THE

RUSSIAN NOVELISTS

BY

E M DE VOGÜÉ

TRANSLATED BY
JANE LORING EDMANDS

BOSTON
D. LOTHROP COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

Copyright, 1887,
BY D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
Electrotyped
By C. J. Peters and Son, Boston.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

The spelling of Russian names is a matter of peculiar difficulty, and no fixed usage in regard to it has as yet been established. I have tried to follow the system presented in the Proceedings of the American Library Association for 1885, but it has been in some cases impossible for me to go back to the original Russian form as a starting-point. I have found it necessary to abridge M. de Vogüé’s work somewhat, in order to bring it within certain prescribed limits.

J. L. E.

PREFACE.

In offering this book to the constantly increasing class of persons interested in Russian literature, I owe them a little explanation in regard to the unavoidable omissions in these essays, as well as to their object and aim. The region we are approaching is a vast, almost unexplored one; we can only venture upon some of its highways, selecting certain provinces, while we neglect others.

This volume does not claim to give a complete history of Russian literature, or a didactic treatise upon it. Such a work does not yet exist in Russia, and would be premature even in France.

My aim is quite a different one. To do justice to both the dead and the living, in a history of the literature of only the past hundred years, I should but accumulate a quantity of names foreign to our ears, and a list of works which have never been translated. The entire political and social history of the three preceding reigns should be written, to properly explain the last.

It appears to me better to proceed as a naturalist would do in his researches in a foreign country. He would collect specimens peculiarly characteristic of the climate and soil, and choose from among them a few individual types which are perfectly developed. He draws our attention to them, as best revealing to us the actual and peculiar conditions of life in this particular corner of the earth.

This is my plan. I shall briefly touch upon the earliest Russian literature, and show how it became subjected to foreign influences, from which it was finally emancipated in the present century.

From this time, I am embarrassed in choosing from such a rich supply of material, but I shall confine myself to a few individual types. This method is, besides, even more legitimate in Russia than in more recently settled countries. If you go through one hundred different villages between St. Petersburg and Moscow, you will see that, in feature, bearing, and costume the people seem to be remarkably similar; so that a few portraits, chosen at random, will describe the whole race, both as to physical and moral traits.

This series of studies is principally devoted to the four distinguished contemporary writers, already well known in Europe by their translated works. I have tried to show the man as well as his work; and both, as illustrating the Russian national character. Without paying much attention to the rules of literary composition, I have been glad to make use of everything which would help me to carry out my design: of biographical details, personal recollections, digressions upon points of historical and political interest, without which the moral evolutions of a country so little known would be quite unintelligible. There is but one rule to be followed; to use every means of illuminating the object you wish to exhibit, that it may be thoroughly understood in all its phases. To this end, I have used the method of comparison between the Russian authors and those of other countries more familiar to us, as the surest and most rapid one.

Some persons may express surprise that it is of her novelists that I demand the secret of Russia.

It is because poetry and romance, the modes of expression most natural to this people, are alone compatible with the exigencies of a press-censure which was formerly most severe, and is even now very suspicious. There is no medium for ideas save through the supple meshes of fiction; so that the fiction which shields yet conveys these ideas assumes the importance of a doctrinal treatise.

Of these two leading forms of literature, the first, poetry, absorbed the early part of the present century; the other, the novel, has superseded poetry, and monopolized the attention of the whole nation for the last forty years.

With the great name of Pushkin at the head of the list, the Russians consider the romantic period as the crowning point of their intellectual glory. I once agreed with them, but have had two motives for changing my opinion.

In the first place, it would be quite useless to discuss works which we could not quote from; for the Russian poets have never been and never will be translated. The life and beauty of a lyric poem is in its arrangement of words and its rhythm; this beauty cannot be transferred into a foreign form. I once read a very admirable and exact Russian translation of Alfred de Musset’s “Nights”; it produced the same sensation as when we look upon a beautiful corpse; the soul had fled, like the divine essence which was the life of those charming verses.

The task is yet more difficult when you attempt to transfer an idea from the most poetical language in Europe into one which possesses the least of that quality. Certain verses of Pushkin and Lermontof are the finest I know in any language. But in the fragment of French prose they are transferred into, you glean but a commonplace thought. Many have tried, and many more will continue to try to translate them, but the result is not worth the effort. Besides, it does not seem to me that this romantic poetry expresses what is most typical of the Russian spirit. By giving poetry the first rank in their literature, their critics are influenced by the prestige of the past and the enthusiasm of youth; for the passage of time adds lustre to what is past, to the detriment of the present.

A foreigner can perhaps judge more truly in this case; for distance equalizes all remote objects on the same plane. I believe that the great novelists of the past forty years will be of more service to Russia than her poets. For the first time she is in advance of Western Europe through her writers, who have expressed æsthetic forms of thought which are peculiarly her own. This is why I choose these romances as illustrative of the national character. Ten years’ study of these works has suggested to me many thoughts relative to the character of this people, and the part it is destined to fill in the domain of intellect. As the novelist undertakes to bring up every problem of the national life, it will not be a matter of surprise if I make use of works of fiction in touching upon grave subjects and in the weaving together of some abstract thoughts.

We shall see the Russians plead the cause of realism with new arguments, and better ones, in my opinion, than those of their rivals in the West.

This work is an important one, and is the foundation of all the contests of ideas in the civilized world; revealing, moreover, the most characteristic conceptions of our contemporaries.

In all primitive literature, the classical hero was the only one considered worthy of attention, representing in action all ideas on religions, monarchical, social, and moral subjects, existing from time immemorial. In exaggerating the qualities of his hero, either for good or evil, the classic poet took for his model what he deemed should or should not be expected of him, rather than what such a character would be in reality.

For the last century, other views have gradually prevailed. Observation, rather than imagination, has been employed. The writer constantly gives us a close analysis of actions and feelings, rather than the diversion and excitement of intrigues and the display of passions. Classic art was like a king who has the right to govern, punish, reward, and choose his favorites from an aristocracy, obliging them to adopt conventional rules as to manners, morals, and modes of speech. The new art tries to imitate nature in its unconsciousness, its moral indifference. It expresses the triumph of the masses over the individual, of the crowd over the solitary hero, of the relative over the absolute. It has been called natural, realistic; would the word democratic suffice to define it, or not? It would be short-sighted in us not to perceive that political changes are only episodes in the great and universal change which is taking place.

Man has undertaken to explain the Universe, and perceives that the existence itself, the greatness and the dangers of this Universe are the result of the incessant accumulation of infinitesimal atoms. While institutions put the ruling of states into the hands of the multitude, science gave up the Universe to the control of the atoms of which it is composed. In the analysis of all physical and moral phenomena, the ancient theories as to their origin are entirely displaced by the doctrine of the constant evolution of microscopic and invisible beings. The moral sciences feel the shock communicated by the discoveries in natural science. The psychologist, who studies the secrets of the soul, finds that the human being is the result of a long series of accumulated sensations and actions, always influenced by its surroundings, as the sensitive strings of an instrument vary according to the surrounding temperature.

Are not these tendencies affecting practical life as well, in the doctrines of equality of classes, division of property, universal suffrage, and all the other consequences of this principle, which are summed up in the word democracy, the watchword of our times? Sixty years ago, the tide of the stream of democracy ran high, but now the stream has become an ocean, which is seeking its level over the entire surface of Europe. Here and there, little islets remain, solid rocks upon which thrones still stand, occasional fragments of feudal governments, with a clinging remnant of caste privileges; but the most far-seeing of these monarchs and of these castes know well that the sea is rising. Their only hope is that a democratic organization may not be incompatible with a monarchical form; we shall find in Russia a patriarchal democracy growing up within the shadow of an absolute power.

Literature, which always expresses the existing condition of society, could not escape this general change of base; at first instinctively, then as a doctrine, it regulated its methods and its ideals according to the new spirit. Its first efforts at reformation were awkward and uncertain; romanticism, as we know to-day, was but a bastard production. It was merely a reaction against the classic hero, but was still unconsciously permeated by the classic spirit. Men soon tired of this, and demanded of authors more sincerity, and representations of the world more conformable to the teachings of the positive sciences, which were gaining ground day by day. They demanded to know more of human life, of ideas, and the relations of human beings to each other. Then it was that realism sprung into existence, and was adopted by all European literature, and is still reigning, with the various shades of difference that we shall allude to. A path was prepared for it by the universal revolution I have spoken of; but a realization of the general causes of this revolution could alone give to literature a philosophical turn.

These great changes in men’s ideas were thought to be due to the advancement in scientific knowledge, and the resulting freedom of thought, which for a time inaugurated the worship of reason. But beyond the circle of truth already conquered appeared new and unknown abysses, and man found himself still a slave, oppressed by natural laws, in bondage to his passions. Then his presumption vanished. He fell back into uncertainty and doubt. Better armed and wiser, undoubtedly, but his necessities increased with the means of satisfying them. Disenchanted, his old instincts came back to him; he sought a higher Power,—but could find none. Everything conspired to break up the traditions of the past; the pride of reason, fully persuaded of its own power, as well as the aggravating stubbornness of orthodoxy. By a strange contradiction, the pride of intelligence increased with universal doubt which shattered all opinions.

All the Sages having declared that the new theories regarding the universe were contrary to religious explanations, pride refused to make further researches. The defenders of orthodoxy have done little to facilitate matters. They did not understand that their doctrine was the fountain-head of all progress, and that they turned that stream from its natural direction by opposing the discoveries of science and all political changes.

The strongest proof of the truth of a doctrine is the faculty of accommodating itself to all human developments, without changing itself, because it contains the germ of all the developments. The remarkable power of religion over men arises from this faculty; when orthodoxy does not recognize this gift, it depreciates its own strength.

By reason of this misunderstanding, the responsibility of which should be shared by all parties, it has taken a long time to come to a perception of this simple truth. The world has been for eighteen centuries in a state of fermentation, through the gospel. Bossuet, one of those rare spirits which prophesy truly, realized this. He said:

“Jesus Christ came into the world to overthrow all that pride has established in it; thence it is that his policy is in direct opposition to that of the age.”

But this constant, active work of the gospel, although formerly acknowledged, is now denied by many; this gives to realism the harshness of its methods. The realist should acknowledge the present, abiding influence of the spirit of the gospel in the world. He should, above all, possess the religious sentiment; it will give him the charity he needs. The spirit of charity loses its influence in literature the moment it withdraws from its true source.

To sum up what realism should be, I must seek a general formula, which will express both its method and the extent of its creative power. I can find but one, and it is a very old one; but I know of none better, more scientific, or which approaches nearer the secret of all creation:—

“And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground.”—But, to complete the formula, and account for the dual nature of our humanity, we must add the text: “And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul—”

This divine spark, derived from the source of universal life, is the spirit, the active and mysterious and incomprehensible element of our being, which baffles all our explanations, and without which we are nothing. At the point where life begins, there do we cease to comprehend.

The realist is groping his way, trying his experiments in the creations of his brain, which breathe the spirit of truth, and speak with at least the accent of sincerity and sympathy.

CONTENTS.

THE RUSSIAN NOVELISTS.

CHAPTER I.
EPOCHS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

I.

Before studying those contemporary writers who alone will reveal to us the true Russian spirit and character, we must devote a little attention to their predecessors, in order to understand the Russian literature in its prolonged infancy, and its bearing upon that of the present day. We shall see how everything conspired to retard its development. Russian literature may be divided into four distinct epochs. The first, ending with the accession of Peter the Great, was in fact its mediæval age. In this epoch a wealth of national traditions had accumulated in its popular poetry and barbarous essays. The second period embraces the last century, from Peter the Great to Alexander I., and, although seemingly progressive, was the least fruitful one, because its literature was but a servile imitation of that of the Occident. The third, the short epoch of romanticism, produced a brilliant set of poets, whose works were of value to the general world of letters. But they were hot-house blooms, produced by a culture imported from abroad, and give but little idea of the true properties of their native soil.

Forty years ago a new epoch began. Russia has finally produced something spontaneous and original. In the realistic novel, Russian genius has at last come to a realizing sense of its own existence; and, while bound indissolubly to the past, it already lisps and stammers the programme of its future. We shall see how this genius has soared from darkness and obscurity, acting already a part in history, although continually repressed by history’s cruel wrongs and injustice and its brusque changes of situation. We must recall too the intellectual origin of this race and its moral peregrinations, and then we can make more allowance for what there is of gloom, irresolution, and obscurity in its literature.

The Russian people are afflicted with a national, a historical malady, which is partly hereditary, partly contracted during the course of its existence. The hereditary part is that proclivity of the Slavonic mind towards that negative doctrine which to-day we call Nihilism, and which the Hindu fathers called Nirvâna. In fact, if we would understand Russia well, we must recall to our minds what she has learned from ancient India.

Many philosophers of the present day in Russia fully accept the doctrines of Buddha, and boast with pride of the purity of their Aryan blood, bringing forward many arguments in support of this claim. First, there is the fact that the physical type is very marked in families in which the Tartar blood has never mingled. Many a Moscow student or peasant from certain provinces might, except for his light complexion, easily pass in a street of Lahore or Benares for a native of the valley of the Ganges. Moreover, they have strong philological arguments. The old Slavonic dialect is declared by linguists to more nearly approach the Sanscrit than does the Greek of the very earliest epochs. The grammatical rules are identical. Speak of the Vêda to any Russian peasant, and you will find he needs no explanation; the verb vêdat is one in constant use by him. If he should mention the word “fire,” it will be the original one used by his ancestors who worshipped that element. Numberless examples could be quoted to prove this close relation to the original Sanscrit; but this is still more strongly shown by an analytical study of the Russian mind and character. The Hindu type of mind may be easily recognized in the Slavonic intellectual type. By studying the revolutions of India one could easily understand possible convulsions in Russia. The most able authors state the Buddhist revolution to have arisen from a social rather than a religious reaction of the popular sentiment against the spirit of caste, against the fixed organizations of society. Like Christianity in the West, Buddhism was in the extreme East the revelation, the personification of charity and meekness, of moral and social freedom, which were to render life more tolerable to multitudes of human beings bowed under the yoke of an implacable theocracy.

The best doctrines, in order to succeed, must permit certain exaggerations for the fanciful and imaginative, and tolerate certain errors which attract minds warped by prolonged sufferings. To the latter, Christianity offers asceticism; Buddhism promises them the joys of annihilation, the Nirvâna. Nihilism is the word invented by Burnouf as a translation of Nirvâna. Max Müller says that the Sanscrit word really means “the action of extinguishing a light by blowing it out.” Will not this definition explain Russian Nihilism, which would extinguish the light of civilization by stifling it, then plunge back into chaos.

