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Title: The great masters of Russian literature in the nineteenth century
Author: Ernest Dupuy
Translator: Nathan Hale Dole
Release date: October 15, 2023 [eBook #71884]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, 1886
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT MASTERS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ***
THE GREAT MASTERS
OF
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
IN
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY
ERNEST DUPUY
_TRANSLATED BY_
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
THE PROSE WRITERS
NIKOLAÏ VASILYÉVITCH GOGOL, IVAN SERGÉYEVITCH TURGENIEF,
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOÏ
_WITH APPENDIX_
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
13 ASTOR PLACE
COPYRIGHT, 1886,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
GOGOL 5
TURGÉNIEF 117
TOLSTOÏ 215
APPENDIX 339
INDEX 441
It may be said, that the emancipation of literature in Russia dates
back scarcely fifty years. All the Russian writers, whether of poetry
or prose, with the exception possibly of one or two satirists, were
little more than imitators. Some of the most valued authors during
the first half of this century, Zhukovsky for example, owed all their
fame to translations. Pushkin himself, who, on the recommendation of
Merimée, has for some time been admired in France, did not venture far
from the Byronic manner. He died, to be sure, just at the moment when
he had found his path. He suspected the profit that could be made from
national sources; he had a presentiment that a truly Russian literature
was about to burst into bloom; he aided in its production. His greatest
originality lies in his having predicted, preached, perhaps prepared or
inspired Gogol.
NIKOLAÏ GOGOL.
I.
Nikolaï Gogol[1] was born in 1810, in a village of the government of
Poltava. His father, a small proprietor with some education, obtained
for him a scholarship in the college of Niézhin. Fortunately the young
Gogol was able to hold his own in rebellion against the direction of
his instructors, and neither the dead nor the living languages brought
him any gain. He thus failed of becoming a commonplace man of letters,
and consequently had less trouble in the end with discovering his
original genius.
In his father’s house, on the other hand, he received a priceless
education, such as Pushkin, in spite of all his efforts, vainly
attempted to obtain. He was imbued with the poetry of the people.
His childhood was entertained by the marvellous legends of the
Malo-Russians. Gogol’s grandfather was one of those Zaparog Cossacks
whose heroic exploits the author of “Taras Bulba” was destined to
celebrate. He excelled in the art of story-telling, and his narrations
had a tinge of mystery about them that brought the cold chills. “When
he was speaking I would not move from my place all day long, but would
listen, ... and the things were so strange that I always shivered,
and my hair stood on end. Sometimes I was so frightened by them, that
at night every thing seemed like God knows what monsters.” This fund
of mainly fantastic and diabolical legends afterwards furnished the
grandson of the Ukraïne village story-teller, with the material for his
first original work.[2]
Gogol’s first attempts were not original: he began too early. Scarcely
out of the gymnasium, he began to write in rhyme; in the morning
trying all the styles in vogue, at evening making parodies upon them.
He established a manuscript journal “The Star” (_Zvyezd_). The student
intoxicated by reading Pushkin still remained in the trammels of
uninspired verse, in the formulas of romanticism. Some characteristics
already began to reveal the precocious observer, the brilliant
satirist. Thus his prose articles, clandestinely introduced, had a
tremendous success never equalled in his ripest years, even by his
comedy of “The _Revizor_.”
After his studies were ended, Gogol was obliged to conquer the favor
of a public less complacent than the rhetoricians and philosophers
of Niézhin. He obtained (1830) an exceedingly modest office in the
Ministry of Appanages (_Udyélui_). But in the bureau, where, like
Popritshchin in the “Recollections of a Lunatic” his service was
limited to sharpening dozens of pens for the director, he worked out
a comedy on the pattern of Scribe’s, and spun a cottony idyl in the
German style. The comedy was hissed by the public, and the idyl was so
unkindly received by the critics that Gogol had this attempt withdrawn
from the market.[3]
Gogol almost simultaneously shook off the double yoke of bureaucratic
slavery and literary imitation. Instead of following, like so many
others, in the track of French, English, or German writers, he
determined to be himself. He went back over the course of his early
years to find in this way in all their freshness the impressions of
his childhood; he returned to his first, his real masters, and began
once more to get material around the Malo-Russian hearth. He appealed
to his mother for recollections; he besought the aid of his friends;
he put them like so many bloodhounds on the track of half-forgotten
legends, half-vanished traditions; he collected documents of every sort
and kind: and when he was sufficiently permeated with savagery to think
and speak, if need were, like a Cossack of the last century, he created
a work at once modern and archaic, learned and enthusiastic, mystic
and refined,--Russian, in a word,--and published it under the title
“Evenings at the Farm” (_Vetchera na Khutoryé bliz Dikanki_).
This series of fantastic tales, published in the reviews under the
pseudonyme of Rudui Panko (Sandy the little nobleman), produced a
singular effect. The Russian reader was surprised and charmed in the
same way as a French traveller, who, after having visited all the
countries and admired all the floras of the world, should discover the
banks of the Seine, and declare that he was willing to exchange the
splendors of the savannas for a tuft of turf and a bunch of violets.
No one was more struck with the value of these tales than Pushkin. He
recommended their author to Pletnef, minister of public instruction;
and Gogol was appointed professor. The servitude was still more onerous
than that of the bureaucracy. The young writer had too much originality
to bend under it very long: a second time he escaped, and took his
departure for the Ukraïna.
The Zaparog Cossack’s grandson used to say that there was material for
an Iliad in the exploits of his ancestors. He buried himself in the
study of the annals of Little Russia; he collected the traditions;
more than all, he picked up the national songs of the Ukraïna,--those
kinds of heroic cantilenas composed by the players of the bandura. A
modern _diaskenastes_, he constructed a body out of all these poetic
remains, joined them together by means of a romantic plot, and renewed
the astonishment caused by the appearance of “Evenings at the Farm,”
by publishing “Taras Bulba.” The minister was convinced that a man who
could thus revivify history could not fail to be skilled in teaching
it: he therefore offered Gogol the chair of mediæval history in the
University of Petersburg. The romancer gave only one lecture, his
opening lecture. This day he dazzled his audience. The remainder of his
course was for both students and professor only a long-continued bore,
which ended finally in his losing the place.
Gogol dreamed of a different success. In 1835 he published his comedy,
“The _Revizor_” (The Inspector General). It was applauded, and, what
was of more value, it was desperately attacked. The author gained as
many admirers and enemies as “Tartuffe” cost Molière. At Petersburg,
as at Paris, the masterpiece was produced on the stage, and kept before
the public, only by a fortunate caprice on the part of the sovereign.
Gogol’s health, which had long been failing, caused him about this
period to leave Russia. He lived many years in Italy. There he
completed his great romance, “Dead Souls” (_Mertvuia Dushi_). The work
appeared in complete form in 1841.[4] The author had reached a state of
nervous irritation and hypochondria, which was more and more manifested
in his correspondence, published in part towards 1846. The last years
of Gogol’s life were only a long torture. A sort of mystic madness took
possession of his brain, exhausted or over-excited by production: death
put an end to his nervous disease (1852).
II.
Dreaminess and banter are the two natural tendencies, the two favorite
pleasures, of the Russian mind. They are also the two elements of
Gogol’s talent. At the beginning of his career as a writer, and during
the sprightly years of his youth, it is dreaminess which prevails: the
narrator penetrates with enthusiasm into the untrodden paths of the
Malo-Russian legends. On the track of witches, of Rusalkas, he finds
the unpublished poetry of the forests, the ponds, the wide stretches,
and the sky of the steppes. These lovely days pass. With age, this
restless spirit grows gloomy and melancholy. The observer’s eyes turn
from the pacifying spectacle of nature, and attempt only to notice the
vexing absurdities of humanity.
The satirical spirit in Gogol is first expressed in verse. He is
poetical only in prose; but his prose is equal to the most beautiful
verse. In truth, poetry is not rhyme, or metre, or even rhythm: it
is the power of touching, of recording its impressions in vivid and
genuine images. To feel emotion suitable for poetic expression, there
is no need of picturing lofty heroes, or of spreading marvellous
landscapes before the eyes. Properly speaking, a Malo-Russian peasant
is like a hero in Corneille; and the imagination of an author, and
therefore of his reader, can just as well be stirred by the view of a
bit of the flat and naked steppe, as by the sight of the Bay of Naples
or a sunset on the ruins of the Coliseum.
Gogol understood this, and, what is far better, made it understood.
Instead of preparing his imitation of Werther and his copy of Childe
Harold in the fashion of so many others, he had the courage to go to
Nature for his models. And in this Russian nature, the wild grace and
strange flavor of which he was, so to speak, the first to feel, that
which attracts him more than all else is its unostentatious aspect. His
field of observation is the village. His heroes are unimportant people,
half-barbarous peasants, true Cossack lads, hard drinkers, with
circumscribed intellectual training, with superstitious imaginations;
in a word, very simple souls, whose artless passions are shown without
any veil, but whose very ingenuousness is a deliriously restful
contrast to our romantic or theatrical characters, so artificial in
their labored mechanism, so insipid and perfunctory in the refinements
of their conventionality.
Gogol places his characters in their natural surroundings. It is the
hamlet bordering on the steppe, monotonous and infinite, deserted and
mysterious. All this country appeals to the writer’s imagination,
as well as to that of those Malo-Russians, whose history, past and
present, he will describe for us in turn. Each shrub inshrines a
memory; each winding valley veils a legend. In yonder stretch of water,
beset with rushes and starred with nenuphars, the sceptic traveller in
his indifference sees only a sort of marsh. The peasant who is here a
poet, and the poet who remembers that he was once a peasant, know well
who the Rusalka is who has been hiding there these many years. From its
surface, on nights when the moon lights up the silvery mist, the queen
of the drowned comes forth with her train of virgins, to find and drag
into the depths of the water her stepmother, the witch whose evil deeds
drove her to suicide.
But to move those whom she has brought forth, this land of the Ukraïna
has no need of being wrapped in mystery. Gogol has only to pronounce
the name of the Dniépr to arouse a sort of passionate woe, whose
expression, unhappily almost untranslatable, equals in beauty the
accents of the noblest poetry.
[5]“Marvellous is the Dniépr in peaceful weather, when he rolls his
wide waters in a free and reposeful course by forests and mountains.
Not the slightest jar, not the slightest tumult. Thou beholdest, and
thou canst not tell if his majestic breadth is moving or is stationary.
It is almost like a sheet of molten glass. It might be compared to a
road of blue ice, without measure in its breadth, without limit to its
length, describing its wondrous curves in the emerald distance. How
delightful for the burning sun to turn his gaze to earth, and to plunge
his rays into the refreshing coolness of the glassy waves, and for the
trees along the bank to see their reflections in this crystal mirror!
Oh the green-crowned trees! They stand in groups with the flowers
of the field by the water-side, and they bend over and gaze, and
cannot weary of gazing. They cannot sufficiently admire their bright
reflection, and they smile back to it, and greet it, waving their
branches. They dare not look towards the middle of the Dniépr: none but
the sun and the azure sky gaze at it. Some daring bird occasionally
wings his way to the middle of the Dniépr. Oh the giant that he is!
There is not a river like him in the world!
“Marvellous indeed is the Dniépr on a warm summer’s night, when all
things are asleep,--both man and beast and bird. God only from on high
looks down majestically on sky and earth, and shakes with solemnity
his chasuble, and from his priestly raiment scatters all the stars.
The stars are kindled, they shine upon the world; and all at the same
instant also flash forth from the Dniépr. He holds them every one, the
Dniépr, in his sombre bosom; not one shall escape from him, unless,
indeed, it perish from the sky. The black forest, dotted with sleeping
crows, and the mountains rent from immemorial time, strive, as they
catch the light, to veil him with their mighty shadow. In vain! There
is naught on earth can veil the Dniépr! Forever blue, he marches onward
in his restful course by day and night. He can be seen as far as human
sight can pierce. As he goes to rest voluptuously, and presses close
unto the shore by reason of the nocturnal cold, he leaves behind him a
silver trail, flashing like the blade of a Damascus sword, and then he
yields to sleep again. Then also he is wonderful, the Dniépr, and there
is no river like him in the world!
“But when the black clouds advance like mountains on the sky, the
gloomy forest sways, the oaks clash, and the lightning, darting zigzag
across the cloud, lights up suddenly the whole world, terrible then
the Dniépr is! The columns of water thunder down, dashing against the
mountain, and then with shouts and groans draw far away, and weep, and
break out into tears again in the distance. Thus some aged Cossack
mother consumes away with grief, when she gets ready her son to take
his departure for the army. With many airs, a genuine good-for-naught,
he dashes up on his black steed, his hand on his hip, and his cap set
jauntily awry; and she, weeping at the top of her voice, runs after
him, seizes him by the stirrup, strives to grasp the reins, and twists
her arms, and breaks into a passion of scalding tears. Like dark stains
in the midst of the struggling waves, emerge uncannily the stumps of
charred trees and the rocks on the shelving shore. And the boats moored
along the shore knock against each other as they rise and fall. What
Cossack would dare embark in his canoe when the ancient Dniépr is
angry? Apparently yonder man knows not that his waves swallow men like
flies.”
The same powerful and charming feeling is found in all the descriptions
which are scattered throughout Gogol’s work. One must read in “Taras
Bulba” the celebrated description of the beauty of the steppe at
different hours of the day. What a picture it is of this ocean of
gilded verdure, where, amid the delicate dry stalks of the tall grass,
shine patches of corn-flower with their shades of blue, of violet, or
of red; the broom with its pyramid of yellow flowers; the clover with
its white tufts; and in this luxuriant flora a corn-stalk, brought
thither God knows how, lifting itself with the haughty vigor of a
solitary fruit! The warm atmosphere is vocal with the cries of unseen
birds. A few hawks are seen hovering; a flock of wild geese sweep
by, and the prairie-gull mounts and swoops down again, now black and
glistening in the sunbeam. Then it is the evening twilight, with its
vapors descending denser and more dense, its perfumes rising more and
more penetrating; the jerboas creep out from their hiding-places; the
crickets madly chirp in their holes; and “one hears resounding, like a
vibrating bell in the sleepy air, the cry of the solitary swan winging
its way from some distant lake.”[6]
What gives this picturesque and vivid prose a singularly penetrating
accent, is the writer’s emotion. His admiration has a truly passionate
character, and this passion breaks out in cries of joy, even in
expletives. “The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are!”
There is in this a flavor of savagery which takes hold of us like a
novelty, and which must have been as agreeable to the Russian taste as
the secretly preferable national dish after too long use of foreign
insipidities.
And even for many Russians, this nature which Gogol studied and
described, or, more accurately speaking, sang with a sort of
intoxication, was a sort of new world offering every attraction.
Nothing is more peculiar than the little Russian landscape with its
solitudes, its lakes, its vast rivers, the incomparable purity of its
sky, icy and burning in turn. Here there is material to tempt the
palette of colorist most enamoured of the untouched (_épris d’inédit_).
But what painter’s palette has colors sufficiently powerful to express
as Gogol has done the profound, ineffable poetry of the sounds and
gleams of the night?
[7]“Do you know the Ukraïne night? Oh! you do not know the Ukraïne
night. Gaze upon it with your eyes. From the midst of the sky the
moon looks down. The immense vault of heaven unrolls wider and still
more wide; more immense it has become; it glows; it breathes. The
whole earth is in a silvery effulgence, and the marvellous air is both
suffocating and fresh. It is full of tender caresses. It stirs into
movement an ocean of perfumes.
“Night divine! enchanting night! silent, and as though full of life,
the forests rise bristling with darkness; they cast an enormous shadow.
Silent and motionless are the ponds: the coolness of their darkling
waters is gloomily enshrined between the dark green walls of the
gardens.
“The cherry-trees and wild plums stretch their roots with cautious
timidity towards the icy water of the springs; and from their leaves
only now and then are heard faint whisperings, as though they were
angry, as though they were indignant, when the gay adventurer, the
night wind, glides stealthily up to them and kisses them.
“All the landscape sleeps; and far above, all is breathing, all is
marvellous, all is solemn. The soul cannot fathom it: it is sublime.
An infinite number of silver visions arise like a harmony in the
depths. Night divine! enchanting night! And suddenly all is filled with
life,--the forests, the ponds, the steppes. Majestically the thunder
of the voice of the Ukraïne nightingale rolls along; and it seems as
though the moon drank her song from the bosom of the sky.
“A magic slumber holds the village yonder in repose. Still more
brilliant in the moonlight the group of little houses stands out in
relief; still more blinding are their low walls in contrast with the
shade. The songs have ceased; all is now still. The pious folk are
already asleep. Here and there a narrow window shows a gleam of light;
on the doorstep of some cottage, a belated family are finishing their
evening meal.”
Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand aspects of the Ukraïne
landscape. He has sketches filled in with adorable detail; and nothing
is more curious than the contrast between the lyricism with which
he celebrates the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the fine,
discreet, restrained tone of so many familiar impressions. The feeling
for nature finds in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in turn
through every gradation.
Sometimes it is a vigorous sketch made with a few strokes, at once
broad and accurate, dominated by a strange and grandiose theme:--
[8]“In places the black sky was colored by the burning of dry rushes
on the shore of some river or out-of-the-way lake; and a long line of
swans flying to the north, struck suddenly by the silver rose-light of
the flame, were like red handkerchiefs waving across the night.”
Sometimes it is a picture full of detail, whose motives have been
strangely brought together and treated delicately, elaborately, as with
a magnifying-glass:--
[9]“I see from here the little house, surrounded by a gallery supported
by delicate, slender columns of darkened wood, and going entirely
around the building, so that during thunder-showers or hail-storms the
window-shutters can be closed without exposure to the rain; behind the
house, mulberry-trees in bloom, then long rows of dwarf fruit-trees
drowned in the bright scarlet of the cherries and in an amethystine sea
of plums with leaden down; then a large old beech-tree, under the shade
of which is spread a carpet for repose; before the house, a spacious
court with short and verdant grass, with two little foot-paths trodden
down by the steps of those who went from the barn to the kitchen
and from the kitchen to the proprietor’s house. A long-necked goose
drinking water from a puddle, surrounded by her soft and silky yellow
goslings; a long hedge hung with strings of dried pears and apples, and
rugs put out to air; a wagon loaded with melons near the barn; on one
side an ox unyoked and chewing his cud, lazily lying down. All this has
for me an inexpressible charm.”
Here we have a realism anterior to our own, and, if I may be allowed to
say so, far superior. Here we do not find, as we do elsewhere, features
collected and reproduced with the conscientiousness--or rather the lack
of conscientiousness--of a photographic camera: a choice is shown,
a soul-felt attention. The observer’s notice is that of a poet: the
external world is no longer reflected in a glass lens, but is caught
by a quivering retina; the image which is transferred to the book is
no less alive, and what the writer has felt in this manner the reader
feels in turn.
Just so far as purely descriptive description produces an impression
of puerility, of unlikeness, and, when it is carried to extremes in
the style of our realists, of fatigue and disgust, to the same degree
does it here afford interest, picturesqueness, appropriateness. Who
could fail to see, or who would refuse to admire, the _pose_ of “yonder
wooden cottages, leaning to one side, and buried in a thicket of
willows, elders, and pear-trees”? They have something better than a
physiognomy: they have a language.
“I could not tell why the doors sang in this way. Was it because the
hinges were rusted? Or had the joiner who made them concealed in them
some secret mechanism? I do not know; but the strangest thing was, that
each door had its own individual voice. That of the sleeping-room had
the most delicate soprano, that of the dining-room a sonorous bass. As
to that which closed the ante-room, it gave forth a strange, tremulous,
and plaintive sound, so that by listening attentively these words could
be distinctly heard: ‘_Batiushki!_ I am freezing.’ I know that many
people do not like the squeaking of doors: for my part, I like it very
much. And when I happen to hear in St. Petersburg a door crying, I
suddenly perceive the scent of the country, together with the memory of
a small, low room, lighted by a taper set in an ancient candlestick.
Supper is already on the table, near the open window through which the
lovely May night looks into the room. A nightingale fills the garden,
the house, and the slope to the river gleaming in the gloomy distance,
with the glory of his voice; the trees gently rustle. _Bozhe moï!_ what
a train of memories arise within me!”
We must draw attention to the exclamations which in Gogol serve for
the passionate conclusion to his most accurate descriptions. They give
us the key to his poetic realism. It is feeling which stored away the
impression in the treasure-house of the memory; it is feeling which
calls it up again, and places it before the reader, kindled with all
the fires of the imagination.
III.
This power of resurrection which makes the poet a god, Gogol applies
equally to facts and to ideas, to men and to things, to legends and to
history. His whole work shows it, but nothing in his work shows it more
clearly than his early writings. Here imagination plays the leading
part. In the works of his riper years, it is observation which comes to
get the mastery, forcing itself everywhere. The part played by poetry,
by fancy, grows less and less. The author of “The _Revizor_,” of “Dead
Souls,” no longer takes pains, except rarely, to distinguish by his
characteristic touch his models of coarseness, platitude, or ugliness.
The writer of the “Evenings at the Farm” is still content to vivify
or revivify in his half-imaginary, half-biographical tales, artless
lovers, full of passion and pathos, heroes of epic grandeur, good old
folks of the vanished past, of odd exteriors, of ridiculous aspect,
but charming by their glances, stirring by their smiles, as in the
pale, faded pastels of a bygone age. Such are the figures which Gogol
afterwards ceases to depict for us: it is these which we are going to
endeavor to take out from his first collection, so as to examine them
entirely at our ease.
This collection of “Evenings at the Farm” is divided into two parts,
bearing, by way of sub-title, the town names, _Didanka_ and _Mirgorod_.
Each part contains two groups of novels. In the “Evenings near
Didanka,”[10] the first group contains “The Fair at Sorotchintsui,”
“St. John’s Eve,” “The May Night, or the Drowned Girl,” and “The
Missing Paper.” The second group includes “Christmas Eve,” “A Terrible
Vengeance,” “Ivan Feodorovitch Shponka and his Aunt,” and “An Enchanted
Spot.”
The “Evenings near Mirgorod” contain four novels in two groups: in the
one, “Old-time Proprietors”[11] and “Taras Bulba” (in its first form;
shortly afterwards the author recast it and developed it); in the
other, “Vii,” which has been translated into French under the title
“The King of the Gnomes,” and “The Story of how Ivan Ivanovitch and
Ivan Nikiforovitch quarrelled.”[12]
The novels of the first part have especially a fantastic character. The
Devil, who holds such a place in the imagination of the Malo-Russian
peasants, is the principal hero of some of the stories, “The Fair at
Sorotchintsui” for example. Witches also play a preponderating part
in his mysterious tales. But here the witch is not that wrinkled,
toothless, unclean being, hiding herself like an abominable beast in
some, ill-omened hovel. She is generally a beautiful girl, with eyes
green as an Undine’s, with skin of lily and rose, with long hair yellow
as gold or black as ebony, with delicate level, haughty eye-brows.
Sometimes, as in “Vii,” it is the proprietor’s daughter, and those who
are impudent enough to stare at her are lost: witness the groom Mikita.
This groom had no equal in the world. Enchanted by the maiden, he
becomes a little woman, a rag, the deuce knows what. Did she look at
him? The reins fell from his hand. He forgot the names of his dogs, and
called one instead of the other. One day, while he was grooming a horse
at the stable, the maiden came and asked him to let her rest her little
foot upon him. He accepted with joy, foolish fellow! but she compelled
him to gallop like a horse, and struck him redoubled blows with her
witch’s stick. He came back half dead, and from that day he vanished
from mortal sight. “Once when they went to the stable, they found
instead of him only a handful of ashes by an empty pail. He had burned
up,--entirely burned up by his own fire. Yet he had been a groom such
as no more can be found in the world.”
Artless but not silly sorcery. It is the timid homage, pathetic from
its very timidity, which is offered by these barbarous souls to the
eternal power of beauty and love.
These witches of Gogol, so bold and novel in their conception, put me
in mind of a painting of the Spanish school, attributed to Murillo.
This canvas, which I saw several years ago in a private gallery, is a
Temptation of St. Anthony, interpreted in an unlooked-for way. A young
man of thirty years, whose features are those of the painter himself,
with sunburned face and passionate eyes, bends towards his mistress,
a lovely girl with piquant charm, _sal y pimienta_, who is leaning on
his shoulder, while her mouth is arched at the corners of the lips in a
smile of irresistible seduction.
In these tales of Gogol, the marvellous abounds. But it abounds equally
in the life of these Malo-Russians whom the author has wished to depict
for us. The supernatural affrights and charms them. If the legends of
the Ukraïna are lugubrious, yet they never weary of hearing them told.
The young girl who at the first sound of the serenade lifts the latch,
steals out from the door, and joins the love-stricken _bandura_-player,
desires no other entertainment on the border of the pond which in the
uncanny lights of the night reflects in its waters the willows and the
maples:[13] “Tell me it, my handsome Cossack,” she says, laying her
cheek to his face and kissing him: “No? Then it is plain that thou
dost not love me, that thou hast some other young girl. Speak! I shall
not be afraid. My sleep will not be broken by it. On the contrary, I
shall not be able to go to sleep at all if thou dost not tell me this
story. I shall be thinking of something else. I shall believe--come,
Lyévko, tell it.” They are right who say that the Devil haunts the
brain of young girls to keep their curiosity awake.
Lyévko, however, yields, and unfolds the old legend. It is the story
of the daughter of the _sotnik_ (captain of a hundred Cossacks). The
_sotnik_ had a daughter white as snow. He was old, and one day he
brought home a second wife, young and handsome, white and rose; but she
looked at her stepdaughter in such a strange way that she cried out
under her gaze. The young wife was a witch, as was seen immediately.
The very night of the wedding, a black cat enters the young girl’s
room, and tries to choke her with his iron claws. She snatches a sabre
down from the wall, she strikes at the animal, and cuts off his paw.
He disappears with a yell. When the stepmother was seen again, her
hand was covered with bandages. Five days later the father drove his
daughter from the house, and in grief she drowned herself in the pond.
Since then the drowned girl has been waiting for the sorceress, to beat
her with the green rushes of the pond; but up to the present time the
stepmother has succeeded in escaping from all her traps. ‘She is very
wily,’ says the poor Undine. ‘I feel that she is here. I suffer from
her presence. Because of her, I cannot swim freely like a fish. I go to
the bottom like a key. Find her for me.’
Lyévko the singer hears the drowned girl thus speaking to him in a
dream. But this dream is a reality; for when he wakes, Lyévko, who has
tracked and caught the stepmother in the circle of the young shadows,
finds in his hand the reward of the Queen of the Lake. It is a letter
containing an order for the marriage between Lyévko and Hanna, his
_fiancée_. The order is given by the district commissioner, to Hanna’s
father, who has hitherto shown himself recalcitrant. “I shall not tell
any one the miracle which has been performed this night,” murmurs the
happy bridegroom. “To thee alone will I confide it, Hanna; thou alone
wilt believe me, and together we will pray for the soul of the poor
drowned girl.”
IV.
In this collection of “Evenings at the Farm” figures the heroic story
of a great character, the life of the atamán Taras Bulba. Gogol
afterwards turned this _epopée_ into prose, but the after-touches did
not change the character of the early composition. The hero of “Taras
Bulba” is one of those Zaparog Cossacks who played such an important
part in the history of Poland, and later in the history of Russia.
After the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Zaporozhtsui,
who formed a military republic, or, if the term is preferred, an
association of cavalry bandits, became the terror of the neighboring
peoples. They had on an island in the Dniépr a permanent camp, the
_Setch_, where, even in times of peace, young Cossacks came to perfect
themselves in the noble game of war. Women were rigorously excluded
from the _Setch_. The men were quartered in divisions, or _kurénui_;
each _kurén_ had its chief, an _atamán_ (_hetman_); the entire camp was
commanded by a supreme chief, the _atamán-kotchevóï_.
The romance of “Taras Bulba” opens in the most original fashion.[14]
The two sons of the Cossack Taras are just back from the divinity
school, to which they will not return. The father, a vigorous
Zaporozhets, who has grown gray in harness, receives them with
sarcastic observations about their long robes. It is a sort of test
like that which Don Diego gives his sons in the “Romancero.” The eldest
of Bulba’s sons, Ostap (Eustace), behaves like Rodriguez. “Though thou
art my father, I swear to thee, if thou continuest to laugh at me, I
will give thee a drubbing.”
After an exchange of well-directed blows on either side, Taras kisses
effusively his son whose courage and strength he has just experienced;
he rudely rallies Andriï (Andrew), the younger, on his gentleness:
“Thou art a puppy so far as I can judge. Don’t listen to they mother’s
words: she is a woman; she knows naught. What need have ye of being
coddled? A good prairie, a good horse, that’s all the delicacies that
ye need. See this sabre: behold your mother, lads!”
The poor woman is not at the end of her trials. Taras announces
his immediate departure with his sons: she protests amid tears and
lamentations; the Cossack ill-uses her, and cuts short her complaints.
The two sons spend in their father’s house just time enough to give
the narrator a chance to describe this interior so characteristic and
brilliantly colored. On the wall hang all the exquisite ornaments in
which barbarous man delights,--sabres, whips, inlaid arms, reins worked
in gold wire, silver-nailed clogs. On the dressers are the products of
civilization brought from different corners of the world,--masterpieces
of Florentine engravers, of Venetian glass-blowers, of Oriental
goldsmiths; and in contrast with all this treasure, the fruit of
pillage, piles of wood, the stove made of the enamelled bricks loved by
the Ukraïne peasant, and the “holy images” in hieratic posture, these
Lares indispensable at every Malo-Russian fireside.
The old Bulba has declared at table, before all the _sotniks_ of his
_polk_[15] who were present in the village, that he should be off next
day. The mother spends the night in tears, crouching by her children’s
bedside, gazing upon them with a look full of anguish like the swallow
of the steppe on her nest. She still hopes that when he wakes, Bulba
will have forgotten what he vowed in the exaltation of the bowl.
“The moon from the height of heaven had long been lighting up all the
_dvor_ filled with sleepers, the thick mass of willows, and the tall
grass in which the palisade which encircled the _dvor_ drowned. She sat
all night by the heads of her beloved sons: not for a moment did she
turn her eyes from them, and she had no thought of sleep. Already the
horses, prescient of dawn, had all stretched themselves upon the grass,
and ceased to feed. The topmost leaves of the willows began to whisper,
and little by little a stream of incessant chattering descended through
them to the very base. Still she sat in the selfsame place; she felt
no fatigue at all, and she wished in her inmost heart that the night
might last as long as possible. From the steppe resounded the sonorous
whinnying of a foal. Ruddy streaks stretched across the sky. Bulba
suddenly waked up, and leaped to his feet. He remembered very well all
that he had determined upon the evening before.”
The preparations for the departure are described in detail with Homeric
satisfaction. Bulba commands the mother to give her sons her blessing:
“A mother’s blessing preserves from all danger on land and on water.”
The farewell is heart-rending: the poor woman seizes the stirrup of
her youngest, Andriï, clings to his saddle, and twice, in a paroxysm
of maternal delirium, throws herself in front of the horses, until she
is led away. Here we see the features of a painting rapidly sketched
by Gogol in another novel. The elements of this scene would, moreover,
be found elsewhere still. It goes back to the ancient _dumas_, the
cantilenas of the Malo-Russian, the traces of which are constantly
found in the epic of “Taras Bulba.”
They depart. As they ride along, their minds are filled with
melancholy thoughts. Andriï reviews mentally a romantic adventure, the
beginning of which dates from his life at the seminary. At Kief, in
order to pay back a joke which had been played upon him, he made his
way into the room of a wild Polish girl, the daughter of the voïevod of
Kovno. The Polish girl made sport of him as though he were a savage; he
put up with his dismissal, but fell in love with her. It is natural to
conjecture that this love will have a decisive influence upon Andriï’s
conduct, and that the beautiful girl will appear again. For the time
being, the activity of the adventurous life just beginning drives away
these recollections. The Cossacks cross the steppe, and the narrator
makes us realize the wholly novel charm of this primitive existence,
with its sensations no less strong than simple, in these immense spaces
which under apparent monotony are so varied and marvellous.
They reach the Setch, and nothing equals the vigor, the color, the
life, of the scenes which the story-teller’s imagination brings before
our eyes. When they disembark from the ferry-boat, which after a
three-hours’ passage has brought them to the island of Khortitsa,
Taras Bulba and his sons reach the camp by an entrance echoing with
the hammers of twenty-five smithies, and encumbered with the packs of
pedlers. A huge Zaporozhets sleeping in the very middle of the road,
with arms and legs stretched out, is the first spectacle which attracts
their admiration. Farther, a young Cossack is dancing with frenzy,
dripping with sweat in his winter sheepskin: he refuses to take it off,
for it would quickly find its way into the pot-house. The merry fellow
has already drunk up his cap, his belt, and his embroidered hilt. You
feel that here is a young, exuberant, indomitable race. You have to go
back to the Iliad to meet such men, and to Homer to find again this
freshness of delineation. Other scenes awaken comparisons such as the
author of “Taras Bulba” scarcely anticipated. His hero finds well-known
faces, and he asks after his ancient companions in arms. They are
questions of Philoktetes to Neoptolemos, and the same replies, followed
by the same melancholy regrets: “And Taras Bulba heard only, as reply,
that Borodavka had been hanged at Tolopan; that Koloper had been flayed
alive near Kizikirmen; that Pidsuitok’s head had been salted in a cask,
and sent to Tsar-grad (Constantinople) itself. The old Bulba hung his
head, and after a long pause he said, ‘Good Kazaks were they.’”
I shall not dwell upon the scenes in which Gogol has described for us
the customs of the Setch, such as the election of the new kotchevóï;
and the wiles of these Zaporogs, in their longing for pillage, to take
up the offensive without having the appearance of breaking treaties.
From the Ukraïna, news is brought which arrives at the very nick of
time. The Poles and the Jews have been heaping up deeds of infamy:
the Cossack people is oppressed; religion is odiously persecuted.
The whole camp breaks into enthusiastic fervor. They fling the Jew
pedlers (_kramari_) into the water. One of them, Yankel, has recognized
Taras: he throws himself on his knees groaning; he reminds him of a
service which he had once done Bulba’s brother; finally he escapes
punishment, thanks to this scornful and brutal protection. A few hours
later, Taras finds him established under a tent, selling all sorts of
provisions, powder, screws, gun-flints, at the risk of being caught
again, and “killed like a sparrow.”
“Taras shrugged his shoulders to see what was the ruling power of
the Jewish race.” We catch a glimpse here of that lively humor which
is common in Gogol, and that keenness of observation which is always
heightened by a satiric flavor.
The Zaporogs invade the Polish soil. They lay siege to Dubno. One
night, Andriï sees rising before him a woman’s form. He recognizes an
old Tartar servant of the voïevod’s daughter. She comes in her young
mistress’s name to beg a little bread. The besieged town is a prey to
all the torments of famine. Andriï is anxious instantly to make his way
inside the walls. He is introduced by a subterranean passage by which
the old woman reached the camp. Andriï sees once again the woman whom
he loves, and it is all over with him. “He will never see again the
Setch, nor his father’s village, nor the house of God. The Ukraïna
will never behold again one of its bravest sons. The old Taras will
tear his gray hair by handfuls, cursing the day and the hour when to
his own shame he begot such a son.”
Here the romance halts to make room for the epos. Help comes to the
city almost immediately after Andriï’s defection. This news is brought
by Yankel, who, true Jew that he is, has succeeded in penetrating
the city, in making his escape, in seeing every thing, hearing every
thing, and putting a good profit into his pocket. What consoles Taras
for Andriï’s treason is Ostap’s bravery, who is made atamán on the
battle-field. One must read the exploits of giants, where the cruelty
of the carnage is relieved by the beauty of the coloring. Pictures
of heroic grandeur light up these sinister scenes, and the magic of
a sparkling palette makes poetical the strong touches of the boldest
realism.
Suddenly the news reaches the camp of the Zaporogs, that the Setch
has been plundered by the Tartars. The old Bovdug, the Nestor of this
second Iliad, proposes a plan which divides the besieging army in such
a way as to protect at once the interests and the honor of the Cossack
nation. One part sets out in pursuit of the Tartars: the others remain
under the walls of the city, with the old Taras as atamán. One would
like to quote from beginning to end these lists of heroes, with their
Malo-Russian names so nearly uniform in termination. One would like to
reproduce these parentheses, these episodes devoted to the complaisant
enumeration of the deeds of prowess of all these braves. The separation
is marked by a melancholy full of grandeur. The feeling of the
solidarity which has grouped all these men, of the brotherhood which
unites all these sons of the Ukraïna, is expressed with rare power.
Taras perceives that it is necessary to create some diversion for this
profound melancholy. He gives his Cossacks the solace of precious wine,
and the stimulus of a fortifying word. They drink to religion, the
Setch, and glory. “Never will a splendid action perish; and the glory
of the Cossacks shall not be lost like a grain of powder dropped from
the pan, and fallen by chance.”
The battle begins anew; the cannon make wide gaps in the ranks, and
many mothers will not see again their sons fallen this day. “Vainly
the widow will stop the passers-by, and gaze into their eyes to see
if among them is not found the man whom best she loves in all the
world.” What an accent in all that, and how we discover in the labored
arrangement of the writer, the native force of the primitive song,
the depth of the feeling of the people! This arises in fact from
the Malo-Russian folk-song; and so also do those challenges which
recall those of the heroes of Argos or of Troy, and that sublime
death-refrain which each hero murmurs as he dies, “Flourish the Russian
soil!” and likewise those rhythmic questions alternating with replies
like couplets, “Is there yet powder in the powder-flasks? Is not
the Cossack power enfeebled? Do not the Cossacks now show signs of
yielding?”--“There still is powder in the powder-flasks; the Cossack
power is not enfeebled; the Cossacks do not yet begin to yield.”
At the height of the battle, Andriï, who is fighting like a lion at
the head of the Poles, finds himself suddenly face to face with Taras
Bulba. Here follows an admirable scene, and long admired, but admired
in an imitation. Is not the conclusion of “Mateo Falcone” an invention
stolen from Gogol? In the two tales, the father becomes the arbiter
of the treason committed by the son; the details of this execution,
the accompanying words, the calculated impression of coldness in the
account, meant to add to the horror of the deed,--all the resemblances
seem to form a literary theft, the traces of which Merimée would have
done better not to hide; and we have almost the right to impute to him
this intention when we see the part that he took in disparagement of
“Taras Bulba.”
This tragedy is followed by a new drama still more painful. Ostap
is taken prisoner, and carried to Warsaw for execution. Taras, left
for dead, is picked up by his followers. He recovers, and, unable to
survive his beloved son, goes to risk his life in the attempt to rescue
him. Through Yankel’s craft he makes his way into Warsaw, but the
assistance of the Polish Jews fails to get him within the prison walls.
He arrives only in time to see the execution of the Cossacks. Ostap is
broken on the wheel before his father’s eyes. In a moment of weakness
the heroic lad utters the cry of the Crucified on Golgotha: “Father,
where art thou? Dost thou hear this?”
“Yes, I hear,” replies a mighty voice from the midst of the throng.
“A detachment of mounted soldiers hastened anxiously to scan the
throng of people. Yankel turned pale as death, and when the horsemen
had got a short distance from him, he turned round in terror to look
for Taras: but Taras was no longer beside him; every trace of him was
lost.” A little later on, and Taras has seized his arms, and is making
a terrible “funeral mass” in honor of his son. At last he dies, pinned
down like Prometheus, and burned alive; but from the midst of the
flames he tastes the triumph which his last shout of command has just
assured to his soldiers.
V.
When Gogol was spoken of to the great romancer Turgénief, he said
simply, “He is our master; from him we get our best qualities.” But
when Turgénief came to speak of “Taras Bulba,” he grew animated, and
went on with an accent of admiration which, for my part, I cannot
forget, and said, “The day when our Gogol stood the colossal Taras on
his feet, he showed genius.”
It would have been a very delicate question, to ask Turgénief
his opinion of another of Gogol’s little masterpieces, “Old-time
Proprietors.” The question would have seemed indiscreet to the author
of “Virgin Soil;” for when this last romance of Turgénief’s appeared,
all the Russian readers, when they came to the charming chapter where
the two old men, Fímushka and Fómushka, come upon the stage, uttered
the same cry: “It is Gogol, pure and simple! it is the _Starosvyétskié
Pomyéshchiki_!” If the model and the imitation are examined closely,
a great quantity of differences in detail are unravelled; and it may
be said that here as elsewhere Turgénief is personal, original in his
work, in his own fashion. But at first glance one has the right to be
struck by the resemblances.
“Old-time Proprietors” is a novel of a number of pages. In this
novel there are no intrigue, no abrupt changes, nothing fantastic,
no theatrical climaxes, no surprising characters, no unexpected
sentiments. Gogol dispensed with all the elements of success: he seems
to have wished to reduce the interest to the minimum, and he wrote a
masterpiece.
He introduces us to one of those country houses whose appearance alone
tells the story of the calm and peaceful life of its inhabitants:
“Never had a desire crossed the hedge which shut in the little _dvor_.”
In this habitation of sages, all is friendly, all is kindly, “even to
the phlegmatic baying of the dogs.” What is to be said of the reception
which we meet with at the hands of the owners of the dwelling? The
husband, Afanasi Ivanovitch, generally sitting down and bent over,
always smiles, whether he be speaking or listening. His wife, Pulkheria
Ivanovna, on the other hand, is serious; but there is so much goodness
in her eyes and in all of her features, that a smile would be too much,
would render insipid her expression of face which is already so sweet.
Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had grown up without
children: thus they had come to love each other with that affection
which is usually reserved for beings in whom one’s youthful days seem
to bloom anew. Their youth had been full of life, however, like all
youth, but it was far away. The husband had served in the army; he had
eloped with his sweetheart. But this wild period had been followed by
so many days of a calm, secluded, uniform, absolutely happy existence,
that they never spoke of the past, and it may be doubted if they ever
thought of it either.
These delicious hours are disturbed only by such events as an
indigestion, or a pain in the bowels. They are filled only by
collations and repasts of greater or less degree. They leave room for
no other care than that of varying the bill of fare, of bringing into
agreement the most diverse viands, of tempting appetites sated but not
satiated.
At first thought, nothing seems more commonplace than such a subject.
What poetry, what interest even, could be attached to that complaining
belly whose ever-recurring pangs must be lulled to sleep the livelong
day and a portion of the night? Herein shines forth all the power of
Gogol’s talent. He paints egotism for us, double egotism: but he paints
it with such delicate shades that the picture excites something more
than admiration; it arouses a sort of sympathy.
Gogol knows well that happy people are the best people; that their joy
radiates out, as it were, and that it warms, lightens, enlivens, just
as sadness, even though legitimate, chills, wounds, warns away, every
thing that approaches it. The two old people are happy, not so much by
the quality of the pleasures which they taste, or by the value of the
goods which they enjoy, as by the assurance which they feel that as
long as they live they are not going to see this luxurious abundance
disappear, nor these far from ruinous pleasures lose their flavor.
Notwithstanding the thefts of the _prikashchik_, of the housekeeper,
of the hands, of the visitors, of their coachman, of their valets,
“this fertile and beneficent soil produced all things in such quantity,
Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had so few necessities,
that all these depredations could have no injurious effect on their
well-being.”
These two fortunate people are worshipped for their indulgence,
which comes from unconcern; and for their liberality, which takes
its rise, if not from the vanity of giving, as La Rochefoucauld
would have expressed it, yet at least from the need of feeling
further satisfaction, after having taken full enjoyment of what is
indispensable, in allowing others to have a certain portion of the
superfluous.
In the same way their pity is, above all, a selfish consideration, and
a movement of dismay at the idea of falling into such disagreeable or
trying situations as they have seen in the cases of others. “Wait,”
says Afanasi Ivanovitch to each visitor: “we don’t know what may
happen. Robbers may attack you, or you may meet with rascals.” “God
protect us from robbers!” said Pulkheria Ivanovna: “why tell such
stories when it is night?”
In this association for happiness, which is scarcely any thing else
than the joining of two aspirations towards well-being, how did Gogol
succeed in bringing about his return to the idea of sacrifice? In
point of fact, one of these good old egotists acts to a certain degree
in a spirit of self-sacrifice, without ever rising above self-love;
becomes partially absorbed in the affection of the companion, who is
more indifferent, more inclined to accept fondling without offering
return. All love, it has been said, is reduced in last analysis to
this: the one kisses, the other offers the cheek. In this case the one
who offers the cheek--that is to say, the one who permits the fondling,
and limits all manifestations of feeling to not ill-natured but not
kindly teasing--is the husband. His wife adores him after her fashion.
This adoration it is vain to express in vulgar language, and translate
by attentions of far from exalted order: it is real, and it brings to
the reader’s lips a smile full of indulgence, even at the moment when
it compels from the eyes a tear of a rare quality, the discreet witness
of the deepest and purest feeling.
This good old woman feels that she is dying; and at the moment when
death “comes to take her,” she knows only one grief,--that of leaving
alone, and, as it were, orphaned, this poor old child for whom she
has lived, and who without her will not know what to do with his sad
life. With prayers, even with threats, good soul that she is, she
intrusts him to a maid-servant old as themselves; and after making all
arrangements and dispositions, so that her companion “need not feel too
sorely her absence,” she goes whither death calls her.
Afanasi Ivanovitch at first is overwhelmed with grief. On his return
from the funeral, his solitude comes to him with the sensation of an
irreparable void; “and he began to sob bitterly, inconsolably; and the
tears flowed,--flowed like two streams from his dull eyes.” Is it not
striking to find here the expressions of Homer? “He sat down, pouring
forth tears like a stream of dark water, which spreads its shady water
along the cliff where even the goats do not climb.” And is there not
here, as in the epic tale of Taras Bulba, the power of the pathetic,
the savory freshness of emotion, the secret of which is known only to
primitive poetry?
But what is not primitive, what, on the contrary, reveals Gogol as a
very well-informed writer, a very watchful psychologist, a satirist
whose scheme was well thought out in advance, and whose slightest
details are calculated with perfect precision, is the little parable
which at the most touching moment of this tale interrupts its thread,
and brings out its hidden significance, its moral bearing, its
psychological lesson.
Gogol leaves the husband and wife at the very hour of their most
touching separation, and tells us rapidly the romance of a young man
madly in love with a mistress who is dying. In the effervescence of his
grief, the lover twice in succession tries to kill himself: the first
time, by a pistol-shot in the head; somewhat later, when he is barely
recovered, by throwing himself under the wheel of a passing carriage.
Again he recovers; “and a year later,” says Gogol, “I met him in a
fashionable salon. He was seated at a table, playing _boston_, and was
saying in a free and easy tone, ‘Little Misery.’ Behind him, leaning on
his chair, stood his young and pretty wife, toying with the counters in
the basket.”
The old Afanasi Ivanovitch does not try to kill himself; but he dies
slowly day by day from the ever-growing regret for her whom he has
lost, from the wound, always more keen and more deep, which has been
left in his heart, or, if the expression be preferred, left in his very
flesh by the torn cluster of his imperishable habits.
“I have never written from imagination,” said Gogol: “it is a talent
which I do not possess.” “Pushkin,” he says in another place, “has
hit it right when in speaking of me he declared that he had never
known in any other writer an equal gift of making a vivid picture
of the miseries of actual life, in sketching with a firm touch the
nothingness of a good-for-nothing man.” This talent, which will be
seen illustrated in such a brilliant way in the great romance of “Dead
Souls,” already begins to give a striking character to the stories
written by Gogol about St. Petersburg. Here he describes in a most
fascinating way the mortifications, the humiliations, the tortures
even, which he had felt or anticipated at the time of the painful
beginning of his literary career, and his wearisome sojourn in the
bureaucracy.
“The Portrait,” for example, is a fantastic tale which is distinguished
from the stories of the former collection by a satiric accent full
of bitterness. It is the account of a painter kept in the depths of
wretchedness just as long as he takes his art seriously. A happy chance
places in his hands a sum of money which allows him to engage rooms on
the Nevsky Prospekt. He allows trickery to usurp the place of work. He
grows rich from the day when he loses his talent: however, the feeling
of having deserted his ideal follows him like remorse, and this remorse
leads him straight to madness.
“The Cloak” is the story of a small official, gentle, conscientious,
but timid, slow, and absent-minded. The poor devil has a fixed
purpose,--the purchase of a cloak to keep him from the cold. This
never-to-be-realized idea finally unsettles his somewhat feeble brain.
It is noticeable that the most lugubrious refrains serve for the
conclusion of these different moral analyses. “The recollections of a
Lunatic,” known in France under the title “Les Mémoires d’un Fou,” take
the reader one step farther into this region of mental trouble, which
is explored with a boldness truly disquieting. Involuntarily one thinks
of the author’s own final insanity; and the tale has the effect of a
prelude, or at least of a prognostication.
At the risk of repetition, I lay especial emphasis upon this evolution
which took place in the mind and in the work of Nikolaï Gogol. In the
“Evenings at the Farm,” the satirical note scarcely appears, except
in a few details; it is found tempered, and as it were refreshed,
by a pure breath of poetry; Nature spoke there almost as much as
man, and she spoke a language of very penetrating sweetness and of
superb grandeur. In the novels on St. Petersburg, satire has already
entirely usurped her place. There is added, to be sure, an element
of fancy, and of caprice, which is no longer the poetry of the
first novels, but which still draws on the imagination; a troubled,
unregulated imagination, which in Gogol shows a physical and moral
state sufficiently akin to the hyperæsthesia of seers, of the insane.
This period of excitement is followed by several years of rather morose
observation and contemplation, during which Gogol writes or plans for
his two great works, the comedy of “The _Revizor_,” and the romance of
“The Dead Souls.” Here we are in full satire, and the satire is fully
in the domain of reality,--reality often vulgar, and sometimes odious.
The author paints only what he sees; and if amid the objects of his
contemplation, and his keen pitiless glance, there passes often as it
were a shade of illusion, it is only a gloomy illusion, a reflection of
melancholy obscuring the real day, and making the colors of things more
sombre, the aspect of men more pitiable.
It is not that the romance of “The Dead Souls,” and especially the
comedy of “The _Revizor_,” have not details, or even whole scenes,
which are very amusing. There is no satire without gayety; and Gogol
understands how to indulge in raillery, that is to say, how to make
fun at the expense of another, as perfectly as any satirist that ever
lived. But never was laughter more bitter than his, and it never came
nearer the ancient definition, “_cachinnus perfidum ridens_.” This
bitterness of style is only too well explained by a morbid state of
mind, the first manifestations of which can be traced back even to
Gogol’s infancy, while its tragic end was madness.
VI.
The comedy of “The _Revizor_” (The Inspector-General) is therefore a
satire,--a satire on Russian functionaryism. The action takes place in
a small provincial city. The _tchinovniks_ of the district have met at
the mayor’s, for news has just been brought of the approaching visit of
the _revizor_. “What can you expect?” asks the mayor[16] with a sigh:
“it is a judgment from God! Hitherto it has fallen on other cities. It
is our turn now.”
