A GUIDE TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE. 1820-1917

A GUIDE TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE

1820-1917

MOISSAYE J. OLGIN

author of the soul of the russian revolution

PREFACE

A NATIONAL literature may be viewed as a manifestation of a purely creative genius, or as a reflection of the spiritual life of a people, or as a picture of its national character and socio-political conditions. It is evident that descriptions of social groups and classes or reproductions of spiritual gropings must form an element of every literature, the writers being children of their times, members of their nations, and drawing their experience from immediate surroundings. Yet hardly any literature equals the Russian in reproducing the spiritual struggles of men, and few western writers have been as willing as their Russian colleagues to go down to the very bottom of everyday existence and to scrutinize the economic, the social, and the political life of their country. This makes Russian literature a valuable object of study not only as art, but also as the surest road to the understanding of the Russian people and Russian conditions.

The task of the present volume is to be of assistance in such studies. From the literary productions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it selects only those which have a value for the present, either on account of their artistic qualities, or as representing some aspect of Russian life. This marks a point of departure from the traditional histories of literature. The Guide omits many poets who were of importance in their time, yet have been overshadowed by greater contemporaries or successors working in the same field. This is the case with Nikitin in the presence of Koltzov and Nekrasov, with Maikov and Polonsky in the presence of Pushkin, Lermontov and Foeth, with Minsky in the presence of Balmont and Bryusov. The Guide omits a number of older writers describing economic and social conditions when the same conditions have been presented more adequately and with more talent by others. Such is the case with Grigorovitch, Pisemsky, Potapenko, Stanyukovitch. All these and many other writers must take their place in a history of Russian literature, yet there is no room for them in a practical guide. On the other hand, The Guide includes many an author of the present generation who may not prove great sub specie aeternitatis yet who is indispensable as a truthful narrator and interpreter of events in recent times. To this class belong Chirikov, Yushkevitch, Gusev-Orenburgsky, Mujzhel. The Guide intends to answer the persistent question coming from many quarters, “What shall I read to understand Russian character and Russian life?”. Yet it passes by no book that marks a step forward in the progress of purely artistic creation.

The fact that a book has not been translated into English could not serve as a reason for excluding it from the Guide, as the list of translations is steadily growing and as the volume is intended to be of service not only to the general reader but also to publishers and translators. Moreover, in most cases it would be profitable to read a chapter devoted even to an untranslated author, as this may help in understanding the general tendencies in Russian literature and the drift of Russian thought.

A selection not only among writers but also among the works of each writer is inherent in a practical guide. Works have been specified which characterize the creative personality of the author, or possess a special literary value, or throw light on some particular facet in Russian life. This criterion made it necessary to select, on the whole, fewer works from authors of a uniform character and more from versatile writers. Thus, the fact that the Guide mentions less of Bunin's and more of Andreyev's works does not in any way put Bunin below Andreyev; it only indicates that Andreyev's interests were wider and so more of his works are required to give his portrait as a writer. On the other hand, the Guide is not overburdened with works that make tedious reading for even the Russian of our time because they are too local or too detailed or somewhat antiquated. For this reason, only a few of Uspensky's and Shchedrin's works are mentioned.

The space given each author naturally varies in accordance with his place in Russian literature. Yet departures from this general rule are unavoidable. Writers of the older generations receive a less detailed treatment than authors of our time. Writers well known in English-speaking countries are comparatively less dwelt upon than writers totally unknown. This procedure may be open to criticism from the standpoint of historic perspective; in a practical guide, however, it is natural that Ostrovsky, a writer of fifty years ago, should occupy less space than our contemporary, Veresayev. It is also excusable that Turgenev, so well-known and so generously commented upon, should not be reviewed with more detail than Sergeyev-Tzensky, whose name has hardly appeared in English. The underlying idea is that modern literature in its best manifestations gives a better insight into the soul of modern Russia than the works of long passed generations.

It would have been gratifying to the author had it been possible to make the Guide a mere compilation of Russian critical essays. This would present a study in Russian literature written by the keenest Russian scholars for Russian consumption. This, however, could not be realized, at least not within the scope set. It remained, therefore, to use quotations from Russian critics only as supplements, or as appreciations of individual books. The quotations were taken from the collected works of recognized students of Russian literature, from individual treatises, and from essays appearing in the most respected monthlies.

The Guide makes no attempt at criticizing the individual authors, i.e., at pointing out not only their merits but also their shortcomings and limitations. It is assumed that the qualities that make an author desirable as an object of study are his originality, his artistic personality, his closeness to Russian realities, not his failures or weaknesses which may be detected by one critic or another according to their conceptions. Therefore, no mention is made of the various and frequent attacks launched at Gorky after the first period of his glory. Similarly, the fierce controversy over the merits of the S5anbolists or Leonid Andreyev could hardly be given sufficient consideration. For detailed information, the student will, of course, have to turn to the work of the respective writers and to more elaborate critical surveys. Only where some negative quality gnaws at the root of an author's talent, it had to be pointed out in the Guide,

A word must be said about the terms story, novelette, and novel as used in the Guide. These terms are indicative only of the approximate size of a work. A short work, whatever its contents or character, if not exceeding in size some fifty pages of an ordinary book, is termed story. A longer work of between fifty and one hundred and fifty pages is called novelette. A longer production is marked as novel. Those names are a mere expedient for the orientation of the reader. In Russian the respective names are román, póvyest, razskáz.

CONTENTS

THE GROWTH OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE

General Survey

A.S.PUSHKIN

A.S.GRIBOYEDOV

M.J.LERMONTOV

A.V. KOLTZOVV

Y. G. BYELINSKY

N.V.GOGOL

S.T.AKSAKOV

A.N.OSTROVSKY

TH.M RESHETNIKOV

N.G. CHERNYSHEVSK

D. I. PISAREV

N. A. NEKRASOV

I. A. GONTCHAROV

I. S. TURGENEV

V. L. GARSHIN

S. J. NADSN a

Th. I. TYUTCHEV

Alexey TOLSTOI

A.A. Foeth-Shenshin

F.M. DOSTOYEVSKY

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV

L. N. LYESKOV

M. E. SALTYKOV (Shchedrin)

G. I. USPENSKY

N. K. MIKHAYLOVSKY

P. YAKUBOVITCH

D. N. MAMIN -SIBIRYAK

P. D. BOBORYKIN

A. P. CHEKHOV

N. G. GARIN-MIKHAYLOVSKY

V. G. KOROLENKO

THE "MODERNISTS"

General Survey

K. D. Balmont

V. Bryusov

K. D. Merezhkovsky

F. sologub

a. volynsky

A. Block

V. ivanov

Andrey Byely

III

THE RECENT TIDE

General Survey

MAXIM GORKY

LEONID ANDREYEV

VERESAYEV

A. KUPRIN

I. BUNIN

O. G. SERGEYEV-TZENSKY

M. P. ARTZYBASHEV

EVGENY CHIRIKOV

V. ROPSHIN o

ALEXEY REMIZOV

V. V. MUJZHEL

SEMYON YUSHKEVITCH

S. I. GUSEV-ORENBURHSKY

BORIS ZAITZEV

APPENDIX

Juvenile Literature in Russia

THE GROWTH OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE

GENERAL SURVEY

The historians of Russian literature follow its progress from decade to decade. They speak of the literature and men of the forties, the sixties, the seventies. They find clear lines of demarcation between one such period and another. For the purpose of a more comprehensive survey, however, Russian literature from the twenties to the beginning of the nineties of the past century may be viewed as one great entity. The points of resemblance between the literary productions of this entire period are numerous.

I. Russian literature is still a product of the land-owning nobility. Pushkin and Lermontov, Gontcharov and Aksakov, Turgenev and the Tolstois, and many another great light, were born in the mansions of the landlords, breathed the air of family traditions, led a carefree life in their youth, received a good education at the hands of private tutors, often foreigners, or in secluded aristocratic schools. This gave a certain unconscious refinement to their writings, and influenced their conception of life. Ordinarily they knew the village and the provincial town well, but the large city was quite outside their range of vision. They were intimately connected with the land-holding class, and consequently had an understanding of the peasantry which was grouped, geographically and economically, around the landlords' mansions, but they were little interested in the problems of the city folk. Russia for them was the village. The Russian people coincided with the Russian peasants.

In the last third of the century, the raznotchinetz, the man from the ranks, makes his appearance in Russian literature. Up to that time, only very few sons of the people succeeded in treading upon the sacred literary ground. The poets Koltzov and Nikitin, and the story-writer Reshetnikov, were the best known. Now, with the general progress of life and the development of education, more and more writers of the non-privileged classes step to the front. The new men have a new boldness in their manner; they are crude; they are in many cases more vigorous than their noble brothers, as raw life often appears to have greater vigor than its more refined manifestations. Yet the new writers cannot compete with the others in charm, in ease, in masterful handling of their subjects, in artistic poise. Notwithstanding all the changes in Russian life gradually developing after the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the dominant figure in literature is still the son of the nobleman’s nest.

2. Russian literature of this period is, to a large extent, a substitution for social and political activities. Russian intelligentzia, well-acquainted with the ideas and movements of the western world, was prevented by autocracy from putting its ideas into practice. The progressive elements were practically barred from any economic or political work not favored by the ruling group. Many of those elements hit their heads against the black wall of Russian absolutism, in a vain attempt to break it. Those were the revolutionists of the seventies and early eighties who stained their martyr-path with tears and blood and were finally crushed by the old régime. But they were few. The vast majority preferred to dream. The intelligentzia lived an imaginary life in its books and writings. Literature in Russia was more than a pastime, more than an artistic reflection of life. It is life itself. It was the only realm where title creative power of the nation’s best men could find a semblance of constructive work.

It is for this reason that our political factions almost always coincided with literary schools. The Slavophils and the Westerners of the forties and fifties were fundamentally divided in their political conceptions. Had they been allowed to carry their controversy into the political field, the Slavophils might have conducted a campaign for a patriarchal system based on confidence between the Czar as father and the people as his children, with a Parliament discussing but not voting bills, while the Westerners might have striven to introduce a parliamentary system on a European scale. Much of the intellectual energies of both factions would have been absorbed by purely political activities, and literature would have only reflected these processes of life. Under autocratic rule, however, both factions turned to the field halfway open for them, and literature became the ground where they fought their battles.

A score of years later, the same was true about the Naródniki and Marxists. What divided these factions was their conception of Russia’s economic future. The Naródniki thought industrialism a foreign growth incompatible with the foundations of Russian economic life. In the communal ownership of land as it existed in the peasant communities, the Naródniki saw the nucleus of a better social order. The peasants were in their eyes the half-conscious bearers of a socialist ideal, which only the pressure of bureaucracy prevented from reorganizing society on the basis of equality and freedom. Hence the great reverence of the Naródniki for the peasant life and habits, for peasant ideology. The Marxists, on the contrary, thought industrialization of Russia unavoidable, and the villages were in their eyes so many nests of ancient prejudices and social reaction. The center of gravity was put by the Marxists in the industrial workers as a coming revolutionary force. All this had little to do with literature, yet for a quarter of a century the ideal of the Naródniki, their hopes and queries could find only literary expression. The few enthusiasts who early in the seventies tried to approach the peasants with social propaganda, were soon imprisoned, and nothing remained for the Naródnik but to study peasant life and to put his dream of a bright future in literary images.

Literature was the only refuge of the Russian mind, the only safety isle to avoid stagnation. All that was deepest in the soul of our spiritual leaders rushed to literature and literary criticism to find realization.

We resembled a string order in the midst of the atrocities of Russian life. We gratified our social instinct by reading descriptions of the people’s life. We satisfied our desire for political action by discussing the various types of Naródniki, Socialists, bureaucrats, capitalists, workingmen, which were presented in our literature. It was almost a civic duty for any member of the intelligentzia to have read the latest sketch of Uspensky or Veresayev, the stories of Korolenko, the poems of Yakubovitch. This is why our writers were so eager to describe all the most novel occurrences in our social life. This is why they always had their ears close to the ground to perceive the faintest sound the very moment it was born.

3. Literature of this period is a very serious occupation, almost a civic service. A writer is not supposed to tell a story for the story’s sake. The aim of literature is not to be pleasing, but to touch the most important moments in the life of the individual as well as in the life of society or humanity. A writer is a friend, a teacher and a leader. It is, of course, taken for granted that a writer must have talent, else he would not be able to impress his readers. Talent alone, however, is not sufficient. Generally speaking, the author is supposed to do one of three things: to broaden the social vision of the public by picturing social injustices and by holding out the ideal of a better social order, though this ideal may not always be clear—(pictures of family life, of relations between the sexes, between fathers and children, all treated from a social viewpoint, would also come under this head) to deepen the spiritual life of the readers by giving, descriptions of psychological problems, of mental strife, of philosophical, metaphysical, ethical, or esthetic gropings, to make the Russians better acquainted with their fatherland by describing social phenomena little known to the public, such as the life of the Siberian miners, the life of mariners, the life of fishermen, the life of the half civilized of the border-provinces, the life of religious sects repudiating the official church, etc. Such descriptions may not be animated by an ideal, yet they are taken as something useful in Russian cultural life. Writings that do not serve one of these purposes are hardly considered worthwhile reading. Literature is a means of keeping the mind and the soul awake to the important problems of existence. Accordingly, the author occupies a high position, perhaps the highest and most respected, in the esteem of his contemporaries. The attitude towards literature is a serious one, almost excluding the aspect of amusement. Literature may give joy, suffering or rapture, but it certainly is not the aim of literature to give pleasure.

4. Throughout the literature of this period sounds the voice of a sick conscience. Russian writers think themselves partly responsible for the miserable conditions of the people. This was a direct outcome of the isolated position into which the intelligentzia was forced by autocratic rule. The sons of the noblemen were, certainly, uncomfortable in their cultural solitude. The intellectual raznotchinetz could not be happy with his modern education which elevated him above the masses. The writers of aristocratic origin indulged in gloomy moods deploring their great unredeemed debt to the people. The writers of the raznotchinetz type were, perhaps, gloomier because they felt more keenly the chaos and humiliating baseness of Russian life. All of them were fully aware of the fact that no changes could be undertaken before they found a way to the minds of the masses. This way, however, was hidden in the mists of the future. There was no bridge over the gulf dividing the intelligentzia and the people.

Only a few writers, notably Foeth and Alexey Tolstoi, were free from this typical Russian gloom, and this is one of the reasons why they never succeeded in becoming leaders of intellectual Russia. They were too much out of tone with the prevailing motives.

5. Russian literature is moved by a keen desire to understand the character of the nation. Up to Pushkin, hardly any writer tried to describe the Russian people and Russian conditions as they were. The task confronting our literature in the nineteenth century is enormous. For the first time in history, the writers have to sketch the fundamentals of the Russian character, the essential features of the Russian soul. True it is that literatures of all periods and all nations depict the characters of the respective nations. Yet one thing it is to record new types in a country where life had been mirrored by literature for generations, and another to outline the features of a great nation for the first time, with hardly any literary traditions in the past. The latter is the situation in Russia, especially in first three quarters of the nineteenth century. Many Russian writers are practically discoverers of new realms: Aksakov discovers patriarchal Russia under serfdom, Gogol discovers the discrepancies of a decaying feudal system, Ostrovsky introduces the Russian middle-class, Turgenev discovers a human being in the peasant, Lyeskov sketches for the first time the Russian clergy and the simple faith of the masses, Koltzov is himself a revelation of the people’s spirit, Gontcharov depicts the national traits of inertia in Oblomov; all of them are discovering the beauty of the Russian landscape, the inherent intelligence of the plain people, the mysticism at the bottom of the Russian soul. Everything is novel in Russia; everything is eagerly read and commented upon. It is only natural that the writers develop a keen interest for all such observations. Literature is scrutinizing the Russian nation from every angle. Literature makes Russia aware of herself as a nation, at least in the mind of her thinking elements.

