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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
AN OUTLINE
OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
By the Hon. MAURICE BARING
LONDON
WILLIAMS & NORGATE
HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK
CANADA: RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO
INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.
HOME
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
OF
MODERN KNOWLEDGE
_Editors:_
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.
Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
(Columbia University, U.S.A.)
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
AN OUTLINE OF
RUSSIAN
LITERATURE
BY THE HON.
MAURICE BARING
AUTHOR OF "WITH THE RUSSIANS IN
MANCHURIA," "A YEAR IN RUSSIA," "THE
RUSSIAN PEOPLE," ETC.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
_First printed 1914/15_
PREFACE
The chief difficulty which Englishmen have experienced in writing
about Russia has, up till quite lately, been the prevailing ignorance
of the English public with regard to all that concerns Russian
affairs. A singularly intelligent Russian, who is connected with the
Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he feared the new interest
taken by English intellectuals with regard to Russian literature and
Russian art. He was delighted, of course, that they should be
interested in Russian affairs, but he feared their interest was in
danger of being crystallized in a false shape and directed into
erroneous channels.
This ignorance will always remain until English people go to Russia
and learn to know the Russian people at first hand. It is not enough
to be acquainted with a certain number of Russian writers; I say a
certain number advisedly, because, although it is true that such
writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev have long been naturalized in England,
it is equally true that some of the greatest and most typical of
Russian authors have not yet been translated.
There is in England no complete translation of Pushkin. This is much
the same as though there were in Russia no complete translation of
Shakespeare or Milton. I do not mean by this that Pushkin is as great
a poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean that he is the most
national and the most important of all Russian writers. There is no
translation of Saltykov, the greatest of Russian satirists; there is
no complete translation of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists,
while Russian criticism and philosophy, as well as almost the whole of
Russian poetry, is completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge
of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit of literature,
consists in, is still a sealed book so far as England is concerned.
M. B.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE ORIGINS 9
II THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN 30
III LERMONTOV 101
IV THE AGE OF PROSE 126
V THE EPOCH OF REFORM 159
VI TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY 196
VII THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY 226
CONCLUSION 243
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 251
INDEX 254
_The following volumes of kindred interest have already been
published in the Library:_
27. English Literature: Mediæval. By W. P. Ker.
43. English Literature: Modern. G. H. Mair.
35. Landmarks of French Literature. G. L. Strachey.
65. The Literature of Germany. Prof. J. G. Robertson, Ph.D.
AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGINS
For the purposes of the average Russian, and still more for the
purposes of the foreigner, Russian literature begins with the
nineteenth century, that is to say with the reign of Alexander I. It
was then that the literary fruits on which Russia has since fed were
born. The seeds were sown, of course, centuries earlier; but the
history of Russian literature up to the nineteenth century is not a
history of literature, it is the history of Russia. It may well be
objected that it is difficult to separate Russian literature from
Russian history; that for the understanding of Russian literature an
understanding of Russian history is indispensable. This is probably
true; but, in a sketch of this dimension, it would be quite
impossible to give even an adequate outline of all the vicissitudes in
the life of the Russian people which have helped and hindered,
blighted and fostered the growth of the Russian tree of letters. All
that one can do is to mention some of the chief landmarks amongst the
events which directly affected the growth of Russian literature until
the dawn of that epoch when its fruits became palpable to Russia and
to the world.
The first of these facts is the existence of a Slav race on the banks
of the Dnieper in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the growth of
cities and trade centres such as Kiev, Smolensk, and Novgorod, which
seem already to have been considerable settlements when the earliest
Russian records were written. Of these, from the point of view of
literature, Kiev was the most important. Kiev on the Dnieper was the
mother of Russian culture; Moscow and St. Petersburg became afterwards
the heirs of Kiev.