Undoubtedly, numerous and more recent causes have acted upon the national mind producing this peculiar state of discouragement, which in violent natures has developed into a furious desire to destroy every existing condition, because all are bad. Moreover, Christianity has lent a new formula to what there was of good in the old instincts. Its influence has been profound, accounting for the spirit of fraternity and self-sacrifice so admirable in this people. But I cannot help thinking that with this stolid race we must go back to the habits of thought of very ancient times in order to realize what their natural inclinations and difficulties would be.

We shall now see how these have been aggravated or modified by a series of accidents. I know of no people which has been so overwhelmed by its own fate; like a river which has changed its course over and over again, or the life of one of those men who seem fated to begin several different careers in life and succeed in none.

The Western nations have developed under much more favorable conditions. After the forced establishment and final withdrawal of Islamism, they enjoyed a long period of comparative peace, several centuries in which they could work out the problem of life. Constant revolutions and wars did not wholly throw them off the track which they had marked out for themselves from the outset.

Russia, on the contrary, seems to have offered a free field for the most radical experiments, in which its poor people have been involved every two or three hundred years, just as they were well started in a new direction. Plunged into the most barbarous and heathenish anarchy, different tribes waged war there for two or three centuries after these had wholly ceased in France. Then Christianity came, but from a Byzantine, the least pure source; a vitiated Christianity, enervated by oriental corruption. The Russian people were fated to become wholly Greek in religion, laws, and government, thus commencing a new epoch in history. Would this germ of a new life have time to develop?

Two hundred years after the baptisms at Kiev, Russia was overwhelmed by the Mongolian invasion. Asia returned to demand its prey and to seize the young Christian territory, which was already gravitating toward Europe. Pagans from the beginning, the Tartars became Mohammedans, remained wholly Asiatic, and introduced oriental customs among their Russian subjects. Not until the fifteenth century, when the Renaissance was dawning upon western Europe, did Russia begin to throw off this Tartar yoke. They freed themselves by a succession of strong efforts, but very gradually. The Crescent did not disappear from the Volga until 1550, leaving behind it traces of the oriental spirit for all time.

The Russian people were now crushed by an iron despotism, made up of Mongolian customs and Byzantine ceremonies. Just emancipated from foreign oppression, they were forced to cultivate the soil. Boris Godunof condemned them to serfdom, by which their whole social condition was changed in one day, with one stroke of the pen,—that unfortunate St. George’s day which the muzhik would curse for three hundred years to come.

In the next century Russia was invaded from the Occident. Poland obtained one-half of its territory and ruled at Moscow. The Poles were afterwards expelled, when the nation could take time to breathe and assert itself again. Naturally, it then turned toward Asia and its own traditions.

Now appeared upon the scene a rough pilot in the person of Peter the Great, to guide the helm of this giant raft which was floating at random, and direct it toward Europe. At this epoch occurred the strangest of all the experiments tried by history upon Russia. To continue the figure, imagine a ship guided towards the West by the captain and his officers, while the entire crew were bent upon sailing for the East. Such was the strange condition of affairs for one hundred and fifty years, from the accession of Peter to the death of the Emperor Nicholas; the consequences of which condition are still observable. The sovereign and a few men he called to his aid abjured oriental life entirely, and became Europeans in ideas, politics, language, and dress. Little by little, the upper classes followed this example during the latter part of the last century.

During the first half of the present one, the influence of Europe became still stronger, affecting administration, education, etc., drawing a small part of the masses with it; but the nation remained stolid, rebellious, with its eyes turned toward the East, as were the prayers of their Tartar masters. Only forty years ago the Western light illumined the highest peaks alone, while the broad valleys lay buried in the shadows of a past which influences them still.

This entire period presents a condition of affairs wholly unique. An immense population was led by a small class which had adopted foreign ideas and manners, and even spoke a strange language; a class which received its whole intellectual, moral, and political food and impetus from Germany, England, or France, as the case might be;—always from outside. The management of the land itself was frequently confided to foreigners—“pagans,” as the Russian peasants called them. Naturally, these foreigners looked upon this country as a vast field open to them for the collection of taxes and recruits; and whose destiny it was to furnish them with everything necessary in carrying out their projects,—their diplomatic combinations on the chess-board of all Europe.

There were, of course, some exceptions—some attempts at restoring national politics and interior reform; but total ignorance of the country as well as of its language was the rule. Grandparents are still living in Russia, who, while they speak French perfectly, are quite incapable of speaking, or at least of writing, in the language of their grandchildren.

Since the time of Catherine, a series of generations living in the Parisian elegance and luxury of the days of Louis XV., of the Empire, and the Restoration, have suffered with the French all their revolutionary shocks, shared in all their aspirations, been influenced by all their literature, sympathized in all their theories of administration and political economy;—and these do not even trouble themselves to know how a muzhik of the provinces lives, or what he has to endure. These political economists do not even know how Russian wheat is raised, which Pushkin declares to grow differently from the English wheat.

So the people, left to themselves, merely vegetated, and developed according to the obscure laws of their oriental nature. We can imagine what disorder would arise in a nation so formed and divided.

In France, historical events have gradually formed a middle class; a natural connecting link between the two extremes of society. In Russia this middle class did not exist, and is still wanting, there being nothing to fill the intervening space. The whole depth of the abyss was realized by those Russians who became enlightened enough to understand the state of their country during the latter years of the reign of Alexander I.

A national fusion was developed, as it usually is on the battle-fields, where the Russians fell side by side before the invader. This movement, however, was very gradual, and Russia was virtually divided into two distinct classes until the death of the Emperor Nicholas, when the necessity of a more orderly condition of affairs was universally felt, giving rise to a social revolution which resulted in the emancipation of the serfs.

For the last quarter of a century, every conscientious and strong-minded man has worked to perform his part towards the common object: the establishment of a solid and united country. But they met with terrible obstacles; for they must abolish the past, heal all differences, and conciliate all parties.

As a world travelling through space, drawn by opposite attractions, is divided, bursts asunder, one fragment rushing to join the distant star which calls it, while the greater portion of the planet continues to gravitate towards the nearer spheres; and as, in spite of all opposing forces, these two separated fragments of a world tend to re-unite, no matter what spaces divide them, or with what a shock they must meet, having acquired such increased velocity;—so was it with Russia, made up of so many dissimilar elements, attracted at different times by opposite poles; now tossed from Europe to Asia, and back again from Asia to Europe, and finally divided against itself.

This condition is what I called the Russian national malady, which has plunged this people into the deepest discouragement and confusion. To historical misfortunes, we may add the peculiarities of soil and climate in which the Russian drama has been enacted. The severe, interminable winter interrupts man’s work and depresses his spirit. In the southern part, the scanty vegetation does not incite him to wrestle with nature and vie with her in energy and devotion. Is it not true that man’s mind is modelled according to the nature of his abiding-place? Must not a country having a limited horizon, and forms strongly and sharply defined, tend to the development of individuality, to clearness of conception, and persevering effort? The larger portion of Russia has nothing analogous to this; only, as Tacitus says, a “monotonous alternation of wild wood and reeking marsh.” (“Aut silvis horrida, aut paludibus fœda”); endless plains with no distinct horizon, no decisive outlines, only a mirage of snow, marsh, or sand. Everywhere the infinite, which confuses the mind and attracts it hopelessly. Tolstoï has well described it as “that boundless horizon which appeals to me so strongly.”

The souls of this people must resemble those who sail on a long voyage; self-centered, resigned to their situation, with impulses of sudden, violent longing for the impossible. Their land is made for a tent-life, rather than for dwelling in houses; their ideas are nomadic, like themselves. As the winds bear the arctic cold over the plains from the White Sea to the Black, without meeting any resisting obstacle, so invasions, melancholy, famine, servitude, seize and fill these empty stretches rapidly and without hindrance. It is a land which is calculated to nourish the dim, hereditary, confused aspirations of the Russian heart, rather than those productions of the mind which give an impetus to literature and the arts.

Nevertheless, we shall see how the persistent seed will develop under this severe sky and amid such untoward influences, saved by the eternal spring which exists in all human hearts of every climate.

II.

The middle age of Russian literature, or the period ending with the accession of Peter the Great, produced first: ecclesiastical literature, comprising sermons, chronicles, moral and instructive treatises. Secondly: popular literature, consisting of epic poems, characteristic sonnets and legends. The former resembles that of western Europe, being in the same vein, only inferior to it.

Throughout Christendom, the Church was for a long time the only educator; monk and scholar being almost synonymous words; while outside the pale of the Church all was barbarism. At first, the writer was a mere mechanical laborer, or Chinese scribe, who laboriously copied the Gospels and the ancient Scriptures. He was respected as possessing one of the arcana of life, and as specially gifted through a miracle from on high. Many generations of monks passed away before the idea occurred to these humble copyists to utilize their art in recording their own personal impressions. At first there were homilies, mere imitations of those of the Byzantine fathers; then lives of saints; and the legendary lore of the monastery of Kiev, the great centre of prayer and holy travail of the whole Slavonic world. Here originated the first approach to romance of that time, its Golden Legend, the first effort of the imagination towards the ideal which is so seductive to every human soul. Then came the chronicles of wars, and of their attendant and consequent evils. Nestor, the father of Russian history, noted down his impressions of what he saw, in a style similar to that of Gregory of Tours.

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, these feeble germs of culture were nearly crushed out of existence by the Tartar invasion; and even the translation of the Bible into the Slavonic language was not accomplished until the year 1498.

In 1518, Maximus, a Greek monk, who had lived in Florence with Savonarola, came to Moscow, bringing with him the first specimens of printing. He reformed the schools, and collected around him a group of men eager for knowledge. About this time the so-called civil deacons, the embryo of future tchinovnism,[A] began to assist the students of Latin and Greek in their translations.

Father Sylvester also wrote the “Domostroi,” a treatise on morals and domestic economy; a practical encyclopædia for Russians of the sixteenth century.

In the second half of this century Ivan the Terrible introduced printing into Russia. A part of the venerable building he erected at Moscow for a printing establishment is still standing. He tried to obtain from Germany skilful hands in the new art, but they were refused him. Each sovereign jealously guarded every master of the great secret, as they did good alchemists or skilful workers in metals.

A Moscow student, Ivan Fedorof, cast some Slavonic characters, and used them in printing the Acts of the Apostles, in 1564. This is the most ancient specimen of typography in Russia. He, the first of Russian printers, was accused of heresy, and obliged to fly for his life. His wretched existence seemed a prophetic symbol of the destiny reserved for the development of thought in his native country. Fedorof took refuge with some magnates of Lithuania, and printed some books in their castles; but his patrons and protectors tore him from his beloved work, and forced him to cultivate the land. He wrote of himself:—“It was not my work to sow the grain, but to scatter through the earth food for the mind, nourishment for the souls of all mankind.” He fled to Lemberg, where he died in extreme poverty, leaving his precious treasure to a Jew.

The seventeenth century produced a few specimens of secular literature. But it was an unfavorable time, a time of anxiety, of usurpations; and afterwards came the Polish invasion. When intellectual life again awoke, theological works were the order of the day; and even up to the time of Peter the Great, all the writers of note were theologians.

The development of general literature in Russia was precisely analogous to that of Western Europe, only about two centuries later, the seventeenth century in Russia corresponding to the fifteenth in France. With popular literature, or folk-lore, however, the case is quite otherwise; nowhere is it so rich and varied as with the Slavonians.

Nature and history seem to have been too cruel to this people. Their spirits rise in rebellion against their condition, and soar into that fantastic realm of the imagination, above and outside the material world; a realm created by the Divine Being for the renewal of man’s spirit, and giving him an opportunity for the play of his fancy. According to the poet Tutschef, “Our earthly life is bathed in dreams, as the earth by ocean’s waves.” Their songs and myths are the music of history, embracing their whole national life, and changing it into dreams and fancies. The Cossack fisher-folk have sung them upon their mighty rivers for more than eight centuries.

When, in the future, Russia shall produce her greatest and truest poets, they have only to draw from these rich sources, an inexhaustible store. Never can they find better material; for the imagination of that anonymous author, the people, is the more sublime, and its heart more truly poetical, because of its great faith, simplicity, and many sorrows. What poem can compare with that description of the universe in a book, written in the fifteenth century, called “Book of the Dove”?—

“The sun is the fire of love glowing in the Lord’s face; the stars fall from his mantle…. The night is dark with his thoughts; the break of day is the glance of his eye….”

And where can the writers of the modern realistic Russian novel find tenderer touches or more sharply bitter allusions than in the old dramatic poem, “The Ascension of Christ”? Jesus, as he is about to rise to heaven, thus consoles the sorrowing crowd clustered around him:—

“Weep not, dear brethren! I will give you a mountain of gold, a river of honey; I will leave you gardens planted with vines, fruits, and manna from heaven.” But the Apostle John interrupts him, saying:—

“Do not give them the mountain of gold, for the princes and nobles will take it from them, divide it among themselves, and not allow our brothers to approach. If thou wishest these unfortunates to be fed, clothed, and sheltered, bestow upon them Thy Holy Name, that they may glorify it in their lives, on their wanderings through the earth.”

The song of “The Band of Igor,” an epic poem, describing the struggle with the pagan hordes from the south-west, and supposed by some authors to have been inspired by Homer, is the most ancient, and the prototype of all others of the Middle Age. The soul of the Slavonic poet of this time is Christian only in name. The powers he believes in are those of nature and the universe. He addresses invocations to the rivers, to the sea, to darkness, the winds, the sun. The continual contrast between the beneficent Light and the evil Darkness recalls the ancient Egyptian hymns, which always describe the eternal contest between day and night.

Pushkin says of the “Song of Igor,” the origin of which is much disputed among scholars: “All our poets of the eighteenth century together had not poetry enough in them to comprehend, still less to compose, a single couplet of this ‘Song of Igor.’”

This epic poetry of Russia strikes its roots in the most remote antiquity of Asia, from Hindu and Persian myths, as well as from those of the Occident. It resembles the race itself in its growth and mode of development, oscillating alternately between the east and the west. Thus has the Russian mind oscillated between the two poles of attraction. In this period of its growth, it remembers and imitates more than it creates; but the foreign images it receives and reflects assume larger contours and more melancholy colors; a tinge of plaintiveness, as well as of brotherly love and sympathy.

Not so with the period we now enter. Literature is now reduced to a restricted form, like the practice of an art, cultivated for itself and following certain rules. It is an edifice constructed by Peter the Great, in which the author becomes a servant of the state, with a set task like the rest of the government officials. All must study in the school of Western Europe, and must accomplish in the eighteenth century what France did in the sixteenth. Even the Slavonic language itself must suffer innovations and adopt foreign terms. Before this, all books were written in the Old Slavonic language of the church, which influenced also all scientific and poetical productions.

