The Russian novelists

By vicomte de Eugène-Melchior Vogüé

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Title: The Russian novelists

Author: vicomte de Eugène-Melchior Vogüé

Translator: Jane Loring Edmands

Release date: November 30, 2023 [eBook #72271]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: D. Lothrop company, 1887

Credits: Carol Brown, Peter Becker and 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 RUSSIAN NOVELISTS ***

THE

RUSSIAN NOVELISTS

E M DE VOGÜÉ

_TRANSLATED BY_

JANE LORING EDMANDS

BOSTON
D. LOTHROP COMPANY

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

ELECTROTYPED
BY C. J. PETERS AND SON, BOSTON.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

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

J. L. E.

PREFACE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 3

PREFACE 5

I. EPOCHS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 19

II. ROMANTICISM.―PUSHKIN AND POETRY 44

III. THE EVOLUTION OF REALISM IN RUSSIA.―GOGOL 56

IV. TURGENEF 88

V. THE RELIGION OF ENDURANCE.―DOSTOYEVSKI 141

VI. NIHILISM AND MYSTICISM.―TOLSTOÏ 209

THE RUSSIAN NOVELISTS.

CHAPTER I.

EPOCHS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Official rank.

CHAPTER II.

ROMANTICISM.―PUSHKIN AND POETRY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.

THE EVOLUTION OF REALISM IN RUSSIA.―GOGOL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[D] About $4000.

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

CHAPTER IV.

TURGENEF.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV.

The emancipation of the serfs, the dream of Turgenef’s life, had become
an accomplished fact, and was, moreover, the inaugurator of other
great reforms. There was a general joyous awakening of secret forces
and of hopes long deferred. The years following 1860, which were so
momentous for Russia, wrought a change in the interior life of the
poet and author. Torn from his native land by the ties of a deathless
friendship, to which he unreservedly devoted the remainder of his life,
he left Russia, never to return except at very rare intervals. He
established himself first at Baden, afterwards settled permanently in
Paris. Every desire of his heart as man, author, and patriot had been
gratified. He had helped to bring about the emancipation. His literary
fame followed him, and his works were translated into many languages.

But, after some years of silence and repose, this poet’s soul, which
through youth had rejoiced in its dreams and anticipations, suffered
the change which must come to our poor human nature. He was not
destined in his old age to realize his ideals.

In 1868 his great novel “Smoke” appeared. It exhibited the same talent,
riper than ever with the maturity of age; but the old faith and candor
were wanting. Were we speaking of any other man, we should say that he
had become bitter; but that would be an exaggeration in speaking of
Turgenef, for there was no gall in his temperament. But there are the
pathetic touches of a disenchanted idealist, astonished to find that
his most cherished ideas, applied to men, cannot make them perfect.
This sort of disappointment sometimes carries an author to injustice;
his pencil shades certain characters too intensely, so that they are
less true to nature than those of his older works. The phase of society
described in “Smoke” exhibits a class of Russians living abroad, who
do not, perhaps, retain in their foreign home the best qualities of
their native soil: noble lords and questionable ladies, students and
conspirators. The scene is laid at Baden, where the author could study
society at his leisure. Of this confusing throng of army officers,
rusticating princesses, boastful Slavophiles, and travelling clerks,
he has given us many a vivid glimpse. But the book, as a whole, is an
exaggeration; and this impression is all the stronger as the author
evidently does not consider his characters of an exceptional type, but
intends to faithfully represent Russian society, both high and low.
Moreover, the artist has modified his style. He formerly presented his
array of ideas, and left his readers to judge of them for themselves;
but now he often puts himself in the reader’s place, and expresses his
own opinion very freely.

For the novelist or dramatist there are two ways of presenting moral
theses; with or without his personal intervention. We will take the
most familiar examples. In Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” there are
two conceptions of duty and virtue, which are perfectly antagonistic,
personified by Jean Valjean and Javert. They are so perfectly drawn
that we might almost hesitate between them; but the author throws
the whole weight of his eloquence on the one; he deifies one and
depreciates the other, so that he forces the verdict from us. But in
“Le Gendre de M. Poirier,” on the contrary, there are two conceptions
of honor; two sets of irreconcilable ideas; those of the Marquis de
Presle, and those of his father-in-law. The author keeps himself in the
background. He presents his two characters with the same clear analyses
of their merits and absurdities; and shows both the weak and the strong
points of their arguments. Even to the very end we hesitate to judge
between them; and it is this conflict of ideas which keeps up the
interest of the drama.

For myself, I prefer the second method. Besides being more artistic,
it seems to approach nearer to real life, in which we can never see
truth clearly, and in which good and evil are always so closely allied.
Turgenef embraced this method in all his first studies of social life,
and they were more just and true, in my opinion, than his later ones.
In the last two, “Smoke” and “Virgin Soil,” he interferes noticeably,
bringing forward his own opinions; but I acknowledge that these
books contain many passages overflowing with vivid fancy and strong
common-sense. He satirizes everything he disapproves, the _Slavophile_
party, all the national peculiarities, especially that mania for
declaring everything perfect that springs from Russian soil. His shafts
of wit, which he employs to illustrate this infatuation, are very keen;
for example, when he speaks of the “literature which is bound in Russia
leather”; and when he says, “in my country two and two make four, but
with more certainty than elsewhere.”

After emptying his quiver, the author describes a love intrigue, in
which he shows as ever his marvellous knowledge of the human heart.
But here again his style has changed. Formerly he wrote of youthful
affection, a loyal emotion, frank and courageous enough to brave the
whole world; and woman seemed to interest him only in her early youth.
But he depicts in “Smoke” and “Spring Floods” the most cruel passions,
with their agonies, deceptions, and bottomless abysses. The virtuous
young girl invariably comes in, but as if held in reserve to save
the repentant sinner at the end. Some may prefer these tempestuous
compositions to the delicious poetic harmonies of his first romances.
It is a matter of taste, and I would not decry the real merit of
“Smoke,” which is a masterpiece in its way. I only affirm that on
the approach of the evening of life the translucent soul of the poet
has given us glimpses of sombre clouds and stormy skies. At the end
of “Spring Floods,” after that wonderful scene, so true to life,
exhibiting the weakness of the man and the diabolical power of the
woman, there follow a few pages so full of rancor that you can but feel
pity for the writer who can express such bitterness.

In 1877, “Virgin Soil,” the last long important work, appeared:
first in French, in a Paris journal, as if to feel its way; then the
original could be risked in Russia with impunity, and had a free
circulation. What a marked change the march of ideas had produced since
the appearance of Turgenef’s article on Gogol! In this new work the
author traversed a road which once would have led directly to Siberia.
He had the ambition to describe the subterranean world which at that
time was beginning to threaten the peace of the Empire. Having studied
for twenty-five years every current of thought springing from Russian
soil, the student thought to perfect his task by showing us the natural
outgrowth of these currents. Since they disappeared under the earth,
they must be investigated and attacked with a bold front.

Turgenef was incited to the work partly from the appearance of a rival,
who had already preceded him in this line. We shall see that “Virgin
Soil” was an indirect response to “Les Possédés” of Dostoyevski. The
effort was not wholly successful; as Turgenef had been away from his
native land for fifteen years, he had not been able to watch narrowly
enough the incessant transformation of that hidden, almost inaccessible
world. Without the closest study from nature the artist’s work cannot
produce striking results. The novelist intended to present the still
unsettled tendencies of the nihilists in a characteristic and fixed
form; but he failed to give clearness and outline to the work; the
image refused to reflect its true form. This is why there is something
vague and indistinct about the first part of “Virgin Soil,” which
contrasts unfavorably with the clear-cut models of his early works.

The author introduces us into the circle of conspirators at St.
Petersburg. One of the young men, Neshdanof, has been engaged as
a tutor in the house of a rich government official, in a distant
province. He there meets a young girl of noble family, who is treated
as a poor relation in the house. She is embittered by a long series
of humiliations, and is struck with admiration for the ideas of the
young apostle, more than for his personal attractions. They escape
together, and form a Platonic union, working together among the common
people, at the great cause of socialism. But Neshdanof is not fitted
for the terrible work; he is a weak character, and a dreamer and poet.
Distracted with doubts, and wholly discouraged, he soon discovers that
all is chaos within his soul. He does not love the cause to which he
is sacrificing himself, and he knows not how best to serve it. Neither
does he love the woman who has sacrificed herself for him, and he feels
that he has lowered himself in her esteem. Weary of life, too proud to
withdraw, and generous enough to wish to save his devoted companion
before her reputation is lost, Neshdanof takes his life. He has found
out that one of his friends, with more character than himself, has
a secret attachment for Marianne. Before dying he joins the hands
of those two enthusiastic beings. The romance ends with a fruitless
conspiracy, which shows the utter uselessness of attempting to stir the
people to revolution.

Other revolutionary characters dimly float before the reader’s vision,
who whisper unintelligible words. Those from among the higher classes
are treated even more harshly than in “Smoke.” They have the same
self-sufficiency, and are equally absurd without a single merit; and
you feel that they are presented in a false light. Hence the work is
abounding in caricatures, and shows a want of balance as a whole.

On the other hand, the apostles of the new faith are surrounded with a
halo of generosity and devotion. Between extreme egotism on one side,
and stern faith and utter self-abnegation on the other, the idealist’s
choice must fall. Naturally, the poet’s warm heart draws him to the
most disinterested party of the two. He invests these rude natures with
delicate sentiments, which clothe them with poetry; concealing from us,
and even from himself, the revolting contrasts they present, and their
brutal instincts. The wolfish, energetic Bazarof was of a type more
true to nature.

I think that Turgenef’s sensibility led him astray in his conception
of the nihilists; while his good-sense did justice to their ideas,
exhibited the puerility of their discourses and the uselessness of
their blind hopes. The most valuable part of the book is where the
writer demonstrates by facts the utter impossibility of uniting the
propagandists and the people. Abstract arguments make no impression
upon the peasant’s dull brain. Neshdanof attempts an harangue in an
ale-house; the peasants force him to drink. The second glass of _vodka_
intoxicates him completely, and he staggers away amid jeers and shouts.
Another man, who tries to stir a village to revolt, is bound and given
over to justice.

At times Turgenef strikes exactly at the root of the evil, shows
up the glaring faults of the revolutionary spirit, and exposes its
weakness. Assuming too much responsibility, the nihilists wish to raise
an ignorant populace at once to the intellectual heights they have
themselves reached; forgetting that time alone can accomplish such a
miracle. They have recourse to cabalistic formulas, but their efforts
are fruitless. The poet sees and explains all this; but, being a poet,
he allows himself to be seduced by the sentimental beauty of the
sacrifice, losing sight of the object; while the proved uselessness of
the sacrifice only redoubles his indulgence towards the victims.

This brings me to a point where I am obliged to touch upon a delicate
subject. Certain political claims, discussed over the author’s tomb,
have caused much anxiety in Russia; and bitter resentment threatened
to mingle with the national grief. The Moscow papers published several
severe articles about him before his death, in consequence of the
appearance of his “Memoirs of a Nihilist” in a French paper. This
autobiographical sketch is not a work of the imagination, for he
obtained the story from the lips of a fellow-countryman who had escaped
from a prison in Russia.

This curious essay has the ring of truth about it, and no attempt
at recrimination; giving an example of that strange psychological
peculiarity of the Russian, who studies so attentively the moral effect
of suffering upon his soul that he forgets to accuse the authors of his
suffering. The sketch recalls vividly certain pages of Dostoyevski’s.
But Turgenef’s ideas were not, at this time, well received by the
Russians. They resented the too indulgent tone of his writings, and
accused him of complicity with the enemies of the Empire. The radicals
wished to claim him for their own; and it was hinted that he subscribed
to support a seditious journal. This is, however, entirely improbable.
Turgenef was open-hearted and generous to a fault. He gave freely and
indiscriminately to any one that was suffering. His door and his purse
were open to any fellow-countryman without reserve, and kind words were
ever ready to flow from his lips. But, though always ready to help
others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer. Was
it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have
aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies? With
the liberal ideas he adopted during his university life in Germany, in
early youth, he was more inclined to cherish political dreams than to
put his liberalism into practice. In fact, it is only necessary to read
“Virgin Soil” attentively, to understand the position he proposed to
maintain.

But I am dwelling too long upon the political standing of a poet. This
man, who was honest and true in the highest degree in all relations of
life, must have been the same as to his politics. Those who questioned
the colors he bore could ill afford to criticise him.

About this time, Turgenef wrote five or six tales; one of which (“A
Lear of the Steppe”), for its intensity of feeling, recalls the most
beautiful parts of “The Annals of a Sportsman.” But I must not dwell
upon these, but give a little attention to the productions of our
author as a whole.

Ivan Sergievitch (Turgenef) has given us a most complete picture of
Russian society. The same general types are always brought forward;
and, as later writers have presented exactly similar ones, with but
few modifications, we are forced to believe them true to life. First,
the peasant; meek, resigned, dull, pathetic in suffering, like a
child who does not know why he suffers; naturally sharp and tricky
when not stupefied by liquor; occasionally roused to violent passion.
Then, the intelligent middle class; the small landed proprietors of
two generations. The old proprietor is ignorant and good-natured, of
respectable family, but with coarse habits; hard, from long experience
of serfdom, servile himself, but admirable in all other relations of
life.

The young man of this class is of quite a different type. His
intellectual growth having been too rapid, he sometimes plunges into
Nihilism. He is often well educated, melancholy, rich in ideas but poor
in executive ability; always preparing and expecting to accomplish
something of importance, filled with vague and generous projects for
the public good. This is the chosen type of hero in all Russian novels.
Gogol introduced it, and Tolstoï prefers it above all others.

The favorite hero of young girls and romantic women is neither the
brilliant officer, the artist, nor rich lord, but almost universally
this provincial Hamlet, conscientious, cultivated, intelligent, but of
feeble will, who, returning from his studies in foreign lands, is full
of scientific theories about the improvement of mankind and the good of
the lower classes, and eager to apply these theories on his own estate.
It is quite necessary that he should have an estate of his own. He will
have the hearty sympathy of the reader in his efforts to improve the
condition of his dependents.

The Russians well understand the conditions of the future prosperity of
their country; but, as they themselves acknowledge, they know not how
to go to work to accomplish it.

In regard to the women of this class, Turgenef, strange to say, has
little to say of the mothers. This probably reveals the existence
of some old wound, some bitter experience of his own. Without a
single exception, all the mothers in his novels are either wicked or
grotesque. He reserves the treasures of his poetic fancy for the young
girls of his creation. To him the young girl of the country province
is the corner-stone of the fabric of society. Reared in the freedom
of country life, placed in the most healthy social conditions, she
is conscientious, frank, affectionate, without being romantic; less
intelligent than man, but more resolute. In each of his romances an
irresolute man is invariably guided by a woman of strong will.

Such are, generally speaking, the characters the author describes,
which bear so unmistakably the stamp of nature that one cannot refrain
from saying as he closes the book, “These must be portraits from life!”
which criticism is always the highest praise, the best sanction of
works of the imagination.

But something is wanting to fully complete the picture of Russian
life. Turgenef never has written of the highest class in society
except incidentally and in his later works, and then in his bitterest
vein. He was never drawn to this class, and was, besides, prejudiced
against it. The charming young girl, suddenly raised to a position in
this circle, becomes entirely perverted―is changed into a frivolous
woman, with most disagreeable peculiarities of mind and temperament.
The man, elevated to the new dignities of a high public position, adds
to his native irresolution ostentatious pride and folly. We are forced
to question these hasty and extreme statements. We must wait for Leo
Tolstoï before forming our opinions. He will give us precisely the
same types of the lower and middle classes as his predecessor; but he
will also give a most complete analysis of the statesman, the courtier,
and the noble dames of the court. He will finish the edifice, the
foundations of which Turgenef has so admirably laid. Not that we expect
of our author the complicated intrigues and extraordinary adventures of
the old French romances. He shows us life as it is, not through a magic
lantern. Facts interest him but little, for he only regards them as
to their influence on the human soul. He loved to study character and
sentiment, to seek the simplest personages of every-day life; and the
great secret of his power lies in his having felt such deep interest
in his models that his characters are never prosaic, while absolutely
true to life. He says of Neshdanof, in “Virgin Soil”: “He makes realism
poetic.” These, his own words, may be justly applied to himself. In
exquisite and good taste he has, in fact, no rival. On every page we
find a tender grace like the ineffable freshness of morning dew. A
phrase of George Eliot’s, in “Adam Bede,” may well apply to him: “Words
came to me as tears come when the heart is full and we cannot prevent
them.”

No writer ever had more sentiment or a greater horror of
sentimentality; none could better express in a single phrase such
crises, such remarkable situations. This reserve power makes his work
unique in Russian literature, which is always diffuse and elaborate. In
his most unimportant productions there is an artistic conciseness equal
to that of the great masters of the ancient classics. Such qualities,
made still more effective by a perfection of style and a diction always
correct and sometimes most exquisite, give to Turgenef a very high
position in contemporary literature. Taine considered him one of the
most perfect artists the world has produced since the classic period.
English criticism, generally considered somewhat cold, and not given to
exaggeration, places him among writers of the very first rank.

I subscribe to this opinion whenever I take up any of his works to read
once again; then I hesitate when I think of that marvellous Tolstoï,
who captivates my imagination and makes me suspend my judgment. We must
leave these questions of precedence for the future to decide.

After the appearance of “Virgin Soil,” although Turgenef’s talent
suffered no change, and his intelligence was as keen as ever, his mind
seemed to need repose, and to be groping for some hidden path, as is
often the case with young authors at the beginning of their career.
There were good reasons for this condition of discouragement. Turgenef
reaped many advantages, and some disadvantages, from his prolonged
sojourn in our midst. At first, the study of new masters and the
friendships and advice of Mérimée, were of great use to him. To this
literary intercourse may be attributed the rare culture, clearness,
and precision of his works, as distinguished from any other prose
writer of his country. Later on he became an enthusiastic admirer of
Flaubert, and made some excellent translations of his works. Then,
next to the pioneers of the “School of Nature,” he adhered to their
successors, fondly imagining himself to be one of them, giving ear
to their doctrines, and making frantic efforts to conciliate these
with his old ideals. Moreover, he felt himself more and more widely
separated from his native land, the true source of all his ideas. He
was sometimes reproached as a deserter. The tendencies of his last
novels had aroused recrimination and scandal. Whenever he occasionally
visited St. Petersburg or Moscow, he was received with ovations by the
young men, but with extreme coldness in some circles. He was destined
to live to see a part of his former adherents leave him and run to
worship new idols. On his last appearance in Russia for the fêtes in
honor of Pushkin, the Moscow students rushed to take him from his
carriage, and bear him in their arms; but I remember that one day at
St. Petersburg, returning from a visit to one of the nobility, Ivan
Sergievitch (Turgenef) said to us, in a jesting tone, not quite free
from bitterness: “Some one called me Ivan Nikolaievitch.”[I] This
little inadvertency would to us seem quite pardonable, for here we
are, fortunately, not obliged to know every one’s father’s name. But,
considering Russian customs, this oversight in the case of a national
celebrity was an offence, and showed that he was already beginning to
be forgotten.

About this time I had the good-fortune to pass an evening with Turgenef
and Skobelef. The young general spoke with his habitual eloquence and
warmth of his hopes for the future, and expressed many great thoughts.
The old author listened in silence, studying him meanwhile with that
pensive, concentrated expression of the artist when he wishes to
reproduce an image in form and color. The model was posing for the
painter, who meant to engraft this remarkable character into one of his
books; but Death did not permit the hero to live out his romance, nor
the poet to write it.

One day in the spring of 1883, the last time I had the honor of seeing
Ivan Sergievitch, we spoke of Skobelef. He said: “I shall soon follow
him.”

It was too true. He was suffering terribly from the mortal illness of
which he died soon after―a cancer in the spinal marrow. His eyes
rested upon a landscape of Rousseau, his favorite painter, which
represented an ancient oak, torn by the storms of many winters, now
shedding its last crimson leaves in a December gale. There was an
affinity between the noble old man and this picture which he enjoyed
looking upon, a secret and mutual understanding of the decrees of
Nature.

He published three tales after being attacked with this fatal
disease. It is an example of the irony of fate that the last of
these was entitled “Despair.” This was his last analysis of the
Russian character, which he had made his study for so many years, and
reproduced in all his works.

A few days before his death he took up his pen to write a touching
epistle to his friend, Leo Tolstoï. In this farewell the dying author
bequeathed the care and honor of Russian literature to his friend and
rival. I give the closing words of this letter:―

“My very dear Leo Nikolaievitch, I have not written to you for a long
time, for I have long been upon my death-bed. There is no chance for
recovery; it is not to be thought of. I write expressly to tell you how
very happy I am to have been a contemporary of yours; and to express a
last, urgent request.

“My friend, return to your literary labors. This gift has come to you
from whence come all our gifts. Oh! how happy I should be could I feel
that you will grant this request!…

“My dear friend, great author of our beloved Russia, let me entreat you
to grant me this request! Reply if this reaches you. I press you and
yours to my heart for the last time. I can write no more…. I am weary!…”

We can only hope that this exhortation will be obeyed by the only
author worthy to take up the pen dropped by those valiant hands.

Turgenef has left behind a rich legacy; for every page he ever wrote,
with but very few exceptions, breathes a noble spirit; and his works
will continue to elevate and warm the hearts of thousands.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] “Grande et riche, mais désordonnée.” This historical
phrase has become proverbial in Russia. It was used by
the deputies of the Slavs when they demanded foreign
chiefs to govern them.

[G] Published in English under the name of “Liza.”

[H] An English translation was published in 1884 under the
title “_Annouchka_,” a tale.

[I] (V)itch added to the father’s name (meaning son of) is
the masculine termination of proper names.

CHAPTER V.

THE RELIGION OF ENDURANCE.―DOSTOYEVSKI.

With Dostoyevski, that true Scythian, who will revolutionize all our
previous habits of thought, we now enter into the heart of Moscow, with
its giant cathedral of St. Basil, like a Chinese pagoda as to form
and decoration, and built by Tartar architects; but dedicated to the
worship of the Christian’s God.

Turgenef and Dostoyevski, although contemporaries, belonging to the
same school, and borne on by the same current of ideas, present in
their respective works many sharply defined contrasts; still, they
possess one quality in common, the outgrowth of the period in which
they lived―sympathy for humanity. In Dostoyevski, this sympathy has
developed into an intense pity for the humbler class, which regards him
and believes in him as its master.

All contemporary forms of art have secret bonds in common. The same
causes and sentiments which inclined these Russian authors to the study
of real life attracted the great French landscape-painters of the same
epoch to a closer observation of nature. The works of Corot, Rousseau,
and Millet present to me a perfect idea of the common tendencies and
personal peculiarities of the three types of talent I am attempting
to analyze. Whichever of these painters we prefer, we shall be likely
to be attracted by the corresponding writer. I would not force such
a comparison; but to me Turgenef has the grace and poetry of Corot;
Tolstoï, the simple grandeur of Rousseau; Dostoyevski, the tragic
severity of Millet.

Dostoyevski’s romances have been translated into French, and, to my
astonishment, they are greatly enjoyed by the French. This places
me at ease in discussing him. I should never have been believed, in
attempting to present an analysis of this strange character, if these
books, which reflect and typify their author, had not been well known
among us. At the same time, the books can scarcely be understood
without some knowledge of the life of him who created them. I had
almost said, whose life and sufferings were portrayed in them; but the
one expression partly implies the other.

