E-text prepared by David Starner, Karina Aleksandrova,
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Transcriber's Notes

1. The Russian names normally do not have any accents; in this book they appear to represent the emphasized syllable. The use of accents has been standardized.
2. Corrected the division into stanzas for a poem "God" (O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright) on [page 94]. The translator used nine lines where ten lines were used in the original Russian poem.
3. Several misprints and punctuation errors corrected. Hover over underlined word in the text to see the corrections made. A list of corrections can be found at [the end] of the text.
4. Footnotes moved to chapter-ends.

CHURCH OF THE CATACOMBS MONASTERY AT KIEV.

A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections

BY

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

AUTHOR OF
"RUSSIAN RAMBLES," AND "THE EPIC SONGS OF RUSSIA"

NEW YORK CHAUTAUQUA SPRINGFIELD CHICAGO
The Chautauqua Press
MCMII

Copyright, 1902, by
THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS

The Lakeside Press, Chicago, Ill., U. S. A.
R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company

CONTENTS

1. The Ancient Period, from the Earliest Times to the Introduction of Christianity in 988 [1]
2. The Ancient Period, from the Introduction of Christianity to the Tatár Dominion, 988-1224 [39]
3. Second Period, from the Tatár Dominion to the Time of Iván the Terrible, 1224-1330 [47]
4. Third Period, from the Time of Iván the Terrible, 1530, to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century [50]
5. Fourth Period, from the Middle of the Seventeenth Century to the Epoch of Reform under Peter the Great [61]
6. Fifth Period, the Reign of Peter the Great, 1689-1723 [66]
7. Sixth Period, the Reign of Katherine II. 1762-1796 [80]
8. Seventh Period, from Púshkin to the Writers of the Forties [123]
9. Seventh Period: Gontcharóff, Grigoróvitch, Turgéneff [161]
10. Seventh Period: Ostróvsky, A. K. Tolstóy, Polónsky, Nekrásoff, Shevtchénko, and Others [181]
11. Dostoévsky [212]
12. Seventh Period: Danilévsky, Saltykóff, L. N. Tolstóy, Górky, and Others [229]

PREFACE.

In this volume I have given exclusively the views of Russian critics upon their literature, and hereby acknowledge my entire indebtedness to them.

The limits of the work, and the lack of general knowledge on the subject, rendered it impossible for me to attempt any comparisons with foreign literatures.

Isabel F. Hapgood.

New York, June 6, 1902.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN 988.

Whether Russia had any literature, or even a distinctive alphabet, previous to the end of the tenth century, is not known.

In the year 988, Vladímir, Grand Prince of Kíeff, accepted Christianity for himself and his nation, from Byzantium, and baptized Russia wholesale. Hence his characteristic title in history, "Prince-Saint-equal-to-the-Apostles." His grandmother, Olga, had already been converted to the Greek Church late in life, and had established churches and priests in Kíeff, it is said. Prince Vladímir could have been baptized at home, but he preferred to make the Greek form of Christianity his state religion in a more decided manner; to adopt the gospel of peace to an accompaniment of martial deeds. Accordingly he compelled the Emperors of Byzantium, by force, to send the Patriarch of Constantinople to baptize him, and their sister to become his wife. He then ordered his subjects to present themselves forthwith for baptism. Finding that their idols did not punish Vladímir for destroying them, and that even great Perún the Thunderer did not resent being flung into the Dniépr, the people quietly and promptly obeyed. As their old religion had no temples for them to cling to, and nothing approaching a priestly class (except the volkhvýe, or wizards) to encourage them in opposition, the nation became Christian in a day, to all appearances. We shall see, however, that in many cases, as in other lands converted from heathendom, the old gods were merely baptized with new names, in company with their worshipers.

Together with the religion which he imported from Byzantium, "Prince-Saint" Vladímir naturally imported, also, priests, architects, artists for the holy pictures (ikóni), as well as the traditional style of painting them, ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, and—most precious of all—the Slavonic translation of the holy Scriptures and of the Church Service books. These books, however, were not written in Greek, but in the tongue of a cognate Slavonic race, which was comprehensible to the Russians. Thus were the first firm foundations of Christianity, education, and literature simultaneously laid in the cradle of the present vast Russian empire, appropriately called "Little Russia," of which Kíeff was the capital; although even then they were not confined to that section of the country, but were promptly extended, by identical methods, to old Nóvgorod—"Lord Nóvgorod the Great," the cradle of the dynasty of Rúrik, founder of the line of sovereign Russian princes.

Whence came these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the infant Russian nation? The books had been translated about one hundred and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic tribe, the Moravians. This tribe had been baptized by German ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, in the Latin tongue, were wholly incomprehensible to their converts. For fifty years Latin had been used, and naturally Christianity had made but little progress. Then the Moravian Prince Róstislaff appealed to Michael, emperor of Byzantium, to send him preachers capable of making themselves understood. The emperor had in his dominions many Slavonians; hence the application, on the assumption that there must be, among the Greek priests, many who were acquainted with the languages of the Slavonic tribes. In answer to this appeal, the Emperor Michael dispatched to Moravia two learned monks, Kyríll and Methódy, together with several other ecclesiastics, in the year 863.

Kyríll and Methódy were the sons of a grandee, who resided in the chief town of Macedonia, which was surrounded by Slavonic colonies. The elder brother, Methódy, had been a military man, and the governor of a province containing Slavonians. The younger, Kyríll, had received a brilliant education at the imperial court, in company with the Emperor Michael, and had been a pupil of the celebrated Photius (afterwards Patriarch), and librarian of St. Sophia, after becoming a monk. Later on, the brothers had led the life of itinerant missionaries, and had devoted themselves to preaching the Gospel to Jews and Mohammedans. Thus they were in every way eminently qualified for their new task.

The Slavonians in the Byzantine empire, and the cognate tribes who dwelt nearer the Danube, like the Moravians, had long been in sore need of a Slavonic translation of the Scriptures and the Church books, since they understood neither Greek nor Latin; and for the lack of such a translation many relapsed into heathendom. Kyríll first busied himself with inventing an alphabet which should accurately reproduce all the varied sounds of the Slavonic tongues. Tradition asserts that he accomplished this task in the year 855, founding it upon the Greek alphabet, appropriating from the Hebrew, Armenian, and Coptic characters for the sounds which the Greek characters did not represent, and devising new ones for the nasal sounds. The characters in this alphabet were thirty-eight in number. Kyríll, with the aid of his brother Methódy, then proceeded to make his translations of the Church Service books. The Bulgarians became Christians in the year 861, and these books were adopted by them. But the greatest activity of the brothers was during the four and a half years beginning with the year 862, when they translated the holy Scriptures, taught the Slavonians their new system of reading and writing, and struggled with heathendom and with the German priests of the Roman Church. These German ecclesiastics are said to have sent petition after petition to Rome, to Pope Nicholas I., demonstrating that the Word of God ought to be preached in three tongues only—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—"because the inscription on the Cross had been written by Pilate in those tongues only." Pope Nicholas summoned the brothers to Rome; but Pope Adrian II., who was reigning in his stead when they arrived there, received them cordially, granted them permission to continue their preaching and divine services in the Slavonic language, and even consecrated Methódy bishop of Pannonia; after which Methódy returned to Moravia, but Kyríll, exhausted by his labors, withdrew to a monastery near Rome, and died there in 869.

The language into which Kyríll and Methódy translated was probably the vernacular of the Slavonian tribes dwelling between the Balkans and the Danube. But as the system invented by Kyríll took deepest root in Bulgaria (whither, in 886, a year after Methódy's death, his disciples were banished from Moravia), the language preserved in the ancient transcripts of the holy Scriptures came in time to be called "Ancient Bulgarian." In this connection, it must be noted that this does not indicate the language of the Bulgarians, but merely the language of the Slavonians who lived in Bulgaria. The Bulgarians themselves did not belong to the Slavonic, nor even to the Indo-European race, but were of Ural-Altaic extraction; that is to say, they belonged to the family now represented in Europe by the Finns, Turks, Hungarians, Tatars, and Samoyéds. In the seventh century, this people, which had inhabited the country lying between the Volga and the Don, in southeastern Russia, became divided: one section moved northward, and settled on the Káma River, a tributary of the Volga; the other section moved westward, and made their appearance on the Danube, at the close of the seventh century. There they subdued a considerable portion of the Slavonic inhabitants, being a warlike race; but the Slavonians, who were more advanced in agriculture and more industrious than the Bulgarians, effected a peaceful conquest over the latter in the course of the two succeeding centuries, so that the Bulgarians abandoned their own language and customs, and became completely merged with the Slavonians, to whom they had given their name.

When the Slavonic translations of the Scriptures and the Church Service books were brought to Russia from Bulgaria and Byzantium, the language in which they were written received the name of "Church Slavonic," because it differed materially from the Russian vernacular, and was used exclusively for the church services. Moreover, as in the early days of Russian literature the majority of writers belonged to the ecclesiastical class, the literary or book language was gradually evolved from a mixture of Church Slavonic and ancient Russian; and in this language all literature was written until the "civil," or secular, alphabet and language were introduced by Peter the Great, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Books were written in "Kyríllian" characters until the sixteenth century, and the first printed books (which date from that century) were in the same characters. The most ancient manuscripts, written previous to the fourteenth century, are very beautiful, each letter being set separately, and the capital letters often assuming the form of fantastic beasts and birds, or of flowers, or gilded. The oldest manuscript of Russian work preserved dates from the middle of the eleventh century—a magnificent parchment copy of the Gospels, made by Deacon Grigóry for Ostromír, the burgomaster of Nóvgorod (1056-1057), and hence known as "the Ostromír Gospels."

But before we deal with the written and strictly speaking literary works of Russia, we must make acquaintance with the oral products of the people's genius, which antedate it, or at all events, contain traces of such hoary antiquity that history knows nothing definite concerning them, although they deserve precedence for their originality. Such are the skázki, or tales, the poetical folk-lore, the epic songs, the religious ballads. The fairy tales, while possessing analogies with those of other lands, have their characteristic national features. While less striking and original than, for example, the exquisite Esthonian legends, they are of great interest in the study of comparative folk-lore. More important is the poetical folk-lore of Russia, concerning which neither tradition nor history can give us any clue in the matter of derivation or date. One thing seems reasonably certain: it largely consists of the relics of an extensive system of sorcery, in the form of fragmentary spells, exorcisms, incantations, and epic lays, or bylíny.

Song accompanies every action of the Russian peasant, from the cradle to the grave: the choral dances of spring, summer, and autumn, the games of the young people in their winter assemblies, marriages, funerals, and every phase of life, the sowing and the harvest, and so forth. The kazák songs, robber songs, soldiers' songs, and historical songs are all descendants or imitators of the ancient poetry of Russia. They are the remains of the third—the Moscow or imperial—cycle of the epic songs, which deals with really historical characters and events. The Moscow cycle is preceded by the cycles of Vladímir, or Kíeff, and of Nóvgorod. Still more ancient must be the foundations of the marriage songs, rooted in the customs of the ancient Slavonians.

The Slavonians do not remember the date of their arrival in Europe. Tradition says that they first dwelt, after this arrival, along the Danube, whence a hostile force compelled them to emigrate to the northeast. At last Nóvgorod and Kíeff were built; and the Russians, the descendants of these eastern Slavonians, naturally inherited the religion which must at one time, like the language, have been common to all the Slavonic races. This religion, like that of all Aryan races, was founded on reverence paid to the forces of nature and to the spirits of the dead. Their gods and goddesses represented the forces of nature. Thus Ládo and Láda, who are frequently mentioned in these ancient songs, are probably the sun-god, and the goddess of spring and of love, respectively. Ládo, also, is mentioned as the god of marriage, mirth, pleasure, and general happiness, to whom those about to marry offered sacrifices; and much the same is said of the goddess Láda. Moreover, in the Russian folk-songs, ládo and láda are used, respectively, for lover, bridegroom, husband, and for mistress, bride, wife; and lad, in Russian, signifies peace, union, harmony. Nestor, the famous old Russian chronicler (he died in 1114), states that in ancient heathen times, marriage customs varied somewhat among the various Slavonian tribes in the vicinity of the Dniéster; but brides were always seized or purchased. This purchase of the bride is supposed to be represented in the game and choral song (khorovód), called "The Sowing of the Millet." The singers form two choirs, which face each other and exchange remarks. The song belongs to the vernal rites, hence the reference to Ládo, which is repeated after every line—Did-Ládo, meaning (in Lithuanian) Great Ládo:

First Chorus: We have sown, we have sown millet, Oï, Did-Ládo, we have sown!
Second Chorus: But we will trample it, Oï, Did-Ládo, we will trample it.
First Chorus: But wherewith will ye trample it?
Second Chorus: Horses will we turn into it.
First Chorus: But we will catch the horses.
Second Chorus: Wherewith will ye catch them?
First Chorus: With a silken rein.
Second Chorus: But we will ransom the horses.
First Chorus: Wherewith will ye ransom them?
Second Chorus: We will give a hundred rubles.
First Chorus: A thousand is not what we want.
Second Chorus: What is it then, that ye want?
First Chorus: What we want is a maiden.

Thereupon, one of the girls of the second choir goes over to the first, both sides singing together: "Our band has lost," and "Our band has gained." The game ends when all the girls have gone over to one side.

The funeral wails are also very ancient. While at the present day a very talented wailer improvises a new plaint, which her associates take up and perpetuate, the ancient forms are generally used.

From the side of the East,
The wild winds have arisen,
With the roaring thunders
And the lightnings fiery.
On my father's grave
A star hath fallen,
Hath fallen from heaven.
Split open, O dart of the thunder!
Damp Mother Earth,
Fall thou apart, O Mother Earth!
On all four sides,
Split open, O coffin planks,
Unfold, O white shroud,
Fall away, O white hands
From over the bold heart,
And become parted, O ye sweet lips.
Turn thyself, O mine own father
Into a bright, swift-winged falcon;
Fly away to the blue sea, to the Caspian Sea,
Wash off, O mine own father,
From thy white face the mold.
Come flying, O my father
To thine own home, to the lofty térem.^[1]
Listen, O my father,
To our songs of sadness!

The Christmas and New-Year carols offer additional illustrations of the ancient heathen customs, and mythic or ritual poetry. The festival which was almost universally celebrated at Christmas-tide, in ancient heathen times, seems to have referred to the renewed life attributed to the sun after the winter solstice. The Christian church turned this festival, so far as possible, into a celebration of the birth of Christ. Among the Slavonians this festival was called Kolyáda; and the sun—a female deity—was supposed to array herself in holiday robes and head-dress, when the gloom of the long nights began to yield to the cheerful lights of the lengthening days, to seat herself in her chariot, and drive her steeds briskly towards summer. She, like the festival, was called Kolyáda; and in some places the people used to dress up a maiden in white and carry her about in a sledge from house to house, while the kolyádki, or carols, were sung by the train of young people who attended her, and received presents in return. One of the kolyádki runs as follows:

Kolyáda! Kolyáda!
Kolyáda has arrived!
On the Eve of the Nativity,
We went about, we sought Holy Kolyáda;
Through all the courts, in all the alleys.
We found Kolyáda in Peter's Court.
Round Peter's Court there is an iron fence,
In the midst of the Court there are three rooms;
In the first room is the bright Moon;
In the second room is the red Sun;
And in the third room are the many Stars.

A Christian turn is given to many of them, just as the Mermen bear a special Biblical name in some places, and are called "Pharaohs"; for like the seals on the coast of Iceland, they are supposed to be the remnants of Pharaoh's host, which was drowned in the Red Sea. One of the most prominent and interesting of these Christianized carols is the Sláva, or Glory Song. Extracts from it have been decoratively and most appropriately used on the artistic programmes connected with the coronation of the Emperor Nicholas II. This Glory Song is used in the following manner: The young people assemble together to deduce omens from the words that are sung, while trinkets belonging to each person present are drawn at random from a cloth-covered bowl, in which they have been deposited. This is the first song of the series:

Glory to God in Heaven, Glory!
To our Lord^[2] on this earth, Glory!
May our Lord never grow old, Glory!
May his bright robes never be spoiled, Glory!
May his good steeds never be worn out, Glory!
May his trusty servants never falter, Glory!
May the right throughout Russia, Glory!
Be fairer than the bright sun, Glory!
May the Tzar's golden treasury, Glory!
Be forever full to the brim, Glory!
May the great rivers, Glory!
Bear their renown to the sea, Glory!
The little streams to the mill, Glory!
But this song we sing to the Grain, Glory!
To the Grain we sing, the Grain we honor, Glory!
For the old folks to enjoy, Glory!
For the young folks to hear, Glory!^[3]

Another curious old song, connected with the grain, is sung at the New-Year. Boys go about from house to house, scattering grain of different sorts, chiefly oats, and singing:

In the forest, in the pine forest,
There stood a pine-tree,
Green and shaggy.
O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén!
The Boyárs came,
Cut down the pine,
Sawed it into planks,
Built a bridge,
Covered it with cloth,
Fastened it with nails,
O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén!
Who, who will go
Along that bridge?
Ovsén will go there,
And the New-Year,
O, Ovsén! O, Ovsén!

Ovsén, whose name is derived from Ovés (oats, pronounced avyós), like the Teutonic Sun-god, is supposed to ride a pig or a boar. Hence sacrifices of pigs' trotters, and other pork products, were offered to the gods at the New-Year, and such dishes are still preferred in Russia at that season. It must be remembered that the New-Year fell on March 1st in Russia until 1348; then the civil New-Year was transferred to September 1st, and January 1st was instituted as the New-Year by Peter the Great only in the year 1700.

The highest stage of development reached by popular song is the heroic epos—the rhythmic story of the deeds of national heroes, either historical or mythical. In many countries these epics were committed to writing at a very early date. In western Europe this took place in the Middle Ages, and they are known to the modern world in that form only, their memory having completely died out among the people. But Russia presents the striking phenomenon of a country where epic song, handed down wholly by oral tradition for nearly a thousand years, is not only flourishing at the present day in certain districts, but even extending into fresh fields.

It is only within the last sixty years that the Russians have become generally aware that their country possesses this wonderfully rich treasure of epic, religious, and ceremonial songs. In some cases, the epic lay and the religious ballad are curiously combined, as in "The One and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs, however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession, the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and is used as a means of livelihood by the kalyéki perekhózhie, literally, wandering cripples, otherwise known as wandering psalm-singers. These stikhí, or religious ballads, are even more remarkable than the epic songs in some respects, and practically nothing concerning them is accessible in English.

In all countries where the Roman Church reigned supreme in early times, it did its best to consign all popular religious poetry to oblivion. But about the seventeenth century it determined to turn such fragments as had survived this procedure to its own profit. Accordingly they were written over in conformity with its particular tenets, for the purpose of inculcating its doctrines. Both courses were equally fatal to the preservation of anything truly national. Incongruousness was the inevitable result.

The Greek, or rather the Russo-Greek, Church adopted precisely the opposite course: it never interfered, in the slightest degree, with popular poetry, either secular or religious. Christianity, therefore, merely enlarged the field of subjects. The result is, that the Slavonic peoples (including even, to some extent, the Roman Catholic Poles) possess a mass of religious poetry, the like of which, either in kind or in quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe.

It is well to note, at this point, that the word stikh (derived from an ancient Greek word) is incorporated into the modern Russian word for poetry, stikhotvorénie—verse-making, literally rendered—and it has now become plain that Lomonósoff, the father of Russian Literature, who was the first secular Russian poet, and polished the ancient tongue into the beginning of the modern literary language, about the middle of the eighteenth century, did not originate his verse-measures, but derived them from the common people, the peasants, whence he himself sprang. Modern Russian verse, therefore, is thus traced back directly, in its most national traits, to these religious ballads. It is impossible to give any adequate account of them here, and it is especially difficult to convey an adequate idea of the genuine poetry and happy phrasing which are often interwoven with absurdities approaching the grotesque.

The ballads to which we shall briefly refer are full of illustrations of the manner in which old pagan gods became Christian deities, so to speak, of the newly baptized nation. For example: Perún the Thunder-god became, in popular superstition, "St. Ilyá" (or Elijah), and the day dedicated to him, July 20th (old style), is called "Ilyá the Thunder-bringer." Elijah's fiery chariot, the lightning, rumbling across the sky, brings a thunder-storm on or very near that date; and although Perún's name is forgotten in Russia proper, he still remains, under his new title, the patron of the husbandman, as he was in heathen times. In the epic songs of the Vladímir cycle, as well as in the semi-religious and religious ballads, he figures as the strongest and most popular hero, under the name of "Ilyá Múrometz (Ilyá of Múrom), the Old Kazák," and his characteristic feats, as well as those attributed to his "heroic steed, Cloud-fall," are supposed, by the school of Russian writers who regard all these poems as cosmic myths, rather than as historical poems, to preserve the hero's mythological significance as the Thunder-god Perún.

He plays a similar part in the very numerous religious ballads on the Last Judgment. St. Michael acts as the judge. Some "sinful souls" commit the gross error of attempting to bribe him: whereupon, Michael shouts, "Ilyá the Prophet! Anakh! Take ye guns with great thunder! Move ye the Pharaoh mountains of stone! Let me not hear from these sinners, neither a whine nor a whimper!"

In Lithuania the Thunder-god's ancient name is still extant in its original form of Perkun; the Virgin Mary is called, "Lady Mary Perkunatele" (or "The Mother of Thunder"), according to a Polish tradition; and in the Russian government of Vilna, the 2d of February is dedicated to "All-Holy Mary the Thunderer." It is evidently in this character that she plays a part similar to that of St. Michael and Ilyá the Prophet combined, as above mentioned, in another ballad of the Last Judgment. She appears in this ballad to be the sole inhabitant of heaven, judge and executioner. With her "thundering voice" she condemns to outer darkness all who have not paid her proper respect, promising to bury them under "damp mother earth and burning stones." To the just, that is, to those who have paid her due homage, she says: "Come, take the thrones, the golden crowns, the imperishable robes which I have prepared for you; and if this seem little to you, ye shall work your will in heaven."

St. Yegóry the Brave—our St. George—possesses many of the attributes of Perún. He is, however, a purely mythical character, and the extremely ancient religious poems relating to him present the most amusing mixture of Christianity and Greek mythology, as in the following example:

In the year 8008 (the old Russian reckoning, like the Jewish, began with the creation of the world), the kingdoms of Sodom, Komor (Gomorrah), and Arabia met their doom. Sodom dropped through the earth, Komor was destroyed by fire, and Arabia was afflicted by a sea-monster which demanded a human victim every day. This victim was selected by lot; and one day the lot fell upon the king; but at the suggestion of the queen, who hated her daughter, Elizabeth the Fair, the girl was sent in his place, under the pretext that she was going to meet her bridegroom. Yegóry the Brave comes to her assistance, as Perseus did to the assistance of Andromeda, but lies down for a nap while awaiting the arrival of the dragon. The beast approaches; Elizabeth dares not awaken Yegóry, but a "burning tear" from her right eye arouses him. He attacks the dragon with his spear, and his "heroic steed" (which is sometimes a white mule) tramples on it, after the fashion with which we are familiar in art. Then he binds Elizabeth's sash, which is "five and forty ells in length," about the dragon's jaws, and bids the maiden have three churches built in honor of her deliverance: one to St. Nicholas and the Holy Trinity, one to the All-Holy Birth-giver of God, and one to Yegóry the Brave. Elizabeth the Fair then returns to town, leading the tamed dragon by her sash, to the terror of the inhabitants and to the disgust of her mother. The three churches are duly built, and Christianity is promptly adopted as the state religion of Arabia. In another ballad, Yegóry is imprisoned for thirty years in a pit under the ground, because he will not accept the "Latin-Mussulman faith."

