A PEASANT POET.
In the grass-grown square of Archangel, between the fire-tower and the
court of justice, stands a bronze figure on a round marble shaft; a
figure showing a good deal of naked chest, and holding (with a Cupid's
help) a lyre on the left arm. A Roman robe flows down the back. You
wonder what such a figure is doing in such a place; a bit of false
French art in a city of monks and trade! The man in whose name it has
been raised was a poet; a poet racy of the soil; a village genius;
who, among merits of many kinds, had the high quality of being a
genuine Russian, and of writing in his native tongue.
For fifty years Lomonosoff was called a fool--a clever fool--for
having wasted his genius on coachmen and cooks. Court ladies laughed
at his whimsy of writing verses for the common herd to read; and
learned dons considered him crazy for not doing all his more serious
work in French. A change has come; the court speaks Russ; and society
sees some merit in the phrases which it once contemned. The language
of books and science is no longer foreign to the soil; and all classes
of the people have the sense to read and speak in their musical and
copious native speech. This happy change is due to Michael Lomonosoff,
the peasant boy!
Born in this forest village on the Dvina bluffs (in 1711), he sprang
from that race of free colonists who had come into the north country
from Novgorod the Great. His father, Vassili Lomonosoff, a boatman,
getting his bread by netting and spearing fish on the great river,
brought him up among nets and boats, until the lad was big enough to
slip his chain, throw down his pole, and push into the outer sea. Not
many books were then to be got in a forest town like Holmogory, and
some lives of saints and a Slavonic Bible were his only reading for
many years. A good priest (as I learn on the spot) took notice of the
child, and taught him to read the old Slavonic words. These books he
got by heart; making heroes of the Hebrew prophets, and reading with
ardor of his native saints. The priest soon taught him all he knew,
and being a man of good heart, he sought around him for the means of
sending the lad to school. But where, in those dark ages, could a
school be found? He knew of schools for priests, and for the sons of
priests; but schools for peasants, and for the sons of peasants, did
not then exist. Could he be placed with a priest and sent to school?
The village pastor wrote to a friend in Moscow, who, though poor
himself, agreed to take the lad into his house. A train of carts came
through the village on its way to Moscow, carrying fur and fish for
sale; and the priest arranged with the drivers that Michael should go
with them, trudging at their side, and helping them on the road. At
ten years old he left his forest home, and walked to the great city, a
distance of nearly a thousand miles.
The priest in Moscow sent him to the clerical school, where he learned
some Latin, French, and German; in all of which tongues, as well as in
Russian, he afterwards spoke and wrote. He also learned to work for
his living as a polisher and setter of stones. A lad who can dine off
a crust of rye bread and a cup of cabbage broth, is easily fed; and
Michael, though he stuck to his craft, and lived by it, found plenty
of time for the cultivation of his higher gifts. He was a good artist;
for the time and place a very good artist; as the Jove-like head in
the great hall of the University of Moscow proves. This head--the
poet's own gift--was executed in mosaic by his hands.
After learning all that the monks could teach him in Moscow, he left
that city for Germany, where he lived some years as artist, teacher,
and professor; mastering thoroughly the modern languages and the
liberal arts. When he came back to his native soil he was one of the
deepest pundits of his time; a man of name and proof; respected in
foreign universities for his wonderful sweep and grasp of mind.
Studying many branches of science, he made himself a reputation in
every branch. A Russian has a variety of gifts, and Michael was in
every sense a Russ. While yet a lad it was said of him that he could
mend a net, sing a ditty, drive a cart, build a cabin, and guide a
boat with equal skill. When he grew up to be a man, it was said of him
with no less truth, that he could at the same time crack a joke and
heat a crucible; pose a logician and criticise a poet; draw the human
figure and make a map of the stars. Coming back to Russia with such a
name, he found the world at his feet; a professor's chair, with the
rank of a nobleman, and the office of a councillor of state; dignities
which a professor now enjoys by legal right. A strong Germanic
influence met him, as a native intruder in a region of learning closed
in that age to the Russ; but he joked and pushed, and fought his way
into the highest seats. He not only won a place in the academy which
Peter the Great had founded on the Neva, but in a few years he became
its living soul.
Yet Michael remained a peasant and a Russian all his days. He drank a
great many drams, and was never ashamed of being drunk. One day--as
the members of that academy tell the tale--he was picked up from the
gutter by one who knew him. "Hush! take care," said the good Samaritan
softly; "get up quietly and come home, lest some one of the academy
should see us." "Fool!" cried the tipsy professor, "Academy? I am the
Academy!"