On entering into an examination of the life and works of this man, I
must present to the reader scenes invariably sad, sometimes terrible,
sometimes funereal. Those persons should not attempt to read them
who object to visiting hospitals, courts of justice, or prisons;
or who have a horror of visiting graveyards at night. I cannot
conscientiously throw a cheerful glamour upon what both destiny and
character have made sombre throughout. Some will, at least, follow me
with confidence. At all events, the Russia of the past twenty years
will remain an inexplicable enigma to those who ignore the work which
has made the most lasting impression upon this country, and shaken
it to its foundations. We must, then, examine the books which have
performed such a work, and, first of all, and more dramatic than all,
the life of him who conceived them.

He was born at Moscow, in 1821, in the charity hospital. Destiny
decreed that his eyes should first open upon the sad spectacle which
was to be ever before them, and upon the most terrible forms of
misery. His father, a retired military surgeon, was attached to this
establishment. His family belonged to one of those lower orders of
the nobility from which minor functionaries are generally chosen, and
possessed a small estate and a few serfs in the province of Tula.
The child was sometimes taken out to this country place; and these
first visions of country life occasionally reappear in his works, but
very rarely. Contrary to the habit of the other Russian authors, who
adore nature, and especially love the place where they were reared,
Dostoyevski is not attracted in this direction. He is a psychologist;
the human soul absorbs his entire vision; the scenes of his choice are
the suburbs of large cities, and miserable alleys. In his childish
recollections, which almost invariably give their coloring to an
author’s mind, you never feel the influence of peaceful woods and
broad, open skies. The source from whence his imagination draws its
supplies will give you glimpses of hospital courts, pallid faces under
the regulation white cap, and forms clothed in brown robes; and you
will encounter the timid gaze of the “Degraded” and “Insulted.”

Dostoyevski was one of a numerous family of children, and his life
as a child was not one of luxury. After leaving a Moscow school, his
father procured admission for the two elder sons, Alexis and Feodor, to
the military engineering school at St. Petersburg. The two brothers,
bound together by a common aptitude for literature, were always deeply
attached to each other, and greatly depended, in all the crises of
life, upon each other’s mutual support. We gain much knowledge of
the interior life of Feodor Mikhailovitch, (Dostoyevski) through his
letters to his brother Alexis in his “Correspondence.” Both felt
themselves out of place in this school, which, for them, took the
place of a University training. A classical education was just what
Dostoyevski needed; it would have given him that refinement and balance
which is gained by an early training in the best literature. He made up
for the want of it as best he could, by reading Pushkin and Gogol, and
the French romance-writers, Balzac, Eugene Sue, and George Sand, who
seems to have had a strong influence upon his imagination. But Gogol
was his favorite master. The humble world which attracted him most was
revealed to him in “Dead Souls.”

Leaving the school in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant, he did
not long wear his engineer’s uniform. A year later he sent in his
resignation, to devote himself exclusively to literary occupations.
From this day, the fierce struggle of our author with poverty began
which was to last forty years. After the father’s death the meagre
patrimony was divided among the children, and it quickly vanished.
The young Feodor undertook translations for journals and publishers.
For forty years his correspondence, which recalls that of Balzac, was
one long agonizing lament; a recapitulation of debts accumulating and
weighing upon him, a complaint of the slavish life he led. For years he
is never sure of his daily bread, except in the convict prison.

Although Dostoyevski became hardened to material privations, he was not
proof against the moral wounds which poverty inflicts; the pitiable
pride which formed the foundation of his character suffered terribly
from everything which betrayed his poverty. You feel the existence
of this open wound in his letters; and all his heroes, the real
incarnations of his own soul, suffer the same torture. Moreover, he was
really ill, a victim of shattered nerves; and he became so visionary
that he believed himself threatened with every imaginable disease. He
left on his table sometimes, before retiring for the night, a paper
upon which he wrote: “I may to-night fall into a lethargic sleep; be
careful not to bury me before a certain number of days.” This was no
trick of the imagination, but a presentiment of the fatal malady, of
which he then felt the first symptoms. It has been stated that he
contracted it in Siberia later than this; but a friend of his youth
assures me that at this very time he was in the habit of falling down
in the street foaming at the mouth. He always was, what he seemed to us
to be in his latter years, but a frail bundle of irritable nerves; a
feminine soul in the frame of a Russian peasant; reserved, savage, full
of hallucinations; while the deepest tenderness filled his heart when
he looked upon the sufferings of the lower classes.

His work was his sole consolation and delight. He narrates in his
letters projected plots for his romances with the most genuine
enthusiasm; and the recollection of these first transports makes him
put into the mouth of one of his characters, drawn from himself, the
novelist who figures in “The Degraded and Insulted,”[J] the following
expressions:―

“If I ever was happy, it was not during the first intoxicating moments
of success, but at the time when I had never read nor shown my
manuscript to any one; during those long nights, passed in enthusiastic
dreams and hopes, when I passionately loved my work; when I lived with
my fancies, with the characters created by me, as with real relatives,
living beings. I loved them; I rejoiced or mourned with them, and I
have actually shed bitter tears over the misfortunes of my poor hero.”

His first tale, “Poor People,” contained the germ of all the rest.
He wrote it at the age of twenty-three. During the latter years of
his life, he used to relate the story of this first venture. The poor
little engineer knew not a single soul in the literary world, or what
to do with his manuscript. One of his comrades, Grigorovitch, who
became a man of considerable literary reputation, has confirmed this
anecdote. He carried the manuscript to Nekrasof, the poet, and friend
of poor authors.

At three o’clock in the morning, Dostoyevski heard a knock at his door.
It was Grigorovitch, who brought Nekrasof in with him. The poet threw
himself upon the young stranger’s neck, showing strong emotion. He had
been up the whole night, reading the tale, and was perfectly carried
away with it. He too lived the cautious and hidden life which at that
time was the lot of every Russian writer. These two repressed hearts,
mutually and irresistibly attracted to each other, now overflowed
with all the generous enthusiasm of youth. The dawn of day found the
three enthusiasts still absorbed in an exalted conversation and an
interchange of thoughts, hopes, and artistic and poetical dreams.

On leaving his protégé, Nekrasof went directly to Bielinski, the oracle
of Russian literature, the only critic formidable to young beginners.
“A new Gogol is born to us!” cried the poet, as he entered his friend’s
house. “Gogols sprout up nowadays like mushrooms,” replied the critic,
with his most forbidding air, as he took up the manuscript, handling
it as if it were something poisonous, in the same way that all great
critics of every country treat new manuscripts. But when Bielinski had
read the manuscript through, its effect upon him was magical; so that
when the trembling young man presented himself before his judge, the
latter cried out excitedly:―

“Do you comprehend, young man, all the truth that you have described?
No! at your age, that is quite impossible. This is a revelation of
art, an inspiration, a gift from on high. Reverence, preserve this
gift! and you will become a great writer!”

A few months later “Poor People” appeared in periodical review,
and Russia ratified the verdict of its great critic. Bielinski’s
astonishment was justifiable; for it seems incredible that any person
of twenty could have produced a tragedy at once so simple and so
heart-rending. In youth, happiness is our science, learned without a
master, and we invent grand, heroic, showy misfortunes, and anguish
which blazons its own sublimity. But how had this unhappy genius
learned the meaning of that hidden, dumb, wearing misery before his
time?

It is but an ordinary story, told in a correspondence between two
persons. An inferior clerk in a court of chancery, worn with years and
toil, is passing on toward the decline of life, in a continual struggle
with poverty and the accompanying tortures of wounded self-love. This
ignorant and honest clerk, the butt of his comrades’ ridicule, ordinary
in conversation, of only medium intelligence, whose whole ambition is
to be a good copyist, possesses, under an almost grotesque exterior,
a heart as fresh, open, and affectionate as that of a little child;
and I might almost say, sublimely stupid, indifferent to his own
interests, in his noble generosity. This is the chosen type of all the
best Russian authors, the one which exemplifies what is noblest in the
Russian character; as, for example, Turgenef’s Lukeria in the “Living
Relics,” and the Karatayef of Tolstoï in “War and Peace.” But these are
of the peasant class, whereas the character of Dievushkin, in “Poor
People,” is raised some degrees higher in the intellectual and social
scale.

In this life, dark and cold as the long December night in Russia, there
is one solitary ray of light, one single joy. In another poor lodging,
just opposite the loft where the clerk copies his papers, lives a
young girl, a distant relative, a solitary waif like himself, who can
claim nothing in the world but the feeble protection of this friend.
Both isolated, crushed by the brutal pressure of circumstances, these
two unfortunates depend upon each other for mutual affection, as well
as aid to keep them from starving. In the man’s affection there is a
tender self-sacrifice, a delicacy, so much the more charming in that
it accords not at all with the habitual bungling awkwardness of his
ways and ideas; like a flower growing in sterile soil, among brambles,
and betrayed only by its perfume. He imposes upon himself privations
truly heroic, for the sake of comforting and gladdening the existence
of his dear friend. These are, moreover, so well concealed that they
are only discovered through some awkwardness on his part; as for him,
they seem to him a matter of course. His sentiments are by turns those
of a father, a brother, a good faithful dog. He would define them thus
himself if called upon to analyze them. But although we well know a
name for this feeling, let us not even whisper it to him; he would be
overcome with shame at the mere mention of it.

The woman’s character is drawn with marvellous art. She is very
superior to her friend in mind and education; she guides him in all
intellectual things, which are quite new to him. She is weak by nature,
and tender-hearted, but less faithful and resigned than he. She has not
wholly given up a desire for the good things of life. She continually
protests against the sacrifices which Dievushkin imposes upon himself,
she begs him not to trouble himself for her; but sometimes a longing
cry for something she feels the deprivation of escapes her, or perhaps
a childish desire for some trifle or finery. The two neighbors can
only see each other occasionally, that they may give no occasion
for malicious gossip, and an almost daily correspondence has been
established between them. In these letters we read of their past, the
hard lives they have lived, the little incidents of their every-day
life, their disappointments; the terrors of the young girl, pursued
by the vicious, who try to entrap her; the agonies of the poor clerk,
working for his daily bread, trying so pitifully to preserve the
dignity of his manhood through the cruel treatment of those who would
strip him of it.

Finally, the crisis comes; Dievushkin loses his only joy in life. You
think, perhaps, that a young lover comes to steal her from him, that
love will usurp in her heart the place of sisterly affection. Oh, no!
the tale is much more human, far sadder.

A man who had once before sought out this young girl, with possibly
doubtful intentions, offers her his hand. He is middle-aged, rich, of
rather questionable character; but his proposition is an honorable one.
Weary of wrestling against fate, persuaded perhaps also that she may
thereby lighten some of the burdens of her friend, the unfortunate girl
accepts the offer. Here the study of character is absolutely true to
nature. The young girl, going suddenly from extreme poverty to luxury,
is intoxicated for a moment by this new atmosphere, fine dresses, and
jewels! In her cruel ingenuousness, she fills the last letters with
details upon these grave subjects. From force of habit, she asks this
kind Dievushkin, who always made all her purchases, to do an errand
at the jeweller’s for her. Can her soul be really base, unworthy of
the pure sentiment she had inspired? Not for a moment does the reader
have such an impression, the writer knows so well how to maintain true
harmony in his delineation of character. No, it is only that a little
of youth and human nature have come to the surface in the experience
of this long repressed soul. How can we grudge her such a trifling
pleasure?

Then this cruelty is explained by the complete misapprehension of their
reciprocal feelings. With her it is only a friendship, which will ever
be faithful, grateful, if perhaps a little less single; how can she
possibly understand that for him it is nothing short of despair?

It had been arranged that the wedded pair should start immediately
after the marriage for a distant province. Up to the very last hour,
Dievushkin replies to her letters, giving her the most minute details
of the shopping that he has done for her, making great efforts to
become versed in the subject of laces and ribbons. He only occasionally
betrays a hint of the terror which seizes him at the thought of the
near separation; but finally, in the last letter, his wounded heart
breaks; the unhappy man sees before him the blank desolation of his
future life, solitary, empty; he is no longer conscious of what he
writes; but, in spite of all, his utter distress is kept back; he
himself seems hardly yet to realize the secret of his own agony. The
drama ends with an agonizing wail of despair, when he is left standing
alone, behind the departing train.

I should like to quote many passages; I hesitate, and find none. This
is the highest eulogium that can be bestowed upon a romance. The
structure is so solid, the materials so simple, and so completely
sacrificed to the impression of the whole, that a detached fragment
quite loses its effect; it means no more than a single stone torn from
a Greek temple, whose beauty consists in its general lines. This is the
peculiar attribute of all the great Russian authors.

Another trait is also common to them, in which Turgenef excelled, and
in which perhaps Dostoyevski even surpassed him: the art of awaking
with a single line, sometimes with a word, infinite harmonies, a whole
series of sentiments and ideas. “Poor People” is a perfect specimen
of this art. The words you read upon the paper seem to produce
reverberations, as, when touching the key-board of an organ, the sounds
produced awake, through invisible tubes, the great interior heart of
harmony within the instrument, whence come its deepest tones of thunder.

When you have read the last page you feel that you know the two
characters as perfectly as if you had lived with them for years;
moreover, the author has not told us a thousandth part of what we know
of them, his mere indications are such revelations; for it seems he is
especially effective in what he leaves unsaid, but merely suggests, and
we are grateful to him for what he leaves us to imagine.

Into this tender production Dostoyevski has poured his own nature, all
his sensibility, his longing for sympathy and devotion, his bitter
conception of life, his savage, pitiable pride. His own letters of
this period are like Dievushkin’s, where he speaks of his inconceivable
mortification on account of his “wretched overcoat.”

In order to understand the high estimation of this work held by
Bielinski and Nekrasof, and to realize its remarkable originality, we
must remember its time and place in Russian literature. The “Annals of
a Sportsman” did not appear until five years later. True, Gogol had
furnished the theme in “Le Manteau,” but Dostoyevski substituted a
suggestive emotion in place of his master’s fancy.

He continued to write essays in the same vein, but they were less
remarkable, and he even tried his hand at writing a farce; but destiny
rudely led him back into his true path, and gave the man his peculiarly
tragic physiognomy among writers.

II.

About the year 1847 the students’ clubs already mentioned, which
assembled to discuss the doctrines of Fourier and others, opened to
receive political writers and army officers, and were at this time
under the direction of a former student, the political agitator
Petrachevski. The conspiracy headed by this man is still imperfectly
understood, as well as the general history of that time. It is,
however, certain that two different currents of ideas divided these
circles. One embraced those of their predecessors, the revolutionists
of December, 1825, who went no farther than to indulge in dreams of the
emancipation and of a liberal government. The other set went far beyond
their successors, the present nihilists, for they desired the total
ruin of the entire social edifice.

Dostoyevski’s character, as we have seen, made him an easy prey to
radical ideas through his generosity as well as his hardships and his
rebellious spirit. He has related how he was attracted toward socialism
by the influence of his learned protector, Bielinski, who tried also to
convert him to atheism.

Our author soon became an enthusiastic member of the reunions inspired
by Petrachevski. He was, undoubtedly, among the more moderate, or
rather one of the independent dreamers. Mysticism, sympathy for the
unfortunate, these must have been what attracted him in any political
doctrine; and his incapacity for action made this metaphysician
altogether harmless. The sentence pronounced upon him charged him
with very pardonable errors: participation in the reunions; also in
the discussions on the severity of the press censure; the reading or
listening to the reading of seditious pamphlets, etc. These crimes seem
very slight when compared with the severe punishment they provoked. The
police force was then so inefficient that it for two years remained
ignorant of what was going on in these circles; but finally they were
betrayed by an unfaithful member.

Petrachevski and his friends also betrayed themselves at a banquet in
honor of Fourier, where they were discussing the destruction of family
ties, property, kings, and deities. Dostoyevski took no part in these
social banquets, that occurred just after those days of June in France
which spread terror throughout all Europe, and only one year after
other banquets which had overturned a throne. The Emperor Nicholas,
although naturally humane, now forced himself to be implacable,
entertaining the firm conviction that he was the chosen servant of God
to save a sinking world. He was already meditating the emancipation
of the serfs; by a fatal misunderstanding he was now going to strike
down men, some of whom had committed no crime but that of desiring
the same reform. History is only just when she seeks the motives of
all consciences and the springs of their actions. But this was not a
favorable time for explanations or cool judgments.

On the 23d of April, 1849, at five o’clock in the morning, thirty-three
persons looked upon as suspicious characters were arrested, the
Dostoyevski brothers being among the number. The prisoners were carried
to the citadel, and placed in solitary confinement in the gloomy
casemates, which were haunted by the most terrible associations. They
remained there eight months, with no distractions except the visits of
the examining commissioners; finally, they were allowed the use of a
few religious books. Feodor Mikhailovitch wrote once to his brother,
who had been soon released through the want of sufficient evidence
against him: “For five months I have lived upon my own substance; that
is, upon my own brain alone…. To think constantly, and receive no
outside impression to renew and sustain thought, is wearing…. I was as
if placed under a receiver from which all the pure air was extracted….”

On the 22d of December the prisoners were led out, without being
informed of the sentence which had been pronounced upon them. There
were now only 21, the others having been discharged. They were
conducted to a square where a scaffold had been erected. The cold was
intense; the criminals were ordered to remove all their clothing,
except their shirts, and listen to the reading of the sentence, which
would last for a half-hour. When the sheriff began to read, Dostoyevski
said to the prisoner next him: “Is it possible that we are going to
be executed?” The idea seemed to have occurred to him for the first
time. His companion pointed to a cart, loaded with what appeared to be
coffins covered over with a cloth. The last words of the sentence were:
“They are condemned to death, and are to be shot.”

The sheriff left the scaffold, and a priest mounted upon it with a
cross in his hand, and exhorted the prisoners to confess. Only one
responded to this exhortation; all the others kissed the cross.
Petrachevski and two of the principal conspirators were bound to the
pillar. The officer ordered the company of soldiers drawn up for the
purpose to charge their weapons. As they were taking aim, a white flag
was hoisted in front of them, when the twenty-one prisoners heard that
the Emperor had commuted their penalty to exile in Siberia. The leaders
were unbound; one of them, Grigoref, was struck with sudden insanity,
and never recovered.

Dostoyevski, on the contrary, has often assured me, as if he were
really convinced of it, that he should inevitably have gone mad if he
had not been removed by this and following disasters from the life
he was leading. Before his imprisonment he was beset by imaginary
maladies, nervous depression, and “mystic terrors,” which condition
would certainly have brought about mental derangement, from which he
was only saved by this sudden change in his way of life, and by the
necessity of steeling himself against his overwhelming trials,―which
may have been true, for it is said that imaginary evils are best cured
by real ones; still, I cannot but think that there was some degree of
pride in this affirmation.

In each of his books he depicts a scene similar to what he himself
experienced, and he has labored to make a perfect psychological study
of the condemned prisoner who is about to die. You feel that these
pages are the result of a nightmare, proceeding from some hidden recess
of the author’s own brain.

The imperial decree, which was less severe for him than for any of the
rest, reduced his punishment to four years of hard labor, after which
he was to serve as a common soldier, losing his rank among the nobles
as well as all civil rights.

The exiled prisoners started immediately in sledges for Siberia. At
Tobolsk, after one night passed together, when they bade each other
farewell, they were put in irons, their heads shaved, and they were
then sent to their several destinations. It was at that temporary
prison that they were visited by the wives of the revolutionists of
December. These brave women had set a noble example. Belonging to the
upper class, and accustomed to a life of luxury, they had renounced
everything to follow their exiled husbands into Siberia, and for
twenty-five years had haunted the prison gates. Learning now of the
arrival of another set of refugees, they came to visit them, warned
these young men of what was in store for them, and counselled them how
best to support their hardships, offering to each of them all that they
had to give, the Gospel.

Dostoyevski accepted his, and throughout the four years always kept
it under his pillow. He read it every evening under the lamp in the
dormitory, and taught others to read in it. After the hard day’s work,
while his companions in chains were restoring their wasted energies in
sleep, he obtained from his book a consolation more necessary still
for a thinking man, a renewal of moral strength, and a support in
bearing his trials. How can we imagine this intellectual man, with his
delicate nervous organization, his overweening pride, his sensitive
imagination, prone to exaggeration of every dreaded evil, condemned to
the companionship of these low wretches in such a monotonous existence,
forced to daily labor; and for the slightest negligence, or at the
caprice of his keepers, threatened with a flogging by the soldiers!
He was inscribed among the worst set of malefactors and political
criminals, who were kept under military surveillance.

They were employed in turning a grindstone for marble works, in
demolishing old boats on the ice in winter, and other rough and useless
labor.

How well he has described the weariness of being forced to labor merely
for the sake of being employed, feeling that his task is nothing but
a gymnastic exercise. He has also said the severest trial of all, was
never being allowed to be alone for a single moment for years. But the
greatest torture of all for this writer, now at the height of his
powers, incessantly haunted by images and ideas, was the impossibility
of writing, of alleviating his lot by absorbing himself in some
literary work. But he survived, and was strengthened and purified, and
the personal history of this martyr can be read in his “Recollections
of a Dead House,”[K] which he wrote after he left the prison. How
unjust is literary fame, and what a thing of chance it is! The name
and work of Silvio Pellico are known throughout the civilized world.
In France the book is one of the classics; and yet there, on the great
highway of all fame and of all great thoughts, even the title of this
tragic work of Dostoyevski’s was but yesterday quite unknown,―a book
as superior to that of the Lombard prisoner, as the tales exceed his in
horror.

No work was ever more difficult to accomplish. Siberia, that mysterious
land which was then only mentioned with extreme caution, must be freely
described. It was, too, a former political prisoner who now undertook
to walk over these burning coals and brave this cruel press-censure.
He was successful; and he made us realize what exquisite refinement of
suffering a man of the upper class, thrown amid such surroundings, was
capable of enduring.

He gives us the biography of such a man, who had been through many
years of hard labor, the penalty of some small crime. This man, who
is, in reality, no other than Dostoyevski himself, occupies himself in
psychological studies of these unfortunates, aiming constantly to show
the divine spark always existing even in the most degraded. Many of
them relate the story of their lives to him; with some he seeks to know
nothing of their past, but contents himself with describing their moral
natures in his broad, vague manner, which is also common to all the
great Russian writers. These portraits, with their indistinct outlines,
melting as into the grayness of the early dawn, recall Henner’s
portraits when compared with those of Ingres. The language, too, which
Dostoyevski purposely employs, of a popular type, is marvellously well
fitted for his purpose.

The greater part of these natures belong to a type of character which
Dostoyevski seems peculiarly to enjoy analyzing; those natures which
are subject to attacks of caprice, almost amounting to sudden or
temporary insanity. In a romance of his, called “The Idiot,” he quotes
an example of this kind, which he declares to be strictly true:―“Two
peasants, of middle age and friends of long standing, arrived at an
inn. Neither of them was at all intoxicated. They took their tea and
ordered a bedroom, which they shared together. One of them had noticed
that within the last few days his companion had worn a silver watch,
which he never had seen him wear before. The man was no thief; he
was an honest man, and, moreover, in very comfortable circumstances
for a peasant. But this watch so struck his fancy that he conceived
a most inordinate desire to possess it, which he could not repress.
He seized a knife, and, as soon as his friend’s back was turned, he
approached him noiselessly, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself,
and devoutly murmured this prayer: ‘Lord, forgive me, through Jesus
Christ!’ He then killed his friend with as much ease as he would a
sheep, and took the watch.”

