action of the censor the police dealt cruel blows to the authors.
One day Pushkin was called to the head of the department. They
believed that they had recognized in one of his satires a certain
gentleman, named N. G., who demanded that Pushkin be severely
punished. Unnerved by the cross-examination to which he was put, the
poet cried:
"But it isn't N. G. whom I have drawn!"
"Who is it, then?"
"It is you, yourself," replied the poet.
"That is madness, sir," the high dignitary cried out with wrath.
"You say that wood belonging to the state was stolen. And at the
time when these thefts were committed I was away."
"Then you do not recognize yourself in my satire?"
"No, a thousand times no!"
"And N. G. recognizes himself?"
"Not exactly, but as he is in the service of the government...."
"Well, is he its spokesman and champion? And why is it precisely he
who asks to have me arrested?"
"All right," replied the dignitary, suddenly becoming milder, "I
shall inform His Majesty of our conversation."
The affair ended without further complications. It should be noted
that the Tsar himself protected Pushkin, for Pushkin had got into
touch with him in order to influence him more successfully.
Nevertheless, this acquaintance was only a new source of suffering
to the poet. In the case of certain less known writers the
malevolence of the higher authorities often took on a tragic turn.
For a single poem in which the poet Polezhayev described a students'
debauch, the author was reduced by Nicholas I to the rank of a
common soldier. Sokolovsky, another writer of this time, not being
able to get a footing in literature, abandoned the pen, and like
many others, sought to forget his disappointment in drink. For
several years Hertzen was transferred from one place of exile to
another until he came to England. And how terrible was the fate of
the talented poet of Little Russia, Shevchenko, who was exiled for
many years to a corner of European Russia and forbidden to do any
writing or even painting, a thing that he loved above all! And
finally, who does not know the sad comedy of Dostoyevsky, who was
made to go through all the preparations for his execution, but was
finally sent to that prison which he has so wonderfully described in
his recollections of "The Dead House"?
The Damocles' sword of defiant authority was suspended over the head
of every Russian writer. The vocation of literature was filled with
danger and brought about actual tragedies in some families. Thus,
Pushkin's father, fearing that the fury of the authorities would
extend to him, began to hate all literature, and had serious
quarrels with his son. Griboyedov's mother threw herself at her
son's feet and begged him not to write any more but rather to enter
the service of the State. In Griboyedov we have a sad example of a
great talent virtually buried alive by the censor. His comedy,
"Intelligence Comes to Grief," is a masterful work, sparkling with
satiric warmth, the equal of which it would be hard to find
anywhere. This first work, rich in promise, was never published nor
produced. Discouraged, the author renounced literature, and on the
advice of his mother, accepted a position as ambassador to Persia,
where he was killed in a riot.
* * * * *
Not only does the censorship mutilate literary works, but it often
suffocates the inspiration of the author. The Russian press has
lately published a very interesting article on Nekrasov, explaining
the frequent interruptions of his activity by a momentary paralysis
of his inspiration. Often, he writes, the ideas and poetic forms
which come to his mind are so strong that he need only take up his
pen and write them down. But the thought that what he might write
would be condemned by the censor, stops him. It was, then, a long
struggle between the ideas which he wanted to express and the
obstacles which hindered him. And when finally Nekrasov had
smothered his inspiration, he was broken down and crushed by fatigue
and disgust, and for a long time he stopped writing. His friends
advised him to jot down his ideas in spite of all, in the hope that
they would be recognized by future generations when happier days
should dawn on literature. He was not successful, because in order
to create his genius needed to feel a close bond between him and his
readers. Thus the censor carried his brutal hand into the very
laboratory of thought.
Happily, since the movement toward reform between 1860 and 1870, the
Russian censor has become more lenient and now no one says what was
once said to the writer Bulgarin: "Your business is to describe
public activities, popular holidays, the theatre. Do not look for
other topics." The number of subjects open to the press has
increased. But the desire to live a free life has developed in
literature and in society alike, and as resistance to it has also
strengthened, the pressure has remained relatively the same. The
censor and the police continue to stifle the natural richness and
the power of the Russian mind. To-day, as before, Russian literature
is made up of just that small fraction of the whole which has
escaped government inquisition.
