peasants, the squalor in which they live, they should remember that
Russia is a large country; that it possesses a north, a south, an east,
and a west, and that what is true about one place is quite untrue
about another. So that in one village the peasants may be starving
for want of bread, and a hundred miles to the north or south you may
find a village where the peasants have spent 300,000 roubles (£30,000)
in building an enormous church, which is the case in the village of
Lamki, government of Tambov, and there the church stands, towering and
immense, built entirely by the voluntary contributions of peasants, to
witness if I lie.
Tennyson, I think, says something about the North being dark and tender
and true, and the South false and fickle. I asked a Little Russian
gentleman what the main differences were between Little Russians and
Big Russians, and he said the Little Russians were more decent people
but far lazier than the Big Russians; that the Little Russian was so
lazy that he would say to his wife: “Little wife, say ‘woa’ to my
horse; I have a pain in my tongue.”
On the other hand, I asked a Muscovite who lived in Little Russia,
who told me that he infinitely preferred to deal with Big Russians,
but that the Little Russians were perhaps cleverer, though they would
pretend to be stupid out of laziness. On the score of indolence
everybody seemed to be agreed. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any
great burst of energy in a country where the sun is so hot in October
and the air so mild and so heavily charged with sunny indolence.
The country in the government of Kharkov was in distress owing to the
want of rain; special services were being held in the village square
praying for rain, because if the drought continues next year’s harvest
will be ruined, and it is impossible at the present moment to sow.
The dryness of the autumn in the government of Kharkov, which was
threatening distress and disaster for the future, was in the meantime
adding to the beauty of the present. The woods were harmonies in
many-coloured golds; the nights were not yet cold, and every evening
the sun sank in a cloudless halo of golden dust, making the yellow
trees shine like the banners in a cathedral, as though they were
the trophies of a triumphant conqueror instead of the last tattered
remnants of the robe of a dying king. The little farms painted pale
green are clean inside as they are outside. The walls are painted
red and blue; the furniture is neatly arranged, and no poultry live
in the living-room. Contrary to my expectations the inhabitants,
instead of being dressed in their gloriously picturesque South Russian
costumes, are far less striking to look at than the inhabitants of
Central Russia, and they looked as if they had ordered their clothes
from Birmingham or Manchester. The reason of this is the prevalence of
large factories in this region, which spread education, civilisation,
and the shirt and collars of the “intelligent” middle class. Every
now and then, however, you see something which appeals more strongly
to that which is primeval in you than to that which is progressive; a
thing which may distress the theorising Socialist spirit in you, if
you possess it, and please that which in you hankers towards Homer,
_Puss in Boots_, and the elementary needs of the human heart. I saw
just such a thing. It was a blind beggar. He was sitting on a hill in
front of a church, and he was playing an instrument called a “lira,”
that is to say, a lyre. But the lyre was not what you imagine when you
think of pictures of the lyre of Orpheus or of Apollo. It was a wooden
instrument shaped exactly like a violin. It had three strings, which
were tuned with pegs like a violin, but it was played by fingering
wooden keys, like those of a large concertina and by at the same time
turning a handle which protruded from the base of the violin. The
musician said he could play any kind of music, sad, joyous, and sacred,
and he gave examples of all three of the various styles; they were to
my ear indistinguishable in kind; they appeared to me all tinged with
the same quick and deliciously plaintive melancholy, and the _kind_ of
music made by this instrument instantly suggested that which Schubert
has rendered in the accompaniment of a song called “Der Leiermann”:
the plaintive comfortable noise of the very first organ-grinders. But
what I wondered at the time was this. Is the instrument, the sound
of which Schubert renders in his song “Der Leiermann,” this very
identical “lyre” which my blind beggar was playing in the village
Giebko, government of Kharkov? Or is Schubert just imitating the noise
of the earliest portable grinding organs, whose music is made by wind
proceeding from a bellows into a small box and thence into pipes, and
whose principle of construction is exactly the same, though the scale
is different, as that of the organ in St. Paul’s Cathedral? In any case
the noise made by this “lyre” was the same in kind as the noise which
Schubert imitates in the accompaniment of his song “Der Leiermann.” I
afterwards ascertained that this instrument is called Leierkasten in
Germany, _Vielle_ in France, and Hurdy-gurdy in English, and that my
blind beggar must have been identical with Schubert’s Leiermann.