Those persons who conceive a desire, when on the top of a high tower,
to throw themselves into the abyss below, he says are often of a mild,
peaceable, and quite ordinary type. Some natures apparently enjoy the
anticipation of the horror they can inspire in others, and, in a fit of
desperation, seem to court punishment as a solution of their condition
of mind. Sometimes in these attacks of madness is mingled a vein of
asceticism. Dostoyevski introduces an instance of this kind in “Crime
and Punishment,” which illustrates the strange sense which the Russian
peasant attaches to the idea of punishment, sought for itself, for its
propitiatory virtue:―

“This prisoner was quite different from all the rest. He was a little
pale thin man, about 60 years of age. I was struck with his appearance
the first time I saw him, there was so much calmness and repose about
him. I particularly liked his eyes, which were clear and intelligent.
I often talked with him, and have seldom met with so kindly a nature,
so upright a soul. He was expiating in Siberia an unpardonable crime.
In consequence of several conversions in his parish, a movement towards
the old orthodoxy, the government, wishing to encourage these good
tendencies, had an orthodox church built. This man, together with a few
other fanatics, determined to ‘resist for his faith’s sake,’ and set
fire to the church. The instigators of the crime were all condemned to
hard labor in Siberia. He had been a very successful tradesman at the
head of a flourishing business. Leaving his wife and children at home,
he accepted his sentence with firmness, in his blindness considering
his punishment as a ‘witness to his faith.’ He was mild and gentle
as a child, and one could not but wonder how he could have committed
such a deed. I often conversed with him on matters of faith. He
yielded up none of his convictions, but never in argument betrayed the
least hatred or resentment; nor did I ever discover in him the least
indication of pride or braggadocio. In the prison he was universally
respected, and did not show a trace of vanity on this account. The
prisoners called him ‘our little uncle,’ and never disturbed him in any
way. I could realize what sway he must have had over his companions in
the faith.

“In spite of the apparent courage with which he bore his fate, a
secret constant pain, which he tried to hide from all eyes, seemed
at times to consume him. We slept in the same dormitory. I waked one
morning at four o’clock, and heard what sounded like stifled sobbing.
The old man was sitting on the porcelain stove reading in a manuscript
prayer-book. He was weeping bitterly, and I heard him murmur from time
to time: ‘O Lord! do not forsake me! Lord, give me strength! My little
children, my dearest little ones, we shall never see each other again!’
I felt such inexpressible pity for him!”

I must also translate a terrible piece of realism, the death of
Mikhailof: “I knew him but slightly; he was a young man about
twenty-five years of age, tall, slender, and had a remarkably fine
form. He belonged to the section in which the worst criminals were
placed, and was always extremely reticent and seemed very sad and
depressed. He had literally wasted away in prison. I remember that his
eyes were very fine, and I know not why his image so often comes before
me. He died in the afternoon of a fine, clear, frosty day. I remember
how the sun shone obliquely through our greenish window-panes, thickly
covered with frost. The bright shaft of sunlight shone directly upon
this poor unfortunate, as he lay dying. Though he might have been
unconscious, he had a hard struggle, the death agony lasting many
hours. He had recognized no one since morning. We tried to relieve
his suffering, which evidently was intense; he breathed with great
difficulty, with a rattling sound, and his chest labored heavily. He
threw off all his coverings and tore his shirt, as if the weight of
it was insupportable. We went to his aid and took the shirt off. That
emaciated body was a terrible sight, the legs and arms wasted to the
bone, every rib visible like those of a skeleton. Only his chains and
a little wooden cross remained upon him. His wasted feet might almost
have escaped through the rings of the fetters.

“For a half-hour before his death all sounds ceased in our dormitory,
and no one spoke above a whisper, and all moved as noiselessly as
possible. Finally his hand, wavering and uncertain, sought the little
cross, and tried to tear it off, as if even that was too heavy a
weight and was stifling him. They took it away, and ten minutes
after he expired. They went to inform the guard, who came and looked
indifferently upon the corpse, then went to call the health officer,
who came immediately, approached the dead man with a rapid step
which resounded in the silent chamber, and with a professional air
of indifference, assumed for the occasion, felt his pulse, made a
significant gesture as if to say that all was over, and went out. One
of the prisoners suggested that the eyes should be closed, which was
done by one of the others, who also, seeing the cross lying on the
pillow, took it up, looked at it, and put it around Mikhailof’s neck;
then he crossed himself. The face was already growing rigid, the mouth
was half open, showing the handsome white teeth under the thin lips,
which closely adhered to the gums. Finally, the second officer of the
guard appeared in full uniform and helmet, followed by two soldiers. He
slowly advanced, looking hesitatingly at the solemn circle of prisoners
standing about him. When he drew near the body, he stopped short as if
nailed to the spot. The spectacle of this wasted, naked form in irons
evidently shocked him. He unfastened his helmet, took it off, which
no one expected of him, and crossed himself reverentially. He was a
gray-haired veteran officer, and a severe disciplinarian. One of the
soldiers with him seemed much affected, and, pointing to the corpse,
murmured as he left: ‘He, too, once had a mother!’ These words, I
remember, shot through me like an arrow…. They carried away the corpse,
with the camp bed it lay upon; the straw rustled, the chains dragged
clanking against the floor, breaking the general silence. We heard the
second officer in the corridor sending some one for the blacksmith. The
corpse must be unfettered….”

This gives an example of Dostoyevski’s method, showing his persistence
in giving all the minutiæ of every action. He shows us, how,
sometimes, among these tragic scenes, kind souls come to bring
consolation to the exiles, as in the case of a widow who came daily
to bring little gifts or a bit of news, or at least to smile upon the
wretched creatures. “She could give but little, for she was very poor;
but we prisoners felt that we had at least, close by the walls of our
prison, one being wholly devoted to us,―and that was something.”

On opening this book, the key-note from the very beginning has a tone
so melancholy, so harrowing, that you wonder how long the author can
continue in this vein, and how he can ever manage the gradation into
another. But he is successful in this, as those will see who have the
courage to go on as far as the chapter on corporal punishments, and the
description of the hospital, to which the prisoners afterwards come to
recover from the effects of these chastisements. It is impossible to
conceive of sufferings more horrible than these, or more graphically
portrayed.

Nevertheless, Dostoyevski does not properly belong to the “natural
school.” The difference is not easily explained, but there is a
difference. Everything depends upon the master’s intention, which never
deceives the reader. When the realistic writer only seeks to awake a
morbid curiosity, we inwardly condemn him; but when it is evident that
he is aiming to develop some moral idea, or impress a lesson the more
strongly upon our minds, we may criticize the method, but we must
sympathize with the author. His portrayals, even when disgusting to us,
are ennobled, like the loathsome wound under the hands of the gentle
Sister of Charity. This is the case with Dostoyevski. His object in
writing was reform. With a cautious but pitiless hand, he has torn away
the curtain which concealed this distant Siberian hell from the eyes of
the Russians themselves. The “Recollections of a Dead House” gave the
death-blow to the sentence of exile, as “Annals of a Sportsman” gave
the signal for the abolition of serfdom. To-day I am thankful to say
these repulsive scenes belong only to the history of the past; corporal
punishment has been abolished, and the prisons in Siberia are regulated
with as much humanity as with us. We can then pardon the tortures this
author has inflicted upon us in his graphic recitals of these scenes
of martyrdom. We must persevere and continue to the end, and we shall
realize better than from a host of philosophical dissertations what
things are possible in such a country, what has taken place there
so recently, and how this writer could calmly relate such horrors
without a single expression of revolt or astonishment. This reserved
impartiality is, I know, partly his own peculiar style, and partly the
result of the severe press-censure; but the fact that the writer can
speak of these horrors as natural phenomena of social life, reminds
us that we are looking into a different world from ours, and must be
prepared for all extremes of evil and good, barbarism, courage, and
sacrifice. Those men who carried the Testament into the prison with
them, those extreme souls are filled with the spirit of a Gospel which
has passed through Byzantium, written for the ascetic and the martyr;
their errors as well as their virtues are all derived from that same
source. I almost despair of making this world intelligible to ours,
which is haunted by such different images, moulded by such different
hands.

Dostoyevski has since said, many times, that the experience in Siberia
was beneficial to him, that he had learned to love his brothers of the
lower classes, and to discover nobleness even among the very worst
criminals. “Destiny,” he said, “in treating me with the severity of a
step-mother, became a true mother to me.”

The last chapter of this work might be entitled: “A Resurrection.” In
it are described, with rare skill, the sentiments of a prisoner as
he approaches the time of his liberation. During the last few weeks,
his hero has the privilege of obtaining a few books, and occasionally
an odd number of a review. For ten years he had read nothing but his
Gospel, had heard nothing of the outside world.

In taking up the thread of life among his contemporaries, he
experiences unusual sensations; he enters into a new universe; he
cannot explain many simple words and events; he asks himself, almost
with terror, what giant strides his generation has made without him;
these feelings must resemble those of a man who has been resuscitated.

At last the solemn hour has come. He tenderly bids his companions
farewell, feeling real regret at parting with them; he leaves a portion
of his heart wherever he goes, even in a prison. He goes to the forge,
his fetters fall, he is a free man!

III.

The freedom which Dostoyevski entered into was, however, only a
relative one. He entered a Siberian regiment as a common soldier. The
new reign, two years after, in 1856, brought him pardon. At first he
was promoted to the rank of officer, and his civil rights restored
to him, and then authorized to send in his resignation. But it was a
long time before he could obtain permission to leave the country, or
to publish anything. At last, in 1859, after ten years of exile, he
recrossed the Ural mountains and returned to a country which he found
greatly changed, and at that moment palpitating with impatience and
hope, on the eve of the Emancipation. He brought a companion with him
from Siberia, the widow of one of his old comrades in the conspiracy
of Petrachevski, whom he there met, fell in love with, and married.
But, as in every phase of his life, this romantic marriage too was
destined to be crossed by misfortune and ennobled by self-sacrifice.
The young wife conceived a stronger attachment for another man, whom
she threatened to join. For a whole year Dostoyevski’s letters prove
that he was working to secure the happiness of his wife and his rival,
writing constantly to his friends at St. Petersburg to help him to
remove all obstacles to their union. “As for me,” he added, at the
close of one of those letters, “God knows what I shall do! I shall
either drown myself or take to drinking.”

It was this page of his personal history which he reproduced in “The
Degraded and Insulted,” the first of his romances which was translated
into French, but not the best. The position of the confidant favoring
a love affair which only brought despair for himself, was true to
nature, for it was his own experience. Whether it was not skilfully
presented, or whether we ourselves are more selfish by nature, I
cannot say, but it is hard for us to accept such a situation, or not
to see a ridiculous side to it. The general public cannot appreciate
such subtleties. His characters are too melodramatic. On the very
rare occasions when he draws his types from the upper classes, he
always makes a failure, for he understands nothing of the complex and
restrained passions of souls hardened by intercourse with the world.
Natasha’s lover, the giddy creature for whom she has sacrificed
everything, is not much better. I know that we must not expect lovers
to be reasonable beings, and that it is more philosophical to admire
the power of love, irrespectively of its object; but the general
novel-reader is not supposed to be a philosopher; he would like the
adored hero to be interesting at least, and would prefer even a
rascal to an idiot. In France, at all events, we cannot endorse such
a spectacle, although it is both true to nature and consoling; an
exquisite type of woman devoted to a fool. Our gallantry, however,
forces us to admit that a man of genius may be permitted to adore a
foolish woman, but that is all we are willing to concede. Dostoyevski
himself has surpassed the most severe criticisms of this work in his
article on the “Degraded and Insulted”: “I realize that many of the
characters in my book are puppets rather than men.”

With these exceptions, we must acknowledge that we recognize the
hand of a master in the two female characters. Natasha is the very
incarnation of intense, jealous passion; she speaks and acts like a
victim of love in a Greek tragedy. Nelly, a charming and pathetic
little creature, resembles one of Dickens’ beautiful child characters.

After his return to St. Petersburg, in 1865, Dostoyevski became
absorbed in journalism. He conceived an unfortunate passion for this
form of literature, and devoted to it the best years of his life. He
edited two journals to defend the ideas which he had adopted. I defy
any one to express these ideas in any practical language. He took a
position between the liberal and the _Slavophile_ parties, inclining
more toward the latter. It was a patriotic form of religion, but
somewhat mysterious, with no precise dogmas, and lending itself to no
rational explanation. One must either accept or reject it altogether.
The great error of the _Slavophile_ party has been to have filled
so many pages of paper for twenty-five years, in arguing out a mere
sentiment. Whoever questions their arguments is considered incapable of
understanding them; while those who do not enter into the question at
all are despised, and taxed with profound ignorance.

At this time of transition, during the first years following the
Emancipation, men’s ideas, too long repressed, were in a state of
vertigo, of chaotic confusion. Some were buoyed up with the wildest
hopes; others felt the bitterness of disenchantment, and many
disappointed enthusiasts embraced Nihilism, which was taken up at
this time by romance writers as well as by politicians. Dostoyevski
abandoned his purely artistic ideals, withdrew from the influence of
Gogol, and consecrated himself to the study of this new doctrine.

From 1865, our author experienced a series of unfortunate years. His
second journal was unsuccessful, failed, and he was crushed under the
burden of heavy debts incurred in the enterprise. He afterwards lost
his wife, as related above, and also his brother Alexis, his associate
in his literary labors. He fled to escape his creditors, and dragged
out a miserable existence in Germany and Italy. Attacks of epilepsy
interrupted his work, and he only returned home from time to time to
solicit advance pay from his editors. All that he saw in his travels
seems to have made no impression upon him, with the exception of an
execution he witnessed at Lyons. This spectacle was retained in his
memory, to be described in detail by characters of his future romances.

In spite of his illness and other troubles, he wrote at this time three
of his longest novels,―“Crime et Châtiment,” “l’Idiot,” and “Les
Possédés.” “Crime and Punishment” was written when he was at the height
of his powers. It has been translated, and can therefore be criticised.
Men of science who enjoy the study of the human soul, will read with
interest the profoundest psychological study which has been written
since Macbeth. The curious of a certain type will find in this book
the entertaining mode of torture which is to their taste; but I think
it will terrify the greater number of readers, and that very many will
have no desire to finish it. We generally read a novel for pleasure,
and not for punishment. This book has a powerful effect upon women,
and upon all impressionable natures. The writer’s graphic scenes of
terror are too much for a nervous organization. I have myself seen
in Russia numerous examples of the infallible effect of this romance
upon the mind. It can be urged that the Slav temperament is unusually
susceptible, but I have seen the same impression made upon Frenchmen.
Hoffmann, Edgar Poe, Baudelaire, all writers of this type, are mere
mystics in comparison with Dostoyevski. In their fictions you feel that
they are only pursuing a literary or artistic venture; but in “Crime
and Punishment,” you are impressed with the fact that the author is as
much horrified as you are yourself by the character that he has drawn
from the tissue of his own brain.

The subject is very simple. A man conceives the idea of committing a
crime; he matures it, commits the deed, defends himself for some time
from being arrested, and finally gives himself up to the expiation of
it. For once, this Russian artist has adopted the European idea of
unity of action; the drama, purely psychological, is made up of the
combat between the man and his own project. The accessory characters
and facts are of no consequence, except in regard to their influence
upon the criminal’s plans. The first part, in which are described the
birth and growth of the criminal idea, is written with consummate skill
and a truth and subtlety of analysis beyond all praise. The student
Raskolnikof, a nihilist in the true sense of the word, intelligent,
unprincipled, unscrupulous, reduced to extreme poverty, dreams of a
happier condition. On returning home from going to pawn a jewel at an
old pawnbroker’s shop, this vague thought crosses his brain without his
attaching much importance to it:―

“An intelligent man who had that old woman’s money could accomplish
anything he liked; it is only necessary to get rid of the useless,
hateful old hag.”

This was but one of those fleeting thoughts which cross the brain
like a nightmare, and which only assume a distinct form through the
assent of the will. This idea becomes fixed in the man’s brain, growing
and increasing on every page, until he is perfectly possessed by it.
Every hard experience of his outward life appears to him to bear some
relation to his project; and by a mysterious power of reasoning,
to work into his plan and urge him on to the crime. The influence
exercised upon this man is brought out into such distinct relief
that it seems to us itself like a living actor in the drama, guiding
the criminal’s hand to the murderous weapon. The horrible deed is
accomplished; and the unfortunate man wrestles with the recollection
of it as he did with the original design. The relations of the world
to the murderer are all changed, through the irreparable fact of his
having suppressed a human life. Everything takes on a new physiognomy
and a new meaning to him, excluding from him the possibility of feeling
and reasoning like other people, or of finding his own place in life.
His whole soul is metamorphosed and in constant discord with the
life around him. This is not remorse in the true sense of the word.
Dostoyevski exerts himself to distinguish and explain the difference.
His hero will feel no remorse until the day of expiation; but it is
a complex and perverse feeling which possesses him; the vexation at
having derived no satisfaction from an act so successfully carried out;
the revolting against the unexpected moral consequences of that act;
the shame of finding himself so weak and helpless; for the foundation
of Raskolnikof’s character is pride. Only one single interest in
life is left to him: to deceive and elude the police. He seeks their
company, their friendship, by an attraction analogous to that which
draws us to the extreme edge of a dizzy precipice; the murderer keeps
up interminable interviews with his friends at the police office, and
even leads on the conversation to that point, when a single word would
betray him; every moment we fear he will utter the word; but he escapes
and continues the terrible game as if it were a pleasure.

The magistrate Porphyre has guessed the student’s secret; he plays with
him like a tiger with its prey, sure of his game. Then Raskolnikof
knows he is discovered; and through several chapters a long fantastic
dialogue is kept up between the two adversaries; a double dialogue,
that of the lips, which smile and wilfully ignore; and that of the eyes
which know and betray all. At last when the author has tortured us
sufficiently in this way, he introduces the salutary influence which is
to break down the culprit’s pride and reconcile him to the expiation
of his crime. Raskolnikof loves a poor street-walker. The author’s
clairvoyance divines that even the sentiment of love was destined in
him to be modified, like every other, to be changed into a dull despair.

Sonia is a humble creature, who has sold herself to escape starvation,
and is almost unconscious of her dishonor, enduring it as a malady
she cannot prevent. She wears her ignominy as a cross, with pious
resignation. She is attached to the only man who has not treated her
with contempt; she sees that he is tortured by some secret, and tries
to draw it from him. After a long struggle the avowal is made, but not
in words. In a mute interview, which is tragic in the extreme, Sonia
reads the terrible truth in her friend’s eyes. The poor girl is stunned
for a moment, but recovers herself quickly. She knows the remedy; her
stricken heart cries out:―

“We must suffer, and suffer together … we must pray and atone … let us
go to prison!…”

Thus are we led back to Dostoyevski’s favorite idea, to the Russian’s
fundamental conception of Christianity: the efficacy of atonement, of
suffering, and its being the only solution of all difficulties.

To express the singular relations between these two beings, that
solemn, pathetic bond, so foreign to every pre-conceived idea of
love, we should make use of the word _compassion_ in the sense in
which Bossuet used it: the suffering with and through another being.
When Raskolnikof falls at the feet of the girl who supports her
parents by her shame, she, the despised of all, is terrified at his
self-abasement, and begs him to rise. He then utters a phrase which
expresses the combination of all the books we are studying: “It is not
only before thee that I prostrate myself, but before all suffering
humanity.” Let us here observe that our author has never yet once
succeeded in representing love in any form apart from these subtleties,
or the simple natural attraction of two hearts toward each other. He
portrays only extreme cases; either that mystic state of sympathy and
self-sacrifice for a distressed fellow-creature, of utter devotion,
apart from any selfish desire: or the mad, bestial cruelty of a
perverted nature. The lovers he represents are not made of flesh and
blood, but of nerves and tears. Yet this realist evokes only harrowing
_thoughts_, never disagreeable _images_. I defy any one to quote a
single line suggestive of anything sensual, or a single instance where
the woman is represented in the light of a temptress. His love scenes
are absolutely chaste, and yet he seems to be incapable of portraying
any creation between an angel and a beast.

You can imagine what the _dénouement_ will be. The nihilist, half
conquered, prowls for some time around the police office; and finally
he acknowledges his guilt, and is condemned. Sonia teaches him to pray,
and the wretched creatures go to Siberia. Dostoyevski gladly seizes
the opportunity to rewrite, as a sort of epilogue, a chapter of his
“Recollections of a Dead House.”

Apart from the principal characters of this book, there are secondary
characters and scenes which are impossible to forget, such is the
impression they leave upon you after one reading. There is one scene
where the murderer, always mysteriously attracted back to the fatal
spot, tries to recall every detail of his crime; he even goes to pull
the cracked bell of the apartment, in order to recall more vividly by
this sound the impression of the terrible moment. Detached fragments of
this work seem to lose their signification, and if you skip a few pages
the whole thing becomes unintelligible. One may feel impatient with
the author’s prolixity, but if he omits anything the magnetic current
is interrupted. This I have been told by those who have tried the
experiment. The reader requires as much of an effort of concentration
and memory as for a philosophical treatise. This is a pleasure or a
penalty according to the reader. Besides, a translation, however good,
cannot possibly render the continuous smooth course of the original
text, or give its under-currents of meaning.

We cannot but pity the man who has written such a book, so evidently
drawn from the substance of his own brain. To understand how he was led
so to write, we must note what he once said to a friend in regard to
his mental condition, after one of his severe attacks of illness:―“The
state of dejection into which they plunge me makes me feel in this way:
I seem to be like a criminal who has committed some terrible deed which
weighs upon his conscience.” The review which published Dostoyevski’s
novels often gave but a few pages at a time, followed by a brief note
of apology. Every one understood that Feodor Mikhailovitch had had one
of his severe attacks of illness.

“Crime and Punishment” established the author’s popularity. Its
appearance was the great literary event of the year 1866. All Russia
was made ill by it, so to speak. When the book first appeared, a Moscow
student murdered a pawnbroker in almost precisely the way described
by the novelist; and I firmly believe that many subsequent attempts,
analogous to this, may have been attributable to the influence of this
book. Dostoyevski’s intention, of course, was undoubtedly to dissuade
men from such acts by representing their terrible consequences; but he
did not foresee that the intensity of his portrayals might act in an
opposite sense, and tempt the demon of imitation existing in a certain
type of brain. I therefore hesitate to pronounce upon the moral value
of the work. Our writers may say that I am over-scrupulous. They may
not admit that the moral value of a work of art is a thing to be taken
into account in regard to the appreciation of it as a work of art. But
does anything exist in this world wholly independent of a moral value?

The Russian authors claim that they aim to nourish souls, and the
greatest offence you could offer them would be to accuse them of making
a collection of purposeless words. Dostoyevski’s novels will be judged
either as useful or harmful according as one decides for or against the
morality of public executions and sentences. It is an open question.
For myself, I should decide against them.

IV.

In this work Dostoyevski’s talent had reached its culminating point.
In “The Idiot,” “The Possessed,” and especially in “The Karamazof
Brothers,” many parts are intolerably tedious. The plot amounts to
nothing but a framework upon which to hang all the author’s favorite
theories, and display every type of his eccentric fancy. The book is
nearly filled with conversations between two disputants, whose ideas
are continually clashing, each trying to worm out the other’s secrets
with the most cunning art, and expose some secret intrigue either of
crime or of love. These interviews recall the terrible trials under
Ivan the Terrible, or Peter the First; there is the same combination
of terror, duplicity, and obstinacy still existing in the race.
Sometimes the disputants attempt to penetrate the labyrinth of each
other’s religious or philosophical beliefs. They vie with each other
in the use of arguments, now fine-spun, now eccentric, like a pair of
scholastic doctors of the Sorbonne. Some of these conversations recall
Hamlet’s dialogues with his mother, Ophelia, or Polonius. For more than
two hundred years critics have discussed the question whether Hamlet
was mad when he thus spoke. When that question has been settled, the
decision may be applied to Dostoyevski’s heroes. It has been said more
than once that this writer and the heroes of his creation are simply
madmen. They are mad in the same degree that Hamlet was. For my own
part, I consider this statement neither an intelligent nor reasonable
one. Such an opinion must be held only by those very short-sighted
people who refuse to admit the existence of states of mind different
from those they know from personal experience.

