king who, feeling that he was going to die, gathered his many
children about him and said to them: 'I will leave my kingdom to
that one of you who can enter a marble palace situated in a very
dense forest, and there light his torch from the sacred fire which
always burns there. The forest is full of wild beasts and venomous
serpents. The palace is guarded by three lions: Envy, Poverty, and
Doubt.'
"The young people set out on the road. But, while the older ones
search outside of the forest for a road that is not beset with
dangers, the youngest courageously starts on the regular path. He
there is exposed to many dangers and temptations. Already, his
strength failing, he feels that he is almost on the point of
succumbing, when a fairy appears and stretches forth her hand to
him. The young man blesses this providential aid. The fairy brings
back his courage and leads him to the palace."
Near them on the terrace, concealed by some plants, there sat a
young and beautiful woman who was eagerly listening to the story.
She was Kotik's mother, the fairy of the story, and the favorite
pupil of the painter. Some of her paintings had already made a
sensation.
The story ended, the father led the child to his room and with the
help of his nurse undressed him and put him to bed.
"He had started back towards the terrace, when suddenly two arms
embraced his neck, while two sweet lips pressed against his.
"The story was finished."
With these words the story really ends.
Kuprin shows the same grace and the same delicate emotion in his
recent story, "The Garnet Necklace," a tale which is analogous to
the legend of the troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, which has been made
into a play by Rostand in his "Princesse Lointaine."
Geltov, a Russian petty official, loves the beautiful Princess
Sheine with a desperate love. After long hesitation he decides to
send her a garnet necklace, with a tender and respectful note
enclosed. Alas! his gift is returned to him and the husband of the
princess angrily threatens the naive lover. The latter has not the
strength to face the situation, and commits suicide. But before
dying he writes to the princess:--
"I saw you for the first time eight years ago in a theatre, and
since that time I have loved you with boundless passion. It is not
my fault, Princess, that God has sent this great happiness to me....
My life for the last eight years has been bound up in one
thought,--you. Believe what I say, believe me because I am going to
die.... I am neither a sick man nor an enthusiast.... I consider my
love for you as the greatest happiness that God could have given
me.... This happiness I have enjoyed for eight years. May God give
you happiness, and may nothing henceforth trouble you...."
This naive and touching letter moves the princess. At the grave of
her unhappy lover, she recalls the words of an old friend of her
father's: "Perhaps he was an abnormal man or a maniac....
Perhaps,--who knows?--your life was illumined by a love of which
women often dream, a kind of love that one does not see nowadays."
* * * * *
One can judge by these summaries how little Kuprin "pads" his
stories. Most of them are reduced to a commonplace anecdote, which
the author is careful not to ornament in the least. He respects
truth to such a degree that he offers it to his readers in its
disconcerting bareness. He would think that he was failing in his
duty as an observer if he disguised it by any literary mechanism.
His work, stripped of all general ideas and of all subjective
aspects, is of a rather curious impersonality. Nothing ever betrays
his intimate thoughts or feelings. And it is in this respect that
he differs so much from most of the writers of to-day, who give
themselves up completely to their attractive heroes and vituperate
their odious people. Kuprin's objective tendencies are best shown in
his story called "Peaceful Life."
A retired official, Nassedkine, who has been enriched by the
gratuities which he has exacted from those who have had to do
business with him, has made it his duty to play censor in his little
town. He makes use of a very discreet and edifying method: to all of
the citizens whose honor is in danger, he sends one or more
anonymous letters telling them of the "extent of their misfortune."
Nassedkine has just finished writing two laconic notes, one of which
is to a young woman whom he tells to visit one of her friends on a
certain day, when, he assures her, her husband is always to be found
there. At this moment the church bells ring, and Nassedkine, who is
religious, goes to vespers. On entering, he notices a fashionable
lady, all dressed in black, in a dark corner of the church.
Nassedkine, more than any one else, knows the heart-rending story of
this woman. She had recently, against her will, married an
excessively rich wood merchant who was almost forty years older than
she. One day, when she thought that her husband had gone off on
business, he returned unexpectedly and found her in the arms of one
of his employees. He had been warned that same morning, by an
anonymous letter, that his wife was deceiving him.