However, in spite of all the unheard-of constraints which weigh upon
her, Russia has already given us such great authors, that we need
not hesitate to say that on the day when she regains liberty of
speech and of pen, her literature will take its place among the
first in the world.
II
ANTON TCHEKOFF[2]
[2] This spelling has been adopted here, rather than Chekhov,
since it is more familiar to the public. In all other cases, the
_ch_ and _v_ have been retained.
"There is a saying that man needs only six feet of ground, but that
is for a corpse and not for a living man. It is not six feet of
ground that man requires, not even an entire estate, but the whole
terrestrial globe, nature in its fullness, so that all his faculties
can expand freely."
This is the proud profession of faith that Anton Tchekoff made on
entering the literary world. He was born January 17, 1860, at
Taganrog, where his father, a freed serf, lived. After attending
school in his native town, he took up the study of medicine at
Moscow. Once a doctor, rather than practise, he devoted most of his
time to literature. His career as an author does not offer us any
extraordinary situations. He owed his success, and later on his
glory, to severe and prolonged work. His literary talent manifested
itself while he was still a student. He began his career with
humorous short stories which were published in various newspapers.
They brought him enough for the bare necessities of life.
These stories have been collected in two volumes. They are very
short, almost miniatures. For the most part they are elegant
trifles, worked out with painstaking care. One feels that the author
had no definite goal in sight; he wrote them simply to amuse and
entertain his readers. One would search in vain for any sort of
philosophy. On the contrary, one finds there a rather significant
spirit, a gaiety, care-free, loquacious and, at times, ironical.
Unimportant people tell pleasant things about themselves or others.
All these men are a trifle debauched, talky, futile, and their
companions are flighty, intriguing little women who chatter
incessantly. Everything begins and ends with a laugh. This recalls
some of the early works of Gogol, but, we repeat, one finds no moral
element in this laughter, and these tiny comedies are in reality no
more than simple vaudeville sketches. Once in a while we find a sad
note; less frequently, we find the sadness accentuated in order to
present a terrible drama. Such, then, are the contents of the first
two volumes which came from the pen of Tchekoff.
However, this melancholy little note, met from time to time,
gradually grew in intensity in the third volume, until later on it
lost all trace of the old carelessness, and developed, on the
contrary, into a profound sadness. Tchekoff unconsciously gave up
the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his
attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this
time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last
Russo-Turkish war. This war, which, at the cost of enormous
sacrifices, ended in the liberation of the Bulgarian people,
awakened among the Russians a hope of obtaining their own liberty,
and provoked among the younger generation the most energetic efforts
to obtain this liberty, no matter what the cost might be. Alas, this
hope was frustrated! All efforts were in vain, a reaction followed,
and the year 1880 brought the reaction to its height. From then on
apathy followed in the steps of the great enthusiasm. All illusion
fled. A kind of disenchantment filled all minds. Those who had hoped
with such ardor, and had counted on their own strength, felt weak
and powerless. Some confined themselves to moaning incessantly. A
grey twilight enveloped Russian life and filled it with melancholy.
These are the dreary aspects that Tchekoff describes, and none has
excelled him in portraying the events of this hopeless reaction. His
stories and dramas give us a long procession of people who succumb
to the monotony, to the platitudes, to the desolation, of
existence.
It is in the following manner that one of his characters expresses
his ideas on the subject of this moral crisis:
"I was then not more than twenty-six years of age; nevertheless I
was conscious not only that life was senseless, but that it was
without any visible goal; that all was illusion and dupery; that, in
its consequences and even in its very essence, the life of the
exiled on the island of Sakhaline was very much the same as the life
that was led at Nice; that the difference between the brain of Kant
and the brain of a fly was very small; finally, that no one in this
world was either right or wrong."