In studying Dostoyevski and his work, we must keep in mind one of
his favorite phrases, which he often repeats: “Russia is a freak
of nature.” A strange anomaly exists in some of these lunatics he
describes. They are absorbed in the contemplation of their own minds,
intent upon self-analysis. If the author leads them into action,
they throw themselves into it impetuously, obedient to the irregular
impulses of their nerves, giving free rein to their unbridled wills,
which are uncontrollable as are elementary forces. Observe how
minutely he describes every physical peculiarity. The condition of
the body explains the perturbation of the soul. Whenever a character
is introduced to us, he is never by any chance sitting comfortably by
a table or engaged in any occupation. “He was extended upon a divan,
with his eyes closed, although he was not asleep…. He walked along the
street without having any idea where he was…. He was motionless, his
eyes absently fixed upon space.”…

These people never eat; they drink tea through the night. Many are
given to strong drink. They rarely sleep, and when they do they dream.
There are more dreams described in Dostoyevski’s works than in the
whole of our classic literature. They are nearly always in a “feverish
condition.” Whenever any of these creatures come into relations with
their fellow-beings, you meet with such expression as these in almost
every line:―“He shuddered … he sprang up with a bound … his features
contracted … he became ashy pale … his lower lip trembled … his teeth
chattered….” Sometimes there are long pauses in a conversation, when
the disputants look fixedly into each other’s eyes.

The writer’s most elaborate creation, and evidently his favorite one,
the analysis of which fills a large volume, is “The Idiot.” Feodor
Mikhailovitch has described himself in this character, in the way that
many authors do: certainly not as he was, but what he wished to be
considered. In the first place, “The Idiot” is subject to epilepsy;
his attacks furnish a most convenient and effective climax for all
emotional scenes. The author evidently greatly enjoys describing these;
he assures us that the whole being is bathed in an ecstasy, for a few
seconds preceding the attack. We are quite willing to take his word
for this. The nickname “Idiot” becomes fixed upon the hero, Prince
Myshkin, because his malady produced such an effect upon his faculties
in childhood that he has always been eccentric. Starting with this
pathological idea, this fictitious character is persistently developed
with an astonishing consistency.

Dostoyevski at first had the idea of producing another Don Quixote,
the ideal redresser of wrongs. Occasionally you feel the impress of
this idea; but soon the author is carried away by his own creation;
his aim is loftier, he creates in the soul in which he sees himself
mirrored the most sublime, Christ-like qualities, he makes a desperate
effort to elevate the character to the moral proportions of a saint.
Imagine, if you can, an exceptional being, possessing the mind and
reasoning faculties of a man, while his heart retains the simplicity
of a child, who, in short, can personify the gospel precept: “Be as
little children.” Such a character is Prince Myshkin, the “Idiot.”
The nervous disease has, by a happy chance, produced this phenomenon;
it has destroyed that part of the intellect which is the seat of
all our defects: irony, arrogance, selfishness, avarice; while the
noble qualities are largely developed. On leaving the hospital, this
extraordinary young man is thrown into the current of ordinary life.
It would seem that he must perish in such an atmosphere, not having
the weapons of defence that others are armed with. Not so; his simple
straightforwardness is stronger than any of the malicious tricks
practised upon him; it carries him through every difficulty, saves
him from every snare. His innocent wisdom has the last word in all
discussions; he utters phrases proceeding from a profound asceticism,
such as this, addressed to a dying man:―“Pass on before us, and
forgive us our happiness.”―Elsewhere he says: “I fear I am unworthy
of my sufferings―” and many similar expressions. He lives among a set
of usurers, liars, and rascals. These people treat him as they would
an idiot, but respect and venerate him; they feel his influence, and
become better men. The women also laugh at the idiot at first, but they
all end by falling desperately in love with him; while he responds to
their adoration only by a tender pity, a compassionate love, the only
sort that Dostoyevski permits his favorite characters to indulge in.

The writer constantly returns to his ruling idea, the supremacy of the
suffering and poor in spirit. Why do all the Russian idealists, without
exception, cry out against prosperity in life? What I believe to be the
secret, unconscious solution of this unreasonable feeling is this: they
feel the force of that fundamental truth, that the life of a living,
acting, thinking being must perforce be a mixture of good and evil.
Whoever acts, creates and destroys at the same time, makes for himself
a place in the world at the expense of some other person or thing.
Therefore, if one neither acts nor thinks, this fatality must naturally
be suppressed,―this production of evil as well as of good; and, as
the evil he does has more effect than the good, he takes refuge in a
non-existence. So these writers admire and sanctify the idiot,―the
neutral, inactive being. It is true, he does no good, but then he can
do no evil: therefore, from the point of view of pessimists, in their
conception of the world, he is the most admirable.

As I read, I am overwhelmed by the number of these moral giants and
monsters around me; but I cannot pass by one of the most striking of
them, Rogozhin, the merchant, a very forcibly drawn figure. The twenty
pages descriptive of the workings of passion in the heart of this man
are written by the hand of a great master. Passion, in this strange
nature, has developed to such intensity, and bestows upon the man such
a gift of fascination, that the woman he loves accepts, in spite of
herself, this savage whom she abhors, and moreover with the certainty
that he will murder her. So he does; and, throughout an entire night,
beside the bed where lies the body of his strangled victim, he calmly
discusses philosophy with his friend. There is nothing melodramatic
about this scene. It is simple as possible; to the author, at least, it
appears quite natural; and this is why it makes us shiver with terror.
I must also mention,―there are so few such touches in the work―the
little drunken money-lender who “offers a prayer every night for the
repose of the soul of Mme. du Barry.” Do not suppose that Dostoyevski
means to enliven us with anything approaching a joke. Through the lips
of this character, he seriously indulges in compassionate sympathy for
the martyrdom endured by Mme. du Barry during the long passage of the
cart through the streets and the struggle with the executioner. He
evidently has always before him that half-hour of the 22d December,
1849.

“Les Possédés” is a description of the revolutionary world of the
Nihilists. This title is a slight modification of the Russian title,
“The Demons,” which is too obscure. All Dostoyevski’s characters
might be said to be _possessed_, as the word was understood in the
Middle Ages. A strange, irresistible will urges them on, in spite
of themselves, to commit atrocious deeds. Natasha, in “The Degraded
and Insulted,” is an example; as also Raskolnikof, in “Crime and
Punishment,” and Rogozhin, in “The Idiot,” besides all the conspirators
who commit murder or suicide without any definite aim or motive.
The history of the origin of “Les Possédés” is rather curious.
Dostoyevski was always opposed to Turgenef in politics and even
more seriously through literary jealousy. At this time, Tolstoï had
not yet established his reputation; and the other two were the only
competitors in the field ready to dispute empire over the imaginations
of their countrymen. The inevitable rivalry between them amounted, on
Dostoyevski’s part, to hatred. He was always the wronged party; and
into this volume he most unjustifiably introduced his brother author
under the guise of a ridiculous actor. But his secret, unpardonable
grievance was that Turgenef was the first to take up and treat the
subject of Nihilism, introducing it into his celebrated novel,
“Fathers and Sons.” Since 1861 Nihilism had, however, developed from
a metaphysical doctrine into practical action. Dostoyevski wrote “Les
Possédés” out of revenge; three years after, Turgenef accepted the
challenge, by publishing “Virgin Soil.” The theme of both romances is
the same―a revolutionary conspiracy in a small provincial town.

The prize in this tilting match must be adjudged to the dramatic
psychologist rather than to the gentle artist who created “Virgin
Soil.” Dostoyevski lays bare the inmost recesses of those intricate
natures more completely; the scene of Shatof’s murder is rendered with
a diabolical power which Turgenef was utterly incapable of. Still, it
must be admitted that Bazarof, the cynic in “Fathers and Sons,” was the
imperishable prototype of all Nihilists who came after him. Dostoyevski
felt this, and keenly regretted it. His book, however, may be called
a prophecy as well as an explanation. It was truly prophetic; for in
1871, when anarchy was still in the process of fermentation, he looked
deeply enough into the future to relate facts precisely analogous
to what we have since seen developed. I attended the trials of the
Nihilists and can testify that many of the men and the conspiracies
that were judged at that time were exact reproductions of those the
novelist had previously created.

The book is also an explanation; for the world will understand from
it the true face of the problem, which is even to-day imperfectly
understood, because its solution is sought only in politics.
Dostoyevski presents to us the various classes of minds from which
the sect is recruited. First, the simple unbeliever, who devotes all
his capacity for religious fervor to the service of atheism.―The
author illustrates this type by the following anecdote (in every
Russian’s bedroom stands a little altar, with its holy images of
the saints): “Lieutenant Erkel, having thrown down the images and
broken them in pieces with an axe, arranged upon the tablets three
atheistic books; then he lighted some church tapers and placed one
before each volume.”―Secondly, there is the weak class, who feel the
magnetism of the strong, and blindly follow their chiefs. Then the
logical pessimists, among whom the engineer Kirilof is an example.
These are inclined toward suicide, through moral inability to live.
Their party takes advantage of these yielding natures; for a man
without principles, who decides to die because he can settle upon no
principles, is one who will easily lend himself to whatever is exacted
of him. Finally, the worst class: those who will not hesitate to
commit murder, as a protest against the order of the world, which they
do not comprehend, and in order to make a singular and novel use of
their will power, to enjoy inspiring terror in others, and satisfy the
animal cravings within them.

The greatest merit of this confusing book, which is badly constructed,
often ridiculous, and loaded with doubtful theories, is that it gives
us, after all, a clear idea of what constitutes the real power of the
Nihilists. This does not lie in the doctrines in themselves, nor in the
power of organization of this sect, which is certainly overrated; it
lies simply and only in the character of a few men. Dostoyevski thinks,
and the revelations brought to light in the trials have justified his
opinion, that the famous organization may be reduced to only a few
local circles, badly organized; and that all these phantoms, central
committees and executive committees, exist only in the imaginations
of the adepts. On the other hand, he brings into bold relief those
iron wills, those souls of frozen steel, in striking contrast with
the timidity and irresolution of the legal authorities. Between these
two poles he shows us the mass of weak natures, attracted toward that
pole which is most strongly magnetized. It is, indeed, the force of
character of these resolute men, and not their ideas, which has acted
upon the Russian people; and here the piercing eye of the philosopher
is keener than that of Russia herself. Men become less and less
exacting in regard to ideas, and more and more skeptical as to the
way of carrying them out. Those who believe in the absolute virtue of
doctrines are becoming every day more rare; but what is seductive to
them is force of character, even if its energy be applied to an evil
cause,―because it promises to be a guide, and guarantees a strong
leadership, the very first requisition of any association of men. Man
is the born slave of every strong will which he comes in contact with.

The last period of Dostoyevski’s life, after the publication of
this book, and his return to Russia, was somewhat easier and less
melancholy. He had married an intelligent and courageous woman,
who helped him out of his pecuniary embarrassments. His popularity
increased, while the success of his books freed him from debt. Taking
up journalism again, he established a paper in St. Petersburg, and
finally an organ peculiarly his own, which he conducted quite by
himself. It was called the “Note-book of an Author” (Carnet d’un
Ecrivain), and it appeared―whenever he chose. It did not at all
resemble what we call a journal or review, but might have been called
something similar to the Delphic oracle. Into this encyclopædia, the
principal work of his latter years, he poured all the political,
social, and literary ideas which beset him, and related anecdotes and
reminiscences of his life. I have already stated what his politics
were; but the obscure productions of this period can neither be
analyzed nor controverted. This periodical, which first appeared just
before the war with Turkey, reflected the states of enthusiasm and
discouragement of Russia through those years of feverish patriotism.
Everything could be found in this summary of dreams, in which every
question relating to human life was mooted. Only one thing was wanting:
a solid basis of doctrine that the mind could take hold of. There were
occasionally some touching episodes and artistic bits of composition
recalling the great novelist. The “Note-book of an Author” was in fact
a success, although the public now really cared less for the ideas
than for the person, and were, besides, so accustomed to and fond of
the sound of his voice. His last book, “The Karamazof Brothers,” was
so interminably long that very few Russians had patience to read it to
the end. But it contains some scenes equal to his best of early days,
especially that of the death of the child. The French novel grows ever
smaller, is easily slipped into a travelling-bag, to while away a few
hours on a journey; but the heavy Russian romance reigns long upon the
family table in country homes, through the long winter evenings. I
well remember seeing Dostoyevski entering a friend’s house, on the day
his last novel appeared, with the heavy volumes under his arm; and his
saying with pride: “They weigh, at least, five pounds”;―a fact he
should rather have regretted than have taken pride in.

I should say here that the three books which best show the different
phases of his talent are: “Poor People,” “Recollections of a Dead
House,” and “Crime and Punishment.” As to the criticism of his works
as a whole, every one will have to use his own judgment. We must look
upon Dostoyevski as a phenomenon of another world, an abnormal and
mighty monster, quite unique as to originality and intensity. In spite
of his genius, you feel that he lacks both moderation and breadth. The
world is not composed of shadows and tears alone. Even in Russia there
is light and gayety, there are flowers and pleasures. Dostoyevski has
never seen but one half of life; for he has never written any books
except either sad or terrible ones. He is like a traveller who has seen
the whole universe, and described what he has seen, but who has never
travelled except by night. He is an incomparable psychologist when he
studies souls either blackened by crime or wounded by sorrow; and as
skilful a dramatist, but limited to scenes of terror and of misery. No
one has carried realism to such an extreme point as he. He depicts real
life, but soars above reality in a superhuman effort toward some new
consummation of the Gospel. He possesses a double nature, from whatever
side you view him: the heart of a Sister of Charity and the spirit of
a Grand Inquisitor. I think of him as belonging to another age, to the
time of great sacrifices and intense devotion, hesitating between a St.
Vincent de Paul and a Laubardemont, preceding the first in his search
for destitute children, lingering behind the other, unwilling to lose
the last crackling of the funeral pile.

According as we are affected by particular examples of his talent,
we call him a philosopher, an apostle, a lunatic, a consoler of
the afflicted, or the torturer of a tranquil mind; the Jeremiah of
the prison or the Shakespeare of the mad-house. Every one of these
appellations belongs to him; but no one of them, taken alone, will
suffice. What he himself said of his race, in “Crime and Punishment,”
we may say of him:―

“The soul of the Russian is great, like his vast country; but terribly
prone to everything fantastic and excessive; it is a real misfortune to
be great without any special genius.”

I subscribe to this; but also to the opinion that I have heard
expressed upon this book by one of our masters of psychology: “This
author opens up unknown horizons, and discloses souls different from
ours; he reveals to us a new world of beings, with stronger natures,
both for good and evil, having stronger wills and greater endurance.”

I must apologize for returning to personal recollections in order to
make this sketch complete, and must therefore recall the man himself,
and give some idea of his extraordinary influence. By chance I met
Feodor Mikhailovitch many times during the last three years of his
life. The impression he made upon you was as profound as was that
of the most striking scenes of his romances; if you had once seen
him, you would never forget him. His appearance exactly corresponded
with his life and its work. He was short and spare, and seemed to be
all nerves; worn and haggard at the age of sixty. He was, in fact,
prematurely old, and looked ill, with his long beard and blond hair,
but, in spite of all, as vivacious as ever. His face was of the true
peasant type of Moscow: the flat nose; the small, twinkling eyes, full
of fire and tenderness; the broad forehead, all seamed with wrinkles,
and with many indentations and protuberances; the sunken temples, and,
most noticeable of all, a mouth of inexpressible sadness. I never
saw in any human face such an expression of accumulated sorrow―as
if every trial of soul and body had left its imprint upon it. You
could read in his face better than in any book his recollections of
the dead house, and his long experience of terror, mistrust, and
martyrdom. His eyelids, lips, and every fibre of his face quivered
with nervous contractions. His features would grow fierce with anger
when excited over some subject of discussion, and at another time
would wear the gentle expression of sadness you so often see in the
saints on the ancient Slavonic altar-pieces, so venerated by the Slav
nation. The man’s nature was wholly plebeian, with the curious mixture
of roughness, sagacity, and mildness of the Russian peasant, together
with something incongruous―possibly an effect of the concentration
of thought illumining this beggar’s mask. At first he rather repelled
you, before his strange magnetism had begun to act upon you. He was
generally taciturn, but when he spoke it was in a low tone, slow and
deliberate, growing gradually more earnest, and defending his opinions
without regard to any one. While sustaining his favorite theme of the
superiority of the Russian lower classes, he often observed to ladies
in the fashionable society he was drawn into, “You cannot pretend to
compare with the most inferior peasant.”

There was not much opportunity for literary discussion with
Dostoyevski. He would stop you with one word of proud disdain. “We
possess the best qualities of every other people, and our own peculiar
ones in addition; therefore we can understand you, but you are not
capable of understanding us.”

May I be forgiven, but I shall now attempt to prove the contrary. In
spite of his assertion, his views on European life were laughably
ingenuous. I remember well one of his tirades against the city of
Paris, one evening when the inspiration seized him. He spoke of it with
fiery indignation, as Jonah would have spoken concerning Nineveh. I
remember the very words:―

“Some night a prophet will appear in the ‘Café Anglais’! He will write
on the wall the three words of fire; that will be the signal for the
end of the old world, and Paris will be destroyed in fire and blood, in
all its pride, with its theatres and its ‘Café Anglais.’” In the seer’s
imagination, this inoffensive establishment represented the heart of
Sodom, a den of enticing and infernal orgies, which he thought it his
duty to call down curses upon. He enlarged long and eloquently upon
this theme.

He often reminded me of J. J. Rousseau. That pedantic genius has
often come before me since I have studied the character and works
of this distrustful philanthropist of Moscow. Both entertained the
same notions, had the same combination of roughness and ideality,
of sensibility and ill-humor, as well as the same deep sympathy for
humanity which compels the attention of their contemporaries. After
Rousseau, no man had greater literary defects than Dostoyevski:
boundless self-love, over-sensitiveness, jealousy, and spite, none
knew better how to win the hearts of his fellow-men by showing them
how they filled his heart. This writer, so forbidding in society, was
the idol of a large proportion of the young men of Russia, who awaited
with feverish impatience the appearance of his novels, as well as his
periodical; who consulted him as they would a spiritual adviser and
director, and sought his help in all moral questions.

The most important work of the latter years of his life was to reply
to the scores of letters which brought to him the echo of strangers’
grievances. One must have lived in Russia during those troublous times,
to understand the ascendancy he obtained over the world of “Poor
People” in their search for a new ideal, as well as over the class just
above the very poor. The influence of Turgenef’s literary and artistic
work was most unjustly eclipsed; Tolstoï with his philosophy influenced
only the most intellectual minds, but Dostoyevski won all hearts and
obtained a most powerful sway over them. In 1880, at the time of the
inauguration of the monument to Pushkin, when all the Russian authors
assembled in full force to celebrate the fête, Dostoyevski’s popularity
entirely obliterated that of all his rivals. The audience sobbed when
he addressed them. They bore him in triumph in their arms; the students
crowded upon the platform and took possession of it, that they might
see and be near him and touch him; and one of these young enthusiasts
swooned from emotion when he had succeeded in reaching him. The current
of feeling ran so high that had he lived a few years longer he would
have found himself in a very difficult position. In the official
hierarchy of the empire there is no place for plants of such exuberant
growth; no field for the influence of a Goethe or a Voltaire. In spite
of his consistency in politics and his perfect orthodoxy, the old exile
would have seriously risked being compromised by his blind partisans,
and even considered dangerous. They only realized on the day of his
death how dangerous he was.

Although I regret to finish this sombre sketch with a funereal scene, I
cannot refrain from speaking of the apotheosis accorded to him, and the
impression it made upon me, for it will show, more than any extended
criticism, what this man was to his native country. On the 10th of
February, 1881, some friends of Dostoyevski told me that he had died
the preceding night, after a short illness. We went to his house to
attend the service which the Russian Church holds twice a day over the
remains of the dead, from the time of the decease until the burial.
He lived in a populous quarter of St. Petersburg. We found an immense
crowd before the door and on the staircase, and with great difficulty
threaded our way to the study, where the great author lay. It was
a small apartment, strewn with papers and pamphlets, and crowded by
the visitors, who filed around the coffin, which rested upon a little
table at one end of the room. I saw that face for the first time at
peace, utterly free from pain. He seemed to be happily dreaming under
the profusion of roses, which quickly disappeared, divided among the
crowd as relics. The crowd increased every moment, all the women were
in tears, the men boisterously pushing and crowding, eager to see his
face. The temperature of the room became suffocating, being closed
quite tightly from the air, as Russian rooms are in winter. Suddenly
the air seemed to be exhausted, all the candles went out, and only the
little flickering lamp before the holy images remained. Just at this
moment, in the darkness, there was a terrible rush from the staircase,
bringing a new influx of people. It seemed as if the whole crowd
outside were mounting the stairs; the first comers were hurled against
the coffin, which tottered―the poor widow, crowded, with her two
children, between the table and the wall, threw herself over the body
of her husband, and held it, screaming with terror. For a few moments
we thought the corpse would be crushed under foot by the crowd. It
oscillated, pressed upon by this mass of humanity, by the ardent and
brutal affection of the rushing throngs below. At this moment there
came before me a rapid vision of the author’s whole work, with all the
cruelty, terror, and tenderness he tried to portray in it. This throng
of strangers seemed to assume names and forms quite familiar to me.
Fancy had sketched them in books, but now they stood living before me,
taking part in a similar scene of horror. His characters seemed to have
come to torment him, even after death, to bring him their rough homage,
even to the profanation of the object of it. He would have appreciated
just such exaggerated homage.

Two days after, this vision was repeated more completely, and on a
larger scale. The 12th February, 1881, was a memorable day in Russia.
Except on the occasion of the death of Skobelef, there were never
seen in St. Petersburg such significant and imposing obsequies. From
an early hour the whole population were standing in the street, one
hundred thousand persons along the line where the procession was to
pass. More than twenty thousand persons followed it. The government
was alarmed, fearing some serious disturbance. They thought the corpse
might be seized, and they had to repress the students who wanted to
have the chains of the Siberian prisoner carried behind the funeral
car. The timorous officials insisted upon preventing all risk of a
revolutionary uprising. This was at the time of the most important
of the Nihilist conspiracies, only one month previous to that one
which cost the Tsar his life, during the time of that experiment of
the liberal leader, Loris Melikof. Russia was at this moment in a
state of fermentation, and the most trifling incident might produce an
explosion. Loris thought it wiser to associate himself with the popular
sentiment than to try to crush it out. He was right; the wicked designs
of a few men were absorbed in the general grief. Through one of those
unexpected combinations, of which Russia alone possesses the secret,
all parties, all adversaries, all the disjointed fragments of the
empire, now came together, through the death of this man, in a general
communion of grief and enthusiasm. Whoever witnessed this funeral
procession saw this country of contrasts illustrated in all its phases;
the priests who chanted the service, the students of the universities,
the school children, the young female students from the medical
schools, the Nihilists, easily recognized by their peculiarities of
dress and bearing, the men wearing a plaid over the shoulder, the
spectacles and closely cut hair of the women; all the literary and
scientific societies, deputations from every part of the empire, old
Muscovite merchants, peasants, lackeys, and beggars. In the church
waited the official dignitaries, the minister of public instruction,
and the young princes of the imperial family.