"Beside himself with rage, the merchant threw his employee out of
the house, and then satiated his brutal jealousy on his wife. He
struck her with his big, hobnailed boots; then he called his
coachman and valet, made her undress completely, and had each of
them in turn lash her beautiful body until, covered with blood, she
fainted away.
"And as the priest at the altar was reciting: 'Lord, I offer Thee
the tears of a woman who has sinned,' Nassedkine repeated this
phrase with satisfaction. Then he left the church in order to post
the two letters he had just written."
This characteristic dryness does not come, as one is liable to
think, from ill-disguised insensibility. Kuprin's soul, on the
contrary, is of such exquisitely fine texture that all human
emotions vibrate there. The few times when he has expressed himself
are enough to convince the reader. He has often pitied women with a
discreet, fraternal compassion. He has also devoted many pages to
the sufferings of animals, be it the story of circus horses hurt by
the rolling of the ship, or the story of a kitten mutilated by
wolves. Only a few words are needed to make us tender and to bring
tears to our eyes. And it is with the eyes of a poet or a child that
he has viewed nature.
* * * * *
No one ever studies a Russian author without finally asking himself
what the author's influence was on the political manifestations of
society. The answer here is not hard to find: Kuprin, observer,
artist, and painter of life, has had no influence. If we except one
story, "The Toast," in which he shows his deep affection for the
oppressed classes, nothing in his work betrays even slightly his
opinions on this subject. Always, the thought of Kuprin deserts the
social struggle to fly into more vast and serene surroundings than
the theatre of wars and revolutions. And he is doubtless ready to
exalt above this terrible struggle, the one thing that he judges
eternal, the love of woman.
"There have been kingdoms and kings," he says in his beautiful
novel, "Sulamite," "and the only trace that is left of them is the
wind in the desert. There have been long and pitiless wars, at the
end of which the names of the leaders sparkled like stars: time has
effaced all memory of them.
"But the love of a poor girl of the vineyards and a great king[17]
will never be effaced and will always live in the minds of men,
because love is divinely beautiful, because every woman who loves is
a queen, because love is stronger than death."
[17] Refers to Solomon.
IX
WRITERS IN VOGUE
As we have already noted in the first chapter of this book, Russian
literature from 1830 to 1905 is distinctly different from European
literature: it is, above all, a literature of action and social
propagandas which puts the popular cause in the place of prominence.
This cause has been abandoned by several writers during the last
few years. From 1905 to 1910, an evolution, accelerated by the
most audacious hopes and the most lively beliefs, has transformed
the story and the novel, and has brought to the front certain
authors who, up to this time, had scarcely been known. It seems
as if suddenly the ancient tradition of Russian literature had
been broken. Contrary to the rule of their predecessors, whose
thoughts were on justice and liberty, and whose works breathe
forth a wholesome quality, a large number of the present writers
have been gradually attracted by metaphysical questions, which
fill their works with a veritable chaos of morbid conceptions and
disenchantment. Some express with acuteness man's unconquerable
fear of life or death; others treat of the divine or satanic
principles in man; still others study, with a sickly passion, the
problems of the flesh in all of its manifestations.[18]
[18] Happily, this literary crisis seems to have been ephemeral.
Since the beginning of 1910, according to a Russian critic, "the
salubrity of the atmosphere" has been accomplished. The "cursed
questions" are less prominent in recent works, and it seems that
the crisis which desolated Russian literature for several years
has come to an end, and that the writers are going back to the old
traditions of Russian literature.
Among the latter, Michael Artzybashev is a writer of great breadth,
whose erotic tendencies have spoiled some of his best traits. His
novel, "Sanine," which recently caused so much talk, pretends to
paint the youth of to-day in Russia. If we believed the author, we
should conclude that the above-mentioned youth consisted of
hysterical people in whom chastity was the least of virtues.