The change which came about naturally in France, as the result of an intellectual revolution, for which the minds of the people were already ripe, was in Russia brought about by a single will; being the artificial work of one man who aroused the people from slumber before their time.

A new style of literature cannot be called into being, as an army can be raised, or a new code of laws established, by an imperial order or decree. Let us imagine the Renaissance established in France by Philippe le Bel! Such an attempt was now made in Russia, and its unsatisfactory results are easily accounted for.

Peter established an Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, sending its members abroad for a time at first to absorb all possible knowledge, and return to use it for the benefit of the Russian people. This custom prevailed for more than a century. The most important of these scholars was Lomonosof, the son of a poor fisherman of the White Sea. Having distinguished himself at school, he was taken up by the government and sent into Germany. Returning to supplant the German professors, whom he found established at St. Petersburg, he bequeathed to his country a quite remarkable epic poem on Peter the Great, called “La Pétriade,” for which his name is revered by his countrymen.

The glorious reign of Catherine II. should have added something to the literary world. She was a most extraordinary woman. She wrote comedies for her own theatre at the Hermitage, as well as treatises on education for the benefit of her grandchildren, and would gladly have been able to furnish native philosophers worthy to vie with her foreign courtiers; but they proved mere feeble imitators of Voltaire. Kheraskof wrote the “Rossiade” and Sumarokof, called by his contemporaries the Russian Racine, furnished the court with tragedies. But two comedies, “Le Brigadier,” and “Le Mineur,” by Von Vizin, have more merit, and are still much read and highly appreciated. These form a curious satire on the customs of the time. But the name of Derzhavin eclipses all others of this epoch. His works were modelled somewhat after Rousseau and Lefranc de Pompignan, and are fully equal to them.

Derzhavin had the good-fortune to live to a ripe old age, and in court life through several reigns; thus having the best of opportunities to utilize all striking events. Each new accession to the throne, victories, anniversaries, all contributed to inflate his national pride and inspire his muse.

But his high-flown rhetoric is open to severe criticism, and his works will be chiefly valued as illustrative of a glorious period of Russian history, and as a memorial of the illustrious Catherine. Pushkin says of him:—

“He is far inferior to Lomonosof.—He neither understood the grammar nor the spirit of our language; and in time, when his works will have been translated, we shall blush for him. We should reserve only a few of his odes and sketches, and burn all the rest.”

Krylof, the writer of fables in imitation of La Fontaine, deserves mention. He had talent enough to show some originality in a style of literature in which it is most difficult to be original; and wrote with a rude simplicity characteristically Russian, and in a vein much more vigorous than that of his model.

Karamzin inaugurated a somewhat novel deviation in the way of imitation. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Rousseau. He was poet, critic, political economist, novelist, and historian; and bore a leading part in the literature of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth; a time including the end of Catherine’s reign and the early part of Alexander’s. It was a transition period between the classic and romantic schools of literature. Karamzin might be called the Rousseau and the Chateaubriand of his country. His voluminous history of Russia is of great merit, although he is sufficiently blinded by his patriotism to cause him to present a too flattering picture of a most cruel despotism; so that his assertions are often challenged by later writers. But the work is of great value as a most conscientious compilation of events and quotations, and the only one written up to the last twenty years; and in this respect Karamzin has no rival.

He owed his renown, before writing his history, to a few little romances of a sentimental turn. The romantic story of “La pauvre Lise” especially was received with a furor quite out of proportion to its merit. Its popularity was such that it became the inspiration of artists and of decorators of porcelain. Lakes and ponds innumerable were baptized with the name of Lise, in memory of her sad fate. Such enthusiasm seems incredible; but we can never tell what literary effort may be borne on to undying fame by the wheel of fashion!

The successive efforts of these secondary writers have contributed much to form the language of Russian literature as it now exists; Karamzin for its prose, Derzhavin for its poetry. In less than one hundred years the change was accomplished, and the way prepared for Pushkin, who was destined to supply an important place in Russian literature.

Karamzin’s part in politics was quite at variance with his position in the world of letters. Although an imitator of Rousseau, he set himself against the liberal ideas of Alexander. He was opposed to the emancipation of the serfs, and became the champion of the so-called Muscovitism, which, forty years later, became Slavophilism. He lived in Moscow, where the conservative element was strongest, acting in opposition to Speranski, the prime minister.

In 1811, Karamzin wrote a famous paper, addressed to his sovereign, called, “Old and New Russia,” which so influenced Alexander’s vacillating mind that it gave the death-blow to Speranski. In this paper he says: “We are anticipating matters in Russia, where there are hardly one hundred persons who know how to spell correctly. We must return to our national traditions, and do away with all ideas imported from the Occident. No Russian can comprehend any limitation of the autocratic power. The autocrat draws his wisdom from a fountain within himself, and from the love of his people,” etc.

This paper contained the germ of every future demand of the Muscovite party.

Karamzin is the pioneer of the Slavophile party, which would do away with all the reforms of Peter the Great, and reconstruct the original Russia as an ideal government, entirely free from any European ideas. As this political programme became a literary one, it is important to note its first appearance.

Freemasonry, that embodiment of the spirit of mysticism, worked its way into Russia, brought from Sweden and Germany, during the reign of Catherine; and was at once taken up by the literary world, then led by Novikof. The greater part of the distinguished scholars and statesmen under Alexander, Karamzin among them, were interested in it, and spread through the country the philosophical works which deluged Europe.

The French Revolution now broke out; and Catherine, becoming alarmed at the rapid spread of the new philosophy, ordered the lodges closed, had the suspicious books seized, and Novikof tried and condemned.

But the new doctrines assumed greater force under Alexander, who encouraged them. The infatuation for this mysticism spread among all intelligent people. The state of mind of the upper classes has been faithfully depicted in the character of Pierre Bezushof, in “War and Peace,” the historical novel of Leon Tolstoï. (See the chapter which describes Pierre’s initiation into Freemasonry.) This condition of mind is not peculiar to the Russians. All Europe was obscured by it at the end of the eighteenth century; but in Russia it found free scope in the unsettled and confused state of affairs, where the thinking mind struggled against the influx of rationalism, while unwilling to accept the negative philosophy of the learned class. On this account, among others, the reign of Alexander I. presents a curious subject for study and contemplation. It offered a point of meeting for every new current of thought which agitated Russia, as well as for everything that had been repressed throughout the reign of Nicholas. The Masonic lodges insensibly became a moving power in politics, which led to the liberal conspiracy crushed out in 1825. A horror of the revolutionary ideas of France, and the events of 1812, had produced a great change in the Russian mind; besides, Russia, now temporarily estranged from France, became more influenced by Germany; which fact was destined to have a considerable effect upon their literature. During the whole of the eighteenth century, France tutored the Russian mind in imitation of the classics. It now became inculcated with the romanticism of Germany.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Official rank.

CHAPTER II.
ROMANTICISM.—PUSHKIN AND POETRY.

Russia—all Europe, in fact—was now enjoying a period of peace. A truce of twenty-five years lay between the great political wars and the important social struggles to come. During these years of romanticism, so short and yet so full, between 1815 and 1840 only, all intelligent minds in Russia seemed given up to thought, imagination, and poetry.

Everything in this country develops suddenly. Poets appear in numbers, just as the flowers of the field spring forth after the sun’s hot rays have melted the snow. At this time poetry seemed to be the universal language of men. Only one of this multitude of poets, however, is truly admirable, absorbing all the rest in the lustrous rays of his genius,—the glorious Pushkin.

He was preceded by Zhukovski, who was born twenty years earlier, and who also survived him. No critic can deny that Zhukovski was the real originator of romanticism in Russian literature; or that he was the first one to introduce it from Germany. His works were numerous. Perfectly acquainted with the Greek language, his version of Homer is most admirable. He also wrote several poems in the style of Schiller, Goethe, and Uhland; and many compositions, ballads, etc., all in the German style. He touched upon many Russian subjects, themes which Pushkin afterwards took up. In fact, he was to Pushkin what Perugino was to Raphael; yet every Russian will declare that the new romanticism of that time dates from Pushkin, and is identified with him.

Zhukovski was one of those timid spirits which are born to be satellites, even though they rise before the sun in the pale dawn; but they only shine with reflected light, and their lustre becomes wholly absorbed in the rays of the rising luminary which replaces them.

I.

To realize the importance of the part the poets of this period were destined to play, we must remember what a very small part of the population of this vast country could be called the educated class. At the beginning of the century, the education of the Muscovite aristocracy was confided entirely to the Jesuits, who had been powerfully supported by the Emperor Paul. In 1811, Alexander I. replaced these foreign educators by native Russians, and founded the Lyceum of Tsarskoe-Selo, after the model of the Paris Lyceums.

Students were admitted according to birth and merit only. Pushkin and Gortchakof were the two who most distinguished themselves. The course of study was rather superficial. The students were on intimate terms with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and quartered in the imperial palace with them. Politics, patriotism, poetry, all together fomented an agitation, which ended with the conspiracy of December, 1825.

Pushkin was at once recognized as a master in this wild throng, and was already famous as a poet. The old Derzhavin cast his own mantle upon Pushkin’s shoulders and pronounced him his heir. Pushkin possessed the gift of pleasing; but to understand his genius, we must not lose sight of his origin. His maternal grandfather was an Abyssinian negro, who had been a slave in the Seraglio of Constantinople, was stolen and carried to Russia by a corsair, and adopted by Peter the Great, who made him a general, and gave him in marriage to a noble lady of the court. The poet inherited some of his grandfather’s features; his thick lips, white teeth, and crisp curly hair. This drop of African blood, falling amid Arctic snows, may account for the strong contrasts and exaggerations of his poetic nature, which was a remarkable union of impetuosity and melancholy.

His youth was passed in a wild whirl of pleasure and excess. He incurred while still young the imperial anger, by having written some insolent verses, as well as by committing some foolish pranks with some of the saints’ images; and was banished for a time to the borders of the Black Sea, where, enchanted by the delicious climate and scenery, his genius developed rapidly.

He returned not much the wiser, but with his genius fully matured at the age of twenty-five. For a few short years following his return, he produced his greatest masterpieces with astonishing rapidity, and died at thirty-seven in a duel, the victim of an obscure intrigue. He had married a very beautiful woman, who was the innocent cause of his death. Lending an ear to certain calumnies concerning her, he became furiously jealous, and fought the fatal duel with an officer of the Russian guard.

While we lament his sad fate, we can but reflect that the approach of age brings sadness with it, and most of all to a poet. He died young, in the prime of life and in the plenitude of his powers, giving promise of future possible masterpieces, with which we always credit such geniuses.

It is impossible to judge of this man’s works from a review of his character. Though his heart was torn by the stormiest passions, he possessed an intellect of the highest order, truly classic in the best sense of the word. When his talent became fully matured, form took possession of him rather than color. In his best poems, intellect presides over sentiment, and the soul of the artist is laid bare.

To attempt to quote, to translate his precious words, would be a hopeless task. He himself said: “In my opinion, there is nothing more difficult, I might say impossible, than to translate Russian poetry into French; concise as our language is, we can never be concise enough.”

In Latin one might possibly be able to express as many thoughts in as few words, and as beautifully. The charm vanishes with the translator’s touch; besides, the principal object of this book is to show how the peculiar type of Russian character is manifested in the works of the Russian writers. Neither do I think that Pushkin could aid us much in this study; although he was no servile imitator, like so many of his predecessors, it is none the less true that he drew his material from the great sources of European literature. He was educated from a child in French literature. His father knew Molière by heart, and his uncle was a great admirer of Béranger. When he entered the Lyceum he could scarcely speak his mother-tongue, but he had been fed with Voltaire from early childhood. His very first verses were written in French, and his first Russian rhymes were madrigals on the same themes. In the “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” written in 1824, we can feel the influence of Byron, whom he calls the “master of his thoughts.” Gradually he acquired more originality, but it is quite certain that but for Byron some of the most important of his poems, such as “Onyegin,” “The Bohemians,” several of his oriental poems, and even his admirable “Poltava,” would never have existed.

During the latter years of his life, he had a passion for history, when he studied the historical dramas of Shakespeare. This he himself acknowledges in the preface to “Boris Godunof,” which is a Shakespearian drama on a Muscovite subject. In certain prose works he shows unmistakable proofs of the influence of Voltaire, as they are written in a style wholly dissimilar to anything in Russian prose.

The Slavophile party like to imagine that Pushkin, in his “Songs of the Western Slavs,” has evoked the ancient Russian spirit; while he has merely translated some French verses into Russian. We must acknowledge the truth that his works, with the exception of “Onyegin,” and a few others, do not exhibit any peculiar ethnical stamp. He is influenced at different times, as the case may be, by his contemporaries in Germany, England, and France. He expresses universal sentiments, and applies them to Russian themes; but he looks from outside upon the national life, like all his contemporaries in letters, artistically free from any influence of his own race. Compare his descriptions of the Caucasus with those of Tolstoï in “The Cossacks.” The poet of 1820 looks upon nature and the Orientals with the eye of a Byron or a Lamartine; while the observer of 1850 regards that spot of Asia as his ancestral mother-country, and feels that it partly belongs to him.

We shall find that Pushkin’s successors possess none of his literary qualities. He is as concise as they are diffuse; as clear as they are involved. His style is as perfect, elegant, and correct as a Greek bronze; in a word, he has style and good taste, which terms cannot be applied to any of his successors in Russian literature. Is it taking away anything from Pushkin to remove him from his race and give him to the world and humanity at large? Because he was born in Russia, there is nothing whatever to prove that his works were thereby modified. He would have sung in the self-same way for England, France, or Italy.

But, although he resembles his country so little, he served it well. He stirred its intellectual life more effectively than any other writer has done; and it is not too much to call him the Peter the Great of Russian literature. The nation gratefully recognizes this debt. To quote one of his own verses:—“The monument I have erected for myself is made by no mortal hand; and the grass will not have time to grow in the path that leads to it.”

II.

Among the group of poets contemporaries of Pushkin only two are really worthy of mention, viz.: Griboyedof and Lermontof; but these two, although they died young, gave promise of great genius. The first of these left only one comedy, but that is the masterpiece of the Russian drama (“le Mal de Trop d’Esprit”). The author, unlike Pushkin, disdained all foreign literature, took pride in all the ancient Muscovite customs, and was Russian to the backbone. He painted the people and the peculiarities of his own country only, and so wonderfully well that his sayings have become proverbs. The piece is similar to the “Revizor” of Gogol, but, in my opinion, superior to it, being broader in spirit and finer in sentiment. Moreover, its satire never will grow old, for it is as appropriate to the present day as to the time for which it was written.

