Essays on Russian Novelists Part 1

Essays on Russian Novelists.

by William Lyon Phelps.

I

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTION

The j.a.panese war p.r.i.c.ked one of the biggest bubbles in history, and left Russia in a profoundly humiliating situation. Her navy was practically destroyed, her armies soundly beaten, her offensive power temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury exhausted, her pride laid in the dust. If the greatness of a nation consisted in the number and size of its battleships, in the capacity of its fighting men, or in its financial prosperity, Russia would be an object of pity. But in America it is wholesome to remember that the real greatness of a nation consists in none of these things, but rather in its intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it gives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and to all things that count in humanity's intellectual advance. When we Americans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we might profitably reflect for a moment on the comparative value of America's and Russia's contributions to literature and music.

At the start, we notice a rather curious fact, which sharply differentiates Russian literature from the literature of England, France, Spain, Italy, and even from that of Germany. Russia is old; her literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century; Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in the nineteenth. Russian literature and American literature are twins. But there is this strong contrast, caused partly by the difference in the age of the two nations. In the early years of the nineteenth century, American literature sounds like a child learning to talk, and then aping its elders; Russian literature is the voice of a giant, waking from a long sleep, and becoming articulate. It is as though the world had watched this giant's deep slumber for a long time, wondering what he would say when he awakened. And what he has said has been well worth the thousand years of waiting.

To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language, twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; but the general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interested in only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists like Gorki, Artsybashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedly attracting wide attention. The great five, whose place in the world's literature seems absolutely secure, are Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi. The man who killed Pushkin in a duel survived till 1895, and Tolstoi died in 1910. These figures show in how short a time Russian literature has had its origin, development, and full fruition.

Pushkin, who was born in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence.

He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never pa.s.sed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of the great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in his Olympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."* It is always difficult fully to appreciate poetry in a foreign language, especially when the language is so strange as Russian. It is certain that no modern European tongue has been able fairly to represent the beauty of Pushkin's verse, to make foreigners feel him as Russians feel him, in any such measure as the Germans succeeded with Shakespeare, as Bayard Taylor with Goethe, as Ludwig Fulda with Rostand. The translations of Pushkin and of Lermontov have never impressed foreign readers in the superlative degree. The glory of English literature is its poetry; the glory of Russian literature is its prose fiction.

*Arnold told Sainte-Beuve that he did not think Lamartine was "important." Sainte-Beuve answered, "He is important for us."

Pushkin was, for a time at any rate, a Romantic, largely influenced, as all the world was then, by Byron. He is full of sentiment, smiles and tears, and pa.s.sionate enthusiasms. He therefore struck out in a path in which he has had no great followers; for the big men in Russian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Cla.s.sicism. What is peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete.

Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his t.i.tle as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He took Russia away from the artificiality of the eighteenth century, and exhibited the possibilities of native material in the native tongue.

The founder of the mighty school of Russian Realism was Gogol. Filled with enthusiasm for Pushkin, he nevertheless took a different course, and became Russia's first great novelist. Furthermore, although a melancholy man, he is the only Russian humorist who has made the world laugh out loud. Humour is not a salient quality in Russian fiction.

Then came the brilliant follower of Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. In him Russian literary art reached its climax, and the art of the modern novel as well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style that Russia has ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown genius in Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown the impeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. George Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existed since antiquity?"

Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years younger than Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist; his chief interest was in the psychological processes of the uncla.s.sed. His foreign fame is constantly growing brighter, for his works have an extraordinary vitality. Finally appeared Leo Tolstoi, whose literary career extended nearly sixty years. During the last twenty years of his life, he was generally regarded as the world's greatest living author; his books enjoyed an enormous circulation, and he probably influenced more individuals by his pen than any other man of his time.

In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought to find all the prominent traits in the Russian character.

It is a rather curious thing, that Russia, which has never had a parliamentary government, and where political history has been very little influenced by the spoken word, should have so much finer an instrument of expression than England, where matters of the greatest importance have been settled by open and public speech for nearly three hundred years. One would think that the constant use of the language in the national forum for purposes of argument and persuasion would help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost total absence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity.

In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust the testimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that the English language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkward dialect. Compared with Russian, the English language is decidedly weak in synonyms, and in the various shades of meaning that make for precision. Indeed, with the exception of Polish, Russian is probably the greatest language in the world, in richness, variety, definiteness, and elegance. It is also capable of saying much in little, and saying it with tremendous force. In Turgenev's "Torrents of Spring," where the reader hears constantly phrases in Italian, French, and German, it will be remembered that the ladies ask Sanin to sing something in his mother tongue. "The ladies praised his voice and the music, but were more struck with the softness and sonorousness of the Russian language." I remember being similarly affected years ago when I heard "King Lear" read aloud in Russian. Baron von der Bruggen says,* "there is the wonderful wealth of the language, which, as a popular tongue, is more flexible, more expressive of thought than any other living tongue I know of." No one has paid a better tribute than Gogol:--

"The Russian people express themselves forcibly; and if they once bestow an epithet upon a person, it will descend to his race and posterity; he will bear it about with him, in service, in retreat, in Petersburg, and to the ends of the earth; and use what cunning he will, enn.o.ble his career as he will thereafter, nothing is of the slightest use; that nickname will caw of itself at the top of its crow's voice, and will show clearly whence the bird has flown. A pointed epithet once uttered is the same as though it were written down, and an axe will not cut it out.

