In the chapter _Of Vanitie_ we hear much more of himself: "My chiefest

profession in this life was to live delicately and quietly and rather

negligently then seriously.... I am no Philosopher ... life is a tender

thing, and easie to be distempered...."

"Neither the pleasure of building ... nor hunting, nor hawking, nor

gardens ... can much embusie me or greatly ammuse me. It is a thing for

which I hate my selfe.... Those who hearing mee relate mine own

insufficiencie in matters pertaining to husbandry or thrift, are still

whispering in mine eares that it is but a kinde of disdaine, and that I

neglect to know the implements or tooles belonging to husbandry or

tillage, their seasons and orders; how my wines are made, how they

graft, and understand or know the names and formes of hearbes ... and

what belongs to the dressing of meats wherewith I live and whereon I

feede; the names and prices of such stuffes I cloath my selfe withall,

onely because I doe more seriously take to heart some higher knowledge;

bring me in a manner to death's doore ... I would rather be a cunning

horseman than a good Logician."

I like his attitude to his servants: "I never presume vices but after I

have seene them ... it is not amisse if you allow your servant some

small scope for his disloyalty and indiscretion."

I like his attitude to money: "I had rather heare at two months end that

I have spent foure hundred crownes, then every night when I should goe

to my quiet bed have mine eares tired and my minde vexed with three,

five, or seven."

"What would I not rather doe then reade a contract?"

"In mine owne house I exactly looke unto necessitie, little unto state,

and lesse unto ornament...."

"Over-many parts are required in hoarding and gathering of goods: I have

no skill in it."

He has a good deal to say against the Government, as all men in all ages

have: "Our Common-wealth is much crazed and out of tune ... the gods

play at hand-ball with us, and tosse us up and downe on all hands," but

"all that shaketh doth not fall"; but he comes back very soon to what

interests him far more than nationalities, princedoms, potentates or

powers--himself: he doubts whether the passage of years had added one

inch of wisdom to him ... he tells us that he has a thousand times gone

to bed imagining that he would be killed in the night: he pats himself

on the back for his nice scrupulousness in the keeping of promises, he

shows us a side of his nature which was wholly foreign to any other man

of his time when he expresses his humour "to esteeme all men as my

countrymen," he extols travel as a profitable exercise and tells us that

in spite of his cholic he can sit ten hours on horseback "without

wearinesse or tyring." "I love rainy and durty weather as duckes doe"

... "these Umbrels ... doe more weary the armes then ease the head." ...

"It is a hard matter to make me resolve of any journey; but if I be once

on the way, I hold out as long and as farre as another. I strive as much

in small as I labour in great enterprises...."

He seems to excuse himself for leaving home so often, being married:

"They doe me wrong. The best time for a man to leave his house is when

he hath so ordered and settled the same that it may continue without

him.... I require in a maried woman the Occonomicall vertue above all

others." Besides, "Jovisance and possession appertaine chiefly unto

imagination. It embraceth more earnestly and uncessantly what she goeth

to fetch, then what wee touch. Summon and count all your daily

ammusements and you shall finde you are then furthest and most absent

from your friend when he is present with you ... verely that woman who

can prescribe unto her husband how many steps end that which is neere,

and which steps in number begins the distance she counts farre, I am of

opinion that she stay him betweene both." It reads very much as if

Montaigne had had to use that argument with his own wife. "We did not

condition when we were maried, continually to keepe ourselves close

hugging one another." He rises to a sublimer thought shortly after this:

"I undertake (my journey) not either to returne or to perfect the same.

I onely undertake it to be in motion. So long as the motion pleaseth me,

and I walke that I may walke. Those runne not that runne after a

Benefice or after a Hare," and this leads him to scorn the fear of dying

away from home. "If I were to chuse, I thinke it should rather be on

horsebacke than in a bed, from my home and farre from my friends.... Let

us live, laugh and be merry amongst our friends, but die and yeeld up

the ghost amongst strangers and such as we know not."

"I dayly endeavour ... to shake off this childish humour ... which

causeth ... that we desire to moove our friends to compassion and sorrow

for us."

"A man should, as much as he can, set foorth and extend his joy, but to

the utmost of his power suppresse and abridge his sorrow...." Again he

turns off at a tangent: "A pleasant fantazie is this of mine, many

things I would be loath to tell a particular man, I utter to the whole

world. And concerning my most secret thoughts and inward knowledge, I

send my dearest friends to a Stationers shop.... I would willingly come

from the other world to give him the lie that should frame me other than

I had beene; were it he meant to honour mee."

So he goes on to explain himself: "I trace no certaine line, neither

right nor crooked ... bee my meate boyled, rosted, or baked; butter or

oyle, and that of Olives or of wall-nuts, hot or colde, I make no

difference, all is one to me.... One string alone can never sufficiently

hold me.... I must walke with my penne as I goe with my feete. The

common high way must have conference with other wayes.... Libertie and

idlenesse are my chiefest qualities." He realises that he frequently

straggles out of the path in his discourse, but contends that "some word

or other shall ever be found in a corner that hath relation to it,

though closely couched." He explains also why his later essays are much

longer than his earlier ones: "The often breaking of my chapters ...

seemed to interrupt attention before it be conceived," and he ends the

essay on a magnificent note:

"You distract yourselves," said the God of Delphos, "call yourselves

home again ... except thy selfe, O man, everything doth first seeke and

study it selfe ... there's not one so shallow, so empty, and so needy as

thou art who embracest the whole world. Thou art the Scrutator without

knowledg, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the

vice of the play."

In chapter ten, _How One Ought to Governe his Will_, he pleads for

moderation and irrelevantly curses the Pope for "eclipsing or abridging

tenne days" in the calendar.

Again and again he returns to this love of his for moderation in all

things. "We need not much learning for to live at ease ... all our

sufficiency that is beyond the naturall is well nigh vaine and

superfluous.... I have no care at all to acquire or get ... apprehension

doth not greatly presse me ... I ever carry my preservatives above me,

which are resolution and sufferance ... we finde nothing so sweete in

life as a quiet rest and gentle sleepe and without dreames."

So long as he can keep his accustomed hours, eat his accustomed meals at

the usual time, he is satisfied. Little things put him out. "If my minde

be busie alone, the least stirring, yea, the buzzing of a flie doth

trouble and distemper the same." On the other hand: "With small adoe and

without compulsion, I can easily leave mine inclinations and embrace the

contrary ... there is no course of life so weake and sottish as that

which is mannaged by Order, Methode, and Discipline." "To be tied to one

certaine particular fashion," he calls a "most contrary quality." ...

"Let such men keep their kitchin."

He immediately returns to himself: "Without long practise I can neither

sleepe by day, nor eate betweene meales ... nor get children but before

I fall asleepe ... nor leave mine owne sweate, nor quench my thirst

either with cleere water or wine alone, nor continue long bare-headed,

nor have mine hair cut after dinner. I could as hardly spare my gloves

as my shirt ... or lye in a bed without curtaines about it. I could dine

without a tablecloth, but hardly without a cleane napkin ... when others

goe to breakefast, I goe to sleepe, and within a while after I shall be

as fresh and jolly as before ... both in sicknesse and in health I have

willingly given my selfe over to those appetites that pressed me ... I

never received harme by any action that was very pleasing unto me.... A

man must give sicknesses their passage ... let Nature worke: let hir

have hir will ... pleasure is one of the chiefest kinds of profit.... Do

but endure, you neede no other rule or regiment.... Sleeping hath

possessed a great part of my life: and as old as I am, I can sleepe

eight or nine houres together.... I love to take my rest with my legs as

high or higher then my seate.... I seldome dreame, and when I doe, it is

of extravagant things and chymeras, commonly produced of pleasant

conceits, rather ridiculous than sorrowfull. And thinke it true that

dreames are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but great skill

is required to sort and understand them.... I feed much upon salt cakes,

and love to have my bread somewhat fresh.... Never take unto your selfe,

and much lesse never give your wives the charge of your childrens

breeding or education.... Let custome enure them to frugality and breed

them to hardnesse: that they may rather descend from a sharpenesse than

ascend unto it.... My father chose no other gossips to hold me at the

font than men of abject and base fortune, that so I might the more be

bound and tied unto them ... long sitting at meales doth much weary and

distemper me ... in mine owne house, though my board be but short and

that wee use not to sit long, I doe not commonly sit downe with the

first, but a pretty while after others ... such as have care of me may

easily steale from me what soever they imagine may be hurtfull for me,

inasmuch as about my feeding I never desire or find fault with that I

see not.... But if a dish or any thing else be once set before me, they

lose their labour that goe about to tell me of abstinence.... I love all

manner of flesh or fowle but greene rosted ... and in divers of them the

very alteration of their smell." He keeps his teeth in condition by

rubbing them with his napkin before and after meals. "I am not over-much

or greedily desirous of sallets or of fruits, except melons ... am

gluttonous of fish ... for a man of an ordinary stature I drinke

indifferent much ... I like little glasses best ... I feare a foggy and

thicke ayre, and shunne smoke more than death ... to allay the whiteness

of paper, when I was most given to reading, I was wont to lay a piece of

greene glass upon my booke, and was thereby much eased. Hitherto I never

used spectacles ... and can yet see as farre as ever I could ... I must

like that preacher well that can tie mine attention to a whole sermon

... I hate that we should be commanded to have our minds in the clouds

whilst our bodies are sitting at the table.... When I dance, I dance;

and when I sleepe, I sleepe."

The fundamental principle of life he finds is to live. "The glorious

masterpiece of man is to live to the repulse.... All other things--as to

reigne, to governe, to hoard up treasure, to thrive, and to build--are

for the most part but appendixes and supports thereunto ... it is for

base and petty minds, dulled and overwhelmed with the weight of

affaires, to be ignorant how to leave them, and not to know how to free

themselves from them, nor how to leave and take them againe.... There is

nothing so goodly, so faire, and so lawfull, as to play the man well

and duely: nor science so hard and difficult as to know how to live this

life well.... There is a kinde of husbandry in knowing how to enjoy it.

I enjoy it double to others." And he concludes the book by praising this

our mortal life, "corporall voluptuousness" as well as that of the

mind....

To anyone coming to Montaigne for the first time I would recommend this

last essay, _Of Experience_, to be read first. He reveals himself more

there than anywhere, and it is the details of his life, his likes and

dislikes, that attract us most of all in this "well-meaning booke."

It is time to turn back to volume one. The essays here are

shorter--fifty-seven in number, as against thirteen in the third volume.

They are as full of quaint conceits, quotations and anecdotes from the

classics, but not quite so full of himself. "There is no man living," he

says in an essay _Of Liars_, "whom it may lesse beseeme to speake of

memorie, than my selfe, for to say truth, I have none at all." Ten

chapters later on he muses on the imminence of death: "A man should

ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and

above all things, looke he have then nothing to doe but with himselfe."