The heroes of his novel are two representatives of the revolutionary
youth, Sanine and Yuri Svagorich. Both of them have deserted "the
cause," Sanine, through lassitude, and Yuri, who has met nothing but
a despairing indifference among those whom he wanted to save from
"the oppression of the shadows," through scorn. Yuri, "a man of the
past," is an "intellectual" entirely impregnated with generous
altruism, haunted by social and political preoccupations. But he is
also a "failure" who falls from one deception into another, because
he is thoroughly powerless to combat life.
On the other hand, his friend, Vladimir Sanine, "the man of the
future," is, without a doubt, capable of living. None is freer than
he from all social and political preoccupations, and none is more
than he resolved to obey only his lucid egotism, or the suggestions
of his instincts.
These two young fellows meet, one summer, in the country. Yuri lives
with his father, a retired colonel; Sanine, with his mother.
Sanine's sister, Lida, is in love with the officer Zaroudine, who
abandons her later when she is with child. Lida wants to commit
suicide, but Sanine stops her and proposes that she marry Dr.
Novikov, who has been in love with her for a long time. Parallel to
the history of Lida, the life story of Karsavina is presented. Yuri
falls in love with this young and pretty school-teacher. But,
although she returns Yuri's love, the young girl, in a moment of
passion, gives herself to Sanine, whom she does not love. Disgusted
with life, feeling himself weak, neurasthenic, and sick, Yuri, only
twenty-six years of age, commits suicide. Karsavina, terribly
affected by this act of despair, leaves Sanine. And the latter,
after Yuri's funeral, disappears from the city....
All the characters in the book, from Sanine to Karsavina, are
continually preyed upon by carnal desires. Long passages of funereal
scenes alternate with pictures of the transports of love and the
descriptions of masculine and feminine bodies. "Your body proclaims
the truth, your reason lies." This is the "leitmotiv" of all the
theories that the characters in the book preach.
Let us hasten to add to the praise of the Russian public, that the
enormous success of "Sanine" was not justified by the extreme
licentiousness of the book, but by the eloquence with which the
author claims the right of free love for man and woman.
Although its success was less than that of "Sanine," Artzybashev's
second novel, "Morning Shadows," is more interesting and is more
realistic than his first.
Tired of their sometimes happy, sometimes monotonous existence, two
young people from the provinces, Lisa and Dora, go to St. Petersburg
to take some courses there and to join the revolutionary movement.
They have read Nietzsche, and want to "live dangerously." In order
to realize this project, Lisa has not hesitated to break off her
engagement with the charming and naive Lieutenant Savinov. However,
their existence in the capital is nothing but a long and bitter
deception: Dora's literary ambitions disappointed! the love of Lisa,
who has given herself to the student Korenyev, disappointed! In a
fit of despair Lisa kills herself, and her friend, who has not had
the courage to follow her example, falls victim to a terrorist
outrage which the author describes with rare power.
In his recent novel, "Before Expiration,"--which recalls "Sanine" to
our minds again,--Artzybashev has found some ingenious variations on
the old theme, "love and death." The story of the love affairs of
the painter Mikhailov, a cynical and brutal Lovelace who abandons
his mistresses when they are with child, is intermingled incessantly
with gloomy episodes, such as the agonies of an old man or of a
child. It is a book for "blase" people, a book which a reader with
moral health will not read without a certain feeling of uneasiness.
We are also indebted to Artzybashev for a series of highly colored
stories. "Sub-Lieutenant Golobov," "Blood," "The Workingman
Shevshrev," and "The Millions" are some of the most remarkable.
* * * * *
Like Artzybashev, but with less talent, Anatol Kamensky has written
little stories happily enough conceived. Thus, "Laida"--the story of
a worldly woman so taken up with liberty that she exhibits herself
nude before her husband's guests. Another story called "Four," tells
of four women taken from the most diverse social classes, ranging
from a young school-girl to the wife of a clergyman, who give
themselves to an officer at the end of a trip of twenty-four hours.
Then there is also the story of a woman who proposes to an unknown
man that he should play a game of cards with her companions, she
being the prize. This story is called "The Game." Finally, there is
the story of a young man whose agreeable profession consists in
living among others gratuitously and in seducing women under the
eyes of their husbands.
These stories are sadly spoiled by a crude philosophy and by
"anarchistic" protestations against present values.
