No intelligent outlander, I suppose, but marvels at the patience with
which the Russian people endure the exile system that has so long
brewed hell-broth for the nation to drink. When some violent offense
is answered by such punishment, we do not demur, but when trivialities
are magnified, and the police stupidly blunder, our blood boils with
protest.
So many times has Vladimir Korolenko been banished, that exile must
seem to him almost a normal condition, and freedom from police
surveillance a happy freak of fortune. And yet, more than any other
distinguished Russian writer, he is free from pessimism--his writings
are filled with passages of lyric sweetness.
Sixty years ago--in July, 1853--Vladimir was born at Jitomir, in the
government of Volynia. His father, of Cossack blood, was a district
judge in the cities of Dubno and Rovno, having previously served as
district attorney, and also as a minor judge. He was an honest man,
since he forbore to enrich himself with bribes, but made his modest
salary suffice. This course--eccentric in those days--left his wife
in straitened circumstances when he died. Vladimir was about fifteen
at the time, and still in the Gymnasium at Rovno, but his mother, the
daughter of a Polish landed proprietor, was enabled to keep him in
school and also maintain her other children, three boys and two girls.
The future author entered the Institute of Technology at St. Petersburg
in due course, and for two years fought off the extremes of nakedness
and hunger by coloring maps in the intervals of study, for he had
come to the great capital with only seventeen rubles in his purse.
The third year found him in Moscow, in the Petrovsk (St. Peter’s)
Agricultural Academy, and here, in the third year of his new course
(1875), he got his first taste of exile. His unforgivable crime was to
participate in a joint address of the students to the Faculty! For this
he was banished to the government of Vologda, but the sentence was not
completely carried out, for some one relented and before he reached the
place he was bidden to return to his home at Kronstadt. Here for one
year he was kept under police surveillance.
At the end of the year he was allowed to remove with his family to St.
Petersburg, where he worked in peace as a proof-reader, until February,
1879. But he was soon to learn that Government never forgets, for twice
during that month was his home officially searched, and at length he,
together with his brother, his brother-in-law, and his cousin, was
banished to Glazof, in the government of Vyatka, and presently still
further north, to Vyshne Volotsk, where he was confined in a political
prison--and all without a trial, the reading of charges, or any
semblance of human justice.
The whole term of his exile was spent without a single gleam of light
to make clear his offense. But _after_ his release in 1880, he learned
that his exile was due to his having attempted to break prison--an
offense which was alleged against him before he had ever been in prison!
The circumstances of his release were fortunate. Prince Imeritinsky had
been deputized to investigate the condition of the political prisons
and to report on the causes of incarceration. Among other prisons, he
visited that at Vyshne Volotsk, and Korolenko was already on the way to
Yakutsk, Siberia, when the message came ordering his release--probably
as a result of the investigation.
Even then entire freedom was not granted him, for he was “allowed” to
settle at Perm; and here he began his active work as a writer, though
he had written successfully as early as 1879.
In 1881 Alexander III became Emperor of Russia, and all his subjects
were required to take oath of allegiance. But Korolenko refused,
because in addition the government officers demanded that he betray
his friends by giving details of any revolutionary enterprises in
which he knew them to be engaged. Rather than become a party to such
villainy, the young man chose further exile, and for the succeeding
three years lived miserably in Yakutsk, in East Siberia. At length he
returned to the ancient Tartar city of Nijni Novgorod, on the Volga,
where he now lives with his family.
All this period of maddening oppression was aggravated by the fact that
his mother needed his help. When in 1879 Korolenko began to contribute
literary sketches to such Russian periodicals as _Russian Thought_,
_The Northern Messenger_, and _Annals of the Fatherland_, the meagre
honorariums were indeed a blessing to his loved ones.
* * * * *
The thing that “goes without saying” often needs to be said just the
same. That a writer is likely to reproduce his life-experiences in
his writings is one of these truisms, yet it will always remain an
interesting occupation to trace connection between life and literary
product in the work of an author of individuality.
Korolenko came from “Little Russia,” and began to find his subjects
in the towns and villages of the west country in which he was born,
but naturally he turned at length to depicting the life of the extreme
Siberian east.
That Korolenko has been formed in opinion and moulded to iron fortitude
of heart by his severe experiences in exile is shown by his remarkable
story, “The Wondrous Maid,” in which the Nihilist is depicted as a
simple gendarme, whose manhood transfigures his Nihilism and his work
as an officer. Again, our author proved his independence in a letter
to the St. Petersburg Academy, in which, as did Chekhov before him, he
courteously declined membership because the Academy had struck the name
of Gorki from its list of members.
