PREFACE

As a novel-writer and a dramatist, Gogol appears to me to deserve a

minute study, and if the knowledge of Russian were more widely spread,

he could not fail to obtain in Europe a reputation equal to that of the

best English humorists.

A delicate and close observer, quick to detect the absurd, bold in

exposing, but inclined to push his fun too far, Gogol is in the first

place a very lively satirist. He is merciless towards fools and rascals,

but he has only one weapon at his disposal--irony. This is a weapon

which is too severe to use against the merely absurd, and on the other

hand it is not sharp enough for the punishment of crime; and it is

against crime that Gogol too often uses it. His comic vein is always too

near the farcical, and his mirth is hardly contagious. If sometimes he

makes his reader laugh, he still leaves in his mind a feeling of

bitterness and indignation; his satires do not avenge society, they only

make it angry.

As a painter of manners, Gogol excels in familiar scenes. He is akin to

Teniers and Callot. We feel as though we had seen and lived with his

characters, for he shows us their eccentricities, their nervous habits,

their slightest gestures. One lisps, another mispronounces his words,

and a third hisses because he has lost a front tooth. Unfortunately

Gogol is so absorbed in this minute study of details that he too often

forgets to subordinate them to the main action of the story. To tell the

truth, there is no ordered plan in his works, and--a strange trait in an

author who sets up as a realist--he takes no care to preserve an

atmosphere of probability. His most carefully painted scenes are

clumsily connected--they begin and end abruptly; often the author's

great carelessness in construction destroys, as though wantonly, the

illusion produced by the truth of his descriptions and the naturalness

of his conversations.

The immortal master of this school of desultory but ingenious and

attractive story-tellers, among whom Gogol is entitled to a high place,

is Rabelais, who cannot be too much admired and studied, but to imitate

whom nowadays would, I think, be dangerous and difficult. In spite of

the indefinable grace of his obsolete language, one can hardly read

twenty pages of Rabelais in succession. One soon wearies of this

eloquence, so original and so eloquent, but the drift of which escapes

every reader except some Oedipuses like Le Duchat or Eloi Johanneau.

Just as the observation of animalculae under the microscope fatigues the

eye, so does the perusal of these brilliant pages tire the mind.

Possibly not a word of them is superfluous, but possibly also they might

be entirely eliminated from the work of which they form part, without

sensibly detracting from its merit. The art of choosing among the

innumerable details which nature offers us is, after all, much more

difficult than that of observing them with attention and recording them

with exactitude.

The Russian language, which is, as far as I can judge, the richest of

all the European family, seems admirably adapted to express the most

delicate shades of thought. Possessed of a marvellous conciseness and

clearness, it can with a single word call up several ideas, to express

which in another tongue whole phrases would be necessary. French,

assisted by Greek and Latin, calling to its aid all its northern and

southern dialects--the language of Rabelais, in fact, is the only one

which can convey any idea of this suppleness and this energy. One can

imagine that such an admirable instrument may exercise a considerable

influence on the mind of a writer who is capable of handling it. He

naturally takes delight in the picturesqueness of its expressions, just

as a draughtsman with skill and a good pencil will trace delicate

contours. An excellent gift, no doubt, but there are few things which

have not their disadvantages. Elaborate execution is a considerable

merit if it is reserved for the chief parts of a work; but if it is

uniformly lavished on all the accessory parts also, the whole produces,

I fear, a monotonous effect.

I have said that satire is, in my opinion, the special characteristic of

Gogol's talent: he does not see men or things in a bright light. That

does not mean that he is an unfaithful observer, but his descriptions

betray a certain preference for the ugly and the sad elements in life.

Doubtless these two disagreeable elements are only too easily found, and

it is precisely for that reason that they should not be investigated

with insatiable curiosity. We would form a terrible idea of Russia--of

"Holy Russia," as her children call her--if we only judged her by the

pictures which Gogol draws. His characters are almost entirely confined

to idiots, or scoundrels who deserve to be hung. It is a well-known

defect of satirists to see everywhere the game which they are hunting,

and they should not be taken too literally. Aristophanes vainly employed

his brilliant genius in blackening his contemporaries; he cannot prevent

us loving the Athens of Pericles.

Gogol generally goes to the country districts for his characters,

imitating in this respect Balzac, whose writings have undoubtedly

influenced him. The modern facility of communication in Europe has

brought about, among the higher classes of all countries and the

inhabitants of the great cities, a conventional uniformity of manners

and customs, e.g. the dress-coat and round hat. It is among the middle

classes remote from great towns that we must look to-day for national

characteristics and for original characters. In the country, people

still maintain primitive habits and prejudices--things which become

rarer from day to day. The Russian country gentlemen, who only journey

to St Petersburg once in a lifetime, and who, living on their estates

all the year round, eat much, read little and hardly think at all--these

are the types to which Gogol is partial, or rather which he pursues with

his jests and sarcasms. Some critics, I am told, reproach him for

displaying a kind of provincial patriotism. As a Little Russian, he is

said to have a predilection for Little Russia over the rest of the

Empire. For my own part, I find him impartial enough or even too general

in his criticisms, and on the other hand too severe on anyone whom he

places under the microscope of his observation. Pushkin was accused,

quite wrongly in my opinion, of scepticism, immorality, and of belonging

to the Satanic school; however he discovered in an old country manor his

admirable Tatiana. One regrets that Gogol has not been equally

fortunate.

