my fatherland; but strange that love,
In spite of all my reasoning may say;
Its glory, bought by shedding streams of blood,
Its quietness, so full of fierce disdain,
And the traditions of its gloomy past
Do not awake in me a happy vision._...
What he loved in Russia was its country life, its plains, the life of
its peasants. He was inspired at the same time with a deep love towards
the natives of the Caucasus, who were waging their bitter fight against
the Russians for their liberty. Himself a Russian, and a member of
two different expeditions against the Circassians, his heart throbbed
nevertheless in sympathy with that brave, warm-hearted people in their
struggle for independence. One poem, _Izmail-Bey_, is an apotheosis
of this struggle of the Circassians against the Russians; in another,
one of his best--a Circassian is described as fleeing from the field
of battle to run home to his village, and there his mother herself
repudiates him as a traitor. Another gem of poetry, one of his shorter
poems, _Valérik_, is considered by those who know what real warfare is
as the most correct description of it in poetry. And yet, Lérmontoff
disliked war, and he ends one of his admirable descriptions of fighting
with these lines:
“I thought: How miserable is man! What does he want? The sky is pure,
and under it there’s room for all; but without reason and necessity,
his heart is full of hatred.--Why?”
He died in his twenty-seventh year. Exiled for a second time to the
Caucasus (for a duel which he had fought at St. Petersburg with
a Barrante, the son of the French ambassador), he was staying at
Pyatigórsk, frequenting the shallow society which usually comes
together in such watering places. His jokes and sarcasms addressed
to an officer, Martýnoff, who used to drape himself in a Byronian
mantle the better to capture the hearts of young girls, led to a duel.
Lérmontoff, as he had already done in his first duel, shot sideways
purposely; but Martýnoff slowly and purposely took his aim so as even
to call forth the protests of the seconds--and killed Lérmontoff on the
spot.
PÚSHKIN AND LÉRMONTOFF AS PROSE-WRITERS
Towards the end of his life Púshkin gave himself more and more to
prose writing. He began an extensive history of the peasant uprising
of 1773 under Pugatchóff, and undertook for that purpose a journey to
East Russia, where he collected, besides public documents, personal
reminiscences and popular traditions relating to this uprising. At
the same time he also wrote a novel, _The Captain’s Daughter_, the
scene of which was laid in that disturbed period. The novel is not
very remarkable in itself. True, the portraits of Pugatchóff and of
an old servant, as well as the description of the whole life in the
small forts of East Russia, garrisoned at that time by only a few
invalid soldiers, are very true to reality and brilliantly pictured;
but in the general construction of the novel Púshkin paid a tribute
to the sentimentalism of the times. Nevertheless, _The Captain’s
Daughter_, and especially the other prose novels of Púshkin, have
played an important part in the history of Russian literature. Through
them Púshkin introduced into Russia the realistic school, long before
Balzac did so in France, and this school has since that time prevailed
in Russian prose-literature. I do not mean, of course, Realism in the
sense of dwelling mainly upon the lowest instincts of man, as it was
misunderstood by some French writers, but in the sense of treating both
high and low manifestations of human nature in a way true to reality,
and in their real proportions. Moreover, the _simplicity_ of these
novels, both as regards their plots and the way the plots are treated,
is simply marvellous, and in this way they have traced the lines upon
which the development of Russian novel writing has ever since been
pursued. The novels of Lérmontoff, of Hérzen (_Whose Fault?_), and of
Turguéneff and Tolstóy descend, I dare to say, in a much more direct
line from Púshkin’s novels than from those of Gógol.
Lérmontoff also wrote one novel in prose, _The Hero of our Own Time_,
of which the hero, Petchórin, was to some extent a real representative
of a portion of the educated society in those years of romanticism.
It is true that some critics saw in him the portraiture of the author
himself and his acquaintances; but, as Lérmontoff wrote in his preface
to a second edition of this novel--“The hero of our own time is indeed
a portrait, but not of one single man: it is the portrait of the vices
of our generation,”--the book indicates “the illness from which this
generation suffers.”
