Why we should read Part 26

Her husband is taken for the army, and Matrna goes, although her time is on her to bring to birth another baby, to plead for him to the Governor's lady. Somewhat to our surprise she wins her cause and gets her husband back again, but the peasants are cured after hearing her story of imagining that any woman could be happy in Russia.

"'The Tsar, little Father, But never a woman: G.o.d knows, among women Your search will be endless.'"

So they continue their wanderings, and having heard many grim stories of all sorts, they remain without a solution to their problem, and the only consolation suggested by the author comes in a subtle touch: a son of a psalm-singer, with a knowledge of, and deep sympathy for, all the down-trodden ones, finds exaltation in putting together songs about their pains and greatness:

"In his breast rose throbbingly powers unembraceable, In his ears rang melody--henceforth undefaceable: Words of azure radiance, n.o.ble in benignity.

Hailing coming happiness and the People's dignity."

Happiness, Nekra.s.sov concludes, can only be won in doing creative work.

I have, I think, by my copious quotations from his most popular poem at any rate proved his claim to be considered "the Russian Crabbe," the uncompromising realist who can depict the sorrows of the poor with undeflected trueness of aim.

III

PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

It is habitual with critics, especially critics of Russian literature, to probe with a microscopic accuracy into the work of the subject they undertake to explain: they search for psychological phenomena untiringly, and are not content unless they can wrest a secret from the author which the author himself would certainly in many cases never have realised that he possessed. We see this in our own tongue in many of the critical essays on Shakespeare. We see it applied to Pushkin equally unnecessarily; for Pushkin needs no interpreter: he is delightfully human, clear, sincere, impulsive, vital and vivifying, as far removed as possible from any artfulness, the least of a digger in the depths of his own soul imaginable. He is the type of artist who sees Beauty in her naked blaze and straightway reincarnates her because he cannot help it.

He is of the earth, earthy in the best sense of the word. The final word about him is that he accepted life open-heartedly and as a consequence requires in his readers an equal open-heartedness and nothing else.

He was brought up as a boy in an atmosphere of that sparkling elegance which we a.s.sociate with the French, and himself wrote verses in that tongue, by the age of twelve acquiring a real taste in French literature. He revelled in Plutarch, Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, imitated the French comedies and acted them before his sister. As was customary in Russia, he was, as a boy, allowed free access to the society of the literary and artistic people who frequented his father's house. Here he entered into that life of boundless hospitality, disorderliness, whimsical jollity, and revelry, of erotic and baccha.n.a.lian orgies, which were typical of the upper cla.s.ses of his time.

From his nurse, a life-long friend, he learnt to love the world of Russian folklore.

For five years, from twelve to seventeen, he was at the Lyceum, just then opened at the Tsarskoye Sel, which reflected among its youthful pupils the same pa.s.sions of illicit amours, drink, and literature which characterised the parents. They became a sort of jovial anarchists. Like the Elizabethans, they were as often intoxicated with poetry as with wine. Pushkin early became the leader, as was only natural: he was already the best-read man in Russia; he was enthusiastic over the work of his younger contemporaries; he was an ideal companion. Like Milton and most other geniuses of a high order, he recognised his _metier_ very early in his life. He wrote in his teens:

"I am a poet too. My new and modest road Is now bestrewn with flowers by G.o.ddesses of singing, And G.o.ds have poured into my breast The names, elating visions bringing...."

Not only so, but--

"My pen revels in finding In it the ends of lines.

Exactness of expressions Through hallowed crystal shines."

Exactness of expression is as important to Pushkin as it was to Pope, just as fearless honesty was the keystone of his personality.

It was at the public examination of the Lyceists in Russian literature in 1815 that he first came before the public eye. Together with other compet.i.tors he had to read his work before the old ode-writer D'erjavin, who was so thrilled by _The Reminiscences of the Tsarskoye Sel_ that he wanted to rush forward and embrace the young poet.

Jukvski, then at the height of his fame, would read his verses to Pushkin and rely on his judgment. When in return Pushkin read _Ruslan and Ludmla_, Jukvski gave the boy his portrait with this inscription: "To the victorious pupil from his conquered teacher."

Such treatment might well be expected to turn the head of the youth, but Pushkin was then, as ever, modest and extremely critical of his own work. He was, as I have said, always searching for hidden genius in others: he it was who first discovered Gogol, and when that d.i.c.kens of Russia published _Dead Souls_ and _The Inspector-General_, the subjects in each case being suggested to him by Pushkin, the poet said delightedly: "The rascal robs me in such a bewitching way that it is impossible to be angry with him."

Pushkin's father declined to allow him to take a commission in the Hussars, and at eighteen the poet obtained a post in the Foreign Office, where he had much leisure, and plunged deeper than ever into the excesses common to his time, with the result that, though he swam, rode, fenced and walked to keep himself fit, twice in his nineteenth and twentieth years he nearly lost his health. Nor did his riotous living prevent him from working hard at his poetry.

In 1820 the long fairy tale _Ruslan and Ludmla_ appeared. The nearest approach to it in England is _Hero and Leander_--sensuous yet cold.

Everywhere it was read, copied out and learnt by heart by tradesman and n.o.ble alike. The story was founded on the national folklore. A wicked, humped dwarf carries away the only daughter of Prince Vladimir of Kiev from her nuptial bed to his castle: Ruslan, the bridegroom, and three disappointed lovers give chase. The adventures of the four warriors, Ludmla's seclusion in the wizard's castle and Ruslan's ultimate victory by hanging on to the long beard of the dwarf as he flies over seas and forests form the plot of the story.

