A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections Part 16

There are women in Russian hamlets With a dignified calmness of face; With a beautiful strength in their movements, With mien and glance of an empress in grace.

A blind man alone could ignore them; And he who can see them must say: "She pa.s.ses--'tis as though the sun shineth!

She looks--'tis giving rubles away!"

A n.o.ble-minded, splendid peasant woman, who has worthily fulfilled all the duties of her hard lot, at last becomes a widow. The manner of it; the quaint folk-remedies employed to heal the sick man; the making of the shroud by the bereaved wife; the digging of his grave by his father; the funeral; all are described. The widow drives the sledge with the coffin to the grave. On her return home she finds that the fire is out and that there is no wood on hand. Intrusting her two children to the care of a neighbor, she drives off with the sledge to the forest to cut some. As she collects the fuel, her thoughts wander back over the past, and she sees a vision of her life, its joys and sorrows. Just as she is about to set out for home, she pauses, approaches a tall pine-tree with her axe, and there Jack Frost woos and wins her, and she remains, frozen stiff. The beauty and interest of the poem quite escape in this (necessarily) bald summary. The same is the case with "Russian Women."

The first poem of this is ent.i.tled "Princess Trubetzkoy." It begins by narrating how the "Count-father" prepares the covered traveling sledge for the Princess, who is bent upon the long journey to Siberia, to join her husband, one of the "Decembrists," exiled for partic.i.p.ation in the tumults of 1825, on the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. He spreads a thick bear-skin rug, puts in down-pillows, hangs up a holy image (_ikona_) in the corner, grieving the while. After this prologue, the journey of the devoted wife is described; the monotonous way being spent in great part by the n.o.ble woman in vision-like memories of her happy childhood, girlhood, and married life. On arriving at Irkutsk she receives a visit from the governor, an old subordinate of her father, who endeavors by every possible means to deter her from pursuing her journey. She persists in demanding that fresh horses be put to her sledge, and that she be allowed to proceed to the Nertchinsk mines, where her husband is. Failing to frighten her by the description of the hardships she will be compelled to endure, by telling her that she will have to live in the common ward of the prison with hundreds of prisoners, never see her husband alone, and the like, he at last informs her that she can proceed only on condition that she renounces all her rights, t.i.tle, property. She demands the doc.u.ment on the instant and signs it, and again demands her horses. The governor (who, by pleading illness, has already detained the impatient woman a whole week) then tells her that, having renounced her rights, she must traverse the remaining eight hundred versts[28] on foot, like a common prisoner, and that the majority fall by the way in so doing. Her only thought is the extra time which this will require. The governor, having done his duty, tells her that she shall have her horses and sledge as before; he will a.s.sume the responsibility. She proceeds. Here the poem ends. But the second poem, ent.i.tled "Princess Volkonsky," and dated 1826-1827 carries the story further for both women. It takes the form of a tale told to her grandchildren, to whom says the Princess Volkonsky, she will bequeath flowers from her sister Muravieff's grave (in Siberia), a collection of b.u.t.terflies, the flora of Tchita, views of that savage country, and an iron bracelet forged by their grandfather from his chains. She narrates how, at the age of seventeen, she married the Prince, a friend of her father, and the hero of many campaigns, much older than herself, who even after the wedding, is absent the greater part of the time on his military duties. Once, when they meet again after one of these prolonged separations, he is suddenly seized with panic, burns many doc.u.ments in her presence, and takes her home to her father without, however, explaining anything. After that she hears nothing about him for many months; no letters reach her, every one professes ignorance as to his whereabouts, but a.s.sures her he is engaged in his duties. Even when her son is born he makes no sign, and all further efforts to pacify her prove useless. She goes to St. Petersburg, finds out the truth, and insists on joining her husband who, with Prince Trubetzkoy and the other n.o.ble Decembrists, is in Siberia. Every effort on the part of friends and relatives to prevent her leaving her baby and taking this step prove of no avail. She obtains the Emperor's permission, and sets out. The description of her journey is even more graphic and touching than that of Princess Trubetzkoy's. She hears on the way about the efforts which have been made to turn the latter from her purpose, and that probably the same measures will be used with her.

At one point she meets the caravan which is bringing the silver from the Nertchinsk mines to the capital, and she asks the young officer in charge if the exiles are alive and well. He replies insultingly that he knows nothing about such people. But one of the peasant-soldiers of the caravan quietly gives her the desired information, and she adds, that invariably throughout her long and trying experience the peasant men have been truly sympathetic, helpful, and kind to the last degree, when their superiors were not. Efforts to turn her aside fail. She overtakes Princess Trubetzkoy, and the two friends pursue their sad journey together. On arriving in Nertchinsk, the commandant questions their right to see their husbands, refuses to recognize the Emperor's own signature, says he will send to Irkutsk for information (they had offered to go back themselves for it), and until it is received, they will not be permitted to hold communication with those whom they have come so far to see. The women resign themselves, and pa.s.s the night in a peasant hut, so small that their heads touch the wall, their feet the door. Princess Volkonsky, waking early, sets out on a stroll through the village, and comes to the mouth of the mine-shaft, guarded by a sentry.

