months later in the same year he was presented to Madame Smirnova;
these friends gave him the entree to the literary salons, and the
young author, lonesome as he was, found the intellectual stimulation
he needed. It was Pushkin who suggested to him the subjects for two of
his most famous works, "Revizor" and "Dead Souls." Another friend,
Jukovski, exercised a powerful influence, and gave invaluable aid at
several crises of his career. Jukovski had translated the "Iliad" and
the "Odyssey;" his enthusiasm for Hellenic poetry was contagious; and
under this inspiration Gogol proceeded to write the most Homeric
romance in Russian literature, "Taras Bulba." This story gave the
first indubitable proof of its author's genius, and to-day in the
world's fiction it holds an unassailable place in the front rank. The
book is so short that it can be read through in less than two hours;
but it gives the same impression of vastness and immensity as the huge
volumes of Sienkiewicz.
Gogol followed this amazingly powerful romance by two other works,
which seem to have all the marks of immortality--the comedy "Revizor,"
and a long, unfinished novel, "Dead Souls." This latter book is the
first of the great realistic novels of Russia, of which "Fathers and
Children, "Crime and Punishment," and "Anna Karenina" are such
splendid examples.
From 1836 until his death in 1852, Gogol lived mainly abroad, and
spent much time in travel. His favourite place of residence was Rome,
to which city he repeatedly returned with increasing affection. In
1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departed
from the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact,
toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic. The
last years were shadowed by illness and--a common thing among Russian
writers--by intense nervous depression. He died at Moscow, 21 February
1852. His last words were the old saying, "And I shall laugh with a
bitter laugh." These words were placed on his tomb.
Most Russian novels are steeped in pessimism, and their authors were
men of sorrows. Gogol, however, has the double distinction of being
the only great comic writer in the language, and in particular of
being the author of the only Russian drama known all over the world,
and still acted everywhere on the Continent. Although plays do not
come within the scope of this book, a word or two should be said about
this great comedy; for "Revizor" exhibits clearly the double nature of
the author,--his genius for moral satire and his genius for pure fun.
From the moral point of view, it is a terrible indictment against the
most corrupt bureaucracy of modern times, from the comic point of
view, it is an uproarious farce.
The origin of the play is as follows: while travelling in Russia one
day, Pushkin stopped at Nizhni-Novgorod. Here he was mistaken for a
state functionary on tour among the provinces for purposes of
government inspection. This amused the poet so keenly that he narrated
all the circumstances to Gogol and suggested that the latter make a
play with this experience as the basis of the plot. Gogol not only
acted on the suggestion, but instead of a mere farce, he produced a
comedy of manners. Toward the end of his life he wrote: "In "Revizor"
I tried to gather in one heap all that was bad in Russia, as I then
understood it; I wished to turn it all into ridicule. The real
impression produced was that of fear. Through the laughter that I have
never laughed more loudly, the spectator feels my bitterness and
sorrow." The drama was finished on the 4 December 1835, and of course
the immediate difficulty was the censorship. How would it be possible
for such a satire either to be printed or acted in Russia? Gogol's
friend, Madame Smirnova, carried the manuscript to the Czar, Nikolas
I. It was read to him; he roared with laughter, and immediately
ordered that it be acted. We may note also that he became a warm
friend of Gogol, and sent sums of money to him, saying nobly, "Don't
let him know the source of these gifts; for then he might feel obliged
to write from the official point of view."
The first performance was on the 19 April 1836. The Czar attended in
person, and applauded vigorously. The success was immediate, and it
has never quitted the stage. Gogol wrote to a friend: "On the opening
night I felt uncomfortable from the very first as I sat in the
theatre. Anxiety for the approval of the audience did not trouble me.
There was only one critic in the house--myself--that I feared. I heard
clamorous objections within me which drowned all else. However, the
public, as a whole, was satisfied. Half of the audience praised the
play, the other half condemned it, but not on artistic grounds."
"Revizor" is one of the best-constructed comedies in any language; for
not only has it a unified and well-ordered plot, but it does not stop
with the final fall of the curtain. Most plays by attempting to finish
up the story with smooth edges, leave an impression of artificiality
and unreality, for life is not done up in such neat parcels. The
greatest dramas do not solve problems for us, they supply us with
questions. In "Revizor," at the last dumb scene, after all the mirth,
the real trouble is about to begin; and the spectators depart, not
merely with the delightful memory of an evening's entertainment, but
with their imagination aflame. Furthermore, "Revizor" has that
combination of the intensely local element with the universal, so
characteristic of works of genius. Its avowed attempt was to satirise
local and temporal abuses; but it is impossible to imagine any state
of society in the near future where the play will not seem real. If
Gogol had done nothing but write the best comedy in the Russian
language, he would have his place in literature secure.*
*The first production of "Revizor" in America (in English) was given
by the students of Yale University, 20 April, 1908. For all I know to
the contrary, it was the first English production in the world. It was
immensely successful, caused subsequent performances elsewhere, both
amateur and professional, and attracted attention in Russia, where a
journal gave an illustrated account of the Yale representation.