Among the most ancient religious ballads, properly speaking, are: "The Dove Book," "The Merciful Woman of Compassion" (or "The Alleluia Woman"), "The Wanderings of the All-Holy Birth-giver of God," in addition to the songs about Yegóry the Brave, already mentioned. The groundwork of "The Dove Book" is of very ancient heathen origin, and almost identical with the oldest religious songs of the Greeks. The book itself is somewhat suggestive of the "little book" in Revelation. "The Dove Book" falls from Alatýr, the "burning white stone on the Island of Buyán," the heathen Paradise, which corresponds to our Fortunate Isles of the Blest, in the Western Sea, but lies far towards sunrise, in the "Ocean Sea." The heathen significance of this stone is not known, but it is cleverly explained in "The Dove Book" as the stone whereon Christ stood when he preached to his disciples. This "little book," "forty fathoms long and twenty wide," was written by St. John the Evangelist, and no man can read it. The prophet Isaiah deciphered only three pages of it in as many years. But the "Most Wise Tzar David" undertakes to give, from memory, the book's answers to various questions put to him by Tzar Vladímir, as spokesman of a throng of emperors and princes. A great deal of curious information is conveyed—all very poetically expressed—including some odd facts in natural history, such as: that the ostrich is the mother of birds, and that she lives, feeds, and rears her young on the blue sea, drowning mariners and sinking ships. Whenever she (or the whale on which the earth rests) moves, an earthquake ensues. There are several versions of this ballad. The following abridged extracts, from one version, will show its style. Among the questions put to "the Most Wise Tzar David" by Prince Vladímir are some touching "the works of God, and our life; our life of holy Russia, our life in the free world; how the free light came to us; why our sun is red; why our stars are thickly sown; why our nights are dark; what causes our red dawns; why we have fine, drizzling rains; whence cometh our intellect; why our bones are strong"; and so forth.

Tzar David replies: "Our free white light began at God's decree; the sun is red from the reflection of God's face, of the face of Christ, the King of Heaven; the younger light, the moon, from his bosom cometh; the myriad stars are from his vesture; the dark nights are the Lord's thoughts; the red dawns come from the Lord's eyes; the stormy winds from the Holy Spirit; our intellects from Christ himself, the King of Heaven; our thoughts from the clouds of heaven; our world of people from Adam; our strong bones from the stones; our bodies from the damp earth; our blood from the Black Sea." In answer to other questions, Tzar David explains that "the Jordan is the mother of all rivers, because Jesus Christ was baptized in it; the cypress is the mother of all trees, because Christ was crucified on it; the ocean is the mother of all seas, because in the middle of the ocean-sea rose up a cathedral church, the goal of all pilgrimages, the cathedral of St. Clement, the pope of Rome; from this cathedral the Queen of Heaven came forth, bathed herself in the ocean-sea, prayed to God in the cathedral," which is a very unusual touch of Romanism.

The ancient religious ballads have no rhyme; and, unlike the epic songs, no fixed rhythm. The presence of either rhyme or rhythm is an indication of comparatively recent origin or of reconstruction in the sixteenth century.

"The Merciful Woman of Compassion," or "The Alleluia Woman," dates from the most ancient Christian tradition, and is a model of simplicity and beauty. It is allied to the English ballad of "The Flight into Egypt" (which also occurs among the Christmas carols of the Slavonians of the Carpathian Mountains), in which the Virgin Mary works a miracle with the peasant's grain, in order to save Christ from the Jews in pursuit. The Virgin comes to the "Alleluia Woman," with the infant Christ in her arms, saying: "Cast thy child into the oven, and take Christ the Lord in thy lap. His enemies, the Jews, are hastening hither; they seek to kill Christ the Lord with sharp spears." The Alleluia Woman obeys, without an instant's hesitation. When the Jews arrive, immediately afterwards, and inquire if Christ has passed that way, she says she has thrown him into the oven. The Jews are convinced of the truth of her statement, by the sight of a child's hand amid the flames; whereupon they dance for joy, and depart, after fastening an iron plate over the oven door. Christ vanishes from the arms of the merciful woman; she remembers her own child and begins to weep. Then Christ's voice assures her that he is well and happy. On opening the oven door, she beholds her baby playing with the flowers in a rich green meadow, reading the Gospels, or rolling an apple on a platter, and comforted by angels.

"The Wanderings of the All-Holy Birth-giver of God," another very ancient ballad, represents the Virgin Mother wandering among the mountains in search of Christ. She encounters three Jews; and in answer to her query, "Accursed Jews, what have ye done with Christ?" they inform her that they have just crucified him on Mount Zion. She hastens thither, and swoons on arriving. When she recovers, she makes her lament, and her plakh, or wail, beginning: "O, my dear son, why didst thou not obey thy mother?" Christ comforts her, telling her that he shall rise again, and bidding her: "Do not weep and spoil thy beauty." A form of the ballad which is common in Little Russia reverses the situation. It is the Jews who inquire of Mary what she has done with her son. "Into the river I flung him," she promptly replies. They drain the river, and find him not. Again they ask, "Under the mountains I buried him." They dig up the mountains, and find him not. At last they discover a church, and in it three coffins. Over the Holy Virgin's, the birds are warbling or flowers are blossoming; over John the Baptist's, lights are burning; over Christ's, angels are singing.

As might be expected, the Holy Virgin is a very popular subject of song. In numerous ballads she delivers a temperance lecture to St. Vasíly the Great on his drunkenness, putting to him various questions, such as, "Who sleeps through matins? Who walks and riots during the liturgy?" [St. Vasíly being the author of a liturgy which is used on certain important occasions during the church year.] "Who has unwashed hands? Who is a murderer?" and so on, through a long list of peccadilloes and crimes. The answer to each question is, "The drunkard." Poor St. Vasíly dashes his head against a stone, and threatens to put an end to himself on the spot, if his one lapse in five and twenty years be not forgiven. Accordingly the Holy Virgin steps down from her throne, gives him her hand, and informs him that the Lord has three mansions: one is the House of David, where the Last Judgment will take place; through the second flows a river of fire, the destination of wizards, drunkards, and the like; and the third is Paradise, the home of the elect. The imagery in the very numerous and ancient poems on the Last Judgment, by the way, is purely heathen in character. The ferryman over the river of fire sometimes acts as the judge, and the punishments to which sinners are condemned by him recall those mentioned in the Æneid, and in Dante's Divina Commedia, the frescoes on the walls of churches bearing out the same idea.

Adam and Eve naturally receive a share of the minstrel's attention, and "Adam's Wail" before the gates of Paradise is often very touching. In a ballad from White Russia, Adam begs the Lord to permit him to revisit Paradise. The Lord accordingly gives orders to "St. Peter-Paul" to admit Adam to Paradise, to have the song of the Cherubim sung for him, and so forth; but not to allow him to remain. In the midst of Paradise Adam beholds his coffin and wails before it: "O, my coffin, coffin, my true home! Take me, O my coffin, as a mother her own child, to thy white arms, to thy ruddy face, to thy warm heart!" But "St. Peter-Paul" soon catches sight of him, and tells him that he has no business to be strolling about and spying out Paradise; his place is on Zion's hill, where he will be shown books of magic, and of life, and things in general.

There is a great mass of poetry devoted to Joseph; and a lament to "Mother Desert," uttered as he is being led away into captivity by the merchants to whom his brethren have sold him, soon becomes the groundwork for variations in which the Scripture story is entirely forgotten. In these Joseph is always a "Tzarévitch," or king's son, his father being sometimes David, sometimes "the Tzar of India," or of "the Idolaters' Land," or some such country. He is confined in a tower, because the soothsayers have foretold that he will become a Christian (or because he is already a Christian he shuts himself up). One day he is permitted to ride about the town, and although all old people have been ordered to keep out of sight, he espies one aged cripple, and thus learns that his father has grossly deceived him, in asserting that no one ever becomes old or ill in his kingdom. He forthwith becomes a Christian, and flees to the desert. Then comes his wail to "Mother Desert Most Fair," as she stands "afar off in the valley": "O Desert fair, receive me to thy depths, as a mother her own child, and a pastor his faithful sheep, into thy voiceless quiet, beloved mother mine!" "Mother Desert" proceeds to remonstrate with her "beloved child": "Who is to rule," she says, "over thy kingdom, thy palaces of white stone, thy young bride? When spring cometh, all the lakes will be aflood, all the trees will be clothed with verdure, heavenly birds will warble therein with voices angelic: in the desert thou wilt have none of this; thy food will be fir-bark, thy drink marsh-water." Nevertheless, "Joseph Tzarévitch" persists in his intention, and Mother Desert receives him at last. Most versions of this ballad are full of genuine poetry, but a few are rather ludicrous: for example, "Mother Desert" asks Joseph, "How canst thou leave thy sweet viands and soft feather-beds to come to me?"

Of David, strange to say, we find very little mention, save in the "Dove Book," or as the father of Joseph, or of some other equally preposterous person.

Among the ballads on themes drawn from the New Testament, those relating to the birth of Christ, and the visit of the Wise Men; to John the Baptist, and to Lazarus, are the most numerous. The Three Wise Men sometimes bring queer gifts. One ballad represents them as being Lithuanians, and only two in number, who bring Christ offerings of botvínya—a savory and popular dish, in the form of a soup served cold, with ice, and composed of small beer brewed from sour, black, rye bread, slightly thickened with strained spinach, in which float cubes of fresh cucumber, the green tops of young onions, cold boiled fish, horseradish, bacon, sugar, shrimps, any cold vegetables on hand, and whatever else occurs to the cook. Joseph stands by the window, holding a bowl and a spoon, and stares at the gift. "Queer people, you Lithuanians," he remarks. "Christ doesn't eat botvínya. He eats only rolls with milk and honey (or rolls and butter)." In one case, the Three Wise Men appear as three buffaloes bringing gifts; in another as "the fine rain, the red sun, and the bright moon," showing that nature worship can assume a very fair semblance of Christianity.

Christ's baptism is sometimes represented by his mother bathing him in the river; and this is thought to stand for the weary sun which is bathed every night in the ocean. A "Legend of the Sun," whose counterpart can be found in other lands, represents the sun as being attended by flaming birds, who dip their wings in the ocean at night and sprinkle him, and by angels who carry his imperial robe and crown to the Lord's throne every night, and clothe him again in them every morning, while the cock proclaims the "resurrection of all things." In the Christmas carols, angels perform the same offices, and the flaming phoenix-birds are omitted.

The Apostle Peter's timid and disputatious character seems to be well understood by the people. One day, according to a ballad, he gets into a dispute with the Lord, as to which is the larger, heaven or earth. "The earth," declares St. Peter; "Heaven," maintains the Lord. "But let us not quarrel. Call down two or three angels to measure heaven and earth with a silken cord. So was it done; and lo! St. Peter was right, and the Lord was wrong! Heaven is the smaller, because it is all level, while the earth has hills and valleys!"

On another occasion, "all the saints were sitting at table, except the Holy Spirit." "Peter, Peter, my servant," says the Lord, "go bring the Holy Spirit." Peter has not traversed half the road, when he encounters a wondrous marvel, a fearful fire. He trembles with fear and turns back. "Why hast thou not brought the Holy Spirit?" inquires the Lord. Peter explains. "Ho, Peter, that is no marvel! that is the Holy Spirit. Thou shouldst have brought it hither and placed it on the table. All the saints would have rejoiced that the Holy Spirit sat before them!"

The Lazarus ballads illustrate how the people turn Scriptural characters into living realities, by incorporating their own observations on human nature with the sacred text. According to them, Lazarus and Dives were two brothers, both named Lazarus; the younger rich, the elder poor. Poor Lazarus begs alms of his brother: "How dare you call me brother?" retorts rich Lazarus. "I have brothers like myself—princes, nobles, wealthy merchants, who fare sumptuously and dress richly. Even the church dignitaries visit me. Your brethren are the fierce dogs which lie under my table and gather up the fragments. I fear not God, I will buy off intrusive death, I will attain to the kingdom of heaven; and if I attain not thereunto, I will buy it!" Thereupon, he sets the dogs on his brother, spits in his eye, locks the gates, and goes back to his feasting. The dogs which are set upon poor Lazarus bring him their food, instead of rending him. After three efforts to move his brother to compassion, poor Lazarus entreats the Lord to let him die: "Send sudden death, Lord, winged but not merciful," he prays. "Send two threatening angels; let them take out my unclean soul through my side with a hook, my little soul through my ribs, with a spear and with iron hooks; let them place my soul under their left wing, and carry it to the nethermost hell, to burning pitch and the river of fire. All my life have I suffered hunger and cold, and my whole body hath been full of pains. It is not for me, a poor cripple, to enter Paradise." (This is in accordance with the uncomfortable Russian belief that a man's rank and station in this life determine his fate in the other world.) But the Lord gives orders to have everything done in precisely the opposite way. Holy angels remove Lazarus's soul gently, through his "sugar mouth" (referring, possibly, to the Siberian belief that the soul is located in the windpipe) wrap it in a white cloth, and carry it to Abraham's bosom. After a while rich Lazarus is overtaken by misfortune and illness, and he, also, prays for speedy death, minutely specifying how his "large, clean soul," is to be handled and deposited in Abraham's bosom. He acknowledges that he has committed a few trivial sins, but mentions, with pride, in extenuation, that he has never worn anything but velvet and satin, and that he formerly possessed great store of "flowered garments." Again the Lord gives contrary orders, and rich Lazarus undergoes the treatment which his poor brother had indicated for his own soul. When rich Lazarus looks up from his torment and beholds poor Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, he addresses him as "Brother, my own brother." Here one version comes to a sudden end, and the collector who transcribed it, asked: "What?" "He repented," answered the peasant woman who sang it, "and called him 'brother' when he saw that he was well off." In other versions, a long conversation ensues, in the course of which poor Lazarus reminds rich Lazarus of numerous sins of omission and commission, and inquires, with great apparent solicitude, what has become of all his gold, silver, flowered garments, and so forth, and assures him that he would gladly give him not a drop but a whole bucketful of water were he permitted to do so.

But to the share of no saint does a greater number of songs (and festivals) fall than to that of John the Baptist. In addition to June 24th, which still bears the heathen name of Kupálo, in connection with St. John's Eve, and which is celebrated by the peasants in as thoroughly heathen a fashion as is the Christmas festival, in honor of the Sun-goddess, Kolyáda, he has three special days dedicated to him. Two of these deserve mention, because of a curious superstition attached to them. On St. John's Day, May 25th, the peasants set out their cabbages; but on the autumn St. John's Day, August 29th, they must carefully avoid all contact with cabbages, because it is the anniversary of the beheading of John; no knife must be taken in the hand on that day, and it is considered a great crime to cut anything, particularly anything round, resembling a head. If a cabbage be cut, blood will flow; if anything round be eaten—onions, for example—carbuncles will follow.

In concluding this brief sketch of the religious ballads of the Slavonians, I venture to quote at length, a masterpiece of the Wandering Cripples' art. It is a Montenegrin version of a legend which is common to all the Slavonic peoples, and contains, besides an interesting problem in ethics, an explanation of the present shape of the human foot. In some versions the emperor's crown is replaced, throughout, by "the bright sun," thus suggesting a mythological origin. It is called "The Emperor Diocletian and John the Baptist."

Two foster brothers were drinking wine,
On a sunny slope by the salt seaside;
One was the Emperor Diocletian,
The other, John the Baptist.
Then up spake John the Baptist
As they did drink the wine:
"Foster brother, come now, let us play.
Use thou thy crown; but I will take an apple."
Then up they jumped, began to play,
And St. John flung his apple.
Down in the depths of the sea it fell
And his warm tears trickled down.
But the emperor held this speech to him:
"Now weep not, dear my brother,
Only carry thou not my crown away
And I will fetch thy apple."
Then did John swear to him by God
That he would not steal the crown.
The emperor swam out into the sea,
But John flew up to heaven,
Presented himself before the Lord,
And held this speech to him:
"Eternal God, and All-Holy Father!
May I swear falsely by thee?
May I steal the emperor's crown?"
The Lord replied:
"O John, my faithful servant!
Thrice shalt thou swear falsely by me,
Only, by my name must thou not swear."
St. John flew back to the sunny slope,
And the emperor emerged from the sea.
Again they played; again John flung his apple;
Again it fell into the depths of the sea.
But Diocletian, the emperor, said to him:
"Now, fear thou not, dear brother,
Only carry thou my crown not away,
And I will fetch thy apple."
Then did John swear to him by God,
Thrice did he swear to him by God
That he would not steal his crown.
The emperor threw his crown under his cap,
Beside them left the bird of ill omen,
And plunged into the blue sea.
St. John froze over the sea,
With a twelve-fold ice-crust he froze it o'er,
Seized the golden crown, flew on high to heaven.
And the bird of ill omen began to caw.
The emperor, at the bottom of the sea, divined the cause,
Raced up, as for a wager,
Brake three of the ice-crusts with his head,
Then back turned he again, took a stone upon his head,
A little stone of three thousand pounds,
And brake the twelve-fold ice.
Then unfolded he his wings,
Set out in pursuit of John,
Caught up with him at the gate of heaven,
Seized him by his right foot,
And what he grasped, he tore away.
In tears came John before the Lord;
The bright sun brought he to heaven,
And John complained unto the Lord,
That the emperor had crippled him.
And the Lord said:
"Fear not, my faithful servant!
I will do the same to every man."
Such is the fact, and to God be the glory!

"Therefore," say the Servians, in conclusion of their version of this ballad, "God has made a hollow in the sole of every human being's foot."

The Epic Songs, properly speaking, are broadly divisible into three groups: the Cycle of Vladímir, or of Kíeff; that of Nóvgorod; and that of Moscow, or the Imperial Cycle, the whole being preceded by the songs of the elder heroes. With regard to the first two, and the Kíeff Cycle in particular, undoubtedly composed during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, authorities on the origin of Russian literature differ considerably. One authority maintains that, although the Russian epics possess a family likeness to the heroic legends of other Aryan races, the Russians forgot them, and later on, appropriated them again from Ural-Altaic sources, adding a few historical and geographical names, and psychical characteristics. But this view as to the wholesale appropriation of Oriental myths has not been established, and the authorities who combat it demonstrate that the heroes are thoroughly Russian, and that the pictures of manners and customs which they present are extremely valuable for their accuracy. They would seem, on the whole, to be a characteristic mixture of natural phenomena (nature myths), personified as gods, who became in course of time legendary heroes. Thus, Prince Vladímir, "the Fair Red Sun," may be the Sun-god, but he is also a historical personage, whatever may be said as to many of the other characters in the epic lays of the Vladímir cycle. "Sadkó, the rich Guest of Nóvgorod," also, in the song of that title, belonging to the Nóvgorod cycle, was a prominent citizen of Nóvgorod, who built a church in Nóvgorod, during the twelfth century, and is referred to in the Chronicles for a space of two hundred years. In fact, the Nóvgorod cycle contains less of the personified phenomena of nature than the cycle of the Elder Heroes, and the Kíeff cycle, and more of the genuine historical element.

A regular tonic versification forms one of the indispensable properties of these epic poems; irregularity of versification is a sign of decay, and a complete absence of measure, that is to say, the prose form, is the last stage of decay. The airs to which they are sung or chanted are very simple, consisting of but few tones, yet are extremely difficult to note down. The peasant bard modifies the one or two airs to which he chants his lays with astonishing skill, according to the testimony of Rýbnikoff, who made the first large collection of the songs, in the Olónetz government (1859), and Hilferding, who made a still more surprising collection (1870), to the north and east of Olónetz.

The lay of Sadkó, above mentioned, is perhaps the most famous—the one most frequently alluded to in Russian literature and art. Sadkó was a harper of "Lord Nóvgorod the Great." "No golden treasures did he possess. He went about to the magnificent feasts of the merchants and nobles, and made all merry with his playing." Once, for three days in succession, he was bidden to no worshipful feast, and in his sorrow he went and played all day long, upon the shore of Lake Ílmen. On the third day, the Water King appears to him, and thanks him for entertaining his guests in the depths. He directs Sadkó to return to Nóvgorod, and on the morrow, when he shall be bidden to a feast, and the banqueters begin the characteristic brags of their possessions, Sadkó must wager his "turbulent head" against the merchants' shop in the bazaar, with all the precious wares therein, that Lake Ílmen contains fishes with fins of gold. Sadkó wins the bet; for the Tzar Vodyanóy sends up the fish to be caught in the silken net. Thus did Sadkó become a rich guest (merchant of the first class) of Nóvgorod, built himself a palace of white stone, wondrously adorned, and became exceeding rich. He also held worshipful feasts, and out-bragged the braggers, declaring that he would buy all the wares in Nóvgorod, or forfeit thirty thousand in money. As he continues to buy, wares continue to flow into this Venice of the North, and Sadkó decides that it is the part of wisdom to pay his thirty thousand. He then builds "thirty dark red ships and three," of the dragon type, lades them with the wares of Nóvgorod, and sails out into the open sea, via the river Vólkhoff, Lake Ládoga, and the Nevá. After a while the ships stand still and will not stir, though the waves dash and the breeze whistles through the sails. Sadkó arrives at the conclusion that the Sea King demands tribute, as they have now been sailing the seas for twelve years, and have paid none. They cast into the waves casks of red gold, pure silver, and fair round pearls; but still the ships move not. Sadkó then proposes that each man on board shall prepare for himself a lot, and cast it into the sea, and the man whose lot sinks shall consider himself the sacrifice which the Sea King requires. Sadkó's lot persists in sinking, whether he makes it of hop-flowers or of blue damaskeened steel, four hundred pounds in weight; and all the other lots swim, whether heavy or light. Accordingly Sadkó perceives that he is the destined victim, and taking his harp, a holy image of St. Nicholas (the patron of travelers), and bowls of precious things with him, he has himself abandoned on an oaken plank, while his ships sailed off, and "flew as they had been black ravens." He sinks to the bottom, and finds himself in the palace of the Sea King, who makes him play, while he, the fair sea-maidens, and the other sea-folk dance violently. But the Tzarítza warns Sadkó to break his harp, for it is the waves dancing on the shore, and creating terrible havoc. The Tzar Morskóy then requests Sadkó to select a wife; and guided again by the Tzarítza's advice, Sadkó selects the last of the nine hundred maidens who file before him—a small, black-visaged maiden, named Tchernáva. Had he chosen otherwise, he is told, he would never again behold "the white world," but must "forever abide in the blue sea." After a great feast which the Sea King makes for him, Sadkó falls into a heavy sleep, and when he awakens from it, he finds himself on the bank of the Tchernáva River, and sees his dark red ships come speeding up the Vólkhoff River. Sadkó returns to his palace and his young wife, builds two churches, and roams no more, but thereafter takes his ease in his own town.

Between these cycles of epic songs and the Moscow, or Imperial Cycle there is a great gap. The pre-Tatár period is not represented, and the cycle proper begins with Iván the Terrible, and ends with the reign of Peter the Great. Epic marvels are not wholly lacking in the Moscow cycle, evidently copied from the earlier cycles. But these songs are inferior in force. Fantastic as are some of the adventures in these songs, there is always a solid historical foundation. Iván the Terrible, for instance, is credited with many deeds of his grandfather (his father being ignored), and is always represented in rather a favorable light. The conquest of Siberia, the capture of Kazán and Ástrakhan, the wars against Poland, and the Tatárs of Crimea, and so forth, are the principal points around which these songs are grouped. But the Peter the Great of the epics bears only a faint resemblance to the real Peter.

Perhaps the most famous hero of epic song in the seventeenth century is the bandit-chief of the Volga, Sténka Rázin, whose memory still lingers among the peasants of those regions. He was regarded as the champion of the people against the oppression of the nobles, and "Ilyá of Múrom, the Old Kazák" is represented as the captain of the brigands under him. To Sténka, also, are attributed magic powers. From the same period date also the two most popular dance-songs of the present day—the "Kamarýnskaya" and "Bárynya Sudárynya," its sequel. The Kamarýnskaya was the district which then constituted the Ukraína, or border-marches, situated about where the government of Orél now is. The two songs present a valuable historical picture of the coarse manners of the period on that lawless frontier; hence, only a few of the lines which still subsist of these poetical chronicles can be used to the irresistibly dashing music.

