A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections Part 11

JUDGE.--What do you mean by 'faults,' Anton Anton'itch? There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? Greyhound pups. That's quite another thing.

CHIEF.--Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the same.

JUDGE.--Well, no, Anton Anton'itch. But, for example, if some one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a shawl--

CHIEF.--Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as bribes? Why don't you trust in G.o.d? You never go to church. I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every Sunday. But you--oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about the creation, one's hair rises straight up on his head.

JUDGE.--It came of itself, of its own accord.

CHIEF.--Well, in some cases, it is worse to have brains than to be entirely without them. As for you, Luka Luk'itch, as superintendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the teachers. One of them, for instance, the fat-faced one--I don't recall his name--cannot get along without making grimaces when he takes his seat--like this (_makes a grimace_); and then he begins to smooth his beard out from under his neckerchief with his hand. In short, if he makes such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said; it must be necessary; I am no judge as to that. But just consider--if he were to do that to a visitor, it might be very unpleasant; the Inspector, or anyone else, might take it as personal. The Devil knows what might come of it.... And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's a learned man, that's plain; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses control of himself. I heard him once; well, so long as he was talking about the a.s.syrians and the Babylonians, it was all right; but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by heavens! He jumped up from his seat, and dashed his chair down against the floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no doubt; but why smash the chairs?([21]) There will be a deficit in the accounts, just as the result of that.

SUPERINTENDENT.--Yes, he is hasty! I have spoken to him about it several times. He says: "What would you have? I would sacrifice my life for science."

CHIEF.--Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of Fate; a learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that would scare the very saints.

As the play proceeds in this lively vein, two men about town--in a humble way--the public busybodies, happen to discover at the Inn a traveler who has been living on credit for two weeks, and going nowhere.

The landlord is on the point of putting the man in prison for debt, when the busybodies jump to the conclusion that he is the Inspector. The Prefect and the other officials accept their suggestion in spite of the traveler's plain statement as to his own ident.i.ty as an uninfluential citizen. They set about making the town presentable, entertain him, bribe him against his will, and bow down before him. He enters into the spirit of the thing after a brief delay, accepts the hospitality, asks for loans, makes love to the Prefect's silly wife and daughter, betroths himself to the latter, receives the pet.i.tions and the bribes of the downtrodden townspeople, and goes off with the best post-horses the town can furnish, ostensibly to ask the blessing of a rich old uncle on his marriage. The Postmaster intercepts a cynically frank letter which the man has written to a friend, and in which he heaps ridicule on his credulous hosts. This opens their eyes at last, and at that moment, a gendarme appears and announces that the Inspector has arrived. Tableau.

Gogol's two volumes of Little Russian Tales, above-mentioned, must remain cla.s.sics, and the volume of St. Petersburg Tales contains essentially the same ingredients, so that they may be considered as a whole. All the tales in the first two volumes are from his beloved native Little Russia. Some are merely poetical renderings of popular legends, counterparts of which are to be found in the folk-lore of many lands; such are "Vy," and "St. John's Eve's" and the exquisite "May Night," where the famous poetical spirit of the Ukraina (borderland) is displayed in its fullest force and beauty. "Know ye the night of the Ukraina?" he writes. "O, ye do not know the Ukraina night! Look upon it; from the midst of the sky gazes the moon; the illimitable vault of heaven has withdrawn into the far distance, has spread out still more immeasurably; it burns and breathes; the earth is all bathed in silvery light; and the air is wondrous, and cool, and perfumed, and full of tenderness, and an ocean of sweet odors is abroad. A night divine! An enchanting night! The forests stand motionless, inspired, full of darkness, and cast forth a vast shadow. Calm and quiet are the pools; the coldness and gloom of their waters is morosely hemmed in by the dark green walls of gardens. The virgin copses of wild bird-cherry and black cherry trees stretch forth their roots towards the coolness of the springs, and from time to time their leaves whisper as though in anger and indignation, when a lovely little breeze, and the wind of the night, creeping up for a moment, kisses them. All the landscape lies in slumber. But on high, everything is breathing with life, everything is marvelous, everything is solemnly triumphant. And in the soul there is something illimitable and wondrous, and throngs of silvery visions make their way into its depths. Night divine! Enchanting night! And all of a sudden, everything has become instinct with life; forests, pools, and steppes. The magnificent thunder of the Ukraina nightingale becomes audible, and one fancies that the moon, in the midst of the sky, has paused to listen to it.... As though enchanted, the hamlet dreams upon the heights. The ma.s.s of the cottages gleams still whiter, still more agreeably under the light of the moon; still more dazzlingly do their lowly walls stand out against the darkness. The songs have ceased.

Everything is still. Pious people are all asleep. Only here and there are the small windows still a-glow. In front of the threshold of a few cottages only is a belated family eating its late supper."

Others of the tales are more exclusively national; such as "The Lost Doc.u.ment," "Sorotchinsky Fair," "The Enchanted Spot," and the like. But they display the same fertility of invention, combined with skill in management, and close study of every-day customs, superst.i.tions, and life, all of which render them invaluable, both to Russians and to foreigners. More important are such stories as "Old-fashioned Gentry,"

"The Cloak" (from the volume of "St. Petersburg Tales"), wherein kindly wit is tempered with the purest, deepest pathos, while characters and customs are depicted with the greatest art and fidelity. "The Portrait,"

again, is semi-fantastic, although not legendary; and the "Diary of a Madman" is unexcelled as an amusing but affecting study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom, where the tedious, insignificant routine disperses what few wits the poor man was originally endowed with by nature.