Another slight episode which gave me food for reflection happened
in the train on a small line between the town of Kharkov and a
neighbouring village. I was going to the town of Kharkov for the day;
it was only half an hour’s journey. I was in a third-class carriage;
there were not many passengers, and most of them were railway guards
off duty, two peasants, a soldier, and a monk. The monk had no sooner
entered the carriage than he began a theological discussion. Now, as
soon as the train started, although I was sitting quite close, I could
not unfortunately follow the intricacies of his argument for the noise
made by the train, but whenever the train stopped at a station his
words were plain. And the drift of the matter was this: that all the
passengers in the carriage were uniting to express to him in forcible
language that priests in general, and monks still more (and himself in
particular), were lazy, worthless, good-for-nothing scoundrels, and
deceivers into the bargain. The soldier said, and his words received
universal approval, that every one who was not a born fool knew that
there was one God, the same for everybody, and that all men were
equal before Him, and that consequently there could be only one real
religious faith (namely, a belief in God), and that all the rest was
the invention of priests. By “the rest” it subsequently became plain
that he meant the Devil and the tenets of the Orthodox Church in
general and of any other Churches. The monk, on the other hand, said
that the Devil was intensely real, and that every man was followed by
angels, who were constantly fighting the Devil for the soul of the
man. Now, the soldier, and three guards off duty who were taking part
in this discussion, starting from the premise that there is only one
God, one faith which consists in the belief in this one God, and that
all priests are liars, worried the monk with questions and attacked
him in every possible manner. They accused him of begging in the first
place; they would be ashamed of doing such a thing, they said. Then
the soldier asked him if he had seen the Devil. The monk said, “Yes,
often.” “Where is he?” said the soldier. “It would be most interesting
to see him.”
Then when the monk stood up for the Orthodox faith the soldier said:
“You say it is the only faith. You lie, because I have been told there
are any number of other Churches, and each of them says its faith is
the true one. For instance, the Jews have an entirely different faith,
and this proves that all priests are liars; because God is the same for
everybody.”
At last the monk said that everybody attacked him and nobody stuck up
for him, and he retired into another corner of the carriage, followed
by the soldier, who went on with the argument, and afterwards repeated
his main thesis to me separately, namely, that all priests were
deceivers, because God is the same for everybody. Therefore there could
be only one religious belief were it not for the lies of priests. But
what struck me in this matter is a thing which has repeatedly struck me
among Russians of the lower class, namely, their broad common sense in
religious matters. “Mysticism,” Mr. Chesterton once wrote, “was with
Carlyle as with all its genuine professors only a transcendent form of
common sense. Mysticism and common sense alike consist in a sense of
the dominance of certain truths which cannot be formally demonstrated.”
Now the Russians of the lower class seem to me often the genuine
professors of mysticism, because their mysticism is simply common
sense. And it is this very fact which seems to me to lead people astray
when they discuss the religion of the Russian peasant. For instance,
you often hear people bewail the _superstition_ of the peasant which
makes him devote so much attention to paper and wooden images. Again, I
have read in an English book on the Russian peasant that the peasant’s
habit of perpetually crossing himself, his respect for images, and his
prayers are purely mechanical and therefore meaningless, because they
are often interrupted by, or simultaneous with, jokes, laughter, and
the business of life. Now this union of the practice of the outward
signs of religion with the business of everyday life, this interruption
of a prayer by a conversation, this sign of the cross made before a
theft seem to me all to derive from the broad common sense which is
at the root of their belief, and which, as Mr. Chesterton says, is
synonymous with mysticism.