Consequently he finds himself thinking of sudden death even in the

transport of love: he writes things down at once lest he should die

before he comes again to his writing-tables. "The deadest deaths are the

best." ... "I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives

offices as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I

am setting my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect

garden." There are few things that so constantly occupy Montaigne's mind

more than death. "Life in itselfe is neither good nor evill: it is the

place of good or evill, according as you prepare it for them. And if you

have lived one day, you have seene all: one day is equal to all other

daies.... The profit of life consists not in the space, but rather in

the use.... I imagine truly how much an ever-during life would be lesse

tolerable and more painfull to a man, than is the life which I have

given him.... Neither to fly from life nor to run to death I have

tempered both the one and other betweene sweetnes and sourenes."

Some of his wisest remarks are to be found in his essay, _Of

Pedantisme_: "We should rather enquire who is better wise than who is

more wise ... even as birds flutter and skip from field to field to

pecke up corne ... and without tasting the same, carrie it in their

bils, therewith to feed their little ones; so doe our pedants gleane and

pick learning from bookes, and never lodge it farther than their lips

... we take the opinions and knowledge of others into our protection....

I tell you they must be enfeoffed in us, and made our owne ... what

avails it to have our bellies full of meat, if it be not digested?...

Except our mind be the better, unless our judgement be the sounder, I

had rather my scholler had imployed his time in playing at tennis; I am

sure his bodie would be the nimbler. See but one of these our

universitie men returne from schole ... who is so inapt for any matter?

who so unfit for any companie? who so to seeke if he come into the

world? all the advantage you discover in him is that his Latine and

Greeke have made him more sottish, more stupid, and more presumptuous,

than before he went from home. Whereas he should return with a mind

full-fraught, he returnes with a wind-puft conceit; instead of

plum-feeding the same, he has only spunged it up with varietie."

Montaigne has very little use for such "flim-flam tales" as the

succession of kings and "the first preter perfect tense of [Greek:

τúπτω]": "I find Rome to have beene most valiant when it was least

learned."

He acknowledges that he himself has "a smacke of everything in generall,

but nothing to the purpose in particular." "The good that comes of

studie is to prove better, wiser and honester ... a mere bookish

sufficiencie is unpleasant--among the liberall sciences, let us begin

with that which makes us free ... remove these thornie quiddities of

logike, whereby our life can no whit be amended, and betake ourselves to

the simple discourses of Philosophy ... all sports and exercises shall

be a part of study; running, wrestling, musicke, dancing, hunting, and

managing of armes and horses ... it is not a mind, it is not a body that

we erect, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him." He

hates severity of discipline in education, and would see "pictures of

Gladness and Joy, of Flora and of the Graces to be set up round about

the school-house." He derides the waste of time spent on grammar and

logic: "It is a naturall, simple, and unaffected speech that I love, so

written as it is spoken, and such upon the paper, as it is in the mouth,

a pithie, sinnowie, full, strong, compendious and materiall speech, not

so delicate and affected as vehement and piercing.... I must needs

acknowledge that the Greeke and Latine tongues are great ornaments in a

gentleman, but they are purchased at over-high a rate," yet he himself

has nothing but praise for Ovid, Virgil and the rest, and calls the

Arthurian romances "wit-besotting trash."

His essay _Of Friendship_ contains much that is self-revelatory: "I am

nothing inquisitive whether a Lackey be chaste or no, but whether he be

diligent ... I feare not a hot swearing Cooke, as one that is ignorant

and unskilfull ... in bed I prefer beauty than goodnesse." He returns to

the subject of moderation in this volume and, as we might expect, limits

his discussion to moderation in the passion of love: "The love we beare

to women is very lawful: yet doth Divinitie bridle and restraine the

same." ... "A man that is able may have wives, children, goods, and

chiefly health, but not so tie himselfe unto them that his felicitie

depend on them. We should reserve a storehouse for our selves ...

altogether ours, and wholly free ... the greatest thing of the world is

for a man to know how to be his owne." In _A Consideration upon Cicero_

he returns to himself: "I deadly hate to heare a flatterer ... I ever

write my letters in past-hast ... I commonly begin without project: the

first word begets the second ... there is no accident woundeth men

deeper, or goeth so neere the heart as the losse of children ... there

is nothing I hate more than driving of bargaines ... to have more meanes

of expences is ever to have increase of sorrow ... in the third stage of

my life I measure my garment according to my cloth, and let my expenses

goe together with my comming in ... I live from hand to mouth ... a

straight oare, being under water seemeth to be crooked. It is no matter

to see a thing, but the matter is how a man doth see the same ... it is

the enjoying, and not the possessing that makes us happy. He that cannot

stay till he be thirsty, can take no pleasure in drinking."

One of his most delicious confessions occurs in his essay _Of Smels and

Odors_: "As for me in particular, my mostachoes, which are verie thick,

serve me for that purpose. Let me but approach my gloves or my

hand-kercher to them, their smell will sticke upon them a whole day.

They manifest the place I came from. The close-smacking,

sweetnesse-moving, love-alluring, and greedie-smirking kisses of youth,

were heretofore wont to sticke on them many houres after.... The

principall care I take is to avoid and be far from all manner of filthy,

foggy, ill-savouring and unwholesome aires." So much for the first

volume.

We now come finally to the second, the longest, containing thirty-seven

essays of varying length. He begins with a delightful essay on

_Inconstancy_. "There is nothing I so hardly beleeve to be in man as

constancie, and nothing so easy to be found in him as inconstancy"--and

in woman he expects never to find faithfulness. Of himself he writes as

I quoted before: "All contrarities are found in me, according to some

turne or removing, and in some fashion or other."

In his second essay he denounces drunkenness: "Other vices but alter and

distract the understanding, whereas this utterly subverteth the same,

and astonieth the body ... my taste, my rellish, and my complexion are

sharper enemies unto this vice than my discourse, for besides that I

captivate more easily my conceits under the auctoritie of ancient

opinions, indeede I finde it to be a fond, a stupid, and a base kinde of

vice, but lesse malicious and hurtfull than others; all which shocke and

with a sharper edge wound publike societie. And if we cannot give

ourselves any pleasure except it cost us something; I finde this vice to

be lesse chargeable unto our conscience than others: besides it is not

hard to be prepared, difficult to be found ... sobrietie serveth to make

us more jolly-quaint, lusty, and wanton for the exercise of love

matters." He diverges from the point to talk about his father (a

favourite topic with him), who at the age of sixty seldom ascended "any

staires without skipping three or four steps at once." "But come we to

our drinking againe ... let none bestow the day in drinking, as the time

that is due unto more serious negotiations, nor the nights wherein a man

intendeth to get children."

In the essay, _To-morrow is a New Day_ (most fascinating of all his

titles), he tells us: "Never was man lesse inquisitive, or pryed lesse

into other mens affaires than I." In _Of Exercise or Practice_ he

returns to the subject of death. "Let me be under a roofe, in a good

chamber, warme-clad, and well at ease, in some tempestuous and stormy

night. I am exceedingly perplexed and much grieved for such as are

abroad and have no shelter. But let me be in the storme myselfe I doe

not so much as desire to be else-where.... I am in good hope the like

will happen to me of death: and that it is not worth the labour I take

for so many preparations as I prepare against her ... for a man to

acquaint himselfe with death, I finde no better way than to approach

unto it."

_Of the Affections of Fathers to their Children_ leads him to "utterly

condemne all manner of violence in the education of a young spirit,

brought up to honour and libertie ... if it lay in my power to make my

selfe feared, I had rather make my selfe beloved." But with regard to

children generally "I wot not well, whether my selfe should not much

rather desire to beget and produce a perfectly-well-shaped and

excellently-qualified infant, by the acquaintance of the Muses than by

the acquaintance of my wife.... There are few men given unto Poesie that

would not esteeme it for a greater honour to be the father of Virgils

Aeneidos than of the goodliest boy in Rome and that would not rather

endure the losse of the one than the perishing of the other.... Nay, I

make a great question whether Phidias would as highly esteeme and

dearely love the preservation and successfull continuance of his

naturall children, as he would an exquisite and matchlesse-wrought

Image, that with long study and diligent care he had perfected according

unto art."

In chapter ten, _Of Bookes_, he comes back yet again to his own writing:

"Let that which I borrow be survaied, and then tell me whether I have

made good choice of ornaments to beautifie and set forth the invention

which ever comes from mee ... I number not my borrowings, but weight

them ... my intention is to passe the remainder of my life quietly and

not laboriously, in rest and not in care. There is nothing I will

trouble or vex myself about, no not for science it selfe, what esteeme

soever it be of ... if I studie, I only endevour to find out the

knowledge that teacheth or handleth the knowledge of my selfe, and

which may instruct me how to die well and how to live well.... I doe

nothing without blithnesse ... if one booke seeme tedious unto me I take

another, which I follow not with any earnestnesse, except it be at such

houres as I am idle, or that I am weary with doing nothing. I am not

greatly affected to new books, because ancient Authors are, in my

judgement, more full and pithy.... I esteeme Bocace his Decameron and

Rabelais worth the paines-taking to reade them.... I speake my minde

freely of all things." He goes on to indulge in panegyrics of the

classics, specially his beloved "Plutarke," who is "everywhere free and

open hearted ... stuft with matters." ... "I am wonderfull curious to

discover and know the minde, the soul, the genuine disposition and

naturall judgement of my authors." He objects to the "remisse niceness"

of Cicero. "Concerning his eloquence," however, "it is beyond all

comparison, and I verily beleeve that none shall ever equall it."

"Historians are my right hand, for they are pleasant and easie ... they

ammuse and busie themselves more about counsels than events ... they are

fittest for me; and that's the reason why Plutarke above all in that

kinde doth best please me." "The subject of an historie should be naked,

bare and formelesse.... I have a while since accustomed my selfe to note

at the end of my booke the time I made an end to read it, and to set

downe what censure or judgement I gave of it."

Chapter eleven, _Of Crueltie_, contains this typical bit of common

sense: "Amongst all other vices, there is none I hate more than

Crueltie.... I cannot well endure a seelie dew bedabled hare to groane

when she is seized upon by the houndes, although hunting be a violent

pleasure ... I seldom take any beast alive but I give him his libertie."

But he well realises that "Nature hath of her own selfe added unto man a

certaine instinct to inhumanitie."

He has a wonderful chapter on the habits of animals, and comes to this

conclusion: "Touching trust and faithfulnesse, there is no creature in

the world so trecherous as man ... as for warre, which is the greatest

and most glorious of all humane actions ... it seemeth it hath not much

to make itselfe to be wished for in beasts.... We have not much more

need of offices, of rules, and lawes how to live in our common-wealth

than the cranes and ants have in theirs. Which notwithstanding, we see

how orderly and without instruction they maintaine themselves." It is in

this very long chapter that he dives most deeply into philosophy. "To a

pensive and heart-grieved man a cleare day seemes gloomie and duskie.