One must never forget in reading Gogol that he was a man of the
South--"homme du Midi." In all countries of the world, there is a
marked difference between the Northern and the Southern temperament.
The southern sun seems to make human nature more mellow. Southerners
are more warm-hearted, more emotional, more hospitable, and much more
free in the expression of their feelings. In the United States, every
one knows the contrast between the New Englander and the man from the
Gulf; in Europe, the difference between the Norman and the Gascon has
always been apparent--how clear it is in the works of Flaubert and of
Rostand! Likewise how interesting is the comparison between the
Prussian and the Bavarian; we may have a wholesome respect for Berlin,
but we love Munich, in some respects the most attractive town on
earth. The parallel holds good in Russia, where the Little Russians,
the men of the Ukraine, have ever shown characteristics that separate
them from the people of the North. The fiery passion, the boundless
aspiration of the Cossack, animates the stories of Gogol with a
veritable flame.
His first book, "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka (Veillees de
l'Ukraine)," appeared early in the thirties, and, with all its crudity
and excrescences, was a literary sunrise. It attracted immediate and
wide-spread attention, and the wits of Petersburg knew that Russia had
an original novelist. The work is a collection of short stories or
sketches, introduced with a rollicking humorous preface, in which the
author announces himself as Rudii Panko, raiser of bees. Into this
book the exile in the city of the North poured out all his love for
the country and the village customs of his own Little Russia. He gives
us great pictures of Nature, and little pictures of social life. He
describes with the utmost detail a country fair at the place of his
birth, Sorotchinetz. His descriptions of the simple folk, the beasts,
and the bargainings seem as true as those in "Madame Bovary"--the
difference is in the attitude of the author toward his work. Gogol has
nothing of the aloofness, nothing of the scorn of Flaubert; he himself
loves the revelry and the superstitions he pictures, loves above all
the people. Superstition plays a prominent role in these sketches; the
unseen world of ghosts and apparitions has an enormous influence on
the daily life of the peasants. The love of fun is everywhere in
evidence; these people cannot live without practical jokes, violent
dances, and horse-play. Shadowy forms of amorous couples move silent
in the warm summer night, and the stillness is broken by silver
laughter. Far away, in his room at St. Petersburg, shut in by the long
winter darkness, the homesick man dreamed of the vast landscape he
loved, in the warm embrace of the sky at noon, or asleep in the pale
moonlight. The first sentence of the book is a cry of longing. "What
ecstasy; what splendour has a summer day in Little Russia!" Pushkin
used to say that the Northern summer was a caricature of the Southern
winter.
The "Evenings on a Farm" indicates the possession of great power
rather than consummate skill in the use of it. Full of charm as it is,
it cannot by any stretch of language be called a masterpiece. Two
years later, however, Gogol produced one of the great prose romances
of the world, "Taras Bulba." He had intended to write a history of
Little Russia and a history of the Middle Ages, in eight or nine
volumes. In order to gather material, he read annals diligently, and
collected folk-lore, national songs, and local traditions. Fortunately
out of this welter of matter emerged not a big history, but a short
novel. Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the manner
of Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare.
Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the more
evident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberately
Homeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much to
this little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work can
show such colossal force. Force is its prime quality--physical,
mental, religious. In this story the old Cossacks, centuries dead,
have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all
their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and
drinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to
their religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by
passion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy.
These Cossacks are the veritable children of the steppes, and their
vast passions, their Homeric laughter, their absolute recklessness in
battle, are simply an expression of the boundless range of the mighty
landscape.
"The further they penetrated the steppe, the more beautiful it became.
Then all the South, all that region which now constitutes New Russia,
even to the Black Sea, was a green, virgin wilderness. No plough had
ever passed over the immeasurable waves of wild growth; the horses
alone, hiding themselves in it as in a forest, trod it down. Nothing
in nature could be finer. The whole surface of the earth presented
itself as a green-gold ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions of
different flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peeped
light-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broom
thrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of the
false flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence,
was filling out to ripening. About their slender roots ran partridges
with out-stretched necks. The air was filled with the notes of a
thousand different birds. In the sky, immovable, hung the hawks, their
wings outspread, and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The cries
of a cloud of wild ducks, moving up from one side, were echoed from
God knows what distant lake. From the grass arose, with measured
sweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And now
she has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she has
turned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes,
how beautiful you are!"*
*Translated by Isabel Hapgood.
