Anthology of Russian literature from the earliest period to the present time, volume 2 (of 2)
Date: 2026-08-05T00:00:00+00:00
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Title: Anthology of Russian literature from the earliest period to the present time, volume 2 (of 2)

The nineteenth century

Author: Leo Wiener

Release date: August 5, 2026 [eBook #79276]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1903

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79276

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHOLOGY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***

ANTHOLOGY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

From the Earliest Period to the Present Time

BY

LEO WIENER

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

In Two Parts

8o with Photogravure Frontispieces

Part I.—From the Tenth Century to the Close of the Eighteenth Century

Part II.—The Nineteenth Century

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

IVÁN SERGYEEVICH TURGÉNEV

“In days of doubt, in days of anguished thought over the fate of my native land, you alone are my staff and my support, O great, mighty, true and free Russian language! Were it not for you how could one help despairing at the sight of what is taking place at home? But it is unthinkable that such a language should not be given to a great nation.”

Turgénev.

Anthology of Russian Literature
From the Earliest Period to the Present Time

By

Leo Wiener

Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University

IN TWO PARTS

PART II

The Nineteenth Century

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1903

PREFACE

Considerations of space compel me to give but a small selection of authors from the last two decades of the nineteenth century, while some of the writers, here omitted, of the beginning of this period have been previously treated in the first volume of the Anthology. For the intermediate time, the material here offered will be found sufficiently complete, while the essays of Byelínski, Dobrolyúbov, Písarev, and Merezhkóvski illustrate the evolution of Russian literature in the nineteenth century, as viewed by the Russian critics themselves.

The introductory sketch is not intended as a preliminary exposition of the Anthology, but as a résumé of all the matter contained there; it will, therefore, be best perused after the extracts and biographical sketches of the separate authors have become familiar to the reader. To avoid undue annotations, literary allusions have not been mentioned in the footnotes; they may readily be discovered by turning to the Index, where all cross references are given.

During the preparation of the second volume, the interesting discovery was made that not Sir John Bowring, but William D. Lewis, an American, was the first to render Russian poetry into English; thus, the Stanzas given on p. 394 of vol. i. originally appeared in the National Gazette and Literary Register of Philadelphia, on January 31, 1821, while other poems seem to have been translated by him much earlier.

I again wish to express my thanks to the authors and publishers by whose permission translations are here reproduced, and to my colleague, Prof. F. N. Robinson, who has patiently read through these pages and given me his advice.

CONTENTS

| PAGE
Preface | v
A Sketch of Russian Literature in the Nineteenth Century | 3
The Nineteenth Century | 27
Karamzín (1766-1826) | 27
Letters of a Russian Traveller | 28
Tver | 28
On the French Tragedy | 30
On Shakspere | 31
London | 32
The Churchyard | 33
Poor Líza | 34
History of the Russian Empire. Introduction | 37
Krylóv (1768-1844) | 41
The Ass and the Nightingale | 41
The Quartette | 43
Damian’s Fishsoup | 44
The Swan, the Pike, and the Crab | 45
The Lion and the Wolf | 45
The Cloud | 46
The Shipwrecked Sailor and the Sea | 46
Izmáylov (1779-1831) | 46
The Drunkard’s Vow | 47
The Canary and the Nightingale | 47
The Two Cats | 48
Naryézhny (1780-1825) | 49
The Two Iváns; or, The Passion for Litigation | 49
Zhukóvski (1783-1852) | 54
Svyetlána | 55
The Minstrel in the Russian Camp | 63
Kozlóv (1779-1840) | 67
Solitude | 68
Kíev | 69
The Black Monk | 70
Bátyushkov (1787-1855) | 73
The Friend’s Shadow | 73
The Dying Tasso | 75
Glínka (1788-1880) | 78
Moscow | 79
The Search for God | 80
Prince Vyázemski (1792-1878) | 81
The Samovár | 82
To My Three Absent Friends | 84
Death Reaps the Harvest of Life | 85
Rylyéev (1796-1826) | 86
Voynaróvski | 87
Iván Susánin | 88
Griboyédov (1795-1829) | 92
Intelligence Comes to Grief | 93
Bestúzhev (Marlínski) (1797-1837) | 102
Ammalát Bek | 102
Lazhéchnikov (1794-1869) | 111
The Heretic | 112
Baron Délvig (1798-1831) | 120
Gloomy Thoughts | 120
Sang a little bird, and sang | 121
Ah, you night, you little night | 122
Púshkin (1799-1837) | 122
The Captain’s Daughter | 125
Evgéni Onyégin. Tatyána’s Letter | 131
The Bakhchisaráy Fountain | 133
The Poison-Tree | 135
The Bird | 136
The Prophet | 137
The Talisman | 138
The Lay of the Wise Olég | 139
To the Slanderers of Russia | 142
Borís Godunóv | 143
Demons | 147
Baratýnski (1800-1844) | 149
Finland | 150
Spring | 151
Truth | 151
Yazýkov (1803-1846) | 152
The Sailor | 153
The Storm | 154
To the Poet | 155
Lérmontov (1814-1841) | 155
A Hero of Our Times. Maksím Maksímych | 157
The Demon | 165
Dispute | 167
Alone I wander out along the road | 170
The Sail | 171
The Prayer | 171
The Branch of Palestine | 172
Remember’st thou the day when we | 173
At a Ball | 174
Dream | 175
Koltsóv (1808-1842) | 176
First Love | 176
The Abundant Harvest | 177
The Forest | 179
Betrayed by a Bride | 181
The Mower | 182
Gógol (1809-1852) | 185
The Dnieper | 187
The Revizór | 188
Dead Souls. Mrs. Koróbochka | 199
Byelínski (1811-1848) | 205
The Natural School | 206
Aksákov (1791-1859) | 216
The Family Chronicle | 217
Khomyakóv (1804-1860) | 229
To My Children | 230
The Eagle | 231
Kíev | 232
Tyútchev (1803-1873) | 234
Scarce cooled from midday heat | 234
The Spring-Storm | 235
I suffer still from anguished longing | 235
Sunrise | 235
Gértsen (Herzen) (1812-1870) | 236
Slavophiles and Panslavism | 237
Ogarév (1813-1877) | 242
To Iskánder | 242
Monologues | 244
The Village Watchman | 244
Count A. K. Tolstóy (1817-1875) | 245
Prince Serébryany | 246
The Death of Iván the Terrible | 255
The Kurgán | 257
Goncharóv (1812-1891) | 259
Oblómov | 260
Dobrolyúbov (1836-1861) | 271
What is Oblómovism? | 272
Turgénev (1818-1883) | 280
Fathers and Sons | 282
Poems in Prose. Nature | 295
Grigoróvich (1822-1900) | 296
The Fishermen | 297
Polónski (1820-1898) | 303
The Birds | 303
Night in the Crimea | 304
Love scared thee not | 305
Musician Grasshopper | 305
Písemski (1820-1881) | 310
The Old Proprietress | 311
Shenshín (Fet) (1820-1892) | 319
When deeply musing in the silence of the night | 320
Every feeling at night to me becomes clearer and deeper | 320
Stay here awhile, ’tis good | 321
Night, thou art so blest with odours sweet and strong | 321
Tryst | 322
Dostoévski (1821-1881) | 322
Crime and Punishment | 323
A. N. Máykov (1821-1898) | 339
The Peris | 340
Who Was He? | 341
The Marble Faun | 342
Three Deaths. The Death of Seneca and of Lucius | 344
Nekrásov (1821-1877) | 347
Red-nosed Frost | 348
A Moral Man | 352
Who Lives in Russia Happily | 353
The Unmown Strip | 359
A Mother’s Tears | 360
Nikítin (1824-1861) | 361
Burlák | 361
The Gaffer | 364
Pleshchéev (1825-1894) | 365
Forward | 366
My Country | 367
A Legend | 367
Spring | 368
Ostróvski (1823-1886) | 369
The Storm | 369
Saltykóv (Shchedrín) (1826-1889) | 379
Beyond the Border | 380
Písarev (1841-1868) | 385
Flowers of Harmless Humour | 386
Count L. N. Tolstóy (1828-0000) | 391
Ánna Karénin | 392
War and Peace | 401
Uspénski (1840-1902) | 408
The Power of the Land. Iván Petróv | 409
Levítov (1842-1877) | 417
Shoemaker Cock-of-the-Boots | 417
Zlatovrátski (1845-0000) | 427
Old Shadows | 428
Korolénko (1853-0000) | 436
The Old Bell-ringer | 437
Garshín (1855-1888) | 443
That Which Was Not | 443
Potápenko (1856-0000) | 448
A Thousand Talents | 448
Nádson (1862-1887) | 457
My Friend, My Brother! | 458
Poetry | 458
Pity the stately cypress trees | 459
Chékhov (1860-0000) | 459
In the Court-room | 460
Pyeshkóv (Górki) (1871-0000) | 467
In the Steppe | 468
Merezhkóvski (1865-0000) | 482
From an Essay on “Pushkin” | 483
Index | 495

A SKETCH OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

I

Were we to compare English literature to the starred heavens with their galaxies and their permanent constellations of varying magnitudes, Russian literature would represent itself to us as the darkling sky which is now illumined by the refracted glamour of the aurora borealis, now by the illusive flashes of shooting meteors, and now again by the steadier brilliancy of some errant comet, by the side of which stars seem pale and insignificant. In England, as with the other great nations of the West, there have been temporary suspensions of literary activities, but with every new unshrouding the ancient combinations gleam forth in the azure vault in untarnished brilliancy, even though new stars may obtrude themselves to view. Not thus in Russia. After every short period of celestial fireworks the heavens are suddenly merged into palpable darkness, to dazzle us once more with an entirely new display of unwonted splendour.

Such, at least, is the aspect Russian literature bears in the nineteenth century. Though Púshkin’s poetry was naturally the crowning glory of the incipient reign of Nicholas I., it bears but a faint resemblance to the lacrimose verses of Karamzín, or to the elegant imitations and patriotic ebullitions of Zhukóvski of the previous two decades, and yet Karamzín lived till Púshkin reached man’s estate, while Zhukóvski was still active after his death. Púshkin and his contemporaries are classed separately from Lérmontov, though but fifteen years lie between their births and only four between their deaths. No new division is made for poetry since the days of Lérmontov, though in the light of Nekrásov’s realism, who began writing in 1848, the poets of pure art, Máykov, Polónski, Tyútchev, Fet,—all of them born long before Púshkin’s demise,—were reviled by the democratic critics and suffered more or less complete oblivion after the fifties. Still more pathetic is the fate of Vyázemski who, reared in the school of Karamzín, had the misfortune of surviving to a vigorous old age: he bitterly felt the living literary death to which he was doomed for more than a quarter of a century.

The vicissitudes of prose have been even more varied. Karamzín had barely established the new style of writing, based on French and English writers, still struggling with the reactionary tendency of Shishkóv, whose antiquated style is prominent in Griboyédov’s comedy, when a whole school of Romanticists, beginning with Bestúzhev-Marlínski and Lazhéchnikov, and ending with Púshkin and Lérmontov, evolved, under the influence of Walter Scott, the Russian novel. It is a far cry from Karamzín’s Líza to Púshkin’s Captain’s Daughter and to Lérmontov’s Hero of Our Time. Yet, within less than a decade after the latter had charmed the public, Gógol’s Dead Souls completely obliterated the fame of all its predecessors, and Byelínski’s dictum in regard to the Natural School at once set the pace for an entirely new set of writers,—the novelists of the forties. Turgénev, Goncharóv, Tolstóy, Dostoévski, Písemski, were trained in that school and wrote their first productions in the lifetime of Gógol. Yet after the memorial year 1848 a reaction set in in literature as well as in affairs, and the fifties, except for rare flashes of genius from Turgénev and Tolstóy, were one barren waste. Of Gógol’s example and Byelínski’s injunctions hardly a trace was left. Then, during the reign of Alexander II., the atmosphere was again cleared, and the sixties produced that wonderful series of writings for which Russia is mainly known abroad. And yet, in 1862, Turgénev proved by his Fathers and Sons that he was no longer in touch with Russian reality; and a few years later, after Tolstóy had written his War and Peace and Anna Karénin, began Tolstóy’s rapid departure from all reality.

In the meantime the critics, from the master Byelínski down, through Dobrolyúbov, Písarev and Chernyshévski, reached the ne plus ultra of negation, and with them rose a new set of authors, who returned to the lowest elements of society for their themes,—to the peasants. Grigoróvich, Pomyalóvski, Uspénski, and a whole host of minor writers, many of them riotous in the absence of style, produced a vast amount of literature. Dostoévski, revelling in excruciating psychological analyses, wrote his best work, Crime and Punishment, in 1865. No wonder, then, that after such a concentrated creative period there should follow a decade of impotence, in which the only relief was afforded by the older writers, who occasionally lighted up the darkness with their phosphorescence. Then, since the eighties, there has been a November shower of novelists, Korolénko, Potápenko, Chékhov, Boborýkin, and many, many more, and but lately a new comet has loomed up in the horizon in the person of Maksím Górki.

The periods of distinct literary ideals are so short, their activities so varied, that one feels tempted to treat the nineteenth century by decades, or, to avoid embarrassing results from a purely mechanical arrangement, to survey each field of belles-lettres, poetry, drama, prose, in its evolution from Karamzín to the present. Neither method, however, is free from serious objections, and it will be found more convenient to regard the literary movement under each reign, especially since the Decembrist revolt at the end of the rule of Alexander I., the Crimean War under Nicholas I., and the death of Alexander II. mark real epochs in the intellectual movements of Russia. Each reign, in its turn, is by some historical event divisible into two parts, the first of which coincides with aspirations and vigorous activities in literature, the second with relaxation and indifference. Such events were the year 1812 and, in a higher measure, the year 1848.

It would, however, be incorrect to identify the various periods with the political changes of the Empire. Though, naturally, a new impetus may be given at the beginning of a new reign, or a great national calamity may rouse the dormant literary powers of the people, yet the accessions to the throne of the successive rulers, and their policies, do not sufficiently account for the shortness of each separate period and their apparently abrupt cessations; just as, on the other hand, the political changes themselves are frequently only the reflex of the antecedent literary movement with the pronounced public opinion which is based upon it. Thus, for example, the emancipation of the serfs, with its tremendous political and social consequences, was not merely an arbitrary act of the monarch, but the logical culmination of the literary propaganda, with Turgénev and his Memoirs of a Huntsman at its head, which had preceded it.

Nor can governmental policy and severity of censorship be made accountable for the short-lived literary influence of each individual author, for the early maturity of genius, and the wide chasm between the author’s sunny youth and his old age in the rare instances when he has lived beyond his forties. At forty years of age, rather earlier than later, all Russian writers have reached their apogee. Most authors have gained their reputation long before that, and their old age passes by unnoticed or in mystic abstractions, and in nearly all cases out of tune with the realities of the day. And how appallingly large is the number of those whose career was brought to an untimely end before they had reached forty, either by violent means, as that of Púshkin and Lérmontov, or through insanity, as that of Garshín, or through disease, frequently as the result of dire wretchedness in youth, or of intemperance, as that of Byelínski, Dobrolyúbov, Písarev, Nikítin, Nádson, and many others!

The peculiar conditions of Russian literary life are the result of the whole social structure of the country. Here we shall find an answer to the many perplexing questions that the foreigner must necessarily put to himself as he contemplates, not only the peculiar course of Russian belles-lettres and their artistic and political maxims, but also the exaggerated relation that Russian men of letters bear to the political life of the nation.

The literate class of the people of Russia is at the present time but a small part of the total population, and the cultured elements of society form but a small percentage of all those who can read and write Russian. The conditions were, naturally, much more unfavourable for education in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Western civilisation which had spread over Russia since the days of Peter the Great had not penetrated deep: it had not touched the core of things, had not changed much in the semi-barbaric home life of the gentry and even of the higher nobility. Below these classes it was practically non-existent. A desire for learning there was, and the fathers who wished to have their children benefited by the blessings of an education had either to fall back on foreign tutors, or to send them to the schools maintained at Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Lyceum at Tsárskoe-Seló was the chief seminary of learning for the sons of the nobility. The sons were just as eager to acquire the lustre of the foreign culture, but they invariably understood this European learning merely as a counteraction to the brutal surroundings of old Russia. They brought with them no home traditions of refinement, no settled political and social views. At their schools the young men were banded together by common interests of progress against the world without, and they felt that the future of Russia depended upon them as an intellectual force. Had the next generation of students been recruited exclusively from the sons of men who had enjoyed school advantages before, there would have been a nucleus for traditional culture. But, in the nature of the case, ever-new elements were availing themselves of the higher schooling, and the younger generation was as much torn out of its barren surroundings as the young men at the beginning of the century. They, too, were the chosen few, and upon them, they knew, devolved the task of regenerating their country. Unfortunately they lacked not only traditions of culture in their families, but the school had not been able to transmit any other positive tradition than the general desire for mental training and literary brilliancy. The ethical principle of culture was but weakly developed, and the absence of stated maxims of life made philosophic moderation impossible. If the older generation had been carried away by the prevailing French taste, or by Byron’s enticing poetry, or by the powerful Romanticism of Germany, without, however, grasping the underlying philosophy of either, or making it its own, the youths of the thirties sat at the feet of the German philosophers, and with the enthusiasm of new converts transferred their tenets into their whole view of life and letters, however, by first eliminating from it the essence of methodical thinking, which alone would have assured any permanency to the Russian ecstasy.

Since culture was confined chiefly to the higher classes of society, there was slowly growing up a select circle of cultivated men who, while not characterised by the stability of the German intellectual class or the dignified refinement of the English aristocracy, atoned for the superficiality of their learning by a superabundance of youthful enthusiasm. But, before the gentry had any time to crystallise into an intellectual class, the doors of schools were thrown open to the nation at large, and the middle classes began at once to avail themselves of the privilege. There was a new influx of men without a tradition, and the work of intellectualising had to be begun once more. The vigorous burghers had not the wealth and position of their noble predecessors to distract their spiritual energies, and to them the pursuit of learning was a very serious matter. But their efforts were often thwarted by a struggle against all kinds of adversities, and they frequently succumbed in body and mind to the effects of poverty and persecution. If the sons of the gentry in the previous generations stood out as a protest against their fathers, the young men now added to it a protest against the higher classes, and, as is natural in a state of chronic protests, they rapidly reached the negation of everything. Russian literature passes all the stages of negation, from the criticisms of Chátski in Griboyédov’s comedy to the conscious superiority of Bazárov in Turgénev’s Fathers and Sons, and from the critiques of Byelínski to the negation of art and literature in the acrid solvent of Písarev’s reviews and in the latter-day literary productions of the master-artist Tolstóy.

The salutary effects of the renewal of the intellectual classes with every generation have been in the extreme democratisation of Russian society, and in the frequent and varied evolution of talent,—artistic, musical, literary, political. But the democracy, lacking the moderation of established procedure, too often loses itself in mazes of inactive speculation, and, lacking historic perspective and philosophic precision, is vacillating in its ultimate ends; while the same causes militate against a concentration of talent, and rather disperse its strength and nullify its effects. Hence the apt classification of the heroes of Russian novels as so many Oblómovs, which Dobrolyúbov has made in his review of Goncharóv’s famous work. It is, indeed, a notable fact that Russia has not produced a single philosopher worthy of the name, and a late attempt at discovering The Philosophic Tendencies in Russian Poetry has resulted in a meagre work which, though interesting for the poets it harbours, is conspicuous for the absence of that philosophy which it sets out to find.

Philosophy can have free sway only where there is calm reflection; and reflection lies at the base of actions only where ideals of life are formed at a mature age. Unfortunately for Russia, young men have stood behind the cultural movements, and by “young men” are in Russia understood those who have not yet reached the age of thirty. In the Anglo-American civilisation men between thirty and fifty are supposed to be young men, men of action, which view, having its origin in the conservative spirit of Anglo-Saxon institutions, more than anything else assures a cautious progress. In Russia, we have seen, the task of fostering progress has fallen on school-lads and university students. The consequence has been disastrous. Russian youths have tried to carry high the banner of progress, and one cannot help but admire the courage with which they have upheld their cause, the enthusiasm with which they have advocated their tenets, the sacrifices which they have ever been ready to bring. At the same time it must be evident that their courage has frequently been ill-advised, their enthusiasm brittle because not tempered by chill experience, and their sacrifices vain and useless. There has been no bond of sympathy between the sons and their fathers, and the enthusiasm of one generation has not been bequeathed in its turn to the next.

As long as effervescent youth has lasted, Russians have not hesitated to throw their whole souls into their cause. In Púshkin’s days they surpassed Byron in the recklessness of their youthful excesses, and would-be Manfreds could be met with in the flesh. As Slavophiles they were willing to forego the fruits of Western civilisation, and gloried in their unwieldy native costume. As Soilers and Populists they renounced the society of their likes, and buried themselves in the deadening wildernesses of distant villages. Even if the Government had not nipped their efforts by exile and prisons, their fate could not later in life have been happy. When their first fervour had evaporated, and they were brought face to face with actualities, the discrepancy between theories and practices of necessity produced a revulsion. The stout of heart maintained their cherished hopes, but their minds became variously affected by quiet sorrow, melancholy, despair. The men of coarser texture turned liberal opportunists, temporisers, or downright deniers of all their previous thoughts and acts. The Government absorbed these as officials in various capacities, and thus the better elements, through their abhorrence of compromise, have generally been lost to the State.

The same disenchantment is noticeable in the life of every man of letters. Literature has been in Russia the field in which all the battles of progress have been fought. As there does not exist a representative government, where political opinions may struggle for recognition, and as there cannot exist a public opinion based on tradition and class interests, literature alone appears as the medium for advancing social and political ideas; and since scientific treatises reach but a vanishing proportion of the nation, belles-lettres proper have in Russia become the means for inculcating and propagating truths. In the beginning of the nineteenth century this was not yet so apparent, and literature for art’s sake could hold its own. But with the advancing democratisation of society, literature gathered ever more around camps with definite ideas, and literary art receded more and more and lived out its day in oblivion. The individual authors have always been conscious of their high calling, and in their youth have devoted themselves with fervour to their tasks; but in middle life they generally have been chilled by the actual conditions of life, and have fallen a prey to disappointment, the effects of which were mysticism, renunciation, opportunism, as the case might be.

Thus, also, there has followed a period of comparative stagnation and even retrogression after every decade of concentrated production. The men whom common interests had brought together in literary emulation had passed their perihelion, and another generation had not yet reached maturity; and in the interim the discordant notes could be heard more clearly. In the last twenty years, however, a marked change has taken place in Russian literature. While there has not risen an author of the first magnitude, there has been no lack of writers and poets of the second rank, and the reactionary element has been well kept in abeyance. Russian critics stigmatise this period as one of mediocrity, and despair of the future, since never before has there been so long a time without some author of strong personality and influence. In reality, the symptoms are very encouraging. It is evident from the long duration of the smouldering literary life that society is becoming more stable, even though temporarily less deep, and that literary sentiment and culture is gaining in breadth. The next outburst of literary activities will unquestionably be greater than any that have preceded it.

II

The gloom which had spread over literature at the end of Catherine’s reign was lifted at the very opening of the nineteenth century by the accession of the liberal Alexander I. Instead of continuing the persecution of the Free Masons and suppressing literature, the Emperor himself favoured all kinds of mystic societies, and carried his liberalism to the greatest extreme. He associated with Quakers, and Jesuits were left unmolested in the capital. He proposed to reorganise the country on Western models, and did not think it unwise to ask Thomas Jefferson for a sketch of the American Constitution. He surrounded himself with men of pronounced progressive tendencies, and heaped honours on the author of the Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, whose advanced ideas had so displeased Catherine.

Yet only the end of his reign saw the fruition of the new spirit in literature, when Púshkin with his mighty genius for ever settled the direction Russian letters were to take. There could have been no sudden change. No new ideals had taken the place of the literary traditions of the eighteenth century, which looked upon authorship as a pleasant pastime and profitable exercise of wit, but did not invest the authors with the dignity of social factors. Though Romanticism was rapidly displacing the older pseudo-classicism, many authors of the former style were still active among the changing surroundings. Ózerov produced his thunderous dramas and found a ready audience, and Derzhávin not only continued his writing of odes, but was able to maintain a coterie of literary men who would not listen to the innovations of Karamzín.

The most persistent stickler for the old conventions was Shishkóv. He had no ear for the subtler beauties of verse, and identified poetry with high-sounding epithets and well-turned phrases. His admiration for the older bards led him to seek in their language, with the strange admixture of Church-Slavic words, the proper norm for all time, and to abhor the introduction of foreign words, which Karamzín so dexterously applied in his formation of a new literary style. As President of the Russian Academy Shishkóv exercised a certain influence, and the discussion of the two styles agitated society for some time. There was just a spark of truth in his contention. Like Shcherbátov before him, and the Slavophiles thirty years later, he was anxious to see a greater approach to the national spirit. Like his predecessor, he did not fail to recognise that the colourless imitation of foreign models was not bringing literature any nearer to the people, and, like the older historian, he receded as far as possible into the past in his search for native elements. Writers were at that time not yet prepared to look for a common bond with the people in a living intercourse with them.

In the meanwhile Karamzín proceeded to find his models for composition in the West, and to base his literary style on a close imitation of French and English writers. He freely introduced such words and turns as would mould Russian into a simpler and more harmonious instrument. His example has been followed ever since. He was led by personal predilection and a natural pensiveness to father that sentimentalism which had found such a ready soil in Europe. How unnatural for Russian that sentimentalism was, may be seen in the gentle transformation the peasants have suffered in his novels. But in his day no one took exception to such a treatment, and many affected that exotic sentiment themselves.

In general, the particular direction of any author was very much a matter of chance. Not the necessities of the time, not the spiritual needs of any class of society decided what the poet was to sing and the novelist was to write about,—indeed, society had not yet risen to a well-defined spiritual life,—but the temporary whim of the author, the accidental acquaintance with this or that manifestation in the foreign literatures were the only reasons for transplanting the foreign models upon Russian soil. The adroitness with which extraneous themes have been handled by many of the writers is truly remarkable. In Bátyushkov it reached masterly perfection. Having tried himself in imitations of German, French, and classical models, his interest finally centred on the Italian poets, especially Tasso. The result of his especial predilection was that faultless poem, The Dying Tasso, which combines epic calm and majesty of language as probably no other production in Russian literature. But he had no contemporary audience that could follow him in his exquisite interpretation of the Italian classical spirit, just as Gnyédich, the famous translator of the Iliad, felt aggrieved at the indifference with which society met his great undertaking.

While a select number of authors, separating themselves from the life that surrounded them, found inspiration in the distant past, Zhukóvski devoted himself to familiarising his nation with the productions of the German Romantic Muse. But, while in Europe Romanticism was the logical outcome of the period of storm and stress through which it had just passed, it bore no relation to actual spiritual needs in Russia. Consequently only the external form and the technique, and not the inner meaning was transplanted by Zhukóvski to his native soil. It is true, he all the time preached a high ideal for poetry, but that ideal was only superficially related to the fashionable Romantic verse in which he enunciated it.

More original than these was Krylóv who, basing his fables on those of La Fontaine, clad them in an idiomatic form and adorned them with an art peculiarly his own. It would be, however, a mistake to suppose that he, at least, fell back on the native element for his subjects. There is absolutely nothing Russian in his fables. Not only do the popular animal stories differ widely from those employed by him for illustration, but he did not hesitate to introduce classical allusions whenever a chance offered itself. The same method, though in a coarser vein, was also pursued by Izmáylov.

The year 1812 had its immediate effects upon literature. It gave rise to patriotic songs, like Zhukóvski’s In the Camp of Russian Warriors, and to the patriotic series by Rylyéev. It led to a closer study of Russian history, and Karamzín’s monumental work could not have come at a more auspicious period. The consequences were even greater. Many young officers who had formed their ideals of life through the imitations of their native literature took part in the campaign in Germany and France, and there came in contact with all the living movements that agitated the best minds. They brought home with them a new enthusiasm, formed secret societies in imitation of the German Tugendbund, and dreamed of a violent reorganisation of Russia. All the best young forces were directly or indirectly affected by the new ideal. In the meanwhile the Government entered into its phase of reaction, and obscurantism became rampant. University professors were watched by the secret police, and instruction was carried on under great difficulties. The slightest expression of independence or freedom led to banishment and imprisonment. The strained relations between the youthful idealists and the reactionaries culminated in the unfortunate and impossible Decembrist conspiracy in 1825, when Rylyéev, among others, paid the penalty of death for his rashness.

But the accumulated literary force could no longer be dispersed. A galaxy of poets had with wonderful skill reproduced every imaginable aspect of European verse, even though they did not enter into a full understanding of the meaning and duty of their art. The language had been polished by Karamzín and his followers to its utmost extent and was now capable of every literary form. It only needed a subtle genius to breathe a soul into that fair body. That genius was Púshkin.

III

A period rich in literary experience and new modes of expression does not necessarily presage the coming of a genius who will unify the unrelated modes into a symmetric, intrinsically artistic whole. But, given an ardent poetic soul and a time when the minds of men are agitated by high aspirations and hopes, the opportunity is favourable for that soul to become the focus of all the tendencies of the day, and to reflect the accumulated force as one bright light for long years to come. The conditions could not have been more auspicious for giving direction and meaning to Púshkin’s genius. Not only Derzhávin, Karamzín, Dmítriev, Zhukóvski, Bátyushkov, and Krylóv furnished him in his youth with varied poetical productions for his imitation, but a large number of minor poets, trained in the traditions of the eighteenth century, Merzlyakóv, Neledínski-Melétski, Dolgorúki, were still active during the formative time of his genius. And not only the external forms of verse had been carried to a high perfection in his schooldays. The liberalism of the Government in the beginning of Alexander’s reign, the stirring patriotism of the nation consequent upon the events of the year 1812, the crass obscurantism and reaction from above, and the secret organisations of the youthful idealists which soon after superseded the open progress of the previous decade,—all that combined to inspire the younger generation of poets with the seriousness and dignity of their mission.

In his evolution Púshkin passed through several stages. In Ruslán and Lyudmíla, which he wrote in 1820, the year of his first exile, he attempted to treat a popular subject in the Romantic style, but there is little of a native element in it. During his banishment to the south he came under the influence of Byron, and began his Evgéni Onyégin, the first real Russian novel. In Borís Godunóv he came under the spell of Shakspere.

In the beginning of the new reign, Púshkin’s genius was clearly defined and, departing from the Byronism of his former productions, became completely original. At the same time he renounced the easy liberalism of his younger days, and placed himself in the service of the Tsar. Since he withdrew from the communion with the masses and preached an aristocratism in letters as well as life, his real importance in Russian literature has been obscured by the more democratic Gógol. The doctrine which he taught, that art is to be exercised for art’s sake and not polluted by contact with the vulgar, found no ready response in the troubled years of the second half of the century. Only now, when the battle for the masses has been fought, and literature is beginning to lose its didactic and political value, there is to be noticed a growing tendency to turn back to Púshkin as the fountainhead of Russian poetry. This just renewal of the cult of Púshkin has already had the marked effect of rediscovering and bringing to public notice the excellent creations of the poets of his school, Tyútchev, Fet, Máykov, Polónski, and others, and of stimulating the youngest generation of poets, whose names are just beginning to be heard, to higher efforts.

Many contemporary poets were inspired by the master. Délvig, Rylyéev, Baratýnski, Venevítinov, Yazýkov came under his influence, but they were not able to follow him in his eagle flight, and stopped at the earlier stages of his development. There were others who showed more individuality, or even opened up new avenues in literature. Griboyédov’s Intelligence Comes to Grief stood out as the most remarkable drama that had till then appeared in Russia, as it had seized with great clearness the contradictory and indefinite tendencies of society, and indicated the coming conflict between Westerners and Slavophiles. But the indefinite tendencies of the time were reflected with far greater power in Lérmontov.

Lérmontov’s Hero of Our Time is, to a certain extent, an autobiography. It is of the same spiritual family as Evgéni Onyégin, but the greater indefiniteness and disenchantment of its hero supply a true portrayal of the men of the thirties who had not yet come to have any well-defined aims in life. Men were dissatisfied with the past, saw all the misery and wretchedness that surrounded them, and wished for something better to come, but did not have the energy to rise above their surroundings and so lost themselves in contradictions and Byronic despair. The same subjective tone runs through all his shorter poems and through The Demon, that most precious flower of the whole Romantic school. Such is the sweetness of his verse and the wealth of his imagery that he is preferred by many foreign readers even to Púshkin.

More original than Lérmontov was his contemporary Koltsóv. His middle-class surroundings had brought him in much closer contact with the people than Púshkin, and his neglected early education operated in favour of his poetic genius inasmuch as it kept him free from any traditional associations. When his talent became apparent to him, he for a short time tried his strength in the customary rhymed verses, especially of the type of Púshkin, whom he greatly admired and understood as few poets after him have done. But soon his native feeling asserted itself, and he began to draw his inspiration from popular songs. A number of poets before him, especially Délvig, had attempted this kind of composition, but none of them had even distantly brought to bear the same talent upon it as Koltsóv, and none after him have equalled him.

While Romanticism was scoring its greatest successes, and a novel-reading public was going into ecstasies over the impassioned stories of Bestúzhev-Marlínski, Gógol evolved his series of naturalistic stories, rising by pyramidal steps to his immortal Dead Souls, which appeared in the very year that Lérmontov and Koltsóv died. A new chord was struck,—one that reverberates even now through all Russian literature. The foundation was placed for a Russian school of belles-lettres, the first in its annals. All the peculiarities of Russian literature for all time to follow are the direct outcome of the tradition which begins with Gógol. His appearance, though startling and unexpected, was not unprepared. There has always been a strong element of sound naturalism in the Russian character. It shows frequently through the Byzantine shroud in the earliest times; it refreshes us in many a simple folktale; it is a pre-eminent characteristic of the thoughts and acts of Peter the Great; it craves expression in the exotic pseudo-classic rhetoric of the eighteenth century; it comes to the surface in Púshkin’s best productions. Gógol had even a direct predecessor in the manner of his stories in the person of Naryézhny who, being born in the same locality with him, had fallen back on the same rich narrative material of his native Little-Russia.

But in Gógol this naturalism was for the first time clearly expressed and completely freed from all foreign contamination. Not at once, however. He made his début with a Romantic idyl, and all his earlier productions are still tinged with the current mannerism. Only in 1836 appeared his Cloak, the prototype of all later Russian novels. He was not at once accepted by the public, so daring were his innovations, so disenchanting his realism, so appalling the wretchedness of Russia which he laid bare. He did not himself proceed consciously upon the new path, but by the inspiration of his genius. Later in life, therefore, when a reaction set in in his thoughts, he deeply regretted his earlier activity. But there was no retracing his steps. The critic Byelínski had subjected him to literary analysis, and had pronounced him the father of the new school. It seemed to him as if there had not even existed a literature before Gógol, and all previous writers henceforth barely eked out an anthology existence.

The conscious tendency towards realism in Russia was due to another fact. The predilection for the encyclopedic knowledge of France and its literature had come to an end in the thirties. Young men had become acquainted in Germany with the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, and the circles of Moscow were ever more familiarising themselves with the more serious aspects of German science. Those who were not forgetful of their obligations to Europe gathered around Byelínski in their advocacy of a greater approach to Western ideals. Others, again, inspired by the conceptions of nation, national spirit, national destiny, which the German philosophers had evolved, were led to seclude themselves from all foreign influence by advocating the narrow tenets of Slavophilism. The Slavophiles have not produced one great author, for Khomyakóv is better known for his theological writings than for his poetry, and Aksákov, who had received his training before the thirties, wrote his Family Chronicle in his old age, evidently under the influence of Gógol. All the great writers who are honoured abroad, Turgénev, Tolstóy, Dostoévski, have issued from the camp of the Westerners, and had received their impetus in the thirties and early in the forties.

After the year 1848 a reaction set in in letters, under the influence of the political gloom that had been cast over Europe, but especially over Russia. The censorship became more oppressive than ever, and a general apathy took possession of society. Periodicals ceased to exist, or were colourless and pedantic. The flimsiest society novels had pushed all the great literature of the previous decade into the background. The gloom hung over Russia until the end of the reign of Nicholas I., lighted up only by the flashes of the great authors who were passing through their apprenticeship.

IV

Gógol more appropriately ends the old series of authors than begins the new. His powerful genius raised him above his predecessors, but the absence of a definite political or social tendency in his works makes him more akin to the writers of pure art. In the forties, a younger generation of writers was trained in the philosophical conceptions of Germany, and the democratic spirit that swept over Europe affected them in favour of the people. It became incumbent on these authors, not merely to amuse by their productions, but to teach and propagate definite social ideals, to become the protagonists in the battle for human liberties. At the same time the vast abyss which lay between their theories and the disheartening reality about them, the unmooring from all the traditions of the past, and the hopelessness of the future developed in them a strain of scepticism and self-analysis that sooner or later led to pessimism.

The oldest of these new authors, Turgénev, who was the first to express his interest in the people, remained all his life an advocate of a peaceful progress on the basis of a cautious adoption of Western ideals. In style he was a realist of a pronounced type, but his genius saved him from carrying his naturalism to the appalling extent to which the French novelists have carried it. In 1847 he began to attract attention by his sketches from peasant life, but in the sixties he depicted the condition of the intelligent classes as affected by the emancipation of the serfs. The keynote to the conception of his heroes is struck in an article of his on Hamlet and Don Quixote, in which he expresses the thought that all people belong to one of these two types, but that in his days there was a predominance of Hamlets, that is, of such as are prone to analysis and scepticism.

Goncharóv, in his Oblómov, has given us a type of a passive man who lacks every initiative, and has generalised in his hero all Russians as by nature incapable of active progress; but Tolstóy very early began to carry his analysis to the farthest extent and not only assumed a negative attitude towards all the questions of the day, but soon reached the negation of all progress in general, and sought refuge from the world without in a close communion with the people. He is less careful about style and artistic perfection of his productions than Turgénev, but in the portrayal of separate incidents and in analysis of character he often rises to the highest art. In the second half of his life, but especially since the eighties, Tolstóy has carried negation to the impossible point of non-resistance, thus repeating, though not in an identical form, the experience of Gógol.

Dostoévski, born and bred in the city under distressing circumstances, appropriated for himself the analysis of the lower elements of the population of the towns. His long imprisonment in Siberia acquainted him with the mental and moral life of the criminals, and his own epileptic and extremely nervous condition made it possible for him to pry into the recesses of the diseased and depraved mind. His democratic love for the subjects he described, and the psychological analysis to which he submitted them, however startling and unusual they are in his case, are in keeping with the traditions of the men of the forties.

No new school, no new tendency, has since supplanted the democratic school of analysis which these authors had inaugurated nearly half a century ago. Nearly all authors have taken the people for their motto. The question has only been to decide what really constitutes the people. Just before and soon after the emancipation the peasants came in for the largest share of attention. At first their real condition was not clearly understood, and they were, on the one hand, idealised, and, on the other, represented as objects worthy of ridicule. In the meanwhile the Slavophiles, in their attempt to discover the national spirit, did a great deal to study their customs and their oral literature. Thus, by degrees, a proper understanding of the real life of the peasant was possible, and the novelists of the people were able to treat them with greater objectivity and truth. Among these writers of one class or other were Danilévski, Ryeshétnikov, Levítov, Glyeb Uspénski, and Zlatovrátski.

Others, again, proceeded to busy themselves with the intelligent class, pre-eminently with the negative sides of their existence. Písemski painted them in the blackest colours, while Saltykóv applied his great satirical talents more especially to the disclosure of all the wretchedness and dishonesty of the middle and the official strata of society. Ostróvski, again, took for his dramas the Moscow merchant class which stood on the border of the old Russian civilisation, and treated it ideally, apologetically, or negatively at various stages of his development. In poetry the democratic spirit of the forties is best reflected in Nekrásov and in a much lesser degree in Nikítin. Though these writers are related to Koltsóv in the treatment of popular themes, they differ vastly in the application of the democratic motive from their more artistic predecessor.

In the seventies there was the usual reaction in literature as well as in the political life of the nation. Since then a large number of novelists and poets have been endeavouring to reproduce the currents of modern society. The background of all this new literature is still the democracy of the forties, but the centre of interest has shifted from the peasant and the intellectual class to the large burgher population in its undefined tendency to form a substantial middle class. There are no pronounced ideas which these writers feel themselves called to propagate or defend, hence their task is comparatively more difficult than that of the previous generation. They are conscious of this, and when accused of scattering their energies and not rising to the high points of the men of the forties, they have justly answered that they are at a loss to discover any positive tendencies in the nation to reproduce. In the external technique of their works, however, there is a decided improvement over the generation which has just passed away, and the works would, no doubt, greatly interest foreign readers if they did not so much approach well-known models of the West.

In this greater cosmopolitanism of the newer Russian literature, in the broadening of the intellectual horizon, even though the literary life is more shallow, lies the hope of Russia’s future. Life is readjusting itself on a more stable basis. The tendencies of society, though indefinite, are more normal. Hence didacticism in literature is rapidly passing away, and art, this time tempered by the democratic spirit of the age, bids fair to regain its place in letters. Two illustrations will suffice to make this clear. Górki, who by his private life and the influence of the democratic school has been led to descend to the lowest dregs of society for his subjects, absolutely refrains from inculcating, directly or indirectly, any social or political tenet. Whatever he paints, he paints with the consummate skill of the artist for the sake of art. Merezhkóvski, who has not yet entirely passed his apprenticeship in letters, is trying to bridge over the democratic epoch, which he abhors, and aspires for the laurels of Púshkin.

Compared with its humble beginnings in 1800, Russian literature has made a wonderful record in the nineteenth century. The Russian language has been moulded into an instrument of great perfection: it is melodious, and capable of all shades of expression and all literary forms. The great authors of its literature have become the possession of all nations. Intellectual Russia no longer stands aloof. It is an important and valuable member of the great nations of the world. From the steady progress in the past, frequently under the most trying opposition, must be prognosticated a still greater advancement in the future. It has well learned its lessons from the West: it may yet become its teacher.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nikoláy Mikháylovich Karamzín. (1766-1826.)

Karamzín was born in the Government of Simbírsk. At fourteen years of age he entered Professor Schaden’s school at Moscow, and later he attended the university. In 1783 he settled in St. Petersburg where he began his literary career in conjunction with his friend Dmítriev (see vol. i., p. 428 et seq.); he entered the army for a short time, and spent the next year in his native place. After that he was taken to Moscow by I. P. Turgénev, a friend of Nóvikov (see vol. i., pp. 32 and 327), and was brought by him under the educational influences of the Masonic Society, which, however, he never joined himself. He devoted himself to the study of the German language, from which he translated much, and acquainted himself with English literature. In 1789 he travelled extensively through Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, meeting wherever possible the famous men of letters. Upon his return he edited, among other periodicals, the Moscow Journal, in which had appeared his Letters of a Russian Traveller. These differ immensely in tone and literary execution from the similar compositions by Fon-Vízin (see vol. i., p. 355 et seq.), and indicate the great stride made in the intellectual advancement of Russia in the short period of one decade. They created a sensation, not only on account of the pleasing and novel manner in which he treated serious subjects, but in a greater measure on account of the strong element of sentimental optimism that pervaded them. His sentimentalism is even more pronounced in his poems, and in his novels Poor Líza, Natálya, the Boyár’s Daughter, and Burgomistress Márfa.

In 1803 Karamzín was appointed historiographer, and he began to busy himself with Russian antiquity. After twelve years of labour appeared the first eight volumes of his History of the Russian Empire, in which he continued the sentimental idealisation of the Russian past. Though extolled by his contemporaries, and even later, as the first real history of Russia, it differs from those of his predecessors, the Russians Shcherbátov (see vol. i., p. 287) and Tatíshchev (ib., p. 218), and the German historians in Russia, not by any scientific method, but by its literary exposition, which served as a model for a generation of historical novelists. Karamzín’s greatest desert consists in having purified the Russian language from the dross of Church-Slavic words and constructions, by borrowing freely from the store of the spoken language, and by following the simpler constructions and the shorter sentences of the French and the English languages. This innovation involved him in a long controversy with the adherents of the old style, of which Admiral Shishkóv was the head, but he came out victorious, and for ever established the Russian literary norm.

There are several translations, or rather paraphrases, of Karamzín’s stories, and one of his Travels, in English: Russian Tales, ... translated into English by J. B. Elrington, London, 1803; Julia, translated from the Russ into French by M. du Boullier, and from the French into English by Ann P. H.[awkins], St. Petersburg, 1803; Tales from the Russian of Nicolai Karamsin [translated by A. A. Feldborg], London, 1804; Travels from Moscow, through Prussia, Germany, Switzerland, France, and England ... translated from the German [by A. A. Feldborg], 3 vols., London, 1803. A few of his poems are given in Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I.: The Song of Bornholm, The Churchyard, Autumn, Lilea, To Nicander; and in Part II.: Raïssa, The Haven, Song of the Good Tzar, To ⸺, To the Nightingale. An epigram is translated by V. E. Marsden in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 9, and there is also a version of The Churchyard by W. H. Dole (publication not ascertainable).

LETTERS OF A RUSSIAN TRAVELLER

Tver, May 18, 1789.

I have departed from you, my dear ones, I have departed! My heart is attached to you with all its tenderest feelings; and here I am getting farther and farther away from you!

O heart, heart! Who knows what you want? For how many years travel has been the fondest dream of my imagination! Did I not in rapture say to myself: “At last you will start”? Did I not awaken joyfully in the morning, did I not fall asleep with pleasure, thinking: “You are going to travel”? How long I could think of nothing else, busy myself with nothing else except the journey! And did I not count the days and hours? But when the desired hour arrived, I grew sorrowful, for I came to the first vivid realisation that I was about to part from the dearest people in the world, and from all that, so to say, entered into the composition of my moral existence.

Whatever I looked at, whether at the table upon which I had for years committed my unripe thoughts and feelings to paper; at the window under which I used to sit dolefully in my fits of melancholy, and where the rising sun found me so often; at the Gothic house, the favourite object of my eyes in the nocturnal hours,—in short, everything that came within my vision was for me a precious monument of the bygone years of my life, rich not in deeds, but in thoughts and feelings. I bade farewell to inanimate things as to friends; and while I was overcome and dispirited, my servants came, and began to weep and entreat me not to forget them and to take them back upon my return. Tears are contagious, my dear ones, especially in such circumstances.

But you are the dearest to me, and I had to part from you. My heart was so full that I forgot to speak. But why should I tell you that? The moment when we bade each other good-bye was such that a thousand agreeable minutes of the future will scarcely repay me for it.

Dear Petróv accompanied me to the toll-gate. There we embraced each other, and for the first time I observed his tears; there I seated myself in the kibítka,[1] glanced at Moscow, where I left behind so much that was dear to me, and said: “Good-bye!” The bells jingled, the horses galloped away,—and your friend was orphaned in the world, and his soul was orphaned!

The whole past is a dream and a shadow! Oh! where are the hours when my heart was so at ease among you, my dear ones? If the future were suddenly revealed to the most fortunate man, his heart would congeal with terror, and his tongue would grow dumb the very moment in which he deemed himself the happiest of mortals.

Upon my whole journey not one cheering thought entered my mind. At the last station in Tver, my melancholy had so increased that, standing, in the village tavern, before the caricatures of the French Queen and the Roman Emperor, I felt, as Shakspere says, “my blood weeping from my heart.” All that I had left behind appeared to me in such a touching aspect. But enough, enough! I am again growing very sad. Good-bye! May God console you! Remember your friend, but without any grievous feeling!

[1] Native vehicle.

ON THE FRENCH TRAGEDY

In the so-called French Theatre they play tragedies, dramas, and large comedies. I have not changed my opinion of the French Melpomene. She is noble, majestic, beautiful, but she never will touch and stir my heart as does the Muse of Shakspere and of a few (’t is true, a very few) Germans. The French poets have a delicate, refined taste, and may serve as models in the art of writing. Only in the matter of invention, warmth, and deep sentiment of Nature,—forgive me, sacred shades of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire!—they must concede the supremacy to the English and the Germans. Their tragedies are filled with artistic pictures in which the colours and shades are skilfully matched; but I generally admire them with a cold heart. There is everywhere a mixture of the natural with the romantic; everywhere “mes feux,” “ma foi”; everywhere Greeks and Romans à la française, who are dissolved in amatory raptures, who sometimes philosophise, express one thought in a variety of choice words, and, losing themselves in a maze of eloquence, forget to act. The public demands here of the author beautiful verses, “des vers à retenir”; these make a play famous, and, consequently, the versifiers use all their efforts to multiply their number, and are more concerned about them than about the importance of the plot and the new, extraordinary, yet natural situations, forgetting that character is revealed in these unusual occurrences and that the very words obtain their strength from them.

To be short, the creations of the French Melpomene are glorious, and will always be glorious, by the beauty of their diction and brilliant verses; but if a tragedy is deeply to stir our hearts or to terrify our souls, Voltaire’s countrymen have, probably, no more than two real tragedies, and D’Alembert very justly remarked that all their dramas have been composed for reading rather than for the theatre.

ON SHAKSPERE

In dramatic poetry the English have nothing remarkable, except the works of one author, but that author is Shakspere, and the English are rich!

It is easy to make light of him, not only with the mind of a Voltaire, but also with the most ordinary mind. I do not wish even to dispute with him who does not feel his great beauties. The amusing critics of Shakspere resemble those naughty urchins who in the street surround a strangely dressed man and cry out: “What a funny fellow! What a strange fellow!”

Every author is marked with the stamp of his age. Shakspere wished to please his contemporaries, knew their taste, and satisfied it. What seemed to be witty then is now wearisome and repulsive; this is the result of the evolution of the mind and taste, with which even the greatest genius cannot count. But every real talent creates for eternity, though paying the tribute to his age: the contemporary beauties disappear, and the common ones that are based on the human heart and on the nature of things preserve their strength, in Shakspere as in Homer. The grandeur and truthfulness of the characters, the attractiveness of the plot, the revelation of the human heart, and the great thoughts that are scattered in the dramas of the British genius will always keep their magic charm for people who are endowed with sentiment. I know no other poet who has such an all-embracing, fertile, inexhaustible imagination,—and you will find all kinds of poetry in Shakspere’s works. He is the favourite son of the goddess Fancy who surrendered to him her magic wand, and disporting in the luxuriant gardens of the imagination he creates miracles at each step.

London, September, 1790

There was a time, when I had hardly seen any Englishmen, when I went into ecstasy over them, and imagined England to be of all countries the most agreeable to my heart. With what delight, being a boarding pupil at Professor S’s, I used to read during the American war the reports of the victorious British admirals! Rodney, Howe, did not leave my tongue; I celebrated their victories and invited my young schoolmates to my room. It seemed to me that to be an Englishman was to be brave, also magnanimous, sentimental, and true. If I am not mistaken, novels were the chief foundation for this opinion. Now I see the English at close range, and I do them justice and praise them, but my praise is as cold as they themselves are.

Above all, I should not like to pass my life in England on account of its damp, gloomy, sombre climate. I know that one may be happy even in Siberia when the heart is satisfied and joyful, but a cheerful climate makes us more cheerful, and here one feels, in a fit of pining and melancholy, more than elsewhere like committing suicide. The groves, parks, fields, gardens,—all that is beautiful in England; but it is all covered with fogs, darkness, and coal smoke. The sun rarely peeps through, and then only for a short time; but without it life upon earth is not a pleasure. “Give my regards to the sun,” someone wrote from here to his friend in Naples; “I have not seen him for a long time.” The English winter is not so cold as ours; but we have at least beautiful days in winter, which are uncommon here even in summer. How, then, can an Englishman keep himself from looking like September?

In the second place, their cold natures do not please me in the least. “It is a snow-covered volcano,” a French emigrant said of them smilingly to me. But I stand, watch, see no flame, and meanwhile freeze. My Russian heart loves to bubble in a sincere, lively conversation, loves the play of the eyes, the rapid changes of the face, the expressive motion of the hands. The Englishman is reticent, indifferent, and speaks as he reads, without ever expressing those sudden mental convulsions that electrify our whole physical system. They say he is profounder than others. Is it not rather that he seems profounder? Is it not because his thick blood moves more slowly in him, and gives him the aspect of being deep in thoughts, though he often has none? The example of a Bacon, Newton, Locke, Hobbes, proves nothing. Geniuses are born in all lands; the universe is their country, and, then, can it be said in justice that, for example, Locke is deeper than Descartes and Leibnitz?

THE CHURCHYARD

FIRST VOICE

How frightful the grave! How deserted and drear!

With the howls of the storm-wind, the creaks of the bier,

And the white bones all clattering together!

SECOND VOICE

How peaceful the grave! Its quiet how deep!

Its zephyrs breathe calmly, and soft is its sleep,

And flowerets perfume it with ether.

FIRST VOICE

There riots the blood-crested worm on the dead,

And the yellow skull serves the foul toad for a bed,

And snakes in its nettle-weeds hiss.

SECOND VOICE

How lovely, how lone the repose of the tomb!

No tempests are there, but the nightingales come

And sing their sweet chorus of bliss.

FIRST VOICE

The ravens of night flap their wings o’er the grave:

’T is the vulture’s abode; ’t is the wolf’s dreary cave,

Where they tear up the earth with their fangs.

SECOND VOICE

There the coney at evening disports with his love,

Or rests on the sod, while the turtles above

Repose on the bough that o’erhangs.

FIRST VOICE

There darkness and dampness with poisonous breath

And loathsome decay fill the dwelling of death,

The trees are all barren and bare.

SECOND VOICE

Oh, soft are the breezes that play round the tomb,

And sweet with the violet’s wafted perfume,

With lilies and jessamine fair!

FIRST VOICE

The pilgrim who reaches this valley of tears

Would fain hurry by, and with trembling and fears

He is launched on the wreck-covered river.

SECOND VOICE

The traveller outworn with life’s pilgrimage dreary,

Lays down his rude staff, like one that is weary,

And sweetly reposes for ever.

—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I.

POOR LÍZA

Perchance none of those who live in Moscow know the surroundings of that city so well as I do, because nobody is oftener in the open than I, nobody oftener wanders about, planlessly, aimlessly, whither his eyes carry him, through meadows and groves, over hills and vales. Every summer I discover new places of delight, or new beauties in those I already know.

But most pleasant to me is the place where rise the sombre Gothic towers of the monastery of St. Simeon. Standing on that mound, you survey upon your right nearly all of Moscow, that enormous mass of houses and churches, that presents itself to the eyes in the form of a majestic amphitheatre,—a superb picture, especially when the sun shines upon it, when his evening rays gleam on the innumerable gilded cupolas and the innumerable crosses that tower to heaven!

Below, stretch the luscious, dark-green, blossoming fields; beyond them, there flows over the yellow sands the limpid river, stirred by the light oars of fishing-boats, or splashing under the prows of freighted barges that come from the more fertile parts of the Russian Empire and supply hungry Moscow with grain. On the other side of the river there is seen an oak grove, and near it graze numerous flocks. There young shepherds, sitting in the shade of trees, sing simple, doleful songs, and thus shorten the monotonous summer days. A little farther off, in the dense verdure of ancient elms, gleams the gold-domed monastery of St. Daniel’s; still farther away, almost on the verge of the horizon, loom the blue outlines of the Sparrow Hills. To the left appear vast, grain-covered fields, groves, three or four villages, and, in the distance, Kolómna with its high palace.

I often repair to that spot, and nearly always meet spring there; thither I also repair in the gloomy days of autumn, to mourn together with Nature. The winds moan terribly within the walls of the deserted monastery, in the rank grass of the graves, and in the dark corridors of the cells. There I lean against the ruins of the tombstones and hearken to the hollow groan of Time, the groan of those swallowed by the abyss of the past, which makes my heart flutter and tremble. At times I enter into the cells, and I picture to myself those who have lived in them,—sad pictures! Here I see a grey-haired old man bending his knee before the crucifix and imploring a swift liberation from his earthly fetters, for all pleasures of life have left him, all his feelings are dead, except the feeling of ill-health and weakness. There a youthful monk, with pale face and languishing glance, looks through the latticed window, sees the merry birds that freely swim in the aërial ocean,—sees them, and bitter tears issue from his eyes. He pines, withers, dries up,—and the dismal sound of a bell announces to me his untimely death.

At times I scan on the doors of the sanctuary the representation of miracles that have taken place in this monastery: there fishes fall from heaven to appease the hunger of the denizens of the cloister that is besieged by a multitudinous host; here the image of the Mother of God puts the enemy to flight. All that refreshes in my mind the history of our country,—the sad history of those times when the savage Tartars and Lithuanians with fire and sword laid waste the surroundings of the Russian capital, and when luckless Moscow, like a defenceless widow, awaited from God alone succour in her dire distress.

But most frequently of all I am attracted to the walls of St. Simeon’s monastery by the memory of the tearful fate of Líza, poor Líza. Oh! I love those objects that touch my heart and cause me to shed tears of tender sorrow!

Some five hundred feet from the cloister wall there stands, near a birch grove, amidst a green field, a deserted hut without doors, without windows, without a floor; its roof is decayed and has fallen in long ago. In that hut there lived, some thirty years ago, lovely Líza with her old mother.

Líza’s father was a fairly well-to-do peasant, for he loved work, carefully tilled the soil, and always led a sober life. But soon after his death his wife and daughter fell into poverty. The indolent hand of the hired servant ploughed the field carelessly, and the grain began to give diminished returns. They were compelled to let their land to a tenant, at an inconsiderable income. At the same time the poor widow, who continuously shed tears for her deceased husband,—for peasant women also know how to love,—grew weaker and weaker from day to day, and finally could not work at all. Líza alone, who was fifteen years old at her father’s death,—Líza alone did not spare her tender youth nor her rare beauty, and laboured day and night: she wove hempen cloth, knit stockings; in springtime picked flowers, and in winter berries, and sold them in Moscow. Seeing the indefatigableness of her daughter, the sensitive, gentle old woman frequently pressed her to her feebly beating heart, called her “divine grace, protector, consolation of my old age,” and prayed to God to reward her for all she did for her mother.

“God gave me hands to work,” Líza would say. “You nourished me at your breast, watched me in my childhood. Now it is my turn to look after you. Only stop grieving, stop weeping! Our tears will not bring father to life.”

But often gentle Líza could not restrain her own tears, for oh! she recalled that she had had a father, and that he was no more; but to comfort her mother she tried to hide the grief of her heart, and to appear calm and gay.

“In the world to come, beloved Líza,” the sorrowing old woman answered, “in the world to come I shall cease to weep. There, they say, we shall all be happy; I shall certainly be happy when I see your father again. But I do not wish to die now, for what would become of you without me? To whom could I leave you? No, God grant me first to see you provided for! Maybe some good man will be found for you. Then I will bless you, my dear children, will make the sign of the cross, and willingly will lie down in the damp earth.”

FROM THE “HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE”

INTRODUCTION

History is in a certain sense the sacred book of the nations, their most important and indispensable book, the mirror of their being and activities, the tables of their revelation and of their laws, the injunction of the ancestors to their posterity, the complement, the exposition of the present, and the example for the future.

Rulers and lawgivers act according to the lessons of history, and look upon its pages as the mariner looks upon his ocean charts. Human wisdom is in need of experience, and life is short. It is necessary to know how riotous passions have of yore agitated civil society, and in what manner the beneficent dominion of reason has bridled its tempestuous onrush, in order to establish order, harmonise the interests of men, and give them the best attainable happiness upon earth.

But even a simple citizen must read history. It reconciles him to the imperfection of the visible order of things, as to a common phenomenon in all ages; consoles him in his country’s calamities, by certifying to former similar, even more ominous misfortunes, by which the country did not perish; it fosters a moral sense, and by its equitable judgment inclines the soul to justice, by which our well-being and the concord of society are confirmed.

Such is its usefulness, and many are the pleasures of heart and mind that are derived from it. Curiosity is an innate feeling with the man of culture and with the savage. At the famous Olympic games the noise died down, and the masses preserved silence around Herodotus reading the traditions of the ages. Even before knowing the use of letters, the nations love history: the old man points out to the youth the elevated tomb and narrates to him the deeds of the hero resting in it. The first experiments of our ancestors in the art of writing were devoted to religion and history; shrouded by a dense cloud of ignorance, the people listened eagerly to the accounts of the chroniclers. Even fiction pleases, but to get a full pleasure out of it we must deceive ourselves and imagine that it is true. By opening the graves, raising the dead, putting life into their hearts and words upon their lips, by recreating kingdoms from the dust and presenting to the imagination a series of the ages with their several passions, customs, acts,—history expands the limits of our own existence. By its creative power we live with the men of all times, see and hear them, love and hate them; before we think of usefulness, we revel in the contemplation of the various occurrences and of the characters that entertain the mind or nurture our sensibilities.

If every history, even the inartistically written, may be pleasing, as Pliny says,—how much more that of our native land! A true cosmopolite is a metaphysical being or so unusual a phenomenon that there is no need of speaking of him, neither to praise nor to condemn him. We are all citizens,—in Europe and in India, in Mexico and in Abyssinia; the personality of each is closely bound up with his country: we love it because we love ourselves. The Greeks and the Romans may captivate our imagination: they belong to the family of the human race and are no strangers to us in their virtues and in their weaknesses, in their glory and in their calamities; but the name of a Russian has a special attraction for us: my heart beats more strongly for Pozhárski[2] than for Themistocles or Scipio. Universal history by its great recollections embellishes the world in our eyes, but Russian history embellishes our country in which we live and feel. How attractive are to us the banks of the Vólkhov, Dnieper, Don, when we know what has taken place upon them in remote antiquity! Not only Nóvgorod, Kíev, Vladímir, but even the cabins of Eléts, Kozélsk, Gálich, become interesting monuments, and mute objects grow eloquent. The shadows of bygone centuries everywhere draw pictures before us.

Outside of their special value for us, sons of Russia, its annals have an universal interest. Let us cast a glance at this unique Empire: thought staggers! Rome in all her majesty, ruling from the Tiber to the Caucasus, to the Elbe and to the African sands, could never equal it. Is it not wonderful how a land that is disrupted by eternal barriers of Nature, by immeasurable deserts and impenetrable forests, by cold and hot climates, how Astrakhán and Lapland, Siberia and Bessarabia, could have formed one empire with Moscow? And is that mixture of its inhabitants less wonderful, that composite and heterogeneous mass of varying degrees of civilisation? Like America, Russia has its savages; like other countries of Europe, it displays the fruits of a protracted civil existence. One need not be a Russian, one need only think, in order to read with curiosity the traditions of a nation that by daring and courage has obtained the dominion over the ninth part of the world, has discovered countries, heretofore unknown, has entered them in the universal system of geography and history, and has enlightened them through God-sent faith, without violence, without atrocities practised by the other devotees of Christianity in Europe and America, but merely by dint of good example.

We shall admit that the deeds described by Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, are in general more interesting to others than to Russians, representing as they do more force of character and a more vivid play of the passions, since Greece and Rome were world powers and more enlightened than Russia; yet we may boldly assert that certain incidents, pictures, characters, of our history are not less curious than those of antiquity. Such are the exploits of Svyatosláv, the scourge of Batý, the popular rising under Donskóy, the fall of Nóvgorod, the taking of Kazán, the victory of the civic virtues in the time of the interregnum. The giants of the early dawn, Olég and the son of Ígor; the simple-minded knight, blind Vasílko; the friend of his country, virtuous Monomákh; the brave Mstislávs, terrible in war and an example of meekness in peace; Mikhaíl of Tver, so famed for his magnanimous death; the ill-fated, truly courageous Aleksándr Névski; the youthful hero, the vanquisher of Mamáy,—the slightest sketch of them acts powerfully on the imagination and on the heart. The reign of Iván III. alone is a rare treasure of history; at least I know of no monarch more worthy to live and shine in its sanctuary. The rays of his glory fall upon the cradle of Peter, and between these two autocrats are the remarkable Iván IV. and Godunóv, who merited his good fortune and his reverses; the strange False Demetrius; and, after a host of valiant patriots, boyárs, and citizens, the mentor of the enthroned, Patriarch Filarét with his august son, the light-bearer in the darkness of our country’s woes; and Tsar Alexis, the wise father of the Emperor whom Europe has called the Great. Either all modern history must be silent, or that of Russia has a right to be heard.

[2] The liberator of Russia, during the interregnum of the False Demetrius.

Iván Andréevich Krylóv. (1768-1844.)

Krylóv’s biography is not satisfactory. It is known that he was the son of a poor army officer, and that he lost his father early in life. He received only the scantiest education, and while still a boy became acquainted with practical life. He served in various capacities in the government offices of St. Petersburg and the province. Then he disappeared from public view for a number of years, though it is surmised that he passed much of that time gambling at cards, to which he was passionately addicted. In 1812 he received an appointment at the Imperial (later the Public) Library, which gave him ample leisure to devote himself to literature, though his innate laziness made him very unproductive. Krylóv first entered the literary career before the age of twenty, by a series of mediocre comedies. From 1789 he edited a number of periodicals, the first of which, The Spirit Post, was in the manner of the older satirical journals. It was here that he began to develop the fine satirical vein for which his fables later became so famous. In 1809 appeared the first small collection of his fables. Most of his subjects he borrowed from the older writers, especially from La Fontaine, but he not only gave them a Russian surrounding, but invested them with such an artistic atmosphere as to make them the possession of all times and all nations. His fables have been translated into all the European and some of the Asiatic languages.

There are several translations of Krylóv in English: Krilof and his Fables, by W. R. S. Ralston, London, 1869 (4th edition, 1883; several of the poems had been published before, in 1868 and 1870, in Good Words); Krilof’s Fables, Illustrating Russian Social Life, translated from the Russian for the Calcutta Weekly “Englishman” [by J. Long], Calcutta, 1869; Kriloff’s Original Fables, translated by I. H. Harrison, London, 1883. Separate fables have been translated by Sir John Bowring in his Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I. (from the manuscript furnished him by Krylóv); three poems, given below [by W. D. Lewis] in the National Gazette and Literary Register, Philadelphia, 1825; in Russian Fabulists, with Specimens, in Fraser’s Magazine, 1839 and 1842; in Chambers’s Journal, vol. v., 1856; by Sutherland Edwards, in The Russians at Home, London, 1861; by R. Garnett, in The University Magazine, 1879 (Fables from Krilof); by C. T. Wilson, in Russian Lyrics, London, 1887; by John Pollen, in Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891.

THE ASS AND THE NIGHTINGALE

Chancing a Nightingale to meet,

Thus did an Ass the songstress greet:—

“Whither in such a hurry winging?

I ’m told, my dear, you ’re famed for singing.

My curiosity I fain would satisfy,

So if you ’ll condescend to gratify,—

Come! for a specimen of your rare skill,

And let me hear how featly you can trill!”

Forthwith the Nightingale began,

And through her cadences she ran,

Now tender and most soft,

Anon her voice she raised aloft;

While all around in silence hushed

Listened to her melting strain,

As its music sweetly gushed,

And floated over dale and plain;

Hardly breathed the enraptured swain

As drank his ear of sound the stream,

And as he mused on the varying theme.

Ceased the songstress, the critic Ass

His sentence thus began to pass:—

“Upon my word, ’t is not amiss!

Yet you should hear

Friend Chanticleer.

From him some lessons you ’d do well to take.

His mode of singing well I know,

Nor can there finer be, I trow.

Yes! He is clever;

And you, my dear, should by all means endeavour

Like him to crow!

He has a voice—a shake—

That really keeps folks quite awake.

Yet after all you do not sing amiss.”

On hearing this,

Far away the song-bird flew.

—From Russian Fabulists, with Specimens, in Fraser’s Magazine, 1842.

THE QUARTETTE

The tricksy Monkey, the Goat, the Ass, and bandy-legged Míshka the Bear, determine to play a quartette. They provide themselves with the necessary pieces of music—with two fiddles, and with an alto and counter-bass. Then they sit down on a meadow under a lime-tree, prepared to enchant the world by their skill. They work away at their fiddlesticks with a will; and they make a noise, but there is no music in it.

“Stop, brothers, stop!” cried the Monkey, “wait a little! How can we get our music right? It ’s plain, you must n’t sit as you are. You, Míshka, with your counter-bass, face the alto. I will sit opposite the fiddle. Then a different sort of music will begin: we shall set the very hills and forests dancing.”

So they changed places, and recommenced; but the music is just as discordant as ever.

“Stop a little!” exclaims the Ass; “I have found out the secret. We shall be sure to play in tune if we sit in a row.”

They follow its advice, and form in an orderly line. But the quartette is as unmusical as ever. Louder than before there arose among them squabbling and wrangling as to how they ought to be seated. It happened that a Nightingale came flying that way, attracted by their noise. At once they all entreat it to solve their difficulty.

“Be so kind,” they say, “as to bear with us a little, in order that our quartette may come off properly. Music we have; instruments we have: tell us only how we ought to place ourselves.”

But the Nightingale replies:

“To be a musician, one must have a quicker intelligence and finer ear than you possess. You, my friends, may place yourselves just as you like, but you will never become musicians.”

—From W. R. S. Ralston’s Krilof and his Fables.

DAMIAN’S FISHSOUP

“Well, neighbour, now you are a brick!

Come, try some more.”

“Neighbour, I ’m bursting quite.”—“No humbug, quick—

One plateful let me pour:

Real fishsoup, see what soup, done to a t.”—

“But that ’s my third.”—“Hush! here we count nor plates nor glasses—

With a good appetite all passes:

Digestion ’s good for sleep, you see.

’T is tempting, ’t is a very jelly;

Look at the amber that its surface coats,

Indulge, old chum, unto thy heart’s content!

See there, ’t is bream, here sterlet choice that floats!

That liver there for thee was meant.

Another spoonful!—Wife, thy reverence make!—

One small one more, and for my sake!”

Thus feasted Damian once his old friend Neddy;

No time to breathe or talk, kept to it steady.

Down Neddy’s face had long been trickling rain,

But, yielding unto fate, his plate he hands again;

And, summoning his strength remaining,

He swallows all.—“Now, that a friend I call,”

Exulting Damian cries; “why on excuses fall

To spare my cheer? Then once more show your training!”

Then hapless Neddy, who

Doted on fish, at this aggression new,

Seizing his coat,

Stick, and capote,

Ran straight and swiftly to his own street door,

And ne’er set foot in Damian’s parlour more.

Good author, happy thou in gift beyond dispute;

But, if thou hast not learned yet to be mute,

Boring unwilling ears to suit

Nor time nor place, be sure—thy verse or prose

More sickening e’en than Damian’s fishsoup grows.

—From I. H. Harrison’s Kriloff’s Original Fables.

THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB

Whene’er companions don’t agree,

They work without accord;

And naught but trouble doth result,

Although they all work hard.

One day a Swan, a Pike, a Crab,

Resolved a load to haul.

All three were harnessed to the cart,

And pulled together all.

But though they pulled with all their might,

That cart-load on the bank stuck tight.

The Swan pulled upwards to the skies,

The Crab did backwards crawl,

The Pike made for the water straight:

This proved no use at all.

Now, which of them was most to blame

’T is not for me to say,

But this I know,—the load is there

Unto this very day.

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

THE LION AND THE WOLF

A hungry Lion on a lamb was feeding,

When a poor dog passed by,

And, with a patient look of meekness pleading,

Shared in the banquet, while the royal beast

Smiled at his ignorant simplicity.

A Wolf looked on, and said: “And surely I

May have a portion of the prey,—at least,

Indeed, I ’ll try.”

He came,—came boldly: when the Lion saw

His purpose, he upraised his kingly paw,

Smote him to earth, and left him there to die.

There ’s some excuse for inexperience;

But none for daring, insolent pretence.

—From National Gazette and Literary Register, Philadelphia, September 3, 1825.

THE CLOUD

Over the thirsty plains a pregnant Cloud

Rolled on its forward way;

Scorning the cliffs whose summit proud

Beneath it lay;

While to the overflowing sea

It poured its waters forth rejoicingly.

“Am I not liberal?” to the Mountain cried

The Cloud, while the swift torrents swelled the tide.

“Liberal! The panting field and sun-dried plain

Asked for one drop, one single drop, in vain,”

Exclaimed the Mountain; “liberal, indeed,

To those who asked no favour,—felt no need!”

—Ib.

THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR AND THE SEA.

The waves had whelmed the venturous bark,

And dashed the shipwrecked seaman to the shore;

He turned himself, impatient at the roar,

And cried, “Perfidious Sea!

Why didst thou lure me, smiling tranquilly,

To such a fate, so desolate and dark?”

The Ocean-god awoke, and frowning said:

“Hurl not thy vain reproaches at my head;

My waters calmly ebb and flow,

Till the land-warring tempests break their rest,

Go! to the storm-winds be thy plaints addressed,

Go! to the whirlwind, go!”

—Ib.

Aleksándr Efímovich Izmáylov. (1779-1831.)

Izmáylov was for a short time vice-governor of Tver and Arkhángelsk. He published several periodicals, to which he contributed sentimental novels in Karamzín’s style. He wrote a number of fables in a somewhat coarse manner, which earned for him the title of “an author not for ladies.”

The Drunkard’s Vow is given in Russian Fabulists, in Fraser’s Magazine, vol. xxv., 1842; The Drunkard’s Answer, The Ladder, The Donkey and the Horse are given in Wilson’s Russian Lyrics. An epigram is translated by V. E. Marsden in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 9.

THE DRUNKARD’S VOW

A toper made a solemn vow he never more would touch,

Or punch, or grog, or spirits mixed, or any compounds such.

Yet though to make ’t was easy, to keep so strict a vow,

To prove an easy matter was not likely, you ’ll allow.

Soon after was our tippler seen reeling ’long the street.

“How now!” a neighbour cried, “why, you scarce can keep your feet.

I thought you had forsworn for ever punch and grog?”

“And so I have, nor do I now touch either, you dull dog;

But I keep my vow unbroken by drinking spirits neat.”

—From Russian Fabulists, in Fraser’s Magazine, vol. xxv.

THE CANARY AND THE NIGHTINGALE

In a beautiful cage near the window in the garden was a Canary who sang the livelong day alone. At some distance, where an avenue of birches led to a bramble bush, a lonely Nightingale sang through the nights and early in the mornings. Both man and beast and bird, and all that have blood, feel all-powerful love in spring. The two singers made each other’s acquaintance, and forthwith the Canary forgot the naughty Parrot in his foppish green uniform for the sake of the Nightingale. No sweeter bird, in all the world, for her than the Nightingale, and what a charming voice he had!

The Nightingale, the favourite of the roses, frequently left at night his fragrant birches, and flitted near the window over the flower bed, and in the hope of a reward serenaded her in the lilac bushes, for he loved the Canary with all his heart. At first, like the artist he was, he appeared awkward and timid, but at last he made up his mind and, sighing, explained his burning passion for her. The sentimental daughter of the Canary Islands, who was yellower than straw and lemons, blinking, sang out in semitones that the best of singers was dear to her. The lovers agreed to fly into the distant forest (they had forgotten to close the cage); so, the heavens favouring them, the bridegroom and bride started for the wished-for woods. They flew for a long while, and at last, late in the evening, alighted in a thicket; they kissed each other and began to sing,—but they had not eaten since morning. So the bride said to her husband:

“How nice it is to listen to your singing! But, could I not have a bite of something?”

“Right away, my angel!” and the Nightingale flew away, as if pursued by a hawk, and returned a minute later:

“O friend of my soul! Here are little ants, they are very good! Here are some ant eggs⸺”

“Sir, that is no food for a bird brought up in the capital! Bring me crackers and candy!”

“Alas, there are none in the woods!”

“No? Do you expect me to starve?”

“Maybe I shall find some kernels in the field!”

“What? Do you expect me to peck kernels?”

And she began to scold her husband, broke her relations with him, and transferred herself to the Parrot in the garden.

Inexperienced bridegrooms! If you are charmed by a cultivated maiden who has never been away from the luxurious capital,—read with her my verses; if she will agree to eat forget-me-not soup, you may safely marry her.

THE TWO CATS

Vánka the Cat and Váska were two brothers; they were both born and lived in the same house. Vánka was so lean that it would frighten you to look at him,—in truth, he was not rounder than a plank; whereas Váska was as fat as the steward, and could barely waddle on account of his obesity; his fur had the sheen of velvet.

“We have not the same luck, though we are of one mother,” said the skeleton to him. “You know no cares; you are never without meat, not even on week-days. You are free to eat meat, while with me it is always Lent; you sleep long, while I hardly know of sleep, preserving the whole house from mice and rats,—yet, with all my zeal, I am hungry⸺”

“And stupid!” the fat one interrupted him. “Brother, come to your senses! Take me for an example, if you want to be fatter.”

“Pray, what am I to do?”

“Amuse your master, walk on your hind legs in his presence, dance, leap over his arm when he stretches it out, and learn all my amusing tricks. Believe me, you will be loved as well as have your hunger satisfied. Know, silly one, that he who pleases people in trifles and foolish things never loses by doing so; but he who labours for their benefit and passes sleepless nights often stays hungry.”

Vasíli Trofímovich Naryézhny. (1780-1825.)

Naryézhny was born but a short distance from Gógol’s native place. In 1801 he graduated from the Moscow University, and entered the army. After that he served in various departments, rising to the post of Chief of Department. He wrote a tragedy, The False Demetrius, which was published in 1804; in 1814 appeared the first three volumes of The Russian Gil Blas: the last three volumes did not get the censor’s imprimatur. There is much in the manner of this Little-Russian author that reminds of Gógol, who availed himself not only of the genre of his predecessor, but also of the very subject-matter for his classical creations. The very titles of Naryézhny’s later works, The Seminarist: A Little-Russian Story, and The Two Iváns; or, The Passion for Litigation, recur in a modified form in Gógol’s works. It was only a short time ago that this relation of the two authors was pointed out.

FROM “THE TWO IVÁNS; OR, THE PASSION FOR LITIGATION”

The day was inclining to its fall, but the merriment in the house of the hospitable host did not abate. A large number of visitors were not a burden to him. He feasted the men, and his wife the women. Pan Kharitón took the guests around in the garden, though the September winds had already brought half of the leaves to the ground; to the barn, where he figured out how much brandy every stack of rye would give him; to the cattle yard, where he had occasion to boast of his bulls and cows, goats and wethers. His spouse showed her friends from the window the flocks of chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys, telling them in detail of the peculiarities of every cock and hen. Is not that charming?

When all had gathered again in the room, where the table was set with earthen wine-jugs filled with steaming spiced brandy, and the host and guests had placed their cups at random before them, they heard in the yard the rattle of wheels and the tramp of horses, and soon appeared in the assembly a thick-set man of some fifty years, expansive about his abdomen and broad in his shoulders. His bald head shone like the full moon. Who was that guest? The scribe of the hundred-court, Pan Anúri. All rose respectfully, and the host gave him a friendly embrace, offered him his seat, and set before him his cup of mulled brandy. They all looked into his eyes, eagerly caught every word of his, and laughed uproariously when that fool smiled at his own witticisms.

When three cups had found their way into his entrails, he stood up akimbo and announced: “What will you give me, Pan Kharitón, for the good news which I bring you from town? The judge of the hundred-court said to me, as he handed me this batch of papers: ‘Go, my friend, and place these papers into the personal hands of Pan Kharitón!’ From this I conclude,” proceeded Anúri, “that they are favourable, for I am seldom wrong in my conclusions.”

“I understand, I understand!” said Pan Kharitón, and went out smiling. Anúri had barely gotten away with the fourth cup, when Pan Kharitón appeared with some gifts and offered him a new hat of the best cowhide, new boots, permeated by the purest tar, and a clay pipe, the work of the first Poltáva potter. Pan Anúri received the offerings with condescension and hastened to his two-wheeled cart to deposit them there, after which he entered the room with a large sealed batch of papers, handed it respectfully to Pan Kharitón, and seated himself in his old place. Pan Kharitón cursorily glanced at every paper and said: “After all the troubles I have had, my eyes have grown dim. Be so kind, Pan Anúri, as to read them. The decree of the hundred-court is no secret.”

Pan Anúri took the documents with much dignity, selected from them the judgment, put on his eyeglasses, and began to read: “Pan Kharitón Zanóza appears as the plaintiff against Pan Iván Zúbar and Pan Iván Khtára, claiming that they had burnt down his dove-cots with all the pigeons, of which there were more than two hundred; the two Pans Iván, however, declare that the apiary of the elder Iván, containing not less than fifty hives, has been destroyed.

“The hundred-court, having taken into consideration all circumstances, as is meet, decrees:

1. “Granting that during the fire of Pan Kharitón’s dove-cot all the pigeons, of which there were more than two hundred, i. e., two hundred and one, have perished, and estimating the price of each pigeon at the maximum of a farthing, his damage amounts to fifty kopeks and a farthing. But since the two Pans Iván declare under oath that they have used as food only twenty birds, the real damage which they have done amounts only to five kopeks; the rest of the pigeons either flew away, or were burnt. Whereas nobody tied any of the aforesaid pigeons or cut their wings, they might have flown away, and thus they were roasted by their own free will.

2. “Pan Iván the elder has lost fifty hives that at the time were full of honey. Upon inquiry it is found that such a hive is worth sixty kopeks, and thus his damage amounts to thirty roubles. Excluding from that sum five kopeks, Pan Kharitón has caused to Pan Iván the elder a real damage of twenty-nine roubles and ninety-five kopeks, which sum is without delay to be turned over within three days to Scribe Anúri. Of this sum twenty-eight roubles and ninety-five kopeks will be retained for the necessary expenses of the hundred-court; the remaining rouble is to be turned over to Pan Iván the elder, he signing a receipt for it.”

Who will describe Pan Kharitón’s fury! He cracked the knuckles of his fingers, stamped the floor with his feet, and rolled his eyes terribly. Finally he jumped up like one beside himself, ran to the perplexed scribe, grabbed the fatal judgment out of his hands, tore it to shreds, and threw it into the eyes of the ambassador of the hundred-court. On all sides was heard a noise and murmuring. Pan Kharitón paid no attention to anything; he shouted to the scribe: “Why have you been riding about upon my horses? Eh? Why have you been tilling your soil with my steers, and sowing it with my grain? Eh? Why have you been devouring my sheep and wethers, and making fur coats out of their hides? Eh? Why have you been taking my money, you destroyers of souls, good-for-nothings, robbers? Why have you been extorting money from me, I say, if you had no intention to stand by me? Eh?”

With these words, to the horror of all the guests and their families,—for at the thunderous roar of Pan Kharitón all the women and daughters of the guests had made their appearance,—he pulled Pan Anúri by his collar, dragged him out into the yard, lifted him up, banged him into his cart, jammed the reins into his hands, gave him two mighty blows in his occiput, raised from the ground a birch club and began to belabour, now the horse, now Anúri. The poor animal flew out of the yard into the road as fast as it could, and Pan Kharitón ran out after the cart and shouted to the scribe: “Tell the fool of a hundred-judge and the good-for-nothing members of the hundred-court that they are transgressors of the law, and that I shall go to-morrow to Poltáva to cite them before the regimental chancery!”

Having obtained such a famous victory over their worst enemy in the matter of the burnt-down dove-cot and destroyed apiary, the two Pans Iván were travelling in triumph from the town to their abode, when they espied in the middle of the road near the tavern the cart, and they immediately knew to whom it belonged.

“That ’s fortunate,” said Iván the elder: “we ’ll take the rouble that belongs to us from Anúri and will give him a good treat.”

They entered the tavern and sure enough saw Pan Anúri sitting over a cup, but in a most dejected attitude. “What ’s the matter, Pan Anúri?” cried out Iván the elder: “The cup is at your very mouth, and you look so sad,—those things do not fit together. Jew, give us two more cups, of anything you please, so it ’s of the best spirits! Really, you, Pan Anúri, are a great fellow and pretty slick! Who would have thought you could manage in so short a time that riotous head of worthless Zanóza?”

“I should say I did manage!” said Anúri with a bitter smile and, filling his cup, drank from it with unmistakable disgust. The two Iváns looked at his strange action in wonderment, and pressed him with all kinds of questions.

Anúri told them all in detail. Having listened with undisguised attention to this incident which had been unheard of in Little-Russia from its beginning, the two Iváns were heartily glad, and the elder one clapped his hands. Anúri showed a very dissatisfied look and asked:

“Is it possible that you, whom I regarded as my friends, can rejoice at my having had my occiput boxed and at the descent of full-weighted blows upon my back?”

“Not at all,” answered Iván the elder: “we rejoice and are merry not because you, our friend and go-between, have received a fine drubbing, but because it has been administered to the worshipful scribe of the hundred-court by the bold hand of furious Zanóza. We hope that this wrongdoing will be his surer undoing than massacred coneys, maimed geese, ducks, sheep and, finally, the destroyed apiary! It is no trifling matter to dare box the occiput and warm up ten times with a birch rod Pan Anúri, a man grown grey and bald among papers, ink, and pens!”

“He ’s warmed me up just twelve times,” said Pan Anúri proudly, “and though he missed me the thirteenth time, it ought to be counted a blow all the same. Besides, he has disgraced the judge and the hundred-court with the foulest curses, and in the presence of an immense throng of noblemen and ladies; he dragged me through the whole room, which is the same as if he dragged me through the whole house;—then by my collar which reaches up to my occiput, hence it is the same as if he had pulled me along by my hair. O Pans Iván! If you rejoice because Kharitón Zanóza will be repaid for this godless deed with interest, I am glad! Oh, if he had twice the property he possesses, it would not be enough to pay me for the disgrace and battery. No! he will have to become acquainted with the city prison and find out the taste of stale bread and water. I give you my hand that this will happen, and before long!”

Vasíli Andréevich Zhukóvski. (1783-1852.)

Zhukóvski was the son of a landed proprietor of Túla, by the name of Búnin, and of a captive Turkish woman, but received his own name from his godfather, who happened to be living at Búnin’s house. After the death of his father he was adopted by Mrs. Búnin, who cared for him as for her own son. He was first educated in the public school of Túla, but was requested to be removed on account of dulness. He was then privately brought up in the house of his godmother, where, at the age of twelve, he composed and acted two dramas—one of them from Roman history. In 1796 he was taken to Moscow to be placed in the boarding-school that was connected with the Moscow University. He there came in contact with a number of talented young men who later made their mark in literature, and under the inspiring influence of the school began, at the early age of fourteen, to contribute poems to the periodical press. His earliest verses contained frequent references to death and the cemetery, and when, a few years later, he lost a friend, he remembered him by translating Gray’s Elegy. That was the beginning of his literary fame. He then translated a large number of poetical productions from the German, French, and English, invariably choosing melancholy subjects, as more adapted to his sentimental, reflective nature.

It was chiefly Zhukóvski who transplanted the German Romanticism to Russia, but his deserts are not only in having abandoned the pseudo-classic style of poetry: he was the first to recognise the important educational value of poetry, and its moral power, which made it the equal of religion, or, as Zhukóvski put it, “Poetry is the terrestrial sister of heavenly religion,” and “Poetry is virtue.” He achieved his fame by his ballad Svyetlána. The Minstrel of the Russian Camp was written by him at the campfires during the War of 1812: it produced a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm among the whole army. He soon became a great favourite at the Court, and in 1817 was chosen as teacher of Russian to the German bride of Crown Prince Nicholas. In 1841 he left Russia never to return, and died in Baden-Baden in 1852. His body was taken to Russia, where he was buried by the side of Karamzín.

Sir John Bowring gives in Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I.: The Mariner, Æolus’s Harp Song (Say, ye gentle breezes, say), Romance; in Part II.: The Minstrel in the Russian Camp, Svyetlána (under the name of Catherine), Theon and Æschines, The Bard; a prose version of Svyetlána, under the name of Christmas Omens, by W. D. Lewis, was given in The Atlantic Souvenir, Philadelphia, 1828; another translation, under the title of The Eve of St. Silvester, from the Russian of Tzobovsk (?), by J. C. M., was given in Dublin University Magazine, vol. xxxi., 1848; C. T. Wilson, in Russian Lyrics, gives The Flower, extract from The Minstrel in the Russian Camp, Svyetlána; in the Library of the World’s Best Literature are given N. H. Dole’s translations of Happiness in Slumber and The Coming of Spring Night.

SVYETLÁNA[3]

St. Silvester’s evening hour

Calls the maidens round:

Shoes to throw behind the door,

Delve the snowy ground.

Peep behind the window there,

Burning wax to pour;

And the corn for chanticleer

Reckon three times o’er.

In the water-fountain fling

Solemnly the golden ring,

Earrings, too, of gold;

Kerchief white must cover them

While we ’re chanting over them

Magic songs of old.

Feebly through the vapours shine

Moonbeams on the hill;

Silently sat Catherine,

Sorrowful and still.

“Maiden, why so pensive? We

Fain thy voice would hear—

Come and join our revelry!

Take the ring, thou dear!

Sing, ‘Make haste and melt, and bring,

Goldsmith! Come with golden ring,

Golden wreath for Kate!

Ring to deck her hand of snow,

Wreath to bloom upon her brow

At the altar-gate.’”

“I can sing no choral song

While my love ’s away,

For my days are sad and long,—

Gloomier every day.

Left alone,—a year is past,—

Not a line to send,—

Oh, my life is but a waste,

Severed from my friend!

Hast thou then forgotten me?

Tell me, wanderer! can it be?

Where ’s thy dwelling, where?

See, I pine ’neath secret smart:

Guardian angel! Watch my heart,—

Listen to my prayer!”

Covered with a napkin white,

Stood a table there,

Where a mirror, clear and bright,

Shone amidst the glare.

Vacant seats for two were placed,—

“Look within, O look!

’T is the hour of spirits,—haste!

Read Fate’s opening book:

To the mirror turn thy eye,

And the door shall silently

Open,—list, ’t is he!

Gently shall thy lover glide,

Seat him by his maiden’s side,

And shall sup with thee.”

Cath’rine sat before the glass,—

All alone was she,

Watching all the shades that pass,

Shuddering inwardly.

But the glass is dark and drear,

Still as death the room;

Scarce a fading taper there

Flitted midst the gloom.

Oh, how fear her bosom shook!

Backwards then she dared not look!

Dread had dimmed her sight:

And the dying taper’s noise,

And the cricket’s chirping voice,

Cried,—“’T is middle-night!”

Breathless terror chilled her o’er,

And she shades her brow:—

List! a knock is at the door,

And it opens now:

To the mirror then she turned,

Stupefied with fear;

There two brilliant eyeballs burned,

Ever bent on her.

Horror heaved her breast, when lo!

Gentle accents, sweet and slow,

Glided on her ear:

“All thy wishes are fulfilled,—

All thy spirit’s sighs be stilled,—

’T is thy lover, dear!”

Cath’rine looked—her lover’s arm

Was around her thrown:

“Maiden! Banish all alarm,

We are ever one!

Come! the priest is waiting now,

Life with life to blend;

Torches in the chapel glow,

Bridal songs ascend.”

Cath’rine smiled,—her lover led,—

O’er the snow-clad court they sped,

And the portals gain;

There a ready sledge they found,—

Two fleet coursers stamp the ground,

Struggling with the rein.

Onwards! Like the wind they go,

When the storm awakes,

Scattering round them clouds of snow,

While the pathway shakes.

All was dark and wild as night,

Terrible and new;

Mist-wreaths dimmed the pale moon’s light,

Plains were drenched in dew.

Fear again possessed the maid,

And in gentlest tones she said,

“Speak, my lover true!”

He was silent then, but soon

Turned him to the wintry moon,—

Pale and paler grew.

Through the snow, a mountain’s height,

Next the wild steeds passed;

And a church appeared in sight,

Midst a gloomy waste;

Then a whirlwind burst the door—

Men are there who mourn;

Clouds of incense rolling o’er,

Wax and taper burn.

Lo! a black sepulchral shroud—

“Dust to dust!” the priest aloud

Chants,—the horses flew

Tow’rds the door,—her agony

Rose,—he spoke no word,—but he

Pale and paler grew.

Clouds of snow ascend again—

Lo! the coursers fly;

And a raven on the plain

Croaks and passes by;

’T was an awful, ominous sound!

And the moonlight wanes;

Darkness wraps the desert round

O’er the steaming manes.

See! a glimmering light is there,

And upon the heather bare

Stands a humble shed.

Swifter, swifter flew the car,

Whirled the snow around it far,

But no farther sped.

At the door they stopped anon,

There, a moment stood:—

Steeds, sledge, bridegroom,—all are gone:

All is solitude.

Cath’rine on the waste was left,

Midst dense clouds of snow,

Of her lover now bereft,

To commune with woe:

But she hears a footstep now,

Turns, and sees a taper glow,

Crosses her, and stalks

Trembling to the door, and knocks:—

Of itself the door unlocks,—

In the maiden walks.

There, upon a winding-sheet,

Lay a mortal bier;

Christ’s bright image at its feet

Shone resplendent there.

Whither, whither art thou come,

Maiden, all unblest?

Thou hast sought a wretched home,

Art a hapless guest!

Cath’rine to the image flies,

Wipes the snow-dust from her eyes,

Bends her down and weeps;

Presses to her breast the cross,—

Thoughts of heaven her soul engross,

And she silence keeps.

All is still!—The storm is hushed,

Faint the tapers beam,

Light across the chamber rushed,—

Momentary gleam:—

All is wrapped in silence deep

As when visions come.

List! what gentle rustlings sweep

Through the hallowed room:

Lo! a dart of silvery white,

Soft and still, with eyes of light,

Tow’rds the mourners springs:

For a moment hovers there,

Then upon her bosom fair

Flaps its beauteous wings.

Silence reigned again.—Can all,

All illusion be?

Lo! the corpse beneath the pall

Shudders fearfully:

Burst the mantling bier of death,

Throws his shroudings by:

On his brow he wore a wreath,

Frozen was his eye:

From his lips a murmur breaks,

With his hand a sign he makes,

Pointing to the maid:

Trembling she,—she dared not move,—

But the bright and silver dove

On her bosom played;

Fanned her with its gentle wing:—

To the dead man’s breast

Then she saw her sweet dove spring,—

There it seemed to rest.

Heaved the icy corpse a sigh,

As in dark despair,

Gnashed his teeth in agony,

Turned his eyes on her.

Paler waxed those lips so pale;

And the fixed eye told the tale

That life’s film was broke.

Cath’rine! Lift thy drooping head!

All is o’er,—thy lover’s dead!—

God!—and she awoke.

Where?—within the selfsame room

Where the mirror stood:—

Morn was chasing twilight’s gloom

With its golden flood;

Chanticleer had clapped his wing,

Sung his early song:

All is bright,—the matin rings,—

Oh, thy dream was long!

Long indeed, and dreadful too;

And my spirit long shall rue

The dread prophecy!

Tell me, Future’s misty night,

Shall my fate be dark or bright,

Bliss or misery?

Cath’rine in the window sat,

Sorrowful and still:

Tell me, tell me what is that?—

Mist-cloud on the hill?

In the sunbeams shines the snow;

Leaps the frozen dew:

List! I hear the bells below,

And the horses too.

Lo! they come, the sledge is near,—

Now the driver’s voice I hear,—

They have passed the grove:—

Fling the gates wide open, fling—

Who ’s the guest the coursers bring?

Who?—’T is thou, my love!

Cath’rine, tell me now! The dream—

Is the dream forgot?

Youths may faithful be who seem

Faithless,—may they not?

When the light of love hath lent

Brightness to his eye;

When his lips are eloquent;—

Timid maid! Reply!

Open now the temple-gate,

Spring on wings of joy elate,

Truth, we honour thee!

Pour the glass, and join the hymn,

Ne’er may days of darkness dim

Youth’s fidelity.

Thou dost smile, sweet maid! But deem,

Deem it worth a thought,

For that memorable dream

Stores of wisdom brought.

Thou dost smile again,—but know,

It had lessons holy:

Fame, it told thee, was but—show;

Worldly wisdom—folly.

This my song was meant to say,

Hope and trust should guide our way,

Maid! there ’s no mistaking:

This the genuine moral seems,

Miseries are only dreams.

Joy—is the awaking.

O my Cath’rine! never dwell

On that dream of gloom:

Heaven! build up her citadel,

There may grief ne’er come,

Not a cloud her joy o’ershade,

Not a joy decay;

Holy is that gentle maid

As the light of day.

Ne’er be it obscured by woe,

Let her days of comfort flow

Like a forest river!

And let joy, with smiles serene,

Be as it hath ever been,

Her bright guide for ever!

—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.

[3] Changed by Sir John Bowring in the poem to Catherine.

THE MINSTREL IN THE RUSSIAN CAMP

Now silence wraps the battlefield!

The tents with lights are gleaming;

And lo! the bright moon’s silver shield

In the calm heaven is beaming.

Fill, fill the glass of rapture yet

In unity full-hearted;

In wine the bloody strife forget,

The grief for the departed!

The glasses’ ruby stream to drain

Is glory’s pride and pleasure—

Wine! conqueror thou of care and pain,

Thou art the hero’s treasure.

Now to the warriors of old time,

The strong in fight and glory!

These warriors and their deeds sublime

Are lost in distant story!

The grave hath gathered up their dust,

Their homes,—the storm hath razed them;

Their helmets are devoured by rust,

And silent those who praised them:

But in their children live their fires,

We tread the land that bore them,

And see the shadows of our sires

With all their triumphs o’er them.

Oh, come! in all your brightness, come,

And smile complacent, near us;

Look from your high and misty home,

Encourage us and hear us.

O Svyatosláv! time’s injured son,

Thy path an eagle’s flying:

“There is no shame in dying—On!

There is no shame in dying!”

And Donskóy, thou! courageous man,

Midst heathen foes we find thee;

Destruction leading in thy van,

And naught but death behind thee.

Thou, Peter! thou, the hero’s crown,

“Poltáva!” is repeated:

Thy foes have thrown their sabres down,

Thee, all the world has greeted.

What? Robbers, would you build your throne

Upon our cities’ ruin?

Thy horse and rider fell—begone!

For vengeance is pursuing.

Go hide thee in thy native woods,

There by ambition smother;

Fate drives thee to their solitudes,

Yes! thou, the rebel’s brother.

Who is that white-haired hero, who

That northern more than Roman?

His penetrating glance looks through

The phalanx of the foeman;

From yonder clouds what shadowy rows

Are tow’rds his footsteps turning?

The spirits of the Alpine snows

Are wailing loud and mourning.

Franks and Sarmatians, at his view,

Death’s icy paleness borrow;

Well they may fear him, well may rue,—

It is the great Suvórov!

Hail, sons of ages long gone by!

Your glories are recorded;

We follow you to victory,

Like you to be rewarded.

We see your ranks,—they lead us on,—

The foe retreats before us;

We scatter death, as ye have done,

While ye are smiling o’er us.

Drawn sword, and flowing glass, elate

We look to our Creator!

“And death for death, and hate for hate,

And curses on the traitor.”

This glass then to our country’s joys,

Ne’er may our hearts feel colder;

The scenes of mirth while we were boys,

Of love, when we grew older!

Our country’s plains, our country’s sky,

The streams that flow beneath it;

The memories of infancy,

And all the thoughts that wreathe it

With joyous hopes and visions blest,—

Dear shrine of our affection,

How glows our heart, how beats our breast,

When beams the recollection!

That is our country, there our home,

There wife and babes attend us;

And oft their prayers towards us roam,

And oft to Heaven commend us!

There dwell our plighted, chosen ones;

How bright their memory flashes!

Our monarchs’ dust, our monarchs’ thrones,

And there our fathers’ ashes.