She prevails upon this sentry to let her descend, contrary to orders, and after a long and arduous pa.s.sage through the rough, dripping corridors, and after running the risk of discovery by an official, and even of death (when she extinguishes her torch to escape the official, and proceeds in the dark), she reaches her husband and the other Decembrist exiles, and delivers to them the letters from their friends, which she has with her. The poem is most beautiful and affecting.

A third very famous poem is "Who in Russia Finds Life Good?" Seven peasants meet by chance on the highway, and fall into a dispute on that theme. One says, "the landed proprietor"; another, "the official"; a third, "the priest." Others say, respectively, "the fat-bellied merchant," "the minister of the empire," "the Tzar." All of the peasants had started out at midday upon important errands, but they argue hotly until sundown, walking all the while, and do not notice even that until an old woman happens along and asks them, "Where are they bound by night?" On glancing about them, the peasants perceive that they are thirty versts from home, and they are too fatigued to undertake the return journey at once. They throw the blame on the Forest-Fiend, seat themselves in the woods, and light a fire. One man goes off to procure liquor, another for food, and as they consume these, they begin the discussion all over again in such vehement wise that all the beasts and birds of the forest are affrighted. At last Pakhom, one of the peasants, catches a young bird in his hand and says that, frail and tiny as it is, it is more mighty than a peasant man, because its wings permit it to fly whithersoever it wishes; and he beseeches the birdling to give them its wings, so that they may fly all over the empire and observe and inquire, "Who dwelleth happily and at ease in Russia?" Surely, Ivan remarks, wings are not needed; if only they could be sure of half a pud (eighteen pounds) of bread a day (meaning the sour, black rye bread), they could "measure off Mother Russia" with their own legs. Another of the peasants stipulates for a vedro (two and three-quarters gallons) of vodka; another for cuc.u.mbers every morning; another for a wooden can of kvas (small beer, brewed from the rye bread, or meal) every noon; another for a teapot of boiling tea every evening. A peewit circles above them in the air, listening, then alights beside their bonfire, chirps, and addresses them in human speech. She promises that if they will release her offspring she will give them all they desire. The compact is made; she tells them where to go in the forest and dig up a coffer containing a "self-setting table-cloth," which will carry them all over the country at their behest. They demand, in addition, that they shall be fed and clothed; granted. They get the carpet; their daily supply of food appears from its folds, on demand (they may double, but not treble the allowance), and they vow not to return to their families until they shall have succeeded in their quest of a happy man in Russia. Their first encounter is with a priest, who in response to their questions, asks if happiness does not consist in "peace, wealth, and honor?" He then describes his life, and demonstrates that a priest gets none of these things. As they proceed on their way, they meet and interrogate people from all ranks and cla.s.ses. This affords the poet an opportunity for a series of pictures from Russian life, replete with national characteristics, stories, arguments, songs, described in varying meters.

The whole forms a splendid and profoundly interesting national picture-gallery.

The movements of the '40's and the '60's brought to the front several poets who sprang directly from the people. On the borderland of the two epochs stands the most renowned of Little Russian poets, Taras Grigorievitch Shevtchenko (1814-1861). He was the contemporary of Koltzoff and Byelinsky, rather than of Nekrasoff; nevertheless, he may be regarded as a representative of the latter's epoch, in virtue of the contents and the spirit of his poetry.

His history is both interesting and remarkable. He was the son of a serf, in the government of Kieff. When he was eight years old his mother died, and his father married again. His stepmother favored her own children, and to constant quarrels between the two broods, incessant altercation between the parents was added. At the age of eleven, when his father died, he began a roving life. He ran away from a couple of ecclesiastics who had undertaken to teach him to read and write (after having acquired the rudiments of those arts), and made numerous ineffectual attempts to obtain instruction in painting from various wretched daubers of holy pictures, having been addicted, from his earliest childhood, to scrawling over the walls of the house and the fences with charcoal drawings. He was obliged to turn shepherd. In 1827 he was taken on as one of his master's household servants, and sent to Vilna, where at first he served as scullion. Later on, it was decided that he "was fitted to become the household painter."