The method of handling the story was fascinating, and quite new to Russia. It was vigorous, whimsical, absolutely natural and human: it was this last characteristic in particular which captivated the hearts of the whole race. Russia always loves the natural--but she did not yet recognise why it was that Pushkin especially appealed to her: there had been hitherto no realistic school.

No one realised, Pushkin least of all, that _Ruslan and Ludmla_ laid the foundation-stone of all future Russian literature.

The two schools then in existence, the pseudo-cla.s.sical and the romantic, debated savagely as to which category Pushkin belonged. They were unable to grasp the significance of this bubbling over of human fun, this directness of detail; indignation at such ideas as "Ruslan's tickling with his spear the nostrils of the giant's head," as bringing the national element into poetry at all, and so on, spread fast.

In the same year Pushkin threw himself heart and soul into the movement of young reformers, and joined the "Society of Welfare," which somewhat naturally roused the Government to action.

Alexander I. was for banishing him; Karamzin, however, pleaded for him with such effect that he was only sent to Bessarabia for a year. His banishment only accentuated his popularity. He took advantage of his retirement to write _The Prisoner of the Caucasus_ in eight hundred lines, the main feature of which is the first appearance in his work of _that grand reverence for women_ which is one of Pushkin's greatest charms.

A man in a Circa.s.sian village brings home one day as prisoner a young Russian, who has left his usual world to find freedom in the wilderness: being captured, he is put in irons and left to drag out his days in a cave. A young Circa.s.sian girl falls in love with him; he responds out of pity, being in love with another girl at home who did not, however, return his affection. The girl, struck with grief, yet understands, and gives up visiting him secretly, and while the tribe are away raiding she comes with a saw and dagger and gives him his freedom. They part with a kiss of great _human_ love. The young man, touched to the heart, looks back after he has swum the river, but the girl is nowhere to be seen and "only a circle widens on the face of the water, in the gentle shine of the moon." ... The public swallowed the poem greedily, the description of the manners of the Circa.s.sians especially attracting them. In another poem Pushkin uses a legend which he came across while visiting the ancient capital of the Crimean Tartars.

The young Tartar Khan, Givey, captures in a raid on Poland a young Christian princess, Mary, and conceals her in his harem. Her purity and saintly beauty so work upon him that he remains in awe before her.

Another beauty, Zarema, once a favourite of Givey, implores Mary to make her man come back to her: failing, of course, Zarema kills her and is herself drowned. The Khan in despair leaves his harem and goes out to wage wars, and returns in the end to build a fountain in memory of Mary, over which he erects a crescent crowned with a cross.

It was at this time that Pushkin fell under the influence of Byron and learned English to do so: not that he imitated Byron, but he was braced up to do something equally good in another way. This was in Kishinv, a hot-bed of noisy, pa.s.sionate freethinking blended with Asiatic aboriginality. He fought three duels, one of them resulting from a quarrel at a ball as to whether a waltz or a mazurka should be next on the programme. He then fell in love with a gipsy and joined the camp to which the girl belonged. The result was another poem called _The Gipsies_.

The hero, a man of society, comes to join the free life of a gipsy tribe because he despises the degenerating effect of civilisation. He has had enough of people in cities.

"Of love afraid, they cast off feeling And thought, and barter their free will: Before their idols blindly kneeling They ask for chains and money still."

The gipsies admit him into their careless, free, happy life. Aleko, as they call him, falls in love with the only child of a very wise old man and is happy, just loving, lying about in the sun and taking round for show a tame bear.

Zemphra, the girl, after bearing a son to Aleko, gets tired of him and falls in love with another gipsy. Aleko feels this very much and complains to her father, who tells him that he too in his youth lost his love in a similar way.

"'And thou didst not kill her lover?'" asks her lover. The old gipsy replies:

"'For what? Man's youth enjoys bird's licence.

Who is there that can love restrain?

In turn, joy brings to all sufficance.

What has been once comes ne'er again.'"

This does not satisfy Aleko, who kills Zemphra and her lover, after which the old father implores him to leave their free, kind world and return to civilisation.

Pushkin next writes a _Mazeppa_ of his own, the epic of _Peter the Great_, but not idealised as Byron's was.... The heroine Mar?a leaves her lover and becomes insane when her father is executed.

This stern, objective fragment of an epic, falling into their sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses, and cupids, was like a bas-relief conceived by a t.i.tan and executed by a G.o.d ... it is not surprising that it met with little or no appreciation. It is as if Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a style as concise as Pope's and as concentrated as Browning's dramatic lyrics. It revealed an entirely new phase in his style: hitherto it had seemed as shining and luscious fruit, now it became a concentrated, weighty tramp of ringing rhyme.

Pushkin has been accused (not by the Russians) of sentimentality ... a charge that can be confuted by quoting almost any of his lines at random.

Does this, for instance, reek of sentimentality?--

"To see you every hour that flies, To follow where your footsteps wander-- Your lip's faint smile, your turn of eyes, On these my thirsting love to squander, To listen to your voice, to grasp By man's soul woman's consummation, To pine for you, wither and gasp, This is a life's supreme elation."

Or this?--

"Just what I was before, the same I am to-day, Light-hearted, ever p.r.o.ne to fall in love again."

Or this Tenth Commandment?--