I do not know the dates of Gogol's different works, but I should be

inclined to believe that his short stories were the first in order of

publication. They seem to me to witness to a certain vagueness in the

author's mind, as though he were making experiments in order to

ascertain to what style of work his genius was best adapted. He has

produced an historical romance inspired by the perusal of Sir Walter

Scott, fantastic legends, psychological studies, marked by a mixture of

sentimentality and grotesqueness. If my conjecture is correct, he has

been obliged to ask himself for some time whether he should take as his

model Sterne, Walter Scott, Chamisso, or Hoffmann. Later on he has done

better in following the path which he has himself traced out. "Taras

Bulba," his historical romance, is an animated and, as far as I know,

correct picture of the Zaporogues, that singular people whom Voltaire

briefly mentions in his "Life of Charles XII." In the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries the Zaporogues played a great part in the annals

of Russia and of Poland; they then formed a republic of soldiers, or

rather of filibusters, established on the islands of the Don, nominal

subjects sometimes of the Kings of Poland, sometimes of the Grand Dukes

of Moscow, sometimes even of the Ottoman Porte. At bottom they were

extremely independent bandits, and ravaged their neighbours' territory

with great impartiality. They did not allow women to live in their

towns, which were a kind of nomad encampments; it was there that the

Cossack aspirants to military glory went to be trained as irregular

troops. The most absolute equality prevailed among the Zaporogues while

at peace in the marshes of the Don. Then the chiefs, or atamans, when

speaking to their subordinates always took their caps off. But during an

expedition, on the contrary, their power was unlimited, and disobedience

to the captain of the company (Ataman Kotchevoi) was considered the

greatest of crimes.

Our filibusters of the seventeenth century have many traits of

resemblance to the Zaporogues, and the histories of both preserve the

remembrance of prodigies of audacity and of horrible cruelties. Taras

Bulba is one of those heroes with whom, as the student of Schiller said,

one can only have relations when holding a well-loaded gun in one's

hand. I am one of those who have a strong liking for bandits; not

because I like to meet them on my road, but because, in spite of myself,

the energy these men display in struggling against the whole of society,

extorts from me an admiration of which I am ashamed. Formerly I read

with delight the lives of Morgan, of Donnais, and of Mombars the

destroyer, and I would not be bored if I read them again. However, there

are bandits and bandits. Their glory is greatly enhanced if they are of

a recent date. Actual bandits always cast into the shade those of the

melodrama, and the one who has been more recently hung infallibly

effaces the fame of his predecessors. Nowadays neither Mombars nor Taras

Bulba can excite so much interest as Mussoni, who last month sustained a

regular siege in a wolf's den against five hundred men, who had to

attack him by sapping and mining.

Gogol has made brilliantly coloured pictures of his Zaporogues, which

please by their very grotesqueness; but sometimes it is too evident that

he has not drawn them from nature. Moreover, these character-pictures

are framed in such a trivial and romantic setting that one regrets to

see them so ill-placed. The most prosaic story would have suited them

better than these melodramatic scenes in which are accumulated tragic

incidents of famine, torture, etc. In short, one feels that the author

is not at ease on the ground which he has chosen; his gait is awkward,

and the invariable irony of his style makes the perusal of these

melancholy incidents more painful. This style which, in my opinion, is

quite out of place in some parts of "Taras Bulba," is much more

appropriate in the "Viy," or "King of the Gnomes," a tale of witchcraft,

which amuses and alarms at the same time. The grotesque easily blends

with the marvellous. Recognising to the full the poetic side of his

subject, the author, while describing the savage and strange customs of

the old-time Cossacks with his usual precision and exactitude, has

easily prepared the way for the introduction of an element of

uncanniness.

The receipt for a good, fantastic tale is well known: begin with

well-defined portraits of eccentric characters, but such as to be within

the bounds of possibility, described with minute realism. From the

grotesque to the marvellous the transition is imperceptible, and the

reader will find himself in the world of fantasy before he perceives

that he has left the real world far behind him. I purposely avoid any

attempt to analyse "The King of the Gnomes"; the proper time and place

to read it is in the country, by the fireside on a stormy autumn night.

After the _denouement_, it will require a certain amount of resolution

to traverse long corridors to reach one's room, while the wind and the

rain shake the casements. Now that the fantastic style of the Germans is

a little threadbare, that of the Cossacks will have novel charms, and in

the first place the merit of resembling nothing else--no slight praise,

I think.

The "Memoirs of a Madman" is simultaneously a social satire, a

sentimental story, and a medico-legal study of the phenomena presented

by a brain which is becoming deranged. The study, I believe, is

carefully made and the process carefully depicted, but I do not like

this class of writing; madness is one of those misfortunes which arouse

pity but which disgust at the same time. Doubtless, by introducing a

madman in his story an author is sure of producing an effect. It causes

to vibrate a cord which is always susceptible; but it is a cheap method,

and Gogol's gifts are such as to be able to dispense with having resort

to such. The portrayal of lunatics and dogs--both of whom can produce an

irresistible effect--should be left to tyros. It is easy to extract

tears from a reader by breaking a poodle's paw. Homer's only excuse, in

my opinion, for making us weep at the mutual recognition of the dog

Argus and Ulysses, is because he was, I think, the first to discover the

resources which the canine race offers to an author at a loss for

expedients.

I hasten to go on to a small masterpiece, "An Old-time Household." In a

few pages Gogol sketches for us the life of two honest old folk living

in the country. There is not a grain of malice in their composition;

they are cheated and adored by their servants, and naive egoists as they

are, believe everyone is as happy as themselves. The wife dies. The

husband, who only seemed born for merry-making, falls ill and dies some

months after his wife. We discover that there was a heart in this mass

of flesh. We laugh and weep in turns while reading this charming story,

in which the art of the narrator is disguised by simplicity. All is true

and natural; every detail is attractive and adds to the general effect.

* * * * *

_Translator's Note._--The rest of Merimee's essay is occupied with

analyses of Gogol's "Dead Souls" and "The Revisor," and therefore is not

given here.