IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA

DR.

GEORG BRANDES

AUTHOR OF "EMINENT AUTHORS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY"

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH

BY

SAMUEL

EASTMAN

NEW YORK
THOMAS
Y.
13

CROWELL &

CO.

ASTOR PLACE

COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY T. Y. CROWELL & Co.

C. J.

PETERS

&

SON,

TYPOGRAPHERS AND ELECTROTYPERS,

145 HIGH STREET, BOSTON.

PEEFAC

E.

THIS book was published in October, 1888, while the translator was in Copenhagen. The great interest taken
at the present

time in the literature of Russia and in

everything which relates to that great country makes

all

that

aids

in

giving a correct impression of

its

political

and
is

social condition specially acceptable.

Dr.

Brandes

a shrewd observer of what he sees, and

critic.

has an established reputation as an acute literary

During his lecturing tours he came in contact with the leading men of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and "Warsaw.

The brighter

aspects of the Eussian problem are in-

corporated in this volume, while his

work on Poland

contains the more sombre picture of the oppression to

which that country has been subjected.

The

translator desires to express his obligations to

Professor

Rasmus

B.

Anderson,

late

United States
assistance, as

Minister to Denmark,
well as to the author,

for his advice

and

who

is

himself thoroughly con-

versant with the English language and literature.

CONTENTS.
The
.Russian Empire.

Extent.

Natural conditions.

Charac1

teristics of

Bussia

n.
Country and
cities.

neity of nature.

Petersburg and Moscow. Difference of the seasons

St.

Homoge5

in.

The

Have the Bussian people origicharacter of the people. What it consists of in ordinary matters, in the social, nality ? The popular disposition communal, and intellectual domain. The Black Earth and popular ideal. It
IY.

Ko popular education, Peasants Life of the Bussian people. Submissiveness. and workmen. Superstition and " ignorance. "
of both sexes. The Bussian intelligent ia. Nigilists Contrast between the standpoint of the intelligent youth and the 56 common people

Y.

The official world. Ministers. Literary and artistic festivals. Governors. Ultra-conservative youth 68 Censors.

...

YI.

The

The Intellectual aristocracy in Bussia and Poland. Contact with the fundamental interests of Bussia are modern. and dramas. official circle. capriciousness. Instability Family Two currents in Bussian Bussian types of aristocracy. The Bussian intellectual life : the European and Slavophilist.
elite.

dilemma

80

vi

CONTENTS.

VII.
Feelings in regard to prospects of war. Longing for defeat. Court circles. Social Antecedents of the present condition. abolition of serfdom. The influence of Herzen and Katkof the Polish of insurrection. The significance of the suppression Terrorists and Fundamental, political, and religious re-action. Foreign and domestic policies. 108 attempts at assassination.
.

Yin.
The Russian press.
Contemporary Newspapers and periodicals. men of talent, older and younger. Original men in science and 136 The Russian public and its receptiveness literature.
.
.

IS.
Russian characteristic and quality of imitation in archiArt. tecture and the fine arts. History of the art of building and of Development of the art of painting from religious pictures. frhe time of Catherine to the present time: Brylof, iva'nof, Industrial Kramskoi, and Riepin. Sculpture: Antopolski. Relation between the course of development of art and art.
literature

156

LITEBATUBE.
I.

Herodotus and Ovid concerning the country and its climate. Herodotus on the customs and myths of the Scythians. Resemblance between a Scythian myth and one related in the bilini. Ovid's account of the Black Sea coast Kola-Xais and Mikula. and its inhabitants. Chronicle of TSTestor. Parallel between the accounts of Nestor and the Icelandic sagas. Scandinavians and Russians. Slavic mythology. The oilini. Parallel between the contents of these and the old Norse myths and traditions. The song of Igor. Its characteristics, and extracts from it 177
II.

The Russian

national literature. The popular ballads of Little Russia and Great Russia. Their characteristics. Russian love. Lompnosof , the founder of the modern literature. a How far he is typical Russian. Derzhavin and classicism. Influence of Holberg on the Russian theatre. Zhukovski and

romanticism

204

CONTENTS.

III.

Pushkin.

Emancipation of poetry. Pushkin and Byron. Lermontof. His poetry and Pushkin's
IV.

His life and poetry. His life and character.

228

The

national characteristic. The Little Eussians, Gogol and Shevtchenko. His ruin. The Gogol's satire and genius. s of Shevtchenko' sufferings and his poetry. The rehistory formers Herzen and Tchernuislievski. Herzen and Byelinski. Herzen creates a public sentiment. Imprisonment and senHis fate and ideas. tence of Tchernuishevski. The typical Kussian in his principal work 244

y.
Turgenief , the first Russian author who hecomes cosmopolitan. He is an artist and philosopher. His efforts His pessimism. for the liberation of the serfs. Characteristics both of him and of his novels 271

VI.
His optimism. His complex character. His life Dostoyevski. His debut. of Christian emotion. Byelinski and Dostoyevski. The house of correction in Siberia. His arrest and sentence. . His labors as a Slavophilist journalist His novels. 301
.

VII.

The strength of his nature and fancy. The epic charTolstoi. His realism and power of divination. acter of his imagination. Their defects. His fatalism. His His historical portraits. His ideal of a return to nature. description of how men die. His Christian socialism, so His pessimism and the French. His life and teaching. His labors for the typically Russian. His portraits. What elevation and education of the people. Kramskoi's portrait and Riepin's painting. they teach, 337 Black Earth Tolstoi as Prince of the Ploughshare.

...

INTBODUCTION.
THE cause of trip to Russia in 1887 was an invitation "by the Russian Authors' Association in St. Petersburg to deliver a course of lectures in French. They

my

proposed to make

all the arrangements, if I would give one-fourth of the receipts to their poor-fund. While I was in St. Petersburg, I received a similar

invitation

from Count Kapnist, the curator of the uni-

versity in Moscow, who also asked for the same portion of the receipts for the benefit of the poor students. On my way to St. Petersburg I also visited Helsingfors.
villa in Central Russia,

After iny lectures in Moscow, I spent some time in a twenty hours' journey by rail south of Moscow. From there I went to Smolensk, and

from Smolensk to Warsaw. Thus in three months I became acquainted with widely separated parts of the coxintry, and some of the most important of this great empire. I had the opportunity I saw Russia of observing both city and country life. both in winter and summer garb. The peculiar conditions under which I travelled brought me in connection with several hundred people of different races and of I met residents of Great different classes in society and Little Russia,, Finns and Swedes, Armenians and Poles, of both sexes, and was brought into close relations with fashionable and common people, conservatives and
;

X
liberals,

INTRODUCTION.
lawyers and doctors, authors and artists, princes

and

professors, journalists

and peasants,

officials

and

menials.

Although I

am

giving

my

impressions, I do not for a

forget imperfect must be my description of the Russian Empire in its entirety. I am not unmindful of how little of what I did see I was able to under-

moment

how

stand fully, nor of how inconsiderable a portion of a country like Russia and of its inhabitants was placed before me. But naturally I believe in my capacity for
observation and in the soundness of

my

judgments.
G. B.

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

ble illustration of the

VON" HTJMBOLDT, in order to give a forciimmense extent of the Russian

Empire, once compared it to the moon. If you look at the moon when it is full, you see in the hemisphere of the satellite which is before you a smaller territory than that of Russia. About fifty thousand square miles are still wanting. No other country has so large an extent of territory It is one-sixth part of the area of the in one division. land of our globe, and, although sparsely inhabited, has a population of about ninety-seven million souls, of whom sixty-seven millions are of Russian lineage. So far as inanimate nature is concerned, the situation of the Russian Empire corresponds to its immense size. Boundless plains extend from the G-erman frontier far into Central Asia, and from the extreme north to the Black Sea. In one of its remote quarters are the mountains of Caucasus, which rise, from a level lower than that of the ocean, to a height far above the highest of the European Alps. In the northwest, it has the largest lakes of Europe, the Ladoga and the Onega, and in the south, the Caspian Sea, the largest in the world. Finally, its rivers are as vast as its plains, its mountains, and its lakes* The largest of them, the Volga, is the longest and widest river in Europe. Although it does not discharge so large a volume of water as might be expected,
1

IMPRESSIONS OF BUSSIA.

and as the Danube does, for example, yet that is on account of the flatness of the country and the scantiness Just as whole streams in Southern Rusof the rainfall. sia are swallowed up by the earth and evaporated as they
flow, so the

immense flood of the Volga, pouring into the basin of the Caspian Sea, has not sufficed in a hundred years to raise the water level.

The great steppes, which have been compared to the ocean, have none of the ever varying aspects of the sea. The Unchanging uniformity is their characteristic.
which is as broad as a. sound, and in comwhich the Rhine is short, lacks the impetuwith parison A certain less imposing rivers. turmoil of and osity flow. its is to This peculiar slugmighty sluggishness
greatest river,

gishness as well as this uniformity

is

Eussian.

In this empire, where everything is immense, there is nothing in the natural conditions which is mild or temThis great tract of land is like a body without perate. limbs. It has no indentations of any consequence; is
not cut up into half-island formations or divided into islands, like the whole of Northern, Western, and Southern Europe. It has a continental climate that is, long,
:

severe winters and burning summers. The ocean, which always tempers the. cold and heat, is remote ; and the influence of the Gulf Stream, always softening, is not felt here.

Just as this immense continent has no indentations, is its uniformity unbroken by either mountains or This land of forests, black mould, and steppes valleys. is one great plain. This is the reason why the cold
so
blasts

from the Arctic Ocean sweep down over the whole empire without meeting any obstruction, and why the moisture is wanting which the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas give to Europe. With

NATURAL

CONDITIONS.

the exception of tlie Crimea and Caucasus, no part of As some one this broad land has a southern climate.

has expressed

it,

Eussia has a summer but no south.

It is quite true that there are very great extremes in this homogeneous climate* The average summer temper-

ature on the northern coasts

of Eussia (37

Fahr.)

is

lower than the winter temperature in Sevastopol. But January in Odessa has the same temperature as January in Christiania; and although Moscow is on the same
degree of latitude as Copenhagen and Edinburgh, the average winter temperature is 10 Pahr. in the Eussian
city,

Yet there

33 in the Danish, and 38 in the Scotch. is hardly any real difference between the

natural conditions of European Eussia and Siberia except the greater severity.

Prom that region, in the north, where only the reindeer can exist, to that country, in the south, which produces the grape and Indian corn, there is in European
Eussia a gradual transition yet to the Western-European neither the vegetable nor the animal life presents anyj

thing unfamiliar or extraordinary. Both the plants and animals that are common with us are found in the larger Of wild beasts there are found part of the empire.

some bears in all the forests, while both in the forests and on the grassy plains and some of the steppes there
are wolves in great numbers.

The number of wolves in Eussia is estimated to be about 17S,000. These European wolves destroy annually 180,000 head of cattle, 560,000
wolf

Each sheep, 100,000 dogs, besides 150 human beings. is estimated to consume about value of the annually
80 rubles.

Except this one wild beast, however, there is no dangerous or uncommon animal. While the inorganic world in this land is on a grand scale, the vegetable and animal

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

even in the forests, products are the reverse. The trees, are not tall, and the whole animal world has no striking
feature.

The decidedly
Eussia
is

essential feature

which characterizes

uniformity notwithstanding the immensity of everything. Although the country is enormously large,

it is

monotonous.

Eussia

is

a land not only of far-reach-

ing plains, long and broad rivers, uniform climate, but This immense also of regular geological formation.

country also constitutes one organic unit, since the woodland cannot do without the grain-land, the grain-land without the steppes, nor the steppes without the woodland.

steppes need the trees, and the woodland And so also the country near the needs the cattle.
coast feels the

The

want of the

interior,

and the interior of

"

the coast.

As Count Moltke has

said, in his

Letters

from Eussia,"

part can do without the other: the forests of the north cannot dispense with the grain -pro-

"No

ducing south, nor can the industrious interior spare either of the other parts." The vision that this great empire will be broken up into a number of small king-

doms

will therefore hardly be realized.

What

nature

has united geographically, man cannot separate; and what it has separated, man cannot unite. The geogra-

phy

of the country, which has prevented the union of the three Scandinavian nations into one, keeps this sixth
1 part of the earth together.

A. Leroy-Beaulieu: " The Empire

Elisee Eeclus
:

of the Tsars

and theRussias,"
vol. 5.

vol. 1, bk. 1.

"New Universal Geography,"

II.

RUSSIA is an agricultural country. There are comparThe provincial towns all resemble atively few cities. one another. When you have seen one or two, you know them all. Such a provincial town has a public park, a So much cathedral, a governor's palace, and a hospital. is essential the remainder depends on the better or
;

worse condition of the inhabitants.

Still,

there

is

one

and a very important thing you are sure to find a and in a country town like Lomja, which has a prison, population of twenty-five thousand, there is one with six hundred inmates. Life in such a Russian country town, on a clear summer day, however little it may be praised by native The gay authors, sometimes appears very attractive. costumes, the red shirts of the men and the embroidered
jackets of the women, shine brightly in the sun. which I have seen, Briansk, a manufacturing

Of those town on

the river Diesna, was a type of the Russian monotony. On the other hand, Smolensk 1 is delightfully situated on both banks of the Dnieper. The larger part of the town is on the left bank, which has a steep descent to the river, so that the numerous domes and spires of the churches, seen from the opposite side, appear towering over the landscape in strong relief. The general situation, however, on account of the flatness of the land,
is

not attractive, and the town, therefore,

?

is

only interestlast syllable.

Pronounced Smahlyensk, with the accent on the

5

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
as a commercial

ing to

tlie traveller

and manufacturing

town or for the historical associations, like all the towns which Napoleon's winter campaign has made renowned. The intellectual life in these provincial towns presents a sad picture it is cards and brandy, brandy and cards. "With the exception of Finland, Poland, and the provinces on the Baltic, each of which has its own character,
:

all

the intellectual
capitals, St.

life

in Russia

is

concentrated in the

two

Petersburg and Moscow.

At the very moment when the traveller at the frontier takes the Eussian railway train, there are three things
which meet him like messages from a strange world: the language, which, with its rich and soft melody, has not the least resemblance to any of the Western-European
tongues
are
;

new

to us
(as,

the alphabet, of which some of the characters and others have a different meaning than
for instance,

in ours

is

used for N)
tears

computation of time,

which

and finally a you away from your

;

customary almanac by rolling the time back for twelve days, and thereby burns the bridge to the civilization of Western and Southern Europe. Would that it were only in these twelve days that Kussia was behind the
rest of
St.

Europe

Petersburg

is

the traveller.
ator of

St.

generally the first place visited by Petersburg is, as said by Peter the

Great in his old comparison, the window which the cremodern Kussia built towards the west. It must be conceded that for by far the largest part of the year
the view through the
ers.

window

is

obscured by frost flow-

What Eussia most needed

in that time

was an open

Archangel, in the north, was almost continuously closed by ice. Kronstadt was added, but that also is shut up for half the year. Since then the empire has
port.

gained new harbors, such as Vladivostok, in the far east,

ST.

PETERSBURG.

but not one of them

is free from ice. Only from the on Sea the Black and the Sea of Azof is navigation ports almost always free, but these do not afford Eussia free

approach to the outside -world, since vessels can always be stopped at the Dardanelles, so long as Constantinople is in the possession of the Turk. This accounts for the
constant and ever increasing desire of Eussia to possess Constantinople. By the founding of St. Petersburg the Tsar desired
to bring his country nearer to the west. The city, as has been said, was at once a symbol of Ms determination and the means for its execution. Although at the same time he allowed a canal to be constructed between the

Neva and the Volga, he strove to force the wealth of the land from the east and south up against the current,
and to open an outlet
St.

for it to the west.

a city intersected by an enormous number of canals and streams it is built in a swamp

Petersburg

is

and surrounded by a desert. It is an artificial city, without any country naturally tributary, and it derives the most of its support from officials and soldiers, although its trade and manufactures are of late more important.
It is an unhealthy city, in which, as in the old capital of the empire also, the number of deaths is so much larger than the number of births that the population, suffering

it

a loss of one or two thousand a year, would die out, were not for a constant immigration. It is a half-educated

city, in

which, at the present time, three hundred thou-

sand of the nine hundred thousand inhabitants cannot read or write. Finally, it is a beautiful city, in grand style, with half European and half barbarian splendor. For the foundation of this city in the five years from 1712 to 1716, Peter the Great caused more than one hundred and fifty thousand workmen to be brought into the

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.

of them died of fever, conTo or hunger. compel the masons to diseases, tagious seek employment in this place only, he prohibited the

Neva swamp, where the most

erection of stone houses in the whole empire, under a penalty of confiscation of property and banishment to Siberia, and also commanded every nobleman who owned more than thirty peasant families to build a house in
this

new

capital, the situation

and

size of

which were

exactly determined as the conditions of the individuals brought them under one or another class of householders. Perhaps in remembrance of what he owed to Holland, he gave to the city,
its

when

it

was

built, his

name

in

Dutch form, Piterburg.

has developed into a city of luxury, where the number of servants in proportion to the number of the inhabitants exceeds that of any other city in Europe. In
It

1870 the number of families in Berlin which had three domestics was two per cent of the whole number, in St.
Petersburg it was twelve per cent and for that year the percentage of families in Berlin having eleven domestics was not given, but the number of such families in St.
;

Petersburg was one per cent. Driving from the railway station into St. Petersburg, St. you constantly expect to see the Neva before you Petersburg and the Neva being so closely connected in
our minds.
river Fontanka,

But no this is only a canal, and that only the which empties into the Neva. Pinally,
!

the mighty stream lies before you, broad as an arm of the sea, ice-bound and covered with snow, between the
tall quays and the islands, on one of which towers the fortress of Petro-Pavlovsk, with its gilded spire glistening in the sun. Then a world of reddish
is

yellow Russian government buildings, awaken surprise by their wonderful

palaces
disclosed, which, like all the

ST.

PETERSBURG.

being partly suggestive of a prison hue of a flesh tint.

color,

and partly

Before the Winter Palace the stranger is startled by the sight of a strange, ugly iron shed, which disfigures the beautiful square. This shed, however, gives a correct impression of the climate of the country. It is as
necessary as the palace, even more necessary. In the middle of it there is a huge caldron, which in winter nights is filled with glowing coals so that the coachmen and servants, while waiting for their masters in the palace,

may

not freeze to death.

left

bank of the Neva are also the huge, gay-colored buildings of the Admiralty, and St. Isaac's Church, built wholly of granite and marble. And here also the stranger first comes in contact with the propensity of the Eussian to work out his results by the aid of the strength and the richness of the material, rather than by the beauty of the design. In the interior, the floor and walls are covered with polished marble of
different kinds
:

Here on the

there are columns of lapis-lazuli, sixteen

or seventeen feet high, and of malachite, thirty feet high, with gilded bases and capitals ; but there are no

forms that impress themselves on your memory. Great art first meets the eye when it dwells on Falconet's bold memorial Peter the Great, where the Tsar is seen galloppering up a block of Finnish granite on a rearing horse haps the best equestrian statue of modern times. There are also along the Neva a large number of fine buildings in the Italian and French style, transplanted here. There are also very numerous chapels and shrines, before which every passer-by crosses himself again and again,

Neva and on
sleighs.

in case he does not stop and say his prayers. On the the quays there is a constant succession of

These

sleighs, public

or private, have only a

10
-

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.

two persons, generally a gentleman and a lady, and the man and woman sit in such, a manner that he always has his arm about her waist, probably to prevent her being thrown out. Everybody drives, even the servants who are sent
single seat, for

about the
rule, it is

city.

The

distances are so great that, as a

necessary, and there are twenty-five thousand at command. coachmen People bargain about public the price of every trip; and in the outset, when the

stranger imperfectly understands Eussian, nothing is this conversation: "What do you " Fifteen I will not "Mot at all ask ? "

more common than

kopecks."

give more than twenty-five." drive from here to the Nevski Prospekt, on a day in early spring, with pure, clear air and sun. The driver

We

a Eussian peasant. During the summer he cultivates his land, but in the winter he earns his bread as i&voshchik. He sits there, with his face covered with beard,
is

under a low-crowned hat, in a long and loose coat, which from the waist down is shaped like a wide, puckered shirt or a loose dressing-gown, and extends quite down to the He wears an embroidered scarf about the waist. feet.
Strange to say, in the museum at the Hermitage, among the antiquities found in the earth at Kertsh, in the Crimea, on the ornaments like bracelets, are to be found

bearded Scythians, who in physiognomy, as well as in dress, remind one of these peasant coachmen. The type seems to have prevailed ever since.
figures of

It is a genuine scene of a great city, this Nevski Prospekt in the sparkling sunlight, with three and four rows

of carriages side by side, in an endless procession. Elegant men and women are in the carriages. On the sidewalks are the less wealthy people, the women wrapped up like mummies for fear of the cold, although the worst

STREET LIFE.
of
it is

11

becomingly.
trivial

and apparently wholly unable to dress The impression made by most of tliem is and insignificant, but the appearance of some who
over,

have striven to be noticed for their dress arrests the attention. I recall such a one in a glaring costume of
light green velvet, shining like a scarabaeus, and another in a bright yellow velvet dress with embroidery down

the back.

Some

of the

coachmen look

like genuine bar;

those of the barians, being dressed in red and gold have in ministers a foreign gold embroidery on triangle the back and the colors of the country on the front of

the hat.
selves

Our coachman and all coachmen cross themon the forehead, the mouth, and the breast before every shrine and before every one of the numerous chapels from whose burning lamp a light is thrown into the Most of this comes from habit. There is far street. less piety than there would seem to be from all the crossing and bowing, in the open streets, to which the stranger While they are making the sign of the is a witness. cross with the right hand, they are scratching themselves on the back with the left. Some of the men have extremely expressive counteAlmost all the women have chlorosis. The nances. The climate compels them to sit too much indoors. water is undrinkable and the food bad. The poorer people live on barley bread, cabbage soup, and porridge in this land whose temperature demands more nutritious food than in England. And the national drinks tea, have not the nutriment of kvas, and vodka (brandy) Germany's lighter or England's stronger ales. In St.
Petersburg anaemia is met everywhere. Life in the principal streets is quite modern. But in the middle of the Nevski, near the Kazan Church, behind the memorial of Catherine the Second, you look into the

12

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Gostinny Dvor, bazaars with, arcades, stall against stall, a spectacle which is anything but modern. You catch a glimpse of old Eussia in the bearded peasant (mu&hiK)

with his bast shoes, and his patched caftan or sheepskin, and then you see the priests in brown robes, reaching to their feet, a black cap over their long hair, and with an embroidered belt to which the beard almost reaches. They trade with the merchant, who stands there in antique Eussian fur cap, while his wife, with real pearls about her neck, stands by and listens. Nevertheless, if you really wish to see old Eussia you must go to Moscow. It is easily done for, though St. Petersburg and Moscow are two separate worlds, it is
;

arranged by the modern means of conveyance that by leaving the first in the afternoon the other is reached the next morning. The two capitals are united by the

only really express train in Eussia. On the more elevated land in the interior, surrounded by a wall which here and there rises into towers with

a city which, in its different quarters, alternately possesses the characteristics of a great capiHere there tal, a provincial city, and a country town. are fine streets, with tall houses and passages, as in Paris, and there interminable ranges of low houses with spagreen roofs,
lies

cious gardens. You can drive from this fine quarter into one which is almost wholly without pavements. In

some places, it is like the country in this city of eight hundred thousand inhabitants and four hundred churches. There is open ground enough, but hardly any place where people can walk, no promenades except in the Yet everything is laid out on a broad scale outskirts.

everything has the stamp of repose, just as in St. Petersburg everything seems to be planned for keen and immediate enjoyment.

THE KREMLIN.
Here the
traveller

13

into Asia.

lie was on the highway Strange sights are to be seen a Tatar wedding-party in modern carriages dark countenances, under
:

would think

That was the turbans, in elegant European landaus. which first met me in Moscow. sight Everything is to be seen here which we are accustomed to imagine as gay
in the streets of a city Persians with their tall sheepskin caps, Turks with their fezes, and pagan Kalmucks ;
:

it is

perhaps as unusual a variety as the sight of Turks

streets of Venice.

and Persians in the

The

stranger's first visit is to the Kremlin.

Here he

stands on the navel of Eussia.

This

is

a holy place for

Russian patriotism. Here is the central point of the the is crowned. here Tsar empire Ascending the highest tower, Ivan Yeliky, you can see an immense city on every side, with gilded and green cupolas and roofs. Here stood Napoleon with his marshals in 1812 and saw
;

the commencement of the conflagration of the city. Here stood Madame de Stael and uttered the well-known words,

"Borne of the Tatars!" which depicts in a masterly manner the impression made by the fountain-head of the church of a barbaric race. But the old French proverb, " Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar," contains
a truth, though with so many limitations that it will be wrong nine times in ten. The harsh rule of the Mongolian for

two hundred and sixty years (1220-1480) in

;

fact

put Eussia far back and had its baneful influence on the Russian character but it did not succeed in changing the The Russian race, even if it made the blood less pure. flesh and blood is concealed under many Tatarean princely titles; under many customs originating with
the Mongolians, the Slavic temperament has held its own That appeared when Peter the Great unincorrupted.

dertook to scratch the Asiatic and found a European^

14

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
Even if Kief is more entitled from the Russians than Moscow, on account of greater antiquity, and even if it is, like Jerusalem, the

iinder tlie foreign crust.

to honor
its

still, Moscow is always, for the inhabitants holy city, of Greater Eussia, the mother city, Moskva mdtushka.

The vivid colors of these roofs, the bright gilding of the cupolas of the churches, all this, which in a milder climate would be in bad taste, has its foundation in the
climatic and historical relations, length and kind of the winters.

and most of
If

all

in the

you conceive a winter where the snow for two hundred days together covers
everything, woods and fields, roads and streets and roofs of the houses, with its monotonous sheet, you can under-

the world

stand that some splendor is needed in the air to enliven when the sun does shine for a day.

Winter is the characteristic season in Russia. Even the wind is cold, still it is not by far so strong as in Denmark, so that a greater degree of cold can be endured than here. Winter stamps the whole life and character
if

of the people.

The peasant

is

obliged to live

immured in

his hut,

with the walls and windows carefully closed to the cold. He lives in bad air, by the light of a blazing pine knot,
close to the great stove,

family sleep at night.

on the top of which the whole He sleeps with his clothes on, including his sheepskin. He does not undress the whole week through, except when, on Saturday, he takes his Russian bath. But with his sheepskin he puts on his vermin again.

With the higher

sult,

that night
is
life.

Petersburg
night

classes the long winter has this returned into day. Social life in St. even in a higher degree than in Warsaw a
is

Even the most

In the

of the sleighing parties take

silent quiet, the three horses

place in the night.

DIFFERENCE OF THE SEASONS.

15

ice fields.

abreast with the light sleighs whistle over the snow and It is the combination of the silence of death

and the furious speed which amuses and satisfies the Eussian disposition. In a southerly land like Italy vegetation is somewhat uniform, during the whole year. The laurels and the olive In Russia, summer and winter trees are always green. present two entirely different countries and aspects of life. For a typical impression of winter the life in Siberia in that season

may be taken

as described

by Koro-

lenko, the poet of Little Russia, who returned from an involuntary residence of several years in the department

He lived in a little house thatched with In such a dwelling, at the approach of winter, blocks of ice are substituted for the windows, which are replaced by panes of glass only when, melted in the There is never a single day of thaw in winter. spring.
of Yakutsk.

deerskin.

It begins by barely freezing and gradually falling to fiffcy In order to breathe, they to sixty degrees below zero. of in a sort boa or respirator of fur, themselves up wrap

made of squirrel's tails. The sun breaks through the icy panes in strange and beautiful rainbow hues. But the approach of spring awakes a new existence.
The
fluid element,

which had vanished,

returns.

The

But this disagreeable spring real spring is detestable. thaw lasts only a short time, and is hardly considered in
Russia as one of the seasons. Still nothing can give the Western-European a conception of the effect on the mind and senses of this sudden plunge into summer.
the It had been necessary to wear furs in Moscow days were raw and the nights cold it snowed and froze until the streets, during the last of my stay (until the middle of May), changed to a chaos of mud. Then one day I was taken by an acquaintance to the Kursk Railway
;

16
station,

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
and we journeyed
for a

day and night towards the morning at five o'clock summer was upon us. There was the country-house surrounded with trees newly clad with foliage. There was a fragrance from these poplars and birches as intoxsouth.

When we

arose the next

icatingly strong as the perfume of the plants in a conservatory, and far more fresh. There was no grass, only

but over the moss a never ending carpet of extremely fragrant lilies of the valley. The dense, fresh, primeval forest extended along the two rivers Diesna and Bolva and the nightingales sang in rich chorus, as I had never before heard them. This was no accident, for this is the country of nightingales above all others. It is said that in the vicinity of Kursk and Orel (pronounced Arydl) the nightingale is to be found in the greatest numbers and sings the best of all places on the
moss,
;

earth.

To sum up the characteristics, this is a land where In everything is extravagant and nothing temperate. the next place, just as the conditions are extraordinary,
immense, so the uniformity
uniformity
is
is great, and as the natural great, so is the variety produced by the All is laid out on a large scale, cities and is

seasons great.

provincial towns. There as in the United States.

room

to spare everywhere,

in.
IF the stranger lias now looked about at all in this he will necessarily be inclined to reflect on the

Land,

condition of the people who inhabit it, and will strive to reach clear conclusions as to the fundamental elements
of their character.

The truth has been expressed in many different ways, especially in earlier times, that the Russians have invented very little, have contributed nothing, so to speak,
to the development of civilization, but have only appropriated the culture of others. They are, it is said, a people of imitation, a people without originality.
It cannot be denied that of all the larger

European

the one which has borrowed the most of foreign culture, and whose native culture strikes one It shows itself in something external, as in this, least. that, while a travelling Englishman may be detected at the distance of a hundred paces, you must look well It is, moreover, to recognize a Russian on his travels. scarcely any extravagant exaggeration to say, as in the first part of the " Main Currents/' that a square yard of the Roman Forum has more history than the whole Rusnations this
is

sian Empire.

And

yet the observation

is

very superficial which,

characterizes the Russian people with the word exotic. The traveller in Russia who asks himself the question, What is there here original ? will not fail to find an

answer when he directs his mind from the

17

trivial

and

18

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

unimportant to the most fundamental qualities which he can trace.

He is, very

likely, first struck

by the way in which the

In no other place horses are harnessed to the carriages. is this done as here ; in no other country are three horses
used with one carriage in so stylish a manner. It is no slight or common sense of beauty which prompted this. In the next place, there is a very striking originality in all kinds of manual labor. This is seen in the patterns of embroidery (also well known here from the Russian embroidered handkerchiefs), in the

harmony of bright

colors

which characterize all Russian ornamentation and decoration, from the ancient manuscripts down to the beautiful enamel in gold and silver of this present day, and,
finally, in

the style of architecture, which, although it is a composite of Byzantine and Mongolian, Hindoo and Persian, Gothic and Renaissance, still has obtained a

marked national character

Russian-Greek Church.

as the

embodiment

of the

In the next place, this people have an original conception in their civil relations, the so-called mir, a municipality whose bond of union is home rule and common
ownership of the soil. Russia is primarily and in
its

very essence a patriar-

chal state, a state where the father has the authority and the children are in a condition of equality with one another. As a result of a development ordained by fate,

Russia has become a bureaucratic state, where official power has destroyed all spontaneous and natural growth
in the relations of public life. Nevertheless, the family, the municipality, and the state in Russia are three organisms, constructed on entirely moving in different spheres.

homogeneous

principles, but

great Russian family is not restricted to parents and children; it includes

The

COMMON OWNERSHIP OF LAND.

19

several generations and many families. Married sons, brothers of the father or of the mother, have down to a very recent period constantly worked in the same house

same farm, yielding obedience to the authority of the eldest, and with property in common. This family relation is now being broken up, because in it (as in the
or on the
state) the paternal authority

has been inflated

till it

has

become unnatural and oppressive.

In the mean time, the municipality is only the larger family, as the state is only the union of all the municipalities into one great family, whose father is the Tsar. The Eussian family has two decided characteristics the unlimited authority of the father, and the undivided possession by the children. The Eussian state, absolute monarchy, has developed the first; the Eussian municipalIn fact, these two characteristics ity, mir, the second. the power of the Tsar and the ownership of land in common are the two fundamental principles which distinguish the Eussian people from all others. It is very
:

true that

many

other countries,

Denmark among the

rest, have long known a similar common ownership of property but elsewhere it has been abolished with the abolition of serfdom, or with the emancipation from villanage here, on the contrary, it still survives. While the common family (or the organization which may Tafe termed a family partnership) is undergoing dissolution
;
;

since the emancipation of the serfs, the municipal joint property has not only held its own since then, but it has even increased at the expense of private property. In

the department of Moscow, since 1861, of 74,480 farms only nineteen have abandoned the joint proprietorship ; and at the present time, in the whole of Greater Eussia,
of all the peasant farm lands 90-98 per cent are owned in common. Even in White and Little Eussia common

ownership has made inroads.

20

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

It is natural that the Eussians, underneath, the socialistic agitations

healthy germ

of our time, should see in their mir the of better social relations. They generally

regard themselves in this particular as the pioneer or

prototype for Europe.

Intellectual originality
rally,

among the Eussians

hut
it

is,

natu-

much

less

easily grasped,

account the less indisputable. sians impress the stranger by their realism, their practical, positive taste for the real, which has made them a great
people and has
life.

not on that Intellectually, the Rusis

won

so

many

victories in the battle of

It seems to be this quality which has given the inhabitant of G-reat Eussia superiority over all the other

races of the empire.

While the Little-Eussian possibly in continued action, through the Great-Eussian surpasses

his vivacity and delicacy, his sensibility and disposition, he lacks the sound common sense of the other. This taste for realism has shown itself to be the strong point of the It is this among other things which G-reat-Eussian. it is that, where a realistic tendency in how explains modern times has prevailed in French literature, and books of this intellectual character have been brought to Eussia, they have been received there as the representaA long time tives of something old and well known. before, the Eussian authors had solved the problem of the novel in a like manner. At the time when [France was becoming the most infatuated with Eomanticism, the whole Eussian novel literature had already begun to produce the description of actual life, and Art had begun to follow on the track of Poetry.

The

result of this realism is that the Great-Eussian

despises the Little-Eussian as sentimental

and effeminate, andJooks down upon the Pole as on a being weak and unreliable, or, on a higher plane, romantic and fantastic,

RUSSIAN MYSTICISM AND FKANKNESS.

21

There is also the strongly developed realistic tendency which has deprived the Russian of all metaphysical qualities, and led him, as a rule, to take interest in only two groups of sciences the physical and social. The form of government in Eussia is not now of the kind to give free scope for any sort of originality. And
while independent thought in political affairs is not allowed any outlet, and is almost equally debarred from
full

and free expression in

literature

on account of the

censor, there is no obstacle to singularity, individual pe-

and absurdity, which not infrequently becomes into merged mysticism, a Slavic peculiarity, but one which with the Russians is wonderfully united to realism.
culiarity,

Gogol comes to us a representative of the past, and It is this mysticism which Tolstoi of the present time. is outwardly shown in the numerous sects which are
found in Russia.

The membership

of the sects amounts

to fourteen or fifteen millions, divided among or sixty different moral and religious systems.

some

fifty

The trait, however, which struck me personally more strongly than any other, and one which I met with in the most developed and also, so far as I could judge, the most
was what they themselves called une a Nobroad and proud frankness. large franchise, where else are men and women occupying the most advanced places in culture heard expressing themselves so openly and without reserve. They not only give utterance to their ideas and thoughts without hesitation, but they not infrequently expose traits of their own lives, traits which they must see may be judged differently, without any fear of losing anything in the opinion of others. Behind this transparency, which especially
typical individuals,

" Such am I I ; surprises us in the women, there lies : and I to as am top constituted largely appear broadly

22

IMPBESSIONS OF BUS SIA.

be reserved and prudent, and too sure of my position in The life not to be dependent on my own judgment." " This is what is intercourse in I social this of meaning
:

the profit of this scantily measured out if we are to get anything out of our intercourse, we must explain what we are to each other." And behind this

am.

Tell
!

me what you
is

are.

What

is

reserve

Life

short,

time

is

frankness

lies

of all on one

the emotion which works most strangely who comes from the north, a horror and

hatred of hypocrisy, and a pride which shows itself in so unlike English stiffness, French prucarelessness
dence,

German

The

class pride, Danish nonsense. basis of this is the broadly constituted nature,

without

frivolity, without narrowness, without bitterness the true basis of originality in Russia. And this, which is thus opened to inspection when this

natural disposition is examined, this is a peculiarity which is unique among the national peculiarities of Europe.

The fundamental

inclination,

which numerous experi:

ences disclose to the stranger, is the inclination to have their swing. It is not simply the inclination to extremes.

But it is

this when a Eussian has got hold of a thought, a fundamental idea, a principle, a purpose, without regard to its origin, whether it originated with himself or was borrowed from European culture, he does not rest until he has followed it out to the last results. There:

fore the Eussians are the most arbitrary oppressors in the world and the most reckless liberators, blindly orthodox/ following sectarian religions to self-destruction,

free-thinking to Nihilism, sedition to attempts at murder and dynamite assaults. If they believe in the idea of
authority, they bow down till the forehead touches the earth before it (chelobitie) if they hate the idea of
;

authority, that hate forces percussion

bombs

into their

CAPACITY OF APPROPRIATION.
hands.

23

They

infidelity, in love

are radicals in everything, in faith and and hate, in submission and rebellion.

Finally, there is one

more fundamental

trait of

the

Russians, one which seems most vigorously to combat the idea of originality the inclination to imitation, the
:

power of echoing, of reflecting after the Eussian spirit, the capacity to accommodate themselves to the strange and to adapt the strange to themselves. It is first and
foremost a capacity to understand and then a disposition
to appropriate.
It has

been claimed that the Germans possess a simi-

lar quality of seizing upon everything foreign, and by translation or penetrating comprehension making it their

own.

They have
it is

this quality in the

highest degree.

kind with them. Herder's highly but endowed, ponderous and slow people understand and slowly national intellects they grasped ponderously Greece, Calderon, and Shakespeare before any of the other European nations but they are not able, on that account, to become so thoroughly imbued with the genius of the foreign race as to reproduce it and act in its spirit. The French, who did not appreciate the Greeks, came far nearer to them in their works than the Germans, who did comprehend them. The Russians, above all others, have the talent of grasping the manner of thought and range of ideas of other races, of imitating them and of dealing with them as their own intellectual property. The cultivated Eussian understands and always has understood the living, the new, the newest in foreign countries, and does not wait till it becomes cheap because
of a different
: ;

But

it is old, or has gained currency by the approbation of The Eussian catches the the stranger's countrymen. new thought on the wing. Their culture makes a mod-

ern race, with the keenest scent for everything modern.

24
It

IMPEESSIONS OF BUSSIA.

has been often the case in our own time that authors who have met with obstacles or aversion in their own country have found their first sanctuary in the Russian newspapers or from the Eussian public. Who knows if in this respect Eussia will not in the future play a r6le
it

similar to that of Holland during the Eenaissance, when furnished a place of refuge to those authors who were

persecuted at

home

An omen

of this

is

the hero-wor-

ship which exists in full bloom in Eussia after having been almost wholly lost in the rest of Europe.

This remarkable capacity for assimilation is also met with, in matters of artistic handicraft, among the peasThe peasant readily takes to any kind of work. ants. He can imitate anything he sees. He knows ten trades.

somewhere in the country loses a cap with a peculiar kind of embroidery, ten years later the whole region is reproducing it. Another traveller forgets in a corner a piece of chased copper or enamelled silver,
If a traveller

and this waif gives rise to a new industry. Some of the most celebrated producers of industrial art are self-made men from the peasant class, men who have groped their

way who

Maslianikof,^ position they now occupy. master potter has reached the post of superintendent of the imperial porcelain-factory, was formerly a peasant, and he has worked his way up, without any
to the
as

training in the works,

;

by his own individual exertions and conjectures and Ovtchinnikof, the celebrated goldsmith of Moscow, whose transparent enamel was so much admired at the exhibition in Copenhagen, was also born a peasant, and is indebted to nothing but his natural
talents.

has succeeded, among other things, in reold Byzantine art of using cloisonnethe producing enamel to represent the human countenance, and in
getting on the track of one of the secrets of the Japanese

He

FUNDAMENTAL

TRAITS.

25

in the use of a fine red enamel with inlaid foliage of silver, where the shadows of the leaves are brought out

by a device

in the process of firing.

In this popular intelligence, exactly the opposite of

the English, the capacity for fructification, intellectual suppleness, is the predominating talent.
It

of this
all

can easily be understood how a national character kind should be developed in this land above others. We see before us an enormously large but

and which

scantily populated country, very backward in education, it is necessary at once to reclaim by new

a land settlements and to elevate by European culture, with broad, unoccupied territory, as in the United States, and at the same time governed in much the same manner as Turkey. It is a great winter-land, and the first effect of the cold That is possibly the cause of the is to produce inertia. national inclination to indolence, which has obtained its
expression in Gonchardf's novel "Obl6mof," famous both in and out of Eussia, and a monumental picture of Eussian sluggishness. Obldmof is a character
typical

so slack, so tired, so indolent, so disinclined to activity, that he loses his dignity, his self-respect, his sweetheart and his fortune, from pure, insurmountable indifference.

The want of

sufficiently nutritious

food makes the

blood thin, the requirements for protection against the cold make the temperament nervous. Passivity becomes a fundamental trait, which is sharply and clearly manifested in the popular amusements. While the Spaniard takes his pleasures in bull-fights, either as participant or spectator ; while the Englishman boxes and rows, the-

Frenchman fights, the Pole

the Eussian finds no dances, of in kind His delight is to hear sport. any happiness

26

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

a hand-organ or harmonica play, to swing and to ride on

the gravitating railway of which he is the inventor. In every Eussian traktir, where the common or better
to

food and found a great automatic organ, sometimes reaching to the ceiling and the coming guest orders the waltz to suit his taste, never tired of hearing a favorite melody. The swing, with its rocking ease, is
drink
tea, there is
;

class of people assemble to enjoy the national

an indispensable accompaniment of every Eussian festivBut the gravitating railway, with its passive voyage ity. into the unknown, is the most characteristic amusement
for the

Eussian temperament. Without any exertion, without moving a limb, the participant has the complete sensation of having his full swing.

Passivity shows itself, in public and private life, in the submission to the powers that be. But, at the same
time, sluggishness has its strength in passive resistance.

Absolutism not only cows, but it hardens. This stolidity becomes the popular ideal. It is not the one who takes
the daring, the defiant, who is admired; the lead, but the one who, without complaint, knows how to endure, to suffer, and to die. This characteristic may be
seen more at large in Dostoyevski's " Eecollections of a Dead House in Siberia," in which, according to the

popular view, he who endures the lash and the knout without asking for mercy is the object of veneration, such as, among other nations, is bestowed on the hero or

conqueror for dealing blows. This explains the fact that, although the Eussians are a brave people, and a remarkably steadfast people in
war, they are the most peaceful and unwarlike nation in the world. The B-ussian officers have little class feeling.

They

never, likcTtlie Prussians,

distinct

from the people.

form a military caste, They have no morgue^ no

INDIFFERENCE TO DEATH.
cruel haughtiness.

27

While the German

officer,

even when

his education is the best, feels himself to be a sort of

priest,

a military sace?'dos,
is

the Russian

officer,

even

-when he

rude, is, mortal like others.

according to his

own

conception, a

In the nest

place, it

seems as

if

the hard contest with

the harsh climate, which at the same time has made the people hardy and inactive, has given them the apparently

good nature and gruffness. to be at once unfeeling and kindly. There is a Eussian indifference to their own sufferings, and a Eussian sympathy for the sufferings of others, to which this indifference contributes. The Eussian peasant often shows himself indifferent to death. He generally has no special fear of death, and he is indifferent as to inflicting death on others, espeHorcially if it is a question of children or old people. rible murders are thus sometimes perpetrated among the Compare, for expeasants, without passion or malice.
contradictory qualities,

The popular temper seems

ample, the child-murder in Tolstoi's instructive drama, " The Power of Darkness."

more striking is the trait, which is here stated verbal a from account, given by a Eussian general. The following incident took place in the time of the
Still

Crimean War severely wounded soldier was dragging himself along with difficulty, and in great pain, after his His wound was so severe that there seemed battalion.
:

His comrades then said to be no hope of his recovery. " You are to him, with the deepest sympathy suffering
:

too much,

you will soon die. Do you want us to end "I wish you Shall we bury you?" your pain? So the soldier. they set to unhappy would," answered work and dug a grave. He laid himself down in it, and out of pity. the others buried him alive

28

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
general;

When the
all

who

did not hear of

it till it

was
!

over,

afterwards said to the soldiers:

terribly,"
:

"He must

have
feet"

suffered
/)

(Nitchevo

we stamped

" they answered Oh, no the earth down hard with our

This mingling of gentleness and ferocity

It is typical of the Eussian

is

remarkable.

common

people.

What

is

otherwise inexplicable becomes clear when we see the utter darkness of the ignorance in which the soul of the

poor Eussian peasant vegetates. In all probability, also, the strife with the natural conditions has developed the practical qualities with the the taste for that which is available Great-Eussian,

and useful in handiwork. In this aspect, it is suggestive that the most celebrated and most typical Eussian, Peter the Great, when he wanted to reform his country, felt himself drawn to the mechanical inventions above
everything
else.

Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, in his charac-

teristics of that

monarch, has pertinently made prominent that, on his journeys, he did not visit the universities, but the workshops and the dock-yards that he brought back to Eussia anatomy, surgery, the art of the apothecary,
;

mechanics, ship-building, engineering, as well as a whole but that there army of workmen and master mechanics,

were no learned men or thinkers in his train. With his own hands he essayed the whole range of manual labor
:

entered the
pilot,

knew

army as a drummer, served in the navy as a how to build boats, forge iron, and engrave.

In the armory in the palace of the Kremlin, in Moscow, there is shown a horseshoe which he hammered out on the anvil, and a bowl which he modelled. The genial

muzhik shines out through

many As

this ruler as through so a gifted Eussian nobleman. the severity of the climate is the cause of certain

OEIG1N OF THE MIB.

29

national qualities, already spoken of, so it seems to be tlie connecting link between the extraordinary uniformity
of nature and the melancholy which is so characteristic of the Russian disposition. The Russian is melancholy,

yet not splenetic in solitude, like the Englishman. It is a melancholy pervading the community. It is this which
easily glides into sectarian mysticism. The union of the natural and historical conditions has

produced the Russian mir. Call to mind one or another small country town, settled by Russian immigrants, in the vicinity of one of the remote cities in the north, on the Yolga, only a century or two ago. Before it extend the boundless steppes, from which hordes of wild Tatars,

the so-called Nogai, are constantly threatening; the forests round about are full of wild beasts and of

subjugated Tatar tribes, the

so-called Cheremissians,

who are constantly rising in rebellion. An impassable swamp separates the country town from the castle of the
which in time of danger is the only place of refuge In winter, the swamp is frozen over 60 Fahr., and the cold reaches the neighborhood of the blasts from Siberia pile up mountains of snow, which almost bury the whole town. Is it not evident that in such circumstances there is no use for the saying, "My house is my castle"? Such an idea would be
Tsar,

of the inhabitants.

Here, it is not only unsuited to the surbut roundings, impossible, to live alone, each family and each farm by itself. Each one daily needs the help of

madness.

his neighbors for protection against the Tatars, for defence against the wild beasts, for the clearing of the
'

woodland, and for breaking up the soil. The first and most important thing is to take care not to starve to death, and to preserve their own lives and the lives of
those dearest to them.

Bread can nowhere be bought,

30

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
to

and

keep the road open to the castle requires the

all.
1

united aid of

every country town was composed, as a rule, of few a farms, it was of the greatest importance to only haye as strong a league as possible between these towns. And thus it came about that all the thoughts of the
peasant were concentrated on giving to this league, his world, his true fatherland, as perfect an the mir,
,to

When

internal structure as possible. unite with his equals, and to

Necessity taught

him

manage

his

own

affairs

in union with them.

Eussia, as
is

ing empire since the time of Peter the

then, it has annexed annually, While as large as Denmark.
its

well known, has been a constantly growGreat. Since

on an average, a territory
western boundaries in

for our time cannot be extended or are even insecure, in a great war neither the Baltic provinces nor Poland

could be depended on,

its

Asiatic boundary

is

elastic,

and

is

The

constantly moving towards the east and south. significant condition of things is here manifested,

that such an

immense empire
:

is

continually growing

larger, and, impossible as it may seem, all the new races are immediately assimilated the Bussian race still main-

tains its

supremacy and moves on everywhere, however

far the boundaries are extended.

It seems as if the natural conditions of empire had been a controlling force in this direction. The broad endless plains have from an early time awakened a migratory passion among the peasants. They never

emigrate to North America, like the peasants of other countries they go to new places in the Russian Empire. The Russian peasant has always been given to roving.
;

He

has been accustomed to make a day's journey to 1 Tikhomirof La Russie politique et sociale, p. 100.
:

INCLINATION TO &OAM.
fairs,

31

and to pass weeks and months in a pilgrimage to Kief; nay, even to this day the Eussian peasants in crowds make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. For this reason they are exceedingly well fitted for colonizing a new
Although they are bound to Eussia, they do Mature is, so all bound to their homesteads. to speak, unif orm r wherever they go. They can wander for weeks together over the steppes without seeing any
country.

not feel at

They can build new houses (izbas) for special change. themselves in a few days anywhere. For, from a fear of fire, which in Russia, on account of the droughts and the construction of the houses, is more frequent than in

The new house

in the old.

other countries, the peasant never ornaments his izba. contains everything which was contained

He

misses nothing in

it.

The new

soil

which he

cultivating brings forth just as good a harAnd by his emigration he has satisfied vest as the old.
is

his desire for adventure, for

new

experiences,

and for

seeing

new

faces.

about the steppes, that they invite to one continually go on and on. Level as the sea never is, it evokes limitless reveries, passion for
is this peculiarity

There

'wandering about, thirst for novelty, and the inclination to let every idea be pursued to its never-reached end.

The uniformity of the country gives to the roaming propensity, the contrasts of make a certain pliability necessary in the great and sudden changes, which may be

the Eussian
the climate
face of the

the basis of

the Eussian flexibility in intellectual matters, and is perhaps connected with the spasmodic in Eussian manners and

mode

of

life.

It is the suppleness in the Eussian's nature which makes him so susceptible to foreign impressions. The
intellectual transition to the

Eussian talent for imita-

32
tion,

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
and the

foreign, flows

ability to appropriate everything which is from this flexibility. Looking at it in this connection (that is, from the standpoint of its cause) this quality of comprehension and assimilation, it seems
to me, has its character of originality.

Looking

at it

abstractly, the lack of originality becomes the foundation of a new originality in the culture of Europe.

It is quite certain that this Russia has always been the pupil of the whole world. It is quite certain that this Russian people is indebted to each and all the na-

The foundations of its empire were tions of Europe. laid by Scandinavian chiefs almost all the names of the
;

Varings are Norse, and so are the "Russian" names of the Dnieper Tails preserved by Constantine Porphyrogenetes even the name Eus is in all probability a Norse word, even if other explanations are not absolutely excluded. 1
;

Modern Russian civilization exhibits strong proofs of the Byzantine and Tatar influences. The Russians as a nation have been to school to the Poles, then to the Germans and Dutch, and then to the French. Finally, they

have received impulses from the whole of West-Europe, and their belles-lettres have been influenced by the whole All this cannot be denied, and it is of civilized Europe.
equally true that when we stand in St. Petersburg and look at this Winter Palace, built from designs by the Italian Rastrelli, and the beautiful equestrian statue,

the

Frenchman Falconet, or when, in Mosupon the walls and towers of the Kremlin, built by Lombardian and Venetian architects, or when, finally, in front even of Vasfli Blazhemnoi, the model
of the

work

cow, you gaze

of all time-honored Byzantine

:

Muscovite churches, we

" 1 See William Thomsen The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, and the Origin of the Russian State.*' Compare Elise'e Eeclus, cited before, tome v. 301.

THE BROADLY CONSTITUTED NATURE.

learn that

33

it also, with its domes, which are like bulbs and pine-apples, dentated and peeled fruits and buds, with its towers in all forms and hues, was built by Italian

artists

of the Eenaissance,

then

we

unquestionably

wonder what the Eussians themselves have done.

it

But

will also be noted that the Eussians have compelled the foreigner to work in their spirit or adopt and develop

the peculiar Eussian style. At the present time, the unlimited capacity of receiving that which is foreign means scarcely anything else

than the intensified ability to fructify. It is this which, among other things, becomes ardor, enthusiasm, deification of genius, hero-worship.

All springs from the broadly constituted nature (shirokaya, natural). The Eussians have an expression, Cherno-

ziom the black earth, mould. They mean by it the broad and deep belt of fertile soil, humus, which extends from Podolia to Kazan and even across Ural into Siberia.

The wonderful

fertility of this soil is ascribed to

the slow decay of the grass of the steppes, which has

been going on for centuries.

The

richest

and broadest Eussian natures remind us

soil.

of this belt of rich

Even the circumstance

that the

Eussian nature has been lying fallow for hundreds of

years increases
its

wealth.

You

occasionally meet a
soil

man
warm

or

woman who

exactly
open,

embodies this Eussian

a nature which

is

rich, luxurious, receptive,

without glow or heat,

but which gives the impression of inexhaustible exuberance.

A foreigner who had delivered a course

the Polytechnic
sity for

of lectures in

women

in Moscow, where the univerfounded by Professor G-uerrier and his

until it

Museum

colleague

was situated

was recently

closed,

34

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
:

related the following little trait of Muscovite enthusiasm "At the time when the university for women was in existence, I went, one forenoon, into the hall where I had lectured the evening before. I was going to have some changes made in the arrangement of the chairs. I was

and waiting, when a door was girl looked in and withdrew later a hundred young girls moments A few smiling. came quickly in through the door, all in black woollen dresses, formed a circle around me, and began to clap
sitting alone in the hall,

half opened and a

young

Then one of them, the daughter of a celebrated deceased poet, said a few words to ine, and they clapped again, I believe it is the pleasantest impressiontheir hands.

of

my

journey."
to see will discover similar

Every one who knows how

little traits

of surprising warmth and simplicity, during a It is, possibly, this receptiveness, this in Eussia. trip of nature, this inexhaustible richness of the prodigality

material

life, which makes the greatest attraction of and which betokens its future more decided Eussia,

originality.

Black land,
is its

fertile land,

constitution.

warm

nature,

new land, grain-land, that The broadly constituted, open, rich, that is Eussia's. And when you are turn:

the unlimited extended, that ing over these qualities which fills the mind with melancholy and hope, the impenetrable, darkly mysterious, the

womb of new

realities

and new mysticism,

it

all

these which are Eussia' s,

itself

then

strikes one that they suit the future almost as well,

and the question presses

upon us whether, when

we

are striving to penetrate the secrets of this land, are not gazing into the very future of Europe.

we

IV.

As may be imagined, tlie foreigner has little chance to see the real Russian people in motion in the open air. All public life, meetings, conferences, unions, are forbidden
nay, impossible. the traveller who is in Russia at the right season can get a distinct impression of the character of the masses. In St. Petersburg, Easter is the gayest season for the common people. In the largest open place, the Field of Mars, where the soldiers are drilled at Easter, four or five large theatres of unpainted wood are erected, side by side, and in these theatres plays are acted, with short intervals between, from morning till night. In the vicinity of the buildings there was a large, permanent market, and, especially on holidays, a great crush of spectators
Still

and purchasers.
gani.

The whole goes under the name

amusement of the poorer
:

bala-

The

principal

people,

who

have not the means of paying the cheap admission fee to the theatres, is this On the open balcony which encircles the theatre walks from side to side a youth, dressed like an old man, with an enormous wig of long white hair and a long white beard, who, sitting down, with his legs hanging from the scaffolding, collects a crowd. He is called Stdrik (the old man). What he says is the " If I had most childish and harmless nonsense, plenty
of
SO

money I would eat this and that for breakfast, so and and they much for dinner," etc. [absurd quantities],
35

36
laugh.

IMPBESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
Or, "You,

down

there, don't forget to take off

and more your boots when you go to bed at night/' nonsense of equal value. He speaks just as we do to children of six or seven years, when we want to make

them

laugh.

We go inside and see

a real play.

At the

best theatre,

Suvorofis given, a national play in three acts. It is now two o'clock in the afternoon, and the piece has already been played four times since nine o'clock in the morning.

It takes about

an hour.

The auditorium

is

as

a shed; the seats are unplaned, simple as possible wooden benches, like those used at the Passion play in the Tyrol. The audience is made up of very simple
peasant men and women from the and their wives, from the tradesmen vicinity; petty in Bussian silence, till wait suburbs. silence, They
people:
servants,

the curtain rises.

Suvdrof

is

short distance from the theatre stands a

the popular national hero of Eussia. A bad academical

statue of him, in ancient Eoman costume, with bare legs, which resembles almost anything, only not at all, exterThus the actor, hoarse nally, a careless Bussian general. as he is, has more of the real Suvdrof than the statue. This great man was, in reality, a genuine Bussian eccentricity,

undoubtedly the only genius among the generals

of Bussia.

While ELutuzof, the loiterer, whom Tolstoi, from philosophic-religious reasons, has glorified and idealized in " War and Peace," was a nullity, who appropriated Barclay de Tolly's plan of the campaign, and for whom circumstances conquered, Suvdrof was a real military genius, irresistible even at the head of only a mere handful of men. His crossing the Alps from Italy to Switzerland was undertaken under greater difficulties than either that of Hannibal or of Bonaparte,

A POPULAR DRAMA.
Very
significantly

37

he is represented in the play exnational from He is gloriclusively patriarchal aspects. fied in the Bussian spirit on account of his fatherly disposition, and not for his courage or his victories. And suggestive enough in regard to the Bussian taste in this piece about a war hero there is no burning of powder, no shooting. ISo, the common man here sees with surprise and pride Suvorof clad in an old, wornout uniform, like a common soldier, even carrying his living with the soldier, baggage in a bag on his back, and eating as he does the same food, a father to all. There is a well known anecdote of Suvorof, that when and he was generally the he awoke in the morning he used to crow like a cock to awaken his assofirst ciates. As General Cock-a-doodle-do he has been famous throughout the whole of Bussia. In the play this
characteristic is abused' to such a degree that the hero shouts his Cock-a-doodle-do thirty times, or speaks of its

And the screech is every time followed by the exultation of the audience. So also are the scenes in which he declares to the common
use on earlier occasions.
soldier that he is as

duty, and

offers

him

good as a general when he does his his hand, a scene where he sends
of a flag of truce,

away the decorated bearer

who

is

astonished at the sight of his simple barracks, scenes where he comforts and assists his subordinates, jokes

with them, and exacts the same things from himself as from them. When a play like this is compared with the national plays of other countries, about the military heroes of general reputation, it strikes one that invariably, in the latter, dash is the quality which is illuminated with Bengal lights, while in the former it is patriarchal simplicity, the paternal relation of the leader of the army to the soldier, that is emphasized.

38

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

patriarchal trait appeared in another sight Easter the of festival, in the open streets. Young girls of the upper classes of the Imperial Girls' School were

The same

driven in a long procession through the streets in the

imperial carriages. The pleasure for them was only that of being allowed to take a drive in a stylish court
carriage,

ery

for there

with coachman and footman in the imperial was nothing special to be seen.

liv-

The theory of this is that the Tsar stands in a sort of higher paternal relation to all these children. When he to which only once a year visits one of these schools, it is a custhe children of the nobility are admitted, tom that, as a sign of his favor, he drops his pockethandkerchief, and the girls all scramble for it, and it is torn in pieces, so that each one can get a fragment. He takes the most brilliant girl to the table, and tastes of

the food of the institution.

distinction

when he

what
to

upon it. it with delight shown in all her features. Great was the stupefaction of Alexander the Second when a young girl, a Pole, from whose own mouth I had the story, whom, the Tsar had taken to the table, as the most distinguished scholar of the institute, and to whom he shoved what was left of roast meat and potanodded to a servant, and calmly gave him the toes,
swallow
Tsar's plate to take away.

is left

It is valued as the highest gives one of the girls his plate with It is the custom and usage for her

The Tsar has always stood in the position

of their com-

father to the people of the lower ranks, although the foundations of this feeling have of late been some-

mon

what shaken. At the same time, as the present government in Russia has placed itself upon a war footing
towards the advanced classes of the people by the very act of putting the greatest of impediments, in the

way

MUSIC OF THE PEOPLE.

39

the passion for learning and travel, so it has foolishly decided to forbid the holding the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the abolition of serfdom.

The now emancipated

to infer that those

serfs consequently think it proper

who

are in the highest places repent

of

what was done.

In the cities, the Eussian common people are found in the genuine Kussian tea-houses, where they have the melodies ground out for them in the organs, and enjoy
the pleasure of having music at tea. There also the workman or the peasant is generally to be seen on his Friday, or when he has got a little too much in his head,

with his harmonica in his hand, that instrument which demands so little skill and has superseded the balalaika
I shall never forget a slightly intoxiin Smolensk, who was reeling along happy in the middle of the street, working away on his accordion while the inhabitants from all the street
of earlier times.

cated young

workman

doors accompanied his wanderings with looks and smiles. Seeing him suggested the r6le the accordion plays in
of Darkness." We cannot help comthe of gay tramp young men through paring mentally the streets of Borne, keeping step to the melody of the guitar, or the artistic four-part songs of the Germans.
Tolstoi's

"Power

is delight in music which is elementary and only half developed. G-entleness and naivete in this popular pleasure are united with rudeness and stupid melancholy.

Here

style) there

In the vicinity of Moscow, on the first of May (Russian was an opportunity of seeing a celebrated

national festival, which annually takes place in Sakolniki Park. It is a wood of tall spruces, traversed by many broad carriage-roads. From the grand avenue
radiate seven principal roads, which are mutually united by cross-roads. There are also smaller roads and paths,

40

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
to

which lead
style.

numerous

villas

in the Russian Swiss

Even the promenade on the

meant
a

first

of

as a sort of Corso, and for

which

it

to engage your carriage days before if

sxtitable

May, which was was necessary you would have

lost its

conveyance, by a genuine Russian arrangement whole Corso character. All of these numerous roads, for the whole distance from the city, were guarded by Cossacks and gensdarrnes on horseback, who were

by the side of the road, about twenty yards there should be no riot, and for the sake of so that apart, good order it was decided at the last moment that the
stationed
lines of carriages

park,

should not cross each other in the notwithstanding the fact that there was room enough. Thus, instead of being able to enjoy the usually varied scenes of a Corso, there was nothing to be seen
except the back of the driver, the tails of the horses, and your lady's face, if you were fortunate enough to

have one with you. In the park, on the great lawns, the common people were collected in great swarms. But neither song nor music was to be heard, nor a single shout or noise of

The people amused themselves in perfect any kind. Here were gravitating railways, which afford silence.
a pleasure very much like that of the toboggan slide at the combination of silence and furious speed night
:

which answers for the enthusiastic phase of the national character, and to the Russian favorite word, which is the peculiar characteristic device of the passionate Russian woman, Avos, "Fire away," the French vogue la galore.
In the next place, the second, also characteristic popular amusement, which corresponds with the lymphatic temperament of the nation, was supplied to the common
people in constantly used swings of
all

kinds.