* * * * *
Certain authors wander into far-away countries for their subjects:
to Sodom and Lesbos. The best known is Michael Kouzmine. This
writer, who happily began with stories of the Orient in the Middle
Ages, has now acquired a rather sad renown for himself with his
story called "The Wings," which appeared at the end of 1906. The
scandalous success which this book won, encouraged the author to go
on in the same manner. In poor verse, and especially in the story,
"The Castle of Cards," Kouzmine has exalted the sin of Sodom as
being the most supreme form of aesthetic emotions.
* * * * *
Closely related to these writers, although surpassing them all in
original talent, Feodor Sologoub is the most intellectual and subtle
of the Russian modernists. His principal work consists in depicting
the small provincial towns. His heroes are little bourgeois petty
officials, school-teachers, and country proprietors.
This chanter of birth and death, disgusted by the banality of
existence, has given us, under the title, "The Little Demon," a
pathetic picture of human baseness and sordidness, which cannot be
read without emotion.
The atmosphere of an arbitrary regime engenders almost always
"demonomania." The insecurity of life, and the consecutive
injustices in the cavils of the police administration, develop in
society a reciprocal fear and distrust. From feeling themselves in
danger of being denounced and menaced in their liberty, men rapidly
become the prey of terror. And the terrible life, sooner or later,
awakens demoniacal terror among the weak. But people of this sort
are legion in Russia, and Peredonov, the hero of "The Little Demon,"
represents this class so graphically that to-day Russian historians
and authors designate the era from 1880 to 1905 by the name
"peredonovchina." The following is a brief outline of the story:
Peredonov is a school-teacher in a provincial town. His fondest
dream is to be nominated primary inspector. He lives with his
mistress, the old dressmaker, Varvara by name. One of his mistress's
clients, a virtuous and philanthropic princess, makes him
understand, one day, that she will have him nominated if he marries
Varvara. Peredonov does not love his mistress; he simply lives with
her from habit and because she bears, without complaining too much,
his coarseness, his cavilling, and his bad humor. However, he will
marry her if the princess can get him the position he desires. But
will the princess keep her word? It is some time since she has let
herself be heard from. What is to be done?
"Marry," says his friend Routilov to him, when he is told the
condition of things. "I have three sisters," he continues. "Choose
the one you like best and marry her immediately. Thus Varvara will
know nothing and cannot throw any obstacles in the way."
"Done!" cries Peredonov, who has known the three sisters for a long
time. He chooses the youngest, Valerie.
"Go and tell her about it. I will wait for you in the hall and then
we'll go to the priest's together."
Alone, Peredonov again muses: "Doubtless, Valerie is pretty and I
shall be happy to have her as my wife. But she is young,
pretentious; she will demand lots of new clothes, she will want to
go out a lot, in fact, so much that I'll not be able to lay anything
aside. Moreover, she'll not look after the kitchen, I'll have poor
food, and the cook will rob us." Anguish seizes him. He knocks at
the window, calls his friend, and says:
"I've changed my mind."
"Ah!" exclaimed the other, horrified.
"Yes, I have reflected, and I have decided that I prefer the second,
Lyoudmila."
Lyoudmila consents, for, besides his personal fortune, Peredonov
occupies an enviable position, and the sisters are poor. She
hurriedly gets dressed; in a quarter of an hour she will be ready to
accompany him to the priest's.
However, Peredonov reflects: "Lyoudmila is pretty and plump; she
doubtless has a perfect body, but she is always jolly, she loves to
laugh. She will laugh incessantly and will make her husband seem
ridiculous." Full of fear, he knocks at the window: "I have
reflected," he cries. "I prefer the oldest, Darya."
"What an awful man!" cries his friend. "Hurry up, Darya, or he'll
leave all of us in the lurch."
Again Peredonov reflects: "Darya is nice, not young any more, and
economical; she knows life. But ... she is decisive in her
resolutions, and she has an energetic character. She is not the kind
who would listen to my observations. She could make life hard for
me, and use me ill. Frankly, do I have to marry any of the three
sisters? What will the princess say when she hears of my marriage?