For them we fight, for them we rove,

For them have all forsaken;

And may our land’s undying love

In our sons’ breasts awaken!

Now to the Tsar that rules the Russ,

And be his sceptre glorious;

His throne an altar is to us,—

We swear to be victorious.

The oath is heard,—’t is stamped in blood,—

’T is sworn,—there ’s no returning;

Our swords shall make our promise good,

Our hearts with love are burning.

Each Russ a son of victory,

To duty’s ranks we throng us;

Let every craven coward fly,

For fear was ne’er among us.

One glass to vengeance! In the fray

“Heaven for the right!” our voices,

And “death or victory!” proudly say;

And victory’s self rejoices.

Oh, count not on your numbers, foe!

In vain ye boast your numbers;

Our march is like the torrent’s flow,

Which never, never slumbers.

We have no treasures, but we bring

Our arrows and our lances,

And round us desolation fling,

And death is in our glances.

The Robber! he had spread his power

Around our Moskvá’s borders;

And from our Kremlin’s sacred tower

He issued forth his orders.

“I trample on the base-born clay,

Which folly’s pride assembles,

And prince and subject both obey.”

Insulting one!—he trembles.

For Vengeance wakes her from her rest,

And arms her with her torches,

Heaves ruin on the tyrant’s breast,

And drives him from our porches.

Now bring thy slavish princes, now,

To our ice-girded nation;

And lead them o’er our paths of snow

To horror and starvation.

Come, Winter! rouse thee from thy bed,

And close our country’s portals.

Oh, see! he strews the land with dead,

With piles of frozen mortals.

Now, Robber! look what thou hast done;

Come, for the strife prepare thee!

The land we fight on is our own,—

God’s vengeance, wretch, is near thee!

—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.

Iván Ivánovich Kozlóv. (1779-1840.)

After having served for some time in the army, Kozlóv in 1798 entered the Civil Service, living in Moscow and later in St. Petersburg. In 1818 he was struck by paralysis, which deprived him of the use of his legs, and three years later he became totally blind. Though he had long been on friendly terms with Zhukóvski, he never thought of devoting himself to literature. But the calamity that had overtaken him compelled him to concentrate himself, and the result was the evolution of his poetical genius. He had learned French and Italian before, and, though blind, acquired the German and English languages so perfectly that he could recite by heart whole pages from the great writers, whom he also translated into Russian. His first poetical efforts were some verses in praise of Zhukóvski and Byron, but he gained his great reputation by his The Black Monk, written in 1824, which enjoyed the same popularity among the sentimental souls of the twenties that Poor Líza (see p. 27) had had in the beginning of the century. This was soon followed by Princess Natálya Borísovna Dolgorúki (see vol. i., p. 233) and a large number of minor poems that are distinguished for their elegiac and deep religious tone.

In W. D. Lewis’s The Bakchesarian Fountain, Philadelphia, 1841, is given his Solitude; T. B. Shaw translated his Kíev in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844; in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics are given The Village Orphan, The Wreck, The Dream of the Betrothed, and Chernetz (The Black Monk); in the Library of the World’s Best Literature is N. H. Dole’s translation of The Vesper Bells.

SOLITUDE

Upon a hill, which rears itself midst plains extending wide,

Fair flourishes a lofty oak in beauty’s blooming pride;

This lofty oak in solitude its branches wide expands,

All lonesome on the cheerless height like sentinel it stands.

Whom can it lend its friendly shade, should Sol with fervour glow?

And who can shelter it from harm, should tempests rudely blow?

No bushes green, entwining close, here deck the neighbouring ground,

No tufted pines beside it grow, no osiers thrive around.

Sad e’en to trees their cheerless fate in solitude if grown,

And bitter, bitter is the lot for youth to live alone!

Though gold and silver much is his, how vain the selfish pride!

Though crowned with glory’s laurelled wreath, with whom that crown divide?

When I with an acquaintance meet he scarce a bow affords,

And beauties, half saluting me, but grant some transient words.

On some I look myself with dread, whilst others from me fly,

But sadder still the uncherished soul when Fate’s dark hour draws nigh;

Oh! where my aching heart relieve when griefs assail me sore?

My friend, who sleeps in the cold earth, comes to my aid no more!

No relatives, alas! of mine in this strange clime appear,

No wife imparts love’s fond caress, sweet smile, or pitying tear;

No father feels joy’s thrilling throb, as he our transport sees;

No gay and sportive little ones come clambering on my knees;—

Take back all honours, wealth and fame, the heart they cannot move,

And give instead the smiles of friends, the tender look of love!

—From W. D. Lewis’s The Bakchesarian Fountain.

KÍEV

O Kíev! where religion ever seemeth

To light existence in our native land;

Where o’er Pechérski’s dome the bright cross gleameth,

Like some fair star, that still in heaven doth stand;

Where, like a golden sheet, around thee streameth

Thy plain, and meads that far away expand;

And by thy hoary well, with ceaseless motion,

Old Dnieper’s foaming swell sweeps on to ocean.

How oft to thee in spirit have I panted,

O holy city, country of my heart!

How oft, in vision, have I gazed enchanted

On thy fair towers,—a sainted thing thou art!—

By Lávra’s[4] walls or Dnieper’s wave, nor wanted

A spell to draw me from this life apart;

In thee my country I behold, victorious,

Holy and beautiful, and great and glorious.

The moon her soft ray on Pechérski poureth,

Its domes are shining in the river’s wave;

The soul the spirit of the past adoreth,

Where sleeps beneath thee many a holy grave:

Vladímir’s shade above thee calmly soareth,

Thy towers speak of the sainted and the brave;

Afar I gaze, and all in dreamy splendour

Breathes of the past,—a spell sublime and tender.

There fought the warriors in the field of glory,

Strong in the faith, against their country’s foe;

And many a royal flower yon palace hoary,

In virgin loveliness, hath seen to blow.

And Boyán sang to them the noble story,

And secret rapture in their breast did glow;

Hark! midnight sounds,—that brazen voice is dying,—

A day to meet the vanished day is flying.

Where are the valiant?—the resistless lances,—

The brands that were as lightning when they waved?

Where are the beautiful, whose sunny glances

Our fathers, with such potency, enslaved?

Where is the bard, whose song no more entrances?

Ah! that deep bell hath answered what I craved:

And thou alone, by these grey walls, O river!

Murmurest, Dnieper, still, and flow’st for ever.

—Transl. by T. B. Shaw, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844 (vol. lv).

[4] Name of certain monasteries.

FROM “THE BLACK MONK”

I.—THE MONASTERY

Beyond Kíev, where the broad Dnieper boils and booms between steep banks, near a grove, upon a high hill, stands the hermits’ abode. Around it is a crenelated wall, with four towers in the corners, and in the midst,—the temple of the Lord with gilded cupolas. A row of cells, a dark corridor, a chapel at the holy gates, with a miracle-working image, and nearby a spring of cool water, whose medicinal stream bubbles under the shade of a century linden tree.

The evening darkness is in the misty field; the twilight is dimming in the heavens; the song is not heard in the meadows; the flocks are not seen in the vales. The horn will not be blown in the forest,—no one will come; only at times the bell tinkles in the distance upon the highway; no fires are to be seen upon the fishermen’s boats on the Dnieper. The midnight moon has risen, and the bright stars are shining; the clearings, the woods, the waters are asleep. The fateful hour has struck upon the tower,—the hermitage is merged in sleep,—and all around is peace and quiet.

II.—THE CONFESSION OF THE BLACK MONK

“I left my deserted country. Alone, in despair, in tears, I wandered around with my orphaned soul in distant defiles and woods. Gloomy clefts and mountains heard my groan, my wail, my plaints with terror, for seven years. Sullen, melancholy, wild, I pined away, dreaming an old dream, and sobbed for what is not. The shades of night, the mountain torrent, the whistling of the storm and the howl of the wind secretly united with my murky thought, with my unquenchable yearning. And sorrow was a delight, a sacred relic of former days; it seemed to me that through my suffering I did not altogether part from it.

“Where the heart loves, where it suffers,—there is also our merciful God; He gives the cross, and He also sends us hope with the cross. In these seven hard, stormy years there has flashed for me a consoling light. Once, at evening tide, I sat gloomy near the river; the star-flaming vault of heaven, the quiet glimmer of the moon, the rustling of the leaves, the plashing of the waves silvered by the moon, involuntarily held my soul captive. Everything attracted me by its mysterious beauty to a world of bliss.

“My crushed spirit awoke: ‘Creator of all! My babe with my unforgettable mate dwell in Thy holy abode, and, perchance, I shall be with them, and they there for ever mine!’ Love understands miracles: my heart trembled hopefully in some mysterious expectation. I lifted my eyes to the skies, dared to implore them with tears,—and it seemed to me that for an answer was given me that calm ocean with its imperishable stars. Since then, my father, have I found consolation in my misery itself, and I have hoped by my heavy cross to earn my union with her. Though still, at times, I shed tears, yet hope assuages them, and quiet grief has taken place of bitter sorrow. Flaming with faith, I have forgotten my misfortune and the villain: she with her babe in heaven appeared to my heart in dreams of paradise. My soul rose to her, and my mind was full of this: I wished to be as pure as she, and I gladly bid life farewell. But I wanted to die in my native home. I began to pine away in mountains of other lands. I wanted to cast my last glance upon our woods and our dales, to see the country which was full of her, and our village house, and the garden, and the blue waves of the Dnieper, and the church upon the mound where in the shade of the birches sleeps their dust, and the glowing evening sky over their quiet grave.

“Ah, what happened to my soul when suddenly, in all its sacred beauty, before me lay the landscape of my native Kíev fields! As before they were green, the waves of the Dnieper boomed as formerly, the same forest lay dim in the distance, the same songs were sung in the fields, and everything was the same in my native land, but she alone was not there. Everywhere familiar valleys, brooks, mounds, and plains, in an enchanting quiet, appeared to me on all sides, and brought back my brighter years; but with a poisoned soul, a stranger in my own land, I greeted them with tears and disconsolate melancholy.

“I walked. The day was inclining to the evening, and suddenly a rustic temple of the Lord stood before my frightened eyes. Beside myself, I approached the grave where my son, my wife,—my whole life lay buried. I barely touched the ground with my feet, as if fearing to disturb their eternal slumber. I repressed a deep groan within my breast, that their rest be not broken. My saddened spirit dared not give vent to my impassioned agitation. It seemed to me that upon their grave I breathed a sacred air. A wondrous feeling came over me, and with an unearthly hope I softly bent my knees, and prayed, and wept, and loved.”

Konstantín Nikoláevich Bátyushkov. (1787-1855.)

Bátyushkov received his education in the boarding-schools of St. Petersburg, from which he took away a good knowledge of French, German, and Italian, and little else, especially since all his schooling ended with his sixteenth year. He was then ushered into the circle of literary men by a relative of his, M. N. Muravév (see vol. i. p. 395), who also interested him in the ancient classics, among whom Bátyushkov admired most and imitated Horace and Tibullus. In 1806 he was seized by the prevailing patriotic enthusiasm, after the disaster of Austerlitz, and joined the army. He was seriously wounded, but in 1813 he again took part in the campaign against Napoleon. During his stay in Germany he became intimately acquainted with the German literature, which he began to prefer to the French and Latin. He returned to Russia over England and Sweden. In 1818 he received a diplomatic post at Naples, which gave him an opportunity of making himself familiar with the country of his beloved author, Tasso. He soon returned home, where he was up to his death, for a period of thirty-three years, lost to Russian letters, having, like his mother before him, become hopelessly insane. No other poet had given such promise as Bátyushkov, and even Púshkin regarded him as his teacher. His fame rests mainly on his Dying Tasso and The Friend’s Shadow, the Anacreontic character of the other poems and the absence of a Russian motive having otherwise almost obliterated his fame.

In Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I., there is a translation of his To My Penates, and in Part II., To F. F. Kokoshkin, The Farewell, The Friend’s Shadow, Love in a Boat, The Prisoner, To the Rhine. What purports to be a translation of his Dying Tasso is given in The Foreign Quarterly Review, 1832.

THE FRIEND’S SHADOW

From Albion’s misty isle across the waves I sped me:

It looked as if interred beneath a leaden sea,

And gathering round our bark the halcyon’s music led me,

While all the crew rejoiced in their sweet melody.

The dancing surge, the evening breezes falling,

And through the sails and shrouds those breezes whistling thrill,

And to the watch the active helmsman calling,

The watch, who, midst the roar, sleeps tranquilly and still.

All seemed to rock itself to gentle thought;

Like an enchanted one, I, from the mast, looked forth,

And through the night and through the mist I sought,

I sought the star beloved of my domestic north.

Then into memory melted every feeling,—

My soul had sanctified my home of joy and peace,

And the sea raging, and the zephyrs gently stealing,

Covered my eyelids o’er with self-forgetfulness.

Then dreams with other dreams were blended,

And lo!—there stood, was it a dream?—the form

Of that dear friend who his career had ended

Nobly, amidst the thundering battle storm.

He stood upon the mist, and smiled,—his face,

Fresh as the morn and bloodless, shining

Like the young spring in gaiety and grace,

Even as an angel from high heaven declining:—

“Comrade of better time! and is it thou?

And is it thou?” I cried, “thou hero bright!

Did I not in the fury of the fight

Attend thee, and when thou hadst fallen below

Make thy new grave,—and on a neighbouring tree

Write with my sword thy feats of bravery,

And followed thy cold ashes to their bed,

And hallowed it with prayers, and with tears waterèd?

Speak, unforgotten one, speak! Was it a deceit?

Is all that ’s past a dream, a cheating dream?

A dream that corpse, a dream that grave, that sheet

Wrapt round thee,—were they not? did they but seem?

Oh, but one word! Let that tongue’s melody

Yet sweetly fall on my transported ear:

O unforgotten one! Stretch out to me

Thy old right hand of friendship, stretch it here!”

I sprung towards him,—Oh! the mists had dimmed my eye,—

He vanished like a shade, a lock of airy smoke,—

Dispersed in the wide azure of the sky,

And I, arousing from my dream, awoke.

Beneath the wing of stillness all was sleeping;

The very winds, the very waves at rest;

And scarce a breath upon the sea was creeping;

The pale moon swam along upon the white cloud’s breast.

But I was troubled, peace had left my soul,—

I stretched my hands tow’rds him, whom I no more could see,—

I called on him, whom I could not control,—

On thee, beloved one! best of friends, on thee!

—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.

THE DYING TASSO

What solemnity does ancient Rome prepare? Whither rush the nation’s noisy waves? For whom these fragrant fumes of incense and of myrrh, and everywhere the vases full of odorous herbs? Wherefore above the streets of the universal city, from the Tiber’s banks up to the Capitol, midst flowers and laurels, are fluttering costly carpets and the purple?

Wherefore this noise? Wherefore the timbrel’s sound and thunder? Is it of gladness or of victory the herald? Why with the standard gains the house of prayer the mitred apostolic vicar? For whom this glittering crown he holds,—a priceless gift of grateful Rome? For whom this triumph? For thee, immortal singer, for thee this gift, O singer of “Jerusalem.”

The din of joy has reached the cell where in death agony Torquato lies, where o’er the sufferer’s immortal head is borne the spirit of wingèd death. Neither tears of friendship, nor the prayers of the monks, nor honours’ tardy due,—these will not curb indomitable fate that spares not even the great. Half-shattered, he sees the threatening hour, hails it with joy, and,—alluring swan!—bids life good-bye and utters these last words:

“My friends, let me behold Rome the magnificent, where an untimely grave awaits the poet, that my eyes may see your hills and smoke, O ancient hearths of the Quirites! O sacred ground of miracles and heroes! O glorious ruins and O glorious dust! Azure and purple of cloudless skies, you poplars, ancient olives, and thou, eternal Tiber, wellspring of all the nations, grave of the bones of the world’s citizens,—you, you I greet within these sombre walls, where I lie doomed to an untimely end!

“’T is done! I stand o’er the abyss of destiny, shall not applauded reach the Capitol, and laurels of fame upon my feeble head will not assuage the singer’s bitter fate. From earliest youth a shuttlecock of men, I was an exile from my very childhood; a poor wanderer under the voluptuous heaven of my Italy, I have experienced all vicissitudes of fate. Where was my bark not borne by the waves? Where found it rest? Where wet I not my daily bread with tears of grief? Sorrento! cradle of my luckless days, where in the night, like terrified Ascanius, I was bereft by destiny of my mother, of her soft embraces and caresses,—rememberest thou how many tears I shed while still a child? Alas! since then, a prey of evil fate, all sorrows I have learned, all misery of existence. The depths by Fortune furrowed were cleft below me, and the thunder never silenced. Driven from vill to vill, from land to land, I sought in vain a refuge upon earth: its unrelenting finger saw I everywhere, and everywhere its lightnings struck the bard! Neither in the humble ploughman’s hut, nor under cover of Alfonso’s palace, nor in the quiet of the lowliest shelter, nor forest tangle, nor mountains, was my head secure, the exile’s head, by shame and fame oppressed, and from the cradle a victim of the goddess of the doom.

“Friends, what wrings so terribly my breast? What gnaws my heart, and keeps it in a flutter? Whence have I come? What awful journey have I made? What glimmers there behind me in the dark? Ferrara⸺furies⸺and the snake of envy! Whither, whither, murderers of genius? I ’m in the haven; ’t is Rome. Here are my family, my brothers! Here are their tears and sweet caresses,—and Virgil’s crown here in the Capitol!

“Yes, I have done Apollo’s bidding: his zealous priest from earliest youth, I sang, midst lightnings, under raging skies, the fame and majesty of bygone days. My soul, though fettered, never changed; the rapture of the sweet-voiced Muses never died in me, and through my sufferings my genius grew strong. It dwelt in the land of miracles, O Sion, by thy walls, on Jordan’s flowery banks; and it communed with thee, rebellious Cedron, and thee, peaceful retreats of Lebanon! ’T is there the heroes of the ancient days rose from the dead, in the majesty and glow of their grim glory. It beheld thee, Godfrey, ruler, lord of kings, majestic, calm, while arrows whizzed; and thee, youthful Rinaldo, fervid like Achilles and a happy victor in love and war. It saw thee flying o’er the corpses of the foeman’s host, like fire, like death, like the destroying angel,—and Tartarus vanquished by the gleaming cross!

“O models of unheard-of valour! O holy triumph and victory of the pure faith of our ancestors now long asleep! Torquato extricated you from the abyss of time: he sang,—and you will never be forgotten; he sang: to him a wreath of immortality has been decreed, wound by the hands of Muses and of Glory. Too late: I stand o’er the abyss of destiny, shall not applauded reach the Capitol, and laurels of fame upon my feeble head will not assuage the singer’s bitter fate!”

He stopped. A sombre light glowed in his eyes, the final ray of genius before its death; it seemed, the dying wished to snatch one day of triumph from the Parcæ; his eyes sought eagerly the Capitolian walls; he tried his best to raise himself but lay, exhausted from the dreadful torment of his agony, immovable upon his bed. Day’s luminary was gliding to the west, and merged in blood-red glow; the hour of death was near⸺the sufferer’s gloomy brow was now agleam with its last light. Refreshed by the evening coolness, he raised his right hand to the hearkening heavens, like a righteous man, with hope and joy:

“See,” he addressed his sobbing friends, “the royal luminary flaming in the west! ’T is he, ’t is he who calls me to the cloudless lands where glows the eternal light⸺. The angel stands before me to guide me on; he shades me with his azure pinions⸺. Give me Love’s token, this mysterious cross⸺. Pray in hope and tears⸺all earthly things are vanishing⸺and glory and the crown⸺the sublime creations of the Arts and Muses: all is there eternal as the Lord, the Giver of the crown of immortal glory! There is all the great my spirit fed upon, and I did from my cradle breathe. O brothers, friends! weep not o’er me: your friend has reached at last the longed-for goal. He’ll pass away in peace and, strong in faith, will not perceive his cruel end: there, there⸺. O bliss! ’midst virtuous women and ’midst angels Eleanor will meet him!”

And with the name of love the godly passed away; his friends sobbed speechless o’er him. Daylight softly died away⸺the bell’s voice spread the melancholy news down to the streets: “Dead is our Torquato!” Rome cried in tears: “Dead is the bard who has deserved a better fate!”⸺ The dawn perceived a sombre smoke of torches, and in mourning shrouded was the Capitol.

Fédor Nikoláevich Glínka. (1788-1880.)

Glínka was born in the Government of Smolénsk and was educated in the First Cadet Corps, which he left in 1803 as lieutenant. He took part in the campaign of the Russian army against Napoleon in the Austrian possessions, serving as adjutant under Milorádovich. He described his experience in his Letters of a Russian Officer, which is a remarkable production for a young man of nineteen. After his return he devoted himself to literature, both prose and poetry. His poems attracted much attention on account of their sincerity and the harmoniousness of their verses. In 1869 he published a collection of Spiritual Songs.

In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics are given The Appearance of the Unknown, The Search for God, and Moscow. N. H. Dole has translated his Moscow (publication unascertainable).

MOSCOW

Wondrous city, ancient city,

Thou enfoldest in thy walls

Villages and smiling suburbs,

Churches, palaces and halls.

Thou art girt by grassy meadows,

Gay with gardens, rich in flowers;

Seven the hills are which thou crownest

With thy temples, with thy towers.

Thou unfoldest like a parchment

Written by a giant hand,

And beside thy little river

Thou art glorious now and grand.

Many are thine ancient churches

Towering like the northern pine;

Where can eye see streets so noble,

Mother Moscow, as are thine?

Capture Moscow’s mighty Kreml?

Who on earth would boast the power?

Who could rob the golden bonnet

From the slender Iván tower?

Who could ever swing the Tsar-bell,

Or the Tsar-gun overthrow?

Reverence at the sacred gateway

Who could ever fail to show?

In thine awful hour of peril,

When thy haughty neck was bent,

All thy children, men of Russia,

Felt with thee the punishment.

White-walled city, thou wast chastened

Like a martyr in the fire;

And thy river, boiling, hastened

Onward to escape the pyre.

Once a captive and dishonoured,

In thine embers thou didst lie!

Now arisen from thine ashes

Changeless, lift thy head on high!

Flourish through the countless ages,

Moscow! many-towered town.

Thou art central heart of Russia,

Russia’s glory, Russia’s crown!

—Transl. by N. H. Dole (publication not ascertainable).

THE SEARCH FOR GOD

The heavens grow dark before mine eyes,

The earth gives out a groaning sound;

The stormy blasts in fury rise,

And all obstructions quick confound;

They drive apart hills with their foot,

Huge trees they pluck up by the root:

I call on God with loudest tone,—

God is not in the tempest known.

As I behold, the meadows fair

Are breaking into mound and vale;

The earth is shaking everywhere,

The rocks roll down the hills like hail;

Dense clouds of smoke the sight appall,

With trembling voice on God I call,—

But in the earthquake’s fearful round

His holy footsteps are not found.

On novel wonders still I gaze;

The vaults of heaven with lightning blaze,

The flames burst forth on every side,

And onwards rush,—a raging tide,—

Stirring the mind with direst fear,—

But not in fire does God appear.

Fair peace succeeds: the perfect calm

My prescient spirit fills with balm;

Like the young morn with glimmering light,

So burns with haze of silver bright

The presence pure of God:

The soul, responsive to the strain,

Breathes with unearthly life again;

Sweet stillness settles on the scene,

And, though deep distance intervene,

God’s voice is heard abroad.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Prince Petr Andréevich Vyázemski. (1792-1878.)

Prince Vyázemski was one of the very few literary men in Russia whose career began before that of Púshkin and who were still active at a time when Tolstóy and Dostoévski had established their reputations. His father, dying, left him in charge of Karamzín, to whom he was related by marriage. Through him, Prince Vyázemski was early brought in contact with the literary circle, meeting there on a friendly footing Zhukóvski, Bátyushkov, and Púshkin. He took part in the campaign of 1812, and at Borodinó two horses were shot under him. He later occupied various posts, and was made Associate Minister of Public Instruction and a Senator in 1855. His literary works have lately been collected in twelve large volumes, and yet, in spite of his great talent as a satirist, critic, and lyricist, he has fallen into oblivion. The cause of this is that he persevered in the pseudo-classic, sentimental attitude of the school of Karamzín, while the Romantic spirit of Púshkin’s time touched him but lightly, and the realism of the period after the forties entrenched him only more in his old habits and confirmed him in his hostility to everything that departed from the code of Karamzín.

Sir John Bowring gives in Part II. of the Specimens of the Russian Poets translations of his To My Three Absent Friends, To N. N., and Fragment; John Pollen, in the Rhymes from the Russian, has translated his Troika. An epigram of his is given by V. E. Marsden in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 9.

THE SAMOVÁR

’T is pleasant, having strayed abroad, to find a familiar picture of native customs, homelike bread-and-salt, a hospitable roof, a retreat, a sacred retreat of your country’s Lares for the soul that is crusted by the ice in the chill sea of the world, where to a native question there is no native answer; where life is but an empty exchange of ceremonial words; where you are only a stranger and only Monsieur N. ’T is pleasant to warm yourself in a quiet haven and with confidence to look into friends’ faces, eagerly to listen to the discourse in which there is something familiar to the soul and a message from bygone days.

A wanderer’s days are like unto displaced pages: a teasing, malicious spirit disrupts them,—there is no connection: each day you live anew, yet life is only good through traditions of love, oneness of beliefs and feelings, concord of impressions, and a gentle antiqueness of customary relations. Our mind is cosmopolitan, but our heart home-bound: the mind pleases itself in ever treading new paths, and has all its joys in the future; but the heart grows young with old dreams, the heart lives on old habits and blooms more gladly in the shadow of the past. Oh, be blessed, roof of light and refuge, where, like a relative, the guest of the moment has been received, where carelessly he could unfold his heart, and for a time deceive his orphanhood! Where consciously and sympathetically he partook of the dear family’s harmony and happiness, and saw the young joys of the parents’ souls blooming in a cloudless calm⸺.

But we are drawn even by another mysterious power to that familiar retreat where, with usual kindness, the loving family waits for us at the table. I love that hour,—almost the best of the day,—a poetic hour ’midst the prose of rude days, a sincere hour of life, a joyous interval ’twixt the labour of the day and the deep sleep of the night. All accounts are cast,—in the balance we live: there are no cares of life, nay, have not been; to-day has vanished from your shoulders, to-morrow is not yet. Hour of friendly discourse at the tea table! Honour and praise to the young hostess! Right Orthodoxly, not in German fashion, not thin like water or childish drink, but redolent with Russia, juicy and thick, the fragrant tea flows in an amber stream.

Very well! But I find one thing lacking: no, the stamp of Russian life is not complete! Where is the native samovár, our family’s hearth, our family altar, ark of domestic joys? In it boil, from it flow, the traditions of all our days; in it live the recollections of Russian antiquity; it alone has survived from the torso of former years,—the inextinguishable grandfather has passed to the grandchildren. It is the Russian rococo, formless, awkward, but inwardly good, though unsightly from without; it preserves better the heat, and while it croons, the discourse boils like its steaming liquid.

How many secret chapters of daily romances, life-stirring, heartfelt romances that are not in books,—let one write as sweetly as one may,—how many pure dreams of maidens’ souls and gentle quarrels of love, and gentle peace-making, and quiet joys, and softly riotous joys have stealthily taken fire in its flame and have invisibly been carried in its cloud of steam! Wherever there are domestic Penates, from gilded palaces to humble huts, wherever there is the brass samovár, an inheritance of the orphan, the widow’s last wealth, and luxury of poverty,—everywhere in holy and Orthodox Russia it is the chief participator at family reunions. One cannot be born into the world, nor enter into matrimony, nor will friends say “welcome” or “good-bye,” but that, the end and beginning of all everyday affairs, the boiling samovár, the domestic leader of the choir, raises its voice and calls the family together.

The poet has said, and his verse we understand: “Our country’s smoke is sweet and pleasant to us!” Was not our great poet—there can be no doubt about it—then inspired by the samovár? Derzhávin’s shades, following me, turn to you with the earnest request, to his honour and the honour of the Orthodox country, to throw away the teapot and introduce the samovár.

TO MY THREE ABSENT FRIENDS

My brothers! whither scattered now?

What fate, what cruel fate could sever

Hands, souls, fast-bound, divided never?

But ye are fled, and fled for ever,

And I am left alone with woe!

The sigh I heave in silence here,

The careless zephyr bears away;

’T is lost in twilight’s darkening ray,

’T is veiled in night,—it fades in day,—

It ne’er will reach your listening ear.

Perchance e’en now, while round me roll

Dark storms and misty clouds, e’en now,

Pain’s icy sweat upon his brow,

One calls upon his friend, and oh!

Death’s wintry curtain wraps his soul.

Then sleep in peace, thou spirit blest!

My spirit seems to cling to thee;

From sorrow to felicity

Wafted, thy bark has passed the sea

Of storms, in joy’s calm port to rest.

How long shall absence’ misery last?

When, when shall dawn the hour of meeting?

Shall ne’er again the blessed greeting

Of social bliss return?—How fleeting

Its rapture,—’t is for ever past!

Cold, cold,—I feel my heart; delight

Can kindle ne’er its fire again;

My tears flow forth, they flow in vain;

My smiles,—no light those smiles retain;

For what awaked it sinks in night.

Time was, how blessèd to recall

That time, when our hands garlanded

The fairest wreaths of roses red,

And in youth’s spring the chorus led

To heaven, the source, the end of all.

Time was, but like a dream it fled!

The hymn,—’t is now a funeral dirge;

The garland,—’t is affliction’s scourge;

The dance,—its memories now emerge

Like ghosts that wander midst the dead.

And now the plaint ascends! Appear,

Appear, delightful hours, anew!

Spirit of youth, so fond, so true,

Awake! Suns, once so bright, so few,

Shine,—let illusion’s mockery cheer!

But see! the darkness creeps away,—

The clouds disperse, the storm is gone,—

Thy smile returns not, blessèd one!

The mountains see the morning dawn,

To me, alas! there dawns no day.

—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.

DEATH REAPS THE HARVEST OF LIFE

Death reaps the harvest of life, and every day and every hour asks for a new prey of life, and sternly tears us asunder.

How many fair names he has already snatched away from the living, and how many voiceless lyres hang on young cypresses!

How many companions are no more, how many younger ones have passed, whose morning dawned when the sultry midday burnt us!

But we have remained, have survived that fateful carnage; but we are impoverished after the death of our near ones, and no longer strive for life as for a conflict.

Sadly finishing our days, we are waiting for the belated relief,—slowly dying from day to day, until we shall be no more.

Sons of another generation, we are a last year’s flower in the new: the impressions of the living are foreign to us, and they have no sympathy for ours.

They care not for that which we love, and their passions do not agitate us! They were not there where we have been, and not for us is where they shall be!

Our world is an empty fane to them, our past is but a myth, and that which for us are hallowed ashes, to them is but mute dust.

Yes! We are like ruins, and we stand on the crossroad of the living, like mortuary monuments amidst the habitations of men!

Kondráti Fédorovich Rylyéev. (1796-1826.)

Rylyéev was at the early age of six inscribed by his mother in the Cadet Corps, in order to remove him from the influence of his brutal father. In 1814 he graduated as lieutenant, and took part in the expedition that entered Paris. Upon his return, he was stationed in the Governments of Minsk and Vorónezh; he later settled in St. Petersburg, where he distinguished himself for his official integrity as member of the Criminal Court and as Manager of the Russo-American Company. He began to write verses as a boy, and his ardent republicanism, coupled with a not less fervent patriotism, led him to an idealisation of ancient Russian heroes. He did this in the prevailing Romantic spirit, being urged on in his endeavours by his mentor and friend, Púshkin. Of his historical ballads the best are Iván Susánin and Voynaróvski; they all created an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm upon their appearance. Of his other poems the most perfect are The Citizen and Civil Valour. Rylyéev took an active part in the plot of the Decembrists, was at once arrested, and later publicly executed. His poems were prohibited in Russia until a comparatively recent time.

An extract from Voynaróvski was translated in the Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. ix., 1832; a large number of his poems, containing the whole of Voynaróvski, are given in The Poems of K. F. Relaieff, translated from the Russian by T. Hart-Davies, London (new and enlarged edition, 1887); C. T. Wilson has translated in Russian Lyrics his Iván Susánin, Svyatopólk, and Prayer Before Death. In Free Russia, vol. xii., No. 2, The Citizen is translated by Elizabeth Gibson.

FROM “VOYNARÓVSKI”

But whose that wandering form that ’s seen

Athwart the morning fog to creep

From out yon hut, and on the steep

Beneath which Lena’s waters sweep

Pace with slow step and ’wildered mien?

His arquebus slung at his back,

His short caftan, and cap of black,

Seem to denote him a Cossack

From Dnieper’s shores. Stern is his face,

And full of grief, for cankering thought

Hath furrowed deep that brow, and wrought

The stamp of age on manhood’s grace.

See! to the west his hands extending,

Wild lustre breaking from his eyes,

Homeward his thoughts and wishes sending,

He thus exclaims with tearless sigh:

“Ye distant fields, that saw my birth,

My death you may not view!

Tombs of my sires! The exile’s bones

Will never rest in you!

In vain the flame of life yet burns,—

It never more may shine;

In vain my soul the dastard spurns,—

The dastard’s lot is mine.”

Who is that exile? None may tell:

Months, years have passed since first he came

To this his far abode of shame,

Here shunned, and shunning all, to dwell.

Ne’er hath a smile been seen to play

Across that face blanched by despair;

And woe, not age, hath tinged with grey

His unkempt beard and matted hair.

Yet, not a felon deed hath sent

That stranger hither; nor hath brent

The glowing iron his scarred face,

And charactered a slave’s disgrace;

Though ne’er did branded felon show

Such withered look, so wild a brow.

Calmness is there, but ’t is the calm

Of Baykal, ere the tempest rise

To lash its waters to the skies,

Spreading around dismay, alarm;

And, as athwart the midnight gloom

Flickers the lamp beside the tomb,

So gleam with ghastly glare his eyes.

Wandering alone o’er crag, through dell,

He roams each day, and none may dare

To ask his name, his grief, his care:

His frown forbids, that frown ’s a spell.

“List, stranger, and with wonder learn

How Fate, unpitying, wayward, stern,

Delights us mortals to oppress.

Beneath this garb uncouth, this dress

So coarse, a slave it scarce befits,

Thus abject here beside thee sits

Mazeppa’s kinsman, friend, and heir.”

—From Foreign Quarterly Review, 1832.

IVÁN SUSÁNIN

“Where lead’st thou our footsteps? Here naught can be seen,”

Thus shouted the foe to the brave Susanin,

“We sink in the snow-heaps, we stick on the road,

We ne’er shall arrive at thy sheltering abode;

’T is on purpose thou stray’st from the path, but in vain,

From tricks like this Michael no safety will gain.

“Though snow-storm may rage, though we wander afar,

Yet death at the Poles’ hands shall come on thy Tsar;

So lead on, or tremble! and shorten our pain,—

All night with the tempest contending amain,

Through snow-storms and cold thou hast made us to go,—

But what dark spot is that in the valley below?”

“’T is the hamlet,” the peasant replied, “see, there stand

The corn-yards, the bridge, and the pales round the land!

With me, on to the door, for the cottage hath been

Long time ready warmed to receive guests within,

So onward, and fear not!” “Well, well I must say

Thou hast led us, my friend, a most cursed long way.

“A night more infernal I never have seen,

With snow stuck together my eyelids have been;

My coat, pah! you wring it, there ’s not a thread dry.”

Thus grumbled the Pole, and went in with the cry

Of, “Wine, wine! we are cold, we are wet through and through,

Or we ’ll take what our broadswords can wring out of you.”

And now on the board the rough napkin was spread

With beer and with wine-jugs, and each had his bread

Before him, and soup made of cabbage was there

And Russian wheat-gruel, a right welcome fare.

Without the cold wind at the casemates was spurning,

Within the dim spluttering torches were burning.

Now midnight had passed, in tranquillity deep

On the benches the Poles lay unheeding asleep,

In the house filled with smoke no one stirring was seen,

Save as sentinel standing the grey Susanin,

In the corner he stood near the ikon, and there

For the young Tsar’s protection he murmured a prayer.

The silence the tramp of a horse’s hoofs stirred.

Then stole Susanin to the doorway, and heard,

“Is it thou, father dear? to find thee I am here.

Where goest thou? Rough is the journey and drear,

’T is past midnight, no lull in the tempest hath come,

Sure thou bringest distress to the hearts of thy home.”

“It was God’s will thy steps to this village to guide,

And now haste to the young Tsar,” the father replied,

“And tell him, tell Michael, to flee and not wait,

For the murderous Poles in their pride and their hate

In secret to murder young Michael intend,

And so doth a fresh woe o’er Moscow impend.

“Tell him that I, loving my faith and my land,

Will rescue the Tsar from the enemy’s hand;

Tell him that his safety lies only in flight,

That e’en now the assassins are with me this night.”

“O my father, what say’st thou?—a moment refrain,”

Said the youth, “if thou die, what to me will remain?

“Who then my young sister, my mother will guard?”

“The holy Creator will take them in ward,”

Said brave Susanin, “and they never will fall,

For assistance and shelter He giveth to all

Who are orphans; so hasten, ’t is time now to go,

’T is for Russia, remember, I lay my life low.”

With a sob the youth mounted, and swiftly did go,

Like a whistling arrow just loosed from the bow.

Through the clouds the moon shone, the wild snow-storm was o’er,

All hushed were the winds and the tempest’s loud roar,

In the east the dim dawn ’gan to glimmer afar,

And the Poles woke from slumber, those foes of the Tsar.

“Susanin,” they cried, “cease thy prayers to thy God,

It is time for the start, we should be on the road!”

So leaving the village in shouting array,

Through the forest they followed a winding pathway.

Susanin led them on; and now up rose the light,

And the sun through the branches began to gleam bright.

Soon his rays were obscured, then again brightly shone,

Then with dim light he glimmered, and vanished anon.

Scarce a rustle was heard from the beech or the oak,

Scarce a sound ’neath the feet from the frost-bound snow broke,

Scarce a crow rose in flight with a flutter and cry,

And the woodpecker pecked at the willow-tree dry.

In silence the Poles marched on singly in file,

Still farther their grey-haired guide led them the while;

Now high in the heavens the mid-day sun stood,

But darker and drearer grew the thick wood,

Till sudden before them the pathway was lost,

And a hedge of fir-branches thick plaited and crossed

With pine-boughs right down to the ground interlaced,

On the road like some rough wall before them was placed;

In vain did the scouts bend a listening ear,

All was desert and dead, not a sound could they hear.

“Whither now hast thou led us?” the wearied Poles cried.

“To the place that was needed,” the peasant replied;

“So slay me, a martyr, for here is my tomb,

But know that I save the young Tsar from his doom;

Ye thought ye had found a base traitor in me,

But no Russ is a traitor, nor ever shall be!

Here each loves his country from youth’s early day,

And his fatherland vilely can never betray.”

“Wretch!” yelled the fierce Poles with a wild fury torn,

“Thou shalt die ’neath our sabres.” “Your anger I scorn,

For the true Russian heart with content and with trust

Ever joyfully dies in the cause which is just,

Fear of death or of doom from my spirit is far,

All untrembling I die for my country and Tsar.”

“Die then!” to the hero the angry foe screamed,

O’er his grey head the broadswords keen-whistling gleamed,

“Perish, traitorous villain, thy life’s end is near!”

Susanin wounded fell without shrinking or fear,

By his purer blood’s red stream the pure snow was laved—

’T was that life-blood which Michael for Russia had saved.

—From T. Hart-Davies’s The Poems of K. F. Relaieff.

Aleksándr Sergyéevich Griboyédov. (1795-1829.)

The famous author of the drama Intelligence Comes to Grief was the son of wealthy and cultivated parents, who gave him a brilliant education. At the age of fifteen he spoke several languages fluently, and entered the university, from which he graduated two years later with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. He immediately joined the army, but did not take part in the foreign campaigns as his regiment was kept back for home duty. During his leisure hours he translated and remodelled several French dramas, without displaying any especial talent for dramatic work. In 1818 he was appointed secretary of the Russian legation in Persia, and in recognition of his important services was highly decorated by both the Russian and the Persian governments. During his wearisome sojourn in Asia he laid the foundation for his drama Intelligence Comes to Grief, and he finished it in Moscow in 1823. He went with it to St. Petersburg to stage it, but the censor would not permit even its publication. In the meanwhile the drama became known throughout Russia in hundreds of manuscript copies, and it created a sensation unlike any previous work of literature. In portraying both the servility and corruption of the older temporising generation, and the carping criticism and would-be liberalism of the younger set, who in their endeavour to imitate the West sinned against the national character, Griboyédov incurred the animosities of all the camps; but by unanimous consent Intelligence Comes to Grief is the greatest national drama of Russia. Since its first appearance on the stage in 1831, and its first publication in 1833, it has had some fifty editions, and is still on the repertoire of Russian theatres. In 1828 Griboyédov was sent again to Persia, this time in the capacity of minister, but he was killed soon after his arrival in Teheran by an infuriated mob.

Intelligence Comes to Grief was translated into English under its Russian title, Gore ot Ouma, from the Russian of Griboiedoff, by N. Benardaky, London, Edinburgh, 1857. In The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 15, is translated his David, by F. P. Marchant.

FROM “INTELLIGENCE COMES TO GRIEF”

ACT II, SCENE 1. FÁMUSOV AND SERVANT

Fámusov. Petrúshka, your caftan is eternally patched up or torn at the elbow! Fetch down the almanac. Look there; don’t read like a sexton, but with feeling, with understanding, with rests. Hold on! Write down on the memorandum, against next week: “I ’m invited to Praskóvya Fédorovna on Tuesday for trout.” How wonderful this world is made! Your brain is in a whirl when you philosophise about it! Now you take care of yourself, and now it is a dinner; you eat three hours, and it will not be digested in three days. Oh, make a note for the same day—no, no! “For Thursday I am called to a funeral.” O human race! It has slipped my mind that we all shall have to get into that box where one can neither stand up nor sit. Here is an example of a praiseworthy life: the defunct was an honourable chamberlain, he held a key, and has managed to obtain a key for his son; he was rich, and married to a rich woman; he married off his children and grandchildren; he has passed away, and all mention him with regret: “Maksím Petróvich, peace to his ashes!” Write down, on Thursday, while you are about it, or may be, on Friday, or Saturday: “I am to be godfather at the doctor’s widow.” The child is not yet born, but, if my calculation is right, will be.

SCENE 2. FÁMUSOV, SERVANT, AND CHÁTSKI

Fámusov. Ah, Aleksándr Andréich, come nearer, take a seat!

Chátski. You are busy?

Fámusov (to the servant). Go! (Servant exit.) Yes, I have been entering various memoranda on business matters, not to forget them by any chance.

Chátski. You look disconcerted. Tell me, why? Is my arrival untimely? Has, perchance, some sorrow come to Sophia Pávlovna? There is disquiet in your face and movements.

Fámusov. What a riddle you have propounded, my friend! Not joyful! You would not expect me, at my age, to dance a jig.

Chátski. Nobody asks you to. I just asked two words about Sophia Pávlovna, fearing that she might be ill.

Fámusov. Pshaw, the Lord spare us! Five thousand times he repeats one and the same thing: now it is, there is no one fairer in the world than Sophia Pávlovna, now, Sophia Pávlovna is ill. Tell me, have you taken a liking to her? You have raced through the whole world,—don’t you want to get married?

Chátski. What is that to you?

Fámusov. It would not be bad to ask of me: I am, so to say, a near relative of hers; at least, they have not in vain been calling me her father.

Chátski. Suppose I should sue for her hand, what would you say?

Fámusov. I should say: First, do not make a fool of yourself, do not, my friend, neglect your estate; but above all, take a government position.

Chátski. I should gladly serve, but I hate to be subservient.

Fámusov. That ’s it! You are all a haughty lot! Ask how your fathers have done! Learn from your elders. Let us take, for example, my deceased uncle, Maksím Petróvich: he used to dine not upon silver, but upon gold; a hundred servants were at his beck; he was all covered with decorations; he travelled all the time in a procession, was all the time at Court, and at what Court! It was not then as now: he served under Empress Catherine! In those days there was some weight in dignity: bow all you please to them, they would not nod their heads. A dignitary was not an ordinary mortal: he drank and ate quite differently. And my uncle,—what is your prince, your count? He had such a serious look, such haughty mien,—but when it was necessary to be subservient, he knew how to limber up his joints. Once he by chance made a misstep during audience at Court: he fell, and almost hurt his occiput. The old man groaned,—his hoarse voice provoked her Majesty’s smile, she deigned to laugh. What did he do? He rose, arranged his clothes, wanted to make a bow, and fell down again, but this time on purpose. The laughter was louder than before,—he repeated his feat. Well, how is that according to your ideas? According to ours, he was shrewd: he fell down in pain, he rose quite well. Who was oftenest invited to whist? Who heard a kind word at Court? Maksím Petróvich! Who was honoured above all others at Court? Maksím Petróvich! That ’s no trifle! Who conferred ranks, and gave pensions? Maksím Petróvich! Ah, you of to-day are what?

Chátski. Truly, the world has grown more stupid—you may say so with a sigh! When we compare the present age with the one that ’s past, though the tradition is living, it is hard to believe: he was most famous whose neck was oftenest bent, and the brow took by assault in peace, not war; they mercilessly knocked their brows against the floor. He who needed it, took delight in grovelling in the dust; those who stood higher wove flattery like lace,—it was a sincere age of submission and terror! Under the mask of zeal for the Tsar—(I am not talking of your uncle: we will not disturb his ashes). But now, who would, even in the most ardent servility, undertake to amuse the people, and boldly to sacrifice his occiput? Though then, many an equal of his, or some old man who was falling to pieces in his ancient hide, seeing his capers, probably remarked: “Oh, if I could do the same!” There are even now some servile souls, but nowadays ridicule terrifies them and shame holds them in check. Kings, with good reason, are slow to favour them.

Fámusov. My God, he is a carbonaro!

Chátski. No, this is a different world!

Fámusov. Dangerous man!

Chátski. Everybody breathes more freely, and nobody hastens to inscribe himself in the army of fools.

Fámusov. How he talks! And he talks as he writes.

Chátski. To yawn at the ceiling in the house of your patrons, to make your appearance and sit in silence, to courtesy, dine, fetch a chair, lift up a handkerchief—

Fámusov. He wants to preach liberty!

Chátski. Who travels, who lives in the village—

Fámusov. He does not acknowledge the authorities!

Chátski. Who serves his office and not men—

Fámusov. I should most severely forbid such gentlemen to get within a gunshot of the capitals!

Chátski. I will not give you any rest!

Fámusov. My patience is all exhausted, I have had enough!

Chátski. I have unmercifully scolded your age; I leave it to you to reject part of it in favour of our times: I shall not contradict.

Fámusov. I do not wish to know you! I despise debauch!

Chátski. I have had my say.

Fámusov. Very well, I close my ears!

Chátski. What for? I shall not insult them.

Fámusov (rapidly). Such are the people that race the world and waste their time. When they return, what order can you expect of them?

Chátski. I am done.

Fámusov. Please, spare me!

Chátski. It is not my desire to continue the dispute.

Fámusov. At least leave my soul to repentance.

SCENE 3. THE SAME AND SERVANT

Servant. Colonel Skalozúb!

Fámusov (not seeing or hearing him). You ’ll be court-martialled yet! They ’ll give you to drink.

Chátski. You have a guest.

Fámusov. I do not hear! You ’ll be court-martialled!

Chátski. Your servant is reporting to you.

Fámusov. I do not hear! You ’ll be court-martialled, court-martialled, I say!

Chátski. Just turn around, you are addressed.

Fámusov (turning around). Oh, rebellion! I am expecting nothing but Sodom!

Servant. Colonel Skalozúb! Shall he be received?

Fámusov (rising). Asses! Shall I repeat it a hundred times? Receive him, call him, ask him in, tell him I am at home, that I am glad. Begone, be in a hurry! (Exit Servant.) Please, sir, be careful in his presence; he is a distinguished gentleman, of solid habits, and he has no end of decorations; his rank is enviable, considering his age; ’t is but a question of a short time when he will be general!

SCENE 5. CHÁTSKI, FÁMUSOV, SKALOZÚB

Fámusov. Sergyéy Sergyéich, come here, near us! ’T is warmer here, come here! I ’ll open the register at once.

Skalozúb (in a heavy bass). Why should you trouble yourself? As an honourable officer I can’t permit that.

Fámusov. Why should I not take a step for a friend? Dear Sergyéy Sergyéich, put down your hat, take off your sword. Here is a sofa: make yourself comfortable.

Skalozúb. I do not care where, so I am seated.

(All three sit down, Chátski at some distance.)

Fámusov. O friend, not to forget: let us figure out our relationship—there is no inheritance to be divided here. Do you know—I used to know, thanks to what your cousin told me—how Nastásya Nikoláevna is related to you?

Skalozúb. Beg your pardon, I do not know: we did not serve together.

Fámusov. Sergyéy Sergyéich, do you say that? I am ready to get down on my knees before a relative of mine, wherever I may find him, though he be at the bottom of the sea. I seldom have subordinates who are not my relatives: they are nearly all my sister’s children, or some near relative’s; Molchálin only is not of my family, and for the reason that he knows about affairs. How can one help thinking of his family, when there is a chance for promotion or for decoration? Yet, your cousin told me that through you he has had many advantages in his service.

Skalozúb. Cousin and I distinguished ourselves in 1813 in the thirtieth of the Chasseurs, and later in the forty-fifth.

Fámusov. How fortunate is he who has such a son! He has, I believe, a decoration in the buttonhole?

Skalozúb. For August third. We stuck to a trench. He received his in the buttonhole, I—around my neck.

Fámusov. A lovely man! A fine fellow to look at! A splendid man is your cousin!

Skalozúb. He ’s chock-full of new-fangled rules. He was to get a higher rank, when he left the service, and began to read books in his village.

Fámusov. Strange youth! To read, and then—look out! You have acted as is proper: you have long been colonel, though you serve but shortly.

Skalozúb. I am sufficiently fortunate in my colleagues. Vacancies have been open just at the right time: some older ones have been retired, and others have been killed off.

Fámusov. Yes, if God wants to show one His favour, He advances him!

Skalozúb. Some are luckier than I. Not to go farther, I ’ll mention our brigadier-general in the fifteenth division.

Fámusov. But, I pray, you are lacking nothing.

Skalozúb. I can’t complain,—I have not been overlooked; yet, I have been two years with the same regiment.

Fámusov. Oh, you are after the rank of general! Still, in many other things you have left others far behind.

Skalozúb. No, there are older ones than I in the army: I have been serving since eighty-nine. Yes, there are many channels through which one may get promotion; I judge of them like a real philosopher: all I care for is the rank of general.

Fámusov. You judge excellently. God grant you health and the rank of general—and, why delay it longer?—it would be time to begin talking of a Mrs. Skalozúb.

Skalozúb. Get married? I am not disinclined.

Fámusov. Well! One has a sister, another a niece, a daughter. In Moscow there is no lack of prospective brides: they breed each year! My friend, confess, it would be hard to find another capital like Moscow.

Skalozúb. Distances of enormous proportion!

Fámusov. There are good taste, my friend, and excellent manners, and for everything there are laws. There, for example, it is an old custom with us that the son is honoured according to his father: let him be a worthless chap, but let him have two thousand peasants to his name, and he will be an eligible bridegroom; another may be much more agile, full of all kinds of pride, let him pass for a clever fellow,—yet he will not be a member of our families, nor need you wonder at this, for it is only here that we still respect noble birth. Nor is this all! Take our hospitable bread and salt: anyone who may wish to call on us is welcome! The door is open for invited and uninvited guests, especially if they be foreigners. It makes no difference to us whether they be honourable or dishonest men: dinner is prepared for all alike. On all the Muscovites, if you please, there is a special stamp. Just look at our youths, our sons, and grandchildren: we lecture them, but look close at them, and you will find that at fifteen years they are ready to teach their teachers! And our old men? When a notion strikes them, and they discuss affairs,—each word they say is a sentence passed. They are important men, and care not a fig for anyone. Should someone hear their discussions about the Government, there would be trouble! Not that they introduce innovations—never! The Lord preserve us, no! They simply find fault with this and that, and oftenest with nothing at all: they quarrel, make a noise, and go each one to his home. They are true ex-chancellors as regards their brains! I will tell you this much: evidently time has not been propitious, but no affair will be decided without them.

And the ladies? Let anyone try and get the better of them! They are judges in all things and everywhere,—there are no judges over them. When they rise in common riot at the cards,—then God grant us patience! Remember, I have myself been married! Order them to command an army! Send them to take their seats in the Senate! Irína Vlásevna! Lukórya Aleksyéevna! Tatyána Yúrevna! Pulkhériya Andréevna! And he who has seen their daughters will only hang his head! His Majesty the Prussian King was here: he admired beyond measure the Moscow maidens,—their mannerliness, not their faces! And forsooth! Can one be brought up better! They know how to primp themselves in taffeta, velvet, and dimity; they never say a word simply, but always with a grimace. They sing French romances, and strike the upper notes. They cling to the military,—because they are patriots. I must say emphatically: you will scarcely find another such a capital as Moscow!

Skalozúb. In my opinion, the conflagration has done much for its embellishment.

Fámusov. You have no cause for complaint: since then our roads, our sidewalks, houses, and all creak in a new fashion.

Chátski. The houses are new, but the prejudices old. Rejoice: neither years, nor fashion, nor conflagrations will annihilate them.

Fámusov (to Chátski). Sir, tie a knot for memory’s sake! I asked you to keep quiet,—’t is but a small service. (To Skalozúb.) Permit me, sir, to acquaint you with Chátski, a friend of mine, the son of the late Andréy Ilích! He does not serve, that is, he sees no advantage in it; he would make a good official, if he only wished so. ’T is a pity, a great pity: he is a young man with a head, and he writes and translates beautifully. One can’t help regretting⸺

Chátski. Can you not regret someone else? Even your praises anger me!

Fámusov. Not I alone,—everybody judges you thus.

Chátski. Who are the judges? They being old, their hostility against a free life cannot be assuaged: they draw their judgments from forgotten gazettes of the days of Ochákov and the conquest of the Crimea. Ever ready to chide, they eternally sing one and the same song, and do not notice that the older they grow, the worse they become. Where, show us, are the fathers of the fatherland whom we are to assume as our models? Perchance they are those who by robbery have grown rich, who find protection against the courts in their friends and families, and who erect magnificent palaces, where they indulge in banquets and lavishness, and where the foreign clients will not efface the meanest features of their former lives? Pray, whose mouth has in Moscow not been closed by dinners, suppers, and dances? Is it, perhaps, he to whom you took me still in my swaddling clothes, for some incomprehensible purpose, to make obeisances,—that Nestor of noble scoundrels, who was surrounded by a crowd of servants? They bestirred themselves for him, and in houses of wine and brawls more than once had saved his honour and his life,—and he suddenly exchanged three hounds for them. Or that other man who, to please his fancy, brought together in many waggons to an enforced ballet the children who had been torn away from their parents? Himself merged in contemplation of Zephyrs and Cupids, he caused all Moscow to admire their beauty; but he did not with all that appease his creditors: the Cupids and Zephyrs were all sold one by one.

These are the men who have lived to have grey hair! It is these that you wish us to respect in the wilderness! These are our austere arbiters and judges! Let now one among us young men be found who is an enemy of servility, who seeks neither a place, nor a promotion, who, thirsting for knowledge, bends his mind to the sciences, or into whose soul God Himself has implanted a fire for the high and beautiful creative arts,—they at once cry: murder! fire! and you at once pass for a dangerous dreamer. The uniform, nothing but the uniform! In their former existence their beautiful gold-laced uniforms had cloaked their pusillanimity and poverty of intelligence,—so they wish us Godspeed upon their own path. And their wives and daughters have the same passion for the uniforms. Is it long since I, sharing that weakness for it, have renounced it? Now I shall never again be prone to such childishness. But who would then not have been carried away together with all? When someone of the Guards or from the Court came here for a time, the women cried “Hurrah!” and threw their bonnets in the air.

Fámusov (aside). He will get me into trouble yet! (Aloud.) Sergyéy Sergyéich, I shall wait for you in the study. (Exit.)

Aleksándr Aleksándrovich Bestúzhev (pseud. Marlínski). (1797-1837.)

Bestúzhev was one of three brothers who took part in the Decembrist uprising. He had received a brilliant education at home, which, thanks to the industry of his highly cultivated father, was a museum in miniature. He turned his attention to literature in 1819, through his friend Rylyéev joined the December conspiracy, and was banished for only a few years to Siberia, because he had voluntarily surrendered himself. He was possessed of an unusually ardent nature, which led him to engage in most extravagant love affairs, with always a duel in prospect, and his many novels, with their transcendental Romanticism and perfervid diction, are only the expression of his inner experiences. He died in the Caucasus, in an engagement with the mountaineers, but his body was not recovered. He was, in his day, the most popular novelist, whom even Púshkin greatly admired, and several of his works have been translated into many languages, among them also into Georgian. His Ammalát Bek was translated into English by Thomas B. Shaw, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. liii., 1843; also The Tartar Chief; or, A Russian Colonel’s Head for Dowry, from the Russian of Marlinsky, by G. C. Hebbe, LLD., New York, 1846.

FROM “AMMALÁT BEK”

For some time past, the mountaineers had fallen in considerable numbers only on Christian villages, for in the stanítsas[5] the resistance had cost them very dear. For the plundering of houses they approached boldly yet cunningly the Russian frontier, and on such occasions they frequently escaped a battle. The bravest Uzdéns desire to meet with these affairs that they may acquire fame, which they value even more than plunder.

In the autumn of the year 1810, the Kabardinians and Chechenians, encouraged by the absence of the commander-in-chief, assembled to the number of fifteen hundred men to make an attack upon one of the villages beyond the Térek, to seize it, carry off prisoners, and take the droves of horses. The leader of the Kabardinians was the Prince Dzhembulát. Ammalát Bek, who had arrived with a letter from Sultan Akhmét Khan, was received with delight. They did not, indeed, assign him the command of any division; but this arose from the circumstance that with them there is no order of battle or gradation of command; an active horse and individual courage secures the most distinguished place in action. At first they deliberate how best to begin the attack,—how to repel the enemy; but afterwards they pay no attention to plan or order, and chance decides the affair.

Having sent messengers to summon the neighbouring Uzdéns, Dzhembulát fixed on a place of general assembling; and immediately, on a signal agreed on, from every height spread the cry: “Garáy, garáy!” (alarm), and in one hour the Chechenians and Kabardinians were assembling from all sides. To avoid treason, no one but the leader knew where the night-camp was to be, from which they were to cross the river. They were divided into small bands, and were to go by almost invisible paths to the peaceful village, where they were to conceal themselves till night. By twilight, all the divisions were already mustered.

As they arrived, they were received by their countrymen with frank embraces; but Dzhembulát, not trusting to this, guarded the village with sentinels, and proclaimed to the inhabitants that whoever attempted to desert to the Russians should be cut to pieces. The greater part of the Uzdéns took up their quarters in the sáklas of their kunáks or relations; but Dzhembulát and Ammalát, with the best of the cavaliers, slept in the open air around a fire, when they had refreshed their jaded horses. Dzhembulát, wrapped in his búrka, was considering, with folded arms, the plan of the expedition; but the thoughts of Ammalát were far from the battlefield: they were flying, eagle-winged, to the mountains of Avár, and bitterly, bitterly, did he feel his separation. The sound of an instrument, the mountain balaláyka, accompanying a slow air, recalled him from his reverie; and a Kabardinian sang an ancient song.

“On Kazbék the clouds are meeting,

Like the mountain eagle-flock;

Up to them, along the rock,

Dash the wild Uzdéns retreating;

Onward faster, faster fleeting,

Routed by the Russian brood,

Foameth all their track with blood.

“Fast behind the regiments yelling,

Lance and bayonet raging hot,

And the seed of death their shot.

On the mail the sabre knelling,

Gallop, steed! for far thy dwelling,—

See! they fall,—but distant still

Is the forest of the hill!

“Russian shot our hearts is rending,

Falls the Moollah on his knee,

To the Lord of Light bows he,

To the Prophet he is bending;

Like a shaft his prayer ascending,

Upward flies to Allah’s throne—

Il-Allah! Oh, save thine own!

“Ah, despair!—What crash like thunder!

Lo! a sign from heaven above!

Lo! the forest seems to move,

Crashes, murmurs, bursts asunder!

Lower, nearer, wonder! wonder!

Safe once more the Moslem bold

In their forest mountain-hold!”

“So it was in old times,” said Dzhembulát, with a smile, “when our men trusted more to prayer, and God oftener listened to them; but now, my friends, there is a better hope,—your valour! Our omens are in the scabbards of our sabres, and we must show that we are not ashamed of them. Hark ye, Ammalát,” he continued, twisting his moustache, “I will not conceal from you that the affair may be warm. I have just heard that Colonel K⸺ has collected his division; but where he is, or how many troops he has, nobody knows.”

“The more Russians there are the better,” replied Ammalát, quietly; “the fewer mistakes will be made.”

“And the heavier will be the plunder.”

“I care not for that. I seek revenge and glory.”

“Glory is a good bird, when she lays a golden egg; but he that returns with his toróks (straps behind the saddle) empty, is ashamed to appear before his wife. Winter is near, and we must provide our households at the expense of the Russians, that we may feast our friends and allies. Choose your station, Ammalát Bek. Do you prefer to advance in front to carry off the flocks, or will you remain with me in the rear? I and the Abréks will march at a foot’s pace to restrain the pursuers.”

“That is what I also intend. I will be where the greatest peril is. But what are the Abréks, Dzhembulát?”

“It is not easy to explain. You sometimes see several of our boldest cavaliers take an oath, binding them for two or three years, or as long as they like, never to mingle in games or gaieties, never to spare their lives in battle, to give no quarter, never to pardon the least offence in a brother or a friend, to seize the goods of others without fear or scruple,—in a word, to be the foes of all mankind, strangers in their family, men whom any person may slay if he can; in the village they are dangerous neighbours, and in meeting them you must keep your hand on the trigger; but in war one can trust them.”

“For what motive, or reason, can the Uzdéns make such an engagement?”

“Some simply to show their courage, others from poverty, a third class from some misfortune. See, for instance, yonder tall Kabardinian; he has sworn to be an Abrék for five years, since his mistress died of the smallpox. Since that year it would be as well to make acquaintance with a tiger as with him. He has already been wounded three times for blood vengeance; but he cares not for that.”

“Strange custom! How will he return from the life of an Abrék to a peaceable existence?”

“What is there strange in this? The past glides from him as water from the wild-duck. His neighbours will be delighted when he has finished his term of brigandage. And he, after putting off Abrékism, as a serpent sheds his skin, will become gentle as a lamb. Among us, none but the avenger of blood remembers yesterday. But the night is darkening. The mists are spreading over Térek. It is time for the work.”

Dzhembulát whistled, and his whistle was repeated to all the outposts of the camp. In a moment the whole band was assembled. Several Uzdéns joined from the neighbouring friendly villages. After a short discussion as to the passage of the river, the band moved in silence to the bank. Ammalát Bek could not but admire the stillness, not only of the riders, but of their horses; not one of them neighed or snorted, and they seemed to place their feet on the ground with caution.

They marched like a voiceless cloud, and soon they reached the bank of Térek, which, making a winding at this spot, formed a promontory, and from it to the opposite shore extended a pebbly shoal. The water over this bank was shallow and fordable; nevertheless, a part of the detachment left the shore higher up, in order to swim past the Cossacks, and, diverting their attention from the principal passage, to cover the fording party. Those who had confidence in their horses leaped unhesitatingly from the bank, while others tied to each fore-foot of their steeds a pair of small skins, inflated with air like bladders: the current bore them on, and each landed wherever he found a convenient spot.

Daybreak appeared; the fog began to separate, and discovered a picture at once magnificent and terrible. The principal band of foragers dragged the prisoners after it,—some were at the stirrup, others behind the saddle, with their arms tied at their backs. Tears, and groans, and cries of despair were stifled by the threats or frantic cries of joy of the victors. Loaded with plunder, impeded by the flocks and horned cattle, they advanced slowly towards the Térek. The princes and best cavaliers, in mail-coats and casques glittering like water, galloped round the dense mass, as lightning flashes round a living cloud.

In the distance were galloping up from every point the Cossacks of the Line; they ambushed behind the shrubs and straggling oak-trees, and soon began an irregular fire with the brigands who were sent against them. In the meantime, the foremost had driven across the river a portion of the flocks, when a cloud of dust, and the tramp of the cavalry, announced the approaching storm.

About six hundred mountaineers, commanded by Dzhembulát and Ammalát, turned their horses to repulse the attack, and give time to the rest to escape by the river. Without order, but with wild cries and shouts, they dashed forward to meet the Cossacks; but not a single gun was taken from its belt, not a single sabre glimmered in the air: a Circassian waits till the last moment before he seizes his weapons. And thus, having galloped to the distance of twenty paces, they levelled their guns, fired at full speed, threw their fire-arms over their backs, and drew their sabres; but the Cossacks of the Line, having replied with a volley, began to fly, and the mountaineers, heated by the chase, fell into a stratagem which they often employ themselves.

The Cossacks had led them up to the Chasseurs of the brave forty-third regiment, who were concealed at the edge of the forest. Suddenly, as if the little squares had started out of the earth, the bayonets were levelled, and the fire poured on them, taking them in flank. It was in vain that the mountaineers, dismounting from their horses, essayed to occupy the underwood and attack the Russians from the rear; the artillery came up and decided the affair. The experienced Colonel Kortsarév, the dread of the Chechenians, the man whose bravery they feared and whose honesty and disinterestedness they respected, directed the movements of the troops, and success could not be doubtful. The cannon dispersed the crowds of brigands, and their grape flew after the flying.

The defeat was terrible; two guns, dashing at a gallop to the promontory, not far from which the Circassians were throwing themselves into the river, enfiladed the stream; with a rushing sound, the shot flew over the foaming waves, and at each fire some of the horses might be seen to turn over with their feet in the air, drowning their riders. It was sad to see how the wounded clutched at the tails and bridles of the horses of their companions, sinking them without saving themselves,—how the exhausted struggled against the scarped bank, endeavouring to clamber up, fell back, and were borne away and engulfed by the furious current. The corpses of the slain were whirled away, mingled with the dying, and streaks of blood curled and writhed like serpents on the foam. The smoke floated along the Térek, far in the distance, and the snowy peaks of the Caucasus, crowned with mist, bounded the field of battle.

Dzhembulát and Ammalát Bek fought desperately,—twenty times did they rush to the attack, twenty times were they repulsed; wearied, but not conquered, with a hundred brigands they swam the river, dismounted, attached their horses to each other by the bridle, and began a warm fire from the other side of the river, to cover their surviving comrades. Intent upon this, they remarked, too late, that the Cossacks were passing the river above them; with a shout, the Russians leaped upon the bank, and surrounded them in a moment. Their fate was inevitable.

“Well, Dzhembulát,” said the Bek to the Kabardinian, “our lot is finished. Do you what you will: but for me, I will not render myself a prisoner alive. ’T is better to die by a ball than by a shameful cord!”

“Do you think,” answered Dzhembulát, “that my arms were made for a chain? Allah keep me from such a blot! The Russians may take my body, but not my soul. Never, never! Brethren, comrades!” he cried to the others, “fortune has betrayed us, but the steel will not. Let us sell our lives dearly to the Giaour. The victor is not he who keeps the field, but he who has the glory; and the glory is his who prefers death to slavery!”

“Let us die, let us die, but let us die gloriously!” cried all, piercing with their daggers the sides of their horses, that the enemy might not take them, and then piling up the dead bodies of their steeds, they lay down behind the heap, preparing to meet the attack with lead and steel.

Well aware of the obstinate resistance they were about to encounter, the Cossacks stopped, and made ready for the charge. The shot from the opposite bank sometimes fell in the midst of the brave mountaineers, sometimes a grenade exploded, covering them with earth and fragments; but they showed no confusion, they started not, nor blenched; and, after the custom of their country, began to sing, with a melancholy yet threatening voice, the death-song, replying alternately stanza for stanza.

DEATH-SONG

Chorus

“Fame to us, death to you,

Alla-ha, Alla-hu!”

Semichorus

“Weep, O ye maidens, on mountain and valley,

Lift the dirge for the souls of the brave!

We have fired our last bullet, have made our last rally,

And Caucasus gives us a grave.

Here the soft pipe no more shall invite us to slumber,—

The thunder our lullaby sings;

Our eyes not the maiden’s dark tresses shall cumber,

Them the raven shall shade with his wings!

Forget, O my children, your father’s stern duty,—

No more shall he bring ye the Muscovite booty!”

Second Semichorus

“Weep not, ye maidens! Your sisters in splendour,

The Houris, they bend from the sky,

They fix on the brave their sun-glance deep and tender,

And to Paradise bear him on high!

In your feast-cup, my brethren, forget not our story:

The death of the Free is the noblest of glory!”

First Semichorus

“Roar, winter torrent, and sullenly dash!

But where is the brave one,—the swift lightning-flash?

Soft star of my soul, my mother,

Sleep, the fire let ashes smother;

Gaze no more, thine eyes are weary,

Sit not by the threshold stone;

Gaze not through the night-fog dreary,

Eat thine evening meal alone,

Seek him not, O mother, weeping,

By the cliff and by the ford!

On a bed of dust he ’s sleeping,—

Broken is both heart and sword!”

Second Semichorus

“Mother, weep not! with thy love burning:

This heart of mine beats full and free,

And to lion-blood is turning

That soft milk I drew from thee;

And our liberty from danger

Thy brave son has guarded well;

Battling with the Christian stranger,

Called by Azrael, he fell;

From my blood fresh odours breathing,

Fadeless flowers shall drink the dew;

To my children fame bequeathing,

Brethren, and revenge to you!”

Chorus

“Pray, my brethren, ere we part:

Clutch the steel with hate and wrath!

Break it in the Russian’s heart,—

O’er corses lies the brave man’s path!

Fame to us, death to you,

Alla-ha, Alla-hu!”

Struck by a certain involuntary awe, the Chasseurs and Cossacks listened in silence to the stern sounds of this song; but at last a loud hurrah resounded from both sides. The Circassians, with a shout, fired their guns for the last time, and breaking them against the stones, they threw themselves dagger in hand, upon the Russians. The Abréks in order that their line might not be broken, bound themselves to each other with their girdles, and hurled themselves into the mêlée. Quarter was neither asked nor given: all fell before the bayonets of the Russians.

“Forward! Follow me, Ammalát Bek,” cried Dzhembulát, with fury, rushing into the combat which was to be his last: “Forward! For us death is liberty!”

But Ammalát heard not his call: a blow from a musket on the back of the head stretched him on the earth, already sown with corpses and covered with blood.

—Transl. by Thomas B. Shaw, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. liii. (1843).

[5] Cossack villages.

Iván Ivánovich Lazhéchnikov. (1794-1869.)

Lazhéchnikov was the most famous of Russian novelists before Gógol. His father was a rich grain and salt merchant in the city of Kolómna, and he spared no money for the education of his son. At sixteen years Lazhéchnikov wrote his Thoughts in Imitation of La Bruyère, which was published in The Messenger of Europe. His father having lost all his property, he accepted a government position, but in 1812 joined the army and with it went through the whole French campaign. In 1819 appeared his Campaign Memoirs of a Russian Officer, which are full of youthful ardour, patriotism, and a consciousness of the European importance of Russia. Having attracted the attention of the Court, he received various appointments, but again left the service in 1826. He then wrote his three great novels on which his reputation rests, namely, The Last Noviks, The Ice House, and The Heretic. His later stories did not sustain his fame.

In English has appeared The Heretic, translated from the Russian of Lajetchnikoff, by Thomas B. Shaw (in three volumes), Edinburgh and London, 1844, and again, under the title The Heretic and the Maid of Moscow, a Romance of Russia, by Thos. B. Shaw, London, 1849.

THE HERETIC

PROLOGUE

It was the 27th of October, 1505. As if for the coronation of a Tsar, Moscow was decorated and adorned. The Cathedral of the Assumption, the Church of the Annunciation, the Stone Palace, the Tower Palace, the Kreml with its towers, a multitude of stone churches and houses scattered over the city—all this, just come out of the hands of skilful architects, bore the stamp of freshness and newness, as if it had risen up in one day by an almighty will. In reality, all this had been created in a short time by the genius of Ioánn III. A person who, thirty years back, had left Moscow, poor, insignificant, resembling a large village, surrounded by hamlets, would not have recognised it had he seen it now; so soon had all Russia arisen at the single manly call of this great genius.

Taking the colossal infant under his princely guardianship, he had torn off its swaddling bands, and not by years, but by hours, he reared it to a giant vigour. Nóvgorod and Pskov, which had never vailed their bonnet to mortal man, had yet doffed it to him, and had even brought him the tribute of liberty and gold: the yoke of the Khans had been cast off, and hurled beyond the frontiers of the Russian land; Kazán, though she had taken cover from the mighty hunter, yet had taken cover like the she-wolf that has no earth,—her territories had melted away, and were united into one mighty appanage; and the ruler who created all this was the first Russian sovereign who realised the idea of a Tsar.

Nevertheless, on the 27th of October, 1505, the Moscow which he had thus adorned was preparing for a spectacle not joyful but melancholy. Ioánn, enfeebled in mind and body, lay upon his death-bed. He had forgotten his great exploits; he remembered only his sins, and repented of them.

It was towards the evening-tide. In the churches gleamed the lonely lamps; through the mica and bladder panes of the windows glimmered the fires, kindled in their houses by faith or by necessity. But nowhere was it popular love which had lighted them; for the people did not comprehend the services of the great man, and loved him not for his innovations. At one corner of the prison, the Black House, but later than the other houses, was illumined by a weak and flickering light. On the bladder which was the substitute for glass in the window, the iron grating, with its spikes, threw a net-like shadow, which was only relieved by a speck, at one moment glittering like a spark, at another emitting a whirling stream of vapour. It was evident that the prisoner had made this opening in the bladder, in order, unperceived by his guards, to look forth upon the light of heaven.

This was part of the prison, and in it even now was pining a youthful captive. He seemed not more than twenty. So young! What early transgression could have brought him here? From his face you would not believe in such transgressions; you would not believe that God could have created that fair aspect to deceive. So handsome and so noble that you would think never had one evil intention passed over that tranquil brow, never had one passion played in those eyes, filled with love to his neighbour and calm melancholy. And yet, by his tall and majestic figure, as he starts from his reverie, and shakes his raven curls, he seems to be born a lord, and not a slave. His hands are white and delicate as a woman’s. On the throat of his shirt blazes a button of emerald; in the damp and smoky room, on a broad bench against the wall, are a feather-bed with a pillow of damask, and with a silken covering; and by the bedside a coffer of white bone in filigree work. Evidently he is not a common prisoner. No common prisoner!—no, he is a crowned prince!—and pure in thought and deed as the dwellers of the skies.

All his crime is a diadem, which he did not seek, and which was placed on his head by the caprice of his sovereign; in no treason, in no crime had he been accomplice; he was guilty by the guilt of others,—by the ambition of two women, the intrigues of the courtiers, the anger of his grandfather against the others, and not against him. They had destined him a throne, and they had dragged him to a dungeon. He understood not why they crowned him, and now he understands not why they deprived him of liberty,—of the light of heaven,—of all that they deny not even to the meanest. For him his nearest kinsman dared not even pray aloud.

This was the grandson of Iván III., the only child of his beloved son,—Dmítri Ivánovich.

At one time he sat in melancholy musing, resting his elbows on his knees, and losing his fingers in the dark curls of his hair; then he would arise, then lie down. He was restless as though they had given him poison. No one was with him. A solitary taper lighted up his miserable abode. The stillness of the room was disturbed only by the drops from the ceiling, or the mice nibbling the crumbs that had fallen from the captive’s table. The little light now died away, now flared up again; and in these flashes it seemed as though rows of gigantic spiders crept along the wall. In reality, these were scribbling in various languages, scrawled with charcoal or with a nail. Hardly was it possible to spell out among them—“Matheas,” “Marfa, burgomistress of Nóvgorod the Great,” “Accursed be⸺,” “Liebe Mutter, liebe A⸺”; and several words more, half obliterated by the damp which had trickled along the wall, or been scratched out by the anger or the ignorance of the guards.

The door of the dungeon softly opened. Dmítri Ivánovich started up. “Afóniya, is it thou?” he joyfully enquired; but seeing that he had mistaken for another the person who entered, he exclaimed sadly: “Ah, is it thou, Nebogáty! Why cometh not Afóniya? I am sad, I am lonely, I am devoured by grief, as if a serpent lay at my heart. Didst thou not say that Afóniya would come as soon as they lighted the candles in the houses?”

“Afanási Nikítin[6] hath a mind as single as his eye,” said the deacon Dmítri Nebogáty, a kind and good-natured officer, yet strict in the performance of the charge given him by the Great Prince, of guarding his grandson. (We may remark that at this time he, in consequence of the illness of Dmítri, the treasurer and groom of the bedchamber, fulfilled their duties. All honour to a prince, even though he be a prisoner!)

“Make thyself easy, Dmítri Ivánovich; soon, be sure, will come our orator. Thou wottest thyself he groweth infirm, he seeth not well, and so must grope along the wall; and till he cometh, my dear child, play, amuse thyself with thy toys. Sit down cozily on thy bed; I will give thee thy coffer.”

And Dmítri Ivánovich, a child, though he was more than twenty years old, to escape from the weariness that oppressed him, instantly accepted the proposition of his deacon, sat down with his feet on his bed, took the ivory box upon his knees, and opened it with a key that hung at his girdle. By degrees, one after the other, he drew out into the light a number of precious articles which had been imprisoned in the coffer.

The young prince held up to the fire, now a chain of gold with bears’ heads carved on the links, or a girdle of scaly gold, then signet rings of jacinth or emerald, then crucifixes, collars, bracelets, precious studs: he admired them, threw the collars round his neck, and asked the deacon whether they became him; took orient pearls and rubies by the handful, let them stream like rain through his fingers, amused himself in playing with them, like an absolute child—and suddenly, hearing a voice in the neighbouring chamber, threw them all back anyhow into the coffer. His face lighted up.

“’T is Afóniya!” he cried, giving back the box to the deacon, and descending from the bed.

“Lock it, Dmítri Ivánovich!” said Nebogáty firmly: “without that I will not receive it.”

Hastily clinked the key in the coffer; the door opened, and there entered the room an old man of low stature, bowed down by the burden of years; the silver of his hair was already becoming golden with age. From the top of his head to the corner of his left eye was deeply gashed a scar, which had thus let fall an eternal curtain before that eye, and therefore the other was fixed in its place, like a precious stone of wondrous water, for it glittered with unusual brilliancy, and seemed to see for itself and for its unfortunate twin brother. No son more affectionately meets a tenderly beloved father than Dmítri Ivánovich met the old man. Joy sparkled in the eyes of the Tsarévich, and spoke in his every gesture.

He took his guest’s walking-staff, shook from his dress the powdered snow, embraced him, and seated him in the place of honour on his bed. Nevertheless, the guest was no more than Afanási Nikítin, a merchant of Tver, a trader without trade, without money, poor, but rich in knowledge, which he had acquired in an adventurous journey to India, rich in experience and fancies, which he knew how to adorn beside with a sweet and enchanting eloquence. He lived on the charity of his friends, and yet was no man’s debtor: the rich he paid with his tales, and to the poor he gave them for nothing. He was allowed to visit the Great Prince Dmítri Ivánovich (whom, however, it was forbidden to call Great Prince). We may judge how delightfully he filled up the dreadful solitude of the youth’s imprisonment, and how dear he therefore was to the captive. And what did Dmítri give him for his labour? Much, very much to a good heart,—his delight, the only pleasure left him in the world,—and this reward the Tver man would not have exchanged for gold. Once the Tsarévich had desired to present him with one of the precious articles from his ivory box; but the deacon gently reminded the captive that all the articles in his coffer were his, that he might play with them as much as he pleased, but that he was not at liberty to dispose of them.

The day before Afanási Nikítin had begun a tale about the “Almayne,” surnamed the Heretic. To-day, when he had seated himself, he continued it. His speech flowed on like the song of a nightingale, which we listen to from the flush of morning till the glow of eve without shutting our eyes even for a moment. Greedily did the Tsarévich listen to the story-teller, his cheeks burned, and often tears streamed from his eyes. Far, very far, he was borne away from his dungeon, and only from time to time the rude brawling of the guards behind the partition-wall recalled him to bitter reality. In the meantime the deacon Nebogáty’s pen was hurriedly scratching along the parchment: the sheets, pasted one to another in a long line, were fast covered with strange hieroglyphics, and wound up into a huge roll. He was writing down from Afanási Nikítin’s mouth, A tale touching a certain Almayne, surnamed the Heretic.

Suddenly, in the midst of the tale, there rushed into the dungeon the court officer of the Great Prince. “Iván Vasílevich is about to render up his soul to God,” said he hastily; “he grieveth much about thee, and hath sent for thee. Make haste!”

The prince was convulsively agitated. Over his face, which became as white as a sheet, passed some thought; it flashed in his eyes. Oh, this was a thought of Paradise! Freedom⸺a crown⸺the people⸺mercy⸺perhaps a block⸺what was there not in that thought? The captive—the child who had just been playing with jewels—arose the Great Prince of all Russia.

Iván was still a sovereign, though on his dying bed; death had not yet locked for ever his lips, and those lips might yet determine on his successor. The thoughts of another life, remorse, an interview with his grandson, whom he had himself of his own free will crowned Tsar, and whom they had just brought from a dungeon,—what force must these thoughts have on the will of the dying man!

They gave the prince his bonnet, and just as he stood, conducted by the deacon and other officers, he hastened to the Great Prince’s palace. In the hall he encountered the sobbing of the kinsmen and servants of the Tsar. “It is over!—My grandsire is dead!” thought he, and his heart sunk within him, his steps tottered.

The appearance of Dmítri Ivánovich in the palace of the Great Prince interrupted for a time the general lamentation, real and feigned. The unexpectedness, the novelty of the object, the strange fate of the prince, pity, the thought that he, perhaps, would be the sovereign of Russia in a moment, overwhelmed the minds and hearts of the courtiers. But even at this period there were among the long-beards some wise heads: acute, far-sighted calculations, which we now call politics, were then as now oracles of fate, and though sometimes, as happens even in our own days, they were overthrown by the mighty hand of Providence.

These calculations triumphed over the momentary astonishment; the tears and sobbing began again, and were communicated to the crowd. Only one voice, amidst the expressions of simulated woe, ventured to raise itself above them: “Haste, my lord, our native prince,—thou hast been sent for no short time,—Iván Vasílevich is yet alive,—the Lord bless thee, and make thee our Great Prince!”

This voice reassured the youth; but when he was about to enter the bedchamber where the dying man lay, his strength began to fail. The door opened; his feet seemed nailed to the threshold. Iván had only a few minutes left to live. It seemed as if death awaited only the arrival of his grandson, to give him his dismissal. Around his bed stood his sons, the primate, his favourite boyárs, his kinsmen.

“Hither,—to me, Dmítri,—my dear grandson,” said the Great Prince, recognising him through the mists of death.

Dmítri Ivánovich threw himself towards the bed, fell upon his knees, kissed the cold hand of his grandsire, and bedewed it with tears. The dying man, as if by the power of galvanism, raised himself, laid one hand on his grandson’s head, with the other blessed him, then spoke in a breathless voice: “I have sinned before God and thee⸺Forgive me⸺forgive⸺The Lord and I have crowned thee⸺be⸺my⸺”

The face of Vasíli Ioánnovich was convulsed with envy and fear. Yet one word more⸺

But death then stood on the side of the strongest, and that word was never pronounced in this world. The Great Prince Iván Vasílevich yielded up his last breath, applying his cold lips to the forehead of his grandson. His son, who had been earlier designated by him as his heir, immediately entered into all his rights. They tore Dmítri from the death-bed, led him out of the Great Prince’s palace, and conducted him back to his dungeon. There, stretched on his bed, was reposing Afóniya in the deep slumber of the just. Having bewailed his woes, the ill-fated Dmítri lay down beside the old man. Prince and peasant were there equal. The one dreamed that night of royal banquets, and of a glorious crown, glittering like fire, upon his head, and of giving audience to foreign ambassadors, and reviewing vast armies; the other, of the hospitable palm and the rivulet in the deserts of Arabia. The poor man awaked the first, and how was he surprised to find the Tsarévich by his side! Mournfully he shook his hoary head, and wept, and was about to bless him, when he heard the joyful gallant cry of Dmítri Ivánovich as he dreamed—“Warriors!⸺on the Tartars!⸺on Lithuania!⸺”

And immediately awoke the young prince. Long he rubbed his eyes, and gazed around him, and then, falling on Afóniya’s bosom, he melted into tears. “Ah, father, father, I have been dreaming⸺”

His words were strangled by sobs.

Soon all that he had seen and heard in the palace of the Great Prince began to appear to him as a dream. Only when he recalled to his memory that weary vision, he felt on his forehead the icy seal which had been placed on it by the lips of the dying Tsar.

The winter came: all was as before in the Black House; nothing but the decorations of the scene had changed: the uniform sound of the falling drops was dumb, the bright speck had vanished from the bladder window-pane; instead, a silvery film of frost adhered to the corners of the walls and the crevices of the ceiling, and the bright speck, through which the captive could see the heavens, with their sun and free birds, was veiled with a thick patch. But Afóniya, as of old, visited the dungeon. He had finished his tale of the Almayne, whom they called the Heretic, and the scribe Nebogáty, putting it on paper word for word, had placed the roll in his iron chest,—an amusement for his descendants.

Thus passed a little more than three years.

The royal prisoner was no longer in the dungeon, and Afanási Nikítin was seen no more within it. Assuredly Dmítri Ivánovich had been set at liberty. Yes, the Lord had set him free from all earthly bonds. Thus writes an annalist: “In the year 1509, on the fourteenth of February, departed this life the Grand Prince Dmítri Ivánovich, in prison.” Gerberstein adds: “It is thought he was starved—with cold or with hunger—to death, or stifled with smoke.”—From The Heretic, translated from the Russian by Thomas B. Shaw, Edinburgh and London, 1844.

[6] See vol. i., p. 111.

Baron Antón Antónovich Délvig. (1798-1831.)

Délvig entered the Lyceum at Tsárskoe-Seló on the same day with Púshkin, whose friend he remained to his death. He began writing poetry at about the same time as his more gifted schoolmate. At first he confined himself to more or less close imitations of Horace, but under Púshkin’s influence he soon turned his attention to original poems. Though only a star of the second magnitude, his verses became very popular and were set to music. Later they served as the starting-point for the popular poets, Koltsóv, Nekrásov, and others.

GLOOMY THOUGHTS

To-day I feast with you, dear friends,

With joy our spirits burn;

To-morrow’s chance may find me there

Whence I shall not return.

Thus, long ago, I spake to those

Who were with merriment wild;

For gloomy thoughts of coming grief

Possessed me from a child.

My laughing friends around my locks

Enwreathed a fresh bright crown;

“For shame!” they cried; “youth’s not a time

To wear a moody frown.”

War breaking out, my friends to it

As to a banquet prest;

I with them; but me cruel fate

Soon parted from the rest.

In weary idleness their steps

I followed mentally;

And oft their relatives I cheered

With words of victory.

Time passed: the thoughts of days gone by

Sad tears of sorrow yield;

Then ceased the war. Where are my friends?

Dead on the battlefield.

Now I am sorrowful at feasts,

Where others’ joy is great;

In wine-cups e’en the past recalled

Embitters all my state.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Sang a little bird, and sang,

And grew silent;

Knew the heart of merriment,

And forgot it.

Why, O little songster bird,

Grew you quiet?

How learned you, O heart, to know

Gloomy sorrow?

Ah! the little bird was killed

By grim snow-blasts;

Perished is the fellow brave

Through ill gossips!

Had the bird but flown away

Tow’rds the blue sea!

Had the youth but run away

Tow’rds the forest!

On the sea the billows roar,

And not snow-blasts;

In the woods are evil beasts,

And not people!

Ah, you night, you little night!

Ah, you night, you stormy night!

Why from early evening tide

Even to the midnight late

Twinkle not your little stars,

Shineth not your full-orbed moon?

You are veiled with darkling clouds!

’T is with you, I think, O night,

Even as with me, young man,—

Villain grief has called on us!

When the dire one takes abode

Somewhere deep within the heart,—

You forget the lasses fair,

Dances and obeisances;

You forget from evening tide

Even to the midnight late,

Singing songs, to take delight

In the chorus and the dance.

No, you sob, you weep aloud,—

And, a sad and lonely lad,

You upon your coarse straw bed

Throw yourself as in the grave!

Aleksándr Sergyéevich Púshkin. (1799-1837.)

Púshkin was descended, on his father’s side, from a family of distinguished men, and, on his mother’s side, from Peter the Great’s favourite negro, Hannibal. Having early lost his mother, he was brought up by his grandmother, but the greatest influence upon his first education had his nurse, Arína Rodiónovna, who charmed him with her rich stock of popular stories and fairy tales, and who, even later in life, inspired him with national themes. In 1811 Púshkin entered the newly opened Lyceum at Tsárskoe Seló, where he did not display any especial aptitude for studies; but he soon began to write poetry, and in 1817, at graduation, read his own production which attracted attention. After leaving school he threw himself into the whirl of society pleasures, but at the same time devoted himself to his first great poem, still in the Romantic style of the older generation, Ruslán and Lyudmíla. In 1820 he incurred the displeasure of the Government for writing some verses on liberty and for his liberal utterances. He was banished to the south, passing part of the time in the Caucasus. Here his genius was unfolded in all its greatness. In the Caucasus he wrote The Prisoner of the Caucasus; the Crimea gave him material for his Bakhchisaráy Fountain; in the neighbourhood of Odessa he composed his Gypsies and laid the foundation for Evgéni Onyégin, besides writing a large number of smaller poems. In 1824 Púshkin was permitted to return to his native village, in the Government of Pskov, where he remained two years, after which he was, by the intercession of his friends, allowed to settle in the capitals. In this last period of his activity he devoted himself more especially to subjects taken from Russian life. He wrote his series of fairy tales, illustrated the acts of Peter the Great by a number of poems, of which The Bronze Rider is the best known, and wrote a History of the Pugachév Rebellion. Aspersion upon his domestic life caused him to challenge to a duel the son of the Dutch ambassador, by whom he was killed in 1837, in his thirty-eighth year.

Púshkin’s great poetical genius has not been surpassed by that of any other Russian poet, and has only been equalled by that of Lérmontov. All the later generations have drawn their inspiration from him. Since the forties his importance has been obscured by the universal domination of the democratic spirit in literature, as evidenced in the Russian novel. The celebration of the centennary anniversary of his birth has given rise to a wide-spread interest in Púshkin, and his influence is again in the ascendant.

Púshkin’s prose tales have often been translated into English: Queen of Spades, in Chambers’s Papers, 1850, and Living Age, 1850, also in Gift of Friendship, 1854; The Captain’s Daughter, translated by J. F. Hanstein, London, 1859; some tales in Simple Tales, a Reading Book for Little Folks, by Mary Anna Pietzker, St. Petersburg, 1860; The Pistolshot, in the Albion, 1861; Russian Romance (consisting of miscellaneous tales), by Mrs. J. B. Telfer (née Mouravieff), London, 1873 and 1880; Queen of Spades, in Lippincott’s Magazine, 1876; Marie, a Story of Russian Love, by Marie H. de Zielinska, Chicago, 1877 (1876); The Captain’s Daughter, a Tale of the Time of Catherine II. of Russia, translated by Madame Igelström and Mrs. Percy Easton, London, 1883; Queen of Spades, in Modern Age, 1884; The Daughter of the Commandant, a Russian Romance, translated by Mrs. Milne Home, London, 1891; The Queen of Spades and Other Stories, from the Russian, by Mrs. Sutherland Edwards (the first three stories had appeared before in the Strand Magazine), London, 1892; Tales from the Russian, I.—Dubrovsky (in Railway and General Automatic Library), London, 1892; The Prose Tales of A. Poushkin, from the Russian, by T. Keane, London, 1894 and 1896.

Of his poetical works the following have been translated: Extracts from Ruslán and Lyudmíla, The Prisoner, The Robbers, in Russian Literature and Poetry, in Foreign Review, 1827; extracts from The Fountain of Bakhchisaráy and Poltava in The Foreign Quarterly Review, 1832; The Talisman, with Other Pieces (The Hermit), translated by George Borrow, St. Petersburg, 1835; Pushkin, the Russian Poet (containing October 19, 1825, Caucasus, To ⸺, The Mob, The Black Shawl, The Rose, Napoleon, The Storm, The General, Alas for Her, To the Sea, Echo, The Lay of the Wise Oleg, Remembrance, I have outlived the hopes that charmed me, Motion, To the Slanderers of Russia, Presentiment, The Madonna, André Chénier), by T. B. Shaw, in The Edinburgh Blackwood Magazine, 1845; The Bakhchesarian Fountain, W. D. Lewis, Philadelphia, 1849; several poems, by W. R. Morfill, in Constitutional Press, 1860; On the Calumniators of Russia, by W. R. Morfill, in Literary Gazette, 1861; Translations from Russian and German Poets, by a Russian Lady (containing two extracts from The Gypsies, The Poet, The Angel, The 19th of October, The Demon, and several minor poems), Baden-Baden, 1878; Eugene Oneguine, translated by Lieut. Col. Spalding, London, 1881; The Black Shawl, The Talisman, Ode to the Sea, and several extracts (the first two, amended, in The Story of Russia, New York and London, 1890), by W. R. Morfill, in Westminster Review, 1883; The Flower, The Birds, The Bridegroom, The Winter Journey, The Anchor, Poltava, Song of Oleg the Wise, To ⸺, The Angel, The Demons, in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887; Poems by Alexander Pushkin, translated by Ivan Panin, Boston, 1888; parts of Boris Godunov in Shakespeare and the Russian Drama, by N. H. Dole, in Poet Lore, vol. i. (1889); I wander down the noisy streets, Anacreontic, To his Wife, Let me not lose my senses, I’ve overlived aspirings, Peter the Great, The Prophet, Play, My Kathleen, A Monument, The Poet, in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891. In Free Russia have appeared: by Charlotte Sidgwick, in vol. x., No. 1, The Poison-Tree, ib., No. 3, The Monument; by Mrs. M. G. Walker, in vol. x., No. 4, The Prophet; by Elizabeth Gibson, vol. xii., No. 2, A Message. In The Anglo-Russian Literary Society have been published: some verses, by a Russian lady, in No. 11; by F. P. Marchant, Scene from “Boris Godunov,” in No. 13, The Shield of Oleg, in No. 15, The Prophet, The Three Springs, The Prayer, Truth, in No. 22, To My Friends, in No. 32; by J. Pollen, The Talisman, in No. 22; by Miss H. Frank, The Demons, in No. 34; by L. A. Magnus, Through clam’rous streets my feet may stray, in No. 33. In the Library of the World’s Best Literature are given: by N. H. Dole, The Bard, The Angel, The Free Life of the Bird (a different version of this poem is given below); reprints of several of T. B. Shaw’s and J. Pollen’s poems, and extracts from Boris Godunov and Evgeni Onyegin, by Miss I. Hapgood.

FROM “THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER”

As I crossed the square I saw several Bashkirs assembled round the gibbets, engaged in dragging off the boots of those who had been hanged. With difficulty I repressed my indignation, feeling convinced that if I gave expression to it, it would have been perfectly useless. The brigands invaded every part of the fortress, and plundered the officers’ houses. On every side resounded the shouts of the drunken mutineers. I reached home. Savélich met me on the threshold.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed when he saw me; “I was beginning to think that the villains had seized you again. Ah! my little father, Peter Andréich, will you believe it, the robbers have plundered us of everything—clothes, linen, furniture, plate—they have not left us a single thing. But what does it matter? Thank God! they have spared your life. But, my lord, did you recognise their leader?”

“No, I did not recognise him. Who is he then?”

“How, my little father! Have you forgotten that drunken scoundrel who swindled you out of the pelisse at the inn? A brand new hairskin pelisse; and the beast burst the seams in putting it on.”

I was astounded. In truth, the resemblance of Pugachév to my guide was very striking. I felt convinced that Pugachév and he were one and the same person, and then I understood why he had spared my life. I could not but feel surprised at the strange connection of events—a child’s pelisse, given to a roving vagrant, had saved me from the hangman’s noose, and a drunkard, who had passed his life in wandering from one inn to another, was now besieging fortresses and shaking the empire!

“Will you not eat something?” asked Savélich, still faithful to his old habits. “There is nothing in the house; but I will go and search, and get something ready for you.”

When I was left alone, I began to reflect. What was I to do? To remain in the fortress now that it was in the hands of the villain, or to join his band, was unworthy of an officer. Duty demanded that I should go wherever my services might still be of use to my fatherland in the present critical position of its affairs⸺ But love strongly urged me to remain near Maria Ivánovna and be her protector and defender. Although I foresaw a speedy and inevitable change in the course of affairs, yet I could not help trembling when I thought of the danger of her situation. My reflections were interrupted by the arrival of one of the Cossacks, who came to inform me that “the great Tsar required me to appear before him.”

“Where is he?” I asked, preparing to obey.

“In the Commandant’s house,” replied the Cossack. “After dinner our father took a bath, but at present he is resting. Ah! your Excellency, it is very evident that he is a distinguished person; at dinner he deigned to eat two roasted sucking pigs, then he entered the bath, where the water was so hot that even Tarás Kúrochkin could not bear it; he had to give the besom to Fomká Bikbáev, and only came to himself through having cold water poured over him. There is no denying it; all his ways are majestic⸺ And I was told that in the bath he showed his Tsar’s signs upon his breast: on one side a two-headed eagle as large as a five-kopek piece, and on the other his own likeness.”

I did not consider it necessary to contradict the Cossack’s statement, and I accompanied him to the Commandant’s house, trying to imagine beforehand what kind of a reception I should meet with from Pugachév, and endeavouring to guess how it would end. The reader will easily understand that I did not by any means feel easy within myself.

It was beginning to get dark when I reached the Commandant’s house. The gibbet, with its victims, loomed black and terrible before me. The body of the poor Commandant’s wife still lay at the bottom of the steps, near which two Cossacks stood on guard. The Cossack who accompanied me went in to announce me, and, returning almost immediately, conducted me into the room where, the evening before, I had taken a tender farewell of Maria Ivánovna. An unusual spectacle presented itself to my gaze. At a table, covered with a cloth and loaded with bottles and glasses, sat Pugachév and some half a score of Cossack chiefs, in coloured caps and shirts, heated with wine, with flushed faces and flashing eyes. I did not see among them Shvabrín and his fellow traitor, the orderly.

“Ah! your Excellency!” said Pugachév, seeing me. “Welcome; honour to you and a place at our banquet.”