It was in 1885, while in exile in Yakutsk, that he wrote his famous
“Makár’s Dream.” It is an odd fantasy, this story of the Yakut who,
having gotten half frozen in the wood, dreams that he is dragged
before the tribunal of the great Lord Toyon--a nondescript judge who
is neither of heaven nor of earth. Before a great scale, whose one
end is a small golden platter and whose other a huge wooden bowl, the
peasant is summoned to explain the acts of his life. At length, when
his cheatings and stealings are found to have outweighed all of the
deeds of service and faithfulness in his life, he suddenly breaks into
an unwonted eloquence of protest. He is unwilling to bear the penalty
of being turned into a beast of burden by becoming the horse of a
church official, not because the horse is badly treated, for it is well
fed--better fed, indeed, than he, the peasant, has ever been--but he
protests because the penalty is unjust. This appeal to justice seems
to move the great Toyon, and he ends by saying to the dejected Makár,
“Have patience, poor soul, thou art no longer on earth: here will be
found justice, even for thee!” And as he speaks the scales begin to
tremble, and the wooden bowl, filled with his evil deeds, rises higher
and higher, as though weighed down by his good acts.
Surely, the great meed of injustice suffered by The Exile himself gave
inspiration for the message of mercy at the end of this fantastic tale.
What may be called Korolenko’s Siberian era is further illustrated
in his sketches of a Siberian tourist, nine of which cover about one
hundred pages of ordinary size. All the sketches are remarkable for
local color and fine understanding of character. The one unfortunate
tendency is toward unfinished situation, for the sense of coming
to an adequate close is inseparable from good story-telling. It is
but fair to observe, however, that this trait of incompleteness is
characteristic of the sketch as a fictional form.
Throughout this series I have frequently asserted the obvious fact
that Russian themes have largely reflected the Russian temperament, as
is shown by the realistically direct and often terrible pictures which
fill the pages of their literature. Altogether apart from our interest
in the literate expressions of a great and alien people, we must feel a
sort of gruesome fascination as we are thrilled to the point of horror
in reading these simple yet titanic records of gloom.
All this raises the question of what is the difference between
fascination and charm--for charm, from the Anglo-American viewpoint,
is almost an unknown element in Russian literature. Fascination they
all possess; but charm is fascination plus delight. In Korolenko we do
have a writer of charm; and, besides, a charm that is not the reflex of
literatures other than his own--it evidently springs from the sweetness
of a spirit which all of the bitterness of banishment could not defile.
Here is a high and final test of native fineness.
As compared with the stories of Garshin, with their “terrible,
incoherent cries of woe,” Korolenko’s tales are idyllic. A rhythmical,
lyrical measure beats enchantingly in his nature passages, whose
intimacy with the life of the woods inevitably recalls the French
Theuriet. “The Forest Whispers,” one of his longer short-stories, is
simply redolent of tree-fragrance. We feel the wandering airs of the
glades; we hear the never-ceasing swish of majestic boughs; we stand
rapt in the cathedral silences of the green-shadowy aisles. The peasant
tale is the thread on which these pearls are strung, but the pearls
hide the string.
Listen to this passage. What Loti has evoked from the inscrutable sea,
Korolenko has charmed from the forest with his enchanter’s wand.
In the forest there was always a murmur, regular, continuous, like
the faint echo of a distant peal of bells; soft and indistinct,
like a song without words, or like the confused recollection of
bygone days. The murmur never ceased by day or night, for it was an
old dense forest of pines that had never been touched by woodman’s
saw or axe. Lofty pines, a hundred years old, with their red,
sturdy trunks, stood in close array, waving, in response to each
breath of wind, their high-tufted tops. Below, all was quiet; the
air was filled with an odor of tar; through the thick layer of
pine-cones, with which the ground was strewn, pushed gay ferns,
in all the luxury of their rich fringes, and standing motionless,
their leaves unstirred by the breeze. In damp nooks green grasses
rose up on their high stalks; and the white clover bent its heavy
head, overcome, as it were, with dreamy lassitude. And above flowed
the murmur of the forest, the mingling sighs of the old pine-wood.
Besides “The Forest Whispers,” two stories belong especially to
Korolenko’s Little-Russian group--“Iom-Kipour” (the Jewish Day
of Expiation) and “The Blind Musician.” The former relates how
a Little-Russian miller, good Christian though he is, narrowly
escapes being carried away by the Devil, in the place of the Jewish
tavern-keeper Iankiel, because, like him, he has tried to make money
out of the poor peasants--the same tendency to penetrate to the inner
life which we discover in other of Korolenko’s work, for he rose above
the realistic school, with its pathological records.