At

the

MUSEUMS AND MEMORIALS.

same time the humor with which we
in

41

Denmark amuse

ourselves in the parks on a spring day, was wanting. The lines between the different classes of society, also, are

nowhere with us, outside of the metropolis, so sharply drawn as here. While in cities like London, Paris, and Berlin the museums and other places of education are constantly
filled

to their capacity,

by the common people, seeking instruction suited and for whom, even when they possess only the most moderate abilities, the use of such places

it is to

has been made easy, nothing whatever corresponding to be found in Russia. The Hermitage in St. Peters-

burg, with its large and valuable collection of objects of The art, is commonly inaccessible and little visited.
in Moscow are also rarely open, and have even an instructive character. Not even the memorials in the large cities have any educational qualities. They glorify the Tsar and the generals or national heroes, and are designed only to aid in the deification of the Tsar and national self-esteem. In this respect they are behind

museums

less of

Berlin, where, since the establishment of the kingdom, no small number of statues have been erected which represent neither kings nor warriors. The re-action in Russia even at the present moment is so great that even

Falconet's Peter the taken as a sign of disloyalty rather than the opposite Peter was a man of the West, a European. Besides the emperors and generals in bronze, only one It is a single statue is to be found in St. Petersburg. very unpretending and modest memorial of the fabulist

the possession of a statuette of

Great

is

Krylof, in the imperial

children.
It
is
is

summer

placed just as that of

park, the playground for Hans Christian

Andersen
statue is

Rosenburg Park, only the Russian various reliefs on the base, which the and better,
in the

42

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

represent the whole animal world crowded together, are more amusing, though on the other hand, less artistic

In Moscow there is a large group of the two liberators from the yoke of the Poles, the butcher Minin and Prince Pozharsky, whose celebrity
than the Danish.
dates from 1612,
in Novgorod.

and

to
is

whom

also a

memorial

is

erected
of

There
is

besides this a

modern statue

not remarkably good. Smolensk is the of the musical composer Glinka, and there is birthplace found a statue of him, a square-built little man, not parNevertheless, they ticularly suitable for the plastic art.

Pushkin, which

had the original idea of putting slender cross-lines in the iron railing which is around the memorial, to represent the musical staff, and thus encircle the composer with
his best

known

melodies.
states do something,

While other European

all

even if not

they might, for the instruction of the people, the government here dislikes popular education, and puts innumerable obstacles in the way, nay, even does what it

can to oppose it. As has already been said, the cities do not afford nearly as many opportunities for the instruction and cultivation of the common people as the cities
of other countries.

As

in the country the fight against

knowledge can be carried on with much greater emphasis, a still more appalling ignorance is the result, in spite of
the excellent natural capacities of the people. It may be said without exaggeration that there
is

now,

as in the time of the Tsar Nicholas, a constant exertion on the part of the rulers to make real knowledge impossible

and to destroy all individual and independent will. Three kinds of books are published in Russia First,
:

the -forbidden, that

is,

nearly

all

valuable literature,

except

when with ineffable art and resignation it is shaped so as exactly to suit the demands of the Russian

OBSTACLES TO EDUCATION.
censor;

43

second, the allowed innocent belles-lettres and

purely technical works, yet with this limitation that in the German Conversations-lexicons of Myers and Brockhans all the articles about E/ussia and all the biographies of Kussians are blackened over on account of the

which they are written, though they necessarily contain almost nothing but known facts. The anxiety even extends to foreign lands. In a French book which
spirit in

was sent to ine from Eussia last year, the censor had cut out a leaf, on which, as the context showed, was
something not unfavorable, but not absolutely favorable,
to the deceased Tsaritsa.

Third, the last category of

books consists of those recommended for use in educational establishments and schools for the common peoAn idea can easily be formed as to what these are. ple. The solicitude lest the popular standard of knowledge should be raised is so great that obstacles are put in the

way
dren.

of elementary instruction

of the youngest chil-

When,

whom

a few years since, a lady of high rank, of nothing whatever of a revolutionary character

was known, the daughter of a well-known minister, who under Alexander II. had carried through a legal reform, a princess of great wealth, who could not possibly be mistaken as having any wish to excite the peasants to unlawful trespasses on foreign soil, wished to found an orphan asylum in the country where she lived, she sought permission for two years in vain and then received a refusal. Leave must be asked in such cases, and this kind of petition is not granted as a rule. Thus it is no wonder that the condition of the peasants in most respects makes an impression of profound ignorance and of an Asiatic spirit of submission. The lady of rank, on her estate, is greeted by every
peasant or workman, by every young or old

woman

of

44

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

who would ask assistance of any kind, on the face at her feet. Not only every by one who would beg, but every man or woman who would ask a favor, falls on the knee before her and touches the
the lower classes,
falling flat

make them

forehead to the dirt of the road. give up this custom.

No

remonstrances can

Significantly enough,

the striking of the forehead (to the earth) is even at the present time the name of petitions to the Tsar (chelolitnaya).

The

superstition

is

as great as the ignorance.

it

In turbulent times
formidable character.

When,

not infrequently assumes a in the time of the Tsar

Nicholas, the cholera broke out in St. Petersburg, the common people ascribed such a mysterious origin to the

epidemic that they attacked in a frenzy some boys who had been seen pouring the cholera into the Neva, and in

one of the market-squares they rose in a great revolt against the police, because they had not arrested two persons who had brought cholera powder into a house
to spread the contagion.

It

was on

this occasion that

Nicholas,

just driving past in his sleigh, and witnessed the tumult, quelled it at once by raising his arm in anger, and calling in a loud tone " On your knees."
:

who was

This

is

the scene which

is

portrayed in relief

on the base

of the memorial to him.

The superstition of the people still continues. In a manufacturing region in middle Eussia, where I was staying, the lightning struck several times, or some other
misfortune happened, on Trinity Sunday. To avert the wrath of Heaven, this year, the workmen asked the monks in a cloister some miles away to lend them the miracle" working image of the Blessed Virgin with three hands," which in that district is regarded as endowed with holy,

supernatural power, and this picture was brought to the

POPULAR SUPERSTITION.

45

country town, with, great pomp, in a special railway car, accompanied by the singing of the priests and the swinging of censers. The people collected at the station in such numbers that those who were on the front part of
the platform were compelled to take refuge in the railway carriage, to escape being crushed. The picture was brought into the church, where a Te Deum was sung.
there was not a

The day passed without either storm or accident, and workman who had a doubt as to the

supernatural cause thereof. Another illustration of the spiritual point of view of the peasants and priests is the following from the same

Not far from the little town Biezhitsa the huge head of a mammoth was found. A young princess, whose country-seat was in the vicinity, bought this head of the peasants. Some one or other who wanted to play a trick on the public or the clergy wrote to the local newspaper of the department that the peasants, after the head was dug up, had brought a priest, who had read the prayers for the dead over it and then buried it again. Could one believe it! On this account the whole clergy of that region were excited, and just because what had been stated in the article was untrue and nothing had happened. What if it had been a human head, and they had The conneglected to read the prayers for the dead sistory in St. Petersburg sent a mandate to the most distinguished prelate, required an examination into what had happened, and commanded that the clergy of the district should take the measure of the head that had " inasmuch as it is of been found (literally anthropo" The day after a whole procession of logical interest ). priests arrived at the country place and held a great
time.
!

how they ought to act to show that this was a mammoth and not an antediluvian man, as they
council as to

46
expressed
ist,
it,

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
until the private tutor, a Panslavist naturalable to inspire confidence, fortified by his

who was

diploma, measured the head and gave the formal declar ration that this head had never rested on the body of a The subject prehistoric Christian, but on a mammoth.

well fitted for a Russian farce, only printed or acted.

is

it

would never be

The workmen

in this district lived in barracks.

One

hundred and fifty workmen slept in a narrow room. Bunks were built up on the walls, so that they lay and slept as in berths on board a ship, except that these bunks or benches were so wide that the workmen lay with their heads against the walls and their feet towards the middle of the floor. There was no other furniture in no pillows, no carpet, no the room, nothing whatever, The furnishing was exactly like a dogchair, no table. kennel. This unfortunate condition depends on the fact that there are everywhere found contractors who keep hundreds of workmen in the vicinity of the large manufactories, to let them out as soon as there is need of them. The food they get is a porridge which is scarcely cooked. The rest is uneatable bread and undrinkable kvas with a few pieces of cucumber in it.

visit to

female physician gave the following account of a one of these barracks woman was expecting
:

her confinement in a

room where eight persons were lying about her. When I was called, I was obliged to shove them aside in order to deliver the woman. They saw what was coming, shrugged their shoulders a little, and went to sleep. The poorest workmen in this manufactory, where mandrels are made, earn 17 cents a day, the more skilful 27 cents, and the best workmen 43 cents. This is the human material which the young men and
little

THE PEOPLE TO BE EDUCATED.

47

women, who strive to make the great populace share in the advanced ideas of the age, must educate and rely upon. It is plain that the education will take time, and
the aid they are now able to find is of no account Two short dialogues of Turgenief are given below, which, on account of the censor, were omitted from the " Poems in entitled " The workman and the Prose," man with the white hands."

In the first, the workmen wonder at the stranger, and reject his claim of being one of them, while they point to their own working hands, which smell of filth and tar,

and to his

delicate white

hands

" What do they smell

is strange! We Smell, yourselves." of should say they smell of iron." iron. For "Yes, six whole years I have worn handcuffs on them."

of?"

"

"It

" Because I thought of your happiness. I wanted to make you poor fellows free, I rebelled against "

Why ?

"

your oppressors on that account I was put in prison." " " Yes." " " Prison " Why were you rebellious ? In the second dialogue, which occurred two years later, the same workman speaks to another about the " He is to young gentleman who once talked with them " Has he been be hanged to-day the order has come."
;
!

Yes Well, Dmitri, again." rebelling again ?" don't you believe we could get a piece of the rope he is They say it brings good luck to the hanged by?
house."

"

"

" Yes.
is

Piotr, let us try."

human material which the young men and women who " go out among the people " try to educate and elevate. They do it with an untiring, heroic zeal, which is beyond all praise and without parallel in any land. They leave relatives and friends, expose themselves to cold and hunger, hatred and derision, scorn and insult they brave imprisonment, sickness and death,
This, then,

the

48

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

with no other reward than that their own conscience gives them. No honor of any kind awaits them their work is hidden, their offering is unrecognized. Their outer life is a series of struggles and sufferings. They constitute the outwardly active element of the a world by itself, with its own Russian intelligentia, moral qualities, precarious at times, but always of
;

more value than the mercantile compound, which

in

a other parts of Europe goes under the name of moral, pure young world, with the fiery faith of youth, and the
passive character of Eussian heroism, constant even in torture. The faith in their historic mission, and the consciousness of their spiritual power, sustains them. Tikhomirof, who has been one of the leading spirits in revolutionary agitations, and who now lives an exile
in Paris, greatly deploring the attempts at assassination

which alone have made possible the re-action now

vailing in Eussia, is always fully trustworthy

pre-

when he

portrays single traits, though not always when he generalizes. He speaks of a young prisoner who was constantly refractory and asking for unheard-of favors, such as permission for the prisoners confined in cells to talk and walk together. "It is necessary to protest," he con" " But what can you accomplish ? tinually repeated. said his comrade. " You forget that you are under lock

How are you going to find the power of compel" " The the authorities ? How ? In myling power self, in you. ... I am myself the power!" "My dear " friend, that power the others can crush in a minute "a " Crush it ! let us see first let them try Without doubt, in a classical sense the fundamental
and key.
!

trait of invincibility tation in Eussia.

i

is

the strength of the party of agiRussie politique

et $ociale, p. 280,

Tikhomirof:

La

NIHILISTS.

49

conception of the stoicism of Russian prisoners can be gained by reading, in Dostoyevski's " Recollections of a Dead House/' the number of lashes they endure

without a complaint or a groan. In later times, there have, been repeated instances of the resolution with which political prisoners have sought death to avoid disclosing their accomplices. One has killed himself by the aid of petroleum, and another has cut his throat with a

fragment of denied them.

spirits in this

glass, all access to

weapons having been

list

Out of Eussia, an already extended

curiosity

of revolutionary

land has attracted the attention and kept

alert.

on the

We

call

them Nihilists,

of

which

the Russian pronunciation is neegilist, which, however, is now obsolete. Confined to the terroristic group in Europe

the

of these persons is certainly very small. as is thought in Eussia, there are five hundred Perhaps, in all, who busy themselves, even if reluctantly, with thoughts of resorting to bombs and murderous weapons

number

to inspire terror.

But it is not exactly this group that is meant when we speak of that nihilistic force in society which extends everywhere, into all circles, and finds support and strongholds at widely spread points. It is indeed not very different from what elsewhere in Europe
:

regarded as culture, advanced culture the profound scepticism in regard to our existing institutions in their
is

present form, what

marriage, property.

we

call

royal prerogative, church,

The nigilists even do not call themselves by this old name, to which currency was given by Turgenief, in "Fathers and Sons/' It dates from the time when Eussia by the death of the Tsar Nicholas ha(J been liberated
from the system of compulsion intensified to the highest degree under an absolute monarchy, and whexi not only

50

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
air,

the liberation of the serfs was in the

but thought,

which for a generation had been paralyzed, at once felt itself free, unhampered, and unrestrained, and speech, which so long had been the serf of the government, was made free, or by a sort of inward necessity assumed freedom. At that time, everything which had the ring of a human voice was pure criticism, negation, revolt against With the wrath and enthusiasm all ancient authority. of youth, their inexperience ran away with them. The young men showed their democratic proclivities by not combing their long locks, not washing their hands, and
going about fantastically dressed;
asserted their independence

the young

women

by wearing their hair short, a plain dress, and using the blunt speech of the peasant. Hatred of the old traditions of society, its hypocrisy and
its old customs, went so far that everything which had hitherto been held sacred was despised on account of

the respect

'

enjoyed. Yet this period was of short duration. Niekrasof (in the (t Cabinet of Beading ") makes a son answer his father's " !N"ihilist is a stucomplaints in the following manner if But it word. understand you pid by a man of liberal
:

it

ideas,

who does not intend to live

at the
is

but works, seeks for the truth,

useless

expense of others, striving not to live a

life, looks every scoundrel straight in the eye, sometimes in that sense I gives him a thrashing, nay, do not see anything bad in it, and in that sense am I a

nihilist."

At own

the present time, the discontented youth, in their that is, language, call themselves Nyelegalni,

outlaws. To obtain a correct idea of them, you must, at the outset, forget the old Eaz^rof (in "Fathers and Sons "), who was at one time a true conception, but is so no longer, as well as the young people in " Virgin

DISCONTENTED YOUTH.

51

Soil," who are foreign creations, and were never a true " representation, but particularly Dostoyevski's The Posan caricature of a sessed/' ultra-reactionary tendency in which he participated in his youth, but to which by the

lapse of time he had taken an aversion. And it must be remembered that no other sketches of this youth can be found, in books which are published in Bussia, than such as are intended to pass the censor. And it would

be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a sympathetic sketch of the outlaw elements of society to go through the Russian censorship.
plainly clad, very intelligent young girl came to a country town in the department of Orel, who supported herself by the modest and unartistic employment of painting portraits of the dead from photographs. While very young, with some other young girls she had gone among the people in the country to teach the peasants to read and their wives to sew she wished for once and all to live with them. The authorities arrested these young girls, separated them, and sent them all by the administrative process to different remote towns, despatching this one to a very small town in the department of There she made the acquaintance of Yiera Ydlogda.
;

Sassulitch, who was also exiled, and they lived there together for several years. In this way she became inShe was especially on fected with revolutionary ideas. her guard with the families of rank and wealth in the But she met a lady to whom, after further vicinity. acquaintance had inspired her with confidence, she said "I see you are human I class you as one of us." The most of these young girls are plain, rather unattractive, hardly ever sensual. They are wholly entranced by their ideas. Several ladies who were present as spectators at the celebrated political trial which goes by
:

52
the

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

name of the Trial of 193 report that all the women who were implicated in it looked like pale nuns, thin, very serious, care-worn; only one of them was at all
pretty.

^Jiich obtains in the Russian mtettiwhich can be found in the interfreedom of the gentia course between men and women is directly the opposite

The construction

Nowhere is the relation of the French and Polish. between the two sexes judged with more liberality, and in the cases where nature has broken over the boundaries No one in the more culof law with greater toleration. tivated circles of Russia finds it strange if a man and a woman seek one another's company by themselves. No one on that account immediately believes that there is any bond of love between them least of all, are the sexes regarded here (as in Prance) as on every opportunity The attracted to each other from brutish impulses. Russian mother is generally not afraid to leave her daughter alone with a young man. Perhaps the indifference for qu'en dira-t-on is nowhere greater than in good
;

society here.

When Bourbaki's army, in 1870, was forced to cross the boundaries into Switzerland, and the soldiers were obliged, after forced marches, to pass the night in the open streets,
in a pouring rain, no house, where there were only women, would open its doors to them. Only two young Russian

women, who were studying in Switzerland, gave up to some soldiers the only room they had, and passed the whole night in their company rather than let them sleep in the street, entirely unconcerned what stupid and cruel popular judgment would be given to this step. Also nothing is more common than the bond of friendship between young students of both sexes, where common interests, common ideals and plans for the future,

FREE LOVE.

53

form that connecting link which in other countries is due only to the attraction of love. Here the latter, naturally, may he an element, hut just as often it is wanting. The intellectual curiosity and the youthful zeal for reform are greater than elsewhere. It must, however, be understood that these young women would like to live a full human life. Anatole LeroyBeaulieu, who, plainly, has obtained the far larger part of the material for his valuable book about Uussia from

a small circle composed of those

liberal but are

the nihilist

now women

disorganization,

who were formerly strongly conservative, has described as living in a distinct kingdom of where " the free-love " has inprinciple
life

troduced a " manner of

customary among monkeys,"

and he speaks with a surprised recognition of the fact that in these brutish circles there are, nevertheless, now
and then found vestals, who actually abstain from using the freedom which they support in principle. Tikhomirof (1886) cites against him that the free love, only not interpreted as it is understood by the European
populace, has long ago been the recognized principle of a principle which is the whole Russian intelliyentia

not even discussed any more, just as we no longer discuss religious freedom or the freedom of the press. It

can be said that since Tchernuishevski wrote his prin" nay, sub(1863), cipal work, "What is to be done ? Herzen his Alexander wrote since romance, stantially,
this problem is regarded (1847), as substantially (so far as morals are concerned) solved. Love is not understood in Russia, as in other countries,
is

"

Who

to

blame

"

as

mere sensualism.
intelligentia,

Russian

And there is found within the as of a a true worship of love,

holy thing, lawful in itself. The respect for the formal legal bond between man and

54

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
is

woman

relation as a

the view of the marriage means of support is unpopular sympathy in the case where repentance at leisure has followed the marriage in haste often has a humorous coloring here.
;

comparatively weak

happens that, when, for one cause or a another, greater incongruity of temper than usual has been found to exist, the husband and wife give each
It not infrequently

other complete liberty and continue their

as

common
;

life

good friends. The young girl has here, perhaps even more frequently than elsewhere, her ideal of life she does not wish to live a useless life. It would not be
possible for her to surrender herself coldly and brutally like the very unreal nihilist in the play, by a Danish " " author, The Lodger which is otherwise very admirable. She would also be ashamed of entering into a matrimonial

contract simply for profit. But she would not be ashamed of forming a connection with a man without the consent
of her parents, and without any legal formalities, if she were seriously in love with him. She is more indifferent to the judgment of the world than are the women of

other countries.

This mental and moral attitude has no connection with

frivolity or thoughtlessness.
tistics that

It is a fact

shown by

sta-

accord,

two thousand women annually, of their own accompany the exiles to Siberia, frequently to

In this way, a lady of high rank, Baroness Eehbinder, some years ago went with the celebrated physician Dr. Weimar, who was implicated in the trials for the attempts at assassination. hard labor.
It can generally be said of those

who

"

go out among

the people" that, when the home. life is oppressive or obstructive, they seek emancipation from it at any cost.
It

what at the time was called sham was marriage invented, though it has nearly gone out of
in this view that

was

SHAH MARRIAGES.
use.

55

The young

girl

found a comrade of the same views

of life as herself, who consented to marry her pro forma, but who neither had nor claimed any control over her,

and by whose aid she escaped from the surveillance of her family. Sometimes it happens that the two (as in Mrs. G-yllembourg's " Light Nights " ), after having be-

come better acquainted,

the

man

is

actually marry; in other cases said to have abused the rights formally con-

ferred

upon him and a separation is the result. Generally the newly married couple have separated from each other immediately after the wedding, each being free and independent. As is well known in " Virgin Soil," Turgenief has described a kindred case, the relation
of brother and sister in the case of Nezhdanof and

Marianne, after he carried away the young

girl.

However much these young women feel themselves drawn towards the common people, it very seldom happens that they fall in love or marry out of their own rank and, if it does happen, it usually brings its own The following is an instance from my punishment.
;

own circle of acquaintance young girl loved a man of her own, the higher classes. They were both exiled by the administrative process, but were sent to the opposite
:

ends of Siberia and could never learn the least thing about each other. In the country town where the young girl was, after the lapse of a few years, she became
acquainted with a young workman exiled for the same She met him daily. He fell political reasons she was. passionately in love with her they had a child. Other
;

on the way home, came to the town. Among them was a young man of the same class in society as the young girl, who knew something about her lover. She was never wearied of asking him questions, and sat and talked with him through the whole night. At dayexiles,

56

IMPRESSIONS Of RUSSIA.

break, as she was sitting with the child at her breast, the workman killed her in a fit of jealous frenzy. He thought' that in her face he read regret for having

stooped

down

to him.

Two

years after, the child was

brought to St. Petersburg, to her parents. Very significant and instructive is an unprinted and prohibited novel of Korolenko, the title of which is " Strange," and the plot as follows woman has been sent in exile to a distant province.
:

One
lady

is

of the gendarmes who has accompanied the young the narrator. She has not been able in advance

to find out

where she

is

to be sent to,

and

is

thus,

by two

gendarmes, taken almost through the whole of Siberia. One of the gendarmes, an iincultivated but fine fellow, feels so deeply affected by her youth and charms that

he actually
orders.

falls in love
tells

He

her the

.selected for her abode.

with her, and cannot obey his name of the town which is "Good!" she says; "there are
arrival, she

several of ours there."

Immediately on her

goes to a young man, whose name she knows, but whom she has never seen, and takes lodgings in his house.

She

falls

ill,

of a lung disease.

gendarme conies again through the seeks her town, out, and finds the young man by her and with astonishment hears them still using bedside,

A month later the

"you" to each other. It is impossible for him to understand what kind of bond it is which unites them it is clear that it is not love but the companionthe formal
; ;

ship of ideas

He makes
rence.

foreign to his scope of comprehension. known to the young girl his attachment for
is

her, but she drives

him away with the greatest abhorShe does not dislike him personally; but solely because h# is a gendarme, from principle, from love for the cause to which she has devoted her life he is for her
;

EARNESTNESS OF THE REFORMERS.

not a

57

human being, only an instrument in the hand of an evil power. The poor gendarme cannot possibly understand this any more than what has been stated
above.

An

author,

who

has a European reputation, gave

me
:

the following account of his connection with this circle "About ten years ago, while I was living in Berlin, I

frequently received letters from discontented Eussians, of both sexes, some of them asking me to write for them
ute

some pamphlets, which they could translate and distribamong the peasants; and others, in relation to a monograph I had written about a celebrated revolutiona book to which I am chiefly indebted ary individual,
for

my popularity

in certain social circles in Eussia.

juvenile naivete shone through the style of some of the letters; but the tone of warm juvenile enthusiasm, united

which is uncommon even in men where the Christian name of the writer was only indicated by an initial, awakened
to

an energy of

style,

of ability,

in one letter,

it

great surprise in me. As I remarked, in my answer, that was not new to me to find enthusiasm and energy

in Eussia, I received, to my amazethe following reply: 'It is very possible that you ment, have been accustomed to find these qualities among our

among the young men

young men but it does not apply to my case, for I have An exfor some years already been a grandmother/ tended correspondence was the result of this letter. But, after the lapse of some time, this, and other correspondence of a similar nature, had to be suspended, on
;

account of the innumerable precautions my correspondents were obliged to take. As several of my books had at that time just been forbidden in Eussia, they did not dare to write my name on the envelopes. They changed
the name, so that I was obliged to inform the letter-

58
carriers of
tion, all

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

it. At the time of the attempts at assassinacorrespondence of this kind was suspended." ]$Tot infrequently they are very young children who embark upon the peculiarly Eussian plans for the im-

provement of the world.

For, even if the old sometimes

possess a youthful enthusiasm, yet in Eussia, as elsewhere, it is the rule that years and experience bring both men and women to regard the existing state of

things as stronger than

able to overthrow
it,

it is,

as

much

and the prospect of being less promising than it

appeared to them in their youth. The observation has also long since been made that, in the numerous political trials of the last twenty years, hardly any one has been
convicted

who was

who were
three.

twenty-five years

over thirty years old; even those old were uncommon, the

ages of the majority varying from seventeen to twenty-

In the spring of 1887, a young girl of sixteen was arrested in St. Petersburg, whose parents were well known everywhere in good society. Out of regard to
the high standing of her father, she was set at liberty; but yet with such conditions that she now remains under

the surveillance of the police. group of young stuto dents had a weekly meeting in her mother's house, read Shakespeare aloud in Eussian, as it was said. The
fact of these six or seven students

meeting together so

regularly aroused suspicion

and the police sent a warning, received an explanation, and answered: "It would be better to abandon these readings."
;

They apparently complied.

were arrested.
cialistic tract,

A manuscript

Then the young students

translation of a little so-

written by a man by the name of Thun, was found in the rooms of one of them and a card of invitation was found, in the same handwriting, signed
;

GIRLS AS PROPAGANDISTS.
with
tlie

59

denied
script.

all

young girl's name. knowledge of the

It

was of no

avail that she

tract contained in the

manu-

She was very peculiar: homely, with beautiful eyes; become acquainted with, for a little thing would silence her. In the presence of a dashing woman of the world or a beautiful coquette, she opened not her mouth. She contended that it was impossible to say a word in the presence of that kind of woman. She had the whole severity of youth; forbearance was a virtue she knew only by name. And she had youth's na'ive faith in the efficacy of every kind of propaganda. Her mother, a lady of thirty-five years of age, was high-spirited and passionate, with all the luxurious vital powers of the Eussian blood. The whole emotional life of the daughter had been absorbed by the intellectual; she managed her mother as if the latter had been her own
difficult to

grown-up
Still

child.

more rare than

this type, there is

among

these

women

the patient, light-hearted, on

whom

no oppo-

A letter from a young sition makes any impression. married woman, who had been exiled to a town in Siberia, but without being confined in prison, was somewhat to this effect: "Dear Friends, I can imagine that you are somewhat uneasy about me. But never in my It is quite pleasant to be seplife have I been happier.
arated for a while from

my

beginning to tire me.

But that

beloved husband, who was is truly one of the most

unimportant things. I have been received here not as a criminal, but as a queen. The whole town is made up of exiles, descendants of exiles, friends of exiles. They actually vie with each other in showing me kindness nay, homage. Every other evening, I am at a ball, and
never o$ the
floor.

This place

is

a true ball-paradise^

etc.

60

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
titan

More frequent

this arrogance is a humility, a

profound, boundless modesty, "which is genuinely Slavic. In a small house with a garden, in a remote quarter of

Moscow, lived an extremely finely endowed young girl, for many years had been severely ill and, as a result, from time to time, especially when excited, lost the power of speech. She lived a purely intellectual life, wholly absorbed in intellectual pursuits and, on account of her poor health and weakness, was hardly a woman. But a purer and stronger intellectual enthusiasm, and more arduous exertions in that direction, are not often She translated a great deal from foreign lanseen. guages, and also wrote, herself. There was a combination of energy and the most profound humility, which struck the stranger who conversed with her. Her father had been a well known professor of mathematics. She and her two sisters, bright and healthy girls, supported

who

themselves respectably, orphans as they were, without The worship of the gifted invalid by the two sisaid. ters, especially by the younger, was very touching.

One evening,

who had spent some time

in a company, a distinguished foreigner, in St. Petersburg, described

another young girl of the same turn of mind and of the same plane of culture, only seventeen years old, and of "I have," he continued, "met far bolder temperament.

her for a short time in society, but we were almost immediately separated. I merely noticed that she had
beautiful, clear eyes, and cordial, but very decided manThe day before ners. departure, I received a long letter from her, which seemed to me to be very interest-

my

ing, because it gave me the impression of being characteristic of a whole family. She wrote, " e Permit me to to express you in writing what I had

not any opportunity to say otherwise,

I do not speak

A YOUNG
in

GIRL'S LETTER.

61

my own name

alone, but in behalf of a large part of

whom you have not had time to become adequately acquainted. I should have said it to you, day before yesterday, at the D s but could not in the few moments we talked together. You regretted having known, comparatively, so few of the young people. That is partly because the time of your visit was very unfortunately chosen, so far as the Rusthe young people of Eussia, with
? ;

nation in

sian youth are concerned. It is just the time of examiall of the public institutions of education. But,

entirely apart from that, the Eussian youth could not Life deprives us of its to you. all and the freedom, highest good, happiness which is

make themselves known

;

inseparable from it but do not believe us insensible to that which alone gives meaning and value to human life. Quite the contrary. If fate has sent us so few blessings,

we

love those

we

do receive
highly.

all

prize

them the more

We

the more dearly, and prize above everyIt is not allowed

thing the science which emancipates.

to the Eussian youth to express in writing what they feel but it would pain me, as a patriot, if you should
;

get an unjust impression of them. You once called Eudin the typical representative of the Eussian weak" Weakness " I exclaimed to ness of character.
!

myself Do not forget that the EusOh, no sian literature is only an incomplete reflex of the life and character of the Eussian people. Do not forget that they would make us deaf and dumb, and that we are still too few in number not to be compelled to be so. But we are really not like Eudin. Eudin is intelligent, and has a certain quality of intellectual perception, but has no depth of soul; he loves no one and no thing. He is allured by the beauty of ideas; he is not drawn on by true and earnest love for the human race. It is on

when

I heard

it.

62

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.
he
is

this account that

lie,

and especially in

life,

a failure in his relation to Nathaeven if he does not succeed as

a hero.

we we

do not believe about us that But, great God ! are a failure in the wearisome battle of life, which

are in, day in and day out. and living faith is that Prussia will

How unjust my strong

!

some day come

forth

cured of

its political disease,

and manfully. but I believe in our intelligent youth, in their receptiveness of everything which is true and therefore It betrays itself in the profound respect for beautiful.
the

and disclose itself liberally I believe not only in the Russian people,

men who understand how to find out and unveil the " meaning of things, and to open for us wider horizons.' in this letter indicative of There is, perhaps, nothing uncommon abilities, and the seventeen-year-old child is
visible
it

behind

it

nevertheless, there is a personality in

it would be impossible to find in a Scandinavian girl of that age, and a will gleams out through the words, flashing like a steel blade, a will which is full of promise. One can form a vivid conception of this progressive youth of both sexes, as they enter upon life, face to face with the common people, whose elevation is the object of

which may be typically Eussian, and which

their aspirations.

the age renders

These young people represent the highest culture of among the peasants there is an ignorance which it almost impossible to begin the communication
;

of information. An exiled mathematician, who had returned from Siberia, a very practical young man, told me that in the country town he was regarded as a man with

library

a supernatural insight, simply on account of his large and after he had taught some peasants there, in
;

the spring, how to graft fiuit-trees, they came to him the next day from the whole neighborhood with sick

CREDULOUS COSSACKS.

63

children and sick cattle, and besought him to undertake a general cure: "Make them well, little father! make them well " When he assured them that he had not the
!

power

to do

it,

there was not one of

them who would

believe him.

They begged, cried, asked him what they had done to him that he would not help them: "You know very well you can, if you will " In Benjamin Constant's old work on "Eeligion," it is related that at the beginning of this century, when a
!

Russian general in

full

uniform rode out into a country

town in a part of Siberia but little frequented, he was regarded by the natives as God himself, and that the memory of his appearance got such a firm hold among
the people that when ten years later a Eussian colonel came to the same place he was greeted as the " Son of

God."

That would hardly be possible now.

ing happened last year. through a town inhabited

Still,

the follow-

A
:

by

cultured Eussian passed Cossacks of Little Eussia.

" Will asked the question you be so good as been in the other world ? " He if have to tell us you was offended, since he supposed that the inhabitants

He was

meant to indicate to him that they did not believe what he had said. But the fact was that one of the inhabitants of the town had returned from a pilgrimage and had told them that he came from the other world, and those recently deceased in the town had requested him to bring He had gon^ away again, greetings to their relatives.
the credulous Cossacks.

loaded with rustic presents, to the departed relatives of Now they wanted to find out

from the Eussian gentleman whether these gifts had reached their proper destination. In the presence of such ignorance and naivetd mutual
understanding
is

difficult,

most

difficult,

perhaps,

be-

64

IMPKESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

cause the peasant does not like to be treated as children As a matter of course, he does are by their teachers.

not like to have morals preached to him.

When an attempt was lately made on an estate to give a new

drama of Tolstoi, aimed against intoxicating liquors, and in which the devil personally appears as the maker and
distributer of spirits, the peasants expressed their disgust at it. It was, they said, a tale for children.

But the same peasants would readily believe that, if the harvest was poor this year, it was because the priests were now on a fixed salary. Heretofore the latter said
the mass earnestly, to get a good harvest and rich tithe this year it was all the same to them ; therefore they
:

prayed negligently and without real heartiness. Drought followed. And the same peasants explained the last Russian-Turkish war by saying that in the country of the Turks there lies in the ground a huge beast, of great age, and under the claw of his left hind-leg an immense treasure of gold is buried, which the Tsar wanted to wrest from the Turk. It must not be forgotten that by the last returns seventy-six out of one hundred of the soldiers could neither read nor write. On the other hand, let us examine the moral idea which underlies the whole struggle of the intelligent people of Eussia The wish to be useful, to see those about them
:

happy

in freedom.

ent guises,

now

This idea crops out in many differin the costume of the utilitarianism, of

Bentham and

Mill,

now

in the garb of Tchernuishevski's

phalanstery, now in Dostoyevski's strait-jacket, but it is the basis of the philosophy of the enlightened reform-

and their friends of reformIn speaking of the relations of the two sexes, attention has been called to the equality between the man
ers of the fatherland

PEASANT MARRIAGES.

65

and woman, and to the greatest possible sum of human freedom as the right of both. On this point we can compare the manner of thought and action prevailing among the peasants. External considerations are almost wholly excluded from the marriage question in this class. Nowhere else in Europe does the heart play so small a role in affairs of this kind. That early marriages do not indeed of themselves bestow the happiness of love is shown here for as a rule the age at which they marry is eighteen for the men and sixteen for the women. A result of the extreme youth of these marriages is that the " old man/' the head of the family, is often a man less than forty years old and who uses to the full extent his power and the respect which must be shown to him. For a long time past he has sent his sons into the fields and been at home alone with the sons' wives. For centuries he has gone about among all the young women in the house, like a Turkish sultan, and none of them has dared A whole range of Russian national songs to defy him.
;

treat of the cane of the father-in-law.

The

result is that

your your you " It cannot thrash your wife, whom can you thrash ? " is my wife my thing." Even in the seventeenth cenon giving his daughter in marriage, bought the father, tury
!

the Russian peasant never has treated woman as man's " Love your wife as equal helpmate. The proverbs run " If fur " own soul and beat her like
:

a new whip to give her the last domestic discipline coming from him, and then gave it solemnly to the son-in-law, with the direction to use it early and unsparingly. On entering the bridal chamber, the ceremonial custom was for the bridegroom to give his bride one or two lashes over the shoulders, with the words " Now forget your father's will and suit yourself to mine." The national " song, nevertheless, directs him to take a silken whip."
:

66,

IMPRESSIONS^ OF RUSSIA.
a stride
it is

from this to the conceptions of the the right of women freely to about youngest generation and themselves freely recede, and their ideas away give of the common work of the sexes for the freedom and
happiness of the masses And yet, if the distance
!

What

is enormous between these and sprightly young people and those for whom and among whom they would labor, the contrast between an intelligentia, with its system of morals and the official world of Eussia, which holds in its hands the whole administration and all the material means of the country, is not less immense. Here is an intelligent 6lite, for whom the rule of

alert

the legal

ethics is not the official patent morality, " for the

nay, even not

many who belong

but for

whom

motto, Nothing unlawful," is, for the it, stamp of the Philistine, above all ethics stands that which they
to

traces out

this spark which Dostoyevski and finds even in criminals and the partially insane, and for whom morality is what they call "the that is, that in which the indiunconscious condition," vidual does what is right without exertion, without selfcall the divine spark,

conquest, because

agrees with his nature. intelligentia with these rules of ethics, as a spiritual guiding power in a state which is ruled and where the most ignorant bigotry, governed as Eussia,
it

Imagine an

in the darkest of the Christian creeds, fashion, which from the court is diffused

is the law and downwards, and

where a single

man s
;

will,
j

even

if

he has none,

is

the

supreme controlling law. These two underlying powers are drawing away from each other on every side. What does it lead to ? Can

any mortal draught the parallelogram of these resulting tendency and its course ?

forces, the

GOGOL'S APOSTROPHE.

67

are reminded, in considering it, of the passage in Gogol's "Dead Souls," where Tchitchikof's kibitka is lost in the distance, driven with mad haste,

We

"And dost not thou, Russia, drive away like a troika, The road smokes behind thee, the not to be overtaken
!

bridges creak.

Thou

leavest all behind thee.

The

be-

'Was it a flash of lightholders, amazed, stop and say, ning ? what means this blood-curdling course ? what is
the secret power in these horses ?
are

What

kind of horses

you ? have you whirlwinds in your withers ? have you recognized tones from above, and do you now force
your iron limbs, without touching the earth with your hoofs, to y hence through the air, as if inspired by a God ? Eussia, answer whither thou. art driving ? ? There comes no answer. We can hear the little bells on the
horses tinkling strangely
; ;

there

is

a groaning in the

air,

increasing like a storm and the Russian land continues its wild flight, and the other nations and kingdoms of

the earth step timorously aside, without checking

career."

its

V.
fiftieth anniversary of the Polonski was celebrated in old the dSbut of poet poetic This festival offered an opportunity of St. Petersburg.

IN the spring of 1887, the

obtaining a glimpse of the official world, and of becoming acquainted, at the same time, with many of the literary and artistic celebrities of Eussia.
is very highly exceedingly popular as a lyric poet. He, Maikof, and Plestcheyef are the leading living lyric poets of Eussia of the older generation. The last (born 1825), like Dostoyevski, belonged to the "Petrashevskians," who were sentenced to death in 1849 but, by

Yakof Petrovitch Polonski (born 1820)

is

esteemed, and

commutation of his sentence, he was sent to the Ural and put into the Orenburg battalion of the line. It was not till 1857 that he was restored to his rights of inheritance and rank, and given permission to reside at the
capital of the country. Plestcheyef to this day belongs to the liberal group in St. Petersburg. Polonski and

Maikof, on the contrary, have a close connection with the government. This does not imply that they have at any time participated in politics or cherished principles
hostile to freedom;
but, since they are both men of just as impossible in Eussia as in smaller countries to live as a lyric poet, even by the

moderate means, and

it is

aid of an occasional novel, the government endeavored to improve their condition by giving each of them an office in the censorship. This combination of lyric poet
68

POLONSEI'S JUBILEE.
and
literary censor,

69

which

is

so tragi-coinic in itself, is

decidedly a peculiarity of Russia. In any other country it would be taken for granted that if any one needed
absolute freedom, it would be a lyric poet, and that if any one was not adapted to curtail the liberty of others,
it

of character and poverty have united to bring these poets to the point of receiving gratefully the bounty of the government.

would be he. More or less weakness

officer,

Since Polonski was censor as well as government it could be anticipated that the whole official
Since
belles-

world would be present to assist at his jubilee. he was to be honored as the representative of
lettres, it

was not

less certain that the larger

number

of

the authors in St. Petersburg would be present. In fact, it was only the extreme liberal party, of which the re-

views Vyestnik Yevropui and Sevyernl Vyestnik are the rallying-points, that did not participate in the festival.

The only really liberal authors who were present sat, one even as an honored humorously enough, as guests between those who had forbidden the publicaguest tion of their books and prevented the delivery of their
lectures.

one side of Polonski sat Vyshnegradski, then ad interim, but since fully constituted, minister of finance, a fine-looking, elderly man, with broad shoulders, but

On

with a countenance that did not inspire confidence and who, prior to his assuming the office, had been somewhat The unthinking mob, which in Eussia, as criticised. elsewhere, likes to throw mud at anything which shines, had set the following absurd report in circulation, and it obtained general currency, though, naturally, no credit: It is said that, on his appointment as minister, he was taken to the Kazdn Church, before a celebrated image of
;

70 a
saint,

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

adorned with, jewels, and there was obliged to take a solemn oath that the treasury of the state should be sacred to him. He took the oath readily but by a
j

strange accident, it is added, after the cereinony, some diamonds and rubies were missing from the vestments of

the saint.

This story

is

of about the

same kind

as the

accounts which are found in the Eussian national songs, of how the Cossack chief Platof pays a visit to the

Emperor Napoleon, in Paris, disguised as a merchant, gives the Frenchman a description of himself, then leaps upon his horse and rides away before the emperor's nose. But the story is, nevertheless, indicative of the suspicion which the continual robbery of the public funds by officials has created among the people, even towards men in the highest places. foreign author, who had described the Eussian situation in Poland as that, when eighty

thousand rubles were appropriated for a road, forty thousand must go into the pockets of the officials, repeatedly heard in St. Petersburg the answer: "Lucky
fellows, those Poles, if
it is

really the case there

Since

here, eighty thousand rubles are appropriated for a road, eighty thousand goes into the pockets of the officials."

when

Since the Zemstvos have been deprived of jurisdiction throughout the land, it would seem that stealing goes on, regardless of consequences, in the most barefaced manner.

It appears to the order on the part of the more than ever before.

common
officials

people as

if

every

dis-

escaped punishment

now

the side of Vyshnegradski sat a patron of liters a general in uniform, with a face as red as a lobture,

By

ster,

lyric

and faience eyes, and expressed his good wishes for and novelistic literature of the right kind in and

out of Eussia,

HOMAGE

TO POLONSKL

71

]?olonski, who was placed at the middle of the left side of the table arranged in the form of a horse-shoe,
is a tall and dignified old gentleman, with a mild, intellectual countenance, and a long, white beard. His hair,

smoothly combed back, has still preserved its dark color. in with a cane in his hand, for he is slightly lame in his face there was a somewhat uneasy expres-

He came
;

sion of satisfaction at receiving homage. Later, the expression of pleasure at the consideration which was

shown him broke through all his embarrassment. There was something childlike in this character, stamped by the circumstances under which it had been developed, and which plainly had many excellent qualities. The friendship with which Turgenief continually honored him, and which does honor to his life, could not otherwise be explained. (The Vesna collection, published by the Banish author, Thor Lange, contains a series of genial letters from Turgenief to Polonski.)
Opposite to him at the table sat his brother in Apollo

and in the censorship, Apollon ISTikolayevitch Maikof, with his speech under his arm, with his long, white hair falling down as German professors sometimes wear it, a sharply cut countenance with a pure, strong profile. He rose first and moved a little away from the table and not, as elsewhere is the began to read from his paper, with his the face towards custom, company, but, as was the case with the later speakers, turned towards the honored guest, so that those who would hear what was said must gather in a throng about him. When he came to the statement of the fact that the Tsar, in honor of
the day, had doubled Polonski's salary as censor, there was loud applause from all directions, and with surprising servility came shouts of "The hymn! the hymn!"

meaning the national song.

They

all rose to their feet

72

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
it.

and sang
Katk<5f
?

s canie, it

Then the telegrams were read. When was received with demonstrations of
and a
silence,

shouts and applause, on the part of some.

When these shouts of joy

not less significant, for a man

whose name

is

the symbol for every suppression and

reaction in the interests of their fatherland were heard, it could be seen that in this hall there was assembled an
extract of everything in Russia that gags, paralyzes, and brags, although on that account the presence of many distinguished and finely cultured men is not to be denied.

Among

those

who shook

their heads

quiringly at their neighbors,

and looked inwhen the mention of Kat-

k6f s name awaked such a storm

small, grizzled

of applause, was the celebrated Slavophile, Orestes Miller, the historian, a

man, with a round head, animated features, and an expression of sense and enthusiasm, united with
the conservatism of a professor. He has long sought to occupy a middle standpoint between the fanatical Slavophiles of the Aksakovian school, who see an original production in all Eussian works, and the scholars who

investigate in the European methods, like Stasof, who, as, for instance, in the question about the subjects of the

Eussian epic poems, has supported the view that all this is the echo of tradition which a long time previous had been spread among the most distant nations of antiquity. Miller has written a valuable essay on the greatest national hero of the Kief-cycle, Ilia of

Murom. In the more modern literature, Dostoyevski is his ideal, and he was just expounding to his neighbor at the table the excellence of that author's " Karamazof Brothers," when he was interrupted by the shouts for Katkdf He little
.

suspected that not a year after he should receive his dismissal from his professorship at the University at St. Petersburg because in two introductory lectures in sue-

VSEVOLOD GARSHIN.

T3

cession he had stamped the character and effect of the Katkofskian re-action as injurious to Eussia, oblivious of the fact that the Tsar himself, in a letter to Katkof 's widow just after his death; had called him Russia's greatest patriot.

from him sat a younger man, whom love of had brought into this circle, a wild and free bird in defiance of anybody, Ysevolod Garshin. He was strongly built, dark-haired, with the stamp of a selfeducated man. He rolled his eyes about in a strangely watchful and wild manner he had had repeated attacks of insane melancholy, and fears were entertained for his future condition. On no one did the reception given to Katk6f make so profound an impression as on him. But who could then imagine that, not many months later, the almost universal servile attitude of the Eussian press at the death of Katkof should be the occasion which caused

Not

far

literature alone

him permanently

to lose control over his faculties.

The

panegyrics over a man whose influence he regarded as the root of all evil in the new era of the Eussian Empire
groaned,

At first he continually gave a shock to Ms brain. "No, I should never have believed that our
:

press was despicable to that extent, to that extent lowWhat shall we do ? what shall we then do ? " minded And again and again he broke out in sobs. After that he sat for half a year in his black melancholy, and wept continually. When he was asked the reason, he answered,
"I

weep for Eussia."

ery, the directors- of the railroads,

In the hope of causing his recovby which he wa.s em-

means to day before he was to set out, the sick man put an end to his life by throwing himself over the stairs from the upper story of the house in which he lived with his young wife.
ployed, gave travel south
leave of absence and the
;

him a

but, the

74

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
who happened

After Ma'ikof, a stranger to Polonski,

to be present, spoke, by invitation, and, although there was nothing in the speech, received hearty applause. It

here

make an impression of eloquence seems that, with the exception of the advocates, no man in Russia has the talent of speaking, nor the courage to try. Not a single Russian arose who did not have his speech on paper in his hands, and who did
was not
;

difficult to
it

for

not read

Even among the advocates, there are not it. a reputation for eloquence perhaps the have who many best known are Alexander Passauvert, " the great advo;

nificant that he

Yet it is sigmost popular and makes the most money is the Pole Spasovitch, author of the volume which treats of Poland in Pypin's great work about It is certain, in any case, that even if Slavic literature. in Russian Poland, as here, all public and political life, which are indeed the natural school of eloquence, are wholly prohibited, yet the Poles have access to three parliaments out of Russia and their natural gifts, from
3

cate/

Prince Urussof, Koni, and Utin.

who

is

ancient times, lead them in the direction of weighing and selecting their words. One will seldom hear a more

eloquent

man than

the Pole Joseph Koscielski

he

is

member German

of the Prussian

House of Lords and of the

parliament. the persons present at the festival for Polonwhose ski, acquaintance a foreigner would be interested to make, the old lyric poet Pleshcheyef must also be

Among

a man of large frame, with white hair and mentioned, beard, one of the few old men in Russia who have been
true to the convictions of their youth;

and Dostoyevski's
years old, with
to

widow, a lady between forty and

delicate, regular features,

fifty

who must have appeared

great advantage

by the

side of the irregular, plebeian,

AIVASOVSKPS JUBILEE.

75

fortable

good-natured physiognomy of her husband. An uncomhusband he must have been, even less fitted for

matrimony than poets in general, and fully as irregular as any one to whom it has never occurred to make his books a series of arguments for mystical religion and
pious asceticism. short time after, there was a similar festival in

jubilee-delighting Bussia, with speeches and telegrams, for the old marine painter Aivasovski, whom they would thank for "having raised Eussian art to the height it

now

occupies."

Aivasovski

is

chiefly indebted for his

fame to the fact that there are very few Russians who have thoroughly known the ocean, and many who have never even seen it. None of them were qualified to criticise or sit in judgment on his marine views. When he was young, he may have painted some fine pictures later, he has only repeated himself, and manufactured his sea-views as waffles are served, hot and fresh on the spot. Always the same story always the same waves, seen from right or left, in sun or moonlight. The exhibition of his painting, some time ago, in Copenhagen, was a
; ;

not without good cause. two after the jubilee, he responded with a dinner to one hundred and fifty persons ; consisting of
-fiasco

A day or

who had been present at the festival in his honor, the whole Academy, the Minister of Education, the President of the Synod, the Tsar's tutor, Pobyedonostsef,
those
others. Each guest received Aivasovski's portrait, a large photograph, representing him sitting before a canvas, and this canvas, one-fourth the size of an octavo

and

page, pasted to the photograph, was a painting by Ms own hand. In this manner he distributed to his guests one hundred and fifty small paintings: waves, ship-

wrecks, moonlight effects on the water.

The

rector of

76

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the university delivered a long, ineffably silly speech. He said that the Black Sea might vanish (be dried up ?),

memory of it would never disappear for it was immortalized by Aivasovski's paintings. The press, on this occasion, was represented only by Suvdrin, the editor of Novoye Vremya, as the other newspapers
but the
;

had been unable

rank.

to see in Aivasovski

an

artist of

any

as a whole, the official world in Eussia is doubtno worse than elsewhere. The spirit of deference, timid snobbery, and arrogant leaders of society are its At the same time, perhaps characteristics everywhere. the lack of culture and the natural simplicity is even greater, which is the more unfortunate because the higher officials in Eussia have a far greater uncontrolled range of power than in any other European
less

Taken

country.

Eussia, as

is

well known,

is

divided into departments

and on the fifty; Poland, into ten; frontier three, four, and five of them are placed under one governor-general. In addition, the largest cities,
Eussia proper, into
like
St.

Petersburg,

Moscow, Kharkof, Odessa, have

governors-general, who possess a military dictatorship. Until the abolition of serfdom, in 1861, the governor was

the absolute ruler in his

a lesser Tsar, department, over about a million and a half inhabitants. Since then,

the situation

is changed only to the extent that he is surrounded by a group of heterogeneous committees of control. But the whole of this apparatus is of extremely

slight practical

importance, since nearly all of these

committees consist of officials under the governor, or of other officials of low rank, the watchword of whose life is and must be official servility. Instead of sharing in
the governor's responsibility, these committees dimin-

EXILE BY ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS.

ish
to
it,

11

without limiting

tlie

full extent of

Ms power

any perceptible extent.

It

is

only necessary to

read Saltykov's gory description of Russian provincial governors, in the work, "Our Pompadours," to
get an idea of the plane of intellectual development which these men occupy, and of what can happen any
day.

To

this

must be added
;

that,

even since the legal

reforms of 1864

the governor has retained the privilege of reporting to the Minister of the Interior the " persons whom, in the interest of the public welfare," he desires to send to the distant provinces of the empire

a privilege not limited process, to him, since " the third section of his Majesty's private

by the administrative

Department of Justice," the secret

police,

who have

the

superintendence both of the officials and their subordinates, have the right, without judgment or evidence, to send to prison or to exile every one who is suspected

by them.

How

is

it

possible

that such institutions

all

should not bring to the surface

that

is

evil

and

cowardly, hidden away in human nature, in those who, at the same time, represent the machinery of state and
are in a situation to place others under its wheels, and must themselves continually take precautions not to share the same fate ?
It is quite true that there are Russian officers of high rank who, from their judgment and humanity or from their strong sense of justice and plain manner of proceeding, understand how to make themselves respected in the most difficult circumstances, like the distinguished Governor of Warsaw. On the other hand, there can scarcely be any doubt that the Governor-General of Poland, Gen-

eral Gurko, possesses very few qualifications for his high of office, or that old Prince Dolgorukof, Governor-General

T8

IMPRESSIONS OF BUSSIA.

Moscow, discharges his duties badly. He is an extremely obliging and polite old gentleman to foreigners, and yet he has a stamp of shallowness and vanity, which makes a painful impression, when we remember that the weal and woe of so many people depend on the state of his That he has many friends emotions and judgment. merchants of the city was conservative the rich, among shown by the exhibition, in his ante-chamber, of complia collection of costly gifts sent to mentary presents, which filled one great case after him on his jubilee, another. But when tact and magnanimous forbearance are demanded, official zeal would evidently run away

with him.

plainly sity, in

which happened in the autumn of 1887 showed this. A concert was given at the univerwhich an orchestra of the students took part. In the midst of a solemn pianissimo passage, the sound of two blows on the ear were heard. It was a student who "an impertinent gave them to Inspector Brysgalof,
incident

An

camel," as one of the professors called him, a creature of Katkdf, who had done all he could to deserve and excite
-the hatred of the students.

The blows were accompanied There was a by the words: "From all the students." general commotion the police, Cossacks, all were called up to prevent the young men from escaping from the It came to a general fight university. many students were struck and wounded in the courtyard, when they
;
.

resisted arrest.

The whole

affair

was taken

as a

good excuse for the

authorities still further tightening the reins the young men at the university are driven.

by which

No

less

than eighty-six students were exiled on this account by Prince Dolgorukof. "What remained after this kind of a thorough purification were the extreme conferva-

CONSERVATIVE STUDENTS.

79

tives^who are more autocratic than the government itself, who lament from the bottom of their souls the liberation of the serfs, and who, according to circumstances, mix a dose of Slavophilism or of Panslavism in
their

way

of looking at political

life.

VL
IN Bussia, as elsewhere, it is not the official world with, which the foreigner has the greatest desire to become

He seeks in every large city, as soon as be introduced to those whom the inhabitants to possible, themselves regard as the elite. As I have elsewhere exacquainted.

pressed it There is always a great difference between the tea which the Chinese drink and that which is sold throughout the rest of the world. He who is fond of
:

tea will in every China seek for the tea drunk

natives.

by the

The foreigner, who, after having become acquainted with one Slavic race, comes to another, soon sees that, in order to understand the new race thoroughly, he must make use of the one already known as a standard of comparison. For only thus can he find the resemblance, without which all comparison is meaningless. By comparison with the qualities of the intellectual aristocracy in Warsaw could the peculiarities of the most advanced and interesting persons in St. Petersburg and Moscow be grasped in their delicacy. The Bussians have very few qualities in common with the Scandinavians and the Germans and eveu with the Finns, who live under the same rule, and generally use the same language, there is hardly any similarity. The attitude of Finland to B/ussia has been admirably compared to that of an honest, quiet tradesman, who has lived sensibly but monotonously and a little tediously, to that of a rollicking student, at one
;

80

RUSSIAN AND POLISH PECULIARITIES.

81

time dissolute and then famished, ready for all sorts of follies, but also for business, and who is always thinking more of the problem of human life than of the rent he has to pay. The capital of Finland, in spite of the differences and battle of the languages and what revolves about it, on a flying visit makes a predominating Scandi-

navian impression on a foreigner. It is certainly true that a large, free, cosmopolitan culture is found among the best educated Pinns, partly owing to their close connection with a power of the world which it would be quite
impossible to find in a place of the same sLze in a Scandinavian country. Nevertheless, frivolity, slander, and flourish here, as in other parts of the North. philistinism

There

is

no real standpoint of comparison with Eussia

to be found here.

Nay, the simiovershadows the dissimilarities, and conceals the Russian peculiarities. But, in order to find it, we must begin by eliminating all the traits which the Poles and Eussians have in common. In this way we naturally approach the qualifications

With Poland it is entirely different. larity at first sight is so striking that it

which have any precise character

but they are not so

The common observer insignificant as they may seem. sees no difference between the cultured classes of the
European nations. As he moves among these people, who are everywhere dressed in the same manner, and who everywhere observe the same rules of life and of politeness, they seem to him the same and even if he thinks he discovers some differences, they seem in reality
;

to be purely accidental. On the other hand, he who is inclined to critical comparison, and is, therefore, accustomed to discriminate between essential and unessential
qualities, typical

and accidental

traits,

and

is skilled

in

tracing the individual propensities back to the national.

84
intelligent
;

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
his

of

German
is

solidity

manners present an attractive mingling and Eussian intellectual freedom.

He

an interesting illustration of how the intellectual currents which are blended in the highest circles of Eussia in our time result in a half cosmopolitan, half
national culture.

His grandfather, the Prince Imperial Mikhail, and

his

elder brother, Nicholas, were taught by the well known Swiss, Caesar La Harpe, the same person who had pre-

viously been the tutor of Alexander the First, and in their schoolboy days received a thorough course in the
liberal culture of the eighteenth century.

So completely were the young imperial princes to be educated without

regard to the traditions of Christianity, that, as is shown by the memoirs (edited by Durof) prepared for the Tsaritsa Katharina describing the methods of instruction

adopted by La Harpe, the following was taught to them as to the founder of the Christian religion: "Jesus,

surnamed the Christ, a Jew, from whom the Christian The young imperial princes, sect takes its name." 1 hdwever, were forced by the tediousness of their teacher to let the philosophy he taught them go in at one ear and out at the other, and to employ all their leisure hours in the drill yard, where the beating of drums and the parades were their chief delight. Mikhail, who had some mathematical talent, became a zealous artillery officer, and still was no more absorbed in the peculiarly military problems than in the arts and sciences of peace. He would have readily given utterance to his older brother's memorable sentence, "I detest war: it 2 Ee views and parades, orders and spoils the armies."
1

J4$u$,

$urnomm

le

Christ, juif, dont la secte des Chretiens tire

elle

le

nom. a Je

dtteste la guerre

gate les armSes.

HELENA P^VLOVNA.

85

When epaulets, were everything to him in his youth. Nicholas became Tsar, from enthusiastic zeal for his authority, he excluded his brother from every position
whatever, that was in the slightest degree influential; and, from indignation at this, the latter on all occasions expressed himself in bitter derision about his surroundings, sneering at everything

and everybody, with the

reckless irony of a discontented man. It was to this man that in the last year of the life of

Alexander

I.

(1824) the

young Princess

of Wiirtemberg,

who on being received into the Greek Church took name Helena Pavlovna, was married. During
twenty-five years of her married
life,

the
the

she was compelled to suppress all her interests, and to be apparently absorbed in court festivals, audiences, and tedious drives,

and dared to occupy herself with reading and music and and scientists only during the time which etiquette dealt out as sparingly as possible.
to enjoy the society of artists

of forty-five she was a widow, and seemingly some years only for her daughter Katharina Mikhailovna and the children whom the latter had from her marriage with the somewhat bigoted re-actionist, Duke George of Meoklenburg-Strelitz. At the death of the Czar Nicholas, a new epoch was begun in her life, and she opened her palace to everything intellectual to be found in the different parties in St. Petersburg. The

At the age

lived

leaders not only of the Slavophile, but of the liberal party frequented her house. Conversation there was
spirited

and without
still

restraint.

The mistress of the

house was
ing

men

handsome, and she liked to see fine-lookHer household contained only about her.

handsome men, among them Abaza, afterwards Minister of Finance. She also patronized the distinguished became the wife of the latter, afterwards who vocalist,

86

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
as Julia

and now

Feodorovna Abaza

is

one of the ladies

in waiting at her daughter's court. By the side of the politicians of the different shades, artists and scientists, Russian and foreign, had free access to her house.

For a long time

it

was the custom that distinguished

to St. Petersburg took up

artists or scholars

who came

their residence, by her invitation, in the beautiful palace at Mikhailof Square. She had lost the power of

her

continuous activity or work during that long period of life when her whole existence had been absorbed by

the etiquette of the old court. But interest in and love of knowledge was fresh in her to the last.
It is her inheritance

heir has entered

penetration in

which Katharina Mikhailovna's upon with greater earnestness and spite of his youth and in spite of his

1 oppressive situation under the existing Kussian rule. point like this makes one feel sharply the distance

from Eussian Poland, where no thread from the world

of

intelligence reaches completely within the court circles. At the present time there is no central salon in
St.

Petersburg.

Formerly, Countess

Alekse'i

Tolstoi

formed such a centre. The widow of the celebrated poet, one of the most cultivated women in Russia, is now an elderly woman and no longer an attraction to society. Among the advanced Eussians it is the style nowadays to answer questions relating to that subject with: "A salon! a circle! an intellectual aristocracy! Eeally, what do you expect ? There is nothing of the kind here. The house where you live is an oasis. All around it is a desert." And if you ask for their great men, where they are to be found and seen, the answer readily slips out: "I don't know them; I have never
Comp. (Julius Eckhardt): 5th ed., p. 30 and following.
1

Aus der Petersburg

Gesellschaft,

SELF-DEPRECIATION.
heard of them.

87

We are

mans in

this one thing, that

like them.

We

and Julius Wolff, and so on. We do not have the solid and learned, earnest men, who on the other side of the frontier write novels in four volumes, and historical works in fifteen. There is an utter want of that kind of genius among us. We have not even the Prussian
Feldivebel with clinched
fists,

perhaps in advance of the Gerwe do not have great men lack a Felix Dahn, a Gustav Freytag,

see the

new Pericles.

He

is

stupidity of our statesmen is you can find his genius here." This trait of depreciating and speaking ironically about themselves is of very frequent occurrence among

in whom our neighbors deeply indebted to us. The his genius. To that extent

the progressive Eussians, more frequently than among the Poles of the present time, and united with an irony

pointed at foreign self-conceit, which

find elsewhere.

it

is

difficult to

Just as the Eussians, as a rule, do not extol the geniality or the industry of their countrymen, so also the more refined and more sceptical among them glorify just as little their intellectual powers or their trustworthiness. " Look out for a will hear in St. PetersEussian," you

he has more imagination than intellect, and more This is hardly true about intellect than moral sense." the common people of Great Eussia, whose quick apprehension, constancy in work, and perseverance in adversity, a great are crowned by the most meritorious virtue, and who, however credulous they may gentleness, be, and however easily on that account they may be frightened for the moment, still have an equipoise in
burg
:

"

their nature, a consistency in their

method of thought, and a quiet courage, which makes them composed and
steady in times of danger.