The power of composing epic songs has been supposed to have gradually died out, almost ceasing with the reign of Peter the Great, wholly ceasing with the war of 1812. But very recently an interesting experiment has been begun, based on the discovery of several new songs about the Emperor Alexander II., which are sung by the peasants over a wide range of country. All these songs are being written down with the greatest accuracy as to the peculiarities of pronunciation and accentuation. If, in the future, variants make their appearance, containing an increasing infusion of the artistic and poetical elements, considerable light will be thrown upon the problem of the rise and growth of the ancient epic songs, and on the question of poetical inspiration among the peasants of the present epoch. One of these ballads, written down in the Province of the Don, from the lips of a blind beggar, says that Alexander II., "burned with love, wished to give freedom to all, kept all under his wing, and freed them from punishment. He reformed all the laws, heard the groans of the needy, and himself hastened to their aid." "So the wicked killed him," says the ballad, and proceeds to describe the occurrence, including the way in which "the black flag" was lowered on the palace, and "they sent a telegram about the eclipse of our sun." In the far northern government of Kostromá, on the Volga, two more ballads on the same subject have been taken down on the typewriter, so that the bard could readily correct them. The first, entitled "A Lay of Mourning for the Death of the Tzar Liberator," narrates how "a dreadful cloud of black, bloodthirsty ravens assembled, and invited to them the underground, subterranean rats, not to a feast-ball, not to a christening, but to undermine the roots of the olive-branch." Naturally this style demands that the emperor be designated as "the bright falcon, light winged, swift eyed." It describes the plot, and how the bombs were to be wrapped up in white cloths, and the conspirators were "to go for a stroll, as with watermelons." When the bombs burst, "the panes in the neighboring houses are shattered," and "the dark blue feathers" of the "bright falcon" are set on fire. "As there were no Kostromá peasants on hand to aid the emperor—no Komisároffs or Susánins," adds the ballad, with local pride (alluding to the legend of Iván Susánin saving the first Románoff Tzar from the Poles in 1612, which forms the subject of the famous opera by Glínka, "Life for the Tzar"), "he laid himself down in the bosom of his mother (earth)." The second ballad is "The Monument-Not Made-with-Hands to the Tzar Liberator"—the compound adjective here referring to that in the title of a favorite ikóna, or Holy Picture, which corresponds to the one known in western Europe as the imprint of the Saviour's face on St. Veronica's kerchief. There are four stanzas, of six lines each, of which the third runs as follows:

He is our Liberator and our father!
And we will erect a monument of hearts
Whose cross, by its gleaming 'mid the clouds,
Shall transmit the memory to young children and the babes in arms,
And this shall be unto ages of ages
So long as the world and man shall exist!

In southwestern Russia, where the ancient epic songs of the Elder Heroes and the Kíeff Cycle originated, the memory of them has died out, owing to the devastation of southern Russia by the Tatárs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the decay of its civilization under Lithuanian sway in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century the population of southern Russia reorganized itself in the forms of kazák communes, and fabricated for itself a fresh cycle of epic legends, which replaced those of Kíeff; and there the kobzárs (professional minstrels who accompany their songs on the kábza, a mandolin-like, twelve-stringed instrument) celebrate the deeds of a new race of kazák heroes. But in the lonely wildernesses of the northeast, whither the Tatár invasion drove the descendants of those who composed and sang the great epic songs, no more recent upheavals have brought forward heroes to replace the historic paladins, who there hold undisputed sway to the present time.

Of the songs still sung by the people, the following favorite (in the version from the Olónetz government) may serve as a sample. It is not rhymed in the original.

Akh! Little guelder-rose, with pinkish azure bloom,
And merry little company, where my dear one doth drink;
My darling will not drink, until for me he sends.
When I, a maiden, very young did dally,
Tending the ducks, the geese, the swans,
When I, a young maid, very young, along the stream-bank strolled,
I trampled down all sickly leaves and grass,
I plucked the tiny azure flowerets,
At the swift little rivulet I gazed;
Small was the hamlet there, four cots in all,
In every cot four windows small.
In every little window, a dear young crony sits.
Eh, cronies dear, you darlings, friends of mine,
Be ye my cronies, one another love, love me,
When into the garden green ye go, then take me, too;
When each a wreath ye twine, twine one for me;
When in the Danube's stream ye fling them, drop mine, too;
The garlands all upon the surface float, mine only hath sunk down.
All your dear lover-friends have homeward come, mine only cometh not.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How was Christianity introduced into Russia?
2. In what two important centers was it finally established?
3. How was the Greek Church able to supply these converts with a Slavonian translation of the Bible?
4. Who were Kyríll and Methódy? Describe their work.
5. Why was "Ancient Bulgarian" not the original language of the Bulgarians?
6. In what language was Russian literature written up to the time of Peter the Great?
7. Where, according to tradition, did the early Slavonians settle in Europe?
8. How are the forces of nature represented in the ancient marriage songs?
9. What custom is illustrated in "The Sowing of the Millet"?
10. What connection is there between the funeral wails of modern and of ancient Russia?
11. What was the festival of Kolyáda?
12. What Christian character has been given to the ancient "Glory Song"?
13. Why is pork commonly used at the Russian New-Year?
14. What different dates have been observed for the opening of the New-Year?
15. What remarkable fact is true of the preservation of the Russian epic songs?
16. How were the religious ballads brought before the people?
17. Describe some of the characteristics of these ballads.
18. Into what three groups do the epic songs naturally fall?
19. What is the Lay of Sadkó?
20. What are the favorite subjects of the songs of the "Imperial Cycle"?
21. What interesting discovery of modern epic songs has recently been made?
22. Why have the songs of the Kíeff Cycle died out in their own country?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• The Epic Songs of Russia. Isabel F. Hapgood.
• Myths and Folk-Tales of Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars. Jeremiah Curtin.
• Cossack Fairy-Tales. R. Nisbet Bain.
• Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources. A. H. Wratislaw.
• Russian Fairy-Tales. R. Nisbet Bain.
• Fairy-Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen. From the French of Alexander Chodsko.
• Songs of the Russian People and Russian Folk-Tales. W. R. S. Ralston.
• Slavonic Fairy-Tales. M. Gastner.
• Slavonic Literature and its Relations to the Folk-Lore of Europe. M. Gastner.
• Russian Folk-Songs as Sung by the People. Mme. Eugenie Lineff.

FOOTNOTES:

^[1] A Tatár word, signifying "tower"; used to mean the part of the house where the women were secluded, in Oriental fashion.

^[2] Lord, in the original, is Gosudár, the word which, with a capital, is applied especially to the emperor.

^[3] The dramatist Ostróvsky has made effective use of this game, and the more prophetic couplets of the song, in his famous play: "Poverty is not a Vice." Other national customs and songs are used in his play.

CHAPTER II

THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE TATÁR DOMINION, 988-1224.

As soon as Prince Saint Vladímir introduced Christianity into Russia, he and his sons began to busy themselves with the problem of general education. Priests came from Greece and Bulgaria to spread the Gospel in Russia; but they thought only of disseminating Christianity, and were, moreover, not sufficiently numerous to grapple with educational problems. Accordingly, Vladímir founded schools in Kíeff, and ordered that the children of the best citizens should be taken from their unwilling parents, and handed over to these schools for instruction. His son, Yároslaff I. ("the wise"), pursued the same policy, in Kíeff and elsewhere—the schools being attached to the churches, and having for their chief object the preparation of ecclesiastics. The natural result was, that in ancient Russia, most people who could read and write were ecclesiastics or monks, and religious literature was that most highly prized. Even so-called worldly literature was strongly tinctured with religion. The first Russian literary compositions took the form of exhortations, sermons, and messages addressed by the clergy to their flocks, and the first Russian authors were Ilarión, metropolitan of Kíeff (beginning in 1051), and Luká Zhidyáta, appointed bishop of Nóvgorod in 1036. The latter's "Exhortation to the Brethren" has come down to us, and is noteworthy for the simplicity of its language, and its conciseness of form. From Ilarión we have, "a Word Concerning the Law" (meaning, the Law of God), which deals with the opposing character of Judaism and Christianity. It proves not only that he was a cultivated man, capable of expressing himself clearly on complicated matters, but also that his hearers were capable of comprehending him. Other good writers of that period were: Feodósiy, elected in 1062, abbott of the Monastery of the Catacombs in Kíeff (which was fated to become one of the most important nurseries of enlightenment and literature in Russia); Nestor, who left a remarkable "Life of Feodósiy"; Nikifór, a Greek by birth, educated in Byzantium, who was metropolitan of Kíeff, 1104-1121; and Kyríll, bishop of Nóvgorod, 1171-1182.

Thus, it will be seen, events took their ordinary course in Russia as in other countries: learning was, for a long time, confined almost exclusively to the monasteries, which were the pioneers in education and culture elements, such as they were. Naturally the bulk of the literature for a long time consisted of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, translations from the works of the fathers of the church (Eastern Catholic), homilies, pastoral letters, and the like. But in the monasteries, also, originated the invaluable Chronicles; for not only did men speedily begin to describe in writing those phenomena of life which impressed them as worthy of note, but ecclesiastics were in a position to learn all details of importance from authoritative sources, and were even, not infrequently, employed as diplomatic agents, or acted as secretaries to the ruling princes. The earliest and most celebrated among these ancient Russian historical works is the Chronicle of Nestor, a monk of the Catacombs Monastery in Kíeff (born about 1056), the reputed author of the document which bears his name. Modern scientists have proved that he did not write this Chronicle, the earliest copy of which dates from the fourteenth century, but its standing as a priceless monument of the twelfth century has never been impunged, since it is evident that the author gathered his information from contemporary eye-witnesses. The Chronicle begins by describing how Shem, Ham, and Japhet shared the earth between them after the flood, and gives a detailed list of the countries and peoples of the ancient world. It then states that, after the building of the Tower of Babel, God dispersed all the peoples into seventy-two tribes (or languages), the northern and western lands falling to the tribe of Japhet. Nestor derives the Slavonians from Japhet—describes their life, first on the banks of the Danube, then their colonization to the northeast as far as the River Ílmen (the ancient Nóvgorod), the Oká, in central Russia, and the tributaries of the Dniépr, delineating the manners and customs of the different Slavonic tribes, and bringing the narrative down to the year 1110, in the form of brief, complete stories. The style of the Chronicle is simple and direct. For example, he relates how, in the year 945, the Drevlyáns (or forest-folk) slew Ígor, prince of Kíeff, and his band of warriors, who were not numerous.

Then said the Drevlyáns, "Here we have slain the Russian Prince; let us now take his wife, Olga, for our Prince Malo; and we will take also Svyátoslaff (his son), and will deal with him as we see fit"; and the Drevlyáns dispatched their best men, twenty in number, in a boat, to Olga, and they landed their boat near Borítcheff, and Olga was told that the Drevlyáns had arrived, and Olga summoned them to her. "Good guests are come, I hear"; and the Drevlyáns said: "We are come, Princess." And Olga said to them, "Tell me, why are ye come hither?" Said the Drevlyáns: "The land of the Drevlyáns hath sent us," saying thus: "We have slain thy husband, for thy husband was like unto a wolf, he was ever preying and robbing; but our own princes are good. Our Drevlyán land doth flourish under their sway; wherefore, marry thou our Prince, Malo" for the Drevlyán Prince was named Malo. Olga said to them: "Your speech pleaseth me, for my husband cannot be raised from the dead; but I desire to show you honor, to-morrow, before my people; wherefore, to-day, go ye to your boat, and lie down in the boat, exalting yourselves; and to-morrow I will send for you, and ye must say: 'we will not ride on horses, we will not walk afoot, but do ye carry us in our boat.'" Thus did she dismiss them to the boat. Then Olga commanded a great and deep pit to be digged in the courtyard of the palace, outside the town. And the next morning, as Olga sat in her palace, she sent for the guests, and Olga's people came to them, saying: "Olga biddeth you to a great honor." But they said: "We will not ride on horses, nor on oxen, neither will we walk afoot, but do thou carry us in our boat." And the Kievlyáns said: "We must, perforce, carry you; our prince is slain, and our princess desireth to wed your prince," and they bore them in the boat, and those men sat there and were filled with pride; and they carried them to the courtyard, to Olga, and flung them into the pit, together with their boat. And Olga, bending over the pit, said unto them: "Is the honor to your taste?" and they made answer: "It is worse than Ígor's death"; and she commanded that they be buried alive, and they were so buried.

The narrative goes on to state that Olga sent word to the Drevlyáns, that if they were in earnest, their distinguished men must be sent to woo her for their prince; otherwise, the Kievlyáns would not let her go. Accordingly, they assembled their best men, the rulers, and sent them for her. Olga had the bath heated and ordered them to bathe before presenting themselves to her, and when they began to wash, Olga had the bath-house set on fire, and burned them up. Then Olga sent again to the Drevlyáns, demanding that they collect a vast amount of hydromel in the town where her husband had been slain, that she might celebrate the ancient funeral feast, and weep over his grave. So they got the honey together, and brewed the hydromel (or mead), and Olga, taking with her a small body-guard, in light marching order, set out on the road and came to her husband's grave and wept over it; and commanded her people to erect a high mound over it; and when that was done, she ordered the funeral feast to be celebrated on its summit. Then the Drevlyáns sat down to drink, and Olga ordered her serving-boys to wait on them. And the Drevlyáns asked Olga where was the guard of honor which they had sent for her? And she told them that it was following with her husband's body-guard. But when the Drevlyáns were completely intoxicated, she ordered her serving-lads to drink in their honor, went aside, and commanded her men to slay the Drevlyáns, which was done, five hundred dying thus. Then Olga returned to Kíeff, and made ready an army against the remaining Drevlyáns. Such is one of the vivid pictures of ancient manners and customs which the chronicle of Nestor furnishes.

The descendants of Prince-Saint Vladímir were not only patrons of education, but collectors of books. One of them, in particular, Vladímir Monomáchus, is also noted as the author of the "Exhortation of Vladímir Monomáchus" (end of the eleventh century), which he wrote for his children, in the style of a pastoral address from an ecclesiastic to his flock—a style which, in Russia, as elsewhere, was the inevitable result of the first efforts at non-religious literature, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. "Chiefest of all," he writes, among other things, "forget not the poor, and feed them according to your powers; give most of all to the orphans, and be ye yourselves the defenders of the widows, permitting not the mighty to destroy a human being. Slay ye not either the righteous or the guilty yourselves, neither command others to slay them. In discourse, whatsoever ye shall say, whether good or evil, swear ye not by God, neither cross ye yourselves; there is no need of it.... Reverence the aged as your father, the young as brethren. In thy house be not slothful, but see to all thyself; put not thy trust in a steward, neither in a servant, that thy guests jeer not at thy house, nor at thy dinner.... Love your wives, but give them no power over you. Forget not the good ye know, and what ye know not, as yet, that learn ye," and so forth.

The beginning of the twelfth century witnessed other notable attempts at secular literature. To the twelfth century, also, belongs Russia's single written epic song, "The Word (or lay) Concerning Ígor's Raid," which contains an extremely curious mixture of Christianity and heathen views. By a fortunate chance, this epic was preserved and was discovered, in 1795, by Count Músin-Púshkin, among a collection which he had purchased from a monastery. Unhappily, Count Músin-Púshkin's valuable library was burned during the conflagration of Moscow, in 1812. But the Slóvo had been twice published previous to that date, and had been examined by many learned paleographists, who decided that the chirography belonged to the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Ígor Svyátoslavitch was the prince of Nóvgorod-Syéversk, who in 1185, made a raid against the Pólovtzy, or Plain-dwellers, and the Word begins thus:

Shall we not begin our song, oh brothers,
With the story of the feuds of old;
Song of the valiant troop of Ígor,
And of him, the son of Svyátoslaff,
And sing them as men now do sing,
Striving not in thought after Boyán.^[4]
Making this ballad, he was wont the Wizard,
As a squirrel swift to flit about the forest,
As a gray wolf o'er the clear plain to trot,
And as an eagle 'neath the clouds to hover;
When he recalleth ancient feuds of yore,
Then, from out the flock of swans he sendeth
In pursuit, ten falcons, swift of wing.

The whole expedition is described in this poetical style, in three hundred and eighty-four unrhymed lines, with a curious mingling of heathen beliefs and Christian views. God shows Ígor the road "to the land of Pólovetzk, to the Russian land," and on his return from captivity, Ígor rides to Kíeff to salute the Holy Birth-giver of God of Pirogóshtch, while the Pólovtzy are called "accursed," in contrast with the orthodox Russians. But the winds are called "the grandchildren of Stribog," and the Russian people are alluded to as "the grandsons of Dázhbog," both heathen divinities, and other mythical and obscure personages are introduced.

With this epic lay, the first period of Russian literature closes.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How did Vladímir and his son provide for the education of their people?
2. What kind of literature naturally grew out of the learning of the monasteries?
3. What was the chronicle of Nestor? What special interest has it?
4. Quote some of the precepts from the "Exhortation of Monomáchus."
5. By what good fortune has "Ígor's Raid" been preserved?
6. What is the character of this Epic Song?

FOOTNOTES:

^[4] Evidently an ancient epic bard.

CHAPTER III

SECOND PERIOD, FROM THE TATÁR DOMINION TO THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1224-1330.

During the Tatár Dominion, or yoke (1224-1370), Kíeff lost its supremacy, and also ceased to be, as it had been up to this time, the center of education and literature. The dispersive influence of the Tatár raids had the effect of creating centers in the northeast, which were, eventually, concentrated in Moscow; and in so far it proved a blessing in disguise for Russia. The conditions of life under the Tatár sway were such, that any one, man or woman, who valued a peaceful existence, or existence at all, was driven to seek refuge in monasteries. The inevitable consequence was, that a religious, even an æsthetic, cast was imparted to what little literature was created. One celebrated production, dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century, will serve to give an idea of the sort of thing on which men then exercised their minds and pens. It is the Epistle of Archbishop Vasíly of Nóvgorod to Feódor, bishop of Tver, entitled, "Concerning the Earthly Paradise," wherein the author discusses a subject of contention which had arisen among the clergy of the latter's diocese, as to "whether the earthly paradise planted by God for Adam doth still exist upon the earth, or whether not the earthly but only an imaginary paradise doth still exist." The worthy archbishop, with divers arguments, defends his position, that the earthly paradise does still exist in the East, and hell in the West: which latter proposition is not surprising when we recall the historical circumstances under which it was enounced.

The monks continued to be the leaders in the educational and literary army, and under the stress of circumstances, not only won immense political influence over the life of the people, but also developed a new and special type of literature—political sermons—which attained to particular development in the fourteenth century. Another curious phenomenon was presented by the narratives concerning various prominent personages, which contain precious facts and expressions of contemporary views. The authors always endeavored, after the time-honored fashion of biographers, to exalt and adorn their subjects; so that "decorated narratives," a most apt title for that sort of literature in general, was the characteristic name under which they came to be known. One peculiarity of all of these, it is worth noting, including that which dealt with the decisive battle with the Tatárs on the field of Kulikóvo, on the Don, in 1370, under Dmítry Donskóy (Dmítry of the Don), Prince of Moscow, is, that they are imitated, in style and language, from the famous "Word Concerning Ígor's Raid."

Among the many purely secular tales of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries preserved in manuscript, not one has anything in common with Russian national literature. All are translations, or reconstructions of material derived from widely divergent sources, such as the stories of Alexander of Macedon, of the Trojan War, and various Oriental tales. About the middle of the sixteenth century, Makáry, metropolitan of Moscow, collected, in twelve huge volumes, the Legends (or Spiritual Tales) of the Saints, under the title of Tchetyá Mináya—literally, Monthly Reading. It was finished in 1552, and contains thirteen hundred Lives of Saints.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What was the effect of the Tatár raids upon Kíeff?
2. What striking illustration have we of the weak religious literature of this time?
3. What were the "decorated narratives"? To what famous epic are they similar in style?
4. What foreign character have the secular tales of this period?
5. What famous collection of Legends of the Saints was made in the sixteenth century?

CHAPTER IV

THIRD PERIOD, FROM THE TIME OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE, 1530, TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Political events had tended to concentrate absolute power in the hands of the Grand Princes of Moscow, beginning with Iván III. But no counterbalancing power had arisen in Russian society; there was no independent life, no respect for the individual, no public opinion to counteract the abuse of power. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Russian society had reached the extreme limits of development possible to it under its unfavorable conditions. The time for the Russian Renaissance had arrived. It is well to remember that at this time in other parts of Europe also the spirit of despotism and intolerance was holding individual liberty in check. This was the age of Henry VIII., of Catherine de Medici, of the Inquisition, and of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

In this century of transition, the sixteenth, the man who exerted over the spirit of the age more influence than any other was Maxím the Greek (1480-1556), a learned scholar, a monk of Mt. Athos, educated chiefly in Italy. He was invited to Russia by Grand Prince Vasíly Ivánovitch, for the purpose of cataloguing a rich store of Greek manuscripts in the library of the Grand Prince. To his influence is due one of the most noteworthy books of the sixteenth century, the "Stogláva," or "Hundred Chapters," a set of regulations adopted by the young Tzar Iván Vasílievitch (afterwards known as Iván the Terrible), the son of Vasíly, and by the most enlightened nobles of his time at a council held in 1551. Their object was to reform the decadent morals of the clergy, and various ecclesiastical and social disorders, and in particular, the absolute illiteracy arising from the lack of schools. Another famous work of the same century is the "Domostróy," or "House-Regulator," attributed to Pope (priest) Sylvester, the celebrated confessor and counselor of Iván the Terrible in his youth. In an introduction and sixty-three chapters Sylvester sets forth the principles which should regulate the life of every layman, the management of his household and family, his relations to his neighbors, his manners in church, his conduct towards his sovereign and the authorities, his duties towards his servants and subordinates, and so forth. The most curious part of the work deals with the minute details of domestic economy—one injunction being, that all men shall live in accordance with their means or their salary—and family relations, in the course of which the position of woman in Russia of the sixteenth century is clearly defined. This portion is also of interest as the forerunner of a whole series of articles in Russian literature on women, wherein the latter are depicted in the most absurd manner, the most gloomy colors—articles known as "About Evil Women"—and founded on an admiration for Byzantine asceticism. In his Household Regulations Sylvester thus defines the duties of woman:

"She goeth to church according to opportunity and the counsel of her husband. Husbands must instruct their wives with care and judicious chastisement. If a wife live not according to the precepts of her husband, her husband must reprove her in private, and after that he hath so reproved her, he must pardon her, and lay upon her his further injunctions; but they must not be wroth one with the other.... And only when wife, son, or daughter accept not reproof shall he flog them with a whip, but he must not beat them in the presence of people, but in private; and he shall not strike them on the ear, or in the face, or under the heart with his fist, nor shall he kick them, or thrash them with a cudgel, or with any object of iron or wood. But if the fault be great, then, removing the offender's shirt, he shall beat him (or her) courteously with a whip," and so forth.

We have seen that Iván IV. (the Terrible) took the initiative in reforms. After the conquest of Kazán he established many churches in that territory and elsewhere in Russia, and purchased an immense quantity of manuscript service-books for their use, many of which turned out to be utterly useless, on account of the ignorance and carelessness of the copyists. This circumstance is said to have enforced upon Iván's attention the advisability of establishing printing-presses in Russia; though there is reason to believe that Maxím the Greek had, long before, suggested the idea to the Tzar. Accordingly, the erection of a printing-house was begun in 1543, but it was only in April, 1563, that printing could be begun, and in March, 1564, the first book was completed—The Acts of the Apostles. The first book printed in Slavonic, however, is the "Októikh," or "Book of the Eight Canonical Tones," containing the Hymns for Vespers, Matins, and kindred church services, which was printed in Cracow seventy years earlier; and thirty years earlier, Venice was producing printed books in the Slavonic languages, while even in Lithuania and White Russia printed books were known earlier than in Moscow. After printing a second book, the "Book of Hours" (the Tchasoslóff)—also connected with Vespers, Matins, kindred services, and the Liturgy, in addition—in 1565, the printers, both Russians, were accused of heresy, of spoiling the book, and were compelled to flee from Moscow. In 1568 other printers produced in Moscow the Psalter, and other books. In 1580, in Ostróg, Government of Volhýnia, in a printing-house founded by Prince Konstantín Konstantínovitch Ostrózhsky, was printed the famous Ostrózhsky Bible, which was as handsome as any product of the contemporary press anywhere in Europe.

Nevertheless, manuscripts continued to circulate side by side with printed books, even during the reign of Peter the Great.

During the reign of Iván the Terrible, secular literature and authors from the highest classes of society again made their appearance; in fact, they had never wholly disappeared during the interval. Iván the Terrible himself headed the list, and Prince Andréi Mikháilovitch Kúrbsky was almost his equal in rank, and more than his equal in importance from a literary point of view. Iván the Terrible's writings show the influence of his epoch, his oppressed and agitated childhood, his defective education; and like his character, they are the perfectly legitimate expression of all that had taken place in the kingdom of Moscow.

The most striking characteristic of Iván's writings is his malicious, biting irony, concealed beneath an external aspect of calmness; and it is most noticeable in his principal works, his "Correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky," and his "Epistle to Kozmá, Abbot of the Kiríllo-Byelózersk Monastery." They display him as a very well-read man, intimately acquainted with the Scriptures, and the translations from the Fathers of the Church, and the Russian Chronicles, as well as with general history. Abbot Kozmá had complained to the Tzar concerning the conduct of certain great nobles who had become inmates of his monastery, some voluntarily, others by compulsion, as exiles from court, and who were exerting a pernicious influence over the monks. Iván seized the opportunity thus presented to him, to pour out all the gall of his irony on the monks, who had forsaken the lofty, spiritual traditions of the great holy men of Russia.

