Russia: Its People and Its Literature Part 12

In speaking of nihilism I have mentioned the most important one of the directive Russian novels, called "What to Do?" by the martyr Tchernichewsky,--a work of no great literary merit, but which was the gospel of young Russia. In his wake followed a host of novelists of this tendency, but inferior, obscure, and without even the inventive power of their leader in dressing up their ideas as symbolic personages, like his ascetic socialist Rakmetof, who laid himself down upon a board stuck through with nail-points. In their turn came the reactionaries, or rather the conservatives, and in novels as absurd as those of their predecessors they clothed the nihilists in purple and gold; it finally resulted that everybody was as ready to produce a novel as to write a serious article, or to handle a gun at a barricade. If any one of the neophytes of the school of directive novels possessed genius, it was swallowed up in the froth of political pa.s.sion.

As an accomplice in guilt, criticism did not weigh these works of art in the golden scales of Beauty, but in the leaden ones of Utility. There were critics who went so far as to declare war upon art, undertaking to ruin the fame of great authors, because they wrought not in the interests of transcendentalism; their motive was like that which impelled the early Christians to destroy the great works of paganism.

The popular novelists condemned the verses of Puchkine and the music of Glinka, in the name of the down-trodden and suffering people, just as Tolsto, in remembrance of the hungry family he had just visited, refused to partake of the appetizing meal offered him by servants in livery. As art had not achieved the amelioration of the people's condition, they considered it not merely a futile recreation, but actually an obnoxious thing. Bielinsky, with a taint of this same mania, at last entertained scruples against the pure pleasure enjoyed in contemplation of the beautiful, and was almost inclined to stop his ears and shut his eyes so as not to fall into aesthetic sins.

Are the authors and critics the only ones responsible for this directive character of most Russian novels? No. Two factors are requisite to the work of art,--the artist and the public. The Russians exact more of the novel than we; the Latins, at least, regard the novel as a means of beguiling a few evening hours, or a summer siesta,--a way to kill time.

Not so the Russians. They demand that the novelist shall be a prophet, a seer of a better future, a guide of new generations, a liberator of the serf, able to face tyranny, to redeem the country, to reveal the ideal, in fine, an evangelist and an apostle. Given this conception, it ought not to astonish us that the students drag Turguenief's carriage through the streets, that they faint with emotion at Dostoiewsky's touch, nor that the enthusiasm of the mult.i.tude--in itself contagious--should sometimes fill the heads of the novelists themselves. The novelists are, in reality and truth, a faithful echo of the aspirations and needs of the souls that feed upon their works. The Occidentalism of Turguenief, the mysticism of Dostoiewsky, the pessimism of Tolsto, the charity, the revolutionary spirit,--each is a manifestation of the national atmosphere condensed in the brains of two or three foremost geniuses.

Who can doubt the reflex action which the anonymous mult.i.tude exercises on eminent persons, when he contemplates the great Russian novelists?

There is a difference, however, between the novel which is purposely directive, the novel with a moral, so to speak, and the novel which is guided by a social drift, by "the spirit of the times." The former is liable to mediocrity and flatness, the latter is the patrimony of the loftiest minds. This spirit, this social sympathy, issued from every pore of Ivan Turguenief, the most able and exquisite of them all, indirectly and without detriment to his impersonality, and with the full conviction that it ought to be so; and novel-writing is useful in this way and no other. He says as much in a sort of autobiographical fragment, in which he explains how and why he left his country: "I felt that I must at all costs get away from my enemy in order the better to deal him a telling blow. And my enemy bore a well-known name; it was serfdom, slavery. Under the name of slavery I included everything that I proposed to fight without truce and to the death. This was my oath, and I was not alone in subscribing thereto. And in order to be faithful to it I came to the Occident."

If I am not mistaken, the great difference between French and Russian naturalism lies in this predominant characteristic of social expression.

The defects and merits of French naturalism are bound up with its condition as a purely literary insurrection and protest against the rhetoric of romanticism. In vain Zola exerts his t.i.tanic energies to impress on his works this social significance, whose invigorating power is not unheeded by his perspicacious mind. He fights against egoism without and perhaps within; but only in the two which he conceives to be his master works, "L'a.s.sommoir" and "Germinal," has he approached the desired mark.

The condition of France is diametrically opposed to that of Russia. I am only repeating the opinion of a large number of ill.u.s.trious Frenchmen who have judged themselves without any great amount of optimism. They say, "We are an old people, depraved and worn-out, our illusions vanished, our hopes faded. We have proved all things, and now we cannot be moved either by military glory which has undone and ruined us, or by revolutions which have discredited us and made Europe look upon us with suspicion. We have no religious faith, nor even social faith. We desire peace, and, if possible, that industry and commerce may flourish; we are not yet bereft of patriotism, and we expect art to entertain us, which is difficult,--for what new thing remains for the artist to discover?

