ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS

By William Lyon Phelps

I

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTION

The Japanese war pricked one of the biggest bubbles in history, andleft Russia in a profoundly humiliating situation. Her navy waspractically destroyed, her armies soundly beaten, her offensive powertemporarily reduced to zero, her treasury exhausted, her pride laid inthe dust. If the greatness of a nation consisted in the number andsize of its battleships, in the capacity of its fighting men, or inits financial prosperity, Russia would be an object of pity. But inAmerica it is wholesome to remember that the real greatness of anation consists in none of these things, but rather in itsintellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas itgives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and toall things that count in humanity's intellectual advance. When weAmericans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we mightprofitably reflect for a moment on the comparative value of America'sand Russia's contributions to literature and music. 

At the start, we notice a rather curious fact, which sharplydifferentiates Russian literature from the literature of England, France, Spain, Italy, and even from that of Germany. Russia is old;her literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century;Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in thenineteenth. Russian literature and American literature are twins. Butthere is this strong contrast, caused partly by the difference in theage of the two nations. In the early years of the nineteenth century, American literature sounds like a child learning to talk, and thenaping its elders; Russian literature is the voice of a giant, wakingfrom a long sleep, and becoming articulate. It is as though the worldhad watched this giant's deep slumber for a long time, wondering whathe would say when he awakened. And what he has said has been wellworth the thousand years of waiting. 

To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language, twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; butthe general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interestedin only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists likeGorki, Artsybashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedlyattracting wide attention. The great five, whose place in the world'sliterature seems absolutely secure, are Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi. The man who killed Pushkin in a duel survivedtill 1895, and Tolstoi died in 1910. These figures show in how short atime Russian literature has had its origin, development, and fullfruition. 

Pushkin, who was born in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder ofRussian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence. He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all theirnational poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has neverpassed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one ofthe great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in hisOlympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet. "* It isalways difficult fully to appreciate poetry in a foreign language, especially when the language is so strange as Russian. It is certainthat no modern European tongue has been able fairly to represent thebeauty of Pushkin's verse, to make foreigners feel him as Russiansfeel him, in any such measure as the Germans succeeded withShakespeare, as Bayard Taylor with Goethe, as Ludwig Fulda withRostand. The translations of Pushkin and of Lermontov have neverimpressed foreign readers in the superlative degree. The glory ofEnglish literature is its poetry; the glory of Russian literature isits prose fiction. 

*Arnold told Sainte-Beuve that he did not think Lamartine was"important. " Sainte-Beuve answered, "He is important for us. "

Pushkin was, for a time at any rate, a Romantic, largely influenced, as all the world was then, by Byron. He is full of sentiment, smilesand tears, and passionate enthusiasms. He therefore struck out in apath in which he has had no great followers; for the big men inRussian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to thespirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What ispeculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete. Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This isshown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his titleas Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He tookRussia away from the artificiality of the eighteenth century, andexhibited the possibilities of native material in the native tongue. 

The founder of the mighty school of Russian Realism was Gogol. Filledwith enthusiasm for Pushkin, he nevertheless took a different course, and became Russia's first great novelist. Furthermore, although amelancholy man, he is the only Russian humorist who has made the worldlaugh out loud. Humour is not a salient quality in Russian fiction. Then came the brilliant follower of Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. In himRussian literary art reached its climax, and the art of the modernnovel as well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style thatRussia has ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown geniusin Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown theimpeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. GeorgeMoore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existedsince antiquity?"

Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years youngerthan Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist; his chiefinterest was in the psychological processes of the unclassed. Hisforeign fame is constantly growing brighter, for his works have anextraordinary vitality. Finally appeared Leo Tolstoi, whose literarycareer extended nearly sixty years. During the last twenty years ofhis life, he was generally regarded as the world's greatest livingauthor; his books enjoyed an enormous circulation, and he probablyinfluenced more individuals by his pen than any other man of his time. 

In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought tofind all the prominent traits in the Russian character. 

It is a rather curious thing, that Russia, which has never had aparliamentary government, and where political history has been verylittle influenced by the spoken word, should have so much finer aninstrument of expression than England, where matters of the greatestimportance have been settled by open and public speech for nearlythree hundred years. One would think that the constant use of thelanguage in the national forum for purposes of argument and persuasionwould help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost totalabsence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity. In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust thetestimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that theEnglish language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkwarddialect. Compared with Russian, the English language is decidedly weakin synonyms, and in the various shades of meaning that make forprecision. Indeed, with the exception of Polish, Russian is probablythe greatest language in the world, in richness, variety, definiteness, and elegance. It is also capable of saying much inlittle, and saying it with tremendous force. In Turgenev's "Torrentsof Spring, " where the reader hears constantly phrases in Italian, French, and German, it will be remembered that the ladies ask Sanin tosing something in his mother tongue. "The ladies praised his voice andthe music, but were more struck with the softness and sonorousness ofthe Russian language. " I remember being similarly affected years agowhen I heard "King Lear" read aloud in Russian. Baron von der Bruggensays, * "there is the wonderful wealth of the language, which, as apopular tongue, is more flexible, more expressive of thought than anyother living tongue I know of. " No one has paid a better tribute thanGogol:--

"The Russian people express themselves forcibly; and if they oncebestow an epithet upon a person, it will descend to his race andposterity; he will bear it about with him, in service, in retreat, inPetersburg, and to the ends of the earth; and use what cunning hewill, ennoble his career as he will thereafter, nothing is of theslightest use; that nickname will caw of itself at the top of itscrow's voice, and will show clearly whence the bird has flown. Apointed epithet once uttered is the same as though it were writtendown, and an axe will not cut it out. 

*"Russia of To-day, " page 203. 

"And how pointed is all that which has proceeded from the depths ofRussia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns, nor any otherstrange tribes, but where all is purely aboriginal, where the bold andlively Russian mind never dives into its pocket for a word, and neverbroods over it like a sitting-hen: it sticks the word on at one blow, like a passport, like your nose or lips on an eternal bearer, andnever adds anything afterwards. You are sketched from head to foot inone stroke. 

"Innumerable as is the multitude of churches, monasteries withcupolas, towers, and crosses, which are scattered over holy, mostpious Russia, the multitude of tribes, races, and peoples who throngand bustle and variegate the earth is just as innumerable. And everypeople bearing within itself the pledge of strength, full of activequalities of soul, of its own sharply defined peculiarities, and othergifts of God, has characteristically distinguished itself by its ownspecial word, by which, while expressing any object whatever, it alsoreflects in the expression its own share of its own distinctivecharacter. The word Briton echoes with knowledge of the heart, andwise knowledge of life; the word French, which is not of ancient date, glitters with a light foppery, and flits away; the sagely artisticword German ingeniously discovers its meaning, which is not attainableby every one; but there is no word which is so ready, so audacious, which is torn from beneath the heart itself, which is so burning, sofull of life, as the aptly applied Russian word. "*

*"Dead Souls, " translated by Isabel Hapgood. 

Prosper Merimee, who knew Russian well, and was an absolute master ofthe French language, remarked:--

"La langue russe, qui est, autant que j 'en puis juger, le plus richedes idiomes de l'Europe, semble faite pour exprimer les nuances lesplus delicates. Douee d'une merveilleuse concision qui s'allie a laclarte, il lui suffit d'un mot pour associer plusieurs idees, qui, dans une autre langue, exigeralent des phrases entieres. "

And no people are more jealous on this very point than the French. Inthe last of his wonderful "Poems in Prose, " Turgenev cried out: "Inthese days of doubt, in these days of painful brooding over the fateof my country, thou alone art my rod and my staff, O great, mighty, true and free Russian language! If it were not for thee, how could onekeep from despairing at the sight of what is going on at home? But itis inconceivable that such a language should not belong to a greatpeople. "

It is significant that Turgenev, who was so full of sympathy for theideas and civilization of Western Europe, and who was so oftenregarded (unjustly) by his countrymen as a traitor to Russia, shouldhave written all his masterpieces, not in French, of which he had aperfect command, but in his own beloved mother-tongue. 

We see by the above extracts, that Russia has an instrument ofexpression as near perfection as is possible in human speech. Perhapsone reason for the supremacy of Russian fiction may be found here. 

The immense size of the country produces an element of largeness inRussian character that one feels not only in their novels, but almostinvariably in personal contact and conversation with a more or lesseducated Russian. This is not imaginary and fantastic; it is adefinite sensation, and immediately apparent. Bigness in earlyenvironment often produces a certain comfortable largeness of mentalvision. One has only to compare in this particular a man from Russiawith a man from Holland, or still better, a man from Texas with a manfrom Connecticut. The difference is easy to see, and easier to feel. It is possible that the man from the smaller district may be moresubtle, or he may have had better educational advantages; but he islikely to be more narrow. A Texan told me once that it was eighteenmiles from his front door to his front gate; now I was born in a cityblock, with no front yard at all. I had surely missed something. 

Russians are moulded on a large scale, and their novels are as wide ininterest as the world itself. There is a refreshing breadth of visionin the Russian character, which is often as healthful to a foreigneras the wind that sweeps across the vast prairies. This largeness ofcharacter partly accounts for the impression of Vastness that theirbooks produce on Occidental eyes. I do not refer at all to the lengthof the book--for a book may be very long, and yet produce animpression of pettiness, like many English novels. No, it is somethingthat exhales from the pages, whether they be few or many. Asillustrations of this quality of vastness, one has only to recall twoRussian novels--one the longest, and the other very nearly theshortest, in the whole range of Slavonic fiction. I refer to "War andPeace, " by Tolstoi, and to "Taras Bulba, " by Gogol. Both of theseextraordinary works give us chiefly an impression of Immensity--wefeel the boundless steppes, the illimitable wastes of snow, and thelong winter night. It is particularly interesting to compare TarasBulba with the trilogy of the Polish genius, Sienkiewicz. The formeris tiny in size, the latter a leviathan; but the effect produced isthe same. It is what we feel in reading Homer, whose influence, by theway, is as powerful in "Taras Bulba" as it is in "With Fire andSword. "

The Cosmopolitanism of the Russian character is a striking feature. Indeed, the educated Russian is perhaps the most complete Cosmopolitanin the world. This is partly owing to the uncanny facility with whichhe acquires foreign languages, and to the admirable custom in Russiaof giving children in more or less wealthy families, French, German, and English governesses. John Stuart Mill studied Greek at the age ofthree, which is the proper time to begin the study of any languagethat one intends to master. Russian children think and dream inforeign words, but it is seldom that a Russian shows any pride in hislinguistic accomplishments, or that he takes it otherwise than as amatter of course. Stevenson, writing from Mentone to his mother, 7January 1874, said: "We have two little Russian girls, with theyoungest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year-old, I hadthe most laughable little scene at lunch to-day. . . . She saidsomething in Italian which made everybody laugh very much . . . ; aftersome examination, she announced emphatically to the whole table, inGerman, that I was a machen. . . . This hasty conclusion as to my sexshe was led afterwards to revise . . . But her new opinion . . . Wasannounced in a language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. Tocomplete the scroll of her accomplishments, . . . She said good-bye tome in very commendable English. " Three days later, he added, "Thelittle Russian kid is only two and a half; she speaks six languages. "Nothing excites the envy of an American travelling in Europe moresharply than to hear Russian men and women speaking European languagesfluently and idiomatically. When we learn to speak a foreign tongue, we are always acutely conscious of the transition from English toGerman, or from German to French, and our hearers are still more so. We speak French as though it HURT, just as the average tenor sings. Iremember at a polyglot Parisian table, a Russian girl who spoke sevenlanguages with perfect ease; and she was not in the least ablue-stocking. 

Now every one knows that one of the indirect advantages that resultfrom the acquisition of a strange tongue is the immediate gain in theextent of view. It is as though a near-sighted man had suddenly put onglasses. It is something to be able to read French; but if one haslearned to speak French, the reading of a French book becomesinfinitely more vivid. With a French play in the hand, one can seeclearly the expressions on the faces of the personages, as one followsthe printed dialogue with the eye. Here is where a Russian understandsthe American or the French point of view, much better than an Americanor a Frenchman understands the Russian's. Indeed, the man from Parisis nothing like so cosmopolitan as the man from Petersburg. One reasonis, that he is too well satisfied with Paris. The late M. Brunetieretold me that he could neither read or speak English, and, what isstill more remarkable, he said that he had never been in England! Thata critic of his power and reputation, interested as he was in Englishliterature, should never have had sufficient intellectual curiosity tocross the English Channel, struck me as nothing short of amazing. 

The acquisition of any foreign language annihilates a considerablenumber of prejudices. Henry James, who knew Turgenev intimately, andwho has written a brilliant and charming essay on his personality, said that the mind of Turgenev contained not one pin-point ofprejudice. It is worth while to pause an instant and meditate on thesignificance of such a remark. Think what it must mean to view theworld, the institutions of society, moral ideas, and human characterwith an absolutely unprejudiced mind! We Americans are skinful ofprejudices. Of course we don't call them prejudices; we call themprinciples. But they sometimes impress others as prejudices; and theyno doubt help to obscure our judgment, and to shorten or refract oursight. What would be thought of a painter who had prejudicesconcerning the colours of skies and fields?

The cosmopolitanism of the Russian novelist partly accounts for theinternational effect and influence of his novels. His knowledge offoreign languages makes his books appeal to foreign readers. When heintroduces German, French, English, and Italian characters into hisbooks, he not only understands these people, he can think in theirlanguages, and thus reproduce faithfully their characteristics notmerely by observation but by sympathetic intuition. Furthermore, thevery fact that Tolstoi, for example, writes in an inaccessiblelanguage, makes foreign translations of his works absolutelynecessary. As at the day of Pentecost, every man hears him speak inhis own tongue. Now if an Englishman writes a successful book, thousands of Russians, Germans, and others will read it in English;the necessity of translation is not nearly so great. It is interestingto compare the world-wide appeal made by the novels of Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi with that made by Thackeray and George Eliot, not to mention Mr. Hardy or the late Mr. Meredith. 

The combination of the great age of Russia with its recentintellectual birth produces a maturity of character, with a wonderfulfreshness of consciousness. It is as though a strong, sensible man offorty should suddenly develop a genius in art; his attitude would bequite different from that of a growing boy, no matter how precocioushe might be. So, while the Russian character is marked by an extremesensitiveness to mental impressions, it is without the rawness andimmaturity of the American. The typical American has some strongqualities that seem in the typical Russian conspicuously absent; buthis very practical energy, his pride and self-satisfaction, stand inthe way of his receptive power. Now a conspicuous trait of the Russianis his humility; and his humility enables him to see clearly what isgoing on, where an American would instantly interfere, and attempt tochange the course of events. * For, however inspiring a full-bloodedAmerican may be, the most distinguishing feature of his character issurely not Humility. And it is worth while to remember that whereassince 1850, at least a dozen great realistic novels have been writtenin Russian, not a single completely great realistic novel has everbeen written in the Western Hemisphere. 

*It is possible that both the humility and the melancholy of theRussian character are partly caused by the climate, and the vaststeppes and forests, which seem to indicate the insignificance of man. 

This extreme sensitiveness to impression is what has led the Russianliterary genius into Realism; and it is what has produced the greatestRealists that the history of the novel has seen. The Russian mind islike a sensitive plate; it reproduces faithfully. It has no morepartiality, no more prejudice than a camera film; it reflectseverything that reaches its surface. A Russian novelist, with a pen inhis hand, is the most truthful being on earth. 

To an Englishman or an American, perhaps the most striking trait inthe Russian character is his lack of practical force--the paralysis ofhis power of will. The national character among the educated classesis personified in fiction, in a type peculiarly Russian; and that maybe best defined by calling it the conventional Hamlet. I say theconventional Hamlet, for I believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a man ofimmense resolution and self-control. The Hamlet of the commentators isas unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet as systematic theology is unlike theSermon on the Mount. The hero of the orthodox Russian novel is averitable "L'Aiglon. " This national type must be clearly understoodbefore an American can understand Russian novels at all. In order toshow that it is not imaginary, but real, one has only to turn toSienkiewicz's powerful work, "Without Dogma, " the very titleexpressing the lack of conviction that destroys the hero. 

"Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance thesetwo words, 'l'improductivite slave. ' I experienced the same relief asdoes a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptomsare common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease. . . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He hadhis wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. Thereis something in us, --an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us thepower to string the bow and send the arrow straight to its aim. Ishould like to discuss it with my father, but am afraid to touch asore point. Instead of this, I will discuss it with my diary. Perhapsit will be just the thing to give it any value. Besides, what can bemore natural than to write about what interests me? Everybody carrieswithin him his tragedy. Mine is this same 'improductivite slave' ofthe Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when romanticism flourished in heartsand poetry, everybody carried his tragedy draped around him as apicturesque cloak; now it is carried still, but as a jagervest next tothe skin. But with a diary it is different; with a diary one may besincere. . . . To begin with, I note down that my religious belief Icarried still intact with me from Metz did not withstand the study ofnatural philosophy. It does not follow that I am an atheist. Oh, no!this was good enough in former times, when he who did not believe inspirit, said to himself, 'Matter, ' and that settled for him thequestion. Nowadays only provincial philosophers cling to that worn-outcreed. Philosophy of our times does not pronounce upon the matter; toall such questions, it says, 'I do not know. ' And that 'I do not know'sinks into and permeates the mind. Nowadays psychology occupies itselfwith close analysis and researches of spiritual manifestations; butwhen questioned upon the immortality of the soul it says the same, 'Ido not know, ' and truly it does not know, and it cannot know. And nowit will be easier to describe the state of my mind. It all lies inthese words: I do not know. In this--in the acknowledged impotence ofthe human mind--lies the tragedy. Not to mention the fact thathumanity always has asked, and always will ask, for an answer, theyare truly questions of more importance than anything else in theworld. If there be something on the other side, and that something aneternal life, then misfortunes and losses on this side are, asnothing. 'I am content to die, ' says Renan, 'but I should like to knowwhether death will be of any use to me. ' And philosophy replies, 'I donot know. ' And man beats against that blank wall, and like thebedridden sufferer fancies, if he could lie on this or on that side, he would feel easier. What is to be done?"*

*Translated by Iza Young. 

Those last five words are often heard in Russian mouths. It is afavourite question. It is, indeed, the title of two Russian books. 

The description of the Slavonic temperament given by Sienkiewicztallies exactly with many prominent characters in Russian novels. Turgenev first completely realised it in "Rudin;" he afterwards madeit equally clear in "Torrents of Spring, " "Smoke, " and other novels. *Raskolnikov, in Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment, " is anotherillustration; he wishes to be a Napoleon, and succeeds only inmurdering two old women. Artsybashev, in his terrible novel, "Sanin, "has given an admirable analysis of this great Russian type in thecharacter of Jurii, who finally commits suicide simply because hecannot find a working theory of life. Writers so different as Tolstoiand Gorki have given plenty of good examples. Indeed, Gorki, in"Varenka Olessova, " has put into the mouth of a sensible girl anexcellent sketch of the national representative. 

*Goncharov devoted a whole novel, "Oblomov, " to the elaboration ofthis particular type. 

"The Russian hero is always silly and stupid, he is always sick ofsomething; always thinking of something that cannot be understood, andis himself so miserable, so m--i--serable! He will think, think, thentalk, then he will go and make a declaration of love, and after thathe thinks, and thinks again, till he marries. . . . And when he ismarried, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and then abandonsher. "

Turgenev's Bazarov and Artsybashev's Sanin indicate the ardent revoltagainst the national masculine temperament; like true Slavs, they goclear to the other extreme, and bring resolution to a reductio adabsurdum; for your true Russian knows no middle course, being entirelywithout the healthy moderation of the Anglo-Saxon. The great Turgenevrealised his own likeness to Rudin. Mrs. Ritchie has given a verypleasant unconscious testimony to this fact. 

"Just then my glance fell upon Turgenev leaning against the doorpostat the far end of the room, and as I looked, I was struck, beingshortsighted, by a certain resemblance to my father [Thackeray], whichI tried to realise to myself. He was very tall, his hair was grey andabundant, his attitude was quiet and reposeful; I looked again andagain while I pictured to myself the likeness. When Turgenev came upafter the music, he spoke to us with great kindness, spoke of ourfather, and of having dined at our house, and he promised kindly andwillingly to come and call next day upon my sister and me in OnslowGardens. I can remember that next day still; dull and dark, with ayellow mist in the air. All the afternoon I sat hoping and expectingthat Turgenev might come, but I waited in vain. Two days later, we methim again at Mrs. Huth's, where we were all once more assembled. Mr. Turgenev came straight up to me at once. 'I was so sorry that I couldnot come and see you, ' he said, 'so very sorry, but I was prevented. Look at my thumbs!' and he held up both his hands with the palmsoutwards. I looked at his thumbs, but I could not understand. 'See howsmall they are, ' he went on; 'people with such little thumbs can neverdo what they intend to do, they always let themselves be prevented;'and he laughed so kindly that I felt as if his visit had been paid allthe time and quite understood the validity of the excuse. "*

*"Blackstick Papers, " 1908

It is seldom that the national characteristic reveals itself soplayfully; it is more likely to lead to tragedy. This cardinal factmay militate greatly against Russia's position as a world-power in thefuture, as it has in the past. Her capacity for passive resistance isenormous--Napoleon learned that, and so did Frederick. A remarkableillustration of it was afforded by the late Japanese war, when PortArthur held out long after the possible date assigned by many militaryexperts. For positive aggressive tactics Russia is just as weaknationally as her men are individually. What a case in point is theDuma, of which so much was expected! Were a majority of that DumaAnglo-Saxons, we should all see something happen, and it would nothappen against Finland. One has only to compare it with the greatparliamentary gatherings in England's history. *

* Gogol said in "Dead Souls, " "We Russians have not the slightesttalent for deliberative assemblies. "

Perhaps if the membership were exclusively composed of women, positiveresults would show. For, in Russian novels, the irresolution of themen is equalled only by the driving force of the women. The Russianfeminine type, as depicted in fiction, is the incarnation ofsingleness of purpose, and a capacity to bring things to pass, whetherfor good or for evil. The heroine of "Rudin, " of "Smoke, " of "On theEve, " the sinister Maria of "Torrents of Spring, " the immortal Lisa of"A House of Gentlefolk, " the girl in Dostoevski's "Poor Folk;" Duniaand Sonia, in "Crime and Punishment"--many others might be called tomind. The good Russian women seem immensely superior to the men intheir instant perception and recognition of moral values, which givesthem a chart and compass in life. Possibly, too, the women arestiffened in will by a natural reaction in finding their husbands andbrothers so stuffed with inconclusive theories. One is appalled at theprodigious amount of nonsense that Russian wives and daughters areforced to hear from their talkative and ineffective heads of houses. It must be worse than the metaphysical discussion between Adam and theangel, while Eve waited on table, and supplied the windy debaters withsomething really useful. 

To one who is well acquainted with American university undergraduates, the intellectual maturity of the Russian or Polish student and hiseagerness for the discussion of abstract problems in sociology andmetaphysics are very impressive. The amount of space given in Russiannovels to philosophical introspection and debate is a truthfulportrayal of the subtle Russian mind. Russians love to talk; they arestrenuous in conversation, and forget their meals and their sleep. Ihave known some Russians who will sit up all night, engaged in thediscussion of a purely abstract topic, totally oblivious to thepassage of time. In "A House of Gentlefolk, " at four o'clock in themorning, Mihalevich is still talking about the social duties ofRussian landowners, and he roars out, "We are sleeping, and the timeis slipping away; we are sleeping!" Lavretsky replies, "Permit me toobserve, that we are not sleeping at present, but rather preventingothers from sleeping. We are straining our throats like thecocks--listen! there is one crowing for the third time. " To whichMihalevich smilingly rejoins, "Good-bye till to-morrow. " Then follows, "But the friends talked for more than an hour longer. " In Chirikov'spowerful drama, "The Jews, " the scene of animated discussion thattakes place on the stage is a perfect picture of what is happening inhundreds of Russian towns every night. An admirable description of atypical Russian conversation is given by Turgenev, in "Virgin Soil":--

"Like the first flakes of snow, swiftly whirling, crossing andrecrossing in the still mild air of autumn, words began flying, tumbling, jostling against one another in the heated atmosphere ofGolushkin's dining-room--words of all sorts--progress, government, literature; the taxation question, the church question, the Romanquestion, the law-court question; classicism, realism, nihilism, communism; international, clerical, liberal, capital; administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation! It was just thisuproar which seemed to arouse Golushkin to enthusiasm; the real gistof the matter seemed to consist in this, for him. "*

*All citations from Turgenev's novels are from Constance Garnett'stranslations. 

The Anglo-Saxon is content to allow ideas that are inconsistent andirreconcilable to get along together as best they may in his mind, inorder that he may somehow get something done. Not so the Russian. Dr. Johnson, who settled Berkeleian idealism by kicking a stone, and theproblem of free will by stoutly declaring, "I know I'm free andthere's an end on't, " would have had an interesting time among theSlavs. 

It is rather fortunate that the Russian love of theory is so oftenaccompanied by the paralysis of will power, otherwise political crimeswould be much commoner in Russia than they are. The Russian istremendously impulsive, but not at all practical. Many hold the mostextreme views, views that would shock a typical Anglo-Saxon out of hiscomplacency; but they remain harmless and gentle theorists. ManyRussians do not believe in God, or Law, or Civil Government, orMarriage, or any of the fundamental Institutions of Society; but theirdaily life is as regular and conventional as a New Englander's. Others, however, attempt to live up to their theories, not so much fortheir personal enjoyment, as for the satisfaction that comes fromintellectual consistency. In general, it may be said that the Russianis far more of an extremist, far more influenced by theory, thanpeople of the West. This is particularly true of the youth of Russia, always hot-headed and impulsive, and who are constantly attempting toput into practice the latest popular theories of life. Americanundergraduates are the most conservative folk in the world; if anystrange theory in morals or politics becomes noised abroad, theAmerican student opposes to it the one time-honoured weapon of theconservative from Aristophanes down, --burlesque. Mock processions andabsurd travesties of "the latest thing" in politics are a feature ofevery academic year at an American university. Indeed, an Americanstudent leading a radical political mob is simply unthinkable. It iscommon enough in Russia, where in political disturbances students arevery often prominent. If a young Russian gives his intellectual assentto a theory, his first thought is to illustrate it in his life. One ofthe most terrible results of the publication of Artsybashev's novel"Sanin"--where the hero's theory of life is simply to enjoy it, andwhere the Christian system of morals is ridiculed--was theorganisation, in various high schools, among the boys and girls, ofsocieties zum ungehinderten Geschechtsgenuss. They were simply doingwhat Sanin told them they ought to do; and having decided that he wasright, they immediately put his theories into practice. Again, whenTolstoi finally made up his mind that the Christian system of ethicswas correct, he had no peace until he had attempted to live in everyrespect in accordance with those doctrines. And he persuaded thousandsof Russians to attempt the same thing. Now in England and in America, every minister knows that it is perfectly safe to preach the Sermon onthe Mount every day in the year. There is no occasion for alarm. Nobody will do anything rash. 

The fact that the French language, culture, and manners have beensuperimposed upon Russian society should never be forgotten in adiscussion of the Russian national character. For many years, anduntil very recently, French was the language constantly used byeducated and aristocratic native Russians, just as it is by the Polesand by the Roumanians. It will never cease seeming strange to anAmerican to hear a Russian mother and son talk intimately together ina language not their own. Even Pushkin, the founder of Russianliterature, the national poet, wrote in a letter to a friend, "Je vousparlerai la langue de l'Europe, elle m'est plus familiere. " ImagineTennyson writing a letter in French, with the explanation that Frenchcame easier to him!

It follows, as a consequence, that the chief reading of Russiansociety people is French novels; that French customs, morals, andmanners (as portrayed in French fiction) have had an enormous effecton the educated classes in Russia. If we may believe half thetestimony we hear, --I am not sure that we can, --Russian aristocraticsociety is to-day the most corrupt in the world. There is an immensecontrast between Parisians and Russians, and the literature that wouldnot damage the morals of the former is deadly to the latter. Thespirit of mockery in the Parisian throws off the germs of theirtheatre and their fiction. I have seen in a Parisian theatre men, their wives, and their families laughing unrestrainedly at a piece, that if exhibited before an American audience would simply disgustsome, and make others morbidly attentive. This kind of literature, comic or tragic, disseminated as it everywhere is among impulsive andpassionate Russian readers, has been anything but morally healthful. One might as rationally go about and poison wells. And the Russianyouth are sophisticated to a degree that seems to us almost startling. In 1903, a newspaper in Russia sent out thousands of blanks to highschool boys and girls all over the country, to discover what booksconstituted their favourite reading. Among native authors, Tolstoi wasfirst, closely followed by Gorki; among foreign writers, Guy deMaupassant was the most popular! The constant reading of Maupassant byboys and girls of fifteen and sixteen years, already emancipated fromthe domination of religious ideas, can hardly be morally hygienic. Andto-day, in many families all over the Western world, Hygiene has takenthe place of God. 

