platitudes of existence compared with the unrelenting lessons of
death, of which Tchekoff speaks with such a nervous terror, can be
found in almost all the works of the best known Russian writers. We
find it in Byronian Lermontov, who sees nothing in life but "une
plaisanterie;" in Dostoyevsky, who has written so many striking
pages of realism on the bitterness of a life without religious
faith; and in the realist Turgenev, we find the same kind of thing.
Turgenev even reaches a stage of hopeless nihilism, and one of his
heroes, Bazarov,--in "Fathers and Sons,"--reflecting one day on the
lot of the peasant, considering it better than his, says sadly, "He,
at least, will have his little hut, while all I can hope for is a
bed of thorns." Finally, all the tortuous quests of the ideal toward
which Tolstoy strove, were suggested to him, as he himself says, by
his insatiable desire to find "the meaning of life, destroyed by
death."
It is sometimes maintained that this state of intellectual sadness
is innate in the Russians; that their sanguinary and melancholy
temperaments are a mixture of Don Quixote and Hamlet. Foreign
critics have often traced this despair to the so-called mysticism
peculiar to the Slavonic race.
What is there mystical in them? The consciousness of the
nothingness, of the emptiness of human life, can be found deep down
in the souls of nearly all mankind. It shows itself, among most
people, only on rare tragic occasions, when general or particular
catastrophes take place; at other times it is smothered by the
immediate cares of life, by passions that grip us, and, finally, by
religion. But none of these influences had any effect on Tchekoff.
He was too noble to be completely absorbed by the mean details of
life; his organism was too delicate to become the prey of an
overwhelming passion; and his character too positive to give itself
over to religious dogmas. "I lost my childhood faith a long time
ago," he once wrote, "and I regard all intelligent belief with
perplexity.... In reality, the 'intellectuals' only play at
religion, chiefly because they have nothing else to do." Tchekoff,
in his sober manner, has seen and recognized the two great aspects
of life: first, the world of social and historical progress with its
promise of future comforts; secondly, an aspect that is closely
related to the above, the obscure world of the unknown man who feels
the cold breath of death upon him. He was an absolute positivist;
his positivism did not make him self-assertive nor peremptory; on
the contrary, it oppressed him.
But why should this sad state of mind, which has been expressed by
great men in all literatures, be so exceptionally prominent among
the Russians, and particularly among the modern ones? The reason is,
without a doubt, because the political and social organization of
Russia has always been a prison for literature. Oppression had
reached its height during Tchekoff's life. This period was the
moment of suffocation before the storm. If Tchekoff were alive
to-day, now that the tempest has burst forth, his sadness would be
lessened, or it would at least have before it the screen which,
according to Pascal, people wear before their eyes that they may not
see the abyss, on the edge of which they pass their lives. Up to the
present time, the Russians have lacked these screens.
III
VLADIMIR KOROLENKO
"A long time ago, on a dark autumn evening, I was being rowed down a
rather uninteresting Siberian stream. Suddenly, at a bend in the
river, I saw a bright fire burning ahead of us at the foot of some
black mountains. It did not seem far away.
"'Thank Heaven,' I cried with joy, 'we have nearly reached our
stopping-place!'
"The boatsman turned, looked at the fire over his shoulder, and
again grasped the oars with an apathetic gesture:
"'That is still a long way off,' he murmured.
"I did not believe him, for the fire seemed to stand out very clear
against the infinite shadows. However, he was right; we were still
far away.
"Just so those fires, the conquerors of darkness, deceive us into
thinking that they are near, while they only cast their distant,
illusive rays into the night...."
It is with this sober description in "Little Fires" that one of the
last volumes of Korolenko's "Sketches and Stories" opens. This
simple picture makes a warm and clear impression on one's very soul.
It is itself a precious and welcome light.
At times when life is sombre, and when shadows fill the heart, when,
under the blows of despair and anguish, courage finally fails, the
mere existence of some brave spirit suffices to give a new birth to
hope and to rekindle the flame so that the distance is again lighted
up, and we again put our shoulders to the wheel.
Thus for more than thirty years in Russian literature Korolenko has
played the part of one of these clear, alluring lights. He has not
written a single book in which we do not find a fire that warms us
with its caresses even from afar, not one in which we do not feel
the vibration of a loving heart, which dreams of giving light and
joy to all unfortunates, and is confident that if they have not yet
had their equal share, they will surely have it some day.
Korolenko was born in 1853 in Zhitomir, in Little Russia. On his
father's side he is descended from an old Cossack family, and by his
mother he is related to Polish nobility. This double origin, so to
speak, is shown very clearly in his works, which are filled with the
melancholy and dreamy poetry of the Little Russians, and also with
the perennial hope so common among the Poles.