This idea of the nothingness of life, with its extremes, monstrous
and profitless, is often found in the work of Tchekoff. His story
"The Kiss" is but a variation of this theme,--the absurdity of life.
Lieutenant Riabovich, under the influence of a chance kiss, a kiss
that was not meant for him, dreams of love for an entire summer; he
waits impatiently for the return of the pretty stranger; but alas,
his lovely dream cannot be realized, for the simple and cruel reason
that no one is waiting for _him_, no one is interested in him. One
day, on the banks of a stream, the young officer gives himself up to
his reflections:
"The water flows off; one knows not where nor why; it flowed in
exactly the same way last May; from the stream it flows into the
river, and then into the sea; then it evaporates, turns into rain,
and perhaps the very same water again flows by before my eyes.... To
what good? Why?" And all life appears to Riabovich an absurd
mystification and seems thoroughly senseless.
The hero of "The Bet" absolutely scorns humanity, with its petty and
its great deeds, its little and its great ideas, because he feels
that after all everything must disappear, be annihilated, and the
earth itself will turn into a mass of ice.
* * * * *
Tchekoff has given us innumerable rough sketches typical of people
belonging to the most diverse social classes. He seems to take his
readers by the hand and to lead them wherever he can show them
characteristic scenes of modern Russian society,--be it in the
country, in the factory, in princely dwellings, at the post-office,
or on the highway. He barely takes the time absolutely necessary to
depict in a few, appropriate words a state of mind or the secret of
a gesture. One would say that he hastens to express the totality of
life with the variety of his detached manifestations of it. That is
why his stories are short; often mere allusions stand in place of
actual development. And whatever domains or corners of Russian life
the reader, under the guiding hand of this perspicacious cicerone,
may visit, he will almost always go away with one predominating
impression: the lamentable isolation of Russia.
"The Windswept Grain" shows the reader a religious establishment,
where a young Jew, recently converted, has taken refuge. Here is a
young man, very impressionable and eager to learn, who has fled from
his home and his family, whose prejudices offended him. His family
tries every means to bring him back and to punish his apostasy.
In order to employ his energies effectively, the young proselyte,
who has embraced the new religion only that he may follow progress,
tries to get a position as a school-teacher. But the apostleship of
learning cannot satisfy his versatile mind: he continues to flit
from one thing to another, like a gypsophilia, driven by the wind
across the entire stretch of the steppes of southern Russia.
Then Tchekoff takes us to a postal station to show us another type
of the "Windswept Grain." This man, like the young convert, is a
dreamer, who puts heart and soul into any new idea that comes along.
He also has spent his life in searching for an activity
corresponding to his ideal. At present, being a widower, he is
obliged to support both himself and his daughter, who, while loving
him devotedly, never ceases to reproach him for the many
inconveniences of their uncertain existence. In the evening, a young
widow from a neighboring province gets off at the place where he and
his daughter are living. When she sees the young girl pouting, she
consoles her by caressing her with the tact peculiar to women. Then,
at tea time, she starts talking to the father. The idealist tells of
his life, and reveals to the young woman the plans that he has made.
The true sympathy with which she listens, and the respectful and
tender feeling that he has for her, inevitably makes the reader
think that fate has not brought these two people together in vain,
and that their lives will be united. This impression persists when
on the next day we find the young woman entering her carriage
assisted by her companion of the evening before. We wait for the
word that will unite this couple. But neither of them pronounces the
all-important phrase. The carriage leaves; the man remains for a
long time motionless as a statue, watching with a mingled feeling of
joy and suffering the distant road and his disappearing happiness,
which, but a moment ago, he seemed to hold in his hand.
After those who insist on always realizing their temporary ideals,
let us take up characters of a new type, those whom destiny has
irredeemably conquered, and who have finally resigned themselves to
their fate.