Like a prudent man, he has taken his measures, and he advises the
other employees to do likewise. “You,” he says to the director of the
hospital,--“you will do well to take pains that every thing is on a
good footing.... Let ’em put on white cotton nightcaps, and don’t allow
the patients to look like chimney-sweeps as they usually do.--And you,”
he says to the doctor, “you must look out that each bed has its label
in Latin, or some other language.... And it would be better not to
have so many patients, for they won’t fail to throw the blame on the
administration.” The director of the hospital explains the method of
treatment which is adopted. No costly medicines: man is a simple being;
if he dies, he dies; if he recovers, he recovers. Besides, any other
method would be scarcely practicable with a German doctor who does
not understand Russian, and consequently cannot tell at all what his
patients say.
“You,” he says to the justice of the peace, “pay attention to your
tribunal! Your boy brings his geese into your great hall, and they
come quacking between the legs of the plaintiffs.... And your
audience-chamber looks like--the Devil knows what! a horsewhip in the
midst of briefs! and the assessor, who always exhales an odor as though
he had just come out of a distillery!” But the most serious part of the
matter is the rumors of corruption. “A trifle,” replies the justice:
“a few grey-hounds as presents.” And he immediately returns allusion
for allusion: “Ah! I did not say that if some one had presented me
with a five-hundred-ruble _shuba_, and a shawl for my wife”--The mayor
interrupts warmly, with that tone of hypocrisy so common to the Russian
_tchinovnik_, “That’s all right! Do you know why you take presents of
dogs? It’s because you don’t believe in God. You never go to church. I
at least have some religion: Fridays I go to mass. But you--Ah! I know
you well. When you begin to descant on the way the world was made, your
hair stands up on your head.
“And you,” he says to the principal of the college,--“you watch over
your professors. Their actions are suspicious; there is one who so far
forgets himself in his chair as to put his fingers behind his cravat,
and to scratch his chin: it is not necessary to teach the young habits
of independence.” The postmaster remains. The mayor urges him to open a
few letters, so as to assure himself that there are no denunciations.
“You need not teach me my trade,” replies the postmaster: “I have
nothing else to do.” In fact, it is his daily amusement: he could
not do without this reading. Some letters are as well composed as the
Moscow journals. He has at this very moment in his pocket a young
lieutenant’s letter,--reminiscences of a ball, an elegant description.
The mayor begs him to hold back every petition of complaint. “There’s
nothing to fear any other way. It would be a different thing if this
were generally the custom; but it’s just a little family affair, the
way we do it.”
Two loungers of the place,[17] two self-important bustlers, in their
eager rivalry of tittle-tattle and gossip, run up all out of breath,
and, after a great deal of desultory talk, are delivered of the great
news. He has come, the government _tchinovnik_, the _revizor_; he saw
them eating salmon at the hotel; he cast a terrible look at their
plates. “_Akh!_ God in heaven,” cries the mayor; “have pity upon us,
miserable offenders!”
And here follows a general confession, a recapitulation of the most
recent sins of moment: an under-officer’s wife whipped, prisoners
deprived of their rations, wine-shops established in open defiance of
the law, the streets not swept. “How old is he? He’s a young man; then
there’s more hope than with an old devil. Quick! orders, measures; and
let us get ahead of him. My hat! my sword! but the sword is ruined.
“That cursed hatter! He sees that the mayor has an old sword, and
does not send him a new one. What a pack of villains! _Akh!_ my fine
fellows! I am perfectly sure they have their complaints all ready, and
that they will rise up right out of the cobble-stones. Let everybody
take hold of the street. The Devil take the street! Fetch me a broom, I
say, and have the street cleaned in front of the hotel; and let it be
well done.--Listen! Take care there, _you_! I know you well. You put
on a saintly look, and yet you hide the silver spoons in your boots.
You look out! Don’t you dare to stir me up! What kind of a job did you
concoct at the tailor’s? He gave you two arshins of cloth to make you a
uniform, and you gobbled up the whole piece. Attention! You steal too
much for your rank.”
That phrase has taken its place among the popular proverbs in Russia,
and our Molière has not many more pointed. Exactly as in Molière, the
situation is spun out and renewed with a liveliness which suffers no
loss of force. On the mayor’s lips, command follows command; ideas
crowd upon one another; words get tripped up; exclamations of fury,
of terror, fly out; the note of hypocrisy mingles with his main
characteristic, the violence of which forces its way to the surface
under false appearances. And this inward trouble is rendered visible,
as it were, by stage tricks, not free from vulgarity, but extremely
amusing. “You have the hat-box in your hand: here is your hat.” All
this forms a rude, rough, but new and irresistible element of comedy.
The personage who thus sets a whole city by the ears is a poor devil,
himself in a peck of trouble. Kléstakof has left Petersburg, where he
is a small official, in order to spend his vacation in the province.
On the way he has gambled, has emptied his pockets, and he is waiting
for his father to send him a fresh supply of funds to pay travelling
expenses and the landlord’s bill. We learn all these details from his
valet Osip. He it is who, in his description of the situation, gives
us the key to his master’s character. “One day he lives like a lord,
the next he perishes with starvation. But we must have carriages. Every
day he sends me to get theatre-tickets. This lasts a week, and then he
tells me to bring him his new suit of clothes from the nail. A suit
costs him a hundred and fifty rubles. He spends twenty rubles for a
waistcoat. I won’t answer for the trousers: it’s impossible to tell
what that amounts to. And the wherefore of all this? the wherefore? I
will tell you. He does not attend to his business; he goes for a walk
on the _Preshpektive_ (the Nevsky Prospekt). He plays his game. _Akh!_
if the old gentleman knew all this business, he would not bother his
head whether his son held a place in government: he would take off his
shirt, and give him such a drubbing as would warm him up for a week.”
In this comedy of “The _Revizor_,” the valet Osip fills a comic _rôle_
quite like that of the fool in Shakspeare, or the _gracioso_ in the
Spanish comedy. The Russian buffoon, however, is a clown rather than
a joker. He does not enliven the scene with jests: he makes the
spectator split his sides by his artless blunders. This smacks of
farce, and may seem overdone. But exaggeration in this way is not in
the power of every one. It is the splendid fault of Aristophanes, and
even of Molière. Let us remember what Fénelon, La Bruyère, and Rousseau
said of it. And after all, in spite of the famous definition, is it not
the greatest triumph of the comic poet to make the fastidious laugh,
and especially smile? An excellent actor of our own time defined the
great comedian as one who has only to show his grimace at the opening
of a door, to make the whole public shout with laughter. Are not the
author and the actor of genius told by the same characteristic? Have
not both of them the secret of this grimace?
To return to the analysis of the piece: Kléstakof scolds his valet
because he no longer dares to report the traveller’s complaints at
the office. The landlord treats this stranger as a man who does not
pay his bills. After many negotiations he permits him to have some
dish-water as apology for soup, and some burned sole-leather in place
of the roast. Amid the vociferations wrung from him by such an outrage,
Kléstakof beholds Osip returning to announce a call from the mayor.
He imagines that the official has come in order to put him in arrest,
with which he was threatened only a few moments since; and he endeavors
immediately to exonerate himself in the mayor’s eyes. His explanations,
enigmatical for the still more anxious visitor, clear only for the
reader or the audience, have no other effect than to increase the
terror of the high functionary, who thinks that he is in the presence
of a crafty inspector-general. In the incoherent remarks, full of
ingenuous confessions, which the little _tchinovnik_ makes to him, the
mayor hears only certain portentous words,--the prison, the minister.
He is only half re-assured when the conversation offers him a chance to
proffer some money and insist on its acceptance.
Kléstakof finally blurts out how matters really stand. “I am here,
and I have not a kopek.” The mayor sees in this avowal only a further
illustration of cunning. He immediately offers his services. The
stranger borrows two hundred rubles of him. “Take it,” he says
eagerly; “don’t trouble to count it, it isn’t worth while:” and instead
of two hundred rubles, he slips four hundred into his hand. And now
behold our two sharpers delighted to find themselves so easily in
agreement. Kléstakof suspects that there is some misunderstanding, but
he takes pains not to say a word which may bring about an explanation.
The mayor thinks that he can detect, under Kléstakof’s ambiguous
actions, an immensely profound plan. “He wants his _incognito_
respected. Two can play that game. Let us make believe not know who
he is.” While the traveller’s baggage is transported to a place more
worthy of him,--that is, to the mayor’s own dwelling,--they drive off
in a drozhsky to visit the college and the hospital. They hastily turn
their backs on the prison, which offers not the slightest attraction
for Kléstakof. “What’s the good of seeing the prison? It would be much
better to give our attention to institutions of beneficence!”
Here we are now in the mayor’s house. They are waiting for Kléstakof;
and the entrance of this important personage is very well led up to by
two or three scenes of chattering, in which the voices of the mayor’s
wife and daughter are dominant. At last he appears, followed by the
mayor and other _tchinovniks_ of the district. They have just returned
from visiting the hospital; that is to say, from enjoying a bounteous
collation at the superintendent’s. The ice is broken: tongues are
unloosed; Kléstakof’s performs wonders.
First come the exquisite courtesies of the introduction, then the
expatiation on the charms of the capital; and instantly there begins a
series of inventions grafted by Kléstakof one upon the other.
Here is the summing-up which loses the devil-possessed movement, but
not the comic value of the scene.
At the ministry, Kléstakof is the intimate of the _direktor_; on the
street, he is recognized as he is out walking; the soldiers leave
the guard-house, and present arms; at the theatre, he frequents the
green-room; he composes vaudevilles; he is the friend of Pushkin,
“that great original;”[18] he writes for the magazines; he wrote the
articles on the “Marriage of Figaro,” “Robert le Diable,” “Norma.”
It is he who writes under the signature of the Baron de Brambeus. A
book is mentioned: “I wrote it;” the daughter objects that it bears
on the title-page the name of Iuri Miloslavski; he replies to the
objection [by declaring that there is another book by the same name,
which he wrote]. The balls which he gives at Petersburg are marvellous
beyond description; he collects around his whist-table the minister of
foreign affairs, the ambassadors of France and of Germany. From time to
time a glimpse of the truth shines through this tissue of improvised
boastings, but he leisurely recalls the phrase imprudently uttered. His
importance increases at every new effort of his imagination. Once he
had been offered the direction of the ministry: he would have been glad
to decline, but what would the Emperor have said? Therefore he accepts
the office, and with what hands! He inspires everybody with awe; all
bow in the dust before him; the council of state trembles at sight of
him; at a moment’s notice he will be made field-marshal.
The adventurer would not make any end of speaking, did not intoxication
become a factor, and cut short his flow of words. The _tchinovniks_,
whose dismay has reached the highest pitch, respectfully assist him
to leave the dining-room, to sleep off the effects of his glory and
his wine on a bed in a neighboring room. “Charming young man!” say
the mayor’s wife and daughter in chorus. “Terrible man!” declares the
mayor, in an anxious and dubious tone, for he has detected in all this
braggadocio some grains of falsehood. “But how can one speak of any
thing without a little prevarication? The certain thing is that he
makes fools of the ministers, that he goes to court.” And while the
false _revizor_ is snoring peacefully, taking his mid-day nap, they
turn to his valet Osip as a make-shift. He also unflinchingly receives
flatteries, compliments, and fees.
But now follows the truly new and powerful part of this bold satire.
How to wheedle the ferocious inspector? Is he a man to accept money?
This attempt at corruption may lead to Siberia. The justice essays the
risk with fear and trembling. The bank-note which he held in his hand
slips out. To his great dismay, he sees the _revizor_ make a dash for
the note; to his great delight, he hears the words, “You would do me
great pleasure by lending me this.”--“Why, certainly, only too much
honor.” And discreetly he allows another to take his place.
The postmaster enters in great style, and assumes his most official
attitude. Kléstakof cuts short the formalities of the interview: “Could
you not lend me three hundred rubles?” A new and eager acquiescence; a
new and still more eager disappearance.
The college principal appears: Kléstakof, now in good humor, offers him
a cigar, indulges in rollicking conversation, all of which completely
dumbfounds the poor man’s brain, which is already full of perplexity.
But a new forced loan of three hundred rubles is accomplished in four
words; and the principal takes to his heels, crying, “God have mercy,
he has not visited my classes yet!”
The director of the hospitals has hoped to whiten himself at the
expense of the other _tchinovniks_. He has brought against them a
complaint which our adventurer has but to take action upon. The false
_revizor_ consents that all the details should be transcribed for him.
What the director does not think to proffer is the sum of four hundred
rubles; but this is finally demanded of him, and paid over without a
word.
It is more difficult to extract a little money from the two gossips who
were the first to discover, in the traveller at the inn, the stuff of
which an inspector-general is made. This devil of a man nevertheless
has the skill to extort a little something from them. They are not
_tchinovniks_, to be sure, but how gayly they swell the ranks of the
procession! Gogol justifies their visit in showing them up in the
capacity of petitioners. The one wants to legitimize a bastard son of
his, “born, so to speak, in wedlock,” and consequently half legitimate.
The other would like to have his name mentioned, on some suitable
occasion, before the court and the Emperor: “nothing but these words,
‘in such and such a village lives such and such a person;’ yes, nothing
more,--‘such an one lives in such a village.’”
This train of _tchinovniks_ has its counterpart full of eloquent, and
even melancholy, humor. Kléstakof has just finished counting his money;
he finds the part easy to play, and full of profit. But Osip, whose
dull head contains more sense than his master’s giddy pate, advises
him to have his post-horses put in, and to pack off while yet there is
time. Kléstakof admits that his reasoning is good; still, the farce is
so pleasant that he cannot refrain from writing to one of his friends,
a Petersburg journalist. It is easy to conjecture that this letter will
never reach its destination, and that it will serve to bring about the
_dénoûment_.
Suddenly voices are heard outside the house. It is the merchants, the
hatter at their head, coming to bring their complaints before the
_revizor_. The mayor steals from them shamelessly: when they complain,
he slams the door in your face, saying, “I will not apply the knout,
for that’s against the law; but I will make you eat humble pie.” A
woman comes, complaining that her husband had been forcibly conscripted
as a soldier, in place of two others who had escaped service through
the aid of bribes. “Your husband is a thief: he is already, or he will
be,”--that is the excuse offered her by this “blackguard of a mayor.”
But it is a real inspector-general’s business to perform the functions
of his office. Kléstakof has enjoyed the profits, and thinks that he
can confine his duties to that. At this moment the sick appear in their
hospital dressing-gowns, fever and pestilence in their faces: the false
_revizor_ rudely drives away all this importunate throng, and shuts the
door fast.
In happy contrast to the lugubrious impression of these scenes, the
author introduces some inventions of charming buffoonery. The mayor’s
daughter enters. To beguile the time, Kléstakof makes love to her,
kisses her, falls on his knees before her. The mother appears, and
expresses her astonishment--but in the fashion of Bélise, in the
“Femmes Savantes;” such homage as that is befitting. The daughter
departs after a sharp reprimand. The extempore lover, now addressing
the mother, continues the wooing which he had begun with the daughter,
who returns just as he throws himself on his knees for the second
time. The mayor comes in unexpectedly, and almost chokes with surprise
to hear an inspector-general ask for his daughter’s hand. How can he
deny himself such an honor? The agreement is made on the spot, and the
two lovers fall into each other’s arms.
Just at this moment the valet Osip comes, and, twitching his master
by the tail of his coat, announces that the horses are ready. The
adventurer, recalled to reality, ventures a brief explanation: a very
wealthy uncle to visit, a day’s journey distant. The post-chaise
departs; and the act ends with the postilion’s command to his horses,
“Off with you, on wings!”
The _dénoûment_ has been unnecessarily anticipated. It has a gayety, a
dash, a variety in its detail, which make it amusing, fascinating, rich
in surprises. Nevertheless it is only the identical _dénoûment_ of our
“Misanthrope,” the all-revealing letter in which each character of the
drama receives his share of epigrams. Gogol’s humor is given free play
in this series of rapidly sketched portraits, the originals of which
are united around the reader, who is spared no more than the rest.
The development of the idea has an inexhaustible _verve_; but the idea
itself belongs to Molière, and Merimée long ago ascribed to him all the
honor of it.
What belongs to Gogol, what gives the _dénoûment_ of “The _Revizor_”
an original coloring, is the mayor’s comic fury at finding that he has
been cheated in such a fine fashion. His new title of father-in-law
of an inspector-general had already begun to exalt him, to intoxicate
him. He has crushed the merchants with it. He has overwhelmed them
with the lightning of his glance. He has dismissed them with one of
those deep phrases, such as paint the Russian _tchinovnik_ with his
redoubtable hypocrisy: “God commands us to forgive: I have no spite
against you. You will only be good enough to remember that I am giving
my daughter in marriage, and not to the first noble that comes along.
Endeavor to have your congratulations suitable to the occasion. Don’t
expect to get off with a smoked salmon or a sugar-loaf. Do you hear
me? Go, and God protect you!” The sly old dog has already begun to
dream of a general’s epaulets: it can be seen how he is puffed up; he
receives with the air of a prince the unctuous compliments of the other
_tchinovniks_. Suddenly the pail of milk falls, and the milk is spilt;
the balloon bursts! In all that comes to pass, there is only sheer
comedy; a skilful sharper, and duped rascals. The one who is most duped
of all, the mayor, gives himself up to a storm of the most amusing
frenzy. “You great fool!” he says to himself, pounding himself, “idiot!
you have taken a dish-clout for a great personage! And this very
moment he is galloping off down the road to the sound of the bells. He
will tell the story to everybody. Worse than all, he will find some
penny-a-liner, some scribbler, to cover you with ridicule! Behold the
disgrace of it! He will not spare your rank or your office, and he
will find people to applaud him with their voices and their hands. You
laugh? Laugh at yourselves, yes. [He stamps with passion.] If I only
had ’em! these scribblers! Cursed liberals! Spawn of the Devil! I’d put
a bit on ’em! I’d put a curb on ’em! I’d crush the whole brood of ’em.”
And behold what adds a still keener flavor to this adventure.
At the very moment when the mayor, out of his wits at having
been capable of mistaking this fop for an inspector-general, is
trying to find the one who egged him on to commit this blunder, a
policeman enters, and says, “You are requested to repair instantly
to the _revizor_, who has come on a mission from Petersburg. He
has just arrived at the hotel.” The whole company are, as it were,
thunderstruck; and the curtain falls on a scene of silence, the
arrangement of which Gogol provided for with the minute accuracy of
a realistic writer, for whom attitudes and facial expression are the
indispensable complement of a moral painting. In point of fact, they
are, especially at times when a lively emotion tears away all masks,
the faithful and legible translation of character.
VII.
After having laid bare the vices of the Russian administration, in his
satiric comedy of “The _Revizor_,” Gogol attacked the social question
in his romance of the “Dead Souls.” He set himself to work at the very
moment when the Tsar Nicolas, in a liberal humor, proclaimed in a
_ukaz_ of prodigious power the principle of the abolition of serfage.
Unhappily this liberal policy of the throne was not strong enough to
hold its own before the dissatisfaction of the higher classes: the
decree was not put into effect. But the impulse was given, and Gogol’s
satire once more became the echo of the popular feeling.
The very title of the romance was a satiric touch, the significance
of which could not escape a Russian, but which for a French reader
needs rather a long explanation. At the time of serfdom, a Russian
proprietor’s fortune was not valued according to the extent of his
lands, but according to the number of male serfs which were held
upon them. These serfs were called “souls” (_dushi_). The owner of a
thousand souls was a great proprietor; the owner of a hundred souls
was only a beggarly country squire. The proprietor paid the capitation
tax for all the souls on his domain; but, as the census was rarely
taken, it happened that he had long to pay for dead serfs, until a new
official revision struck them out from among the number of the living.
It is easy to see what these dead souls must have cost a proprietor
whose lands had been visited by famine, cholera, or any other scourge;
and his interest in getting rid of them will be explicable.
What seems more surprising is, that there were people ready to purchase
them. But here, again, it is sufficient to lessen the strangeness of
the fact, if we accompany it with a simple explanation. There was in
Russia, at the time to which Gogol’s novel transports us, a sort of
bank, established and supported by the State, and directed by the
managing boards of certain institutions for orphan boys and girls,
deaf-mutes, and others. This bank borrowed money at four per cent, and
loaned on deposits. Here a man could pawn his personal property, or
mortgage his real estate and his peasants up to ten thousand souls,
say at two hundred rubles a head; in other words, up to two million
rubles. Here is a reason why the hero of Gogol’s romance, Tchitchikof,
a former customs officer, dismissed for embezzlement, purchases dead
souls. He hopes some day to possess a sufficient number to populate an
out-of-the-way estate in a distant province of the empire, and to pawn
this domain to the State for a sum large enough to permit him to go and
live in grand style abroad.
As can be seen, the motive of the book has lost its point since the
abolition of serfage, and this motive never was very interesting except
for Russian readers. But this motive serves Gogol only as a piquant
pretext for a series of studies of provincial life in Russia. These
studies have an originality, a variety, and sometimes a force, so great
that it is to be feared lest our analysis can give only a very feeble
notion of it.
The hero of “Dead Souls” is a veritable hero of a realistic romance;
that is to say, he has nothing which justifies the title of hero. He
is neither handsome nor ugly, neither fat nor lean, neither stiff nor
pliant; he cannot any longer be taken for a young man. He is more
prudent than courageous, more ambitious than honorable, more obsequious
than dignified, more scrupulous of his bearing than of his conduct;
at once capable of trickery, and guilty of heedlessness; without
talent, but not without expedients; with no foundation of goodness,
but not without some small change of benevolence; without conscience,
but not lacking a certain varnish of decency and gravity. This
characterless[19] personage is brought out in a sort of relief by the
very frame in which the author has ingeniously placed him. Tchitchikof
travels across the province; and Gogol does not separate him from what
is his indispensable accompaniment in his outlandish Odyssey,--I mean
from his coach, his horses, and his servants.
Petrushka, his lackey, is a blockhead of thirty summers, with a big
nose, thick lips, coarse features, and with a skin exhaling an odor
_sui generis_ which clings to every thing that comes in his vicinity.
He speaks rarely, and reads as much as possible; but little difference
makes it to him, what the nature of the book may be. He does not bother
his head with the subject. “What pleased him was not what he read: it
was the mere act of reading. It did not trouble him to see that he was
eternally coming upon words the meaning of which the deuce alone knows.”
The coachman, Selifan, is a little man, as talkative as Petrushka is
silent. He fills the long hours of the journey across the deserted
steppe or the monotonous cultivated fields, with monologues laughable
in their variety. For the most part, he addresses his incoherent
discourse to his horses. With his reproaches, sometimes accompanied
by a blow of the whip under the belly or across the ears, he stirs
up “Spot,” a huge trickster, harnessed on the right for draught,
who makes believe pull so that one would think that he was doing
himself great injury, but in reality he is not pulling at all. The
bay, on the contrary, is a very “respectable” horse: he does his
work conscientiously; as does also the light sorrel, surnamed the
Assessor because he was bought of a justice. The coachman, Selifan, who
understands the spirit of his animals, finds no subject too lofty for
their comprehension. He quotes their master’s example, who is a man to
be respected because he has been in government service, because he is a
college councillor;[20] and when once he enters into these abstract and
subtile considerations about duty, he goes so far, he soars so high,
that he regularly gets lost in the confusing network of Russian roads,
and sometimes he finishes his discussion in the bottom of a slough.
As to the carriage, it also has its strange physiognomy, and, so to
speak, its national stamp. It is the britchka, with leather flaps
fortified with two round bull’s-eyes; the britchka, whose postilion,
not booted in the German fashion, but simply with his huge beard and
his mittens, seated on no one knows what, whistles, brandishes his
whip, shouts his song, and makes his team fly over the trembling earth.
In this equipage Tchitchikof reaches the village of N----. He
introduces himself to the mayor, to the vice-mayor, to the fiscal
attorney, to the _natchalnik_ of the court, to the chief of police,
to the _vodka_-farmer, to the general director of the crown works.
His politeness, his flattering words skilfully accommodated to each
of these gentlemen, his air of concern in presence of the ladies,
immediately give him the reputation of being a man of the best tone.
He is overwhelmed with invitations; he makes his first appearance in
the fine society of N---- on the occasion of a party given by the
mayor. The throng of functionaries is divided into two classes,--the
“slenders” (_fluets_), who hover like butterflies around the ladies,
jargon gayly in French, and in three years succeed in mortgaging all
their paternal property to the _Lombard_; and secondly the “solids”
(_gros_), who _thesaurize_ without making any stir, buy estates in the
name of their wives, and some fine day go into retirement, so as to go
and live like village proprietors, like true Russian _barins_, until
their heirs, who are generally the “slenders,” come to take possession
of the inheritance, and make a single mouthful of it.
In this somewhat monotonous throng, Tchitchikof’s attention is
attracted by two country gentlemen,--Manilof, a Russian _Philinte_,
extremely fair-spoken, assiduous, and sensitive; and Sabakévitch, a
colossus of brusque manners, of laconic speech. Both of them invite the
new-comer to honor with his presence their dwellings, which are only a
few versts distant. Here the novelist’s plan becomes apparent. He is
going to take his hero and his readers from visit to visit, through
all the households of these provincial proprietors, whose foibles he
intends to make sport of, and whose vices he intends to scourge. And
what the traveller’s business will bring under our observation in his
peregrinations, will be the condition of the serfs under different
masters,--a precarious and ill-regulated condition under the best,
lamentable under those who are bad. Thus the importance of the literary
value in the romance of the “Dead Souls,” whatever it may be, fades
before the political and social aim of the conception. Or, rather,
here may be seen the new and durable character which Gogol impressed
upon the national romance. He applied that form in which fancy reigns
to the real description of Russian life: that is to say, he devoted it
to the portraying of those abuses of every sort in which the Russian
is still, to a certain degree, swaddled; to the expression of the
sufferings under which the thinking class, more oppressed to-day than
the serfs of yore, feel themselves more and more crushed; finally, to
the translation of all those obscure but insistent desires, those vague
but ardent aspirations, which are summed up in the old Muscovite cry
“Forward!” repeated to-day in a whisper, from one end of the country to
the other, like a watchword.
The first household which Gogol brings us to visit, in company with the
purchaser of dead souls, is that of the Manilof family. At the very
approach to the village of Manilovka, you begin to feel an impression
of vulgarity, of vapidness, and of _ennui_. The country is poor, but it
does not exclude pretentiousness: in the bottom is a greenish pond,
like a billiard-cloth, and on the higher part of the rising ground a
few atrophied birches. Under two of these decrepit and consumptive
trees stands an arbor with flat roof, with green painted lattice-work,
the entrance of which is made by two little pillars with a pediment,
on which can be read the inscription: “_Temple de la méditation
solitaire_.”
The frame is entirely appropriate to the characters. Manilof is a
pale blonde, with eyes blue as faïence. “His ever-smiling face, his
ever-sugared words, make you say at first, ‘What a good and amiable
man!’ The next minute you will not say any thing; and the third you ask
yourself, ‘What the deuce is this man, anyway?’” Above all, he is a man
weary of life. He has not a passion, or a hobby, or a fault. He has
nothing decisive in his character. At one time he was in the service;
and he left in the army the reputation of being a very gentle officer,
but a “spendthrift of Levant tobacco.” After returning to his estate,
he allowed the management of it to go as chance would have it. “When
one of his peasants came to find him, and said, scratching the nape of
his neck, ‘_Barin_, let me go and find some work so as to earn enough
to pay my _obrok_ (quit-rent);’--‘All right, go ahead!’ he replied,
drawing a full whiff from his pipe; and he did not take the trouble
to think that this man wanted to get out of his sight so as to have a
better chance to indulge in his habits of drunkenness.” Manilof himself
is continually plunged in a sort of somnolent revery which is like
intoxication of the mind. His thoughts do not emerge from the embryonic
state, but they come back with the persistence of the fixed idea in the
brain of a man who has no ideas. His bureau always has the same book
open at the same place. The parlor of his house was hung round with
silk and luxuriously furnished many years ago. It has always lacked two
arm-chairs, “which aren’t done yet;” and this has been so since the
first days of his marriage. A bronze candelabrum, which is an object
of art, has as a pendant a wretched copper candlestick, out of shape,
humpbacked, soiled with tallow.
This disorder disturbs no one in the house. Manilof and his wife are
enchanted with every thing,--with themselves, with their children,
with their neighbors, with the city of N----. Every _tchinovnik_ is
the “most distinguished, the most lovable, the most honorable of
men.” People so prone to admiration and to praise melt into gush at
the visit of their guest. He, in his turn, praises Manilof’s merits
to the skies, goes into ecstasies over the precocious intelligence of
their two sons Alcides and Themistocles; and when he has charmed them
all by his delicate attentions, he takes Manilof aside, and asks if
he has lost many peasants since the last census. The proprietor, in
great perplexity as to what answer to give, summons his _prikashchik_,
formerly a peasant, who has cut his beard and thrown his kaftan to the
winds, a great friend of the feather-bed and fine down foot-warmers,
godfather or relative of all the big-wigs of the village, a tyrant over
the poor devils whom he loads down with fees and tasks. The chubby
old fellow, who gets up at eight o’clock in the morning, and who gets
up simply to put his red-copper _samovar_ on the table, and then to
tipple his tea like a gourmand for an hour and a half, has no greater
knowledge than his master about the insignificant question of the
mortality of the serfs. “The number of the dead? That’s something we
don’t take note of. How’s that?--the number of the dead? No one has had
the idea of counting them, naturally.”
Tchitchikof asks to have an exact list made out, with the names,
surnames, nicknames, dates of birth, color of eyes, tints of hair.
When the _prikashchik_ has gone, Tchitchikof comes to the delicate
explanation. At first Manilof takes his guest to be crazy; but his face
has nothing about it that is not re-assuring. He still hesitates, in
the fear of some illegality. The purchaser dispels this fear. The bill
of sale will not say any thing about dead souls. “Dead? Never! We will
have them entered as living; they are so inscribed on the official
registers. No one shall ever induce me to break the law. I respect
it. I have suffered enough from my uprightness during my career as a
_tchinovnik_. Duty first, the law above all things. That’s the kind of
man I am, and I shall die the same. When the law speaks, there must
be no objections!” Manilof is therefore re-assured; and when he is
convinced that the crown has only to gain by this exchange of property,
even though it be fictitious, he offers all his dead souls for nothing.
He would like to have many other occasions to show his new friend “all
the drawing of his heart, all the magnetism of his soul.” The friend
takes his departure, promising the precocious children some toys;
and “when the cloud of dust raised by the britchka had drifted away,
Manilof came into the house again, sat down, and abandoned himself to
the sweet thought that he had shown his crony a perfect amiability,
such as might have been expected from his eminently benevolent and
complaisant soul.”
Not all his negotiations come to this successful issue with such ease.
In driving over to the house of the laconic giant Sabakévitch, the
equipage gets off the track, and the carriage is overturned directly in
front of a country-house where an old Russian lady, Mrs. Karabotchka,
lives. As in the case of Manilof, the appearance of the landscape
in some degree gives the clew to the character of the native. The
landscape is little else than a nest for poultry. Fowls of every sort
fill the court-yard, behind which stretch vegetable-gardens, variegated
here and there with fruit-trees protected by great webs of thread.
Amid this vulgarly utilitarian nature, rises a pole which ends in a
bar shaped like a cross; and on the arm of this cross is nailed a
nightdress, surmounted by a damaged bonnet belonging to “the lady and
mistress of all this property.”
Tchitchikof does not waste so much politeness upon Nastasia Petrovna
(these are the lady’s given names) as upon Manilof. He is Russian;
that is to say, he possesses in perfection all those shades of speech
and all those different intonations by which it is possible to show
the one with whom you are speaking, veneration, respect, deference,
esteem, vulgar consideration, disdainful familiarity, and, descending
still lower, all degrees of patronage, even to the extreme limit of
scorn. Accordingly he opens his project in free-and-easy style. But the
proposition shocks the worthy woman. “What do you want to do with my
dead?” she asks, fixing upon him two great eyes streaked with yellow
saffron. She suspects some shrewd trick in this business; and her
obstinacy, characteristic of the narrow-minded but calculating _baba_,
finally exasperates the purchaser, who gets carried away, pounds the
floor with a cane-seated chair within his reach, and to the old woman’s
horror mingles the name of the Devil in his furious exclamations.
These violent actions, however, have less effect than a promise deftly
introduced into the conversation: “I wanted to buy of you your various
farm products[21] because I have charge of various crown contracts.”
This mention of the crown brings the old blockhead to terms. “_Nu_,
yes, I consent. I am ready to sell them for fifty paper rubles. Only
look, my father, at that question of supplies. If it happens you want
rye-flour or buckwheat, or grits, or slaughtered neats, then please
don’t forget me.” One good turn deserves another. The contract is
instantly drawn up; and Mrs. Karabotchka, seeing her guest fetch forth
from his travelling outfit a supply of newly stamped paper, arranges
to have him leave a package for five rubles in case of necessity.[22]
All this comedy would be well worth translating word for word. The
situation already treated in the preceding canto is here renewed with
consummate art. The characters are developed in broad light: the
contrasts are forcibly brought out; the drawing is full of freedom in
its requisite vulgarity; the coloring is full of brilliancy in its
rather trivial boldness. This country scene is itself enclosed between
two capital bits of narration, opening and ending the chapter or canto
with a symmetry of the most skilful effect.
At the beginning of the episode comes the soliloquy of Selifan
the coachman, with his horses, already mentioned; the britchka’s
wanderings in a pouring rain, across roads torn up by the storm;
finally the catastrophe which sends the whole equipage to the bottom of
a ditch into the mud.
At the end of the canto we have the britchka’s return guided by a
little girl of the neighborhood, a sort of wild Indian with bare legs
literally shod with fresh mire. Selifan drives his team with a silent
care which makes a pointed contrast with his loquacious spirit the day
before. The horses, especially the mottled one, miss his discourses;
for he substitutes for them a hail-storm of treacherous goads in the
fat, pulpy, soft, delicate, and sensitive portions of their bodies. At
last, when the carriage has emerged from the region of mud, and has
passed all these roads, running, in every sense of the word, “like
crawfish at market when they are allowed to escape from the bag;” and
when the coachman has reached the highway, and caught a glimpse of
the public house, “he reined in his team, helped the little maiden to
dismount, and, as he helped her, he looked at her for the first time.
He muttered between his teeth, ‘What muddy legs! hu! hu! hu! all the
way from here home, she will soil the clean grass!’ Tchitchikof gave
the little maiden a copper coin, about two kopeks: she turned her back
quick as a flash, and off she went, starting with five or six mad
gambols; she was enchanted at the splendid gift, still more enchanted
at having been allowed to sit on the coach-box of the britchka.”
At the public house Tchitchikof falls in with a character whom he has
already met at the crown solicitor’s at dinner, where his familiarity
surprises him, less, however, than his skill at cards, and the
suspicious way in which the other players watch his fingers. He is a
terrible braggart, and he carries off the traveller willy-nilly. Once
again the domain resembles the owner. Nozdref is a great hand for
going to fairs, a mighty tippler, a mighty gambler, a mighty liar,
or, as they say in Russia of these impudent improvisers, “a mighty
maker of bullets.” He is always ready to sell all his possessions
at a bargain. He sometimes wins at play, and he spends his gains
in purchases of every sort. The booths at the fairs in a few hours
absorb all his winnings. Generally he loses; and, with the forlorn
hope of getting back his money, he casts into the same hole his
watch, his horses, and both carriage and coachman. Some friend has
to carry him home in a simple short overcoat of Bokharian stuff,
despoiled and shorn, but filled only with thoughts of having his
revenge next market-day. This imbecile’s country-house has nothing
more remarkable than his kennels, where beasts of every race growl
and bark. As to the mill, the clamp which tightens the mill-stone is
missing. The fields lie fallow. Nozdref’s work-shop is adorned only
with Turkish guns, swords, poniards; add to that, pipes of every clay
and of every size, and an old hand-organ. Here the negotiations about
dead souls do not run smoothly. Nozdref treats his man as though he
were a liar, a sharper: he wants to compel him to a bargain no less
preposterous than disadvantageous; then he offers to put up souls at
lansquenet. Tchitchikof, in spite of insults, accepts only a part of
the queens; and the game has hardly begun before he refuses to play
in consequence of the strange pertinacity shown by his adversary’s
sleeve in pushing forward the cards which are not in the game. Hence a
terrible quarrel. Nozdref seizes the suspicious player by the throat,
and calls his valets to thrash him. The comedy is changing into a
tragedy. The purchaser of souls is paler than one of his dead. At the
critical moment a carriage drives up, and from it descends the _deus ex
machinâ_, a police-officer, who comes to arrest Nozdref for assault and
battery committed by him and some other gentlemen on the person of a
Mr. Maksimof, whom they had beaten on leaving some orgy.
The procession of vices and absurdities sweeps on. Next to Nozdref,
the rascally brutal gambler, appears Sabakévitch, the Russian
gormandizer,--a colossus with enormous feet, with a back as wide as the
rump of a Viatkan horse, with arms and legs huge as the granite posts
which fence in certain monuments; a man capable of wrestling with a
bear, himself a bear, as his surname Mikhaïl, which is the nickname of
the bear in Russia, sufficiently indicates.[23]
After Sabakévitch comes the miser Plushkin, a portrait whose hideous
relief outdoes the effect of Balzac’s Grandet. The village where
he lives still preserves traces of former wealth, rendering more
noticeable and more frightful the state of degradation and wretchedness
into which the present proprietor has let it fall. The appearance of
the miser on his threshold, his sullen reception of the traveller,
the characteristics of his dress and his person, the enumeration of
the treasures which fill his sheds, the utensils crowding his office,
the bric-à-brac loading his what-not, the description of his stingy
ways, the contrast with his wise and happy past, the account of his
domestic troubles, and of his rapid transformation under the influence
of anxiety and loneliness,--all this makes this canto not only a
picturesque painting, a most lively comedy, but, more than all, a
psychological study as deep as it is novel. In fact, avarice may have
been as well described in its effects; it had never before been so
studied in its principles, and, as it were, determined in its essence.
Plushkin has sold Tchitchikof all his dead souls, and all his runaway
serfs into the bargain. The list of the different purchases already
concluded reaches a respectable length. The names, surnames, nicknames,
description, and other particulars, complaisantly noted down by those
who sell, give Tchitchikof the illusion of having actual property. His
imagination brings all these dead to life. He knows their ways, their
faults, their habits, the distinctive characteristics of each. The
only thing that is left is to have all the purchases sanctioned by the
tribunals. Now or never is the chance to show up in satire the Russian
_tchinovnik_ and his incurable corruption. The cunning tricks of the
clerks, whose slightest service must be bought, the _natchalnik’s_
collusion, the character of the witnesses, the method of blinding the
chief of police as to the nature of the contract,--here would be the
material for another comedy in the style of “The _Revizor_.”
Every thing comes out just as Tchitchikof desires. In the village, he
marches from ovation to ovation: he seems at the height of his good
fortune. But, unhappily for him, Nozdref meets him at the mayor’s ball,
and publicly and in a loud voice makes sport of him on account of his
craze for purchasing dead souls. This mysterious word has its effect.
Tchitchikof is shunned as a dangerous man. The tattle of a whole idle
village ravins on his reputation. Justice is stirred up: it imputes to
him all sorts of misdemeanors and even crimes. True, these imputations
almost instantly are shown to be false; but public opinion does not
make charges against an innocent man for nothing. Suspicion always
hovers about him. Every townsman goes a little farther than what has
been already supposed. One day the postmaster comes declaring that
Tchitchikof is Capt. Kopéïkin. This Kopéïkin is a robber chieftain,
known by his wooden leg and his amputated arm. It is needless to say
that Tchitchikof possesses all his limbs.
Finally Nozdref, who has done all the harm, makes partial reparation.
He tells Tchitchikof what is thought and said about him in the city of
N----. The man of “acquisitions” has his britchka cleaned and greased,
straps his valise, and gives Selifan his orders for their departure.
Selifan scratches the nape of his neck at this order to depart. What
did this expressive pantomime mean? Did he regret the wine-room, and
his friends the tipplers, he with the _tulup_ thrown negligently over
his shoulders? Was he deep in some love-affair, and did he mourn the
_porte-cochère_, under the shelter of which he squeezed two whitish
hands at the hour when the bandura-player, in red camisole, claws his
instrument? Did he merely turn a melancholy glance towards the kitchen
with its savory perfume of sauer-kraut, and look with dismay on the
weariness of the cold, the wind, the snow, and the interminable roads,
following this life of contemplation? “His gesture might signify
all that, and many other things; for among the Russians the action
of scratching the nape of the neck is not the indication of two or
three ideas, limited in number, but rather of an infinite quantity of
thoughts.”
They depart. A new Odyssey begins; that is to say, a new series of
visits, and a new gallery of portraits. This time the author seems to
have desired to soften his satire, and to add to the critical portion
of his work certain theories, or, at least, certain counsels. Taking
as his text Andréi Tentyotnikof,--a sweet-tempered and easy-going
gentleman, who is slowly consuming away in the vague torment of a
sentimental life,--he propounds his ideas on education, and lays out
his programme of studies in the fashion of Rabelais, his favorite
author. In contrast to Andréi he places the charming figure of
Julienne, daughter of the old general Betrishef. Those who blame Gogol
for never having created an elegant and graceful heroine have not read
the thirteenth canto of “Dead Souls.” Never to be forgotten when once
met is the dazzling amazon, whose portraiture thus begins: “The person
so suddenly introduced was bathed and caressed by the light of heaven;
she was as straight and as agile as a rosewood javelin.” Andréi is in
love with her. But this romance is scarcely begun before it is hidden
from us, and in its place comes satire again.
We fall back into vulgar life, and into the most beastly epicureanism,
with the gastronomist Peetukof. This jovial fat-paunch has a splenetic
neighbor. With good health, and eighty thousand rubles income, the
handsome, gentle, and good Platonof is bored. He has only this word
on his tongue: _ennui_. His brother-in-law Konstantin is apparently
the only one of these Russian grandees whom Gogol has been pleased to
spare. Industrious as an ox, he demands of his serfs constant labor.
“I have discovered,” he says, “that when a man does not work, dreams
come along, his brains run away, and he becomes a mere idiot.” This
proprietor has, moreover, no claims to noble descent. “He took very
little thought about his genealogical tree, judging that the possession
of proofs was not worth the labor of research, and that such documents
have no application to agriculture.” Finally, he contented himself with
speaking Russian without going round Robin Hood’s barn, and, without
any admixture of French, in thorough Russian style.
This wise man has made his property a model domain, and he would like
to see the country peopled with good proprietors like himself. He
lends Tchitchikof money to purchase an estate in the neighborhood. But
we may conjecture that the adventurer will not settle down so soon.
In fact, we are yet to see other absurd specimens; for example, the
fool Koshkaref, who, though within two steps of ruin, plays with
governmental forms. He has transformed his domain into a little state
divided into bureaus, with such inscriptions as these: “Depot of Farm
Utensils;” “Central Bureau for the Settlement of Accounts;” “Bureau
of Rural Matters;” “School of High Normal Instruction;” etc. It is
needless to say, that, through the fault of the employees, the bureaus
do not work; for the Bureau of Edifices has taken his last ruble, and
the poor sovereign’s ruin is rapidly drawing nigh.
Finally, the spectacle on which the narrator longest holds our
attention is that of the poverty whereto the various faults or vices,
touched by our finger in this tale, bring the great majority of the
small proprietors of Russia. Klobéyef has been ruined this ten years.
He still lives, and his existence is a problem. To-day is a gala day,
grand dinner, play by French actors: the next, not a morsel of bread
in the larder. Any one would have hung himself, drowned himself, or
put a bullet through his head. Klobéyef finds the means of keeping
up this alternation of luxury and wretchedness. He is a well-bred,
enlightened, intelligent man: he absolutely lacks common-sense. When
he is in trouble, he opens some pious book; and when the compassion of
his old friends, or the charity of some strange lady on the lookout
for good works, succeeds in rescuing him, for the time being, from
the final tragedy, he ascribes praise to Providence, thanks the holy
images, and begins to bite off from both ends this fortune come from
Heaven.
With this portrait we must end the analysis of “Dead Souls.” The
impression, as can be seen, is truly heart-rending. According to the
author’s own statement, “it is a picture of the universal platitude
of the country.” The story is told, that the scoffer Pushkin, after
hearing his friend Gogol read this romance, said to him, in a voice
broken by emotion, “Good God! the sad thing is our poor Russia.” It is
indeed this state of moral wretchedness which Gogol strove above all to
make the Russian reader feel, even though he had to do so at the cost
of his own popularity.
I shall pass briefly over the last part of the romance, which is only
an arrangement drawn from the author’s notes. The adventurer is seen
for the second time in the clutches of the law. He has forged a will,
like Crispin in “Le Légataire;” and he is only released from prison
by the intercession of an old philanthropist, who finally succeeds in
softening the governor-general’s severity. Tchitchikof has agreed to
become an honest man, or at least to marry, and to found a line of
honest folk.
It has been thought that in this violent but straightforward governor,
“animated by healthy hatreds” as Alceste says, Gogol meant to picture
the Tsar Nicholas. Gogol belonged, indeed, to an epoch when Russia as
yet expected her salvation and delivery from above. However, the tsar
is not mentioned here more than elsewhere in “Dead Souls;” and the
author, whose patriotism shines forth in so many places in the book,
does not seem to have cared, as might have been expected, to personify
the country in the emperor. I might adduce, in proof, all the passages
where, by way of compensation, words about Russian soil, Russian
horsemanship, Russian idiom, etc., bring out, through the ironical and
trivial prose of the satire, the poet’s passionate lyric utterances
which were revealed to us in his first writings. Here is a fragment
which deserves to be enshrined in an anthology along with the piece
about the Dniépr or the “Ukraine night:”--
“Russia! Russia! from the beautiful distant places where I dwell[24] I
see thee, I see thee plainly, O my country! Thy nature is niggardly. In
thee there is nothing to charm or to awe the spectator.... No: there
is nothing splendid in thee, Russia, nothing marvellous; all is open,
desert, flat. Thy little cities are scarce visible in thy plains,
like points, like specks. Nothing in thee is seductive, nothing even
delights the eye. What secret mysterious force, then, draws me to
thee? Why does thy song, melancholy, fascinating, restless, resounding
throughout all thy length and breadth, from one sea to the other, ring
forever in my ears? What does this song contain? Whence come these
accents and these sobs which find their echo in the heart? What are
these dolorous tones which strike deep into the soul, and wake the
memories? Russia, what desirest thou of me? What is this obscure,
mysterious bond which unites us to each other? Why dost thou look at
me thus? Why does all that thou containest fix upon me this expectant
gaze? My thought remains mute before thy immensity. This very infinity,
to what forebodings does it give rise? Since thou art limitless,
canst thou not be the mother country of thoughts whose grandeur is
immeasurable? Canst thou not bring forth giants, thou who art the
country of mighty spaces? This thought of thy immeasurable extent is
reflected powerfully in my soul, and an unknown force makes its way
into the depths of my mind. My eyes are kindled with a supernatural
vision. What dazzling distances! What a marvellous mirage unknown to
earth! O Russia!”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Nikolaï Vasilyévitch Gogol-Yanovsky, born, according to Polevoï, on
the 31st of March, 1809, at Sorotchintsui. See Appendix.
[2] Evenings at the Farm House (_Vetchera na Khutoryé_).
[3] Hans Küchel Garten--such was the name of the unfortunate idyl--was
afterwards placed by the author, not without complaisance, among his
_juvenilia_. See Appendix.
[4] This is a mistake. He completed it, to be sure, but in his
religious mania he destroyed the most of the second part: it was
completed by another hand. See Appendix.
[5] From A Terrible Vengeance.
[6] The passage referred to is as follows: “The steppe grew more and
more beautiful. The whole South, all the region which includes the
New Russia of the present day as far as the Black Sea, was a virgin
desert of green. Never had the plough passed through the boundless
waves of vegetation. Only a few horses, concealed in it as in a forest,
trod it under their hoofs. Nothing in nature could be finer. All the
surface of the earth was like a green golden ocean from which emerged
millions of varied flowers. Amidst the delicate tall stalks of the
grass gleamed azure, purple, violet blue-bonnets (_voloshki_); the
yellow broom lifted on high its pyramidal tower; the white clover, with
its umbrella-like bonnets, mottled the plain; a wheat-stalk, brought
from God knows where, was waxing full of seed. Under their slender
roots the partridges were running about, thrusting out their necks.
The air was full of a thousand different bird-notes. In the sky hung
motionless a cloud of hawks, stretching wide their wings and fixing
their eyes silently on the grass. The cry of the wild geese moving in
clouds was heard from God knows what distant lake. From the grass arose
with measured strokes the prairie-gull, and luxuriously bathed herself
in the blue waves of the air. Now she was lost in immensity, and was
visible only as a lone black speck. Now she swept back on broad wings,
and gleamed in the sun. The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you
are!” (_Tchort vas vozmi, styépi, kak vui khoroshi’_)
[7] From The May Night.
[8] From Taras Bulba.
[9] From Old-time Proprietors.
[10] _Vetchera na Khutoryé bliz Dikanki._
[11] _Starosvyétskié Pomyéshchiki._
[12] _Povyést o Tom Kak Possorilis Ivan Ivanovitch s. Ivanom
Nikiforovitchem._
[13] From The May Night.
[14] For a translation of this portion, see Appendix.
[15] Regiment.
[16] _Gorodnitchi._
[17] Bobtchinski and Dobtchinski by name.
[18] He says that he addresses Pushkin by the familiar pronoun _tui_
(thou).
[19] _Effacé._
[20] _Kollezhsky sovyetnik_, the ninth rank in the civil _tchin_,
giving personal nobility.
[21] _Khozyaistvennuie produktui._
[22] “‘_Akhti!_ what nice stamped paper you have!’ continued she,
gazing at him, at his portfolio. And, indeed, there was not much
stamped paper to be had then. ‘If you would only let me have a sheet! I
need it so much. It happens sometimes I want to write a petition to the
court, and I haven’t any thing fit to write on.’
“Tchitchikof explained to her that this paper was not of that kind;
that it was designed for drawing up contracts in regard to serfs, and
not for petitions. However, in order to accommodate her, he let her
have a few sheets for a ruble” (not five rubles, as M. Dupuy translates
it, mistaking the word meaning _price_ for _five_).--N. H. D.
[23] See Mérimée’s novel entitled Lokis.--_Author’s note._
[24] Gogol was living at that time in Italy. He wrote while abroad the
second part of Dead Souls. He left Russia after the publication of the
first part.--_Author’s Note._
[Illustration: IVAN S. TURGÉNIEF.]