6. Particular attention is given the peasantry. Scrutiny of the village and contemplation over the fate of the agricultural worker are common to the writers of all camps and factions, Slavophil or Westerner, nobleman or raznotchinetz. Gogol writes tales of the Ukrainian people with an amazing gaiety of color and humorous fondness. Turgenev portrays a number of peasant types in a tone of lofty artistic composure. Nekrasov writes of the peasants’ sufferings with tears and seething compassion. Uspensky tries to be a calm inquisitive observer interested primarily in facts though his brain is constantly aflame. Reshetnikov made the reader shiver with fear at the sight of the dreadful savagery of the people. All these writers, varying in talent and in social conceptions, are united by their profound interest in the life of the peasants, by their insatiable desire to solve the mystery of the great sphinx,—the Russian masses.

This is not mere artistic curiosity. Neither is it a feeling of charitable pity for the poor. Back of it all is the consciousness of the fact that the peasant is the cornerstone of Russian life, that all work of reconstructing Russia must begin from below. The object of all this invest, the moujik, was hardly awake of the intellectual attempts of interpreting his very essence. He continued to lead his obscure routine life. He seldom stirred. He never protested. He was like a drop in a black sea under a heavy sky. He was not conscious of his power. Yet all those gentlemen who stretched at him their artistic feelers, had a distinct premonition that someday the black sea would begin to heave and rage and storm and break its chains. Hence the feeling of awe that the Russian sphinx inspired in all the writers.

7. Life in Russia through all this period is in a state of organic development. No violent changes are taking place. No great social-catastrophes shake the body of the nation,—up to the famine of 1891. What is annoying in Russia is the slowness of all processes. Misery and poverty are increasing in the rural districts, to be sure, but even these threatening symptoms are accumulating gradually, with the steady and slow progress of a glacier. Accordingly, Russian literature is slow in manner and style. Compared with the modern way of writing, many of the older authors such as Grigorovitch, Zlatovratsky, Pisemsky, Uspensky, seem very tedious. They are painstakingly recording every detail. They go into lengthy descriptions of nature, often occupying several pages. They stop to reason over life in general, over the fate of their heroes, over the destinies of their native land. They proceed in their narrative with utter deliberation.

This, of course, is not applicable to such brilliant writers as Gogol or Turgenev or Nekrasov. Yet even in the best works of this period we notice a preponderance of matter over form, of contents over construction. As a rule, Russian writers do not construct their works carefully. They are hardly concerned over a plot. They are not very fastidious as to the choice of expressions. What is their real interest and what gives their work a peculiar value is the palpitation of actual life, the soaring of the spirit, the sincerity of a human soul speak directly and freely. Literary productions called by their authors, a story or a novel are quite often neither one nor the other. They are just a morsel of real life, an illuminating episode, a study in human character, or a string of such episodes and studies loosely connected. The Russian reader and the Russian critic were looking for the truthfulness and spiritual depth of a work rather than for its external perfection.

8. In a country where literature takes the place of life, the critic takes the place of a leader. From the forties to the nineties, Byelinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, Mikhaylovsky follow one another in a splendid succession, exerting an amazing influence over the minds of their generation. What they do cannot be called pure criticism. Even the most artistic of the group, Byelinsky, considered literary criticism a means to raise the nation to a higher level of social and cultural life. The others use the works of art as a basis for discourses over philosophical, sociological, or political topics. From a character or an incident given by an author they proceed to the social background and to the causes of the existing evils. This procedure brings within their scope all the important problems of their time. They are not mere critics, they are teachers, propagandists, prophets of a new order. Their work is ordinarily connected with the editing of progressive monthlies.

9. The literary language remains almost uniform throughout the entire period. Aside from individual deviations, nearly all writers use the same literary apparatus. Pushkin’s language is dominant in poetry, and the subsequent works of Nekrasov, Alexey Tolstoi, or Nadson are, perhaps, even a step backward. Foeth and Tyutchev are using a very refined and subtle language, but they are outside of the general run and seem to have little influence on their colleagues. Turgenev’s manner is dominant in prose writing, but there seems to be no worship of the language, no effort at stretching it or making it more colorful. Here as in many other respects, the writers are more interested in what they have to say than in the way they say it. The language is taken for granted. Rhythm and music and a certain beauty are almost common property. This accounted for lucidity, simplicity, chastity and honesty of expression, yet reform work in this realm became imminent.

All this changes towards the beginning of the nineties. Social and cultural progress initiated by the abolition of serfdom and facilitated by subsequent industrial development, brought about new literary schools. The modernist with his gospel of beauty, his lack of interest for social problems, and his strong inclination towards a mystical conception of life, makes his appearance, and within a short time becomes one of the dominant factors. On the other hand, new waves of social energy, hardly perceptible at the outset, make the ground vibrate. Unrest spreads. Social forces are growing. The country is in the grip of a revolution. Russian literature responds. It is saturated with new color. It breathes unrest. It expands. It becomes infinitely more abundant in motives, forms, observations, ideas. Thus the great trunk of Russian literature of the nineteenth century branches off into two main boughs. These will form the subject of the second and the third divisions of the present work.

A. S. PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

Poet. One of the great national classic writers.

Pushkin created the modern Russian poetic language. He freed it from dead hyperbolism and false solemnity; he brought it closer to the living language of the people, and gave it sincerity, dignity, flexibility, and vigor.

Pushkin is the first Russian poet to express in simple and truthful words the soul of a Russian. “The substance and qualities of his poetry”, said Turgenev, “coincided with the substance and qualities of the Russian nation”. Pushkin gave utterance to such emotions and moods as constituted the best traits of the Russian character. He thus fulfilled a great desire for self-expression dormant in a great people. Russia instantly recognized in Pushkin her own and loved him as people love their soil, their nature, the house of their parents. Pushkin's influence on the following generations is incalculable. Not one Russian possessing the knowledge of reading has failed to learn from Pushkin beautiful and inspiring things.

Pushkin is firm and tender. The joy of living permeates his musical lines, and their reading is a strange solace even when they touch the dark aspects of existence. There is clarity, serenity, balance in his poems; they give the impression of a clear autumn sky over a country rich with fruit and seeds. Life is sparkling in his songs, ballads, and verbal paintings; there is often pain and sadness and a longing for unmitigated freedom in his melodies; at times he is bitter, full of indignation and stinging mockery; yet his faith in man is never diminished, and the undertone of all his poetry is a restrained gladness of the soul in intimate contact with the destinies of human beings, the life of humanity, and nature.

Pushkin is not only a lyrical poet, though the lyrical element permeates most of his poetic creations. He wrote a series of epic works unmatched in Russian literature. His numerous fantastic poems use the material of fairytales current among the plain people. His poetic tales exceed in simplicity and national color even the original productions of folklore. In a number of dramatic productions and fragments he manifested a dramatist's talent equal to the best. His prose stories are marked by a simplicity, lucidity, and charm undreamed of before, and they open a new era in the history of Russian prose.

All of Pushkin's writings bear the stamp of a rich personality. Pushkin is unusually clever, sharp, and witty. At the same time he is deeply earnest. Underneath his frivolity which is only the play of overabundant creative power, there is a foundation of thought. And whatever Pushkin writes is brilliant.

Not one of the Russian classic writers has been studied so lovingly and with so much care as Pushkin. Pushkinism has become an important science occupying an honorable place side by side with other branches of history. The literature on Pushkin is enormous.

"When you pronounce the name of Pushkin you invariably think of a Russian national poet. He possesses all the richness, the power, and the flexibility of our language. He, more than anybody, widened the boundaries of the language and showed its entire scope. Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps the most unique phenomenon in the history of the Russian spirit: he is the Russian man in the process of development, as he will be, say, two hundred years from now. Russian nature, Russian soul, Russian character, Russian language have been reflected through him with such purity, in such purified beauty, as a landscape is reflected on the convexed surface of an optic glass."

N. V. Gogol.

"Pushkin's main contribution to Russian literature consisted in putting poetry on a high level of independence. He freed poetry from its former subsidiary role as a means of propaganda or a pretty pastime. He made poetry the highest activity of the human spirit. This activity, in his opinion, ought to be unrestricted. He, therefore, proclaimed the right of human personality to be free. From the very first words of his poetic creations, he unequivocally declared himself a champion of freedom.

"His creative activities were not a result of reason and logic, however, but of a poetic imagination. He brought into poetry a wealth of live impressions. This is why his pictures and moods are so infinitely varied. Still, hand in hand with imagination, works his conscious thought.

"... Pushkin's poetry is the history of a lofty ideal which seeks for light, for sincere feeling, and for freedom. "I wish to live that I may think and suffer", the poet said.

" The unusual wealth of his poetic pictures was a revelation. He widened the horizon of Russian poetry beyond national boundaries. He made it universal."

A. N. Pypin.

"Pushkin is the echo of the world, an obedient and melodious echo which moves from realm to realm, passionately responding to everything so that no one significant tone in the life of the universe may vanish without leaving a trace. There is something fundamentally human in this ability to respond, in this gift of musical answers to all living voices, as nobody ought to limit himself to a definite set of impressions, and the universe oueht to exist as a whole for every one of us. Yet there is something inherently poetic in these qualities of Pushkin's. . . . There was such a limitless amount of beauty in his own soul that it could find relief, consonance, and inner rhyme only in the variety of nature and in the boundlessness of human existence. His all-responding soul was like a many-stringed instrument, and the universe playing on this Aeolian harp extracted from it the most marvelous songs. Pushkin, the great Pan of poetry, listened eagerly to the call of the sky, the earth, the throbbing of the heart. ... A giant of the spirit, full of burning curiosity, full of restlessness and sounds, Pushkin embraces all, sees and hears everything. The soul is indivisible and eternal, he said, and he proved it by his own example. Without boundaries or limits, knowing no distance or past, always in the present, everywhere alive, a contemporary of everything, he moves, above space and above time, from land to land, from age to age, and nothing is alien or foreign to him."

J. Eichenwald.

I. Lyrical Poems. (From approximately 1820 to 1837.)

"In his charming anthology of short poems, Pushkin is still more versatile and broader in scope than in his epics. Some of his smaller productions are of a dazzling brilliance. Here is everything: enjoyment, simplicity, an instant elevation of thought which gives the reader a thrill of inspiration. There is no eloquence here, only pure poetry; there is no outward luster, no elaboration, no perplexing form, but there is inner light which reveals itself gradually. The poems are laconic as pure poetry ought to be, but they are full of meaning, they signify everything. There is a world of space in every word; every word is boundless as the poet himself."

N. V. Gogol.

It is needless to say that almost every poem of Pushkin's has been studied in the schools and is known to every educated Russian. No classic poet has been, through many generations, so close as Pushkin to the heart of his nation. We have all learned to love Russian nature and the best elements in the past and present of Russia through Pushkin's poems.

The Queen of Spades.

Eugene Onéguine; a romance of Russian life in verse (Archives.org). //Gutenberg

Translations from Poushkin in memory of the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birthday; by Charles Edward Turner .

Marie; a story of Russian love .

Events are centered around the Battle of Poltava 1709). The main figures are Peter the Great; Mazeppa, the Ukrainian Hetman: Maria, the beautiful Ukrainian maiden. The pictures of Ukrainian nature and of the Battle of Poltava belong to the best of Pushkin's creations. Poltava is, perhaps, the ripest and most perfect of all his works.

"The pathos [of Poltava] is turned towards a colossal subject. We see Peter and the Battle of Poltava. The picture of the battle is drawn with a broad and daring brush; it is full of life and motion: a painter could copy it as he copies nature. The appearance of Peter in the midst of this picture, an appearance represented in flaming colors which make your hair stand upright on your head, gives you an impression of being present at a great religious mystery; as if some unknown God, in rays of glory unbearable to mortal eyes, were passing before us surrounded by lightning and thunder."

V. G. Byelinsky.

Russians learned to appreciate Peter the Great through Pushkin's Poltava more than through all the textbooks of history.

Boris Godounov. A historical drama in verse. (1830.)

The first historical drama of a realistic nature in Russian literature. The main figure is the Tzar Boris Godounov (1605) ascending the throne over the dead body of the legitimate heir whom he caused to be murdered. Godounov's tragedy is the discrepancy between outward happiness and inner consciousness of guilt. The hand of a Nemesis is suspended over all his deeds. Worse is the Nemesis intrenched in his own soul.

A group of other historic figures very well drawn fill the drama with life and action.

''Boris Godounov is all permeated with Russian history. The poet condensed it: he extracted it lovingly from old documents and chronicles and transformed it into living figures. On the very words, grave and earnest, on their choice and arrangement, our national past and its spirit are stamped; they are hidden in the very folds of the play notwithstanding its Shakespearean manner. When you read Boris Godounov you see history in action, you feel its vibration.

"Yet, the individual, the historic, became under Pushkin's hand universal; a human crime retained in the annals of Russian history, the poet represented not only as an event in Russian life, but as a universal phenomenon of conscience."

J. Eichenwald.

The Copper Rider. (1837.)

A series of poetic pictures and contemplations connected with the city of Petersburg and its founder, Peter the Great, whose copper statue, a powerful rider on a wild prancing horse, seemed to Pushkin to symbolize an entire epoch in Russian history.

The city of Petersburg, rising in melancholy beauty from the marshes of a dreary country on the faraway Gulf of Finland; its imposing structures combining barbarous taste with western refinement; its river and canals half hidden in fog; its "white" summer nights when dawn almost instantly follows sunset,—all the glory and mystic charm and hopes for the future are living in this series of poetic sketches centered around the inundation of Petersburg in 1824. The subject, however, is wider. The subject is Russia of modern times assimilating western civilization.

The Avaricious Knight. Dramatic fragment. (1836.)

Here Pushkin leaves his time and nation and carries us back to mediaeval times. His subject is a lonely knight devoured by the passion of avarice. The character is represented with marvelous vigor. The Knight's monologues are equal in psychological truth, color, and expression to those of the best classic tragedies.

[Other works of importance: Ruslan and Ludmila, fantastic poem; Mozart and Salieri, dramatic fragment; The Stone Guest, dramatic sketch; The Feast in Pest Time; The Water Fairy; Tales; Songs of Eastern Slavs; The Captain's Daughter, novelette in prose; Byelkins Stories in prose; Dame Pique, story in prose; and many more. In fact, all of Pushkin's works available in English, including his brilliant letters, deserve to be studied.]

A. S. GRIBOYEDOV (1795-1829)

Griboyedov is known as the author of one comedy, The Misfortune of Reason. Though he wrote many other works, they were all of slight value and would not have made his name known. The Misfortune of Reason put him instantly into the foremost ranks of Russian writers.

The Misfortune of Reason, a comedy in five acts, in verse, was written between 1818 and 1823. It subsequently underwent many revisions, and numerous handwritten copies were circulating for years among the public, arousing merriment and admiration; many monologues of the comedy became famous before the work finally appeared in print in 1833.

Few works equal The Misfortune of Reason in its influence on the public mind. The comedy is a presentation of the Russian nobility and higher bureaucracy looked at from the angle of modern progress. The scene of action is Moscow, and the characters are a noble Russian bureaucrat, his daughter, his subordinate, a colonel of the army, and many other representatives of society each with his own peculiar traits. The element of protest and criticism is embodied in young Tchatzky who returns to Moscow after a few years of absence.