His father was a judge and enjoyed a reputation for strict
integrity. It was, in fact, often hard for him to ward off those who
wanted to thank him for his services. One day he had to accept a
gift. A merchant, whose case he had won, sent him a cart filled with
various objects, among which was a beautiful large doll. The little
daughter of the judge saw it, and at once took possession of it. The
judge, when he found out what had happened, ordered the gifts to be
returned immediately; but, because of the grief of the little girl,
they had to give up all thoughts of returning the doll.
The judge, who was a man of firm principles, maintained a severe
discipline in his family. He made a special study of medicine and
hygiene, and put his knowledge into practice by treating the sick of
the neighborhood. His children, although always well dressed, had to
go around barefoot. Their father was convinced that this was the
best way to toughen them. Besides, they were compelled, every
morning, summer and winter, to take a cold plunge bath. The children
did not like this way of doing things. Early in the morning they
used to run to the stable in their shirts, and there, cowering in a
corner, trembling with cold, they would wait for their father to
leave the house.
Korolenko remembers well this Spartan-like education, which inured
him to the severity of the seasons. Without this training he
certainly would have perished in savage and freezing Siberia, where
he lived in exile for several years.
At the death of the father, the family with its six children was
left without resources. The mother, a very good and kind woman,
opened a boys' boarding-school, and Vladimir, then fifteen years of
age, helped her as well as he could, and also earned money by giving
lessons outside.
In 1870, after having finished his studies in his native town,
Korolenko entered the Technological Institute at St. Petersburg,
where he spent two years in extreme poverty. He had to earn his
living as well as he could, by giving lessons or doing copying. His
mother could not help him at all, as she herself had to struggle
against adversity. The following will show how sparingly he had to
live in his youth: during his two years, he had a real substantial
meal only about once in two months, and then in a restaurant run on
philanthropic principles, where he paid only 30 copecks (about 30
cents). His regular meals consisted of bread, tea, sausage and
potatoes. But this was an epoch in which living was cheap: the wave
of democracy was spreading, and the "intellectuals" were trying to
get into closer touch with the people. The movement was so powerful
that many of the younger generation who could have done other
things took up this work; others, on principle, married humble
peasants. In 1872 Korolenko left for Moscow, and there entered the
Academy of Agriculture. He was expelled after two years and sent to
Kronstadt for having taken part in student manifestations. Several
years later, we find him again in St. Petersburg without a permanent
position; he was employed as a reader in a publishing house, and was
also attempting to do some writing. His first efforts took the form
of a series of sketches, published under the title, "Episodes in the
Life of a Seeker." He was at this time accused of being too much
inspired by the scenes of sadness and injustice of which he had been
a witness. In 1879 he was imprisoned and then deported to Viatka. He
remained there a year. Thence he was sent to the miserable town of
Kama, and a few months later to Tomsk, where he learned that they
wanted to exile him to Siberia. In a letter, published by a
newspaper, he eloquently protested against the persecutions of which
he was the unhappy victim. His protestation was answered by his
transfer to the frozen region of the province of Yakutsk in Eastern
Siberia! He passed three years in the midst of the "taiga," the
immense virgin forest which covers this country, in a village of
nomads whose miserable huts, very low and smoky, were scattered
along the shores of the Aldane. Here he wrote several stories, and
the "Dream of Makar," which was published two years later, and
greatly praised by the critics for its originality and its setting.
The dreary country around Yakutsk and the life that is lived there
made such a profound impression on the young man that even to-day he
speaks of that time with real emotion.
"My hut was at the extreme end of the town. During the short day one
could see the small plain, the mountains which surrounded it, and
the fires in the other huts, in which lived people who were either
descended from Russian colonists or deported Tartars. But in the
morning and evening a cold grey mist covered everything so thickly
that one could not see a foot ahead.
"My little hut was like a lost island in a boundless ocean. Not a
sound about me.... The minutes, the hours passed, and insensibly the
fatal moment approached when the 'cursed land' pierced me with the
hostility of its freezing cold and its terrible shadows, when the
high mountains covered with black forests rose menacingly before me,
the endless steppes, all lying between me and my country and all
that was dear to me.... Then came the terrible sadness ... which, in
the depths of your heart, suddenly lifts up its sinister head, and
in the terrible silence among the shadows murmurs these words: 'This
is the end of you ... the very end ... you will remain in this tomb
till you die....'
"A low and caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was
my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been
placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he
was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold
weather, I did not have a fire.
"Whenever I felt that I was going to be beaten in my struggle with
silence and the shadows, I turned to this wholesome expedient,--a
large fire."
In 1885, Korolenko, having returned from Siberia, went to
Nizhny-Novgorod, and in a relatively short space of time wrote a
series of stories which, two years later, were collected in book
form. Afterward, he became the editor of the celebrated St.
