Dreaminess and banter are the two natural tendencies, the two favorite
pleasures, of the Russian mind. They are also the two elements of
Gogol’s talent. At the beginning of his career as a writer, and during
the sprightly years of his youth, it is dreaminess which prevails: the
narrator penetrates with enthusiasm into the untrodden paths of the
Malo-Russian legends. On the track of witches, of Rusalkas, he finds
the unpublished poetry of the forests, the ponds, the wide stretches,
and the sky of the steppes. These lovely days pass. With age, this
restless spirit grows gloomy and melancholy. The observer’s eyes turn
from the pacifying spectacle of nature, and attempt only to notice the
vexing absurdities of humanity.
The satirical spirit in Gogol is first expressed in verse. He is
poetical only in prose; but his prose is equal to the most beautiful
verse. In truth, poetry is not rhyme, or metre, or even rhythm: it
is the power of touching, of recording its impressions in vivid and
genuine images. To feel emotion suitable for poetic expression, there
is no need of picturing lofty heroes, or of spreading marvellous
landscapes before the eyes. Properly speaking, a Malo-Russian peasant
is like a hero in Corneille; and the imagination of an author, and
therefore of his reader, can just as well be stirred by the view of a
bit of the flat and naked steppe, as by the sight of the Bay of Naples
or a sunset on the ruins of the Coliseum.
Gogol understood this, and, what is far better, made it understood.
Instead of preparing his imitation of Werther and his copy of Childe
Harold in the fashion of so many others, he had the courage to go to
Nature for his models. And in this Russian nature, the wild grace and
strange flavor of which he was, so to speak, the first to feel, that
which attracts him more than all else is its unostentatious aspect. His
field of observation is the village. His heroes are unimportant people,
half-barbarous peasants, true Cossack lads, hard drinkers, with
circumscribed intellectual training, with superstitious imaginations;
in a word, very simple souls, whose artless passions are shown without
any veil, but whose very ingenuousness is a deliriously restful
contrast to our romantic or theatrical characters, so artificial in
their labored mechanism, so insipid and perfunctory in the refinements
of their conventionality.
Gogol places his characters in their natural surroundings. It is the
hamlet bordering on the steppe, monotonous and infinite, deserted and
mysterious. All this country appeals to the writer’s imagination,
as well as to that of those Malo-Russians, whose history, past and
present, he will describe for us in turn. Each shrub inshrines a
memory; each winding valley veils a legend. In yonder stretch of water,
beset with rushes and starred with nenuphars, the sceptic traveller in
his indifference sees only a sort of marsh. The peasant who is here a
poet, and the poet who remembers that he was once a peasant, know well
who the Rusalka is who has been hiding there these many years. From its
surface, on nights when the moon lights up the silvery mist, the queen
of the drowned comes forth with her train of virgins, to find and drag
into the depths of the water her stepmother, the witch whose evil deeds
drove her to suicide.
But to move those whom she has brought forth, this land of the Ukraïna
has no need of being wrapped in mystery. Gogol has only to pronounce
the name of the Dniépr to arouse a sort of passionate woe, whose
expression, unhappily almost untranslatable, equals in beauty the
accents of the noblest poetry.
[5]“Marvellous is the Dniépr in peaceful weather, when he rolls his
wide waters in a free and reposeful course by forests and mountains.
Not the slightest jar, not the slightest tumult. Thou beholdest, and
thou canst not tell if his majestic breadth is moving or is stationary.
It is almost like a sheet of molten glass. It might be compared to a
road of blue ice, without measure in its breadth, without limit to its
length, describing its wondrous curves in the emerald distance. How
delightful for the burning sun to turn his gaze to earth, and to plunge
his rays into the refreshing coolness of the glassy waves, and for the
trees along the bank to see their reflections in this crystal mirror!
Oh the green-crowned trees! They stand in groups with the flowers
of the field by the water-side, and they bend over and gaze, and
cannot weary of gazing. They cannot sufficiently admire their bright
reflection, and they smile back to it, and greet it, waving their
branches. They dare not look towards the middle of the Dniépr: none but
the sun and the azure sky gaze at it. Some daring bird occasionally
wings his way to the middle of the Dniépr. Oh the giant that he is!
There is not a river like him in the world!
“Marvellous indeed is the Dniépr on a warm summer’s night, when all
things are asleep,--both man and beast and bird. God only from on high
looks down majestically on sky and earth, and shakes with solemnity
his chasuble, and from his priestly raiment scatters all the stars.
