When Gogol was spoken of to the great romancer Turgénief, he said
simply, “He is our master; from him we get our best qualities.” But
when Turgénief came to speak of “Taras Bulba,” he grew animated, and
went on with an accent of admiration which, for my part, I cannot
forget, and said, “The day when our Gogol stood the colossal Taras on
his feet, he showed genius.”
It would have been a very delicate question, to ask Turgénief
his opinion of another of Gogol’s little masterpieces, “Old-time
Proprietors.” The question would have seemed indiscreet to the author
of “Virgin Soil;” for when this last romance of Turgénief’s appeared,
all the Russian readers, when they came to the charming chapter where
the two old men, Fímushka and Fómushka, come upon the stage, uttered
the same cry: “It is Gogol, pure and simple! it is the _Starosvyétskié
Pomyéshchiki_!” If the model and the imitation are examined closely,
a great quantity of differences in detail are unravelled; and it may
be said that here as elsewhere Turgénief is personal, original in his
work, in his own fashion. But at first glance one has the right to be
struck by the resemblances.
“Old-time Proprietors” is a novel of a number of pages. In this
novel there are no intrigue, no abrupt changes, nothing fantastic,
no theatrical climaxes, no surprising characters, no unexpected
sentiments. Gogol dispensed with all the elements of success: he seems
to have wished to reduce the interest to the minimum, and he wrote a
masterpiece.
He introduces us to one of those country houses whose appearance alone
tells the story of the calm and peaceful life of its inhabitants:
“Never had a desire crossed the hedge which shut in the little _dvor_.”
In this habitation of sages, all is friendly, all is kindly, “even to
the phlegmatic baying of the dogs.” What is to be said of the reception
which we meet with at the hands of the owners of the dwelling? The
husband, Afanasi Ivanovitch, generally sitting down and bent over,
always smiles, whether he be speaking or listening. His wife, Pulkheria
Ivanovna, on the other hand, is serious; but there is so much goodness
in her eyes and in all of her features, that a smile would be too much,
would render insipid her expression of face which is already so sweet.
Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had grown up without
children: thus they had come to love each other with that affection
which is usually reserved for beings in whom one’s youthful days seem
to bloom anew. Their youth had been full of life, however, like all
youth, but it was far away. The husband had served in the army; he had
eloped with his sweetheart. But this wild period had been followed by
so many days of a calm, secluded, uniform, absolutely happy existence,
that they never spoke of the past, and it may be doubted if they ever
thought of it either.
These delicious hours are disturbed only by such events as an
indigestion, or a pain in the bowels. They are filled only by
collations and repasts of greater or less degree. They leave room for
no other care than that of varying the bill of fare, of bringing into
agreement the most diverse viands, of tempting appetites sated but not
satiated.
At first thought, nothing seems more commonplace than such a subject.
What poetry, what interest even, could be attached to that complaining
belly whose ever-recurring pangs must be lulled to sleep the livelong
day and a portion of the night? Herein shines forth all the power of
Gogol’s talent. He paints egotism for us, double egotism: but he paints
it with such delicate shades that the picture excites something more
than admiration; it arouses a sort of sympathy.
Gogol knows well that happy people are the best people; that their joy
radiates out, as it were, and that it warms, lightens, enlivens, just
as sadness, even though legitimate, chills, wounds, warns away, every
thing that approaches it. The two old people are happy, not so much by
the quality of the pleasures which they taste, or by the value of the
goods which they enjoy, as by the assurance which they feel that as
long as they live they are not going to see this luxurious abundance
disappear, nor these far from ruinous pleasures lose their flavor.
Notwithstanding the thefts of the _prikashchik_, of the housekeeper,
of the hands, of the visitors, of their coachman, of their valets,
“this fertile and beneficent soil produced all things in such quantity,
Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had so few necessities,
that all these depredations could have no injurious effect on their
well-being.”
These two fortunate people are worshipped for their indulgence,
which comes from unconcern; and for their liberality, which takes
its rise, if not from the vanity of giving, as La Rochefoucauld
would have expressed it, yet at least from the need of feeling
further satisfaction, after having taken full enjoyment of what is
indispensable, in allowing others to have a certain portion of the
superfluous.
In the same way their pity is, above all, a selfish consideration, and
a movement of dismay at the idea of falling into such disagreeable or
trying situations as they have seen in the cases of others. “Wait,”
says Afanasi Ivanovitch to each visitor: “we don’t know what may
happen. Robbers may attack you, or you may meet with rascals.” “God
protect us from robbers!” said Pulkheria Ivanovna: “why tell such
stories when it is night?”
In this association for happiness, which is scarcely any thing else
than the joining of two aspirations towards well-being, how did Gogol
succeed in bringing about his return to the idea of sacrifice? In
point of fact, one of these good old egotists acts to a certain degree
in a spirit of self-sacrifice, without ever rising above self-love;
becomes partially absorbed in the affection of the companion, who is
more indifferent, more inclined to accept fondling without offering
return. All love, it has been said, is reduced in last analysis to
this: the one kisses, the other offers the cheek. In this case the one
who offers the cheek--that is to say, the one who permits the fondling,
and limits all manifestations of feeling to not ill-natured but not
kindly teasing--is the husband. His wife adores him after her fashion.
This adoration it is vain to express in vulgar language, and translate
by attentions of far from exalted order: it is real, and it brings to
the reader’s lips a smile full of indulgence, even at the moment when
it compels from the eyes a tear of a rare quality, the discreet witness
of the deepest and purest feeling.
This good old woman feels that she is dying; and at the moment when
death “comes to take her,” she knows only one grief,--that of leaving
alone, and, as it were, orphaned, this poor old child for whom she
has lived, and who without her will not know what to do with his sad
life. With prayers, even with threats, good soul that she is, she
intrusts him to a maid-servant old as themselves; and after making all
arrangements and dispositions, so that her companion “need not feel too
sorely her absence,” she goes whither death calls her.