Russian novelists have given us again and again pictures of typicalsociety women who are thoroughly corrupt. We find them in historicaland in contemporary fiction. They are in "War and Peace, " in "AnnaKarenina, " in "Dead Souls, " in "A House of Gentlefolk, " and in thebooks of to-day. And it is worth remembering that when Tolstoi was ayoung man, his aunt advised him to have an intrigue with a marriedwoman, for the added polish and ease it would give to his manners, just as an American mother sends her boy to dancing-school. 

Finally, in reading the works of Tolstoi, Turgenev, Dostoevski, Gorki, Chekhov, Andreev, and others, what is the general impression producedon the mind of a foreigner? It is one of intense gloom. Of all thedark books in fiction, no works sound such depths of suffering anddespair as are fathomed by the Russians. Many English readers used tosay that the novels of George Eliot were "profoundly sad, "--it becamealmost a hackneyed phrase. Her stories are rollicking comediescompared with the awful shadow cast by the literature of the Slavs. Suffering is the heritage of the Russian race; their history issteeped in blood and tears, their present condition seems intolerablypainful, and the future is an impenetrable cloud. In the life of thepeasants there is of course fun and laughter, as there is in everyhuman life; but at the root there is suffering, not the loud protestof the Anglo-Saxon labourer, whose very loudness is a witness to hisvitality--but passive, fatalistic, apathetic misery. Life has beenoften defined, but never in a more depressing fashion than by thepeasant in Gorki's novel, who asks quietly:--

"What does the word Life mean to us? A feast? No. Work? No. A battle?Oh, no!! For us Life is something merely tiresome, dull, --a kind ofheavy burden. In carrying it we sigh with weariness and complain ofits weight. Do we really love Life! The Love of Life! The very wordssound strange to our ears! We love only our dreams of the future--andthis love is Platonic, with no hope of fruition. "

Suffering is the corner-stone of Russian life, as it is of Russianfiction. That is one reason why the Russians produce here and theresuch splendid characters, and such mighty books. The Russian capacityfor suffering is the real text of the great works of Dostoevski, andthe reason why his name is so beloved in Russia--he understood thehearts of his countrymen. Of all the courtesans who have illustratedthe Christian religion on the stage and in fiction, the greatest isDostoevski's Sonia. Her amazing sincerity and deep simplicity make usashamed of any tribute of tears we may have given to the familiarsentimental type. She does not know what the word "sentiment" means;but the awful sacrifice of her daily life is the great modernillustration of Love. Christ again is crucified. When the refined, cultivated, philosophical student Raskolnikov stoops to this ignorantgirl and kisses her feet, he says, "I did not bow down to youindividually, but to suffering Humanity in your person. " That phrasegives us an insight into the Russian national character. 

The immediate result of all this suffering as set forth in the livesand in the books of the great Russians, is Sympathy--pity and sympathyfor Humanity. Thousands are purified and ennobled by these sublimepictures of woe. And one of the most remarkable of contemporaryRussian novels--Andreev's "The Seven Who Were Hanged, " a book bearingon every page the stamp of indubitable genius--radiates a sympathy andpity that are almost divine. 

This growth of Love and Sympathy in the Russian national character isto me the sign of greatest promise in their future, both as a nationof men and women, and as a contributor to the world's great works ofliterary art. If anything can dispel the black clouds in their drearysky, it will be this wonderful emotional power. The political changes, the Trans-Siberian railway, their industrial and agriculturalprogress, --all these are as nothing compared with the immense advancethat Christian sympathy is now making in the hearts of the Russianpeople. The books of Dostoevski and Tolstoi point directly to theGospel, and although Russia is theoretically a Christian nation, nocountry needs real Christianity more than she. The tyranny of thebureaucracy, the corruption of fashionable society, the sufferings ofthe humble classes, the hollow formalism of the Church, make Russiaparticularly ripe for the true Gospel--just as true to-day as whengiven to the world in Palestine. Sixty years ago Gogol wrote: "What isit that is most truly Russian? What is the main characteristic of ourRussian nature, that we now try to develop by making it rejecteverything strange and foreign to it? The value of the Russian natureconsists in this--that it is capable, more than any other, ofreceiving the noble word of the Gospel, which leads man towardperfection. " One cannot read Dostoevski and Tolstoi without thinkingof the truth of Gogol's declaration. 

All the philosophy and wisdom of the world have never improved on theteachings of the Founder of Christianity. What the individual andsociety need to-day is not Socialism, Communism, or Nihilism; notemporary palliative sought in political, social, or financial Reform;what we each need is a closer personal contact with the simple truthsof the New Testament. The last word on all political, philosophical, and social questions may still be found in the Sermon on the Mount. Itis a significant fact, that Tolstoi, after a varied and longexperience of human life, after reviewing all the systems of thoughtthat have influenced modern society, should have finally arrived andfound rest in the statements that most of us learned in childhood fromour mothers' lips. 

II

GOGOL

Nikolai Vassilievich Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, in Little Russia, in March, 1809. The year in which he appeared on the planet proved tobe the literary annus mirabilis of the century; for in that sametwelvemonth were born Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson, AbrahamLincoln, Poe, Gladstone, and Holmes. His father was a lover ofliterature, who wrote dramatic pieces for his own amusement, and whospent his time on the old family estates, not in managing the farms, but in wandering about the fields, and beholding the fowls of the air. The boy inherited much from his father; but, unlike Turgenev, he hadthe best of all private tutors, a good mother, of whom his biographersays, Elle demeure toujours sa plus intime amie. *

*For the facts in Gogol's life, I have relied chiefly on the doctor'sthesis by Raina Tyrneva, Aix, 1901. 

At the age of twelve, Nikolai was sent away to the high school atNezhin, a town near Kiev. There he remained from 1821 to 1828. He wasan unpromising student, having no enthusiasm for his lessons, andshowing no distinction either in scholarship or deportment. Fortunately, however, the school had a little theatre of its own, andGogol, who hated mathematics, and cared little for the study of modernlanguages, here found an outlet for all his mental energy. He soonbecame the acknowledged leader of the school in matters dramatic, andunconsciously prepared himself for his future career. Like Schiller, he wrote a tragedy, and called it "The Robbers. "

I think it is probable that Gogol's hatred for the school curriculuminspired a passage in "Taras Bulba, " though here he ostensiblydescribed the pedagogy of the fifteenth century. 

"The style of education in that age differed widely from the manner oflife. These scholastic, grammatical, rhetorical, and logicalsubtleties were decidedly out of consonance with the times, never hadany connection with and never were encountered in actual life. Thosewho studied them could not apply their knowledge to anything whatever, not even the least scholastic of them. The learned men of those dayswere even more incapable than the rest, because farther removed fromall experience. "*

*Translated by Isabel Hapgood. 

In December, 1828, Gogol took up his residence in St. Petersburg, bringing with him some manuscripts that he had written while atschool. He had the temerity to publish one, which was so brutallyridiculed by the critics, that the young genius, in despair, burnedall the unsold copies--an unwitting prophecy of a later and morelamentable conflagration. Then he vainly tried various means ofsubsistence. Suddenly he decided to seek his fortune in America, buthe was both homesick and seasick before the ship emerged from theBaltic, and from Lubeck he fled incontinently back to Petersburg. Thenhe tried to become an actor, but lacked the necessary strength ofvoice. For a short time he held a minor official position, and alittle later was professor of history, an occupation he did not enjoy, saying after his resignation, "Now I am a free Cossack again. "Meanwhile his pen was steadily busy, and his sketches of farm life inthe Ukraine attracted considerable attention among literary circles inthe capital. 

Gogol suffered from nostalgia all the time he lived at St. Petersburg;he did not care for that form of society, and the people, he said, didnot seem like real Russians. He was thoroughly homesick for hisbeloved Ukraine; and it is significant that his short stories of lifein Little Russia, truthfully depicting the country customs, werewritten far off in a strange and uncongenial environment. 

In 1831 he had the good fortune to meet the poet Pushkin, and a fewmonths later in the same year he was presented to Madame Smirnova;these friends gave him the entree to the literary salons, and theyoung author, lonesome as he was, found the intellectual stimulationhe needed. It was Pushkin who suggested to him the subjects for two ofhis most famous works, "Revizor" and "Dead Souls. " Another friend, Jukovski, exercised a powerful influence, and gave invaluable aid atseveral crises of his career. Jukovski had translated the "Iliad" andthe "Odyssey;" his enthusiasm for Hellenic poetry was contagious; andunder this inspiration Gogol proceeded to write the most Homericromance in Russian literature, "Taras Bulba. " This story gave thefirst indubitable proof of its author's genius, and to-day in theworld's fiction it holds an unassailable place in the front rank. Thebook is so short that it can be read through in less than two hours;but it gives the same impression of vastness and immensity as the hugevolumes of Sienkiewicz. 

Gogol followed this amazingly powerful romance by two other works, which seem to have all the marks of immortality--the comedy "Revizor, "and a long, unfinished novel, "Dead Souls. " This latter book is thefirst of the great realistic novels of Russia, of which "Fathers andChildren, "Crime and Punishment, " and "Anna Karenina" are suchsplendid examples. 

From 1836 until his death in 1852, Gogol lived mainly abroad, andspent much time in travel. His favourite place of residence was Rome, to which city he repeatedly returned with increasing affection. In1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departedfrom the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact, toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic. Thelast years were shadowed by illness and--a common thing among Russianwriters--by intense nervous depression. He died at Moscow, 21 February1852. His last words were the old saying, "And I shall laugh with abitter laugh. " These words were placed on his tomb. 

Most Russian novels are steeped in pessimism, and their authors weremen of sorrows. Gogol, however, has the double distinction of beingthe only great comic writer in the language, and in particular ofbeing the author of the only Russian drama known all over the world, and still acted everywhere on the Continent. Although plays do notcome within the scope of this book, a word or two should be said aboutthis great comedy; for "Revizor" exhibits clearly the double nature ofthe author, --his genius for moral satire and his genius for pure fun. From the moral point of view, it is a terrible indictment against themost corrupt bureaucracy of modern times, from the comic point ofview, it is an uproarious farce. 

The origin of the play is as follows: while travelling in Russia oneday, Pushkin stopped at Nizhni-Novgorod. Here he was mistaken for astate functionary on tour among the provinces for purposes ofgovernment inspection. This amused the poet so keenly that he narratedall the circumstances to Gogol and suggested that the latter make aplay with this experience as the basis of the plot. Gogol not onlyacted on the suggestion, but instead of a mere farce, he produced acomedy of manners. Toward the end of his life he wrote: "In "Revizor"I tried to gather in one heap all that was bad in Russia, as I thenunderstood it; I wished to turn it all into ridicule. The realimpression produced was that of fear. Through the laughter that I havenever laughed more loudly, the spectator feels my bitterness andsorrow. " The drama was finished on the 4 December 1835, and of coursethe immediate difficulty was the censorship. How would it be possiblefor such a satire either to be printed or acted in Russia? Gogol'sfriend, Madame Smirnova, carried the manuscript to the Czar, NikolasI. It was read to him; he roared with laughter, and immediatelyordered that it be acted. We may note also that he became a warmfriend of Gogol, and sent sums of money to him, saying nobly, "Don'tlet him know the source of these gifts; for then he might feel obligedto write from the official point of view. "

The first performance was on the 19 April 1836. The Czar attended inperson, and applauded vigorously. The success was immediate, and ithas never quitted the stage. Gogol wrote to a friend: "On the openingnight I felt uncomfortable from the very first as I sat in thetheatre. Anxiety for the approval of the audience did not trouble me. There was only one critic in the house--myself--that I feared. I heardclamorous objections within me which drowned all else. However, thepublic, as a whole, was satisfied. Half of the audience praised theplay, the other half condemned it, but not on artistic grounds. "

"Revizor" is one of the best-constructed comedies in any language; fornot only has it a unified and well-ordered plot, but it does not stopwith the final fall of the curtain. Most plays by attempting to finishup the story with smooth edges, leave an impression of artificialityand unreality, for life is not done up in such neat parcels. Thegreatest dramas do not solve problems for us, they supply us withquestions. In "Revizor, " at the last dumb scene, after all the mirth, the real trouble is about to begin; and the spectators depart, notmerely with the delightful memory of an evening's entertainment, butwith their imagination aflame. Furthermore, "Revizor" has thatcombination of the intensely local element with the universal, socharacteristic of works of genius. Its avowed attempt was to satiriselocal and temporal abuses; but it is impossible to imagine any stateof society in the near future where the play will not seem real. IfGogol had done nothing but write the best comedy in the Russianlanguage, he would have his place in literature secure. *

*The first production of "Revizor" in America (in English) was givenby the students of Yale University, 20 April, 1908. For all I know tothe contrary, it was the first English production in the world. It wasimmensely successful, caused subsequent performances elsewhere, bothamateur and professional, and attracted attention in Russia, where ajournal gave an illustrated account of the Yale representation. 

One must never forget in reading Gogol that he was a man of theSouth--"homme du Midi. " In all countries of the world, there is amarked difference between the Northern and the Southern temperament. The southern sun seems to make human nature more mellow. Southernersare more warm-hearted, more emotional, more hospitable, and much morefree in the expression of their feelings. In the United States, everyone knows the contrast between the New Englander and the man from theGulf; in Europe, the difference between the Norman and the Gascon hasalways been apparent--how clear it is in the works of Flaubert and ofRostand! Likewise how interesting is the comparison between thePrussian and the Bavarian; we may have a wholesome respect for Berlin, but we love Munich, in some respects the most attractive town onearth. The parallel holds good in Russia, where the Little Russians, the men of the Ukraine, have ever shown characteristics that separatethem from the people of the North. The fiery passion, the boundlessaspiration of the Cossack, animates the stories of Gogol with averitable flame. 

His first book, "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka (Veillees del'Ukraine), " appeared early in the thirties, and, with all its crudityand excrescences, was a literary sunrise. It attracted immediate andwide-spread attention, and the wits of Petersburg knew that Russia hadan original novelist. The work is a collection of short stories orsketches, introduced with a rollicking humorous preface, in which theauthor announces himself as Rudii Panko, raiser of bees. Into thisbook the exile in the city of the North poured out all his love forthe country and the village customs of his own Little Russia. He givesus great pictures of Nature, and little pictures of social life. Hedescribes with the utmost detail a country fair at the place of hisbirth, Sorotchinetz. His descriptions of the simple folk, the beasts, and the bargainings seem as true as those in "Madame Bovary"--thedifference is in the attitude of the author toward his work. Gogol hasnothing of the aloofness, nothing of the scorn of Flaubert; he himselfloves the revelry and the superstitions he pictures, loves above allthe people. Superstition plays a prominent role in these sketches; theunseen world of ghosts and apparitions has an enormous influence onthe daily life of the peasants. The love of fun is everywhere inevidence; these people cannot live without practical jokes, violentdances, and horse-play. Shadowy forms of amorous couples move silentin the warm summer night, and the stillness is broken by silverlaughter. Far away, in his room at St. Petersburg, shut in by the longwinter darkness, the homesick man dreamed of the vast landscape heloved, in the warm embrace of the sky at noon, or asleep in the palemoonlight. The first sentence of the book is a cry of longing. "Whatecstasy; what splendour has a summer day in Little Russia!" Pushkinused to say that the Northern summer was a caricature of the Southernwinter. 

The "Evenings on a Farm" indicates the possession of great powerrather than consummate skill in the use of it. Full of charm as it is, it cannot by any stretch of language be called a masterpiece. Twoyears later, however, Gogol produced one of the great prose romancesof the world, "Taras Bulba. " He had intended to write a history ofLittle Russia and a history of the Middle Ages, in eight or ninevolumes. In order to gather material, he read annals diligently, andcollected folk-lore, national songs, and local traditions. Fortunatelyout of this welter of matter emerged not a big history, but a shortnovel. Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the mannerof Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare. Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the moreevident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberatelyHomeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much tothis little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work canshow such colossal force. Force is its prime quality--physical, mental, religious. In this story the old Cossacks, centuries dead, have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in alltheir amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating anddrinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion totheir religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired bypassion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy. These Cossacks are the veritable children of the steppes, and theirvast passions, their Homeric laughter, their absolute recklessness inbattle, are simply an expression of the boundless range of the mightylandscape. 

"The further they penetrated the steppe, the more beautiful it became. Then all the South, all that region which now constitutes New Russia, even to the Black Sea, was a green, virgin wilderness. No plough hadever passed over the immeasurable waves of wild growth; the horsesalone, hiding themselves in it as in a forest, trod it down. Nothingin nature could be finer. The whole surface of the earth presenteditself as a green-gold ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions ofdifferent flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peepedlight-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broomthrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of thefalse flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence, was filling out to ripening. About their slender roots ran partridgeswith out-stretched necks. The air was filled with the notes of athousand different birds. In the sky, immovable, hung the hawks, theirwings outspread, and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The criesof a cloud of wild ducks, moving up from one side, were echoed fromGod knows what distant lake. From the grass arose, with measuredsweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And nowshe has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she hasturned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are!"*

*Translated by Isabel Hapgood. 

The whole book is dominated by the gigantic figure of old Taras Bulba, who loves food and drink, but who would rather fight than eat. Like somany Russian novels, it begins at the beginning, not at the second orthird chapter. The two sons of Taras, wild cubs of the wild old wolf, return from school, and are welcomed by their loving father, not withkisses and affectionate greeting, but with a joyous fist combat, whilethe anxious mother looks on with tears of dismayed surprise. After thesublime rage of fighting, which proves to the old man's satisfactionthat his sons are really worthy of him, comes the sublime joy ofbrandy, and a prodigious feast, which only the stomachs of fifteenthcentury Cossacks could survive. Then despite the anguish of themother--there was no place for the happiness of women in Cossacklife--comes the crushing announcement that on the morrow all threemales will away to the wars, from which not one of them will return. One of the most poignant scenes that Gogol has written is the pictureof the mother, watching the whole night long by her sleeping sons--whopass the few hours after the long separation and before the eternalparting, in deep, unconscious slumber. 

The various noisy parliaments and bloody combats are pictured by a penalive with the subject; of the two sons, one is murdered by his fatherfor preferring the love of a Capulet to the success of the Montagues;the other, Ostap, is taken prisoner, and tortured to death. Taras, indisguise, watches the appalling sufferings of his son; just before hisdeath, Ostap, who had not uttered a word during the prolonged andawful agony, cries out to the hostile sky, like the bitter cry "MyGod, why hast thou forsaken me?" "Father! where are you? do you hearall?" and to the amazement of the boy and his torturers, comes, like avoice from heaven, the shout, "I hear!"

Fearful is the vengeance that Taras Bulba takes on the enemy; fearfulis his own death, lashed to a tree, and burned alive by his foes. Hedies, merrily roaring defiant taunts at his tormentors. And Gogolhimself closes his hero's eyes with the question, "Can any fire, flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable of overpoweringRussian strength?"

In its particular class of fiction, "Taras Bulba" has no equal exceptthe Polish trilogy of Sienkiewicz; and Gogol produces the same effectin a small fraction of the space required by the other. This is ofcourse Romanticism rampant, which is one reason why it has not beenhighly appreciated by the French critics. And it is indeed as contraryto the spirit of Russian fiction as it is to the French spirit ofrestraint. It stands alone in Russian literature, apart from theregular stream, unique and unapproachable, not so much one of thegreat Russian novels as a soul-thrilling poem, commemorating theimmortal Cossack heart. 

Gogol followed up the "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka" with twoother volumes of stories and sketches, of which the immortal "TarasBulba" was included in one. These other tales show an astonishingadvance in power of conception and mastery of style. I do not sharethe general enthusiasm for the narrative of the comically grotesquequarrel between the two Ivans: but the three stories, "Old-fashionedFarmers, " "The Portrait, " and "The Cloak, " show to a high degree thatmingling of Fantasy with Reality that is so characteristic of thisauthor. The obsolete old pair of lovers in "Old-fashioned Farmers" isone of the most charming and winsome things that Gogol wrote at thisperiod: it came straight from the depths of his immeasurabletenderness. It appealed to that Pity which, as every one has noticed, is a fundamental attribute of the national Russian character. In "ThePortrait, " which is partly written in the minute manner of Balzac, andpartly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, wehave the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into thisstrange story he has also indicated two of the great guidingprinciples of his life: his intense democratic sympathies, and hisdevotion to the highest ideals in Art. When the young painter forsakespoverty and sincerity for wealth and popularity, he steadilydegenerates as an artist and eventually loses his soul. The ending ofthe story, with the disappearance of the portrait, is remarkablyclever. The brief tale called "The Cloak" or "The Overcoat" has greatsignificance in the history of Russian fiction, for all Russiannovelists have been more or less influenced by it. Its realism is soobviously and emphatically realistic that it becomes exaggeration, butthis does not lessen its tremendous power: then suddenly at the veryend, it leaves the ground, even the air, and soars away into the etherof Romance. 

Although these stories were translated into English by Miss Hapgoodover twenty years ago, they have never had any vogue amongEnglish-speaking people, and indeed they have produced very littleimpression anywhere outside of Russia. This is a misfortune for theworld, for Gogol was assuredly one of the great literary geniuses ofthe nineteenth century, and he richly repays attentive reading. InRussia he has been appreciated, immensely respected and admired, fromthe day that he published his first book; but his lack of reputationabroad is indicated by the remark of Mr. Baring in 1910, "the work ofGogol may be said to be totally unknown in England. " This statement isaltogether too sweeping, but it counts as evidence. 

Despite Gogol's undoubted claim to be regarded as the founder ofRussian fiction, it is worth remembering that of the three works onwhich rests his international fame, two cannot possibly be calledgerminal. The drama "Revizor" is the best comedy in the Russianlanguage; but, partly for that very reason, it produced no school. Theromance "Taras Bulba" has no successful follower in Russianliterature, and brought forth no fruit anywhere for fifty years, untilthe appearance of the powerful fiction-chronicles by Sienkiewicz. Ithas all the fiery ardour of a young genius; its very exaggeration, itsdelight in bloody battle, show a certain immaturity; it breathesindeed the spirit of youth. With the exception of "The Cloak, " Gogolhad by 1840 written little to indicate the direction that the bestpart of Russian literature was to take. It was not until thepublication of "Dead Souls" that Russia had a genuine realistic novel. This book is broad enough in scope and content to serve as thefoundation of Russian fiction, and to sustain the wonderful work ofTurgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. All the subsequent great novels inRussia point back to "Dead Souls. "

No two books could possibly show a greater contrast than "Taras Bulba"and "Dead Souls. " One reveals an extraordinary power of condensation:the other an infinite expansion. One deals with heroes and mightyexploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and themost trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; theother a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the mostbrilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of theRomantic spirit--Aspiration; the other looks at life through anachromatic lens, and is a catalogue of Realities. To a certain extent, the difference is the difference between the bubbling energy of youthand the steady energy of middle age. For, although Gogol was stillyoung in years when he composed "Dead Souls, " the decade thatseparated the two works was for the author a constant progress indisillusion. In the sixth chapter of the latter book, Gogol hashimself revealed the sad transformation that had taken place in hisown mind, and that made his genius express itself in so different amanner:--

"Once, long ago, in the years of my youth, in those beautiful yearsthat rolled so swiftly, I was full of joy, charmed when I arrived forthe first time in an unknown place; it might be a farm, a poor littledistrict town, a large village, a small settlement: my eager, childisheyes always found there many interesting objects. Every building, everything that showed an individual touch, enchanted my mind, andleft a vivid impression. . . . To-day I travel through all the obscurevillages with profound indifference, and I gaze coldly at their sadand wretched appearance: my eyes linger over no object, nothinggrotesque makes me smile: that which formerly made me burst out in aroar of spontaneous laughter, and filled my soul with cheerfulanimation, now passes before my eyes as though I saw it not, and mymouth, cold and rigid, finds no longer a word to say at the veryspectacle which formerly possessed the secret of filling my heart withecstasy. O my youth! O my fine simplicity!"

Gogol spent the last fifteen years of his life writing this book, andhe left it unfinished. Pushkin gave him the subject, as he had for"Revizor. " One day, when the two men were alone together, Pushkin toldhim, merely as a brief anecdote, of an unscrupulous promoter, who wentabout buying up the names of dead serfs, thus enabling their owners toescape payment of the taxes which were still in force after the lastregistration. The names were made over to the new owner, with alllegal formalities, so that he apparently possessed a large fortune, measured in slaves; these names the promoter transferred to a remotedistrict, with the intention of obtaining a big cash loan from somebank, giving his fictitious property as security; but he was quicklycaught, and his audacious scheme came to nothing. The story stuck inGogol's mind, and he conceived the idea of a vast novel, in which thetravels of the collector of dead souls should serve as a panorama ofthe Russian people. Both Gogol and Pushkin thought of "Don Quixote, "the spirit of which is evident enough in this book. Not long aftertheir interview, Gogol wrote to Pushkin: "I have begun to write "DeadSouls. " The subject expands into a very long novel, and I think itwill be amusing, but now I am only at the third chapter. . . . I wishto show, at least from one point of view, all Russia. " Gogol declaredthat he did not write a single line of these early chapters withoutthinking how Pushkin would judge it, at what he would laugh, at whathe would applaud. When he read aloud from the manuscript, Pushkin, who had listened with growing seriousness, cried, "God! what a sadcountry is Russia!" and later be added, "Gogol invents nothing; it isthe simple truth, the terrible truth. "

The first part of his work, containing the first eleven chapters, or"songs, " was published in May 1842. For the rest of his life, largelyspent abroad, Gogol worked fitfully at the continuation of hismasterpiece. Ill health, nervous depression, and morbid asceticismpreyed upon his mind; in 1845 he burned all that he had written of thesecond volume. But he soon began to rewrite it, though he made slowand painful progress, having too much of improductive slave either tocomplete it or to be satisfied with it. At Moscow, a short time beforehis death, in a night of wakeful misery, he burned a whole mass of hismanuscripts. Among them was unfortunately the larger portion of therewritten second part of Dead Souls. Various reasons have beenassigned as the cause of the destruction of his book--some have said, it was religious remorse for having written the novel at all; others, rage at adverse criticism; others, his own despair at not havingreached ideal perfection. But it seems probable that its burning wassimply a mistake. Looking among his papers, a short time after theconflagration, he cried out, "My God! what have I done! that isn'twhat I meant to burn!" But whatever the reason, the preciousmanuscript was forever lost; and the second part of the work remainssadly incomplete, partly written up from rough notes left by theauthor, Partly supplied by another hand. 

"Dead Souls" is surely a masterpiece, but a masterpiece of life ratherthan of art. Even apart from its unfinished shape, it is characterisedby that formlessness so distinctive of the great Russian novelists thesole exception being Turgenev. The story is so full of disgressions, of remarks in mock apology addressed to the reader, of comparisons ofthe Russian people with other nations, of general disquisitions onrealism, of glowing soliloquies in various moods, that the whole thingis a kind of colossal note-book. Gogol poured into it all hisobservations, reflections, and comments on life. It is not only apicture of Russia, it is a spiritual autobiography. It is withoutform, but not void. Gogol called his work a poem; and he could nothave found a less happy name. Despite lyrical interludes, it is as farremoved from the nature and form of Poetry as it is from Drama. It isa succession of pictures of life, given with the utmost detail, havingno connection with each other, and absolutely no crescendo, nomovement, no approach to a climax. The only thread that holds the worktogether is the person of the travelling promoter, Chichikov, whosevisits to various communities give the author the opportunity hedesired. After one has grasped the plan of the book, the purpose ofChichikov's mission, which one can do in two minutes, one may read thechapters in any haphazard order. Fortunately they are all interestingin their photographic reality. 

The whole thing is conceived in the spirit of humour, and its authormust be ranked among the great humorists of all time. There is anabsurdity about the mission of the chief character, which gives riseto all sorts of ludicrous situations. It takes time for eachserf-owner to comprehend Chichikov's object, and he is naturallyregarded with suspicion. In one community it is whispered that he isNapoleon, escaped from St. Helena, and travelling in disguise. An oldwoman with whom he deals has an avaricious cunning worthy of a Normanpeasant. The dialogue between the two is a masterly commentary on theroot of all evil. But although all Russia is reflected in a comicmirror, which by its very distortion emphasises the defects of eachcharacter, Gogol was not primarily trying to write a funny book. Thevarious scenes at dinner parties and at the country inns arelaughable; but Gogol's laughter, like that of most great humorists, isa compound of irony, satire, pathos, tenderness, and moralindignation. The general wretchedness of the serfs, the indifferenceof their owners to their condition, the pettiness and utter meannessof village gossip, the ridiculous affectations of small-town society, the universal ignorance, stupidity, and dulness--all these areremorselessly revealed in the various bargains made by the hero. Andwhat a hero! A man neither utterly bad nor very good; shrewd ratherthan intelligent; limited in every way. He is a Russian, but auniversal type. No one can travel far in America without meetingscores of Chichikovs: indeed, he is an accurate portrait of theAmerican promoter, of the successful commercial traveller, whosesuccess depends entirely not on the real value and usefulness of hisstock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human nature and thepersuasive power of his tongue. Chichikov is all things to all men. 