Of much greater importance, as illustrating Iván's literary talent, is his "Correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky" (1563-1579), a warrior of birth as good as Iván's own, a former favorite of his, who, in 1563, probably in consequence of the profound change in Iván's conduct, which had taken place, and weighed so heavily upon the remainder of his reign, fled to Iván's enemy, the King of Poland. The abuses of confidence and power, with the final treachery of Priest Sylvester (Iván's adviser in ecclesiastical affairs), and of Adásheff (his adviser in temporal matters), had changed the Tzar from a mild, almost benevolent, sovereign, into a raging despot. On arriving in Poland, Prince Kúrbsky promptly wrote to Iván announcing his defection, and plainly stating the reasons therefor. When Iván received this epistle—the first in the celebrated and valuable historical correspondence which ensued—he thrust his iron-shod staff through the foot of the bearer, at the bottom of the Red (or Beautiful) Staircase in the Kremlin, and leaning heavily upon it, had the letter read to him, the messenger making no sign of his suffering the while. Kúrbsky asserted the rights of the individual, as against the sovereign power, and accused Iván of misusing his power. Iván, on his side, asserted his omnipotent rights, ascribed to his own credit all the noteworthy events of his reign, accused Kúrbsky of treason, and demonstrated to the Prince (with abundant Scriptural quotations), that he had not only ruined his own soul, but also the souls of his ancestors—a truly Oriental point of view. "If thou art upright and pious," he writes, "why wert not thou willing to suffer at the hands of me, thy refractory sovereign lord, and receive from me the crown of life?... Thou hast destroyed thy soul for the sake of thy body ... and hast waxed wroth not against a man, but against God."

Kúrbsky's letters reveal in him a far more cultivated man, with more sense of decency and self control, and even elegance of diction, than the Tzar. He even reproaches the latter, in one letter, for his ignorance of the proper way to write, and for his lack of culture, and tells him he ought to be ashamed of himself, comparing the Tzar's literary style with "the ravings of women," and accusing him of writing "barbarously."

In addition to these letters, Kúrbsky wrote a remarkable history of Iván the Terrible's reign, entitled, "A History of the Grand Principality of Moscow, Concerning the Deeds Which We Have Heard from Trustworthy Men, and Have also Beheld with Our Own Eyes." It is brought down to the year 1578. This history is important as the first work in Russian literature in which a completely successful attempt was made to write a fluent historical narrative (instead of setting forth facts in the style of the Chronicles), and link facts to preceding facts in logical sequence, deducing effects from causes.

To the reign of Iván the Terrible belong, also, "A History of the Kingdom of Kazán," by Priest Ioánn Glazátly; and the "Memoirs of Alexéi Adásheff"—the most ancient memoirs in the Russian language.

In the mean time, during this same sixteenth century, a new culture was springing up in southwestern Russia, and in western Russia, then under the rule of Poland, and under the influence of the Jesuits. Many Russians had joined the Roman Church, or the "Union" (1596), by which numerous eastern orthodox along the western frontier acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope of Rome, on condition of being allowed to retain their own rites and vernacular in the church services. In the end, they were gradually deprived of these, almost entirely; and curiously enough, the solution of this problem has been found, within the last decade, in the United States, where the immigrant Uniates are returning by the thousand to the Russian Church. In order to counteract the education and the wiles of the Jesuits, philanthropic "Brotherhoods" were formed among the orthodox Christians of southwest Russia, and these brotherhoods founded schools in which instruction was given in the Greek, Slavonic, Latin, and Polish languages; and rhetoric, dialectics, poetics, theology, and many other branches were taught. One of these schools in Kíeff was presided over by Peter Moghíla (1597-1646), the famous son of the Voevóda of Wallachia, who was brilliantly educated on the Continent, and at one time had been in the military service of Poland. Thus he thoroughly understood the situation when, later on (1625), he became a monk in the Kíeff Catacombs Monastery, and eventually the archimandrite or abbot, and devoted his wealth and his life to the dissemination of education among his fellow-believers of the Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church. The influence of this man and of his Academy on Russia was immense. The earliest school-books were here composed. Peter Moghíla's own "Shorter Catechism" is still referred to. The Slavonic grammar and lexicon of Lavrénty Zizánie-Tustanóvsky and Melénty Smotrítzky continued in use until supplanted by those of Lomonósoff one hundred and fifty years later. The most important factor, next to the foundation of the famous Academy, was, that towards the middle of the seventeenth century learned Kievlyanins, like Simeón Polótzky, attained to the highest ecclesiastical rank in the country, and imported the new ideas in education, which had been evolved in Kíeff, to Moscow, where they prepared the first stable foundations for the future sweeping reforms of Peter the Great.

Literature continued to bear an ecclesiastical imprint; but there were some works of a different sort. One of the compositions which presents a picture of life in the seventeenth century—among the higher and governing classes only, it is true—is Grigóry Kotoshíkin's "Concerning Russia in the Reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch." Kotoshíkin was well qualified to deal with the subject, having been secretary in the foreign office, and attached to the service of Voevóda (field marshal), Prince Dolgorúky, in 1666-1667. Among other things, he points out that the "women of the kingdom of Moscow are illiterate," and deduces the conclusion that the chief cause of all contemporary troubles in the kingdom is excessive ignorance. He declares, "We must learn from foreigners, and send our children abroad for instruction"—precisely Peter the Great's policy, it will be observed.

Another writer, Yúry Krizhánitz, must have exerted a very considerable influence upon Peter the Great, as it is known that the latter owned his work on "The Kingdom of Russia in the Middle of the Seventeenth Century." This book contains a discussion as to the proper means for changing the condition of affairs then prevailing; as to the degree in which foreign influence should be permitted; and precisely what measures should be adopted to combat this or that social abuse or defect. The programme of reforms, which he therein laid down, was, to proceed from the highest source, by administrative process, and without regard to the opposition of the masses. This programme Peter the Great carried out most effectually later on.

Battle was also waged with the old order of things in the spiritual realm by the famous Patriarch Níkon (1605-1681), who, as a peasant lad of twelve, ran away from his father's house to a monastery. Although compelled by his parents to return home and to marry, he soon went back and became a monk in a monastery in the White Sea. Eventually he rose not only to the highest ecclesiastical post in the kingdom, but became almost more powerful than the Tzar himself. He may be classed with the great literary forces of the land, in that he caused the correction of the Slavonic Church Service-books directly from the Greek originals, and eliminated from them innumerable and gross errors, which the carelessness and ignorance of scribes and proof-readers had allowed to creep into them. The far-reaching effects of this necessary and important step, the resulting schism in the church, which still endures, Níkon's quarrels with the Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch, Peter the Great's father, are familiar matters of history; as is also the fact that the power he won and the course he held were the decisive factors in Peter the Great's resolve to have no more Patriarchs, and to intrust the government of the church to a College, now the Most Holy Governing Synod.

When Níkon passed from power, lesser men took up the battle. Chief among these was Archimandrite Simeón Polótzky (already mentioned), who lived from 1626-1681, and was the first learned man to become tutor to a Tzarévitch. The spirit of the times no longer permitted the heir to the throne to be taught merely to read and write from the primer, the Psalter, and the "Book of Hours"; and Alexéi Mikháilovitch appointed Simeón Polótzky instructor to the Tzarévitch Feódor.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What unfavorable conditions do we find in Russian society at the beginning of the sixteenth century?
2. Who was Maxím the Greek, and what service did he render to his times?
3. What was the purpose of the "House-Regulator" of Pope Sylvester?
4. How does he define the duties of woman?
5. What early attempts at printing were made in Russia?
6. What qualities of Iván the Terrible may be seen in his writings?
7. Describe his correspondence with Prince Kúrbsky.
8. How do Kúrbsky's qualities compare with those of the Tzar, as shown in this correspondence?
9. Why is Kúrbsky's history of Moscow a remarkable work?
10. What great work was done by Moghíla and his Academy?
11. How did his influence prove very far-reaching?
12. What did other writers of this time say of the need for better education in Russia?
13. Describe the career of the famous Patriarch Níkon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• History of Russia. Rambaud, Chapter XV., Iván the Terrible, also Chapters XVI.-XX.
• The Story of Russia. W. R. Morfill.

CHAPTER V

FOURTH PERIOD, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EPOCH OF REFORM UNDER PETER THE GREAT.

Even in far-away, northeastern Russia a break is apparent in the middle of the sixteenth century; and during the reign of Iván the Terrible, a new sort of historical composition came into vogue—the so-called "Stépennaya Kníga," or "Book of Degrees" (or steps), wherein the national history was set forth in order, according to the Degrees of the Princely Houses in the lines of descent from Rúrik to Iván the Terrible in twenty degrees. This method found favor, and another degree was added in the seventeenth century, bringing the history down to the death of the Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch. During the seventeenth century many attempts were made at collections and chronicles, the only one approaching fullness being the "Chronicle of Níkon," so-called, probably, because it was compiled by order of the Patriarch Níkon.

During the seventeenth century a fad also sprang up of writing everything, even school-books, petitions, and calendars in versified form, which was known as vírshi, and imported from Poland to Moscow by Simeón Polótzky. At that time, also, it was the fashion for school-boys to act plays as a part of their regular course of study in the schools in southwest Russia; and in particular, in Peter Moghíla's Academy in Kíeff. Plays of a religious character had, naturally, been imported from western Europe, through Poland, in the seventeenth century, but as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century certain church ceremonies in Russia were celebrated in a purely dramatic form, suggestive of the mystery plays in western Europe. The most curious and famous of these was that which represented the casting of the Three Holy Children into the Fiery Furnace, and their miraculous rescue from the flames by an angel. This was enacted on the Wednesday before Christmas, during Matins, in Moscow and other towns, the first performance, so far as is known, having been in the beginning of the sixteenth century, it being mentioned, in the year 1548, in the finance-books of the archiepiscopal residence of St. Sophia at Nóvgorod. The "furnace" was a circular structure of wood, on architectural lines, gayly painted with the figures of appropriate holy men; specimens have been preserved, one being in the Archeological Museum in St. Petersburg.

The second famous "Act" (for such was their title) was known under the name of "The Riding on the Foal of an Ass," and took place (beginning with the end of the sixteenth century) in Moscow and other towns, generally on Palm Sunday. It represented the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and in Moscow it was performed in accordance with a special ritual by the Patriarch, in the presence of the Tzar himself; the Patriarch represented Christ, the Tzar led the ass upon which he was mounted. In other towns it was acted by the archbishops and the Voevódas. The third, and simplest, of these religious dramas, the "Act of the Last Judgment," generally took place on the Sunday preceding the Carnival.

In 1672 Tzar Alexéi Mikháilovitch ordered Johann Gregory, the Lutheran pastor in Moscow, to arrange "comedy acts," and the first pieces acted before the Tzar on a private court stage were translations from the German—the "Act of Artaxerxes," the comedy "Judith," and so forth. But under the influence of southwestern Russia, as already mentioned, it was not long before a Russian mystery play, "St. Alexéi, the Man of God," founded on a Polish original, thoroughly imbued with Polish influence, was written in honor of Tzar Alexéi, and acted in public by students of Peter Moghíla's College in Kíeff. A whole series of mystery plays followed from the fruitful pen of Simeón Polótzky. Especially curious was his "Comedy of King Nebuchadnezzar, the Golden Calf, and the Three Youths Who Were Not Consumed in the Fiery Furnace." He wrote many other "comedies," two huge volumes of them.

Theatrical representations won instant favor with the Tzar and his court, and a theatrical school was promptly established in Moscow, even before the famous and very necessary Slavonic-Greco-Latin Academy, for "higher education," as it was then understood.

None of the school dramas—several of which Peter Moghíla himself is said to have written—have come down to us; neither are there any specimens now in existence of the spiritual dramas and dramatic dialogues from the early years of the seventeenth century. In addition to the dramas of Simeón Polótzky, of the last part of that century, we have the dramatic works of another ecclesiastical writer, St. Dmítry of Rostóff (1651-1709), six in all, including "The Birth of Christ," "The Penitent Sinner," "Esther and Ahashuerus," and so forth. They stand half-way between mysteries and religio-allegorical pieces, and begin with a prologue, in which one of the actors sketches the general outline of the piece, and explains its connection with contemporary affairs; and end with an epilogue, recited by another actor, which is a reinforcement and inculcation of the moral set forth in the play. St. Dmítry's plays were first acted in the "cross-chamber," or banquet-hall, of the episcopal residence in Rostóff, where he was the Metropolitan, by the pupils of the school he had founded. He cleverly introduced scenes from real life into the middle of his spiritual dramas.

Collections of short stories and anecdotes current in western Europe also made their way to Russia, via Poland; and freed from puritanical, religious, and conventional bonds, light satirical treatment of topics began to be met with in the seventeenth century, wherein, among other things ridiculed, are the law-courts, the interminable length of lawsuits, the covetousness and injustice of the judges, and so forth. Among such productions are: "The Tale of Judge Shemyák" (Herring), "The Description of the Judicial Action in the Suit Between the Pike and the Perch"; or, applying personal names to the contestants, "The Story of Yórsha Yórshoff (Perch, the son of Perch) and the Son of Shtchetínnikoff (the Bristly)." A similar production is "The Story of Kúra (the Cock) and Lisá (the Fox)." The first place among such works, for simplicity of style and truth of description, belongs to "The History of the Russian Nobleman, Frol Skovyéeff, and Anna, Daughter of Table-Decker Nárdin Nashtchókin." But many writers of that age could not take a satirical view of things, and depicted life as a permanent conflict between the powers of evil and good—wherein the Devil chiefly got the upper hand—and man's principal occupation therein, the saving of his soul. One of the best compositions of ancient Russian secular literature belongs to this gloomy category, "The Tale of Góre-Zloshtchástye; How Góre-Zloshtchástye Brought the Young Man to the Monastic State," Góre-Zloshtchástye being, literally, "Woe-Misfortune." Woe-Misfortune persecutes the youth, who finds no safety from him, save on one road, where, alone, he does not besiege him—the road to the monastery.

It will be seen that the spirit of the age was deeply influenced by the state of material things.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What kind of historical writing sprang up in northeastern Russia during the time of Iván the Terrible?
2. Describe the fashion of acting plays in the schools.
3. What were the "comedy acts" given before the Tzar?
4. For what is Dmítry of Rostóff to be remembered?
5. What kind of anecdotes and short stories came from western Europe to Russia in the seventeenth century?
6. What picture of Russian life do they bring before us?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• History of Russia. Alfred Rambaud.
• The Story of Russia. W. R. Morfill.

CHAPTER VI

FIFTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF PETER THE GREAT (1689-1723).

The Fifth Period of Russian literature is that which comprises the reign of Peter the Great, with its reforms, scientific aims, and utter change of views upon nearly all conceivable practical and spiritual subjects. With the general historical aspects of that reign we cannot deal here. The culture which Peter I. introduced into Russia was purely utilitarian; and moreover, in precisely that degree which would further the attainment of his ends. But however imperatively his attention was engaged with other matters, he never neglected to maintain and add to the institutions of general education and special schools, and to order the translation of such works as were adapted to the requirements of his people, as he understood those requirements.

His views on the subject of literature were as peculiar as those on culture, and were guided by the same sternly practical considerations. But it must be said, that under him the printing-press first acquired in Russia its proper position of importance, and became the instrument for the quick, easy, and universal dissemination and exchange of thought, instead of serving merely as an indifferent substitute for manuscript copies. Not only were books printed, but also speeches and official poetry for special occasions; and at last the "Russian News" (January, 1703), the first Russian newspaper, keenly and carefully supervised by Peter the Great himself, made its appearance.

At the end of the seventeenth century, only two typographical establishments existed in all Russia: one in the Kíeff Catacombs Monastery (which does an immense business in religious books, and cheap prints and paper ikóni, or holy pictures); the other in Moscow, in the "Printing-House." In 1711 the first typographical establishment appeared in St. Petersburg, and in 1720 there were already four in the new capital, in addition to new ones in Tchernígoff, Nóvgorod-Syéversk, and Nóvgorod; while another had been added in Moscow. Yet Peter the Great distrusted the literary activity of the monks—and with reason, since most of them opposed his reforms, while many deliberately plotted against him—and in 1700-1701 ordered that monks in the monasteries should be deprived of pens, ink, and paper.

His official, machine-made literature offers nothing of special interest. But one of the curious phenomena of the epoch was the peasant writer Iván Tikhonóvitch Posóshkoff (born about 1670), a well-to-do, even a rich, man for those days, very well read, and imbued with the spirit of reform. Out of pure love for his fatherland he began to write projects and books in which he endeavored to direct the attention of the government to many social defects, and to point out means for correcting them. One of the most interesting works of Peter the Great's period was Posóshkoff's written "Plan of Conduct" for his son (who was one of the first young Russians sent abroad, in 1708, for education), entitled, "A Father's Testamentary Exhortation." His "Book on Poverty and Wealth" is also noteworthy, inasmuch as it affords a complete survey of Russia under Peter the Great.

During this reign, the highly educated and eminently practical Little Russians acquired more power than ever. The most notable of them all was Feofán Prokópovitch, Archbishop of Nóvgorod (born in Kíeff, 1681), who had been brilliantly educated in Kíeff and Rome, and was the most celebrated of Peter the Great's colaborers, the most zealous and clever executor of his sovereign's will, who attained to the highest secular and ecclesiastical honors, and prolonged his influence and his labors into succeeding reigns. His sermons were considered so important that they were always printed immediately after their delivery, and forwarded to the Emperor abroad, or wherever he might chance to be. Like others at that period, he indulged in dramatic writing, for acting on the school stage; and at Peter the Great's request he drew up a set of "Ecclesiastical Regulations" for the Ecclesiastical College, and was appointed to be the head of the church government, though Stepán Yavórsky was made head of the Holy Governing Synod when it was established, in 1721.

Peter the Great's ideas were not only opposed but persecuted, after his death (1723), until the accession to the throne of his daughter Elizabeth, in 1741. It was a long time before literature was regarded seriously, on its own merits; before literary and scientific activity were looked upon as separate departments, or any importance was attributed to literature. Science usurped the first place, and literature was regarded as merely a useful accessory thereto. This view was held by all the first writers after Peter the Great's time: Kantemír, Tatíshtcheff, Trediakóvsky, and even the gifted Lomonósoff, Russia's first secular writers, in the present sense of that word.

The first of these, in order, Prince Antiókh Dmítrievitch Kantemír, was born in 1708, and brought to Moscow at the age of three by his father, the Hospodár of Moldavia (after the disastrous campaign on the Pruth), who assumed Russian citizenship. Prince Kantemír published his first work, "A Symphony (concordance) of the Psalter," at the age of eighteen, being at that time in the military service, and a member of Feofán Prokópovitch's circle, and his close friend. His father had left a will by which he bequeathed his entire estate and about one hundred thousand serfs to that one of his children who should prove "the most successful in the sciences"; and one of Prince Antiókh's brothers having married a daughter of Prince D. M. Galítzyn, one of the most influential men of the day, Peter the Great naturally adjudged him the heir to the estate. This embittered Prince Antiókh Kantemír, and he revealed his wrath against the Emperor and his party in his first two notable satires, which appeared about the time the Empress Anna Ioánnovna ascended the throne (1730). Galítzyn was one of the nobles who were ruined by this event, and Prince Kantemír recovered a portion of his rightful possessions. In 1731 his powerful protection secured him the appointment of diplomatic resident in London. Thence he was, later on, transferred to Paris, and never returned to Russia. Before his departure to London, he wrote five satires, several fables and epistles, none of which were printed, however, though they won him great reputation in cultivated society, where they circulated in manuscript copies. Satire was quite in the spirit of the age, and Kantemír devoted himself to it. He displayed much wit and keen observation. In all, he produced nine satires, four being written during his sojourn abroad. In Satire Second, entitled, "Filarét and Evgény," or "On the Envy and Pride of Cantankerous Nobles," he describes the arrogance of the nobility, and their pretensions to the highest posts, without any personal exertion or merit, solely on the merits of their ancestors; and here he appears as a zealous advocate of Peter the Great's "Table of Ranks," intended to put a stop to precisely this state of affairs, by making rank depend on personal services to the state. The Third and Sixth Satires are curious in that they clearly express the author's views on his own literary activity, and also on society and literature in general. The Sixth Satire, written in 1738, is the most important, as showing Kantemír's own nature, both as a man and as a writer.

One of the men most in sympathy with Peter the Great was Vasíly Nikítitch Tatíshtcheff (1686-1750), who was educated partly in Russia, partly abroad. He applied his brilliant talents and profound mind to the public service, first in the Artillery, then in the Department of Mines, later on as Governor of Ástrakhan. In pursuance of a general plan for useful literary labors, Tatíshtcheff collected materials for a geography, which he did not finish, and for a history of Russia, which he worked out with considerable fullness, in five volumes. It was published thirty years after his death, by command of Katherine II. It is not history in the sense of that word at the present day, but merely a very respectable preliminary study of materials; and the author's expressions of opinion are valuable features, as setting forth the spirit of the Epoch of Reformation. He is generally mentioned as a historian, but far more important are his "Spiritual Testament" (Last Will) and "Exhortation to his son Evgráff" (1733), and "A Discussion between Two Friends as to the Advantages of Sciences and Schools" (probably written 1731-1736). The Testament consists of a general collection of rules concerning worldly wisdom, applied to contemporary needs and views, though his son was already grown up and in the government service, so that much of its contents are of general application only, and were introduced to round out the work, and for the edification of the rising generation. It is the last specimen of a class of works in which, as has been seen, Russian literature is rich.

The first Russian who devoted himself exclusively to literature was Vasíly Kiríllovitch Trediakóvsky (born at Ástrakhan in 1703), the son and grandson of priests, who was educated in Russia and abroad. When he decided, on his return from abroad in 1730, to adopt literature as a profession, the times were extremely unpropitious. He had, long before, during his student days in Moscow, written syllabic verses, an elegy on the death of Peter the Great, and a couple of dramas, which were acted by his fellow-students. In 1732 he became the court poet, or laureate and panegyrist, and wrote, to the order of the Empress Anna Ioánnovna, speeches and laudatory addresses, which he presented to the grandees, receiving in return various gifts in accordance with the custom of the epoch. But neither his official post nor his personal dignity prevented his receiving, also, violent and ignominious treatment at the hands of the powerful nobles. His "New and Brief Method of Composing Russian Verses" constituted an epoch in the history of Russian poetry, since therein was first set forth the theory of Russian tonic versification. But although he endeavored to create a distinct Russian style, and to put his own system into practice, he wrote worse than many of his contemporaries, and his poems were all below mediocrity; while not a single line of them supported the theory he announced. They enjoy as little consideration from his literary posterity as he enjoyed personally in the society of Anna Ioánnovna's day. Yet his work was very prominent in the transition period between the literature of the seventeenth century and the labors of Lomonósoff, and he undoubtedly rendered a great service to Russian culture by his translations, as an authority on literary theories and as a philologist.

The first writer of capital importance in modern Russian literature in general was the gifted peasant-academician Mikháil Vasílievitch Lomonósoff (1711-1755)—a combination of the scientific and literary man, such as was the fashion of the period in general, and almost necessarily so in Russia. Born in a village of the Archángel Government, near Kholmogóry on the White Sea, he was a fisherman, like his father, until the age of sixteen, having learned to read and write from a peasant neighbor. A tyrannical stepmother forced him to endure hunger and cold, and to do his modest studying and reading in desert spots. Accordingly, when he obtained from the village authorities the permission requisite for absenting himself for the space of ten months, he failed to return, and was inscribed among the "fugitives." In the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy at Moscow, which he managed to enter, and where he remained for five years, he distanced all competitors (though he lived, as he said, "in incredible poverty," on three kopeks a day), devoting himself chiefly to the natural sciences. At the age of twenty-two he was sent abroad by the government to study metallurgy at Freiburg. There and elsewhere abroad, in England, France, and Holland, he remained for five years, studying various practical branches.

