Contemporary Russian Novelists Part 4

"They are going to leave; we shall be alone; the monotonous life is going to begin again," cries one of the sisters.

"We must work; work alone consoles," says the second.

And the youngest exclaims, embracing her two sisters, while the military band plays the farewell march:

"Ah, my dear sisters, your life is not yet completed. We are going to live. The music is so gay! Just a little bit more, and I feel that we shall know why we live, why we suffer...."

This certainly is the dominant note of Tchekoff's philosophy: the impotency of living mitigated by a vague hope of progress.

The last, and perhaps the most important play of Tchekoff, is "The Cherry Garden."[4] Human beings, locked up in themselves, morally bounded, impotent and isolated, wander about in the old seignioral estate of the Cherry Garden. The house is several centuries old. In former times a happy life was led there; feasts were given, and generals and princes were the hosts. The Cherry Garden gave tone to the neighborhood, but many years have pa.s.sed!... Now other houses have taken its place: the estate is mortgaged, the interest is not paid, and the only guests now are the postman or a railway official who lives close by. The occupants of the house do not think of doing anything about this state of things. For them the past is gone. All that is left is a dislike for work, carelessness, improvidence, and ignorance of the necessities of the present. Like all that dies, they evoke a certain pity, a certain fatality hangs over them. The inhabitants of the Cherry Garden set forth their ideas about one another; but in reality none of them see anything but themselves, in their small and very limited moral world, and they a.n.a.lyze with difficulty the embryos of thought that are left to them. Thus, they cannot grasp in full the evil that is falling on the old home, and they remain impa.s.sive when some one proposes to alleviate this evil by energetic means. People speak to them of the downfall to which they are doomed; a means of safety is proposed, but they turn a deaf ear and continue in their narrow and fruitless dream. Finally, when the estate is sold, they look upon this event as a fatal and unexpected blow. They say good-bye to the cradle of their family, weeping silently, and depart.

[4] For some reason, unknown to the translator, the author has made no mention of Tchekoff's famous play, "The Sea-Gull." This drama, which, when first produced, was a flat failure, scored a tremendous success a short while afterwards. It is especially interesting in that the author has made one of the characters, Trigorin, largely autobiographical. To-day "The Sea-Gull" is one of the most popular productions on the Russian stage.

They are now thrown out into the world. The old existence has gone, as well as the seignioral estate. The Cherry Garden is to be torn down; the blinds are all lowered, and in the half-darkened rooms, the old servant, who is nearly a century old, wanders about among the disordered furniture.

Tchekoff is a true product of Russian literature, an autochthon plant, nourished by his natal sap. His humor is completely Russian; we hear Tolstoyan notes in his democracy; the "failures" of his stories are distantly related to the "superficial characters" of Turgenev; finally, the theory of the redemption of the past by suffering which he puts in the heart of the hero of the "Cherry Garden" makes us think of Dostoyevsky. The qualities which call to mind all these great names in Russian literature are found in the works of Tchekoff along with characteristics which show a very original talent. If one wishes to look for foreign influence, one can relate Tchekoff to de Maupa.s.sant and Ibsen, of whom he reminds one in s.n.a.t.c.hes, although still in a very vague way. And that is indeed fortunate, for, in general, Scandinavian symbolism hardly goes hand in hand with the Russian spirit, which likes to make _direct_ answers to "cursed questions," and whose ideal, elaborated since 1840 in the realm of strict realism, is so definite that it does not necessitate going back to the circ.u.mlocutions of metaphors and allegories.

While Tchekoff lived his literary aspect was enigmatical. Some judged him to be indifferent, because they did not find in his writings that revolutionary spirit which is felt in almost all modern writers. Others thought of him as a pessimist who saw nothing good in Russian life, because he described princ.i.p.ally resigned suffering or useless striving for a better life. Since the death of Tchekoff, which made it necessary for the critics to study his works as a whole, and especially since the publication of his correspondence, his character has come to the fore, as it really is: he is a writer, who, by the very nature of his talent, was irresistibly forced to study the inner life of man impartially, and who, consequently, remains the enemy of all religious or philosophical dogmas which may hinder the task of the observer.