Criticism, spread abroad among the mult.i.tudes, has killed inspiration; the generative forces are exhausted. We demand so much of the novelists that they are at a loss how to whet our appet.i.tes, and neither ugliness, nor unnatural crime, nor monstrous aberrations are sufficient to stimulate our cloyed palates. They are touched with our coldness, and, like ourselves, spiritless and inert, sick and disgusted, they feel beforehand the irremediable and fatal decadence that is coming upon us, and they believe that art in the Latin races will die with the century."

Thus mourn some of the men of France, and to my mind they have a basis of truth.

The artist never goes beyond the line marked out by his epoch. And how should he? Of course there is, in every work of art, something that is the exclusive property of the individual, something of his own genius; but as the nature of the fish is to swim, but swim it cannot out of the water, and the nature of the bird is to fly, but lacking air it flies not, so, given a social atmosphere, the artist modifies and adapts himself to it. The novelist cannot have an ideal different from the society which reads him; and if one but perceives the rigor and inflexibility of this law, one may avoid many foolish sentiments expressed with the intent to censure the immorality of the novel. Take any one of them, Tolsto's, Zola's, Goncourt's, Dostoiewsky's, look at it well, study it closely, and you will find in it the exact expression and even the artistic interpretation of a tendency of his epoch, his nation, and his race. This is as evident as that two and two make four.

Novelists are what they must be rather than what they would be, and it is not in their power to make a world after their own hearts or according to any ideal pattern.

Melchior de Voguie, it seems to me, has not recognized this truth in accusing French novelists of materialism, dryness, egoism, and paganism, and has not taken into account the fact that the reflex action of the public upon the novelist is greater than that of the latter upon the former, or at least that the novelist is the first to be influenced, although afterward his works have an influence in turn, and in lesser proportion.

"The French realists," says Voguie, "ignore the better part of humanity, which is the spirit." This is true; and I have said and thought for a long time that realism, to realize to the full its own program, must embrace matter and spirit, earth and heaven, human and superhuman. I entirely agree with Voguie in believing that naturalism--or to call it by a more comprehensive name, the School of Truth or Realism--should not close its eyes to the mystery that is beyond rational explanations, nor deny the divine as a known quant.i.ty. And so entirely is this my opinion, that I could never consent to the narrow and short-sighted idea of some who imagine that a Catholic, by the act of admitting the supernatural, the miraculous, and the verity of revelation, is incapacitated for writing a profound, serious, and good novel, a realistic novel, a novel that shall breathe a fragrant essence of truth. Aside from the fact that literary as well as scientific methods do not presuppose a negation of religion, when did it ever happen that Catholicism, in the days of liveliest faith, impeded the production of the best of realist novels, as for example "Don Quixote"? The truth is that the novel, given the epic element, will be neither Catholic nor religious in those societies which are neither one nor the other. The lyric element does not demand this harmony with society: a great Catholic poet may be found in a most agnostic country, but not a Catholic novelist.

The novel is a clear mirror, a faithful expression of society, and the actual conditions of the novel in Europe are a proof of it. I think I have shown that the Russian novel reflects the dreams, sentiments, and changes of that country; it appears revolutionary and subversive, because the spirit of both Russian _intelligence_ and Russian educated people is so. In France, where to-day, in spite of the efforts of the spiritual and eclectic school, the traditions of the Encyclopaedia have prevailed together with a frivolous sensualist materialism, the novel follows this road also, and without meaning to strike up Beranger's famous refrain,--

"C'est la faute de Rousseau, C'est la faute de Voltaire,"

I affirm that _animalism_, determined materialism, pessimism, and _decadentism_ may be explained by the light of the great writers of the eighteenth century, not only through their literary influence, but because the society which pores over the novels of the present day is the daughter of the French Revolution, and the latter is the daughter of the Encyclopaedia. Who does not know the relation which exists between the novel and the fashion in England, and how the former is conditioned, shaped, and limited exclusively by the latter? In Germany another curious phenomenon is apparent. The novel in vogue is historical,--a condition appropriate to a country where everybody is interested only in epic life and the contingency of war.

On account of this interdependence, or, in fact, unity, of the novel and society, I cannot agree with Voguie when he says that the books that are influencing and stimulating the mult.i.tudes, the general ideas that are transforming Europe, are proceeding nowadays not from France but from Russia. It may be true of the Northern races, but of Latin races it cannot be more than partially and indirectly so. Does Voguie find in the French novel as in the Russian the latent fermentation of the evangelical spirit, or are the currents of mysticism that impregnate Russia circulating through France?