88

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Among the cultivated Russians, on the contrary, the foreigner will often enough meet with instability and capriciousness, of which the young men of Turgenief
it

Little traits which illustrate by the scores A young Russian sees a yoimg Englishwoman on a public promenade in Heidelberg. He does not rest until he has won her, and she gives him her hand. They come to Russia. He has little property and does not care to work to any extent. He has hardly passed the honeymoon before he declares that there is no congeniality, no affinity to be found between him and' his wife. They then live in different cities he amuses himself as

afford so

many examples.

will be at his service

well as he can in St. Petersburg she remains in Schiisselburg, educates her daughter, in the English style, to
;

independence, lives constantly in recollection of her husband. He amuses himself, travels, as a choice lies
in a boat

on the Black Sea and dreams.

He

is

now

forty years old and has not yet found his career. He has for a long time been a farmer, but wishes to change his occupation and become an advocate.
Is not that Russian ? asks the foreigner. It is human, and common to the Slavs. A Pole has certainly not very infrequently done about the same. A Frenchman might, I dare say, become tired of an Englishwoman, but would hardly enter upon a new career at forty. A German would apply for a divorce, remain at his trade, and immediately marry again. It is Slavic, it is true,

but hardly peculiarly Russian. "Tell me your family drama," says the foreigner to> his Russian acquaintances. They tell a story like this
:

There were two brothers L., of the aristocracy, one married but childless. His wife becomes enceinte, and informs her husband that his brother is the father of the

SOCIETY MORALS.
child.

89

which blood

duel between the two brothers follows, in is spilt, but no one killed. The wife leaves

her husband, who is living and has lived with a balletdancer, marries the brother, and by him has a large

number of

children.

The

fathers

and mothers in law are

delighted. They immediately received the newly married pair with open arms, and society approves of what has been done. Is this Russian, or not ?

That which is specially Russian must be the contentment and tolerance of the fathers and mothers in law. Professor T. of the University became infatuated with a lady who was married to one of his colleagues. He moved into the same apartments with Mrs. M. They had both their names on the door, each received in their
rooms, and were invited everywhere together. This is more characteristic. In the capitals of other
countries marriage Baroness L. was

would have been

first

essential.

married to a young, fine-looking

man, who held a high

official position, left him to marry his superior officer, who was thirty years older than herself. Since this marriage she for some years travelled

about with a young Austrian count of a celebrated family, then came back to Russia, while her husband by
his official situation is tied in Madrid.

In

St.

Peters-

burg she has a young artist living in her house, sees a

young poet every day, shows a lively sympathy for several other men, and is not the less, after some hesitation
on the part of
at the

young and remarkably

society, received everywhere, being still She drives to a ball pretty.

sits

house of the minister of Foreign Affairs, and

there dressed as a gypsy queen, with a gold ring on her forehead, takes an active part in the social life of the

highest circles, and makes eyes to the young gentlemen. The next day she sits clothed in a simple woollen dress,

90

IMPRESSIONS OF

without ornaments, knitting a stocking in a garret with a poor gray-haired lady, who knows the addresses of all
the exiled, and takes care of money sent to them. She writes a novel for a prominent French periodical, about interesting countesses from Russian high life, who fall
rise again, and she writes pamphlets at one kopek for the collection of popular writings in Moscow. She

and

men

stands on almost confidential footing with several young of the radical wing of the liberal party but on still
;

more confidential footing with the prefect of police of a great city, through whom she can, and does obtain
pardons in large numbers. This combination ought not to exist outside of Russia. Nicholas Y., a very well educated young man, had
revolutionary tendencies in the sixties. young girl, very handsome and enthusiastic, fled out of the country with him. She was then a Nihilist, had taken part in

commotions

place to place

accompanied him from " to married him, as she called civilly it, which means in Russia not married at all. They went When they returned, in 1878, both were to London.
of

the

students,

"

changed. He, a capitalist, re-actionist, working to get exorbitant railroad grants in Bulgaria. She, exclusive,
formal, an Anglomaniac, correct and strikingly dressed, with several diamond ornaments on a dress of black velvet. It would not have been believed that they had ever led a life of independent and rebellious ideas and emotions. On his death some years after, it is said that she found among his papers several which placed his

character in a light of which she had never dreamed, and which was unfavorable to her. Then she had

another transformation, sought the most extreme liberal circles, and has now wholly devoted herself to the literature and politics of the progressives, declares that she
is

RUSSIAN INCONSTANCY.

91

living her youth, over again, because she believes that in the present times she finds once more the vigorous

impulses from the sixties. This inconstancy, which

prising than elsewhere, and of the country.

emanates
is

from

the very

receptive nature of the cultivated Bussian,

is less sur-

accepted by the customs

This

class,

moreover, in the higher stratum of society

also not infrequently manifests a certain cynicism in the " " presence of brides by the civil rules to be found else-

where only among Bohemians.

Critic F. reads aloud in

company an

article

about M.'s

enjoys a certain prestige as a lyric poet, poems. M., is a small, robust, thick-set man, about thirty years old,

who

with a dark Jewish-Mongolian countenance, a kindly, attractive smile, and rather embarrassed demeanor. His
rich in sentences, and belong to a kind of lyric usually characterized as deep. The critic positively overwhelmed the absent poet with his praise. In bombastic, incoherent prose, he extolled the wonderful beauties, which were not to be found in reading the poems through the first time. The comic aspect of the

poems are ponderous,

vious year,

was that Mrs. M., who was divorced the preis present, listens to the panegyrics upon her ex-husband, and by the side of him she now prefers
situation

his

expressed to the author of the article her objections to view of the subject.

One must go to the South German circles of actors and authors to find anything like this. That which bears
the special Eussian stamp on it is perhaps that no one in the company seems to find anything out of the way in
it.

It is a peculiarity of Russia that,

tie is dissolved, it is generally

the wife

when a marriage who desires to

in

enter

upon a new union, and very often the husband,

92
order to

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
make
assumes the blame, be decreed, although he thereby impossible to be married again himself. The
this possible for her,

so that a divorce

may

makes

it

following

is

a case which happened last year

an

esti-

mable and

finely educated advocate, who was married to a young princess, received the confession from her that she was in love with an officer of the guard. He

declared himself to be the guilty party, and she, by reason of this accommodation, not very easy for him, married her lover without impediment.

These glimpses of fundamental traits from, the St. Petersburg family dramas shape themselves into a typical picture. But the peculiarities are brought into the
light when we compare prominent Russian individuals of the higher circles with prominent Poles of the same class.
clearest

nobleman of our time is a grand whose gentleman practical interests are agricultural, whose diversions are amusements and the theatre, whose intellectual interests are concentrated in the advancement of the cause of the Catholic Church To him the and thereby of the Polish aristocracy. Church is the precious pledge of the nationality, and in
typical Polish
his

The

mind the aristocracy stands as the indispensable He publishes, at his own expense, leader of the nation. some old national work, he subsidizes the national theatre in

alliance
is

Posen or the Polish press in Warsaw, enters into with Borne and with the Jesuits, that is, if he a zealous Conservative and a zealous Pole. Otherwise,

he only thinks of amusing himself, lives for the ballet, never misses a horse race, marries the daughter of some rich Jewish banker to gild his tarnished coat-of-arms, and then continues the life of his youth with greater
dignity and fewer creditors.

He

never does any real

A TYPICAL BUSSIAN.

93

The old aristocratic disdain and aversion for work. labor exist to this day unchanged in Poland. young Polish nobleman who works is cited everywhere as a

phoenix. It is quite different in Eussia.

here, for the

In the aristocracy

most

part, the broad-shouldered, persistent

muzhik shines out. Here is a type He

:

is

of a princely family

that

is

to

say,

he belongs to one of the only half a hundred Eus-

who are of real princely blood, because are descended from the old rulers of the country. they He has inherited hardly any property. Without any
sian families
trace of the Eanudo-like
is

disinclination to work, which the characteristic of the Polish nobleman, he studies engineering first in Russia, then in Germany; on

his return goes to work with an axe in his hand, builds bridges, and lays out railroads, at first in the employment of others, and afterwards on his own

Not that he loves work on its own account. means to become rich, very He becomes a manufacturer, gives up his manurich. as a speculator on the factory to become a financier and a exchange develops sagacity prudence which are
account.

As a

practical Eussian, he

not surpassed by old bankers

has the keenest scent for

money-making, and at forty years of age is a millionnaire. He is a practical and coarse-grained nature, a mathematical head, a calculator of probabilities, who has never known any kind of enthusiasm, and has never had a glimpse of artistic taste. If he travels to Italy, it is he is to be not to enjoy nature, or see works of art found dallying with roulette at Monaco. He is practical but not narrow-minded, and not de^:

du Nar " Oh, thou fool I ") (read backwards in character Holberg's comedy of that title. principal
i

Don Eanudo

is

the

94

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

praved. He is not like the Polish landed proprietors, who in G-alicia (until in more recent times it was prohibited) tortured their Little-Russian peasants, and prevented their going to church, by locking the doors of the

Greek church to them, and giving the keys to the Jews, must buy them back in order to he has himself no on festivals their Lord the worship kind of religion, a.nd he is willing that all men should have theirs. Nor is he like the Polish landed proprietor
so that the peasants
;

in Galicia of the present day, who lives by the manufacture of spirits, and by forcing as much of it as possiHis heart is without any sensible into his peasants.

tiveness

no

man any

tarian

is obstinate but he does In his youth he has been a humaninot from emotion, but from force of a process

he

is

as harsh as he

harm.

of reasoning in which the right is the logical justice is so no longer to that extent, as he no longer believes in the utility of the efforts of single individuals
;

now he

in respect to the great sum of social misery, and as he is entirely incapable of the enthusiasm which leads to

action even if the profit of the action is infinitesimally small. Very sharp-sighted as he is, he feels an almost

personal hostility to all metaphysics he has written a book, a sort of philosophy of mathematics, in which he
;

advocates the necessity of introducing object lessons into the department of mathematics, and combats the use of the words line, point, etc., as unreal abstractions.

Like so many persons with mathematical minds, he is informed in all nmsical technics, conversant with modern music, and eager to hear a great deal of good music well performed. As coarse as a peasant, unrefined but not frivolous, narrow but not shallow, reckless and loving money but upright and sometimes almost liberal, he is a decided
skilled in music, well

THE IDEAL ELEMENT.

95

materialist from conviction in all matters as to which,

He cannot with calmness hear he has any knowledge. even a lady submit to him for consideration personal
immortality as ever so weak a possibility with which imagination might amuse itself. To the question why

whom he keeps in preference to any of the other actresses, he answers: " She is a bit more tidy than the others," and it seems almost to be the moving cause, for in her regard for him
he has preferred the ballet-dancer he neither believes nor can believe. But, in spite of this candid materialism, openly exposed, this man is far from being an out-and-out mateHe would not be a typical Russian if he wholly rialist. lacked an ideal element. And he has it. Tchernuishev" ski's old book, "What is to be Done ? ("A Vital Question "
l

) is

his Bible.

tents are to

him the truth

Its rebellious propositions and conin regard to the traditions of

the old society. He demands, not aloud but in his quiet thoughts, a reform in the relations of the sexes, would

have that freedom introduced which is proper for a man of age, who has left the official religion and the official morals equally far, far in the rear, and there, at this
point of his spiritual life, is a nook where the social Utopia sprouts and blossoms in shade and twilight

Next, the following type

is

more

characteristic

he

is

also a prince, but probably of Tatar descent ; the name indicates this, but the physiognomy is entirely European.

He is very fine-looking, very elegant, with eyes whichj in spite of his being almost fifty, shine like those of a youth, or rather like those of a magnetizer. He is unusually gifted, possessing at once great artistic, linguistic,

and

oratorical powers.

1 Translated from the Bussianby N. Co. published by T. Y. Crowell

H. Dole and

S. S. Skidelsfcy ;

&

96

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Being without money, he chose a practical career while yet very young. But he met with a mishap at the out-

Somewhere in a foreign country, in a semi-private he had made a speech of a political tendency On his return home which had caused displeasure. he was punished by exile to a little country town in Esthonia, where he was obliged to remain for ten or
set.

circle,

twelve years, exclusively limited as to society to men, of whom not one stood on the same plane of culture as himself, and shut out from all activity, all development,

and

all

means

of livelihood.

At

last,

he

lost all

hope of

ever being liberated from his place of exile, and in a sort of desperation married a young woman of the neighbor-

hood, who, indeed, was both pretty and good-hearted, but separated from him by so deep an abyss in culture, that
she,

on her

part,

has never desired to enter her husband's

circle in society at St,

Petersburg as princess.
son.

She

lives

only for her

home and her

He came
ever,

back finer-looking and more elegant than

thoroughly cured of political enthusiasm.

As

if

in

scorn 5 freedom was given him in the guise of a government appointment in which he must work in its service

had

directly against that system of thought for which he suffered. Cold as ice, materialist in his manner of

thought and in all the relations of life, he has allowed himself only one passion the passion for collecting. He In litercollepts books, manuscripts, bronzes, women. ature and art he gives his allegiance to the principle, Art
:

l for the sake of art / in life, to the principles from the time of the court of Louis XV. Among French authors,

he specially

affects the line of Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans; among the Russian poets, Andreyevski, a lyric writer, whose poems are not on emotional subjects, have no emo1

Part pour Van,

ANOTHER TYPE.
tional relations,

97

and who has had the artistic, exceedingly odd idea of turning a whole novel of Turgenief
into verse.

He has much passion, but hardly a flash of emotion. He is frank, entirely truthful, perhaps, except when
a question as to his age, reserved towards men, who towards women, open worship him, and in whom he trusts after having educated them. More than one is bound to him as if by enchantment, although he has conit

is

stantly taught them to root out every germ of emotion as a germ of misfortune, and although his conversation

with them chiefly turns upon his relations to his other

mistresses.

Now and then, this man shuts himself up in his room, and sits lost in silent adoration of a statuette of a favorite French author, with a long, thick mustache, more sincerely loved by him than perhaps any Parisian woman has ever been. He makes a journey to Paris simply to buy a particular edition or a single autograph. He has no convictions outside of the literary and But within this circle he has his Russian artistic. enthusiasm as a passion, wholly absorbing him, irrational in the midst of all his intellectual coldness.

What

is

common

to

the Slavs

is

easily

compre-

hended in him. On closer examination and comparison, that which is essentially Eussian may also be comprehended. In Poland there is an eminent nobleman, K. J. 7 who belongs to the same class of men. He is elegant, cold, prudent, and yet, in certain directions, enthusiastic. This Pole and this Russian, to every one who knows them both and is able to compare them, are equally but the Pole is vainer, the Russian more brilliant There is a remnant directly fond of sensual pleasures. in the of chivalrous tradition Pole, which, the Russian
;

98
has shaken

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

The Russian satiety goes deeper than off. the Polish, and at the same time leaves room for more The Pole presents a weak side from his Polish force. dilettante desire to distinguish himself in every department the Russian is of harder metal. The Polish ideal the Prussian, force. is, and continues to be, grace If we now place the two typical Russian characters sketched here side by side, we shall notice that, however
;
5

have this in common, that the and struggles of their youth have been made anticipation of no avail by circumstances, so that they have been forced by necessity to be smaller men than they were framed for, hardened, practical materialists, in no situation to do anything profitable for others than themselves,
different they are, they

and entertaining their ideals

eccentricity.

as one cherishes a harmless

The two

currents in Russian intellectual

life,

which

at

once strike every observer, the tendency towards Western Europe, the disposition to acclimatize and further
develop the general European culture, and the tendency inward, the national self-absorption, with a hostile atti-

tude towards

"the Gentiles" in the west, are most

in

plainly personified

those

Tsars of

great historic

renown, Peter the Great mental Russian types.

If

and Nicholas, two

funda-

you go

still

farther back,

you

find both these

characteristics united in the old Muscovite Tsars, Ivdn III. and Ivan IV. the Terrible, the latter being espeHe has well been characterized as a cially important.

combination of Louis XI. of Prance and Henry VIII.

England: a mystical, bloody tyrant and prudent monarch like the former, and having about as many
of

wives as the

latter.

It looks as

if

Peter the Great

broke with

alj

the traditions from the old Muscovite

CONFLICTING TENDENCIES.
princes

$9

when he began

his violent reforms.

And

their

coarseness, stubbornness, power, cruelty, and mystical faith in the might of the Tsar rise up again in this century in Nicholas. But even then Ivan III. turned
to the different

them

European courts in order to procure from physicians, artisans, and artists. He invited into Eussia foreign masons, metal-founders, and goldsmiths, and caused architects and engineers to be brought from Bologna and Venice. Ivan IV. also caused handicraftsmen to be brought from various parts of Europe he
;

approached England and, in spite of the opposition of the clergy, brought the art of printing into his empire. In other words, in the more remote times the contrast between the condition of the learners to the culture of

Western Europe and the originality in the strongly marked institutions of the Muscovite Tsar and the longbearded Byzantine Russia (governed from a palace which was a compromise between a barrack and a Greek Catholic monastery) was far weaker, far less sharp, than since that time. It was only when Peter I. at a blow abolishes the dignity of the Patriarch, takes from the Greek Church its landed estates, interdicts the national dress

tume in order

(nay, the beard), even abandons the long Byzantine costo dress in an ordinary uniform, and sta-

tions a herd of foreigners,

more or less unscrupulous, but with Russian peculiarities, at the head of unacquainted all the affairs of the empire, that the tendency towards Western Europe comes to the front as exclusive. And it was only when Nicholas wrapped himself up in a decided hate towards the ideas and reforms which emanated from
the liberal west, when he limited the number of the students at each of the universities to three hundred, discontinued instruction in the common constitutional law of Europe, intrusted the philosophical instruction to the

100

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

clergy of the orthodox church, caused the manuscripts from which history and kindred branches were taught to pass under the supervision of the censor, and about
1840,

speaking in general terms, would not allow any foreign newspapers or books to cross the frontier, that the ten-

dency which closed Russia to Europe was developed not less exclusively. At that time, it went so far that all the instructors in geometry in the land were ordered, when they were teaching the properties of triangles, to remind their pupils of the holy Trinity, and that the
performance of
Lessing's
Schiller's

"Emilia

G-alotti,"

Goethe's

"Fieseo," were forbidden, while Rossini's " William Tell " was allowed only with the words and title of "Charles the Bold."

"Egmont," and

And if the heterogeneous old Russian types appear sharply in these Czars, Ivan III. and Ivan IV., Peter and Nicholas, the modern Russian type of civilization is
shown not
less clearly
its

Alexander L, with

and peculiarly in the person of commingling of energy and fem-

inine receptivity, of comprehensive liberalism with care for all the oppressed and love for the title of liberator,

on the one side, and inertia, the mysticism of Mine. de Krudener, a propensity to diffuse conceits or Utopias like the Holy Alliance, on the other.
This nature in our time is found in many a young Russian of rank, who travels to Berlin to seek out and passionately attach himself to Eugene Diihring or

Edward von Hartmann,

calls

himself positivist or pessi-

mist and to that extent regards himself as standing on the heights of modern progress, but, returned home,

with tearing haste

is

developed into a Russian high con-

servative, enthusiastic for the mission of absolute power, for the omnipotence of the dominion of the Slav and the

glory of the

Greek-Orthodox Church.

One of these

FOREIGN INFLUENCES.

101

younger men, Prince Z., a good man, but not a good poet, a philosopher, who is accustomed at least once a year to sit at the feet of Edward von Hartmann, immediately after Katk<5f s death, sought to succeed him in charge of his newspaper in Moscow and carry it to

greater lengths in his spirit. He failed in solving this problem, not from lack of good will but of power.

In the mean time, most significant for Russia, and yet entirely in analogy to the situation elsewhere, is the intellectual division into the Western European and
Slavophile groups. It is noticeable and extremely Russian that the primitive national party of the Slavophiles, not less

than the Western European, owes

its

origin to the study of foreign philosophy and poetry. It is just as true that the great revolutionary spirits of

Russia are a product of the movements which at the beginning of the thirties took possession of the University

Some of the professors, who had studied and Germany, at that time awakened the interest of the young students for French socialism and German philosophy. In all secrecy and from prohibited
of Moscow.
in France

books, the young men in separate groups appropriated, some of them the ideas of Saint-Simon and Fourier, and
life of Schelling and HegeL They gradually divided themselves up in such a manner that

others the views of

one party, to which Herzen and Bakunin belonged, united that manner of thought which was nearly allied to that of Hegel's most advanced disciples (Huge, Feuerbach) to the French Socialistic ideas, which were proclaimed by Louis Blanc, and in modern French light literature by George Sand and many others ; while, on the
other hand, the natural philosophy of Schelliug and the enthusiasm of the German romanticists for everything national and old German was kindled in the party of

102

XMPBESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the Slavophiles, who, wholly in the spirit of these Germans, demanded a purely Slavic culture and posed as the
representatives of
sharpness.

They

cast longing looks

the national principle in its full back to the time of

Peter the Great.

The Muscovite Eussia was the home

The horrible rule of of their thoughts and dreams. Ivan the Terrible, in spite of everything, was dearer to
them than the modern
ter,

liberalism, so destitute of charac-

and parliainentarianisin. Their most precious study was Slavic antiquities, and they thought that they were diving into the Russian national spirit when they had dived deep into the Byzantine theology. To that extent they substantially gave a voice to the forces and efforts which had existed since the time of Peter the Great. In those days there was no other element of opposition than the Easkolnik, that is to say, the old orthodox party, which, since the time of the reformer Nikon, had seceded from the State Church and been split up into numerous sects. The Patriarch Nikon had wished to regulate the ceremonies of the church. Erom his time on, the church demands that its followers shall cross themselves with three fingers and say three hallelujahs in succession, and fearful consequences have overtaken those who resisted. But the Easkolnik have defied the knout, exile, and execution for their conviction that one ought to cross himself with two fingers and only say two hallelujahs in succession. They have allowed themselves to be burned alive for their conviction, for they believed that they would suffer everlasting damnation if they consented to the number three. It is even only a year or two since that these sects have been suffered to have their own chapels and pray as they
pleased excepting, however, such sects as are still declared to be dangerous and are persecuted. The most

WARRIORS OF THE

SPIRIT.

103

interesting group of them at the present time is the socalled Dukhobortsi (Warriors of the Spirit), who are in the largest numbers in the department Voronezh, and

water.

who were exiled to the Caucasus, to a region without They have shown such energy as to have con-

verted this desert into one of the most fruitful and

richest regions in the Caucasus. They work in common, old and young, women and children. They can all read,

themselves.

although they have no schools they teach their children They do not recognize holy images. They
;

hang up in

their houses, in the corner where the images are usually placed, an embroidered towel. They do not carry the cross, but, regarding it as a symbol and memo-

rial of Christ's sufferings, detest instead of

honoring it. In time of war they have rendered the greatest service to the country, when there was need of transporting supplies or the wounded over the sometimes impassable roads of the Caucasus they freely rendered their service to the State, which had treated them so harshly, and gave their wagons and time without compensation. Yet
;

it is

characteristic in this connection that in all these

sects the

retical institutions of

most profound hatred of the heathenish, heWestern Europe has been nour-

ished.

eign,

But the national consciousness and hatred of the formounted from the lowest classes of society to the

highest during the great national struggle against JSTapoleon, who in 1812 inundated the land with hosts of

The Italians, and Spaniards. the followed literature national of the great prosperity in. both its victorious with contest exit, which, great Pushkin and in Grriboy6dof, however much the one is
Frenchmen, Germans,
influenced by Moliere and the other by Byron, is controturned against the foreign influence in the versially

104

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

empire. To a certain extent the Slavophiles thus only continued the agitation, which had been planted and had

reached maturity. This intellectual current must not be confounded with the Panslavist, to which there is a cerThe Panslavists themselves tain resemblance in name.

have been European radicals like Bakunin,

in so far as

they, in the service of the national cause, to the advantage of the dissemination of the peculiar Russian communism and association, wished the union of all the
Slavic races

and the foundation

of a great Slavic empire,

monarchical or republican. The Slavophiles, on the other hand, have directed the most vigorous assaults towards
those sympathizing with the Poles in the west; they represent the narrower Russian national feeling, and
like to look

back to the old Byzantine basis of culture

to our starting-point, the com-

and faith
If

for the Russian national life. 1

we turn back now

parison between the Russian and Polish intelligence, we shall see that the Russian intelligence is obliged to make almost as painful a choice of forces as the Polish. The dilemma of the modern Polish patriot is this, that, if he
decides to labor uncompromisingly for progress, he undermines the Catholic Church, and thereby, for the time being, the Polish nationality, and labors in reality for

the oppressive government, the force at hand most hostile to himself and to progress of every kind. If, on

the other hand, he chooses intellectual stagnation, he plainly sees the danger that the nationality, which is
protected thereby, and of which they were and are so
proud, will fall behind in European culture, and become
2 antiquated and outstripped. The corresponding dilemma
1

Comp. Julius Eckhardt: Jungrussich und Altlwlandisch ;

neue Aera.
r

di$

russiscJie
2

Comp. Georg Brandes: Indtrykfra Polen

PROGRESSIVE RUSSIA'S NEEDS.

:

105

of the progressive Russian patriot is this to the best of his ability he would shake off foreign influences.

But

at the

same time that he considers that what

this

brings in its train is ruinoxis to national originality and growth, he sees that the Russians are less advanced than

the inhabitants of any of the European countries except

However strongly he may complain, like 7 Tchatski, the celebrated typical Russian in Griboydof s " The Misfortune of Having Intelligence," that Moscow
Turkey.
imitates Paris in manners and customs, in language and modes of expression, in fashions and follies, nevertheless, like Tchatski, he winds up by turning abruptly on the Russians themselves, who feel that they are only lit to be imitators, and who, when a man has five or six

by means of which he rises above the people, and dares to express them freely, fall upon him like barbarians. All the attacks on the intellectual supremacy of
ideas

the foreigners become at last an attack on that Russia which submits to and finds its profit in it. Tchatski,
in his last soliloquy, utters the painful cry, "It is also my fatherland." And thousands have ended with this

cry of distress. In other words, the progressive Russian who desires the broadening and development of the nationality of
his people, and that the foreign element should be kept at a distance, soon comes to the conviction that the fragments of Western European culture in his land are

always worth more than the unquestionable national

roughness and the equally national barbarity. He cannot indeed distinguish between the people and the government, for a great people have the government they
deserve.

He

sees that for whatever finer culture, scienartistic taste

tific insight,
1

and

he himself possesses, he
p. 1$.

Eckhardt: Jungrussisek un$ Altlivlandisch,

106
is

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

that

indebted -to the civilization of Western Europe, and it is the Russian people's own fault if they have only used this civilization to varnish the brutality of
istration.

form of government and the barbarity of its adminThe more nobly and earnestly he wishes for his country the gifts of justice, humanity, and freedom, the plainer it becomes to him that they can be obtained by unremittingly and uncompromisingly opposing the
their

ruling national tendencies of the century. He feels the impossibility of wishing for progress and freedom of

thought at the same time with the strengthening of national feeling in Eussia. Not only the sentiment of fatherland, but that national feeling which he feels in his heart to be justified here, become re-actionary from necessity. The freedom-loving patriot can long

enough and enthusiastically enough demand the development of the people from within. He can only by virtue of the points of view supplied by the culture of Western Europe judge what there is in his own country which ought to be promoted or repressed; and, wherever he makes his exit, if he desires to see human and civil rights respected in his land, and to see strong emotions and productive ideas disseminated and rooted there, he comes out by returning to the deficient
western culture, only too often caricatured in Eussia, which the sects detest, and which the national party of For on the the Slavophiles abhors and condemns. of this time Eussia has at reached, plane development he inevitably finds himself compelled to choose between
the two forces, either the national with the sacrifice of the ideal of progressive freedom and culture, or the decidedly liberal, but then also without any firm footing

on Eussian
the national

soil,

and with only a weak connection with

spirit.

THE TWO PATHS.

107

All the most remarkable men of Bussia have this dilemma to contend with. Minds like Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevski chose definitely to pursue the former direction; those like Alexander Herzen and Ivan Turgenief, the latter.

VII.

IN the year 1887, the

hostility in
its height.

Russia towards the

They had the feeling that the future conflict was not very distant, and the foreigner frequently heard expressions about the impending European war. As a rule, these expressions
were desponding. There is nowhere such a lively perception of the very great weakness of Russia as in Russia itself. But what without qualification was significant for Russia was the almost universal wish for The foreigner heard this not only in Northern defeat. but in Southern Russia, and it made no difference whether the speakers were Russians from the east or the west, provided only they were able men who loved freedom. I have certainly heard the wish expressed, as if by common consent, by more than fifty Russians, of the most varied classes of society, and entirely unacquainted with each other, that there should be a decisive defeat in an ensuing war. We can scarcely imagine a more instructive symptom than what I have here stated of the deep despair which exists as to the present condition of the country.
'No other possibility of liberation

German Empire reached

from the predominant misery presents itself than that which is offered in the weakness which an unsuccessful war will entail on the ruling system.
It
is

not the

first

time that this sentiment has flourished

and that wishes apparently so unpatriotic have been cherished by men who have the greatest love
in Russia,
108

ABSOLUTE POWER MODERN.

109

for their country, and are the best educated. It was the case in the time of the Crimean War, and the wholesome

which accompanied the defeat remembered.

results

are

distinctly

which exists at the present no means of so old a date as is sometimes by believed by those who think that Eussia, as a matter of This course, is and constantly has been behind Europe. is a re-action toward the short but powerful and remarkable period of freedom and emancipation in the first ten years of the rule of Alexander II. On the whole, in Eussia freedom is the old, and oppression the comparaThe oldest Eussian law-book (Pravda, tively new.
terrible oppression

The

time

is

Russkaya) does not recognize corporal punishment. Serfdom was first introduced in the sixteenth century, and Pskof, the last free city, like the old Novgorod, a
republic governed by a popular assembly for centuries, by the cruel order of the Muscovite Tsar, Vasili, was

deprived of all its privileges, its inhabitants carried " away to the interior of Eussia, in order to live happily by the grace of the Tsar," and replaced by a newly

imported race of men.

In the eighteenth century the

deliberative assemblies of the provinces, the Zemstvos, which in the Middle Ages had spoken loudly and energetically, first lost all their importance,

and the theory

of absolute power, on which the authority of the rulers now rests in Eussia, first took form in the nineteenth
It is not even of domestic origin. Alexander I., in the first period of his reign, manifested an almost modern spirit. He appeared to be a man sincerely fond of freedom. He loved his age, de-

century.

spised the proceedings of the revolutionary re-actionists,

was ior a long time an admirer of Napoleon, continued for a long time to wish well to France, and cherished

llO

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Mm

plans for the elevation of Poland, It seemed as if under the power of the Tsar, like everything else in Europe, was to "be humanized, and as if the voice of the

people would be heard. So, under the strong re-actionary counter-shock towards the French revolution and empire, it was two persons who were not Russians, the Piedmou-

De Maistre and the Frenchman Bonald, who shaped the great theory of re-action which was victorious throughout Europe, which the doctrinaires of Russia passiontese

ately appropriated, and which, easily manipulated by them, became the new corner-stone of the Tsar's throne.

The present condition

in Russia

is,

then, neither the

thousand years, nor of a uniform progress towards the better, which has been too slow and much delayed, nor of a retrograde movement
result of a stagnation for a

in culture uninterruptedly continued for a long time. It is the product of a re-action now twenty-five years old, constantly fortified anew by insurrections and attempts

at assassination.
It is not that there is a

want of good

will

and earnest-

ness on the part of the Tsar. Justice is done everywhere and in all circles to his character. It is known
that he likes to see honorable, upright men about him, and also that he was angry at the corruption and deceit

which during the

last

Russo-Turkish war extended even

to the highest officers of the army, and had so large a share in the unfavorable progress of the campaign. In other* words, it is admitted that he is a man of honor;

but a great man, a great leader, is at this moment needed on the imperial throne of Russia. It is, perhaps, a misfortune for a people to need great rulers.

A country like Holland or Switzerland certainly has no need of any. But it is a greater misfortune not to have a great ruler when one is needed.

F&IVOLITY OP THE COVET.

The
nized.

HI

Tsar's virtues as a private man are readily recogFor the first time for centuries, for the first time
all,

probably at

he furnishes an example of an occupant

whose relations to the other sex even evil tongues have not the slightest thing to report. The men, as well as the women, who have
of the throne of Russia, about

occupied

it,

have for

all

time been renowned for their

erotic extravagances. The emperor seems to be a pattern as a husband and a father. About this exemplary

imperial family, the Russian court nevertheless runs

with its elegant frivolity and its numberless irreguwithout re-acting upon it, but also without being influenced by the spirit which emanates from it. All the world knows that the Prince Imperial Alexis lives openly with the beautiful Countess de Beauharnais,
riot
larities,

sister of General Skobelef, whose husband, a cousin of the Prince Imperial, the Prince of Leuchtenberg, has seen his profit in resigning his rights to a prince of the imperial family. The beautiful German Princess Maria

Pdvlovna, consort of Prince Imperial Vladimir, of whom the author of the book La Societe de St. Petersburg, instigated by his hatred to the Germans, relates all

imaginable

evil,

is,

as it were, an incarnation of the

It is not necessary to passion for court pleasures. believe what is said of her by the pen inspired by hate ; but thus much is true, that there is a sort of recklessness

which stamps the tendency she gives to the amusements She arranges parties in which they amuse of the court.
themselves with
all

kinds of games, but chiefly with

playing hide-and-seek (cache-cache). In such games now and then a lady of the highest rank will be found hidden away with an officer of the guards in an empty
bath-tub.

One

of the
is

court circles, also,

to get

amusements of the youth in these up sleighing parties, in which

112

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the finest ladies are taken out in basket sleighs drawn by officers. The sport is that the officers at a certain

time upset the sleighs, with all their contents, in the snow. They laugh at the result. In certain higher circles of the court, where a different

no other amusement than dancing. dance continually, on all occasions, with a real They mania. They make up for their detention for many months at Gatshina by whirling away in an endless round dance. Where they do not dance, the tediousness
spirit rules, there is

overwhelming. Tea-parties in these upper circles are described as tiresome. The guests arrive after a while the grand persons appear, and take their places in silence.
is
;

Evidently no one dares to ask so exalted ladies about anything. Then from their side drops a question as to the state of the health of one of the ladies present. As
a rule she answers briefly, and therewith the conversaIf she is very ingenious or very goodtion dies away. natured in relation to the embarrassment of the grand company, she shapes her answer so that it makes a new

question almost necessary

this subject is exhausted,

but when the

little series of

questions and answers having intimate connection with

as trustworthy eye-witnesses assure me, twenty or twenty -five minutes may elapse in a pause of complete and painful silence, during

which the guests look smilingly on the exalted visitors, who, in turn, distribute their smiles upon those about
them.

Even

if

there

is

little

more

noise, the impression

may sometimes

be

not

less

painful.
:

Eye-witnesses

have described the following scene the old courtier, Count A., fell while waltzing, and remained sitting This evoked a laugh from the Tsar. on the floor. Stimulated by having been the occasion of such a burst

AMUSEMENT AT

COURT.

113

of good humor on the part of one whom it had been the study of the count's life to please, the old man danced out, and let himself fall again, this time with comic

Eenewed laughter. From that the aged gestures. courtier devoted himself the whole evening to
evoking
smiles from the lips of the august being by playing the clown. While all this was going on, his daughter, the present Countess 0., one of the ladies in waiting to the

empress, sat straight and stiff, with contented mien and a smile in her eye, swallowing her anger at her father's

abasement, and really satisfied with the obvious favor which fell to his lot. The scene reminds one of what is immortalized in the well-known painting of the

Anna Ivanovna, which is widely the by copper-plate engraving, and in which the members of the first families of Eussia are
court of the Tsaritsa
in Eussia

known

represented playing leap-frog in the ball-room of the palace for the amusement of their sovereign lady. Court life was far from being so spiritless as now in
the time of Alexander
II.

The

court bigotry, so closely

connected with shaXLowness, was also unknown during his time. Now you find large circles among the aris-

who belong to the Eadstock-Pashkof sect, which was founded not many years ago by an impostor. In these circles they pass their time in reading " The Evantocracy

damn all who don't think as they do, and, above pick their neighbors to pieces. Fanaticism and a malicious propensity to gossip generally go hand in hand here. large part of the members of this stratum
3

gelists/

all,

of society send their sick to the priest Joan in Cronstadt, whom they believe able to work miraculous cures

by the laying-on of hands. Even Loris Melikof sent a daughter to him when she was ill. The vigorous Greek-orthodox re-action in the highest

114
circles is

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

comparatively new, and is now in full bloom. began under Alexander II. It was not that this monarch was favorable to it far from that. But his consort, a German princess, at first from a desire for popularity, afterwards from a want of an object in life, when
It
;

she felt that she had entirely glided out of the existence of her volatile husband, took up the cause of
the Greek-orthodox Church with constantly increasing warmth. Thus it happened for the first time from time immemorial in this empire, where the clergy occupy an inferior position and have little influence, that a priest
of the imperial household, the wise and fanatical Bashanof, became influential at court. It was to this man to whom it also happened to prepare the present
Tsaritsa, by instruction in the Greek religion, for her And among the court ladies change of confession. who were smitten with zeal for spreading abroad the sound doctrine, and combating Eoman Catholicism and Lutheran Protestantism, especially when found within the boundaries of the Russian Empire, Countess Antonie Dmitrievna Bludova, a slightly deformed, energetic,

and intelligent girl, made herself very conspicuous. It was she who, under Alexander II., cemented the union between the Muscovite Slavophile party and Aksakof and Katkdf, and was the first to master the Polish Marquis Wielopolski's plan for a reconciliation between Eussia and Poland, with a hostile attitude towards Germany.

Through her father, the well-known powerful minister, she accomplished the appointment of Wielopolski as governor in Poland but then, after the revolt in 1863,
;

she was converted to the doctrine of the necessity of the eradication of Eoman Catholicism, and actually
initiated the horrible religious persecutions in Lithuania and White Eussia. It was she who stood at the head

RESULT OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.

115

of the idolizing of Vilna's executioner, Muravief, in St. Petersburg, after the attempts at revolt were drowned in the blood of the Poles
;

and

it

was she who, on an

appeal to the liberal Prince Suvorof for a subscription for the memorial present which was being procured for
the hero, at a public dinner received the courageous answer, which deprived the prince of all popularity,

you will make the general a present of a gold axe, purse is at your service, countess." She took care that Katkdf's most fanatical and bloodthirsty articles were laid before the Tsar just at the moment when he

" If

my

was in a receptive mood for that kind of reading and when, after Karakosof s attempts at assassination in
;

1866, a decisive re-action took place, she contributed perhaps more than any one else to bringing about the

of placing the whole educational system in bigoted hands, hostile to culture. From that time to the present, this religious re-action has continued uninresult

terrupted, partly

from fashion and partly

political re-action
it

precaution.
current,

The

took

as a prudential it up in its

and carried

farther on.

This political re-action can be dated from 1863. An orgy of ideas had preceded it, in which the whole nation
revelled in hopes of progress, with plans of emancipation.

and became intoxicated

put an end to the

The

result of the

Crimean

War had

The time was passed system of the Tsar Nicholas. when fanatical narrowness and cruel harshness alone
Not ruled over everything in the Russian Empire. only had the books and newspapers of Europe been
excluded, but the greatest obstacles had been put in the way of travellers across the frontiers, whether going
in the first or coming ; nay, the hatred to the age had gone so far man of the empire, that lie detested rail-

116

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

ways and prohibited their construction, so that Russia, at his death, had only the single line between St. Petersburg and Moscow, and this one was managed in such a manner that the merchants preferred to send their goods

by the old teamsters, in common wagons, as the safer and cheaper way. The defeats in the Crimea brought the deliverance. In however great respect for his father Alexander II. had been educated, he was compelled at once on his accession to the throne to repeal some of the most
This was received by the peoso long gagged and fettered as if ple from this time any kind of criticism of Nicholas's system of government would be allowed, and as if it was
absurd of these laws.

who had been

the Tsar's

own intention now to change everything. During the Crimean War, Herzen had already established his Russian printing-office in London and his
;

weekly newspaper, Kohkol (The Bell), gave the signal for the free and reckless inquiry into all the blunNever had such ders and follies of the old regime. in heard been never had any one Russia, language The boldness carried away the wielded such a pen. Herzen was soon the readers and conquered all minds. most influential man in Russia, the idolized dictator of He seemed to be omniscient; the intelligent youth. nothing which happened in the land, from which he had been banished, escaped his attention, so thoroughly He published secret state papers, was he informed. like the memoirs of Catherine IL he threw light \ipon embezzlements, frauds, infamous and cruel deeds, com;

mitted in various parts of the empire. He had so many connections, and in such high places, that on a day when Kolokol contained serious charges against one of
the imperial adjutants-general, and
3,

number printed

CREATION OF A PRESS.

117

in St. Petersburg, without the compromising passage, was laid before Alexander, who was a constant reader

week or two later the Tsar received the number in an envelope, with a few lines which original the reason gave why it was sent in this manner. So his newspaper, that in Nizhni alone, was widely spread in 1859, one hundred thousand copies, which had been
of the paper, a

introduced from Asia, were seized by the police. There was at once formed a group of parties with
different shades of opposition or progress. There was the opposition to the Germans flourishing at the court, on the part of the higher nobility who had been set aside by Nicholas in the interest of absolute power.

There was the opposition of the Slavophile, who, as unaristocratic as possible, idolized the people. Finally, there was Herzen's, Ogaref's, and, in a short time, the
sceptical, radical,

and gradually

socialistic opposition of

Bakunin, who had escaped from Siberia. And all these groups of opposition, under these conditions, for the first
time in Eussia created a press. Until the forties there had not existed in the great empire any other press than the official. Under Nicholas the newspaper, "The Eussian Bee/' an academical
classical poets,

organ, which was conducted in the spirit of the old Lornonosof and Derzhavin, carried on the

same war against the romantic tendency inaugurated by Pushkin as Oginski's organ in Warsaw had carried on against Mickiewicz and his friends. It was the great
Eussian
critic

Byelinski

who gained a

hearing for the

It was national poetry of the nineteenth century. under the control of the literary impressario, Krayevski, who is still living, that the newspaper "The Annals of our Fatherland " was published, and it was sustained by the genial articles of Byelinsfci. Wlien be

118

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

worn out by his literary strife, by poverty and disease, the Annals were continued in Sovredied, in 1847,

mennik

(The Contemporary), to which journal the poet Nyekrasof contributed, and which in 1858-62 was in the main inspired by Tchernuishevski, who, as an author of novels and works on political economy, had

made a deep impression on his But the importance of the

time.

press in Russia must be

dated from the end of the Crimean War, and from the dtbut of Herzen as a journalist. For before this time the

was extremely small, chiefly because the more intelligent circles spoke and read only French, with persistent contempt for the journalistic
influence of the writers

productions in their mother tongue besides, they were compelled to limit their attention to purely literary questions, especially such as this, wh.ether the Russian
;

literature

ought to be purely national or not.

at the dose of the sixth decade, hundreds and hundreds of newspapers and periodicals were at once

Now,

established.

How

by a

fact stated

numerous they were is best shown by Eckhardt, that in 1858-60 not less

than seventy-seven large newspapers were compelled to suspend publication, without being perceptibly missed.
Then, as
it

still

happens down

to

the large monthly periodicals, each

number

the present day, as thick a

good-sized book, began to give abstracts of books in the natural sciences, literary history, or economy, to furnish
political comments, and to publish long society novels The of German, French, English, or native authors.

legitimate daily newspapers, with genuine Slavic enthusiasm, plunged into the most extreme radicalism. They

became, as

it were, giddy from the heights which culture had and to which the youth European attained, gf the capitals and the denizens of the provincial towns.

EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS.

119

who had known nothing of the life of Western Europe, were now suddenly carried. The first question which forced itself upon the thoughts of all was about the education of the people. There were hardly any schools in the land, and the few
that did exist were, in the rural districts, wholly in the There were no other hands of the ignorant popes.

At teachers than the priests of the country towns. this time, Sunday schools were started, first in the capitals, and then in various parts of the country, and the
teachers in these schools taught without pay, from pure enthusiasm for the cause of the elevation of the people.

In the various divisions of the army, the officers taught the recruits in similar schools, the officers of the Guard distinguishing themselves as teachers above all others.
It

was under these conditions that the

great, far-reach-

ing reforms which characterized the beginning of the reign of Alexander II. were begun. The first of these

was that which, on the 19th of February, 1861, led to the emancipation of the serfs, and gave to more than fifty million of men personal freedom and a share in the
ownership of the soil of Russia. As a matter of course, it caused a tremendous diminution of the power of the noble landed proprietors. It was a measure at once
democratic and autocratic.
at a time

And

it

was carried through

been lost had their The defeats in the respected splendor. Crimea had destroyed the prestige of the army the shortcomings and the mistakes and the frauds of the administration, which the war had brought to light, had given a death-blow to official authority; the. clergy had long been utterly despicable. ]STow, by one blow the power of the nobility was diminished in an unprecedented manner, at the same time that a large part of their property
;

when the powers

that had hitherto

120

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

was taken from them without any proportionate comThe hope that there would be a political pensation. Alexander II. was greatly weakened, just under reform because the social reform in this form came first. For a " long time, the enlightened classes had hoped for a conin the as it be must naturally stitution," beginning, an
aristocratic constitution. political liberalism stood, in the presence of this gigantic advance of the power of the Tsar, without any hope for the future. For now,

Now

when

all the lofty peaks of society were levelled, the position of the power of the Tsar alone was unaffected and even expanded to a dominion over soldiers and peas-

ants unlimited by any kind of barrier.

The great peasant population was still very far from being satisfied. They had for a long time cherished Utopian expectations, and now, especially since the socialistic agitators had strengthened their illusions,
were waiting and there, of
immediate transfer to them, then the land which they had cultivated, without any equivalent. This disappointment brought the peasants in the departments of Kazan and the Volga to
for the
all
a^i

armed

insurrection.

broke out among the students.

of the

At the same time, disturbances The abnormal limitation

number

of students at each of the universities to

three hundred had been repealed, and the scholar had suddenly attained a prestige almost surpassing that which the officers of the Guard had hitherto enjoyed.

Now, with a genuine Eussian lack

of principle,

the

execution both of legal reforms and of a new plan of education was intrusted to the old re-aetionists. So far

was concerned, the leading men, Count Panin, Minister of Justice, accommodated themselves to the demands of the times but only three months later, when the emancipation of the serfs
as the former reform
like
;

UNREALIZED HOPES.
set all

121

thought

ment of the

in vibration, a regulation for the governuniversities was published, which deprived

all

the students of

the liberties previously given them,

and cut off their hopes of obtaining any of those which they had been led to anticipate. They were deprived of the liberty of holding meetings, forbidden to have charity
funds, and, in order to reduce their number, each student was required to pay a fee of fifty silver rubles each

semester. In all the university cities, in Moscow as well as in St. Petersburg, in Kief as well as in Kharkof, the young men refused to submit to the new rules. Con-

with the police and the military followed. In 1862 the irritation in Russia reached its height. In various parts of St. Petersburg there was a series of fearful conflagrations which indicated the breaking loose
flicts

of revolutionary instincts. The government interfered, established a summary court for incendiaries, closed the Sunday schools and other institutes and clubs, put re-

made the censorship more rigorous. Thus when the baleful blindness of the Polish demagogues and the indiscreet and cruel measures of the
straints upon the press,

noble Wielopolski against the dangerous spirit of rebellion in Poland brought about the outbreak of the Polish
insurrection, it was the event from which all the re-actionary lusts and powers in Eussia were to imbibe new force.

Up to this time, Alexander Herzen had been the hero of cultured Eussia. He had continually manifested a lively sympathy for oppressed Poland, treated its cause
as his

own and

as

that of his friends.

He now

ex-

pressed himself warmly in behalf of the revolt, even after the protecting attitude of the powers of the west

and their threatening mien towards Eussia (which made the Polish nobility, with Zamoiski at their head, conquer their scruples against an alliance with the popular leaders

122
in

IMPSS88IONB OF RUSSIA.

Warsaw) had aroused and goaded the Eussian national of the empire. feeling even among the liberal groups Then it was that Katkdf entered upon the scene, and in the course of a very short time won all power out of
the hands of Herzen, and rose to the position of the most influential man in Eussia. This remarkable man,

August, 1887, represented during twenty-five years the principle of oppression in a land of oppression, promoted during the whole of that time,
only

who

died

in

with

all his

to liberty, wrote

demanded

coarse energy, everything that was inimical down everything that was non-Russian, and supported the establishment of complete
is

uniformity in the great empire, Mikhail Nikoforovitch Katkof

in the history of Eussia.
stood, it has never
licist,

As long

a unique phenomenon as the empire has

without

or

official

been seen before his time that a pubposition and without any external exerted an influence on the acts has authority,
official

of the

government, saying nothing of what was the

case with him, exerting a greater influence than the government itself. To that extent, but only to that extent,

can his
theless

life

the

be said to point towards a new time. Nevercause of satisfaction vanishes when we

examine into the manner in which he reached this degree of power. He attained it because, with a recklessness which too often disregarded the claims of truth and the demands of justice, he devoted himself to flattering the national vanity and cultivating the national pride in its most detestable forms.
Katk<5f made his debut as professor of philosophy in the University at Moscow with contributions of slight importance to the history of philosophy. He was, from the beginning, an adherent of German philosophy,
especially

an admirer of Schelling, and then belonged to

RISE OF EATZdF.

123

the same circle as the enthusiastically satirical Byelinski and the celebrated international revolutionist Bakunin.

He

called himself

an

idealist

and taught the

cult of

the ideal.

was removed from his position. In 1856 he established a monthly periodical, "The Eussian Messenger " (Eusski Vyestnik), and in 1861 he assumed the control of the daily paper, " The Muskovite
of the ideal in 1848 he

As a worshipper

Itfews" (Moskovskii/a Vyedomosti). He began his career in both of the journals as an extreme liberal of the English type,

demanded self-government, extension

of the

distribution of power, constitution, etc., until in 1861-2, when radicalism broke out of bounds, when the disturb-

ances of the peasants and of the students frightened timid people, and when it was brought to light that a multitude of men and women in high positions in Eussia

were in communication with

Herzen's revolutionary the in of a complete change in London, possibility party

public sentiment was apparent. Then Katk<5f felt that the moment was propitious for a change of front and for setting himself up as the

He broke the silence which had Savior of Russia. been laid upon the whole press of Eussia in regard to his old exiled friends, Herzen, Ogaref, and Bakunin. Although their names could not be mentioned, and their existence was officially ignored by the government, he attacked them openly as enemies of their fatherland, and to blame as the cause of all the disturbances. This was the first shock given to the great influence of Herzen among the cultured classes of Eussia. And then in 1863, at the time when the Polish revolt broke out, when
Herzen committed the imprudence of offending the Eussian national feeling, and the approval with which the uprising was greeted by the Eussian emigrants had

124

IMPRfiSSIOXS OF RUSSIA.

the result that the liberal Russian newspapers manifested their sympathy by silence, then it was that Katkdf made
his

master-stroke.

He denounced

the emigrants and

nihilists as fjerfidious traitors to their country,

preached

the strongest Russian chauvinism, demanded not only that the rebels should be put out of the way, but that the independent existence of Poland should be blotted out by changing the kingdom to a Eussian province. When the revolt was quelled, Katkdf was one of the

most popular men in the higher circles of Russia. It was he who caused Muravief to be sent as "Hanging " Dictator to Wilna. It was under his aegis, under the pretence of the law of self-preservation of the State, that the democrats gave the Lithuanian peasants freedom and land through the unbridled plundering of the Polish nobility, and that the Slavophiles urged religious persecution under the pretence of wishing to eradicate the
tyranny of the Catholic Church. From this time on, Katkdf could only rise and rise in influence in the same degree as the re-action in Russia He had identified himself with it. rose.
zealous adherent of the Greek orthodoxy.

The quondam philosopher was henceforth the most The quondam henceforth a was liberal English worshipper and defender of the national absolutism, more national than the government, more monarchical than his monarch.
All his disputes with the Court and the Tsar were only lovers' quarrels occasioned by too much zeal on his part.
}

His power increased to an incredible degree. When, on one occasion, the ministry forbade the publication of
his newspaper, he nevertheless issued
it as usual, only with the comment that it was forbidden, but that the prohibition must have arisen from a misunderstanding.

It passed unchallenged

the Tsar sustained him.

KATKOF'S INFLUENCE.
The Polish
nation,

125
was to the

from

this time forth,

Slavophiles the embodiment of the detested Western But the Europe and of the detested Catholicism.

ownership of the soil was given to the Lithuanian peasants, chiefly because the Slavophiles, with Milyutin at their head, hated the Poles as aristocrats. For them the
Polish nationality was a peculiarity of the noble caste, and, as such, ought to be rooted out of Russia. Here
also the absolute power sought to contract an alliance with the masses against the higher classes. But to Katkdf personally the uniformity of the Russian state was henceforward the most important principle. He allied himself with the Slavophiles in order through their

worship of democracy to bring the government to stir up the Finns against the Swedes in Finland, the Lithuanians against the Poles in Poland, the Esthonians and the Letts against the Germans in the Baltic provinces, because they necessarily insisted on the idea that the

strengthening of

all

these oppressed small nationalities

in their relation to the ruling people was only the first step to the final and complete Russianizing of those
countries.

in 1866 came the attempt of Karakdsof to assasAlexander II., and it gave to the re-action its last " strong impulse. Katkdf shouted with joy, The pistol shot of Karakdsof has purified the air." It is quite true that in a short time the government got frightened at its alliance with democracy. It once more cast its looks towards the nobles, whom it had hitherto mistrusted, because they had wished for a constitution. Even Katkdf's paper was suppressed for two months, as a punishment, because its editor had dared to publish a warning from Valuyef. But soon the reign of terror, friendly to the peasants, conquered under Milyutin in
sinate

Then

126

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

from Poland could not be Poland, and the example The unrestricted, absolute defied in Russia proper. and the unqualified Greek* Catholic orthodoxy,

power which had been upheld in the western provinces, were the whole empire. Now, necessarily upheld throughout

when the glamour of weaker, we can see

the

name

of the Tsar has become

the possibility, as a result of the of disturbance a dictator might times in situation, that of revolution, for instance, a man the power, usurp
if

like Skobelef, the celebrated cavalry general

such could be found, with a past and a popularity, who died

in-

under such horrible circumstances. Erom 1866 the current of re-action continually
creased.

Everything helped

it

on, radical as well as

Soon at several retrograde agitations in foreign lands. places in the empire the oppression becomes too strong, produces this revolutionary propaganda or attempts at
political murder, re-action takes a

and for every

political

new

stride,

with

prosecution doubled frenzy.

Everything strengthens it, everything works to its advantage. The old "Nihilism," which was described by Turgenief, which was substantially an intellectual emancipation, with its whole energy concentrated on the attack on Christianity, and with a love for science, which found its expression in dislike of art as useless

and undemocratic, was over about 1870. The insurrection of the commune in Paris, and the outbreaks of the internationals, set the minds of the youth in active ferment at this time. A generation had arisen, which,
instead of the individualized radicalism of the older
"Nihilists," for a G-od.

had socialism for a religion and the people

From all parts of Russia and Siberia young girls streamed to Zurich to study medicine and socialism. In

POPULAR PBORAGANDISX.

127

1872 Prince Krapotkin began to work among the artisans in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. In the beginning
of the seventies, young men and women of the families of the highest rank, by hundreds and hundreds, " went

out

among the

people," labored there twelve, fifteen

hours a day in the fields, in the workshops, in the factories, in order to propagate modern ideas everywhere among the common people. But in the provincial and
country towns, where everything is spread by rumor, the presence of a propagandist could not possibly long be a secret to the police and government. One arrest
followed another.
!N"ot less than thirty-seven provinces were declared, in a government circular of 1875, to be " infected by socialistic contagion." In 1876 and 1877, the whole of this generation, as it may be called, of youth with their minds in a ferment was mowed down. All the prisons were full of political offenders, and it was constantly found necessary to build new ones. Mere suspicion led to imprisonment. A letter from a friend who had gone out among the people/' an answer from a child twelve years old, who, when interrogated by the police, did not know what he said from fright, was quite sufficient. So also in 1876 to 1878, in the different Russian cities, on the chance occasion of a funeral or a death sentence, there were demonstrations and street revolts, the outbreak of passionate despair,
'-'

meaningless in so far as they could never reach the proportions of a general revolt, and invariably immediately suppressed
all

by the

military.

The

uselessness of

such demonstrations produced the result that a party of terror was finally formed, which determined to work
exit at the end of These unfortunate per-

by single attempts at assassination. The earlier propaganda made its

the seventies with the 193
trial.

128

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

sons had been in prison for four years, while the slow

The Russian cell and thorough investigation lasted. system during this period bore so heavily upon them, that of the one hundred and ninety-three no less than seventy-five committed suicide, became insane or died. A special tribunal had been arranged for the trial of this cause, so that it was not to be expected that the judgment would be against the government. There were
sentences of ten, twelve, fifteen years imprisonment, with hard labor, for two or three lectures, privately delivered
to a handful of

workmen, or

for having

bought or loaned

And so harshly were political prisoners a single book. treated in prison that in the central prison at Kharkof were several attempts at insur(" house of terror ") there
rection

among them

same

treatment as the

for the purpose of obtaining the common criminals. And when

the senate of Alexander

II., which in other respects was of a petition for pardon, acin the form pliant enough, number of the the 193, the Tsar personlarger quitted the set the aside verdict of Senate. Not even in ally

the laws which this government had promulgated did it seek its support against its antagonists. It was,
therefore, natural that these antagonists did not regard it as anything else than organized injustice, against

which all weapons seemed to be allowable. In 1877 followed Viera Sassulitch's attempt to assassinate General Trepof, who had caused a political prisoner to be whipped, and her acquittal by the jury, which aroused the attention of the whole of Europe. In August, 1878, came the bullet from " Stepniak's " revolver, which, in the forenoon, in the open street, killed General Mesentzef, chief of the political police. 1 Among

the numerous attempts at political murders which,

1

now

Stepniak: Underground Russia.

Introduction.

FOBEIGN POLICY.

129

followed are the four against Tsar Alexander II., of which the first occurred April 2, 1879, the last, which
resulted in his death,

March

13, 1881.

Nothing has set Eussia farther backward than this occurrence, which was pregnant with misfortune.

last

It

immediately prevented the formation of a sort of parliamentary constitution, which had just then been promised. It frightened the successor to the crown back from the paths his father had entered upon at the beginreprisals

ning of his reign, and it seemed to justify the rulers in and measures of prevention of every kind. Thus they have reached a point where they now are,

reached a policy which is no policy, hension and irresolution.

Generally,

a policy of appre-

when we speak

of the policy of Eussia,

we

mean

foreign policy, and many are dazzled by the extraordinarily large display of the power of the empire. We speak about Bussia's great "mission" in Central
its

Asia, about its irresistible advance towards India,

etc.,

and then we admire Eussian statesmanship. But what power is there in Russia's subjugating a little larger or smaller number of semi-barbarian tribes in Asia, and what statesmanship is there in involving itself continually with more wars there, when it must concern Eussia to collect all its powers and make all its preparations for the great impending conflict! These Eussian generals, with their victories won from Tatars and Turcomans, remind us altogether too much of those French commanders who were victorious over Abd-elKader and were defeated by Moltke. What else are they doing in Eussia now, than once a year to conquer an Abd-el-Kader And to pit against a man with Bismarck's genius for managing foreign affairs, Eussia has not a single prime
!

130

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
For there
all.

minister, not one of any kind whatever. prime minister in the Russian ministry.

is

no

The unlimited
"When Under the

power

of the Tsar does not tolerate this at Gortchakof was chancellor it was only a title.

present management, Russia, the great exponent of the Slavs, has succeeded in making itself detested to the ut-

termost hy
carried
it

all

the Slavic nations.

to so great an extent that Russia

This government has is now hated

by Bulgaria and Servia (nay, by the common people of and that means Roumania) as it is hated by the Poles,
Russia liberated Bulgaria from the Turkish reign of terror, and has now successfully, after the lapse of not ten years, by falsehood, violence, hypocrisy, by infamous acts for whose authority the Bulgarians looked

much.

to the higher circles of the Russian government, brought matters to the pass that the liberators of that day

are more hated than the

ago.

oppressors were ten years

internal policy is still more pitiable. It is is which not a most needed. parliament greatly certainly Only the naive youth in Russia can think that. par-

But the

liament could easily be imagined so chosen that it would be more conservative than the government itself. It

body

would, in all probability, if established now, be such a as the Duma (city council) in Moscow is. That
is elected.

Yes

its own elected mayor. fought for in vain, is not on that account the less conservative,

Moscow has what Paris has so long The Duma

and
it

would

not present a different appearance if it had been the government and not the citizens in Moscow who had elected
its

members.

ISTo, it

is

concerns Russia to get administration. Yet it

axe

first.

not a popular assembly that it Russia needs a bond fide

no

institutions,

is understood everywhere there no provincial home rule, no inde-

EI> UCA TIOXAL

ORDERS.

1 31

pendent courts, no genuine seminaries of learning, no schools In the proper sense. During the whole of the reign of this Tsar the enormous Siberia has been denied the permission to found even a single university. It was feared that it would Permisgive Asiatic Russia too much independence. sion has only just been given for the foundation of a
university at Tomsk, which, in the present circumstances, is of hardly any importance.

(illegal,

All knowledge is dreaded. The most recent circular but carried into effect), which after Katkdfs

death was prepared by the curator in Odessa., makes It the duty of the --school committees to decide whether the parents are sufficiently well off for the children to be

admitted to a grammar school. They are required to ask how the parents live, in what kind of a house and
of

how many rooms, how much money they

are.

earn fl.-nrm3.11y,

and who their friends

The

turbance.

universities are closed at the least sign of a disThis happened to all the universities in Russia

proper in the spring of 1888, after the unimportant affair of Brysgalof's box on the ear at Moscow ; St. Petersburg,

Moscow, Kazan, Kharkof, and Odessa were at once closed

for fear of students' pranks. Since then the curator of the universities in Odessa in which it is said : " Since a new has

prepared

circular,

several instructors have allowed themselves publicly to express their thoughts without the reservations which

are due to their position in the educational system, and without feeling themselves bound by bhe duties of the service when the question turned upon something which and since had no direct connection with this service,

they have even appeared as recognized organs for certain circles of society, have taken part in party debates,

132

IMPRESSIONS OF BUSSIA.

to be drawn into nay, have even allowed themselves curator the controversies in newspapers, requires them
for the future to use greater prudence." It forbids them to take part in the discussion of social

and literary questions. It closes with the expression of the hope that for the future they will solemnly devote their leisure hours to matters of instruction and education.

had

All this was because a poor little teacher in a club suffered himself to criticise Katkdf
.

the whole, we in Western Europe can form no idea of the grade of civilization occupied by these cura-

Upon

When, in 1884, the students in Kief had arranged a banquet on the jubilee of the old university, one fine day, by a gratuitous regulation of the curator, they were wholly excluded from participation in the festival.
tors.