Returning from Persia, where he had been sent as Russian minister to the Shah, he was murdered by a party of robbers, at the age of thirty four.

Lermontof was the poet of the Caucasus, which he made the scene of all his poems. His short life of twenty-six years was spent among those mountains; and he was, like Pushkin, killed in a duel, just as he was beginning to be recognized as a worthy successor to him. Byron was also his favorite model, whom he, unhappily, strongly resembled in character. His most celebrated poem was “The Demon”; but he wrote many most picturesque and fascinating stanzas and short pieces, which are full of tenderness and melancholy. Though less harmonious and perfect than Pushkin’s, his verses give out sometimes a sadder ring. His prose is equal to his poetry, and many of his short sketches, illustrative of Caucasian life, possess a subtle charm.

III.

Lermontof was the last and most extreme of the poets of the romantic period. The Byronic fever, now at its height, was destined soon to die out and disappear. Romanticism sought in history some more solid aliment than despair. A reaction set in; and writers of elegies and ballads turned their attention to historical dramas and the picturesque side of human life. From Byron they turned back to Shakespeare, the universal Doctor. Pushkin, in his “Boris Godunof,” and in the later poems of his mature period, devoted himself to this resurrection of the past; and his disciples followed in his wake. The rhetoric of the new school, not wholly emancipated from romanticism, was naturally somewhat conventional. But Pushkin became interested in journalism; and polemics, social reforms, and many other new problems arising, helped to make romanticism a thing of the past. The young schools of philosophy found much food for thought and controversy. The question of the emancipation of the serfs, raised in the court of Alexander I., weighed heavily upon the national conscience. A suffering people cannot be fed upon rhetoric.

In 1836, Tchadayef published his famous “Lettre Philosophique.” He was a man of the world, but a learned man and a philosopher. The fundamental idea of his paper was that Russia had hitherto been but a parasite, feeding upon the rest of Europe, and had contributed of itself nothing useful to civilization; had established no religious reforms, nor allowed any scope for free thought upon the leading questions of modern society. He said:—

“We have in our blood a principle which is hostile to civilization.”

These were strong sentiments coming from the mouth of a Russian; but they afterwards found many echoing voices, which never before had put such crude truths into words. Tchadayef was claimed by the liberals as their legitimate father, his “Lettre Philosophique” was made a political pamphlet, and he himself was regarded as a revolutionary leader.

Just at this time, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel were translated, and a great many young Russians now studied rationalism at its fountain-heads, in the different German universities. The preceding generation, which had become intoxicated with sentiment, was followed by a generation devoted to metaphysics. This new hobby was ridden with the enthusiasm peculiar to the Russians, and hairs which in Germany were split into four parts were subdivided in Moscow into eight.

A writer nourished on the new doctrines, and who soon became leader of the liberal school, appeared at this time, and exercised a strong influence upon literature. It was the critic Bielinski. He was, perhaps, the only critic of his country really worthy of the name. He left a voluminous work, a perfect encyclopædia of Russian literature; rich in wisdom and in ideas, giving a fine historical account of the ancient literature, and defining with rare sagacity the tendencies of the new. He threw down many old idols, and ridiculed the absurd confidence in the writers of the classic period. In spite of his admiration for Pushkin, he points out many of the weak points of romanticism, and seems to fully realize the intellectual necessities of his time. The great novelists of modern Russia have been encouraged by his advice, and he has certainly shown himself to be a critic in advance of his own time, and the only one Russia has produced. The first sketches and tales of Gogol revealed to Bielinski the birth of this new art. He declared the age of lyric poetry was past forever, and that the reign of Russian prose romance had begun. Everything has justified this great writer’s prophecy. Since the time of Pushkin, their literature has undergone wonderful developments. The novelists no longer draw from outside sources, but from the natal soil, and it is they who will show us what a rich verdure can be produced from under those Arctic snows.

CHAPTER III.
THE EVOLUTION OF REALISM IN RUSSIA.—GOGOL.

The first Russian tale or romance was published in 1799, but nothing of note appeared before 1840; although we have seen what success Karamzin obtained with his touching romances, especially with “La Pauvre Lise.” Several historical romances also appeared about this time, (1820), inspired, no doubt, by the unprecedented popularity and success of those of Sir Walter Scott. But lyric poetry and romanticism had not lost their influence, and even Pushkin’s little historical tales savor more of the classic period, and are rather works of the imagination than studies from real life. The historical and so-called popular novel, however, with its superhuman heroes, was now becoming tedious; and authors were already appearing who had begun to observe the life around them attentively, and to take pleasure in studying something outside of themselves. The same causes conspired to produce, almost simultaneously, three writers destined to accomplish the same task: Dickens in England, Balzac in France, and Gogol in Russia. Gogol developed his work more slowly than the others at first, but collected rich materials for his successors. He may be called the first of Russian prose writers; and we shall see by a study of his character and works, what a foundation he laid for future progress in prose literature in his country, and what stirring controversies his books called forth.

I.

Gogol was a Cossack, from Little Russia or Ukraine. For Russian readers, that is quite enough to explain the peculiar qualities of his mind and its productions, which were characterized by keen but kindly satire, with a tinge of melancholy ever running through and underneath it. He is the natural product of the land which gave him birth. This frontier country is subject to the contending influences of both north and south. For a few short months the sun revels there and accomplishes an almost miraculous work—an oriental brilliancy of light by day, and soft, enchanting nights under a sky resplendent with stars. Magnificent harvests from the fertile soil ensure an easy, joyous life; all trouble and sadness vanish with the melting snow, and spirits rise to general gayety and enthusiasm.

But the boundless spaces, the limitless horizons of these sunny plains overwhelm the spirit; one cannot long feel joyous in the presence of Infinity. The habit of thought becomes like that of the eye; is lost in space, develops an inclination to revery, which causes the mind to fall back upon itself, and the imagination is, so to speak, thrown inward.

Winter transforms the Russian. Upon the Dnieper the winter is nearly as severe as on the Neva. There is nothing to check the icy winds from the north. Death comes suddenly to claim its reign. Both earth and man are paralyzed. Just as Ukraine was subjugated by the armies of Moscow, so it is taken possession of by the climate of Moscow. On this great battle-field nature carries out the plan of this country’s political history, the vicissitudes of which have no doubt contributed, as well as those of climate, to form its own peculiar physiognomy.

Little Russia was at one time overrun by the Turks; and derived from its long association with them many oriental traits. Then it was subdued by Poland, which has transmitted something of its savage luxury to its vassal. Afterwards the Cossack leagues established there their republican spirit of independence. The traditions of this epoch are dearest of all to the heart of the Little Russian, who claims from them his inheritance of wild freedom and prowess. An ancient order of Cossack chivalry, the Zaporovian League, recruited from brigands and fugitive serfs, had always been in constant warfare, obeying no law but that of the sword. Families who were descended directly from this stock (Gogol’s was one of them) inherited this spirit of revolt, as well as wandering instincts, and a love of adventure and the marvellous. The complex elements of this character, which is more free, jovial, and prompt in action than that of the native of Russia proper, have strongly influenced the literature of Russia through Gogol, whose heart clung with tenacity to his native soil. In fact, the first half of his life’s work is a picture of life in Ukraine, with its legends.

Gogol (Nikolai Vasilievitch) was born near Poltava in 1809, in the very heart of the Cossack country. His grandfather, who was his first teacher, was regimental scribe to the Zaporovian League.[B] The child listened from infancy to the tales of this grandfather, inexhaustible tales of heroic deeds during the great wars with Poland, as well as thrilling exploits of these Corsairs of the Steppes. His young imagination was fed with these stories, tragedies of military life, and rustic fairy-tales and legends, which are given to us almost intact in his “Evenings at the Farm,” and in his poem of “Taras Bulba.” His whole surroundings spoke to him of an age of fable not long past; of a primitive poetry still alive in the customs of the people. This condensed poetry reaches us after passing through two prisms; the recollections of old age, which recalls while it regrets the past; and the impressions of a child’s fancy, which is dazzled by what it hears. This was the first and perhaps the most profitable part of the young boy’s education. He was afterwards put into an institution, where he was taught Latin and other languages; but, according to his biographers, he never excelled in scholarship. He must have made up for lost time later on; for all his contemporaries speak of his extensive reading and his perfect familiarity with all the literature of the Occident.

His letters written to his mother before leaving school show already the bent of his mind. Keen, observant, and satirical, his wit is sometimes exercised at the expense of his comrades. He already showed signs of a deeply religious nature, and was ambitious too of a great career. His high hopes are sometimes temporarily crushed by a sudden depression or feeling of discouragement, and in his letters he declaims against the injustice of men. He feels the pervading influence of the Byronism of that time. “I feel as if called,” cries the young enthusiast, “to some great, some noble task, for the good of my country, for the happiness of my fellow-citizens and of all mankind. My soul feels the presence of an angel from heaven, calling, impelling me towards the lofty aim I aspire to.”

A Russian who lived under the rule of the Emperor Nicholas, and was eager to work for the happiness of his fellow-men, had no choice of means. He must enter the government service, and laboriously climb the steps of the administrative hierarchy, which appropriates to itself every force of the community and nation. Having completed his studies, Gogol set out for St. Petersburg. It was in the year 1829, and he was twenty years of age. With empty pockets, but rich in illusions, he approached the capital just as his Cossack ancestors had entered the cities they conquered; thinking he had only to walk boldly forward and claim everything he desired. But the future author, destined to play so prominent a part in the life and literature of his country, must now put aside his dreams and taste the stern reality of life. A few weeks’ experience taught him that the great capital was for him more of a desert than his native steppe. He was refused everything he applied for; for a provincial with no letters of introduction could expect nothing else. In a fit of despair, he determined to leave St. Petersburg. One day, having received a small sum from his mother, which she had saved to pay off a mortgage on their house, instead of depositing the money in a bank, he jumped on board a ship to go—somewhere, anywhere—forward, into the great world; like a child who had become imbued with the spirit of adventure, from reading Robinson Crusoe. He left the boat at her first landing-place, which was Lubeck. Having wandered about the city for three days, he returned to St. Petersburg, cured of his folly, and resigned to bear patiently whatever was in store for him.

With great difficulty he obtained a modest position in an office connected with the government, where he only remained one year, but where he received impressions which were to haunt his whole future life. It was here that he studied the model of that wretched hero of his work, “Le Manteau,” in flesh and blood.

Becoming weary of his occupation, he attempted acting, but his voice was not thought strong enough. He then became a tutor in families of the aristocracy of St. Petersburg; and finally was appointed to a professorship in the University. But although he made a brilliant opening address, his pupils soon complained that he put them to sleep, and he lost the situation. It was at this juncture that he took refuge in literature. He published at first a few modest essays in the leading journals, which attracted some attention, and Zhukovski had introduced him to Pushkin. Gogol has related with what fear and trembling he rung one morning at the door of the great poet. Pushkin had not yet risen, having been up all night, as his valet said. When Gogol begged to be excused for disturbing one so occupied with his literary labors, the servant informed him that his master had passed the night playing cards. What a disenchantment for an admirer of the great poet!

But Gogol was warmly welcomed. Pushkin’s noble heart, too great for envy, enjoyed the success of others. His eager sympathy, lavish praise, and encouragement have produced legions of authors. Gogol, among them all, was his favorite. At first he advised him to write sketches descriptive of the national history and the customs of the people. Gogol followed his advice and wrote his “Evenings at a Farm near Dikanka.”[C]

II.

This book is a chronicle of scenes of the author’s childhood; and all his love and youthful recollections of the country of the Cossacks are poured from his heart into this book.

A certain old man, whose occupation is that of raising bees, is the story-teller of the party. He relates tales of Little Russia, so that we see it under every aspect; and gives glimpses of scenery, rustic habits and customs, the familiar dialogues of the people, and all sorts of legends, both terrible and grotesque. The gay and the supernatural are strangely blended in these recitals, but the gay element predominates; for Gogol’s smile has as yet no bitterness in it. His laugh is the hearty, frank laugh of the young Cossack who enjoys life. All this is related in racy, expressive language, full of words peculiar to Little Russia, curious local expressions, and those affectionate diminutives quite impossible to translate or express in a more formal language. Sometimes the author bursts forth in a poetical vein, when certain impressions or scenes of his native country float before his eyes. At the beginning of his “Night in May” is this paragraph:—“Do you know the beauty of the nights of Ukraine? The moon looks down from the deep, immeasurable vault, which is filled to overflowing and palpitating with its pure radiance. The earth is silver; the air is deliciously cool, yet almost oppressive with perfume. Divine, enchanting night! The great forest trees, black, solemn, and still, reposing as if oppressed with thought, throw out their gigantic shadows. How silent are the ponds! Their dark waters are imprisoned within the vine-laden walls of the gardens. The little virgin forest of wild cherry and young plum-trees dip their dainty roots timidly into the cold waters; their murmuring leaves angrily shiver when a little current of the night wind stealthily creeps in to caress them. The distant horizon sleeps, but above it and overhead all is palpitating life; august, triumphal, sublime! Like the firmament, the soul seems to open into endless space; silvery visions of grace and beauty arise before it. Oh! the charm of this divine night!

“Suddenly life, animation, spreads through forest, lake, and steppe. The nightingale’s majestic trill resounds through the air; the moon seems to stop, embosomed in clouds, to listen. The little village on the hill is wrapt in an enchanted slumber; its cluster of white cottages gleam vividly in the moonlight, and the outlines of their low walls are sharply clear-cut against the dark shadows. All songs are hushed; silence reigns in the homes of these simple peasants. But here and there a twinkling light appears in a little window of some cottage, where supper has waited for a belated occupant.”

Then, from a scene like this, we are called to listen to a dispute and quarrel between two soldiers, which ends in a dance. Now the scene changes again. The lady of the lake, the Fate lady, rises from her watery couch, and by her sorceries unravels the web of fortune. Again, between the uproarious bursts of laughter, the old story-teller heaves a melancholy sigh, and relates a bit of pathos,—for a vein of sadness is always latent in the gay songs and legends of this people. These sharp contrasts fill this work with life and color. The book excited considerable attention, and was the more welcome as it revealed a corner of Russia then hardly known. Gogol had struck the right chord. Pushkin, who especially enjoyed humor, lauded the work to the skies; and it is still highly appreciated by Russians.