Russia is Christian, in spite of German materialist philosophers who for a time set her brains in a whirl, but whom she has finally rejected, as the sea gives up a dead body; and if I have succeeded in showing clearly the forms adopted by the social revolution in Russia, and the strange a.n.a.logies these sometimes bear to the actions of the early Christians, if I have shown the love of sacrifice, the ardent charity, the sympathetic pity and tenderness not only toward the oppressed but toward even the criminal, the despised, the idiot, and the outcast, which characterize this society and this literature; if I have shown the degrees of mystic fervor by which it is permeated and consumed,--no one need be surprised at my statement and conclusion that although Buddha and Schopenhauer have a goodly share in the present condition of Russian thought, the larger part is nevertheless Christian. It is my opinion that the world is more Christian now than in the Middle Ages, not as to faith, but as to sentiments and customs; and if in hours of despondency I were sometimes inclined to doubt the efficiency of the word of Christ, the sight of its prodigious effects in Russia would certainly correct my doubts. The heterodox nature of the Russian faith is not a nullification of it. The most heretical heretic, if he be a sincere Christian, has more of truth than error in his faith. But error is like sin: one drop of poison is enough to permeate a gla.s.s of pure water; yet it is certain that there is more water than poison in the gla.s.s.

To return to the literary question, the Russian novel demonstrates, if such demonstration be necessary, the futility of the censures directed against naturalism, and which confound general principles with the circ.u.mstances and social conditions which environ the novelist. The Russian novel proves that all the precepts of the art of naturalism may be realized and fulfilled without committing any of those sins of which it is accused by those who know it through the medium of half a dozen French novels. The charge that is oftenest made against the French realist is the having painted pictures of pa.s.sion and vice too nakedly and with too much candor,--and the charge is certainly not without foundation; and it may be added that some novelists overload the canvas and go to the extreme of making humanity out to be more sinful than even physical possibilities admit; but they must not be made to bear the responsibility alone; the public that gloats and feeds on these comfits, and grumbles when they are not provided,--the public, I say, must share it. In Russia, where the readers do not ask the novelist for intricate plot or high-colored sketches, the novel is chaste: I do not mean in the English sense of being moral with an air of affectation, and frowns and false modesty; I mean chaste without effort, like an ancient marble statue. In "Anna Karenina" Tolsto depicts an illicit pa.s.sion, extravagant, vehement, full of youthful ardor; yet there is not a page of "Anna Karenina" which cannot be read aloud and without a blush. In "War and Peace" the most candid pages are models of decorum, of true decorum, such as education, reason, and the dignity of man approve. In "Crime and Punishment" Dostoiewsky introduces the character of a prost.i.tute; but this character is no such romantic creature as Marie Gautier or Nana. She is not made poetical, nor is she embellished or exaggerated; yet she produces an impression (let him read the novel who doubts) of purity, of suffering, of austerity. In Turguenief, by far the most sensual of the great Russian novelists, and in Pisemsky, of secondary rank, there is so much art in the disposition and harmony of detail and description, that the definitive impression, while less severe than in the case of the two others mentioned, is equally n.o.ble and lofty.

Are they any the less Realists for this? They are rather more so, in my opinion. In order to carry out the great precept of modern art, the novelist must copy life,--the life that we live and that unfolds about us every day. But life does not unfold as it is represented in many novels that are the product of French naturalism. The Zola school makes use of abstraction and acc.u.mulation in uniting in one scene and one character all the aberrations, abominations, and vices that only a collection of profligates could be capable of, with the result offered us in pictures such as the house in "Pot-Bouille," that should be handled with tongs for fear of soiling one's fingers. We turn to the reality, and we find that all these colors exist, that all these vices are actual,--yes, but one at a time, intermingled with a thousand good or commonplace things; then we are in a rage with the novelist, and ever after bear him a grudge for having a mania for ugliness. The impression which life makes upon us is quite different; the alternative of good is evil, of poetry is vulgarity; we demand a recognition of this from the novelist, and this the Russian novelists have given us, yet without leaving the firm ground of realist art. They present the material, the b.e.s.t.i.a.l, the trivial, the vile, the obscene, the pa.s.sionate, as they appear in life, in due proportion and no more.

We have also to thank them for having recognized the psychical life, and the spiritual, moral, and religious needs of mankind. And I would make a distinction between the moral spirit of the English novel and the Russian. The English judge of human actions according to preconceived notions derived from a general standard accepted by society and officially imposed by custom and the Protestant religion. The Russian moralist feels deeper and thinks higher; morality is not for him a system of narrow and inalterable rules, but the aspiration of a creature advancing toward a higher plane, and learning his lessons in the hard school of truth and the great theatre of art.