The stars are kindled, they shine upon the world; and all at the same
instant also flash forth from the Dniépr. He holds them every one, the
Dniépr, in his sombre bosom; not one shall escape from him, unless,
indeed, it perish from the sky. The black forest, dotted with sleeping
crows, and the mountains rent from immemorial time, strive, as they
catch the light, to veil him with their mighty shadow. In vain! There
is naught on earth can veil the Dniépr! Forever blue, he marches onward
in his restful course by day and night. He can be seen as far as human
sight can pierce. As he goes to rest voluptuously, and presses close
unto the shore by reason of the nocturnal cold, he leaves behind him a
silver trail, flashing like the blade of a Damascus sword, and then he
yields to sleep again. Then also he is wonderful, the Dniépr, and there
is no river like him in the world!
“But when the black clouds advance like mountains on the sky, the
gloomy forest sways, the oaks clash, and the lightning, darting zigzag
across the cloud, lights up suddenly the whole world, terrible then
the Dniépr is! The columns of water thunder down, dashing against the
mountain, and then with shouts and groans draw far away, and weep, and
break out into tears again in the distance. Thus some aged Cossack
mother consumes away with grief, when she gets ready her son to take
his departure for the army. With many airs, a genuine good-for-naught,
he dashes up on his black steed, his hand on his hip, and his cap set
jauntily awry; and she, weeping at the top of her voice, runs after
him, seizes him by the stirrup, strives to grasp the reins, and twists
her arms, and breaks into a passion of scalding tears. Like dark stains
in the midst of the struggling waves, emerge uncannily the stumps of
charred trees and the rocks on the shelving shore. And the boats moored
along the shore knock against each other as they rise and fall. What
Cossack would dare embark in his canoe when the ancient Dniépr is
angry? Apparently yonder man knows not that his waves swallow men like
flies.”
The same powerful and charming feeling is found in all the descriptions
which are scattered throughout Gogol’s work. One must read in “Taras
Bulba” the celebrated description of the beauty of the steppe at
different hours of the day. What a picture it is of this ocean of
gilded verdure, where, amid the delicate dry stalks of the tall grass,
shine patches of corn-flower with their shades of blue, of violet, or
of red; the broom with its pyramid of yellow flowers; the clover with
its white tufts; and in this luxuriant flora a corn-stalk, brought
thither God knows how, lifting itself with the haughty vigor of a
solitary fruit! The warm atmosphere is vocal with the cries of unseen
birds. A few hawks are seen hovering; a flock of wild geese sweep
by, and the prairie-gull mounts and swoops down again, now black and
glistening in the sunbeam. Then it is the evening twilight, with its
vapors descending denser and more dense, its perfumes rising more and
more penetrating; the jerboas creep out from their hiding-places; the
crickets madly chirp in their holes; and “one hears resounding, like a
vibrating bell in the sleepy air, the cry of the solitary swan winging
its way from some distant lake.”[6]
What gives this picturesque and vivid prose a singularly penetrating
accent, is the writer’s emotion. His admiration has a truly passionate
character, and this passion breaks out in cries of joy, even in
expletives. “The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are!”
There is in this a flavor of savagery which takes hold of us like a
novelty, and which must have been as agreeable to the Russian taste as
the secretly preferable national dish after too long use of foreign
insipidities.
And even for many Russians, this nature which Gogol studied and
described, or, more accurately speaking, sang with a sort of
intoxication, was a sort of new world offering every attraction.
Nothing is more peculiar than the little Russian landscape with its
solitudes, its lakes, its vast rivers, the incomparable purity of its
sky, icy and burning in turn. Here there is material to tempt the
palette of colorist most enamoured of the untouched (_épris d’inédit_).
But what painter’s palette has colors sufficiently powerful to express
as Gogol has done the profound, ineffable poetry of the sounds and
gleams of the night?
[7]“Do you know the Ukraïne night? Oh! you do not know the Ukraïne
night. Gaze upon it with your eyes. From the midst of the sky the
moon looks down. The immense vault of heaven unrolls wider and still
more wide; more immense it has become; it glows; it breathes. The
whole earth is in a silvery effulgence, and the marvellous air is both
suffocating and fresh. It is full of tender caresses. It stirs into
movement an ocean of perfumes.
“Night divine! enchanting night! silent, and as though full of life,
the forests rise bristling with darkness; they cast an enormous shadow.
Silent and motionless are the ponds: the coolness of their darkling
waters is gloomily enshrined between the dark green walls of the
gardens.
“The cherry-trees and wild plums stretch their roots with cautious
timidity towards the icy water of the springs; and from their leaves
only now and then are heard faint whisperings, as though they were
angry, as though they were indignant, when the gay adventurer, the
night wind, glides stealthily up to them and kisses them.
