Russia: Its People and Its Literature Part 7

Within the restricted circle of poets who hovered around Puchkine, one deserves especial mention, namely, Lermontof. He is the second lyric poet of Russia, and perhaps embodies the spirit of romanticism even more than Puchkine; he is the real Russian Byron. His life is singularly like that of Puchkine, he having also been banished to the Caucasus, and for the very reason of having written the elegy upon Puchkine's death; like him he was also killed in a duel, but still earlier in life, and before he had reached the plenitude of his powers.

Lermontof became the singer of the Caucasian region. At that time it was really a great favor to send a poet to the mountains, for there he came in contact with things that reclaimed and lifted his fancy,--air, sun, liberty, a wooded and majestic landscape, picturesque and charming peasant-maidens, wild flowers full of new and virginal perfume like the Haydees and Fior d'Alizas sung of by our Western poets. There they forgot the deceits of civilization and the weariness of mind that comes of too much reading; there the brain was refreshed, the nerves calmed, and the moral fibre strengthened. Puchkine, Lermontof, and Tolsto, each in his own way, have lauded the regenerative virtue of the snow-covered mountains. But Lermontof in particular was full of it, lived in it, and died in it, after his fatal wound at the age of twenty-six, when public opinion had just singled him out as Puchkine's successor. He had drunk deeply of Byron's fountain, and even resembled Byron in his discontent, restlessness, and violent pa.s.sions, which more than Byron's were tinged with a stripe of malice and pride, so that his enemies used to say that to describe Lucifer he needed only to look at himself in the gla.s.s.

There is an unbridled freedom, a mocking irony, and at times a deep melancholy at the bottom of his poetic genius; it is inferior to Puchkine's in harmony and completeness, but exceeds it in an almost painful and thrilling intensity; there was more gall in his soul, and therefore more of what has been called subjectivity, even amounting to a fierce egoism. Lermontof is the high-water mark of romanticism, and after his death it necessarily began to ebb; it had exhausted curses, fevers, complaints, and spleens, and now the world of literature was ready for another form of art, wider and more human, and that form was realism.

I am sorry to have to deal in _isms_, but the fault is not mine; we are handling ideas, and language offers no other way. The transition came by means of satire, which is exceptionally fertile in Russia. A genius of wonderful promise arose in Griboiedof, a keen observer and moralist, who deserves to be mentioned after Puchkine, if only for one comedy which is considered the gem of the Russian stage, and is ent.i.tled (freely rendered) "Too Clever by Half." The hero is a misanthropic patriot who sighs for the good old times and abuses the mania for foreign education and imitation. This shows the first impulse of the nation to know and to a.s.sert itself in literature as in everything else. Being prohibited by the censor, the play circulated privately in ma.n.u.script; every line became a proverb, and the people found their very soul reflected in it.

Five years later, when Puchkine was returning from the Caucasus, he met with a company of Georgians who were drawing a dead body in a cart: it was the body of Griboiedof, who had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in an insurrection.

Between the decline of the romantic period and the appearance of new forms inspired by a love of the truth, there hovered in other parts of Europe undefined and colorless shapes, sterile efforts and shallow aspirations which never amounted to anything. But not so in Russia.

Romanticism vanished quickly, for it was an aristocratic and artificial condition, without root and without fruit conducive to the well-being of a nation which had as yet scarcely entered on life, and which felt itself strong and eager for stimulus and aim, eager to be heard and understood; realism grew up quickly, for the very youth of the nation demanded it. Russia, which until then had trod with docile steps upon the heels of Europe, was at last to take the lead by creating the realistic novel.

She had not to do violence to her own nature to accomplish this. The Russian, little inclined to metaphysics, unless it be the fatalist philosophy of the Hindus, more quick at poetic conceptions than at rational speculations, carries realism in his veins along with scientific positivism; and if any kind of literature be spontaneous in Russia it is the epic, as shown now in fragmentary songs and again in the novels. Before ever they were popular in their own country, Balzac and Zola were admired and understood in Russia.