As Pushkin showed his people the better elements of the national character, so Griboyedov showed in a realistic manner the dark side of their life. He came, however, not as a preacher in solemn garb; he came as a friend who mocks at the infirmities and emptiness of the upper class. He touched a very sensitive spot, and the response was vast. We all know Griboyedov's characters as we know our best friends. Their ideas, the object of their interest, their past and present are an open book to us. Their sayings have become an integral part of every intellectua's vocabulary. The various features of their characters we can and do trace in other types created by Russian writers and, more important, in actual life. It is the peculiarity of The Misfortune of Reason that its characters are undying. Even in the twentieth century we still find in our public life men and women who can be identified easily with Griboyedov's heroes. We experience a melancholy satisfaction in comparing their words and deeds with those of their prototypes in a comedy written a hundred years ago.

The Misfortune of Reason formed all through the nineteenth and twentieth century an integral part of the Russian stage repertoire. Generation after generation looked at its production with the same mirth. Its influence on dramatic literature, on the stage, on generations of actors was immense.

"He [Griboyedov] loved the truth; he was her'champion from his very youth; he spoke the truth fearlessly, without mercy to himself or to others. Contemporaries and witnesses admired the power of his mind and his devotion to the truth. Representatives of the most divergent views agree in appreciating his personality. One is almost astonished that men of this kind could really exist.

"The opinions expressed by the hero of the comedy are quite unusual for his time. They combine admiration for ancient Russian customs with a love for European institutions, sympathy for the sound fundamentals of national life and appreciation of modern progress. Tchatzky advocates higher education, freedom of opinions; he is proud of the new century when 'a man can breathe freely'. This is good Russian patriotism on a European basis." A. Veselovsky.

"Every word of Griboyedov's comedy showed life in a comical aspect. It impressed one with the quickness of understanding, the originality of expression, the poetical realism of the characters. . . . Griboyedov is one of the most powerful manifestations of the Russian spirit." V. G. Byelinsky.

"The comedy The Misfortune of Reason is both a picture of social customs, a gallery of living types, and a scathing, deeply penetrating satire. As a picture it is undoubtedly stupendous. Its canvas includes a long period of Russian life, from Catherine to Emperor Nicholas [the First]. In a group of twenty persons is reflected, as a ray of the sun in a drop of water, all of old Moscow, its pattern, its spirit, its manners at a certain historic moment. All is done with an artistic skill, an objectivity and perfection equaled only by Pushkin and Gogol. In a picture which contains not one blurred spot, not one superfluous stroke, the reader even now feels himself at home, among living persons.

"Both the general subject and the details are taken from the Moscow drawing-rooms and transferred into the book and to the stage, all the time retaining their freshness and peculiar Moscow atmosphere.

"The salt, the epigrams, the satire, the conversational verse, it seems to me, will never die, nor will that sharp and caustic Russian mind die which lives in Griboyedov's lines. It is impossible to imagine a better language, more natural, more simple, more close to life. Prose and verse have here amalgamated into an indivisible entity as if with conscious intention that they might be easier retained in memory and circulated with all the wit, humor, fun, and malice which the author has put into them" .A. I. GONTCHAROV.

M. J. LERMONTOV (1814-1841)

When we think of Lermontov, we see in our minds a huge mountain-peak somewhere in the heart of the Caucasus, Eternal silence reigns in its clefts and gorges. Its mass of ice and stone looks a picture of gloomy solitude. It seems to be indifferent to the turmoil of life. Still, there is boiling lava deep in its heart. Time and again it shakes from the fury of compressed inner forces. On its bare stony body little trees with lacy foliage climb higher and higher; and when the world is in bloom, winds laden with fragrance blow on its ragged brow, bringing the lure of distant lands.

Such is the poet Lermontov. This is, perhaps, why he loved the Caucasus all his life.

He is the most tragic of the Russian poets. From his very boyhood he was full of disdain for humanity, whose life he thought shallow, empty, and ugly; at the same time, he was irresistibly attracted by this very meaningless life. He cherished the ideal of a demon, a proud, lonely, and powerful superhuman creature challenging peaceful virtues and conventional happiness; at the same time he was fiercely craving for mortal love and sunlit human happiness, the absence of which filled his heart with pain. He had a cool and strong intellect, a power of analysis and criticism which revealed the futility of endeavor in this world and dictated an attitude of bored aloofness; at the same time he was torn by mad passions prompting him to the most unreasonable actions. He was inclined to protest, to repudiate, to curse, and ahnost without noticing he drifted into a prayer or saw the vision of an angel singing his quiet song over "a world of grief and tears." Altogether he is a profoundly unhappy nature, just the reverse of his older brother Pushkin.

If Pushkin is primarily the poet of the Russian soul and Russian nature, Lermontov is the first of the great Russian poets of the spirit. And if Pushkin is fundamentally national, acquiring international significance through his closeness to his native land, Lermontov is of universal value in himself as expressing those doubts and moods and gropings which are common to all cultured men. This did not prevent him from being a genuine Russian poet. One is even justified in looking for a connection between his dark rebellious moods and the dark conditions of the society in which he lived.

Lermontov is a self-centered poet. "The most characteristic feature of Lermontov's genius", Vladimir Solovyov says, "is a terrific intensity of thought concentrated on himself, on his ego, a terrific power of personal feeling." This, however, is no self-centeredness. Lermontov seeks refuge within himself because he finds no values in the ephemeral existence of the world. He sinks into brooding moods not because he finds in them satisfaction, but because life does not quell his thirst for harmony and truth. He is at war with society, with humanity, with the universe. He is at war even with God in the name of some great unearthly beauty which only at rare moments gives to his soul her luminous forebodings.

If Pushkin is the poet of all the people, Lermontov is the poet of the thinking elements in it. As such he played a colossal role in the spiritual history of his country. Generation after generation learned from him to hate the slueeishness of Russian life and the convention of every life, to repudiate compromises, to understand the longing of the soul for things non-existent, and to cherish freedom in the broad sense of the word.

Lermontov's form is in full accord with his moods, varying from the most exquisite tenderness to "verses coined of iron, dipped in poignancy and gall", from slow, thoughtful, and melancholy lines to volcanic outbursts of fury. In expressing delicate shades of emotions and in dignified refinement Lermontov is, perhaps, even superior to Pushkin. There is more of the elusive quality in his poems, that which cannot be expressed in definite words.

"Horrified by the triviality of life, by its corruption and helplessness, Lermontov sounded the motive of indignation. This indignation, so rare in Russia, utterly alien to Pushkin, timidly sounding in the work of Tchatzky, unknown to Gogol, was something new and unheard of. Through Lermontov's indignation, the Russian citizen for the first time became aware of himself as a real human being. The feeling of human dignity was stronger in Lermontov than all other feelings. It sometimes assumed unhealthy proportions, it led him to satanical pride, to contempt for all his surroundings. And in the name of this human dignity, unrecognized and downtrodden, he raised the voice of indignation.

"It appeared to him that not only society, those hangmen of freedom and genius, but also the Deity that gave him life, are making attempts on his inalienable rights as a man and are preventing him from living a full, eternal life which alone was of value to him. He saw no prospect of eternal life, no fullness of existence, no love without betrayal, no passion without satiety, and he did not wish to agree to'less, as a deposed ruler does not wish to receive donations from the hand of the victor. . . .

''Lermontov is a religious nature, but his religion is primarily a groping, an indefinite, hazy admittance of life's tragic mystery." Evg. Solovyov (Andreyevitch.).

"Lermontov introduced into literature the struggle against Philistinism. Not, perhaps, till the end of the nineteenth century did Philistinism meet a more ruthless, merciless foe. His aversion to philistinism is the key to his entire conception of life. His hatred for everything ordinary led him to his outspoken individualism and brought him near to that real romanticism which was unknown in Russia before him. It also imbued him with that contempt for the surrounding world which it is customary to view as Lermontov's characteristic pessimism. Lermontov, however, is not only a pessimist. Lermontov believed that life in itself could be beautiful, even at present. It could be beautiful, and it was all soiled under Philistine rule,—this was for him the tragic contradiction. Hence his pessimism, his misanthropy, his hatred for life. He sees ethical philistinism in all social groups, in all society, in humanity at large. From this standpoint he is perhaps the most outspoken individualist in all Russian literature."

Ivanov-Razumnik.

"The leading motives of Lermontov's charming and sparkling poetry were a protest against the restrictions of individual freedom, a detached attitude towards an oppressing world, and the lure of another world which though not shaped clearly, not based on a definite foundation, is possessed of an irresistible power. This luring world is ordinarily somewhere in the past; it is a reminiscence, not a hope; at times it is heaven, at times, nature, at times, an idea, unclear yet so wonderful that the very sounds which give an inkling of its dark meaning cannot be listened to 'without emotion'. It is this better world which gives real meaning to a soul reminiscent of it, and the idea of this world lives in many of Lermontov's heroes.

"The idea of something which does not allow us to accept our world as the best of all worlds, an idea appearing to men in the best moments of their life and stirring them to action and changes, was very strong in Lermontov's mind. The circumstances of his personal life and the conditions of his time might have strengthened his longing for another world; fundamentally, however, this longing is an inherent quality of mankind, and through it, Lermontov is close not only to his own contemporaries, but also to readers of the present and the future."

I. Ignatov.

"What an abundance of power, what a variety of ideas and images, emotions and pictures! What a strong fusion of energy and grace, depth and ease, elevation and simplicity!

"Not a superfluous word; everything in its place; everything as required, because everything had been felt before it was said, everything had been seen before it was put on the canvas. His song is free, without strain. It flows forth, here as a roaring waterfall, there as a lucid stream.

"The quickness and variety of emotions are controlled by the unity of thought; agitation and struggle of opposing elements readily flow into one harmony, as the musical instruments in an orchestra join in one harmonious entity under the conductor's baton. And all sparkles with original colors, all is imbued with genuine creative thought and forms a new world similar to none" .V. G. BYELINSKY

Lyrical poems. (1828-1841.)

"Invincible spiritual power; subdued complaints; the fragrant incense of prayer; flaming, stormy inspiration; silent sadness; gentle pensiveness; cries of proud suffering, moans of despair; mysterious tenderness of feeling; indomitable outbursts of daring desires; chaste purity; infirmities of modern society; pictures from the life of the universe; intoxicating lures of existence; pangs of conscience; sweet remorse; sobs of passion; quiet tears flowing in the fullness of a heart that has been tamed in the storms of life; joy of love; trembling of separation; gladness of meeting; emotions of a mother; contempt for the prose of life; mad thirst for ecstasies; completeness of spirit that rejoices over the luxuries of existence; burning faith; pains of soul's emptiness; outcry of a life that shuns itself; poison of negation; chill of doubt; struggle between fullness of experience and destructive reflection; angel fallen from heaven: nroud demon and innocent child: imPetuous bacchante and pure maiden,—all, all is contained in Lermontov's poetry: heaven and earth, paradise and hell. ..."

V. G. Byelinsky. .

The Demon, A fantastic poem. (1829-1841.)

The Demon, the Spirit of Evil, craves to free himself from his cold loneliness and to rise to heights of harmony through love for a mortal, the nun Tamar. The scene is set in the Caucasus, and the story is full of the mystic glow of the Orient.

The figure of the Demon was the creation Lermontov loved most. He worked on it practically all his life.

"Lermontov's Demon is not a symbol of the eternal Evil; he is not the Satan, he is a proud spirit, embittered and therefore sowing evil. He lived a lonely, monotonous life. He spread evil without satisfaction to himself. The Demon is an idealist suffering from disappointment. His hatred for mortals is too human. His love for Tamar suddenly transforms him. Her appearance makes him comprehend the sanctity of 'love, the good, and the beautiful' which had never been foreign to his soul, but lay hidden in its remotest corners. A Demon, however, is not destined for joy. Victory does not satisfy his heart, and torn by despair, he goes to tear the one he loves."

K. I. Arabazhin.

Mtzyri. (1840.)

The poem of freedom. A Circassian boy brought up in a monastery and ready to become a monk, is lured by the wild freedom of nature. On a stormy night he runs away from his half-voluntary prison. For three days he is absent. On the fourth, he is found in the fields near the monastery. He is exhausted and dying. The poem consists mainly of the boy's story. He tells what he experienced in his dash for freedom.

In Mtzyri, Lermontov expressed one of his strongest emotions: his desire to be free like the wind, like the eagle on top of a mountain, like a powerful horse running through the boundless steppe. It is the fullness of life that lured both Lermontov and his Caucasian hero.

Ismael Bey. An epic poem. (1832.)

The scene of action is the Caucasus, the fight of the native mountain tribes against Russian aggression. Attention is centered on Ismae's drama.

"Ismael is endowed by nature with a powerful mind, a strong will, and stormy passions; in a word, he possesses the qualities of a demon whom nobody can oppose unpunished. He is a son of the mountains, a free child of wild nature who was early torn away from his homeland and made to taste the fruit of civilization. This devastated his soul. When he finally comes back to his native mountains, he believes regeneration is still possible for his withered soul. But he is mistaken, a civilized man cannot return to the happiness of the primitive. Ismael remains alone with his hatred for the Russians who swept the mountain ranges of his country with iron and fire. He is alone with his gloom and regret."

Nestor Kotlyarevsky.

Much has been spoken about the influence of Byron on Lermontov's poetry. Lermontov himself was aware of a certain kinship of souls between himself and Byron. Careful investigators agree, however, that there was only a certain affinity of moods between both poets, but that Lermontov never imitated Byron.

Song of Tzar Ivan Vassilyevitch, Epic poem. (1838.)

Lermontov was a singer of heroism; Heroic moods and heroic deeds were at the very heart of his Poetry. He found the heroic in his demon, in the wild inhabitants of the Caucasus, but he also looked for heroes in the past of Russia. The Song of Tzar Ivan Vassilyevitch presents a hero coming from the rank of the people and challenging the authority of the Tzar even under the threat of death. The poem is written in the tone and in the spirit of the heroic folk-tales and as such was considered a remarkable contribution to Russian literature.

[Other works of importance: Boyar Orsha; Maskarade; The Hero of Our Time]

V. G. BYELINSKY (1811-1848)

Critic, publicist, and philosopher. Founder of Russian literary criticism.

The name of Byelinsky stands out as a bright light in the history of Russian thought. The whole decade of the forties is named after Byelinsky. He was a real teacher of men in the best sense of the word. He stood at the very center of the spiritual movement of his generation, and his influence was colossal. He possessed broad knowledge, great talent as a writer, an arduous temperament, and an extraordinary charm of personality.

Byelinsky was the first of a series of critics who blended literary appreciation with the exposition of a philosophical theory and at the same time shaped social views. A man with a burning love for pure literature and pure art, Byelinsky never satisfied himself with pure criticism, but strove always to put a broader foundation under his literary opinions. Starting out with the philosophy of Schelling and Fichte, he soon became an adherent of Hegel, and in his essays attempted to interpret the teachings of his master. Nature and history were to him only manifestations of the Absolute. The spirit, in his opinion, was supreme, and real happiness could be found only in the depths of a man's spirit. Hegel's axiom, "All that is real, is reasonable", he propounded in a very eloquent manner. In nature he found wonderful harmony, in its infinite variety he saw great unity. History to him was "a real and reasonable development of the Divine Idea." He, therefore, found no cause for criticizing history or striving to improve its present course.