As for us, while we recognize its high qualities, the work does not wholly please us. Perhaps we are too old or morose to appreciate and enjoy these rustic jokes, and the comic scenes are perhaps a little coarse for our liking. It may be, too, that the enthusiastic readers of 1832 looked upon life with different eyes from ours; and that it is only the difference in time that biases our opinion. To them this book was wonderfully in advance of its time; to us it seems perhaps somewhat behind. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate what effect a work which is already old (especially if it be written in a foreign language) will produce on our readers of to-day. Are we amused by the legend of “La Dame Blanche”? Certainly we are, for everybody enjoys it. Then perhaps the “Ladies of the Lake” of Gogol’s book will be amusing.

In 1834 Gogol published his “Evenings near Mirgorod,” including a veritable ghost story, terror-inspiring enough to make the flesh creep.

The principal work of this period of the author’s career, however, and the one which established his fame, was “Taras Bulba,” a prose epic, a poetical description of Cossack life as it was in his grandfather’s time. Not every writer of modern epics has been so fortunate as Gogol; to live at a time when he could apply Homer’s method to a subject made to his hand; only repeating, as he himself said, the narratives of his grandfather, an actual witness and actor in this Iliad. It was scarcely more than half a century since the breaking-up of the Zaporovian camps of the corsairs and the last Polish war, in which Cossack and Pole vied with each other in ferocious deeds of valor, license, and adventure. This war forms the subject of the principal scenes of this drama, which also gives a vivid picture of the daily life of the savage republic of the Zaporovian Cossacks. The work is full of picturesque descriptions, and possesses every quality belonging to an epic poem.

M. Viardot has given us an honest version of “Taras Bulba,” giving more actual information about this republic of the Dnieper than any of the erudite dissertations on the subject. But what is absolutely impossible to render in a translation is the marvellous beauty of Gogol’s poetic prose. The Russian language is undoubtedly the richest of all the European languages. It is so very clear and concise that a single word is often sufficient to express several different connected ideas, which, in any other language, would require several phrases. Therefore I will refrain from giving any quotations of these classic pages, which are taught in all the Russian schools.

The poem is very unequal in some respects. The love passages are inferior and commonplace, and the scenes of passion decidedly hackneyed in style and expression. In regard to epic poems, the truth is that the mould is worn out; it has been used too long; although Guizot, one of the best judges of this sort of composition, said that in his opinion “Taras Bulba” was the only modern epic poem worthy of the name.

Even the descriptions of scenery in “Taras” do not seem to us wholly natural. We must compare them with those of Turgenef to realize how comparatively inferior they are. Both were students and lovers of nature: but the one artist placed his model before his easel in whatever attitude he chose; while to the other she was a despotic mistress, whose every fancy he humbly obeyed. This can be readily understood by a comparison of some of their works. Although I am not fond of epics, I have called particular attention to “Taras Bulba,” knowing what pride the Russians take in the work.

III.

In 1835, Nikolai Vasilievitch (Gogol) gave up his position in the University, and left the public service for good. “Now I am again a free Cossack!” he wrote at this time, which was the time of his greatest literary activity.

His novels now show him groping after realism, rather than indulging his fancy. Among the unequal productions of the transition period, “Le Manteau” is the most notable one. A late Russian politician and author once said to me: “Nous sommes tous sortis du manteau de Gogol.”

“Le Manteau” (as well as the “Revizor,” “Inspector-General”) was the outgrowth of his one year’s experience in the government offices; and the fulfilment of a desire to avenge his life of a galley slave while there. These works were his first blows aimed at the administrative power. Gogol had always had a desire to write for the stage; and produced several satirical comedies; but none of them, except the “Revizor,” had any success. The plot of the piece is quite simple. The functionaries of a provincial government office are expecting the arrival of an inspector, who was supposed to come incognito to examine their books and accounts. A traveller chances to alight at the inn, whom they all suppose to be the dreaded officer of justice. Their guilty consciences make them terribly anxious. Each one attacks the supposed judge, to plead his own cause, and denounce a colleague, slipping into the man’s hand a generous supply of propitiatory roubles. Amazed at first, the stranger is, however, astute enough to accept the situation and pocket the money. The confusion increases, until comes the crash of the final thunderbolt, when the real commissioner arrives upon the scene.

The intention of the piece is clearly marked. The venality and arbitrariness of the administration are exposed to view. Gogol says, in his “Confessions of an Author”: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the gay satire.”

In fact, the disagreeable effect predominated over the fun, especially in the opinion of a foreigner; for there is nothing of the French lightness and elegance of diction in the Russian style. I mean that quality which redeems Molière’s “Tartuffe” from being the blackest and most terrible of dramas.

When we study the Russian drama, we can see why this form of art is more backward in that country than in any other. Poetry and romance have made more rapid strides, because they are taken up only by the cultivated class. There is virtually no middle class; and theatrical literature, the only diversion for the people, has remained in its infancy.

There is an element of coarseness in the drollery of even the two masterpieces: the comedy by Griboyedof, “Le Mal de Trop d’Esprit,” and the “Revizor” by Gogol. In their satire there is no medium between broad fun and bitterness. The subtle wit of the French author ridicules without wounding; his keen witticism calls forth laughter; while the sharp, cutting satire of the Russian produces bitter reflection and regret. His drollery is purely national, and is exercised more upon external things and local peculiarities; while Molière rails at and satirizes humanity and its ways and weaknesses. I have often seen the “Revizor” performed. The amiable audience laugh immoderately at what a foreigner cannot find amusing, and which would be utterly incomprehensible to one not well acquainted with Russian life and customs. On the contrary, a stranger recognizes much more keenly than a Russian the undercurrent of pathos and censure. Administrative reform is yet too new in Russia for the public to be as much shocked as one would expect at the spectacle of a venal administration. The evil is so very old!

Whoever is well acquainted with the Oriental character knows that their ideas of morality are broader, or, rather, more lax, than ours, because their ideas of the rights of the government are different. The root of these notions may be traced to the ancient principle of tribute money; the old claim of the powerful over the weak, whom they protect and patronize.

What strikes us as the most astonishing thing in regard to this comedy is that it has been tolerated at all. We cannot understand, from what we know of the Emperor Nicholas, how he could have enjoyed such an audacious satire upon his government; but we learn that he himself laughed heartily, giving the signal for applause from his royal box. His relations with Gogol are very significant, showing the helplessness of the absolute power against the consequences of its own existence. No monarch ever did more to encourage talent, or in a more delicate way. Some one called his attention to the young author’s poverty.

“Has he talent?” asked the Czar. Being assured that he had, the Emperor immediately placed the sum of 5000 roubles[D] at his disposition, saying, with the greatest delicacy: “Do not let your protégé know that the gift comes from me; he would be less independent in the exercise of his talents.” The Emperor continued therefore in future to supply him incognito, through the poet Zhukovski. Thanks to the imperial munificence, this incorrigible traveller could expatriate himself to his heart’s content, and get rest and refreshment for future labors.

The year 1836 was a critical one for Gogol. He became ill in body and mind, and the melancholy side of his nature took the ascendency. Although his comedy had been a great success at St. Petersburg and at court, such a work could not but excite rancor and raise up enemies for its author. He became morbidly sensitive, and considered himself the object of persecution. A nervous disease, complicated with hypochondria, began to undermine his constitution. A migratory instinct, which always possessed him in any crisis of his life, now made him resolve to travel; “to fly,” as he said. But he never returned to his country for any length of time, and only at long intervals; declaring, as Turgenef did some years later, that his own country, the object of his studies, was best seen from afar.

After travelling extensively, Gogol finally settled at Rome, where he formed a strong friendship with the painter Ivanof, who for twenty years had been in retirement in a Capuchin monastery, working upon his picture, which he never finished, “The Birth of Christ.” The two friends became deeply imbued with an ascetic piety; and from this time dates the mysticism attributed to Gogol. But before his mind became obscured he collected his forces for his last and greatest effort. He carried away with him from Russia the conception of this work, which excluded all other thoughts from his mind. It ruled his whole existence, as Goethe was for thirty years ruled by his “Faust.”

Gogol gave Pushkin the credit of having suggested the work to him, which never was finished, but which he wrestled with until he finally succumbed, vanquished by it. Pushkin had spoken to him of his physical condition, fearing a premature death; and urged him to undertake a great work, quoting the example of Cervantes, whose works previous to “Don Quixote” would never have classed him among the great authors. He suggested a subject, which he said he never should have given to any other person. It was the subject of “Dead Souls.” In spite of the statement, I cannot help feeling that “Dead Souls” was inspired by Cervantes; for, on leaving Russia, Gogol had gone at once to Spain, where he studied the literature of that country diligently; especially “Don Quixote,” which had always been his favorite book. It furnished a theme just suited to his plan; the adventures of a hero impelled to penetrate into every strange region and into every stratum of society; an ingenious excuse for presenting to the world in a series of pictures the magic lantern of humanity. Both works proceed from a satirical and meditative mind, the sadness of which is veiled under a smile, and both belong to a style unique in itself, entirely original. Gogol objected to his work being called a romance. He called it a poem, and divided it into songs instead of chapters. Whatever title may be bestowed upon Cervantes’ masterpiece may just as appropriately be applied to “Dead Souls.”

His “poem” was to be in three parts. The first part appeared in 1842; the second, unfinished and rudimentary, was burned by the author in a frenzy of despair; but after his death it was printed from a copy which escaped destruction. As to the third, it is perhaps interred with his bones, which repose in the cemetery at Moscow under the block of marble which bears his name.

IV.

It is well known that the Russian peasants or serfs, “Souls” as they were popularly called, were personal property, and to be traded with in exactly the same way as any other kind of property. A proprietor’s fortune was reckoned according to the number of male serfs he owned. If any man owned, for instance, a thousand of them, he could sell or exchange them, or obtain loans upon them from the banks. The owner was, besides, obliged to pay taxes upon them at so much a head. The census was taken only at long intervals, during which the lists were never examined. The natural changes of population and increase by births being supposed to make up for the deaths. If a village was depopulated by an epidemic, the ruling lord and master sustained the loss, continuing to pay taxes for those whose work was done forever.

Tchitchikof, the hero of the book, an ambitious and evil-minded rascal, made this proposition to himself: “I will visit the most remote corners of Russia, and ask the good people to deduct from the number on their lists every serf who has died since the last census was taken. They will be only too glad, as it will be for their interest to yield up to me a fictitious property, and get rid of paying the tax upon it. I shall have my purchases registered in due form, and no tribunal will imagine that I require it to legalize a sale of dead men. When I have obtained the names of some thousands of serfs, I shall carry my deeds to some bank in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and raise a large sum on them. Then I shall be a rich man, and in condition to buy real peasants in flesh and blood.”

This proceeding offers great advantages to the author in attaining his ends. He enters, with his hero, all sorts of homes, and studies social groups of all classes. The demand the hero makes is one calculated to exhibit the intelligence and peculiar characteristics of each proprietor. The trader enters a house and makes the strange proposition: “Give me up the number of your dead serfs,” without explaining, of course, his secret motives. After the first shock of surprise, the man comprehends more or less quickly what is wanted of him, and acts from instinct, according to his nature. The simple-minded give willingly gratis what is asked of them; the distrustful are on their guard, and try to penetrate the mystery, and gain something for themselves by the arrangement; the avaricious exact an exorbitant price. Tchitchikof finds some wretches more evil than himself. The only case which never occurs is an indignant refusal, or a denunciation; the financier well knew how few scruples he should have to contend with in his fellow-countrymen.

The enterprise supplied Gogol with an inexhaustible source of both comic and touching incidents and situations. The skilful author, while he apparently ignores, under an assumption of pleasantry, the lugubrious element in what he describes, makes it the real background of the whole narrative, so that it reacts terribly upon the reader.

The first readers of this work, and possibly even the author himself, hardly appreciated the force of these contrasts; because they were so accustomed to the horrors of serfdom that an abuse of this nature seemed to them a natural proceeding. But with time the effect of the book increases; and the atrocious mockery of using the dead as articles of merchandise, which seems to prolong the terrors of slavery, from which death has freed them, strikes the reader with horror.

The types of character created by Gogol in this work are innumerable; but that of the hero is the most curious of all, and was the outgrowth of laborious study. Tchitchikof is not a Robert Macaire, but rather a serious Gil Blas, without his genius. The poor devil was born under an unlucky star. He was so essentially bad that he carried on his enterprise without seeming to realize the enormous immorality of it. In fact, he was wronging no one, in his own opinion.

Gogol makes an effort to broaden this type of character, and include in it a greater number of individuals; and we can see thereby the author’s intention, which is to show us a type, a collective image of Russia herself, irresponsible for her degradation, corrupted by her own social condition.

This is the real, underlying theory of “Dead Souls,” and of the “Revizor,” as well as of Turgenef’s “Annals of a Sportsman.” In all the moralists of this time we recognize the fundamental sophistry of Rousseau, who poisoned the reasoning faculties of all Europe.

At the end of the first part the author attempts a half-ironical, half-serious defence of Tchitchikof. After giving an account of his origin, he says: “The wise man must tolerate every type of character; he must examine all with attention, and resolve them into their original elements…. The passions of man are as numberless as the sands upon the sea-shore, and have no points of resemblance; noble or base, all obey man in the beginning, and end by obtaining terrible power over him…. They are born with him, and he is powerless to resist them. Whether sombre or brilliant, they will fulfil their entire career.”…

From this analysis, this argument of psychological positivism, the writer, in a roundabout way, goes back ingeniously to the designs of Providence, which has ordered all for the best, and will show the right path out of this chaos.[E]

What is after all most remarkable about the book is that it is the reservoir of all contemporary literature, the source of all future inventions.

The realism, which is only instinctive in Gogol’s preceding works, is the main doctrine in “Dead Souls”; and of this he is fully conscious. The author thus apologizes for bringing the lower classes so constantly before the reader:—

“Thankless is the task of the writer who dares reproduce what is constantly passing before the eyes of all, unnoticed by our distracted gaze: all the disgusting little annoyances and trials of our every-day lives; the ordinary, indifferent characters we must constantly meet and put up with. How they hinder and weary us! Such a writer will not have the applause of the masses; contemporary critics will consider his creations both low and useless, and will assign him an inferior place among those writers who scoff at humanity. He will be declared wanting in heart, soul, and talent. For his critic will not admit those instruments to be equally marvellous, one of which reveals the sun and the other the motions of invisible animalculæ; neither will he admit what depth of thought is required to make a masterpiece of a picture, the subject of which is drawn from the darker side of human life.”….

