ROMANTICISM.―PUSHKIN AND POETRY.
Russia―all Europe, in fact―was now enjoying a period of peace. A
truce of twenty-five years lay between the great political wars and the
important social struggles to come. During these years of romanticism,
so short and yet so full, between 1815 and 1840 only, all intelligent
minds in Russia seemed given up to thought, imagination, and poetry.
Everything in this country develops suddenly. Poets appear in numbers,
just as the flowers of the field spring forth after the sun’s hot rays
have melted the snow. At this time poetry seemed to be the universal
language of men. Only one of this multitude of poets, however, is
truly admirable, absorbing all the rest in the lustrous rays of his
genius,―the glorious Pushkin.
He was preceded by Zhukovski, who was born twenty years earlier, and
who also survived him. No critic can deny that Zhukovski was the
real originator of romanticism in Russian literature; or that he was
the first one to introduce it from Germany. His works were numerous.
Perfectly acquainted with the Greek language, his version of Homer is
most admirable. He also wrote several poems in the style of Schiller,
Goethe, and Uhland; and many compositions, ballads, etc., all in the
German style. He touched upon many Russian subjects, themes which
Pushkin afterwards took up. In fact, he was to Pushkin what Perugino
was to Raphael; yet every Russian will declare that the new romanticism
of that time dates from Pushkin, and is identified with him.
Zhukovski was one of those timid spirits which are born to be
satellites, even though they rise before the sun in the pale dawn; but
they only shine with reflected light, and their lustre becomes wholly
absorbed in the rays of the rising luminary which replaces them.
I.
To realize the importance of the part the poets of this period were
destined to play, we must remember what a very small part of the
population of this vast country could be called the educated class.
At the beginning of the century, the education of the Muscovite
aristocracy was confided entirely to the Jesuits, who had been
powerfully supported by the Emperor Paul. In 1811, Alexander I.
replaced these foreign educators by native Russians, and founded the
Lyceum of Tsarskoe-Selo, after the model of the Paris Lyceums.
Students were admitted according to birth and merit only. Pushkin and
Gortchakof were the two who most distinguished themselves. The course
of study was rather superficial. The students were on intimate terms
with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and quartered in the imperial
palace with them. Politics, patriotism, poetry, all together fomented
an agitation, which ended with the conspiracy of December, 1825.
Pushkin was at once recognized as a master in this wild throng, and
was already famous as a poet. The old Derzhavin cast his own mantle
upon Pushkin’s shoulders and pronounced him his heir. Pushkin possessed
the gift of pleasing; but to understand his genius, we must not lose
sight of his origin. His maternal grandfather was an Abyssinian negro,
who had been a slave in the Seraglio of Constantinople, was stolen and
carried to Russia by a corsair, and adopted by Peter the Great, who
made him a general, and gave him in marriage to a noble lady of the
court. The poet inherited some of his grandfather’s features; his thick
lips, white teeth, and crisp curly hair. This drop of African blood,
falling amid Arctic snows, may account for the strong contrasts and
exaggerations of his poetic nature, which was a remarkable union of
impetuosity and melancholy.
His youth was passed in a wild whirl of pleasure and excess. He
incurred while still young the imperial anger, by having written
some insolent verses, as well as by committing some foolish pranks
with some of the saints’ images; and was banished for a time to the
borders of the Black Sea, where, enchanted by the delicious climate and
scenery, his genius developed rapidly.
He returned not much the wiser, but with his genius fully matured at
the age of twenty-five. For a few short years following his return,
he produced his greatest masterpieces with astonishing rapidity, and
died at thirty-seven in a duel, the victim of an obscure intrigue. He
had married a very beautiful woman, who was the innocent cause of his
death. Lending an ear to certain calumnies concerning her, he became
furiously jealous, and fought the fatal duel with an officer of the
Russian guard.
While we lament his sad fate, we can but reflect that the approach of
age brings sadness with it, and most of all to a poet. He died young,
in the prime of life and in the plenitude of his powers, giving promise
of future possible masterpieces, with which we always credit such
geniuses.
