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.