Petchórin is an extremely clever, bold, enterprising man who regards
his surroundings with cold contempt. He is undoubtedly a superior man,
superior to Púshkin’s Onyéghin; but he is, above all, an egotist who
finds no better application for his superior capacities than all sorts
of mad adventures, always connected with love-making. He falls in love
with a Circassian girl whom he sees at a native festival. The girl is
also taken by the beauty and the gloomy aspect of the Russian. To marry
her is evidently out of question, because her Mussulman relatives would
never give her to a Russian. Then, Petchórin daringly kidnaps her, with
the aid of her brother, and the girl is brought to the Russian fort,
where Petchórin is an officer. For several weeks she only cries and
never speaks a word to the Russian, but by and bye she feels love for
him. That is the beginning of the tragedy. Petchórin soon has enough
of the Circassian beauty; he deserts her more and more for hunting
adventures, and during one of them she is kidnapped by a Circassian who
loves her, and who, on seeing that he cannot escape with her, kills her
with his dagger. For Petchórin this solution is almost welcome.
A few years later the same Petchórin appears amidst Russian society
in one of the Caucasus watering towns. There he meets with Princess
Mary, who is courted by a young man--Grushnísky,--a sort of Caucasian
caricature of Byron, draped in a mantle of contempt for mankind, but
in reality a very shallow sort of personage. Petchórin, who cares but
little for the Princess Mary, finds, however, a sort of wicked pleasure
in rendering Grushnítsky ridiculous in her eyes, and uses all his wit
to bring the girl to his feet. When this is done, he loses all interest
in her. He makes a fool of Grushnítsky, and when the young man provokes
him to a duel, he kills him. This was the hero of the time, and it must
be owned that it was not a caricature. In a society free from care
about the means of living--it was of course in serfdom times, under
Nicholas I.--when there was no sort of political life in the country, a
man of superior ability very often found no issue for his forces but in
such adventures as Petchórin’s.
It need not be said that the novel is admirably written--that it is
full of living descriptions of Caucasus “society”; that the characters
are splendidly delineated, and that some of them, like the old Captain
Maxím Maxímytch, have remained living types of some of the best
specimens of mankind. Through these qualities _The Hero of our own
Time_, like _Evghéniy Onyéghin_, became a model for quite a series of
subsequent novels.
OTHER POETS AND NOVELISTS OF THE SAME EPOCH KRYLÓFF
The fable-writer KRYLÓFF (1768-1844) is perhaps the Russian writer who
is best known abroad. English readers know him through the excellent
work and translations of so great a connoisseur of Russian literature
and language as Ralston was, and little can be added to what Ralston
has said of this eminently original writer.
He stands on the boundary between two centuries, and reflects both the
end of the one and the beginning of the other. Up to 1807 he wrote
comedies which, even more than the other comedies of the time, were
mere imitations from the French. It was only in 1807-1809 that he found
his true vocation and began writing fables, in which domain he attained
the first rank, not only in Russia, but among the fable-writers in
all modern literatures. Many of his fables--at any rate, the best
known ones--are translations from Lafontaine; and yet they are
entirely original productions. Lafontaine’s animals are academically
educated French gentlemen; even the peasants in his fables come from
Versailles. There is nothing of the sort in Krylóff. Every animal in
his fables is a character--wonderfully true to life. Nay, even the
cadence of his verses changes and takes a special aspect each time a
new animal is introduced--that heavy simpleton, the Bear, or the fine
and cunning Fox, or the versatile Monkey. Krylóff knew every one of
them intimately; he knew each of their movements, and above all he
had noticed and enjoyed long since in his own self the humorous side
of every one of the dwellers of the forests or the companions of Man,
before he undertook to put them in his fables. This is why Krylóff
may be taken as the greatest fable-writer not only of Russia--where
he had a not to be neglected rival in DMÍTREFF (1760-1837)--but also
of all nations of modern times. True, there is no depth, no profound
and cutting irony, in Krylóff’s fables. Nothing but a good-natured,
easy-going irony, which made the very essence of his heavy frame, his
lazy habits, and his quiet contemplation. But, is this not the true
domain of fable, which must not be confounded with satire?