A forest of banners, crosses, and wreaths were borne by that army,
which was made up of such various elements, and produced in the
spectator such a medley of impressions. To me everything that passed
seemed an illustration of the author’s work, formed of elements both
formidable and restless, with all their folly and grandeur. In the
first rank, and most numerous, were those he loved best, the ‘poor
people,’ the ‘degraded,’ the ‘insulted,’ the ‘possessed’ even, glad to
take part in leading the remains of their advocate over this path of
glory;―but accompanying and surrounding all were the uncertainty and
confusion of the national life, as he had painted it, filled with all
the vague hopes that he had stirred.

The crowd pressed into the little church, decked with flowers, and
into the cemetery around it. Then there was a Babel of words. Before
the altar the high-priest discoursed of God and of eternity, while
others took the body to carry it to the grave, and discoursed of glory.
Official orators, students, _Slavophile_ and liberal committees, men of
letters and poets,―every one came there to set forth his own ideal, to
claim the departed spirit for his cause, and parade his own ambition
over this tomb.

While the winter wind bore away all this eloquence with the rustling
leaves and the snow-dust raised by the spades of the grave-diggers, I
made an effort to make, in my own mind, a fair estimate of the man’s
moral worth and of his life’s work. I felt as much perplexed as when I
had to pronounce judgment upon his literary merit. He had sympathized
with the people, and awakened sympathy, and even piety, in them. But
what excessive ideas and what moral convulsions he engendered! He had
given his heart to the cause, it is true; but unaccompanied by reason,
that inseparable companion of the heart. I reviewed the whole course of
that strange life;―born in a hospital, to a youth of poverty, illness,
and trial, exiled to Siberia, then sent to the barracks, ever pursued
by poverty and distress, always crushed, and yet ennobled by a labor
which was his salvation. I now felt that this persecuted life should
not be judged by our standards, which may not apply to his peculiar
case, and that I must leave him to Him who judges all hearts according
to their true merits. When I bent over his grave, covered with laurel
wreaths, the farewell words which came to my lips were those of the
student to the poor abandoned girl, and which express Dostoyevski’s
entire creed: “It is not only before thee that I prostrate myself, but
before all suffering humanity!”

FOOTNOTES:

[J] An English translation was published in 1886, under
the title, “Injury and Insult.”

[K] Published also under the title “Buried Alive.”

CHAPTER VI.

NIHILISM AND MYSTICISM.―TOLSTOÏ.

In Turgenef’s artistic work, illustrative of the national
characteristics, we have witnessed the birth of the Russian romance,
and how it has naturally tended toward the psychological classification
of a few general types; or, perhaps, more justly, toward the
contemplation of them, when we consider with what serenity this
artist’s moral investigations were conducted. Dostoyevski has shown a
spirit quite contrary to this, uncultured and yet subtile, sympathetic,
tortured by tragic visions, morbidly preoccupied by exceptional
and perverted types. The first of these two writers was constantly
coquetting, so to speak, with liberal doctrines: the second was a
_Slavophile_ of the most extreme type.

In Tolstoï, other surprises are reserved for us. Younger by ten years
than his predecessors, he hardly felt the influences of 1848. Attached
to no particular school, totally indifferent to all political parties,
despising them in fact, this solitary, meditative nobleman acknowledges
no master and no sect; he is himself a spontaneous phenomenon. His
first great novel was contemporary with “Fathers and Sons”, but between
the two great novelists there is a deep abyss. The one still made use
of the traditions of the past, while he acknowledged the supremacy
of Western Europe, and appropriated to himself and his work what he
learned of us; the other broke off wholly with the past and with
foreign bondage; he is a personification of the New Russia, feeling
its way out of the darkness, impatient of any tendency toward the
adoption of our tastes and ideas, and often incomprehensible to us.
Let us not expect Russia to do what she is incapable of, to restrict
herself within certain limits, to concentrate her attention upon one
point, or bring her conception of life down to one doctrine. Her
literary productions must reflect the moral chaos which she is passing
through. Tolstoï comes to her aid. More truly than any other man, and
more completely than any other, he is the translator and propagator
of that condition of the Russian mind which is called Nihilism. To
seek to know how far he has accomplished this, would be to turn around
constantly in the same circle. This writer fills the double function of
the mirror which reflects the light and sends it back increased tenfold
in intensity, producing fire. In the religious confessions which he has
lately written, the novelist, changed into a theologian, gives us, in a
few lines, the whole history of his soul’s experience:―

“I have lived in this world fifty-five years; with the exception of
the fourteen or fifteen years of childhood, I have lived thirty-five
years a Nihilist in the true sense of the word,―not a socialist or a
revolutionist according to the perverted sense acquired by usage, but a
true Nihilist―that is, subject to no faith or creed whatever.”

This long delayed confession was quite unnecessary; the man’s entire
work published it, although the dreadful word is not once expressed
by him. Critics have called Turgenef the father of Nihilism because
he had given a name to the malady, and described a few cases of it.
One might as well affirm the cholera to have been introduced by the
first physician who gave the diagnosis of it, instead of by the first
person attacked by the scourge. Turgenef discovered the evil, and
studied it objectively; Tolstoï suffered from it from the first day of
its appearance, without having, at first, a very clear consciousness
of his condition; his tortured soul cries out on every page he has
written, to express the agony which weighs down so many other souls of
his own race. If the most interesting books are those which faithfully
picture the existence of a fraction of humanity at a given moment of
history, this age has produced nothing more remarkable, in regard to
its literary quality, than his work. I do not hesitate in giving my
opinion that this writer, when considered merely as a novelist, is
one of the greatest masters in literature our century has produced.
It may be asked how we can venture to express ourselves so strongly
of a still living contemporary, whose overcoat and beard are familiar
objects in every-day life, who dines, reads the papers, receives money
from his publishers and invests it, who does, in short, just what other
men do. How can we thus elevate a man before his body has turned to
ashes, and his name become transfigured by the accumulated respect of
several generations? As for me, I cannot help seeing this man as great
as he will appear after death, or subscribing voluntarily to Flaubert’s
exclamation, as he read Turgenef’s translation of Tolstoï, and cried in
a voice of thunder, while he stamped heavily upon the ground:―

“He is a second Shakespeare!”

Tolstoï’s troubled, vacillating mind, obscured by the mists of
Nihilism, is by a singular and not infrequent contradiction endowed
with an unparalleled lucidity and penetration for the scientific study
of the phenomena of life. He has a clear, analytical comprehension of
everything upon the earth’s surface, of man’s internal life as well
as of his exterior nature: first of tangible realities, then the play
of his passions, his most volatile motives to action, the slightest
disturbances of his conscience. This author might be said to possess
the skill of an English chemist with the soul of a Hindu Buddhist.
Whoever will undertake to account for that strange combination will be
capable of explaining Russia herself.

Tolstoï maintains a certain simplicity of nature in the society of
his fellow-beings which seems to be impossible to the writers of our
country; he observes, listens, takes in whatever he sees and hears, and
for all time, with an exactness which we cannot but admire. Not content
with describing the distinctive features of the general physiognomy
of society, he resolves them into their original elements with the
most assiduous care; always eager to know how and wherefore an act is
produced; pursuing the original thought behind the visible act, he
does not rest until he has laid it bare, tearing it from the heart
with all its secret roots and fibres. Unfortunately, his curiosity
will not let him stop here. Of those phenomena which offer him such
a free field when he studies them by themselves, he wishes to know
the origin, and to go back to the most remote and inaccessible causes
which produced them. Then his clear vision grows dim, the intrepid
explorer loses his foothold and falls into the abyss of philosophical
contradictions. Within himself, and all around him he feels nothing but
chaos and darkness; to fill this void and illuminate the darkness, the
characters through which he speaks have recourse to the unsatisfactory
explanations of metaphysics, and, finally, irritated by these pedantic
sophistries, they suddenly steal away, and escape from their own
explanations.

Gradually, as Tolstoï advances in life and in his work, he is more
and more engulfed in doubt; he lavishes his coldest irony upon those
children of his fancy who try to believe and to discover and apply a
consistent system of morality. But under this apparent coldness you
feel that his heart sobs out a longing for what he cannot find, and
thirsts for things eternal. Finally, weary of doubt and of search,
convinced that all the calculations of reason end only in mortifying
failure, fascinated by the mysticism which had long lain in wait for
his unsatisfied soul, the Nihilist suddenly throws himself at the feet
of a Deity,―and of what a Deity we shall see hereafter.

In finishing this chapter, I must speak of the singular phase into
which the writer’s mind has fallen of late. I hope to do this with all
the reserve due to a living man, and all due respect for a sincere
conviction. There is nothing to me more curious than his statement of
the actual condition of his own soul. It is a picture of the crisis
which the Russian conscience is now passing through, seen in full
sunlight, foreshortened, and upon a lofty height. This thinker is the
perfect type of a multitude of minds, as well as their guide; he tries
to say what these minds confusedly feel.

Leo Nikolaievitch (Tolstoï) was born in the year 1828. The course of
his external life has offered nothing of interest to the lovers of
romance, being quite the same as that of Russian gentlemen in general.
In his father’s house in the country, and afterwards at the University
of Kazan, he received the usual education from foreign masters which
gives to the cultivated classes in Russia their cosmopolitan turn of
mind. He then entered the army and spent several years in the Caucasus
in a regiment of artillery, and was afterwards transferred at his
request to Sebastopol. He went through the famous siege in the Crimean
War, which he has illustrated by three striking sketches: “Sebastopol
in December, in May, and in August.” Resigning his position when peace
was declared, Count Tolstoï first travelled extensively, then settled
at St. Petersburg and Moscow, living in the society of his own class.
He studied society and the court as he had studied the war―with that
serious attention which tears away the masks from all faces and reads
the inmost heart. After a few winters of fashionable life, he left the
capital, partly, it is said, to escape from the different literary
circles which were anxious to claim him among their votaries. In 1860,
he married and retired to his ancestral estate, near Tula, where he
has remained almost constantly for twenty-five years. The whole history
of his own life is hardly disguised in the autobiography he wrote,
entitled, “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” The evolution of his inward
experience is further carried out in the two great novels, “War and
Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” and ends, as might have been foreseen,
with the theological and moral essays which have for some years quite
absorbed his intellectual activity.

I believe the author’s first composition, while he was an officer in
the army of the Caucasus, must have been the novelette published later
under the title, “The Cossacks.” This is the least systematic of all
his works, and is perhaps the one which best betrays the precocious
originality of his mind, and his remarkable power of seeing and
representing truth. This book marks a date in literature: the definite
rupture of Russian poetry with Byronism and romanticism in the very
heart of their former reign. The influence of Byron was so strong that
the prejudiced eyes of the poets saw the Orient in which they lived
through their poetical fancy, which transfigured both scenery and men.
Attracted like so many other writers toward this region, Tolstoï, or,
rather, Olenin, the hero of the Cossacks (I believe them to be one
and the same), leaves Moscow one beautiful evening, after a farewell
supper with his young friends. Weary of civilization, he throws off
his habitual thoughts as he would a worn-out garment; his _troïka_
bears him away to a strange country; he longs for a primitive life, new
sensations, new interests.

Our traveller installs himself in one of the little Cossack settlements
on the river Terek; he adopts the life of his new friends, takes
part in their expeditions and hunts; an old mountaineer, who
somewhat recalls Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking,” undertakes to
be his guide. Olenin quite naturally falls in love with the lovely
Marianna, daughter of his host. Tolstoï will now show us the Orient
in a new light, in the mirror of truth. For the lyric visions of his
predecessors he substitutes a philosophical view of men and things.
From the very first this acute observer understood how puerile it is
to lend to these creatures of instinct our refinement of thought and
feeling, our theatrical way of representing passion. The dramatic
interest of his tale consists in the fatal want of mutual understanding
that must, perforce, exist between the heart of a civilized being and
that of a wild, savage creature, and the total impossibility of two
souls of such different calibre blending in a mutual passion. Olenin
tries in vain to cultivate simplicity of feeling. Because he dons a
Circassian cap, he cannot at the same time change his nature and become
primitive. His love cannot separate itself from all the intellectual
complications which our literary education lends to this passion. He
says:―

“What there is terrible and at the same time interesting in my
condition is that I feel that I understand Marianna and that she never
will be able to understand me. Not that she is inferior to me,―quite
the contrary; but it is impossible for her to understand me. She is
happy; she is natural; she is like Nature itself, equable, tranquil,
happy in herself.”

The character of this little Asiatic, strange and wild as a young doe,
is beautifully drawn. I appeal to those who are familiar with the
East and have proved the falsity of those Oriental types invented by
European literature. They will find in the “The Cossacks,” a surprising
exposure of the falsity of that other moral world. Tolstoï has brought
this country before us by his vivid and picturesque descriptions of its
natural features. The little idyl serves as a pretext for magnificent
descriptions of the Caucasus; steppe, forest, and mountain stand before
us as vividly as the characters which inhabit them. The grand voices of
Nature join in with and support the human voices, as an orchestra leads
and sustains a chorus. The author, absorbed as he was afterwards in the
study of the human soul, never again expressed such a profound sympathy
with nature as in this work. At this time Tolstoï was inclined to
be both pantheist and pessimist, vacillating between the two. “Trois
Morts,” a fragment of his, contains the substance of this philosophy:―

“The happiest man, and the best, is he who thinks the least and who
lives the simplest life and dies the simplest death. Accordingly, the
peasant is better than the lord, the tree is better than the peasant,
and the death of an oak-tree is a greater calamity to the world than
the death of an old princess.”

This is Rousseau’s doctrine exaggerated: the man who thinks is not
only a depraved animal but an inferior plant. But Pantheism is another
attempt at a rational explanation of the universe: Nihilism will
soon replace it. This monster has already devoured the inmost soul
of the man, without his even being conscious of it. It is easy to be
convinced of this when we read his “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” It
is the journal of the gradual awakening of an intelligence to life; it
lays before us the whole secret of the formation of Tolstoï’s moral
character. The author subjects his own conscience to that penetrating,
inexorable analysis, which later he will use upon society; he tries
his hand upon himself first of all. It is a singular book, lengthy,
and sometimes trivial; Dickens is rapid and sketchy in comparison
with him. In relating the course of a most ordinary journey from the
country into Moscow, he counts every turn of the wheels, notes every
passing peasant, every guide-post. But this fastidious observance of
details, applied to trivial facts, becomes a wonderful instrument when
applied to human nature and to psychological researches. It throws
light upon the man’s own inner conscience, without regard to his
self-love; he sees himself as he is, and lays bare his soul with all
its petty vanities, and the ingratitude and mistrust of an ill-humored
child. We shall recognize this same child in the principal characters
of his great novels, with its nature quite unchanged. I will quote two
passages which show us the very foundation of Nihilism in the brain of
a lad of sixteen:―

“Of all philosophical doctrines, the one which attracted me most
strongly was skepticism; for a time it brought me to a condition
verging upon madness. I would imagine that nothing whatever existed
in the world except myself; that all objects were only illusions,
evoked by myself just at the moment I gave attention to them, and which
vanished the moment I ceased to think of them…. There were times when,
possessed by this idea, I was brought into such a bewildered state that
I would turn quickly around and look behind me, hoping to be able to
pierce through the chaos which lay beyond me. My enfeebled mind could
not penetrate through the impenetrable, and would lose by degrees in
this wearisome struggle the certainties which for the sake of my own
happiness, I ought never to have sought. I reaped nothing from all
this intellectual effort but an activity of mind which weakened my
will-power, and a habit of incessant moral analysis which robbed every
sensation of its freshness and warped my judgment on every subject….”

Such a cry might have been uttered by a disciple of Schelling. But
listen to what follows from the heart of a Russian, who speaks for his
countrymen as well as himself:―

“When I remember how young I was, and the state of mind I was in, I
realize perfectly how the most atrocious crimes might be committed
without reason or a desire to injure any one, but, so to speak, from
a sort of curiosity or an unconscious necessity of action. There are
times when the future appears to a man so dark that he fears to look
into it; and he totally suspends the exercise of his own reason within
himself, and tries to persuade himself that there is no future and
that there has been no past. At such moments, when the mind no longer
controls the will, when the material instincts are the only springs
of life left to us,―I can understand how an inexperienced child can,
without hesitation or fear, and with a smile of curiosity, set fire
to his own house, in which all those he loves best―father, mother,
and brothers―are sleeping. Under the influence of this temporary
eclipse of the mind, which I might call a moment of aberration or
distraction,―a young peasant lad of sixteen stands looking at the
shining blade of an axe just sharpened, which lies under the bench
upon which his old father has fallen asleep: suddenly he brandishes
the axe, and finds himself looking with stupid curiosity, upon the
stream of blood under the bench which is flowing from the aged head he
has just cleft. In this condition of mind, a man likes to lean over a
precipice and think: ‘What if I should throw myself over head first!’
or to put a loaded pistol to his forehead and think: ‘Suppose I should
pull the trigger!’ or when he sees a person of dignity and consequence
surrounded by the universal respect of all, and suddenly feels impelled
to go up to him and take him by the nose, saying: ‘Come along, old
fellow!’”

This is pure childishness, you will say! So it would be in our steadier
brains and more active lives, rarely disturbed by these attacks of
nightmare. Turgenef has touched upon this national malady of his
fellow-countrymen in his last tale, “Despair,” as well as Dostoyevski
in many of his. There are several cases in “Recollections of a Dead
House,” identical with those described by Tolstoï, although the two
authors’ treatment of this theme are so unlike. The word in their
language which expresses this condition is quite untranslatable.
_Despair_ approaches it nearest; but the condition is a mixture also
of fatalism, barbarism, asceticism, and other qualities, or want of
them. It may describe, perhaps, Hamlet’s mental malady or attack of
madness, at the moment he ran his sword through Polonius, father of his
Ophelia. It seems to be a sort of horrible fascination which belongs to
cold countries, to a climate of extremes, where they learn to endure
everything better than an ordinary fate, and prefer annihilation to
moderation.

Poor Russia! a tempest-tossed sea-gull, hovering over an abyss!

Nihilist and pessimist,―are not these synonymous words, and must
they not both exist in the same person? From this time, all Tolstoï’s
productions would argue this to be the fact. A few short tales are a
prelude to his two great novels, which we must now make a study of, as
to them he devoted his highest powers and concentrated upon them his
profoundest thought. His talent heretofore had produced but fragmentary
compositions and sketches.

II.

“War and Peace” is a picture of Russian society during the great
Napoleonic wars, from 1805 to 1815. We question whether this
complicated work can be properly called a novel. “War and Peace” is
a summary of the author’s observations of human life in general.
The interminable series of episodes, portraits, and reflections
which Tolstoï presents to us are introduced through a few fictitious
characters; but the real hero of this epic is Russia herself, passing
through her desperate struggle against the foreign invader. The real
characters, Alexander, Napoleon, Kutuzof, Speranski, occupy nearly as
much space as the imaginary ones; the simple and rather slack thread
of romance serves to bind together the various chapters on history,
politics, philosophy, heaped pell-mell into this polygraph of the
Russian world. Imagine Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” being re-written
by Dickens in his untiring, exhaustless manner, then re-constructed
by the cold, searching pen of Stendhal, and you may possibly form an
idea of the general arrangement and execution of the work, and of that
curious union of epic grandeur and infinitesimal analytical detail. I
try to fancy M. Meissonier painting a panorama; I doubt if he could
do it, but if he could his twofold talent would illustrate the double
character of Tolstoï’s work.

The pleasure to be derived from it resembles that from mountain-climbing;
the way is often rough and wild, the path, as you ascend, difficult
to find, effort and fatigue are indispensable; but when you reach the
summit and look around you the reward is great. Magnificent vistas
stretch beneath you; he who has never accomplished the ascent will
never know the true face of the country, the course of its rivers
or the relative situation of its towns. A stranger, therefore, who
would understand Russia of the nineteenth century, must read Tolstoï;
and whoever would undertake to write a history of that country would
utterly fail in his task if he neglected to consult this exhaustless
repository of the national life. Those who have a passion for the
study of history will not, perhaps, grow impatient over this mass of
characters and succession of trivial incidents with which the work is
loaded down. Will it be the same with those who seek only amusement
in a work of fiction? For these, Tolstoï will break up all previous
habits. This incorrigible analyst is either ignorant of or disdains the
very first method of procedure employed by all our writers; we expect
our novelist to select out his character or event, and separate it from
the surrounding chaos of beings and objects, making a special study
of the object of his choice. The Russian, ruled by the sentiment of
universal dependence, is never willing to cut the thousand ties which
bind men, actions, thoughts, to the rest of the universe; he never
forgets the natural mutual dependence of all things. Imagine the Latin
and the Slav before a telescope. The first arranges it to suit himself;
that is, he voluntarily foreshortens his range of vision, to make
more distinct what he sees, and diminish the extent of it; the second
requires the full power of the instrument, enlarges his horizon, and
sees a confused picture, for the sake of seeing farther.

In a passage in “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoï well defines the contrast
between two such natures, and the mutual attraction they exert upon
each other. Levin, the dreamer, meets one of his friends, who is of a
methodical turn of mind.

“Levin imagined that Katavasof’s clearness of conception came from the
poverty and narrowness of his nature; Katavasof thought that Levin’s
incoherency of ideas arose from the want of a well disciplined mind;
but the clearness of Katavasof pleased Levin, and the natural richness
of an undisciplined mind in the latter was agreeable to the other.”

These lines sum up all the grounds of complaint that the Russians
have to reproach us with in our literature, and those we have against
theirs; which differences explain the pleasure the two races find in an
interchange of their literary productions.

It is easy to predict what impressions all readers of “War and
Peace” and “Anna Karenina” will receive. I have seen the same effect
invariably produced upon all who have read those books. At first,
for some time, the reader will hardly find his bearings; not knowing
whither he is being led, he will soon grow weary of the task that lies
before him. But little by little he will be drawn on, captivated by
the complex action of all these characters, among whom he will find
himself, as well as some of his friends, and will become most anxious
to unravel the secret of their destinies. On closing the book, he feels
a sense of regret, as if parting with a family with which he has been
for years on terms of familiar intercourse. He has passed through the
experience of the traveller thrown into the novelty of new society and
surroundings; he feels annoyance and fatigue at first, then curiosity,
and finally has formed deeply rooted attachments.

What seems to me the distinction between the classic author and a
conscientious painter of life as it is, like Tolstoï, is this: a book
is like a drawing-room filled with strangers; the first type of author
voluntarily presents you to this company at once, and unveils to you
the thousand intertwining combinations, incidents, and intrigues going
on there; with the second you must go forward and present yourself,
find out for yourself the persons of mark, the various relations and
sentiments of the entire circle, live, in fact, in the midst of this
fictitious company, just as you have lived in society, among real
people. To be able to judge of the respective merit of the two methods,
we must interrogate one of the fundamental laws of our being. Is there
any pleasure worth having which does not cost some little trouble? Do
we not prefer what we have acquired by an effort all our own? Let us
reflect upon this. Whatever may be our individual preferences in regard
to intellectual pleasure, I think we can agree on one point: in the
old, well worn paths of literature, mediocrity may be tolerated; but
when an author strikes out in a new path we cannot tolerate a partial
success; he must write dramas equal to Shakespeare, and romances as
good as Tolstoï’s, to give us a true picture of life as it is. This
we have in “War and Peace,” and the question of its success has been
decided in the author’s favor. When I visit with him the soldiers
in camp, the court, and court society, which has hardly changed in
the last half-century, and see how he lays bare the hearts of men, I
cry out at every page I read: “How true that is!” As we go on, our
curiosity changes into astonishment, astonishment into admiration,
before this inexorable judge, who brings every human action before his
tribunal, and forces from every heart its secrets. We feel as if drawn
on with the current of a tranquil, never-ending stream, the stream of
human life, carrying with it the hearts of men, with all their agitated
and complicated movements and emotions.