Petersburg review, the "Russkoe Bogatsvo,"--a position which he
still holds.
* * * * *
In all of Korolenko's works we distinctly feel the living breath
that inspires the artist, and the ardor of a fervent ideal. His god
is man; his ideal, humanity; his "leitmotiv," the poetry of human
suffering. This intimate connection with all that is human is to
be found in his psychological analysis as well as in his
descriptions of natural phenomena. Both God and nature are in turn
spiritualized and humanized. Korolenko looks at life from a human
standpoint; the world which he describes is made up wholly of men
and exists for them only. He has a very clear philosophy, and a
conscience aware of the duties it has to perform. If he has not
opened up hitherto unknown paths, nor made new roads, he has
himself nevertheless passed through terrible experiences; he has
been a prey to profound sorrows and doubts, and in spite of all, he
has kept his love for the people intact, and deeply pities their
ignorance and abasement. His work constantly recalls to our minds
the theory that the cultivated classes are in debt to the people
for the education which they have received at the people's expense.
This is the great moral principle which governs the conscience of
the Russian "intellectuals." It is in this sense then, that
Korolenko may be said to continue the literature of 1870, and to be
the successor of Zlatovratsky and Uspensky. But he has reincarnated
this past in new forms, which naturally result from the activity of
his far-sighted, powerful intelligence. We do not find in his work
either the nervousness, often sickly, which pervades the works of
Uspensky, or the optimism of Zlatovratsky, which often excessively
idealizes the life of the Russian peasant, who is the principal
hero of all his works. Korolenko, because he puts a high value on
human personality, perfectly appreciates the terrible struggle that
man has to make in order to secure his rights. A desire for justice
on the one hand, and a defence of man's dignity on the other, form
the very essence of the talent of this author, and it is with these
feelings that he observes the people on whom injustice weighs most
heavily and who have merely remnants of human dignity left in their
make-up,--for in general, these people are not those whom fate has
overcome. Most of them lead a hard and gloomy life beset with
misfortunes. Many of them are vagabonds, escaped convicts,
drunkards, murderers, who are bowed down with misery, and have no
wish except to escape the mortal dangers of the Siberian forests
and marshes. On opening any of Korolenko's books we find ourselves,
to use his own words, in "bad company." He does not flatter his
heroes, he does not make gentlemen of them; they are not even men,
but rather human rubbish.
"Because I knew a lot about the world," he writes, "I knew that
there were people who had lost every vestige of humanity. I knew
that they were corroded with vice and sunk deep in debauchery, in
which they lived contented. But when the recollection of these
beings surged through my mind, enveloped in the mists of the past, I
saw nothing but a terrible tragedy, and felt only an inexpressible
sorrow...."
This author does not give any judgment on life; he does not condemn
it and does not nourish a preconceived spite against it, but his sad
heart overflows with pity, and, if he approaches this life, it is
with the balm of love, in order to try to dress its terrible wounds.
For Korolenko, the sufferings of existence atone for its injustice;
he does not perceive the iniquities that surround him except through
the prism of sorrow.
* * * * *
From the very beginning of his literary career, in his first book,
"Episodes in the Life of a Seeker," Korolenko shows himself to be a
seeker after truth. With him, the understanding of life, so ardently
sought after, is never summed up in a single solution. He dreams of
it constantly; at times, he seems to have found it, but he loses
track of it again and starts all over.
This groping about resulted in a moral crisis in which he looked
forward to death with joy. Beset with the thought of suicide, he
often prowled around railroad platforms and looked at the
car-wheels.
"I went there and came back again," he writes, "depressed by my
realization of the stupidity of life. The snow was falling all
around me, and shaping itself into a frozen carpet, the telegraph
poles shivered as if they were cold through and through, and on the
other side of the road, on a slope, shone the sad little light of
the watchman's tower. There, in the darkness, lived a whole family.
Through the shadows the little red fire seemed to be as desolate as
the family. The children were scrofulous and suffered; the mother
was thin and sickly. To procreate and to bury! Such was the life of
the father, probably the most unfortunate of all, because the
household depended wholly upon him, and he saw no gleam of hope
anywhere. He bore this condition of things, because, in his
simplicity, he believed in a superior will, and thought that his
misery was inevitable. The resignation of this man, the terrible
bareness of his obscure existence, oppressed me. If I could bear the
sight of it, it was only because I hoped; I thought that we should
soon find the road which makes life happier, more agreeable to every
one. How, where, in what manner? What a mystery! But the future
beauty of life was in the search for it."
* * * * *
The observations that Korolenko was able to make were many and
diverse. By going all over Russia he gathered inexhaustible riches,
in the form of anecdotes and actual experiences. This can be easily
realized when we consider the sumptuous variety of his descriptions.