“All the landscape sleeps; and far above, all is breathing, all is
marvellous, all is solemn. The soul cannot fathom it: it is sublime.
An infinite number of silver visions arise like a harmony in the
depths. Night divine! enchanting night! And suddenly all is filled with
life,--the forests, the ponds, the steppes. Majestically the thunder
of the voice of the Ukraïne nightingale rolls along; and it seems as
though the moon drank her song from the bosom of the sky.
“A magic slumber holds the village yonder in repose. Still more
brilliant in the moonlight the group of little houses stands out in
relief; still more blinding are their low walls in contrast with the
shade. The songs have ceased; all is now still. The pious folk are
already asleep. Here and there a narrow window shows a gleam of light;
on the doorstep of some cottage, a belated family are finishing their
evening meal.”
Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand aspects of the Ukraïne
landscape. He has sketches filled in with adorable detail; and nothing
is more curious than the contrast between the lyricism with which
he celebrates the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the fine,
discreet, restrained tone of so many familiar impressions. The feeling
for nature finds in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in turn
through every gradation.
Sometimes it is a vigorous sketch made with a few strokes, at once
broad and accurate, dominated by a strange and grandiose theme:--
[8]“In places the black sky was colored by the burning of dry rushes
on the shore of some river or out-of-the-way lake; and a long line of
swans flying to the north, struck suddenly by the silver rose-light of
the flame, were like red handkerchiefs waving across the night.”
Sometimes it is a picture full of detail, whose motives have been
strangely brought together and treated delicately, elaborately, as with
a magnifying-glass:--
[9]“I see from here the little house, surrounded by a gallery supported
by delicate, slender columns of darkened wood, and going entirely
around the building, so that during thunder-showers or hail-storms the
window-shutters can be closed without exposure to the rain; behind the
house, mulberry-trees in bloom, then long rows of dwarf fruit-trees
drowned in the bright scarlet of the cherries and in an amethystine sea
of plums with leaden down; then a large old beech-tree, under the shade
of which is spread a carpet for repose; before the house, a spacious
court with short and verdant grass, with two little foot-paths trodden
down by the steps of those who went from the barn to the kitchen
and from the kitchen to the proprietor’s house. A long-necked goose
drinking water from a puddle, surrounded by her soft and silky yellow
goslings; a long hedge hung with strings of dried pears and apples, and
rugs put out to air; a wagon loaded with melons near the barn; on one
side an ox unyoked and chewing his cud, lazily lying down. All this has
for me an inexpressible charm.”
Here we have a realism anterior to our own, and, if I may be allowed to
say so, far superior. Here we do not find, as we do elsewhere, features
collected and reproduced with the conscientiousness--or rather the lack
of conscientiousness--of a photographic camera: a choice is shown,
a soul-felt attention. The observer’s notice is that of a poet: the
external world is no longer reflected in a glass lens, but is caught
by a quivering retina; the image which is transferred to the book is
no less alive, and what the writer has felt in this manner the reader
feels in turn.
Just so far as purely descriptive description produces an impression
of puerility, of unlikeness, and, when it is carried to extremes in
the style of our realists, of fatigue and disgust, to the same degree
does it here afford interest, picturesqueness, appropriateness. Who
could fail to see, or who would refuse to admire, the _pose_ of “yonder
wooden cottages, leaning to one side, and buried in a thicket of
willows, elders, and pear-trees”? They have something better than a
physiognomy: they have a language.
“I could not tell why the doors sang in this way. Was it because the
hinges were rusted? Or had the joiner who made them concealed in them
some secret mechanism? I do not know; but the strangest thing was, that
each door had its own individual voice. That of the sleeping-room had
the most delicate soprano, that of the dining-room a sonorous bass. As
to that which closed the ante-room, it gave forth a strange, tremulous,
and plaintive sound, so that by listening attentively these words could
be distinctly heard: ‘_Batiushki!_ I am freezing.’ I know that many
people do not like the squeaking of doors: for my part, I like it very
much. And when I happen to hear in St. Petersburg a door crying, I
suddenly perceive the scent of the country, together with the memory of
a small, low room, lighted by a taper set in an ancient candlestick.
Supper is already on the table, near the open window through which the
lovely May night looks into the room. A nightingale fills the garden,
the house, and the slope to the river gleaming in the gloomy distance,
with the glory of his voice; the trees gently rustle. _Bozhe moï!_ what
a train of memories arise within me!”
We must draw attention to the exclamations which in Gogol serve for
the passionate conclusion to his most accurate descriptions. They give
us the key to his poetic realism. It is feeling which stored away the
impression in the treasure-house of the memory; it is feeling which
calls it up again, and places it before the reader, kindled with all
the fires of the imagination.