Merezhkovski quoted above. The English title of the translation is "A
Dilemma," but as the translator has explained, the name of the story
in the original is "Thought (Mysl)." The chief character is a
physician, Kerzhentsev, who reminds one constantly of Dostoevski's
Raskolnikov, but whose states of mind are even more subtly analysed.
No one should read this story unless his nerves are firm, for the
outcome of the tale is such as to make almost any reader for a time
doubt his own sanity. It is a curious study of the border-line between
reason and madness. The physician, who rejoices in his splendid
health, bodily vigour, and absolute equilibrium of mind, quietly
determines to murder his best friend--to murder him openly and
violently, and to go about it in such a way that he himself will
escape punishment. He means to commit the murder to punish the man's
wife because she had rejected him and married his friend, whom she
loves with all the strength of her powerful nature. His problem,
therefore, is threefold: he must murder the man, the man's wife must
know that he is the murderer, and he must escape punishment. He
therefore begins by feigning madness, and acting so well that his
madness comes upon him only at long intervals; at a dinner-party he
has a violent fit; but he waits a whole month before having another
attack. Everything is beautifully planned; he smashes a plate with his
fist, but no one observes that he has taken care previously to cover
the plate with his napkin, so that his hand will not be cut. His
friends are all too sorry for him to have any suspicion of a sinister
intention; and his friend Alexis is fatuously secure. Not so the wife;
she has an instinctive fear of the coming murder. One evening, when
all three are together, the doctor picks up a heavy iron paper-weight,
and Alexis says that with such an instrument a murderer might break a
man's head. This is interesting. "It was precisely the head, and
precisely with that thing that I had planned to crush it, and now that
same head was telling how it would all end." Therefore he leads Alexis
into a dispute by insisting that the paper-weight is too light. Alexis
becomes angry, and actually makes the doctor take the object in his
hand, and they rehearse his own murder. They are stopped by the wife,
who, terror-stricken, says that she never likes such jokes. Both men
burst into hearty laughter.
A short time after, the doctor crushes the skull of Alexis in the
presence of his wife. In the midst of the horror and confusion of the
household, the murderer slips out, goes home, and is resting calmly,
thinking with intense delight of the splendid success of the plan, and
of the extraordinary skill he had shown in its conception and
execution; when, just as he was dropping off to sleep in delicious
drowsiness, there "languidly" entered into his head this thought: it
speaks to his mind in the third person, as though somebody else had
actually said it: It is very possible that Dr. Kerzhentsev is really
insane. He thought that he simulated, but he is really insane--insane
at this very instant.
After this poison has entered his soul, his condition can be easily
imagined. A terrible debate begins in his own mind, for he is fighting
against himself for his own reason. Every argument that he can think
of to persuade himself of his sanity he marshals; but there are plenty
of arguments on the other side. The story is an excellent example of
what Merezhkovski must mean by the passion of thought.
Another illustration of Andreev's uncanny power is seen in the short
story "Silence." A father does not understand his daughter's silence,
and treats her nervous suffering with harsh practicality. She commits
suicide; the mother is stricken with paralysis; silence reigns in the
house. Silence. The father beseeches his wife to speak to him; there
is no speculation in her wide-open eyes. He cries aloud to his dead
daughter. Silence. Nothing but silence, and the steady approach of
madness.
Andreev is an unflinching realist, with all the Russian power of the
concrete phrase. He would never say, in describing a battle, that the
Russians "suffered a severe loss." He would turn a magnifying glass on
each man. But, although he is a realist and above all a psychologist,
he is also a poet. In the sketch "Silence" there is the very spirit of
poetry. The most recent bit of writing by him that I have seen is
called a Fantasy*--"Life is so Beautiful to the Resurrected." This is
a meditation in a graveyard, written in the manner of one of
Turgenev's "Poems in Prose," though lacking something of that master's
exquisite beauty of style. It is, however, not sentimentally
conventional, but original. The poetic quality in Andreev animates all
his dramas, particularly "To the Stars."
*Translated in "Current Literature," New York, for September 1910.