Again, in one of his letters, he says:—

“Those who have analyzed my powers as a writer have not discerned the important element of my nature, or my peculiar bent. Pushkin alone perceived it. He always said that I was especially endowed to bring into relief the trivialities of life, to analyze an ordinary character, to bring to light the little peculiarities which escape general observation. This is, I think, my strong point. The reader resents the baseness of my heroes; after reading the book he returns joyfully to the light of day. I should have been pardoned had I only created picturesque villains; their baseness is what will never be pardoned. A Russian shrinks before the picture of his nothingness.”

We shall see that the largest portion of the later Russian novels were all generated by the spirit of this initiative book, which gives to the Slav literature its peculiar physiognomy, as well as its high moral worth. We find in many a passage in “Dead Souls,” breathing through the mask of raillery and sarcasm, that heavenly sentiment of fraternity, that love for the despised and pity for the suffering, which animate all Dostoyevski’s writing. In another letter he says:—

“Pity for a fallen human creature is a strong Russian trait. There is no spectacle more touching than our people offer when they go to assist and cheer on their way those who are condemned to exile in Siberia. Every one brings what he can; provisions, money, perhaps only a few consoling words. They feel no irritation against the criminal; neither do they indulge in any exaggerated sentiment which would make a hero of him. They do not request his autograph or his likeness; neither do they go to stare at him out of curiosity, as often happens in more civilized parts of Europe. There is here something more; it is not that they wish to make excuses for the criminal, or wrest him from the hands of justice; but they would comfort him in his fallen condition; console him as a brother, as Christ has told us we should console each other.”

In “Dead Souls,” the true sentiment is always masked, which makes it the more telling; but when the first part appeared, in 1842, it was received by some with stupefaction, by others with indignation. Were their countrymen a set of rascals, idiots, and poor wretches, without a single redeeming quality? Gogol wrote: “When I read the first chapters of my book to Pushkin, he was prepared to laugh, as usual whenever he heard anything of mine. But his brow soon clouded, and his face gradually grew serious. When I had finished, he cried, with a choking voice: ‘Oh, God! poor Russia!’”

Many accused the writer of having judged his fellow-countrymen from a sick man’s point of view; and considered him a traducer of mankind. They reminded him that, in spite of the evils of serfdom and the corruption of the administration, there were still plenty of noble hearts and honest people in the empire of Nicholas. The unfortunate author found that he had written too strongly. He must now make explanations, publish public letters and prefaces imploring his readers to suspend their judgment until he produced the second part of the poem, which would counteract the darkness of the first. But such was not the case. No bright visions proceeded from the saddened brain of the caricaturist.

However, every one read the work; and its effect has never ceased increasing as a personification of the Russia of former times. It has for forty years been the foundation of the wit of the entire nation. Every joke has passed into a proverb, and the sayings of its characters have become household words. The foreigner who has not read “Dead Souls” is often puzzled in the course of conversation, for he is ignorant of the family traditions and the ideal ancestors they are continually referring to. Tchitchikof, his coachman Seliphan, and their three horses are, to a Russian, as familiar friends as Don Quixote, Sancho, and Rosinante can be to a Spaniard.

V.

Gogol returned from Rome in 1846. His health rapidly declined, and attacks of fever made any brain-work difficult for him. However, he went on with his work; but his pen betrayed the condition of his nerves. In a crisis of the disease he burned all his books as well as the manuscript of the second part of the poem. He now became absorbed in religious meditations; and, desiring to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he published his last work, “Letters to my Friends,” in order to raise the necessary funds, and to “entreat their prayers for him,” as he said in his preface. These letters were written in a religious vein, but intermingled with literary arguments; and not one of his satirical works raised up for him so many enemies and such abuse as this religious treatise. It is difficult to account for the intense excitement it produced, and the lengthy arguments it called forth. The second half of the reign of Nicholas is a period but little understood. In the march of ideas of that time, there were already indications of the coming revolutionary movement among the young men, which was entirely opposed to the doctrines brought forward by Gogol. These contained a good deal of philosophy, as well as ancient truths, mingled with some new ideas, which are exactly those of the present day. But these, because they were new, were just what met with the strongest opposition; and he was now accused of taking upon himself the direction of consciences, and of arrogating to himself the right to do so by dint of his intellectual superiority. His letters present a curious combination of Christian humility and literary pride. He was declared to have fallen into mysticism; but any one who now reads his letters carefully cannot call him a mystic. The fact that he gave up writing to recover his health would only be considered at any other epoch reasonable and natural. Tolstoï, who has acted in a similar manner, protests against this epithet being applied to him. He, however, proposes to us a new theology, while Gogol clung to the established dogmas. Possibly what would have been called “mysticism” in 1840 would not have been looked upon as such two centuries earlier, any more than it is a half-century later.

But what became of the poor author in the midst of the tempest he himself had raised? He went to Jerusalem and wandered for a time among its ancient ruins; hardly a wholesome sphere for a sick and morbid soul. Returning to Moscow, he was made welcome in the homes of friends. But the Cossack nature could not rest in any fixed spot. He had no money, for he had given everything he had to the poor. Since 1844 the whole receipts from his works he gave to poor students. He brought with him only a small valise, which was crammed with newspaper articles, criticisms, and pamphlets written against him. This was all he possessed.

A person who lived in a house which he often visited thus described him: “He was short, but the upper part of his body was too long; he walked with an uneven gait, was awkward and ungainly; his hair fell over his forehead in thick locks, and his nose was long and prominent. He conversed but little, and not readily. Occasionally a touch of his old gayety returned, especially when with children, whom he passionately loved. But he soon fell back into his hypochondria.” This description agrees with what Turgenef wrote of him, after his first visit to him. “There was a slight gleam of satire in his heavy eyes, which were small and dark. His expression was somewhat like that of a fox. In his general appearance there was something of the provincial schoolmaster.” Gogol had always been awkward and plain, which naturally produced in him a habitual timidity. This is perhaps why, according to his biographers, no woman ever crossed his path. We can therefore understand why he so rarely wrote of women.

It is almost universally believed that he died from the effects of his excessive fastings and mortification of the flesh; but I have learned from reliable sources that an aggravation of his disease, with typhoid symptoms, caused his death. But little is known of his latter years. He aged rapidly, as Russians do, and ended his work at the time of life when others begin theirs. A mysterious fatality has attended nearly all the writers of his time, who have all died at about the age of forty. The children of Russia develop as her vegetation does. It grows quickly and matures young, but its magnificent growth is soon cut off, benumbed while still in perfection. At the age of thirty-three, after the publication of “Dead Souls,” the productive brain-power of Nikolai Vasilievitch was wellnigh ruined. At forty-three he died, on the 21st of February, 1852. The event of his death made but little sensation. The imperial favor had quite forgotten this writer. Even the governor of Moscow was criticized for putting on the regalia of his order to attend the funeral. Turgenef was exiled to his own distant estates as a punishment for having written a letter in which he called the deceased author “a great man.” Posterity, however, has ratified this title. Gogol may now be ranked, according to some critics, with the best English humorists; but I should place him rather between Cervantes and Le Sage. Perhaps it may be too soon to judge him. Should we appreciate “Don Quixote” now if Spanish literature had not been known for three hundred years? When we were children we laughed whenever an alguazil or an alcalde was mentioned.

Gogol introduces us to an untried world. I must warn the reader that he will at first find difficulties—the strangest customs; an array of characters not in any way connected; names as strange as the people who bear them. He must not expect the attractive style or class of subjects of Tolstoï and Dostoyevski. They show us results, not principles; they tell of what we can better apprehend; for what they have studied is more common to all Europe. Gogol wrote of more remote times, and, besides, he and his work are thoroughly and exclusively Russian. To be appreciated by men of letters, then, his works must be admirably translated; which, unfortunately, has never yet been done. We must leave him, therefore, in Russia, where all the new authors of any distinction recognize in him their father and master. They owe to him their very language. Although Turgenef’s is more subtile and harmonious, its originator has more life, variety, and energy.

One of the last sentences that fell from his pen, in his “Confessions of an Author,” was this:—

“I have studied life as it really is—not in dreams of the imagination; and thus have I come to a conception of Him who is the source of all life.”

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Zaporovian commonwealth, so-called from “Zaporozhtsi,” meaning those who live beyond the rapids.

[C] “Veillées dans un hameau près de Dikanka.”

[D] About $4000.

[E] The quotation of this paragraph in full should be given here, in order to obtain a clear understanding of Gogol’s thought; but the French translator has omitted too much.

CHAPTER IV.
TURGENEF.

I.

While the name of Gogol was temporarily lost in oblivion during the years preceding the Crimean war, his spirit was shedding its ripening influences upon the thinking minds of his country. I know of no parallel example in the history of literature, of an impulse so spontaneous and vigorous as this. Every author of note since 1840 has belonged to the so-called “school of nature.” The poets of 1820 had drawn their inspiration from their own personality. The novel-writers of 1840 found theirs in the spirit of humanity, which might be called social sympathy.

Before studying the great writers of this epoch, we must take note of the elements which produced them, and glance for a moment at the curious movement which ripened them.

Russia could not escape the general fermentation of 1848; although this immense country seemed to be mute, like its frozen rivers, an intense life was seething underneath. The rivers are seemingly motionless for six months of the year; but under the solid ice is running water, and the phenomena of ever-increasing life. So it was with the nation. On the surface it seemed silent and inert under the iron rule of Nicholas. But European ideas, creeping in, found their way under the great walls, and books passed from hand to hand, into schools, literary circles, and even into the army.

The Russian Universities were then very insufficient. Their best scholars quitted them unsatisfied, and sought more substantial nourishment in Germany. Besides, it being the fashion to do so, there was also a firm conviction that this was really necessary. The young men returned from Berlin or Göttingen crammed with humanitarian philosophy and liberal notions; armed with ideas which found no response in their own country, full, as it was, of malcontents and fault-finders. These suspicious missionaries from western Europe were handed over to the police, while others continued to study in the self-same school. These young fellows, returning from Germany with grapes from the promised land, too green as yet for their countrymen, formed a favorite type with authors. Pushkin made use of it, and Turgenef afterwards gave us some sketches from nature made during his stay in Berlin. On their return, these students formed clubs, in which they discussed the foreign theories in low and impassioned voices, and initiated their companions who had remained at home. These young thinkers embraced a transcendental philosophy, borrowed from Hegel, Stein, and Feuerbach, as well as from Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon in France. These metaphysics, of course, were a mask which covered more concrete objects and more immediate interests. Two great intellectual schools divided Russia, and took the place of political parties.

The Slavophile party adhered to the views of Karamzin and protested against the unpatriotic blasphemies of Tchadayef. For this party nothing whatever existed outside of Russia, which was to be considered the only depository of the true Christian spirit, and chosen to regenerate the world.

In opposition to these Levites, the liberal school of the West had appeared; a camp of Gentiles, which breathed only of reforms, audacious arguments, and coming revolutions; liberalism developing into radicalism. But, as all social and political discussions were prohibited in Russia, these must be concealed under the disguise of philosophy, and be expressed in its hieroglyphics. The metaphysical subtleties in these literary debates did little to clear up the obscurity of the ideas themselves, which are very difficult to unravel and comprehend. In attempting to understand the controversies in Russia at this time, you feel as if watching the movements of a complicated figure in the ballet; where indistinct forms are seen moving behind a veil of black gauze, intended to represent clouds, which half conceal the dancers.

The liberals of 1848 carried on the ideas of the revolutionaries of December, 1825; as the Jacobins developed those of the Girondists. But the difference between the ideals of the two generations is very marked, showing the march of time and of ideas. The revolutionists of 1825 were aristocrats, who coveted the elegant playthings fashionable in London and Paris—a charter and a Parliament. They were ambitious to place their enormous, unwieldy country under a new and fragile government. They played the conspirator like children, but their game ended tragically; for they were all exiled to Siberia or elsewhere.

When this spirit awoke twenty years after, it had dreamed new dreams. This time it aimed at the entire remodelling of our poor old world. The Russians now embraced the socialist and democratic ideas of Europe; but, in accepting these international theories, they did not see how inapplicable they were to Russia at this time. Penetrated as they were with the rationalistic and irreligious spirit of the eighteenth century, they have nothing in common with the grave sympathy of such men as Dostoyevski and Tolstoï. These are realists that love humanity; but the others were merely metaphysicians, whose love for humanity has changed into hatred of society.

Every young writer of the “school of nature” produced his socialistic romance, bitterly satirical, and showing the influence of George Sand and Eugène Sue. But an unsuccessful conspiracy headed by Petrachevski put an end temporarily to this effervescence of ideas. Russia became calm again, while every sign of intellectual life was pitilessly repressed, not to stir again until after the death of the Emperor Nicholas. The most violent of the revolutionists had secured their property in foreign lands; and all authors were either condemned or exiled. Many of them followed Petrachevski to Siberia. Turgenef was among the most fortunate, having been exiled to his own estates in the country. The Slavophile party itself did not wholly escape punishment and exile. Even the long beards, which formed a part of their patriotic programme, had no better fate than their writings. All were forbidden to wear them. The government now suppressed all the scientific missions and pilgrimages to the German Universities, which had produced such bad results. While Peter the Great drove his subjects out of the Empire to breathe the air of Europe, Nicholas forced his to remain within it. Passports could only be obtained with great difficulty, and at the exorbitant price of 500 roubles. In every University and seminary of learning in the Empire, the teaching of philosophy was forbidden, as well as the classics; and all historical publications were subject to a severe control, which was almost equivalent to a prohibition. There were now but seven small newspapers printed in all Russia, and these were filled with the most insignificant facts. The wars in Hungary and in the East were hardly alluded to. The first article of any consequence appeared in 1857. The absurd severity exercised towards the press furnished material for a long and amusing article in the leading journal. The word liberty was underscored wherever and in whatever sense it occurred, as the word King was, during the reign of Terror in France.

These years of “terror” have since furnished much amusement for the Russians; but those who passed through them, warmed by the enthusiasm and illusions of youth, have always retained, together with the disinclination to express themselves frankly, a vein of pathos throughout their writings. Besides, the liberty granted to authors in the reign of Alexander II. was only a relative one; which explains why they returned instinctively to novel-writing as the only mode of expression which permitted any undercurrent of meaning. In this agreeable form we must seek for the ideas of that time on philosophy, history, and politics; for which reason I have dwelt on the importance of studying the Russian novelists attentively. In their romances, and only in them, shall we find a true history of the last half-century of their country, and form a just idea of the public for which the works were written.