IVAN TURGÉNIEF.
I.
Ivan Turgénief was born at Orel on the 28th of October, 1818. This
date, given by Turgénief himself in a letter to the Russian journalist
Suvarin, corresponds to the 9th of November in our calendar.
His father, Sergéi Nikolayevitch, and his mother, Várvara Petrovna,
died early.[25] He was brought up by his grandmother, a Russian lady
of the old school, haughty by nature and of despotic disposition. The
portrait of this “severe and choleric” _baruina_ is found sketched in
vigorous outlines in the little story “Punin and Baburin.” This story,
says Turgénief in the letter which I have just mentioned, “contains
much biography.”
Turgénief’s grandmother lived in the country, on an estate a short
distance from the city of Orel. Here the child became passionately
fond of nature. From the age of twelve he entered into intimate
relationship with trees and flowers; and he felt, when in contact with
them, impressions whose vividness remains after more than forty years
in the deeply stirred remembrances of the mature man.
“The garden belonging to my grandmother’s property was a large park of
ancient date. On one side it sloped towards a pond of running water,
wherein lived not only gudgeon and tench, but also _salvelines_,
the famous _salvelines_, those little eels which are found scarcely
anywhere nowadays. At the head of this pond grew a dense rose-bed;
higher up, on both sides of the ravine, stretched a thicket of vigorous
bushes,--hazel, elder, honeysuckle, black-thorn, in the lower part
encroached upon by tall grass and lovage. Amid the clumps of trees,
but only here and there, appeared very small bits of emerald-green
lawn of fine and silken grass, prettily mottled with the dainty pink,
yellow, lilac caps of those mushrooms called _russules_; and there the
golden balls of the great celandine hung in luminous patches. There
in springtime were heard the songs of nightingales, the whistling of
blackbirds, and the cuckoos’ call. It was always cool there, even
during the warmest days of summer; and I loved to bury myself in those
depths where I had my favorite hiding-places, mysterious, known to
myself alone--or at least so I imagined.”
Prepared by this beneficent influence of colors, perfumes, and the
sounds of rustic life, the child’s moral education was directed,
without anybody’s knowledge, and influenced for all time, by the
presence of two outlandish servants, flitting members of the high-born
lady’s household. One of them was a “philanthropic and philosophical
plebeian,” destined to die in Siberia; the other, a sort of innocent
enthusiast, a great reader of Russian epics then out of fashion. The
former sowed in the young Turgénief’s soul the seeds of a liberalism
which will bear fruit in the most manly resolves; the latter kindled in
the lad’s lively imagination a poetic flame whose heat and glory will
shine out in a score of masterpieces.
Towards the age of thirteen, the young Ivan was removed from these
influences. He was given two tutors, one French and the other German.
Having obtained his diploma as candidate in philology, he went to
Berlin to finish, or rather begin anew, his studies in the humanities;
and he brought them to a close by plunging into the current of
the Hegelian philosophy. He came back to Russia converted to that
“occidentalism” which we shall define later when we study Turgéniefs
political theories.
He made his _début_ as a writer in 1843, with a little poem,
“Parasha.”[26] The critic Biélinsky gave it such praise that it covered
the author with confusion. Towards the end of his life, Turgénief
criticised his poetry with a severity that was absolutely sincere. Even
at this period, he set as little value on his verses as though he
had already shown his ability in a prose masterpiece. The masterpiece
appeared three years later, in 1846. The first story in “The Annals
of a Sportsman,”[27] “Khor and Kalinuitch,” was published in the
_Sovremennik_ (“Contemporary”); and at a single stroke Turgénief’s fame
reached a height which will never be surpassed by any of his great
works.[28]
[Most of] the other stories in Turgénief’s first collection were
written abroad. The author came back to Russia in 1851, but only to
leave it again two years later. He will still have a domicile there,
and above all he will come back regularly to keep up his relations,
and touch foot to earth; but it may be said that after 1863 he made
only flying visits to his country. The Russians have heaped reproaches
on Turgénief for this abandonment of his native soil. It has always
been easily explained. There was, at least primarily, a sort of state
reason. In 1852, owing to an article on Gogol’s death, Turgénief
got into difficulty with the imperial censorship, which ended in a
month of close imprisonment, and in the writer being interned at his
estate. After two years of solitude and work, Turgénief felt the need
of “gaining freedom, the knowledge of himself.” He acquired these
conditions, outside of which it was impossible for him to write and to
struggle, at the price of life in a foreign country.[29]
But behold what was not known, and what was revealed only by the
posthumous publication of Turgénief’s letters. This Russian who made
his home abroad, who dwelt twenty years in France, and died in the very
heart of Paris, was overwhelmed during his forced or voluntary exile
with the blackest melancholy of homesickness, and during the last part
of his life suffered even the sharpest torment.
He did not succeed in acclimating himself, either at Baden Baden, in
spite of the charm of the situation where his poet’s glance first
rested; or at Paris, where he was to be enchained by the bonds of love
which he himself called “imperishable, indissoluble.” It may be asked,
in regard to this well-known friendship, whether Turgénief, exiled from
Russia by his desire for liberty, succeeded in avoiding all the forms
of dependence. It is a problem which I leave to the most inquisitive to
settle. I confine myself to pointing out in Turgénief the expressions
which now and again betray his weariness of exile, his restlessness as
of a Northern bird, a captive swan or eider, languishing, mourning with
regret for its cold natal seas. “I am condemned to a Bohemian life,
and I must make up my mind never to build me a nest.” “In a foreign
atmosphere,” he writes once more, “I decompose like a frozen fish in
time of thaw.... I shall certainly come back to Russia in the spring.”
During the winter of 1856 Turgénief made this promise to return; and
he repeats it many times, as though to assure himself further excuses
for keeping it. From that time he knows all the disappointments of a
wandering life; and to express the idea of not feeling at home where
one is, he uses a word of rare power: “Say what you will, but in a
foreign country a man is _dislocated_: you are needful to no one,
and no one is needful to you.” Far from growing feeble, this painful
impression will increase as time goes on; the flame of regret, instead
of going out or dying down, will get fresh vigor, and break forth in
new developments.
First it is the family instinct, which wakens and which speaks very
eloquently at that ambiguous hour when youth begins to withdraw, and
when, like the foliage in autumn, one feels a premonitory shiver,
harbinger of the wintry winds. “Anenkof married,” says Turgénief
smiling, “is handsomer than ever.” “Get thee a wife,” he writes
seriously to another of his friends: “it is the one thing needful.”
Then there is also the acute feeling of the impoverishment of the
creative faculty, the very disturbing realization or apprehension of a
sort of literary _anema_ due to the deprivation of the desired climate
with its inspiring horizons, with its atmosphere filled with vivifying
breezes and suggestive sounds. “I will admit, if you please, that the
talent with which I was endowed by nature has not grown smaller; but
I have nothing on which to set it to work. The voice is rested: there
is naught to sing, so it is better to be silent. And I have nothing to
sing, because I live away from Russia.” “Living abroad,” he says in
another place, “the fountain from which my inspiration sprang has dried
up.”
Finally, more than all, it is the lofty sadness and the noble remorse
at not being on hand, at not mingling more intimately in the troublous,
dangerous drama which is enacting on Russian soil. “In fact,” Turgénief
writes his friend the great author, Lyof Tolstoï, “Russia is now
passing through serious and gloomy times; but it is for that very
reason that at this moment one feels the gnawing of conscience at
living like a foreigner.”
And so this existence which seemed to be ruled by a certain
indifference, a sort of elegant and fortunate dilettanteism, was early
crossed, and to the very end disturbed, by fits of melancholy and
splenetic depression, the secret of whose existence few people, I am
inclined to think, ever discovered. Who seeing Turgénief unaffectedly
smiling, in a humor not exactly sportive, but sweet, even, and
obliging, would have suspected that after an interview with his
Parisian friends, for whom he saved all the flower of his wit, he would
shut himself up to confide his heart-secret to pages destined to fall
only under the softened and by no means mocking eyes of his old Russian
comrades?
One can easily imagine the sympathy roused in a Polonsky, for example,
by passages such as this: “The chill of old age every day penetrates
farther into my soul: it takes entire possession of it. The absolute
indifference which I find in me makes me tremble for myself. I can now
repeat with Hamlet,--
“‘How stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems me that life!’[30]
Perhaps this mood will pass; or, if it lasts, perhaps I shall succeed
in _lignifying_, and in that case, it is all the same.”
Another day he tears out from his private journal this page, the
disappearance of which is to be deeply regretted: “Again I am at my
table, and in my soul it is gloomier than the gloomiest night. Thus,
like a moment, passes the day, empty, aimless, colorless. A space to
give a passing glance, and, lo! it is bedtime again. No right to life,
no desire to live. Nothing to do, nothing to expect, nothing to hope
for.... Thou speakest of halos of glory, and of enchanting tones. O my
friend! we are the fragments of a vase broken long ago.”
When once the straits of old age were crossed, Turgénief enjoyed a few
years of relative calm, of less bitter resignation. It was the time of
his intimacy with George Sand and Flaubert. They both died. Illness
falls upon Turgénief himself, and nails him pitilessly to the land of
exile.
From the day when the way of return is cut off, the “occidental”
is seized once more with the agony of homesickness for the mother
country. His eyes and his heart are fastened immovably on the corner of
Russia whither all the memories of childhood and youth draw him. Unable
to see his village of Spaskoe, he sends his best friends to it, and
establishes them there. He begs them to give him endless details about
the peasants, about the women, the school, the chapel, the hospital.
He worries about the garden, and urges Mrs. Polonskaïa to look upon
its most humble products with “the eyes of the master.” He feels more
keenly than ever the value of what he has lost. In addition to his ever
renewed and lively regrets comes the feeling of bitterness and mourning
which is born of the irreparable. His country calls him, and draws
him with such force, that he has the sensation of a great “tearing
asunder.” That is the expression to which it is necessary to hold fast.
It is calculated to surprise even those who had the good fortune often
to meet Ivan Sergéyevitch; but what regret it ought to cause those who,
deceived by the way in which Turgénief persisted in living far away
from the Russian land, cruelly upbraided him for having forgotten his
country!
Turgénief was so far from forgetting Russia, that he went back almost
every year; and he wrote almost all his works there. The critics
scarcely had any suspicion of such a thing. They attacked Turgénief’s
later novels, bringing up against them his residence abroad. “How
could he know Russia any more? He no longer lives there.” Turgénief
was indignant at this objection, which “that old woman called the
public” persisted in hurling at him. He answered this argument once for
all, in terms which must be quoted: “The objection can only be made
to what I have published since 1863. Until that time,--that is, until
my forty-fifth year,--I lived in Russia, scarcely going out of the
country, except the years from 1848 to 1850. During just those years
I wrote ‘The Annals of a Sportsman.’ On the other hand, ‘Rudin,’ ‘The
Nest of Gentlemen,’ ‘On the Eve,’ and ‘Fathers and Sons’ were written
in Russia. But that makes no difference to the old woman. Her mind is
already made up.”
To be a little more precise, “Rudin” was published in 1855. “A Nest
of Gentlemen”[31] appeared in 1859 [1858?], and the year 1862 was
distinguished by the appearance of “Fathers and Sons.” Better than any
one, Turgénief understood the necessity of writing nothing without his
models before him; and he went to seek for them where they were to be
found. Turgénief’s correspondence shows these scruples in a score of
places, and especially in regard to “Fathers and Sons.” Having once
conceived the plan of the work, the novelist has no rest until he finds
himself in Russia. There only can he imagine, create, or, to speak more
accurately, reproduce what he sees in real life. His pen, which refused
to move as long as he was abroad, runs and flies over the paper. The
sight of familiar landscapes refreshes the parched brain: inspiration
flows.
Between the romance of “Fathers and Sons,” and that of “Smoke,” which
was published in 1867, during the period when the Russian writer was an
habitual resident of Baden Baden,[32] appeared quite a large number of
shorter stories and tales of less pretension, but not of less value.
There is more than one masterpiece of sentiment or imagination in
“Apparitions,” in “Strange Stories,” “Spring Waters,” “Living Relics.”
Not all these collections preceded “Smoke,” but they came shortly
before or shortly after it.
Between “Smoke” and “Virgin Soil,” Turgénief’s last great novel, passes
a period of nearly ten years. The cause of this long silence was the
alienation which had arisen between the writer and his public. Russian
readers had already begun to show their dissatisfaction with “Fathers
and Sons,” and the causes of this displeasure deserve to be closely
examined. We shall return to them in the course of this study. The
spitefulness of the critics was let loose against the very satirical
romance “Smoke;” other works, such as “The King Lear of the Steppe,”
did not even have the success of causing scandal, and were “damned with
faint praise.” “That,” said Turgénief, “for an author who is growing
old, is worse than a _fiasco_. It is the best proof that it is time to
stop, and I am going to stop.”
In such a resolution, there were other motives besides pique.
Turgénief felt weary, and, as it were, short of inspiration or of
subjects. In the intervals between the recuperative journeys which we
have mentioned, he was obliged to nourish himself on his own substance.
He knew that to suspend them, or even to postpone them too long, was at
the risk of losing his strength and wasting away even to consumption.
“I am compelled, like a bear in winter, to suck my paw; and thus it is
that nothing comes forth.”
The weariness disappeared, the pique wore away, and gradually this firm
resolution to enjoy rest and absolute silence was shaken. Turgénief
finally even found excellent reason for resuming the pen. It was
necessary, not to blot out, but to complete, the effect of “Fathers
and Sons” by writing another romance, which this time should clear up
misunderstandings, and put the author in the position and in the rank
that he felt he ought to hold. This romance, “Virgin Soil,”[33] did
not appear till 1876; but almost two years beforehand Turgénief was
talking of it, thinking about it, and working at it. It can be seen in
his correspondence, that the work is in some degree taking shape; and
under each abstract formula one can already detect the outlines of a
character who will be the realization of it.
It is easily understood how Turgénief, who expected so much from this
last work, who thought that he had put into it the best of his talent,
and reached the culmination of his creative faculty, was disappointed
and discouraged to receive once more only reproaches and blame. “This
time,” he says, “it is my last original work. Such is my decision,
and it is irrevocable.... I may possibly busy myself still with
translations. I am contemplating ‘Don Quixote’ and Montaigne.” In vain
opinion calms down, changes base, turns to praise and admiration: he
remains firm in his design of staying in retreat, and of “joining the
veterans.” Indeed, for a few months at least, he seems to drop this
implement of the writer, “which he has used for thirty years.”
He travels abroad, in England; and quickly finds himself too well
known, too much entertained, too much exhibited. This excess of glory
is incompatible with his modesty.
Was it the delight in his visit to Russia in the spring of 1878, was it
the joy of renewing long-interrupted relations of intimacy with Count
Lyof Tolstoï? At all events, Turgénief again finds literary work to his
taste. At first, it is true, he is seen occupying himself only with the
work of others. He wishes to do for Tolstoï the same service in France,
as for Flaubert in Russia, by popularizing their works in translation.
Or he publishes Pushkin’s correspondence, and supervises a superb
edition of the complete works of his favorite poet.
He writes Bougival his “Song of Triumphant Love,” which he regretfully
allows to be printed, and which is this time hailed as a marvel. He
makes a selection of his “Poems in Prose.” He puts some personal
reminiscences in the form of short stories; among others, “The Hopeless
Man.” He already passes beyond the horizon of life,--which is ending
for him amid the most cruel sufferings,--by writing that half-real
vision entitled “The Morrow of Death.”
Turgénief, by these short works, endeavored to get himself into the
mood of writing another great work. He was already beginning to speak
of it to his friends; he explained the subject; he had, perhaps,
blocked out his plan; and since we know his habits of work, and his
method, we are safe in adding that he had conceived the principal
types, that he had seen the majority of the characters pass and halt
before his eyes. In this romance, Turgénief intended to compare the
Russian with the French _grévistes_ or anarchists. We see it is the
subject which Zola had the ambition to take up in “Germinal;” and, in
spite of the popularity of the work, I may be allowed to believe that
this subject still remains to be treated.
The idea of this great romance must have been suggested to Turgénief’s
mind, as a consequence of his almost triumphal journey in Russia,
on the occasion of the Pushkin festival. A few years had sufficed
absolutely to change the feelings of the younger generation in Russia.
The popularity which the author of “The Annals of a Sportsman” so
suddenly won was restored to him after a pretty long period of
alienation, and at last beatified the author of “Virgin Soil.” The
enthusiastic reception of the Moscow students filled his soul with
the emotion of unexpected joy, and the ovation which he received had
for him all the value of an improbable result. A Russian who was very
near to Turgénief told me that, on this occasion, he found only a few
hesitating and broken words to reply to the speeches of the orators,
the leaders of this young generation; but he had the moistened eyes and
the smile of a happy man.
Full of gratitude for this eleventh-hour homage, he would have been
glad to express his thankfulness in his own manner; and doubtless
the new work would have translated it. His illness put a stop to his
project. On the 8th of April, 1882, Turgénief writes to Mrs. Polonskaïa
to inform her of the physician’s diagnosis in regard to what they
call his _angina pectoris_, or his gouty neuralgia of the heart. The
term was not accurate. It is known that Turgénief died of cancer of
the spinal marrow. Whatever the trouble was, the torment of it became
atrocious, and the suffering which the invalid underwent lasted
more than a year. He bore this slow agony with great sweetness. His
complaints were rare, and they were for the most part hidden under a
veil of irony which robbed them of every shade of bitterness.
Pinched by pain as by a vise, he still found the time and the power to
address comforting raillery to those who were sadder than himself. “For
your consolation,” he wrote to one of his friends, “I wish to quote one
of Goethe’s remarks, made just before his death. It would seem as if he
at least had to satiety all of the happiness that life can give. Think
what a pitch of glory he reached, loved by women, and hated by fools;
think that he had been translated even into Chinese; that all Europe
was setting out in pilgrimage to salute him; that Napoleon himself said
of him, ‘There is a man!’ think that our Russian critics, the Uvarofs
and others, burned incense under his nose: and yet, at the age of
eighty-two, he declared that during his long life he had not been happy
a quarter of an hour all told. Then for you and me it is the will of
God, isn’t it? Suppose the perfect health which Goethe always enjoyed
is lacking to us, still he was bored.... But what is to be done about
it?”
On the 3d of July, 1883, Turgénief with feeble hand, and at the cost
of cruel pangs, wrote in pencil the following unsigned letter to his
friend the great novelist Lyof Tolstoï: “It is long since I have
written you, for I have been and I am literally on my death-bed. It is
impossible for me to recover: it is not within the limits of thought.
I write you simply to tell you that I am happy to have been your
contemporary, and to express to you my last and most sincere request:
my friend, return to literary work! This talent of yours came to you
from the source whence come all our gifts. Ah! how happy I should be if
my prayer were to have the effect upon you so deeply desired! As for
me, I am a dead man. The doctors do not even know what name to give
my ailment. Gouty neuralgia of the stomach; no walking, no eating, no
sleeping. Bah! it is tiresome to repeat all this. My friend, great
writer of the Russian land, hear my supplication. Let me know if you
receive this slip of paper, and allow me once more to press you
closely in my embrace,--you, your wife, and all your family. I cannot
write you more, I am weary.”
Turgénief died a month later, on Monday, Sept. 3, 1883.
Turgéniefs features are so well known that it seems unnecessary to
sketch them in his biography. One of his characters, the gigantic
Karlof, thus defined the men of his race: “We are all born with
light hair, brilliant eyes, and pale faces; for we have sprung up
under the snow.” Turgénief himself had a good share of these race
characteristics. But in France the majority of people knew the good
giant only after he was well along in life, and when he already had the
aspect of one of those venerable kings of whom the poet speaks:--
... _Nosco crines incanaque menta._
Turgénief was of a very honest, very obliging, and very affable
nature.[34] Those who met him saw him to the best advantage at moments
when he allowed himself to talk with a charming frankness. He talked
deliciously, with abundance of feeling and a fluency of expression,
which went with him even when he spoke in French. He enchanted those
who listened to him in his moments of enthusiasm: always lively and
original, his conversation then became passionate and brilliant, even
lyrical. Listening to this stream of ideas and words hurrying in eager
floods, not noisily, from the lips of this old man of heroic mould and
structure, one involuntarily thought of some Homeric bard. There was
also “the harmony of the cicadas” and “all the sweetness of honey” in
the voice of the Nestor of the steppes.
II.
Was Turgénief only an artist, only a dilettante?
We must give up this false definition which his enemies wished to
become current, and which his friends even have been too willing
to let go with contravention. Superficial critics deny in him all
capacity, all enlightenment, on the questions of social order: they
have gone so far as to say that in these respects he has neither
teachings nor opinion. Certain fanatics, young or old, the Písarefs,
the Dostoyevskys, have taken it upon them to advance this pretext for
denying him the right to write and to print his works, and to be read
as they are and more than they are.
It is true to say that Turgénief never laid down, or even sketched
out, a programme; that he never made public speeches, that he did not
peddle interviews, that he did not lucubrate leading articles for the
editorial pages of journals. What am I saying? Perhaps he did not
even reply to a sensational toast during his active life! Many persons
obtain and grant the title of political man only by this test. In their
judgment, Turgénief was not one.
As for believing that Turgénief had in political matters no definite
opinions, or keen sympathies, or profound views, or well-digested
purposes, it takes a pretty strong dose of passion or of _naïveté_ to
accept and to promulgate this mistake. Those who have read his works
carefully suspected it; those who were in his intimate circle had no
question about it: but no scepticism in this regard could withstand the
revelations of his correspondence.
We know what popularity the Slavophile party gained from the moment of
its birth. The declamations of the Pogodins and the Aksákofs against
“occidental rot,” their dithyrambs in honor of the virtues of the
Slavic race, their childish programmes pretending to put the Russian
people on the right track, and to free it from the old vestment
of foreign ideas and habits which Peter the Great had swaddled it
with,--all this specious rhetoric, flattering at once the national
vanity, ignorance, and indolence, found in Turgénief from his early
youth a decided enemy. His conviction as an occidental, which was the
foundation of all his other convictions, could not be shaken either by
the constant effort of years or by the sudden shock of the most varied
events.
But what was the characteristic of this occidentalism? Did it go so
far as to dislike the special features of the Russian people, and
desire to extirpate the individuality of the race, as one would demand
the excision of a tumor or the extirpation of a wart? Turgénief was
too proud of being a Russian, not to have a legitimate share in the
development of these peculiarities of the national type; but, according
to his own words, it was repugnant to him “to feel any vanity in this
sort of exclusiveness, in whatever sphere it was manifested, pure art
or politics.” In his eyes, Slavophilism was an artificial entity, a
sort of hollow edifice, constructed on foreign models and in imitation
of the German genius.
He could not reconcile himself to the idea of artificially isolating
Russia from the rest of Europe, and of shutting her up in a sort of
quarantine, where, in order to be free from foreign influences, the
result would be that the natal air would not preserve its purity, but
would grow vitiated and rarefied. And with still greater reason, he
regarded as puerile the thought of giving new life to the European
organism by the infusion of the Slavic element. This ambition of
grafting the Russian shoot on the aged wood of other races tore from
him protestations of very expressive irony. “I cannot accustom myself
to this view of Aksákof’s, that it is necessary for Europe, if she
would be saved, to accept our orthodox religion.” Every policy that
adopted this narrow principle seemed to him worthy of reprobation,
at least in its principle. “In freeing the Bulgarians we ought to be
guided to this step, not because they are Christians, but because the
Turks are massacring and robbing them.” “All that is human is dear to
me,” he says again: “Slavophilism is as foreign to me as every other
orthodoxy.”
In bringing these habits of moderation to his judgments of the acts
of the government, and of the men who helped, who extolled, who
blamed, who clogged its action, Turgénief might have expected to cause
dissatisfaction, and to rouse for the most part only murmurs. Early
in point of fact, and even to the end of his career, Turgénief is the
object of violent attacks from the opposite party. At the very moment
when the younger generation of Russians felt that they were travestied
by him in “Fathers and Sons,” and when Tchernuishevsky, the author of
the famous romance “What is to be Done?”[35] turns to his own profit
the misunderstandings caused by the appearance of the hero Bazarof;
Turgénief, for having created this same Bazarof, for having refused to
exaggerate or blacken his character, makes for himself irreconcilable
enemies in the reactionary party. He quarrels with Katkof, the
officious journalist, the confidant of the heir-apparent, the inspirer
of that retrograde policy which has prevailed in Russia of late years.
“When I left ‘The Russian Messenger’ (_Russki Vyestnik_), Katkof sent
me word that I did not know what it was to have him for an enemy. He
is trying, therefore, to show me. Let him do his best. My soul is not
in his power.”
No consideration of interest, no low ambition for popularity, could
have decided Turgénief to deviate from this line of conduct. We
remember the quite barren movement of agitation started a few years ago
by those young people who called themselves, somewhat naïvely, “the
new men.” A lady who was one of their sympathizers sends Turgénief a
bundle of documents: it is the confession of one of the representatives
of this progressive generation. Turgénief finds in this jumble of
prose and verse only two characteristics,--an intoxicated, delirious
self-conceit, and boundless incapacity and ignorance. It is vain to
make allowance for time of life, and to attribute a part of their
faults to the extreme youth of these individuals puffed up with a
mighty sense of their small importance. Under it all there lies “only
feebleness of thought, absence of all knowledge, a scantiness of talent
verging on poverty.” He does not put his unfavorable judgment under any
sort of subterfuge or oratorical disguise: his frankness costs him a
storm of bitter criticisms.
Yet Turgénief is the very same man who will receive in Paris other
young people, with still more trenchant opinions, still more angular
forms; and “in their presence,” he says eloquently, “I, old man that I
am, I open my heart, because I feel in them the ‘real presence,’ and
force, and talent, and mind.” These virtues attracted him and disarmed
him, no matter in what class of people or in what group of thinkers he
found them. Thus he is seen giving the patronage of his name, and the
cover of his authority, to the first work on the newspaper _Le Temps_
of a young Russian, treated by the home government as a dangerous
character. To punish Turgénief for this audacious deed, the minister
causes him to be insulted, slandered by a paid scribbler. “Verily,
among us,” writes Turgénief, “many shameful things are exposed to God’s
air, like this vile article of the rascally....”
Now, a few days later, on the occasion of the attempted assassination
of 1879, behold how the man whom “The Moscow Gazette” (edited by
Katkof) affected to confound with the scatter-brains of Nihilism,
expressed himself: “The last ignominious news has greatly troubled me.
I foresee that certain people will use this senseless outrage to the
disadvantage of the party which justly, in the interest of its liberal
ideas, places the Tsar’s life above every thing; for salutary reforms
are to be expected from him alone. In Russia, how can a reform be
imagined which does not come from above?... I am deeply troubled and
grieved. Here for two days I have not slept at the idea of it. I think
about it, and think about it; but I cannot come to any conclusion.”
Whatever were his apprehensions, he could not foresee with what fury
of re-action the Emperor would strive to stem the Liberal current, by
which, when he first mounted the throne, he had allowed himself to be
carried onward. Turgénief suffered from this aberration of power more
than can be told. He foresaw new acts of despair, which would give
a color of reason to measures of repression constantly growing more
crushing. He attributed this infatuated policy to the influence of
Pobyedonostsef, the _Ober-Prokuror_ of the Holy Synod; and above all
to the counsels of Katkof, that former Liberal, that exile converted to
the most brutal absolutism. He writes: “Who can tell what is going on
at home, _Katkovio regnante_?”
With what passion Turgénief uttered one day before two callers, one
of whom was a Frenchman, this expression, which I find also in his
correspondence! With what pathetic eloquence he mourned for the days of
yore, the days of the old oppression! “We had then a bare wall before
us,” he writes, “but we knew where it was necessary to make the breach.
To-day the door is ajar, but to enter through this narrow opening is
more difficult than to undermine and cast down the wall.”
I find, among some notes taken down after an afternoon call upon Ivan
Turgénief during the winter of 1882, a rather expressive _résumé_ of
his conversation, which I beg permission to quote in its entirety. “At
that time we felt sustained by an auxiliary which allows one to defy,
and which finally softens, all the severities of power,--Opinion. We
had on our side the two stimuli which lead to victory,--the feeling
of duty, the presentiment of success. Who would have believed that the
day would come when we should look back with regret upon this period of
terror, but of hope; of oppression, but of activity! Indeed, were not
the youth of that time happy and enviable compared to those of to-day?
What sincere mind can help feeling the deepest pity for that handful
of Russians, educated, or greedy for education, whom the misfortune
of the times has driven to the most frightful extremes? You might say
that every thinker is caught between the anvil of an ignorant populace
and the hammer of a blinded power. The Russian people are afraid
even of those who, scorning every danger, are laboring to gain them
their rights; they are absolutely ignorant, and are afraid of every
innovation. They have the anxious look, and the quick flashes of anger,
of a wild beast. We have just seen them rush upon the Jews with a sort
of frenzy. If the people were not kept like a bear fastened to a chain,
they would treat the revolutionists with the same fairness and the same
gentleness.
“As to the throne, the end of advance in the path of absolutism has
just about been reached. It is now the formidable ideal of tyranny.
During the preceding reign it took the initiative of reform. Alexander
II. was carried away by the current of liberal ideas. He ordered
measures to be taken; above all, he allowed projects to be elaborated.
He wished, for example, to give the district assemblies power enough to
struggle against the abuses of the _tchinovniks_, and to put a stop to
corruption. But one day he was panic-struck. Karakózof’s pistol-shot
drove back into the shade that phantom of liberty, the appearance of
which all Russia had hailed with acclamation. From that moment, and
even to the end of his life, the Emperor devoted himself to the undoing
of all that he had done. If he could have cancelled with one stroke the
glorious _ukaz_ which had proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs, he
would have been only too glad to disgrace himself.
“What can be said of his successor, that doting sovereign, that victim
nailed to the throne? He shuts himself between four walls, and, what
is worse, between four narrow, limited minds, the responsible editors
of the policy of an anonymous tsar, the former Liberal and exile,
Katkof. It is a war upon ideas, a crusade of ignorance. Russia is
having its Inquisition, it has its Torquemada. What other name is to
be given to that minister of creeds, or, to speak more exactly, that
procuror-general of the Synod, Pobyedonostsef?
“The Tsar sees in Pobyedonostsef the most virtuous and the most saintly
man in all the empire. He has for him all the tenderness of Orgon; and
you might say that he likes to think, like that pig-headed dupe,--
“‘He teaches me for naught to feel affection,
My soul from every friendship he estranges.’
“Just as the Tsar loves and venerates Pobyedonostsef, so he shows
Katkof _naïve_ admiration and respectful deference. In the one he
sees science inborn; in the other, religion personified. But the more
dangerous of these two fanatics is Katkof, the former Liberal, the
companion of Herzen’s misfortunes, the ex-professor of philosophy at
Moscow. He scorns to hold the reins of power; he likes better to give
the word to those who carry the order for him and by him alone. The
ministers are his valets; he has even his under-slaves; it would not be
interesting to mention all their names. He is the disgraceful Richelieu
behind the throne, who terrorizes Russia.”
Notwithstanding the very gloomy aspect of the present, Turgénief had
unshaken faith in the future. “We must not expect that the future will
be all roses. No matter, things will come out all right.” And what were
the means, according to Turgénief’s idea, of realizing this? Give up
illusions and fidgeting. Don’t imagine that you are going to find a
panacea, a remedy for the great evils; and that, to cure the Russian
colossus of all his tribulations, it will be sufficient to practise a
sort of incantation “analogous to the spells used by old women to calm
the toothache suddenly, miraculously.” According to Turgénief, the
miraculous means alone changes: “sometimes it is a man, sometimes the
natural sciences, sometimes a war;” but what is unchangeable is faith
in the miracle. That is the superstition which first of all must be
extirpated.
Likewise the idea of obtaining without delay “large, beautiful, and
glorious” results, the idea of wishing “to move mountains,” must be
renounced. It is necessary to know how to pay attention to little
objects, to limit one’s self to a very narrow circle of action, not
to step out of it; and there without glory, almost without result,
work incessantly. The only activity that is fruitful was defined by
Turgénief, in quoting the two verses of Schiller’s old man: “Unwearied
activity is that which adds one grain of sand to another.” “What!” said
he, “you begin by telling me that your constructive work is ended,
that the school has just been begun; and, a little farther on, you
speak of the despair which takes hold of you! I beg of you, for pity’s
sake: your enterprise has already had some small result. It is not
unfruitful. What more do you want? Let every one do as much in his own
sphere, and there will be a grand, a splendid result.”
And Turgénief was one of the first to put his doctrine into practice.
Just as in his youth he signed the charter for the emancipation of his
serfs, with the same pen which wrote the indictment of serfage in “The
Annals of a Sportsman;” so in the time of his old age, notwithstanding
his absence, tortured as he was by the horrors of disease, he preached
humbleness of aim and constancy of effort, but he preached it by his
example. All his cares were directed to the improvement of the material
and moral condition of his former serfs. He granted them a fifth of
the sum settled upon for the redemption. At his own expense he built
a school; he founded a hospital in his village of Selo Spaskoe; he
succeeded in diminishing drunkenness, and in spreading a taste for
reading in a region where, at the time of his boyhood, an educated,
self-taught _muzhik_ was a genuine rarity.
His correspondence shows that he was greatly concerned about his estate
in the government of Orel: but it was not the revenue of his lands
that troubled him; it was the happiness, the moral welfare, of his
little people of Spaskoe. Behold the evolution which he wanted to see
accomplished from one end to the other of his country, and which, so
far as in him lay, he called forth, he prepared.
Any other policy seemed to him useless, dangerous, almost criminal. He
hoped that the new reign was going to inaugurate a whole tradition
of efforts in favor of the development of the rural classes. That was
why he manifested his sympathy with the new Tsar, on the accession
of Alexander III.: he applied to him the title, the “Emperor of the
_muzhiks_,” and, if this was not a name of praise, it was found at
least to contain a counsel.
“All that one can say,” wrote Turgénief again on the subject of the
Tsar, “is that he is Russian, and nothing but Russian.... Seeing him
anywhere, one would know his country.” I do not know whether these
words went to the Tsar’s heart; but are they not honorable to him
who penned them? What Slavophile would have imagined any thing more
eloquent in their simplicity? In giving this emperor, “in whose veins
runs scarce a drop of Russian blood,” his naturalization papers,
Turgénief surely thought that he had reached the borders of eulogy.
III.
After reading what has gone before, I trust that no one will be
inclined to see a mere paradox in this affirmation: Turgénief was above
all things interested in the question of politics and social order, and
of this interest were born all his great works. This was the reason
that Turgénief’s writings so stirred the public: hence the favor of his
readers at first was, enthusiastic; hence came notorious alienation,
irritation, almost calumnious fury, from the time when the public and
the author no longer advanced with equal steps towards progress. For,
here is the point to be noted: Turgénief never ceased to make progress;
but as long as he walked slowly, with regular steps, like a man who
holds aloof from the popular current, and is not dragged along against
his will by the rising tide of the throng, the masses of the nation--I
mean the majority of the educated classes--no longer regulated his
gait, and, seeing him each day a little farther behind them, imagined
that he was retrograding or was not following. Turgénief was advancing,
and he went to great lengths. Let us see how great was the distance
between “The Annals of a Sportsman” and “Virgin Soil.”
Turgénief somewhere expressed his sympathy and admiration for Don
Quixote. He contrasted him with the dreamer Hamlet, in whom he took
little stock. Did not he himself enter the career of letters like a
knight-errant (_campeador_) in the lists? From the very beginning,
when he had won all the glory of a victor, he gave his young talent
to the service of the right and of truth; he turned his pen, like a
sword, against egotism, against injustice, against prejudice,--in a
word, against the different forms of error. His maiden book, “The
Annals of a Sportsman,” was not merely a literary event: it brought
about a political revolution. This picture of the wretched condition of
the serfs contributed in large measure to call forth the _ukaz_ that
enfranchised Russia.
It was not the first time that fiction had attacked the social
question. Gogol had already struck the first blow against the enemy
which Turgénief had the honor of defeating. But the author of “Dead
Souls” had laid himself out especially to depict the faults and foibles
of the small Russian proprietors; and, while he made it sufficiently
evident how miserable was the condition of the serfs under their
grotesque or detestable tyranny, his book left the unfortunate _muzhik_
in the background. Turgénief’s originality consisted in placing this
pariah in full light. He dared to show not only his pity but his
affection for the Russian peasant, often narrow-minded, ignorant, or
brutal, but good at heart. He undertook to reveal to the Russians this
being which they scarcely knew.
In the very first pages of his book he showed him with his instinctive
qualities; and for this reason he took pains to place him in an
exceptional condition, that is to say, in that sort of relative
independence occasionally realized in spite of, or by favor of, the
law. Khor and Kalinuitch are accordingly almost freed from the actual
miseries of serfage,--the first by living in the midst of a swamp,
avoiding statute labor by paying a quit-rent (_obrok_); the second
by serving as whipper-in for his master, whom he passionately adores.
The former is a _muzhik_, who has the feeling of reality, “who is
settled in life;” the other is a dreamer, “who sticks to nothing, and
smiles at all things.” Khor the cautious has carefully observed men and
things, and his experiences are expressed with that humorous _naïveté_
which gives such a color to the conversation of the Russian peasant.
Kalinuitch the enthusiast has the inspired language of a poet. He is
largely endowed with mysterious powers. The bees obey him as though he
were an enchanter. Both of them are good. The one is devout and gentle;
the other, simply cordial and hospitable. There is profit in listening
to the former, and pleasure in holding intercourse with the latter.
Under these features Turgénief pictured the Russian of the country
districts. After showing him, so to speak, in his native state, he went
on to explain the deformities from which the type was liable to suffer
under the brutalizing influences of serfdom.
The first alteration of the character of the Russian _muzhik_ is a
sort of ferocious, even savage, humor, which takes the place of the
original reason or ingenuity. The huntsman Yermolaï offers us a curious
example of this reversion to barbarism, of this return of the _muzhik_
towards the savage state. Emancipated in the manner of an outlaw, of a
bandit, he lives in the woods or the marsh, sleeping on a roof, under
a bridge, in the crotch of a tree, hunted down by the peasants like
a hare, beaten sometimes like a dog, but, aside from these trials,
enjoying to the full this strange independence. He does not support
his wife or his dog, both of whom he beats with the same brutal
indifference. He has all the instincts of the beast of prey in scenting
game, in trapping birds, in catching fish. He already possesses the
shrewdness of the savage: he would easily acquire his cruelty. “I did
not like the expression which came over his face when he applied his
teeth to the bird he had just brought to earth.”
However precarious and anxious this independent life may be, it appears
very enviable when compared to the torment and degradations of
slavery. The _muzhik_ Vlas walks all the way to Moscow, where he comes
to ask a reduction in his quit-rent; for his son who paid it for him is
dead, and he himself is old. The _barin_ slams the door in his face,
with the words, “How do you dare to come to me?” Vlas sadly returns to
his hut, where his wife is waiting for him, blowing in her fist from
starvation. “His lip is drawn, and in his little bloodshot eyes stands
a tear.” He suddenly bursts out into a laugh, thinking that they can’t
take any thing more from him than his life,--“a wretched pledge,”--and
that that damned German, the _prikashchik_ Quintilian Semenitch, “will
shuffle in vain:” that’s all he’ll get. That tear of anguish, and that
desperate laugh, are never to be forgotten.
Here are other impressions not less cruel. The serf Sutchok, now
employed at his trade of fisherman, tells how he began by working
as a cook; and how, in changing his profession, according as he
went from master to master, he found himself successively cook,
restaurant-keeper, actor, then back to his ovens again, then wearing
livery as sub-footman, then postilion, then huntsman, then cobbler,
then journeyman in a paper-mill. These caprices of the mastership which
weighs upon the _muzhik_ have not only their ridiculous side: there is
always something detestable about it. The last owner of this wretch,
whose life is only an irksome apprenticeship, is an old maid, who vents
her spleen at having been left in single-blessedness by forbidding all
her household to marry. This abasement of a human being, condemned by
his master to isolation, to barrenness, like a beast, is powerfully
shown in the little tale entitled “Yermolaï and the Miller Girl.”
But what seems still more painful than the slavery itself is to see
that it is endured with resignation, and sometimes even upheld,
excused, by those who have to submit to it. “How do you live?” is asked
of one of these victims of feudal despotism. “Do you get wages, a fixed
salary?”--“A salary! _Ekh!_ _barin_, we are given our victuals. Indeed,
that’s all we need, God knows! And may Heaven grant long life to our
_baruina_!” Another has just been tremendously flogged. He treats with
very bad grace the stranger who presumes to express commiseration;
he takes the part of the master who has so cruelly abused him for a
trifle; he is proud of belonging to a man who makes strict use of his
seignorial prerogatives. “No, no! there is not a _barin_ like to him in
the whole province!”
Turgénief does not confine himself to the expression of pity for the
_muzhiks_: he is unsparing of the nobles. With what irony he depicts
for us their false sentimentality, their detestable selfishness! How he
lays his finger on their absurdities! How he scourges their cruelty!
How he lays bare their hypocrisy! They all appear in the book, from
the narrow and cringing citizen, to the cynically brutal country
_pomyeshchik_, from the gentlemen of the steppe (_stepniaks_) up to the
vanished nobles, those legendary _vyelmozhui_, personified in Count
Alekséï Orlof, so handsome, so strong, so terrible, and at the same
time so beloved! “If you were not acquainted with him, you would feel
abashed; but after getting wonted to his presence, you felt warmed and
delighted as by a beautiful sunrise.” The author finds in this vanished
aristocracy the rather barbaric form of his own grandfather, and he
cannot refrain here from a sort of admiration. It is true, that small
men have a sympathy very differently marked for these ostentatious
giants of the olden days. Besides, is it not enough that the author
of “Annals of a Sportsman” makes no secret of the excesses committed
by those of his race? Has he not the right to remember that the form
of oppression has merely been changed, and that the serf is not less
abused from falling from the mighty hands of the tyrants, into the
hooked claws of tyrannical weaklings?
But the true tormentor of the serf was a man whose condition
brought him nearest to the _muzhik_; the one who, more often than
not, was himself only a _muzhik_ polished up,--in other words, the
representative of the proprietor, the superintendent (_prikashchik_),
the _burmistr_. This subaltern master pays the peasant’s quit-rent
until the latter, overwhelmed with debts, is absolutely in his power.
He becomes his slave, his drudge. Now and then will be found in the
woods the corpse of some wretch who has torn himself from this hell, by
suicide. But what is the use of complaining? The proprietor receives
his revenue, and is satisfied. And then the _prikashchik_ has a
thousand ways of getting hold of the fault-finder, and the wreaking of
his vengeance brings a groan.
Proprietors, _muzhiks_, _priskashchiks_, all these characters strike,
move, stir, by their fidelity to the truth. In a subject which lent
itself so easily to declamation, the author succeeded in refraining
from all excess of fine writing. This self-restraint in form gave
greater force to the satire, and added weight to the argument. Besides,
under the irony the bitterness was felt, and under the comic fervor was
occasionally heard the rumbling of a generous wrath. Turgénief himself
explained the feelings which animated him at this period of his life,
which I would rather compare to the morning of a battle. He had just
left Russia, the atmosphere of which seemed no longer fit to breathe.
He went away to get a fresh start, so as to come back with a renewed
impetus against his enemy serfage. “I swore that I would fight it even
to the death; I vowed that I would never come to terms with it: that
was my Hannibal’s oath.”
From one end of his work to the other, Turgénief never did aught else
than thus reflect the feelings of the Russian people, express its
hopes, note carefully, proclaim sincerely, all the forward and backward
movements of opinion. In every one of his novels, there is to be found
one person whose appearance, conduct, and worth may vary, but whose
dominant characteristic holds throughout all changes. This personage,
however alive he may be, serves to express an abstraction. He is, so
to speak, the incarnation of the wishes, the fears, the claims, of
the Russian people. Now, in Russia, as elsewhere, and still more than
elsewhere, public opinion is undergoing constant modification: the
novelist has followed with careful eye, and copied with accurate hand,
all these rapid transformations.
In Dmitri Rudin, he depicts for us a lofty but inconsequential
generation, eloquent, but lacking in depth, eager for every
undertaking, but having no fixed purpose; as the youth of 1840 must
have been, who had the power of speech, but were prevented from
action.[36]
This was the epoch when there was a passion for words, and especially
for words of foreign origin. Hegel’s philosophy frothed and foamed
in these Russian brains, so little constituted for the digestion of
metaphysical nutriment. But the fashion was for cosmopolitanism: they
affected to scorn national habits; they dreamed only of going “beyond
Russia.” Rudin, who personifies this error, was its first victim. At
first he carries away, he rouses to enthusiasm, all whom he approaches;
then his friends, his disciples, ultimately, sooner or later, turn
against him. He succeeds in rousing only hatred, or exciting only
distrust. Useless and inactive amid his own people, he goes to perish
on a French barricade; and by a supreme but unconscious irony, the
insurgent who fights at his side pronounces his funeral oration in
these words: “Lo, they have killed our Pole!”
Is it true to say that the Rudins were of no advantage to their
country? The author gives us to understand, that their words may have
cast the germ of generous thoughts into more than one young soul to
whom nature will not refuse the advantage of a fruitful activity.
To this same unfortunate family of forerunners, and to this same
sacrificed but indispensable generation, belongs the character of
Lavretsky in the romance entitled “A Nest of Noblemen.” Unlike Rudin,
Lavretsky owes nothing to schooling. Scarcely does he have time for
applying his simple and ingenuous mind to the acquisition of knowledge
during the period between the moment when he escapes the durance of
paternal despotism, and that when he takes upon him the more pleasing
yoke of conjugal will. He therefore has remained Russian; he believes
in the future of the national genius. He is lavish of himself, and
of those of his age; but he admires the tendencies of the young, and
he praises their endeavors. Departing from his country, happy, or at
least under that delusion, he returns alone and crushed; but he has the
consolation of doing his duty, that is to say, cultivating his estate,
and improving the lot of his peasants. This unostentatious work of
Lavretsky’s, better than Rudin’s brilliant declamations, pointed out to
the rising generations what Russia henceforth expected from her sons:
“You must act, and the benediction of us old men will fall upon you.”
But this period of action which they seem to be approaching will be
postponed before the unanimous wishes of the novelist and the reader.
In the book “On the Eve,” translated into French under the title
“Hélène,”[37] the author’s aim is very evident. He contrasts two
Russians with a Bulgarian; and the brilliant or solid qualities of the
artist Shubin and the student Bersénief yield before the unique virtue
of Insarof, a more common nature. This virtue of the barbarian is to go
straight ahead; he does not delay for dreaming or discussion; there is
nothing of the Hamlet about him. However strange be his ideal, however
adventurous his lot, he carries with him Elena’s hesitating wisdom,
just as Don Quixote overcame Sancho’s rebellious good sense. It is this
decisiveness, this bold gait, this firm resolution not to fall back,
and resolutely to emerge from the beaten path, which the author of
“On the Eve” seems to hold up before the Russian people. But it might
be said that he despaired of finding in his own country the man of
action, destined to win the glory to come; and it was thus that the
Russian critics explained his significant choice of a Bulgarian for the
hero of his romance.
This ingenious explanation is not correct. Insarof and Elena have
experienced life. This beautiful young Russian girl, who is anxious to
devote herself to a noble cause, and who, not being able to die for her
own country, clings to the lot of the foreigner who shows her the path
of great sacrifices, was not a creature of Turgéniefs imagination. Not
only did Elena exist, but there was a throng of Elenas who asked only
for a chance to show themselves. This was seen as soon as the romance
was published. All feminine hearts throbbed. One might say that the
author had placed before the eyes of the virgins of Russia a mirror,
where, for the first time, they were allowed to see themselves, and
become conscious of their own existence. A few years later Elena would
have had a chance to offer herself to Russia. She would have acted like
Viéra Sasuluitch, or, not to go outside of fiction, like Marian in
“Virgin Soil.”
In the famous novel “Fathers and Sons,” the young generation for the
first time comes upon the scene. It is represented by the medical
student Bazarof. Better to bring out his hero by a fortunate contrast,
the author has put this brutal but thoroughly original plebeian face
to face with a gentleman in whom are united all the qualities and
the eccentricities of the conservative nobility. Again, it is German
education which has fashioned Bazarof. But Hegel’s theories have
given place to Schopenhauer’s; and Germanic pessimism, grafted on the
Russian mind, has brought forth very strange fruit. The young men of
whom Bazarof is a type are of the earth earthy, to the same degree as
that generation of which Rudin was the shining example showed itself
exalted. They have only one aim, action; they admit only one principle
of action, utility; they see only one form of utility at the present
time, absolute negation. “Yet isn’t it necessary to rebuild?--That does
not concern us. Before all things we must clear the ground.”
Here, clearly formulated, is the theory of Nihilism. This word,
invented by Turgénief, and spoken for the first time in “Fathers and
Sons,” has in short space gone all over the world. We know that all
Russian readers, young and old, blamed the author of the novel for
slandering them. The older generation could not forgive him for having
spurned their prejudices; the rising generation were angry with him
for not preaching their errors. What strikes us to-day is that at this
moment he was able to remain so clear-sighted and sincere; that he was
able to unite so much nobility with Pavel Kirsánofs narrow-sightedness,
and so much subtilty with Bazarof’s destructive scepticism.
But the character which Turgénief liked best in this romance of
“Fathers and Sons” was Bazarof,--in other words, that personage
representing the Russian soul with aspiration toward progress, no
longer ideal and vague, but violent, and brutal. “What! do _you_, do
you say that in Bazarof I desired to draw a caricature of our young
men? You repeat (excuse the freedom of the expression), you repeat
that stupid reproach? Bazarof! but he is my well-beloved son, who
caused me to break with Katkof, for whom I expended all the colors
on my palette. Bazarof, that quick spirit, that hero, a caricature!”
And he took delight in returning to the definition of this enigmatic
personage. He never wearies in commenting on “this harbinger type,”
this “grand figure,” surrounded by a genuine “magic spell,” and, as it
were, by some sort of “aureole.”
The conclusion of the book lies in the ironical and bitter advice
given by Bazarof to his friend Arkad: “Take thee a wife as soon as
thou canst, build thy nest well, and beget many children. They will
certainly be people of brains, because they will come in due time, and
not like thee and me.”