Where do we not go, and whom do we not meet in his books? First, we
are in a peaceful little town of the southwest, then in the thick
woods of Poliyessye, in the snow-covered and frozen Siberian
forests, or in the valleys of Sakhaline, inhabited by half-breed
Russians and escaped convicts, not to mention the innumerable
sectarians who fill the Siberian prisons. And Korolenko never
repeats. Not even a detail occurs more than once. Each of his works
is a little world in itself. The author, moreover, unlike other
writers, is never satisfied with pale sketches; each character is
shown in full relief, each picture is absolutely finished. This
wholeness, this finish which does not hurt the harmony of the
proportions, is a precious quality, very rare in our time.
* * * * *
The "Sketches of a Siberian Tourist," published in 1896, in which
bandits of various odd types tell thrilling tales of nocturnal
attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The
postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of
stature, audacious and clever, he exercises a mysterious influence
over the brigands, whom he inspires with a superstitious terror.
Most of them, thinking him invulnerable, do not dare attack the
travelers whom he is driving.
That same year another work of Korolenko's appeared, called: "In Bad
Company,"--a sort of autobiography which added to his renown. The
story, poetically simple, is laid in a provincial town. The hero is
a little, seven-year-old boy called Volodya. He is the son of the
local judge. The mother has been dead for a long time, and the
father, in his sorrow, more or less loses track of his children, who
roam about unwatched.
The little town has its historic legends; it boasts of the ruins of
a castle, which in times gone by was inhabited by rich Polish
counts, whose descendants, having become poor, have long since left
their manorial home. The castle has served as a refuge for a nomadic
population. Expelled by the count's agent, this little band has
taken up its abode in a dilapidated chapel in the crypts of a
cemetery.
The chief of this barefoot brigade is called Tibertius Droba. He has
two children: Vanek, a large, dark-haired lad, whom one sees
wandering about the village with a sullen look on his face, and
Maroussya, a small and thin child, who is gradually fading away in
the darkness of her cellar-like home.
While strolling about one day, Volodya, impelled by his childish
curiosity, decides, with two of his friends, to explore the chapel.
He meets there Tibertius' children and they strike up a friendship.
The description of the ruins and of the superstitious fear of the
children gives an opportunity for some exquisite pages. If the
little vagabonds are hungry, poor Volodya, who himself is without
love or caresses, suffers still more, but every time that he brings
the children some apples or cakes he feels that he is less unhappy,
because these offerings are accepted with such an outpouring of
gratitude. Gradually, the little lad gets to know all the
inhabitants, and becomes especially intimate with Maroussya, whose
eyes have an expression of precocious desolation.
"Her smile," says Korolenko, "reminded me of my mother during the
last few months of her life; so much so, that I almost used to weep
when I watched this little girl."
One day, Volodya brings her some apples, flowers, and a doll that
his little sister has given him.
"Why is she always so sad?" he asks Maroussya's brother.
"It is on account of the grey stone," he replies.
"Yes, the grey stone," repeated Maroussya, like a feeble echo.
"What grey stone?"
"The grey stone that has sucked the life out of her," explained
Vanek, gazing at the sky. "Tibertius says so, and Tibertius knows
everything."
"I was very much puzzled, but the force with which Tibertius'
omniscience was affirmed impressed me. I looked at the little girl,
who was still playing with the flowers, but almost without moving.
There were dark rings under her eyes and her face was pale. I did
not exactly understand the meaning of Tibertius' words, but I felt
dimly that they veiled some terrible reality. The grey stone was, in
fact, sucking out the life of this frail child. But how could grey
stones do it? How could this hard and formless thing worm itself
into Maroussya's very soul, and make the ruddy glow disappear from
her cheeks and the brilliancy from her eyes? These mysteries puzzled
me more than the phantoms of the castle."
Volodya's father is not aware that he is spending part of his days
in the cemetery, and knows nothing of his son's new friends. But one
day the secret is discovered, and a family storm follows. The judge
demands a full confession. Volodya heroically remains silent.
Finally, Tibertius himself pleads the child's cause so eloquently
that Volodya is not scolded and the father allows him to go and say
good-bye to his little friend, who has meanwhile died of privation.
The day after the little girl's funeral the whole band disappears
without leaving a trace behind them. "Later on," says Korolenko,
"when we were about to leave our home, it was on the grave of our
poor little friend that my sister and I, both of us full of life,
faith, and hope, interchanged our vows of universal compassion...."
Another short story, called "The Murmuring Forest," which was
published in the same year, made as much of a success as "Bad
Company."
* * * * *
But it is in "The Blind Musician" that Korolenko attains perfection.
This masterly psychological study does not present a very
complicated plot. From the very start the reader is captivated by a
powerful poetic quality, free from all artifice, fresh, spontaneous,
and breathing forth such moral purity, such tender pity, that one
literally feels regenerated.