Not content with the constant interpolation of side remarks andcomments, queries of a politely ironical nature to the reader, in theregular approved fashion of English novels, Gogol added after thetenth chapter a defiant epilogue, in which he explained his reasonsfor dealing with fact rather than with fancy, of ordinary peoplerather than with heroes, of commonplace events rather than withmelodrama; and then suddenly he tried to jar the reader out of hisself-satisfaction, like Balzac in "Pere Goriot. "

"Pleased with yourselves more than ever, you will smile slowly, andthen say with grave deliberation: 'It is true that in some of ourprovinces one meets very strange people, people absolutely ridiculous, and sometimes scoundrels too!'

"Ah, but who among you, serious readers, I address myself to those whohave the humility of the true Christian, who among you, being alone, in the silence of the evening, at the time when one communes withoneself, will look into the depths of his soul to ask in all sinceritythis question? 'Might there not be in me something of Chichikov?'"

This whole epilogue is a programme--the programme of theself-conscious founder of Russian Realism. It came from a man who haddeliberately turned his back on Romanticism, even on the romanticismof his friend and teacher, Pushkin, and who had decided to venture allalone on a new and untried path in Russian literature. He fullyrealised the difficulties of his task, and the opposition he was boundto encounter. He asks and answers the two familiar questionsinvariably put to the native realist. The first is, "I have enoughtrouble in my own life: I see enough misery and stupidity in theworld: what is the use of reading about it in novels?" The second is, "Why should a man who loves his country uncover her nakedness?"

Gogol's realism differs in two important aspects from the realism ofthe French school, whether represented by Balzac, Flaubert, Guy deMaupassant, or Zola. He had all the French love of veracity, and couldhave honestly said with the author of "Une Vie" that he painted'humble verite. But there are two ground qualities in his realisticmethod absent in the four Frenchmen: humour and moral force. Gogolcould not repress the fun that is so essential an element in humanlife, any more than he could stop the beating of his heart; he saw menand women with the eyes of a natural born humorist, to whom the utterabsurdity of humanity and human relations was enormously salient. Andhe could not help preaching, because he had boundless sympathy withthe weakness and suffering of his fellow-creatures, and because hebelieved with all the tremendous force of his character in theChristian religion. His main endeavour was to sharpen the sight of hisreaders, whether they looked without or within; for not even thegreatest physician can remedy an evil, unless he knows what the evilis. 

Gogol is the great pioneer in Russian fiction. He had the essentialtemperament of all great pioneers, whether their goal is material orspiritual. He had vital energy, resolute courage, clear vision, and anabiding faith that he was travelling in the right direction. Such aman will have followers even greater than he, and he rightly shares intheir glory. He was surpassed by Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi, but had he lived, he would have rejoiced in their superior art, justas every great teacher delights in being outstripped by his pupils. Heis the real leader of the giant three, and they made of his lonelypath a magnificent highway for human thought. They all used himfreely: Tolstoi could hardly have written "The Cossacks" without theinspiration of Gogol, Turgenev must have taken the most beautifulchapter in "Virgin Soil" directly from "Old-fashioned Farmers, " andDostoevski's first book, "Poor Folk, " is in many places almost aslavish imitation of "The Cloak"--and he freely acknowledged the debtin the course of his story. The uncompromising attitude towardfidelity in Art which Gogol emphasised in "The Portrait" set thestandard for every Russian writer who has attained prominence sincehis day. No one can read Chekhov and Andreev without being consciousof the hovering spirit of the first master of Russian fiction. Hecould truthfully have adapted the words of Joseph Hall:--

I first adventure: follow me who list, And be the second Russian Realist. 

III

TURGENEV

Turgenev was born on the 28 October 1818, at Orel, in south centralRussia, about half-way between Moscow and Kiev. Thus, although thetemperament of Turgenev was entirely different from that of Gogol, hewas born not far from the latter's beloved Ukraine. He came honestlyby the patrician quality that unconsciously animated all his books, for his family was both ancient and noble. His mother was wealthy, andin 1817 was married to a handsome, unprincipled military officer sixyears younger than herself. Their life together was an excellentexample of the exact opposite of domestic bliss, and in treating theboy like a culprit, they transformed him--as always happens in similarcases--into a severe judge of their own conduct. The father'sunbridled sensuality and the mother's unbridled tongue gave asuccession of moving pictures of family discord to the inquisitiveeyes of the future novelist. His childhood was anything but cheerful, and late in life he said he could distinctly remember the salt tasteof the frequent tears that trickled into the corners of his mouth. Fortunately for all concerned, the father died while Turgenev was aboy, leaving him with only one--even if the more formidable--of hisparents to contend with. His mother despised writers, especially thosewho wrote in Russian; she insisted that Ivan should make anadvantageous marriage, and "have a career"; but the boy was determinednever to marry, and he had not the slightest ambition for governmentfavours. The two utterly failed to understand each other, and, wearyof his mother's capricious violence of temper, he became completelyestranged. Years later, in her last illness, Turgenev made repeatedattempts to see her, all of which she angrily repulsed. He endeavouredto see her at the very last, but she died before his arrival. He wasthen informed that on the evening of her death she had given orders tohave an orchestra play dance-music in an adjoining chamber, todistract her mind during the final agony. And her last thought was anattempt to ruin Ivan and his brother by leaving orders to haveeverything sold at a wretched price, and to set fire to other parts ofthe property. His comment on his dead mother was "Enfin, il fautoublier. "

It is significant that Turgenev has nowhere in all his novelsportrayed a mother who combined intelligence with goodness. 

French, German, and English Turgenev learned as a child, first fromgovernesses, and then from regular foreign tutors. The language of hisown country, of which he was to become the greatest master that hasever lived, he was forced to learn from the house-servants. His fatherand mother conversed only in French; his mother even prayed in French. Later, he studied at the Universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, andBerlin. At Berlin he breathed for the first time the free air ofintellectual Europe, and he was never able long to live out of thatelement again. One of his closest comrades at the University wasBakunin, a hot-headed young Radical, who subsequently became aNihilist agitator. There is no doubt that his fiery harangues gaveTurgenev much material for his later novels. It is characteristic, too, that while his student friends went wild at the theatre overSchiller, Turgenev immensely preferred Goethe, and could practicallyrepeat the whole first part of "Faust" by heart. Turgenev, likeGoethe, was a natural aristocrat in his manner and in his literarytaste--and had the same dislike for extremists of all kinds. With theexception of Turgenev's quiet but profound pessimism, his temperamentwas very similar to that of the great German--such a man will surelyincur the hatred of the true Reformer type. 

Turgenev was one of the best educated among modern men-of-letters; hisknowledge was not superficial and fragmentary, it was solid andaccurate. Of all modern novelists, he is the best exponent of genuineculture. 

Turgenev often ridiculed in his novels the Russian Anglo-maniac; butin one respect he was more English than the English themselves. Thisis seen in his passion for shooting. Nearly all of his trips toBritain were made solely for this purpose, and most of thedistinguished Englishmen that he met, like Tennyson, he met whilevisiting England for grouse. Shooting, to be sure, is common enough inRussia; it appears in Artsybashev's "Sanin, " and there was a time whenTolstoi was devoted to this sport, though it later appeared on hislong blacklist. But Turgenev had the passion for it characteristiconly of the English race; and it is interesting to observe that thishumane and peace-loving man entered literature with a gun in his hand. It was on his various shooting excursions in Russia that he obtainedso intimate a knowledge of the peasants and of peasant life; and hisfirst important book, "A Sportsman's Sketches, " revealed to the worldtwo things: the dawn of a new literary genius, and the wretchedcondition of the serfs. This book has often been called the "UncleTom's Cabin" of Russia; no title could be more absurd. In the wholerange of literary history, it would be difficult to find twopersonalities more unlike than that of Turgenev and Mrs. Stowe. Thegreat Russian utterly lacked the temperament of the advocate; but hisinnate truthfulness, his wonderful art, and his very calmness made thepicture of woe all the more clear. There is no doubt that the bookbecame, without its author's intention, a social document; there is nodoubt that Turgenev, a sympathetic and highly civilised man, hatedslavery, and that his picture of it helped in an indirect way to bringabout the emancipation of the serfs. But its chief value is artisticrather than sociological. It is interesting that "Uncle Tom's Cabin"and "A Sportsman's Sketches" should have appeared at about the sametime, and that emancipation in each country should have followed atabout the same interval; but the parallel is chronological rather thanlogical. *

*There is an interesting and amusing reference to Harriet BeecherStowe in the fourth chapter of "Smoke. "

The year of the publication of Turgenev's book (1852) saw the death ofGogol: and the new author quite naturally wrote a public letter ofeulogy. In no other country would such a thing have excited anythingbut favourable comment; in Russia it raised a storm; thegovernment--always jealous of anything that makes for Russia's realgreatness--became suspicious, and Turgenev was banished to hisestates. Like one of his own dogs, he was told to "go home. " Home hewent, and continued to write books. Freedom was granted him a fewyears later, and he left Russia never to return except as a visitor. He lived first in Germany, and finally in Paris, one of the literarylions of the literary capital of the world. There, on the 3 September1883, he died. His body was taken to Russia, and with that cruelperversity that makes us speak evil of men while they are alive andsensitive, and good only when they are beyond the reach of our pettypraise and blame, friends and foes united in one shout of praise whoseechoes filled the whole world. 

Turgenev, like Daniel Webster, looked the part. He was a great greygiant, with the Russian winter in his hair and beard. His face inrepose had an expression of infinite refinement, infinite gentleness, and infinite sorrow. When the little son of Alphonse Daudet sawTurgenev and Flaubert come into the room, arm in arm, the boy criedout, "Why, papa, they are giants!" George Moore said that at a ball inMontmartre, he saw Turgenev come walking across the hall; he lookedlike a giant striding among pigmies. Turgenev had that peculiar gentlesweetness that so well accompanies great bodily size and strength. Hismodesty was the genuine humility of a truly great man. He was alwayssurprised at the admiration his books received, and amazed when heheard of their success in America. Innumerable anecdotes are toldillustrating the beauty of his character; the most recent to appear inprint is from the late Mr. Conway, who said that Turgenev was "a grandman in every way, physically and mentally, intelligence and refinementin every feature. . . I found him modest almost to shyness, and in hisconversation--he spoke English--never loud or doctrinaire. At theWalter Scott centennial he was present, --the greatest man at thecelebration, --but did not make himself known. There was an excursionto Abbotsford, and carriages were provided for guests. One in which Iwas seated passed Turgenev on foot. I alighted and walked with him, atevery step impressed by his greatness and his simplicity. "

We shall not know until the year 1920 how far Turgenev was influencedby Madame Viardot, nor exactly what were his relations with thisextraordinary woman. Pauline Garcia was a great singer who made herfirst appearance in Petersburg in 1843. Turgenev was charmed with her, and they remained intimate friends until his death forty years later. After this event, she published some of his letters. She died in Parisin 1910, at the age of eighty-nine. It is reported that among herpapers is a complete manuscript novel by Turgenev, which he gave toher some fifty years ago, on the distinct understanding that it shouldnot be published until ten years after her death. We must accordinglywait for this book with what patience we can command. If this novelreally exists, it is surely a strange sensation to know that there isa manuscript which, when published, is certain to be an addition tothe world's literature. It is infinitely more valuable on that accountthan for any light it may throw on the relations between the twoindividuals. 

When Madame Viardot gave up the opera in 1864, and went to live atBaden, Turgenev followed the family thither, lived in a little houseclose to them, and saw them every day. He was on the most intimateterms with her, with her husband, and with her daughters, whom heloved devotedly. He was essentially a lonely man, and in thishousehold found the only real home he ever knew. It is reported thathe once said that he would gladly surrender all his literary fame ifhe had a hearth of his own, where there was a woman who cared whetherhe came home late or not. What direction the influence of MadameViardot on Turgenev took no one knows. Perhaps she simply supplied himwith music, which was one of the greatest passions and inspirations ofhis life. This alone would be sufficient to account for theirintimacy. Perhaps she merely stimulated his literary activity, andkept him at his desk; for, like all authors except Anthony Trollope, he hated regular work. His definition of happiness is not only aself-revelation, it will appeal to many humble individuals who are notwriters at all. Being asked for a definition of happiness, he gave itin two words--"Remorseless Laziness. "

It is one of the curious contradictions in human nature that Tolstoi, so aggressive an apostle of Christianity, was himself so lacking inthe cardinal Christian virtues of meekness, humility, gentleness, andadmiration for others; and that Turgenev, who was without religiousbelief of any kind, should have been so beautiful an example of thereal kindly tolerance and unselfish modesty that should accompany aChristian faith. There is no better illustration in modern history ofthe grand old name of gentleman. 

His pessimism was the true Slavonic pessimism, quiet, profound, andundemonstrative. I heard the late Professor Boyesen say that he hadnever personally known any man who suffered like Turgenev from mereDespair. His pessimism was temperamental, and he very early losteverything that resembled a definite religious belief. Seated in agarden, he was the solitary witness of a strife between a snake and atoad; this made him first doubt God's Providence. 

He was far more helpful to Russia, living in Paris, than he could havebeen at home. Just as Ibsen found that he could best describe socialconditions in Norway from the distance of Munich or Rome, just as thebest time to describe a snowstorm is on a hot summer's day, --forpoets, as Mrs. Browning said, are always most present with thedistant, --so Turgenev's pictures of Russian character and life arenearer to the truth than if he had penned them in the hurly-burly ofpolitical excitement. Besides, it was through Turgenev that theFrench, and later the whole Western world, became acquainted withRussian literature; for a long time he was the only Russian novelistwell known outside of his country. It was also owing largely to hispersonal efforts that Tolstoi's work first became known in France. Hedistributed copies to the leading writers and men of influence, andasked them to arouse the public. Turgenev had a veritable genius foradmiration; he had recognised the greatness of his younger rivalimmediately, and without a twinge of jealousy. When he read"Sevastopol, " he shouted "Hurrah!" and drank the author's health. Their subsequent friendship was broken by a bitter and melancholyquarrel which lasted sixteen years. Then after Tolstoi had embracedChristianity, he considered it his duty to write to Turgenev, andsuggest a renewal of their acquaintance. This was in 1878. Turgenevreplied immediately, saying that all hostile feelings on his part hadlong since disappeared; that he remembered only his old friend, andthe great writer whom he had had the good fortune to salute beforeothers had discovered him. In the summer of that year they had afriendly meeting in Russia, but Turgenev could not appreciate theimportance of Tolstoi's new religious views; and that very autumnTolstoi wrote to Fet, "He is a very disagreeable man. " At the sametime Turgenev also wrote to Fet, expressing his great pleasure in therenewal of the old friendship, and saying that Tolstoi's "name isbeginning to have a European reputation, and we others, we Russians, have known for a long time that he has no rival among us. " In 1880, Turgenev returned to Russia to participate in the Pushkin celebration, and was disappointed at Tolstoi's refusal to take part. The truth is, that Tolstoi always hated Turgenev during the latter's lifetime, whileTurgenev always admired Tolstoi. On his death-bed, he wrote to him oneof the most unselfish and beautiful letters that one great man eversent to another. 

"For a long time I have not written to you, because I was and I am onmy death-bed. I cannot get well, it is not even to be thought of. Iwrite to tell you how happy I am to have been your contemporary, andto send you one last petition. My friend! resume your literary work!It is your gift, which comes from whence comes everything else. Ah!how happy I should be if I could only think that my words would havesome influence on you! . . . I can neither eat nor sleep. But it istiresome to talk about such things. My friend, great writer of ourRussian land, listen to my request. Let me know if you get this bit ofpaper, and permit me once more to heartily embrace you and yours. Ican write no more. I am exhausted. "

Tolstoi cannot be blamed for paying no heed to this earnest appeal, because every man must follow his conscience, no matter whither it maylead. He felt that he could not even reply to it, as he had grown sofar away from "literature" as he had previously understood it. But theletter is a final illustration of the modesty and greatness ofTurgenev's spirit; also of his true Russian patriotism, his desire tosee his country advanced in the eyes of the world. When we reflectthat at the moment of his writing this letter, he himself was stillregarded in Europe as Russia's foremost author, there is true nobilityin his remark, "How happy I am to have been your contemporary!" EdwinBooth said that a Christian was one who rejoiced in the superiority ofa rival. If this be true, how few are they that shall enter into thekingdom of God. 

After the death of Turgenev, Tolstoi realised his greatness as he hadnever done before. He even consented to deliver a public address inhonour of the dead man. In order to prepare himself for this, he beganto re-read Turgenev's books, and wrote enthusiastically: "I amconstantly thinking of Turgenev and I love him passionately. I pityhim and I keep on reading him. I live all the time with him. . . . Ihave just read "Enough. " What an exquisite thing !"* The date was setfor the public address. Intense public excitement was aroused. Thenthe government stepped in and prohibited it!

* In 1865, he wrote to Fet, "'Enough' does not please me. Personalityand subjectivity are all right, so long as there is plenty of life andpassion. But his subjectivity is full of pain, without life. "

Turgenev, like most novelists, began his literary career with thepublication of verse. He never regarded his poems highly, however, norhis plays, of which he wrote a considerable number. His reputationbegan, as has been said, with the appearance of "A Sportsman'sSketches, " which are not primarily political or social in theirintention, but were written, like all his works, from the serenestandpoint of the artist. They are full of delicate character-analysis, both of men and of dogs; they clearly revealed, even in theirmelancholy humour, the actual condition of the serfs. But perhapsthey are chiefly remarkable for their exquisite descriptions ofnature. Russian fiction as a whole is not notable for nature-pictures;the writers have either not been particularly sensitive to beauty ofsky and landscape, or like Browning, their interest in the human soulhas been so predominant that everything else must take a subordinateplace. Turgenev is the great exception, and in this field he standsin Russian literature without a rival, even among the professionalpoets. 

Although "Sportsman's Sketches" and the many other short tales thatTurgenev wrote at intervals during his whole career are thoroughlyworth reading, his great reputation is based on his seven completenovels, which should be read in the order of composition, even thoughthey do not form an ascending climax. All of them are short; comparedwith the huge novels so much in vogue at this moment, they look liketiny models of massive machinery. Turgenev's method was first to writea story at great length, and then submit it to rigid and remorselesscompression, so that what he finally gave to the public was thequintessence of his art. It is one of his most extraordinary powersthat he was able to depict so many characters and so many lifehistories in so very few words. The reader has a sense of absolutecompleteness. 

It was in his first novel, "Rudin, " that Turgenev made the firstfull-length portrait of the typical educated Russian of the nineteenthcentury. In doing this, he added an immortal character to the world'sliterature. "Such and such a man is a Rudin, " has been a commonexpression for over fifty years, as we speak of the Tartuffes and thePecksniffs. The character was sharply individualised, but he stands asthe representative of an exceedingly familiar Slavonic type, and noother novelist has succeeded so well, because no other novelist hasunderstood Rudin so clearly as his creator. It is an entire mistake tospeak of him, as so many do nowadays, as an obsolete or rather a"transitional" type. The word "transitional" has been altogetheroverworked in dealing with Turgenev. Rudins are as common in Russiato-day as they were in 1850; for although Turgenev diagnosed thedisease in a masterly fashion, he was unable to suggest a remedy. Solate as 1894 Stepniak remarked, "it may be truly said that everyeducated Russian of our time has a bit of Dmitri Rudin in him. " IfRudin is a transitional type, why does the same kind of characterappear in Tolstoi, in Dostoevski, in Gorki, in Artsybashev? Why hasSienkiewicz described the racial temperament in two words, improductivite slave? It is generally agreed that no man has succeededbetter than Chekhov in portraying the typical Russian of the lasttwenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1894 some one sent to himin writing this question, "What should a Russian desire at thispresent time?" He replied, "Desire! he needs most of all desire--forceof character. We have enough of that whining shapelessness. " Kropotkinsays of him: "He knew, and more than knew--he felt with every nerve ofhis poetical mind--that, apart from a handful of stronger men andwomen, the true curse of the Russian 'intellectual' is the weakness ofhis will, the insufficient strength of his desires. Perhaps he felt itin himself. . . . This absence of strong desire and weakness of willhe continually, over and over again, represented in his heroes. Butthis predilection was not a mere accident of temperament andcharacter. It was a direct product of the times he lived in. " If itwas, as Kropotkin says, a direct product of the times he lived in, then Rudin is not a transitional type, for the direct product of theforties and fifties, when compared with the direct product of theeighties and nineties, is precisely the same. Turgenev's Rudin is farfrom obsolete. He is the educated Slav of all time; he to a largeextent explains mapless Poland, and the political inefficiency of thegreat empire of Russia. There is not a single person in any English orAmerican novel who can be said to represent his national type in themanner of Rudin. When we remember the extreme brevity of the book, itwas an achievement of the highest genius. 

Rudin, like the Duke in "The Statue and the Bust, " is a splendidsheath without a sword, "empty and fine like a swordless sheath. " Hismind is covered with the decorations of art, music, philosophy, andall the ornaments engraved on it by wide travel, sound culture, andprolonged thought; but he can do no execution with it, because thereis no single, steady, informing purpose inside. The moment the girl'sresolution strikes against him, he gives forth a hollow sound. He islike a stale athlete, who has great muscles and no vitality. To callhim a hypocrite would be to misjudge him entirely. He is more subtleand complex than that. One of his acquaintances, hearing him spoken ofas Tartuffe, replies, "No, the point is, he is not a Tartuffe. Tartuffe at least knew what he was aiming at. " A man of smallintelligence who knows exactly what he wants is more likely to get itthan a man of brilliant intelligence who doesn't know what he wants, is to get anything, or anywhere. 

Perhaps Turgenev, who was the greatest diagnostician among allnovelists, felt that by constantly depicting this manner of man Russiawould realise her cardinal weakness, and some remedy might be foundfor it--just as the emancipation of the serfs had been partly broughtabout by his dispassionate analysis of their condition. Perhaps herepeated this character so often because he saw Rudin in his ownheart. At all events, he never wearied of showing Russians what theywere, and he took this means of showing it. In nearly all his novels, and in many of his short tales, he has given us a whole gallery ofRudins under various names. In "Acia, " for example, we have a charmingpicture of the young painter, Gagin. 

"Gagin showed me all his canvases. In his sketches there was a gooddeal of life and truth, a certain breadth and freedom; but not one ofthem was finished, and the drawing struck me as careless andincorrect. I gave candid expression to my opinion. 

"'Yes, yes, ' he assented, with a sigh, 'you're right; it's all verypoor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I oughtto have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the betterof one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; onefancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place--but when itcomes to doing anything, one's weak and weary directly. "

The heroine of "Rudin, " the young girl Natalya, is a faint sketch ofthe future Lisa. Turgenev's girls never seem to have any fun; howdifferent they are from the twentieth century American novelist'sheroine, for whom the world is a garden of delight, with exceedinglyattractive young men as gardeners! These Russian young women aregrave, serious, modest, religious, who ask and expect little forthemselves, and who radiate feminine charm. They have indomitablepower of will, characters of rocklike steadfastness, enveloped in adisposition of ineffable sweetness. Of course they at first fall aneasy prey to the men who have the gift of eloquence; for nothinghypnotises a woman more speedily than noble sentiments in the mouth ofa man. Her whole being vibrates in mute adoration, like flowers to thesunlight. The essential goodness of a woman's heart is fertile soilfor an orator, whether he speaks from the platform or in aconservatory. Natalya is limed almost instantly by the honey ofRudin's language, and her virgin soul expands at his declaration oflove. Despite the opposition of her mother, despite the iron bonds ofconvention, she is ready to forsake all and follow him. To herunspeakable amazement and dismay, she finds that the great orator isvox, et praeterea nihil. 

"'And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?'

"'What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you, I shalltrust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?'

"'My plans--Your mother certainly will turn me out of the house. '

"'Perhaps. She told me yesterday that she must break off allacquaintance with you. But you do not answer my question. '

"'What question?'

"'What do you think we must do now?'

"'What we must do?' replied Rudin, 'of course submit. '

"'Submit?' repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white. 

"'Submit to destiny, ' continued Rudin 'What is to be done?'"

But, although the average Anglo-Saxon reader is very angry with Rudin, he is not altogether contemptible If every man were of the Roosevelttype, the world would become not a fair field, but a free fight. Weneed Roosevelts and we need Rudins The Rudins allure to brighterworlds, even if they do not lead the way. If the ideals they setbefore us by their eloquence are true, their own failures do notnegate them. Whose fault is it if we do not reach them? Lezhnyov givesthe inefficient Rudin a splendid eulogy. 

"Genius, very likely he has! but as for being natural. . . . That'sjust his misfortune, that there's nothing natural in him. . . . I wantto speak of what is good; of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm;and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the mostprecious quality in our times. We have all become insufferablyreasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, andthanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! . . . He is not anactor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives atother people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child. . . . He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, noblood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use? thathis words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whomnature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and thefaculty of carrying out their own ideas? . . . I drink to the healthof Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth, to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its purity, to all thatour hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothingbetter than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time, --to thehealth of Rudin!"

It is plain that the speaker is something of a Rudin himself. 

The next novel, "A House of Gentlefolk, "* is, with the possibleexception of "Fathers and Children, " Turgenev's masterpiece. I know ofno novel which gives a richer return for repeated re-readings. As thetitle implies, this book deals, not with an exciting narrative, butwith a group of characters; who can forget them? Like all of itsauthor's works, it is a love-story; this passion is the mainspringof the chief personages, and their minds and hearts are revealed byits power. It is commonly said that Turgenev lacked passion; onemight say with equal truth that Wordsworth lacked love of nature. Many of his novels and tales are tremulous with passion, but theyare never noisy with it. Like the true patrician that he was, hestudied restraint and reserve. The garden scene between Lisa andLavretsky is the very ecstasy of passion, although, like the twocharacters, it is marked by a pure and chaste beauty of word andaction, that seems to prove that Love is something divine. Only thetruly virtuous really understand passion--just as the sorrows of menare deeper than the sorrows of children, even though the latter beaccompanied by more tears. Those who believe that the master passionof love expresses itself by floods of words or by abominable imagery, will understand Turgenev as little as they understand life. In readingthe few pages in which the lovers meet by night in the garden, onefeels almost like an intruder--as one feels at the scene ofreconciliation between Lear and Cordelia. It is the very essence ofintimacy--the air is filled with something high and holy. 

* In the original, "A Nobleman's Nest. "

Lisa is the greatest of all Turgenev's great heroines. No one can helpbeing better for knowing such a girl. She is not very beautiful, sheis not very accomplished, not even very quick-witted; but she has eineschone Seele. There is nothing regal about her; she never tries toqueen it in the drawing-room. She is not proud, high-spirited, andhaughty; she does not constantly "draw herself up to her full height, "a species of gymnastics in great favour with most fiction-heroines. But she draws all men unto herself. She is beloved by the two oppositeextremes of manhood--Panshin and Lavretsky. Lacking beauty, wit, andlearning, she has an irrepressible and an irresistible virginalcharm--the exceedingly rare charm of youth when it seeks not its own. When she appears on the scene, the pages of the book seem illuminated, and her smile is a benediction. She is exactly the kind of woman to beloved by Lavretsky, and to be desired by a rake like Panshin. For aman like Lavretsky will love what is lovely, and a satiated rake willalways eagerly long to defile what is beyond his reach. 

It is contemptuously said by many critics--why is it that so manycritics lose sensitiveness to beauty, and are afraid of their ownfeelings?--it is said that Lisa, like Rudin, is an obsolete type, thetype of Russian girl of 1850, and that she is now interesting only asa fashion that has passed away, and because of the enthusiasm she onceawakened. We are informed, with a shade of cynicism, that all theRussian girls then tried to look like Lisa, and to imitate her manner. Is her character really out of style and out of date? If this weretrue, it would be unfortunate; for the kind of girl that Lisarepresents will become obsolete only when purity, modesty, andgentleness in women become unattractive. We have not yet progressedquite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of theRussian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of theEwig-weibliche. 