In 1742 he became assistant professor at the Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, at a wretched salary, and in 1748 professor, lecturing on physical geography, chemistry, natural history, poetry, and the Russian language. He also was indefatigable in translating scientific works from the French and German, in writing a work on mining, a rhetoric-book, and so forth. By 1757 he had written many odes, poetical epistles, idyls, and the like; verses on festival occasions and tragedies, to order; a Russian grammar; and had collected materials for a history, and planned extensive philological researches. Eager to benefit his country, and conscious that he was capable of doing so, he made practical application of many important improvements in architecture, navigation, mining, and manufacturing industries. For example: in 1750 he zealously engaged in the manufacture of glass (with the aid of the government), set up a glass-factory, and applied his chemical knowledge to colored glass for mosaics. The great mosaic pictures which glorify Peter the Great, and the vast, magnificent ikóni (holy pictures) which adorn the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, in St. Petersburg, are the products of those factories, which still exist and thrive.

It is impossible to narrate in detail all Lomonósoff's enterprises for the improvement of the economic condition of the masses, his government surveys of Russia, ethnographical and geographical aims, and the like. His administrative labors absorbed most of his time leaving little for literary work. Like others of his day, he regarded literature as an occupation for a man's leisure hours, and even openly ridiculed those who busied themselves exclusively with it; though he ascribed to it great subsidiary importance, as a convenient instrument for introducing to society new ideas, and for expounding divers truths, both abstract and scientific. Thus he strove to furnish Russia with models of literary productions in all classes, and to improve the language of literature and science. Nevertheless, although he rendered great services in these directions, and is known as "the Father of Russian Literature," he was far more important as a scientific than as a literary man. It is true that precisely the opposite view of him was held during the period immediately succeeding him, and he became an authority and a pattern for many Russian writers, who imitated his pseudo-classical poetry, and even copied his language, as the acme of literary perfection. In reality, although he acquired a certain technical skill, he was a very mediocre poet; yet he was as an eagle among barnyard fowls, and cleverly made use of the remarkable possibilities of the Russian language as no other man did, although he borrowed his models from the pseudo-classical productions then in vogue in foreign countries. A few of his versified efforts which have come down to us deserve the name of poetry, by virtue of their lofty thoughts and strong, sincere feeling, expressed in graceful, melodious style. Among the best of these are: "A Letter Concerning the Utility of Glass," "Meditations Concerning the Grandeur of God," and his triumphal ode, "On the Day of the Accession to the Throne of the Empress Elizavéta Petróvna"—this last being the expression of the general rapture at the accession of Peter the Great's daughter.

The most important feature of all Lomonósoff's poetical productions is the fine, melodious language, which was a complete novelty at that time, together with smooth, regular versification. Not one of his contemporaries possessed so profound and varied a knowledge of the Russian popular and book languages, and this knowledge it was which enabled him to make such a wide choice between the ancient Church Slavonic, ancient Russian, the popular, and the bookish tongues.

In Peter the Great's Epoch of Reform, the modern "secular" or "civil" alphabet was substituted for the ancient Church Slavonic, and the modern Russian language, which Lomonósoff did so much to improve, began to assume shape, literature and science at last freeing themselves completely from ecclesiasticism and monasticism.

The first writer to divorce literature and science, like Lomonósoff, a talent of the transition period, between the Epoch of Reform and the brilliant era of Katherine II.—a product, in education and culture, of the Reform Epoch, though he strove to escape from its traditions—was Alexander Petróvitch Sumarókoff (1717-1777). Insignificant in comparison with Lomonósoff, the most complete contrast with the peasant-genius by his birth and social rank, which were of the highest, he was plainly the forerunner of a new era; and in the sense in which Feofán Prokópovitch is called "the first secular Russian writer," Sumarókoff must be described as "the first Russian literary man."

The Empress Anna Ioánnovna had had a troop of Italian actors, early in her reign; and in 1735 a troop of actors and singers. The Empress Elizavéta Petróvna revived the theater, and during her reign there were even two troops of actors, one French, the other Italian, for ballet and opera-bouffe (1757), both subsidized by the court. Sometimes an audience was lacking at their performances, and on one occasion at least, Elizavéta Petróvna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted for such dereliction of duty.

A distinctive feature of Elizavéta's reign was the growth of closer relations with France, which at this period represented the highest culture of Europe. Dutch and German influences which had hitherto impressed themselves upon Russian society, now gave place to French ideas. Translations of the French classics of the brilliant age of Louis XIV. were made in Russian, and the new Academy of Fine Arts established by Elizavéta in St. Petersburg was put under the care of French masters. It was in her reign also that the University of Moscow was founded.

In 1746 Feódor Grigórievitch Vólkhoff, the son of a merchant, built in Yaroslávl (on the upper Volga), the first Russian theater, to hold about one thousand spectators. Five years later, the news of the fine performances of the actors and actresses of Vólkhoff's theater reached St. Petersburg, and the troop was ordered to appear before the court. Four years later still, the existence of the Russian theater was assured, by imperial decree. Sumarókoff was appointed the director, having, evidently, for a long time previously had full charge of all dramatic performances at court; and also, evidently, been expected to furnish plays. His first tragedy, "Khóreff," dates from 1747. In the following year "Hamlet" appeared. Until the arrival of the Vólkhoff troop, all his plays were acted in St. Petersburg only, by the cadets and officers of the "Nobles' Cadet Corps," where he himself had been educated. Towards the end of Elizavéta Petróvna's reign, Sumarókoff acquired great renown, almost equaling that of Lomonósoff in his literary services, and the admirers of Russian literature of that day were divided into hostile camps, which consisted of the friends and advocates of these two writers, the Empress Elizabeth being at the head of the first, the Empress Katherine II. (then Grand Duchess) at the head of the second.

For about ten years (1759-1768), Sumarókoff published a satirical journal, "The Industrious Bee," after which he returned to his real field and wrote a tragedy, "Výsheslaff," and the comedies, "A Dowry by Deceit," "The Usurer," "The Three Rival Brothers," "The Malignant Man," and "Narcissus." In all he wrote twenty-six plays, including the tragedies "Sínav and Trúvor," "Aristona," and "Semira," before the establishment of the theater in St. Petersburg, in addition to "Khóreff" and "Hamlet," "Dmítry the Pretender," and "Mstíslaff." "Semira" was regarded as his masterpiece, and among his comedies "Tressotinius" attracted the most attention. All these, however, were merely weak imitations of the narrow form in which all French and pseudo-classical dramas were molded, the unities of time, place, and action exerting an embarrassing restriction on the action; and the heroes, although they professed to be Russians, with obscure historical names (like Sínav and Trúvor), or semi-mythical (like Khóreff), or genuinely historical (like Dmítry the Pretender), were the stereotyped declaimers of the bombastic, pseudo-classical drama.

Sumarókoff's dramatic work formed but a small part of his writings, which included a great mass of odes, eclogues, elegies, ballads, and so forth; and although he ranks as a dramatist, he is most important in his series of fables, epigrams, and epitaphs, which are permeated with biting satire on his own period, though the subjects are rather monotonous—the bad arrangement of the courts of justice, which permitted bribery and other abuses among lawyers, the injurious and oppressive state monopolies, attempts at senseless imitations of foreigners in language and customs, and ignorance concealed by external polish and culture. Coarse and imperfect as are these satires, they vividly reproduce the impressions of a contemporary gifted with keen observation and the ability to deal dispassionately with current events. As we shall see later on, this protest against the existing order of things continued, and blossomed forth in the succeeding—the sixth—period of literature in productions, which not only form the flower of the century, but also really belong to modern literature, and hold the public attention at the present day. This Sumarókoff's dramatic and other works do not do, and their place is rather in the archives of the preparatory school.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What was the general character of the reign of Peter the Great?
2. How important did the printing press become in his time?
3. Why did Peter the Great deprive the monks of pens, ink, and paper?
4. What interesting works were written by Posóshkoff?
5. Who was Feofán Prokópovitch?
6. Give an account of the life and writings of Kantemír.
7. What literary influence had Tatíshtcheff and Trediakóvsky?
8. Describe the early life of Lomonósoff.
9. Give an account of his many activities.
10. How did he regard literature, and what were his best works.
11. In what way did he exert a strong literary influence?
12. What attention did the Court give to theatrical representations at this time?
13. What new relations with Europe marked the reign of Elizavéta?
14. When and where was Vólkhoff's theater established?
15. What share had Sumarókoff in developing the Russian drama?
16. How did he protest against the abuses of his times?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• History of Russia. Alfred Rambaud. Vol. II., Chapter VI.
• The Story of Russia. W. R. Morfill.
• Specimens from the Russian Poets. Two volumes, Sir John Bowring, contain many specimens from Lomonósoff to Zhukóvsky inclusive.

CHAPTER VII

SIXTH PERIOD, THE REIGN OF KATHERINE II. (1762-1796).

Under the brilliant sway of Katherine II. (1762-1796) literature and literary men in Russia first began to acquire legitimate respect and consideration in the highest circles—the educated minority, which ruled tastes and fashions. Wealthy patrons of literature had existed even in the Empress Elizabeth's day it is true; and a taste for the theater had been implanted or engendered, partly by force, as we have seen. Western ideas had made much progress in a normal way, through the close contact with western European nations, brought about by Elizabeth's great political genius, which had made St. Petersburg the diplomatic center and law-giver; and Katherine's own interest in literature before her accession to the throne had also had much to do with raising the standard and the respect in which literature and writers were held, and in preparing the ground for the new era. During her reign, life and literature may be said to have come into close contact for the first time. Katherine II. herself may be placed at the head of the writers of her day, in virtue not only of her rank and her encouragement of literature, at home and abroad, but because of her own writings. One of her comedies, "O, Ye Times! O, Ye Manners!" is still occasionally given on the stage. Her own Memoirs and her Correspondence with Voltaire, Diderot, and others, furnish invaluable pictures of contemporary views and manners. Her satires, comedies, and journalistic work and polemical articles are most important, however, because most original. In 1769 she began to publish a newspaper called "All Sorts of Things" (or "Varieties"), to which she personally contributed satirical articles attacking abuses—chiefly the lack of culture, and superficiality of education. It was extremely popular with the public, and imitators started up, which the Empress eventually suppressed, because of their virulent attacks on her own journal. She ceased journalistic work in 1774, and then introduced on the stage, in her comedies, the same types and aspects of Russian life which she had previously presented in her satirical articles.

Of the fourteen comedies, nine operas, and seven proverbs which she wrote, in whole or in part (she had the skeletons of some filled out with choruses and verses according to her own plans), up to 1790, eleven comedies, seven operas, and five proverbs have come down to us. The comedies are not particularly artistic, but they are important in a history of the national literature, as noteworthy efforts to present scenes and persons drawn from contemporary life—the first of that sort on the Russian stage—the most remarkable being the one already referred to, and "The Gambler's Name-day" (1772). The personages whom she copied straight from life are vivid; those whom she invented as ideals, as foils for contrast, are lifeless shadows. Her operas are not important. Towards the close of her literary activity she once more engaged in journalism, writing a series of satirical sketches, "Facts and Fiction" (published in 1783), for a new journal, issued on behalf of the Academy of Sciences by the Princess Dáshkoff, the director of that academy, and chairman of the Russian Academy, founded in that year on the Princess's own plan.

This Princess Ekaterína Románovna Dáshkoff (born Vorontzóff, 1743-1810) was a brilliantly educated woman, with a pronounced taste for political intrigue, who had a great share in the conspiracy which disposed of Peter III., and placed Katherine II. on the throne. Katherine richly rewarded the Princess, but preserved her own independence and supremacy, which offended Princess Dáshkoff, the result being a coldness between the former intimate friends. This, in turn, obliged the Princess to leave the court and travel at home and abroad. During one trip abroad she received a diploma as doctor of laws, medicine, and theology from Edinburg University. Her Memoirs are famous, though not particularly frank, or in agreement with Katherine II.'s statements, naturally. The Empress never ceased to be suspicious of her, but twenty years later a truce was patched up between them, and Katherine appointed her to the offices above mentioned—never held before or since by a woman.

Princess Dáshkoff wrote much on educational subjects, and in the journal referred to above, she published not only her own articles and Katherine II.'s, but also the writings of many new and talented men, among them, Von Vízin and Derzhávin. This journal, "The Companion of the Friends of the Russian Language," speedily came to an end when the Princess-editor took umbrage at the ridicule heaped on some of her projects and speeches by the Empress and her courtiers.

If Katherine II. was the first to introduce real life on the Russian stage, Von Vízin was the first to do so in a manner sufficiently artistic to hold the stage, which is the case with his "Nédorosl," or "The Hobbledehoy." He is the representative of the Russian type, in its best aspects, during the reign of Katherine II., and offers a striking contrast to the majority of his educated fellow-countrymen of the day. They were slavish worshipers of French influences. He bore himself scornfully, even harshly, towards everything foreign, and always strove to counteract each foreign thing by something of native Russian origin.

Denís Ivánovitch Von Vízin (1744-1792), as his name suggests, was the descendant of an ancient German family, of knightly rank. An ancestor had been taken prisoner in the reign of Iván the Terrible, and had ended by settling in Russia and assuming Russian citizenship. The family became thoroughly Russified when they joined the Russian Church. Von Vízin was of a noble and independent character, to which he added a keen, fine mind, and a caustic tongue. His father, he tells us, in his "A Frank Confession of Deeds and Thoughts" (imitated from Rousseau's "Confession"), was also of an independent character in general, and in particular—contrary to the custom of the epoch—detested extortion and bribery, and never accepted gifts. "Sir!" he was accustomed to say to persons who asked favors of him in his official position, "a loaf of sugar affords no reason for condemning your opponent; please take it away and bring legal proof of your rights."

Denís Von Vízin received a thorough Russian education at home—which was unusual at that era of overwhelming foreign influence; and his inclination for literature having manifested itself in his early youth, while still at the University School for Nobles, he made various translations from foreign languages before entering the Moscow University, at the age of fifteen. During a visit which he made to St. Petersburg, while still a student at the University, he saw the theater for the first time, and soon made acquaintance with F. G. Vólkhoff (already mentioned), and one of the actors. These things exerted a great influence upon him. During a visit of the Court to Moscow, in 1755, he was appointed translator to the Foreign College (Office), with the inevitable military rank, and went to live in the new capital. After divers vicissitudes of service, he wrote "The Brigadier," which he was promptly asked to read before royalty and in society. It won for him great reputation with people who were capable of appreciating the first play which was genuinely Russian in something more than externals. It jeers at ignorance coated over with an extremely thin veneer of pretentious foreign culture. The types in "The Brigadier" (written about 1747) had long been floating about in literature, and as it were, awaiting a skillful pen which should present them in full relief to the contemporary public. Von Vízin set forth these types on the stage in a clearer, more vivid manner than all previous writers who had dealt with them, as we have seen, in satires and dramas, from Kantemír to Katherine II. The characters, as Von Vízin depicted them, were no longer abstract monsters, agglomerations of evil qualities, but near relations to everybody. Moreover, the drama was gay, playful—not even the moral was gloomy—with not a single depressing line.

Totally different is "The Hobbledehoy" ("Nédorosl," 1782), which is even more celebrated, and was written towards the close of a long career in the service, filled with varied and trying experiences—part of which arose from the difficulties of the author's own noble character in contact with a different type of men and from his attacks on abuses of all sorts—after a profound study of life in the middle and higher classes of Russian court and diplomatic circles. The difference between "The Brigadier" and "The Hobbledehoy" is so great that they must be read in the order of their production if the full value of the impression created by the earlier play is to be appreciated. "The Hobbledehoy" was wholly unlike anything which had been seen hitherto in Russian literature. Had the authorities permitted Von Vízin to print his collection of satires, he would have stood at the head of that branch of literature in that epoch; as it was, this fine comedy contains the fullest expression of his dissatisfaction at the established order of things in general. The merits of the play rest upon its queer characters from life, who are startlingly real, and represent the genuine aims and ideas of the time. The contrasting set of characters, whom he introduced as the exponents of his ideals, do not express any aims and ideas which then existed, but merely what he personally would have liked to see. Katherine II., with whose comedies Von Vízin's have much in common, always tried to offset her disagreeable real characters by honorable, sensible types, also drawn from real life as ideals. But Von Vízin's ideal characters are almost hostile in their bearing towards his characters drawn from real life. Altogether, Von Vízin must be regarded as the first independent, artistic writer in Russia, and therefore epoch-making, just as Feofán Prokópovitch must be rated as the first Russian secular writer, and Sumarókoff as the first Russian literary man and publicist in the modern meaning of the words. It is worth noting (because of a tendency to that sort of thing in later Russian writers down to the present day) that towards the end of his life a stroke of paralysis, in 1785, and other unfortunate circumstances, threw Von Vízin into a gloomy religious state of mind, under the influence of which he judged himself and his works with extreme severity, and condemned them with excessive harshness.

The general outline of "The Hobbledehoy" is as follows: Mrs. Prostakóff (Simpleton), a managing woman, of ungovernable temper, has an only child, Mitrofán (the Hobbledehoy), aged sixteen. She regards him as a mere child, and spoils him accordingly. He is, in fact, childish in every way, deserving his sobriquet, and is followed about everywhere by his old nurse, Eremyéevna. Mr. Simpleton has very little to say, and that little, chiefly, in support of his overbearing wife's assertions, and at her explicit demand. She habitually addresses every one, except her son, as "beast," and by other similar epithets. She has taken into her house, about six months before the play opens, Sophia, a fairly wealthy orphan, and a connection of hers by marriage, whom she ill-treats to a degree. She is on the point of betrothing her to Skotínin (Beastly), her brother, who frankly admits that he cares nothing for the girl, and not very much for her estate, which adjoins his own, but a very great deal for the extremely fine pigs which are raised on it—a passion for pigs, which he prefers to men, constituting his chief interest in life. Mr. Beastly, who says that he never goes to law, no matter what losses he may suffer, no matter how much his neighbors injure him, because he simply wrings the deficit out of his peasants, and that ends it, declares that Sophia's pigs, for which he expresses a "deadly longing," are so huge that "there is not one of them which, stood up on its hind legs, would not be a whole head taller than any one of us," is eager for the match. While this is under discussion (Sophia being entirely ignorant of their intentions), the young girl enters, and announces that she has received good news: her uncle, who has been in Siberia for several years in quest of fortune, and is supposed to be dead, has written to inform her of his speedy arrival. Mrs. Simpleton takes the view that he is dead, ought to be dead; and roughly tells Sophia that the latter need not try to frighten her into giving her her liberty, and asserts that the letter must be from the officer who has been in love with her, and whom she wishes to marry. Sophia offers her the letter, in proof of innocence, saying, "Read it yourself." "Read it myself!" cries Mrs. Simpleton; "no, madam, thank God, I was not brought up in that way. I may receive letters, but I always order some one else to read them," whereupon she orders her husband to read it. Her husband gives it up as too difficult, and Mr. Beastly, on being asked, replies, "I! I have never read anything since I was born, my dear sister! God has delivered me from that boredom." Právdin (Mr. Upright), an official charged with inspecting the condition of the peasants, also empowered to put under arrest cruel proprietors, and under guardianship of the state those who have been ill-treated, enters and reads the letter to them. When Mrs. Simpleton learns from it that Uncle Starodúm (Oldidea) has a large income, and that Sophia is to inherit it, she immediately overwhelms Sophia with flattery and affection, and decides to marry her to her precious "child," Mitrofán. This leads to violent quarrels during the rest of the play between her and her brother, who wants the pigs; and to violence from the latter to Mitrofán, who declares that he has long wished to marry, and intends to have Sophia. In the mean time a company of soldiers, on the march to Moscow, arrives, and is quartered in the village, while their commanding officer, Mílon, a friend of Mr. Upright, makes his appearance at the house, where to his surprise, he finds his lady-love, Sophia, who promptly explains to him the situation of affairs.

Mitrofán is still under teachers, consisting of Vrálman (Liar), a former gunner, who is supposed to be teaching him French and all the sciences; Tzýfirkin (Cipherer), a retired army-sergeant, who instructs him in arithmetic, and Kutéikin, who, as his name implies, is the son of a petty ecclesiastic, and teaches him reading and writing, talking always in ecclesiastical style, interlarded with old Church-Slavonic words and phrases. He is always doing "reviews," never advancing to new lessons, and threatens to drown himself if he be not allowed to wed Sophia at once. There is a most amusing lesson-scene. The teacher of arithmetic sets him a problem: three people walking along the road find three hundred rubles, which they divide equally between them; how much does each one get? Mitrofán does the sum on his slate: "Once three is three, once nothing is nothing, once nothing is nothing." But his mother exclaims, that if he finds such a sum, he must not divide it, but keep it all, and that arithmetic, which teaches such division, is a fool of a science. Another sum is worked out in equally absurd style, with equally intelligent comments from the mother. Kutéikin then takes his turn, and using a pointer, makes Mitrofán repeat after him a ridiculously appropriate sentence from the Psalms, in the "Tchasoslóff," the "Book of Hours," or first reader. Vrálman enters, meddles with everybody, in a strong foreign accent, and puts an end to the lessons, as quite unnecessary for the precious boy; for which, and his arrogance (when Mrs. Simpleton and the Hobbledehoy have retired), the other teachers attack him with slate and book.

Meanwhile, Uncle Starodúm has arrived, and talks in long paragraphs and stilted language to Právdin and Sophia, expressing the ideal view of life, conduct, service to the state, and so forth. He, as well as Sophia, Právdin Mílon, are quite colorless. The Simpletons overwhelm Starodúm with stupid courtesies, and Mrs. S. gets Právdin to examine Mitrofán, in order to prove to Starodúm that her darling child is fit to be Sophia's husband. The examination is even more brilliant than the lesson. Mitrofán says that door, that is to say, the door to that room, is an adjective, because it is added, or affixed, to its place; but the door of the store-house is a noun, because it has been standing off its hinges for six weeks. Further examination reveals the fact, that Vrálman's instruction in history has impressed his pupil with the idea that the histories (stories) told by Khavrónya, the herd-girl, constitute that science. When asked about geography, the Hobbledehoy declares that he does not know what is meant, and his mother prompts him with "'Eography," after asking Právdin what he said. On inquiring further as to its meaning and its use, and on being informed that it is a description of the earth, and its first use is to aid people in finding their way about, she makes the famous speech, frequently quoted, "Akh, good gracious! What are the cabmen for, then? That's their business. That's not a science for the nobility. All a noble has to do is to say, 'Drive me to such a place!' and you're driven whithersoever you wish. Believe me, my good sir, everything that Mitrofán does not know is nonsense."

Uncle Starodúm makes acquaintance with Mílon, whose good qualities he has learned through an old friend, and betroths him to Sophia. Mrs. Simpleton, on learning of this, and that Starodúm and Sophia are to set out for Moscow early the next morning, arranges to have Mitrofán abduct Sophia at a still earlier hour, and marry her. Sophia escapes; Mrs. Simpleton raves and threatens to beat to death her servants who have failed to carry out her plan. Právdin then announces that the government has ordered him to take charge of the Simpletons' house and villages, because of Mrs. S.'s notorious inhumanity. Vrálman, whom Starodúm recognizes as a former coach-man of his, mounts the box, and Starodúm, Sophia, and Mílon set out for Moscow, virtue reigning triumphant, and wickedness being properly punished—which, again, is an ideal point of view.

But the man who, taken as a whole, above all others in the eighteenth century, has depicted for us governmental, social, and private life, is Gavríl Románovitch Derzhávin (1743-1816). His memoirs and poetical chronicle furnish the most brilliant, vivid, and valuable picture of the reign of Katherine II. Moreover, in his own person, Derzhávin offers a type of one of the most distinguished Russians of the last half of the eighteenth century, in his literary and official career. He presented a great contrast to his contemporary and friend, Von Vízin, in that, while the latter was a noteworthy example of all the best sides in contemporary social life, with very few defects, Derzhávin was an example of all the defects of contemporary life, and of several distinctly personal merits, which sharply differentiated him from others in the same elevated spheres of court and official life. He was the son of a poor noble. His opportunities for education were extremely limited, and in 1762 he entered the military service as a common soldier, in the famous Preobrazhénsky (Transfiguration) infantry regiment of the Guards. As he had neither friends nor relatives in St. Petersburg, he lived in barracks, where with difficulty he followed his inclinations, and read all the Russian and German books he could obtain, scribbling verses at intervals. In 1777 he managed to obtain a small estate and the rank of bombardier-lieutenant, and left the service to become an usher in one department of the Senate, where he made many friends and acquaintances in high circles. Eventually he became governor of Olónetz, then of Tambóff. In 1779 he began "in a new style," among other compositions therein being an ode "To Felitza," meaning the Empress Katherine II. He continued to write verses, but published nothing under his own name until his famous ode, "God" and "The Murza's Vision," in 1785. We cannot here enter into his official career further than to say, that all his troubles arose from his own honesty, and from the combined hostile efforts of the persons whose dishonest practices he had opposed. Towards the end of Katherine's reign he became a privy councilor (a titular rank) and senator; that is to say, a member of the Supreme Judicial Court. Under Paul I. he was President of the Commerce College (Ministry of Commerce), and Imperial Treasurer. Under Alexander I. he was made Minister of Justice.