Our senses are not only altered, but many times dulled, by the passions

of the mind.... Those which have compared our life unto a dreame, have

happily had more reason so to doe than they were aware. When we dreame,

our soule liveth, worketh and exerciseth all her faculties, even and as

much as when it waketh ... we wake sleeping, and sleep waking." In the

chapter entitled _That our Desires are encreased by Difficultie_ we

read: "To forbid us anything is the ready way to make us long for it ...

that which so long held mariages in honour and safety in Rome was the

liberty to break them who list. They kept their wives the better,

forsomuch as they might leave them: and when divorces might freely be

had, there past five hundred years and more before any would ever make

use of them." In the essay _Of Presumption_ we hear yet more of his

idiosyncrasies: "As for musicke, were it either in voice, which I have

most harsh, and very unapt, or in instruments, I could never be taught

any part of it. As for dancing, playing at tennis, or wrestling, I could

never attaine to any indifferent sufficiencie, but none at all in

swimming, in fencing, in vaulting, or in leaping. My hands are so stiffe

and nummie, that I can hardly write for my selfe, so that what I have

once scribled, I had rather frame it a new than take the paines to

correct it: and I reade but little better ... I cannot very wel close up

a letter, nor could I ever make a pen. I was never good carver at the

table. I could never make ready nor arme a horse; nor handsomely array a

hawke upon my fist, nor cast her off ... nor could I ever speake to

dogges, to birds, or to horses. The conditions of my body are, in fine,

very well agreeing with those of my minde, wherein is nothing lively,

but onely a compleate and constant vigour.... I am extreamlie lazie and

idle, and exceedingly free, both my nature and art. I would as willingly

lend my blood as my care." A noble and amazing confession. "In events, I

carry myselfe man-like; in the conduct childishly. The horror of a fall

doth more hurt me than the blow. The play is not worth the candle ...

touching this new-found vertue of faining and dissimulation, which is

now so much in credit, I hate it to the death ... it is for free-men to

speake truth. It is the chief and fundamentall part of Vertue.... I

eschew commandement, duty, and compulsion. What I doe easily and

naturally, if I resolve to doe it by expresse and prescribed

appointment, I can then doe it no more.... I helpe myselfe to loose what

I particularly locke up.... In games wherein wit may beare a part, as of

chesse, of cards, of tables ... I could never conceive but the common

and plainest draughts. My apprehension is very sluggish and gloomy; but

what it once holdeth, the same it keepeth fast.... There are divers of

our French coines I know not: nor can I distinguish of one graine from

another: nor do I scarcely know the difference between the cabige or

lettice in my garden. I understand not the names of the most usuall

tooles about husbandry ... I was never skilfull in mechanicall arts ...

nor in the diversitie and nature of fruits, wines, or cakes ... let me

have all that may belong to a kitchin, yet shall I be ready to starve

for hunger."

He picks out as his three "worthiest and most excellent men," Homer,

Alexander the Great and Epaminondas. In one of his latest chapters he

lashes the physicians in no uncertain tones: "The most ignorant and

bungling horseleech is fitter for a man that hath confidence in him than

the skilfullest and learnedest physitian. The very choyce of most of

their drugges is somewhat mysterious and divine." This attack is

obviously induced by his own troublous complaint of stone-colic. "I am

growne elder by seven or eight yeares since I beganne these essays; nor

hath it beene without some new purchase. I have by the liberality of

years acquainted my selfe with the stone-chollike." And he ends the book

with a letter _To my Lady of Duras_: "My study and endevour to doe, and

not to write.... I am a lesse maker of bookes then of anything else.

Whosoever hath any worth in him, let him shew it in his behaviour,

maners and ordinary discourses: be it to treat of love or of quarrels;

of sport and play or bed-matters, at board or elsewhere ... those whom I

see make good bookes, having tattered hosen and ragged clothes on, had

they believed me they should first have gotten themselves good clothes."

This is perhaps a good note to part company with him on. There is really

no limit to the number of quotations that one could cull to give a

picture of this most lovable man. I have tried to do what he would have

wanted me to do, describe him by letting him describe himself. For it is

the man's own personality that we want to dig into when we read

Montaigne's _Essays_, not the multitudinous anecdotes, not the splendid

apophthegms which have become household proverbs, not the philosophy. He

is the most human man who ever wrote a book, and the highest praise we

can give him is that which would also please him most. He succeeded in

writing the most human book that has ever been written. And we love him

not least of all for his very vices.

Listen to Sainte-Beuve's praise of him: "There is something for every

age, for every hour of life: you cannot read in it for any time without

having the mind filled and lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully

armed and clothed."

II

NEKRASSOV (1821-1877)

Nekrassov was the poet of the proletariat, of suffering in general and

of Russian woman's suffering in particular, but denouncing rather than

sentimental, a realist from start to finish. He followed in the direct

succession of Gogol as an apostle of a "To-the-People" movement.

For the first time in Russian poetry we read in his work of the life

stories of cabmen, carters, gardeners, printers, sweating journalists,

soldiers, hawkers, prostitutes, convicts and peasants, descriptions of

street scenes, fires, funerals, tragic weddings, cruel dissipations,

vulgarity, platitudes of town life, and so on.

He was as interested in the common life of the people as a newspaper

reporter, as satiric in his outlook as Byron and Burns; with Dostoievsky

his passion for Russia connoted unbearable suffering: he is pellucidly

clear and writes down what he sees without moralising.

He was a member of an aristocratic family which had fallen on evil days

at the time of his birth. His early education was in the hands of a

devoted Polish mother. When later he developed a turn for satiric verse

at school he was requested to leave and went to Petrograd at the age of

fifteen. On threepence three farthings per day, which had to be shared

with another young man and his boy-serf, he managed just to exist, but

he nearly died of starvation. He sought for work of any kind and in the

meanwhile learnt much of low life that was afterwards to prove of

inestimable value to him. His wit and general brightness of manner

brought him to the notice of the well-to-do and lazy, and among them too

he found valuable copy. He then attempted to gain a living as a

journalist and among his multitudinous duties managed to spare a little

time for the pursuit of his own art. He became the editor of _The

Contemporary_, and spent twenty years of hard, continuous work in

attempting to attract the best literary giants of his day to write for

it.

In 1866 his first volume was published and met with instantaneous

recognition, which deeply touched him, though he was always a severe

critic of his own work.

"Thou hast none of poetry's light freedom,

My severe and clumsy, rustic verse."

After the publication of these, his best poems, his health gave way, and

he spent much time on his brother's estate, where he got to know the

peasantry intimately. Owing to his geniality, honesty and common sense

the country people felt quite at home with him and did not mind

recounting all their experiences to him. Consequently his peasant

stories have a genuine ring about them that is unmistakable. He died in

Petrograd in 1877, hard-worked to the end. He was a true representative

of the best Russian Intelligentzia: not an extremist, but responsive

(like Dostoievsky) at once to all suffering. His most famous poem, _Who

Can be Happy and Free in Russia?_ is the only one that I can attempt to

deal with at any length here, but from it one may gauge the humanity and

interest-rousing qualities of the poet.

It begins by the chance meeting of seven peasants on a country roadway.

They immediately begin to argue over the question of who in Russia is

happy and free.

"Lukà cries, 'The Pope,'

And Romàn, 'the Pomyèschick.'

And Prov shouts, 'The Tsar,'

And Demyàn, 'The official.'

'The round-bellied merchant,'

Bawl both brothers Goobin,

Mitròdor and Ìvan.

Pakhòm shrieks, 'His Lordship,

His most mighty Highness,

The Tsar's chief adviser.'"

Unable to settle the question among themselves, they begin to fight. At

last, with their ribs aching, they come to their senses, drink some

water from a pool, wash in it and lie down to rest. A little bird,

thankful to one of them for having shown pity to her little one, gives

them a fantastic tablecloth "that would bedeck itself with food and

drink."

"'Go straight down the road,

Count the poles until thirty;

Then enter the forest

And walk for a verst.

By then you'll have come

To a smooth little lawn

With two pine-trees upon it.

Beneath these two pine-trees

Lies buried a casket

Which you must discover.

The casket is magic,

And in it there lies

An enchanted white napkin.

Whenever you wish it

This napkin will serve you

With food and with vodka:

You need but say softly,

"O napkin enchanted,

Give food to the peasants."

But one thing remember:

Food, summon at pleasure

As much as you fancy,

But vodka, no more

Than a bucket a day.

If once, even twice

You neglect my injunction

Your wish shall be granted;

The third time, take warning:

Misfortune will follow.'"

They first meet the pope, or village priest, and ask him whether he is

not the happiest man in Russia, to which he replies:

"'Of whom do you make

Little scandalous stories?

Of whom do you sing

Rhymes and songs most indecent?

The pope's honoured wife,

And his innocent daughters,

Come, how do you treat them?

At whom do you shout

Ho, ho, ho in derision

When once you are past him?'

The peasants cast downwards

Their eyes and keep silent...."

There follows a description of scenery, a charming lyric which I cannot

forbear from quoting:

"The cloudlets in springtime

Play round the great sun

Like small grandchildren frisking

Around a hale grandsire,

And now, on his right side

A bright little cloud

Has grown suddenly dismal,

Begins to shed tears.

The grey thread is hanging

In rows to the earth,

While the red sun is laughing

And beaming upon it

Through torn fleecy clouds,

Like a merry young girl

Peeping out from the corn."

The priest goes on to sketch the sort of life he is condemned to lead

and concludes on this note:

"'At times you are sent for

To pray by the dying,

But Death is not really

The awful thing present,

But rather the living,--

The family losing

Their only support.

You pray by the dead,

Words of comfort you utter,

To calm the bereavèd ones;

And then the old mother

Comes tottering towards you,

And stretching her bony

And toil-blistered hand out;

You feel your heart sicken,

For there in the palm

Lie the precious brass farthings.

Of course it is only

The price of your praying.

You take it, because

It is what you must live on;

Your words of condolence

Are frozen, and blindly,

Like one deeply insulted,

You make your way homeward.'"

In chapter two we are taken to the village fair.

"The spring sun is playing

On heads hot and drunken,

On boisterous revels,

On bright mixing colours;

The men wear wide breeches

Of corduroy velvet,

With gaudy striped waistcoats

And shirts of all colours;

The women wear scarlet;

The girls' plaited tresses

Are decked with bright ribbons;

They glide about proudly,

Like swans on the water."

In chapter three, "The Drunken Night," occurs the exquisite metaphor:

"The moon is in Heaven,

And God is commencing

To write His great letter

Of gold on blue velvet....

Then suddenly singing

Is heard in a chorus

Harmonious and bold,

A row of young fellows,

Half drunk, but not falling,

Come staggering onwards,

All lustily singing:

They sing of the Volga,

The daring of youths

And the beauty of maidens ...

A hush falls all over

The road, and it listens:

And only the singing

Is heard, sweet and tuneful,

Like wind-ruffled corn."

They then accost the pomyèschick (the landowner) and inquire of him

whether he is not the happiest of all the Russians, to which he answers:

"'The joy and the beauty,

The pride of all Russia--

The Lord's holy churches--

Which brighten the hill-sides

And gleam like great jewels

On the slopes of the valleys,

Were rivalled by one thing

In glory, and that

Was the nobleman's manor.