Because if your belief in God is solid and based on great rocks of
common sense it is not extraordinary that your outward expression of
your allegiance to the great fact should be mechanical. For instance,
if you are the loyal subject of the King, you mechanically take off
your hat when he drives past you in the street or when you see the
colours of his Army go by, and nobody says, if at that moment you
happen to be whistling a comic song or thinking of the North Pole,
that your action is hypocritical, insincere, or meaningless. But it is
exactly the same in the case of the peasants; the outward expression
of their religion is as mechanical as possible, but it is mechanical
because their religious feeling is true and right and not because it is
insincere and false.
I will end by telling two stories which exemplify the common sense
which lies at the root of the Russian peasant’s religion. The first
story happened at Kharbin. It was Easter, and the soldiers wanted Mass
said for them. There were two priests. One priest had been engaged by
some officers and the second priest was drunk. A soldier was relating
these facts, and some asked: “Well, did you have to go without your
Mass?” “Oh, no,” said the soldier, “we went to the priest who was drunk
and we pulled him out of bed, and we said: ‘Say Mass, you devil’ (and
a lot more uncomplimentary expressions), and he said Mass.” This story
shows that the soldiers regarded the priest partly as an instrument to
say Mass and partly as a man. They differentiated between the two, and
the instrument had to perform its divine office whatever happened to
the man, whose good or bad qualities had nothing to do with the case.
This seems to me gloriously sensible.
The second story happened somewhere down in this government. A
Socialist arrived in a village to convert the inhabitants to Socialism.
He wanted to prove that all men were equal and that the Government
authorities had no right to their authority. Consequently he thought he
would begin by disproving the existence of God, because if he proved
that there was no God, it would naturally follow that there should be
no Emperor and no policemen. So he took a holy image, and said: “There
is no God, and I will prove it immediately. I will spit upon this image
and break it to bits, and if there is a God he will send fire from
heaven and kill me, and if there is no God nothing will happen to me at
all.” Then he took the image and spat upon it and broke it to bits, and
he said to the peasants: “You see God has not killed me.” “No,” said
the peasants, “God has not killed you, but we will,” and they killed
him. And thus an act was committed which was one of common sense or of
mysticism.
II
A CONVERSATION WITH A LANDOWNER
In a small wooden house at the edge of a large wood, and within a
stone’s-throw of a river which floods the whole of the neighbouring
meadows in the spring-time, lives Feodor Petrovitch X----. He is what
is called in Russia a small landowner. He is a Moderate Liberal.
That is to say, for twenty years he has groaned and lamented at the
foolish proceedings of the Russian Government, which he used to accuse
of criminal levity. He is in favour of a policy of common sense.
Therefore, in the rapid course of recent events he has veered, like
many others, slightly to the Right; although he still calls himself
a Constitutional Democrat. And this is not because his faith in the
existing Government has increased or that his ideal, which consists
in the carrying out of certain drastic reforms, has diminished,
but because he is dissatisfied with the conduct of the Opposition.
Nevertheless, he means to vote for the Constitutional Democrats at the
coming election. He is a short, dark, middle-aged man, not scrupulously
shaven, with a brown glittering eye and a great flow of talk. He has
immense practical knowledge of farming, machinery, and manufactories.
At the same time he likes talking literature and politics, and his
opinions are worth listening to except when he tells shooting stories;
in this region he is given to such gross exaggeration that many people
cease to pay attention to what he says on other subjects which excite
his interest but not his imagination.
I was drinking tea with him the other afternoon and talking over the
Anglo-Russian Agreement. “This is the only sensible thing,” he said,
“which the Russian Government has done for the last forty years.” And
then the conversation veered on to the plays in Moscow and the latest
productions in the world of literature.
Here I wish to make a long parenthesis. One of the most striking
features among educated Russians of all classes, whether landowners,
doctors, lawyers, or officials, is the prevalence of what is called
“culture.” We consider “culture” as a luxury--something extra, a
pleasant appendage to education. The Russians consider culture and
education to be synonymous and “culture” to be indispensable. In their
eyes what they call a “cultured” and we call an educated man must
possess a certain wide general knowledge. He must be able to talk
authoritatively on literature, science, and the arts, the European
stage, etc. He is positively ashamed if he is caught ignorant of some
one like Sudermann or Finsen or Grieg. I have often seen Russians
amazed and aghast at the “unculturedness” of Englishmen who have taken
their degree at a University. This is not surprising considering that
for two or three generations boys in England no longer receive any kind
of instruction at schools. To the educated Russian, a certain wide
layer of general knowledge is considered absolutely indispensable.