Soon, however, he abandoned this doctrine, descending from quiescent, idealistic heights to the burning realities of life. Contact with surrounding conditions and more mature thinking convinced him that not all "existing" was "reasonable", at least not in his native land. Consequently, he abandons metaphysics for positive knowledge; admiration for the world's harmony is superseded in his works by scathing criticism of existing evils; indifference to political problems gives way to an acute interest in the political destinies of his country. From a pure idealist he becomes a realist, and this second period of his life (approximately nine years, 1839-1847) is the most active and fruitful.

In accordance with his philosophic and social conceptions, his views on literature and art also underwent a radical change. In his first period, he preaches pure art as an incarnation of beauty, as an expression of the idea of "nature's universal life" and as a representation of "not the problems of the day, but the problems of ages, not the interests of a country, but the interests of the world, not the destiny of parties, but the destinies of mankind in his second period, he becomes more inclined to appreciate literature that depicts actual life, actual persons, actual conditions even in a naturalistic way. Now, as formerly, he is a champion of the sovereignty of art. He would not like to make art and literature a means of social or political propaganda. He believes in the freedom of the writer and demands truthfulness above all. Still he maintains that art, true and independent, may have a great social function. "Nobody, save the stupid and the immature," he wrote, "would demand that a poet sing hymns to virtue and punish vice with satire; yet every man of reason has aright to demand that the poet's poetry give answers to the problems of the day, or at least that it be saturated with grief over those grave insoluble problems."

Throughout all his changes Byelinsky carried his high enthusiasm and his sincerity. "Furious Vissarion" [Vissarion was his first name] his contemporaries rightly called him. He accepted every idea, every thought, every impression with great animation. His style was a white-hot metal spreading sparks and an almost oppressive radiance. Byelinsky was possessed of real intellectual passion, and carried away his readers in whatever direction his genius was striving. In the second period of his life, he exerted a greater influence on Russia, as he came closer to those problems which nobody could escape. In a letter to Gogol, he thus voiced the demands of Russia: "Russia sees her salvation, not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in ossified piety, but in the progress of civilization, in enlightenment, in humanitarianism. She needs, not preachings (she has had enough of them!), not prayers (she has prayed them long enough!), but the awakening in the people of a feeling of human dignity lost for centuries in mire and dirt; she needs right and law in accordance with common sense and justice, and a rigid execution of the law. Instead of this, she represents the terrible picture of a country where men sell and buy men, a country where people do not call themselves by full name but by derogatory nicknames, a country lacking guarantees of personal dignity and property, and governed by a huge corporation of various robbers and thieves."

This high pressure of civic indignation, together with an unequaled love for art and beauty, endeared Byelinsky to Russian society and made him a teacher not only of his contemporaries, but of many following generations. Time has shown many of Byelinsky's errors and shed a clearer light on many of his views. Yet his great heart, his deep love, his passion for the truth, his hatred for oppression, and his adoration of harmony of life and of spirit are undying and still exert their influence on millions of Russians.

"Byelinsky represents the progress of Russian thought from the abstract realms of literature, estheticism, and philosophy towards social problems. Byelinsky cherished the ideal of a moral human personality, an ideal which grew in our midst after European examples in the course of an entire historic epoch; at the same time, he passionately repudiated the social ugliness of his time. His point of view, his temperament, and the trend of the best contemporary minds made it impossible for him to enjoy truth, beauty, and a moral ideal in a theoretical way only; he wished to see the realization in life of what was his deep conviction and the object of his heart's devotion. This is why he was indignant at the sight of rottenness and meanness which he encountered everywhere. He certainly was a negator, and nobody ought to overlook or minimize this side of his activities. Yet he was all his life in the power of ideals which gave tone and meaning to his negation. His ideals changed, to be sure, but never in his life was he devoid of ideals. Only in the name of an ideal did Byelinsky repudiate first the Russian literature of the preceding period and then contemporary conditions. To him can justly be applied the maxim that hatred is the other side of love. Both were combined in his work, both appeared hand in hand. And it is due to Byelinsky's ideals and their application that his influence was so great. Byelinsky educated entire generations not only by his repudiation of the archaic, the backward, and the useless, but also by elevating our minds and souls to the heights of a moral ideal which could be formulated by every one in accordance with his conception and serve as a basis for practical work. Byelinsky exerted a direct influence on the life-giving soil and the root of every ideal,— on the human, moral, and spiritual personality."

K. D. Kavyelin.

"If at present Byelinsky's words touch us more by their tone of conviction and by their animation than by making us feel that we have heard undying vital truths; if at the mention of his name we are now stirred by emotion rather than by restless thought, one ought not to forget that there was a time when Byelinsky's words were an answer both to the queries of Russian hearts and Russian minds. Byelinsky's criticisms were for his time a quite complete encyclopedia of knowledge. Byelinksy was not only a witness but a judge of an entire epoch in our development; he lived it as hardly any of his contemporaries, because nobody equaled him in the ability to respond to all the problems of spiritual and material life which at that time had not only to be discussed, but sometimes guessed, conceived, and formulated for the first time. Byelinsky's generation found in his critical essays the most complete and many-sided expression. His essays are the most important document of an entire decade in the history of our progress. They are a historic monument which sums up the flow of our philosophical, esthetic, historical, and social thought for many years; they tell the history of our self- consciousness in one of the most remarkable moments in our development; they tell it, perhaps, not always with full objectivity, but sincerely, completely, with a rare broadness and depth of critical outlook." N. Kotlyarevsky.

"Byelinsky was not only a man of the highest nobility of character, a great critic of artistic works and a publicist highly responsive to the problems of his time, but he also manifested a marvelous foresight in formulating the deepest and most important problems of our later social development."

G. V. Plekhanov.

On Gogol's Stories. Essay. (1835.)

A, V, Koltzov. Essay. (1835.)

N. V. GOGOL (1809-1852)

Foremost Russian humorist. A man who wrote of himself that he described life "through visible laughter and invisible tears, hidden from the world". The discrepancies, crudeness, emptiness, and meanness of provincial life under the bureaucratic régime is the object of his unrivaled mockery which for seventy-five years has made Russia tremble with delight, notwithstanding the accompanying moral indignation.

Gogol's types are undying. Gogol's mots are a part of the Russian vocabulary. Gogol's lyrical descriptions of Russian nature, strangely intertwined with most cutting comical scenes and situations, are learned by heart in Russian schools. In the midst of life gloomy under a load of misery, made painful by unfulfilled desires, downtrodden under the boot of a reckless ruling caste, Gogol was the mocking bird whose gay laughter, flowing from a loving heart, brought relief and comfort.

Yet, in Gogol's own heart there was no gaiety and no feeling of comfort. Gogol was a dreamer first, a humorist second. He loved to dwell in a romantic world where everything is beautiful, harmonious, perfect; and he was compelled by his humorous talent to lead people into a world where everything is petty, trivial, ugly. He longed to picture men and women of moral strength, virtue and purity, and he saw about himself people with crooked souls and crooked morals. Moreover, he thought himself the prototype of all his humorous persons, and this weighed heavily on his exalted religious spirit. Torn by mental agonies, he gave up his realistic writings, destroyed the second part of his Dead Souls in a vain hope to find more sublime channels for his creative work. In fighting against himself, he destroyed his marvelous talent and practically died for Russian literature long before his physical death.

Marks of these intense struggles are on all, even the most famous of his works. Gogol is not an accuser. He hardly aimed at radical social reforms. He did not blame the political system, though others used his writings as a splendid illustration of the viciousness of the old régime. Gogol himself was horror-stricken at the sight of human infirmities. His laughter was not the result of feeling morally superior, but a kind of sympathy for the afflicted. He suffered himself as he laughed. He often interrupted his laughter with long lyrical outpourings in which he spoke of Russia's destinies, of a poet's task, or contemplated people in general. He alternated between excruciating pain and wild enthusiasm, between the most minute scrutiny of the most trifling phenomena and a sweeping vision devoid of definite contours but full of mysterious light. He loved his country with an intensity and adoration bordering on delirium, and he saw everywhere only devils making mischief in his native land. He was intolerably proud and intolerably humble; he made people roar with mirth, and he was mortally wounded in the grip of the typical Russian toska (melancholy).

His style is, of course, an expression of his soul. He is considered the first Russian realist (though Pushkin deserves this title with more right), yet he constantly oversteps the boundaries of realism. He is supposed to picture Russia as it actuallv is, yet he is always exaggerating in the direction of the grotesque, or of the romantic, or of the symbolic. Such is the intensity of his talent that he carries the reader completely in the direction he chooses. The brightness of colors in his pictures is overwhelming. The teeming life in even his romantic stories is amazing. The clearness of lines, the variety of pattern is unmatched in Russian literature. There is almost too much movement and too many voices in his works. All is drenched with an emotion which breathes into the gayest pages the chill of unfathomable depths.

As time passed, Gogol was appreciated more and more in Russia. In the twentieth century, he is even more valued, because more understood, than he had ever been before.

"From his early years Gogol, more than any other Russian and even non-Russian writer, conceived the delusive joy, the limitless power, the deadening poison, and the suicidal bitterness of laughter. In his Author's Confession he tells us that even in his childhood and boyhood he experienced 'fits of mockery' deriding all his surroundings. This is why even in his earliest creations, in those 'carefree scenes' as he calls them, we find the intrusion of something terrible, Something elementally funny, something demoniacal into the midst of the most picturesque and even idyllic places. Later, as the naive creations of his first 'carefree scenes' were followed by others more numerous and marked with depth and perfection, they turned into an entire world, an inimitable museum full of little monsters. In this collection of crippled, deformed, and dwarfed beings, in this amusing zoological garden which speaks all languages of the world, in this hospital in which only hopelessly incurable cases are accepted, in this remarkable world, you would seek in vain for even one figure that is not funny. And no wonder; is it not laughter that called them all into being "

Ellis (pseud.).

"Everybody sees evil in great violations of the moral law, in rare, unusual crimes, in tragic catastrophes of a shocking nature. Gogol was the first to notice the most dreadful, eternal evil not in a tragedy but in the absence of anything tragic, not in power but in the lack of power, not in senseless extremes but in too sensible mediocrity, not in sharpness and depth but in dullness and flatness, in triviality of all human feelings and thoughts, not in the greatest but in the smallest. Gogol was the first to understand that the devil is in reality something infinitely small, and seems large only because we ourselves are so very small; that he is the most feeble thing, appearing strong only because we ourselves are so feeble. 'I call things by their real name', he said; 'I call the devil, devil, I do not give him a splendid costume a la Byron, and I know that he wears a frock-coat' . . . 'The devil appeared in the world without a mask: he looks what he actually is' . . . Gogol was the first to see the devil without a mask, to see his real face, which is dreadful not by virtue of unusual qualities but because it is ordinary and trivial; he was the first to understand that the face of the devil is not anything distant, uncommon, strange, or fantastic, but that it is a very close and well known, real 'human all too human' face, the face of the crowd, a face 'like everybody's,' almost our own face at moments when we dare not be ourselves and agree to be ' like everybody"

D. S. Merezhkovsky.

"If we have a right to demand of an author that he reproduce before our eyes the pulse not of one individual person, but of an entire diversified society, then Gogol's works ought to take the first place among the novels that preceded them or appeared at one time with them, and may be considered the first realistic productions. They helped their reader to understand the meaning of the historic moment in which he lived. Gogol's comedies and Dead Souls thus filled one of the greatest gaps in Russian literature. Gogol's characters were not individual phenomena, they were Russia itself with its current social habits, tendencies, thoughts, and programs of life. Gogol has a right to be called a realistic writer, not only because he described the Russian people in a realistic manner, but because he grasped the real substance of Russian life, because he knew how to incarnate in a single type a wealth of mental states and a number of lives.

Nestor Kotlarevsky.

"Gogol understands the secret of being hail-fellow with his readers; with enviable ease he practises a language of familiarity which puts us straight into the atmosphere of patriarchal life, making us feel its specific odor even by the very construction of the phrases. He speaks with his readers in the tone of an old acquaintance, as if he had lived with them in the same town, perhaps on the same street, had seen them nearly every day and is sure they know him as well as his friends and everything he tells about them. Gogol indulges in all sorts of intimacies with his readers, and his talk is sometimes peculiarly simple-hearted and gentle."

V. Th. Pereverzev.

Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, Ukrainian Tales. (1831.)

In these charming stories the fantastic and the realistic, the heroic and the humorous are strangely intertwined. The beliefs of the plain folk in Ukrainia, Gogol's native land, the various types of the Ukrainian village, the beauty of the Ukrainian landscape, and the legends and myths of the Ukrainian past, form the unique texture of these stories. What is, perhaps, most precious in them is Ukrainian nature. Russia has not many such artistic descriptions of a rich and colorful country.

The conflict between the two elements in Gogol's soul, the romantic and the realistic, is strikingly manifest in these stories.

The Controller General. Comedy. (1836.)

One of the most famous of Gogol's works. The scene of action is the provincial bureaucracy. The Controller is an integral part of the Russian repertoire, an everlasting source of merriment. When it was first set in a printing shop, the typesetters could not work for laughter; the proof readers shook in convulsions of laughter. Audiences, then and now, all over the country burst into uproars.

The source of humor in The Controller General is in the situation and characters, not in exaggerations. In his Instructions to the actors, Gogol warns them to play most naturally, to be modest, to appear even a little more noble than the persons represented would be in life. The actor ought not to think of being funny. "The comical," Gogol writes, "will appear in the very seriousness with which every person of the comedy pursues his own task."

The main hero is Khlestakov, an impostor, a byword in the mouth of every educated Russian, as are all the characters of the comedy.

"Khlestakov's lies have something in common with the creative inventions of an artist. He is intoxicated by his fantasy to full abandon. Least of all does he think of gain, of material advantage. His is a disinterested lying, lying for lying's sake, art for art's sake. He requires nothing of his hearers but that they believe him. He lies innocently, in an unsophisticated manner, he is the first to believe what he tells, he deceives himself; herein is the secret of his influence. . . . He has the ability to turn everything into one dimension, the flatness of triviality."

S. D. Merezhkovsky.

"Gogol's humor is quiet, quiet in its very indignation, good-natured in its very shrewdness. He has, however, still another humor, frank and menacing in its frankness. This humor bites till blood runs, it sinks its teeth into the flesh to the very bone, it hits with all its might, it lashes right and left with its whip which is woven of hissing serpents. This humor is full of gall, of venom; it knows no mercy."

V. G. Byelinsky.

The Dead Souls. Novel (1842.)

This is Gogol's main work. It is a broad panorama of Russian provincial life under the system of serfdom. The peasants are not yet considered human beings, but "souls" who can be bought and sold. The landlords are ignorant, idle, and addicted to primitive physical pleasures. The bureaucracy is part and parcel of this system, thriving on it in a parasitic way. When Pushkin heard the reading of the manuscript of this work he exclaimed: "God, what a sad country our Russia is!". Yet he could not help laughing.

"The salient characteristic of Gogol's writing, the extraordinary plasticity and vividness of his figures, reaches its climax here. Russian literature knows of no other figures that would surpass the figures of The Dead Souls in vividness and striking power. The contents of the book is, however, too national, it is too Russian. The Dead Souls is a picture of Russia. Gogol saw the process of disintegration of the primitive, patriarchal system of serfdom, and the dreadful vulgarity of this primitive life. The picture is actually appalling."