An example of this type is Sofia Lvovna in "Volodia the Great and
Volodia the Small." Married to a rich colonel, she has no other end
in life. The days pass, tiresome, monotonous, filled only with
visits and driving; the nights are interminable and sad near this
husband whom she does not love, and whom she married out of spite
and for money. Love for a comrade of her youth, Volodia by name,
fills her heart. But this young man, who has recently finished his
studies, is just as commonplace and just as debauched as her husband
and the society which surrounds her. Sofia Lvovna is not yet
resigned to her fate. She speaks of her aspirations to her childhood
friend, who, after getting from her what he desires, leaves her at
the end of a week. And Sofia Lvovna becomes frightened at the
thought that for the young girls and women of her station there is
no other alternative than to go on riding in carriages, or to enter
a convent and gain salvation.
"The Attack" gives us an example of the terrible feeling of terror
that suddenly enters the proud soul of a young man at his first
contact with certain realities.
The student Vassiliev, a young man of excessively nervous
temperament, has visited a house of ill-fame, and since then, he
cannot rid himself of his painful impressions. Sombre thoughts
beset his mind: "Women, living women!" he repeats, his head between
his hands. "If I broke this lamp you would say that it was too bad;
but down there it is not lamps that they break, it is the existence
of human creatures! Living women!..."
He dreams of several ways of saving these unfortunates, and he
decides childishly to stand on a street-corner, and say to each
passer-by:
"Where are you going? and why? Fear God."
But this desire soon gives place to a general state of anguish and
hatred of himself. The evil seems too great for him, and its
vastness crushes him. In the meantime, the people about him do not
suffer; they are indifferent or incredulous. The student feels that
he is losing his mind. They confine him. Later on, when, cured, he
leaves the alienist, "he blushes at his anxiety."... The general
indifference has broken down his aspirations, smothered his vague
dream.
In "Peter the Bishop," we see a man, good and simple, the son of
peasants. This man, thanks to his intelligence, has raised himself
to the rank of bishop. During all his life he has suffocated in this
high ecclesiastical position, the pompous tinsel of which troubles
him to such an extent that the cordial and sincere relationship
existing between him and his old mother, who is so full of respect
for her son, is broken off. After his death he is quickly forgotten.
The old mother, now childless, when she walks in the fields with the
women of the village, still speaks of her children, of her
grandchildren, and of her son, the bishop. But she speaks timidly of
him, as if she feared that they would not believe her. And, in
truth, no one puts any faith in what she says.
It is among the people and the working classes that man is most
completely rid of all traces of an artificial and untruthful
exterior; the struggle against misery does not leave much room for
other preoccupations; life is merciless, it crushes unrelentingly
man's dreams of happiness, and often does not leave any one to share
the burden of sorrows or even its simple cares. The short and very
touching story of "The Coachman" gives us an excellent example of
this loneliness. Yona, a poor coachman, has lost his son; he feels
that he has not the strength to live through this sorrow alone; he
feels the absolute need of speaking to some one. But he tries in
vain to confide his sorrows to one or the other of his patrons. No
one listens to him. Therefore, once his day's work is over, alone in
the stable, he pours out his heart to his horse: "Yes, my little
mare, he is dead, my beloved child.... Let us suppose that you had a
colt, and that this colt should suddenly die, wouldn't that cause
you sorrow?" The mare looks at him with shining eyes, and snuffles
the hand of her master, who ends by telling her the entire story of
the sickness and death of his son.
In "The Dreams," a miserable vagabond, whom two constables are
taking to the neighboring city, dreams aloud of the pleasant life he
expects to lead in Siberia, whither he hopes to be deported. His
gaolers listen to him not without a certain interest. They also
begin to dream ... they dream of a free country, from which they are
separated by an enormous stretch of land, a country that they can
hardly conceive. One of them brusquely interrupts the dreams of the
vagabond: "That's all right, brother, you'll never get to that
enchanted land. How are you going to get there? You are going to
travel 300 versts and then you'll give your soul up to God. You are
already almost gone." And then, in the imagination of the vagabond,
other scenes present themselves: the slowness of justice, the
temporary jails, the prison, the forced marches and the weary halts,
the hard winters, sickness, the death of comrades.... "A shudder
passes through his whole body, his head trembles and his body
contracts like a worm which has been trodden upon...."
