Comrade Kropotkin Part 6

"That's right. It has a tail as long as that."

"Come man, none of your tales now. Do you take me for a fool? I know a thing or two about the microscope myself."

"But I tell you it has. I aught to know better. That's the very first thing I saw under the microscope."

At this moment Kropotkin ran past them unnoticed, and tho usually much interested in convex lenses, took absolutely no part in the animated argument.

On gaining the street he was dumfounded to see that the huge man who occupied the carriage wore a military cap. The unhappy thought came to him that he had been betrayed. But on running nearer he saw it was a friend.

"Jump in! Jump in!" cried this modern Mikoula Selaninovich in a terrible voice, calling him a vile name. Leaning over to the coachman, he shoved a revolver in his face, screaming, "Gallop! Gallop! I will kill you, you----!!" using language abusive enuf to have made every foul-mouthed cossack in the cavalry stare in mute admiration.

Springing into the air from a forefoot, the beautiful horse--a famous trotter named Barbar--flew along as if it were shod not with steel but with wings. When the cause of Revolution is triumphant, this flying quadruped should receive a statue of purest gold, for two years later it rendered another magnificent service to the movement by bearing to safety the Nihilist Stepniak, after he helped a.s.sa.s.sinate the monstrous Mezentsov--murderer of many.[41]

Like lightning it leapt thru a narrow lane; they entered the immense Nevsky Prospect; they turned into a side-street; Kropotkin ran up a stair-case; the smiling comrade-coachman drove away. At the top of the steps waiting with painful anxiety was his sister-in-law. Physiologists claim it is impossible to do two things at one instant, but Kropotkin says that when he fell into her arms, she laughed and cried at once, and at the same time bade him change his clothes and crop his beard. Ten minutes later, he and his muscular Mikoula left the house, and took a cab. About an hour after, the house was searched, but as Kropotkin was not there, and it was necessary to arrest someone, the police took his sister and his sister-in-law.

Kropotkin was puzzled where to spend the time till evening, but his big friend knew. He called out to the cabman, "To Donon!" which has the same significance in Saint Petersburg that Delmonico has in New York, or Cecil in London, or Doree in Paris, or Bristol in Berlin, or Sacher in Vienna.

The decision was wise, for the police searched the dirty slums, but not the swell West End. So Kropotkin, dressed in an elegant costume, entered the aristocratic restaurant, and as he walks thru the halls flooded with light and crowded with guests, let us fill the biggest b.u.mper with the richest wine, and quaff congratulations to the n.o.blest prince that was ever imprisoned--and escaped.

Then softly let us retreat on tiptoe, and glance at his products for the bookshelf.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] For a description of this disease, see Professor Osler's "Principles and Practise of Medicine."----"In parts of Russia scurvy is endemic, at certain seasons reaching epidemic proportions; and the leading authorities upon the disorder, now in that country, are almost unanimous, according to Hoffmann, in regarding it as infectious."----This reference to a physician reminds me of an interesting little book which has just appeared, "Glimpses of Medical Europe," by Dr. Ralph L. Thompson. Writing of Russia he says, "In St.

Petersburg are fine parks and theatres and comfortable hotels in abundance. But despite it all there is an odd feeling of oppression that strikes one the moment he lands on Russian soil, and one doesn't breathe freely till he is out of it all."... "Personally I wouldn't mind foregoing health, friends and money, to fame; but if it came to a question of living in Russia, I would choose to die unknown."

[40] For a work dealing with revolutionary workmen and peasants, see "Mother," by Maxim Gorky. See also the admirable "Russia's Message" by William English Walling. This book is ill.u.s.trated with magnificent photographs, including the latest one of Kropotkin.

[41] The Russian Revolutionists are too modest. Stepniak in "Underground Russia," finds it necessary to mention that Mezentsov was stabbed to death in the streets of Saint Petersburg in full daylight, but he does not tell the reader that he himself was the author of the glorious deed.

