[_31 Mar. '10_]
I have read with very great interest Mr. Maurice Baring's new volume about
Russia, "Landmarks in Russian Literature" (Methuen, 6s. net). It deals
with Gogol, Tourgeniev, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, and Tchehkoff. It is
unpretentious. It is not "literary." I wish it had been more literary. Mr.
Baring seems to have a greater love for literature than an understanding
knowledge of it. He writes like a whole-hearted amateur, guided by common
sense and enthusiasm, but not by the delicate perceptions of an artist. He
often says things, or says things in a manner, which will assuredly annoy
the artist. Thus his curt, conventional remarks about Zola might have been
composed for a leading article in the _Morning Post_, instead of for a
volume of literary criticism. Nevertheless, I cannot be cross with him. In
some ways his book is illuminating. I mean that it has illuminated my
darkness. His chapters on Russian characteristics and on realism in
Russian literature are genuinely valuable. In particular he makes me see
that even French realism is an artificial and feeble growth compared with
the spontaneous, unconscious realism of the Russians. If you talked to
Russians about realism they probably would not know quite what you meant.
And when you had at length made them understand they would certainly
exclaim: "Well, of course! But why all this fuss about a simple matter?"
Only a man who knows Russia very well, and who has a genuine affection for
the Russian character, could have written these chapters. And I am ready
to admit that they are more useful than many miles of appreciation in the
delicate balancing manner of, say, an Arthur Symons.
* * * * *
Mr. Baring raises again the vexed question of Tourgeniev's position. It is
notorious that Tourgeniev is much more highly appreciated outside Russia
than in it. One is, of course, tempted to say that Russians cannot judge
their own authors, for there is a powerful and morally overwhelming cult
for Tourgeniev in France, Germany, and England. I have myself said, sworn,
and believed that "On the Eve" is the most perfect example of the novel
yet produced in any country. And I am not sure that I am yet prepared to
go back on myself. However, it is absurd to argue that Russians cannot
judge their own authors. The best judges of Russian authors must be
Russians. Think of the ridiculous misconceptions about English literature
by first-class foreign critics!... But I am convinced that Mr. Baring goes
too far in his statement of the Russian estimate of Tourgeniev. He says
that educated Russian opinion would no more think of comparing Tourgeniev
with Dostoievsky than educated English opinion would think of comparing
Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte Brontë. This is absurd. Whatever may be
Tourgeniev's general inferiority (and I do not admit it), he was a great
artist and a complete artist. And he was a realist. There is all earth and
heaven between the two Charlottes. One was an artist, the other was an
excellent Christian body who produced stories that have far less relation
to life than Frith's "Derby Day" has to the actual fact and poetry of
Epsom. If Mr. Baring had bracketed Tourgeniev with Charlotte Brontë and
Dostoievsky with the lonely Emily, I should have credited him with a
subtle originality.
About half of the book is given to a straightforward, detailed, homely
account of Dostoievsky, his character, genius, and works. It was very much
wanted in English. I thought I had read all the chief works of the five
great Russian novelists, but last year I came across one of Dostoievsky's,
"The Brothers Karamazov," of which I had not heard. It was a French
translation, in two thick volumes. I thought it contained some of the
greatest scenes that I had ever encountered in fiction, and I at once
classed it with Stendhal's "Chartreuse de Parme" and Dostoievsky's "Crime
and Punishment" as one of the supreme marvels of the world. Nevertheless,
certain aspects of it puzzled me. When I mentioned it to friends I was
told that I had gone daft about it, and that it was not a major work.
Happening to meet Mrs. Garnett, the never-to-be-sufficiently-thanked
translator of Tourgeniev and of Tolstoy, I made inquiries from her about
it, and she said: "It is his masterpiece." We were then separated by a
ruthless host, with my difficulties unsolved. I now learn from Mr. Baring
that the French translation is bad and incomplete, and that the original
work, vast as it is, is only a preliminary fragment of a truly enormous
novel which death prevented Dostoievsky from finishing. Death, this is yet
another proof of your astonishing clumsiness! The scene with the old monk
at the beginning of "The Brothers Karamazov" is in the very grandest
heroical manner. There is nothing in either English or French prose
literature to hold a candle to it. And really I do not exaggerate! There
is probably nothing in Russian literature to match it, outside
Dostoievsky. It ranks, in my mind, with the scene towards the beginning of
"Crime and Punishment," when in the inn the drunken father relates his
daughter's "shame." These pages are unique. They reach the highest and
most terrible pathos that the novelist's art has ever reached. And if an
author's reputation among people of taste depended solely on his success
with single scenes Dostoievsky would outrank all other novelists, if not
all poets. But it does not. Dostoievsky's works--all of them--have grave
faults. They have especially the grave fault of imperfection, that fault
which Tourgeniev and Flaubert avoided. They are tremendously unlevel,
badly constructed both in large outline and in detail. The fact is that
the difficulties under which he worked were too much for the artist in
him. Mr. Baring admits these faults, but he does not sufficiently dwell on
them. He glances at them and leaves them, with the result that the final
impression given by his essay is apt to be a false one. Nobody, perhaps,
ever understood and sympathized with human nature as Dostoievsky did.
Indubitably nobody ever with the help of God and good luck ever swooped so
high into tragic grandeur. But the man had fearful falls. He could not
trust his wings. He is an adorable, a magnificent, and a profoundly sad
figure in letters. He is anything you like. But he could not compass the
calm and exquisite soft beauty of "On the Eve" or "A House of
Gentlefolk."...