The two great geniuses of lyric poetry, Puchkine and Lermontof, confirm this theory. Though both perished before the descriptive and observing faculties of their countrymen were matured, they had both instinctively turned to the novel, and perhaps the possible direction of their genius was thus shadowed forth as by accident. Puchkine seems to me endowed with qualities which would have made him a delightful novel-writer. His heroes are clearly and firmly drawn and very attractive; he has a certain healthy joyousness of tone which is quite cla.s.sic, and a brightness and freedom of coloring that I like; in the short historic narrative he has left us we never see the slightest trace of the lyric poet. As to Lermontof, is it not marvellous that a man who died at the age of twenty-six years should have produced anything like a novel? But he left a sort of autobiography, which is extremely interesting, ent.i.tled "A Contemporary Hero," which hero, Petchorine by name, is really the type of the romantic period, exacting, egotistical, at war with himself and everybody else, insatiable for love, yet scorning life, a type that we meet under different forms in many lands; now swallowing poison like De Musset's Rolla, now refusing happiness like Adolfo, now consumed with remorse like Rene, now c.o.c.king his pistol like Werther, and always in a bad humor, and to tell the truth always intolerable. "My hero," writes Lermontof, "is the portrait of a generation, not of an individual." And he makes that hero say, "I have a wounded soul, a fancy unappeased, a heart that nothing can ease. Everything becomes less and less to me. I have accustomed myself to suffering and joy alike, and I have neither feelings nor impressions; everything wearies me." But there are many fine pages in the narratives of Lermontof besides these poetical declamations. Perhaps the novel might also have offered him a brilliant future.

The sad fate of the writers during the reign of Nicholas I. is remarkable, when we consider how favorable it was to art in other respects. Alexander Herzen calculated that within thirty years the three most ill.u.s.trious Russian poets were a.s.sa.s.sinated or killed in a duel, three lesser ones died in exile, two became insane, two died of want, and one by the hand of the executioner. Alas! and among these dark shadows we discern one especially sad; it is that of Nicholas Gogol, a soul crushed by its own greatness, a victim to the n.o.blest infirmity and the most generous mania that can come upon a man, a martyr to love of country.

III.

Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder.

Gogol was born in 1809; he was of Cossack blood, and first saw the light of this world amid the steppes which he was afterward to describe so vividly. His grandfather, holding the child upon his knee, amused him with stories of Russian heroes and their mighty deeds, not so very long past either, for only two generations lay between Gogol and the Cossack warriors celebrated in the _bilinas_. Sometimes a wandering minstrel sang these for him, accompanying himself on the _bandura_. In this school was his imagination taught. We may imagine the effect upon ourselves of hearing the Romance of the Cid under such circ.u.mstances.

When Gogol went to St. Petersburg with the intention of joining the ranks of Russian youth there, though ostensibly to seek employment, he carried a light purse and a glowing fancy. He found that the great city was a desert more arid than the steppes, and even after obtaining an office under the government he endured poverty and loneliness such as no one can describe so well as himself. His position offered him one advantage which was the opportunity of studying the bureaucratic world, and of drawing forth from amid the dust of official papers the material for some of his own best pages. On the expiration of his term of office he was for a while blown about like a dry leaf. He tried the stage but his voice failed him; he tried teaching but found he had no vocation for it. Nor had he any apt.i.tude for scholarship. In the Gymnasium of Niejine his rank among the pupils was only medium; German, mathematics, Latin, and Greek were little in his line; he was an illiterate genius. But in his inmost soul dwelt the conviction that his destiny held great things in store for him. In his struggle with poverty, the remembrance of the hours he had pa.s.sed at school reading Puchkine and other romantic poets began to urge him to try his fortune at literature. One day he knocked with trembling hand at Puchkine's door; the great poet was still asleep, having spent the night in gambling and dissipation, but on waking, he received the young novice with a cordial welcome, and with his encouragement Gogol published his first work, called "Evenings at the Farm." It met with amazing success; for the first time the public found an author who could give them a true picture of Russian life. Puchkine had hit the mark in advising him to study national scenes and popular customs; and who knows whether perhaps his conscience did not reproach him with shutting his own eyes to his country and the realities she offered him, and stopping his ears against the voice of tradition and the charms of Nature?

