fancifulness, built for himself a little house on the fortress island,
where the furniture made by himself is still preserved by the side of
the miracle-working image of the Redeemer which the despot always
carried with him. His spirit soars over this city and this land. What he
did not entirely trust to his unscrupulous fist he left in honest
bigotry to the bones of the holy Alexander Nevski, which he had brought
to his capital soon after its establishment. Autocracy and popocracy
still reign in the Russian empire. The Peter-and-Paul fortress, in the
subterranean vaults of which many of the noblest hearts and heads of
Russia have found their grave, the Isaac cathedral, with its barbarian
pomp of gold and precious stones, and the mighty monoliths--these are
the symbols of the city of St. Petersburg and of its régime. If there is
in Russia, even among the enlightened minds, something like a fanatical
hatred of civilization and of the West, it is due to the manner in which
the half-barbarian Peter imposed Western ideas and civilization on a
harmless and good-natured people.
What brutal power of will may do in defiance of unfriendly nature has
been done on the banks of the Neva. Indeed, its green waters are now
hidden by an ice-crust three feet thick, over which the sleighs run a
race with the little cars of the electrical railway. Yet even without
the restless shimmer of the water the view of the river-bank is still
very impressive. The golden glitter of the great cupolas of the Isaac
cathedral, the long red front of the Winter Palace, the pale yellow
columns of the admiralty, between Renaissance structures, stand out
from among the rest.
Palaces and palaces stretch along the stream right up to the Field of
Mars. The gilded spire of the Peter-and-Paul cathedral pierces the
white-blue sky and greets, with its angel balanced on the extreme spire,
the equally grotesque high spire of the admiralty. Great stone and iron
bridges span the broad stream, its opposite shore almost faded in the
light mist of the wintry day. Walking towards the middle of the bridge,
whence a splendid view may be obtained, one sees the long row of
buildings on the farther islands standing out of the mist. One row of
columns is followed by another--the Academy of Arts, the Academy of
Sciences, the house of Menschikov, which Catherine built for her
favorite, come into view. Towards the west the hulls of vessels stand
out from among the docks. Still farther out the mist hides the shoals of
the Neva, together with those of the Gulf of Finland, in an impenetrable
gray. Towards the north stretch the endless lanes with their bare
branches which lead to the islands. This is the Bois de Boulogne of St.
Petersburg, where the gilded youth race in brightly decorated "troikas,"
and hasten to squander in champagne, at cards, and in gypsy
entertainments, the wages of the starved muzhik. It is a magnificent
picture of power, of self-conscious riches, the better part of which is
furnished by the mighty stream itself.
It is easy now to realize that St. Petersburg was originally planned
for a seaport, and that it therefore presents its glittering front to
the sea. The railroads which conduct the traffic to-day could no longer
penetrate with their stations into the city proper; hence the visitors
must first pass through the broad, melancholy suburban girdle which
gives one the impression of a giant village. When access to the city was
still by boat from the Gulf of Finland, the landing at the "English
quay," with its view of all these colossal structures, golden domes and
spires, must have created a powerful impression. Nothing less was
contemplated by this massing of palaces. The capital and residence city
was not intended to facilitate the access of the West but rather to
inspire it with awe.
The splendor of the city naturally becomes gradually diminished from the
banks of the Neva towards the vast periphery. The main artery of traffic
in St. Petersburg, the "Nevski Prospect," and its continuation, the
"Bolshaya Morskaya," remain stately and impressive to their very end. A
peculiar feature of St. Petersburg is the numerous canals which begin
and end at the Neva, and which once served to drain the swampy soil of
the city. They are now to be filled, for they do not answer the purpose.
Nevertheless, they offer meanwhile an opportunity for pretty bridge
structures, as, for instance, the one leading over the Fontanka,
ornamented with the four groups of the horse-tamers by Baron Klodt. A
comparison with the lagoon city, Venice, would really be a flattering
hyperbole, for one does not get the impression here of being on the sea,
as in the case of the "Canal-Grande." The city rather reminds one of the
models that were nearer to its founder, the canal-furrowed cities of
Holland. Still, these canals are a pleasant diversion in the otherwise
monotonous pictures of the city streets.