At the conclusion of the great garden-scene, Turgenev, by what seemsthe pure inspiration of genius, has expressed the ecstasy of love inold Lemm's wonderful music It is as though the passion of the lovershad mounted to that pitch where language would be utterly inadequate;indeed, one feels in reading that scene that the next page must be ananti-climax. It would have been if the author had not carried us stillhigher, by means of an emotional expression far nobler than words. Thedead silence of the sleeping little town is broken by "strains ofdivine, triumphant music. . . . The music resounded in still greatermagnificence; a mighty flood of melody--and all his bliss seemedspeaking and singing in its strains. . . The sweet, passionate melodywent to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishingwith inspiration, happiness, and beauty; it swelled and melted away;it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. Itbreathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens. "

Elena, the heroine of "On the Eve, " resembles Lisa in the absoluteintegrity of her mind, and in her immovable sincerity; but in allother respects she is a quite different person. The difference issimply the difference between the passive and the active voice. Lisais static, Elena dynamic. The former's ideal is to be good, thelatter's is to do good. Elena was strenuous even as a child, was madehotly angry by scenes of cruelty or injustice, and tried to helpeverything, from stray animals to suffering men and women. As Turgenevexpresses it, "she thirsted for action. " She is naturallyincomprehensible to her conservative and ease-loving parents, who havea well-founded fear that she will eventually do something shocking. Her father says of her, rather shrewdly: "Elena Nikolaevna I don'tpretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart isso large that it embraces all nature down to the last beetle or frog, everything in fact except her own father. " In a word, Elena isunconventional, the first of the innumerable brood of the vigorous, untrammelled, defiant young women of modern fiction, who puzzle theirparents by insisting on "living their own life. " She is only a faintshadow, however, of the type so familiar to-day in the pages of Ibsen, Bjornson, and other writers. Their heroines would regard Elena astimid and conventional, for with all her self-assertion, she stillbelieves in God and marriage, two ideas that to our contemporaryemancipated females are the symbols of slavery. 

Elena, with all her virtues, completely lacks the subtle charm ofLisa; for an aggressive, independent, determined woman will perhapslose something of the charm that goes with mystery. There is nomystery about Elena, at all events; and she sees through her variousadorers with eyes unblinded by sentiment. To an artist who makes loveto her she says "I believe in your repentance and I believe in yourtears But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes, and your tears too. " Naturally there is no Russian fit to be the mateof this incarnation of Will. The hero of the novel, and the man whocaptures the proud heart of Elena, is a foreigner--a Bulgarian, whohas only one idea, the liberation of his country. He is purposelydrawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemenwith whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual traitin a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by thelaconic answer he makes to her question, "You love your country verydearly?" "That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, thenone can say he loved his country. " Perhaps it is hypercritical toobserve that in such a case others would have to say it for him. 

He proves that he is a man of action in a humorous incident. At apicnic, the ladies are insulted by a colossal German, even as Gemma isinsulted by a German in "Torrents of Spring. " Insarov is not aconventional person, but he immediately performs an act that isexceedingly conventional in fiction, though rare enough in real life. Although he is neither big, nor strong, nor in good health, heinflicts corporal chastisement on the brute before his lady'seyes--something that pleases women so keenly, and soothes man's vanityso enormously, that it is a great pity it usually happens only inbooks. He lifts the giant from the ground and pitches him into a pond. This is one of the very few scenes in Turgenev that ring false, thatbelong to fiction-mongers rather than to fiction-masters. Nothing ismore delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insultedthe woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarelycrowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisinglyunwilling to play this complaisant role. 

Finding himself falling in love with Elena, Insarov determines to goaway like Lancelot, without saying farewell. Elena, however, meets himin a thunderstorm--not so sinister a storm as the Aeneas adventure in"Torrents of Spring"-and says "I am braver than you. I was going toyou. " She is actually forced into a declaration of love. This is anexceedingly difficult scene for a novelist, but not too difficult forTurgenev, who has made it beautiful and sweet. Love, which will ruinBazarov, ennobles and stimulates Insarov; for the strong man has foundhis mate. She will leave father and mother for his sake, and cleaveunto him. And, notwithstanding the anger and disgust of her parentsshe leaves Russia forever with her husband. 

All Turgenev's stories are tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed byhis own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and"Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanicwomen. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny. Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena, thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little Italiandoctor, with wig and spectacles, quietly remarks, "Signora, theforeign gentleman is dead--of aneurism in combination with disease ofthe lungs. "

This novel caused great excitement in Russia, and the title, "On theEve, " was a subject for vehement discussion everywhere. What didTurgenev mean? On the eve of what? Turgenev made no answer; but overthe troubled waters of his story moves the brooding spirit ofcreation. Russians must and will learn manhood from foreigners, frommen who die only from bodily disease, who are not sicklied o'er withthe pale cast of thought. At the very close of the book, one man asksanother, "Will there ever be men among us?" And the other "flourishedhis fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance. "Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through awoman--through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many arethe Russian women who have given their lives for their country. *

* See an article in the "Forum" for August, 1910. 

The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of"A House of Gentlefolk, " his masterpiece, is "Fathers and Children, "which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by "Onthe Eve. " The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has notyet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judgesof Russian literature. Shut off from participation in free, public, parliamentary political debate, the Russians of 1860 and of to-day arealmost certain to judge the literary value of a work by what theyregard as its political and social tendency. Political bias isabsolutely blinding in an attempt to estimate the significance of anybook by Turgenev; for although be took the deepest interest in thestruggles of his unfortunate country, he was, from the beginning tothe end of his career, simply a supreme artist. He saw life clearly inits various manifestations, and described it as he saw it, from thecalm and lonely vantage-ground of genius. Naturally he was bothclaimed and despised by both parties. Here are some examples fromcontemporary Russian criticism* (1862):--

* To the best of my knowledge, these reviews have never before beentranslated. These translations were made for me by a Russian friend, Mr. William S. Gordon. 

"This novel differs from others of the same sort in that it is chieflyphilosophical. Turgenev hardly touches on any of the social questionsof his day. His principal aim is to place side by side the philosophyof the fathers and the philosophy of the children and to show that thephilosophy of the children is opposed to human nature and thereforecannot be accepted in life. The problem of the novel is, as you see, aserious one; to solve this problem the author ought to haveconscientiously and impartially studied both systems of speculationand then only reach certain conclusions. But on its very first pagesyou see that the author is deficient in every mental preparation toaccomplish the aim of his novel. He not only has not the slightestunderstanding of the new positive philosophy, but even of the oldideal systems his knowledge is merely superficial and puerile. Youcould laugh at the heroes of the novel alone as you read their sillyand 'hashy' discussions on the young generation had not the novel as awhole been founded on these identical discussions. "

The radical critic Antonovich condemned the book in the followingterms:--

"From an artistic standpoint the novel is entirely unsatisfactory, notto say anything more out of respect for the talent of Turgenev, forhis former merits, and for his numerous admirers. There is no commonthread, no common action which would have tied together all the partsof the novel; all of it is in some way just separate rhapsodies. . . . This novel is didactic, a real learned treatise written in dialecticform, and each character as he appears serves as an expression andrepresentative of a certain opinion and direction. . . . All theattention of the author is turned on the principal hero and the otheracting characters, however, not on their personality, not on theemotions of their souls, their feelings and passions, but ratheralmost exclusively on their talks and reasonings. This is the reasonwhy the novel, with the exception of one nice old woman, does notcontain a single living character, a single living soul, but only somesort of abstract ideas, and various movements which are personifiedand called by proper names. Turgenev's novel is not a creation purelyobjective; in it the personality of the author steps out too clearly, his sympathies, his inspiration, even his personal bitterness andirritation. From this we get the opportunity to find in the novel thepersonal opinions of the author himself, and in this we have one pointto start from--that we should accept as the opinions of the author theviews expressed in the novel, at least those views which have beenexpressed with a noticeable feeling for them on the part of the authorand put into the mouths of those characters whom he apparentlyfavours. Had the author had at least a spark of sympathy for the'children, ' for the young generation, had he had at least a spark oftrue and clear understanding of their views and inclinations, it wouldhave necessarily flashed out somewhere in the run of the novel. 

"The 'fathers' as opposed to the 'children' are permeated with loveand poetry; they are men, modestly and quietly doing good deeds; theywould not for the world change their age. Even such an empty nothingas Pavel Petrovich, even he is raised on stilts and made a nice man. Turgenev could not solve his problem; instead of sketching therelations between the 'fathers' and the 'children' he wrote apanegyric to the 'fathers' and a decrial against the 'children'; buthe did not even understand the children; instead of a decrial it wasnothing but a libel. The spreaders of healthy ideas among the younggeneration he wanted to show up as corrupters of youth, the sowers ofdiscord and evil, haters of good, and in a word, very devils. Invarious places of the novel we see that his principal hero is no fool;on the contrary, a very able and gifted man, who is eager to learn andworks diligently and knows much, but notwithstanding all this, he getsquite lost in disputes, utters absurdities, and preaches ridiculousthings, which should not be pardoned even in a most narrow and limitedmind. . . . In general the novel is nothing else but a merciless anddestructive criticism on the young generation. In all thecontemporaneous questions, intellectual movements, debates and idealswith which the young generation is occupied, Turgenev finds not theleast common sense and gives us to understand that they lead only todemoralisation, emptiness, prosaic shallowness, and cynicism. Turgenevfinds his ideal in quite a different place, namely in the 'fathers, 'in the more or less old generation. Consequently, he draws a paralleland contrast between the 'fathers' and the 'children, ' and we cannotformulate the sense of the novel in this way; among a number of goodchildren there are also bad ones who are the ones that are ridiculedin the novel; this is not its aim, its purpose is quite different andmay be formulated thus: the children are bad and thus are theyrepresented in the novel in all their ugliness; but the 'fathers' aregood, which is also proven in the novel. "

One of the very few criticisms from a truly artistic standpointappeared in the "Russian Herald" during the year 1862, from which abrief quotation must suffice:--

"Everything in this work bears witness to the ripened power ofTurgenev's wonderful talent; the clearness of ideas, the masterlyskill in sketching types, the simplicity of plot and of movement ofthe action, and moderation and evenness of the work as a whole; thedramatic element which comes up naturally from the most ordinarysituations; there is nothing superfluous, nothing retarding, nothingextraneous. But in addition to these general merits, we are alsointerested in Turgenev's novel because in it is caught and held acurrent, fleeting moment of a passing phenomenon, and in which amomentary phase of our life is typically drawn and arrested not onlyfor the time being but forever. "

These prophetically true words constitute a great exception to theprevailing contemporary criticism, which, as has been seen, waspassionately unjust. Twenty years later, a Russian writer, Boorenin, was able to view the novel as we see it to-day:--

"We can say with assurance that since the time of "Dead Souls" not asingle Russian novel made such an impression as "Fathers and Children"has made. A deep mind, a no less deep observation, an incomparableability for a bold and true analysis of the phenomena of life, and fortheir broadest relations to each other, --all these have shownthemselves in the fundamental thought of this positively historicalcreation. Turgenev has explained with lifelike images of 'fathers' and'children' the essence of that life struggle between the dying periodof the nobility which found its strength in the possession of peasantsand the new period of reforms whose essence made up the principalelement of our 'resurrection' and for which, however, none had found areal, true (BRIGHT) definition. Turgenev not only gave such adefinition, not only illumined the inner sense of the new movement inthe life of that time, but he also has pointed out its principalcharacteristic sign--negation in the name of realism, as theopposition to the old ideally liberal conservatism. It is known thathe found not only an unusually appropriate nickname for this negation, but a nickname which later became attached to a certain group ofphenomena and types and as such was accepted not only by Russia alonebut by the whole of Europe. The artist created in the image of Bazarovan exceedingly characteristic representative of the new formation oflife, of the new movement, and christened it with a wonderfullyfitting word, which made so much noise, which called forth so muchcondemnation and praise, sympathy and hatred, timid alarm and boldraving. We can point out but few instances in the history ofliterature of such a deep and lively stir called forth in our literarymidst by an artistic creation and by a type of almost politicalsignificance. This novel even after twenty years appears the samedeep, bright, and truthful reflection of life, as it was at the momentof its first appearance. Now its depth and truthfulness seem even moreclear and arouse even more wonder and respect for the creative thoughtof the artist who wrote it. In our days, when the period ofdevelopment pointed at by Turgenev in his celebrated novel is almostentirely lived through, we can only wonder at that deep insight withwhich the author had guessed the fundamental characteristic in thatlife movement which had celebrated that period. The struggle of twosocial streams, the anti-reform and post-reform stream, the struggleof two generations; the old brought up on aesthetical idealism forwhich the leisure of the nobility, made possible by their rights overthe peasants, afforded such a fertile soil; and the young generationwhich was carried away by realism and negation, --this is what made upthe essence of the movement of the epoch in the sixties. Turgenev withthe instinct of genius saw through this fundamental movement in lifeand imaged it in living bright pictures with all its positive andnegative, pathetic and humorous sides. 

"In his novel Turgenev did not at all side with the 'fathers' as theunsympathetic progressive critics of that time insisted, he did notwish to in the least extol them above the 'children' in order todegrade the latter. Just so he had no intention of showing up in thecharacter of the representative of the 'children' some kind of modelof a 'thinking realist' to whom the young generation should have bowedand imitated, as the progressive critics who received the worksympathetically imagined. Such a one-sided view was foreign to theauthor; he sketched both the 'fathers' and the 'children' as far aspossible impartially and analytically. He spared neither the 'fathers'nor the 'children' and pronounced a cold and severe judgment both onthe ones and the others. He positively sings a requiem to the'fathers' in the person of the Kirsanovs, and especially PaulKirsanov, having shown up their aristocratic idealism, theirsentimental aestheticism, almost in a comical light, ay almost incaricature, as he himself has justly pointed out. In the prominentrepresentative of the 'children, ' Bazarov, he recognized a certainmoral force, the energy of character, which favourably contrasts thisstrong type of realist with the puny, characterless, weak-willed typeof the former generation; but having recognised the positive side ofthe young type, he could not but show up their shortcomings to lifeand before the people, and thus take their laurels from them. And hedid so. And now when time has sufficiently exposed the shortcomings ofthe type of the generation of that time, we see how right the authorwas, how deep and far he saw into life, how clearly he perceived thebeginning and the end of its development. Turgenev in "Fathers andChildren" gave us a sample of a real universal novel, notwithstandingthe fact that its plot centres on the usual intimate relations of theprincipal characters. And with what wonderful skill the author solvesthis puzzling problem--to place in narrow, limited frames the broadestand newest themes (CONTENT). Hardly one of the novelists of our age, beginning with Dickens and ending with George Sand and Spielhagen, hassucceeded in doing it so compactly and tersely, with such an absenceof the DIDATIC element which is almost always present in the works ofthe above-mentioned authors, the now kings of western literatures, with such a full insight into the very heart of the life movementwhich is reflected in the novel. I repeat again, "Fathers andChildren" is thought of highly by European critics, but years willpass and it will be thought of even more highly. It will be placed ina line with those weighty literary creations in which is reflected thebasic movement of the time which created it. "

It would have been well for Turgenev if he could have preserved anabsolute silence under the terrific storm of abuse that his mostpowerful novel brought down on his head; it would have been well tolet the book speak for itself, and trust to time to make the strongwine sweet. But this was asking almost too much of human nature. Stungby the outrageous attacks of the Radicals, and suffering as only agreat artist can suffer under what he regards as a completemisrepresentation of his purpose, Turgenev wrote letters ofexplanation, confession, irony, letters that gained him no affection, that only increased the perplexity of the public, and which are muchharder to understand than the work itself. The prime difficulty wasthat in this book Turgenev had told a number of profound truths aboutlife; and nobody wanted the truth. The eternal quarrel between the oldand the young generation, the eternal quarrel between conservative andliberal, was at that time in Russia in an acute stage; and everybodyread "Fathers and Children" with a view to increasing theirammunition, not with the object of ascertaining the justice of theircause. The "fathers" were of course angry at Turgenev's diagnosis oftheir weakness; the "sons" went into a veritable froth of rage at whatthey regarded as a ridiculous burlesque of their ideas. But that isthe penalty that a wise man suffers at a time of strife; for if everyone saw the truth clearly, we should never fight each other at all. 

Turgenev's subsequent statement, that so far from Bazarov being aburlesque, he was his "favourite child, " is hard to understand evento-day. The novelist said that with the exception of Bazarov's viewson art, he himself was in agreement with practically all of the ideasexpressed by the great iconoclast. Turgenev probably thought he was, but really he was not. Authors are poor judges of their own works, andtheir statements about their characters are seldom to be trusted. Manywriters have confessed that when they start to write a book, with aclear notion in their heads as to how the characters shall develop, the characters often insist on developing quite otherwise, and guidethe pen of the author in a manner that constantly awakens his surpriseat his own work. Turgenev surely intended originally that we shouldlove Bazarov; as a matter of fact, nobody really loves him, * and noother character in the book loves him for long except his parents. Wehave a wholesome respect for him, as we respect any ruthless, terribleforce; but the word "love" does not express our feeling toward him. Itis possible that Turgenev, who keenly realised the need in Russia ofmen of strong will, and who always despised himself because he couldnot have steadily strong convictions, tried to incarnate in Bazarovall the uncompromising strength of character that he lacked himself;just as men who themselves lack self-assertion and cannot even lookanother man in the eye, secretly idolise the men of masterfulqualities. It is like the sick man Stevenson writing stories of ruggedout-door activity. I heard a student say once that he was sure Marlowewas a little, frail, weak man physically, and that he poured out allhis longing for virility and power in heroes like Tamburlaine. 

*I cannot believe that even Mr. Edward Garnett loves him, though inhis Introduction to Constance Garnett's translation, he says, "we lovehim. "

Bazarov, as every one knows, was drawn from life. Turgenev had oncemet a Russian provincial doctor, * whose straightforward talk made aprofound impression upon him. This man died soon after and had aglorious resurrection in Bazarov, speaking to thousands and thousandsof people from his obscure and forgotten grave. It is ratherinteresting that Turgenev, who drew so many irresolute Russiancharacters, should have attained his widest fame by the depiction of aman who is simply Incarnate Will. If every other person in allTurgenev's stories should be forgotten, it is safe to say that Bazarovwill always dwell in the minds of those who have once made hisacquaintance. 

* It is difficult to find out much about the original of Bazarov. Haumant says Turgenev met him while travelling by the Rhine in 1860;but Turgenev himself said that the young doctor had died not longbefore 1860, and that the idea of the novel first came to him inAugust, 1860, while he was bathing on the Isle of Wight. Almost everywriter on Russian literature has his own set of dates and incidents. 

And yet, Turgenev, with all his secret admiration for the Frankensteinhe had created, did not hesitate at the last to crush him both in souland body. The one real conviction of Turgenev's life waspessimism, --the belief that the man of the noblest aspiration and theman of the most brutish character are treated by Nature with equalindifference. Bazarov is the strongest individual that the novelistcould conceive; and it is safe to say that most of us live all ourlives through without meeting his equal. But his powerful mind, in itscolossal egotism and with its gigantic ambitions, is an easy prey tothe one thing he despised most of all--sentiment; and his rugged bodygoes to the grave through a chance scratch on the finger. Thus theirony of this book--and I know of no novel in the world that displayssuch irony--is not the irony of intentional partisan burlesque. Thereis no attempt in the destruction of this proud character to prove thatthe "children" were wrong or mistaken; it is the far deeper irony oflife itself, showing the absolute insignificance of the ego in thepresence of eternal and unconscious nature. Thus Bazarov, who seemsintended for a great hero of tragedy, is not permitted to fight forhis cause, nor even to die for it. He is simply obliterated by chance, as an insect perishes under the foot of a passing traveller, who isentirely unaware that he has taken an individual life. 

Nature herself could hardly be colder or more passive than the womanwith whom it was Bazarov's bad luck to fall in love. The gradualchange wrought in his temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in themost subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable foronly one thing; he had told this very woman that people were liketrees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying an individualbirch tree. Why, then, should this entirely unimportant individualwoman change his whole nature, paralyse all his ambitions, ruin allthe cheerful energy of his active mind? He fights against thisobsession like a nervous patient struggling with a dreadful depressionthat comes over him like a flood. He fights like a man fighting withan enemy in the dark, whom he cannot see, but whose terrible blowsrain on his face. When he first meets her, he remarks to the shockedArkady, "What a magnificent body! Shouldn't I like to see it on thedissecting table!" But he is unable long to admire her with suchscientific aloofness. "His blood was on fire directly if he merelythought of her; he could easily have mastered his blood, but somethingelse was taking root in him, something he had never admitted, at whichhe had always jeered, at which all his pride revolted. " It is thisbewilderment at meeting the two things that are stronger thanlife--love and death--that both stupefy and torture this superman. Itis the harsh amazement of one who, believing himself to be free, discovers that he is really a slave. Just before he dies, he murmurs:"You see what a hideous spectacle; the worm half-crushed, but writhingstill. And, you see I thought too: I'd break down so many things, Iwouldn't die, why should I! there were problems to solve, and I was agiant! And now all the problem for the giant is how to die decently, though that makes no difference to any one either. . . . I was neededby Russia. . . . No, it's clear, I wasn't needed. "

Madame Odintsov's profound and subtle remark about happiness is thekey to her character, and shows why she never could have been happywith Bazarov, or have given him any happiness. 

"We were talking of happiness, I believe. . . . Tell me why it is thateven when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a fine evening, or aconversation with sympathetic people, it all seems an intimation ofsome measureless happiness existing apart somewhere rather than actualhappiness such, I mean, as we ourselves are in possession of? Why isit? Or perhaps you have no feeling like that?"

Many of us certainly have feelings like that; but while these twointellectuals are endeavouring to analyse happiness, and losing it inthe process of analysis, the two young lovers, Arkady and Katya, whosebrows are never furrowed by cerebration, are finding happiness in thefamiliar human way. In answer to his declaration of love, she smiledat him through her tears. "No one who has not seen those tears in theeyes of the beloved, knows yet to what a point, faint with shame andgratitude, a man may be happy on earth. "

Although the character of Bazarov dominates the whole novel, Turgenevhas, I think, displayed genius of a still higher order in the creationof that simple-minded pair of peasants, the father and mother of theyoung nihilist. These two are old-fashioned, absolutely pious, dwelling in a mental world millions of miles removed from that oftheir son; they have not even a remote idea of what is passing in hismind, but they look on him with adoration, and believe him to be thegreatest man in all Russia. At the end of a wonderful sketch of themother, Turgenev says: "Such women are not common nowadays. God knowswhether we ought to rejoice!"

This humble pair, whom another novelist might have treated with scorn, are glorified here by their infinite love for their son. Such love asthat seems indeed too great for earth, too great for time, and tobelong only to eternity. The unutterable pathos of this love consistsin the fact that it is made up so largely of fear. They fear their sonas only ignorant parents can fear their educated offspring; it issomething that I have seen often, that every one must have observed, that arouses the most poignant sympathy in those that understand it. It is the fear that the boy will be bored at home; that he is longingfor more congenial companionship elsewhere; that the very solicitudeof his parents for his health, for his physical comfort, will irritateand annoy rather than please him. There is no heart-hunger on earth socruel and so terrible as the hunger of father and mother for thecomplete sympathy and affection of their growing children. This is whythe pride of so many parents in the development of their children ismingled with such mute but piercing terror. It is the fear that theson will grow away from them; that their caresses will deaden ratherthan quicken his love for them. They watch him as one watches someinfinitely precious thing that may at any moment disappear forever. The fear of a mother toward the son she loves is among the deepesttragedies of earth. She knows he is necessary to her happiness, andthat she is not to his. 

Even the cold-hearted Bazarov is shaken by the joy of his mother'sgreeting when he returns home, and by her agony at his earlydeparture. He hates himself for not being able to respond to herdemonstrations of affection. Unlike most sons, he is clever enough tounderstand the slavish adoration of his parents; but he realises thathe cannot, especially in the presence of his college friend, relievetheir starving hearts. At the very end, he says "My father will tellyou what a man Russia is losing. . . . That's nonsense, but don'tcontradict the old man. Whatever toy will comfort the child . . . Youknow. And be kind to mother. People like them aren't to be found inyour great world if you look by daylight with a candle. "

The bewildered, helpless anguish of the parents, who cannot understandwhy the God they worship takes their son away from them, reaches thegreatest climax of tragedy that I know of anywhere in the wholehistory of fiction. Not even the figure of Lear holding the dead bodyof Cordelia surpasses in tragic intensity this old pair whose wholelife has for so long revolved about their son. And the novel closeswith the scene in the little village churchyard, where the agedcouple, supporting each other, visit the tomb, and wipe away the dustfrom the stone. Even the abiding pessimism of the novelist lifts for amoment its heavy gloom at this spectacle. "Can it be that theirprayers, their tears, are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all-powerful? Oh, no! However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowersgrowing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; theytell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of indifferentnature; they tell us too of eternal reconciliation and of life withoutend. "

This is where the novel "Fathers and Children" rises above a pictureof Russian politics in the sixties, and remains forever an immortalwork of art. For the greatness of this book lies not in the use of theword Nihilist, nor in the reproduction of ephemeral politicalmovements; its greatness consists in the fact that it faithfullyportrays not merely the Russian character, nor the nineteenth century, but the very depths of the human heart as it has manifested itself inall ages and among all nations. 

The next novel, "Smoke, " despite its extraordinary brilliancy, is inmany ways unworthy of Turgenev's genius. It was written at Baden, while he was living with the Viardots, and I suspect that theinfluence of Madame Viardot is stronger in this work than in anythingelse Turgenev produced. Of course he had discussed again and againwith her the abuse that young Russia had poured on his head for"Fathers and Children;" and I suspect she incited him to strike andspare not. The smoke in this novel is meant to represent the idlevapour of Russian political jargon; all the heated discussions on bothsides are smoke, purposeless, obscure, and transitory as a cloud. Butthe smoke really rose from the flames of anger in his own heart, fanned by a woman's breath, who delighted to see her mild giant foronce smite his enemies with all his force. If "Fathers and Children"had been received in Russia with more intelligence or more sympathy, it is certain that "Smoke" would never have appeared. This is the mostbitter and purely satirical of all the works of Turgenev; theSlavophils, with their ignorance of the real culture of westernEurope, and their unwillingness to learn from good teachers, are hithard; but still harder hit are the Petersburg aristocrats, the "idlerich" (legitimate conventional target for all novelists), who are hererepresented as little better in intelligence than grinning apes, andmuch worse in morals. No one ever seems to love his compatriots whenhe observes them in foreign lands; if Americans complain that HenryJames has satirised them in his international novels, they ought toread "Smoke, " and see how Turgenev has treated his travellingcountrymen. They talk bad German, hum airs out of tune, insist onspeaking French instead of their own tongue, attract everybody'sattention at restaurants and railway-stations, --in short, behaveexactly as each American insists other Americans behave in Europe. 

The book is filled with little portraits, made "peradventure with apen corroded. " First comes the typical Russian gasbag, who talks andthen talks some more. 

"He was no longer young, he had a flabby nose and soft cheeks, thatlooked as if they had been boiled, dishevelled greasy locks, and a fatsquat person. Everlastingly short of cash, and everlastingly inraptures over something, Rostislav Bambaev wandered, aimless butexclamatory, over the face of our long-suffering mother-earth. "

Dostoevski was so angry when he read this book that he said it oughtto be burnt by the common hangman. But he must have approved of thepicture of the Petersburg group, who under a thin veneer of polishedmanners are utterly inane and cynically vicious. One of them had "anexpression of constant irritability on his face, as though he couldnot forgive himself for his own appearance. "

The portrait of the Pecksniffian Pishtchalkin: "In exterior, too, hehad begun to resemble a sage of antiquity; his hair had fallen off thecrown of his head, and his full face had completely set in a sort ofsolemn jelly of positively blatant virtue. "

None but a great master could have drawn such pictures; but it is notcertain that the master was employing his skill to good advantage. Andwhile representing his hatred of all the Russian bores who had madehis life weary, he selected an old, ruined man, Potugin, to expresshis own sentiments--disgust with the present condition of Russia, andadmiration for the culture of Europe and the practical inventive powerof America. Potugin says that he had just visited the exposition atthe Crystal Palace in London, and that he reflected that "our dearmother, Holy Russia, could go and hide herself in the lower regions, without disarranging a single nail in the place. " Not a single thingin the whole vast exhibition had been invented by a Russian. Even theSandwich Islanders had contributed something to the show. At anotherplace in the story he declares that his father bought a Russianthreshing machine, which remained five years useless in the barn, until replaced by an American one. 