X
KUPRIN'S PICTURE OF GARRISON LIFE
As Tolstoi, Garshin, and Andreev have shown the horrors of war, so
Kuprin* has shown the utter degradation and sordid misery of garrison
life. If Russian army posts in time of peace bear even a remote
resemblance to the picture given in Kuprin's powerful novel "In
Honour's Name,"** one would think that the soldiers there entombed
would heartily rejoice at the outbreak of war--would indeed welcome
any catastrophe, provided it released them from such an Inferno. It is
interesting to compare stories of American garrisons, or such clever
novels as Mrs. Diver's trilogy of British army posts in India, with
the awful revelations made by Kuprin. Among these Russian officers and
soldiers there is not one gleam of patriotism to glorify the drudgery;
there is positively no ideal, even dim-descried. The officers are a
collection of hideously selfish, brutal, drunken, licentious beasts;
their mental horizon is almost inconceivably narrow, far narrower than
that of mediaeval monks in a monastery. The soldiers are in worse
plight than prisoners, being absolutely at the mercy of the alcoholic
caprices of their superiors. A favourite device of the officer is to
jam the trumpet against the trumpeter's mouth, when he is trying to
obey orders by sounding the call; then they laugh at him derisively as
he spits out blood and broken teeth. The common soldiers are beaten
and hammered unmercifully in the daily drill, so that they are all
bewildered, being in such a state of terror that it is impossible for
them to perform correctly even the simplest manoeuvres. The only
officer in this story who treats his men with any consideration is a
libertine, who seduces the peasants' daughters in the neighbourhood,
and sends them back to their parents with cash payments for their
services.
*Kuprin was born in 1870, and was for a time an officer in the Russian
army.
**Translated by W. F. Harvey: the French translation is called "Une
Petite Garnison Russe;" the German, "Das Duell," after the original
title.
If Kuprin's story be true, one does not need to look far for the utter
failure of the Russian troops in the Japanese war; the soldiers are
here represented as densely ignorant, drilling in abject terror of
their officers' fists and boots, and knowing nothing whatever of true
formations in attack or defence. As for the officers, they are much
worse than the soldiers: their mess is nothing but an indescribably
foul alcoholic den, where sodden drunkenness and filthy talk are the
steady routine. They are all gamblers and debauchees; as soon as a sum
of money can be raised among them, they visit the brothel. The
explanation of the beastly habits of these representatives of the Tsar
is given in the novel in this wise: "Yes, they are all alike, even the
best and most tender-hearted among them. At home they are splendid
fathers of families and excellent husbands; but as soon as they
approach the barracks they become low-minded, cowardly, and idiotic
barbarians. You ask me why this is, and I answer: Because nobody can
find a grain of sense in what is called military service. You know how
all children like to play at war. Well, the human race has had its
childhood--a time of incessant and bloody war; but war was not then
one of the scourges of mankind, but a continued, savage, exultant
national feast to which daring bands of youths marched forth, meeting
victory or death with joy and pleasure. . . . Mankind, however, grew
in age and wisdom; people got weary of the former rowdy, bloody games,
and became more serious, thoughtful, and cautious. The old Vikings of
song and saga were designated and treated as pirates. The soldier no
longer regarded war as a bloody but enjoyable occupation, and had
often to be dragged to the enemy with a noose round his neck. The
former terrifying, ruthless, adored atamens* have been changed into
cowardly, cautious tschinovnih,** who get along painfully enough on
never adequate pay. Their courage is of a new and quite moist kind,
for it is invariably derived from the glass. Military discipline still
exists, but it is based on threats and dread, and undermined by a
dull, mutual hatred. . . . And all this abomination is carefully
hidden under a close veil of tinsel and finery, and foolish, empty
ceremonies, in all ages the charlatan's conditio sine qua non. Is not
this comparison of mine between the priesthood and the military caste
interesting and logical? Here the riassa and the censer; there the
gold-laced uniform and the clank of arms. Here bigotry, hypocritical
humility, sighs and sugary, sanctimonious, unmeaning phrases; there
the same odious grimaces, although its method and means are of another
kind--swaggering manners, bold and scornful looks--'God help the man
who dares to insult me!'--padded shoulders, cock-a-hoop defiance. Both
the former and the latter class live like parasites on society, and
are profoundly conscious of that fact, but fear--especially for their
bellies' sake--to publish it. And both remind one of certain little
blood-sucking animals which eat their way most obstinately into the
surface of a foreign body in proportion as it is slippery and steep."