Afanasi Ivanovitch at first is overwhelmed with grief. On his return
from the funeral, his solitude comes to him with the sensation of an
irreparable void; “and he began to sob bitterly, inconsolably; and the
tears flowed,--flowed like two streams from his dull eyes.” Is it not
striking to find here the expressions of Homer? “He sat down, pouring
forth tears like a stream of dark water, which spreads its shady water
along the cliff where even the goats do not climb.” And is there not
here, as in the epic tale of Taras Bulba, the power of the pathetic,
the savory freshness of emotion, the secret of which is known only to
primitive poetry?
But what is not primitive, what, on the contrary, reveals Gogol as a
very well-informed writer, a very watchful psychologist, a satirist
whose scheme was well thought out in advance, and whose slightest
details are calculated with perfect precision, is the little parable
which at the most touching moment of this tale interrupts its thread,
and brings out its hidden significance, its moral bearing, its
psychological lesson.
Gogol leaves the husband and wife at the very hour of their most
touching separation, and tells us rapidly the romance of a young man
madly in love with a mistress who is dying. In the effervescence of his
grief, the lover twice in succession tries to kill himself: the first
time, by a pistol-shot in the head; somewhat later, when he is barely
recovered, by throwing himself under the wheel of a passing carriage.
Again he recovers; “and a year later,” says Gogol, “I met him in a
fashionable salon. He was seated at a table, playing _boston_, and was
saying in a free and easy tone, ‘Little Misery.’ Behind him, leaning on
his chair, stood his young and pretty wife, toying with the counters in
the basket.”
The old Afanasi Ivanovitch does not try to kill himself; but he dies
slowly day by day from the ever-growing regret for her whom he has
lost, from the wound, always more keen and more deep, which has been
left in his heart, or, if the expression be preferred, left in his very
flesh by the torn cluster of his imperishable habits.
“I have never written from imagination,” said Gogol: “it is a talent
which I do not possess.” “Pushkin,” he says in another place, “has
hit it right when in speaking of me he declared that he had never
known in any other writer an equal gift of making a vivid picture
of the miseries of actual life, in sketching with a firm touch the
nothingness of a good-for-nothing man.” This talent, which will be
seen illustrated in such a brilliant way in the great romance of “Dead
Souls,” already begins to give a striking character to the stories
written by Gogol about St. Petersburg. Here he describes in a most
fascinating way the mortifications, the humiliations, the tortures
even, which he had felt or anticipated at the time of the painful
beginning of his literary career, and his wearisome sojourn in the
bureaucracy.
“The Portrait,” for example, is a fantastic tale which is distinguished
from the stories of the former collection by a satiric accent full
of bitterness. It is the account of a painter kept in the depths of
wretchedness just as long as he takes his art seriously. A happy chance
places in his hands a sum of money which allows him to engage rooms on
the Nevsky Prospekt. He allows trickery to usurp the place of work. He
grows rich from the day when he loses his talent: however, the feeling
of having deserted his ideal follows him like remorse, and this remorse
leads him straight to madness.
“The Cloak” is the story of a small official, gentle, conscientious,
but timid, slow, and absent-minded. The poor devil has a fixed
purpose,--the purchase of a cloak to keep him from the cold. This
never-to-be-realized idea finally unsettles his somewhat feeble brain.
It is noticeable that the most lugubrious refrains serve for the
conclusion of these different moral analyses. “The recollections of a
Lunatic,” known in France under the title “Les Mémoires d’un Fou,” take
the reader one step farther into this region of mental trouble, which
is explored with a boldness truly disquieting. Involuntarily one thinks
of the author’s own final insanity; and the tale has the effect of a
prelude, or at least of a prognostication.
At the risk of repetition, I lay especial emphasis upon this evolution
which took place in the mind and in the work of Nikolaï Gogol. In the
“Evenings at the Farm,” the satirical note scarcely appears, except
in a few details; it is found tempered, and as it were refreshed,
by a pure breath of poetry; Nature spoke there almost as much as
man, and she spoke a language of very penetrating sweetness and of
superb grandeur. In the novels on St. Petersburg, satire has already
entirely usurped her place. There is added, to be sure, an element
of fancy, and of caprice, which is no longer the poetry of the
first novels, but which still draws on the imagination; a troubled,
unregulated imagination, which in Gogol shows a physical and moral
state sufficiently akin to the hyperæsthesia of seers, of the insane.
This period of excitement is followed by several years of rather morose
observation and contemplation, during which Gogol writes or plans for
his two great works, the comedy of “The _Revizor_,” and the romance of
“The Dead Souls.” Here we are in full satire, and the satire is fully
in the domain of reality,--reality often vulgar, and sometimes odious.
The author paints only what he sees; and if amid the objects of his
contemplation, and his keen pitiless glance, there passes often as it
were a shade of illusion, it is only a gloomy illusion, a reflection of
melancholy obscuring the real day, and making the colors of things more
sombre, the aspect of men more pitiable.
It is not that the romance of “The Dead Souls,” and especially the
comedy of “The _Revizor_,” have not details, or even whole scenes,
which are very amusing. There is no satire without gayety; and Gogol
understands how to indulge in raillery, that is to say, how to make
fun at the expense of another, as perfectly as any satirist that ever
lived. But never was laughter more bitter than his, and it never came
nearer the ancient definition, “_cachinnus perfidum ridens_.” This
bitterness of style is only too well explained by a morbid state of
mind, the first manifestations of which can be traced back even to
Gogol’s infancy, while its tragic end was madness.