The whole book is dominated by the gigantic figure of old Taras Bulba,
who loves food and drink, but who would rather fight than eat. Like so
many Russian novels, it begins at the beginning, not at the second or
third chapter. The two sons of Taras, wild cubs of the wild old wolf,
return from school, and are welcomed by their loving father, not with
kisses and affectionate greeting, but with a joyous fist combat, while
the anxious mother looks on with tears of dismayed surprise. After the
sublime rage of fighting, which proves to the old man's satisfaction
that his sons are really worthy of him, comes the sublime joy of
brandy, and a prodigious feast, which only the stomachs of fifteenth
century Cossacks could survive. Then despite the anguish of the
mother--there was no place for the happiness of women in Cossack
life--comes the crushing announcement that on the morrow all three
males will away to the wars, from which not one of them will return.
One of the most poignant scenes that Gogol has written is the picture
of the mother, watching the whole night long by her sleeping sons--who
pass the few hours after the long separation and before the eternal
parting, in deep, unconscious slumber.
The various noisy parliaments and bloody combats are pictured by a pen
alive with the subject; of the two sons, one is murdered by his father
for preferring the love of a Capulet to the success of the Montagues;
the other, Ostap, is taken prisoner, and tortured to death. Taras, in
disguise, watches the appalling sufferings of his son; just before his
death, Ostap, who had not uttered a word during the prolonged and
awful agony, cries out to the hostile sky, like the bitter cry "My
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" "Father! where are you? do you hear
all?" and to the amazement of the boy and his torturers, comes, like a
voice from heaven, the shout, "I hear!"
Fearful is the vengeance that Taras Bulba takes on the enemy; fearful
is his own death, lashed to a tree, and burned alive by his foes. He
dies, merrily roaring defiant taunts at his tormentors. And Gogol
himself closes his hero's eyes with the question, "Can any fire,
flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable of overpowering
Russian strength?"
In its particular class of fiction, "Taras Bulba" has no equal except
the Polish trilogy of Sienkiewicz; and Gogol produces the same effect
in a small fraction of the space required by the other. This is of
course Romanticism rampant, which is one reason why it has not been
highly appreciated by the French critics. And it is indeed as contrary
to the spirit of Russian fiction as it is to the French spirit of
restraint. It stands alone in Russian literature, apart from the
regular stream, unique and unapproachable, not so much one of the
great Russian novels as a soul-thrilling poem, commemorating the
immortal Cossack heart.
Gogol followed up the "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka" with two
other volumes of stories and sketches, of which the immortal "Taras
Bulba" was included in one. These other tales show an astonishing
advance in power of conception and mastery of style. I do not share
the general enthusiasm for the narrative of the comically grotesque
quarrel between the two Ivans: but the three stories, "Old-fashioned
Farmers," "The Portrait," and "The Cloak," show to a high degree that
mingling of Fantasy with Reality that is so characteristic of this
author. The obsolete old pair of lovers in "Old-fashioned Farmers" is
one of the most charming and winsome things that Gogol wrote at this
period: it came straight from the depths of his immeasurable
tenderness. It appealed to that Pity which, as every one has noticed,
is a fundamental attribute of the national Russian character. In "The
Portrait," which is partly written in the minute manner of Balzac, and
partly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, we
have the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into this
strange story he has also indicated two of the great guiding
principles of his life: his intense democratic sympathies, and his
devotion to the highest ideals in Art. When the young painter forsakes
poverty and sincerity for wealth and popularity, he steadily
degenerates as an artist and eventually loses his soul. The ending of
the story, with the disappearance of the portrait, is remarkably
clever. The brief tale called "The Cloak" or "The Overcoat" has great
significance in the history of Russian fiction, for all Russian
novelists have been more or less influenced by it. Its realism is so
obviously and emphatically realistic that it becomes exaggeration, but
this does not lessen its tremendous power: then suddenly at the very
end, it leaves the ground, even the air, and soars away into the ether
of Romance.
Although these stories were translated into English by Miss Hapgood
over twenty years ago, they have never had any vogue among
English-speaking people, and indeed they have produced very little
impression anywhere outside of Russia. This is a misfortune for the
world, for Gogol was assuredly one of the great literary geniuses of
the nineteenth century, and he richly repays attentive reading. In
Russia he has been appreciated, immensely respected and admired, from
the day that he published his first book; but his lack of reputation
abroad is indicated by the remark of Mr. Baring in 1910, "the work of
Gogol may be said to be totally unknown in England." This statement is
altogether too sweeping, but it counts as evidence.