*Officers.
**Officials.
Apart from the terrible indictment of army life and military
organisation that Kuprin has given, the novel "In Honour's Name" is an
interesting story with living characters. There is not a single good
woman in the book: the officers' wives are licentious, unprincipled,
and eaten up with social ambition. The chief female character is a
subtle, clever, heartless, diabolical person, who plays on her lover's
devotion in the most sinister manner, and eventually brings him to the
grave by a device that startles the reader by its cold-blooded,
calculating cruelty. Surely no novelists outside of Russia have drawn
such evil women. The hero, Romashov, is once more the typical Russian
whom we have met in every Russian novelist, a talker, a dreamer, with
high ideals, harmlessly sympathetic, and without one grain of
resolution or will-power. He spends all his time in aspirations,
sighs, and tears--and never by any chance accomplishes anything. The
author's mouthpiece in the story is the drunkard Nasanski, who
prophesies of the good time of the brotherhood of man far in the
future. This is to be brought about, not by the teachings of Tolstoi,
which he ridicules, but by self-assertion. This self-assertion points
the way to Artsybashev's "Sanin," although in Kuprin it does not take
on the form of absolute selfishness. One of Nasanski's alcoholic
speeches seems to contain the doctrine of the whole book: "Yes, a new,
glorious, and wonderful time is at hand. I venture to say this, for I
myself have lived a good deal in the world, read, seen, experienced,
and suffered much. When I was a schoolboy, the old crows and jackdaws
croaked into our ears: 'Love your neighbour as yourself, and know that
gentleness, obedience, and the fear of God are man's fairest
adornments.' Then came certain strong, honest, fanatical men who said:
'Come and join us, and we'll throw ourselves into the abyss so that
the coming race shall live in light and freedom.' But I never
understood a word of this. Who do you suppose is going to show me, in
a convincing way, in what manner I am linked to this 'neighbour' of
mine--damn him! who, you know, may be a miserable slave, a Hottentot,
a leper, or an idiot? . . . Can any reasonable being tell me why I
should crush my head so that the generation in the year 3200 may
attain a higher standard of happiness? . . . Love of humanity is burnt
out and has vanished from the heart of man. In its stead shall come a
new creed, a new view of life that shall last to the world's end; and
this view of life consists in the individual's love for himself, for
his own powerful intelligence, and the infinite riches of his feelings
and perceptions. . . Ah, a time will come when the fixed belief in
one's own Ego will cast its blessed beams over mankind as did once the
fiery tongues of the Holy Ghost over the Apostles' heads. Then there
shall be no longer slaves and masters; no maimed or cripples; no
malice, no vices, no pity, no hate. Men shall be gods. How shall I
dare to deceive, insult, or ill-treat another man, in whom I see and
feel my fellow, who, like myself, is a god? Then, and then only, shall
life be rich and beautiful.... Our daily life shall be a pleasurable
toil, an enfranchised science, a wonderful music, an everlasting
merrymaking. Love, free and sovereign, shall become the world's
religion."
In considering Russian novelists of to-day, and the promise for the
future, Andreev seems to be the man best worth watching--he is the
most gifted artist of them all. But it is clear that no new writer has
appeared in Russia since the death of Dostoevski in 1881 who can
compare for an instant with the author of "Anna Karenina," and that
the great names in Russian fiction are now, as they were forty years
ago, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. Very few long novels
have been published in Russia since "Resurrection" that, so far as we
can judge, have permanent value. Gorki's novels are worthless; his
power, like that of Chekhov and Andreev, is seen to best advantage in
the short story. Perhaps the younger school have made a mistake in
studying so exclusively the abnormal.
End of Project Gutenberg's Essays on Russian Novelists, by William Lyon Phelps