Another factor of vital historical importance which had an indirect
effect on the history of Russian literature was the coming of the
Norsemen into Russia at the beginning of the ninth century. They came
as armed merchants from Scandinavia; they founded and organized
principalities; they took Novgorod and Kiev. The Scandinavian Viking
became the Russian _Kniaz_, and the Varanger principality of Kiev
became the kernel of the Russian State. In the course of time, the
Norsemen became merged in the Slavs, but left traces of their origin
in the Sagas, the _Byliny_, which spread from Kiev all over Russia,
and still survive in some distant governments. Hence the Norse names
Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga), Igor (Ingvar). The word Russian, _Rus_,
the origin and etymology of which are shrouded in obscurity, was first
applied to the men-at-arms who formed the higher class of society in
the early Varanger states.
The next determining factor in the early history of Russian literature
is the Church. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, married the sister of the
Emperor of Byzantium and was baptized; henceforward Christianity began
to spread (987-8), but the momentous fact is that it was the
Christianity of the East. The pearl of the Gospels, says Soloviev, was
covered over with the dust of Byzantium, and Russia was committed to
the Greek tradition, the Greek rivalry with the West and was
consequently excluded from the civilization of the West and the great
intellectual community of which Rome was the centre. This fact is of
far-reaching and momentous importance. No less important was the
introduction of the Slavonic liturgy, which was invented by two Greek
brothers from Saloniki, in the ninth century, who tried to force their
Macedonian dialect on all the Slavs, and succeeded in the case of
Bulgaria and Servia. A century or so later it reached the Russian
Slavs. Through Bulgaria, the Russians acquired a ready-made literature
and a written language in a dialect which was partly Bulgarian and
partly Macedonian, or rather Macedonian with Bulgarian modifications.
The possession of a written language acted as a lever as far as
culture was concerned. In the eleventh century, Kiev was one of the
most enlightened cities in Europe.
The rulers of Kiev were at this time related to the Kings of France,
Hungary, Norway, and even England. The Russian MSS. of the eleventh
century equal the best MSS. of Western Europe of the same period. The
city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, and art. Byzantine
artists went to Kiev, and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West.
There seemed at this time to be no barrier between East and West.
Nothing could be more promising than such a beginning; but the course
of Russian history was not destined to run smooth. In the middle of
the eleventh century, the foundations of a durable barrier between
Russia and Western Europe were laid. This was brought about by the
schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The schism arose out of
the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry
which ever since then has continued to exist between Rome and
Byzantium. The Slavs, whom the matter did not concern, and who were
naturally tolerant, were the victims of a racial hatred and a rivalry
wholly alien to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell upon what some
may regard as an ancient and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in
its effects and in its results, this "Querelle de Moine," as Leo X
said when he heard of Luther's action, was as momentous for the East
as the Reformation was for the West. Sir Charles Eliot says the schism
of the Churches ranks in importance with the foundation of
Constantinople and the Coronation of Charlemagne as one of the turning
points in the relations of West and East. He says that for the East it
was of doleful import, since it prevented the two great divisions from
combining against the common enemy, the Turk. It was of still more
doleful import for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, which
soon became formidable, between it and the civilizing influences of
Western Europe.
But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the existence of this
growing barrier was not yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth
centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and "Byliny," already clearly
stamped with the democratic character and ideal that is at the root of
all Russian literature, and which offer so sharp a contrast to Greek
and Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the most popular hero is the
peasant's son, who is despised and rejected, but at the critical
moment displays superhuman strength and saves his country from the
enemy; and in return for his services is allowed to drink his fill for
three years in a tavern.
But by far the most interesting remains of the literature of Kiev
which have reached posterity are the _Chronicle of Kiev_, often called
the _Chronicle of Nestor_, finished at the beginning of the twelfth
century, and the _Story of the Raid of Prince Igor_. The _Chronicle of
Kiev_, written in a cloister, rich in that epic detail and democratic
quality that characterize the Sagas, is the basis of all later
chronicles dealing with the early history of Russia. _The Story of the
Raid of Prince Igor_, which also belongs to the twelfth century, a
prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable memorials of the
ancient written language of Russia; but by virtue of its originality,
its historical truth, its vividness, it holds a unique place in the
literary history of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast to the
_Chanson de Roland_.