Such remarks enraged the Slavophils beyond measure, for they weredetermined to keep out of Russia foreign inventions and foreign ideas. But that Turgenev was right is shown in the twentieth century by anacute German observer, Baron Von der Bruggen. In his interesting book, "Russia of To-day, " he says: "All civilisation is derived from theWest. . . . People are now beginning to understand this in Russiaafter having lost considerable time with futile phantasies uponoriginal Slavonic civilisation. If Russia wishes to progress, herWestern doors must be opened wide in order to facilitate the influx ofEuropean culture. " The author of these words was not thinking ofTurgenev: but his language is a faithful echo of Potugin. They soundlike a part of his discourse. Still, the literary value of "Smoke"does not lie in the fact that Turgenev was a true prophet, or that hesuccessfully attacked those who had attacked him. If this were allthat the book contained, it would certainly rank low as a work of art. 

But this is not all. Turgenev has taken for his hero Litvinov, a youngRussian, thoroughly commonplace, but thoroughly practical and sincere, the type of man whom Russia needed the most, and has placed himbetween two women, who represent the eternal contrast between sacredand profane love. This situation has all the elements of true drama, as every one knows who has read or heard "Carmen;" it is needless tosay that Turgenev has developed it with consummate skill. Turgenevregarded brilliantly wicked women with hatred and loathing, but alsowith a kind of terror; and he has never failed to make them sinisterand terrible. Irina as a young girl nearly ruined the life ofLitvinov; and now we find him at Baden, his former passion apparentlyconquered, and he himself engaged to Turgenev's ideal woman, Tanya, not clever, but modest, sensible, and true-hearted, another Lisa. Thecontrast between these two women, who instinctively understand eachother immediately and the struggle of each for the soul of the hero, shows Turgenev at his best. It is remarkable, too, how clearly thereader sees the heart of the man, so obscure to himself; and howevident it is that in the very midst of his passion for Irina, hislove for Tanya remains. Irina is a firework, Tanya a star; and eventhe biggest skyrockets, that illuminate all the firmament, do not forlong conceal the stars. 

Turgenev thoroughly relieved his mind in "Smoke;" and in the novelthat followed it, "Torrents of Spring, " he omitted politics and"movements" altogether, and confined himself to human nature in itseternal aspect. For this very reason the book attracted littleattention in Russia, and is usually dismissed in one sentence by thecritics. But it is a work of great power; it sings the requiem of lostyouth, a minor melody often played by Turgenev; it gives us a curiouspicture of an Italian family living in Germany, and it contains theportrait of an absolutely devilish but unforgettable woman. We have asincere and highly interesting analysis of the Russian, the German, and the Italian temperament; not shown in their respective politicalprejudices, but in the very heart of their emotional life. Once morethe Russian hero is placed between God and Satan; and this time Satanconquers. Love, however, survives the burnt-out fires of passion; butit survives only as a vain regret--it survives as youth survives, onlyas an unspeakably precious memory. . . . The three most sinister womenthat Turgenev has ever drawn are Varvara Pavlovna, in "A House ofGentlefolk;" Irina, in "Smoke;" and Maria Nikolaevna, in "Torrents ofSpring. " All three are wealthy and love luxury; all three areprofessional wreckers of the lives of men. The evil that they do risesfrom absolute selfishness, rather than from deliberate sensuality. Notone of them could have been saved by any environment, or by anyhusband. Varvara is frivolous, Irina is cold-hearted, and Maria is asuper-woman; she makes a bet with her husband that she can seduce anyman he brings to the house. To each of her lovers she gives an ironring, symbol of their slavery; and like Circe, she transforms men intoswine. After she has hypnotised Sanin, and taken away his allegianceto the pure girl whom he loves, "her eyes, wide and clear, almostwhite, expressed nothing but the ruthlessness and glutted joy ofconquest. The hawk, as it clutches a captured bird, has eyes likethat. " Turgenev, whose ideal woman is all gentleness, modesty, andcalmness, must have seen many thoroughly corrupt ones, to have been sodeeply impressed with a woman's capacity for evil. In "Virgin Soil, "when he introduces Mashurina to the reader, he says: "She was a singlewoman . . . And a very chaste single woman. Nothing wonderful in that, some sceptic will say, remembering what has been said of her exterior. Something wonderful and rare, let us be permitted to say. " It issignificant that in not one of Turgenev's seven novels is the villainof the story a man. Women simply must play the leading role in hisbooks, for to them he has given the power of will; they lead menupward, or they drag them downward, but they are always in front. 

The virtuous heroine of "Torrents of Spring, " Gemma, is unlike anyother girl that Turgenev has created. In fact, all of his good womenare individualised--the closest similarity is perhaps seen in Lisa andTanya, but even there the image of each girl is absolutely distinct inthe reader's mind. But Gemma falls into no group, nor is there anyother woman in Turgenev with whom one instinctively classifies orcompares her. Perhaps this is because she is Italian. It is a longtime before the reader can make up his mind whether he likes her ornot--a rare thing in Turgenev, for most of his good women capture usin five minutes. Indeed, one does not know for some chapters whetherGemma is sincere or not, and one is angry with Sanin for his moth-likeflitting about her radiance. She at once puzzles and charms thereader, as she did the young Russian. Her family circle are sketchedwith extraordinary skill, and her young brother is unique inTurgenev's books. He has, as a rule, not paid much attention togrowing boys; but the sympathy and tenderness shown in the depictionof this impulsive, affectionate, chivalrous, clean-hearted boy provethat the novelist's powers of analysis were equal to every phase ofhuman nature. No complete estimate of Turgenev can be made withoutreading "Torrents of Spring;" for the Italian menage, the character ofGemma and her young brother, and the absurd duelling punctilio are notto be found elsewhere. And Maria is the very Principle of Evil; onefeels that if Satan had spoken to her in the Garden of Eden, she couldeasily have tempted him; at all events, he would not have been themost subtle beast in the field. 

In 1876 Turgenev wrote "Virgin Soil. " Of the seven novels, this is thelast, the longest, and the least. But it did not deserve then, anddoes not deserve now, the merciless condemnation of the critics;though they still take up stones to stone it. Never was a book about arevolutionary movement, written by one in sympathy with it, solukewarm. Naturally the public could not swallow it, for even Godcannot digest a Laodicean. But the lukewarmness in this instancearose, not from lack of conviction, but rather from the convictionthat things can really happen only in the fulness of time. Everythingin the story from first to last emphasises this fact and might beconsidered a discourse on the text add to knowledge, temperance: andto temperance, patience. But these virtues have never been in highfavour with revolutionists, which explains why so many revolutions areabortive, and so many ephemeral. It is commonly said that the leadingcharacter in "Virgin Soil, " Solomin, is a failure because he is notexactly true to life, he is not typically Russian. That criticismseems to me to miss the main point of the work. Of course he is nottrue to life, of course he is not typically Russian. The typicalRussian in the book is Nezhdanov, who is entirely true to life in hisuncertainty and in his futility; he does not know whether or not he isin love, and he does not know at the last what the "cause" really is. He fails to understand the woman who accompanies him, he fails tounderstand Solomin, and he fails to understand himself. So he finallydoes what so many Russian dreamers have done--he places against hisown breast the pistol he had intended for a less dangerous enemy. Buthe is a dead man long before that. In sharp contrast with him, Turgenev has created the character Solomin, who is not at all"typically Russian, " but who must be if the revolutionary cause is totriumph. He seems unreal because he is unreal; he is the ideal. He isthe man of practical worth, the man who is not passion's slave, andTurgenev loved him for the same reason that Hamlet loved Horatio. Amidall the vain babble of the other characters, Solomin stands outsalient, the man who will eventually save Russia without knowing it. His power of will is in inverse proportion to his fluency of speech. The typical Russian, as portrayed by Turgenev, says much, and doeslittle; Solomin lives a life of cheerful, reticent activity. As therevolution is not at hand, the best thing to do in the interim is toaccomplish something useful. He has learned how to labour and to wait. "This calm, heavy, not to say clumsy man was not only incapable oflying or bragging; one might rely on him, like a stone wall. " In everyscene, whether among the affected aristocrats or among the futilerevolutionists, Solomin appears to advantage. There is no worseindictment of human intelligence than the great compliment we paycertain persons when we call them sane. Solomin is sane, and seemstherefore untrue to life. 

It is seldom that Turgenev reminds us of Dickens; but Sipyagin and hiswife might belong to the great Dickens gallery, though drawn with arestraint unknown to the Englishman. Sipyagin himself is a miniaturePecksniff, unctuous, polished, and hollow. The dinner-table scenes athis house are pictured with a subdued but implacable irony. How thenatural-born aristocrat Turgenev hated the Russian aristocracy! WhenSolomin appears in this household, he seems like a giant amongmanikins, so truly do the simple human virtues tower above thearrogance of affectation. The woman Marianna is a sister of Elena, whom we learned to know in "On the Eve;" she has the purity, not of anangel, but of a noble woman. She has that quiet, steadfast resolutionso characteristic of Russian heroines. As for Mariusha, she is aspecimen of Turgenev's extraordinary power of characterisation. Sheappears only two or three times in the entire novel, and remains oneof its most vivid personages This is ever the final mystery ofTurgenev's art--the power of absolutely complete representation in afew hundred words. In economy of material there has never been hisequal. The whole novel is worth reading, apart from its revolutionaryinterest, apart from the proclamation of the Gospel according toSolomin, for the picture of that anachronistic pair of old lovers, Fomushka and Finushka. * "There are ponds in the steppes which neverget putrid, though there's no stream through them, because they arefed by springs from the bottom. And my old dears have such springs tooin the bottom of their hearts, and pure as can be. " Only one shortchapter is devoted to this aged couple, at whom we smile but neverlaugh At first sight they may seem to be an unimportant episode in thestory, and a blemish on its constructive lines but a little reflectionreveals not only the humorous tenderness that inspired the novelist'spen in their creation, but contrasts them in their absurd indifferenceto time, with the turbulent and meaningless whirlpool where the modernrevolutionists revolve. For just as tranquillity may not signifystagnation, so revolution is not necessarily progression. Thisold-fashioned pair have learned nothing from nineteenth centurythought, least of all its unrest. They have, however, in their ownlives attained the positive end of all progress--happiness. They areindeed a symbol of eternal peace, the shadow of a great rock in aweary land. Turgenev, most cultivated of novelists, never fails torank simplicity of heart above the accomplishments of the mind. 

* I cannot doubt that Turgenev got the hint for this chapter fromGogol's tale, "Old-fashioned Farmers. "

Turgenev's splendid education, his wealth which made him independent, his protracted residence in Russia, in Germany, and in Paris, hisintimate knowledge of various languages, and his bachelor life gave tohis innate genius the most perfect equipment that perhaps any authorhas ever enjoyed. Here was a man entirely without the ordinaryrestraints and prejudices, whose mind was always hospitable to newideas, who knew life at first hand, and to whose width of experiencewas united the unusual faculty of accurately minute observation. Heknew people much better than they knew themselves. He was at varioustimes claimed and hated by all parties, and belonged to none. His mindwas too spacious to be dominated by one idea. When we reflect that hehad at his command the finest medium of expression that the world hasever possessed, and that his skill in the use of it has never beenequalled by a single one of his countrymen, it is not surprising thathis novels approach perfection. 

His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judgedby his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply fromTolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admirehim more than they love him. To him the truth about life was alwaysthe main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with themost painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced apot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousnesswhich Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration. He had a gift for condensation, and a willingness to cultivate it, such as no other novelist has shown. It is safe to say that his novelstell more about human nature in less space than any other novels inthe world. Small as they are, they are inexhaustible, and alwaysreveal beauty unsuspected on the previous reading. 

His stories are not stories of incident, but stories of character. Theextraordinary interest that they arouse is confined almost entirely toour interest in his men and women; the plot, the narrative, the eventsare always secondary; he imitated no other novelist, and no other canimitate him. For this very reason, he can never enjoy the popularityof Scott or Dumas; he will always be caviare to the general. HenryJames said of him, that he was particularly a favourite with people ofcultivated taste, and that nothing cultivates the taste better thanreading him. It is a surprising proof of the large number of readerswho have good taste, that his novels met with instant acclaim, andthat he enjoyed an enormous reputation during his whole career. Afterthe publication of his first book, "A Sportsman's Sketches, " he wasgenerally regarded in Russia as her foremost writer, a positionmaintained until his death; his novels were translated into French andEnglish very soon after their appearance, and a few days after hisdeath, the London "Athenaeum" remarked, "Europe has been unanimous inaccording to Turgenev the first rank in contemporary literature. " Thata man whose books never on any page show a single touch of melodramashould have reached the hearts of so many readers, proves howinteresting is the truthful portrayal of human nature. 

George Brandes has well said that the relation of Turgenev to his owncharacters is in general the same relation to them held by the reader. This may not be the secret of his power, but it is a partialexplanation of it. Brandes shows that not even men of genius haveinvariably succeeded in making the reader take their own attitude tothe characters they have created. Thus, we are often bored by personsthat Balzac intended to be tremendously interesting; and we oftenlaugh at persons that Dickens intended to draw our tears. With thesingle exception of Bazarov, no such mistake is possible in Turgenev'swork; and the misunderstanding in that case was caused principally bythe fact that Bazarov, with all his powerful individuality, stood fora political principle. Turgenev's characters are never vague, shadowy, or indistinct; they are always portraits, with every detail so subtlyadded, that each one becomes like a familiar acquaintance in reallife. Perhaps his one fault lay in his fondness for dropping the storymidway, and going back over the previous existence or career of acertain personage. This is the only notable blemish on his art. Buteven by this method, which would be exceedingly irritating in a writerof less skill, additional interest in the character is aroused. It isas though Turgenev personally introduced his men and women to thereader, accompanying each introduction with some biographical remarksthat let us know why the introduction was made, and stir our curiosityto hear what the character will say. Then these introductions arethemselves so wonderfully vivid, are given with such brilliancy ofoutline, that they are little works of art in themselves, like thematchless pen portraits of Carlyle. 

Another reason why Turgenev's characters are so interesting, isbecause in each case he has given a remarkable combination ofindividual and type. Here is where he completely overshadowsSudermann, even Ibsen, for their most successful personages areabnormal. Panshin, for example, is a familiar type in any Continentalcity; he is merely the representative of the young society man. He isaccomplished, sings fairly well, sketches a little, rides horsebackfinely, is a ready conversationalist; while underneath all thesesuperficial adornments he is shallow and vulgar. Ordinaryacquaintances might not suspect his inherent vulgarity--all Lisa knowsis that she does not like him; but the experienced woman of the world, the wife of Lavretsky, understands him instantly, and has not theslightest difficulty in bringing his vulgarity to the surface. Familiar type as he is, --there are thousands of his ilk in all greatcentres of civilisation, --Panshin is individual, and we hate him asthough he had shadowed our own lives. Again, Varvara herself is thetype of society woman whom Turgenev knew well, and whom he both hatedand feared; yet she is as distinct an individual as any that he hasgiven us. He did not scruple to create abnormal figures when he chose;it is certainly to be hoped that Maria, in "Torrents of Spring, " isabnormal even among her class; but she is an engine of sin rather thana real woman, and is not nearly so convincingly drawn as the simpleold mother of Bazarov. 

Turgenev represents realism at its best, because he deals with soulsrather than with bodies. It is in this respect that his enormoussuperiority over Zola is most clearly shown. When "L'Assommoir" waspublished, George Moore asked Turgenev how he liked it, and hereplied: "What difference does it make to me whether a woman sweats inthe middle of her back or under her arm? I want to know how shethinks, not how she feels. " In that concrete illustration, Turgenevdiagnosed the weakness of naturalism. No one has ever analysed thepassion of love more successfully than he; but he is interested in thegrowth of love in the mind, rather than in its carnal manifestations. 

Finally, Turgenev, although an uncompromising realist, was at heartalways a poet. In reading him we feel that what he says is true, it islife indeed; but we also feel an inexpressible charm. It is themysterious charm of music, that makes our hearts swell and our eyesswim. He saw life, as every one must see it, through the medium of hisown soul. As Joseph Conrad has said, no novelist describes the world;he simply describes his own world. Turgenev had the temperament of apoet, just the opposite temperament from such men of genius asFlaubert and Guy de Maupassant. Their books receive our mental homage, and deserve it; but they are without charm. On closing their novels, we never feel that wonderful afterglow that lingers after the readingof Turgenev. To read him is not only to be mentally stimulated, it isto be purified and ennobled; for though he never wrote a sermon indisguise, or attempted the didactic, the ethical element in histragedies is so pervasive that one cannot read him without hating sinand loving virtue. Thus the works of the man who is perhaps thegreatest novelist in history are in harmony with what we recognise asthe deepest and most eternal truth, both in life and in our ownhearts. 

The silver tones and subtle music of Turgenev's clavichord werefollowed by the crashing force of Tolstoi's organ harmonies, and bythe thrilling, heart-piercing discords struck by Dostoevski. Stillmore sensational sounds come from the younger Russian men of to-day, and all this bewildering audacity of composition has in certain placesdrowned for a time the less pretentious beauty of Turgenev's method. During the early years of the twentieth century, there has been avisible reaction against him, an attempt to persuade the world thatafter all he was a subordinate and secondary man. This attitude isshown plainly in Mr. Baring's "Landmarks in Russian Literature, " whosebook is chiefly valuable for its sympathetic understanding of thegenius of Dostoevski. How far this reaction has gone may be seen inthe remark of Professor Bruckner, in his "Literary History of Russia":"The great, healthy artist Turgenev always moves along levelled paths, in the fair avenues of an ancient landowner's park. Aesthetic pleasureis in his well-balanced narrative of how Jack and Jill did NOT cometogether: deeper ideas he in no wise stirs in us. " If "A House ofGentlefolk" and "Fathers and Children" stir no deeper ideas than thatin the mind of Professor Bruckner, whose fault is it? One can onlypity him. But there are still left some humble individuals, at leastone, who, caring little for politics and the ephemeral nature ofpolitical watchwords and party strife, and still less for faddishfashions in art, persist in giving their highest homage to the greatartists whose work shows the most perfect union of Truth and Beauty. 

IV

DOSTOEVSKI

The life of Dostoevski contrasts harshly with the luxurious ease andsteady level seen in the outward existence of his two greatcontemporaries, Turgenev and Tolstoi. From beginning to end he livedin the very heart of storms, in the midst of mortal coil. He was oftenas poor as a rat; he suffered from a horrible disease; he was sick andin prison, and no one visited him; he knew the bitterness of death. Such a man's testimony as to the value of life is worth attention; hewas a faithful witness, and we know that his testimony is true. 

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was born on the 30 October 1821, atMoscow. His father was a poor surgeon, and his mother the daughter ofa mercantile man. He was acquainted with grief from the start, beingborn in a hospital. There were five children, and they very soondiscovered the exact meaning of such words as hunger and cold. Povertyin early years sometimes makes men rather close and miserly in middleage, as it certainly did in the case of Ibsen, who seemed to thinkthat charity began and ended at home. Not so Dostoevski: he was oftenvictimised, he gave freely and impulsively, and was chronically indebt. He had about as much business instinct as a prize-fighter or anopera singer. As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealtwith money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevskithinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hatesmoney, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one, dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife'sbusiness qualities would have died, a beggar. The other, all his lifedreaming and preaching of poverty, not only has not given away, buthas greatly multiplied his very substantial possessions. " In order tomake an impressive contrast, the Russian critic is here unfair toTolstoi, but there is perhaps some truth in the Tolstoi paradox. Nowonder Dostoevski loved children, for he was himself a great child. 

He was brought up on the Bible and the Christian religion. Theteachings of the New Testament were with him almost innate ideas. Thus, although his parents could not give him wealth, or ease, orcomfort, or health, they gave him something better than all four puttogether. 

When he was twenty-seven years old, having impulsively expressedrevolutionary opinions at a Radical Club to which he belonged, he wasarrested with a number of his mates, and after an imprisonment of somemonths, he was led out on the 22 December 1849, with twenty-onecompanions, to the scaffold. He passed through all the horror ofdying, for visible preparations had been made for the execution, andhe was certain that in a moment he would cease to live. Then came thenews that the Tsar had commuted the sentence to hard labour; thissaved their lives, but one of the sufferers had become insane. 

Then came four years in the Siberian prison, followed by a few yearsof enforced military service. His health actually grew better underthe cruel regime of the prison, which is not difficult to understand, for even a cruel regime is better than none at all, and Dostoevskinever had the slightest notion of how to take care of himself. At whattime his epilepsy began is obscure, but this dreadful diseasefaithfully and frequently visited him during his whole adult life. From a curious hint that he once let fall, reenforced by the manner inwhich the poor epileptic in "The Karamazov Brothers" acquired thefalling sickness, we cannot help thinking that its origin came from ablow given in anger by his father. 

Dostoevski was enormously interested in his disease, studied itssymptoms carefully, one might say eagerly, and gave to his friendsminute accounts of exactly how he felt before and after theconvulsions, which tally precisely with the vivid descriptions writtenout in his novels. This illness coloured his whole life, profoundlyaffected his character, and gave a feverish and hysterical tone to hisbooks. 

Dostoevski had a tremendous capacity for enthusiasm. As a boy, he wasterribly shaken by the death of Pushkin, and he never lost hisadmiration for the founder of Russian literature. He read the greatclassics of antiquity and of modern Europe with wild excitement, andwrote burning eulogies in letters to his friends. The flame of hisliterary ambition was not quenched by the most abject poverty, nor bythe death of those whom he loved most intensely. After his first wifedied, he suffered agonies of grief, accentuated by wretched health, public neglect, and total lack of financial resources. But chillpenury could not repress his noble rage. He was always planning andwriting new novels, even when he had no place to lay his head. And thebodily distress of poverty did not cut him nearly so sharply as itsshame. His letters prove clearly that at times he suffered in the sameway as the pitiable hero of "Poor Folk. " That book was indeed aprophecy of the author's own life. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the difficulties under which he wrotehis greatest novels. His wife and children were literally starving. Hecould not get money, and was continually harassed by creditors. Duringpart of the time, while writing in the midst of hunger and freezingcold, he had an epileptic attack every ten days. His comment on allthis is, "I am only preparing to live, " which is as heroic as PaulJones's shout, "I have not yet begun to fight. "

In 1880 a monument to Pushkin was unveiled, and the greatest Russianauthors were invited to speak at the ceremony. This was the occasionwhere Turgenev vainly tried to persuade Tolstoi to appear andparticipate. Dostoevski paid his youthful debt to the ever living poetin a magnificent manner. He made a wonderful oration on Russianliterature and the future of the Russian people, an address thatthrilled the hearts of his hearers, and inspired his countrymeneverywhere. On the 28 January 1881, he died, and forty thousandmourners saw his body committed to the earth. 

Much as I admire the brilliant Russian critic, Merezhkovski, I cannotunderstand his statement that Dostoevski "drew little on his personalexperiences, had little self-consciousness, complained of no one. " Hisnovels are filled with his personal experiences, he had an almostabnormal self-consciousness, and he bitterly complained that Turgenev, who did not need the money, received much more for his work than he. Dostoevski's inequalities as a writer are so great that it is nowonder he has been condemned by some critics as a mere journalisticmaker of melodrama, while others have exhausted their entire stock ofadjectives in his exaltation. His most ardent admirer at this momentis Mr. Baring, who is at the same time animated by a strange jealousyof Turgenev's fame, and seems to think it necessary to belittle theauthor of "Fathers and Children" in order to magnify the author of"Crime and Punishment. " This seems idle; Turgenev and Dostoevski weregeniuses of a totally different order, and we ought to rejoice in thegreatness of each man, just as we do in the greatness of those twoentirely dissimilar poets, Tennyson and Browning. Much of Mr. Baring'slanguage is an echo of Merezhkovski; but this Russian critic, whileloving Dostoevski more than Turgenev, was not at all blind to thelatter's supreme qualities. Listen to Mr. Baring:--

"He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from thoseof any other writer, a power of seeming to get nearer to the unknown, to what lies beyond the flesh, which is perhaps the secret of hisamazing strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualitieswhich other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also;but he has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with otherwriters he annihilates them. The combination of this difference inkind and this difference in degree makes something so strong and sotremendous, that it is not to be wondered at when we find many criticssaying that Dostoevski is not only the greatest of all Russianwriters, but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen. I am not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; forinstance, Professor Bruckner, a most level-headed critic, in hislearned and exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it isnot in "Faust, " but rather in "Crime and Punishment, " that the wholegrief of mankind takes hold of us. 

"Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is trueto say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present daywould place Dostoevski as being equal to Tolstoi and immeasurablyabove Turgenev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the presentday no more dreams of comparing Turgenev with Dostoevski, than itwould occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with CharlotteBronte. "

This last sentence shows the real animus against Turgenev thatobsesses Mr. Baring's mind; once more the reader queries, SupposeDostoevski be all that Mr. Baring claims for him, why is it necessaryto attack Turgenev? Is there not room in Russian literature for bothmen? But as Mr. Baring has appealed to Russian criticism, it is onlyfair to quote one Russian critic of good standing, Kropotkin. Hesays:--

"Dostoevski is still very much read in Russia; and when, some twentyyears ago, his novels were first translated into French, German, andEnglish, they were received as a revelation. He was praised as one ofthe greatest writers of our own time, and as undoubtedly the one who'had best expressed the mystic Slavonic soul'--whatever thatexpression may mean! Turgenev was eclipsed by Dostoevski, and Tolstoiwas forgotten for a time. There was, of course, a great deal ofhysterical exaggeration in all this, and at the present time soundliterary critics do not venture to indulge in such praises. The factis, that there is certainly a great deal of power in whateverDostoevski wrote: his powers of creation suggest those of Hoffmann;and his sympathy with the most down-trodden and down-cast products ofthe civilisation of our large towns is so deep that it carries awaythe most indifferent reader and exercises a most powerful impressionin the right direction upon young readers. His analysis of the mostvaried specimens of incipient psychical disease is said to bethoroughly correct. But with all that, the artistic qualities of hisnovels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russianmasters Tolstoi, Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realismare interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of themost incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest areinterrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the mostunnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such ahurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read overhis novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all, every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially in his novels of thelater period, is a person suffering from some psychical disease orfrom moral perversion. As a result, while one may read some of thenovels of Dostoevski with the greatest interest, one is never temptedto re-read them, as one re-reads the novels of Tolstoi and Turgenev, and even those of many secondary novel writers; and the present writermust confess that he had the greatest pain lately in reading through, for instance, "The Brothers Karamazov, " and never could pull himselfthrough such a novel as "The Idiot. " However, one pardons Dostoevskieverything, because when he speaks of the ill-treated and theforgotten children of our town civilisation he becomes truly greatthrough his wide, infinite love of mankind--of man, even in his worstmanifestations. "

Mr. Baring's book was published in 1910, Kropotkin's in 1905, whichseems to make Mr. Baring's attitude point to the past, rather than tothe future. Kropotkin seems to imply that the wave of enthusiasm forDostoevski is a phase that has already passed, rather than a new andincreasing demonstration, as Mr. Baring would have us believe. 

Dostoevski's first book, "Poor Folk, " appeared when he was onlytwenty-five years old: it made an instant success, and gave the youngauthor an enviable reputation. The manuscript was given by a friend tothe poet Nekrassov. Kropotkin says that Dostoevski "had inwardlydoubted whether the novel would even be read by the editor. He wasliving then in a poor, miserable room, and was fast asleep when atfour o'clock in the morning Nekrassov and Grigorovich knocked at hisdoor. They threw themselves on Dostoevski's neck, congratulating himwith tears in their eyes. Nekrassov and his friend had begun to readthe novel late in the evening; they could not stop reading till theycame to the end, and they were both so deeply impressed by it thatthey could not help going on this nocturnal expedition to see theauthor and tell him what they felt. A few days later, Dostoevski wasintroduced to the great critic of the time, Bielinski, and from him hereceived the same warm reception. As to the reading public, the novelproduced quite a sensation. "

The story "Poor Folk" is told in the highly artificial form ofletters, but is redeemed by its simplicity and deep tenderness. Probably no man ever lived who had a bigger or warmer heart thanDostoevski, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. All the great qualities of the mature man are in this slender volume:the wideness of his mercy, the great deeps of his pity, theboundlessness of his sympathy, and his amazing spiritual force. Ifever there was a person who would forgive any human being anythingseventy times seven, that individual was Dostoevski. He never had tolearn the lesson of brotherly love by long years of experience: themystery of the Gospel, hidden from the wise and prudent, was revealedto him as a babe. The language of these letters is so simple that achild could understand every word; but the secrets of the human heartare laid bare. The lover is a grey-haired old man, with the trueSlavonic genius for failure, and a hopeless drunkard; the young girlis a veritable flower of the slums, shedding abroad the radiance andperfume of her soul in a sullen and sodden environment. She has apurity of soul that will not take pollution. 