N. I. Korobka.

"What is common to all Gogol's figures, is the emptiness of their existence. This emptiness shows itself either in complete idleness or in paltry and senseless activities of no use to anybody and is accompanied by the failure to understand that it is emptiness or even by a proud conviction of being the salt of the earth. This is the source of merriment those types provoke. The more satisfied they are with themselves, the more they are convinced that they are the center of the universe, the more comical and strange do they appear and the less pity vou feel for them. . . . This feature of Gogol's characters is a subjective psychological reflection of their position in society. They belong to a class that has become economically and socially useless while it still maintains its legal status as the first and foremost class."

M. Th. Pereverzev.

The Dead Souls are really undying. Even as late as the twentieth century we still found, in Russia types and characters which we easily identified with the persons of this great, though unfinished, work.

The Cloak, Novelette. (1836.)

If ever Gogol strove to make us feel the misery of life and at the same time to open our souls for a real understanding of our fellow human beings, for moral indignation over the wrongs of the world and for the highest altruistic emotions, he succeeded in this small sketch, which is the history of one humble ordinary, creature crushed under the weight of a cruel and senseless order. "What are you doing? Am I not your brother?" this poor, funny man seems to cry out for generations over the entire length and breadth of Russia.

[Other important works: Taras Bulba; Mirgorod; Arabesques, and Marriage

Though Ostrovsky's plays are primarily centered around the family relations of their heroes, they give also a picture of the middle-class as an economic and social group. Many other groups appear in his productions, but his fame is based on his presentations of the middle-class.

"Reviewing in memory the long series of Ostrovsky's heroes and heroines, you invariably see them equipped either with the mouth of a wolf or with the tail of a fox, or with both. The psychology of violence and fraud as they appear in Russia is the subject of nearly all Ostrovsky's plays. It forms the contents at least of those works which will live as Ostrovsky's most characteristic productions and which are a valuable contribution to Russian literature and Russian scenic art. Ostrovsky's historic dramas and historic chronicles may possess good qualities, but they are not original and are not characteristic of him as an author. His power is in his depicting of typical Russian violence and fraud with inexhaustible force and the most penetrating analysis."

N. K. Mikhaylovsky.

"There is a profound reason why Ostrovsky chose the merchant class as his subject, outside of the fact that he was intimately acquainted with it. The merchant class, as the most numerous and active, was by its very occupation compelled to come into contact with all the other social groups and classes; it thus acquired all the habits and customs prevailing in Russia; it crystallized, as it were, the fundamental traits of the national character; it manifested both the influences of a many-sided civilization and those primitive features which retained their original simplicity."

P. Weinberg.

The Storm, Drama, (1860.)

This is Ostrovsky's most famous play. The conflict between the deadening grip of a crude patriarchal family life and the craving of a young beautiful woman's soul towards emotional freedom, is given a most vivid presentation. It is one of the most genuine Russian creations.

"The dramatic conflicts and catastrophes in Ostrovsky's works are the result of conflicts between old and young, rich and poor, despotic and defenseless. We see the melancholy faces of our younger brothers, sad, full of resignation. This is a world of subdued, silently moaning grief, a world of dull, nagging pain, a world of prisonlike, gravelike silence. There is no light, no warmth, no space to move in. Yet man is alive; you never can destroy his craving for life. In utter darkness, a spark is sometimes rekindled, that sacred fire which burns in the heart of every man before it is drowned in the muddy swamp of life. By the passing light of those sparks we see the sufferings of our brothers. Such a 'spark of light in the world of darkness' is Katharine, the heroine of The Storm" N. A. Dobrolyubov.

Poverty Is No Crime. Comedy ; and others. A Protégée of the Mistress; Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All; It's a Family Affair—We'll Settle It Ourselves

We see another protest here, the protest of a man who prefers poverty and freedom to the restrictions imposed on the human soul by wealth. There are two brothers in the comedy, one is prosperous and proud, the other has squandered his property, he is almost a beggar, and he has no family and no shelter. Yet he has retained independence of spirit; his judgment is broad and humane, and the reader is irresistibly attracted to him.

[Other works of interest: The Snow-Maiden, Bad Days. Ostrovsky's plays number several dozen.] "

TH. M. RESHETNIKOV (1841-1871)

A simple son of the people who, through infinite pain and struggle, acquired an education and began to write, describing the life of the poor in a very realistic manner. His sketches, particularly those depicting the peasants in eastern Russia, made a profound impression. They were like the call of the earth itself, the cry of a life caught in the dutches of poverty, suffering, ignorance, cruelty. ... Nobody equaled Reshetnikov in power, though his talent is quite inferior to that of the great masters.

Those of Podlipovka. Novelette. (1864.)

A history of two peasants of the Perm province who left their native village to seek happiness in town. They are supposed to be free men, these serfs of yesterday, yet Russia was shocked by the savage appearance and primitive minds of these new citizens.

"Even now, after having gone through many experiences and having seen not a few horrifying pictures, now that we make such great demands on the language of a writer of fiction and our literary style has made such rapid progress, Those of Podlipovka, with their primitive language, with their description of small details of peasant life, make the impression of a prolonged, terrifying, importunate nightmare. Poverty and ignorance, impotence and impossibility are strangely intertwined in this implacable nightmare; you never find a way out, you do not know how to break its spell.

"It gives the dumbfounding impression of a big clod of life, split off from ordinary human existence, a shapeless, uncanny, imendurable clod." I. N. Ignatov.

N. G. CHERNYSHEVSKY (1828-1889)

Economist, sociologist, philosopher, publicist, critic. One of the most influential intellectual leaders of the fifties and sixties.

Chernyshevsky appeared on the scene of Russian life when the end of serfdom was near, when new economic forces were rapidly developing, when a new intelligentzia was coming up from the ranks of the plain people pushing the intelligentzia of the noble mansions to the background, when all Russian life was ready, at least in the opinion of the progressive elements, to be reconstructed on a modern basis. Chernyshevsky gave utterance to those strivings of the new times. A profound scholar in many realms, a disciple of Fourier and Feuerbach, he evolved a theory of radical reconstruction in Russia which, he thought, would culminate in a socialist order. He was more than a mere philosopher and economist, however; he influenced his generation as a teacher of life. His numerous essays and articles had the aim of showing young Russia how to live, how to free itself from the superstitions of the passing epoch, how to organize its family life, how to build up relations within the community, how to establish a healthy, prosperous, rational social life. What was most precious in his writings was faith in life, faith in man, a vigorous tone, confidence in the future. The impending and later actually realized reforms were for Chernyshevsky the beginning of a new joyous era shot through with the fire of ideals. The response in Russia was enormous. Chernyshevsky became the idol of his time, enjoying even more recognition than did Byelinsky in the forties.

It was natural for a man of Chernyshevsky's kind to write also on literature, as the characters presented in literary works gave him an occasion to criticize society and to make his followers realize the need for a higher culture in a better social order. Between 1853 and 1858 Chernyshevsky is the leading critic. Later he resorted to fiction in order to make his ideas more accessible to the public. Czarism, of course, could not tolerate a worker of Chernyshevsky^s scope; it imprisoned him and sent him to eastern Siberia, where he spent some twenty years under rigid vigilance. Thus his fruitful career was cut almost at its beginning. Still, the trace left by Chernyshevsky in Russian economic and political life and in social thinking is deep and indelible.

What Is To Be Done? Novel. (1863.)

Written in the fortress of Peter and Paul, this work is a repetition in fiction of what the author was preaching in serious essays and treatises. It is the history of a few intellectuals from the ranks who organized their life on a new sound basis. There is nothing unusual about most of them. They have just acquired education, they have done away with the apathy of archaic Russia, they are doing practical work of a useful character, they are free from senseless conventional restrictions, they recognize full equality between men and women in the pursuit of life, and they are ready to help their neighbors actively. They are far from sacrificing themselves (with very few exceptions); their idea is rather sound egoism which necessarily involves cooperation with others. What is valuable about them is their courage, confidence, respect for sound work, ability to live a full life with no vestige of the traditional Russian gloom.

The novel was a revelation to Russia. "It was like a bomb exploding with a terrible, crushing force," to use the expression of a Russian critic. It became the Bible of the young generations for many a decade. Life, that terrible tangle, looked so plain and rational in What Is To Be Done? It was such a joy to know that man, by force of will and rational thinking, can make himself like one of the heroes of that startling novel. What Is To Be Done? was soon suppressed by the censor, but sub rosa editions circulated ever5^here, and there was hardly an intellectual Russian who did not read the novel.

"Chernyshevsky's novels are long-winded, they are checkered with digressions, they present a somewhat uncouth appearance, and remind one of productions à thèse, yet What Is To Be Done? is being read with unabating interest even at present, and it stirs our soul. One may explain this phenomenon by the contents of the book, its type of characters, and the qualities of the idea propounded. Such an explanation, however, would not be sufficient. The very fact that the novel has stood the greatest of all tests, the test of time, shows that it is not devoid of certain artistic qualities; it shows that the psychology of the time was reflected in it correctly, and this alone is an important feature. Aside from this, however, it must be said that some of Chernyshevsky's types are drawn with great artistic power. . . . Still, the dominant element in his fiction is not the artistic, but the instructive."

D. I. PISAREV (1841-1868)

Critic, publicist, and author of popular works on history and science. Pisarev is the leading spirit of the sixties. He most fully expresses the trend of thought and the social movement of his time.

This was a stirring time. The serfs had just been liberated. A number of important civic reforms (the great reforms of the sixties) had been introduced. New possibilities for economic development had been opened. Industrialism was making its first conquests in hitherto archaic Russia. The thinking elements saw the coming of a new era. Their attention, previously concentrated on one paramount issue, abolition of slavery, turned now to the broad problem of making Russia more prosperous and more healthy. Two things were most pressing: work instead of former indolence, and technical knowledge instead of former dreams.

These two points formed the foundation of Pisarev's program. "Two facts", he wrote, "loom up before our eyes; two immense facts which are the source of all our other miseries and evils. First, we are poor; second, we are ignorant. We are poor, that is to say, in relation to our population we have not enough bread, meat, linen, cloth, clothing, shoes, underwear, dwellings, comfortable furniture, good agricultural machinery; in short, not enough products of work. We are ignorant, that is to say, an overwhelming majority of our minds do not work; only one out of ten thousand brains is active in one way or another, still that one produces twenty times less of useful thoughts than it could produce under normal conditions without any strain."

In accordance with this program, Pisarev hailed the realist and condemned art.

A realist in his conception is a man who does useful practical work in any realm of life. A realist is not a dreamer. He pursues his own interest. He works for himself. He is an egoist. Yet in his pursuit of happiness he inevitably takes account of his neighbors, as he can never be happy where others suffer. His very egoism prompts him to direct his work so as to secure the happiness of all. "When the individual realizes the importance and the high significance of his personal work, when he sees in it a connecting link between himself and millions of other thinking human beings, then he becomes still more attached to his work, he develops his abilities more fully, he feels more keenly the justice of his endeavor, and his happiness grows."

A realist is a man equipped with skill, with knowledge, with natural science, a worker free of prejudices and unhampered by archaic conventions. He is the builder of a new, healthy, and prosperous mankind.

Yet a realist has no place for art in the scheme of his life. Under art Pisarev understands every luxury of a refined, inactive life, every indulgence in esthetic pursuits that have no bearing upon the practical improvement of economic or social conditions. Pure poetry, pure literature, accordingly, falls under Pisarev's ban. A son of the nobility with all its refinement and estheticism, Pisarev launches the heaviest attacks on the idle landlords whose sole occupation is music, poetry in various languages, romanticism, and the idealistic philosophy of the West. All his writings are an attempt to shake the Russian intelligentzia out of its inertia and traditional detachment, to make it see life as it is, partake of life's work, and be useful citizens of a progressive country.

Consequently, Pisarev demands that literature spread new and sound ideas. Literature does not exist for him as a value in itself. Literature must do public service. The writers, he says, ought to be teachers in practical life. What the philosopher or sociologist do through their investigations, the writer ought to do through his pictures, both differing only in method: the former propound general ideas; the latter shows practical instances illustrating the same ideas. According to Pisarev, it would be better to do away with literature altogether. "Yet,'' he writes, "if there are human organisms who can express their thoughts easier in images, if a novel or a poem is a better means for them to propound a new idea which they would be unable to develop with sufficient completeness and clearness in a theoretical essay, then let them do as it is convenient for them. The critic will notice and society will appreciate a fruitful idea in whatever form it may appear."

It is evident that from this standpoint most of Russian literature and Russian criticism, including Pushkin and Byelinsky, was of no value to Pisarev. His critical essays, accordingly, are hardly to be classed with literary criticism. They are splendid sociological analyses where the critic sits in judgment over the characters represented by the author, revealing the defects of their conceptions, criticising their "unreasonable'' behavior, pointing out the vices of their class, tracing their shortcomings back to social environment, enumerating the faults of the social order, and making a vigorous plea for better, healthier, more advanced lives. A writer whose characters do not conform with the idea of realism is, in Pisarev's judgment, useless.

N. A. NEKRASOV (1821-1877)

Poet. One of the most typical representatives of the Russian intelligentzia whose heart was constantly aching with the sufferings of the people. He was the son of a landlord and a member of the nobility, but he despised slavery and condemned the humiliation of the peasants. Being unable to identify himself completely with the exploited and downtrodden classes, he despised himself and condemned his own, often imaginary vices. Being a poet of great lyrical vehemence, he often wrote journalistic stuff in verse, or political satires, or scourging feuilletons. All his works, personal as well as political, lyrical as well as narrative, are marked with a deep sincerity of pain, realism of description, clarity of expression, and power of emphasis. Apollon Grigoryev speaks of "the sledge-hammer of Nekrasov's emotions which strikes outright with might and main," and I. S. Turgenev says that "Nekrasov's poems, focused on one point, are scorching."

Nekrasov himself calls his Muse "the Muse of revenge and of grief," and it was through his works that generations of young Russians learned to hate oppression, to abominate autocracy, to understand the common people, and to sympathize with the toiler. While Pushkin was a source of beauty and serene fancy, Nekrasov gave his readers the stinging touch of excruciating reality; while Pushkin resembled a colorful flower-bed in a frame of marble statuary, Nekrasov was a strong salty breeze from a heaving sea. And there were times when Nekrasov was more cherished by the progressive Russian intelligentzia than even Pushkin or Lermontov.

"Nekrasov was a strong analyst. His thought always proceeded from facts to their causes. In his lyrics he castigates himself with merciless passion. In his other poems he exposes the contradictions of social life, protesting against their evils in one way or another. He treats of the most fundamental issues of the Russian social order, and his poems reflect the broodings and moods of his progressive contemporaries in the most sensitive manner. Being a satirist, striking evil not with a lash, but with a hammer, Nekrasov directed his blows to those points where contradictions were the sharpest, where sufferings were the keenest. Children, women, and the mass of the peasantry, the "people," were the closest objects of his attention. To illuminate the life of the people with rays of consciousness he thought his direct vocation. In his larger works, however, he approached those sides of the people's life which required not the passionate grief of a satirist, but the lofty tenderness of an epic poet."

V. P. Kranichfeld.

Lyrical Poems, (1840-1877.)

It was only in the last decade that particular attention was called to the short lyrical poems of Nekrasov, which up to that time were overshadowed by his more bulky and more readable socio-political poems. Lovers of poetry were charmed by the penetrative sincerity of those personal confessions, by the music of their language, by the grip of their pain. In poetical value those poems often surpass the more known objective works.

Who Lives Well in Russia. (1869-1874.)