_The Story of the Raid of Igor_ tells of an expedition made in the
year 1185 against the Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son of
Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together with other Princes. The story
tells how the Princes set out and raid the enemy's country; how,
successful at first, they are attacked by overwhelming numbers and
defeated; how Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end he escapes
and returns home. The story is written in rhythmical prose, with
passages where the rhythm has a more strongly accentuated quality as
of unrhymed verse. All the incidents recorded in the epic agree in
every respect with the narrative of the same events which is to be
found in the _Chronicle of Kiev_. It is only the manner of presenting
them which is different. What gives the epic a unique interest is that
the author must indubitably have belonged to the militia of
Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of
the events he describes with such wealth of detail, his knowledge was
at any rate first-hand and intimate.
But the epic is as remarkable for the quality of its style as it is
for the historical interest of its subject-matter. It plunges, after a
short introduction, _in medias res_, and the narrative is concentrated
on the dramatic moments which give rise to the expression of lyrical
feeling, pathos and description--such as the battle, the defeat, the
ominous dream of the Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of Igor on
the walls of Putivl--
"I will fly"--she says--
"Like the cuckoo down the Don;
I will wet my beaver sleeve
In the river Kayala;
I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince,
The wounds of his strong body."
* * * * *
"O Wind, little wind,
Why, Sir,
Why do you blow so fiercely?
Why, on your light wings
Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband's warriors?
Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds,
To rock the ships on the blue sea?
Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?"
Throughout the poem, Nature plays an active part in the events. When
Igor is defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the trees are bowed
to the earth with grief. When Igor escapes, he talks with the river
Don as he fords it, and when the bandits follow him, the woodpeckers
tell them the way with their tapping. The poem, which contains much
lamentation over the quarrels of the Princes and the injury ensuing
from them to the Russian people, ends in the major key. Igor is
restored to his native soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the
Church, and the people acclaim the old Princes and then the young
Princes with song.
A transcript of the poem, made probably at the end of the fourteenth
century, was first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, and
first published in 1800, when it made the same kind of impression as
the publication of the _Songs of Ossian_. It was not, however, open to
Dr. Johnson's objection--"Show me the originals"--for the fourteenth
century transcript of the original then existed and was inspected and
considered unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and others, but was
unfortunately burnt in the fire of Moscow.[1] The poem has been
translated into English, French and German, and has given rise to a
whole literature of commentaries.
Up to the twelfth century, Russian life was concentrated in the
splendid and prosperous centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth century
came a crushing blow which was destined to set back the clock of
Russian culture for three hundred years, namely, the Tartar invasion.
Kiev was destroyed in 1240. After this, the South was abandoned;
Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated from the East; the
Eastern principalities centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of Kiev
transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; and by the fourteenth century
Moscow had taken the place of Kiev, and had become the kernel of
Russian life and culture. Russia under the dominion of the Tartar yoke
was intellectually stagnant. The Church alone retained its
independence, and when Constantinople fell, Moscow declared itself to
be the third and last Rome: but the independence of the Church,
although it kept national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, made
for stagnation rather than progress, and the barrier between Russia
and the culture of the West was now solid and visible.
From the fourteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth
century, Russian literature, instead of being a panorama of various
and equally splendid periods of production, such as the Elizabethan
epoch, the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, or, as in France,
the Renaissance, the _Grand Siècle_, and the philosophic era of the
eighteenth century, has nothing to show at all to the outward world;
for during all this time the soil from which it was to grow was merely
being prepared, and gradually, with difficulty and delay, gaining
access to such influences as would make any growth possible. All that
is important, as far as literature is concerned, in this period, are
those events and factors which had the effect of making breaches in
the wall which shut Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting in
that light which was necessary for any literary plants to grow, and in
removing those obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying her
rightful heritage among the rest of her sister European nations: a
heritage which she had well employed in earlier days, and which she
had lost for a time owing to the barbarian invasion.
The first event which made a breach in the wall was the marriage of
Ivan III, Tsar of Moscow, to Sophia Palæologa, the niece of the last
of the Byzantine Emperors. She brought with her Italian architects and
other foreigners, and the work of Peter the Great, of opening a window
in Russia on to Europe, was begun.