He is ashamed to be without it. You meet with extraordinary examples
of this very often. For instance, I once knew a Cossack officer who
was well known for the rows he made in restaurants, for letting off
pistols at odd moments, and for fighting duels. He was what is called
in Russia a “skandalist” (a row-maker). This same man, I afterwards
found out, had written a most valuable work on the differential
calculus, and was one of the most brilliant of modern mathematicians.
Now this indispensable “culture” has its good sides, but it has its
bad sides also. It is often exaggerated in Russia just as ignorance
is exaggerated in England. In many cases what is called “culture”
and what is considered to be indispensable, is not culture at all,
but a terribly superficial smattering of thin-spread information,
possessing which its owner considers he has the right and even the
duty of pronouncing an arbitrary and final judgment on a subject of
which he knows nothing. I once knew an official employed in business in
Moscow who was perfectly aghast because he discovered I knew nothing,
that I had not even the shadow of pretence to any kind or sort of
knowledge of natural science, that I was ignorant and not ashamed of
being ignorant, of the elementary principles of dynamics. This same
official, secure of his position in what he considered a universal
field of “culture,” told me that Browning’s “Ring and the Book” was
an old-fashioned, milk-and-water poem, rather like one of Trollope’s
novels, and that Browning was a writer who was all sound and no sense,
a victim to a fatal fluency and an incredible facility of expression.
The result, therefore, of this culture is that in some cases it makes
the man genuinely many sided and widely appreciative, and in others, as
in the case I have just quoted, it leads him to express opinions of the
kind which the French call _saugrenu_.
To go back to Feodor Petrovitch. He is saturated with so-called
“culture.” In his case it is in many respects not superficial at all.
He knows exactly how to manage a starch factory, not only how to
manage it, but how every part of the machine is made and worked. He
has practical knowledge of agriculture; he is an excellent economist.
Besides this he has travelled and understands English, German, and
French; he is well acquainted with Dickens, Thackeray, Shakespeare,
and Mrs. Humphry Ward, with Beaumarchais and Ibsen, and, of course,
it goes without saying, after what I have related, that a thorough
knowledge of the Russian classics is an absolutely indispensable
part of “culture.” I happened to mention to Feodor Petrovitch that
a discussion had lately been raging in the _Morning Post_ as to the
comparative merits of modern and ancient literature and I asked him on
what side the balance of opinion would fall if a similar discussion
were to be held in Russia. “Russian literature at the present moment,”
he said, “is leaping along with the force of a strong stream, but it is
impossible to point to any one author of the younger generation who is
worthy to take his place side by side with the older giants.” “But,” I
asked, “with regard to those same giants, is the general opinion the
same as what it was thirty years ago? For instance, do the younger
generation admire Tolstoi, Tourgenieff, Gogol, and Dostoievski as much
as their fathers did, or are there people who cannot read Gogol and
Tourgenieff just as in England there are people who cannot read Dickens
and Thackeray?” “The younger generation,” he answered, “have read all
the classics; they find no difficulty in doing that, and of course it
is difficult to generalise on subjects which are, after all, matters
of taste; but I think you will find many Russians not only of the
young generation who on reading or re-reading Tourgenieff are acutely
disappointed.” “I have just read an interesting and admirably-written
article in an English newspaper,” I answered, “in which it is said
that as a psychologist pure and simple Tourgenieff is superior to
Tolstoi--that he is a writer for the aristocracy of taste, not for the
general public, and that not to know him is not to have penetrated into
the best society. The author quotes Renan and George Sand to back him
up, and says, moreover, that his artistic form is superior to that of
Tolstoi, Daudet, and even Flaubert.”