The division of men into good and bad, according to the point of view of this or that doctrine, angered him:

"I fear," he says in one of his letters, "those who look for hidden meanings between the lines, and those who look upon me as a liberator or as a guardian. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative, neither a monk nor an indifferent person. I despise lies and violence everywhere and under any form.... I only want to be an artist, and that's all."

One realized that this unfettered artist, with his hatred of lies and violence, although he belonged to no political party, could be nothing but a liberal in the n.o.blest and greatest sense of the word.

One also realized that he was not the pessimist that he was once believed to be, but a writer who suffered for his ideal and who awakened by his works a desire to emerge from the twilight of life that he depicted.

To some he even appeared as an enchanted admirer of the future progress of humanity. Did he not often say, while admiring his own little garden: "Do you know that in three or four hundred years the entire earth will be a flourishing garden? How wonderful it will be to live then!" And did he not p.r.o.nounce these proud words: "Man must be conscious of being superior to the lions, tigers, stars, in short, to all nature. We are already superior and great people, and, when we come to know all the strength of human genius, we shall be comparable to the G.o.ds."

These great hopes did not prevent him from painting with a vigorous brush the nothingness of mankind, not only at a certain given moment and under certain circ.u.mstances, but always and everywhere. Is this a paradox? No. If he did not doubt progress, he would be most pessimistic, if I may so express myself. He would suffer from that earthly pessimism, in face of which reason is weak; the pessimism which manifests itself by a hopeless sadness in face of the stupidity of life and the idea of death.

"I, my friend, am afraid of life, and do not understand it," says one of Tchekoff's heroes. "When, lying on the gra.s.s, I examine a lady-bird, it seems to me that its life is nothing but a texture of horrors, and I see myself in it.... Everything frightens me because I understand neither the motive nor the end of things. I understand neither persons nor things. If you understand I congratulate you.

"When one looks at the blue sky for a long time, one's thoughts and one's soul unite mysteriously in a feeling of solitude.... For a moment one feels the loneliness of the dead, and the enigma of hopeless and terrible life."

This universal hopelessness; this sadness, provoked by the plat.i.tudes of existence compared with the unrelenting lessons of death, of which Tchekoff speaks with such a nervous terror, can be found in almost all the works of the best known Russian writers. We find it in Byronian Lermontov, who sees nothing in life but "une plaisanterie;" in Dostoyevsky, who has written so many striking pages of realism on the bitterness of a life without religious faith; and in the realist Turgenev, we find the same kind of thing.

Turgenev even reaches a stage of hopeless nihilism, and one of his heroes, Bazarov,--in "Fathers and Sons,"--reflecting one day on the lot of the peasant, considering it better than his, says sadly, "He, at least, will have his little hut, while all I can hope for is a bed of thorns." Finally, all the tortuous quests of the ideal toward which Tolstoy strove, were suggested to him, as he himself says, by his insatiable desire to find "the meaning of life, destroyed by death."

It is sometimes maintained that this state of intellectual sadness is innate in the Russians; that their sanguinary and melancholy temperaments are a mixture of Don Quixote and Hamlet. Foreign critics have often traced this despair to the so-called mysticism peculiar to the Slavonic race.

What is there mystical in them? The consciousness of the nothingness, of the emptiness of human life, can be found deep down in the souls of nearly all mankind. It shows itself, among most people, only on rare tragic occasions, when general or particular catastrophes take place; at other times it is smothered by the immediate cares of life, by pa.s.sions that grip us, and, finally, by religion. But none of these influences had any effect on Tchekoff.