"See how this mere chance-sown deft-nursed seedThat sprang up by the wayside 'neath the footOf the enemy, this breaks all into blaze, Spreads itself, one wide glory of desireTo incorporate the whole great sun it lovesFrom the inch-height whence it looks and longs!"

No one can read a book like this without being better for it, andwithout loving its author. 

It is unfortunate that Dostoevski did not learn from his first littlemasterpiece the great virtue of compression. This story is short, butit is long enough; the whole history of two lives, so far as theirspiritual aspect is concerned, is fully given in these few pages. Thebesetting sin of Dostoevski is endless garrulity with its accompanyingdemon of incoherence: in later years he yielded to that, as he did toother temptations, and it finally mastered him. He was never to writeagain a work of art that had organic unity. 

Like all the great Russian novelists, Dostoevski went to school toGogol. The influence of his teacher is evident throughout "Poor Folk. "The hero is almost an imitation of the man in Gogol's short story, "The Cloak, " affording another striking example of the germinal powerof that immortal work. Dostoevski seemed fully to realise his debt toGogol, and in particular to "The Cloak;" for in "Poor Folk, " oneentire letter is taken up with a description of Makar's emotions afterreading that extraordinary tale. Makar assumes that it is adescription of himself. "Why, I hardly dare show myself in thestreets! Everything is so accurately described that one's very gait isrecognisable. "

Dostoevski's consuming ambition for literary fame is well indicated inhis first book. "If anything be well written, Varinka, it isliterature. I learned this the day before yesterday. What a wonderfulthing literature is, which, consisting but of printed words, is ableto invigorate, to instruct, the hearts of men!"

So many writers have made false starts in literature that Dostoevski'sinstinct for the right path at the very outset is something notable. His entire literary career was to be spent in portraying the despisedand rejected. Never has a great author's first book more clearlyrevealed the peculiar qualities of his mind and heart. 

But although he struck the right path, it was a long time before hefound again the right vein. He followed up his first success with arow of failures, whose cold reception by the public nearly broke hisheart. He was extremely busy, extremely productive, and extremelycareless, as is shown by the fact that during the short period from1846 to 1849, he launched thirteen original publications, not a singleone of which added anything to his fame. It was not until after thecruel years of Siberia that the great books began to appear. 

Nor did they appear at once. In 1859 he published "The Uncle's Dream, "a society novel, showing both in its humour and in its ruthless satirethe influence of Gogol. This is an exceedingly entertaining book, and, a strange thing in Dostoevski, it is, in many places, hilariouslyfunny. The satire is so enormously exaggerated that it completelyovershoots the mark, but perhaps this very exaggeration adds to thereader's merriment. The conversation in this story is often brilliant, full of unexpected quips and retorts delivered in a manner far moreFrench than Russian. The intention of the author seems to have been towrite a scathing and terrible satire on provincial society, whereevery one almost without exception is represented as absolutelyselfish, absolutely conceited, and absolutely heartless. It is a studyof village gossip, a favourite subject for satirists in all languages. In the middle of the book Dostoevski remarks: "Everybody in theprovinces lives as though he were under a bell of glass. It isimpossible for him to conceal anything whatever from his honourablefellow-citizens. They know things about him of which he himself isignorant. The provincial, by his very nature, ought to be a veryprofound psychologist. That is why I am sometimes honestly amazed tomeet in the provinces so few psychologists and so many imbeciles. "

Never again did Dostoevski write a book containing so little ofhimself, and so little of the native Russian element. Leaving out theexaggeration, it might apply to almost any village in any country, andinstead of sympathy, it shows only scorn. The scheming mother, whoattempts to marry her beautiful daughter to a Prince rotten withdiseases, is a stock figure on the stage and in novels. The only trulyRussian personage is the young lover, weak-willed and irresolute, wholives a coward in his own esteem. 

This novel was immediately followed by another within the same year, "Stepanchikovo Village, " translated into English with the title "TheFriend of the Family. " This has for its hero one of the mostremarkable of Dostoevski's characters, and yet one who infalliblyreminds us of Dickens's Pecksniff. The story is told in the firstperson, and while it cannot by any stretch of language be called agreat book, it has one advantage over its author's works of genius, inbeing interesting from the first page to the last. Both the uncle andthe nephew, who narrate the tale, are true Russian characters: theysuffer long, and are kind; they hope all things, and believe allthings. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder thatthe German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oderHerrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others aredownright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in theentire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy, though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossalhypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. If one finds Dickens's charactersto be caricatures, what shall be said of this collection? This is thevery apotheosis of the unctuous gasbag, from whose mouth, eternallyajar, pours a viscous stream of religious and moral exhortation. Compared with this Friend of the Family, Tartuffe was unselfish andnoble: Joseph Surface modest and retiring; Pecksniff a humble andloyal man. The best scene in the story, and one that arousesoutrageous mirth, is the scene where the uncle, who is a kind of TomPinch, suddenly revolts, and for a moment shakes off his bondage. Heseizes the fat hypocrite by the shoulder, lifts him from the floor, and hurls his carcass through a glass door. All of which is in theexact manner of Dickens. 

One of the most characteristic of Dostoevski's novels, characteristicin its occasional passages of wonderful beauty and pathos, characteristicin its utter formlessness and long stretches of uninspired dulness, is "Downtrodden and Oppressed. " Here the author gives us the life heknew best by actual experience and the life best suited to his naturalgifts of sympathetic interpretation. Stevenson's comment on this storyhas attracted much attention. Writing to John Addington Symonds in 1886, he said: "Another has been translated--"Humilies et Offenses. " It iseven more incoherent than "Le Crime et le Chatiment, " but breathes muchof the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoevski isa devil of a swell, to be sure. " There is no scorn and no satire inthis book; it was written from an overflowing heart. One of the speechesof the spineless young Russian, Alosha, might be taken as illustrativeof the life-purpose of our novelist: "I am on fire for high and nobleideals; they may be false, but the basis on which they rest is holy. "

"Downtrodden and Oppressed" is full of melodrama and full of tears; itis four times too long, being stuffed out with interminablediscussions and vain repetitions. It has no beauty of construction, noevolution, and irritates the reader beyond all endurance. The younghero is a blazing ass, who is in love with two girls at the same time, and whose fluency of speech is in inverse proportion to his power ofwill. The real problem of the book is how either of the girls couldhave tolerated his presence for five minutes. The hero's father is amelodramatic villain, who ought to have worn patent-leather boots anda Spanish cloak. And yet, with all its glaring faults, it is a storythe pages of which ought not to be skipped. So far as the narrativegoes, one may skip a score of leaves at will; but in the midst ofaimless and weary gabble, passages of extraordinary beauty and uncannyinsight strike out with the force of a sudden blow. The influence ofDickens is once more clearly seen in the sickly little girl Nelly, whose strange caprices and flashes of passion are like Goethe'sMignon, but whose bad health and lingering death recall irresistiblyLittle Nell. They are similar in much more than in name. 

Dostoevski told the secrets of his prison-house in his great book"Memoirs of a House of the Dead"--translated into English with thetitle "Buried Alive. " Of the many works that have come fromprison-walls to enrich literature, and their number is legion, this isone of the most powerful, because one of the most truthful andsincere. It is not nearly so well written as Oscar Wilde's "DeProfundis;" but one cannot escape the suspicion that this lattermasterpiece was a brilliant pose. Dostoevski's "House of the Dead" ismarked by that naive Russian simplicity that goes not to the reader'shead but to his heart. It is at the farthest remove from awell-constructed novel; it is indeed simply an irregular, incoherentnotebook. But if the shop-worn phrase "human document" can ever befittingly applied, no better instance can be found than this. It is arevelation of Dostoevski's all-embracing sympathy. He shows nobitterness, no spirit of revenge, toward the government that sent himinto penal servitude; he merely describes what happened there. Nordoes he attempt to arouse our sympathy for his fellow-convicts bydepicting them as heroes, or in showing their innate nobleness. Theyare indeed a bad lot, and one is forced to the conviction that theyought not to be at large. Confinement and hard labour is what most ofthem need; for the majority of them in this particular Siberian prisonare not revolutionists, offenders against the government, sent therefor some petty or trumped-up charge, but cold-blooded murderers, fiendishly cruel assassins, wife-beaters, dull, degraded brutes. Butthe regime, as our novelist describes it, does not improve them; theofficers are as brutal as the men, and the floggings do not make forspiritual culture. One cannot wish, after reading the book, that suchprisoners were free, but one cannot help thinking that something isrotten in the state of their imprisonment. Dostoevski brings out withgreat clearness the utter childishness of the prisoners; mentally, they are just bad little boys; they seem never to have developed, except in an increased capacity for sin. They spend what time theyhave in silly talk, in purposeless discussions, in endeavours to getdrink, in practical jokes, and in thefts from one another. The cruelpathos of the story is not in the fact that such men are in prison, but that a Dostoevski should be among them. Here is a delicate, sensitive man of genius, in bad health, with a highly organisednervous system, with a wonderful imagination, condemned to live foryears in slimy misery, with creatures far worse than the beasts of thefield. Indeed, some of the most beautiful parts of the story are whereDostoevski turns from the men to the prison dog and the prison horse, and there finds true friendship. His kindness to the neglected dog andthe latter's surprise and subsequent devotion make a deep impression. The greatness of Dostoevski's heart is shown in the fact that althoughhis comrades were detestable characters, he did not hate them. Hiscalm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from eithervindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because theywere buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with alove as far removed from condescension as it was from secretadmiration of their bold wickedness. There was about these men nocharm of personality and no glamour of desperate crime. The delightfulthing about Dostoevski's attitude is that it was so perfect anexemplification of true Christianity. No pride, no scorn, no envy. Heregarded them as his brothers, and one feels that not one of the menwould ever have turned to Dostoevski for sympathy and encouragementwithout meeting an instant and warm response. That prison was a greattraining-school for Dostoevski's genius, and instead of casting ablack shadow over his subsequent life, it furnished him with thenecessary light and heat to produce a succession of great novels. 

Their production was, however, irregular, and at intervals hecontinued to write and publish books of no importance. One of hispoorest stories is called "Memoirs of the Cellarage, " or, as theFrench translation has it, "L'Esprit Souterrain. " The two parts of thestory contain two curious types of women. The hero is the regulationweak-willed Russian; his singular adventures with an old criminal andhis mistress in the first part of the story, and with a harlot in thesecond, have only occasional and languid interest; it is one of themany books of Dostoevski that one vigorously vows never to read again. The sickly and impractical Ordinov spends most of his time analysinghis mental states, and indulging in that ecstasy of thought which isperhaps the most fatal of all Slavonic passions. Soon after appeared astrange and far better novel, called "The Gambler. " This story is toldin the first person, and contains a group of highly interestingcharacters, the best being an old woman, whose goodness of heart, extraordinary vitality, and fondness for speaking her mind recall thebest type of English Duchess of the eighteenth century. There is not adull page in this short book; and often as the obsession of gamblinghas been represented in fiction, I do not at this moment remember anyother story where the fierce, consuming power of this heart-eatingpassion has been more powerfully pictured. No reader will ever forgetthe one day in the sensible old lady's life when all her years oftraining, all her natural caution and splendid common sense, could notkeep her away from the gaming table. This is a kind of internationalnovel, where the English, French, German, and Russian temperaments areanalysed, perhaps with more cleverness than accuracy. The Englishman, Astley, is utterly unreal, Paulina is impossible, and the Slavophilattacks on the French are rather pointless. Some of the characters areincomprehensible, but none of them lacks interest. 

Of all Dostoevski's novels, the one best known outside of Russia is, of course, "Crime and Punishment. " Indeed, his fame in England and inAmerica may be said still to depend almost entirely on this one book. It was translated into French, German, and English in the eighties, and has been dramatised in France and in America. While it isassuredly a great work, and one that nobody except a genius could havewritten, I do not think it is Dostoevski's most characteristic novel, nor his best. It is characteristic in its faults; it is abominablydiffuse, filled with extraneous and superfluous matter, and totallylacking in the principles of good construction. There are scenes ofpositively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by drearydrivel; but the success of the book does not depend on its action, butrather on the characters of Sonia, her maudlin father, the studentRaskolnikov, and his sister. It is impossible to read "Crime andPunishment" without reverently saluting the author's power. As is wellknown, the story gave Stevenson all kinds of thrills, and in a famousletter written while completely under the spell he said: "Raskolnikovis easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I am glad youtook to it. Many find it dull; Henry James could not finish it; all Ican say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness. James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikov was notobjective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, onfurther reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many mindsof to-day, which prevents them from living IN a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. To suchI suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is aroom, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and arepurified. The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird, touching, ingenious creation; the drunken father, and Sonia, and thestudent friend, and the uncircumscribed, protoplasmic humanity ofRaskolnikov, all upon a level that filled me with wonder; theexecution, also, superb in places. "

Dostoevski is fond of interrupting the course of his narratives withdreams, --dreams that often have no connection with the plot, so far asthere may be said to exist a plot, --but dreams of vivid and sharpverisimilitude. Whether these dreams were interjected to deceive thereader, or merely to indulge the novelist's whimsical fancy, is hardto divine; but one always wakes with surprise to find that it is all adream. A few hours before Svidrigailov commits suicide he has anextraordinary dream of the cold, wet, friendless little girl, whom heplaces tenderly in a warm bed, and whose childish eyes suddenly givehim the leer of a French harlot. Both he and the reader are amazed tofind that this is only a dream, so terribly real has it seemed. ThenRaskolnikov's awful dream, so minutely circumstanced, of the cruelpeasants maltreating a horse, their drunken laughter and viciousconversation, their fury that they cannot kill the mare with one blow, and the wretched animal's slow death makes a picture that I have longtried in vain to forget. These dream episodes have absolutely noconnection with the course of the story--they are simplyimpressionistic sketches. 

Another favourite device of Dostoevski's is to have one of hischaracters take a walk, and on this walk undergo some experience thathas nothing whatever to do with the course of the action, but is, asit were, a miniature story of its own introduced into the novel. Oneoften remembers these while forgetting many vital constructivefeatures. That picture of the pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteenyears old, staggering about in the heat of the early afternoon, completely drunk, while a fat libertine slowly approaches her, like avulture after its prey, stirs Raskolnikov to rage and then toreflection--but the reader remembers it long after it has passed fromthe hero's mind. Dostoevski's books are full of disconnected butpainfully oppressive incidents. 

Raskolnikov's character cannot be described nor appraised; one mustfollow him all the way through the long novel. He is once more theRudin type--utterly irresolute, with a mind teeming with ideas andsurging with ambition. He wants to be a Russian Napoleon, with acompletely subservient conscience, but instead of murdering on a largescale, like his ideal, he butchers two inoffensive old women. Althoughthe ghastly details of this double murder are given with definiterealism, Dostoevski's interest is wholly in the criminal psychology ofthe affair, in the analysis of Raskolnikov's mind before, during, andchiefly after the murder; for it is the mind, and not the bodilysensations that constitute the chosen field of our novelist. Afterthis event, the student passes through almost every conceivable mentalstate; we study all these shifting moods under a powerful microscope. The assassin is redeemed by the harlot Sonia, who becomes hisreligious and moral teacher. The scene where the two read together thestory of the resurrection of Lazarus, and where they talk about God, prayer, and the Christian religion, shows the spiritual force ofDostoevski in its brightest manifestations. At her persuasion, hefinally confesses his crime, and is deported to Siberia, where hisexperiences are copied faithfully from the author's own prison life. Sonia accompanies him, and becomes the good angel of the convicts, whoadore her. "When she appeared while they were at work, all took offtheir hats and made a bow. 'Little mother, Sophia Semenova, thou artour mother, tender and compassionate, ' these churlish and brandedfelons said to her. She smiled in return; they loved even to see herwalk, and turned to look upon her as she passed by. They praised herfor being so little, and knew not what not to praise her for. Theyeven went to her with their ailments. "

It is quite possible that Tolstoi got the inspiration for his novel"Resurrection" from the closing words of "Crime and Punishment. "Raskolnikov and Sonia look forward happily to the time when he will bereleased. "Seven years--only seven years! At the commencement of theirhappiness they were ready to look upon these seven years as sevendays. They did not know that a new life is not given for nothing; thatit has to be paid dearly for, and only acquired by much patience andsuffering, and great future efforts. But now a new history commences;a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressiveregeneration, and change from one world to another--an introduction tothe hitherto unknown realities of life. This may well form the themeof a new tale; the one we wished to offer the reader is ended. "

It did indeed form the theme of a new tale--and the tale was Tolstoi's"Resurrection. "

Sonia is the greatest of all Dostoevski's woman characters. Theprofessional harlot has often been presented on the stage and in thepages of fiction, but after learning to know Sonia, the others seemweakly artificial. This girl, whose father's passion for drink issomething worse than madness, goes on the street to save the familyfrom starvation. It is the sacrifice of Monna Vanna without any rewardor spectacular acclaim. Deeply spiritual, intensely religious, she isthe illumination of the book, and seems to have stepped out of thepages of the New Testament. Her whole story is like a Gospel parable, and she has saved many besides Raskolnikov. . . . She dies daily, andfrom her sacrifice rises a life of eternal beauty. 

Two years later came another book of tremendous and irregularpower--"The Idiot. " With the exception of "The Karamazov Brothers, "this is the most peculiarly characteristic of all Dostoevski's works. It is almost insufferably long; it reads as though it had never beenrevised; it abounds in irrelevancies and superfluous characters. Onemust have an unshakable faith in the author to read it through, andone should never begin to read it without having acquired that faiththrough the perusal of "Crime and Punishment. " The novel is acombination of a hospital and an insane asylum; its pages are filledwith sickly, diseased, silly, and crazy folk. It is largelyautobiographical; the hero's epileptic fits are described as only anepileptic could describe them, more convincingly than even so able awriter as Mr. De Morgan diagnoses them in "An Affair of Dishonour. "Dostoevski makes the convulsion come unexpectedly; Mr. De Morgan usesthe fit as a kind of moral punctuation point. The author's sensationswhen under condemnation of death and expecting the immediatecatastrophe are also minutely given from his own never palingrecollection. Then there are allusions to Russian contemporaryauthors, which occur, to be sure, in his other books. One reason whyDostoevski is able to portray with such detail the thoughts andfancies of abnormal persons is because he was so abnormal himself; andbecause his own life had been filled with such an amazing variety ofamazing experiences. Every single one of his later novels is afootnote to actual circumstance; with any other author, we should say, for example, that his accounts of the thoughts that pass in amurderer's mind immediately before he assassinates his victim were thefantastical emanation of a diseased brain, and could never have takenplace; one cannot do that in Dostoevski's case, for one is certainthat he is drawing on his Siberian reservoir of fact. These novels arefully as much a contribution to the study of abnormal psychology asthey are to the history of fiction. 

The leading character, the epileptic Idiot, has a magnetic charm thatpulls the reader from the first, and from which it is vain to hope toescape. The "lovely goodness" that Stevenson found in Dostoevski's"Downtrodden and Oppressed" shines in this story with a steadyradiance. The most brilliant and beautiful women in the novel fallhelplessly in love with the Idiot, and the men try hard to despisehim, without the least success. He has the sincerity of a child, witha child's innocence and confidence. His character is almost theincarnation of the beauty of holiness. Such common and universal sinsas deceit, pretence, revenge, ambition, are not only impossible tohim, they are even inconceivable; he is without taint. From one pointof view, he is a natural-born fool; but the wisdom of this world isfoolishness with him. His utter harmlessness and incapacity to hurtoccasion scenes of extraordinary humour, scenes that make the readersuddenly laugh out loud, and love him all the more ardently. Dostoevski loved children and animals, and so-called simple folk; whatis more, he not only loved them, he looked upon them as his greatestteachers. It is a delight to hear this Idiot talk:--

"What has always surprised me, is the false idea that grown-up peoplehave of children. They are not even understood by their fathers andmothers. We ought to conceal nothing from children under the pretextthat they are little and that at their age they should remain ignorantof certain things. What a sad and unfortunate idea! And how clearlythe children themselves perceive that their parents take them forbabies who can't understand anything, when really they understandeverything! Great folks don't know that in even the most difficultaffairs a child is able to give advice that is of the utmostimportance. O God! when this pretty little bird stares at you with ahappy and confiding look, you are ashamed to deceive him! I call themlittle birds because little birds are the finest things in the world. "

The Idiot later in the story narrates the following curious incident. Two friends stopping together at an inn retired to their roompeacefully, when one of them, lusting to possess the other's watch, drew a knife, sneaked up behind his victim stealthily, raised his eyesto heaven, crossed himself, and piously murmured this prayer: "O Lord, pardon me through the merits of Christ!" then stabbed his friend todeath, and quietly took the watch. Naturally the listener roars withlaughter, but the Idiot quietly continues: "I once met a peasant womancrossing herself so piously, so piously! 'Why do you do that, mydear?' said I (I am always asking questions). 'Well, ' said she, 'justas a mother is happy when she sees the first smile of her nursling, soGod experiences joy every time when, from the height of heaven, hesees a sinner lift toward Him a fervent prayer. ' It was a woman of thepeople who told me that, who expressed this thought so profound, sofine, so truly religious, which is the very basis of Christianity, that is to say, the idea that God is our father, that He is delightedat the sight of a man as a mother is at the sight of her child, --thechief thought of Christ! A simple peasant woman! To be sure, she was amother. . . . The religious sentiment, in its essence, can never becrushed by reasoning, by a sin, by a crime, by any form of atheism;there is something there which remains and always will remain beyondall that, something which the arguments of atheists will never touch. But the chief thing is, that nowhere does one notice this more clearlythan in the heart of Russia. It is one of the most importantimpressions that I first received from our country. "

The kindness of the Idiot toward his foes and toward those who arecontinually playing on his generosity and exploiting him, enragesbeyond all endurance some of his friends. A beautiful young societygirl impatiently cries: "There isn't a person who deserves such wordsfrom you! here not one of them is worth your little finger, not onewho has your intelligence or your heart! You are more honest than allof us, more noble than all, better than all, more clever than all!There isn't one of these people who is fit to pick up the handkerchiefyou let fall, so why then do you humiliate yourself and place yourselfbelow everybody! Why have you crushed yourself, why haven't you anypride?"

She had begun her acquaintance with him by laughing at him and tryingto cover him with ridicule. But in his presence those who come toscoff remain to pray. Such men really overcome the world. 

He is not the only Idiot in fiction who is able to teach the wise, asevery one knows who remembers his "David Copperfield. " How BetsyTrotwood would have loved Dostoevski's hero! Dickens and Dostoevskiwere perhaps the biggest-hearted of all novelists, and their respectfor children and harmless men is notable. The sacredness of mad folkis a holy tradition, not yet outworn. 

"The Eternal Husband" is a story dealing, of course, with an abnormalcharacter, in abnormal circumstances. It is a quite original variationon the triangle theme. It has genuine humour, and the conclusionleaves one in a muse. "The Hobbledehoy, " translated into French as "UnAdolescent, " is, on the whole, Dostoevski's worst novel, which iscurious enough, coming at a time when he was doing some of his bestwork. He wrote this while his mind was busy with a great masterpiece, "The Karamazov Brothers, " and in this book we get nothing but thelees. It is a novel of portentous length and utter vacuity. I haveread many dull books, but it is hard to recall a novel where thesteady, monotonous dulness of page after page is quite so oppressive. For it is not only dull; it is stupid. 

Dostoevski's last work, "The Karamazov Brothers, " was the result often years' reflection, study, and labour, and he died withoutcompleting it. It is a very long novel as it stands; had he lived fiveyears more, it would probably have been the longest novel on the faceof the earth, for he seems to have regarded what he left as anintroduction. Even as it is, it is too long, and could profitably becut down one-third. It is incomplete, it is badly constructed, it isvery badly written; but if I could have only one of his novels, Iwould take "The Karamazov Brothers. " For Dostoevski put into it allthe sum of his wisdom, all the ripe fruit of his experience, all hisreligious aspiration, and in Alosha he created not only the greatestof all his characters, but his personal conception of what the idealman should be. Alosha is the Idiot, minus idiocy and epilepsy. 

The women in this book are not nearly so well drawn as the men. Icannot even tell them apart, so it would be a waste of labour to writefurther about them. But the four men who make up the Karamazov family, the father and the three sons, are one of the greatest family partiesin the history of fiction. Then the idiotic and epilepticSmerdakov--for Dostoevski must have his idiot and his fits, and theymake an effective combination--is an absolutely original character outof whose mouth come from time to time the words of truth andsoberness. The old monk at the head of the chapter is marvellous; hewould find a natural place in one of Ibsen's early historical dramas, for he is a colossal pontifical figure, and has about him the ancientair of authority. If one really doubted the genius of Dostoevski, onewould merely need to contemplate the men in this extraordinary story, and listen to their talk. Then if any one continued to doubtDostoevski's greatness as a novelist, he could no longer doubt hisgreatness as a man. 

The criminal psychology of this novel and the scenes at the trial aremore interesting than those in "Crime and Punishment, " for theprisoner is a much more interesting man than Raskolnikov, and by anexceedingly clever trick the reader is completely deceived. Thediscovery of the murder is as harsh a piece of realism as the mostdifficult realist could desire. The corpse lies on its back on thefloor, its silk nightgown covered with blood. The faithful oldservant, smitten down and bleeding copiously, is faintly crying forhelp. Close at hand is the epileptic, in the midst of a fearfulconvulsion. There are some dramatic moments!

But the story, as nearly always in Dostoevski, is a mere easel for theportraits. From the loins of the father--a man of tremendous force ofcharacter, all turned hellward, for he is a selfish, sensualbeast--proceed three sons, men of powerful individualities, boundtogether by fraternal affection. Mitia is in many respects like hisfather, but it is wonderful how we love him in the closing scenes;Ivan is the sceptic, whose final conviction that he is morallyresponsible for his father's murder shows his inability to escape fromthe domination of moral ideas; Alosha, the priestly third brother, hasall the family force of character, but in him it finds its only outletin love to God and love to man. He has a remarkably subtle mind, buthe is as innocent, as harmless, as sincere, and as pure in heart as alittle child. He invariably returns for injury, not pardon, but activekindness. No one can be offended in him for long, and his cheerfulconversation and beautiful, upright life are a living witness to hisreligious faith, known and read of all men. Angry, sneering, andselfish folk come to regard him with an affection akin to holy awe. But he is not in the least a prig or a stuffed curiosity. He isessentially a reasonable, kind-hearted man, who goes about doing good. Every one confides in him, all go to him for advice and solace. He isa multitudinous blessing, with masculine virility and shrewd insight, along with the sensitiveness and tenderness of a good woman. Seeingsix boys attacking one, he attempts to rescue the solitary fighter, when to his surprise the gamin turns on him, insults him, strikes himwith a stone, and bites him. Alosha, wrapping up his injured hand, after one involuntary scream of pain, looks affectionately at theyoung scoundrel, and quietly asks, "Tell me, what have I done to you?"The boy looks at him in amazement. Alosha continues: "I don't knowyou, but of course I must have injured you in some way since you treatme so. Tell me exactly where I have been wrong. " The child bursts intotears, and what no violence of punishment has been able to accomplish, Alosha's kindness has done in a few moments. Here is a boy who wouldgladly die for him. 

The conversations in this book have often quite unexpected turns ofhumour, and are filled with oversubtle questions of casuistry andcurious reasonings. From one point of view the novel is a huge, commonplace book, into which Dostoevski put all sorts of whimsies, queries, and vagaries. Smerdakov, the epileptic, is a thorn in theside of those who endeavour to instruct him, for he asks questions andraises unforeseen difficulties that perplex those who regardthemselves as his superiors. No one but Dostoevski would ever haveconceived of such a character, or have imagined such ideas. 

If one reads "Poor Folk, " "Crime and Punishment, " "Memoirs of theHouse of the Dead, " "The Idiot, " and "The Karamazov Brothers, " onewill have a complete idea of Dostoevski's genius and of his faults asa writer, and will see clearly his attitude toward life. In his storycalled "Devils" one may learn something about his political opinions;but these are of slight interest; for a man's opinions on politics arehis views on something of temporary and transient importance, and likea railway time-table, they are subject to change without notice. Butthe ideas of a great man on Religion, Humanity, and Art take hold onsomething eternal, and sometimes borrow eternity from the object. 

