A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections Part 4

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What was the effect of the Tatar raids upon Kieff?

2. What striking ill.u.s.tration have we of the weak religious literature of this time?

3. What were the "decorated narratives"? To what famous epic are they similar in style?

4. What foreign character have the secular tales of this period?

5. What famous collection of Legends of the Saints was made in the sixteenth century?

CHAPTER IV

THIRD PERIOD, FROM THE TIME OF IVaN THE TERRIBLE, 1530, TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Political events had tended to concentrate absolute power in the hands of the Grand Princes of Moscow, beginning with Ivan III. But no counterbalancing power had arisen in Russian society; there was no independent life, no respect for the individual, no public opinion to counteract the abuse of power. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Russian society had reached the extreme limits of development possible to it under its unfavorable conditions. The time for the Russian Renaissance had arrived. It is well to remember that at this time in other parts of Europe also the spirit of despotism and intolerance was holding individual liberty in check. This was the age of Henry VIII., of Catherine de Medici, of the Inquisition, and of the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.

In this century of transition, the sixteenth, the man who exerted over the spirit of the age more influence than any other was Maxim the Greek (1480-1556), a learned scholar, a monk of Mt. Athos, educated chiefly in Italy. He was invited to Russia by Grand Prince Vasily Ivanovitch, for the purpose of cataloguing a rich store of Greek ma.n.u.scripts in the library of the Grand Prince. To his influence is due one of the most noteworthy books of the sixteenth century, the "Stoglava," or "Hundred Chapters," a set of regulations adopted by the young Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch (afterwards known as Ivan the Terrible), the son of Vasily, and by the most enlightened n.o.bles of his time at a council held in 1551. Their object was to reform the decadent morals of the clergy, and various ecclesiastical and social disorders, and in particular, the absolute illiteracy arising from the lack of schools. Another famous work of the same century is the "Domostroy," or "House-Regulator,"

attributed to Pope (priest) Sylvester, the celebrated confessor and counselor of Ivan the Terrible in his youth. In an introduction and sixty-three chapters Sylvester sets forth the principles which should regulate the life of every layman, the management of his household and family, his relations to his neighbors, his manners in church, his conduct towards his sovereign and the authorities, his duties towards his servants and subordinates, and so forth. The most curious part of the work deals with the minute details of domestic economy--one injunction being, that all men shall live in accordance with their means or their salary--and family relations, in the course of which the position of woman in Russia of the sixteenth century is clearly defined.

This portion is also of interest as the forerunner of a whole series of articles in Russian literature on women, wherein the latter are depicted in the most absurd manner, the most gloomy colors--articles known as "About Evil Women"--and founded on an admiration for Byzantine asceticism. In his Household Regulations Sylvester thus defines the duties of woman:

"She goeth to church according to opportunity and the counsel of her husband. Husbands must instruct their wives with care and judicious chastis.e.m.e.nt. If a wife live not according to the precepts of her husband, her husband must reprove her in private, and after that he hath so reproved her, he must pardon her, and lay upon her his further injunctions; but they must not be wroth one with the other.... And only when wife, son, or daughter accept not reproof shall he flog them with a whip, but he must not beat them in the presence of people, but in private; and he shall not strike them on the ear, or in the face, or under the heart with his fist, nor shall he kick them, or thrash them with a cudgel, or with any object of iron or wood. But if the fault be great, then, removing the offender's shirt, he shall beat him (or her) courteously with a whip," and so forth.

We have seen that Ivan IV. (the Terrible) took the initiative in reforms. After the conquest of Kazan he established many churches in that territory and elsewhere in Russia, and purchased an immense quant.i.ty of ma.n.u.script service-books for their use, many of which turned out to be utterly useless, on account of the ignorance and carelessness of the copyists. This circ.u.mstance is said to have enforced upon Ivan's attention the advisability of establishing printing-presses in Russia; though there is reason to believe that Maxim the Greek had, long before, suggested the idea to the Tzar. Accordingly, the erection of a printing-house was begun in 1543, but it was only in April, 1563, that printing could be begun, and in March, 1564, the first book was completed--The Acts of the Apostles. The first book printed in Slavonic, however, is the "Oktoikh," or "Book of the Eight Canonical Tones,"

containing the Hymns for Vespers, Matins, and kindred church services, which was printed in Cracow seventy years earlier; and thirty years earlier, Venice was producing printed books in the Slavonic languages, while even in Lithuania and White Russia printed books were known earlier than in Moscow. After printing a second book, the "Book of Hours" (the Tchasosloff)--also connected with Vespers, Matins, kindred services, and the Liturgy, in addition--in 1565, the printers, both Russians, were accused of heresy, of spoiling the book, and were compelled to flee from Moscow. In 1568 other printers produced in Moscow the Psalter, and other books. In 1580, in Ostrog, Government of Volhnia, in a printing-house founded by Prince Konstantin Konstantinovitch Ostrozhsky, was printed the famous Ostrozhsky Bible, which was as handsome as any product of the contemporary press anywhere in Europe.