The guests moved closer together. I sat down silently at the end of the table. My neighbour, a young Cossack, tall and handsome, poured out for me a glass of wine, which, however, I did not touch. I began to observe the company with curiosity. Pugachév occupied the seat of honour, his elbows resting on the table, and his broad fist propped under his black beard. His features, regular and sufficiently agreeable, had nothing fierce about them. He frequently turned to speak to a man of about fifty years of age, addressing him sometimes as Count, sometimes as Timoféich, sometimes as uncle. All those present treated each other as comrades, and did not show any particular respect for their leader. The conversation was upon the revolt, and of their future operations. Each one boasted of what he had done, expressed his opinion, and fearlessly contradicted Pugachév. And in this strange council of war it was resolved to march upon Orenbúrg; a bold movement, and which was to be very nearly crowned with success. The march was fixed for the following day.

“Now, lads,” said Pugachév, “before we retire to rest, let us have my favourite song. Chumakóv, begin!”

My neighbour sang, in a shrill voice, the following melancholy peasant’s song, and all joined in the chorus:

“Stir not, mother, green forest of oak,

Disturb me not in my meditation;

For to-morrow before the court I must go,

Before the stern judge, before the Tsar himself.

The great Lord Tsar will begin to question me:

‘Tell me, young man, tell me, thou peasant’s son,

With whom have you stolen, with whom have you robbed?

Did you have many companions with you?’

‘I will tell you, true-believing Tsar,

The whole truth I will confess to you.

My companions were four in number:

My first companion was the dark night,

My second companion was a steel knife,

My third companion was my good horse,

My fourth companion was my taut bow,

My messengers were my tempered arrows.’

Then speaks my hope, the true-believing Tsar:

‘Well done, my lad, brave peasant’s son;

You knew how to steal, you knew how to reply:

Therefore, my lad, I will make you a present

Of a very high structure in the midst of a field—

Of two upright posts with a cross-beam above.’”

It is impossible to describe the effect produced upon me by this popular gallows song, trolled out by men destined for the gallows. Their ferocious countenances, their sonorous voices, and the melancholy expression which they imparted to the words, which in themselves were not very expressive, filled me with a sort of poetical terror.

The guests drank another glass, then rose from the table and took leave of Pugachév.

I wanted to follow them, but Pugachév said to me:

“Sit down; I want to speak to you.”

We remained face to face.

For some moments we both continued silent. Pugachév looked at me fixedly, every now and then winking his left eye with a curious expression of craftiness and drollery. At last he burst out laughing, and with such unfeigned merriment that I, too, looking at him, began to laugh, without knowing why.

“Well, your lordship,” he said to me, “confess now, you were in a terrible fright when my fellows put the rope round your neck. I do not believe that the sky appeared bigger than a sheepskin to you just then⸺ You would have been strung up to the crossbeam if it had not been for your servant. I knew the old fellow at once. Well, would your lordship have thought that the man who conducted you to the inn was the great Tsar himself?”

Here he assumed an air of mystery and importance.

“You have been guilty of a serious offence against me,” continued he, “but I pardoned you on account of your virtue, and because you rendered me a service when I was compelled to hide myself from my enemies. But you will see something very different presently! You will see how I will reward you when I enter into possession of my kingdom! Will you promise to serve me with zeal?”

The rascal’s question, and his insolence, appeared to me so amusing that I could not help smiling.

“Why do you smile?” he asked, frowning. “Perhaps you do not believe that I am the great Tsar? Is that so?—Answer plainly!”

I became confused. To acknowledge a vagabond as emperor was quite out of the question; to do so seemed to me unpardonable cowardice. To tell him to his face that he was an imposter was to expose myself to certain death, and that which I was prepared to say beneath the gibbet before the eyes of the crowd, in the first outburst of my indignation, appeared to me now a useless boast. I hesitated. In gloomy silence Pugachév awaited my reply. At last (and even now I remember that moment with self-satisfaction) the sentiment of duty triumphed over my human weakness. I replied to Pugachév:

“Listen, I will tell you the whole truth. Judge yourself: can I acknowledge you as emperor? You, a sensible man, would know that it would not be saying what I really thought.”

“Who am I, then, in your opinion?”

“God only knows; but whatever you may be, you are playing a dangerous game.”

Pugachév threw a rapid glance at me.

“Then you do not believe,” said he, “that I am the Emperor Peter? Well, be it so. But is not success the reward of the bold? Did not Gríshka Otrépev reign in former days? Think of me what you please, but do not leave me. What does it matter to you one way or the other? Whoever is pope is father. Serve me faithfully and truly, and I will make you a field-marshal and a prince. What do you say?”

“No,” I replied with firmness. “I am by birth a nobleman; I have taken the oath of fealty to the Empress; I cannot serve you. If you really wish me well, send me back to Orenbúrg.”

Pugachév reflected.

“But if I let you go,” said he, “will you at least promise not to serve against me?”

“How can I promise you that?” I replied. “You yourself know that it does not depend upon my will. If I am ordered to march against you, I must go—there is no help for it. You yourself are now a chief; you demand obedience from your followers. How would it seem if I refused to serve when my services were needed? My life is in your hands; if you set me free, I will thank you; if you put me to death, God will be your judge; but I have told you the truth.”

My frankness struck Pugachév.

“Be it so,” said he, slapping me upon the shoulder. “One should either punish completely or pardon completely. Go then where you like. Come to-morrow to say good-bye to me, and now go to bed. I feel very drowsy myself.”

I left Pugachév and went out into the street. The night was calm and cold. The moon and stars were shining brightly, lighting up the square and the gibbet. In the fortress all was dark and still. Only in the tavern was a light visible, where could be heard the noise of the late revellers. I glanced at the pope’s house. The shutters and doors were closed. Everything seemed quiet within.

I made my way to my own quarters and found Savélich grieving about my absence. The news of my being set at liberty filled him with unutterable joy.

“Thanks be to Thee, Almighty God!” said he, making the sign of the cross. “At daybreak to-morrow we will leave the fortress and go wherever God will direct us. I have prepared something for you; eat it, my little father, and then rest yourself till the morning, as if you were in the bosom of Christ.”

I followed his advice and, having eaten with a good appetite, I fell asleep upon the bare floor, worn out both in body and mind.—From T. Keane’s The Prose Tales of Alexander Poushkin.

FROM “EVGÉNI ONYÉGIN”

TATYÁNA’S LETTER TO ONYÉGIN

I write to you! Is more required?

Can lower depths beyond remain?

’T is in your power now, if desired,

To crush me with a just disdain.

But if my lot unfortunate

You in the least commiserate

You will not all abandon me.

At first I clung to secrecy:

Believe me, of my present shame

You never would have heard the name,

If the fond hope I could have fanned

At times, if only once a week,

To see you by our fireside stand,

To listen to the words you speak,

Address to you one single phrase

And then to meditate for days

Of one thing till again we met.

’T is said you are a misanthrope,

In country solitude you mope,

And we—an unattractive set—

Can hearty welcome give alone.

Why did you visit our poor place?

Forgotten in the village lone,

I never should have seen your face

And bitter torment never known.

The untutored spirit’s pangs calmed down

By time (who can anticipate?)

I had found my predestinate,

Become a faithful wife and e’en

A fond and careful mother been.

Another! to none other I

My heart’s allegiance can resign,

My doom has been pronounced on high,

’T is Heaven’s will and I am thine.

The sum of my existence gone

But promise of our meeting gave,

I feel thou wast by God sent down

My guardian angel to the grave.

Thou didst to me in dreams appear,

Unseen thou wast already dear.

Thine eye subdued me with strange glance,

I heard thy voice’s resonance

Long ago. Dream it cannot be!

Scarce hadst thou entered thee I knew,

I flushed up, stupefied I grew,

And cried within myself: ’t is he!

Is it not truth? in tones suppressed

With thee I conversed when I bore

Comfort and succour to the poor,

And when I prayer to Heaven addressed

To ease the anguish of my breast.

Nay! even as this instant fled,

Was it not thou, O vision bright,

That glimmered through the radiant night

And gently hovered o’er my head?

Was it not thou who thus didst stoop

To whisper comfort, love, and hope?—

Who art thou? Guardian angel sent

Or torturer malevolent?

Doubt and uncertainty decide:

All this may be an empty dream,

Delusions of a mind untried,

Providence otherwise may deem—

Then be it so! My destiny

From henceforth I confide to thee!

Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour

And thy protection I implore.

Imagine! Here alone am I!

No one my anguish comprehends,

At times my reason almost bends,

And silently I here must die—

But I await thee: scarce alive,

My heart with but one look revive;

Or to disturb my dreams approach

Alas! with merited reproach.

’T is finished. Horrible to read!

With shame I shudder and with dread—

But boldly I myself resign:

Thine honour is my countersign!

—From Lieut.-Col. Spalding’s Eugene Onéguine, London, 1881.

FROM “THE BAKHCHISARÁY FOUNTAIN”

Days passed away; Maria slept

Peaceful, no cares disturbed her, now—

From earth the orphan maid was swept.

But who knew when, or where, or how?

If prey to grief or pain she fell,

If slain or Heaven-struck, who can tell?

She sleeps; her loss the chieftain grieves,

And his neglected harem leaves,

Flies from its tranquil precincts far,

And with his Tartars takes the field,

Fierce rushes mid the din of war,

And brave the foe that does not yield,

For mad despair hath nerved his arm,

Though in his heart is grief concealed,

With passion’s hopeless transports warm.

His blade he swings aloft in air

And wildly brandishes, then low

It falls, whilst he with pallid stare

Gazes, and tears in torrents flow.

His harem by the chief deserted,

In foreign lands he warring roved,

Long nor in wish nor thought reverted

To scene once cherished and beloved.

His women, to the eunuch’s rage

Abandoned, pined and sank in age.

The fair Grusinian now no more

Yielded her soul to passion’s power,

Her fate was with Maria’s blended,

On the same night their sorrows ended;

Seized by mute guards the hapless fair

Into a deep abyss they threw,—

If vast her crime, through love’s despair,

Her punishment was dreadful too!

At length th’ exhausted Khan returned,

Enough of waste his sword had dealt,

The Russian cot no longer burned,

Nor Caucasus his fury felt.

In token of Maria’s loss

A marble fountain he upreared

In spot recluse:—the Christian’s cross

Upon the monument appeared

(Surmounting it a crescent bright,

Emblem of ignorance and night!).

Th’ inscription mid the silent waste

Not yet has time’s rude hand effaced,

Still do the gurgling waters pour

Their streams dispensing sadness round,

As mothers weep for sons no more,

In never-ending sorrows drowned.

In morn fair maids, (and twilight late,)

Roam where this monument appears,

And pitying poor Maria’s fate

Entitle it the Fount of Tears!

—From W. D. Lewis’s The Bakchesarian Fountain.

THE POISON-TREE

Remote and dire, in desert-lands

Where naught but sunburnt sod is seen,

Anchár, the Tree of Poison, stands—

A sentinel, with threatening mien.

The thirsty steppe-land gave it birth

In bitterness and anger dark;

It sucked foul venom from the earth,

Its roots and leaves are dead and stark.

At noon, when fiercest sunlight glows,

The poison from its veins escapes,

And trickling down the stem it flows

By evening into globèd shapes.

No bird will seek this Tree of Death,

Nor dare the tiger prowl anigh,

The hungry whirlwind’s dusty breath

Grows baneful as it hastens by.

If e’er a wand’ring cloud distil

Soft rains upon its blighted top,

Their harmless nature turns to ill,

And changed, in deadly dews they drop.

But yet a man’s imperial nod

Sent forth a fellow-man afar,

Whose meek, obedient footsteps trod,

Right to the base of foul Anchár.

By morning he returned, and bore

The fatal resin, with a bough

Of withered leaves, and like it wore

A wasted look—and from his brow

Cold sweat was streaming, and he tried

To stand, but fell to earth prostrate.

And there, poor slave! he sank and died

In presence of the Potentate,

Who sopped his arrows in the bane,

And sent them dark—a doom new-found!—

By messenger o’er hill and plain

To neighbours in the countries round.

—Transl. by Charlotte Sidgwick, in Free Russia, January, 1899 (vol. x., No. 1).

THE BIRD

Naught of labour, naught of sorrow,

On God’s little bird doth rest,

And it questions not the morrow,

Builds itself no lasting nest.

On the bough it sleeps and swings

Till the ruddy sun appears,

Then it shakes its wings and sings,

When the voice of God it hears.

After Spring’s delightful weather,

When the burning Summer’s fled,

And the Autumn brings together

For men’s sorrow, for men’s dread,

Mists and storms in gloomy legions;

Then the bird across the main

Flies to far-off, southern regions,

Till the Spring returns again.

—Transl. by N. H. Dole (publication unascertainable).

THE PROPHET

By spiritual thirst opprest,

I hied me to the desert dim,

When lo! upon my path appeared

The holy six-winged seraphim.

My brow his fingers lightly pressed,

Soothing my eyelids into rest:

Open my inward vision flies,

As ope a startled eaglet’s eyes.

He touched my ears, and they were filled

With sounds that all my being thrilled.

I felt a trembling fill the skies,

I heard the sweep of angels’ wings,

Beneath the sea saw creeping things,

And in the valleys vines arise.

Over my lips a while he hung,

And tore from me my sinful tongue—

The babbling tongue of vanity.

The sting of serpent’s subtlety

Within my lips, as chilled I stood,

He placed, with right hand red with blood.

Then with a sword my bosom cut,

And forth my quivering heart he drew;

A glowing coal of fire he put

Within my breast laid bare to view.

As corpse-like on the waste I lay,

Thus unto me God’s voice did say—

“Prophet, arise! Confess My Name;

Fulfil my will; submit to Me!

Arise! Go forth o’er land and sea,

And with high words men’s hearts inflame!”

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

THE TALISMAN

Where fierce the surge with awful bellow

Doth ever lash the rocky wall,

And where the moon most brightly mellow

Doth beam when mists of evening fall;

Where midst his harem’s countless blisses

The Moslem spends his vital span,

A sorceress there with gentle kisses

Presented me a Talisman.

And said: “Until thy latest minute

Preserve, preserve my Talisman;

A secret power it holds within it,—

’T was love, true love the gift did plan.

From pest on land or death on ocean

When hurricanes its surface fan,

O object of my fond devotion!

Thou scap’st not by my Talisman.

“The gem in eastern mine which slumbers,

Or ruddy gold ’t will not bestow;

’T will not subdue the turbanned numbers

Before the Prophet’s shrine which bow;

Nor high through air on friendly pinions

Can bear thee swift to home or clan,

From mournful climes or strange dominions,

From South to North,—my Talisman.

“But oh! when crafty eyes thy reason

With sorceries sudden seek to move,

And when in night’s mysterious season

Lips cling to thine,—but not in love,—

From proving then, dear youth, a booty

To those who falsely would trepan,

From new heart wounds, and lapse from duty,

Protect thee shall my Talisman.”

—From The Talisman, and Other Pieces, by George Borrow, St. Petersburg, 1835.

THE LAY OF THE WISE OLÉG

Wise Olég to the war he hath bound him again,

The Khozárs have awakened his ire;

For rapine and raid, hamlet, city, and plain

Are devoted to falchion and fire.

In mail of Byzance, girt with many a good spear,

The Prince pricks along on his faithful destrere.

From the darksome fir-forest, to meet that array,

Forth paces a grey-haired magician:

To none but Perún did that sorcerer pray,

Fulfilling the prophet’s dread mission:

His life he had wasted in penance and pain:—

And beside that enchanter Olég drew his rein.

“Now rede me, enchanter, beloved of Perún,

The good and the ill that ’s before me;

Shall I soon give my neighbour-foes triumph, and soon

Shall the earth of the grave be piled o’er me?

Unfold all the truth; fear me not; and for meed,

Choose among them,—I give thee my best battle-steed.”

“O enchanters, they care not for prince or for peer,

And gifts are but needlessly given;

The wise tongue ne’er stumbleth for falsehood or fear,

’T is the friend of the councils of Heaven!

The years of the future are clouded and dark,

Yet on thy fair forehead thy fate I can mark:

“Remember now firmly the words of my tongue;

For the chief finds a rapture in glory:

On the gate of Byzantium thy buckler is hung,

Thy name shall be deathless in story;

Wild waves and broad kingdoms thy sceptre obey,

And the foe sees with envy so boundless a sway:

“And the blue sea, uplifting its treacherous wave,

In its wrath,—in the hurricane-hour,—

And the knife of the coward, the sword of the brave,

To slay thee shall never have power:

Within thy strong harness no wound shalt thou know,

For a guardian unseen shall defend thee below.

“Thy steed fears not labour, nor danger, nor pain,

His lord’s lightest accent he heareth,

Now still, though the arrows fall round him like rain,

Now o’er the red field he careereth;

He fears not the winter, he fears not to bleed,—

Yet thy death-wound shall come from thy good battle-steed!”

Olég smiled a moment, but yet on his brow,

And lip, thought and sorrow were blended:

In silence he bent on his saddle, and slow

The Prince from his courser descended;

And as though from a friend he were parting with pain,

He strokes his broad neck and his dark flowing mane.

“Farewell then, my comrade, fleet, faithful, and bold!

We must part,—such is Destiny’s power:

Now rest thee,—I swear, in thy stirrup of gold

No foot shall e’er rest, from this hour.

Farewell! we ’ve been comrades for many a long year,—

My squires, now I pray ye, come take my destrere.

“The softest of carpets his horse-cloth shall be:

And lead him away to the meadow;

On the choicest of corn he shall feed daintilie,

He shall drink of the well in the shadow.”

Then straightway departed the squires with the steed,

And to valiant Olég a fresh courser they lead.

Olég and his comrades are feasting, I trow;

The mead-cups are merrily clashing:

Their locks are as white as the dawn-lighted snow

On the peak of the mountain-top flashing:

They talk of old times, of the days of their pride,

And the fights where together they struck side by side.

“But where,” quoth Olég, “is my good battle-horse?

My mettlesome charger,—how fares he?

Is he playful as ever, as fleet in the course;

His age and his freedom how bears he?”

They answer and say: on the hill by the stream

He has long slept the slumber that knows not a dream.

Olég then grew thoughtful, and bent down his brow:

“O man, what can magic avail thee!

A false lying dotard, Enchanter, art thou:

Our rage and contempt shall assail thee.

My horse might have borne me till now, but for thee!”

Then the bones of his charger Olég went to see.

Olég he rode forth with his spearmen beside;

At his bridle Prince Ígor he hurried:

And they see on a hillock by Dnieper’s swift tide

Where the steed’s noble bones lie unburied:

They are washed by the rain, the dust o’er them is cast,

And above them the feather-grass waves in the blast.

Then the Prince set his foot on the courser’s white skull,

Saying: “Sleep, my old friend, in thy glory!

Thy lord hath outlived thee, his days are nigh full:

At his funeral feast, red and gory,

’T is not thou ’neath the axe that shall redden the sod,

That my dust may be pleasured to quaff thy brave blood.

“And am I to find my destruction in this?

My death in a skeleton seeking?”

From the skull of the courser a snake, with a hiss,

Crept forth as the hero was speaking:

Round his legs, like a ribbon, it twined its black ring;

And the Prince shrieked aloud as he felt the keen sting.

The mead-cups are foaming, they circle around,—

At Olég’s mighty Death-Feast they ’re ringing;

Prince Ígor and Ólga they sit on the mound;

The war-men the death-song are singing:

And they talk of old times, of the days of their pride,

And the fights where together they struck side by side.

—From T. B. Shaw’s Pushkin, the Russian Poet, in Blackwood’s Magazine, 1845.

TO THE SLANDERERS OF RUSSIA

Why rave ye, babblers, so—ye lords of popular wonder?

Why such anathemas ’gainst Russia do you thunder?

What moves your idle rage? Is ’t Poland’s fallen pride?

’T is but Slavonic kin among themselves contending,

An ancient household strife, oft judged but still unending,

A question which, be sure, ye never can decide.

For ages past still have contended

These races, though so near allied:

And oft ’neath Victory’s storm has bended

Now Poland’s, and now Russia’s side.

Which shall stand fast in such commotion,

The haughty Pole, or faithful Russ?

And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean—

Or that dry up? This is point for us.

Peace, peace! your eyes are all unable

To read our history’s bloody table;

Strange in your sight and dark must be

Our springs of household enmity!

To you the Kreml and Prága’s tower

Are voiceless all,—you mark the fate

And daring of the battle-hour,—

And understand us not, but hate⸺

What stirs ye? Is it that this nation

On Moscow’s flaming wall, blood-slaked and ruin-quenched,

Spurned back the insolent dictation

Of Him before whose nod ye blenched?

Is it that into dust we shattered

The Dagon that weighed down the earth so wearily?

And our best blood so freely scattered

To buy for Europe peace and liberty?

Ye ’re bold of tongue—but hard, would ye in deed but try it.

Or is the hero, now reclined in laurelled quiet,

Too weak to fix once more Izmail’s red bayonet?

Or hath the Russian Tsar ever in vain commanded?

Or must we meet all Europe banded?

Have we forgot to conquer yet?

Or rather, shall they not, from Perm to Tauris’ fountains,

From the hot Colchian steppes to Finland’s icy mountains,

From the grey Kreml’s half-shattered wall,

To far Kathay, in dotage buried,—

A steely rampart close and serried,

Rise, Russia’s warriors, one and all?

Then send your numbers without number,

Your maddened sons, your goaded slaves,

In Russia’s plains there ’s room to slumber,

And well they ’ll know their brethren’s graves!

—From T. B. Shaw’s Pushkin, the Russian Poet, in Blackwood’s Magazine, 1845.

FROM “BORÍS GODUNÓV”

I

Night: A cell in the Chúdov monastery

FATHER PÍMEN, GRIGÓRI (sleeping).

Pímen (writing before a lamp). Once more, one final anecdote, and then

My manuscript will be complete, the task

On me, a sinner, laid by God, fulfilled.

’T is not for naught that during all these years

The Lord hath made me witness many things,

And taught me all the art of writing books.

When in the future some industrious monk

Shall find my hard-accomplished, nameless work,

He will, like me, illume his little lamp,

And, brushing off the dust of centuries,

Will copy down my truthful chronicle.

Then will the children of believers true

Read all the story of their native land,

Recall the labours of their mighty Tsars,

Performed for them, for glory and for right,

And humbly offer prayers that God will blot

The crimes, though dark, of him who wrought for them.

Thus, bent for many years I live anew.

The past before me rose its hurrying flood.

Is ’t long ago that like the angry sea

Time’s fateful surges broke in great events?

And now it rests in motionless repose!

Not many men my memory preserves,

Not many words are in my mind engrossed,

And all the rest for ever now are gone.

But day is nigh, my little lamp burns dim,

One more, one final story of the past! (Writes.)

Grigóri (wakes). That dream again? How strange! That cursèd dream!

Thrice have I dreamed it! But the aged man

Still sits before his little lamp and writes.

He hath not closed his eyes the livelong night

In slumber: how I love his peaceful mien,

As, deeply buried in the past, his soul

Broods o’er the secret of his manuscript.

How gladly would I scan his precious line.

What writeth he: the Tatars’ bloody reign,—

The cruel deeds of John the Terrible?

The stormy council of old Nóvgorod?

The glories of the fatherland? In vain!

Nor in his glance nor in his lofty brow

Can one discern the secrets of his mind:

His mien is calm and full of majesty,

As well becomes an aged priest who looks

With cloudless eye on good and evil men

Impartially, detecting right and wrong

Or hatred or compassion knowing not.

Pímen. Art thou awake?

Grigóri.art thou awake? Thy blessing, honoured sire.

Pímen. The Lord His blessing grant thee, oh, my son,

To-day, hereafter, and for evermore!

Grigóri. Long has thy pen been busy, nor has sleep

Once brought thee sweet oblivion this night;

But some strange, diabolic vision hath disturbed

My rest: my enemy hath tormented me.

I dreamed that up the winding narrow stairs

I mounted to the windy tower alone;

Before me from the top all Moscow lay

Diminished like an ant-hill. Far below

The people swarmed and babbled in the square

And jeered at me with senseless ridicule.

Shame mastered me and terror overwhelmed,

And, falling headlong on my face, I waked.

’T is thrice that I have dreamed the selfsame dream.

Is ’t not a marvel?

Pímen.a marvel?’T is thy youthful blood

Makes sport of thee: by prayer and strenuous fast

Thy dreams will be with peaceful visions filled.

’T is e’en not otherwise with me when I,

Dazed with involuntary drowsiness,

E’er fail my soul with earnest prayer to guard—

My aged dreams are then disturbed with sin:

While scenes of banqueting torment me oft,

Now warlike camps or surging battles rude,

Now senseless dissipations of wild youth.

Grigóri. How gaily must have passed thy youthful days!

Thou wast in battle ’neath Kazán’s high walls;

Hast shared the wars in Lithuania’s plains;

Hast seen the wanton court of John the Great.

How fortunate! But I from earliest years

Have been immured in cells a needy monk!

Why should not I have had delight in war

And feasted at the table of the Tsar?

Then, when I reached like thee the term of life,

I might have turned me gladly from the world

And all its vanities, and shut myself

Within the calm retirement of a cell

To meditate upon my holy vows.

Pímen. Lament not, brother, that thou hast so soon

The world abandoned, that a loving God

Hath little of temptation sent to thee.

Take thou my word, a fascination strong

Is exercised upon us from afar,

By glory, luxury, and woman’s wiles.

Long have I lived and much have I enjoyed;

But only true enjoyment have I known

Since to the cloister God hath led my steps.

Recall the mightiest Tsars that have ever lived.

Who stands above them? God alone! And who

Would venture to oppose them? None! What then?

On them so sorely weighs the golden crown

They would exchange it gladly for the cowl.

E’en John the Tsar sought comfort and relief

Within the semblance of monastic rule.

His court, where swarmed his haughty favourites,

The novel aspect of a cloister took;

His body-guard, in sackcloth and in stole,

Appeared like docile monks, the while the Tsar,

Himself, the cruel Tsar, an abbot mild.

Myself have seen, here in this very cell—

(’T was then the abode of that most just of men,

Kiríll, who suffered much, and even then

I also had been led by God to see

The folly of the world)—myself have seen,

Here in this very cell, the mighty Tsar,

Grown weary of his mad designs and wrath,

Repenting, sit amongst us, meek and mild.

We stood before him silent, motionless,

And quietly he would converse with us,

Would hold the abbot and the brotherhood:

“Ye fathers, soon the wished-for hour will come,

When I ’ll appear with hunger to be saved;

Thou Nikodím, thou Sérgi, thou Kiríll,

And all of ye, accept my heartfelt vow!

I ’ll come to you a sinner in despair;

I ’ll take upon myself the monk’s harsh garb,

I ’ll fall, O holy father, at thy feet!”

Thus spoke the mighty ruler of the realm;

And gentle words flowed from his cruel lips,

And tears bedewed his cheeks; and we in tears

Would pray our Lord his sinful, suffering soul

To fill with everlasting love and peace.

But his son Feódor? Upon the throne

Vowed to perpetual silence, like a monk;

He sighed to lead a life of easy peace.

He straightway changed the royal palace-halls

To cloistered cells, the heavy cares of state

Did not at all disturb his saintly soul.

God mercifully gave the Tsar his peace;

And while he lived, our Russia, undisturbed

In taintless glory, owned his gentle sway.

But when he died, a miracle was wrought,

Unheard of: at his couch appeared a man

With face of flame, seen by the Tsar alone.

Feódor talked with him, and called him “Sire,”—

“Great Patriarch.” All around were filled with fear

To see the heavenly apparition there,

Because the holy father was not then

Within the chamber where the Tsar was laid.

When he appeared sweet fragrance filled the halls,

And like the sun his holy visage shone.

—From Shakespeare and the Russian Drama, by N. H. Dole, in Poet-lore, vol. i., No. 11.

DEMONS

Clouds are shifting, clouds are flying,

Scarce the hidden moon’s pale light

On the drifting snow is lying,—

Wild the heavens, wild the night.

Swiftly o’er the stormswept lowland—

Jingle, jingle bells amain!

Swiftly still, though heavy-hearted,

Drive I o’er the frozen main.

“Ho there! driver, onward!” “Faster,

Good my lord, we may not go,

For the stormwind blinds me, master,

And the road is choked with snow.”

Useless all! the track is hidden;

We are lost to help and home;

From afar the demon spies us—

Closer circling see him come!

Ha! beside us he ’s careering,

Hissing, spitting,—now, I ween,

Round the steeds so madly veering

On the brink of yon ravine.

There—if near or far I know not—

He was whirling in my sight.

There again he pined and dwindled,

Vanished into empty night!

Clouds are shifting, clouds are flying,

Scarce the hidden moon’s pale light

On the drifting snow is lying,—

Wild the heavens, wild the night.

Courage fails to struggle longer,

Suddenly the sleigh bells cease—

Pause the team—Declare thou yonder—

Wolf or tree-stem—is it peace?

Hark, the wind is wailing sadly,

Loudly snort the startled team.

There, see there he gambols madly,

Through the murk his eyeballs gleam.

Once again the team has started—

Jingle, jingle bells amain!

Lo, the spirit-hosts assemble

O’er the faintly gleaming plain!

Form they have not, have no number,

Lightly whirling round, they seem

Like the dead leaves of November

In the moon’s uncertain beam.

Are they endless? whither fly they?

Why this wailful chanting, say!

Mourn they now their dead? In marriage

Give they, else, some witch away?

Clouds are shifting, clouds are flying,

Scarce the hidden moon’s pale light

On the drifting snow is lying,—

Wild the heavens, wild the night.

Still they come and still they vanish

In the darkness o’er the plain,

Still their moaning and imploring

Rends my very heart in twain!

—Transl. by Miss H. Frank, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 34.

Evgéni Abrámovich Baratýnski. (1800-1844.)

Baratýnski was the most talented of all the contemporary poets of Púshkin. He came of a distinguished family in the Government of Tambóv. At fifteen years he entered the Corps of Pages, but was soon expelled for some misdemeanour. This compelled his enlisting as a common soldier in St. Petersburg, where he came at once in contact with the leading poets of the day, and he began himself writing verses. The following six years he passed in Finland, the austere nature of which much impressed his mind and gave him ample material for his melancholy Muse. After rising to the rank of a commissioned officer, he retired and settled in Moscow. In 1843 he went abroad, and the next year he suddenly died in Naples. His best production, The Gipsy Girl, was at one time preferred to Púshkin’s poems, but he is now chiefly remembered as the earliest and most brilliant of Russian pessimistic poets.

In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887, is given Faith Rewarded; the same, under the title The Madonna, translated by F. P. Marchant, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 28.

FINLAND

Into your clefts you have received the poet, granite rocks of Finland, eternal granites, guardian heroes of the land of the glacial crown. With the lyre he is among you. His greeting is a greeting to the masses of the rock, contemporaneous with the world. Like them may he for ever be unchangeable!

How wondrously everything about me charms my eye: there with its immeasurable waters the sea is welded with the heavens; here the dreamy pine-forest has descended with heavy tread from the mountain rock, and mirrors itself in the smooth waters! ’T is late: day is out, but the vault of heaven is bright; night comes without darkness upon the Finnish cliffs, and only for its own adornment it leads out upon the horizon a useless choir of diamond stars. This is the country of Odin’s children,—the distant nations of the storm! This is the cradle of their restless days, consecrated to famous warrings!

Silent is the sounding shield, not heard the voice of the skald; the flaming oak is extinguished; the stormy wind has scattered the solemn calls, the sons know not the exploits of their fathers, and prone in the dust lie the prostrate forms of their gods,—and all around me is deep silence. O ye who carried war from shore to shore, where are ye, heroes of the north? Your vestige has disappeared from your native land. Do ye press your grieving eyes against the cliffs and swim, a misty host, up in the clouds? Do ye? Give me answer, listen to my voice calling to you in the silence of the night. Mighty sons of these threatening, eternal cliffs! How were ye severed from your rocky fatherland? Why are ye sad? Why have I read upon your melancholy faces the smile of chiding? And ye have hid yourselves in the abode of shades! And time has not spared your names! What are our exploits, what the glory of our days, what is our windy tribe? Oh, everything will in its turn disappear in the abyss of years! For all there is one law,—the law of annihilation. In all I hear the mysterious greeting of sought-for forgetfulness.

But I,—for life’s sake loving life in ingloriousness,—shall I with careless soul tremble before destiny? Though not eternal in time, I am eternal for myself: does not the storm of time speak to imagination alone? The moment belongs to me, as I belong to the moment. What care I for past or future races? Not for them do I strum the soft-voiced strings: though not listened to, I am sufficiently rewarded with sounds for sounds, and with dreams for dreams.

SPRING

Spring, O spring! How pure the air, how clear the vault of heaven! With its bright azure it blinds my eyes.

Spring, O spring! How, upon the pinions of the wind, caressing the sunbeams, the clouds flit upon high!

The rivulets babble, the rivulets sparkle; roaring the river carries on its triumphant back the uplifted ice.

The trees are still bare, but in the grove the old leaves, as before, rustle under foot and emit fragrance.

Rising to the very sun and invisible in the clear height, the lark sings the song of welcome to the spring.

What has happened to my soul? With the brook it is a brook, and with the bird a bird: with one it babbles, with the other flies into heaven.

Why do sun and spring give it such joy? Does it, as a daughter of the elements, make merry at their banquet?

Well, happy is he who there drinks oblivion from thought, who there is carried far away from it!

TRUTH

Yearning since childhood for happiness, I have ever been poor in happiness! Or shall I never attain it in the wilderness of existence?

My young dreams have flitted from the heart,—I do not recognise the world: I am deprived of my former aim of hopes, but have no new aim.

“Senseless are you and all your wishes!” spoke to me a secret voice, and I cast off for ever the best creations of my dreams.

But wherefore has the disappointment of the soul not been complete? Why lives within me the blind pity of my youthful dreams?

Thus I once murmured, meditating about my heavy lot: suddenly I saw—it was no dream—Truth before me.

“My light will show the path to happiness!” said she. “Let me but wish,—and I will teach you, impassioned one, joyful dispassionateness:

“Though through me you may lose the heat of your heart; though, learning to know people, you, perchance, frightened, may cease to love your neighbours and your friends.

“I shall destroy all the charms of existence, but shall put your mind aright; I shall pour an austere cold over your soul, but shall give it calm.”

I trembled, as I listened to her words, and grievously I replied to her: “O unearthly guest, sad is your visitation!

“Your light is the funereal light of all earthly joys! Your peace, alas! is the melancholy peace of the grave, and it is terrible to the living!

“No, I am not yours: in your severe science I shall not find happiness! Leave me: I will somehow manage to wander upon my path.

“Good-bye! or no: when my luminary in the starry height will begin to grow dim, and when the time will come to forget all that to my heart is dear,—

“Appear then! Open then my eyes, enlighten my mind, that, despising life, I may without murmuring descend into the abode of night!”

Nikoláy Mikháylovich Yazýkov. (1803-1846.)

Yazýkov was born in Simbírsk, where he remained to his twelfth year. In 1820 he entered the School of Mines at St. Petersburg, but before graduating went to the university at Dorpat, from which he also failed to get a diploma. He passed his student days in riotous bouts that completely undermined his health. His anacreontic poems early attracted the attention of Zhukóvski and Púshkin, and the latter became a warm friend of his. He then settled in Moscow, where he served in one of the governmental offices, and wrote a series of poems, among which To the Poet, The Conflagration, and A Spring Night are his best. Ill health soon drove him abroad, and there he composed his famous To the Rhine; his other poems of the same period have a religious and patriotic tinge. Yazýkov’s poetry has been the subject of much controversy: some deny the intrinsic value of his productions, though all unite in extolling the exquisite musicalness and harmony of his verse.

N. H. Dole has translated his The Sailor (publication unascertainable). In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887, are given The Earthquake, Evening, Prayer.

THE SAILOR

Cruel is our lonely ocean,

Roaring always day and night;

Buried ’neath its wild commotion

Many a wreck lies, far from sight.

Courage, comrades! I, confiding,

To the free winds give my barque;

Forth it hastens, swiftly riding

O’er the billows grim and dark.

Thick the clouds fly o’er the heaven,

Fierce the gale grows,—black the waves;

Hither, thither we are driven,

While the waking whirlwind raves.

Courage, comrades! Peals the thunder,

High the watery heaps arise,

Yawning gulfs now draw us under,

Now we ’re lifted to the skies.

Yet behold, our ship is nearing

Through the storm the wished-for land;

See, the vaults of heaven are clearing,

See, the port is near at hand.

Thither but brave hearts and ready

Will the billows speed along!

Courage, comrades! straight and steady

Flies our vessel, stanch and strong.

—Transl. by N. H. Dole (publication not ascertainable).

THE STORM

Lo! behind the distant mountains is concealed the beautiful day; under the protection of the woods above the waters the tremulous shade grows ever longer in wavelike rows. In the river gleams the evening star,—hills, vales, and shores are deserted: long processions of carts, having left the fields, drive into the village. Now and then a watchdog barks, or the breeze makes the leaves rustle in the darkling oak-forest, or a bird flies timidly by, or a heavy, creaking waggon, drawn by a tired horse, and counting off each plank with its wheels, crosses the lightly poised bridge. And suddenly a broken, dull rattling is borne over the river, already silent and dreamy,—and all is quiet again.

But in the distance, at the edge of the heavens, large, cloudy waves have on all sides veiled the full moon: now they part, now they come together again; now the silent clouds threateningly merge into one mass that, lightning-bearing and black, steals from the east upon the azure vault. Already is the speechlessness of the woods disturbed by the encroachment of the wind; no longer is the nightly flowing of the river peaceful and dark. In broad ripples flash upon it the far-stretched groves of shadows,—just as a sail, trembling in the air and almost furled by the sailor, when suddenly a storm arises, and rolling the noisy floods, seizes the pinion of his barque and stretches it above the whirling waters.

Darkness has drowned the heavens; rain pours down; the storm agitates and stirs the waters and the woods.—it lightens, thunders, and raves. Wondrous moments! When from end to end, through the stormy clouds a furrow of toothed lightning gleams in purple fire,—then everything is seen: the chain of the distant mountains and the variegated pictures of the windings of the Sorót, the lakes, the villages, the banks, and the vales. Suddenly the darkness grows more grim and murky, the thunder claps are louder; noisier, thicker, faster are the torrents of the rain. But to-morrow the luminary of the day will, in luxurious silence, appear in the light-blue heaven, and will re-establish a golden morning in the storm-washed country.

TO THE POET

When inspiration has grown one with you, and your breast heaves mightily with it, and you perceive your consecration and know your God-blest path, when all, by which the heavenly gift is patent upon earth, is ready for your deeds,—the light and heat of mighty thought and the fire-breathing word,—then go into the world, that it may hear the prophet! But in the world be holy and majestic, kiss not the sugared lips of vice, beg not, take no reward,—whether the morning star invite you with its glow, or terrible be the tyranny of fate: be innocent as the dove, and bold and brave as the eagle!

And harmonious and soothing sounds will rise from your thundering strings; in these sounds the slave will forget his torments, and King Saul will listen to them, and you will bloom in life of high solemnity, and for ever bright will be your open brow and piercing, flaming eye!

But if you are filled with the earthly desire of praise and pleasure,—gather not rich gifts upon the altar of your God: He will ungraciously look upon you, will not accept your cunning offerings; smoke and thunder will disperse them,—and the priest will recede, trembling with fear and shame.

Mikhaíl Yúrevich Lérmontov. (1814-1841.)

Lérmontov was born in the house of his grandmother, who brought him up after the early death of his mother. Up to his tenth year he was educated at home, in the country, studying several modern languages and Greek. In 1826 he was taken to Moscow and placed in the Boarding School for Young Noblemen, which was connected with the university. He here distinguished himself as a student, but was much ridiculed by his mates on account of his awkward manner and unattractive exterior. This led him to withdraw from their company as much as possible, and to frequent solitary spots. He read a great deal, but his favourite author was Byron, whose life he set up as an example for himself to follow. Having been expelled from the university for some scandalous pranks, he entered in 1832 the School of the Guard Cadets at St Petersburg, where he soon gained the reputation of a clever poet of immodest verses. After graduation he passed his life in a whirl of society pleasures at St. Petersburg and at Tsárskoe Seló. Púshkin’s death, in 1837, roused Lérmontov from his inactivity. The poem, On the Death of the Poet, which he then wrote, and which was spread over Russia in a large number of manuscript copies, caused a sensation in higher society, and he was banished for it to the Caucasus, but was soon returned to the army. Lérmontov was at that time little known to the public at large, though his poem “Borodinó” had just appeared, as he kept himself aloof from the literary coteries. He first attracted universal attention by his Ballad of the Tsar Iván Vasílevich, after which followed a long series of his famous poems, and the prose novel The Hero of our Time. In 1840 he was again banished to the Caucasus for having fought a duel, but the next year he was killed in another duel with a fellow-officer.

Lérmontov had displayed unusual talent before the age of twenty, and before his twenty-eighth year he had achieved a reputation that is hardly second to Púshkin’s. His fervid imagination led him to add to his fashionable Byronian mood a charm entirely his own: his melancholy and pessimism, which find their most beautiful expression in his long poem, The Demon, do not leave the reader disheartened and disappointed, but rather invite to pensive meditation. His poetry gives the impression of having no relation to active life; it seems as though the questions of the day did not exist for him. This is partly due to the fact that he stood aside from the literary circles, but more especially because he wrote at a time when the application of art to life had not yet become the watchword of Russian poets. He therefore characterises the transition period from Púshkin to Gógol. He was entirely under the influence of Byron, without, however, inheriting his political and humanitarian ideals.

There are several translations of his prose tale: Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus, by a Russe (a literary forgery), London, 1853; A Hero of Our Times, now first translated into English, London, 1854; The Hero of Our Days, from the Russian, by T. Pulszky (in The Parlour Library), London, [1854]; A Hero of Our Time, from the Russian, by R. I. Lipmann, London, [1886]; Russian Reader: Lermontoff’s Modern Hero, with English translation and biographical sketch, by Ivan Nestor-Schnurmann, Cambridge University Press, 1899. Taman (part of Hero of Our Time) was also given in Railway and General Automatic Library, London, [1892]. The Demon has been translated twice: The Demon, translated from the Russian, by A. Condie Stephen, London, 1875, 2nd ed., 1881, 3rd ed., 1886; The Demon of Lermontoff, translated from the Russian, by Francis Storr, London, 1894. The Mtsyri has appeared under the name, The Circassian Boy, translated through the German, by S. S. Conant, Boston, 1875.

The following separate poems have been translated into English: The Gifts of Terek, by T. B. Shaw, in Edinburgh Blackwood Magazine, vol. liv.; Rememberest thou the day, by W. R. Alger, in The Poetry of the Orient, Boston, 1865; Gifts of the Terek, The Cup of Life, Cossack Cradlesong, The Prisoner, by A. E. Staley, in Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. cxxxvi.; God’s Presence in Nature, Clouds, The Cup of Life, The Bark, The Dispute, Circassian Song, Cossack Cradlesong, The Prisoner, The Deserter, The Dream, Stanzas, The Nun’s Song, Prayer, The Branch from Palestine, by C. T. Wilson, in Russian Lyrics, London, 1887; The Angel, The Voyage, Prayer, Thanksgiving, On Death of Púshkin, Dream, Clouds, How Weary, Alone I pass along the lonely road, Men and Waves, The Queen of the Sea, The Prophet, When my native land, To ⸺, The Dagger, Not for Thee, Dispute, “Why?” Moscow, in J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891; in Free Russia have appeared: by G. R. Tomson, The Poet, in vol. i., No. 6; by Mary Grace Walker, The Death of Pushkin, in vol. x., Nos. 6 and 7, My Neighbour, in vol. xi., No. 1, My Country, ib., No. 4; by Mrs. Ch. Sidgwick, At a Ball, ib., No. 2; in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society have been published: by F. P. Marchant, The Angel, The Prayer, in No. 11, The Branch from Palestine, and Gratitude, in No. 16, Cossack Cradlesong, in No. 25, Ballad of the Tsar Ivan Vasilevich, in No. 26; by Miss G. Shepherd, Oh, he was born for happiness, for hope, in No. 13; by A. C. Coolidge, Alone I wander out along the road and The Angel, in No. 14 (given before in Harvard Monthly Magazine, 1895); by Mrs. Heath, The Sail, in No. 19; by J. Pollen, The Gifts of the Terek, in No. 20; by Anna Laura K. Bezant, On life’s road I wander, lone and dreaming, in No. 21; in the Library of the World’s Best Literature is given The Cloud, by N. H. Dole, and are reprinted The Prisoner and The Cup of Life, by Staley, and The Angel, by Pollen.

FROM “A HERO OF OUR TIMES”

MAKSÍM MAKSÍMYCH

Leaving Maksím Maksímych, I rode at a rapid gait through the Térek and Daryál cañons, breakfasted in Kazbék, drank tea at Lára, and hastened away for supper to Vladikavkáz.

I stopped at the inn where all passengers stop⸺I was told that I should have to pass three days longer here, since the chance-team had not yet returned from Ekaterinográd and, consequently, could not start on its return journey.

The first day I passed lonely. Early in the morning of the next day a vehicle drove into the yard. “Ah, Maksím Maksímych!” We met like old friends. I offered him my room; he accepted it without ceremony, even clapped me on my shoulder and curved his mouth in the manner of a smile. What a queer fellow!

Maksím Maksímych was well versed in the culinary art: he could broil a pheasant remarkably well, superbly seasoned it with cucumber sauce, and I must confess that without him I should have been obliged to live on dry food. A bottle of Kakhetine wine helped us to forget the modest number of our dishes, of which there was but one, and lighting our pipes we seated ourselves,—I at the window, he at the stove, for it was a damp and cold day. We were silent.

We sat for a long time. A few vehicles with dirty Armenians drove into the yard of the inn, and behind them—an empty carriage.

“Thank the Lord!” said Maksím Maksímych, approaching the window. “What a fine carriage!” he added⸺“Who can it be? Let us go and find out.”

We went into the corridor. A lackey was dragging, with the help of the driver, some portmanteaus into a room.

“Listen, friend,” the staff-captain asked him, “to whom does this magnificent carriage belong?⸺Eh? A fine carriage!”

The lackey did not turn around, but muttered something as he opened the portmanteau. Maksím Maksímych grew angry. He touched the rude fellow on the shoulder and said to him: “I ’m talking to you, my dear fellow.”

“To whom the carriage belongs? To my master?”

“And who is your master?”

“Pechórin.”

“You don’t say? Pechórin? Oh, good God! Did n’t he serve in the Caucasus?” exclaimed Maksím Maksímych, pulling me by the sleeve. Joy glistened in his eyes.

“I think he did, but I have not been long with him.”

“Well, that ’s it! Grigóri Aleksándrovich? That ’s his name? Your master and I have been friends,” he added, giving the lackey a friendly slap on the shoulder that made him stagger.

“Excuse me, sir, you are in my way,” he said, knitting his brow.

“How funny you are, friend! You must know that your master and I have been bosom friends and have lived together. But what has become of him?”

The servant announced that Pechórin would remain for supper and the night at Colonel N.’s.

“Won’t he come here in the evening?” said Maksím Maksímych. “Or, are n’t you going down to see him for something or other? If you are, tell him that Maksím Maksímych is here,—he knows,—I ’ll give you eight grívenniks[7] for vódka.”[8]

The lackey made a scornful grimace when he heard of such a modest promise, but he assured Maksím Maksímych that he would carry out his order.

“He ’ll come right away!” Maksím Maksímych said to me, with a radiant look. “I ’ll wait for him outside the gate. Oh, what a pity I don’t know Colonel N.”

Maksím Maksímych sat down on a bench in front of the gate, and I went to my room.

An hour later an invalid brought a boiling samovár and a teapot. “Maksím Maksímych, don’t you want any tea?” I cried to him through the window.

“Thank you, I don’t feel like it.”

“Do take a glass! Look, it is already late and cold.”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, as you please!” I began to drink tea myself; some ten minutes later the old fellow came into the room.

“You are right: it will be better to take some tea. I have been waiting, but his man went to him long ago; evidently something has detained him.”

He hurriedly sipped a cup, declined a second, and went again outside the gate, somewhat disturbed. It was clear that Pechórin’s negligence annoyed the old fellow, especially since he had only lately been telling me of his friendship, and since he was so sure an hour ago that Pechórin would hurry to see him, the moment he heard his name.

It was late and dark when I again opened the window and began to call Maksím Maksímych, saying that it was time to go to bed. He muttered something through his teeth. I repeated the invitation, but he did not answer.

I lay down on the divan and covered myself with my cloak. I left a candle on the oven-bench and fell asleep. I should have slept quietly if Maksím Maksímych had not entered very late into the room and awakened me. He threw down his pipe on the table, began to pace over the room and to poke the fire; finally he lay down, but he coughed, spit, and tossed for a long time.

“Are bugs biting you?” I asked him.

“Yes, bugs,” he answered, drawing a deep sigh.

I awoke very early the next morning, but Maksím Maksímych had anticipated me. I found him in front of the gate, seated on the bench.

“I must go down to the Commandant,” he said, “so please send for me if Pechórin should come.”

I promised I would. He ran away as if his limbs had regained their youthful vigour and flexibility.

Less than ten minutes had passed when at the end of the square appeared the man we were waiting for. He was walking with Colonel N., who brought him to the inn, bade him good-bye, and returned to the fort. I immediately sent the invalid for Maksím Maksímych.

The horses were already hitched. The bells now and then tinkled over the yoke, and the lackey had already twice approached Pechórin with the report that all was ready, but Maksím Maksímych had not yet made his appearance. Fortunately Pechórin was buried in meditation and was looking at the blue crags of the Caucasus, and did not seem to be in a hurry to leave. I went up to him.

“If you will wait a little,” I said, “you will have the pleasure of meeting an old friend of yours.”

“Oh, that ’s so!” he answered rapidly. “I was told so yesterday; but where is he?”

I turned to the square and saw Maksím Maksímych running at full speed. A few minutes later he was near us; he could hardly breathe; perspiration ran down his face; wet tufts of grey hair stood out from under his cap and stuck to his brow; his knees were trembling. He wanted to throw himself on Pechórin’s neck, but the latter quite coldly, though with a pleasant smile, stretched out his hand to him. The staff-captain was stupefied for a moment, but then eagerly grasped his hand with both of his: he could not speak.

“How glad I am, dear Maksím Maksímych! Well, how are you getting along?” Pechórin asked.

“And thou? and you?” the old man muttered with tears in his eyes. “How many years—how many days—but where are you going to?”

“I am going to Persia, and still farther.”

“Right away? Do stay here a while, my friend! Are we really going to separate at once? We have not seen each other for so long.”

“I must, Maksím Maksímych,” was his answer.

“O Lord! Where are you hurrying so? I should like to tell you so much, and ask you so much! Well, have you retired? What have you been doing?”

“Having ennui!” Pechórin answered, smiling.

“Do you remember our life in the fort? ’T was a fine country for hunting! You were a passionate hunter! And Béla?”

Pechórin grew slightly pale and turned away.

“Yes, I remember!” he said, yawning forcedly.

Maksím Maksímych began to entreat him to stay an hour or two with him.

“We shall have a fine dinner,” he said. “I have two pheasants, and the Kakhetine wine is excellent,—of course not what it is in Georgia, yet of the best sort. We shall talk. You will tell me of your life in St. Petersburg. Well, what do you say?”

“Really, I have nothing to tell, dear Maksím Maksímych. Now good-bye, I must go, I am in a hurry. Thank you for remembering me,” he added, taking his hand.

The old man knit his eyebrows. He was sad and angry, though he tried to hide it.

“Forget? No, I have forgotten nothing. Well, God be with you! I hoped to meet you differently.”

“Well, well!” said Pechórin, embracing him in a friendly manner. “Am I not the same? What ’s to be done? Each one has his road laid out. God knows if we shall ever meet again!”

He was already in the carriage when he said this, and the driver was arranging the reins.

“Wait, wait!” Maksím Maksímych suddenly shouted, catching hold of the door of the carriage: “I almost forgot. I have your papers, Grigóri Aleksándrovich, and I have been dragging them along with me. I had hoped to find you in Georgia, but by the will of God we have met here. What shall I do with them?”

“Whatever you please!” answered Pechórin. “Good-bye!”

“So you are making for Persia? When will you be back?” Maksím Maksímych cried after him.

The vehicle was far off, but Pechórin made a sign with his hand which could be interpreted as follows: “Hardly! And there is no reason why I should!”

The tinkling of the bell and the rattling of the wheels on the flinty road had long died away, but the poor old man was still standing in the same place, buried in meditation.

“Yes,” he said at last, trying to assume an indifferent look, though from time to time a tear of indignation glittered on his eyelashes. “We have been friends, but what does friendship nowadays mean? What interest can he have in me? I am not rich, have no title, and am not a match for him as to age. What a swell he has become since he has been in St. Petersburg. What a carriage! How much luggage! And what a proud lackey!” These words were pronounced with an ironical smile. “Tell me,” he continued, turning towards me: “What do you think about it? What demon carries him now to Persia? It ’s ridiculous, upon my word, ridiculous! I always knew that he was a flighty man upon whom one could not rely. But, really, it ’s a pity he should end so badly,—it can’t be otherwise! I always said it does no good to forget old friends!”

Here he turned away to conceal his agitation, and began to pace up and down the yard, near his vehicle, as if to examine the wheels, while his eyes kept filling with tears.

“Maksím Maksímych,” I said, walking over to him, “what kind of papers are those that Pechórin has left with you?”

“God knows! Some memoirs.”

“What will you do with them?”

“What! I ’ll have them made into cartridges.”

“You had better give them to me.”

He looked at me in wonderment, muttered something through his teeth, and began to rummage through his portmanteau. Then he took out a notebook, threw it contemptuously on the floor, then another, a third, a tenth, and they had all the same fate: there was something childish in his anger; I was amused, and I pitied him.

“Here they are,” said he. “I congratulate you with your find.”

“And I may do with them what I wish?”

“As far as I am concerned, you may print them in newspapers. What do I care? What am I to him? Neither a friend, nor a relative. It is true, we have lived a long time together under the same roof. But there are many others with whom I have lived!”

I grabbed the books and carried them quickly away, fearing that the captain might regret his action. They announced to us soon after that the carriage would start in an hour. I gave orders to pack. The captain entered the room as I was putting on my cap. He was evidently not getting ready to travel; he had a kind of a forced, cold look.

“Are n’t you going, Maksím Maksímych?”

“No, sir.”

“How so?”

“I have not yet seen the Commandant, and I have to hand over to him some Crown goods.”

“But you have been with him?”

“Yes, I have, that ’s so,” he said, hesitatingly, “but he was not at home, and I did not wait for his return.”

I understood him—the poor old man had, probably for the first time in his life, neglected his official duties for private reasons, as they say in chancery language, and how he was rewarded for it!

“Very sorry, Maksím Maksímych, that we are to part before our time.”

“We uncouth old men can’t keep up with you! You are a worldly, proud young set. As long as you are under Circassian bullets, you are passable, but when you meet one of our kind later, you are ashamed to stretch out your hand to him.

“I have not deserved these reproaches, Maksím Maksímych.”

“I should not have mentioned it, if I had not been egged on. As for you, I wish you good luck and a happy journey.”

We parted quite dryly. Good Maksím Maksímych became a stubborn, quarrelsome staff-captain! Why? Because Pechórin, in his absent-mindedness or for some other reason, stretched out his hand to him, when he was ready to fall around his neck. It is sad to see a young man lose all his best hopes and dreams, when the rose-coloured glass is taken away from him through which he had been looking at human acts and feelings, though there is hope that he will exchange his old illusions for new ones, not less transitory, but also not less sweet. But what is to take their place in a man of Maksím Maksímych’s years? The heart involuntarily becomes hardened, and the soul closes up.

I travelled by myself.

[7] A grívennik is equal to ten kopeks, or about five cents.

[8] Native brandy.

FROM “THE DEMON”

I

A sombre fiend, a spirit banished,

Was flying o’er this world of sin;

While thoughts of better days, now vanished,

Upon his brain were crowding in—

Those days, when in the home of light

Midst cherubim he too was bright.

The time was when the comet fleeting,

Its soft caressing smile of greeting

To interchange with him was proud;

When, through the never-ending cloud,

He followed curiously the trace

Of where the caravans had moved

Of stars, whose paths were lost in space,—

When he believed and when he loved.

A happy first-born of creation,

He knew no thought of fear or doubt:

Existence then was his, without

The weight of ages of damnation⸺

And much and much,—but no, not all,

Had he the strength that dared recall.

II

Through earthly deserts long he sped,

Without a refuge or an aim.

The ages after ages fled;

Like minute after minute, came

Recurring ceaselessly the same.

In this mean world o’er which he lorded

No ill he sowed, relief afforded;

For nowhere he resistance met

That stood against the snares he set.

Sin did but weariness beget.

III

Now, o’er the Caucasus, on high,

Was Eden’s outcast flying by.

Kazbék, beneath, with diamond light

Of everlasting snow shines blinding;

And deep below, a streak of night,

Like some dark cleft, the snake’s delight,

In endless curves the Daryál’s winding

And Térek like a lion springing,

With bristling mane, in fury roars;

The beast of prey, the bird, high winding

Its flight in azure where it soars,

Have heard the cry his waves give forth,

And little golden clouds there are

From southern lands,—ay, from afar,

To follow on the journey north.

The cliffs in serried masses seem,

Replete with some mysterious dream,

To bend their heads above the stream,

And watch his waters as they gleam

Perched on the rock, the castle tower,

That stands on Caucasus to wait,

A giant guardian at the gate,

Seems sternly through the mist to glower,

And wild and wonderful about

Was all God’s world; but that proud sprite

With but a glance of scorn looked out

On all his God had wrought in might;

His lofty brow did naught express

Except the void of nothingness.

IV

Before him now another scene

Had living beauties to display,

Where Georgian valleys robed in green,

Stretched outward like a carpet, lay.

One of earth’s happy fertile nooks

Where column-like the ruins stand;

O’er stones of every hue, the brooks

Run downward babbling through the land.

The nightingales among the roses

Sing tuneful love in accents fond

To graceful mates that ne’er respond;

The plane-tree’s spreading shade discloses

The spot where ivy thick reposes;

Here gorges where from burning day

The timid deer lie hid away;

And light, and life, and leaves that rustle,

And voices’ hundred-sounding bustle,

And plants whose thousand breaths compete,

And fierce voluptuous noonday heat;

And nights whose aromatic dew

Distils a freshness ever new;

And stars that are as bright as eyes,

As glances of the Georgian maid.

But nature in all charm arrayed

To no new throb of life gave rise

Within that outlaw’s sterile breast,

Save for a hostile, cold unrest;

And that which here he contemplated,

He looked with scorn upon and hated.

—Transl. by A. C. Coolidge (unpublished).

DISPUTE

Once, before a tribal meeting

Of the mountain throng,

Kazbék-hill with Shat-the-mountain

Wrangled loud and long.

“Have a care, Kazbék, my brother,”

Shat, the grey-haired, spoke;

“Not for naught hath human cunning

Bent thee to the yoke.

Man will build his smoky cabins

On thy hillside steep;

Up thy valley’s deep recesses

Ringing axe will creep;

Iron pick will tear a pathway

To thy stony heart,

Delving yellow gold and copper

For the human mart.

Caravans, e’en now, are wending

O’er thy stately heights,

Where the mists and kingly eagles

Wheeled alone their flights.

Men are crafty; what though trying

Proved the first ascent!—

Many-peopled, mark, and mighty

Is the Orient.”

“Nay, I do not dread the Orient,”

Kazbék, answering, jeers;

“There mankind has spent in slumber

Just nine hundred years.

Look, where ’neath the shade of plane-trees

Sleepy Georgians gape,

Spilling o’er their broidered clothing

Foam of luscious grape!

See, ’mid wreaths of pipe-smoke, lying

On his flowered divan,

By the sparkling pearly fountain

Dozeth Teheran!

Lo! around Jerusalem’s city,

Burned by God’s command

Motionless, in voiceless stillness,

Deathlike, lies the land.

“Farther off, to shade a stranger,

Yellow Nilus laves,

Glowing in the glare of noonday,

Steps of royal graves.

Bedouins forget their sorties

For brocaded tents,

While they count the stars and sing of

Ancestral events.

All that there the vision greeteth

Sleeps in prized repose;

No! the East will ne’er subdue me!

Feeble are such foes!”

“Do not boast thyself so early,”

Answered ancient Shat;

“In the North, look! ’mid the vapours,

Something rises! What?”

Secretly the mighty Kazbék

At this warning shook,

And, in trouble, towards the nor’ward

Cast a hurried look.

As he looks in perturbation,

Filled with anxious care,

He beholds a strange commotion,

Hears a tumult there.

Lo! from Ural to the Danube,

To the mighty stream,

Tossing, sparkling in the sunlight,

Moving regiments gleam;

Glancing wave the white-plumed helmets

Like the prairie grass,

While, ’mid clouds of dust careering,

Flashing Uhlans pass.

Crowded close in serried phalanx

War battalions come;

In the van they bear the standards,

Thunders loud the drum;

Streaming forth like molten copper

Batteries, rumbling, bound;

Smoking just before the battle

Torches flare around;

Skilled in toils of stormy warfare,

Heading the advance,

See! a grey-haired general guides them,

Threat’ning in his glance.

Onwards move the mighty regiments

With a torrent’s roar;

Terrible, like gathering storm-clouds,

East, due east, they pour.

Then, oppressed with dire forebodings,

Filled with gloomy dreams,

Strove Kazbék to count the foemen,

Failed to count their streams.

Glancing on his tribal mountains,

Sadly gloomed the hill;

Drew across his brows the mistcap,

And for aye was still.

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Alone I wander out along the road;

The stony way gleams through the mist afar;

The night is calm; the waste lists to its God;

And star is speaking unto star.

In heaven wondrousness and grandeur reign;

The earth sleeps in a glow of soft blue sky.

Then why do I feel such distress, such pain?

What have I to await? or what regret have I?

Already I await no more from life;

And nothing in the past do I regret.

I seek for freedom, and an end to strife;

I only wish to sleep and to forget.

But not as in the tomb’s too chilly rest,

My slumber through the ages I conceive

With all Life’s vigour throbbing in my breast—

That with my breathing it should gently heave,—

That all the day and night, to soothe my ear,

A tender voice to me of love should sing;

And I must have, in green for ever near,

A dark oak bending o’er me, murmuring.

—Transl. by A. C. Coolidge, in The Harvard Monthly, 1895, and in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 14.

THE SAIL

A solitary sail is gleaming,

While, through the haze of th’ azure, she,

In chase of chance’s fortune seeming,

Far from a cherished home may be.

The waves leap up,—the wind is blowing,

The mast is bending low and creaks,—

Alas! from happiness not going,

It is not happiness she seeks.

Beneath her prow blue floods are swelling,

Above her glides the sunlit fleece,

But still she prays for storms, rebelling—

As if in storms there can be peace.

—Transl. by Mrs. Heath, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 19.

THE PRAYER

In life’s hard, trying moments,

With sorrow in my breast,

I breathe a prayer most wonderful,

Which ever brings me rest.

There is a power of blessedness

In those sweet words enshrined,

Thought cannot grasp their sacred charm

That calms the anxious mind.

Doubt stays no more, the soul is free,

Her burden rolls away,

Her faith renewed, tears bring relief,

When this sweet prayer I pray.

—Transl. by F. P. Marchant, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 11.

THE BRANCH OF PALESTINE

Branch of Palestine, the story

Of thy birth and beauty, say

Of what hill and vale the glory

Were thy leaves and blossoms gay?

Thee, by Jordan’s limpid fountains,

Did the Eastern sunbeam bless?

Thee, on Lebanon’s great mountains,

Did the night-wind’s love caress?

Salem’s sons, with sorrow smitten,

As they twined thy leaves with care—

Sang they songs, in old times written?

Breathed they then a gentle prayer?

Is thy parent-palm yet living

Where the summer sun beats down,

Still to desert-travellers giving

Shade beneath her broad-leafed crown?

Or, thy faded palm-tree sighing,

Withered at thy parting, grieves,

While the thirsty dust is lying

Thickly on her yellow leaves?

Whose the reverent hand that bore thee

From thy country to this place?

Wept he often, bending o’er thee?

Have those hot tears left their trace?

Was he of God’s host the flower,

Shone his cheek with rapture bright,

Worthy heaven, like thee, each hour

In his God’s and comrades’ sight?

Branch from Salem, guard unsleeping

Of the golden ikon fair,

Watch before the holiest keeping,

Thou art weighed with silent care!

Beauteous twilight, lamp-beams o’er thee;

Full of peace and comfort, shine;

Ark and cross repose before thee,

Symbols of a love divine!

—Transl. by F. P. Marchant, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16.

Remember’st thou the day when we—

Late was the hour—were forced to part?

The night-gun boomed athwart the sea;

In painful silence beat each heart;

The lovely day found cloudy close;

A heavy mist the landscape palled;

And seemed it, when that shot arose,

An echo from the ocean called.

Alone I wander by the flood;

And when a gun booms in its might,

I think in pain how we once stood

Together on that parting night.

And as the mournful echoes roll,

Muffled, along the fluid walls,

From out the caverns of my soul

Death answeringly calls and calls.

—From W. R. Alger’s The Poetry of the Orient, 1865.

AT A BALL

How oft, surrounded by the motley crowd,

Mid whirling dance, and din of music loud,

I sink my senses in a dream,—

When phrased convention, polished fiction, fly

And all the men and women pass me by,—

Like masks their faces seem.

When my cold hands are met with colder still,

And callous city beauties touch me chill,

Bold but effete, with hollow cheer,

Then, to appearance wrapped in light and glare,

I cherish in my heart a fancy fair,—

Echoes a bygone year.

Forsaking all around, in heart and mind

I fly—a free, free bird—to things behind,

And see myself a child once more,

In places old and dear. The house o’erhead,—

The garden path I see,—the ruined shed,—

The pond well-weeded o’er:

And see across the pond the village lie,

From clustered roof the smoke is rising high,

The mists from meadows far away!

I enter a dark alley: evening red

Blinks through the shrubs, and underneath my tread

The dead leaves rustling stray.

Then a strange longing holds me,—yearning sore

For love,—my fancy’s love and nothing more:—

She was a dream and yet my love!

Her sky-blue eyes could flash with silver flame,

Her rosy smile with kindling sweetness came,

Like sunrise through the grove.

Thus, potent master of my fairyland,

Alone I pass my hours, and understand

The spell of those sweet days to save,

Unharmed, unstained by passion or by doubt,

Like some fair flowery islet, lying out

Where leaps the wild sea wave.

But suddenly a jar renews my sense,—

The happy, happy dream is frighted hence,

That gentle, uninvited guest.

And wild I long my steel-cold lines to fling

Upon the startled crowd, to smite and sting,

With anger from my breast.

—Transl. by Mrs. Charlotte Sidgwick, in Free Russia, vol. xi., No. 2.

DREAM

’Neath midday heat, in Dagestána’s Vale,

With leaden ball in breast I lifeless lay;

From a deep wound smoke rose upon the gale,

And drop by drop my life-blood ebbed away.

Alone I lay upon the sandy slopes;

The craggy cliffs around me crowded steep;

The sunlight burned upon their yellow tops,

And burned on me who slept no mortal sleep.

A dream I dreamed, and saw in sparkling bowers

An evening feast in my home,—far away,—

Where young and lovely women, crowned with flowers,

Conversed of me in accents light and gay.

But, in their happy talk not joining, one

Sat far apart, and plunged in thought she seemed;

And oh! the mystery knows God alone,—

This was the dream her young soul sadly dreamed.

She saw in vision Dagestána’s Vale,

Where on the slope a well-known body lay;

From the black wound smoke rose upon the gale,

And in cold streams the life-blood ebbed away.

—From John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Aleksyéy Vasílevich Koltsóv. (1808-1842.)

Koltsóv was the son of a burgher of Vorónezh who dealt in hides and tallow. He received very little training in his coarse and ignorant family, and at ten years of age went to a school just long enough to learn to read and write. After that his father put him to work at his business, but the boy found enough time to read some Russian fairy tales and a few novels. Dmítriev’s poems, which fell into his hands, gave him a taste for poetry, and a “Russian Prosody,” given him by a local book-dealer, for the first time taught him the harmony of verse and its technical structure. He at once began to compose poems in imitation of such as he could procure, while a seminarist whose acquaintance he cultivated corrected and guided his first attempts. In 1831 Koltsóv went to Moscow where he was introduced to the critic Byelínski, who at once recognised the unusual talent of the untutored bard. After a second visit, in 1836, the two became staunch friends, and under Byelínski’s influence Koltsóv produced the best of his poems. He soon returned to the sordid surroundings of his native place, and died shortly after of consumption. The striking picturesqueness of his verse, which is based on the inimitable, untranslatable diction of the peasant, has given rise to two diametrically opposed views: according to the one, he is the popular bard par excellence; according to the other, he has only made artistic use of the peasant’s language for productions that are eminently refined and, therefore, removed from the understanding of the masses.

In English translation have appeared: Season of Love, A Prayer, Two Lives, First Love, in A Russian Poet, by W. R. S. Ralston, in Fortnightly Review, vol. vi., 1866; The Abundant Harvest, The Mower, The Peasant Musing, in Russian Idylls, by W. R. S. Ralston, in Contemporary Review, vol. xxiii., 1874; The Ploughman’s Song, The Peasant’s Misgivings, The Orphan, Love’s Invitation, in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, 1887; The Forest, Betrayed by a Bride, by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16, and A Winter Wooing, The Mower, by Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, ib., No. 30.

FIRST LOVE

Her whom I loved in early years

So well, so tenderly,—who filled

With a first passion’s hopes and fears

A heart which time has not yet stilled,—

Can I forget her? Day by day I strive

Her well-loved image from my mind to drive;

To find new dreams my old dreams to efface,

And let another love my early love replace.

But all in vain. I strive and strive, and yet

Whate’er I do I never can forget.

When in the silent hours of night I sleep,

She comes in dreams; once more I see her stand

Beside my couch; once more her accents steep

My suffering soul in bliss; once more her hand

In mine so gently, mournfully, she lays,

While her dark eyes on mine in sadness gaze.

Speed, kindly Time, my thoughts from her to sever,

Or set me free with her to live for ever.

—Transl. by W. R. S. Ralston, in Fortnightly Review, 1866 (vol. vi.).

THE ABUNDANT HARVEST

I

With a rosy flame the dawn burns on high, but the fog still broods over the face of the earth;

Till the day has caught the fire of the sun, and rolled up the mists higher than the tops of the hills,

And has pressed them into a black cloud. The black cloud has begun to knit its brows,—

Has begun to knit its brows, as if reflecting, as though musing upon the place of its birth,

As though remembering how the wild winds will drive it before them across the face of the wide world.

Then it arms itself with the hurricane and the thunderbolt, with the lightning’s flash and the bow of the cloud.

It has taken up arms, and flown abroad, and struck its stroke, and poured itself forth

In a torrent of tears, in a flood of rain, over the copious bosom of the earth.

II

Now from heaven’s heights the dear sun looks down. The earth a plenteous draught has drunk.

On their corn-fields and gardens, and meadows green, the rustic folk cannot gaze enough.

For the grace of God these rustic folk have waited long with trembling and prayer.

Together with the spring there have come to life the secret thoughts of their quiet minds.

Thought the first: To pour into sacks the grain in the bins, and to set their carts in order.

Thought the second: Forth from the village by night to drive their line of carts.

Thought the third⸺When of this they thought, to God the Lord arose the prayers.

With early dawn have they gone afield. There in handfuls heaped each scatters the grain, furrows the soil with the ploughshare’s blade, or rips it across with the harrow’s tooth.

III

I will go and gaze with gladdened eye at what God has sent to men for their toil.

Above my waist the large-grained rye rises, then dreamily bends well nigh to the ground.

On every side the corn, guest sent by God, greets with a smile the joyful day.

Over it the breeze floats lustrously, streaming this way and that a wave of gold.

Now in whole families the peasants commence their harvest, cutting close to the roots the stalks of the lofty rye.

Into close-packed mows are the sheaves collected; from the lines of carts sounds music all the night long.

On every side do the stacks erect their heads in the barnyards,—taking up much room, like nobles of yore in their robes of state.

IV

The dear sun sees that the harvest is done; so colder gleam his last autumnal rays.

But with warm light glows the peasant’s taper—burning before the pictured form of the Mother of God.

—Transl. by W. R. S. Ralston, in The Contemporary Review, 1874 (vol. xxiii.).

THE FOREST

IN MEMORY OF PÚSHKIN

What does the silent wood

Dream of so pensively?

What is the sorrow that

Rides in its mystery?

Why dost thou, Knightly One,

Under its charm’s spell,

Head undefended

Hold ’gainst the wind-stroke,—

Standing there shamedly

Letting the storm-clouds

As they pass momently

Burst on thee savagely?

Thy helmet of green leaves

Bound fastly together

Is whirled from thee far off

And scattered to dust;

Thy boughs, as a mantle falls,

Lie all around thee;

Thou standest ashamedly,

Forced to submit thee.

Where hath vanished now

Speech that was mighty,

Strength that was prouder than

All a king’s bravery?

A night there hath been for thee,

A calm night within which

Thou heardest the nightingale’s

Deluge of song—

A day there hath been for thee

Triumphant, forgetless—

A friend and an enemy

Sought thy cool freshness;

’T was late in the evening,

And loud blew the storm-blast

Of him that was speaking

Unto thy detractor.

His wrath drove the clouds off

That round thee had gathered,

His love clung around thee

Like wind-gusts, but warmer.

Thou said’st to the other,

With voice that changed loudly,

“Go, fall back beyond me!

Go, leave me in peace!”

That voice of his dizzied,

As tone on tone sounded;

Thy very depths trembled,

Their stoutest trunks reeling.

Then, startled from silence,

To life thou awakest;

A whistling of tempest

Re-echoed throughout thee;

’T is the cry of the wood-sprite,

A witch’s note shrilling,

Until the loud rumble

Is borne away seaward.

Where now all thy glory

Of verdure and leaf?

Thou ’st put on dark clothing

Of rain-mist and grief;

Wild art thou and silent,

But, when the wind quickens,

Thy plaint sadly peals out

For him lost untimely.

And so, thou dark forest,

Life-long hast thou harassed

The Knightly, the Noble,

To combat for thee.

Against thee prevailed not

Those stronger than thou art;

Life’s autumn in him, though,

Seemed cruelly short.

The woods know in dreamland

That forces of evil

Their malice did spend on

Who least had deserved it:

From off Knightly shoulders

A head had been struck—

Not by a hero’s hand,

But by a recreant.

—Transl. by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16.

BETRAYED BY A BRIDE

Warm the summer sun in heaven,

But for me no heat is given!

Frozen is the very heart’s blood,

Through the bride that played me false.

Grief’s black pall hath fallen o’er me,

On my sorrow-bowed-down head:

Mortal anguish tears my soul, and

From this body would it break.

Neighbours asked have I to help me;

No man gave me aught but laughter;

Then, to the grave of either parent—

Neither heard the voice I called with.

Light then changed for me to darkness,

Senseless on the ground I lay,

Dull the night, until a tempest

Roused me from the tombstone cold.

Raged the storm—a horse I saddled,

Bent on riding—God knows where—

Life is heartless toil to laugh at,

Man’s fate evil alone to share.

—Transl. by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16.

THE MOWER

I can’t understand it,

I can’t make it out—

Yet why I can’t see

How it all came about?

In an unlucky day,

In an ill hour, alack,

I came into this world

With no shirt to my back!

Yet my grand-dad’s broad shoulders

Are mine, as you see;

And my mother’s deep chest;

In my cheeks flowing free

Burns the blood of my sire,

Like milk set afire

By dawn’s crimson light;

And my locks lie in clusters

As black as the night.

Yet, whatever I do—

Oh, it never goes right!

In an unlucky day,

In an ill hour, alack,

I came into this world

With no shirt to my back!

There’s darling Grunyúsha,

The Stárosta’s daughter—

Well, all through the spring

Did I patiently court her;

But he, the old churl,

Was finely put out!

To whom has he planned

That he ’ll marry the girl?

Oh, I can’t understand

How it all came about.

Does he think, the old ass,

I was after his money?

Let him stick to his brass

If he give me my honey—

’T is for her that I pine.

Oh, her face is bright

And as rosy as sunrise,

Her rounded cheeks mellow,

And the flash of her eyes

Might drive a young fellow

Clean out of his wits.

Ah, ’t was only last night

That she wept so for me,

But her tears were in vain.

For her dad said downright

That it never could be.

Shall I never again

From my sorrow be free?

Come, I ’ll buy a new scythe,

And I ’ll sharpen it well,

Aye, its edge I will whet,

Ere I bid a farewell

To my own native place.

Nay, Grúnya, don’t fret,

Don’t worry, dear maid.

Though keen is the blade,

I ’ll not cut myself down;

Good-bye, little town.

You, hard parent, good-bye!

To a land far away

Will the young mower hie.

Down the Don’s bank I ’ll stray

Till I reach the quayside,

Where the suburbs stand gay

And the Steppe stretches wide.

There, wherever I glance,

The tall plume-grass is blown.

O Steppe, thou, my own,

How thy fertile expanse

Lies green on each hand,

So free and so vast,

Till it reaches at last

To the Black Sea’s far strand!

I have come as thy guest,

But I come not alone,

I have brought thee a friend,

One, my closest and best.

See, my sharp scythe is here,

As myself he is dear.

Oh, from end to far end,

What a joy it will be

To wander with him

O’er the Steppe’s grassy sea!

Swish, work away shoulders;

Swing arms to and fro,

While cool on my face

The light southern winds blow,

Refreshing and rippling

The Steppe’s endless space.

Now, scythe, hum a song,

Flash in circles thy blade;

How the long grass-ranks fall

As the steel moves along!

O ye poor blossoms all,

Your heads are low-laid!

Ye must dry up and fade

In the straight swathes of grass

As my young heart, alas,

Withers up for a maid,—

And I languish for Grúnya!

I ’ll rake up the hay

Till so high my stack stands

That the wife of the Cossack

Must pay with both hands.

I shall sew up my pocket,

My treasure to guard,

Then, home I ’ll betake me,

To the Stárosta say:

“Though tears could not make thee

Give Grúnya away,

Thou art not so hard

But my good pieces may.”

—Transl. by Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 30.

Nikoláy Vasílevich Gógol (—Yanóvski). (1809-1852.)

Gógol was born in the Government of Poltáva, in Little-Russia, and was educated at home up to his twelfth year. His father was a landed proprietor of more than ordinary culture, who had a private theatre at his estate, on which were played Little-Russian comedies, some his own. His grandfather had held an important post with the Zaporóg Cossacks, and being an excellent story-teller, had imbued his grandson with the spirit of the recent Cossack past. At the Gymnasium, Gógol evinced little interest in his studies, but devoted himself with enthusiasm to drawing and to the theatre which he himself created for his schoolmates. He even then composed some comedies and edited a manuscript periodical. After graduation he went to St. Petersburg in search of some occupation, but found himself unfit for any work. He also tried literature, and in 1829 appeared his romantic tale Hans Küchelgarten. It was so severely criticised that Gógol bought up the whole edition and committed it to the flames. He busied himself with the history of Little-Russia, and shortly after he wrote his beautiful Evenings on the Farm near the Dikánka, in which the idealisation of the past and of his native country is already tempered by realism. These Evenings at once made him known, and he became intimate with Zhukóvski and Púshkin. He dreamed of devoting himself to history, but prolonged labour was distasteful to him, and he did not go beyond collecting material for his Little-Russian epic, Tarás Búlba. He really obtained a professorship at the university, but his professional career was a failure. Instead, he brought out a series of admirable stories, such as Old-fashioned Landed Proprietors, The Nose, The Phaeton, The Mantle, and his comedies, of which the Revizór has remained a classic in the Russian repertoire. He was now completely launched into naturalism, and was at once recognized by the critic Byelínski (see p. 205), as forming a new school in literature. A few years later he gave to the world the first part of the Dead Souls, in which he reached the highest point of his artistic development. The plot of the story is simple: an unscrupulous ex-official travels about the country to buy up peasants, that in reality are dead but before the Government are still accounted alive until the following census and are subject to taxes; by nominally transferring them to his own estate, he is able to mortgage them at the rate of three hundred roubles for each “soul.” This plot served Gógol as a thread on which to string his different types of people. In 1836 Gógol went abroad, and slowly succumbed to a species of melancholia, which showed itself in an increased tendency to mysticism. This led him to burn the greater part of what was to form the second book of the Dead Souls, and to practice self-chastisement.

In English translation have appeared: The Portrait, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and in Living Age, 1847; Home Life in Russia, by a Russian Noble (a literary forgery), 2 vols., London, 1854; Cossack Tales, translated by G. Tolstoy, London, [1860]; St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, translated by Miss I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], and London, 1887; Taras Bulba, by I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], (Lovell’s Library, No. 1016), and London, 1887; Tchitchikoff’s Journey; or, Dead Souls, by I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], and London, 1887; also Dead Souls, 1887 and 1888, and Taras Bulba, 1887 and 1888, published by Vizetelly; A May Evening, in Cosmopolitan, vol. iii.; The Cloak, in Short Stories, 1891, and (with The Portrait and Old-fashioned Farmers) in Wayward Dosia, by Gréville, Chicago, 1891; Inspector General, or, Revizór, translated by A. A. Sykes, London, 1892, 1893; The Inspector, a comedy, translated by T. Hart Davies, London, 1892; On Christmas Eve, translated by F. Volkhovsky, in Free Russia, vol. x., No. 12; Marriage and A Madman’s Diary, in the Humour of Russia, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895; extracts from The Inspector, and from Mirgorod, translated by I. F. Hapgood, are given in the Library of the World’s Best Literature.

THE DNIEPER

Wonderful is the Dnieper in quiet weather when softly and smoothly he hurries his full waters by forests and hills. He neither rustles, nor thunders. You look at him, and you do not know whether his majestic breadth is in motion, or not, and it looks as if he were all cast of glass and as if his blue, mirrored path, measureless in breadth and endless in length, meandered and wound over the wide green world. The hot sun then joyfully looks down from his height and plunges his beams in the coolness of the glassy waters, and the woods of the shore are brightly reflected therein. Green-locked ones! They crowd together with the field flowers to the brink, and bending over look into the water, and do not get tired looking at their bright image, and smile to it, and greet it, shaking their branches. They dare not look into the middle of the Dnieper; none but the sun and the blue sky look upon it; rarely a bird flies to the middle of the Dnieper. Proud one! There is not a river in the world like him.

Wonderful, too, is the Dnieper in a warm summer night, when all is asleep,—man, and beast, and bird,—and God alone majestically surveys heaven and earth and majestically waves His garment. From the garment fall stars; stars burn and gleam over the world, and all together are reflected in the Dnieper. The Dnieper holds them all in his murky lap; not one of them will escape him, unless it be dimmed in heaven. The black forest, weighted down by sleeping ravens, and anciently disrupted mountains hang down over him and attempt to cover him with their long shadows. In vain! There is nothing in the world that could cover the Dnieper. Ever blue, he spreads his gentle floods in the night as in the day, and may be seen as far as the human eye can see. Proceeding in his voluptuous course and hugging the shore in the coolness of the night, he leaves behind him a silvery streak which flashes like the blade of a Damascus sabre, but the blue one again falls asleep. Even then the Dnieper is wonderful, and there is no river like him in the whole world!

But when the grey clouds pass like mountains over the sky, the black forest shakes to its roots, the oaks crack, and the lightnings, piercing through the clouds, at once illumine the whole world,—then the Dnieper is terrible! The mounds of water thunder as they beat against the mountains, and with a splash and groan they rush back, and weep, and lose themselves in the distance. Thus grieves an old Cossack mother as she leads her son to the army: in his best spirits and boldly he rides forth on his black charger, his arms akimbo, his cap poised jauntily; but she sobs and runs after him, seizes him by his stirrup, catches his bridle, and wrings her hands, and is dissolved in bitter tears.

THE REVIZÓR

ACT I. (room in the Burgomaster’s house). SCENE 1. THE BURGOMASTER, CURATOR OF CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS, INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS, JUDGE, CAPTAIN OF POLICE, DOCTOR, TWO SERGEANTS OF POLICE

Burgomaster. Gentlemen, I have called you together to give you a very disagreeable piece of news: a Revizór is coming.

Judge. What, a Revizór?

Curator. What, a Revizór?

Burgomaster. A Revizór from St. Petersburg, incognito, and with secret instructions, if you please.

Judge. I declare!

Curator. Things have been too easy with us, so there it is.

Inspector. Good gracious! With secret instructions!

Burgomaster. I really had a presentiment of it: last night I did nothing but dream of two extraordinary rats. I tell you, I never saw the like of them; they were black and of unusual size. They came, nosed around, and went away. I ’ll read to you the letter I received from Andréy Ivánovich Chmýkhov whom you, Artémi Filíppovich (Curator), know. This is what he writes: “Dear friend, and benefactor” (mutters in a whisper as he runs down the lines)⸺“and to let you know.” Ah, here it is: “among other things I hasten to inform you that an official is here with instructions to inspect the whole Government, and especially our county (significantly raises his finger). I have learned this from most trustworthy people, although he passes himself for a private individual. Knowing that, like all people, you have some peccadilloes, for you are a clever fellow and don’t let things slip through your fingers⸺” (Stops.) Oh, that ’s private⸺“I advise you to take the proper precaution, for he is likely to come any hour, if he has not arrived yet and is not living somewhere incognito⸺Yesterday”⸺Oh, these are family matters: “sister Anna Kirílovna has been visiting us with her husband; Iván Kirílovich has grown very stout, and is all the time playing the fiddle⸺” and so forth, and so forth. So that ’s the way it stands!

Judge. But that ’s an unusual affair. There must be something back of it.

Inspector. But what is that all for, Antón Antónovich (Burgomaster)? Why is the Revizór coming to us?

Burgomaster (sighing). Why! It ’s evidently our fate! (Sighing again.) Thanks to the Lord, they have come down on other towns before this; but now our turn has come.

Judge. I think, Antón Antónovich, that there is a delicate reason of a political nature behind all this. It ’s simply this: Russia, you see, is about to wage war, and the Minister has sent a special official to find out whether there is not any treason here.

Burgomaster. What a guess! And you call yourself a clever man! Treason in a county town! Does it lie on the border, eh? Why, you ’d have to gallop three years from here to get to another country.

Judge. No, let me tell you. You don’t⸺no, you don’t⸺The government is pretty shrewd about things: never mind its being far away, but the government is on the lookout.

Burgomaster. Let it be or not, but I have given you warning, gentlemen, so take notice! I, for my part, have taken some precautions, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artémi Filíppovich! No doubt, the official will first of all want to inspect the charitable institutions under your charge, and so you had better give everything a decent appearance. Let there be clean caps, and don’t let the patients look like blacksmiths, as they generally appear.

Curator. Oh, that is not hard! I see no reason for not putting on clean caps.

Burgomaster. Yes. And let there also be written over every bed in Latin, or some other language⸺that ’s your business, Christian Ivánovich,—the name of every illness: when any of them got ill, what day of the month⸺It is not right for your patients to smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze upon entering. Yes, it also would be better if there were not so many of them, for it will be ascribed to improper care or the physician’s lack of skill.

Curator. Oh, Christian Ivánovich and I have taken our measures in regard to the doctoring: the nearer to nature, the better; we do not employ expensive medicaments. A man is a simple affair: if he is to die, he ’ll die anyway; and if he is to get well, he ’ll get well anyway. Besides, it would not be an easy matter for Christian Ivánovich to carry on a conversation with them, he does not know a word of Russian.

(Christian Ivánovich emits a sound, somewhere between ee and eh.)

Burgomaster. I should advise you also, Ammós Fédorovich, to direct your attention to the court-house. In the antechamber, where the people wait with their petitions, your janitors have been raising geese with their goslings that continually get between one’s legs. I admit it is praiseworthy to raise your own geese, and there is no reason why janitors should not rear them; only, don’t you know, it is n’t quite the thing to raise them in that place⸺I had in mind to tell you that before, but I somehow forgot.

Judge. Well, I ’ll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very day. Can’t you come and take dinner with me?

Burgomaster. Then again, it ’s wrong for all kinds of rags to be hung out in the court-room to get dry, and on the case with the documents lies a hunting-whip. I know you are fond of the chase; but it would be better for the time being to take it away, and as soon as the Revizór has gone, I don’t see why you can’t hang it back there again. Then again your assessor⸺, of course, he is a clever fellow; but there is an odour about him as if he had just come out of a still,—that won’t do either. I had intended to tell you about that long ago, but something or other drew my attention away from it. There are means against it, if it is, indeed, as he says, a natural odour with him: you might recommend him to eat garlic, onions, or something else. In this case Christian Ivánovich might help him with some of his medicaments.

(Christian Ivánovich emits the same sound as before.)

Judge. No, you can’t drive it out of him: he says that his nurse once hurt him when he was a baby, and ever since he has had a brandy smell about him.

Burgomaster. I only mention it to you. As to the internal disposition and what Andréy Ivánovich in his letter calls “peccadilloes,” I can’t say anything. Strange to say, there is not a man who has not some sin to answer for. God Himself has arranged it so, and the followers of Voltaire are in vain preaching against it.

Judge. What do you call peccadilloes, Antón Antónovich? There are peccadilloes and peccadilloes. I tell everybody openly that I take bribes, but what bribes? Greyhound pups. That ’s an entirely different matter.

Burgomaster. Pups or anything else, it ’s bribes all the same.

Judge. Not at all, Antón Antónovich. But suppose a man’s fur-coat costs five hundred roubles, and his wife’s shawl⸺

Burgomaster. What of it if your bribes consist in greyhound pups? But you don’t believe in God; you never go to church. I am, at least, firm in my faith and attend church regularly every Sunday; whereas you⸺Oh, I know you: when you begin to talk about the creation of the world, my hair simply stands on end.

Judge. I have reasoned it out all by myself, with my own intellect.

Burgomaster. Well, in this case much intelligence is worse than none at all. However, I only mentioned the County Court. To tell the truth, there is not much likelihood of anybody’s looking in there: it ’s an enviable place, and God Himself protects it. But you, Lúka Lukích, as Inspector of Schools, must take especial care of the teachers. They are, of course, knowing people, and have been educated in all kinds of colleges, but they have very strange ways about them, no doubt inseparable from their learned profession. One of them, for example,—the one with the fat face, I can’t think of his name,—can’t get along, upon standing on the platform, without making a grimace like this (imitates him), then he begins to claw his beard under the necktie. Of course, it does not matter much if he makes such a face to a pupil of his, and maybe that is necessary, for I am not a judge of that; but judge yourself,—if he should do so to a visitor, it might have a bad effect: the Revizór, or someone else, might take it to himself. The devil knows what that might lead to.

Inspector. I declare I don’t know what to do. I have talked several times to him about it. Only a few days ago, when the Marshal of the Nobility entered his classroom, he made a face I had never seen before. He did it from the goodness of his heart, but I had a reprimand for instilling radical thoughts into the youths.

Burgomaster. I must also draw your attention to the teacher of history. He is a learned man, that ’s evident, and is chockful of knowledge, only he lectures with such fervour that he forgets himself. I once listened to his lecture: as long as he was talking of Assyrians and Babylonians, things went tolerably well; but when he got to Alexander the Great, I can’t tell you what became of him. I thought there was a fire, upon my word! He ran down from the platform and with all his might and main smashed a chair against the floor! I ’ll admit Alexander the Great was a hero, but why break chairs over him? There is only a loss to the Crown from it.

Inspector. Yes, he is fiery! I have remarked so to him several times. He says: “I don’t care, I ’ll not spare my life for the sake of science!”

Burgomaster. Yes, such is the inexplicable law of fate: a clever fellow is either a drunkard, or he makes faces so that you have to carry out the holy images.

Inspector. God preserve us from being schoolmasters. You are afraid of everything! Everybody meddles with you, everybody wants to show that he, too, is a clever fellow.

Burgomaster. All that could pass,—but the accursed incognito! He ’ll suddenly poke in his nose: “Ah, there you are, my darling! Who,” will he say, “is the judge here?”—“Lyápkin-Tyápkin.”—“Fetch me in Lyápkin-Tyápkin! And who is the Curator of the Charitable Institutions?”—“Zemlyaníka.”—“Fetch in Zemlyaníka!” That ’s what is bad.

SCENE 2. THE SAME AND THE POSTMASTER

Postmaster. Tell me, gentlemen, what is it,—what official is coming?

Burgomaster. Have n’t you heard?

Postmaster. I have heard from Petr Ivánovich Bobchínski. He was just in my office.

Burgomaster. Well, what do you think of it?

Postmaster. What I think? Why, there will be a war with Turkey.

Judge. That ’s it! I thought so myself.

Burgomaster. Well, you ’re both wrong.

Postmaster. I insist, with Turkey. It ’s all the Frenchmen’s doing.

Burgomaster. Nonsense, war with Turkey! It ’s we who ’ll catch it, not the Turks. So much is certain; I have a letter.

Postmaster. If that ’s the case, there will be no war with Turkey.

Burgomaster. Well, how do you feel about that, Iván Kuzmích?

Postmaster. How I feel? How do you feel, Antón Antónovich?

Burgomaster. How I feel? Not exactly afraid, but just a little shaky. The shopkeepers and townspeople worry me. They say I ’ve laid it on to them; but I declare that if I have taken here and there a thing from one, I have done so without any ill-feeling. I even think (takes his arm and leads him aside), I even think there might have been some denunciation against me. For why should the Revizór come to us? Listen, Iván Kuzmích, could n’t you, for our common good, you know, just open a little and read every outgoing and incoming letter in your postoffice, to see whether they do not contain some denunciation or simply some report? If there is nothing in them, you may seal the letters again, or for that, you can return the letters unsealed.

Postmaster. I know, I know. Don’t teach me; I have been doing it, not exactly as a precaution, but chiefly from curiosity,—I ’m awfully fond of knowing what ’s up in the world. I assure you, it makes most interesting reading! Now and then there is a letter that I read with real pleasure,—there are all kinds of incidents described in them, and they are so edifying,—better than in the Moscow Gazette!

Burgomaster. Well, tell me, have n’t you found out from them something about an official from St. Petersburg?

Postmaster. No, there ’s nothing in them about anybody from St. Petersburg, but a great deal about Kostromá and Sarátov people. Really, what a pity you do not read letters! There are fine passages in them. For example, there was a lieutenant who in a letter to his friend described a ball in a most playful⸺yes, very fine: “My life, my dear friend,” says he, “flows in the empyrean: there are plenty of young ladies, music is playing, the flag is flying⸺” he described it with great, very great feeling. I purposely kept the letter. Do you want me to read it to you?

Burgomaster. Well, this is not the right time for it. So do me the favour, Iván Kuzmích: if, by chance, there should be a complaint or denunciation, keep it back without any further ado.

Postmaster. With the greatest pleasure.

Judge. Look out, you ’ll get into trouble yet.

Postmaster. Good gracious!

Burgomaster. Not at all, not at all. It would be a different matter, if you were to make a public affair out of it, but this is, so to say, a family matter.

Judge. Yes, there ’s mischief brewing! I was really coming to tell you, Antón Antónovich, that I wanted to present to you a puppy, a sister to that dog that you know. You have heard that Chéptovich and Varkhovínski have started a litigation; so I ’m in clover: I hunt hares now on one estate, now on the other.

Burgomaster. Lord, what do I care for your hares now! That accursed incognito is running through my head! I am only waiting for the door to open, and⸺

SCENE 3. THE SAME, BOBCHÍNSKI AND DOBCHÍNSKI ENTER, OUT OF BREATH

Bobchínski. An extraordinary occurrence!

Dobchínski. An unexpected occurrence!

All. What, what is it?

Dobchínski. An unforeseen affair: we come to the inn⸺

Bobchínski (interrupting him). Petr Ivánovich and I come to the inn⸺

Dobchínski (interrupting). Eh, permit me, Petr Ivánovich, let me tell it.

Bobchínski. Oh no, let me⸺let me, let me⸺you are n’t a good speaker⸺

Dobchínski. And you ’ll get confused and you ’ll forget something.

Bobchínski. No, I won’t, upon my word, I won’t. Don’t bother me, let me tell it, don’t bother me! Please, gentlemen, do tell Petr Ivánovich not to bother me.

Burgomaster. For the Lord’s sake, do tell, what is it? My heart is in my mouth. Sit down, gentlemen! Take seats! Petr Ivánovich, here is a chair for you. (All sit around the two Petr Ivánovichs.) Well, what is it, what?

Bobchínski. Allow me, allow me; I ’ll tell it all in order. No sooner had I the pleasure of leaving you, just as you were disturbed by the letter you had received, yes, I at once ran⸺now, please don’t interrupt me, Petr Ivánovich! I know it all, truly, I do. So, you see, I ran to Koróbkin’s house. As I did not find him at home I turned in to Rastákovski’s, and as I did not find him at home I stopped at Iván Kuzmích’s house to inform him the piece of news you had received, and as I was going away from there, I fell in with Petr Ivánovich.

Dobchínski (interrupting). Near the booth where they sell cakes.

Bobchínski. Near the booth where they sell cakes. Yes, and as I fell in with Petr Ivánovich, I said to him: “Have you heard the news that Antón Antónovich has received in a trustworthy letter?” But Petr Ivánovich had already heard that from your housekeeper Avdótya, who had been sent for something or other to Filíp Ivánovich Pochechúev.

Dobchínski (interrupting). For a keg of French brandy.

Bobchínski (warding him off with his hand). For a keg of French brandy. So Petr Ivánovich and I came to Pochechúev⸺Now, Petr Ivánovich, please don’t⸺don’t interrupt me, please, don’t interrupt me!⸺We went to Pochechúev, and on the way Petr Ivánovich said to me: “Let ’s go,” says he, “to the inn. My stomach,—I have eaten nothing since morning,—why, there ’s a rumbling in my stomach⸺” Yes, Petr Ivánovich’s stomach⸺ “In the inn,” says he, “they have received some fresh salmon, so we ’ll have a bite.” No sooner had we entered into the inn, when a young man⸺

Dobchínski (interrupting). Of good appearance and in citizen’s clothes⸺

Bobchínski. Of good appearance and in citizen’s clothes, was walking up and down the room, such an expression in his face⸺physiognomy⸺carriage, and up here (moves his hand around his forehead) very distinguished. I had a kind of presentiment, and I said to Petr Ivánovich: “There ’s something up here.” Yes. And Petr Ivánovich beckoned to the innkeeper and called him up,—’t was innkeeper Vlas,—his wife had a baby three weeks ago, such a lively creature, he ’ll be an innkeeper like his father. So, calling up Vlas, Petr Ivánovich asked him in a whisper: “Who,” says he, “is that young fellow?” to which Vlas answered: “That,” says he⸺oh, don’t interrupt me, Petr Ivánovich, I beg you, don’t interrupt me, you won’t be able to tell the story, upon my word you won’t: you lisp, you have a whistling tooth in your mouth, I know⸺ “That young man,” says he, “is an official,” yes, “he ’s from St. Petersburg, and his name is,” says he, “Iván Aleksándrovich Khlestakóv, sir, and he is on his way,” says he, “to the Government of Sarátov, and,” says he, “he is acting very strangely: he has been here nearly two weeks, he never leaves the inn, takes everything on credit, and won’t pay a kopek.” When he told me that, a light dawned upon me at once. “Oho!” said I to Petr Ivánovich⸺

Dobchínski. No, Petr Ivánovich, it was I who said “Oho!”