“The Blind Musician” is a remarkable psychological story--about
forty thousand words in length--in which all the sensations of the
blind are portrayed with sympathy and intelligence. The author has
not attempted to build up a meretricious interest by surrounding
his blind characters with the usual accompaniments to be found in
fiction--poverty and physical distress. Disallowing all such devices,
he wonderfully pictures the life of a child born blind in the home of
a wealthy family, his advance to boyhood, his love-life, and finally
his manhood’s experiences as a brilliant musician, “who attempts to
reproduce the sensations of sight by means of sounds.”
The following passage is typical:
The boy imaged to himself depth in the form of the soft murmur of
the stream as it flowed at the foot of the precipice, or of the
frightened splash of pebbles thrown from its top. Distance sounded
in his ears like the confused notes of a dying song. At times, in
the sultry noonday, when over the whole of nature there reigns
a quiet so profound that we can only divine the uninterrupted
noiseless course of life, the face of the blind boy would light up
with a strange expression. It seemed as if, under the influence of
the silence that prevailed around, there rose from the depth of his
soul sounds audible only to himself, to which he was listening with
rapt attention. It was easy to believe that at such moments a vague
but productive train of thought was awakening in his soul, like to
the imperfectly caught melody of an unknown song.
Two prose poems, of harmonious diction and fine human feeling, I have
space only to mention--“Easter Night,” and “The Old Bell-Ringer,” which
Korolenko calls “A Spring Idyl.” The latter is reproduced herewith in a
new translation for this series, and from it the tone of the former may
well be inferred.
* * * * *
Though not a great novelist--if he can be classed as a novelist at
all--Korolenko is the exponent of normality. He is more like Turgenev
than is any other living writer, though comparison with the Greatest
must not be taken to imply equality. The anarchistic, anti-Christian
Artsybashev, whose big-fisted novel, “Sanin,” forms an iconoclastic
type of its own, cannot approach Korolenko in lucid attractiveness.
Tolstoi, Korolenko followed, but at a distance, for he was of the
romantic school and little inclined to Tolstoi’s ultra-idealism,
particularly that of the last period.
One more refreshing characteristic of our author I venture to
name--human sympathy. True, he does not always temper his pity for the
“unfortunates” with the sound judgment of the moralist. Whether they
suffer deservedly or not, he does not deeply inquire--it is enough for
him that they suffer.
Well, I love him for that very trait of all-embracing sympathy. When a
man lets his heart go unleashed by the eternal judgment as to whether
the victim has sinned and may be suffering a righteous punishment, he
rises to utmost humanity--which is to say, the divine spirit of the
Great Master whose heart was Pity.
THE OLD BELL-RINGER
_By Vladimir Korolenko_
It had grown dark.
The tiny village, resting on the ledge of a remote stream, in a pine
forest, had become enveloped in that twilight which is peculiar to
starry spring nights, when the thin mist, rising from the earth,
deepens the shadows of the woods and fills the open spaces with a
silvery blue vapor.... How still was everything, and pensive and sad!
The village was quietly dreaming.
The dark outlines of the wretched huts were but vaguely visible; here
and there lights were aglimmer; now and then you could hear a gate
creak; a dog’s bark would start suddenly and die away; occasionally out
of the dark woods the figure of a pedestrian would emerge, or that of a
horseman; or a cart would pass by with a jolting noise. These were the
inhabitants of lone forest settlements, gathering to their church to
greet the great spring holiday.
The church stood on a little hill, in the very middle of the village.
Its windows were all alight. Its belfry--an old, tall, and dark
structure--pierced the blue sky.
The steps of the staircase creaked as the old bell-ringer ascended the
belfry, and soon his little lantern looked like a star suddenly sprung
into space.
* * * * *
It was hard for the old man to mount the steep staircase. His old legs
had already served their time, and his eyesight had grown dim....
It was time an old man had rest, but God seemed slow in sending
deliverance. The old bell-ringer had buried sons and grandsons; he
had escorted both young and old to their final resting-place; but he
himself was still alive. It was hard!... So many times had he greeted
Easter that he had lost count--he could not even remember how many
times he had awaited here his last hour. And now once more God had
willed that he should be here.
Having reached the top, he leaned his elbow on the railing.