It is impossible to judge of this man’s works from a review of his
character. Though his heart was torn by the stormiest passions, he
possessed an intellect of the highest order, truly classic in the best
sense of the word. When his talent became fully matured, form took
possession of him rather than color. In his best poems, intellect
presides over sentiment, and the soul of the artist is laid bare.
To attempt to quote, to translate his precious words, would be a
hopeless task. He himself said: “In my opinion, there is nothing more
difficult, I might say impossible, than to translate Russian poetry
into French; concise as our language is, we can never be concise
enough.”
In Latin one might possibly be able to express as many thoughts in as
few words, and as beautifully. The charm vanishes with the translator’s
touch; besides, the principal object of this book is to show how the
peculiar type of Russian character is manifested in the works of the
Russian writers. Neither do I think that Pushkin could aid us much in
this study; although he was no servile imitator, like so many of his
predecessors, it is none the less true that he drew his material from
the great sources of European literature. He was educated from a child
in French literature. His father knew Molière by heart, and his uncle
was a great admirer of Béranger. When he entered the Lyceum he could
scarcely speak his mother-tongue, but he had been fed with Voltaire
from early childhood. His very first verses were written in French,
and his first Russian rhymes were madrigals on the same themes. In the
“Prisoner of the Caucasus,” written in 1824, we can feel the influence
of Byron, whom he calls the “master of his thoughts.” Gradually he
acquired more originality, but it is quite certain that but for Byron
some of the most important of his poems, such as “Onyegin,” “The
Bohemians,” several of his oriental poems, and even his admirable
“Poltava,” would never have existed.
During the latter years of his life, he had a passion for history,
when he studied the historical dramas of Shakespeare. This he
himself acknowledges in the preface to “Boris Godunof,” which is a
Shakespearian drama on a Muscovite subject. In certain prose works he
shows unmistakable proofs of the influence of Voltaire, as they are
written in a style wholly dissimilar to anything in Russian prose.
The _Slavophile_ party like to imagine that Pushkin, in his “Songs of
the Western Slavs,” has evoked the ancient Russian spirit; while he has
merely translated some French verses into Russian. We must acknowledge
the truth that his works, with the exception of “Onyegin,” and a few
others, do not exhibit any peculiar ethnical stamp. He is influenced at
different times, as the case may be, by his contemporaries in Germany,
England, and France. He expresses universal sentiments, and applies
them to Russian themes; but he looks from outside upon the national
life, like all his contemporaries in letters, artistically free from
any influence of his own race. Compare his descriptions of the Caucasus
with those of Tolstoï in “The Cossacks.” The poet of 1820 looks upon
nature and the Orientals with the eye of a Byron or a Lamartine;
while the observer of 1850 regards that spot of Asia as his ancestral
mother-country, and feels that it partly belongs to him.
We shall find that Pushkin’s successors possess none of his literary
qualities. He is as concise as they are diffuse; as clear as they are
involved. His style is as perfect, elegant, and correct as a Greek
bronze; in a word, he has style and good taste, which terms cannot be
applied to any of his successors in Russian literature. Is it taking
away anything from Pushkin to remove him from his race and give him to
the world and humanity at large? Because he was born in Russia, there
is nothing whatever to prove that his works were thereby modified. He
would have sung in the self-same way for England, France, or Italy.
But, although he resembles his country so little, he served it well. He
stirred its intellectual life more effectively than any other writer
has done; and it is not too much to call him the Peter the Great of
Russian literature. The nation gratefully recognizes this debt. To
quote one of his own verses:―“The monument I have erected for myself
is made by no mortal hand; and the grass will not have time to grow in
the path that leads to it.”
II.
Among the group of poets contemporaries of Pushkin only two are
really worthy of mention, viz.: Griboyedof and Lermontof; but these
two, although they died young, gave promise of great genius. The
first of these left only one comedy, but that is the masterpiece of
the Russian drama (“le Mal de Trop d’Esprit”). The author, unlike
Pushkin, disdained all foreign literature, took pride in all the
ancient Muscovite customs, and was Russian to the backbone. He painted
the people and the peculiarities of his own country only, and so
wonderfully well that his sayings have become proverbs. The piece is
similar to the “Revizor” of Gogol, but, in my opinion, superior to it,
being broader in spirit and finer in sentiment. Moreover, its satire
never will grow old, for it is as appropriate to the present day as to
the time for which it was written.