To find this out, we must go to another work; for instance, Konni Zilliacus's "Russian Revolutionary Movement," or Leo Deutsch's "Sixteen Years in Siberia," (see the English translation by Helen Chisholm). On the other hand Deutsch escaped in a romantic manner from the prison in Kiev, but in his book he refers to it so casually that if we wish to learn the facts we must go to another work; either Stepniak's, or Professor Thun's "Geschichte der revolutionaren Bewegung in Russland."

FROM THE PRINTING PRESS

You poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, if you understand your true mission and the very interests of art itself, come with us.

Place your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service of the revolution. Figure forth to us, in your eloquent style, or your impressive pictures, the heroic struggles of the people against their oppressors, fire the hearts of our youth with that glorious revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our ancestors; tell women what a n.o.ble career is that of a husband who devotes his life to the great cause of social emanc.i.p.ation! Show the people how hideous is their actual life, and place your hands on the causes of its ugliness; tell us what a rational life would be, if it did not encounter at every step the follies and ignomies of our present social order.--P. KROPOTKIN: _An Appeal to the Young_.

Peter Kropotkin's writings range from obscure articles in unknown papers read by a handful of faithful subscribers, to cloth-bound far-famed volumes translated into several languages; include contributions to periodicals as revolutionary as _Revolte_ and as respectable as the _Atlantic Monthly_; embrace all subjects from machinery to music, and from Tolstoyism to Terrorism.

Judged from a literary standpoint, his work is distinctly disappointing. It is styleless. But it has one redeeming feature: clearness. The man is straight. He is not ashamed of his ideas. He speaks right out. He is one of the few authors who writes for the peculiar purpose of being understood. He does not bury the flower of his thought in a wilderness of words.

It cannot be contended that Kropotkin gave up his style because he writes for workers who are unable to appreciate the beauty of literary composition. A man may refuse a t.i.tle with an oath as Carlyle did, or give it up as Kropotkin himself did, but he who has a style relinquishes it not, for this is a gift besides which the 'boast of heraldry' is as a puppy's snappish yelp unto the lion's mighty roar.

Neither can it be claimed that Kropotkin's stylistic deficiency is due to the fact that he is an economist. So was Henry George, and yet there is a magical music in _Progress and Poverty_ which makes the phrases flow like a poem of Pushkin's.

Nor can it be argued that his style has been spoilt by the circ.u.mstance that he writes in various languages, for in none of his work is there epigram, imagery or imagination--the glorious trinity of the stylists.

But what has a foreign tongue to do with it? Was not Kossuth just as much an artist in English as in his native pepper? Even when he cried that we must seize the opportunity by the _front hair_? Many waters cannot quench love, and strange alphabets do not wipe out style.

What is a stylist? He is one who handles words, who licks phrases into shape, who moulds clauses to his bidding, who compels a sentence to leave a deathless impression, who weaves a connected chain of harmony from the scattered links of language.

Kropotkin has written very much, but practice does not make a stylist any more than learning the rules in the _Rationale of Verse_ makes one capable of producing _The Raven_. The secret of style is revealed to few. Its essence is a mystery in which only a handful are initiated. The elusive occultism of art consists in this--that a single expression has the power to either d.a.m.n a pa.s.sage into oblivion, or to emblazon it forever in eternity.

To give a striking instance: When Edgar Poe first wrote _To Helen_, these lines composed the second stanza:

"On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy cla.s.sic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome."

In this case the concluding couplet is cheap and commonplace--"fair Greece" and "old Rome" being anemic expressions unfit to live. Poe amended it to read:

"To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome."

Miracle of Art! This is not a change, but an apotheosis. We now have two lines which lay before us in gorgeous perfection a picture of the past; two lines as splendid as they were sickly, as magnificent as formerly they were mediocre. Yet the idea is the same in both cases. What then is it which makes so much difference? It is the manner of expression--it is style--it is art.

There is no reason why one man should be a stylist and another should not, but so it is. Huxley was a stylist; Darwin was not; Herzen, yes; Kropotkin, no.

Being anxious to know Kropotkin's exact att.i.tude towards Art, I wrote to him asking categorically: "In your opinion, have exquisite poets like Keats and Pushkin--who never touched social questions, but celebrated only beauty--been of much benefit to mankind?"

