Contemporary Russian Novelists Part 6

In the very heart of the dense woods of the "taiga," Makar, a poor little peasant, who has become half savage by a.s.sociation with the Yakutsk people, dreams of a better future.

Makar does not dream, however, when he is normal; he hasn't time to, for he has to chop wood, plough, sow, and grind grain. He only dreams when he is drunk. As soon as he is under the influence of liquor, he weeps and says that he is going to leave everything and go to the "sacred mountain" to gain salvation for his soul. What is the name of this mountain? Where is it? He does not know exactly; he only knows that it is very far away. On Christmas eve, Makar extorts a ruble from two political refugees, and, instead of bringing them some wood for the money, he quickly buys some tobacco and brandy.

After drinking and smoking a great deal, Makar goes to sleep and has a dream. He dreams that the frost has got the better of him in the woods, that he has died there, and that the priest Ivan, who has also been dead a long time, takes him to the great Tayon--the G.o.d of the woods--to be judged for his former deeds. Even there his natural knavery does not forsake him; he tries to fool Tayon. But the latter has everything that Makar has ever done, both good and bad, written down, and becoming angry, he says: "I see that you are a liar, a sluggard, and a drunkard."

He orders Makar to be transformed into a post-horse, to be used by the police commissioner. And Makar, this Makar who never in his lifetime was known to say more than ten words at a time, suddenly finds that he has the faculty of speech. He begins by saying that he does not want to be a horse, not because he is afraid of work but because this decision is unfair. If one works geldings, one feeds them with oats; but people have imposed upon him and tortured him all his life and have never fed him, no, not even with oats.

"Who imposed upon you and tortured you?" asks old Tayon, moved by compa.s.sion.

"Everybody! The men who demanded taxes, the heat and the cold, rain and dryness, the pitiless earth, and the forest."

The beam of the balance wavers; the wooden dish, filled with sins, rises, while the golden one sinks.

Makar continues: "You have everything written down, have you? Well, look and see whether Makar has ever had any kindness shown to him.

He is here before his judges, dirty, his hair disordered, and his clothes in rags. He is ashamed. However, he realizes that he was born just like the others, with clear eyes in which both heaven and earth were reflected, and with a heart ready to open and receive all the beauty of the world."

Makar thus pa.s.ses in review his miserable life. Old Tayon is moved.

"Makar, you are no longer on earth, and you shall receive justice."

Makar begins to weep, and Tayon weeps too.... And the young G.o.ds and the angels, they also shed tears.

Again the balance moves. But this time it is in the opposite direction.

Makar has received justice from the hands of Tayon.

Korolenko does not try to reconcile us to reality, but to mankind.

In all of the catastrophes in his books, in the most sombre descriptions, he comforts us with a consolation, an ideal, a "little fire" that burns in the distance and attracts us. But to get to that fire we have to fight against evil. And it is perhaps in answer to Tolstoy's doctrine of pa.s.sive resistance that Korolenko wrote that beautiful story called, "The Legend of Florus," the subject of which was probably taken from "The War of the Jews," by Flavius Josephus.

This work takes us back to the time when Judaea was bowed down under Roman rule. The Jews bear their lot without a murmur, and this resignation encourages Florus, the governor of Judaea, to oppress them more.

Soon there are two parties formed: the "pacifics" want to rid themselves of Roman cruelty by humble submission, while the others advise opposing this cruelty to the utmost. The chief of the latter party is Menahem, the son of a famous warrior who has inherited from his father his generous pa.s.sions and his hatred of oppression.

Menahem's words inspire respect even in his enemies. But he does not succeed in making peace among his people. In vain he cries to them, as his father before him had cried: "It is disgraceful to bow down to sovereigns, especially since these sovereigns are men; no human being should bow down to any one excepting G.o.d, who created men that they might be free." With great trouble he finally succeeds in rousing a part of the people to rebellion. Then he leaves the city with his followers, resolved to defend his country. Menahem has no illusions as to the outcome; he knows that he will be conquered by the Romans. Nevertheless he is fearless, for his whole being is filled with a single thought,--the idea of justice, which imposes upon men certain obligations which they must not scorn.

During his stay in Siberia Korolenko had a very good chance to observe the deported convicts. Most of them are thieves, forgers, and murderers. The others, urged on by a heroic desire to live their own true lives, have been sent to this "cursed land" because of "political offences."