*"Russia of To-day," page 203.

"And how pointed is all that which has proceeded from the depths of Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns, nor any other strange tribes, but where all is purely aboriginal, where the bold and lively Russian mind never dives into its pocket for a word, and never broods over it like a sitting-hen: it sticks the word on at one blow, like a pa.s.sport, like your nose or lips on an eternal bearer, and never adds anything afterwards. You are sketched from head to foot in one stroke.

"Innumerable as is the mult.i.tude of churches, monasteries with cupolas, towers, and crosses, which are scattered over holy, most pious Russia, the mult.i.tude of tribes, races, and peoples who throng and bustle and variegate the earth is just as innumerable. And every people bearing within itself the pledge of strength, full of active qualities of soul, of its own sharply defined peculiarities, and other gifts of G.o.d, has characteristically distinguished itself by its own special word, by which, while expressing any object whatever, it also reflects in the expression its own share of its own distinctive character. The word Briton echoes with knowledge of the heart, and wise knowledge of life; the word French, which is not of ancient date, glitters with a light foppery, and flits away; the sagely artistic word German ingeniously discovers its meaning, which is not attainable by every one; but there is no word which is so ready, so audacious, which is torn from beneath the heart itself, which is so burning, so full of life, as the aptly applied Russian word."*

*"Dead Souls," translated by Isabel Hapgood.

Prosper Merimee, who knew Russian well, and was an absolute master of the French language, remarked:--

"La langue russe, qui est, autant que j 'en puis juger, le plus riche des idiomes de l'Europe, semble faite pour exprimer les nuances les plus delicates. Douee d'une merveilleuse concision qui s'allie a la clarte, il lui suffit d'un mot pour a.s.socier plusieurs idees, qui, dans une autre langue, exigeralent des phrases entieres."

And no people are more jealous on this very point than the French. In the last of his wonderful "Poems in Prose," Turgenev cried out: "In these days of doubt, in these days of painful brooding over the fate of my country, thou alone art my rod and my staff, O great, mighty, true and free Russian language! If it were not for thee, how could one keep from despairing at the sight of what is going on at home? But it is inconceivable that such a language should not belong to a great people."

It is significant that Turgenev, who was so full of sympathy for the ideas and civilization of Western Europe, and who was so often regarded (unjustly) by his countrymen as a traitor to Russia, should have written all his masterpieces, not in French, of which he had a perfect command, but in his own beloved mother-tongue.

We see by the above extracts, that Russia has an instrument of expression as near perfection as is possible in human speech. Perhaps one reason for the supremacy of Russian fiction may be found here.

The immense size of the country produces an element of largeness in Russian character that one feels not only in their novels, but almost invariably in personal contact and conversation with a more or less educated Russian. This is not imaginary and fantastic; it is a definite sensation, and immediately apparent. Bigness in early environment often produces a certain comfortable largeness of mental vision. One has only to compare in this particular a man from Russia with a man from Holland, or still better, a man from Texas with a man from Connecticut. The difference is easy to see, and easier to feel.

It is possible that the man from the smaller district may be more subtle, or he may have had better educational advantages; but he is likely to be more narrow. A Texan told me once that it was eighteen miles from his front door to his front gate; now I was born in a city block, with no front yard at all. I had surely missed something.

Russians are moulded on a large scale, and their novels are as wide in interest as the world itself. There is a refreshing breadth of vision in the Russian character, which is often as healthful to a foreigner as the wind that sweeps across the vast prairies. This largeness of character partly accounts for the impression of Vastness that their books produce on Occidental eyes. I do not refer at all to the length of the book--for a book may be very long, and yet produce an impression of pettiness, like many English novels. No, it is something that exhales from the pages, whether they be few or many. As ill.u.s.trations of this quality of vastness, one has only to recall two Russian novels--one the longest, and the other very nearly the shortest, in the whole range of Slavonic fiction. I refer to "War and Peace," by Tolstoi, and to "Taras Bulba," by Gogol. Both of these extraordinary works give us chiefly an impression of Immensity--we feel the boundless steppes, the illimitable wastes of snow, and the long winter night. It is particularly interesting to compare Taras Bulba with the trilogy of the Polish genius, Sienkiewicz. The former is tiny in size, the latter a leviathan; but the effect produced is the same. It is what we feel in reading Homer, whose influence, by the way, is as powerful in "Taras Bulba" as it is in "With Fire and Sword."