Bobchínski. First you said it, and then I. “Oho!” said we. “What reason could he have to stay here, when his road is to the Government of Sarátov?” Yes, sir, he is that very official.

Burgomaster. Who—what official?

Bobchínski. The official about whom you have received that information,—the Revizór.

Burgomaster (terrified). Don’t say that, the Lord be with you! it is n’t he.

Dobchínski. He! He does n’t pay his bill, and he does n’t leave. Who else could it be, if not he? His passport is made out for Sarátov.

Bobchínski. He—he—upon my word, he⸺He is so observing: he watches everything. He saw Petr Ivánovich and me eating salmon,—mainly because of, on account of, Petr Ivánovich’s stomach⸺yes, he even looked into our plates. I just trembled with fear.

Burgomaster. Lord, have mercy upon us sinners! Where is he staying there?

Dobchínski. Number five, under the staircase.

Bobchínski. The same room that the transient officers had a fight in last year.

Burgomaster. Has he been here long?

Dobchínski. Some two weeks. He arrived on the day of St. Basil the Egyptian.

Burgomaster. Two weeks! (Aside.) Friends and saints, help me! Within these two weeks the sergeant’s wife has been flogged! The prisoners have received no provision. Drunkenness and dirt in the streets! Disgraceful! Shameful! (Tears his hair.)

Curator. Antón Antónovich, had we not better make an official call in the inn?

Judge. No, no! First send the Mayor, the clergy, the merchants. It says in the book “John the Mason”⸺

Burgomaster. No, no! Let me attend to it! I ’ve had hard cases before in life, and I not only got out of them hale, but even received thanks. Maybe God will succour me now too. (Turning to Bobchínski.) You say, he is a young man?

Bobchínski. Yes, about twenty-three or -four at most.

Burgomaster. So much the better: it is easier to get at the bottom of a young fellow. It is a tough job, if you have an old devil to deal with; but a young fellow is all on the surface. You, gentlemen, make your proper arrangements, and I ’ll go myself, or maybe with Petr Ivánovich, privately, just for a walk to see that travellers are properly treated. Here, Svistunóv!

Svistunóv. At your service, sir!

Burgomaster. Fetch me at once the captain—or, no. I need you. Tell somebody there to fetch me the captain as quickly as possible, and come back here. (The sergeant runs away.)

Curator. Let us go, let us go, Ammós Fédorovich. There might, indeed, happen some misfortune.

Judge. What are you afraid of? Put clean nightcaps on the patients, and your deed is done.

Curator. Bosh, nightcaps! The patients are supposed to get oat gruel, and instead there is such a smell of cabbage in the corridors that you are compelled to hold your nose.

Judge. I am at ease on that score. Indeed, who would think of looking into the County Court? And if he should take it into his head to glance at some papers, he ’ll wish he had not done it. It ’s now fifteen years I have been occupying the bench, but when I look into a brief, I give it up in despair. Solomon himself could not make out what is right and what wrong.

(The Judge, Curator of Charitable Institutions, Inspector of Schools, and Postmaster go out, and in the door bump against the returning sergeant.)

FROM “DEAD SOULS”

MRS. KORÓBOCHKA

“It ’s a fine village you have there, motherkin. How many souls are there?”

“There are in it nigh upon eighty souls, my friend,” said the proprietress. “The trouble is, times are bad: now, last year there was such a failure of crops; God save us from another!”

“Yet your peasants are rather a fine lot, and their cabins look as if they were in good trim. Oh, please tell me your name! I am so distracted, having arrived here in night time⸺”

“Koróbochka, college secretary.”

“Much obliged. And your Christian name and patronymic?”

“Nastásya Petróvna.”

“Nastásya Petróvna? It ’s a fine name—Nastásya Petróvna. I have an aunt, my mother’s sister, whose name is Nastásya Petróvna.”

“And what is your name?” asked the proprietress: “you are the tax-collector, if I am not mistaken?”

“No, motherkin!” answered Chíchikov smiling: “not the tax-collector. I am travelling on my own account.”

“Oh, then you are buying things! What a pity that I sold the honey so cheap to the merchants! I am sure, my friend, you would have bought it of me.”

“No, it is n’t honey I am after.”

“What then? Hemp? Why, I have n’t much of it just now,—something like half a pud.”

“No, motherkin, it ’s different goods I want. Tell me, have any of your peasants died?”

“Oh, my friend, eighteen of them?” said the old woman with a sigh. “And it ’s all good workers that have died. There have been born some since, it is true, but what good is there in them? It ’s all small fry. When the tax-collector comes around, I ’ll have to pay for the dead ones all the same as if they were living. Last week my blacksmith was burned; he was such a fine blacksmith, and he was a locksmith too.”

“Have you had a fire, motherkin?”

“God has spared me that misfortune. A fire would have been worse; no, he burnt himself, my friend. There was something inside of him that caught fire: he had been drinking hard. A blue flame came out of him, and he burnt all up, and grew black like coal. Oh, he was such a fine blacksmith! Now I can’t drive out at all, for there is nobody here to shoe the horses.”

“God’s will is in everything, motherkin!” said Chíchikov heaving a sigh: “we must say nothing against the wisdom of God⸺ Turn them over to me, Nastásya Petróvna!”

“Whom, my friend?”

“I mean all those that have died.”

“How do you mean, to turn them over?”

“Why, just turn them over, or, if you wish, sell them to me. I ’ll pay you for them.”

“How do you mean that? I declare, I can’t see through it. Do you intend to dig them up?”

Chíchikov perceived that she was far from the mark, and it became necessary to explain to her the business. He told her in a few words that the transfer or sale would be only on paper, and that the souls would be mentioned as if they were still alive.

“What do you want them for?” said the old woman, as she stared at him.

“That ’s my affair.”

“But they are dead!”

“Well, who said they were alive? That ’s where your loss comes in, because they are dead. You have been paying for them all this time, and I will deliver you from trouble and expenses. You understand? I will not only deliver you, but I ’ll pay you fifteen roubles to boot. Well, is it clear now?”

“I confess, I don’t know,” said the proprietress deliberately: “I have never before sold dead souls.”

“I guess not! It would, indeed, have been an odd thing if you had. Or do you, really, think there is some use in them?”

“No, I don’t think exactly that. What use can there be in them? There ’s no use in them. The thing that troubles me is, they are dead.”

“I see she is a thick-skulled old woman,” Chíchikov thought. “Listen, motherkin! Just consider well: you are ruining yourself when you pay taxes for them as if they were alive⸺”

“Oh, my friend, don’t mention it!” the proprietress interrupted him. “It is n’t three weeks yet that I had to pay one hundred and fifty, and to grease the tax-collector besides.”

“That ’s it, motherkin! Now, just consider that you will not have to grease the tax-collector again, for it is I who am going to pay for them, and not you. I take upon myself all obligations. I ’ll even have the deed made out at my expense, do you understand that?”

The old woman became pensive. She saw that the business was indeed advantageous, but so new and unusual that she was growing suspicious, lest the purchaser should get the better of her, especially since God knows where he came from, and that, too, at night time.

“Well, motherkin, is it a bargain?” said Chíchikov.

“Really, my friend, I have never yet had a chance to sell corpses. As for living ones, it ’s only three years hence that I sold some to Protopópov,—two girls at one hundred roubles apiece,—and he ’s been thankful for them: they have turned out to be excellent workers, and they can make even napkins.”

“But we are not concerned about living ones,—God be with them! I am asking for dead ones.”

“Really, I am afraid, to begin with, I might sell them at a sacrifice. Maybe, my friend, you are cheating me. Who knows but what they are worth more?”

“Listen, motherkin,—what a funny woman you are! What worth can they have? Think of it: they are dust. Do you understand?—they are nothing but dust. Take any useless, worthless thing, say, a common rag, and that has some value: it may be, at least, bought in the paper factory, but what are these good for? Say yourself, what are they good for?”

“I ’ll agree, you are right. They are good for nothing. The only thing that bothers me is that they are dead.”

“Confound that club-headed woman!” said Chíchikov to himself, as he was beginning to lose patience. “Go and straighten things out with her! She has made me sweat, accursed woman!” He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe off the perspiration that really had come out on his forehead. In reality, Chíchikov had no special reason to lose his patience: there is many an honourable man, a man of state, who is a fine reproduction of Mrs. Koróbochka. Let him take some notion, and you will not get him away from it; all your proofs in the world, even if they are as clear as daylight, will rebound from him, like a rubber ball from the wall. Having wiped off his perspiration, Chíchikov resolved to try her from another side, hoping to get her at last on the right path.

“Motherkin, either you do not want to understand my words, or you are just talking, to be a-talking. I am offering you money, fifteen roubles in assignats,—do you understand? It is money I am offering you. You can’t pick it up in the street. Now, confess, what did you sell your honey at?”

“Twelve roubles a pud.”

“You are sinning a little, motherkin. You did not sell it at twelve.”

“Upon my word, I did.”

“Well, you see, but it is honey! You have been gathering it probably for a year, with care, and trouble, and worry; you had to be about, to starve the bees, to feed them a whole winter in the cellar—while dead souls are not of this world. Here you have to undergo no trouble: it was God’s will that they should leave this world and cause your estate a loss. There you received a compensation for your labour and your care at the rate of twelve roubles, and here you receive for nothing, and not twelve, but fifteen, and not in silver, but in blue assignats.”

Chíchikov did not doubt that after such convincing proof the old woman would finally capitulate.

“Really,” answered the proprietress, “I am such an inexperienced widow! I think I had better wait a little: maybe some other purchasers will come, and I ’ll get used to the price.”

“Shame, shame, motherkin! Simply, shame! Now, just think what you are saying! Who is going to buy them? Well, what use can anybody make of them?”

“Maybe they are some good on the estate⸺” retorted the old woman and did not finish her speech. She opened her mouth and looked at him almost with terror, wondering what he would say to that.

“Dead souls on the estate! What a guess you have made! What do you want to do with them? Use them for scarecrows to drive the sparrows out of your garden?”

“The power of the cross be with us! What awful things you say!” muttered the woman, making the sign of the cross.

“Well, where else would you make use of them? Besides, I leave their bones and graves to you: the transfer is only on paper. Well, what do you say? Give me, at least, some kind of an answer.”

The old woman fell again to musing.

“What are you thinking about, Nastásya Petróvna?”

“Really, I can’t quite make it out; let me better sell you some hemp.”

“What do I want with the hemp? I declare, I am asking you for something else, and you foist hemp upon me! The hemp is all right, I ’ll come another time, and will take your hemp. How is it now, Nastásya Petróvna?”

“Upon my word, it ’s such a strange article, and so odd.”

Here Chíchikov’s patience burst all bounds; in his anger he banged a chair against the floor, and sent her to the devil.

The proprietress was dreadfully put out by the devil. “Oh, don’t mention him, God be with him!” she cried out, while growing pale: “Only night before last the accursed one appeared to me in my dream. I had carelessly been laying cards to tell fortune in the evening after prayers, so the Lord evidently sent him to me to punish me. Oh, he looked so horrible: his horns were longer than a bull’s.”

“I wonder how it is they don’t come to you by the dozen. Out of mere Christian charity I wanted to help a poor widow that is suffering want⸺ Go to perdition with your whole village!⸺”

“What curses you are uttering!” said the woman, looking at him in terror.

“I can’t find the right words with you! Really, not to use any bad words, you are just like a watchdog that is lying on the hay: he does n’t himself eat any hay, and won’t let anybody else eat it. I had intended to buy all kinds of produce from you, for I am also a government contractor⸺” He lied here, just in passing, without any further thought, but it came in unexpectedly at the right moment. Government contracts made a strong impression on Nastásya Petróvna; at least she spoke in an almost imploring voice:

“But what has made you so dreadfully angry? If I had known before that you are such an excitable man, I would n’t have contradicted you at all.”

“There is really no cause for anger! The whole business is n’t worth an empty eggshell, and why should I get angry over it?”

“Well, if you want them, I ’ll let you have them for fifteen in assignats! Only, my friend, let me tell you about your government contracts: if you have any occasion to buy up rye, or buckwheat, or grit, or meat,—please don’t forget me.”

“No, motherkin, I won’t,” he said while wiping off the sweat that came down his face in three streaks. He asked her whether she did not have in town some attorney or friend whom she could give the power to make out the deed and everything else that was necessary.

“Certainly! The son of Father Cyril, the protopope, serves in the court-house,” said Koróbochka.

Chíchikov asked her to write a letter to him granting him power of attorney, and, to save more trouble, began to compose the letter himself.

“It would be nice,” Koróbochka said to herself in the meanwhile, “if he bought flour and beef of me for the government. I must get on the good side of him: there is some dough left from last night, so I ’ll go and tell Fetínya to make some griddle cakes.”

Vissarión Grigórevich Byelínski. (1811-1848.)

Few persons have exerted such a far-reaching influence upon Russian literature as the critic Byelínski, and a whole generation of writers was cast in the mould of his æsthetic views. Byelínski was the son of a district physician in the Government of Pénza. His home life was exceedingly unhappy and his childhood was neglected; from the district school, to which he was sent up to his fourteenth year, he was transferred to the Gymnasium and later to the Moscow University, but he was a very poor student and careless about his person. In Moscow he joined the Schelling circle of the students and with them devoted his time to the study of literature, especially of Shakspere, Goethe, Schiller, and Hoffmann. In 1832 he left the university, and the next two years he passed in utter wretchedness and poverty. Then he took his first critical essay, Literary Dreams, to a magazine, and his literary career began. Under Schelling’s influence he denied the previous importance of Russian literature, and proclaimed the nascent genius of Gógol, who had just made his appearance. Between 1836 and 1838 Byelínski’s circle of friends vaulted over to Hegel’s philosophy, and under this new influence Byelínski rejected all lyrics and satire as not compatible with an unbiased, objective contemplation of the phenomena of life, and discredited all productions that dealt with the living questions of the day. In 1839 he was called to St. Petersburg to take charge of the critical and bibliographical departments of the Memoirs of the Fatherland. Here began the third and most important period of his activity: he soon recanted his former æsthetic theories and evolved the theory of “art for life,” which henceforth became the criterion for all literary criticisms. Of his many excellent essays of this period dealing with Russian belles-lettres, the best is A View on Russian Literature for the Year 1847. He died of consumption, brought about mainly by his many privations.

THE NATURAL SCHOOL

Our literature has been the fruit of conscious thought; it appeared as an innovation, it began by imitation. It did not stop there, but continually strove to be independent, national; from being rhetorical it strove to become simple, natural. This tendency has been made perceptible by a continuous progress, and forms the meaning and soul of the history of our literature. We will say without reserve that in no Russian writer has this tendency been crowned by such success as in Gógol. This end was attained only through the exclusive application of art to reality, in spite of all ideals. It became necessary to direct all the attention to the people, the masses, to depict common men, and not merely the pleasant exceptions from the universal rule, that invariably tempt the poets to idealise, and that bear upon themselves a foreign stamp. That was Gógol’s great merit, and it is that precisely which the men of the old culture regard as his crime against the laws of art. By his manner he has completely changed the view on art itself. One may apply to the works of all the Russian poets, by stretching the point a little, the old and obsolete definition of poetry as “Nature adorned”; but it is impossible to do so in relation to Gógol’s works. For these the more appropriate definition is “a reproduction of reality in all its truth.” Here the whole matter is in types, and the ideal is here not understood as an adornment (consequently—a lie), but as the correlation of the types created by him, in accordance with the thought which he wishes to develop in his production.

Art has in our days got the better of theory. The old theories have lost all their credit; the very people that had been educated in them follow not them, but a certain strange mixture of old and new conceptions. Thus, for example, some of them, in rejecting the old French theory in the name of Romanticism, were the first to give the aggravating example of introducing into their novels persons from the lower strata, even villains, under the appropriate appellation of Pilferer and Cutter; but they immediately rectified themselves by bringing out moral persons, together with the immoral ones, under the name of Truth-lover, Charitable, etc. In the first case was to be seen the influence of new ideas, in the second, of old conceptions, for according to the recipe of ancient poetics at least one clever fellow must be added to a number of fools, and at least one virtuous man to a number of good-for-nothings. In either case these betweeners left out of sight the main thing, namely, art; for it did not occur to them that their virtuous and vicious persons were not men, not characters, but rhetorical personifications of abstract virtues and vices. That explains better than anything why for them theory, rule, is more important than fact, reality: the latter is inaccessible to their comprehension. However, not even talented writers and geniuses are always able to escape the influence of theory. Gógol belongs to the number of the few who have entirely avoided every influence of any and all theory. Though capable of understanding art and of admiring it in the productions of other poets, he nevertheless proceeded in his own way, following his deep and true artistic instinct with which Nature had endowed him lavishly, and without being tempted to imitate the successes of others. Of course, that did not in itself give him any originality, but enabled him to preserve and express in its entirety that originality which was the part and parcel of his individuality, consequently, like talent, a natural gift. It is for that reason that he appeared to many as having entered Russian literature from without, while, in reality, he was its necessary phenomenon, which was the logical conclusion of all its preceding evolution.

Gógol’s influence on Russian literature has been enormous. Not only did all the young talents throw themselves on the path which he had indicated, but some writers who had already gained a reputation abandoned their old way and proceeded on the new. Gógol wrote nothing after the Dead Souls. There is only his school upon the arena of literature. All blame and accusation that formerly was hurled at him is now directed against the natural school, and whatever attack is still made upon him is on account of that school. What is he, then, accused of? There are but few accusations, and they are nearly always the same. At first they attacked the school, they claimed, on account of its eternal attacks upon the officials. In the representation of the life of this class some saw sincerely, others feignedly, evil-minded caricatures. These accusations have been silenced for some time. Now they accuse the writers of the natural school for loving the people of the lower occupations, for making heroes of their novels out of peasants, janitors, coachmen, for describing the purlieus and refuges of naked poverty and frequently of all kind of immorality. To put the new writers to shame, the accusers point with triumph to the beautiful days of Russian literature, refer to the names of Karamzín and Dmítriev, who had chosen for their productions high and noble objects, and adduce as an example of now forgotten prettiness the sentimental song: “Of all the flowerets I loved most the rose!” But we shall remind them that the first noteworthy novel, was written by Karamzín, and its heroine was “Poor Líza,” a peasant girl, who was seduced by a coxcomb⸺ But, they will say, everything is decent and pure there, and the Moscow peasant girl does not yield to the best-brought-up lady. Now we have, at last, come to the cause of the dispute: you see, the old poetics is to be blamed for it. It does not mind your representing peasants, but not otherwise than masqueraded in theatrical costumes, who display feelings and ideas that are strange to their existence, position, and education, and who express themselves in a language no one speaks, and least of all peasants,—a literary language that is embellished by “wherewith, aforementioned, than which,” and so forth.⸺ In short, the ancient poetics permits you to represent anything you please, but immediately prescribes so to adorn the subject under discussion as to make it utterly impossible to discover what it is you had intended to represent.

The natural school follows the very opposite rule: the nearest possible resemblance of the persons represented to their prototypes in reality does not form its all, but is its first condition, a non-compliance with which would vitiate anything good there may be in the composition. It is a heavy condition which only a talent can comply with. After that, how can those writers help loving and honouring that ancient poetics, who formerly could without talent insinuate themselves successfully in the field of poetry? How can they help regarding the natural school as their most terrible enemy, since it has introduced a manner of writing which is inaccessible to them? That, of course, refers only to people with whom egotism enters in the discussion of this question; but there will also be found many who in all sincere conviction do not love the natural in art, through the influence of the old poetics upon them. These people, in addition, complain with special bitterness, because art has now forgotten its former purpose. “Poetry,” they say, “used to instruct while amusing, compelled the reader to forget the tribulations and sufferings of life, and represented to him only pleasant and smiling pictures. The former poets used to represent also pictures of poverty, but a poverty that was neat, washed, and expressing itself modestly and with refinement; then, at the end of the novel there always appeared a sentimental young lady or maiden, a daughter of rich and refined parents, or at least a philanthropic young man,—and, in the name of these kind hearts, was enthroned abundance and happiness where there was poverty and misery, and grateful tears watered the beneficent hand,—and the reader involuntarily raised his batiste handkerchief to his eyes and felt that he was growing better and more sentimental⸺

“But now!—See what they are writing about now! Peasants in bast shoes and gabardines who often smell of brandy; an old woman—a kind of centaur, by whose dress one cannot easily tell of what gender that creature may be; purlieus—refuges of misery, despair, and debauch, which one can reach only by yards knee-deep in mud; some drunkard,—a scribe or a seminarist turned teacher, expelled from service,—all that is described from nature, in the nakedness of terrible truth, so that the reading of it will give you some bad dreams⸺”

Thus, or in some such manner, speak the intrepid disciples of the ancient poetics. In reality, their complaints are that poetry has quit lying shamelessly, that it has changed from a nursery tale into a not always pleasant narrative, that it has ceased being a rattle, by the sound of which children leap about or fall asleep. Strange people, happy people! They have succeeded in remaining all their life children, and even in their old age to be minors,—and now they demand that all should resemble them! Read your old fairy tales, nobody will keep you from them; but leave to others the occupations that suit those who are of age. For you—the lie; for us—truth: let us divide without quarrelling. You do not want our share, and we will not take yours gratis⸺

But there is another cause which interferes with this friendly division,—egotism which regards itself as virtue. Indeed, let us take a man who is well-off, or even rich. He has just had a good, savoury dinner (he has an excellent cook), has seated himself in his comfortable arm-chair, with a cup of coffee, in front of a glowing fireplace; he feels good and warm, a feeling of well-being makes him happy; he takes a book and lazily turns its pages; his brow wrinkles over his eyes, the smile disappears from his rosy lips, he is agitated, disturbed, annoyed⸺ And there is reason for it! The book tells him that not all people in the world live as well as he; that there are purlieus where a whole family shakes with cold under rags, though it had, probably, but lately known of ease; that there are people in the world who by birth and fate are destined for misery,—that the last kopek goes for “green wine” not always from indolence, but also from despair. And our happy man feels ill at ease, and rather ashamed of his comfort. The whole trouble is in that wretched book: he had picked it up for his pleasure, and he had read himself into melancholy and ennui. Away with it! “A book is to give you a pleasant pastime; I do not need it to find out that there is much sorrow and sadness in life, and if I do read, it is to forget it all!” he exclaims.

Yes, dear sybarite, for your peace books ought to lie, and the poor man forget his woe, the hungry his hunger, the groans of suffering must reach your ears as musical notes, lest your appetite be spoiled, your sleep disturbed⸺ Now let us imagine another lover of pleasant reading in the same situation. He has to give a reception, the time is drawing near, and there is no money. His steward, Nikíta Fédorych, has for some reason been slow in sending the amount. At last the money arrives, the reception can come off. With a cigar in his mouth, happy and satisfied, he is lying on the couch and, having nothing to do, his hands lazily stretch out towards a book. Again the same story! That damnable book tells him the exploits of his Nikíta Fédorych, that low-born churl, who had been accustomed from childhood eagerly to pander to the passions and whims of others, who was married to the ex-sweetheart of his master’s progenitor⸺ Away with that wretched book!

Now imagine again another man in a comfortable condition, who in his childhood had been running about barefooted, had been a messenger-boy, and at fifty had somehow risen to rank, and who possessed a small competency. Everybody reads, so he must too. But what does he find in the book?—His biography and, at that, correctly told, though no one, but himself, knows anything of the experiences of his life, and no author could possibly have discovered his secret⸺ He is not merely agitated, he is mad, and with a feeling of dignity he eases his anger by the following consideration: “That’s the way they write nowadays! That’s what Free Thought has come to! Did they write that way before? No! It used to be such a fluent style, and they discussed such tender and elevated subjects that it was a joy to read, and there was no cause for annoyance!”

There is a special class of readers who, from a sentiment of aristocratism, hate to meet people of the lower strata even in books, especially those that have no sense of proprieties and refinement; they despise dirt and misery, as the very opposite of their luxurious parlours, boudoirs, and cabinets. These refer to the natural school only with a haughty contempt and ironical smile⸺ Who are they, these feudal barons, that they loathe the “low-born mob” that in their eyes is lower than a good horse? Be not in a hurry to learn about them in books of heraldry or at European courts: you will not find their coats-of-arms; they do not go to Court, and if they have seen the fashionable world, it was only in the street, through brilliantly lighted windows, as much as curtains and blinds permitted them to do so. They cannot boast of ancestors: they are generally officials, or new-made nobles that are rich only in plebeian traditions of a grandfather who was a steward, an uncle—a contractor, and, at times, a grandmother—a baker of altar breads, and an aunt—a huckstress.

A contempt for the lower strata of society is in our days no longer a vice of the higher classes; no, it is the disease of upstarts, a monstrous outgrowth of ignorance, and vulgarity of feelings and conceptions. A wise and cultured man would never manifest this disease, if he were at all subject to it, because it does not comport with the spirit of the time, because to proclaim it would be the croaking that announces the raven. It seems to us that, though doublefacedness is contemptible, in this case it is better than a raven sincerity, for it bears witness to cleverness. The peacock that proudly opens his splendid tail before the other birds has the reputation of a beautiful, not clever, animal. What is to be said of the raven that haughtily displays its borrowed plumage? Such haughtiness is always devoid of sense, and is generally a plebeian vice. Where is there more display and pretence than in those classes of society that come right after the lowest? It is so, because there is most ignorance there. See how deeply the lackey despises the peasant who is, in every respect, better, nobler, humaner than he! Whence that pride in the lackey?—He has adopted his master’s vices, and therefore he regards himself as more cultured than the peasant. External lustre is ever taken by coarse natures for culture.

“What sense is there in flooding literature with peasants?” exclaim the aristocrats of a certain category. In their opinion the writer is an artisan who is to furnish work according to order. It does not enter their minds that in the selection of the subject for his composition the author cannot be guided by the will of others, or even his own free choice, for art has its laws that must be complied with in order that one may write well. It demands above all that the writer should be true to his own nature, his talent, his fancy. How are we to explain the fact that one likes to represent happy subjects, another sad ones, if not by the nature, character, and talent of the poet? What one loves and is interested in, that one knows best, and what one knows best, one represents best. That is the most legitimate justification of the poet who is blamed for the selection of his subjects; it is not satisfactory only to those who have no understanding of art and vulgarly confound it with the artisan’s profession.

Nature is the eternal model of art, and the greatest and noblest subject in nature is man. And is a peasant not a man? But what can there be of interest in a coarse, untutored man? Why, his soul, mind, heart, passions, inclinations,—in short, the same as in the cultured man. Granted, the latter is more interesting than the first; but is the botanist interested only in artfully improved garden plants, and does he neglect their wild-growing field prototypes? Is not for the anatomist and physiologist the organism of a wild Australian as interesting as the organism of an enlightened European? For what reason should art, in this respect, differ so much from science? Then you say that a cultured man is higher than an uncultured one. One has to agree with you in that, but not unconditionally. Of course, the most frivolous worldly man stands incomparably higher than a peasant, but in what respect? Only in worldly education, but that in no way interferes with many a peasant’s being higher than he, for example, as regards his mind, feelings, character. Education only develops the moral powers of man, it does not give them; Nature gives them to man. In this distribution of her precious gifts, she acts blindly, without considering the classes. If from the educated class of society there issues a greater number of remarkable men, it is only because there are there more means for development, and not at all because Nature has been more niggardly with the men of the lower classes in the distribution of her gifts.

“What can one learn from a book in which is described some miserable wretch who has drunk himself to perdition?” say again these second-hand aristocrats. Why, certainly not worldly manners and refinement, but the knowledge of man under certain conditions. One man gets drunk through indolence, through bad bringing up, through weakness of character, another through unfortunate circumstances in life for which he may not bear the least blame. In either case, they are instructive and curious examples for observation. Of course, it is much easier to turn away with disgust from a fallen man than to stretch out to him a consoling and helpful hand, just as it is much easier to judge him severely in the name of morality than with sympathy and love to enter into his situation, to probe the cause of his fall, and to pity him as a man, even when he appears much to blame for his fall.

The Redeemer of the human race came into the world for all men; not wise and educated men, but simple-minded and simple-hearted fishermen He called to be “fishers of men”; not rich and happy men, but poor, suffering, fallen men He sought, in order to console some, and encourage and raise others. Festering sores on a body that was hardly covered with unclean rags did not offend His eyes, which shone with love and charity. He, the son of God, loved men humanely and sympathised with them in their misery, dirt, shame, debauch, vices, wrongdoings. He bid those throw a stone at the adulteress who could not in any way accuse their own consciences, and put the hard-hearted judges to shame, and gave the fallen woman a word of consolation,—and the robber, who breathed his last on the cross as a well-deserved punishment, for one moment of repentance, heard from Him the word of forgiveness and peace. But we, the sons of men, we want to love only those of our brothers who are like us, we turn away from the lower classes as from pariahs, fallen ones, lepers. What virtues and deserts have given us the right to do so? Is it not rather the very absence of all virtues and deserts? But the divine word of love and brotherhood has not in vain been proclaimed to the world.

That which formerly was only the duty of persons who had been called to serve at the altar, or the virtue of the chosen few, has now become the obligation of societies, and no longer serves as a token of mere virtue, but also of culture of private individuals. See, how in our century everybody is interested in the lot of the lower classes, how private philanthropy is everywhere being changed into state institutions, how on all sides are formed well-organised, richly endowed societies for the aid of the needy and suffering, for the suppression and prevention of misery and its inevitable consequence—immorality and debauch. This universal movement, so noble, so humane, so Christian, meets its detractors in the persons of the worshippers of a dull and stark patriarchalism. They say that fashion, whim, vainglory, and not philanthropy, are active here. Suppose it is so, but when and where have similar trifling impulses not taken part in the best of human actions? But how can one assert that only such impulses have been the cause of these phenomena? How can one think that the chief creators of these phenomena, who by their example have influenced the masses, are not inspired by nobler and higher impulses? Naturally, there is no cause for admiring the virtue of people who throw themselves into charity not from a sense of neighbourly love, but from fashion, from imitation, from vainglory. But it is a virtue as regards society which is so full of the spirit that it can direct the activities of trivial people towards the good! Is it not an extremely encouraging phenomenon of modern civilisation, of progress of mind, education, and culture?

Entirely admitting that art must above all be art, we nevertheless think that the idea of some kind of a pure, exclusive art that lives in its own sphere, that has nothing in common with the other sides of life, is an abstract, visionary idea. There has never and nowhere existed such an art. No doubt, life is divided and subdivided into a multitude of sides that have their separate existences; but these sides continually interact in a living organism, and there is between them no sharply drawn line. No matter how you may parcel out life, it is always one and inseparable. They say: for science we need mind and reason, for art, fancy, and they think that they have thus once and for all settled the matter, and that it is fit to go in that shape into the archives. Does not art need mind and reason as well? And can the savant get along without fancy? No! The truth is that in art fancy plays the most active and important part, while in science, mind and reason. There are, to be sure, productions of poetry in which nothing is to be seen except a strong, brilliant fancy; but that is not a common rule for artistic productions.

Sergyéy Timoféevich Aksákov. (1791-1859.)

Aksákov represents the rare example in Russian literature of an author who passed from the pseudo-classic style to the realistic school of Gógol without taking part in the intervening Romantic movement. He was born at Ufá, and graduated from what was then the Kazán University at sixteen years of age. He then served as a government translator, and devoted himself to literature, mainly to translations from the French. His sympathies were entirely with Shishkóv, Karamzín’s opponent. In 1827 he was made a censor, in which capacity he gained an unenviable reputation as an unscrupulous partisan. In the thirties he came under the influence of Gógol, and in 1833 he wrote The Snowstorm, which was later followed by an admirable series of sketches on angling and on hunting, containing charming pictures of animal life. In 1856 appeared his great work, The Family Chronicle, in which he gives vivid descriptions from the life of a landed proprietor in the Orenbúrg country, abounding in exquisite landscape pictures. The Family Chronicle differs from all the other productions of the realistic school in that there is not a word of fiction in it, but that it is based entirely on actual facts.

FROM “THE FAMILY CHRONICLE”

Towards the end of June the heat was oppressive. After a sultry night there blew, at daybreak, a fresh eastern breeze, but it subsided as soon as the sun grew warmer. Grandfather awoke at sunrise. He found it warm sleeping in a small upper room, even though the old-fashioned window frame with its tiny panes was lifted up to its fullest capacity, because his bed was curtained with a bar of homespun netting. This was a necessary precaution, for without the bar the pestering mosquitoes would have eaten him up and would have kept him from falling asleep. The winged musicians swarmed around in clouds and stuck their long stings through the thin screen, and they hummed all night their wearisome serenades. It is funny for me to say so, but I can’t help confessing that I like the descant buzz and even the biting of the mosquitoes; I hear in it the oppressive summer, the luxurious, sleepless nights, the shores of the Buguruslán that are overgrown with green bushes, from which resound on all sides the songs of the nightingales; I recall the rapture of my young heart and the sweet, unaccountable pining for which I would now gladly give the rest of my flickering life.

Grandfather awoke, with his warm hand wiped the sweat from his straight, high forehead, put his head out from under the bar, and began to laugh. Vánka Mazán and Nikánorka Tanaychénok were snoring on the floor on which they were stretched out in laughable, though artistic, postures. “I declare, the dog’s children are snoring!” said grandfather and smiled again.

Stepán Mikháylovich was an enigmatic man. After such a strong verbal exordium one would have expected a poke in the side of the sleeper, with the viburnum cane which always stood by his bed, or a kick with the foot, or even a greeting with the chair; but grandfather only laughed out loud as he awoke, and thus, as they say, got into a good humour for the whole day.

He rose without any noise, made one or two signs of the cross, stepped with his bare feet into leather slippers that were worn red, and, dressed in nothing but a shirt of peasant homespun (grandmother would not let him have loom-woven linen for shirts), he went out on the porch where he was refreshed by a whiff of the morning moisture. I just said that Arína Vasílevna did not give him any loom-woven linen for shirts, and every reader would be right in remarking that this was not in keeping with the character of the wedded pair. But really I can’t help it, and I beg you not to be angry with me, it was as I said: feminine nature carried the day over the male, as is always the case! Though she was frequently beaten for giving him coarse underwear, she continued to offer him the same, until the old man took it as a matter of course. Once grandfather made use of the last and the most efficacious means: he chopped up with an axe, on the threshold of his room, all the underwear that had been made of peasant homespun, in spite of grandmother’s wail, who kept on imploring that Stepán Mikháylovich might strike her, but should spare his own property, but even this means was of no avail; the coarse underwear made its appearance again,—and the old man surrendered.

I am much to be blamed for interrupting the story about “my grandfather’s good day,” in order to contradict the reader’s possible remark. Without disturbing anyone, he took down a felt blanket which always lay in the storeroom, spread it out on the upper step of the porch, and sat down upon it, to receive, as was his custom, the rising sun.

Before sunrise a man’s heart experiences unconsciously a happy feeling; but grandfather had the additional pleasure of looking at his estate which was then already well provided with all necessary farm buildings. It is true, the yard was not fenced in, and the cattle from the peasant yards, which were gathering into a common herd before being driven out into the pasture, made a call upon him in passing, just as on that morning and as always happened in the evenings. A few dirty pigs rubbed and scratched themselves against the very porch on which grandfather was sitting, and, grunting, feasted on lobster shells and all kinds of remnants from the dinner which were unceremoniously thrown out near the same porch. Cows and sheep made their visits too. Naturally there were left indecent traces of their calls, but grandfather saw nothing disagreeable in all that, but on the contrary took his delight in watching the healthy cattle, which were to him a sure sign of the sufficiency and well-being of his peasants.

Soon the loud snapping of a long shepherd whip drove the visitors away. The servants began to rise. The tall groom Spiridón, who was called Spírka to a good old age, led out one after another two roan colts and one bay, hitched them to a post, groomed them, and then walked them around by a long rope, while grandfather admired their stature, as he also took delight in the breed he expected to raise from them (he was later completely successful in that). Then awoke also the old stewardess who slept in the loft of the cellar; she came out of the cellar, went to the Buguruslán to get washed, sighed, sobbed (that was her unchangeable custom), prayed to God while turning to the east, and began to wash, rinse, and clean the pots and dishes.

The swallows and martins chirped and sang, circling merrily in the sky; the quails called loudly in the fields; the songs of the skylarks rang out in the air; the crake cried hoarsely, sitting in the bushes; the whistling of waterhens, and the tocking and bleating of wild snipes were borne thither from the nearby swamp, and the blue-throated warblers vied in mocking the nightingales.—The bright sun rolled out from beyond the hill.

Smoke rose from the peasants’ huts, bending with the wind in light grey columns, like a procession of river boats flaunting their flags; the peasants started for the field.

Grandfather wanted to wash himself in cold water, and then to drink tea. He awoke his disgracefully sleeping servants. They leaped up, like half-witted people, in fright, but Stepán Mikháylovich’s merry voice reassured them: “Mazán, fetch me some water! Tanaychénok, wake Aksyútka and the lady,—and tea!” There was no need of repeating the commands: awkward Mazán was running as fast as his feet could carry him with a bright brass wash-basin to get some water at the spring; and agile Tanaychénok awoke the homely servant girl Aksyútka who only fixed the kerchief that had slipped from her head and at once went to wake the good old lady Arína Vasílevna. A few minutes later the whole house was on its feet, and everybody knew that the old gentleman had gotten up in a good humour. Fifteen minutes later a table was placed near the porch, and it was covered with a fine white cloth of home make; upon it boiled a samovár in the shape of a huge brass tea-pot, and Aksyútka was busy attending to it; the old lady, Arína Vasílevna, bade Stepán Mikháylovich good-morning, without sighing and groaning, as would be proper on other mornings, and loudly and merrily asked his health: “How did you rest yourself, and what kind of dreams did you have?”

Grandfather greeted his wife kindly and called her Arísha; he never kissed her hand, but gave her his hand to kiss as a token of his favour. Arína Vasílevna bloomed out and grew younger. Her obesity and clumsiness disappeared as if by magic! She brought a little stool and seated herself on the porch near grandfather, which she never dared to do if he did not receive her graciously.

“Let us have tea together, Arísha!” said Stepán Mikháylovich, “before it is hot. Though it was sultry to sleep, I slept so well that I had no dreams? And you?”

Such a question was an unusual favour, and grandmother speedily replied that she slept well every time Stepán Mikháylovich passed a good night, but that Tanyúsha had tossed a great deal. Tanyúsha was the youngest daughter, and the old man loved her more than his other daughters, as is often the case. These words disquieted him, and he ordered not to wake Tanyúsha, but let her awaken herself. Tatyána Stepánovna had been wakened together with Aleksándra and Elizavéta Stepánovna and they were all dressed, but they did not dare tell him that. Tanyúsha immediately undressed herself, went back to bed, ordered to close the shutters in her room and, though she could not fall asleep, lay for two hours in the dark; grandfather was satisfied because Tatyána had had a good rest. His only son, who was nine years old, was never made to get up early.

The elder daughters appeared at once. Stepán Mikháylovich graciously gave them his hand to kiss and called one Lizánka and the other Leksána. Neither of them was a silly girl. Aleksándra united her father’s vivacity and excitability with her cunning mind, but she did not have his good qualities. Grandmother was a very simple woman and was completely controlled by her daughters. If she ever undertook to outwit Stepán Mikháylovich, she did so solely by their instigation, which the old man knew all by heart and for which, on account of her simple-mindedness, she had often to pay dearly. He also knew that his daughters were ready to deceive him at any convenient moment, and only from ennui, or in order to preserve his own peace, that is, only when he was in good humour, did he allow them to think that they were really deceiving him; but in the first fit of anger he told them all without mercy, in the most unceremonious words, and sometimes he even beat them. But the daughters, like Eve’s real grandchildren, did not lose their courage: the moment the hour of anger passed and their father’s face was becalmed, they set out once more to try their old tricks, and they were often successful.

Having drunk his tea and talked over all kinds of things with his family, grandfather got ready for the field. He had told Mazán long before: “The horse!” and an old greyish brown gelding was already at the porch; it was hitched to a long peasant waggon that was very comfortable, being woven with a close rope netting and having a long seat in the middle that was covered with a blanket. Groom Spiridón was seated in the waggon as a coachman; his livery was quite simple, that is, it consisted only of his shirt; he was barefooted and was girded with a red woollen girdle from which hung a key and a brass comb. On a previous occasion Spiridón had ventured out on such an expedition even without a hat; but grandfather scolded him for it, so he had prepared this time something in the shape of a hat out of broad bast bands. Grandfather made fun of his headgear and, putting on his field coat of unbleached homespun and a cap, and placing under him a cloak against rainy weather, seated himself in the waggon. Spiridón placed under himself his common gabardine, having folded it three times; it was made of white cloth but was painted blood-red with madder, which grew very profusely in the fields. This red colour was so customary with our old men that the neighbours called the Bagróv servants “madderlings”; I heard that nickname myself some fifteen years after my grandfather’s death.

Stepán Mikháylovich was satisfied with everything in the field. He looked at the deflorated rye which stood like a wall and as high as a man’s stature. A soft breeze was blowing, and bluish waves passed over it, appearing now lighter, now darker in the sun. It was a joy for the master to look at such a field! Grandfather surveyed also the young oats and all the summer crops; then he went to the untilled field, and had himself taken up and down his ploughed-up acres. That was his usual way of judging how well the ploughing had been done; every clod of earth which had been untouched by the plough gave a jerk to the shaky waggon, and if grandfather happened to be out of sorts, he stuck a small stick or a withe into such a place, sent for the village elder, if he was not with him, and the inquest began right on the spot. This time everything went off favourably; there may have been some untouched spots, only Stepán Mikháylovich did not notice them, or did not wish to notice them.

He cast also a glance at his prairie meadows, and looked with delight at the dense high grass that was to be mowed in a few days. He visited also the peasant fields, in order to find out for himself who was going to have a good harvest and who not. He also looked at their untilled ground, investigated matters closely, and forgot nothing. Passing by a fallow field and noticing ripe strawberries, grandfather stopped and with the aid of Mazán gathered a fine bunch full of fine, large berries which he took home as a present for his Arísha. In spite of the heat he was away until noon. The moment they noticed grandfather’s waggon coming down the hill, the dinner stood on the table, and the whole family waited for him on the porch.

“Well, Arísha,” merrily spoke grandfather, “it is a fine harvest God is giving us! The Lord’s mercy is great! Here are some strawberries for you!”

Grandmother beamed with joy.

“The berries are nearly all ripe,” he continued, “so let them begin picking to-morrow!”

Saying these words, he went into the ante-chamber; the odour of warm cabbage soup was wafted to him from the hall. “Ah, it is ready!” Stepán Mikháylovich said with a happier mien, “thanks!” and without going to his room, he went straight into the hall and seated himself at the table. I must mention that it was grandfather’s custom, when he returned from the field, whether it was early or late, to find the dinner on the table, and God preserve them if they did not get ready with the meal upon his return. Such mishaps had brought about some sad results. But on that lucky day everything went as if greased, without a hitch. A sturdy fellow, Nikólka Ruzán, stood behind grandfather with a large birch-branch, in order to drive away the flies. The hot cabbage soup, which a Russian will not refuse in the hottest weather, grandfather sipped from a wooden spoon, because a silver spoon burned his lips. Then followed cold beet soup with ice, with transparent sterlet, with salted sturgeon, which was as yellow as wax, and with shelled crawfishes, and similar light dishes. All that was washed down by home-brewed beer and kvas, also with ice. It was a very jolly dinner. All spoke aloud, jested, laughed. There were, however, dinners that passed in terrible silence and in speechless expectation of some outbreak. All the boys and girls of the estate knew that the master was dining in a good mood, and they packed the hall, expecting to catch some dainties. Grandfather treated them lavishly, because there was always prepared five times as much food as was necessary. After dinner he at once lay down to sleep. The flies were driven out from under the bar which was let down over grandfather and tucked down under the feather mattress. Soon a mighty snore gave evidence that the master was sleeping a heroic sleep.

Everybody went to his place to take a nap. Mazán and Tanaychénok, having had a solid meal from the remnants of the master’s table, stretched themselves out on the floor of the ante-chamber, near the very door into grandfather’s sleeping-room. They had already had a nap in the forenoon, which did not keep them from falling asleep again; but the stifling air and burning sun which shone through the window woke them up soon. The sleep and the heat had dried up their throats. They wanted to cool their burning throats with the master’s iced home-brew, so these bold lazybones had recourse to the following trick. Through the open door they reached for grandfather’s morning gown and sleeping-cap which lay on a chair, near the door. Tanaychénok put on his master’s garment and seated himself on the porch, and Mazán ran with a pitcher to the cellar, woke the stewardess, who, like everybody else in the house, slept the sleep of the dead, and asked in a hurry for some iced beer for the master who had just risen. When the stewardess expressed her doubt about the master’s waking, Mazán pointed to Tanaychénok’s figure that was sitting on the porch in morning gown and night-cap. The pitcher was filled with beer, ice was put into it, and Mazán ran speedily away with his booty. They divided the contents in a brotherly way, put the morning gown and night cap in the old place, and had to wait for a whole hour before grandfather awoke.

The master awoke in even a better frame of mind than upon the previous day, and his first words were: “Cold beer!” The servants were frightened out of their wits. Tanaychénok ran to the stewardess who saw immediately that they had themselves drunk the first pitcher. She gave the liquor, but followed the messenger to the porch where the real master was now sitting in his morning gown. The deception was made evident from her first words, and Mazán and Tanaychénok, trembling with fear, fell down before the master’s feet, and what do you suppose grandfather did? He laughed out loud, sent for Arísha and his daughters, and laughing loud, told them the trick of his servants. The poor fellows breathed more freely, and one of them even smiled. Stepán Mikháylovich noticed that and came very near getting angry. His brows began to be furrowed, but his soul was so full of calm restfulness from the whole merry day, that his forehead cleared off right away, and he only looked angrily and said: “Well, God will forgive you this time; but if it happens another time—” It was not necessary to finish the sentence.

One can’t help marvelling how it is that the servants had dared to practise such a sharp trick upon their master who was senselessly excitable and who during his excitement became very cruel. I have frequently noticed in the course of my life that the severer the master, the more daring were the acts of their servants. That was not an exceptional case with my grandfather. The same Vánka Mazán, having once swept the sleeping room of Stepán Mikháylovich and just getting ready to make the bed, was so seduced by the soft feather beds and pillows that he took it into his head to pamper himself; so he lay down upon the master’s bed and fell asleep. Grandfather found him sleeping in that bed, and he only laughed out loud. It is true, he gave him a blow with his viburnum stick, but that was only for fun, to have a good laugh at Mazán’s fright.

He awoke about five o’clock in the afternoon, drank some iced homebrew, and, in spite of the stifling heat, wanted to drink some tea, believing that a hot drink would make the heat more bearable. He went down to take a swim in the cool Buguruslán which flowed under the very windows of the house, and, upon returning, found his whole family waiting for him at the same tea table, which was now placed in the shade, with the same boiling teapot-samovár, and with the same Aksyútka. Having had his fill of his favourite sweat-producing drink, with thick cream and its browned skin, grandfather proposed to all a ride to the mill. Of course, all gladly consented, and two of my aunts, Aleksándra and Tatyána Stepánovna, took some fishing rods with them, for they were very fond of angling. In a minute two long waggons were hitched up: in one of them seated themselves grandfather and grandmother, placing between them their only heir, the precious scion of their ancient noble race. In the other sat my three aunts and the lad Nikoláshka Ruzán, who was taken along, in order to dig for worms in the dam and to put them on the ladies’ hooks.

At the mill they brought a bench for grandmother, and she seated herself in the shade of the mill barn, not far from the mill trough, near which her younger daughters were fishing. The elder daughter, Elizavéta Stepánovna, went, as much to please her father as from her own love of farming, with Stepán Mikháylovich to look at the mill and the grinding. The young boy now looked at the sister’s angling (he was not yet allowed to fish in deep places), now played near his mother who did not turn her eyes away from him, fearing that he might somehow roll into the water.

Both millstones were at work: in one of them they were grinding wheat for the master’s table; in the other, rye for strangers; the stamping mill was crushing millet. Grandfather was an expert in every part of the farm; he knew well the mechanism of the mill, and was explaining all its details to his clever and attentive daughter. He saw at a glance all the imperfections in the gearing, or all the mistakes in the position of the millstones. He ordered to let one down half a notch, and the flour came out much finer, which pleased the customer very much. In the other grinding apparatus he discovered by the sound that one pin in the wheel was beginning to be worn out. He ordered to shut off the water, and miller Boltunénok jumped down to examine the wheel. He said:

“You are right, Father Stepán Mikháylovich! One pin is a little worn off.”

“Yes, yes, a little,” replied grandfather without any displeasure. “If I had not come, the wheel would have broken over night.”

“It is my fault, Stepán Mikháylovich, I did not notice it.”

“God forgive you! Let us have a new wheel, and get a new pin made for the old wheel; see to it that the new wheel is not any wider, nor narrower than the rest, that is the main point.”

They brought a new wheel, which had been fitted before, and put it in place; they oiled it, let in the water,—not all at once, but by degrees (also by order of grandfather),—and the millstone started to hum and grind, without interruption or rattling, but smoothly and evenly. Then grandfather went with his daughter to the stamping mill, took out of the stamp a handful of crushed millet, blew the dust away from the palm of his hand, and said to the customer, a neighbouring Mordvínian: “Look here, neighbour Vasyúkha! Don’t you see there is not a single unbroken grain? If you let the stamping go on, there will be less of flour.” Vasyúkha tried it himself, and he convinced himself that grandfather was telling the truth. He thanked him and bowed, that is, he only shook his head, and ran away to shut off the water.

From there grandfather went with his pupil to the barnyard. He found everything in excellent order. There was a large number of geese, ducks, turkeys, and hens, and an old woman and her grandchild looked after them all. As a special favour, grandfather let them both kiss his hand, and he ordered that the fowlkeeper should receive, in addition to the usual allowance, twenty pounds of wheat flour a month for cakes. Stepán Mikháylovich returned in good spirits to Arína Vasílevna, and he was satisfied with everything: his daughter was clever, the mill was grinding well, and the fowlkeeper Tatyána Gorozhána was looking well after the fowls.

The heat had long subsided. The coolness from the water increased the freshness of the approaching evening; a long cloud of dust rose along the road and came nearer to the village; one could hear in it the bleating and lowing of the farm animals; the declining sun disappeared behind a steep hill. Standing on the dam, Stepán looked with delight at the broad pond which lay immovable like a mirror between its low banks; fishes kept on playing in the water and leaping up, but Stepán Mikháylovich was not fond of fishing.

“Arísha, it is time to start home; the elder, I suppose, is waiting for me,” said he. Seeing him in a happy frame of mind, the younger daughters began to beg him to let them stay a little longer, saying that at sundown the fish bite better, and that they would walk home in half an hour. Grandfather consented and drove away in his waggon with grandmother, while Elizavéta Stepánovna seated herself with her brother in the other waggon. Stepán Mikháylovich was not mistaken. The elder was waiting for him at the porch, and he was not alone, but several peasants and their wives were there also. The elder had seen the master, and he knew that he was in good humour, and he had told some peasants about it. Some of them who had some special request to make, such as exceeded any usual favour, made use of the favourable opportunity, and they were all satisfied. Grandfather gave some grain to a peasant who had not yet paid off his old debt, though he could have done so; he permitted another one to marry off his son, without waiting for winter, and not to the girl which he had himself selected; he permitted a guilty soldier’s widow, whom he had ordered to be driven out of the village, to live with her father, and so forth.

More than that. They were treated each to a silver cup of strong home-made brandy, and this cup held more than a beakerful. Grandfather gave short and clear orders to the elder, and hastened to the supper which had been waiting for him for some time. The supper table differed little from dinner, and undoubtedly they ate a more solid meal, because it was not so hot. After supper Stepán Mikháylovich was in the habit of sitting up another half an hour in his shirt and cooling himself on the porch, after his family had been excused to retire. This time he jested and laughed a little longer than usual with his servants. He ordered Mazán and Tanaychénok to have a boxing match, and he urged them on in such a way that they belaboured each other not in jest and tore each other’s hair. Having had all the fun he wanted, grandfather gave the command for them to come to their senses and stop.

A short, marvellous summer night lay over all Nature. The evening twilight had not yet all disappeared! The azure of the sky grew darker from hour to hour, and from hour to hour the stars shone more brilliantly. Louder and louder became the voices and calls of the birds of the night, as if they were getting nearer to man! The mill sounded nearer, and the stamping mill stamped in the damp night mist⸺ Grandfather rose from his porch, made one or two signs of the cross towards the starry heavens, and lay down to sleep, in spite of the closeness of the room, on the hot feather bed, and he ordered the servants to lower the mosquito bar over him.

Aleksyéy Stepánovich Khomyakóv. (1804-1860.)

Khomyakóv was born in Moscow, where he passed his early childhood and youth, and there early came in contact with some of the representative men of letters. In 1821 he was fired with enthusiasm for the Greek struggle for independence, and ran away from home to join the Greek patriots. He was, however, overtaken in time by his father, and entered the Russian army, which he left in 1825. Soon after began to appear his patriotic and religious songs that attracted the public attention by their artistic perfection. He again joined the army during the Turkish campaign of 1828. A few years later he wrote two tragedies, but they were a complete failure. He then devoted himself to prose, devoting all his energies to the cause of Slavophilism and the propagation of Greek-Catholic theology.

Into English have been translated: Kiev, in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887; To My Children, in Short Poems and Hymns, the latter mostly translations, by W. Palmer, Oxford, 1845 (reprinted in Russia and the English Church during the Last Fifty Years, vol. i., London, 1895, and in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 17, and in Khomyakóv’s Complete Works, vol. iv., Moscow, 1900); The Island and To Russia, in Russia and the English Church, vol. i. (reprinted in Khomyakóv’s Complete Works, vol. iv.); The Eagle and several extracts, by H. Havelock, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 17; Russian Song, by N. H. Dole, in Library of the World’s Best Literature.

TO MY CHILDREN

Time was when I loved at still midnight to come,

My children, to see you asleep in your room;

The cross, holy sign on your foreheads to trace,

And commend you in prayer to the love and the grace

Of our gracious and merciful God.

To keep gentle guard, and watch over your rest,

To think how your spirits were sinless and blest,

In hope to look forward to long happy years

Of blithe, merry youth, without sorrows or fears,

Oh, how sweet, how delicious it was!

But now, if I go, all is silence, all gloom;

None sleep in that crib, nothing breathes in that room;

The light that should burn at the image is gone:

Alas! so it is, children now I have none,

And my heart, how it painfully throbs!

Dear children, at that same midnight do ye,

As I once prayed for you, now in turn pray for me;

Me who loved well the cross on your foreheads to trace;

Now commend me in turn to the mercy and grace

Of our gracious and merciful God.

—Transl. by Rev. W. Palmer, in Short Poems and Hymns, Oxford, 1845.

THE EAGLE

High hast thou built thine eyrie,

Eagle of the Northern Slavs,

Wide hast thou spread thy wings,

High into heaven hast thou soared.

Fly! But in the lofty deep of ether,

Where thy scarce-breathing breast

Is warmed by the passage of Freedom,

Forget not thy younger kin!

Look to the Southern Steppe,

Look to the far-off West:

Many are there, where the Danube rages,

Where the Alpine clouds gather way,

In the mountain dells, in the dark Carpathians,

In the Balkan defiles wood-clothed,

In the clutches of faithless Teutons,

In the steely chains of the Tartar,

And thy brothers walk in fetters

Till thy voice shall sound in their ears,

Till thy wings thou shalt spread protecting

O’er their heads grown feeble with bondage.

Forget them not, Northern Eagle,

Send them thy resonant call

And in slavery’s night console them

With thy free and cheering light.

Feed them with thoughts elating,

With the hope of happier days,

And warm with loving kindness

These hearts whose blood is as thine.

Their hour shall come: their pinions

Wax strong, and their talons sharp,

They shall cry, full-grown, and shall sunder

At a breath the bonds that now bind.

—Transl. by H. Havelock, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 17.

KIEV

Kiev! upon the Dnieper built,

Thy lofty walls above me tower;

Like silver from the furnace pure,

The river gleams where dark hills lour.

All hail to thee, thou ancient town!

The cradle thou of Russia’s fame!

And hail to thee, O Dnieper swift,

The bath, whence glorious Russia came!

In the calm air the songs resound,

The evening bells ring out their note;

“Whence come ye, Pilgrim-Brothers, say,

Your homage who to God devote?”

“I come from where the quiet Don

Glides forth, the beauty of our homes”;

“I come where stern Yenisey

In boundless waters proudly foams.”

“My home is on the Euxine shore.”

“Mine in those distant realms is found

Where wide-extending ice-fields hold

The sea within their rigid bound.”

“Savage the view of Altay’s ridge,

Eternal is the snowy glare;

My native town time-honoured Pskov,

My own dear home is there, is there.”

“I come from cold Ladoga’s Lake”;

“I from the Neva’s soft blue face”;

“I come from Kama’s flowing stream”;

“And I from Moscow’s fond embrace.”

All hail, Kiev! most wondrous town,

With turbid stream which Dnieper laves!

Grander than seats imperial are

The silent shadows of thy caves.

We know in night of times gone by,

In darkness of antiquity,

The brightly shining Eastern sun

Glowed ever, Russia, over thee.

And now, from strange, and distant, lands,

From far-off steppes,—from unknown homes,—

From deepest rivers of the North,—

A crowd of praying children comes.

In loving company well met,

We gather in thy sanctuary;

Where are thy sons, Volhynia?

Galich, where is thy progeny?

Woe! woe! as though by savage fires,

They all by Poles consumèd are;

By noisy banquetings deceived,

They yield to festive charm and glare.

Captives to sword and treachery,

They are ensnared by falsehood’s flame;

They move beneath a foreign flag,

They bow unto a stranger’s name.

Awake, Kiev! again arise,

Upon thy fallen children call,

On them let father’s tenderness,

With voice of supplication, fall.

Thy sons, erst ravished from thy breast,

Will listen to thy soothing cry;

Will tear asunder cunning chain,

The foreign flag will pass it by;

Will come again, as in past days,

Will in thy love themselves disport,

Will lay their faces in thy lap,

Will bring their vessels to thy port.

And all around their native flag

Thy strong commands they will await;

Their life’s full spirit,—spirit’s life,—

Will be by thee regenerate!

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Fédor Ivánovich Tyútchev. (1803-1873.)

Born almost at the same time with Púshkin, Tyútchev continued the tradition of Púshkin’s school until the seventies. When only fourteen years of age, he was chosen a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature for his masterly translation of poems from Horace. In 1823 he was attached to the Russian embassy at Munich; then, after serving in various capacities, he was made president of the Commission of Foreign Censorship, which office he held to his death. Though frequently contributing to the periodicals, Tyútchev remained unknown to the middle of the century, when Nekrásov and Turgénev rediscovered him. His verses are very melodious and tunable, but rather narrow of scope.

In English translation are to be found: Scarce cooled from midday heat and The Spring-Storm, by John Pollen, in Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891; I suffer still from anguished longing, by A. C. Coolidge, in Harvard Monthly Magazine, 1895, and The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 15; Spring Waters, Sunrise, Evening, The Leaves, by N. H. Dole, in the Library of the World’s Best Literature. A few poems, translated by N. H. Dole, are given in G. Schirmer’s Octavo Choruses for Mixed Voices, New York; the Sunrise, by Dole, was also given in the Ladysmith Leader and Wellington Extension News, Nov. 6, 1901.

Scarce cooled from midday heat

Sparkles the summer night;

O’er sinful earth a threatening cloud

Trembles with lightnings bright.

Heaven’s sleepy eyelids ope,

And through its distant gleam,

The threatening orbs of One above

O’er earth to kindle seem.

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

THE SPRING-STORM

I love the storm in early May,

When spring’s first maiden thunder peals,

And, laughing in its frolic play,

Across the blue sky softly steals.

The little rumblings roll and reel;

The rain-shower glistens; flies the dust;

The rain-drop pearls in clusters cling,

And golden gleams the fields encrust.

From hillside headlong speeds the rill,

In groves the birds keep twittering,

And chattering wood and murmuring hill

Echo with joy the thundering.

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

I suffer still from anguished longing,

For towards thee still my spirit strives.

In a twilight of memories thronging

E’en now thine image still survives.

Thine image sweet, forgotten never,

Before me always, near and far,

Unreachable, unchanging ever

As in the sky of night, a star.

—Transl. by A. C. Coolidge.

SUNRISE

In solemn calm the Orient waits,

A deep, mysterious silence keeping;

No sign to tell if Day be sleeping

Or if he halt before her gates.

Now, now the mountain tops grow white,

The mists the vales below still cumber,

Still towns and peaceful hamlets slumber—

But heavenward turn your eager sight!

Behold it! Now a gleam awakes

And like young Passion’s timid blushes

The red glow brighter, rosier flushes,

Then high above the zenith breaks!

A moment passes: swift the light

Throughout the Ether’s vast dominions

Sweeps onward on her glittering pinions

And conquers all the hosts of Night.

—Transl. by N. H. Dole, in Schirmer’s Octavo Choruses, No. 623.

Aleksándr Ivánovich Gértsen (Herzen). (1812-1870.)

Gértsen was the son of a rich landed proprietor by the name of Yákovlev, and of a German mother (Herzen). He was brought up in the house of his father, where he early acquired several languages and a love for the German literature of the period, especially for Schiller and Goethe. He later devoted himself entirely to the exact sciences and graduated in 1833 from the University of Moscow with a silver medal for his thesis, The Historical Evolution of the System of Copernicus. While attending the university, Gértsen was the soul of one of those circles of the thirties where all kinds of philosophical and social themes were discussed with great wit and enthusiasm. He later served in several government capacities, chiefly in St. Petersburg, where he continued to be a centre around which gathered all the progressive forces of the younger generations. In 1844 the two extreme literary camps completely severed their connections: the Slavophiles rallied around Khomyakóv and the Aksákovs, while the Westerners gathered around Gértsen and Ogarév. In 1847 Gértsen went abroad never to return. In the last few years of his residence in St. Petersburg he had evinced great literary talent: his best known stories are The Thieving Magpie and Who is to be Blamed? During his long residence abroad he published the famous Bell, in which periodical he carried on a relentless propaganda for constitutionalism in Russia. In From the Other Shore (originally published in German) he expressed his disenchantment with the West, and in Past and Reflections he has given a series of vivid pictures of his times. His influence as a political agitator and as a man of letters may be traced through several generations in Russia.

Gértsen wrote two of his works in English: My Exile in Siberia, 2 vols., London, 1855, and The Russian People and Their Socialism, A Letter to M. Jules Michelet, Brantwood, 1855.

SLAVOPHILES AND PANSLAVISM

Side by side with our circle were our opponents, nos amis les ennemis, or, more correctly, nos ennemis les amis,—the Moscow Slavophiles.

The war between us has long been ended, and we have shaken each others hands; but in the beginning of the forties we had to meet as enemies,—so a consistent adherence to our principles demanded. We might have avoided quarrelling with them for their childish adoration of the childish period of our history; but accepting their Orthodoxy at full value, and seeing their ecclesiastic intolerance in both directions,—in the direction of science and in the direction of the schism,—we had to assume a hostile attitude towards them. We saw in their doctrine a new oil with which to anoint the Tsar, a new chain imposed upon thought, a new subordination of conscience to the servile Byzantine Church.

It is the Slavophiles’ fault that for a long time we did not understand the Russian people, or their history: their iconographic ideals and incense smoke have hindered our discerning the national life and the foundations of the village commune.

The Orthodoxy of the Slavophiles, their historical patriotism and exaggerated, irritating feeling of nationality were provoked by extremes in the other direction. The importance of their view, its truth and essential part are not in Orthodoxy and not in national exclusiveness, but in those elements of Russian life which they have discovered beneath the fertiliser of the artificial civilisation.

The idea of nationality is in itself a conservative idea, based on the exclusiveness of its rights and the clannishness of its associations; there are in it the Judaic conception of the superiority of race, and the aristocratic pretensions of purity of blood and entailment. Nationality, as a banner, as a battle-cry, only then is surrounded by a revolutionary aureole when the nation fights for independence, when it throws off a foreign yoke. It is for this reason that national sentiments, with all their exaggerations, are full of poetry in Italy and in Poland, and at the same time banal in Germany.

It would be even more ridiculous than with the Germans to prove our nationality, for even those do not doubt it who curse us. They hate us from fear, but do not deny us, as Metternich denied Italy. We ought to have opposed our nationality to our Germanised government and to its renegades. This domestic war could not be raised to an epos. The appearance of the Slavophiles as a school and as a separate doctrine was quite proper; but if they had found no other flag than the Orthodox banner, and no other ideal than the Domostróy and the extremely Russian, but exceedingly harsh, period before Peter, they would have passed for a curious party of transmogrified odd people who belonged to another time. The strength and the future of Slavophilism lay in another direction. It may be that their treasure was really hid in church vessels of ancient workmanship, but its value was neither in the vessel, nor in the form. They did not separate them at first.

To the historical recollections proper were added the memories of all the related nations. Our Slavophiles assumed the sympathy for the Western Panslavism to be identical in fact and in direction, forgetting that there the exclusive nationalism was at the same time the lament of a people that was oppressed by a foreign yoke. Western Panslavism was, upon its appearance, regarded by the Austrian government as a conservative step. It was evolved during the sad epoch of the Vienna Congress. It was, in general, the time of all kinds of resurrections and rehabilitations, the time of all kinds of Lazaruses,—fresh and stinking ones. The Bohemian Panslavism arose by the side of the Deutschthum, which was marching to the resurrection of the happy days of Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufens. The governments hailed this new tendency, and at first encouraged the development of international hatred; the masses again clung to their tribal interrelation, of which the knot was being drawn tighter, and again were departing from the common demands for the improvement of their existence; borders became ever more impassable, and the tie and sympathy between nations were loosened. It goes without saying that only weak, apathetic nations were allowed to awaken, and that only so long as their activities were limited to scientific, archeographic labours and etymological quarrels. In Milan and in Poland, where nationality would not rest at grammar, it was held down with spiked hands.

The Bohemian Panslavism incited the Slavic sympathies in Russia.

Slavism, or Russism, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as an offended national feeling, as an indistinct recollection and correct instinct, as a resistance to an exclusively foreign influence, has existed since the shearing of the first beard by Peter the Great.

The resistance to the St. Petersburg terrorism of education has never stopped: tortured and quartered and hung out on the spikes of the Kremlin, to be shot at by Ménshikov and the other royal jesters in the shape of savage hunters, poisoned in the ravelin of the St. Petersburg fortress, in the shape of Tsarévich Alexis, it appeared as the party of the Dolgorúkis during the reign of Peter II., as the hatred of the Germans under Birón, as Pugachév under Catherine II., as Catherine II. herself, an Orthodox German, under the Prussian Holsteinian Peter III., as Elizabeth, who leaned on the Slavophiles of her day, in order to seat herself on the throne (the people of Moscow were waiting for all the Germans to be killed at her coronation).

All the dissenters are Slavophiles.

All the white and black clergy are Slavophiles of a different sort.

The soldiers who demanded the removal of Barclay de Tolly for his foreign name were the predecessors of Khomyakóv and his friends.

The war of 1812 developed a strong feeling of national consciousness and patriotism, but the patriotism of 1812 had no Orthodox, Slavic character. We see it in Karamzín and Púshkin, and in Emperor Alexander himself. It was practically an expression of that instinct of force which all mighty nations feel when they are attacked by a foreign people; and then it was a solemn feeling of victory, a proud consciousness of a successful defence. But that theory was weak; in order to love Russian history, the patriots transformed it according to European models; they in general translated the Græco-Roman patriotism from French into Russian, and did not go beyond the verse

Pour un cœur bien né, que la patrie est chère!

It is true, Shishkóv even then raved of reëstablishing the ancient style, but his influence was limited. The real popular diction was used only by the Frenchified Count Rostopchín in his proclamations and appeals.

In measure as the war was being forgotten, this patriotism cooled down and finally deteriorated, on the one hand, into a low, cynical flattery of The Northern Bee, on the other, into the trivial patriotism of Zagóskin,[9] who called Shúya,[10] Manchester and Shebúyev, a Raphael, and who boasted of the bayonets and the expanse from the ice of Torneå to the Tauric Mountains⸺

In the reign of Nicholas the patriotism was transformed into something knout-like and official, especially in St. Petersburg, where this uncouth tendency ended, according to the cosmopolitan character of the city, in the invention of a national hymn from Sebastian Bach, and, by Prokópi Lyapunóv, from Schiller.

To cut loose from Europe, from enlightenment, and from revolution, which kept him in terror ever since the 14th of December, Nicholas, on his side, raised the banner of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality, which was worked out in the manner of a Prussian standard, and supported by any thing and everything: by the uncouth novels of Zagóskin, the uncouth iconography, the uncouth architecture, by Uvárov, by the persecution of the Uniates, and by The hand of the Almighty has saved the fatherland.[11]

The meeting of the Moscow Slavophiles with the Petersburgian Slavophilism of Nicholas was a great misfortune for them. Nicholas took refuge in nationality and Orthodoxy from revolutionary ideas. There was nothing in common between them but words. Their extremes and insipidities were all unselfishly insipid, without any relation whatsoever to the Third Division,—which, of course, did not in the least hinder their insipidities from being exceedingly insipid.

Thus, for instance, there passed through Moscow, at the end of the thirties, the Panslavist Gaj, who later played some indefinite rôle as a Croatian agitator and at the same time was near to Ban Jelačić. Muscovites believe in foreigners in general; Gaj was more than a foreigner, and more than one of their own,—he was both. He, consequently, had no difficulty in engaging the sympathy of our Slavs for the fate of their suffering Orthodox brothers in Dalmatia and Croatia; an enormous subscription was taken up in a few days, and in addition to that Gaj was given a dinner in the name of all the Servian and Ruthenian sympathies. At the dinner one of the Slavophiles, who by his voice and by his profession was more gentle than the rest, a man of red Orthodoxy, who, no doubt, was heated by the toasts for the Montenegrin ruler, and for all kinds of great Bosnians, Bohemians, and Slovaks, improvised a poem in which occurred the following not quite Christian expression:

“I shall drink the blood of Magyars and of Germans.”

All who were still in their senses heard this phrase in disgust. Fortunately the witty statistician Andrósov saved the bloodthirsty bard: he jumped up from his chair, grabbed a fruit knife, and said: “Gentlemen, pardon me, I shall leave you for a moment; it has just occurred to me that my landlord, the old piano-tuner Diez, is a German; I ’ll just run down to cut his throat, and I ’ll be back in a trice.”

A thunderous laughter drowned the indignation.

[9] Russian novelist of the beginning of the century.

[10] Manufacturing town in the Government of Vladímir; famous for its raw sheepskins.

[11] A line in Ózerov’s tragedy Dimítri Donskóy (see vol. i., p. 418).

Nikoláy Platónovich Ogarév. (1813-1877.)

Ogarév was born in the Government of Pénza, in the estate of his father, where he was educated till his fourteenth year. He then attended the Moscow University, but before he finished his course he was arrested for singing some revolutionary songs, and was exiled to his father’s estate. He later passed his life abroad, aiding Herzen in his revolutionary propaganda. Though mainly known as a propagandist, he excels even more as a poet. His tender verses remind of Lérmontov, with whom he has much in common. Among his best poems are his Monologues, The Village Watchman, The Sea of Life.

In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics are given: Notturno, The Old House, The Village Watchman, The Child, Hidden Love, and Death; in Free Russia: by Charlotte Sidgwick, in vol. xi., No. 11, To Iskander, in vol. xii., Nos. 6-7, Summer; by J. E. Lewis, in vol. xii., Nos. 8-10, The Commandment; by Mary Grace Walker, in vol. xii., No. 3, A Prayer.

TO ISKÁNDER[12]

In days of my boyhood so gentle and tender,

In days of my passionate youth in its splendour,

Through manhood, while slowly to age I surrender,—

Through all of my life and within my endeavour,

One word in my ears there is ringing for ever—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

Tormented by slavery, sad and dejected,

In alien lands all unknown and rejected,

I live but to utter that name long neglected;

Across the wide seas and the countries that sever,

One word to my motherland calling for ever—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

It came o’er the waves to the place of my wailing,

’Mid silence, at midnight,—a rumour assailing

My senses, through darkness and tempest prevailing—

I hear it! my heart can abandon it never,

That voice from my country that sounds on for ever—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

My heart, long accustomed to doubt in its yearning,

Sprang up as it throbbed with new ecstasy burning,

Like a bird from its cage to the wide world returning;

It sings a farewell to its prison for ever,

While solemn and clear rings the note of endeavour—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

In the dreams I behold, with the snows that surround him,

The peasant, long-bearded,—the glad news has found him,—

He shakes from his great limbs the fetters that bound him,—

And speaks the glad word, the unchanging for ever

Eternal,—the future can silence it never—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

But if there should chance,—if there came any reason,—

To fear for that Liberty, let her in season

Cry out, and I fly to encounter the treason;

And if from that uttermost struggle I never

Return, I can call with the cry “Live for ever,

Liberty! Liberty!”

It may be I die with the strangers around me,

Yet hope and belief in the future have found me,

O comrade! ere Death in his shackles has bound me;

That name do thou whisper, to last me for ever,

That name—of our love, of our faith and endeavour—

“Liberty! Liberty!”

—Transl. by Charlotte Sidgwick in Free Russia, vol. xi., No. 11.

[12] Pseudonym of Herzen; see p. 236.

MONOLOGUES

What I wish? What?⸺ Oh, there are so many wishes, and their host is so eager for a sally, that at times it seems that by their inward agitation my brain will burn and my breast will burst. What I wish?⸺ Everything, in all its fulness! I thirst to know, I yearn for deeds, I still desire to love with senseless pining, I want to feel the whole thrill of life!

I feel in secret all the wishes vain, and life is niggardly, and inwardly I am feeble,—my striving will be silent and unanswered, and in endeavours will my strength be wasted. I seem unto myself, oppressed by suffering, a kind of miserable, puny fool, a creature lost in endless space, wearing away in empty fermentation.

It is not given to us to embrace at once the spirit of eternity, and the cup of life we quaff in swallows; what we have drunk we most regret,—the empty bottom shows more and more. With every day the soul feels heavier the aging, and it is more painful to remember, and more terrible to wish, and to live appears bold recklessness,—but the pulse cannot stop beating. And I live on in hopeless striving, and take upon myself the cross of life, and all the fervour of my soul I bear in eager motion, grasping and losing moments after moments⸺

And I wish all! What?⸺ Oh, there are so many wishes, and their host is so eager for a sally, that at times it seems that by their inward agitation my brain will burn and my breast will burst.

THE VILLAGE WATCHMAN

The night is dark, and clouds abound,

Appears the white snow everywhere;

The crackling frost pervades the ground,

And frigid is the atmosphere.

On either side the long, broad street

The peasants’ cottages are seen;

The solitary watchman’s feet

Are heard, as he moves on between.

Cold is he now; the hollow gale

Fills with violent blast the air;

The frost has touched his visage pale,

And whitened all his beard and hair.

Joy has fled from his gloomy brow,

He finds it hard to be alone;

Through the dark night, and blinding snow,

His song resounds with mournful tone.

By moonless nights he paces late,

Watching until the morn comes round;

His hammer upon the iron plate

Gives out a dreary, dismal sound.

And swaying ever to and fro,

The board prolongs its dreadful moan;

The heart dies down with feelings low,

And sorrow weighs it, lorn and lone.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Count Aleksyéy Konstantínovich Tolstóy. (1817-1875.)

Count Tolstóy’s youth was passed in the estate of his uncle in the Government of Chernígov. He was early attached to the Russian legation at Frankfurt, and travelled extensively in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Upon his return to Russia, he settled in St. Petersburg and devoted himself to literature. He at first wrote a series of lyrics and some ballads which are perfect in technique but lack animation. After the Crimean War he was attached to the Court, and his renewed literary activity bore better fruits: the result of his careful historical investigations was the novel Prince Serébryany and the tragedy The Death of Iván the Terrible. There is no historical novel in Russian that surpasses Prince Serébryany in its artistic setting and scrupulous adherence to facts. Tolstóy also wrote two other tragedies that form a trilogy with The Death of Iván the Terrible, but they are weaker in execution. Towards the end of his life he wrote a number of ballads in the style of the ancient Bylinas, of which Alésha Popóvich is the best.

Prince Serébryany has been translated three times: Prince Serebrenni, translated by Princess Galitzine, 2 vols., London, 1874; Prince Serbryani, an Historical Novel of the Times of Iván the Terrible and of the Conquest of Siberia, by Jeremiah Curtin, New York and London, [1892]; The Terrible Czar, translated by Capt. H. C. Filmore, London, 1892 (and 1893, 1895). The following poems are to be found in English translation: Believe it not, The Scolding, in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian; Speys the Dwarf, The Sinner, in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics; in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 21, by F. P. Marchant, Prince Mikhailo Repnin and Dearest Country, No. 23, by N. Shishkoff, You know I like to seek, Into my soul so full of vain illusions, Where planets roll, and Autumn, No. 25, by H. Havelock, The Kurgan; in Free Russia, by Elizabeth Gibson, in vol. xi., No. 3, A Prayer and The Convicts, in Nos. 6 and 7, The Sorrows of Ages Departed; in the Library of the World’s Best Literature, reprint of J. Pollen’s Believe it not, and Renewal, by Prince Wolkonsky.

FROM “PRINCE SERÉBRYANY”

Tsar Iván Vasílevich was praying. The perspiration was already rolling down his face; the bloody marks, imprinted upon his high forehead by former prostrations, were now more clearly defined by the new devotion. Suddenly, a rustling sound in the room caused him to turn around. He saw his nurse Onúfrevna.

His nurse was an old woman. She had been taken to the Upper Apartments by Grand Prince Vasíli Ivánovich of blessed memory, she had served under Eléna Glínski. Ioánn was borne in her arms, and in her arms did the dying father bless him. They said of Onúfrevna that much was known to her which nobody even suspected. During the minority of the Tsar, the Glínskis had been afraid of her; the Shúyskis and Byélskis tried in every way to gain her favour.

Onúfrevna discovered many hidden things through divination, and she was never mistaken. She predicted of Prince Telepnév during his very greatness,—Ioánn was then only four years old,—that he would die of starvation. And so it happened. Many years had passed since then, but that prediction was still fresh in the memory of old men.

It was now almost the tenth decade that Onúfrevna was ending. She was bent nearly double; the skin of her face was so wrinkled that it resembled tree bark, and as moss grows out on old bark, so grey tufts of hair burst out of her chin. She had long ago lost her teeth; her eyes, it seemed, could not see; her head shook convulsively.

Onúfrevna bent with her bony hand on a staff. She looked at Ioánn for a long time, drawing in her seared lips, as if she were chewing or muttering something.

“Well?” at last said the nurse with a dull, trembling voice, “are you praying, father? Pray, pray, Iván Vasílevich! It will take a great deal of praying to get forgiveness. If you had only your old sins upon your soul! God is merciful, and He might have forgiven you! But you add every day a new sin, and many a day even two or three of them.”

“Hush, Onúfrevna,” said the Tsar, rising, “you do not know what you are saying!”

“I do not know what I am saying! Have I grown insane,—what?”

And the lifeless eyes of the old woman suddenly sparkled.

“What have you been doing at the table to-day?⸺Why did you poison the boyár? You thought I did not know it! Well? Why do you frown? Wait, when your hour of death will strike, just wait! Your sins will stick to you, like a thousand thousand puds; they will pull you down to the bottom of hell. And the devils will run up and will catch you on their hooks!”

The old woman again began to chew.

The fervent prayer had prepared the Tsar for pious thoughts. His irritable imagination had more than once presented to him a picture of the future chastisement, but his power of will vanquished the terror of the torments beyond the grave. Ioánn assured himself that this fear and his bites of conscience were provoked in him by the fiend of the human race, in order to distract the anointed of God from his high purposes. The Tsar opposed prayer to the cunning of the devil; but he often succumbed to the cruel onrush of his imagination. Then despair took possession of him as with iron claws. The unrighteousness of his acts appeared in all its nakedness, and the abyss of hell yawned terribly before him. But that lasted only a short time, Ioánn immediately regretted his pusillanimity. In anger at himself and at the spirit of darkness, he, to spite hell and to oppose his conscience, again started upon his work of blood and villainy, and never did his cruelty reach such dimensions as after an involuntary exhaustion.

Now the thought of hell, illuminated by the approaching storm and the prophetic voice of Onúfrevna, stirred him through and through with a feverish chill. He seated himself upon the bed. His teeth chattered against each other.

“Well, father?” said Onúfrevna, softening her voice. “What is the matter with you? Are you ill? That ’s it, you are ill! I have given you a good fright! But you need n’t be frightened, father. Only repent, and stop sinning. I, too, am praying for you, day and night, and now I shall pray more than ever. Why should n’t I? I had rather forfeit heaven, if I could gain forgiveness for you.”

Ioánn looked at his nurse,—she seemed to be smiling, but her stern face was not lit up by a smile that was reassuring.

“Thank you, Onúfrevna, thank you. I am feeling easier; go, the Lord be with you!”

“Yes, yes, easier! Your terror leaves you the moment you are consoled! And you at once drive me away! The Lord be with me, you say! But you, father, had better not count too much upon God’s long-suffering. Even God’s patience will give way in your case. Beware, He will renounce you, and Satan will rejoice and—plump! will enter into you. There, you have begun to shake again! It will not hurt you to drink a glass of mulled honey. Drink a glass, father! Your father, the kingdom of heaven be his, used to drink mulled honey at night! And your mother, God grant her soul rest, was fond of mulled honey. And it was with mulled honey that the accursed Shúyskis poisoned her.”

The old woman became absent-minded. Her eyes were dimmed; she again began to chew, all the time shaking her head.

Suddenly something knocked at the window. Iván Vasílevich shuddered.

The old woman made the sign of the cross with her trembling hand.

“Just see,” she said, “how it is raining! And it is beginning to lighten! And there is also thunder, father; God have mercy upon us!”

The storm increased in fury, and soon the sky was disturbed by uninterrupted peals of thunder and a continuous sheet of lightning.

Ioánn shuddered at every thunderclap.

“What a chill you have, father! Wait a moment, I ’ll have them make you some mulled honey.”

“It is not necessary, Onúfrevna, I am well.”

“Well! Why, your face does not show it! You had better lie down on your bed and cover yourself with a quilt. What a bed you have here! Nothing but boards. What a queer notion! Is that proper for a Tsar? That is all right for a monk, but you are not a monk!”

Ioánn did not answer. He was intent on listening to something.

“Onúfrevna,” he suddenly said in fright, “who is walking there in the corridor? I hear somebody’s steps!”

“Christ be with you, father! Who should be walking now? It is your imagination.”

“No, there is someone walking there! Somebody is coming here! Go and look, Onúfrevna!”

The old woman opened the door. A cold wind burst into the room. Beyond the door appeared Malyúta.

“Who is that?” asked the Tsar, leaping up.

“Your red dog, father,” answered the nurse, casting an angry glance at Malyúta, “Gríshka Skurátov. How the accursed one has frightened me!”

“Lukyánych!” said the Tsar, made happy by the arrival of his favourite, “you are welcome; where do you come from?”

“From the prison, sir. I was at the inquest, and I have brought the keys.”

Malyúta bowed low to the Tsar and looked askance at the nurse.

“The keys!” grumbled the old woman. “They will flog you in the other world with red hot keys, you Satan! Upon my word, you are Satan! Your very face is that of a devil! Though somebody else may escape the eternal fire, you won’t. You, Gríshka, will be licking hot pans for all your calumnies! You, accursed one, will be boiling in pitch, remember my word!”

Lightning illuminated the threatening woman, and she was terrible with her uplifted staff and her sparkling eyes.

Malyúta himself felt a little uncomfortable; but Ioánn was emboldened by the presence of his favourite.

“Pay no attention to her, Lukyánych,” he said, “know what you are about, and don’t listen to women’s babble. But you, old fool, go away and leave us!”

Onúfrevna’s eyes sparkled once more.

“Old fool?” she repeated. “You will think of me in the next world! All your companions, Ványa, will receive their retribution, and they will receive it even in this world, every one of them, Gryaznóy, Basmánov, and Vyázemski. Each of them will receive his due, but this one,” she continued, pointing with her staff at Malyúta, “this one will not receive his due: there is no adequate punishment for him in this world; his punishment is in the lowermost pit of hell; there a place is ready for him, and the devils are waiting for him and rejoicing! And there is a place there for you, too, Ványa,—a big, warm place!”

The old woman went out, shuffling her feet and making a noise with her staff.

Ioánn was pale. Malyúta did not speak a word. The silence lasted quite a while.

“Well, Lukyánych?” said the Tsar at last, “do the Kolýchevs confess?”

“Not yet, sir. But they will, or they won’t get off so easily from me!”

Ioánn asked for the details of the inquest. The conversation about the Kolýchevs gave another direction to his thoughts. It appeared to him that he might be able to fall asleep. He sent Malyúta away, lay down upon his bed, and lost consciousness.

He was awakened as if by a sudden push. The room was weakly lighted by the lamps before the images. A moonbeam passed through the low window and glittered on the painted flourishes of the couch. A cricket chirped behind the couch. A mouse nibbled somewhere at the wood.

Iván Vasílevich was again terrified amidst this silence.

Suddenly it seemed to him as though the floor was being raised and a poisoned boyár looked out from underneath.

Such visions were common occurrences with Ioánn. He ascribed them to the persecutions of the devil. To get rid of the apparition, he made the sign of the cross.

But the apparition did not disappear, as it did formerly.

The dead boyár kept on looking at him awry. The eyes of the old man bulged out, and his face was as blue as then, at dinner, when he drank the cup sent him by Ioánn.

“That ’s again the devil’s incitement!” thought the Tsar. “But I will not submit to the power of Satan, and I will crush the cunning of the devil. Let God arise, and may His foes be dispersed!”

The dead man slowly rose from the floor and came nearer to Ioánn.

The Tsar wanted to cry out, but he could not. There was a terrible din in his ears.

The dead man bowed before the Tsar.

“Hail, Iván!” spoke a hollow, unearthly voice. “I greet you, who have destroyed an innocent man.”

These words re-echoed in the very depth of Ioánn’s soul. He did not know whether he heard them from the apparition, or whether his own thought found expression in sounds tangible to the ear.

Then another board was raised; underneath appeared the face of Daníla Adáshev who had been executed by Ioánn four years before.

Adáshev, too, rose from the floor, bowed to the Tsar, and said:

“Hail, Iván! I greet you who have executed an innocent man!”

After Adáshev there appeared the boyár’s wife Maria who had been executed together with her children. She rose from the floor, with her five sons. They all bowed to the Tsar, and all said:

“Hail, Iván! I greet you!”

Then appeared Prince Kurlyátev, Prince Obolénski, Nikíta Sheremétev, and other persons who had been killed or executed by Ioánn.

The room was filled with dead people. They all bowed low to the Tsar, and all said:

“Hail, hail, Iván! I greet you!”

And there rose monks, hermits, nuns, all in black garments, all pale and blood-covered.

And there appeared warriors who had been at Kazán with the Tsar. Upon them gaped terrible wounds, that were not gained in battle, but were inflicted by the executioner.

And there appeared maidens in torn garments, and young women with suckling babes. The children stretched their bloody hands to Ioánn and lisped:

“Hail, hail, Iván, who have made us innocent ones to perish!”

The room was ever more filled with apparitions. The Tsar could no longer distinguish his imagination from reality. The words of the apparitions were repeated in hundred-fold echoes, while the prayers for the dead and the singing of the vigils resounded above Ioánn’s ears. His hair stood on end.

“In the name of the living God,” he spoke, “if you are evil spirits sent by the power of the devil,—perish! If you are, in truth, the souls of those I have executed,—wait for the terrible judgment of the Lord! God will judge us all!”

The dead people moaned and circled around Ioánn, like autumn leaves driven by the whirlwind. The singing of the vigils sounded more pitifully, the rain again beat against the window, and amidst the howl of the wind, the Tsar thought he heard the sound of trumpets and a voice calling:

“Iván, Iván, to the judgment, to the judgment!”

The Tsar cried out aloud. The sleeping guards ran from the adjoining apartments into the bedroom.

“Rise,” cried the Tsar, “all who are asleep now! The last day has come! The last hour has come! Let us to the church, all after me!”

The courtiers bestirred themselves. The large bell was rung. The opríchniks who had just fallen asleep heard the familiar sound, and they jumped up from their couches and hastened to dress themselves.

Many were feasting at the house of Vyázemski. They were sitting at the wine cups and singing drinking songs. When they heard the sound of the bell, they jumped up from their seats, donned black cloaks over their rich garments, and covered their heads with high hoods. The whole palace quarter came into motion. The church of the Mother of God was brilliantly illuminated. The excited inhabitants rushed to their gates and saw a multitude of lights that wandered in the palace from room to room. Then the lights formed a long chain, and the procession meandered along the outward corridors that connected the palace with the temple of God.

All the opríchniks, who were dressed in the identical black cloaks and hoods, carried pitch torches. Their light was wonderfully reflected upon the carved pillars and wall decorations. The wind scattered the cloaks, and the moonlight and the light of the torches was reflected on the cloth, the pearls, and the costly stones. The Tsar marched in front, dressed as a monk, and he beat his breast and called out, sobbing aloud:

“Lord, have mercy on me, sinful man! Have mercy on me, stinking dog! Have mercy on my evil head! Pacify, O Lord, the souls of those who have been innocently killed by me!”

Before the doors of the temple Ioánn fell down exhausted. The torches illuminated an old woman that was sitting on the steps. She stretched out her trembling hand to the Tsar.

“Rise, father!” said Onúfrevna. “I will help you. I have been waiting for you for a long while. Come, Ványa, let us pray together!”

Two opríchniks held up the Tsar under his arms. He entered the church.

New processions, also in black cloaks, also in high hoods, were hastening over the streets with lighted torches. The doors of the temple swallowed ever new opríchniks, and the gigantic forms of the saints looked at them with disfavour from the walls and the vault of the church.

In the night, which had till then been speechless, there was suddenly heard the singing of several hundred voices, and the sound of the bell and the chant of the psalms were borne afar.

The prisoners awoke in their dungeons and, rattling their chains, began to listen.

“The Tsar is reading the matins!” they said. “O Lord, soften his heart, put mercy into his soul!”

Small children that were sleeping by the side of their mothers awoke in terror and began to cry. Many a mother could not quiet her babe for a long time.

“Hush!” she finally said. “Hush, or Malyúta will hear you!”

At the mention of Malyúta the child stopped crying and in its fright pressed close to its mother, and during the stillness of the night there were again heard the psalms of the opríchniks, and the continuous ringing of the bell.

THE DEATH OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE

ACT I. SCENE 2.

(The Tsar’s bedchamber. Iván, pale and exhausted, in a black cassock, is sitting in an arm-chair, beads in his hand. Near him, on a table, lies the Cap of Monomákh; on the other side, on a stool, are the royal vestments. Grigóri Nagóy is handing him a goblet.)

Nagóy. O Tsar! one drop of wine thou ’lt drink,

One drop refuse not. Thou these many days

Dost wear thyself out. All this time thy lips

Have nothing touched.

Iván.othing touched.The body needs no food

When the soul is fed on anguish. Henceforth

Remorse shall be my food.

Nagóy.shall be my food. O mighty Tsar!

Is ’t true thou wouldst forsake us? How will it

With the Tsarítsa be? with the Tsarévich

Thy Dimítri?

Iván.imítri?God will not forsake them.

Nagóy. But who can hold the reins of government

Except thyself?

Iván.thyself?My mind’s edge is blunted;

My heart is faint; my hands are powerless

To hold the reins; already for my sins,

To th’ pagan God hath given victory,

Commanded me my throne that I give up

Unto another; my iniquities

Are more than sands o’ th’ sea: a cannibal—

Tormentor—lecher—church-profaner I:

The boundlessness of God’s long-suffering

Have I exhausted by the last misdeed.

Nagóy. O Tsar! Thou dost exaggerate thy sin;

Thy mind went not with it. Thou meantest not

To slay the Tsarévich: thy staff by accident

Did give the blow.

Iván.e the blow.’T is false! I knowingly,

On purpose, of free will did slay him. Or

Was I then mad, knew not where fell my blow?

No—I slew him purposely! On his back

He fell, bathed in his blood, aye, kissing

These my hands; and dying he forgave me

My monstrous sin, but I forgive myself

Such crimes dare not.

Such crimes dare n(Speaks low.)

Such crimes dare not. SpeaksThis very night to me

Appeared he, beckoned with bloody hand,

And, pointing to a cowl, he waved me on

With him along, unto the holy dwelling

By the White Lake, ev’n there where lie the relics

Of Cyril the Wonder-worker.

There loved I formerly alone to be

At times from out the tempests of the world;

There loved I, far from every care, to think

Of future rest, and the unthankfulness

Of man, and the malicious wiles of foes forget;

Mournfully sweet it was to me within

Some cell to rest me from the day’s exertions,

In evening hour to watch the clouds float by,

Hear but the winds sough, and the cries of gulls,

And of the lake the plash monotonous,

All silent there. There passion’s all forgotten.

There will I take the cowl, and it may be

By prayer, by life-long fasting and contrition,

That I shall merit pardon of my curse.

(A silence.)

Go thou, and learn the reason that so long

Their conference lasts. Soon shall I know their sentence.

When come they with their Tsar? I ’ll lay on him

At once the regal mantle and the crown!

(Exit Nagóy.)

The end of all! And hither am I brought

Along the lengthened path of majesty.

What have I met with on ’t? Sufferings alone.

E’en from my youth but knowing of unrest,

Now on the steed, amid the whistling shot,

The heathen subjecting, now in the Council

Struggling against the boyárs in revolt,

I see behind me but a long-drawn line

Of sleepless nights and troubled days.

I have not gracious to my people been—

No! I had never mastery o’er myself.

Father Sylvester, my good old tutor,

Would say to me, “Iván, take care! In thee

Satan would seat him. Open not thy soul

To him, Iván.” But I was deaf unto

The holy, aged man, and oped my soul

Unto the devil. No, no Tsar am I.

A wolf! a stinking cur! a tyrant!

My son I ’ve slain! Cain’s crime I have outpast!

A leper in soul and mind! The sores

That eat away my heart are countless!

O thou, God Christ, heal me, and forgive me

From my unheard-of foulness, and among

The choir of the blessèd count my soul.

—From The Death of Iván the Terrible, transl. by I. H. Harrison.

THE KURGÁN

Where the broad level steppe lies bare

There stands a lonely mound,

Beneath a famous warrior erst

His latest honour found.

Three days the funeral feast endured,

Three days his meinie strove;

His wives the priests did offer there,

The war horse he did love.

But when at length he buried lay,

The noisy rites were o’er,

Singers foretold his fame to be,

Golden the lute he bore.

“O hero, yet thy deeds shall be

A mighty nation’s boast,

Nor shall thy loudly-sounded name

Through ages all be lost.

“Nay, should thy lofty tomb be laid

Low as this barren plain,

Yet far thy fame shall ever spread,

Honoured thy dust remain.”

And see! the years have passed amain,

And centuries have ranged,

Nations to nations given place,

Countries their fall have changed.

But still that mound its head lifts high,

Where the great chief doth rest,

Nor level with the ground it lies;

Still proudly soars its crest.

But through the years his glorious name

Was lost, nor lived till now.

Who was he, and what coronets

Graced his victorious brow?

What blood was it he shed in streams,

What towns in ashes laid?

What death was it he died, and when

Was his sepulture paid?

This lonely mound doth naught reply,

The warrior is forgot,

And games no more nor songs record

His once lamented lot.

Only the wild giraffe darts by,

Bounding across the plain,

Or locusts in a fluttering swarm

Settle, then on again.

Anon the cranes from high in air,

Their goal is now in sight,

Descend, shrill wayfarers, to rest

And preen for their last flight.

And there the timid jerboa leaps

When slowly dies the day,

Or rider high on mettled steed

Takes there his headlong way.

And, as across the sky they sail,

The clouds let drop their tears,

And lightly thence the passing breeze

The dust unheeded bears.

—Transl. by H. Havelock, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 25.

Iván Aleksándrovich Goncharóv. (1812-1891.)

Goncharóv was born in Simbírsk where his father was a wealthy merchant. His first ten years he passed in his home amidst the sloth and indolence of the old Russian patriarchalism. In 1822 he was placed in an educational institution at Moscow, and twelve years later he graduated from the university. He began early to translate from the French and from other languages, in which he was versed, but his first original story appeared only in 1847. This novel, A Usual Story, at once attracted attention by its realistic pictures of details, and by the fine raillery at the Romantic extravagancies of its hero. In 1852 Goncharóv was invited by the Ministry of Marine to accompany an expedition which was to circumnavigate the world on a mission to Japan. The result of this voyage was his memoirs, Frigate Palláda, which for brilliancy of description surpass any book in the Russian language on travels. During his voyage he, at the same time, worked on his great novel, Oblómov, for which he had laid the plan long before. It was published in 1858 and created a sensation unlike any other previous production in Russia. The country was on the eve of the emancipation, and everybody was filled with the optimism that the native indolence was soon to come to an end, when Goncharóv with marvellous plasticism generalised that very indolence in his hero, and made him succumb to it: everybody who read the book recognised himself, and trembled lest he should also become a victim of Russian fatalism. Goncharóv’s later novel, The Declivity, was less successful.

In English there are some extracts translated from Oblómov in the Library of the World’s Best Literature and in Garnett’s Universal Anthology.

FROM “OBLÓMOV”

“Go ahead with the description of the ideal of your life⸺ Well, good friends around you: what next? How would you pass your days?”

“Well, I should rise in the morning,” began Oblómov, placing his hands back of his head, and an expression of rest came over his face: he was in thought already in the country. “The weather is fine, the sky deep-blue, and there is not a cloud,” he said. “One side of my house is turned with its balcony to the east, facing the garden and fields, the other towards the village. While waiting for my wife to get up, I should put on my smoking-jacket and should saunter through the garden, to breathe the morning evaporations; there I should find the gardener, and we should together water the flowers, and lop the bushes and trees. I cull a bouquet for my wife. Then I take a bath in the bath-tub or in the river; I return, the balcony is open; my wife has on a blouse and a light morning cap that barely stays on the head and that will be wafted away by the slightest breeze. She is waiting for me. ‘Tea is ready,’ she says. What a kiss! What tea! What a restful armchair! I seat myself at the table: upon it are toast, cream, fresh butter⸺”

“Then?”

“Then I don a comfortable coat or jacket, and lose myself with my wife in an endless, deep avenue of trees: we walk softly, lost in meditation, or think aloud, dream, count the moments of happiness, like the beating of the pulse, and listen to the beating and fainting of the heart; we look for sympathy in Nature⸺and by degrees we reach a brook or a field⸺ The river barely splashes; the ears of corn wave with the wind. ’T is warm⸺we seat ourselves in the boat, my wife rows, barely raising the oars⸺”

“Yes, you are a poet, Ilyá!” Stolz interrupted him.