This people’s way of reasoning and their demands are peculiar to themselves. In France, we expect of a romance what we expect of any work of art, according to the degree of civilization we have reached; something to afford us a refined amusement; a diversion from the serious interests of life; merely a passing impression. We read books as a passing pedestrian looks at a picture displayed in some shop window, casually, on his way to his business. They regard the masters of their language quite otherwise in Russia. What for us is a temporary gratification is to them the soul’s daily bread; for they are passing through the golden age of their literature. Their authors are the guides of the race, almost the creators of their language; their poets are such according to the ancient and full sense of the word—vates, poet, prophet.

In Russia, the small educated class have perhaps surpassed us in cultivation; but the lower classes are just beginning to read with eagerness, faith, and hope; as we read Robinson Crusoe at twelve years of age. Their sensitive imaginations are alive to the full effect these works are calculated to produce. Journalism has not scattered their ideas and lessened their power of attention. They draw no comparisons, and therefore believe.

We consider “Fathers and Sons,” and “War and Peace” merely novels. But to the merchant of Moscow, the son of the village priest, the country proprietor, either of these works is almost like a national Bible, which he places upon the shelf holding the few books which represent to him an encyclopædia of the human mind. They have the importance and signification for him that the story of Esther had for the Jews, and the adventures of Ulysses for the Athenians.

Our readers will pardon these general considerations, which seemed to us necessary before approaching the three most prominent figures of this period, which we choose from among many others as the most original of the two groups they divide into. Dostoyevski will represent to us the opinions of the Slavophile or national school; Turgenef will show us how many can remain thoroughly Russian without breaking off their connections with the rest of Europe; and how there can be realists with a feeling for art and a longing to attain a lofty ideal. He belonged to the liberal party, which claims him as its own; but this great artist, gradually freeing himself from all bounds, soars far above the petty bickerings of party strife.

II.

Turgenef’s talent, in the best of his productions, draws its inspiration directly from his beloved father-land. We feel this in every page we read. This is probably why his contemporaries long preferred him to any of his rivals. In letters, as well as in politics, the people instinctively follow the leaders whom they feel belong to them; and whose spirit and qualities, even whose failings, they share in common. Ivan Sergievitch Turgenef possessed the dominant qualities of every true Russian: natural kindness of heart, simplicity, and resignation. With a remarkably powerful brain, he had the heart of a child. I never met him without realizing the true meaning of the gospel words, ‘poor in spirit’; and that that quality can be the accompaniment of a scientific mind and the soul of an artist. Devotion, generosity, brotherly love, were perfectly natural to him. Into the midst of our busy and complicated civilization he seemed to drop down as if from some pastoral tribe of the mountains; and to carry out his ideas under our sky as naturally as a shepherd guides his flocks in the steppe.

As to his personal appearance, he was tall, with a quiet dignity in his manner, features somewhat coarse; and his finely formed head and searching glance brought to mind some Russian patriarch of the peasant class; only ennobled and transfigured by intellectual cultivation, like those peasants of old who became monks and perhaps saints. He gave me the impression of a person possessing the native frankness of the peasant, while endowed with the inspiration of genius; and who had reached a high intellectual elevation without having lost anything of his natural simplicity and candor. Such a comparison could not, surely, offend one who so loved his people!

Now, when the time has come to speak of his work, my heart fails me, and I feel disposed to throw down my pen. I have spoken of his virtues; why should we say more, or dwell upon the brilliant qualities of his mind, adding greater eulogies? But those who know him well are few, and they will soon die and be forgotten. We must then try to show to others what that great heart has left of itself in the works of his imagination. These are not few, and show much persevering labor. The last complete edition of his works comprises not less than ten volumes: romances, novels, critical and dramatic essays. The most notable of these have been carefully translated into French, under the direction of the author himself; and no foreigner’s work has ever been as much read and appreciated in Paris as his.

The name of Turgenef was well known, and had acquired a literary reputation in Paris, at the beginning of the present century; for a cousin of the author’s, Nikolai Ivanovitch (Turgenef), after having distinguished himself in the government service under Alexander I., was implicated in the conspiracy of December, 1825, and exiled by the Emperor Nicholas. He spent the remainder of his life in Paris, where he published his important work, “Russia and the Russians.” He was a distinguished man and an honest thinker, if perhaps a little narrow, and one of the most sincere of those who became liberals after 1812. Faithful to his friends who were exiled to Siberia, he became their advocate, and also warmly pleaded the cause of the emancipation of the serfs; so that his young cousin continued a family tradition when he gave the death-blow to slavery with his first book.

Turgenef was born in 1818, on the family estate in Orel, and his early years were passed in this solitary place, in one of those “Nests of Nobles” which are so often the scene of his novels. According to the fashion of that time, he had both French and German tutors, which were considered a necessary appendage in every nobleman’s household. His mother-tongue was held in disrepute; so his first Russian verses were read in secret, with the help of an old servant. Fortunately for him, he acquired the best part of his education out on the heaths with the huntsmen, whose tales were destined to become masterpieces, transformed by the great author’s pen. Passing his time in the woods, and running over the marshes in pursuit of quail, the poet laid in a rich stock of imagery and picturesque scenes with which he afterwards clothed his ideas. In the imagination of some children, while thought is still sleeping, impressions accumulate, one by one, like the night-dew; but, in the awakening dawn, the first ray of the morning sun will reveal these glittering diamonds.

After going to school at Moscow, and through the University at St. Petersburg, he went, as others did, to conclude his course of study in Germany. In 1838, he was studying the philosophy of Kant and Hegel at Berlin. He said of himself later in regard to this: “The impulse which drew the young men of my time into a foreign land reminds me of the ancient Slavs going to seek for chiefs from beyond the seas. Every one felt that his native country, morally and intellectually considered, was great and rich, but ill regulated.[F] For myself, I fully realized that there were great disadvantages in being torn from one’s native soil, where one had been brought up; but there was nothing else to be done. This sort of life, especially in the sphere to which I belonged, of landed proprietors and serfdom, offered me nothing attractive. On the contrary, what I saw around me was revolting—in fact, disgusting—to me. I could not hesitate long. I must either make up my mind to submit, and walk on quietly in the beaten track; or tear myself away, root and branch, even at the risk of losing many things dear to my heart. This I decided to do. I became a cosmopolitan, which I have always remained. I could not live face to face with what I abhorred; perhaps I had not sufficient self-control or force of character for that. At any rate, it seemed as if I must, at all hazards, withdraw from my enemy, in order to be able to deal him surer blows from a distance. This mortal enemy was, in my eyes, the institution of serfdom, which I had resolved to combat to the last extremity, and with which I had sworn never to make peace. It was in order to fulfil this vow that I left my country….”

The writer will now become a European; he will uphold the method of Peter the Great, against those patriots who have entrenched themselves behind the great Chinese wall. Reason, good laws, and good literature have no fixed country. Every one must seize his treasure wherever he can find it, in the common soil of humanity, and develop it in his own way. In reading the strong words of his own confession we are led to a feeling of anxiety for the poet’s future. Will politics turn him from his true course? Fortunately they did not. Turgenef had too literary and contemplative a nature to throw himself into that vortex. But he kept his vow of taking his aim—and a terrible one it was—at the institution of serfdom. The contest was fierce, and the war was a holy one.

Returning to Russia, Turgenef published some poems and dramatic pieces; but he afterward excluded all these from the complete edition of his works; and, leaving Russia again, he sent his first prose work, “Annals of a Sportsman,” which was to contribute greatly to his fame as a novelist, to a St. Petersburg review. He continued to send various little bombshells, from 1847 to 1851, in the form of tales and sketches, hiding their meaning under a veil of poetry. The influence of Gogol was perceptible in his work at this time, especially in his comprehension of nature. His scenes were always Russian, but the artist’s interpretation was different from Gogol’s, having none of his rough humor and enthusiasm, but more delicacy and ideality. His language too is richer, more flowing, more picturesque and expressive than any Russian author had yet attained to; and it perfectly translates the most fugitive chords of the grand harmonious register of nature. The author carries us with him into the very heart of his native country.

The “Annals of a Sportsman” have charmed many French readers, much as they must lose through the double veil of translation and our ignorance of the country. Indeed we must have lived in the country described by Turgenef to fully appreciate the way in which he presents on every page the exact copy of one’s personal impressions; even bringing to the senses every delicate odor breathed from the earth. Some of his descriptions of nature have the harmonious perfection of a fantastic symphony written in a minor key.

In the “Living Relics,” he wakes a more human, more interior chord. On a hunting expedition, he enters by chance an abandoned shed, where he finds a wretched human being, a woman, deformed, and unable to move. He recognizes in her a former serving-maid of his mother’s, once a gay, laughing girl, now paralyzed, stricken by some strange and terrible disease. This poor creature, reduced to a skeleton, lying forgotten in this miserable shed, has no longer any relations with the outside world. No one takes care of her; kind people sometimes replenish her jar with fresh water. She requires nothing else. The only sign of life, if life it can be called, is in her eyes and her faint respiration. But this hideous wreck of a body contains an immortal soul, purified by suffering, utterly resigned, lifted above itself, this simple peasant nature, into the realms of perfect self-renunciation.

Lukeria relates her misfortune; how she was seized with this illness after a fall in the dark; how she had gone out one dark evening to listen to the songs of the nightingales; how gradually every faculty and every joy of life had forsaken her.

Her betrothed was so sorry; but, then, afterwards he married; what else could he do? She hopes he is happy. For years her only diversion has been to listen to the church-bells and the drowsy hum of the bees in the hives of the apiary near by. Sometimes a swallow comes and flutters about in the shed, which is a great event, and gives her something to think about for several weeks. The people that bring water to her are so kind, she is so grateful to them! And gradually, almost cheerfully, she goes back with the young master to the memories of old days, and reminds him how vain she was of being the leader in all the songs and dances; at last, she even tries to hum one of those songs.

“I really dreaded to have this half-dead creature try to sing. Before I could speak, she uttered a sound very faintly, but the note was correct; then another, and she began to sing, ‘In the Fields’ … as she sang there was no change of expression in her paralyzed face or in her fixed eyes. This poor little forced voice sounded so pathetically, and she made such an effort to express her whole soul, that my heart was pierced with the deepest pity.”

Lukeria relates her terrible dreams, how Death has appeared before her; not that she dreads his coming, but he always goes away and refuses to deliver her. She refuses all offers of assistance from her young master; she desires nothing, needs nothing, is perfectly content. As her visitor is about to leave her, she calls him back for a last word. She seems to be conscious (how feminine is this!) of the terrible impression she must have made upon him, and says:—

“Do you remember, master, what beautiful hair I had? you know it reached to my knees…. I hesitated a long time about cutting it off; but what could I do with it as I am? So—I cut it off…. Adieu, master!”

All this cannot be analyzed any more than the down on a butterfly’s wing; and yet it is such a simple tale, but how suggestive! There is no exaggeration; it is only one of the accidents of life. The poor woman feels that if one believes in God, there are things of more importance than her little misfortune. The point which is most strongly brought forward, however, in this tale, and in nearly all the others, is the almost stoical resignation, peculiar to the Russian peasant, who seems prepared to endure anything. This author’s talent lies in his keeping the exquisite balance between the real and the ideal; every detail is strikingly and painfully real, while the ideal shines through and within every thought and fact. He has given us innumerable pictures of master, overseer, and serf; clothing every repulsive fact with a grace and charm, seemingly almost against his will, but which are born of his own poetical nature.

It is not wholly correct to say that Turgenef attacked slavery. The Russian writers never attack openly; they neither argue nor declaim. They describe, drawing no conclusions; but they appeal to our pity more than to our anger. Fifteen years later Dostoyevski published his “Recollections of a Dead-House.” He took the same method—without expressing a word of indignation, without one drop of gall; he seems to think what he describes quite natural, only somewhat pathetic. This is a national trait.

Once I stopped for one night at an inn in Orel, our author’s native place. Early in the morning, I was awakened by the beating of drums. I looked down into the market-place, which was full of soldiers drawn up in a square, and a crowd of people stood looking on. A pillory had been erected in the square, a large, black, wooden pillar, with a scaffolding underneath. Three poor fellows were tied to the pillar, and had parchments on their backs, giving an account of their misdeeds. These thieves seemed very docile, and almost unconscious of what was being done to them. They made a picturesque group, with their handsome Slavonic heads, and bound to this pillar. The exhibition lasted long; the priests came to bless them; and when the cart came to carry them back to prison, both soldiers and people rushed after them, loading them with eatables, small coins, and words of sympathy.

The Russian writer who aims to bring about reforms, in like manner displays his melancholy picture, with spasms of indulgent sympathy for the evils he unveils. The public needs but a hint. This time it understood. Russia looked upon serfdom in the mirror he showed her, and shuddered. The author became celebrated, and his cause was half gained. The censorship, always the last to become convinced, understood too, at last. Serfdom was already condemned in the heart of the Emperor Nicholas, but the censorship does not always agree with the Emperor; it is always procrastinating; sometimes it is left far behind, perhaps for a whole reign. It will not condemn the book, but keeps its eye upon the author.

Gogol died at this time, and Turgenef wrote a strong article in praise of the dead author. This article appears to-day entirely inoffensive, but the author himself thus speaks of it:—

“In regard to my article on Gogol, I remember one day at St. Petersburg, a lady in high position at court was criticizing the punishment inflicted upon me, as unjust and undeserved, or, at least, too severe. Some one replied: ‘Did you not know that he calls Gogol “a great man” in that article?’ ‘That is not possible.’ ‘I assure you he did.’ ‘Ah! in that case, I have no more to say; I am very sorry for him, but now I understand their severity.’”

This praise, justly accorded to a great author, procured for Turgenef a month of imprisonment and banishment to his own estates. But this tyranny was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Thirty years before, Pushkin had been torn from the dissipations of the gay capital, where his genius would have been lost, and was exiled to the Orient, where it developed into a rich bloom. If Turgenef had remained at this time in St. Petersburg, he might have been drawn, in his hot-headed youth, by compromising friendships, into some fruitless political broil; but, exiled to the solitude of his native woods, he spent several years there in literary work; studying the humble life around him, and collecting materials for his first great novels.

III.

Turgenef always declared himself as no admirer of Balzac. This was, no doubt, true; for they had no points of resemblance in common. Still I cannot but think that that sworn disciple of Gogol and of the “school of nature” must have received some suggestions from our great author. Turgenef, like Balzac, gave us the comedy of human life in his native country; but to this great work he gave more heart and faith, and less patience, system, and method, than the French writer. But he possessed the gift of style, and a racy eloquence, which are wanting in Balzac.

If one must read Balzac in France in order to retrace the lives of our predecessors, this is all the more true of Turgenef in Russia.