The spiritual element in the Russian novel is to me one of its most singular merits. The novel should not teach the supernatural, nor be the instrument of any religious propaganda. But from this premise to a condition of mutilation and mere dry chronicle of physiological functions is a long way. There are countless facts of our existence that cannot be explained by the most determined materialist; it is not the duty of art to explain them, but art cannot justly ignore them. emile Zola is both a thinker and an artist. As an artist he is admirable, and is hardly behind Tolsto either in poetic or descriptive faculties; but with the artist he combines the philosopher--may I call it so?--the philosopher of the lowest and coa.r.s.est fibre, whose influence upon French naturalism has been most pernicious, and has greatly limited the scope of the novel in his country.

In conclusion, it is my opinion that the only way to understand the naturalistic movement is in connection with its social environment; the impulse of our age toward a representation of truth in art everywhere prevails, and everywhere the novel has become a result of observation, an a.n.a.lytical study, as we notice in a general view of European literature for the last forty years. The century which began with lyric poetry is closing with a triumphant novel.

But the great principle of reality is differently applied in different countries. Why was romanticism so much the same in England, Germany, Spain, and Russia? Because it was chiefly rhetoric,--a literary protest, an artistic insurrection. And why the differences between French naturalism, the Russian _natural school_, English and Spanish realism, and Italian _verismo_? Because each one of these phases of the religion of truth is adequate to the country that conceived it, and to the hour and the occasion upon which it is focused. It is no objection that between these various forms there is close communication and relation.

Edmund de Goncourt once remarked to me that the Russian novel is not so original as people think, for besides the marked influence of Hoffmann and Edgar Poe upon the genius of Dostoiewsky, it would not be difficult to trace in the other great writers the inspiration of Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, and George Sand. Pie was right; and yet Russian literature is not the less indigenous.

I should always prefer the art that is disinterested, that carries within itself its aim and object, to the art that is directive, with a moral purpose; between the art that is pagan and the art that is imbecile, I should choose the pagan. If we Spaniards, who are like the Russians, at once an ancient and a young people, still ignorant of what the future may lead us to, and never able to make our traditions harmonize with our aspirations,--if we could succeed in incorporating in our novel not merely bits of fragmentary reality, artistic individualisms, but the spirit, the heart, the blood of our country, what we are doing, what we are feeling as a whole,--it would indeed be well. Yet I think this impossible, not for lack of talent but for lack of preparation on the part of the public, upon whom at present the novel exercises no influence at all. The novel is read neither quant.i.tatively nor qualitatively in Spain. As to quant.i.ty, let the authors who publish, and the booksellers who sell, speak what they know; of the quality, let the numerous lovers of Montepin and the eager readers of the translations in the _feuilletines_ tell us. The serious and profound novel dies here without an echo; criticism makes no comment upon it, and the public ignores its appearance. Is there a single modern novel that is popular, in the true meaning of the word, among us? Has any novel had any influence at all in Spanish political, social, or moral life?

On coming from France, I have often noticed a significant fact, which is, that at the French station of Hendaye there is a stand for the sale of all the popular and celebrated novels; while at Irun, just across the frontier, only a few steps away, but Spanish, there is nothing to be had but a few miserable, trashy books, and not a sign of even our own best novelists' works. From the moment we set foot on Spanish soil the novel, as a social element, disappears. It is sad to say, but it is so true that it would be madness to build any illusions on this matter. And yet the instinct, the desire, the inexplicable anxiety of the artist to embody and transmit the great truths of life, the impulse that lifts men to great deeds, and to desire to be the voice of the people, is secretly stimulating the Spanish novelists to break the ice of general indifference, to put themselves in communication with the sixty million souls and intelligences that to-day speak our language. Is the goal which we desire to attain inaccessible? Perhaps; but as the immense difficulties in the way of penetrating to the Arctic regions and the discovery of the open Polar Sea are but an incentive to the explorer, so the impossible in this undertaking should incite and spur on the masters of the Iberian novel.

A few words of humble confession, and I have done.

I feel that there is a certain indecision and ambiguity running through these essays of mine. I could not quite condemn the revolution in Russia, nor could I altogether approve its doctrines and discoveries. A book must reflect an intellectual condition which, in my case, is one of uncertainty, vacillation, anxiety, surprise, and interest. My vision has not been perfectly clear, therefore I have offered no conclusive judgments,--for conviction and affirmation can only proceed from the mind they have mastered. Russia is an enigma; let those solve it who can,--I could not. The Sphinx called to me; I looked into the depths of her eyes, I felt the sweet and bewildering attraction of the unknown, I questioned her, and like the German poet I wait, with but moderate hope, for the answer to come to me, borne by voices of the ocean of Time.