“Yes, a poet of life, for life is poetry. It is the privilege of people to distort it! Then we can enter the greenhouse,” continued Oblómov, himself becoming intoxicated with the ideal which he was depicting. He extracted from his memory ready, long-present pictures, and therefore he spoke with warmth, and without stopping. “We look at the peaches, at the grapes,” he said: “We tell what to send to table; then we return, take a light breakfast and wait for friends⸺ There is a note for my wife from some Márya Petróvna, with a book or music; or a pine-apple has been sent us as a present, or in our own garden a monster melon has ripened, and we send it to some good friend, for to-morrow’s dinner, and we go there ourselves⸺ In the meantime everything is busy in the kitchen; the cook is running around in an apron and cap as white as snow: he puts down one pot, takes up another; there he stirs, here he begins to mix the dough; there he pours out some water—the knives are rattling—they are chopping some spinach—there they turn the ice-cream freezer⸺ ’T is a pleasure to look into the kitchen before dinner, to open a saucepan, sniff, take a glance at the making of the cakes, and beating of the cream. Then to lie down on the sofa; the wife reads aloud something new; we stop, quarrel a bit⸺ But there are guests coming, say, you and your wife.”

“Bah, you are getting me married, too?”

“By all means! Two, three friends more,—the same old faces. We take up the unfinished conversation of yesterday. Then come jokes, or there falls upon us an eloquent silence, a meditation,—not on account of the loss of some place, not on account of some affair of the Senate, but from the fulness of satisfied desire,—a meditation of enjoyment⸺ You will hear no philippics, with foam upon the lips, against an absent person; you will not notice a glance cast at you that promises you the same the moment you have closed the door. You will not dip your bread in his salt cellar whom you do not love, who is not good. In the eyes of the interlocutors you will perceive sympathy, in their jests, a sincere, harmless laughter⸺ Everything from the soul! What is in the eyes, is in the words and hearts. After dinner—a mocha, a Havana cigar on the terrace⸺”

“You are painting me there the same that has been with our fathers and grandfathers.”

“No, not the same,” retorted Oblómov, almost offended. “How can you say so? Do you suppose my wife would be preserving jams and mushrooms? Would she be counting skeins, and looking after the homespun? Would she be boxing the servant girls’ ears? Don’t you hear?—There would be music, books, piano, fine furniture!”

“Well, and you yourself?”

“I myself would not be reading last year’s newspapers, would not travel in a kolymága, would not eat noodles and goose meat, and would have my cook taking lessons in the English club or at the ambassador’s.”

“And then?”

“Then, when the heat would subside, I should send a carriage with the samovár, with a dessert, to the birch forest, or else, to the field, on the newly mown grass, I should have carpets spread between the hayricks, and there we should be staying in bliss until cold hash and beefsteak. The peasants are returning from the field, with their scythes over their shoulders; there creeps by a waggon with hay that conceals the vehicle and the horse; above, a peasant’s cap, adorned with flowers, and a child’s head stick out of the hay; there, a crowd of barefooted old women, with sickles, talk aloud⸺ Suddenly they notice their masters, and they grow silent, and bow low.

“’T is damp in the field, and dark; a mist, like an inverted sea, hovers over the rye; the horses jerk their shoulders and stamp their hoofs: ’t is time to go home. In the house the fires are lit; in the kitchen there is a mighty rattle of knives; there is a pan of mushrooms, cutlets, berries⸺there is music⸺Casta diva—Casta diva!” sang out Oblómov. “I cannot mention with indifference Casta diva,” he said, after singing the beginning of the cavatina; “how that woman weeps her heart away! What melancholy there is in those sounds⸺ And no one around her knows anything⸺ She is alone⸺ The secret weighs heavily upon her; she confides it to the moon⸺”

“Do you like that aria? I am very glad: Ólga Ílinski sings it beautifully. I ’ll introduce you to her,—what a voice, what singing! And what a charming child she herself is! However, maybe I am a prejudiced judge: I have a small weakness for her⸺ But, don’t let me distract you,” Stolz added: “Go ahead with your description!”

“Well,” continued Oblómov, “what more?⸺yes, that ’s all⸺ The guests scatter to the side buildings, to the pavilions; the next day they go in different directions: one to fish, another to hunt; a third,—well, just sits down⸺”

“How, with nothing in his hands?” asked Stolz.

“What do you want? Well, with a handkerchief, if you please. Why, would you not like to pass such an existence?” asked Oblómov, “or, is n’t that an existence?”

“All my life that way?” asked Stolz.

“To your grey hair, to the grave. This is life!”

“No, it is not.”

“How not? What is lacking here? Just consider that you would not see a single poor, suffering face, no care, not a single question about the Senate, exchange, shares, reports, audience at the minister’s, ranks, increase of salary. Nothing but soul-felt conversations. You would never have to move from one house to another,—that in itself is worth something! And you say that is not life?”

“That is not life!” Stolz repeated stubbornly.

“What is it then according to you?”

“That is⸺” Stolz fell to musing and was trying to find a proper expression for such a life, “I should call it⸺ Oblómovism!” he finally said.

“Ob-lóm-ov-ism!” Oblómov uttered slowly, wondering at the strange word, and pronouncing it by syllables: “Ob-lóm-ov-ism!”—he looked strangely and fixedly at Stolz. “What, then, in your opinion, is the ideal of life? What is not Oblómovism?” he asked timidly, without passion. “Do not all strive for the same thing that I am dreaming of? Say yourself,” he added more boldly, “is not the aim of all our running, passions, wars, commerce, politics the obtaining of peace, is it not a striving for that ideal of a lost paradise?”

“Your very Utopia is of the Oblómov kind,” retorted Stolz.

“Everybody is in search of rest and quiet,” Oblómov defended himself.

“Not all, and you yourself did not look for that in life ten years ago.”

“What did I look for?” Oblómov asked, perplexed, as he mentally transferred himself into the past.

“Try to recall it. Where are your books and translations?”

“Zákhar has put them somewhere,” answered Oblómov, “they are somewhere in the corner here.”

“In the corner!” Stolz said reproachfully. “In this same corner lie your intentions ‘to serve, while strength lasts, because Russia needs hands and heads to exploit its inexhaustible resources’—I am quoting your words: ‘to work, in order to rest more sweetly; and to rest means to live with the other, aristocratic, artistic side of life, the life of artists, poets.’ Has Zákhar stored away all these intentions also in the corner? Do you remember, you had intended, after having studied from books, to travel in foreign countries, in order to know and love yours better? ‘All life is thought and work,’ you used to repeat then: ‘an unnoticed, dark, but incessant work, and to die with the consciousness of having done your work’—well, in what corner does all that lie now?”

“Yes⸺yes⸺” said Oblómov, restlessly following every word of Stolz’s, “I do remember, I really did⸺it seems⸺ That ’s so!” he suddenly exclaimed, as the past returned to him. “Why, Andréy, we had made up our minds to crisscross Europe, to walk through all of Switzerland, to burn our feet on Mount Vesuvius, to go down to Herculaneum. We almost went insane! How many foolish things!⸺”

“Foolish things!” Stolz repeated reproachfully. “Did you not say in tears, as you looked at the engravings of Raphael’s Madonnas, at Correggio’s Night, at the Apollo Belvedere: ‘Lord! Shall I really never be able to gaze at the originals and be dumb with terror at the thought that I am standing before the productions of Michael Angelo, Titian, and that I tread the soil of Rome? Shall I pass my life seeing these myrtles, cypresses, and orange trees in hothouses, and not in their native home? Not to breathe the air of Italy, not to drink in the azure of its sky!’ And what superb fireworks you used to send out of your head. Foolish things!”

“Yes, yes! I remember,” said Oblómov, as he lost himself in the past. “You once took me by my hand and said to me: ‘Let us promise not to die before having seen all that!⸺”

“I remember,” continued Stolz, “how you once brought me a translation from Say, with a dedication to me upon my birthday: I still have the whole translation. How you shut yourself up with the teacher of mathematics, and wanted by all means to find out what good there was in knowing circles and squares, and then you gave it up before you were half way through, without having found it out! You began to study English—and you did not learn it! And when I made a plan of a journey abroad, and asked you to come to see me at the German universities, you jumped up, embraced me, and solemnly gave me your hand: ‘I am with you, Andréy, everywhere with you,’ those are all your words. You have always been something of an actor. Well, Ilyá? I have been twice abroad; after having been crammed full of our native wisdom, I sat modestly on the student benches at Bonn, Jena, Erlangen, then I studied Europe like my estate. But one might say, a journey is a luxury and not all are able or obliged to make use of that means; what about Russia? I have seen Russia up and down. I work⸺”

“Sometime you ’ll stop working,” Oblómov remarked.

“I shall never stop. Why should I?”

“When you have doubled your capital,” said Oblómov.

“Not when I increase it fourfold.”

“What is all this unrest for,” he said after a silence, “if it is not your aim to provide for the future and to retire later for a rest?”

“Country Oblómovism!” said Stolz.

“Or by service to gain importance and position in society, and then in honourable indolence to enjoy a well-deserved rest⸺”

“Petersburg Oblómovism!” exclaimed Stolz.

“When is one to live, pray?” Oblómov replied with annoyance to Stolz’s remarks. “Why should one worry a whole life away?”

“For work’s sake, and for nothing else. Work is the image, contents, element, and aim of life, at least, of my life. You have driven work out of life: what is it like now? I ’ll try to raise you, maybe, for the last time. If you will be staying here after that, with your Tarántevs and Aleksyéevs, you will go to perdition, and be a burden to yourself. Now or never!” he concluded.

Oblómov listened, fixing his excited eyes upon him. His friend had, so to say, placed a mirror before him, and he became frightened as he recognised himself.

“Do not scold me, Andréy, but really help me!” he began with a sigh. “I am tormented myself by it, and if you had seen or heard me only to-day, how I am digging my own grave and lamenting over myself, you would never have had the courage to blame me so much. I know and understand all, but I have no strength and no will. Give me your will-power and mind, and lead me where you wish. I shall probably go with you, but alone I will never move from the spot. You are saying the truth: ‘Now or never!’ Another year, and it will be too late!”

“Is it you, Ilyá?” said Andréy. “I remember you as a slender, lively boy, as you walked every day from Prechístenka to Kúdrino; there, in the garden⸺you have not forgotten the two sisters? You have not forgotten Rousseau, Schiller, Goethe, Byron, which you used to carry to them, and you took away from them the novels of Cottin, Janlis⸺you put on such importance before them, you wanted to purify their taste?⸺”

Oblómov jumped up from his bed. “What, you remember that too, Andréy? That is so! I dreamt with them, whispered hopes of the future to them, developed plans, ideas, and—feelings too, secretly from you, lest you should ridicule me. All that is dead, it was never repeated! Where has it all gone to, and why has it been extinguished? Incomprehensible! There have been no storms, no violent perturbations with me; I have not lost anything; no yoke burdens my conscience; it is as pure as glass; no stroke has killed ambition in me. God knows why all that has gone!” He sighed. “Do you know, Andréy? There has never burnt in my life, neither a redeeming, nor a destructive fire! It has never resembled a morning upon which gradually fall colours and fire until it is changed into day, as with others; and then it flames up, and boils, moves in the brilliant midday, and then softly, very softly, becomes paler and paler, and naturally and gently dies out towards evening. No, my life began with the extinction! Strange to say, it is so! From the first moment that I have been conscious of myself, I have felt that I am already being extinguished. I began to go out when I was writing documents in the chancery; I was going out when, later, I read in books truths that I did not know what to do with in life; I was going out among my friends, as I listened to the disputes, gossips, malicious teasings, ill-minded and cold prattle, emptiness, and as I looked at the friendship that was supported by aimless and unsympathetic meetings; I was going out in the languid and indolent saunterings along the Névski Prospect, among racoon furcoats and beaver collars,—at evening entertainments, receptions, where I was gladly received as a possible prospective bridegroom; I was going out and trifling away life and reason when I migrated from the city to the country, and from the country back to the Gorókhovaya street, measuring spring by the arrival of oysters and lobsters, autumn and winter by reception days, summer by excursions, and life in general by an indolent and restful dreaming, like the rest⸺ Even my ambition, what did I waste it upon? To order a garment from a well-known tailor, in order to find my way into a certain house, in order that Prince P. should press my hand. And ambition is the salt of life! What has become of it? Either I did not understand this life, or it is good for nothing, and I knew and saw nothing better, and no one showed it to me. You used to appear and disappear like a comet, brilliantly, swiftly, and I forgot all about it, and went out⸺”

Stolz no longer answered with a careless banter Oblómov’s speech. He listened and kept a grim silence.

“You told me lately that my face was not quite fresh, that it was crushed,” continued Oblómov. “Yes, I am a threadbare, old, worn-out coat, but not from the effect of the climate, and labour, but because for twelve years light was imprisoned within me; it sought an exit, and only burnt the prison, and did not get its liberty, and went out. Thus, my dear Andréy, have passed twelve years of mine, and I lost the desire to awaken.”

“Why did you not tear yourself away and run somewhere, instead of perishing in silence?” Stolz asked impatiently.

“Whither?”

“Whither? If you could do nothing better, with your peasants to the Vólga: there is more motion there, there are there some kind of interests, aims, work. I should have gone to Siberia, to Sitka⸺”

“You prescribe such dreadfully strong measures!” Oblómov remarked languidly.

“I am not alone in that. There is Mikháylov, Petróv, Seménov, Aleksyéev, Stepánov⸺ You can’t count them all: our name is legion!”

Stolz was still under the influence of that confession and he was silent. Then he sighed. “Yes, much water has flowed since then!” he said. “I will not leave you as you are; I ’ll take you away from here, first abroad, and then into the country: you will grow a little thinner, you will stop pining away, and we shall find some work for you⸺”

“Yes, let us get away from here!” the words escaped from Oblómov.

“To-morrow we will apply for a passport abroad, then we will pack up⸺ I will not leave you, do you hear, Ilyá?”

“It is always to-morrow with you!” retorted Oblómov, as though coming down from the clouds.

“You would prefer, ‘Don’t put off for to-morrow what you can do to-day?’ What a hurry! It is too late now,” Stolz added. “In two weeks we shall be far away⸺”

“You talk of two weeks, my friend! How so? Let us consider it properly and get ready⸺ I ’ll have to get some carriage⸺say rather in three months.”

“Talk of a carriage! We shall travel to the border in a stage coach, or in a steamer as far as Lubeck, that will be much more convenient. There we shall find railroads in many places.”

“And what about the house, and Zákhar, and Oblómovka? Some kind of arrangements will have to be made,” Oblómov defended himself.

“Oblómovism, Oblómovism!” said Stolz, laughing; then he took a candle, wished Oblómov good-night, and went to bed. “Now or never!—Remember!” he added, as he turned back to Oblómov and closed the door behind him.

“Now or never!” were the first threatening words he thought of as he awoke in the morning. He rose from his bed, walked three times up and down the room, and looked into the sitting-room where Stolz was sitting and writing. “Zákhar!” he called out, but he did not hear him jumping down from the oven bed. Zákhar did not make his appearance,—Stolz had sent him to the post-office. Oblómov walked up to his dusty table, sat down, picked up a pen, dipped it in the inkstand, but there was no ink in it, looked for some paper, but there was none. He fell to musing, and mechanically began to draw with his finger in the dust, then he looked down to see what he had written: it turned out to be “Oblómovism.” He hurriedly wiped away the writing with his sleeve. That word he had been dreaming of in the night: it was written in flaming letters upon the wall, as at Belshazzar’s feast. Zákhar arrived and when he found Oblómov not in his bed, he dimly looked at his master, wondering why he should be on his legs. In that dull glance of astonishment was written: “Oblómovism!” “One single word,” thought Ilyá Ilyích, “but how poisonous!⸺”

Zákhar took, as usual, the comb, brush, and towel, and stepped towards his master to fix his hair. “Go to the devil!” Oblómov exclaimed angrily and knocked the brush out of Zákhar’s hands, and Zákhar himself dropped the comb on the floor.

“Would you not like to lie down again?” asked Zákhar. “If so, I shall fix the bed for you.”

“Bring me ink and paper,” answered Oblómov.

He fell to musing over the words: “Now or never!” As he listened inwardly to this despairing appeal of reason and willpower, he consciously weighed the little willpower that was left to him, whither he would carry it, into what he would put that paltry remnant. After having pondered over it painfully, he seized the pen, dragged a book out of the corner, and in one hour wanted to read, write, and think all that he had neglected to read, write, and think in ten years. What was he to do now? To go ahead, or to remain? This Oblómov question was of more import to him than Hamlet’s. To go ahead,—that would mean at once doffing his comfortable dressing-gown, not only from the shoulders, but from the soul and mind; together with the cobweb on the walls to sweep away the cobweb from the eyes, and regain eyesight! What first step should be made for this? Where begin? “I do not know—I cannot—no, I am begging the question, I do know, and⸺ And here is Stolz by my side; he will tell me. What will he tell me? ‘In a week,’ he will say, ‘you must sketch a detailed instruction for your plenipotentiary and send him into the village. Get your Oblómovka mortgaged, buy some more land, send a plan of new buildings, give up your house, procure a passport, and go abroad for six months, to get rid of your surplus fat, to throw off the weight, to refresh the soul with the atmosphere of which you have dreamed long ago with your friend, to live without a dressing gown, without Zákhar and Tarántev, to put on your own socks and take off your own boots, sleep only at night, travel where all travel, on railroads, steamboats, and then⸺ Then to settle in Oblómovka, to find out what sowing and threshing is, why peasants are poor or well-to-do, walk over the fields, go to elections, to the factory, to the mill, the docks. At the same time you are to read newspapers, books, and become excited why the English have sent a warship to the East⸺’ That ’s what he will say! That ’s what is meant by going ahead, and thus it is to be all my life! Farewell, poetical ideal of life! That is some kind of a blacksmith shop, not life! There is in it an eternal fire, hammering, heat, din⸺ But when is one to live? Would it not be better to stay? To stay means to put on a shirt over all, to hear the patter of Zákhar’s feet as he jumps down from his couch, to dine with Tarántev, to think less about anything, never to finish the “Voyage to Africa,” to grow peacefully old in these chambers, at the house of Tarántev’s ladyfriend.”

“Now or never!” “To be or not to be!” Oblómov was about to rise from his chair, but his foot did not at once find its way into the slipper, and he sat down again.

Nikoláy Aleksándrovich Dobrolyúbov. (1836-1861.)

Dobrolyúbov was the most powerful of critics belonging to the school of Byelínski. In the short period of three years in which he devoted himself exclusively to criticism, he produced four large volumes of minute analyses of the intellectual and social movements at the end of the fifties. His most famous essay is What is Oblómovism? in which he places all the heroes of previous novels in the same category with the hero in Goncharóv’s story. Dobrolyúbov was born in Nízhni-Nóvgorod as the son of a poor priest. He studied at a Seminary and at the Pedagogical Institute at St. Petersburg, struggling all the time against want. He practised much asceticism, and kept strict account of himself and his mental evolution by means of a diary. He later transferred this asceticism and scrupulous self-examination to his literary work.

WHAT IS OBLÓMOVISM?

It was remarked long ago that all the heroes of the most noted Russian stories and novels suffer from not seeing any aim in life and from not finding any proper occupation for themselves. On account of this they feel ennui and a dislike for all kinds of work, thus presenting a striking similarity to Oblómov. Indeed, open, for example, Evgéni Onyégin, The Hero of Our Time, Who is to be Blamed, Rúdin, or Useless Men, or Hamlet of Shchigróv County,[13]—in every one of them you will find traits that are literally identical with those in Oblómov⸺

⸺One feels the breeze of a new life when, after reading Oblómov, one stops to think what it is that has called forth this type in literature. It cannot be ascribed solely to the personal talent of the author and to the breadth of his views. Great talent and the broadest and humanest conceptions are to be found also in the authors who have produced the former types, mentioned above. But the fact is that since the appearance of the first of these, Onyégin, up to the present, thirty years have passed. What was then in the embryo, what was then whispered in indistinct words, has now assumed a definite, concrete form, has been proclaimed openly and aloud. The trite phrase has lost its meaning; there has arisen in society itself the need for actual work.

Béltov[14] and Rúdin, men with really high and noble tendencies, not only could not grasp the necessity, but could not even imagine the near possibility of a terrible, mortal conflict with actualities that oppressed them. They entered into a deep unknown forest, walked over a dangerous bog, saw under their feet various reptiles and serpents, and climbed a tree,—partly to see whether they could not discover a road somewhere, partly to rest and for a time at least to save themselves from the danger of sinking into the mire or being stung. The people who followed them waited for them to say something, and looked at them with respect as at people who had taken the lead. But these leaders saw nothing from the elevation to which they had climbed: the forest was very extensive and dense.

However, while climbing the tree, they have scratched their faces, wounded the feet, spoiled their hands. They suffer, they are fatigued, they must rest themselves, after having fixed a comfortable place upon the tree. It is true, they do nothing for the common good, they have discovered no way, and they say nothing. Those who stand beneath them must, without their aid, clear for themselves a road through the forest. But who will dare to throw a stone at these unfortunate men in order to make them fall down from their height in which they have settled after such difficulties, having in view the public good? They have the sympathy of the others, they are not even required to take part in the clearing of the forest; another work fell to their lot, and they did it. If it led to nothing, it is not their fault. Every one of the former authors could look at his Oblómov hero from that standpoint, and he was right. To this was also added the circumstance that the hope of finding a way out from the forest upon the road was long maintained by the whole crowd of the travellers, just as their confidence was long maintained in the far-sightedness of the leaders who had climbed the tree.

But by degrees the affair becomes clearer, and it takes a different turn. The leaders have taken a liking to the tree: they very eloquently discuss the ways and means of issuing from the bog and from the forest. They have found on the tree some kind of fruit which they enjoy, after throwing down the shell. They invite a few of the select from the crowd to come to them, and these climb up and stay there, not to look for the road, but to eat the fruit. They are now Oblómovs in the true sense. The poor travellers who stand below sink in the mire, serpents sting them, reptiles frighten them, and branches strike their faces. At last, the crowd decides to be doing something, and want to get back those who have lately climbed the tree; but the Oblómovs keep silent and glut themselves on the fruit. Then the crowd turns to its former leaders and begs them to come down and to help them in the common work. But the leaders again repeat the old trite phrases that it is necessary to find the road, but that it is useless to think of clearing the forest.

It is then that the poor travellers see their mistake, and turn their backs on them and say: “Sure enough, you are all Oblómovs!” And they begin to work with a vim and without cessation: they cut down the trees, make a bridge with them through the bog, lay out a path, kill the serpents and reptiles that are in their way, and no longer pay any attention to those clever fellows with their strong natures, those Pechórins and Rúdins, on whom they had all their dependence before and whom they so admired. At first the Oblómovists look calmly at the common movement, but later, as is their wont, they lose courage and begin to cry:

“Oh, oh! Don’t do that; leave off!” they cry as they notice that the tree upon which they are sitting is about to be cut down. “Consider, we might be killed, and then there will perish with us all those beautiful ideas, all those elevated sentiments, all those humane tendencies, that eloquence, that pathos, that love for everything beautiful and noble, which ever lived in us. Stop, stop! What are you doing?”

But the travellers have heard these beautiful phrases a thousand times, and they continue their work, without paying any attention to them. The Oblómovists have another chance to save their reputation: let them climb down from the tree, and fall in with the work of the others. But, as usual, they are at a loss what to do. “How do you expect us all of a sudden?” they repeat in despair, and they continue to hurl their futile curses against the stupid crowd that has lost respect for them.

The crowd, however, is right. If it has become conscious of the necessity for actual work, it can be of no consequence to it whether Pechórin stands before it, or Oblómov. We do not assert that Pechórin would act in the given circumstances precisely like Oblómov; these very circumstances cause him to develop in an entirely different direction. But the types which a mighty genius creates are lasting: there are even now some men living who represent, so to say, a chip of Onyégin, Pechórin, and so forth, not in the form in which they might have developed in other circumstances, but just exactly as they are represented by Púshkin, Lérmontov, and Turgénev. But in the social consciousness they are evermore changed into Oblómov.

It cannot be said that this change is already accomplished: no, even now thousands of persons are wasting their time in talking, and thousands of others are ready to regard this talking as work. But that this transformation is beginning, is proved by the type of Oblómov which Goncharóv has created. Its appearance would be impossible, if the conviction had not grown ripe in at least a small part of society that those quasi-talented natures that caused so much delight in former days are quite insignificant. Formerly they were cloaked by all kinds of mantles, adorned with all kinds of coiffures, and they attracted to themselves by all kinds of talents. But now Oblómov appears before us divested of his adornments, just as he is, uncommunicative, removed from a beautiful pedestal to a soft divan, covered with an ample morning robe, instead of a mantle. The question, What is he doing? Wherein is the meaning and aim of his life? is put directly and clearly, and it is not obscured by side questions. This is so, because the time for social labour has at last come or is just coming. For this reason we say that we see in Goncharóv’s novel a sign of the time.

Let us, indeed, see how the point of view has changed which was held in regard to those cultivated and glib accumbents who in former days were taken for real social workers.

Here is before you a young man; he is very handsome, agile, and cultured. He makes his entry in fashionable society and he has success there. He drives to the theatre, to balls and masquerades; he dresses and dines superbly; he reads books and writes very orthographically. His heart is agitated only by the routine of fashionable life, but he has also an idea about higher questions. He likes to talk of passions,

Of prejudices centuries old

And fateful mysteries of the tomb.

He has a few honourable rules; he is capable

Of changing to light tenant pay

The yoke of old manorial labour;

he is capable of not taking advantage of the inexperience of a girl whom he does not love; he is capable of not ascribing any special value to his worldly successes. He stands so far above the fashionable society which surrounds him that he has arrived at the consciousness of its inanity; he is even able to leave that society and to settle in the country; only, not knowing what work to find for himself, time weighs heavily upon him. Having nothing to do, he quarrels with his friend and frivolously kills him in a duel. A few years later he again makes his appearance in society and falls in love with a woman whose love he himself rejected before, because he would have been compelled to renounce his roving life for her. You recognise Onyégin in this man. But take a good look at him: it is Oblómov.

There is another man before you, with a more passionate soul, with a broader egoism. He has, as it were, all that by nature which forms an object of care to Onyégin. He does not worry about his toilet and apparel; he is a man of the world without all that. He does not need to pick his words and to shine with his tinsel knowledge: without all that his tongue is as sharp as a razor. He actually despises men, well knowing their weaknesses; he really knows how to conquer the hearts of women, not for a short moment, but for a long time, often for ever. Everything that hampers his way he knows how to remove or destroy. He has only one misfortune: he does not know whither to go. His heart is empty and cold to everything. He has experienced everything, and even while a young man all pleasures which one can get for money palled on him; he also loathes the love of worldly beauties, because it has given nothing to his heart; he is tired of the sciences, because he sees that neither glory nor happiness depend upon them, that ignoramuses are the happiest people, and that glory is a matter of success; dangers of war soon wearied him, because he saw no sense in them and because he readily got used to them.

In fine, even the sincere, pure love of a country girl whom he really likes annoys him: he does not find even in her any satisfaction for his impulses. But what impulses are they? Whither do they draw him? Why does he not give himself over to them with the whole power of his soul? It is because he himself does not understand them and does not take the trouble of thinking what to do with his power of soul. So he passes all his life in making witticisms at the expense of fools, in disquieting the hearts of inexperienced maidens, in mixing up with the affairs of others’ hearts, inviting brawls, showing bravado in trifles, fighting without any provocation⸺ You recollect that this is the history of Pechórin, that with almost such words he explains his character to Maksím Maksímych. Please, do take a good look at him: you will see Oblómov even in him.

Here is another man who walks upon his path with greater self-consciousness. He not only understands that he is endowed with great power, but he also knows that he has a great purpose. It seems he even suspects what that purpose is and where it is to be found. He is noble, honest, though he frequently does not pay his debts; he discusses with ardour not trifles, but higher questions; he assures us that he is ready to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. In his mind all questions are solved, everything is brought into a living, harmonious connection; by his mighty speech he entices inexperienced youths so that, hearing him, they feel that they have been called to something great.

Now, what does he spend his life on? On beginning everything and not finishing it, on scattering himself in all directions, on following up things with ardour, without accomplishing them. He falls in love with a girl who finally tells him that, in spite of her mother’s prohibition, she is ready to belong to him; whereat he answers: “Heavens! so your mother does not give her consent! What a sudden shock! Lord, how soon! There is nothing to be done,—we must submit.” And that is a real picture of all his life. You already know that this is Rúdin. No, that ’s again Oblómov. If you will take a good look at this person, and will place him face to face with the demands of contemporary life, you will yourself come to this conclusion.

All these people have this in common: they have no work in life as their vital necessity, as their heart’s holiness, their religion, that might organically grow up with them so that to deprive them of it would mean to take their life away. Everything is external with them, nothing has any roots in their natures. They may be doing something if compelled by outward necessity, just as Oblómov made calls wherever Stolz took him, bought music and books for Ólga, and read what she made him read. But they have not their souls in the work which accident imposes upon them. If they were offered gratis all the external comforts which their labour gives them, they would gladly turn away from their work. By dint of his Oblómovism, the Oblómov official will stop going to his office, if that would not interfere with getting his salary and his promotions. The warrior will make a vow not to touch his arms, if he is offered the same conditions, provided they permit him also to keep his beautiful uniform which is very useful upon certain occasions. The professor will abandon his lectures, the student his studies, the writer his authorship, the actor will not appear on the stage, the artist will break his chisel or his palette, to express myself in eloquent style, if they can see their way of obtaining for nothing that which they now get by work.

They talk of higher aims, of the consciousness of moral obligations, of being imbued with the interests of society,—but investigate it all, and you will find that it is nothing but words and words. Their sincerest, most heartfelt aim is their aim for rest, for the morning gown, and their very activity is nothing else but an honourable morning gown (the expression does not belong to me), with which they cover their inanity and apathy. Even the most cultivated people, such as possess a vivid nature and a warm heart, in practical life very easily depart from their ideas and plans, very readily make their peace with the reality that surrounds them, though they do not cease speaking of it as low and contemptible. This means that everything of which they speak and dream is, in their case, foreign and external; but in the depth of their soul is rooted one dream, one ideal,—a most undisturbed rest, quietism, Oblómovism. Many go even so far as not to be able to imagine a man working for the love of it, from predilection⸺

⸺If I now see a landed proprietor discussing the rights of humanity and the necessity for the development of the individual,—I know from his first words that he is an Oblómov.

If I meet an official who complains of the intricacy and laboriousness of the official routine,—he is an Oblómov.

If I hear from an officer tirades on the weariness of parades and bold discussions of the uselessness of slow steps, etc., I have no doubt that he is an Oblómov.

When I read in the periodicals liberalising sallies against malfeasance, and expressions of joy that at last that which we have been hoping and wishing for has been done,—I think that these must be correspondences from Oblómovka.

When I am in a circle of cultivated people who feel warmly for the needs of humanity and who for a series of years have with undiminished zeal been telling the same anecdotes, or at times even new ones, about bribe-takers, about oppressions, about illegalities of all kinds,—I involuntarily feel that I am transferred to old Oblómovka.

Stop these people in their noisy disputations and say to them: “You say that so and so is wrong; well, what is to be done?” They do not know. Propose the simplest means to them, and they will say: “But pray, why so suddenly?” You may be sure they will say that, because Oblómovs cannot speak otherwise. Continue your conversation with them and ask them: “What do you intend to do?” They will give you the same answer which Rúdin gave to Natálya: “What is to be done? Of course, submit to fate. What is to be done? I know too well how bitter, how hard and intolerable it is, but judge yourself”⸺and so forth. You will get nothing else out of them, because upon all of them is the stamp of Oblómovism.

Who will, at last, stir them from the spot with the almighty word “Forwards!” of which Gógol has dreamed so much and for which Russia has been waiting so long and so yearningly? So far there is no answer to this question, neither in society, nor in literature. Goncharóv, who knew how to grasp and represent to us our Oblómovism, could not help paying his tribute to the universal delusion which still holds strong sway over our society; he decided to bury Oblómovism and to hold a funeral sermon over it. “Farewell, old Oblómovka, you have lived your day,” he says with the lips of Stolz, but he tells an untruth. All Russia that has read or will read Oblómov will not agree with it. No, Oblómovka is our real country; its owners are our educators, its three hundred Zákhars are ever ready for our services. In every one of us there is a goodly part of Oblómov, and it is still too early to write the inscription on our tomb.

[13] These works are by the following authors: Púshkin, Lérmontov, Gértsen, Turgénev, Saltykóv, Turgénev.

[14] Hero in Who is to be Blamed?

Iván Sergyéevich Turgénev. (1818-1883.)

Turgénev is the most noted of the novelists who began their literary career in the forties. He was brought up in the estate of his father, in the Government of Orél. His early impressions were extremely unpleasant: his father belonged to the brutal type of the old landed proprietors, and his mother developed, after the death of her husband, similar repellent characteristics. Thus Turgénev, who was himself possessed of a soft and refined nature, received an early bias against the whole institution of serfdom. In 1833 Turgénev entered the St. Petersburg University, and five years later he went to Berlin to finish his education. He had tried writing poetry before, but he met with little success. Upon his return to Russia he wrote Parásha, a novel in verse, in which the Romantic incident of the story is tempered by a goodly admixture of realism. It at once attracted attention, and Turgénev was fairly launched into literature. But he became a power in literature only at the end of the forties when he began to publish his series of sketches from the life of the peasants under the name of Memoirs of a Hunter: their effect was tremendous: it was the first time that the public read sympathetic stories about the serfs, and they did a great deal to hasten the emancipation. The government looked awry at this tendency of Turgénev’s novels, and when he, in 1852, wrote a eulogistic essay on Gógol, who had just died, he was banished to his estate. Upon his release, he went abroad where he, with short interruptions, passed the rest of his days. Then followed that series of brilliant novels, Dimítri Rúdin, Faust, A Nest of Gentlefolk, which made him famous throughout Europe. In 1862 appeared his Fathers and Sons. In this novel he attempted to give a picture of the new tendencies in Russian society. But he had been too long away from Russian surroundings, and so he has been blamed for not having grasped the positive characteristics of the younger generation. His later productions are tinged by pessimism, which finds its most pronounced expression in his Poems in Prose.

The following translations of Turgénev’s works have been published: After Death, in Modern Age, 1883. Annals of a Sportsman, extracts in Photographs from Russian Life, in Fraser’s Magazine, and in Graham’s Magazine, 1854; Russian Life in the Interior, London, 1855; Annals of a Sportsman, translated from the French by F. P. Abbott (Leisure Hour Series, No. 164), New York, 1885; Tales from the Note-book of a Sportsman, translated by E. Richter, London, 1895. The Antchar, in Galaxy, 1873. Asya, under title Assja, in Galaxy, 1877; Annouchka, translated from the French by F. P. Abbott, Boston, 1884. Daughter of Russia, translated by G. W. Scott (Seaside Library), New York, 1882. Desperate, in Cosmopolitan, 1888. Dimitri Roudine (Leisure Hour Series), New York, 1873 (reprinted from Every Saturday, 1873). The Dream, in Home Journal, 1878. Fathers and Sons, translated by E. Schuyler, New York, 1867, London, 1888, and (Leisure Hour Series and Seaside Library) New York, 1883; Fathers and Children, New York, 1883. Faust, in Galaxy, 1872. First Love, and Punin and Baburin, translated by S. Jerrold, London, 1884. Hamlet and Don Quixote, translated by J. Král and P. Durdík, in Poet Lore, vol. iv. The Idiot, London, 1887, and in Temple Bar, 1870. A Leaf of the Steppes, in London Society, and in Living Age, 1873; Nobleman of the Steppes, in Scribner’s Monthly, 1877. The Living Mummy, in Scribner’s Monthly, 1876. Liza, translated by W. R. S. Ralston, London, 1869 and 1884, and New York, 1872. Mumu, and Diary of a Superfluous Man, translated by H. Gersoni, New York, 1884. Novels (containing Dimitri Roudine,—Fathers and Sons, translated by E. Schuyler, Liza, translated by Ralston, On the Eve, by Turner, Smoke, by West, Spring-floods, by S. M. Butts, A Leaf of the Steppes, by W. H. Browne), 6 vols., New York, 1874-5. On the Eve, translated by C. B. Turner, London, 1871, and New York, 1873. Poems in Prose, Boston, 1873; Senilia, Poems in Prose, in MacMillan’s Magazine, vol. xlix, 1887, and Eclectic Magazine, vol. cii, 1887; Senilia, Poems in Prose, translated by S. J. Macmullan, Bristol, [1890]. The Priest’s Son, in Lippincott’s, 1877. Punin and Baburin, translated by G. W. Scott (Seaside Library), New York, 1882. The Ruffian (?) (Overland Library, No. 13), New York, 188-. Smoke, or, Life at Baden, London, 1868; Smoke, translated from the French, by W. F. West, New York, 1873, and London, 1883. Song of Triumphant Love (Seaside Library), New York, 1883. The Sorcerer, in Appleton’s 1870; under title How Russians meet Death, in Temple Bar, and in Living Age, 1887. Spring Floods, translated by E. Richter, London, 1896. Strange Adventure of Lieut. Yergunof, in Galaxy, 1877. Tales from a Stormy Night, New York, 1891. Three Meetings, in Lippincott’s, 1875. An Unfortunate Woman, also Assya, translated by H. Gersoni (Standard Library, No. 142), New York, 1886; The Unfortunate One, translated by A. R. Thompson, London, 1888. Vassilissa, in Romance, 1892. Virgin Soil, translated from the French by T. S. Perry (Leisure Hour Series), New York, 1877, and London, 1883—translated by A. W. Dilke, London, 1878 and 1879. Visions, in Galaxy, 1872, and in Cornhill, and Living Age, 1880. The Watch, in Lippincott’s, 1876, and in The Bridal March, from the Norwegian of Björnson, and The Watch, translated by J. E. Williams, London, 1893. Works (containing Dimitri Roudine, Fathers and Sons, Liza, Smoke, and Virgin Soil), 5 vols., London, 1889. There is also a complete set of his Works, translated from the Russian by Mrs. Garnett, London, and New York, 1894-99.

FROM “FATHERS AND SONS”

⸺Arkádi stepped towards his uncle, and he once more felt the touch of his perfumed moustache upon his own cheeks. Pável Petróvich seated himself at the table. He was dressed in an elegant morning gown after the English fashion; his head was embellished by a small fez. This fez and the carelessly tied neckerchief hinted of the freedom of country life; but the stiff collar of the shirt, which was not white, but coloured, as is proper for the morning toilet, stuck with customary inexorability against the clean-shaven chin.

“Where is your new friend?” he asked Arkádi.

“He is not at home. He generally rises early and goes away. The main thing is, not to pay any attention to him: he does not like ceremonies.”

“Yes, that is evident.” Pável Petróvich began leisurely to spread some butter on his bread. “Is he going to stay here long?”

“That depends. He has stopped here on his way to his father’s.”

“Where does his father live?”

“In our Government, some eighty versts from here. He has a small estate there. He used to be an army surgeon.”

“Well, well, well! That ’s why I kept on asking myself: ‘Where have you heard that name Bazárov’? Nikoláy, it seems to me there was a surgeon by the name of Bazárov in papa’s division.”

“I think there was.”

“That ’s right. So that surgeon is his father. Hm!” Pável Petróvich smoothed his moustaches. “Well, and Mr. Bazárov himself, what is he?” asked he with deliberation.

“What Bazárov is?” Arkádi smiled. “If you want, uncle, I ’ll tell you what he really is.”

“Do me the favour, dear nephew.”

“He is a nihilist.”

“What?” asked Nikoláy Petróvich, and Pável Petróvich raised up his knife with a piece of butter at the end of the blade, and remained immovable.

“He is a nihilist,” repeated Arkádi.

“Nihilist,” muttered Nikoláy Petróvich. “That is from the Latin nihil, nothing, so far as I can judge; consequently that word designates a man who—who acknowledges nothing?”

“Say, who respects nothing,” Pável Petróvich interrupted him, starting again to spread his butter.

“Who looks at everything from the critical point of view,” remarked Arkádi.

“Is not that the same?” asked Pável Petróvich.

“No, not the same. A nihilist is a man who bows to no authorities, who accepts not a single principle on faith, no matter with what respect that principle be surrounded.”

“And do you call that good?” Pável Petróvich interrupted.

“It depends, uncle. It ’s good for some, and very bad for others.”

“I declare. Well, that, I see, is beyond us. We are of the older generation; we assume that without principles (Pável Petróvich pronounced this word softly, in the French fashion, Arkádi, on the contrary, pronounced it hard, with a decided accent on the first syllable), without principles taken, as you say, on faith, it is impossible to take a step, or breathe. Vous avez changé tout cela. God grant you health and the rank of general,[15] but we shall only take pleasure in looking at you, gentlemen⸺what do you call them?”

“Nihilists,” Arkádi said distinctly.

“Yes. Formerly there used to be Hegelists, and now there are nihilists. Let us see how you are going to exist in the vacuum, in an airless space. But now, please ring the bell, brother Nikoláy Petróvich; it is time for me to drink my cocoa.”

⸺For some moments silence reigned upon the terrace. Pável Petróvich sipped his cocoa, and then he suddenly raised his head.

“There is the nihilist coming to honour us with his presence,” he said half aloud.

There was really Bazárov, crossing the beds in the garden. His linen ulster and trowsers were smeared with mud; a prickly swamp plant surrounded the band of his old round hat; in his right hand he held a small bag, and in the bag were crawling living things. He rapidly approached the terrace and said, nodding: “Good-morning, gentlemen! Excuse me for being late to tea. I shall be back at once; I just want to find a place for my captives.”

“What have you there, leeches?” asked Pável Petróvich.

“No, frogs.”

“Do you eat them or raise them?”

“For experiments,” indifferently answered Bazárov and went into the house.

“You see, he is going to cut them up,” remarked Pável Petróvich. “He does not believe in principles, but in frogs.”

Arkádi looked with pity at his uncle, and Nikoláy Petróvich stealthily shrugged his shoulders. Pável Petróvich felt himself that he had made an infelicitous remark, and began to talk about the estate and the new manager who had come to him a few days before to complain of Fomá’s having become useless on account of his reckless ways.

⸺Bazárov returned, seated himself at the table, and began hastily to drink his tea. Both brothers looked at him in silence, and Arkádi threw stealthy glances, now upon his father, now upon his uncle.

“Did you have a long tramp?” finally asked Nikoláy Petróvich.

“You have a small swamp near the aspen grove. I there scared up some five snipes. Arkádi, you ’ll have some shooting there.”

“Are you not a hunter?”

“No.”

“I understand your specialty is physics?” asked Pável Petróvich in his turn.

“Yes, physics; natural sciences in general.”

“They say the Teutons have of late made great progress in this field.”

“Yes, the Germans are in this our teachers,” Bazárov answered carelessly.

Pável Petróvich had used the word Teutons, instead of Germans, in irony, but no one took notice of it.

“Have you such a high opinion of the Germans?” spoke Pável Petróvich with affected politeness. He began to feel a secret irritation. Bazárov’s extreme plainness ruffled his aristocratic nature. That son of a surgeon not only was not abashed, but he answered abruptly and as if against his will, and in the sound of his voice there was something harsh, nay, impudent.

“Their learned men are a fine lot.”

“Yes, yes. Well, I suppose, you have not the same flattering conception of the Russian savants.”

“I guess you are right.”

“That is a very laudable self-abnegation,” retorted Pável Petróvich, straightening himself, and throwing his head back. “But how is it Arkádi Nikoláevich told a little while ago that you did not acknowledge any authorities? Do you not believe them?”

“Why should I acknowledge them? And what should I believe? If I am told a fact, I agree with it, that ’s all.”

“Do the Germans always tell facts?” spoke Pável Petróvich, and his face assumed a disinterested, distant expression, just as if he had retired to some cloudy height.

“Not all,” answered Bazárov with a slight yawn, evidently not wishing to continue the discussion.

Pável Petróvich looked at Arkádi, as if to tell him: “I must say, your friend is a polite chap.”

“As for me,” he spoke again with some effort, “I, sinful man, am not particularly fond of the Germans. Not to mention the Russian Germans: we all know what kind of birds they are. But I cannot stomach even the German Germans. Those of the former generations were not half so bad; they then had, well, a Schiller, or let us say, a Goethe⸺Brother thinks quite favourably of them. But now there is such a procession of chemists and materialists over there⸺”

“A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” Bazárov interrupted him.

“Indeed!” spoke Pável Petróvich, barely raising his eyebrows, as if falling asleep. “So you do not acknowledge art?”

“The art to make money, or no more hemorrhoids!” exclaimed Bazárov with a contemptuous smile.

“Yes, yes. How you please yourself to jest! So you deny all that? Very well. So you believe only in science?”

“I have already reported to you that I believe in nothing. What is science anyway, science in general? There are sciences, as there are trades and professions; but science in general does not exist at all!”

“Very well, sir. Well, and do you assume the same negative attitude in regard to all the other institutions, generally accepted in human existence?”

“What is this, an inquest?” asked Bazárov.

Pável Petróvich grew slightly pale. Nikoláy Petróvich thought it necessary to take part in the conversation.

“We will discuss this matter more thoroughly some other time, dear Evgéni Vasílich; we shall then get your view, and we shall tell you ours. I, for my part, am very glad to hear that you busy yourself with the natural sciences. I have heard that Liebig has made some remarkable discoveries in regard to the fertilisation of the fields. You could aid me in my agronomic work by giving me some useful advice.”

“I am at your service, Nikoláy Petróvich; but what business have we with Liebig? We must first learn the ABC, and then we may take to books; we have not yet put our eyes on A.”

“I should say you are a nihilist,” thought Nikoláy Petróvich. “Still, let me in case of necessity have recourse to you,” he added aloud. “But for the present, brother, I think it is time for us to go and have a talk with the steward.”

Pável Petróvich rose from his chair.

“Yes,” he said, without looking at anyone, “it is a misfortune to live five years in the country, away from great minds! You will just become a round fool. You are trying not to forget what you have learned, and, before you know it, it turns out that it is all nonsense, and you are told that clever people no longer busy themselves with such trifles, and that you, sir, are an old-fashioned night-cap. What is to be done? It seems the younger generation is really more clever than we are.”

Pável Petróvich slowly turned upon his heels and walked away leisurely. Nikoláy Petróvich went after him.

“Say, is he always that way?” Bazárov coolly asked Arkádi, when the door was closed behind the two brothers.

“Listen, Evgéni, you have treated him altogether too brusquely,” remarked Arkádi. “You have offended him.”

“I am not going to pamper these county aristocrats! It is with them nothing but egotism, manners of society lions, dandyism! Well, he ought to have continued his activities in St. Petersburg, if he is built that way⸺ However, God be with him! I have found a fairly rare specimen of a water beetle,—Dysticus marginatus, do you know it? I ’ll show it to you!”

⸺They began to talk about one of the landowners of the neighbourhood.

“A scoundrel, a snob of an aristocrat,” calmly remarked Bazárov who had met him in St. Petersburg.

“Permit me to ask you,” began Pável Petróvich, and his lips quivered, “according to your conception, the words ‘scoundrel’ and ‘aristocrat’ mean one and the same thing?”

“I said ‘snob of an aristocrat,’” remarked Bazárov, lazily sipping his tea.

“Just so. But I suppose you are of the same opinion about aristocrats, as you are about snobs. I regard it my duty to inform you that I do not share that opinion of yours. I dare say, I am known as a liberal man and one who loves progress, and it is for that very reason that I respect aristocrats, that is, real aristocrats. Remember, dear sir” (at these words Bazárov turned his eyes to Pável Petróvich), “remember, dear sir,” he repeated with acrimony, “the English aristocrats. They do not yield an iota from their privileges, and therefore they respect the rights of others. They demand the fulfilment of obligations towards them, and therefore they fulfil their own obligations. The aristocracy gave England its freedom, and the aristocracy supports it.”

“We have heard that old song before,” replied Bazárov. “But what do you wish to prove by it?”

“I wish to prove by that there thing, dear sir” (when Pável Petróvich got angry, he purposely said “that there” and “this here,” although he knew full well that grammar did not permit any such forms. In this oddity one might perceive a reminiscence of the traditions of the days of Alexander I. The somebodies of those days were in the habit of using “that there” and “that yer,” in the rare cases when they spoke their native language, as much as to say: “We are native Russes, and at the same time dignitaries, who have a right to disdain scholastic rules”), “I wish to prove by that there thing that without the feeling of one’s own dignity, without respect to oneself,—and in an aristocrat these feelings are developed,—there is no secure foundation of society—bien public—the social structure. Individuality, dear sir,—that is the main thing: human individuality must be as strong as a rock, for everything rests upon it. I know very well, that you please yourself to find my habits, my toilet, in fine, my cleanliness, ridiculous, but it all flows from my feeling of self-respect, from my feeling of duty, yes, sir, yes, sir—duty. I am living in the country, in the wilderness, but I do not let myself fall—I respect the man in me.”

“Permit me to say, Pável Petróvich,” spoke Bazárov, “you claim to respect yourself, and yet you sit with folded hands; what good is that to the bien public? It would be better, if you respected yourself less, and did more.”

Pável Petróvich grew pale. “That is an entirely different question. It is not my duty to explain to you now, why I am sitting with folded hands, as you please to express yourself. I only want to say that aristocratism is a principle, and in our days only immoral and brainless people can live without principles. I told Arkádi so on the next day after his arrival, and I repeat it to you. Am I not right, Nikoláy?”

Nikoláy Petróvich nodded his head.

“Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles,” Bazárov was saying in the meantime. “Just think how many foreign and useless words! A good Russian would not take them gratis.”

“Then what does he want, according to you? Listening to you, one might conclude that we are living beyond the pale of humanity, beyond its laws. Why, sir, the logic of history demands⸺”

“What do you want to do with that logic? We are getting along without it.”

“How so?”

“We just do. I hope you do not need any logic in order to put a piece of bread into your mouth, when you are hungry. What good to us are all these abstractions?”

Pável Petróvich waved his hands.

“After that I do not understand you. You insult the Russian nation. I can’t understand how one can fail to acknowledge principles and rules! By dint of what do you act?”

“I told you before, uncle, that we do not acknowledge any authorities,” interposed Arkádi.

“We act by dint of what we regard as useful,” spoke Bazárov. “At the present time the most useful thing is negation,—we negate.”

“Everything?”

“Everything!”

“What? Not only art, poetry⸺but⸺it is terrible to say it⸺”

“Everything,” repeated Bazárov with inexpressible calm.

Pável Petróvich stared at him. He had not expected that, while Arkádi even blushed with joy.

“But permit me to ask you,” again said Pável Petróvich, “you deny everything, or, to express myself more correctly, you destroy everything—but is it not necessary to build up again?”

“That is not our affair. First, the place has to be cleared.”

“The contemporary condition of the people demands it,” Arkádi added with dignity. “We must execute these demands; we have no right to devote ourselves to the satisfaction of our personal egotism.”

This last phrase evidently displeased Bazárov: it smacked of philosophy, that is, of Romanticism, for Bazárov called philosophy Romanticism; but he did not think it necessary to contradict his young disciple.

“No, no!” exclaimed Pável Petróvich in a sudden passion. “I do not wish to believe that you, gentlemen, properly understand the Russian nation, that you are the representatives of its needs, its aims! No, the Russian nation is not as you represent it to yourselves. It reveres tradition, it is patriarchal, it cannot live without faith⸺”

“I will not dispute that,” interrupted Bazárov; “I am even willing to admit that you are right in this.”

“And if I am right⸺”

“And yet it proves nothing.”

“That ’s it, it proves nothing,” repeated Arkádi with the confidence of an experienced chess player who, foreseeing the apparently dangerous move of his antagonist, does not become in the least uneasy.

“How does it not prove anything?” muttered Pável Petróvich in wonderment. “So you are going against your nation?”

“What of it, if I do? People imagine that when it thunders the prophet Elias is riding in a chariot over the heavens. Well? Shall I agree with them? Besides, they are Russians, and am I not myself a Russian?”

“No, you are not a Russian, after what you have just told me! I cannot acknowledge you as a Russian.”

“My grandfather was a ploughman,” replied Bazárov with supercilious pride. “Ask any of your peasants, in whom he will quicker recognise a countryman of his, in you or me? You do not even know how to talk with him.”

“But you speak with him and despise him at the same time.”

“Why not, if he deserves contempt! You find fault with my tendency, but who told you that it is accidental in me? that it is not provoked by the same national spirit that you are championing?”

“Well, of what good are the nihilists?”

“It is not for you to decide whether they are any good or not. Don’t you regard yourself useful?”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please no personalities!” exclaimed Nikoláy Petróvich, rising from his chair.

Pável Petróvich smiled and, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder, compelled him to sit down again.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will not forget myself, by dint of that very feeling of dignity that the gentleman, the doctor, makes so light of. Permit me,” he turned again towards Bazárov, “you probably think that your doctrine is something new. But you imagine that in vain. The materialism which you preach has been in vogue more than once, and it has always proved itself insufficient⸺”

“Again a foreign word!” interrupted Bazárov. He began to feel annoyed and his face assumed a coarse coppery colour. “First of all, we preach nothing; that is not our custom⸺”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I ’ll tell you what we do. In former days, not so long ago, we used to say that the officials take bribes, that we have no roads, no commerce, no regular justice.”

“Yes, yes, you are accusers, I think that is what you call it. I agree with many of your accusations, but⸺”

“Then we came to the conclusion that to prate, nothing but prate, about our sores is not worth the trouble, that it only leads to triteness and doctrinarianism; we discovered that our wise men, the so-called leaders and accusers, were good for nothing, that we were busying ourselves with nonsense, were talking of art, unconscious creative power, parliamentarism, of legalism, and the devil knows of what not, when we ought to have talked of the daily bread, when we were oppressed by most vulgar superstition, when all our commercial companies burst only because there was a dearth of honest men, when the very liberty with which the Government is concerned would hardly do us any good, because our peasants would as lief rob themselves, if only they could fill themselves with brandy in the tavern.”

“Ah,” Pável Petróvich interrupted him, “ah! You have convinced yourself of all that, and so you have decided not to do anything seriously?”

“And we decided not to undertake anything,” grimly repeated Bazárov. He suddenly felt irritated for having entered into a dispute with that gentleman.

“And only to scoff?”

“To scoff.”

“And that is called nihilism.”

“And that is called nihilism,” again repeated Bazárov, but this time with special rudeness.

Pável Petróvich slightly closed his eyes.

“Ah, that ’s the way!” he said with a strangely calm voice. “Nihilism is to help all misery, and you—you—are our deliverers and heroes. Yes. But why do you hold others in honour, say, those very accusers? Or do you not prate like the rest?”

“You may accuse us of anything else, but not of that,” said Bazárov through his teeth.

“Well? You act, don’t you? You are getting ready to act?”

Bazárov did not answer. Pável Petróvich shuddered, but he immediately controlled himself.

“Hm!—Act, break—” he continued. “But how are you going to break, not knowing for what purpose?”

“We break, because we are a force,” remarked Arkádi.

Pável Petróvich glanced at his nephew and smiled.

“Yes, force does not give any accounts of itself,” said Arkádi straightening himself out.

“Miserable man!” lamented Pável Petróvich. He was absolutely unable to hold himself any longer. “If you only thought what you are supporting in Russia by your despicable phrase? No, that would make an angel lose his patience! Force! A wild Calmuck, a Mongolian has force too, but of what good is it to us? We treasure civilisation, yes, sir, yes, sir, dear sir, we treasure its fruits. Don’t tell me that these fruits are worthless. The last latherer, un barbouilleur, a fiddler who gets five kopeks for an evening, are more useful than you, because they are the representatives of a civilisation, and not of a rude Mongolian force! You regard yourselves as leaders, but you ought to pass your days in a Calmuck tent! Force! Remember, gentlemen of force, that there are only four and a half of you, and there are millions of others who will not permit you to tread under foot their most sacred beliefs and who will crush you.”

“If they will crush us, then that is our destiny,” spoke Bazárov. “Only you are slightly off. We are not as few as you imagine.”

“What? You think in earnest you will be able to stand out against a whole nation?”

“You know, it was a kopek candle that caused the conflagration of Moscow,” replied Bazárov.

“Yes, yes. First it is an almost satanic pride, and then contemptuous scoffing. That ’s what the young generation is carried away with, that ’s what conquers the inexperienced hearts of boys! Just look at them: one of them is sitting by your side; he almost worships you,—look at him. (Arkádi turned away and frowned.) This plague has spread far and wide. I have been told that our artists won’t visit the Vatican in Rome, that they regard Raphael almost as a fool, because, don’t you see, he is an authority; but they themselves are impotent and barren to nausea; their fancy does not rise above a Girl at the Fountain, try as they may! And the girl is horribly painted at that. In your opinion they are a fine lot, are they not?”

“In my opinion,” retorted Bazárov, “Raphael is not worth a copper penny, and they are not better than he.”

“Bravo! Bravo! Listen, Arkádi! That ’s the way modern young men must express themselves! When I come to think of it, why should they not follow you! Formerly young men had to study; they did not like to pass for ignoramuses, and so they worked, even against their will. But all they have to say now is: “Everything in the world is bosh!” and that ’s all there is to it. The young people are happy. And really, formerly they were nothing but blockheads, but now they have suddenly turned nihilists.”

“There, your vaunted feeling of your personal dignity has played you false,” phlegmatically remarked Bazárov, while Arkádi flamed up and his eyes glistened. “Our discussion has gone too far⸺ It seems it would be better to cut it short altogether. I will then be ready to agree with you,” he added, rising, “when you will show me one single institution in our present existence, social or domestic, which does not call for a complete and merciless negation.”

“I will show you millions of such institutions,” exclaimed Pável Petróvich, “millions! For example, the village commune.”

A cold smile contorted Bazárov’s lips.

“When it comes to the commune,” he said, “you had better have a talk with your brother. He, it seems, has discovered in practice what kind of a thing the commune is, and communal responsibility, temperance, and similar fine things.”

“The family, if you please, the family, as it exists with our peasants!” cried Pável Petróvich.

“It would be better, I suppose, not to enter into the details of that affair. Listen, Pável Petróvich, give yourself two days’ time; you will hardly find anything before that time. Run over all our conditions of life, consider them all well, while, in the meantime, Arkádi and I will⸺”

“Make light of everything,” interrupted Pável Petróvich.

“No, cut up frogs. Come, Arkádi! Good-bye, gentlemen!”

Both friends went out.

[15] See page 98, line 28.

POEMS IN PROSE (SENILIA)

NATURE

I dreamt that I entered an enormous subterranean hall with high vaults. It was all filled with an even, subterranean light.

In the very centre of the hall sat a majestic woman in a flowing garment of a green colour. Bending her head on her hand, she seemed to be buried in deep meditation.

I saw at once that that woman was Nature herself, and, with a sudden chill, a reverential awe entered my soul.

I approached the woman who was sitting there, and making a respectful bow: “O our common mother!” I exclaimed. “What are you meditating on? Are you, perchance, pondering on the future destiny of the human race? Or, how it may reach the highest possible perfection and happiness?”

The woman slowly turned to me her dark, piercing eyes. Her lips moved, and there issued from them a ringing voice, like the clanking of iron.

“I am thinking how to add greater strength to the muscles of a flea’s legs, that it may more easily save itself from its enemies. The equilibrium between attack and defence has been impaired⸺ It must be re-established.”

“What?” I lisped an answer. “Is that what you are thinking about? But are we not, men, your favourite children?”

The woman barely frowned: “All creatures are my children,” she spoke, “and I take equal care of them, and equally exterminate them.”

“But goodness—reason—justice⸺” I muttered again.

“Those are human words,” was heard the woman’s voice. “I know neither good nor evil⸺ Reason is not my law, and what is justice? I have given you life, and I will take it from you and will give it to others, worms or men⸺it makes no difference to me⸺ You defend yourself in the meantime, and do not bother me!”

I wanted to retort—but the earth around me gave a dull groan and trembled, and I awoke.

Dmítri Vasílevich Grigoróvich. (1822-1900.)

Grigoróvich was the son of a landed proprietor, and was born in a village on the Vólga, in the Government of Simbírsk. His early childhood he passed at home; at ten years of age he entered a boarding school in Moscow, and later the School of Engineers, where he studied at the same time as his friend Dostoévski. Having become infatuated with art, he transferred himself to the Academy of Arts and there studied drawing for two years. He began writing in 1844, and attracted the attention of the public and of the critic Byelínski by his sketches from the life of the serfs, The Village and Antón the Miserable. These were followed by a large number of shorter stories and two novels, The Fishermen and The Emigrants; they mainly excel for their artistic landscape painting, in which they abound. His warm advocacy of emancipation and his sympathetic descriptions of peasant life have earned for him the name of the Russian Beecher-Stowe.

Two of his stories have been translated into English: Cruel City, after the Russian, with a sketch of the author, by E. de Pierson (Sunshine Series, No. 84), London and New York, 1891; New Year’s Eve (Railway and General Automatic Library), London, [1892].

FROM “THE FISHERMEN”

A gloomy, grey day. The vault of heaven looks as though lowered, as though pensively reposing over the silent earth. If it were not for the warmth of the air, the nascent odour of budding verdure, one might have thought spring had suddenly been changed into autumn. There are many such days in the beginning of spring. They resemble the fair, pensive face of a young girl. All Nature suddenly grows still, like a lively child in the open, who, having abandoned himself to noisy, boisterous merriment, and not trusting his strength, suddenly throws himself tired on the grass and sleeps a sweet sleep.

In such days you will not hear a sound. Everything living seems to hold its breath, to get ready for something, to collect its strength for a noisy celebration of the summer. The flocks are silent, as if intoxicated by the strong aroma of the unfolding plants, which, lacking the sunrays, is spreading over the ground; the animals are reclining on the succulent grass, and hang their heads, or lazily wander about. The birds dreamily slumber on the branches that are permeated by their fresh, young sap; the insects are hid under the tree-bark, or have crept into the narrow seams of the moss that, in an infinitely diminished form, resembles impassable fir forests; not a fly buzzes in the air; the air itself seems to be afraid to break the solemn quiet, and touches not a blade, nor even raises the light down that is left in the meadows by the young, newly hatched goslings.

Nothing can be more poetical than such days! A delicate, happily tuned ear can distinguish, midst this dead silence, a measured, harmonious singing. Your soul is filled with an inexpressibly pleasant sensation. But not ecstatic agitation nor pensive sorrow (in which there is a charm of their own) takes possession of your soul: no! your blood and brain are in perfect composure; you simply feel happy; your whole being involuntarily recognises the possibility of quiet, peaceful enjoyments, of a modest, intimate life with yourself,—a life which you have been, perchance, long seeking in vain; the capitals, with their din, splendour, and enticements, do not exist for you: they appear so small that you do not even notice them. In such moments your heart is light and free, as in the first years of happy youth; not one evil thought will enter your head. You are satisfied with yourself, satisfied with your feelings, satisfied with your loneliness, and you bless Providence for having given you a chance to live, breathe, and feel.

It was just such a day when Vanyúsha, early in the morning, bade his family farewell. The landscape, it seemed, had assumed the most gloomy and grey appearance in order to rouse in the heart of the lad as little regret as possible in parting with familiar places. The fisherman’s family was standing in the yard: it was not numerous now, for Peter, Vasíli, and their wives and children had left the day before. There were there in all: Glyeb, his old wife, his son, the adopted child, and Grandfather Kondráti, who had come to see Vanyúsha off.

We find them during the most fateful and oppressive minute. The gate that leads out to the small square is already open; grandfather Kondráti has already taken back to the cabin the old ikon with which the parents have blessed their son. It is only left to say: “Come!” but old Glyeb is still hesitating. Gríshka has meanwhile told the companion of his youth good-bye; he is standing some distance away; his head is bent, his brows are knit, but his dark eyes, which are stealthily directed now to one side of the yard, now to another, clearly indicate that his sorrowful look is assumed only by necessity, to fit the occasion, and that he does not share the family’s grief.

None of those present this minute think of the adopted child. Aunt Ánna tightly clasps the neck of her beloved child with both her hands; the face of the old woman is still more tightly pressed against his breast; in a weak, dying voice she pronounces a disconnected parting prayer. Before them Glyeb is standing; his eyes are dry; he utters no complaints, no accusations, no bitter words of blame, but his hands folded over his breast, the drooping head, the furrows, which one cannot count upon his high brow, sufficiently indicate that the soul of the old fisherman is passing through a heavy trial. In vain Grandfather Kondráti, whom Glyeb always respected and obeyed, tries to console him, calling to his aid soul-saving words: the words of the old man are powerless now; they act upon Glyeb as upon a half-witted person: he hears every word of the grandfather, distinguishes every sound of his voice, but does not retain them in his memory. Glyeb is still unable to collect his thoughts: in the last three days the old man had passed through so much sorrow! The acts of his children have effaced from his memory the whole sixty years of a quiet, undisturbed, one may even say, happy life. But however much one may think, or feel grieved, nothing is gained by it, and time passes. “Come!” says Glyeb.

Grandfather Kondráti warily unclasps the hands of the old woman who thoughtlessly and speechlessly is hanging about the neck of her son; Aunt Ánna has wept her last strength away with her last tears. Ványa transfers her from his hands to the hands of Kondráti, hastily throws a bundle with his possession over his shoulder, makes the sign of the cross and, without raising his tearful eyes, hurries after his father who meanwhile has bent around the corner of the cabin. A despairing, heartrending cry, uttered behind him, chains the young lad to the spot.

“Ványa!—Ványa!”

“Cease, mother⸺do not grieve so⸺God is merciful!” says he, embracing the old woman who is grasping him in her hands like an insensate person.

But the consolations are in vain! Grandfather Kondráti and Ványa continue their path, while supporting Ánna. Now, they have already passed the garden, and now, they have crossed the brook. This brook, witness of youthful years, serves as the last threshold of the paternal house. Now, they have already reached the footpath, and they begin to ascend the hill. Memories are crowding in the soul of the young lad; with every advancing step there is a new parting.

However much the young fisherman strengthened himself with the thought that by his action he had saved his old father from injustice and had freed him from a heavy sin, however strong his faith in Providence was, yet he could not restrain his tears that of their own accord coursed down his youthful cheeks. It is, indeed, hard for the first time to part from your paternal home, and you cannot control your heart: it will not listen to reason, and is not deceived by fancies and hopes.

It is even more difficult for a common man to leave his native roof, than for any other person. No matter how wretched the cabin of the poor man may be, he is attached to it with all his feelings, with all his soul. The attachment of the educated man for material objects to which he has become accustomed, his attachment for his house and his soil, is quite insignificant in comparison with the attachment of the common man for the same objects with which he is familiar. This is easily explained: the mental and spiritual life which more or less absolves man from a coarse materialism is very limited in the common man. Living almost exclusively a material, carnal life, he, so to say, grows one with every object which surrounds him, with every log of his cabin; he was born there, he has passed his life there without interruption; not one thought has drawn him away beyond the confines of his native hut: on the contrary, all his thoughts have been directed to the one object of never leaving his home. The Russian peasant is pre-eminently a lover of his family, and domestic in his habits.

I had once occasion to see a ploughman’s family who were of their own free will emigrating to the fertile southern Governments, bidding farewell to their field,—miserable two desyatínas of clayey, almost worthless, soil. I have in all my life not seen such a terrible parting, such terrible tears! A mother, who parts from her beloved children, does not embrace them so passionately and does not kiss them so warmly, as these peasants kissed the earth that had supported them so many years. It seemed as though they left themselves in these two plots. Pieces of earth were even sewed into the amulets of the suckling babes!

The common man bows to habit: when he parts from his house, he parts from everything that binds him to the soil. He has lived in his exclusive, limited sphere; there are no interests for him outside of his home; he looks with suspicion at the world which transcends the limits of his customary, narrow conceptions. When he leaves his home, he does not strengthen himself, as we do, with dreams and hopes: he positively knows only this,—that he is leaving his home, that he is leaving everything which binds him to life, and therefore he abandons himself with all his feelings, with all his soul to grief.

Having reached the summit of the high ridge of the river bank, from which the deceased Uncle Akím had once timidly descended with Gríshka to the cabin of the old fisherman, Glyeb stopped. It was not the rapid ascent that had tired him: he would rather have walked more rapidly, and would have gone higher up. A strange weight rested upon the old man’s heart; he wished to walk a hundred versts without stopping, if the exhaustion would only allay the persistent pining that was gnawing at his heart. When Ványa and Grandfather Kondráti, who were still supporting Ánna, had ascended the hill, Glyeb went up to them:

“Why did you bring her here?” said he impatiently: “it will not make things easier. Well, old woman, that will do—say farewell, and the Lord be with you! Too much parting,—too much weeping! Well, good-bye!”

“Good-bye, mother!” muttered the son, and for the first time he could not control himself, and for the first time burst out into tears: he wept bitterly, like a small boy.

The old woman shuddered at this sight: her oblivion disappeared, her strength was resurrected. Drawing aside with her lean hands the kerchief which covered her head, she cast a senseless glance on all present, as if not yet quite conscious of what was happening, and then she suddenly, with the rapidity of lightning, threw herself on her son, and placed her hands over his head. The cry that accompanied that motion cut as with a knife the hearts of the two old men. People of Grandfather Kondráti’s age do not weep: all the tears have been wept, and their source itself has long ago dried up. But Glyeb had yet seen little grief; and so his strength left him. However much Glyeb fortified himself, however much he turned his head aside, and knit his brows, large teardrops of their own will burst from his eyes and silvered still more his grey beard. He waved his hand and walked ahead more rapidly. Ványa tore himself away from the embrace of his mother and ran after him, all the time making the sign of the cross.

“Ványa! Ványa!”

The old woman started after her son; but her legs gave way. She fell upon her knees and extended her hands before her.

Ványa meanwhile continued to follow his father. Only once did he turn back: the cabins, the small squares, the brook, the boats, the nets,—all had disappeared! At the edge of the hill, which hid the indentation of the shore that served him for his native place, he saw only Kondráti’s white head leaning over something prostrate in the road. Beyond them, in the limitless depth, he saw the distant meadows. From this height Grandfather Kondráti’s little lake appeared as in the palm of the hand: a white moving dot glinted through the verdure that surrounded the lake in a dark strip. Ványa almost stopped, but immediately turned his head aside, made the sign of the cross, and walked on more rapidly. When he found himself within a few steps from his father, he did not hold out, and turned back once more; but this time the eyes of the young lad no longer met familiar places: everything had disappeared behind the hill, the dark ridge of which rested against the gloomy, grey, cheerless sky.

Farewell, mother! Farewell home, childhood, memories,—farewell everything!

Yákov Petróvich Polónski. (1820-1898).

Polónski was born in the city of Ryazán, where he graduated from the Gymnasium. After that he studied law at the Moscow University, and in 1844 he published his first collection of poems, under the title of Gamuts. Then began for him years of restless wanderings in Russia and abroad, in his attempt to earn his daily bread. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, in 1859, he became an editor of a periodical, and soon after he was made a member in the Board of Foreign Censorship. His genius has been characterised by Turgénev as follows: “His talent represents a special, quite individual mixture of simple-hearted grace, a free picturesqueness of language, upon which still rests a reflection of Púshkin’s elegance, and a certain amiable, though frequently awkward, honesty and truthfulness of impressions. At times he, almost unconsciously to himself, surprises one with the sharpness of his poetic vision.” Many of his lyrics belong to the most popular of songs in Russia, and have been set to music. Of his longer poems, the fantastic tale Musician Grasshopper enjoys the greatest popularity.

But little of Polónski has been translated. In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics are given The Birds, Night in the Crimea, The Sun and the Moon, The Guardian Angel; in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian,—On Skobelev (reprinted in the Library of the World’s Best Literature); in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 21, by H. Havelock, Love scared thee not, and To the fond heart that passionately loveth; in Free Russia, vol. xii, No. 11, by Charlotte Sidgwick, A Vision.

THE BIRDS

The smell of fields pervades the air,

And in the peaceful sky

Are heard the lays of tuneful birds,

Resounding far and high.

Each has its mate, with whom it spends

The hours of day and night;

In unmown fields, and growing grass,

Their homes are their delight.

Up in the skies they pour their notes,

Fired with enraptured song;

But, still, to earth, though not for bread,

The free birds all belong.

While thus I listen to their voice,

Vexation stirs my mind;

Their happy lot with envy fills

The hearts of all mankind.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

NIGHT IN THE CRIMEA

Bear’st thou in mind the moon’s glimmering light,

On rocks the waves dashing with sullen roar,

The rustling trees with sleepy leaves adight,

The chirruping crickets in the fields anight,

Close by the garden, on the sea-girt shore?

In twilight soft, beneath the garden’s shade,

We wandered; scent of laurel filled the air;

We saw a grotto in the vineyard made,

And water falling, as we careless strayed,

Which sounded sweetly in the basin there.

Dost thou recall the freshness of the hour,

The smell of roses, and the murmuring brooks?

All Nature seemed entranced with magic power,

And at each other, in the perfumed bower

Sitting, gazed we with absorbing looks.

The music flowing from all Nature’s smiles,

The melody working in the awakened soul,

This have I heard mid all the cozening wiles

Of life,—in direst storms,—and it beguiles

My aching heart, and fills my spirit whole.

I lent unto the chords attentive ear,

While my mind warmèd to the beauteous sound,

Which touched my senses with triumphant cheer;

I listened till it drew me ever near,

And all my soul with joyous rapture bound.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Love scared thee not, for early thy heart ripened;

His was thy trust, and now thou mourn’st alone.

O hapless, hopeless prey of lies and passion,

Burst thou their net, and fear not any blame!

The blame of men, their feigned reprobation,

Heed not, nor weep, but clear thy clouded eyes.

Not I thy judge, thy headsman, though I know it

That with a laugh malice thy doom has signed.

Has not each one of us been passion’s plaything?

Will nought but death assuage thine enemies’ scorn?

Will e’en thy friends not cease thy soul to torture?

Feed not the fire, and malice self must die.

And all that in thee was of pure, of holy,

Of dear, shall sacred be to those that love thee,

And rich as ever shall thy generous heart be,

And thou shalt love as erst and, loving, smile.

—Transl. by H. Havelock, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 21.

FROM “MUSICIAN GRASSHOPPER”

Not the blustering cricket chirping at the stove I sing: my hero is a small grasshopper. He was of small size, but oblong in shape, and wore over his back a greenish frock; he was thin-legged, lank, and broad of brow, and he was a real genius, had a special gift: he was famed as a musician among all the insects, and he often invited his friends to hear his concerts. He lived under the luxuriant grass in the open field, and drowned the air with the eternal piping of his orchestra. The frivolous tribe of hoppers has forgotten that at that time he was the representative of good taste and music.

Everything which the rustic dweller nowadays hears outside the window, as he lies upon his bed, or as he walks out on the balcony in his morning gown,—this crackling piping, this discordant din that is over everything,—so dry and yet so tender,—if in this gloomy concert there is at all any glowing voluptuousness and rapture,—believe me,—those are the bygone, eternal creations, or imitations, of my hero.

Poor little grasshopper, your genius is forgotten! But you have passed your life not without adventures. I know you did not in vain pass for an idealist: you used to sit down in the silvery light of the moon, under the canopy of night, upon a grassblade broken by the wind. Though the bending ears are not lightly broken, yet the naughty wind crushes many of them in the wavy meadow. You used to sit down, and with all your might you scraped upon your fiddle, in order to glorify night. And the empty-headed squeakers, the villainous mosquitoes, the trumpeters of the steppe, teased you, and ladybirds fell in love with you, and envy roiled many a little head with the same musical inclination and with the same eagerness, but not with the same ability. And the gnat threatened to kill, by means of science, the sounds which you produced, and the weighty June-bug repeatedly assured all that it was pleasant to moisten the ears at your concert, for otherwise the ears would dry up, like the grass, from the terrible drouth.

In your private life you have frequently been put in an awkward position by the good little ladybirds, flies, and little bugs: you listened to their confessions, and timidly avoided secret meetings with them. Nothing, however, disturbed your calm: no sting appeared injurious to your talent: you were unconquerable in the musical world.

Little linden trees,—that was something in the nature of a park; in the centre—a pond, and at the entrance—a bower of branches, unquestionably a marvel of perfection; it was so spacious that—just think of it—two hundred insects could enter it in a row. Hang me if I am telling an untruth! The architect of it—I will not conceal it—was Nature herself; only I do not know who paid her for the work; however, we are not concerned here about Nature. Lest the journalists should peck us to death, I will confess that it was hardly possible to describe the staircase under the yellow carpet of moss, which was worn through in spots; nor the gloomy antechamber, where the lackeys could remain from early morning without their boots, but not without their liveries; nor the parlour, where some mould, like stalactites, stuck to the cornices and was wound about with verdure. An acquaintance of mine, a Russian architect, saw in this parlour a bit of Etruscan art, and—I remember it well—he boasted, without blushing, that the idea had struck him in that parlour tastefully to adorn lordly rooms by covering the wall-paper with white mould.

However, the house of the sylphid, to be sternly critical about the style, resembled somewhat a hole in a tree. The grasshopper was so charmed, or his heart was so electrified, that he trembled and wasted away as he silently waited for the sylphid, while standing at the window and looking at the sights. The sylphid was flitting about with someone in the garden, and having a chat with pleasant guests. These guests were worms of various appellations, and they lay in the grass in the form of hooks. A black-skinned little bedbug, doubtless the porter’s son, or the nurse’s grand-child—a godchild of the gentlefolk—announced to the sylphid that a certain lank gentleman was waiting for her in the drawing-room.

My hero was called in. His bow was returned with a smile, and he heard the muttering: “Very, very happy!” The ladies examined his whole figure, and hardly could withhold their laughter: they only looked askance at the gentlemen. But the worms did not stir, for someone had so dreadfully narrowed down their brains that they need only look at the decoration on the ribbon or around the neck, in order not to pay any attention to the rest, and remain in haughty calm.

The artist’s calling familiarises the soul with all kinds of meetings; but my hero was not accustomed to the manners of the charming insects of the higher order. Living at a distance from the garden, poor, sickly, and pale, he wore from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet the imprint of the field upon him. There clouds alone raise their voice, and the harvest waves its ears, and the grain waits for the scythe.

I know, O grasshopper, how well you were received by the butterfly. You acted proudly, as if you had spent all your life in higher society, though from early childhood you had never travelled except in your own carriage. But tell me, what became of you on that evening, and what inexpressible feeling compressed your soul, and what thoughts ardently possessed your genial brow, as you departed from the park and took your fieldward way over the tufts? Will you say, or—shall we put down periods?

Departing day wept behind the mountain, and, shedding tears, cast a warm glow upon the edge of the meadow, from behind the dark grove. Night came in the track of day, and mingling lights were reflected and, quivering, wandered over her cheeks. Softly came out the lights, the heralds of the moon, lighting the tapers before the throne of God. Far and wide the sea of the tremulous harvest grew dark; the melancholy birch embraced the linden tree; the grove grew silent; only the oak whispered, and the woodpecker somewhere tapped his strong beak, and somewhere a rivulet lisped sadly,—only fateful passions were not asleep, and only the irrepressible world of insects vociferated without cessation in the sleepless silence. The flies hummed, the mosquitoes trumpeted; those whom the grasshopper led in the chorus merrily scraped their fiddles, evidently knowing their music even without candles. In front of the orchestra, he scraped his fiddle loudest of all, in honour of his queen. It was the marriage of the butterfly’s cousin, and the bridegroom was a fine fellow with a long mouthpiece; of course, he was not mentally quick, but he came from a family of select worms. According to the bride’s words, he was intolerable only because he indiscriminately compared the odour of old pines with the vernal fragrance of violets, and because he respected the brier and was afraid of jackdaws.

But what do we care for this nonsense? The ball was magnificent. The choirs bubbled over with sounds. Dozens of Spanish flies in golden liveries burnt incense in murky avenues. Glowworms, flaming up like fire-pots and rockets, gleamed up and down all the paths. The guests swarmed everywhere. The butterflies flitted in the moonshine in their ball dresses; darning-needles flashed through the air, holding on to darning-needles; the variegated whirl of the waltz spun around with a rustling sound; bugs circled around the serving table; small beetles crawled about, and the weighty persons of fashionable society, the ladybugs, were gathered together to show their newest dresses. Two beetles with big bellies on short legs silently approached two green flies. An ant, laced in a waistcoat of the latest fashion, solemnly and carelessly bent his knees, while dancing with a yellow ladybird. The lively sylphid flapped her little wings: her eyes, her nose, her little feet, the pattern of her dress,—everything in her involuntarily attracted attention.

My artistic grasshopper’s soul was aflame; he did not turn his eyes away from her and be played like a demon. At her own request he, his heart being unchangeable, composed this inspired dance, by whose music hop even to-day the myriads of insects on any flower-bed of your garden, if, O reader, the Creator has at all given you a garden, or, at least, a garden plot.

However, the ball of the insects did not pass without a scandal: they say, there was an evil spider in the park who, having drawn his threads from twig to twig, made such a devilishly clever and artistic, invisible net, that, maybe, he had a nice little snack in secret. They say also that a ladybird fell down and that from fright her corset gave way. The artist himself noticed a little spider—he looked so innocent—throwing something like a hook over the sylphid’s wing, and trying to draw her to him, in order to find somewhere in the charming garden a place where he could pass with her at least ten minutes in the cool shade, in silence, in comfort, away from the bustle. But the jealous artist understood his cunning, so he leaped up and tore the fateful threads.

The spider swelled with anger; and a mosquito buzzed to the artist: “See, how you have soiled yourself, as if you had been in an improper place.”

The grasshopper blushed, seeing the cobweb sticking to his sleeve. “What a beast!” he grumbled, and he wiped it off. The butterfly said not a word, and only chose another partner for the dance: the winged gentleman was her neighbour’s silly brother.

“Is it true,” he asked, “there is a rumour in the meadow, that you are dead in love with the maestro? They say that the grasshopper wants to marry you, and that he is suing for your hand?”

“Don’t say that!” said the sylphid. “My husband—a grasshopper! What an insult! Who has spread this gossip? Or have the flies concocted this stupid thing?”

“No, not the flies at all! Someone from the orchestra said that he heard it from the maestro.”

The fay controlled herself and did not show her anger and, flapping her wings, cast a cold glance upon the musician, and when all, to honour his talents, cried: “Bravo! Fora, fora!” she screwed up her face or smiled, with downcast eyes.

Aleksyéy Feofiláktovich Písemski. (1820-1881.)

Písemski was the son of poor gentlefolk in the Government of Kostromá, where his father was an army officer. At fourteen years of age he entered the Gymnasium, and there developed a taste for the theatre and for writing; after graduation he studied mathematics at the Moscow University, but he devoted much of his time to acting in amateur theatricals and to public readings, becoming famous as a reader of Gógol. He began his literary career in 1847 and produced a large number of novels and dramas. In all these he evolved a cynical pessimism of the extremest kind, and unmercifully and without reserve laid bare the moral dirt and corruption that surrounded him. His pictures from the life of the common people, as found in The Petersburgian, The Faun, Bitter Fate, and A Thousand Souls, are remarkably realistic, though harrowing in their nakedness. Having incurred the enmity of the liberal writers of the sixties, who suspected him of retrograde tendencies, he, in 1863, wrote his novel, Troubled Waters, which roused a storm of indignation in the liberal camp. By depicting only the underside, with all its nastiness, of the movement of the sixties, he did great harm to progress in Russia. After that greatest of his works, his genius began to decline, and he died, amidst much mental and moral suffering, neglected and despised by the literary coteries.

THE OLD PROPRIETRESS

The cabin which I entered was large and neat, the woodwork was planed, the stove white, the partition made of boards, the bench and shelves washed clean. In the front corner, under the ikons, stood a table, behind which sat an old man with a shaven beard, with two grey tufts of hair on his temples, with a clever expression on his face and, evidently, blind. He was dressed in a blue cloth coat of ancient cut, underneath which could be seen a laced shirt front and a striped cashmere vest, no doubt an ancient fashion, too. All that old costume of his was clean and, it seemed, preserved in spite of time. By his side sat a neat and trim-looking old woman, in a threadbare old hood and a chintz capote. At first glance I thought they were poor gentlefolk. Upon my entering, the old woman immediately rose and said something to the old man: he raised himself, and both bowed to me.

“Please, be seated, I shall find a place,” said I.

“Never mind, sir,” said the old woman with an affected voice, brushing aside her scanty possessions in a small bag.

“Be seated, please,” I repeated.

The old man heeded my words and, feeling the bench with the cautiousness of a blind person, seated himself, and, bending over his staff, fixed his dim eyes upon me. The old woman did not sit down but continued standing in a respectful attitude. I guessed they were not gentlefolk.

“Whither are you travelling, friends?” asked I.

“To the capital of the Government, dear sir,” answered the old man in a sad voice.

“The grandparents are seeing this lad off,—they are his grandparents,” hastened to add the hostess, who was placing a samovár on the table.

“The grandparents of this fellow?” said I.

“Yes, sir,” answered the old man with a deep sigh, and hung his grey head.

“What rank are you?”

“Burghers, your honour.”

“Burghers by birth?”

“By no means, sir; we were formerly manorial servants.”

“Not in this place ought a grandson of Yákov Ivánovich be,” interrupted the hostess: “I will say it in the presence of this old man,” she continued, “he was in his day a great gentleman, and full of mettle. Whenever he stopped off here, I had to bestir myself: it would not have done to offer him stale food or a dirty samovár.”

The old man smiled a bitter smile.

“We did not think, madam, that a child of our own could ever act thus,” said the old woman in her affected and somewhat lackadaisical voice.

“What ’s to be done, mother? What ’s to be done?” replied the hostess, also in a whining voice.

“He was left after my daughter,” proceeded the old woman. “He was our precious diamond; we thought he would be the consolation and joy in our loneliness and old age. We had him educated like a child of gentlefolk: we placed him in Moscow with what we thought to be nice merchant people.”

“What ’s to be done, what ’s to be done, mother!” again fell in the hostess.

“Well, did he dissipate?” asked I.

“God knows, sir, whether it was the merchant people did not treat him right, or he did not watch himself,” answered the old woman.

The old man smiled bitterly and interrupted his wife:

“He had not taken care of himself since his childhood, for he was born and brought up a spoilt child. Other clerks in his business send money home while they are still boys, but our lad kept on writing home for some: we sent him money, until we were ruined. Meanwhile we heard that he was getting into things that might bring him into jail. We wrote him to come home, and he turned up only after two years: he was barefoot and naked. We clothed him, hoping that he would mend under our eyes, but, instead, he began the very first week to take everything from the house to the inn.” With every new word there was heard more severity in his voice, and tears stood in the eyes of the old woman.

“Who were your masters?” asked I, in order to interrupt the conversation, which evidently gave them pain.

“Our mistress was Madam Court-intendant Pasmúrov,” reverently spoke the old man.

“Madam Court-intendant Pasmúrov,” repeated I, remembering that my mother used to tell about a Madam Court-intendant Pasmúrov, as in her day a great lady.

“Your mistress was quite a prominent and well-known woman in these parts?” said I.

At this question the face of the old man became quite serene.

“Our lady,” he began, speaking slowly and with emphasis, “was probably the first person in Russia. She was a woman by sex, but not one man could have stood out against her. As she said, so it was done. She was a woman of immense brains.”

“They say she lived well, in a lordly manner,” said I.

“Royally, or as would become the wife of a field-marshal. She did not visit her fellow landed proprietors the year round. There were forty rooms in the manor, and yet they were crowded on holidays. They would come down like the locusts with their nurses and their children,—everybody was welcome,” concluded the old man in a boastful tone.

I saw that I had before me one of those old servants of former lords, who had grown up and become old, on the one hand, in what was then regarded as modern fashions, and on the other, under the cane.

“You, no doubt, were a steward?” asked I.

“I was, sir,” answered he, compressing his eyes, as if to collect his thoughts, “I was, as we used to call it in those days, chief servant of the manor: for one thing, I had some twenty men and the musicians under my command, but especially the serving at the table. Our lady of blessed memory did not like things to be done half way: every day there was to be a parade! Another thing: her eyesight was weak, so I had to write letters at her dictation, and I had to attend courts in her behalf; I was well instructed and, though I did not know the law as I ought to, I knew how to get along with the officials. Up to the fiftieth year of my life, sir, I never wore anything but silk stockings and full dress of fine English cloth. God grant her the kingdom of heaven,—I enjoyed the favour of my lady.”

“Nowadays there are no such masters,” said I.

“By no means, sir, and there cannot be,—I have not the honour of knowing who you may be, for, being blind, I cannot see. There are no such masters now,” answered the old man, as if restraining himself from being open to me.

“I am a landed proprietor in this neighbourhood, and I should like to ask you about those masters of olden times.”

The old man sighed.

“I am seeing my ninety-seventh year in this world, sir, and I see a great change in everything: those old masters, I must say so, are in comparison with those of to-day like eagles before sparrows,” spoke he, significantly shaking his head.

“How so?” asked I.

The old man moved his hands in thoughts.

“The first thing,” he began, “they have somehow squandered their properties, and they have not the same spirit. Gentlemen nowadays behave differently, but then all was simple; there was plenty of everything: grain, cattle, their own winepress,—they prepared liqueurs by the barrel, and such meads and sweet drinks! They made merry and enjoyed themselves; for example, they would bring together a lot of male and female jesters on some holiday, and they would urge them on against each other: and they fought and amused the gentlefolk; but nowadays they keep little company with each other, and find more pleasure in books.”

Here the old man stopped, but he soon began anew with animation:

“There are not many gentlemen who now stay on their estates, unless they be old or sick, but all serve in some capacity; there are no longer great personages. Let us take, for instance, our lady, the Court-intendant,” he continued, almost with emotion, “how she was honoured in the Government! A new lieutenant, or, as you call him now, a new governor, is appointed: he is still in St. Petersburg, but she is already writing to her friends, the ministers and senators, that, inasmuch as a new governor is coming to us, ‘you tell him to know me, and I will know him.’ And the moment she receives the news that he has arrived, she immediately sends for me. I make my appearance, and bow. ‘Listen,’ says she, ‘Yákov Ivánov!’—she always spoke a little through her nose: ‘Listen! A new governor has arrived, so take the best tróyka,[16] drive to Kostromá, go to such and such a jeweller and purchase a silver basin; search out wherever you please the very best of sterlets, or, still better, a live sturgeon; go in my name to the governor, have yourself announced, and say this and that about your mistress, the Court-intendant, and that, on account of ill-health, she cannot come herself, so she congratulates him by proxy upon his arrival and, as a resident, sends him, as a greeting and instead of the bread and salt, fish in the basin.’ He receives it, I am given a fine treat, and he sends a letter to our mistress.”

“So the amity began,” remarked I, in imitation of the old man’s voice.

“That ’s it, amity, your word is correct!” he fell in: “because, when now his Excellency, the Chief of the Government, deigned to travel on inspections, he would visit us, and those were magnificent assemblies. From what I have seen and heard, governors nowadays travel with great pomp, and demand great receptions and respect, and there is a great fear, at least upon the small officials, but from what I know of the past, the governors of to-day are nothing in comparison with them.”

“How was it then?” asked I.

“Formerly, sir, the governor travelled over the Government like a king of the earth: what a lot of officials surrounded his person, and what a lot of gentlefolk joined him everywhere on his journey! There was one,—I dare not mention his name,—who was in the habit of travelling over the Government with his wife, and she,—pardon me for saying so,—on account of her feminine weakness, had a great love for dogs. There was a special carriage for these dogs; and a special officer had charge of them. He by accident lost one little dog; her Excellency the governor’s wife, in spite of her exalted position, boxed his ears in sight of all people, and he was discharged,—that ’s the kind of times that were then!”

“Those were good, simple times,” remarked I.

“It was simple, sir,” concluded Yákov Ivánov; then, having thought a moment, he continued: “It would happen, sir, that all that company stayed with us for three or four days, or a whole week, and if the governor chanced to praise some thing in our house, say a clock, a picture, a silver platter, I had a standing order to take that thing in the evening to his sleeping-room and to report that my lady was very happy that such and such a thing had pleased him, and that she begged him to accept it.”

“Did the old lady do it all from mere bravado?” asked I.

“Bravado there was,” answered Yákov Ivánov. “Of course, she had great vanity, but more than that, she drew great advantages from it. For instance, an estate was for sale by order of the chancery,—and my lady, relying on her amicable relations to the chiefs of the Government, had only to cast her eyes upon it, and it was ours. If I, the plenipotentiary of Mrs. Pasmúrov, appeared at the sales in the chancery, not a purchaser turned up: they knew full well that the Chief of the Government did not desire it. I thanked where thanks were needed, and in a befitting manner, and it was all right whatever was paid for the estate. The estate of Byelogrívy, sir, came in those days into our hands for one hundred and twenty roubles, and when I went down to take possession of it, I collected two hundred roubles of delinquent dues from the peasants, so you may figure out what the estate cost us.”

Saying this, the peasant evidently did not consider that he had said too much, and when I cried out almost involuntarily:

“Old man! but that is a sin, that is stealing,” he was taken back, and answered in an humbled voice and with a sigh:

“A sin, sir; in my wretchedness and blindness I see and feel it all; in the commandments of the Lord it is said: thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, nor his village, nor his manservant,—but our old lady had a desire for it all, though it must be said that all people are not without weaknesses.” He strongly accentuated the last word.

“I should say, he and his mistress knew their advantage!” suddenly fell in Gráchikha, who was busy at the stove: “you are telling of the estate, but you had better tell how you delivered a gentleman into the army as a recruit from your estate,” continued she, stepping out behind the partition and standing near the ovenbed, while she leaned with one arm on a beam and with the other against her fat side.

Yákov Ivánov frowned a little.

“How a gentleman?” asked I.

“They did,” answered Gráchikha. “Their mistress, the General’s wife, did not like to get her peasants under the red hat, because she needed them all; so there happened to turn up a poor gentleman: he was not a nice fellow to behold; he must have been maimed when he was young,—his head was so large and flat, and there was little sense in it, for he knew neither count, nor days, nor anything else, and yet he knew enough to live according to his estate. So these our falcons came to him and began to persuade him: ‘You,’ they said, ‘are a gentleman, and yet you live as a labourer among the peasants. You had better serve in the army; but as you know neither how to read, nor write, you will not be ranked as a gentleman, so you had better serve first for our estate, and later, when you will declare yourself a gentleman, you will be properly advanced.’ Having no kin with whom to take counsel, he foolishly drank their wine and ate their cates, and unthinkingly consented. The young gentleman was brought to the recruiting office, and was declared a common peasant. They called out: ‘Shave him!’ dressed him in soldier’s clothes, and ‘March!’ with the rest of the recruits. Three or four years later he announced to his superior: ‘I,’ says he, ‘am a gentleman!’ ‘What kind of a gentleman are you?’ says he, and he chaffed him a little, but he kept on repeating: ‘I am a gentleman, that ’s all,’ and he went to the higher authorities, and told them the same. They looked into the documents, and saw that he was a peasant, so they reported that way. So our gentleman had to give it up, and he served thirty-five years for their estate. They knew how to fix documents! It may be that for their trickery they are now paying with their own blood,” said Gráchikha half-loud, pointing with her eyes to Yákov Ivánovich, who, in his turn, had listened to her recital with bent head, and without saying a word.

I tried to change the subject, so I asked the old man:

“In whose hands is the estate of your mistress now? I saw it: it is dilapidated and neglected, and the house is in ruins.”

“Our estate is now held in trust,” answered he, evidently satisfied with the change. “Well, the guardians are strangers, and they either do not care to look after things, or they steal into their own pockets. Not only do they neglect the estate, but they do not keep the peasants in order. Drunkards and wasters are living without fear, and those who are better off now are frequently squeezed: ‘We will put your son,’ they say, ‘into the army, or we will take him to our own estate.’”

“And now, peasant, pay your ransom. In former days you used to make a great deal of money,” fell in Gráchikha.

Yákov Ivánov paid no attention to her words, and continued:

“And then the estate has no protection against the officials. In former days, when my mistress was alive, our manorial servants were, to tell the truth, a riotous lot. Not a church holiday passed without their riots, when they would smash whole fairs, but the authorities, considering who they were and to what lady they belonged, begged them with words to stop; but nowadays, our rural captain of police, an insignificant man, commands and punishes in our villages, just out of interest to that accursed one himself, in whose favour he is so biassed that he regards that day lost in which he has not had some advantage from his office. I once met him in town, and says I to him: ‘Why and for what cause do you, sir, so abuse the estate of my mistress?’ ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘worthy old man, where are we, the rural police, to have our sway, if not in the estates that are in trust? These are severe times, we are not permitted to take bribes, but what we can pocket in any other way is all right!’ and he laughed, sir!”

[16] Three-horse carriage.

Afanási Afanásevich Shenshín (Fet). (1820-1892.)

Shenshín is one of the most melodious of the minor poets. He was born in the Government of Orél, and received his early education at home. Upon entering the Moscow University he was confronted with certain difficulties which compelled him to assume the name of Fet, after his mother by her first marriage, which he retained through life as his nom de plume. He then served in the army up to 1856, after which he retired to his Orél estate. He began writing in 1840, and at first distinguished himself as a translator from Goethe and Horace. His original poems, of which there is a large number, are all short and tunable lyrical outbursts, with rarely a title to know them by.

Two short poems, A Russian Scene and Tryst, are given in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, reprinted in the Library of the World’s Best Literature; and the four nameless ones, given below, by I. H. Harrison in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 19.

When deeply musing in the silence of the night,

I see her, gentle Queen, above me shining clearly;

When all the constellations pour out their rays of light,

And Argo seems to dream, while twinkling, then I dearly

Long for the coming hour, when I again shall see

Thee near me, with a pain dull, dumb, and ever growing,

As, frightened by each sound, I trembling wait for thee.

Impatience gnaws my breast. Thou comest, slowly, showing

By stealthy pace thy love, bashful, with timid glance

Around thee, and I rush to see those clear eyes tell

Their secret, and I read love’s answer in their dance,

And hear thee softly whisper, smiling, “I love thee well!”

I strive in vain to utter the words which fill my heart;

All speech, by passion broken, ends but in sound unmeaning,

And as I panting kiss thy hair, and feel a part

Of thy breath mine becoming, I listen, o’er thee leaning,

For what thou ’lt say, but no, I listen long in vain,—

Without a word thy kisses freely respond to mine—

O sweet one, may the happiness I feel be always thine,

And mine lie in sure hope that we two meet again!

Every feeling at night to me becomes clearer and deeper,

Shapes that are born of our fears terrible grow in the dark—

Sounds I at once understand, e’en when o’er my book I sit musing,

Motionless, lost in my thoughts, stung to the point of belief

In impossible things, while that which seems strangest seems easy—

In through the windows the moon shines, and the lamp burns on

Dimly beside the couch, and far in the distance a tolling

Breaks through the silence at times, filling the room with its swell;

Gladly I yield to the charm which ever hath set my heart beating,

Moistening mine eyes with night’s dew, tears of its infinite joy—

Always I hear night’s song, but often the melody changes:

Now ’t is the clang of brass, then ’t is of silver the ring.

Strange ’t is that ears hear well when the mind is still working or vacant;

Thought presses fast upon thought,—wave after wave in the sea,—

Night with a mystical strength embraces, and into one fuses,

Feelings and objects around, all that we see, think, and hear;

Thus on the two-headed poppies midnight sheddeth its moisture,

Giving them power of sleep—none can that mystery tell!

Stay here awhile,—’t is good!—Amid the shadows looming

Widely, with jagged edge, by moonlight from the pines—

Silence is over all! The sounds on hilltops booming

Have here no leave to bring of heart’s unrest the signs.