Returning from Persia, where he had been sent as Russian minister to
the Shah, he was murdered by a party of robbers, at the age of thirty
four.
Lermontof was the poet of the Caucasus, which he made the scene of all
his poems. His short life of twenty-six years was spent among those
mountains; and he was, like Pushkin, killed in a duel, just as he was
beginning to be recognized as a worthy successor to him. Byron was
also his favorite model, whom he, unhappily, strongly resembled in
character. His most celebrated poem was “The Demon”; but he wrote many
most picturesque and fascinating stanzas and short pieces, which are
full of tenderness and melancholy. Though less harmonious and perfect
than Pushkin’s, his verses give out sometimes a sadder ring. His prose
is equal to his poetry, and many of his short sketches, illustrative of
Caucasian life, possess a subtle charm.
III.
Lermontof was the last and most extreme of the poets of the romantic
period. The Byronic fever, now at its height, was destined soon to
die out and disappear. Romanticism sought in history some more solid
aliment than despair. A reaction set in; and writers of elegies and
ballads turned their attention to historical dramas and the picturesque
side of human life. From Byron they turned back to Shakespeare, the
universal Doctor. Pushkin, in his “Boris Godunof,” and in the later
poems of his mature period, devoted himself to this resurrection of
the past; and his disciples followed in his wake. The rhetoric of the
new school, not wholly emancipated from romanticism, was naturally
somewhat conventional. But Pushkin became interested in journalism;
and polemics, social reforms, and many other new problems arising,
helped to make romanticism a thing of the past. The young schools of
philosophy found much food for thought and controversy. The question
of the emancipation of the serfs, raised in the court of Alexander I.,
weighed heavily upon the national conscience. A suffering people cannot
be fed upon rhetoric.
In 1836, Tchadayef published his famous “Lettre Philosophique.” He
was a man of the world, but a learned man and a philosopher. The
fundamental idea of his paper was that Russia had hitherto been but
a parasite, feeding upon the rest of Europe, and had contributed of
itself nothing useful to civilization; had established no religious
reforms, nor allowed any scope for free thought upon the leading
questions of modern society. He said:―
“We have in our blood a principle which is hostile to civilization.”
These were strong sentiments coming from the mouth of a Russian; but
they afterwards found many echoing voices, which never before had put
such crude truths into words. Tchadayef was claimed by the liberals
as their legitimate father, his “Lettre Philosophique” was made a
political pamphlet, and he himself was regarded as a revolutionary
leader.
Just at this time, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel were translated,
and a great many young Russians now studied rationalism at its
fountain-heads, in the different German universities. The preceding
generation, which had become intoxicated with sentiment, was followed
by a generation devoted to metaphysics. This new hobby was ridden with
the enthusiasm peculiar to the Russians, and hairs which in Germany
were split into four parts were subdivided in Moscow into eight.
A writer nourished on the new doctrines, and who soon became leader
of the liberal school, appeared at this time, and exercised a strong
influence upon literature. It was the critic Bielinski. He was,
perhaps, the only critic of his country really worthy of the name. He
left a voluminous work, a perfect encyclopædia of Russian literature;
rich in wisdom and in ideas, giving a fine historical account of the
ancient literature, and defining with rare sagacity the tendencies
of the new. He threw down many old idols, and ridiculed the absurd
confidence in the writers of the classic period. In spite of his
admiration for Pushkin, he points out many of the weak points of
romanticism, and seems to fully realize the intellectual necessities
of his time. The great novelists of modern Russia have been encouraged
by his advice, and he has certainly shown himself to be a critic in
advance of his own time, and the only one Russia has produced. The
first sketches and tales of Gogol revealed to Bielinski the birth of
this new art. He declared the age of lyric poetry was past forever,
and that the reign of Russian prose romance had begun. Everything has
justified this great writer’s prophecy. Since the time of Pushkin,
their literature has undergone wonderful developments. The novelists no
longer draw from outside sources, but from the natal soil, and it is
they who will show us what a rich verdure can be produced from under
those Arctic snows.