He was too n.o.ble to be completely absorbed by the mean details of life; his organism was too delicate to become the prey of an overwhelming pa.s.sion; and his character too positive to give itself over to religious dogmas. "I lost my childhood faith a long time ago," he once wrote, "and I regard all intelligent belief with perplexity.... In reality, the 'intellectuals' only play at religion, chiefly because they have nothing else to do." Tchekoff, in his sober manner, has seen and recognized the two great aspects of life: first, the world of social and historical progress with its promise of future comforts; secondly, an aspect that is closely related to the above, the obscure world of the unknown man who feels the cold breath of death upon him. He was an absolute positivist; his positivism did not make him self-a.s.sertive nor peremptory; on the contrary, it oppressed him.

But why should this sad state of mind, which has been expressed by great men in all literatures, be so exceptionally prominent among the Russians, and particularly among the modern ones? The reason is, without a doubt, because the political and social organization of Russia has always been a prison for literature. Oppression had reached its height during Tchekoff's life. This period was the moment of suffocation before the storm. If Tchekoff were alive to-day, now that the tempest has burst forth, his sadness would be lessened, or it would at least have before it the screen which, according to Pascal, people wear before their eyes that they may not see the abyss, on the edge of which they pa.s.s their lives. Up to the present time, the Russians have lacked these screens.

III

VLADIMIR KOROLENKO

"A long time ago, on a dark autumn evening, I was being rowed down a rather uninteresting Siberian stream. Suddenly, at a bend in the river, I saw a bright fire burning ahead of us at the foot of some black mountains. It did not seem far away.

"'Thank Heaven,' I cried with joy, 'we have nearly reached our stopping-place!'

"The boatsman turned, looked at the fire over his shoulder, and again grasped the oars with an apathetic gesture:

"'That is still a long way off,' he murmured.

"I did not believe him, for the fire seemed to stand out very clear against the infinite shadows. However, he was right; we were still far away.

"Just so those fires, the conquerors of darkness, deceive us into thinking that they are near, while they only cast their distant, illusive rays into the night...."

It is with this sober description in "Little Fires" that one of the last volumes of Korolenko's "Sketches and Stories" opens. This simple picture makes a warm and clear impression on one's very soul.

It is itself a precious and welcome light.

At times when life is sombre, and when shadows fill the heart, when, under the blows of despair and anguish, courage finally fails, the mere existence of some brave spirit suffices to give a new birth to hope and to rekindle the flame so that the distance is again lighted up, and we again put our shoulders to the wheel.

Thus for more than thirty years in Russian literature Korolenko has played the part of one of these clear, alluring lights. He has not written a single book in which we do not find a fire that warms us with its caresses even from afar, not one in which we do not feel the vibration of a loving heart, which dreams of giving light and joy to all unfortunates, and is confident that if they have not yet had their equal share, they will surely have it some day.

Korolenko was born in 1853 in Zhitomir, in Little Russia. On his father's side he is descended from an old Cossack family, and by his mother he is related to Polish n.o.bility. This double origin, so to speak, is shown very clearly in his works, which are filled with the melancholy and dreamy poetry of the Little Russians, and also with the perennial hope so common among the Poles.

His father was a judge and enjoyed a reputation for strict integrity. It was, in fact, often hard for him to ward off those who wanted to thank him for his services. One day he had to accept a gift. A merchant, whose case he had won, sent him a cart filled with various objects, among which was a beautiful large doll. The little daughter of the judge saw it, and at once took possession of it. The judge, when he found out what had happened, ordered the gifts to be returned immediately; but, because of the grief of the little girl, they had to give up all thoughts of returning the doll.

The judge, who was a man of firm principles, maintained a severe discipline in his family. He made a special study of medicine and hygiene, and put his knowledge into practice by treating the sick of the neighborhood. His children, although always well dressed, had to go around barefoot. Their father was convinced that this was the best way to toughen them. Besides, they were compelled, every morning, summer and winter, to take a cold plunge bath. The children did not like this way of doing things. Early in the morning they used to run to the stable in their shirts, and there, cowering in a corner, trembling with cold, they would wait for their father to leave the house.