This author sharply discerned the prevailing current of ideas which were developed in that period of transition,—the reign of Nicholas and the first few years of the reign of Alexander II. It required a keen vision to apprehend and describe the shifting characters and scenes of that period, vivid glimpses of which we obtain from his novels written at that time.

His first one of this period is “Dimitri Roudine.” The hero of the story is an eloquent idealist, but practically inefficient in action. His liberal ideas are intoxicating, both to himself and others; but he succumbs to every trial of life, through want of character. With the best principles and no vices whatever, except, perhaps, an excess of personal vanity, he commits deeds in which he is his own dupe. He is at heart too honest to profit by offered opportunities, which would give him advantage over others; and, with no courage either for good or evil undertakings, he is always unsuccessful, and always in want of money. He finally realizes his inefficiency, in old age, and dies in extreme poverty.

The characters of the prosaic country life in which the hero’s career is pictured are marvellously well drawn. These practical people, whose ideas are nearly on a level with the earth which yields them their livelihood, prosper in all things. They have comfortable incomes, good wives, and congenial friends; while the enthusiastic idealist, in spite of his intellectual superiority, falls even lower. It is the triumph of prosaic fact over idealism. In this introductory work, the author touched keenly upon one of the greatest defects of the Russian character, and gave a useful lesson to his fellow-countrymen; showing them that magnificent aspirations are not all-sufficient, but they must be joined to practical common-sense, and applied to self-government. “Dimitri Roudine” is a moral and philosophical study, inciting to thought and interesting to the thinking mind. It was a question whether the author would be as skilful in the region of sentiment, whether he would succeed in moving the heart.

His “Nest of Nobles”[G] was his response; and it was, perhaps, his greatest work, although not without defects. It is less interesting than the other, as the development of the plot drags somewhat; but when once started, and fully outlined, it is carried out with consummate skill.

The “Nest of Nobles” is one of the old provincial, ancestral mansions in which many generations have lived. In this house the young girl is reared, who will serve as a prototype for the heroine of every Russian novel. She is simple and straightforward, not strikingly beautiful or gifted, but very charming, and endowed with an iron will,—a trait which the author invariably refuses to men, but he bestows it upon every young heroine of his imagination. This trait carries them through every variety of experience and the most extreme crises, according as they are driven by fate.

Liza, a girl of twenty, has been thus far wholly insensible to the attractions of a handsome government official, whose attentions her mother has encouraged. Finally, weary of resistance, the young girl consents to an engagement with him, when Lavretski, a distant relative, appears upon the scene. He is a married man, but has long been separated from his wife, who is wholly unworthy of him. She is an adventuress, who spends her time at the various Continental watering-places. There is nothing whatever of the hero of romance about him; he is a quiet, kind-hearted, and unhappy being, serious-minded and no longer young. Altogether, a man such as is very often to be met with in real life. He and the young heroine are drawn together by a mysterious attraction; and, just as the man, with his deeper experience of life, recognizes with terror the nature of their mutual feelings, he learns of the death of his wife, through a newspaper article. He is now free; and, that very evening, in the old garden, both hearts, almost involuntarily, interchange vows of eternal affection. The description of this scene is beautiful, true to nature, and exceedingly refined. The happiness of the lovers lasts but a single hour; the news was false, and the next day Lavretski’s wife herself appears most unexpectedly upon the scene.

We can easily see what an opportunity the author here has for the delineation of the inevitable revulsion and tumult of feeling called forth; but with what delicacy he leads those two purest of souls through such peril! The sacrifice is resolutely made by the young girl; but only after a fearful struggle by the lover. The annoying and hated wife disappears again, while the reader fondly hopes the author will bring about her speedy death. Here again those who wish only happy dénouements must close the book. Mme. Lavretski does not die, but continues the gayest kind of a life, while Liza, who has known of life only the transient promise of a love, which lasted through the starry hours of one short evening in May, carries her wounded heart to her God, and buries herself in a convent.

So far, this is a virtuous and rather old-fashioned story, suitable for young girls. But we must read the farther development of the tale, to see with what exquisite art and love for truth the novelist has treated his subject. There is not the slightest approach to insipid sentimentality in this sad picture; no outbursts of passion; but, with a chaste and gentle touch, a restrained and continually increasing emotion is awakened, which rends the heart. The epilogue of this book, only a few pages in length, is, and will always be, one of the gems of Russian literature.

Eight years have passed in the course of the story; Lavretski returns one morning in spring to the old mansion. It is now inhabited by a new generation, for the children have become young men and women, with new sentiments and interests. The new-comer, hardly recognized by them, finds them in the midst of their games. The story opened in the same way, and we seem to have gone back to the beginning of it. Lavretski seats himself upon the same spot where he once pressed for a moment in his the hand of the dear one, who ever since that blissful hour has been counting the beads of her rosary in a cloister.

The young birds of the old nest can give no answer to the questions he longs to ask, for they have quite forgotten the vanished one; and they return to their game, in which they are quite absorbed. He reflects, in his desolation, how the self-same words describe the same scene of other days: nature’s smile is quite the same; the same joys are new to other children; just as, in a sonata of Chopin’s, the original theme of the melody recurs in the finale.

In this romance, the melancholy contrast between the perennity of nature and the change and decay of man through the cruel and pitiless work of time is very strikingly portrayed. We have become so attached to the former characters painted by our author, that these children, in the heyday of their lives, are almost hateful to us.

I am strongly tempted to quote these pages in full, but they would lose too much in being separated from what precedes them; and, unwillingly leaving the subject, I can only apply to Turgenef his own words in regard to one of his heroes:—

“He possessed the great secret of that divine eloquence which is music; for he knew a way to touch certain chords in the heart which would send a vibrating thrill through all the others.”

The “Nest of Nobles” established the author’s renown. Such a strange world is this that poets, conquerors, women also, gain the hearts of men the more effectually by making them suffer and weep. All Russia shed tears over this book; and the unhappy Liza became the model for all the young girls. No romantic work since “Paul and Virginia” had produced such an effect upon the people. The author seems to have been haunted by this type of woman. His Ellen in “On the Eve” has the same indomitable will. She has a serious, reserved, and obstinate nature, has been reared in solitude; and, free from all outside influences, and scorning all obstacles, she is capable of the most complete self-renunciation. But in this instance the circumstances are quite different. The beloved one is quite free, but cast out by his family. As Liza fled to the cloister in spite of the supplications of her friends, so Ellen joins her lover and devotes herself to him, not suspecting for a moment her act to be in any way a criminal one; but it is redeemed, in any case, by her devoted constancy through a life of many trials. These studies of character show a keen observation of the national temperament. The man is irresolute, the woman decided; she it is who rules fate, knows what she wants to do, and does it. Everything which, with our ideas, would seem in a young girl like boldness and immodesty, is pictured by the artist with such simplicity and delicacy that we are tempted to see in it only the freedom of a courageous, undaunted spirit. These upright and passionate natures which he creates seem capable of anything but fear, treachery, and deceit.

The poet seems to have poured the accumulated emotion of his whole youth into the “Nest of Nobles” as a vent to the long repressed sentiment of his inmost heart. He now set himself to study the social conditions of the life around him; and in the midst of the great intellectual movement of 1860, on the eve of the emancipation, he wrote “Fathers and Sons.” This book marks a date in the history of the Russian mind. The novelist had the rare good-fortune to recognize a new growth of thought, and to give it a fixed form and name, which no other had been able to do.

In “Fathers and Sons,” an old man of the past generation, discussing his character of Bazarof, asked: “What is your opinion of Bazarof?”—“What is he?—he is a nihilist,” replied a young disciple of the terrible medical student.—“What do you say?”—“I say he is a nihilist!”—“Nihilist?” repeated the old man. “Ah, yes! that comes from the Latin word nihil, and our Russian word nitchevo; as well as I can judge, that must be a man who will neither acknowledge nor admit anything.”—“Say, rather,” added another, “who respects nothing.”—“Who considers everything from a critical point of view,” resumed the young man.—“That is just the same thing.”—“No, it is not the same thing; a nihilist is a man who bows to no authority, and will admit no principle as an article of faith, no matter how deeply respected that principle may be.”

We must go back still farther than the Latin to find the root of the word and the philosophy it expresses; to the old Aryan stock, of which the Slavonic race is one of the main branches. Nihilism is the Hindu nirvâna; the yielding of the primitive man before the power of matter and the obscurity of the moral world; and the nirvâna necessarily engenders a furious reaction in the conquered being, a blind effort to destroy that universe which can crush and circumvent him. But I have already touched upon this subject, which is too voluminous to dwell upon here. So Nihilism, as we understand it, is only in its embryo state in this famous book of Turgenef’s. I would merely call the attention of the reader to another passage in this book which reveals a finer understanding of the word than volumes written upon the subject. It is in another discussion of Bazarof’s character, this time between an intelligent young girl and a young disciple of Bazarof, who honestly believes himself a nihilist. She says:—

“Your Bazarof you cannot understand, neither can he understand you.”—“How so?”—“How can I explain it?… He is a wild animal, and we, you and I, are tamed animals.”

This comparison shows clearly the shade of difference between Russian Nihilism and the similar mental maladies from which human nature has suffered from time immemorial down to the present day.

This hero of Turgenef’s has many traits in common with the Indian heroes of Fenimore Cooper, who are armed with a tomahawk, instead of a surgeon’s knife. Bazarof’s sons seem, at first sight, much like our revolutionists; but examine them more closely, and you will discover the distinction between the wild and the tamed beast. Our worst revolutionists are savage dogs, but the Russian nihilist is a wolf; and we now know that the wolf’s rage is the more dangerous of the two.

See how Bazarof dies! He has contracted blood-poison by dissecting the body of a typhoid subject. He knows that he is lost. He endures his agony in mute, haughty, stolid silence; it is the agony of the wild beast with a ball in his body. The nihilist surpasses the stoic; he does not try to complete his task before death; there is nothing that is worth doing.

The novelist has exhausted his art to create a deplorable character, which, however, is not really odious to us, excepting as regards his inhumanity, his scorn for everything we venerate. These seem intolerable to us. With the tamed animal, this would indicate perversion, disregard of all rules; but in the wild beast it is instinct, a resistance wholly natural. Our moral sense is ingeniously disarmed by the author, before this victim of fate.

Turgenef’s creative power and minute observation of details in this work have never been excelled by him at any period of his literary career. It is very difficult, however, to quote passages of his, because he never writes single pages or paragraphs for their individual effect; but every detail is of value to the ensemble of the work. I will merely quote a passing sketch of a character, which seems to me remarkably true to life; that of a man of his own country and his own time; a high functionary of St. Petersburg; a future statesman, who had gone into one of the provinces to examine the petty government officials.

“Matthew Ilitch belonged to what were called the younger politicians. Although hardly over forty years of age, he was already aiming to obtain a high position in the Government, and wore two orders on his breast. One of them, however, was a foreign, and quite an ordinary one. He passed for one of the progressive party, as well as the official whom he came to examine. He had a high opinion of himself; his personal vanity was boundless, although he affected an air of studied simplicity, gave you a look of encouragement, listened with an indulgent patience. He laughed so good-naturedly that, at first, you would take him for a ‘good sort of fellow.’ But, on certain occasions, he knew how to throw dust in your eyes. ‘It is necessary to be energetic,’ he used to say; ‘energy is the first quality of the statesman.’ In spite of all, he was often duped; for any petty official with a little experience could lead him by the nose at will.

“Matthew Ilitch often spoke of Guizot with admiration; he tried to have every one understand that he did not belong to the category of those who followed one routine; but that he was attentive to every phase and possible requirement of social life. He kept himself familiar with all contemporary literature, as he was accustomed to say, in an off-hand way. He was a tricky and adroit courtier, nothing more; he really knew nothing of public affairs, and his views were of no value whatever; but he understood managing his own affairs admirably well; on this point he could not be duped. Is not that, after all, the principal thing?”

In the intervals of these important works, Turgenef often wrote little simple sketches, in the style of his “Annals of a Sportsman.” There are more than twenty of these exquisitely delicate compositions. One of them, entitled “Assia,”[H] of about sixty pages, is a perfect gem in its way, and is a souvenir of his student-life in Germany, and of a love-passage experienced there.

The young student loves a young Russian girl without being quite conscious of his passion. His love being evidently reciprocated, the young girl, wounded by his hesitation, suddenly disappears, and he knows too late what he has lost. I will quote at hazard a few lines of this poem in prose, which is only the prelude of this unconscious passion.

The two young people are walking, one summer evening, on the banks of the Rhine.

“I stood and looked upon her, bathed as she was in the bright rays of the setting sun. Her face was calm and sweet. Everything around us was beaming with intensity of light; earth, air, and water.

“‘How beautiful it is!’ I said, involuntarily lowering my voice.

“‘Yes,’ she said, in the same tone, without raising her eyes. ‘If we were birds, you and I, would we not soar away and fly? … we should be lost in those azure depths…. But—we are not birds.’

“‘Our wings may grow,’ I replied. ‘Only live on and you will see. There are feelings which can raise us above this earth. Fear not; you will have your wings.’

“‘And you,’ she said; ‘have you ever felt this?’

“‘It seems to me that I never did, until this moment,’ I said.

“Assia was silent, and seemed absorbed in thought. I drew nearer to her. Suddenly she said:—

“‘Do you waltz?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, somewhat perplexed by this question.

“‘Come, then,’ she said; ‘I will ask my brother to play a waltz for us. We will imagine we are flying, and that our wings have grown….’

“It was late when I left her. On recrossing the Rhine, when midway between the two shores, I asked the ferryman to let the boat drift with the current. The old man raised the oars, and the royal stream bore us on. I looked around me, listened, and reflected. I had a feeling of unrest, and felt a sudden pang at my heart. I raised my eyes to the heavens; but even there there was no tranquillity. Dotted with glittering stars, the whole firmament was palpitating and quivering. I leaned over the water; there were the same stars, trembling and gleaming in its cold, gloomy depths. The agitation of nature all around me only increased my own. I leaned my elbows upon the edge of the boat; the night wind, murmuring in my ears, and the dull plashing of the water against the rudder irritated my nerves, which the cool exhalations from the water could not calm. A nightingale was singing on the shore, and his song seemed to fill me with a delicious poison. Tears filled my eyes, I knew not why. What I now felt was not that aspiration toward the Infinite, that love for universal nature, with which my whole being had been filled of late; but I was consumed by a thirst, a longing for happiness,—I could not yet call it by its name, but for a happiness beyond expression, even if it should annihilate me. It was almost an agony of mingled joy and pain.

“The boat floated on, while the old boatman sat and slept, leaning forward upon his oars.”