When

they, mortified and exasperated as they were, hissed at the curator and the well known president of

the Synod Pobyedonostsef, as a punishment they were There was only one all expelled from the university.
single

man

in Eussia with
:

praise this act

it

whose principles it agreed to was Katkof The students, he wrote,

.

who had not

participated in the demonstration are for not responsible having prevented it. From absolutely trustworthy sources there has been

communicated to me the following incident, which recently occurred in the case of another curator, Novikof, who had conie to examine (audit, as it is called) a school
in Novgorod.

He

finds at the teacher's

;

two books

one,

a collection of Korolenko's tales

the other, a volume of Dostoyevski's. Not having any idea as to who the first author is, he looks for the name of the publisher and finds the name of the magazine Russakaya, Mysl (The Bussian Thought), which
is

published in

Moscow and edited

MONSTROSITIES IN TXtiTRUCTIOlT.

133

He says, in by Goltzef in a moderate, liberal spirit. a discontented tone, "Don't read productions from the socialist organ! But/ he continues, "what dissatisfies me still more, is that you have Dostoyevski here.
3

He

talks about love too

much

in his books.

know,

indeed, that it is the Christian love; but it doesn't matter, it is love all the same, and love is good enough in the beginning, but look out how it ends " ISi ow, if we distinctly conceive what authority such a
!

curator of universities possesses, especially those who rule over the universities at the capitals, we shall not
to

be greatly surprised at the monstrosities in instruction which the press now and then dares to call atten-

Recently the Vyestnik Yevropi thus called attention to the oddity of some lectures on psychology which this spring seriously occupied the good society in
tion.
St. Petersburg. Vladislavlef, a professor of Philosophy, gave an outline of psychology, which contained the fol" This senlowing analysis of the sentiment of respect
:

timent," he said, to the income of

" increases or diminishes in proportion

A man who has three thouits object. sand rubles a year necessarily has a great respect for a man who has fifteen thousand. And a man who, for example, has over seven million rubles a year (in this
he seems to allude to the Tsar) necessarily makes the impression of a colossal greatness. On the other hand, poverty engenders indifference or disdain." He said all this without irony, and also not even citing many instances of the fact, but as the expression of a psychical law.

Where such a management and such

it

instruction are

self-evident that the acquisition of possible, the higher education is rendered difficult for the young men. So far as the young women are concerned, the

must be

134

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

conditions are even more unfavorable. Although, it has been constantly forbidden them to attend the universities of Eussia, to

say nothing of passing examinations

still

and taking degrees,

no young

women

in Europe

crave a scientific education like those of Eussia. About ten years ago, some liberal professors in St. Petersburg

and others in Moscow, under the leadership of Professor G-uerrier, established a kind of university for women in each city. The professors of the universities and men eminent for their literary culture (like Vesselovski and Storosyenko) gave their time without pay, and young girls from seventeen to twenty and upwards came in crowds to hear good lectures on science, mathematics, As a mathistory, literature, and some other branches. ter of course, these lectures were neutral in politics, Eor some time, a dislike for this course had been manifested on the part of the Tsar. Tor when the Tsaritsa was asked to allow them to ornament the diplomas not only with medallion portraits of the Tsaritsas Catherine and Elizabeth, but also with hers, permission was refused, so that it was necessary to put the date in the space which was reserved for the portrait of the Tsaritsa Maria Peodorovna. A year ago last spring the universities for women received a blow in a communication stating that they would be closed from and after the month of June, 1887, and that all instruction of that kind would be suspended. The expression that he wished to send all the Eussian women back home is, in Eussia, generally attributed to a person occupying a very high position. JChis is the condition in which the most intelligent

part of the youth grow up. It was from feeling that in such conditions all exertion to attain a higher position must fail, that Gdrshin has a novel with the following argument.

GARSHIN'S PAKABLE.

135

palm, which has been brought from its tropical to a conservatory in St. Petersburg, struggles towards the clear sky and burning sun of its native It grows on in the hope of bursting through the land. glass roof of the conservatory and gaining its freedom. The panes in Finally, the wished-for moment comes. the roof yield to the pressure of its branches, the curled-down plant stretches itself out into the clear air of the open day. Then it meets the cold wind and the damp snow. It is frozen through, its crown withers away, and the owner of the conservatory has the tree

home

cut down.

VIII.
I am provoked at this everpress Russian the about talk press," broke out the lasting editor of the Russian paper having the widest circula" There is tion. simply no press in Russia. There are

"

THE Russian

printing-presses and paper, of course, and black marks on a white surface there are editors and journalists, but
;

a press

is

From

not and cannot be found." the nature of the case, the Russian press cannot

have any

political importance, entirely without regard to the question whether, like the newspapers in. the departments and some periodicals in the capitals, it has to pass tinder the supervision of the censor or not. The best known newspaper, in a foreign language, is a Erench official journal (the Journal de St. Petersnext the two larger German papers in St. bourg) " Petersburg (St. Petersburg Zeltung and the St. Petersin Moscow a small sheet Herald and German burg ") the last Moscow being extremely moderZeitung\ (the ate, and at every opportunity only defends and demonstrates the excellent, admirable relations which prevail between Germany and Russia. Besides the official government paper, and a little sheet written in a light and entertaining, and sometimes rather frivolous style, but which has a very large circulation, there are in
;

Petersburg two newspapers which are generally read: Novosti (News), a so-called liberal paper, digniSt.

fied in its tone, edited

by Notovitch, whose best

130

assist-

THE NOYOYE YREMYA.

ant, in directions

137

P.

which are not political, is the poet Weinberg, the well known translator of Heine. Since the publisher is of Jewish extraction, this paper is continually taxed with serving the interests of the
Jews.
of
It is sober, serious, earnest, supports the cause

European

culture, but is not

patriotic in its attitude toward With this paper the Novoye

lives in constant controversy.
nal,

on that account the less England and Germany. Vremya (the Xew Times)

It is a well written jourbut entirely without principle, edited after the pattern of the French Figaro (especially as this news-

man

paper was edited in earlier times), by Suvorin, a literary of business, who in his day made himself renowned in Russia by his open declaration that the time had

now come when

literature ought to step down from its and understand that it is a commodity like pedestal, other wares, subject to the same laws of supply and demand as everything else, and that there is no disgrace

In obedience to this view, Novoye Vremya drifts it. with the wind in the shortest time possible attacks and
in
;

defends the same cause and the same person, generally

in incisive,

entertaining articles.
is

more read than respected. It out faith and law (sans foi ni

The newspaper is known that it is withFrom its nature it loi).

its

cannot occupy a leading position, and ence is absolutely nil.

lishing house in

political influ-

Since Suv<5rin ? besides his newspaper, has a great pubMoscow, his literary influence is neces-

Many young liberal authors, for sarily not unimportant. the sake of the honorarium, exhibit the weakness of putting their articles or novels into his widely circulated
little they may sympathize with its Suvdrin spares no expense in advertising ; standpoint. he has as and, agents in all the large cities, Europe is

sheet,

however

138

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

constantly kept informed through the telegraph bureau of what the Novoye Vremya has said about this or that,

a thing in and for itself as unimportant as the barking of a dog or the soughing of the wind in the streets of St. Petersburg, but which at a distance is regarded as an

some weight. The feuilleton of this sheet is edited by a certain Bure'nin, who is entirely worthy of The other coadjutors take the tone which his master.
affair of
is

given them by Suvdrin and by him. About one of them, B of, a foreign author, who had delivered a course of lectures in St. Petersburg,
related

the

following

veritable

anecdote

"

of

wrote to
sent

me

several times, while I

was

still

at home,

a book, and ended with placing himself and the Novoye Vremya at my disposal on the occasion of my

me

Immediately after my arrival he called on me, invited me to his house, with so much zeal that he assured me that a plate was ready for me at
visit to St. Petersburg.

He gave a very favorable report of his table every day. first lecture, after having requested the use of

my

my

notes in the preparation of his article. Several times he expressed the wish that I would take his wife with

me on a shopping expedition. His manner was so ating as to affect me not quite agreeably. I held
back
to
;

insinu-

little

and when,
it

at last, after

a renewed invitation, I

indicated that

would be impossible for me on that day in company with his wife, he inserted in his paper the same evening, without any

make any purchases

reference to the preceding articles, the boldest attack upon me. 'He had long kept silent, and watched/ said

the

'but at last so great a lack of talent and must be punished;' nay, concealing the fact, known to him, that I had received one of my lectures back from the censor, so that I was obliged to substitute
article,

conceit

KATKOF'S JOURNAL.
another,

139

in Russia, but previously delivered, principally with not being able to hit upon anything new, but with confining myself to the "The presentation of old and well known stories.

unknown

he charged

me

Eussian public/ it added, was not so stupid as I supposed, nor yet so ignorant. It is understood very well that in such circumstances the stranger treats it like
*

a fool in order to get his fingers into

its

';

pockets.

informant adds,
the

My

Even with abundant experience from

all

the press of other lands, even with

the surprises of

past which no one who lives the literary life escapes, the foreigner will be surprised at the shameless-

much of some Eussian as of some particular St. Petersburg newspapers." Moscow, like St. Petersburg, has two large newsOne is liberal, written in the best style, and papers. the most honorable of all the Eussian newspapers,
ness and corruption, not so

Russldya Vyedomosti (The Eussian Times), published by Sobolevski, a quiet, honorable, energetic, and scientific man, formerly a professor, but now an editor. This daily paper, certainly the most widely circulated in EusISText to this is the newssia, has 30,000 subscribers.
paper hitherto better
in Western Europe, the the Moskovskiya, Vyedomosti, organ of the lately deceased Katkdf.

known

little

Katkdf was a man without much knowledge and of reading. In the last twenty years of his life he never read a single book. There was no need of his reading or thinking to support and maintain the general But he wrote exceedingly well he was Eussification. His paper of the first rank among the prose authors. did not have many subscribers not a third part of what the Russkiya Vyedomosti has. But it was written for
;

a single reader^

who never skipped

a single number,

140

IMPRESSIONS OF &VSSIA.

And voluntary his Majesty the Tsar Alexander III. subscribers were not wanting when it was supported by
the order of the government. All the institutions and foundations of the Crown,- the schools, courts, etc., were

bound

to support this sheet.

died,

When Katkdf
to light, his
left

and the state of his fortune came

an

lost a large share of its glamour. He so that it could large astonishingly large fortune,

name

not be explained except by gifts from the rich merchants Katkof had indeed met their views by of Moscow.

opposing

all

reduction of the

tariff.

It also

made a

dis-

agreeable impression on the Tsar that he, by an evasion of the law, by a transfer of his property in his lifetime,

cheated the State of the succession tax in addition.

Besides
the

Moskovskiya

Vyedomosti,

which

still

exists but has lost all importance, there

has just been

started another newspaper in a similar spirit.

The

weekly newspaper Grazhdanin (The Citizen) has become a daily, and, according to report, the government will grant it a large annual subsidy. It is to be edited known author of the well Prince Menovels, by poor shcherski, a re-actionist and tale-bearer, is to have the same drift as Katkof s paper, only with out-and-out
servility instead of talent.

The more important monthlies play a greater part than in any other land, for the rules of the censorship allow much to appear in a periodical that would be forbidden in a book form, Nevertheless in the last ten
years several of the best Russian reviews, like

the

Dyelo, for example, have been suppressed. Every month there appears a number of each of the large periodicals,
as thick as

two numbers of the Revue des

deitx

Mondes

together. The best

known

is

Vyestnik Yevropi (The European

MONTHLY
cultivated

PERIODICALS.

141

Messenger), edited by Stassulevitch. a stately and finely man about sixty years old, formerly a univer-

sity teacher,

now

occupied with, economical and hygienic

questions, such as the improvement of the river water in St. Petersburg. His periodical is the organ of correct It has a circulation of 7,000. liberalism. The two great

authors, now old men, Gontcharof and Arseiiief, contribute to this magazine, the former at the present time
life, and the latter a clever, scientific towards the younger generation. It relies on a circle of men among whom the literary historians Pypin and Spasovitch are well known. The latter has already been spoken of. The former, who originally belonged to Tehernuishevskrs group and passed for a radical, but escaped accusation, as author of the great " work, The History of the Slavic Literature," in which the pressure laid on by the censor is felt all the way through, has presented a profound and real representa-

publishing his
critic, affable

tion of the intellectual struggle for existence, ary productions of the different Slavic races.

and

liter-

nately the most important part, the literature of G-reat Russia, is still wanting.

Unfortuhistory of the

The two

eminent advocates and publicists Koni and Utin are The former also coadjutors of the Vyestnik TevropL is best known as an author by his interesting treatment of "Dostoyevski as an analyst of crime;" the
other, by the series of articles published in the periodical under the title " Prom Bulgaria/ which was forbidden publication in book form by the censor.
3

By the side of this great St. Petersburg review stands Goltzef s Moscow periodical, Russkaya Mysl (The Russian Thought), as suggested above, conducted in the
same spirit as Russkiya, Vyedomosti, and supported by the contributors to that daily paper. It has 10,000 subscribers.

142

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
is

the Severni Vyestnik (The Northern 4 Messenger), with 800 subscribers, published by a lady, Miss Evreinova, hitherto the most sprightly and most modern of these periodicals, but which has now met with a very great loss, because the celebrated and influential critic Mikhailovski has separated from it, and may with him. This possibly carry a staff of sympathizers the advanced views of several of account on periodical, of the contributors, is suspected by the government and placed under the censor. Miss Evreinova is a lady in the forties, with a stern face and gray hair. She has spent several years on the shores of the Adriatic near
Finally there
;

Montenegro, in the study of the old Slavic conditions, has copied and published manuscripts written in old Slavic. Having used up her property in this work, she

assumed the publication of Severni Vyestnilc as a means of subsistence. She is a Eussian slave to duty, with a
good but not discriminating
intellect.

Her

circle of contributors

has hitherto chiefly con-

sisted of bright literary

Bohemians, who in E/ussia are

debt, the older among them They live exclusively

utterly poor, hungry,

and in

generally unhappily married. with each other in a world

sadly by themselves, enough, almost without exception, addicted to drink, and utterly wanting in nervous equipoise on account of their

many
still

years of misery and exile.

Among them

there are

several eminent authors, who have succeeded in passing through the anxieties of a literary life and of exile with unimpaired bodily and mental health.

There was Pratopopof who long ago contributed to the "Annals of our Fatherland," with great talent and Then he was exiled, and is now back again. spirit. There is Korolenko, who, broad-shouldered and boyish, has returned from Yakutsk. There was Garshin, who,
,

GLYEB USPYUXSKL

143

though subject to repeated attacks of insanity, has published fine and vigorous novels. He was greatly under the influence of Tolstoi, but nevertheless has his own

stamp of desperate pessimism. There was the leader Mikhailovski himself, in his style inclined to the imitation of the satirical tone of Saltykof, as a critic audacious and wily, who is capable of placing a not inconsiderable store of learning and remarkable ingenuity at the service
of the opposition.

There

is

Zlatovratski,

who

describes

almost ideal peasants, and, himself resembling a poor workman of the peasant rank, poor as Job, with a great flock of children, and such a slave to alcohol that he does
not any longer dare to go out in the streets alone. Finally there is Glyeb Uspyenski, a great and shining
talent, far

more important than his brother, Nikolai Uspyenski, whose Viesna was translated into Danish by Thor Lange. In G-lyeb, who is familiarly called by his first name, the advanced youth see their apostle. Unfortunately he too has fallen so low as to spend six
or seven hours on a stretch in the dram-shops of St. Petersburg, but his abilities have not been impaired by

His his irregular life outside of the pale of society. works, consisting of nothing but short stories, already fill

At the present time he presents and articles only the woman of the working class, and he works over and elucidates the idea, which haunts him, that this woman has no right to be a mother,
a long row of volumes.
in novels

since she cannot support her child. loose morals of factory

life,

He
errs
;

pictures the

and the -unmerited disgrace

but he also

which

falls

upon the woman who

writes for the working-women, with the design of impressing upon them that they, for the sake of the children, ought not to

become mothers.
is

Glyeb Uspyenski

the genuine literary gypsy.

He

144

IMPRESSIONS OF KUSSIA.

borrows and gets along without troubling himself about money. He cannot see a needy person without giving him all the money he has with him, and often more; The admirafor he borrows of one to give to another. circles in wide him is tion which prevents any one given
being

He angry with him for any irregularity. must remember it "We the with words, forgiven
Glyeb."
it

is is

Apart from a few of the most eminent of these authors, may be said that what is common to all these younger and older authors is propensity to drink, laxity in money matters, lack of fundamental culture, and an every-day

Several of them are utterly ruined by dull melancholy. the homeless life, with its debauches of ale, champagne,

and women. The loss of all illusions as to the attainment of freedom and happiness, the feeling of boundless disappointment in life, and of a lack of means to do anything for the people or the country, brings them to despair, and to seek to forget the despair in a life of
stupefaction. It is clear that these writers

know only

a very small

part of society, and possess only a restricted and peculiar

And as they have no acquaintance with the higher classes of society, from which they suspiciously keep aloof, so these classes have no acquaintance with them. Towards society in St. Petersburg
intellectual culture.
<

they occupy the position of pariahs, At best their works only are known. The authors as persons have no existence for the fine gentlemen and ladies.

Even the oldest and greatest of them live entirely secluded, and almost every one of them has a wife, who
does not understand

him

at all,

and with

whom

it

is

only with

difficulty that he continues to live; yet the author makes all sorts of concessions from his good

OUR POMPADOURS.
nature.

145

When a near

friend one clay said to one of the

most important, an old man,

get such a control over a

stupid

woman.

A man

can a stupid woman he answered, " Only a who has something to do has no

"How

man ? "

weapons against stupidity, which tires ; nags, always begins over, and never knows when it is beaten. An amiable and intellectual woman would never gain such an influence over her husband." The old Salty'kof (Shchedrin), the satirist, the most
popular author of liberal Russia, at the present time is ill of the gout, and it is hardly likely that he will In the eyes of those who value the tendencies recover.
lying
in their poetical works
tially

more than that which

is

is

essen-

poetical therein, he

Of

all

the authors

now

a greater author than Tolstoi. living, he is certainly the one

who

has most consistently made use of irony as the In his whole form he is the style of prose writing. unconscious product of the circumstances. "With a pas-

and for civil freedom on the one and the government on the other, all criticism of the situation must necessarily assume the character of Bead as an illustrapleasantry. But what pleasantry tion his book, " Our Pompadours." By a remarkable change in the meaning of the word, they mean in the daily speech in Russia by the word Pompadour, a man who governs by the aid of the rule of his mistress. In Saltykof's work provincial governors of this kind are characterized by the dozen. As an idea of his method of representation, take this fragment of a dialogue The clerk is met in the morning at the office by his superior, an official under the
sion like his for justice
side,
! :

governor, with the exclamation, " fellow has been dismissed ?

"Do you know

"

that our

Excellency condescend to speak to

Of whom does your me ? " " Of whom ?

146

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
little

Of our
Little

Pompadour, naturally."

"At this answer/'

still
;

relates the clerk,

"my

heart stood

in
I

my

breast.

thought that began head." a "Does your without left not be we should his as named been successor ? " has who know Excellency " " "A certain Udarin." "A general ? Yes, a gen-

by

little, it

to beat again

eral."

"Of what
"

kind, if I

may ask?"

"A mamthe clerk.

mal."
"

We were both thoughtful," continues

there.
is

Then I went

out into the market, and told the

news
'

to

some muzhiks who stood

Excellency Aufimoi
it!'

Do you know
?
'

that his

no longer our governor

Bah,

The peasant had scarcely uttered these what of words before my hand had given a sound whack on his cheek. 'But a new one is coming! a new one is com'

ing

bellowed the peasant.

I continued to strike
:

heard it not. At last, it fell like dew upon my soul ' A new one is coming.' That was the consolation. I gave
the peasant ten kopeks." Another sketch describes
ing,

how

the clerk one fine morn-

the newly installed governor gives a free rein to his ideas and dreams about his coining administration, allows himself the remark that the law sets certain bounds to these fantasies as, for instance, as to whipThere are cases where the law declares it to be ping. " You will useful, and others in which it is forbidden. then have the goodness to inform me when, and when
;

when

not," said the governor, ironically.

ness, but the law."

I, your Highbecoming interesting." The governor, it appears further, had long known that there were laws, but he always conceived them as bound books arranged in a case. It was for the order, lawful order. "When he, on the other hand, saw these

" Not

"That

is

Mm

In Russia, there are

civil as

well as military generals, and just as

many of them.

PATRONAGE.

147

same books lying about among others on a table in a room, that was disorder. But what he did not know was that these same laws allowed him certain acts and forbade him others.

He

regarded them simply as a hymn,

composed in the

interests of the small pompadours, for their honor, to serve them for recreation. Since he was

modest by nature, and blushed whenever he heard any one echo his praises, it can be understood that he did not care to fumble in the laws. When it now dawned upon the governor that the law forbids him to sentence the bigwig Proshorof, whom he was burning to let feel his wrath, to a good sound whipping, he became very
uneasy.
It soothed

him very little

that, according to the

he always had the recourse of having him flogged secretly and without witnesses. And now
clerk's disclosure,

his state of

mind

at this discovery is portrayed.

u He

had never yet felt such an annoyance. It seemed to as if he had fallen into a danger, and as if he heard an inward challenge not to be a coward, but to show personal courage." And he shouted with the voice of a commander: "Let Proshorof be flogged on the spot
publicly." favorite subject for Shchedrin's satire is the system of patronage, which flourishes in Eussia as nowhere else.

Mm

Every kind of patronage

connections

is

possible here, if
officers.

among

the superior

you have

St. Peters-

burg family of my acquaintance, who were going down to Southern Eussia, had a whole railway carriage sent up from Orel, and travelled in it from St. Petersburg down to the door of their country house. It even happened to me that one night on the railroad at Smolensk a separate carriage, with a bed ready for use, was placed at my disposal by the station-master, who had received an order to that effect from his superior, while the oecu-

148

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.

protest, were turned out and placed pants, in spite of elsewhere. "You need not say anything against it," said

my

the station-master to me.

"You may be sure

that there is

not one of them who has paid for his ticket." I inquired of some of the bystanders, and it appeared that such was the fact. Thus, on this occasion, the higher patron-

age did not violate other privileges than those which were acquired by the exercise of inferior authority. Another favorite subject for attack with Shchedrin
is

the

system of bribery, which flourishes in consequence of the low intellectual standpoint and poor pay of the offiThat these men are stupid and servile is chiefly cials. because, as a rule, they must rise in the service from the
lower ranks. They are frequently invalids when they approach towards power and influence. As the phrase goes, "My uncle, the general, had a fit of apoplexy, so

he became a senator he lost his sight, and then he was made a member of the council of the empire. If he can only have a new accident he will die as minister." Brib;

ery naturally has its root in the fact that the'salaries are so low. They regard the drink money which is given to the officials about as we do the honorarium which is

given to the clergy, although the latter also have their salaries from the State. The worst of it is that the relation of the officials to the treasury of the State is often
so untrustworthy.
erb,

From

that comes the Russian prov-

except Christ," with the blasphemous addition, "and he would if his hands were not nailed to the cross." Or this proverb, " If you are going to talk to an official, you must talk rubles to him." All these
steal,

"All

customs have one good

side, that the officials, just because of their lax morals, sell the common people an otherwise unattainable freedom tolerance, impunity for the inno:

cent,

and

free passage for

men and

books.

But

it will

RUSSIAN SCHOLARS.

149

be understood that this circumstance does not make the

government any more worthy of respect.

An
cal,

administration like this naturally invites a

satiri-

humorous treatment like Shchedrin's. If you compare his satire with that of a Polish author of the same
period, like Svientochovski, you will find that, while the satire of the Pole is almost always anti-clerical, and is

weakened in

its effects upon the masses by the appearance of anything unpatriotic, yet in this direction the Russian satire has its sting unsheathed and its spear-head

tempered and glowing like that which was plunged into

the eye of Cyclops by Odysseus. The most important of the contributors to the news-

papers and periodicals have now been mentioned. !Next comes a whole long list of authors, historical, critical,
philosophical, and anthropological,

irreproachable, whose style

is

trifle professorial,

whose learning is and

who

as a rule lack inspiration.

Among

the historians, jurists, and critics

who have

already been mentioned, as well as outside of these circles, the foreigner meets many who at first make this

impression upon

him

They remind him of the German

scholars, particularly as they were a generation ago. They have solidity, earnestness, and a little heaviness.

Russian philologian is, indeed, only exceptionally (like Korsh, in Moscow) crammed with learning like a German, but to compensate for this these scholars are usually able to clothe their thoughts in a much more available form. They do not have the boyish innocence, which at seventy unites red cheeks and light blue eyes, as I have seen in the old German philologian Fleischer. But they do have especially the Little Russians which smiles in great dimples on a breadth, good nature,

brown cheek, roguishness, as a clever woman

is

roguish.

152

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
of a novel

had a kindred idea

and had talked

it

over

with each other. Turgenief published his novel first. with the title "A Nest of Nobles." 1 one the is It Gontcharof reads the novel, becomes furiously exasperated, sees Turgenief on the street, and runs after

him shouting, " Stop, thief stop, thief " when Turgenief s name is mentioned in his
!

Even now,
presence, he

foams with

rage.

It is evidently not easy to characterize

the public to

which the Eussian newspapers and periodicals address

themselves throughout the empire.
tered
;

It is too

much

scat-

and

it is

far

more

difficult

than in the world of

it to gain an expression and receive examination through "the voice of the Nevertheless, by many indications we can people."

readers of other countries for

conclude that

it is

docile in a high degree, unprejudiced,

easily acted upon. priation of that which

and

of a thorough approread ought to be weaker than in the principal countries of Europe, but the capacity to The enthusiasm of receive is, without doubt, greater. the female sex is especially great.
is

The quality

In the provincial towns a caricature of this peculiarity " very often met with. I saw a lady from Orel ; still who and bedecked as the young," powdered, passed of She oracle the town. was an enthusiastic literary admirer of Eichepin, and quoted boldly
is
:

I? amour queje sens, V amour qui me cuit, Ce n'estpas V amour chaste et platonique,
Sorbet a la neige,
etc.

It

bad

taste,
i

was well meant, and in and for itself did not show but was exceedingly unbecoming. Another
Also published with the English
title

"

Lisa,"

INFATUATION FOE POETS.

153

lady from Kharkof, old and stiff, was, in her own opinShe instiion, the source of refinement for the place. tuted readings of the masterpieces of Eussian literature
for the

common people, was also a writer, was loudlitervoiced, noisy, knew everything that was printed, ary to the tips of her fingers and toes.
~

It is also true that among the Slavic people there is seen more often than in other places that kind of enthusiasm for a poet or author which makes a woman worship

him

for her

whole

life.

It is hardly an accident that

the lady

for twenty years continued in uninterrupted correspondence with Balzac, and at last married him, was a Pole, Mine. Hanska, of the renowned family

who

Her daughter married a Mniszek. In our time in St. Petersburg, a lady of a good family has been seen to leave her husband and her home to run away with the poet Nadson, then mortally ill, and nurse him till his death; and she now lives only in his memory and for his fame. This lady's feelings for the poet, and her worship of him, were cruelly made sport of in the last years of his life and after his death,
of Rzewuski,

although it is, nevertheless, ethnographically significant, because it shows how strong the faith is in the highest
literary enthusiasm in Russia. Some months after ISTadson's

death, his fair friend

published a somewhat comprehensive correspondence between the poet and a lady of distinction, an anonymous countess, who had written to him without ever

having seen him or having made his acquaintance personally.

tesque.

woman are fine but groto all indications, a young, beautiful, According
The
letters of the

aristocratically educated woman, not long married, had apparently fallen in love with Nadspn without ever

having met him, only from reading his poetry and seeing

154
his portrait.

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
The exchange
letters

of letters lasted for seven

were full of fire and constantly months. Her answers were not without tenderHis more passionate. and calm, comparatively cold, although it can ness, yet be seen he had heen much moved by this wonderful love, which came to him so unsought and unexpected. Then

he

dies.

editress, the fair writer of the letters also died,

Shortly after, according to the preface of the but not

until she

had obtained from her husband his word of honor that he would give his consent to the publication not only of the letters which she had received from the poet, but of those which she herself had
written.

For several months

of the

this correspondence

was the
the

sub-

Russian sympathy ject as it had Then was been world. discovered, reading first suggested in the feuilleton of a newspaper as a
of
derisive conjecture, that the poet and his fair friend had been the victims of a bold forgery. From what
it is uncertain, but a lady who frequented the house, at first continually entertained the friend with accounts of a certain countess of her acquaintance, who lived in a state of hero-worship for Nadson. Then she

attention and

motive

began to bring letters, said that she was willing to carry back the answers, and thus for more than half a year had kept the intrigue on foot. First she was compelled to admit the death of the countess for the very good reason that she had never lived ; then she confessed that she had fabricated all the anonymous protestations of love, It is unimportant whether her motive had been
her desire to make herself interesting, a disposition to mystify, or only a mania for romancing and a vigorous imagination. The only thing that is significant about it is that the whole of the Russian public found nothing

AUTHO&S* KEWAEDS.
unusual or incredible

155

m such
men

a personal passion, evoked

infre-

by black on white, without personal influences. What is still more remarkable, you will not
quently find in the

a similarly exalted nature, readily receptive of literary enthusiasm. I think it is in unison with the fact that certain types, among the

educated Russians especially, have an uncommonly great Just so far inclination to cultivate a life of emotion.
as,

by aid of the

life

and

literature,

one can comprehend

the domain, which

so difficult to penetrate, they seem to fall more deeply in love and with more reverence than in our time is the rule in other countries. The
it is

very young Russian expects a kind of spiritual aid and The older man, salvation from the woman he loves.
in love, tries to supply his wants by sustained homage. It is the same propensity to worship which leads the men of the lower classes in hordes to the
religious sects

when

domain of In spite of the great

and mystics. And it is this which in the literature becomes an exquisite sensibility.
size of the empire, authorship is

not economically remunerative in Bussia.

Except the two greatest poets, and some journalists without conscience, no one earns money there by his labor with his pen. But in a deeper sense, perhaps, in no other place and is it better rewarded to expose one's emotions
thoughts in an article, an essay, or a larger book. The author is understood by great groups of people with a cordiality, and is appropriated with an intensity and
devotion which are exceptional elsewhere. Everything there which can quench the thirst, the

burning intellectual on an arid soil.

thirst, is

absorbed like dew-drops

IX.

Moscow

had driven out to a large restaurant outside of to hear the gypsies sing and see them dance. Accompanied by the male members of the families, they came in crowds, with the chief of the tribe at the head, into the room where people sit and eat in the evening, and sang a series of wild, wonderfully sonorous songs. Several of the young girls dance a dance which had nothing European in it, a dance for which only the free space of a square between the chair and the table is
5

required,

because the dancer,

in

contracted place,

moves every fibre of her body while in apparent repose. This pantomime, which is a whirlwind within these The song, on the other limits, is Asiatic or African. hand, to which the Russians take great pleasure in listening, barbaric as it sounds, is less original.

If several

of the melodies are really gypsy tunes, still the mass of them are, in fact, Russian national songs, which the

gypsies have appropriated and made their own. And the language which they sing is Russian. Evidently the

musical taste of the Russian peasant, the poetic character of the Russian national songs, have set their own stamp upon the spirit of this foreign race so insusceptible to external influences, so that the Russian, who seeks among the gypsies for that which is unlike himself, for the strange and the new, unknown to himself, finds not a little of his own. These were the thoughts which the grotesque song
156

EARLY

LOG- HOUSES.

157

and dance first awakened in me, and when they were expressed they led by a connection of thought to a conversation about the Russian peculiarity and power of assimiand the plastic art. This started and now, after the lapse of a year, brings giving such an account as I can of Russia's artistic originality in the past and in the present. The Eussians early showed originality in the art of While the Scandinavians hewed the tree in building.
lation in architecture

many me to

ideas,

order to make their oldest log-houses, the Russians placed the trunks of the trees one above the other, and fastened them at their outer ends, so^as to make walls. do

We

the Eussians injustice, therefore, when, without further

investigation, we call their art of building Byzantine, for the Byzantine art has in its forms not the least sug-

gestion of a previous log-building. It was only in the eleventh century that the Eussians began to erect

churches after the Byzantine types, and even then they ornamented them with Asiatic and Slavic elements. The Scythian burial mounds, which have been opened in the middle of this century, have brought to light a medley of purely Greek and of Asiatic-Slavic objects of art. Many of the antique Eussian ornaments which represent the forms of animals or plants, show in themselves a kind of animals and plants which have never
existed in Russia, the influence of the East, of Persia, nay of India. But the Russian reproduction, which is free from any influence from Byzantium, has its distinct
peculiarities.

It is different with the production of religious images, the representation of saints. In this domain Russia has been and Russia has become wholly Byzantine. On this point it has not separated in any respect from the
rest of the

Greek Catholic Church of Eastern Europe.

158

IMPRESSIONS OF

But, so far as religious architecture is concerned, there the oldest Russian churches are plainly distinguished

from the unmixed Byzantine style, by their slender forms and the endeavor to tower into the heavens. At the end of the twelfth century Russian art had already become so advanced that it was not behind that of Western Europe nor of Byzantium. The Russian art-craftsmen understood how to work in metal with such dexterity that their fame extended far and wide. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the French ambassadors found them in the Tatar-Mongolian service. The holy Louis of Trance sent an embassy from Cyprus to the great Khan of Tatary, whose force at that time occupied a large part of Russia. The messengers found a Russian architect and a French goldsmith working for him. And Du Plan Carpin, who in 1246 was sent by Innocent IV. to the great Khan Gajuk, and who described the pomp and wealth of the Tatar Court, speaks of a Russian goldsmith who was a favorite of the Khan, and who had made a throne of ivory, adorned with gold and precious stones and ornamented with bas-reliefs.
It is utterly improbable that the Tatars, in the long time they ruled Russia, should have tried to give a different direction to the artistic taste and style of the people.

Nomads as they were, they had no artistic style of their own, and did not trouble themselves about the
Russians, except to get money out of them. But the Tatar Khans, in all probability, served as means of com-

munication between the Asiatic r^ces who possessed an artistic style, on the one hand, and the oppressed Russian people, on the other. The Russian artists who
resided
into the art forms which were new to them, and they remembered them when they came home. In 1247
of the interior of Asia,

among them looked deeply

INFLUENCES FHOM THE EAST.

159

the Bussian national hero and saint, Alexander Itfevsky, celebrated for his victories over the Swedes and the German order of knights, was obliged to pay a personal visit
to the cainp of the golden hordes, and was thence taken to the great Khan himself, in order to obtain a desired

and mitigation of the conditions of vassalage. The journey took two years, and shows how many points in common there were between the two courts, and how easily impressions must have been received.
alleviation

In this respect, I am greatly struck by a quotation by Viollet-le-Due in his work on Russian art, from Marco

who

Polo, the famous Venetian traveller, the first European (in the thirteenth century) travelled in and described

In this it is shown that a strong influence from Eastern Asia has been effective in the production of the gilded and colored metal cupolas, the variegated roofs
Asia.

and highly colored walls in Russia. He thus describes the palace of the great Khan in the city of Khanbalu " LCL sale est si grant et si larges^ que bien hi inenuient
:

plus de six milles homes. II ha tantes chambres que tfen II est si grant et si bien fait que est mervoilles & voir. ne a home au monde que le pooir en ailst qu^il le seust

miaus ordrer nefaire

moile
et

et la

covreture desoure sunt tout ver-

vers bloies et jaunes et de tons colors et sunt enver-

tree si bien et si soitilement, qiCil

sunt respredisant come

le

cristiaus, si

que mont ou loigne environ

pcdais luissent.

sachies que cele covreuse est si fort et si fermeement l fait que dure maint ans."
thousand men.
is so large and broad that it -will hold more than six There are so many rooms that it is a wonder to see. It is so large and so well built that no man in the world could ask for or do it better, and the roof of it is vermilion and blue and yellow glass of all colors, and it is so well and so skilfully varnished that it shines
i

Et

"

The palace

like crystal, so that the palace glistens far in the distance. And know that this roof is strong, and so firmly built that it has endured for

many years."

160

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.

Although Eussian scholars like Strogonof and Martinof have zealously fought against Viollet-le-Duc's theories about the Tatar and Indian influence in Eussian architecture and ornamentation, he seems to me to be right in his view that the Eussian art of building is composed of elements which are almost wholly borrowed from the East. Eussian art has been essentially religious, because the religious sentiment in Eussia (as in Poland) has been fused with love for the fatherland and the place of birth. The question with the clergy was how to fasten the
attention of the people

the

common

upon religious subjects, and, since people could not read, religious painting
;

as a kind of figurative language and, in order that this language should be understood at all A hierarchical canon times, all changes were avoided.

was employed

was borrowed from the Byzantine masters, and in the

lapse of centuries nothing whatever has been changed in the form and stamp of the images. The holy icon was a national symbol, like the flag in later times,
it reprerevered and unchangeable as a coat-of-arms sented a grave, thin, ascetic person in a long garment, which was the ideal of the stalwart, carnally minded
;

men

domain that Eussian art was from the moment when Constanstationary. Especially tinople was no longer a Christian city, but in the hands
of the Turks, the Eussians ceased to seek there for artistic forms, and in the fourteenth century their origi-

But

of the earlier days. it was only in this

nal production reached its climax. With a prudent use of their natural materials, they erected churches and

houses which exactly answered to their needs they manufactured leather and ornamented it they wove cloths and embroidered them in a manner which exactly an; ;

CHURCHES AND DECORATIONS.

161

that the unity of the

swered to their sense of beauty. At tlie same epoch. empire was worked out, their artistic production took on a homogeneous stamp.
bolical of the

their church edifices, which were symKussian national characteristics, as much splendor as possible. They were intended to attract attention by their size and by the striking outline of the highest parts. They connected a crown of cupolas around a central cupola, gave them the form of a tower, and crowned them with a skilfully worked-out bulb of gilded or colored metal, which ended in a cross furnished and united by chains. They gave to the outer walls, which were covered with tiles, enamelled faience and paintings, the character of a radiant, cheerful carpet. The predominant colors are red, white, and green, which last color is even specially adapted to the bulb-shaped metal top. 1 And the Tatar rule was scarcely shaken off before the Muscovites disclosed the greatest talent as artistic armorers, as masters of chasing gold and silver and working in niello ; and they supplied all the neighboring countries with embroidered linen and artistically manuTheir embroidery is distinguished, factured leather. like the vignettes on their old manuscripts, by the harmonious combination of colors. They have, upon the whole, a keener sense of the harmony of colors than for Since the law for them as painters is plastic beauty. not inventive power but fidelity, they sought to atone for the Byzantine stiffness of their figures and the lifelessness of their paintings by surrounding them with gold, precious stones, and pearls, and thus change the images to a kind of gorgeous decoration. And since they did not dare to make any change, and as no kind of origi-

They gave

'to

i Yiollet-le-Duc:

L'Art Russe, p.

108.

162

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

nality could be exhibited in the treatment of the head and countenance of the holy persons, they strove, in

consequence, to make amends by encircling these heads with golden halos, inlaid with pearls and precious stones, and engraved with the most delicate appreciation of art, and by ornamenting the breast of the image with plates inlaid with gold and silver in blazing designs, and worked in niello with arabesques. Some of these halos
breast-plates from the sixteenth century, with small green leaves and small blue flowers inlaid in the gold

and

matte, or with green in different shades, enclosed by white lines, and with single black leaves and black

geometric lines in the gold, are of a beauty, of a fascinating, inspiring loveliness, of which no description can

convey any

idea.

The common

houses, built of the trunks

of trees,

remind one of the manner of building in Switzerland and -Norway. Kindred material has produced kindred forms, even if the peculiar Eussian stamp is easily Thus even before the time of Peter the recognizable. Great, Eussia had fully developed its artistic peculiariIn so far as the foreign invasion which ensued ties.
did not place itself at the service of these peculiarities, it only succeeded in retarding or stopping their develop-

ment

until

the national spirit in this century took a

new start in artistic as well as in other domains. The nineteenth century has brought an art of painting
to Eussia for the first time.

Catharina collected pic-

tures in the Hermitage, and founded an academy of art in order to obtain artists for her empire as other countries
sold.

have them.

The

pictures ; native artists then began, as well as they could, to imi-

But what they painted, they never rich Eussian of her day bought only foreign and, in order not to make an utter failure, the

IVANOF.

163

tate the art of painting of other countries. Thus there sprang up several generations of academicians, imitators

of David,
legs

who

painted Spartans and Konians with bare

and flowing mantles.

The national revival of 1812, which was quickly felt in the literature, had hardly any effect upon art. Xicholas secured two court painters, Beylof and Kotzebue,
former of whom has become known by a cold academical painting, " The Last Day of Pompeii," and the latter by his battle-pieces, representing the victories of Suvorof and Kutiizof, which of necessity resemble all such scenes of victory of former days. single
the

artist

comes to the front at this time, Ivanof, who

is

now

so celebrated, the painter of a single painting, which, however, was never finished.
It was Gogol, who had formed a friendship with Ivdnof, who gave him the idea of this picture from sacred history, which was to be a prodigy, and which, since he was never content with the execution of his

For artist continually begin anew. himself Ivanof busied with consecutive twenty years, this work, "The Coming of Christ." throng of men
plan,

made the

on the banks of the Jordan, about John the The looks of all are fixed upon a point in the Baptist. distance, at which John points with his hand. Here' over the highland Jesus appears, a sad man, drawing near to the throng, grazing the ground with his divine feet. He seems to be half beatified. The characterization in these heads was executed with
are standing

persistent passion.

On

the other hand, the coloring

is

weak.

In Tretiakofs gallery in Moscow, a gold mine for the study of Eussian art, you can trace a whole series of the attempts through which the painting has
Attained to its final form.

164

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Ivanof, prompted by true the against the academic great protest only genius, The Tsar, who would be autocrat art under Nicholas.
is

The unwearied study of

over all things and all men in his empire, and who to the best of his ability influenced poetry and poets also,

was he who made Pushkin busy himself with the also desired to have a noble and history of Eussia, conservative art, partly in a general way as an ornament to his reign, and partly to solve the problem of glorifyit

ing his own exploits. He succeeded only in destroying the courage of independent men of talent, and nipping them in the bud.
It is only in the last twenty-five years that there has existed a real Russian school of painting, and that the Eussian lovers of art no longer go to foreign countries

when they wish

to

adorn their walls.

It

was when, with

the emancipation of the serfs, which liberated about fifty millions of men, the great blast of freedom spread over
Eussia, that the artists set to work, and on their canvases frequently of the greatest possible dimensions placed important incidents from their national life,

very much as the authors at the same time began to write novels in four volumes about society in Russia. And

now

it

Eussian

became quite the fashion to be interested in art, as it recently had been the fashion to do

homage

to everything foreign. The artists made good customers their sometimes found a sales, and, among Maecenas like Tretiakof, who alone has founded a col-

lection of Eussian paintings which is many times greater and very much better than that of the Hermitage.

A relationship is now disclosed between the course of development of literature and art. Both move with the same force and speed from an aristocratic romanticism to a kind of realistic representation of the people. In

MODERN
literature the
patli

ARTISTS.

165

leads

Pushkin and Lermontof to

from the refined heroes of Tolstoi's and Dostoyevski's

dwelling upon the simple-hearted. In art, the path has -taken its course from the expounders of the deeds of
the great and the elegance of the upper circles of society to the bald and sad pictures of the lot in life of the
reality is concerned, and close to France.

oppressed and unhappy. So far as artistic fidelity to Eussia now stands far above Poland,
It is quite true that the

sort of artistic hierarchy.

academy in St. Petersburg is a The same Tchinornisme (offi-

cial spirit) prevails there as everywhere in Russia. The chief authorities in this establishment have no idea of
art.

At the head,

Vladimir, and an ex-governor

for form's sake, stands Prince Imperial acts under him. The same
:

subjects are constantly given to all students Priams who come to sue for Hector's corpse. It is prescribed from which side the light shall come, what person shall stand
in the foreground, etc. It is of no use that the student is much more interested in an old apple-woman at the corner than for King Priam and his whole court. It is

Priam and Hecuba that he must paint. "What is Hecuba to him ? " Among the modern artists of Russia there is a group of decorative colorists. The best known among them is not a Russian, though he constantly exhibits in Russia. It is a Pole, Semiradski, who has been under the He will be recollected by the influences of Makart.

reader from his pictures, of which the photographs have

" everywhere been widely scattered, The Living Torches, "The Sword Dance," "The Girl or the Vase?" That which is attractive in him and which he can impart is not the highest art, which paints the sentiment of a
3'

scene or the expression of emotion*

What he

aspires to

166
is

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the correct representation of things and the picturesque splendor of fabrics. Endowed with less dramatic power than he, but otherwise akin to him, is the Eussian Makovski, an artist
colorist,

very pleasing as a
power.

but of

He

exhibited in 1887, in
:

St.

painting, bought by an American a Bride." The subject had a patriotic interest, in so far as this bride who was sought for was the mother of

psychological Petersburg, a great " Tsar Alexis Choosing

little

Peter the Great.

self of

Besides this the artist has availed him-

the opportunity of painting a throng of beautiful young girls in the costume of the period. Strangely enough, he seems to have used one and the same model

whom

his pretty wife Alexis shall

for all the

make

his choice.

young women among The whole does

not perceptibly rise above simple costume

art. Neither can his later picture, " The Death of Ivdn the Terrible," which has been much talked of, be regarded as much superior to that style of art. In two of the figures there

in the frightened fool, who is lying at the and in the white-haired Russian dignitary, with a white beard, who, with eyes as if fixed with fear, looks over the game of chess at the drooping man ;
is

expression

feet of the Tsar,

the other spectators assume theatrical attitudes. unique position has also been achieved in the latest

Eussian art by Verestchagin, just as well

known

in

Denmark
its

for his extraordinary natural gifts and for his abuse of his talents. His biography has found
also

way into our literature, and a large paintings have been seen in Copenhagen.
with
this fact, it

number

of his

In connection

ought to be mentioned that only too

large a

of the paintings which have been seen here were duplicates, which are far inferior to Verest-

number

chagin's originals.

When

he chooses he

is

able to dp

VERESTCHAGIN

KRAXSEO1.

167

And among his far too great things as a colorist. numerous paintings there are not a few which, like his
"Field of the Dead/' remain ineffaceably impressed upon memory of the beholder. He who wishes to judge him correctly ought not to be content with studying what he has himself selected for export and international exhibition by electric light, with the accompaniment of hand-organ music, but he should visit the collection of
the

chagin

his paintings in Tretiakof's gallery in Moscow. Verestis a genuine Russian, with his bias towards a
life

rambling

compound in

of adventure, and with the extraordinary his art of ultra-realism and symbolical

mysticism (the allegory of war, for example). There is a certain connection between him and Tolstoi. He would be in his sphere as an illustrator of Tolstoi's " War and Peace " would be works, and specially adapted to his talents. His conception of war, as De Vogue has correctly felt, is that of the authors who love
1 peace and describe war. Among the modern artists of Russia there are two

who

have impressed

me above all others, Riepin and KramskcR.

The forte of Kramskoi, who died in the spring of In Tretiakof 's gallery there 1887, was portrait-painting.
can be seen a whole suggestive series of Ms vigorously conceived portraits of the great distinguished Russians
of his

day

and
his

others.

Hertzen, Byelinski, Turgenief, Dostoyevski, After his death there was an exhibition of

paintings

There were two religious " Christ in the Desert/* emaciated by fasting, oppressed by the weight of his thoughts; and a huge

works in the academy.

:

unfinished picture, "Christ before Pilate," besides five halls full of portraits, the pearl of which, with its peerless expression, is that of the Little-Russian poet
1

E.

M. de Vogue: Souvenirs

et Visions, p. 172.

168
Ch.evch.enko, well.

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
who has
suffered so

much and

written so

Kramskoi* was born in 1S37; in a village in Little His father was a Russia, near the town of Ostrogo'isk. mother Ms passed her life in the petty tradesman;
kitchen.

The boy received

his first

education in the

parochial school.

At the age

model Cossacks in clay; parents to let him learn the art of painting. Permission was refused, for everybody in the town knew that

seven, he began to at thirteen he begged his

of

"go barefooted." Having, in the mean time, drawn everything he saw, and copied all the images in the church, a year or two later he was sent to Voronezh, to the best sculptor there, but remained with him only
painters

three months, being only sent on errands about the town, and having no other amusement or recreation than a
flogging.

From

Eussia, in

all directions,

sixteen to twenty he roamed about touching up pictures for a pho-

tographer

who came through Ostrogoisk. During this roving life, which brought him an income of two rubles and a half a month, he read everything he could get hold of, and was especially enthusiastic over Gogol and
Lermontof.
the streets of

twenty years of age, he entered Petersburg, and was so fortunate as to admission into the academy. He thought he was gain standing in the temple of Art. His disappointment was great. The instruction was simply horrible. The drawing classes were tolerably good, but the higher the student rose the worse was the teaching. No attention whatever was paid to the individuality of the young men, and there were always the same biblical or antique subjects. It was then just twenty years since Ivdnof had suffered a similar disappointment in the academy. But it was just in 1858 that
Finally, at
St.

169
came with his painting to St. Petersburg. Kramsko! was strongly impressed by this special picture he felt the force of genius in the conception, and
this artist
;

admired the truth of the expression of the faces. In his letters he puts the head of St. John on a level with those of the Venus of Milo and of the Sistine Madonna, and is scandalized that no one in St. Petersburg has any eye for anything but the mistakes in drawing in this
grand painting. Kramsko'f had now obtained his first medals, and lacked only one year of being sent abroad at the expense of the academy, when he with fourteen comrades suddenly left, disgusted at the instruction they received. It is these fifteen men who have extricated Eussian art from routine. Kramskoi married early, and his house was the place where the young men met. He himself,
as the leader of the movement, worked and unceasingly, sought for all sorts of knowledge. His thirst for information and knowledge was so great that it made him regard every student with veneration. His simplicity and kind-heartedness conquered the hearts
of
all.

who was regarded

this time, Eiepin became his pupil, and soon Ms intimate friend. In 1868 he also formed a friendship

At

with a landscape-painter Vasilief, who later exerted considerable influence upon him. Vasilief drove him
to independence of authority of every sort, and Eiepin enchanted him by his bold style. From 1868 Kramskoi was celebrated. He, the old enemy of the academy, was himself appointed a member of the academy. Gradually he became more and more of a In 1876 he writes from Paris, that he had colorist. hitherto worshipped form alone; that now he was be-

on

ginning to understand what the art of painting

is.

He

170

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
:

becomes an idolize! of Velasquez " Everything is pale and insignificant in comparison with him. He paints with his nerves. The impression is crushing ; there is no other word for it."

was painting the

While, in 1887, he of Eauchfuss, the imperial portrait in he dropped his brush, and, stoopordinary, physician fell dead on the spot. !No one else has for over it, ing
Kramsko'i died in his vocation.

painted the Eussian race in so

many different physiognomies as he. His pupil, Eiepin, the greatest living artist of Russia, has gained special reputation by some historical paintings one of the Tsaritsa Sophia after Peter the Great has driven her from the throne, and the much-talkedabout Ivan the Terrible, throwing himself brokenhearted over his son, whom he has killed by a blow from
:

his iron-shod cane.

The

latter is

a masterpiece, and

admirably painted.
blood.
Still,

You can

almost smell the pools of

these are not the paintings which are the most

characteristic of Eiepin's talent. They are those in which he has represented his own age. There is a simple strength in them, a profound and genuine earnestness,

and a fascinating heartiness. He has caught upon his canvas what, in the strict sense of the word, may be called modern Eussia. His pictures, on that account, are regarded in certain circles as paintings with a purpose,
radical paintings.

You

will find in his

works

the types of the intelligent young men of the day, of the female students with short hair and wise expression. He has painted the burlaki, who drag the boats on
the Volga up against the stream. The expression in the depraved or resigned countenances of these bent, sweating laborers, with the tense muscles under their

THE SCULPTOR ANTOPOLSKL

tatters, is admirable.

171

He is fond of subjects like the departure of the recruits, the simple, every-day scene frequently met with the young man's departure from " family and home or like The Eeturn of the Exile/' a
;

picture

which never ceases

sister,

to be thrilling

from

its

very

simplicity.

The look cannot be forgotten which the

astonished and half frightened, not

mother and
sorry clothes,

yet glad, cast

upon the emaciated young form, in the which silently glides in through the door.
this art veils the remorse-

The profound sympathy in

lessness of the realistic representation. There is in Eussia at present only one eminent sculptor, who is of equal importance with these painters, and

that

is

who have made themselves known

Antopolski, one of the few men of Jewish descent in the history of

He passed his youth in great poverty, and sculpture. was learning the trade of shoemaker in St. Petersburg when his talent was brought to light. Baron Gtinzberg, the rich and genial banker of St. Petersburg, took an interest in and supported him, until, quickly enough, he was able to support himself by his art. After having been a long time in Borne, he is now a resident of Paris and enjoys a European reputation. Antopolski's "Christ" may, perhaps, be remembered from Julius Lange's "Art of Sculpture." Bound, with
his feet joined close together, Christ is presented to the people in a form executed with a melancholy realism, in

the costume of the time, with broad sandals under his feet, his hair fast bound to his brow by sweat under the

an earnest and truly Jewish type. He burning sun, looks a little down before him, but the look is contemplative; he accepts with manly firmness the ignominy
that the cry of the populace prefers Barabbas to him. There is a Russian stoicism in this look.

1T2

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

tlie

Another celebrated statue of Antopolski, representing dying Ivan the Terrible, is not less interesting. The
sits in his arm-chair,

awaiting the coming of death. has The position unquestionably been affected by Hou" Voltaire " the hand din's which, groping, anchors There is something in the itself on the arm-chair. look as if he saw, in his dying glance, the thirty-five

Tsar

hundred men

whom he has condemned to death pass slowly before him. Lange has the phrase, "It is like a soliloquy of Macbeth." In Baron Giinzberg's house, rich in works of art, there

is a very admirable bust which Antopolski has made of Peter the Great, of large size, idealized into a hero, with royal beauty and the stamp of immense power of will.
is also a captivating bust of a Baron of the likeness Gunzberg's deceased wife. lady, Among his other works, a statue of Spinoza, smiling and contemplative, deserves special mention.

In the same place, there

the art of sculpture thus has at present only to, yet there is, nevertheless, great ability in this field in Russia, and a great deal of plastic talent finds employment in the service of art
if

But

one great name to point

industries.

It is one of the peculiarities of Russian all that the anniversaries, all the jubilees, which society fall to the lot of persons of high position are celebrated by the presentation of one or more pieces of silver or

gold artistically designed. Not infrequently a jeweller receives an order from a society or corporation with permission to go as high as twenty-five thousand rubles, pro-

vided he can produce a real work of art. The Russian taste for color is employed in a more pleasing manner in such small works than in large architectural designs.

The

jewellers in Moscow understand how to combine both high and pale colors with gold and silver matte

INDUSTRIAL ART.
with extraordinary beauty.

173

Unfortunately, the most the opportunity of seeing at the Scandinavian exhibition in Copenhagen was less characteristic of the Russian people, because the workman in part had
that

we had

away by French designs and patterns, and in part because, as a whole, this art came rather from the mountaineers of the Caucasus than from the Eussian people proper, They seem here to have preferred to work with elegance rather than with individuality, and especially to have preferred to present proofs
often been carried
of the talent of the Eussians in imitation, rather than their remarkable gifts of compelling the foreigners on their own soil to create artistic effects in the Bussian
style

and

spirit.

IMPEESSIONS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

i.

K if tlie Russians of our day are not the descendants of the races which in remote times ruled the countries north of the Black Sea, they are at least their heirs, and he who is much interested in modern Russia gladly turns to the Greek and Homan authors for their descriptions of these countries and their climates, and for their accounts of the people and their manners and customs. What made the deepest impression upon the classical authors is without doubt the cold, the eight months'
winter, which Herodotus describes (iv. 28), and which is followed by a cool and rainy summer. That whole arms of the sea and broad rivers are frozen, so that people can drive and ride over them, is a terrible prodigy to them. read in Ovid " They protect themselves against the cold by skins and sewed trousers, and of the whole form only the face is to be seen. The hair

We

often rattles from the ice which hangs on it, and the beard shines with the frost which covers it. The wine keeps the shape of the bottle, when the bottle is broken in pieces, and they do not pour it out, but divide it up. Why should I say that all the brooks are stiffened by the cold and that they dig water out of the sea that they can break into pieces ? Even the Ister (Danube), which is not less broad than the Kile, and which, through its
177

178

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

many months, mingles its waters with the sea, freezes, when the winds harden its waves, and steals out into the sea under a covering of ice. Where the ships went
before, people go

on

foot.

The

horse's hoof stamps

on

the frozen plain, and over these new bridges, above the flowing waves, the Sarmatian oxen drag the barbaric

You may hardly believe me, but, since I shall nothing by telling a falsehood, I ought to be gain believed I have seen the immense Black Sea hardened into ice, which like a smooth shell lay upon the immovvehicles.
:

I have not only seen it, but I have ocean plain and walked with dry hard trodden on the sea." the over feet (Tristia, iii. 10.) In the next place, the lack of trees in these regions made a great impression on those who came here from

able waters.

And

Greece and Italy. Of the country of the Sarmatians, Herodotus says that it is entirely bare both of cultivated and wild trees of the Scythians he relates how for
j

want of wood they cook the

flesh

of their

sacrificed

animals in the stomachs of the latter, with fire which Ovid turns back is made of their bones (iv. 21, 61).
again and again to the melancholy want of vegetation " No in the region. trees, no vines in the Getian land.

Barely in the open

does not flourish."

fields is there

a bush, which even then

iii. 1,

(Trirtia,

iii.

12; JSx Ponto,

7.)

In remote times, as is well known, all the races on the plains which became Russia were mingled together under the names of the Scythians, Sarmatians, Getians, and some others. It is impossible now to determine how far they were the ancestors of the Slavs. But that the latter generally had ancestors among them, is evident from the character of the bones which have been found
in the old burial
1

mounds (Kurgans) in Southern Scythia. 1

EliseeBeclus: Gfographie umverselle, v. 299.

IDENTITY OF DIFFERENT MYTHS.

179

Several places in Herodotus have already drawn our Thus the place (iv. 75) thoughts in this direction. where he relates of the Scythians that they never wash
their bodies
in
?

water,

but use steain baths

instead.

(Comp. Herodotus
far

]STestor s
(iv.

Chronicle, v.)

5)

But the chapter where he speaks of their myths

in
is

even then, that the common ancestor of their race was a son of the supreme God, whom he had from a daughter of the river Borysthenes (Dnieper). Here already is the personification of the rivers which is so common in the old Slavic
Slavic
it is

more remarkable.

How

epics.

But

still

more surprising

is

the resemblance

between the myths about that Kola^xais, the youngest son of the common father, prince of the ploughshare, and Mikula of the bUini (the epic poems), the son of the peasant. Herodotus relates that, while Kola-xais and his brothers reigned, there fell a plough, a yoke, an ox, and a bowl, all of gold, down into Scythia from heaven.

When the eldest brothers, one after the other, approached,

they were burned by the gold and driven back by its glow. But when the youngest came up, the fire was extinguished, and for that reason they gave him the whole kingdom. Also Mikula, the child of a village, the agricultural hero, has a wonderful plough. When Volga, the bold warrior, with his guard, rides from place to place to collect taxes from the Slavic towns, he suddenly hears out in the country the sound of a plough.
hears the creaking of its woodwork and the grinding of its ploughshare against the stones. Volga and his men take a course in the direction of the ploughman,

He

and ride a whole day without finding any one. Yet the sound of the visionary plough, and the striking of tlie
iron against the stones in the furrows, constantly ring in their ears. Volga rides another day without meeting

180
any one.
portions.

IMPRESSIONS OP BUSSIA.
As
It

Orestes Miller has remarked, the picture is

developed in this direction, so that it assumes

huge pro-

becomes a poetic representation of the boundless plain of which the Russian land is made up. The farmer draws his furrow in this plain with such a wonderful skill that they only see in him a divine

workman, the representative and protector of Russian

agriculture. It is only

on the morning of the third day that Volga reaches the countryman who is ploughing up the ground with the mighty plough, tearing up the roots of He greets trees and breaking off fragments of rock. him and congratulates him. Mikula tells him, in return, how one day, when people from the neighborhood came to him and demanded taxes, he gave them all taxes
Volga begs him to join his body Mikula consents on condition that guard (Druzkina), one of Volga's men shall pull his plough out of the furrow and throw it into a bush. But not five, not even ten, of his brave men can stir the plough from its Then Mikula comes up alone, and with one hand place. seizes the plough and flings it up in the clouds, from which it falls down into a bush. 1 As we saw, the plough thus fell down from heaven, and over again, as ethnographic studies make progress, scholars have occasion to admire the scrupulous
with his
staff.

When

trustworthiness of old Herodotus.

To reac^Ovid after Herodotus is to.be transported five hundred years in time and from one world to another. But the ptoetical lamentations of the over-educated

Roman poet\and his letters from Pontus are still one of the oldest, sources of our knowledge of how the regions which ,to-day lie on the southwestern frontier
1

A. Rambaud

Za

Russie tpiqtte, p. 39.

OVID'S MISFORTUNES.