Gogol's "Evenings at the Farm" is the echo of his own childhood; in these pages the Russia of the people lives and breathes in landscapes, peasants, rustic customs, dialogues, legends, and superst.i.tions. It is a bright and simple work, not yet marked with the pessimism which later on darkened the author's soul; it has a strong smell of the soil; it is full of dialect and colloquial diminutive and affectionate terms, with now and then a truly poetical pa.s.sage. Is it not strange that the intellect of a nation sometimes wanders aimlessly through foreign lands seeking from without what lies handier at home, and borrowing from strangers that of which it has a super-abundance already? And how sweet is the surprise one feels at finding so beautiful the things which were hidden from our understanding by their very familiarity!

"The Tales of Mirgorod," which followed the "Evenings at the Farm,"

contain one of the gems of Gogol's writings, the story of "Taras Boulba." Gogol has the quality of the epic poet, though he is generally noted only for his merits as a novelist; but judging from his greatest works, "Taras Boulba" and "Dead Souls," I consider his epic power to be of the first cla.s.s, and in truth I hold him to be, rather more than a modern novelist, a master poet who has subst.i.tuted for the lyric poetry brought into favor by romanticism the epic form, which is much more suited to the Russian spirit. He is the first who has caught the inspiration of the _bilinas_, the hero-songs, the Sclavonic poetry created by the people. The novel, it is true, is one manifestation of epic poetry, and in a certain way every novelist is a rhapsodist who recites his canto of the poem of modern times; but there are some descriptive, narrative fictions, which, imbued with a greater amount of the poetic element united to a certain large comprehensive character, more nearly resemble the ancient idea of the epopee; and of this cla.s.s I may mention "Don Quixote," and perhaps "Faust," as examples. By this I do not mean to place Gogol on the same plane as Goethe and Cervantes; yet I a.s.sociate them in my mind, and I see in Gogol's books the transition from the lyric to the epic which is to result in the true novel that begins with Turguenief.

All the world is agreed that "Taras Boulba" is a true prose poem, modelled in the Homeric style, the hero of which is a people that long preserved a primitive character and customs. Gogol declared that he merely allowed himself to reproduce the tales of his grandfather, who thus becomes the witness and actor in this Cossack Iliad.

One charming trait in Gogol is his love for the past and his fidelity to tradition; they have as strong an attraction for him certainly as the seductions of the future, and both are the outcome of the two sublime sentiments which divide every heart,--retrospection and antic.i.p.ation.

Gogol, who is so skilful in sketching idyllic scenes of the tranquil life of country proprietors, clergy, and peasants, is no less skilful in his descriptions of the adventurous existence of the Cossack; sometimes he is so faithful to the simple grandeur of his grandfather's style, that though the action in "Taras Boulba" takes place in recent times, it seems a tale of primeval days.

The story of this novel--I had almost said this poem--unfolds among the Cossacks of the Don and the Dnieper, who were at that time a well-preserved type of the ancient warlike Scythians that worshipped the blood-stained sword. Old Taras Boulba is a wild animal, but a very interesting wild animal; a rude and majestic warrior-like figure cast in Homeric mould. There is, I confess, just a trace of the leaven of romanticism in Taras. Not all in vain had Gogol hidden Puchkine's works under his pillow in school-days; but the whole general tone recalls inevitably the grand naturalism of Homer, to which is added an Oriental coloring, vivid and tragical. Taras Boulba is an Ataman of the Cossacks, who has two young sons, his pride and his hope, studying at the University of Kief. On a declaration of war between the savage Cossack republic and Poland, the old hawk calls his two nestlings and commands them to exchange the book for the sword. One of the sons, bewitched by the charms of a Polish maiden, deserts from the Cossack camp and fights in the ranks of the enemy; he at length falls into the power of his enraged father, who puts him to death in punishment for his treason.

