In this collection of “Evenings at the Farm” figures the heroic story
of a great character, the life of the atamán Taras Bulba. Gogol
afterwards turned this _epopée_ into prose, but the after-touches did
not change the character of the early composition. The hero of “Taras
Bulba” is one of those Zaparog Cossacks who played such an important
part in the history of Poland, and later in the history of Russia.
After the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Zaporozhtsui,
who formed a military republic, or, if the term is preferred, an
association of cavalry bandits, became the terror of the neighboring
peoples. They had on an island in the Dniépr a permanent camp, the
_Setch_, where, even in times of peace, young Cossacks came to perfect
themselves in the noble game of war. Women were rigorously excluded
from the _Setch_. The men were quartered in divisions, or _kurénui_;
each _kurén_ had its chief, an _atamán_ (_hetman_); the entire camp was
commanded by a supreme chief, the _atamán-kotchevóï_.
The romance of “Taras Bulba” opens in the most original fashion.[14]
The two sons of the Cossack Taras are just back from the divinity
school, to which they will not return. The father, a vigorous
Zaporozhets, who has grown gray in harness, receives them with
sarcastic observations about their long robes. It is a sort of test
like that which Don Diego gives his sons in the “Romancero.” The eldest
of Bulba’s sons, Ostap (Eustace), behaves like Rodriguez. “Though thou
art my father, I swear to thee, if thou continuest to laugh at me, I
will give thee a drubbing.”
After an exchange of well-directed blows on either side, Taras kisses
effusively his son whose courage and strength he has just experienced;
he rudely rallies Andriï (Andrew), the younger, on his gentleness:
“Thou art a puppy so far as I can judge. Don’t listen to they mother’s
words: she is a woman; she knows naught. What need have ye of being
coddled? A good prairie, a good horse, that’s all the delicacies that
ye need. See this sabre: behold your mother, lads!”
The poor woman is not at the end of her trials. Taras announces
his immediate departure with his sons: she protests amid tears and
lamentations; the Cossack ill-uses her, and cuts short her complaints.
The two sons spend in their father’s house just time enough to give
the narrator a chance to describe this interior so characteristic and
brilliantly colored. On the wall hang all the exquisite ornaments in
which barbarous man delights,--sabres, whips, inlaid arms, reins worked
in gold wire, silver-nailed clogs. On the dressers are the products of
civilization brought from different corners of the world,--masterpieces
of Florentine engravers, of Venetian glass-blowers, of Oriental
goldsmiths; and in contrast with all this treasure, the fruit of
pillage, piles of wood, the stove made of the enamelled bricks loved by
the Ukraïne peasant, and the “holy images” in hieratic posture, these
Lares indispensable at every Malo-Russian fireside.
The old Bulba has declared at table, before all the _sotniks_ of his
_polk_[15] who were present in the village, that he should be off next
day. The mother spends the night in tears, crouching by her children’s
bedside, gazing upon them with a look full of anguish like the swallow
of the steppe on her nest. She still hopes that when he wakes, Bulba
will have forgotten what he vowed in the exaltation of the bowl.
“The moon from the height of heaven had long been lighting up all the
_dvor_ filled with sleepers, the thick mass of willows, and the tall
grass in which the palisade which encircled the _dvor_ drowned. She sat
all night by the heads of her beloved sons: not for a moment did she
turn her eyes from them, and she had no thought of sleep. Already the
horses, prescient of dawn, had all stretched themselves upon the grass,
and ceased to feed. The topmost leaves of the willows began to whisper,
and little by little a stream of incessant chattering descended through
them to the very base. Still she sat in the selfsame place; she felt
no fatigue at all, and she wished in her inmost heart that the night
might last as long as possible. From the steppe resounded the sonorous
whinnying of a foal. Ruddy streaks stretched across the sky. Bulba
suddenly waked up, and leaped to his feet. He remembered very well all
that he had determined upon the evening before.”
The preparations for the departure are described in detail with Homeric
satisfaction. Bulba commands the mother to give her sons her blessing:
“A mother’s blessing preserves from all danger on land and on water.”
The farewell is heart-rending: the poor woman seizes the stirrup of
her youngest, Andriï, clings to his saddle, and twice, in a paroxysm
of maternal delirium, throws herself in front of the horses, until she
is led away. Here we see the features of a painting rapidly sketched
by Gogol in another novel. The elements of this scene would, moreover,
be found elsewhere still. It goes back to the ancient _dumas_, the
cantilenas of the Malo-Russian, the traces of which are constantly
found in the epic of “Taras Bulba.”