Thus is the solution of the social problem once more postponed. The
rock of Sisyphus falls back as heavily on the new-comers as on their
predecessors. The recoil is even so mighty that the observer feels
that he too is attacked by pessimism; and if he does not take pride in
absolute negation, like Bazarof or his young adepts, he just as surely
comes to deny their qualities, to see any sense in their conduct. The
romance “Smoke,” which is the expression of this new state of mind,
roused in Russia all the clamors by which a satire is received. What
was entirely overlooked was the feeling of painful compassion hidden
under the aggressive form. It was an act of enlightened patriotism,
to let daylight into the hollow declamations of the progressists, and
to lay the scourge on the stupid folly, the idiotic depravity, of a
nobility which had brought itself into discredit. Between Gubaref,
that solemn imbecile, and Ramirof, the complaisant husband of a
faithless wife, one must go to the hero of the story, Litvinof; that
is to say, to the idealized Russia, whose gloomy and painful destiny
we have followed across all Turgéniefs work, under the features of
Rudin, of Lavretsky, of Bazarof. Like Lavretsky twenty years before,
Litvinof returns to his country, overwhelmed with domestic troubles,
which exasperate all his other feelings, and change the mishaps of his
patriotism into despair. The vanity of love makes him find all things
vain. In the tumult of the recent years, in the agitation of divers
classes, in the words of others, in his own thoughts, he sees mere
nothingness, sham, smoke. The desolation of this conclusion was brought
up against the author of the book, by his compatriots, with a warmth
which almost disgusted him with the _rôle_ of political observer, and
almost deprived us likewise of a masterpiece in which Turgénief seems
to have reached his greatest height,--“Virgin Soil.”
The author of “Fathers and Sons” named and defined theoretic Nihilism:
in “Virgin Soil,” the same author shows us the Nihilists at the very
moment when, for the first time, they begin to act. Between the two
books a pretty long time elapsed, during which Turgénief kept silent.
There is lacking, therefore, among his works, a book which might let us
into the secrets of the dark development and mysterious spread of the
new theories. In regard to this Nihilist propaganda in its early years,
when it was only an attempt at self-instruction, we find, in “Virgin
Soil,” only hints, allusions. The very character, however, who is
going to bring about the crisis, at the risk of destroying every thing
along with himself, Markelof, still reads and propagates with naïve
assurance the “brochures” which are secretly sent him, and which he
passes on “under the mantle” to his other confederates. What subjects
were treated in these books so carefully hidden? Those which were worth
the trouble of reading were translations of foreign works on political
economy; writings attacking, with greater or less ability, the problems
of society. But this instruction, good or bad, could not have the least
influence on the great mass of the Russian population, which does not
read at all.
It was therefore necessary to find more efficacious means of action,
and to organize actual preaching. Then it was that a pretty large
number of people belonging to the educated classes, students like
Nedzhanof, women voluntarily deserting their own rank in life, like
Marian, undertook to go down among the people, to dress in their
style, to speak their dialect, to lead their rough lives, to gain
their confidence at the cost of this labor, to open their minds to the
ideas of liberty and progress, to rescue them from the double curse of
laziness and drunkenness, and, finally, to bring them into the path of
action. The trouble was that these people who preached action did not
themselves know where to begin the work. Each of them was waiting for
the word of command, which no one could give; for in this concert of
wills there was no one to direct, and the most violent efforts, from
lack of determined purpose, were obliged to remain without results.
Another insurmountable obstacle lay in the repugnance of the people
at emerging from their tremendous inertia. Nedzhanof compares Holy
Russia to a colossus, whose head touches the north pole and his feet
the Caucasus, and who, holding a jug of _vodka_ in his clutched
fingers, sleeps an endless sleep. Those who try to struggle against
this sleep lose their time and their labor. Discouragement takes hold
of them, and some of them, like Markelof, for having desired, having
tried by themselves alone, to perform a part which needs the efforts
of an army, go forth on the hopeless path by the gate that leads to
Siberia; others, like Nedzhanof, having lost faith in this work for the
regeneration and enfranchisement of a people to which they believed
themselves capable of offering their devotion, throw down violently
the double burden of their vain labor and their ridiculous lives. The
Russian Hamlet gets rid of his mission by suicide.
This beautiful novel of “Virgin Soil,” which must be read through,
appeared on the very eve of the great Nihilist suit against the One
Hundred and Ninety-three. At first the cry was raised, that the author
did not draw a true picture: the author was again slandering Russia.
A few days later the critics, dismayed at his power of divination,
accused Turgénief of having got into the confidence of the ruling
power, and of having had in his hands the entire brief of the
preparatory trial.[38] Some Nihilists were already dreaming of more
tragic performances. “I also,” said one of them, who at this time was a
refugee in Paris, “I also am a Nedzhanof; but I shall not kill myself
as he did: there is a better way of doing it.” This better way was
worse. It was assassination in the manner of Soloviéf, who, having
resolved to kill himself, and for the same reasons that influenced
Nedzhanof, will inaugurate suicide with a bloody preface.
Since “Virgin Soil,” the evolution of Nihilism has made new and
rapid strides. The mania of descending among the people, and “being
simplified” has given place to other fantastic notions, just as
useless, but less innocent. We have said that Turgénief died before
he had time to finish the romance in which he would have shown us the
agitations of to-day, and possibly pointed out the social reforms of
to-morrow.
Who knows what Russia is preparing for us? Hitherto the reforms have
been decreed by the throne; and the _ukazes_ have remained without
effect, because they have not had the support in the lever of the
people. The expenditure of energy, starting from above, did not make
the nation stir. But now suddenly the nation seems to be shaking off
its torpor. The peasants, hitherto deaf to all voices, and stubbornly
resistant of all progress, have perhaps found for themselves the way
of safety and redemption. They are assembling in their villages, and
they are organizing the league against drunkenness. This strike against
the wine-shop is terrifying to the Russian clergy: they see in it a new
form of heresy. In their eyes, these water-drinkers are _raskolniks_,
and the most dangerous kind. We know the Russian proverb versified by
Nekrásof: “The _muzhik_ has a head like a bull: when a folly finds
lodgement there, it is impossible to drive it out, even with heavy
blows of the goad.” It is this headstrong obstinacy which seemed to
postpone forever, and which may precipitate to-morrow, the settlement
of the social question.
IV.
The expressions, “Russian ideal,” “representative type of one
generation,” and other terms of this kind, which one must necessarily
use to mark the connection between Turgénief’s different works, must
not be allowed to give a false idea of the nature of his talent and of
his methods in fiction.
He has himself defined his talent. He has explained his methods so
far as they were essential. We have, therefore, only to turn to these
precious directions. “I will tell you in a few words that I am, so far
as preference goes, a realist; and that I am interested, more than all
else, in the living truth of the human physiognomy.” He says elsewhere,
that at no moment of his career has he ever taken for his point of
departure in a new creation an abstract idea, but that he has always
started with the true image, the objective reality, the characteristic
personage observed and living.
Here is the very principle of his æsthetic, as he summed it up in his
letter to Mr. King, a novelist just beginning his career: “If the study
of the human physiognomy, and of the life of another, interests you
more than the promulgation of your own feelings and your own ideas; if,
for example, it is more agreeable for you to reproduce accurately the
external appearance not only of a man, but also of a simple object,
than to express with elegance and warmth what you feel in seeing this
object or this man,--then you are an objective writer, and you can
begin a story or a novel.”
Truth is not disagreeable to those who love it: it gives life to their
conceptions. Turgénief’s work, the political bearing of which we have
already tried to show our readers, is a little world where go and come
a thousand people with variously expressive characters and faces. The
creator of such living characters as these has been compared to a
great portrait-painter. The comparison is unjust to the novelist. Like
the great painters of portraits, he seizes a dominant feature, and
expresses it powerfully. It is thus that in a book, on the canvas,
the resemblance is caught. But the art of a Titian, of a Reynolds,
renders the aspect of the face, and reveals, if you like, something
more,--the temperament of the model. It goes scarcely beyond that. The
novelist expresses, besides, a whole order of hidden facts, a whole
internal spectacle, of which the brush scarcely gives us an inkling.
There is therefore a double field of studies to go over, a double power
of observation to put into use. It is necessary at one and the same
time to note the attitude, and interpret the disposition; to catch the
expression of the face, and to penetrate the meaning of the character.
Turgénief possessed this double talent to a very high degree. As a
general thing, he paints with broad touches; and his portrait, both
physically and morally, is finished in few words. Sometimes the detail
is more minute, but the accumulation of lines serves only to verify
the dominant impression. I refer the reader to the romance of “The
Abandoned One,” and to that admirable portrait of the old Russian
gentleman in the time of Catherine II. What a calling-back of the past
is given by this old man of lofty stature, perfumed with ambergris,
glacial in doublet of silk with its relief of stock and lace ruffles, a
suspicion of powder on his hair brought behind into a cue, and in his
hand a gold snuff-box ornamented with the empress’s cipher! He always
speaks French; he scarcely knows Russian. He reads perforce every
day Voltaire, Mably, Helvétius, the _Encyclopédistes_; he has whilom
improvised verses in Madame de Polignac’s _salon_; he has been among
the guests at Trianon; he has seen Mirabeau wearing coat-buttons of
extravagant size, and his opinion on our great orator is, that he was
“exaggerated in all respects; that, on the whole, he was a man of low
tone, in spite of his birth.”
It is seen by this example, that Turgénief’s portraits often represent
a class in an individual. They are the expression of an epoch. In
fact, though he studies nature closely, he takes pains not to content
himself, as our realists do, with the first model that comes to hand.
He carefully seeks for the character whose features are sufficiently
marked and original, so that in copying it he shall be sure to
reproduce the general type. Thus he discovered Bazarof, the hero of
“Fathers and Sons.” The idea was given him by the chance which brought
to his sick-bed in a small Russian city the “young doctor of the
district,” who served him for his model. I do not know whether all
the characters of “Virgin Soil,” without exception, passed under the
author’s eyes; but I have heard Turgénief tell how he knew, and was
able to study, the most characteristic personage of the story, the
Nihilist woman,--the upright, solemn, and rather absurd, but strong and
sublime Mashurina.
It was by his knowledge of the heart of women, and by the
thorough-going fascination of his heroines, that Turgénief left far
behind him his great predecessor Gogol. By an inexplicable peculiarity,
the author of “The _Revizor_,” of “Dead Souls,” cared only to paint
women who were not women at all, who are lifeless abstractions or
caricatures.[39] The most gossiping biographers are embarrassed to
explain the reason of this impotence. All that can be said is that
Gogol dreaded too much the approach of woman-kind, ever to have the
chance to study the sex. On the contrary, Turgénief’s heroines are so
life-like, that under each portrait his readers have tried to recognize
and name some model. All well-informed Russians would have told you
in what palace in Warsaw dwelt Iréna of “Smoke,” or at the first
official reception would have pointed you Mrs. Sipiagina of “Virgin
Soil.” It certainly seems that all these delicate creations have the
irresistible seduction of reality. There is not a romance, not a
story, by Turgénief, in which there does not shine forth some feminine
face, sometimes of a rather strange grace, but singularly lifelike and
touching. Natalia and her sister in “Dmitri Rudin,” Liza in “A Nest of
Noblemen,” Elena in “On the Eve,” Marian in “Virgin Soil,”--it would be
necessary to name them all.
What rather surprises the French reader is not to find them always
beautiful; at least, with that perfect and improbable beauty which our
novelists do not hesitate to give their expressionless dolls. One has
regular features, a pretty foot, but her hands are too large. Another,
at first sight, seems ugly: “She wore her thick chestnut hair short,
and she seemed to be fretful; but her whole person gave the impression
of something strong, passionate, and fiery. Her feet and her hands were
extremely dainty; her little body, robust and supple, reminded one of
the Florentine statuettes of the sixteenth century; her movements were
graceful and harmonious.” What idealized beauty would have this living
grace?
Another singularity, which shows us to what a degree the author takes
us from our own latitude: in him the women have less originality than
the young girls. The indecision and feebleness found in their lovers,
the Rudins and the Nedzhanofs, is paralleled by the resolute wisdom,
and--let us use the words “graceful virility,” in them. They somewhat
resemble the Roman girls, and we expect to hear them say in their way
the “_Non dolet_” of the illustrious Arria. But no; they have not
in the least these rather theatrical attitudes and words. It is the
Nedzhanofs who die like impatient Stoics, or perhaps like discouraged
Epicureans: Marian continues to live, and without bustle to prepare
for the freeing of the country which she loves.
Women raised by noble feeling to the scorn of death are found elsewhere
than in Russia. What is more rare, and almost impossible to find, are
these fanatical sacrifices, these renunciations worthy of the primitive
days of the Church, which associate lovely maidens of sixteen with
imbecile vagabonds eaten up by hideous ulcers. Turgénief might have
multiplied in his work description of pathological cases (“Strange
Stories”), but if his realism is too artistic to delay over what is
commonplace, he is too honest to devote himself to exceptions.
The form which best brings out this sincerity of expression is the
tale. Turgénief takes little stock in dramatic form, at least in
his own case. “I see a subject,” he used to say, “only when I have
the framework, the portrait, the dialogues, the wanderings, of a
narration.” In the drama he felt himself bothered by the necessity
of collecting, abridging, curtailing, filling in; and his psychology
seemed to him warped, when presented in miniature. It is in vain that
you brought up in opposition to this modest claim the form of such and
such of his stories, which from beginning to end is an uninterrupted
scene, a dramatic dialogue.
“That is not dramatic dialogue,” said he: he was and had to remain a
narrator.
To find finished narration, it is sufficient, indeed, to open at
hap-hazard “The Annals of a Huntsman.” Nothing is lacking; not
character-painting, or lively course of the story, or surprise in
circumstances, or development of the situation, or harmony of outline,
or feeling for nature, or grace of style, or value of coloring. But one
ought to have heard Turgénief, and to have seen him in his character
of story-teller, to imagine to what degree all these qualities in him
were spontaneous. It was especially in this that his conversation was
unlike any one else’s: it translated ideas into images, and, without
any attempt, created paintings which one would never forget.
Does narration in Turgénief gain by assuming the ampler proportions
of the novel? Our French taste is open to suspicion, and I hesitate
about replying. Our good novelists are such clever carpenters: they
construct so symmetrically works so ingeniously arranged for effect;
the interest is kept up with such skill; the action moves along with
such a certain step, towards a logical result feared or suspected from
the very first word! We find ourselves at first not quite so much at
our ease in these Russian novels, which are full of art, but are bare
of little artifices; where the developments are like the course of real
life; where the characters hesitate, and sometimes remain still; where
the action develops without haste; and where the author does not even
think it important to come to an end. It is sufficient for him to state
facts, and explain characters. This perfect naturalness, at first a
trifle dubious, finally comes to have a great charm. There is nothing
which is more able to make us reflect on the puerile stress which we
lay on the method, and on the often to-be-regretted emptiness of our
novels of industrious mechanism.
We should not have given Turgénief his just deserts if we forgot to
praise him as a poet worthy of all admiration. I mean, as a poet in
prose; for Turgénief was no more successful than Gogol in making good
verse. Both of them used a language that was picturesque, infinitely
expressive, full of images, and, in the case of Turgénief more than
Gogol, of perfect purity and the greatest variety. He feels all the
beauties of nature, and expresses them with powerful originality, or
a delicate charm which shines through even the rather thick veil of
translations. And yet what shadings escape us, what graces are lost for
us!
The Russian language has infinite resources. If it is less exact in
expressing the relations of action and of time, it brings out the most
imperceptible circumstances of action. It outlines with less clearness:
it paints with incredible richness of coloring. It is easy to
understand what effects a writer who can see and can express--a poet,
in a word--is able to make with it. Turgénief’s descriptions threw
Merimée into despair. One day, when he was trying to put into French
a passage where the author had represented the peculiar sound of the
rain falling on a sheet of water, the French words _grésillement froid_
(cold shrivelling), destined to translate this inexpressible noise,
caused the author of “Colomba” to hesitate. “Yet that is it,” said he,
thinking better of it; “and the thing must be said, or lose the bit
of observation, which is perfectly true to nature. The Devil take the
pedants! Let us leave the phrase.”
How far this poetic realism is from our flat and tiresome enumerations
of details heaped up without selection! But the parallel between
the Russian realists and the French realists, to which this subject
constantly attracts us, would carry us too far. It is sufficient to
point out the essential difference. Observation in our realists is
systematic and cold; in the Russians, and, above all, in Turgénief, it
is always natural, and generally passionate. There is not a novel by
Turgénief where the pathetic has not a large part; and sometimes this
pathos, by the simplest means, reaches heights neighboring upon the
sublime.
I shall only quote one example of it, taken from “Fathers and Sons;”
and I have no fear that the reader will charge me with bad taste in
cutting out this admirable scene from this novel, extended as it is:--
“Although Bazarof pronounced these last words with a rather resolute
expression, he could not bring himself to tell his father of his
departure until they were in the library, just as he was going to bid
him good-night. He said, with a forced yawn,--
“‘Wait a moment. I almost forgot to let you know. It will be necessary
to send our horses to Fyodot to-morrow for the relay.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch stood stupefied.
“‘Is Kirsánof going to leave us?’ he asked at last.
“‘Yes, and I am going with him.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch fell back stupefied.
“‘You are going to leave us!’
“‘Yes, I have business. Have the kindness to send the horses.’
“‘Very well,’ stammered the old man, ‘for the relay. Very
good,--only--only--is it possible?’
“‘I must go to Kirsánofs for a few days. I shall come right back.’
“‘Yes, for several days. Very well.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch took out his handkerchief, and blew his nose,
bending over till he almost touched the floor.
“‘Well, be it so. It shall be done. But I thought that you--longer.
Three days--after three years of absence. It isn’t--it isn’t very long,
Yevgéni.’
“‘I just told you that I would come right back. I must!’
“‘You must? Very well: before all things, one must do his duty. You
want me to send the horses? Very well; but we did not expect this,
Arina and I. She just went to ask a neighbor for some flowers to put in
your room.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch did not add that every morning at daybreak, in bare
feet in his slippers, he went to find Timoféitch, handing him a torn
bill, which he picked out from the bottom of his pocket-book with
trembling fingers. This bill was designed for the purchase of different
provisions, principally food and red wine, great quantities of which
the young men consumed.
“‘There is nothing more precious than liberty; that’s my principle. It
is not well to hinder people. One should not’--
“Vasíli suddenly stopped, and started for the door.
“‘We shall see each other soon again, father, I promise you.’
“But Vasíli Ivanovitch did not return. He left the room, making a
gesture with his hand. Coming into his bed-chamber, he found his wife
already asleep; and he began to pray in a low voice, so as not to
disturb her slumber. However, she waked up.
“‘Is it you, Vasíli Ivanovitch?’ she asked.
“‘Yes, my dear.’
“‘You have just left Yeniushka? I am afraid that he is not comfortable
sleeping on the sofa. Yet I told Anfisushka to give him your
field-mattress and the two new cushions. I would have given him our
feather-bed too, but I think I remember that he does not like to sleep
too easy.’
“‘That’s no matter, my dear; don’t trouble yourself. He is
comfortable.--Lord, have pity on us sinners,’ he added, continuing
his prayer. Vasíli Ivanovitch did not talk long. He did not wish to
announce the tidings that would have broken his poor wife’s rest.
“The two young men took their departure the next morning. Every
thing in the house, from early that morning, assumed a sad aspect.
Anfisushka let fall the plate that she was carrying; Fyedka himself was
entirely upset, and finally left his boots. Vasíli Ivanovitch moved
about more than ever. He tried hard to hide his disappointment; he
spoke very loud, and walked noisily: but his face was hollow, and his
eyes seemed always to avoid his son. Arina Vlasievna wept silently. She
would have entirely lost her self-control if her husband had not given
her a long lecture in the morning. When Bazarof, after having repeated
again and again that he would come back before a month was over,
finally tore himself from the arms that held him back, and sat down in
the _tarantás_; when the horses started, and the jingling of the bells
was mingled with the rumbling of the wheels; when it was no use to
look any longer; when the dust was entirely settled, and Timoféitch,
bent double, had gone staggering back to his lodging; when the two old
people found themselves once more alone in their house, which seemed
also to have become smaller and older, ... Vasíli Ivanovitch, who but
a few moments before was waving his handkerchief so proudly from the
steps, threw himself into a chair, and hung his head on his breast. ‘He
has left us,’ he said with a trembling voice,--‘left us! He found it
lonesome with us. Now I am alone, alone,’ he repeated again and again,
lifting each time the forefinger of his right hand.[40] Arina Vlasievna
drew near him, and, leaning her white head on the old man’s white head,
she said, ‘What’s to be done about it, Vasíli? A son is like a shred
torn off. He is a young hawk: it pleases him to come, and he comes; it
pleases him to go, and he flies away. And you and I are like little
mushrooms in the hollow of a tree: placed beside each other, we stay
there always. I alone do not change for thee, just as thou dost not
change for thy old wife.’
“Vasíli lifted his face, which he had hidden in his hands, and embraced
his companion more tenderly than he had ever done, even in his youth.
She had consoled him in his disappointment.”
Were we not right in speaking here of the pathetic, and was it not
well that we drew the reader’s attention to this good old word? It
expresses an old idea, which, with no offence to the lovers of the
commonplace, is not yet ready to perish. It is the mistake of the
French realists,[41] to take coolness for strength, and they claim to
be considered very strong men. Turgénief’s great superiority consists
in his having no pretension, not even to be trivial and common. He does
not make it a matter of pride to stay on the hither side of the truth.
V.
In this study of Turgénief, I do not flatter myself that I have pointed
out all the aspects of a character so varied,--that I have shown all
the traits of a nature so complex. Yet it would be a serious lack if I
did not explain Turgénief’s relationship to the writers of his country,
or if I neglected the great number of criticisms which he has passed,
in his letters to his friends, in regard to the literary movement of
the last thirty years.
He characterizes the epoch to which he belongs. It is still, in his
opinion, an epoch “of transition.” He deplores the lack of union, the
want of solidarity, in the men who in Russia hold this weapon,--the
pen; and who might, by concentrating their efforts, triumph over so
many obstacles against which, in their isolation, they run a-muck and
bruise themselves. “Each one sings his own song, and follows his
lonely path.”
He speaks without too much feeling about his enemies, unless he finds
a settled aversion for their work, and for their conception of art.
“I am sorry for Tchernuishevsky’s dryness, his tendency to crudeness,
his unceremonious treatment of living writers; but I find nothing in
him corpse-like. I see a living fountain spouting.” To be sure, he has
little to praise in the man of whom he thus speaks; but malice, arising
from personal attacks, could not draw him far from the truth. “These
are spring waters,” said he in regard to certain injurious writings
directed against him. “They will run off, and no trace of them will be
left.”
It is not the same with him when teachings wound him, and when the
literary form disgusts him. After having loved Nekrásof, he goes so far
as no longer to recognize any talent in him, so shocked, so disgusted,
is he by his intentional brutalities. His verses “leave behind them
an after-taste which makes me nauseated.” “What a son of a dog!” he
says in another place. “He is a vulture, ravening and gorging.” But
Nekrásof[42] died before him; and he modifies, he explains the judgment
which he had passed upon him. “No matter if the young have been
infatuated with him, this has done no harm. The chords set in vibration
by his poetry (if you can give the name of poetry to what he wrote)
are good chords. But when St. ----, addressing these young people,
tells them that they are right in placing Nekrásof above Pushkin and
Lermontof,[43] and tells them so with an imperturbable smile, I find it
hard to restrain my indignation, and I repeat the lines of Schiller:--
“‘I have seen splendid crowns of glory woven for most common brows.’”
His early sympathy for the novelist Dostoyevsky[44] was soon changed
to dislike, owing to their differences of opinion. The sharp features
in the character of the author of “Crime and Punishment” were not slow
to disgust Turgénief. He could not be brought back by the reading of
works, the clearly marked tendency of which is sometimes to put a check
upon his own. He was not sparing of admiration for the “Recollections
of a Dead House.” “The picture of the _banya_ (bath) is really worthy
of Dante. In the character of the various people (that of Petrof, for
example), there is much fine and true psychology.”
But when Dostoyevsky’s faults grow more pronounced; when his qualities
become extravagant, and themselves turn to mannerisms; when this
keenness, once so fine and delicate, loses itself in subtleties; when
the writer’s sensitiveness changes into supersensitiveness; when his
imagination goes beyond the bounds of reason, and gloats over the
pursuit of the horrible,--Turgénief does not hide his disgust, his
scorn. “God, what a sour smell! What a vile hospital odor! What idle
scandal! What a psychological mole-hole!”[45]
Turgénief prefers as he debars, he loves as he detests; that is to say,
with a passion which is contagious, and carries the reader with him.
One should see with what pleasure he receives the works of the satirist
Soltuikof, better known and more appreciated under the _nom de guerre_
of Shchedrin. What a feast it was for him, when a new “Letter to my
Aunt” appeared! With what joy he applauded its satirical features which
were “powerful even to gayety”! Soltuikof seems disturbed at the flood
of hatred which he stirs up. “If you only had a title of hereditary
nobility, nothing of the sort would have happened to you. But you are
Soltuikof-Shchedrin, a writer to whom it will have been given to leave
a deep and permanent impress on our literature: then you will be hated,
and you will be loved also; that only depends on the person.”
The most striking example of this generosity of Turgénief’s is shown
us by the spectacle of his relations with his great rival Tolstoï.
From the moment when Tolstoï’s first book appeared, Turgénief, already
famous, distinguishes the young author, welcomes him as a new star,
and feels impelled by an irresistible desire to love him. “My heart
goes out to you as towards a brother.” “Childhood and Youth” appear.
Turgénief’s admiration is expressed in this fashion: “When this young
wine shall have finished fermenting, there will come forth a drink
worthy of the gods.”
Life separates them; the most diverse mental tendencies still further
increase this separation. There is even, at one time, an inopportune
meeting, conflict, violent rupture, almost tragic, since a duel
narrowly escaped being the result. There are noticeable in Turgénief,
from that moment, movements of vexation. The admiration which he was
the first to arouse in Tolstoï’s favor turns, becomes fashionable, and
goes to commonplace unreason: still he continues to be glad that “War
and Peace” is praised to the skies; “but it is by its most dubious
merits that the public want to regard it as unequalled.” In his
opinion, there are not such good reasons for falling into ecstasies
about “Anna Karénina.” “Tolstoï this time has taken the wrong track;
and that is due to the influence of Moscow, of the Slavophile nobility,
of orthodox old maids, to the isolation in which the author lives, to
the impossibility of finding in Russia the requisite degree of artistic
liberty.”
But excessive strictures are rare in him; and how richly they are
compensated by the generous crusade, which, from the year 1878,
Turgénief undertakes for the sake of popularizing Tolstoï in France,
and of building him a pedestal which at the present time threatens
to rise higher than his own! If, unfortunately for French readers, a
“Russian lady” had not got ahead of him, he would have translated the
masterpiece which he liked the best, which seemed to him to give the
highest idea of Tolstoï’s great powers,--“The Cossacks.”
In last resort, he contents himself with the most active propaganda
in favor of another translation, that of “War and Peace.” His
correspondence shows him to us, going about carrying the book to
Flaubert, to Taine, to Edmond About, to those who are capable of
enjoying this foreign dish without further advice. He hopes that their
articles will enlighten those who need to be told in order to get the
taste of it. His illness alone turns him away from this occupation
which I have no need of qualifying: it is too characteristic.
At the hour of death, Turgénief’s last thought turns to Tolstoï. I beg
the reader to go back to that admirable letter, to that short literary
will, in which the dying author salutes, and calls back to the arena
from which he is just departing, his great rival in talent and in glory.
It would be very strange, if having lived long in France, and having
made precious literary friendships, Turgénief had not mentioned names
particularly interesting for French readers. He speaks much in his
letters of the contemporaneous realistic school, and he judges it
favorably, especially at its first beginning. He does more than enjoy
the Goncourts and Zolas. He makes arrangements for them with the
directors of Russian journals or reviews; he endeavors to have one or
two thousands of francs more paid for their manuscripts, by giving them
to be translated into Russian before they are published in France.
Especially for Zola did he use his mediatorial influence. He seems very
happy to help him; nevertheless, he does not fail to note with his
delicate and imperceptible irony certain amusing traits of character.
“As far as Zola is concerned, you told me that you would pay more for
his manuscript than Stasulevitch. I have informed Zola.... His teeth
have taken fire at it.” “In his last visit to Paris, Stasulevitch,
having made Zola’s acquaintance, gilded him from head to foot, on the
one condition that Zola should belong to him alone. So the European
messenger (_Vyestnik Yevropui_) seems in Zola’s eyes like the fabulous
hen with the golden eggs, which he must guard like the apple of his
eye.”
The friendship, made of admiration and sympathy, between Turgénief and
Flaubert, is well known. It is painted in Turgénief’s letters in truly
expressive lines: “I have translated one of Gustave Flaubert’s stories.
It is not long, but of incomparable beauty. It will appear in the April
number of ‘The European Messenger.’ Perhaps two translations of it will
appear. I recommend it to you in advance. I have endeavored, so far as
in me lay, to reproduce the colors and tone of the original.” Flaubert
dies. Turgénief is so moved that he breaks with all his habits. He,
so sober, so disliking noise, wire-pulling, puffing, puts himself at
the head of a demonstration in the Russian journals; and he opens a
subscription for a monument to his friend. He speaks with genuine
disgust of the low interpretations to which this intervention on his
part gave rise. His enemies affected to see in this something like the
return of an old actor, who had left the stage, and was tormented by
yearning for the scenes.
It would not be well to dwell too strongly on Turgénief’s judgment in
regard to Victor Hugo. Turgénief was a true poet, but when he wrote
in verse he never rose above mediocrity. He knew it, and he criticised
this part of his work very severely. The quality of his verses is
explained better when it is seen how narrowly and unfairly he judges
_La Légende des Siècles_. The epic grandeur and originality of this
work escape him: its swing is too powerful, and it wearies him; its
brilliancy is too intense, and it blinds him. He judges Victor Hugo as
a poet of thirty years ago--Pushkin, if he had come to life--might have
done: he did not much rise above the Byronian horizon.[46]
He is, however, more just towards Swinburne, the English Hugo. But
here, again, his criticism is superficial: favorable as it is, one can
see that he has not had time to find his reasons, and touch bottom.
The critical faculty is evidently less keen in Turgénief than in
others of his friends,--Shchedrin, for example. He it was who caused
the scales to fall from Turgénief’s eyes, and revealed for him what
he himself felt somewhat confusedly as to the often artificial and
conventional character of our realists. “I would have kissed you with
delight, ... to such a degree what you say about the romances of
Goncourt and Zola hits the case, and is true. As for me, it seemed
so confusedly, as though I had a heavy feeling over the epigastrium.
I have just this moment uttered the _Akh!_ of relief, and seen
clearly.... It cannot be said that they have not talent, but they do
not follow the right way: they are already inventing too much. Their
literature smacks of literature, and that is bad.”
Although he was warned, Turgénief was not the man to wish to put others
on the lookout. The success of another did not fill him with any envy.
On the other hand, the disappointment of those who were dear to him
caused him real pain. After the failure of one of George Sand’s dramas,
he wrote this charming word: “If I had met her, I should not have said
any thing of the _fiasco_ of her poor piece: like a respectful son of
Noah, I turn away my eyes, and hide the nakedness of my grandam.”
He had recovered from his boyish enthusiasm for the work of the
illustrious novelist, “I cannot any longer hold by George Sand, any
more than by Schiller”, he wrote in 1856. But in place of admiration
for the diminished and collapsed merits of the writer, there was
substituted, especially in latter years, a touching worship for the
truly virile virtues of the woman.
This is the way he speaks of her, on the day of her death, in a letter
meant for publication: “It was impossible to enter into the circle
of her private life, and not become her adorer in another sense, and
perhaps in a better sense. Every one felt immediately that he was in
presence of an infinitely generous and benevolent nature, in which all
the egotism had been long and thoroughly burned away by the ever-ardent
flame of poetic enthusiasm and faith in the ideal; a nature to which
all that was human became accessible and dear, and from which exhaled,
as it were a breath of cordiality, of friendliness, and above all that,
an unconscious aureole, something sublime, free, heroic. Believe me,
George Sand is one of our saints.”
We cannot better finish this review of names loved by Turgénief than by
letting the reader rest on this luminous portrait of George Sand. In
the virtues which Turgénief ascribed to her, is it not allowed us to
find many of his own?
FOOTNOTES:
[25] This is a mistake. His father died in 1835; and his mother reached
the age of seventy, dying in 1850.
[26] Turgénief says in his Recollections: “About Easter, 1843, in
Petersburg, an event took place, in itself indeed of small importance,
and long ere this swallowed up in perfect oblivion. It was this: A
short poem entitled Parasha, by a certain T. L., was published. That T.
L. was I. With this poem I began my literary career.” He says further
that Biélinsky’s praise was so extravagant that he felt more confusion
than pleasure. “I could not believe it,” he adds; “and when in Moscow
the late I. V. Kiréyevski came to me with congratulations, I hastened
to disown my child, declaring that I was not the author.”--N. H. D.
[27] _Zapiski Okhotnika._
[28] Yet Biélinsky wrote him: “‘Khor’ gives promise that you will be a
remarkable writer--in the future.”--N. H. D.
[29] Turgénief says in his Recollections: “I should certainly never
have written The Annals of a Sportsman if I had staid in Russia. I was
in a state of mind singularly analogous to Gogol’s, who just about this
time wrote his best pages about Russia from ‘the beautiful distance.’”
The article on Gogol’s death was not passed by the Petersburg censor,
but was admitted by the Moscow censor, and appeared in the Vyédomosti
in March, 1852. Nevertheless, the article was construed as a violation
of the law: “I was put under partial arrest for a month, and then sent
into domicile in the country, where I lived two years.... But all for
the best.... My being under arrest, and in the country, proved to my
undeniable advantage: it brought me close to those sides of Russian
life which, in the ordinary course of things, would probably have
escaped my observation.”--N. H. D.
[30] A misquotation, of course, of
“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!”--N. H. D.
[31] _Dvoryánskaye Gnyezdó_, an untranslatable title. A Nest of Nobles
or Courtiers or Gentlemen fairly expresses it.
[32] “In 1863 Ivan Sergéyevitch bought a plat of land at Baden Baden,
built a house on it, and lived there until 1870.”--_Polevoï._
[33] _Nov_, the Russian title, means merely _new_,--one of the words,
by the way, showing the affinity of Russian with Latin, English, and
the other Indo-European languages,--and is suggestive not only of new
land, but of new people and new ideas.--N. H. D.
[34] His generosity was more than princely; not even the palpable
impositions of his impecunious countrymen caused him to clasp his
ever-open purse. It is related that a Russian family residing in Paris
made frequent applications to this abundant fountain. Turgénief saw
through their wiles, but let the stream still flow. The little daughter
of the family showed some musical talent, and Turgénief undertook
her education. It happened that there was a very exclusive school in
Paris; and one fine day the ambitious mother came and besought their
Mæcenas to use his influence to have the young girl admitted where no
foreigner was allowed. Turgénief was at last a little nettled, and
in epigrammatic Russian he said, “Make her either a candle for the
Lord, or an ash-scraper for the Devil” (_Bogu svyétchu ili Tchortu
katchergu_).--N. H. D.
[35] _Tchto Dyélat_, a translation of which is published by T. Y.
Crowell & Co., under the title A Vital Question.
[36] Písemsky described this same generation in his great story, _Liudi
Sorokovuikh Godof_ (People of the Forties).--N. H. D.
[37] Also under the title _Un Bulgare_.--N. H. D.
[38] It was reported, and believed by some, that the Russian government
paid Turgénief fifty thousand rubles for Virgin Soil.--N. H. D.
[39] Yuliana Betrishef in Dead Souls is not a portrait: she is a
luminous apparition.--_Author’s note._
[40] A Russian proverb says, “Alone as a finger.”--_Translator’s note,
quoted by author._
[41] It is only just to make exception in favor of Alfonse
Daudet. His talent is largely made up of sentiment, and even of
sentimentality.--_Author’s note._
[42] Nikolai Alekseyévitch Nekrásof, born in December, 1821, editor
of the _Sovremennik_ from 1847 till 1866. Afterwards, when the
_Sovremennik_ was suppressed, he edited the _Otetchestvennui Zapiski_
till his death, which took place in January, 1877. He was eminently
Russia’s popular poet.--N. H. D.
[43] Mikhaïl Yuryevitch Lermontof, the author of the great poem Demon,
and other verses inspired by the Caucasus, was born in 1814, and died
in 1841.
[44] Feódor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoyevsky was born in 1822 in Moscow, and
died in March, 1881. His life reads like a romance. For a short sketch
of it, and also for the translation of the scene from his _Zapiski iz
Mertvava Doma_, so praised by Turgénief, see appendix.--N. H. D.
[45] A brilliant Russian lady, now in this country, writes to the
translator as follows: “I am glad indeed that you escaped the
translation of ‘Crime and Punishment.’ You would never find any
readers for such a book in this country. I could never read any of
Dostoyevsky’s books through. It made me sick. My nerves could not bear
the strain on them. I don’t believe in pathology in literature. And
yet another of my American acquaintances, who is thoroughly versed
in Russian, ... tried to translate ‘Crime and Punishment,’ but had
not time to do it. He says he never read, in any language, any thing
so powerful as _Prestuplenie i Nakazanie_. Generally speaking, your
countrymen have too healthy a constitution to appreciate such a novel.
Let it turn heads among the pessimists in France and Russia, the
natives of effete Europe.”--N. H. D.
[46] This explains, perhaps, why he did not appreciate Nekrásof.
Indeed, Turgénief, though his literary judgments are always
interesting, must be taken with a grain of salt: like a true poet, he
was not a critic. On the other hand, Tchernuishevsky, whose critical
judgments Turgénief affected to despise, was a born critic, and his
literary prognostications were greatly in advance of his time. See
Appendix.--N. H. D.
[Illustration: LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ.]
LYOF TOLSTOÏ.
I.
Count L. N. Tolstoï was born on the 28th of August, 1828 (O.S.), at
Yasnaya Polyana, a village near Tula, in the Government of Tula. He
reckons among his direct ancestors one of the best servitors of the
Tsar Peter the Great, Count Piotr Tolstoï. Early left an orphan,
he studied at the University of Kazan, entered successively the
departments of Oriental languages and of law, got tired of both, left
the university, returned to his paternal estate, and one fine day set
out for the Caucasus, where his eldest brother, Nikolaï Tolstoï, was
serving with the rank of captain. He quickly became an officer, took
part in the guerilla warfare in Circassia, returned to be shut up in
Sevastópol, underwent the siege, was greatly distinguished by his
bravery, and resigned at the conclusion of peace.
Count Lyof Tolstoï’s works have not been all published in the order in
which they were written. “The Cossacks,” published after the “Military
Scenes,” and after “Childhood and Youth,” it seems was written, in
part, during his stay in the Caucasus. The romantic portion of the work
may have been thought out towards the period when the book appeared,
but the impressions which fill the book are the first which the writer
took pains to note down. It is well to emphasize this fact from the
very first moment: in the study of Tolstoï’s works, we can make it
a starting-point in our investigation of the steps traced in the
evolution accomplished by his mind.
The “Military Sketches,” collected into a volume in 1856, were produced
in the form of articles in the _Sovremennik_ (“The Contemporary”).
These tales bear the following subtitles: “Sevastópol in December,”
“Sevastópol in May,” “The Felling of the Forest,” “The Incursion.” They
paint at once the energy with which the French invasion was resisted,
and the monotony of the siege, more terrible than its dangers. The book
narrowly escaped remaining in the censor’s hands: this suspicious and
petty critic was offended by the most beautiful pages. There is, for
example, an admirable passage where the soldiers, in order to escape
the irksomeness whereby they have been overcome in the long days,
listen with truly infantile excitement to the reading of fairy-stories.
According to the censor’s opinion, it was a bad example. The author
should have depicted the soldiers as engaged in reading some serious
work, capable of exerting a good influence on their moral state, on
their spirit of discipline. “The attention of the army should be
called only to useful literature.” Fortunately the book escaped this
rolling-mill, and roused the Russian public to enthusiasm.
As regards this album of impressions noted with incomparable vivacity
of observation, vigor of tone, and energy of touch, Count Lyof
Tolstoï gave another example, which is like a first confession, in
his “Childhood and Youth.” The material of this biography is family
life brought into the exact environment which the Russian nature, when
very closely observed and very poetically described, can furnish. On
one side external impressions, very accurately and very powerfully
retained; on the other, profound reflections upon self, and a very keen
view in regard to the most secret and the least explored regions of
consciousness: these are the two sides of Tolstoï’s talent; these, from
the very beginning of his literary career, are the two elements which
will combine to form the great novels of the writer’s maturity, “War
and Peace” and “Anna Karénina.”
These masterpieces having been once finished, Tolstoï turned aside
from fiction to apply himself to pedagogy. The great painter of men
becomes the instructor of children; the creator of heroes undertakes
the mission of popularizing the alphabet.
At the present time we see him passing through a new transformation,
and from pedagogue becoming preacher. He propagates a new dogma; or,
rather, he is on his way to increase the number of Russian sectaries
who seek in the Gospels a solution of the social problem.
Soldier, literarian, agriculturist, popular educator, and prophet of a
new religion,--Count Lyof Tolstoï has been all these in succession. But
the secret of these transformations is no longer far to seek: he has
explained it to us in his latest work, entitled “My Confession,” the
publication of which has been forbidden in Russia by the ecclesiastical
censor. The work is read in spite of the interdiction, and it makes
converts; copies are hawked about; it will not be slow in following
the fortunes of “My Religion:” it will be printed abroad in some sheet
edited by exiles, and will be translated, doubtless, in France.
Let us find in this “Confession” the commentary on the strange
existence which we have sketched only in broad lines.
Every man has, so to speak, a moral physiognomy; and this physiognomy,
like the face itself, is more or less characteristic. In Count Lyof
Tolstoï, this characteristic is the need of a fixed principle, of a
well-established rule of conduct. This principle has changed, and more
than once changed, the formula which expresses the sum of his acts, and
explains them, justifies them, which becomes enlarged, transformed,
entirely reversed; but what remains immutable is his attachment to some
formula, his absorption in the article of faith. Count Tolstoï’s soul
is, before all things, the soul of a believer.
He begins by believing in the _ego_. He started with a sort of
Darwinian conception of the world, of the struggle of individuals,
with the conflict of egoisms. For Tolstoï, the ideal at this first
period of his life was individual progress. The aim of existence was
to get above other individuals, and to subjugate them in some degree
by his own superiority. “I tried at first to cultivate the will in me;
I laid down rules which I compelled myself to follow. Physically I
strove towards perfection by developing, with all sorts of exercises,
my strength and my skill, and by wonting myself by privations of
every sort, to be neither wearied nor disheartened by any thing.” He
pitilessly analyzes the feelings which he had at this time; after the
fashion of La Rochefoucauld, he tells us to what a degree he was the
dupe, the victim, of self-love. Under the pretext of discovering the
progress made by the _ego_, and of advancing it towards perfection, “I
gave in, above all, to the desire of finding that I was better not in
my own eyes, not even in the eyes of God, but above all, but solely,
in the eyes of others, in the judgment of the world.... And even this
desire to seem better to other men quickly yielded to the single
desire of being stronger than all others.” All these manifestations of
individual force so much esteemed by men, and called “ambition, passion
for power, cupidity, pleasure, pride, wrath, vengeance,”--Tolstoï also
admired them, coveted them, and finally realized them to such a degree
as to rouse admiration and envy. “Just as in my life I offered homage
to strength and to the beauty of strength, so in my works I most often
sang all the manifestations of individual force; and yet I pretended
to love truth, and boasted of it! In reality I loved only force, and
when I found it without alloy of folly, I took it for truth.” We shall
see in studying “The Cossacks” to what a degree Tolstoï’s first ideal,
followed and realized especially during his stay in the Caucacus,
is reflected in this work, which is the actual product, if not the
immediate outcome, of his residence there.
At the age of twenty-six Tolstoï changes his environment: he leaves
the army and the bastions of Sevastópol, and passes directly into the
circles of St. Petersburg where the famous writers are gathered. He
is welcomed, _fêted_, placed at the very first in the front rank. He
changes his whole manner of existence; but he changes it in the name
of a new faith, the faith in the “mission of the men of thought.” This
mission consists in teaching other men. “Teaching them what? I had not
the slightest idea myself. But I was paid for it in ready money. I had
a magnificent table, a sumptuous dwelling. I had women, I had society,
I had glory. What I taught could not help being very good.” At the end
of two or three years of this existence, Tolstoï begins to doubt the
infallibility of his literary faith: he applies to the settling of the
question his dissolvent analysis. He bethinks himself to discuss also
the moral worth of the priests of this faith, of the writers. “They
were almost all immoral men; and the great majority were bad men,
of no character, and in no respect less so than the boon companions
of yore, of the time when my life was only a round of gayety and
disorder.” A sort of misanthropy seizes Tolstoï as the result of his
inquiry. A new Alceste, he hotly tears himself away from the perverse
environment of literary people, and begins to hunt up and down the
world for the support of a new conviction.
After having visited foreign lands, interviewed philosophers,
questioned the men of “the vanguard,” Tolstoï returns to his country,
persuaded that progress must be realized, not within himself, but
outside of himself. He becomes farmer, judge of the peace, magistrate,
instructor; he founds a pedagogical review, and starts a school. “I got
upon stilts to satisfy my desire for teaching.” In spite of its simple
and calm appearance, this existence let all the inward trouble, all
the moral anguish, remain. “I left every thing, and I departed for the
steppe. I went forth among the Bashkirs to breathe the pure air, to
drink _kumis_, and to lead an animal life.”
On his return from his visit to the Bashkirs, Tolstoï marries. The joy
of family life at first takes all his will, absorbs all his reflective
powers. “For a long time his life is centred in his wife and in his
children: it is entirely monopolized by the anxiety of increasing their
well being.” At the end of fifteen years, he finds that he is still the
dupe of selfish illusion, that this sacrifice to the greatest advantage
of his family has simply turned him aside from the search after the
real meaning of life. Is not his present existence, in fact, full of
contradictions? Long ago he has become convinced that literary activity
is vanity, and yet he continues to write. What impels him to it? “The
seduction of glory, the attraction of large pecuniary remuneration.”
What moral principle is there at bottom of all that? Here begins a
period of perplexity, of despondency, of bitter and morbid scepticism.
The two questions, “Why?” and “What is to come?” force themselves more
and more upon his mind. By reason of attacking the same problem, like
dots on the same bit of paper, they finally “make a huge black blot.”
And Tolstoï’s scepticism goes over from theory into practice: it is
nihilism in the truest sense of the word. “Before I undertake the
charge of my property at Samara, the education of my son, my literary
work, I must know what is the good of doing it all. As long as I could
not know the reason, I could do nothing.... Well, suppose I shall come
to possess ten thousand acres and three hundred head of horses, what
then? Suppose I become more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakspeare, and
all the writers in the world, what then? I found no reply.” At this
moment of strange trouble, Tolstoï seriously considers the question of
suicide.
How did he succeed in escaping the entanglement of scepticism? He
takes the back track in his ideas in regard to humanity. He had long
believed, “like so many other cultivated and liberal minds, that the
narrow circle of _savants_ and wealthy people to which he belonged
constituted his entire world. As to the thousands of beings who had
lived, or were living still, outside of him, were they not animals
rather than men? I can scarcely realize to-day, so strange do I find
it, that I should have fallen into such a mistake as to believe
that my own life, that the life of a Solomon, that the life of a
Schopenhauer, was the true or normal life, while the life of all these
thousands of human beings was a mere detail of no account.” Fortunately
for Tolstoï, the taste for country life, and his intercourse with
the field-hands, brought him to divine, that, “if he desired to
live and comprehend the meaning of life, he must find this meaning,
not among those who have lost it, who long to get rid of life, but
among these thousands of men who create their life and ours, and who
bear the burden of both.” Having found only the leaven of doubt or
negation among the men of his own society, he goes to ask the germs
of faith, the elements of religion, among the poor, the simple, the
ignorant, pilgrims, monks, _raskolniks_, peasants. In them alone
he finds agreement between faith and works. “Quite contrary to the
men of our sphere, who rebel against fate, and are angry at every
privation, at every pain, these believers endure sickness and sorrow
without any complaint, without any resistance, with that firm and calm
conviction that all must be as it is, or could not be otherwise, and
that all this is a blessing. The more enlightened we are, the less
we comprehend the meaning of life: we see only cruel mockery in the
double accident of suffering and death. With tranquillity, and more
often with joy, these obscure men live, suffer, and approach death.”
Seeing these simple souls so unanimous in their interpretation of
existence, so obstinately bent on seeking the good by means of calm
labor and patience capable of enduring any trial, Tolstoï again begins
to feel love for men; and he endeavors to imitate these models.
After ten years of initiation into the holy life, he reaches the
most perfect renunciation. No longer to think of self, and to love
others only,--that is the moral scheme which can alone reconcile us
to existence, and reveal to us the good concealed under this apparent
evil. The question is, therefore, not to think well, as Pascal said,
but to live well. And who shall tell us what it is to live well? “The
thousand who create life, and get from it all their faith.”
This expression, “create life,” must be understood in all its senses.
In the moral sense, it is explained only by its contrary. What do
the wise men, the Solomons, the Sakyamunis, and the Schopenhauers do?
They destroy life; they present it to us as an absurdity and as an
evil. The calmness with which the humble, the simple, the pariahs of
society, support existence, shows the falseness of the assertions of
the thinker; and that which the philosophers in their supercilious
speculation claim to annihilate, the modest practice of these virtuous
men re-establishes, creates in a certain degree.
Once fixed on the rock of this faith, which seemed to him unassailable,
Count Tolstoï felt that it was his duty to study its dogma and
formulate its credo. He wrote “My Religion.” Later we shall return to
this work, in which not only the propensities of the author’s mind are
revealed, but also the tendencies of a considerable part of the Russian
nation. It is enough for us to note here the fundamental article of
this religious law, to which Count Tolstoï assents with all his heart,
like thousands, nay millions, of his compatriots: “Resist not him that
is evil.” This saying of Jesus sums up for him all duties, and gives us
the secret of all the virtues. We shall see in detail the applications
of this principle to the conduct of individual and social life; for the
present, let us content ourselves with calling the reader’s attention
to the path followed by the man whom we are studying. He started with
this principle,--the exclusive development of the _ego_. In practice,
this principle led him to conflict, to violence, and to hatred. He
ended with this principle,--the absolute sacrifice of the _ego_.
In practice, this principle leads him to a life of abnegation, of
gentleness, and of love.
Between these two extreme limits of his development, we have seen all
the mental states through which Tolstoï has passed. These varying
dispositions will be found in his literary work. It would be running
systemization into the ground to desire to show the writer going
through this development, side by side with the man. But it is only
just to remark to what a degree Tolstoï’s earlier writings, his
“Kazaki,” for example, express his first ideal, that of the epoch in
which he was taken up exclusively with force, and when he worshipped it
in himself, giving it the name of truth. Later on in “Anna Karénina,”
one of his favorite characters, Levin, will closely resemble Tolstoï
changed into a farmer, and already, in his drawing towards the rural
populace, advancing towards the abandonment of all egotism, towards
the spirit of sacrifice, towards that simplicity of virtue personified
by the peasant Feódor in the story of “Anna Karénina,” and the soldier
Platon Karataïef in “War and Peace.”