Should it be mentioned here that St. Petersburg has its "millionnaya"
(millionaire's street)? It is well known that hither and towards Moscow
flow the treasures of a country squeezed dry. The great wealth of the
one almost presupposes the nameless misery of the other. The
indifference with which the shocking famine conditions of entire
provinces and the threatening economic collapse of the whole empire are
regarded here finds its explanation only in the bearing of these
boyar-millionaires, who consider themselves Europeans because their
valets are shaved in the English fashion.
The eye of the stranger who wishes to understand, and not merely to
gaze, will rather turn to other phenomena more characteristic than
splendid buildings of the country and its people.
There is, in the first place, the pope (priest), and then the policeman.
The priests and the policemen are the handsomest persons in St.
Petersburg. Although the flowing hair of the bearded priest, reaching to
his shoulders, is not to be regarded as a characteristic peculiarity,
since every third man in Russia displays long hair or profuse locks that
would undoubtedly draw to their fortunate possessor in our land the
attention of the street boys, still they are carefully chosen human
material, tall, graceful men with handsome heads and proud mien.
Notwithstanding this they are accorded but little reverence even among
the bigoted Russians, for no matter how often and copiously these may
cross themselves before every sacred image, they quite often experience,
behind the priest, a sort of salvation which compels them suddenly to
empty their mouths in a very demonstrative manner. This may be due to
various kinds of superstition, which regard the meeting with a priest as
very undesirable, but it finds its explanation also in the not always
exemplary life of this servant of the Lord. He is especially accredited
with a decided predilection for various distilled liquors that at times
exert a doubtful influence on a man's behavior. One may see in St.
Petersburg men wrapped in costly sable furs make the acquaintance of the
street pavements, especially during the "butter-week," yet for spiritual
garments the gutter is even less a place of legitimate rest, and, at any
rate, it is difficult to acknowledge as the appointed interpreter of
God's will a man whose mouth savors of an entirely different spirit than
the "spiritus sanctus."
For all this, however, the Russian is filled, outwardly at least, and
during divine services, with a devotion which, to us, is scarcely
comprehensible. With fanatical fervor he kisses in church the hand of
the same priest behind whose back he spat at the church door. His body
never rests. As with the orthodox Jew and the howling dervish, his
praying consists in an almost unceasing bowing, and a not at all
inconsiderable application of gymnastics. He is perpetually crossing
himself. Particularly fervent suppliants, of the female gender
especially, can hardly satisfy themselves by kissing again and again the
stone flags of the floor, the hem of the priest's coat, the sacred
images, and the numberless relics. But how effective and mind-ensnaring
is the orthodox church service. The glimmer of the innumerable small and
large wax candles brought by most of the congregants fills the golden
mist of the place with an unearthly light. Rubies, emeralds, and
diamonds shine from the silver and gold crowns on the sacred images. The
gigantic priest in his gold-embroidered vestments lets sound his deep,
powerful, bass voice, and wonderful choirs answer him from both sides of
the "ikonostas." Clouds of incense float through the high nave. The
faithful, ranged one after another, intoxicate and carry one another by
their devotion--a huge general hypnosis in which education and priestly
art are equally concerned. The orthodox cult is not to be compared, at
least in my opinion, with that of the Roman Catholics in the depth and
nobility of the music and in the artistic arrangement of the service.
But in its archaic monotony, in its use of the coarsest material
stimuli, it is perhaps even more suggestive for the Eastern masses than
is the other for the civilized peoples of the West. The quantity of
gold, silver, and precious stones offered up, especially in the Isaac
cathedral and in the Kazan cathedral--fashioned after that of St.