The first printing press was established in Moscow during the reign of
Ivan the Terrible, and the first book was printed in 1564. But
literature was still under the direct control of the Church, and the
Church looked upon all innovations and all foreign learning with the
deepest mistrust. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Peter
the Great had a strange forerunner in the shape of that enigmatic
historical personage, the false Demetrius, who claimed to be the
murdered son of Ivan the Terrible, and who, in spite of his western
ideas, Polish manners, and Latin culture, succeeded in occupying the
throne of Moscow for a year. His ideal was one of progress; but he
came too soon, and paid for his prematurity with his life.
But it was from Kiev and Poland that the fruitful winds of
enlightenment were next to blow. Kiev, re-risen from its ruins and
recovered from its long slumber, became a centre of learning, and
possessed a college whose curriculum was modelled on the Jesuit
schools; and although Moscow looked upon Kiev with mistrust, an
imperative demand for schools arose in Moscow. In the meantime a
religious question had arisen fraught with consequences for Russia:
namely that of the revision of the Liturgical books, into the text of
which, after continuous copying and recopying, errors had crept. The
demand for revision met with great opposition, and ended ultimately in
producing a great schism in the Russian Church, which has never been
healed. But, with the exception of the Little Russians, there was no
one at Moscow capable of preparing texts for printing or of conducting
schools. The demand for schools and the decision to revise the texts
were simultaneous. The revision was carried out between 1653-7, and a
migration of Kiev scholars to Moscow came about at the same time. In
1665 Latin was taught in Moscow by SIMEON POLOTSKY, who was the first
Russian verse-maker. It is impossible to call him a poet; he wrote
what was called syllabic verse: the number of syllables taking the
place of rhythm. As a pioneer of culture, he deserves fame; but in the
interest of literature, it was a misfortune that his tradition was
followed until the middle of the eighteenth century.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, another influence
besides that of Kiev and Poland made itself felt. A fresh breach in
the wall came from another quarter. The German suburb in Moscow in the
seventeenth century, called the _Sloboda_, became a centre of European
culture. Here dwelt the foreign officers and soldiers, capitalists and
artisans, who brought with them the technical skill and the culture of
Western Europe. It was here that the Russian stage was born. The
Protestant pastor of the _Sloboda_, Gregory, was commanded to write a
comedy by the Tsar Alexis, in 1672, on the occasion of the birth of
the Tsarevitch. A theatre was built in the village of Preobrazhenskoe
(Transfiguration), and a play on the subject of Esther and Ahasuerus
was produced there. It was here also in 1674 that the ballet was
introduced. A regular company was formed; several plays translated
from the German were produced, and the first original play written in
Russia was _The Prodigal Son_, by Simeon Polotsky.
Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, Russia was ready for any
one who should be able to give a decisive blow to the now crumbling
wall between herself and the West. For, by the end of the seventeenth
century, Russia, after having been centralized in Moscow by Ivan III,
and enlarged by Ivan IV, had thrown off the Tartar yoke. She had
passed through a period of intestine strife, trouble, anarchy, and
pretenders, not unlike the Wars of the Roses; she had fought Poland
throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, from her darkest hour
of anarchy, when the Poles occupied Moscow. It was then that Russia
had arisen, expelled the invaders, reasserted her nationality and her
independence, and finally emerged out of all these vicissitudes, the
great Slavonic state; while Poland, Russia's superior in culture and
civilization, had sunk into the position of a dependency.
The man whom the epoch needed was forthcoming. His name was Peter. He
carried on the work which had been begun, but in quite an original
manner, and gave it a different character. He not only made a breach
in the wall, but he forced on his stubborn and conservative subjects
the habits and customs of the West. He revolutionized the government
and the Church, and turned the whole country upside down with his
explosive genius. He abolished the Russian Patriarchate, and crushed
the power of the Church once and for all, by making it entirely depend
on the State, as it still does. He simplified the Russian script and
the written language; he caused to be made innumerable translations of
foreign works on history, geography, and jurisprudence. He founded the
first Russian newspaper. But Peter the Great did not try to draw
Russia into an alien path; he urged his country with whip, kick, and
spur to regain its due place, which it had lost by lagging behind, on
the path it was naturally following. Peter the Great's reforms, his
manifold and superhuman activity, produced no immediate fruits in
literature. How could it? To blame him for this would be like blaming
a gardener for not producing new roses at a time when he was relaying
the garden. He was completely successful in opening a window on to
Europe, through which Western influence could stream into Russia. This
was not slow in coming about; and the foreign influence from the end
of the reign of Peter the Great onwards divided directly into two
different currents: the French and the German. The chief
representatives of the German influence in the eighteenth century were
TATISHCHEV, the founder of Russian history, and MICHAEL LOMONOSOV.
