Dmitri Mérejkowski is perhaps the most interesting and powerful of the
younger Russian novelists, the only writer that promises to carry on
the work of Tolstoi, Turgeniev, and Dostoievski. His books, which are
already numerous, are animated by a single master-idea, the
Pagano-Christian dualism of our human nature. What specially interests
him in the vast spectacle of human affairs is the everlasting contest
between the idea of a God-Man and the idea of a Man-God; that is to
say, between the conception of a God incarnate for awhile (as in
Christ) and the conception of Man as himself God--gradually evolving
higher types of splendid and ruling character which draw after them
the generations.
The novelist's own doctrine seems to be that both the Pagan and the
Christian elements in our nature, although distinct elements, are
equally legitimate and sacred. His teaching is that the soul and the
senses have an equal right to be respected; that hedonism and altruism
are equals, and that the really full man, the perfect man, is he who
can ally in harmonious equilibrium the cult of Dionysus and the cult
of Christ.
Mérejkowski conceives that European civilisation has been born of the
tremendous conflict between these two main ideas. And he has embodied
this conflict in a trilogy of novels,--three great historical
romances. The first is entitled _The Death of the Gods_, and deals
with the extraordinary career of the Roman Emperor. Julian the
Apostate, who in the fourth century A.D. sought to revive the worship
of the Olympians after Christianity had been adopted by Constantine
the Great as the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The historical novel, pure and simple, exists no longer. Writers of
genius who seem to write historical novels in reality are only
transferring to the stage of the world a drama which is being played
in their own souls. They transfer thither that drama in order to show
that the struggle which is now going on in us is eternal. Mérejkowski
sees the question, which is of supreme interest to us, being asked by
the great spirits of a wealthy and imperial civilisation closely
resembling our own, in the fourth century. And, what is of more
interest still, he not only sees the momentous problem and places it
before us with remarkable lucidity, but he also seems, in his own
fashion, to arrive at a solution. Moreover, this novelist, this
psychologist, is also an artist and a poet, possessed by what he
somewhere calls the "Nostalgia of the Distant." With an ardour as of
Flaubert in _Salammbo_, and with perhaps more skill than Sienkiewicz
in _Quo Vadis_, the author of _The Death of the Gods_ has succeeded in
re-creating the wonderful rich scenes and characters of that remote
epoch. We see the racing stables of the Hippodrome of Constantinople,
battles with wild German warriors round Strasburg, the interior of the
baths at Antioch, dinners of epicures and men of letters at Athens,
pictures of a Roman Emperor at his toilet-table, or of a lovelorn
child in the Temple of Aphrodite. Before writing this first of his
great romances Mérejkowski himself travelled through Asia Minor and
Greece, visited Constantinople and Syria, and gathered everywhere
living impressions to serve his art and his thought. He was besides
admirably prepared to handle a subject which had attracted him from
youth. A delicate Hellenist, his first appearance in literary life was
as a harmonious translator of Æschylus and Sophocles. Later, the
Gnostics, the Fathers of the Eastern Church, the Greek Sophists (who
represented the last throes of expiring Paganism and already dreamed
of reviving it), were the young poet's objects of study. Thus was born
the romance of _The Death of the Gods_, which he has continued later
in _The Resurrection of the Gods_ (of which Leonardo da Vinci is the
hero), and completed by _The Anti-Christ_, portraying the savage
figure of Peter the Great, the creator (despite all natural obstacles)
of St. Petersburg and of modern Russia.
In the first romance of the three the new Christian spirit is seen
invading the soul of Julian himself, the last champion of expiring
Paganism. It can even be seen in the little treatises, _The Sun King_
and the _Mother of the Gods_, which Julian wrote in his feverish
nights to defend his lost cause. Soon there remained to this singular
man of all that first ardour but a feeling of impotent rage and
unbridled pride--the Napoleonic lust of conquering the world. And so
we see him in this book, in the midst of the mad expedition against
Persia, where he was to meet his death, oversetting the altar of the
gods who had betrayed him, and exclaiming: "_The gods are no more; or
rather, the gods do not yet exist. They are not. But they will be. We
shall all be gods. We have but to dare!_" A few days later he falls,
vanquished by the Galilean, whose image haunts his deathbed. But at
that last hour it is not the fierce God of the Arians (who educated
Julian the Emperor) that he sees. He whom delirium calls up is
Christus Pastophorus,--the Good Shepherd,--the Spirit of gentleness
and love. It is that Spirit who has dethroned the Olympians.
But the gods do not perish utterly. Centuries pass, and from the bosom
of the waters, like Aphrodite, from the bosom of the earth, like
Cybele, they come forth again, serene and impassive. Popes, kings,
great nobles, simple Florentine merchants welcome them, brought by
galleys from the coasts of Hellas, or discovered by patient excavators
of the antique soil. Their marble glory shines anew. The rays of
Helios penetrate the soul of artists. The fires of Dionysus kindle the
blood of the young men and the young women. It is the dawn of the
_Renaissance_. Has then the God-Man conquered the Man-God? No;
because, see, Savonarola is defying the gods of Olympus and the gods
of the earth. The latter destroy him, but the Christ has reappeared,
and the problem of the two forms of wisdom continues to be set in a
form more august and more painful than ever before.
This is the subject of the _Renaissance of the Gods_, a romance of
which the distinguished critic in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, M.
Theodore de Wyzewa, says that it "far surpasses the mass of the
romances published in Russia during the last twenty-five years."
And since then, as before then, as at all times, at every fresh
crisis, at every renewal of the creative process taking place within
human consciousness, the two principles reappear. They struggle too in
the soul of the strongest. Look at Peter the Great, whom old believers
used to call "The Anti-Christ." He will be the hero of the third
romance of the trilogy. We shall see therein the tragedy of the gentle
Tsarevitch Alexis, servant of the Galilean and immolated victim of the
new god; victim, that is, of human will incarnate in the genius of
Peter, lifting itself above good and evil.
The above notes are largely taken, and partly translated, from an
interesting paper on Mérejkowski by M. Prozor in the _Mercure de
France_.