But he served at first as personal attendant on his master and handed him a light for his pipe, until his master caught him one night drawing a likeness of Kazak Platoff, whereupon he pulled Shevtchenko's ears, cuffed him, ordered him to be flogged, but simultaneously acquired the conviction that the lad might be converted into a painter to the establishment. So Shevtchenko began to study under a Vilna artist, and a year and a half later, by the advice of his teacher, who recognized his talent, the master sent the lad to a portrait-painter in Warsaw. In 1831 he was sent to his master in St. Petersburg on foot by the regular police "stages" (_etape_), arriving almost shoeless, and acted as lackey in the establishment. At last his master granted his urgent request, and apprenticed him for four years to an instructor in painting. Here Shevtchenko made acquaintance with the artist I. M. Soshenko, and through him with an author of some little note, who took pity on the young fellow's sorry plight, and began to invite him to his house, give him books to read, furnish him with various useful suggestions, and with money. Thus did Shevtchenko come to know the Russian and western cla.s.sical authors, history, and so forth. Through Soshenko's agency, the aid of the secretary of the Academy of Arts was invoked to rescue the young man from his artist master's intolerable oppression, and his literary friend introduced Shevtchenko to Zhukovsky, who took an ardent interest in the fate of the talented young fellow. They speedily began operations to free Shevtchenko from serfdom; and the manner in which it was finally affected is curious. A certain general ordered a portrait of himself from Shevtchenko for which he was to pay fifty rubles. The general was not pleased with the portrait, and refused to accept it. The offended artist painted the general's beard over with a froth of shaving-soap, and sold the picture for a song to the barber who was in the habit of shaving the general, and he used it as a sign. The general flew into a rage, immediately purchased the portrait, and with a view to revenging himself on the artist, he offered the latter's master a huge sum for him. Shevtchenko was so panic-stricken at the prospect of what awaited him, that he fled for aid to the artist Briuloff, entreating the latter to save him. Briuloff told Zhukovsky, and Zhukovsky repeated the story to the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I.

Shevtchenko's master was ordered to stop the sale. The Empress then commanded Briuloff to complete a portrait of her which he had begun, and she put it up as the prize in a lottery among the members of the imperial family for the sum of ten thousand rubles--the price offered for Shevtchenko by the enraged general. Shevtchenko thus received his freedom in May, 1838, and immediately began to attend the cla.s.ses in the Academy of Arts, and speedily became one of Briuloff's favorite pupils and comrades.

In 1840 he published his "Kobzar"[29] which made an impression in Little Russia. In 1842 he began the publication of his famous poem, "The Hadamak" (A Warrior of Ancient Ukraina). In 1843 he was arrested and sent back to Little Russia, where he lived until 1847, and during this period his talent bore its fairest blossoms, and his best works appeared: "The Banquet of the Dead," "The Hired Woman," "The Dream,"

"The Prisoner," "Ivan Gus" (the goose), "The Cold Hillside," and so forth. His literary fame reached its zenith, and brought with it the friendship of the best intellectual forces of southern Russia, and with the aid of Princess Ryepnin (cousin to the minister of public education) and Count Uvaroff, he obtained the post of drawing-master in Kieff University. But in 1847 some one overheard and distorted a conversation in which Shevtchenko and several friends had taken part, the result being that all were arrested, while Shevtchenko, after being taken to St. Petersburg, was sent to the Orenburg government in the far southeast, to serve as a common soldier in the ranks, and was forbidden to paint or to write. There he remained for ten years, when he returned to the capital, and settled down at the Academy of Arts, where he was granted a studio, in accordance with his right as an academician. He never produced anything of note in the literary line thereafter, and the last three years of his life were chiefly devoted to releasing his relatives from serfdom, and furnishing them with land for cottages, which object he accomplished a few months before the general emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs.

In the work of Shevtchenko it is possible to follow the curious transformation from what may be called the collective-folk creative power, to the purely individual. His figures, subjects, and the quiet, heart-rending sadness of his poems are precisely the same as those to be met with in any Little Russian folk-ballad. The majority of his poems are not inventions, but are taken directly from popular legends and traditions, and the personality of the poet vanishes in a flood of purely popular poetry. Nevertheless, he is not a slavish copyist of this folk-poetry. The language of his compositions is strikingly simple, and comprehensible not only to native-born Little Russians, but also to those who are not acquainted with the dialect of that region. Most writers who have employed the Little Russian dialect are difficult of comprehension not only to educated Great Russians, but also to ordinary Little Russians, because their language is artificial, intermingled with a ma.s.s of new words and expressions invented in educated circles of Little Russia. But Shevtchenko wrote in the living tongue of the Ukraina, in which its people talk and sing. His best work, after he came under the influence of Zhukovsky, is "The Hired Woman." This is the story of a girl who is betrayed, then forced by outsiders to abandon her child, after which she hires herself out as servant to the people at whose door she has left the child, and so is enabled to rear it, only revealing the secret to her child on her deathbed.