II.
Count Tolstoï’s literary life is divided very sharply into three
periods; or, if the expression be preferred, his powerful talent,
original from the very first, has passed through three phases. He began
by writing works which are mainly the working up of reminiscences
or illustrations of personal impressions. In the “War Sketches,”
in “Childhood and Youth,” in “The Cossacks,” the writer confines
himself to narration. Of these three writings, the one that best
shows Tolstoï’s talent in the first part of his career is the romance
entitled “Kazaki,” which, to use Turgénief’s words, is “an incomparable
picture of men and things in the Caucasus.” In a detailed analysis of
this masterpiece, we shall find the definition of Tolstoï’s manner at
the time of his forceful youth.
The second period is that of ripe age; it is filled by the two great
novels “War and Peace,” and “Anna Karénina.” The writer’s manner has
singularly broadened; even the dimensions of the frame-work of the
fiction have taken an almost exaggerated aspect. “War and Peace”
makes not less than eighteen hundred pages. “Anna Karénina” appeared
in the “Russki Vyestnik,” not in the course of months, but of years.
It is true that between two parts of the work the author stopped, as
though he had lost interest in its publication. But the public did
not lose its interest by waiting; and when, after more than half a
year, the narrator resumed the broken thread of his story, his readers
found themselves, as it were, dazzled by the return of the brilliant
characters of the romance, after this long and dismal eclipse.
In the novels of this second period, argument forces its way in under
cover of fiction. Thus, in “Anna Karénina,” which is the story of an
adultery, Tolstoï has not only tried to present us with a very accurate
picture of aristocratic customs in Russia; he has not only wished to
show as the centre and powerful fascination in this series of pictures,
the very subtle, very penetrating, very accurate study of a soul
wounded by love, the wound of which becomes more and more painful under
the effect of the friction and worriments following her first fault:
but he has also wished to attack, to settle in his own way, a problem
in the social order; he wished to express his opinion about marriage,
about separation, about divorce, about celibacy, about unions freely
agreed upon and religiously maintained.
“War and Peace,” likewise, is a sort of semi-military, semi-domestic
epos; or, if you like, it is a broad study of Russian life, and
especially of aristocratic life, whether in the camps, whether in
the parlors, whether in the residences of the proprietors during the
first quarter of this century, and more especially at the time of the
invasion. But within this ample scope the author expresses his theories
on military art, his private opinions on the state of war and on the
state of peace, his philosophic doctrine of destiny, or his religious
fatalism. Some of the characters in “War and Peace” seem at certain
times to give a prophetic hint of the dogma which Count Tolstoï will
adopt a little later. In Pierre Bezukhof are seen the aspirations
towards the ideal which the author of “My Religion” will soon be
preaching to men.
If his teaching at this time encroaches on the romance, still it
understood how to use marvellously well that vehicle for dissemination
wherever the Russian language is spoken; and we shall see, in analyzing
them, that the two works of Tolstoï’s second manner show a power and
a brilliancy that are truly Shaksperian. But the mysticism, traces of
which are found in these works, will develop in their author to such
a degree as to make him look upon a novel as an object of scandal,
as a “flood of oil thrown on the fire of erotic sensuality.” He will
therefore renounce the inventions of romance; he will sacrifice
fiction, which now he calls “licentious;” he will not take up the pen,
except to perform the work of a doctor or an evangelist; he will write
“My Confession,” “My Religion,” the “Commentary on the Gospels.” Of
these three works which illustrate Count Lyof Tolstoï’s third manner,
the reader will be interested especially in knowing about the first
two. He will even find that we have already said enough about “My
Confession,” and he will take it kindly if we reserve merely “My
Religion” for analysis. In return, he will allow us to dwell upon it,
and to speak of it entirely at our ease.
Before entering upon the study of “The Cossacks,” it will not be idle
to run quickly over a little story which might serve in place of an
introduction to a translation of this romance. This story, consisting
of only a few pages, is entitled “Recollections of a Scorer.”[47] It is
the story of a rich young man, who, having full control of his fortune,
is led by laziness in a short time to degradation and ruin. Nekliudof
falls into the society of debauchees and professional gamblers. They
pluck him, and ruin him. At his first appearance in this society, he
has a feeble nature, but not vulgar. He had some honor: disgusted by
the lowness of one of the gamblers, he demands reparation, calls him
a coward when he refuses to fight, and compels him to leave the club
forever. He had a sense of shame: on the day following a most debasing
night, when he had been made intoxicated and initiated into all the
depths of debauchery, he bursts into tears, declaring that he will
never forgive either himself or his companions in the orgie. Passion
for gambling keeps him bound to them; he sinks so low that soon he
plays, not only with his habitual partners, but with the servant who
fills the functions of scorer. One by one he descends all the steps of
a sickening and abject degradation. He is ruined, and disappears.[48]
He returns one fine day, enters the club, asks for writing materials,
and, having finished his letter, summons the scorer: “I would like
to try one more game with you.” He gains. “Haven’t I learned to play
well? Hey?”--“Very well.”--“Now go and order my carriage.” “He started
to walk up and down the room. Not suspecting any thing, I went
down to call his carriage; but there was no carriage there. I went
up-stairs again; and, as I approached the billiard-room, I thought I
heard a slight noise, like a knock with a cue. I went in. I noticed a
strange smell. I looked around: what did I see? He was stretched out
on the floor, bathed in his own blood ... a pistol near him. I was so
terror-struck that I could not make a sound. He gave a few signs of
life; he stretched out his legs, gave the death-rattle, and all was
over.”
If this young Russian had possessed a stronger nature or less enfeebled
elasticity, he would have done like Olénin, the hero of “The Cossacks,”
or like Tolstoï, who is himself represented under that name. He would
have torn himself from his habits; he would have started for the Far
East: he would have been certain to find there enough new impressions
to refresh his weary brain; enough manly occupations or vivifying
pleasures to strengthen his nerves, and build up his muscles; enough
perils and accidents or proofs of every kind to regenerate his soul,
purify it from the tares of vice, and again raise the wheat of more
than one virtue.
Tolstoï was not the first of these superficially blasé emigrants who
went off to Asia to find a powerful diversion from irksomeness, from
the disgust of an idle and disorderly existence. Pushkin had pointed
out the road for him; and the author of “The Gypsies” had himself
followed the traces already marked through the desert by the _britchka_
which carried Griboyédof, and the ox-cart which brought him back.[49]
“On the high river bank,” says Pushkin, “I saw before me the fortress
of Herhera. Three torrents, with roar and foam, come tumbling down
the banks. I had just crossed the river. Two oxen, hitched to an
_arba_, were climbing the steep road. A few Georgians accompanied
the _arba_. ‘Where from?’ I asked them. ‘From Teheran.’--‘What are
you carrying?’--‘Griboyéd.’ It was the body of the assassinated
Griboyédof, which they were taking back to Tiflis.”
More fortunate than Griboyédof, Tolstoï will come back alive, and,
like Pushkin, will be able to describe this adventurous existence;
but he will describe it without embellishments, above all without
exalting it. He will let the people whom he finds there, and whom he
studies entirely at his leisure, appear in all the bold relief of their
natures. He will not take away the strange grace and the perfume of the
wildflower from this nature in which he feels a voluptuous delight.
The evolution of the romance is rapid and fascinating. We are at
Moscow. The night is done. The busy city is waking little by little.
The indolent youth are finishing their evenings. At the Hotel
Chevallier a light, the presence of which is against the rules, filters
through the blinds. A carriage, sledges, and a travelling _troïka_, are
before the door, near which the porter, muffled in his _shuba_, and a
grumbling lackey with pale, drawn features, are waiting.
In the dining-room three young men are finishing a farewell supper.
One of them, in short _shuba_, strides up and down the room, cracking
almonds in his strong, thick, but well-cared-for hands. At first glance
we feel moved by sympathy for him: there is such an expression of life
in his smile, in his heated cheeks, in his brilliant eyes, in his fiery
gestures, and in his animated voice. He is off for the Caucasus, in the
capacity of _yunker_.[50]
Olénin found himself, without family and without curb, at the head
of a great fortune, which at twenty-four he has already half wasted.
The dominant trait of his character is scorn for all authority. Yet
he remains capable of every impulse, even of the most generous. He
has experimented with social relations, with service of the State,
with farming occupations, with music, with love. He feels that he is
_blasé_, but he believes that he is capable of beginning life anew. He
is not one of those men “who, born for the bridle, put it on once, and
never take it off till the day of their death.” He has the spirit and
the vivacity which impel him to pick up and cast far from him all the
weight of servitude.
After having followed a whole net-work of unknown and obscure streets,
after having felt a softening of the heart during this drive, not about
his friends, not about his mistresses, but about himself, as though
his tears were homage rendered to all that he felt that was still good
and beautiful and strong and hopeful in him, Olénin suddenly finds
himself before the wide, snow-bound plain. He turns his mind to the
past. He thinks about his farming, about his debts, about his follies;
and he comes to the conclusion that he is, “in spite of all, a very,
very clever young man.” Having made the first relay, he endeavors to
bring about equilibrium in his budget, so as to pay up his creditors
in the briefest possible time; and, his conscience being now eased, he
falls asleep. He dreams of Circassian beauties, of battles, of glory,
of passionate love, of some wild beauty tamed, civilized, and freed
by his hand. His tailor Capelli, whom he owes nearly seven hundred
rubles, comes across this gilded dream, which is rudely interrupted by
the second relay. His journey is broken or filled only by these halts,
by tea served at the station, by watching the rumps of the horses, by
a few words with his valet Vanya, by a certain number of indefinite
dreams, and, most of all, by the nights of sound sleep, such as is
granted to youth alone.
According as Olénin advances towards the Caucasus, calm takes
possession of his soul. The evidences of civilization which he sees on
the route are a trial to him. At Stavropol he is disagreeably impressed
to find fashionable attire, cabs, and round hats. But as soon as he
is beyond the city the country assumes and retains a wild and warlike
character. In the territory of the Don the air becomes already so mild
that he has to ride without his furs. Nothing is so delightful as this
unexpected spring. But here is something better: danger begins. At any
moment they may be attacked by bandits. Then the mountains rise on the
horizon. The first impression, at twilight, and from the distance, and
through the clouds, is disappointing; but the next morning at early
dawn, in the clearness of the sky, they take a new and superb aspect.
“From this moment, all that he saw, all that he thought, all that he
felt, took on the new and sternly majestic character of the mountains.
All his recollections of Moscow, his shame and his regret, all his idle
dreams about the Caucasus, departed, never to return.”
It is on the banks of the Terek that Olénin is going to dwell, to
struggle, to love, to hate,--in a word, to live,--for a number of
seasons. It is this river, therefore, that Tolstoï begins to describe
for us, with its heaps of grayish sand, and its border of reeds on the
right bank, with its low, steep left bank, gullied and crowned with
oaks or “rotten plane-trees.” On the right are the villages of the
Tcherkes, on the left the _stanitsas_ (stations) of the Kazaki. “In old
times the majority of these _stanitsas_ were on the very bank; but the
Terek, moving annually north of the mountain, has washed them away, and
now only the traces can be seen of thickly-overgrown ancient ruins,
abandoned gardens, pear-trees, lindens, and poplars, woven together
with mulberries and wild vines. No one dwells there now; and on the
sand only the tracks of stags, wolves, hares, and pheasants, which love
these places, can be seen.”
A delicious impression of buoyant air and joyous light fills Olénin’s
heart as soon as he sets foot in the Novomlinskaïa _stanitsa_, in the
midst of the Kazak tribe of Grebna. His arrival in the clear twilight,
when the whitish mass of the mountains stood out distinctly against
the brilliant rays of the setting sun, is described with a vivacity of
coloring which deliciously translates emotions never to be forgotten.
“Young girls in tucked-up petticoats, with switches in their hands,
ran, merrily chattering, to meet the cattle hurrying home in a cloud of
dust and gnats from the steppe. The satiated cows and buffaloes scatter
through the streets, followed by the Kazak children in their variegated
Tatar tunics. Their loud conversation, merry bursts of laughter, and
shouts are commingled with the lowing of the cattle. Here an armed
Kazak on horseback, having leave of absence from his outpost, rides up
to a cottage, and, leaning down from his horse, raps at the window; and
in a moment the pretty young head of the Kazak girl appears, and one
hears their gay, affectionate talk. Here comes a ragged, high-cheeked
Nogai laborer back with reeds from the steppe. He turns his creaking
_arba_ into the captain’s broad, clean _dvor_, and throws off the
yokes from the shaking heads of the oxen, and talks in Tatar with the
_esaul_. Around the puddle which fills nearly the whole street, and by
which people, all these years, have forced their way, crowding against
the fence, a bare-legged Kazak girl is picking her way, bending under
a bundle of fagots, and lifting her skirt high above her white ankles;
and a Kazak horseman, returning from the chase, laughingly shouts out,
‘Lift it higher, wench!’ and he aims at her. The Kazak girl drops her
skirt, throws down her wood. An old Kazak, with turned-up trousers and
bare gray breast, on his way home from fishing, carries his silvery
fish, still flopping in the net, and, in order to take a shorter path,
crawls through his neighbor’s broken hedge, and tears a rent in his
coat on the thorns. Here comes an old woman dragging a dry branch, and
the blows of an axe are heard around the corner. Kazak children shout
as they whip their tops wherever there are level places in the streets;
women crawl through the fences so as to save going round. The pungent
smoke of burning dung rises from all the chimneys. In every _dvor_ is
heard the sound of the increased bustle that precedes the silence of
the night.”
Amid these new faces, there is one whom Olénin catches a glimpse of the
very first thing: it is the girl to whom he is going to lose his heart.
How she comes upon the scene, this wild young maiden, with her noble
features, her statuesque form, her gloomy and burning eyes, with her
red lips, her golden complexion, her supple and nervous muscles, her
turbulent blood, her savage heart! She comes in with her cattle, which
break their way through the open wicket, following a huge buffalo-cow
driven wild by the gnats of the steppe. “Marianka’s face is half
concealed by a kerchief tied round her head: she wears a pink shirt,
and a green _beshmet_, or petticoat.” She hides under the pent-house
of the _dvor_; and her voice is heard as she gently wheedles the
buffalo-cow, which she is about to milk: “Now stand still! Here now!
Come now, _mátushka_!” How could Olénin escape the impression of “the
tall and stately figure, ... her strong and virginal form, outlined by
the thin calico shirt,” of those beautiful black eyes, which at first
will shun him, but which later will gaze at him “with childish fright
and savage curiosity.” Love will be born all the more easily from the
fact that Marianka is the daughter of the people with whom Olénin is
quartered, and that he will find her in his path at every step.
But this feeling is not destined to be met with return. If Marianka
is Olénin’s ideal of maidenly beauty, this civilized Russian cannot
arouse in the young girl’s heart any feeling of admiration, and, in
consequence, no love. He is not ill-favored, or a weakling, or foolish,
stupid, or cowardly; but he has not the triumphant beauty, or the
marvellous vigor, or the ever-watchful shrewdness, or the pitiless
courage, of the young Kazak, Lukashka. What woman would not love the
latter? He is so tall and so well shaped; he wears his soldier’s rig
so proudly, his torn kaftan, his woollen cap knocked in behind; he has
such elegant weapons, and such unrivalled skill in the use of them!
There is nothing sweet, nothing tender about him; but the ardor and the
life of all the passions show on his face, with its black brows, with
its falcon eyes, with teeth of dazzling whiteness. He appears to us for
the first time at the Kazak post, near the Terek. His great hands are
laying snares and traps for the pheasants, and he is whistling. His
comrade (Nazarka), brings him a live pheasant, not daring to kill it.
“‘Give it here!’ Lukashka took a small knife from under his dagger, and
quickly cut the pheasant’s throat. The bird struggled, but did not have
time to spread its wings before its bleeding head bent over and fell.”
Whatever character Tolstoï gave these young figures of Marianka and
Lukashka, he does not find that they express all that ideal of strength
and power with which at this time infatuated. Accordingly he calls
up the image of a more striking savagery, in the person of the old
Yeroshka, the colossal huntsman with his voice of thunder, his animal
habits, his ogre-like appetites, and his childlike character. “Over
his shoulders was thrown a ragged woven _zipún_, and his feet were
shod in buck-skin _porshni_, or sandals, fastened by cords, which were
twisted about his legs. On his head was a rumpled white fur cap. On
his back, over one shoulder, he carried a _kobuilka_ [an instrument to
catch pheasants], and a sack with pullets and dried meat, to bring back
the falcon; over the other shoulder a dead wild-cat was swinging by a
strap; behind him, fastened to his belt, were a bag containing bullets,
powder, and bread, a horse-tail for keeping off the gnats, a big dagger
in a torn sheath, stained with blood, and two dead pheasants. This
giant has, for distinctive traits, the discreet and silent way in which
he walks in his soft sandals, and the odor which he exhales, “a strong,
but not unpleasant odor mingled of fresh wine, of vodka, of powder,
and of dried blood.” He has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, about
his past life, his hunting, his exploits, his horse-thefts. Yet he is
only a child, compared to what his father was, who carried on his back
a four-hundred-pound wild boar, and drank at a draught two buckets of
vodka. He likes to repeat this saw of a Western man, whom he knew: “We
shall all die, the grass will grow on our grave, and that is all.”
He is stout and hearty for his seventy years, although a witch had
ruined him a little with her spell. On the chase, in the woods, he
does not cease to whisper, God knows what mysterious monologue. When
he returns, if he finds some host at whose table he can sit, and if he
can only have wine furnished according to the measure of his thirst,
he gets drunk, until he falls stiff on the floor. Hunting scenes,
scenes of love, scenes of ambuscade or of combat, go to make up almost
exclusively the matter of all this work. But all these scenes are so
variously true, and so profoundly the result of experience, that the
romantic thread designed to connect them seems almost needless. What
reader, however, would have the courage to disengage it? I should like,
for my part, to give by way of analysis, and by short quotations, an
idea of the most powerful scenes here pictured. I will present them in
the order in which they come.
Here we are in ambush, on the banks of the river: “They were hourly
expecting the Abreks--as the hostile Tchetchens were called--to cross
and attack them, from the Tatar side, especially during the month of
May, when the woods along the Terek are so dense, that a man on foot
has difficulty in breaking through, and when the river is so low that
it can in many places be forded.” The Kazak Lukashka is gazing at the
sky, with its flashing of heat lightning. He spreads down his kaftan at
the foot of the reeds. “Occasionally the reeds, without any apparent
reason, would all begin to wave and to whisper to each other. From
below, the waving feathers of the sedge looked like the downy branches
of trees, against the bright background of the sky.” He listens to
all the noises of the night, the murmur of the reeds, the snoring of
the three Kazaks who have come with him to keep his secret guard, the
buzzing of the gnats, and the rippling of the water, from time to time
a far-off shot, the fall of a part of the bank washed away, the splash
of some big fish, the crashing of the underbrush as some animal forced
its way through. “Once an owl, slowly flapping its wings, flew down the
Terek; over the heads of the Kazaks, it turned and flew towards the
forest, with faster flapping wings, and then fluttering settled down in
the branches of an old _tchinar_ (plane tree). At every such unusual
sound the young Kazak pricked up his ears eagerly, snapped his eyes,
and slowly examined his gun.”
Suddenly (it is now almost daybreak) a log with a dry branch floating
in the river attracts his attention. He immediately notices that
the log, instead of going according to the will of the current, and
floating down stream, is crossing the river. Here follows several
minutes of strange excitement: the whole inner drama which is enacting
in this young savage’s soul is expressed with so much truth and force,
that you come to follow with him the voice of the ferocious instinct
which controls him. He puts his gun to his shoulder and waits, while
his heart is violently beating at the thought that he may miss his
human game; finally he draws a long breath and shoots, muttering,
according to the Kazak custom, the “In the name of the Father and the
Son.” The tree trunk, rocking and rolling over and over, swiftly floats
down the stream, freed from the weight which it carried.
And when the Kazaks come hurrying down, both on foot and on
horseback (the first thing, in case of a surprise, was to send for
re-enforcements), what a scene is that where the lucky marksman plunges
into the water to go and bring his fish from the sandbank, and flings
the corpse on the bank “like a carp”! What barbarous coloring in the
exclamations of the spectators! “How yellow he is!” says one. “He was
evidently one of their best _jigits_,” says Lukashka: “his beard is
dyed and trimmed.” While they are on the spot, the chief claims the
_jigit’s_ gun, one Kazak buys the kaftan for a ruble, another promises
two gallons of vodka for the dagger.
But the marvellous fragment of this broad, animated, boldly lighted
canvas is this group, this contrast between the living man triumphant
in his nakedness, and the corpse lying on the ground, naked also,
but rigid and terrible to see under the strange coloration and the
disconcerting expression of death. “The cinnamon colored body, with
nothing on but wet, dark-blue cotton drawers, girdled tightly about
the fallen belly, was handsome and well built; the muscular arms lay
stiffly along the sides; the livid, freshly shaven round head, with
the clotted wound on one side, was thrown back; the smooth sunburned
forehead made a sharp contrast with the shaven head; the glassy eyes
were still open, showing their pupils, and seemed to look up beyond
them all; a good-natured and shrewd smile seemed to hover on the thin
and half-open lips under the reddish, half-cut mustache. The small
bony hands were covered with hair; the fingers were clinched, and the
nails had a red tinge. Lukashka was not yet dressed; he was still wet;
his neck was redder, and his eyes were brighter, than usual; his broad
cheeks trembled; and from his white and healthy body there seemed to
rise into the cool morning air a visible vapor.”
As a reward for this expedition, the Kazaks who took part in it are
permitted to go and spend the day at the village. The victorious
Lukashka steps up to Marianka with the same feeling of faith in his
strength and in his skill as he had had the evening before while
lying in wait for the enemy. He asks her for some of the sunflower
seeds which she has; she offers him her apron. He comes close to her,
and whispers a request of her: she replies, “I shall not go! I have
said so.” He follows her by the house, and there he urges her to love
him. She laughs, and sends him off to his married mistress. He cries,
“Suppose I have a sweetheart, the Devil take her.” She does not reply,
but breaks the switch which she has in her hands. At last, “I will
marry certainly, but don’t expect me to commit any follies for you,
never!” He tenderly woos her. She leans against him, kisses him on the
lips, calls him a sweet name, and, after pressing him warmly to her,
suddenly tears herself from his arms and runs away. “You will marry,”
he says to himself, “but the only thing that I want is that you love
me!” He went off to find Nazarka at Yamka’s; “and, after drinking a
while with him, he went to Duniashka’s, where he spent the night.”
In this struggle for existence, and in this battle for the possession
of the beauty whom both love, why should not Olénin be worsted
by Lukashka? The principal obstacle to the triumph of the son of
civilization comes from I his intellectual advantages and from his
moral perfection. Do the best he can, he can never get rid of all
his prejudices. He will be able only to approach that barbaric ideal
which his rival without effort realizes by his natural gifts. In
Marianka’s eyes he could have only borrowed virtues, only the graces of
a plagiarist.
Olénin cannot change his nature by changing his habits; still more he
cannot succeed by formulating a theory of life, in conforming to it in
all respects the practical facts of existence. The contradictions which
result from this conflict between the past and the present, between
long-settled ideas and present convictions, is strongly brought out by
Tolstoï in many passages in the novel. Here is one example: The first
time that the young Russian goes alone pheasant-hunting, he gets tired,
and lies down on the ground in the midst of the forest. Myriads of
gnats settle down upon him. The torment of it nettles him, discourages
him. He is on the point of retracing his steps; an effort of the will
keeps him where he is. Finally the feeling of pain is diminished, and
at length it seems to him almost agreeable. “It even seemed to him that
if this atmosphere of gnats surrounding him on all sides, this paste
of gnats which rolled up under his hand when he wiped his sweaty face,
and this itching over his whole body were missing, the forest would
have lost for him its wild character and its charm.”
From this reflection he passes to others; and, lying “in the old stag’s
bed,” he thinks about his whole surrounding,--the trees, the wild vine,
the frightened pheasants, the complaining jackals, the gnats buzzing
and dancing amid the leaves. “About me, flying among the leaves, which
seem to them immense islands, the gnats are dancing in the air and
humming,--one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million
gnats; and all these, for some reason or other, are buzzing around me,
and each one of them is just as much a separate existence from all
the rest as I am.” It began to seem clear to him what the gnats said
in their humming. “Here, here, children, here is some one to eat,”
they sing, and settle down upon him. And now this taught him that he
was not a Russian nobleman, a person in Moscow society, a friend or a
relative to this and that person. It came to him that he was just a
mere gnat, a mere pheasant, a mere stag, like those around him. The
conclusion which he draws from this is quite different from what would
be expected. Instead of saying, “Let us struggle like these beings, and
like them let us live to triumph, or let us triumph to live,” Olénin
throws himself down on his knees, and beseeches God to let him live
to accomplish some great deed of devotion; for “happiness,” he says,
“consists in living for others.”
What did Tolstoï mean to insinuate? That Olénin was illogical, or that
he lacked sincerity? It will be enough for him to find himself in
Marianka’s presence to forget his vow, and to sacrifice his morals to
his instincts.
How much happier the Kazak Lukashka is in having only instincts, and
in not entangling them, in not fastening them down in this bird-lime
of moral considerations! This is what Tolstoï seems to have wished to
be understood in a marvellous scene, an analysis of which cannot give
either the bold design or the sombre coloring or the proportions worthy
of an epos. It is the wholly Homeric parley about the ransom of the
corpse. The brother of the dead man and his murderer are face to face:
the former tall, stalwart, with reddish trimmed beard, with an air of
royalty under his ragged kaftan, honoring no one with a glance, not
even looking at the corpse, and sitting on his crossed legs, with a
short pipe in his mouth, doing nothing except occasionally giving an
order in a guttural voice to his companion the interpreter; the latter
with difficulty restraining the exultation into which he is thrown by
the promise which has just been made of giving him the cross, and,
in spite of his face reddened with pleasure, striving to preserve an
impassive attitude, and whittling a stick of wood, out of which he will
make a ramrod.
The Tchetchenets has merely asked, as he takes his departure, where
the murderer is; and the interpreter points out Lukashka. “The
Tchetchenets looked at him for a moment, and then, slowly turning away,
fixed his eyes on the other bank. His eyes expressed, not hatred, but
cold disdain.” They get into the boat; they rapidly push through the
stream. Horsemen are waiting for them; they put the dead body across
a saddle on a horse, which shies. Lukashka is told what a curt threat
the Tchetchenets made as he went away. “You have killed us, but we will
crush you.” Lukashka bursts out laughing. “Why do you laugh?” asked
Olénin. “If they had killed your brother, would you be glad?” The Kazak
looked at Olénin, and laughed. He seemed to have comprehended his idea,
but he was above all prejudice. “Well, now, mayn’t that happen? Isn’t
this necessary? Haven’t they sometimes killed some of our men?”
The time passes. Instead of drinking, of playing cards, of flirting
with the Kazak women, of all the time calculating his chances of
promotion, like the majority of the Russian _yunkers_ in the Caucasus,
Olénin plunges into the solitudes of the woods, and gathers indelible
impressions. His love for Marianka has imperceptibly developed until it
presents all the phenomena of a genuine passion. He has even blurted
out a few hints of his affection, which a strange timidity or a scruple
of candor keeps him from putting into more direct form; but at night
he comes to the door of the room where the young girl is sleeping, in
order to listen to her breathing.[51] What shall he do? To take her
for his mistress would be “horrible; it would be murder.” To marry her
would be worse.
“Ah! if I could become a Kazak like Lukashka, could steal horses, could
drink _tchikhir_ wine, could sing songs, shoot people, creep under her
window at night when drunk, without any thought of what I am, or why
I exist, that would be another matter. Then we might understand each
other; then I might be happy.... What is the most terrible and the
most delightful thing in my position is the feeling that I understand
her, and that she will never understand me. It is not because she is
below me that she does not understand me: no, she could not possibly
understand me. She is happy. She, like nature itself, is beautiful,
calm, and absolutely self-contained.” What is to be done, then? Give
her up? Sacrifice himself? What folly! Live for others? Why? It is the
fate of men to love only the _ego_; that is to say, in this case, to
conquer Marianka, “and live her life.” Olénin then makes himself drunk
like a Kazak; and, in the madness of intoxication, he offers to marry
the young girl. She perceives clearly that that is only the wine that
speaks: she drives the wooer away, and escapes him.
Yet she feels somewhat moved in consequence of this offer; and on the
day of the _stanitsa_ festival she is rude to Lukashka, though she has
already become his acknowledged “bride.” But a tragic event is about
to bring forth abundantly the feeling which fills this young soul to
overflowing. All Marianka’s deep love for Lukashka will suddenly gleam
out with unexpected brilliancy, like the gloomy sheet of the Terek in
the flashes of the storm.
The Kazaks have started out on an expedition against the Abreks.
Olénin follows the band which is directed, but not commanded, by
Lukashka. The engagement takes place. The Abreks are sitting in a swamp
at the foot of a hillock of sand. The Kazaks approach them behind a
cart loaded with hay. At first they do not reply to the enemy’s shots.
They wait till they are within five paces from the Abreks, then they
rush upon them. Olénin joins them. “Horror came over his eyes. He
did not see any thing distinctly, but perceived that all was over.
Lukashka, white as a sheet, had caught a wounded Tchetchenets, and was
crying, ‘Do not kill him. I will take him alive.’ The Tchetchenets
was the red-bearded Abrek, the brother of the one whom he had killed,
he who had come to ransom his body. Lukashka was twisting his arms.
Suddenly the Tchetchenets tore himself away, and his pistol went off.
Lukashka fell. Blood showed on his abdomen. He leaped to his feet,
but fell back again, swearing in Russian and Tatar. Still more blood
appeared on him and under him. The Kazaks hurried up to him, and
began to loosen his belt. One of them--it was Nazarka--for some time
before coming to him could not sheathe his _shashka_. The blade of the
_shashka_ was covered with blood.”
“When Olénin came back to Marianka, and wanted to speak of his love for
her, he found her grieving. She looked at him silently and defiantly.
“Olénin said, ‘Mariana, I have come.’...
“‘Stop,’ she said. Her face did not change in the least, but the tears
poured from her eyes.
“‘What is the matter? What are you crying for?’
“‘Why?’ she repeated in a hoarse, deep voice. ‘They have been killing
Kazaks, and that’s what the matter is!’
“‘Lukashka?’ asked Olénin.
“‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’
“‘Mariana,’ said Olénin, coming nearer to her.
“‘You will never get any thing from me!”
“‘Mariana, don’t say so!’
“‘Go away, you hateful man!’ cried the young girl, stamping angrily,
and starting towards him with a threatening gesture. Such anger, scorn,
hatred, were expressed in her face that Olénin instantly saw that he
had nothing more to hope for.”
He therefore goes away. The scene of his farewell with the old uncle
Yeroshka has that exquisite pathos where smiles are mingled with
tears. As a friendly gift at this solemn moment of separation, the old
Kazak gives the young Russian some advice which will save his life in
battles. He casts ridicule on the customs of the orthodox soldiers.
“When you have to go into battle, or everywhere,--I am an old wolf,
you see, who has seen every thing,--when they fire at you, don’t go
into a crowd where there are many men. You see, when your fellows are a
bit afraid, they all crowd together; and though it’s more sociable in
a crowd, it is more dangerous, because a crowd gives a good mark....
I say sometimes, when I look at your soldiers, “I wonder at ’em. How
stupid! They go straight on, all in a mass; and, what is worse, they
wear red. How can they help getting killed?” And he breaks into tears
as he kisses this young, “ever-wandering fool;” but he manages to
extort from him a gun, to keep as a remembrance of him.
“Olénin looked round. Dyadya Yeroshka and Marianka were talking,
evidently about their own affairs; and neither the old Kazak nor the
young girl were looking at him.” (With these simple but pathetic words,
the story ends.)
III.
An analysis mingled with characteristic quotations might be able to
give some slight idea of the romance “Kazaki,” might give the reader
a hint of its interest, its color, and its flavor of originality. An
analysis of “War and Peace” can have no other aim, no other pretension,
than to point out Tolstoï’s design in this colossal work, and separate
the moralist’s tendencies from the story itself, which every one will
want to read, and read again, in detail.
In “War and Peace,” amid a multitude of thoroughly interesting figures,
there are three heroes who in some measure occupy the foreground, and
who stand out clearly against a background of great variety, carefully
studied, and peopled with living beings. These three characters are
Andréi Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, and Pierre Bezúkhof. The last
mentioned is not at first glance the one who is most attractive in
outward appearances; but it is the one whose moral nature is most
curious, the one in whom the author has expressed his own inmost
views, the one who, in his eyes, best illustrates the striking faults
and the fundamental virtues of a Russian nature. Bezúkhof’s qualities
are exactly those of the men of the Slav race: he is good, gentle,
loyal, compassionate; his faults are indolence, apathy, fickleness in
his tastes, incapability of following a given course, inaptitude in
realizing his own volitions.
Thus after having given his word not to attend a _soirée_ at Prince
Anatol Kuragin’s, Pierre Bezúkhof goes there, becomes intoxicated, then
with the aid of another gay spirit, Dolokhof, fastens a police-agent
to the back of a tame young bear, and throws them both into the river.
Dolokhof is degraded; Pierre escapes with a few months’ exile from the
capital. In the same way Bezúkhof is perfectly convinced that Elen
Kurágina’s beauty and the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders do not
hinder her from being dangerous on account of her coquetry; he has
heard mysterious rumors concerning her equivocal relations with his
brother, the last of the debauchees; he is perfectly convinced that it
would be foolish to the last degree to marry this admirable character,
and that the best way of not committing this folly is to give up seeing
her charming face, her seductive snowy complexion. Unhappily for him,
her marble shoulders, neck, and bosom, one evening, came close to his
poor near-sighted eyes, and all “is so near to his lips that he had
scarcely to bend a hair’s breadth to impress them upon it.” Pierre
Bezúkhof does not depart more: he allows himself to be married, partly
through infatuation, partly through feebleness.
The marriage almost from the very first turns out ill. The rake
Dolokhof has returned, and never leaves Bezúkhof’s house. Pierre long
puts up with a situation, the meaning of which he does not suspect:
the inevitable anonymous letter comes to open his eyes. At first he
refuses to believe what he has been told; but at the club where he
meets Dolokhof, it is sufficient for him to find himself face to face
with his wife’s lover, for his jealousy to burst forth with a flash
like a discharge of electricity. The first pretext gives Pierre cause
for a quarrel, and a duel follows. Dolokhof is a crack marksman: he has
no sort of feebleness. Pierre Bezúkhof is near-sighted, awkward: he has
never fired a pistol in his life. But, as if by judgment of God, it is
Dolokhof who falls.
Returning home, Pierre Bezúkhof tries vainly to sleep, so as to forget
all that has just passed. He cannot close his eyes. “He got up, and
began to pace up and down the room with uneven steps. Now he thought
of the early days of their marriage, of her beautiful shoulders, of
her languishing, passionate gaze; now he pictured Dolokhof standing by
her, handsome, impudent, with his diabolic smile, just as he had seen
him at the club dinner; now he saw him pale, shivering, vanquished, and
sinking on the snow.
“‘And, after all, I have killed her lover,’ he said to himself; ‘yes,
my wife’s lover! How could that be?’ ‘It happened because you married
her,’ said an inward voice. ‘But in what respect am I to blame?’--‘You
are to blame because you married her without loving her,’ continued
the voice; ‘you deceived her, since you willingly blinded yourself.’ At
this instant, the moment when he said with so much difficulty, ‘I love
you,’ came back to his memory. ‘Yes, there was the trouble. I felt then
that I had not the right to say it.’”
If any one wishes to be assured of the passage which I have just
quoted, he must open “My Religion,” and there read the commentary on
adultery, and the condemnation of divorce according to the books of
Matthew (xix.), Mark (x.), Luke (xvi.), and Paul’s First Epistle to the
Corinthians. According to Tolstoï, marriage is indissoluble. Nothing,
not even a wife’s unfaithfulness, authorizes a man to repudiate her;
and, if he puts her away, he cannot marry another without himself
committing the crime of adultery. We shall see this theory more clearly
brought out in the romance of “Anna Karénina;” but even here Tolstoï
makes his hero Bezúkhof conform to it. He will not allow him to claim
the hand of another woman until the day when Elen’s unexpected death
shall have broken the bond which he had imprudently allowed to be tied.
He exalts this imprudence into a crime. He thinks that the chief
culprit was he who did not fear to contract a loveless marriage, or to
seek in this marriage mere gratification of pride and lust.
But Pierre acknowledges his fault to no purpose: his conscience will
not speak as soon as his wrath is again stirred up by his wife’s
impudent cynicism and truly mad provocations. Elen comes into her
husband’s library in a rich and brilliant dishabille, with her calm and
imposing air, “though on her slightly prominent forehead a deep line
of fury was drawn.” She reproaches her husband for the scandal which
he has caused, twits him as though he were an imbecile, and declares
that the man of whom he was jealous was a thousand times his superior.
She claims that she has the right to berate him; “for I can say up and
down that a woman with such a husband as you who would not have a lover
would be a rare exception, and I have none.” Pierre, as he listens,
feels a moral discomfort, which torments him, the sting of physical
pain.
“‘We had better part,’ he said, in a choking voice.
“‘Part? By all means, on condition that you give me enough of your
fortune,’ replied Elen.
“Pierre leaped to his feet, and, losing control of himself, flew at her.
“‘I will kill you!’ he cried; and seizing a piece of marble from the
table, he made a step towards Elen, brandishing it with a force which
even startled himself.
“The countess’s face was frightful to see: she yelled like a wild
beast, and fell back. Pierre felt all the fascination, all the
intoxication, of fury. He threw the marble on the floor, breaking it
into fragments, and advanced towards her with uplifted arms.
“‘Get out,’ he cried, in a voice of thunder, which sent a thrill of
terror throughout the house. God knows what he would have done at that
moment had Elen not fled.
“A week later Pierre left for Petersburg, having made over to his
wife the full control of all his property in Russia proper, which
constituted a good half of his fortune.”
In going from Moscow to Petersburg, Bezúkhof stops at Torzhok for
relays, but horses are not to be had. He spends the night at the
post-station. The bitterest reflections crowd upon his mind. “What is
wrong? what is right? Whom must you love? whom must you hate? What is
the end of life?” “Every thing within him and without seemed to him
confused, uncertain, distasteful; but this very feeling of repugnance
gave him an irritating sense of satisfaction.” At this moment a
stranger arrives, an old man, whose “grave, intelligent, piercing gaze”
strikes Pierre, and troubles him, in spite of its fascination. The
new-comer knows Bezúkhof by sight, and has heard of his domestic grief.
He expresses to Pierre his deep regret at this “misfortune.” Pierre,
confused at the pity shown him, turns the conversation to the subject
of a death’s-head ring which he notices on the stranger’s finger: he
recognizes in it the mark of Free Masonry. The conversation takes up
the moral views and the religious doctrine of those who belong to the
order. The old man urges the young man to take a different view of life
from that of looking at it with horror; not to escape from it, but to
change it. “How have you spent your life? In orgies, in debauchery,
in depravity, taking every thing from society, and giving nothing
in return. How have you employed the fortune that was put into your
hands? What have you done for your fellow-men? Have you thought of
your tens of thousands of serfs? Have you ever helped them, morally
or physically? No! Is it not true that you profited by their labor to
lead a worthless life? That is what you have done. Have you striven to
employ your abilities for the good of others? No, you have passed your
life in idleness. Then you married. You undertook the responsibility of
being a guide to a young woman. How did you acquit yourself? Instead
of aiding her to find the path of truth, you cast her into an abyss
of falsehood and misery. A man insulted you: you killed him. And you
say that you don’t believe in God, that you look upon your life with
horror. How could it be otherwise?”
In this programme of a new life sketched out by the old Free Mason,
we recognize the one followed by Tolstoï himself, at a certain epoch
of his life between the period of relentless struggle, of implacable
egotism, and the period of absolute sacrifice, of humble renunciation.
Pierre accordingly allows himself to be initiated into the order. I
forbear to quote all the picturesque details of the ceremony. The
novelist, using his rights, does not fail to throw a curious light
on the mystic customs of the Russian aristocracy at the beginning of
this century. What concerns us to note here, is the immediate benefit
which Pierre Bezúkhof draws from this first transformation of his
life. The simple prospect of devoting himself “to the regeneration of
humanity” was sufficient to put meaning into a life which seemed to him
impossible to travel. Unfortunately, in practice, his accomplishments
fall below his dreams. He contents himself with giving his overseer
orders concerning the emancipation of his serfs, the cessation of
corporal punishment, the reasonable regulation of labor, the building
of hospitals and schools. The overseer, who sees through his master’s
_naïveté_, constantly plays it upon him, and imposes upon him in regard
to the effect of the measures prescribed, but which he carefully
refrains from undertaking. Pierre is not the man to descend to the
details of the reform which he has vowed to carry out: he is, above
all, not the man to make a bold stand against the difficulties of
execution. At bottom, he would be very sorry if they had not been
concealed from his sight. Accordingly he contents himself with a few
apparent results, and is very careful not to look too closely into the
lack which these appearances cover.
Besides, his new faith receives a terrible blow the day when he tries
to make one of his friends, Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, share in his
conviction. He encounters his bitter scepticism, which is the fruit
of heredity (Andréi’s father having been a “grand seigneur,” of sharp
temper and despotic soul), but it is also the result of the most
painful collisions in life. Like Pierre Bezúkhof, Andréi Bolkonsky had
been the husband of a woman whom he did not love. He always treated
her like a brainless doll, and never showed any other feeling in her
presence than lassitude. His only attitude towards her was that of
disdain. This child, whom he did not have the patience to make into
a helpmeet, died in child-birth. His young wife’s death has left in
Andréi a sense of irremediable injustice, and he loves better to blame
fate than himself; although at times he is seized with such a violent
wish to repair his fault, that he is driven by it almost to express his
belief in immortality. He hesitates to utter his assent to the dogma
of the future life; but his wounded heart allows the exclamation to
escape, “Oh, if it were so!”
To realize the distance traversed by Count Tolstoï since the time
when he put this language into Bolkonsky’s mouth, we must look in “My
Religion,” at the place where the writer--rather, let us say, the
apostle--engages in such a vigorous combat with the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead, which he condemns as heresy. “Strange as it
may seem, it is impossible to refrain from saying that the belief in
a future life is a very low and degrading conception, founded on a
confused notion of the resemblance between sleep and death, a notion
common to all savage peoples. The Hebrew doctrine (and much more the
Christian doctrine) was far above this conception.”
Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, as soon as he enters the stage, strikes us as
one of the most distinguished examples of that Russian aristocracy
to which Tolstoï belongs, and which he wished to make known to his
readers in “War and Peace.” He has for his dominant features a clear,
sharp, penetrating mind, and all the elegancies of his race, including
a super-eminent pride. During the peace, and when his best qualities
are not called into action, he wears some “affectation of indifference
and _ennui_.” In time of war, and when “the weight of serious and
real interests” will leave him no “leisure to consider the impression
which he makes on others,” he will deserve all Kutuzof’s praise by his
solidity, his desert, and his attachment to his duty. He will give
offence by his disdain, but he will win over to his side the majority
of the Russian officers; for his birth gives him a certain superiority
over his chiefs, which they themselves tacitly acknowledge. Finally,
he has a few rare friends, whom the distinction of his character has
carried even to passionate admiration.
Andréi Bolkonsky’s faults and virtues are found, with more striking
features, and exaggerated till they give an impression of humorous
terribleness, in his father, the old proprietor, Nikolaï Bolkonsky.
With his powdered wig, his withered hands, his arms of steel, his
bushy, grizzled brows, under which shine his youthful and brilliant
eyes; with his manias for mathematics, for turning wooden snuff-boxes,
and for putting up buildings; with his brusque speech, his sardonic
smile, his yellow teeth, his ill-shaven chin, his Tatar boots of soft
leather, his arm-chair tainted with a musty odor of tobacco,--this
despot is not to be forgotten. He teaches his daughter, the Princess
Marya, the sciences. Before she goes into the room where her father is,
to give him the morning greeting, the young woman, as she leaves the
vestibule, “crossed herself, and prayed that courage would be given
her.” On the day when his son Andréi comes to announce that he is going
away to enter the service, and that he leaves in his father’s care his
young wife, who is pregnant, and much troubled by a prediction which
had been made to her after a dream, “the king of Prussia,” as the old
man is nicknamed, replies only with the words,--
“‘Bad business, hey;’ and he smiled....
“‘What is bad business, father?’
“‘Your wife,’ replied the old man bluntly, accenting the word.
“‘I don’t understand you.’
“‘Well, my dear fellow, you can’t do any thing, you see; you can’t
get unmarried. Don’t worry, ... I won’t tell anyone: but--you know it
as well as I do--it’s the truth.’ He seized his son’s hand with his
lean, bony fingers, and pressed it, while his piercing eyes seemed to
look to the very bottom of his being. His son answered with a silent
confession,--a sigh.”
The weight of this paternal dictatorship, which constantly crushes the
Princess Marya, has an effect upon her which it is important to note.
She is thrown into a sort of mysticism, somewhat like that which we
have seen come over Tolstoï himself. She has frequent interviews with
beggars, pilgrims, the poor in spirit; she listens to them, and gets
instruction, not from their coarse anecdotes about the wonder-working
Virgin whose cheeks sweat blood, but from their resignation at the
torments of life. Thus she succeeds in forgetting her most bitter
disappointments, or at least in bearing them with a steadfastness which
no stoicism can approach. She also gets from her faith, her gentleness
in judging those who come near her.
“_Akh_, Andréi,” she says to her brother, “what a treasure of a wife
you have!--a real child, gay, animated. How I love her!” Andréi had
taken a seat by his sister: he did not speak; an ironical smile played
on his lips. She noticed it, and went on: “Her little weaknesses call
for indulgence.... Who is there without some?... To understand every
thing is to forgive.” And she forgives every thing, even the most cruel
insult, even the wound inflicted on the most sensitive part of her
sensitive nature,--of her loving heart. The handsome Anatoli Kuragin
comes with his father, Prince Vasíli, to ask her hand in marriage, she
being an heiress. While waiting to carry off this dowry with a high
hand, he plays, in the Bolkonsky house, as everywhere else, his game of
seduction; and he has rendezvous with the _demoiselle de compagnie_,
a young and pretty French girl. Marya catches them accidentally. She
refuses the marriage which she had eagerly anticipated. “I shall be
called to some other good fortune. I shall be happy in devotion, and
in making others happy.” She dreams of seeing the man whom she loved
marry the one who has so shamefully insulted her. “I should be so glad
to see her his wife: she is so sad, so lonely, so abandoned! How she
must love him when he forgets her so! Who knows? Perhaps I should have
done the same.”
Andréi goes to war; and Tolstoï takes us with him into a world of
action, which he describes with rare power. We are dazzled at first by
the brilliant art with which the novelist moves armies, carries out
the combinations of tacticians, shows the troops with their passionate
dash or their senseless terrors, represents their leaders with their
hesitations or their unconscionable activity, but all alive, true,
recognizable, from the humblest of the German officers to Napoleon the
great captain. We are singularly struck by certain of his preferred
methods; like that, for instance, of being true to fact in his painting
of what is always idealized. Napoleon has vulgarities of character and
expression, and the unexpected meeting with them gives us at first a
shock of admiration. Instead of saying simply, “What realism!” we
exclaim, “What reality!” Yet I do not hesitate to consider this portion
of “War and Peace” as inferior to others. The historian in Tolstoï
inspires me with a certain feeling of distrust: it seems to me that the
painter of battles, with his first-class ability, here and there takes
advantage of our fairness. There is a tinsel effect in his painting;
the details are far too numerous, and there is not so much variety
among them as one would think.
What is incomparable in the war part of the romance are the
descriptions of military customs, the scenes of camp-life, the
impressions of certain hours of day and night, the reminiscences of
evening conversations, the effects of groups lighted up by the weird
light of the bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle-field
or the hospital-wards. The marvellous beauty of all this wealth of
feelings felt and experienced adds its glory to the more commonplace
and less valuable woof of the historical narration. Turgénief, who
understood this, noted somewhere or other this difference; but there
are very few readers who can thus bethink themselves, and take account
of their illusions.
Wounded at Austerlitz, and taken to the French hospital, Andréi sees
Napoleon approach his bedside; that is to say, he sees the one who,
in his eyes, represents the ideal, the superhuman man, the hero, the
demigod. At death’s door, Andréi sees all things in a light which
reduces them to their real proportions. To him all Napoleon’s acts, all
his words, all the motives which make him act and speak, seem empty of
interest. He turns from the sight of what is only human, and, with his
eyes fixed solely on the medal which Marya hung around his neck on the
day of his departure, he endeavors to believe “in that ideal heaven
which alone promises him peace.”
Scarcely recovered from his wound, Andréi returns to his father’s home,
which he reaches in time to be present at his wife’s confinement.
There is here an admirable scene, which will be surpassed only by the
birth-scene described in the romance of “Anna Karénina.” All that
is dramatic, august, mysterious, in the opening flower of maternity
has been expressed by Tolstoï in these two passages. That of “Anna
Karénina” is famous. We feel nothing of the equivocal impressions
and the lugubrious effects, which, under the pretext of realism, the
author of “La Joie de Vivre” will put into a similar description. But a
parallel between the realism of Tolstoï and the realism of Zola would
carry us too far from our subject.
The impression left upon Andréi Bolkonsky by the death of his wife has
in no small degree contributed to develop in him the tendency toward
dissatisfaction with life. But one day a young girl comes into the
circle of shadow, and he instantly allows her to usurp its place. The
memory of a luminous vision is brought into the depths of his soul. All
the apparently sleeping springs of affection in his nature are stirred
up by the appearance of Natasha Rostova. Chance brings Andréi to the
young girl’s paternal mansion: he falls in love with her, and with this
new love begins the renewal of life.
The house of the Rostofs is the third of the seignorial homes which
Tolstoï opens to us, and it is the one where it is the easiest thing to
forget one’s self. Songs only are heard, merry laughter, the chatter
of fresh voices. The head of the family, Count Rostof, is a great
proprietor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and is carelessly
hurrying to his ruin; but no one better than he understands the
duties of hospitality. His wife is a sweet, good woman, adoring her
family, and by her family adored. There are two sons in the house. The
youngest, Petya, is a child at the beginning of the story; but he will
be seen in the ranks of the Russian army before the end of the book.