Seven peasants assembled, the poet says, and began to argue as to who lives well in Russia. Opinions differed. One said, the landlords; another, the fat merchant; a third, the priest; a fourth, the government's official; a fifth, the Tsar. The peasants made a bet. They decided to go over Russia from end to end and to find out who is the happiest one. Thus the poet created a framework for a broad and vivid description of Russia just a year or two after the abolition of serfdom. The work is written in the tone of folklore. Miracles happen in it as in any of the popular fairy tales. Yet Who Lives Well in Russia is full of striking realism, of keen observation. Interwoven as it is with lyrical digressions, with narratives of human lives, with contemplations of the fate of the Fatherland, it is unique in Russian literature..

I. A. GONTCHAROV (1812-1891)

On the border-line between the old and the new, between the well-defined characters of a patriarchal regime and the unclear shapes of approaching modern times, stands the novelist Gontcharov, one of the classical Russian artists. Temperamentally and emotionally he is with the old, with the placid noble, mansions, with the quiet lakes hardly disturbed by a ripple, with the robust, red-faced and well-fed old gentlemen of the landed estates, with the unsophisticated beautiful and good- natured women, with that vegetarian life where even the sky seems closer to the earth and the chariot of life is rolling with the swiftness of a peasant wagon drawn by oxen in the midst of a sun-tired landscape on a July midday. Mentally, however, Gontcharov sees the coming of new men, new ideas, new wishes, new struggles, the rising of new tones which combine in dissonances and often fill the air with an uncomfortable uproar. Gontcharov sees the inevitability of impending changes; he deems it even his duty to sympathize with some of the reforms which, of course, he thinks should be introduced ever so slowly, cautiously, peacefully, with no shocks at all. Innately he is a bdrin, a gentleman of the pomieshchik type, and his writings inevitably reflect this duality of his make-up.

He is a beautiful artist. He has an ease and charm of style hardly surpassed by Turgenev. He has a penetrating eye which sees a wealth of detail and color. He has a manner, quiet, composed, serene, which makes all his pictures emanate a refreshing warmth. He has a humor, soft and friendly, which gives a peculiar human touch to most of his observations. He creates characters with a master hand confident of its strength. With all that, he never became a "leading" writer. He is a member of the classic Pantheon, to be sure, he is studied in schools, he is recognized as the creator of at least one national type, yet he never was a priest in the temple of the Russian spirit. This is because he lacks that spirituality which Russians were (and are) wont to seek for in the works of their artists. He is, as it were, too close to the ground, though he manages to transform his ground into sheer beauty. Lacking the exhilaration of spirituality and, besides, lacking in heartfelt sympathy for the new social characters who then appeared in Russian life equipped with a luring ideal, Gontcharov naturally could not find the response which was due to his great artistic talent. It is only now that we are in a position to overlook his defects and to enjoy thoroughly the permanent beauty of his writings.

Among his defects, one deserves particular mention,— his inability to draw a new character. Thus, whenever Gontcharov tried to picture a strong, self-assured, practical man of affairs, a type which attracted his attention in a high degree, he inevitably failed. The explanation lies in the fact that new phenomena were not as close to his soul as the well-known old.

"Gontcharov is, above all, a master of the genre, here is his strength, here belong his best pages. He loves a man in his domestic environment, among the various trifles of a peaceful everyday existence, in his cosy native corner. He is a poet of the room, a singer of the house ... He pictures with pleasure nature morte and all that approaches it in simplicity of mind . . . He is interested in a bright open life where houses and souls are transparent ... A poet of the ordinary, he knows how to extract warmth and beauty from household prose ... On the other hand, the further he moves from the uncultured, primitive, elementary man, the paler and more tiresome becomes his brush."

J. Eichenwald.

"In his wonderfully sober attitude towards the world, Gontcharov approaches Pushkin. Turgenev is intoxicated with beauty, Dostoyevsky, with the sufferings of men, Leo Tolstoi, with a thirst for truth; all of them look at life from a certain angle. Reality in their work becomes slightly distorted, like the outlines of things on a disturbed surface of water.

"Gontcharov knows of no intoxication. Life projects itself into his soul with imperturbable clarity, as the tiniest grass-blades or the distant stars are reflected in a deep forest spring shielded from the wind. The sobriety, simplicity, and health of this powerful talent have something refreshing. However beautiful may be the works of other modern writers, all of them have some dark corner breathing cold and horror. Gontcharov has no such corners. All the monumental structure of his epics is lit by an even light of intelligent love for human life." D. Merezhkovsky.

Oblomov, Novel.(Archives.org) (1859.)

This is Gontcharov's principal work. It is a novel of will, or rather a novel studying the lack of will. Oblomov has a beautiful soul. He is capable of the most noble emotions. His intentions are always good. The storms aroused in his soul are genuine. They shake him deeply. He is honest, good-hearted, idealistically inclined. But —he is Oblomov. He is lazy. He is inertia incarnated. From his thoughts and emotions there are no wires to the mechanism of action. Oblomov's life is followed up by Gontcharov from his childhood until the time when he definitely "settled down" (if this term can properly be applied to a man who spent all his life "lying on one side", as the Russian says). The dramatic moment of Oblomov's life arrives when he falls in love with the charming young Olga. It is only natural that this love should end in nothing. Olga marries Stoltz, a Russian of German descent, who is just the opposite of Oblomov and who conducts business on a large scale.

Oblomov represented a trait of character so well known and so common in Russia that nearly every Russian recognized himself or his friends in the hero of the novel. Oblomov possesses inertia in an excessive measure, he is pure inertia. It may be questioned whether there ever existed a real human being personifying inertia to such an extent; this, however, does not diminish the realistic value of Oblomov. Russians speak of Oblomov as of a man they know personally, much in the same way as Englishmen speak of Micawber.

I. S. TURGENEV (1818-1883)

The novels AND STORIES of Ivan Turgenev (16 Volumes. Archives.org)

One of the few central figures in Russian literature. Creator of a great school. An inexhaustible source of beauty and inspiration. Turgenev's language is like music. His pictures are tender pastels. His characters are drawn with a firm and loving hand. His range of observation is wide, reaching from the first dawn of love in a budding maiden heart to the agony of a fighter for freedom who has lost his path in the maze of life; from the dream-like haze of spring over tender flower-heads to the trumpet-call of life under glaring sunlight. Turgenev is the poet of youth and love, a guide through the sweet mysteries of women's souls, an interpreter of the most gentle, delicate emotions, a garden full of quaint beauty. Yet Turgenev is at the same time in the very midst of social life, recording the political and social movements of his time, giving voice and artistic interpretation to the foremost ideas of the society he lived in. This society is mainly composed of well-educated, progressive noblemen, who are much concerned with the fate of the "people", yet never lose the essential qualities of noble gentlemen. The other classes of the Russian people are given only a secondary place in Turgenev's works.

Short Stories, (1843-1883.)

''Turgenev created a whole world of the most diversified figures, full of life and color; he sketched several important moments of our cultural progress, and gave splendid descriptions of the old life. Yet, his main subjects are intimate psychological experiences. The broad outline of an entire epoch which we find in his works, is compose'd of little studies and miniatures selected and executed with the most unusual sensitiveness and skill. A note is incessantly sounding through all his writings, a peculiar note of tender lyrical sadness." A. E. Gruzinsky.

Diary of a Sportsman. Stories and sketches. (GUTENMBERG) (1852.)

It has been said that Turgenev's Diary added more to the campaign for the liberation of the serfs than all the political activities of the progressive factions combined. Turgenev performed a true human service. He gave a series of sketches of rural life thrown against a background of Russian nature which showed that the peasants, "our younger brethren," were possessed of the same human qualities as the "better" classes. It seems an obvious truth in our days. It was a great revelation in 1852. Turgenev did not idealize. He shed no cheap tears. His aim was not to arouse pity. He was fundamentally an artist. He touched peasant life with his artistic wand, and the world stood aghast at the sight of those simple men and women whose hearts were moved by the same emotions, whose souls were craving for the same truth, beauty and good, as the upper classes. It must be borne in mind, however, that The Diary of a Sportsman is not a book written with a conscious social purpose. In no sentence has Turgenev betrayed his political tendency. He was an artist above all things. His love was his best argument. His artistic sympathy with the objects of his descriptions was his best political weapon.

The years immediately following the abolition of serfdom in Russia (in 1861) were years of great intellectual unrest. The bonds of an ancient patriarchal régime were broken. The beginnings of a transition to modern economic and social conditions were felt as an urge to something vast, though indefinite. A new man appeared on the scene: an "intellectual," though not a son of the manor; a member of the lower classes, though claiming equality with the nobles, nay, asserting his superiority over the "idle rich." The new man had education, but cared little for good manners; he loved culture, but had no respect for traditions. His intellectual guides were the materialistic philosophers Buechner and Moleschott with their crude naturalism, whereas the idols of the former generation had been Hegel, Schelling, Pushkin. The hew man claimed to believe in the results of experience only, to deny the refinements of an idealistic spirit. This is why this brand of intellectuals soon became known as Nihilists. Fathers and Children introduces the new type of Nihilist as contrasted to the old "beautiful souls" of the patriarchal manor. Bazarov, the hero, is a student of natural science, a man who declares that the world is a vast workshop and the man is born to be a master there.

No type in Russian literature has aroused so much heated comment as Bazarov.

"I am an adherent of the negating tendencies", says Bazarov. "It gives me pleasure to reject, it suits best the construction of my brain. That's all!". As an empiric, Bazarov recognizes only those things whose existence can be proved by his senses. Bazarov needs nobody, he is afraid of no one, he has no love for anybody, and therefore knows no mercy. His ironical attitude towards all sorts of emotions, towards sentimental dreams, lyrical strivings, confessions, is a manifestation of his inner cynicism. The crude expression of this irony, the unwarranted and aimless roughness of his manners, mark his outward cynicism." D. Pisarev.

New Earth, Novel, (1877.)

The intellectual unrest of the sixties ripened into revolutionary activities at the beginning of the seventies. A number of young men and women of the educated class went into the Russian villages to conduct revolutionary propaganda among the peasants. The revolutionists, known as Naródniki, idealized the qualities of the people (naród). They believed that the Russian village community contained the nucleus of a better social order based on equality and cooperation. They saw in the village an ideal life of truthfulness and peace. It was, therefore, natural for them to try and adopt the same mode of living as the peasants. They called it, "to become simple". Altogether it was a naive movement, full of the beauty and daring of inspired youth, though the consequences—imprisonment and death for many—were by no means simple.

New Earth depicts a few intellectuals of this Naródniki movement. It seems that Turgenev has minimized the extent and the seriousness of the revolutionary activities, partly, perhaps, because he had to reckon with the requirements of the censor. At any rate, the novel reflects truly the atmosphere of the time and the psychology of the revolutionary heroes, as well as the bureaucrats. The figure of Marianna, the girl revolutionist who "becomes simple" for the sake of the cause, is one of the loveliest portraits in Turgenev's gallery.

"The facts of the movement, the methods and the practice of the propaganda and conspiracies as described in the New Earth, coincide in all particulars with the materials revealed in the case of Netchayev. The types of the revolutionaries are well represented. Turgenev gives a true reflection of the psychology of the movement." A. E. Gruzinsky.

[Nearly every work of Turgenev's is of great and lasting value, and should be read. We call special attention to his delightful novels, Rudin, .... On the Eve,...Smoke, ... the Jew , ...the Diary of a superfluous man, ... First Love, ...Phantoms,... the Brigadier,... Spring Freshets, ... A Reckless Character,...]

V. L. GARSHIN (1855-1888)

There is a story by Garshin, The Red Flower (btm). A man in an insane asylum has seen a red flower down in the garden. To him the flower has a deep significance. It is evil incarnate. "It has gathered all the blood of innocent victims (that is why it is so red), all the tears, all the misery of mankind. It is a mysterious dreadful being, the antithesis of God, Ahriman in an innocent shape". The man decides to pluck the flower, to kill it and thus kill evil. It is a hard task. The windowbars are strong. The guards are cunning. Moreover, he knows that after plucking the flower he will have to hide it on his breast lest it shed its poison into the world with its last breath. He knows he must die. But this gives him superhuman courage and strength. "The evil will permeate his very heart, his soul. It will be conquered there or else he will die as the foremost fighter of mankind who first dared to challenge all the evil of the world at once."

The man undertakes the heroic deed. He has to do it alone because nobody sees the meaning of the flower, nobody cares. In anguish he exclaims, "Why do they not see it? I do. Can I go on living?"

Such a cry, "Why do they not see it?" were the stories of the tragic writer, Garshin, who died as a young man in an insane asylum. He was a typical son of the eighties: sad, subdued, with no vigor, with no hope but full of great yearning for beauty and humaneness that cannot be. Garshin's stories are delicately carved. Their lines are simple, almost naive, and each is vibrating with intense emotion. Garshin was one of the few writers dearly loved by intellectual Russia. This young man with the head of a saint and deep marks of suffering on his face, appears as in a halo of devotion and admiration. He died too young for his talent to blossom out in full power. Yet his influence on Russia was unmistakable.

" He was a man of extraordinary sensitiveness and alertness, one of those souls which are woven of the 'best ether', a natural advocate of humanity. The sufferings of others evoked in him an unusually keen response. It was his nature to respond most readily to human suffering, he could not help it. He did not need the aid of cool reflection, the reminder of 'duty' to sacrifice himself for others, to be heroic. It was his own, his deepest characteristic. Garshin's face is said to have borne from his very childhood the stamp of unusual 'unearthly' beauty. The same stamp marked his inner self, and is manifest in his work". E. Koltonovskaya

Stories, Vol. 1,1883; Vol. II, 1885; Vol. Ill, 1888.

Pain, honesty, chastity, lucidity, and youthful enthusiasm characterize these stories.

"One feature impresses itself constantly upon the reader of Garshin's stories, whether it is accentuated or not, and that is grief over that particular and ultimate humiliation which human dignity is made to suffer when a man becomes a tool, a subservient part of an organism. We loved Garshin just for this reminding us of human dignity, for this original, deeply personal grief." N. K. Mikhaylovsky.

[Particular attention is called to the stories, The Signal, Four Days, A Coward, Artists, The Red Flower, Attalea Princeps, Nadeshda Nikolayevna,...

S. J. NADSON (1862-1887)

Poet. A son of the gloomy eighties,—the nightmare-like period in recent Russian history; a singer of the intelligentzia's melancholy and broken hopes. In Nadson's poetry everything is somber, subdued, shrouded in the atmosphere of graves. When he speaks even of "sacred hope" it sounds more like weak resignation. When he says "Brother, friend, believe in a beautiful future", he himself lacks this faith or, perhaps, he thinks of it as of some remote hazy dream that has no substance. When he speaks of love, it is "love for the broken, the suffering brothers". Tiredness marks Nadson's young Muse. It is a wounded Muse, craving for happiness yet ever afraid even of a ray of sunshine; afraid to betray the eternal life-companion, grief.

"The flowers have faded, the lights have burnt out,

The limitless night is black like a grave,—"

this is the leading motive in the sick poetry of Nadson, the poet of a sick generation.

Lyrical Poems.

"AWAKE, HE IN WHOSE HEART ARE ALIVE .
Awake, he in whose heart are alive
The wishes for better, bright days,
Who, the noble impulses
Did not stifle in his bosom ! . . .
Go forward in the dawn of learning,
Struggling with the profound darkness of night,
So that the bright shining of light
May flash again over the earth !