181

of Eussia were inhabited in ancient times, and of their Poor Ovid The knowledge we natural conditions.
!

now have was bought by

him,

the misfortune which befell

a misfortune so great and complete that it is incomprehensible how any one has ever been able to

speak of his lamentations in a careless tone. No author in the Eoman literature had a more original or bolder It was talent, and no one met with a more cruel fate.
so long before the days of the Eussian empire, an actual The illegal judgment strikes exile for life to Siberia.

him, the
of

finest,

most sensuous, most petted poetic nature

Eome, tears him, even then growing old, out of the pleasures of home life, away from a wife whom he loves with the most heartfelt tenderness, after having been
twice unhappily married, away from the circle of his friends and admirers, away from the city of the world which is all in all to him, from his fatherland (nay, from

and drags him over the sea and the salt end of the known world. He is landed solitary and alone in a place where the air itself is painwhere he can endure neither the drinking ful to him
civilization),

waves

to the

water nor the food, cannot protect himself sufficiently against the climate, cannot find a physician when he is ill, nor a single man with whom he can exchange ideas when he is well where few understand Greek and none Latin where he must live in perpetual fear of attacks from hostile tribes, who swarm about the town and often enough break in, in constant anxiety lest there should be attacks from the inhabitants of the town, who were little less than barbarian j finally, where he cannot once
; ;

outside of the poor strongholds of the town, or own even the least bit of a garden, of which he so bitterly feels the want, because there are no gardens in the town,

move

and personal safety

is

wholly wanting outside, so that the

182

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

land for miles distant remains uncultivated. Wlien the the refined forguards on the towers give the alarm, he, is inhabited coast The eigner, lays hold of his weapons. the latter mixed and Getians Greeks together, being

by

the more numerous, and even those who speak Greek have the Getian accent. Getian and Sarmatian horsemen ride through the streets in crowds, clothed in skins,

with long and loose trousers, with long beards and hair which hangs down over their faces, with knives loose in
their sheaths, their
full of

bows in their hands, and their quivers poisoned arrows rattling on their backs. The hostile Getians also use only arrrows which they have
dipped in poison; they live by robbery alone, come driving on their horses with the fury of a storm, very little dismayed by the slight walls of the town, and many a time their death-bearing shots fly in over the walls, so that the houses of the town were as if larded with arrows. Grant that there is a little poetic exaggeration in his description of his continual danger, there is wretchedness enough left* And in this condition Augus-

tus and his successor let the most original poet of Boine pine away, year in and year out, always cherishing
delusive hopes of a milder place of banishment, separated from everything he loved and had a taste for, and
for a fault

which was not a fault for having got on the which he did not dare to mention, and which is unknown to us. It is no wonder that he, with his gentle and timid character, begs for mercy from the powerful father of the land, with continual humble adulation. But when we read these prayers
;

scent of a court secret,

for

liberation

we

feel

an involuntary admiration
authors

ris-

ing up who, exiled in our day in similar circumstances, live and die without a prayer or a complaint, much less a word of flattery

for the Eussian

NESTOR'S CHRONICLE.
or adulation for
their lips.

183

him who

exiled them, falling from

Putting Ovid's "Elegies" back on the shelves, and

taking down Nestor's chronicle in its place, we are fully a thousand years later in time. The great national migrations had driven the Slavic races in broad waves

Kingdoms have been founded in NovTogether with legends and na'ive conjectures about the more remote times, we have here a history becoming more trustworthy as we approach the
in over Eussia.

gorod and Kief.

period of the narrator's own life, ending with the year 1110. And even from a period concerning which Nestor has only exceedingly doubtful traditions to depend upon,

he possessed treaties and agreements, genuine documents of the highest importance, which he incorporates in his book. He is Bussia's Saxo-G-rammaticus, but a hundred years older than the Danish monk, and his work has the greater literary value, given to it by the use of the

mother tongue.

What

especially attracts the attention of the Scandi-

navian reader is everything which relates to the rule of the Norsemen in Eussia, the statesmanship of the

Yarings and their campaign.

In the Danish translation

of Nestor's chronicle, there are given in learned notes all necessary criticism of the old chronicles and information
as to the present condition of investigation. The explanation of the Scandinavian words by Gislason, at the

end of the book, is also very instructive. In historical and psychological respects, a comparison between the style and descriptions of Nestor and of the
Icelandic sagas is of great interest, especially in those cases where the chronicles and sagas treat of the same

persons and events.

An

essay by the Eussian scholar

184

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Senkovski on the Icelandic sagas and their relation to Bussian history, which has been translated into Danish, awakens the attention and sharpens the reader's capacity
to

recognize

Nestor's

peculiarities

and

limitations. 1

Senkovski compares, as an example point by point,

the chapters (forty-eighth and monk here falls far following) in Nestor. The worthy from the verbal narrawas The behind. composed saga tive of Icelanders who had been participants in the events described, and have the trustworthiness of eye-

Eymundar Saga with

witnesses.

Nestor, credulously, with

many

oratorical

embellishments and pious remarks, gives an account of martial exploits, victories, and defeats, concerning which he has only an indistinct and unintelligible tradition.

The Icelanders had

skill

political talent

and

ability, in addi-

of the Vikings in tactics and war. tion to the While the monk from the cave-cloister in Kief, without considering the material difficulties of keeping forces in

the open field, makes the armies of Yaroslaf and Sviatopolk stand full three months face to face in battle at

and while he, in biblical fashion, reports the threatening speeches of the leaders of the armies to the enemy, and the impatient expressions of the troops at this derision, the saga shortens the time from three
Liubetch
;

months to four days, shows what lot and part Eyniund, the chief of the Varings, had in the battle, describes his flank movement, his attack on them at once from front and rear, and gives, without any fabrications, embellishments, or pious reflections, an intelligible picture, even if it seems as if the author of the saga had mixed up the reports of two different battles. The greatest difference between the cloister spirit and
saga style
1

is felt

in the account given

of

by Nestor and in
184:7.

Annals of the Society

Northern Antiquities,

CHRONICLE AND SAGA COMPARES.

185

the saga of Sviatopolk's (Burisleifs) decisive defeat in the revolt against Brother Yaroslaf (the Jarisleif of the saga). In Nestor it is said, "But towards evening

Yaroslaf conquered, and Sviatopolk took

flight.

And,

as he fled, the devil came upon him, and his joints were loosened so that he could not sit on his horse, and they carried him in a litter, and brought him in his flight to

Berstije.

But he
us.'
'

'

said,

Fly with me, for they are

;

pursuing

and said, was no one who followed them. And they fled farther with him, and he was then lying in delirium, and started Hasten He up, and said, They are coming after us could not stay in one place, and flew through Liachland, pursued by the wrath of God, and came to a desert place between Liacher and Czecher, and there in a pitiThe unjust and godless able manner he ended his life. man now had his deserts, when the judgment came upon him, after his exit from this world, given up to torments This was plainly shown by the mortal in the next. pangs which came upon him, and mercilessly drove him to death and after death he is suffering everlasting torments in chains. This has God done as a warning to the Eussian princes," etc. In the saga the extract is less theological. It is told there how the practical Norse chief lays before Yaroslaf
{

his servants sent a messenger back, See if any one is coming after us ? and there

And

'

the necessity of letting his rebellious brother be slain. " For there will never be end to this misfortune so

any

long as you both live." When the king gives the answer that he will not call upon people to attack his brother,

and then afterwards prosecute them in case they killed him,, Eymund interprets the answer as it suits him,
forth with eleven others, hides himself in a forest, by the borders of which the hostile army is
sallies

186

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

and brings to the encamped, murders the king's brother, " See here, my lord, if you know king his severed head. " This deed we Norsered. turns Yaroslaf this head."

men have done," says Eymund, "but now let your brother be buried in a becoming and honorable manner." Yaroslaf answers, "You have done a rash deed, my You have friends, which weighs heavily upon me.
killed

him

then bury him also."

About condemnation

of the event, even on the side of the injured brother, not a word is said. Senkovski properly notices the improba-

heroes of that bility of attributing to the Varing-Bussian age the aversion of the Christian monk to bloodshed.

was only cowardice that was despicable in their sight. For the perfidious and bold wrong-doer they had a respect which was not denied to Tnm even when they were in arms against them. The language, as well as the peculiarities of race, of the ruling warrior caste of Scandinavian Eussians was
It

speedily absorbed by the great Slavic people, largely because the Yarings seldom married any other than native-

born wives therefore no traces of the Norse mythology On the other hand, we meet are to be found in Russia. in the written only epic poem of Russia) not (especially
;

a few reminiscences of the old Slavic worship of God and nature. Still, what we know about the mythical
beings by the
is

very little. The Slavs worshipped the heavens name of Svarog. The sons of the heavens were

Bazhbog, god of the sun (and wealth.

Prom dazk clay, and bog god), and the god of fire, Ogon (Indian, Agni). The god of the sun had other names besides Hors and Volos, who like Apollo was god of the flocks and of the poets. Perun corresponds to Thor as the god of thun:

der.

Stribog

is

the god of the winds.

worshipped

" the

In addition they
the spring season.

damp mother earth;"

RUSSIAN EPICS.

187

Vesnd; and Morana, the god of death and of winter. The souls of the dead were called Eusalki. In Russia, as everywhere else, on the introduction of Christianity, the heathen forms and ceremonies were not rooted out, hut named anew, and consolidated with the festivals of the Church. Thus, for instance, the holy Elias, with his
chariot
of
fire,

appears in place of the thunder-god

There are many songs, which it is the custom and usage to sing on anniversaries, over the whole of 1 Eussia, which have a mythical origin. But an entirely different, copious and valuable source
Perun.
of knowledge of the old Slavic intellectual life is to be found at the present time in the bilim, which were first that is to say, collected and published in this century, the old Eussian epic poems. The first collection of these appeared in 1804, consisting of songs which had been collected among the iron-workmen in the department of Perm. In 1818 a new edition of the collection was pubIt lished, with sixty numbers in place of twenty-five. was then found out that there were a large number of epic songs in circulation among the peasants in Northern Eussia. From 1852 to 1856, Sreznevski published which were recited in these northern departments ; yet it was only in 1859 that the investigations of Eybnikof, in the regions about the Onega Lake, made it plain that Eussia had an enormously large unknown national literature in the form of popular poems, which it was simply necessary to collect from the lips of the people. The isolation caused by the severe climate about the Onega

MM,

Lake, the simple manner of life and naive mode of thought of the inhabitants, the superstition and ignorance, the inability to read and write, have made these
1

See Alexander von Beinholdt: Gfeschichte der Rnssiscfien Lit-

teratur, bk. 1.

188

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

for old Slavic poetry. regions a sort of oral Iceland followed was who, in the same Hilferding, by Eybnikof three hundred new than wild provinces, collected more a comes Next garland of poems songs or new variations. almost all parts from collected by Kirievski,

published And in all these songs of Great Eussia and Siberia. the same persons appear, the same adventures happen,

and the same poetical expressions are found. The best of these poems, and the most of them, turn upon the oldest memories of the Slavic countries, and range themselves into two principal circles, the Kief Sometimes they point circle and the Novgorod circle. straight back to the heathen Eussia and the oldest

Aryan mythology, which lies back of the Slavic reliThus they also present points of comparison gions. with the holy books of India, and even several, and for a Scandinavian reader more interesting ones, with the Edda and the Norse myths. Maikof succeeded in fixing the eleventh and twelfth centuries as the period of the most important songcircle: the Vladimir cycle, whose centre is Kief. He
has proved that in all these poems there is no other Eussia known than that which lies about the Dnieper. Tne capital is Kief; there is no mention of Moscow.

The subordinate
etc.

places are Chernigof, Galitch, Murom, The Eussia of the Mlini has already Smolensk, been converted to Christianity, and obeys one prince, but is in continual war with the nomads in the south

and

east. find ourselves in the period between the introduction of the orthodox faith and the rule of the

We

examination gives the circumstance mentioned in the German "Otnit," from the twelfth century, an "Ilias of Eiuzen," plainly the Eussian national hero Ilia of Murom, and that in like
Tatars.

-Closer
is

that there

NORSE AND EUSSIAN MYTHS.

manner
tions

189

in the Icelandic Thidrek saga of the thirteenth century, which is composed from Saxon songs or tradi-

from the twelfth century, there is mention of a Eussian King, Vladimir, and his brother Jarl Ilia from
Greece, which

means Eussia. 1

Now and then, as already stated, we hit upon a passage in the Inlini of the Kief circle which call to mind Norse myths and popular traditions. Thus it is said of
Sviatogor, one of the oldest heroic figures, a Titan with

supernatural strength who is sometimes mixed up with the Bible Samson, that when, one day, he was lying
stretched out on a mountain, Ilia of Murom, the national hero, the son of a peasant, in whom the saga figure

Mikula seems to have been born again, wished to Choi-* lenge him to single combat. But the most vigorous blows from Ilia's club were hardly able to awaken He thought it was pebSviatogor from his dreams. At the third blow, he bles that were falling on him. " You are remain strong among men says to Ilia
:

strong
self.

among them with me you cannot compare yourThe ground could not bear me, so I lay down on
;

this mountain."

Who does not recall the scene between Thor and the giant who, at the most vigorous blows of the hammer of the god, thinks that he was hit by a falling leaf or acorn Another adventure
!

also

reminds us of

Thor and

Utgardloke. It is an account of how Ilia disappears in the pocket of the sleeping Sviatogor. (The wife of the latter hides him there to escape the anger of the

In just the same way, Thor passes a whole night giant.) in Skrymer's glove. Both Ilia and Thor here are the lightning which conceals itself for a long time behind
i

A
t

von Reinholdt, above

p. 155,

cited, p. 49,

Ramfcand:

I^

190

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the clouds, and very significantly Thor, immediately after coming out of the glove, strikes the giant on his head with his hammer so that the blooil spurts out.

Among
Solove'i,

who

other things, Ilia also fights with the robber blocks his way to the mountain of the Sun-

This Solovei has a face of a bird and utters a prince. horrible bird-cry, whose shriek works such destruction that the roofs in Vladimir's palaces fall in. He is. therefore, the spirit of

bad weather and storm, and by

his

bird-form calls to

in the guise of an eagle who, in Vafthrudnismal, sitting at the end of heaven, with his wings which are those of an eagle, sets

mind that giant

the winds in motion

or the giant Thiasse, who, in the

guise of an eagle, carries away, conceals, and later pursues Idun, until he meets his death in the fire which was

Bird-forms kindled for him behind Asgaard's wall. and bad of storms weather. are symbols everywhere

There is still another little incident of Ilia's battle with the giant which recalls a ISTorse tradition. As Ilia finds gold and silver in great quantity in Solovei's nest, It so Sigurd finds the red gold under the dragon IPafner.
N

one and the same symbol of the shining the dark clouds hide under or behind them.
is

beams which

Among Sviatogor's adventures, in the next place, is one which greatly reminds us of Thor's when the giant plays a trick upon him, and lets him drink out of the horn the other end of which is in the sea, raises a cat which is the Midgaard-serpent, and is troubled by an old woman who
is

old age. When the giant Sviatogor one day is riding over the plains, he meets an old man who asks him to help him put his sack on his back. The hero would lift

the sack with the end of his whip, with his finger-tip, with his strong hand, he cannot do it. Then he alights from his horse and tries with both hands, with tremen-

ILIA

OF MUItOM.

191

dous efforts, to lift the sack which is so heavy, while the sweat drops from his forehead. Finally, he thinks he has got it up to his knee but it is he himself who has sunk down to the knees in the ground. In the little
;

sack,

God had put

the weight of the whole earth.

characteristic incident,

We finally find a
J

which reminds

us of one of our national traditions, where Sviatogor and Ilia, after haying formed a foster-brotherhood, visit Sviatogor
s old father together. The old man is blind and apparently impotent. -He asks to be allowed to press Ilia's hand to see if the Eussian logatyrs (the generic

name

of the national heroes)

blood.

still

have strong limbs and

warm

his friend, Ilia grabs a huge iron bar glowing in the fire and hands it to the old man. " I feel that " Good " he to the hero.
!

At a nod from

says young you have a strong hand and hot blood." This is the story of 1 Holger Danske and the peasant. There is no one among the heroes of these Mlini who is more characteristic and typical than this Ilia of Murom.

belongs to the cycle which has Vladimir, the beautiful but he is treated by the poets as the sun, for its centre
;

He

son of a peasant, with even more sympathy than the Eegular geological layers can be found in all prince.
the epic poems of Eussia
plainly,
;

we can

see,

how
to all

certain conceptions

of nature

more or which

less

are

common

began to The mythical heroes, which were

Aryan peoples about the eleventh century assume a constantly more decided Slavic stamp.
at first like those of

other countries, like those of the old North, for instance, become decidedly Eussian and decidedly Greek-orthodox.
are born in a definite Eussian village they are on a definite Eussian field. The celestial mountains, streams, and seas, which, in the oldest mythological

They

slain

Rambaud La
:

Russie tpique, pp. 41,

50, 111,

and

following.

192

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

language, indicated clouds, rain, and air, become Russian mountains like the Ural, Russian rivers like the Dnieper,

and Russian seas like the Caspian Sea.

In like manner,

we

see Ilia also individualized.

It

is

related of

him

that,

before he makes his appearance as Bogatyr, he sits for tMrty years (the constant expression for a very long

time) immovable and lame.

who come

Then two celestial old men him up from his sleep of death. It is in vain that he answers that he can move neither hand nor foot. When they call to him again, he is able
to

Murom

call

to raise himself

him a strengthening

and open the door to them. They give drink, and he feels an immense power suddenly rippling through his limba Here Ilia is evidently the same thing as nature, which is awakened from its long winter sleep. Ilia is thus roused to action, and his first exploit is to
cultivate the Russian soil; with superhuman strength he tears up a whole oak forest and tranforms it to arable land. After that he sallies forth to free peasants, as a hero of the fields to protect this Russian earth against monsters, robbers, and heathens. We have seen how in these conflicts he appears as the God of Thunder. He shoots an arrow from his bow against an oak, and the oak is entirely split to pieces as if struck by lightning he swings the club like Perun, the hammer like Thor. But then we see him like a true Russian hero travelling from Murom to Tchernigof to free the land from robbers who were exhausting it. We see him reject the money and the sovereignty which the muzhiks of Tchernigof would confer upon him, and hasten to Kief to
;

Vladimir, to aid the national prince against his many enemies. And he becomes chief Ataman over Vladimir's forces. In some of the lilini, at this point, he

develops in entire consistency with the popular ideal,

ILIA

A CHRISTIAN KNIGHT.

193

Vladimir, one day, offers him an insult, he gives a sound thrashing, runs down into the courtthe gold tiles down from the roof of the batters yard, the and gold crosses from the churches, and with palace the gold he entertains all the muzhiks and beggars of the
his

When

men

region at a feast, where mead and spirits flow freely. In other Ulim he is suspected by Vladimir, because he is

and he

slandered by the Prince of the Boyars at his court, is thrown into prison to starve to death. He

remains there for three years, secretly supported by Vladimir's young daughter. When Kief was attacked by a huge Tatar host, and Ilia was bitterly missed,
Vladimir, led
of his daughter, finds in the the hero, "the old Cossack," who is underground prison a at table, sitting plain reading the Evangelists. Vladi-

by the advice

mir, on his knees, begs him for help, not for himself, but for the churches of the Blessed Virgin, and for the

widows and the

Ilia discloses

fatherless in the holy Russia. Then himself as the Christian knight, who pro-

tects the defenceless

heart.

and has the churches near to his he travels Nay, straight to Constantinople and Tsar from the heathen liberates the (Tsargrad)
It is

army.

now peculiarly Russian that,

before this great mil-

itary hero starts out into the wide world, he makes the vow that he will never soil his hands with blood. The

few incidents of wildness that are met with

in his his-

tory are plainly mythical elements, as when he kills the robber Solovei, and afterwards the terrible Amazon or
Polenitsa (who at last shows herself to be his daughter), tearing them both into small pieces, and scattering these upon the earth to make it fertile. Otherwise he per-

forms all his exploits with the greatest calmness, and, while he despises danger, he is fond of making deri-

194

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

sive jokes after the manner of the Russian peasants. Like a good son of a peasant he began by helping his old parents. Everywhere, as at Vladimir's table, he

compels the persons of position to give place to those of low degree. Like a genuine muzhik he sometimes drinks but he is opendeeply and sleeps otit his drunkenness hearted towards his prince to the last degree, and when the latter has taken it ill and punished him cruelly for to forget the injury as soon as he hears it, he is ready
;

that there
less.

may

is any question about the cause of the defencenever brags of his victories, wishes that honors redound to the glory of Russia, and, in his aversion

He

to soiling his hands with blood, spares his enemies he can do so, and sets his -captives free.

when

It is a very remarkable instance of Russian imagina" there tion that a well-known bUina, with the title are no more heroes in holy Russia," for the purpose of increasing the impression of the power there is in this

Why

than Fate
heroes.

national hero, represents Ilia of Murom as stronger so itself, to which this people otherwise patiently submit, and which conquers all the other
Ilia

had become fully three hundred and fifty years but his powers were less impaired than Steerkodder's old, as an old man, when, one day, while riding through a " If forest, he read on a stone the inscription, you go to
the right you will become rich, if you take the middle road you will be married, if you go to the left you will

The old Cossack, as he is called here, after considering it, concludes that it does not become his age now to seek for wealth or marriage. It is more becombe killed."
ing for him to ride in the road in which death is found. After riding a short distance he meets with a band of robbers, but disperses them, turns back and writes

upon

ILIA'S SELF-SACRIFICE.

195

the stone, "! rode to the left and was not killed." By the middle road he comes to a splendid castle. king's daughter, dazzlingly beautiful, first waits upon him, and

then asks him to share her couch on a bed of silk and But the old hero; suspecting treachery, eider down.
declares that in his country it is the custom, for women down first, seizes the princess by her belt and throws her on the bed, and then rushes down into the
to lie

vaults of the palace.

He liberates the forty princes she has held imprisoned there, causes the enchantress to be broken on the wheel, and writes a second time on the guide-board at the cross-roads, "I rode by the middle

married." By the road to the right he an iron cross and under it a great treasure. He divides it into three parts and builds three churches with the gold one for the merciful Saviour, one for St. ITicholas from Mozhaisk, and one for the bold St. George, " I rode to the so he can properly write on the stone right and did not become rich." From this lilina we can perhaps best learn with what strength the Eussian imagination has felt obliged to endow its heroes. His most extraordinary trait of charfinally finds
:

way and was not

acter, nevertheless, is

in the exhibition of self-sacrifice.

does not, like the heroes of the West, perform the act from a feudal devotion to his prince nor from a feeling of duty to Mm; still less, like the Norse heroes,

He

from ambition, but from a magnanimous tenderness for children and the abandoned, or to protect the country and its religion. It is the common weal, not the happiness of the prince or his own honor, which lies near to his heart. While Achilles never pardons Agamemnon for the insult he received from the king, Ilia forgets on the spot what Vladimir has done to him. On that account the Eussian scholars, like Orestes Miller, seek

196
to

IMPRESSIONS OF BUSSIA.
Ilia's feeling of

duty is conclusively sigidea of community, which nificant in relation to the for the Slavophiles. idea is the Eussian fundamental

show that

mere personality, the common to serve and his willingness cause, a symbol the of Eussian the of spirit to comoriginal tendency

They

see in Ilia's indifference towards

munity in family,

society,

and

state.

Besides this popular epic poem, moreover, the Eus" The sian literature possesses in Story of Igor's Cam" an old of of art rank, corresponding high very epic paign " is for the French, and to what the " Song of Eoland
the Niebelungenlied for the Germans, but which, nevertheless, has the fault, which would be very serious in
the eyes of the Germans, of being much shorter. This was written a very short time after the event

which

it

describes

the campaign which Igor Sviatosla-

vitch, one of the

princes from Nbvgorod-Sieversk, in undertook against the pagan Polovtsians, a nomadic 1155, tribe of Turco-Pinnish descent, who lived on the banks of the Don and were continually attacking the careless

Igor was a cousin of the Prince Imperial of the Kief, year before, with other princes, had conducted a victorious expedition against the Polovtsians.
Russians.

who

Now,

honor,

own part, he wished to cover himself with and therefore sallied forth with his brother Vsevolod, "the wild bull," to whom he was greatly attached, and his son Vladimir. But his expedition was unfortunate; he was himself taken prisoner and with great difficulty escaped from captivity by the aid of a trusty esquire. We have the same incident related in the old Eussian chronicle of the monk Ipat, one of those
for his
1

Bambaud, above

cited, 62, 113.

A. yon Bemholdt, above

bttini translated in

cited,

p. 69.

Beinholdt has extracts from the

the origi-

nal metres.

STORY OF
who wrote
and we can
true that

IGOR.

197

see

a continuation of the chronicle of Nestor, from that the endeavor of the unknown

poet to confine himself to the historic truth. It is quite we find in the " Story of Igor " many traditions or mythical stories incorporated with the principal

monk who is the author of the chronhas carefully eliminated every heathen expression and element, but still there is a more evident attempt in the chronicler to endow the heroes with fine qualities.
event, while the
icle

When the

battle is lost the princes are advised

to- fly.

In the chronicle they refuse to do so; they will not desert their men, their common soldiers, but will live or die with them. The story has nothing of this. And when Igor is taken prisoner according to the chronicle he refuses for a long time to escape from captivity, because he has given his word to the princes of the
Polovtsians, until at last the regard for Russia, now so exposed to the enemy, moves him. In the story he is
at once ready for flight.

the heroic lays

" " mentally compare the Story of Igor with of the Edda, which are probably of greater antiquity and, at any rate, describe a rougher and wilder form of national life, the Russian poem, no doubt (in contradistinction to the ITiebelungennot), has

When we

the inequality and lyrical form as well as the predilection for a yivid dramatic representation in common with the ITorse poems, but the essential feature of the Slavic In the first place, the latepic is still entirely distinct.

do not know the ter possesses an individuality. author's name, but his entity stands out very distinctly before the reader, rich as it is in enthusiasm and piety.

We

He

speaks in his

own name,

stands as an individual

responsible for his words, is conscious of a personal style of composition which is less flighty and fantastic than

198

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the style of the older seers and bards, whom he in other feel that his respects admires. In the next place, you than less his admiranot is love for the poetic art strong

He is an tion for the deeds of the princes of his day. he as It his for intenenthusiast expresses it, is, poetry.
tion to free himself from the poetic traditions he does " not wish to borrow f roni his predecessors the old words."
;

From
There
tains

the lilini
is

we can see what he meant by this. found in them, just as in the Homeric poems,

a standing supply of descriptive epithets. The mounare always gray, the sea always blue, the sun

The earth is our mother, the damp earth. red. They always run on their swift feet, always take another by his white hand, etc. The unknown poet has plainly
always

wished to adopt as little of that as possible. Nevertheless, we meet in him certain constantly recurring expressions which are evidently inherited, as, to drink the Don dry with his helmet, to set ten falcons on a flock of swans, to sow the earth with human bones, and certain
constantly recurring epithets, as, Vsevolod, the wild bull, the falcon Igor, and his son the young falcon, and others. As a man, the author of " Igor's Campaign " is far milder
in his emotions than the author of even the mildest of

the heroic poems of the Edda,

"The Songs of Helge." poem, Yaroslavna expresses her longing for Igor during his absence in the war, and
The
style in which, in his

her fear for the

life of her lover, is more like Ingeborg's in Tegner's poem than it is to lamentations languishing loss of in the Edda. And the whole life Sigrun's Helge

of emotion

and nature, which the nameless poet has spread out before us, makes an entirely characteristic impression, by the grand, childlike simplicity with which
the association between

man and

nature
is

is

interpreted

and described.

The whole of nature

alarmed when

LAMENTATION FOR DEFEAT.

199

Igor starts upon his unfortunate ride to the Don: the sun is darkened, the night groans, the beasts howl in Both YarosUvna anticipation of the impending danger.

on their part, address winds and streams as were men; nay, give them titles and complithey words mentary just as plainly as it is done in the Iliad two thousand years before. And the river Donyets gives Igor an answer. The living naturalism, the transfer of human qualities and emotions to nature, is so prominent
and
if

Igor,

here that

it is

noticed as the expressive personal naivete*

of the characteristic poet. Finally, the patriotism of this epic and of its author is characteristic in the highest degree. Patriotism per-

meates and constitutes its motive a love for the E>ussian land, which breaks forth not only in mourning over the triumph of the heathen Polovtsians, but even more vehemently in wrath and laments on account of the dis;

this pregnant period, rent the land asunder

cord between the Eussian princes who, at the close of with civil war.

When

the defeat
grass

is

sustained, the singer exclaims

bowed down in pain. The crowns of the trees bowed down to the earth in sorrow. For the cheerless time was already come, brothers, when it was void
of power,
like a

" The

when

injustice spread itself in the ranks of

Quiet, into our land, and, as if with the wings of a swan, dabbled in the waters of the Don and of the blue sea. It awakened the hours of disaster.

the descendants of

Dazhbog [princely power].

young

girl, it stole

Then the

contests of the princes against the heathen

were broken off; brother said to brother, 'This is mine, even this also is mine.' And the princes began to say about small things, 'This is great.' But the heathens from all sides fell down upon the Eussian land." The old poet is a skilful battle-painter. Like the

200

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

authors of the old Northern ballads, lie embellishes his of many battles which he has poeins by descriptions seen or in which he has participated; for example " The Russians fenced round the wide field with their
:

honor for themselves and purple-colored shields, sought At their for daybreak on Friday, they princes. glory crushed the heathen host of the Polovtsians under their
the beautiful Polovtsian girls away with them, and with them gold and veils and costly velvet garments. With the ribbons and capes and furs and finery of all sorts they began to build bridges over pools and swamps. But the red standards, the white banners, and the spears with the silver points fell to the lot of
feet, carried

the brave Sviatoslavitch." Or read the description of the battle on the following

day

the next day the blood-red light very early heralded the dawn. Black clouds swept in from the sea they would cover the four suns [the four Eussian
;

"On

leaders of the army], in them. There was

like

and the blue lightning trembled heavy thunder. The arrows flew rain from the great Don. Then the spears were

splintered ; then the swords struck against the helmets of the Polovtsians by the river, by Kay&la, near the

Eussian land thou art still protected. great Don. But behold the winds, Stribog's offspring they blow a
!

sea of arrows against Igor's brave warriors. trembles; sadly now the rivers; the field
;

with dust ; the banners rustle from the Don and from the sea, and from all sides surround the Eussian army the children of the devil beset the shrieking battle-field still the brave Eussians enclose it with their purple-colored shields."
; ;

earth covered the Polovtsians come

is

The

But the pearl of the poem and Igor's flight.

is

YarosUvna's lamentation

YAKOSLAVNA'S LAMENT.
"
!

201

Like a cuckoo she Listen, the voice of Yaroslavna in the alone early complains morning. 'I will fly/
she says, ' like a cuckoo over the Danube will plunge my beaver-skin sleeves in the Kayala's stream will dry
;

the prince's bloody wounds on his stiffening limbs.' Yarosldvna weeps early in the morning on the wall at

and thus she speaks: <0 wind, thou mighty wind, why, oh, Lord dost thou blow so hard ? Why dost thou bear Chanen's arrows on thy light wings against my lover's men ? "Was it not enough for thee to blow the mountain waves out from under the clouds when thou didst rock the ships on the blue sea ? Why does the breath of thy spirit waft my joy away over the grass of the plains ? ' Yaroslavna weeps early in the morning on the walls at Putivl, and thus she speaks Dnieper, the famous thou hast broken through the rocks in the
Putivl,
!

country of the Polovtsians, hast rocked Sviatolafs ships L hosts. Lord, bring my lover back to against Kobyak's shall send him my tears over so that I no me, longer
the sea

Yaroslavna weeps on the wall at Putivl, and ' Thou clear and thrice clear sun thou art warm and beautiful for all. Why dost thou aim thy burning beams on my lover's men ? Why hast thou in the arid desert dried their bows together in their hands ? Why hast thou tortured them with thirst, so that the quiver became heavy on their backs ?
'
!

thus she speaks

'

" Towards midnight the sea became disturbed whirlwinds raised themselves among the fogs. God shows
;

to the

way out of the country of the Polovtsians Russian land, to his father's golden throne. The glow of the evening is extinguished. Does Igor sleep ? No, he is awake he measures in his mind the plains
Prince Igor a
;

from the great Don to the

i

little

Donyets.

Listen

the

Prince of the Polovtsians.

202
sound of

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Ms

horse at midnight.

Ovlur whistles on
:

this

side of the river, gives information to the prince

Igor
grass
near.

must not remain longer.

whistles, the guards

The earth
the

roars, the

of

Polovtsians

draw
;

Then Igor leaps up

his fleet horse.

like a weasel in the rushes

like a

white sea-duck, he leaps into the water. He jumps on Soon after he leaps down again,
and,

like a wolf,

with light steps he hastens to the meadows of the Donyets; flies like a falcon in the fog, killing geese arid swans for his meals morning, noon, and night. While Prince Igor flies like a falcon, Ovlur runs like a wolf, both dripping with cold dew in the grass of the steppes. For they have broken the wind of their fleet horses. c " Donyets said, Prince Igor, thou shalt have no little honor now, and Kontchak no little wrath, and the ' Eussian land no little joy. Igor answers, Donyets no little honor hast thou now, thou who borest the prince on thy billows, made him a bed on the green grass on thy banks, and covered him with warm fog in the shade thou who causedst him to be guarded by of green trees the sea-duck on the water, by the gull on the rivers, by
3
!

the wild-duck in the air!

river Stugna,

Not such/ said

he, <is the

whose stream is so dangerous when it has swallowed foreign brooks, and which has broken our barks Nor is the against the roots of the trees on its shore. a such river. our That thrust Dnieper young prince Kostislav back from its sombre banks. Kostislav's mother now weeps over the young prince. The flowers the tree bowed its crown wither, consumed by grief
;

down

to the earth in sorrow.' "

1 "Wenceslaus Hanka: Igor Svatoslavitch. Prag, 1821. (Text, Bohemian and German translation.) Wolfsohn: Die SchSnwissen-

schaftliche Litteratur der Russen. Leipzig, 1843, pp. 182-226 (the best translation in German). Rambaud, above cited, pp. 192-233.

THE WRITTEN EPIC ARISTOCRATIC.

From
these extracts

203

we can form a

conception of the

see that they style and tone of the Eussian epic. are very different from those of the heroic poems of the

We

This written epic is unique in Eussian literature. from the btlint of the Kief-circle by its purely historical character, since none of its leading actors are demi-gods, but all the heroes who figure there are men, who conquer or suffer in a purely human manner. In the next place, this epic is characteristic from its stamp of aristocratic culture, since it was evidently written with the purpose in view, like the old Norse laudatory poems, of being recited before the body guard of a Therefore it does not extol the masses in the prince. a popular hero, but sings of the chiefs and of person leaders of the army as the leading men. Still, however patriotic the poem is, it is nevertheless inspired by the patriotism of the princely power and of the highest

Edda.

It differs

culture.

IL

THE Russian

national

literature,

like

the Danish,

dates from the eighteenth century, and it is even a The foundation was little younger than the latter.
laid by Lomonosof, thirty years after Holberg became the founder of ours. But between the ancient literature written in the Church Slavic together with the btlini, which date from a period before the reign of the Tatars,

and the modern Russian book-world there lie the popular ballads, the short lyrical poems, Little Eussian as well as Great Eussian, rich and attractive from their tenderness and their sadness. Little-Eussian and Great-Eussian popular ballads, each
written in
its

own

dialect,

sung by widely different peodifferent literatures, of

ple, belong, in fact, to

two

which

one, in later times, by despotic command, has been suppressed ; but, in spite of the differences, the two groups present so many points of resemblance that they influ-

mind in a cognate manner. The Little-Eussian ballads treat exclusively of the life of the Cossack people in older and later times. The
ence the

Ukraine steppes are the theatre of this life, but the ballads also follow the Cossack in all his bold excursions

away from home

for centuries.

They present picture

after picture of the dangers in the martial life on horseback, in eternal conflicts with enemies in the east and

west.

There

is

longing for

home

the mortal hour of the wounded Cossack in a foreign laud ; the corpse which is
204;

POPULAR BALLADS.

205

washed by the cold rain and whose eyes are picked out by the birds of prey; the lamentation of the Cossack girl when the signal for the departure is given, and her
lover rides

away her ardent regret for him when he is absent on a military expedition in a foreign land the lamentation of the old Cossack over the young men who
;
;

have disappeared

the young Cossack's self-reliance and

confidence in victory; the sorrow of the lovers at the gossip about them, and the ignominy which they who

would separate them heap upon the loved girl, all this in short lyrical poems different from the more narrative form of the Cossack duma, which is fond of describing a
definite historical person or exploit. 1

The Great-Russian ballads are of several kinds partly being the more stereotyped wedding and Christmas verses; partly the so-called ballads of men of adven:

ture, that

is,

of highwaymen,

the semi-pathetic, semi-

humorous, always humble ballads of those who are under sentence of death, which open the perspective to the gallows, and to that extent have a certain resemblance
to several
of Frangois Villon and partly (the of great bulk) genuine popular ballads, nearly all of which are about the longing and sorrows of lovers. 2

poems

The Little-Russian and Great-Russian popular

:

ballads

in the comparison beagree in two principal features tween a display of nature and a mental condition, which
is

continually evoked by companionship with nature and a poetic view thereof, and in the richness of expression for the most varied moods and shades of a love upon whose multifarious sorrows they dwell with ineffable
1 Comp. Fr. Bodenstedt: Die poetische Ukraine, Sammluny Eleinrussischer Volkslieder. See G. Brandes: Indtrylcfra Polen, 220, 227. 2 See the poems in Wolfsohn: Die schffnwissenschaftliche Litteratur der Russen, 227-272.

206

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
parallel is of this sort
:

The natural
hurled
itself

Little Russian:

"A

down

hop vine alone in the garden to the earth. young little girl

among men
hop, say
girl,

'

wept very

bitterly.

green, blossoming
'

why do you not twine?' 'Oh, dear young " etc. why do you grieve over your fate ?
:

"Between two mountains, two high a slim grew up a slim white birch tree where the sun warmed it not, birch tree, a branching and the moon and the starry host shed not their light, where only violent torwhere only the blasts shook it,
Great Russian
mountains,
so among our neighbors upon it little sweet a girl, praised for her beauty and grew up her and slenderness neatness, plumpness and dainti-

rents of rain fell

ness," etc. So far as richness in expressions of love is concerned, it may be regarded as scientifically proved that, of all

living

and dead languages, there is none so rich in The expression as the Russian in both of its dialects. philologist Carl Abel has written an essay which gives a vivid impression of the peculiarity of the Eussian language in this respect. ("The Conception of Love in some Ancient and Modern Languages.") They have, for
the expression of love as a pure, simple emotion, as an involuntary attraction, the noun liubov and the verb liubity

and the adjectives liiibezni^ liubeni^ liubo'i, Hub (loved for superiority, by voluntary choice, by taste, from interest) 1 next, zaznoba, which indicates the growing love with its sweet apprehensions and its tender hopes. Milost is
;

the active love in endless shades

partiality, grace.

Blagost

goodness, warmth,

and
1

preference, good will, especially grace in all its The study of inexhaustibility.
:

is

languages shows

that,

while love

among the Romans

in

" flame." Passion,

RUSSIAN PET-NAMES.
particular

207

was love for the family, for kinsmen, and regarded as a duty, among the Hebrews love for the whole tribe, and, at the highest point, love for the whole
of mankind, and was regarded as a religion the Russian sentiment, according to the derivation of the words, is caressing and full of charm, exclusively a natural instinct,
;

far less conscious, circumspect,

and trustworthy, always

wholly involuntary. The domain of Russian love is the tender flattery which expresses itself in innumerable ingratiating diminutives. Of liubov, love, as a woman's name, the common
people

make use of the names Liuba, Liubka, Liubkascha, Liubaschenka, Liubashetchka, Liubotchka, Liubutehka, Liubushenka, Liubushetchka, Liubenka, and even many others, each with its different shade of tenderness and
caressing.

And, however numerous the linguistic exfor the sentiments and moods of love are, pressions naturally just as numerous are the sentiments and

moods themselves. 1 Here is a short erotic poem, which

is

typical

"Thou ash
ash
tree, oh,

tree,

oh,

thou

full of

branches!

didst thou sprout,

when

didst thou
!

grow up
"

when Thou

thou full of branches when didst thou ripen and blossom,

when wast thou in

?

I was in "I sprouted in spring, shot up in summer blossom in the spring, became a tree in the summer." no "Under thee there grows, under thee, thou Ash! there grows no grass, there poppy flowers and no grass, There burns no fire, yet a heart so warm. burns no fire.

Yet the heart so warm in a youth's breast

burns, nay, boils like pitch
little

it

burns,

boils in longing for

little soul,

swan
i

charming

my swan, my dove, my dove, my dearly beloved.

my my

See Carl Abel: Linguistic Essays, pp. 23-78.

208

IMPRESSIONS OF HUSSIA.
soul,"

"Oh, thou

my

soul,

my

beautiful

maid

in the

when hour of daybreak, when the morning was red without leave the shining sun rose up in the heavens without even once seeing of thy father and mother thou left life, thou went away from here. thy friend

warm winds, ye Oh, ye winds, ye warm winds, ye blow not autumn who waft towards here, I need ye thou thou come But storm, oh, only roaring ye not.
"
!

the regions of the North fly only thou hither split the Split only with thy breath the moist earth wide field, split the broad field Oh, open for me, And ah, let me, storm! open for me here my grave.

Prom

let

me

for the last time

here take leave of

my

loved

friend

dearly beloved. my Then I expire Only a tear-kiss amid weeping so bitter!

of
die

loved friend, of

my

with her." from these tones of nature you come to the lyrical in the founder of the later Russian literature, the transition is abrupt, so abrupt that for a man of the

and

When

present day
torical

it

demands a very great

interest in the his-

development

of a great people, not to put Loinon-

For he, who, moreover, was a far than greater philosopher poet, belongs absolutely to that the in of taste eighteenth century for which tendency the inartistic poetry of the people was no poetry at all,
dsof aside with disgust.

and which saw the end and aim of

lyric poetry in the

strained pathos of the style of the ode and its artistic form of regular combination. The modern artistic poem,
in various parts of the country, begins in this eighteenth century by separating itself as far as possible from the ballads of the people and from everything which belongs
to them, so as for the first time at the beginning of the new century to seek backwards for simplicity, unity, and nature.

BOYHOOD OF LOMONOSOF.

209

Lomonosof, whom Byelinski has called the "Peter the Great of Eussian literature," "was obliged to shape the modern Russian language, as a literary language, entirely anew. Before the time of Peter the Great they wrote
in Church Slavic, after that a mixture of Church Slavic and Eussian. As a boy, Lomonosof had drawn the language of the people from the purest fountain, had heard it as it fell from the lips of the Eussian fishermen in Archangel, but he had studied Slavic at an early age in the old church books. He was thus able to mould his language with the confidence of a man of intellect, and created the newer prose style and the Eussian metre and wrote the first sonorous verse existing in Eussian, composed by any poet whose name is known. Lomonosof s importance for Eussia is, as already stated, closely akin to that of Holberg for Norway and Denmark. He had a wonderfully many-sided genius, developed by a career which is almost marvellous. Mikhail Vasilyevitch Lomonosof was born in 1711, in a village in the department of Archangel. His father was a royal serf, who earned his living as a fisherman, and who used From his to take the boy with him out in his boat.

tenth to his sixteenth year the intelligent boy thus sailed about every summer over the White Sea and the
Arctic Ocean, receiving impressions of a great and wild nature, experiencing the poor man's hard fight for bread, seeing salt-works, cloisters, religious meetings, and among the people of the region he acquired a knowledge of the He character of the Eussian people in its purity.

learned to read and write from the village priest, devoured one or two old church books, which were the only reading available to him, discovered that Latin must be learned in order to acquire knowledge of a wider scope, and therefore ran away from home at the age of seventeen

210

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

and went ten miles on foot to catch a wagon-train of frozen fish which was going from Archangel to Moscow. There he was dropped in the market-place, and by the accidental kindness of a monk a few days later was taken to a cloister school, which indeed only received the sons of the nobility, but where his ancestry was overlooked. Here, and for a short time in Kief, his progress in Latin and
Greek, in
the
Slavic
is

physics,

and mathematics,

language, in philosophy, that of a genius. When

he had completed his courses at Moscow and Kief, he

obtained the privilege of being sent to the
St.

Academy

at

Petersburg and to Germany, where at Marburg he attended Chr. Wolfs lectures on philosophy, and at

Friburg he studied practical metallurgy and mining. He had previously made attempts at writing verse in
St. Petersburg, and now he showed his enthusiasm for the poet Johann Christian Gunther, forgotten in our time outside of Germany, by transferring his metres to

the Eussian language.

His first ode to the Tsaritsa Anna, a memorial ode celebrating the conquest of Chotin, is an exact imitation of a poem by Gunther in honor of Prince Eugene. Lomon<5sof, perhaps, surpasses his German model in spirit, and is possibly his equal in the domain of the ode in bombast but he does not at all succeed, like Gunther, in writing bold and
;

audacious verses about his personal experiences or his

erotic inclinations.

In 1740 he is secretly married to the daughter of a poor tailor in Marburg, runs in debt, and, when he is threatened with the debtor's prison, flies secretly from
'

the town without even telling his wife, and begins to beg his way on foot with the intention of getting to Holland. On the way he falls in with a Prussian recruiting officer with recruits,

who

gets

him drunk,

gives

LOMONdSGF AS SCIENTIST.

211

Mm the

bounty money, and receives

Ms

promise.

The

next morning Lomonosof wakes up in uniform, and, in spite of all Ms prayers and protestations, is a Prussian
cavalry soldier.

He

taken to the fortress at Wesel. deserts, hotly pursued, amid dangers and anxieties,
is

He

crossing the Westphalian boundaries, and arrives at

Am-

sterdam, representing himself to be a poor student from Saxony. In Holland the Russian, minister takes charge of him, and sends him back to St. Petersburg. Prom the Hague he wrote to his wife for the first

time since his flight but in St. Petersburg, where he did not feel that he was in a situation to support his
;

wife and the child sho had brought to him, he allowed two whole years to pass without any communication, until she, through the Eussian minister at the Hague, finally learned where he was, and with his consent came
to him.

From 1745 Lomonosof labored

at St. Petersburg as

professor of chemistry and experimental physics, and from 1755 began to advocate a plan for the re-organization of the Scientific Society, in which he fought against the encroachments of the Germans, Mtherto the sole

masters of the situation; and, as the passionate, nay, fanatical exponent of Eussian nationality, was soon
guilty of no less scientific and personal encroachments. Here at home he developed his whole genius as a
scientist.

He was

the the

first

Russian naturalist who, on

results

the foundation of

scientific

of

Western

Europe, which he laid before his pupils, was an inde-

pendent yiventor of machines and apparatus, and an independent discoverer of hitherto unknown laws of nature. The great mathematician Euler gave the most appreciative praise to his work on the phenomena of
electricity, light,

and

air.

Euler publicly declared that

215

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

" this talented

man

did honor to the academy and the

whole people." Franklin, explained the principles of electricity in the air and of the Northern Lights, which accords in many in some other respects he points with Franklin's, and
is

In physics, Lomonosof, independent of

even more advanced.

In mineralogy he was the

first

to point out the vegetable origin of amber and the production of coal from peaty soil under the influence of

subterranean gases. In astronomy he was the discoverer of the atmosphere of Venus. Finally, as a chemist

and

geologist,

he distinguished himself by his popular

descriptive powers. His studies in the Eussian language, literature,

history made an

epoch.

and His Russian grammar has con-

trolled education in

Ms

native land for half a century.

He wrote

books about Eussian style, rhetoric, and metres at the same time that he himself was working as a poet and orator. Finally, he is Eussia's pioneer in mosaic There still exist from his hand a well executed art.
portrait in mosaic of Peter the Great, representing the battle at Poltava,

and a large work

It is this man of genius who, for the first time since the introduction into Eussia of the intellectual and in

directions material foreign ascendency by the Tsar Peter, gave an organ to the old Eussian national feeling,

some

while he at the same time

exponent and

its poetical the latter being champion, carried out to the most infatuated chauvinism. His its practical

made himself

great reputation in this generation, when his poetry is no longer read, depends on the fact that it was he

who gave

the first impulse towards the liberation of the Eussian intellectual life and of Eussian science,

then just dawning, from the foreign and especially from

the

German yoke,

PLAN OF THE ACADEMY.

When Lomon6sof was
St.

213

admitted to the Academy of

Petersburg, there were two illustrious Germans, Gerhard Miiller and A, L. von Schlozer, who had laid the

foundation for

all historical

were the

influential

investigation in Eussia, who persons in the Academy, where,

moreover, they found themselves

exclusively by their countrymen. the Tsar Peter, the founder of the

surrounded almost

At the request

of

Academy, Leibnitz,

had prepared a plan therefor, expressly designed to "bring the culture of the west into Eussia, and to be instrumental in teaching the Eussians to know and appreciate it, and in thus causing them to cease to be regarded as barbarians." It was in his spirit that only books of instruction of the Academy were printed in
Eussian, while the purely scientific publications, which, moreover, would not have found many readers if printed
in Eussian, were issued in German or French. But, naturally, this condition, when the national feeling first

grew strong, could not long continue. In 1741, Elizabeth, by the aid of the party of the native nobility, annulled the rule which Munnich, Ostermann, and some other aristocrats of German birth in the regency of Anna Leopoldovna, had established for the minority of Ivdn VI. Elizabeth had banished Munnich and Ostermann, "bravery and wisdom," from her empire, and was now everywhere greeted as the person who was to bring about an age of reform in
Eussia, only on account of the agitation in the directiqn opposite to that which was due to her great father. She had inherited Peter's sensuous instincts, but not
his genius.

In the mean time, simply that she dreamed about again making Moscow the capital of the empire, that she had only native-born Eussians about her and
continually took the part of protectress of the orthodox

214

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

was enough to make clergy, who had long been repressed, her generally regarded as the liberator of the people from the oppression of Western Europe. She was especially so regarded

by Lomon6sof, whose

lyrical

poems

have hardly any other subject than his sovereign; and she was celebrated as "the Astrsea who had brought back
a golden age," " the Moses who had brought Eussia out Under of the darkness of Egyptian thraldom," etc. her guidance, Eussia was to show that, without foreign
teachers,
it was in a situation to bring forward "pro" a found Platos and intellectually endowed Newtons manner of speech which sounds strangely in the mouth of Lomonosof, who had himself been so thoroughly

grounded in the schools of foreign lands, and who, without the instruction in Marburg and Friburg, never

would have attained the

his day.

level of the

European culture of

His general enthusiasm for science was beyond all doubt, but in the domain of history and language the rabid national feeling handicapped him as to the results
In his contests with Miiller and Schlozer he maintains, for example, that they derived the Russian word kniaz (prince) from the German word knecht to dishonor the Eussian people and stamp them as a nation of thralls. (Kniaz seems to be cognate not only
within reach.
to the

word kneckt, but also, to the English word knight, and other appellations of rank of the highest repute. Nevertheless, the comparison, by Anatole Leroy Beaulieu, of Jcniaz with king [La Russie, i. 214] is certainly An address of Mtfller, which was to be misleading.) delivered on the name-day of the Tsaritsa, " About the Scandinavian Origin of the Eussian Eace and Name," struck Lomon6sof as insulting to the honor and prestige of the Eussian IJe was so reckless, in his paspeople.

LOMONdSOF'S POEMS.

215

sion that one day he burst into the audience-room of the German professor, and began to scold and abuse him.

was summoned before the consistory in regard it, upon his associates with such abusive terms that they refused to place them upon the record. He was condemned to be punished with the knout for this,
to

When he
he

fell

but,

and his superior intellectual

" out of consideration for his services as a scholar, qualities," the sentence was
as

commuted to a reduction of his salary. At this time it became established

an

article of

faith that the intention of Peter the Great

done

drive foreign culture out of the land as its work; and as they now contended that

had been to soon as it had

its

mission was already accomplished, they succeeded in being able to honor Peter also among the great national
rulers.

Lomondsof, therefore, compares

him

in

his

speaker's servility to Elizabeth, one of whose favorites he was, there is

speeches with

God

himself.

To the

naturally even less limit.

Lomon6sof s

lyrical

poems were

at first didactic, like

the antiquated, naive " About the Use of Glass," which, on account of the insight of the author into the natural
sciences, stands a little above the didactic poems of this kind of the eighteenth century, and rather reminds us of the cognate poems of Hans Christian Oersted. In the next place he wrote religious poems, observations on the greatness of God and on similar themes, in the same style as Johannes Ewald among us, and finally hymns in laudation of Elizabeth and her husband, which remind us in the highest degree of the flights in the first ode

of Victor
i

Hugo

in Odes et Ballades. 1
see Wolfsohn, above cited, 305-340, with exabove cited, 304 and follow;

About Lomondsof,

cellent metrical translations ; Reinholdt, ing, with translations by Bellinghausen

der Petersburger Gesellsehaft, Neue Folge die Akademie der Wi&sensGhaften, pp. 194-245.

Aus

and the anonymous work, : Was&ity Ostrov und

216

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
strongest impression
is

The

of this great figure,

literature,
its

which the foreigner receives planted at the entrance to Eussian

in the next
results

notice, typical Eussian stamp. of appropriating the place, its quality

We

of a foreign civilization,

with such remarka-

ble rapidity and in so many different directions, and how the imitative tendency has taken root and become

remark the universality which reminds productive. us of Peter the Great, and which, as in the case of the latter, takes its starting-point in mechanics and technics.

We

Lomon6sof

is

a real muzhik, the ingenious serf who,

in the space of one generation, goes through the development which we trace back to the natural gifts of the

Eussian peasant in the main, but which his class of society as a whole will take a thousand years to travel
through.

Lomonosof is a genuine Slav by nature, Several years in succession he vanand gentle. flighty ishes from his wife's range of vision without sending a word to her but when she reminds him of her existence and of his child, he bursts into tears, and exclaims
;

to the

man who

brings
!

him the

"
letter,

My God how
!

Circumstances have prevented me from calling her to me. Now I will send her a hundred rubles for the journey." Like a genuine Slav, he
could I have left her
is

above everything else, at the same time, a rationalist and mystic. On his journey back to Eussia he had seen in a djeam his father's corpse cast up by the waves on an uninhabited island in the Arctic Ocean. The strong mathematician could not escape from this vision. He had scarcely reached home before he inquired of people from Archangel about his father's fate, and learned that now for four months after he had gone out arfishing on the Arctic Ocean, nothing had been heard from him. He then sent his brother with a letter to the fishermen

DEKZHAVIN.

217

of the region, and directed them to seek for his father's body on the island seen in his dreams, whose situation he exactly described; and, since the body was found, was for the rest of his life obstinately convinced that it was found exactly on the spot shown to him in his

dream.

Russian in his rambling propenknowledge very Russian in his adoration of the Tsaritsa Russian in his coarseness and violence towards his foreign colleagues; but Russian especially in the way in which, a pupil of the Germans, he goes to the end of his rope in his hatred of and opposition to the intellectual sway of the
is

Finally Lomon6sof

sity,

and his

thirst for foreign

foreigner.

From Lomoii6sof

it is

a direct descent through Derto

zhavin and Zhukovski

down

Pushkin and Lermontof,

the literary geniuses of this century.

Derzhavin (1743-1816) represents in lyrics the period of Catherine IL, as Lomonosof does that of Elizabeth. He was born at Kazan, learned German early, read
Gellert

pelled to pass twelve

and Hagedorn, Herder and Klopstock, was comhard years from 1762 as a soldier of

the guard. The day when Catherine ascended the throne, he stood as a soldier of nineteen on guard at the Winter
Palace.
JSk>

future his
hers.

name would be mentioned

one could then have imagined that in the in connection with

In 1773 he took part in the campaign against Pugatchef on the Volga, which he afterwards tried to describe In 1777 he published his first collection of in verse.
poems, which contained among others a translation of a number of the poems of Frederick the Great. He ob" tained a oivil appointment by his well-known

Ode

to

218

IMPEESSIOFS OF RUSSIA.
"

(viz,, Catherine). Feliza, Tsaritsa of the Kirgiz-Cossacks He attracted the attention of the Tsaritsa, received a

snuff-box and some ducats for his poem, and then one important office after the other, since on account of his
passionate, fiery temperament,

which was strangely united

with the most methodical pedantry, he was generally very soon obliged to leave his posts. His ode on the occasion of the taking of Izmail by storm inspired Catherine anew just when his affairs were at a low ebb. In 1791 he was appointed private secretary to the Tsaritsa, but tired her excessively in this capacity. Under Paul he became
the leading
officer in the home department of the empire, and under Alexander minister of justice, without being He was obliged of any use in either of these offices. " " licentious of on account the former to leave language in the latter he showed himself to be ultra-reactionary, and, among other things, set himself with might and main against the plan, which had even then been proposed, of emancipating the serfs. Derzhavin had some other traits as an official; he was disagreeable and pedantic, and at the same time possessed a vigorous conscience, a combination which reminds a Dane of
;

Schack

Staffeldt.

passed that part of his life which fell to the nineteenth century almost wholly as a private man, sur-

He

rounded by the admiration and piety of the rising His figure inspired veneration, his literary generation. eye was full of fire, and the expression of his countenance was mild. When, a year before his death, he was
.

present at the final examination of a grammar school in Tsarskoye-Sielo, a pxipil recited a poem composed by
himself.

This pupil was Alexander Pushkin, and his

old poet, that,

verses

made such an impression on the

he exclaimed:

after having heard them,

"My

time

is

DEKZHAVIN'S ODES.
past
in his

219
Pushkin, with emotion,

you

will

now be

a second Derzhavin."
(viii. 2), recalls,

Yevgeni Onyecjin

these encouraging words which his predecessor in the poetic art gave him by the way.

Derzhavin began as the imitator of Lomondsof s bombastic style with the broad, cold pathos. His ode " God," admired and celebrated in its time, corresponds

to the import of the religious odes of Baggesen in the Danish literature. It must be owing to the subject that

the poem has been translated into a great many different tongues, and last of all into the Japanese. It contains everything which such a hymn must contain of gratitude

and humility, on the part of the very small towards the eternal greatness, but no genuine emotion and not an idea. The long-winded poem which won Catherine's
is far better. It surprises us agreeably on coming* from the Klopstock bombast of earlier days. It keeps to the earth, is jocular and sportive, adopts a tone like that which Horace assumed towards Maecenas, in the

favor

broad description of the worldly-minded laziness of the poet in comparison with the life full of responsibility
of the regent.

The poem " The Great " has no longer a historic and psychological interest, but any poetic, without because, mentioning any names, it contains a

disparaging description of Potemkin (pronounced Paty <5mkin) in contrast to other unappreciated but really great Eussians. Our respect for the poet is, however, some-

what diminished, from the fact that he himself was

in-

debted to Potemkin's energetic protection for his escape in a lawsuit brought against him by some bitter enemies,
so that gratitude ought to have restrained him from giving utterance to his ill humor. He also, at a later period,

commemorated Potemkin's
of the steppes in his

poem

solitary death in the middle " The Waterfall."

220

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Constantly changing influences from Western and Southern Europe, from the contemporary age and from the past, had their effect upon this poetry, which just
escaped mediocrity. The influence of Horace and the Anacreontics, perhaps through the influence of the

When Gdttingen lyric, follows that of Klopstock. the ballad style prevails, Derzhavin begins to write
ballads and to imitate, at second-hand (after Zhukovski), " Leonore." At the close of his poetic career Btirger's

he was influenced by Ossian, who was then making an

impression everywhere.

The

influence

which Ludwig Holberg exerted even

here in distant Russia at this period is specially interThe author who laid the foundation esting to a Dane.
of Russian comedy, Denis von Wi'zin (1742-1792), received the impulse to his dramatic attempts from Holberg.

French and German companies had found an

audience in Russia before the Russian theatre was established,

and

it

was a German manager, the distinguished

actor Ackerman, who, so to speak, introduced the entire comedy of Holberg into Russia. When a permanent

Russian stage was opened in

St.

Petersburg and

Moscow

(1756-57), a long list of plays of the favorite Danish author, translated from the German into Russian, was

produced upon it. "Don Ranudo" and "Henry and Pernilla" gave the most satisfaction, yet they could not compete in power of attraction with the lyrical tragedy
of Metastasio,

Artaxerxes," translated by Holberg, which was regarded as an original production of Holberg and always filled the house to the last place. Yon Wizin saw "Henry and Pernilla" in St. Petersburg when he was a student, and felt, to use his own
expression,

"

"an
first

indescribable

fascination"

in

this

comedy.

His

celebrated comedy,

"The

Brigadier-

VON wfziN'S BRIGADIER-GENERAL.

General,"
is

221

by "Jean de France."
Jean),

greatly influenced by Holberg, especially The General's son Ivan (that is,

who has been educated in a boarding-house of a French coachman, has returned from his journey to Paris with the " Francomania." How great the resemblance is between this figure and the Hans Frandsen of
Holberg, a brief extract will make plain. The General: "Listen, Ivan, I have seldom blushed since I got out of leading-strings but to-day, in spite of y gray hair, I was so ashamed of you that my cheeks
;

burned."

Ivan : "Mbn cher pere ! Can it be agreeable to me to be told that I must marry a Russian girl ? " I The General: "Are you a Frenchman, then? thought you were born in Eussia."

Ivdn: "My body was born in Eussia; that is true. But my spirit belongs to the French crown." The General: "Then you owe Eussia more than France, for there is more coherence in your body than
there
is
:

in your spirit."

Ivan

" See

civil things to

here, papa, now you are beginning to say me, since you understand that you cannot

make any
you

The General
compliments.

progress by severity." : "You are a regular fool

I have called

a blockhead, and
:

you think that I

ass

am

paying you

What an
!

"
!

Ivdn

"Ass

II ne

me

flatte pas.

papa, je vous

le repete,

that

my
our

I repeat to you, ears are not accustomed

that the

to such expressions." It is no slight honor for

laid

Denmark

man who
and

the

foundation

of

national

literature

created the Danish stage has also been instrumental He died in the foundation of the Eussian theatre.

without seeing anything of this; he certainly never

222
suspected

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
how
;

would

affect

large a portion of the world his genius but it is a curious idea that even in the

last years of Holberg's life, when his countrymen were turning their backs upon him, the inhabitants of St.

Petersburg and

Moscow were jubilant over his comedies, ten that and years after his death his influence only could be traced as predominant in the first Eussian comedies that gave
1 any pleasure to their hearers. VonWizin, "the Russian Moliere," was also influenced

by several other foreign authors besides Holberg. But, upon the whole, down to the present time, it has been a law of Eussian literature and intellectual life that no progress and no new form of development has been
attained except on a foundation of foreign influence in its most emphatic and unequivocal form.

This is again to be seen in the author who shows the next advance, and who, in Eussia, is regarded as the Columbus of romanticism namely, Vasily Zhukovski a character ten(1783-1852). A man of subtile talent
;
;

der as a woman, but pure, with A. W. Schlegel's gifts as a translator, but without Schlegel's wealth of ideas,

an honest visionary and upright lover of the good, the

beautiful,

and the true, as three venerable, conservative well fitted to develop as court poet under the powers, Tsar Nicholas, and to end, as Slavic men of talent like
to end, in mystic pietism. He is the author of the sian national song, the hymn to the Tsar.

Eus-

Zhukovski was the illegitimate son of an elderly Eussian

country noblemaa by the name of Bunin and a young Turkish woman whom Bunin had brought home to his residence
as booty after the conquest of Bender.
1

The boy grew

sische Theater^

See Alexis Wesselofsky: Deutsche JSinflusse anf das alte Ru$von 1672-1758, p 107. Beinholdt, cited above, p. 358
t

and following.

ZHUKOVSKL
up with Bunin's legitimate daughters, who were much older early developed, and spoiled in a purely feminine atmosphere. While yet young, he read Diderot, Voltaire, Young, Burger, Herder, Wieland, and Schiller. At the age of nineteen, he translated Schiller's "William Tell;" some years later, " Don Quixote " also wrote original epic poems, ballads, and tales, yet without close connec; ;

tion with the Russian popular spirit, because, in almost every one of his poems, yor can point out the foreign

models*

In 1812 he participated with distinction, as an officer, in the campaign against the army of Napoleon, and became celebrated by the poem, "The Singer in the
Eussian Camp," and by a metrical homage addressed Alexander from Paris, which for the first time brought him in contact with the ladies of the impeto the Tsar
rial family.