Adjoining the manor

Were glass-houses sparkling,

And bright Chinese arbours,

While parks spread around it.

On each of the buildings

Gay banners displaying

Their radiant colours,

And beckoning softly,

Invited the guest

To partake of the pleasures

Of rich hospitality.

Never did Frenchmen

In dreams even picture

Such sumptuous revels

As we used to hold.

Not only for one day,

Or two, did they last--

But for two months together!

We fattened great turkeys,

We brewed our own liquors,

We kept our own actors,

And troupes of musicians,

And legions of servants!

Why, I kept five cooks,

Besides pastry-cooks, working,

Two blacksmiths, three carpenters,

Eighteen musicians,

And twenty-one-huntsmen ...

My God ...'

The afflicted

Pomyèschick broke down here,

And hastened to bury

His face in the cushion....

[And now--] 'What has happened?

When in the air

You can smell a rank graveyard,

You know you are passing

A nobleman's manor!

The axe of the robber

Resounds in the forest,

It maddens your heart,

But you cannot prevent it.'"

Part II. deals charmingly with the story of the last pomyèschick:

"A very old man

Wearing long white moustaches

(He seems to be all white);

His cap, broad and high-crowned,

Is white, with a peak,

In the front, of red satin.

His body is lean

As a hare's in the winter,

His nose like a hawk's beak.

His eyes--well, they differ:

The one, sharp and shining,

The other--the left eye--

Is sightless and blank,

Like a dull leaden farthing.

Some woolly white poodles

With tufts on their ankles

Are in the boat too."

This venerable barin Prince Yutiàtin believes that the old regime still

exists and his serfs have agreed to humour him in order to keep him

alive.

They agree to

"'Keep silent and act still

As if all this trouble

Had never existed:

Give way to him, bow to him

Just as in old days.'"

So the Prince has all his whims satisfied and peasants are beaten

(voluntarily) at his pleasure. He orders his sons to dance and girls to

sing.

"The golden-haired lady

Does not want to sing,

But the old man will have it.

The lady is singing

A song low and tender,

It sounds like the breeze

On a soft summer evening

In velvety grasses

Astray, like spring raindrops

That kiss the young leaves,

And it soothes the Pomyèschick,

The feeble old man:

He is falling asleep now ...

And gently they carry him

Down to the water,

And into the boat.

And he lies there, still sleeping.

Above him stands, holding

A big green umbrella,

The faithful old servant,

His other hand guarding

The sleeping Pomyèschick

From gnats and mosquitoes.

The oarsmen are silent,

The faint-sounding music

Can hardly be heard

As the boat moving gently

Glides on through the water...."

In Part III., having failed to elicit a satisfactory answer to their

question from the men, they decide to try the women. They go to the

woman Matròna

[Who] "Is tall, finely moulded,

Majestic in bearing,

And strikingly handsome.

Of thirty-eight years

She appears, and her black hair

Is mingled with grey.

Her complexion is swarthy,

Her eyes large and dark

And severe, with rich lashes."

They manage to prevail upon her to tell her life story:

"'My girl-hood was happy,

For we were a thrifty

And diligent household:

And I, the young maiden,

With father and mother

Knew nothing but joy.

My father got up

And went out before sunrise,

He woke me with kisses

And tender caresses:

My brother, while dressing,

Would sing little verses:

"Get up, little sister,

Get up, little sister,

In no little beds now

Are people delaying,

In all little churches

The peasants are praying;

Get up, now, get up,

It is time, little sister.

The shepherd has gone

To the field with the sheep,

And no little maidens

Are lying asleep,

They've gone to pick raspberries,

Merrily singing...."

I never ran after

The youths, and the forward

I checked very sharply.

To those who were gentle

And shy, I would whisper:

"My cheeks will grow hot,

And sharp eyes has my mother:

Be wise, now, and leave me

Alone" ... and they left me.'"

At last came the man to whom she was destined to give her heart:

"'And Philip was handsome,

Was rosy and lusty,

Was strong and broad-shouldered,

With fair curling hair,

With a voice low and tender....

Ah, well ... I was won....

* * * * *

"Don't fear, little pigeon,

We shall not regret it,"

Said Philip, but still

I was timid and doubtful.

Of course I was fairer

And sweeter and dearer

Than any that lived,

And his arms were about me....

Then all of a sudden

I made a sharp effort

To wrench myself free.

"How now? What's the matter?

You're strong, little pigeon!"

Said Philip, astonished,

But still held me tight.

"Ah, Philip, if you had

Not held me so firmly

You would not have won me:

I did it to try you,

To measure your strength:

You were strong and it pleased me."

We must have been happy

In those fleeting moments

When softly we whispered

And argued together:

I think that we never

Were happy again....'"

She marries Philip and joins his family.

"'A quarrelsome household

It was--that of Philip's

To which I belonged now:

And I from my girlhood

Stepped straight into Hell.

My husband departed

To work in the city,

And leaving, advised me

To work and be silent,

To yield and be patient:

"Don't splash the red iron

With cold water--it hisses."

With father and mother

And sisters-in-law he

Now left me alone:

Not a soul was among them

To love or to shield me,

But many to scold....

Well, you know yourselves, friends,

How quarrels arise

In the homes of the peasants.

A young married sister

Of Philip's one day

Came to visit her parents.

She found she had holes

In her boots, and it vexed her.

Then Philip said, "Wife,

Fetch some boots for my sister."

And I did not answer

At once: I was lifting

A large wooden tub,

So, of course, couldn't speak.

But Philip was angry

With me, and he waited

Until I had hoisted

The tub to the oven

Then struck me a blow

With his fist, on my temple....

Again Philip struck me ...

And again Philip struck me ...

Well, that is the story.

'Tis surely not fitting

For wives to sit counting

The blows of their husbands,

But then I had promised

To keep nothing back.'"

A baby is born to her, and her life becomes more and more of a burden to

her: one friend alone of Philip's relatives, an old man called Savyèli,

has pity on her. Savyèli has been branded as a convict for burying a

German alive. She relates now the story of his life and more

particularly the account of his crime:

"'"He (the German) started to nag us,

Quite coolly and slowly,

Without heat or hurry;

For that was his way.

And we, tired and hungry,

Stood listening in silence.

He kicked the wet earth

With his boot while he scolded,

Not far from the edge

Of the pit. I stood near him,

And happened to give him

A push with my shoulder:

Then somehow a second

And third pushed him gently....

We spoke not a word,

Gave no sign to each other,

But silently, slowly,

Drew closer together,

And edging the German

Respectfully forward,

We brought him at last

To the brink of the hollow ...

He tumbled in headlong!

'A ladder,' he bellows:

Nine shovels reply.

'Heave-to'--the words fell

From my lips on the instant,

The word to which people

Work gaily in Russia:

'Heave-to,' and 'Heave-to,'

And we laboured so bravely

That soon not a trace

Of the pit was remaining,

The earth was as smooth

As before we had touched it:

And then we stopped short

And we looked at each other."'"

Matròna gets Savyèli to look after her infant Djòma, and while she is

away the pigs attacked and killed him. The country police as the custom

is in Russia threatened to hold an inquest unless they were bribed: this

Matròna could not afford.

"'"My God, give me patience,

And let me not strangle

The wicked blasphemer!"

I looked at the doctor

And shuddered in terror;

Before him lay lancets,

Sharp scissors and knives.

I conquered myself,

For I knew why they lay there.

I answered him trembling,

"I loved little Djòma,

I would not have harmed him."

"And did you not poison him,

Give him some powder?"'"

They refuse to listen to her piteous cries:

"'They have lifted the napkin

Which covered my baby:

His little white body

With scissors and lancets

They worry and torture ...

The room has grown darker,

I'm struggling and screaming,

You butchers! You fiends!

Oh, hear me, just God!

May thy curse fall and strike them!

Ordain that their garments

May rot on their bodies!

Their eyes be struck blind,

And their brains scorch in madness!

Their wives be unfaithful,

Their children be crippled!...

The pope lit his pipe

And sat watching the doctor.

He said, 'You are rending

A heart with a knife.'

I started up wildly:

I knew that the doctor

Was piercing the heart

Of my little dead baby."

Her husband is taken for the army, and Matròna goes, although her time

is on her to bring to birth another baby, to plead for him to the

Governor's lady. Somewhat to our surprise she wins her cause and gets

her husband back again, but the peasants are cured after hearing her

story of imagining that any woman could be happy in Russia.

"'The Tsar, little Father,

But never a woman:

God knows, among women

Your search will be endless.'"

So they continue their wanderings, and having heard many grim stories of

all sorts, they remain without a solution to their problem, and the

only consolation suggested by the author comes in a subtle touch: a son

of a psalm-singer, with a knowledge of, and deep sympathy for, all the

down-trodden ones, finds exaltation in putting together songs about

their pains and greatness:

"In his breast rose throbbingly powers unembraceable,

In his ears rang melody--henceforth undefaceable:

Words of azure radiance, noble in benignity.

Hailing coming happiness and the People's dignity."

Happiness, Nekrassov concludes, can only be won in doing creative work.

I have, I think, by my copious quotations from his most popular poem at

any rate proved his claim to be considered "the Russian Crabbe," the

uncompromising realist who can depict the sorrows of the poor with

undeflected trueness of aim.

III

PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

It is habitual with critics, especially critics of Russian literature,

to probe with a microscopic accuracy into the work of the subject they

undertake to explain: they search for psychological phenomena

untiringly, and are not content unless they can wrest a secret from the

author which the author himself would certainly in many cases never have

realised that he possessed. We see this in our own tongue in many of the

critical essays on Shakespeare. We see it applied to Pushkin equally

unnecessarily; for Pushkin needs no interpreter: he is delightfully

human, clear, sincere, impulsive, vital and vivifying, as far removed as

possible from any artfulness, the least of a digger in the depths of his

own soul imaginable. He is the type of artist who sees Beauty in her

naked blaze and straightway reincarnates her because he cannot help it.

He is of the earth, earthy in the best sense of the word. The final word

about him is that he accepted life open-heartedly and as a consequence

requires in his readers an equal open-heartedness and nothing else.

He was brought up as a boy in an atmosphere of that sparkling elegance

which we associate with the French, and himself wrote verses in that

tongue, by the age of twelve acquiring a real taste in French

literature. He revelled in Plutarch, Voltaire, Rousseau and Molière,

imitated the French comedies and acted them before his sister. As was

customary in Russia, he was, as a boy, allowed free access to the

society of the literary and artistic people who frequented his father's

house. Here he entered into that life of boundless hospitality,

disorderliness, whimsical jollity, and revelry, of erotic and

bacchanalian orgies, which were typical of the upper classes of his

time.

From his nurse, a life-long friend, he learnt to love the world of

Russian folklore.