I will not go there where the stones, my faith deceiving,

Fall from beneath my heel, as the cliff’s edge I tread,

Sheer to the beach below; where the great waves are leaving,

And rushing on, the shore—the play of waters dread.

Thou, Silence, art alone before me, ’neath the quiet

Of the deep stars, thou empress of feeling and of thought—

But there the rough wave comes, and brings its splashing riot—

I will not go there where all is with tumult fraught.

Night, thou art so blest with odours sweet and strong,

Thou rousest idlest fancies in the mind!

All listen unto thee, and I cannot but long

To speak of what I in thy stillness find.

Thine azure vault spreads wide before my wondering eyes,

And all thy golden lights are burning bright;

It is as if thy stars were one great sun that tries

To cast its rays upon my garden’s site.

Even the moon, no longer swimming o’er tuft-crowned trees

With placid gaze, seems like thyself to burn,

Though all the while the brook glistens in plashing ease

Beneath the boughs which hide its every turn.

The feeblest noise resounds throughout thee like a blow;

Air whispers, like the strings of a guitar,

So tenderly to thee that all who hear him know

The call to love from lands both near and far.

All Nature seems aroused, in concert to cry out

In speech that will not let our fancies die;

We push the casement open to look on night without,

And trembling try to read the silvery sky.

—Transl. by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 19.

TRYST

A whisper, a gentle sigh,

Trills of the nightingale;

The silver flash of the brook,

Asleep in the sleepy vale.

The shadows and shine of night—

Shadows in endless race;

The sweet of a magical change

Over a sweet young face.

The blush of a rose in a mist,

An amber gleam on the lawn;

A rush of kisses and tears—

And oh, “the Dawn! the Dawn!”

—From John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Fédor Mikháylovich Dostoévski. (1821-1881.)

Dostoévski was the second of seven children of a poor army surgeon. He was brought up at home, which consisted of but two living rooms, by his father. At thirteen years of age he was sent to a boarding school, and later to the School of Engineering in St. Petersburg from which he graduated in 1843. He received a good appointment, but soon resigned from it in order to devote himself to literature. His first novel, Poor People, appeared in 1846, and was proclaimed as the work of a “new Gógol.” In 1849 he was arrested for a supposed participation in a conspiracy and was sentenced for four years to Siberian prisons, after which he was to serve as a soldier in a Siberian regiment. His nerves, which had never been strong, were completely shattered in his imprisonment, and he at times had fits of epilepsy. He was permitted to return to European Russia in 1859. Two years later he published with his brother a periodical, The Time, in which appeared simultaneously two of his great novels, The Humiliated and the Offended, and The Memoirs from the Dead House. His best novel, Crime and Punishment, came out a few years later. Only towards the end of his life did his works and his literary labours furnish him with a competency. Dostoévski’s writings lack the artistic perfection of his great contemporaries, and almost entirely neglect the description of Nature; but they are unsurpassed for the psychological analysis of human character, especially of the diseased mind. It has been pointed out by a medical authority that in his analysis of pathological cases he has anticipated later scientific discoveries.

The following works have been translated into English: Buried Alive; or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia, translated by Marie von Philo, London and New York, 1881; Prison Life in Siberia, translated by H. S. Edwards, London, 1887; Crime and Punishment, London, 1885, New York, 1886 and 1889 (4th ed. London, 1893); Injury and Insult, translated by F. Whishaw, London, 1886; Uncle’s Dream, and The Permanent Husband, London, 1888-9; Friend of the Family, and The Gambler, London, 1887-9; Poor Folk (Franklin Square Library, No. 594), New York, 1887, translated by L. Milman, Boston, and London, 1894; The Idiot, London, 1887-8; extracts from Poor People, and Crime and Punishment, translated by I. Hapgood, in the Library of the World’s Best Literature.

FROM “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT”

RASKÓLNIKOV’S CONFESSION

Raskólnikov again covered his face with his hands and dropped his head. He suddenly grew pale, rose from his chair, looked at Sónya, and, without uttering a word or being conscious of the act, seated himself on her bed.

To his sensations, that moment bore a dreadful resemblance to the one when he was standing back of the old woman and, having loosened the axe from the noose, was feeling that not another minute was to be lost.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Sónya, terrified.

He could not speak a word. It was not at all that way that he had intended to announce it to her, and he did not himself understand what was going on within him. She softly went up to him, sat down on the bed near him, and waited, without taking her eyes away from him. Her heart alternately beat strongly or stopped beating. It became unbearable. He turned his deathly pale face to her; his lips twitched impotently in a vain effort to say something. Terror passed through Sónya’s heart.

“What is the matter with you?” she repeated, moving a little away from him.

“Nothing, Sónya. Don’t get frightened. Nonsense! Really, when you come to think of it, it is nonsense,” he muttered like a delirious person who is not conscious of himself. “But why have I chosen you of all persons to torment?” he added suddenly, looking at her. “Really, why? I am continually asking myself this question, Sónya.”

It may be he had asked himself that question fifteen minutes before, but just then he had lost control of himself and hardly knew what he was about, feeling only an uninterrupted chill over his whole body.

“Oh, how you suffer!” she spoke with a painful expression, looking fixedly at him.

“It ’s all bosh!⸺ Say, Sónya” (he, for some reason, suddenly for a second or two smiled a pale and impotent smile), “do you remember what I had intended to tell you yesterday?”

Sónya was waiting restlessly.

“I told you, as I left you, that it was probably the last time I was bidding you good-bye, but that if I came back to-day, I would tell you—who killed Lizavéta.”

A tremor suddenly passed over her whole body.

“So, you see, I have come to tell you.”

“So you really did yesterday⸺” she whimpered with difficulty. “But how do you know?” she immediately asked, as if coming to.

Sónya began to breathe with difficulty. Her face grew paler and paler.

“I do know.”

She remained silent for a minute.

“Did they find him?” she asked him timidly.

“No, they did n’t.”

“How, then, do you know about it?” she again asked him barely audibly, after a minute’s silence.

He turned around to her and fixed his gaze at her. “Guess!” he muttered with the same convulsive and impotent smile as before.

Her whole body was shivering as if with cramps. “You—why do you—do you frighten me?” she spoke and smiled like a child.

“It must be, then, I am a great friend of his, since I know,” proceeded Raskólnikov, continuing uninterruptedly to look at her face, as though it was beyond him to take his eyes away from her. “He did not mean to—kill—that Lizavéta— He—killed her by accident— He wanted to kill the old woman—when she was alone—and he came— And then Lizavéta entered— He—then killed her too.”

Another terrible minute passed. They looked at each other.

“So you can’t guess?” he suddenly asked her, with a sensation as if he were falling down a belltower.

“N—no!” Sónya lisped almost inaudibly.

“Take a good look.”

When he said that, the former, familiar sensation suddenly iced his soul. He glanced at her, and immediately it appeared to him, he recognised Lizavéta in her face. He vividly remembered the expression of Lizavéta’s face as he approached her with the axe and she kept receding to the wall, with outstretched hand, and perfectly childish expression of fear in her face, precisely as little children do who, when they suddenly become frightened at something, immovably and restlessly look at the object of their fear, step back and begin to cry, while stretching out their little hands. Almost the same took place with Sónya. She looked at him for a while, just as powerless, with just the same expression of terror; then, suddenly, she stretched out her left hand, barely touched his breast with her fingers, and began to rise slowly from the bed, all the time removing farther away from him and ever more immovably fixing her eyes upon him.

Her terror was soon communicated to him, and he began to look at her, almost with the same childish smile.

“Have you guessed?” he whispered at last.

“Lord!” A terrible moan issued from her breast. She fell powerless on the bed, with her face on the pillows. But in a moment she was again on her feet, rapidly walked up to him, seized his two hands, and, pressing them hard with her thin fingers, as in a vise, again became motionless as if glued to the place, and stared at him. With this last, despairing glance she wanted to read some last hope in his face. But there was no hope; there was no suspicion left; it was all so! Even later, when she recalled that moment, she felt inexpressibly strange: how was it that she then saw at once that there was no doubt whatsoever left? For certainly she could not say that she had had a presentiment of that kind. But just then, when he had barely told her about it, it suddenly flashed upon her that she really had had some such presentiment.

“Stop, Sónya, stop! Do not torment me!” he begged her pitifully. He had had the intention of telling her about it in an entirely different manner, but it had turned out just that way.

She jumped up, as if beside herself, and, wringing her hands, stepped to the centre of the room; but she immediately returned and seated herself by his side, touching his shoulder with her own. Then she suddenly quivered, as if pierced by an arrow, cried out aloud, and, without knowing herself why, kneeled down before him.

“Oh, what have you done with yourself?” she cried in despair and, rising to her feet, embraced his neck and pressed it with all her might.

Raskólnikov reeled back and looked at her with a sad smile.

“You are a strange girl, Sónya! You embrace and kiss me, though I told you all about it. You are beside yourself.”

“No, there is not a more unfortunate man in the whole world than you are!” she called out, as if in a stupor, without hearing his remark, and suddenly bursting into tears, as if in hysterics.

A long unfamiliar feeling flooded his soul and at once softened it. He did not struggle against it: two tears rolled out of his eyes and hung upon his lashes.

“So you will not leave me, Sónya?” he spoke, looking almost hopefully at her.

“No, no! Never and nowhere!” Sónya cried out. “I will go with you, anywhere you want me to! O Lord! O miserable girl that I am. Oh, why, why did I not know you before? Why did you not come to see me before? O Lord!”

“You see, I have come now!”

“Now! Oh, what can now be done? Both of us, both of us!” she cried out as if oblivious and again embraced him. “I ’ll go to Siberia with you!”

Something touched him to the quick, and his former hateful and almost supercilious smile stood upon his lips.

“Sónya, as far as that is concerned, I may not yet be ready to go to Siberia,” he said.

Sónya cast a swift glance at him.

After her first impassioned and vexatious sympathy with the unfortunate man, the terrible idea of the murder struck her again forcibly. She heard the murderer in his changed tone of voice. She looked in wonderment at him. She knew nothing as yet, neither why, nor how, nor for what purpose. Now all these questions burst at once upon her consciousness. And again she could not believe: “He, he a murderer! But is that possible?”

“But what is that? Where am I?” she exclaimed in great perplexity as if still in a trance. “But how could you, you, take that step? How was it possible?”

“Why, to rob. Stop, Sónya!” he answered, as if exhausted and even as if annoyed.

Sónya stood for a moment, as if struck dumb, then she suddenly cried out:

“You had been hungry! You—to help your mother? Yes?”

“No, Sónya, no,” he muttered and turned away his drooping head, “I was not so hungry, I really wanted to help my mother, but—that is not quite correct either—do not torment me, Sónya!”

Sónya wrung her hands.

“But can all this be really true? Lord, is it true? Who would believe it?⸺ How can it be, you give away your last, and then you kill, in order to rob! Ah!” she suddenly cried out. “The money, the money that you had given Katerína Ivánovna—that money—Lord, can it be that money, too?”

“No, Sónya,” he speedily interrupted her, “not that money, calm yourself! That money mother sent me by a merchant, and I received it when I was sick, and that very day I gave it away. No, that was my money, my own money.”

Sónya listened to him perplexed and was invoking all her reasoning power in order to form a concept.

“That money—I really do not even know whether there was any money there,” he added softly and as if lost in meditation. “I did take off a purse, a full chamois purse, from her neck, but I did not open it to look into it; I suppose I did not have the time for it⸺ There were some other things, studs, chains, and I know not what,—I buried all that and the purse next morning under a rock in somebody’s yard, in the V. Prospect⸺ It ’s all there yet⸺”

Sónya was straining herself to hear.

“Then why did you do it? You said yourself, you did it to rob, and then you did not take anything?” she quickly asked him, trying to catch at a straw.

“I do not know—I have not yet made up my mind whether to take that money, or not,” he spoke, as if again lost in meditation, but suddenly regaining consciousness, his face was lit up by a swift, soft smile. “Oh, what a lot of bosh I have been just saying, eh?”

A thought flashed through Sónya’s mind: “Maybe he is insane!” but she immediately arrested her thought: “No, there is something else there.” She did not understand a thing, not a thing!

“Do you know, Sónya,” he suddenly said with a kind of inspiration, “do you know what I will tell you? If I had murdered them because I was hungry,” he continued, accentuating every word, and enigmatically, though sincerely, looking at her, “I would now be happy! You had better know that! What do you care, what do you care,” he cried out after a moment in a voice akin to despair, “what do you care for my confession, if I were to make it, that I have done wrong? What good could such a foolish victory of yours over me do you? O Sónya, did I now come to you for that?”

Sónya again wanted to say something, but she kept silent.

“That ’s why I wanted you last night to be with me, because you are the only one left to me.”

“Where did you want me to go to?” Sónya asked timidly.

“Not to steal, nor murder, don’t worry—not for that,” he smiled sarcastically. “I only now begin to understand what I called you for last night! Yesterday, I did not understand what I called you for. I called you for the same purpose for which I have come to see you now: not to leave me. You will not leave me, Sónya?”

She pressed his hand.

“Now, why did I tell her, why did I confess to her,” he cried out a minute later in despair, looking in endless torment at her. “You are waiting for an explanation from me, Sónya; you are sitting there and waiting, I see it; but what am I to tell you? You won’t understand a word of it; you will only suffer torment—for me! There, there you are weeping and again embracing me. Why are you embracing me? Is it because I did not bear it all myself, but came to put it on other shoulders, that by your suffering I may feel relieved? And you can love such a villain?”

“Are n’t you suffering yourself?” Sónya exclaimed.

The same feeling again flooded his soul, and again for a moment softened it.

“Sónya, my heart is bad. Take a note of that, for you will be able to explain much by it. I came because I am bad. There are some who would not have come. But I am a coward, a villain! Well, let it be! But that is not it!⸺I ought to talk now, and I do not know how to begin⸺”

He stopped and fell to musing.

“Bah, we don’t belong together!” he again exclaimed. “We are not a match for each other. Why, why did I come? I shall never forgive myself!”

“No, no! It is good that you have come!” exclaimed Sónya, “it is better that I should know, much better!”

He looked in pain at her.

“After all, why not?” he said, as if pondering over it. “It certainly happened that way! Listen: I wanted to be a Napoleon, that ’s why I murdered⸺ Well, do you understand now?”

“N—no!” Sónya muttered naïvely and timidly, “but just go on! I ’ll understand you, I ’ll make it out!” she begged him.

“You will understand? Very well, we shall see!”

He grew silent and pondered for a long while.

“It is like this: I once asked myself what would have happened if Napoleon had been in my place, and had had nothing with which to begin his career, neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor crossing Mont-Blanc; if instead of all these beautiful and monumental things there would be nothing but a funny old woman, a registrar’s widow, whom, in addition, it would be necessary to kill in order to get the money out of her trunk (for the sake of a career, you understand!),—well, would he have made up his mind to do so, if there had been no other way? Would he have had scruples because it is far from being monumental, and—and because it is sinful? Well, I tell you, this ‘question’ tormented me for a dreadfully long time, so that I felt very much ashamed when at last I guessed (it came all of a sudden to me), that he not only would not have had any scruples, but that it would not even have occurred to him that it was not monumental—and that he would have been at a loss to see what he was to have any scruples about? And if no other road had been open to him, he would have choked her to death, without giving her a chance to cry out, and he would not even have brooded over it. Well, I—stopped brooding over it—killed her—following the example of my authority⸺ It was precisely that way! You think it is funny? Yes, Sónya, the funniest thing about all this is that it really happened that way⸺”

Sónya did not think it at all funny.

“You had better tell me straight, without examples,” she begged him more timidly and in a hardly audible voice.

He turned towards her, sadly looked at her, and took her hands.

“You are again right, Sónya. That is indeed nonsense, nothing but empty prattle! You see: you know that my mother hardly has a thing. My sister has somehow managed to get an education, and she is destined to wear her life away as a governess. All their hopes were centred in me. I studied, but was unable to support myself in the university, and was compelled to leave it for a time. Even as it was, I still might have hoped, if circumstances became favourable, in ten or twelve years to be a teacher or official, with a thousand roubles yearly salary.” He spoke as if he had learned it by heart. “In the meanwhile my mother would dry up from cares and grief, and I should not after all succeed in making her lot easier, while my sister—well, something worse could happen to her!⸺ What pleasure is there in passing all your life by things and avoiding them, in forgetting your mother, or, say, respectfully bearing the insult offered to your sister? What for? To bury them, to get a family of your own, wife and children, and then to leave these too without a penny? Well—well, so I decided to get hold of the old woman’s money, to use it for the first few years, by providing for myself in the university, without putting my mother to any trouble, and to use it also for the first steps after my university career. I had decided to do it all in a broad, radical manner, so as to provide abundantly for my new career, and to start on a new and independent road⸺ Of course, it is wrong for me to have killed that old woman—well, enough of it!”

He dragged out the story in complete exhaustion, and his head fell down on his breast.

“Oh, it is not that, not that,” Sónya exclaimed dejectedly, “how could one—no, not that way, not that way!”

“You see yourself that it is not so! Still I have told you the whole truth!”

“What truth is that! O Lord!”

“I have only killed a louse, Sónya, a useless, nasty, harmful louse.”

“You call a person a louse!”

“I know myself that she is not a louse,” he answered, looking at her in a strange manner. “However, Sónya, I am lying,—I have been lying for a long time⸺ No, it is not that; you are right. No, there are altogether different reasons!⸺ I have not talked to anybody for a long time, Sónya⸺ My head hurts me dreadfully.”

His eyes burnt with a feverish fire. He was almost growing delirious; a restless smile hovered on his lips. A terrible impotence could be seen through the excited condition of his soul. Sónya understood how he was suffering. Her own head began to whirl. And he spoke so strangely, and yet as if one might understand, but—“How is it possible? How is it possible, O Lord?” and she wrung her hands in despair.

“No, Sónya, it is not that!” he began again, raising his head, as if a sudden new turn in his thoughts had struck him and roused him. “It is not that! But rather, suppose (yes, that is better!), suppose that I am selfish, envious, malicious, villainous, revengeful, well—if you wish it, inclined to insanity. (Let us grant all, while we are about it! We spoke before of insanity, it seems!) I told you long ago that I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know, I may have been able to after all! Mother would have sent the amount for the fees, and very likely I could have earned enough for shoes, clothes, and bread! There was some tutoring to do, and they offered fifty kopeks an hour. Take Razumíkhin, he is working! But I just got mad, and did n’t want to. That ’s it, mad,—that is a good word! I then kept to my corner like a spider. You have been in my den, you have seen it⸺ Do you know, Sónya, low ceilings and small rooms oppress soul and mind! Oh, how I did hate that den! And yet, I did not wish to leave it! I did not leave it for days at a time, and I did not want to work, or even eat, but lay there all the time. If Nastásya brought me anything, I would eat it; if not,—a day might pass without eating. I was so mad, I did not ask on purpose. During the evenings I had no candles, but lay in darkness. I did not try to earn enough for candles. I ought to have studied, but I had sold my books; on my notes and copybooks that are lying on the table there is even now an inch of dust. I preferred to lie and think. And I did nothing but think⸺ I had such strange visions, such peculiar dreams, just horrible! It was then that I began to imagine that—no, that is n’t correct! I am again telling wrong! You see, I kept on asking myself: why am I so stupid and do not try to be wiser, when others are stupid and I am positive that they are stupid? Then I discovered, Sónya, that it would take a long time to wait for others to get wiser⸺ Then I found out that it would never happen, that people would not change, that nobody could change them, and that it was not worth the while anyway! Yes, that ’s the way! That ’s their law, their law, Sónya! That ’s so!⸺ I know even now, Sónya, that he who is strong and mighty in soul and mind is their master! He who dares is right in their eyes. He who looks with contempt at most things is their lawgiver, and he who dares most of all is most right! So it has always been, and so it will always be! Only a blind man will refuse to see that!”

Saying this, Raskólnikov looked at Sónya, but he was no longer concerned about her understanding him. He was in a kind of sombre rapture. He had really not exchanged any words with anyone for a long time. Sónya understood that that gloomy catechism was his faith and law.

“I then came to the conclusion, Sónya,” he proceeded in an ecstatic mood, “that power is given only to him who dares to bend in order to take it up. That is the only thing,—one must dare! Then I worked out a thought, for the first time in my life, which no one had ever worked out before! Nobody! It all of a sudden became clear to me as the sun that it was very strange that, passing by all that nonsense, no one had ever dared or would dare to take the whole business by the tail and send it flying to the devil! I—I wanted to dare, and I killed—I only wanted to dare. Sónya, there is the whole reason!”

“Oh, hush, hush!” cried Sónya, and wrung her hands. “You have departed from God, and God has struck you down, and has given you over to the devil!”

“By the way, Sónya, when I was lying in the dark and all kinds of thoughts came to me, was it the devil that was tempting me, eh?”

“Hush! Don’t laugh, blasphemer! You do not understand anything, not a thing! O Lord! He will not understand anything!”

“Hush, Sónya, I am not at all laughing, I know myself that the devil was dragging me all the time. Hush, Sónya, hush!” he repeated gloomily and with emphasis. “I know all. I thought it all over and whispered it to myself as I was lying there in the dark—I have discussed it all with myself, down to the finest point, and I know all, I know all! And I got then so tired of all that prattle! I wanted to forget and begin anew, Sónya, and stop all that nonsense! Do you really think I went headlong, like a fool? I went like a shrewd fellow, and it is this that has been my undoing! Or do you really think that I did not know, for example, that the very fact that I kept on asking myself and discussing with myself whether I had a right to have power, was in itself a proof that I had no such right? Or, that when I put the question to myself: ‘Is man a louse?’ man is no longer a louse, as far as I am concerned, but that he is only a louse for him who has no doubts about it, and proceeds without any questions? The very fact that I was vexed for several days by the question, whether Napoleon would have gone or not, showed that I clearly felt that I was no Napoleon⸺ I suffered all the torment of that nonsense, Sónya, and I wanted to get rid of it. I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sónya, to kill for my own sake, only for me! I did not want to lie in this matter, not even to myself! I did not kill in order to help mother,—that ’s bosh! I did not kill in order to get the means and the power with which to do good to humankind. Bosh! I simply killed, killed for my own sake, only for me. No doubt, it was all the same to me at that moment whether I was ever to become anybody’s benefactor, or whether I was going, like a spider, to catch them all in my cobweb in order to suck their vital sap!⸺ Nor was money the main thing that I wanted when I killed her, Sónya; not so much the money as something else⸺ Now I know it all⸺ Understand me: if I were to go on that road again, I should never repeat that murder. I had to find out something else,—something else drew me on. What I had to find out then,—and find out at once,—was whether I was a louse or a man! Whether I should be able to transgress or not! Whether I should be able to bend and take up or not! Whether I am a trembling creature, or whether I have the right⸺”

“To kill? Whether you have the right to kill?” Sónya wrung her hands.

“Ah, Sónya!” he exclaimed excitedly; he wanted to retort something, but contemptuously kept silent. “Do not interrupt me, Sónya! I wanted to prove but one thing to you: that the devil was then drawing me on, and that only later he explained to me that I had no right to go there, because I am just the same kind of a louse as anybody else. He has had his laugh at me, and so I have come to you now! Here is a guest for you! If I were not a louse, would I have come to you? Listen! When I was then going to the old woman, I only went to try—I am telling you!”

“And you killed her! You killed her!”

“How killed her? Is that the way to kill? Do people go to kill the way I went? I ’ll tell you sometime how I went then!⸺ Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself, and not the old woman! I then crushed myself for eternity!⸺ The devil killed the old woman, and not I⸺ Enough, Sónya, enough! Leave me alone,” he suddenly cried out in convulsive despair, “leave me alone!”

He bent over his knees and pressed his head with his hands, as if in a vise.

“Oh, what torment!” Sónya moaned pitifully.

“Well, what is to be done now, speak!” he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with a face that was horribly distorted by despair.

“What is to be done!” she exclaimed, jumping up from her seat, and her eyes that had been full of tears suddenly began to sparkle.

“Rise!” She grabbed him by his shoulder; he raised himself and looked almost perplexed at her. “Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-road, make your obeisance, first kiss the earth that you have polluted, then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and cry out aloud to all, so that all may hear it: ‘I have murdered!’ Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you?” she asked him, trembling as if in a fit. She seized both his hands, pressed them tightly with her own, and looked at him with a fiery glance.

He was perplexed and was even surprised at her sudden ecstasy.

“You are talking about Siberia, Sónya, are n’t you? If I understand you right, I am to accuse myself,” he said gloomily.

“What is necessary is to accept the suffering and redeem yourself through suffering.”

“No, Sónya, I won’t go to them.”

“But how are you going to live?—how are you? What are you going to live by?” Sónya exclaimed. “Will that be possible now? How are you going to talk to your mother? Oh, what will become of them, what will become of them now? But what am I saying? You have already abandoned mother and sister. You have abandoned them, you have. O Lord!” she exclaimed, “he knows all that himself! How, pray, how can one live without people? What will become of you?”

“Be no child, Sónya,” he softly said. “What am I guilty of in their presence? Why should I go? What shall I tell them? That is all visionary⸺ They themselves get away with people by the million, and regard it a virtue. They are rascals and villains, Sónya!⸺ I won’t go. What should I tell them?—that I have killed somebody, and that I did not dare take the money, but hid it under a rock?” he added with a sarcastic smile. “Why, they will themselves laugh at me, and will say: ‘He was a fool not to take the money. A coward and a fool!’ They will understand nothing, absolutely nothing, Sónya, and they do not deserve to understand. Why should I go? Be no child, Sónya.”

“You will worry your life away, you will worry your life away,” she repeated, stretching out her hands to him, and imploring him with a despairing look.

“Maybe I have incriminated myself beyond necessity,” he remarked gloomily, as if lost in meditation, “maybe I am still a man, and not a louse, and have been too hasty in accusing myself⸺ I will struggle on for a while.”

A haughty smile lay on his closed lips.

“To bear such a torment! And it is for a lifetime, for a lifetime!”

“I ’ll get used to it,” he said morosely and pensively. “Listen,” he began a minute later, “it ’s time to stop weeping, and think of business. I came to tell you that they are looking for me now, and trying to catch me⸺”

“Ah!” exclaimed Sónya in fright.

“Why have you cried out! You yourself wanted me to be sent to the mines, and now you are frightened. But let me tell you: I am not going to give myself up to them. I will struggle on, and they will do nothing. They have no real clue. Yesterday I was in great danger, and I thought that I was undone; but to-day things have improved. All their proofs have two ends to them, that is, I can turn their accusations to my advantage, do you understand? And I will do so, for I have learned a thing or two. But they will certainly put me in jail. If it had not been for just one incident, they would have put me in jail to-day, and maybe they still will⸺ But that is nothing, Sónya. I shall stay there a while, and then they will let me out, for they have not a single proper proof, and there will be none,—I give you my word for it. With what they know, they cannot hold a man. Well, that ’s enough⸺ I just wanted you to know⸺ I shall try to fix matters with my mother and sister, so as to allay their suspicions and fears. Besides, my sister seems to be provided for at present, consequently mother too. Well, that ’s all. However, you want to be cautious. Will you come to see me in jail, when I am taken there?”

“O yes, I will, I will!”

They were sitting side by side, sorrowful and crushed, as if cast by a storm on a desolate shore. He looked at Sónya and he felt how much her love was upon him, and, strange to say, he suddenly had a heavy and painful feeling because he was loved. Yes, that was a strange and terrible sensation! As he was on his way to Sónya, he felt that all his hope was in her. He had hoped to put away part of his sufferings, and now that all her heart had turned to him, he suddenly felt and knew that he was infinitely more unhappy than he had been before.

“Sónya,” he said, “you had better not come to see me in jail.”

Sónya did not answer, she was weeping.

“You won’t, will you?”

“Here, take this cypress cross. I have another, of copper, that used to belong to Lizavéta. Lizavéta and I have exchanged crosses: she gave me her cross, and I gave her my image. I shall now wear Lizavéta’s, and you keep this one. Take it—it is mine! It is mine!” she begged him. “We will suffer together, let us together bear the cross!”

“Give it to me!” said Raskólnikov. He did not wish to offend her. But he immediately drew back the hand that he had stretched out to receive the cross.

“Not now, Sónya. Better some other time,” he added, in order to calm her.

“Yes, yes, better later,” she said in rapture, “when you begin your punishment, then you will put it on. You will come to me, and I shall put it on you; then we will pray and we shall start.”

Apollón Nikoláevich Máykov. (1821-1898.)

A. N. Máykov was the grandson of V. I. Máykov, the author of the Eliséy (see vol. i., p. 263), and the son of a well-known artist. He passed his early childhood in the country, near Moscow, until his family, in 1834, emigrated to St. Petersburg. Here he early came in contact with the literary circles, and was prepared for the university by Goncharóv (see p. 259), who was his tutor in Russian literature. At first he devoted himself entirely to painting, and attached little importance to his poetical talents; but his growing nearsightedness interfered with his artistic activity, and the flattering reception of his verses by Byelínski led him to turn his attention to poetry. In 1842 he went abroad, staying more than a year in Italy, attending the Collège de France and the Sorbonne, and plunging into the Pan-slavic propaganda at Prague. Upon his return he wrote a large number of poems, dealing with his European impressions, and also some from Russian history. He excelled in the description of classic antiquity, which culminated in his great work, The Two Worlds, with Three Deaths as a kind of prologue to it; his classic knowledge appears to great advantage in his Anthological Poems. Of his medieval poems may be mentioned Savonarola and The Council of Clermont. He kept entirely aloof from the questions of the day, and Russian contemporary history and life occupied but a small space in his productions: he either betook himself to depicting scenery, as in The Catching of the Fish, or to the idealisation of the past. Of his many translations, mainly from the Slavic languages, must be especially mentioned his admirable modernisation of The Word of Ígor’s Armament.

In Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. xxxiii. (1877), is given To the Empress of India; in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887, are given: The Cornfields, Hay-making, The Mountain Spring, The Idiot Girl, A Picture; in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Who Was He?, The Easter Kiss, On Lomonósov, Propriety, The Singer, A Little Picture, The Alpine Glacier, The Mother, The Kiss Refused, The Snowdrop, A Smile and a Tear. In The Anglo-Russian Literary Society: by F. P. Marchant, The Marble Faun, in No. 19, On Re-reading Pushkin, in No. 32, The Thought, Hesiod, The Muse, The Peris, The Hermit, Happy realm of youth eternal, When overwhelmed by grief, From the Gnostics, in No. 33; by J. Pollen, reprint of his A Little Picture, in No. 33. In Free Russia are given: by Elizabeth Gibson, The Council of Constance, in vol. xi., Nos. 8-10, and parts of the Three Deaths, in vol. xii., No. 4. In the Library of the World’s Best Literature are reprinted J. Pollen’s The Easter Kiss, The Alpine Glacier, The Kiss Refused.

THE PERIS

Her sins atoned by tears of sorrow,

Those penitential tears scarce dry,

The soul, by her Creator pardoned,

Flies on swift wings to realms on high.

Through starry space, the soul embracing,

White peris take their flight along,

While choirs of infant cherubs thronging

Greet her with bursts of joyous song.

Oh, with ecstatic cries of rapture

She would fill all the heavenly plains,

Would render thanks, and in rejoicing

Forget all former earthly pains!

But, circling round with curious glances

And coaxing wiles, the peris all

Entreat her, with most tender pleading,

To tell the story of her fall.

Is it their joy a soul to comfort,

From earthly trials gone up on high?

Or do they know by strange traditions

This world of sin beyond the sky?

—Transl. by F. P. Marchant, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 33.

WHO WAS HE?

A STORY OF PETER THE GREAT

Upon the mighty Neva’s bank,

Along the winding woodland way,

A Horseman rode, in forest wilds

Of elms, of pine, of mosses grey.

Before him rose a Fisher’s hut;

Beneath a pine, by the blue stream,

An aged, bearded Fisherman

Was mending his boat’s broken beam.

The Horseman said, “Grandsire! Good-day!

God help thee, friend! how livest thou?

Dost thou catch much? and tell me, pray,

Where dost thou sell thy takings now?”

The old man answered sullenly,

“Are fishes in the river few?

And other market have I none

Except the town, there, close to you.

“And how am I to fish to-day?

What kind of turmoil’s here, you see!

You fight; and, in the fight, a shell

Has smashed my fishing-boat for me!”

The Horseman bounded from his horse,

Without a word the tools he grasped;

And in a twinkling planked the boat,

The rudder in the stern set fast.

“See, now, old friend, thy boat’s all right!

Out on the water boldly set;

And, in the name of Peter’s luck,

Cast forth into the deep thy net.”

He vanished. Mused the stern old man:

“I wonder who the de’il was he!

In every inch he looked a king,

But plied the hatchet splendidly.”

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

THE MARBLE FAUN

Through a deserted garden-walk I wandered in the shade,

The rosy twilight faded, and of leaves the trees all bare

In dark clusters stood around me, while the autumn evening made

The atmosphere quite chilly. Then among the thickets there

I chanced to find a statue of a faun once white and clean,

With rubbish, dust, and moss encrusted, dingy, mildewed, green.

He glanced from out the branches with a pleasant smile, and these

Set in motion gently by the wind, his strong visage swept,

While hidden from my downward glance the marble form they kept.

I saw the aged lindens shake, and lo, among the trees

Were other forms of marble that within their foliage slept.

But what of all most struck my view wrapped in the shrubs’ embrace

Was that one marble image-head and mocking, smiling face.

I admired the ancient idol, long neglected, for a while,

And the face amid the thicket threw at me a cunning smile.

I felt a kind of pity. “Thou wert held of old divine,

Image cynical and smiling! To the flute’s melodious sound

Men prepared to thee the sacrifice, for thee the flames did shine,

They uttered prayers, the lamb expired, and thou wert sprinkled round

With the fresh blood of the victim. Now, I pray thee, let me know,

Art thou sighing for the days gone by,—thy vanished power and crown?

Then upon those youthful races did a happier lot pour down?

Or have sages merely fabled of the days of long ago?

Was that tale a vain invention, of their lives of peace and joy,

Or did ceaseless labour in the field their energies employ?

Thou dost smile upon me, dost thou?—Then when dawned a later date

Thou didst gaze, a mute spectator, on a splendid court and state;

Thou wert looked on as a marvel when among the ruins found,

Then the garden was laid out for thee, and thou wert compassed round

With the tritons and the naiads, with Athenians old and wise,

And with Rome’s Imperial Cæsars and Greek Sovereigns of the skies;

Thou didst look on it with laughter, and thy pleasant visage glowed

On the ball-scene’s glitter gazing. Then the garden overflowed

With the ringing strains of music. In that alley’s gloomy shade

A pair of youthful lovers from the guests their shelter made.

Thou didst note their stolen interviews among the bushes dark,

Thou didst hear the kiss resounding, and their fond caresses mark.

Tell me further: were those lovers’ ardent pledges kept for long

Unrepentant and unbroken? Was their hearts’ love always strong,

Shining brightly, burning ever, not expiring like a spark?

Were their names and plighted promise,—on thy pedestal here traced

By precise and earnest fingers,—by the raindrops soon effaced?

Or, maybe, they wandered here again, beneath thy lindens’ shade,

Where to meet with other paramours they new appointments made?

Through the thick boughs overhanging did thy sly and sneering smile

From their amorous professions tear the treacherous mask away?

Did their faces, flushed with crimson, their deceitful hearts betray?”

Thus I gazed in mute inquiry on the statue for a while,

And the marble cynic answered with his calm, sarcastic smile.

—Transl. by F. P. Marchant, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 19.

FROM THE LYRIC DRAMA “THREE DEATHS”

THE DEATH OF SENECA AND OF LUCIUS

(Having embraced Seneca and Lucius, Lucan exit, in company of the lictors.)

Seneca (wants to follow him, but stops as his disciples rush up to him; stroking his brow, he speaks softly and solemnly). I had but one aim in life, and I have walked to it over a rugged path. My life has ever been a moral school: and death is but a new lesson, a new letter, amidst the eternal and wondrous alphabet, a pledge of a higher, endless science! The Creator has given me a stern mind with which to scan the universe, that what I have learned in me and it I may transmit to future generations. He sent against me malice, monstrous and vile debauch, that, like an oak upon the height midst storms, I might grow strong through artful battling, that among a mass of deeds and acts I might impress my image⸺ I have accomplished all. My form is cast. Yet one more chisel’s sweep,—and proudly shall it stand through ages. The chisel shall not quiver. Terror shall not bind my hands. My journey is finished here,—but my spirit, made in this terrestrial life more perfect and more wise, will enter eternity. Open is the door before me, and I see the dawn of another life⸺

(The philosopher’s friends, sobbing, embrace his knees. Looking at them, he proceeds:)

Life is good when in the world we are a necessary link, and one with all the living; when at the banquet I am not superfluous; when going with the people to the fane, I worship the same gods with them. But when the crowd, apart from you, has raised up a divinity and with cruel malice watches the movements of your heart; when, seeing you afar, they point their fingers (oh, believe me, friends, it is not easy to live an outcast wanderer!) at the remnants of better generations, with their ancient virtue in their breast:—we pass like corpses, like shadows, like jesters in the forum! And unobserved a mighty wind will drown us midst the rippling waves, like worthless chips of once victorious ships⸺

Our age is past. Our time is up, O brothers! Others have now come into the world; other feelings and conceptions they have brought with them⸺ Perchance, believing stubbornly in the traditions of our youth, we, like an ominous blast, congeal the renovated lives of men. Perhaps⸺the truth is not with us! Our mind no longer grasps it, and looks up with weakened eyes, yet not ahead, nor sees the light of truth, and wails: “No, there is no salvation!” And, perchance, another man will come, and he will say: “Here is the light!” No! Our time is up!⸺ Cut open now my arteries! O greatest of all gifts, O death, you are now in my hands! O Socrates! O teacher! Dearest friend! To you I go!

(Exit, accompanied by his disciples.)

Lucius. Well finished, Seneca! Thou borest it gloriously! And now, one hero less!⸺ Looking at the man, I feel aggrieved! What matters it that thou art dead? That to the end thy courage did not flag? For gossips and for calumny thou hast for two days given food to Rome! In this alone thy exploit lies!

(Looks through the window at the sky and at the distant mountains.)

How all is quiet there! The mountains—clear⸺ Even thus the gods look reckless from the heavens at the human race! And what is there to see?

(Scans the room.)

’T is terrible here to live, and let alone—to die! But little time is left for life. What use is there to grant one needless hour to cruel Nemesis? For great exploits one needs a rest, a joyful mood, and—a good supper⸺ Glory after death avails us not! What happiness is this that in the future a bearded rhetorician will expound you as a model for his schoolboys? With future mysteries I have no dealings! Or whether here my life will come to an end, or bodiless my soul may live,—in any case I ’ll be no longer man! But now, while still I live, I may with honour dismiss my body, my old servant⸺ O slave!

(Enter slave, Lucius continuing.)

In my villa by the sea prepare a splendid supper; in the amphitheatre, below the mountains, strew flowers on my couch; call a ballet of Bacchantes, a chorus of Fauns⸺and lyres and timbrels,—not the kind of chorus as last time, when the basso was a squeaker! Open in the garden all the fountains. Here is the key: in the inner storeroom are some cups of Grecian workmanship,—get them. And send at once the slaves to call my friends. Let all come who are alive. Thyself go to Marcellus. Ask him humbly, he has long had in keeping some Horatian wine. Tell him that thy master begs him not to refuse him anything, and that to-day he deigns to die! Well, think of everything—thou hast been a faithful slave, and thou art not forgotten in my testament.

(The slave falls down to his feet.)

Haggle not, nor be niggardly,—let the supper teem with fabulous dainties! Yes, I have forgot the main thing: go, knock at the door of careless Pyrrha! Take basketfuls of flowers to her and let her, laughing heedlessly, come, brighter than springtime, to grace my supper.

(Exit slave.)

And on the knees of the dear maid I will with tensest power of life intoxicate my soul with the fragrance of the herbs, and with the sleeping sea, and with the sun immerging in the waves, and Pyrrha’s lucent beauty! And when my senses weary feasting, she will, with gentle smiles, give to me, not knowing it herself, the deadly draught in wine, and I will jesting die, scarce audible, a true, wise Sybarite who, having surfeited his dainty appetite at the luxurious table, sleeps peaceably, surrounded by aromas.

Nikoláy Aleksyéevich Nekrásov. (1821-1877.)

Nekrásov was the son of an impoverished landed proprietor who served on the military staff, and of a Polish mother, who was his first teacher. In 1832 he was sent to the Yarosláv Gymnasium. Here he made little progress in the ancient languages and in mathematics, and, having reached the fifth form, was obliged to leave on account of some satires he had written against the school authorities. He went to St. Petersburg and entered the university as a special student, but his extreme poverty made any regular progress impossible and undermined his health. He occasionally wrote prose stories for a variety of periodicals, and in 1840 he published his first volume of poems which, having been unfavourably received, he later bought up and destroyed. Then he published a number of volumes of miscellaneous collections, and in 1847 became the editor of The Contemporary, formerly Púshkin’s magazine. The most active period of Nekrásov’s life began in 1856, since when he produced all the poems by which he lives. It is difficult to characterise Nekrásov’s poetry, as it represents so many different aspects: there are in it elegies and lyrics in Púshkin’s best style, satires which have earned for him the name of the Russian Juvenal, and popular verses dealing with the life of all classes of society, especially with the peasant. The great wealth of native scenery which he depicts, the idiomatic, inimitable language of his poems, the objectivity of his themes, united with a graceful lyricism, make him the most notable of Russian poets. Among his best productions are Red-Nosed Frost, Who Lives in Russia Happily?, The Peddlers, and a large number of shorter poems.

English translations: A Moral Man, by Alexander Koumanin, in Cornhill Magazine, 1863; The Forgotten Village, Village News, Brandy, The Unreaped Plot, On the Road, and parts of The Railroad, In the Village, and Red-Nosed Frost, by W. R. S. Ralston, in the Contemporary Review, vol. xxvii. (1876); Red-Nosed Frost, translated in the original metres [by J. Sumner Smith], Boston, 1886, second edition emended, 1887; The Forgotten Village, The Field Unreaped, Mary, The Hospital, The Song of the Convicts, A Mother’s Tears, in C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics, London, 1887; Te Deum, The Prophet, Offer my Muse a friendly hand, Dream, A Sick Man’s Jealousy, The Landlord of Old Times, The Russian Soldier, in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, London, 1891 (The Prophet and The Russian Soldier reprinted in Library of the World’s Best Literature); in Free Russia, by Charlotte Sidgwick, I am weak, I am old, and another, in vol. x., Nos. 8-10, and The Song of the Poor Wanderer, in vol. x., No. 12, and by Mary Grace Walker, War, in vol. x., No. 11; in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, by A. C. Coolidge, The Unmown Strip and When from thine error, in No. 14 (from the Harvard Monthly Magazine, 1895); by F. P. Marchant, Farewell and I gaz’d upon thy tomb, in No. 16; by J. Pollen, ’Tis May in the meadows, in No. 19; by Leo Wiener and A. C. Coolidge, Who Lives Happily in Russia? (reprinted from Harvard Monthly Magazine, 1898), in No. 25; by Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, some extracts, in No. 30; by Leo Wiener, The Railroad, in No. 33; by L. A. Magnus, The Poet to his Love, in No. 34.

FROM “RED-NOSED FROST”

Three grievous allotments had Fortune decreed:—

Allotment the first,—with a slave man to marry;

The second,—the mother to be of his seed;

The third,—until death his hard yoke e’er to carry.

And all these allotments so grievous did lie

On woman ’neath Russia’s broad sky.

The ages have passed: all for pleasure has striven;

To manifold change all on earth has been given.

The poor peasant woman alone is forgot:

No change in her lot has God made.

Of feminine beauty and strength, we all wot,

The type, ’mong the Slavs, has decayed.

Fortuitous victim of fate!

Hast suffered unseen and unheard;

The world has not told of thy strait,

Of plaining hast uttered no word.

But me thou, my friend, wilt tell all;

From childhood together we ’ve plodded:—

Fatigue and dismay on thee fall,

All misery in thee is embodied.

No heart in his breast carrieth he

Who tears doth not shed over thee.

We ’ve thus of the serf woman spoken,

However, with purpose to say:—

The type of the stately Slavonian,

Perhaps, may be found e’en to-day.

In Russ hamlets women are dwelling,

Of countenance earnest, serene;

In all grace of movement excelling;

In bearing and look like a queen.

Perhaps they ’ll escape the dim-sighted;

But one who can see says of them:—

“She passes—with sunshine all ’s lighted!

And looks—’t is like giving a gem!”

The paths all our people are thronging

They follow,—the same burthens bring;

But mire, to their low lot belonging,

To them as it were does not cling.

See blooming,—a world’s admiration,—

The beauty! tall, rosy, well-shaped;

Proficient in each occupation;

A beauty, however she ’s draped;

Both hunger and cold calmly brooking;

Content, ever patient, discreet.

I oft as she moved have been looking:

One flourish—a haycock complete!

Her kerchief is o’er her ear slipping,

Her tresses are ready to fall.

And then some young fellow comes tripping—

The rascal! and up throws them all:

The flaxen, luxuriant tresses

O’erspread her tanned bosom, and wrap

Her little bare feet in caresses;

Her eyes, too, in darkness entrap:

She quickly her locks apart brushes,

And fiercely a glance at him throws;

Her tress-enframed, proud face with blushes

Of passion, of hot anger glows.

On work-days she likes full employment.

But strange will to you be her face

When from it the smile of enjoyment

The sigil of toil shall erase:

Such laughter, so hearty! such measure

In song and in dance! no such treats

With gold can be purchased. “What pleasure!”

Each peasant to each oft repeats.

The horseman she ’ll vanquish in racing;

In danger, not flinching, she ’ll save:

A galloping steed boldly facing;

To enter a burning hut, brave.

Her beautiful, regular teeth

Seem pearls, when to view them one chances;

But firmly the lips’ rosy sheath

Conceals them from people’s rude glances.

She rarely indulges in laughter,

For jesting she ’s no time to spare;

Not oft dares her neighbour come after

Some item of her kitchen ware.

No pity has she for the tramp,—

Why country paths uselessly scour?

Of scrupulous fitness the stamp

She bears and of immanent power.

She knows, as ’t were writ in her creed,

In labour is all their salvation;

And labour returns her the meed:—

Her household knows never privation;

They ’ve always a warm roof o’erhead,

Bread well-baked, and kvas of good savour;

The children are healthy, well-fed;

For high-days there ’s some extra favour.

This woman goes forth Sunday morn

To mass, all her family guiding:

Is sitting a child, two years born,

Her bosom upon, and there riding:

The mother, well dressed, by the hand

Is leading her six-years-old boy.

This picture all friends of Russ land,

All friends of Russ folk will enjoy.

—From [J. Sumner Smith’s] Red-Nosed Frost, Boston, 1887.

A MORAL MAN

A strictly moral man have I been ever,

And never injured anybody—never.

I lent my friend a sum he could not pay,

I jogged his memory in a friendly way,—

Then took the law of him th’ affair to end,—

The law to prison sent my worthy friend.

He died there,—not a farthing for poor me!

I am not angry, though I ’ve cause to be.

His debt that very moment I forgave,

And shed sad tears of sorrow o’er his grave.

A strictly moral man have I been ever,

And never injured anybody—never.

I sent my slave to learn the art of dressing

Meat;—he succeeded,—a good cook ’s a blessing;

But he too oft would leave his occupation,

And gained a taste not suited to his station.

He liked to read, to reason, and discuss—

I, tired of scolding, without further fuss

Had the rogue flogged,—all for the love of him:

He went and drowned himself,—’t was a strange whim.

A strictly moral man have I been ever,

And never injured anybody—never.

My silly daughter fell in love one day,

And with her tutor wished to run away:

I threatened curses and pronounced my ban;

She yielded, and espoused a rich old man.

Their house was splendid, brimming o’er with wealth,

But suddenly poor Mary lost her health,

And in a year consumption wrought her doom:

She left us mourning o’er her early tomb.

A strictly moral man have I been ever,

And never injured anybody—never.

—By Alexander Koumanin, in Cornhill Magazine, 1863.

FROM “WHO LIVES IN RUSSIA HAPPILY”

EPILOGUE

What year it was,—you figure out!

What land it was,—you guess yourself!

Upon a level country road

Were gathered seven muzhíks:

They all had masters whom they served

I’ the Government of Strained-too-hard,

The county called Enduring-much,

The district Fallowlandedness,

In villages hard by:

In Patchedupville and Raggedtown,

In Emptyville and Freezingtown,

In Burnedupville, and Hungerville,

And in Cropfailingthorpe;

They met and quarrelled straight away:

“Who lives in Russia happily

And to his heart’s content?”

Román declared—“The landowner,”

Demyán declared—“The bureaucrat,”

Luká declared—“The priest.”

“The merchant with his goodly paunch,”

The Gúbin brothers both declared,

Iván and Mitrodór.

But old Pakhóm looked gloomily

Upon the ground, and said at last:

“The gentleman of noble birth,

The minister of the Emperor,”

While Prov declared: “The Tsar.”⸺

Muzhíks are stubborn like the ox:

Let any nonsense fill their heads,

You cannot pound it out of them,

Each one sticks to his mind.

They started such a loud dispute

That all the passers-by averred

They must have found a treasure-trove,

The fuss is—to divide.

That forenoon each had left his house,

On business each had sallied out:

One to the blacksmith’s shop was bound,

One to the town Ivánkovo

To call the priest Prokópius,

His baby to baptise.

Pakhóm was taking honeycombs

To market in Velíkoë,

And both the brothers Gúbin had

With bridle started out to catch

The wild horse of the herd.

’T were better that they long ago

Had gone each one where business called,

Yet they together keep!

They walk as if there were grey wolves

Behind them, chasing after them,—

The farther, quicker still;

They walk, they brawl unceasingly;

They cry and do not come to sense,

But time waits not for them.

They quarrelled on, they did not see

The sun was red, was sinking fast,—

The evening had set in.

In faith, they would have walked all night,

They would have walked not knowing where,

If pockmarked old Durándikha

Had not addressed them, meeting them,

And spoken to them: “Gentlemen!

As night has come upon you, where

Do you intend to go?”⸺

The old witch asked, then laughed aloud;

She struck her gelding with a whip,

And galloped out of sight.

Where were they? As they gazed around,

They did not know themselves;

They stood, they paused, they drooped their heads,⸺

’T was night-time long ago,

The stars were twinkling way above

Upon the vaulted sky.

The moon swam out, the shadows dark

Stopped further headlong gait.

O shadows, shadows black and thick!

Who is there that you will not catch?

Of whom will you not get ahead?

And yet there ’s no one, shadows black,

Can seize you and embrace!

Into the wood and down the road

Pakhóm looked round him silently;

He looked, he pondered in his mind,

And then at last he said:

“The wood spirit has played on us

A pretty joke to-night!

Indeed we must have surely tramped

Some thirty versts[17] at least;

And, as for walking home again,—

We ’re tired, we should peter out.

Sit down—there ’s nothing to be done—

Let ’s rest till break of day!”⸺

Then blaming loud the wood spirit,

Beside the road, right in the wood,

The peasants sat them down.

They made a fire, each did his part,

And two of them for vódka[18] went,

The while the others to the wood

Repaired to make a drinking cup

Of bark stripped from the birch.

The vódka came in proper time;

There also somehow came some food,—

A feast for the muzhíks!

Three glasses each man had to drink;

They ate,—they quarrelled once again:

“Who lives in Russia happily

And to his heart’s content?”

Román cried out: “The landowner,”

Demyán cried out: “The bureaucrat,”

Luká cried out: “The priest”;

“The merchant with his goodly paunch,”—

The Gúbin brothers both cried out,

Iván and Mitrodór.

Pakhóm cried out: “His Excellence,

The gentleman of noble birth,

The minister of the Emperor,”

And Prov cried out: “The Tsar!”

Thus worse than ever brawled again

The quarrelsome muzhíks;

They cursed, they called each other names,

Till soon enough they came to blows,

And grabbed each other’s hair.

Look! as each one has grabbed the next,

Román is hitting at Pakhóm,

Demyán hits at Luká,

And both the brothers Gúbin hit

At Prov—while each one yells.

The far-resounding echo woke,

And rolling wandered on and on,

And louder cried from side to side,

As if to tease, to imitate,

The obstinate muzhíks.

“The Tsar!” it spoke to the right of them,

But to the left the answer came:

“The priest! The priest! The priest!”

Then all the wood was full of fright:

The very birds that flit about,

The very beasts, the swift-footed,

The very crawling, creeping things,—

’T was groan and roar and bawl.

The grey-haired rabbit, first of all,

From out the bush jumped suddenly

And looked around distractedly,—

He jumped and disappeared.

The youthful jackdaws perched aloft

Upon a birch-tree standing near

Set up a piteous squeak.

And in the neighbouring peewit’s home

The baby from its mother’s nest

Was scared and tumbled out.

The little peewit chirped and wept:

Where is her birdie gone?

The old and feeble cuckoo woke,

Awoke and sat there wondering

If she should cuckoo now;

Ten times, at least, she made a start,

But every time she lost the beat,

And had to start again⸺

You cuckoo, cuckoo, dear old bird!

As soon as wheat is in the ear

You ’ll choke yourself with wheaten ears,[19]

You ’ll cuckoo then no more.

Next, seven horncoots from all sides

Have gathered to enjoy the fight,—

They peer from seven trees:

These midnight ones are laughing loud;

Their large round eyes of yellow hue

Are burning just like fourteen lights

Of pure and virgin wax.

The raven, bird of common-sense,

Is here and sitting on a tree

Beside the burning fire;

He sits and to the devil prays

That they may somehow pound to death

At least one of the lot.

The cow, that with her bell had strayed

Away that evening from the herd,

Approached, attracted by the sound

Of human voices’ tones.

She slowly walked up to the fire,

She stared at the muzhíks.

She listened to their foolish talk,

And then began with all her might

To low, to low, to low.

The silly cow is lowing loud,

The youthful jackdaws squeak and pipe,

The seven muzhíks are boisterous,—

The echo seconds all.

The echo has but this desire:

To tease an honest man, to scare

A woman or a child.

No one has ever seen it yet,

But all have heard it more than once:

Without a body—yet it lives,

Without a tongue—it cries.

The owl, a Moscow princess once,[20]

Is flitting here from side to side;

She flies above the peasants’ heads,

Or with her wings sweeps o’er the ground

Or o’er the bush nearby.

The fox himself, of crafty mind,

With womanish curiosity

Crept close to the muzhíks.

He listened, listened carefully,

And went away at last convinced—

“The Deuce can’t make it out”;

The brawlers hardly knew themselves,—

They had forgotten by that time

The cause of all the row.

They hit each other lustily,

Came to their senses finally,—

Agreed to strike no more.

They drank some water from the pool,

They washed themselves, refreshed themselves,

And sleepiness set in.

—Transl. by L. Wiener, revised by A. C. Coolidge, in The Harvard Monthly, January, 1898, and in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 25.

[17] A verst is about three-fifths of a mile.

[18] The national liquor in Russia, consumed in large quantities.

[19] According to a popular superstition in Russia the cuckoo is silent when the wheat is in the ear.

[20] A Russian legend.

THE UNMOWN STRIP

Late in the autumn, the rooks are diverted;

Bare is the forest, the field is deserted.

Only one strip which is lying unmown:

Sad are its musings in stillness alone.

“Truly,” each blade to the other is sighing,

“Weary are we of the autumn wind crying:

Weary of bowing to earth as we must,

Burying our grain-laden heads in the dust.

Scarce is it night, when the birds flocking near us

Halt on their passage to greedily tear us.

Hares tread us down, and the storm vents its hate.—

Where is our peasant? What more does he wait?

Were we, then, worse at our birth than all others?

Have we not sprouted and grown like our brothers?

No! We ’re not worse than the rest. Long in vain

In us hath germed and hath ripened the grain.

Was it for this he was ploughing and sowing,

That we should bend to the autumn gales blowing?”

Borne on the breeze the sad answer came back:

“It is the power your peasant doth lack.

He knew the why of his ploughing and sowing,

Started his work, but his strength all unknowing.

Ill fares the wight, he can drink not nor eat;

For his sick heart is the canker-worm’s seat.

And the strong arms that his plough used to guide him,

Dried to dead stalks, now like whips hang beside him.

Dim were his eyes, and his voice hollow rang;

Mournful indeed was the song that he sang

When with his hand at the plough ever present,

Wrapped in his thoughts, o’er the strip moved the peasant.”

—By A. C. Coolidge, in The Harvard Monthly, 1895.

A MOTHER’S TEARS

With each fresh victim in the strife,

When war’s dire terrors round us roll,

I pity neither friend, nor wife,

I pity not the heroic soul.

The wife will soon new comfort gain,

His friend the best of friends forget,

And scarce a single soul remain,

That, until death, remembers yet.

Amid the poor, prosaic round

Of things, which here so falsely show,

No tears are true, and sacred, found,

Save such as from a mother flow.

The sons, in battlefield who sleep,

Her tears to memory fond recall;

E’en like to willow-trees, which weep

O’er boughs, that ever earthward fall.

—From C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics.

Iván Sávich Nikítin. (1824-1861.)

Nikítin was born in Vorónezh, the birthplace of Koltsóv (see p. 176), where his father was a chandler. At eight years of age he entered a religious school, and later, in 1841, the Seminary in his native town. He wrote his first poem while at school, but only in 1853 did he succeed in having his verses printed in the Vorónezh Governmental Gazette. These brought him in contact with the local cultured society who encouraged him to write more. His first volume of collected poetry was not favourably received by the literary circles of St. Petersburg, who saw in Nikítin’s verses mere imitations of Koltsóv and Nekrásov; his reputation has, however, risen since, and he is counted among the better popular poets. Among his best verses are The Ploughman, The Plough, The Wife of the Driver, The Fist, while such poems as The Morning, The Swallow’s Nest, A Winter Night in the Village, belong to the most popular of Russian songs.

W. R. S. Ralston, in Contemporary Review, vol. xxiii. (1874), has translated The Stubborn Father, Burlák, A Winter Night in the Village. In C. T. Wilson’s Russian Lyrics are translated The Yamshchik’s Wife, The Grandfather, The State of the Departed, The Churchyard. In The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 28, F. P. Marchant translated The Inheritance, and in No. 30 Mrs. Rosa Newmarch gives a part of The Village Money-Lender and The Gaffer.

BURLÁK[21]

Ah, friends! You too have had your sorrows,—else

A song would never make you weep. Well now,

Just hear what I have gone through,—then you ’ll know

What sorrow really means.

What sorrow really means. My father died

When I was just nineteen, and I was left

An orphan, and at first alone,—but soon

A neighbour’s daughter won my heart; I pleased her,

And we were married,—happily did we live

Together. I could fancy she had brought me

Happiness with her—(Heaven be hers, poor thing!)

You can’t conceive how good a manager

She was,—she would n’t waste a single farthing.

In the long winter evenings, she would light

A firewood splinter, and then spin away

For hours,—not pausing till the cock would crow.

Then would she lay her down,—but with the dawn

She was up again,—would run to give their food

To the sheep and cows,—next light the fire,—and then

Betake her to the spinning-wheel again,

Or find some other indoor work to do.

When summer came, she helped to cut the rye

And carry it, nor ever weary. I would say,

“Is n’t it time to rest?”

“Is n’t it time to rest?” “Oh, no!” she ’d cry,

“I ’m not a bit tired.”—

“I ’m not a bit tired.”— Every now and then

Perhaps I ’d buy her something as a present.

“You need n’t have done that, my bonny bird,”

She ’d say, “we love each other much too well

To care for presents—don’t go wasting money

On me.”—

On me.?— My life with her was just as if

I ’d been in Paradise.

I ’d been in Paradise. But no one knows

How calamity may fall upon him!

My wife lay down to rest within the grave,—

The world grows dark whene’er I think of it.

My only consolation was my child,—

I ’d only one,—a fair-skinned, dark-haired boy,

As like his mother as one drop to another;—

He had begun to spell a bit already,

And I to think, “My boy will be a man.”

But that was not God’s pleasure.—In the spring

He got some kind of sickness. We called in

Wise women, soothsayers, had magic drinks

For him to take. I promised I would give

A rouble for a candle,—to be burnt

Before the holy image in the church⸺

But God refused to listen to my prayer—

I had to lay my darling in the coffin,

And bear him to the graveyard.⸺

And bear him to the graveyard.⸺ In those days,

Those dreary days, ’t was bitter for me, friends!

My heavy arms hung listlessly,—my neighbours

Gathered their harvest. All the fields around

Were blithe with song—But there I pined away

With heavy sorrow. When the day was done,

The heavy-laden carts would come from the field

And in a line drive creaking through the village.

But in my cottage I would sit alone

Trying to stem my tears.

Trying to stem my tears. The autumn passed.

I waited till the first snow fell.—Methought

I ’ll sell my rye, fit up a sledge, and go

And earn a living with it somewhere.

And earn a living with it somewhere. Suddenly

Woe upon woe! A murrain seized my cattle,—

Never until I die shall I forget

That fatal year.—

That fatal year.— I managed to get through

The winter somehow. But I saw I ’d lost

My old position. In our village meetings,

This one would flout me, saying:—“Good! It seems

The barest beggar thinks he has the right

To meddle in the business of the Commune!”

That one would gird at me behind my back,

And cry:—“The lazy fellow! Such a one as he

Will never gain his bread. In my opinion,

If one ’s a man, one never will give way,

Whatever happens.”

Whatever happens.? All this talk and laughter

Aroused me;—God assisted me, I think.

I felt a longing for a freer life.

I got a passport, paid up all my taxes,

And joined the bargemen.

And joined the bargemen. Since that time my grief

Has yielded to the Vólga’s dark blue wave⸺

Rest follows toil: upon the river side

Bright burns the evening fire,—a comrade starts

A song,—the rest join in,—your spirits rise,—

A thrill runs o’er your limbs,—you sing yourself.

And if at times a dreary season comes,

And half-forgotten sorrows vex your soul,—

There ’s solace still. You hear the river’s roar,

Singing a freedom to the sweeping plain.

Fast beats your heart;—you burn,—though wintry cold

The weather, yet you want no cloak to warm you.

Aboard and take your seat! Fall back on the oar!

Pleasant it is to brave the Russian storm.

The waves run mountain-high,—in snowy flakes

The foam flies fast; strange voices groan and wail.

The tempest roars and whistles,—from your soul

A cry arises: “Let God’s will be done.

If we ’re to live, we ’ll live. And if to die,—

Well then, so be it!” And you feel as though

Your heart had never known what sorrow meant.

—From W. R. S. Ralston’s Russian Idylls, in The Contemporary Review, 1874 (vol. xxiii.).

[21] A labourer towing boats up the Vólga.

THE GAFFER

Old Gaffer, with his beard and smooth bald head,

Sits in his chair.

His little mug of water, and his bread,

Stand near him there.

Grey as a badger he: his brow is lined;

His features worn.

He ’s left a world of cark and care behind,

Since he was born.

’T is over now, his eyesight soon must go;

His strength is done.

Death laid within the churchyard long ago

Grandchild and son.

A cat the smoke-grimed hut with Gaffer shares—

Upon the stove

All day he sleeps. He too is old, nor cares

From thence to move.

The old man still plaits shoes, with fingers slow,

From bark of birch.

His wants are few, his greatest joy to go

Into God’s church.

He stands within the porch, against the wall,

Mutt’ring his prayers.

A loyal child, he thanks the Lord for all

Life’s griefs and cares.

Cheery he lives,—with one foot in the grave,—

In his dark hole.

Whence does he draw the strength that keeps him brave,

Poor peasant soul?

—Transl. by Mrs. R. Newmarch, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 30.

Aleksyéy Nikoláevich Pleshchéev. (1825-1894.)

Pleshchéev was the most cultivated and the most sympathetic poet who belonged to Nekrásov’s camp. He was born in the city of Kostromá, of an ancient noble family. He studied at St. Petersburg at the School of the Guard Cadets and at the university, without graduating from either. He began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, and in 1846 appeared the first edition of his poems. These were pervaded by a militant spirit of liberty, and soon his sympathies with the liberal movement brought him into trouble, for he was arrested in 1849 and banished to Orenbúrg, with loss of all his civil rights. He there served in the army as a common soldier, but rose in 1858 to the rank of a commissioned officer, when his privileges were restored to him, and he was permitted to return to Moscow. Up to that time he had entirely abandoned literature, but now his former activity began anew, and he enriched Russian letters with a large number of translations from various languages, and with original lyrical verses. These no longer are filled with the aspirations of his youth, but bear the imprint of melancholy disappointment and renunciation.

Spring and Passion are given in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, and N. H. Dole has translated A Legend (publication unascertainable).

FORWARD

Forward, without fear or doubt, to the valiant deed, my friends! I have already seen the dawn of the holy redemption in the skies!

Courage! We will take each other’s hands and boldly will move onward,—and let our union grow and be strong under the banner of science!

We will chastise the priests of sin and falsehood with the word of truth,—and we will awaken the sleeping from their sleep and will lead the host to battle.

We will not build an idol for ourselves, either upon earth, or in heaven; we will not fall before it in the dust for all the gifts and benefits of the world.

We will proclaim the teaching of Love to the poor and to the rich,—and for it we will endure persecution, forgiving our malevolent enemies.

Blessed is he who has exhausted his life in a sanguinary struggle, in heavy cares; he has not, like an indolent and tricky slave, buried his talent in the ground!

Let holy truth burn as a guiding star for us,—and, believe me, a noble voice will not resound in vain in the world.

Hearken, then, O brothers, to the word of a brother, as long as we are full of youthful strength! Forward, forward,—and without returning, whatever fate may have in store for us!

MY COUNTRY

Scanty Nature of my native land, you are dear to my sad soul! Formerly, in the days of my fleeting spring, the distant shores of other countries enticed me.

And my glowing imagination painted brilliant pictures before me: I saw the transparently blue vault of the heavens, and the crenelated summits of mighty mountains.

Merged in the gold of midday beams, it seemed to me, the myrtle, the planes, and the olive trees called me into the shade of spreading branches, and roses beckoned silently to me⸺

Those were days when my spirit did not ponder, among the seductions of life, over the aims of existence, and, being frivolous, I only demanded enjoyment from it.

But that time speedily disappeared without a trace,—and grief unexpectedly visited me, and much with which my soul was not familiar suddenly became dear to it.

I then abandoned my secret dream of a magic and distant land,—and in my country I discovered beauties invisible to the worldly eye.

Furrowed fields, ears of yellow grain-fields, the speechless, majestic expanse of the steppes, the freshets of broad rivers in the spring, mysteriously rustling oak-forests;

Sacred silence of poor villages, where the labourer, oppressed by misery, prayed to heaven for a new, a better day,—the great day of liberty, to rise over him;

I understood you then,—and near to my heart suddenly grew the song of my native land, whether in that song was heard deep pining or unrestrained hilarity.

My country, nothing in thee captivates the stranger’s eye; but thou art dear by thy stern beauty to him who himself has yearned for freedom and the wide expanse, and whose spirit has borne oppressive fetters.

A LEGEND

Christ, when a child, a garden made,

And many roses flourished there.

He watered them three times a day

To make a garland for His hair;

And when in time the roses bloomed,

He called the children in to share.

They tore the flowers from every stem,

And left the garden stript and bare.

“How wilt Thou weave Thyself a crown

Now that Thy roses are all dead?”

“Ye have forgotten that the thorns

Are left for me,” the Christ-child said.

They plaited then a crown of thorns,

And laid it rudely on His head,—

A garland for His forehead made;

For roses, drops of blood instead.

—Transl. by N. H. Dole (publication unascertainable).

SPRING

Ah! who art thou, fair maid, with upland flowers

Twined in the glossy silk of golden hair,

With smile sunbright, with eyes the dove in hue,

With ray-like raiment spun from upper air?

Who gifted thee with deep mysterious power

To heal the aching heart of human woe?

At thy approach delights that long lay dead

Revive, and once again with glad life glow.

To honour thee a hymn doth Nature raise;

The babbling brooks and birds in chorus blend;

And pine-woods dark, shimmering in every spray,

To thee, as to a friend, their arms extend.

I ’m but a Stranger-Guest, sent from on high

To weary souls a draught of peace to bring,

To soften wrath, to soothe fierce enmity;

I ’m but a Stranger-Guest,—they call me “Spring.”

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Aleksándr Nikoláevich Ostróvski. (1823-1886.)

No other dramatist is so characteristically Russian as Ostróvski. His father was a poor scribe who acted as a kind of attorney to that merchant class of Moscow which had not yet emerged from the manners and beliefs preceding the days of the reforms of Peter the Great. Ostróvski had, consequently, ample opportunity of getting acquainted with these people, who had heretofore entirely escaped the scrutiny of the litterateurs. When, in 1843, he was expelled from the university for some misbehaviour, he found employment in the Commercial Court, where he again came in contact with the merchant class. He had early developed a passion for the theatre, and in 1847 appeared two of his dramas, Pictures of Family Happiness and We’ll Square up Accounts with Our Own. The latter play gave offence to the merchants, who complained to the authorities, and Ostróvski was placed under police surveillance. Only five years later did he take up his pen again, and as before he had strictly adhered to the traditions of Gógol’s school, so now he paid his tribute to the Slavophile sentiments of Moscow by idealising his characters. The best drama of that period is Poverty is no Vice. After the Crimean War he began to represent in his dramas the negative sides of the wealthy merchant class, and to oppose to them the honesty and dignity of intelligent men. His chief production, The Storm, belongs to that period. He also tried himself in historical dramas, or Dramatic Chronicles, as he called them, but they are the weakest of his works. All his dramas are more properly realistic scenes lacking the element of conscious effect: they are supremely natural and tax the ability of the greatest actors. Ostróvski’s dramas soon became very popular, and he was elected president of the Society of Russian Dramatic Authors. Just before his death the Moscow Theatre was put in his charge, but his new activity was cut short by his illness, brought about by years of privation and suffering.

In English translation are to be found: The Storm, by Constance Garnett, London, 1899; Incompatibility of Temper and A Domestic Picture, in The Humour of Russia, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895. Extracts from several dramas are given in The Modern Russian Drama, in Edinburgh Review, cxxviii. (1868).

THE STORM

ACT V. SCENE 1. TWILIGHT. KULÍGIN (sitting on a bench), KABANÓV (walking in the square)

Kulígin (singing).

“In darkness shrouded are the skies,—

To rest themselves all close their eyes.”

(noticing Kabanóv). Good-evening, sir! Which way are you bound?

Kabanóv. Home. Good friend, have you heard what has happened with us? Our whole family is upset.

Kulígin. Yes, I have heard so, sir.

Kabanóv. I have been away to Moscow, you know. Mamma kept giving me all kinds of instructions for my journey, but no sooner I got away, than I began having a good time. I was so happy to be free. I drank all the way up, and I kept on drinking in Moscow. I just went on a spree to last me for a whole year! Not even once did I stop to think of home, and if I did, I never should have dreamed what has happened here. You have heard about it?

Kulígin. Yes, I have, sir.

Kabanóv. My friend, I am a miserable man now! I am ruined just for nothing, for no cause at all.

Kulígin. Your mother is rather harsh.

Kabanóv. That ’s so. She is the cause of it all. Do tell me, why should I suffer for it? I just stopped at Dikóy’s,—well, we took a drink together; I thought it might make me feel easier, but no, Kulígin, it ’s worse! See, how my wife has treated me! It could not be worse⸺

Kulígin. It ’s a mixed-up affair, sir. It is hard to judge between you.

Kabanóv. No, don’t say that. What can there be worse? It is not enough to kill her for that. Mamma says she ought be buried alive for a punishment! But I love her, and it makes me feel bad to lay a finger upon her. I did give her some blows, but mamma told me to do so. You must understand, Kulígin, that I feel sorry for her. Mamma torments her to death, and she walks around like a shadow and does not say a word. She does nothing but weep, and she is melting away like wax. And I worry myself to death, as I look at her.

Kulígin. Could you not, sir, make up with her? You ought to forgive her, and never mention the affair again. I suppose you yourself are not without sin!

Kabanóv. Of course not!

Kulígin. Only you must not reproach her when you are drunk! She would make you a good wife, sir, I am sure, better than any other.

Kabanóv. Don’t you see, Kulígin, it is all right with me, but mamma—there is no getting along with her!⸺

Kulígin. It is time, sir, to live by your own wits.

Kabanóv. Well, what am I to do,—to tear myself to pieces? They say, I have no sense of my own, and so I have to live by other people’s sense. I tell you, I ’ll drink away whatever little sense I have left, let mamma then bother with me as with a senseless fool.

Kulígin. It is bad, sir! Well, and Borís Grigórevich, what about him?

Kabanóv. They are sending that scoundrel to Kyákhta, into China. His uncle is sending him to the office of a merchant whom he knows there. He is going there for three years.

Kulígin. Well, what does he do, sir?

Kabanóv. He is suffering, too: he weeps. We fell upon him, his uncle and I, and we kept scolding him, but he did not say a word. He acts like a wild man. “Do with me what you please,” says he, “only do not torment her!” He is pitying her too.

Kulígin. He is a good man, sir.

Kabanóv. He is ready for the journey, and the horses are waiting. He is pining for her dreadfully. He wants to say good-bye to her, I see. What do I care? He has done enough harm. He is my enemy, you know, Kulígin! He ought to be quartered, so that he might know⸺

Kulígin. We must forgive our enemies, sir!

Kabanóv. Go and talk to mamma about that, and see what she will tell you. Yes, friend Kulígin, all our family is now broken up. They are acting not like relatives to each other, but like enemies. Mamma has been nagging Várvara so long; she could stand it no longer, and so she just got up, and ran away.

Kulígin. Where has she gone?

Kabanóv. Who knows? They say she has run away with Vánka Kudryásh, and he can’t be found anywhere either. Now, Kulígin, I must tell you that is all mamma’s doing: she has been tormenting her, and locking her up. “Don’t lock me up,” she said, “or it will be only worse!” And just so it has happened. Do tell me, what I am to do now! Do instruct me how to live now! I loathe the house, I am ashamed to meet people, and if I try to work, my hands drop helpless. Here I am going home, but it is not to find pleasure there. (Enter Glásha.)

Glásha. Tíkhon Iványch!

Kabanóv. What is it now?

Glásha. Things have gone wrong at home, sir!

Kabanóv. Lord! There has been enough trouble! Speak, what is it?

Glásha. Your good wife⸺

Kabanóv. Well, what? Is she dead?

Glásha. No, sir, she has gone off, and we can’t find her anywhere. We have run our legs off, trying to find her.

Kabanóv. Kulígin! We must look for her. Do you know, friend, what I am afraid of? That in her wretchedness she may lay hands upon herself! It is just terrible, how she is grieving! It makes my heart burst to look at her. (To Glásha.) That is the way you have watched her. Is it long she has been gone?

Glásha. Not very long, sir! It is our fault, we did not watch her better. However, one can’t be watching every minute.

Kabanóv. Well, what are you standing for? Go, run! (Exit Glásha.) Let us go, too, Kulígin! (Exeunt. The stage is empty for a little while. From the opposite side enters Katerína, and slowly walks across the stage.)

SCENE 2. KATERÍNA ALONE. (During the whole monologue and the following scenes she speaks slowly and repeats words, as if in thought and in a state of forgetfulness.)

Katerína. No, he is nowhere! What is he doing now,—the poor fellow? If I only could bid him good-bye, and then—and then I do not mind dying. Why did I lead him into misfortune? I am no better off for that! I alone ought to suffer! As it is, I have ruined myself, and I have ruined him: to me—dishonour, to him—eternal remorse! Yes, to me—dishonour, to him—eternal remorse. (Silence.) If I only could think what he said to me? How he pitied me? What were the words he said? (Clasps her head.) I can’t remember them, I have forgotten everything. The nights, the nights weigh heavily upon me! All lie down to sleep, I too. All feel well, but I feel as if I were going into the grave. It is so terrible in the dark! I hear a noise and singing, as if they were burying someone, only so soft, and barely heard, far, far from me⸺ How glad one is when daylight comes! But I do not like to get up,—the same people again, the same talks, the same torment. Why do they look that way at me? Why don’t they kill nowadays? Why have they changed it? They say, they used to kill. If they took and threw me into the Vólga, I should be happy. “If we kill you,” they say, “your sin will be taken from you; so live and be tormented for your sin.” I have suffered enough! How much longer shall I suffer? What am I to live for now, yes, what for? I want nothing,—nothing gives me pleasure, God’s world gives me no pleasure! But death does not come. You call for it, but it does not come. Whatever I see, whatever I hear, causes me pain here (points to her heart). If I could live with him, maybe there would be some pleasure yet for me. Well, what difference does it make? I have lost my soul anyway. How I long for him! Oh, how I long for him! If I cannot see you, hear me at least from far away! Boisterous winds, bear my grief to him! O Lord, I am weary, I am weary! (Walks to the river bank and cries at the top of her voice:) My joy, my soul, my life, I love you! Answer! (Weeps. Enter Borís.)

SCENE 3. KATERÍNA AND BORÍS

Borís (not seeing Katerína). O Lord! That is her voice! Where is she? (Looks round.)

Katerína (runs up to him and falls on his neck). At last I see you again! (Weeps on his breast. Silence.)

Borís. Well, God has granted us to weep together.

Katerína. You have not forgotten me?

Borís. How can you speak of forgetting?

Katerína. Oh, no, it was not that, not that! You are not angry?

Borís. Angry for what?

Katerína. Forgive me! I did not mean to do you any harm: I was not free myself. I did not know what I said, and what I did.

Borís. Don’t speak of it! Don’t!

Katerína. Well, how is it with you? What are you going to do?

Borís. I am going away.

Katerína. Where are you going?

Borís. Far away, Kátya, to Siberia.

Katerína. Take me away from here.

Borís. I can’t, Kátya. I am not going of my own will: my uncle is sending me off, and the horses are waiting already. My uncle gave me but a minute to be away; I wanted to bid farewell to the place where we used to see each other.

Katerína. God speed you! Do not grieve over me. At first, I suppose, you, poor fellow, will pine for me, but you will soon forget me.

Borís. Let us not talk of me! I am a free bird! But how will it be with you? What of your mother-in-law?

Katerína. She torments me, she locks me up. She tells everybody, and my husband too: “Do not trust her, she is sly!” They follow me all day and laugh at me before my eyes. At every word they reproach me with you.

Borís. And your husband?

Katerína. He is now kind, and now angry, but he is drinking all the time. I loathe him, I loathe him; I loathe his kindness worse than his blows.

Borís. It is hard for you, Kátya.

Katerína. Yes, so hard, so hard, that death would be easier!

Borís. Who could have told that we would have to suffer so for our love? It would have been better if I had run away then.

Katerína. It was for misfortune that I saw you. I have seen little joy, but oh, how much sorrow! And how much there is still ahead of me! Well, what use is there to think of what will be? I am seeing you now, and that they will not take away from me! I need nothing else. All I wanted was to see you. Now I feel much more at ease: as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders. And there, I thought that you were angry with me, that you cursed me⸺

Borís. How could you? How could you?

Katerína. No, it is not that I mean. I wanted to say something else. I was longing for you, that is it; and now, I have seen you⸺

Borís. If they should find us here!

Katerína. Wait, wait! I wanted to tell you something! I have forgotten again! Something important I had to tell you! my head is in a whirl, I can’t remember anything.

Borís. It is time for me to go, Kátya!

Katerína. Wait, wait!

Borís. Well, what was it you wanted to say?

Katerína. I will tell you right away. (Thinking a moment.) Yes! As you will travel on the road, don’t let any beggar go by without giving him something, and tell them to pray for my sinful soul.

Borís. Ah, if these people knew how hard it is for me to leave you! God grant they may some day feel as bad as I do now! Good-bye, Kátya! (Embraces her and is about to go.) Rascals! Monsters! If I only had the power!

Katerína. Wait, wait! Let me take a last look at you! (Looks into his eyes.) That will do me! Now, God be with you! Go, go quickly!

Borís (walks a few steps and stops). Kátya, something is wrong! You have something in your mind! I shall worry on my journey, thinking of you!

Katerína. No, no! God speed you! (Borís is about to walk up to her.) Don’t, don’t, that is enough!

Borís (sobbing). Well, God be with you! I must pray to God that she may die soon, that she may not suffer long! Farewell! (Greets her.)

Katerína. Farewell! (Exit Borís. Katerína follows him with her eyes and stands a while, lost in thought.)

SCENE 4. KATERÍNA (alone)

Where shall I go now? Home? No, I might as well go into the grave. What—home, what—grave? It is better in the grave⸺ A little grave under a tree—how nice!⸺ The sun warms it, the rain waters it—in the spring the grass, the soft grass will grow up—the birds will fly to that tree, they will sing, and will bring up their little ones, the flowers will bloom: yellow, red, blue, all kinds of flowers (in thought), all kinds of flowers⸺ How quiet! how nice! I almost feel better! I do not wish even to think of life! To live again? No, no, I do not wish it—it is not good! I loathe the people, I loathe the house, I loathe the walls! I will not go there! No, no, I will not! If I go to them, they will come and talk to me, and what is that to me? Ah, it is dark! And they are singing somewhere! What are they singing? I cannot make it out⸺ Oh, if I could die now⸺ What are they singing? It is all the same whether death will come to me, or I myself—no, I cannot live! It is a sin! They will not pray for me? He who loves me, will pray⸺ They cross the hands over the breast—in the coffin! Yes, it is so—I remember. And if they catch me, they will take me home by force⸺ Ah, quickly, quickly! (Goes to the river bank. Aloud.) My friend! My joy! Farewell! (Exit. Enter Mrs. Kabanóv, Kabanóv, Kulígin, and a workman with a lantern.)

SCENE 5. MRS. KABANÓV, KABANÓV, AND KULÍGIN

Kulígin. They say, they saw her here.

Kabanóv. Is it certain?

Kulígin. They certainly saw her.

Kabanóv. Thank the Lord they saw her alive.

Mrs. Kabanóv. And you have been frightened and crying! And for whom? Don’t fret: she will give us plenty of trouble yet.

Kabanóv. Who would have thought that she would come here! It is such a public place. Who would ever think of hiding here.

Mrs. Kabanóv. You see for yourself what she is doing. The creature she is! She wants to keep up her character! (People come from all sides with lanterns.)

One of the Crowd. Well, have you found her?

Mrs. Kabanóv. Why, no. She is vanished.

A Few Voices. I declare! That is strange! Where could she hide?

One of the Crowd. She will be found!

Another. Of course, she will be!

A Third. She will come herself, I think. (A voice behind the scene: “Hoa there, a boat!”)

Kulígin (from the river bank). Who is calling? What is up? (Voice: “A woman has thrown herself in the water!” Kulígin and several men after him run out.)

SCENE 6. THE SAME WITHOUT KULÍGIN

Kabanóv. O God, it is she! (Wants to run off. Mrs. Kabanóv holds him back.) Mamma, let me go, I must! I will save her! or I will myself—what is the use of living without her!

Mrs. Kabanóv. I will not let you, indeed not! Kill yourself for her sake!—is she worth it? She has brought enough disgrace on us without this!

Kabanóv. Let me!

Mrs. Kabanóv. They ’ll save her without you. I ’ll curse you if you go.

Kabanóv (falling on his knees). Just to look at her!

Mrs. Kabanóv. You will look at her when they have pulled her out.

Kabanóv (rises. To the crowd.) Well, friends, did you see anything?

First. It is dark down there, you can’t see anything. (A noise behind the scene.)

Second. They are calling there, but I can’t make out what.

First. That is Kulígin’s voice.

Second. They are walking along the bank with a lantern.

First. They are coming this way. They are carrying her. (A few people are returning.)

One of the Returning Men. Kulígin is a fine fellow! Here close by, in the whirlpool, by the shore: with the fire we could see a distance off in the water, and he saw her dress, and pulled her out.

Kabanóv. Is she alive?

Another Man. Alive? Why, she leaped high: the bank is steep here, and she must have fallen on an anchor, the poor woman is bruised! And yet, my friends, she looks as though alive! Only on the temple there is a small wound, and only one small drop of blood. (Kabanóv starts to run, and meets Kulígin with the people carrying Katerína.)

SCENE 7. THE SAME AND KULÍGIN

Kulígin. Here is your Katerína. Do with her what you please! Her body is here, take it; but her soul is not yours now: she is now before the Judge who is more merciful than you! (Puts her on the ground and runs away.)

Kabanóv (rushes to Katerína). Kátya! Kátya!

Mrs. Kabanóv. Enough! It is a sin even to weep for her!

Kabanóv. Mamma, you have killed her! You! You!

Mrs. Kabanóv. How dare you? Are you forgetting yourself? Do you know to whom you are speaking?

Kabanóv. You have killed her! You! You!

Mrs. Kabanóv. I ’ll talk to you at home. (Bowing low to the people.) I thank you, good people, for your services! (All bow.)

Kabanóv. It is well with you, Kátya! But why am I left in this world to suffer! (Falls on his wife’s body.)

Mikhaíl Evgráfovich Saltykóv. (pseud. Shchedrín). (1826-1889.)

Saltykóv was descended from an ancient noble family. He received his first education at home, at ten years of age entered the Moscow Institute for Sons of Noblemen, and two years later was chosen, on account of his excellent progress, to be sent to the Lyceum at Tsárskoe-Seló. In that school the memory of its distinguished alumnus, Púshkin, was still fresh, and it was expected that there should be a continuator of the great poet in every class. Thus Saltykóv wrote his first poem in 1841, but he soon abandoned poetry for satire. After leaving the Lyceum, Saltykóv threw himself into the whirlpool of pleasures, even in this emulating the older generation. In 1847 appeared his first story. The following year he wrote A Mixed Affair, which, like his previous effort, was quite weak and insignificant, but as it happened to have made its appearance in the critical year 1848, when the censorship was unusually severe, he was suspected of evil purposes and was banished to the Government of Vyátka. He there remained eight years, but served with distinction under the Governor and rose to various posts of eminence. Upon his return from exile he published his Provincial Sketches, in which he gave some gloomy pictures of provincial oppression and dishonesty. Saltykóv created a special language for his satires, which, on account of the endless allusions and masterly word-creations, are the despair of the translator and have made his admirable works less known abroad than they deserve to be. In his long literary career Saltykóv has adapted himself to the conditions of the time, and thus his satires give a continuous record of the reverse of Russian life for upwards of forty years. Among his best works are Pompadours and Pompadouresses, The Tashkentians, Refuge Monrepos, Diary of a Provincial at St. Petersburg, and his famous The Golovlévs, which enjoys a reputation like Gógol’s Dead Souls.

In English translation are to be found: Tchinovniks, Sketches of Provincial Life, from the memoirs of the retired Conseiller de Cour Stchedrin (Saltikow), translated with notes from the Russian by F. Aston, London, 1861; The Recollections of Onésime Chenapan, The Self-Sacrificing Rabbit, and The Eagle as Mecænas, in The Humour of Russia, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895; in Free Russia were given The Fool, in vol. i., No. 5, The Deceitful Editor and the Credulous Reader, in vol. i., No. 9, Story of how One Peasant Saved Two Generals, in vol. ii., No. 6, and Misha and Vania, in vol. iii., Nos. 6 and 7.

FROM “BEYOND THE BORDER”

Having grown tired of my fruitless sojourn in the world of concrete facts, I self-confidently attempted to fly as a steel-grey eagle into the sphere of abstractions. In my younger days I took such flights quite often. Together with my other companions I liked to pamper myself with excursions into that region where one is supposed to get “revelations of invisible things,” and, I remember, these excursions were a source of great pleasure to me. I cannot say I saw that region clearly defined, but, in any case, the contemplation of it evoked in me no fear, but a decidedly pleasurable sensation. In general, we then lived with more vigour (of course, I have in view only myself and my contemporaries), though I must confess our basal fund of life was impaired by inconsistencies that bordered on frivolities. Two lives went side by side: one, so to say, pro domo, the other for the fear of the Jews, that is, in the manner of a justificatory document to the authorities.

You are sitting at home and with your whole being, so to say, have transferred yourself into the sphere of the “revelation of invisible things.” Suddenly, the fateful hour strikes,—run to your bureau! You don your trowsers and your office uniform, and fifteen minutes later you are in an entirely different sphere, in the sphere of the “confirmation of visible things.” Of course, the questions in the two places are quite different. In the first sphere the question is whether the golden age is to be sought behind or before us; in the second the question is the establishment of golden ages by means of provincial government offices and departments of charity, on the basis of explicit statutory enactments anent this subject. You stay there a while, scratch your pen, and behold! again strikes the fateful hour. You run home again, change your trowsers, put on a coat or a smoking-jacket, and you transport yourself once more into the sphere of the “revelation of invisible things.” Thus our youth passed⸺

The present generation will, no doubt, regard this running from one sphere into another as not very consistent, but in those days we managed to unite them, and we felt no awkwardness. And now, after many, many years, passing in accidental solitude, the stream of my youth has suddenly burst upon me. Come, thought I, I will run, as in olden days. However, I did not get as far as running, for, though my youthful recollections streamed upon me with vim, I had to convince myself that my legs were not what they used to be, and that the blood in my veins was no longer the same. And then, the questions that these recollections brought back—really, I do not know what to call them. Some, who are more lenient, call them untimely, while others, who are unquestionably evil-minded, blankly call them harmful⸺ Well, you may judge for yourself.

The first question: “Does history console?” Some forty years ago—I am quite sure of it—I should in all truth have answered: “Yes, it consoles.” But what shall I say now? To tell the truth, I have even forgotten how to think by principles, without prefatory admixtures. I begin with the tenebrousness of Time, and no sooner does light begin to glimmer than I strike river Pinéga with Vilyúy, or some statute of abatement, and there I stick fast. Precisely that has happened now. Barely had the question peeped at me, and barely had I proceeded to dismember it, when God knows whence bobbed up Major-General Terrible and so flashed his eyes at me that I was completely stunned. “No, I had better to-morrow—” I confusedly said to myself, and I that very moment hastened to duck so that my ears might not be seen.

The second question: “Can one live with the people, and depend upon them?” Forty years ago I certainly should have answered: “One not only can, but it is not possible to live otherwise.” Now⸺ No sooner do I begin to expatiate and prove “from principle” that human activity outside of the sphere of the people is objectless and senseless, than the hide of my whole being begins to shudder. There stare at me those fellows of Hunting Row,[22] those colabourers of Hay Market, and, at last, a whole mass of temporising rascals, à la Napoleon III., who, too, had proclaimed: tout pour le peuple et par le peuple⸺ Of course, the conclusion was that I had better to-morrow⸺

The third question: “Is it possible to lead a life in which you are supposed to eat mushroom pie exclusively that you may restrain your tongue behind your teeth?” Forty years ago I, no doubt, should have answered again: “No, it is not possible to live that way.” And now?—Now: “No, I had better to-morrow⸺”

In short, I attempted to give answers to a whole stack of questions, but alas! neither concreteness, nor abstraction,—nothing awakened impotent thought. I struggled for quite a while, and I came very near calling out: “Vódka!” but fortunately that drink is not so accessible in Paris as to console one at will.

So I lay me down to sleep, having carried away from my two-days’ blues the truth that under certain conditions of life a spree must be considered not so much from the standpoint of a vitiated will as in the sense of an irrepressible necessity of a grieving soul⸺ I had a disturbed, painful dream. At first there hovered before me some incoherent fragments, but by degrees they formed themselves into something connected, there was a whole colloquy, the heroine of which was—a swine! However, this colloquy is so interesting that I do not regard it nugatory to share it with my readers in the form in which my memory has preserved it.

THE TRIUMPHANT SWINE, OR THE CONVERSATION OF THE SWINE WITH TRUTH—AN INTERRUPTED SCENE

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

SWINE, stall-fed beast; his bristles have become glossy and shining as the result of uninterrupted contact with the stable mire.

TRUTH, a person that, by rights, is supposed to be eternally young, but in reality is badly knocked up. By order of the authorities she is covered with rags, through which glints her full classical uniform, i. e., nakedness.

The action takes place in the stable.

Swine (screwing up his face). Is it true what they say, that the sun is shining in the sky?

Truth. Yes, Swine.

Swine. Really? I have never seen any of your suns here in the stable where I live.

Truth. That ’s so, Swine, because when Nature was creating you, she kept on saying: ’T is not for you, O Swine, to see the bright sun!

Swine. You don’t say! (Authoritatively.) In my opinion, all these suns of yours are rank heresy—eh?

(Truth, silent and embarrassed, arranges her rags. In the audience are heard voices: “You are right, Swine! Heresy! Heresy!”)

Swine (continues to grimace). Is it so?—I have heard that they say in papers that liberty is the most precious possession of human society?

Truth. Yes, Swine.

Swine. In my opinion, we are surfeited with liberty. Here, I have been living without intermission in this stable, and I have no worry! What more do I want? If I take a notion, I stick my snout in the trough, or rummage the manure⸺what more liberty do I want? (Authoritatively.) You are all traitors, as I look at you—eh?

(Truth again tries to conceal her nakedness. The audience shouts: “You are right, Swine! Traitors! Traitors!” Some of the audience demand that Truth shall be taken to the police station. The swine grunts with self-satisfaction, seeing himself equal to the situation.)

Swine. What ’s the use, taking Truth to the station? They ’ll only keep her there for appearances, and then they ’ll let her out again. (Lies down in the manure, and falls into sentimentality.) Oh, nowadays those police people speak the same language as the feuilleton writers! A few days ago I read in a paper that the cause of our weakness is that our laws are only written for appearances⸺

Truth. So you read, Swine?

Swine. Now and then. Only I do not take it in as it is written⸺ I understand it as I please⸺ (To the audience.) So, as I say, my friends! We will not send her to the police station, we ’ll get at her in our own way⸺ To-day we ’ll put one little question to her, and to-morrow—two⸺ (Meditating.) We won’t get away with her at once,—we ’ll just chaw her by degrees⸺ (Panting, approaches Truth, grabs her by her calf, and begins to bite her.) That ’s the way!

(Truth shrinks with pain; the audience yells. Shouts are heard: “You are a brick, Swine! You are a good one!”)

Swine. What? You like it? Well, that ’ll be enough for this time! (Stops chawing.) Now, tell me, where is the root of evil?

Truth (confused). The root of evil, Swine? The root of evil—the root of evil—is (with decision, and unexpectedly to herself) in you, Swine!

Swine (furious). Ah, that ’s the way you talk! Now, look out! Did n’t you say that universal truth was incomparably superior to police-truth?

Truth (trying to avoid a direct answer). Though under certain conditions of life, one cannot deny⸺

Swine. Stop wagging your tail! We have heard of those ifs and buts before! Talk straight! Is there in your opinion a certain special truth that is superior to police-truth?

Truth. O Swine, how treacherously mean⸺

Swine. Very well, we ’ll talk later about that. (Treading with heavier step.) Go ahead! Is it true you have said that the laws must protect all alike, for, say you, otherwise human society would change into a chaotic mass of warring elements? What kind of laws have you been talking about? What was the cause, madam, of your glibness, and at whose door did you wish to place it—eh?

Truth. Ah, Swine!

Swine. Swine me no swine to my snout! I know without you that I am a swine. I am a swine, and you are Truth⸺ (The swine’s grunting sounds like irony.) Go, Swine, make for Truth! (Begins to chaw. To the audience.) Fine, is n’t it?

(Truth shudders with pain. The audience goes into convulsions. On all sides is heard: “Fine! Give it to her, Swine! Give it to her! Go for her! Chaw her! Look at that impudent one; she dares have anything to say!”)

The colloquy was interrupted here. I could not make out anything else, because there was raised such a hubbub in the stable that I could only dimly catch the sounds: “Is it true that in the university⸺” “Is it true that in the female colleges⸺” In a twinkling of the eye Truth was enmeshed in a whole net of stupidly treacherous deceit, and every attempt at disentangling from that net was met by the swine’s chawing and the thunder of the crowd: “Friends, let us judge her with the people’s judgment!”

I lay like one fettered, expecting any moment to be chawed up myself. I, who had all my life been repeating in frivolous self-confidence: “God won’t permit it, the swine won’t eat me!”—suddenly yelled out at the top of my voice: “The swine will eat me up! He will!”

That very moment a loud rap at the door made me wake up.

[22] Poultry and game market.

Dmítri Ivánovich Písarev. (1841-1868.)

Písarev was the son of wealthy gentlefolk who gave him a very careful training at home, so that at the age of four he spoke fluently three languages, at the age of eleven entered an advanced class of the Gymnasium, graduating with a gold medal, and at sixteen years was by especial permission admitted to the university. While there, he contributed some reviews for periodicals and wrote an elaborate dissertation on Apollonius of Tyana. In 1862 he was arrested for having furnished a secret printing establishment with an article on Herzen, and was kept for four years in prison. Here he composed his essays for which he is known. He taught a philosophic sensualism and denied the value of art, and with it of poetry for art’s sake,—in short, he stood on the standpoint of Bazárov in Turgénev’s Fathers and Sons. He thus represented the reaction of the early sixties against the opportunism of the previous decade. In his Flowers of Harmless Humour he made an attack against the satirist Shchedrín, whom he advised to abandon his literary labours for the popularisation of the sciences. He died by accidental drowning.

FLOWERS OF HARMLESS HUMOUR

Poets fare badly in our days. Their credit is rapidly sinking. Unfeeling critics and soulless scoffers are breaking down the public’s respect for the great mysteries of the unconscious creative power. Formerly they used to talk of a poet’s inspiration; formerly a poet was thought to be a favourite of the gods and an intimate of the Muses. Though these mythological metaphors were not supposed to be interpreted in a literal sense, yet under these metaphors one continually felt something good and mysterious, something intangible and inapproachable, something that must for ever remain inaccessible to us, poor clodhoppers. Fellows of our kind were permitted to learn something about it only from the indistinct accounts of the artists who “like gods have access to the Olympian halls,” where they are shown very interesting and frequently very immodest scenes.

Now all that has changed. Brother clodhopper has gathered an enormous force, and he undertakes to discuss everything. He does not acknowledge any inspiration, does not hanker for any Olympian halls, in spite of the fact that the poet gives a detailed account how a certain artist was once shown in these halls “a white nape’s curvedness” in “eternal ideals,” and things in general which “divinity discloses to mortals in paltry doles” (A. Máykov). Our brother clodhopper denies all that with his innate coarseness of feeling and boldness of expression. Those are all flowers of fancy, he says, but you had better tell us: What mental power does the poet possess? Is his development broad, and his culture thorough?

What questions these are! Are they pertinent? Are they refined? Is it permissible to summon a favourite of the gods and to question him like a guilty high-school boy? If it at all has come to such unheard of questions, if faith has been lost in divine inspiration, if the periodicals find it more interesting to have their correspondents in Paris or London, in Sarátov or Irkútsk, rather than upon Parnassus or in the Olympian halls,—then, of course, there is nothing left for the peaceable poet to do but to hang his darling lyre on a nail, and to enter the Government service or turn to the sombre occupations of agriculture. If it keeps on in that way, there will at last come a dramatic moment, when the last poet will embrace the last esthetician and, sobbing, will say to him:

“My friend, we are alone. The world has turned sour and is decaying. The microscope and the scalpel give us no rest. If we do not conceal ourselves or do not turn naturalists, they will put us alive into spirits, in order to preserve complete the last specimens of an extinct species that had remarkable external resemblances to man. My friend, when we die, the last gate that leads to the Olympian dwellings will be nailed up and securely hidden from view, not by bricks, but by a heap of all the unsold copies of my poems and all the uncut sheets of your critical essays.”