“When the writer said that Tourgenieff was not for the general public,
he meant, of course, the English or the French general public,” said
Feodor Petrovitch. “In Russia his novels are read by every schoolboy;
they are generally the first grown-up books to be read by young boys
and girls at school. We have all read Tourgenieff in our youth, and
we have all come under his spell as a writer. But to many of us, and
certainly to me when I read him now, much of the glamour has gone. The
beauty of style remains. And first and foremost, I consider Tourgenieff
to be a poet. The books of his which give me the most pleasure are
_The Poems in Prose_, _The Sportsmen’s Sketches_, and _Spring Waters_.
These works seem to me incomparable for their harmony and many-sided
beauty. Besides being a poet Tourgenieff was a chronicler of his time;
but he has always seemed to be more a chronicler of the atmosphere of
the epoch he deals with than a portrait painter of the human beings
that crowded it--I mean a portrait painter like Velasquez and not a
writer of _romans à clef_. Of course, his characters are living, but to
me they are living as the characters in Trollope’s novels are living.
They are people who existed in an imaginary world, and that imaginary
world has the atmosphere of the Sixties. But with Tolstoi the case is
different; he gives you the human beings who did actually exist. You
know that what he described happened. I do not mean to say that he was
a photographer, but an artist of the calibre of Velasquez; he recreated
a world and made the human beings which he put into it breathe and
live and speak as they actually did in real life. Tourgenieff’s novels
at their best are novels. One knows quite well that _Smoke_ never
happened. On the other hand, we know that the doings and sayings of
Pierre, and Levin, and Natasha, and Dolly are as true as the doings
of Dr. Johnson and Pepys, or as true as the sayings and doings of
any of our acquaintances. For this reason, I don’t care a fig for
Tourgenieff’s psychology.
“When my contemporaries and I,” Feodor Petrovitch added, “first read
the novels of Tourgenieff we were carried off our feet by the skill
and magic of a new and great artist. To us it was all new. When I read
him now, I admire _Poems in Prose_ and _The Sportsmen’s Sketches_ as
much as I used to do, and I am still enchanted by his incomparable
style. But the matter seems hopelessly old-fashioned. Just that which
seemed so new and so daring seems to me now like mahogany furniture,
crinolines, Octave Feuillet, the Second Empire, and all that is what
you call ‘Early Victorian.’ And nine-tenths of his characters seem to
me to be _clichés_. We know all that. We have got beyond it. What we
shall never get beyond is the poet in Tourgenieff, his apprehension
of certain shades and values of beauty in nature and life, and his
expression of it in matchless prose. In this respect he seems to me
indeed superior to Flaubert and the French in that Tourgenieff is a
poet; but on the other hand I find _Madame Bovary_ infinitely more
interesting than _Virgin Soil_ or _Smoke_ on account of its relation
to real life, which seems to me far closer; the Frenchman’s work is, I
think, more vital, more real, and more true. _Virgin Soil_ is, I think,
a collection of conventional characters, or rather caricatures who bear
really no relation to the period represented. And hence I consider
Dostoievski so infinitely superior to Tourgenieff. In his book called
_Devils_ he gives you a picture of the same epoch; the surroundings he
invents are as fantastic as a picture thrown on the screen by a magic
lantern; but the human beings, the naked souls of which he lays bare
to you, how poignantly and terribly real they are! Tolstoi shows you
life as it is, Tourgenieff life as one can imagine it, only he imagines
it with the genius and skill of an artist; but Dostoievski leads you,
as Virgil leads Dante, through the smoky regions which lie between the
real and the unreal, regions which we all know; and although he was not
a stylist, not an artist like Tourgenieff, yet in laying bare the human
soul and revealing all its darkness and all its light he was without an
equal. Of course, as I said, it is absurd to generalise on such things,
which are matters of taste, but I am sure you will find many Russians
who think that Tourgenieff is old-fashioned as a novelist, though
immortal as a poet, and very few who would place him above Tolstoi or
Dostoievski.”
Then he went on to talk of other things.
III
THE BIRTH OF THE BELL