They depart. As they ride along, their minds are filled with
melancholy thoughts. Andriï reviews mentally a romantic adventure, the
beginning of which dates from his life at the seminary. At Kief, in
order to pay back a joke which had been played upon him, he made his
way into the room of a wild Polish girl, the daughter of the voïevod of
Kovno. The Polish girl made sport of him as though he were a savage; he
put up with his dismissal, but fell in love with her. It is natural to
conjecture that this love will have a decisive influence upon Andriï’s
conduct, and that the beautiful girl will appear again. For the time
being, the activity of the adventurous life just beginning drives away
these recollections. The Cossacks cross the steppe, and the narrator
makes us realize the wholly novel charm of this primitive existence,
with its sensations no less strong than simple, in these immense spaces
which under apparent monotony are so varied and marvellous.
They reach the Setch, and nothing equals the vigor, the color, the
life, of the scenes which the story-teller’s imagination brings before
our eyes. When they disembark from the ferry-boat, which after a
three-hours’ passage has brought them to the island of Khortitsa,
Taras Bulba and his sons reach the camp by an entrance echoing with
the hammers of twenty-five smithies, and encumbered with the packs of
pedlers. A huge Zaporozhets sleeping in the very middle of the road,
with arms and legs stretched out, is the first spectacle which attracts
their admiration. Farther, a young Cossack is dancing with frenzy,
dripping with sweat in his winter sheepskin: he refuses to take it off,
for it would quickly find its way into the pot-house. The merry fellow
has already drunk up his cap, his belt, and his embroidered hilt. You
feel that here is a young, exuberant, indomitable race. You have to go
back to the Iliad to meet such men, and to Homer to find again this
freshness of delineation. Other scenes awaken comparisons such as the
author of “Taras Bulba” scarcely anticipated. His hero finds well-known
faces, and he asks after his ancient companions in arms. They are
questions of Philoktetes to Neoptolemos, and the same replies, followed
by the same melancholy regrets: “And Taras Bulba heard only, as reply,
that Borodavka had been hanged at Tolopan; that Koloper had been flayed
alive near Kizikirmen; that Pidsuitok’s head had been salted in a cask,
and sent to Tsar-grad (Constantinople) itself. The old Bulba hung his
head, and after a long pause he said, ‘Good Kazaks were they.’”
I shall not dwell upon the scenes in which Gogol has described for us
the customs of the Setch, such as the election of the new kotchevóï;
and the wiles of these Zaporogs, in their longing for pillage, to take
up the offensive without having the appearance of breaking treaties.
From the Ukraïna, news is brought which arrives at the very nick of
time. The Poles and the Jews have been heaping up deeds of infamy:
the Cossack people is oppressed; religion is odiously persecuted.
The whole camp breaks into enthusiastic fervor. They fling the Jew
pedlers (_kramari_) into the water. One of them, Yankel, has recognized
Taras: he throws himself on his knees groaning; he reminds him of a
service which he had once done Bulba’s brother; finally he escapes
punishment, thanks to this scornful and brutal protection. A few hours
later, Taras finds him established under a tent, selling all sorts of
provisions, powder, screws, gun-flints, at the risk of being caught
again, and “killed like a sparrow.”
“Taras shrugged his shoulders to see what was the ruling power of
the Jewish race.” We catch a glimpse here of that lively humor which
is common in Gogol, and that keenness of observation which is always
heightened by a satiric flavor.
The Zaporogs invade the Polish soil. They lay siege to Dubno. One
night, Andriï sees rising before him a woman’s form. He recognizes an
old Tartar servant of the voïevod’s daughter. She comes in her young
mistress’s name to beg a little bread. The besieged town is a prey to
all the torments of famine. Andriï is anxious instantly to make his way
inside the walls. He is introduced by a subterranean passage by which
the old woman reached the camp. Andriï sees once again the woman whom
he loves, and it is all over with him. “He will never see again the
Setch, nor his father’s village, nor the house of God. The Ukraïna
will never behold again one of its bravest sons. The old Taras will
tear his gray hair by handfuls, cursing the day and the hour when to
his own shame he begot such a son.”