Korolenko remembers well this Spartan-like education, which inured him to the severity of the seasons. Without this training he certainly would have perished in savage and freezing Siberia, where he lived in exile for several years.

At the death of the father, the family with its six children was left without resources. The mother, a very good and kind woman, opened a boys' boarding-school, and Vladimir, then fifteen years of age, helped her as well as he could, and also earned money by giving lessons outside.

In 1870, after having finished his studies in his native town, Korolenko entered the Technological Inst.i.tute at St. Petersburg, where he spent two years in extreme poverty. He had to earn his living as well as he could, by giving lessons or doing copying. His mother could not help him at all, as she herself had to struggle against adversity. The following will show how sparingly he had to live in his youth: during his two years, he had a real substantial meal only about once in two months, and then in a restaurant run on philanthropic principles, where he paid only 30 copecks (about 30 cents). His regular meals consisted of bread, tea, sausage and potatoes. But this was an epoch in which living was cheap: the wave of democracy was spreading, and the "intellectuals" were trying to get into closer touch with the people. The movement was so powerful that many of the younger generation who could have done other things took up this work; others, on principle, married humble peasants. In 1872 Korolenko left for Moscow, and there entered the Academy of Agriculture. He was expelled after two years and sent to Kronstadt for having taken part in student manifestations. Several years later, we find him again in St. Petersburg without a permanent position; he was employed as a reader in a publishing house, and was also attempting to do some writing. His first efforts took the form of a series of sketches, published under the t.i.tle, "Episodes in the Life of a Seeker." He was at this time accused of being too much inspired by the scenes of sadness and injustice of which he had been a witness. In 1879 he was imprisoned and then deported to Viatka. He remained there a year. Thence he was sent to the miserable town of Kama, and a few months later to Tomsk, where he learned that they wanted to exile him to Siberia. In a letter, published by a newspaper, he eloquently protested against the persecutions of which he was the unhappy victim. His protestation was answered by his transfer to the frozen region of the province of Yakutsk in Eastern Siberia! He pa.s.sed three years in the midst of the "taiga," the immense virgin forest which covers this country, in a village of nomads whose miserable huts, very low and smoky, were scattered along the sh.o.r.es of the Aldane. Here he wrote several stories, and the "Dream of Makar," which was published two years later, and greatly praised by the critics for its originality and its setting.

The dreary country around Yakutsk and the life that is lived there made such a profound impression on the young man that even to-day he speaks of that time with real emotion.

"My hut was at the extreme end of the town. During the short day one could see the small plain, the mountains which surrounded it, and the fires in the other huts, in which lived people who were either descended from Russian colonists or deported Tartars. But in the morning and evening a cold grey mist covered everything so thickly that one could not see a foot ahead.

"My little hut was like a lost island in a boundless ocean. Not a sound about me.... The minutes, the hours pa.s.sed, and insensibly the fatal moment approached when the 'cursed land' pierced me with the hostility of its freezing cold and its terrible shadows, when the high mountains covered with black forests rose menacingly before me, the endless steppes, all lying between me and my country and all that was dear to me.... Then came the terrible sadness ... which, in the depths of your heart, suddenly lifts up its sinister head, and in the terrible silence among the shadows murmurs these words: 'This is the end of you ... the very end ... you will remain in this tomb till you die....'

"A low and caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold weather, I did not have a fire.

"Whenever I felt that I was going to be beaten in my struggle with silence and the shadows, I turned to this wholesome expedient,--a large fire."

In 1885, Korolenko, having returned from Siberia, went to Nizhny-Novgorod, and in a relatively short s.p.a.ce of time wrote a series of stories which, two years later, were collected in book form. Afterward, he became the editor of the celebrated St.

Petersburg review, the "Russkoe Bogatsvo,"--a position which he still holds.