The sufferings of the people in serfdom form the subject of another series of his poems, and in this category, "Katerina" is the best worked out and most dramatic of his productions. A third category comprises the historical ballads, in which he celebrates the days of kazak freedom.

This cla.s.s comprises two long poems, "The Hadamak" (The Kazak Warrior of Ancient Ukraina) and "Gamaliya," besides a number of short rhapsodies. In these poems the writer has expressed his political and social views, and they are particularly prized by his fellow-landsmen of the Ukraina. The fourth (or, in the order of their appearance, the first) cla.s.s of Shevtchenko's poems consists of ballads in the folk-style, and sentimental, romantic pieces, which have no political or social tendencies. Such are the ballads, "The Cause," "The Drowned Woman," "The Water Nymph," "The Poplar Tree," which he wrote in St.

Petersburg on sc.r.a.ps of paper in the summer garden.

Of less talent and importance was a fellow-citizen of Koltzoff, Ivan Savitch Nikitin (1824-1861). Perhaps the most interesting thing about him is that Count L. N. Tolstoy took a lively interest in this gifted plebeian, and offered to bear the cost of publishing his poems, regarding him as a new Koltzoff. Count Tolstoy has since arrived at the conclusion that all poetry is futile and an unnecessary waste of time, as the same ideas can be much better expressed in prose, and with less labor to both writer and reader.

The poet from the educated cla.s.ses of society who deserves the most attention as a member of Nekrasoff's camp, is Alexyei Nikolaevitch Pleshtcheeff (1825-1893), the descendant of an ancient family of the n.o.bility. In 1849 he was arrested for suspected implication in what is known as "The Petrashevsky Affair" (from the name of the leader), and imprisoned in the Peter-Paul Fortress. Together with Dostoevsky and nineteen others he was condemned to be shot, but all the prisoners were pardoned by the Emperor (the charge was high treason) at the last moment, and after spending nine months in the fortress, Pleshtcheeff was sent to serve as a common soldier in the troops of the line, in the Orenburg government, with the loss of all his civil rights. There he remained nine years, taking part in several border campaigns, and rising to the rank of ensign, after which he entered the civil service. In 1859 he was allowed to return to Moscow, whence he removed to St. Petersburg in 1872.[30]

The princ.i.p.al writers of satirical verse during this period were: Alexyei Mikhailovitch Zhemtchuzhnikoff (1822), V. S. Kurotchkin (1831-1875), who founded the extremely popular journal "The Spark," in 1859, and D. D. Minaeff (1835-1889).

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What had been the progress of the drama in Russia up to the time of Ostrovsky?

2. How did "It Is All in the Family" make its appearance, and with what result?

3. What especial value has the play "The Thunderstorm"?

4. What variety of subjects are treated in Ostrovsky's plays?

5. Why does his work rank so high?

6. What plays by Turgeneff hold the next place to Ostrovsky's?

7. What are the best historical novels in the Russian language?

8. What was the character of the poetry of this period?

9. What ballads by Polonsky have a national reputation?

10. Give the chief events in the life of Nekrasoff.

11. What hostile criticism have his works received?

12. What may be said in his favor?

13. What is the story of "Red-Nosed Frost"?

14. What pictures of Russian society are given in "Russian Women"?

15. How is the poet's wide knowledge shown in his poem "Who in Russia Finds Life Good"?

16. Give an account of the eventful career of Shevtchenko.

17. What are the noteworthy features of his poetry?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_The Thunderstorm._ Ostrovsky.

_Prince Serebryany_; _The Death of Ivan the Terrible_. Count Alexei K. Tolstoy.

_Red-Nosed Frost._ N. A. Nekrasoff.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] I had the pleasure of knowing Polonsky and his wife, a gifted sculptress. He was a great favorite in society, for his charming personality, as well as for his poetry. He served on the Committee of Foreign Censure.

[27] I permit myself to quote from my "Russian Rambles" Count L. N.

Tolstoy's opinion, in which he succinctly expressed to me the view of this second party: "There are three requisites which go to make a perfect writer. First, he must have something worth saying. Second, he must have a proper way of saying it. Third, he must have sincerity.

d.i.c.kens had all three of these qualities. Thackeray had not much to say; he had a great deal of art in saying it, but he had not enough sincerity. Dostoevsky possessed all three requisites. Nekrasoff knew well how to express himself, but he did not possess the first quality; he forced himself to say something--whatever would catch the public at the moment, of which he was a very keen judge, as he wrote to suit the popular taste, believing not at all in what he said. He had none of the third requisite."

[28] A verst is about two-thirds of a mile.

[29] The player on the Little Russian twelve-stringed guitar, the Kobza, literally translated.

[30] I saw him, a majestic old man, surrounded by an adoring throng of students and young men, at one of the requiem services for M. E.

Saltykoff (Shtchedrin), in the Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg, in April, 1889.