And my position as inspector? How stupid it is to stand waiting in
this court! Without a doubt, Routilov ensnared me. I've got to get
out of this at any cost!"
He spits on all sides to conjure up the spirits, then knocks at the
window, and tells the amazed family:
"I am going away.... I have thought it over. I don't want to get
married."
Meanwhile, his position in school becomes intolerable; complaints
are registered against him; he is reproached with having ill-treated
and even with having beaten the poor children, and with treating the
noble and rich children with too much respect. His ridiculous and
evil passions cause him to be detested by all. Luckily, he will soon
be nominated inspector, and then he will say good-bye to all this
riff-raff. In the meantime, Varvara writes a letter, filled with the
most alluring promises, to which she signs the princess's name, and
has it mailed from St. Petersburg. Peredonov is at the height of
joy; but, being a prudent man, he does not want to marry before he
has received the nomination. He waits and waits for it, and,
meanwhile, he is not even sure of his position in the school. He
discovers enemies everywhere, and believes there are always spies at
his heels. In order to cajole the administration, he begins to
frequent the church, and to pay visits to the city authorities. He
assures the chief of police of his respect, and, in order to give a
glaring proof of his devotion to the established institutions, he
lodges information against a school-mistress of the locality. But
still the nomination does not come, and he lives in a continual
trance. The evil in him increases. He torments beasts and human
beings. He whips his pupils, throws nettles at his cat, and
maltreats his cook. He believes himself more and more in the power
of the demon, and terrible visions follow him:
"He saw running before him, a little, grey, noisy beast. It sneered,
its head trembled, and it ran quickly around Peredonov. When he
wanted to seize it, it escaped under the cupboard, only to reappear
a moment later...."
This strange book, written with rare perfection, had a great
success. To several readers who thought that they recognized the
author himself in the person of Peredonov (Sologoub had had the same
position as his hero for several years) the author replied in the
preface of a recent edition, by these malicious lines:
"Men like to be loved. They adore noble and elevated descriptions
and portrayals. They even search among the scum for a 'divine
spark.' They also are surprised and offended when any one offers
them a veracious and sombre picture. And most of them then do not
fail to declare: 'The author has described himself in his work.'
But no, my dear friends and readers, it is you, and only you, whom I
have painted in my book, 'The Little Demon.'"
In "The Charms of Navii" Sologoub happily blends fantasy and
reality. Revolutionary meetings alternate with improbable hypnotic
seances, and terrible corteges of corpses contrast violently with
scenes of platonic and ethereal love.
The plot of the story, "The Old Home," is not less distressing than
the preceding one. A young revolutionary, condemned to death by
court-martial, has been executed, but for his dear ones this death
has never been a reality. His mother and sister, and even the old
servant, have not the strength to admit his disappearance. They wait
and wait for his return until their own death carries them off.
Another story, "The Crowd," shows us a "fair" at which pewter
goblets are being given away. These so excite the greediness of the
crowd that a fray results, in which three children are seriously
wounded. While dying, the unfortunates have terrible visions of life
and humanity. "It seemed to them that ferocious demons were
chuckling and sneering silently behind human faces. And this
masquerade lasted so long that the poor little tots thought that it
would never end...."
Sologoub is, above all, a chanter of death. Almost all of his works
unveil a murder, suicide, or madness. Moreover, the author, who
shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who
affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the
possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from
reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions in
speaking of death.
"There is not a surer and more tender friend on earth than death,"
says one of his heroes. "And if men fear the name of death, it is
because they do not know that it is the real life, eternal and
invariable. Life deceives very often, death never. It is sweet to
think of death, as it is to think of a dear friend, distant and yet
always close at hand.... One forgets all in the arms of the
consoling angel, the angel of death."
The ever supremely correct and beautiful language of Sologoub shows
the power of a master, and it is most regrettable that an artist of
his merit should confine himself to so morbid an art.
* * * * *
These then are the principal authors--some of whom have enjoyed an
immense popularity--who treat the "cursed questions:" the rights of
the flesh, the problem of death, and other equally "cursed"
problems.