He suffered the heartache of youth when on one, grounds of orthodoxy, refused to give him his niece in marriage. In order to enjoy the young girl's society, he accompanied the family to Dorpat, passed an instructive year in the little university town, and then,
some
in 1816, in St. Petersburg, joined the literary society "Artasamas," composed of persons similarly educated,

which Pushkin, Nicholas Turgenief, and the later re-actionists, Minister Bludof and Uvarof, were memof

bers

in

Sweden of that

a society which, as a league of the Phosphorists time, started the opposition of the

new

The romanticism which the

offset did not

century against the French classicism. society advocated as an

and could not have that relation to the

past, especially to the Middle Ages, possessed by the German romanticism, of which it was a product. For

the Eussian antiquity and Middle Ages were, at that time, still a sealed book. They only brought forward

224
a

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

and, in its essence, a tolerably inexact aesthetic doctrine fantasy should have freer flight than before ; is of more account than deeper psychological insight nationalities during the other like all local color. Still,

new

reign of Napoleon and after his fall, the Russian nation turned its attention to its national peculiarity, and the

problem of describing the nature of the Russian land and people, and of representing the domestic world in poetry, was now presented for the first time, and for the first time solved by Pushkin in his way. Here, as everywhere else, Shakespeare made his influence felt on the nascent romanticism, and here, as in Poland, Byron soon became
the poet of the romancing youth. The little circle of romanticists was broken as soon
as the political question entered
liberal tendencies,
it.

On

account of his

Pushkin was sent for a six years' exile to Southern Eussia. Bludof became a legation attach^. Zhukovski, after 1817, became a courtier, because he was commissioned to supervise the instruction in the ".Russian language and literature of Alexandra, the German-born wife of the Prince Imperial Kicholas. Very soon also the Tsaritsa Elizabeth, the somewhat neglected, sentimental, and fragile consort of the Tsar Alexander, became interested in the gentle, bland poet^ and dipped alternately into his elegies and into Tiedge's " Urania." From this time Zhukovski assumed a position which for Hans Christian Andersen would have been the realization of the ideal of happiness. He read aloud with never-failing applause his ballads and odes, his poems on grand birthdays and on the occasion of the birth of little princes and princesses of the royal family, in a circle of ladies of the family of the Tsar and of the court, whose real life he neither understood nor wished to understand, but who to him were super-

ZHUKOVSKI'S TRANSLATIONS.
" " natural beings ; angels/ guiding stars," as in his festal poems. them
3

225
lie

called

As he had already translated a number of notable European poems, among them Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," existing in all languages,

and Biirger's "Leonore" (Liudmila), he now displayed to this circle of hearers an incredible productiveness as a translator a large number of the poems of Goethe and Schiller,
:

whole plays of the latter, like Die Junyfrau von Orleans, Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," Moore's "Lalla Rookh," the Indian poem, " Nal and Damasjanti," Fouque's "Undine," and Hebel's Allemanic poems, Homer's all "Odyssey," and Rttckert's "Rusten and Sohrab," these different kinds of poetry with his subtile talent he transmuted into flowing Russian verse. In 1821, on a journey to Germany, he contracted a friendship with Justinus Korner, whom he resembled in superstitious mysticism, and made a visit to Goethe, but without winning any favor from the old man. He was more agreeable to "the romanticist on the throne," Frederick William IV., who introduced him to Tieck, and also to other leaders of the German romanticism. Some years after his return to Russia, a re-action towards all the youthful desires of Alexander I. for an enlightened despotism in the aid of progress ascended the throne in the person of Nicholas. Soon the tender Zhukovski, with painful astonishment, saw the best of the friends of his youth banished others, less promi;

nent, but

strong characters, leave the vicinity of the court, and isolate themselves in obscure silence on their estates. Nevertheless, when at this time a genius
still

of Pushkin's
tories

rank turned around and extolled the

vic-

over unhappy Poland, it will not astonish any one that Zhukovski issued from this crisis
of Nicholas

226

IMPBESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

with firm faith that whatever the Tsar regarded as right

is right.

After Pushkin's early death (1837), Zhukovski occupied the position of Bussia's leading poet distinguished at the imperial court in every manner, even appointed
;

as the

civil

tutor of

the Prince Imperial Alexander

If he is
it
is,

(afterwards Alexander II.). with gratitude in Eussia,

now remembered

more on account

of the

humane

significantly enough, influence he exerted on

the young prince, who was admirably endowed by nature, than on account of his literary services. He dared to put in a word for many a political offender, whom a man

who was not in so good

standing or less courageous would never have dared to name, and he thereby accomplished a great deal of good. We see from Alexander Herzen's "Eeminiscences," that he procured a considerable diminution of the burdens of exile for this great man, who as a youth was languishing in Viatka. 1 When Zhukovski,
after 1840, took

up his residence in Germany, where

at

the age of fifty-seven he married a girl of nineteen, who worshipped his talent, he had the affliction of finding
out

how

and despised by

the rule of his dear native country was hated all thinking men in the foreign land.

The intellectual agitations of young Germany, and still more the revolution of 1848, shook him fearfully, and gave him the most melancholy pietism in all its force. He lived in IPrankfort for some time in company with Gogol, in whom the re-action had already been accomplished which converted him from the wittiest and most
mocker of the Eussian situation to a poor, sick admirer of absolute power and a mystic obscurantist, who lay for whole days prostrate before shrines. The
caustic
1

Le Monde Russe

et la

Revolution.

Memoires de A. Hertzen,

ii.

154.

MYSTICISM THE END.

two men constantly filled
each, other

227

more and more with

universal hatred of liberty and the personal feeling of their boundless sinfulness. They both ended as insane
mystics.
1

Zhukovski's

life

spans the whole of that of the epoch-

making Russian national poet. He prepares the way for Pushkin, becomes his friend, and ascends his vacant
throne without being able to cause his predecessor to be forgotten. Zhukovski was sixteen years older than Pushkin, whom he survives for fifteen years. His importance vanishes by the side of the younger man, began life as his and Derzhavin's imitator.
1

who

Aus

ing: Litteratur

der Petersburger Gesellschaft. Neue Folge, p. 106 und Presse unter dem Kaiser Nikolaus.

and follow-

III.

WITH Alexander Sergeyevitch Pushkin, Kussian poetry becomes an independent power, just as it is with Goethe, Oelenschlager, or Victor Hugo. It no longer does duty for inculcating noble emotions or useful instructhe handmaid neither in principle, at least tion it is
;

of morals nor of patriotism.

free.

It stands erect, wild,

and

Like the other leading Slavic poets of this period, Pushkin was greatly influenced by Byron, and had to go through this experience in order to become himself. He is very peculiar from the beginning from his violent temperament. He descends, on his mother's side, from the negro Hannibal, whom Peter the Great bought and educated in France as a civil engineer, and who died with the rank of general, possessing a good landed estate.
face of the author as well as his poetry plainly betrays the African blood in his veins. His father was

The
a

man of the world, educated in France, who had never spoken any other language than French, and who, in the fashion of the aristocracy, also caused his son to learn, that language. Pushkin was indebted to his nurse alone, a good Russian peasant woman, for his early and so fruitful acquaintance with popular ballads, bilim, and fairy
tales of Bussia.

Precocious, dissolute at an early age,

and then and for

a long time a "dandy," he belongs to the not small number of artistic geniuses from the beginning of the cen-

PUSHKIN'S YOUTH.
tury,

229

whom an inner power, which no depravity destroys, preserved sound and capable of production in circumstances

which would undermine and shatter weaker

minds.

What harm

he suffered in his soul did not

come from the wildness and irregularity in his life, but from the pressure of the political situation when his character was not developed, and even from the personal attempts of the Tsar Nicholas to win him, which the
young
aristocrat could not resist.

When he was only ten years old, Pushkin had devoured

French library, including Voltaire, Kousseau, and the Encyclopedists. From his twelfth to his eighteenth year, he went to the imperial school in Tsarskoyeeven Sielo, where the instruction and spirit were French the French language was taught to the pupils by Marat's own brother where the instruction was very bad, and where the older students saw their ideals in the lieutenants of the Guard in the garrison, after whose example they kept mistresses, gambled, and played mad pranks. The young Pushkin was regarded as one of the worst madcaps of the school, but at the same time enjoyed a certain reputation for erotic and epigrammatic verses. In 1817 he got a position in the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which he neglected, and plunged headlong into
his father's

the whirlpool of St. Petersburg social life, apparently desiring no other honor than that of being a fully developed man of the world and aristocratic lion. How much

importance, almost to his last days, he attached to the refinements of foppery is best seen in the description which he has given of himself under the name of Tcharsky,
in his posthumous novel, "The Egyptian Nights." Like Byron, he did not wish in any manner to be regarded as a poet " by trade," very reluctantly spoke of literature, and, on the other hand, with great pleasure of horses.

230
cards,

IMPRESSIONS OF

Elf SSIA.

and dinners, " although he could not tell a mountain horse from the Arabian, never remembered what was trumps, and, at heart, preferred fried potatoes to all the dishes of the French cook" ("Egyptian Nights"). In spite of all his dissipations, in 1820 he published his first poem, "Euslan and Liudnrila," which made
an unusual sensation, although this fairy tale in verse, founded on a Eussian legend, reminds one of Ariosto, of Wieland, and of Zhukovski, and has no other originality than that which depends on great skill in story-telling

and careful composition. The poem passed for pure romance it was interesting from a certain archness in its tone and a strong sensuousness in its color, but was otherwise without any psychological interest. At this time, Pushkin fell into disgrace for the first time. As a young man, he had been a political revolu;

tionary poet.

An

ode written by him,

"To

the Dagger,"

was sung

in all the garrision towns of Eussia, but probwithout ably knowledge of the author's name. He detested the despotism which they were compelled to

endure at the close of the reign of Alexander I., hated the idiotic censorship, which then weighed heavily upon poetry, and the rough rule of the police, to whose arbitrariness the

young men beheld their welfare intrusted

and, witty as he was and with cutting sarcasm, he pierced the ruling persons and prevailing conditions with epi-

In 1820 grams which circulated through the land. the Governor-General of St. Petersburg complained of him to the Tsar for an " Ode to Freedom ; " but Alexander read it without indignation, and only asked the

young poet
before him.

to let

all

his other manuscripts be laid

Unfortunately, among them there was a lampoon of the Tsar's favorite, Arakcheyef and, indignant at this scornful treatment of a man whom he had
;

PUSHKIN'S EXILE AND PAEDON.

281

treated with distinguished consideration, Alexander exiled the sinner first to Siberia, and then, on the intercession
of many, to Kishenef in Southern Russia, as assistant secretary of the general-governor there. During his so-

journ here, after an illness, Pushkin obtained leave to visit the Caucasus and the Crimea. The epoch-making

impression of
his poetry.

its

natural scenery

is

plainly visible in

In the Caucasus, he became acquainted with Byron's poetry, and the impression of it became fused in his youthful mind with the impressions of the Caucasus, and the Byronic impression was even the more radical of the two. In Kishenef and Odessa, he gave offence by his wild life and his Byronic manners, and was already in bad odor with his superiors, when a private letter from him to St. Petersburg was intercepted, which described a young Englishman, a friend of Shelley's, with whom he had become acquainted, and in which he

new

defended Shelley's so-called atheism. The result was a exile. Pushkin was directed, under the supervision

of the police, to reside

on

his estate Mikha'ilovskoye, in

the department of Pskof. As is well known, the six years' exile from St. Petersburg saved Pushkin's life. He would, no doubt, have

taken part in the revolt of December, 1825, on the accession of Nicholas to the throne, if he had been on the After the fearful result of the revolution and the spot. annihilation of his nearest friends, when he resolved to petition the Tsar for the termination of his exile, he nevertheless humbled himself no more than to admit, in

answer to the direct question of the Tsar, that his sympathies, on the 25th of December, had been on the side of the rebels. Among the few points of the Russian litwhich have become public property is the erary history of future loyalty to the Tsar, the embrace poet's promise

232

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

with which, the Tsar responded to the pledge, and his own promise to Pushkin that he would protect him from the stupidity and chicanery of the censorship by being
himself his censor in the future.

Pushkin,

who was

con-

fronted with the choice between reconciliation with the

Tsar and his system or a lifelong persecution and exile, had not the strength of character that would have made

compromise impossible. His position in society as well as in the literary world was soon assured. The Tsar gave him a pension of six thousand rubles a year, with the task, which bore lightly on the poet, of writing the history of Peter the Great, and, at the same time, appointed him gentleman of the imperial bed-chamber. This appointment was regarded as very slight honor by the poet, who thought the title absurd and degrading for a man of his importance and " high reputation. He took part anew with brio in the life" of St. Petersburg, but was, in fact, secretly and heartily ashamed of the court favor he enjoyed while the friends of his youth were languishing in the casemates of fortresses and in Siberian mines, or living in
exile in foreign capitals. He stupefied this sentiment

by taking refuge in the

feeling of pride at the extent of Eussia and its strength as a military power, which is not uncommon among emi-

nent Eussians.

tation of the Eussian

radical enjoyed the presenof power beating down resistance of every kind which came from the Poles, who had rebelled from their longing for independence, or from the nations of the West who sympathized with them in their love for freedom. It is thus that his " Ode to the

The former

Slanderer

of Eussia/ 7 written in 1831, must be understood. However, he was too unlike his worldly-minded associates,

among whom he was

placed, too thoroughly origi-

HIS

RANK AS A

POET.

233

and sarcastic, too much admired and appreciated by those who understood his genius, not to live environed by irritated envy and hate. It was this hate which gratified itself by defending the advances of the Franco-Dutch adventurer Dantes de Hecheren to his wife, and which thus drove Pushkin to an
nal, too peculiar, proud,

The outburst of anger was, therefore, juswith which the younger generation in Russia, through the voice of Lermontof, greeted the tidings of Pushkin's death in the well-known duel.
early death.
tifiable,
is the first modern person in Eussian poetry could also be expressed, the first illustrious man in Eussia who had the courage to express his personality

Pushkin

or, as it

In contrast to his predecessors, he at fully in poetry. once makes his appearance while a youth, asserting himself without respect for tradition and authority in
literature,

and he has, even when young, the stamp of on his forehead, style and power in his aspect greatness as a poet, which compel his contemporaries to greet him as a chief. There is something manly about him, which even his opponents do not fail to recognize. He belongs
to the

envied, rank.

number of those who are vituperated, assailed, and hated, but whom no one puts in the second The combination of power and grace in his lanbefore.

guage surpassed, in a very high degree, anything that

had been known

To a
quated.

foreigner,

much

The overwhelming

of his poetry now seems antiinfluence of Byron, under

which he ripened, can be seen too plainly in his shorter epic poems. Of the four which he wrote between 1821 and

"The Prisoner in the Caucasus," "The Fountain in Bakhchisarai," "The Brigand-Brothers," and "The Gyp1824,

the first is the most pleasing from its pictures of nanext two from a genuineness in the poet's personal the ture,
sies,"

234

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
is

not affected by the close imitation of of Chillon," and "The Byron's "Giaour," "The Prisoner Corsair." Pushkin's brigands certainly do not feel at all like real brigands, but he has naively allowed his emoemotions, which

"The tional life to find free expression through them. " stands the fresh The wildness with highest. Gypsies which the figure of the gypsy girl appears makes a very
strong impression in comparison with the lack of moral force in Alyeko, who flies from civilization and brings one of its most disgusting vices with him jealousy
:

which regards another being

has once loved as its own property. Probably, this fine poem has given Prosper Merimee, who has translated it, the idea of his " Carmen." masterpiece,
it

whom

Like the Prisoner in the Caucasus, Alyeko suffers from the Byronic spleen and scepticism. The poem " Count Nulin," which assumes a lighter, more frivolous tone, " Beppo." In again reminds us of Byron, especially of 1823, Pushkin, entirely under the influence of the English poet's " Don Juan," began his chief work, " Yevgeni Onyegin," without any plan and to it he constantly
;

returned for seven years, in order to express there a constantly more characteristic poetical delineation of
himself, and, above

raphy than

all, a far more complete autobiogfound in his other poems. Finally, his great epic poem, "Poltava," is evidently inspired by " Byron's Mazeppa," although, regarded in and of itself, it far surpasses the youthful poem of Byron in its power of picturesque description, and in the historically

is

correct representation of the appalling character of the old hetman, which forms a striking contrast to the

romantic stamp Byron has given to the figure. With the exception of short lyrical poems and prose novels, in which Pushkin stands independent, hardly a

PUSHKIN'S POETRY.
poem
of his can be

235

named

for

which he did not have

in the popular style, like the " Song of Oleg " (pronounced AleeokK) and his fairy tales are modernized lilini. Pushkin was one of the
tales in verse

a model.

His

in Eussia who made collections from the epic songs of the people. His only great drama, " Bon's Gudunof," treated in such a masterly manner as to give great promfirst

an imitation of Shakespeare's historical plays, and Macbeth. That this play is widely celebrated and greatly admired, while Prosper Merimee's Les d&buts d'un Aventurier, which with infinitely more originality and truth treats the same theme,
ise, is

especially of Richard III.

the rebellion
often awarded.

of

the false Dmitri,

so far as

is

almost wholly

unknown, shows with how

little justice literary

fame

is

Finally, are concerned, they are not only strongly inspired by Mickiewicz, but two of the best known and most fre-

Pushkin's ballads

quently translated,

"The Three Budrysses" and "Voye-

vods," are verbal translations from the Polish poet, without expressly naming the latter. It may possibly have been stated in some of the earlier editions of

Pushkin's works, but in the edition for the people it is not mentioned, and in Bodenstedt's translation of 1855 the ballads are treated as Pushkin's, as a matter of
course.

Necessarily a vigorous independence permeates the best of these metrical works, and even more the prose
novels in which Pushkin took up and developed the Eussian prose style created by the great historian Karamzin. In so far as Pushkin, himself sick, attains the

high point of presenting the healthy, he possesses, in an extraordinary degree, the characteristic of a great The artist is generally an outlaw, a living irreguartist.
larity,

a watch which goes

now

too fast and

now

too

236
slow,
this

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

may even be said of Shakespeare and Moliere,

is

surprising quality therefore uct is healthy, obedient to law, a watch

but

Ms

that the prod-

So it is with Pushkin. high a degree a child of the St. Petersburg civilization, a victim of society culture, a slave of fashion. As a poet, the more he is developed, constantly the more plainly does he show the nascent Slavic re-action against St. Petersburg and the hatred of all society culture, as well as of the foolish dominion of fashion which forms
the fundamental passion in "Yevgeni Onyegin," and which has its clearest expression when Ony6gin kills his best friend, the young Lensky, in a duel demanded

which goes right. As a man, he was only in too

by the conventionalities of society. Intellectually Pushkin is far behind Byron, in

whom

no satiety exhausts the glowing enthusiasm for freedom, which was his life, and which led him to death, while
Pushkin's youthful faith in freedom, when he came to man's estate, surrendered to a brutal patriotism. But he surpasses Byron in his ability to draw figures. His
fine historical tale,

"The

Captain's Daughter," is the

precursor of Gogol's "Taras Bulba;" and his admirable novels pave the way for the realistic representations of the coming generation in what is called by a Eussian critic " the sentimental, naturalistic style."

How much nearer to my heart is Pushkin's successor, Mikhail Yuryevitch Lermontof! How much deeper, more- intensively, does he act on a receptive mind!
Never
shall I forget the impression his " Hero of Time," in Marmier's French translation, made

Our

upon me as a schoolboy. It was Byronism in its strongest, most delicate essence, the greatness in this Caucasus to which Lermontof was again and again banished, greatness

LEEMONTOF.

237

in nature, greatness and frigidity in the hero's soul. It was the Prometheus of the newer time, chained to the

was courage, modesty, thirst superiority, bound up in bantortured the ishment, eagle's beak of a world-weary by 1 How I loved and admired this passion for scepticism. book, the first which I understood as a grown-up man
rocks of the Caucasus.
It

for pleasure, feeling of

sympathized with the poor Tscherkesserine Bela, with the passionate and morbid Viera, and with
I

How

the

little

Princess Mary,

all
;

those

women who

love

the hard and proud Petch6rin and, in the next place, with the good old Captain Maxim Maximitch, whose

admiring attachment Petchdrin rewards with corresponding coldness! And in the preface to the book, the admirable poem contributed by Marmier, which is so
descriptive of
"

Lermontol
!

Je te rends graces, O Seigneur Du tableau varie d'un tnonde plein de charmes, Du feu des passions et du vide du cceur, Du poison des baisers, de racrete* des larmes,

De la haine qui tue et de amour qui ment, De nos reves trompeurs perdus dans les espaces, De tout, enfin, Mon Dieu! Puise*-je seulement Ne pas longtemps te rendre graces "
1*
!

JBodenstedt has given a description of Lermontof as he saw him, the winter before his death, in a restaurant in Moscow: "A young officer of middle height, with a stately, unconstrained demeanor, and unusual elasticity
in all his movements.

He had

his neckcloth carelessly

was not wholly buttoned it dazzling white linen but under nor up wholly new, could be seen." He stooped down to pick up something which he had dropped, says Bodenstedt, "with a suppletied about the neck, his uniform
1

Comp. Geo. Brandos Soeren Kierkegaard,

:

p. 120.

238
ness as
if all

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the bones in his body were broken, although from his breast and shoulders you would conclude that he had a reasonably strong frame." And he describes

the contrast between the great, sedate, expressive eye, and the mocking expression about the finely cut mouth, paints his cynicism in the use of language, his pleasure
in
^sincere desire for reconciliation

showing himself superior to those present, and his when he had offended
in this description is that
it

any one.

What we admire

not

only vividly recalls Lermontof s own description of the "Hero of our Time," but that every single expression and turn corresponds to the place where Petchdrin
is

introduced in the section,

Maxim Maximitch.

It

reads thus:
;

height, elegant and delicate but his broad shoulders augured a strong frame, and, when you observed, you readily saw that nature had furnished him with power to endure the toils of a
of middle

"He was

roving

life,

the influences of varied climates, the whirl-

winds of life in the world, and the storms of the soul. His velvet jacket, carelessly buttoned, betrayed perfectly white linen, one of the criterions of a man of good taste. When he sat down on a bench, it seemed as if his frame folded itself up, just as if he had no backbone. His whole bearing thus showed a kind of nervous
. .

weakness."

This parallel shows in what a high degree Lermontof had himself in mind in the representation of the person of Petchdrin, and any one familiar with the whole work
'

will easily see how much of Petchdrin there is also found in the distracted leading characters in his two
greatest poems,
l
1

"The Demon" and

"

Ismael-Bey."

Lermontof was born in Moscow.

While yet a boy, he

originally.

Of the Scotch family of Learmont

EXILED FOR EL EOT 0# PUSHKIN.

visited the wild, picturesque

239

mountain regions of the Caucasus, absorbed Byronism, studied at the university in his native city, went through the school for gentle-

men's sons at St. Petersburg, and left it as cornet in the hussar regiment, and while only a young officer was already known for wanton and indecent verse. The

poem Hadji-Abrek, written

in his early youth, is strong

and harsh as a fantasy of Merimee written in verse. In 1837 the twenty-three-years-old poet was for the first time exiled to the Caucasus and for a reason possible only in Russia, for his elegy on Pushkin's death, which simply expressed what everybody felt, the Tsar included, but in which Lermontof had shown the boldness to call on Nicholas for vengeance on the murderer, who was as he afterone of the favorites of the Imperial Court wards in the reign of Napoleon III. was one of the courtiers,

best known for his shameless appearance in the Senate as the leader of Orthodoxy against Sainte-Beuve. At the end of a year Lermontof was pardoned, and

then lived for some time in

St. Petersburg, where he was already highly esteemed as a poet. He published his " Song of the Tsar Ivan Vasilyevitch, of his young chief

of the life guard, and the bold merchant Kalashnikof." Pushkin had already tried his hand at giving the keynote
of the old Inlint, yet only in purely romantic poems. Lermontof reproduced the spirit of the historical and heroic bilini in

&

graceful little epic, sustained in the

most correct style, which breathes the whole spirit of the age of Ivan III., expressed with pure native simplicity. What an artist he was, this demon in human form, who as a boy was man, and who died in his youth after having produced works of undying importance. And at the same time he wrote a host of short lyrical poems, in which his proud soul unreservedly exposes

240

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
Pushkin could
yield, allow himself to

his stubbornness.

be won over, compromise, become a patriot of brutality, His friends disappointed and betrayed he, never! him. He continued faithful in friendship. Others were He continued faithful reconciled to what they hated. The greatness and elevation of to himself in his hate.
his inner being exposed him ever and again to a fall. He continued to experience great emotions and to think
freely.

He was
silent,

surrounded by

spies,

suspected when

he was

accused

when he

He dered, hated, abandoned. and stronger than his fate. He never

to Baal.

spoke, denounced, slanwas always far greater

bowed the knee

him for being a poor patriot. He an"I love my fatherland, but I can do indeed swered: They
reviled
feel

no enthusiasm for barbarity.

I do not value that

fame which is bought with blood, nor that proud confidence which relies on bayonets, and least of all in the
glory of the heroes of antiquity." (The poem "My Fatherland.") And a similar outburst of contempt and
disgust for bloody honor ends the masterly battle-piece " Valerik." How conventional does not Pushkin appear
in comparison
!

The most hidden emotions of Lermontof are revealed in the collection " Little Conceits and Fancies." " They tortured him because he dared to think, stoned him because he dared to speak they could make no answer, and that was the sole cause of their frenzy." "But he did not envy them their decorations, nor their servility by which they were won. They robbed him of everything except his pride and his courage. He was on fire for the beautiful, fought for the true. The
;

others found that to

liberty
is

"be bad and When dangerous. taken from him, long, solitary contemplation

LERMONTOF >S DEATH.

changed

241

Ms hate to boundless contempt. He knew that a single prayer for mercy, a single repentant word, would open to him all paths, but he would rather fall down in
his chains than say the one lying word which could save him. He does not grudge the others their pleasures ; he

allows the others to deplore his condition,* he would rather suffer everything than be like them."

In 1840 Lermontof was a second time banished to the

Caucasus, for a duel with a son of the French minister, the historian of literature, Barante. In principle he was opposed to duels, but, as a nobleman and an officer, he

were honored about him.

tal, his

could not free himself from the laws of society which Shortly after he left the capi-

romance, "The Hero of Our Time," appeared. In this book several characters are found, the prototypes of which could be found in the higher ranks of society of his day. A comrade of Lermontof, Martynof, felt that he was insulted in several places in the book. Probably he thought himself portrayed in the person of Gruzhnitski. When the poet, one day, made a joke about him, the latter embraced the opportunity for a In the duel which followed, Lermontof was challenge. on July 15, 1841, pierced through the heart. A killed, memorial to him was raised at Pyatigorsk, in the

'

which he fell. There was a demon in him, a ruling spirit, hot and cold, good and cruel, wild and tender ; cherishing independence in defiance of everything above him, and to emancipation from everything which would cling to him. Young as Lermontof was, he was often obliged to ask one himself if he was not possessed of an evil spirit, which gained him women, who soon became a burden to him one which laughed disdainfully at him, and mocked him, where others were moved pathetically. If he had
vicinity of
;

242
lived

MPEESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

more than the twenty-seven years which were vouchsafed to him, this question would not have troubled him more. He would then have felt that his powers were sound, his right secure, his nature rich and great,

and that the source of his being was situated beyond the contrast between good and evil. We have from him only the above peerless prose romance and several volumes of poems, in which there are several erasures, which are real gaps, made by the " Stories for censor. 1 Of his Children," we see that this what we, for example, possess of the Demon " is so popular in Russia that the illustrawhich poem tions to it are to be seen on every wall, and that Rubinis in stein has made it the text of one of his operas
('

" there reality so little that, in the opinion of the poet, is not left a trace of the demoniac nature of the spirit." how does not this " Demon " Nevertheless,

high

stand

above

" Vigny's celebrated Eloa." of the romance Caucasian country lives in The whole nature and man saturated with a wild, this poetry,

De

heroic spirit, illuminated by youthful defiance, like lightning in lightning. ISTo one describes so fascinatingly as Lermontof the solitary ride of a young Circassian prince

through the mountain-paths of the Caucasus. No one like him has pictured a battle between the Cossacks and
the Caucasians.
is

Pushkin's battle picture in "Poltava"

:

powerful and pompous it is a poet's fantastic reconstruction of a past. In Lermontof s " Valerick " every little trait has been experienced, seen, and reproduced in so striking and admirable a manner, that no other poem brings us nearer to him. We see him by himself,
1

The same

imbecile censor

who

forbade

all

women

in statuary

which " were not

fully dressed,

representations of that is, from the

chin to the knees."

HIS DESCRIPTIVE POETRY.

243

tents of the

as he lies there before the battle begins, with the whifce camp stretched out before his eyes, while

the Cossack horses, small and thin, stand with hanging heads by his side. We feel the sun burn., catch a glimpse
of the Cossack sentinels, two by two, in the distance, hear the first bullets and the first cries. And the more thoroughly we become acquainted with Lermontof as a man and as an author, the dearer he becomes to us. It is emblematical that his life was a series of slights and exiles in a land where, as he himself has somewhere " no one comes forward, except those who go backsaid, ward." His poetry produces its effect by its strong personal originality. He began, like all Russian authors, under foreign influences, particularly the German romana work of his youth has the title ticism of terror, Mensehen und Leidenschaften ; afterwards, like the Poles and Pushkin, he looks up to Byron as the great poet of the age but, although he dies so very young, younger even than Shelley, his manly and proud face stands out before us with pure and distinct features. He was too much occupied with his own thoughts and his own affairs to be able to unfold the broad Russia to our gaze he was a revolutionary romanticist, but still a romanticist. Shortly after him, or at the same time with him, new influences had begun to exert a force in Russian literature and intellectual life, which were destined to displace him. and Pushkin.
; ;

IV.

WITH
Russia.

Gogol a new inspiration canie to Europe from With him, authors ceased to describe themselves.

He was wholly absorbed by his

subject, and the reader no longer received the impression of the spiritual life of a man of the world and a cosmopolite, but of the national peculiarities of the subject as it was displayed in the soul of

Gogol possessed an extraordinarily which two or three times rose to genius, but which speedily declined, because it was a genius without moral views, which was supported neither by
a genuine Russian.
artistic talent,

culture nor character.

Nikolai Vasilyevitch Gogol (1809-1852) was by birth a

Little Russian, and as a child grew up in the midst of traditions of the bold and eventful Cossack troopers in the

Ukraine.
tor,

His father, an impoverished landed propriepossessed no mean capacities as a narrator and actor, which the son inherited from him. As a boy, he had already displayed a considerable power of observation of human stupidity and weakness. In St. Petersburg, he tried without success the career of an actor, and then that of a government official, when, by the aid of Pushkin, he obtained a position as professor of history in the university. He utterly failed in this, on account of a lack of preparatory knowledge and defective education, author.

and abandoned

it

for the profession of

an

He made his

debut as a humorist,
244

a strong and conii-

GOGOL'S SHORTER STORIES.

245

who used Ms talent on subjects of small dent humorist, compass, taken at first from the country life of Little Kussia, which he knew so thoroughly, and then from the lower, poorer, gay, disorderly life in St. Petersburg. In
these tales, he weaves into his pictures of real
life

That he starts from romanticism is free imagination. shown by such tales as "King of the Spirits of Earth,"

"Notes of a Lunatic/' or "The Nose." This last story, which is essentially a study after E. T. A. Hoffman, is the wildest capriccio on the theme a suddenly lost and then regained nose, an ingenious and humorous story for children of an older growth, but without any deeper
:

meaning.

The

tween Iv&n Ivanovitch and Ivan Mkiforovitch"

humorous, amusing
on*

celebrated history of the "Quarrel beis a

story, well carried

through in

style,

the all-consuming spirit of frivolity and conceit in Little Russia, written in much the same style as Gott.

faults

humorous stories about the and vices of the Swiss. With the historical romance " Taras Bulba," which, in Eussia, is of repute as an heroic epic, Gogol entered upon
fried Keller later wrote his

a new path. The narrative describes the heroic period in the Cossack world during the struggles for liberty
against the Poles. But in spite of the greatness of the style and the realism with which this picture of a wild,
extinct past is painted, the book has the common defects of historical romances. The idealism which, as a rule,

has dictated them weakens their effect. That which is most beautiful in them is not true we feel behind the
;

whole description that he started out with the intention

we notice how the author puts opportuof glorification nities in the way of this heroism, which in the middle of
;

the battle displays itself in a single combat, and fastens upon it the gaze of all.

246

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

Among the longer and shorter stories in the first three volumes of Gogol there is not one which is out and out
worthy of admiration, except "The Cloak." It is the St. Petersburg official who simple story of a poor life has needed a Spanish cloak, which his half through he finally obtains, and from whom it is stolen. De " Vogue quotes a saying of a Russian author, We have " There is this truth all grown out of Gogol's cloak.' in it, that the whole of the modern emotional Russian naturalism descends in a direct line from this little story. Dostoyevski's first book, "Poor Polk," may be named as
tf

having had

its

germ

here.

Nevertheless, even this classical story does not give to the Western European reader the standard of Gogol's high rank as a modern author. That is done only by his play,

"The Reviser," and the

Souls."

first

It is the stinging satire

" Dead part of the romance, and the bold fidelity to

nature, expressed in a vigorous style, which here first betrayed Gogol's great superiority to the circumstances
in
literature

which he was born, and which showed that Russian was ready to launch out into an entirely new field, which demanded boldness and originality to enter, and which this literature silently, as it were, pointed out
to that of several other countries lost in romanticism,

^as

the path which alone emerges from the world of

dreams.

However Aristophanic the satire is in "Dead Souls," the theories on which this comic epic rests are so peculiar that

they appear to the foreign reader like a story from another part of the world or from a remote age. Outside of Russia, even the cunning conceit about which
everything in the story revolves can hardly be understood the idea of the audacious speculator, of buying
:

up dead

serfs,

who were

still

nominally counted as

liv-

"THE REVISER" AND "DEAD SOULS."

ing, carrying

247

them

to

a worthless tract of land, and then

mortgaging them to a bank. The drama, " The Beviser," on the other hand, is perfectly intelligible everywhere, and is as pointed as it is simple in its plot. More than twenty-five years were demanded to raise the Norse drama, under Henrick the German drama has not yet Ibsen, to this height
;

attained

it.

It is said that it was Pushkin who gave Gogol the idea of " The Beviser." If so, he deserves just as much

honor for it as for any finished work of his own of any kind whatever. Tor there is hardly a single play in modern literature which can compare with it in wit.

But it is improbable that Gogol is greatly indebted to Pushkin for this. For a careful examination shows that his two great modern works, "The Beviser" and "Dead
Souls," notwithstanding all the differences required by the forms of drama and romance, are alike in all essential points. In both, the fundamental defects of differ-

ent ranks and types of a whole

community are subjected

to a test, in which all these men are brought in connection with a single person, a rather common but shameless
sort of a being, before

whom

they stand as before a mys-

tery they are not sure of having penetrated. In the play, this person makes, directly or indirectly, unusual

claims upon them, because he is regarded by them as a superior officer sent by the government to inquire into
their conduct,

and whom, with their guilty consciences,

In the they meet with bent backs and full hands. novel, this person makes an unusual proposal to them,
because he offers them a bargain never heard of before, the disposal of their dead souls ; but in both cases he

compels them to unveil their true characters and close their weakest points.

dis-

248

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
else in the

Nowhere

comic literature

known

to

me

is

there found a more vigorous comic denouement than that which is presented just after the disappearance of

Khlestyakof with
ladies,

all

recollections of the

the spoils he has secured and the favors he has enjoyed from the

when the coming of the real reviser is announced, and we feel that a day of judgment is breaking in upon the sinners who have just bought their freedom in the
wrong place. As is well known, the government had serious misgiv" " to appear. Finally ings about allowing The Eeviser Nicholas gave his consent, and at the first performance
burst into such laughter that he called the author to his box and said to him " I have never laughed before as
:

I have this evening."

"I had really aimed at another was Gogol's manly answer. effect," And yet he did not himself comprehend the scope of his comedy it was the product of a satirical genius, not of a conviction. With his deficient culture he was a
;

Eussian patriot in the sense that all the Eussian institutions and peculiarities were good, viz. absolute power, bureaucracy, suppression of all individual independence, and above all Greek Orthodoxy. When he became melancholy with his advancing years, it came over him that his principal satirical works were wicked, traitorous to his fatherland, and he bitterly repented of them. In 1846 he surprised the Eussian reading world by the
:

" Selected publication of his Correspondence," in which he declared war against the civilization of Western

Europe, glorified re-action and obscurantism, nay, furnished a defence for serfdom.

In
first

this condition of mind, to make amends for the " Bead part of Souls," he wrote an unreadable

second part, with purely virtuous persons.

He became

GOGOL'S DEATH.

249

absorbed in theological meditations. His friends in vain sent him abroad to travel to liberate him from his con-

Western Europe. Petersburg to Wiesbaden, from Wiesbaden to Paris and Eome, and undertook a pilgrimceptions of the decadence of the heathen

He

journeyed from

St.

Rome to Jerusalem. The revolution of 1848 him an unconditional supporter and admirer made finally
age from
of the system of government of the Tsar Nicholas and brought him to the highest degree of Orthodox fanaticism.

Four years after he was found one winter day in Moscow, starved to death before a shrine, before which he was accustomed to lie for days in silent prayer. 1 We pay little heed to the fact that a man like Gogol was a Little Eussian. The reason for this is that, as
soon as his son manifested a turn for poetry, his father gave him the decided advice to write only in Great Eussian,

and that Gogol followed his advice.

Almost

all

the authors born in Little Eussia, in view of the contempt with which their language has been treated as a

peasant tongue, good for common people, in which they could only address themselves to a public of schoolteachers and popes, have written in one of the great neighboring languages, Eussian or Polish. The Little

Eussians Padura, Tchaikovski, Groza, have thus in the beginning only written in their mother tongue and later
in Polish.

The same thing is also true of Bogdan Zabski. 2 however much the Polish language is set aside and For,
suppressed, the suppression it endures is not like that is used towards the Little-Eussian tongue, against
"Taras Bulba," "Bead Souls," "St. John's Eve and Other " The Cloak," have been translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. (T. Y. Crowell & Co., N.Y.) Prosper Me'rimee has made " a masterly translation of The Reviser" in French. 2 See G-. Brandes: Indtrykfra Polen, pp. 227.
1

which

Stories," including

250

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
real

which a

war of extermination has by degrees been

finally reached.

been hit harder in this war than Taras Grigorovitch Shevtchenko Gogol's contemporary the greatest poet whom the Little-Russian (1814-1861), ever have produced. While the other poets in people
single person has

No

the Little-Russian dialect have built wholly popular ballads of the Ukraine, appropriated
carried

upon the them and

them

farther

by adding individual
artistic style,

personality,

European

Shevtchenko alone, although he is poet of the people above everything, has raised himself high above the level hitherto attained by
culture,

and

the Little-Russian literature. Shevtchenko was born in a village in the department of Kief, and was the son of a serf peasant who belonged
to a rude

German landed proprietor, Engelhard. At the of eight he had a stepmother who tormented him, age and at eleven he lost his father. He was sent to school
to the parish clerk, a drunken scamp, who flogged the boy and treated him cruelly, for fear that he, by his rapid progress, would soon outshine him in knowledge

The boy ran away, and deprive him of his bread. roamed about homeless for some time, and then came a second time under instruction, this time under a servant
of the church
art

who painted

shrines, in order to learn the

from him. This one also whipped him so inhumanly that he ran away and took a place as a swineherd in the village where he was born. Here his master's attention was drawn to the remarkable swineherd who could read and draw, and he took him into his personal service as bootblack and pipe-cleaner. When he was caught copying pictures with a stolen pencil, on paper also stolen, Engelhard had him punished with the knout; that was at least suitable for a serf. Nevertheless, when

SHEVTCHENKO.
it

251

became certain in many ways that the boy had talent, he sent him to a painting master in St. Petersburg, in hopes of getting the money he laid out on him richly repaid in due time. Here Shevtchenko began to draw with his own hand, awakened the interest of an artist,

who recommended him to Zliukovski. The latter, ready and humane as he always was, took the young man's cause in hand. The first thing to be done was to buy his
freedom. Engelhard asked twenty-five hundred rubles for this " soul/' Zhukovski had his which the
portrait,

court-painter Brylof, who has been previously spoken of, was going to paint, sold by lottery and obtained the sum

needed.
in the

In 1838 the emancipated serf began his studies Academy, and, having served his time, left it in 1844 to go to Little Eussia to find there subjects for,

had begun to write verse. In 1840 he had already published his first collection of lyrical tendency poems, poems, Khobzar (The Singer), which with deep national feeling dwelt on the heroic memories of the Little-Russian people, their sufferings in the past and their hopes for the future. His anxiety for everything which could operate for the breaking-up of the monotony in the empire, manifested
in this collection of poems,

pictures and poems. In the mean time, he

made the government

with-

support from Shevtchenko, and place him under the supervision of the police. The year after, he pub-

draw

all

lished his largest work, the Little-Russian epic poem, "The Haidamaks," and still later several different smaller

poems in the almanacs. In a poem called Caucasus," he commemorated an unfortunate friend of his, Count Balmen, who on account of his liberal views had been sent as a common soldier to the Caucasian army. For
this

"

imprudence Shevtchenko, in spite of his reputation,

252

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
after the
soldier to

was condemned in 1847 to be whipped, and,

execution of that sentence, to go as a

common

He was also most strictly forbidden to write. remained for some time in Orenburg itself, he At first then he took part in an of Orsk fortress the then in at last he was transferred and Lake to Aral, expedition
Orenburg.
;

to fort Nev-Petrovsk
Sea.

on the Asiatic shore of the Caspian

While

still

in Orenburg, he

had again followed

his

irresistible

impulse to write. Thousands of copies of his poems of freedom and vengeance, which then issued from his pen, were distributed in the Ukraine, and,
luring the time of the revolt in 1848, were printed in
Galicia.
It

did not crush him.

second time he was punished by the lash. But in Nev-Petrovsk, whither he

was last taken, and where the garrison was made up of the most worthless dregs of society, while the duty was the most arduous that can be imagined, and where
neither a

human being in whom the poet could confide, nor even a book or newspaper, could be found, he sickened, and slowly grew stupid. When, after the lapse of

admirers in

seven years (1857), his Petersburg, especially Countess Alexis Tolstoi, at last obtained his discharge from the military service, the commander of the fort was able to support
St.

the petition by the statement, " The man is harmless." He went to St. Petersburg, and there wrote, with powers flaming up anew, a bitterly scornful poem, "The Brothers'
Mission," against Russian Panslavism, which would free other people, but cruelly oppress the Slavic races in
Eussia, published several works anonymously, and wrote a short autobiography. He was cured of the uncritical enthusiasm of his

youth for the Cossack part of the Ukraine.

"Hetman-

"THE HAIDAM^KS."
ship

253
Against the

" had lost

its

romantic halo for him.

traditions of its nobility he now placed the idea of the amelioration of the peasants; and against the literary

world of the Slavophiles, he proposed what they forgot

or overlooked,

the severe distress of the people of

which thraldom and ignorance has brought upon them. He died in St. Petersburg in February, 1861, and, according to his wish, he was buried in ELaniof in the Ukraine. However much ill he had personally suffered,
Little Eussia, the misery

however great was the persecution of the Little-Eussian nationality to which he had been a witness, still he did not live to see what would have afflicted him more than any personal torture to which he had been subjected,. the prohibition issued in 1875, and constantly enforced

down

in the Russian

to the present time, against printing or publishing Empire any kind of a book or newspaper
is thus not only the highest and which the race to which he belongs
it is

in the Little-Eussian language.

Shevtchenko's poetry
richest expression

has attained in literature, but

expression.

for the present its last

varied; he wrote political lyrics, idylls, love poems, short sketches of society in verse, and a great historical epic in the spirit of the elder Dumas, which among the modern Slavic epics

His

gifts are

surpassed only by Mickiewicz's incomparable "Pan The Haidamaks " (that is, the Cossack warTadeusz." of the Littleriors) treats of the last independent revolt
is

Eussian popular spirit, the Cossack insurrection of 1770 under G-onta. It was directed against the nobility of Poland, who in those days oppressed the Ukraine in a cruel manner, and who, when it came to the point, were
too

imbecile and disorganized to defend themselves. But the Eussian government, which was alarmed lest the

254

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

determined to interfere.

disturbances should spread within the confines of Eussia, The leader of the Eussian

army, Eomanzov, proposed to Gonta an alliance against the Poles, lured him and the officer next in command
into an ambush,

enemies.

prived of

and immediately delivered them to their Then the Cossack army, which had been deits leaders, was surrounded, captured, and

fully eight thousand men were divided in crowds among the cities of Poland for execution. Gonta and the other
chiefs were broken alive

mon men

on the wheel, and all the comwithout exception were executed in different

ways. They generally preferred suffocation to hanging, on account of its convenience, and to save the trees.

This

is

out of his

the subject which Shevtchenko, without going way for horrors, has presented, describing the

which were

cruelties the oppressed were guilty of as fully as those inflicted upon them, even to the extent that

this historic scene furnishes the

background for the fate

of a pair of lovers.

His little pictures of society, which are usually idyllic and emotional, are not wanting in marks of an energy which sees life as it is at its worst. In one of the best, "The Drowned," he tells the story of a mother and
daughter who lived in a country village, and whose ghosts now on moonlight nights are seen hovering "to and fro over the steppes along the banks of the streams. The mother was a Eussian, proud and sensual, rich and
beautiful, a

young widow, who held a court for her She gave birth to the daughter secretly, and put her out to nurse in a poor Little-Eussian peasant family. The daughter grew up, became an extraordinary beauty, and when the mother finally took her home, she
admirers.

received more attention in the rich house than the mother. When the latter became possessed with jealous

ALEXANUtili IvlNOVITCH HERZEN.

255

hate, she gave her daughter poison, and when the poison did not result in death, she went with her to take a bath, seized her by her long braids of hair, and hurled her out

into the eddies of the stream, where she met with death. There runs through this poem the attempt to show the

coarse and cruel traits of character in the Great-Russian

But race, without sparing the poet's own countrymen. the vices he upbraids them for are the vices of the self-abandonment and cowardice. Thus in oppressed
:

the poem, "Taras's Night/' the singer narrates for the Little-Eussian youth of the country the achievements of The circle listen the great hetman, Taras Triasylo.

But immediately after the lisand dance with happy recklessness. Then the singer shouts to them, " Lie behind the stove ; it is warm and safe I will go to the inn and make about the Poles and Muskovites. Will you go jokes with me ? That you can still do. But you can no l longer have any spirit."
with tears in their eyes.
teners begin to sing
!

The history of Eussian literature counts martyrs The life of Shevtchenko apostles in great number.

is

and a

prolonged martyrdom; among the other great men of Russia who bore their part of the martyrdom is the apostle of activity who first attracted the attention of A long time imprisoned, twice exiled, and posterity.

Alexander Ivdnovitch Herzen (1812the 1870) apostle of the new times for Russia. He is, as a spirit, among the Russians of this century, what the year 1848 ^s among the years of the century.
finally banished,
is

He
i

is

the year 1848 in

human

form, an incarnation of all

Pypin: Geschichte der Slavischen Litteraturen, i. 480. K. B. FranVon Don zur Donau, i. 85-126. Selected pieces of Shevtchenko Jiave been translated into German by J. Cr. Obiest,
zos
:

256

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the ideas which, that year came to the front, and of all the noble struggles for liberty which were then set in motion. Herzen's father was a rich Russian grand seigneur, Yakovlef, a retired captain of the Guard, with a colossal
received his whole culture from his a disciple of Voltaire, who Western Europe, read only French and spoke it better than Russian. His mother was a young lady, the daughter of a tradesman, Louise Herzen, from Stuttgart, who, at the age of seventeen, consented to accompany the rich Russian gentleman who had won her heart to his home in Moscow, and who was always treated as his wife, although no marriage ceremony had taken place between them. The son was born a few months before the French troops marched into Moscow, and it was the great event in his father's life that Napoleon, who was in want of a messenger to the Tsar, sent for the Russian nobleman, who was of old known to his Marshal Mortier, and gave him a letter, "To my brother, the Tsar Alexander," and gave him
fortune,

who had

journeys in

safe conduct out of the burning city. His father developed constantly more

and more into

reserved, aristocratic eccentricity, wholly absorbed in a boundless contempt for the human race.
bitter,

His mother was an unhappy, solitary creature, with In the son, the qualities of parents intellect and heart. and ancestors were so mingled as to amount to genius.

He has written his life, reminiscences in three voland this work ought not to be neglected by any umes, one who takes an interest in the struggle for the develno better insight with the unreservedness of an author of memoirs, Herzen has told, not only the life of his boyhood and youth to his thirty-fifth year, but he has given the description of a superior, inci-

opment

of

modern Russia.

There

is

accessible to us.

With

artistic clearness,

HERZEN'S REMINISCENCES.
sive,

25T

and penetrating observer of the social, political, and literary conditions of Russia between 1812 and 1847, and
yet he has no pity for himself, and when he can he uncovers the humorous side of his misfortunes. But with withering scorn, with an indignant, harrowing contempt for the throne, with a heart which moans and bleeds, he spreads before the eye of the reader the heartrending cruelty which proceeded from the throne of the Tsar, and all that spirit of thraldom, corruption, and stupidity which made such a rule
;

especially of the reign of Nicholas. conditions is also the victim of them

The observer

of the

possible.

never dwells upon the horrible, and yet it is a question if even Dostoyevski's Recollections of the

He

Dead House

with a deeper sense of

in Siberia contain pictures which fill one terror. (See, for example, about

the torture in the prisons.) 1

With Herzen and his friends, modern knowledge and modern philosophy force their way into the Russian Empire. He and his fellow-students were first inspired by the languid liberalism of Lafayette and Benjamin Constant, and then, after the suppression of the Polish revolt of 1831, went through a rigorous course of SaintSimonism. At the age of fifty, Herzen writes in his reminiscences on this subject, "A new age knocked at the door our souls, our hearts were opened to its com*
;

ing.

Saint-Simonism laid the foundation for our con-

and constitutes, even at the present time, an The young men were inspired essential part of them." by the two fundamental ideas the calling of woman to
victions,
:

share in the

common

duties,

and what they

at that time

called "the justification or the honorable satisfaction of the flesh." An idea, says Herzen, to which people with
1

M&noires de .Herzen,

i.

290 and following.

258

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

an imagination which reminds one of the imagination of lewd monks have wanted to give a low and cynical interin reality, only means dethronepretation, but which, ment of Christianity, the religion of beauty and life, which supplanted the religion of asceticism and death. 1 Erom the fact that some other students, with whom this group of young men had no connection, late one evening, at the instance of a member of the secret police, had sung a song in which some abusive language could be taken as pointing at the Tsar, Herzen, his friend and late companion-in-arms the poet Ogaref, and many others equally innocent, were first kept in prison for months, and then sent away. Herzen was first exiled to Vyatka, on the Siberian frontier, where he happened to fall under a governor by the name of Tiufayef, who most resembled a wild and malignant beast, and afterwards to Vladimir, only a day's journey from Moscow. On the way to his exile, he became thoroughly acquainted with the
situation in its worst aspects, among other things falling in with a convoy of eight wagon-loads of small Jewish boys, the most of them between eight

Russian

and ten years of age, who were sent to military colonies ; a third part of them had already died on the way. 2 From Vladimir, Herzen eloped with his young cousin? whom he had loved for many years, and whom they had endeavored to prevent from marrying him. In her society, he passed the fifth and last year of his exile, and
lived happily for many years, until their marriage relations came to a tragic end in London. George Herwegh
here, for a short time, won the heart of the young Russian j but she died of a broken heart in consequence of her infidelity to her first and, in reality, her only love.
1

MSmoires de Herzen, i. 236. Qonrp. G. Brandos: Indtrykfra Polen, p. 67.

HERZEN'S DEVELOPMENT.

259

letter of Turgenief to Saltykof, dated January 19, 1876, shows that there exists an imprinted account, written by Herzen, of the bitterest catastrophe of his life.

his return to Moscow, Herzen found the youth with Hegel's philosophy. When he saw that he was regarded as outside of agitations, he devoted himself to the encyclopaedia, logic, the science of phenomena, sesthetics studied and canvassed them paragraph by paragraph; at last, he devoured every single Hegelian writing he could obtain, from the nearest disciples of Hegel to the liberal Hegelian Arnold Huges. Herzen interpreted the teachings of the master entirely in the
filled
;

On

young Hegelians. While others, as, for the instance, great critic Byelinski, Herzen's intimate friend, accepted in a purely conservative spirit the wellknown sentence from the preface to the " Philosophy of the Bight," " That which is reasonable is real, and that which is real is reasonable," so that they only found in it the justification of the Russian absolute power, with all the crimes which flourished in its bosom, Herzen saw
spirit

of the

it only the simple expression of the principle of the for that adequate cause, broke with Byelinski, until he matter very soon his on his and, gave up quietism,

in

found in HegeFs philosophy an algebra of revolution, which freed the spirit by not leaving one stone upon another of the Christian world of tradition. And when Ogaref brought him ITeuerbaeh's " Spirit of Christianity," on reading this work, he felt himself at once
side,

And in his first philosophical wholly emancipated. enthusiasm he wrote the series of articles which he published in 1842, with the title, "Dilettantism in Knowledge," by Iskander (that is, Alexander). Shortly before Herzen's return from exile, Tschaadayef had published the celebrated "Philosophical Let-

260

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

ters" about the insignificance of Bussia to European

coming too late. To punish him and treated as insane by the declared was he for this, "the Tsar. Lessing of Russia," already far Byelinski,
culture, its everlasting

gone in consumption, which carried him off when only thirty-eight years old, now began his impassioned literary campaign with the official world and the official When "The Annals of our Fatherland," literature. appeared on the 25th of each month, the whole cultured youth were in a fever to get hold of the thick volume. They were continually asking during the whole as soon forenoon, in the cafes, if the number had come as it arrived, they tore it open with the question, "Is " If there anything of Byelinski's in it ? only one page was found of his, it was devoured eagerly and debated in
;

endless discussions.

sarcasm, his sneers, his unmaskings and people flocked together where he swung his whip, as if to see an execution. Almost on his death-bed, he attacked his disciple Gogol for his
fire,

His

his

enchained

all,

As the disciple of the culture of back-sliding. cut down pedants and Slavophiles. he Europe,

Western

he died, his friends were forbidden to place an The newspapers were forbidden to mention his name, and the prohibition has remained in
epitaph at his grave.
force for full eighteen years. It fell to Herzen's lot to carry Byelinski's literary purification and reformation into the political arena.

When

He

was admirably constituted for such a contest, which was to endure for many years. He was not spindling and weak like Ms friend, but large and broad-shouldered, a powerful frame, and not poor and therefore dependent, but after his father's death he was in possession of what, even by Eussian standards, would be regarded as a large

HERZEN>S LITERARY WORK.

fortune.

261
lie

Tims,

all

that was needed was that

should

obtain leave to pass over the Eussian frontier, so that, with solid ground under his feet, he could use his great talent as a writer in shaking up Russia in all its joints.

He was

the creator of a public sentiment in the Rusfirst

sian Empire.

In Paris, where he

took refuge, he formed a

league with the party of the French socialists and the Polish emigrants. What he felt when the great storm of insurrection burst over Europe, and when one popu-

was suppressed, all the promises of kings and pope were broken, and contra-revolutions were victorious along the whole line, is shown by his
lar revolt after another

two books, written in the most fascinating style, " From the Other Side of the Stream," and " Letters from Italy and France." They were published anonymously in 1850, and first in German, having been translated by Frederick Kapp, who subsequently became the well known German-American historian, and who at that time was a tutor in Herzen's house. It is sixteen years since I read these books, and they are not now at hand, but
the impression is as vivid now as when I first read them. Never has manly political enthusiasm found a more ele-

gant or more lucid expression, and never have disappointment and contempt spoken in more energetic language. From Paris Herzen went to London, and there, during the Crimean War, established his liberal "Russian Press," and published in London from 1857 to 1865, and in Geneva from 1865 to 1869, his celebrated weekly paper, KoloTcoly whose overwhelming influence -in Russia has keen previously spoken of, as well as the manner in which this influence was destroyed by Katkof The same year in which Alexander Herzen went into exile, he published a novel, which is still worth reading,
.

262

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

less for its literary value than on account of the movements to which it gave rise in Russia. It is the romance

"Who

is

to

Blame?"

(1847),

an indirect attack on

marriage as an institution, dedicated to the author's " The book is written withwife "with hearty devotion. out any regular plot, with a long-winded introductory historical sketch, several digressions, and without style
;

but the characters are living as in the better novels of George Sand. The theme is substantially as follows The peaceful, happy marriage between the calm and ami:

and his elegant wife Liubonka the young, talented but idle man of the world, Beltof, comes within the sphere of these two married people. Without any guilt on the part of either,
able teacher Kruziferski
is

disturbed

when

Beltof and Liubonka are irresistibly attracted to each other, understand each other, need each other, and can-

not do without each other.

They

strive to

conquer their
;

he passion, but Beltof tears himself away in vain drags himself off on journeys to no purpose, Liubonka
wastes away, Kruziferski takes to drink and is ruined. 1 The idea embodied in this book grew luxuriantly,
since, in 1863, the man who may be regarded as Herzen's great intellectual heir, and for a time as inheritor of his influence, published his celebrated novel, "What is to " be

done ?

Nikolai G-avrilovitch Tchernuishevski was born in 1829, the son of a pope in Saratof on the Volga, and was first
destined for the clergy, but soon gave up theology for the study of ancient and modern languages, and, in 1846, began his career as a philologist in the university
of St. Petersburg. After passing his examinations, he became Professer of Literature in the Cadet School in
1

Vom andern
Wer
ist

1850.

Ufer; Briefe au$ Italien und Frankreich, Scfiuld? Eeclam's Bibliothek.

Hamburg,

TCHEKNUISHEVSKL
St.

263

mother,

Petersburg, but soon after, at the desire of his who could not bear to be separated from him,

he accepted a position as teacher in the grammar school in his native town. Here he was married at the age of
twenty-two. After his mother's death in 1853, he returned to the capital, wrote a thesis on the relations of art to nature, but in his oral defence gave utterance to such radical ideas that the minister of education refused

him his diploma. From 1853 to 1862 he wrote for ISTiekrasof s newspaper, Sovremennik, a large number of articles and discusJ

sions of an economical, critical, and historical character, which, from their way of treating the problems, and by their ironic, satirical tone, awakened the greatest attention.

Tchernuishevski presented and criticised John Stuart Mill's " Political Economy," the aesthetic criticism of the Gogolian period, the party quarrels in France

during the Restoration, Lessing and Ms age, etc., treated with the same superiority subjects of widely different kinds, but had his principal interests centred on the

ment

the arrangesolution of certain great social problems, of the relations between the sexes, the abolition

of serfdom, the abrogation of all individual property in land for the good of the community. Everything that he wrote was passed by the censor.

But

in July, 1862, to the astonishment of all, Tchernuishevski was arrested, and kept in custody in the PetroPavlovsk prison, on the island of Keva, until May, 1864. On the 24th of May, 1864, about eight o'clock in the

morning, in a pouring rain, a great crowd of men was collected in St. Petersburg around a scaffold with a pillory surrounded by soldiers in a hollow square. Presently the wagon which was expected drove up, escorted

by gendarmes on horseback, and out of

it

alighted first

264

IMPRESSION'S OF RUSSIA.

a general and then a pale man, dressed as a civilian. The latter ascended the scaffold, where two men with

him by the arms, hung a black plate over his sentence was written in white which on his neck, of the executioners took his hat off one Then letters. his head so that he should listen reverently to what was
red caps took
to be read to him.

It was long enough closely six hundred lines; it took more over printed, than an hour to read. But it would be difficult to find a legal document with less foundation for its charges.
It

was his indictment.

it
fills

"Several circumstances," it says, "have pointed out to the government the said Tchernuishevski as an agitator These circumstances are dangerous to the State."
:

first, an anonymous letter sent to the Third Section (the This letter, which is quoted at length secret police). with all its vulgarity and stupidity, calls upon the gov-

ernment to free the people from Tchernuishevski. In the second place, an intercepted letter from the exile Alexander Herzeu, in which is found, " We intend to publish Sovremennik here or in London with Tchernuishevski." For these two things Tchernuishevski was imprisoned. Now follows in the indictment the list of the papers "belonging to the case," that is, a letter from the accused to his wife, in which he says that they both belong to history, so that their names will be known for centuries, and the production of a newspaper article

from 1853, which was now in 1862 found to be dangerous.

In

all this,

however, there

is

no foundation for any

But while the accused is in prison, legal proceedings. in March, 1863, they were fortunate enough in the Third
Section to obtain possession of a letter from a certain Kostomarof to one of his friends, in, which it is said

TCHEENUISHEVSEP S INDICTMENT.
that " Tchernuishevski
serfs."

265

had written the appeal to the

As proof

found in
observe,

of the truth of this contention, a note the pocket of Kostomarof is read, which,
in

was when he had already been a long time

prison, sentenced, ready to be sent away to exile, and in which he is asked to correct a misprint. The note is " Tcher." The secretaries of the

signed

Senate, before

whom
find

this letter

was

laid,

were not

able, it is true, to

any resemblance to Tchernuishevski's handwriting

when the letters are taken separately, twelve of the twenty-five letters resemble his to a certain extent but the Senate in pleno found the resemblance striking. With incredible ease it is said, in the next place, that a copy of Tchernuishevski's proclamation to the peasants has been found in the possession of Kostomarof, although' no original is forthas a whole, even admitting that,
;

coming, and although the style bears no resemblance to

that of the great author. And, in conclusion, a letter is read, full of scratches and erasures, which comes from

the Third Section, and which is presumed to be from the accused, since it is signed " Tsch," and directed to one Alexis Nikolayevitch, who is presumed to be the

poet Pleshcheyef, whose Christian name has the same sound. Tchernuishevski firmly denied having written
this letter, which, moreover,

would have been entirely

innocent in any other place than Russia and modern Germany. Pleshcheyef denied before the court not less
firmly that he had received it ; but they were not It was regarded as a proof of the attempt of believed. the accused to stir up the serfs, and his culpability is

increased

by

his obstinate denial.

the guilty of participation in a conspiracy for destruction of the present political arrangements, N. G. Tchernuishevski, thirty-five years old, is sentenced to

"As

266

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

fourteen years hard labor in the mines, and then to

exile to Siberia for life."