Not without cause is this proud boast attributed to the peasant's son;
for Lomonosoff was the academy, at least on the Russian side. The
breadth of his knowledge seems a marvel, even in days when a special
student is expected to be an encyclopedic man, with the whole of
nature for his province. He wrote in Latin and in German before he
wrote in Russ. He was a miner, a physician, and a poet. He was a
painter, a carver, and draughtsman. He wrote on grammar, on drugs, on
music, and on the theory of ice. One of his best books is a criticism
on the Varegs in Russia; one of his best papers is a treatise on
microscopes and telescopes. He wrote on the aurora borealis, on the
duties of a journalist, on the uses of a barometer, and on
explorations in the Polar Sea. In the records of nearly every science
and art his name is found. Astronomy owes him something, chemistry
something, metallurgy something. But the glory of Lomonosoff was his
verse, of which he wrote a great deal, and in many different styles;
lays, odes, tragedies, an unfinished epic, and moral pieces without
end.
The rank of a great poet is not claimed for Michael Lomonosoff by
judicious critics. No creation like Oneghin, not even like Lavretski,
came from his pen. His merit lies in the fact that he was the first
writer who dared to be Russian in his art. But though it is the chief,
it is far from being the only distinction which Lomonosoff enjoys,
even as a poet. The mechanism of literature owes to his daring a
reform, of which no man now living will see the end. The Russ are a
religious people, to whom phrases of devotion are as their daily
bread; but the language of their Church is not the language of their
streets; and their books, though calling themselves Russ, were printed
in a dialect which few except their popes and the Old Believers could
understand. This dialect Lomonosoff laid aside, and took up in its
stead the fluent and racy idiom of the market and the quay. But he had
a poetic music to invent, as well as a poetic idiom to adapt. The
poetry of a kindred race--the Poles--supplied him with a model, on
which he built for the Russ that tonical lilt and flow, which ever
since his time has been adopted by writers of verse as the most
perfect vehicle for their poetic speech.
But greater than his poetic merit is the fact on which writers like
Lamanski love to dwell, that Lomonosoff was a thorough Russian in his
habits and ideas; and that after his election into the academy, he set
his heart upon nationalizing that body, so as to render it Russian;
just as the Berlin Academy was German, and the Paris Academy was
French.
In his own time Lomonosoff met with little encouragement from the
court. That court was German; the society nearest it was German; and
German was the language of scientific thought. A Russian was a savage;
and the speech of the common people was condemned to the bazars and
streets. Lomonosoff introduced that speech into literature and into
the discussions of learned men.
A statue to such a peasant marks a period in the nation's upward
course. A line on the marble shaft records the fact that this figure
was cast in 1829; and a second line states that it was removed in 1867
to its present site. Here, too, is progress. Forty years ago, a place
behind the courts was good enough for a poet who was also a
fisherman's son; even though he had done a fine thing in writing his
verses in his native tongue; but thirty years later it had come to be
understood by the people that no place is good enough for the man who
has crowned them with his own glory; and as they see that this figure
of Michael Lomonosoff is an honor to the province even more than to
the poet, they have raised his pedestal in the public square.
Would that it had fallen into native hands! Modelled by a French
sculptor, in the worst days of a bad school, it is a stupid travestie
of truth and art. The rustics and fishermen, staring at the lyre and
Cupid, at the naked shoulders and the Roman robe, wonder how their
poet came to wear such a dress. This man is not the fellow whom their
fathers knew--that laughing lad who laid down his tackle to become the
peer of emperors and kings. Some day a native sculptor, working in the
local spirit, will make a worthier monument of the peasant bard. A
tall young fellow, with broad, white brow and flashing eyes, in shaggy
sheep-skin wrap, broad belt, capacious boots, and high fur cap; his
right hand grasping a pole and net, his left hand holding an open
Bible; that would be Michael as he lived, and as men remember him now
that he is dead.
Four years ago (the anniversary of his death in 1765), busts were set
up, and burses founded in many colleges and schools, in honor of the
peasant's son. Moscow took the lead; St. Petersburg followed; and the
example spread to Harkof and Kazan. A school was built at Holmogory in
the poet's name; to smooth the path of any new child of genius who may
spring from this virgin soil. May it live forever!