"Katharine's Bard," as he was called, like several of his predecessors, cherished an idea of fixing a style in Russian literature, his special aim being to confine it to the classical style, and to oppose the new school of Karamzín. In this he was upheld by I. I. Dmítrieff, who was looked upon as his successor. But after Derzhávin heard Púshkin read his verses, at the examination in the Tzárskoe Seló Lyceum (1815), he frankly admitted that the lad had already excelled all living writers of Russia; and he predicted that this school-boy would become the new and brilliant star.

Despite the burdens of his official life, Derzhávin wrote a great deal; towards the end of his life, much dramatic matter; yet he really belongs to the ranks of the lyric poets. He deserved all the fame he enjoyed, because he was the first poet who was so by inspiration, not merely by profession or ambition. Even in his most insignificant works of the stereotyped sort, with much sound and very little thought and feeling, the hand of a master is visible, and talent is perceptible; while many passages are remarkable for their poetic figures, melody of versification, and beauty and force of expression. No poet previous to Púshkin can be compared to him for talent, and for direct, independent inspiration. His poetry is chiefly the poetry of figures and events, of solemn, loudly trumpeted victories and feats, descriptions of banquets, festivals, noisy social life, and endless hymns of praise to the age of Katherine II. It is not very rich in inward contents or in ideas. But he possessed one surpassing merit: he, first of all among Russian poets, brought poetry down from its lofty, classical flights to the every-day life of his fatherland at that age, and to nature, and freed Russian poetry from that monotonous, stilted, tiresome, official form which had been introduced by Lomonósoff and copied by all the latter's followers. Derzhávin's language is powerful, picturesque, and expressive, but still harsh and uneven, the ordinary vernacular being mingled with Church-Slavonic, and frequently obscuring the meaning; also, and owing to his deficient education, he often had recourse to inelegant, tasteless forms. If we compare him with Lomonósoff and Sumarókoff, it is evident that Russian poetry had made a great stride in advance under him, both as to external and internal development, in that he not only brought it nearer to life, but also perfected its forms, to a considerable degree, and applied it to subjects to which his predecessors would never have dreamed of applying it. His famous ode "God" will best serve to illustrate his style:

GOD^[5]

O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright
All space doth occupy, all motion guide;
Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight;
Thou only God! There is no God beside!
Being above all beings! Three in One!
Whom none can comprehend and none explore;
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone:
Embracing all,—supporting,—ruling o'er,—
Being whom we call GOD—and know no more!

In its sublime research, philosophy
May measure out the ocean deep, may count
The sands or the sun's rays—but God! for Thee
There is no weight nor measure:—none can mount
Up to Thy mysteries; Reason's brightest spark,
Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try
To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark:
And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high,
Even like past moments in eternity.

Thou from primeval nothingness didst call,
First chaos, then existence. Lord! on Thee
Eternity had its foundation; all
Sprung forth from Thee:—of light, joy, harmony,
Sole origin:—all life, all beauty Thine.
Thy word created all, and doth create;
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine.
Thou wert, and art, and shalt be! Glorious! Great!
Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate!

Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround:
Upheld by Thee, by Thee inspired with breath!
Thou the beginning with the end has bound,
And beautifully mingled life and death!
As sparks mount upwards from the fiery blaze,
So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from Thee;
And as the spangles in the sunny rays
Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry
Of heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise.

A million torches lighted by Thy hand
Wander unwearied through the blue abyss:
They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command;
All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss.
What shall we call them? Piles of crystal light—
A glorious company of golden streams—
Lamps of celestial ether burning bright—
Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams?
But Thou to these art as the noon to night.

Yes, as a drop of water in the sea,
All this magnificence in Thee is lost:—
What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee?
And what am I then? Heaven's unnumber'd host,
Though multiplied by myriads, and array'd
in all the glory of sublimest thought;
Is but an atom in the balance weighed
Against Thy greatness; is a cypher brought
Against infinity! What am I, then? Naught!

Naught! But the effluence of Thy light divine,
Pervading worlds, hath reach'd my bosom, too;
Yes! In my spirit doth Thy spirit shine
As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew.
Naught! But I live, and on hope's pinions fly
Eager towards Thy presence; for in Thee
I live, and breathe, and dwell; aspiring high,
Even to the throne of Thy divinity.
I am, O God! and surely Thou must be!

Thou art! directing, guiding all, Thou art!
Direct my understanding then to Thee:
Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart:
Though but an atom midst immensity,
Still I am something fashioned by Thy hand!
I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,
On the last verge of mortal being stand,
Close to the realms where angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land!

The chain of being is complete in me:
In me is matter's last gradation lost,
And the next step is spirit—Deity!
I can command the lightning, and am dust!
A monarch, and a slave; a worm, a god!
Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously
Constructed and conceived? Unknown! This clod
Lives merely through some higher energy;
For from itself alone it could not be!

Creator, yes! Thy wisdom and thy word
Created me! Thou source of light and good!
Thou spirit of my spirit, and my Lord!
Thy light, Thy love, in their bright plenitude
Fill'd me with an immortal soul, to spring
O'er the abyss of death, and bade it wear
The garments of eternal day, and wing
Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere,
Even to its source—to Thee—its author there.

O thoughts ineffable! O visions blest!
Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee,
Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast,
And waft its homage to Thy Deity.
God! Thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar;
Thus seek Thy presence—Being wise and good!
Midst Thy vast works admire, obey, adore;
And when the tongue is eloquent no more,
The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude.

But the literary activity of Katherine II.'s reign was not confined to its two most brilliant representatives—Von Vízin and Derzhávin; many less prominent writers, belonging to different parties and branches of literature, were diligently at work. Naturally, there was as yet too little independent Russian literature to permit of the existence of criticism, or the establishment of a fixed standard of taste.

Among the worthy writers of the second class in that brilliant era, were Kheraskóff, Bogdanóvitch, Khémnitzer, and Kápnist.

Mikháil Matvyéevitch Kheraskóff (1733-1801), the author of the epic "The Rossiad," and of other less noteworthy works, was known during his lifetime only to the very restricted circle of his friends. In his convictions and views on literature he belonged to the epoch of Lomonósoff and Sumarókoff; by birth and education to the highest nobility. More faithfully than any other writer of his century does Kheraskóff represent the pseudo-classical style in Russian epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, for he wrote all sorts of things, including sentimental novels. To the classical enthusiasts of his day he seemed the "Russian Homer," and his long poems, "The Rossiad" (1789) and "Vladímir" (1786), were confidently believed to be immortal, being the first tolerable specimens of the epic style in Russian literature. In twelve long cantos he celebrates the capture of Kazán by Iván the Terrible in "The Rossiad." "Vladímir" (eighteen cantos) celebrates the Christianizing of Russia by Prince-Saint Vladímir.

Ippolít Feódorovitch Bogdanóvitch (1743-1803), who was developed under the immediate supervision and patronage of Kheraskóff, belonged, by education and his comprehension of elegance and of poetry, to a later epoch—on the borderland between pseudo-classicism and the succeeding period, which was ruled by sentimentalism. His well-known poem, "Dúshenka" ("Dear Little Soul"), was the first light epic Russian poem, with simple, intelligible language, and with a jesting treatment of a gay, playful subject. This subject Bogdanóvitch borrowed from La Fontaine's novel, "The Loves of Psyche and Cupid," which, in turn, was borrowed from Apuleius.

The third writer of this group, Iván Ivánovitch Khémnitzer (1745-1784), the son of a German physician, was unknown during his lifetime; enjoyed no literary fame, and cared for none, regarding his capacities and productions as unworthy of notice. In 1779, at the instigation of his friends, he published a collection of his "Fables and Tales." At this time there existed not a single tolerable specimen of the fable in Russian; but by the time literary criticism did justice to Khémnitzer's work, Karamzín, and Dmítrieff had become the favorites of the public, and Khémnitzer's productions circulated chiefly among the lower classes, for whom his Fables are still published. His works certainly aided Dmítrieff and Krylóff in handling this new branch of poetical literature in Russia. His "The Metaphysician" still remains one of the greatest favorites among Russian fables for cultivated readers of all classes.

Briefly told, the contents of "The Metaphysician" are as follows: A father, who had heard that children were sent beyond sea to be educated, and that those so reared were more respected than those brought up at home, determined, being wealthy, to send his son thither. The son, despite his studies, from being stupid when he went, returned more stupid than before, having fallen into the clutches of educational quacks, of whom there is no lack. Aforetime, he had babbled stupidities simply, but now he began to expound such things in learned wise; aforetime, only the stupid had failed to understand him, now he was beyond the comprehension of the wise. The whole house, and town, and world were bored to death with his chatter. He was possessed with a mania for searching out the cause of everything. With his wits thus woolgathering as he walked, he one day suddenly tumbled into a pit. His father, who chanced to be with him, rushed off to get a rope, wherewith to drag out "his household wisdom." Meanwhile, his thoughtful child, as he sat in the pit, reasoned with himself as to what might be the cause of his fall, and came to the conclusion that it was an earthquake; also, that his sudden flight into the pit might create an atmospheric pressure, from the earth and the pit, which would wipe out the seven planets. The father rushed up with a rope. "Here's a rope for you," says he, "catch hold of it. I'll drag you out; look out that you don't fall off!" "No, wait; don't pull me out yet; tell me first, what sort of a thing is a rope?" "Although the father was not learned, he was gifted by nature with common sense," winds up the fable.

Another, called "The Skinflint," runs thus:

"There was once a Skinflint, who had a vast amount of money.
And, as he was wont to say, he had grown rich,
Not by crooked deeds. Not by stealing or ruining men.
No, he took his oath to that: That God had sent all this wealth to his house,
And that he feared not, in the least, to be convicted of injustice towards his neighbor.
And to please the Lord for this, His mercy,
And to incline Him unto favors in time to come—
Or, possibly, just to soothe his conscience—
The Skinflint took it into his head to build a house for the poor.
The house was built, and almost finished. My Skinflint, gazing at it,
Beside himself with joy, cheers up and reasons with himself.
How great a service he to the poor hath rendered, in ordering a refuge to be built for them!
Thus was my Skinflint inwardly exulting over his house.
Then one of his acquaintances chanced along.
The Skinflint said, with rapture, to his friend,
'I think a great lot of the poor can be housed here!'
'Of course, a great many can live here;
But you cannot get in all whom you've sent wandering homeless o'er the earth!'"

One of Khémnitzer's most intimate friends, and also one of the most notable members of Derzhávin's circle (being related to the latter through his wife), was Vasíly Vasílievitch Kápnist (1757-1824), whose ancestors had been members of an Italian family, the Counts Capnissi. He owed his fame chiefly to his ode on "Slavery" (1783); to another, "On the Extirpation in Russia of the Vocation of Slave by the Empress Katherine II." (1786); and to a whole series celebrating the conquests of the Russian arms in Turkey and Italy. But far more important are his elegies and short lyrics, many of which are really very light and graceful; and his translations of "The Monument," from Horace, which was quite equal to Derzhávin's, or even Púshkin's. His masterpiece was the comedy "Yábeda" (Calumny), which was written probably at the end of Katherine's reign, and was printed under Paul I., in 1798. It contains a sharp condemnation of the morals in the provincial courts of justice, and of the incredible processes of chicanery and bribery through which every business matter was forced to pass. The types which Kápnist put on the stage, especially the pettifogger Právoloff, and the types of the presiding judge and members of the bench, were very accurately drawn, and can hardly fail to have been taken from life. Alarmed by the numerous persecutions of literary men which took place during the last years of Katherine II.'s reign, Kápnist dared not publish his comedy until the accession of the Emperor Paul I., when he dedicated it to the Emperor, and set forth in a poetical preface the entire harmlessness of his satire. But even this precaution was of no avail. The comedy created a tremendous uproar and outcry from officialdom in general; the Emperor was petitioned to prohibit the piece, and to administer severe punishment to the "unpatriotic" author. The Emperor is said to have taken the petition in good faith and to have ordered that Kápnist be dispatched forthwith to Siberia. But after dinner his wrath cooled (the petitioners had even declared that the comedy flagrantly jeered at the monarchical power), and he began to doubt the justice of his command. He ordered the piece to be played that very evening in the Hermitage Theater (in the Winter Palace). Only he and the Grand Duke Alexander (afterwards Alexander I.), were present at the performance. After the first act the Emperor, who had applauded incessantly, sent the first state courier he could put his hand on to bring Kápnist back on the instant. He richly rewarded the author on the latter's return, and showed him favor until he died. Another amusing testimony to the lifelikeness of Kápnist's types is narrated by an eye-witness. "I happened," says this witness, "in my early youth, to be present at a representation of 'Calumny' in a provincial capital; and when Khvatáïko (Grabber), sang,

'Take, there's no great art in that;
Take whatever you can get;
What are hands appended to us for
If not that we may take, take, take?'

all the spectators began to applaud, and many of them, addressing the official who occupied the post corresponding to that of Grabber, shouted his name in unison, and cried, 'That's you! That's you!'"

Towards the end of Katherine II.'s reign, a new school, which numbered many young writers, arose. At the head of it, by reason of his ability as a journalist, literary man, poet, and savant, stood Nikolái Mikháilovitch Karamzín (1766-1826). Karamzín was descended from a Tatár princeling, Karamurza, who accepted Christianity in the days of the Tzars of Moscow. He did much to disseminate in society a discriminating taste in literature, and more accurate views in regard to it. During the first half of his sixty years' activity—that under Katherine II.—he was a poet and literary man; during the latter and most considerable part of his career—under Alexander I.—he was a historian. His first work to win him great renown was his "Letters of a Russian Traveler," written after a trip lasting a year and a half to Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, begun in 1789, and published in the "Moscow Journal," which he established in 1791. For the next twelve years Karamzín devoted himself exclusively to journalism and literature. It was his most brilliant literary period, and during it his labors were astonishing in quantity and varied in subject, as the taste of the majority of readers in that period demanded. During this period he was not only a journalist, but also a poet, literary man, and critic. His poetical compositions are rather shallow, and monotonous in form, but were highly esteemed by his contemporaries. They are interesting at the present day chiefly because of their historical and biographical details, as a chronicle of history, and of the heart of a profoundly sincere man. Their themes are, generally, the love of nature, of country life, friendship; together with gentleness, sensibility, melancholy, scorn for rank and wealth, dreams of immortality with posterity. His greatest successes with the public were secured by "Poor Liza," and "Natálya, the Boyár's Daughter," which served as much-admired models for sentimentalism to succeeding generations. Sentimentality was no novelty in Russia; it had come in with translations from English novels, such as Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," and the like; and imitations of them in Russia. "Sensibility" was held to be the highest quality in human nature, and a man's—much more a woman's—worth was measured by the amount of "sensibility" he or she possessed. This new school paid scant heed to the observation and study of real life. An essential tenet in the cult consisted of a glorification of the distant past, "the good old times," adorned by fancy, as the ideal model for the present; the worship of the poor but honest country folk, the ideal of equality, freedom, happiness, and nearness to nature.

Of this style, Karamzín's "Poor Liza" is the most perfect and admired specimen. Liza, a poor country lass, is "beautiful in body and soul," supremely gifted with tenderness and sensibility. Erást, a wealthy noble, possessed of exceptional brains and a kind heart, but weak and trifling by nature, falls in love with her. He begins to dream of the idyllic past, "in which people strolled, care-free, through the meadows, bathed in crystal clear pools, kissed like turtle-doves, reposed amid roses and myrtle, and passed their days in happy idleness." So he feels himself summoned to the embrace of nature, and determines to abandon the high society, for a while at least. He even goes so far as to assure Liza that it is possible for him to marry her, despite the immense difference in their social stations; that "an innocent soul, gifted with sensibility, is the most important thing of all, and Liza will ever be the nearest of all persons to his heart." But he betrays her, involuntarily. When she becomes convinced of his treachery, she throws herself into a pond hard by, beneath the ancient oaks which but a short time before had witnessed their joys.

"Natálya, the Boyár's Daughter," is a glorification of a fanciful past, far removed from reality, in which "Russians were Russians"; and against this background, Karamzín sets a tale, even simpler and more innocent, of the love of Natálya and Alexéi, with whom Natálya falls in love, "in one minute, on beholding him for the first time, and without ever having heard a single word about him." These stories, and Karamzín's "Letters of a Russian Traveler," already referred to, had an astonishing success; people even learned them by heart, and the heroes of them became the favorite ideals of the young; while the pool where Liza was represented as having drowned herself (near the Simónoff Monastery, in the suburbs of Moscow) became the goal for the rambles of those who were also "gifted with sensibility." The appearance of these tales is said to have greatly increased the taste for reading in society, especially among women.

Although Karamzín did not possess the gift of artistic creation, and although the imaginative quality is very deficient in his works, his writings pleased people as the first successful attempts at light literature. In his assumption that people should write as they talked, Karamzín entirely departed from Lomonósoff's canons as to the three styles permissible, and thereby imparted the final impulse to the separation of the Russian literary language from the bookish, Church-Slavonic diction. His services in the reformation and improvement of the Russian literary language were very important, despite the violent opposition he encountered from the old conservative literary party.^[6]

When Alexander I. ascended the throne, in 1801, Karamzín turned his attention to history. In 1802 he founded the "European Messenger" (which is still the leading monthly magazine of Russia), and began to publish in it historical articles which were, in effect, preparatory to his extended and famous "History of the Russian Empire," published in 1818, fine in style, but not accurate, in the modern sense of historical work.

Karamzín's nearest followers, the representatives of the sentimental tendency in literature, and of the writers who laid the foundations for the new literary language and style, were Dmítrieff and Ózeroff.

Iván Ivánovitch Dmítrieff (1760-1810), and Vladisláff Alexándrovitch Ózeroff (1769-1816), both enjoyed great fame in their day. Dmítrieff, while under the guidance of Karamzín, making sentimentalism the ruling feature in Russian epic and lyric poetry, perfected both the general style of Russian verse, and the material of the light, poetical language. Ózeroff, under the same influence and tendency, aided in the final banishment from the Russian stage of pseudo-classical ideals and dramatic compositions constructed according to theoretical rules. Dmítrieff's most prominent literary work was a translation of La Fontaine's Fables, and some satirical writings. Ózeroff, in 1798, put on the stage his first, and not entirely successful, tragedy, "Yáropolk and Olég."^[7] His most important work, both from the literary and the historical points of view—although not so regarded by his contemporaries—was his drama "Fingal," founded on Ossian's Songs, and is a triumph of northern poetry and of the Russian tongue, rich in picturesqueness, daring, and melody. His contemporaries regarded "Dmítry Donskóy" as his masterpiece, although in reality it is one of the least noteworthy of his compositions, and it enjoyed a brilliant success.

But the most extreme and talented disciples of the Karamzín school were Vasíly Andréevitch Zhukóvsky (1783-1852) and Konstantín Nikoláevitch Bátiushkoff (1786-1855), who offer perfectly clear examples of the transition from the sentimental to the new romantic school, which began with Púshkin. Everything of Zhukóvsky's that was original, that is to say, not translated, was an imitation, either of the solemn, bombastic productions of the preceding poets of the rhetorical school, or of the tender, dreamy, melancholy works of the sentimental school, until he devoted himself to translations from the romantic German and English schools. He was not successful in his attempts to create original Russian work in the romantic vein; and his chief services to Russian literature (despite the great figure he played in it during his day) must be regarded as having consisted in giving romanticism a chance to establish itself firmly on Russian soil; and in having, by his splendid translations, among them Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon," and de la Mott Fouqué's "Undine," brought Russian literature into close relations with a whole mass of literary models, enlarged the sphere of literary criticism, and definitively deprived pseudo-classical theories and models of all force and influence.

Zhukóvsky's own history and career were romantic. He was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor named Búnin, who already had eleven children; when his peasants, on setting out for Rumyántzoff's army as sutlers, asked their owner, "What shall we bring thee from the Turkish land, little father?" Búnin replied, in jest, "Bring me a couple of pretty Turkish lasses; you see my wife is growing old." The peasants took him at his word, and brought two young Turkish girls, who had been captured at the siege of Bender. The elder, Salkha, aged sixteen, first served as nurse to Búnin's daughters. In 1783, shortly after seven of his children had died within a short time of each other, she bore him a son, who was adopted by one of his friends, a member of the petty nobility, Búnin's daughter standing as godmother to the child, and his wife receiving it into the family, and rearing it like a son, in memory of her dead, only son. This baby was the future poet Zhukóvsky. When Búnin died, he bequeathed money to the child, and his widow and daughters gave him the best of educations. Zhukóvsky began to print bits of melancholy poetry while he was still at the university preparatory school. When he became closely acquainted with Karamzín (1803-1804), he came under the latter's influence so strongly that the stamp remained upon all the productions of the first half of his career, the favorite "Svyetlána" (Amaryllis), written in 1811, being a specimen. In 1812 Zhukóvsky served in the army, and wrote his poem "The Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors,"^[8] which brought him more fame than all his previous work, being adapted to the spirit of the time, and followed it up with other effusions, which made much more impression on his contemporaries than they have on later readers. But even in his most brilliant period, the great defect of Zhukóvsky's poetry was a total lack of coloring or close connection with the Russian soil, which he did not understand, and did not particularly love. His poetical "Epistle to Alexander I. after the Capture of Paris, in 1824," he sent in manuscript to the Emperor's mother, the Empress Márya Feódorovna. The result was, that the Empress ordered it printed in luxurious style, at government expense, had him presented to her, and made him her reader. He was regarded as a great poet, became a close friend of the imperial family, tutor to the Grand Duchess Alexándra Feódorovna (wife of Nikolái Pávlovitch, afterwards the Emperor Nicholas I.), and his fortune was assured. His career during the last twenty-five years of his life, beginning with 1817, belongs to history rather than to literature. In 1853, wealthy, loaded with imperial favors, richly pensioned, he went abroad, and settled in Baden-Baden, where he married (being at the time sixty years of age, while his bride was nineteen), and never returned to Russia. During the last eleven years of his semi-invalid life, with disordered nerves, he approached very close to mysticism.^[9]

Bátiushkoff, as a poet, was the exact opposite of Zhukóvsky, being the first to grasp the real significance of the mood of the ancient classical poets, and to appropriate not only their views on life and enjoyment, but even their plastic and thoroughly artistic mode of expression. While Zhukóvsky removed poetry from earth and rendered it ethereal, Bátiushkoff fixed it to earth and gave it a body, demonstrating all the entrancing charm of tangible reality. Yet, in language, point of view, and literary affiliations, he belongs, like Zhukóvsky, to the school of Karamzín. But his versification, his subject-matter are entirely independent of all preceding influences. In beauty of versification and plastic worth, Bátiushkoff had no predecessors in Russian literature, and no competitors in the school of Karamzín. He was of ancient, noble family, well educated, and began to publish at the age of eighteen.