War is one of the social phenomena which has strongly attracted our
author and philosopher. He is present at the Council of Generals and
at the soldiers’ bivouac; he studies the moral condition of each; he
understands the orders, and why they should be obeyed. He presents
to us the whole physiognomy of the Russian army. A minute description
which he gives of a disorderly retreat is second only to Schiller’s
“Camp of Wallenstein.” He describes the first engagement, the first
cannon-shot, the fall of the first soldier, the agony of that
long-dreaded moment.

In the course of these volumes the imperial battles are portrayed;
Austerlitz, Friedland, Borodino. Tolstoï talks of war like a man who
has taken part in it; he knows that a battle is never witnessed by
the participants. The soldier, officer, or general which the writer
introduces never sees but a single point of the combat; but by the
way in which a few men fight, think, talk, and die on that spot, we
understand the entire action, and know on what side the victory will be.

When Tolstoï wishes to give us a general description of anything,
he ingeniously makes use of some artifice; as, for example, in the
engagement at Schöngraben he introduces an aide-de-camp who carries an
order the whole length of the line of battle. Then the corps commanders
bring in their reports, not of what has taken place, but of what
naturally ought to have taken place. How is this? “The colonel had so
strongly desired to execute this movement, he so regretted not having
been able to carry it out, that it seemed to him that all must have
taken place as he wished. Perhaps it really had! Is it ever possible in
such confusion to find out what has or has not occurred?”―How perfect
is this ironical explanation! I appeal to any soldier who has ever
taken part in any action in war, and heard an account given of it by
the other participants.

We do not demand of this realistic writer the conventional ideas of
the classic authors;―an entire army heroic as its leaders, living
only for the great causes it accomplishes, wholly absorbed in its
lofty aim. Tolstoï reveals human nature: the soldier’s life, careless,
occupied with trifling duties; the officers, with their pleasures or
schemes of promotion; the generals, with their ambitions and intrigues;
all these seeming quite accustomed and indifferent to what to us
appears extraordinary and imposing. However, the author, by dint of
sheer simplicity, sometimes draws tears of sympathy from us for those
unconscious heroes, such as, for example, the pathetic character of
Captain Touchino, which recalls Renault, in “Servitude et Grandeur
Militaires.”[L] Tolstoï is severe upon the leaders of the Russian
army; he reminds us of the councils of war after the late trials; he
satirizes the French and German strategists by whom Alexander was
surrounded; and, with his Nihilistic ideas, he thoroughly enjoys
describing this Babel of tongues and opinions. With one man alone
he secretly sympathizes―with the commander-in-chief, Kutuzof. And
why?―Because he gave no orders, and went to sleep during the council,
giving up everything to fate. All these descriptions of military life
converge toward this idea, which is developed in the philosophical
appendix to the novel; all action on the part of the commanders is
vain and useless; everything depends upon the fortuitous action of
small divisions, the only decisive factor being one of those unforeseen
impulses or inspirations which at certain times impels an army. As
regards battle array, who thinks of it on the spot when thousands of
possible combinations arise? The military genius in command sees only
the smoke; he invariably receives his information and issues his orders
too late. Can the commander carry out any general plan who is leading
on his troops, which number ten, fifty, or one hundred men out of one
hundred thousand, within a small radius? The rest of the account you
may find in the next day’s bulletins! Over the three hundred thousand
combatants fighting in the plains of Borodino blows the wind of chance,
bringing victory or defeat.

Here is the same mystic spirit of Nihilism which springs up before
every problem of life.

After war, the study which Tolstoï loves best, come the intrigues of
the higher classes of society and its centre of gravitation, the court.
As differences of race grow less distinct as we approach the higher
classes of society, the novelist creates no longer merely Russian
types, but general, human, universal ones. Since St. Simon, no one has
so curiously unveiled the secret mechanism of court life. We are very
apt to distrust writers of fiction when they attempt to depict these
hidden spheres; we suspect them of listening behind doors and peeping
through key-holes. But this Russian author is in his native element;
he has frequented and studied the court as he has the army; he talks
of his peers in their own language, and has had the same education and
culture; therefore his information is copious and correct, like what
you obtain from the comedian who divulges the secrets of the boards.

Go with the author into the salons of certain ladies of the court;
listen to the tirades of refugees, the opinions expressed upon
Buonaparte, the intrigues of the courtiers, and that peculiar accent
when they mention any member of the imperial family. Visit with him a
statesman’s home; sit down at Speranski’s table (the man who “laughs a
stage laugh”); mark the sovereign’s passage through a ball-room by the
light which is visible upon every face from the moment he enters the
apartment; above all, visit the death-bed of old Count Bezushof, and
witness the tragedy which is being acted under the mask of etiquette;
the struggle of base instincts around that speechless, expiring old
man, and the general agitation. Here a sinister element, as elsewhere
a lofty one, lends marvellous force to the simple sincerity of the
picture and to the restraint which propriety imposes upon faces and
tongues.

Every passage in which the Emperors Napoleon and Alexander appear
in action or speech should be read in order to understand the place
that Nihilism occupies in the Russian mind so far as regards the
denial of the grandeur and respect accorded by general consent to
such potentates. The writer speaks in a deferential tone, as if he
would in no wise curtail the majesty of power; but by bringing it
down to the most trivial exigencies of life he utterly destroys it.
Scattered through the tale we find ten or twelve little sketches of
Napoleon drawn with great care, without hostility or an approach to
caricature; but merely by withdrawing him from the legendary halo
surrounding him, the man’s greatness crumbles away. It is generally
some physical peculiarity or trivial act, skilfully introduced, which
seems quite incompatible with the sceptre and the imperial robes. With
Napoleon, Tolstoï evidently takes great liberties; but it is curious
to note these descriptive touches when applied to his own sovereign.
With infinite precautions and perfect propriety, the spell of majesty
is broken through the incongruity of the man’s actual habits and the
formidable rôle he plays. I will quote one of the many examples of this
kind (Alexander is at Moscow, in 1812; he receives the ovations of
his people at the Kremlin, at the solemn hour when war is proclaimed):
“When the Tzar had dined, the master of ceremonies said, looking out of
the window, ‘The people are hoping to see your Majesty.’ The emperor,
who was eating a biscuit, rose and went out on the balcony. The people
rushed towards the terrace. ‘Our emperor! Our father! Hurrah! Hurrah!’
cried the people. Many women and a few men actually wept for joy. Quite
a large piece of the biscuit the emperor held in his hand broke off and
fell upon the balustrade, and from that to the ground. The man nearest
to it was a cab-driver, in a blouse, who made a rush for the piece and
seized it. Others rushed upon the coachman; whereupon the emperor had a
plateful of biscuit brought, and began to throw them from the balcony
to the crowd. Pierre’s eyes became blood-shot; the danger of being
crushed only excited him the more, and he pressed forward through the
crowd. He could not have told why he felt that he positively must have
one of those biscuit thrown by the hand of the Tzar….”

Again, there is nothing more true to nature than the account of the
audience granted by the Emperor of Austria to Bolkonski, who had been
despatched as a courier to Brünn with the news of a victory of the
allies. The writer describes so well the gradual disenchantment of
the young officer, who sees his great battle vanish before his eyes
in the opinion of men. He quitted the scene of the exploit expecting
to astonish the world with the announcement he now brings; but on his
arrival at Brünn a bucket of cold water has been thrown over his dreams
by the “polite” aide-de-camp, the minister of war, the emperor himself,
who addresses a few words to him in an absent way―the ordinary
questions as to the time of day, the particular spot where the affair
took place, and the usual indispensable compliments. When he takes
his leave, after reflecting upon the subject from the point of view
of other men, according to their respective interests, poor Bolkonski
finds his battle much diminished in grandeur, and also a thing of the
past.

“Andé felt that his whole interest and joy over the victory was sinking
away from him into the indifferent hands of the minister of war and the
‘polite’ aide-de-camp. His whole train of thought had become modified;
there seemed to be nothing left to him but a dim, distant recollection
of the battle.”

This is one of the phenomena most closely analyzed by Tolstoï―this
variable influence exerted upon man by his surroundings. He likes to
plunge his characters successively into different atmospheres,―that
of the soldier’s life, the country, the fashionable world,―and then
to show us the corresponding moral changes in them. When a man, after
having for some time been under the empire of thoughts and passions
previously foreign to him, returns into his former sphere, his views on
all subjects change at once. Let us follow young Nikolai Rostof when
he returns from the army to his home, and back again to his cavalry
regiment. He is not the same person, but seems to be possessed of two
souls. On the journey back and forth to Moscow, he gradually lays aside
or resumes the one which his profession requires.

It is useless to multiply examples of Tolstoï’s psychological
curiosity, which is ever awake. It forms the principal feature of
his genius. He loves to analyze the human puppet in every part. A
stranger enters the room; the author studies his expression, voice, and
step; he shows us the depths of the man’s soul. He explains a glance
interchanged between two persons, in which he discovers friendship,
fear, a feeling of superiority in one of them; in fact, a perfect
knowledge of the mutual relations of these two men. This relentless
physician constantly feels the pulse of every one who crosses his path,
and coolly notes down the condition of his health, morally speaking.
He proceeds in an objective manner, never directly describing a person
except by making him act out his characteristics.

This fundamental precept of classic art has been adopted by this
realistic writer in his desire to imitate real life, in which we
learn to comprehend people by trivial indications and by points of
resemblance, without any information as to their position or qualities.
A good deal of art is required to discern clearly in this apparent
chaos, and you have a large choice in the formidable accumulation of
details. Observe how, in the course of a conversation or the narration
of some episode, Tolstoï makes the actors visibly present before us by
calling our attention to one of their gestures, or some little absurd,
peculiar habit, or by interrupting their conversation to show us the
direction of their glances. This occurs constantly.

There is also a good deal of wit in this serious style; not the
flashes and sallies of wit that we are familiar with, but of a fine,
penetrating quality, with subtle and singularly apt comparisons.

III.

Among the numerous characters in “War and Peace,” the action is
concentrated upon two only―Prince André Bolkonski and Pierre Bezushof.
These remarkable types of character are well worthy of attention. In
them the double aspect of the Russian soul, as well as of the author’s
own, is reflected with all its harassing thoughts and contradictions.
Prince André is a nobleman of high rank, looking down from his lofty
position upon the life he despises; proud, cold, sceptical, atheistic,
although at times his mind is tortured with anxiety concerning great
problems. Through him the author pronounces his verdicts upon the
historical characters of the time, and discourses of the various
statesmen and their intrigues.

André is received at Speranski’s. We know the wonderful influence
acquired by this man, who almost established a new constitution in
Russia. Speranski’s most striking trait, in Prince André’s opinion, was
his absolute, unshaken faith in the force and legitimacy of reason.
This trait was what particularly attracted André to him, and explains
the ascendency that Speranski acquired over his sovereign and his
country. André, having been seriously wounded at Austerlitz, lies on
the battle-field, his eyes raised to heaven. The dying man exclaims:―

“Oh, could I now but say, ‘Lord, have pity upon me!’ But who will hear
me? Shall I address an indefinite, unapproachable Power, which cannot
itself be expressed in words, the great All or Nothing, or that image
of God which is within the amulet that Marie gave me?… There is nothing
certain except the nothingness of everything that I have any conception
of, and the majesty of something beyond my conception!”

Pierre Bezushof is more human in character, but his intelligence is
of quite as mysterious a quality. He is a stout man, of lymphatic
temperament, absent-minded; a man who blushes and weeps easily,
susceptible to love, sympathetic with all suffering. He is a type
of the kind-hearted Russian noblemen, nervous, deficient in will, a
constant prey to the ideas and influence of others; but under his gross
exterior lives a soul so subtle, so mystic, that it might well be that
of a Hindu monk. One day, after Pierre had given his word of honor to
his friend André that he would not go to a midnight revel of some of
his young friends, he hesitated when the hour of meeting came.

“‘After all,’ he thought, ‘all pledges of words are purely
conventional, without definite meaning, when you reflect about it.
I may die to-morrow, or some extraordinary event take place, in
consequence of which the question of honor or dishonor will not even
arise.’

“Reflections of this sort―destructive of all resolve or method―often
occupied Pierre’s mind….” Tolstoï has skilfully made use of this weak
nature, which is as receptive of all impressions as a photographer’s
plate, to give us a clear conception of the chief currents of ideas in
Russia in the reign of Alexander I.; these successively influence this
docile adept with all their changes. We see the liberal movement of
the earlier years of that reign developed in the mind of Bezushof, as
afterwards the mystic and theosophic maze of its later years. Pierre
personifies the sentiments of the people in 1812, the national revolt
against foreign intervention, the gloomy madness of conquered Moscow,
the burning of which has never been explained, nor is it known by whose
hands it was kindled. This destruction of Moscow is the culminating
point of the book. The scenes of tragic grandeur, simple in outline,
sombre in color, are superior, I must acknowledge, to anything of the
kind in literature. He pictures the entrance of the French into the
Kremlin, the prisoners and lunatics roaming by night in freedom about
the burning city, the roads filled with long columns of fugitives
escaping from the flames, beside many other very striking episodes.

Count Pierre remains in the burning city. He leaves his palace in
plebeian guise, in a peasant’s costume, and wanders off like a
person in a trance; he walks on straight before him, with a vague
determination to kill Napoleon and be an expiatory victim and martyr
for the people. “He was actuated by two equally strong impulses.
The first was the desire to take his part of the self-sacrifice and
universal suffering―a feeling which, at Borodino, had impelled him to
throw himself into the thick of the battle, and which now drove him
out of the house, away from the luxury and habitual refinements of
his daily life, to sleep on the ground and eat the coarsest of food.
The second came from that indefinable, exclusively Russian sentiment
of contempt for everything conventional and artificial, for all that
the majority of mankind esteem most desirable in the world. Pierre
experienced this strange and intoxicating feeling on the day of his
flight, when it had suddenly been impressed upon him that wealth,
power, life itself, all that men seek to gain and preserve with such
great effort, were absolutely worthless, or, at least, only worth the
luxury of the voluntary sacrifice of these so-called blessings.” And
through page after page the author unfolds that condition of mind that
we discovered in his first writings, that hymn of the _Nirvâna_, just
as it must be sung in Ceylon or Thibet.

Pierre Bezushof is certainly the elder brother of those rich men
and scholars who will some day “go among the people,” and willingly
share their trials, carrying a dynamite bomb under their cloaks, as
Pierre carries a poniard under his, moved by a double impulse: to
share the common suffering, and enjoy the anticipated annihilation of
themselves and others. Taken prisoner by the French, Bezushof meets,
among his companions in misfortune, a poor soldier, a peasant, with
an uncultivated mind, one, indeed, rather beneath the average. This
man endures the hardships on the march, through these terrible days,
with the humble resignation of a beast of burden. He addresses Count
Pierre with a cheerful smile, a few ingenuous words, popular proverbs
with but a vague meaning, but expressing resignation, fraternity, and,
above all, fatalism. One evening, when he can keep up with the others
no longer, the soldiers shoot him under a pine-tree, on the snow, and
the man receives death with the same indifferent tranquillity that he
does everything else, like a wounded dog―in fact, like the brute. At
this time a moral revolution takes place in Pierre’s soul. Here I do
not expect to be intelligible to my fellow-countrymen; I only record
the truth. The noble, cultured, learned Bezushof takes this primitive
creature for his model; he has found at last his ideal of life in this
man, who is “poor in spirit,” as well as a rational explanation of the
moral world. The memory and name of Karatayef are a talisman to him;
thenceforward he has but to think of the humble _muzhik_, to feel at
peace, happy, ready to comprehend and to love the entire universe. The
intellectual development of our philosopher is accomplished; he has
reached the supreme avatar, mystic indifference.

When Tolstoï related this episode, he was twenty-five years of age. Had
he then a presentiment that he should ever find his Karatayef, that he
would pass through the same crisis, experience the same discipline, and
come out of it regenerated? We shall see later on how he had actually
prophesied his own experience, and that from this time he, together
with Dostoyevski, was destined to establish the ideal of nearly all
contemporaneous literature in Russia. Karatayef’s name is legion; under
different names and forms, this vegetative form of existence will be
presented for our admiration. The perfection of human wisdom is the
sanctification, deification of the brute element, which is kind and
fraternal in a certain vague way. The root of the idea is this:―

The cultured man finds his reasoning faculties a hindrance to him,
because useless, since they do not aid him to explain the object of his
life; therefore it is his duty to make an effort to reject them, and
descend from complications to simplicity, in life and thought. This is
the aim and aspiration, under various forms, of Tolstoï’s whole work.

He has written a series of articles on popular education. The leading
idea is this:―

“I would teach the children of the common people to think and to write;
but I ought rather to learn of them to write and to think. We seek our
ideal beyond us, when it is in reality behind us. The development of
man is not the means of realizing that idea of harmony which we bear
within us, but, on the contrary, it is an obstacle in the way of its
realization. A healthy child born into the world fully satisfies that
ideal of truth, beauty, and goodness, which, day by day, he will
constantly continue to lose; he is, at birth, nearer to the unthinking
beings, to the animal, plant, nature itself, which is the eternal type
of truth, beauty, and goodness.”

You can catch the thread of the idea, which is much like the
contemplative mistiness of the ancient oriental asceticism. The
Occident has not always been free from this evil; in its ascetic
errors and deviations, it has ennobled the brute, and falsified the
divine allegory of the “poor in spirit.” But the true source of this
contagious spirit of renunciation is in Asia, in the doctrines of
India, which spring up again, scarcely modified, in that frenzy which
is precipitating a part of Russia toward an intellectual and moral
abnegation, sometimes developing into a stupid quietism, and again to
sublime self-devotion, like the doctrine of Buddha. All extremes meet.

I will dwell no longer upon these scarcely intelligible abstractions,
but would say a word concerning the female characters created by
Tolstoï. They are very similar to Turgenef’s heroines, treated,
perhaps, with more depth but less of tender grace. Two characters call
for special attention. First, that of Marie Bolkonski, sister of André,
the faithful daughter, devoted to the work of cheering the latter years
of a morose old father; a pathetic figure, as pure in outline, under
the firm touch of this artist, are the works of the old painters. Of
quite another type is Natasha Rostof, the passionate, fascinating
young girl, beloved by all, enslaving many hearts, bearing with her an
exhalation of love through the whole thread of this severe work. She
is sweet-tempered, straightforward, sincere, but the victim of her own
extreme sensibility.

Racine might have created a Marie Bolkonski; the Abbé Prévost would
have preferred Natasha Rostof. Betrothed to Prince André, the only
man she truly loves, Natasha yields to a fatal fancy for a miserable
fellow. Disenchanted finally, she learns that André is wounded and
dying, and goes to nurse him in a mute agony of despair. This part
of the book presents the inexorableness of real life in its sudden
calamities. After André’s death, Natasha marries Pierre, who has
secretly loved her. French readers will be horror-stricken at these
convulsions in the realms of passion; but it is like life, and Tolstoï
sacrifices conventionality to the desire to paint it as it is. Do not
imagine he sought a romantic conclusion. The young girl’s fickleness
ends in conjugal felicity and the solid joys of home life. To these
the writer devotes many pages, too many, perhaps, for our taste. He
loves to dwell upon domestic life and joys; all other affections are
in his eyes unwholesome exceptions―exciting his curiosity but not
his sympathy. Thus he analyzes with a skilful pen, but with visible
disgust, the flirtations and coquetry carried on in the _salons_ of St.
Petersburg. Like Turgenef, Tolstoï does not hold the ladies of court
circles in high estimation.

He has added a long philosophical appendix to his romance, in which
he brings up again, in a doctrinal form, the metaphysical questions
which have tormented him the most, and once more repeats that he is a
fatalist. This appendix has not been translated in the French edition,
and this is well, for no reader would voluntarily undergo the useless
fatigue of wading through it. Tolstoï is unwise in pressing ideas by
abstract reasoning which he is so skilful in illustrating through his
characters; he does not realize how much more clearly his ideas are
expressed in their language and action than in any of his own arguments.

IV.

“Anna Karenina,” which appeared periodically in a Moscow review, was
the result of many years’ study. The work was not published in full
until 1877, and its appearance was a literary event in Russia. I
happened to be a witness of the curiosity and interest it excited there.

The author intended this book to be a picture of the society of the
present day, as “War and Peace” illustrated that of its time. The
task offered the author more difficulties, for many reasons. In the
first place, the present does not belong to us, as does the past; it
deceives us, not having become firmly established, so that we cannot
get in all the necessary lines and figures to emphasize it, as we
could a half-century later. Besides, the liberties that Tolstoï could
take with deceased potentates and statesmen, as well as with ideas of
the past, he could not allow himself with contemporary ideas and with
living men. This second book on Russian life is not as much in the
style of an epic, neither is it as strong or as complex, as the first;
on the other hand, it is more agreeable to us, as having more unity of
subject and more continuity of action; the principal character, too, is
more perfectly developed. Although there are two suicides and a case
of adultery, Tolstoï has in this work undertaken to write the most
strictly moral book in existence, and he has succeeded. The main idea
is duty accomplished uninfluenced by the passions. The author portrays
an existence wholly outside of conventional lines of conduct; and, as
a contrast, the history of a pure, legitimate affection, a happy home,
and wholesome labor. He is too much of a realist, however, to picture
an earthly paradise under any human conditions.

Karenina, a statesman in the highest circles of St. Petersburg society,
is a husband so greatly absorbed in the study of political economy
as to be easily blinded and deceived in other matters. Vronski, the
seducer of his wife’s affections, is a sincere character, devoted and
self-sacrificing. Anna is a very charming woman, tender and faithful
where her affections are enlisted. Tolstoï has recourse neither to
hysteria nor any nervous ailment whatever, to excuse her fall. He
is sagacious enough to know that every one’s feelings are regulated
by his or her peculiar organism; that conscience exerts contrary
influences, and that it really exists, because it speaks and commands.
Take, for example, the description of Anna’s first anxieties, during
the night-journey between Moscow and St. Petersburg, when she first
comprehends the state of her heart. These pages you can never forget.
She discovers Vronski in the train, knows that he is following her,
then listens to his avowal of love. The intoxicating poison steals into
every vein, her will is no longer her own, the dream has begun.

The writer takes advantage of every outward circumstance to illustrate
and color this dream in his inimitable manner, according to his usual
method. He describes the poor woman making an effort to fix her
thoughts upon an English novel, the snow and hail rattling against
the window-panes; then the sketches of fellow-travellers, the various
sounds and rushing of the train through the night,―all assume a new
and fantastic meaning, as accompaniments of the agony of love and
terror which are struggling within that woman’s soul. When, the next
morning, Anna leaves the train and steps upon the platform where her
husband is awaiting her, she says to herself: “Good heavens! how much
longer his ears have grown!” This exclamation reveals to us the change
that has taken place within her. How well the author knows how to
explain a whole situation with a single phrase!

From the first flutter of fear to the last contortions of despair,
which lead the unhappy woman to suicide, the novelist exposes her
inmost heart, and notes each palpitation. There is no necessity for
any tragic complication to bring about the catastrophe. Anna has given
up everything to follow her lover; she has placed herself in such a
fatal predicament that life becomes impossible, which is sufficient to
explain her resolve.