For five years, from twelve to seventeen, he was at the Lyceum, just

then opened at the Tsàrskoye Selò, which reflected among its youthful

pupils the same passions of illicit amours, drink, and literature which

characterised the parents. They became a sort of jovial anarchists. Like

the Elizabethans, they were as often intoxicated with poetry as with

wine. Pushkin early became the leader, as was only natural: he was

already the best-read man in Russia; he was enthusiastic over the work

of his younger contemporaries; he was an ideal companion. Like Milton

and most other geniuses of a high order, he recognised his _métier_ very

early in his life. He wrote in his teens:

"I am a poet too. My new and modest road

Is now bestrewn with flowers by goddesses of singing,

And gods have poured into my breast

The names, elating visions bringing...."

Not only so, but--

"My pen revels in finding

In it the ends of lines.

Exactness of expressions

Through hallowed crystal shines."

Exactness of expression is as important to Pushkin as it was to Pope,

just as fearless honesty was the keystone of his personality.

It was at the public examination of the Lyceists in Russian literature

in 1815 that he first came before the public eye. Together with other

competitors he had to read his work before the old ode-writer D'erjàvin,

who was so thrilled by _The Reminiscences of the Tsàrskoye Selò_ that he

wanted to rush forward and embrace the young poet.

Jukòvski, then at the height of his fame, would read his verses to

Pushkin and rely on his judgment. When in return Pushkin read _Ruslàn

and Ludmìla_, Jukòvski gave the boy his portrait with this inscription:

"To the victorious pupil from his conquered teacher."

Such treatment might well be expected to turn the head of the youth, but

Pushkin was then, as ever, modest and extremely critical of his own

work. He was, as I have said, always searching for hidden genius in

others: he it was who first discovered Gogol, and when that Dickens of

Russia published _Dead Souls_ and _The Inspector-General_, the subjects

in each case being suggested to him by Pushkin, the poet said

delightedly: "The rascal robs me in such a bewitching way that it is

impossible to be angry with him."

Pushkin's father declined to allow him to take a commission in the

Hussars, and at eighteen the poet obtained a post in the Foreign Office,

where he had much leisure, and plunged deeper than ever into the

excesses common to his time, with the result that, though he swam, rode,

fenced and walked to keep himself fit, twice in his nineteenth and

twentieth years he nearly lost his health. Nor did his riotous living

prevent him from working hard at his poetry.

In 1820 the long fairy tale _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_ appeared. The nearest

approach to it in England is _Hero and Leander_--sensuous yet cold.

Everywhere it was read, copied out and learnt by heart by tradesman and

noble alike. The story was founded on the national folklore. A wicked,

humped dwarf carries away the only daughter of Prince Vladimir of Kiev

from her nuptial bed to his castle: Ruslàn, the bridegroom, and three

disappointed lovers give chase. The adventures of the four warriors,

Ludmìla's seclusion in the wizard's castle and Ruslàn's ultimate victory

by hanging on to the long beard of the dwarf as he flies over seas and

forests form the plot of the story.

The method of handling the story was fascinating, and quite new to

Russia. It was vigorous, whimsical, absolutely natural and human: it was

this last characteristic in particular which captivated the hearts of

the whole race. Russia always loves the natural--but she did not yet

recognise why it was that Pushkin especially appealed to her: there had

been hitherto no realistic school.

No one realised, Pushkin least of all, that _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_ laid

the foundation-stone of all future Russian literature.

The two schools then in existence, the pseudo-classical and the

romantic, debated savagely as to which category Pushkin belonged. They

were unable to grasp the significance of this bubbling over of human

fun, this directness of detail; indignation at such ideas as "Ruslàn's

tickling with his spear the nostrils of the giant's head," as bringing

the national element into poetry at all, and so on, spread fast.

In the same year Pushkin threw himself heart and soul into the movement

of young reformers, and joined the "Society of Welfare," which somewhat

naturally roused the Government to action.

Alexander I. was for banishing him; Karamzin, however, pleaded for him

with such effect that he was only sent to Bessarabia for a year. His

banishment only accentuated his popularity. He took advantage of his

retirement to write _The Prisoner of the Caucasus_ in eight hundred

lines, the main feature of which is the first appearance in his work of

_that grand reverence for women_ which is one of Pushkin's greatest

charms.

A man in a Circassian village brings home one day as prisoner a young

Russian, who has left his usual world to find freedom in the wilderness:

being captured, he is put in irons and left to drag out his days in a

cave. A young Circassian girl falls in love with him; he responds out of

pity, being in love with another girl at home who did not, however,

return his affection. The girl, struck with grief, yet understands, and

gives up visiting him secretly, and while the tribe are away raiding she

comes with a saw and dagger and gives him his freedom. They part with a

kiss of great _human_ love. The young man, touched to the heart, looks

back after he has swum the river, but the girl is nowhere to be seen and

"only a circle widens on the face of the water, in the gentle shine of

the moon." ... The public swallowed the poem greedily, the description

of the manners of the Circassians especially attracting them. In another

poem Pushkin uses a legend which he came across while visiting the

ancient capital of the Crimean Tartars.

The young Tartar Khan, Givèy, captures in a raid on Poland a young

Christian princess, Mary, and conceals her in his harem. Her purity and

saintly beauty so work upon him that he remains in awe before her.

Another beauty, Zarèma, once a favourite of Givèy, implores Mary to make

her man come back to her: failing, of course, Zarèma kills her and is

herself drowned. The Khan in despair leaves his harem and goes out to

wage wars, and returns in the end to build a fountain in memory of

Mary, over which he erects a crescent crowned with a cross.

It was at this time that Pushkin fell under the influence of Byron and

learned English to do so: not that he imitated Byron, but he was braced

up to do something equally good in another way. This was in Kishinòv, a

hot-bed of noisy, passionate freethinking blended with Asiatic

aboriginality. He fought three duels, one of them resulting from a

quarrel at a ball as to whether a waltz or a mazurka should be next on

the programme. He then fell in love with a gipsy and joined the camp to

which the girl belonged. The result was another poem called _The

Gipsies_.

The hero, a man of society, comes to join the free life of a gipsy tribe

because he despises the degenerating effect of civilisation. He has had

enough of people in cities.

"Of love afraid, they cast off feeling

And thought, and barter their free will:

Before their idols blindly kneeling

They ask for chains and money still."

The gipsies admit him into their careless, free, happy life. Alèko, as

they call him, falls in love with the only child of a very wise old man

and is happy, just loving, lying about in the sun and taking round for

show a tame bear.

Zemphìra, the girl, after bearing a son to Alèko, gets tired of him and

falls in love with another gipsy. Alèko feels this very much and

complains to her father, who tells him that he too in his youth lost his

love in a similar way.

"'And thou didst not kill her lover?'" asks her lover. The old gipsy

replies:

"'For what? Man's youth enjoys bird's licence.

Who is there that can love restrain?

In turn, joy brings to all sufficance.

What has been once comes ne'er again.'"

This does not satisfy Alèko, who kills Zemphìra and her lover, after

which the old father implores him to leave their free, kind world and

return to civilisation.

Pushkin next writes a _Mazeppa_ of his own, the epic of _Peter the

Great_, but not idealised as Byron's was.... The heroine Marỳa leaves

her lover and becomes insane when her father is executed.

This stern, objective fragment of an epic, falling into their

sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses, and cupids, was like a

bas-relief conceived by a Titan and executed by a god ... it is not

surprising that it met with little or no appreciation. It is as if

Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a style as concise as Pope's

and as concentrated as Browning's dramatic lyrics. It revealed an

entirely new phase in his style: hitherto it had seemed as shining and

luscious fruit, now it became a concentrated, weighty tramp of ringing

rhyme.

Pushkin has been accused (not by the Russians) of sentimentality ... a

charge that can be confuted by quoting almost any of his lines at

random.

Does this, for instance, reek of sentimentality?--

"To see you every hour that flies,

To follow where your footsteps wander--

Your lip's faint smile, your turn of eyes,

On these my thirsting love to squander,

To listen to your voice, to grasp

By man's soul woman's consummation,

To pine for you, wither and gasp,

This is a life's supreme elation."

Or this?--

"Just what I was before, the same I am to-day,

Light-hearted, ever prone to fall in love again."

Or this Tenth Commandment?--

"In thy commandment, Lord, I read

My neighbours' goods I must not covet,

But ask me not to rise above it

When tender hopes for licence plead:

I do not wish to harm my fellow,

I never grudge him house or folk:

Nor will his cattle e'er provoke

My envy--though in hordes they bellow:

His wife or ox I never seek,

Of asses I am unobservant:

But if his youthfullest maid-servant

Is pretty! Lord, there I am weak."

He was not given to brooding over disappointment, nor was there any

self-centredness about him. Only once, on his twenty-eighth birthday,

does he show himself obsessed with the problems of existence:

"Casual present, gift so aimless,

Life, why art thou given to me?

As by secret judgment nameless,

Why is death-doom passed on thee?

Who with hostile power inspired

Called me out of nothingness,

My poor heart with passion fired,

Doubt upon my mind did press?

Aimless is my whole existence,

Vague my mind, emotions thin.

With monotonous persistence

Life out-tires me with its din."

He was, _par excellence_, the singer of _this_ world, reflecting it with

a photographic exactness. Gogol called it _reality turned into a pearl

of creation_, which is about the best and most concise definition we

could require.

As a result of this Byronic obsession Pushkin was sent to Odessa to join

the staff of the Governor. But the atmosphere of rectitude and cold

officialdom bored him: trying his best was no good here: he was sent

into the depths of the country to do easy and interesting reconnaissance

work, to investigate the causes and results of the locust plague. The

following is his official report:--

"The locust was flitting and flitting:

And sitting

And sitting sat, ravage committing,

At last the place quitting."

About this time he wrote to a friend a letter which was intercepted. It

ran as follows:--

"I am reading the Bible. The Holy Ghost sometimes soothes me, but I

prefer Goethe and Shakespeare. There is an Englishman here, a clever

atheist, who overturns the theory of immortality--I am having lessons

from him...."

The reading public got to know of it and devoured it ... officially it

led to his banishment to the estate of his parents. His father bullied

him so that he begged to be sent to a fortress. Jukòvski intervened and

his parents left him to the care of his nurse, and he had two years of

quiet, learning more and more of the old folklore. He wrote six long

fairy tales of the school of _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_. He wrote the long

historical poem _Poltàva_, the novel in verse, _Evgèni Onyègin_, the

historical drama in blank verse, _Borìs Godunòv_, the story in verse,

_The Bronze Horsemen_, and dozens of shorter poems. He abandoned Byron

for Shakespeare.

"Shakespeare," he wrote about this time--"what a man! I am overwhelmed.

What a nonentity Byron is with his travesty of tragedy, as compared to

Shakespeare." We can trace this influence in _Borìs Godunòv_.

Shakespeare helped him to develop his power of realism: even his

wonderland becomes a matter of course--Russia.

_Evgèni Onyègin_ swept the country off its feet. Society suddenly saw

the greatness of the simple beauty of Russia, the dignified, lovable

Russian woman: in the hero he reflects his own education, tastes and

manners: it is the first work of a consciously psychological analysis in

Russian literature.