After dreadful battles and sieges, starvation and suffering, Taras dies, and with him the glory and the liberty of the Cossacks. Such is the argument of this simple story, which begins in a manner not unlike the Tale of the Cid. The two sons of Taras arrive at their father's house, and the father begins to ridicule their student garb.

"'Do not mock at us, father,' says the elder.

"'Listen to the gentleman! And why should I not mock at you, I should like to know?'

"'Because, even though you are my father, I swear by the living G.o.d, I will smite you.'

"'Hi! hi! What? Your father?' cries Taras, receding a step or two.

"'Yes, my own father; for I will take offence from n.o.body at all.'

"'How shall we fight then,--with fists?' exclaims the father in high glee.

"'However you like.'

"'With fists, then,' answers Taras, squaring off at him.

'Let us see what sort of fellow you are, and what sort of fists you have.'"

And so father and son, instead of embracing after a long absence, begin to pommel one another with naked fists, in the ribs, back, and chest, each advancing and receding in turn.

"'Why, he fights well,' exclaims Taras, stopping to take breath. 'He is a hero,' he adds, readjusting his clothes. 'I had better not have put him to the proof. But he will be a great Cossack! Good! my son, embrace me now.'"

This is like the delight of Diego Lainez in the Spanish Romanceros, when he says, "Your anger appeases my own, and your indignation gives me pleasure."

Could Gogol have been acquainted with the Tale of the Cid and the other Spanish Romanceros? I do not think it too audacious to believe it possible, when we know that this author was a delighted reader of "Don Quixote," and really drew inspiration from it for his greatest work. But let us return to "Taras Boulba." Another admirable pa.s.sage is on the parting of the mother and sons. The poor wife of Taras is the typical woman of the warlike tribes, a gentle and miserable creature amid a fierce horde of men who are for the most part celibates,--a creature once caressed roughly for a few moments by her harsh husband, and then abandoned, and whose love instincts have concentrated themselves upon the fruits of his early fugitive affection. She sees again her beloved sons who are to spend but one night at home,--for at break of day the father leads them forth to battle, where perhaps at the first shock some Tartar may cut off their heads and hang them by the hair at his saddle-girths. She watches them while they sleep, kept awake herself by hope and fear.

"'Perhaps,' she says to herself, 'when Boulba awakes he will put off his departure one or two days; perhaps he was drunk, and did not think how soon he was taking them away from me.'"

But at dawn her maternal hopes vanish; the old Cossack makes ready to set off.

"When the mother saw her sons leap to horse, she rushed toward the younger, whose face showed some trace of tenderness; she grasped the stirrup and the saddle-girth, and would not let go, and her eyes were wide with agony and despair. Two strong Cossacks seized her with firm but respectful hands, and bore her away to the house. But scarcely had they released her upon the threshold, when she sprang out again quicker than a mountain-goat, which was the more remarkable in a woman of her age; with superhuman effort she held back the horse, gave her son a wild, convulsive embrace, and again was carried away. The young Cossacks rode off in silence, choking their tears for fear of their father; and the father, too, had a queer feeling about his heart, though he took care that it should not be noticed."

In another place I have translated his magnificent description of the steppe, and I should like to quote the admirable paragraphs on starvation, on the killing of Ostap Boulba, and the death of Taras. As an example of the extreme simplicity with which Gogol manages his most dramatic pa.s.sages and yet obtains an intense and powerful effect, I will give the scene in which Taras takes the life of his son by his own hand,--a scene which Prosper Merimee imitated in his celebrated sketch of "Mateo Falcone."

Andry comes out of the city, which was attacked by the Cossacks.