Peter's in Rome--to give the faithful a conception of the just claims of
Heaven on treasure and reverence, is beyond the belief of Europeans. The
artistically excellent silver ornaments of the Isaac cathedral weigh not
less than eleven thousand kilograms. A single copy of the New Testament
is bound in twenty kilograms of gold. The sacred image made in
commemoration of the catastrophe of Borki is almost entirely covered
with diamonds. These endowments came, for the most part, from members of
the imperial house. The union of church and state is more intimate here
than elsewhere, and, apparently, even more profitable for the guardians
of the altar. Among all the sacred relics and trophies of the St.
Petersburg church, one impresses the foreigner above the others. It is a
collection of silver gifts from the French, ranged along the wall of the
Peter-and-Paul cathedral. By the side of the coffins of the Russian
emperors and empresses, from Peter the Great to Alexander III., which
one cannot pass without a peculiar feeling of historical respect, under
innumerable flags and war trophies, there stand, as the greatest triumph
that the despotic barbarian state has won from civilized Europe, the
silver crowns and the shields of honor which Félix Faure,
Casimir-Périer, the senate, the chamber, and the Parisian press
presented to the Russian ally of France.
"You see here the greatest misfortune that has befallen us in this
century," said my companion, an orthodox Russian of nothing less than
radical views. "Until then, until this alliance, with all our
boastfulness we still felt some shame before Europe for our barbarous
and shameful rule. But since the most distinguished men and corporations
of the most enlightened republic have begun prostrating themselves
before us, the knout despotism has received the consecration of Europe
and has thrown all shame to the winds."
"But the French have lent you eight milliards for it," I replied.
"A part of which has gone into Heaven knows whose pockets; the other
supports our police against us, and the remainder was sunk in a
worthless railroad, while we, in order to provide the interest, must
take the horse from our peasant's plough and the cow from its stable,
until even that shall come to an end, for nothing else will be left for
the executor."
"A Jesuit trick," I said. "You owe the alliance to the diplomacy of
Rampolla."
"The sword and the holy-water sprinkler," answered the Russian, as he
pointed his hand in a circle from the war trophies to the "ikonostas,"
"they go everywhere hand-in-hand and enslave and plunder the nations."
The leaden, snowy skies looked down on us oppressively as with a deep
shudder at the prison gratings of the Peter-and-Paul fortress we
hastened back to the city. I heard in my mind the notes of the
"Marseillaise," and before my eyes there stood the gifts of honor from
the French nation brought to the despot of the fortress. They are very
near each other, cathedral and prison. In the still of the night the
watchman of the French offerings may often hear the groans and the
despairing cries of the poor souls who had dreamed of freedom and
brotherhood and had paid for their dreams behind the heavy iron bars,
deep under the mirror-like surface of the Neva, in the dungeons of the
Peter-and-Paul fortress.
VI
ARTIST AND PROFESSOR--ILYA RYEPIN
Should some one assert that there is a great artist in a European
capital, honored by an entire nation as its very greatest master, yet,
nevertheless, not even known by name among the great European public, we
should shake our heads unbelievingly, for such a phenomenon is
impossible in our age of railroads and printer's-ink. And yet this
assertion would be literally true. There is such a great artist living
in a city of a million inhabitants, and recognized by millions, yet of
his works even art-students outside of Russia have seen but one or two.
To make this even more incomprehensible, it should be stated that this
artist had attained renown in his country not merely a few years ago,
but has created masterpiece after masterpiece for more than thirty
years; indeed, his first picture at the world's fair in Vienna in 1873
was generally recognized as startling. Nevertheless, the name of the
master has long been forgotten on our side of the Vistula; it may be
because no one found it to his interest to advertise him and thus to
create competition for others, but more probably because Russia is a
separate world and isolates itself from the rest of Europe with almost
barbaric insolence.