“Well,” will say the esthetician, “if it is so, then all is ended. The gate will for ever remain inaccessible! No man will ever climb, no animal will ever jump over my critiques and your poesy.” And, clasping each other in a tight embrace, as people embrace on the grave of everything that is dear to them, our last Mohicans will start on a run to the shop to buy themselves a microscope and chemical retorts, as appurtenances of a masquerade that is to save them from an untimely and involuntary descent into spirits. The history of the regenerated specimens of the extinct species will end by the esthetician’s and poet’s marriage, à la face du soleil et de la nature, to two girls who are medical practitioners and who in times of yore used to completely upset their present admirers by their incomprehensibly solid education, their indecently firm manner of thinking, and their complete absence of feminine grace, that is, weakness, silliness, and affectation. The children of these two happy pairs will get to hear some dim references to estheticians and poets, but their grandchildren will never hear that. Both species will become entirely unknown, as are unknown to us many slugs of the primeval world, that have left neither bones, nor shells, nor any other traces of their mundane existence.

From many separate features that are scattered in my prophetic improvisation, the reader may notice that its realisation belongs to a very distant future. In all likelihood the great-great-grandfathers and the great-great-grandmothers of the last esthetician and the last poet are at the present moment not yet in the wombs of their mothers; yet, in spite of the remoteness of the decisive catastrophe, there are evil omens of it even in our own time⸺ There are very many literary parasites, but out of the murky and miserable crowd of the intellectual proletariat rise only those who know how to acquire a flexible and variegated form of expression. These brilliant parasites carry form to a truly incredible perfection. They produce in their language the same kind of wonderful roulades that Kóntski does on the violin or Rubinstein on the piano. If this virtuosity is acquired by habit and practice, it, naturally, behooves to make use of it: it is a capital from which one must derive interest. And all the simple-minded reader has to do, is to roll his eyes and take in the wonder! One is present at the creation of a world in miniature: everything is made out of nothing; emptiness is made to appear as fulness, and it is made to appear fulness so naturally that one has only to shrug his shoulders: “Yes, he is an artist, a painter, a professor of white magic, a Bosco, and even a Mikháyla Vasílevich!” Of course, the public says “Ah!” and goes into ecstasies, and how can it help going into ecstasies, when the miracles are produced right before its eyes!

When the parasite begins to receive interest from his capital, he simply and definitely creates, in order to apply his technical skill to something. He has no prompting to tell society any ideas; he has no feeling that is persistently seeking to come out and manifest itself; he does not at all wish to act consciously upon the development of society in one direction or another; he is not a thinker, not a social factor, and not a poet in the higher and now forgotten sense of the word. He is a master workman of articles, novels, or verses, and, being a sensible artisan, he does not wish his skill to be lost in vain. Why should he sit with folded hands, having learned a trade? Why should he not start out on the hunt of roubles and laurel wreaths, as long as there are good people who lavish both in fair abundance?

His reasoning is faultless, and this reasoning leads straightway to the complete triumph and unlimited domination of pure art. Some people write because their being boils over with the impassioned work of mind and feelings. It is evident that their mind and feelings, being abroad because of the creative process, are roused by impressions that are independent of that process.

Others write in order to act upon society. The aim of their activity is independent of the process, as we see in Byelínski, Dobrolyúbov, and the author of What is to be Done?[23]

Others again write because they have learned to write and because they can write without the least labour, just as a nightingale sings and a rose exhales perfume. Their activity is causeless and aimless, that is, they have a cause and an aim, but these can have no effect upon the direction of the creative process. Suppose the versifier wants to have a beaver collar sewn on to his warm overcoat. Here is a stimulating cause for dipping his pen in the inkstand; however, he will, in all probability, not write of beaver collars, but of the vicissitudes of fate that affected three ancient sages,[24] or of the misfortunes of a poor girl who died in the spring by the sounds of her father’s fiddle, or of some other elevated and beautiful thing that has nothing in common with the tempting display of the furrier next door.

He has also an aim: the versifier wishes to sell his poem to a periodical, to get for it as much as possible, and to receive on account all they will give him. Yet Seneca, Lucan, and Lucius warmly discuss the immortality of the soul, and not where he will get most, whether in the “Contemporary” or the “Memoirs of the Fatherland.” And dying Mánya, in her last moments, is interested in the spring leafage, instead of disquieting herself with the ticklish question: I wonder whether they will let me have fifty roubles in advance at the “Russian Word”?

It is clear that cause and aim do not penetrate into the sanctuary of creativeness. The sanctuary remains unpolluted, and people that pine for a beaver collar and that dream of a tempting advance payment may be recognised as high priests of pure art. The question will, naturally, not be changed if instead of a beaver collar I should put a craving for literary glory, and instead of an advance payment of fifty roubles—applauses at public readings. The priest of pure art will in either case remain true to his vocation, and in either case he will remain a magnificent specimen of the genus parasite.

If it is not quite clear to the readers why our lyric poets, who represent a complete absence of ideas, may be included in the list of parasites that despoil the ideas of others, I will at once set them aright. Our lyric poets feed their destitution on the tiniest grains of thought and feelings that are the common possession of all men, stupid and wise, cultured and uncultured, honest and dishonest. Every man has some kind of a feeling when he looks at a pretty woman, and everybody knows that sensation and understands that it is known to others also, and that, consequently, it is useless and uninteresting to tell others about it. But the lyricists live, like the humming-birds, on flower dust; they have turned this trifling and well-known sentiment to their advantage and have begun to elicit an income from it, thanks to their ability to create something out of nothing and to clothe the intangible dust in thin-woven and variegated garments of iambics, chorees, anapests, dactyls, and amphibrachs.

The lyric poets, being tiny birds in the great family of parasites, prosper on what everybody knows and none but the lyric poets can or wish to make use of. Other larger parasites exploit in their favour not small grains of feeling and germs of thought, but whole, big feelings and whole, well-developed thoughts. These priests of pure art devour remarkable theories and majestic world conceptions. There are among these priests sparrows, and there are also elephants, and, as the proverb says, the bigger the vessel, the better the sailing,—the elephants, naturally, lay hold of the broadest and most daring world conceptions. They discuss with another’s voice the most important and the greatest questions of life; they perform their variations with so much aplomb and with such overpowering thunder that the reader is intimidated and reverentially bows his head before them.

But the temple of pure art is open alike for all its real devotees, for all the priests who have a pure heart and are innocent of independent mental labour. Thanks to this circumstance, the reader, though he may marvel and not believe his eyes, will see at the same altar, on the one hand, our little lyric poet Fet, on the other, our great humorist Shchedrín.

[23] Chernyshévski, whose name was tabooed by the censors.

[24] Máykov is meant; see p. 344.

Count Lev Nikoláevich Tolstóy. (1828-.)

Count Tolstóy was born in the estate of Yásnaya Polyána, in the Government of Túla. In 1837 his family settled in Moscow, but his father died soon after, and he returned to Yásnaya Polyána. In 1843 he entered the university at Kazán, and in 1848 graduated from the Faculty of Jurisprudence at St Petersburg. He again returned to his estate, where he remained till 1851. He then enrolled in the army and was stationed in the Caucasus, where he began his literary career with his sketches, Childhood, The Incursion, Boyhood, The Cossacks. He took part in the Crimean War, and during the campaign wrote his stories about Sebastopol. After the war Tolstóy settled in St. Petersburg, where he published a series of shorter stories. In these his disenchantment with existing conditions is clearly perceptible. In 1862 he married the daughter of Doctor Behrs, and went back to the estate of Yásnaya Polyána. Here he devoted himself to the education of the peasants and edited an educational periodical, Yásnaya Polyána, in which he evolved his radical views. Soon after he assumed a negative attitude to all progress, and has remained in it ever since. From 1865 to 1869 appeared his great novel War and Peace. Then he again returned to his pedagogical activity, and composed a large number of short stories for the peasants. In 1875 began to appear his other great novel, Ánna Karénin. At the same time he wrote his Confession, and devoted himself to the composition of theological tracts. His newly formulated theory of a return to common labour and simplicity of life has found many followers who emulate the life of their master under the name of Tolstoyists.

The first novel of Tolstóy’s to be translated was The Cossacks, by Eugene Schuyler, in 1878. Since then such a large number of translations of most of his works have appeared that it is not advisable to give them here; they may easily be found in late publishers’ annuals. The following names figure as translators of Tolstóy: A. Hulme Beaman, M. Cruger, E. J. Dillon, A. Delano, N. H. Dole, H. Sutherland Edwards, Constance Garnett, G. B. Halsted, Isabel Hapgood, Ch. Johnston, A. Loranger, Y. A. Ludwig, Louise Maude, W. Aylmer Maude, Count Norraikow, C. Dopoff, S. Rapoport and J. Kenworthy, V. Tchertkoff, W. M. Thompson, B. R. Tucker.

FROM “ÁNNA KARÉNIN”

“Do you know, I have been thinking of you,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich. “From what that doctor has told me, there are some awful things going on in your county; the doctor is quite a clever fellow. I have been telling you and I repeat it now: it is wrong for you not to go to the meetings and altogether to keep away from all agrarian interests. If decent people are going to withdraw from them, then, of course, everything will go God knows how. We are paying out money; it all goes on salaries, and we have no schools, no medical assistants, no midwives, no apothecary shops, nothing.”

“I have tried,” Levín answered softly and unwillingly, “but I can’t! What ’s to be done?”

“What is it that you can’t! I confess, I do not understand you. Indifference and inability I do not admit; is it, then, simply indolence?”

“Neither the one, nor the other, nor the third. I have tried, and I see that I can’t do anything,” said Levín.

He did not pay much attention to what his brother was saying. As he looked beyond the river at the field, he distinguished something black, but he could not make out whether it was a horse or a clerk on horseback.

“Why can’t you do anything? You have made an attempt, and in your opinion you did not succeed, so you have given it up. Have n’t you any ambition?”

“Ambition,” said Levín, touched to the quick by his brother’s words, “is incomprehensible to me. If they had told me in the university that others understand integral calculus, and that I do not, there would be a case for ambition. But here one must be convinced first of all that one must have a certain ability for that, and above all, that these affairs are really important.”

“Well, is n’t that important?” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, himself touched to the quick because his brother regarded as unimportant that which interested him, and because, evidently, he was not listening.

“It does not seem important to me, and does not interest me, so what are you going to do about that?” answered Levín, having in the meantime made out that what he saw was really the clerk and that the clerk had, no doubt, told the peasants to stop ploughing. They were turning over the ploughs. “Is it possible, they have done the ploughing?” he thought.

“But listen,” said his elder brother, with a frown on his beautiful, intelligent face, “there are limits to everything. It ’s all very nice to be an odd fellow, and a sincere man, and not to like deception,—I understand all that; but what you are saying has either no sense, or a very bad sense. How is it you find it unimportant that the people whom you profess to love⸺”

“I never professed,” thought Konstantín Levín.

“Are dying without receiving any aid? Coarse midwives are killing the children, and the people are steeped in ignorance and remain in the power of every scribe, whereas you have the means at hand to correct all that, and you do nothing, because in your opinion it is not important.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich had placed a dilemma before him: “Either you are so undeveloped that you cannot see all that you are able to do, or you do not wish to sacrifice your quiet and your vainglory, or what not, in order to do it.”

Konstantín Levín felt that there was nothing left for him to do but submit or confess an absence of love for the common weal. And this offended and grieved him.

“Both,” he spoke with decision; “I can’t see how one can⸺”

“What? You can’t, by making proper use of money, give them medical help?”

“As far as I can see, it is impossible⸺ I see no possibility of furnishing medical aid in all the places of the four thousand square versts of our county, with our freshets, blizzards, and working season. Besides, I have no faith in medicine.”

“Come now, that is not just⸺ I can give you a thousand examples⸺ Well, and schools?”

“What are the schools for?”

“You don’t mean that! Can there be any doubt of the use of education? If it is good for you, it is also good for everybody else.”

Konstantín Levín felt himself morally pushed to the wall, and so he became excited and involuntarily expressed the main cause of his indifference to the common good.

“May be all that is good. But why should I bother about establishing medical centres which I am not going to use, or schools to which I am not going to send my children, to which even the peasants do not want to send theirs, and I am not yet firmly convinced that they should?” said he.

This unexpected view of the affair for a moment startled Sergyéy Ivánovich; but he at once thought out a new plan of attack. He kept silent, pulled out one fishing-rod, threw it in at another place, and, smiling, turned to his brother.

“You will pardon me: in the first place, a medical centre is much needed. There, we had to send for the county doctor to attend to Agáfya Mikháylovna.”

“Well, I think her hand will always stay crooked.”

“That is an open question⸺ Then, a literate peasant will make a more useful labourer.”

“I don’t know, you may ask anybody you please,” answered Konstantín Levín emphatically,—“literate peasants are much worse as labourers. You can’t fix the roads with them; and if they have to build a bridge, they ’ll swipe the material.”

“However,” frowningly said Sergyéy Ivánovich, who did not like contradictions, especially such as continually jumped from one subject to another and without connection adduced new proofs, so that it was impossible to tell what to answer first, “however, that is not the question. Let me ask you, do you acknowledge education to be a benefit to the people?”

“I do,” said Levín incautiously, and immediately was conscious that he did not say what was in his mind. He felt that since he did acknowledge it, the proof would be forthcoming that he was talking senseless bosh. He did not know how that would be argued, but he was sure that the logical deduction was forthcoming, and he waited for that proof.

The argument was much simpler than Konstantín Levín had expected it.

“If you acknowledge it to be beneficial,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, “you, as an honest man, can’t help loving this thing and sympathising with it, and consequently you can’t help wishing to work for it.”

“But I have not yet acknowledged this to be good,” said Konstantín Levín, blushing.

“What? You have just told me⸺”

“That is, I do not acknowledge it to be good or possible.”

“You can’t know that, not having made an effort.”

“Well, granted,” said Levín, though he did not at all grant it, “granted, it is so; I still can’t see, why I should bother about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, since we have gotten so far in our discussion, explain it to me from the philosophical point of view,” said Levín.

“I don’t understand what need there is here of philosophy,” said Sergyéy Ivánovich, in a tone which sounded to Levín as if he did not acknowledge his brother’s right to discuss philosophy. This irritated Levín.

“It is this,” he said excitedly, “I think that the prime mover of all our actions is, after all, our personal happiness. I, as a nobleman, see at present nothing in the agrarian institutions by which my interests are advanced. The roads are no better, and they can’t be better; my horses take me just as easily over bad roads. I need no doctors and no medical centres. I don’t want a justice of the peace,—I have never had recourse to him, and I never will. I not only need no schools, but I find them injurious, as I have told you. For me the agrarian institutions mean only an obligation to pay eighteen kopeks per desyatína, to travel to town, in order to pass the nights with bedbugs, and to listen to all kinds of nonsense and commonplaces,—but my personal interest in no way incites me.”

“Wait a moment,” Sergyéy Ivánovich interrupted him, with a smile, “our personal interest did not incite us to work for the liberation of the peasants, yet we worked.”

“No!” Konstantín interrupted him, getting ever more excited. “The liberation of the peasants was an entirely different matter. There was a personal interest connected with it. We wanted to get rid of the yoke which was oppressing us, all the good people. But to be an alderman, to discuss how many cleaners of privies are needed, and how the pipes are to be laid in the town I am not living in,—to be a juryman and sit in judgment over a peasant who has stolen a ham, and for six hours to listen to all kinds of nonsense that is threshed out by the defence and by the procurators, and the presiding judge asking my old peasant, Aléshka the fool: ‘Do you, Mr. Defendant, plead guilty to misappropriating the ham, eh?’”

Konstantín Levín was getting away from the argument, and began to act the presiding judge and Aléshka the fool; it seemed to him that it all was pertinent to the discussion.

But Sergyéy Ivánovich shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what is it you are up to?”

“I want to say that I will always, with all my might, defend the rights that touch me—my interest; that, when I was a student and the secret police made a raid on us and read our letters, I was ready with all my might to defend these rights, to defend my rights of culture and of liberty. I can understand military duties that touch the fate of my children, my brothers, and myself; I am ready to discuss what touches me; but I do not understand, and do not want to understand, why I should consider what to do with forty thousand roubles of the county money, or why I should sit in judgment over Aléshka the fool.”

Konstantín Levín spoke as if the dam of his words had broken loose. Sergyéy Ivánovich smiled.

“Suppose you will have a case at law to-morrow: well, would you prefer to be judged in the old criminal court?”

“I will not have a case in court. I will not cut anybody’s throat, and I have no need to do so. By the way!” he continued, again jumping over to an entirely irrelevant matter, “all our county institutions and such things are very much like the birch saplings that we stick up, as on Whitsun Monday, in order to make them look like a forest that has grown up of its own accord in Europe; but I have not the heart to water these birches, nor have I any faith in them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich only shrugged his shoulders, expressing by this motion that he was at a loss to account for these birches in their discussion, though he immediately saw what his brother had intended to say by them.

“Really, that is not a way of discussing the matter,” he remarked.

But Konstantín Levín was anxious to put himself right in regard to his defect, of which he was conscious, that is, his indifference to the common good, and he continued:

“I think,” said Konstantín, “that no activity can be permanent if it is not based on personal interest. This is a universal truth, a philosophic truth,” said he, emphatically repeating the word “philosophic,” as if to show that he, too, had a right, like anybody else, to talk of philosophy.

Sergyéy Ivánovich smiled again. “He has a philosophy of his own to suit his inclinations,” thought he.

“Well, you had better leave philosophy alone,” said he. “The main problem of philosophy has been in all ages to discover the necessary connection that exists between personal and common interests. But that is not to the point; it behooves me to correct your comparison. The birch saplings were not stuck up, but some were set out, and some were planted, and one has to tend them carefully. Only those nations have a future, only those nations may be called historical, that have discernment in what is important and significant in their institutions, and that value them.”

Sergyéy Ivánovich transferred the question into the field of philosophical history, which was inaccessible to Konstantín Levín, and showed him the whole injustice of his view.

“But as to your having no love for it,—you must pardon me,—it is a case of our Russian indolence and mannerism, and I am convinced that it is only a temporary aberration which will pass.”

Konstantín was silent. He felt that he had been demolished all around, but he felt at the same time that his brother did not understand what he had intended to convey. But he did not know why he was not understood: because he did not express clearly his thoughts, or because his brother did not wish to understand him, or because he could not. However, he did not pursue this thought any longer; he did not answer his brother, and fell to musing about something different, some personal matter of his.

Sergyéy Ivánovich fastened his last fishing-rod, untied the horse, and they drove away.

The waggon-load was full. Iván jumped down and led the gentle, well-fed horse by the bridle. The woman threw her rake on the waggon, and, swinging her arms, went with a rapid step to the other women who were walking together. When Iván drove into the road, he joined a whole procession of other waggons. The women were walking behind the waggons, with their rakes over their shoulders, adorned with bright flowers and prating away with their sonorous, merry voices. A coarse, low, woman’s voice started a song and sang it out to the refrain; then half a hundred of low and high healthy voices caught the refrain and sang the song again from the beginning.

The singing women were approaching Levín, and it appeared to him as though a cloud, discharging peals of joy, were passing over him. The cloud came nearer, and overwhelmed him, and the stack on which he was lying, and all the other stacks, and the waggons, and the whole meadow with the distant field,—all moved and rocked with the rhythmical measure of this wild, hilarious song, with its exclamations, its whistling and shouting. Levín envied them their healthy merriment, and he wished to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and he was obliged to lie, and look and listen. When the people disappeared with their song from the eye and the ear, a heavy feeling of melancholy, on account of his loneliness, his physical inactivity, his hostility to this world, took possession of Levín.

Some of the very peasants who had more than anybody else been disputing with him on account of the hay, those whom he had offended, or those who had wished to cheat him,—those very peasants merrily bowed to him and evidently had no evil thought of him, nor could they have any; they had not only no repentance but even no recollection of their having wished to cheat him. Everything was drowned in the sea of the merry mass work. God has given the day, God has given the strength to work. And the day and the strength are devoted to work, and in it is its own reward. For whom is this work? What will be the fruits of this work? These are secondary, unimportant considerations.

Levín often admired this life, often experienced the feeling of envy towards the people that lived this life, but it was to-day for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen of the relations of Iván Parménov to his young wife, that Levín was possessed of the idea that it depended upon him to change the burdensome, empty, artificial, and personal life which he was living for this busy, pure, social, charming life.

The old man who had been sitting by his side had long ago gone home; the people had all disappeared. Those who lived near by had gone home, and those that were from a distance were preparing their supper and their camp in the meadow. Unnoticed by the people, Levín remained lying on the stack, in order to see, listen, and think. Those who had stayed for the night in the field hardly closed their eyes in the short summer night. At first one could hear a universal merry conversation and laughter during the supper, and then again songs and laughter.

The whole long work-day had left no other trace in them but merriment. Before the morning dawn everything grew quiet. One could hear only the nocturnal sounds of the unsilenced frogs in the swamp, and of the horses that neighed in the meadow in the mist that rose before morning. Awakening from his revery, Levín climbed down from the stack and, looking at the stars, he knew that night had passed.

“Well, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it?” said he to himself, trying to formulate for himself all that he had thought out and that he had felt in that short night. All that he had thought and felt was divided into three different mental processes. One was the renunciation of his old life, of his useless education. This renunciation caused him pleasure, and it was easy and simple for him. Other thoughts and ideas touched upon the life which he now wanted to live. He clearly felt the simplicity, purity, and legality of this life, and he was convinced that he would find in it that satisfaction, that rest and dignity, the absence of which had caused him such painful sensations. But the third series of thoughts circled about the question how to make that transition from the old life to the new. But here he could see nothing clearly. “To have a wife. Have work and the necessity for work. Should I leave Pokróvskoe? Should I buy land? Join society? Marry a peasant woman? How am I to do it?” he asked himself again and found no answer. “However, I have not slept the whole night, and I have no clear ideas,” said he to himself. “I will think it out later. One thing is certain, this night has decided my fate. All my former ideas of family life are bosh,” said he to himself. “This is much simpler and better⸺”

“How beautiful!” thought he, as he looked at a strange, mother-of-pearl shell of white cirrus clouds that stopped over his head in the middle of the sky. “How superb everything is in this superb night! When has this shell been formed? It is only a moment ago I was looking at the sky, and there was nothing there but two white streaks. Yes, just so imperceptibly have my views of life been changed!”

FROM “WAR AND PEACE”

NAPOLEON’S ENTRY INTO MOSCOW

On the night of the thirteenth of September was given Kutúzov’s order for the Russian army to retreat beyond the Moskvá on the Ryazán road.

The first divisions started in the night. As long as it was dark, they were in no hurry and moved slowly and in good order. But when the moving army reached the Dorogomílov bridge at daybreak, they could see ahead of them the endless masses of the army, pressing and hurrying over the bridge, and emerging on the other side, and stopping up the streets and byways, and behind them followed similar endless masses. An unnecessary haste and alarm took possession of the army. They all pushed forward to the bridge, over the bridge, to the fords, and into the boats. Kutúzov had himself taken by back streets beyond the Moskvá.

By ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th there were left at large in the Dorogomílov suburb only the battalions of the rear-guard. The army was already beyond the Moskvá and out of sight of Moscow.

At just that time, at ten o’clock on the morning of September 14th, Napoleon stood among his soldiers on the Poklónnaya Hill, and surveyed the spectacle before him. Beginning with September 7th and up to September 14th, from the battle at Borodinó up to the enemy’s entry into Moscow, during all the days of that alarming and memorable week, there was that unusual autumn weather, which always puzzles people, when the low sun is warmer than in spring, when everything gleams in the pure, rarified air, so as to hurt the eyes, when the breast grows stronger and fresher as it inhales the fragrant autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in these dark and warm nights golden stars shower down from the heavens, causing continual fear and joy.

It was just such weather on September 14th, at ten o’clock in the morning. The morning shone with a magic glow. Moscow spread far and wide from the Poklónnaya Hill, with its river, its gardens and churches, and seemed to be living its own life, its cupolas sparkling like stars in the sunbeams.

At the sight of the strange city with its unfamiliar forms of unusual architecture, Napoleon experienced that somewhat envious and restless curiosity which people generally experience at the sight of forms of a strange life that knows nothing of them. Evidently the city was living with all the manifestations of its life. By those indefinable signs, by which a living body is unfailingly distinguished at a great distance from a dead one, Napoleon saw from the Poklónnaya Hill the palpitation of life in the city, and, as it were, felt the breath of that great and beautiful body. Looking at Moscow, every Russian feels that she is a mother; every stranger, who looks at her and does not know her maternal meaning, must perceive the feminine character of this city, and Napoleon felt it too.

“There it is, at last, that famous Asiatic city with its innumerable churches,—that holy Moscow! I ought to have seen it long ago!” said Napoleon and, dismounting his horse, ordered to unfold before him the map of that Moscow and called up the translator, Lelorme d’Ideville.

“A city that is taken by the enemy is like a girl who has lost her innocence,” thought he (he had said so to Tuchkóv in Smolénsk). And from this point of view he surveyed the Eastern beauty that lay before him and that he had not yet seen. It appeared strange to him that at last his old wish, which had seemed to him to be impossible, was fulfilled. In the clear morning light he looked, now at the city, now at the map, studying the details of the city, and the confidence of possessing it agitated and frightened him.

“But could it have been otherwise?” thought he. “There is the capital: it lies at my feet, expecting its fate. Where is Alexander now, and what is he thinking about? Strange, beautiful, majestic city! And this is a strange and majestic moment! In what light do I appear to them?” thought he of his army. “Here is the reward for all these men of little faith,” thought he, as he looked at those who surrounded him and at the battalions that were defiled before him. “One word of mine, one motion of my hand, and this ancient city of the Tsars is in ruins. But my mercy is ever ready to be shown to the conquered. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it is not true that I am in Moscow,” it suddenly occurred to him. “Still, there it lies at my feet, playing and trembling with its golden cupolas and crosses in the rays of the sun. But I will spare it. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will write great words of justice and mercy⸺ Alexander will feel that more painfully than anything else, I know him.” It seemed to Napoleon that the chief meaning of what was happening consisted in his personal contest with Alexander. “From the summit of the Kremlin—yes, that is the Kremlin, yes—will I give them laws of justice, will I show them the true meaning of civilisation: I will cause generations of boyárs to mention with love the name of their conqueror. I will tell the deputation that I did not wish and do not now wish war; that I have made war only on the false politics of their Court, that I love and respect Alexander, and that I will accept in Moscow the conditions of peace, such as is worthy of me and of my nations. I will not make use of the fortune of war in order to lower their respected Tsar. ‘Boyárs,’ will I say to them, ‘I want no war, I want the peace and well-being of all my subjects⸺’ Indeed, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak as I always do,—clearly, majestically, and grandly. But is it really true that I am in Moscow? Yes, there it is!”

“Bring the boyárs to me,” he said to his suite. A general at once galloped away with a brilliant suite to fetch the boyárs.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had his breakfast, and again stood in the same place upon Poklónnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation. His speech to the boyárs was already clearly formed in his imagination. That speech was full of dignity and grandeur, as Napoleon understood them.

That mood of magnanimity which Napoleon intended to exercise in Moscow carried him away. In his imagination he appointed days of assembly in the palace of the Tsars, where the Russian dignitaries were to meet the dignitaries of the French Emperor. He mentally appointed a governor who would be able to gain the love of the populace. Having heard that there were many charitable institutions in Moscow, he decided in his imagination to shower his favours on all these establishments. He thought that, as it was necessary in Africa to sit in the mosque in a burnous, so one must in Moscow be as charitable as the Tsars. And in order to touch most deeply the hearts of the Russians, he, like every Frenchman, who cannot imagine anything touching without the memory of his dear, his tender, his poor mother, decided to have written in large letters over these institutions: “Establishment dedicated to my dear mother.” No, simply: “House of my mother,” he concluded with himself. “But am I really in Moscow? Yes, there it is, before me; but why is the deputation so late in making its appearance?” thought he.

In the meanwhile an agitated consultation took place between the Imperial generals and marshals in the back of his suite. Those who had been sent out to fetch the deputation returned with the news that Moscow was deserted, that everybody had left the city. The faces of the consulting men were pale and agitated. Not the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants, however important that incident may have appeared, frightened them, but how they were to announce it to the Emperor, and how to avoid placing his Majesty into that terrible position which the French call ridiculous, when they would inform him that he had in vain been waiting so long for the boyárs, that there were left crowds of drunken men, but no one else. Some said that it was by all means necessary to get together some kind of a deputation; other rejected that opinion and insisted that it behooved them carefully and cleverly to prepare the Emperor, and to tell him the truth.

“But we must tell him by all means,” said the gentlemen of the suite. “But, gentlemen—” The situation was the more difficult since the Emperor, in considering his plans of magnanimity, was patiently walking up and down, in front of the map, now and then shielding his eyes, in order to look down the road to Moscow, and smiling happily and proudly. “But it is awkward—impossible!” said the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging their shoulders, and not venturing to pronounce the suppressed terrible word, le ridicule.

In the meanwhile the Emperor, tiring of his vain expectation and feeling with his histrionic sentiment that the majestic moment was lasting too long and, consequently, was beginning to lose its majesticalness, gave a sign with his hand. A single shot of the signalling cannon was heard, and the troops that were besieging Moscow from various sides moved upon the city, through the Tver, Kalúga, and Dorogomílov toll-gates. The troops moved faster and faster, outrunning each other, in a rapid march and a gallop, disappearing in the clouds of dust which they raised, and filling the air with their deafening voices. Carried away by the movement of the troops, Napoleon rode with the army to the Dorogomílov toll-gate, but there he stopped again and, dismounting his horse, walked up and down by the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, awaiting the deputation⸺

All this time Moscow was deserted. There were still some people in it, there was still left one fiftieth part of all its former inhabitants, but it was deserted. It was as deserted as is a queenless beehive in its last moments.

In the queenless hive there is no life, but at a superficial glance it appears as full of life as others. The bees swarm in the warm rays of an afternoon sun just as merrily about the queenless hive, as around the other live hives; from a distance it is just as fragrant with honey, and bees fly in and out of it as before. But one has only to look more closely at it, to discover that there is no life left within. The bees do not fly here as in the live hives; not the same odour and not the same sound strike the bee-keeper. To the bee-keeper’s tap on the wall of the great beehive there is no longer the former immediate, unison answer and humming of tens of thousands of bees that threateningly lower their backs and by the swift motion of their wings produce that aërial life sound, but some discordant buzzing is heard in various places of the empty beehive. From the entrance does not proceed, as formerly, a fragrant alcoholic odour of honey and pollen, nor does it exhale a warm breath of fulness, but with the odour of honey is mingled an odour of emptiness and decay.

At the entrance are no longer found the watch-bees, ready to defend the hive to the last extremity, with their backs raised up and trumpeting the alarm. There is no longer that even and soft sound, that palpitation of work, resembling the sound of boiling, but one hears the incoherent, discordant noise of disorder. Black, slender, honey-covered plunderer-bees fly timidly and stealthily out of one hive into another; they do not sting, but avoid danger. Formerly bees flew in with burdens and out again without anything; now they fly off laden with booty.

The bee-keeper opens the lower part of the hive and looks at its bottom. Instead of the black rows of well-fed bees that, pacified by their work, hung down to the very bottom, holding each other by the legs, and with a continuous murmur of labour drawing out the wax, now sleepy, dried-up bees wander about distractedly over the bottom and over the walls of the hive. Instead of the floor being pasted even with glue, and swept clean by the fanning wings, it is covered with bits of wax, with excrements of the bees, and with half-dead bees that barely move their feet, and with entirely dead bees that have not been removed.

The bee-keeper opens the upper part of the hive, and inspects the top. Instead of serried ranks of bees that have filled up all the interstices in the honeycomb and that are warming their young brood, he sees only the artistic, complicated work of the comb, but no longer in its previous virgin purity. Everything is neglected and obstructed: the black plunderer-bees race rapidly and stealthily over the structure; while his own bees, dried up, wizened, and flaccid as if from age, loiter slowly, without disturbing anyone, wishing nothing, and having lost the consciousness of life. Drones, wasps, humble-bees, and moths in their flight aimlessly beat against the walls of the hive. Here and there, between the wax with the dead brood and the honey, is at times heard from various sides an angry buzzing: two bees, from old habit, are somewhere cleaning a nest of the hive, and carefully, above their strength, dragging away a bee or humble-bee, not knowing themselves why they are doing it. In another corner, two old bees are quarrelling, or cleaning, or feeding each other, without thinking whether they are doing it out of friendship or enmity. In a third place a crowd of bees press against each other, and, attacking some victim, beat and choke it. And the weakened or killed bee slowly, softly, like down, falls from above upon the heap of corpses.

The bee-keeper unscrews the two middle combs, in order to see the nest. In place of the thick, black rows of thousands of bees, sitting back to back, and guarding the highest secrets of birth, he sees hundreds of drowsy, barely living skeletons of bees. They have died, nearly all of them, before they knew it, sitting on the sanctum which they have guarded, and which is no more. They exhale an odour of decay and death. Only a few of them are stirring: they rise, lazily fly up and alight on the hand of the enemy, whom they sting, not being able to die, while the other, the dead bees fall down like scales of fishes. The bee-keeper closes the hive and marks it with a piece of chalk, and in proper time breaks it open and burns it out.

Just so empty was Moscow when Napoleon, tired, restless, and frowning, walked up and down the Kammer-Kolleg rampart, waiting for the external, but, according to his ideas, necessary preservation of proprieties,—the deputation.

Some people were still moving about senselessly in various corners of Moscow, preserving the old habits, but not understanding what they were doing.

When, with proper caution, it was announced to Napoleon that Moscow was deserted, he angrily looked at him who reported it and, turning away, continued to walk in silence.

“Bring the carriage,” said he. He seated himself in the carriage with an adjutant of the day, and drove into the suburb.

“Moscow is deserted. What an incredible event!” said he to himself.

He did not drive into the city, but stopped at an inn in the Dorogomílov suburb.

The finale of the theatrical performance was not a success!

Glyeb Ivánovich Uspénski. (1840-1902.)

Uspénski was born in the city of Túla, where his father was a government official. He attended the Gymnasia at Túla and Chernígov, devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He then studied at the universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, leaving them in 1863 without graduating. His literary career began in 1866 with a series of sketches under the general title of Customs of Perdition Street, in which he described the proletariat that eke out their existence in small provincial towns, struggling with hunger and cold, and drowning in liquor the cheerless monotony of their lives. He next gave, in Observations of a Lazy Fellow and other stories, a series of types from the proletariat of intelligence in the same provincial towns. In 1871 he went abroad, and wrote his Letters from Servia. Upon his return he determined to turn his attention to the “source,” that is, to the peasant. He settled for that purpose in the country, in the Government of Samára, but his experience was disappointing: he saw the peasant in his crude and savage nakedness. His Drudgery, which is the result of his study of peasant morality, was a revelation to Russia. Heretofore the peasant had been either idealised or detracted, according to the literary camp to which the writer belonged, but now he was for the first time painted from nature, without reserve or bias. His greatest production is The Power of the Land, based on another study in the Government of Nóvgorod, in which he comes to the conclusion that the peasant can be saved only when he is returned to his land.

In English translation: The Steam Chicken and A Trifling Defect in the Mechanism, in The Humour of Russia, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895.

FROM “THE POWER OF THE LAND”

IVÁN PETRÓV

Iván Petróv belongs to that useless, incomprehensible, disgraceful class of village people (certainly disgraceful to such a country as Russia) that has grown up in the last twenty years and that one can’t help calling by any other name than “village proletariat.” This new-born proletariat could absolutely have been avoided, if millions of measures that are directed for the good of the masses paid at least as much attention to the people’s conception of the world as they do to their taxable qualities.

A peasant is frequently led to turn his back on his land and to prefer the tavern to his house by some such inconsistency in the peasant “rights” by which he may one day be a foreman of a jury or a judge who, by pronouncing the life-giving words “not guilty!” magnanimously saves some unfortunate man, and the next day after this manifestation of his great “right” may be beaten black and blue by the village official because while intoxicated he had insulted his elder with the words: “O you stub-nosed bunny!” One would have to discard all morality, all spiritual life, all ability to live according to one’s own ideas, if one wanted to move silently and without murmuring between these two poles of the peasant “rights.” But this example is only a drop in the sea of that radical disorder that undermines the most radical foundations of the popular world conception and that evolves a man “without any prospects,” “without a to-morrow,” and tries to make a labourer and slave of a man who, by the very essence of his nature, cannot exist otherwise than with the consciousness that he is a “master.”

Look at this Iván Petróv, nicknamed Bosýkh: he is a man of great physical power, and an agile and skilful workman; his wife is strong, clever, and skilful, and was once a beauty; he can have all the land he wants. In addition to being a husbandman, he is also a good village joiner and a shoemaker; and even as a common day labourer—chopping wood, or pressing hay—he could, by receiving seventy kopeks a day and his board, live without any care. Instead, he has given up his farm, he beats his wife, and she is continually weeping and complaining against him; his three children loiter for days at a time in dirty rags in the streets and without being cared for, and nobody knows whether they are being fed. Though his hut is one of a row of new peasant huts where one may see print curtains, Vienna furniture, clocks under glass globes, etc., it is the acme of disorder: it is nearly all in ruins; instead of window panes there are only rags; and yet one may see by the structure of the cabin and outhouses that it was once a “rich” house, and that the barns extended some two hundred feet in length; the posts are all of oak, nearly six feet in circumference⸺

And the “master” himself? Ask about him the village people of standing, and they will all give bad reports of him: he has sold the same hay to three different parties, and the money he has spent in drinks; he has taken on credit, “against the calf,” in three different shops, but he has not paid anywhere, while he has sold the calf to somebody else and, as usual, has spent the money in liquor. He has been several times flogged in the village office for using abusive language to the authorities, for unpaid taxes, and for beating his wife, whom, upon returning from his punishment, he beat again mercilessly in the field.

“Don’t give him any money, for the Lord’s sake, don’t advance him any!” is the advice a wary villager gives you.

“Don’t trust him a hair’s breadth!” says another villager who has been cheated by Iván.

And yet, let Iván “come to” for a week or two, what a splendid, what a good and clever, man he is! How much humour there is in him, how much observation, tenderness, magnanimity, self-detraction, and how much youthful freshness of soul! What is it then that sends him in an intoxicated state into the wet and dirty gutter, without boots, without garments, his swollen face downward, and his broad shoulders beaten by the rains and the wind? The whole village remembers his family, and all say that the Bosýkhs were at one time among the first farmers, that Iván used to live peaceably with his wife, that they had been “first-class” workers; all are convinced that let him only awaken and he will be priceless, that he has “golden hands”; and they wonder why he has turned his back to everything, why he cheats, causes disturbances, and like a tramp does an occasional day’s work only to spend his wages in the tavern.

Now, Iván’s intoxication has changed into a disease. The people characterise this disease that oppresses not only Iván, but whole masses of the village proletariat like him, by the name of “weakness.” Physically Iván is, like hundreds of similar “weak” peasants, not only healthy and strong, but even powerful, consequently his weakness did not spring from physical but some other causes. I have had frequent conversations with Iván in regard to these “weaknesses”; for a long time they led to no satisfactory results, and often they were only confusing, especially to the writer of these lines, that is, to a man who has been in the habit of explaining the wretched state of the masses almost exclusively as springing from material want, misery, taxes, and so forth. I shall here relate one of these conversations as an example.

“Do tell me, Iván, why are you drinking so much?” I ask Iván in one of those clear moments when he “comes to,” repents his dreadful actions, and ponders over his bitter fate.

Iván draws a deep sigh and speaks with contrition, almost in a whisper:

“I have humoured myself too much⸺ I don’t know what to think⸺ We had better not speak of it!⸺ When I think it over, I wish I were dead, I swear I wish I were!”

“But why? Do tell me!”

“Why? Well, it ’s all—on account of—freedom! That ’s why! On account of too much freedom!”

As this answer perplexes me, and I am absolutely unable to see how “freedom” should ruin a man, Iván tries to dispel my perplexity, and he gives me a more detailed explanation:

“On account of a free life, that ’s what it is!”

“But what does that mean?” I ask him, still perplexed.

“It means this: when I was living at the railroad station, I received thirty-five roubles a month, and I had about ten men under my charge, and I had an additional income of a rouble in silver for every waggon,—now figure out how many waggons we sent out in a winter? Well, it was there that I humoured myself⸺”

The word “humour” does not at all fit a strapping, forty years old, bearded man, and it is hard to understand how in the explanation of his conduct he can use an expression that is proper only for a baby. But Iván cannot find a more exact word.

“Well, so I began to humour myself. When father was alive, I never took a drop. He would have killed me, if I had, yes, he would have killed me dead with his own hands. After father died, and I got married and had my own household, I allowed myself a drink only when I was treated to it, on a holiday, or once in a while a glass when I felt blue⸺ I was careful, and I watched myself as long as I could. But when I had my freedom at the railroad station, that is, my full liberty, then I began, well, in a word, to be short, I let myself loose⸺ I kept it up for days at a time, and I never could get enough⸺ I remember how it all began, as though it were but yesterday: roadmaster Iván Rodiónych’s name day fell on John of the Lent⸺ Well, he poured me out a glass of the grape juice, they call it port⸺ I liked it, as I swallowed it—so I took some more—and then gin, lemonade⸺ Since then that plague has stayed with me. And why? It ’s all on account of freedom!⸺ Not being used to it⸺ Making an easy living⸺ That ’s what it is from!⸺ I used to have my pockets full of money⸺ Well, since then I have been a regular pig⸺”

So it appears that “freedom,” “liberty, easy living, plenty of money,” that is, that which is necessary for a man to establish himself, causes his whole disorder, until he becomes “a regular pig.”

“Why did you spend your money not on your house but on drinking?” I ask him.

“That ’s the trouble, I was not used to it! Life was too free to think of house and farm⸺ Do anything you please, and nobody interferes with you⸺ In short, there is a good chance to humour yourself⸺”

Seeing that his explanation explains nothing and that I am unable to understand why an easy life makes a pig of a man, Iván tries to make his idea clearer by an example, such as peasants are in the habit of having recourse to in their conversations. I shall here give his example, though I know that the reader will hardly be much enlightened by it.

“Because,” says he, “our peasant nature is n’t used to it⸺ We are by nature a working lot⸺ Let me tell you an example⸺ There was living in our neighbourhood a gentleman, by the name of Podsólnukhov, and he was farming⸺ So he farmed and farmed, and seeing that there was no profit in farming, he got it into his head to go into the dairy business. He had no use for our breed of cattle, and it ’s so, our cows are rather thin and coarse-haired⸺ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I ’ll get a cow from abroad.’ He sent for one. A telegram came, the cow was on her way, and a learned German was bringing her⸺ There they were leading her, why, almost in chains,—such a monster, some seven feet in height, ten feet in length⸺ Her horns, her eyes, and such things,—God’s wonder,—a regular giant, an Eruslán Lázarevich[25]⸺ They cleaned out the cattle yard for her, spread some straw over it, and the moment she came, she lay down on her side upon it. And the German asked for a lamp to be used in the night. Very well. And the cow remained lying on her side and eating in that posture. All the women did was to put the feed within reach of her mouth. She kept on eating, but of milk there was not a trace.

“‘What is the matter,’ says I to the German, ‘she is not giving any milk?’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘she is resting; it ’s so and so,’ says he. ‘She has been travelling a long distance, and in the car, and so she is tired, and is taking it easy⸺’

“‘How long,’ says I, ‘will she be taking it easy?’

“‘Maybe a month.’

“All right. We thought we would let her while away her time with our village bull,—but that was a dreadful blunder. No sooner did he lay his eyes on her majestic form, when he got frightened like a rabbit, for he saw at once that he, with his country snout, had no business in her presence,—and so he picked himself up and off he went, and it was only twelve versts away that some peasants succeeded in catching him. But she was resting herself all the time. She ate, and yawned, and ate again⸺ At last she evidently felt conscience-stricken and gave a whole pail of milk. So our master said:

“‘Do you see, Iván?’ says he,—‘there is no comparison with our sickly little cows!’

“‘Well, no, sir,’ says I; ‘considering what she has eaten up, our cattle are worth more.’

“‘How so?’

“‘It ’s like this: figure out, how much she has eaten up, and compare it with the milk she is giving. It ’s so, she does give a pailful, but that pailful costs too much. If you were to give her feed to ten of our cows, they would give you ten times the amount this monster is giving you.’

“Says the German: ‘She is not the kind of a breed,’ says he, ‘that ’s just good for the milk; she is considering herself too; she is eating for her own benefit—just look what firm flesh she has.’

“After these words says I to my master: ‘Do you see, sir,’ says I, ‘it ’s just it: our cows suit our case much better. We do not care about their flesh, and they do not live for their benefit, but for work; they give back what they eat up, and they do not consider themselves. Our cows are born for work, and for work they live all their lives,—that ’s their purpose.’

“And so there are all kinds of men. And we peasants are just the same. We work the year round, and all our lives, without stopping. I tried to get away from my peasant’s life, and I have almost killed myself with drinking⸺ There are some who like that which is easy, and who want to do nothing⸺ Some get rich by saving their money, but when I turned my back on the village and ran away from a peasant’s work, and began to live freely,—my money flew like chips. All I was interested in was how to get rid of it, and I could think of no other place to spend it in but the tavern. What? Well, I ’ll make a clean breast of it,” Iván spoke in a whisper, “I had three mamzelles! I forgot the Law! I am speaking before the Lord⸺ Freedom! liberty! I was only thinking how to do wrong, pshaw! I so far forgot myself that I began to oppress my own kind, my fellow-peasants! Why did I do it? I had simply lost my conscience⸺ Some cold day they would be looking for me and having found me in a saloon, they would bow and say:

“‘Let us have our hay; we have been here two days and spending our money, but we can’t get at it.’

“It seems, it was not much for me to say to my assistant: ‘Mikháylo! Go and get them the car!’ but Satan himself began to urge me on; so I sat over my bottle, looking important, and said: ‘You have to do the best you can.’

“‘But, friend, how are we to find it? We have walked all over the yards, among whistling engines and no end of smoke, and we are afraid we shall get killed yet, and we are worn out besides.’

“‘Look for it! Find the fellow you need!’

“‘But you, our protector⸺’

“And I would keep them off until someone of those present would say to them:

“‘Stick three roubles into his mug,—that ’s what you want to do!’

“And it was only thus that I did them any favours⸺ If my wife came my way, I used to scold her roundly. As long as I stayed in the village I had use for her, but here where I had my freedom, I had others to pass my time with, and what was I to do with her, a common peasant woman? That ’s the kind of lawlessness I came to. I drank more and more, and the authorities heard of it, and the superintendent of the division came and mauled me all up (his face shone as he was telling this), and the superintendent of traffic gave me a few mighty blows (a childish joy was spread over his face), and they took me to the round-house, and laid it on to me,—so I made the sign of the cross and, just as if I had risen from the grave, I jumped up, and started on a run home, without my hat, right through the cold! Over fields, over snowdrifts, by back roads, I flew like a bird, not stopping for twenty-five versts, until I was back to my farm. There I was, in my yard, without a thing to my name, everything in ruins, but I felt as happy as if I had been resurrected. Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Queen of Heaven! I am again a man, I have found myself! I fell to my wife’s feet.

“‘Forgive me, my dear wife! Let me work, look after the farm! I shall give up all my foolishness, I will be a man again!’

“And I went at it with a vim! I loved it all,—my field, my plough and harrow, the sheds, the calf, the barn that was beginning to lean to one side, and the fence, and the woodpile⸺ They were all my dear friends, my nearest ones. It was just terrible to look at the desolation, but it only gave me more courage. The more work I saw, the more work there was ahead, the greater was my desire to do it, and the greater my strength⸺ That ’s what our peasant nature is! But there where I had been there was no work, but all kinds of distractions,—and money; but that had almost deprived me of my senses, and I dragged my soul through the mud, as a swine drags her belly. And what from? Freedom!⸺”

Iván would always begin and end his conversations with me by this incomprehensible correlation of “freedom” and “moral fall,” but you see, he not only did not make my misgivings clearer, but considerably increased them.

[25] Giant of Russian fairy tales.

Aleksándr Ivánovich Levítov. (1842-1877.)

Levítov was the son of a village priest in the Government of Tambóv. His early youth was passed at home in sordid peasant surroundings, where he learned just enough from his father to be able to read religious books. A seminarist having provided him with some of the Russian classics, he acquired a taste for literature and entered a Seminary. He was a brilliant student, but had to suffer much insult from his brutal companions for his physical weakness. Scenes from the Seminary later formed the main subject of his stories. He then entered the Moscow University, but soon afterwards transferred himself to the Medico-Surgical Institute at St. Petersburg. Having taken part in some political agitation, he was exiled to the north-east. Here he associated entirely with the lower classes, confirmed himself in his vicious habit of drinking, and in his sober moments composed his excellent Steppe Sketches, that abound in poetical descriptions of southern nature and in detailed pictures of the inhabitants of the steppe. Then began his roving life from town to town, from one capital to another, living all the time in the purlieus of the cities, and in cellars, garrets, and outhouses. This, combined with his chronic state of intoxication, led to consumption, and he finally died in a clinic. Levítov has given a series of pictures from the life of the most degraded townspeople with whom he came in contact, under the name of The Misery of Country, Roads, and Towns. They are a reflex of his own experiences and make painful reading, though, but for some discursiveness, they are artistic in conception and execution.

SHOEMAKER COCK-OF-THE-BOOTS

I

There was in our village a good fellow,—a shoemaker. We just called him Cock-of-the-Boots, because he deserved the name. Early in the morning and late at night you might have seen him staggering through the village streets, and yelling, in his drunken fit, and repeating the same phrase:

“Come out, you village wiseacre, if there is such a one among you! Come out,” he shouted, “and I will have a chat with you.”

But no one dared to come out, being sure to get the worst of it.

He had come to us from down Usmán way. He was such a thick-set, homely-looking fellow, with thick, monstrous moustaches, and he wore a blue coat. His wife was as stubby and homely as he, and all in wrinkles, but she had on a chintz dress that was good enough for a shopkeeper’s wife and a red shawl over her shoulders. You would think that the moment he drove into the village he would make for the inn? The Lord bless you, he made plump for the tavern. That is, he and his wife went into the tavern, but the cart was left in charge of six good-looking young fellows, all of them in extensible boots, caps, and blue nankeen coats. They stood around the cart. People began to come up to them, and somebody asked them:

“Say, what kind of people are you, honourable gentlemen? Whence do you come and whither do you tend?”

“Step aside,” they replied to us, “step aside as far as you can, before dad comes back from the tavern, or there will be trouble!”

We all had to laugh, seeing that these strapping fellows were trying to frighten us with their “dad.”

We looked around: there he was coming out of the tavern with a bretzel in his hands, his cap poised way back on his head, while his wife carried a quart of brandy in her hand, in order to treat her sons.

“Go ahead,” he said, “and drink, and then find some quarters, for I am sleepy.”

Right near the tavern there was living in a hut a crazy old woman. We had nicknamed her the Blue Rig. She had no relatives of any sort, and managed to live somehow by charity. While he was cooling himself off in the tavern, his youngsters found out that she was helpless, and so they immediately reported to him:

“Dad, there is hereabouts a destitute old woman. They call her Blue Rig, and we might stop at her hut.”

They settled there, and before long they smoked the old woman out of her house. The township chief sent some hundred-men to oust Cock-of-the-Boots, but he gave the hundred-men a mighty drubbing, and told them that it was his house, and that the chief had better attend to his own business.

The chief marvelled at the fellow, and himself came down upon him with a posse. The whole village went to see the fun.

Cock-of-the-Boots took up a daring attitude in front of the chief, his hands akimbo; then he stroked his moustache and said:

“What made you, sir, come to me when I did not invite you? You had better wait for an invitation.”

“How dare you?” began the chief.

Now each of Cock-of-the-Boots’s sons had a special name: their father called one of them Prince Kutúzov, another Paskévich, a third Díbich. “They are all my generalissimos,” he would say. When the chief began to call him names, he turned to Díbich:

“Díbich! Take him out!”

Díbich, without any further ado, took the chief by his shoulder and led him out. The hundred-men and some of the villagers tried to interfere,—but these protectors got dreadfully mauled by Cock-of-the-Boots and his sons.

“I myself,” cried Cock-of-the-Boots, “with my good fellows can kick out two such villages as this. I,” says he, “will root out any man that will undertake to oppress me, because I am not afraid of anybody, and my children are not afraid of anybody but me.”

And his wife seconded him: “That ’s right,” says she, “we are not afraid of anybody!”

It was a fine family we had to deal with.

“It ’s now up with Cock-of-the-Boots,” we villagers thought, after that occurrence. “They ’ll certainly drag him to Siberia for insulting such a great gentleman.” But that ’s where we were wrong. The chief complained to the district superintendent, saying: “It is so and so, and I can’t do anything with Cock-of-the-Boots, because,” says he, “he has a powerful lot of sons, and they get the better of the whole village.”

No sooner did Cock-of-the-Boots hear of that letter than he slung a wallet with a slice of bread over his shoulder, lighted his pipe,—he had a small pipe with a short carved stem,—and off he went to the capital of the province. A lot of gentlemen were just entering the Governor’s palace, and he somehow managed to slip in with them into the audience room, where he waited for the Governor to appear, in the meantime angrily twisting his moustache.

Then came his turn.

“Who are you?” asked the Chief, “and what do you want?”

“I am, sir,” answered Cock-of-the-Boots, “a crown peasant and a shoemaker. And what I want is that you should kick out the township chief,—his name is so and so,—because he is an embezzler of the Tsar’s treasure, and a great nuisance to the commune. That ’s what I want,” says he.

They say that the gentlemen that were present were stunned, seeing how freely he spoke with the General. The Governor himself frowned and looked for a long time at Cock-of-the-Boots with angry eyes, and finally he said:

“Do you, Cock-of-the-Boots,” says he, “want me to put you in jail for insulting me in that way?”

But Cock-of-the-Boots only smiled, and his moustaches twitched, and he said to the Governor: “Let me tell you,” says he, “that I won’t go to jail, but straight to Peter, to complain to the Emperor himself; and you are not strong enough to stop me,” says he, “because I am not afraid of anybody except God in heaven,” and he threw his wallet over his shoulders, and started out.

The gentlemen present could not keep back any longer and burst out laughing, and the Governor himself laughed.

“What a bold fellow!” says he, “I have not seen the like of him in all my life. Fetch him back,” says he, “and send him to my cabinet. I will talk to him later.”

“I see no objection to having a talk with him,” said Cock-of-the-Boots, smiling. “I am always ready to talk to a Governor.”

It is not known what the Governor and he talked about, only, Cock-of-the-Boots had not yet reached his village when the township chief had an order from the capital to the effect that he had been a chief long enough.

II

You ought to have seen how we ever after honoured Cock-of-the-Boots. As he and his wife passed a great part of their time in the tavern, they were treated to many a cup by anybody who happened to be there and who felt that they must offer them a part of their just labour. But Cock-of-the-Boots would keep one of his hands in his pocket, and with the other he would twist his moustache around his ears, saying:

“Now let we tell you why I am drinking all the time. It ’s because you are all fools, and I can’t do anything with you.”

“That ’s correct,” was the invariable refrain of his wife.

And to tell the truth, if he had not been drinking so hard, he could have gotten away with many a fellow, for he was very clever. He was a great hand at his business! He could make any kind of boots, gentlemen’s and shopkeepers’ boots, extensible and simple peasant boots,—it was just a joy to look at them! The only trouble was, that accursed Cock-of-the-Boots rarely ever finished a job. He nearly always carried the leather that his customers gave him to the tavern to exchange it for drinks.

“How did you dare, Cock-of-the-Boots, to buy drinks with my leather?” they would ask him.

“Simply because I wanted to,” says he.

Nobody entered any complaints against him, because it did no good. He knew how to amuse all the chiefs with his conversations and to gain all kinds of favours from them. They tried to take the law into their own hands, but that only ended in an all around fight, for his wife and sons took his side, and also a stalwart sexton,—they called him Katerínych,—and they easily vanquished the whole village. However, we learned to find our way into Cock-of-the-Boots’s heart, only it took us quite a while to find it out. All one had to do, when Cock-of-the-Boots had spent the leather in drinks, was to take at once another piece to him, and beg him not to spend this second piece.

“Won’t you, Grigóri Kuzmích, make me a pair of boots out of this? We ’ll square up about the first piece later.”

“That ’s what I like!” Cock-of-the-Boots would say. “I like to be trusted!” he would shout, “just as I would like to trust others, only I have nothing to give.” And he immediately ordered his sons to make a special effort with these boots.

“As you command, dad!” his sons would say, and they at once set to work, so that you could see chips flying. They were a fine lot, and they obeyed their parents so that we all envied them.

“Just look!” the whole village said, “father and mother are drunkards, but the children are all right.” They not only were skilled in their trade and could read and write, but every one of them had picked up some specialty: one could play the accordion, another the guitar, or horn. They used to go out, of a summer evening, into the street, after their work was done, and, seating themselves in front of their hut, they began to play some sweet song. There was not one of the whole family that did not have a good voice. Their mother was such an insignificant woman to look at; but when she began to trill “Lovely forget-me-not” with her soft voice, everybody would stop to listen. Cock-of-the-Boots himself was regarded as a first-class singer in these entertainments. At first he would start with a fine tenor, and then he would carry the whole song in a heavy bass. Where in the world did he get that bass from?

The whole village and people from the outlying hamlets used to come to hear them.

Cock-of-the-Boots lived in this manner for three or four years. We all got used to his intoxication, and shouting at night time, and his blaspheming. We quit getting angry at him, because, in the first place, he was a hopeless case, and, in the second, he did a great deal of good in the village and the neighbouring hamlets. For example, if a rich merchant began to flay the people in too open a manner, or the chief or scribe put down the screws a little too tight, Cock-of-the-Boots and his friend, the sexton, would go to their windows and would read them a sermon, which made them wish they were dead.

“Just go away from these windows, good fellows, and stop this disgraceful business,” such a man would say to them. “I ’ll treat you to all the brandy you wish,” he would add.

They particularly annoyed the village dean. His daughters did not dare to go out into the streets, or even stand outside the door, because the dean had offended the sexton.

“Just wait, Katerínych!” the dean threatened the sexton, “I ’ll see to it that you get your hair shaved off.”

“I am ready any minute,” said the sexton, “for I would rather live with the devil in hell than be under your rule.”

The dean would spit out in anger, as he listened to these talks of the sexton, and would walk away. But Cock-of-the-Boots and his friend rolled with laughter, and they proclaimed all his secrets to the whole Christian world:

“We ’ll teach you a thing or two! You just make a move against us!”

When they got tired standing under the window, they lay down opposite the house, and proceeded with their scolding, and they would not go away any sooner than they would be treated to brandy or money. When this was sent out to them they only laughed:

“Look at these infidel devils! They think that they can wash down their wrongs with this brandy. Don’t worry, you will not wash them down!” Having had their fun, they walked away, and the sexton invariably started a chant upon these occasions.

They were particularly successful in saving young men from conscription, if these were unjustly worried by the commune, on account of their poverty or orphaned state. All such an unfortunate man had to do was to buy a keg of brandy, paper, and ink, and the sexton was ready to compose a letter. He presented his case to the higher authorities in so convincing a manner that many a recruit was returned from service and the commune received severe reprimands. And if the higher authorities stood in with the commune against these luckless fellows, our scribes would add a postscript to their petition to the effect that: “If your honour will not free Iván Lúchin who has been shaven a recruit against the law, we will at once go to Peter to complain to our father the Tsar.” And they both signed that letter.

“This petition,” they wrote, “has been signed in person by the village sexton Kuzmá Lukích Zabubénny and the crown peasant and shoemaker Grigóri Kuzmích, nicknamed Cock-of-the-Boots.”

Many a fellow was freed after such a letter. But they refused to intervene in the case of a man whose evident fate it was to be a soldier, and in no case did they receive any other remuneration than brandy.

It was on account of his good soul, which we all saw, that we did not interfere with his drinking. All of a sudden we heard the news of a general conscription.

Our town officers scared us with such phrases: “There will be an unusually large conscription. Three countries have risen against us. We ’ll have a job on hand.”

“Well,” we said, “if there is to be a big conscription, let there be. Evidently it has to be.” In the meantime we began to fit out any of the young fellows that might be called, that they might be ready at any time and hour, for it was not for a day or two that our youngsters were to leave us⸺

These rumours began to spread just before the battle of Sebastopol.

At last the time came to draw lots, and then to be examined as recruits. Cock-of-the-Boots did not have to worry about his sons for something like three years, because a nephew of his had become a soldier and, consequently, his family was for the time being exempt.

“This Cock-of-the-Boots is a lucky chap,” we said. “He has raised six fine eagles, and there they are to stay at home.”

One morning, we saw to our surprise that Cock-of-the-Boots was starting out on the road with all his sons. He was walking at their head and smoking his pipe, and he looked gloomy and his moustache hung down, but he was not drunk. The mother was accompanying them and weeping torrents of tears.

“Where are you starting out, Grigóri Kuzmích? Have you taken a liking to another place, and do you want to leave us?”

“Good-bye, friends!” he said. “I am going to enter my sons, every one of them, into the army, because a large host is up against us, and there are as many of them as stars in heaven.”

Sexton Kuzmá was walking with them.

“Orthodox people,” he said, “don’t recall me with an evil thought! I sha’n’t think of you at all, because I am sick of your foolishness. I ’ll try to find a place somewhere.”

“They are jesting!” we thought. “They are, no doubt, going out on the chase or catching fish.”

But it was not a jest at all. He really inscribed all his sons and the sexton in the army! And the provincial authorities were so much pleased with his act, that he and his boys received a great deal of money, and he was promised that all his sons and the sexton were to serve in one and the same company.

They had wanted to put all his sons in the bodyguard, but Cock-of-the-Boots begged them to let them go straightway to the war.

“I have brought them to go against the enemy,” he said.

The authorities gave him a written document in which they expressed their thanks to him. When he returned home, he hung that letter up in the hut of the Blue Rig, and started on a protracted spree.

His wife could not believe for a long time that he would give up all his sons at once. She kept on hoping that to-day, or to-morrow, one of them at least would return, say, the youngest. But when she saw that there was no return from the army, she joined her husband in the spree.

She was all bent up and crushed, and she sailed along, vainly moving her hands, and mumbling something; her red shawl fell down from one shoulder and dragged along the ground.

She did not long continue to walk that way. She soon died. While on her deathbed, she gave her husband a terrible tongue-lashing for having separated her from her dear children.

Some people came to look at the dead person, and they found Cock-of-the-Boots talking to her as if she were alive, for he was dreadfully drunk just then.

“Foolish woman!” he muttered. “You do not know your own good luck. You will be better off there! I myself have long wished to die, but death does not come to me.”

He muttered that in an undertone, and not aloud as he used to. It was a pity to see him left so alone. The hut looked dreadfully desolate, and destitute of everything. The stove had all fallen in. The Blue Rig, tattered and torn, and all wrinkled up, lay on the stove, and looked at everybody like an insensate beast, and angrily gnashed her teeth at them⸺

III

Cock-of-the-Boots became gentler than a lamb when his family had all left him. He sat for days at a time in the hut with the Blue Rig, and they looked at each other. Village urchins came in and made fun of the old people, but they received no reply. Only at midnight, when the whole village was asleep, the neighbours could hear Cock-of-the-Boots wailing:

“My children, my children, what have I done with you?”

Neighbors stole up to the window, and they saw him wallowing on the ground and tearing his hair. In daytime he again sat down in his den, not leaving his place, and he was so sad, grey, and bald. When the villagers saw that the old people not only could not provide for themselves, but were even too weak to go a-begging, they began to bring them bread, water, and kvas.

“Why do you sit here, Grigóri Kuzmích?” old people would ask him, when he came a little to his senses.

“I am waiting for death, dear people! Maybe it will carry away my great grief, which I have tried all my life to drown in the taverns, but never succeeded in drowning!” And he began to weep bitterly, tears flowing in torrents.

We wondered much what grief he was talking about. He had feasted nearly all his life in taverns at other people’s expense, and now he was grieving. If he was weeping for his sons, he had himself taken them to be inscribed in the army.

His grief must, indeed, have been very great, for he lamented dreadfully at night, and often woke us up. He woke us with his awful cries, like the sound of the house spirit when he calls for an evil omen; and we, hearing them, were very much frightened and, rising in the morning, fervently prayed to our Lord⸺

Nikoláy Nikoláevich Zlatovrátski. (1845-.)

Zlatovrátski, the son of a village priest, was born in Vladímir, where he attended the Gymnasium. His father having established a library for the people, Zlatovrátski had an opportunity to acquaint himself with Russian literature. He then studied at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, but his extreme poverty compelled him to look for work, and he became a proof-reader in one of the newspapers. This gave him an impetus to try himself in authorship, and his first sketch, The Murrain, appeared in 1866. Since then he has written a large number of shorter and longer stories, dealing with the life of the peasants in the period of the emancipation, and also with the intelligent classes at the same time. To the latter he assumes a negative attitude, regarding them as having departed from the simple, fundamental life of the Russian peasant. Though he treats his peasants with more consideration, there is a strong element of pessimism even in the sketches of that kind, thus, differing from the similar stories by Uspénski. They also differ from Uspénski’s novels by the musicalness of their language and the greater wealth of detailed descriptions. Among his best stories are The History of a Village, Village Work Days, The Karaváevs, The Wanderer.

OLD SHADOWS

In moments of heavy anguish of soul my “little grandfather” would visit me, and he brought with him from the darkness of oblivion a series of just such little and insignificant existences as himself. My childhood and youth are, it seems, inseparably connected with these little existences. I particularly recall those strange, mysterious forms that suddenly appeared, one knew not whence,—both in our “old house” in the provincial city, and in the old, weather-stained cabin of my grandfather,—and just so vanished, one knew not whither. They were wandering shadows that frightened our childish imagination,—especially, since my grandmother, whom I cannot picture to myself otherwise than in an enormous kerchief, with overhanging eyebrows and a huge frying fork in her hand, had no use for them and called them “tramps,” “loafing people,” and “worthless lot.” Yet, in spite of the existence of my stern old grandmother, who always appeared before me as an incarnation of that stern period,—these “loafing people,” it seemed to me, were breeding more and more in our Russian land, and with it my stern grandmother gave ever more a piece of her mind to my visionary mother and to the “village windbag,” my little grandfather, who were giving refuge to these people, and to whom, it seemed, they clung as a moth flits about the light.

Dimly pass before me those strange, mysterious forms which that irrevocable past produced in such large numbers. I have before my mind the tall, smoke-stained old cabin of my grandfather that was roughly made of big logs. It is warm within, but in the open the frost is getting stronger towards evening. Half of the panes are already covered with downy hoar-frost, and there is a thumping, crackling sound now in one corner, now in another. Grandfather is sitting by a tallow dip, hurrying to mend his leaky felt boot with a piece of leather. Mother is solemnly and chantingly reading the versified paraphrase of the psalms, distinctly pronouncing the words,—and I enjoy the harmonious sound of the words, though I ill understand their meaning.

Sister and I are snuggled up under a warm sheepskin, and we silently move in some frivolous fairy world, for which there is no time and no space: from the fantastic countries of the Eastern Shaherezade we are rapidly transferred to the warm, soft shores of the Jordan, to the stern kingdom of the Pharaohs, or suddenly we are borne in the whirl of a joyous, bright light, amidst a sea of festive sounds of music, to the splendour of a new, frivolous world of European capitals, whither so enticingly beckon and call us all those vigorous, fresh young people, who had managed before us to escape from the harsh and murky habitations of the manorial hamlets⸺ Though sister and I are not saying anything, yet I am quite convinced that her thoughts are taking her to the same regions. I need only ask her: “Do you remember the letter mother read us yesterday from Uncle Sásha in St. Petersburg?” in order to be sure that her youthful fancy will immediately carry her, as it has carried me, far, far away from these dim and dusky, though warm, walls of grandfather’s cabin.

Suddenly a heavy creaking is heard on the bridge; the gate ring rattles; someone coughs behind the door. We all listen intently; the door is opened timidly and with indecision, and on the threshold appears a tall, lean, strange figure, merged in steaming frost: he has on a long sheepskin coat that is covered with snow, and on his head is a tall, thick, cotton-filled cap and in his hands a long staff; over his shoulder hangs a long calfskin-covered wallet; he has a long, thin, wet face, with sunken cheeks, thick tufts of a greyish beard, and timid, black eyes under long brows.

“Peace and blessing be upon your house!” distinctly enounces the stranger on the threshold, without moving from the spot.

“Thank you,” says grandfather. “Whither are you bound? Másha, get a slice of bread from grandmother,—say it ’s for a pilgrim.”

“Don’t you recognise me, father?” in the meantime asks the pilgrim, without leaving the threshold.

“No, no⸺ Or are we acquaintances?” says grandfather, as he is looking for his glasses. “Who are you?”

The pilgrim timidly surveys the room with his penetrating black eyes, and softly says:

“A despised servant of the Lord, a slave of men—the manorial servant Aleksándr—the wandering Jew, the accursed Ahasuerus⸺”

“O Aleksándr! I do recognise you, I do,” says grandfather. “You want to warm yourself and stay over night; you are tired, no doubt. We will find a place!⸺ Sit down, Aleksándr, pilgrim of the Lord!”

“Will you let me, father?” the pilgrim asks again, still timidly surveying all around him.

“Have no fear, no fear! The Lord be with you, come in, make yourself at home!”

The pilgrim slowly and with indecision takes off his wallet, and seats himself on the bench with a heavy sigh.

“Well, Aleksándr, have you not yet found rest for your soul?” asks grandfather.

But the pilgrim sits in silence, and lowers his head.

Then a deep sigh is heard again issuing from his breast. Then he begins to speak clearly, without hurrying, lowering his eyes all the time, as if ashamed to look at us.

“I have crossed all the borders—have been everywhere—have visited all the holy places⸺ I have been in the countries of the midday sun and of midnight—on sultry Athon and in the cold Solovétsk cells⸺ Everywhere, father⸺ I have continually looked for the eternal city, and there is no refuge for the despised slave!⸺ Father, I have suffered hunger and cold⸺ In summer and in winter I, as a thief, hide from the light, and wander at night-time⸺ I come into cities, and they drive me out, I knock at the cells, and they do not receive the outcast⸺ I see neither my kin, nor my relations, neither wife, nor children, who abide in servitude⸺ Be accursed, despised slave, for having thought of liberty, abandoning your roof, and departing from your kin!⸺ If I should wish to return to the house of my master, my children and my kin would deny me, for the fear of the Jews, and my master would turn me over to mockery and to outrage⸺ I am afraid to return to slavery, and I shall wander about, as a thief, and my refuge shall be the lair of beasts⸺”

And suddenly the pilgrim falls upon his knees with a dull sound, and begins to pray. For a long time are heard, amidst a complete silence, the deep sighs of the pilgrim and now and then a moan of my grandfather.

My mother, and sister, and I look with fixed attention at that lean, bony face, which is as swarthy as if cast of bronze, and on which lie the clear traces of his endless wanderings and immeasurable sorrow.

The pilgrim rises, straightens himself up, and still keeps his eyes on the holy image. Large tears course down his cheeks, while his black eyes sparkle at the same time evil despair and stern faith.

“Father!” he suddenly speaks, raising his hand to the image. “There—there let us seek the eternal city!⸺ Only there⸺ There they will not cast you off⸺”

“But do not despair, Aleksándr! God will uplift you,” says grandfather. “There is not a tear, Aleksándr, that floweth in vain, and is not heard at the throne of the Almighty! Not a hair of your head shall perish⸺ Seek, and you shall always find! Knock, and the gates of truth shall be opened unto you!⸺ Sit down, Aleksándr, and strengthen yourself with what God hath sent.”

The pilgrim is, it seems, quieted down, and he seats himself on the bench again; but now his head is raised, and his gleaming eyes look somewhere into the distance, as if they pierced the walls of our cabin, and a strange struggle shines in them, as if they did not yet know on what to rest their choice: on heaven or on earth.

“Well, Aleksándr, tell us something about God’s world. Many things are revealed to you pilgrims. Come, sit down here!”

The pilgrim seats himself at the table, and I see my mother, her eyes burning with some mysterious curiosity, moving up towards him, placing her arms on the table, leaning her head upon them, and fixing her dreamy eyes upon the pilgrim’s face.

And the pilgrim begins to speak. But my childish imagination is only impressed by his stern, misty form, and has preserved nothing else, and I recall his speeches only as the din of a turbid torrent that runs across the endless steppes. And over these steppes rapidly marches, driven by the wind, the tall, stern figure that is in vain seeking a place where the son of man may lay down his head.

And the pilgrim has not yet ended his stories, which, it seems, are so long that they last a whole night, and a day, and again a night, when there appears in the door of our cabin a new strange being that strikes our childish imagination.

At first we see only an immense old rough sheepskin coat that is held together by a belt, and large old felt boots, but it is quite impossible to define the sex, the age, or the occupation of the person that is hidden in the recesses of that huge coat, above which is barely seen the head so tightly wrapped in a frosted shawl that even the eyes cannot be discerned. The strange coat nervously and rapidly makes three deep inclinations before the holy image, and then to the corners of the room, and just as rapidly begins to unravel the shawl, and by degrees appears, at first, a thin, grey beard, then a thin, long nose, small, mouse-like, grey eyes, and finally an immense bald head is freed from a sheepskin cap, here and there feathered with dishevelled tufts of greyish red hair. And when the coat suddenly and unexpectedly falls off in the corner,—there stands before us one of the commonest, the most “insignificant” of the “worthless lot” who, in the opinion of my grandmother, live in this world: it is an old serf, in a patched and torn gabardine. No sooner does the peasant feel himself freed from the weight of the huge sheepskin that has oppressed him, than he becomes nervously alive, sweetly smiles upon us all, bows again and again into both corners, and, rapidly twitching his feet before grandfather, cries out in an entreating voice: “Most worshipful one! Father! Give me a lodging! Refresh me! Give me hope!”

“Ah, Filimón, Filimón! Is it you again?” says my “little grandfather” in evident agitation, trying to find his snuff-box.

“Yes, I, worshipful man. Do not misjudge me,” says the peasant so softly that you would think he was afraid of his own voice.

“Ah, Filimón!” says grandfather, for some reason shaking his head in anguish and trying to console himself with a pinch of snuff. “When will you come to rest? Friend, is there a living spot in you?”

It appears to us, indeed, that there is not a living spot in the peasant: neither muscles, nor flesh, nor blood,—nothing but strong, indestructible bones enclosed in a dark-brown skin.

The peasant, after grandfather’s words, smiles even more entreatingly; his grey, little eyes apparently become even smaller,—and he suddenly grows once more enlivened and agitated; all his bony members are in motion, and, as if seized by some unusual care, he begins to rummage in the breast of his torn outer garment.

He finally brings to light something that is wrapped in a dark kerchief. He cautiously opens it with his trembling fingers and, timidly turning to both sides, with a careworn glance places before grandfather some old, stained papers, and again makes a low bow before him.

“Worshipful one! I have a request to make.”

“Ah, Filimón! Ah, Filimón!” sighs grandfather, again shaking his head in anguish: “Why do you tempt God our Lord? If you do not care for yourself, think of your kin. Pacify your spirit! It is enough! Enough, Filimón! You have chastised yourself enough, my friend! The Lord seeth, the Lord hath weighed and measured. He demandeth not complete exhaustion. Do not tempt fate!”

“Most worshipful man! I am going! I have to care for people! I must go!”

“Whither are you going, senseless man? Take a breath. At least heal your old wounds. Take your ease!”

“Father, they are healed! Do not misjudge me! I am going—to the higher realms!”

And the peasant once more looks entreatingly into grandfather’s face, and it seems to us that grandfather is unable to withstand that entreating glance.

And grandfather rises, his glance becomes stern and serious, and he says with severity:

“Filimón! Have pity on me! God will punish me, your councillor and abettor, for you!”

“Father, do not deny me! I will knock once more: knock, knock, knock! Maybe the Lord will grant me⸺ Just this way, lightly, father: knock, knock, knock! ‘Who is there?’ they will ask. ‘’T is I,’ says I, as before. ‘’T is I.’”

“How many times have you gone to knock?”

“’T is the eighth time, father. ’T is the eighth for the higher realms. I was driven off six times. Six times they flayed me⸺”

“Dear Filimón, how much will there be left of you? Take pity on yourself. Pity me, I pray, pity my soul. Why should I aid in your suffering and destruction?”

The peasant once more smiles entreatingly into grandfather’s face, and suddenly falls down before his feet.

“Most worshipful one! Do not begrudge me!”

And rising to his feet just as swiftly, he nervously and excitedly flourishes his dry, bony hands, lets his mouse-like eyes roam timidly in the corners, and begins to speak, without cessation, as if everything is to come down in a rain, everything he has been carrying hither with the greatest care for days and miles⸺ It is one endless, intent murmur, like the distant din of the mill water, interrupted by some sudden exclamations that make our childish hearts tremble with fear.

I remember how that intent murmur of the bony peasant made my head feel as though compressed in a vise, how terribly my blood beat in my temples, so that I was ready to burst out into sobs and run away from the cabin,—far, far away from that terrible murmur, in spite of the frost, and the deep snowdrifts, and the night storm that howled around our cabin. And if that dreadful murmur that racked my nerves had lasted one minute longer, I should have come out from under my warm fur, and should have, indeed, run away as in a delirium. But the “little grandfather” stepped up to us, and thoughtfully stroked our heads. Why did he do it? He, evidently, did not notice it himself. Or, maybe, he unconsciously wanted to ask our consent for something. And, interrupting the peasant, he said:

“Filimón! For the last time, absolutely. I feel it, it is for the last time. There shall be an end! It can’t be otherwise! There must be an end! The Lord is great in His long-suffering, that is true, but also terrible in His anger!”

The peasant’s face beams with pleasure, and he at once breaks off his murmur.

“What shall I write about?” asks grandfather.

“Father, write the whole truth. Tell straight about everything. Hide nothing, and have no mercy upon us: crush the blood of Judas! The blood of Judas has begun to oppress the people! The main thing, father, tell the whole truth about everything.”

And the peasant solemnly raises his hands to heaven.

“Write! I have suffered, and I can suffer more. I am afraid of no new prison, and of no new chains. Most worshipful one, have no mercy! Write!”

And for a long, long time, through the speechless quiet of a winter night and through our disturbed dreams, we see the bony little peasant, with his entreating smile and a certain childishly naïve decision and faith, that enlighten his whole little face, and our “little grandfather,” who has suddenly become so serious and stern and who with the consciousness of some great obligation is slowly and deliberately drawing his legible semi-uncial letters on the paper.

“Write, write, father! There is truth! There will be truth!” we again hear the voice of the bony peasant, and the longer he watches grandfather’s pen, the brighter, it seems, his face is growing.

We are, for some reason, happy for the peasant and for grandfather, but at the same time we are oppressed by a mysterious feeling of terror and of fear, because it seems to us that our stern grandmother will soon come out of the living rooms, and will angrily cast her suspicious glance upon all of us “useless” and “loafing” people, and will cry:

“Where did that worthless lot come from? Whence does God carry them? Evidently punishments and threats do not take off all the loafing people⸺ What have you found in each other? And why do you stick to each other, like flies to honey? Well, this one has been half-witted from her birth,” grandmother shakes her head at my mother, “but you, old man? O deacon! Some evil will befall you, some evil will! Make a note of my words. You will get a terrible reward for all these people!”

But the “loafing people,” who at first are really grieved and intimidated by the angry words of my stern grandmother, not only do not disappear, but grow more and more.

Vladímir Galaktiónovich Korolénko. (1853.-)

Korolénko is descended on his father’s side from the Cossacks; his mother was the daughter of a Polish landed proprietor. He graduated from a Real-Gymnasium in the Government of Zhitomír, and then, under untold hardships, studied in the Technological Institute of St. Petersburg and Peter’s Academy in Moscow. Here he was arrested for addressing a collective petition to the director of the school, and was sent to the Government of Vológda, and thence back to Krónstadt, where his family was residing. The next year he settled in St. Petersburg where he read proof. In 1879 he was again arrested, and his wanderings through all parts of European Russia and Siberia began. His first stories were published in 1879, but the first to attract the attention of the public was his Makár’s Dream, which deals with the semi-savages of the Siberian Tayga. The artistic perfection of his style, the harmoniousness of his diction, and the completeness of his stories are rare qualities among modern Russian authors. The sadness of his stories is not of the heartrending, cheerless kind, and rather invites a rereading. Among his best known books and separate sketches are The Blind Musician, The Forest Rustles, The Old Bell-ringer, In Bad Society.

Many of Korolénko’s stories have been well translated into English: The Vagrant and Other Tales (containing The Old Bell-ringer, The Forest Roughs, Easter Night, A Saghalinian, Sketches of a Siberian Tourist), translated by Mrs. A. Delano, New York and Boston, 1887 (2d ed. 1896); The Blind Musician, translated by Mrs. A. Delano, with an introduction by G. Kennan, Boston, 1890; the same, translated by W. Westall and S. Stepniak (International Series, No. 100), New York, 1890 (2d ed. 1893); the same (Seaside Library, No. 1515), New York, 1890; Makár’s Dream, in Cosmopolitan, vol. vi.; A Queer Girl, in Free Russia, vol. ii., Nos. 9 and 10, and In the Famine Year, vol. x., No. 2; A Saghalien Convict (in Pseudonym Library); In Two Moods (and In Bad Society), translated by S. Stepniak and W. Westall (Lovell’s International Series, No. 178), New York, 1891, and (Seaside Library, No. 1943) New York, 1892; The Old Bell-ringer, translated by M. P. de Schatokhin, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 8; An Involuntary Murderer, translated by Jessie Mackenzie, in Gentleman’s Magazine, 1898.

THE OLD BELL-RINGER

A SPRING IDYLL

It grows dark. Over the black, crenelated line of the dense forest stands the full moon; it stands, but does not shine⸺ A small settlement that nestles over the distant brook, in the pine forest, is merged in that peculiar twilight, so common to spring nights, when the moon stands pensively over the horizon, shrouded by a smoky veil. The mist, rising from the earth, thickens the long shadows of the woods and covers the open places with a silvery azure glamour⸺ All is quiet, pensive, melancholy.

The village slumbers quietly.

The humble cabins barely stand out in their dark contours; here and there glimmer fires; now and then a gate creaks, a watchful dog barks, and all is silent again. At times there issue from the dark mass of the softly rustling forest the figures of pedestrians, there passes by a rider, creaks a vehicle. These are the inhabitants of lonely forest hamlets who are going to their church to meet the spring holiday.

The church stands on a mound, in the centre of the village. Its windows are bright with lights. The tall, murky, old belfry is lost with its spire in the azure.

The steps of the staircase are creaking⸺ The old bell-ringer Mikhyéich is ascending the bell tower, and soon his little lantern will be suspended in mid-air, like a shooting star in space⸺

It is hard for the old man to climb the steep staircase. His old legs do not serve him well, he is worn out, and his eyes see but dimly⸺’T is time, it has long been time, that the old man should take his rest, but God does not send him death. He has buried his sons, has buried his grandchildren, has accompanied old men to their celestial dwelling, has accompanied young men, but he is still alive. ’T is hard⸺ Many is the time he has met the spring holiday, and he has lost the count of how often he has waited for the appointed time on that very bell tower. And there God has again decreed⸺

The old man walks to the opening in the tower and leans over the banister. Below, around the church, the graves of the village cemetery dot the darkness; the old crosses look as though they protected them with their outstretched arms. Here and there leafless birches bend over them⸺ From there, below, is wafted to Mikhyéich the aromatic odour of young buds and reminds him of the melancholy silence of the eternal sleep⸺

What will become of him in a year? Will he again climb to this top, under the brass bell, in order to awaken light-sleeping night by its metallic din, or will he lie—down there, in the dark corner of the cemetery, under a cross? God knows⸺ He is prepared: in the meanwhile may God grant him to meet the holiday once more. “Glory to Thee, Lord!” his old lips mutter the customary formula and he looks upwards, at the starred heaven that glows with a million lights, and he makes the sign of the cross⸺

“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich!” calls out to him from below the tremulous voice of an old man. The aged sexton looks up at the belfry, shades his unsteady and tearful eyes with his open hand, but he does not see Mikhyéich.

“What do you want? Here I am!” answers the bell-ringer, as he leans over the banister. “Can’t you see me?”

“No, I can’t. Say, is it not time to ring? What do you think?”

Both look at the stars. Thousands of God’s fires twinkle down to them from on high. The fiery “Wain” has risen way above them⸺ Mikhyéich is making his calculation.

“No, not yet, wait a bit⸺ I know when⸺”

He does know. He needs no watch: God’s stars will tell him when the time has come. Heaven and earth, and the white cloud that gently swims in the azure, and the murky forest that indistinctly whispers below, and the plash of the brook lost in the darkness,—all that is familiar to him, all that is his own⸺ Not in vain has he passed his whole life here⸺

The distant past arises before him⸺ He recollects how he for the first time climbed this bell tower with his father. Lord, how long ago that is—and yet how recent! He sees himself a blonde boy; his eyes are aflame; the wind—not the wind that raises the dust in the streets, but some special kind of wind that flaps its noiseless wings way above the earth—dishevels his hair⸺ Below, way, way down, walk tiny people, and the huts of the village are tiny too, and the forest has receded, and the round clearing in which the village is situated looks so enormous, so endless⸺

“Oh, there it is, all of it there!” the grey-haired old man smiles as he looks down at the small clearing.

That is the way with life. In your youth you can’t see the end of it, and there it is, all of it, as if in the palm of your hand, from the beginning to that very little grave that he has taken a fancy to for himself in the corner of the cemetery. Well, glory to Thee, Lord! ’t is time for rest. The hard road has been passed honourably, and the damp earth is his mother⸺ Soon, yes, very soon!⸺

But, it must be time! He looks once more at the stars, rises, takes off his cap, makes the sign of the cross, grasps the bell ropes⸺ A minute later the night air reverberates from the hollow stroke—another, a third, a fourth—one after the other, filling the light-sleeping night of the holiday’s eve, there flow the mighty, drawn-out sonorous singing sounds⸺

The ringing stops. In the church begins the service. In former years Mikhyéich used to go down the staircase and stand in the corner, at the door, in order to pray and hear the singing. But this time he stays in his belfry. It is hard for him to climb the stairs, and besides, he feels rather tired. He seats himself on the bench and, hearing the dying din of the rocking brass, falls into deep musing. About what? He is hardly able to answer that himself. The tower is dimly illumined by the lantern. The dull-sounding bells are merged in darkness; below, from the church, the singing reaches him from time to time as a weak murmur, and the night wind agitates the ropes that are attached to the iron hearts of the bells.

The old man bends on his breast his grey head that is disturbed by disconnected pictures. “They are singing the troparion!” he thinks to himself, and sees himself in the church. In the chancel dozens of children’s voices flow together; the aged priest, Father Naúm of blessed memory, reads the litany with a quivering voice; hundreds of peasants’ heads bow down and rise again, like the ripe ears when the wind blows through them. The peasants make the sign of the cross. They are all familiar faces, and all of them now dead. There is the stern face of his father; there his elder brother is with fervour making the sign of the cross, and sighing, as he is standing by the side of his father. There he is himself, abloom with health and strength, full of unconscious hope of future happiness and joys of life⸺ Where is that happiness? The old man’s memory flashes like a dying flame and a bright beam, gliding through his consciousness, for a moment illumines all the nooks of his past life. He sees work above endurance, sorrow, care. Where is that happiness? A hard lot will make furrows on his young brow, will bend his powerful spine, will teach him to sigh, like his elder brother.

There, at the left, among the village women, stands his young wife, modestly bending her head. She has been a good woman, may she come to the kingdom of heaven! She has suffered so much, the dear woman. Want and work, and a woman’s inevitable sorrow will dry up her beauty; her eyes will grow dim, and an expression of an eternal, dull fear of sudden calamities will take the place of serenity in her face. Yes, where is her happiness? One son is left to them, their hope and joy, and human injustice has overpowered him.

There is also that rich fiend; he makes low obeisances, asking forgiveness for the bloody tears of orphans. He fervently crosses himself and falls upon his knees, and strikes his brow against the floor. And Mikhyéich’s heart boils furiously, and the dusky faces of the images look down from the walls upon human misery and human injustice.

All that is past, all that is behind him. Now his whole world is here in the dark tower, where the wind moans in the night and swings the bell-ropes. “God be your judge, God be your judge!” mutters the old man and bends his grey head, and tears gently roll down the old cheeks of the bell-ringer.

“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich! Oh there, have you fallen asleep?” they shout below.

“What?” the old man cries out and jumps to his feet. “Lord! Have I really fallen asleep? Never before have I so disgraced myself!”

Mikhyéich hastens to lay his hands on the ropes. Below him the peasant crowd moves about like an ant-hill; banners wave in the air and glimmer with their gilt brocade. The procession of the cross has made the round of the church, and the joyous call reaches Mikhyéich’s ears:

“Christ is risen from the dead!”

And this call stirs a wave in the old man’s heart. It seems to him that the flames of the wax tapers have burnt up more brightly in the darkness, and the crowd is more agitated, and the banners flutter, and the wakened wind seizes the waves of sound and with broad pinions carries them up, to run together with the loud, solemn tones of the bells.

Old Mikhyéich rings as he has never rung before.

It seems as though the old man’s full heart has passed into the dead brass, and the tones sing and waver, laugh and weep, and interweaving in a mighty stream are borne upwards, to the starry heaven. And the stars flash more brightly and burn, and the tones tremble and pour down and fall to the earth with loving grace.

A deep bass cries out loud in mighty tones that announces to heaven and earth: “Christ is risen!”

And two tenors, trembling with the alternate beats of their iron hearts, respond merrily and clangorously: “Christ is risen!”

And two soft sopranos, seemingly hastening not to be behindhand, push themselves in between the larger ones, and joyfully, like little children, sing out rapidly: “Christ is risen!”

And it seems as though the old tower were trembling and shaking, and as though the wind that blows around the face of the bell-ringer flapped its mighty pinions and repeated: “Christ is risen!”

The old heart forgets life that is full of cares and injury. The old bell-ringer forgets that his life is confined to the grim narrow space in the bell-tower, that he is alone in the world, like a lonely trunk that the storms have broken. He hears those singing and weeping sounds that rise to the heaven on high and fall down to poor earth, and it seems to him that he is surrounded by his sons and grandchildren, that he hears their joyful voices; the voices of the old and young are combined into a chorus, and they sing to him of happiness and joy, which he has not known in his life. The old bell-ringer jerks the ropes, tears roll down his face, and his heart beats violently with the illusion of happiness.

Down below people listen and say to each other that never before has old Mikhyéich rung the bells so wonderfully.

Suddenly the great bell utters an uncertain tone, and grows dumb. The disturbed smaller bells ring out with an unfinished trill, cutting it short, as if to listen to the sad hollow note which trembles and flows and weeps, gradually dying upon the air. The old bell-ringer drops down upon the bench in utter exhaustion, and two last tears softly roll over his pale cheeks⸺

“Ho there, send up a change; the old bell-ringer has done his ringing⸺”

Vsévolod Mikháylovich Garshín. (1855-1888.)

Garshín was born in the Government of Ekaterinosláv, where his father was a small landed proprietor. In his early childhood he travelled a great deal over Russia, as his father was in the military service. He was placed in the Gymnasium at St. Petersburg, and there he excelled as a student, but in 1872 he had the first attacks of insanity which afterwards returned periodically and finally caused him to commit suicide by throwing himself headlong from an upper story. He took part in the Turko-Russian War as a common soldier, and while in the field composed his first story, Four Days, in which he described the suffering of a wounded comrade of his. Upon his return he wrote, in his lucid intervals, a series of wonderfully realistic stories, many of which deal with painful situations. Among his best are The Coward, The Artists, The Red Flower, Attalea Princeps, and That Which Was Not.

In English translation are: Four Days, translated by N. H. Dole, in Poet Lore, vol. iii.; Mad Love, or, An Artist’s Dream, London, 1890, and Stories, translated by E. L. Voynich, London, 1893.

THAT WHICH WAS NOT

One beautiful June day—it was beautiful because it was twenty-eight degrees Réaumur—one beautiful June day it was warm everywhere, but it was even warmer in the clearing in the garden, where stood some ricks of newly mown hay, because the place was protected from the wind by a thick, impenetrable, cherry grove. Nearly everything was asleep: people had had their fill and were devoting themselves to post-prandial lateral occupations; the birds were silent; and even many insects had sought shelter from the heat.

That was even more true of the domestic animals: the cattle took refuge under some roof; the dog lay in a hole that he had dug out under the barn and, with eyes half open, breathed intermittently, while sticking out his tongue for almost more than a foot; at times he so yawned, evidently from ennui superinduced by the deadly heat, that one could hear a falsetto whine; the pigs, mother and her thirteen young ones, went down to the river bank and there lay down in the black, thick mud whence issued only their panting and snoring pig coins with two holes in them, their oblong, mud-washed spines, and enormous pendent ears. Only the hens were not afraid of the heat and managed to kill time by scratching up the dry earth opposite the kitchen entry, though they knew full well that there was not a kernel to be found there. The cock, evidently, was not feeling very well, for now and then he assumed a stupid attitude and cried amain: “What a scandal!”

There, we have walked away from the clearing where it was warmer than elsewhere, and yet a whole wakeful company was sitting there. That is, they were not all sitting. For example, the old bay, that was rummaging a hayrick at the danger of feeling the whip of coachman Antón, could not sit at all, being a horse; the caterpillar was not sitting either, but rather lying on its belly; but we need not be so particular about words. A small but very serious company was gathered under a cherry tree: a snail, a dung beetle, a lizard, and the above-mentioned caterpillar; then a grasshopper hopped up to them. Nearby stood the old bay, listening to their conversation with one of his bay ears, on the inside of which could be seen dark grey hairs. On the bay sat two flies.

The company discussed things politely, but with sufficient animation, and, as is proper in such cases, nobody agreed with his neighbour, for they all valued the independence of their opinions and characters.

“In my opinion,” said the Dung Beetle, “a decent animal must above all care for his posterity. Life is a labour for the next generation. He who conscientiously fulfils the obligations which Nature imposes upon him stands on a firm foundation. He knows what he has to do, and no matter what may happen, he is not responsible. Look at me: who works more than I? Who for whole days at a time rolls such a heavy ball, a ball that I have made with great art out of dung, with the great purpose in view of giving the opportunity to new dung beetles like myself to grow up? But then, I do not think there is anybody who has such a calm conscience, or could with such a pure heart say: ‘Yes, I have done all I can and all I ought to do,’ as I will say when these new dung beetles will see daylight. That ’s what I call labour!”

“Don’t mention your labour, friend!” said an Ant that during the Dung Beetle’s speech had dragged up an immense piece of a dry stalk. He stopped for a moment, sat down on his four hind legs, and with his two front legs wiped off the sweat from his tired-out face. “I work myself, and much harder than you! But you work for yourself, or, what is the same, for your baby beetles; not everybody is so fortunate as that. Just try dragging logs for the commonwealth’s stores, as I do! I do not know myself what it is that makes me work so hard, even in such hot weather. Nobody will say ‘thanks!’ to me for it. We, unlucky working ants, all work, and what good do we get out of it? It ’s just our fate!”

“You, Dung Beetle, look at life too dryly, and you, Ant, too gloomily,” protested the Grasshopper. “No, Beetle, I do like to chirrup and leap about a little, and, really, I have no scruples about it! Besides, you have not touched the question that Madam Lizard has put. She asked: ‘What is the world?’ and you are talking about your dung ball. Why, that is not even decent. The world is, in my opinion, a very good thing, if for nothing else, because we find in it juicy grass, the sun, and the breeze. And it is so big! Living under these trees, you can’t have the slightest conception how big it is. When I am in the field, I sometimes jump up as high as I can, and I assure you I reach an enormous height. I see from way up there that there is no end to the world.”

“That ’s right,” thoughtfully assented the Bay. “But all the same none of you will ever see one hundredth part of what I have seen in my lifetime. What a pity, you can’t understand what a verst is! A verst from here is the village Lupárevka: I go there every day with a barrel for water. But they never feed me there. On the other side is Efímovka and Kislyákovka; in the latter there is a church with a belfry. And then comes Svyáto-Tróitskoe, and then Bogoyávlensk. In Bogoyávlensk they always give me some hay, but the hay is not good there. And then there is Nikoláevsk,—that ’s a town, twenty-eight versts from here,—there the hay is better, and I get oats there; but I do not like to go to Nikoláevsk: our master generally drives there, and he tells the coachman to drive fast, and the coachman lays the whip on us dreadfully. And there are also Aleksándrovka, Byelózerka, Khérson,—that ’s a town too⸺ But how can you grasp that all! That is the world; I must say, not the whole world, but yet a considerable part of it.”

The Bay grew silent, but his lower lip was quivering as if whispering something. That was from old age: he was seventeen years old, and for a horse that is as much as seventy-seven for a man.

“I do not understand your wise equine words, and, I confess, I am not trying to catch their meaning,” said the Snail. “All I want is a burdock: it is now four days I have been crawling over one, and it is not yet all ended. Beyond this burdock there is another burdock, and in that burdock there is, no doubt, another snail. There you have it all. There is no need in leaping about,—that ’s all empty talk and bosh; stay where you are, and eat the leaf on which you are sitting. If it were not for my laziness, I should have long ago crawled away from you and all your talk: it gives me only a headache, that ’s all.”

“Now, I beg your pardon, I don’t see why?” broke in the Grasshopper. “It is quite enjoyable to chirrup, particularly about pleasant matters, like infinity and so forth. Of course, there are practical natures who only think of filling their bellies, like you, or that charming Caterpillar⸺”

“Oh, no, leave me alone, I pray, leave me alone, don’t touch me!” exclaimed the Caterpillar pitifully. “I am doing it all for the future life, only for the future life.”

“What future life are you talking about?” asked the Bay.

“Don’t you know that after death I shall be turned into a butterfly with colored wings?”

The Bay, the Lizard, and the Snail did not know it, but the insects had some notion of it. And they all kept silent for a moment, for none of them could say anything sensible about the future life.

“We ought to bow respectfully to solid convictions,” chirruped the Grasshopper. “Is there nobody else who wants to say anything? Maybe you?” he turned to the Flies.

And the older one answered:

“We can’t complain. We have just come out of the rooms; the lady had put out some fresh jam in some dishes, and we crawled in under the covers, and had lots to eat. We are satisfied. Dear mama stuck fast in the jam, but what ’s to be done? She has lived long enough in this world. But we are satisfied.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Lizard, “I think that you are all absolutely right! But, on the other hand⸺”

The Lizard did not finish saying what there was on the other hand, because she felt that something was jamming her tail to the ground.

It was coachman Antón who had just awakened and had come to fetch the Bay. He accidentally stepped with his monstrous boot on the whole company and smashed it. Only the flies flew away to lick off their dead, sugared mama, and the Lizard got away with part of her tail. Antón took the Bay by the forelock and led him out of the garden to hitch him to the barrel, in order to fetch some water, and he kept saying: “Get up there, shagtail!” to which the Bay answered only with a lisp.