The typical man of society is bored with life because he does not know

what real life is: he "hastened to live and hurried to feel" on too

narrow a scale. His first blow is the realisation of the fact that the

thoughtful girl of seventeen, whose love he neglected early in life,

rejects his passion when she, married, is shining and dignified in

society life. Then only, being honestly told by her that she still loves

him, but is going to remain true to her husband, he flies from the

capital, tortured by his first deep heart pain. Here the story ends. At

the beginning he kills a romantic poet, Lensky, in a duel, a man of

whom he is genuinely fond, but to whose _fiancée_, Olga, who is simple,

fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face like the foolish moon, he pays court

out of sheer devilry. The elder sister, Tatiana, shy and dreamy, and yet

clean-cut in character and iron-willed, is the girl who has given her

heart to Onyégin and afterwards rejects him. She is as real as Diana

Middleton or Sophia Western, as sensible as Portia, as resolute as

Juliet. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman, taken

straight from life, the crowning glory of Russian life. Mr Baring puts

her confession of love on a level with Romeo and Juliet's leave-taking

as one of the absolutely perfect things in the literature of the world.

It is, he says, a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous

as a blackbird's song. It is Pushkin's most characteristic work. It is

certainly the best-known and most popular. It is all--like

_Hamlet_--quotations! Pushkin himself speaks as having seen the

unfettered march of the novel in a magic prism. The scenes are clear,

the nail is hit on the head every time, all the labour escapes notice.

It arrests the attention as a story, it is amusing; it delights the

intelligence. It is simply a story of everyday life executed perfectly

by a master spirit.

"'Onyegin, I was younger then, and better-looking, I suppose; and

I loved you....

For me, Onyegin, all that wealth,

That showy tinsel of Court life,

All my successes in the world,

My well-appointed house and balls ...

For me, are nought!--I gladly would

Give up these rags, this masquerade,

And all this brilliancy and din,

For a few books, a garden wild,

Our weather-beaten house, so poor--

Those very places where I met

With you, Onyegin, that first time;

And for the churchyard of our village,

Where now a cross and shady trees

Stand on the grave of my poor nurse.

* * * * *

And happiness was possible then!

It was so near!'"

The girl beseeches him to leave her.

"'I love you'" (she goes on):

"'Why should I hide the truth from you?

But I am given to another,

And true to him I shall remain.'"

Pushkin's own opinion of the work is shown in the dedication:

"Accept these motley chapters' run,

Pages half mirth, half sadness blending,

Idealistic, unpretending:

The casual fruit of leisure, fun,

Insomnia, light inspirations

In youthful and unripened years

My mind's dispassioned observations,

My heart's grave notes on human cares."

In form the novel is like _Childe Harold_. But the descriptions, the

irony, and humour are truly Russian.

As an example of all three in one these may suffice:

"For forty years he nagged with his housekeeper, looked out of the

window and squashed flies."

"Once upon a time the head of a secret team of gamblers, now he was a

kind and simple father of a bachelor's numerous brood, living the life

of a true philosopher: planting cabbages, breeding ducks and geese and

teaching his youngsters the A B C."

All the characters use genuine everyday speech, and yet the realistic

subjects are magically turned into poetry. "One can be a serious man and

yet think of the beauty of one's nails."

An example of his descriptive power may be found in this stanza on

Moscow:

"O'er the snow-humps the sleigh is dashing,

Alongside in the streets are flashing

Shops, convents, palaces, mean shacks,

Peasantry, country-wives, cozàcks,

Gardens of kitchen-stuff and flowers,

Street-boys, lamps, chemists, fashion-stores,

Churches, stone lions at house doors,

Sentries, sleighs, balconies, old towers,

Merchants, Tartars that sell old clo'

And on the crosses many a crow."

As you can see even from these few extracts, the realism in _Onyégin_ is

the realism of Jane Austen--meticulous, correct, amazingly sketched in.

He imitated the Koran, blending sensuality with religious enthusiasm and

even the element of nonsense in a way that is inimitably reminiscent of

the Eastern Law.

Equally brilliant are his _Imitations of Dante_ ... the Divine Comedy

lives again for us in Pushkin's rendering: again, in _The Journeying of

Cæsar_, we seem to be reading the Latin classics themselves. But his

prose-work as a whole is perhaps below his poetry, though Baring does

not think so. Unfortunately in England it is on these very prose works

that we have for the most part to rely, because so few of his poems are

translated.

He was not born with a passion to reform the world: he was neither

Liberal nor Conservative: he was a democrat in his love for the Russian

people, a patriot in his love of his country.

There seem to have been in him, however, two distinct spirits, as in so

many other Russians--the inspired priest of Apollo and the most

frivolous of all the frivolous children of the world. The former

characteristic predominated, but the people, his readers, preferred his

latter mood; they like the dazzling colours, the sensuousness of his

early poems--they could not appreciate the nobler, simpler and more

majestic harmonies of _Borìs Godunòv_ and _Onyégin_.

It is this two-sidedness that makes for his all-embracing

humanity--Dostoievsky called him [Greek: πανανδρωπος]--this capacity for

understanding everybody which makes him so profoundly Russian. He set

free the Russian language from the bondage of the conventional and, like

Peter the Great, spent his whole life in apprenticeship and all his

energies in craftsmanship. He is completely the artist and never the

fighter, which explains the coldness of much of his work.

He was no innovator of forms in his verse: he was content to follow the

accepted types; nor did he ever fly too high ... he does not try to

unlock the gates of the Unknown: the old iambic introduced by Lomonòsov

was good enough for him. Only in _Borìs Godunòv_ does he break out into

an imitation of Shakespearean form: the play is rather like _Henry

VIII._ in its plan: it is a succession of isolated scenes, not a

coherent drama; there is no definite beginning or end.

On the other hand his scenes, taken by themselves, tragic or comic, are

as vivid as any in Shakespeare; the characters all live and are

convincing.

As a chronicle it is completely successful. There are scenes so inspired

as to be really in spirit Shakespearean, an absence of all conscious

effort and visible artifice which only the greatest artists can attain

to.

As there are no innovations, so are there no mannerisms: metaphors and

similes are few and apt. Of Peter the Great we read:

" ... His eyes

Are shining: features awe-inspiring:

His movements swift: handsome, untiring,

He is like Heaven's thunderstorm."

Wholesome, breezy, clear-cut, genuine, free and honest--those are the

adjectives to apply to his art. Unfortunately it is impossible to convey

in English the ring and beauty of his original work.

While he was at home the Decembrists' revolt took place, 14th December

1824. He was absent from all his old friends and was naturally concerned

about them. He petitioned the Government, signing a pledge never to join

any secret society, to give him his liberty. One morning a field-yeger

appeared, gave him time to put on his greatcoat and take his money,

enter the sledge and dash to Petrograd. After travelling two hundred

miles he was brought before the young Emperor and the following

conversation took place:--

"Pushkin, I hope thou art pleased with thy return. Wouldst thou take

part in the 14th December if thou wert here?"

"By all means, Sovereign. All my friends were in it. My absence alone

has saved me."

"Well, thou hast played the fool sufficiently long. I hope thou wilt be

sensible in the future, and we shall not quarrel. Send me all thy

manuscripts. I shall be thy censor myself."

He was received everywhere with open arms. He joined the main current of

social and literary life and speedily electrified society. He was for a

little entirely happy, but he had overestimated the extent of his

freedom. Gradually he realised that he was not allowed even to read

aloud his writings without submitting them to his censor.

_Borìs Godunòv_ was refused on the plea that it would have been better

if the author had rewritten it in prose, turning it into a historical

novel like those of Sir Walter Scott. Consequently the drama did not

appear till 1831, much polished and toned down.

In these last years Pushkin founded and edited a literary monthly called

_The Contemporary_, which played a great part in the development of the

literature of Russia later on.

The net of officialdom was meanwhile being drawn tighter and tighter

round him: he had to attend compulsory meaningless ceremonies at the

Court. The Government gave him 20,000 roubles for the publication of his

works, and elected him member of the Academy. But they would not allow

him to retire from the service. In 1829 he dashed away to the Caucasus

without leave.

He joined the ranks and fought, but returned safely. He then married a

society beauty whom he loved sincerely but who increased his expenses

enormously. He continued to train his talents and wrote a series of

brilliant epigrams which increased the number of his friends and foes.

He had enemies in every camp.... Meanwhile a young officer, of French

and Dutch extraction, by name Baron Dantes, began to press his

attentions on Pushkin's wife. Pushkin received a series of anonymous

letters ... he, however, trusted his wife completely. She urged him to

retire with her to the country to get away from the impending doom, but

he challenged the Baron, who had by that time married the sister of

Pushkin's wife. Pushkin was fatally wounded in the duel and died mourned

by a whole nation.... And what is his legacy? He must have been no mean

poet who could induce Turgenev to say that he would burn all his works

if he could but have written four lines of the conversation between the

Bookseller and the Poet.

His legacy is that he stripped Reality from her daintily-coloured

veil--not to show her possible hideousness, but to enjoy the beauty of

her form. And beneath his hands nakedness rose like a piece of magic

sculpture, warm and breathing of life. His variety and the width of his

range are astonishing.

I have attempted to convey something of this. He can write an elegy as

tender as Tennyson, a picture of a snowstorm in intoxicating rhythms

which would have made Poe green with jealousy; his patriotic poems are

lofty and inspired, his prayers humble, sincere and devout. His love

poems are as playful as Heine's, as tender as Musset's; he can translate

with equal spirit and exactness Byron and Horace, the Koran and Dante.

Mr Baring selects two poems as examples of the greatness of his style

and the force of his magic.

"As bitter as stale aftermath of wine

Is the remembrance of delirious days:

But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs

The past more sorely, as my days decline.

My path is dark. The future lies in wait,

A gathering ocean of anxiety.

But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create,

That is my prayer: to live and not to die!

I know that ecstasy shall still lie there

In sorrow and adversity and care.

Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine,

Be moved to tears by musings that are mine:

And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh

Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky."

The other and greater is _The Prophet_, which is Miltonic in conception

and Dantesque in expression: it is, Mr Baring says, the Pillars of

Hercules of the Russian language.

"My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, and I was astray in the dark

wilderness. And the Seraphim with six wings appeared to me at the

crossing of the ways: and he touched my eyelids, and his fingers were as

soft as sleep; and like the eyes of an eagle that is frightened my

prophetic eyes were awakened. He touched my ears and he filled them with

noise and with sound: and I heard the Heavens shuddering and the flight

of the angels in the height, and the moving of the beasts that are under

the waters, and the noise of the growth of the branches in the valley.

He bent down over me and he looked upon my lips; and he tore out my

sinful tongue, and he took away that which is idle and that which is

evil with his right hand, and his right hand was dabbled with blood; and

he set there in its stead, between my perishing lips, the tongue of a

wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder with a sword, and he

plucked out my trembling heart, and in my cloven breast he set a burning

coal of fire. Like a corpse in the desert I lay, and the voice of God

called and said unto me, 'Prophet, arise, and take heed, and hear; be

filled with my will, and go forth over the sea and over the land and set

light with my word to the hearts of the people.'"

