Rossica

ALEXANDER S. KAUN

It is still on—the Russian invasion.

Across the ocean the triumphant Prussian drives a hedge into the heart of Russia. With blood and iron and fire Efficiency celebrates its victory over Nihilism.

And we, the neutrals, the note-writers, attempt to thwart the grand march of Efficiency by delivering shells to the port of Vladivostok. Shells that do not always explode, despite their “moderate” prices.

In exchange we are getting thoughts, ideas. Unobstructed by Krupps or U’s or Zeppelins, they invade our peaceful shores, and intend to stay.

Woe to the Chambers and Herricks and Pooles and Dreisers and McCutcheons and other best sellers! The enemy is raining in torrents, in avalanches. What if the good, good public will be forced to taste the new food. What if after having tasted it they will rebel and demand real meat thereafter, rejecting as indigestible the canned affairs and the oleomargarine surrogates. What if....

No danger, I am assured by my friend who has great faith in the uncorruptible taste of the American public.

Surely no one will accuse the American publishers of being pure idealists or Ford-like fanatics who are ready to squander their hard dollars for propaganda purposes. Surely those gentlemen know their market and adjust the supply to the demand. The extraordinary deluge of Russian literature is evidently a paying proposition.

It is gratifying. We need the injection of new blood into our anemic literature.

New blood. Not even Gogol is too old for us. No matter that he died in 1852. His Dead Souls, Tarass Bulba, and just published stories[2] belong to the category of works that do not age in spite of their technical flaws. If you use this perspective, The Mantle will loom up as the peak of Russian realism. “We have all come out of The Mantle”, admitted Gogol’s disciple, Dostoevsky. If in that tale we recognize the forerunner of the relentless soul-vivisectionists of the later days, we get in the other stories a glimpse of the mystic Gogol, the poet of Goyaesque witches and devils. Do not read Viy before bed-time lest you go through a heavy nightmare.

It is an enormous leap from Gogol to Korolenko[3], Gorky[4], and Kuprin[5]. These are living authors, although they belong rather to the past century in their motives and modes. Vladimir Korolenko is a writer whose very name causes the heart of every Russian to beat with emotion. Not for the greatness of his art: as an artist he ranks among the lesser. It is the charm of his personality that places him far above all his colleagues. His long years of exile in Siberia, his never-flagging championship of the oppressed classes and races, his tireless encouragement of the young beginners, and his smile, the deep, broad smile that flows like a sunny stream through his writings, have endeared him to his countrymen beyond parallel. Korolenko is the bridge between the heroic, idealistic seventies and the ultra-individualistic moderns. His stories are not idylls, yet they smile; he deals with tragedies, describes horrifying situations, but he bears no ill feeling for the universe, he loves it with all its evils and follies, loves it with that keen understanding which spells forgiveness. Gorky tells us that he owes to Korolenko not only his discovery and introduction to the public, but also his style. I seldom trust an author’s self-criticism. Gorky differs from his alleged teacher in his style as well as in his philosophy. Korolenko is gentle, mild, refined, loving, forgiving. Gorky is rude, loud, hating, revenging. Both have known misery and hardships, both have rubbed shoulders with the humiliated and down-trodden. But Korolenko came out of the crucible with a radiant smile, with universal compassion and sympathy. Gorky neither forgets or forgives. His body and soul shriek out vengeance for man enslaved, maimed, bestialized. Korolenko and his “disciple” both exalt human personality, but the first does so indiscriminatingly, wholesalely, while Gorky glorifies only the strong, proclaims the “beauty of power”, and scorns the weak worms, the lazy adders who are content to stagnate in the mire. Gorky’s philosophy may appeal to us who have drunk from the waters of Zarathustra, but Korolenko’s art is purer, free from preaching, and hence more convincing.

Alexander Kuprin has been hailed as an anarchist, a free-love preacher, a social reformer, a cynic, a retrograde, and what not. He may be all these, or none, or more. Of all the Russian writers he is the only true, unaffected Dionysian. His love for women, for wine, for horses, for nature—in a word, for life, is spontaneous and elemental. None of the hectic morbidity of the consumptive Artzibashev. Kuprin is a healthy artist with an enormous eye. He sees to the bottom the mind of man and animal, of the thief and the intellectual, of the empty military officer and of the street-woman, of the artist and of the gambler, and he makes us see what he sees with a cheerful gracefulness, with no other purpose but the presentation of his sweetheart, life. His novel, The Duel, stirred Russian society as a vigorous indictment of militarism, a picture of the dehumanizing garrison life. Kuprin guffawed at that accusation over a glass of vodka, as he is usually drawn by cartoonists. Far be it from him to advocate or condemn. He rejoices in all his heroes, whether they be garrison dummies, or artistic pickpockets (The Outrage), or Japanese spies (Captain Ribnikov), or petty philistines (The River of Life). He floats upon the “river of life”, observes, absorbs, delights, and chuckles at the very fact of his existence. “Even if I were to fall under a railway train, and were left lying on the line with broken and bleeding limbs, and any one were to ask me if life were beautiful, I should none the less, and even by summoning my last remains of strength, answer enthusiastically, ‘Ah, yes, even now life is glorious!’” (The Duel).

From the charming, lithe, joyous Kuprin I pass reluctantly to a book on the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky[6]. It is deplorable that the publisher who has given us the excellent translation of Dostoevsky by Constance Garnett should throw on the market such a mediocrity as Mr. Soloviev’s work, as if there were not excellent books on the novelist written by Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Veresayev! Mr. Soloviev presents the accepted view of Dostoevsky as the preacher of repentance and atonement, the retrograde, the pillar of church and autocracy. Superficially, the view appears to be correct. Dig deeper into the chaotic, epileptical soul of the author of Crime and Punishment, gaze into the abysses of the dual characters of Raskolnikov, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, the Karamazovs, fling your imagination into the hellish crater of the novelist’s mind, and Mr. Soloviev’s symmetrical structure evaporates like mist. Again I ask, Why are such useless school-exercises reproduced by intelligent publishers? Why should such a fine translator as Mr. Hogarth waste his energy on puerilities?

The same Whys can be applied to another recent publication[7], Doroshevich’s impressions. Doroshevich is the most popular journalist in Russia, a witty, entertaining feuilletonist, who employs an original staccato rhythm. But there is no reason under the sun to translate his reportorial impressions of the war fugitives, written for a Moscow daily paper. Their value is purely local. How can we be interested in the management of the Russian relief-points, or their mismanagement? True, at times Doroshevich flashes brilliant impressionistic colors, as in describing the fugitives’ bonfires in the forest. But the rare gems do not justify the journalistic heap.

I am uneasy about these fallacies of the publishers. Few though they are, they may serve the part of a spoonful of vinegar in a pot of honey.