In contrast with this wrecked life, the innocent affection of Kitty and
Levin continues its smooth course. First, it is a sweet idyl, drawn
with infinite grace; then the home, the birth of children, bringing
additional joys and cares. This is the highly moral and dull theme of
the English novel, one may say. It is similar, and yet not the same.
The British tale-writer is almost always something of a preacher; you
feel that he judges human actions according to some preconceived rule,
from the point of view of the Established Church or of puritanic ideas.
But Tolstoï is entirely free from all prejudices. I might almost say
he has little anxiety as to questions of morality; he constructs his
edifices according to his own idea of the best method; the moral lesson
springs only from facts and results, both bitter and wholesome. This
is no book for the youth of twenty, nor for a lady’s boudoir,―a book
containing no charming illusions; but a man in full maturity relates
what experience has taught him, for the benefit of mankind.

These volumes present an exception in regard to what is thought to
guarantee the permanent success of a literary work. They will be read,
and then reflected upon; we shall apply the observations to our own
souls and to others’ (the most unimportant as well as the most general
ones); then we shall go back to his model, which will invariably verify
them. Years may pass after the first reading, notes accumulate on the
margins of the leaves, as in many masterpieces of the classics you find
at the bottom of the pages the explanatory remarks of generations of
commentators. In this case, they need merely to say: “_Confer vitam_.”

Tolstoï’s style is in this work the same as in “War and Peace.” He
is like a scientific engineer who visits some great establishment
where machines are manufactured. He studies the mechanism of every
engine, examines the most trifling parts, measures the degree of
steam-pressure, tries the balance-valves, studies the action of the
pistons and gearing; he seeks eagerly to discover the central motive
power, the invisible reservoir of force. While he is experimenting
with the machinery, we, outside spectators, see only the results of all
this labor, the manufactures of delicate fabrics with infinite variety
of designs―life itself.

Tolstoï shows the same qualities and defects as in “War and Peace,” and
gives the same tediously long descriptions. The parts devoted to the
pictures of country life and rural occupations will seem, in France,
a little dull. Unfortunately, in one sort of realistic description,
we must know the locality to appreciate the artist’s effort and the
resemblance of the picture. The description, for instance, of the
races at Tsarskoe-Selo, so appreciated by Russian readers, could not
have any more interest for us than the brilliant account of _le grand
prix de Paris_ in “Nana” would have for the Muscovites; on the other
hand, the portraits of Oblonski and Karenina will always retain their
power, because they express human sentiments common to all countries
and all times. I will carry the analysis of these novels no farther,
for they will hardly admit of it; we could scarcely choose a path in
this labyrinth for the reader; we must leave him the pleasure of losing
himself in it.

Tolstoï belongs to the “school of nature,” if extreme realism of
description entitles him to that honor. He carries this tendency
sometimes to great excess, even to coarseness. I might quote many
examples of this kind, but they would hardly bear translation,
and might, occasionally, be almost revolting to us. He is also an
_impressionist_, for his phrases often bring to us every material
sensation produced by a sight, object, or sound.

Finally, his being both pessimist and Nihilist gives him, as a
narrator, almost the impassibility of a stoic. Persuaded of the
vanity of all human action, he can maintain his own coolness in all
his delineations, his condition resembling that of a man awaking
from sleep at dawn, in the middle of a ball-room, who looks upon the
whirling dancers around him as lunatics; or the man who, having eaten
to repletion, enters a hall where people are dining, and upon whom
the mechanical movements of the mouths and forks make a grotesque
impression. In short, a writer who is a pessimist must assume the
superiority of an inexorable judge over the characters he has created.
Tolstoï employs all these methods, which he carries as far as any of
our novelists do. Why is it, then, that he produces such a different
impression upon the reader? The question as to how far he is both
realist and impressionist in comparison with our authors is the
important one. The whole secret is a question of degree. The truth
is that what others have sought he has found and adopted. He leaves
a large space for trifling details, because life is made up of them,
and life is his study; but as he never attacks subjects trifling in
themselves, he after all gives to trifles only the secondary place
which they hold in everything that demands our attention.

As an _impressionist_ he well knows how to produce certain rapid and
subtle sensations, while he is never obscene or unhealthy in tone.
“War and Peace” is put into the hands of all young girls in Russia.
“Anna Karenina,” which touches upon a perilous subject, is considered a
manual of morals.

As to Tolstoï’s impassibility, though his coldness almost approaches
irony, we feel, behind and within the man, the shadow of the Infinite,
and bow before his right to criticise his fellow-man. Moreover, unlike
our own authors, he is never preoccupied with himself or the effect
he wishes to produce. He is more logical; he sacrifices style that he
himself may be eclipsed, put aside entirely in his work. In his earlier
years he was more solicitous in regard to his style; but of late he has
quite renounced this seductive temptation. We need not expect of him
the beautiful, flowing language of Turgenef. An appropriate and clear
form of expression of his ideas is all we shall have. His phraseology
is diffuse, sometimes fatiguing from too much repetition; he makes
use of a great many adjectives, of all he needs to add the smallest
touches of color to a portrait; while incidents rapidly accumulate,
from the inexhaustible fund of thought in the farthest recesses of his
mind. From our point of view, this absence of style is an unpardonable
defect; but to me it appears a necessary consequence of realism which
does away with all conventionality. If style is a conventionality,
might it not warp our judgment of facts presented to us? We must
acknowledge that this contempt of style, if not to our taste,
contributes to the impression of sincerity that we receive. Tolstoï, in
Pascal’s way, “has not tried to show to us himself, but our own selves;
we find in ourselves the truths presented, which before were utterly
unknown to us, as in ourselves; this attracts us strongly to him who
has enlightened us.”

There is still another difference between Tolstoï’s realism and ours:
he applies his, by preference, to the study of characters difficult
to deal with, those made more inaccessible to the observer by the
refinements of education and the mask of social conventionalities. This
struggle between the painter and his model is deeply interesting to me
and to many others.

Count Tolstoï would no doubt commiserate us if he found us occupied
in discussing his works; for the future he wishes to be only a
philosopher and reformer. Let us, then, return to his philosophy. I
have said already that the composition of “Anna Karenina,” written at
long intervals, occupied many years of the author’s life, the moral
fluctuations of which are reflected in the character of Constantin
Levin, the child and confidant of his soul. This new incarnation of
Bezushof, in “War and Peace,” is the usual hero of modern romance in
Russia, the favorite type with Turgenef and with all the young girls.
He is a country gentleman, intelligent, educated, though not brilliant,
a speculative dreamer, fond of rural life, and interested in all the
social questions and difficulties arising from it. Levin studies these
questions, and takes his part in all the liberal emotions his country
has indulged in for the last twenty years. Of course, his illusions and
chimeras vanish, one after another, and his Nihilism triumphs bitterly
over their ruins. His Nihilism is not of so severe a kind as that of
Pierre Bezushof and Prince André. He drops the most cruel problems and
takes up questions of political economy. A calm and laborious country
life, with family joys and cares, has strangled the serpent. Years
pass, and the tale goes on toward its close.

But suddenly, through several moral shocks in his experience, Levin
awakes from his religious indifference, and is tormented by doubts. He
becomes overwhelmed with despair, when the _muzhik_ appears who proves
his saviour and instructor. His mind becomes clear through some of
the aphorisms uttered by this wise peasant. He declares that “every
evil comes from the folly, the wickedness of reason. We have only to
love and believe, and there is no further difficulty.” Thus ends the
long intellectual drama, in a ray of mystic happiness, a hymn of joy,
proclaiming the bankruptcy and the downfall of reason.

Reason has but a narrow sphere of its own, is only useful in a limited
horizon, as the rag-picker’s lantern is merely of use to light up the
few feet of space immediately around him, the heap of rubbish upon
which he depends for subsistence. What folly it would be for the poor
man to turn those feeble rays toward the starry heavens, seeking to
penetrate the inscrutable mysteries of those fathomless spaces!

The consolation of the doctrines of Quietism, the final apotheosis of
Tolstoï’s entire literary work, was yet in reserve for him, revealed
through an humble apostle of these doctrines. He too was destined to
find his Karatayef.

After the appearance of “Anna Karenina,” a new production from this
author was impatiently anticipated. He undertook a sequel to “War
and Peace,” and published the first three chapters of the work,
which promised to be quite equal to his preceding novels; but he
soon abandoned the undertaking. Only a few stories for children now
appeared, some of which were exquisitely written. In them, however,
you could but feel that the soul of the author had already soared
above terrestrial aims. At last, the report spread that the novelist
had renounced his art, even wishing no allusion made to his former
works, as belonging to the vanities of the age, and had given himself
up to the care of his soul and the contemplation of religious themes.
Count Tolstoï had met with Sutayef, the sectary of Tver. I will not
here dwell upon this original character―a gentle idealist, one among
the many peasants who preached among the Russian people the gospel of
the Communists. The teachings and example of this man exerted a strong
influence upon Tolstoï, according to his own statement, and caused him
to decide what his true vocation was.

We could have no excuse for intruding upon the domain of conscience,
had not the author, now a theologian, invited us so to do, by
publishing his late works, “My Confession,” “My Religion,” and “A
Commentary on the Gospel.” Although, in reality, the press-censorship
has never authorized the publication of these books, there are several
hundred autographic copies of them in circulation, spread among
university students, women, and even among the common people, and
eagerly devoured by them. This shows how the Russian soul hungers for
spiritual food. As Tolstoï has expressed the desire that his work
should be translated into French, we have every right to criticise it.
But I will not abuse the privilege. The only books which can interest
us as an explanation of his mental state are the first two.

Even “My Confession” is nothing new to me. In his “Childhood, Boyhood,
and Youth” we have the same revelation in advance, as well as from
the lips of Bezushof and Levin. This is, however, a new and eloquent
variation in the same theme, the same wail of anguish from the depths
of a human soul. I will give a quotation:―

“I became sceptical quite early in life. For a time I was absorbed,
like every one else, in the vanities of life. I wrote books, teaching,
as others did, what I knew nothing of myself. Then I became thirsty
for more knowledge. The study of humanity furnished no response to
the constant, sole question of any importance to me―‘What is the
object of my existence?’ Science responded by teaching me other things
which I was not anxious to learn. I could but join in the cry of the
preacher, ‘All is vanity!’ I would gladly have taken my life. Finally
I determined to study the lives of the great majority of men who have
none of our anxieties―those classes which you might say are superior
to abstract speculations of the mind, but that labor and endure, and
yet live tranquil lives and seem to have no doubts as to the end and
aim of life. Then I understood that, to live as they did, we must go
back to our primitive faith. But the corrupt teachings which the church
distributed among the lowly could not satisfy my reason; then I made a
closer study of those teachings, in order to distinguish superstition
from truth.”

The result of this study is the doctrine brought forth under the title
of “My Religion.” This religion is precisely the same as that of
Sutayef, but explained with the aid of the theological and scientific
knowledge of a cultivated scholar. It is, however, none the clearer
for that. The gospel is subjected to the broadest rationalistic
interpretation. In fact, Tolstoï’s interpretation of Christ’s doctrine
of life is the same as the Sadducees’―that is, of life considered
in a collective sense. He denies that the gospel makes any allusion
to a resurrection of the body, or to an individual existence of the
soul. In this unconscious Pantheism, an attempt at a conciliation
between Christianity and Buddhism, life is considered as an indivisible
entirety, as one individual soul of the universe, of which we are
but ephemeral particles. One thing only is of consequence―morality;
which is all contained in the precepts of the gospel, “Be ye perfect….
Judge not…. Thou shalt not kill, …” etc. Therefore there must be no
tribunals, no armies, no prisons, no right of retaliation, either
public or private, no wars, no trials. The universal law of the world
is the struggle for existence; the law of Christ is the sacrifice of
one’s life for others. Neither Turkey nor Germany will attack us,
if we are true Christians, if we study their advantage. Happiness,
the supreme end of a life of morality, is possible only in the union
of all men in believing the doctrine of Jesus Christ―that is, in
Tolstoï’s version of it, not in that of the church; in the return to a
natural mode of life, to communism, giving up cities and all business,
as incompatible with these doctrines, and because of the difficulty
of their application in such a life. To support his statements, the
writer presents to us, with rare eloquence and prophetic vividness, a
picture of a life of worldliness from birth to death. This life is more
terrible in his eyes than that of the Christian martyrs.

The apostle of the new faith spares not the established church; but,
after relating his vain search for comfort in the so-called true
orthodoxy, violently attacks this church from Sutayef’s point of view.
He declares that she substitutes rites and formalities for the true
spirit of the gospel; that she issues catechisms filled with false
doctrines; that since the time of Constantine she has ruined herself
by deviating from the law of God to follow that of the age; that she
has now, in fact, become pagan. Finally, and this is the key-note and
the most delicate point of all, no attention should be paid to the
commands and prohibitions of any temporal power as long as it ignores
the truth. Here I will quote an incident illustrative of this idea:―

“Passing recently through the Borovitzki gate at Moscow, I saw an
aged beggar seated in the archway, who was a cripple and had his
head bound with a bandage. I drew out my purse to give him alms.
Just then a fine-looking young grenadier came running down towards
us from the Kremlin. At sight of him, the beggar rose terrified,
and ran limping away until he reached the foot of the hill into the
Alexander garden. The grenadier pursued him a short distance, calling
after him with abusive epithets, because he had been forbidden to
sit in the archway. I waited for the soldier, and then asked him if
he could read.―‘Yes,’ he replied: ‘why do you ask?’―‘Have you read
the Gospel?’―‘Yes.’―‘Have you read the passage in regard to giving
bread to the hungry?’―I quoted the whole passage. He knew it, and
listened attentively, seeming somewhat confused. Two persons, passing
by, stopped to listen. Evidently, the grenadier was ill at ease, as
he could not reconcile the having done a wrong act, while strictly
fulfilling his duty. He hesitated for a reply. Suddenly his eyes
lighted up intelligently, and, turning toward me, he said: ‘May I ask
you if you have read the military regulations?’ I acknowledged that
I had not.―‘Then you have nothing to say,’ replied the grenadier,
nodding his head triumphantly, as he walked slowly away.”

I have, perhaps, said enough respecting “My Religion”; but must
give a literal translation of a few lines which show the superb
self-confidence always latent in the heart of every reformer:―

“Everything confirmed the truth of the sense in which the doctrine of
Christ now appeared to me. But for a long time I could not take in
the strange thought that, after the Christian faith had been accepted
by so many thousands of men for eighteen centuries, and so many had
consecrated their lives to the study of that faith, it should be given
to me to discover the law of Christ, as an entirely new thing. But,
strange as it was, it was indeed a fact.”

We can now judge what his “Commentary on the Gospel” would be.
God forbid that I should disturb the new convert’s tranquillity!
Fortunately, that would be impossible, however. Tolstoï joyously
affirms, and with perfect sincerity, that his soul has at last found
repose, as well as the true object of his life and the rock of his
faith. He invites us to follow him, but I fear the hardened sceptics
of Western Europe will refuse to enter into any discussion with him
upon the new religion, which seems, moreover, almost daily to undergo
modifications, according to its founder’s new flights of thought.
It eliminates gradually, more and more, the doctrine of a Divine
Providence overruling all, and concentrates all duty, hope, and moral
activity upon a single object, the reform of all social evils through
Communism.

This idea exclusively inspires the last treatise of Tolstoï which
I read; it is entitled: “What, then, must be done?” This title is
significant enough, and has been used many times in Russia since the
famous novel by Tchernishevski was written. It expresses the anxious
longing of all these men, and there is something touchingly pathetic
in its ingenuousness. What, then, must be done? First of all, quit
the populous cities and towns, and disband the work-people in the
factories; return to country life and till the ground, each man
providing for his own personal necessities. The author first draws a
picture of wretchedness in a large capital, as he himself studied it
in Moscow. Here his admirable powers of description reappear, together
with the habit, peculiar to himself, of looking within his own soul,
to discover and expose the little weaknesses and base qualities common
to all of us; and he takes the same pleasure in the observation and
denunciation of his own as men generally do in criticising those of
others. He gives us all a side thrust when he says of himself:―

“I gave three roubles to that poor creature; and, beside the pleasure
of feeling that I had done a kind deed, I had the additional one of
knowing that other people saw me do it….”

The second part of the treatise is devoted to theory. We cannot
relieve the poor and unfortunate for many reasons; First, in cities
poverty must exist, because an overplus of workmen are attracted to
them; secondly, our class gives them the example of idleness and
of superfluous expenditure; thirdly, we do not live according to
the doctrine of Christ: charity is not what is wanted, but an equal
division of property in brotherly love. Let him who has two cloaks give
to him who has none. Sutayef carries out this theory.

Those who draw salaries are in a state of slavery, and an aggravated
form of it; and the effect of the modern system of credit continues
this slavery into their future. The alms we give are only an obligation
we owe to the peasants whom we have induced to come and work in our
cities to supply us with our luxuries. The author concludes by giving
as the only remedy, a return to rural life, which will guarantee to
every laborer all that is necessary to support life.

He does not see that this principle involves, necessarily and
logically, a return to an animal state of existence, a general struggle
for shelter and food, instead of a methodical system of labor; and that
in such a company there must be both wolves and lambs. He sees but
one side of the question, the side of justice; he loses sight of the
intellectual side, the necessity for mental development, which involves
a division of labor.

All this has no great attraction for us. We can obtain no original
ideas from this apostle’s revelation; only the first lispings of
rationalism in the religious portion, and in the social the doctrine
of Communism; only the old dream of the millennium, the old theme,
ever renewed since the Middle Ages, by the Vaudois, the Lollards and
Anabaptists. Happy Russia! to her these beautiful chimeras are still
new! Western Europe is astonished only, to meet them again in the
writings of such a great author and such an unusually keen observer of
human nature.

But would not the condition of this man’s soul be the result of
the natural evolution of his successive experiences? First, a
pantheist, then nihilist, pessimist, and mystic. I have heard that Leo
Nikolaievitch has defended himself energetically against being thought
to have assumed the title of a mystic; he feels its danger, and does
not think it applicable to one who believes that the heavenly kingdom
is transferred to earth. Our language furnishes us no other word to
express his condition; may he pardon us what seems to us the truth. I
know that he would prefer to have me praise his doctrines and decry his
novels. This I cannot do. I am so enraptured with the novels that I can
only feel that the doctrines but deprive me of masterpieces which might
have given me additional enjoyment in the future. I have been lavish
of praise, but only because of my thorough and sincere appreciation of
the books. Now, however, that the author has reached a state of perfect
happiness, he needs no more praise, and must be quite indifferent to
criticism.

We must, at least, recognize in Tolstoï one of those rare reformers
whose actions conform to their precepts. I am assured that he exerts
around him a most salutary influence, and has actually returned to
the life of the primitive Christians. He daily receives letters from
strangers, revenue officers, dishonest clerks, publicans of every
type, who put into his hands the sums they have dishonestly acquired;
young men asking his advice as well as fallen women who need counsel.
He is settled in the country, gives away his wealth, lives and labors
with his peasant neighbors. He draws water, works in the fields, and
sometimes makes his own boots. He does not wish his novels alluded to.
I have seen a picture of him in a peasant’s costume working with a
shoemaker’s awl in his hand. Should not this creator of masterpieces
feel that the pen is the only tool he should wield? If the inspiration
of great thoughts is a gift we have received from Heaven as a
consolation for our fellow-beings, it seems to me an act of impiety to
throw away this talent. The human soul is the author’s field of action,
which he is bound to cultivate and fertilize.

From Paris, where Tolstoï is so highly appreciated, comes back to him
again the touching, last request of his dying friend which to me was
inspired by a higher religious sentiment than that of Sutayef:―

“This gift comes to you from whence come all our gifts. Return to your
literary labors, great author of our beloved Russia!”

I shall not pretend to draw any definite or elaborate conclusions from
these initiatory explorations into Russian literature. To make them
complete, we should study the less prominent writers, who have a right
to bear their testimony as to the actual condition of the nation. If,
moreover, the writer of this book has succeeded in presenting his own
ideas clearly, the reader should draw his own conclusions from the
perusal of it; if the author has failed, any added defence of his ideas
would be superfluous, and have little interest or value for the reader.

We have witnessed the at first artificial growth of this literature,
for a long time subjected to foreign influence; a weak and servile type
of literature, giving us no enlightenment whatever as to the actual
interior condition of its own country, which it voluntarily ignored.
Again, when turning to its natal soil to seek its objects of study it
has become vigorous. Realism is the proper and perfect instrument which
it has employed, applied with equal success to material and spiritual
life. Although this realism may occasionally lack method and taste,
and is at the same time both diffuse and subtile, it is invariably
natural and sincere, ennobled by moral sentiments, aspirations toward
the Divine, and sympathy for humanity. Not one of these novelists aims
merely at literary fame, but all are governed by a love of truth as
well as of justice,―a combination of great importance, and well worth
our serious reflection, betraying and explaining to us, moreover, the
philosophical conceptions of this race.

The Russians seek religious truth because they find the formulas of
their doctrines insufficient for them, and the negative arguments which
satisfy us would be entirely opposed to all their instincts. Their
religious doubts govern, cause, and characterize all their social and
political questions and difficulties. The Slav race, under the guise
of its apparent orthodoxy, has not yet found its true path, but seeks
it still in every grade of society. The formula they are looking
forward to must comprise and answer to their double ideal of truth and
justice. Moreover, the people still feel the influence of the old Aryan
spirit; the cultivated classes also feel that of the teachings of the
contemporaneous sciences; hence the resurrection of Buddhism which we
now witness in Russia; for I cannot otherwise qualify these tendencies.
We see in them the condition of the ancient Hindus vacillating between
an extremely high morality and Nihilism, or a metaphysical Pantheism.

The spirit of Buddhism in its great efforts toward the extension
of evangelical charity has penetrated the Russian character, which
naturally has such intense sympathy for human nature, for the humblest
creatures, for the forsaken and unfortunate. This spirit decries
reason and elevates the brute, and inspires the deepest compassion in
the heart. Moreover, this simple love of the neighbor and infinite
tenderness for the suffering gives a peculiarly pathetic quality to
their literary works. The initiators of this movement, after having
written for the benefit of their peers and the cultivated classes, are
strongly drawn toward the people. Gogol with his bitter irony devoted
himself to the study of suffering humanity. Turgenef pictured it from
his own artistic standpoint rather than from that of an apostle.
Tolstoï, his sceptical investigations being over, has become the most
determined of the apostles of the unfortunate.

But beyond these mental tortures, beneath the extreme Nihilism of a
Tolstoï and the intellectual morbidness of a Dostoyevski, we feel that
there is a rich fund of vitality, a fountain of truth and justice,
which will surely triumph in the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[L] By Alfred de Vigny, author of “Cinque-Mars.”

INDEX.