He answered thus: "Not in a direct way, but perhaps _very much in an indirect way_: Pushkin by creating language,[42] and Keats by teaching love of nature. As to "exquisiteness," have we not had too much of those egotistic sweets?"

Closely a.n.a.lysed, and reduced to its ultimate elements, this answer shows that Kropotkin has no use for art per se. According to him Keats and Pushkin are benefactors not because of their beautiful verses, but because of other reasons. Exquisiteness he condemns altogether. He rejects the doctrine of Art for the sake of Art. He does not subscribe to the creed of Flaubert, Gautier, Bouilhet, Maupa.s.sant, Anatole France and Lafcadio Hearn.

I think Kropotkin is wrong, and I believe that because his work lacks artistic finish, much of it is doomed to perish.

Maxim Gorky, in speaking of a brief period when the Russian Censorship was somewhat suspended, said, "Books fell over the land like flakes of snow, but their effect was as sparks of fire!"

If Kropotkin wished to express the same idea, he would say it something like this: "Numerous books of all descriptions were published and distributed thruout Russia."

How fine Gorky's; how poor Kropotkin's. How vivid the former; how weak the latter. This is the difference between style and lack of it. Not in the entire range of Kropotkin's writings is there a single sentence in any way comparing with the above one of Gorky's; for he who writes without art holds a crippled pen. I may be mistaken, but in my opinion this single quotation from the Bitter One is worth all Kropotkin's _Freedom Pamphlets_. It is sublime in its similes and exquisite in its ant.i.theses. There is a power in it which unchains enthusiasm and awakens intensity. "Books fell over the land like flakes of snow, but their effect was as sparks of fire." It is art. It is unforgettable, while to remember a phrase from _Modern Science and Anarchism_ is impossible.

With this introduction, we may proceed to examine his work, much of which is necessary and valuable, tho none of it is of primal or epoch-making importance. Stepniak is right when he says, "He is not a mere manufacturer of books. Beyond his purely scientific labors, he has never written any work of much moment." And as Herzen said of Ogaryov, we may remark of Kropotkin: "His chief life-work was the working out of such an ideal personality as he is himself."

The majority of prominent periodicals in England and America to which Kropotkin has contributed, are listed in the _Reader's Guide_ which can be found in any library, and those interested can look them up. Of course, many of these articles are first-cla.s.s, but I can stop to mention only two. See _Russia and the Student Riots_ (_Outlook_, April 6, 1901), which deals with the disturbances which caused the young revolutionist, Peter Karpowitch, to kill Bogolepov, Minister of Public Instruction. It shows with painful clearness the extreme and useless savagery of that cruel, repulsive, Stead-praised, arch-murderer, Nicholas II.

See also the _Present Crisis in Russia_, (_North American Review_, May 1901). In this excellent essay he refers to the Procurator of the Holy Synod in these words: "Pobedonostzeff, a narrow-minded fanatic of the state religion, who--if it were only in his power--would have burnt at the stake all protestants against Orthodoxy and Catholicism."[43]

Who should answer this article, but Pobedonostzeff himself! (_Russia and Popular Education_, _N. A. R._ September 1901). How strange when Light and Darkness are arrayed against each other![44] Pobedonostzeff calls Kropotkin "a learned geographer and sociologist;" but says; "Tho a Russian, he (Kropotkin) does not understand Russia, and is incapable of understanding his country; for the soul of the Russian people is a closed book to him which he has never opened." It is noteworthy that he does not attempt to deny Kropotkin's charge that if it were only in his power he would burn at the stake all protestants against orthodoxy and catholicism. Doubtless he considers this his chief crown of glory.

There was a further response from Kropotkin, (_Russian Schools and the Holy Synod_, _N. A. R._ April 1902).

Among his pamphlets which are used a.s.siduously by the anarchists of all countries for propaganda, and which often cause the arrest of the devoted distributer, are: _Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal. The State: Its Historic Role. War. Law and Authority. The Paris Commune.

Organized Vengeance--called Justice. Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles. An Appeal to the Young. The Psychology of Revolution. The Wage System._ These tracts are valuable as eye-openers to uneducated workmen, but they possess no merit whatsoever for cultured liberals.