Michael Lomonosov (1714-1765), a man with an incredibly wide
intellectual range, was a mathematician, a chemist, an astronomer, a
political economist, a historian, an electrician, a geologist, a
grammarian and a poet. The son of a peasant, after an education
acquired painfully in the greatest privation, he studied at Marburg
and Freiburg. He was the Peter the Great of the Russian language; he
scratched off the crust of foreign barbarisms, and still more by his
example than his precepts--which were pedantic--he displayed it in its
native purity, and left it as an instrument ready tuned for a great
player. He fought for knowledge, and did all he could to further the
founding of the University of Moscow, which was done in 1755 by the
Empress Elizabeth. This last event is one of the most important
landmarks in the history of Russian culture.
The foremost representative of French influence was PRINCE KANTEMIR
(1708-44), who wrote the first Russian literary verse--satires--in the
pseudo-classic French manner, modelled on Boileau. But by far the most
abundant source of French ideas in Russia during the eighteenth
century was Catherine II, the German Princess. During Catherine's
reign, French influence was predominant in Russia. The Empress was the
friend of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot. Diderot came to St.
Petersburg, and the Russian military schools were flooded with French
teachers. Voltaire and Rousseau were the fashion, and cultured society
was platonically enamoured of the _Rights of Man_. Catherine herself,
besides being a great ruler and diplomatist, was a large-minded
philosopher, an elegant and witty writer. But the French Revolution
had a damping effect on all liberal enthusiasm, for the one thing an
autocrat, however enlightened, finds difficulty in understanding, is a
revolution.
This change of point of view proved disastrous for the writer of what
is the most thoughtful book of the age: namely RADISHCHEV, an official
who wrote a book in twenty-five chapters called _A Journey from St.
Petersburg to Moscow_. Radishchev gave a simple and true account of
the effects of serfdom, a series of pictures drawn without
exaggeration, showing the appalling evils of the system, and appealing
to the conscience of the slave-owners; the book contained also a
condemnation of the Censorship. It appeared in 1790, with the
permission of the police. It was too late for the times; for in 1790
the events in France were making all the rulers of Europe pensive.
Radishchev was accused of being a rebel, and was condemned to death.
The sentence was commuted to one of banishment to Eastern Siberia. He
was pardoned by the Emperor Paul, and reinstated by the Emperor
Alexander; but he ultimately committed suicide on being threatened in
jest with exile once more. Until 1905 it was very difficult to get a
copy of this book. Thus Radishchev stands out as the martyr of Russian
literature; the first writer to suffer for expressing opinions at the
wrong moment: opinions which had they been stated in this case twenty
years sooner would have coincided with those published by the Empress
herself.
Catherine's reign, which left behind it many splendid results, and
had the effect of bestowing European culture on Russia, produced
hardly a single poet or prose-writer whose work can be read with
pleasure to-day, although a great importance was attached to the
writing of verse. There were poets in profusion, especially writers of
Odes, the best known of whom was DERZHAVIN (1743-1816), a brilliant
master of the pseudo-classical, in whose work, in spite of its
antiquated convention, elements of real poetical beauty are to be
found, which entitle him to be called the first Russian poet. But so
far no national literature had been produced. French was the language
of the cultured classes. Literature had become an artificial
plaything, to be played with according to French rules; but the
Russian language was waiting there, a language which possessed, as
Lomonosov said, "the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the
softness of Italian, the richness and powerful conciseness of Greek
and Latin"--waiting for some one who should have the desire and the
power to use it.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Another copy of it was found in 1864 amongst the papers of
Catherine I. Pushkin left a remarkable analysis of the epic.