IV

LÈRMONTOV (1814-1841)

Lèrmontov was descended from a Scotsman, George Learmonth, who was

present at the siege of a small Polish town in 1613.

He had always been connected with the army: his father was an officer,

his mother a young girl, at the time of her marriage, of noble birth:

she died at the age of twenty. He was brought up by his maternal

grandmother, who only permitted him to visit his father on very rare

occasions. He was in all respects very lonely, entirely without society

or friendship, excellently educated by the very best tutors in noble

tastes and refined manners, with such success that he knew French,

German and English thoroughly before he was twelve. If ever he saw a

serf being punished he would immediately give vent to his anger by

attacking the torturer with a knife or stones.

He was, in spite of his fondness for other languages, tenacious of his

own, and a great lover of Russia. "In the Russian folklore," he wrote

when he was fifteen, "told from mouth to mouth there is probably more

than in the whole of French literature."

But it was the Caucasus that first led him to creative art. He was ten

when he first accompanied his grandmother to that land, whither she went

in search of health. It is, I think, worth while to dwell on the

beauties of this country in order to see quite what sort of scenery it

was that so fascinated the child's mind.

In his fifteenth and sixteenth year Lèrmontov was educated at the

University Pension at Moscow, and filled all his exercise-books with

poetry, all of which betrayed a deeply impressionable, passionate,

highly strung nature, permeated with views quite extraordinary in one so

young.

The two years following saw him a member of the University proper,

consciously isolating himself from his contemporaries in spite of

adequate means; on the other hand, he launched into the sea of

fashionable society life.

The influence of an unending round of balls, masquerades and

supper-parties prompted him to write drinking songs and epigrams which

could not be tolerated by the Press, while at the same time he showed an

extraordinary power of detaching himself from vulgarity and giving

himself up to his work. Always he would invest his productions with

mockery and sarcasm.

During his second year he left Moscow on account of a row which he got

into over an unpopular professor, and went to Petrograd, where he joined

the fashionable Yunker's School, and learnt some of the joys of military

life.

Half his time was occupied in revelling, the other half in seeking some

remote class-room where he could work and satisfy his craving to write.

At the age of nineteen he was commissioned and gazetted in the Life

Guard Hussars, already the author of _The Demon_, though that poem was

still in manuscript. A satirical comedy was censored, and other poems

began to appear in the reviews, so that not only the literary circles

but Society looked with keen expectation for something good at his

hands.

One of his poems in particular at this time attracted attention: it is

the author's prayer in dedicating a girl to the Virgin. It was so

sincere and simple in its religious tone that some of his critics

declared that it was merely a pose of his. They failed to realise that

his sanctuary was his supreme elation of love for a girl who answered

his feelings by friendship. Lèrmontov loathed the idea of the marriage

bond--real love was to him something far higher: his Vàrenka, who

married another, was his kindred spirit. She it was whom he dedicated to

the Virgin, and this relationship finds expression in several of his

poems.

For five years he remained in his regiment, and during this time

translated Byron, Heine and Goethe ... then in 1837 came the blow of

Pushkin's death, which stung Lèrmontov to such a pitch of fury that he

wrote his immortal ode, _On the Death of Pushkin_, which became at once

known and repeated throughout the length and breadth of Russia by

people who repeated it to, and copied it from, one another:

"And you, the proud and shameless progeny

Of fathers famous for their infamy,

You, who with servile heel have trampled down

The fragments of great names laid low by chance,

You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne,

Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory,

You hide behind the shelter of the law,

Before you, right and justice must be dumb!

But, parasites of vice, there's God's assize;

There is an awful court of law that waits.

You cannot reach it with the sound of gold;

It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds;

And vainly you shall call the lying witness;

That shall not help you any more;

And not with all the filth of all your gore

Shall you wash out the poet's righteous blood."

For this daring outburst he was arrested, tried and banished to the

Caucasus, which again acted, as in his childhood, as a direct

inspiration. New poems came flying to Petrograd full of human passions,

and descriptions of a Nature prodigal and passionate as her devoted

lover. No geography book could ever give such a vivid picture of the

Caucasus as Lèrmontov's verse and prose. As the Arabs say: "They turn

our hearing into seeing." Fame at last descended upon him. Then appeared

the "_Song of the Tsar Ivàn Vasìlyevich, the young Opriknik, and the

Brave Merchant Kalàshinkov_," in which the Opriknik insults the

merchant's wife, and the merchant challenges him to fight with his

fists, kills him and is executed for it. The poem is written as a

folk-song, in the style of the _Byliny_: as an epic there is nothing in

modern Russian literature to compare with it for simplicity,

appropriateness of tone, vividness, truth to nature and terseness.

Every line begins with an anapæst, followed by some odd dactyls, and

ends in a dactyl unrhymed. It has been translated by Madame Voynich

admirably, and is published by Elkin Mathews.

While in the Caucasus, his age being now twenty-three, Lèrmontov

finished _The Demon_, on which he had been at work for so long.

The personality of this Demon, the Spirit of Exile, is quite different

from the Satanic Mephistopheles or Lucifer. With all his contempt for

Earth, Lèrmontov's Demon is fascinating in every way. He is always

musing over his former days in Heaven, and vainly seeking some relief in

the desert of time and space into which he is cast out _alone_; he is

the embodiment of the idea of loneliness in a proud soul. His sudden

love for the Grùzian girl Tamàra inflames him with the desire of

abandoning his pride, of opening his heart to Good, of making peace with

Heaven ... we are never allowed to forget that the Angel and the Demon

had been brothers. Moved by his love, the Demon is on the verge of

humility and of opening his heart to Goodness when his pride and hatred

return upon him, due entirely to the tone of enmity which the Angel

adopts on meeting him. The Angel is a good hater and thorough in his

scornfulness. Being Tamàra's celestial guardian, he becomes quite human

and understandable when he meets the Demon (whom he might have conquered

by greeting him with Heavenly grace) with icy contempt and threats. Here

we have a perfect delineation of the kinship between the spirits of good

and evil.

The Demon's wooing of Tamàra is irresistibly bewitching, one of the most

passionate love declarations ever written, in couplets of sonorous

iambics that glow like jewels and tremble like the strings of a harp.

Tamàra yields to him (what human girl could have done otherwise?) and

forfeits her life, but her soul is borne off to Heaven by the Angel: by

death she has expiated her offence, and the Demon is left as before

desolate in a loveless universe.

Owing to his grandmother's persistence Lèrmontov was recalled before one

of his five years' exile had elapsed, and we see him again in Petrograd

with his old regiment, a tremendous source of interest to all society,

half of whom hated, while half loved him.

In 1838 _Duma_ appeared, in which Lèrmontov gave to the world his view

of his contemporaries: it was the severest indictment imaginable, far

saner and truer than Byron's, not of the great Russian nation of course,

but of the shallow side of that human nature to which he had allied

himself. How clear he was of the shortcomings of that lot of people to

which he himself, at least outwardly, belonged, and how deeply it hurt

him is proved by the exquisite precision with which he exercised his

lancet of lampoon.

It is in form a perfect example of his rhymed and scanned prose as it

were--that is, not a single word would have to be altered or shifted if

you wanted to write it out in prose. It is the work not of a superficial

satirist, but of a deep and profound thinker, of a Shelley rather than a

Byron.

In 1840 he was challenged to a duel by a son of the French ambassador,

in which Lèrmontov fired his shot in the air and received himself a

slight scratch. For this he was again arrested and banished as before to

the Caucasus. This, the last year of his life, he spent at Patigorsk, a

town forming the centre of a fashionable healing-springs district, at

the foot of a mountain range. Here he wrote his only novel in prose,

_The Hero of Our Times_, as great a piece of artistry as anything that

he did in poetry. It is the first psychological novel in Russia. The

hero, Pechorin by name, was undoubtedly Lèrmontov himself, although he

said, and quite probably thought, that he was merely creating a type.

This Pechorin is an officer in the Caucasus, who analyses his own

character, and lays bare his weaknesses, follies and faults with extreme

candour and frankness. "I am incapable of friendship," he says. "Of two

friends, one is always the slave of the other, although often neither of

them will admit it: I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a tiring

business."

Or again: "I have an innate passion for contradiction ... the presence

of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and intercourse with a phlegmatic

temperament would turn me into a passionate dreamer."

On the eve of fighting a duel he writes:

"If I die it will not be a great loss to the world, and as for me, I am

sufficiently tired of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, who does

not go home to bed because the carriage is not there, but as soon as the

carriage is there, Good-bye! I review my past and I ask myself, Why

have I lived? Why was I born? And I think there was a reason, and I

think I was called to high things, for I feel in my soul the presence of

vast powers: but I did not divine my high calling: I gave myself up to

the allurement of shallow and ignoble passions: I emerged from their

furnace as hard and as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour

of noble aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have

I played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of

the Executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often without

malice, always without pity. My love has never brought happiness,

because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed myself for those

whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own pleasure.... And if I

die I shall not leave behind me one soul who understood me. Some think I

am better, others that I am worse than I am. Some will say he was a good

fellow: others he was a blackguard."

From this it may be easily seen that Lèrmontov must have been a most

trying companion. He had an impossible temperament, proud, exasperated,

filled with a savage amour-propre: he took a childish delight in

annoying: he was envious of that which was least enviable in his

contemporaries. When he could not make himself successful--that is,

felt--by pleasant, he would choose unpleasant means, and yet in spite of

all this he was warmhearted, thirsting for love and kindness and capable

of giving himself up to love--if he chose.

During the course of this second banishment he took an active part in

the fighting with the Circassian tribes, showing striking courage

combined with perfect modesty.

This experience was the direct inspiration of _Valèrik_, one of the most

beautiful of his long poems on the Caucasus.

After this came his second duel. On this occasion he somehow contrived

to offend a somewhat posing officer called Major Martỳnov, who could not

bear Lèrmontov's jokes in the presence of ladies. As before, Lèrmontov

fired his pistol into the air, but Martỳnov aimed so long that the

seconds began to remonstrate. He then fired and killed Lèrmontov

immediately.

As a result Martỳnov only escaped the anger of the mob by being

arrested.