Immediately after it was announced to him that the Tsar in his mercy has commuted the fourteen years hard labor to seven. Then he received an order to kneel
down.

him

a sword over his head, and chained some minutes to the pillory. A bouquet of The bouquets which flowers falls down at his feet. He is follow are thrown into the air by the police. * taken to the wagon, and vanishes. He vanished, never more to be seen among those who admired him, and who were indebted to him for the best

They broke

for

part of their intellectual culture. He passed his seven years among the criminals in the mines underground,

then fifteen years more in solitary exile in one of the most distant points of Siberia, without books, without men with whom he could exchange ideas, cut off from
all

at last

A year or two since they found the prisoner sufficiently subdued by his martyrdom of more than twenty years. They transferred him to a milder place of banishment, and allowed
communion with Europe.

him

tions

to occupy himself in a harmless and similar things.

is

manner by

transla-

now and then visited there by some faithful admirers, who dare to expose themselves to the odium "Xhich follows upon such visits and I know of nothing
j

He

morV^significant of the contentment into which public opinion^as sunk in Russia, than the satisfaction with

which thost^who have seen him express their impressions on ther r return " Tchernuishevski is well,"
:

they

say generally ;^ he
1

is

not entirely broken

down

intel-

L'economiepolitt'vuejuge'epar le science. Critique &es principes John Stuart Mill par N. TschernuisclievsM. Bruxelles, 1874, i.-xxxvi'.v
d'economiepolitique', de,

A VITAL

QUESTION.

267

It lias gone lectually; he translates from the German." so far in Russia that when a genius, who was the honor of the nation and the pride of the youth, after having

been abused for a quarter of a century with the coarsest cruelty, has, nevertheless, not become an idiot, they then do not think much more of what has happened they feel entirely satisfied with the result, feel about as if they had made a bet with the government, and, in all probability, had won it. Even one who is not competent to judge of the value of Tchernuishevski's economical work will read with pleasure his critical treatise on Mill's " Political Economy."
\

The urbanity

of the tone, the crystal clearness of his

description, and the richness of his pertinent psychoBut the threelogical observations, enchain an outsider. volume novel of Tchernuishevski, which was written in

prison (finished April 4, 1863), "What is to be done?" has had a far more important influence. 1 It is not that the book is a fine poetical production,

nor even poetical at

all in

the true sense of the word.

It is highly intellectual and liberal, a thorough and free development of the man's views of life, so far as he

could develop them in a manuscript which must pass under the inspection of the prison authorities and of the

could reach the printing-office. to the reader, a radiant good humor pervades the book, which only towards the end
censor before
it

Strange as

it

may seem

becomes long-winded and tiresome, partly because everything must be expressed so indirectly, frequently in a
far-fetched manner, partly because the poor prisoner -at the last felt far too great need of light and air and free-

dom and men.

1

1883).

In French, Que Faire ? In German, Was Thvn ? (Brockbaus, Vital Question " (T. Y. Crowell & Co.). In English,
'

268

tMP&ESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

The work was intended and was received as a gospel It was intended to point the for the modern Eussia.
out of the conflicts which are occasioned in one direction by the regulation -of the sexual relations, and in another direction by the whole economical disorder of " What is to be done ? " is a sort of a bastard society.

way

between a novel and a treatise on political economy it descends on the female side from George Sand and on the male from Karl Marx. Books of this kind have apparently been written In tendency it has a resemblance to the before.
;

" Jacques of George Sand, in its story it also reminds one strongly of a much older romance, namely Jean Paul Eichter's Leben, Tod und Mhrestand des Armenadvo-

"

katen Siebenkas. But still there is no book of this kind in the literature of the world, and no work in the whole Russian literature is more Eussian. The argument can be stated in a few lines The medical student Lopukhdf marries Viera Pavlovna for love.
:

They live happily together for a long* time. After the lapse of some years she falls in love with his comrade, Kirsdnof. Lopukh6f, with whose notions it does not
agree to stand in the way of two lovers, apparently commits suicide and disappears; he travels under another name to America, returns home some years later, marries another woman, and continues to live in friendly rela-

and her husband. There are many most excellently drawn subsidiary characters, who take part in the story, who are grouped around the leading persons. The form of the narrative
tions to his former wife

personal to the highest degree. Every moment the author addresses himself directly to the reader, humoris

ously makes the ordinary excitement of a novel impossible, by telling far in advance everything which is going

A TREATISE ON

SOCIALISM.

269

to happen, pokes fun at the reader's consternation at the immorality of the narrator, telling him that it is even far greater than it appears to be. But in truth this is

not at

all a story, but is in all respects a treatise on social morals. Much which wearies a modern reader,

the description of Yiera's sewing establishment, where every sewing-girl shares in the receipts, and much more
of the same kind, is for Tchernuishevski only the means of proclaiming that socialism which he regards as right

and promising for the future.

ideals directly.

He
all

careful reading will

cannot proclaim his show that all the

Eussian ideas of progress and

are contained in this book.

the Eussian Utopias

On
this.

a hasty reading one understands nothing at all of The book was not written for the superficial

reader.

By

an

artistic

circumlocution the poor prisoner

must inform the reader of his ideas of how the world of the future will come to look. When he cannot do it any other way, he lets his heroine fall asleep and tells us her dreams in regular dream pictures, with symbolical

meaning in great poetical visions, the description of which sometimes fills over thirty pages in succession. Thus everything is combined in this book which is most thoroughly characteristic of Russia: the broadly constituted nature, the proud frankness, and the radical disposition to go to the end of the rope strong influences from foreign lands, and independent originality, lively sense of reality down to the dry prose and pene;

trating fanatical mysticism. When the foreigner in Eussia, after repeatedly asking if this or that person is prominent, gifted, remarkably
interesting, or the like, and after continually receiving a negative answer, at last demands impatiently, "Who,

then, in the whole world

is

gifted ?

" then

it

will

happen

270
to

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

him again and again to receive from the most differ" ent directions the melancholy answer, Tchernuishevski was." He will understand this answer when he has read attentively all that is accessible from the pen of this do not even dare to print great man, whose name they
in Eussia.

Y.

OCTOBER 28, 1818, there was born in the department of Orel, in an old noble (originally Tatar) family, the man to whom, down to the very latest time, the cultured
classes in the

German and Latin

countries are indebted

for almost all they races of our day.

know

of the inner life of the Slavic

earlier Russian author has been read in Europe Ivan Sergeyevitch Turgenief ; he is to be regarded rather as a cosmopolitan than as a Russian author. He opened up to the European public a new world of subjects, but he did not need the collateral interest which his work gained for him thereby for it is the artist and not the describer of culture which Europe has admired in him. Although he has hardly been read out of his own country in his own .language, he has everywhere, even in those countries which possess the most taste, been placed on a level with the best authors of the land. He has been read everywhere in translations, which

No

like

necessarily distort or diminish the impression of his superiority; but the perfection of his originality asserted itself so strongly in the various more or less happy forms
in

which his books were cast that any want of delicacy and clearness was overlooked. Great authors, as a rule, work most effectively through their style, because by this they come into personal contact with the reader. Turgenief made a very deep impression, although the reader who was not a Russian could appreciate only the
271

272

IMPRESSIONS OP RUSSIA.

Ms style, and could scarcely imagine what elegance he was wont to express himself, and would be just as far from understanding his allusion's as from being able to compare his interpretation and description of persons and ways of thinking in Eussia with the reality from which they were taken. Turgenief conquered in the artistic race, although he was heavily handicapped he was triumphant in the great arena, although he wielded a sword without a point. For the cultured people of Western Europe, he has
coarser qualities of
with,
;

peopled the great empire of the East with human beings of the present time. Thanks to him, we know the spiritual characteristics of its

men and women.

Although

in the vigor of his age he left Eussia, never again to dwell in his native land, he has never described anything
else than the inhabitants of this country, and Germans and Frenchmen only as half Eussianized or even only in

He only presents to us beings with whose peculiarities he was familiar from his youth. That gradually, during his long exile and the estrangement which existed between the Slavophile and European Eussians, it came to be regarded as proper, in certain Eussian circles, to depreciate his knowledge of
contact with Eussians.
his fatherland,

and treat him as a kind of Western European, was natural. But, if he had been a degree less cosmopolitan, he certainly would never have made
into the whole civilized world as he has done. has given pictures from the forest and the steppes, from spring and autumn, from all ranks and classes of

his

way

He

He has society, and all grades of culture, in Eussia. drawn the serf and th.e princess, the peasant and the proprietor, and the student the young girl who is pure soul, endowed with the finest Slavic charms, and the
;

cold, beautiful, egotistical coquette,

(

who

in his

hands

TURGENIEF AETIST AND POET.

273

seems to be more irresponsible in her heartlessness than anywhere else. He has given a rich psychology of a whole human race, and has given it with a rnind greatly excited, but yet so that his mental agitations do not in

any way disturb the transparent clearness of the descriptions.

Of
he
is

all

the prose writers of Bussia, Turgenief

Possibly,
it

is

the

depends upon has lived most in foreign for if his long residence in France has not inlands creased the stock of poetry which he brought with him from his home, yet he has plainly learned there the art of setting his pictures in frame and glass.
the one of those

greatest artist.

the. fact that

who

broad,

Turgenief s
books.

melancholy flows through therefore also through his and thoughts, However sober and impersonal his style is, and

deep wave of

although he hardly ever inserts poems in his novels and romances, still his general narrative makes a lyrical There is so much feeling condensed in impression.

a peculiar, them, and this feeling is invariably sadness, wonderful sadness without a touch of sentimentality.
Turgenief never expresses himself wholly emotionally; he works with restrained emotion but no Western European is sad as he is. The great melancholy authors of the Latin races, like Leopard! or Flaubert, have harsh, firm
;

humorous

the German sadness is glaringly or The melancholy sentimental. ,or pathetic of Turgenief is, in its general form, that of the Slavic
outlines in their style
;

races in their weakness

direct line
ballads.

and sorrow, which comes In a from the melancholy in the Slavic popular

But with Turgenief

All the later Eussian poets of rank are melancholy. it is the melancholy of the thinker
that all the ideals of the

who has understood

human

274
race

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

justice, reason, supreme goodness, happiness are a matter of indifference to nature, and never assert " themselves by their own spiritual power. In Senilia," he has represented Nature as a woman, sitting clad in

wide green
Oh,

kirtle, in

the middle of a hall in the depths

asks, what art thou the future fate of the human
!

of the earth, lost in meditation. ' "' our common mother

he

'

thinking of?
race ?
Is it

Is it on on the necessary conditions for

its

reach-

ing the highest possible perfection, the greatest possible

happiness ?
" The

'

slowly turns her dark, piercing, dreadful towards me; her lips half opened and I heard a eyes voice which rang as when iron comes in contact with
iron.

woman

"*I
flea

am

thinking

how

I can give the muscles of the

it can more easily escape from the persecutions of its enemies. There is no equilibrium between the attack and defence; it must be

greater

power so that

restored.

of ?

"'What!' stammered I, But we, the human

'is it

race,

are

that you are thinking we not your chil-

" She wrinkled her eyebrows imperceptibly. "'All animals are my children/ said she; 'I care equally for them all, and I exterminate them all in the

same manner.' Here you have

?'

his character of melancholy.

it is

When

<rOgol is melancholy,

indignant ; when Dostoyevski is so, it depends upon the fact that he is dissolved in sympathy with the ignorant and the obscure, with the saint-like, noble, and pure of heart, and almost

because he

is

even more with sinners both male and female

Tolstoi's

^lancholy has
"

its root in his religious fatalism.

Tux-

geaief alone

is

a philosopher

HIS
It will also

FREEDOM FROM MYSTICISM.

275

be found that the other great poets have had a turning-point in their lives when they have been seized by a religions excitement which has given a new

stamp
tion a

to their career, according to their

new

consecration and a

new

interpretaearnestness, but

own

also operates greatly to hamper and diminish their poetic descriptive powers, nay, generally a little sooner or later it entirely destroys their poetic gifts.

which

This turning-point conies in some cases from an inde-

pendent conversion, and in others when they are filled with a national or a national religious mysticism. The disposition to such mysticism makes its appearance in
this century as a

common

Slavic trait.

It attacked in

the Polish literature, in the forties, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Krasinski, Zaleski, and others when Towianski and other

dreamers made their influence

felt.

It

has prevailed

in Bussian literature, in different forms, with men of so great ability as G-ogol and Dostoyevski, and manifests
itself, last

of

all,

with Tolstoi

as it

would seem, under

the influence of Zhutayef.

Only for Turgenief, with his quiet contemplation,

even religious enthusiasm is a theme like any otherr ;; and "The Love although he, too, in "Clara Militch

Song

of the

mystical. his equilibrium.

He

Conquering Lovers," pays his tribute to the treats religious enthusiasm without losing

We

recall, for

instance, his

SopMe

Vladimirovna from " A Strange Story," the young girl of good family, who accompanies a wandering saint out into the wide world. His melancholy, therefore, is less religious than philosophical but it is that of the patriot who has become a In spite of all his seeming cosmopolitanism, pessimist. he was a patriot, but a patriot who mourned over his
;

fatherland and despaired of

it.

He was

attacked for

276
*

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

this.

Dostoyevski tried to make him ridiculous in the Karnmsinof in " The Possessed." He did not, of figure indeed? lack confidence in the future of his fatherland
;

language and certain parts of its literature so much that he inferred therefrom what abilities the people must possess who had produced such results.

he admired

its

But he did not share in the enthusiasm of his more simple and ignorant countrymen for the Russian people as
such.

He

did not find their past history great,

Turgenief somewhere describes his dejection when at one of the great world's exhibitions he got an exact
perception of

how

insignificant

Russia's contribution

was to industrial inventions, and he added bitterly, "We have invented nothing but the knout," His career as an author shows that the history of the more recent development of his country was far from inspiring him with confidence, Iv$n Turgenief lost his father early (1834), Col. Sergei Nikolayevitch (of that Turgenief family which had already given two distinguished men to Russia), and stiffened from the imperious and cold-hearted rule of But he was brought up in country quiet, his mother. on the family estate Spasskoye, and at an early age felt the most vital love for nature as well as the most passionate hatred to serfdom, whose unhappy results were
eoHstantly before him. Ha studied first at the University of Moscow and fbett at that of St. Petersburg, travelled in 1838 to
fr

.OB philosophy

and Bakunin listened to lecand history at the University of (by Michelet, Werder, Ranke, and others). After years' residence in foreign lands he returned as a supporter of Western European liberal was given a position in the department of
like Katk<5f

and

"RECOLLECTIONS OF A HUNTSMAN."

27V7

the Minister of the Interior, but retired from the office at the end of a year, to live the free life of a Russian

landed proprietor and huntsman. He published his first hunting stories in 1847 then followed from 1847 to 1851 the others, which in 1852 appeared collected as "Recollections of a Huntsman," and
;

created an epoch-making sensation* He at first began with things in verse like Byronisms and romanticisms, It was in this unsuccessful and without originality. first period that Alexander Herzen, as has been told me by an eye-witness, called him so affected that he could not eat without affectation. Byelinski tore him loose from Byron, Heine, and the romanticists, and brought

him

into the right path.

expressed what he knew thoroughly: Russian nature and the life of the Russian people, and gave
his hatred of serfdom expression in the

He

the censor would allow.

effect

forms which This certainly had a beneficial

on his

talent,

that

was pre-eminent,

aristocratic,

developed, necessarily, everything and discreet in it. If

he sometimes, in his early youth, had an inclination to

the pathetic, to declamation, to glaring effects, pronounced it could have been under no circumstances,
'

then the relation to the censor must have suppressed it. To awaken a sympathy for the serfs, to show the lawlessness in which they passed their lives, and give pictures of the roughness which abused them even to death,

>

and that without making use of the whip or knout,

relates incidents in his life as

he

a sportsman, visits to the landed proprietors or to the physicians, and among these, now and then, little stories of the miller's wife who, as a girl, had been guilty of a black ingratitude in wishing
:

to marry, although her angelic mistress could not endure

married servants, and who, when she would not give up

278

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

her lover, was punished by a forced marriage to another, after having seen her Petruchklia put into the army. Or
there
is

the story of the deaf and

dumb

but muscular

man-servant Gerassiin, whose sweetheart his gracious mistress married to a drunkard for her own amusement, and who was compelled to drown his dog, a little, emaciated puppy, Mumu, company in the world,
his
last

consolation and sole

because sometimes his barking irritated his mistress when, after too great indulgence at her meals, she was lying sleepless. Both stories are told without comment, with no criti-

cism of the events

manifested
'

the hatred of brutality which was

expressed only in irony, and this irony, again, disappears in the pervading sadness. What makes Turgenief s vein so rich and peculiar is
is
is at once a pessimist and a philanthropist that he loved the race of which he thought so poorly and esteemed so lightly. But he had seen altogether too much go wrong and miscarry in Russia to be able to narrate any other incidents than those with unhappy or sad results. To him, a love story is not genuine Russian if it does not have an
;

that he

unhappy

issue in consequence of the inconstancy of the

man

or the coldness of the

woman.

An

undertaking

does not seem to

to be genuine Russian unless it is beyond the capacity of him who attempts it, and falls through in consequence of the insusceptibility of those

him

7
,

it was to be carried through. But still cannot refrain from dwelling again and again on vacilFor him, l$feing love and fruitless struggles in Russia. tike land of Russia, where everything comes to grief, is a

for whose sake

Jase

land of general shipwreck.

'which awakens and
is

And

his chief emotion is one

mingled with pain in the spectator <$ a shipwreck, in which the latter must give the sufr

HIS ARTISTIC SUPERIORITY.

ferers themselves the greatest part of the blame.
is

279
There

a strong and quiet emotion which is always softened in its expression. It is seldom that a great and productive author has made so little noise as he.

something aristocratic in this noble and simIt is not that, like Lord Byron or Prince Ptickler, he has impressed the marks of superiority upon his works by any external stamp. But the impression forces itself upon us that the author has inherited his intellectual refinement, and has always lived in the best He was a man of the world, and we feel behind society. works the experience in life of a man of the world, his
is

There

ple attitude.

which the German authors generally

lack.

But

this ex-

perience has neither made him cynical, like so French authors, nor given to moralizing, like so
English.

many many

Although he has never shown any lack of good breeding in his style, still his tone is not the tone of the world. Even his contempt is not a cold contempt. There is always a soul in his voice.

It is difficult to say briefly and precisely what it is which makes Turgenief an artist of the first rank. We might almost say that it is because his style is so genuine. But even this word needs an explanation. The
fact that he possesses in the highest degree the quality of a true poet, of being able to create men who live, What makes his artistic superiority so is not all

perceptible is the harmony which the reader traces between the author's conception of the person who is

which

described, his opinion of him, and also the impression is made upon him as well as upon the reader by

that person.

The point is here. The relation of the author to his own creations is such that every weakness which he has
3,8

an

artist or as a

man must be exposed

to the

280

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

The author may have many and rare gifts, but if he calls not worthy of admirar upon us to admire that -which is
tion, or if

he would extort from us admiration for a man, or sympathy with a woman, or enthusiasm for an act, without our feeling that there is any occasion for those sentiments, then he has injured and weakened himself. When the author of a novel, whose company we have kept for a long time with pleasure, suddenly shows himself less critical or

more emotional or morally more lax

than we are, then his descriptions lose their point for us. If he allows a person to appear as irresistibly winning, without our finding him fascinating if he draws a man
;

as

more
;

be

gifted or even more witty than he seems to ps to if he explains his conduct by a magnanimity we
;

have never met with, and in this case do not believe in if he defies us by arbitrary, immature judgments, or disthen turbs us by coldness, or irritates us by moralizing there steals in upon the reader more and more a feeling It is as if you heard a false note of disappointing art. and even if the music is afterwards correct, the disagreeWhat reader of able impression lingers in the mind. or or Auerbach to Balzac, Dickens, speak only of the not dead has this great 'experienced disagreeable imWhen Balzac becomes enthusiastic over vulpression garity, or Dickens childishly pathetic, or Auerbach affectedly simple, the reader feels that he is in the gresence of the untrue, the abortive, and is taken $S$dk. Nothing abortive is ever met with in Turgeniel
:
.

The
;;3jjfo

subjects he has selected are all the most difficult, refuses to be interested in romantic characters and

and he no less refuses the attraop^^tevellous adventures, lions of impurity. There seldom or never happens anya catastrophe like the ;; fling unusual in his books l$ffing-down of a house at the close of the "King Lear
'

'

A CORRESPONDENCE.

281

and although he of the Steppe" is purely exceptional does not go out of his way on account of low and vile
would
incidents which no English novelist yet he does not dwell upon the obscene, as those authors who once for all have disregarded concharacters, or of
relate,

As an artist*" he was a decided realist, but a modest realist. His chief domain a^ a narrator is the poor, the weak, the inconstant and untrustworthy, the superfluous and
ventionality are so often tempted to do.
'the

abandoned.
does not, like Dostoyevski, describe the misfortune is externally palpable, nor the poverty, the rough-

He
which

ness, the corruption, the crime, nor, above all, the misdescribes fortune, which can be seen at a distance.

He

the misfortune which avoids publicity, and he is especially the author for those who have submitted to their
fate.

has pictured the inner life of reticent sorrow, of the unfortunate, so to speak. For instance read " Correspondence." It is a young
the
still-life

He

girl

with

whom we

gradually become acquainted,

who

has lived isolated, misunderstood, despised by stupid associates in a little country village, and who is on the point of becoming an old maid. She has already resigned herself to it, deserted as she has been by her lover. She has given up her demands on life, and is trying only

Then begins for peace and is on the way to success. from an impulse of communicativeness, of idleness, of a friend of her younger days longing, of sympathy
to write to her.

At

first

respondence;

after the

she answers declining the correceipt of other epistles she

to continue to be extorted
replies,
In.

allows permission for

him

from her. He writes, and she but in a long, eloquent letter.

ing of friendship grows up in

no longer

briefly,

manner the feelher heart, and in no very

this

282

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
it

long time occupies

and passes over into

love.

They

He longs for are both in love for one short moment. and his of arrival is the starting and worships her, day
then the correspondence is broken off, already fixed to be carried away by a ballet girl, himself allows he
;

*>ver

whose vulgar graces he forgets everything, and she sinks anew, but this time more deeply wounded, back to her dreadful solitary life.
treats of the life of another

The highly elaborated novel "An Unfortunate Woman" young girl, whose misforHer earliest tune is equally quiet and uneventful*
remembrance
that her mother, a Jewess, the daughter of a foreign painter, and she herself sat daily at the Kaltovskoi table of the landed proprietor Kaltovskoi.
is

is

a grand old bugbear, who smelt horribly of ambergris, continually took snuff out of a gold snuff-box, and inthe child with no other feeling than fear, even
spires

when he
made

for her to kiss.

holds out his hard, dry hand, with lace cuffs, At the same time that the mother is

to marry the disgusting steward Ratch, the child learns that the landed proprietor is her father. The father never speaks a loving word to her, and not even

once a kindly one

his little reader.

he accepts her with

stiff

grandeur, as

later. His brother landed proprietor and heir, Semytfix Matveitch, gives Susannah some money, which her stepfather immediately appropriates. Hav-

The mother dies. dies some years

The

old, heartless

grown up, her heart speaks for the first time she deeply in love with Semy6n's son, her cousin Jd&khail, an excellent young officer, who loves her as she V deserves to be loved. But no sooner is the intimacy of
iiag
;

fells

'

""<&# two discovered than they are ruthlessly separated. Mkhail is sent away and dies immediately after. The
:

r,

Semytfn, pursues his

young niece with dishonor-

"TBJB DIARY OF

A SUPERFLUOUS MAN."

At last he dies also and able advances and proposals. leaves her an annuity, which her stepfather receives.
time moves on. Three years six, seven years pass She sees it gliding away indifferently and with it life.
.

Then a new ray

young man,

whom

of light falls into her existence a fine she has won, also wins her interest j
;

then he hears from her associates, from her own depraved step-brother even, the most scurvy calumnies in regard She takes poison. to her past history, and draws back. Or read "The Diary of a Superfluous Man." The It is a man who is mortally title explains the contents. ill, and who occupies his last days in recording the chain of common events which has made up his useless life. He has from first to last been in the way in the world. Once he fell in love, but only to suffer all the pangs of
jealousy,

and experience all its humiliations. Elizabeth did not love him, but a dazzling young prince from St. Petersburg, who is stopping for a short time in the

town in which she dwells. He challenges the spares him in the duel, succeeds only in passing for a bad man, and appearing to the object of Even when the prince his affections as a murderer. seduces and abandons Elizabeth, and when, nevertheless,
provincial
prince,

who

he

ready again to ask for her hand, her aversion to unchanged. She gives her hand to another not less magnanimous friend, who has got the start of the
is

him

is

unhappy lover, and who thus even on this occasion makes him a superfluity. Here as always the poor
fellow has been the fifth wheel to the coach.

And

yet

we

through every line, nobly endowed and good he

feel,

how
is.

full of feeling, last

how

The

pages of the

diary contain the farewell to life of the consumptive, who has been given up by his physician. " Jacob Passinkof ? is another story of the same kind.
?
.

284

IMPRESSIONS

Off

RUSSIA.

Passinkof belongs to the type of Russian personalities which Turgenief describes with partiality. He is not
his exterior, tall, thin, round-shoulspecially noble in even a little red. But his forehead nose his and dered,

and subdued, and, as it is magnificent, his voice mild of said him, "In his mouth the significantly enough
is

words

goodness,

truth,

life,

knowledge, love sound

always like phrases, however enthusiastically he utters them." In his story Turgenief's fundamental theme

comes out in a double form.

tiful

He

is

in love with

a beau-

give him a thought. in an obscure corner and alone When he dies, forgotten of her on his mementos some has still he of Siberia,

young

girl,

who does not

breast.

He

needed some

faults,

some

selfishness,

some

In the mean time, as a requital, levity, to win her favor. without his knowing it, he was silently loved by her plain,
rather ugly and awkward sister, who has always kept him faithfully in mind, and who for his sake had never been
willing to marry.
{< Turgenief s story, written somewhat late in life, The Living Belie," is certainly the best specimen of these monographs of misfortune, which are just as fine and

perfect as they are simple.

It is almost

an unadorned

soliloquy;

it

is

only the account of her life which a

girl,

young, formerly beautiful Russian peasant

now

worn

to a skeleton, gives to the author. He finds her on her back, after a fateful fall, and she has been

thus for nearly seven years. Her head is emacisallow as bronze ; her nose sharp and pointed as a

her lips sunken in, only the teeth and the of her eyes have any lustre \ some tufts of thin, yellow hair fall down over her forehead. Outside the bed-clothing were lying a pair of very small

whose

fingers, like little

d$rk brown pins, move

THE LIVING RELIC.

slowly to and

285

fro. And once she was the most plump, most graceful, gayest, and most beautiful girl in the country, always ready for laughter, song, and dance. She tells her fate, how after her accident she had become shrunken, dark-colored, had lost the power of standing and walking, appetite for eating and drinking how they burnt her on the back with red-hot iron, and put her into solid ice, all to no effect. And she tells all this in an almost cheerful manner, without any attempt Her lover has left her, and married to excite pity. another. He is, she says, happy in his marriage, thank God. She finds his act natural and right. She is thankful to the people who take care of her, especially to a
j

little girl

who

brings her flowers

she

is

not dull, does

not complain: there are others who are more unhappy the blind or the deaf and dumb ; she sees than she is,

hears when wonderfully well, and hears everything, a mole is digging under ground, and smells every frathe flowers of the buckgrance, even the weakest,

wheat, far out in the fields, and the linden trees far down in the garden. The great events in her existence
are when a hen or a sparrow or a butterfly comes in to hex through a door or window. She has great pleasure in the recollection of a visit a hare made to her pne

day.

And

Lukeria reminds Turgenief of the time when

she sang ballads. She still sings them sometimes, she tells him. The thought that this scarcely living being is preparing to sing inspires him with involuntary horror 5
little

and, trembling like a thread of light smoke,, her poor voice comes out in almost inaudible but clear and

pure tones.

She tells him the wonderful dreams she has had (unfortunately she sleeps but little), one about Jesus, who came to meet her, and held out his hand to her one about a woman whom she met, and who was
;

286
her

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

death., but who went past her, and, pitying her, did not complain that she could not t^Jce her with her. She contradicts the author when he expresses his admiration

What has of her patience. What is there to admire she done No, the maiden who, in a distant country, with a great sword drove the enemy out into the sea,
!
!

and then said, "Burn me now, for it was my promise " that that I would die at the stake for my people maiden performed a wonderful act. As he went away, Lukeria begs him to say a word for the peasants there
!

in the village at her mother's, so that they might obtain a little bit of an abatement in the rent. She needs

nothing herself, and has nothing to wish for in her

behalf.
Still it is

own

Turgenief's
is

not these minor works which have made name renowned throughout the world. It

his greater novels, his few romances, masterpieces, " like " On the Eve (Helen), "Rudin," "Spring Hoods,"

"Smoke," "Fathers and Sons," and "Virgin Soil" 3STo more subtile psychology is to be found in European literature, no more perfect delineation of character, and, what is almost unseen in the history of modern authorship, the figures of the men and women are here equally
perfect.

In order fully to understand these best works of Turgenief, it is necessary to have some knowledge of his life and character.

Two

decisive events occurred in his life.

The

first is

his imprisonment and subsequent banishment to his estate in 1842. The second is his acquaintance with

Mme.

Pauline ,Viardot, n&e Garcia.

In the government circles a suspicious watch was kept on ,Turgenief, on account of his attacks on serfdom.
Then, when Gogol died, and Turgenief, in a newspaper

ms
article (in

EXILE

MME. VIARSOT.

287
to

which the censor in Moscow found nothing

strike out), eulogized the deceased with warm words, they at once seized upon the opportunity to give him a blow.

Heaven knows how disobedience toThey found wards the Tsar in the said article, and on " the command of the highest of all " he was thrown into prison in St. -Petersburg. Among his letters is to be found a communication which he wrote to the heir-apparent
After having (Alexander) to prove his innocence. passed a month in prison, which the delicate condition of his health made doubly painful to him, he was exiled
to his estate Spasskoye, where he was obliged to remain for several years. It is plainly enough this event which after his pardon led him to take up his permanent resi-

dence outside of his native land. The acquaintance with Mine. Viardot imprisoned the far more author near to her for all the rest of his life

than

half.

She was born in Paris in 1821 and had made

extensive artistic tours in America and Europe with her Her parents, first as a pianist and then as a vocalist.
first appearance in Paris, which happened at the same time as Rachel's, is commemorated in verse by Alfred de Musset. From 1840 she was the wife of the author

Louis Viardot. As early as 1847, Turgenief accompanied the married couple to Berlin and then to Paris. From 1856 he is to be regarded as a member of the Viardot
family, and the influence which the mistress of the house exerted upon the author was great, and, so far as can be perceived, only for good. In 1847, when his

despotic mother refused to send support, Mine. Viardot assisted

him any money for his him out of her own

purse, and it was therefore only just that Turgenief iu his will should have .made her his residuary legatee,

which, however, has given rise to ments on the part of Russians.

many

fiendish com-

288

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
Mme. Viardot was
that of

Turgeniefs relation to

He could not do passionate devotion and admiration. her about his affairs with counsel took and without her, as he Slav Genuine of every description. was, susceptible to impressions, intellectually productive and almost destitute of will-power, he was fortunate in having a
fair ruler over his life.

When

any friend complained

to

irregular and unfortunate career, he usually answered: "Do as I do, my dear fellow; I allow myself to be ruled." He did what Mme. Viardot

him

of his

own

him he ought to do, and was contented therewith. She seems to have been the only woman of importance in his life. Naturally, he had known women in
told
his youth.

the friend of a

At the age of nineteen, in Berlin, lie was little sewing-girl and was chagrined that

Bakunin, with whom he was living, could tell by his At first in the looks when he had been to see her* 1 beginning of the fifties he lived in Bussia, and then,
1851-53, with a Russian serf,

Avdotya Yermolayevna
beautiful, but
to

Iv&nova,

who must have been very

whom

appeared to be impossible to impart the mysteries of the art of reading. She bore to him, in 1842, the daughter whom he married to a Frenchman in 1864.
it

His letters show that he did not at that time even know where the mother, who had married a Eussian official, was living. (Letter to Maslof, December 26, 1864.) But he was a good father as well as a faithful friend and a magnanimous protector. His character was noble refined and pure even to the Probpoint of tenderness but gentle and undecided. ably he was not obliged to go far, as a young man, to find the model of single traits of character iu lludin. He was never guilty of any low act but, on the other hand,
;
; ;

i,

Isaac Pavlovsky: Souvenirs de Tourgutneff^.

U2 and following.

HIS WEAKNESS

AND STRENGTH.

289

he hardly ever acted with any bold and forcible energy. In reading his letters we are surprised to see with what rascals he corresponded, apparently not to make enemies of them, and with how little respect he speaks in
confidential letters of persons to whom in other letters he shows great regard. When we find that Turgenief, with a character in which will-power was so weakly developed, during the whole of his life remained invio-

we

lably faithful to the old liberal convictions of his youth, can scarcely err in attributing to Mme. Yiardot no small degree of honor for this result. If she had influ-

enced him in the opposite direction, he would probably have become conservative, and if her house and circle had not been decidedly liberal, perhaps an influence from some other direction would have succeeded in. swaying him. On the contrary, he seems to have been entirely independent in his obstinate position as the exponent
piipil of Western Europe. In perfect accord with the weak appearance of his will-power in Turgenief s character is the circumstance that as an author he comes forward with a confidence like that of a somnambulist. He said to Mikha'ilof, Pro-

and

fessor of Physiology in St. Petersburg (from whom I " I see a man who strikes me from some charhave it)
:

perhaps of little importance. I forget then, long after, the man suddenly starts up from the grave of forgetfulness. About the characteristic which I observed, others group themselves, and it is of no use now if I want to forget him I cannot do it he has taken possession of me I think with him, live in him I can only restore myself to ease by finding an existence for him." Turgenief, as a writer, is more elegant than forcible. It is for that reason that female characters are so .well
acteristic or other,

him.

And

adapted to his talents.

290

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

With tranquil tenderness he draws the young girls who have his full sympathy, Helen and Gemma, and with
an indulgent love which, nevertheless, excludes all praise and admiration on the part of the author. Every word which is said of them is determinative, limiting. One, in. play of features, gestures, laughter, train of ideas and love is wholly Italian; the other is impressed on the ramd of the reader as the most beautiful typo of Russian womanhood. Only the best authors of the world have
produced anything so natural, so well sustained. And the worship of beauty that is to be found there has done no harm to the study of nature. They are not women whom the author has arbitrarily created, and who dwell in the fancy-land of poetry, like the forms of women in
the works of so

many

other authors.

They

are

not

products of Turgeniefs personal enthusiasm for the womanly, not merely an expression of his ideal alone, but studies built up on a foundation of a delicate sense
of reality, and by the force of a thorough the real.

knowledge of

In the more important male characters, from the nature of the material, Turgenief found his task espeWhile the chief aim of an author cially difficult.
usually
$re
is

to sustain his characters

and

let

them escape

self-contradiction,
,

the

finest

characters

made up

of contradictions.

He

Turgenief understood how to

trait

of

a j.4reat inconsistency as

fundamental

of charac-

without having the character disorganized thereby. gj$ar kWith the regular Russian, as he describes him, thore is

girthing certain to be depended upon except instability. Alexis, in "A Correspondence," leaves Maria in the so Btidin abandons Natalia, Sairin, in "Spring |||ftreh,

|^
&'
..

'Moods,"
r-ttosy

Gemma, Litvinof, in Smoke," Tatyana, etc,. abandon youth, freshness, goodness of heart, beauty,
;

RUDIN A TYPE OF INCONSTANCY.

291

happiness, to run after intoxication of the senses and degradation, or they deceive from pure weakness and
instability in themselves.

one can
less

trust,

And to these men, whom no and whose sudden outbursts of passion

and sudden cessation thereof surprise themselves not than others, correspond women on whom it is just as impossible to depend, women who are on the point of being able to love, but cannot, like Marie Odinzof, in " Fathers and Sons " women who unintentionally insnare, abandon themselves, draw back, like Iriona in "Smoke;" and, finally, cold Bacchantes, like that Maria Nikolayevna who carries away Sanin from Gemma. Sometimes, the inconsistency and treachery remain
;

rather unsatisfactorily explained, as in "Spring Floods;" in that case, it depends upon the fact that Turgenief

assumes, so to speak, that this trait of character of

his

young men is known. In his earliest great novel, "Itiidin" (1855), the study of inconsistency is so thorough and exhaustive that, through the weakness of this

one character, we understand the weakness of the Russian character everywhere. That which most excites our admiration for the skill of the artist in this, is that

he has been able to awaken a no small degree of sympathy for Riidin that in the milksop and phrase-monger he has shown us the sincere enthusiast. Kiidin, who
;

speaks so warmly,

tells a story so fascinatingly, and possesses all "the music of eloquence," is lazy, despotic, everlastingly playing a part, forever living at the ex-

to be warmest, be about to accomAnd yet Turgenief shows that he plish something. deserves our pity far more than our ill will, and that he rightfully exerts a great influence on young souls. Men with constant hearts and strong wills do not

pense of others, cold

intellectually

when he seems
to

weak when he seems

292

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

appear among Turgenief s leading figures in his younger days. They are Hamlets who descend from Pushkin's

who

Onyegin and Herzen's Beltov. When lie describes a man is wholly a man, and to whom a woman can look up, then, as in "Helen," in order to shame his countrymen, he chooses a foreigner, the Bulgarian Insarof, who has exactly those qualities which the "Russians, from uhe best to the poorest, lack. The model of the figure was a
real Bulgarian, Katianof,

who has

figured in his native

land, and with whom Turgenief (1855) became acquainted through the papers of a neighboring landed proprietor,

Karateyef. Otherwise, men whom Turgenief himself admires are named only incidentally, and they are placed as figures in the background, or used as contrasts to

bring out the falsity and weakness of the leading character.

Such, for instance,

is

Pokorski in "liudin," of

whom Lekhnef speaks with so fascinating an enthusiasm, and in whom we really may see a portrait of the
critic Byelinski,

youth, to

the friend and teacher of Turgcnief s whose memory he has dedicated " Fathers and Sons/* and by whose side he, on his death-bed, expressed
" Pokorski
gentle,

his desire to be buried.

It is said of him made the impression of a very quiet and almost weak nature he loved women to madness,
:

enjoyed a

'an insult of

and would not have suffered any kind whatever. Rtidin appeared to be all fire and flame, life, boldness, but at the bottom of his soul he was cold and almost a coward, so long as his vanity was not wounded, for then his self-control would be entirely destroyed by his frenzy. He continually . but acquiesced in sought to be the master of others
little dissipation,
.
.

bearing his yoke, but Pokorski submitted to all voluntarily ... oh, it was a beautiful time and I cannot
believe that
it

was wasted.

How

often have I not

met

OEIQIN OF BAZJ.ROF.
people from that time,

293

my former comrades, men who seemed to have sunken into a purely animal existence, and yet it was only necessary to mention Pokorski's name; immediately all the good that had survived in them rose to the surface, as when one in a dirty, dark room opens a bottle of perfume which has been forgotten
there."
' it was not until the publication of c Fathers and " in 1861 that Sons Turgenief gave a typical representa-

Yet

tion of the strong character and intellectual superiority The of the Russian, this time in its modern form.

character of Bazarof introduced "nigilism" into light

literature.

Even if Turgenief has apparently specially desired to strike a blow against the idolization of simple utility, with its poverty of ideas, in the younger generation, still he has succeeded in drawing a man who by
his firmness, his courage, and his steadfastness, towers up in the whole of European literature, which is not It cannot have escaped the rich in types of true men.

observation of any one tolerably familiar with modern books that it is as if true manhood had disappeared. A man who has a will and mind and uses his will to aid
his mind, sticks to his aim, is a support to his friends, is an everlasting thorn in the flesh to his enemies, and to whom the women, the defenceless, the beginners in life,

naturally gravitate, such a man comes no more to the front, save in the dilute romances of boys and ladies.

In 1860, on a journey in Germany in a railway carTurgenief met a young Russian physician, who, in the brief conversation that took place between them,
riage,

astonished

him by

his original

and

startling views.

He

gave the poet the idea of Bazdrof. In order to familiarize himself with the character, Turgenief began to keep "Bazfcofg Diary," that is, as soon as he read a

294

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

new book or met a person who interested him or exhibited some characteristic of a political or social nature, he criticised him in this diary according to Bazarof s
manner of thought. As is well known, it was not so much by the genius which was displayed in the delineation of the principal character as it was from the effect the work created, the
the misunderstandings, the passionate attacks, it " provoked on the part of the radical leaders, that Fathers " was an event in the and Sons history of Russian literaThe book is a masterture and in the author's own life.
ill will,

piece without a blemish, besides being the original prototype of all the modern novels in different countries

which

treat of

reciprocal relations

nothing else
the older.

an older and younger generation in their and conflicts but in the beginning was seen in it than the depreciation of the
;

younger generation to the advantage of the culture of

In the face of this stupidity, Turgeniefs
certain Slutchevski

own

utter-

ances about the hero have an increased interest.

had upbraided him that Bazarof had made so unfavorable an impression. He answers
"Nevertheless, Bazarof drives all the other per(1862) He is honest, sons of the novel into the background.
:
.

And you upright, and a democrat of the purest water. He commends ' Force and find in him no good quality Matter ' by name as a popular, that is a worthless book.
!

The duel with Pavel Petrovitch is introduced to represent the intellectual vacuity of the elegant, noble knighthood
even then almost overdrawn, ridiculously represented. According to my view, Bazarof is Pavel Petrovitch constantly wholly superior and unconverted. When he calls himself a nihilist/ we must read pevolutipnist. ... On the one side a venal official,
5

it is

'

"

SMOKE"

"

VIRGIN SOIL."

295

to

other an ideal youth. Such pictures I leave for others draw; I strove for something greater, ... I close

with the remark: If the reader does not find Bazarof

dear to him in spite of
merciless dryness
all his coarseness, heartlessness,
;

and sharpness then the fault is mine and I have missed nay mark. But sweet with

to speak after the manner of Bazarof that I syrup would not have, although I had immediately won the youth over to my side thereby." And twelve years later, after a fresh attack, he turns back again to his tenderness for Bazarof. He writes
i

"

What

you

also contend that I caricatured

Bazarof.

You

repeat this

youth in pardon the freedom of the

Bazarof,

expression

insane complaint.

my
!

favorite

child, for whose sake I broke with Katkdf, and I lavished all the colors I could command

on
.

whom
.

Bazdrof,
.

1 man, this hero, a caricature I" By the novel "Smoke," Turgenief fell out with another not less influential group in Eussia than that which had been so much offended by "Fathers and Sons." It was almost a blow aimed at the Slavophiles, and imbittered them in every case against him. Katk<5f and Dostoyevski were from this time his bitter enemies and persecutors. In this book certain twaddling and conceited Russian quasi-reformers are thrown aside with a cutting scorn, which recalls to a denizen of the !N"orth Henrick Ibsen's manner of treating certain reformers

this intelligent

among his countrymen. But in "Virgin Soil" (1877), Turgenief s last great work and the most versatile he wrote, he has brought
his criticism of society to an end with a thorough unpartisan justice, by exposing to sun and air ranks, families,
1 Briefe yon J. S. Turgenjev, Uebersetzt von H. Kuhe, and following, 214 and following.

1886,

i.

96

296

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

"Virgin tendencies, and races in his great native land. " is inferior to the Soil older, larger novels to the extent
that here for the
'

first time we feel clearly that the for a long time out of Russia, making lived author has of lack the for personal observation by reading newsup

and still this book is the papers and legal reports; richest and most complete expression of Turgenief's humanity and worldly wisdom, and of his love of free-

dom and

truth.

Here, perhaps in the most positive manner, his filial affection for Russia, his appreciation of the Russian youth, is brought to light here appears unveiled his
;

It is quite true that everyvision of its high idealism. With here. miscarries Turgenief all exertions thing the whole, everything meets with mismiscarry upon
;

fortune.

For the moment only hopelessness

rules.

The

older generation, with the liberalism of Sipjaegin, is once for all given up in the younger generation, there is much that is well meant, much is disinterestedly
;

carried into effect, but all is fruitless. Nezhdanof wants to go out among the people, wants to distribute pamphlets among the peasants. It has the force of a sym-

bol that the peasants misunderstand him. They will the of and the drink with common him; apostle only is dead-drunk. carried home It was withnot people

out cause that Nezhdanof had previously finished his poem, "The Sleep," with this picture never to be forgotten
:

" With a glass of spirit in

thy hand, with head leaning

against the North Pole, with feet pressed against CaucaThus thou sleepest, holy Russia, sus, oh, fatherland
!

deeply and soundly and steadily."

And

yet in this last

work a future

is

to be seen in
like

vague, distant outlines.

Young women

Marianne

HOSTILITY TO GERMANY.

297

and Maschurin, young men like Markelof, like Solomin, Nezhdanof even, prepared the way for it. The last twenty years of his life Turgenief passed alternately in the two countries, Germany and France, to which he was most indebted for his culture. He lived in Baden-Baden and Paris. His relations to Germany and France were, however, quite different. Probably on account of ancient Russian tradition, and besides
like

in consequence of the nationality of Mme. Viardot, he was far more closely bound to France than to Germany.

He had

studied in Berlin, and the criticism of young

Hegelianism had refined and stimulated his mind. But, although he worshipped Goethe as the master above all others, and for a while in his youth was wholly absorbed in Heine, although he continued to have friendly relations with German authors and writers like Paul Heyse, Ernst Dohn, and Ludwig Pietsch, spoke the language
to value the scientific greatness in spite of all these bonds binding him to that country, the Germans in his books, as in almost all Eussian romances and novels, are continually reprefluently,

and knew how

of

Germany,

sented in a highly satirical, and now and then even in a hateful light. It is a weakness of German criticism that it has not been able to see this evident fact. It is
true enough, as a general rule, that all nations describe Eussian woman, as drawn others without enthusiasm.

by Victor Cherbuliez or Paul Heyse (Ladislaus Bolski, "In Paradise," Das Gluck &u Rotheribwg), never has
the good part. But there seems to have been a remnant of national hate at the bottom of Turgenief s soul.

Although, on the other hand, he did not fail to have an eye to the deficiencies in the French culture, he conducted himself in an entirely different manner in regard to it. He felt that his art was wholly understood and

298

IMPRESSIONS OF RtfSSlA.
is

which appreciated in that Paris

otherwise so full of

He had equally warm prejudice towards foreigners. admirers among those of the same age as himself
(Merimee), those of a
little

younger generation (Augier,

Taine, Flaubert, G-oncourt), and among the youngest authors (Zola, Daudet, Maupassant). With that circle
of authors of

which Flaubert was the centre, he

associ-

ated on a friendly and brotherly footing as with the writers of no other land.

His relations to his own country were fluctuating. In his younger days he was popular and then a subject of hatred. It was first seen on his last visit to Russia that that he should have abandoned the misunderstanding
the ideals of his youth

had given way

to a better

understanding, and his journey became a kind of triumphal tour through the ovations which he received from

the youth. It is true that these ovations created such uneasiness on the part of the government, that it short-

In Moscow, where ened his stay in St. Petersburg. Katk6f had attacked him as hostile to his fatherland and seditious, a festival had been arranged for him, to which Dostoyevski also was invited, his more recent, spiteful appearance against Turgenief having been overlooked on account of the convictions of his youth and his
martyrdom. In the mean time, the more the younger generation was reconciled to the author of " Fathers and Sons," and the more warmly he was greeted, the more the dissatisfaction of the Russian government with him increased. This was also very clearly shown at his death. A solemn funeral, with his house decorated, a long procession

and addresses

at the grave

were forbidden.

In perfect

quiet, as if he were a convict, the man was buried who, in these later days, had given the widest reputation to the name of Eussia.

HIS MELANCHOLY.

299

For in the last ten years of his life, at least, he could have rejoiced in an admiration which was equally reverential over the whole of the civilized world. Did he rejoice at it ? I believe not. It affected him agreeably, but he did not delight in it, and it did not Edrnond de Goncourt relates disperse his melancholy.
of Turgenief, that
at a dinner given

by Flaubert, in

March, 1872, during a moment of despondency, which sometimes seizes upon a circle of friends who are getting on towards old age, he allowed himself to be carried " You know that there is someaway so far as to say times found in a room an odor of musk which cannot be driven out; so it seems to me that about my person, and that continually, there is a perfume of dissolution, His last works, the charming and annihilation, death."
:

" Clara Militch," which is a variation of original novel the theme of his youth, disappointed love, and his admi-

rable collection of prose poems, te Senilia," likewise contain a deeper melancholy than the works of his youth,
flashes

save that a lyrical, fantastic element most poetically through them. Here, for the last time, he stands

life, and explains it in in sadness and visions. Nature is unceasing symbols hard and cold then let man not neglect to love. There

face to face with the secret of

a scene here where Turgenief, on a solitary journey from Hamburg to London, sits by the hour with a
is

poor, cowed, fettered little

monkey's hand in his

the

genius, whose spirit had ransacked the universe, hand in hand with the little anthropoid animal, like two kin-

dred mortals, two children of the same mother, there is here more true devotion than in any book of devotion.

At the

last,

Turgenief seems to have had a strong

impression of man's ingratitude. No one who has read " Senilia" will ever " The Feast in Heaven." All forget

300

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

the virtues were invited, and the virtues only; no

men

were invited, only ladies. Many virtues came, small and great. The small virtues were more agreeable and more modest than the great but all seemed to be well contented and talked kindly to each other, as is
;

becoming for those who are akin. Then the good God observed two beautiful ladies who did not seem to be acquainted with each other. The master of the house took one of the ladies by the hand and led her to the Gratitude. other, and he introduced Charity It was the first time since the creation of the world that the two had met. What sadness in the wit and what bitterness It also occurs to me that my gratitude towards this great benefactor has its first expression when he can no
:

longer be sensible of any thanks.

VL
Isr contrast to the national pessimism in Tiirgenief stands the national optimism in Dostoyevski. The great sceptic Turgenief, who believed in so little, believed in

the culture of Western Europe. Dostoyevski despised the Occident, and believed in Eussia. If the works of Turgenief are, to some extent, to be regarded as emigrant
literature, then we stand with Dostoyevski wholly on Eussian soil ; he is the autochthonic author, " the true

Scythian," the legitimate barbarian without a drop of

classic blood in his veins.

Look

at this countenance

half the face of a Eussian

peasant, half the physiognomy of a criminal, with flattened nose, small, piercing eyes, under eyelashes which
light hair

tremble with nervousness, long, thick, untidy beard, and add to this the forehead of a thinker and a poet, large and shapely, and the expressive mouth, which, even when closed, speaks of tortures without
;

number, of ingulfing sadness, of unhealthy desires, enduring pity, sympathy, passionate envy, anxiety, torLook at this body, which is nothing but nerves, ture
!

life,

and tenacious of from his youth up subject to epileptic fits and hallucinations This exterior, at first sight plain and vulon closer examination stamped with weird genius, gar, thoroughly morbid and wholly extraordinary, speaks of
small and slender, round-shouldered,
!

which

Dostoyevski' s epileptic genius, of the depths of mildness filled his soul, of the billows of almost insane acuteness which frequently mounted into his head;
301

302

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
ambition which creates greatness in its and the envy which creates smallness in the

finally of that
efforts,

soul.

It is a character which reminds one of Kousseau's, irritable and suspicious, with fits of depression and the

most exalted flights. Although his family belonged to the lower ranks of nobility of Eussia, from which the subordinate officials are generally taken, he has, like
Moreover, Rousseau, a thoroughly democratic stamp. even if he is fanatical in his ideas, like Rousseau, he differs

from him in his profound spiritual characteristics. Rousseau is a deist, but, in spite of his sentimentality, not a Christian, an enemy of the Christian humility, and of all submission to fate. Dostoyevski, on the contrary, entirely regardless of the fact whether his dogmatic is in his whole emotional faith was orthodox or not, nature the typical Christian. His works constitute a true repertory of characters and conditions of thought conceived from a Christian standpoint. All his persons are invalids, sinners or saints, of both sexes, and the transition from sinner to a convert, from fair sinner to fair saint, and from the bodily sick to the spiritually sound, happens, now after a slow purification, and now at a
flash,

as in the ISTew Testament; nay, often the fair sinner is at the same time a fair saint, and the greatest criminal just as near being worthy of admiration

as he

is

near being a scoundrel.

Physiologically and psychologically, all these types of paupers and poor fellows, of the ignorant good-hearted, of the simple emotional, of noble Magdalens, of the ner-

vously distracted, of those seized with frequent hallucinations, of gifted epileptics, of enthusiastic seekers after

martyrdom, are just the same types as prevailed centuries ago.

DQSTOYEVSEL

803

Feodor Mikha'ilovitch Dostoyevski was born in Octoa hospital for the poor, in Moscow, where There was a large family of his father was physician. means. Feodor and his brother small and children, he was bound whom to Aleksei, through life by an intiber, 1821, in

mate friendship and common literary

interests,

were

sent to the military school for engineers in St. PetersBut, after the burg, and left it as sub-lieutenants.

lapse of a year (1844), Feodor asked for his discharge from the military service, to devote himself to literature.

was even then suffering from the disease which was when he was subsequently whipped in Siberia he had epileptic fits, and moreover he was visionary. With regard to the subjects which he treated later, and his ability to express the psychology of crime, this
aggravated
;

He

tion

" The saying of his to a friend is characteristic dejecwhich succeeds my epileptic attacks has this char:

acteristic,

me

like

an unknown fault

I feel like a great criminal it comes over a criminally guilty deed ;

;

weighs upon my conscience." At the age of twenty-four he wrote his novel " Poor

Towards the close of his* life, in the " Diary of an Author " he related the circumstances of his first appearance as an author. When he had written his novel, and did not know how he should get his manuscript disposed of, he got one of his friends, the subsequent]y well-known author G-rigor<5vitch, to take it to the poet Niekrasof. About three o'clock in the morning, Dostoyevski heard some one knock at his door. It was Grigordvitch, who had come back with Niekrasof, who had already read the novel, and was so struck by it that he felt an impulse immediately to press the author to his heart. When early the next morning he left Doshe went with the manuscript straight to toyevski,
Folk. 33

804
"

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
the oracle of Eussian thought, the critic name frightened debutants." new

Byelinski, whose bare

"A

Gogol has arisen," shouted Niekrasof, as he broke in " Certainly, they shoot up nowadays through the door. answered like toadstools," Byelinski, fretfully, and reluctantly looked into the manuscript. him was the same as on Nieki&sof
.

But the

effect

on

When
:

the author
"

visited him, he said to

you you

enthusiastically Young as how true it is what are, do you yourself understand hare written ? I don't think so. But true artistic

him

Eespect the gifts inspiration is there. you will become a great author."

you

possess,

and

In order to understand this astonishment and this enthusiasm, we must remember that the Eussian literature even

now

kind except

does not possess a single attempt of this Gogol's "Cloak," and that Turgeniefs

" Eecollections of a

years later. " Poor Folk " versation with Dostoyevski (1846) issued from the press, the author's literary reputation was at

Huntsman " did not appear till five When a month or two after Byelinski' s con-

once established.

The uneasiness and* versatility

of his nature is dis-

played in the circumstance that though he had made his d&)ut in a direction which is like that into which Dickens struck a little earlier, he continued his career

with worthless and comic novels in Paul de Kock's manner. He was an inordinate reader at an early day. At the age of twelve he had already ploughed through Karamzin
Scott, histories and historical novels by the Eeading exhausted him, nervous, irritable, timid, emotional, precocious as he was, and with an un-

and Walter
quantity.

usual gift of placing himself in the imagined situation. In the School for Engineers, he read Balzac with special

HIS ARREST FOR FOURIEEISM.

305

zeal, being carried away by "Pere Goriot," which in its whole intellectual character furnishes one of the theories of his own novels, and translated "Eugenie Grandet," occupied himself in addition very much with George Sand and Eugene Sue, Dickens and Hoffman, the influence of all of whom is perceptible in his works. In this first period of his youth Dostoyevski was still a prey to

varied influences.

He

at the close of the forties

has himself told in his later years how Byelinski drew him on to socialism, and,
it,

as he called

tried to convert

him

to atheism.

The

same hatred and the same ingratitude towards the men who influenced his youth, Herzen, Byelinski, and others, which found its expression in the novel The Demons " is shown in this bitter and poisonous attempt to cast the blame of his youthful conviction upon a man who is dead. We must remember that it is an old re-actionist who speaks, and in his defence consider that Dostoyevski was a man abused by life. On the 23d of April, 1849, at five o'clock in the morning, he, together with thirty-three other young men, was
'(

arrested.

He had then for some time continuously belonged to the circle which had established itself around a certain
Petrashevski, an adherent of the system of Fourier in the meetings of this circle the talk had been loud and
;

imprudent.

The leader was a genuine

Fourierist,

an

of gods and kings, an opponent of marriage and property in the predominant forms. The indictment of

enemy

Dostoyevski himself was to this

effect

Participation in

the meetings of the circle, observations about the strictness of the censorship, reading or listening to the reading of prohibited pamphlets, and finally promises of possible aid in the establishment of a printing-office.

306

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

The accused were taken to the castle and isolated in the casemates. They were there eight months without their examinations by the any other amusements than until towards the end of their not was It magistrate.
time of imprisonment that they were furnished with some books of devotion. The poor poet, who was reduced to the necessity of communing with his own
thoughts alone, felt as
if

he had been under an

air

pump. December 22, twenty-one of the accused who had been found guilty were taken out to Sernenovski Place, where a scaffold had been erected. With the thermometer at 15Fahr. they were compelled to strip to their shirts
to listen to the reading of the sentence. This reading occupied a half-hour. When it began the perpetually opti-

mistic Dostoyevski turned to his neighbor and said: " " Can it be possible that they are going to execute us ? Instead of answering, the person to whom the inquiry

was addressed pointed to some objects, which were concealed under the coverings of the wagons and which looked like coffins. The sentence ended with the words, " are condemned to be shot." A priest with a crucifix in his hand now came forward and urged the
. .
.

prisoners to confess.
tion.

They refused with a single excepPetrashevski and two others then fastened They of the leaders to the stake. An officer directed his company to load their guns and wait for the word of command. At this moment a white flag was waved and it was announced to the condemned that the Tsar had commuted
their punishment.

At the

foot of the scaffold

sledges were waiting

his

which were

to carry

them to

Siberia.

Dostoyevski was sentenced to ten years hard labor.

But

punishment was changed later to four years in the house of correction, and four years service as a soldier in

TttE

EFFECT OF HIS EXILE.

307

the ranks with loss of his rank as a noble and his rights In Tobolsk the ways of the prisoners separ as a citizen.

they said farewell to each other. Their feet were fettered, their heads shaved, and they were sent to their
rated
;

1 several places of destination.

What Dostoyevski
fered in the Siberian

saw,

felt,

lived through,

and

suf-

House

of Correction

among

the

dregs of the world, the poor creatures, the ignorant and the barbarous, the criminals and the desperate, that he has indirectly told the world in his " Recollections of a Dead House," one of the greatest masterpieces descrip-

and psychologically, which any literature has to If he had written it in his own name, and spoken of his crime as political, the book would never have passed the censor. Therefore an imaginary narrator is found, who in a moment of passion has committed a common crime, and to whose account the observations are What Dostoyevski does not tell is that he himplaced. self was the subject of the horrible corporal punishments which he describes. From 1849 to 1859 Dostoyevski was wholly dead to
tively

show.

literature.

At the age of thirty-seven he returned home from Siberia with his nervous system wholly destroyed. great change had taken place in him. In the four years
he had passed in the workhouse, he had only one single book with him, the "New Testament, and he had read it again and again. All revolt was quenched in his soul. It was not simply that he saw with how little knowledge of men he had wished to reform the world, and how little this abstract idealism availed but for once and all he had become meek and humble, obedient and submissive. He found his punishment just nay, even more, he was
; ;

De Vogue: Le Roman

Russe, p, 218 and following.

308

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

He imagined that it. insane become have would he without thought that the secret horror he always felt at the approach of darkwould have deprived him ness, under normal conditions
for grateful to the Tsar Nicholas
it
;

of his reason

now

it

deprived real sufferings of their

power. In the next place he had obtained a thorough knowledge of the inner life of the Russian people. His fate

had opened

to him an insight into that which is generally regarded as the sewer of humanity and there he found in every one, even in those who had sunken the deep;

est,

At the same time

something of value in spite of all their depravity. that he had lost all faith in the use or

possibility of a political revolution, he had found the faith in a moral revolution, starting from the bottom, in

the spirit of the gospel. Thus he returned as the philanthropist among the Eussian authors, as the author
of the helpless pariahs. It has somewhere been justly said that what Wilberforce was in the English Parlia-

ment

for the negro, he became in the Eussian literature for the proletariats, that is, their spokesman. As an artist he is true enough not to embellish the

pariah

proclaim the the wretched. presence spark," among the he Kay more, morality preaches is, perhaps, the of the purest expression morality of the pariah, of the morality of the slave.
;

as a poet he is visionary enough to of " a divine even

are indebted to the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche for the establishment of the real and wide

We

contrast between the morality of gentlemen and the The expressions originate with morality of slaves. him. By the morality of gentlemen is meant all that

morality which emanates from self-esteem, positive animal spirits: the morality of Eome, of Iceland, of the

HIS
renaissance

MORAL STANDARD.

309

; by the morality of the slave, all that morality which proceeds from contact with wretchedness as the highest virtue, from the denial of life, from

the hatred for the happy and the strong. This continual praising of the unselfish, self-sacrificing person, as contrasted to that person who lays all his
strength on self-preservation, self-development, and development of power, does not by any means spring from a spirit of unselfishness. The neighbor commends unselfishness because

he has the

profit of

it.

If he thought

himself unselfish, he would reject all that which would be to his advantage. Herein lies the fundamental contradiction of this morality, that the motive for it is in It is proclaimed for the conflict with its principles. advantage of the unsuccessful men, and generally has

no more zealous or ardent advocates than that kind of unsuccessful men who do not have enough independent spiritual life to be able to live in the world of their own ideas, but do have so-called culture enough to suffer under it, and whose existence is at heart envy. Whatever qualities and culture such men have are strengthened by anguish; they live in a constant longing for vengeance on those whom they think are happy.
Dostoyevski developed into a colossal example of this With the worst ill-treatment of his life behind type.
him, and
less debt,

now

and in continual endon dependent publishers, whose advances furpoor, soon in debt,

nish
to

him his means of subsistence, he is to begin anew make his way into literature. The first book which he wrote after his return from " The Siberia, Injured and Oppressed," does not belong

which his book had already given a hint, and which re-appear later. He had brought back with him from Siberia a
to his best works, but it contains characters of
first

310

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
with,

young wife

whom

Tie

had

fallen in love, the

widow

of one of the adherents of Petrashevski, who had died in in love with another prison. But she for her part was

and Dostoyevski's letters show how for a whole year he labored to unite her to his rival, and set his friends to work to remove the obstacles out of the way of their union. Nevertheless, it ended in the marriage of

man

her to Dostoyevski. This is the reality which underlies the occurrences

in
ters

"The Injured and Oppressed," in which the characwho remind one of Dickens do not, however, make

any very deep impression. He plunged into journalism, which during his whole life had a fascination for him, and on which he wasted much time and force. He became a contributor to the
Slavophile newspapers published by his brother Mikhail,
first

"The Times," then "The Epoch," and preached

the love and admiration for Russia " which cannot be

understood by reason, but which is a matter of faith." In 1865 he loses his first wife and his brother Aleksei.
Mikhail's second newspaper is a failure, and he flies from the country to escape from his creditors. He does not enjoy the journey which he makes through Germany, Prance, and Italy. He continually has epileptic fits, and is obliged to return home to obtain new advances from his pxiblishers, which they, it is true, concede to him, but only on the most unfavorable conditions. He brings back only one solitary strong impression from his travels, that of an execution to which he had been a witness in Lyons. This recalled to him the moment in his life in which he felt the greatest horror, and of which the recollection is continually coming back in his novels that morning hour on the scaffold, Decem:

ber 22, 1849.