AT THE BEDSIDE.
Often thou dost whisper, child, while falling asleep
In thy warm and soft little bed :
"God, when shall I be big ? . . .
0, if only one would grow more quickly !
Wearisome lessons I should no longer learn,
Wearisome scales I should not have to play ;
Continually I would visit my friends,
Continually I would run off to the garden to take a walk!"
With a sad smile, bending over my work,
Silently I listen to thy sayings . . .
Sleep, my joy, as long as with trouble
Thou art not acquainted under the paternal roof . .
Sleep, my little bird! stern Time
Quickly flies,—has no pity, and does not wait . . .
Life, it is often a heavy burden.
Bright childhood, like a holiday, will flash past . .
How glad I should be to change places with thee,
So as, like thee, to be gay and to sing,
So as, like thee, to laugh free from care,
Noisily to play and to glance unconcerned !

" AND I REMEMBER. . ."
. . . And I remember the church flooded with lights,
And I remember my mother. With lifeless brow
With pale lips and sunken eyes,
Mother sleeps in her coffin, wrapped in flowers,
And we stand around in dumb silence.
My little sister's arm I firmly grasp with my hand . . .
And the heart shrank within us, we weep, and for the first time,
It is so difficult for us to believe, so painful for us to avow,
That we for all around are unnecessary, strangers,
And thou,—thou wilt not come to caress us again.

A FUNERAL.
Thou hearest—in the village, behind the crystalline river,
Dully the funeral knell spreads
In the sleepy stillness of the fields.
Sullenly and with measured beat, stroke after stroke
Dies away in the distance, glowing with the fire
Of blood-red evening rays . . .
Thou hearest—the funeral chant sounds :
It is an apostle of labour and patience—
An honest worker departed . . .
Long he travelled his difficult way,
Long his native earth in anxiety
He nourished with sweat and blood.
The noonday burned him with its hot sunshine,
The wind froze him with its icy breath,
The cloud soaked him with rain . . .
His poor cottage was blocked up with a snowstorm,
With hail in the fields was beaten down his
Corn, cultivated with labour.
He endured much with mighty soul,
Accustomed from childhood to struggle with fate,
May then he, buried in the earth,
Rest from trouble and tumult,
That apostle of labour and patience
Of our native fatherland.

Lyrical Poems, (1850-1875.)

" In his lyrical poems A. Tolstoi charms with the ear-caressing musical quality of his form as well as with the crystal-clear, chaste quality of his inspirations. The oscillations of feeling, the capricious curves of emotion, are reproduced with the graceful simplicity of the genuine artist".

TO NATURE.

I BLESS you, forests,
Valleys, corn-fields, hills, waters,
I bless Freedom
And blue skies !
And my work I bless,
And this poor wallet,
And the steppe from end to end,
And light of sun, and darkness of night,
And the lonely footpath
Along which, a beggar, I travel,
And every blade of grass in the field,
And every star in the sky !
0, if I could mingle all my life,
All my soul blend together with you ;
0, if I could in my embrace
You, enemies, friends, and brothers,
And all nature enclose !".

" WITH SHARP AXE THE BIRCH TREE IS WOUNDED."

With sharp axe the birch tree is wounded,
On the silvery bark the tears roll down.
Do not weep, birch tree, poor thing, do not grieve,
The wound is not mortal, thou wilt be healed by summer.
Thou shalt flaunt, adorned with leaves—
Bui a sick heart will not heal up its wound.

IN A WHITE MASS
In a white mass whirls
The mist over the lake;
The noble-hearted youth with longing
And with sorrow is possessed.
Not forever appears white
The misty mass;
It will disperse, it will float away,
But sorrow nevermore !"

John of Damascus. Epic poem. (1859.)

The fight between inspiration and dogma, between the free creative human personality which is divine in itself, and the rigid canons of a church. John of Damascus is a singer by the grace of God; he has the power to move human hearts by his images and harmonies. But he is a monk. The Father Superior ordered him to refrain from making songs. Inspiration comes to him "like a black cloud" which he cannot resist, yet the rules of the monastery are implacable. Only the intervention of the Holy Virgin removes finally the seal from his lips. " God wishes no restriction and oppression of free thought; born free in the soul, it should not die in fetters." This is one of the most impressive works of Tolstoi.

Dramatic Trilogy,

The Death of Ivan the Terrible, (1866.)

Tsar Theodore. (1868.)

Tsar Boris. (1870.)

Each of those tragedies has become an integral part of the Russian repertoire. The old Russian life, the language, the costumes, are reproduced in an artistic way. The interest, however, centers around the figures of the Tsars who ruled Russia in the most dramatic times of her history. It must be remarked, however, that all three parts of the trilogy represent, first of all, tragedies of human souls. Autocracy is not the main object of interest, but the conflicts in the souls of the characters. A. Tolstoi was a poet "who derived his inspirations principally from the data of personal experience."

Other works of interest: Prince Serebryany, a historic novel; Don Juan, a dramatic poem.

A. A. FOETH-SHENSHIN (1820-1892)

Poet. The most talented of the few Russian poets who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, proclaimed their adherence to "pure art." In Foeth's opinion, poetry could have nothing to do with political or social problems; poetry is a way to forget the burdens of practical life. "It was our wish," he wrote, "to turn away from those burdens, to break the ice of everyday monotony, so that we may breathe for a moment the pure and free air of poetry."

The poet is, in Foeth's conception, a singer of winged sounds which grasp, in their flight, "the dark delirium of the soul, the unclear fragrance of the grasses." The poet's attention is concentrated on his inner world, as he bears in his breast, "like a certain Seraph," "a fire stronger and more brilliant than the world."

Foeth adheres faithfully to this program. In his poems he tries to seize the most delicate moods of the human soul, the cravings of an instant, the frailest shades of emotion. He would like to fathom the "eternal depths of existence," where words are numb, where "not a song do we hear, but the soul of the singer," where "the spirit throws off the superflous body."

Two ways lead him into those ethereal regions which to him are the heights of reality: nature and love. Foeth is the sweet-voiced Russian nightingale whose songs caress our soul as miracles of nature and love inseparably blended. Foeth almost dissolves, melts away, in the soft embraces of nature. And Foeth rises to hazy, luminous worlds on the wings of love. Over all these wonders, a great sun is shining, its rays almost maddening the poet with joy. And beauty reigns. The world is full of beauty; love is beauty, death is beauty. The gladness of harmony is without end.

Foeth is the most ecstatic of Russian poets. Inspiration is no metaphor to him. He is overcharged with emotion. He is all in the grip of his visions, however evanescent. He hears voices "from other shores". His eyes are always turned skyward. His lips are whispering a half-prayer, half-song. He would be glad to do away with words altogether. Words are too definite and heavy. Music, perhaps, is the better means. Music is the language of the soul. Foeth resembles a priest in the temple of the Universe. He kneels before the altar, his heart is aching with gladness, he is ready "to die with every sound" of his song, his breast is "too narrow for his heart."

Foeth's are not poems of action. They are revelations. They are the flashes of mysterious light which allow the human soul to reach in one moment the deepest elusive truths. They are outbursts of sudden self-realization when a man feels himself an instrument in the great mysterious harmony of life.

Foeth's poems are unusually fresh. They remind one of a flower bathed in dew. They are immaculate in purity, sincerity, perfection. They seem to be not a creation of human effort, but natural organisms born as an entity. Yet, the language is not always faultless.

F. M. DOSTOYEVSKY (1821-1881)

Picture a country, vast, powerful, endowed with limitless natural riches, yet lacking ease and comfort; a country torn by the most picturesque and painful contrasts, yet passionately dreaming of harmony and beauty; a country struggling against the leaden floods of gloom that threaten to choke every living thing, yet seeing visions of pure white light and rapturous joy. Picture a life where the dominant factor is cruelty: cruelty of an autocratic government using the whip and the lash and the fist and the bayonet and the saber and the dungeon to crush its peaceful innocent citizens; cruelty of landlords using the rod as a means of ruling their serfs, and of factory employers "crushing the skulls" of their workers; cruelty of rural communities inflicting corporal punishment on their respectable members, and of military units where the practice of physical tortures developed into an art and the most refined methods of painful humiliation were devised; cruelty of parents, of schools, of husbands, of farm managers, of judges, of priests; cruelty of poverty, of bad roads, of primitive nature, of disorganization, of dirt, mud, filth. Picture a people of a hundred millions inflicted with a profound religious spirit and craving for their God; thousands of convents scattered over the plains of two continents where, among lazy and good-for-nothing impostors, there live individual monks of the purest and most sublime moral and spiritual attainments, ascending to the highest sun-lit peaks of faith and devotion and eternal peace; hosts of plain folks, men, women and children, strong and infirm, rich and poor, leaving their homes every spring for a long pilgrimage by foot to the holy places, walking from village to village in colorful clusters, sleeping nights in the open air and wandering for months and months through rain and hail and dust and mud in the hope of falling prostrate before the holy ikon and of unloading the burden of sin that weighs so heavily on their consciences. Picture a class of intellectual, well-educated people who have absorbed all the cultural and spiritual ideas of their time and who are woefully aware of the discrepancies between their ideal conception and the brutal reality that stares mockingly into their faces from near and far. Picture one of those intellectuals who has received a very careful and thorough European education; a thinker who is irresistibly drawn to philosophical, primarily metaphysical reasoning, living the problems of conscience, of good and evil, of God and man, of time and eternity and things "beyond" in a more acute and suffering way than do ordinary mortals live the problems of their personal happiness; an artist with the most piercing eye, with the deepest understanding of human psychology and with an ability to fathom the abysses of the human mind beyond the surface of common sense; a responsive soul who can hear the cry of a child in the night when it is cruelly beaten by an ignorant mother, the sigh of agony of a man whose daughter is selling her body to earn a meager living for him and his family, the chatter of the teeth of the insane when he is tormented by his infernal visions, and who drinks the cup of suffering of humanity so deeply that the entire world appears to him in a white heat of pain; a constructive genius who has the power to put all his visions, queries, doubts, anguish, rebellions, analyses, curses, blessings into broad, gripping, scourging pictures saturated with elements of reality, of human life, human nature. Let this genius be sentenced to death for no fault of his, let him be put on the scaffold and made to listen to his death sentence only to be later "pardoned" to serve a number of years in chains in the mines of Siberia together with highwaymen and murderers; let him, besides, develop epilepsy and be ever tormented by the expectation of an attack and by all the terror that accompanies the fits of his disease. Let this man loose upon a country pictured above, let him create great monumental works giving expression to his own soul as influenced by the surrounding world,—and you will, perhaps, have an idea of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

People outside of Russia do not like to read Dostoyevsky. "He is too morbid", they say, "he may be very talented, but he is too dark and gruesome". True it is that Dostoyevsky is no amusing reading. Moreover, some of his scenes may appear incredible to those who judge Russia by the standards of the comfortable western civilization. Dostoyevsky does not try to make his writings palatable. He heaps one shocking picture on the other, he tops one excruciating scene by another as if some formidable God were piling black sharp-edged boulders to form a mountain which would penetrate the sky. He is relentless. He knows no pity. He makes the reader gasp for breath and feel as if the entire world were turning insane. Yet the man who has gone through the purgatory of Dostoyevsky's novels emerges with a greater soul, with a wiser mind, with a wealth of unmatched experiences that give new meaning to the world. It is for this reason that Dostoyevsky has grown to be ever more valued and read and commented upon by thinking Russians. Now Dostoyevsky looms up on the spiritual horizon of Russia larger than, perhaps, any of the great.

Crime and Punishment. Novel. (1866.)

Through the processes of pure reasoning, a man comes to the murder of a fellow human being. The man is honest. He is an idealist. He is a thinker. He despises conventional morals. He challenges society by challenging his own deeolv rooted moral conceptions. There are.he says, human lives that are worth nothing, less than nothing. They are injurious to society. They are parasites pure and simple. Why should I not be permitted to go and kill one of these persons, even if it is an old helpless decrepit woman, and take away her money which I can use for some progressive purpose?

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV (1853-1900).

Vladimir Soloviev : a Russian Newman, 1853-1900

Philosopher, publicist, poet, and critic. The student of Russian literature cannot pass by the figure of Vladimir Solovyov though his main work lies outside the realm of literature proper. Solovyov occupies an honorable place among the Russian idealistic philosophers. His most important philosophic treatises are The Spiritual Foundation of Life, The Justification of the Good, and Russia and the Universal Church. Here Solovyov appears as an adherent of the Neo-Platonic school and as a thinker whose main concern is religion. His aim was, to use his own words, "to justify the faith of our fathers by raising it to a new level of intelligent consciousness; to show how this ancient faith, freed from the fetters of local separatism and national egotism, coincides with the eternal universal truth."

In the field of social problems, Solovyov's famous work is The National Problem in Russia, in which he stands against narrow nationalism and false patriotism. His ideal in social questions is "love, truth, and universal solidarity." Patriotism he understands "not as hatred to members of other races or adherents of other religions, but as active love for the entire suffering people." In his political works Solovyov embraces a wide range of national and international problems; through these works he was known to the public more than through his purely philosophic researches.

Fundamentally, however, Solovyov was a poet, and a poetic feeling colored all his philosophic thinking and writing. E. Radlov, author of many essays on Solovyov, says: "The stamp of poetry, of something far away which has no connection whatever with the interests of our time, is seen in Solovyov's philosophy and expresses the mystical element which is a salient feature of the Russian soul." Solovyov was a poet and a mystic, a mystic poet, and in a number of talented poems he gave utterance to his moods. In several splendid essays he gave appreciations of other Russian poets and writers who, in his opinion, approached most closely the ideal of real art. Altogether, Solovyov is a many-sided, highly talented spiritual personality; he stands out as a bright figure on the gloomy horizon of Russian intellectual life. He deserves respect even on the part of those who do not agree with his philosophico-theological conceptions.

"What is most unusual in Solovyov and most fundamental, is his worldwide interest, his universalism. Sectarianism or apostasy was foreign to him. Russian life and thought of the second half of the nineteenth century shows no other instance of a universal personality concerned with Russia, humanity, the world's soul, the Church, God, and not with circles or factions. Solovyov is neither a Slavophil nor a Westerner, neither Greek-Catholic nor Roman-Catholic, because he dwelt all his life in the Church of the Universe. He dwelt all his life in unity with the soul of the world which, as a faithful knight, he wished to free from captivity. Dostoyevsky's assertion that the Russian is primarily a universal man, is most applicable to Solovyov. This Russian longing for a universal humanity led him to raise the question of 'Orient and Occident.' The problem of Orient and Occident, of uniting both worlds in a Christian universal humanity, was Solovyov's main problem which pursued him all his life." Nikolas Berdyayev.

Lyrical Poems, (1875-1900.)

Not till lately have the critics acquired a calm attitude towards Lyeskov, as may be seen from the following two quotations divided by a distance of some fifteen years.

"In Lyeskov's soul lived a great desire for truth, but, twisted by an overabundant richness of a live and sensitive nature and by a number of purely external events which altered the course destined for his talent, his seeking for the truth did not manifest itself in a clear, pure and bright form. As far as purely artistic significance and genuine individuality of talent is concerned, he is hardly inferior to Tolstoi, Turgenev, Saltykov, Dostoyevsky, the foremost writers of his time. As to interior consistency, as to the degree of saturation with the ideals that formed the life of those writers, Lyeskov was much less than the others ... Lyeskov loved life in all its variety, with all its contradictions ... He was, however, too much attracted by the bright colors and dark depths of life. Overwhelmed by the struggle of varying and sometimes conflicting sympathies, he never succeeded in 'placing himself, to use his own expression. And so he remains 'unplaced' in the history of Russian thought and Russian literature. The one thing that is definite and tangible about him is a bright and refined artistic feeling for life, and a pity for man. The title of one of his stories, Vexation of Mind, may be used as a motto for all his creative work. All Lyeskov is in these words. His mind was vexed by a longing for truth and he knew how to stir souls, to arouse in them good feelings and to lead them on the road of self-analysis and self-contemplation at the end of which all problems are solved." N. O. Lerner.