There is, however, some advantage for Russia in this isolation from the
"rotten West." They are not obliged to pass through all the various
phases of our so-called art movement, and therefore are not carried from
one extreme to the other, but calmly pursue their own quiet way. They
also had the good-fortune, while the rest of Europe was in a state of
conflict over unfruitful theories, to possess really great creative
artists, always the best antidote against doctrinarianism. When the
one-sided, methodically proletarian naturalism reigned in the West,
itself a protest against the shallow idealistic formalism of the
preceding decades, Russian literature possessed its greatest realistic
poets, Tolstoï, Turgenyev, Dostoyevski, who never overlooked the inner
process, the true themes of poetical creation, for the sake of outward
appearances, and have thereby created that incomparable, physiological
realism that we still lack. And because their great realists were poets,
great poets and geniuses, they felt no need of a new drawing-room art,
which of necessity goes to the other extreme, the romantic,
aristocratic, catholic. They had no Zola, and therefore they needed no
Maeterlinck. And it was exactly so with their painting. Their great
artists did not lose themselves, like Manet and his school, in problems
purely of light and air without poetical contents; hence to rediscover
poetry and to save it for art there was no need for Preraphaelites or
Decadents. The great painter is artist, man, and poet, a phenomenon like
Leo Tolstoï, therefore the few symbolists who believe they must imitate
European fashions make no headway against them.
Imitators can only exist among imitators, by the side of nature's
imitators, imitators of Raphael's predecessors.
A single true artist frightens away all the ghosts of the night, and
thus decadence plays an insignificant rôle alongside of Tolstoï and
Ryepin, whether it be the decadent literature of Huysmans and
Maeterlinck, or the decadence of the Neoromanticists and of the
Neoidealists.
It is time, however, to speak of the artist himself, an artist of sixty,
still in the fulness of power, who, besides wielding the brush, occupies
a professor's chair at the St. Petersburg Academy. I have just called
him professor. He is more than that, he is, like Leo Tolstoï, a
revolutionist, the terrible accuser of the two diabolical forces that
keep the nation in its course, the church and the despotism of
government. But, to the honor of the Russian dynasty be it said, this
artist, acknowledged to be the greatest of his country, was never
"induced" to cast aside the criticism of the prevailing system he made
by his painting and to engage in the decorative court art. His so-called
nihilist pictures, reproduction of which has been prohibited by the
police, are for the most part in the possession of grand-dukes, and,
notwithstanding his undisguised opinions, he was intrusted with the
painting of the imperial council representing the Czar in the midst of
his councillors. The czars have always been more liberal than their
administrators. Nicholas I. prized Gogol's "Revizor" above all else, and
Nicholas II. is the greatest admirer of Tolstoï. And so Ryepin may paint
whatever and however he will. And we shall see that he makes proper use
of this opportunity. He is Russian, and nothing but Russian. At
twenty-two he received for his work, "The Awakening of Jairus's Little
Daughter," an academic prize and a travelling fellowship for a number of
years. But before the expiration of the appointed time spent by him in
Berlin and Paris he returned to Russia, and produced in 1873 his
"Burlaks" (barge-towers), which attracted great attention at the Vienna
exposition. The thirty years that have passed since then have detracted
nothing from the painting. How far surpassed do Manet's
"revolutionizing" works already appear to us, and still how indelibly
fresh these "barge-towers." That is so. The reason is simple--it is no
painting of theory but of nature represented as the individual sees it,
the masterly impression of an artist, the most concentrated effect of
landscape, light, and action. The purely technical problem is
subordinated to the whole, to the unity of action and mood, solved
naturally and easily. The problem of the artist to tell us what we
cannot forget, to give us something of his soul, his sentiments, his
thoughts, is of first importance, just as geniuses of all ages cared
less to be thought masters of technique than to win friends,
fellow-thinkers, and comrades, to share their joys and feelings. From
the purely technical stand-point, where is there a painting that
presents in a more masterly manner the glimmer of sunlight on the
surface of a broad stream--as in this case--and where, nevertheless, the
landscape is treated merely as the background? And again, where is the
action of twelve men wearily plodding onward, drawing with rhythmic step
the boat against the stream, seized more forcibly, more suggestively
than in this plaintive song of the Russian people's soul?