No doubt Dostoevski realised the sad inequalities of his work, and thegreat blunders due to haste in composition. He wrote side by side withTurgenev and Tolstoi, and could not escape the annual comparison inproduction. Indeed, he was always measuring himself with these twomen, and they were never long out of his mind. Nor was his soulwithout bitterness when he reflected on their fortunate circumstanceswhich enabled them to write, correct, and polish at leisure, and giveto the public only the last refinement of their work. In the novel"Downtrodden and Oppressed" Natasha asks the young writer if he hasfinished his composition. On being told that it is all done, she says:"God be praised! But haven't you hurried it too much? Haven't youspoiled anything?" "Oh, I don't think so, " he replied; "when I have awork that demands a particular tension of the mind, I am in a state ofextraordinary nervous excitement; images are clearer, my senses aremore alert, and for the form, why, the style is plastic, and steadilybecomes better in proportion as the tension becomes stronger. " Shesighed, and added: "You are exhausting yourself and you will ruin yourhealth. Just look at S. He spent two years in writing one short story;but how he has worked at it and chiselled it down! not the least thingto revise; no one can detect a blemish. " To this stricture the poorfellow rejoined, "Ah, but those fellows have their income assured, they are never compelled to publish at a fixed date, while I, why, Iam only a cabhorse!"

Although Dostoevski's sins against art were black and many, it was asupreme compliment to the Novel as an art-form that such a man shouldhave chosen it as the channel of his ideas. For he was certainly oneof the most profound thinkers of modern times. His thought dives belowand soars above the regions where even notable philosophers live outtheir intellectual lives. He never dodged the ugly facts in the world, nor even winced before them. Nor did he defy them. The vast knowledgethat he had of the very worst of life's conditions, and of the extremelimits of sin of which humanity is capable, seemed only to deepen andstrengthen his love of this world, his love of all the creatures onit, and his intense religious passion. For the religion of Dostoevskiis thrilling in its clairvoyance and in its fervour. That soexperienced and unprejudiced a man, gifted with such a power of subtleand profound reflection, should have found in the Christian religionthe only solution of the riddle of existence, and the best rule fordaily conduct, is in itself valuable evidence that the Christianreligion is true. 

Dostoevski has been surpassed in many things by other novelists. Thedeficiencies and the excrescences of his art are glaring. But of allthe masters of fiction, both in Russia and elsewhere, he is the mosttruly spiritual. 

V

TOLSTOI

On the 6 September 1852, signed only with initials, appeared in aRussian periodical the first work of Count Leo Tolstoi--"Childhood. "By 1867, his name was just barely known outside of Russia, for in thatyear the American diplomat, Eugene Schuyler, in the preface to histranslation of "Fathers and Sons, " said, "The success of Gogol broughtout a large number of romance-writers, who abandoned all imitation ofGerman, French, and English novelists, and have founded a trulynational school of romance. " Besides Turgenev, "easily their chief, "he mentioned five Russian writers, all but one of whom are now unknownor forgotten in America. The second in his list was "the CountTolstoi, a writer chiefly of military novels. " During the seventies, the English scholar Ralston published in a review some paraphrases ofTolstoi, because, as he said, "Tolstoi will probably never betranslated into English. " To-day the works of Tolstoi are translatedinto forty-five languages, and in the original Russian the sales havegone into many millions. During the last ten years of his life he heldan absolutely unchallenged position as the greatest living writer inthe world, there being not a single contemporary worthy to be named inthe same breath. 

Tolstoi himself, at the end of the century, divided his life into fourperiods:* the innocent, joyous, and poetic time of childhood, fromearliest recollection up to the age of fourteen; the "terribletwenties, " full of ambition, vanity, and licentiousness, lasting tillhis marriage at the age of thirty-four; the third period of eighteenyears, when he was honest and pure in family life, but a thoroughegoist; the fourth period, which he hoped would be the last, datingfrom his Christian conversion, and during which he tried to shape hislife in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. 

*His own "Memoirs, " edited by Birukov, are now the authority forbiographical detail. They are still in process of publication. 

He was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in south central Russia, not far fromthe birthplace of Turgenev, on the 28 August 1828. His mother diedwhen he was a baby, his father when he was only nine. An aunt, to whomhe was devotedly attached, and whom he called "Grandmother, " had themain supervision of his education. In 1836 the family went to live atMoscow, where the boy formed that habit of omnivorous reading whichcharacterised his whole life. Up to his fourteenth year, the booksthat chiefly influenced him were the Old Testament, the "ArabianNights, " Pushkin, and popular Russian legends. It was intended that heshould follow a diplomatic career, and in preparation for theUniversity of Kazan, he studied Oriental languages. In 1844 he failedto pass his entrance examinations, but was admitted some months later. He left the University in 1847. From his fourteenth to histwenty-first year the books that he read with the most profit wereSterne's "Sentimental Journey, " under the influence of which he wrotehis first story, Pushkin, Schiller's "Robbers, " Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev's "A Sportsman's Sketches;" and to a less degree he wasaffected by the New Testament, Rousseau, Dickens's "DavidCopperfield, " and the historical works of the American Prescott. Likeall Russian boys, he of course read the romances of Fenimore Cooper. 

On leaving the University, he meant to take up a permanent residencein the country; but this enthusiasm waned at the close of the summer, as it does with nearly everybody, and he went to St. Petersburg in theautumn of 1847, where he entered the University in the department oflaw. During all this time he had the habit of almost morbidintrospection, and like so many young people, he wrote resolutions andkept a diary. In 1851 he went with his brother to the Caucasus, andentered the military service, as described in his novel, "TheCossacks. " Here he indulged in dissipation, cards, and women, like theother soldiers. In the midst of his life there he wrote to his aunt, in French, the language of most of their correspondence, "You recallsome advice you once gave me--to write novels: well, I am of youropinion, and I am doing literary work. I do not know whether what Iwrite will ever appear in the world, but it is work that amuses me, and in which I have persevered for too long a time to give it up. " Henoted at this time that the three passions which obstructed the moralway were gambling, sensuality, and vanity. And he further wrote in hisjournal, "There is something in me which makes me think that I was notborn to be just like everybody else. " Again: "The man who has no othergoal than his own happiness is a bad man. He whose goal is the goodopinion of others is a weak man. He whose goal is the happiness ofothers is a virtuous man. He whose goal is God is a great man!"

He finished his first novel, "Childhood, " sent it to a Russian review, and experienced the most naive delight when the letter of acceptancearrived. "It made me happy to the limit of stupidity, " he wrote in hisdiary. The letter was indeed flattering. The publisher recognised theyoung author's talent, and was impressed with his "simplicity andreality, " as well he might be, for they became the cardinal qualitiesof all Tolstoi's books. It attracted little attention, however, and nocriticism of it appeared for two years. But a little later, whenDostoevski obtained in Siberia the two numbers of the periodicalcontaining "Childhood" and "Boyhood, " he was deeply moved, and wroteto a friend, asking, Who is this mysterious L. N. T. ? But for a longtime Tolstoi refused to let his name be known. 

Tolstoi took part in the Crimean war, not as a spectator or reporter, but as an officer. He was repeatedly in imminent danger, and saw allthe horrors of warfare, as described in "Sevastopol. " Still, he foundtime somehow for literary work, wrote "Boyhood, " and read Dickens inEnglish. About this time he decided to substitute the Lord's Prayer inhis private devotions for all other petitions, saying that "Thy willbe done on earth as it is in Heaven" included everything. On the 5March 1855 he wrote in his diary a curious prophecy of his presentattitude toward religion: "My conversations on divinity and faith haveled me to a great idea, for the realisation of which I am ready todevote my whole life. This idea is the founding of a new religion, corresponding to the level of human development, the religion ofChrist, but purified of all dogmas and mysteries, a practical religionnot promising a blessed future life, but bestowing happiness here onearth. "

In this same year he wrote the book which was the first absolute proofof his genius, and with the publication of which his reputationbegan--"Sevastopol in December. " This was printed in the same reviewthat had accepted his first work, was greeted with enthusiasm byTurgenev and the literary circles at Petersburg, was read by the Tsar, and translated into French at the imperial command. It was followed by"Sevastopol in May" and "Sevastopol in August, " and Tolstoi foundhimself famous. 

It was evident that a man so absorbed in religious ideas and sosensitive to the hideous wholesale murder of war, could not remain forlong in the army. He arrived at Petersburg on the 21 November 1855, and had a warm reception from the distinguished group of writers whowere at that time contributors to the "Sovremennik* (The ContemporaryReview), " which had published Tolstoi's work. This review had beenfounded by Pushkin in 1836, was now edited by Nekrassov, who hadaccepted Tolstoi's first article, "Childhood, " and had enlisted theforemost writers of Russia, prominent among whom was, of course, Turgenev. The books which Tolstoi read with the most profit duringthis period were Goethe, Hugo's "Notre-Dame, " Plato in French, andHomer in Russian. 

*An amusing caricature of the time represents Turgenev, Ovstrovski, and Tolstoi bringing rolls of manuscripts to the editors. 

Turgenev had a fixed faith in the future of Tolstoi; he was alreadycertain that a great writer had appeared in Russia. Writing to afriend from Paris, in 1856, he said, "When this new wine is ripenedthere will be a drink fit for the gods. " In 1857, after Tolstoi hadvisited him in Paris, Turgenev wrote, "This man will go far and willleave behind him a profound influence. " But the two authors had littlein common, and it was evident that there could never be perfectharmony between them. Explaining why he could not feel wholly at easewith Tolstoi, he said, "We are made of different clay. "

In January 1857, Tolstoi left Moscow for Warsaw by sledge, and fromthere travelled by rail for Paris. In March, accompanied by Turgenev, he went to Dijon, and saw a man executed by the guillotine. He wasdeeply impressed both by the horror and by the absurdity of capitalpunishment, and, as he said, the affair "pursued" him for a long time. He travelled on through Switzerland, and at Lucerne he felt thecontrast between the great natural beauty of the scenery and theartificiality of the English snobs in the hotel. He journeyed on downthe Rhine, and returned to Russia from Berlin. During all these monthsof travel, his journal expresses the constant religious fermentationof his mind, and his intense democratic sentiments. They were the sameideas held by the Tolstoi of 1900. 

On the 3 July 1860, he left Petersburg by steamer, once more to visitsouthern Europe. He visited schools, universities, and studied theGerman methods of education. He also spent some time in the south ofFrance, and wrote part of "The Cossacks" there. In Paris he once morevisited Turgenev, and then crossed over to London, where he saw thegreat Russian critic Herzen almost every day. Herzen was not at allimpressed by Tolstoi's philosophical views, finding them both weak andvague. The little daughter of Herzen begged her father for theprivilege of meeting the young and famous author. She expected to seea philosopher, who would speak of weighty matters: what was herdisappointment when Count Tolstoi appeared, dressed in the latestEnglish style, looking exactly like a fashionable man of the world, and talking with great enthusiasm of a cock-fight he had justwitnessed!

After nine months' absence, Tolstoi returned to Russia in April 1861. He soon went to his home at Yasnaya Polyana, established a school forthe peasants, and devoted himself to the arduous labour of theireducation. Here he had a chance to put into practice all the theoriesthat he had acquired from his observations in Germany and England. Heworked so hard that he injured his health, and in a few months wasforced to travel and rest. In this same year he lost a thousand rublesplaying billiards with Katkov, the well-known editor of the "RussianMessenger. " Not being able to pay cash, he gave Katkov the manuscriptof his novel, "The Cossacks, " which was accordingly printed in thereview in January 1863. 

On the 23 September 1862, he was married. A short time before thisevent he gave his fiancee his diary, which contained a frank and freeaccount of all the sins of his bachelor life. She was overwhelmed, andthought of breaking off the engagement. After many nights spent inwakeful weeping, she returned the journal to him, with a full pardon, and assurance of complete affection. It was fortunate for him thatthis young girl was large-hearted enough to forgive his sins, for shebecame an ideal wife, and shared in all his work, copying in her ownhand his manuscripts again and again. In all her relations with thedifficult temperament of her husband, she exhibited the utmostdevotion, and that uncommon quality which we call common sense. 

Shortly after the marriage, Tolstoi began the composition of aleviathan in historical fiction, "War and Peace. " While composing it, he wrote: "If one could only accomplish the hundredth part of what oneconceives, but one cannot even do a millionth part! Still, theconsciousness of Power is what brings happiness to a literary man. Ihave felt this power particularly during this year. " He suffered, however, from many paroxysms of despair, and constantly corrected whathe wrote. This made it necessary for his wife to copy out themanuscript; and it is said that she wrote in her own hand the wholemanuscript of this enormous work seven times!

The publication of the novel began in the "Russki Viesinik (RussianMessenger)" for January 1865, and the final chapters did not appeartill 1869. It attracted constant attention during the process ofpublication, and despite considerable hostile criticism, establishedthe reputation of its author. 

During its composition Tolstoi read all kinds of books, "PickwickPapers, " Anthony Trollope, whom he greatly admired, and Schopenhauer, who for a time fascinated him. In 1869 he learned Greek, and was proudof being able to read the "Anabasis" in a few months. He interestedhimself in social problems, and fought hard with the authorities tosave a man from capital punishment. To various schemes of education, and to the general amelioration of the condition of the peasants, hegave all the tremendous energy of his mind. 

On the 19 March 1873, he began the composition of "Anna Karenina, "which was to give him his greatest fame outside of Russia. Severalyears were spent in its composition and publication. Despite the powerof genius displayed in this masterpiece, he did not enjoy writing it, and seemed to be unaware of its splendid qualities. In 1875 he wrote, "For two months I have not soiled my fingers with ink, but now Ireturn again to this tiresome and vulgar "Anna Karenina, " with thesole wish of getting it done as soon as possible, in order that I mayhave time for other work. " It was published in the "RussianMessenger, " and the separate numbers drew the attention of criticseverywhere, not merely in Russia, but all over Europe. 

The printing began in 1874. All went well enough for two years, as wesee by a letter of the Countess Tolstoi, in December 1876. "At last weare writing "Anna Karenina comme il faut, " that is, withoutinterruptions. Leo, full of animation, writes an entire chapter everyday, and I copy it off as fast as possible; even now, under thisletter, there are the pages of the new chapter that he wroteyesterday. Katkov telegraphed day before yesterday to send somechapters for the December number. " But, just before the completion ofthe work, Tolstoi and the editor, Katkov, had an irreconcilablequarrel. The war with Turkey was imminent. Tolstoi was naturallyvehemently opposed to it, while Katkov did everything in his power toinflame public opinion in favour of the war party; and he felt thatVronsky's departure for the war, after the death of Anna, with Levin'scomments thereupon, were written in an unpatriotic manner. Ridiculousas it now seems to give this great masterpiece a political twist, orto judge it from that point of view, it was for a time the solequestion that agitated the critics. Katkov insisted that Tolstoi"soften" the objectionable passages. Tolstoi naturally refused, editorand author quarrelled, and Tolstoi was forced to publish the lastportion of the work in a separate pamphlet. In the number of May 1877, Katkov printed a footnote to the instalment of the novel, which showshow little he understood its significance, although the majority ofcontemporary Russian critics understood the book no better than he. 

"In our last number, at the foot of the novel "Anna Karenina, " weprinted, 'Conclusion in the next issue. ' But with the death of theheroine the real story ends. According to the plan of the author, there will be a short epilogue, in which the reader will learn thatVronsky, overwhelmed by the death of Anna, will depart for Servia as avolunteer; that all the other characters remain alive and well; thatLevin lives on his estates and fumes against the Slavonic party andthe volunteers. Perhaps the author will develop this chapter in aspecial edition of his novel. "

Levin's conversation with the peasant, toward the close of "AnnaKarenina, " indicates clearly the religious attitude of Tolstoi, andprepares us for the crisis that followed. From 1877 to 1879 he passedthrough a spiritual struggle, read the New Testament constantly, andbecame completely converted to the practical teachings of the Gospel. Then followed his well-known work, "My Religion, " the abandonment ofhis former way of life, and his attempts to live like a peasant, indaily manual labour. Since that time he wrote a vast number ofreligious, political, and social tracts, dealing with war, marriage, law-courts, imprisonment, etc. Many of the religious tracts belong toliterature by the beauty and simple directness of their style. Twoshort stories and one long novel, all written with a didactic purpose, are of this period, and added to their author's reputation: "The Deathof Ivan Ilyich, The Kreuzer Sonata, " and "Resurrection. "

One cannot but admire the courage of Tolstoi in attempting to live inaccordance with his convictions, just as we admire Milton for hismotives in abandoning poetry for politics. But our unspeakable regretat the loss to the world in both instances, when its greatest livingauthor devotes himself to things done much better by men destitute oftalent, makes us heartily sympathise with the attitude of theCountess, who hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry. In a letter toher husband, written in October 1884, and filled with terms ofaffectionate tenderness, she said: "Yesterday I received your letter, and it has made me very sad. I see that you have remained at Yasnayanot for intellectual work, which I place above everything, but to play'Robinson. ' You have let the cook go . . . And from morning to nightyou give yourself up to manual toil fit only for young men. . . . Youwill say, of course, that this manner of life conforms to yourprinciples and that it does you good. That's another matter. I canonly say, 'Rejoice and take your pleasure, ' and at the same time Ifeel sad to think that such an intellectual force as yours shouldexpend itself in cutting wood, heating the samovar, and sewing boots. That is all very well as a change of work, but not for an occupation. Well, enough of this subject. If I had not written this, it would haverankled in me, and now it has passed and I feel like laughing. I cancalm myself only by this Russian proverb: 'Let the child amusehimself, no matter how, provided he doesn't cry. "

In the last few weeks of his life, the differences of opinion betweenthe aged couple became so acute that Tolstoi fled from his home, andrefused to see the Countess again. This flight brought on a suddenillness, and the great writer died early in the morning of the 20November 1910. He was buried under an oak tree at Yasnaya Polyana. 

Although Count Tolstoi divided his life into four distinct periods, and although critics have often insisted on the great differencebetween his earlier and his later work, these differences fade away ona close scrutiny of the man's whole production, from "Childhood" to"Resurrection. "

"Souls alter not, and mine must still advance, " said Browning. This isparticularly true of Tolstoi. He progressed, but did not change; andhe progressed along the path already clearly marked in his firstbooks. The author of "Sevastopol" and "The Cossacks" was the same manmentally and spiritually who wrote "Anna Karenina, " "Ivan Ilyich, ""The Kreuzer Sonata, " and "Resurrection. " Indeed, few great authorshave steered so straight a course as he. No such change took place inhim as occurred with Bjornson. The teaching of the later books is moreevident, the didactic purpose is more obvious, but that is somethingthat happens to almost all writers as they descend into the vale ofyears. The seed planted in the early novels simply came to a perfectlynatural and logical fruition. 

Not only do the early novels indicate the direction that Tolstoi'swhole life was bound to assume, but his diary and letters show thesame thing. The extracts from these that I have given above aresubstantial proof of this--he saw the truth just as clearly in 1855 ashe saw it in 1885, or in 1905. The difference between the early andlater Tolstoi is not, then, a difference in mental viewpoint, it is adifference in conduct and action. * The eternal moral law ofself-sacrifice was revealed to him in letters of fire when he wrote"The Cossacks" and "Sevastopol;" everything that he wrote after was amere amplification and additional emphasis. But he was young then; andalthough he saw the light, he preferred the darkness. He knew then, just as clearly as he knew later, that the life in accordance with NewTestament teaching was a better life than that spent in following hisanimal instincts; but his knowledge did not save him. 

*For a very unfavourable view of Tolstoi's later conduct, the"Tolstoi legend, " see Merezhkovski, Tolstoi as Man and Artist. 

Even the revolutionary views on art, which he expressed toward the endof the century in his book, "What is Art?" were by no means a suddendiscovery, nor do they reveal a change in his attitude. Theaccomplished translator, Mr. Maude, said in his preface, "Thefundamental thought expressed in this book leads inevitably toconclusions so new, so unexpected, and so contrary to what is usuallymaintained in literary and artistic circles, " etc. But while theconclusions seemed new (and absurd) to many artists, they were not atall new to Tolstoi. So early as 1872 he practically held these views. In a letter to Strakov, expressing his contempt for modern Russianliterature and the language of the great poets and novelists, he said:"Pushkin himself appears to me ridiculous. The language of the people, on the contrary, has sounds to express everything that the poet isable to say, and it is very dear to me. " In the same letter he wrote, "'Poor Lisa' drew tears and received homage, but no one reads her anymore, while popular songs and tales, and folk-lore ballads will liveas long as the Russian language. "

In his views of art, in his views of morals, in his views of religion, Tolstoi developed, but he did not change. He simply followed his ideasto their farthest possible extreme, so that many Anglo-Saxonssuspected him even of madness. In reality, the method of his thoughtis characteristically and purely Russian. An Englishman may be in lovewith an idea, and start out bravely to follow it; but if he finds itleading him into a position contrary to the experience of humanity, then he pulls up, and decides that the idea must be false, even if hecan detect no flaw in it; not so the Russian; the idea is right, andhumanity is wrong. 

No author ever told us so much about himself as Tolstoi. Not only dowe now possess his letters and journals, in which he revealed hisinner life with the utmost clarity of detail, but all his novels, eventhose that seem the most objective, are really part of hisautobiography. Through the persons of different characters he isalways talking about himself, always introspective. That is one reasonwhy his novels seem so amazingly true to life. They seem true becausethey are true. 

Some one said of John Stuart Mill, "Analysis is the king of hisintellect. " This remark is also true of most Russian novelists, andparticularly true of Tolstoi. In all his work, historical romance, realistic novels, religious tracts, his greatest power was shown inthe correct analysis of mental states. And he took all human naturefor his province. Strictly speaking, there are no minor characters inhis books. The same pains are taken with persons who have littleinfluence on the course of the story, as with the chief actors. Thenormal interests him even more than the abnormal, which is the greatdifference between his work and that of Gorki and Andreev, as it wasthe most striking difference between Shakespeare and his latercontemporaries. To reveal ordinary people just as they reallyare, --sometimes in terrific excitement, sometimes in humdrumroutine, --this was his aim. Natural scenery is occasionallyintroduced, like the mountains in "The Cossacks, " to show how thespectacle affects the mind of the person who is looking at it. It isseldom made use of for a background. Mere description occupied a verysmall place in Tolstoi's method. The intense fidelity to detail in theportrayal of character, whether obsessed by a mighty passion, orplaying with a trivial caprice, is the chief glory of his work. Thisis why, after the reading of Tolstoi, so many other "realistic" novelsseem utterly untrue and absurd. 

The three stories, "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, " now generallypublished as one novel, are the work of a genius, but not a work ofgenius. They are interesting in the light of their author's laterbooks, and they are valuable as autobiography. The fact that hehimself repudiated them, was ashamed of having written them, anddeclared that their style was unnatural, means little or much, according to one's viewpoint. But the undoubted power revealed hereand there in their pages is immature, a mere suggestion of what was tofollow. They are exercises in composition. He learned how to write inwriting these. But the intention of their author is clear enough. His"stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul. " There isnot a single unusual or sensational event in the whole narrative, nordid the hero grow up in any strange or remarkable environment. Theinterest therefore is not in what happened, but wholly in the ripeningcharacter of the child. The circumstances are partly true of Tolstoi'sown boyhood, partly not; he purposely mixed his own and his friends'experiences. But mentally the boy is Tolstoi himself, revealed in allthe awkwardness, self-consciousness, and morbidity of youth. The boy'spride, vanity, and curious mixture of timidity and conceit do not forma very attractive picture, and were not intended to. Tolstoi himselfas a young man had little charm, and his numerous portraits allplainly indicate the fact. His Satanic pride made frank friendshipwith him almost an impossibility. Despite our immense respect for hisliterary power, despite the enormous influence for good that his laterbooks have effected, it must be said that of all the great Russianwriters, Tolstoi was the most unlovely. 

These three sketches, taken as one, are grounded on moral ideas--thesame ideas that later completely dominated the author's life. We feelhis hatred of dissipation and of artificiality. The chapter on Love, in "Youth, " might also form a part of the "Kreuzer Sonata, " so fullydoes it harmonise with the teaching of the later work. 

"I do not speak of the love of a young man for a young girl, and hersfor him; I fear these tendernesses, and I have been so unfortunate inlife as never to have seen a single spark of truth in this species oflove, but only a lie, in which sentiment, connubial relations, money, a desire to bind or to unbind one's hands, have to such an extentconfused the feeling itself, that it has been impossible todisentangle it. I am speaking of the love for man. "*

*Translated by Isabel Hapgood. 

Throughout this book, as in all Tolstoi's work, is the eternalquestion WHY? For what purpose is life, and to what end am I living?What is the real meaning of human ambition and human effort?

Tolstoi's reputation as an artist quite rightly began with thepublication of the three Sevastopol stories, "Sevastopol in December"[1854], "Sevastopol in May, Sevastopol in August. " This is the work, not of a promising youth, but of a master. There is not a weak or asuperfluous paragraph. Maurice Hewlett has cleverly turned the chargethat those 'who oppose war are sentimentalists, by risposting that thebelievers in war are the real sentimentalists: "they do not see themurder beneath the khaki and the flags. " Tolstoi was one of the firstnovelists to strip war of its glamour, and portray its dull, commonplace filth, and its unspeakable horror. In reading thatmasterpiece "La Debacle, " and every one who believes in war ought toread it, one feels that Zola must have learned something from Tolstoi. The Russian novelist stood in the midst of the flying shells, and howlittle did any one then realise that his own escape from death was anevent of far greater importance to the world than the outcome of thewar!

There is little patriotic feeling in "Sevastopol, " and its success wasartistic rather than political. Of course Russian courage is praised, but so is the courage of the French. In spite of the fact that Tolstoiwas a Russian officer, actively fighting for his country, he shows asingular aloofness from party passion in all his descriptions. Theonly partisan statement is in the half sentence, "it is a comfort tothink that it was not we who began this war, that we are onlydefending our own country, " which might profitably be read by thosewho believe in "just" wars, along with Tennyson's "Maud, " published atthe same time. Tennyson was cock-sure that the English were God's ownpeople, and in all this bloodshed were doing the blessed work of theirFather in heaven. 

"God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar. "

Throughout the heat of the conflict, Tolstoi felt its utter absurdity, really holding the same views of war that he held as an old man. "Andwhy do not Christian people, " he wrote in "Sevastopol in May, " "whoprofess the one great law of love and self-sacrifice, when they beholdwhat they have wrought, fall in repentance upon their knees before Himwho, when He gave them life, implanted in the soul of each of them, together with the fear of death, a love of the good and beautiful, and, with tears of joy and happiness, embrace each other likebrothers?"

Together with the fear of death-this fear is analysed by Tolstoi inall its manifestations. The fear of the young officer, as he exchangesthe enthusiastic departure from Petersburg for the grim reality of thebastions; the fear of the still sound and healthy man as he enters theimprovised hospitals; the fear as the men watch the point ofapproaching light that means a shell; the fear of the men lying on theground, waiting with closed eyes for the shell to burst. It is thevery psychology of death. In reading the account of Praskukhin'ssensations just before death, one feels, as one does in reading thethoughts of Anna Karenina under the train, that Tolstoi himself musthave died in some previous existence, in order to analyse death soclearly. And all these officers, who walk in the Valley of the Shadow, have their selfish ambitions, their absurd social distinctions, andtheir overweening, egotistical vanity. 

At the end of the middle sketch, "Sevastopol in May, " Tolstoi wroteout the only creed to which he remained consistently true all hislife, the creed of Art. 

"Who is the villain, who the hero? All are good and all are evil. 

"The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has alwaysbeen, is, and always will be most beautiful, is--the truth. "

The next important book, "The Cossacks, " is not a great novel. Tolstoihimself grew tired of it, and never finished it. It is interesting asan excellent picture of an interesting community, and it isinteresting as a diary, for the chief character, Olenin, is none otherthan Leo Tolstoi. He departed for the Caucasus in much the same manneras the young writer, and his observations and reflections there areTolstoi's own. The triple contrast in the book is powerfully shown:first, the contrast between the majesty of the mountains and thepettiness of man; second, the contrast between the noble simplicity ofthe Cossack women and the artificiality of the padded shapes ofsociety females; third, the contrast between the two ways of life, that which Olenin recognises as right, the Christian law ofself-denial, but which he does not follow, and the almost sublimepagan bodily joy of old Uncle Yeroshka, who lives in exact harmonywith his creed. Yeroshka is a living force, a real character, andmight have been created by Gogol. 

Olenin, who is young Tolstoi, and not very much of a man, soliloquisesin language that was echoed word for word by the Tolstoi of thetwentieth century. 

"Happiness consists in living for others. This also is clear. Man isendowed with a craving for happiness; therefore it must be legitimate. If he satisfies it egotistically, --that is, if he bends his energiestoward acquiring wealth, fame, physical comforts, love, it may happenthat circumstances will make it impossible to satisfy this craving. Infact, these cravings are illegitimate, but the craving for happinessis not illegitimate. What cravings can always be satisfiedindependently of external conditions? Love, self-denial. "*

*Translated by Isabel Hapgood. 