"

CHIME AND PUNISHMENT."

311

In 1862 lie made a strong impression on the reading In world by his u Eecollections of a Dead House." 1866 he made the greatest impression of his life in

"Crime and Punishment" (Prestuplenie i Nakazanie). Hardly any other work has contributed so much to the What the book psychology of the Bussia of that time.
describes
ity, it
is

only apparently something special

in real-

unveils a great picture of society. The problem of the book- in a more limited sense

is

one which the most thoughtful minds have struggled with the two apparently contradictory estimates which
;

society places

upon the value of human

life.

Bismarck

has

1 cleverly discussed this subject in his speeches. of this book, when several It occupied the author

years ago in

Berlin

woman who was more than

eighty-two years old was murdered by one of the many lovers whom she had won by her presents. 2 The problem was tin's: Has human life absolute value?

Why

society answer this question in the most contradictory manner? It punishes with the severest penalty the murder by the mother of the new-born

does

modern

child without regard to the fact that she for fear of shame or of want inflicts upon herself a far greater loss and a far greater pain than she inflicts upon

society; nay, it punishes her even her act was to free the child from
store for
it.

if
all

the motive of
the misery in

Society demands that the full cup of shall be poured out upon the little misfortune earthly But head. being's society does not oppose the establishment of manufactories, the operation of which entails sickness and often death among the workmen,
nay, even regards the founder of such a manufactory
1

Gesammelte Reden des Fursten Bismarck (by Hahn), See G. Brandes: Berlin, p. 303 and following.

i.

895.

312

IMPRESSIONS OF RU8BIA.

in a quarter destitute of industrial pursuits as a benefactor.

The one who

this

problem

is

Dostoyevski's work struggles with Easkolnikof, a young Kussian student,

in

unusually good-looking, with fine features, and expressive black eyes, eminently gifted, but poor, as only a Eussian student is poor, plunged in the deepest poverty,
clad in rags, with a hat

awakening laughter.

He

which cannot be seen without has given up his studies on

account of his poverty, has tried in vain to support himHe is reserved, gruff, self, has let himself go to ruin.

he is proud, but also suspicious, and hypochondriacal high-minded and good he very reluctantly betrays his He is ambitious, with a tendency to boldness, feelings. but often so despondent that he seems to be cold and
; ;

without sensibility to the degree of inhumanity.

He

is

melancholy by nature, sombre and passionate, arrogant and magnanimous, sorrowful over the unhappy condition of the human race, with a constantly burning desire At bottom he is to be a benefactor on a grand scale. the without ability. to According opinion of the author, that is generally the case in Eussia, where all wish to become suddenly rich without toil or trouble, and where every one is accustomed to have that which is generally attained brought to him all ready, accustomed to be led about in leading-strings, accustomed to get all the intellectual nutriment after it has been masticated by others. Capacity does not fall down from heaven, and for almost two centuries the people have been weaned from every public activity. Even if Easkolnikof was melancholy from the first, poverty creates new melancholy in him. His wretched room is enough to cast an uninterrupted gloom over him. The low, small room contracts his whole soul. He can-

THE GERM OF THE CRIME.

313

not pay Ms rent and is frequently hungry. In the long winter evenings he has no light and lies in the dark, and at last does not even try to get a light on his table his
;

college

text-books are covered with thick dust.

. .
.

He

dreams, dreams continually. He dreams of a horrible old pawnbroker-woman, very rich and miserly, from whom he has had a loan now and then, and of a conversation about her to which he had

once listened in a restaurant. A student sitting there said " I should like to kill the old crone and sack her,
:

and I assure you that I could do

of conscience."
:

it

without the least sting

tinued seriously malicious old crone,

He said it indeed as a joke, but con" On the one hand, a stupid, wretched,

who not only never gives anything harm but does to everybody she comes in contact away, with on the other hand, fresh, young powers, who fail
;

want of means of support, and that by the thousands hundreds, perhaps thousands of existences, which might be brought on the right path, dozens of families which could be saved from wretchedness, from debauchery, all for the money of this old from loathsome disease, crone. And, after all, what weight on the universal
for
;
.

scales

of life has the life of this

malicious crone ?
roach's,

Not more than a

swindling, stupid, louse's life or a cock-

and not even so much,

for the old

woman

does

just because the same thought is ready to be developed in his head, peeps forth from, his brain like a chicken from the

much more harm, for she undermines the life of The words take root in Kaskolnikof's mind,

others."

and especially because to his own wretchedness is added that of others who are dearest to him. His old mother, who is living in her country village on an annuity of one hundred and twenty rubles a year, and who by knitting and embroidery, which is spoiling her poor
shell,

314
eyes, earns

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

a twenty rubles a year more, sends whose kind, considerate expressions he from letter, learns that his only dearly loved sister, proud and beautiful as she is, is about to offer up herself on the altar of a detested marriage in order to be able to keep him at the university and support her mother in her old age. He starts up against it, he kicks against the pricks, he
will forbid his pure sister
rible marriage.

Mm

from entering into this horBut what right has he to forbid it? How can he prevent it ? What can he offer her instead ? To devote to her and their mother his whole future, when he has first completed his studies and obtained a But by that time his In ten years perhaps position mother will be blind or dead from fasting or consumption, and by that time his sister will be ... what can! !

not happen in ten years

early formed a theory of his own about crime, that the extraordinary man has the right, not the official right, but one which his conscience gives him, to overstep certain obstacles and barriers which circumscribe

He had

other

men

only, however, in the case that his idea,

an

idea which looks towards the happiness of mankind, demands such a step. If men like Kepler and Newton

could in no

way have made

their discoveries available

to the world without the taking of human life, which put obstacles in the way of these discoveries, then they

would have had the

right, nay, it would have been theii duty, to take that human life. Experience teaches him that almost all the lawgivers andTeformers of humanity,

from the oldest down to Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, have been criminals, from the very fact that they' have created a new law and set aside the old, which, was regarded by society as holy and had been handed down from their ancestors, and that they had not

ITS DEVELOPMENT.

315

shrunk from the shedding of blood, and that even very often entirely innocent blood, which was offered up with The heroic courage for the defence of the -old law.
masses do not recognize the right of such men, they execute or hang them when they can compass it, but the coming generations place these executed men on pedestals

and show them honor.

And

is

not he himself
act.

such an exceptional man ? But his whole being is roused against the

It is

altogether too shameful, far too disgusting. To kill a All his pride, all the little old woman with an axe!
nobility in his nature, shrinks
Still

and groans. and there is no other way out slowly, slowly he becomes familiar with the idea by
the days roll on
;

the strangest accident he learns a time woman on a certain evening will be alone

when the old ... it is as if

a corner of his coat had been caught on the wheel of a machine, which winds him in with it, and with a comlessness, in a

mingling of determined resolution and child-like reckmoment of crime, he accomplishes the

murder

and

still

another murder; for her

sister,

simple and good old being, comes in just as E/askolnikof has begun to investigate the drawers and chests of his

and he strikes her down with another blow. But he was not equal to the task, or too nobly constituted for the misdeed, He just as you may regard it. can commit murder in a somnambulistic insanity, but he
victim,

He only appropriates one with the greatest difficulty he escapes the fate of being arrested on the spot, and now begins that period of his life when he is in no condition to do anything else than brood over his misdeed. He obliterates all material traces of it but he is absorbed ia the thought of concealing it, and betrays himself inaddoes not

know how

to steal.
;

or

two worthless things

316

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

which, passes, to those who vertently more every day are seeking for the perpetrator of the crime. That, however, is not the chief thing ; no discovery from with-

out annihilates him, but an inner one, that he is not one of those chosen, exceptional natures to whom everything
is

allowed.

After having committed his crime, he

before
it

is

no

longer able to raise himself to the height

regarded

was accomplished. he says to himself, "these men whom "No," by we admire are not constituted as I am. The true ruler, to whom everything is allowed, lays Toulon waste, establishes his power in Paris by the bayonet, forgets an
it

from which he He is consumed

inches.

army in Egypt, sacrifices a half a million of men on a campaign to Moscow, then makes a pun in Vilno about and after his death he is idolized. Such men must it, be of iron, not of flesh and blood." And a collateral idea almost makes him. smile "Napoleon, the Pyramids, and a disgusting, little usury practising old "Waterloo
:

Would crone, with a red-strapped trunk under her bed. a Napoleon ever creep in under the bed of such an old
erone ?
.
.

Insanity."
;

not sorry for the murder of the old woman he continues to regard her life as a useless one, her death
is

He

as

an

indifferent,

almost a

beneficial

act.

The
;

old

woman

is, be, a secondary matter he would only by killing her bring a principle to life, kills not a human being, but a prejudice, and strides over the

and continues to

chasm which separates the e very-day souls who possess the vulgar faiths from the host of the elect. He has killed the prejudice, but he remains just the same standing on this side of the chasm. He is excessively wretched, more wretched than ever before. He has not done anything bad. He only wished not to be obliged to pass by his starving mother and keep

A PERIOD OF DOUBT.

317

her rubles in his pocket. And how conscientiously has He assured himself first by a careful selfhe not acted
!

examination, that he would not overstep the barriers to satisfy sensuous impulses, but for the sake of a great object; so he himself selected, among all "the useless
lice/'

the most useless of

all,

and

finally determined,

although he killed the woman, to take only so much as

was absolutely necessary for the object nearest to him. But it is not the old woman he has killed; it was himHis deed has grown up far above his self, his own ecjo. head; it has isolated him completely, thrown him The secret gnaws him to wholly back into himself. "a louse," like insanity, and the agony of being himself
all

the others, paralyzes him.

Scarcely had he committed the murder before he began to feel lonesome, strange to himself, and doomed
to everlasting dumbness. He it is who will nevermore be able to talk with others. Soon after, he is tormented to disclose himself, to tell all prefers immediately to throw all that he has taken into the canal; he has no idea of using it,

by an insane impulse

himself.

He

conceals

it

under a stone in a building-lot.

He

does not
;

himself understand what has happened to him but he has been separated from his past, as if by the clip of

a pair of scissors. There comes a moment when he almost jumps into the water, to make an end of all. On his associates he makes the impression of a madman.

But he falls in with human wretchedness in its worst form a drunkard who dies a consumptive widow with a nest full of children, without bread a noble young
;

girl

who has been compelled

and

to sell herself to get food

sisters
;

for her little brothers

and the need of

showing generosity, of helping, restores to him, for a short time, faith in, life. Still, this short rise is followed

318

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
The thought whether the others did not tortures him, so that he plays an en-

by new pangs.
tirely useless

know everything

acts as if nothing

comedy when, towards certain people, he was the matter. And really there are

some who are on the track; one who has suspected sees through him, and he is everything and completely an a of examining magistrate. Still a genius jurist, nor examined no, what arrested neither is Raskolnikof at last opens his lips and compels him to surrender himself is a purely inward, spiritual movement. Long be;

fore it gains the mastery, it presents itself to him, as the moment approaches when he must disclose himself,

and he even draws a parallel of the feelings of the advent of this moment with his earlier perception of the necessity that the hour was come for murdering the

Yet this feeling is continually crossed by of the feeling growing hate towards the whole world
old

woman.

about him

he

feels a

murderous hatred towards those

in regard to whom he suspects or feels that they know his secret. When, in his solitary ponderings, he puts to

himself the questions what, under these or those given circumstances, he shall do in order not to be trapped, the " outburst, Then I shall kill him," is the constant answer
to all such questions that arise. Nay, at last, he discovthat even of his mother and sisters, with horror, ers,

who have always been

so dear to him, he thinks now and then with a feeling of hate. And this hatred and all this anguish have their root in love. If only he had not loved so much, all this would

not have happened.

If his soul had been barren, if he had not been bold, magnanimous and earnest, he would never have become a murderer. During this horrible time he feels more and more drawn towards the young girl who has been named

GROWTH OF EEPENTANCE.
before,

319

and who has fallen on account of her love for her little brothers and sisters. By her most strenuous exerwas necessary by her earn what not could tions she own her mother had driven her out and daily wages, had into the street. brought him into relations Pity with her, admiration for the nobility and purity of her
being brings him to seek her out, for not a drop of real unchastity has as yet entered into her heart. He honors

She also has "overthe one despised by the world. stepped the barriers," she also has laid her hand upon a

human

life,

her own, has sacrificed herself and sacrificed

;

herself uselessly but she stands spiritually high above him. Little by little she becomes his conscience. One

day, when he has looked for a long time silently into her tearful face, he throws himself down before her and
kisses her feet. " What are
to
?

you doing
"
:

What

are

you doing

That

me

"

He
down

answers

Not

to

you did I bow down

bowed

to the total suffering of the human race." It is Sonya's prayer that he shall himself confess his

guilt, "take his martyrdom upon himself;" she will never leave him, will accompany him in his exile to Siberia as an inmate of the House of Correction. He

His sister also urges him to surhesitates a long time. render himself she sees in this step his only salvation from the self-consumption into which he has fallen. But
:

when she

uses the word crime, he becomes excited. " That I have killed a disgusting, mischievous louse, an

usurious old crone, for whose death one ought to be forgiven forty sins, a creature that sucked the blood
out of poor folk, that a crime!" blood!" breaks in the sister amazed.

"Thou hast shed "Blood! "answers

Raskolrdkof,

"All shed

it

it

flows and has always

320

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

flowed on the earth in streams,

it is poured out like for it on the Capitol crowned are and people champagne, I myself and then called the benefactors of mankind only wished for the good and would have done a hundred thousand good deeds for this one blunder, and it

'

was not even a blunder, only a clumsy act. By this blunder all I wanted was to put myself in an independent and then all this would position, make the first step,
have been compensated by a proportionally large usefulBut I have not been able to take the first step, ness. That is the whole of it." because I am a milksop
!

Sonya is stronger than he. He cannot withstand the prayer of the strong woman in all its humility and unworthiness, to make his deed known, and the novel ends with Baskolnikofs self-accusation at the police-office " It was I who murdered the old regisStill,

in the long run,

ter's

widow and her

!

sister

with an axe and then plun-

dered their property "

In this story Dostoyevski has plainly intended to give a picture of the times. "What is before us here," says the examining magistrate Porfyrius to the hero, in the third part of the book, " is, evidently enough, a fantastic,
tragical product of the

new tendency

of the times

it is

a deed which only the present time could bring forth, the time in which it is a custom to repress one's feelings and to give utterance to phrases like this that blood
:

books
as

operates refreshing it is a heart which ;

;

that

is

a fantasy

which comes from

by theories 5

it is

is spasmodically overstrained a determination which leads to crimes

if strange feet carried him thither." The author evidently has political ferments in view, although he takes care not to say a single word directly about politics.

There

is

undoubtedly contained in
"

it

an allusion
Porfyrius

to the

murder of the Tsar,

Still it is well,"

A SYMBOLICAL DBEAM.
old

321

says to Baskolnikof, "that it was only such, a wretched woman whom yon killed if, on the other hand, yonr
;

theory had taken another direction, then yonr misdeed might have been a hnndred million times more fright-

through a dream which Baskolnibrooding over thoughts of murder and is frightened at it, there is a description, which, it is true, is not anywhere pointed directly at the Bussian people, but which undoubtedly is a symbol of the most
ful."

And

indirectly,
is

kof has, while he

in his

The hero sees dream a miserable, emaciated, light brown peasant-horse, harnessed to a very large, heavy wagon, which it cannot possibly draw but the horse is whipped again and again by the rough owner of the wagon, without
sombre representation of the situation.
;

mercy, over the muzzle, over the eyes, first with one whip and then with three at a time; the horse groans

can scarcely breathe, pulls, stops, tries to pull cannot again, escape from the storm of blows, and at last begins, to the general laughter of the men, to kick
puffs,

and

back.

The horse

is

whipped again

while some beat

on a drum in addition, one sings a shameless song, and a woman contentedly cracks nuts is whipped over the muzzle and over the eyes. When even several heavy blows with a wagon pole over the back are not able to drive the horse forward, the owner seizes a great iron bar and gives the horse a blow with that. The horse tries for the last time to pull, then falls down on the ground and breathes his last. When the social condition is of the kind described here symbolically, it is no wonder that sanguinary thoughts spring up in the minds
of the youth.

Even if it is not a political crime which Dostoyevski has represented, it is a crime which has this in common with the political, that it is not mean, was not committed

322

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

for the vulgar, low object of procuring for the perpetrator greater personal profit, but was in a certain degree
unselfish, and,

what is most important above all, it was committed by a person who at the moment of the crime In the mean does not harbor a doubt as to his right.
if

time,

years

we compare the men and women whom in recent we have seen sentenced in Eussia for intent to
less

commit murder, and not

those

who have been

executed as accessories to the assassination of the Tsar

with this homicide, then the contrast is striking. Those persons were not in any way ruined by the spiritual consequences of their deed they had as conspirators in
;

and after the moment of the murder been in full accord with their inmost being their conviction continued to be unshaken and unmoved to the last. If they had escaped detection, in all probability they would have lived to the end of their lives without any other than peaceful and proud thoughts about their attempts at the murder of a being whose extermination they regarded as a good deed, nay, as a duty. Easkolnikof, on the
;

other hand,

is

destroyed by the consequences of the

murder.
fixed principle, which,

Like the political criminals, he started from a certain it is true, is not mentioned in the

book, but which, nevertheless, lies at the foundation of his way of proceeding, that the end justifies the means.

This principle, which simplicity has misunderstood and Jesuitism has misused, is exactly and literally sound. The word " justifies " indicates that a good, valuable end
is

meant.

'

He

has a good, valuable end

who would

maintain or produce results of real value. Suppose that one could obtain his good end only by
inflicting suffering,

less

and suppose that this suffering is than that which will be produced if he avoids

TEE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

making use of the means.

323

Suppose, for example, that a man wishes the good of his fellow-citizens, and can arrive at his end only by removing a single man (it may be one who is infected with a contagious disease, or a tyrant), then his act is deserving of honor, if of two
evils

incurred
lies

one or the other of which must necessarily be he chooses the lesser. The objection which near to this, that he cannot foresee the results of

his act, signifies nothing, because the morality

depends

upon the intent and not upon the result. In our^Iaily life no one entertains any doubt as to the soundness of the principle we are quite familiar with the idea that there are no absolute duties. Society teaches: Thou must not kill, but adds Except where your fatherland (the good end) demands it, for then it becomes not only
;
:

allowable, but a duty, to kill the largest possible number of enemies. Society teaches It is a bad act to cut off
:

the arms or legs of another, but adds when the physician amputates an arm or a leg to save the life of the
:

wounded, then the good end justifies the means. In order that the principle shall be applicable, the following conditions must be fulfilled The end must be good. The end must be such that it cannot be attained by any other means than those which inflict the pain, nor even by means which inflict less pain than those which are employed. The suffering which is used as a means must be less than that which would exist without the use of the means. With regard to all these points, the typical Russian terrorist, before as well as after his onslaught upon the course of events, would be without any concern whatever. Why, then, was Easkolnikof not
sick or
:

so also ?

Although Dostoyevski undoubtedly was not in the

least degree partial to
political terrorists, since

324

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
were hateful to him, he has an extraordinary discrimina-

political progressionists manifested on this point

tion.

He does not particularly deny the justice of Haskolnikof's reasoning, but shows that he is confused as to In desperhis end, uncertain if it is really good or not.
ation he says to Sonya, a month after the deed, that he has continually fceen uncertain. When he examines himself he finds that in fact he has not committed murder to support his mother nor to become a benefactor of mankind, but in order to find out if he like the others was a "louse," not a man, that is, if he was in a position to overstep the barriers or not. He is uncertain about his

end and uncertain about his inward authority to pursue

this indefinite end, which, according to his own theory, only the elect are at liberty to use all means to attain.

When

he for a whole day has tortured himself with

the question whether Napoleon would have done such an act, he already felt dimly that he was not a

Napoleon. Therefore he was wholly overwhelmed by the consequences of the deed. He wished only to kill an old monster but that was hardly done before necessity compelled him, to escape detection, to kill a poor, kindly being who had never done harm to any mortal, nay, had Since then he continually been a sacrifice for others. has even been obliged to recognize Lisavieta's spiritual
;

kinship to Sonya,

whom he respects so greatly. He says somewhere, "Oh, how I hate this wretched old woman 1 I believe I could strike her down once more
if

she awakened to life, But the poor Lisavieta Why must she come in! Strange that I almost not at all think of her, just as if I had not killed her Lisavieta Sonya ... Ye poor things, ye mild women with timid eyes, ... ye dear women, why do ye not weep ?
! !
! !

RASKOLNIKOF' S CONVERSION.
why
.
.

325

do ye not groan ? They sacrifice everything with their mild and quiet looks." Yet far more than the murder of Lisavieta, which had not been wished for, the fear of being arrested tortured
.

him, and the system of dissimulation and denial and His reason is not lying, in which he involves himself.

enough to endure it, and, until he confesses, he is continually on the verge of insanity. In an epilogue which takes place in Siberia, Dostoyevski then suffers Baskolnikof s defiant and yet troubled nature to be at once dissolved in tenderness and strengthened in spirit by the faithful, enduring love of Sonya. Raskolnikof Even before is an "infidel," but Sonya a believer. Baskolnikof has recognized his guilt, there is an affecting scene where Sonya reads aloud to him from the New a scene where a tallow candle in the batTestament,
solid

tered candlestick in the poor room at once shines upon a murderer, a fallen woman, and the gospel between

a truly Christian scene, stamped with genius. them, In the epilogue, for which Dostoyevski has plainly wished to make use of his experiences in Siberia, his religious
convictions, direct

and

doctrinal,

make

their appearance.

have heard a young Russian lady express it, we very often in reading Dostoyevski have a feeling that the characters which he has created are more profound than

As

the author himself.

He was not capable of understandthe his of own work. ing scope If we should now study the subordinate characters
only approximately with the same care with which the character of the chief person has been examined, we

number

shall find that they, almost without exception, ten in as they are, stand on a level with the hero by

the force and truth with which they are drawn, and that all stand in some relation to him. There is no super-

326

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

fluous person in the book. Among the most admirably the are conceived characters examining magistrate Porfyrius, a legal genius,
ga'ilof,

and the landed proprietor Svidria very complex nature, a voluptuary, who is in

love with Raskolnikof s sister, and who pursues her. He is a man of intellect, has an excellent head, and, although

he has one or more unrepented murders on his conscience, he possesses both courage and sense of honor in his way. As the murderer from selfishness, by numerous details
in regard to his

contrast to the hero of the book,

Svidrigailof s

and thinking, he forms a who writhes under contention that they have one certain

way

of acting

characteristic in

common.

Dostoyevski's delineation of character here is of the it is profound, and bold. first rank; Nevertheless, after the manner of Dickens, it leaves almost the whole
of the relations between the sexes, if not untouched, yet undescribed. In this domain, however, the poet

does not escape the paradoxical

proachable fallen
thesis in

woman reminds
Victor

thus the morally irreus more of an anti-

human form by

Hugo than

of a real

person. His aversion to describing the natural sensual life is all the more impressive since here, as in most of the
author's
-

other books, he dwells on unnatural, turbid notice Svidrigailof s hideous passion for appetites. young girls. And we compare the amazing inquisition in " The Possessed," where Shatof questions Stavrogin if it is true that in St. Petersburg he belonged to a

We

secret society

unnatural

which had for its object the satisfaction of he has really said that the Marquis de Sade could go to school to him, and if he has debauched and misused children. 1
lust, if
1

Nihilister (Danish translation),

i.

319,

DOSTOYEVSKI'S STYLE.
It
is

327

turned on such

fancy frequently unnatural inclinations, just because, according to his train of reasoning, there is no room left for a sound sensuousness. His inclination to de-

evident

that Dostoyevski' s

scribe bodily sufferings, the dwelling greatly on cruelIt is peculiar ties, are suggestive of unnatural desires.

and again returns to the comparison between Dostoyevski and De Sade. Quite evidently it is very much in consequence of his dislike to see his
that Turgenief again

hateful rival installed as a hero, but also it is plain that it was Turgenief s conviction that there is to be found

here physiologically and psychologically a real kinship. 1 Thus much is clear at all events, that with Dosto-

was a perverse nervousness. However high the delineation of character stands in "Crime and Punishment/' the book suffers from the The portions in imperfections of the narrative style. are the best. As soon as the dialogue immeasurably
yevski's gifts there

was not

author himself begins to talk, art ceases. Dostoyevski able, like Turgenief, to acquire the French art

them was

of narration; what he appropriated to himself from their ideal of humanity, a national, funda-

mental view, which is akin to that of Louis Blanc and of Victor Hugo in his later years. Though an author of such a high rank, he was an He allowed all his writings to be artist of a low rank.
printed as they ran off from his pen, without revision of

He

any kind whatever, to say nothing of recasting them. did not trouble himself to give them the highest

possible degree of perfection by condensation or pruning, but only worked as a journalist works, and is therefore universally too prolix. Thus so far as this, his best work,
1

is

concerned,

it is

See especially Turgenief 's

letter to Saltykof of

September 24, 1882.

328

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

clear that lie in the first part

at all about the treatise

had not known anything which in the second part he states that Raskolnikof had written about his theory. Certain expressions in the first part are even at variance with what the hero must have written in such a treatise. Moreover, it is very little in harmony with the modern art of narration when in numerous places in the novel the author uses such turns as: "Later we learn that Svidrigailof that evening also had made a visit," or "When he afterwards, long afterwards, remembered this time, it was clear to him that his consciousness must have been confused," or " Afterwards it was wonderful to Sonya that she thus at once had seen," etc. By such turns the author strives to fill up the gaps and omisSomewhere Dostoyevski even sions in the descriptions.
" writes with the genuine olden-time naivet6 line the of whole leave thought by temporarily
:

We

will

which

Raskolnikof reaches this result besides we have already Yet we add only, that the anticipated it too much.
;

actual material difficulties of the undertaking played Anticipations and only a weak part in his mind."

excuses for anticipations have just as little place in a novel as gaps and gap-stoppers. It is already seen from " Crime and Punishment " in

what sense Dostoyevski can be said to be the author of the proletariats. As no one else he has known and understood the proletariat both of intelligence and of
ignorance. His chief characteristic, when he presents it, is a kind of psychological clairvoyance, which deserts him when

he describes the upper classes. (See, e. g., the Prince in "The Injured and Oppressed.") The force and extent of this clairvoyance is especially traced where
the healthy spiritual condition borders

upon the domain

HIS TREATMENT OF
of insanity.

"MORAL FEVER."

329
he

Towards the human

spiritual condition

has the sure insight of a physician for the insane, but it acts with him, as sometimes with such physicians,
that the habit of constantly having spiritual abnormities before him leads him to see the abnormal every-

where, and by degrees disturbs the equilibrium of his own mind.

He

likes to take his stand

on the dividing

line

which

separates rational trains of thought from the exalted, and From the proper modes of action from the criminal.

narrow and low embankment he looks on both sides and

never forgets to
call the reader's attention to

how

nar-

row and low the difference in reality is between health and disease, right and wrong. With a peculiar mastership he depicts the intellectual dizziness which makes
rush headlong into a gulf of crime or sacrifice. He knows, as no other person knows, the irresistible attrac-

men

tion of gulfs.

As a judge of spiritual life he is wholly pathological. The perpetual sensitiveness, which is the result of his His own bad epileptic nature, is also his strength.
health, his nervous tremors, his hallucinations, his pass through into the persons whom he describes.
fits,

The

horror which oppressed him when he first received the sentence of death, and afterwards when he faced the

punishment of the

lash,

meets one in the attitude of his

principal characters in the face of punishment (Baskolnikof, a number of persons in "The Dead House/' Dmitri in "The Brothers Kararaazof"), most distinctly " " perhaps in The Idiot (Prince Myshkin), where the hero, in the very beginning of the book, exhibits to his
valet all the horrors of the
It is

man condemned
is

to death.

developed here that the putting to death in pursudisproportionately

ance of a sentence of a court

more

330

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

'conclusion

odious than the most dreadful murder, and it is added, in "Perhaps there is a man to whom a sentence
:

of death has been read only to torment him." always this background of agony and terror.

There

is

The

greater

visionary.

number of Dostoyevski's characters are Thus there are in "The Brothers Kara-

niazof" alone, the youngest of the brothers, Aliosha, who reads in the souls of others and sees what is hidden,
foresees the temptation of Dmitri to parricide, the Christian mysticism casts himself on his

and the noble monk Zossima, the saint of the book, who and in
knees
before him, as before the most sinful, and therefore the nearest to salvation. 1 The hero in " The Idiot," Prince

Myshkin,

is epileptic,

in " The Brothers

and so is the murderer Smerdiakof, Karamazof."

Since Dostoyevski's strength is in pathology, it is quite natural that his three principal books should describe find them in "The Brothers criminal natures. as well as in " The Dead House " but

We

Karamazof," ; " Crime and Punishment/ nevertheless, contains the typical example of his masterpiece of psychological analysis it unfolds the crime in its whole growth, from the As a judge of the first cell until it bears its last fruit. diseased condition of the mind, as an author of the "moral fever," Dostoyevski has not his equal.
7
;

It is natural that in

an author who

is

so exclusively

psychological, the natural environments play almost no What he needs of a landscape is the strip of the part.
horizon, the glimpse of the blue sky, which is visible from a garret in the suburbs of a great city, or through the panes placed high up in a prison cell, With him it
is all

repartee, conversation 5 to that extent everything

is

dramatic.
1

Dostoyevski; Les Freres Earamazof, by Halperine-Kaminsky,

ii.

p. 223

and i.

p. 38,

DOSTOYEVSEI AS DIALECTICIAN.

331

Dostoyevski is the greatest dialectician among the Eussian authors. His great strength is his amazing skill The soliloquy of question and answer in dialogue. and he is never tired of employing it analyzes a matter from its different aspects in the most delicate details. Dialogue, with him, is a kind of inquisition, a continued contest between men, who seek to wrest their secrets

from each other. De Vogue's expression is very apt; when he says that he combines the disposition of a compassionate sister with the abilities of a chief inquisitor. The same author has also very truly said of him that his characters are never shown to us in a tranquil state, obeying the rule of reason. One of them never sits quietly at a table, occupied with one thing or another. It is said: "He was lying upon the sofa, with closed He went out on the street eyes, but not sleeping. without knowing where he was. He stood immovable, with his look persistently fixed on a point out into vacancy." They never eat, but they drink tea at night. They almost never sleep, and when they do they
.
.

dream. 1

Nothing is more foreign to them and their author than the code of honor of Western Europe, as it is most clearly stated in the dramas of Calderon, and still exists as a legacy from the age of chivalry in the Latin and German society. In the world which Dostoyevski apens up to us, the most insulting charges, nay, a blow in the face, are no disgrace to a man. They speak about a flogging as the most natural thing in the world. In a Christian spirit, and in perfect accord with the national mysticism, suffering is regarded almost as a blessing.

One of Dostoyevski's
I

am

not worthy of
1

characters says, " I am afraid that my torture." The torture is con:

De Vogue Le Roman

Kusse, p. 257.

332

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
It

sidered as a kind of distinction.

always ransoms is endured, somebody or something. it caused is which the guilt expiated. Still more: suffering in this world turned upside

When

the torture

down

is

a temptation.
i.
:

Shatof says to Stavrogin (Ni.

. .

Do you know why you made this 320) kilister, You married from low and shameful marriage?
a desire to feel pain, pangs of conscience, from moral And this conluxury. It was a nervous irritation."
not exceptional. it is that the extremely significative desire to live which is purely characteristic of the Byzantine Christianity becomes the principle of evil with Dosception
is

"

Therefore

This is what he has mystically embodied in toyevski. The atheistical Ivan the three brothers Karamazof. " Do his to you know that if I had younger brother, says . still I would not have killed lost my faith in life,
.
.

myself, I lifted the

I have everything enchanted cup to my lips, I shall not let it More than go till I have drained it to the dregs. once I have asked myself if there is a pain in the world which is able to conquer this unquenchable thirst, this thirst for life, which, perhaps, is unseemly ; but I do not think that before my thirtieth year any such pain has

would

live in spite of

been given to me.

life is

know very

well that this thirst for

what the moralists, especially those who write verse, the consumptive people, who always have a cold in the head, call low and contemptible. It is also true that this thirst for life is a trait which is characteristic in the Karamazof family to live cost what it will It is also in you. But what is there low in it " x Although the thirst for life is an evil, yet suffering,
:
!

without something more,

1

is

not a good.
i.

Dostoyevski,

Les Freres Karamazof,

205.

HIS VIEW 0^ THE USE OF EVIL.

with, all his (unconsciously cruel)

S33

dwelling on~ torture,

and the enjoyment of torture, is too gentle and nervously weak and shattered not to melt in pity thereat. Nay, pity is a kind of religion with him, and it sometimes conflicts with his system, his faith in God, his
Christianity. fearful attack
earth.
all

We

enough to evolve a upon suffering upon read, for instance, Ivan's enumeration of
is

He

dialectician

faith in

God from

the cruelties of
children
;

men towards

defenceless animals,

little

ments
;

his busying himself with all the refineof cruelties: a little horse, whipped over the

a girl seven years old, who is whipped with eyes thorns a girl of five, who, on a cold night in winter, is locked up in a closet, and whose face is smeared with
;

filth,

which she

old,

whom

dogs,

is made to eat a serf boy eight years a general suffers to be torn to pieces by his all this without the intervention of God, and
;

we ponder

over his conclusion: It

is

this fits into the

heavenly harmony but I do not recognize it it counterbalances for nae not a single tear of a child.
;

possible that all of the Almighty;

The young hero Aliosha, on DostoyevskPs behalf, disposes of this doubt with the answer, "There is a Being who can forgive all, for he himself has poured out
his innocent blood for all

which, in another place in the book (ii. 209), the devil in a hallucination uses with Ivan " What pleasure can one have
is
:

The argument

not

men and things." much better than that

without suffering?
ceremonial,

It

would

all

be like an unending

holy, but unendingly tedious."

With a very extraordinary sublimity and greatness, Dostoyevski has developed the religious problem, as it appeared to him, in the ingenious poem, "The Chief Inquisitor," which he puts into the mouth of Iv3n, and

834
for

IMPRESSIONS 0^

RtfSSlA.

whose sake alone " Tlie Brothers Kararaazof " ought

to be translated.

Christ has come back

self at

upon the

earth.

He

shows him-

a great auto-da-fe in Seville, where hundreds of heretics are burned in his honor, gently walking about

All know him, the common fire. people throng around him, he blesses them. Then the chief inquisitor, an old man of ninety, causes him to be
in the ashes of the
arrested, imprisoned,

who

are

condemned

the night.

and placed in a cell used for those and there visits him in conversation then follows between the
to the stake,

inquisitor and Christ, or rather a long monologue of the a former, which is not interrupted by any answer, monologue in which the cardinal shows the Saviour how wrong he has been in coming again and disturbing the work of his believers, and proclaims to him his fixed intention of letting him be burned alive as a heretic

unfolds

The inquisitor in order to bring peace to his work. to Christ the faults, the political faults, he committed in his lifetime. The most important of all
was that he did not accept the offer of the tempter to change stones to bread, but showed himself to men with

who

empty hands. He thereby made it possible for them rise up against him to rally about the watchword " Give them first meat, if thou wilt that they shall be
:

good."
-

"We," says the

understand
'

how

to

lie,

and we speak

cardinal, "give them bread. in thy name.

We
And

they end by bringing us their freedom, laying it down at our feet, and asking us for chains and bread. There are only three forces on earth which can keep that

humanity in check, which is really so weak and yet so rebellious, and these are the miracle, the mystery, and the authority. And thou hast rejected these forces
:

to proclaim a

freedom which

it

was particularly neces-

HIS LATER YEARS.

335

sary to confiscate, and a love with, which mankind cannot be governed; therefore it has been necessary to
correct thy work, to correct it by the power of Borne and with the sword of Caesar, and make some hundreds

nate

of thousands of progressive spirits unhappy, extermithem when it was possible, in order to secure the

weal of untold millions.

burned.
Dixi."

To-morrow I

shall

have you

Christ does not answer a word, but looks into the eyes of the inquisitor with a mild but firm gaze, then he quietly moves his face close to the inquisitor's, and kisses

the old

man on

his bloodless mouth.

Then the old man trembles, opens the cell door, and " Go says, your way, and come again never more
.
.

never, never

as the offspring of an atheistical train of thought, but even the compo> sition shows with what seriousness and versatility Dos^

more " This poem is condemned in the novel

!

toyevski has asked the question and tested the different answers.

The period from 1871

to 1881

was the most peaceful

in Dostoyevski's life. His second marriage was instrumental in introducing order in his household affairs.

eclipsed in popularity all the writers who were at regarded as his equals, especially causing Pisemski's reputation to grow pale in comparison. But he also
first

He

eclipsed Turgenief, who had so long been regarded as his superior. All the ill will which this great author had stirred up among the Slavophiles and radicals enured
for a long time to the advantage of Dostoyevski. in 1880, the unveiling of Pushkin's statue in

When, Moscow

was the occasion of a great national literary festivity, at which the greatest authors made speeches, Turgenief s was applauded, bui Dostoyevski's excited raptures and

336
sobs
;

IMPRESSIONS OF EUSSIA.
and when he had
1

finished,

he was carried about in

triumph.

In his monthly periodical, " The Diary of an Author," he now preached faith in Russia as a duty and attacked with equal bitterness the Russian "intelligence" and

the culture of Western Europe, which had become to him the culture of Babel and of Sodom. He was thus regarded as the greatest popular author of Russia at the time of his death. The sorrow at his loss was a national sorrow forty thousand men followed him to his grave. The Russian students sent an open letter to his widow, *-in which appears, among other things " Dostoyevski's ideals will never be forgotten; from
; :

generation to generation we shall hand them down as a precious inheritance from our great, beloved teacher. His memory will never be extinguished in the
.

hearts of the Russian youth, and, as we love him, we will also teach our children to honor and love the man
for
.

so bitterly and disconsolately mourn. Dostoyevski will always stand bright before us in our battle of life we shall always remember that it was he who taught us the possibility of preserving the purity of the soul undefiled in every position of life and in all
. .

whom we now
;

circumstances."
It was, as

we

see,

the Slavophile direction of thought

which spoke the

last

word

at his death.

1 The most of Dostoyevski's novels have been translated into Danish, as well as Pisemski's excellent novel, " Thousand Souls." " Crime and Punishment " has been translated into English, and published by T. Y. Crowell Co., New York.

&

YII. RUSSIA'S -last great realist and dreamer, Count Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoi, is more powerful than Turgenief and more healthy than Dostoyevski. He apin Slavic piety and proaches Turgenief in pessimism faith in the E/ussian common people he approaches Dostoyevski. In common with the latter, he has a distrust of the culture of Western Europe, only he extends
;

it

so as to embrace all civilization. His fancy is far-reaching, epic. So far as he

is

is
is

con-

cerned, the proposition

true that the novel

the

modern

has not only like other authors given a phase of culture and the life of so-called good society in and out of the capitals of Russia, but in his greatest work he has depicted an age, an army, a people, and a historic catastrophe of the first rank, Napoleon's campaign and defeat on Russian soil. He was born August 28, 1828, on the estate Ydsnaya
epic.

He

Polyana, in the department of Tula, lost his father in 1837, went to the University of Kazan in 1843, where he studied jurisprudence and the Oriental languages, but returned to his estate at the end of three years. In 1851 he served in the army of the Caucasus, where he made his first essay as an author, took part in the Crimean War, was in the battle at Tchernaya and the
siege of Sevastopol, and, on the conclusion of peace, In 1857 he made his first obtained his discharge.
,

journey abroad, visiting Germany and Italy.

337

On

his

338
estate,

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
where he came in
close contact with the

common

people and studied their natures, he established a free school and busied himself in all directions with meditating on what could and ought to be done for the common
people.

He

married in 1862.

He

first

contemplated

writing a great novel about the "Decembrists" (the heroes of the revolts of 1825), but abandoned this idea
for another, of

which

"

War

(1865-1868).

"Anna Kar6nina"

and Peace ;? was the result followed in 1878, and

later, novels, plays,

It is indicative of the

sketches of the people, confessions. kind of Tolstoi's faith in reality

that he began as an observer of himself, and an autobiographer. Turgenief keeps himself wholly in the back-

ground in his writings.

When we

catch a glimpse of

the author himself in Dostoyevski's works it is in those characters which wholly sacrifice themselves for others, a,nd generally in turn are despised, because they lack
all

the fascinating qualities with which the more ordinary persons are adorned. Thus it is with the narrator of the story, Ivan Petr6vitch, in "The Injured and

Oppressed." There is a gleam of the same thing even in old Makar Alekseyevitch, in " Poor Polk." His description of himself in "The Dead House" is pathetically modest, even humble, although the author lets it be

understood that the narrator

as an

is regarded by the others But when he uses himself as a model, Dostoyevski always draws a person of the most " The extraordinary goodness. In his novel, Idiot," he

uncommon

person.

has presented himself in the guise of the hero, Prince Myshkin. Myshkin is a genius of the greatest ability, a child in simplicity and purity of heart. For four and

twenty years he has been

disease, epilepsy, so that

afflicted with that incurable he acquiesces with mildness

when, even although he

is

in possession of all his facul-

TOLSTOI.
ties,
is

339

he is treated as one who is sick or insane, one who on the point of having a convulsive fit." He has no fine manners, is not able to husband his ideas, and therefore, as he himself says, uses words which are not
'k

would express, and, as But, notwithstanding this, were, disgrace them. there is no one in his circle of acquaintances, not one, who is worthy of such words. Dostoyevski proclaims " There is no the mouth of a that
suitable for the lofty thoughts he
it

through young girl one here who is worthy of your soul, your heart, nay, You are more honest not even of your little finger. than all of us, nobler and wiser than any one of us."
:

If Tolstoi begins

by describing himself,

it is

because

he wants to describe what he knows. He relates the life of his childhood and youth (" Childhood," "Youth ") then, indirectly, but in a transparent manner, his experiences as an officer in the Caucasus (" The Cossacks "), his memories of war (" Pictures of War," " Sevastopol "). In every place where he gives a picture of himself the criticisms of himself and the use of irony towards him;

self

are

palpable.

He

unveils

his

own weaknesses,

shows us his own follies. He never makes the impression of an ideal figure. On the contrary, it is he who less often than others succeeds in winning hearts, and who does not deserve any other happiness than that which falls to his lot. In " The Cossacks," his Olyenin, like Petschdrin with Lermontof, is a Eussian officer

But while of the elegant world, living in the Caucasus. of his in all coldness, Petschdrin, everywhere spite
meets with a warm reception from the women, Olyenin, from his passionate love cherished for a long time for a child of nature, a Cossack girl, reaps only such ill will and contempt that she would not even turn her head towards him when he went away. In Lermontof s book

340

IMPRESSION'S OF RUSSIA.

the highly cultured man is attractive even when he is tired of the world; for Tolstoi' the object here, as ever, is to extol the superiority of nature to the results
of artistic culture.

And

to this love

and admiration

for

nature

we may

landscape, a frame, in "

attribute the fact that the Caucasian which in " The Hero of Our Time " was

only

presents itself identified with the freshness and force of the nature of man "the
:

The Cossacks

"

everlasting snow, untouched by man, and the exalted woman in her primitive beauty." ..." I rejoiced over

her as over the glory of the mountains and of the heavens, and could not help rejoicing, for she is as beautiful as they."

..." Perhaps
of

the embodiment
nature,"
etc.

I love in her the nature, everything that is beautiful in

We

feel

that

something

besides

self-

glorification is
reality.

dear to the author, namely fidelity to

reality

It is this

fidelity to

where in Tolstoi:
natures, strong

First,

which moves us everywhere the author's own .charac-

ter is traced in his created characters, as in certain

heavy and awkward men, who, without any

special stimulus, for a long time allow themselves to float with the stream, until an awakening of their religious

natures calls all their best qualities into action Bezukho'i in "War and Peace," Levin in "Anna Karenina," are
:

examples. In the next place, where Tolstoi describes the every-day life of strange natures, as in the finished,
bitterly veracious story

"Family Happiness," which

is

strongly effective, simply and only in the development of the way in which the illusions of life spring up, are

nourished and

lost.

It describes the

growth and

bios-'

soming of

love,

then the slow transformation which

degrades the love of the two consorts to friendship, and at last allows tenderness for the children to displace

HIS HISTORICAL PORTRAITS.

every other sentiment. It a single romantic event.
is e very-day life,

341

without even

Next to fidelity to reality the quality of divination, the gift of being able to anticipate, is noteworthy in He possesses the extremely rare historical Tolstoi.
imagination.
It

not to

who

quite true that he has a spirit sufficiently modern to conjure up distant persons, have long since died. He does not go farther back
is

make any attempts

than to an epoch where he

is

assisted

by a tradition

still

Nevertheless, his description of a past historic vigorous. that of Alexander the First, is admirable. like period,

His historical portraits make an impression as if the picture was painted on a foundation of personal experiHis Napoleon, his Kutiizof, are instances. ences. There are perhaps in all only two artistic descriptions in which the appearance of Napoleon makes the impression of entire truthfulness, and which are drawn with genuine art. One is Alfred de Vigny's admirable description of Napoleon's conversation with the Pope, in Servitude et Grandeur Militaires; the second is the scene in " War and Peace," where Napoleon gives an audience to the Russian envoy Balash6f. It is written as if the author was present unseen. How expressive is such a little trait as this of Napoleon: "His white and fat neck was set off sharply against the black collar of his uniform, from which there came a strong smell of eau-de-cologne." We feel
the parvenu in this paltry detail. Tolstoi's Kutdzof is a characteristic picture of the same rank. Nevertheless, however eminent it is as a

work of
It

art, it

certainly has great defects as a portrait.

can hardly be doubted that, for national and religious reasons, the author has placed too high an estimate on

342
Kutiizof,
is

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.

and too low an estimate on Napoleon. What emphasized in Napoleon is the violence and the foolish arrogance which unconsciously stand before a fall
;

what we lack the impression of is of the force of his In Kutuzof, even inaction, nay, imbecility, is genius.
extolled as the expression of a profound knowledge to what extent matters go as they will or rather as they

must, without the interference of any single any special effect one way or the other.

man

having

This partiality, however, depends entirely on Tolstoi's Without the nervousness or peculiar views of life. exaltation of Dostoyevski, he is just as far as the latter

from having a reverence for human intelligence and for

political or scientific greatness.

In Germany authors believe in reason and culture, in England on the independent power of the individual, in France on abilities, in the North on morality Tolstoi, as Russians so frequently are, is impressed with the insignificance of the single man in the presence of the
;

universe.

He

cherishes a reverence for the universe

and for fate, but has none for science, art, or culture. In his view nothing depends on science or art. No, life and death are two great, earnest, inscrutable things. The great sermon which life and death daily preach into the ear of the author stifles the noise of the whole earth for him. The understanding of man seems to him so

weak

enigma of life that the simplest here is no than the highest. better intelligence And the will of man is to be counted as nothing in
in the face of the

regard to the irresistible stream of historic events. It is not the leader of the army who in reality leads the army
fate drives it

on

the battle

is

won

or lost without his

intervention, by the play of the secret impelling power. scene typical of Tolstoi is that where the wounded

HIS PESSIMISM.

343

Prince Andrei, lying stretched out on the battle-field, looks up to the heavens. Napoleon, -with his suite, stops by the side of the wounded man. The now feeble man,

whose admiration for Napoleon had hitherto been so boundless, finds him small and unimportant in comparison with what is going on between his own soul and the
immeasurable heavens.
It is significant that hardly

scribed so frequently

any other author has deand with such confidence and ver-

He is equally consatility as Tolstoi, how people die. versant with the feelings which precede suicide, man's as well as woman's with the* emotions with which the
wise and the foolish in sickness await the coming of death, and with the terror and the final release which

death brings in battle.

From

Tolstoi's lack of scientific culture

and

his

weak

faith in the intelligence of man results the ideal he has created for himself of a return to nature. It does not

correspond to Kousseau's, for it has a religious characbut it reminds one of it. The peasant Karatayef, in " War and Peace, 37 makes so deep an impression on Bezukhoi, not only because he is a primitive creation
ter
;

but because he has the resignation and the Christian, brotherly love which the civilized man lacks. Tolstoi is a pure romanticist to the extent that he
lowest classes.
j

does not seek his ideal before us, but behind us, in the He is not a pure pessimist, in so far as,

however black the situation appears to him, he continually tries to embody his ideal, and preaches its In this the pessimism which realization to others. in his writings differs sharply from that in appears

which in our day the Trench literature has culminated, the most characteristic expression of which is found in the writings of Huysmann, a conscientious artist and a

344

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
hope.

man without

The pessimism

of the latter consists

and disgusted with it. All that he has seen and experienced was to an intolerable degree vulgar and low. He suffers and is wounded by everything which there presents itself to his view, and it is very significant that he has created a character in a
in his being tired of life
novel,
is so
cial,

who

retires to

a solitary

life,

to

whom

the reality

hateful that he replaces the natural by the artifieven natural by artificial light, and who from the

simple classics, which are not spicy enough and which he despises, resorts to the very unnatural writers.

With

this radical

pessimism the pessimism of

:

Tolstoi*

has one point of contact the dislike of what is plain and rational. But for the typical French pessimist life is a worthless thing, whose enigma is not worth pondering over.
literature

honor and love

The only thing which the pessimists of this is art. And the same thing

which they loathe in real life, they honor when they find it in art. For only where the work of art almost exclusively represents that which in itself is purely commonplace and ungraceful are they sure that what they love in
the work
is

the art

itself.

The lover of

art indeed often

prefers the low and the sordid as the sxibject in order to be able to the full extent to enjoy the art in the manner
of its treatment.

For

Tolstoi,

on the other hand,

life is so serious

and

inexhaustible a thing that his interest for art was from the first infinitesimal, in comparison with the interest

which he bestows upon the questions of

ness.

life and happithe whole, art has never had an independent value for him, and in his last period he looks down

Upon

upon his

earlier

works as far too

artistic.

He

is

wholly

absorbed in a kind of Christian socialism of a wholly per. onal and eccentric nature, and it i$ evident that, so f$r

HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS EUSSIAN.

as
lie

845

gives art

any importance,
life,

it is

only as the organ of

the sound views of

as the

power which elevates the

people on the largest scale. It is impossible to enter into the spirit of a view of. art which despises the form, the style, even the element

which makes the art an art. There can, however, be no doubt as to which of the two constructions is best adapted to advance a literature which is not on its decadence, but in full prosperity that which regards literature as an organ for ideas, or that which cultivates the form of art simply as form. The teaching that art is its own end is sound enough, but must not be understood as sanctioning speaking or writing only for the sake of speaking and writing. Only where there are broad views and great thoughts is there to be found in literature that principle of life which saves it from being lost in its barrenness. Therefore the intellectual life of Eussia is in no danger from Tolstoi's more recent disdain of art. Why speak of what all know who have in any way
;

kept up with the times of the great man's remorse for the thoughtless life of his youth, which as his books of that epoch show now appears to him far more
:

thoughtless than

it

really was,

of his public confession,

dignified and naive, the confession of a contemplative man who was not created for a thinker, of his self-made religious system, which adopts the instruction of Christianity about the unlawfulness of war, nay, of all armed defence, and in which the principle, that after the blow on one cheek we ought to turn the other also, becomes its chief corner-stone. That there are very great objections to this is more than evident but what interests us is not that, but the genuine Eussian character of this fundamental idea and of this predominant emotion. It
:

346
is as if

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
even this peace-loving, utterly unwarlike
spirit

of the people, which is peculiarly Russian, had become instrumental in the development of Tolstoi's religious

teaching.

The philologian Carl Abel somewhere says, after having given the linguistic characteristics of the Great and " There is still a Little Eussian people nationality in of the two already either than more Eussia important
:

mentioned.

This most remarkable kind of

men

consists

As a fusion of all of the higher classes of the empire. the different races which are collected under the sceptre
of the Tsar, these higher classes constitute one of the

most gifted, courageous, and enterprising types of mankind produced anywhere on the face of the earth. In them sound Finnish reason is combined with Polish boldness, Armenian sagacity with the German reflective and methodical mariner of thought, and to the patient endurance of the Tatar is added the suppleness of the Slav." And he declares that if Eussia has accomplished much in diplomacy and war, it is due to this group of
leaders. 1

That interests Tolstoi

macy
all.

least because war and diploare just the things which do not interest him at And it is to those who have hitherto been under

the necessity of blind obedience to this group of leaders

that his whole

sympathy

is

secured.

It is

with them

that he in his employments, nay, in dress

and

exter-

nals, has gradually sought to identify himself, partly in

order to become thoroughly acquainted with their manner of feeling, and partly not to look down upon them
in any respect. One of my acquaintances, a very dispassionate jurist, who visited him at his estate last summer, could not
i

Carl Abel

Slavic and Latin, p. 51,

PRESENT MODE OF

LIFE.

347

speak of his visit without emotion. Concerning the reports of a decay in Tolstoi's intellectual power he said " Tolstoi has a clear, penetrating mind, especially tolerant of such as think otherwise, and of an angelic good:

ness.

He

and

in his

ganda.

reads everything, is interested in everything, conversation does not attempt any propaPoorly clad, half in rags, he lives in his family,

which does not share in his convictions, but which His wife is an intelligent honors and idolizes him. woman, an excellent mistress of her house, a house
-which

The sons, practical is kept up in grand style. men, take care of the estate. The daughter is beautiful, worldly in her very elegant costume she goes out to walk with her half-dressed father, and worships him." The people who surround him at the present time
;

consist of three classes the half-mad, who see in him what they want to see, and who get out of his words what they wish. In the second place, the good-fornothings, who come to profit by his benevolent disposition, and who are often discontented, since he cannot
:

satisfy all their demands. Finally, the correspondents of the different newspapers, who write about him entirely according to the tendency of the paper to which

they contribute.
teaches, above everything else, that people to be ought happy just as they ought to be pure. To be happy we must have as few necessities as possible.
Tolstoi'

Hence the return

finds in the life of the peasant,

to the primitive condition, which which is so simple.

It is

he

The moralizing propensity has been strong

from the beginning.

in Tolstoi

always to be found in his writings, except, perhaps, in some of his very earliest It is unmistakable in little stories, like "Lucerne." "War and Peace;" it is very strongly stamped on

348
"

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
it

Anna Karenina," where

even weakens the

result.

The moral lesson which we should deduce appears quite

too distinctly in his sketches. In other words the fixed idea of the generations of the past is traced here ; the Cause and idea of punishment thus it goes, when, etc. so its without stated, become being expressly effect,
:
:

transformed to guilt and punishment. Of late Tolstoi has devoted his efforts to writing He has determined to turn to the hunfor the people.

He

dred million instead of to the upper ten thousand. has written a series of short narrative legends, symbolical stories

and

tales,

which from

his disinterested-

ness are sold for about one cent (l kopeks) for each number, and which are intended to give to the Russian

peasants and workmen, who are now, for the first time, awakening from a sleep of a thousand years, the food

which
need.

is

suited to their

minds and the ideas which they

These brief writings are not reading for us who have

But the great peasant drama of last " The Power of Darkness," stands far above these year, didactic sheets. Perhaps it is the masterpiece of this
a different culture.
great eccentric and independent thinker. By its poetic meaning it belongs to the literature of the world, nay,
so far as the dramatic literature
is

concerned, marks the

discovery of a new world of material. Although this play has the wonderful quality that
there

stood

not a single repartee which cannot be underby the ignorant and untaught, it is food for the
is

most cultured.
a peculiarity of Tolstoi', with his lack of scienendowments, that his thought is not able to penetrate the economical causes of unhappiness and misery. No one who has read his essay " On the Importance of
It is
tific

THE POWEE OF DARKNESS.

Art and Science," that

349

is, its uniinportance, this attempt of a self-taught moralist to pass judgment on things which are out of the scope of his intellect, will be

money as the root of all own hand he does all sorts of service for the poor; but he never assists them with money. He wastes his time in helping an old woman set up her
evil.

surprised that Tolstoi regards

With

his

stove, but does not give her the ruble or two which she needs to get the stove set up better and more solidly. He is himself rich and has a large income, but he makes use of the expression that money affairs belong to the

never has any money about him, his home fifteen kopeks to from only gets pay for a bath in one of the bath-houses for the common
his wife.

domain of

He

now and then

people.

In the play " The Power of Darkness " there is a trace of this eccentricity. We notice Akim's indignation when
Mitritch explains to

him how

bank draws

interest.

it is that money put in the All matters of interest and of

banks are in his view a delusion. The author is to be heard here through the old peasant. Otherwise, with exemplary self-control he keeps himself concealed behind his characters, and the play is a great work in its exceptional sense of reality and the great, kind heart which beats in it. Here we look into a world where no one has the bearings, where no one really knows anything about what lies beyond the confines of the country town, not even
the soldier

who has roamed about. And how the women are regarded can be seen from what is said about them in one of the conversations " There are millions of them in the Eussian land, and all as blind as moles no knowl: ;

edge but a little superstition when they were born." just as wise as when they
;

die,

they are

350

IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.
Darkness" that Tolstoi

u Power of It is against this

has directed the beams of light from the blaze of his fantasy and his enthusiasm. It is with this that he, as
the educator of the people, has begun the fight. Behind his Asgaard's wall he kindles the bright fire into which

the Spirit of Darkness, the giant in the Eagle's home, to fall in the future. 1

is

Tolstoi and In the Eussian monograph " Count L. a Criticism of his Works," we have collected all the por There is a group of traits extant of the great author.

the year 1856, in which the young officer

is

painted with

Grigorovitch, Gontcharof, Turgenief, and Druzhinin, and the keen author of comedies, Ostrovski, and another of

the year 1857, in which the group consists of Turgenief,

There

and Panayef. an admirable portrait by Kramskoi, and a great many photographs from later years. We can thus trace how this characteristic head has been moulded and developed from within. There is the officer, not yet thirty years old, with the military mustache and the regularly cut, smooth hair, and the already
Sollogub, Tolstoi, Mekrasof, Grigorovitch,
is

peculiar, discontented, penetrating look, the expressive

a face which shows mouth, querying and uncertain, All the uneasiness, betraying a shy and violent spirit.
others
cious as

seem so tame, so mild by the side of him, caprihe seems, and naif and defiant. Years roll on, developments take place, and this head A quality appears in it which conbecomes changed. all the others quers commanding power. In the later There is pictures this expression becomes very strong. Krarnskoi's portrait, when Tolstoi was between forty and fifty years of age, with the smooth, black hair fall:

1 Tolstoi's works have been translated into Danish, German, French, and English.

ms

PORTRAITS.

351

ing in waves over the temples, the heavy, dark, full beard, which covers his throat and collar, with an
expression of concentrated depth of understanding and There is no more uncertainty about this strength.

mouth, no uneasiness in the brow

of the seer

the look

is

the look

and of the thinker penetrating into the very

marrow

of things. at his writing-desk,

Then

there

is

the portrait of Tolstoi

a wonderful picture from the great-

ness of his style and bearing. absorption shine out from it.

The

greatest gravity and Every one who sees the

portrait feels that what that man writes is not vanity, is not idle words, but strong, mighty words, worth ponder-

ing over. And there is still one later portrait, where the expression of the eyes and about the mouth comes very near to being frightful, appalling, it is so strong and commanding. The heavy eyebrows almost seem to
threaten;

the thick beard, growing freely, and besprinkled with gray, reminds one of the old prophets. In the series of illustrations in the book come also
:

the latest portraits

the well-known photograph of the

sixty -year-old Tolstoi* as a muzhik, in the dark blouse of the peasant, with the leather belt around his waist, with
his hair parted in the middle of his forehead in the fashion of the Russian peasant, with his forehead furrowed with deep wrinkles curving down in the middle,

to

the dishevelled, snow-white beard, extending almost down where the arms are crossed upon the breast, and the anxious look of the mystic, whose firmness reminds us
of the gaze of the careworn. Last of all is Riepin's masterly painting, which is also known in other lands from the chromo-lithographs
:

with a background of woods peasants are in the middle distance; in the foreground ploughing Tolstoi as a peasant is ploughing in the Russian style,
a broad
field
;

352

IMPRESSIONS OP RUSSIA.

with a white horse harnessed to an antique wooden another white horse behind plough, leading by a halter
him, which draws the harrow.
himself, this

Tor

it is

Leo Nikola-

yevitch with the soft white hat, which protects the sunken eyes from the sun, with the blue peasant's-frock, open about
the neck, exposing his naked breast, and the high boots, which sink in the rich mould. There is nothing here

strong, broad-shouldered frame,

which reminds one of the count, of the born aristocrat. The thick, broad nose, the heavy jaws, are those of the Eussian peasant. But what a wonderful peasant this It is the bearing, this immense force in simplicity! a a as as in hero, genius, as a contemplation, peasant
!

It is the Scythian prince of Herodotus, Kolait is Mikula, the the of the Ploughshare Prince Xais, child of the village, the hero of agriculture, with the
civilizer.
;

wonderful plough, who draws his furrow rich in blessings in the boundless Kussian plain. It is the national hero Ilia of Murom himself, risen from his death of

a thousand years to cultivate again the Eussian soil and he who, stronger than fate, went on the road to earth, riches and "did not become rich," but was wholly engrossed in the fundamental Eussian idea of community.

Thus with Tolstoi we turn back to our first impresand literature. He, to whom Turgenief directed his last words written with a pencil, and whom, when dying, he addressed as "my
sion of Eussian intellectual life
friend, the great author of

Eussia " he in our days

!

is

the last great one of the group of cultivators in this

immense empire.

What
these,,

is

it

that he cultivates?
old, "the

what

is

it

that all

young and

men with good

will,

prepare

and

cultivate ?

RUSSIA

AND THE FUTURE.

353
.

Black land, fertile land, new land, grain land, the the broadly constituted, rich, warm nature, the which fills with unlimited mind broad, expanse
.
.

the incomprehensible, darkly melancholy and hope, the womb of new realities and new mysterious, Russia and the future. mysticism,
.
.