And Tolstoï, in describing his heroic death, will write a few pages,
the beauty and noble sadness of which, without any sense of detriment,
recall Virgil and the episode of Euryalus dying beside Nisus. The elder
brother, Nikolaï Rostof, is the typical young noble, born for military
life, for whom the profession of soldier is the first in the world,
who is too sound in mind, too healthy in body, not to carry everywhere
with him his good-humor and his off-hand manners. But he returns to
camp as to a second _home_, and weeps with joy to see his comrades
again; and he has no regret when he is once more in his tent, and he
submits to the yoke and habits of military life with the same sensation
of pleasure that a weary man feels when at last he has the chance to
lie down and go to sleep. Tolstoï makes use of Nikolaï Rostof just as
he does of Prince Andréi, in order to make us present with him during
a portion of the deeds of war which he wishes to relate. Rostof’s
impressions are not, however, like Bolkonsky’s: they recall pretty
closely the memories noted in the “Military Sketches” of Sevastópol. It
is evident that Tolstoï, who has very largely put himself into each of
his characters, has reflected himself in this peculiar side in this one.
In the house of the Rostofs, there is a whole swarm of young
girls,--the prudent Viéra, methodical and tiresome; the gentle Sonya,
a poor relation, who is loved by the son, and who worships him, even
to sacrifice: she will forego marriage with him, so that he may be
rich and happy. But a luminous face, dazzling with its freshness,
gayety, and grace, is that shown us in Natasha, Andréi Bolkonsky’s
“bride.” Natasha is so beautiful, that no one can see her without
loving her. She is willing to be loved without returning it. Happy
in the effect caused by her beauty, she mistakes all her coquettish,
maidenly caprices for honest, serious sentiments. She has imagined that
she was in love with her brother Nikolaï’s friend Boris, then with
Denisof, then with Prince Andréi, all in succession; but her passion
has never yet been really awakened. It is waiting for the appearance
of the last aspirant, the only one unworthy of being chosen; and
then it bursts forth with frightful violence. Natasha meets Anatoli
Kuragin: she yields to the fascination of his beauty, his boldness. He
shamelessly addresses a few coarse, flattering words to her; and she
is intoxicated by this unrefined incense more than by delicate homage.
She forgets that she is plighted to Prince Andréi: she allows herself
to listen to words of love. She loves; and she loves so passionately,
that, without hesitation, she consents to all that her seducer has
planned to lead her to irretrievable ruin. She is willing to elope. A
providential chance prevents her departure. Pierre Bezúkhof arrives in
time to reveal to the unfortunate young woman that Kuragin is married:
he gives him a pretty rough experience of his giant hand, and compels
Lovelace to return Natasha’s letters, and to pack off.
Natasha[52] falls ill with sorrow, shame, and remorse. The doctors
cannot get the better of this moral suffering. Religion alone puts
an end to it. A lady who lives in the country near the Rostofs comes
to Moscow during Lent, and takes Natasha with her to perform their
devotions. Each morning before daybreak they set out, and go to kneel
before the Virgin, “the blackened painting of whom is lighted up by the
candles and the first rays of the dawn.” Natasha prays with fervor,
with humility. She feels that she is gradually becoming somewhat
regenerated; and on the day when she is to receive the communion, she
finds herself “at peace with herself, and reconciled to life.”
“‘Count,’ asked Natasha of Pierre, as she paused, ‘do I do wrong to
sing?’ And she raised her eyes to his, and blushed.
“‘No. Wherein would lie the harm?... On the contrary. But why should
you ask me?’
“‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ replied Natasha, speaking hurriedly. But it
would grieve me to do any thing which might displease you. I saw,’ she
went on, without noticing that Pierre was embarrassed, and reddening in
his turn, ‘I saw his name in the order of the day.... Do you think that
he will ever forgive me? Do you believe that he will always be angry
with me? Do you?’
“‘I think,’ continued Pierre, ‘that he has nothing to forgive. If I
were in his place’--And the same words of love and pity which he had
spoken to her once before were on his tongue’s end, but Natasha did not
give him time to finish.
“‘_Akh!_ you? That is a very different thing,’ she cried
enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know a better and more generous man than
you. Such a man does not exist. If you had not helped me then and now,
I do not know what would have become of me.’ Her eyes filled with
tears, which she hid behind her music; and, turning around abruptly,
she began to practice her _solfeggi_, and to walk up and down.”
Thus begins the last romance in Natasha’s life. She loves Pierre
Bezúkhof, not with the fanciful love which she felt for Andréi, nor
the mad passion which Kuragin inspired in her, but with a pure, moral
affection, founded on esteem, on the similarity of thoughts and
feelings. This union is the only one which Tolstoï wishes to realize
for Bezúkhof, for it is the only kind which seems to him legitimate.
But, before it can be accomplished, it must needs be that the man to
whom Natasha had plighted her troth should be no longer between her and
the one whom she is to marry. Accordingly we are brought to witness
Andréi Bolkonsky’s death.
The French invasion of 1812 has roused all the powers of Russia.
From the _muzhik_ to the _velmozh_, every one has felt the impulse
of self-sacrifice. The Rostofs, whose second son Petya desires to go
as a hussar, are surprised in the midst of moving, by the arrival of
wounded, whom it is impossible to transport farther. They have some
of the furniture unloaded, and arrange a train of wagons. Among the
mortally wounded whom they have thus received is Prince Andréi. He
was struck by a bursting shell on the same day as Kuragin, and chance
has so brought it about that the wounded man can behold on his bed
of agony the man who stole Natasha’s heart from him. This is a most
powerfully dramatic scene. It is not the only one offered by this part
of the book. Natasha discovers, during the journey, that Prince Andréi
is in one of the wagons. She makes her way out during the night, and
comes to kneel by his bedside. Natasha and the Princess Marya meet at
this death-bed. The analysis of the wounded man’s last feelings and
sensations at the supreme moment is a marvel of divination: the ecstasy
of the evening hours, the delirium of the moments of somnolence, are
expressed with a power of imagination which makes one shudder.
Meantime, beside the Rostofs’ carriage walks a man of lofty stature, in
laborer’s attire. It is Pierre Bezúkhof, who also has desired to find
a chance to sacrifice himself. He did not join the army, like Andréi
Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, Petya, and the others. Does he think, then,
like the author of “My Religion,” that he has no right to kill a man,
even though it were an enemy of his country? He stays in Moscow, with
vague projects, which Fate, that mighty actor in the dramas of mankind,
according to the author of “War and Peace,” prevents him from putting
into execution. He is captured by the French, and endures a most trying
nomad captivity. But he finds among his comrades in misfortune a poor
soldier with wounded feet, and body devoured by vermin, and from him he
learns the great secret of existence. Platon Karataïef, in spite of his
pitiable exterior, personifies the moral and religious ideal, which, as
we have already seen, Count Tolstoï definitely came to accept. As soon
as the hero of “War and Peace,” Pierre Bezúkhof, has reached this limit
of his development, the story has only to proceed of its own inertia
to the conclusion. I feel that there is no necessity of delaying over
the final scenes. The Princess Marya, whose father is now dead, marries
Nikolaï Rostof, who had saved her life by quelling a revolt among the
serfs of Luisuia Gorui, the Bolkonsky’s domain. Bezúkhof, at last a
widower, is free to marry Natasha.
IV.
As in “War and Peace,” so in “Anna Karénina,” we shall find Count
Lyof Tolstoï himself just as his own confessions have allowed us to
point him out. As in “War and Peace,” all the chief personages will
have some of his characteristics, and Vronsky and Konstantin Levin, in
turn, represent him in some peculiar aspect, in the same way as Nikolaï
Rostof, Prince Andréi, and Count Pierre. Thus, in the discourse where
Count Vronsky proposes a re-organization of his landed property, and
claims that it must be based on the agreement between the _muzhik_ and
his former lord, Count Tolstoï propounds a theory which he long held,
but which he has since gone beyond; for, as we shall soon see, he has
reached Communism.
In the same way we recognize the ideas of “My Religion” in Levin’s
resistance of the patriotic outburst, or, to use his language, the
unreflecting enthusiasm which rouses the Russian youth, and drives one
of the characters of the story, Vronsky, to enlist of his own accord
for the defence of the Serbian cause. While protesting by his own
abstention, and also by his tirades against the Slav committees and the
enlistment, Konstantin Levin is already applying the doctrine which
Count Tolstoï will formulate in the maxim, “Do not engage in war,” and
on which he will make the following comment: “Jesus has shown me that
the fifth temptation that deprives me of my welfare is the distinction
made by us between our compatriots and foreign nations. I must believe
in that. Consequently, if in a moment of forgetfulness I experience
a feeling of hostility against a man of another nationality, I must
not fail to recognize, in my thoughtful moments, that this feeling is
false. No longer, as formerly, can I justify myself by the superiority
of my people to others; by the ignorance, the cruelty, or the barbarity
of another people. I cannot refrain, at the first opportunity, from
endeavoring to be more affable to a foreigner than to one of my
countrymen.” And if Vronsky behaves differently from Konstantin Levin,
it is not because Tolstoï wishes to offset the conduct of the one to
the views of the other. In reality, it is not from conviction, it is
from despair, that Vronsky enlists. He goes away so as to forget,
amid the excitement--or, as Pascal said, the _divertissement_--of a
soldier’s life the impression of the inward drama which has disturbed
his soul to its foundation, and which, by a fatal, but unexpected,
conclusion, has just bespattered him with blood.
The romance of “Anna Karénina” is the history of an adulterous amour:
the climax of the amour is suicide. Is this suicide in the novelist’s
mind a moral penalty? That would be a wholly barbarous conception,
a sort of divine judgment such as would have been imagined by a
story-teller in the Middle Ages, and Tolstoï seems to have wished to
forestall such a vulgar interpretation of his narrative. There are
in the romance other criminal amours, and it is without any sign of
punishment that the wholly immoral relationship between the Princess
Betsy and her lover leads them to scandalous conduct. On the other
hand, the passion which unites Anna Karénina and Vronsky is a sincere,
profound, almost solemn passion, in spite of the illegality of their
behavior. The hearts of these two lovers are culpable but lofty.
Besides, the more sympathy the author of the romance shows in their
presentation, the more powerful is the lesson which he desires to draw
from their moral torment. All the plan and all the interest of the work
are here. What agonies of remorse this illegal union, so passionately
desired, brings upon the guilty woman! What deep mortifications and
what vulgar discomfitures, what deadly humiliations and what prosaic
irksomeness, spring from this false situation, and ultimately make it
so odious, so painful, that way of escape has to be found by an act of
madness in a moment of despair!
Yet never were more conditions united to facilitate this union outside
the law. Vronsky’s rank is too lofty for him to fear public opinion:
he makes it, as it were, a point of honor to defy it, and he instals
his mistress in his splendid domain as though she were his legitimate
wife. Without much apparent difficulty, he makes his friends and his
family treat his _liaison_ with respect. Anna Karénina, on her part,
loves Vronsky with a perfect passion, which is only intensified and
not chilled by the feeling of sacrifices undergone. All that she asks
from her lover in return is to be loved by him. She has made it a point
of honor on her part to refuse the advantages of a divorce which her
husband, Alekséi Karénin, at first offers to have pronounced against
himself. She refused from a double reason of delicacy: she did not wish
to add this gratuitous insult to the wrongs of which she is guilty
towards this disagreeable, but upright, man; above all, she does not
wish that a suspicion of calculation should cast its shadow over the
feeling which she has towards the count.
A divorce, however, would put an end to many sentimental doubts causing
misunderstandings, and to many subtleties of behavior resulting only in
collisions. Vronsky demands the divorce with all the strength of his
generous pride. Anna Karénina scouts the idea of it with such jealous
anxiety as a naturally noble woman can feel in preserving the remains
of her dignity, which a shock of passion has thrown down and broken to
fragments like a costly vase. This antagonism creates between the two
lovers a secret source of bitterness. There are other latent troubles.
By her marriage, Anna Karénina has a son from whom she is separated,
whom she worships; and the slightest remembrance of him causes her
heart to thrill with that same strange feeling which is the precursor
of motherhood. In consequence of her amour with Vronsky, she has a
daughter. By a singular anomaly she does not love the child of the man
whom she loves: she is vexed with her daughter for occupying in some
measure a place usurped, for monopolizing with her the maternal cares
which it seems to her that the other child so grievously needs. If as a
mother she has her whimsical but touching fits of jealousy, as a woman
she has other fears, the absurdity of which does not prevent them from
being very painful. She spends her time and gnaws her heart in trying
to divine her lover’s attitude towards her. She knows that for her
sake he has renounced a most brilliant future; she is afraid that she
cannot fill his objectless existence; she sees in each attempted return
to any occupation, to any distraction whatsoever, a proof of weariness,
a confession of irksomeness, a sign of regret.
Vronsky, who has made absolute renunciation without thought of return,
at last begins to suffer from this distrust: the more it grows, the
more disappointment and secret vexation he feels. Here the loftiness
of character which attaches him to his mistress, and which has made
it easy for him to brave every thing for her, turns against the
unfortunate woman, and impels him to resist the efforts which she makes
to get fuller possession of him. It is easy to imagine what will be
the outcome of this incessant struggle. Each day the angles become
sharper, feelings become more touchy, actions rankle more painfully;
these two beings, starting on the bright and free pinnacles of love,
have descended, without being themselves aware of it, into the dark
and suffocating regions of hate. The result of this inevitable decay
of passion is made not less cruel, but more evident, by a wholly
external complication. The divorce which at one time Alekséi Karénin
had offered, he refuses when his wife, weary of such suffering, at
last decides to ask him for it. Here it is that the future author of
“My Religion” appears with his precise theory of the immorality of
divorce. The group of mystics to which the deserted husband has been
led to ask consolation of a religious kind declare, through the mouth
of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, that Alekséi Karénin cannot accede to
his wife’s wishes, and grant her liberty, without falling himself into
a state of mortal sin.
From the day when they learn of his refusal, Anna Karénina and Vronsky,
in spite of themselves, rush straight towards separation. Anna, in her
dread of it, precipitates it. Vronsky is nettled at her ever increasing
restlessness; and before what seems to him pure ingratitude, he affects
an indifference which he does not feel. Discussions, once rare, come in
quick succession, and become quarrelsome. This daily conflict brings
about an explosion, followed by a rupture.
Vronsky leaves her. He goes to his mother, the natural enemy of his
mistress. As soon as she is alone, Anna Karénina feels as though torn
in every fibre of her being: he must come back; she will fall on her
knees before him; she will humiliate herself like a naughty child. She
has written him to return, but she has not the strength to wait for
him; she hurries to meet him, and stops at an intermediate station,
when by a telegram she informs him of her arrival. The train arrives.
Only the count’s valet appears, bringing a note in which Vronsky dryly
announces that he is coming back. The tone of the note is interpreted
by Anna as a new proof of the death of a love which in her alone has
grown with time and possession. She tells herself that there is no
more reason to live, and a series of fatal circumstances unite at this
critical moment to hasten her to her death. She wishes to escape the
inquisitive eyes of the loiterers at the station, who are struck by
her strange behavior: she leaves the platform, and steps down upon the
track. She remembers the terrible accident which a train-hand had met
with at Moscow on the very day of her first meeting with Vronsky. A
sort of reflex action takes place in her brain: a freight-train is
coming along; she goes to meet it.
“She looked under the cars, at the chains and the brake, and the high
iron wheels; and she tried to estimate with her eye the distance
between the fore and back wheels, and the moment when the middle would
be in front of her.
“‘There,’ she said, looking at the shadow of the car thrown upon the
black coal-dust which covered the sleepers, ‘there in the centre he
will be punished, and I shall be delivered from it all,--and from
myself.’
“Her little red travelling-bag caused her to lose the moment when she
could throw herself under the wheels of the first car: she could not
detach it from her arm. She awaited the second. A feeling like that
she had experienced once, just before taking a dive in the river, came
over her, and she made the sign of the cross. This familiar gesture
called back to her soul memories of youth and childhood. Life, with
its elusive joys, glowed for an instant before her, but she did not
take her eyes from the car; and when the middle between the two
wheels appeared, she threw away her red bag, drawing her head between
her shoulders, and, with outstretched hands, threw herself on her
knees under the car. She had time to feel afraid. ‘Where am I? What
am I doing? Why?’ thought she, trying to draw back; but a great,
inflexible mass struck her head, and threw her upon her back. ‘Lord,
forgive me all!’ she murmured, feeling the struggle to be in vain. A
little _muzhik_ was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she read, as in a book, the fulfilment of her
life’s work, of its deceptions, its grief, and its torment, flared up
with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all
that before was in darkness; then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.”
Certainly when one reads this brutally frightful _dénouement_ in the
light of the motto of the book, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” one
might be tempted to interpret Jesus’ word in its Judaic sense. Yet
it would be a serious mistake. It is very certain that this sudden
and tragic end in the novelist’s mind was meant for Anna Karénina’s
deliverance: out of pity for her, he granted her the favor of death.
Death alone could put an end to the torment of this soul, and this
torment began with the sin. Here is the true punishment of guilty
love: all the illusion which exalted the senses, as long as they are
pastured in “love’s shadow,” as one of Shakspeare’s characters calls
it, vanishes as soon as one is sated of love itself.
“What had been for Vronsky for nearly a year the only and absolute aim
of his life, was for Anna a dream of happiness, all the more enchanting
because it seemed to her unreal and terrible. It was like a dream. At
last the waking came; and a new life began for her, with a sentiment of
moral decadence. She felt the impossibility of expressing the shame,
the horror, the joy, that were now her portion. Rather than put her
feelings into idle and fleeting words, she preferred to keep silent.
As time went on, words fit to express the complexity of her sensations
still failed to come to her, and even her thoughts were incapable of
translating the impressions of her heart. She hoped that calmness and
peace would come to her, but they held aloof. Whenever she thought of
the past, and thought of the future, and thought of her own fate, she
was seized with fear, and tried to drive these thoughts away.
“‘By and by, by and by,’ she repeated, ‘when I am calmer.’
“On the other hand, when during sleep she lost all control of her
imagination, her situation appeared in its frightful reality: almost
every night she had the same dream. She dreamed that she was the wife
both of Vronsky and of Alekséi Aleksandrovitch. And it seemed to her
that Alekséi Aleksandrovitch kissed her hands, and said, weeping, ‘How
happy we are now!’ And Alekséi Vronsky, he, also, was her husband.
She was amazed that she could believe such a thing impossible; and
she laughed when she seemed to explain to them that every thing would
simplify itself, and that both would henceforth be satisfied and happy.
But this dream weighed on her spirits like a nightmare, and she always
awoke in a fright.”
That is the moral punishment. What keen psychology! What an admirable
commentary, and what a powerful interpretation of the “_surgit amari
aliquid!_” And it is not only her punishment as a woman which
Tolstoï has described, it is also her punishment as a mother, when
the separation, long postponed by the husband’s own will, becomes
indispensable to the two paramours, both of whom have returned from the
doors of death, and returned more morbidly, more hopelessly, in love
with each other than ever before.
During the first part of this separation, Anna Karénina had wonted
herself to think that it was her duty to give up all that had hitherto
gone to make her happiness, and to leave in her husband’s hands as a
compensation, such as it was, all the elements of her past happiness
which she had exchanged for another kind. “I give up all that I love,
all that I appreciate most in this world,--my son and my reputation!”
She succeeds for some time in lulling, in deceiving, the maternal
sentiment, in substituting in place of her affection for her son her
tender and constant care for the daughter, the child of her _liaison_
with Vronsky. But Vronsky is obliged suddenly to leave Italy where they
have been together; he and Anna reach Petersburg; the mother is again
in the neighborhood of the house where her son is living; she wishes
to enter it, to see him; she begs for permission, and it is harshly
refused; she determines to go to her husband’s at any cost, and make
her way to the child by bribing the servants. The reader will not blame
me for quoting this admirable scene.[53]
“She went to a neighboring shop and purchased some toys, and thus
she formed her plan of action: she would start early in the morning
before Alekséi Aleksandrovitch was up; she would have the money in her
hand all ready to bribe the Swiss and the other servants to let her
go up-stairs without raising her veil, under the pretext of laying on
Serozha’s bed some presents sent by his god-father. As to what she
should say to her son, she could not form the least idea: she could not
make any preparation for that.
“The next morning, at eight o’clock, Anna got out of her hired carriage
and rang the doorbell of her former home.
“‘Go and see what is wanted! It’s some _baruina_,’ said Kapitonuitch,
in overcoat and galoshes, as he looked out of the window and saw a lady
closely veiled standing on the porch. The Swiss’s assistant, a young
man whom Anna did not know, had scarcely opened the door before Anna
thrust a three-ruble note into his hand.
“‘Serozha--Sergéi Aleksiévitch,’ she stammered; then she went one or
two steps down the hall.
“The Swiss’s assistant examined the note, and stopped the visitor at
the inner glass door.
“‘Whom do you wish to see?’ he asked.
“She did not hear his words, and made no reply.
“Kapitonuitch, noticing the stranger’s confusion, came out from his
office and asked her what she wanted.
“‘I come from Prince Skorodumof to see Sergéi Aleksiévitch.’
“‘He is not up yet,’ replied the Swiss, looking sharply at the veiled
lady.
“Anna had never dreamed that she should be so troubled by the sight of
this house where she had lived nine years. One after another, sweet
and cruel memories arose in her mind, and for a moment she forgot why
she was there.
“‘Will you wait?’ asked the Swiss, helping her to take off her
_shubka_. When he saw her face, he recognized her, and bowed
profoundly. ‘Will your ladyship[54] be pleased to enter?’ he said to
her.
“She tried to speak; but her voice failed her, and with an entreating
look at the old servant she rapidly flew up the stairs. Kapitonuitch
tried to overtake her, and followed after her, catching his galoshes at
every step.
“‘Perhaps his tutor is not dressed yet: I will speak to him.’
“Anna kept on up the stairs which she knew so well, but she did not
hear what the old man said.
“‘This way. Excuse it if all is in disorder. He sleeps in the front
room now,’ said the Swiss, out of breath. ‘Will your ladyship be good
enough to wait a moment? I will go and see,’ And opening the high door,
he disappeared.
“Anna stopped and waited.
“‘He has just waked up,’ said the Swiss, coming back through the same
door.
“And as he spoke, Anna heard the sound of a child yawning, and merely
by the sound of the yawn she recognized her son, and seemed to see him
alive before her.
“‘Let me go in--let me!’ she stammered, and hurriedly pushed through
the door.
“At the right of the door was a bed, and on the bed a child was sitting
up in his little open nightgown; his little body was leaning forward,
and he was just finishing a yawn and stretching himself. His lips were
just closing into a sleepy smile, and he fell back upon his pillow
still smiling.
“‘Serozha!’ she murmured as she went towards him.
“Every time since their separation that she had felt an access of love
for the absent son, Anna looked upon him as still a child of four,
the age when he had been most charming. Now he no longer bore any
resemblance to him whom she had left: he had grown tall and thin. How
long his face seemed! How short his hair! What long arms! How he had
changed! But it was still the same,--the shape of his head, his lips,
little slender neck, and his broad shoulders.
“‘Serozha!’ she whispered in the child’s ear.
“He raised himself on his elbow, turned his frowzy head around, and,
trying to put things together, opened wide his eyes. For several
seconds he looked with an inquiring face at his mother, who stood
motionless before him. Then he suddenly smiled with joy; and with his
eyes still half-closed in sleep, he threw himself, not back upon his
pillow, but into his mother’s arms.
“‘Serozha, my dear little boy!’ she stammered, choking with tears, and
throwing her arms around his plump body.
“‘Mamma!’ he whispered, cuddling into his mother’s arms so as to feel
their encircling pressure. Smiling sleepily, he took his hand from the
head of the bed and put it on his mother’s shoulder and climbed into
her lap, having that warm breath of sleep peculiar to children, and
pressed his face to his mother’s neck and shoulders.
“‘I knew,’ he said, opening his eyes; ‘to-day is my birthday; I knew
that you would come. I am going to get up now.’
“And as he spoke he fell asleep again. Anna devoured him with her eyes.
She saw how he had changed during her absence. She would scarcely have
known his long legs coming below his nightgown, his hollow cheeks, his
short hair curled in the neck where she had so often kissed it. She
pressed him to her heart, and the tears prevented her from speaking.
“‘What are you crying for, mamma?’ he asked, now entirely awake. ‘What
makes you cry?’ he repeated, ready to weep himself.
“‘I? I will not cry any more--it is for joy. It is all over now,’ said
she, drying her tears and turning around. ‘_Nu!_ go and get dressed,’
she added, after she had grown a little calmer, but still holding
Serozha’s hand. She sat down near the bed on a chair which held the
child’s clothing. ‘How do you dress without me? How’--she wanted to
speak simply and gayly, but she could not, and again she turned her
head away.
“‘I don’t wash in cold water any more; papa has forbidden it: but you
have not seen Vasíli Lukitch? Here he comes. But you are sitting on my
things.’ And Serozha laughed heartily. She looked at him and smiled.
“‘Mamma! _dúshenka, golúbtchika!_’ [dear little soul, darling], he
cried again, throwing himself into her arms, as though he now better
understood what had happened to him, as he saw her smile.
“‘Take it off,’ said he, pulling off her hat. And seeing her head bare,
he began to kiss her again.
“‘What did you think of me? Did you believe that I was dead?’
“‘I never believed it.’
“‘You believed me alive, my precious?’
“‘I knew it! I knew it!’ he replied, repeating his favorite phrase;
and, seizing the hand which was smoothing his hair, he pressed the palm
of it to his little mouth, and began to kiss it.”
“Vasíli Lukitch, meantime, not at first knowing who this lady was,
but learning from their conversation that it was Serozha’s mother,
the woman who had deserted her husband, and whom he did not know,
as he had not come into the house till after her departure, was in
great perplexity. Ought he to tell Alekséi Aleksandrovitch? On mature
reflection he came to the conclusion that his duty consisted in going
to dress Serozha at the usual hour, without paying any attention to a
third person--his mother, or any one else. But as he reached the door
and opened it, the sight of the caresses between the mother and child,
the sound of their voices and their words, made him change his mind. He
shook his head, sighed, and quietly closed the door. ‘I will wait ten
minutes longer,’ he said to himself, coughing slightly, and wiping his
eyes.
“There was great excitement among the servants; they all knew that the
_baruina_ had come, and that Kapitonuitch had let her in, and that she
was in the child’s room; they knew, too, that their master was in the
habit of going to Serozha every morning at nine o’clock: each one felt
that the husband and wife ought not to meet, that it must be prevented.
“Kornéi, the valet, went down to the Swiss to ask why Anna had been
let in; and finding that Kapitonuitch had taken her up-stairs, he
reprimanded him severely. The Swiss maintained an obstinate silence
till the valet declared that he deserved to lose his place, when the
old man jumped at him, and shaking his fist in his face, said,--
“‘_Da! Vot!_ you would not have let her in yourself? You’ve served
here ten years, and had nothing but kindness from her, but you would
have said, “Now, go away from here!” You know what policy is, you sly
dog. What you don’t forget is to rob your master, and to carry off his
raccoon-skin _shubas_!’
“‘Soldier!’ replied Kornéi scornfully; and he turned towards the nurse,
who was coming in just at this moment. ‘What do you think, Marya
Yefimovna? He has let in Anna Arkadyevna, without saying any thing to
anybody, and just when Alekséi Aleksandrovitch, as soon as he is up,
will be going to the nursery.’
“‘What a scrape! what a scrape!’ said the nurse. ‘But, Kornéi
Vasilyévitch, find some way to keep your master, while I run to warn
her, and get her out of the way. What a scrape!’
“When the nurse went into the child’s room, Serozha was telling his
mother how Nádenka and he had fallen when sliding down a hill of ice,
and turned three somersaults. Anna was listening to the sound of her
son’s voice, looking at his face, watching the play of his features,
feeling his little arms, but not hearing a word that he said. She must
go away, she must leave him: this alone she understood and felt. She
had heard Vasíli Lukitch’s steps, and his little discreet cough, as he
came to the door, and now she heard the nurse coming in; but unable to
move or to speak, she remained as fixed as a statue.
“‘_Baruina! Golúbtchika!_’ [mistress, darling], said the nurse, coming
up to Anna, and kissing her hands and her shoulders. ‘God sent this joy
for our birthday celebration! You are not changed at all.’
“‘_Ach!_ nurse [_nyanya_], my dear: I did not know that you were in the
house,’ said Anna, coming to herself.
“‘I don’t live here; I live with my daughter. I came to give my best
wishes to Serozha, Anna Arkadyevna, _golúbtchika_.’
“The nurse suddenly began to weep, and to kiss Anna’s hand.
“Serozha, with bright, joyful eyes, and holding his mother with one
hand and his nurse with the other, was dancing in his little bare
feet on the carpet. His old nurse’s tenderness towards his mother was
delightful to him.
“‘Mamma, she often comes to see me; and when she comes’--he began; but
he stopped short when he perceived that the nurse whispered something
in his mother’s ear, and that his mother’s face assumed an expression
of fear, and at the same time of shame.
“Anna went to him.
“‘My precious!’ she said.
“She could not say the word ‘farewell’ [_proshcháï_]; but the
expression of her face said it, and he understood.
“‘My precious, precious Kutik!’ she said, calling him by a pet name
which she used when he was a baby. ‘You will not forget me; you’--but
she could not say another word.
“Only then she began to remember the words which she wanted to say
to him, but now it was impossible to say them. Serozha, however,
understood all that she would have said: he understood that she was
unhappy, and that she loved him. He even understood what the nurse
whispered in her ear: he heard the words ‘always at nine o’clock;’ and
he knew that they referred to his father, and that his mother must not
meet him. He understood this, but one thing he could not understand:
why did her face express fear and shame?... She was not to blame, but
she was afraid of him, and seemed ashamed of something. He wanted to
ask a question which would have explained this circumstance, but he did
not dare: he saw that she was in sorrow, and he pitied her. He silently
clung close to her, and then he whispered, ‘Don’t go yet! He will not
come yet awhile.’
“His mother pushed him away from her a little, in order to see if he
understood the meaning of what he had said; and in the frightened
expression of his face she perceived that he not only spoke of his
father, but seemed to ask her how he ought to think about him.
“‘Serozha, my dear,’ she said, ‘love him; he is better than I am; and I
have been wicked to him. When you have grown up, you will understand.’
“‘No one is better than you,’ cried the child, with sobs of despair;
and, clinging to his mother’s shoulders, he squeezed her with all the
force of his little trembling arms.
“‘_Dúshenka_, my darling!’ stammered Anna; and, bursting into tears,
she sobbed like a child, even as he sobbed.
“At this moment the door opened, and Vasíli Lukitch came in. Steps were
heard at the other door; and, in a frightened whisper, he exclaimed,
‘He is coming,’ and gave Anna her hat.
“Serozha threw himself on the bed, sobbing, and covered his face with
his hands. Anna took them away to kiss yet once again his tear-stained
cheeks, and then with quick steps hurried from the room. Alekséi
Aleksandrovitch met her at the door. When he saw her, he stopped and
bowed his head.
“Though she had declared a moment before that he was better than she,
the swift glance that she gave him, taking in his whole person, awoke
in her only a feeling of hatred and scorn for him, and jealousy on
account of her son. She hurriedly lowered her veil, and, quickening her
step, almost ran from the room. She had entirely forgotten in her haste
the playthings which, on the evening before, she had bought with so
much love and sadness; and she took them back with her to the hotel.”
In such scenes, in such moral analyses, as these, it is necessary
to look for the meaning and the drift of “Anna Karénina.” There is
also in the conduct of the husband, the statesman, Alekséi Karénin,
a constant lesson and significance which it would be easy to verify
with “My Religion” in hand. He is punished for having sacrificed every
thing to his ambition, even the love and the care of her whom he took
to be his wife. He does not fight a duel with Vronsky because he lacks
courage, but, above all, because religion lays it upon him as a duty
not to strive to kill his neighbor. He hates his guilty wife, even to
the point of wishing for her death, and of feeling disappointment when
he finds her alive after the travail which she dreaded so keenly; but
his heart softens at her delirium, at the words of repentance which
she speaks at the moment which she thinks is her last: he forgives her.
From the day when he has tasted the divine sweetness of mercy, he is
another man: he has found the meaning of life. Henceforth he will apply
the doctrine of Jesus: “‘I offer my other cheek to the smiter; I give
my last cloak to him who has robbed me; I ask only one thing of God,
that he will not take from me the joy of forgiving.’... Karénin rose:
sobs choked his voice. Vronsky rose too, and standing with bowed head
and humble attitude, looked up at Karénin without a word to say. He was
incapable of understanding Alekséi Aleksandrovitch’s feelings; but he
felt that such magnanimity was above him, and irreconcilable with his
conception of life.”
V.
The astonishment felt by Vronsky at hearing Karénin’s words, we
also have some right to feel in reading Tolstoï’s work entitled “My
Religion.” This work is a socialistic and communistic interpretation of
the gospel. The censorship has put an end to the publication and sale
of it; but it cannot prevent the manuscript from passing from hand to
hand; and, when it shall have succeeded in destroying it, it will be
forever unable to suppress the state of mind of which this work is only
a manifestation, and which will possibly be before long the state of
mind of a whole people.
It is possible now, if it ever was, by looking towards Russia, to find
in the spectacle of the moral phenomena there going on an answer to the
question, “How are dogmas born?”
It was remarked long ago that all the great convulsions of a nation
are followed by an increased tendency towards mysticism: this is
manifested in Russia more than elsewhere. For example, after the
invasion in 1812, a sort of sectarian eruption followed the patriotic
fever. The _muzhik_ had bravely burned his harvest, and had taken arms
to drive out the foreigner. He had done a man’s work, and had been
given to understand, that, as soon as the enemy were out of the way,
the grateful country would recognize him as a son and give him his
freedom. The French, burned out by fire, cut down by frost,[55] retire,
sowing the path of their journey back with corpses. But the hour of
liberty does not yet strike. The affairs of Europe must be put in order
before taking hold of the _muzhik’s_. After the treaties have been
signed, after the armies have gone home, the rights of the _muzhik_
remain neglected, and his complaints are stifled. His despair is seen
in emigrations, in deeds of violence, in his affiliation with existing
sects, in the formation of a new social and religious dogma. At that
moment we see arise for the first time the _bogomól_, or praying men.
In the last quarter of the century, Russia has experienced a storm more
tremendous than that of the invasion of 1812: it might be said that the
face of the country was transformed by the upheaval in the condition of
the people.
The single reign of Alexander II. saw such facts accomplished as the
abolition of serfdom; the redivision of the land; above all, the
increase in the taxes, which has touched the people in a very different
way from all the reforms. The dominating influence of wealth has grown
more and more; a great net-work of railroads has extended over the
country; the maxim of _laissez faire_ and _laissez passer_ has made
its way into the Russian village. None of these changes has fully
succeeded, or, in better words, none has succeeded as yet. In periods
of transition, it is the feature of inconvenience that, above all,
attracts attention, and more often than not causes the advantageous to
be overlooked. Now, here, the ill has often surpassed the good. Thus
in the regulation of landed property, the insufficiency of the lots
of land granted the _muzhik_, and the lack of proportion between the
revenue and the tax imposed, have quickly brought the small cultivator
back into dependence upon the great proprietor, and serfage has
re-appeared in disguise.
As to the administrative reforms, the _zemstvo_, the tribunal, the
school, all this has scarcely made any impression upon the people
except as bringing an increase in the tax, expressed by the immemorial
formula _so much per soul_. The taxes coming in much less than the
increase in the rates, extreme measures have to be taken to obtain the
payment of them. The _muzhik_ has only one way of escaping prosecution,
and that is to give himself over, body and soul, to the usurer. In
short space of time the misery is universal. A single man gets rich
at the expense of all the others: it is the _kulak_ (the fist), the
monopolist.
Bread is lacking in many places. In its place they eat, not cake,
but preparations of straw, bark, or grass, all that which is called
by the expressive term _cheat-hunger_.[56] It is plain to see that
the _muzhiks_, reduced to these extremities, lose their interest in a
society which treats them a little less kindly than if they were common
cattle. All that they know of public affairs is that it is necessary to
pay the tax. The most palpable advantage which they get from the time
spent in discussing the common interests is the bumper of _vodka_ with
which discussions are kept alive: thus they forget themselves for a few
hours.
Then, in hatred of the present, minds turn back to the past, and, above
all, yearn eagerly for the future. The peasant’s _naïve_ imagination is
consoled by his dreams; the ardor of his desires is spent in Utopias.
The idea of _free lands_ haunts these enthusiastic minds. The story is
secretly whispered about of the promises made by the Shah of Persia
to emigrants who will come and settle in his dominions: his subjects
shall pay no taxes and have no superiors. Solid masses of people set
out suddenly, and depart for “the country of the white waters.” There
it is that the popular ideal is to be realized. Many outlaw themselves
without leaving their residences, and refuse to answer any of their
obligations towards the commune or the _mir_. Others take refuge in
the neighboring forest, go and settle in the desert, in the steppe.
A considerable number go on pilgrimages to the holy places. Finally,
there are those who go to swell the class of true Nihilists; that is to
say, people who make their lives even a bold negation of all that is
accepted, affirmed, around them,--the class of wanderers, or that of
occults.
The attitude of these refractory men and women strikes the people, and
is not slow to inspire them with a respect which is thus explained.
The Russian people’s heads are stuffed with legends. One of the widest
spread is that of the centenarian who lives in the desert, taking
no other food than a consecrated wafer once a week; and, though he
has not the slightest notion of the alphabet, yet he reads the Holy
Book, the book with the leaves of gold, where is found the answer to
every question, the rule for all conduct. We see now how reality and
legend can come to be confounded. In the lonely hut where this hermit
dwells apart, fitted as he is ordinarily by his intelligence and his
will for the exceptional part which he is going to perform, he allows
himself endlessly to reflect on all sorts of subjects. He ruminates at
his leisure, in the solitude, over all the difficulties of the life
from which he has torn himself away. He gropes after his definition
of things good and of things evil; he slowly builds up his solemn
casuistry.
The peasants one after another take the road to his hermitage. They
are sure of bringing away good advice about disputed cases. Their
cases include every subject,--family affairs, commune affairs,
church affairs. Every thing is discussed, exposed to the cenobite’s
criticism, to his interpretation. It is a matter of course that
religious questions fill a large part in this programme, worked up by
the anxieties of the throng, and the prophetic explanations of the
hermit. But the programme also takes up economic or social questions.
It prepares for the coming of a new law. This law is the outcome of a
duty, and this duty is summed up in the formula, “To live according to
justice;” or, in other words, “according to the will of God.”
The schisms formed, as we have just seen, are those of unimportant
people. They have nothing in common with those which the irksomeness of
living develops, in similar lines, in Russia, among the upper classes
of the nation. Quite contrary to the sects born in the aristocracy,
the schisms among the common people take their rise in the need of
existence. They serve the instinct which impels the creature to seek
not only life, but the best form of life. That is why they act so
powerfully on the masses; that is why they cross time and space, making
proselytes, apostles, martyrs.
The surprising thing is that the rich and aristocratic Count Tolstoï
should become the apostle of such a religion. Like the sectaries of the
rustic class, he builds a complete religious, political, and social
system upon a new interpretation of the Gospels.
His religion, properly speaking, takes as its foundation the maxim of
the Evangelist, “Resist not the one that is evil.” And it is not in an
allegorical sense, it is by the letter, that these words of Jesus must
be understood. The law laid down by Jesus’ disciples is precisely the
opposite of that of the disciples of this world, which is the _law of
conflict_. This doctrine of Jesus, which is sure to give peace to the
world, is contained wholly in five commandments:--
1. Be at peace with everybody. Do not allow yourself to consider any
one as low or stupid.
2. Do not violate the rights of wedlock. Do not commit adultery.
3. The oath impels men to sin. Know that it is wrong, and bind not
yourselves by any promise.
4. Human vengeance or justice is an evil. Do not, under any pretext,
practise it. Bear with insults, and render not evil for evil.
5. Know that all men are brothers, the sons of one father. Do not break
the peace with any on account of difference of nationality.
By putting this doctrine into practice, man can realize a happiness
in life, and there is no happiness in life except in this path. There
is no immortality. The conception of the resurrection of the dead,
according to Tolstoï, is the greatest piece of barbarism.
The political doctrine derived from this religious doctrine admits of
no tribunals or armies or national frontiers.
The social doctrine to which we must be led by this religious and
political dogma is the suppression of property, and the proclamation of
communism. Man is not put into the world that others should work for
him, but that he himself should work for others. He alone who works
shall have daily bread.
The most dangerous enemy of society is the Church, because it supports
with all its power the errors which it has read into its interpretation
of Jesus’ doctrine. In place of this false light of Church dogma, which
misleads believers and lets them “go into the pit,” must be substituted
the light of conscience; one’s whole conduct must be irradiated by it,
by submitting each of his acts to the approbation of the judge which we
feel within us, “in our inner tribunal.”
To succeed in leading the life which conscience may approve, what is,
above all, necessary? “Do not lead a life which makes it so difficult
to refrain from wrath, from not committing adultery, from not taking
oaths, from not defending yourself by violence, from not carrying on
war: lead a life which would make all that difficult to do.” Do not
crush at pleasure the very conditions of earthly happiness; do not
break the bond which unites man to nature: that is to say, lead lives
so as to enjoy “the sky, the sun, the pure air, the earth covered with
vegetation and peopled with animals;” become a rustic instead of being
the busy, weary, sickly urban. Return to the natural law of labor,--of
labor freely chosen and accomplished with pleasure, of physical labor,
the source of appetite and sleep. Have a family, but have the joys
of it as well as the cares: that is, keep your children near you; do
not intrust their education to strangers; do not imprison them; do
not drive them “into physical, moral, and intellectual corruption.”
Have free and affectionate intercourse with all men, whatever their
rank, their nationality. “The peasant and wife are free to enter into
brotherly relations with eighty millions of working-men, from Arkhangel
to Astrakhan, without waiting for ceremony or introduction. A clerk and
his wife find hundreds of people who are their equals; but the clerks
of higher station do not recognize them as their equals, and they
in their turn exclude their inferiors. A wealthy man of society and
his wife have only a few score families of equal distinction, all the
others are unknown to them. The cabinet minister and the millionaire
have only a dozen people as rich and as important as they are. For
emperors and kings, the circle is still narrower. Is it not like a
prison, where each prisoner in his cell has relations only with one or
two jailers?” Finally, live in a community, in hygienic conditions,
with moral habits, which bring you the nearest possible to that ideal
which is the very foundation of happiness, health as long as you live,
death without disease, when existence has reached its limit.
The higher one rises in the social scale, the farther one departs from
this ideal. The picture, which Tolstoï paints of the physical pains and
tortures of the wealthy and of the aristocratic, of those whom he calls
“the martyrs of the religion of the world,” is remarkably vigorous.
Rousseau’s declamation against the pretended benefits of civilization
here finds a powerful interpreter.
Does that mean that Tolstoï declaims? No one is more in earnest. It is
not only in words that he declares war on the organization of society
recognized and defended by the government of his country. He puts the
doctrine into practice; he is ready to suffer all things to affirm
the cause of Jesus. His refusal to take an oath, which is one of the
articles of his creed, has already brought upon him a condemnation
from one of those tribunals which he himself condemns in the name
of the maxim of the Gospels, “Judge not.” It is not credible that
the old hero of the wars of the Caucasus and Crimea compels his son
to refuse military service, as was done once by the son of Sutaïef,
the _raskolnik_ of Tver. He would have liked to strip himself of his
property, in order to conform to the socialistic dogma forbidding
inheritance and property. He was hindered only by the fear of trampling
upon the liberty and the conscience of others. But amid the luxury of
his family Count Tolstoï lives the life of a poor man. He has dropped
his pen as a novelist.[57] Clad like a _muzhik_, he wields the scythe
or drives the plough; between seedtime and harvest, he preaches his
evangel.
I do not wish either to spread or to confute his teaching: for me it
is sufficient to have given the reader an idea of it. Let him not show
the characteristic behavior of a French reader; let him not hasten
to see in Count Tolstoï’s latest attitude a sign of aberration. This
attitude in his country is shared by a multitude of men. The single
religious sect of _Shalaputui_ (Extravagants), preaching and practising
a communistic gospel like Tolstoï, has, within a score of years, won
over all the common people, all the rustic class, of the south and
south-west of Russia. Judicious observers, well-informed economists,
foresee the complete and immediate spread of the doctrine in the lower
classes throughout the empire.[58] The day when the work of propagation
shall be finished, the _raskolniks_ of a special socialistic dogma will
be counted: their number will suffice to show their power. That day,
if they take it into their heads to act, will only have--using the
popular expression--“to blow” on the old order of things, to see it
vanish away.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] _Zapiski Markera._
[48] Count Tolstoï himself apparently narrowly escaped a similar fate.
His brother-in-law induced him to give up gambling; but, after he went
to Teheran, he fell into his old habits, and incurred such debts that
he was unable to pay them. He tells how full of despair he was at the
thought of a certain note falling due when he had nothing wherewith to
meet it. He began to pray; and, as though in answer to his prayer, he
received a playfully sarcastic letter from his brother, enclosing the
dreaded note which a brother officer had generously refused to press or
even collect. Yashvin’s passion for the gaming-table, in Anna Karénina,
is also a reminiscence of this wild-oats period in Count Tolstoï’s
life. All true fiction must be fact.--N. H. D.
[49] Aleksander Sergeyévitch Griboyédof was born in January, 1795, and
died in 1829. He studied law at first, but at the age of seventeen
entered the army, and afterwards the college of foreign affairs, the
service of which took him to Persia and Georgia, where a part of his
great comedy, The Misfortune of having Brains (Gore ot Uma), was
written.--N. H. D.
[50] Cadet, or ensign.
[51] M. Dupuy, in his condensation of the story, loses the perspective.
Olénin taps lightly on the window. “He ran to the door, and actually
heard Marianka’s deep sigh and her steps. He took hold of the latch,
and shook it softly. Bare, cautious feet, scarcely making the boards
creak, drew near the door. The latch was lifted: the door was pushed
ajar. There was a breath of gourds and marjoram, and suddenly
Marianka’s full form appeared on the threshold.” But the prospective
interview is broken by the appearance of Lukashka’s friend Nazarka, who
has to be bought off. The next day Olénin writes a letter, which, being
more like a diary, he does not send, “because no one would understand
what he meant to say.” In this letter occurs the passage which M. Dupuy
quotes.--N. H. D.
[52] She takes a dose of arsenic, but prompt means save her life.--N.
H. D.
[53] M. Dupuy adds, that he borrows “the inelegant but expressive
translation of this scene” from the _Journal de Saint Pétersbourg_.
In the present case, as in nearly all other quotations in the book,
the originals have been used, which will account for greater or less
variations from the literal version of the French text.--N. H. D.
[54] _Vasha prevoskhodítelstvo_; literally, Your Excellency.
[55] The Russians, after the retreat of the French, conferred the
epaulets on Jack Frost: it was said that General _Morozof_ won the
victory for them.--N. H. D.
[56] The word _podspórye_ might be rendered by the much less expressive
periphrasis “the _succedanea_ of bread.”--_Author’s note._
[57] At last accounts, the reports about Count Tolstoï’s vagaries
were found to be idle exaggerations: he is living on his estate,
like a reasonable man, studying Greek and Hebrew, and writing short
stories.--N. H. D.
[58] In 1882 a Russian writer, Mr. Abramof, published, in The
Annals of the Country, a very curious study of the _Shalaputui_.
Turgénief was greatly struck by it. He said in regard to it: “There
is the peasant getting up steam; before long he will make a general
up-turning.”--_Author’s Note._
APPENDIX.
As M. Dupuy does not pretend to give any thing more than a hasty
_résumé_ of biographical facts, the reader may like to have for
reference a more definite and fuller account of the lives of the three
great authors whose literary work has been analyzed. The main authority
which I have consulted has been P. Polevoï’s “History of Russian
Literature, in Sketches and Biographies” [_Istoriya Russkoï Literaturui
f Otcherkakh i Biografyakh_, fourth edition, published in 1883.] Some
of his dates differ slightly from those commonly accepted. How far a
man’s judgment is to be accepted who writes with the fear of the censor
in his eyes, is a question; but there are a few quotations in Polevoï
which are surprising in their liberality. The work is a valuable
compound of literary fact and criticism, and it is illustrated with
capital woodcuts.
Nikolaï Vasilyévitch Gogol-Yanovsky was born on the 31st of March,
1809 (N.S.), in the little town of Sorotchintsui, in the Government
of Poltava. His father, Vasíli Afanasyévitch Gogol, was the son of a
regimental clerk: at the time when the Zaparog Cossacks were still in
existence, this position was considered highly respectable. Only two
generations separated Gogol from the time of the Cossack wars; and
his grandfather, the regimental clerk, used to relate to his family a
great many stories of that time. Gogol was surrounded from his earliest
childhood by a life that was hardly freed from its mediæval, warlike,
half-wild character. It was full of fresh recollections of the olden
times, of legends and war-songs; it was a life in which religious
fervor was intermingled with a swarm of popular prejudices. Gogol’s
grandfather was a lively representative of the just vanishing past,
and not in vain does Gogol speak about him often in his _Vetchera na
Khutoryé_ (Evenings at the Farm). Gogol was indebted to his grandfather
for at least half of his Malo-Russian tales. “My grandfather,” he says,
in his sketch in his _Vetcher Nakanunya Ivána Kupála_ (“The Eve of Ivan
Kupalo’s Day”). “My grandfather (may he prosper in heaven! may he eat
in the other world little wheaten rolls, with poppy seeds and honey!)
was able to tell stories in a wonderful way. When he told stories, I
would sit the whole day without moving from my place, and never cease
to listen.... It was not so much the marvellous tales of the olden
time, about the invasions of the Zaporozhtsui (Cossacks) and the Poles,
about the brave deeds of the old heroes (Polkova, Poltor-Kozhukh, and
Sagaidatchnui), that interested us, as the legends about some olden
deed, which used to make the shudders run down my back, and my hair
stand on end. Sometimes my fear would be so great from them, that every
thing would appear to me like God knows what monsters.”
While his grandfather was a representative of the vanishing past,
his father, Vasíli Afanasyévitch, appeared as the representative of
modern times. He was a well-read man and full of experience, was fond
of literature, subscribed to magazines, and at the same time was
endowed with a gift of relating stories, and of enhancing them with
Malo-Russian humor. His farm, Vasilyevka, was the centre of society
for the district. Among the varied festivals in this farm, Gogol’s
father used often to get up private theatricals. At these spectacles
they used to give Kotlyarevsky’s just published comedy _Natalka
Poltavka_ (“The Girl from Poltava”), and _Moskal Tcharivnik_ (“The
Charming Muscovite”). Thus Gogol was early attracted to the stage.