The Cosmopolitanism of the Russian character is a striking feature.

Indeed, the educated Russian is perhaps the most complete Cosmopolitan in the world. This is partly owing to the uncanny facility with which he acquires foreign languages, and to the admirable custom in Russia of giving children in more or less wealthy families, French, German, and English governesses. John Stuart Mill studied Greek at the age of three, which is the proper time to begin the study of any language that one intends to master. Russian children think and dream in foreign words, but it is seldom that a Russian shows any pride in his linguistic accomplishments, or that he takes it otherwise than as a matter of course. Stevenson, writing from Mentone to his mother, 7 January 1874, said: "We have two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a little polyglot b.u.t.ton of a three-year-old, I had the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day. . . . She said something in Italian which made everybody laugh very much . . .; after some examination, she announced emphatically to the whole table, in German, that I was a machen.. . . This hasty conclusion as to my s.e.x she was led afterwards to revise . . . but her new opinion . . . was announced in a language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. To complete the scroll of her accomplishments, . . . she said good-bye to me in very commendable English." Three days later, he added, "The little Russian kid is only two and a half; she speaks six languages."

Nothing excites the envy of an American travelling in Europe more sharply than to hear Russian men and women speaking European languages fluently and idiomatically. When we learn to speak a foreign tongue, we are always acutely conscious of the transition from English to German, or from German to French, and our hearers are still more so.

We speak French as though it HURT, just as the average tenor sings. I remember at a polyglot Parisian table, a Russian girl who spoke seven languages with perfect ease; and she was not in the least a blue-stocking.

Now every one knows that one of the indirect advantages that result from the acquisition of a strange tongue is the immediate gain in the extent of view. It is as though a near-sighted man had suddenly put on gla.s.ses. It is something to be able to read French; but if one has learned to speak French, the reading of a French book becomes infinitely more vivid. With a French play in the hand, one can see clearly the expressions on the faces of the personages, as one follows the printed dialogue with the eye. Here is where a Russian understands the American or the French point of view, much better than an American or a Frenchman understands the Russian's. Indeed, the man from Paris is nothing like so cosmopolitan as the man from Petersburg. One reason is, that he is too well satisfied with Paris. The late M. Brunetiere told me that he could neither read or speak English, and, what is still more remarkable, he said that he had never been in England! That a critic of his power and reputation, interested as he was in English literature, should never have had sufficient intellectual curiosity to cross the English Channel, struck me as nothing short of amazing.

The acquisition of any foreign language annihilates a considerable number of prejudices. Henry James, who knew Turgenev intimately, and who has written a brilliant and charming essay on his personality, said that the mind of Turgenev contained not one pin-point of prejudice. It is worth while to pause an instant and meditate on the significance of such a remark. Think what it must mean to view the world, the inst.i.tutions of society, moral ideas, and human character with an absolutely unprejudiced mind! We Americans are skinful of prejudices. Of course we don't call them prejudices; we call them principles. But they sometimes impress others as prejudices; and they no doubt help to obscure our judgment, and to shorten or refract our sight. What would be thought of a painter who had prejudices concerning the colours of skies and fields?

The cosmopolitanism of the Russian novelist partly accounts for the international effect and influence of his novels. His knowledge of foreign languages makes his books appeal to foreign readers. When he introduces German, French, English, and Italian characters into his books, he not only understands these people, he can think in their languages, and thus reproduce faithfully their characteristics not merely by observation but by sympathetic intuition. Furthermore, the very fact that Tolstoi, for example, writes in an inaccessible language, makes foreign translations of his works absolutely necessary. As at the day of Pentecost, every man hears him speak in his own tongue. Now if an Englishman writes a successful book, thousands of Russians, Germans, and others will read it in English; the necessity of translation is not nearly so great. It is interesting to compare the world-wide appeal made by the novels of Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi with that made by Thackeray and George Eliot, not to mention Mr. Hardy or the late Mr. Meredith.

The combination of the great age of Russia with its recent intellectual birth produces a maturity of character, with a wonderful freshness of consciousness. It is as though a strong, sensible man of forty should suddenly develop a genius in art; his att.i.tude would be quite different from that of a growing boy, no matter how precocious he might be. So, while the Russian character is marked by an extreme sensitiveness to mental impressions, it is without the rawness and immaturity of the American. The typical American has some strong qualities that seem in the typical Russian conspicuously absent; but his very practical energy, his pride and self-satisfaction, stand in the way of his receptive power. Now a conspicuous trait of the Russian is his humility; and his humility enables him to see clearly what is going on, where an American would instantly interfere, and attempt to change the course of events.* For, however inspiring a full-blooded American may be, the most distinguishing feature of his character is surely not Humility. And it is worth while to remember that whereas since 1850, at least a dozen great realistic novels have been written in Russian, not a single completely great realistic novel has ever been written in the Western Hemisphere.