We now come, chronologically, to a writer who cannot be assigned either to the old sentimental school of Karamzín, or to the new romantic school of which Púshkin was the first and greatest exponent in Russian literature; to a man who stood apart, in a lofty place, all his own, both during his lifetime and in all Russian literary history; whose name is known to every Russian who can read and write, and whose work enjoys in Russia that popularity which the Odyssey did among the ancient Greeks. Iván Andréevitch Krylóff (1763-1844) began his literary work almost simultaneously with Karamzín, but was not, in the slightest degree, influenced by the style which the latter introduced into Russian literature; and bore himself in no less distant and hostile a manner to the rising romantic school of Púshkin. He was the son of an army officer, who was afterwards in the civil service, a very competent, intelligent man, who left his family in dire poverty at his death. At the age of fifteen, Krylóff produced his first, and very creditable, specimen of his future talent, though obliged, by extreme need, to enter government service at the age of fourteen, at his father's death. He filled several positions in different places at a very meager salary, until the death of his mother (1788), when he resigned and determined to devote himself exclusively to literature. He engaged in journalistic work, became an editor, and soon published a paper of his own. But his real sphere was that of fabulist. In 1803 he offered his first three fables, partly translated, partly worked over from La Fontaine, and from the moment of their publication, his fame as a writer of fables began to grow. But he wrote two comedies and a fairy-opera before, in 1808, he finally devoted himself to fables, to which branch of literature he remained faithful as long as he lived. By 1811-1812 his fables were so popular that he was granted a government pension, and became a member of the Empress Márya Feódorovna's circle of court poets and literary men. From 1812-1840, or later, Krylóff had an easy post in the Imperial Public Library, and in the course of forty years, wrote about two hundred fables. He is known to have been extremely indolent and untidy; but all his admirers, and even his enemies, recognized in him a power which not one of his predecessors in the literary sphere had possessed—a power which was thoroughly national, bound in the closest manner to the Russian soil. His fables bear an almost family likeness to the proverbs, aphorisms, adages, and tales produced by the wisdom of the masses, and are quite in their spirit. All the Russian poets had tried their hand at that favorite form of poetic composition—the fable—ever since its introduction from western Europe, in the eighteenth century; and Krylóff's success called forth innumerable imitators. But up to that time, out of all the sorts of poetry existing in Russian literature, only the fable, thanks to Krylóff, had become, in full measure, the organ of nationality, both in spirit and in language; and these two qualities his fables possess in the most profound, national meaning of the term. His language is peculiar to himself. He was the first who dared to speak to Russian society, enervated by the harmonious, regular prose of Karamzín, in the rather rough vernacular of the masses, which was, nevertheless, energetic, powerful, and contained no foreign admixture, or any exclusively bookish elements. One of the most popular of his fables, to which allusion is often made in Russian literature and conversation, is "Demyán's Fish-Soup." The manner in which the lines are rhymed in the original is indicated by corresponding figures.

DEMYÁN'S FISH-SOUP

"Neighbor, dear, my light! (1)
Eat, I pray thee." (2)
"Neighbor, dear, I'm full to the throat,"—"No matter. (1)
Another little plateful; hearken: (2)
This fish soup, I assure you, is gloriously cooked." (3)
"Three platefuls have I eaten."—"O, stop that, why keep count, (4)
If only you feel like it, (4)
Why, eat and health be yours: eat to the bottom! (3)
What fish-soup! and how rich in fat (3)
As though with amber covered. (3)
Enjoy yourself, dear friend! (5)
Here's tender bream, pluck, a bit of sterlet here!
Just another little spoonful!
Come, urge him, wife!"
In this wise did neighbor Demyán neighbor Fóka entertain.
And let him neither breathe nor rest;
But sweat from Fóka long had poured in streams.
Yet still another plateful doth he take,
Collects his final strength—and cleans up everything.
"Now, that's the sort of friend I like!"
Demyán did shout: "But I can't bear the stuck-up; come, eat another plateful, my dear fellow!"
Thereupon, my poor Fóka,
Much as he loved fish-soup, yet from such a fate,
In his arms seizing his girdle and his cap—
Rushed madly, quickly home,
And since that day, hath never more set foot in Demyán's house.
Writer, thou art lucky if the real gift thou hast,
But if thou dost not know enough to hold thy peace in time,
And dost not spare thy neighbor's ears,
Then must thou know, that both thy prose and verse,
To all will prove more loathsome than Demyán's fish-soup.

Another good specimen is called:

THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB

When partners cannot agree, their affair will not work smoothly,
And torment, not business, will be the outcome.
Once on a time, the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike,
Did undertake to haul a loaded cart,
And all three hitched themselves thereto;
They strained their every nerve, but still the cart budged not.
And yet, the load seemed very light for them;
But towards the clouds the Swan did soar,
Backwards the Crab did march,
While the Pike made for the stream.
Which of them was wrong, which right, 'tis not our place to judge.
Only, the cart doth stand there still.

We have seen that Lomonósoff began the task of rendering the modern Russian language adaptable to all the needs of prose and verse; and that the writers who followed him, notably Karamzín, contributed their share to this great undertaking. Púshkin practically completed it and molded the hitherto somewhat harsh and awkward forms into an exquisite medium for every requirement of literature. Alexánder Sergyéevitch Púshkin (1799-1837), still holds the undisputed leadership for simplicity, realism, absolute fidelity to life, and he was the first worthy forerunner of the great men whose names are world-synonyms at the present day for those qualities. Almost every writer who preceded him had been more or less devoted to translations and servile copies of foreign literature. Against these, and the mock-classicism of the French pattern, which then ruled Europe, he waged relentless battle. He vitalized Russian literature by establishing its foundations firmly on Russian soil; by employing her native traditions, life, and sentiment as subjects and inspiration, in place of the worn-out conventionalities of foreign invention. The result is a product of the loftiest truth, as well as of the loftiest art.

His ancestors were nobles who occupied important posts under Peter the Great. His mother was a granddaughter of Hannibal, the negro of whom Púshkin wrote under the title of "Peter the Great's Arab." This Hannibal was a slave who had been brought from Africa to Constantinople, where the Russian ambassador purchased him, and sent him to Peter the Great. The latter took a great fancy to him, had him baptized, and would not allow his brothers to ransom him, but sent him, at the age of eighteen, abroad to be educated. On his return, Peter kept his favorite always beside him. Under the reign of the Empress Anna Ioánnovna he was exiled to Siberia, in company with other court favorites of former reigns; and like them, returned to Russia, and was loaded with favors by Peter's daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. His son was a distinguished general of Katherine II.'s day. Púshkin, the poet, had blue eyes, and very fair skin and hair, but the whole cast of his countenance in his portraits is negro. His father was a typical society man, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, Púshkin was educated exclusively by French tutors at home, and his first writings (at the age of ten) were in French, and imitated from writers of that nation. When his father retired from the military service, he settled in Moscow, and the boy knew all the literary men of that day and town before he was twelve years of age, and there can be no doubt that this literary atmosphere had a great influence upon him. When, at the age of twelve, he was placed in the newly founded Lyceum,^[10] at Tzárskoe Seló (sixteen miles from St. Petersburg), whence so many famous men were afterwards graduated, he and the other pupils amused themselves in their play hours by writing a little newspaper, and by other literary pursuits. Here the lad was compelled to learn Russian, and the first use he made of it was to write caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet Derzhávin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his "Memories of Tzárskoe Seló," he at once predicted his coming greatness. As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms. Karamzín and Zhukóvsky were not long in adding their testimony to the lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his own poems to the young poet's judgment.

Púshkin was an omnivorous reader, but his parents had never been pleased with his progress in his studies, or regarded him as clever. The praise of competent judges now opened their eyes; but he had a good deal to endure from his father, later on, in spite of this. At this period, Púshkin imitated the most varied poetical forms with wonderful delicacy, and yielded to the most diverse poetical moods. But even then he was entering on a new path, whose influence on later Russian literature was destined to be incalculably great. While still a school-boy, he began to write his famous fantastic-romantic poem, "Ruslán and Liudmíla" (which Glínka afterwards made the subject of a charming opera), and here, for the first time in Russian literary history, a thoroughly national theme was handled with a freedom and naturalness which dealt the death-blow to the prevailing inflated, rhetorical style. The subject of the poem was one of the folk-legends, of which he had been fond as a child; and when it was published, in 1820, the critics were dumb with amazement. The gay, even dissipated, society life which he took up on leaving the Lyceum came to a temporary end in consequence of some biting epigrams which he wrote. The Prefect of St. Petersburg called him to account for his attacks on prominent people, and transferred him from the ministry of foreign affairs to southern Russia—in fact, to polite exile—giving him a corresponding position in another department of the government.

For four years (1820-1824) he lived chiefly in southern Russia, including the Crimea and the Caucasus, and wrote, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Fountain of Baktchesarái," "The Gypsies," and a part of his famous "Evgény Onyégin," being, at this period, strongly influenced by Byron, as the above-mentioned poems and the short lyrics of the same period show. Again his life and his poetry were changed radically by a caustic but witty and amusing epigram on his uncongenial official superior in Odessa; and on the latter's complaint to headquarters—the complaint being as neat as the epigram, in its way—Púshkin was ordered to reside on one of the paternal estates, in the government of Pskoff. Here, under the influence of his old nurse, Arína Rodiónovna, and her folk-tales, he became thoroughly and definitively Russian, and entered at last on his real career—poetry which was truly national in spirit. His talents were now completely matured. His wonderfully developed harmony of versification has never been approached by any later poet, except, in places, by Lérmontoff. Quite peculiar to himself, at that day—and even much later—are his vivid delineations of character, and his simple but startlingly lifelike and truthful pictures of every-day life. If his claim to immortality rested on no other foundation than these, it would still be incontestable, for all previous Russian writers had scorned such commonplaces.

In 1826 he returned to the capital, having been restored to favor, and resumed his gay life, which on the whole, had a deleterious influence on his talents. In 1831 he married a very beautiful and extravagant woman, after which he was constantly in financial distress, his own social ambitions and lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatchéff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gógol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was killed in a duel with Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, who had been persecuting his wife with unwelcome attentions, in January, 1837. Baron Hekkeren-Dantes died only a year or two ago.

As a school-boy he had instinctively turned into a new path, that of national Russian literature. For this national service, and because he was the first to realize the poetic ideal, his countrymen adored him. To the highest external elegance and the most exquisite beauty, he fitly wedded inward force and wealth of thought, in the most incomparable manner. His finest effort, "Evgény Onyégin" (1822-1829), exhibits the poet in the process of development, from the Byronic stage to the vigorous independence of a purely national writer. The hero, Evgény Onyégin, begins as a society young man of the period; that is to say, he was inevitably a Byronic character. His father's death calls him from the dissipations of the capital to the quiet life of a country estate. He regards his neighbors as his inferiors, both in culture and social standing, and for a long time will have nothing to do with them. At last, rather accidentally, he strikes up a friendship with Lénsky, a congenial spirit, a young poet, who has had the advantage of foreign education, the son of one of the neighbors. Olga Lárin, the young daughter of another neighbor, has long been betrothed to Lénsky, and the latter naturally introduces Onyégin to her family. Olga's elder sister, Tatyána, promptly falls in love with Onyégin, and in a letter, which is always quoted as one of the finest passages in Russian literature, and the most perfect portrait of the noble Russian woman's soul, she declares her love for him. Onyégin politely snubs her, lecturing her in a fatherly way, and no one is informed of the occurrence, except Tatyána's old nurse, who, though stupid, is absolutely devoted to her, and does not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyána's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyégin is present, being urged thereto by Lénsky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened between him and Tatyána, and innocently scheming to bring them together, place him opposite her at dinner. Angered by this, he revenges himself on the wholly innocent Lénsky, by flirting outrageously with Olga (the wedding-day is only a fortnight distant), and Olga, being as vain and weak as she is pretty, does her share. The result is, that Lénsky challenges Onyégin to a duel, and the seconds insist that it must be fought, though Onyégin would gladly apologize. He kills Lénsky, unintentionally, and immediately departs on his travels. Olga speedily consoles herself, and marries a handsome officer. Tatyána, a girl of profound feelings, remains inconsolable, refuses all offers of marriage, and at last, yielding to the entreaties of her anxious relatives, consents to spend a season in Moscow. As a wall-flower, at her first ball, she captivates a wealthy prince, of very high standing in St. Petersburg, and is persuaded by her parents to marry him. When Onyégin returns to the capital he finds the little country girl, whose love he had scorned, one of the greatest ladies at the court and in society; and he falls madly in love with her. Her cold indifference galls him, and increases his love. He writes three letters, to which she does not reply. Then he forces himself into her boudoir and finds her reading one of his letters and weeping over it. She then confesses that she loves him still, but dismisses him with the assurance that she will remain true to her noble and loving husband. Tatyána is regarded as one of the finest, most vividly faithful portraits of the genuine Russian woman in all Russian literature; while Olga is considered fully her equal, as a type, and in popular sympathy; and the other characters are almost equally good in their various lines.

Besides a host of beautiful lyric poems, Púshkin left several dramatic fragments: "The Rusálka" or "Water Nymph," on which Dargomýzhsky founded a beautiful opera, "The Stone Guest,"^[11] "The Miserly Knight," and chief of all, and like "Evgény Onyégin," epoch-making in its line, the historical dramatic fragment "Borís Godunóff." This founded a school in Russian dramatic writing. It is impossible to do justice in translation to the exquisite lyrics; but the following soliloquy, from "Borís Godunóff," will serve to show Púshkin's power in blank verse. Borís Godunóff, brother-in-law to the Tzar Feódor Mikháilovitch, has at last reached the goal of his ambition, and mounted the throne, at what cost his own speech shows: Scene: The Imperial Palace. The Tzar enters:

I've reached the height of power;
'Tis six years now that I have reigned in peace;
But there's no happiness within my soul.
Is it not thus—in youth we thirst and crave
The joy of love; but once that we have quenched
Our hungry heart with brief possession,
We're tired, and cold, and weary on the instant!
The sorcerers in vain predict long life;
And promise days of undisturbed power.
Nor power, nor life, nor aught can cheer my heart;
My soul forebodeth heaven's wrath and woe.
I am not happy. I did think to still
With plenty and with fame my people here;
To win for aye their love by bounties free.
But vain are all my cares and empty toils:
A living power is hated by the herd;
They love the dead alone, only the dead.
What fools we are, when popular applause,
Or the loud shout of masses thrills our heart!
God sent down famine on this land of ours;
The people howled, gave up the ghost in torment;
I threw the granaries open, and my gold
I showered upon them; sought out work for them.
Made mad by suffering, they turned and cursed me!
By conflagrations were their homes destroyed;
I built for them their dwellings fair and new;
And they accused me—said I had set the fires!
That's the Lord's judgment;—seek its love who will!
Then dreamed I bliss in mine own home to find;
I thought to make my daughter blest in wedlock:
Death, like a whirlwind, snatched her betrothed away,
And rumor craftily insinuates
That I am author of my own child's widowhood:—
I, I, unhappy father that I am!
Let a man die—I am his secret slayer.
I hastened on the death of Féodor;
I gave my sister, the Tzarítza, poison;
I poisoned her, the lovely nun,—still I!
Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm,
Amid the sorrows of this present world;
Conscience alone, mayhap:
Thus, when 'tis pure, it triumphs
O'er bitter malice, o'er dark calumny;
But if there be in it a single stain,
One, only one, by accident contracted,
Why then, all's done; as with foul plague
The soul consumes, the heart is filled with gall,
Reproaches beat, like hammers, in the ears,
The man turns sick, his head whirls dizzily,
And bloody children float before my eyes.^[12]
I'd gladly flee—yet whither? Horrible!
Yea, sad his state, whose conscience is not clean.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How did the reign of Katherine II. mark a distinct advance in the development of Russian literature?
2. Describe the literary activities of Katherine II.
3. Who was Princess Dáshkoff?
4. Describe the early life and character of Von Vízin.
5. What qualities did he show in his play "The Brigadier"?
6. How did the characters in his "The Hobbledehoy" compare with those in the plays of Katherine II.?
7. Give an account of this play.
8. Give the chief events in the life of Derzhávin.
9. Why is he especially worthy to be remembered?
10. What are some of the beautiful thoughts in the ode "God"?
11. How was Kheraskóff regarded in his own day?
12. What was the character of Bogdanóvitch's poem, "Dúshenka"?
13. What influence had the fables of Khémnitzer?
14. Give examples of them.
15. What incidents show the effect of his comedy "Calumny"?
16. Give an account of the life of Karamzín.
17. Give examples of the character of some of his sentimental tales.
18. What real services did he render to Russian literature?
19. What importance had Dmítrieff and Ózeroff?
20. How did the translations of German and French writers, made by Zhukóvsky, affect the literary ideals of his time?
21. Give the chief facts in the life of Krylóff.
22. Give examples of his fables.
23. Describe the ancestry and early life of Púshkin.
24. What is his position in Russian literature?
25. How were his talents shown in Evgény Onyégin?
26. What is the character of the soliloquy from Borís Godunóff?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• The Memoirs of the Empress Katherine II. Written by herself.
• The Princess Dáshkoff. Memoirs written by herself, and containing letters of the Empress Katherine II.
• Original Fables. Krylóff. (The translation by Mr. Harrison, London, 1884, is regarded as the best of the twelve translations of Krylóff's works.)
• Specimens from the Russian Poets. 2 volumes. By Sir John Bowring. Specimens of poetry from Lomonósoff through Zhukóvsky.
• Prose Tales. Alexánder Púshkin. Translated by T. Keane.
• Translations from Púshkin, in Memory of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Poet's Birthday. C. E. Turner.

FOOTNOTES:

^[5] I take this translation from Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," rather than attempt a metrical translation myself. It is reasonably close to the original—as close as most metrical translations are—and gives the spirit extremely well. Sir John Bowring adds the following footnote: "This is the poem of which Golovnin says in his narrative, that it has been rendered into Japanese, by order of the emperor, and hung up, embroidered in gold, in the Temple of Jeddo. I learn from the periodicals that an honor somewhat similar has been done in China to the same poem. It has been translated into the Chinese and Tartar languages, written on a piece of rich silk, and suspended in the imperial palace at Pekin." There are several editions of Sir John's book, the one here used being the second, 1821; but the author admits that in the first edition he stretched the poetic license further than he had a right to do, in this first verse. The book is now rare, but this statement will serve as a warning to those who may happen upon the first edition.

^[6] Karamzín's youngest daughter, by his second marriage, was alive when I was in Russia,—a charming old lady. She gave me her own copy of her "favorite book," a volume (in French) by Khomyakóff, very rare and difficult to obtain; and in discussing literary matters, wound up thus: "They may say what they will about the new men, but no one ever wrote such a beautiful style as my dear papa!" I also knew some of Ózeroff's relatives.

^[7] Pronounced Alyóg.

^[8] A translation of this—which is too long to quote here—may be found in Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," Vol. II.

^[9] These imperial favors and pensions were continued to his children. His son, an artist, regularly visited Russia as the guest of Alexander III. I met him on two occasions and was enabled to judge of his father's charms of mind and manner.

^[10] This building still exists, with its garden alluded to in the "Memories." But though it still bears its name, it is connected by a glazed gallery with the old palace, famous chiefly as Katherine II.'s residence, across the street; and it is used for suites of apartments, allotted for summer residence to certain courtiers. The exact arrangement of the rooms in Púshkin's day is not now known.

^[11] "The Stone Guest" is founded on the Don Juan legend, like the familiar opera "Don Giovanni." Músorgsky set it to music, in sonorous, Wagnerian recitative style (though the style was original with him, not copied from Wagner, who came later). It is rarely given in public, but I had the pleasure of hearing it rendered by famous artists, accompanied by the composer Balakíreff, at the house of a noted art and musical critic in St. Petersburg.

^[12] The reference is to Godunóff's presumptive share in the murder, at Úglitch, of Iván the Terrible's infant heir, the Tzarévitch Dmítry.

CHAPTER VIII

SEVENTH PERIOD, FROM PÚSHKIN TO THE WRITERS OF THE FORTIES.

Even Karamzín's vast influence on his contemporaries cannot be compared with that exercised by Púshkin on the literature of the '20's and '30's of the nineteenth century; and no Russian writer ever effected so mighty a change in literature as Púshkin. Among other things, his influence brought to life many powerful and original talents, which would not have ventured to enter the literary career without Púshkin's friendly support and encouragement. He was remarkably amiable in his relations with all contemporary writers (except certain journalists in St. Petersburg and Moscow), and treated with especial respect three poets of his day, Délvig, Baratýnsky, and Yázykoff. He even exaggerated their merits, exalting the work of the last two above his own, and attributing great significance to Délvig's most insignificant poems and articles. Hence their names have become so closely connected with his, that it is almost impossible to mention him without mentioning them.

Baron Antón Antónovitch Délvig (1798-1831) the descendant of a Baltic Provinces noble, was one of Púshkin's comrades in the Lyceum, and published his first collection of poems in 1829.

Evgény Abrámovitch Baratýnsky (1800-1844) came of a noble family of good standing. His poetry was founded on Byronism, like all European poetry of that day, and was also partly under the influence of the fantastic romanticism introduced by Zhukóvsky. He never developed beyond a point which was reached by Púshkin in his early days in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Gypsies," "The Fountain of Baktchesarái," and the first chapters of "Evgény Onyégin." He wrote one very fine poem, devoted to Finland.

Nikolái Mikháilovitch Yázykoff (1803-1846) was of noble birth, and published a number of early poems in 1819. One of his best and longest, published about 1836, was a dramatic tale of "The Fire Bird." Between 1837-1842 his "The Lighthouse," "Gastún," "Sea Bathing," "The Ship," "The Sea," and a whole series of elegies, are also very good. Yázykoff's poetry is weaker and paler in coloring than Délvig's or Baratýnsky's, yet richer than all of theirs in really incomparable outward form of the verse, and in poetical expression of thought; in fact, he was "the poet of expression," and rendered great service by his boldness and originality of language, in that it taught men to write not as all others wrote, but as it lay in their individual power to write; in other words, he inculcated individuality in literature.

The only one of the many poets of Púshkin's epoch in Russia who did not repeat and develop, in different keys, the themes of their master's poetry, was Alexánder Sergyéevitch Griboyédoff (1795-1829). He alone was independent, original, and was related to the Púshkin period as Krylóff was to the Karamzín period—merely by the accident of time, not by the contents of his work. Griboyédoff was the first of a series of Russian poets who depicted life in absolutely faithful, but gloomy, colors; and it was quite in keeping with this view, that he did not live to see in print the comedy in which his well-earned fame rested, at the time, and which still keeps it fresh, by performances on the stage at the present day.

There was nothing very cheerful or bright about the social life of the '20's in the nineteenth century to make Russian poets take anything but a gloomy view of matters in general. Griboyédoff, as an unprejudiced man, endowed with great poetical gifts, and remarkable powers of observation, was able to give a faithful and wonderfully complete picture of high life in Moscow of that day, in his famous comedy "Woe from Wit" ("Góre ot Umá"), and introduce to the stage types which had never, hitherto, appeared in Russian comedy, because no one had looked deep enough into Russian hearts, or been capable of limning, impartially and with fidelity to nature, the emptiness and vanity of the characters and aims which preponderated in Russian society.

He was well born and very well educated. After serving in the army in 1812, like most patriotic young Russians of the day, he entered the foreign office, in 1817. There he probably made the acquaintance of Púshkin, but he never became intimate with him, as he belonged to a different literary circle, which included actors and dramatic writers. His first dramatic efforts were not very promising, though his first comedy, "The Young Married Pair," was acted in St. Petersburg in 1816. In 1819 he was offered the post of secretary of legation in Persia, which he accepted; and this took him away from the gay and rather wild society existence which he was leading, with bad results in many ways. In Persia, despite his multifarious occupations, and his necessary study of Oriental languages, Griboyédoff found time to plan his famous comedy in 1821, and in 1822 he wrote it in Georgia, whither he had been transferred. But he remodeled and rewrote portions of it, and it was finished only in 1823, when he spent a year in Moscow, his native city. When it was entirely ready for acting, he went to St. Petersburg, but neither his most strenuous efforts, nor his influence in high quarters, sufficed to secure the censor's permission for its performance on stage, or to get the requisite license for printing it. But it circulated in innumerable manuscript copies, and every one was in raptures over it. Even the glory of Púshkin's "Evgény Onyégin," which appeared at about the same time, did not overshadow Griboyédoff's glory. Strange to say, Púshkin, who had magnified Délvig, Baratýnsky, and Yázykoff far above their merits, and in general, was accustomed to overrate all talent, whether it belonged to his own friends or to strangers, was extremely severe on Griboyédoff's comedy, and detected many grave defects in it.

Griboyédoff was greatly irritated by his failure to obtain proper public recognition of his comedy. He expressed his feelings freely, became more embittered than ever against mankind in general, and went back to Georgia, in 1825, where he added to his previous poems, and took part in the campaign against Persia, in which he rendered great services to the commander-in-chief. As a reward, he was sent to St. Petersburg (1828), to present the treaty of peace to the Emperor. He was promptly appointed minister plenipotentiary to Persia, and on his way thither, in Tiflís, married a Georgian princess. His stern course of action and his disregard of certain rooted Oriental customs aroused the priesthood and the ignorant masses of Teheran against him, and a riot broke out. After a heroic defense of the legation, all the Russians, including Griboyédoff, were torn to pieces. His wife had been left behind in Tabreez and escaped. She buried his remains at a monastery near Tiflís, in accordance with a wish which he had previously expressed.