Nevertheless, ma.n.u.scripts continued to circulate side by side with printed books, even during the reign of Peter the Great.

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, secular literature and authors from the highest cla.s.ses of society again made their appearance; in fact, they had never wholly disappeared during the interval. Ivan the Terrible himself headed the list, and Prince Andrei Mikhailovitch Kurbsky was almost his equal in rank, and more than his equal in importance from a literary point of view. Ivan the Terrible's writings show the influence of his epoch, his oppressed and agitated childhood, his defective education; and like his character, they are the perfectly legitimate expression of all that had taken place in the kingdom of Moscow.

The most striking characteristic of Ivan's writings is his malicious, biting irony, concealed beneath an external aspect of calmness; and it is most noticeable in his princ.i.p.al works, his "Correspondence with Prince Kurbsky," and his "Epistle to Kozma, Abbot of the Kirillo-Byelozersk Monastery." They display him as a very well-read man, intimately acquainted with the Scriptures, and the translations from the Fathers of the Church, and the Russian Chronicles, as well as with general history. Abbot Kozma had complained to the Tzar concerning the conduct of certain great n.o.bles who had become inmates of his monastery, some voluntarily, others by compulsion, as exiles from court, and who were exerting a pernicious influence over the monks. Ivan seized the opportunity thus presented to him, to pour out all the gall of his irony on the monks, who had forsaken the lofty, spiritual traditions of the great holy men of Russia.

Of much greater importance, as ill.u.s.trating Ivan's literary talent, is his "Correspondence with Prince Kurbsky" (1563-1579), a warrior of birth as good as Ivan's own, a former favorite of his, who, in 1563, probably in consequence of the profound change in Ivan's conduct, which had taken place, and weighed so heavily upon the remainder of his reign, fled to Ivan's enemy, the King of Poland. The abuses of confidence and power, with the final treachery of Priest Sylvester (Ivan's adviser in ecclesiastical affairs), and of Adasheff (his adviser in temporal matters), had changed the Tzar from a mild, almost benevolent, sovereign, into a raging despot. On arriving in Poland, Prince Kurbsky promptly wrote to Ivan announcing his defection, and plainly stating the reasons therefor. When Ivan received this epistle--the first in the celebrated and valuable historical correspondence which ensued--he thrust his iron-shod staff through the foot of the bearer, at the bottom of the Red (or Beautiful) Staircase in the Kremlin, and leaning heavily upon it, had the letter read to him, the messenger making no sign of his suffering the while. Kurbsky a.s.serted the rights of the individual, as against the sovereign power, and accused Ivan of misusing his power.

Ivan, on his side, a.s.serted his omnipotent rights, ascribed to his own credit all the noteworthy events of his reign, accused Kurbsky of treason, and demonstrated to the Prince (with abundant Scriptural quotations), that he had not only ruined his own soul, but also the souls of his ancestors--a truly Oriental point of view. "If thou art upright and pious," he writes, "why wert not thou willing to suffer at the hands of me, thy refractory sovereign lord, and receive from me the crown of life?... Thou hast destroyed thy soul for the sake of thy body ... and hast waxed wroth not against a man, but against G.o.d."

Kurbsky's letters reveal in him a far more cultivated man, with more sense of decency and self control, and even elegance of diction, than the Tzar. He even reproaches the latter, in one letter, for his ignorance of the proper way to write, and for his lack of culture, and tells him he ought to be ashamed of himself, comparing the Tzar's literary style with "the ravings of women," and accusing him of writing "barbarously."

In addition to these letters, Kurbsky wrote a remarkable history of Ivan the Terrible's reign, ent.i.tled, "A History of the Grand Princ.i.p.ality of Moscow, Concerning the Deeds Which We Have Heard from Trustworthy Men, and Have also Beheld with Our Own Eyes." It is brought down to the year 1578. This history is important as the first work in Russian literature in which a completely successful attempt was made to write a fluent historical narrative (instead of setting forth facts in the style of the Chronicles), and link facts to preceding facts in logical sequence, deducing effects from causes.

To the reign of Ivan the Terrible belong, also, "A History of the Kingdom of Kazan," by Priest Ioann Glazatly; and the "Memoirs of Alexei Adasheff"--the most ancient memoirs in the Russian language.