Below, around the church, he could discern the wretchedly kept graves
of the village burial-place; as if to protect, old crosses stood over
them with outstretched arms. Here and there a young birch-tree inclined
over them its branches, as yet leafless.... The aromatic odor of young
buds ascended from below towards Mikheyich, and with it came a feeling
of the sad tranquillity of eternal sleep.
And what would he be doing a year hence? Would he once more climb this
height, under this bronze bell, to arouse with a resounding peal the
lightly-slumbering night, or would he be resting ... down there, in
some dark corner of the graveyard, under a cross? God knows!... He was
ready, but in the meantime the Lord called him once more to greet the
holiday.
“All glory be to God!” whispered his lips, accustomed to the old
formula. Mikheyich raised his eyes towards the sky, dense with millions
of stars, and crossed himself.
* * * * *
“Mikheyich, Mikheyich!” a trembling voice, also that of an old man,
suddenly called him from below. The aged sexton looked up towards the
belfry, even fixed his palm over his blinking, tear-wet eyes, and still
could not see Mikheyich.
“What do you want? I am here,” answered the bell-ringer, leaning out
from the belfry. “Can’t you see me?”
“No, I can’t see. Isn’t it time to strike? What do you think?”
Both of them glanced at the stars. Thousands of God’s lights twinkled
on high. The fiery “Wagoner” was already far above the horizon.
Mikheyich pondered.
“No, not yet; wait just a little longer.... I know when to ...”
* * * * *
He knew. He had no need of a timepiece. God’s stars always told him
when the time came. The earth and the sky, the white cloud floating
silently across the expanse of blue, the indistinct murmur of dark
pines below, and the rippling of the stream concealed by the dark--all
were familiar to him, near to him.... Not in vain had he spent his life
here.
For the moment his entire long past unrolled before him.... He recalled
how he ascended the belfry with his father for the first time.... Good
Lord! how long ago it was!--and what a short time it seemed!... He
saw himself once more a fair-haired lad; his eyes were kindled; the
wind--not the sort that raises the dust of the street, but rather a
more rare wind, flapping, as it were, its noiseless wings high above
the earth--played with his hair.... There below, so far, so far away,
he saw some sort of little people; and the houses of the village
also seemed small, and the forest receded into the distance, and the
round-shaped meadow, upon which stood the village, seemed immense,
almost boundless.
“Well, here it is, all here!” smiled the old man, glancing at the small
spot of earth.
“So life, too, is like that,” he reflected. “When one is young, one
sees neither its end nor its edge.” ... And yet here it was, as if in
the palm of one’s hand, from the very beginning to the very grave he
had just been contemplating in the corner of the burial-ground.... What
of that? Glory be to the Lord!--It was time for rest. It was a hard
road, and he had traversed it an honest man; and the damp earth was his
mother.... Soon--if only soon!...
* * * * *
Well, the time had come. Mikheyich glanced once more at the stars,
removed his cap, crossed himself, and began to gather up the ropes of
the bells.... A few more moments, and the nocturnal air trembled from
the resounding stroke.... Another, a third, a fourth ... one after
the other, filling the lightly-slumbering pre-festal night with an
outpouring of powerful, lingering, resonant, singing tones.
* * * * *
The bell grew silent. The service in church had begun. It was the
habit of Mikheyich in former years to go down and to stop in a corner
near the door in order to pray and listen to the chanting. This time,
however, he remained in the tower. It was difficult for him; aside
from that, he felt intensely fatigued. He sat down on a little bench,
and as he listened to the dying tones of the agitated bronze he grew
deeply pensive. What were his thoughts? He himself could hardly have
answered the question.... The bell-tower was but dimly lighted by his
lantern. The still vibrating bells were lost in the darkness; faint
murmurs of the chant reached him occasionally from below, and the
nocturnal wind stirred the ropes fastened to the iron hearts of the
bells.
The old fellow let fall his gray head upon his breast. His mind was
in a state of delirious fancy. “Now they are singing a hymn,” he
thought, and he imagined himself among the others in church. He heard
an outpouring of children’s voices in a choir; he saw the figure of
the long-since-departed priest Nahum exhorting the congregation to
prayer; he saw hundreds of peasants’ heads, like ripe corn before the
wind, bend low and stand erect again.... The peasants were crossing
themselves.... Familiar faces, all of them, and all faces of the dead.