Gogol’s father wrote, in imitation of Kotlyarevsky, several comedies
which were played at Vasilyevka. Gogol was taught to read at home by
a hired seminarist. Afterwards he was taken, with his younger brother
Ivan, to Poltava, where he was taught by one of the teachers of the
gymnasium. While the children were at home on their vacation, Ivan
died; and Gogol was not sent back to Poltava, but remained for some
time at home. Meantime, the governor of Thernígof, the _prokuror_
(attorney-general) Bazhánof, informed Gogol’s father about the opening
at Niézhin, of a gymnasium for higher learning, founded by Prince
Bezborodko, and advised him to place his son in the boarding-school
connected with the gymnasium. This was done in May, 1821. Gogol
entered as a paying pupil, and at the end of a year he received the
government scholarship. It cannot be said that Gogol was much indebted
to this gymnasium of the higher education, or that he gained there any
solid knowledge of any kind whatsoever, even in the very elementary
branches. He studied his lessons very superficially; but as he had
a good memory he got a smattering of the lectures, and, by studying
hard just before the examinations, he was promoted in due time. He
especially disliked mathematics, and he had a very slight inclination
even for the study of languages. After graduation he could not read a
French book without a dictionary. Against German and English he had a
curious spite. He used to say, in jest, that he did not believe that
Schiller or Goethe knew German; “surely they must have written in some
other language.”
The slight progress made by Gogol in the modern languages was more than
rivalled by his backwardness in the classic tongues. “He studied with
me three years,” says Kulzhinsky, Gogol’s Latin teacher at the Niézhin
gymnasium, in his “Reminiscences,” “and he could not learn any thing
except the translation of the first sentence of the “Chrestomathie” by
means of Koshansky’s grammar, ‘Universus mundus plerumque distribuitur
in duas partes, cœlum et terram’ (for which he was nicknamed _universus
mundus_). During the lectures, Gogol used to hide some book or other
under his desk, paying heed neither to _cœlum_ nor _terram_. I must
confess that neither under me nor under my colleagues did he learn any
thing. The school taught him only some logical formality and directness
of understanding and thought; and, more than that, he learned nothing
with us.”
Not even the Russian language was accurately learned by Gogol in the
gymnasium of the higher sciences, according to the testimony of his
biographer. “His school letters,” says he, “can be distinguished by
the absence of all rules of orthography. To make them plainer, I used
to arrange the punctuation-marks as it was necessary; I used to change
the capital letters, of which he was very extravagant; and I often
corrected his blunders in the endings of adjectives.”
The only thing that Gogol acquired in the gymnasium was the art of
drawing, and his letters to his relatives prove that he took great
pleasure in spending much time in this art.
As he was towards the bottom of his class in his studies, he was at the
same time greatly distinguished by his love of mischief; and he was a
great favourite with every one. His comrades were especially drawn to
him by his inexhaustible humor. Even in childhood could be seen in him
his spontaneous wit; and at the same time, no one could copy or imitate
a character as well as the little Gogol.
He was an indefatigable reader. He especially liked Pushkin and
Zhukovsky. His parents subscribed to the _Vyestnik Yevropui_
(“Messenger of Europe”), and the reading of this and the almanacs
aroused in him a desire to write. At first this came in the form of
parodies. While he was at Niézhin, a certain scholar showed some signs
of poetical passion; and Gogol collected this fellow’s verses, and
put them in the form of an almanac, which he called _Parnassky Navoz_
(“Manure from Parnassus”). These parodies suggested to him to publish
a serious written journal, and his enterprise cost him great trouble.
He had to write articles on all subjects, and then copy them, and, what
was more important, to make a volume out of them. He spent whole nights
trying to decide upon his titlepage, on which was ornamented the name
of his journal “The Star” (_Zvyezdá_). It was all done stealthily,
without the knowledge of his friends. Early in the month, the journal
made its first appearance. In “The Star” were published Gogol’s story,
“The Tverdislavitch Brothers,” which was an imitation of contemporary
fiction, and some of his poems. In Gogol’s lofty style, which he now
affected, he also wrote a tragedy, “The Murderers” (_Razboiniki_) and
a ballad, “Two Little Fish” (_Dvé Ruíbki_), touching on the death
of his brother. He also wrote at this time “Hans Küchel-Garten,” a
rhymed idyl, which tells how an ideal young man leaves his sweetheart
through his thirst for grandeur, but, after vain wandering, returns
again to his home, and shares with his love happiness under a straw
thatch. Gogol’s comic talent, however, in spite of his belief in a
lofty style, began to find means of expression. Thus, among other
things, he wrote a satire on the inhabitants of the town of Niézhin,
under the title “Something about Niézhin; or, no Law for Fools,” in
which he depicts the typical people of the town. It was divided into
five parts,--“The Dedication of the Church in the Greek Cemetery,” “The
Election to the Greek Magistracy,” “Swallowing-all Fair,” “The Dinner
to the _Predvodítel_ of the Nobility,” and “The Coming and Going of the
Students.”
On returning once to the gymnasium after his vacation, Gogol wrote a
comedy in Malo-Russian, which was played in his father’s theatre; and
thus he made his _début_ as a director and actor.
Blackboards served as scenes, and the insufficiency of costumes was
made up by imagination. Then the schoolboys clubbed together, and got
scenery and costumes, copying what Gogol had seen in his father’s
theatre, the only one that he had ever attended. The direction of the
gymnasium, wishing to encourage the study of French, introduced pieces
in that tongue; and the repertory of the little school theatre soon
was composed of comedies by Molière, Florian, Von Vizin, Kotzebue,
Kniaznin, and Malo-Russian authors. The townspeople heard about the
theatre, and it soon became very popular; and a few years ago people
were still living in Niézhin who could remember how successfully Gogol
took the _rôle_ of old women.
Towards the end of his course, Gogol and his comrades subscribed quite
a sum of money, and bought a library, which contained the works of
Delvig, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and other distinguished contemporaries, and
subscribed to several journals. Gogol was made librarian. He was so
indefatigable that he made every person who took a book finish it, and
so careful of their cleanliness that he used to wrap up the fingers of
his readers in paper.
Gogol graduated in 1828, with the rank of the fourteenth _tchin_.
Even at this time he was very religious, as can be seen in his
correspondence with his relatives. “After the death of his father, in
1825, he writes to his mother, ‘Don’t be worried, my dearest _mámenka_.
I have borne this shock with the strength of a Christian. It is true,
at first I was overwhelmed with this terrible tidings. However, I
did not let anybody see that I was so sorrowful; but, in my own room,
I was given over mightily to unreasonable despair. I even wanted to
take my life. But God kept me from it. And towards evening, I noticed
only sorrow, but not a passionate sorrow; and it gradually turned into
an uneasy, hardly noticeable melancholy, mingled with a feeling of
gratitude to Almighty God. I bless thee, holy faith! In thee only I
find a source of consolation and compensation for my bitter grief.’”
At the same time he was a fiery enthusiast; he imagined himself a
great benefactor of his fatherland. For this reason he felt inclined
to a governmental situation. He wrote his mother in 1828 that he was
not understood: some, he said, took him to be a genius; others, to be
a stupid. He tried to be one of the romanticists; and, like all of
those budding geniuses, he thought that he had a great deal to put up
with from people. In the same letter he writes his mother how much
ungratefulness, coldness, vexation, he had been obliged to bear without
complaint and without grumbling. He writes one of his friends that the
people of Niézhin, not excepting “our dear instructors,” have heaped
upon our genius the pressing heaps of their earthiness, and crushed us.
Two features of Gogol’s life at this time are interesting as showing
his development,--a tendency to asceticism, which led him to a stern
self-restraint, turning all the pleasures and interests of his life to
a spiritual and intellectual sphere. “My plan of my life,” he writes
to his mother in 1829, “is wonderfully stern and exact. Every _kopek_
has its place. I refuse myself even very extreme necessities, with
a view of being able to keep myself in the position which I am now,
so that I can satisfy my desire of seeing and feeling the beautiful
(_prekrásnoe_). With this view I lay up all my annual allowance, except
what is absolutely necessary.”
In 1829 Gogol first went to Petersburg, where, in spite of his vivid
dreams of success and glory, he found the hard realities of life, and
met with discouraging failures. He wrote his mother: “Everywhere I met
with disappointments; and, what is strangest of all, I met them when I
least expected them. Men entirely incapable, without any letters of
introduction whatever, easily succeeded where I, even with the aid of
my patrons, failed.” He also fell in love with a girl of high rank; and
in his letter to his mother he speaks about it, but does not mention
her name: “For God’s sake, don’t ask her name. She is very, very
high.... No, it is not love: I, at least, never heard of such a love.
Under the impulse of madness and horrible torments of the soul, I was
thirsty to intoxicate myself only with the sight of her, only the sight
of her I looked for. To look upon her once more was my only desire,
which grew stronger with an unspeakable, gnawing anguish. I looked upon
myself with horror, and I saw all my horrible situation. Every thing in
the world was strange to me, life and death were equally intolerable,
and my soul could not account for its impulses.”
His mental state arising from all these disappointments became so
serious that he went abroad with money that his mother sent him to pay
a mortgage on their estate, and told his mother to take his portion of
the estate in exchange for it. He went to Lübeck by sea, staid there a
month, took a few baths, and returned to Petersburg without seeing any
thing more of Europe. At all events, he returned, sobered, refreshed,
and strengthened, in September, 1829. In April, 1830, Gogol found
a very insignificant place in the ministry of Appanages. The whole
outcome of this year of servitude was the knowledge of tying up papers,
and a vivid memory of various types of _Tchinovniks_ which he used to
advantage in his works later on.
In 1829 he wrote his poem “Italy,” and sent it anonymously to the
publisher of _Suin Otetchestva_ (Son of the Fatherland.) Soon
afterwards he published “Hans Küchel-Garten,” which had been written
while he was in the gymnasium. It was signed _Alof_, and brought a
review full of unmerciful ridicule. This review cut Gogol so keenly
that he immediately withdrew the story from circulation. Buying up all
the copies that he could get hold of, he hired a room in a hotel, and
made a grand holocaust of them. The last tendencies of his immature,
imitative romanticism went up with the incense of the fire and smoke.
He soon saw that a new spirit was invading Russian literature:
historical novels were becoming fashionable. So Gogol writes to all
his friends and relatives in Malo-Russia to send him every possible
scrap about the history of that region, about the habits, manners,
customs, legends, games, songs, of the Cossacks. “It is very, very
necessary for me,” he would add. He was working over his “Evenings on
the Farm near Dikanka.” In February, 1830, there appeared anonymously
in the _Otetchestvennuie Zapiski_ one of Gogol’s tales, entitled
“Bassavriuk; or, Ivan Kupala’s Eve.” In 1831, in “Northern Flowers,”
appeared a chapter of his historical novel “Hetman,” signed with four
zeros. In the first number of the “Literary Gazette” he published a
sketch from his Malo-Russian story, _Strashnui Kaban_ (The Terrible
Boar). He also wrote serious articles and translations.
In March, 1831, he was made teacher of Russian in the Patriotic
Institute. Here, instead of teaching Russian, he taught history,
geography, and international history; and when he was called to account
for his vagaries, and was asked when he was going to teach the Russian
language, he smiled, and said, “What do you want it for, gentlemen? The
main thing in Russian is to know the difference between _yé_ and _yat_
[two similarly sounding, but differently written, letters], and that I
perceive you know already, as is seen by your copy-books. No one can
teach you to write smoothly and gracefully. This power is granted by
nature, but not by instruction.”
Indeed, Gogol himself, to his dying day, was not able to spell
correctly. He cared more for the spirit than the form. The publication
of “Evenings on the Farm,” especially the second series, which are
marked by the purest humor, without a shade of melancholy, immediately
placed him in the front rank of the authors of his day; and this was
the happiest epoch of his life. Soon afterwards he began to feel a
re-action. In 1833 he wrote to Pogódin: “Let my stories be doomed to
oblivion till something really solid, great, artistic, shall come out
of me. But I stand idle, motionless. I don’t want to do any thing
trivial, and I can’t think of any thing great.” He then betook himself
to historical investigation, and determined to write the history of
Malo-Russia and of the Middle Ages. He laid out the work on a colossal
scale. He wrote to Maksímof, “I am writing the history of the Middle
Ages, and I think it will fill eight volumes, if not nine.” He never
finished these histories, but his study of Malo-Russia led him to the
composition of his great epos “Taras Bulba.”
There happened to be a vacancy in the university of St. Vladímer in
Kief. Some one suggested Gogol, and he was invited to apply. He came,
he saw, and he conquered the man in whose hands the appointment lay,
by his wonderful flow of brilliant conversation; but he brought no
documents. He was requested to come again, with his documents and
application. Again he appeared, and again he dazzled by his wit; but
when he was asked for his documents he pulled from his inside pocket
his certificate of graduation from the gymnasium, which gave him the
right to a _tchin_ of the fourteenth class, and an application for the
chair of Ordinary Professor. He was told that it was impossible, with
such credentials, for him to be given any thing more than the chair
of adjunct. Gogol was obstinate, and absolutely refused to take that
position. Shortly after, he was appointed professor at Petersburg,
where he gave the one lecture which was so beautiful. “We awaited the
next lecture with impatience,” says Ivanitsky, who was a pupil at that
time; “Gogol came in very late, and began with the phrase: ‘Asia was
a volcano belching forth people.’ Then he spoke a few words about the
emigration of nations; but it was so dull, lifeless, and desultory that
it was tedious to listen to him, and we could not believe that it was
the same Gogol who had spoken so beautifully the week before. Finally
he mentioned a few books where we could read up the subject, and bowed
and left. The whole lecture lasted twenty minutes. The following
lectures were of the same stamp; so that we became entirely cool to
him, and the classes became smaller and smaller. But once,--it was
October,--while walking up and down the hall of assembly, and waiting
for him, suddenly Pushkin and Zhukovsky came in. They knew, of course,
through the Swiss, that Gogol had not yet come; and so they only asked
us in which room he would read. We showed them the auditorium. Pushkin
and Zhukovsky looked in, but did not enter. They waited in the hall of
assembly. In quarter of an hour the lecturer came; and we, following
the three poets, entered the auditorium and sat down. Gogol took his
chair, and suddenly, without any warning, began to read the history
of the Arabians. The lecture was brilliant, exactly in the manner of
the first. Word for word it was published in the ‘Arabesques.’ It was
evident that he knew beforehand the intention of the poets to come
to his lecture, and therefore he prepared himself to treat them like
poets. After the lecture Pushkin said something to Gogol, but the
only word I heard was ‘fascinating’ (_uvlekátelno_). The rest of his
lectures were very dry and tedious. Not one historical personage caused
any lively and enthusiastic discussion.... He looked upon the dead
nations of the past with dreary eyes, as it were; and it was doubtless
true that it was tedious to him, and he saw that it was tedious to his
hearers. He used to come and speak half an hour from his platform, and
then leave for a whole week and sometimes for two. Then he would come
again and repeat the same proceeding. Thus went the time till May.”
He gave up his thoughts of the nine-volume history of the Middle Ages;
and of this year of disappointment there remained only a few articles
in the “Arabesques,” and the sketches of a tragedy entitled “Alfred,”
which show that he had not a trace of talent for tragedy. In 1835 he
resigned, and devoted himself entirely to literature.
About this time he began to develop a great passion for the
supernatural, which is best illustrated in his sketch “Vii.” It is an
interesting fact that the poet Pushkin, whose influence over Gogol was
considerable, suggested to him the subject of “Dead Souls.” He also
told him the story which he afterwards worked up into the “Revizor.”
Pushkin himself at one time intended to use both of these subjects.
Gogol attended the first production of the “Revizor” on the stage, and
was greatly disgusted. He trained the actors, however, giving them the
meaning of every inflection, and showing what gesticulation was needed.
“All are against me,” he wrote to M. S. Shchepkin in 1836, “all the
decent _tchinovniks_ are shouting that I hold nothing sacred, since
I dared to speak so about people who are in the service. The police
are against me, merchants are against me, literary men are against me:
they berate me, yet they go to see the play. At the fourth act it is
impossible to get tickets. Had it not been for the mighty protection
of the emperor, my play would never have been put on the stage; and
people even now are doing their best to have it suppressed. Now I see
what it means to be a comic writer. The least spark of truth, and all
are against you,--not one man, but all classes. I imagine what it would
have been if I had taken something from Petersburg life, with which I
am even more acquainted than provincial life. It is very unpleasant for
a man to see people against him whom he loves with brotherly affection.”
Gogol wrote another comedy, entitled “The Leaving of the Theatre
after the Production of a New Comedy.” It was founded on the various
criticisms of his “Revizor,” but it was not very successful. In 1836
Gogol went abroad. He lived most of the time in Rome, though he
wandered all over Europe, and occasionally returned for short visits,
renewing his acquaintance with his old friends. Like Turgénief,
while he was in Russia he was disgusted with the state of affairs,
but when he left there his soul began to turn with intense yearning
for his native land. In 1837 Gogol wrote “Dead Souls.” He said in his
“Confessions of an Author,” “I began to write ‘Dead Souls’ without
laying out any circumstantial plan, without deciding what the hero
should be. I simply thought that the bold project, with the fulfilment
of which Tchitchikof was occupied, would of itself lead me to various
persons and characters, that the natural impulse in me to laugh would
create many scenes which I intended to mingle with pathetic ones. But
I was stopped with questions at every step, why and wherefore? What
must express such and such a character? What must express such and such
a phenomenon? Now I had to ask: What must be done when such questions
arise? Drive them off? I tried, but the stern question confronted me.
As I felt no special love for this character or that, I could not
feel any love for the work to bring it out. On the contrary, I felt
something like contempt: every thing seemed strained, forced; and even
that which made me laugh became pitiable.”
Charles Edward Turner, English lector in the University of St.
Petersburg, says in his “Studies in Russian Literature:” “In the year
1840 Gogol came to Russia for a short period, in order to superintend
the publication of the first volume of the “Dead Souls”, and then
returned to Italy. With the appearance of this volume we may date the
close of his literary career; for though in 1846, at which period
he again settled in Russia, he published his “Correspondence with
my Friends,” the work can only be regarded as the production of a
disordered and enfeebled intellect.... Describing his final illness
and death in 1852, he says, “One of his last acts was to burn the
manuscript of the concluding portion of ‘The Dead Souls,’ and to
write a few sad lines in which he prays that all his works may be
forgotten as the products of a pitiable vanity, composed at a time
when he was still ignorant of the true interests and duties of man.”
At the end of his article on Gogol he says, “What ultimately became
of Tchitchikof, we do not know; for, as has been already stated, the
concluding portion of his adventures was destroyed by Gogol in a fit
of religious enthusiasm.” A certain Dr. Zahartchenko of Kief thought
fit to publish, in 1857, a continuation of Gogol’s inimitable work.
The stolid complacency which alone could encourage an obscure and
talent-less novelist to undertake such a task is in itself a sufficient
standard of the success he could achieve; and his book must be regarded
with the same mingled feeling of astonishment and pity an Englishman
would experience on having put before him a continuation of Thackeray’s
“Denis Duval” or Dickens’s “Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
In 1848 Gogol made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and returned to Russia
by way of Odessa. The last years of his life were passed in Moscow in
an ever-deepening state of fanatical mysticism. His death, in March,
1852, was probably due to his insane attempt to keep the strict fast.
His last days were troubled by strange hallucinations. His life-long
disorder was an acute derangement of the nerves caused by self-abuse.
As an example of Gogol’s early style, the opening scene of “Taras
Bulba,” which has been mentioned by M. Dupuy, may be read with
interest:--
“‘Ah! turn around, little son. How funny you look! What kind of a
parson’s garment have you got on? Is that the way you go in your
academy?’ With such words the old Bulba met his two sons, who had been
studying in the theological school in Kief, and who just came home to
their father.
“His sons have only just dismounted from their horses. They were a
couple of hearty fellows, who looked from under their brows like just
graduated seminarists. Their strong, healthy faces were covered with
the first downy hair, as yet untouched by a razor. They were very much
confused at such a reception by their father, and stood motionless,
with their eyes fixed on the ground.
“‘Hold on, hold on, children!’ he continued, turning them around and
around. ‘What a long _svitkas_ you’ve got on! Those are fine _svitkas_.
_Nu, nu, nu_, such _svitkas_ as these were never yet seen! Well, now,
both of you try to run; I’ll see if you don’t trip up.’
“‘Don’t you make fun of us, don’t you make fun of us, father!’ at last
said the eldest of them.
“‘_Fu_, what a dandy you are! Why not laugh?’
“‘Simply because [_Da tak_]; I suppose, you are my father; yet, if you
keep on making sport of us, by Heaven, I’ll give to you!’
“‘_Akh!_ a fine kind of a son you are. What’s that you say to your
father?’ said Taras Bulba, falling back a little in surprise.
“‘Yes, though you are my father. I don’t regard anybody, or have any
respect for anybody, who insults me.’
“‘How do you want to fight with me,--with fists?’
“‘It makes no difference to me.’
“‘_Nu!_ let us fight with fists,’ said Bulba, rolling up his sleeves.
“And the father and son, instead of saluting each other after their
long separation, began to beat each other angrily.
“‘The old man must be crazy,’ said the pale, thin, and kindly mother,
who was standing on the threshold, and who has not yet had a chance
to embrace her beloved children. ‘By Heaven, he is crazy! Here the
children have come home. For more than a year he has not seen them, and
now he is doing, God knows what! To fight with fists!’
“‘Yes, he fights gloriously,’ said Bulba, stopping. [_Éï Bogu!_]
‘Capital!... So, so!’ he continued, adjusting himself a little. ‘There
won’t be any need of trying. He will make a good Kazak.--_Nu_, how are
you, little son? Give us a kiss.’ And the father and son began to kiss
each other.
“‘Excellent, little son; pound everybody just as you have thrashed me;
don’t give in to anybody. Yet you have on a funny rig. What kind of a
rope is that hanging down?--And, you dog, what are you there for with
your hands by your sides?’ said he, addressing the younger one. ‘Why
don’t you thrash me, you son of a dog?’
“‘Now he is talking nonsense again,’ cried the mother, at the same time
throwing her arms around the younger one. ‘And what nonsense gets into
his head! How can a child beat his own father? As though that was all
he had to tend to now. He is a little child; he has travelled such a
long way, he must be tired’ (this child was more than twenty years old,
and exactly a _Sazhen_, almost seven feet high). ‘He must need to rest
now, and have something to eat; and yet he compels him to fight!’
“‘_Ey!_ you are a little dandy [_mazuntchik_] I see,’ said Bulba.
‘Don’t listen, little son, to your mother: she is a _baba_ [woman], she
doesn’t know any thing. What kind of petting do you want? Your petting
is the clear field and a good horse; that is your petting. And do you
see this sabre? That is your mother. All they are stuffing your heads
with is nonsense: the academy and all those little books--primers and
philosophies--are the Devil knows what. I spit at it all. I am going to
send you away next week to the Zaporozhe. That is the school for you.
It is there only where you will learn reason.’
“‘Won’t they stay at home with us but one week?’ asked the thin old
mother pitifully, with tears in her eyes. ‘Poor fellows, they won’t
have time to enjoy themselves. They won’t get any good out of their
own home, and I sha’n’t look at them half enough.’
“That’ll do, that’ll do, old woman! A Kazak’s got something better
to do than spend his time with women [_babas_]. Hurry up, and put on
the table every thing you’ve got,--poppy-seed cake [_pampuskek_],
gingerbread, and such like; _puddings_ we can get along without. But
fetch us a whole ram for dinner, and then whiskey; and let’s have more
whiskey than any thing else: not the kind with different kinds of stuff
in it,--raisins, and other such things,--but straight whiskey, the
unadulterated, such as’ll hiss like the devil!’
“Bulba took his sons into the small room. Every thing in the room
was arranged according to the taste of that time; and that time was
about the sixteenth century, when the idea of the union had just begun
to be discussed. Every thing was clean and whitewashed. The whole
wall was adorned with sabres and guns. The windows in the room were
small, with round panes of ground glass, such as can be found at the
present time only in old churches. On the shelves, which occupied the
corners of the room, and which were made triangular in shape, were
standing earthen pitchers, blue and green bottles, silver cups, gilded
wine-glasses, of Venetian, Turkish, and Circassian workmanship, which
had found their way into Bulba’s room in different ways,--third and
fourth hand, a very ordinary thing in those bold days. The linden
benches around the whole room, the huge table in the middle of it, the
stove occupying half of the room, like a fat Russian merchant’s wife,
and adorned with tiles with designs of cockerels,--all these things
were very familiar to our two young fellows, who used to walk home
almost every year to spend their vacation; they used to walk because
they had no horses, and because it was not customary to allow scholars
to go on horseback. They had only the long forelocks which every Kazak
who carries weapons felt that he had a right to pull. Bulba, just as
they were about to leave school, sent them from his stud a pair of good
horses.
“‘Well [_nu_], little sons, before all let us have some whiskey. God
bless you! to your health, my little sons; yours, Ostap, and yours,
Andriï! May God grant you be always successful in battle, that you
may beat the Busurmans (Mahometans), beat the Turks, beat the Tatars,
and when the Poles begin to do any thing against our religion, beat
the Poles too! _Nu!_ hold up your glass. Is the whiskey good? And what
is whiskey in Latin? That’s it [_to-to_] little son. The _Latuintsui_
[Latins] were fools; they did not know there was such a thing as
whiskey in existence. What was the name of that fellow who wrote Latin
verses? I don’t know much of reading and writing, and therefore I do
not remember. Wasn’t it Horatsii?’
“‘That’s a fine father,’ said the older son, Ostap, to himself. ‘The
dog knows every thing, but he makes believe that he doesn’t.’
“‘I don’t believe the _arkhimandrit_ allowed you even to smell
whiskey,’ continued Bulba. ‘Well, now, little sons, tell the truth:
did they lash you with cherry and maple sticks over the back, and
everywhere else? Or maybe, being as you are so mighty smart, they used
straps on you! I reckon that; besides Saturdays, they used to thrash
you on Wednesdays and Thursdays too.’
“‘Father, there’s no need of bringing up all that,’ said Ostap, in his
usual phlegmatic voice. ‘What’s past is gone.’
“‘Now we shall pay everybody off,’ said Andriï, ‘with sabres and
bayonets. Just let the Tatars come in our way!’
“‘That is good, little son. By Heavens, that’s good! If that’s the
case, I shall go along with you. By Heavens, I’ll go! What the devil
is the good of staying here! What! must I look after the grain and
swine-herds, or to fool with my wife? I stay at home for her sake? I am
a Kazak. I do not want it! Well, even supposing there is no war, I am
going with you to the Zaporozhe. We’ll have a good time. By Heavens,
I’m going!” And the old Bulba, little by little, grew excited, and
finally became entirely fierce. He got up from the table, and, trying
to look dignified, stamped his foot upon the ground. ‘To-morrow we’ll
go! Why put it off? What in the devil should we sit here for? What good
does this hut do us? What do we want all these things for? What’s the
good of these pots?’ And, while saying this, Bulba began to smash and
throw about the pots and the bottles.
“The poor old wife, who was long wonted to such tricks of her husband,
looked on sorrowfully as she sat on the bench. She did not dare to say
a word; but after hearing this resolution, so terrible to her, she
could not refrain from tears. She looked up at her children, from whom
such a quick separation threatened her; and no one could describe the
whole speechless force of her sorrow, which seemed to quiver in her
eyes and in the tremblingly compressed lips.
“Bulba was terribly stubborn. He was one of those characters which
could spring up only in the rough sixteenth century, and especially in
the half-nomadic Eastern Europe, when ideas were both right and wrong
as to the possession of lands which were a disputed and undecided
property. At that time, the Ukraïna was in this state. The everlasting
necessity of defending the border against three different nations,--all
this added a sort of free and broad character to the actions of its
sons, and it trained in them a stubborn spirit. This stubbornness of
spirit was imprinted with full strength in Taras Bulba. When Batori
raised regiments in Malo-Russia, and roused in them that warlike
spirit which at first marked only the inhabitants of the Rapids,
Taras was one of the first colonels; but at the first opportunity he
quarrelled with all the others, because the booty obtained from the
Tatars by the united forces of the Polish and Cossack armies was not
equally divided between them, and because the Polish army received
a greater share. He, in the presence of all, resigned his rank, and
said, ‘When you colonels don’t know your own rights, then let the Devil
lead you by the nose. And I am going to recruit my own regiment; and
whoever will attempt to take away what belongs to me, I shall know
how to wipe off his lips.’ And, in fact, in a short time he collected
from his father’s estate quite a good number of men, made up of both
farm-laborers and warriors, who gave themselves up entirely to his
wish. He was generally a great hand for taking part in invasions and
raids; he heard with his nose, as it were, where and in what place an
uprising was taking place. Like snow upon the head, he would appear
on his horse. ‘_Nu_, children, what is it? How is it? Who is to be
beaten? What is the reason?’ was what he generally asked, and then
took a hand in the affair. First of all, he would sternly analyze the
circumstances, and he would take a hand only in cases when he saw that
those who seized the weapons had really a right to do so; and this
right, according to his opinion, was only in the following cases. If
the nation in the neighborhood had been carrying off cattle, or cutting
off a portion of land; or if the commissioners had been putting on
heavy taxes, or had not respected their elders, and had spoken in
their presence with their hats on; or if they had left the Christian
religion,--in such cases it was inevitably necessary to take up the
sabre; but against the Busurmans, Tatars, and Turks, he considered it
just to use the weapon any time, in the name of God, Christianity, and
Kazatchestvo (Cossackdom). The position of Malo-Russia at that time,
having no system whatever, and being in perfect uncertainty, brought
into existence many entirely separate partisans. Bulba led a very
simple life; and it would have been impossible to distinguish him from
any ordinary Kazak in the service, if his face had not preserved a
certain expression of command, and even grandeur, particularly when he
used to make up his mind to defend something.
“Bulba comforted himself beforehand with the thought of how he should
appear now with his two sons, and say, ‘Just look what nice fellows I
have brought to you.’ He thought about how he should take them to the
Zaporozhe, to that school of war of the Ukraïna of that day, how he
should introduce them to his comrades, and superintend their advance
in the science of war and making raids, which he considered at that
time one of the first qualities of a knight. At first he intended to
send them off alone, because he deemed it necessary to give himself
up to the enlistment of a new regiment which demanded his presence;
but at the sight of his sons, who were well built and hearty, all his
warrior-spirit suddenly awoke in him, and he made up his mind to go
along with them on the following day, though the necessity of this was
only his stubborn will.
“Without losing a minute, he began to give orders to his _esaul_,
whom he called Tovkatch, because he was really like some kind of a
cold-blooded machine: during battle he would pass indifferently along
the enemy’s ranks, sweeping them down with his sabre as though he was
mixing dough, like a boxer clearing his way. The orders were to the
effect that he should stay on the farm till orders came for him to set
out to the war. After this, he went around the village, giving orders
to some of his people to accompany him, to water the horses, to feed
them with wheat, and to saddle his own horse, which he used to call
Tchort, or the Devil. ‘_Nu_, children, now we must go to sleep, and
to-morrow we shall do what God may instruct us to do. Don’t give us any
bedding! We don’t need any bedding: we shall sleep in the _dvor_!’
“The night had just embraced the heaven; but Bulba always retired
early. He made himself comfortable on the carpet, covered himself up
with a sheep-skin _tulup_, because the night air was rather fresh, and
because Bulba was fond of covering himself warmly when at home. He was
soon snoring, and his example was followed by the whole court. Every
thing that was lying in its various corners was snoring and singing.
Before anybody else the watchman fell asleep, because he drank more
than anybody else, in honor of the arrival of the young lords.
“The poor mother only was not sleeping. She leaned towards the heads
of her dear sons, who were lying side by side; with a comb she
straightened their young, carelessly disordered locks, and moistened
them with her tears. She gazed at them with her whole soul, with all
her feelings; she _metamorphosed herself into one gaze_, and she could
not satisfy herself in looking at them. She had nursed them with her
own breast; she had brought them up, caressed them,--and now only for
one moment does she see them before her. ‘My sons, my precious sons!
what will become of you? what fate awaits you there? If only for one
week more, I might look upon you both,’ said she; and her tears stood
in the wrinkles, which had changed her once beautiful face. And indeed
she was pitiful, like any other woman of that bold age. She saw her
husband two or three days a year, and then for several years there
would be no tidings of him. And if she did see him, when they lived
together, what kind of a life was hers? She suffered insults, even
blows. Only out of mercy at times she felt his caresses. She was like a
strange creature in this assemblage of wifeless knights, upon whom the
dissolute Zaparog life threw its stern shadow. The joyless days of her
youth flashed before her, and her cheeks were covered with premature
wrinkles. All her love, all her feelings, all that is tender and
passionate in a woman, all turned with her into one motherly feeling.
She, with heat, with passion, with tears, like the gull of the steppe
[_step-tchaïka_], looked upon her children. Her sons, her dear sons,
are taken away from her: they are taken away, never to be seen again.
Who knows? Maybe at the first battle the _Tatarin_ will chop off their
heads, and she would not even know where their bodies lie: the ravening
birds may pick them up; and for every little piece of their flesh, for
every drop of blood, she would have given up her all! As she wept, she
looked straight into their eyes, which all compelling sleep began to
close, and she thought to herself, ‘Maybe Bulba, after having a good
sleep, will postpone the journey for a couple of days. Maybe he decided
to go so soon because he drank too much.’ The moon from the height
of the heaven was already shining over the whole _dvor_, filled with
sleeping people, with the thick mass of willows and tall steppe grass,
in which the fence around the yard was drowned. She was still sitting
at the heads of her dear sons, without for a moment taking off her eyes
from them, and not thinking of sleep.
“The horses, anticipating the dawn of day, lay down on the grass, and
ceased eating. The upper leaves of the willows began to rustle, and
little by little the rustling stream descended down over them to the
very bottom. She sat till the very morning: she was not at all tired,
and she inwardly wished that the night might last as long as possible.
From the steppe was heard the loud neighing of a young colt.
“Ruddy stripes brightly gleamed in the heaven. Bulba suddenly awoke and
jumped up. He remembered very well every thing that he had ordered the
day before. ‘_Nu_, fellows, you’ve slept long enough: it is time. Water
the horses. And where is the old woman? [Thus he generally called his
wife]. Be lively, old woman, have something for us to eat, because
there is a long journey before us.’
“The poor old woman, who was deprived of her last hope, gloomily
dragged herself to the hut. While with tears in her eyes she was
preparing every thing for breakfast, Bulba gave his orders, busied
himself in the stable, and he himself selected for his sons his best
adornments. The seminarists were suddenly transformed: instead of their
old soiled boots, they wore red leather ones with silver rings on the
heels; pantaloons as wide as the Black Sea, with a thousand folds and
pleats, were fastened tight around the waist with a golden belt; to the
belt were attached long straps, with tassels and other little ornaments
for the pipe. The _kazakin_ (a little Russian garment), of gay color,
of cloth as bright as fire, was tightened with an embroidered belt.
Silver-mounted Turkish pistols were stuck behind the belt; the sabre
clattered under their feet. Their faces, which were a little burned
by the sun, it seemed, became handsomer and whiter; their young black
mustaches brought out now in somewhat more striking contrast their
whiteness and the healthy, robust color of youth. They looked well
under their sheepskin hats with golden tips.
“The poor mother! As soon as she looked up at them, she could not utter
a word, and the tears were checked in her eyes.
“‘_Nu_, little sons, every thing is ready! There is no need of wasting
time,’ cried Bulba at last. ‘Now, according to the Christian style, all
of us must sit down before setting out.’
“All of them sat down, not excepting even the serfs, who were standing
respectfully at the door. ‘Now, mother, bless your children,’ said
Bulba. ‘Pray to God that they may fight with courage, that they may
always keep the honor of knights, that they may always stand up for
the Christian faith; else rather may they sink, so that their spirits
perish from the world.--Go over, children, to your mother. A mother’s
prayer saves in fire and water.’ The mother, weak as a mother, embraced
them, took out two small holy images, put them on their necks, all the
time weeping bitterly. ‘May the Mother of God--preserve you.--Don’t
forget, little sons, your mother.--Send me some little word about you.’
Further she could not speak.
“‘_Nu_, let us start, children,’ said Bulba.
“At the steps their horses were standing. Bulba mounted his _devil_,
who wickedly began to back on feeling a weight of twenty _puds_ (nearly
eight hundred pounds), for Bulba was exceedingly heavy and fat.
“When the mother saw that her sons were already on the horses, she
hurried after the younger one, whose face expressed more of tenderness.
She caught the stirrup, clung to his saddle, and, with desperation
in all her features, would not let it out of her hands. Two strong
Kazaks took her gently and carried her into the hut. But as soon as
they left her, she, with all the rapidity of a wild goat, though it
was not in accordance with her age, ran out of the gate, and with an
incomprehensible strength stopped the horse, and threw her arms around
one of them in a sort of a mad and senseless excitement.
“They took her away again.
“The young Kazaks rode on gloomily, but kept their tears, fearing
their father, who, however, on his part, was also somewhat melancholy,
though he tried not to show it. It was a gray day; the green fields
gleamed brightly, the birds were singing somehow in discord. After
going some distance, they looked back. Their farm seemed as though
it was swallowed up by the earth; only two chimneys of their humble
house stood on the earth; only the tops of the trees, on the branches
of which they used to climb like squirrels. Only the distant prairie
remained before them, that prairie which reminded them of the whole
history of their life, since the days when they used to ride over its
dewy grass. And now there is only the sweep over the well, with a
_telyega_ wheel attached to its top, standing out by itself against
the sky; already the level over which they have passed looks, in a
distance, like a mountain, and it has covered every thing. Farewell,
childhood, and games, and all, and all, farewell.”
TURGÉNIEF.
Among the historical characters belonging to Turgénief’s family
were Piotr, who exposed the character of the False Dmitri, and who
in consequence was executed on the Lobno Place in Moscow; and Yakof
Turgénief, the well-known jester of Peter the Great, who, in the
year 1700, had to shear off the _boyars’_ beards. Still more worthy
of mention among those who bore the name of Turgénief was his cousin
Nikolaï Ivanovitch, who was implicated in the celebrated Dekabrist
conspiracy of 1825, and was exiled by Nicholas. He wrote a large work
entitled “Russia and the Russians.” He was a passionate advocate of the
emancipation of the serfs.
Ivan Turgénief’s father served in a regiment of cuirassiers stationed
at Orel, and there he married Várvara Petrovna Lutovinova. His father
resigned with the rank of colonel, and died in 1835. Ivan’s mother
lived till she reached the age of seventy. In 1820 the whole Turgénief
family went abroad and visited Switzerland. At Berne the little
four-year-old Ivan Sergéyevitch narrowly escaped falling a prey to
the bears. His father caught him by the leg just as he was pitching
headlong into the pit. When the family returned to Russia, they lived
in the Government of Orlof; and Ivan Sergéyevitch had tutors of every
nationality except his own. His first acquaintance with Russian
literature came from a serf named Kheraskof, belonging to his mother.
The first Russian book that he ever read was the “Rossiada.” In 1828
the family moved to Moscow, and six years later Ivan Sergéyevitch
entered the University of Moscow; but the year following he left for
Petersburg, where he graduated as _kandidat_ in philology. His first
attempts at writing were made before he graduated; and his teacher,
Pletnef, was able to discover in him signs of future greatness.
Turgénief says, in his “Reminiscences,” “At the beginning of 1827,
while I was a student in the third course of the University of St.
Petersburg, I handed the professor of literature, P. A. Pletnef, one
of the first ‘fruits of my muse,’ as they used to say in those days.
It was a fantastic drama, in iambic pentameters, entitled ‘Stenio.’
In one of the following lectures, Pletnef, without mentioning any
names, analyzed, with his usual kindness, this absolutely stupid piece
of work, in which, with childish incapability, was shown a slavish
imitation of Byron’s ‘Manfred.’ After leaving the university building,
and finding me on the street, he called me to him, and caressed me
like a father, remarking at the same time that there was something
[_tchto-to_] in me. These two words gave me sufficient assurance to
take to him some more of my poetical productions. He picked out two of
them, and a year later published them in ‘The Sovremennik,’ which he
inherited from Pushkin. I don’t remember the title of one; but “The Old
Oak” was the subject of the other, and it began thus:--
“‘The forests’ mighty tsar with curly head,
The ancient oak, bent o’er the water’s sleeping smoothness.’”
In 1838 Turgénief went to Berlin. On his way the ship took fire,
and he narrowly escaped with his life. He afterwards embodied the
recollection in his story, or sketch, “A Fire at Sea.” “I was then
nineteen years old,” he says, in his “Reminiscences,” “and I had been
dreaming about this trip. I was convinced that it was possible to
acquire in Russia only elementary knowledge, but that the source of
real knowledge was abroad. Among the number of the professors in the
St. Petersburg University at that time, there was not one who could
have shaken that conviction in me. Moreover, they themselves felt the
same way. Even the ministry itself, including its chief, Count Uvarof,
was convinced of this same thing; and the latter used to send at his
own expense young men to the universities of Germany. I was at Berlin
(at two different times) for about two years. I studied philosophy,
the ancient languages, history, and with special eagerness I devoted
myself to Hegel under the guidance of Professor Werder. As proof of
the insufficiency of the knowledge to be gained at our own colleges,
I am going to quote this fact: I studied Latin antiquity with Zumpt,
the history of Greek literature with Beck; but at my own home I was
compelled to learn by heart Latin and Greek grammar, of which I had a
very slim acquaintance, and I was not one of the worst candidates.”
In his “Reminiscences” he throws further light on the causes which
induced him to live abroad. He says that there was nothing to keep
him in Russia. Every thing around him was calculated to fill him with
indignation, contempt, and scorn. “I could not hesitate long. It was
necessary either to submit to humiliation, and calmly make up my mind
to follow the general rut over the beaten road, or boldly to push away
‘every thing and all,’ even at the risk of losing much that was dear
and near to my heart. And so I did. I threw myself head first into the
‘German sea,’ which should purify and regenerate me; and, when at last
I emerged from its billows, I became a _Zapadnik_,--a Western man, and
such I remained for all my life.”
In 1841 Turgénief returned to Russia, going directly to Moscow, where
his mother was living. Here he became acquainted with the Slavophiles
Aksákof, Khomiakof, and the Kiriyevskys, who at this time were
just beginning to promulgate their ideas. But Turgénief found them
hopelessly in the “general rut.”
He tells in his “Reminiscences” how he first thought of “Fathers and
Sons.” “I was taking baths at Ventnor, a little town on the Isle of
Wight, in August, 1860, when the first thought of ‘Fathers and Sons’
entered my mind,--that narrative which checked, as it seems to me,
forever the kindly disposition of the Russian younger generation.
More than once I read in journals, and heard that ‘I was off the
track,’ or was ‘bringing in new ideas.’ Some praised me; others, on
the contrary, blamed me. On my part, I must confess that I never
attempted to ‘create a figure.’ I always had for my starting-point,
not an idea, but a living person, to whom I would gradually add and
join suitable elements. The same thing happened in ‘Fathers and
Sons.’ As the foundation of the main figure, Bazarof, the person of a
young provincial doctor, who surprised me very much at the time, was
chosen. He died just before 1860. This remarkable man appeared to me
to contain all the elements of what has since received the name of
Nihilism, but which at that time was just beginning to rise, and had
not yet been formulated. The impression made upon me by this person was
very strong, and at the same time not very clear. At first I could not
account for him very well; and I used my utmost endeavors to hear and
see every thing about me, with a view of vivifying the truthfulness of
my own impressions. This fact confused me. In no book of our literature
could I find a single hint of what seemed to me to be everywhere.
Reluctantly the doubt arose in me whether I was not hunting for a
shadow.”
What he found at last was Bazarof, in which type he predicted the
spirit of a new epoch, and showed “the new man” at the very moment of
his appearance. No one understood it, and hence arose the storm which
assailed the author.
“I experienced impressions,” says Turgénief, “of different kinds, but
all equally disagreeable to me. I noticed coolness, even going so far
as indignation, in many who had been near and dear to me. I received
almost fulsome congratulations from people who belonged to the camp of
my enemies. This confused me: ... it grieved me. But my conscience did
not reproach me. I knew well that I had been true to the type which I
had described.”
M. le Vicomte E. Melchior de Vogüé, in a capital study of Turgénief’s
life and works, thus speaks of the reason for the novelist’s popularity
and influence in Russia: “We read books as the passer-by glances at a
painting in a shop-window, for an instant, from the corner of the eye,
as he goes to his business. If you knew how differently they read their
poets there [in Russia]! What for us is only a feast for enjoyment is
for them the daily bread of the soul. It is the golden age of lofty
literature, which all very youthful peoples in Asia, in Greece, in the
Middle Ages have seen flourishing. The writer is the guide for his
race, the master of a multitude of commingling thoughts; still in a
measure the creator of his language, poet in the ancient and complete
meaning of the word _vates_, poet, prophet. Simple-hearted and serious
readers, new-comers into the world of ideas, eager for direction, full
of illusions about the power of human genius, ask their intellectual
guide for a doctrine, for a reason for life, for a perfect revelation
of the ideal. In Russia the few members of the aristocratic _élite_
long ago reached, and perhaps went beyond, our dilettanteism; but the
lower classes are beginning to read: they read passionately, with
faith and hope, as we read ‘Robinson’ at twelve.... For the Moscow
merchant, the son of the village priest, the small country proprietor,
to whom a few volumes of Pushkin, of Gogol, of Nekrásof represent the
encyclopædia of the human mind, this novel [“Virgin Soil,” or “Fathers
and Sons,” or “A Nest of Noblemen”] is one of the books of the national
Bible: it assumes the importance and the epic significance which the
story of Esther had for the people of Judæa, the story of Ulysses for
the people of Athens, the romance of ‘The Rose’ or of ‘Renart’ for our
ancestors.
“Three years ago, in dedicating the statue of Pushkin at Moscow,
Turgénief quoted a characteristic remark made by a peasant standing
near the monument. In reply to a comrade who asked the name of this
gentleman in bronze, the _muzhik_ said, ‘He was a schoolmaster.’ The
orator appropriated the remark, and developed it, saying rightly that
the peasant in his ignorance had hit upon the true name of the hero
of the celebration. The first Russian poet had been the schoolmaster
of his countrymen, he had given new life to their language and their
thought. The day, not far distant, doubtless, when Turgénief’s statue
will be erected at Moscow, the _muzhik_ will be able to repeat his
saying: he also was a schoolmaster.
“His generation listened to him more willingly than to any other.
It would be a mistake to seek solely in what we call talent for the
reasons of this popular adoption. How many among his primitive and
passionate readers troubled themselves about the question of talent,
of devices of form, delicacies of thought? In literature, as in
politics, a people follow instinctively the men whom they feel belong
to themselves, made of their flesh and their genius, marked by their
virtues and their failings. Ivan Sergeyévitch personified the master
qualities of the Russian people,--their simple-hearted goodness,
simplicity, and resignation. He was, as it is said popularly, _une âme
du bon Dieu_: that mighty brain was ruled by a child’s heart. Never did
I approach him without better comprehending the magnificent meaning
of the gospel saying about the “simple in spirit,” and how this state
of soul can be allied to the artist’s exquisite gifts and knowledge.
Devotion, generosity of heart and of hand, brotherly kindness--all
were as natural to him as an organic function. In our cautious,
complicated society, where every one is armed for the rough struggle of
life, he seemed like a person from another sphere, from some pastoral
and fraternal tribe of the Ural;--some grand, self-forgetful child,
following his thoughts under the sky, as a shepherd follows his flocks
in the steppe.
“Physically, likewise, this tall, calm old man, with his somewhat
coarse features, his _sculpturesque_ head, and his thoughtful gaze,
brought to mind certain Russian peasants,--the elder who sits at
the head of the table in patriarchal families,--but ennobled and
transfigured by the labor of thought, like those peasants of old who
became monks, were worshipped as saints, and are seen represented on
the _ikonostas_ with the aureole and the majesty of prayer. The first
time that I met this good giant, the symbolical statue of his country,
I had great difficulty in making my impression clear: it seemed to me
that I saw and heard a _muzhik_ upon whom had descended the fire of
genius, who had been raised to the pinnacles of mind without losing any
of his native candor. He would assuredly not have been offended by the
comparison, he who so loved his people.”
M. de Vogüé goes on to speak of Turgénief’s work. “The public,” he
says, referring to the “Annals of a Sportsman,” “did not at first
perceive their hidden significance: the watchful censor was deceived.
All that was seen in them was a literary manifestation of the first
order, a new note in Russia. Doubtless Gogol’s influence was apparent
in the young writer’s style, in his comprehension of nature: the
‘Evenings at the Farm’ set the model for the class. It was always the
grand and melancholy symphony of the Russian land; but this time the
interpretation by the artist was quite different. No longer were seen
Gogol’s sharp humor, the frankly popular character of his paintings,
his warm outbursts of enthusiasm suddenly checked by touches of irony:
in Turgénief, no jests or enthusiasm; a soberer note, a more subdued
emotion; landscapes and men are seen in the pale twilight, through an
idealizing mistiness, yet clearly outlined and focussed, as it were,
under the eyes of the ever watchful observer.
“The language, also, is richer, more flexible, more graceful; no
Russian writer had ever carried it to such a degree of expression.
It is not the clear and limpid prose of Pushkin, who had read much
of Voltaire, and did not forget it. Turgénief’s periods run slow and
voluptuous, like the surface of the mighty Russian rivers, without
haste, harmonious, amid the reeds, bearing water-lilies, floating
nests, wandering perfumes, showing luminous vistas, and long mirages of
sky and land, and suddenly reappearing in shady depths. His discourse
stops to gather up any thing,--the humming of a bee, the call of a
night-bird, a passing, caressing, dying breeze. The most elusive
accords of the grand register of nature it translates with the infinite
resources of the Russian keys, flexible epithets, words welded together
with poetic fancy, popular joinings of sound to sense.
“I dwell on that which makes the power of this book: it is only a song
of the earth, and a murmur of a few poor souls directly heard by us.
The writer takes us to the heart of his native land; he leaves us face
to face with this country; he disappears, it seems: yet, if not he,
who then has drawn from things, and condensed on their surface, that
mysterious poetry which they hide within them, but which so few can
see, and which we clearly see here? The ‘Annals of a Sportsman’ have
charmed many French readers; yet how much they lose in color across
the double veil of the translation and the common ignorance of the
country!...