Alexander I., 27, 42

_Anna Karenina_, 246

_Annals of a Sportsman_, 101

_Ascension of Christ, The_, 34

_Assia_, 119

Bielinski, 148

_Bohemians, The_, 49

_Book of the Dove_, 34

_Boris Godunof_, 49

_Buried Alive_, 162

Catherine II., 27, 38

_Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth_, 216

_Commentary on the Gospel, A_, 257

_Cossacks, The_, 216

_Crime and Punishment_, 176

_Dead Souls_, 74

_Degraded and Insulted, The_, 147

_Demon, The_, 52

Derzhavin, 38

_Despair_, 139

_Dimitri Roudine_, 109

_Domostroi_, 32

Dostoyevski, 141

_Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka_, 63

_Fathers and Sons_, 115

Freemasonry, 41

French Revolution, The, 42

Gogol, 56

Gortchakof, 46

Gregory of Tours, 31

Griboyedof, 51

Grigorovitch, 147

_Idiot, The_, 163

Ivan the Terrible, 32

Ivan Federof, 32

Ivanof, 73

Ivan Sergievitch, 96

_Karamazof Brothers, The_, 185

Karamzin, 39

Kheraskof, 38

Kiev, 31

Krylof, 39

Kutuzof, 231

_Lear of the Steppe, A_, 131

Lermontof, 52

_Letters to My Friends_, 83

_Living Relics, The_, 102

Lomonosof, 37

Loris Melikof, 206

_Manteau, Le_, 62, 69

Maximus, 31

_Memoirs of a Nihilist_, 130

Muscovitism, 41

_My Confession_, 257

_My Religion_, 259

Nekrasof, 147

_Nest of Nobles_, 109

Nestor, 31

_Note-book of an Author_, 195

Novikof, 42

_On the Eve_, 113

_Onyegin_, 49

_Pauvre Lise, La_, 40

Peter the Great, 37

Petrachevski, 155

_Pétriade, La_, 38

Poltava, 49

_Poor People_, 149

_Possédés, Les_, 191

_Prisoner of the Caucasus, The_, 48

Pushkin, 44

_Revizor, The_, 70

Russian Drama, The, 70

Savonarola, 31

_Sebastopol in December, in May, and in August_, 215

Skobelef, 138

Slavophile, 90

Slavophilism, 41

_Smoke_, 122

Song of Igor, 35

“Souls,” 75

Speranski, 41

_Spring Floods_, 125

Sutayef, 257

_Taras Bulba_, 66

Tchadayef, 53

Tchinovnism, 32

_Tchitchikof_, 76

Tolstoï, 215

_Trois Morts_, 219

Tsarskoe-Selo, Lyceum of, 45

Turgenef, 96

Tutschef, 34

Ukraine, 57

_Virgin Soil_, 126

Von Vizin, 38

_War and Peace_, 223, 228

Zaporovian League, 59

Zhukovski, 44

A LIST OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
FROM THE RUSSIAN.

DOSTOYEVSKI:―

Buried Alive; Ten Years Penal Servitude in Siberia. Trans. from the
Russian by Marie von Thilo; 8vo, London, 1881.

_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1881.

Crime and Punishment; a Russian Realistic Novel; 8vo, London, 1886.

_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1886.

Injury and Insult; trans. by F. Whishaw; 8vo, London, 1886.

GOGOL:―

Cossack Tales, trans. by Geo. Tolstoy; 8vo, London, 1860.

St. John’s Eve, and Other Stories; from the Russian, by Isabel F.
Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886. Selected from “Evenings at the
Farm” and “St. Petersburg Stories.”

_Contents_:―St. John’s Eve, related by the sacristan of
the Dikanka Church.―Old-Fashioned Farmers.―The Tale of How
Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovitch.―The
Portrait.―The Cloak.

Taras Bulbá; a Tale of the Cossacks; from the Russian, by Isabel F.
Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886.

Tchitchikoff’s Journeys, or Dead Souls; from the Russian, by Isabel
F. Hapgood; 2 vols., 12mo, New York, 1886.

PUSHKIN:―

Captain’s Daughter; from the Russian; 4to, New York, 1884.

Eugene Onéguine, a romance of Russian life, in verse; trans, by
Lt.-Col. Spalding; 8vo, London and New York, 1881.

Marie, a Story of Russian Love; from the Russian, by Marie H. de
Zielinska; sq. 16mo, Chicago, 1876 (also 1880). (Same as the
“Captain’s Daughter.”)

Russian Romance; trans. by Mrs. J. B. Telfer; 8vo, London, 1875.

_Same_, 8vo, London, 1880.

_Contents_:―The Captain’s Daughter.―The Lady-Rustic.―The
Pistol-Shot.―The Snow-Storm.―The Undertaker.―The
Station-Master.―The Moor of Peter the Great.

TOLSTOÏ:―

Anna Karenina; from the Russian, by N. H. Dole; 12mo, New York,
1886.

_Same_, London, 1886.

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: Reminiscences; from the Russian, by
Isabel F. Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886. (An earlier translation
seems to have been published in London, in 1862, under the title
“Childhood and Youth.”)

Christ’s Christianity; trans. from the Russian; 8vo, London, 1885.

_Contents_:―How I Came to Believe.―What I Believe.―The
Spirit of Christ’s Teaching.

The Cossacks; from the Russian, by Eugene Schuyler; 2 vols., 8vo,
London, 1878.

_Same_, 16mo, New York, 1878.

My Religion; trans. from the French by W. Huntington Smith; 12mo,
New York, 1885. (The same as his “What I Believe.”)

War and Peace; from the French, by Clara Bell; 3 vols., 8vo,
London, 1886.

_Same_, 6 vols., 16mo, New York, 1886.

What I Believe; from the Russian, by Constantine Popoff; 8vo,
London, 1885.

_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1886. (A translation from the French was
published under the title “My Religion.”)

What People Live By; trans. by Aline Delano; 8vo, Boston, 1887. (A
story of peasant life.)

TURGENEF:―

Annals of a Sportsman; from the authorized French translation, by
Franklin P. Abbott; 16mo, New York, 1885.

Annouchka: a Tale; from the French of the author’s own translation,
by Franklin P. Abbott; 16mo, Boston, 1884.

Daughter of Russia; trans. by G. W. Scott; 4to, New York, 1882.

Dimitri Roudine; trans. from the French and German versions for
“Every Saturday”; 16mo, New York, 1873.

_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.

Fathers and Sons; from the Russian, by Eugene Schuyler; 16mo, New
York, 1867 and 1883.

_Same_, London, 1883.

First Love, and Punin and Baburin; trans. from the Russian, by W.
Ralston; 12mo, London, 1884.

Liza; trans. by W. R. S. Ralston; 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1869.

_Same_, New York, 1872.

_Same_, London, 1884.

(The title of the original and of the French translation is
“A Nest of Nobles.”)

Mumu, and The Diary of a Superfluous Man; from the Russian, by
Henry Gersoni; 12mo, New York, 1884.

On the Eve; from the Russian, by C. E. Turner; 12mo, London, 1871.

_Same_, American ed., with amendments; 16mo, New York, 1873.

Poems in Prose; trans. by Lilla C. Perry; 16mo, Boston, 1883.

Punin and Baburin; trans. by G. W. Scott; 4to, New York, 1882.

Russian Life in the Interior; 12mo, London, 1855.

Smoke, or Life at Baden; 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1868.

Smoke, or Life at Baden; from the author’s French version, by W. F.
West; 16mo, New York, 1872.

_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.

Song of Triumphant Love; 4to, New York, 1883.

Spring Floods, trans. by Sophie Mitchell; also A Lear of the
Steppe, trans. by W. H. Browne; 16mo, New York, 1874.

An Unfortunate Woman; also Ass’ya; from the Russian, by H. Gersoni;
12mo, New York, 1886. (“Ass’ya” is the same as “Annouchka.”)

Virgin Soil; from the French, by T. S. Perry; 16mo, New York, 1877.

_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.

Virgin Soil; trans. by A. W. Dilke; 8vo, London, 1878.

THE SCHOOL OF HOME.

Let the school of home be a good one. Let reading be such as to
quicken the mind for better reading still; for the school at home is
progressive.

* * * * *

The baby is to be read to. What shall mother and sister and father and
brother read to the baby?

BABYLAND. Babyland rhymes and jingles; great big letters and little
thoughts and words out of BABYLAND. Pictures so easy to understand that
baby quickly learns the meaning of light and shade, of distance, of
tree, of cloud. The grass is green; the sky is blue; the flowers―are
they red or yellow? That depends on mother’s house-plants. Baby sees in
the picture what she sees in the home and out of the window.

BABYLAND, mother’s monthly picture-and-jingle primer for baby’s
diversion, and baby’s mother-help; 50 cents a year.

* * * * *

What, when baby begins to read for herself? OUR LITTLE MEN AND WOMEN is
made to go on with. BABYLAND forms the reading habit. Think of a baby
with the reading habit! After a little she picks up the letters and
wants to know what they mean. The jingles are jingles still; but the
tales that lie under the jingles begin to ask questions.

What do Jack and Jill go up the hill after water for? Isn’t water down
hill? Baby is outgrowing BABYLAND.

No more nonsense. There is fun enough in sense. The world is full
of interesting things; and, if they come to a growing child not in
discouraging tangles but an easy one at a time, there is fun enough
in getting hold of them. That is the way to grow. OUR LITTLE MEN AND
WOMEN helps such growth as that. Beginnings of things made easy by
words and pictures; not too easy. The reading habit has got to another
stage.

A dollar for such a school as that for a year.

* * * * *

Then comes THE PANSY with stories of child-life, travel at home and
abroad, adventure, history old and new, religion at home and over the
seas, and roundabout tales on the International Sunday School Lesson.

Pansy the editor; THE PANSY the magazine. There are thousands and
thousands of children and children of larger growth all over the
country who know about Pansy the writer, and THE PANSY the magazine.
There are thousands and thousands more who will be glad to know.

A dollar a year for THE PANSY.

* * * * *

The reading habit is now pretty well established; not only the reading
habit, but liking for useful reading; and useful reading leads to
learning.

Now comes WIDE AWAKE, vigorous, hearty, not to say heavy. No, it isn’t
heavy, though full as it can be of practical help along the road to
sober manhood and womanhood. Full as it can be! There is need of play
as well as of work; and WIDE AWAKE has its mixture of work and rest and
play. The work is all toward self-improvement; so is the rest; and so
is the play. $2.40 a year.

* * * * *

Specimen copies of all the Lothrop magazines for fifteen cents; any one
for five―in postage stamps.

Address D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

You little know what help there is in books for the average housewife.

Take _Domestic Problems_, for instance, beginning with this hard
question: “How may a woman enjoy the delights of culture and at the
same time fulfil her duties to family and household?” The second
chapter quotes from somebody else: “It can’t be done. I’ve tried it;
but, as things now are, it can’t be done.”

Mrs. Diaz looks below the surface. Want of preparation and culture, she
says, is at the bottom of a woman’s failure, just as it is of a man’s.

The proper training of children, for instance, can’t be done without
some comprehension of children themselves, of what they ought to grow
to, their stages, the means of their guidance, the laws of their
health, and manners. But mothers get no hint of most of these things
until they have to blunder through them. Why not? Isn’t the training of
children woman’s mission? Yes, in print, but not in practice. What is
her mission in practice? Cooking and sewing!

Woman’s worst failure then is due to the stupid blunder of putting
comparatively trivial things before the most important of all. The
result is bad children and waste of a generation or two―all for
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Now will any one venture to say that any particular mother, you for
instance, has got to put cooking and sewing before the training of
children?

Any mother who really makes up her mind to put her children first can
find out how to grow tolerable children at least.

And that is what Mrs. Diaz means by preparation―a little knowledge
beforehand―the little that leads to more.

It _can_ be done; and _you_ can do it! Will you? It’s a matter of
choice; and you are the chooser.

Domestic Problems. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. $1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

We have touched on only one subject. The author treats of many.

* * * * *

Dr. Buckley the brilliant and versatile editor of the _Christian
Advocate_ says in the preface of his book on northern Europe “I hope
to impart to such as have never seen those countries as clear a view
as can be obtained from reading” and “My chief reason for traveling in
Russia was to study Nihilism and kindred subjects.”

This affords the best clue to his book to those who know the writer’s
quickness, freshness, independence, force, and penetration.

The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist. Adventures and
Observations in Norway, Sweden and Russia. By J. M. Buckley, LL. D.
72 illustrations, 376 pages. $3. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

Just short of the luxurious in paper, pictures and print.

* * * * *

The writer best equipped for such a task has put into one illustrated
book a brief account of every American voyage for polar exploration,
including one to the south almost forgotten.

American Explorations in the Ice Zones. By Professor J. E. Nourse,
U. S. N. 10 maps, 120 illustrations, 624 pages. Cloth, $3, gilt edges
$3.50, half-calf $6. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

Not written especially for boys; but they claim it.

The wife of a U. S. lighthouse inspector, Mary Bradford Crowninshield,
writes the story of a tour of inspection along the coast of Maine with
two boys on board―for other boys of course. A most instructive as well
as delightful excursion.

The boys go up the towers and study the lamps and lanterns and all the
devices by which a light in the night is made to tell the wary sailor
the coast he is on; and so does the reader. Stories of wrecks and
rescues beguile the waiting times. There are no waiting times in the
story.

All Among the Lighthouses, or Cruise of the Goldenrod. By Mary
Bradford Crowninshield. 32 illustrations, 392 pages. $2.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.

There’s a vast amount of coast-lore besides.

* * * * *

Mr. Grant Allen, who knows almost as much as anybody, has been making
a book of twenty-eight separate parts, and says of it: “These little
essays are mostly endeavors to put some of the latest results of
science in simple, clear and intelligible language.”

Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of
us want, if it isn’t dry. And it isn’t dry. Few of those who have the
wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the
gift of popular explanation―the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has
that gift; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty.

Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop
Company, Boston.

By no means a list of new-found facts; but the bearings of them on
common subjects.

We don’t go on talking as if the earth were the centre of things, as if
Galileo never lived. Huxley and Spencer have got to be heard. Shall we
wait two hundred and fifty years?

The book is simply an easy means of intelligence.

* * * * *

There is nothing more dreary than chemistry taught as it used to be
taught to beginners. There is nothing brighter and fuller of keen
delight than chemistry taught as it can be taught to little children
even.

Real Fairy Folks. By Lucy Rider Meyer, A. M. 389 pages. $1.25. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.

“I’ll be their teacher―give them private scientific lectures! Trust
me to manage the school part!” The book is alive with the secrets of
things.

* * * * *

It takes a learned man to write an easy book on almost any subject.

Arthur Gilman, of the College for Women, at Cambridge, known as the
“Harvard Annex,” has made a little book to help young people along in
the use of the dictionary. One can devour it in an hour or two; but the
reading multiplies knowledge and means of knowledge.

Short Stories from the Dictionary. By Arthur Gilman, M. A. 129 pages.
60 cents. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

An unconscious beginning of what may grow to be philology, if one’s
faculty lies that way. Such bits of education are of vastly more
importance than most of us know. They are the seeds of learning.

Elizabeth P. Peabody at the age of eighty-four years has made a book
of a number of essays, written during fifty years of a most productive
life, on subjects of lasting interest, published forgotten years ago in
_Emerson’s Magazine_, _The Dial_, Lowell’s _Pioneer_, etc.

Last Evening with Allston and Other Papers. 350 pages. $1.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.

* * * * *

The wife of Frémont, the Pathfinder of forty years ago and almost
President thirty years ago, has written a bookful of reminiscences.

Souvenirs of My Time. By Jessie Benton Frémont. 393 pages. $1.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.

Mrs. Frémont has long been known as a brilliant converser and
story-teller. Her later years have been given to making books; and the
books have the freshness and sparkle of youth.

* * * * *

The literary editor of the _Nation_ gathers together nearly a hundred
poems and parts of poems to read to children going to sleep.

Bedside Poetry, a Parents’ Assistant in Moral Discipline. 143 pages.
Two bindings, 75 cents and $1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.

The poems have their various bearings on morals and graces; and there
is an index called a key to the moralities. The mother can turn, with
little search, to verses that put in a pleasant light the thoughts the
little one needs to harbor. Hence the sub-title.

Readers of poetry are almost as scarce as poetry―Have you noticed how
little there is in the world? how wide the desert, how few the little
oases?

Through the Year with the Poets. Edited by Oscar Fay Adams. 12 bijou
books of the months, of about 130 pages each. 75 cents each. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.

Is it possible? Is there enough sweet singing ringing lustrous verse
between heaven and earth to make twelve such books? There is indeed;
and heaven and earth are in it!

* * * * *

Ginx’s Baby, a burlesque book of most serious purpose, made a stir
in England some years ago; and, what is of more account, went far to
accomplish the author’s object.

Evolution of Dodd. By William Hawley Smith. 153 pages. $1. D. Lothrop
Company, Boston.

Dodd is the terrible schoolboy. How he became so; who is responsible;
what is the remedy―such is the gist of the book.

As bright as Ginx’s Baby. A bookful of managing wisdom for parents as
well as teachers.

* * * * *

Questions such as practical boys and girls are asking their mothers all
the year round about things that come up. Not one in ten of the mothers
can answer one in ten of the questions.

Household Notes and Queries, A Family Reference-Book. By the Wise
Blackbird. 115 pages. 60 cents.

It is handy to have such a book on the shelf, and handier yet to have
the knowledge that’s in it in one’s head.

_Classified List.—Pansy._

THE PANSY BOOKS.

There are substantial reasons for the great popularity of the “Pansy
Books,” and foremost among these is their truth to nature and to life.
The genuineness of the types of character which they portray is indeed
remarkable.

“Her stories move alternately to laughter and tears.”…
“Brimful of the sweetness of evangelical religion.”…
“Girl life and character portrayed with rare power.”…
“Too much cannot be said of the insight given into the true way
of studying and using the word of God.”… These are a few
quotations from words of praise everywhere spoken. The “Pansy
Books” may be purchased by any Sunday-school without hesitation
as to their character or acceptability.

_Each volume 12mo, $1.50._

Chautauqua Girls at Home.
Christie’s Christmas.
Divers Women.
Echoing and Re-echoing.
Endless Chain (An).
Ester Ried.
Ester Ried Yet Speaking.
Four Girls at Chautauqua.
From different Standpoints.
Hall in the Grove (The).
Household Puzzles.
Interrupted.
Julia Ried.
King’s Daughter (The).
Links in Rebecca’s Life.
Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On.
Modern Prophets.
Man of the House (The).
New Graft on the Family Tree (A).
One Commonplace Day.
Pocket Measure (The).
Ruth Erskine’s Crosses.
Randolphs (The).
Sidney Martin’s Christmas.
Those Boys.
Three People.
Tip Lewis and his Lamp.
Wise and Otherwise.

_Classified List.―Poetry._

=THROUGH THE YEAR WITH THE POETS.―December, January, February,
March, April, May.= Arranged and compiled by OSCAR FAY ADAMS.
Each 75 cents.

The cream of English literature, past and current, has been skimmed
with a judicious and appreciative hand.―_Boston Transcript._

=WAIFS AND THEIR AUTHORS.= By A. A. HOPKINS. A collection of poems
many of which are now for the first time published with the
names of the authors. Quarto, cloth, gilt, $2.00; quarto, full
gilt, gilt edges, $2.50.

=WHEN I WAS A CHILD.= By ERNEST W. SHURTLEFF. Illustrated, $1.00.

A simple, graceful poem, fresh with memories of school and vacation
days, of games and sports in the country.―_Chicago Advance._

=WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS BY NIGHT.= Illustrated, $2.50.

Nothing more exquisite in the way of a presentation book.―_B. B.
Bulletin._

=WOMAN IN SACRED SONG.= Compiled and edited by MRS. GEORGE CLINTON
SMITH. With an introduction by Frances E. Willard. Illustrated.
$3.50.

It gives a very full representation of the contributions of woman to
sacred song, though of course the main bulk of this has been in modern
times.―_Illustrated Weekly._

=YOUNG FOLKS’ POETRY.= By A. P. and M. T. FOLSOM. A choice
selection of poems. 16mo, $1.00.

=YOUNG FOLKS’ SPEAKER.= A collection of Prose and Poetry for
Declamations, Recitations and Elocutionary Exercises. Selected
and arranged by CARRIE ADELAIDE COOKE. 12mo, cloth, illustrated,
$1.00.

It deserves to become a standard in the schools of the country.―_B. B.
Bulletin._

_Classified List.―Standard Micellaneous._

=THE TRIPLE “E.”= By MRS. S. R. GRAHAM CLARK. 12mo, paper,
illustrated, 25 cts. Cloth, $1.50.

It cannot fail to make a strong impression on the minds of those who
read it.―_B. B. Bulletin._

=THUCYDIDES.= Translated into English with marginal analysis and
index. By B. JOWETT, M. A., Master of Balliol College, Professor
of Greek in the University of Oxford, Doctor of Theology in
the University of Leyden. Edited with introduction to American
edition by Andrew P. Peabody, D. D. LL. D. 8vo, $3.50. Half
calf, $6.00.

=WARLOCK O’ GLENWARLOCK.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. 12mo, fully
illustrated, $1.50.

At his best, there are few contemporary novelists so well worth reading
as MacDonald.―_Boston Journal._

=WEIGHED AND WANTING.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.

=WHAT’S MINE’S MINE.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. $1.50.

Let all who enjoy a book full of fire and life and purpose read this
capital story.―_Woman’s Journal._

=WILD FLOWERS, AND WHERE THEY GROW.= By AMANDA B. HARRIS. 8vo,
extra cloth, beautifully bound, gilt edges, $3.00.

It is a book in which all true lovers of nature will delight.―_B. B.
Bulletin,._

=WONDER STORIES OF SCIENCE.= Uniform with “Plucky Boys,” 12mo,
cloth, $1.50.

To improve as well as to amuse young people is the object of
these twenty-one sketches, and they fill this purpose wonderfully
well.―_Texas Siftings._

=WITHIN THE SHADOW.= By DOROTHY HOLROYD. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

“The author has skill in invention with the purest sentiment and good
natural style.”―_Boston Globe._

=HOLD UP YOUR HEADS, GIRLS!= By ANNIE H. RYDER. $1.00.

It is a book for study, for companionship, and the girl who reads it
thoughtfully and with an intent to profit by it will get more real help
and good from it than from a term at the best boarding-school in the
country.―_Boston Transcript._

=HONOR BRIGHT= (the story of). By CHARLES R. TALBOT, author of
Royal Lowrie. 12mo, illustrated, $1.25.

A charming story full of intense life.

=HOW TO LEARN AND EARN.= Half Hours in some Helpful Schools. By
American authors. One hundred original illustrations, 12mo,
extra cloth, $1.50.

The book treats largely of public institutions, training schools,
etc., and shows what may be accomplished by patient concentrated
effort.―_Farm and Fireside._

=HOW WE ARE GOVERNED.= By ANNA LAURENS DAWES, 12mo, $1.50.

An explanation of the constitution and government of the United States,
national, State, and local.

A concise, systematic, and complete study of the great principles which
underlie the National existence.―_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

=IN LEISLER’S TIMES.= A story-study of Knickerbocker New York. By
E. S. Brooks. With twenty-four drawings by W. T. Smedley. $1.50.

Though designedly for young folks’ reading, this volume is a very
careful and minute study of a hitherto half-obscured and neglected
phase of American history, and will be given a permanent place in
historical literature.―_American Bookseller._

=JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS, (the Works of).= A new edition of William
Whiston’s Famous Translations. 8vo, cloth, gilt, 100
illustrations, $3.00. Household Edition. 12mo, cloth, gilt top,
illustrated, $2.00.

This edition is admirable and will make new friends for the easy and
conceited old chronicler.―_B. B. Bulletin._

Transcriber’s Note:

This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been
left unchanged. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=.
Footnotes were lettered sequentially and were moved to the end of
the chapter. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside
down, reversed order, or partially printed letters and punctuation,
were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Missing or duplicate letters at line endings
were added or removed, as appropriate. Extraneous punctuation was
removed.

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added omitted word,‘on,’ to text (line 1436)
‘wook’ to ‘work’ (line 2397)
‘axamples’ to ‘examples’ (line 2790)
‘discourged’ to ‘discouraged’ (line 2877)

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