There is not much plot to "Woe from Wit." Moltchálin, Famúsoff's secretary, a cold, calculating, fickle young man, has been making love to Famúsoff's only child, an heiress, Sophia, an extremely sentimental young person. Famúsoff rails against foreign books and fashions, "destroyers of our pockets and our hearth," and lauds Colonel Skalozúb, an elderly pretender to Sophia's hand, explaining the general servile policy of obtaining rank and position by the Russian equivalent of "pull," which is called "connections." He compares his with Tchátsky, to the disadvantage of the latter, who had been brought up with Sophia, and had been in love with her before his departure on his travels three years previously, though he had never mentioned the fact. Tchátsky gives rise to this diatribe by returning from his travels at this juncture, asking for Sophia's hand, and trying to woo the girl herself with equal unsuccess. Tchátsky's arraignment of the imitation of foreign customs then everywhere prevalent, does not win favor from any one. Worse yet, he expresses his opinion of Moltchálin; and Sophia, in revenge, drops a hint that Tchátsky is crazy. The hint grows apace, and the cause is surmised to be a bullet-wound in the head, received during a recent campaign. Another "authority" contradicts this; it comes from drinking champagne by the gobletful—no, by the bottle—no, by the case. But Famúsoff settles the matter by declaring that it comes from knowing too much. This takes place at an evening party at the Famúsoffs, and Tchátsky returns to the room to meet with an amazing reception. Eventually, he discovers that he is supposed to be mad, and that he is indebted to Sophia for the origin of the lie; also, that she is making rendezvous with the low-minded, flippant Moltchálin. At last Sophia discovers that Moltchálin is making love to her maid through inclination, and to her only through calculation. She casts him off, and orders him out of the house. Tchátsky, cured of all illusions about her, renounces his suit for her hand, and declares that he will leave Moscow forever. Tchátsky, whose woe is due to his persistence in talking sense and truth to people who do not care to hear it, and to his manly independence all the way through, comes to grief through having too much wit; hence the title.

Not one of Púshkin's successors, talented as many of them were, was able to attain to the position of importance which the great poet had rendered obligatory for future aspirants. It is worth noting that Púshkin's best work, in his second, non-Byronic, purely national style, enjoyed less success among his contemporaries than his early, half-imitative efforts, where the characters were weak, lacking in independent creation, and where the whole tone was gloomy. This gloomy tone expressed the sentiments of all Russia of the period, and it was natural that Byronic heroes should be in consonance with the general taste. At this juncture, a highly talented poet arose, Mikháil Yúrievitch Lérmontoff (1814-1841), who, after first imitating Púshkin, speedily began to imitate Byron—and that with far more success than Púshkin had ever done—with great delicacy and artistic application to the local conditions. Thus, as a vivid, natural echo of this epoch in Russian life, the poet became dear to the heart of Russians; and in the '40's they regarded him as the equal of the writers they most loved.

Lérmontoff, the son of a poor but noble family, was reared by his grandmother, as his mother died when he was a baby, and his father, an army officer, could not care for him. The grandmother did her utmost to give him the best education possible at that time, and to make him a brilliant society man. The early foreign influence over Púshkin was, as we have seen, French. That over Lérmontoff was rather English, which was then becoming fashionable. But like many another young Russian of that day, Lérmontoff wrote his first poems in French, imitating Púshkin's "The Fountain of Baktchesarái" and Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon." He finished the preparatory school with the first prize for composition and history, and entered the University, which he was soon compelled to leave, in company with a number of others, because of a foolish prank they had played on a professor. In those days, when every one was engrossed in thoughts of military service and a career, and when the few remaining paths which were open to a poor young man had thus been closed to him, but one thing was left for him to do—enter the army. Accordingly, in 1832, Lérmontoff entered the Ensigns' School in St. Petersburg; but during his two years there he did not abandon verse-making, and here he first began to imitate Byron. A couple of poems, "Ismail Bey" (1832) and "Hadji Abrek" (1833) were published by a comrade, without Lérmontoff's knowledge, at this time. In general, it may be said of Lérmontoff at that period that he cared not in the least for literary fame, and made no haste to publish his writings, as to which he was very severe. Many were not published until five or six years after they were written.

Soon after leaving the military school Lérmontoff wrote a drama, "The Masquerade" (1834), and the fine poem, "Boyárin Órsha," but his fame began only in 1837, with his splendid poem on the death of Púshkin, "The Death of the Poet," beginning, "The poet perished, the slave of honor," in which he expressed his entire sympathy with the poet in his untimely death, and poured out all his bitterness upon the circle which was incapable of appreciating and prizing the genius. This, in a multitude of manuscript copies, created a great sensation in St. Petersburg. Soon afterwards, on hearing contradictory rumors as to the duel and Púshkin's death, he added sixteen verses, beginning, "And you, ye arrogant descendants." One of the prominent persons therein attacked having had his attention called to the matter in public by an officious gossip (he had probably known all about it before, and deliberately ignored the matter), felt obliged to report Lérmontoff. The result was that Lérmontoff was transferred as ensign to a dragoon regiment which was serving in Georgia, and early in 1837 he set out for the Caucasus. Through his grandmother's efforts he was permitted to return from the Caucasus about eight months later, to a hussar regiment. By this time people were beginning to appreciate him; he had written his magnificent "Ballad of Tzar Iván Vasílievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kaláshnikoff," which every one hailed as an entirely new phenomenon in Russian literature, amazing in its highly artistic pictures, full of power and dignity, combined with an exterior like that of the inartistic productions of folk-poetry. This poem was productive of all the more astonishment, because his "The Demon,"^[13] written much earlier (1825-1834), was little known. "The Demon" is poor in contents, but surprisingly rich in wealth and luxury of coloring, and in the endless variety of its pictures of Caucasian life and nature.

In 1838, while residing in St. Petersburg, Lérmontoff wrote little at first, but in 1839 he wrote "Mtzyri," and a whole series of fine tales in prose, which eventually appeared under the general title of "A Hero of Our Times." This work, which has lost much of its vivid interest for people of the present day, must remain, nevertheless, one of the most important monuments of that period to which Lérmontoff so completely belonged. In the person of the hero, Petchórin, he endeavored to present "a portrait composed of the vices of the generation of which he was a contemporary," and he "drew the man of the period as he understood him, and as, unfortunately, he was too often met with." Lérmontoff admitted that in Petchórin he had tried to point out the "malady" which had attacked all Russian society of that day. All this he said in a preface to the second edition, after people had begun to declare that in the novel he had represented himself and his own experiences. Naturally Petchórin was drawn on Byronic lines, in keeping with the spirit of the '30's, when individuality loudly protested against the oppressive conditions of life. Naturally, also, all this now appears to be a caricature, true to the life of the highest Russian society as it was when it was written. Before he had quite completed this work, in February, 1840, Lérmontoff fought a duel with the son of Baron de Barante, a well-known French historian, and was transferred, in consequence, to an infantry regiment in the Caucasus, whither he betook himself for the third time. A year later, after being permitted to make a brief stay in St. Petersburg, he returned to the Caucasus, and three months afterwards he was killed in a duel (on July 25, O. S., 1841) with a fellow officer, Martýnoff, and was buried on the estate in the government of Pénza, where he had been reared by his grandmother. The latest work of the poet, thus cut off almost before his prime, consisted of lyrics, which were full of power and perfection, and gave plain promise of the approaching maturity of the still young and not fully developed but immense talent.

His famous "Ballad of Tzar Iván Vasílievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kaláshnikoff" must be given in a summary and occasional quotations, as it is too long to reproduce in full. It lends itself better to dignified and adequate reproduction than do his lyrics, because it is not rhymed.^[14] After a brief preface, the poet says: "We have composed a ballad in the ancient style, and have sung it to the sound of the dulcimer."

The red sun shineth not in the heaven,
The blue clouds delight not in it;
But at his banqueting board, in golden crown,
Sitteth the Terrible Tzar Iván Vasílievitch.
Behind him stand the table-deckers,
Opposite him all the boyárs and the princes,
At his side, all about, the lifeguardsmen;
And the Tzar feasteth to the glory of God,
To his own content and merriment.

The ballad goes on to relate how the Tzar then ordered the beakers to be filled with wine from beyond the seas, and how all drank and lauded the Tzar. One brave warrior, a gallant youth, did not dip his mustache in the golden cup, but dropped his eyes, drooped his head, and meditated. The Tzar frowned, rapped on the floor with his iron-tipped staff, and finding that the young man still paid no heed, called him to account. "Hey, there, our faithful servant Kiribyéevitch, art thou concealing some dishonorable thought? Or art thou envious of our glory? Or hath our honorable service wearied thee?" and he reproaches the youth. Then Kiribyéevitch answered him, bowing to his girdle, begging the Tzar not to reproach his unworthy servant, but if he has offended the Tzar, he begs that the latter will order his head to be cut off. "It oppresseth my heroic shoulders, and itself unto the damp earth doth incline." The Tzar inquires why the lifeguardsman is sad. "Has his kaftan of gold brocade grown threadbare? Has his cap of sables got shabby? Has he exhausted his treasure? Has his well-tempered saber got nicked? Or has some merchant's son from across the Moscow River overcome him in a boxing match?" The young lifeguardsman shakes his curly head, and says that all these things are as they should be, but that while he was riding his mettlesome steed in the Trans-Moscow River quarter of the town (the merchant's quarter), with his silken girdle drawn taut, his velvet cap rimmed jauntily with black sables, fair young maidens had stood at the board gates, gazing at him, admiring and whispering together; but one there was who gazed not, admired not, but covered her face with her striped veil, "and in all Holy Russia, our Mother, no such beauty is to be found or searched out. She walketh swimmingly, as though she were a young swan. She gazeth sweetly, as though she were a dove. When she uttereth a word, 'tis like a nightingale warbling. Her cheeks are aflame with roses, like unto the dawn in God's heaven. Her tresses of ruddy gold, intertwined with bright ribbons, flow rippling down her shoulders, and kiss her white bosom. She was born in a merchant's family. Her name is Alyóna^[15] Dmítrievna."

He describes how he has fallen in love with her at first sight, and cares no more for anything in all the world save her, and begs that he may be sent away to the steppes along the Volga, to live a free kazák life, where he may lay his "turbulent head" on a Mussulman's spear (in the fights with the Tatars of Kazán is what is meant), where the vultures may claw out his tearful eyes, and his gray bones be washed by the rain, and his wretched dust, without burial, may be scattered to the four quarters of the compass. Tzar Iván Vasílievitch laughs, advises him to send gifts to his Alyóna, and celebrate the wedding. The lifeguardsman then confesses that he has not told the whole truth; that the beauty is already the wife of a young merchant.

In Part II., the young merchant is represented as seated at his shop-board, a stately, dashing young fellow, Stepán Paramónovitch Kaláshnikoff, spreading out his silken wares, beguiling his patrons (or "guests") with flattering speech, counting out gold and silver. But it is one of his bad days; the wealthy lords pass and do not so much as glance at his shop. "The bells of the holy churches have finished chiming for Vespers. The cloudy glow of evening burneth behind the Kremlin. Little clouds are flitting athwart the sky. The great Gostíny Dvor^[16] is empty." And Stepán Paramónovitch locks the oaken door of his shop with a German (that is, a foreign) spring-lock, fastens the fierce, snarling dog to the iron chain, and goes thoughtfully home to his young housewife beyond the Moscow River. On arriving there he is surprised that his wife does not come to meet him, as is her wont. The oaken table is not set, the taper before the ikóna (the holy picture) is almost burned out. He summons the old maid-servant and asks where his wife is at that late hour, and what has become of his children? The servant replies that his wife went to Vespers as usual, but the priest and his wife have already sat down to sup, yet the young housewife has not returned, and his little children are neither playing nor in bed, but weeping bitterly. As young Merchant Kaláshnikoff then looks out into the gloomy street he sees that the night is very dark, snow is falling, covering up men's tracks, and he hears the outer door slam, then hasty footsteps approaching, turns round and beholds his young wife, pale, with hair uncovered (which is highly improper for a married woman), her chestnut locks unbraided, sprinkled with snow and hoarfrost, her eyes dull and wild, her lips muttering unintelligibly. The husband inquires where she has been, the reason for her condition, and threatens to lock her up behind an iron-bound oaken door, away from the light of day. She, weeping bitterly, begs her "lord, her fair little red sun," to slay her or to listen to her, and she explains, that as she was coming home from Vespers she heard the snow crunching behind her, glanced round, and beheld a man running. She covered herself with her veil, but the man seized her hands, bade her have no fear, and said that he was no robber, but the servant of the Terrible^[17] Tzar, Kiribyéevitch, from the famous family of Maliúta, promised her her heart's desire—gold, pearls, bright gems, flowered brocades—if she would but love him, and grant him one embrace. Then he caressed and kissed her, so that her cheeks are still burning, while the neighbors looked on, laughed, and pointed their fingers at her in scorn. Tearing herself from his hands, she fled homewards, leaving in his hands her flowered kerchief (her husband's gift) and her Bokhará veil. She entreats her husband not to give her over to the scorn of their neighbors, she is an orphan, her elder brother is in a foreign land, her younger brother still a mere child.

Stepán Paramónovitch thereupon sends for his two younger brothers, but they send back a demand to know what has happened that he should require their presence on a dark, cold night. He informs them that Kiribyéevitch, the lifeguardsman, has dishonored their family; that such an insult the soul cannot brook, neither a brave man's heart endure. On the morrow there is to be a fight with fists in the presence of the Tzar himself, and it is his intention to go to it, and stand up against that lifeguardsman and fight him to the death until his strength is gone. He asks them, in case he is killed, to step forth for "Holy Mother right," and as they are younger than he, fresher in strength, and with fewer sins on their heads, perchance the Lord will show mercy upon them. And this reply his brethren spake: "Whither the breeze bloweth beneath the sky, thither hasten the dutiful little clouds. When the dark blue eagle summoneth with his voice to the bloody vale of slaughter, summoneth to celebrate the feast, to clear away the dead, to him do the little eaglets wing their flight. Thou art our elder brother, our second father, do what thou see'st fit, and deemest best, and we will not fail thee, our own blood and bone."

Part III. picturesquely and vividly describes the scene of the encounter; the challenge to the combatants to stand forth, by command of the Tzar, with a promise in the latter's name that the victors shall receive from him rewards. Then the redoubtable Lifeguardsman Kiribyéevitch steps forth. Thrice the challenge is repeated before any one responds. Then young Merchant Kaláshnikoff comes forward, makes his reverence to the Tzar, and when Kiribyéevitch demands his name, he announces it, and adds that he was born of an honorable father and has always lived according to God's law; he has not cast his eyes on another man's wife, nor played the bandit on a dark night, nor hid from the light of heaven, and that he means to fight to the death. On hearing this, Kiribyéevitch "turned pale as snow in autumn, his bold eyes clouded over, a shiver ran through his mighty shoulders, on his parted lips the words fell dead." With one blow, the young merchant crushes in the lifeguardsman's breast, and the latter falls dead, the death being beautifully described in stately, picturesque language. At sight thereof, the Tzar Iván Vasílievitch waxed wroth, stamped on the earth, scowled with his black brows; ordered that the young merchant be seized and hauled before him. He then demands whether Kaláshnikoff has slain his faithful servant Kiribyéevitch "voluntarily, involuntarily, or against his will." Kaláshnikoff boldly makes answer that he has done it with deliberate intent, and that the reason therefor he will not tell to the Tzar, but only to God alone. He tells the Tzar to order him to be executed, but not to deprive his little children or his young widow and his brothers of his favor. The Tzar replies that it is well Kaláshnikoff has answered truthfully; he will give the young widow and the children a grant from his treasury, and give command that, from that day forth, his brothers may traffic throughout the wide Russian realm free of taxes. But Kaláshnikoff must mount the scaffold, lay down his turbulent head, and the executioner shall be ordered to make his axe very sharp, and the great bell shall be tolled in order that all the men of Moscow may know that the Tzar has not deprived him of his favor. The execution and Kaláshnikoff's farewell speeches to his brothers, with his last messages to his wife not to grieve so greatly, and his commands that she is not to tell his children how their father died, together with requests for prayers for his soul, are described in very touching and lofty terms, as are also the burial, and the scenes at the grave.

The influence of Schelling's philosophy on the society of Moscow (the literary center until half-way through the '30's of the nineteenth century) was very great. This philosophy held that every historical nation should express some idea or other; that a nation could be called historical only on condition of its being independent in this respect; and that its importance in the progress of general civilization is determined by its degree of independence. This set all thoughtful people to considering the place of Russia among the European nations; and all the problems suggested by this philosophy came up with special force in the Russian literature of the end of the '30's, and split society into two great camps—the Slavyanophils (slavophils)^[18] and the Westerners. These camps had existed earlier, but had concerned themselves only with the purification of the Russian language, or with sentimental admiration for everything Russian, or for everything foreign, as the case might be. But now both parties undertook to solve the problems connected with the fate of the nation.

Schelling's philosophy also suggested new views as to the theory of art and the significance of literature in the life of a nation, and evolved the conclusion, that a nation's literature, even more than its civilization, should be entirely independent. This naturally led the Slavyanophils to reflect upon the indispensability of establishing Russian literature on a thoroughly national, independent basis. Naturally, also, this led to the Slavyanophils contesting the existence of a Russian literature in the proper sense of the term; since the whole of it, from Lomonósoff to Púshkin, had been merely a servile imitation of Western literature, and did not in the least express the spirit of the Russian people, and of the Schellingists. A number of the professors in the Moscow University belonged to this party. Naturally the students in their department—the philological faculty—came under their influence, and under this influence was reared the famous Russian critic, Vissarión Grigórievitch Byelínsky (1811-1848). His name is chiefly identified with the journal "The Annals of the Fatherland" (of St. Petersburg), where he published his brilliant critical articles on Griboyédoff, Gógol's "The Inspector," on Lérmontoff's works, and on those of other writers; on French contemporary literature, and on current topics at home and abroad, among them articles condemning many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Púshkin constitutes a complete critical history of Russian literature, beginning with Lomonósoff and ending with Púshkin. By these Byelínsky's standing as an important factor in literature was thoroughly established, and all the young writers of the succeeding epoch, that of the '50's, gathered around him. Grigoróvitch, Turgéneff, Gontcharóff, Nekrásoff, Apollón Máikoff, Dostoévsky, Tolstóy, and the rest, may be said to have been reared on Byelínsky's criticism, inspired by it to creative activity, and indebted to it for much of their fame. Byelínsky, moreover, educated the minds of that whole generation, and prepared men for the social movement of the '60's, which was characterized by many reforms.

After 1846 Byelínsky was connected with the journal, "The Contemporary," published by the poet Nekrásoff, and I. I. Panáeff, to which the best writers of the day contributed. Here, during the brief period when his health permitted him to work, he expressed even bolder and more practical ideas, and became the advocate of the "natural school," of which he regarded Gógol as the founder, wherein poetry was treated as an integral part of every-day life. Turgéneff has declared, that Byelínsky indisputably possessed all the chief qualities of a great critic, and that no one before him, or better than he, ever expressed a correct judgment and an authoritative verdict, and that he was, emphatically, "the right man in the right place."

One author who deserves to be better known outside of Russia produced the really original and indescribably fascinating works on which his fame rests during the last ten or twelve years of his long life, late in the '40's and '50's, although he was much older than the authors we have recently studied, and began to write much earlier than many of them. His early writing, however, was in the classical style, and does not count in comparison with his original descriptions of nature, and of the life of the (comparatively) distant past. Sergyéi Timoféevitch Aksákoff (1791-1859), the descendant of a very ancient noble family, was born in far-away eastern Russia, in Ufá, and was very well educated by his mother, at schools, and at Kazán University. His talents first revealed themselves in 1847, in his "Notes on Angling," and his "Diary of a Sportsman with a Gun," in the Orenburg Government (1852). Most famous of all, and most delightful, are the companion volumes, "A Family Chronicle and Souvenirs" (1856) and "The Childhood's Years of Bagróff's Grandson" (1858). In these Russian descriptive language made a great stride in advance, even after Púshkin and Gógol; and as a limner of landscape, he has no equal in Russian literature. The most noteworthy point about his work is that there is not a trace of creative fancy or invention; he describes reality, takes everything straight from life, and describes it with amazing faithfulness and artistic harmony. He was the first Russian writer to look on Russian life from a positive instead of from a negative point of view.^[19]

Púshkin's period had been important, not only in rendering Russian literature national, but still more so in bringing literature into close connection with life and its interests. This had in turn led to a love of reading and of literature all over the country, and had developed latent talents. This love spread to classes hitherto unaffected by it; and among the talents it thus developed, none was more thoroughly independent than that of Alexéi Vasílievitch Koltzóff (1809-1842), who was so original, so wholly unique in his genius, that he cannot rightly be assigned to any class, and still stands as an isolated phenomenon. He was the son of a merchant of Vorónezh, who was possessed of considerable means, and he spent the greater part of his youth on the steppes, helping his father, a drover, who supplied tallow-factories. After being taught to read and write by a theological student, young Koltzóff was sent to the district school for four months, after which his education was regarded as finished, because he knew as much as the people about him, and because no more was required for business purposes. But the lad acquired a strong love of reading, and devoted himself to such literature as he could procure, popular fairy-tales, the "Thousand and One Nights," and so forth. He was sixteen years of age when Dmítrieff's works fell into his hands, and inspired him with a desire to imitate them, and to "make songs" himself. As yet he did not understand the difference between poetry and popular songs, and did not read verses, but sang them. The local book-seller was the first to recognize his poetical tendency, and in a degree, guided him on the right road with a "Russian Prosody," and other suitable books, such as the works of Zhukóvsky, Púshkin, and other contemporary poets. A passion for writing poetry was in the air in the '20's. But although he yielded to this and to the promptings of his genius, it was a long time before he was able to clothe his thoughts in tolerable form. An unhappy love had a powerful influence on the development of his poetical talent, and his versified efforts suddenly became fervent songs of love and hate, of melancholy, soulful cries of grief and woe, full of melodious expressions of the world about him. One of Byelínsky's friends, whose family lived near Vorónezh, made his acquaintance, read his poems and applauded much in them. Three years later, in 1833, at the request and expense of this new friend, Koltzóff published a small collection, containing eighteen poems selected by him, which showed that he possessed an original and really noteworthy poetical gift. In 1835 Koltzóff visited St. Petersburg and made acquaintance with Púshkin, Zhukóvsky, and many other literary men, and between 1836 and 1838 his fame penetrated even to the knowledge of the citizens in his native town. He continued to aid his father in business, but his heart was elsewhere—he longed for the intellectual companionship of his friends in Moscow, and all this rendered him extremely unhappy. In 1840 he spent three months with Byelínsky in St. Petersburg, and after that he remained in Vorónezh, had another unhappy love affair, and dreamed continually of the possibility of quitting the place for good. But his father would not give him a kopék for such a purpose. His health gave way, and he died in 1842, aged thirty-three.

His poems are few in number, and the best of them belong to an entirely peculiar style, which he alone in Russian literature possesses, to which he alone imparted significance—the ballad, the national ballad compact, powerful, rich in expression, and highly artistic. The charm of nationality is so great, as expressed in Koltzóff's songs, that it is almost impossible to read them; one wants to sing them as the author sang the verses of others in his boyhood. Even his peculiar measures, which are not at all adapted to popular songs, do not destroy the harmonious impression made by them, and such pieces as "The Forest," "The Ballads of Cabman Kudryávitch," "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," and others, not only belong to the most notable productions of Russian lyric poetry, but are also representatives of an important historical phenomenon, as the first attempt to combine in one organic whole Russian artistic literature and the inexhaustible vast inartistic poetry of the people. "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," which is not rhymed in the original, runs as follows:

Hot in heaven the summer sun doth shine,
But me, young though I be, it warmeth not!
My heart is dead with cold
Through the perfidy of my affianced bride.

Woe-sadness upon me hath fallen,
Upon my sorrowful head;
My soul by deadly anguish is tormented,
And from my body my soul doth long to flee.

Unto men have I resorted for help—
With a laugh have they turned away;
To the grave of my father, my mother—
But they rise not at my call.

The world grew dark before mine eyes,
Upon the grass I swooned.
At dead of night, in a dreadful storm,
They lifted me from the grave.

At night, in the storm, I saddled my steed;
I set out, caring not whither I went—
To lead a wretched life, to console myself,
With rancor to demand satisfaction from men.