“When these fragments were brought together into a volume, the public,
till then uncertain, saw the significance of the work. Some one had
appeared with courage to develop the meaning concealed in Gogol’s
sinister jest about “Dead Souls.” What other name can be given to
that gallery of portraits gathered by the sportsman,--small country
proprietors, selfish and hard; sneaking overseers, idle and rapacious
functionaries; beneath this cruel society, wretched helots, fallen, as
it were, from the state of humanity, touching by force of misery and
submission? The process--however well disguised it be, there is always
a process--was invariably the same. The author causes a ludicrous
being to pass again and again in his lantern, showing all its phases,
laughable and pitiable, in turn, without wants, without resources,
condemned to crepuscular life. By the side of the serf appeared
the master, a half-civilized marionette, a good devil, after all,
unconscious of the harm he was doing, led astray by the fatality of his
environment. This painting, which would otherwise be ugly, repulsive,
the writer clothed with grace and charm, in some sort contrary to his
desire by the inborn virtue of his poetry. Why were all the mainsprings
of life broken in all the heroes of the book? Whence came this malaria
over the Russian land? What was the name of this pest? The reader was
left the trouble of answering.
“It is not very exact to say that Turgénief _attacked_ serfage. Russian
writers, in consequence of the conditions under which they work, as
well as by the peculiar turn of their genius, never attack openly; they
neither argue nor declaim: they paint without drawing conclusions,
and they appeal to pity rather than wrath. Twenty years later, when
Dostoyevsky will publish his “Recollections of a Dead House” (_Zapiski
Mertvava Doma_), his terrible memoirs of ten years in Siberia, he will
proceed in the same way, without a word of mutiny, without a drop of
gall, seeming to find what he describes as quite natural, only a trifle
sad. It is the national trait in all things.... The public understands
by a hint.
“It understood this time. The Russia of serfage looked at itself with
horror in the mirror which was held before its eyes: a long shudder
shook the country; between night and morning the author was famous, and
his cause was half gained. The censorship was the last to comprehend,
but finally it also comprehended. Possibly its sensitiveness will
be wondered at: I have said that serfage was condemned even in
the Emperor Nicholas’s heart. You must know that the wishes of the
censorship do not always coincide with the emperor’s wishes; at
least, it is backward, it is sometimes a reign behindhand. It gave
up launching its thunder against the book, but it kept its eye on
the author. Gogol being dead in the interim, Turgénief dedicated a
warmly eulogistic article to the dead author. This article would seem
inoffensive enough, as it appears in Turgénief’s complete works,[59]
and we should have difficulty in discovering the crime if the criminal
had not revealed the secret in a very gay note: ‘_Apropos_ of that
article, I remember that one day at Petersburg, a lady of very high
rank criticised the punishment inflicted upon me, judging it to have
been undeserved, or at least too severe. As she was warmly speaking
in my defence, some one said to her, “Is it possible that you don’t
know that in this article he called Gogol _a great man_?”--“It is
impossible.”--“I assure you that it is so.”--“Ah! in that case, I have
nothing more to say. I am sorry, but I see that they had to be severe
upon him.”’
“This impertinent epithet, given to a simple writer, cost Turgénief a
month of arrest; then he was advised to go and meditate in his domain.
I imagine that he found that society was very ill arranged, so unfair
are we to the power that wills our best good. It must be confessed,
however, that this power sometimes serves our interest better than
we ourselves, and _lettres de cachet_ are generally in accordance
with the views of Providence. Thirty years earlier an order of exile
saved Pushkin by tearing the poet from the dissipations of Petersburg,
where he was wasting his genius, and by sending him to the sun of the
East, where his genius was to ripen. If Turgénief had remained at the
capital, the warmth of youth and compromising friendships, perchance,
might have brought him into some barren political quarrel: sent into
the solitude of the woods, he lived there laborious years, studying the
humble provincial life of Russia, and gathering materials for his first
great novels.”
An anonymous writer, who knew Turgénief intimately, contributed,
shortly after his death, to “The London Daily News,” an article, some
of the details of which are worthy of preservation: “Turgénief hated
luxury. The more he advanced in life, the more he prized simplicity
in all things. His bedroom at Les Fresnes[60] had an almost austere
aspect. The bed and toilet-stand were in iron; and the desk, drawers,
and a large bookcase, in mahogany, of a plain design. Some photographs
and engraved likenesses of literary and other friends broke the
monotony of the wall. Portrait-cartes, many of which had autographs of
those whom they represented, were stuck into the frame of the chimney
glass.
“Turgénief was the youngest of three very distinguished brothers. Were
the eldest of the trio now living, he would be almost a centenarian. He
remembered Buonaparte, Bernardin, St. Pierre, Talleyrand, Sir Walter
Scott,--of whom he was for some weeks a guest at Abbotsford,--Miss
Edgeworth when she was in the zenith of her fame; visited Mme. de
Staël at Coppet, and fell in with Byron as he was making a tour on
the Rhine. The eldest Turgénief was a many-sided man. Though not a
professional author, he had great literary qualities. His political
insight and sagacity were no less remarkable, and he had a wider
experience of human nature than perhaps any other European of his
time. Though he belonged to a family which stood well with the Court
and high in the administration, he enjoyed close intercourse with his
‘unmasked countrymen.’ He thus designated the serfs, who had learned to
be patient and resigned, but were unable to dissimulate. Nevertheless,
he was accomplished in every polite art, and, if he had chosen, might
have risen to the highest diplomatic position. His education was French
on Russian soil. Voltaire and Diderot were his early schoolmasters.
When he grew up, he made wide incursions into English literature, and
came to the conclusion that Maria Edgeworth had struck on a vein which
most of the great novelists of the future would exclusively work. She
took the world as she found it, and selected from it the material
that she thought would be interesting to write about in a clear and
natural style. It was Ivan Turgénief himself who told me this, and he
modestly said that he was an unconscious disciple of Miss Edgeworth
in setting out on his literary career. He had not the advantage of
knowing English;[61] but, as a youth, he used to hear his brother
translate to visitors, at his country house in the Uralian, passages
from ‘Irish Tales and Sketches,’ which he thought superior to her
three-volume novels. Turgénief also said to me, ‘It is possible, nay,
probable, if Maria Edgeworth had not written about the poor Irish of
the County Longford, and the squires and squireens, that it would not
have occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about
the classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing
out the beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their
extreme simplicity, and to the distinction with which she treated the
simple ones of the earth.’
“Turgéniefs stature was far above the average. He was admirably
proportioned, and, when young, could walk as far in a day as a tough
horse would amble, and that without any oppressive sense of fatigue.
The big bones supported tremendous muscles, which at no time of his
life were clogged with adipose tissue. When I knew him, his thick,
long hair and flowing beard were white as snow; but as the complexion
was fresh, the eye bright, the carriage upright, the voice resonant,
I never thought of him as an old man. This giant wrote a neat and
almost delicate hand. I have before me a book of his with an autograph
inscription which he sent me last winter.... This autograph, though
almost ladylike in its delicacy, is very free and unconventional.
Turgénief felt what was beautiful in minute and lowly things. He
was one of those who are happy in admiring flowers in the valley of
humiliation. In some respects he was a big child. Nobody was more easy
to amuse. He used to say that Providence was so kind in throwing in
his way the kind of persons who exactly suited him. Liking fine arts
and music, and disliking fashion and worldly frivolity, he deemed it
a piece of rare good luck to fall in with Louis Viardot and his gifted
wife (_née_ Garcia), and to be allowed to enter their family circle....
“Turgénief’s conversation was analogous to his handwriting. It was
light, delicate, of a free and quite original style, and abounded in
picturesque traits. Nothing was forced or far-fetched. His ideas came
in the bright, easy flow of a quick-running and well-fed streamlet. It
was all the same to him whether he was brought forward or unnoticed
in society, for he was neither shy nor vain. He rarely, in talking,
broached a subject; but there was no subject on which he could not
talk with ease. The politician, philosopher, artist, poet, novelist,
intelligent or simple, woman or child, found him good company. Whatever
interested mankind appeared to concern him, and to be a thing to study.
At the Universal Exhibition of 1878 I found Turgénief in the United
States Agricultural Department studying horse-shoes and horse-shoe
nails with as much zest as he afterwards showed in comparing the works
of the English, Russian, and German schools of pictorial art. The
person who explained to him the peculiar merits of the horse-shoe nails
was a character; and his peculiarities, which were racy of the soil of
Texas, acted as a stimulant on the Russian novelist.”
“Theoretically, there was no depth of human degradation with which the
Russian novelist was not acquainted; but it was said that personally
no vice ever touched him. ‘_Gros innocent_’ was a term which M.
Viardot often applied to him in their intimate conversation. The
giant was ‘_naïf_.’ He preserved until old age the impressionable
eyes of childhood, and a freshness of nature which to those who did
not know him must seem incompatible with his extensive knowledge of
human nature, which he studied as a student at Moscow and Berlin, as a
functionary at St. Petersburg and in other parts of Russia, and as an
exile in Paris. Although an old bachelor, he was free from crotchets
and angles. He was glad to oblige, often obliged, sometimes was
heartily thanked; and, when he met with ingratitude, he did not think
about it. Flaubert was the French novelist whom he best liked as a man
and a writer. But he was of opinion that he travelled too far south
when he went to Carthage[62] to look for a heroine. His eyes were not
used to the glaring landscape of North Africa. They discerned better
the cool tints of the Normandy landscape. Plots, he thought, spoiled
novels, which were _peintures de mœurs_; and he was glad to see that
the taste for them was dying out. Dickens, in his opinion, was at his
best in the ‘Pickwick Papers,’ because he had not to be thinking about
a plot, instead of letting his pen run on according to the humor of
the moment. The plot was necessary for a drama, but in the way of a
novelist, who should, above every thing else, keep truth in view....
“Turgénief was of opinion that a splendidly picturesque country was
a bad soil for literary or artistic production. Strong emotions or
sensations tended to dethrone the faculty of exact observation upon
which we are dependent for æsthetic enjoyment in flat districts. We
console ourselves for the prose of a landscape in looking with an
almost microscopic eye at the plants and insects, and come to see
a world replete with beauty and animation in a tangle of gorse,
brambles, and humble field-flowers. In expressing to me this theory, he
asked, ‘Did you ever see a mountaineer who was sensible to the beauty
and song of a small bird? He watches the flight of game and birds
of prey. But, for my part, I have found him indifferent to the lark
and swallow. My first acquaintance with the skylark was precisely in
looking about for compensation for the ugliness of a flat near Berlin.
I shall never forget the broadening out of the æsthetic faculty on this
occasion. The little creature rose almost from under my feet, and went
up singing her joyful song, which I heard long after she was invisible.
I then remarked the beauty of the sky and of many other things which I
should not otherwise have noticed.’”
* * * * *
A few sentences from the “noble discourse” spoken by M. Renan at
Turgénief’s tomb, on Oct. 1, 1883, will fittingly bring this note to a
close.
“Turgénief was an eminent writer. He was, above all, a great man. I
shall speak to you only of his soul as it always appeared to me in the
pleasant retreat which an illustrious friendship had provided for him
among us.
“Turgénief received, by that mysterious decree which makes human
avocations, the noblest gift of all: he was born essentially
impersonal. His consciousness was not that of an individual more or
less finely endowed by nature: he was in some sort the consciousness of
a people. Before his birth he had lived thousands of years; infinite
series of visions were concentrated in the depths of his heart. No man
has been to such a degree the incarnation of an entire race. A world
lived in him, spoke by his lips; generations of ancestors lost in the
sleep of ages, without voices, through him came to life and to speech.
“The silent genius of collective masses is the source of all great
things. But the masses have no voice. They can only feel and stammer.
They need an interpreter, a prophet, to speak for them. Who shall be
this prophet? Who shall tell their sufferings, denied by those who are
interested in not seeing them, their secret aspirations which upset the
sanctimonious optimism of the contented? The great man, gentlemen,
when he is at once a man of genius and a man of heart. That is why the
great man is least free of all men. He does not do, he does not say,
what he wishes. A God speaks in him; ten centuries of suffering and
of hope possess him and rule him. Sometimes it happens to him, as to
the seer in the ancient stories of the Bible, that, when called upon
to curse, he blesses; according to the spirit which moves, his tongue
refuses to obey.
“It is to the honor of the great Slav race, whose appearance in the
world’s foreground is the most unexpected phenomenon of our century,
that it was first expressed by a master so accomplished. Never were the
mysteries of an obscure and still contradictory consciousness revealed
with such marvellous insight. It was because Turgénief at once felt,
and perceived that he felt: he was the people, and he was of the elect.
He was as sensitive as a woman and as impassive as a surgeon, as free
from illusions as a philosopher and as tender as a child. Happy the
race, which, at its beginning a life of reflection, can be represented
by such images, simple-hearted as well as learned, at once real and
mystical.
“When the future shall have brought to their real proportions the
surprises kept in reserve for us by this wonderful Slav genius, with
its ardent faith, its depth of intuition, its individual idea of life
and death, its martyr spirit, its thirst for the ideal, Turgénief’s
paintings will be priceless documents, something, as it were, like the
portrait of a man of genius, if it were possible to be had, taken in
his infancy. The perilous solemnity of his duty as interpreter of one
of the great families of humanity, Turgénief clearly saw. He felt that
he had souls in his charge; and, as he was a man of honor, he weighed
each of his words. He trembled for what he said, and what he did not
say.
“His mission was thus wholly that of the peacemaker. He was like the
God of the Book of Job, who ‘makes peace upon the heights.’ What
everywhere else caused discord became with him a principle of harmony.
In his great bosom, contradictions united. Cursing and hatred were
disarmed by the magic enchantments of his art.
“That is why he is the common glory of schools, between which so many
disagreements exist. This great race, divided because it is great,
finds in him its unity. Hostile brethren separated by different ways of
interpreting the ideal, come all of you to his tomb. All of you have
the right to love him; for he belonged to all of you, he held you all
in his heart. Admirable privilege of genius! The repellent sides of
things do not exist for him. In him all finds reconciliation. Parties
most opposed unite to praise him and admire. In the region whither he
carries us, words which stir irritation in the vulgar lose their sting.
Genius accomplishes in a day what it takes centuries to do. It creates
an atmosphere of higher peace when those who were foes find that in
reality they have been co-laborers; it opens the era of the grand
amnesty when those who have been battling in the arena of progress
sleep side by side and hand in hand.
“Above the race, in fact, stands humanity; or, if you prefer, reason.
Turgénief was of a race by his manner of feeling and painting. He
belonged to all humanity by his lofty philosophy, facing with calm
eyes the conditions of human existence, and seeking without prejudice
to know the reality. This philosophy brought him sweetness, joy in
life, pity for creatures, for victims above all. Ardently he loved this
poor humanity, often blind, in sooth, but so often betrayed by its
leaders. He applauded its spontaneous effort towards well being and
truth. He did not reprove its illusions; he was not angry because it
complained. The iron policy which mocked at those who suffer was not
for him. No disappointment arrested him. Like the universe, he would
have begun a thousand times the ruined work: he knew that justice can
wait; the end will always be success. He had truly the words of eternal
life, the words of peace, of justice, of love, and of liberty.”
COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ.
Count Tolstoï traces his ancestry back to Count Piotr Andreyévitch
Tolstoï, a friend and companion of Peter the Great. In all probability
the unnamed _atavus_ who lurks in the patronymic _Andreyévitch_ was
merely distinguished by his size,--Andrew the Stout. Many Russian
family names, just as is the case with our own English appellations,
are derived from characteristics or resemblances. The great Speransky
was a hopeful foundling; Soloviéf recalls our nightingales;
Pobyedonovtsof means “of the victorious;” the name of Katkof may refer
to the proverbial rolling stone; Gogol is a species of duck called the
golden eye; the report of cannon may be heard in Pushkin’s name; the
ancestor of Griboyédof was probably an eater of mushrooms.
Tolstoï’s father was a retired lieutenant-colonel, who died in 1839.
His mother, the Princess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonskaïa, died when
Count Lyof was only two years old, and he was brought up by a distant
relative, Mme. Yergolskaïa. At Yasnaïa Polyana his education was
desultory. In 1840 the five children were taken in charge by a relative
of their mother, Pelagia Ilinishna Yushkovaïa, who lived at Kazan.
It was thus that Lyof Tolstoï happened to enter the university of
that city in 1843. After a few years of study, he suddenly determined
to leave the university without graduation. The _rektor_ and the
professors argued with him, but in vain; and he went back to his
ancestral estate, where he lived till 1851, very rarely visiting
the capital. A visit from his beloved brother Nikolaï, who was an
officer in the army of the Caucasus, inspired him to see “cities of
men and manners, climates, councils,” though least of all the cities
of men. Especially strong was his desire to be with his brother in
the _Kavkaz_, where Russia’s greatest poets had won their proudest
laurels. The impressions made on him by the splendid scenery of the
‘white mountains,’ and by the rough, half-savage life, were so strong
that in 1851 he entered the service, like Olénin, as a _yunker_, or
ensign-bearer in the Fourth Battery of the Twentieth Artillery, the
same in which his brother was an officer.
Here in the Caucasus Count Tolstoï first began to write fiction. He
planned to weave his recollections of family life and old traditions
into a great novel. Fragments of this work were written and afterwards
published in the “Sovremennik.” “Infancy” (_Dyetstvo_) came out in
1852. “Adolescence” (_Otrotchestvo_) was also written then, and several
of his brilliant sketches of wild life,--“The Invasion,” “The Felling
of the Forest,” and, as has been said, “The Cossacks.” “The Cossacks”
is translated into English by Mr. Eugene Schuyler. A very little
polishing would make it a brilliant piece of literary work: in its
present form it is crude and rough.
Count Tolstoï lived two years in the Caucasus, taking part in various
guerilla expeditions, and enduring in common with the soldiers all the
hardships of frontier warfare. Here on the spot he made his powerful
and life-like studies of the Russian soldier, which are seen in his
“War Sketches” (_Voyennuié Razskazui_). At the breaking out of the
Crimean War, Count Tolstoï was transferred to the army of the Danube,
and served on Prince M. D. Gortchakof’s staff. At Sevastópol, whither
he went after the Russian army was driven from the principalities,
he was attached to the artillery. His literary work had attracted
attention in high quarters, and orders were sent to the front to see
that he was not exposed to danger. In May, 1855, he was appointed
division commander: he took part in the battle of the Tchernaïa, was in
the celebrated storming of Sevastópol, and after the battle was sent
as special courier to Petersburg. At the end of the campaign Count
Tolstoï retired, and the next winter he spent at Moscow and Petersburg.
This was a period of great literary activity. Besides his stories,
“Sevastópol in December,” and “Sevastópol in May,” there appeared in
the magazines “Youth” (_Yunost_), “Sevastópol in August,” “Two Hussars”
(_Dva Gusári_), and “Three Deaths” (_Tri Smerti_).
After the liberation of the serfs, Count Tolstoï, like many
conscientious Russian proprietors, felt it his duty to live on his
estate. He was profoundly interested in agronomic questions, and in
the application to the Slavic commune of Occidental methods, which he
studied abroad for himself. He was still more interested in popular
education; and a school journal, called “Yasnaïa Polyana,” which he
established, discussed all pedagogical questions. He also published a
series of primers, readers, spellers, in paper covers and large type.
It was about this time that a Russian journalist met Count Tolstoï; and
his account of the interview is interesting, as showing the novelist’s
views a quarter of a century ago. He says,--
“In 1862 I became acquainted with him in Moscow. I saw before me a
tall, wide-shouldered, thin-waisted man, about thirty-five years
old, with a mustache, but without a beard, with a serious, even
gloomy expression of face, which, however, was softened by a gleam
of kindliness whenever he laughed. Our conversation turned on the
occurrences which at that time were exciting Russian life. Count
Tolstoï immediately showed that he lived outside of this life, that the
interests of the class which regards itself as cultured were foreign
to him. He seemed to be opposed to progress, which, in his opinion, was
only advantageous for the smaller portion of society, having plenty of
time to spend, and which was absolutely injurious for the majority,
for the people; and for them it was just as disadvantageous as it was
profitable for the minority.... Those present argued angrily with him:
he himself sometimes was drawn away, sometimes he spoke ironically.
I listened more than I spoke. At the time when all were infatuated
with progress, such original boldness of thought was remarkable; and I
felt an involuntary sympathy for this Rousseau, who began to contrast
the products of nature with the products of civilization,--forests,
wild creatures, rivers, physical development, purity of morals, and
other such things. It seemed that this man was living the life of the
peasantry, sharing their views, that he was devoted to the welfare of
the people with all the strength of his soul, though he understood the
people in different way from others. The proof was his school,--those
_maltchiks_, of whom he spoke with evident love, praising their
talents, their powers of comprehension, their artistic sense, their
moral virginity, which was so far from being the case with children of
other nationalities.”
The latter years of Count Tolstoï’s life, since the publication of
“War and Peace” and “Anna Karénina,” are somewhat wrapped in mystery.
Various wild stories, founded on the evident bias of “My Confession”
and “My Religion,” have assumed almost the proportions of myth. It may
be that at the present day, that we of the calm, rational, sceptical,
Western world are granted the privilege of seeing the actual evolution
of a myth, as a boy may see a chrysalis unfold.
The Russian race, standing with its Janus face towards the sunset and
the more mystical sunrise, a link, as it were, between Occidental fact
and Oriental fancy, might well allow us the spectacle. “My Religion”
declares that titles, emoluments, dignities, and all such things,
are vain. Next we hear that Count Tolstoï is only a _muzhik_. No
man has a right to wealth. We hear that the opulent aristocrat has
stripped himself to give to the poor. All must earn their bread by
the sweat of the brow. The young sons of the count are next heard of
as crossing-sweepers. The truth probably is, that Count Tolstoï has in
reality changed little from the Olénin of “The Cossacks,” praying for
occasion of self-sacrifice, for chance of renunciation, changed little
from the threefold manifestation of himself in “War and Peace,” working
for the same end, or from the twofold and simpler manifestation of
himself, morally in Levin, socially in Vronsky, of “Anna Karénina.” The
little picture of him given by the Russian journalist casts a flood of
light on the man; and therefore it was but a fulfilment of prophecy to
read that Count Tolstoï, instead of beggaring his children, instead of
deserting the pen of the writer for the awl of the cobbler, was brave
and cheerful and healthy in body and mind, superintending his schools,
cultivating his ancestral _desyatins_, and writing stories when the
mood was on him.
This brief sketch of Count Tolstoï’s life may fitly come to a
conclusion with an acute bit of criticism from a Russian writer. It
is very possible that his marriage to Sofia Andreyevna Beers, the
daughter of a Muscovite professor, which took place in 1862, may have
cast a back gleam, and inspired the thought of creating the gracious
forms that move through Count Tolstoï’s later novels. At all events,
this is what the critic said when “War and Peace” appeared, at the end
of 1860, “It is remarkable, that in all Tolstoï’s works, until the
appearance of “_Voïna i Mir_,” there is not a single female figure
brought out in strong relief; but here were seen a whole _pleiad_,
wonderfully clear, psychologically true, and beautifully described.
The richness and variety in the figures of the men, the splendid
description of the battles, a perfect mass of marvellously described
scenery, in which persons of all classes appear, beginning with
emperors, and ending with _muzhiks_ and _babas_, make this work one of
the greatest ornaments of our literature.”
NOTE TO P. 145.--TCHERNUISHEVSKY.
It is commonly reported in Russia, that Tchernuishevsky wrote yet
another novel besides _Tchto Dyélat_, entitled _Prolog Prologof_ (a
Prologue of Prologues), which may possibly be still in existence in
manuscript.
NOTE TO P. 202.--DOSTOYEVSKY.
Feódor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoyevsky’s father was a doctor. The boy, who
was one of a large family, grew up pale and thin. He had a nervous and
impressionable nature, with some tendency to hallucination. He was very
fond of the woods. He tells in his recollections of his childhood,
that his “special delight was the forest, with its mushrooms and wild
cherries, with its beetles and birds, its porcupines and squirrels,
with its delicious damp of the flying leaves.” He had all the books
that he desired. By the time that he was twelve, he had read all of
Sir Walter Scott’s and Cooper’s novels, besides some Russian authors,
including Karamzin’s great history. At fifteen, Dostoyevsky was
sent to Petersburg, where he entered the main engineering school.
Notwithstanding his passion for literature, which was shared by many
of his school-mates, he distinguished himself in mathematics, and
graduated number three in a class of thirty. About this time he was
deprived of both father and mother.
“While he was living in Petersburg,” says Mr. S. S. Skidelsky, “he
visited all the slums and haunts of poverty, for the sake of collecting
materials for his future literary work.” Dostoyevsky tells in his
recollections, quoted by Polevoï, that in the winter of 1845 he began
his first story, “Poor People” (_Byédnuié Liudi_). “When I finished
the tale, I did not know what to do with it, or where to place it. I
had no literary acquaintances, except possibly Grigoróvitch, who at
that time had written nothing except ‘Petersburg Organ-grinders,’ in
a magazine.... He came to me one day in May, and said, ‘Show me the
manuscript: Nekrásof is going to publish a magazine next year, and I
want to show it to him.’ I took it over to Nekrásof. We shook hands;
I became confused at the thought that I had come with my writing,
and I quickly beat a retreat without saying another word. I had very
little hope of success; for I stood in awe of the party of ‘the
Country Annals,’ as the literary men of that day were called. I read
Byélinsky’s criticisms eagerly, but he seemed to me too severe and
cruel; and ‘he will make sport of my “Poor People,”’ I used to think at
times, but only at times. ‘I wrote it with passion, almost with tears.
Is it really possible that all these minutes spent with pen in hand
over this story, that all this is falsehood, mirage, untrue feeling?’
But I had these thoughts only now and then, and immediately the doubts
returned again.
“On the evening of the very day that I handed him the manuscript, I
went a long way to see one of my former classmates. We talked all
night about ‘Dead Souls,’ and we read it again,--I don’t know how many
times it made. At that time it was fashionable, when two or three
young men met, to say, ‘Hadn’t we better read some Gogol, gentlemen?’
and then to sit down and read late into the night.... I returned home
at four o’clock, in the white Petersburg night, bright as day. It was
a beautiful warm time; and when I reached my room I could not go to
sleep, but opened the window, and sat down by it. Suddenly the bell
rang: it surprised me greatly; and in an instant Grigoróvitch and
Nekrásof were hugging me in a glory of enthusiasm, and both of them
were almost in tears. The evening before they had returned home early,
took up my manuscript, and began to read it for a trial: ‘By ten pages
we shall be able to judge.’ But after they had finished ten pages they
decided to read ten more. And afterwards, without budging, they sat
the whole night through till early morning, taking turns in reading
aloud when one got tired. ‘He read about the death of the student,’
said Grigoróvitch, after we were alone; ‘and suddenly I noticed, that,
when he reached the place where the father runs after his son’s coffin,
Nekrásof’s voice broke once, and a second time, and all at once it
failed entirely. He pounded with his fist on the manuscript: “_Akh_,
what a man!” That was said about you; and so we spent the whole night.’
“When they finished the manuscript, they exclaimed, simultaneously,
‘Let us go and find him right away. Suppose he is asleep, this is more
important than sleep.’... They staid half an hour. For half an hour we
talked about, God knows what, understanding each other by half words,
by exclamations, so eager were we. We talked about poetry, about prose,
about the ‘situation of affairs,’ and of course about Gogol, quoting
from the ‘Revizor’ and ‘Dead Souls,’ but chiefly about Byélinsky....
Nekrásof took the manuscript to Byélinsky that very day. ‘A new Gogol
has appeared,’ shouted Nekrásof, entering with ‘Poor People.’ ‘Gogols
with you spring up like mushrooms,’ remarked Byélinsky severely; but
he took the manuscript. When Nekrásof returned that same evening,
Byélinsky met him in perfect enthusiasm. ‘Bring him, bring him as soon
as you can!’”
On the next day an interview took place between Dostoyevsky and the
great Russian critic. Dostoyevsky thus describes it: “He began to speak
with me ardently, with flashing eyes. ‘Do you understand yourself what
you have written?’ he shouted at me several times, in his own peculiar
way. ‘Only by your own unassisted genius as an artist, could you have
written this. But have you realized all the terrible truth which you
have presented before us? It is impossible that you, at the age of
twenty, could understand it.... You have touched the very essence of
the matter, you have reached the most vital inwardness. We journalists
and critics only argue; we try to explain it with words: but you are an
artist, and with a single stroke put the very truth into shape so that
it is tangible, so that the simplest reader can understand instantly.
Here lies the secret of the artistic, the truth of art. Here is the
service that the artist performs for truth. The truth is revealed and
imparted to you; it is your gift as an artist. Value your talent, and
be true to it, and you will be a great writer.’
“I went from him in a state of rapture. I stopped at the corner of his
house, looked up at the sky, at the bright sun, on the passing people,
and all; and with my whole body I felt that a glorious moment had come
into my life,--a most important crisis; that a new life had begun,
such as I had never anticipated in my most passionate dreams (and at
that time I was a great dreamer). ‘Is it really true that I am so
great?’ I asked myself, full of shame, full of timid glory.--Oh, do not
laugh!--Never again did I have an idea that I was great. But at that
time was it possible to bear it calmly? Oh! I will be worthy of this
praise.”
His name from this time began to stand with Turgénief’s, Byélinsky’s,
Iskander’s (Herzen’s), and others, in the pages of the Russian
magazines. This period, which began so auspiciously, was clouded by
a catastrophy which greatly affected his whole life. In 1849 he was
arrested and imprisoned on the charge of being engaged in a secret
political society. His older brother, a married man, the father of
three children, was also arrested on the same charge. Dostoyevsky
knew that his brother’s family was almost penniless, that his brother
had taken no active part in the Petrashevsky Society, and had only
borrowed books from the general library. The brother, however, was
soon released by the interposition of the Emperor Nicholas. While he
was in prison, Feódor Mikhaïlovitch wrote his beautiful story, “The
Little Hero.” He was condemned to death; but the sentence, without
his knowledge, was commuted to transportation to the mines. He wrote
his brother on the 3d of January, 1850: “To-day we were taken to the
Semyónovsky Place. Here the sentence of death was read to us, we were
given the cross to kiss, the sabres were broken over our heads, and
our death-toilet was prepared,--white shirts. Then three of our number
were placed at the ‘disgraceful post,’ ready for execution. I was the
sixth. Three were summoned at a time: consequently my turn came next,
and I had only a second to live. I remembered thee, my brother, and all
of thy household; at the last moment thou alone wert in my mind; here,
only, I learned how I loved thee, my dear brother!... At last the drums
sounded a retreat. Those who were fastened to the ‘disgraceful post’
were taken down, and it was announced that his Imperial Majesty had
granted us our lives.”
“Dostoyevsky, as a thoroughly religious and highly moral man,” says
Polevoï, “endured all the deprivations of his life in the mines
with remarkable firmness and undisturbed equanimity. His faith was
strengthened, not by the Bible alone, which was the only book allowed
him in prison, but by his love for ‘Poor People,’ to whom he had sworn
to be true till he died.”
After he spent a number of years in the mines, he entered the military
service, and was quickly promoted to be an officer. He says, “I
remember that soon after leaving the Siberian prison, in 1854, I
began to read all the literature written during the five years since
my imprisonment. The ‘Annals of a Sportsman’ had just begun to be
published; and Turgénief’s first stories I read at one draught. The sun
of the steppe shone upon me, spring began, and with it an entirely new
life, an end to prison,--freedom!”
His passion for literature, so long restrained, broke out with energy
and strength; and even before he quitted military service and returned
to Petersburg, he wrote a few little trifles. In Petersburg he took
part in the journal, “The Times” (_Vremya_), edited by his brother
Mikhaïl Mikhaïlovitch. In 1860 appeared the first collection of his
works, and shortly after appeared his great novel, “The Degraded and
Insulted” (_Unizhónnuie i Oskorblonnuie_). At this time Turgénief,
Gontcharóf (author of “Oblómof”), Grigoróvitch, and Count Lyof Tolstoï
were in the full bloom of production, and Dostoyevsky’s book was not
warmly received. But the most antagonistic critics were silenced when
“The Recollections of a Dead House” appeared. It immediately gave him
the reputation as one of the greatest lights of Russian literature.
In 1863 Dostoyevsky’s wife died; and in the following year he lost
his beloved brother, whose journal, “The Times,” passed into his
hands. But he was entirely unused to business, and was placed in
a very embarrassing situation, which was intensified by a strange
public impression that it was the novelist who was dead. Consequently
its circulation was greatly reduced, and Feódor Mikhaïlovitch had to
give it up. As a distraction for all these tribulations, Dostoyevsky
devoted himself to literary work, and wrote his great story, “Crime
and Punishment,” which established his reputation as a psychological
analyst. In 1867 he married again, and lived abroad for four years. He
also, looking from the “beautiful distance” upon the pitiful side of
Russian social life, wrote his two stories, “Idiot” and “Devils.” After
he came back he wanted to analyze the abnormal relationship between the
rising generation and the older writers; and he founded a new journal,
and wrote a novel entitled “Podrostok” (The Adult). The journal was
given up at the end of 1877; but Dostoyevsky, who had new novels in
view, promised ultimately to continue the journal at some future time.
He died on the 9th of February, 1881; and on the day of his funeral
the first number of the long-looked-for journal, which he did not live
to see, was issued. All Petersburg escorted the beloved remains to
the tomb; tens of thousands of people were counted in the procession.
Dostoyevsky’s faith in humanity is summed up in his own words: “I never
could understand the reason why one-tenth part of our people should
be cultured, and the other nine-tenths must serve as the material
support of the minority and themselves remain in ignorance. I do not
want to think or to live with any other belief than that our ninety
millions of people (and those who shall be born after us) will all be
some day cultured, humanized, and happy. I know and I firmly believe
that universal enlightenment will harm none of us. I also believe that
the kingdom of thought and light is possible of being realized in our
Russia, even sooner than elsewhere maybe, because with us, even now,
no one defends the idea of one part of the population being enlisted
against the other, as is found everywhere in the civilized countries of
Europe.’
NOTE TO P. 203.
The _Banya_ (from “The Recollections of a Dead-House”).
“In the whole city, there were only two public baths. The first, which
was kept by a Hebrew, was numbered, with an entrance-fee of fifty
_kopeks_ for each number, and was designed for high-toned people. The
other _banya_ was pre-eminently common, old, filthy, small; and to
this _banya_ our prisoners were going. It was cold and sunny. The men
were already rejoicing because they were going to get out of prison,
and have a glimpse of the city. Jests, laughter, did not cease during
the walk. A whole squad of soldiers escorted us with loaded guns, to
the wonder of the whole city. At the _banya_ they immediately divided
us into two detachments. The second had to wait in the cold ante-room
while the first detachment soaped themselves, and this was necessary
on account of the smallness of the _banya_; but, notwithstanding this
fact, the _banya_ was so small, that it was hard to imagine how our
half could find accommodation in it. But Petrof did not leave me: he
himself, without my asking him, hurried to help me, and even offered to
wash me. Bakliushin, as well as Petrof, offered me his services. He was
a prisoner from a special cell, and was known among us as the pioneer,
and him I remembered as the gayest and liveliest of the _arestants_, as
indeed he was. We had already become somewhat well acquainted. Petrof
helped me undress myself, because, as I was not used to it, it took me
long; and the dressing-room was cold, almost as cold as the street.
By the way, it is very hard for a prisoner to undress if he has not
had some practice. In the first place, it is necessary to know how to
unfasten quickly the shin-protectors.[63] These shin-protectors are
made of leather, about seven inches long; and they are fastened to the
underclothes directly under the iron anklet which encircles the leg.
A pair of shin-protectors are worth not less than sixty kopeks; but,
nevertheless, every prisoner gets himself a pair, at his own expense of
course, because without them it is impossible to walk. The iron ring
does not encircle the leg tightly, and it is easy to thrust a finger
between the ring and the leg. Thus the iron strikes the leg, chafes it;
and a prisoner without shin-protectors would in a single day have bad
wounds. But to take off the shin-protectors is not the hardest thing of
all. It is much harder to learn to get off the clothes when one wears
the rings (_kandalui_). This is the whole trick: Suppose you are taking
off the drawers from the left leg, it is necessary first to let the
garment slip through between the leg and the ring. Afterwards you have
to put it on again the same way. The same process must be gone through
with when you put on clean clothes. For a newcomer it is even hard to
guess how it is accomplished. The first one who ever taught us how to
do it was the prisoner Kóryenef in Tobolsk, who had once been atamán
of a gang of cut-throats, and had been fastened to a chain five years.
But the prisoners get used to it, and do it without any difficulty. I
gave several kopeks to Petrof to get soap and scrubbers. To be sure,
the authorities furnished the prisoners with soap. Every one would get
a little piece about the size of a two-kopek coin, and as thick as the
slice of cheese served at evening lunch by middle-class people. Soap
was sold here in the dressing-room, together with _sbiten_ [a kind
of mead], twists, and hot water. Every prisoner would get, according
to the agreement made with the proprietor of the _banya_, a single
pail of hot water. Whoever wanted to wash himself cleaner could get
for a _grosh_, or half kopek, an extra pail, which was handed into
the _banya_ itself through a window made for that purpose from the
dressing-room. After helping me to undress, Petrof led me by the hand,
observing that it was very hard for me to walk in the rings. “Pull
them up a little higher over the calf,” he added, supporting me as
though he were my uncle (_dyadka_). “Be a little careful here, there is
a door-sill.” I even felt a little ashamed. I wanted to assure Petrof
that I could get along by myself, but he would not have believed me.
He treated me just like a young and incapable child, whom everybody
was obliged to help. Petrof was far from being a servant, by no means
was he a servant. Had I insulted him, he would have understood how to
behave to me. I did not offer him any money for his services, and he
did not ask for any. What, then, prompted him to take such care of me?
“When we opened the door of the _banya_, I thought that we were going
into Gehenna. Imagine a room about twelve feet long, and as wide,
stuffed with probably a hundred men at once, and, at the very least,
surely eighty, because the prisoners were divided into two detachments,
and the whole number of us who went to the _banya_ were two hundred
men; the steam blinding our eyes, the sweat, the filth, such a crowd
that there was no room to get a leg in. I was alarmed, and wanted
to go back, but Petrof immediately encouraged me. Somehow, with the
greatest difficulty, we squeezed ourselves through to the benches,
over the heads of those who were sitting on the floor, asking them
to bend down so that we could pass. But all the places on the benches
were occupied. Petrof told me that it was necessary to buy a place, and
immediately entered into transactions with a prisoner who had taken a
place near the window. For a kopek the prisoner surrendered his place,
immediately took the money from Petrof, who had it tight in his fist,
having foreseen that it would be necessary to bring it with him into
the _banya_. The man threw himself under the bench, directly under my
place, where it was dark, filthy, and where the slimy dampness was
almost half a finger in thickness. But the places under the benches
were also taken; even there, the crowd clustered. On the whole floor,
there was not a free place as large as the palm of the hand where the
prisoners would not be sitting doubled up, washing themselves in their
pails. Others stood upright among these, and, holding their pails in
their hands, washed themselves as best they could. The dirty water
ran down directly on the shaven heads of those who sat beneath them.
On the platform, and on all the steps leading to it, were men washing
themselves, bent down and doubled up. But precious little washing they
got. Plebeians wash themselves very little with hot water and soap:
they only steam themselves tremendously, and then pour cold water over
them, and that’s their whole bath. Fifty brooms or so on the platform
were rising and falling in concert: they all broomed themselves
into a state of intoxication. Every instant steam was let in. It
was not merely heat, it was hell let loose. It was all one uproar
and hullaballoo (_gogotalo_), with the rattling of a hundred chains
dragging over the floor.... Some, trying to pass, entangled themselves
with the chains of others, and they themselves bumped against the heads
of those sitting below, and they tumbled over, and scolded, and dragged
into the quarrel those whom they hit. The filth was streaming on every
side. All were in an excited, and as it were intoxicated, state of
mind. Shrieks and cries were heard. At the dressing-room window, where
the water was handed through, there was a tumult, a pushing, even
fighting. The hot water ordered was spilt on the heads of those sitting
on the floor, before it reached its destination. Now and then, at the
window or in the half-opened door, a soldier with mustachioed face
would show himself, with gun in hand, ready to quell any disorder. The
shaven heads and red, parboiled bodies of the prisoners seemed uglier
than ever. On their parboiled shoulders clearly appeared, oftentimes,
the welts caused by the strokes and lashes which they may have received
in days gone by; so that now all these backs seem to be freshly
wounded. Horrid welts! A chill went through my skin at seeing them.
“Give us more steam;” and the steam would spread in a thick hot cloud
over the whole _banya_. From under the cloud of steam gleamed scarred
backs, shaven heads, disfigured arms and legs. And as a fit climax Isaï
Fomitch (the Jew) would roar with all his throat, from the top of the
platform. He steams himself into insanity, but it seems as if no heat
could satisfy him. For a _kopek_ he hires a washer (_parilshchik_); but
at last it gets too warm for him, and he throws down the broom, and
runs to pour cold water on him. Isaï Fomitch does not give up hope, but
hires a second, a third: he makes up his mind, on such occasions, not
to grudge any expense, and he has as many as half a dozen washers. “You
are tough, Isaï Fomitch, you are a fine fellow,” shout the prisoners
from below. And Isaï Fomitch himself feels that at this moment he
stands above them all, and could thrust them all under his belt; he
is in a glory; and with a sharp, crazy voice he shouts out his aria
_lya-lya-lya-lya_, drowning all other voices.[64] The thought entered
my mind, that, if we were ever to be all in hell, then it would look
very much like this place. I could not refrain from imparting this
thought to Petrof: he only looked around, but said nothing.”
FOOTNOTES:
[59] Ten volumes, published by Salaïef, in Moscow: his poetry, in one
volume of two hundred and thirty pages, bears no publisher’s imprint,
simply the title, Stikhotvoreniya I. S. Turgénieva, S. Peterburg, 1885.
[60] The summer home of his friends the Viardots, at Bougival.
[61] Mr. Henry James, in his Atlantic Monthly article upon Turgénief,
says: “He had read a great deal of English, and knew the language
remarkably well,--too well I used often to think; for he liked to speak
it with those to whom it was native, and, successful as the effort
always was, it deprived him of the facility and raciness with which he
expressed himself in French.”
[62] Referring to Salammbo.
[63] _Podkandalniki._
[64] At the beginning of the chapter Isaï Fomitch assures Dostoyevsky,
“under oath, that this song and the same motive was sung by the six
hundred thousand Hebrews, from small to great, when they crossed the
Red Sea; and that every Hebrew has to sing this song at the moment of
glory and victory over his enemies.”
INDEX.
Aksákof, 142, 144.
Alexander II., Emperor, 148, 151, 152, 326.
Alexander III., Emperor, 151, 152, 156.
“Anna Karénina,” 206, 218, 230, 232;
analysis, 297-323;
quoted, 304-305, 306-307, 309-322;
meaning, 322.
“Annals of a Sportsman,” 121, 129, 158, 190, 394.
Aristophanes, 70.
Arria, 188.
Balzac, 105.
“Banya (bath), The,” 203;
quoted, 433-440.
Bázarof, 145, 173, 174, 186, 388.
Biélinsky, 120, 121 _note_, 424, 426.
“Bulba.” _See_ “Taras Bulba.”
Censorship, The Russian, 122 _note_, 217, 398.
“Childhood and Youth,” 205, 217.
“Confession.” _See_ “My Confession.”
Corneille, 13.
“Cossacks, The” (“Kazaki”), 216, 229, 231;
analysis, 239-267.
“Commentary on the Gospels,” Tolstoï’s, 234.
Daudet, Alphonse, 199 _note_.
“Dead Souls,” 11, 28, 61, 159, 360, 396, 426;
analysis, 86-115.
Devil, The, in Gogol, 30.
Dissenters, 181, 330, 337.
Divorce, according to Tolstoï, 271, 299, 302.
“Dmitri Rudin,” 167, 168.
Dniépr, 15-18, 36.
“Don Quixote,” 133, 158, 170.
Dostoyevsky, 141, 202 _note_, 203, 204 _note_;
biography, 423-432;
faith, 432.
Edgeworth, Maria, 401, 402, 403.
“Evenings at the Farm,” 9, 10, 28, 29, 60.
“Fathers and Sons,” 130, 173, 388;
quoted, 193-198.
Fénelon, 70.
Flaubert, 127, 134, 207, 209, 406.
French novelists, 190, 191.
German education, 172, 386.
Goethe, 343;
quoted by Turgénief, 137.
Gogol, biography, 5-11, 339-362;
professorship, 9, 10, 353, 355-358;
works enumerated, 29, 30, 346, 353;
humor, 80, 346;
as a poet, 6, 13, 47, 114, 191;
as a scholar, 343, 344, 354;
as a painter of women, 186;
influence on Turgénief, 394.
Gontcharóf, 430.
Griboyédof, 238 _note_, 414.
Grigoróvitch, 425, 430.
Hamlet, 126, 158, 170, 179.
Hegel, 120, 168, 172, 386.
Herzen, 428.
Hugo, Victor, 209, 210.
Iskander. _See_ Herzen.
Ivanitsky on Gogol, quoted, 356.
James, Henry, quoted, 403 _note_.
Karakózof, 151.
Katkof, 145, 148, 149, 152, 174, 414.
“Kazaki.” _See_ “The Cossacks.”
Khor and Kalinuitch, 121, 159.
Kulzhinsky on Gogol, quoted, 343.
La Bruyère, 70.
La Rochefoucauld, 220.
Lermontof, 202 and _note_.
“May Night, The,” quoted, 21, 32.
Marvellous, The, in Gogol, 30-34.
Merimée, 4, 48, 192.
Molière, 11, 68, 70, 80.
Muzhik. _See_ Russian Peasantry.
Murillo, comparison with Gogol, 31.
“My Confession” (Tolstoï), 219-228.
“My Religion” (Tolstoï), 228, 322, 420;
quoted, 278, 296;
analysis, 324-338.
Napoleon, Tolstoï’s judgment of, 285.
Nekrásof, 181, 202 _note_, 210 _note_, 391, 426.
“Nest of Noblemen,” 169.
Nicholas, Emperor, 84, 113, 399, 426, 429.
Niézhin, 5, 7, 342.
Nihilism, 148, 173, 176, 179, 180, 329, 389.
Occidentalism, Turgénief’s, 120, 142, 387.
“Old-time Proprietors,” 51-58;
quoted, 24.
“Parasha,” 120.
Pathetic, The, in Turgénief, 199.
Písemsky, 167 _note_.
Pletnef, 9, 385.
Pobyedonovtsof, 152, 414.
Poetry, Nature of, 13.
Pogodin, 142.
Polevoï, 339;
quoted, 424, 429.
Polonsky, 126, 136.
Pushkin, 4, 6, 7, 9, 73, 112, 134, 202, 210, 238, 345, 385, 400, 414;
on Griboyédof’s death, 238;
judgment of Gogol, 58;
as inspiration to Gogol, 345;
festival, 135, 391.
Raskolniks. _See_ Dissenters.
Realism, French and Russian, 25, 189, 193, 199, 286.
“Recollections of a Scorer” (Tolstoï), quoted, 235-237.
“Recollections” (Reminiscences), Turgénief’s, quoted, 120 _note_, 122
_note_, 384, 388.
Renan, funeral discourse on Turgénief, 408.
Resurrection, The, according to Tolstoï, 278.
Revizor, The, 7, 10, 61, 358, 426;
analysis, 63-83.
Rousseau, 70.
Rudin. _See_ Dmitri Rudin.
Russian ideal, 182;
language, 98, 110, 192, 395, 414;
mind, 12;
nature, 14, 18, 23, 114;
nobility, 159, 164;
peasantry, 150, 159, 181, 325.
Sand, George, 127, 211.
Sasuluitch, Viéra, 171.
Satirical, The, in Gogol, 7, 12, 60, 347.
Shchedrin. _See_ Soltuikof.
Schiller, 212, 343;
quoted by Turgénief, 154.
Schopenhauer, 172, 228.
Schuyler, Eugene, translation of “The Cossacks,” 416.
Serfage, 166, 326, 397.
Shakspeare, 69, 126, 225.
Skidelsky, quoted, 424.
Slavophilism, 143, 144, 206.
“Smoke,” 175.
Soltuikof, 204, 211.
Swinburne, Turgénief’s opinion of, 210.
“Taras Bulba,” 6, 10, 18, 29, 355;
analysis, 36-49;
Turgénief’s judgment on, 50;
quoted, 19, 23, 363-382.
Tchernuishevsky, 145, 201, 210 _note_, 423.
“Terrible Vengeance, A,” quoted, 15-18.
Tolstoï, Count Lyof N., biography, 215, 222-230, 236 _note_, 414-422;
works enumerated, 216, 416, 417;
talent, 218;
mental and moral transformation, 222-230, 278;
literary life, 224, 231;
marriage, 224, 421;
mysticism, 234;
character revealed in “The Cossacks,” 256-258;
in “War and Peace,” 267, 275, 293, 295;
in “Anna Karénina,” 295, 421;
his ideal of strength, 248;
ideal of life, 227, 275, 299;
as a historian, 283;
as a non-combatant, 293, 299;
as a prophet, 219, 329;
as a communist, 335;
his creed, 332;
appearance in 1862, 418;
criticised by Turgénief, 205.
Turgénief, Ivan, biography, 117-140, 383-408;
works enumerated, 129-139;
method of work, 130, 135, 183, 407;
progress, 157;
talent, 182, 409;
character, 139, 141;
generosity, 139 _note_, 155, 205;
conversation, 140, 149, 405;
as a political prophet, 153, 157;
as a dramatist, 189;
as a poet, 191, 385, 399 _note_;
as a critic on his epoch, 146, 150, 200;
judgment on Alexander III., 152, 156;
on Hugo, 209, 210;
on George Sand, 212;
Flaubert, 209;
Zola, 208;
Swinburne, 210;
Dickens, 407;
Dostoyevsky, 203;
Nekrásof, 201, 202;
Gogol, 50;
Soltuikof, 204;
Tchernuishevsky, 201;
Tolstoï, 205, 231, 284;
letters to Tolstoï, 127, 138;
letter to Mr. King, 183;
homesickness and love of Russia, 123, 127;
personal appearance, 139, 393, 404;
disease, 136.
Turgénief, Nikolaï, 383.
Turner, C. E., on Gogol, quoted, 361.
Ukraïna, 10, 15, 23, 32.
Viardot, 401, 406.
“Vii,” quoted, 30, 358.
“Virgin Soil” (_Nov_), 131, 132, 176, 179, 187.
Vogüé, Count E. Melchior, on Turgénief, quoted, 390-400.
“War and Peace,” 206, 218, 230, 232, 233;
analysis, 267-294.
Woman in Gogol, 109, 187;
in Turgénief, 186, 187;
in Tolstoï, 247, 288, 422.
Zhukovsky, 4, 345.
Zola, 135, 208, 211, 286.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and accentuation errors have been silently corrected.
Spelling of proper names has been standardized in most cases.
Page 228: “to anihilate” changed to “to annihilate”
Page 233: “sem-military” changed to “semi-military”
Page 335: “the millionnaire” changed to “the millionaire”
Page 337: “immedate spread” changed to “immediate spread”
Page 359: “lived the most” changed to “lived most”
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