Korolenko is not resigned to the sadness of life, he is not an enemy to manly calls to active struggle, but he neither wants to, nor can he, break the ties that bind him to the real life of the present. He does not wish either to judge or to renounce this life. Nor does he try, by fighting, to perpetuate a conflict which is in itself eternal. If he struggles, it is rather in discontent than in despair. Not all is evil in his eyes, and reality is not always and entirely sad. His protestations hardly ever take the form of disdain or contempt; he does not rise to summits which are inaccessible to mankind. In fact, his ideal is close to earth; it is the ideal which comes from mankind, from tears and sufferings. If the thoughts and feelings of the author rise sometimes high above the earth, he never forgets the world and its interests. Korolenko loves humanity, and his ideals cannot separate themselves from it. He loves man and he believes that G.o.d lives in their souls.

We find these theories in the sketch called "En Route." The vagabond, Panov, is one of a party of deported convicts. At one of the stops, an inspector arrives who remembers having seen Panov when a young man. The old man goes over the history of his life, which has been marked with constant success, with pleasure. He shows the vagabond his little son, and with cruel egotism boasts of his happiness. Standing before him, his back bent, and a sad light in his eyes, Panov listens to the story. He feels vaguely that he has not lived and that he lacks personality. There is nothing in store for him except the useless existence of prison life. The egotistical and debonair inspector, in his simplicity, does not understand the anguish of the homeless prisoner, and, by his amicable chatter, subjects him to horrible moral torture. It is too much for Panov.

When the inspector leaves, Panov, gripping the edge of his hard cot in his convulsive hands, falls to the ground. He breathes heavily, his lips move, but he does not speak. "That night Panov got drunk."

Two very different types appear in the novel called, "The Postillion of the Emperor." We have here the idealist Misheka and the sectarian Ostrovsky, a transported prisoner who is embittered by his hard lot, and by life in general.

If Misheka protests against the complicated conditions of life to which he cannot entirely submit, it is rather by instinct than through reason. He is attracted by something invisible, something distant and strange, to the repugnant world which surrounds him. As a postillion of the State he has frequent communications with the distant world which glows vaguely on his mental horizon. Everything displeases him: both the savage country in which he has to live, and the world of stupid, degenerate, and miserable postillions whom he mercilessly criticizes. His random attempts to get away fail.

Despairing, he becomes an accomplice in a crime so that he can leave this solitary place and go where his restless soul leads him.

At the side of Misheka we have the tragic figure of Ostrovsky, who is the exasperated victim of the evil all around him.

The author and the travelers, driven by Misheka, have seen the burning of Ostrovsky's house, which the latter burned himself so that no one could profit by it. This action strikes Misheka as wonderful.

"He begins to tell the story of the fire. Several years before, Ostrovsky had been deported for having given up the orthodox faith.

His young wife and child followed him. They had been given a plot of land in a broad and deep valley, between two walls of rock. The place seemed fertile. It was not hard to sell wheat to the miners and Ostrovsky worked diligently and steadily. But the inhabitants had kept something from him: although the wheat grew in the valley, it never ripened, because each year, without fail, in the month of July it was destroyed by the cold winds from the northeast."

The first few years Ostrovsky attributed his failure to chance. He carefully cared for his crop in the hopes of a better season.

Alas, his wife died of sorrow, and autumn brought him nothing but straw. Ostrovsky, without weeping, dug a grave in the frozen ground and buried his wife. Then he asked permission to go to the mines, and borrowed some money for the trip from his neighbors. The latter gladly loaned it to him, thinking thus to get rid of him and to get the profit of his house and goods. But Ostrovsky fooled them in their nave simplicity; he heaped up all of his possessions in his little cottage and then set fire to it. He no longer thought of justice; he was nothing but a despairing man.

The patriarch of the village in which he had taken refuge tried to recall to him the faith for which he had been exiled:

"Do you remember," answered Ostrovsky, "the first visit I paid you to ask for advice? Ah, so you have forgotten that and you speak of G.o.d.... You are nothing but a crafty dog! All of you are dogs! There is nothing here but woods and rocks, and you are all just as insensible as the very rocks that surround you.... And your cursed land, and your sky, and your stars...." "He wanted to say something more, but he did not dare blaspheme, and there was silence again in the little cottage...."

This Ostrovsky is among the very best of Korolenko's heroes. The sight of this despairing and lonely man, who wanders about in the Siberian forests with his little daughter, calls louder for justice than all the speeches in the world.

Through the wealth of his talent and knowledge, Korolenko is of tremendous social value in three fields of work,--practical affairs, journalism, and art.