*It is possible that both the humility and the melancholy of the Russian character are partly caused by the climate, and the vast steppes and forests, which seem to indicate the insignificance of man.

This extreme sensitiveness to impression is what has led the Russian literary genius into Realism; and it is what has produced the greatest Realists that the history of the novel has seen. The Russian mind is like a sensitive plate; it reproduces faithfully. It has no more partiality, no more prejudice than a camera film; it reflects everything that reaches its surface. A Russian novelist, with a pen in his hand, is the most truthful being on earth.

To an Englishman or an American, perhaps the most striking trait in the Russian character is his lack of practical force--the paralysis of his power of will. The national character among the educated cla.s.ses is personified in fiction, in a type peculiarly Russian; and that may be best defined by calling it the conventional Hamlet. I say the conventional Hamlet, for I believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a man of immense resolution and self-control. The Hamlet of the commentators is as unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet as systematic theology is unlike the Sermon on the Mount. The hero of the orthodox Russian novel is a veritable "L'Aiglon." This national type must be clearly understood before an American can understand Russian novels at all. In order to show that it is not imaginary, but real, one has only to turn to Sienkiewicz's powerful work, "Without Dogma," the very t.i.tle expressing the lack of conviction that destroys the hero.

"Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these two words, 'l'improductivite slave.' I experienced the same relief as does a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease.

. . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He had his wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There is something in us,--an incapacity to give forth all that is in us.

One might say, G.o.d has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the bow and send the arrow straight to its aim. I should like to discuss it with my father, but am afraid to touch a sore point. Instead of this, I will discuss it with my diary. Perhaps it will be just the thing to give it any value. Besides, what can be more natural than to write about what interests me? Everybody carries within him his tragedy. Mine is this same 'improductivite slave' of the Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when romanticism flourished in hearts and poetry, everybody carried his tragedy draped around him as a picturesque cloak; now it is carried still, but as a jagervest next to the skin. But with a diary it is different; with a diary one may be sincere. . . . To begin with, I note down that my religious belief I carried still intact with me from Metz did not withstand the study of natural philosophy. It does not follow that I am an atheist. Oh, no!

this was good enough in former times, when he who did not believe in spirit, said to himself, 'Matter,' and that settled for him the question. Nowadays only provincial philosophers cling to that worn-out creed. Philosophy of our times does not p.r.o.nounce upon the matter; to all such questions, it says, 'I do not know.' And that 'I do not know'

sinks into and permeates the mind. Nowadays psychology occupies itself with close a.n.a.lysis and researches of spiritual manifestations; but when questioned upon the immortality of the soul it says the same, 'I do not know,' and truly it does not know, and it cannot know. And now it will be easier to describe the state of my mind. It all lies in these words: I do not know. In this--in the acknowledged impotence of the human mind--lies the tragedy. Not to mention the fact that humanity always has asked, and always will ask, for an answer, they are truly questions of more importance than anything else in the world. If there be something on the other side, and that something an eternal life, then misfortunes and losses on this side are, as nothing. 'I am content to die,' says Renan, 'but I should like to know whether death will be of any use to me.' And philosophy replies, 'I do not know.' And man beats against that blank wall, and like the bedridden sufferer fancies, if he could lie on this or on that side, he would feel easier. What is to be done?"*

*Translated by Iza Young.

Those last five words are often heard in Russian mouths. It is a favourite question. It is, indeed, the t.i.tle of two Russian books.

The description of the Slavonic temperament given by Sienkiewicz tallies exactly with many prominent characters in Russian novels.

Turgenev first completely realised it in "Rudin;" he afterwards made it equally clear in "Torrents of Spring," "Smoke," and other novels.*

Raskolnikov, in Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment," is another ill.u.s.tration; he wishes to be a Napoleon, and succeeds only in murdering two old women. Artsybashev, in his terrible novel, "Sanin,"

has given an admirable a.n.a.lysis of this great Russian type in the character of Jurii, who finally commits suicide simply because he cannot find a working theory of life. Writers so different as Tolstoi and Gorki have given plenty of good examples. Indeed, Gorki, in "Varenka Olessova," has put into the mouth of a sensible girl an excellent sketch of the national representative.

*Goncharov devoted a whole novel, "Oblomov," to the elaboration of this particular type.

"The Russian hero is always silly and stupid, he is always sick of something; always thinking of something that cannot be understood, and is himself so miserable, so m--i--serable! He will think, think, then talk, then he will go and make a declaration of love, and after that he thinks, and thinks again, till he marries. . . . And when he is married, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and then abandons her."