"At the head of the squadron galloped a horseman, handsomer and haughtier than the others. His black hair floated from beneath his bronze helmet; around his arm was bound a beautifully embroidered scarf. Taras was stupefied on recognizing in him his son Andry. But the latter, inflamed with the ardor of combat, eager to merit the prize which adorned his arm, threw himself forward like a young hound, the handsomest, the fleetest, the strongest of the pack....

Old Taras stood a moment, watching Andry as he cut his way by blows to the right and the left, laying the Cossacks about him. At last his patience was exhausted.

"'Do you strike at your own people, you devil's whelp?' he cried.

"Andry, galloping hard away, suddenly felt a strong hand pulling at his bridle-rein. He turned his head and saw Taras before him. He grew pale, like a child caught idling by his master. His ardor cooled as though it had never blazed; he saw only his terrible father, motionless and calm before him.

"'What are you doing?' exclaimed Taras, looking at the young man sharply. Andry could not reply, and his eyes remained fixed upon the ground.

"'How now, my son? Have your Polish friends been of much use to you?' Andry was dumb as before.

"'You commit felony, you barter your religion, you sell your own people.... But wait, wait.... Get down.' Like an obedient child Andry alighted from his horse, and, more dead than alive, stood before his father.

"'Stand still. Do not move. I gave you life, I will take your life away,' said Taras then; and going back a step he took the musket from his shoulder. Andry was white as wax.

He seemed to move his lips and to murmur a name. But it was not his country's name, nor his mother's, nor his brother's; it was the name of the beautiful Polish maiden.

Taras fired. As the wheat-stalk bends after the stroke of the sickle, Andry bent his head and fell upon the gra.s.s without uttering a word. The man who had slain his son stood a long time contemplating the body, beautiful even in death. The young face, so lately glowing with strength and winsome beauty, was still wonderfully comely, and his eyebrows, black and velvety, shaded his pale features.

"'What was lacking to make him a true Cossack?' said Boulba. 'He was tall, his eyebrows were black, he had a brave mien, and his fists were strong and ready to fight.

And he has perished, perished without glory, like a cowardly dog.'"

In the opinion of Guizot there is perhaps no true epic poem in the modern age besides "Taras Boulba," in spite of some defects in it and the temptation to compare it with Homer to its disadvantage. But Gogol's glory is not derived solely from his epopee of the Cossacks. His especial merit, or at least his greatest service to the literature of his country, lies in his having been what neither Lermontof nor Puchkine could be; namely, the centre at which romanticism and realism join hands, the medium of a smooth and easy transition from lyric poetry, more or less imported from abroad, and the national novel; the founder of the _natural school_, which was the advance sentinel of modern art.

This tendency is first exhibited in a little sketch inserted in the same volume with Taras Boulba, and ent.i.tled "The Small Proprietors of Former Times," also translated as "Old-fashioned Farmers," or "Old-time Proprietors,"--a story of the commonplace, full of keen observations and wrought out in the methods of the great contemporary novelists. About the year 1835, at the height of the romantic period, Gogol gave up his official employment forever, exclaiming, "I am going to be a free Cossack again; I will belong to n.o.body but myself." He then published a little volume of _Arabesques_,--a collection of disconnected articles, criticisms, and sketches, chiefly interesting because by him. His short stories of this period are the stirrings of his awakening realism; and among them the one most worthy of notice is "The Cloak," which is filled with a strain of sympathy and pity for the poor, the ignorant, the plain, and the dull people,--social zeros, so different from the proud and aristocratic ideal of romanticism, and who owe their t.i.tle of citizenship in Russian literature to Gogol. The hero of the story is an awkward, half-imbecile little office-clerk, who knows nothing but how to copy, copy, copy; a martyr to bitter cold and poverty, and whose dearest dream is to possess a new cloak, for which he saves and h.o.a.rds sordidly and untiringly. The very day on which he at last fulfils his desire, some thieves make off with his precious cloak. The police, to whom he carries his complaint, laugh in his face, and the poor fellow falls a victim to the deepest melancholy, and dies of a broken heart shortly after.