Here the romance halts to make room for the epos. Help comes to the
city almost immediately after Andriï’s defection. This news is brought
by Yankel, who, true Jew that he is, has succeeded in penetrating
the city, in making his escape, in seeing every thing, hearing every
thing, and putting a good profit into his pocket. What consoles Taras
for Andriï’s treason is Ostap’s bravery, who is made atamán on the
battle-field. One must read the exploits of giants, where the cruelty
of the carnage is relieved by the beauty of the coloring. Pictures
of heroic grandeur light up these sinister scenes, and the magic of
a sparkling palette makes poetical the strong touches of the boldest
realism.
Suddenly the news reaches the camp of the Zaporogs, that the Setch
has been plundered by the Tartars. The old Bovdug, the Nestor of this
second Iliad, proposes a plan which divides the besieging army in such
a way as to protect at once the interests and the honor of the Cossack
nation. One part sets out in pursuit of the Tartars: the others remain
under the walls of the city, with the old Taras as atamán. One would
like to quote from beginning to end these lists of heroes, with their
Malo-Russian names so nearly uniform in termination. One would like to
reproduce these parentheses, these episodes devoted to the complaisant
enumeration of the deeds of prowess of all these braves. The separation
is marked by a melancholy full of grandeur. The feeling of the
solidarity which has grouped all these men, of the brotherhood which
unites all these sons of the Ukraïna, is expressed with rare power.
Taras perceives that it is necessary to create some diversion for this
profound melancholy. He gives his Cossacks the solace of precious wine,
and the stimulus of a fortifying word. They drink to religion, the
Setch, and glory. “Never will a splendid action perish; and the glory
of the Cossacks shall not be lost like a grain of powder dropped from
the pan, and fallen by chance.”
The battle begins anew; the cannon make wide gaps in the ranks, and
many mothers will not see again their sons fallen this day. “Vainly
the widow will stop the passers-by, and gaze into their eyes to see
if among them is not found the man whom best she loves in all the
world.” What an accent in all that, and how we discover in the labored
arrangement of the writer, the native force of the primitive song,
the depth of the feeling of the people! This arises in fact from
the Malo-Russian folk-song; and so also do those challenges which
recall those of the heroes of Argos or of Troy, and that sublime
death-refrain which each hero murmurs as he dies, “Flourish the Russian
soil!” and likewise those rhythmic questions alternating with replies
like couplets, “Is there yet powder in the powder-flasks? Is not
the Cossack power enfeebled? Do not the Cossacks now show signs of
yielding?”--“There still is powder in the powder-flasks; the Cossack
power is not enfeebled; the Cossacks do not yet begin to yield.”
At the height of the battle, Andriï, who is fighting like a lion at
the head of the Poles, finds himself suddenly face to face with Taras
Bulba. Here follows an admirable scene, and long admired, but admired
in an imitation. Is not the conclusion of “Mateo Falcone” an invention
stolen from Gogol? In the two tales, the father becomes the arbiter
of the treason committed by the son; the details of this execution,
the accompanying words, the calculated impression of coldness in the
account, meant to add to the horror of the deed,--all the resemblances
seem to form a literary theft, the traces of which Merimée would have
done better not to hide; and we have almost the right to impute to him
this intention when we see the part that he took in disparagement of
“Taras Bulba.”
This tragedy is followed by a new drama still more painful. Ostap
is taken prisoner, and carried to Warsaw for execution. Taras, left
for dead, is picked up by his followers. He recovers, and, unable to
survive his beloved son, goes to risk his life in the attempt to rescue
him. Through Yankel’s craft he makes his way into Warsaw, but the
assistance of the Polish Jews fails to get him within the prison walls.
He arrives only in time to see the execution of the Cossacks. Ostap is
broken on the wheel before his father’s eyes. In a moment of weakness
the heroic lad utters the cry of the Crucified on Golgotha: “Father,
where art thou? Dost thou hear this?”
“Yes, I hear,” replies a mighty voice from the midst of the throng.
“A detachment of mounted soldiers hastened anxiously to scan the
throng of people. Yankel turned pale as death, and when the horsemen
had got a short distance from him, he turned round in terror to look
for Taras: but Taras was no longer beside him; every trace of him was
lost.” A little later on, and Taras has seized his arms, and is making
a terrible “funeral mass” in honor of his son. At last he dies, pinned
down like Prometheus, and burned alive; but from the midst of the
flames he tastes the triumph which his last shout of command has just
assured to his soldiers.