At the same time there is no writer who has better possessed and
better understood the true essence of the really popular Russian
language, the language spoken by the men and women of the people. At
a time when the Russian _littérateurs_ hesitated between the elegant,
Europeanised style of Karamzín, and the clumsy, half-Slavonic style of
the nationalists of the old school, Krylóff, even in his very first
fables, written in 1807, had already worked out a style which at once
gave him a quite unique position in Russian literature, and which has
not been surpassed even by such masters of the popular Russian language
as was Ostróvskiy and some of the folk-novelists of a later epoch. For
terseness, expressiveness and strict adherence to the true spirit of
the popularly-spoken Russian, Krylóff has no rivals.
THE MINOR POETS
Several minor poets, contemporary of Púshkin and Lérmontoff, and some
of them their personal friends, must be mentioned in this place. The
influence of Púshkin was so great that he could not but call to life a
school of writers who should try to follow in his steps. None of them
reached such a height as to claim to be considered a world poet; but
each of them has made his contribution in one way or another to the
development of Russian poetry, each one has had his humanising and
elevating influence.
KÓZLOFF (1779-1840) has reflected in his poetry the extremely sad
character of his life. At the age of about forty he was stricken
with paralysis, losing the use of his legs, and soon after that his
sight; but his poetical gift remained with him, and he dictated to
his daughter some of the saddest elegies which Russian literature
possesses, as also a great number of our most perfect translations.
His _Monk_ made everyone in Russia shed tears, and Púshkin hastened to
acknowledge the strength of the poem. Endowed with the most wonderful
memory--he knew by heart all Byron, all the poems of Walter Scott,
all Racine, Tasso, and Dante,--Kozlóff, like Zhukóvskiy, with whom
he had much in common, made a great number of translations from
various languages, especially from the English idealists, and some of
his translations from the Polish, such as _The Crimean Sonnets_ of
Mickiewicz, are real works of art.
DÉLWIG (1798-1831) was a great personal friend of Púshkin, whose
comrade he was at the Lyceum. He represented in Russian literature the
tendency towards reviving ancient Greek forms of poetry, but happily
enough he tried at the same time to write in the style of the Russian
popular songs, and the lyrics which he wrote in this manner especially
contributed to make of him a favourite poet of his own time. Some of
his romances have remained popular till now.
BARATÝNSKIY (1800-1844) was another poet of the same group of friends.
Under the influence of the wild nature of Finland, where he spent
several years in exile, he became a romantic poet, full of the love of
nature, and also of melancholy, and deeply interested in philosophical
questions, to which he could find no reply. He thus lacked a definite
conception of life, but what he wrote was clothed in a beautiful form,
and in very expressive, elegant verses.
YAZÝKOFF (1803-1846) belongs to the same circle. He was intimate with
Púshkin, who much admired his verses. It must be said, however, that
the poetry of Yazýkoff had chiefly an historical influence in the sense
of perfecting the forms of poetical expression. Unfortunately, he had
to struggle against almost continual illness, and he died just when he
had reached the full development of his talent.
VENEVÍTINOFF (1805-1822) died at a still younger age; but there is
no exaggeration in saying that he promised to become a great poet,
endowed with the same depth of philosophical conception as was Goethe,
and capable of attaining the same beauty of form. The few verses he
wrote during the last year of his life revealed the suddenly attained
maturity of a great poetical talent, and may be compared with the
verses of the greatest poets.