Despite Gogol's undoubted claim to be regarded as the founder of
Russian fiction, it is worth remembering that of the three works on
which rests his international fame, two cannot possibly be called
germinal. The drama "Revizor" is the best comedy in the Russian
language; but, partly for that very reason, it produced no school. The
romance "Taras Bulba" has no successful follower in Russian
literature, and brought forth no fruit anywhere for fifty years, until
the appearance of the powerful fiction-chronicles by Sienkiewicz. It
has all the fiery ardour of a young genius; its very exaggeration, its
delight in bloody battle, show a certain immaturity; it breathes
indeed the spirit of youth. With the exception of "The Cloak," Gogol
had by 1840 written little to indicate the direction that the best
part of Russian literature was to take. It was not until the
publication of "Dead Souls" that Russia had a genuine realistic novel.
This book is broad enough in scope and content to serve as the
foundation of Russian fiction, and to sustain the wonderful work of
Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. All the subsequent great novels in
Russia point back to "Dead Souls."
No two books could possibly show a greater contrast than "Taras Bulba"
and "Dead Souls." One reveals an extraordinary power of condensation:
the other an infinite expansion. One deals with heroes and mighty
exploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and the
most trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; the
other a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the most
brilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of the
Romantic spirit--Aspiration; the other looks at life through an
achromatic lens, and is a catalogue of Realities. To a certain extent,
the difference is the difference between the bubbling energy of youth
and the steady energy of middle age. For, although Gogol was still
young in years when he composed "Dead Souls," the decade that
separated the two works was for the author a constant progress in
disillusion. In the sixth chapter of the latter book, Gogol has
himself revealed the sad transformation that had taken place in his
own mind, and that made his genius express itself in so different a
manner:--
"Once, long ago, in the years of my youth, in those beautiful years
that rolled so swiftly, I was full of joy, charmed when I arrived for
the first time in an unknown place; it might be a farm, a poor little
district town, a large village, a small settlement: my eager, childish
eyes always found there many interesting objects. Every building,
everything that showed an individual touch, enchanted my mind, and
left a vivid impression. . . . To-day I travel through all the obscure
villages with profound indifference, and I gaze coldly at their sad
and wretched appearance: my eyes linger over no object, nothing
grotesque makes me smile: that which formerly made me burst out in a
roar of spontaneous laughter, and filled my soul with cheerful
animation, now passes before my eyes as though I saw it not, and my
mouth, cold and rigid, finds no longer a word to say at the very
spectacle which formerly possessed the secret of filling my heart with
ecstasy. O my youth! O my fine simplicity!"
Gogol spent the last fifteen years of his life writing this book, and
he left it unfinished. Pushkin gave him the subject, as he had for
"Revizor." One day, when the two men were alone together, Pushkin told
him, merely as a brief anecdote, of an unscrupulous promoter, who went
about buying up the names of dead serfs, thus enabling their owners to
escape payment of the taxes which were still in force after the last
registration. The names were made over to the new owner, with all
legal formalities, so that he apparently possessed a large fortune,
measured in slaves; these names the promoter transferred to a remote
district, with the intention of obtaining a big cash loan from some
bank, giving his fictitious property as security; but he was quickly
caught, and his audacious scheme came to nothing. The story stuck in
Gogol's mind, and he conceived the idea of a vast novel, in which the
travels of the collector of dead souls should serve as a panorama of
the Russian people. Both Gogol and Pushkin thought of "Don Quixote,"
the spirit of which is evident enough in this book. Not long after
their interview, Gogol wrote to Pushkin: "I have begun to write "Dead
Souls." The subject expands into a very long novel, and I think it
will be amusing, but now I am only at the third chapter. . . . I wish
to show, at least from one point of view, all Russia." Gogol declared
that he did not write a single line of these early chapters without
thinking how Pushkin would judge it, at what he would laugh, at what
he would applaud. When he read aloud from the manuscript, Pushkin,
who had listened with growing seriousness, cried, "God! what a sad
country is Russia!" and later be added, "Gogol invents nothing; it is
the simple truth, the terrible truth."
The first part of his work, containing the first eleven chapters, or
"songs," was published in May 1842. For the rest of his life, largely
spent abroad, Gogol worked fitfully at the continuation of his
masterpiece. Ill health, nervous depression, and morbid asceticism
preyed upon his mind; in 1845 he burned all that he had written of the
second volume. But he soon began to rewrite it, though he made slow
and painful progress, having too much of improductive slave either to
complete it or to be satisfied with it. At Moscow, a short time before
his death, in a night of wakeful misery, he burned a whole mass of his
manuscripts. Among them was unfortunately the larger portion of the
rewritten second part of Dead Souls. Various reasons have been
assigned as the cause of the destruction of his book--some have said,
it was religious remorse for having written the novel at all; others,
rage at adverse criticism; others, his own despair at not having
reached ideal perfection. But it seems probable that its burning was
simply a mistake. Looking among his papers, a short time after the
conflagration, he cried out, "My God! what have I done! that isn't
what I meant to burn!" But whatever the reason, the precious
manuscript was forever lost; and the second part of the work remains
sadly incomplete, partly written up from rough notes left by the
author, Partly supplied by another hand.