The youth of barely twenty-four years had at one leap placed himself at
the head of all contemporary artists. Analogies between him and the
artistic career and method of Leo Tolstoï force themselves on us again
and again. Tolstoï's _Sketches from the Caucasus_, _Sevastopol_,
_Cossacks_, are his early works, yet they are the most wonderful that
the entire prose of all literature can show. And so it is in this
lifelike picture of a twenty-four-year-old youth. Had we no other work
of his than the "Barge-towers," we should yet see in him a great master.
It is but necessary to look at the feet of these twelve wretched toilers
to realize with wonder the characterization, the full measure of which
is given only to genius. How they strain against the ground and almost
dig into the rock! How the bodies are bent forward in the broad belt
that holds the tow-line! What an old, sad melody is this to which these
bare-footed men keep step as they struggle up along the stream? In all
his barefoot stories of the ancient sorrow of the steppe children, Gorki
has not painted with greater insight. A sorrowful picture for all its
sunshine, and the more sorrowful because no tendency is made evident. It
means seeing, seeing with the eyes and with the heart, and, therefore,
it is art.
It would be wrong, however, to say that Ryepin--in his works as a whole
if not in a given instance--has introduced a "tendency" in his choice of
solely sorrowful subjects. Such is not the case. There is nothing more
exuberant, more convulsing than his large painting, "Cossacks Preparing
a Humorous Reply to a Threatening Letter of Mohammed III." The answer
could not have been very respectful. That may be seen from the sarcastic
expression of the intelligent scribe as well as from the effect that his
wit has on the martial environment. A be-mustached old fellow in a white
lamb-skin cap holds his big belly for laughing; another almost falls
over backward, his bald pate quite jumping out of the canvas. One snaps
his fingers; another, old and toothless, grins with joy; a third pounds
with clinched fist on the almost bare back of his neighbor; another
shuts his right eye as if perceiving a doubtful odor; one with a great
tooth-gap shouts aloud, while others smile in quiet joy through the
smoke of their short pipes. All these are crowded around a primitive
wooden table scarcely a metre wide; twenty figures, a natural group, one
head hiding another, and with all you have an unobstructed view of the
camp lying bright in the sunshine and dust and full of horses and men.
The effect of the picture is so overpowering that at the mere
recollection of it you can scarcely refrain from joining in the hearty
laughter of these sturdy, untutored natures. In the entire range of
modern painting there is no other picture so full of the strong joy of
living.
"The Village Procession," preserved in the Tretyakov Gallery in
Moscow--the finest collection of the master's works--is not gloomy like
the mournful song of the "Barge-towers," nor exuberant with serf
arrogance and vitality like the Cossack camp, but a fragment of the
colorless Russian national life as it really is, a sorrowful human
document for the thoughtful observer alone. Tattered muzhiks in fur
coats are carrying on poles a heavy sacred image, and behind them crowds
the village populace with flags and crucifixes. I will not again
emphasize how masterfully everything is noted here, from the gold border
of the sacred image to the last bit of dusty sunshine on the village
street. Absolute mastery is self-evident in Ryepin's work. We are again
attracted in this picture by the great intensity of mood. What harmony
there is in it--the mounted gendarme who pitilessly strikes with his
knout into the peasant group to make room for the priests and the local
officials; the half-idiotic, greasy sexton; the well-fed, bearded
priest; the crowd of the abandoned, the crippled, and the maimed, the
brutalized peasants, the old women. A long procession of folly,
brutality, official darkness, ignorance; a chapter from the might of
darkness; the crucifix misused as an aid to the knout, a symbol of the
Russian régime that could not be held up to scorn more passionately by
any demagogue; and yet only a street-scene which would hardly strike the
Moscow merchant when strolling in the gallery of a Sunday, because of
its freedom from any "tendency."