The Lizard was left without a tail. ’T is true, after a time it grew out again, but it always remained rather stumpy and blackish. When the Lizard was asked how she came to injure her tail in that way, she modestly answered:

“They tore it off, because I had made up my mind to express my convictions.”

And she was absolutely right.

Ignáti Nikoláevich Potápenko. (1856-.)

Potápenko was born in the Government of Khérson, where his father was a priest. He himself was educated for the priesthood in Khérson and Odéssa, but he left the Seminary for the university, and the university again for the Conservatory of Music, from which he finally graduated in singing. Potápenko wrote his first sketch in 1881, and became known as an author through his novel, Holy Art, in which he depicted the literary Bohemia of St. Petersburg. His reputation was still more confirmed by his later novels, In Active Service, Common Sense, and His Excellency’s Secretary. His productions are characterised by a healthy optimism and an exquisite humour, which make them very pleasant reading.

Potápenko has been translated into English by W. Gaussen, A Russian Priest (Sunshine Series, No. 86, and Pseudonym Library, No. 7), London, 1891; The General’s Daughter (Sunshine Series, No. 126, extra), London and New York, 1892; Father of Six, also Occasional Holiday (Unknown Library, No. 26), London, 1893; The Curse of Talent, in Memorials of a Short Life, London, 1895.

A THOUSAND TALENTS

“Yes, my friend, I have a great mass of talents, only nothing sensible comes of them. Yes, that ’s so. That is quite correct!⸺”

“Well, well, don’t say that!”

“Not say it? Why, but I tell you, it is the real truth!”⸺

“But how? And why?”

“Why? That is the question⸺ That is, really, the question!”

The man who was possessed of such an immense mass of talents was sitting in a soft armchair, leaning with the whole weight of his body against its broad, inclined back. He had a remarkably happy exterior. He was neither handsome, nor stately, nor elegant, nor brilliant,—no, his exterior cannot be defined by any other word than “happy.” There were even half a dozen pits on his face,—traces of former smallpox; his nose, which had at first been straight and even, unexpectedly began to turn up at the point; there was not the slightest order in his russet beard and moustaches; his brow looked too large; and he was all as white as milk, while his face had a shade of copper. At last, his common, grey eyes were not out of the ordinary, but everything taken together, his whole face, breathed a serene, frank sincerity. There are such faces: you look at them, and you want to be open with them, and to confide some secret, to unburden your heart to them. He was awkwardly put together, his movements were halting, and his voice was a little shrill, but even thus he was sympathetic. In short, he had a happy exterior. His name was Nikoláy Petróvich Bobróv.

His interlocutor was simply a respectable gentleman, an attorney in important civil cases, the owner of large apartments, among which was a study, in which they were seated, with soft, heavy furniture and with bookshelves filled with a mass of learned and instructive books. That was Kurázhev, Sergyéy Aleksyéevich, a well-known and esteemed person in the city. He had but lately made Bobróv’s acquaintance, having met him two or three times, but he was already in the power of his exterior. Bobróv had this day called upon him for the first time, and a conversation ensued. Kurázhev outside of his practice busied himself with “social questions,” as he called them, and that meant that he was a live, responsive man who was interested in life and people, and who loved to “psychologise,” that is, to rummage in the human soul.

“I ’ll tell you why,—because I am a Russian! Yes, that ’s it,” said Bobróv, this time not awaiting his host’s question.

“That is incomprehensible. You must make yourself clear!” remarked the host, looking at him with the curiosity of a professional psychologist, as if he were ready to take the knife, in order to cut open his breast, and take a look inside his soul.

“Make myself clear? Well, I can make myself clear. I can and I am prepared to make myself clear, only I shall have to go way back⸺”

“That is all right. I am ready to follow you into the depths of time.”

“Well, it is not exactly the depths of time, but I shall have to mention my deceased progenitor, and maybe my grandmother too.”

“Or your great-grandfather, if you want to. You have interested me with your strange statement⸺”

“My statement is not so strange, if you look at it closely. I affirm that Russians suffer from their talented natures. Yes, that ’s it. It ought not to be so. They always are possessed of a huge number of talents, and that is why they never amount to anything. Yes, I beg your pardon, you will contradict me later, but now let me⸺ I have struck a good argument, so I can talk clearly and to the point. One does not always succeed in that. Let us take the simplest kind of an example. I had a cook,—by the way, she is still in evidence,—and she had a husband,—he is at your service, too, and his name is Iván. By the way, you might have guessed a priori that all cooks have husbands by the name of Iván. Now I must tell you how that Iván has surprised me, simply stunned me, yes, sir! We hired his wife by herself, and he came to her a week later. He stayed a while, ate some pumpkin seeds, and went away: that was noble!

“Some three days later he made his appearance once more, but this time it was in the morning. He ate his breakfast with her, washed the dishes, remained for dinner,—all in proper shape. We took a liking to him; we sent him on some errand, I think to the apothecary’s,—he started on a run. Well, in short, to be done with it, two weeks later he settled in the kitchen, and all that looked so simple and clear that it never occurred to us to doubt his right to it, and to send him off. He is there still, but that is another matter. We soon noticed that he never went out to work, but that he was passing all the time in the kitchen, washing dishes, blackening boots, running on errands, eating and sleeping. I once asked him:

“‘Say, Iván! Do you know a trade?’

“‘I know all trades!’ he answered me with the greatest self-confidence.

“‘How so? You don’t mean all trades!’

“‘All, Nikoláy Petróvich!’ He never called me otherwise but Nikoláy Petróvich.

“‘If so, why are you not doing anything?’

“‘Oh, well, no work has turned up⸺ I reckon, there is none for me⸺’

“And you must know he was not lying, he really knew all trades. My dining table became unglued; I told them to send for a joiner.

“‘What ’s the use in a joiner Nikoláy Petróvich? I will fix it for you in first-class shape!’ he informed me, and, in reality, he fussed with the table about three hours, and brought it back to life. It is true, it was rather coarse work: the glue dried up in lumps, where it could be seen, and the heads of the nails somehow stuck sideways in the wood,—but it was solid. My wife was about to have the baby’s bathtub fixed. He got hold of it, straightened out the indented sides, and somehow soldered it, and in addition painted it inside and outside white. Of course, I must say, it was not a particularly neat job, but passable enough,—it could be used. We had to get one of the rooms papered over,—he again proved himself a master, only in one corner he hung a strip upside down. Finally, when spring came, he disappeared, and did not return for three days. When he did show up, he was all smeared with clay and lime.

“‘Where have you been?’

“‘I, sir? I have been doing some masonry.’

“‘What? You are a mason, too?’

“‘Why not? I am a mason, too⸺ I know all trades!’

“To make an end with Iván, I will tell you that he proved to be a tailor, too, and with his own hand he made an overcoat for himself. Of course, it was a wretched coat, but it held together over his back. He finished up by getting drunk and beating his wife. This Iván is a Russian, yes, sir. It is his misfortune to have too much ability, and a bent for too many things. Thanks to that, he has learned many things, but nothing properly, and he cannot stop, concentrate, and perfect himself at anything. No sooner has he taken up calcimining, than the mason is awakened in him; he takes up masonry, and he is at once drawn to the tailor’s trade, and so on. No wonder that this man is all his life suffering and tearing himself asunder, and that he, from time to time, balances his accounts by getting drunk and dealing out blows to his wife. And now it is clear to you that the misfortune of a Russian is in the many-sidedness of his talents.

“It is quite different with the other nations. Take, for example, a German. Of course, a German is not naturally stupid, but he has not the slightest talent. He has but one talent,—patience, and just see what wonders he performs by the aid of that modest companion of his. By the aid of this patience alone, he accomplishes in all spheres of human activities those results that make us with all our talents hold up our hands in wonderment. And all that only because he has but that one talent. He knows that himself, and he begins to develop it in his swaddling clothes. I have heard it said that German babies rarely cry. That is so because they early get used to patience. Now let us take the English. No doubt, they are a clever nation, but they have only one talent, and that is their egotism in the broadest sense of the word, namely their self-respect, their worship of themselves, their contempt for everything that is not English, and its exploitation in their favour. That talent is carried out by them with the strictest consistency in every thing,—from the most trifling to the most stupendous,—and makes it possible for them to be the leaders in everything in the world. Yes, sir.”

“But you have deviated a little. You had intended to speak of yourself!” the attorney gently interrupted him.

“No, I did not deviate. I only began that way to come finally to my case. Now I will pass over to that notable subject. You must know that my father was not of high birth; he was of the gentry, but of those who are greatly impoverished. He was the manager of some count’s estate. He had received no education, but had seen and heard much, and was a man of practical sense. At eight years of age I felt a hankering for the violin. Yes, sir, for the violin. It was not the caprice of a spoilt child, but a real hankering. I remember how my heart beat at the thought of my father buying me a violin. Well, he bought me one. The leader of the church choir showed me the first steps, taught me how to hold the bow and the fingers, and I began scraping. I scraped horribly, but something came of it. When I was ten years old I was taken to town to be sent to the Gymnasium. Here I had a patented teacher whose violin was worth three hundred roubles, if he was not fibbing. My father paid him in kind: he would bring him cottage cheese, or a keg of herrings, or pickling cucumbers. I learned from him my first correct steps, and what do you suppose came of it all? Nothing. Many heard me and cried: ‘Oh, what talent!’ And really, I did have talent. But you understand that I ought to have played do-re-mi-fa-sol, and nothing else, when my aunt visited me.

“‘Give me a tune, my darling, and I will give you a silver rouble for it.’

“I began do-re-mi-fa-sol.

“‘Well, what is that? That is not even interesting. And yet they told me that you had some talent. What kind of talent is that? I could understand if you played something that would touch my soul. No, I don’t think you have any talent!’—What, I have no talent? Aunty thinks so. Wait, I ’ll prove you differently!—And I began secretly from the teacher to learn As I go alone into the street, and I played it before my aunt; it was so touching that she wiped her eyes, and said: ‘Now, that ’s a different matter,—now I see that you have talent!’

“Then I learned The hussar leaning on his sabre, In a gloomy autumn evening, and finally, to cap the climax, a quadrille from Fair Helen. Then I went back to the village,—everybody was delighted. My repertoire was popular. No sooner did anyone call at our house, than father began to boast:

“‘You ought to hear him play the violin! Well, Kólenka, give us The hussar!’

“I took up an attitude and played The hussar, and by degrees worked up to Fair Helen. In this manner I gave concerts all summer, and I forgot everything I had learned from my teacher, but above all I began to despise do-re-mi-fa-sol, because that did not bring me any fame. And thus, sir, I just stuck fast at the Fair Helen, yes, sir! Then, suddenly, a passion for versifying came over me. Again a hankering,—what will you do about that? I began writing verses ‘standing, lying, sitting, walking.’ I first did it secretly, for poetry is a kind of love,—it seeks mystery and solitude. Here again my accursed vanity ran away with me. My verses were not bad. I showed them to a schoolmate or two; they took them up and carried them around, and I became the attested school poet. The director found out about it, and he asked for my note-book, and approved of it: ‘You have, sir, a divine gift!’ They came to me for every solemn occasion: ‘Bobróv, write a poem!’ And Bobróv wrote it and solemnly recited it. You understand what it led to. Namely to this: Bobróv began to try acrobatic feats, and to write in bombastic style, to imitate Derzhávin, and his youthful poetry became flat. Consequently, nothing came of that. By that time I was in the seventh form, and my breast was filled with ecstasies of a different sort. I abandoned poetry, and was drawn to serious and clever books. At first I drank deep from Byelínski, than Dobrolyúbov, and then Písarev fell among us. I graduated from the Gymnasium, the university began⸺”

Bobróv stopped, rose from his seat, and began to walk across the room, holding his hands behind his back.

“Yes, the university! I had brilliant ability, and what came of it all? Do you know what? The devil knows what! I was attracted to science, and I wanted to learn the history of the human race, and its creations,—so I became a philologist, and began to swallow book after book. One of the professors directed his attention to me, and had an eye on me,—but it appeared to me that my country was not in need of such a science; so I turned about, and began studying Smith, Mill, and Marx⸺ A year later, behold, I was studying the law! Yes, sir! The law. And let me tell you I showed ability in Smith-Mill-Marx too. I do not know where I got all my eloquence, my indomitable logic, and so forth. I found mistakes in Mill, so I would say: ‘Here and here Mill has made a mistake!’ Yes, sir! We naturally recognised no authorities, except our own. Mill was to us not a source of wisdom, but only an excuse for showing the depth of our erudition before the ladies of our circle.

“There were some good-looking women among them, let me tell you. And it is really a wonder I did not get married then! Upon my word, it is a wonder. For they nearly all of them, one must say, paired off, and not just one way or other, but in legal wedlock. Then half of them went off with their wives, that is only natural. Though we had all come together on Mill’s platform, yet, everybody knows, life is not Mill. Yes, sir! And thus I came out hale. I must suppose that it was so because I was too late. The respected fellow-members had picked out all the good-looking ones, there was only left an indifferent lot, while I, after all, had some esthetic taste. It did not take us long to crush Mill—that ’s it, we crushed him. It suddenly became as evident as daylight that he was not good for anything, because the salvation of our country lay not at all in political economy, but in anatomy and physiology. Well, the country had to be saved at all cost, and God forbid another man but myself should save it,—that would have been a personal insult.

“You can guess that the result of it was my going over to the department of natural sciences. Just think of it! here I again found myself upon the summit of my calling. I was glued to a chair, and the microscope was glued to my nose. I sat there days and nights studying and analysing, and don’t imagine that it was without results. Indeed not! I even made a discovery: I brought to light, studied, and described some peculiar property of the blood corpuscle, yes, sir! I do not remember what property that was, but it produced an impression, and they even printed my description of it in some periodical. But while I was dissecting the blood corpuscle, a new tendency was ripening within me. The devil take it, another talent! Nature had implanted as many of them within me as I could hold, and each one of them was dying to show itself, and would not yield to any other.

“I was drawn from time to time to the paper. I used to sit by a kerosene lamp in the quiet of the night, and sketch some scene. At times it was not half bad, and again it was quite passable. Yes, sir! Some friend of mine read it: ‘Oh, but you have literary talent, you ought to write!’ Well, pictures of success, reputation, and even fame, the deuce take it, began to swarm before my eyes. Fame! Whose head would it not turn? What affair would one not throw to the dogs for it! And so, I was no longer sitting over the microscope, but passed whole nights producing artistic literary pictures. That took me from the province to St. Petersburg, whither I hastened at once to find fame. My first experiment was a success. They printed it, praised it, and entered it in the column of the ‘promising.’ I was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry, I wanted to pocket all fame at once, and, of course, I only made botch work of it, and spoiled matters. My later works did not call forth any praise, but were honoured with condescending silence. I was beside myself, began to insist, to work still faster, and to spoil more and more. When an idea flashed through my brain, I, instead of putting it away in a quiet corner of my soul, and living and feeling it over, used to sit down at once and work it out on paper. Something came out, but not what it ought to have been. It turned out to be something pale, something born before its time. Yes, sir! They would print it, but more as ballast. And yet, there was talent, there really was,—everybody acknowledged it. But it was something unfinished, like a phrase half spoken, a picture half painted, furniture unpolished and unvarnished.

“At last, one more bent! My old talent for music awoke in me, and I rushed at once to a musical school. I, the future composer, was studying harmony and counterpoint, and again everybody found that I had talent. The world of sounds swallowed me. I wanted to produce and create, and before I had reached a fugue, I was writing little songs and publishing them⸺ Ah, I did not finish here either. My two songs had success, they were sung at concerts, yes, sir, and I decided I could write an opera. What is the use learning when you have talent? That is a good Russian reason⸺

“And do you know what I am now? I am a man without any definite specialty. I am a Russian who has a thousand talents and who is unfit for any definite business. I can play on the violin a quadrille from Fair Helen, I can write a sonnet, I can discuss Russian literature and history, I know a few things about Smith, Mill, and Marx, I have some ideas about the blood corpuscle, I possess a literary style, can compose a song,—and to sum all up, I am head-scribe in a bureau, of course, through protection. Am I not the same Iván? We are both Russians. Both he and I can do everything, and yet are good for nothing. Both of us have a thousand talents apiece. Well? He is the husband of my cook, and I—am head-scribe! The positions are different, but the sense of them is the same⸺ Yes, sir!”

Here Bobróv rolled up a fat cigarette, gave a few puffs at it, took his cap, and bid his host farewell.

Semén Yákovlevich Nádson. (1862-1887.)

Nádson’s grandfather was a Jew. His father, who had been a good musician, died when he was but two years old, and he also lost his mother and brothers early in youth. He was taken care of by relatives of his, and was sent to the Gymnasium, where he devoted himself to literature and music. His first printed poem appeared when he was but fifteen years old. Soon after began to show themselves the symptoms of consumption to which he finally succumbed. He went to the Caucasus, and was later sent to the south of France. Yet, under the most adverse conditions, he produced a series of poems of exquisite beauty, and gave promise of rivalling the best Russian poets. Shortly before his death he was awarded the Púshkin prize of five hundred roubles.

Pity the stately cypress trees is given in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, and a few shorter poems, by Mrs. M. S. Walker, in Free Russia, vol. xiii., No. 5.

MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER!

My friend, my brother, weary, suffering brother, whoever you be, be not discouraged: let untruth and evil have full sway upon earth that is watered with tears, let the sacred ideal be crushed and defamed, let them shed the innocent blood:—believe me, the time is coming when Baal will perish, and Love will return upon earth!

Not with a crown of thorns, nor oppressed with chains, nor with a cross upon his bent shoulders,—he will come into the world in his strength and splendor, in his hands a bright torch of glory. There will be in the world neither tears, nor warring, nor crossless graves, nor serfs, nor cheerless, deadening want, nor the sword, nor pillory.

O my friend! That bright vision is not a dream, nor an empty hope: look about you,—everywhere evil oppresses too much, everywhere night is too dark! The world will grow tired of torments, will drown in the blood, will get weary of senseless battles,—and it will raise to Love, to unhampered Love its eyes, full of yearning prayer⸺

POETRY

Many years ago she descended from the quiet shades of Paradise into our world, in a garland of fragrant roses, with a youthful smile, charming, naked, and proud of her innocent beauty. She brought with her unknown feelings, the harmony of heaven, and loyalty to dreams,—and her law was art for art’s sake, and her command was to serve beauty.

But at her first steps they tore and trod into the dust her superb flowers,—and her beautiful virgin features were shrouded in a dark cloud of doubts and sorrow; and her former hymns are no more! The storm’s breath carried tracklessly away her exultant sounds,—and her song breathes fire of her soul’s anguish, and thorns wound her divine brow.

Pity the stately cypress trees;

How freshly green they spring!

Ah! why amidst their branches, child,

Have you put up your swing?

Break not a single fragrant bough.

Oh, take thy swing away

To heights where thick acacias bloom;

Mid dusty olives play!

Thence you can see the ocean,

And, as your swing ascends,

Through greening boughs a sunny glimpse

The sea in laughter sends

Of white sails in the distance dim,

Of white gulls far away,

Of white flakes foaming on the sands,

A fringe of snowy spray.

—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Antón Pávlovich Chékhov. (1860-.)

Chékhov is the son of a former serf. He was born in the city of Taganróg, where he went through the Gymnasium. He then attended the Moscow University, where he graduated from the Department of Medicine in 1884. He began early to contribute short stories to various periodicals, and established his reputation in 1887 upon the appearance of his first collected volume. Of his longer stories some of the most artistic are The Steppe, Fires, The Memoirs of an Unknown Man, A Wearisome Story. A pessimistic vein runs through all his productions, and all his characters seem to be fit subjects for the psychiatrist; this is especially the case in two of his dramas, The Mew and Three Sisters, in which there is not one redeeming person, and where the very language of the dramatis personæ is nothing but a series of semi-articulated hysterical ejaculations. He is a great favourite with the Russian reading public, but the foreigner will lay aside his books with great admiration for his talent and with a shudder at the hopeless condition of Russian society.

In English has appeared but Philosophy at Home, in Short Stories, October, 1891.

IN THE COURT-ROOM

In the cinnamon-coloured governmental building of the county seat of N., in which the meetings of the Agronomic Council alternate with those of the Justices of the Peace, of the Departments of Peasant Affairs, of the Sale of Liquor, of Military Conscription, and of many more, a division of the Circuit Court was one gloomy autumn day assembled to take up its cases. A local administrator had made a pun in regard to this cinnamon-coloured building:

“Here is Miss Justice, here is Police, here is Milice,—a regular Institute for Noble Young Ladies.”

But, no doubt to justify the proverb that with seven nurses a child generally loses an eye, this building produces a heavy, oppressive sensation in a man who is neither officially connected nor familiar with it, by its melancholy, barrack-like appearance, by its age, and by the complete absence of any and all comforts, either within or without. Even in bright spring days it looks as if it were covered by a dense shade, and on clear, moonlit nights, when the trees and the houses of the citizens are welded into one continuous shadow and are merged in a quiet sleep, it alone rises awkwardly and out of place, like a crushing rock, over the modest landscape, spoils the general harmony, and stays awake, as though it could not rid itself of the grievous memory of past, unforgiven sins. Within, everything is barn-like and exceedingly unattractive. It is curious to see how easily all these elegant prosecutors, members, leaders, who at home will raise a row at the slightest sign of escaping coal gas or a mere speck on the floor, get used to the buzzing ventilators, the nauseating smell of smoking candles, and the dirty, eternally sweating walls.

The session of the Circuit Court began at ten o’clock. They at once took up the docket, being evidently in a hurry. The cases were disposed of one after the other, taking up no more time than a “mass without the singing,” so that no sensible being could have formed a complete, conceptual picture of that variegated crowd that moved about like a freshet, of all the motions, speeches, misfortunes, truth, lies⸺ By two o’clock much was accomplished: two people were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; one privileged person was deprived of all his rights and sentenced to imprisonment in the jail; one man was found innocent, and one case was postponed.

Precisely at two o’clock the presiding judge announced that now was to be taken up the case of “the indictment found against the peasant Nikoláy Kharlámov for the murder of his wife.” The composition of the court remained the same as in the previous case, only the defence was represented by a new individual,—a young, beardless candidate for judicial honours, in a coat with bright buttons.

“Bring in the defendant!” ordered the presiding judge.

But the defendant was prepared even before, and he marched toward the bench. He was a tall, muscular peasant, about fifty-five years of age, completely bald, with a repulsive, hirsute face, and a long red beard. He was followed by a small, wizened soldier with a gun.

When almost near the bench, there happened a slight accident to this guard. He suddenly stumbled and dropped his gun, but he immediately caught it in its fall, giving his knee a severe knock with the butt. Either from pain or, perhaps, from embarrassment at his awkwardness the soldier blushed crimson.

After the customary questions to the defendant, the rearrangement of the jury, the roll-call, and the oath of the witnesses,—they began the reading of the bill of the indictment. A narrow-chested, pale-faced secretary, who had grown much too thin for his uniform and had a plaster on his cheek,—he looked like a walking clinic,—read rapidly, like a sexton, in a subdued, heavy bass, without raising or lowering his voice, as if afraid to exert his lungs; he was seconded by the ventilator that kept on buzzing behind the judge’s chair, and from this there resulted a sound that gave to the stillness of the room a soporific, narcotic character.

The presiding judge, who was not an old man, with an exceedingly tired face, and near-sighted, was sitting in his chair without stirring, and holding the palm of his hand near his brow, as if to keep the sun out of his eyes. During the buzzing of the ventilator and of the secretary he was thinking of something. When the secretary stopped for a second to draw breath before beginning a new page, he suddenly started and looked at the audience with his blinking eyes, then he leaned over the ear of the fellow-judge by his side; and asked him with a sigh:

“You, Matvyéy Petróvich, are stopping at Demyánov’s?”

“Yes, at Demyánov’s,” answered the member, also startled.

“Next time I think I shall stop there myself. I declare, it is impossible to stop at Tipyakóv’s. There is such a noise there all night long! They make a racket, they cough, and the children cry. It ’s just impossible to stand it!”

The associate prosecutor, a full-faced, well-fed, dark-complexioned man, in gold spectacles, and with a beautiful, well-groomed beard, sat immovably, like a statue, and, leaning his cheek on his closed hand, read Byron’s Cain. His eyes were full of ardent attention, and his brows rose admiringly higher and higher. Now and then he threw himself against the back of his chair, looked for a moment indifferently ahead of him, and then was once more lost in his reading.

The counsel for the defence moved the blunt end of his pencil over the table and, bending his head aside, was meditating something. His youthful face expressed nothing but unchangeable, cold ennui, such as is to be seen in the faces of schoolboys and officials who are obliged to sit day after day in one and the same place and to see all the time the same faces and the same walls. The forthcoming speech did not worry him in the least. What kind of a speech is it any way? By order of the authorities he will deliver it without passion or fire before the jury, according to an old stereotyped form, feeling all the time that it is colourless and tiresome, and then he will gallop through mud and rain to the station, then—to the capital, to get soon another order for some other county seat, where he will make another speech⸺ It ’s tiresome!

The defendant at first coughed nervously into his sleeve and grew pale, then the quiet, the universal monotony and the ennui were communicated to him also. He looked with a dull respect at the uniforms of the judges, at the tired faces of the jury, and calmly blinked with his eyes. The judicial surroundings and procedure, waiting for which his heart had been pining in the prison, now acted upon him most soothingly. He did not meet here at all what he could have expected. Over him hung the accusation of murder, and yet he did not meet here any threatening faces, nor scorning glances, nor loud phrases of revenge, nor any sympathy for his unusual fate; not one of those who were going to judge him had turned their long, inquiring glances upon him. The murky windows, the voice of the secretary, the pose of the prosecutor,—all that was imbued with chancery indifference and exhaled a cold breath, as though the murderer were a simple appurtenance of the chancery, or as though not living men were judging him, but some unseen machine which God knows who had introduced.

The composed peasant did not know that they were here as used to the dramas and tragedies of life as one gets used to deaths in a hospital, and that in this very machine-like indifference lay the whole terror and the whole hopelessness of his position. I am sure that if he did not remain silent, but rose and began to plead and implore for mercy with tears in his eyes, to repent with fervour, if he died in despair,—all that would break against their dull nerves and habit like a billow against a rock.

When the secretary had finished, the presiding judge for some reason rubbed the table, for a long time blinked at the defendant, and then asked him, lazily moving his tongue:

“Defendant, do you plead guilty to having killed your wife on the night of June 9th?”

“By no means,” answered the defendant, rising and holding the coat over his breast.

After that the court hurriedly passed over to the examination of the witnesses. There were examined two women, five peasants, and the coroner who had held the inquest. All of them, mud-bespattered and tired from their march and from the long waiting in the witness room, sad and gloomy, deposed the same thing. They declared that Kharlámov had lived “well” with his wife, just like anybody else: he used to strike her only when he was intoxicated. On the 9th of June, about sundown, the woman was found in the hall with her skull split open; an axe was lying near her in a pool of blood. When they tried to find Nikoláy, in order to tell him of the misfortune, he was neither in the house, nor in the street. They began to run up and down the village to find him, they went to all the taverns and cabins, but he could not be found. He had disappeared, and two days later he came himself to the office, pale, tattered, and trembling in his whole body. He was bound with ropes and placed in the lockup.

“Defendant,” said the presiding judge to Kharlámov, “can’t you explain to the court where you kept yourself during the two days after the murder?”

“I wandered over the field, without eating or drinking.”

“Why did you hide yourself, if you did not kill her?”

“I was frightened. I was afraid I ’d be sentenced.”

“Ah! Very well, take your seat!”

The last witness was the county physician who had made the autopsy on the old woman. He communicated to the court everything he could remember from his notes of the autopsy and from what he had managed to work out as he was walking to the court in the morning.

The presiding judge looked with half-closed eyes at his new shining, black suit, at his dandyish necktie, at his moving lips, and in his brain somehow stirred by itself the lazy thought: “Everybody wears now short coats; then why did he have made such a long one? Really, why a long one, and not a short one?”

Behind the presiding judge was heard the cautious creak of boots. It was the associate prosecutor who had gone to the table to take up some document.

“Mikhaíl Vladímirovich,” he leaned down to the ear of the presiding judge, “that Koréyski has made a very careless inquest. The brother was not examined, the elder was not examined, and you can’t make anything out of the description of the room.”

“What is to be done, what is to be done?” sighed the presiding judge, throwing himself back into the chair: “This is an endless sandglass!”

“By the way,” the associate prosecutor continued to whisper, “just look down the audience, in the front bench, the third man from the left,—an actor’s phiz. That is the local financial big-bug. He has a cash capital of nearly five hundred thousand.”

“Yes? His face does n’t show it. How would it be, friend, if we took a recess now?”

“Let us end this case, and then we shall⸺”

“Very well⸺ Well?” the presiding judge turned his eyes upon the physician. “So you find that death was instantaneous?”

“Yes, on account of a considerable lesion of the brain matter.”

When the physician was through, the presiding judge looked into space, between the prosecutor and the counsel, and he proposed:

“Have n’t you anything to ask?”

The associate prosecutor did not turn his eyes away from Cain, and shook his head negatively, but the counsel moved unexpectedly and, clearing his throat, asked:

“Tell me, doctor, is it possible to tell the mental condition of the criminal by the dimension of the wound? That is, I want to know whether the amount of the injury gives us a right to presuppose that the defendant was mentally deranged.”

The presiding judge raised his sleepy, indifferent eyes upon the counsel. The prosecutor tore himself away from his Cain, and looked at the presiding judge. They only looked, but neither a smile, nor wonderment, nor perplexity,—nothing was expressed upon their faces.

“Of course,” hesitated the physician, “if we take into consideration the power with which—eh—eh—eh—the criminal strikes a blow⸺ However, pardon me, I did not quite understand your question.”

The counsel did not get any answer to his question, nor did he feel any need of it. It was quite clear to him that this question had strayed into his head and had escaped from his tongue only under the influence of the quiet, the ennui, and the buzzing ventilator. Having dismissed the physician, the court passed to the examination of the material instruments of evidence. First they examined the caftan, on the sleeve of which there was a dark blood spot. Being asked of the origin of this spot, Kharlámov declared:

“About three days before the death of my wife Penkóv bled his horse. I was there, and as I helped him, I naturally got some on me.”

“But Penkóv has just now declared that he does not remember your being present at the bleeding.”

“I don’t understand that!”

“Sit down!”

They passed to the examination of the axe with which the woman had been killed.

“That is not my axe,” declared the defendant.

“Whose then?”

“I don’t know. I had no axe.”

“A peasant can’t get on a single day without an axe. Your neighbour Iván Timoféich, with whom you fixed the sleigh, deposed that it is your axe.”

“I don’t know, only I swear before God,”—Kharlámov stretched his hand with open fingers before him,—“I swear by the true Creator, I don’t remember of ever having had an axe of my own. I once had one like it, only a little smaller, but my son Prokhór lost it. Two years before his military service he went out to cut some wood, but he was having a good time with the boys, and he lost it.”

“All right, sit down!”

This systematic suspicion and unwillingness to listen to him no doubt provoked and offended Kharlámov. He winked, and on his cheeks appeared red spots.

“As before the Lord!” continued he, stretching out his neck. “If you do not believe, ask my son Prokhór. Prokhór, where is my axe?” he suddenly asked with a coarse voice, abruptly turning to the guard. “Where?”

That was a shocking moment! All seemed to have seated themselves and to have become lower in stature⸺ Through all the heads, as many as there were in the court-room, there flashed one and the same terrible, impossible thought, the thought of the probable fatal accident, and not a person risked or dared to look at the face of the soldier. All wished not to believe their thought and hoped they had not heard correctly.

“Defendant, it is not permitted to speak to the guard,” the judge hastened to say.

Nobody saw the face of the guard and terror invisibly passed through the court-room. The bailiff softly rose from his seat and, balancing himself with his arms, walked out of the room on tiptoes. Half a minute later were heard hollow steps and sounds, such as are heard during the change of sentinels.

Everybody raised his head and, trying to look as if nothing had happened, they continued the case.

Aleksyéy Maksímovich Pyeshkóv (pseud. Maksím Górki). (1871-.)

Born as the son of an upholsterer, Górki, by which name Pyeshkóv is best known, was brought up by his mother’s parents. He had barely entered school when his grandparents’ reverses caused him to be apprenticed to a shoemaker. After that he tried himself in every possible capacity—as an engraver, painter of holy images, cook, hawker of apples, and so forth. In the meanwhile he had an opportunity to learn to read, and he read any and all books he could procure. Finally he fell in with a lawyer at Nízhni-Nóvgorod who did a great deal for his awakening. Then he once more started out on his wanderings, and in the Caucasus in 1893 wrote his first story, entitled Makár Chúdra, for a local paper. The next year he returned to Nízhni-Nóvgorod, and here he met the author Korolénko, under whose guidance his literary career began. Górki draws his vagabonds with a realism that surpasses all previous attempts in that field. Unlike Uspénski, Zlatovrátski, and the other writers who have treated similar subjects, he has no bias in any direction whatsoever, but depicts elementary passions at full play, quite unconcerned about the results to which they may lead. Not less characteristic are his pictures of southern scenes, of the steppe, the sea, and the noisy quay.

In English translation have appeared: Orloff Couple, translated by Emily Jakowleff and Dora B. Montefiore, London, 1901; Orloff and his Wife, translated by I. F. Hapgood, New York, 1902; Foma Gordyeeff, translated by I. F. Hapgood, New York, 1901; Foma Gordeyev, translated by H. Bernstein, New York, 1901; Twenty-six and One, New York, 1902; Twenty-six Men and a Girl, translated by B. Jakowleff and D. B. Montefiore, London, 1902; Tales from Gorky, translated by N. H. Bain, New York, 1902; The Devil, by L. Wiener, National Magazine, 1901; Makar Chudra, by M. Mojaysky, Monthly Review, 1901; Tchelkache, by Katherine Wylde, Fortnightly Review, and Living Age, 1901; Song of the Falcon, Contemporary Review, 1902; part of The Awakening of a Conscience, by L. Wiener, in Garnett’s Universal Anthology.

IN THE STEPPE

STORY OF A TRAMP

We left Perekóp in the worst possible mood,—we were as hungry as wolves and angry with the whole world. For more than half a day we had unsuccessfully applied all our talents and efforts to steal or earn something, and when we at last convinced ourselves that we would fail in both attempts, we decided to move on. Whither? That was a matter of indifference, as long as we moved on. This was our unanimous resolution, as we had expressed it to each other, but we were ready to proceed in every respect upon the path of our actions upon which we had been travelling quite a while,—that had been silently agreed to by everyone of us and, though it was not spoken of in the hearing of all, it sparkled clearly in the grim lustre of our hungry eyes.

There were three of us; we had but lately made each other’s acquaintance, having met at Khérson, in a saloon on the bank of the Dnieper.

One of us had been a soldier of a railroad battalion, later, as he professed, a roadmaster with one of the Polish railways; he was a red-haired, muscular man, with cold, grey eyes; he could speak German, and possessed a very detailed knowledge of prison life.

People of our class don’t like to talk much about their past, generally having more or less good reasons for not mentioning it; consequently we all believed each other, at least outwardly, for inwardly we hardly believed ourselves.

When our second companion, a small, wizened man with thin lips, that were all the time skeptically compressed, said of himself that he had been a student at the Moscow University,—the soldier and I accepted this assertion as a fact. In reality, it was absolutely the same to us whether he had ever been a student, a detective, or one of the “orleans,”—the only important point was that at the time of our acquaintanceship he was our equal: he was starving, he enjoyed in towns the especial attention of the police, and in the country the suspicious attitude of the peasants; he hated both with the hatred of a powerless, persecuted, and hungry animal, and dreamt of a universal revenge upon everybody and everything,—in short, by his position amidst the kings of Nature and the potentates of life, and by his inclinations, he was a bird of our feather.

Misfortune is the best cement to unite even the most contradictory natures, and we were all convinced of our right to regard ourselves as unfortunates.

I was the third. Out of modesty, which has been my characteristic ever since my nails were grown, I will not say a word about my worth, and, not wishing to appear naïve to you, I will keep silent about my faults. However, to furnish you material for my characterisation, I will say that I always regarded myself better than others, and that I still successfully maintain this opinion.

So we left Perekóp and moved on, depending for that day upon the shepherds, whom one may always ask for a piece of bread and who never refuse it to pedestrians.

I walked by the side of the soldier, the “student” marched behind us. Over his shoulders hung something that somewhat reminded of a frock-coat; on his sharp-pointed, angular and clean-shaven head rested the remnant of a broad-brimmed hat; grey trowsers with many-coloured patches fitted tightly to his thin legs, and to the soles of his feet he had fastened parts of a bootleg, which he had picked up on his way; he held them in place by means of ropes which he had wound out of the lining of his costume, and this affair he called sandals; he marched silently, raising a great deal of dust and blinking with his small greenish eyes. The soldier was dressed in a red fustian shirt which, to use his words, he had by his own hand obtained at Khérson; over his shirt there was a warm cotton jacket, and his head was adorned by a soldier’s cap of indefinite colour, which was poised, according to the military rule, “with a bend of the upper circle over the right brow”; about his legs flapped broad Ukrainian carter’s pantaloons. He was barefooted.

I was similarly dressed, and also barefooted.

We marched on, and all about us extended the steppe with a heroic sweep and, being covered with the blue, burning cupola of a cloudless summer sky, lay before us like an enormous black dish. The grey, dusty road cut a broad swath across it, and burned our feet. Here and there we saw bristly stretches of harvested grainfields that bore a striking resemblance to the long-neglected cheeks of the soldier.

The soldier walked and sang with a hoarse voice:

“And we sing and praise Thy holy Sunday⸺”

During his military service he had been something like a sexton in the battalion church, and he knew an endless number of hymns and chants, which knowledge he misused every time our conversation did not flow exactly right.

Ahead of us, on the horizon, rose some forms of soft contours and gentle shades, from lilac to light pink.

“That ’s evidently the Crimean range,” said the student dryly.

“Mountains?” exclaimed the soldier. “It ’s mighty early, my friend, you see them. Those are clouds, just clouds. You see what they look like? Just like cranberry sauce with milk.”

I remarked that it would be exceedingly agreeable if the clouds really consisted of cranberry sauce. This at once roused our hunger,—the great question of the day.

“The devil!” cursed the soldier, and spit out. “If only a single living soul came our way! Not a person⸺ We ’ll have to lick our own paws, like bears in winter.”

“I said we ought to keep near inhabited places,” remarked the “student,” moralising.

“You said!” said the soldier angrily. “That ’s why you are a learned man, just to be a-talking. Where do you expect to find inhabited places here? The devil knows where they are!”

The “student” grew silent and compressed his lips. The sun was going down, and the clouds in the horizon displayed a variety of intangible colours. The air smelled of land and salt.

This dry and appetising odour only increased our hunger.

There was a gnawing sensation in our stomachs. It was a strange and disagreeable sensation: it felt as though the sap were flowing out of all the muscles of the body, as though it evaporated, and the muscles lost their vital flexibility. A sensation of stinging dryness filled the cavity of the mouth and the throat; the head was dizzy, and dark spots arose and flitted before the eyes. At times they assumed the form of steaming pieces of meat, of big slices of bread; reminiscence furnished these “visions of the past, silent visions” with their appropriate aromas, and then it felt as though a knife were turning around in the stomach.

We kept on marching, communicating to each other the description of our sensations and being on a sharp lookout on both sides,—hoping to discover somewhere a flock of sheep, or to hear the sharp creaking of a Tartar’s cart taking fruit to an Armenian market.

But the steppe was deserted and speechless.

On the previous day we had eaten between us four pounds of rye bread and some five melons, after having marched about forty versts,—there was a discrepancy between assets and liabilities,—and, having fallen asleep on the market place of Perekóp, we awoke from hunger.

The “student” had justly advised us not to lie down to sleep, but to go to work in the night,—it is not considered proper in decent society to speak aloud of the plans for trespassing on private property, and so I shall keep silent. I only want to be truthful, and not vulgar, as regards my own interests. I know that people are getting more and more kind-hearted in these our highly cultured days and that when they take their neighbour by the throat with the evident purpose of choking him, they try to do so with the utmost politeness and with the observance of all the proprieties, suited to the case. The experience of my own throat compels me to notice this progress of manners, and I affirm with a pleasant feeling of conviction that everything in this world is being developed and perfected. This remarkable progress is, in particular, sufficiently proved by the annual increase in prisons, saloons, and “houses of toleration.”

So, swallowing our hungry spittle and attempting by a friendly conversation to suppress the pain in our stomachs, we marched across the deserted and speechless steppe, marched in the blood-red rays of the declining sun, full of a dim hope of something. In front of us, the sun was going down, gently descending into the soft clouds, which were lavishly painted by its rays, and behind us and at our sides a bluish mist, rising from the steppe towards heaven, narrowed down the inhospitable horizon around us.

“Friends, collect material for a fire,” said the soldier, as he lifted a stick by the wayside. “We will have to sleep out on the steppe, and there is dew falling. Pick up dung chips and all kinds of dry stalks!”

We scattered on both sides of the road and began to collect dry weeds and everything else that would burn. Every time I had to bend down, a powerful desire to fall down upon the ground took possession of my body, a desire to lie immovably and eat the rich, black earth, to eat a great deal of it, to exhaustion, and then to fall asleep, even if it were to fall asleep for ever, as long as there would be something to eat, and I could chew and feel the thick, warm mass slowly passing from the mouth over the dried-up œsophagus into the hungry and compressed stomach that was burning with the desire of sucking something in.

“If we could only find some roots,” sighed the soldier. “There are some edible roots.”

But there were no roots whatsoever in the black, ploughed-up earth. The southern night came upon us rapidly, and the last sunbeam had not yet gone out, when the stars began to glisten in the dark-blue vault, and the dark shadows grew thicker around us, narrowing down the endless extent of the steppe that held us.

“Friends,” said the “student” half-aloud, “there is a man lying to the left of us.”

“A man?” doubted the soldier. “Why should he be lying there?”

“Go and ask him. No doubt, he has some bread, or he would not be camping out in the steppe,” explained the “student.” The soldier looked aside, where the man was lying, and, spitting out assertively, he said:

“Let us go to him!”

Only the “student’s” sharp green eyes could have discovered that the dark mass that rose some three hundred and fifty feet to the left of the road was a man. We started in that direction, swiftly striding over clods of earth, and we felt the pang of hunger getting more acute in the germinating hope of finding something to eat. We were near the place, but the man did not move.

“Maybe that is not a man,” gloomily said the soldier, giving expression to our common thought.

But our doubt was immediately dispersed, for the mass on the ground moved, raised itself, and we saw that it was a real, live man who was standing on his knees and stretching out his hands towards us.

He spoke to us with a dull and trembling voice:

“Not a step nearer, or I ’ll shoot!”

A dry, short click was heard in the murky air.

We stopped as commanded and kept silent for a few seconds, being dazed by such an inhospitable reception.

“What a r-rascal!” muttered the soldier deliberately.

“Yes,” thoughtfully said the “student.” “He wanders about with a revolver; evidently, the fish is full of spawn.”

“Oh there!” called out the soldier, having made up his mind for something.

The man did not change his position and kept silent.

“Oh there! We will not touch you. Give us only some bread, if you have any! For Christ’s sake, give us some, friend! Damn you, anathema!”

The last words the soldier spoke under his breath.

The man kept silent.

“Do you hear?” again spoke the soldier, with a tremor of anger and despair. “Give us some bread, I say! We will not come near you. Throw some to us!”

“All right!” said the man abruptly.

He might have said to us: “My dear brethren!” and if he had poured all his holiest and purest sentiments into these three Christian words, they would not have roused us so and would not have made us so human as this dull and short:

“All right!”

“Don’t fear us, good man!” said the soldier softly and with a sweet smile upon his face, though the man could not see his smile, for he was separated from us by at least twenty paces.

“We ’re peaceable people, and are walking from Russia into the Kubán country; we have spent our pennies on the way, and have eaten up our provisions, and have n’t had a bite for two days.”

“Catch it,” said the good man, flourishing something in the air. A black piece flashed by and fell not far from us on the ploughed field. The “student” threw himself upon it.

“Catch again! Once more! That ’s all I have!”

When the “student” collected this original gift, it appeared that we had about four pounds of stale wheat bread. It was all rolled in dirt and very stale. The first did not detain our attention, the second pleased us very much. Stale bread is more nourishing than fresh bread, because there is less moisture in it.

“Here, and here, and here!” the soldier doled out the shares with concentrated attention. “Hold on, the pieces are n’t equal! We ’ll have to pinch off a piece of yours, learned man, or he will have too little.”

The “student” submitted without grumbling to the diminution of his piece of bread by some five ounces; I took it and put it in my mouth.

I began to chew it, to chew it slowly, barely repressing the cramp-like motion of my jaws that were ready to crush stones. It gave me an acute pleasure to feel the palpitating cramps of my alimentary canal, and to satisfy it slowly and by small drops. Swallow after swallow, warm and inexpressibly, incomprehensibly appetising, penetrated into the burning stomach and seemed immediately to be transformed into blood and brain. Joy, such a strange, quiet, and vivifying joy, warmed my heart in the measure as my stomach filled up, and my general condition was not unlike a half-sleeping. I forgot those accursed days of my chronic hunger; I forgot my companions, being all merged in the enjoyment by the sensations through which I then passed.

But when I threw from my palm the last crumbs into my mouth, I felt that I was deathly hungry.

“That accursed one has some bacon or some meat left,” grumbled the soldier, sitting against me on the ground and rubbing his belly with his hands.

“No doubt, for the bread smelled of meat. Yes, and he may have some bread left, too,” said the “student” and softly added:

“If it were not for the revolver⸺”

“Who is he anyway?”

“Evidently, one of our kind.”

“A dog!” declared the soldier.

We were sitting closely together and kept looking askance at the place where our benefactor was sitting with his revolver. Not a sound, nor a sign of life proceeded from him.

Night was gathering around us her dark powers. There was a dead silence in the steppe, and we could hear each other’s breathing. Now and then the melancholy whistling of a gopher reached our ears. The stars—living flowers of heaven—gleamed above us. We wanted to eat.

I say it proudly,—I was not worse nor better than my casual companions in that somewhat strange night. I proposed to them that we should get up and make for that man. We would not touch him, but we would eat up anything he might have. He would shoot,—let him! He could hit but one of us three, if he hit us at all; and even if he did, a bullet from a revolver would hardly kill.

“Let us go!” said the soldier, jumping to his feet.

The “student” was slower in rising.

We started, we almost ran. The “student” kept towards one side, and behind us.

“Partner!” cried the soldier to him reproachfully.

We were met with a dull grumbling and a sharp sound of a clicking hammer. There was a flash of fire, and the dry sound of a shot was heard.

“Missed!” joyfully exclaimed the soldier, reaching the man with one bound. “Well, devil, I ’ll give it to you now!”

The “student” made a rush for his wallet.

The devil fell from his knees upon his back and, stretching out his hands, began to snore.

“What the deuce!” wondered the soldier, who had already raised his foot to give the man a kick. “Is it possible he has filled himself up with lead? Oh, there, get up! Say, did you kill yourself, eh?”

“There is some bread, and some cakes, and bread—lots of it, friends!” was heard the jubilant voice of the “student.”

“Well, the deuce take you, go to! Let us eat, friends!” cried the soldier. I took the revolver out of the hands of the man, who had stopped snoring and lay motionless. One barrel had a cartridge in it.

We ate again, and we ate in silence. The man lay silent, without moving a limb. We paid no attention to him.

“Is it really so, my friends, that you did it all for the bread only?” suddenly was heard a hoarse and quivering voice.

We all shuddered. The “student” even started up and, bending to the ground, began to cough.

The soldier finished chewing and began cursing.

“You, soul of a dog, may you burst like a dry plank! What did you want us to do? Take off your hide? What good would it do us? You stupid snout, damned soul! I declare! Carrying arms, and shooting at people! You anathema!”

He kept on cursing and eating, which latter fact much diminished the expressiveness and strength of his curses.

“Just wait, when we are through eating, we ’ll square up with you,” ominously threatened the “student.”

Then were heard, in the quiet of the night, howling sobs that frightened us.

“Friends, how could I know? I fired because I was afraid. I am on my way from New Afón to the Government of Orél. O Lord! The fever is undoing me since the sun went down! It was the fever that made me leave Afón⸺ I was doing some carpentering there⸺ I am a carpenter⸺ I have at home a wife and two daughters—have n’t seen them these three years⸺ Friends! Eat everything⸺”

“We will, you need n’t ask us!” said the “student.”

“My Lord! If I had known that you were good, peaceable people, do you suppose I would have fired at you? You see, my friends, it ’s the steppe, and night—am I to be blamed, eh?”

As he said that, he wept, or to speak more correctly, emitted a quivering, timorous howl.

“Hear him whine!” contemptuously said the soldier.

“He must have money about him,” declared the “student.”

The soldier blinked, looked at him, and smiled.

“You are a good guesser. Say: let us make a fire, and go to sleep!”

“And he?” inquired the “student.”

“The deuce take him! What do you want us to do—roast him?”

“We ought to!” the “student” shook his sharp-pointed head.

We went for the material which we had been gathering and which we had thrown away where the carpenter had stopped us with his threatening call; we brought it back, and soon we were sitting around a fire. It glowed softly in the windless night and illuminated a small space which we were occupying. We were feeling sleepy, though we could have supped again.

“Friends!” cried out the carpenter. He was lying some three paces from us, and at times it appeared to me that he was muttering something.

“Well?” said the soldier.

“May I move up to you, to the fire? My death is upon me, my bones are aching. Lord! I don’t think I ’ll reach home.”

“Crawl up,” decided the “student.”

The carpenter slowly crawled along the ground towards the fire, as if fearing to lose an arm or leg. He was a tall and dreadfully dried up man: everything hung dreadfully loose about him, and his large dim eyes reflected the pain that was consuming him. His wry face was bony and had even in the light of the fire a kind of a yellowish earthy, deathly color. He was all in a tremble and provoked a contemptuous pity. He stretched out to the fire his long, lean hands, and rubbed his bony fingers, but their joints bent lazily and slowly. In short, he was a horrible sight.

“How is it you are in such a fix, and afoot? Are you so stingy?” gloomily asked the soldier.

“They advised me not to go by sea, but to walk through the Crimea, on account of the air. But I can’t walk, I am dying, brothers! I ’ll die alone in the steppe—the birds will peck at me, and nobody will know me⸺ My wife and daughters will be waiting⸺ I have written to them—but the rains of the steppe will be bleaching my bones. My Lord, my Lord!”

He whined with the melancholy whine of a wounded wolf.

“The devil,” cried out the soldier as he rose to his feet. “Don’t howl so! Why don’t you give us people any rest? Are you dying? All right, die, but keep quiet. Who wants you? Shut up!”

“Kick him in the pate!” proposed the “student.”

“Let us lie down to sleep,” said I. “And you, if you want to be by the fire, don’t howl at least.”

“Did you hear?” sternly said the soldier. “Well, make a note of it. Do you think we are going to pity you and look after you, for hurling bread at us, and firing on us? You mean devil! Others⸺pah⸺”

The soldier grew silent and stretched himself out on the ground.

The “student” had lain down before. I lay down myself. The frightened carpenter was all bent into a ball and moved to the fire, and looked at it fixedly. I lay to the right of him and I could hear his teeth chatter. The “student” was to the left of him and, it seemed, fell at once asleep, having rolled up into a ball. The soldier put his hands under his head and lay, face upwards, and looked at the sky.

“What a night! Lots of stars—warmth⸺” he turned to me after a time.

“What a sky! It ’s a coverlet, not a sky. I do love this life of a tramp, my friend. You suffer cold and hunger, but it ’s a mighty free life. There is no superior over you—you are master of your life. You may chew off your head, and nobody will say a word to you. It ’s fine. I have starved enough these days, and have had enough cause for anger, but now I am lying and looking at the sky. The stars are twinkling to me, as if to say: ‘Never mind, Lakútin, wander about over the earth and submit to nobody.’ Yes⸺ And my heart feels light⸺ Oh, there, what do they call you? Oh, there, carpenter! Don’t be angry with me, and have no fear! As to our having eaten up your bread, that ’s nothing. You had some bread, and we had none, so we ate up yours⸺ But you are a savage, you fire off guns. Don’t you know that bullets may harm people? It made me dreadfully mad, and if you had not fallen down, I would have thrashed you, my friend, for your impudence. But as for the bread, you will reach Perekóp to-morrow, and so you will buy some—I know you have money⸺ How long is it since you caught the ague?”

The bass of the soldier and the quivering voice of the sick carpenter resounded for quite a while in my ears. Dark, almost black night descended more and more upon the earth, and the fresh, aromatic air flowed into my breast.

From the fire came an even light and vivifying warmth. The eyes became gluey, and before them was borne, through the drowsiness, something soothing and purifying.

“Get up! Lively there! Let us go!”

I opened my eyes with a feeling of terror and swiftly jumped to my feet, being helped by the soldier, who jerked me up from the ground.

“Lively there! Move on!”

His face was stern and agitated. I looked around me. The sun was rising, and its rose-coloured beam lay upon the immovable and blue face of the carpenter. His mouth was open, his eyes stood far out of their sockets and stared with a glassy glance, expressive of terror. His dress was all torn over his chest, and he lay in an unnaturally contorted position. The “student” was gone.

“Well, what are you tarrying for? I told you to go!” said the soldier persuasively, pulling me all the time by my arm.

“Is he dead?” asked I, shuddering from the morning freshness.

“Of course. You would die, too, if they choked you,” explained the soldier.

“What, did the ‘student’?” cried I.

“Well, who else? Maybe, you? Or I? Yes. There you have a learned man⸺ He got away with the man, and left his companions in a nice fix. If I had known that yesterday, I would have killed that ‘student.’ I would have killed him with one stroke. I would have banged his temple with my fist, and there would have been a villain less in the world. Do you understand what he did? Now we are compelled to walk in such a way that not a soul shall see us in the steppe. Do you understand? Because they will find the carpenter to-day, and they will discover that he had been choked to death and robbed. And they will be on the lookout for fellows of our kind: Where do you come from, and where did you pass your night? Yes, and they will catch us⸺ Though we have n’t a thing of his—yes, I have his revolver in my bosom. It ’s a nice fix we are in!”

“Throw it away,” I advised the soldier.

“Throw it away,” said he, thoughtfully. “It ’s worth something. And then, maybe they will not catch us. No, I won’t throw it away. Who knows that the carpenter had a gun? I won’t throw it away. It ’s worth three roubles. There is a bullet in it. I tell you, I would like to send it a-flying into the ear of our dear companion! I wonder how much money that dog got away with! Anathema!”

“Poor daughters of the carpenter,” said I.

“The daughters? What daughters? Oh, his. Well, they ’ll grow up, and they won’t marry us, so there is no use talking about them. Come, friend, let us be off. Where shall we go?”

“I don’t know⸺ Anywhere.”

“I don’t know either, and I know that it makes no difference. Come, let us to the right, there must be the sea.”

We went to the right.

I turned back. Far away from us rose a dark mound in the steppe, and the sun shone over it.

“Are you trying to see if he has arisen from the dead? Don’t be afraid, he won’t be up after us. The learned fellow is evidently a man of experience, he has done his job thoroughly. Well, he ’s a fine partner! He has put us in a nice hole! Friend! People are getting worse from year to year, they are getting worse!” said the soldier mournfully.

The deserted and speechless steppe, bathed by the bright morning sun and mingling in the horizon with the sky, was unfolded around us in such a bright, gentle, and abundant light that every black and unrighteous deed seemed impossible amidst the great extent of this free plain that was covered by the blue cupola of the sky.

“I feel like having something to eat, friend!” said my companion, as he rolled himself a cigarette out of coarse tobacco.

“What shall we eat to-day, and where and how?”

It was a problem!

Having told me this, the storyteller, who was my neighbour in the hospital, ended his narrative.

“That ’s all. The soldier and I got to be good friends, and we walked together to the Kára territory. He was a good and very experienced fellow, a typical barefoot tramp. I respected him. We walked together to Asia Minor, and then I lost track of him.”

“Do you ever think of the carpenter?” asked I.

“As you see, or, as you heard.”

“Well, and—?”

He laughed.

“What am I to feel? It was not my fault what happened to him, not any more than it is your fault what has happened to me. Nobody is to be blamed for anything, because we are all alike—beasts.”

Dmítri Sergyéevich Merezhkóvski. (1865-.)

Merezhkóvski was born in 1865 and graduated from the university in 1886. He began early to write poetry, but met with no success. A novel in verse, Vyéra, which he wrote in 1890, however, produced a favourable impression. Since then Merezhkóvski has devoted himself more especially to prose. He is opposed to the prevailing democratism in literature, and preaches a return to the ideal of Púshkin. He has evolved an unusually fine style for Russian literature, but his conceptions are rather fantastic, and not always coherent. His chief interest lies in the illustration of the struggle of two worlds, the pagan and the Christian. This idea runs through all his critical essays, in which he deplores the democratic spirit in literature since Gógol, and through his trilogy of novels, of which the first deals with Julian the Apostate, the second with Leonardo da Vinci, and the third is to treat of Peter the Great.

In English translation have appeared: The Death of the Gods, The Resurrection of the Gods, and Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the Forerunner, translated by H. French, London, 1902, the latter also New York, 1902; Julian the Apostate, Philadelphia, 1902; Tolstoi as Man and Artist, with Essay on Dostoïevski, New York, 1902.

FROM AN ESSAY ON “PÚSHKIN”

Not by sudden outbursts and by jerks, but premise after premise, step by step, unavoidably and with dialectic precision, by evolving the one sphere of Púshkin’s harmony, by sacrificing and killing the other, has Russian literature at last reached that one-sidedness of Lev Tolstóy, so suicidal for every artistic development.

Gógol, the nearest of Púshkin’s disciples, was the first to understand and express the meaning of Púshkin for Russia, as no one after him has been able to do. In his best creations, in the Revizór and in the Dead Souls, Gógol carried out the plans with which his teacher had inspired him. It is difficult to find a case of closer adaptation in the history of any literature. Gógol drew directly from Púshkin, that deep and pure source of Russian harmony. Well? Did the disciple execute the injunction of his teacher? Gógol was the first who unconsciously and involuntarily betrayed Púshkin; he was the first who became a victim of the great disorganisation, which was later more and more to take possession of Russian poetry; he was the first to experience the attacks of the all-devouring, sickly mysticism, which was to undermine also the creative powers of others than himself.

It is a tragic fact in Russian literature that in departing with every step more and more from Púshkin, that in destroying the most precious creation of his spirit,—the co-ordination and equipoise of two worlds,—it at the same time has regarded itself as the true guardian of Púshkin’s legacies. Great men have no more dangerous enemies than their nearest disciples,—those who recline upon their breast, for no one can, loving and adoring, with such innocent cunning distort the real image of their teacher.

Turgénev and Goncharóv made conscientious attempts to overcome the incipient discord within them, the ill-omened dissonance of Lérmontov and Gógol, to return to Púshkin’s objective calm and equipoise. If not with their hearts, they understood with their minds the heroic deed of Peter the Great, remaining strangers to the Slavophile pride of Dostoévski, and they consciously, like Púshkin, bowed before the majesty of Western culture. Turgénev appears in a certain measure as the legal heir of Púshkin’s harmony, both on account of the perfect clearness of the artistic architecture and the gentle grace of language.

But all that resemblance, all that harmony, is superficial and deceptive. Neither Turgénev nor Goncharóv succeeded in the attempt to conquer the approaching disorganisation, to return to Púshkin. A feeling of great fatigue and satiety with all cultural forms, Schopenhauer’s Buddhistic nirvana, Flaubert’s artistic nihilism, were much nearer to Turgénev’s heart than Púshkin’s heroic wisdom. In Turgénev’s exceedingly soft, feminine, and pliable language there is no longer Púshkin’s manliness, his sturdy strength and simplicity. In Turgénev’s bewitching melody you continually hear a penetrating, plaintive tone, like the sound of a cracked bell,—a sign of a deepening spiritual discord,—the terror of life, the terror of death, which Lev Tolstóy will later carry to appalling limits.

Turgénev has created an endless gallery of what in his opinion are real Russian heroes, that is, heroes of weakness, cripples, unsuccessful men. He has surrounded his Living Relics with an aureole of the same Galilean poetry which surrounds the images of Tatyána, Tazít, the old gipsy. He has reached the highest degree of his accessible inspiration, by pointing out the superiority of weakness over strength, of the little man over the great, and the humble over the proud, of Don Quixote’s simple-minded insanity over Hamlet’s evil wisdom. The only strong Russian in Turgénev is the nihilist Bazárov. Of course, the author of Fathers and Sons was enough of an objective artist to treat his hero without anger or bias, but he nevertheless was afraid of him and could not forgive him his strength. The poet seemed to say, as he pointed to Bazárov, without noticing that he was not at all a hero, but just such an abortion, just such an unsuccessful man, as the rest of his superfluous people, who created nothing and who was doomed to ruin: “You wanted to see a strong Russian,—here is a strong man! See for yourselves what narrowness and limitation of will-power, which is directed to destruction! What coarseness and awkwardness before the tender mystery of love! What insignificance before the majesty of death! That is what your heroes, your Russian strong men are like! Oh, do you not a hundred times prefer my weak, superfluous, little, gentle heroes of Russian wretchedness, indolence, and carelessness, my magnanimous unsuccessful men and Don Quixotes?”

If a foreigner were to believe Gógol, Turgénev, and Goncharóv, the Russian nation must represent itself to him as unique in history, as denying the very essence of heroic will. If the depth of the Russian spirit were exhausted by only Christian meekness, only self-sacrifice, only the poetry of the pariahs, the humbled, and the offended,—whence, then, comes that “Divine storm,” that blissful and terrifying grandeur, that superabundance of success, will, and merriment, that are felt in Peter and in Púshkin? How could arise these two demoniac phenomena of infinite beauty and infinite love in the country of Buddhistic nihilism and wretchedness, in the country of Dead Souls and Living Relics in the Siloam pool of the maimed and the halt? Or are Peter and Púshkin not our own, not Russians?

Goncharóv has gone even farther on this dangerous path The critics saw in Oblómov a satire, a moral. But Goncharóv’s novel is more venomous and more terrible than any satire. For the poet himself there is in that all-embracing artistic synthesis of Russian helplessness and Russian “do-nothingness,” neither praise, nor blame, but there is only a full justice, the representation of Russian reality in all its terror and in all its beauty. In his best moments Oblómov, a bookish dreamer who with the childlike serenity and azure chastity of his infinitely deep and simple heart is unfit for too coarse a human existence, is surrounded with the same aureole of quiet poetry, as the Living Relics of Turgénev. Goncharóv would, perhaps, have liked to be unjust to Oblómov, but he could not, because he loved him; he, no doubt, intended to be just to Stolz, but he could not, because he secretly hated him. The German hero (he did not try to represent a Russian hero, so unnatural did such a phenomenon seem to him) came out dead, cold, and formless. Art reveals the secret feeling which the poet dares not express: is not the resignation from stern life, the primitive simplicity, the wise inactivity of the gentle hero of Russian indolence a thousand times more noble than the prosaic bustle of the hero of German precision? From Mahomet, Napoleon, Byron, the Bronze Rider, to a puny, hoarding, bourgeois German, and to a gawky seminarist, a provincial tempting demon, Mark Volokhóv,—what a sad metamorphosis, what a fall of the Pushkin demigod!

But that is not yet the lowest step. Gógol, Turgénev, and Goncharóv appear as writers full of objective equipoise, health, and harmony in comparison with Dostoévski and Lev Tolstóy. The emaciated and half-dead Russian heroes, the Russian strong men, Bazárov and Mark Volokhóv, come once more to life in the person of Raskólnikov, Iván Karamázov, in the monstrous visions of the Devils, in order to undergo the last degrading punishment, the most refined, hellish torture,—in the terrible hands of that demon of wretchedness and torment, the great inquisitor Dostoévski.

How much stronger and more truthful he was than Turgénev and Goncharóv! Dostoévski did not hide his dissonance, his discord, did not deceive himself, nor the reader, did not make vain attempts to re-establish the disturbed equilibrium,—the harmony of Púshkin’s form. And yet he valued and understood this harmony with more penetration than Turgénev and Goncharóv,—he loved Púshkin, as the most inaccessible, the most opposite to his nature, just as the mortally ill man values health,—he loved him, but no longer strove after that harmony.

The author of Brothers Karamázov has maimed and violated the artistic form of the epos, has with unheard-of audacity transformed it into a terrible instrument of psychological torture. It is hard to believe that the language that still possesses such vernal freshness and chaste serenity in Púshkin has been so transformed as to serve for the representation of the horrible nightmares and gloomy, fiery visions of Dostoévski.

Dostoévski was more consistent than Turgénev and Goncharóv in even another respect: he did not hide his immeasurable Slavophile pride,—he did not ogle the civilisation of the West. Hellenic beauty was to him Sodom, and Roman force the kingdom of the Antichrist. What could meek, youthful, God-harbouring Russia learn from the haughty, decrepit, Godless West? The Russian nation is not to strive after the ideal of the West, that is, after universal paganism, but the West is to strive after the ideal of the Russian nation, that is, after universal Christianity.

Nevertheless, as an artist he is nearer to Púshkin than Turgénev and Goncharóv. He is the only one of the Russian authors who consciously reproduces the struggle of two worlds. It is even possible that his dualism is deeper than Púshkin’s. Yet it is withal, to its very depths, a discord, a struggle, a torment. Dostoévski’s great soul is like a battle-field, agitated, bloody, full of gnashing of teeth and sobbing of the wounded, a field on which two irreconcilable foes have met. Who will be the victor? No one, never. It is a hopeless, unending struggle. On whose side is the poet? We only know on whose side he wants to be. But in those very moments when you most trust his Christian humility, his wretchedness, and his chastity,—there suddenly happens something unusual and evil somewhere in the dark, dangerous corner of the author’s psychological labyrinth where he slowly, like a spider, entices and entangles the inexperienced reader, so that you look, and hardly know whether it is he or not, and whether it really is, or you only imagine it to be, a terrible were-wolf, a double, or a wolf in a sheepskin. And the great inquisitor whispers with scarcely audible, insane laughter, which sends a chill through your body, and through the meekness of the martyr flickers the unlimited conceit of the devil, through the wretchedness and chastity of the pious sufferer the lustful cruelty of the devil.

To such monstrous insanity, to such epileptic fits of demonism has been changed the beneficent dualism of Púshkin, the harmony of two worlds, the divine music of the spheres that unite their voices to glorify the One. Such is the vengeance of the vilified pagan gods.

It would seem the limit was reached, and that one could go no farther. But Lev Tolstóy has proved that one may go farther on the same road,—into the abyss, into self-torment, into the terror of dualism, into the Titanic disorganisation.

Dostoévski to his last breath suffered, thought, struggled, and died, without finding what he sought most in life,—spiritual peace. Lev Tolstóy no longer seeks or struggles, or, at least, he wishes to assure himself and others that he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to seek. This calm, this silence and petrifaction of a whole subdued world, which once was free and beautiful, but from the present standpoint of its creator is to its very depths pagan and criminal, a world which majestically evolved itself before us in Ánna Karénin and War and Peace,—that tranquillity of The Kingdom of God produces a more disquieting, a more oppressive impression than the sanguinary struggle, contrition, sobs, and eternal agony of Dostoévski. Of course, Lev Tolstóy did not suddenly, and not without painful efforts, reach the final tranquillity, the final victory over the pagan world. But even in War and Peace and Ánna Karénin we are present at a very strange phenomenon: two elements there meet, without running together, like two streams of one river. Where paganism is, all is life and passion, luxury and ardour of physical sensations. Outside of good and evil,—as if good and evil had never existed,—the poet expresses with infinite truthfulness, with a childish and divine inability of being ashamed, of hiding the nakedness of his heart, a thirsty, unsatisfiable love for everything mortal and transitory,—a love for this great billowing ocean of matter, for everything which from the Christian standpoint ought to appear as vain and sinful,—for powerful physical health, for country, glory, woman, and children.

Here is the whole gamut of physical pleasures, and they are told with fearless openness, such as has never been in any other literature: the sensation of muscular strength, the charm of field labour in the fresh air, the gentleness of a child’s sleep, the intoxication with the first games, with the mirth of youthful banquets, with the tranquil manliness in sanguinary battles, with the speechlessness of eternal Nature, with the bracing cold of Russian snows, with the aromatic warmth of the deep summer grass.

Here is the whole gamut of physical pain, told with the same inexorable candour, which sometimes rises to cynical coarseness and shamelessness,—all the terrors of pain, beginning with the inhuman cries of a beloved woman, dying in the agony of childbirth, up to the terrible, crushing sound, when the spine of the horse racing in the hippodrome is broken. What a terror, what an intoxication of unlimited sensuality!

How could he himself, how could others believe in the icy, reflective Christianity, and how did they not recognise in him a great, hidden pagan? This paganism is proclaimed in all the best productions of Tolstóy by all the voices of the human flesh, which is fresh and joyous in the baby in its mother’s embrace, covered with the sweat of the agony and half rotten on the terrible bed of Iván Ilích, blooming and lusty in Ánna Karénin, and racked and bloody under the knives of the surgeons on the operating tables of the military hospitals. Flesh everywhere, the pagan soul of flesh, the one of the two struggling souls of which Goethe sings:

“Die eine hält in derber Liebeslust

Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen.”

But in these very productions there come also to the surface insipid and offensive parts that are connected by no inner tie with the artistic woof of the production, as if written by a different man. Such are the murderous sophistry of Pierre Bezúkhov, and the childishly clumsy and unnatural Christian regenerations of Konstantín Levín. In these dead pages the mighty carnal life, which had just been welling up in a stream, suddenly becomes stark and frozen. The very language which had reached Púshkin’s simplicity and clearness, the greatest in Russian literature, abruptly changes: as though a gloomy ascetic took vengeance upon him for his recent candour, his un-Christian luxury and audacity, with which but a moment ago had been described the torments and pleasures of sinful flesh. The ascetic unsparingly violates the language, breaks, maims, stretches out, and forces into the Procrustean bed towering, intricate syllogisms. “Two souls,” that were united in Púshkin, that struggled in Gógol, Goncharóv, Turgénev, and Dostoévski, for ever abandon each other in Tolstóy, so that the one does not see, nor hear, nor answer the other.

We are at present past our suffering, we have become accustomed to all monstrosity and dissonance, or else we certainly should have felt the barbarity and unseemliness of the artist who, in killing himself and blasphemously treading on God’s gift within himself, publicly recants the best of his productions as a crime: “What is it you admire in Ánna Karénin?” says he to the people: “do you not know it is a debauch, a pagan nastiness of my soul?” The weakness of the great artist lies in his unconsciousness, because he is a pagan not of the bright, heroic type, but of the dark, elementary, barbarous type, the son of ancient Chaos, a blind Titan. The small meek one came and placed a cunning trap for the great one,—the terror of death, the terror of pain,—and the blind Titan was caught; the meek one enmeshed him with the finest nets of moral sophisms and Galilean wretchedness, and he overcame and vanquished him. A few more agonising convulsions, desperate struggles and outbursts,—and everything was for ever silenced and dead,—there began the tranquillity of The Kingdom of God. Only rarely, amidst monkish hymns and prayers, among icy, Puritanic discourses about the use of tobacco, about the brotherhood of the nations, about corporal punishment and chastity, are heard in the depth of depths a subterranean din and hollow thunderclaps: it is the voice of the blind Titan, of indomitable Chaos,—of the pagan love of physical life and pleasures, of the pagan terror of physical pain and death.

Lev Tolstóy is the antipode, the complete opposite and negation of Púshkin in Russian literature. And, as often happens, opposites deceive the superficial observers by their external resemblances. Both in Púshkin and in our Lev Tolstóy there is oneness, equilibrium, peace. But Púshkin’s oneness is based on the harmonious union of two worlds; the oneness of Tolstóy is based on the complete disunion, disruption, and violence, committed against one of the two equally great, equally divine elements. Púshkin’s calm and tranquillity witness to a fulness of life; Lev Tolstóy’s calm and tranquillity witness to a petrified immobility, to a deadening of the whole world. In Púshkin the thinker and artist are welded into one being; in Lev Tolstóy the thinker despises the artist, and the artist does not care for the thinker. Púshkin’s chastity presupposes passion subject to the feeling of divine moderation; Lev Tolstóy’s chastity flows from a desperate ascetic negation of love for a woman. Púshkin’s hope, like Peter the Great’s, was Russia’s participation in the universal life of the spirit, in universal civilisation; but for that participation neither Púshkin nor Peter denied the native element, the peculiarities of the Russian spirit. Lev Tolstóy, an anarchist without violence, preaches the amalgamation of the warring nations into a universal brotherhood; but for that brotherhood he renounces love of country,—that jealous tenderness that filled the hearts of Púshkin and Peter; and with unsparing haughtiness despises those peculiar, for him too impassioned, pagan features of the separate nations, which he would like to weld like the living colours of the rainbow into one white, dead colour—into a cosmopolitan abstraction.

It is significant that the greatest of Tolstóy’s productions discrowns that last incarnation of the heroic spirit in history, which for good reasons had an irresistible charm for all those who in the democracy of the nineteenth century had preserved a spark of the Promethean fire,—Byron, Goethe, Púshkin, and even Lérmontov and Heine. Napoleon, the Delphic god of strength, anger, and glory, “that wondrous man, the messenger of Providence, the fateful executor of the nameless order, that vanished king, vanished like a dream, like the shadow of the dawn,” is transformed in Tolstóy not even into the nihilist Raskólnikov, not even into one of the monstrous devils of Dostoévski, who are still surrounded with the aureole of terror, but into a puny, low-born parvenu, a self-satisfied and prosaic bourgeois, perfumed with eau-de-Cologne, with fat calves, a pusillanimous and coarse-souled French shopkeeper, into a comic general Bonaparte of the Moscow chap-books. That is where the last step into the abyss has been reached, when it is not possible to go any farther, for here the spirit of the mob, the spirit of triumphant vulgarity blasphemes the Divine Spirit, the sanctity of fate, the beneficent and awful appearance of the hero. The most insinuating and modern of all the devils, the devil of equality, the devil of the small and numberless, whose name is Legion, has possessed the last great artist, the blind Titan, in order to proclaim with his thunderous voice to the whole world: “Behold, here is your hero, your god,—he is as small as we, as vulgar as we!”

Everybody has understood Tolstóy, everybody has accepted that watchword of the mob! Not Púshkin, but Tolstóy is the representative of Russian literature before the masses of the universe. Tolstóy, the victor over Napoleon, is himself a Napoleon of the numberless democratic army of the small, the miserable, the lamenting, and the crushed. They dispute with Tolstóy, they hate and fear him: this is a sign that his fame is alive and growing. Púshkin’s fame is becoming ever more academic and distant, ever more unintelligible to the crowd. Who disputes with Púshkin, who in Europe knows of Púshkin more than his name? We learn him by heart on our school-benches, and his verses appear to us as cold and unnecessary for active Russian life as the choirs of the Greek tragedies or the formulas of higher mathematics. The most inaccessible and mysterious of all the books is called the book of the vulgar, the “Vulgate.” Púshkin has become the Vulgate of Russian literature. Everybody is ready to honour him with dead lips, with dead laurels,—who honours him with his soul and spirit? The crowd purchases in the acknowledgment of the great the right of ignoring them, and avenges its too noble enemies by a memorial plate in the academic Pantheon, and by oblivion in fame. Who would believe that this god of the teachers of Russian literature is not only more alive, more modern, but, from the standpoint of bourgeois vulgarity, even more dangerous, more audacious than Lev Tolstóy? Who would believe that the irreproachably aristocratic Púshkin, the singer of the Bronze Rider, the nursling of his old nurse Arína, is nearer to the heart of the Russian people, than the herald of universal brotherhood, the merciless Puritan in the sheepskin coat of the Russian peasant?

To what extent the heroic side of Púshkin’s poetry is not understood and despised, is evident from the fact that two of the greatest of Púshkin’s admirers, Gógol and Dostoévski, as if by common agreement, do not attach the slightest importance to it. However strange it may be, if we leave out of consideration the text-books and the dead academic recognition, Púshkin, the only bard of the only hero in the country of Lev Tolstóy and of Dostoévski, in the country of Russian nihilism and Russian democracy, is a forgotten bard of a forgotten hero.

INDEX.

Abrék, its definition, 105

Aksákov, S. T., biographical sketch and extract, 216 seq.; and see 19, 236

Alexander I., and his period, 5; his liberalism, 12, 16; and see 240

Alexander II. and his period, 4, 5

Alexis Mikháylovich, 40, 239

American Constitution and Alexander I., 12

American War and Karamzín, 32

Analysis, in literature, 20; in Dostoévski, 21

Ánna Karénin, 5, 391 seq.; and see L. N. Tolstóy

Arína Rodiónovna, Púshkin’s nurse, 122, 493

Art for art’s sake, in literature, 16, 20; criticised by Písarev, 386 seq.

Baratýnski, E. A., Púshkin’s influence on, 17; biographical sketch and extracts, 149 seq.

Bátyushkov, K. N., estimate of, 13 seq.; biographical sketch and extracts, 73 seq.; and see 16, 81

Beecher-Stowe, Russian, 297

Belles-lettres, peculiar course of, in Russia, 6 seq.

Bestúzhev, A. A., biographical sketch and extract, 102 seq.; and see 4

Boborýkin, 5

Borís Godunóv, by Púshkin, 143 seq.; and see 16

Bowring, Sir John, not the first translator from the Russian, v

Boyán, 70

Bronze Rider, The, Peter the Great so called, 123, 493

Byelínski, V. G., and the Natural School, 4, 19; and Koltsóv, 176; biographical sketch and extract, 205 seq.; and see 5, 6, 9, 186, 389, 492

Bylínas, by A. K. Tolstóy, 246

Byron, his influence, on Russian literature, 8, 10, 16, 17; on Púshkin, 16; on Kozlóv, 68; on Lérmontov, 155

Byzantine period, 18

Catherine II., 12, 239

Censorship, and literature, 6; after 1848, 20; and see 303

Chékhov, A. P., biographical sketch and extract, 459 seq.; and see 5

Chernyshévski, 5, 389

Church-Slavic, and Shishkóv, 12; and Karamzín, 28

Cloak, The, prototype of later novels, 19

Comedy, Griboyédov’s, 17; and see Griboyédov, Gógol

Cosmopolitanism of the newer Russian literature, 23

Crime and Punishment, 5; and see Dostoévski

Crimean War and literature, 5

Criminals, portrayed in literature, 21; and see Dostoévski

Critics, evolution of, 5; and see Byelínski, Dobrolyúbov, Merezhkóvski, Písarev

Culture in nineteenth century, 7

Danilévski, 22

Dead Souls, 4, 18; and see Gógol

Death, early, of literary men, 6

Decembrist conspiracy, marking an epoch, 5; and Rylyéev, 86; and see 15, 102

Délvig, A. A., Púshkin’s influence on, 17; predecessor of Koltsóv, 18; biographical sketch and extracts, 120 seq.

Democracy, Russian, defined, 9; in the forties, 20, 21; Dostoévski’s, 21; and Nekrásov, 22

Democratic critics, their effect on poetry, 4

Democratisation of Russian society, 9

Demon, The, 17; and see Lérmontov

Derzhávin, 12, 16

Desyatína = various land measures, from 3-5 acres, passim

Didacticism passing away, 23

Disenchantment in Russian literature, 10 seq.

Dmítriev, and Karamzín, 27; and see 16, 176, 208

Dobrolyúbov, N. A., and Oblómov, 9; biographical sketch and extract, 271 seq.; and see 5, 6, 389

Dolgorúki, I. M., 16

Dolgorúki, Princess, 68

Domostróy, 238

Dostoévski, F. M., estimate of, 21; biographical sketch and extract, 322 seq.; and see 4, 5, 19, 81, 296

Drama, Ostróvski’s, 22, 369 seq.; Chékhov’s, 459; and see Comedy

Eighteenth century in literature, 12

Eighties, characterisation of period since, 11

Emancipation of serfs, due to literary propaganda, 6; and Turgénev, 21

England, 73 seq.

English, literature compared with Russian, 3; aristocracy compared with Russian nobility, 8; and Russian literary styles, 13; people and Karamzín, 32

Enthusiasm, in Russian literature, 8; of Russian youths, 10

Evgéni Onyégin, 16, 17; and see Púshkin

Fables and Krylóv, 14, 41 seq.

Family Chronicle, The, 19; and see Aksákov

Fathers and Sons, 4, 8, 9; and see Turgénev

Fet, 4, 17, 391; and see Shenshín

Fifties, the, 4

Filarét, 40

Flaubert, 484

Folktales, naturalism in, 18

Fon-Vízin, 27

Forties, the novelists of the, 4

Forty years, apogee reached by literary men at, 6

France, its influence on Russian literature, 19

French, and Russian literary styles, 13; realism, compared with Russian, 20

Gaj, 241

Garshín, V. M., biographical sketch and extract, 443 seq.; and see 6

German, Romanticism in Russia, 8; influence, 15, 19; philosophy in the forties, 20

Gértsen, A. I., biographical sketch and extract, 236 seq.; estimate by Dobrolyúbov, 272 seq.; and see 242

Glínka, F. N., 78 seq.

Gnyédich, 14

Goethe, 492

Gógol, N. V., novelist of the forties, 4; obscuring Púshkin, 16; estimate of, 18; marks end of older writers, 20; compared with Tolstóy, 21; and Naryézhny, 49; biographical sketch and extracts, 185 seq.; and Byelínski, 206 seq.; and Turgénev, 281; and Dostoévski, 323; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 483 seq.; and see 4, 111, 156, 206, 217, 310, 369, 379

Goncharóv, I. A., estimate of, 21; biographical sketch and extract, 259 seq.; and Dobrolyúbov, 271 seq.; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 484 seq.; and see 4, 9, 339

Górki, M., 5, 23; and see Pyeshkóv

Government and progress, 10

Gray’s Elegy and Zhukóvski, 54

Griboyédov, A. S., estimate of, 17; biographical sketch and extract, 92 seq.; and see 4, 9

Grigoróvich, D. V., and peasant in literature, 5; biographical sketch and extract, 296 seq.

Hamlets in Russian life, 21

Hegel, his influence on Russian literature, 19; and Byelínski, 206

Heine, 492

Hero of our Time, 17; and see Lérmontov

Herzen, see Gértsen

History and Karamzín, 27

Iliad in Russian, 14

Intelligence Comes to Grief, 17; and see Griboyédov

Italian poetry, in Russian, 14

Ivan III., 40, 112

Ivan IV., 40, 246 seq.

Izmáylov, A. B., biographical sketch and extracts, 46 seq.; and see 14

Jefferson, Thomas, and Alexander I., 12

Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, 12

Juvenal, Nekrásov called the Russian, 347

Karamzín, N. M., compared with Púshkin, 3; and Shishkóv, 4; and literary style, 13; biographical sketch and extracts, 27 seq.; and see 5, 12, 14-16, 55, 81, 208, 217, 240

Khomyakóv, A. S., and Slavophiles, 19; biographical sketch and extracts, 229 seq.; and see 236, 239

Koltsóv, A. V., estimate of, 18; biographical sketch and extracts, 176; and see 22, 120, 361

Korolénko, V. G., biographical sketch and extracts, 436; and see 5, 468

Kozlóv, I. I., biographical sketch and extracts, 67 seq.

Krylóv, I. A., biographical sketch and extracts, 41 seq.; and see 14, 16

La Fontaine and Krylóv, 14

Lazhéchnikov, I. I., biographical sketch and extract, 111 seq.; and see 4

Lérmontov, M. Y., estimate of, 17; biographical sketch and extracts, 155 seq.; compared with Ogarév, 242; and Dobrolyúbov, 272 seq.; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 484 seq.; and see 3, 4, 6, 123

Levítov, A. I., biographical sketch and extract, 417 seq.; and see 22

Lewis, W. D., first translator into English from the Russian, v

Literary language and Karamzín, 13

Literature and progress, 10

Little-Russian authors, 18, 49, 185

Lyapunóv, 240

Lyceum at Tsárskoe-Seló, 7

Marlínski, see Bestúzhev

Masonic societies, 12, 27

Maturity, early, of literary talent, 6

Máykov, A. N., biographical sketch and extracts, 339 seq.; criticised by Písarev, 386 seq.; and see 4, 17

Máykov, V. I., 339

Memoirs of a Huntsman, and liberation of serfs, 6; and see Turgénev

Merezhkóvski, D. S., and didacticism, 23; biographical sketch and extract, 482 seq.

Merzlyakóv, 16

Middle class, and culture, 8; in literature, 22

Moscow, circles in the forties, 19; merchant class, 22, 369

Muravév, 73

Nádson, S. Y., biographical sketch and extracts, 457 seq.; and see 6

Napoleon, in Russian literature, 63 seq.; and see 14 seq., 492

Naryézhny, V. T., biographical sketch and extract, 49 seq.; and see 18

Natural School, and Byelínski, 4; and Gógol, 186; defined by Byelínski, 206 seq.; and see 18

Naturalism in Russian literature, 18

Negation, in Russian literature, 5, 8; and Tolstóy, 21

Nekrásov, N. A., his influence on poetry, 4; and democracy, 22; biographical sketch and extracts, 347 seq.; and see 120, 234, 361, 365

Neledínski, 16

Nicholas I., literature under, 3, 5; and reaction, 20; and Slavophilism, 240 seq.; and see 240

Nihilism defined, by Turgénev, 283 seq.; by Merezhkóvski, 485

Nikítin, Afanási, 114

Nikítin, I. S., biographical sketch and extracts, 361 seq.; and see 6, 22

Nobility and culture, 7

Novel, the Russian, 17, 18

Novelists, of the forties, 4; of the people, 22

Nóvikov, 27

Oblómov, as a type of Russians, 9; and see Goncharóv

Ogarév, N. P., biographical sketch and extracts, 242 seq.; and see 236

Optimism in Russian literature, 448

Ostróvski, A. N., biographical sketch and extract, 369 seq.; and see 22

Ózerov, 12, 241

Pan, a Little-Russian (and Polish) word = Mr., 49 seq.

Panslavism, 238 seq.; and see Slavophilism

Peasant, in literature, 5; in Turgénev’s sketches, 20; and Byelínski, 213 seq.; and Uspénski, 408 seq.; and see 176

People, its definition, 22 seq.

Periods, in literature, 3 seq.; by reigns, 5

Pessimism, in the forties, 20; and Baratýnski, 149

Peter the Great, estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 483 seq.; and see 7, 18, 40, 64, 123, 341

Philosophy, its weakness in Russian literature, 9

Písarev, D. I., biographical sketch and extract, 385 seq.; and see 6, 9

Písemski, A. F., biographical sketch and extract, 310 seq.; and see 4, 22

Pleshchéev, A. N., biographical sketch and extracts, 365 seq.

Poetry, Zhukóvski’s conception of, 55; and see 4

Politics and literature, 6, 11

Polónski, Y. P., biographical sketch and extracts, 303 seq.; and see 4, 17

Pomyalóvski, and peasant in literature, 5

Populists, 10

Potápenko, I. N., biographical sketch and extract, 448 seq.; and see 5

Progress, carried by youths, 9 seq.; and Turgénev, 20; of Russian literature in nineteenth century, 23

Protest an important note in Russian literature, 8

Pud, measure of weight = about 36 lbs., passim

Púshkin, A. S., and Byron, 10; estimate, 16 seq.; renewal of his cult, 17; and naturalism, 18; and Merezhkóvski, 23; and Bátyushkov, 73; his death, and Lérmontov, 156; biographical sketch and extracts, 122 seq.; and Dobrolyúbov, 272 seq.; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 483 seq.; et passim

Pyeshkóv, A. M., biographical sketch and extract, 467 seq.

Radíshchev, 12

Reaction, periods of, in literature, 11; after 1848, 20

Realism and Turgénev, 20

Revizór, The, 188; and see Gógol

Romanticism, and novels, 4; early, in Russia, 8; and Zhukóvski, 14, 54; and Púshkin, 16; and Gógol, 19; and Bestúzhev, 102; and Byelínski, 207; and Turgénev, 280

Russian language, 13, 28

Russian literature compared with English, 3

Ryeshétnikov, 22

Rylyéev, K. F., and Decembrist conspiracy, 15; Púshkin’s influence on, 17; biographical sketch and extracts, 86 seq.; and see 14, 102

Saltykóv, M. B., and satire, 22; and Dobrolyúbov, 272 seq.; biographical sketch and extract, 379 seq.; and Písarev, 391; and see 386

Satire and Saltykóv, 22; and see Saltykóv

Scepticism in the forties, 20

Schaden’s school, 27

Schelling, his influence on Russian literature, 19, 205

Schools and culture, 7

Schopenhauer, 484

Scott, Sir Walter, his influence on Russian novel, 4

Sentimentalism, 27

Seventies in literature, 22

Shakspere, his influence on Púshkin, 16; and Karamzín, 31

Shchedrín, see Saltykóv

Shcherbátov, 13, 27

Shebúyev, 240

Shenshín, A. A., biographical sketch and extracts, 319 seq.

Shishkóv, his antiquated style, 4; and Church-Slavic, 12, 28; and Aksákov, 217

Slavophiles, their enthusiasm, 10; studying customs, 22; defined by Gértsen, 237 seq.; and Ostróvski 369; and see 13, 236, 484

Slavophilism due to German philosophy, 19

Soilers, 10

Sons and fathers, 10

Styles of language, 12 seq.; and see 5

Talent not concentrated, 9

Tasso and Bátyushkov, 14, 73, 75 seq.

Tatíshchev, 27

Theatre and Ostróvski, 369

Theology and literature, Khomyakóv’s, 230

Tolstóy, A. K., biographical sketch and extracts, 245

Tolstóy, L. N., novelist of the forties, 4; departing from reality, 5; as negator, 9; estimate of, 21; biographical sketch and extracts, 391 seq.; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 483 seq.; and see 19, 81

Tolstóyists, 392

Tradition, absence of, in home life, 7; in school, 8

Tsárskoe-Seló, lyceum at, 7

Tugendbund in Russia, 15

Turgénev, I. S., novelist of the forties, 4; and emancipation of the slaves, 6; a Westerner, 19; estimate of, 20 seq.; and style, 21; and Dobrolyúbov, 272 seq.; biographical sketch and extracts, 280 seq.; estimate of, by Merezhkóvski, 484 seq.; and see 9, 234, 303, 385

Tyútchev, F. I., biographical sketch and extracts, 234; and see 417

Uspénski, G. I., and peasant in literature, 5; biographical sketch and extract, 408 seq.; and see 22, 428, 468

Uvárov, Count S. S. (lived 1786-1855), famous for his perfervid loyalty to the throne, 241

Venevítinov, 17

Vyázemski, P. A., his literary death, 4; biographical sketch and extracts, 81 seq.

War and Peace, 391 seq.; and see L. N. Tolstóy

Western ideals, in Russia, 7, 19; and Turgénev, 20

Word of Igor’s Armament, The, modernised by Máykov, 340

Yazýkov, N. M., Púshkin’s influence on, 17; biographical sketch and extract, 152 seq.

Young men, and school traditions, 7; in cultural movements, 9

Zagóskin, 240

Zhukóvski, V. A., and Romanticism, 14; biographical sketch and extracts, 54 seq.; and see 3, 16, 67, 68, 81, 152, 186

Zlatovrátski, N. N., biographical sketch and extracts, 427 seq.; and see 22, 468

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Table of Contents

Anthology of Russian Literature From the Earliest Period to the Present Time

PREFACE

A SKETCH OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nikoláy Mikháylovich Karamzín. (1766-1826.)

- LETTERS OF A RUSSIAN TRAVELLER
- THE CHURCHYARD
- POOR LÍZA
- FROM THE “HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE”

Iván Andréevich Krylóv. (1768-1844.)

- THE ASS AND THE NIGHTINGALE
- THE QUARTETTE
- DAMIAN’S FISHSOUP
- THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB
- THE LION AND THE WOLF
- THE CLOUD
- THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR AND THE SEA.

Aleksándr Efímovich Izmáylov. (1779-1831.)

- THE DRUNKARD’S VOW
- THE CANARY AND THE NIGHTINGALE
- THE TWO CATS

Vasíli Trofímovich Naryézhny. (1780-1825.)

- FROM “THE TWO IVÁNS; OR, THE PASSION FOR LITIGATION”

Vasíli Andréevich Zhukóvski. (1783-1852.)

- SVYETLÁNA[3]

- THE MINSTREL IN THE RUSSIAN CAMP

Iván Ivánovich Kozlóv. (1779-1840.)

- SOLITUDE
- KÍEV
- FROM “THE BLACK MONK”

Konstantín Nikoláevich Bátyushkov. (1787-1855.)

- THE FRIEND’S SHADOW

- THE DYING TASSO

Fédor Nikoláevich Glínka. (1788-1880.)

- MOSCOW

- THE SEARCH FOR GOD

Prince Petr Andréevich Vyázemski. (1792-1878.)

- THE SAMOVÁR
- TO MY THREE ABSENT FRIENDS
- DEATH REAPS THE HARVEST OF LIFE

Kondráti Fédorovich Rylyéev. (1796-1826.)

- FROM “VOYNARÓVSKI”

- IVÁN SUSÁNIN

Aleksándr Sergyéevich Griboyédov. (1795-1829.)

- FROM “INTELLIGENCE COMES TO GRIEF”

Aleksándr Aleksándrovich Bestúzhev (pseud. Marlínski). (1797-1837.)

- FROM “AMMALÁT BEK”

Iván Ivánovich Lazhéchnikov. (1794-1869.)

- THE HERETIC

Baron Antón Antónovich Délvig. (1798-1831.)

- GLOOMY THOUGHTS

Aleksándr Sergyéevich Púshkin. (1799-1837.)

- FROM “THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER”
- FROM “EVGÉNI ONYÉGIN”
- FROM “THE BAKHCHISARÁY FOUNTAIN”
- THE POISON-TREE
- THE BIRD
- THE PROPHET
- THE TALISMAN
- THE LAY OF THE WISE OLÉG
- TO THE SLANDERERS OF RUSSIA
- FROM “BORÍS GODUNÓV”
- DEMONS

Evgéni Abrámovich Baratýnski. (1800-1844.)

- FINLAND
- SPRING
- TRUTH

Nikoláy Mikháylovich Yazýkov. (1803-1846.)

- THE SAILOR
- THE STORM
- TO THE POET

Mikhaíl Yúrevich Lérmontov. (1814-1841.)

- FROM “A HERO OF OUR TIMES”
- FROM “THE DEMON”
- DISPUTE
- THE SAIL
- THE PRAYER
- THE BRANCH OF PALESTINE
- AT A BALL
- DREAM

Aleksyéy Vasílevich Koltsóv. (1808-1842.)

- FIRST LOVE
- THE ABUNDANT HARVEST
- THE FOREST
- BETRAYED BY A BRIDE
- THE MOWER

Nikoláy Vasílevich Gógol (—Yanóvski). (1809-1852.)

- THE DNIEPER
- THE REVIZÓR
- FROM “DEAD SOULS”

Vissarión Grigórevich Byelínski. (1811-1848.)

- THE NATURAL SCHOOL

Sergyéy Timoféevich Aksákov. (1791-1859.)

- FROM “THE FAMILY CHRONICLE”

Aleksyéy Stepánovich Khomyakóv. (1804-1860.)

- TO MY CHILDREN
- THE EAGLE
- KIEV

Fédor Ivánovich Tyútchev. (1803-1873.)

- THE SPRING-STORM

- SUNRISE

Aleksándr Ivánovich Gértsen (Herzen). (1812-1870.)

- SLAVOPHILES AND PANSLAVISM

Nikoláy Platónovich Ogarév. (1813-1877.)

- TO ISKÁNDER[12]
- MONOLOGUES
- THE VILLAGE WATCHMAN

Count Aleksyéy Konstantínovich Tolstóy. (1817-1875.)

- FROM “PRINCE SERÉBRYANY”
- THE DEATH OF IVÁN THE TERRIBLE
- THE KURGÁN

Iván Aleksándrovich Goncharóv. (1812-1891.)

- FROM “OBLÓMOV”

Nikoláy Aleksándrovich Dobrolyúbov. (1836-1861.)

- WHAT IS OBLÓMOVISM?

Iván Sergyéevich Turgénev. (1818-1883.)

- FROM “FATHERS AND SONS”

- POEMS IN PROSE (SENILIA)

Dmítri Vasílevich Grigoróvich. (1822-1900.)

- FROM “THE FISHERMEN”

Yákov Petróvich Polónski. (1820-1898).

- THE BIRDS
- NIGHT IN THE CRIMEA
- FROM “MUSICIAN GRASSHOPPER”

Aleksyéy Feofiláktovich Písemski. (1820-1881.)

- THE OLD PROPRIETRESS

Afanási Afanásevich Shenshín (Fet). (1820-1892.)

- TRYST

Fédor Mikháylovich Dostoévski. (1821-1881.)

- FROM “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT”

Apollón Nikoláevich Máykov. (1821-1898.)

- THE PERIS
- WHO WAS HE?
- THE MARBLE FAUN
- FROM THE LYRIC DRAMA “THREE DEATHS”

Nikoláy Aleksyéevich Nekrásov. (1821-1877.)

- FROM “RED-NOSED FROST”
- A MORAL MAN
- FROM “WHO LIVES IN RUSSIA HAPPILY”
- THE UNMOWN STRIP
- A MOTHER’S TEARS

Iván Sávich Nikítin. (1824-1861.)

- BURLÁK[21]

- THE GAFFER

Aleksyéy Nikoláevich Pleshchéev. (1825-1894.)

- FORWARD
- MY COUNTRY
- A LEGEND
- SPRING

Aleksándr Nikoláevich Ostróvski. (1823-1886.)

- THE STORM

Mikhaíl Evgráfovich Saltykóv. (pseud. Shchedrín). (1826-1889.)

- FROM “BEYOND THE BORDER”

Dmítri Ivánovich Písarev. (1841-1868.)

- FLOWERS OF HARMLESS HUMOUR

Count Lev Nikoláevich Tolstóy. (1828-.)

- FROM “ÁNNA KARÉNIN”

- FROM “WAR AND PEACE”

Glyeb Ivánovich Uspénski. (1840-1902.)

- FROM “THE POWER OF THE LAND”

Aleksándr Ivánovich Levítov. (1842-1877.)

- SHOEMAKER COCK-OF-THE-BOOTS

Nikoláy Nikoláevich Zlatovrátski. (1845-.)

- OLD SHADOWS

Vladímir Galaktiónovich Korolénko. (1853.-)

- THE OLD BELL-RINGER

Vsévolod Mikháylovich Garshín. (1855-1888.)

- THAT WHICH WAS NOT

Ignáti Nikoláevich Potápenko. (1856-.)

- A THOUSAND TALENTS

Semén Yákovlevich Nádson. (1862-1887.)

- MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER!

- POETRY

Antón Pávlovich Chékhov. (1860-.)

- IN THE COURT-ROOM

Aleksyéy Maksímovich Pyeshkóv (pseud. Maksím Górki). (1871-.)

- IN THE STEPPE

Dmítri Sergyéevich Merezhkóvski. (1865-.)

- FROM AN ESSAY ON “PÚSHKIN”

INDEX.

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