Among the many services which he has rendered to humanity, let us first mention his brilliant defence of the half-savage Votiaks, accused of ritual murder in the famous Malmige case. Although he had just suffered great grief himself--he had lost two children--he traveled to a distant town in order to be at the trial. He took his seat on the bench of the defenders. He used all of his knowledge, and all the love in his heart to defend the unhappy Votiaks, whose acquittal he succeeded in securing.

As a publicist, he has written some very valuable articles. Among them are observations on the famine year (he spent two months in one of the worst districts). In other articles he has a.n.a.lyzed a moral malady peculiar to our state of society:--honor. In the recent Russian duels he studied the perverse notions of honor and the moral changes produced by sickly egotism. He has studied the causes that bring about the complete loss of individuality. Finally, in 1910, he published under the t.i.tle, "Present Customs (Notes of a Publicist under Sentence of Death)" a series of doc.u.ments gathered here and there, which const.i.tute an eloquent and pa.s.sionate plea in favor of the abolitionist thesis.

When the great Tolstoy read the preface of this work, he wrote to Korolenko, "I often sobbed and wept. Millions of copies of this work ought to be distributed; it ought to be read by every one who has a heart. No discourse, no novel or play, can produce the effect that your 'Notes' do."

But above all, it is as the pure artist that Korolenko merits most attention. It is his talent that has already made him famous, and it is his talent that will make him immortal in Russian literature.

Korolenko is at present one of the most popular writers among the educated cla.s.ses. They have amply proved this to him, especially in 1903 and 1908, when they celebrated his 50th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his literary activity. On the occasion of these celebrations, delegations from many cities and universities came to St. Petersburg to congratulate and to thank the author who, through so many trials, had never ceased to uphold the cause of truth and goodness, and to claim for each human being the right to work, happiness, and free thought.

IV

VIKENTY VERESSAYEV

Veressayev is well known in France for his "Memoirs of a Physician,"

a work that has been translated into almost every language. However, his reputation in Russia is not based on this book, which is considered his masterpiece, but rather on his stories and tales. Let us, however, first take a glance at the life of this author, a life so closely connected with the subjects of his works that it forms an indispensable commentary on them.

Veressayev, whose real name is Vikenty Smidovich, was born in 1867, in Tula. His father was a Pole and his mother a Russian. His father, a very pious and strictly moral man, was a well known and well liked physician. In 1877, the boy entered the local school and received his degree there seven years later. In 1884, he left for the University of St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the department of historical sciences. Four years later, when he was twenty-four and a half, he received his degree of licentiate of letters.[5] Most of his cla.s.s-mates became school-teachers, but he preferred to pursue his studies. Medicine tempted him. He left for Zhouriev (formerly Dorpat, already famous for its department of medicine) and entered the university, where, at the end of six years, he received his doctor's degree.

[5] On the continent of Europe, a university degree between that of bachelor and of doctor.

Two years before, in 1892, a cholera epidemic had broken out in Russia. Young Smidovich, then a fourth-year student, asked to be sent immediately to a province in the East, where the epidemic was spreading like wildfire. He remained there several months, in fact until the plague had gone. As a doctor's a.s.sistant in an infirmary organized in one of the mining districts of the government of Ekaterinoslav, he witnessed a peasant revolt in which several doctors were killed and others cruelly burned by the exasperated and ignorant mob. Veressayev has traced these sad events with tremendous power in his story, "Astray."

His doctor's degree in his pocket, he went to Tula, where he practised for several months, but soon the position of house-surgeon was offered to him in the Botkin Hospital in St. Petersburg. He remained there seven years, till 1901, when, by order of the Minister of the Interior, who has charge of all hospital appointments, he was forced to retire from office and was expelled from St. Petersburg and forbidden to reside in either of the two capitals, Moscow or St. Petersburg. The reason for this was, that the name Veressayev appeared on the pet.i.tion of the "intellectuals"

which had been given to the Minister of the Interior, protesting against the brutal att.i.tude of the police during a student manifestation in the Kazan cathedral on March 4, 1901. This pet.i.tion brought severe punishment to almost all the people whose names were signed to it. Veressayev went abroad; he visited Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Gifted with poetic inspiration, he had begun writing at an early age. He was not more than fourteen when he translated some poems of Koerner and Goethe into Russian verse. Later, when at college, he wrote some short prose tales, which were published in various papers. But it was in 1896, when the "Russkoe Bogatsvo," the large St. Petersburg review, had published his two important stories, "Astray" and "The Contagion," that renown came to him. It came so suddenly that it troubled him and was almost a blow to his modesty, which is one of the sympathetic traits of his personality.