In 1909 Merejkòvski produced a little book on Lèrmontov as a

counterblast to one by Solovyòv in which Martỳnov was hailed as

"Heaven's weapon sent to punish blood-thirstiness and devilish lust." It

is a blessing indeed that Solovyòv should have been led to attack

Lèrmontov, for Merejkòvski was thus brought to criticise Lèrmontov with

an amazingly accurate insight. He loved the poet and so his appreciation

is the more perfect. "Something like Solovyòv's attitude towards

Lèrmontov," he says, "must have been in the minds of the poet's

contemporaries and successors. Even Dostoievski mentions him as the

'spirit of wrath.' Nicholas I. expressed grim pleasure at his death. He

has been up till now the scapegoat of Russian literature. All Russian

writers preach humility, even those who began by heading

revolts--Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoievski, Tolstoi ... here is the one single

man who never gave in and never submitted to his last breath ... he is

the Cain of Russian literature and has been killed by Abel, the spirit

of humility. Solovyòv's cry of 'Devilish superman' is only another proof

of the fact that the struggle between superhumanism and deo-humanism is

the eternal problem of life." Merejkòvski's idea is that Lèrmontov could

remember the past of his eternity ... from the ordinary human mind this

previous existence is excluded, we dwell on the eternity to come ... but

Lèrmontov never did: his mind was concentrated on what he saw left

behind him. From the very first his poetry attracts you uneasily: you

may--Russian youths often are--be taught to hate him as a "spring of

poison" ... he knew the harrowing threat of fruitless ages. Even as a

boy he frequently said: "If only I could forget the unforgettable." His

Demon is never permitted to forget the past. He lives by what is death

to others.

Pechorin, in _The Hero of our Days_, speaks as Lèrmontov when he says:

"I never forget anything--anything."

In one of his poems he laments that his despair is that no love lasts

through eternity: he means _his_ eternity. He knows of a kind of

existence which is neither this life, nor death as promised by

Christianity. That existence is not deprived of love: his idea is that

the less earthly, the deeper and greater the passion becomes. The

difference between Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations_ and

Lèrmontov's is that Wordsworth speaks of these intimations coming to him

from outside this world and Lèrmontov speaks from the outside world

himself, as one belonging to it, while realising his temporary existence

in this world to which he does not belong. This attitude was a continual

torment to him; it made him feel very much of a stranger.

"Usually," says Merejkòvski, "artists find their creation beautiful

because nothing like it has existed before." Lèrmontov feels the beauty

just where it had been always. That is why there is something so

individual and inimitable in him when he speaks of Nature: 'For several

moments spent among the wilderness of rocks where I played as a child I

would give Paradise and Eternity.'

"He is in love with Nature. He longs to blend in an embrace with the

storm and Shelley-like catches of lightnings with his hands. It is the

only non-earthly love for earth to be found in poetry. Christianity is a

movement from here--thither: Lèrmontov's poetry is from there--hither.

He was not-quite-a-man encased in a man's shell. He tried to conceal

this, because people do not forgive anyone for being unlike them. Hence

his reticence, which people mistook for pride. They thought he was

untruthful, posing ... while in reality it was his tragedy that he felt

out of place here and tried to be like everyone else. This explains his

escape into the sphere of dissipations, his cruel attitude towards the

girl he deserted ... when he could feel that at last he was like his

contemporaries.

"The fourth dimension seemed to be squeezed into the three for a while,

and the icy horror of eternity and the inane temporarily forgotten in

the warmth of human vulgarity."

This, Merejkòvski thinks, accounts for that amazing child-likeness in

Lèrmontov which dwelt side by side with his pessimism, sadness,

bitterness, flippancy and sarcasm. He could always play children's games

to the state of self-forgetfulness and had no fear of death, because he

_knew_ that there was no death.

"His Demon never laughs and never lies; he has something of the

child-like in him. He is always genuine, as far removed as possible

from Gogol's spirit of mischief or Dostoievsky's wicked, sneering Devil.

Lèrmontov's Devil is beautiful, because he is not thought out, but

suffered out by the poet himself; he is hardly a devil at all."

There is a legend that once there was a fight between God and Satan and

some of the angels were undecided which side to take. In order to help

them to make up their mind they were sent to be born on earth, where

they should dwell for a little in a limited world: the soul of Lèrmontov

had been in his past one of these. That is why his duality was always

such a burden to him. This explains many queer things about Lèrmontov:

his amazingly deep passion for a girl of nine when he was ten ("I did

not know whence she came") and his having drawn a detailed picture of

his death many times before his final duel: most strange of all is

Merejkòvski's idea that Lèrmontov remembered the future of eternity.

Pushkin is the day-luminary of Russian poetry and Lèrmontov is the

night-luminary: "It is high time to rise after our final stage of

humility and start on our last revolt, and remember that besides Pushkin

we have Lèrmontov and his message to the world.... Because in the end

Satan will make peace with God."

He owed nothing to his contemporaries, little to his predecessors and

still less to foreign models.

As a schoolboy he imitated Byron, merely echoes these, however, of his

reading. Shelley urged him as Byron urged Pushkin to emulation, not

imitation. His pride and obstinacy if nothing else would have made him

carve out his own path: he chose the narrow path of romance, the Turner

method rather than the Constable in his depictions of landscape, as may

be seen in _Mtsysi_, the story of a Circassian orphan educated in a

convent, who has ungovernable longings for freedom: he escapes, loses

his way in the forest and is brought back after three days, dying from

exhaustion and starvation. The greater portion of the poem is given up

to his confession: he then tells how insatiable were his desires to seek

out his own home and people: he describes his wanderings, hearing the

song of a girl ... seeing at nightfall the light of a dwelling-place

twinkling like a fallen star, but afraid to seek it. He then kills a

panther and in the morning finds a way out of the woods and lies

exhausted in the grass under the blinding sun of noon. He then fancies

in his delirium that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream; the

fish sing to him in a voice so unearthly that he is enticed and allured

as if the fish were the Erl-King's daughter.

In _The Testament_ he rises to an unadorned realism that is little short

of magic in its poignancy:

"'I want to be alone with you,

A moment quite alone.

The minutes left to me are few,

They say I'll soon be gone.

And you'll be going home on leave,

Then say ... but why? I do believe

There's not a soul who'll greatly care

To hear about me over there.

And yet if someone asks you there,

Let us suppose they do--

Tell them a bullet hit me here,

The chest--and it went through.

And say I died, and for the Tsar,

And say what fools the doctors are:--

And that I shook you by the hand,

And thought about my native land.

My father and my mother, too!

They may be dead by now:

To tell the truth, it wouldn't do

To grieve them anyhow.

If one of them is living, say

I'm bad at writing home and they

Have sent me to the front, you see--

And that they needn't wait for me.

We had a neighbour, as you know,

And you remember, I

And she ... How very long ago

It is we said good-bye.

She won't ask after me, nor care,

But tell her everything, don't spare

Her empty heart; and let her cry:--

To her it doesn't signify.'"

It is such a poem that led Baring to apply to Lèrmontov what Arnold said

about Byron and Wordsworth: "there are moments when Nature takes the pen

from his hand and writes for him." When one passes in review the vast

output of his short life, we are struck by the lyrical inspiration, the

strength and intensity, the concentration of his power, the wealth of

his imagination, his gorgeous colouring and maintained high level.

It is as though he combined the temperament of a Thackeray with the

wings of a Shelley, so exquisitely blended is his romantic sense and

stern realism. So simple and straightforward is he that his style

escapes notice in its absolute appropriateness, as in _The Testament_.

There is none of the misty vagueness of Keats or Coleridge; he never

follows Shelley into the intense inane.

I propose to conclude this chapter with extracts from his masterpiece,

_The Demon_, to illustrate, if I can, the amazing achievement of this

Lucifer-spirit. He opens with a description of his hero-devil ruminating

over his past:

"When, thirsting for eternal knowledge,

He keenly followed through the mist

The caravans of wandering planets

Thrown into vastness; when he list--

The happy first-born of creation--

To voice of Faith and Love, and knew

No doubt or hatred; and there was

No threat of ages fruitless, dreary,

Awaiting him in even rows ..."

Now an outcast:

"He planted sin without enjoyance;

His art has never met contest,

Has quickly lost its charm and zest,

And has become a mere annoyance."

We follow him in his exile over the world through the Caucasus to

Gruzia:

"A blissful, brilliant nook of Earth!

'Mid stately ancient pillared ruins,

Relucent, gurgling rivulets run

And ripple over motley pebbles;

Between them, rose-trees where the birds

Sing love-songs, while the ivy girds

The stems, and crowns the foliage-temples

Of green chinàra; and the herds

Of timid red-deer seek the boon

Of mountain eaves in sultry noon;

And sparkling life, and rustling leaves,

And hum of voices hundred-toned,

The sweetly breathing thousand plants,

Voluptuous heat of skies sun-laden,

Caressive dew of gorgeous night,

And stars--as clear as eyes of maiden,

As glance of Grùzian maiden bright!

But all this brilliancy of Nature

Awoke not in the Demon's soul

A moment's joy, nor tender feeling."

We are now introduced to the heroine, Tamàra, whose wedding feast is

being prepared:

"Amid her friends, the whole day long

Tamàra spent in play and song.

The sun, behind a far-off mountain,

Is half set in a sea of gold.

The maidens in a round are sitting

And, to a lilting tune they're singing

They clap in time. Tamàra takes

Her tambourine, and nimbly shakes

It o'er her head; with fleeting motion

Now trips it lighter than a bird,

Now holds a-sudden in her dance,

And casts a shining, roguish glance

From underneath the jealous lashes;

Her eyebrow curves in coy expression,

Her lithesome shape does swift incline,

And o'er the carpet slides and flashes

Her little foot of form divine....

The Demon did behold her.... Rapture

And awe possessed him: and at once

The silent desert of his spirit

Rang suddenly with joyful tones;

And once again the sacred grandeur

Of Love and Good and Beauty shone

Within his soul....

He felt a sadness strangely new--

As if the overwhelming shower

Of feelings rang with words he knew.

Was this a sign of renovation?

Gone were the words of dread temptation,

His mind no more in guile adept.

Will he forget his past?... But God

Would never grant him this relief,

Nor he forgetfulness accept."

Tamàra's bridegroom-elect is foully done to death on his way to the

wedding. The bride, fallen on her bed, sobs with a lorn and piteous

feeling until she suddenly hears a voice of magic sweetness urging her

to cease.

"'Forsooth, the destiny of mortals,

Believe me, angel upon earth'" (sings the voice),

"'Is not--not for a single moment

Of thy dear child-like sorrow worth!'"

He beseeches her to listen to his pleas:

"'As soon as night throws silky veiling

O'er Caucasus, and all the world

Grows still and fairy-like, bewitched

By Nature's magic wand and word;

As soon as zephyrs flutter shyly

Across the faded grass, and gaily

Flies out of it the lurking bird;

As soon as under vine and maize

The flowers of night find dew, and raise

Unfolding petals with relief:

As soon as from behind the mountains

The golden crescent glides, and steals

A glance upon thee furtively--

I shall fly down each night to thee,

Shall guard till dawn thy virgin slumber,

And on thy lashes dreams of amber

I'll waft, to woo them prettily....'"

We are not surprised that fire began to flow along the maiden's veins as

she listened to so exquisite a speech. She decides to enter a nunnery

to avoid both marriage and the hellish spirit that assails her in

dreams. The Devil follows:

"But, filled with fear of sanctity,

He dared not boldly force an entrance

And violate the sanctuary.

Then for a moment was he fain

To give up his hell-dark device."

He catches a glimpse of the glimmering lamplight in Tamàra's window and

hears a song in the far distance, a song for earth in heaven born and

nourished.