PRINCE ALEXANDER ODÓEVSKIY (1803-1839) and POLEZHÁEFF (1806-1838) are
two other poets who died very young, and whose lives were entirely
broken by political persecution. Odóevskiy was a friend of the
Decembrists. After the 14th of December, 1825, he was arrested, taken
to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and then sentenced to hard
labour in Siberia, whence he was not released till twelve years later,
to be sent as a soldier to the Caucasus. There he became the friend of
Lérmontoff, one of whose best elegies was written on Odóevskiy’s death.
The verses of Odóevskiy (they were not printed abroad while he lived)
lack finish, but he was a real poet and a patriot too, as is seen from
his _Dream of a Poet_, and his historical poem, _Vasilkó_.
The fate of POLEZHÁEFF was even more tragic. He was only twenty years
old--a brilliant student of the Moscow University--when he wrote an
autobiographical poem, _Sáshka_, full of allusions to the evils of
autocracy and of appeals for freedom. This poem was shown to Nicholas
I., who ordered the young poet to be sent as a soldier to an army
regiment. The duration of service was then twenty-five years, and
Polezháeff saw not the slightest chance of release. More than that: for
an unauthorised absence from his regiment (he had gone to Moscow with
the intention of presenting a petition of release to the Tsar) he was
condemned to receive one thousand strokes with the sticks, and only
by mere luck escaped the punishment. He never succumbed to his fate,
and in the horrible barracks of those times he remained what he was:
a pupil of Byron, Lamartine, and Macpherson, never broken, protesting
against tyranny In verses that were written in tears and blood. When he
was dying from consumption in a military hospital at Moscow Nicholas I.
pardoned him: his promotion to the grade of officer came when he was
dead.
A similar fate befell the Little Russian poet SHEVCHÉNKO (1814-1861),
who, for some of his poetry, was sent in 1847 to a battalion as a
common soldier. His epical poems from the life of the free Cossacks
in olden times, heart rending poems from the life of the serfs, and
lyrics, all written in Little Russian and thoroughly popular in both
form and content, belong to the fine specimens of poetry of all nations.
Of prose writers of the same epoch only a few can be mentioned in this
book, and these in a few lines. ALEXANDER BESTÚZHEFF (1797-1837), who
wrote under the _nom de plume_ of MARLÍNSKIY--one of the “Decembrists,”
exiled to Siberia, and later on sent to the Caucasus as a soldier--was
the author of very widely-read novels. Like Púshkin and Lérmontoff he
was under the influence of Byron, and described “titanic passions” in
Byron’s style, as also striking adventures in the style of the French
novelists of the Romantic school; but he deserves at the same time to
be regarded as the first to write novels from Russian life in which
matters of social interest were discussed.
Other favourite novelists of the same epoch were: ZAGÓSKIN
(1789-1852), the author of extremely popular historical novels, _Yúriy
Miloslávskiy_, _Róslavleff_, etc., all written in a sentimentally
patriotic style; NARYÉZHNYI (1780-1825), who is considered by some
Russian critics as a forerunner of Gógol, because he wrote already in
the realistic style, describing, like Gógol, the dark sides of Russian
life; and LAZHÉCHNIKOFF (1792-1868), the author of a number of very
popular historical novels from Russian life.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The great composer Glínka has made of this fairy tale a most
beautiful opera (_Ruslán i Ludmíla_), in which Russian, Finnish,
Turkish, and Oriental music are intermingled in order to characterise
the different heroes.
[11] For all translations, not otherwise mentioned, it is myself who
is responsible.
PART III
Gógol
CHAPTER III
GÓGOL
Little Russia--_Nights on a Farm near Dikánka_, and
_Mírgorod_--Village life and humour--_How Iván Ivánovitch quarrelled
with Iván Nikíforytch_--Historical novel, _Tarás Búlba_--_The
Cloak_--Drama, _The Inspector-General_--Its influence--_Dead Souls_:
main types--Realism in the Russian novel.