Here was the stern face of his father; here, beside his father, his
older brother, crossing himself and sighing. And he himself stood
here, in the bloom of health and strength and full of the unconscious
yearning for happiness and the joy of life.... Where, oh, where, was
this happiness?... The old man’s mind flared up for a moment, like a
dying flame, flashing with a bright, quick movement and illuminating
for the moment all the passages of his past life.... Hard work, sorrow,
care.... Oh, where was this happiness? A hard fate can bring furrows to
a young face, give a stoop to a strong back, and cause one to sigh like
an older man.
There, on the left, among the women of the village, humbly inclining
her head, stood his sweetheart. A good woman, hers be the Kingdom of
God! How much had she not suffered, that fine soul!... Constant need
and labor and the inevitable womanly sorrow will cause a handsome woman
to wither; her eyes will lose their sparkle; and the expression of
perpetual, dull-like fright before each unawaited blow of life will
change the most superbly beautiful creature.... Yes, and where was her
happiness?... One son remained to them, their one hope and joy, and he
fell a victim to human weakness.
And he too was here, his rich enemy, bending low time and again,
seeking to pray away the bitter tears of orphans he had wronged;
repeatedly he was performing upon himself the sign of the cross,
falling on his knees and touching the ground with his forehead.... And
Mikheyich’s heart boiled over within him, while the dark faces of the
ikons looked down severely from their walls upon human sorrow and human
iniquity.
All that was past, all that behind him.... Now the entire world seemed
to him like a dark bell-tower, where the wind blew in the dusk,
stirring the bell-ropes.... “Let the Lord judge you!” whispered the old
man, shaking his gray head, while tears silently ran down his cheeks.
* * * * *
“Mikheyich! Mikheyich!... You haven’t fallen asleep?” someone shouted
up to him from below.
“Eh?” returned the old man, and quickly jumped to his feet. “Lord! Have
I in truth fallen asleep? That never happened before!”
With an accustomed hand, Mikheyich quickly caught the ropes. Below
him moved the peasant throng, a veritable ant-hill; the holy banners
aglimmer with gold brocade fluttered in the wind.... The procession
made a circuit of the church, and presently Mikheyich heard the joyous
cry, “Christ has risen from the dead!”
Coming like a mighty wave, the cry whelmed the old man’s heart.... And
it seemed to Mikheyich that brighter flared the lights of the waxen
candles, and that stronger grew the agitation of the people; the holy
banners seemed to become more alive; and the suddenly awakened wind
caught up the waves of sound and with broad sweeps lifted them high,
where they became one with the loud triumphant music of the bell.
* * * * *
Never before had old Mikheyich rung so well!
It was as if the old man’s brimming-over heart had passed into the
inanimate bronze; and it seemed as if the reverberations at the
same time sang and throbbed, laughed and wept, and, uniting in a
rare harmony, rose higher and higher unto the starry sky. The stars
themselves seemed to him to take on a new sparkle, to burst into flame,
while the sounds trembled and flowed, and again came down to earth with
a loving embrace.
A powerful bass loudly proclaimed: “Christ has risen!”
While two tenor voices, constantly atremble from the repeated blows of
the iron hearts, mingled with the bass joyously and resonantly: “Christ
has risen!”
And, again, two most slender soprano voices, seemingly in haste not to
be left behind, stole in among the more powerful ones, little children,
as it were, and sang in emulation: “Christ has risen!”
The entire belfry seemed to tremble and to shake; and the wind blowing
in the face of the bell-ringer appeared to flap its mighty wings and to
repeat: “Christ has risen!”
The old heart forgot about life, full of cares and wrongs. The old
bell-ringer forgot that life for him had become a thing shut up in
a melancholy and crowded tower; he forgot that he was alone in the
world--like an old stump, weather-beaten and broken.... He intercepted
these singing and weeping sounds, fleeting higher towards the skies
and falling again to the poor earth, and it seemed to him that he was
surrounded by his sons and his grandsons; that these joyous voices, of
old and young, had flowed together into one great chorus, and that they
sang to him of happiness and joyousness, which he had not tasted in his
life.... And the old man continued to tug at the ropes, while tears
ran down his face, and his heart beat tremulously with the illusion of
happiness.
* * * * *
And below the people were listening and saying to each other that never
had old Mikheyich rung so marvellously.
Then all of a sudden the large bell trembled violently and grew
silent.... The smaller ones, as if confused, rang an unfinished tone;
and then too stopped, as if to drink in the prolonged, sadly droning
note, which trembled and flowed and wept, gradually dying away in the
air....
The old bell-ringer fell back exhausted on the bench, and his last two
tears trickled silently down his pale face.
* * * * *
“Quick! Send a substitute! The old bell-ringer has rung his last
stroke.”