Let us now look at those numerous stories of Tchekoff which treat of
peasant life: "The Peasants," "The Murder," "In the Ravine," and
others.
"The Peasants" is one of the most important of the stories which
treat of the country, and was recently conspicuous for bringing up
the question, violently discussed by the Marxists and the Populists,
of the life of the people in the city and in the country.
Nicholas Chigueldyev, a waiter in a Moscow hotel, falls sick and has
to leave his work. All his savings go into the hands of the doctor
and the druggist. As he does not seem to improve, he decides to
return to his native village, where his family is still living. If
the air of the country does not cure him, he will at least die at
home. He had left the village at an early age, and had never gone
back to visit. He goes home with his wife and his little daughter.
There he finds his mother, his father, and his two brothers and
their wives in the most abject misery. The whole family is entombed
in a dark and filthy "isba" full of flies. Nicholas and his wife
immediately see that it would have been better for them to have
remained in Moscow. But it is too late. They haven't enough money to
return; they must remain. A horrible life begins for the sick man
and his family. There are endless quarrels, blows, abuses. They
reproach one another for eating and even for living. They are angry
at Nicholas and his wife for having come. The latter is soon tired
of this existence. In the city Nicholas had broken himself of
country manners. He wants to go back to Moscow. But where find the
money for the trip?... His sickness becomes more acute. An old
tailor, a former nurse, who has been called in, promises to cure
him; he bleeds him several times and Nicholas dies. The widow and
her little daughter spend the winter in the village. The young
woman, who had watched during those long days of suffering, is now
broken down. When spring comes, the mother and daughter go to the
church, and, after praying at the grave of their dead, they go
begging on the highway.
In "The Murder" Tchekoff studies certain manifestations in the
spiritual life of the peasants. Matvey Terekof belongs to a peasant
family the members of which are all known for their piety; in the
village they are called "the singing boys." Very orthodox, they hold
themselves aloof and give themselves over to mysticism.
Instead of playing with his little comrades, Matvey is constantly
poring over the Gospel. His piety increases, he prays night and
day, hardly eats anything, and experiences "a singular joy at
feeling himself grow weaker through the fasting." One day he notices
that the priest of the village is less pious than he. He enters a
convent in the hopes of finding there true Christians. But even
there his disillusionment comes soon. Finally, he decides to found a
church of his own. He hires a little room which he transforms into a
chapel. He finds disciples and soon gains a reputation as a
thaumaturgical saint.
A sect, of which he is to be the head, is in process of formation,
when, one day, he finds that he is on the wrong track. He thinks he
has committed a mortal sin. Pride has taken possession of him; it is
the Devil and not God who now directs his moves. Conscious of his
error, he returns to orthodoxy, and, in the hopes of expiating his
wrong-doing, he humiliates himself everywhere and on every occasion.
But his cousin Jacob, having become infected with his earlier ideas,
practises them with the fanatic ardor of a neophyte. With his sister
and several other religious people, he locks himself into his house
to pray; he sings vespers and matins. In the meanwhile Matvey
decides that he must read Jacob a sermon.
"Be reasonable," he tells him repeatedly, "repent, cousin. You will
lose, because you are the prey of the demon. Repent."
Instead of repenting, Jacob and his sister vow an implacable hatred
against Matvey; so extreme is their feeling, that one day, at the
end of an altercation, Jacob, blinded by rage, kills his cousin.
He is judged and condemned. He is sent to the island of Sakhaline.
There, he languishes, suffers, and despairs. But, little by little,
his mind grows peaceful, and he has consoling visions. In prison he
is surrounded by pariahs and criminals, and the sight of all this
human suffering turns him again towards God, towards the religion of
Love, the religion of pity for mankind. And now he wants to return
to the country to tell of the miracle that has taken place in him,
and to save souls from ill and ignorance.