It has been my conviction for many years that the Russian and the
Englishman are as it were the complementary halves of a man. What the
Russian lacks the Englishman has; what the Englishman lacks, that has
the Russian. The works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi,
Tchekov--the amazing direct and truthful revelations of these
masters--has let me, I think, into some secrets of the Russian soul, so
that the Russians I have met seem rather clearer to me than men and
women of other foreign countries. For their construing I have been given
what schoolboys call a crib. Only a fool pretends to knowledge--the
heart of another is surely a dark forest; but the heart of a Russian
seems to me a forest less dark than many, partly because the qualities
and defects of a Russian impact so sharply on the perceptions of an
Englishman, but partly because those great Russian novelists in whom I
have delighted, possess, before all other gifts, so deep a talent for
the revelation of truth. In following out this apposition of the Russian
and the Englishman, one may well start with that little matter of
"truth." The Englishman has what I would call a passion for the forms
of truth; his word is his bond--nearly always; he will not tell a
lie--not often; honesty, in his idiom, is the best policy. But he has
little or no regard for the spirit of truth. Quite unconsciously he
revels in self-deception and flies from knowledge of anything which will
injure his intention to "make good," as Americans say. He is, before all
things, a competitive soul who seeks to win rather than to understand or
to "live." And to win, or, shall we say, to maintain to oneself the
illusion of winning, one must carefully avoid seeing too much. The
Russian is light hearted about the forms of truth, but revels in
self-knowledge and frank self-declaration, enjoys unbottoming the
abysses of his thoughts and feelings, however gloomy. In Russia time and
space have no exact importance, living counts for more than dominating
life, emotion is not castrated, feelings are openly indulged in; in
Russia there are the extremes of cynicism, and of faith; of intellectual
subtlety, and simplicity; truth has quite another significance; manners
are different; what we know as "good form" is a meaningless shibboleth.
The Russian rushes at life, drinks the cup to the dregs, then frankly
admits that it has dregs, and puts up with the disillusionment. The
Englishman holds the cup gingerly and sips, determined to make it last
his time, not to disturb the dregs, and to die without having reached
the bottom.
These are the two poles of that instinctive intention to get out of life
all there is in it--which is ever the unconscious philosophy guiding
mankind. To the Russian it is vital to realise at all costs the fulness
of sensation and reach the limits of comprehension; to the Englishman it
is vital to preserve illusion and go on defeating death until death so
unexpectedly defeats him.
What this wide distinction comes from I know not, unless from the
difference of our climates and geographical circumstances. Russians are
the children of vast plains and forests, dry air, and extremes of heat
and cold; the English, of the sea, small, uneven hedge-rowed landscapes,
mist, and mean temperatures. By an ironical paradox, we English have
achieved a real liberty of speech and action, even now denied to
Russians, who naturally far surpass us in desire to turn things inside
out and see of what they are made. The political arrangements of a
country are based on temperament; and a political freedom which suits
us, an old people, predisposed to a practical and cautious view of life,
is proving difficult, if not impossible, for Russians, a young people,
who spend themselves so freely. But what Russia will become, politically
speaking, he would be rash who prophesied.
I suppose what Russians most notice and perhaps envy in us is practical
common sense, our acquired instinct for what is attainable, and for the
best and least elaborate means of attaining it. What we ought to envy in
Russians is a sort of unworldliness--not the feeling that this world is
the preliminary of another, nothing so commercial; but the natural
disposition to live each moment without afterthought, emotionally. Lack
of emotional abandonment is our great deficiency. Whether we can ever
learn to have more is very doubtful. But our imaginative writings, at
all events, have of late been profoundly modified by the Russian novel,
that current in literature far more potent than any of those traced out
in Georg Brandes' monumental study. Russian writers have brought to
imaginative literature a directness in the presentation of vision, a
lack of self-consciousness, strange to all Western countries, and
particularly strange to us English, who of all people are the most
self-conscious. This quality of Russian writers is evidently racial, for
even in the most artful of them--Turgenev--it is as apparent as in the
least sophisticated. It is part, no doubt, of their natural power of
flinging themselves deep into the sea of experience and sensation; of
their self-forgetfulness in a passionate search for truth.
In such living Russian writers as I have read, in Kuprin, Gorky, and
others, I still see and welcome this peculiar quality of rendering life
through--but not veiled by--the author's temperament; so that the effect
is almost as if no ink were used. When one says that the Russian novel
has already profoundly modified our literature, one does not mean that
we have now nearly triumphed over the need for ink, or that our
temperaments have become Russian; but that some of us have become
infected with the wish to see and record the truth and obliterate that
competitive moralising which from time immemorial has been the
characteristic bane of English art. In other words, the Russian passion
for understanding has tempered a little the English passion for winning.
What we admire and look for in Russian literature is its truth and its
profound and comprehending tolerance. I am credibly informed that what
Russians admire and look for in our literature is its quality of "no
nonsense" and its assertive vigour. In a word, they are attracted by
that in it which is new to them. I venture to hope that they will not
become infected by us in this matter; that nothing will dim in their
writers spiritual and intellectual honesty of vision or tinge them with
self-consciousness. It is still for us to borrow from Russian literary
art, and learn, if we can, to sink ourselves in life and reproduce it
without obtrusion of our points of view, except in that subtle way
which gives to each creative work its essential individuality. Our
boisterousness in art is too self-conscious to be real, and our
restraint is only a superficial legacy from Puritanism.
Restraint in life and conduct is another matter altogether. There
Russians can learn from us, who are past-masters in control of our
feelings. In all matters of conduct, indeed, we are, as it were, much
older than the Russians; we were more like them, one imagines, in the
days of Elizabeth.
Either similarity, or great dissimilarity, is generally needful for
mutual liking. Our soldiers appear to get on very well with Russians.
But only exceptional natures in either country could expect to
_understand_ each other thoroughly. The two peoples are as the halves of
a whole; different as chalk from cheese; can supplement, intermingle,
but never replace each other. Both in so different ways are very vital
types of mankind, very deep sunk in their own atmospheres and natures,
very insulated against all that is not Russian, or is not English;
deeply unchangeable and impermeable. It is almost impossible to
de-Anglicise an Englishman; as difficult to de-Russianise a Russian.
1916.