It seems that Mr. Lerner's opinion is nearer to a true appreciation of Lyeskov's value.

Lyeskov wrote a large number of novels and stories of which the following are the most characteristic:

The Bullsheep. Novelette. (1863.) -

"The man here grew up in sheer want. He is seeking for evangelical people, he is indignant over 'senseless injustice, boundless injury. His heart is full of pain at the sight of human suffering. He reads nothing but the Bible. He thinks himself a preacher of God's word. He goes to the people to preach and help, but fails lamentably, grows disappointed, becomes a laughing-stock in the eyes of the people, and finally commits suicide. Everybody thinks he is a clown, and only a few realize his great moral powers and his great tragedy." R. Sementkovsky.

Nowhere, Novel. (1864.)

" The very name of the novel indicates that contemporary social movements are nothing but bubbles, mirages, smoke. The best people can move 'nowhere': the old is rotten, the new is not trustworthy. Two ideal types occupy the foreground, an ideal Socialist, Reiner, and an ideal nihilist, Liza. Reiner is animated by the death of his father, a Swiss revolutionary, who was shot. Reiner is disappointed in European life and comes to Russia, where he hopes to find genuine Socialism rooted in the plain masses of the people. What he finds is a crowd of corrupt nihilists. In desperation he throws himself into the Polish revolt, where he hopes to find true Socialism, but he finds nothing of the kind, falls into captivity and dies on the scaffold. Liza is oppressed in family life, she seeks a way out in the revolutionary movement, but she meets the same nihilists. Disappointed, she knows not where to betake herself, she finds that she can go nowhere, and finally dies." A. M. Skabitchevsky.

The novel aroused the indignation of progressive Russia, which thought the pictures of the nihilists a malicious attack on radical Russia. The following novel, however, overshadowed Nowhere by its mistreatment of the nihilists.-

At Knives'Points. Novel (1870-1871.)

Describes the nihilists as a group of criminals and bloodthirsty monsters. Two large volumes.

"It is inconceivable that the most radical part of society at that time, especially the youth, could have contained only crooks, clowns, and madmen. The hero of the novel commits the following crimes: he manages to have his friend searched and arrested; he sells his friend, literally, for 9,500 rubles, to a lady who is in need of a husband; he keeps a sub-rosa pawnshop; he steals letters and forges a number of notes; he seduces three girls; finally he crowns his career by killing his lover's husband. The other heroes rival with him, and in general the author pictures a black hole teeming with outcasts against whom struggle the ideal heroes of a conservative type, courageously but vainly." A. I. Bogdanovitch.

After the appearance of this novel, Lyeskov was literally ostracized by progressive Russia.

The Churchmen. Novel. (1872.)

Odds and Ends from an Archbishop's Life. Sketches. (1878.)

Lyeskov was truly religious, and in his writings often described the life of the clergy.

"The two main heroes of The Churchmen the priest of the Cathedral and his deacon, are drawn with a master hand. The good-naturedness of the latter, the quiet, cordial warmth of the former, make them almost proverbial. The priest's diary leads us into the most intimate corners of Russian church life, revealing many causes of the shortcomings in our clergy. Lyeskov manifests here an admirable knowledge of the class he describes, and the priest makes such a sympathetic impression that the reader grows to love him. The priest's attitude towards the clerical and civil authorities is reproduced very truthfully. On the contrary, his struggle against the dark forces of faithlessness and revolution, contains much artificial fun and obviously impossible situations." K. Golovin.

Odds and Ends from an Archbishop's Life bore the character of almost scandalous revelations and put Lyeskov into disfavor with the authorities. He had to quit a governmental position in consequence.

The Enchanted Wanderer (1873) and other legends composed in the spirit of the people's beliefs.

" After Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky, Lyeskov is decidedly the most outspoken religious writer in the entire Russian literature of the nineteenth century. His religious feeling throughout the major part of his life was perfectly satisfied with the Greek Orthodox Church, in which he saw a worthy expression of the Christian spirit. He loved also the outward forms of Church service. Christianity, to him, was inseparable from nationalism. He conceived Christianity not as an abstract dogma, but he took it in the way it is understood and expressed by the plain people." N. O. Lerner.

Mamin is known and loved also as a writer of stories for children. He is tender, simple, good-humored, full of amusing and touching observations. His books of tales became a part of all libraries for children.

Ural Stories, (1888-1900.)

"That the Ural Stories arose in Mamin's imagination as ' the witchcraft of beautiful fancy,' as intense joy at recollecting the land of his birth, as a bright dream of its luring charm, is their main artistic value. It may be said that this is their substance, not only for the writer himself, but also for the reader. Together with Mamin, the reader is seized by a longing for Mamin's native land; he is drawn into that enchanted world of virgin forests, swift mountain brooks, clear lakes, adroit and feverish mining work, and the vast and complicated activities of the ancient iron plants. In Mamin's presentation, all this is attractive, fairy-like, unusual; all is astir with an energetic, unique life. Interesting people and interesting occurrences are to be met at every step. Unusually strong emotions, unusual characters are very frequent. Everything shines with special brilliance; altogether it gives you the feeling of some particular, purely Russian beauty. ... In reading Mamin's sketches, you experience a desire to wander, with a rifle on your shoulder, somewhere on the Shikhan or near the Miass or along the Tchusovaya river, you wish to plunge into that Russia, even ancient Russia which has survived there, both in nature and in the people." E. Anitchkov.

A Nest in the Mountains, Novel. (1884.) Mamin finds the Siberian iron and gold mines in a period of transition. The old system of production gives way to new capitalistic methods. The mines are rapidly changing hands. Corporations are succeeding individual or state ownership and management. Yet modern efficient industrialism is not easily established in a country like Siberia. The first attempts are a failure. The old is destroyed, the new has not yet grown to full life. Abuses, frauds, exploitation under such conditions are inevitable. The worst instincts of man are let loose.

This is particularly manifest in the novel A Nest in the Mountains, The narrative centers around the arrival of the owner of the plant from abroad for inspection. The owner is immensely wealthy and bored and has no interest in the plant. He is practically a plaything in the hands of his satellites who have nothing but their selfish interests in mind. The characters of the Siberian sharks" are drawn in the novel very clearly.

Three Ends, Novel. (1890.)

Three Ends is a study of the life, habits and customs of three distinct groups of Russian workers engaged in a cast-iron foundry and inhabiting three districts of a Siberian village. The narrative finds the population still in the chains of serfdom. The author follows the life of the village through the great reform and the subsequent ruin of the enterprise. The novel is valuable as a firsthand study in the character of Russian masses.

Stories and Tales (for children).

[The number of books by Mamin reaches fifty. The student may be interested in his Siberian Stories (3 volumes); Gold, a novel; Impetuous Torrent, a novel; Privalov's Millions, 9, novel.]

P. D. BOBORYKIN (1836-)

Probably the most prolific Russian novelist who for more than half a century was ably and truthfully describing social developments and social conditions in a country just entering the era of industrialism. Boborykin's works may be compared to a succession of photographic pictures taken from actual life. Lacking the depth and high artistic qualities of the outstanding figures of Russian literature, he is none the less indispensable in the study of Russian social life. His novels are always attractive, full of interesting conversations, populated by types snatched from the very centers of public attention at certain moments, and made vivid by plot and action. His attention was particularly turned to the rise of a middle-class in Russia, a subject which few novelists considered.

Men of Affairs. Novel. (1872-1873.)

"Men of Affairs introduces us into that part of our society of the sixties in the capital which in one way or another, directly or indirectly, was drawn into the turmoil of feverish undertakings, speculation, concessions. This is, in our literature, perhaps the most striking document depicting that transition from a patriarchal system and a 'natural economy' to a bourgeois order and money economy which came with the force of a historic necessity after the abolition of serfdom (in 1861) and was accelerated by the reforms of the sixties and the construction of railways. The novel is full of unusual vividness and color." D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky.

Kitay-Gorod, Novel. (1882.)

Mountain Summit. Novel. (1894.)

Both novels lead us into the intimate circle of middle-class life in Moscow (Kitay-Gorod is one of the business sections of Moscow). The author selected Moscow because, of all Russia, that city retained most of the original national color, and the transition of its middle-class from patriarchal modes of living to modern culture and European ideas was more slow and more picturesque here than elsewhere. In these two novels Boborykin makes interesting studies of the psychology of the middle-class, both men and women. We witness the growth of consciousness of power on the part of a new social factor and its rising to new standards.

Vassili Tyorkin. Novel. (1892.)

The hero of this novel is a peasant who, through personal energy and pluck, has risen to the position of a rich man of affairs and is a great power in the community. Tyorkin is clever, far-sighted, efficient. He is very successful in business, yet he is alive to the needs of the poor peasants and is giving much consideration to the problem of relieving their misery. Tyorkin is an entirely new type in Russia. He is no dreamer. He does not believe in the inherent ideal element the intellectuals claimed to discover in the "people". He has no use for social Utopia. What he wished was a healthy, normal development on the basis of the existing economic and social order.

Boborykin wrote also a number of very successful plays.

Chekhov, the sun-loving and fun-loving young artist, opened his eyes to find himself in the midst of this horror-smitten ugliness. It did not break him, because his sense of life was too strong. It did not make him even gloomy, because his sense of humor and witticism was inexhaustible. It only made him subdued. He did not become a hater of life, yet a strain of melancholy sounds all through his work. He did not lose his longing for a perfect existence, yet he transferred the possibility of human perfection into the remote future, "perhaps some tens of thousands of years from our time." The present had no prospect for him. Life is just a strange conglomeration of strange occurrences, some sad, some humorous, some ugly or pitiful, with no general tendency and no possibility of betterment. People are a great host of prisoners shut in a huge building where each has an opportunity to manifest his individual traits and to do something, small or great, only to pass away and vanish forever. There is thought, and there is aspiration, and there is love, and there is greatness, but all this is submerged in the original sadness and meanness of things, and leads nowhere. This is why there is, perhaps, no great difference between good and evil.

Thus Chekhov became a wise observer with a wistful smile and an aching heart. He resembled a jovial strong fellow bed-ridden by an incurable disease, who sees every detail of life more clearly and with a sounder judgment than the healthy ones, but cannot suppress the everlasting nagging pain in his own body. Chekhov's soul is full of forgiveness. He is never irritated. He does not curse, nor bless. He is like a father who sees the follies of his children and cannot help being amused over the trifles they are concerned with. He has a better insight into the reality of things than those little children—humanity at large—he can tell about them so many interesting details, but he certainly would not weep or suffer on their account. He may even think how happy children are; a sigh may silently escape his heart; his head would bend a little lower; his story would then become one shade more melancholy. "People passed before me with their loves," Chekhov wrote, "clear days followed dark nights, nightingales sang, the hay was fragrant, and all these things, dear, wonderful in memory, passed away, disappeared, leaving no trace, vanished like mist. . . . Where is it all? "

Chekhov is delicate and truthful, elegiac and humorous, soft and penetrating, musical and crisp. The range of his observations is vast. The people he describes belong more to the present time, as he is more of a city inhabitant than were the classic writers. His art of description is both subtle and striking. There is almost magic in the way he contrives to draw a picture in a few seemingly simple lines. He is never tiresome. Russians who have read his stories many a time, find a peculiar delight in opening a volume of his at random and reading away for hours. He is the writer who is a friend, and whom the reader grows to love with a tender, admiring, and bashful love. At the same time, none is as modest in his writing as Chekhov.

The Trilogy, consisting of the following novels: Tyoma's Childhood, (1882.) Gymnasium Pupils, (1893.) Students, (1895.)

Fundamentally the trilogy is the history of Tyoma Kartashev's childhood, adolescence, and youth. As such it shows the growth of a distinct personality groping for the realization of possibilities inherent in its nature. Dealing with essentials of human character common to all civilized mankind and being written with a masterful hand that throws individualized figures into a clear relief, the trilogy assumes a more than national significance. Looking back to his own youth, every modern man will find something in common with Tyoma Kartashev's experiences.

At the same time, the trilogy is distinctly Russian. The background of a surburban estate in southern Russia, where the boy's childhood is passed, the gymnasium, the teachers, the pupils, the University in the capital, the student's life, all this is described with great accuracy and skill. The life of Kartashev's family, both material and moral, the characters of each member of the family, the characters of friends and acquaintances, are drawn carefully and are true to life. Altogether the trilogy gives a panorama of the world in which the children of well-to-do Russian families grew up in the second half of the nineteenth century (and perhaps even later). Full of vigor and creative optimism as was Garin, he could not overlook the dark sides of Russian realities. Light and shadow alternate in his novels.

Special value is attached to the trilogy as a study of the regime in Russian gymnasia,—that curse of Russian youth for many generations. The history of Tyoma Kartashev is the history of a constant fight between a richly gifted, spontaneous, imaginative, temperamental youth and the deadening regime of a bureaucratic school conducted in the spirit of military barracks, with the aim of killing personality and choking the inquisitive mind.

It was due to this side of the trilogy that it became a favorite among young students in Russia.

A Few Years in the Village. (1892.)

When Garin bought a 75,000 ruble estate and settled down to introduce new methods of agriculture, he was mindful not only of himself but also of the surrounding peasantry. It was his desire to help the peasants, by acting as an example and by teaching them how to do away with their archaic methods. He gave himself to the task with all the practical knowledge in his possession and all the fanatical devotion of his personality. It would have been a success if the peasants had not failed to see in Garin a friend and had not followed the injurious advice of the exploiters in their own midst rather than the useful advice of a "gentleman." Four times the peasants burned down Garin's estate, and in the end he was compelled to give up.

The history of this experiment is told in a charming volume, A Few Years in the Village, Notwithstanding its specific contents, notwithstanding many excursions into details of agriculture, the work reads like a story. It has something of the equality of rural epic. Garin's frankness and simplicity make it a document indispensable to the student of Russian life.

A Rural Panorama, Collection of stories.

"The total absence of culture breeds savagery, wretchedness and darkness in the Russian village. People do not know how to make use of their own powers; they are poor, brutal, beast-like; they have no idea of law, no respect for the human person. Worst of all, poverty is growing in the rural districts, year in and year out, like some dreadful disease. All this fills the series of Garin's stories A Rural Panorama, where we find many beautifully sketched types of men and women and many local details. . . . With the great love of a thinker and artist, Garin puts his panorama in a natural light where crimes, horrors, mysticism, superstition, the tragic and the comic, intertwine and leave an irresistible impression".P. V. Bykov.

It must be noted that in spite of many discouraging experiences, Garin never gave up the hope of a better future in rural Russia. What he wished to emphasize was the necessity of intelligent and persistent work in this realm.

Short Stories. (1886-1906.)

Garin wrote his stories everywhere: on a sleigh in the bitter cold, in railroad cars, in a tent after a day of surveying, at a stage-coach station while swallowing hot tea and waiting for the horses to be changed. It is natural that his stories are fresh, vivid, lucid. What is unexpected is their finished form and refinement.

Other works of interest : In the Turmoil of Provincial Life; Korean Fairy-Tales; Travels in Korea; Manchuria and the Liautung Peninsula.