In the mean time, during this same sixteenth century, a new culture was springing up in southwestern Russia, and in western Russia, then under the rule of Poland, and under the influence of the Jesuits. Many Russians had joined the Roman Church, or the "Union" (1596), by which numerous eastern orthodox along the western frontier acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope of Rome, on condition of being allowed to retain their own rites and vernacular in the church services. In the end, they were gradually deprived of these, almost entirely; and curiously enough, the solution of this problem has been found, within the last decade, in the United States, where the immigrant Uniates are returning by the thousand to the Russian Church. In order to counteract the education and the wiles of the Jesuits, philanthropic "Brotherhoods" were formed among the orthodox Christians of southwest Russia, and these brotherhoods founded schools in which instruction was given in the Greek, Slavonic, Latin, and Polish languages; and rhetoric, dialectics, poetics, theology, and many other branches were taught. One of these schools in Kieff was presided over by Peter Moghila (1597-1646), the famous son of the Voevoda of Wallachia, who was brilliantly educated on the Continent, and at one time had been in the military service of Poland. Thus he thoroughly understood the situation when, later on (1625), he became a monk in the Kieff Catacombs Monastery, and eventually the archimandrite or abbot, and devoted his wealth and his life to the dissemination of education among his fellow-believers of the Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church. The influence of this man and of his Academy on Russia was immense. The earliest school-books were here composed. Peter Moghila's own "Shorter Catechism" is still referred to. The Slavonic grammar and lexicon of Lavrenty Zizanie-Tustanovsky and Melenty Smotritzky continued in use until supplanted by those of Lomonosoff one hundred and fifty years later. The most important factor, next to the foundation of the famous Academy, was, that towards the middle of the seventeenth century learned Kievlyanins, like Simeon Polotzky, attained to the highest ecclesiastical rank in the country, and imported the new ideas in education, which had been evolved in Kieff, to Moscow, where they prepared the first stable foundations for the future sweeping reforms of Peter the Great.

Literature continued to bear an ecclesiastical imprint; but there were some works of a different sort. One of the compositions which presents a picture of life in the seventeenth century--among the higher and governing cla.s.ses only, it is true--is Grigory Kotoshikin's "Concerning Russia in the Reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch." Kotoshikin was well qualified to deal with the subject, having been secretary in the foreign office, and attached to the service of Voevoda (field marshal), Prince Dolgoruky, in 1666-1667. Among other things, he points out that the "women of the kingdom of Moscow are illiterate," and deduces the conclusion that the chief cause of all contemporary troubles in the kingdom is excessive ignorance. He declares, "We must learn from foreigners, and send our children abroad for instruction"--precisely Peter the Great's policy, it will be observed.

Another writer, Yury Krizhanitz, must have exerted a very considerable influence upon Peter the Great, as it is known that the latter owned his work on "The Kingdom of Russia in the Middle of the Seventeenth Century." This book contains a discussion as to the proper means for changing the condition of affairs then prevailing; as to the degree in which foreign influence should be permitted; and precisely what measures should be adopted to combat this or that social abuse or defect. The programme of reforms, which he therein laid down, was, to proceed from the highest source, by administrative process, and without regard to the opposition of the ma.s.ses. This programme Peter the Great carried out most effectually later on.

Battle was also waged with the old order of things in the spiritual realm by the famous Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681), who, as a peasant lad of twelve, ran away from his father's house to a monastery. Although compelled by his parents to return home and to marry, he soon went back and became a monk in a monastery in the White Sea. Eventually he rose not only to the highest ecclesiastical post in the kingdom, but became almost more powerful than the Tzar himself. He may be cla.s.sed with the great literary forces of the land, in that he caused the correction of the Slavonic Church Service-books directly from the Greek originals, and eliminated from them innumerable and gross errors, which the carelessness and ignorance of scribes and proof-readers had allowed to creep into them. The far-reaching effects of this necessary and important step, the resulting schism in the church, which still endures, Nikon's quarrels with the Tzar Alexei Mikhailovitch, Peter the Great's father, are familiar matters of history; as is also the fact that the power he won and the course he held were the decisive factors in Peter the Great's resolve to have no more Patriarchs, and to intrust the government of the church to a College, now the Most Holy Governing Synod.

When Nikon pa.s.sed from power, lesser men took up the battle. Chief among these was Archimandrite Simeon Polotzky (already mentioned), who lived from 1626-1681, and was the first learned man to become tutor to a Tzarevitch. The spirit of the times no longer permitted the heir to the throne to be taught merely to read and write from the primer, the Psalter, and the "Book of Hours"; and Alexei Mikhailovitch appointed Simeon Polotzky instructor to the Tzarevitch Feodor.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What unfavorable conditions do we find in Russian society at the beginning of the sixteenth century?

2. Who was Maxim the Greek, and what service did he render to his times?

3. What was the purpose of the "House-Regulator" of Pope Sylvester?

4. How does he define the duties of woman?

5. What early attempts at printing were made in Russia?

6. What qualities of Ivan the Terrible may be seen in his writings?

7. Describe his correspondence with Prince Kurbsky.

8. How do Kurbsky's qualities compare with those of the Tzar, as shown in this correspondence?

9. Why is Kurbsky's history of Moscow a remarkable work?

10. What great work was done by Moghila and his Academy?

11. How did his influence prove very far-reaching?

12. What did other writers of this time say of the need for better education in Russia?

13. Describe the career of the famous Patriarch Nikon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_History of Russia._ Rambaud, Chapter XV., Ivan the Terrible, also Chapters XVI.-XX.

_The Story of Russia._ W. R. Morfill.

CHAPTER V

FOURTH PERIOD, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EPOCH OF REFORM UNDER PETER THE GREAT.