In Gogol's greatest work, "Dead Souls," all his qualities are developed to the highest degree, though there is less pathos than in some of the short stories. This must forever rank as a Russian cla.s.sic. The types are as vivid, as faithful, for those who know the Russia of to-day, as when they were first introduced to an enthusiastic Russian public, in 1847.

In the pre-emanc.i.p.ation days, a "soul" signified a male serf. Women were not taken account of in the periodical revisions; although the working unit, or _tyaglo_, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse--the indispensable trinity in agricultural labors. In the interval between revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay taxes on all the male serfs accredited to him on the official list, births being considered as an exact offset to deaths, for the sake of convenience. Another provision of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An ingenious fraud, suggested by a combination of these two laws, forms the basis of plot for "Dead Souls." The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official who has struggled up, cleverly but not too honestly, through the devious ways of bribe-taking, extortion, and not infrequent detection and disgrace, to a snug berth in the customs service, from which he has been ejected under conditions which render further upward flight quite out of the question. In this dilemma, he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors of mediocre probity all their "souls" which are dead, though still nominally alive, and are taxed as such. Land is being given away gratuitously in the southern governments of Kherson and Tauris to any one who will settle on it. This is a matter of public knowledge, and Tchitchikoff's plan consists in buying a thousand non-existent serfs--"dead souls"--at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece, for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south. He will then mortgage them to the loan bank of the n.o.bility, known as the Council of Guardians, and obtain a capital. In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls."

Pushkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the phenomenal opportunities which this plot of Tchitchikoff's wanderings offered for setting forth Russian manners, characters, customs, all Russian life, in town and country, as Gogol did. The author even contrives, in keen asides and allusions, to throw almost equal light on the life of the capital as well. His portraits of women are not exactly failures; they are more like composite photographs. His portraiture of men is supreme. In fact, there is no such thing in the whole of Gogol's work as a heroine, properly speaking, who plays a first-cla.s.s part, or who is a.n.a.lyzed in modern fashion. The day was not come for that as yet.

"Taras Bulba," his great historical novel, offers a vivid picture of the famous kazak republic on the Dniepr, and equally with his other volumes, it stands in the first rank for its poetry, its dramatic force, its truth to life. It alone may be said to have a pa.s.sionate love story.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What special gift as a writer had Yazykoff?

2. Give the chief events in the career of Griboyedoff.

3. What was the character of Russian social life at this time?

4. What was the plot of "Woe from Wit"?

5. Describe the influence of Lermontoff.

6. What is the story of his famous "Ballad of the Tzar, the Lifeguardsman, and the Merchant"? Supply full t.i.tle.

7. What was Sch.e.l.ling's philosophy, and how did it affect Russian thinkers?

8. What important influence had Byelinsky?

9. What marked powers of description had Aksakoff?

10. How does Koltzoff's life ill.u.s.trate the widening influence of Russian literature?

11. How did the change from poetry to prose writing come about?

12. Give an account of the chief events in the life of Gogol.

13. How was the Russian tendency to mysticism ill.u.s.trated in his case?

14. Describe his famous play "The Inspector." What qualities does he show in this?

15. What are the characteristics of his "Tales"?

16. Why is "Dead Souls" regarded as his greatest work?

17. What is the character of "Taras Bulba"?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_A Hero of To-Day._ M. Y. Lermontoff. (Several translations.)

Works of Gogol: _The Inspector._ (Translated by Arthur Sykes.) _Taras Bulba._ (Translated by I. F. Hapgood.)

_Dead Souls, St. John's Eve, and Other Stories._ (Selections from the two volumes of _Little Russian and St. Petersburg Tales_. Translated by I. F. Hapgood.)

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Rubinstein used this as a foundation for the libretto of his delightful opera, with the same t.i.tle.

[14] Rubinstein used this as the libretto foundation for his opera of the same t.i.tle, which was produced once, prohibited by the censor, produced once again after a lapse of eight or ten years, and again promptly prohibited. After another interval of years it was again permitted.

[15] An unaristocratic form of Elena--Helen.

[16] The "Guests' Court," that is, the bazaar.

[17] His Russian name, "Grozny," means, rather, "menacing, threatening,"

than "terrible," the customary translation, being derived from "groza,"

a thunderstorm.

[18] Most Russians prefer to have the world "Slavyane" translated Slavonians, rather than Slavs, as the latter is calculated to mislead.

[19] His "Family Chronicle" was the favorite book (during her girlhood) of Marya Alexandrovna, the daughter of Alexander II., afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Edinburg, and now d.u.c.h.ess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I made acquaintance with this fascinating work by reading aloud from her copy to a mutual friend, a Russian.

[20] Literally, "Old-fashioned Landed Proprietors," who would, as a matter of course, belong to the gentry, or "n.o.bility," as the Russian term is. This t.i.tle is often translated, "Old-fashioned Farmers."