His later glorification of physical labour, as the way of salvationfor irresolute and overeducated Russians, is as emphatically stated in"The Cossacks" as it is in the "Kreuzer Sonata. "

"The constant hard field labour, and the duties intrusted to them, give a peculiarly independent, masculine character to the Grebenwomen, and have served to develop in them, to a remarkable degree, physical powers, healthy minds, decision and stability of character. "

The chief difference between Turgenev and Tolstoi is that Turgenev wasalways an artist; Tolstoi always a moralist. It was not necessary forhim to abandon novels, and write tracts; for in every novel his moralteaching was abundantly clear. 

With the possible exception of "Taras Bulba, " "War and Peace" is thegreatest historical romance in the Russian language, perhaps thegreatest in any language. It is not illumined by the humour of anysuch character as Zagloba, who brightens the great chronicles ofSienkiewicz; for if Tolstoi had had an accurate sense of humour, orthe power to create great comic personages, he would never have beenled into the final extremes of doctrine. But although this long bookis unrelieved by mirth, and although as an objective historicalpanorama it does not surpass "The Deluge, " it is nevertheless agreater book. It is greater because its psychological analysis is moreprofound and more cunning. It is not so much a study of war, or thestudy of a vital period in the earth's history, as it is a revelationof all phases of human nature in a time of terrible stress. It isfilled with individual portraits, amazingly distinct. 

Professors of history and military experts have differed widely--as itis the especial privilege of scholars and experts to differ--concerningthe accuracy of "War and Peace" as a truthful narrative of events. Butthis is really a matter of no importance. Shakespeare is the greatestwriter the world has ever seen; but he is not an authority on history;he is an authority on man. When we wish to study the Wars of the Roses, we do not turn to his pages, brilliant as they are. Despite all thegeographical and historical research that Tolstoi imposed on himselfas a preliminary to the writing of "War and Peace, " he did not writethe history of that epoch, nor would a genuine student quote him as inauthority. He created a prose epic, a splendid historical panorama, vitalised by a marvellous imagination, where the creatures of his fancyare more alive than Napoleon and Alexander. Underneath all the march ofarmies, the spiritual purpose of the author is clear. The real greatnessof man consists not in fame or pride of place, but in simplicity andpurity of heart. Once more he gives us the contrast between artificialityand reality. 

This novel, like all of Tolstoi's, is by no means a perfect work ofart. Its outline is irregular and ragged; its development devious. Itcontains many excrescences, superfluities, digressions. But it is adictionary of life, where one may look up any passion, any emotion, any ambition, any weakness, and find its meaning. Strakov called it acomplete picture of the Russia of that time, and a complete picture ofhumanity. 

Its astonishing inequalities make the reader at times angrilyimpatient, and at other times inspired. One easily understands thevarying emotions of Turgenev, who read the story piecemeal, in thecourse of its publication. "The second part of 1805 is weak. How pettyand artificial all that is! . . . Where are the real features of theepoch? where is the historical colour?" Again: "I have just finishedreading the fourth volume. It contains things that are intolerable andthings that are astounding; these latter are the things that dominatethe work, and they are so admirable that never has a Russian writtenanything better; I do not believe there has ever been written anythingso good. " Again: "How tormenting are his obstinate repetitions of thesame thing: the down on the upper lip of the Princess Bolkonsky. Butwith all that, there are in this novel passages that no man in Europeexcept Tolstoi could have written, things which put me into a frenzyof enthusiasm. "

Tolstoi's genius reached its climax in "Anna Karenina. " Greatly as Iadmire some of his other books, I would go so far as to say that if aforced choice had to be made, I had rather have "Anna Karenina" thanall the rest of his works put together. Leave that out, and hisposition in the history of fiction diminishes at once. It is surelythe most powerful novel written by any man of our time, and it wouldbe difficult to name a novel of any period that surpasses it instrength. I well remember the excitement with which we Americanundergraduates in the eighties read the poor and clipped Englishtranslation of this book. Twenty years' contemplation of it makes itseem steadily greater. 

Yet its composition was begun by a mere freak, by something analogousto a sporting proposition. He was thinking of writing a historicalromance of the times of Peter the Great, but the task seemedformidable, and he felt no well of inspiration. One evening, the 19March 1873, he entered a room where his ten-year-old boy had beenreading aloud from a story by Pushkin. Tolstoi picked up the book andread the first sentence: "On the eve of the fete the guests began toarrive. " He was charmed by the abrupt opening, and cried: "That's theway to begin a book! The reader is immediately taken into the action. Another writer would have begun by a description, but Pushkin, he goesstraight to his goal. " Some one in the room suggested playfully toTolstoi that he try a similar commencement and write a novel. Heimmediately withdrew, and wrote the first sentence of Anna Karenina. The next day the Countess said in a letter to her sister: "YesterdayLeo all of a sudden began to write a novel of contemporary life. Thesubject: the unfaithful wife and the whole resulting tragedy. I amvery happy. "

The suicide of the heroine was taken almost literally from an eventthat happened in January 1872. We learn this by a letter of theCountess, written on the 10 January in that year: "We have justlearned of a very dramatic story. You remember, at Bibikov's, AnnaStepanova? Well, this Anna Stepanova was jealous of all thegovernesses at Bibikov's house. She displayed her jealousy so muchthat finally Bibikov became angry and quarrelled with her; then AnnaStepanova left him and went to Tula. For three days no one knew whereshe was. At last, on the third day, she appeared at Yassenky, at fiveo'clock in the afternoon, with a little parcel. At the railway stationshe gave the coachman a letter for Bibikov, and gave him a ruble for atip. Bibikov would not take the letter, and when the coachman returnedto the station, he learned that Anna Stepanova had thrown herselfunder the train and was crushed to death. She had certainly done itintentionally. The judge came, and they read him the letter. It said:'You are my murderer: be happy, if assassins can be. If you care to, you can see my corpse on the rails, at Yassenky. ' Leo and Uncle Kostiahave gone to the autopsy. "

Most of the prominent characters in the book are taken from life, andthe description of the death of Levin's brother is a recollection ofthe time when Tolstoi's own brother died in his arms. 

Levin is, of course, Tolstoi himself; and all his eternal doubts andquestionings, his total dissatisfaction and condemnation of artificialsocial life in the cities, his spiritual despair, and his finalrelease from suffering at the magic word of the peasant are strictlyautobiographical. When the muzhik told Levin that one man lived forhis belly, and another for his soul, he became greatly excited, andeagerly demanded further knowledge of his humble teacher. He was oncemore told that man must live according to God--according to truth. Hissoul was immediately filled, says Tolstoi, with brilliant light. Hewas indeed relieved of his burden, like Christian at the sight of theCross. Now Tolstoi's subsequent doctrinal works are all amplificationsof the conversation between Levin and the peasant, which in itselfcontains the real significance of the whole novel. 

Even "Anna Karenina, " with all its titanic power, is not an artisticmodel of a story. It contains much superfluous matter, and thebalancing off of the two couples, Levin and Kitty, with Vronsky andAnna, is too obviously arranged by the author. One Russian critic wasso disgusted with the book that he announced the plan of acontinuation of the novel where Levin was to fall in love with hiscow, and Kitty's resulting jealousy was to be depicted. 

It has no organic plot--simply a succession of pictures. The plot doesnot develop--but the characters do, thus resembling our own individualhuman lives. It has no true unity, such as that shown, for example, bythe "Scarlet Letter. " Our interest is largely concentrated in Anna, but besides the parallel story of Kitty, we have many other incidentsand characters which often contribute nothing to the progress of thenovel. They are a part of life, however, so Tolstoi includes them. Onemight say there is an attempt at unity, in the person of that sleekegotist, Stepan--his relation by blood and marriage to both Anna andKitty makes him in some sense a link between the two couples. But heis more successful as a personage than as the keystone of an arch. Thenovel would really lose nothing by considerable cancellation. Theauthor might have omitted Levin's two brothers, the whole Kitty andLevin history could have been liberally abbreviated, and many of theconversations on philosophy and politics would never be missed. Yes, the work could be shortened, but it would take a Turgenev to do it. 

Although we may not always find Art in the book, we always find Life. No novel in my recollection combines wider range with greaterintensity. It is extensive and intensive--broad and deep. Thesimplicity of the style in the most impressive scenes is so startlingthat it seems as if there were somehow no style and no language there;nothing whatever between the life in the book and the reader's mind;not only no impenetrable wall of style, such as Meredith and Jamespile up with curious mosaic, so that one cannot see the characters inthe story through the exquisite and opaque structure, --but really nomedium at all, transparent or otherwise. The emotional life of the menand women enter into our emotions with no let or hindrance, and thatperfect condition of communication is realised which Browning believedwould characterise the future life, when spirits would somehowconverse without the slow, troublesome, and inaccurate means oflanguage. 

I believe that the average man can learn more about life by reading"Anna Karenina" than he can by his own observation and experience. Onelearns much about Russian life in city and country, much about humannature, and much about one's self, not all of which is flattering, butperhaps profitable for instruction. 

This is the true realism--external and internal. The surface of things, clothes, habits of speech, manners and fashions, the way people entera drawing-room, the way one inhales a cigarette, --everything is truthfullyreported. Then there is the true internal realism, which dives belowall appearances and reveals the dawn of a new passion, the first faintstir of an ambition, the slow and cruel advance of the poison of jealousy, the ineradicable egotism, the absolute darkness of unspeakable remorse. No caprice is too trivial, no passion too colossal, to be beyond thereach of the author of this book. 

Some novels have attained a wide circulation by means of one scene. Inrecollecting "Anna Karenina, " powerful scenes crowd into thememory--introspective and analytic as it is, it is filled withdramatic climaxes. The sheer force of some of these scenes is almostterrifying. The first meeting of Anna and Vronsky at the railwaystation, the midnight interview in the storm on the way back toPetersburg, the awful dialogue between them after she has fallen(omitted from the first American translation), the fearful excitementof the horse race, the sickness of Anna, Karenin's forgiveness, thehumiliation of Vronsky, the latter's attempt at suicide, the steadilyincreasing scenes of jealousy with the shadow of death coming nearer, the clairvoyant power of the author in describing the death of Anna, and the departure of Vronsky, where the railway station reminds himwith intrusive agony of the contrast between his first and last viewof the woman he loved. No one but Tolstoi would ever have given histragic character a toothache at that particular time; but thetoothache, added to the heartache, gives the last touch of reality. Noreader has ever forgotten Vronsky, as he stands for the last time bythe train, his heart torn by the vulture of Memory, and his facetwisted by the steady pain in his tooth. 

Every character in the book, major and minor, is a living human being. Stepan, with his healthy, pampered body, and his inane smile atDolly's reproachful face; Dolly, absolutely commonplace and absolutelyreal; Yashvin, the typical officer; the English trainer, Cord; Betsy, always cheerful, always heartless, probably the worst character in thewhole book, Satan's own spawn; Karenin himself, not ridiculous, likean English Restoration husband, but with an overwhelming power ofcreating ennui, in which he lives and moves and has his being. 

From the first day of his acquaintance with Anna, Vronsky steadilyrises, and Anna steadily falls. This is in accordance with thefundamental, inexorable moral law. Vronsky, a handsome man with nopurpose in life, who has had immoral relations with a large variety ofwomen, now falls for the first time really in love, and his love forone woman strengthens his mind and heart, gives him an object in life, and concentrates the hitherto scattered energies of his soul. Hisdevelopment as a man, his rise in dignity and force of character, isone of the notable features of the whole book. When we first see him, he is colourless, a mere fashionable type; he constantly becomes moreinteresting, and when we last see him, he has not only our profoundsympathy, but our cordial respect. He was a figure in a uniform, andhas become a man. Devotion to one woman has raised him far abovetrivialities. 

The woman pays for all this. Never again, not even in the transportsof passion, will she be so happy as when we first see her on thatbright winter day. She grows in intelligence by the fruit of the tree, and sinks in moral worth and in peace of mind. Never, since the timeof Helen, has there been a woman in literature of more physical charm. Tolstoi, whose understanding of the body is almost supernatural, hascreated in Anna a woman, quite ordinary from the mental and spiritualpoint of view, but who leaves on every reader an indelible vision ofsurpassing loveliness. One is not surprised at Vronsky's instant andtotal surrender. 

As a study of sin, the moral force of the story is tremendous. At theend, the words of Paul come irresistibly into the mind. To be carnallyminded is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 

One can understand Tolstoi's enthusiasm for the Gospel in his lateryears, and also the prodigious influence of his parables andevangelistic narratives, by remembering that the Russian mind, which, as Gogol said, is more capable than any other of receiving theChristian religion, had been starved for centuries. The OrthodoxChurch of Russia seems to have been and to be as remote from the lifeof the people as the political bureaucracy. The hungry sheep looked upand were not fed. The Christian religion is the dominating force inthe works of Gogol, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. How eager the Russianpeople are for the simple Gospel, and with what amazing joy they nowreceive it, remind one of the Apostolic age. Accurate testimony tothis fact has lately been given by a dispassionate German observer:--

"In the second half of the nineteenth century the Bible followed inthe track of the knowledge of reading and writing in the Russianvillage. It worked, and works, far more powerfully than all theNihilists, and if the Holy Synod wishes to be consistent in its policyof spiritual enslavement, it must begin by checking the distributionof the Bible. The origin of the 'Stunde, ' from the prayer hour of theGerman Menonites and other evangelical colonist meetings, is wellknown. The religious sense of the Russian, brooding for centuries overempty forms, combined with the equally repressed longing for spirituallife, --these quickly seized upon the power of a simple and practicalliving religious doctrine, and the 'Stundist' movement spread rapidlyover the whole south of the Empire. Wherever a Bible in the Russianlanguage is to be found in the village, there a circle rapidly formsaround its learned owner; he is listened to eagerly, and the Word hasits effect. . . 

"Pashkov, a colonel of the Guards, who died in Paris at the beginningof 1902, started in the 'eighties' a movement in St. Petersburg, whichwas essentially evangelical, with a methodistical tinge, and whichsoon seized upon all the strata of the population in the capital. Substantially it was a religious revival from the dry-as-dust Greekchurch similar to that which in the sixteenth century turned againstthe Romish church in Germany and in Switzerland. The Gospel was toPashkov himself new, good tidings, and as such he carried it into thedistinguished circles which he assembled at his palace on the Neva, and as such he brought it amongst the crowds of cabmen, labourers, laundresses, etc. , whom he called from the streets to hear the news. Pashkov's name was known by the last crossing-sweeper, and manythousands blessed him, some because they had been moved by thereligious spirit which glowed in him, others because they knew of themany charitable institutions which he had founded with his own meansand with the help of rich men and women friends. I myself shall neverforget the few hours which I spent in conversation with this man, simple in spirit as in education, but so rich in religious feeling andin true humility. To me he could offer nothing new, for all that tohim was new I, the son of Lutheran parents, had known from mychildhood days. But what was new to me was the phenomenon of a man whohad belonged for fifty years to a Christian Church and had only nowdiscovered as something new what is familiar to every member of anevangelical community as the sum and substance of Christian teaching. To him the Gospel itself was something new, a revelation. 

"This has been the case of many thousands in the Russian Empire whenthey opened the Bible for the first time. The spark flew from villageto village and took fire, because the people were thirsting for aspiritual, religious life, because it brought comfort in theirmaterial misery, and food for their minds. Holy Vladimir, with hisByzantine priests, brought no living Christianity into the land, andthe common Russian had not been brought into contact with it duringthe nine hundred years which have elapsed since. Wherever itpenetrates to-day with the Bible, there its effect is apparent. It issuch as the best Government could not accomplish by worldly meansalone. But it is diametrically opposed to the State Church; it leadsto secession from orthodoxy, and the State has entered upon a crusadeagainst it. "*

*"Russia of To-day, " by Baron E. Von der Bruggen. Translated by M. Sandwith, London, 1904. Pages 165-167. 

In "The Power of Darkness, "Ivan Ilyich, " and the "Kreuzer Sonata. "Tolstoi has shown the way of Death. In "Resurrection" he has shown theway of Life. The most sensational of all his books is the "KreuzerSonata;" it was generally misunderstood, and from that time some ofhis friends walked no more with him. By a curious freak of the powersof this world, it was for a time taboo in the United States, and itspassage by post was forbidden; then the matter was taken to thecourts, and a certain upright judge declared that so far from the bookbeing vicious, it condemned vice and immorality on every page. He notonly removed the ban, but recommended its wider circulation. Thecircumstances that gave rise to its composition are described in anexceedingly interesting article in the New York "Sun" for 10 October1909, "A Visit to Count Leo Tolstoi in 1887, " by Madame Nadine Helbig. The whole article should be read for the charming picture it gives ofthe patriarchal happiness at Yasnaya Polyana, and while she sawclearly the real comfort enjoyed by Tolstoi, which aroused the fiercewrath of Merezhkovski, she proved also how much good was accomplishedby the old novelist in the course of a single average day. 

"Never shall I forget the evening when the young Polish violinist, whom I have already mentioned, asked me to play with him Beethoven'ssonata for piano and violin, dedicated to Kreuzer, his favouritepiece, which he had long been unable to play for want of a good pianoplayer. 

"Tolstoi listened with growing attention. He had the first movementplayed again, and after the last note of the sonata he went outquietly without saying, as usual, good night to his family and guests. 

"That night was created the 'Kreuzer Sonata' in all its wild force. Shortly afterward he sent me in Rome the manuscript of it. Tolstoi wasthe best listener whom I have ever had the luck to play to. He forgothimself and his surroundings. His expression changed with the music. Tears ran down his cheeks at some beautiful adagio, and he would say, 'Tania, just give me a fresh handkerchief; I must have got a coldto-day. ' I had to play generally Beethoven and Schumann to him. He didnot approve of Bach, and on the other hand you could make him ravingmad with Liszt, and still more with Wagner. "

Many hundreds of amateur players have struggled through the music ofthe "Kreuzer Sonata, " trying vainly to see in it what Tolstoi declaredit means. Of course the significance attached to it by Tolstoi existedonly in his vivid imagination, Beethoven being the healthiest of allgreat composers. If the novelist had really wished to describe sensualmusic, he would have made a much more felicitous choice of "Tristanund Isolde. "

Although his own married life was until the last years happy as mancould wish, Tolstoi introduced into the "Kreuzer Sonata" passages fromhis own existence. When Posdnichev is engaged, he gives his fianceehis memoirs, containing a truthful account of his various liaisons. She is in utter despair, and for a time thinks of breaking off theengagement. All this was literally true of the author himself. When aboy, the hero was led to a house of ill-fame by a friend of hisbrother, "a very gay student, one of those who are called goodfellows. " This reminds us of a precisely similar attempt described byTolstoi in "Youth. " Furthermore, Posdnichev's self-righteousness inthe fact that although he had been dissipated, he determined to befaithful to his wife, was literally and psychologically true inTolstoi's own life. 

The "Kreuzer Sonata" shows no diminution of Tolstoi's realistic power:the opening scenes on the train, the analysis of the hero's mindduring the early years of his married life, and especially the murder, all betray the familiar power of simplicity and fidelity to detail. The passage of the blade through the corset and then into somethingsoft has that sensual realism so characteristic of all Tolstoi'sdescriptions of bodily sensations. The book is a work of art, andcontains many reflections and bitter accusations against society thatare founded on the truth. 

The moral significance of the story is perfectly clear--that men whoare constantly immoral before marriage need not expect happiness inmarried life. It is a great pity that Tolstoi did not let the powerfullittle novel speak for itself, and that he allowed himself to begoaded into an explanatory and defensive commentary by the thousandsof enquiring letters from foolish readers. Much of the commentarycontains sound advice, but it leads off into that reductio ad absurdumso characteristic of Russian thought. 

Many of the tracts and parables that Tolstoi wrote are true works ofart, with a Biblical directness and simplicity of style. Their effectoutside of Russia is caused fully as much by their literary style asby their teaching. I remember an undergraduate, who, reading "WhereLove is there God is Also, " said that he was tremendously excited whenthe old shoemaker lost his spectacles, and had no peace of mind tillhe found them again. This is unconscious testimony to Tolstoi's powerof making trivial events seem real. 

The long novel, "Resurrection, " is, as Mr. Maude, the Englishtranslator, shows, not merely a story, but a general summary of allthe final conclusions about life reached by its author. The Englishvolume actually has an "Index to Social Questions, Types, " etc. , giving the pages where the author's views on all such topics areexpressed in the book. Apart from the great transformation wrought inthe character of the hero, which is the motive of the work, there arecountless passages which show the genius of the author, still burningbrightly in his old age. The difference between the Easter kiss andthe kiss of lust is one of the most powerful instances of analysis, and may be taken as a symbol of the whole work. And the depiction ofthe sportsman's feelings when he brings down a wounded bird, halfshame and half rage, will startle and impress every man who hascarried a gun. 

"Resurrection" teaches directly what Tolstoi always taught--what hetaught less directly, but with even greater art, in "Anna Karenina. "

In reading this work of his old age, we cannot help thinking of whatCarlyle said of the octogenarian Goethe: "See how in that great mind, beaming in mildest mellow splendour, beaming, if also trembling, likea great sun on the verge of the horizon, near now to its longfarewell, all these things were illuminated and illustrated. "

VI

GORKI

Gorki went up like the sky-rocket, and seems to have had thetraditional descent. From 1900 to 1906 everybody was talking abouthim; since 1906 one scarcely hears mention of his name. He wasridiculously overpraised, but he ought not to be forgotten. As anartist, he will not bear a moment's comparison with Andreev; but someof his short stories and his play, "The Night Asylum, " have thegenuine Russian note of reality, and a rude strength much too greatfor its owner's control. He has never written a successful long novel, and his plays have no coherence; but, after all, the man has the realthing--vitality. 

Just at the moment when Chekhov appeared to stand at the head of youngRussian writers, Gorki appeared, and his fame swept from one end ofthe world to the other. In Russia, his public was second in numbersonly to Tolstoi's; Kuprin and Andreev both dedicated books to him; inGermany, France, England, and America, he became literally a householdword. It is probable that there were a thousand foreigners who knewhis name, to one who had heard of Chekhov. Compared with Chekhov, hehad more matter and less art. 

His true name, which comparatively few have ever heard, is AlexeiMaximovich Peshkov. "This name, " said M. De Vogue, "will remainforever buried in the parish register. " He chose to write under thename Gorki, which means "bitter, " a happy appellation for this modernIshmaelite. He was born in 1869, at Nizhni Novgorod, in a dyer's shop. He lost both father and mother when he was a child, but his realmother was the river Volga, on whose banks he was born, and on whosebroad breast he has found the only repose he understands. The littleboy was apprenticed to a shoemaker, but ran away, as he did from asubsequent employer. By a curious irony of fate, this atheist learnedto read out of a prayer-book, and this iconoclast was for a timeengaged in the manufacture of ikons, holy images. As the aristocratTurgenev learned Russian from a house servant, Gorki obtained his lovefor literature from a cook. This happened on a steamer on the greatriver, where Gorki was employed as an assistant in the galley. Thecook was a rough giant, who spent all his spare moments reading, having an old trunk full of books. It was a miscellaneous assortment, containing Lives of Saints, stories by Dumas pere, and fortunatelysome works by Gogol. This literature gave him a thirst for learning, and when he was sixteen he went to Kazan, a town on the Volga, whereTolstoi had studied at the University. He had the notion thatliterature and learning were there distributed free to the famished, like bread in times of famine. He was quickly undeceived; and insteadof receiving intellectual food, he was forced to work in a baker'sshop, for a miserable pittance. These were the darkest days of hislife, and in one of his most powerful stories he has reflected thewretched daily and nightly toil in a bakery. 

Then he went on the road, and became a tramp, doing all kinds of oddjobs, from peddling to hard manual labour on wharves and railways. Atthe age of nineteen, weary of life, he shot himself, but recovered. Then he followed the Volga to the Black Sea, unconsciously collectingthe material that in a very few years he was to give to the world. In1892, when twenty-three years old, he succeeded in getting some of hissketches printed in newspapers. The next year he had the good fortuneto meet at Nizhni Novgorod the famous Russian author Korolenko. Korolenko was greatly impressed by the young vagabond, believed in hispowers, and gave timely and valuable help. With the older man'sinfluence, Gorki succeeded in obtaining the entree to the St. Petersburg magazines; and while the Russian critics were at a loss howto regard the new genius, the public went wild. He visited the capitalin 1899, and there was intense curiosity to see and to hear him. Agreat hall was engaged, and when he mounted the platform to read, theyoung people in the audience went into a frenzy. 

Gorki has been repeatedly imprisoned for his revolutionary ideas andefforts; in 1906, at the very apex of his fame, he came to the UnitedStates to collect funds for the cause. The whole country was eager toreceive and to give, and his advent in New York was a notableoccasion. He insisted that he came, not as an anarchist, but as asocialist, that his mission in the world was not to destroy, but tofulfil. At first, he was full of enthusiasm about America and NewYork, and American writers; he was tremendously impressed by thesky-scrapers, by the intense activity of the people, and by the HudsonRiver, which, as he regarded from his hotel windows, reminded him ofthe Volga. He said America would be the first nation to give mankind atrue government, and that its citizens were the incarnation ofprogress. He declared that Mark Twain was even more popular in Russiathan in America, that it was "a part of the national Russianeducation" to read him, and that he himself had read every translationof his books. 

Incidentally he spoke of his favourite world-authors. Shakespeare heput first of all, saying he was "staggering, " an opinion quitedifferent from that of Tolstoi. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were thephilosophers he liked the best. Byron and Heine he read in preferenceto most other poets, for there is an invincible strain of lyricromanticism in this Russian tramp, as there was in his master Gogol. Flaubert, Goethe, and Dumas pere he read with delight. 

A literary dinner was arranged in honour of the distinguished guest, and inasmuch as all present were ignorant of the next day'scatastrophe, the account given of this love-feast in the New York"Sun" is worth quoting. "Mark Twain and Gorki recognised each otherbefore they were introduced, but neither being able to understand thelanguage of the other, they simply grasped hands and held on more thana minute. . . . Gorki said he had read Mark Twain's stories when hewas a boy, and that he had gotten much delight from them. Markdeclared that he also had been a reader and admirer of Gorki. Thesmile of Gorki was broader and not so dry as the smile of Mark, butboth smiles were distinctly those of fellow-humorists who understoodeach other. Gorki made a little speech which was translated by aRussian who knew English. Gorki said he was glad to meet Mark Twain, 'world famous and in Russia the best known of American writers, a manof tremendous force and convictions, who, when he hit, hit hard. Ihave come to America to get acquainted with the American people andask their aid for my suffering countrymen who are fighting forliberty. The despotism must be overthrown now, and what is needed ismoney, money, money!' Mark said he was glad to meet Gorki, adding, 'Ifwe can help to create the Russian republic, let us start in right awayand do it. The fighting may have to be postponed awhile, but meanwhilewe can keep our hearts on the matter and we can assist the Russians inbeing free. '"

A committee was formed to raise funds, and then came the explosion, striking evidence of the enormous difference between the American andthe Continental point of view in morals. With characteristic Russianimpracticability, Gorki had come to America with a woman whom heintroduced as his wife; but it appeared that his legal wife was inRussia, and that his attractive and accomplished companion wassomebody else. This fact, which honestly seemed to Gorki an incidentof no importance, took on a prodigious shape. This single mistake costthe Russian revolutionary cause an enormous sum of money, and may havealtered history. Gorki was expelled from his hotel, and refusedadmittance to others; unkindest cut of all, Mark Twain, whose absenceof religious belief had made Gorki believe him to be altogetheremancipated from prejudices, positively refused to have anything moreto do with him. As Gorki had said, "When Mark Twain hit, he hit hard. "Turn whither he would, every door was slammed in his face. I do notthink he has ever recovered from the blank amazement caused by theAmerican change of front. His golden opportunity was gone, and hedeparted for Italy, shaking the dust of America off his feet, androundly cursing the nation that he had just declared to be theincarnation of progress. The affair unquestionably has its ludicrousside, but it was a terrible blow to the revolutionists. Many of thembelieved that the trap was sprung by the government party. 

Gorki's full-length novels are far from successful works of art. Theyhave all the incoherence and slipshod workmanship of Dostoevski, without the latter's glow of brotherly love. His first real novel, "Foma Gordeev, " an epic of the Volga, has many beautiful descriptivepassages, really lyric and idyllic in tone, mingled with an incredibleamount of drivel. The character who plays the title-role is a typicalRussian windbag, irresolute and incapable, like so many Russianheroes; but whether drunk or sober, he is destitute of charm. He isboth dreary and dirty. The opening chapters are written with greatspirit, and the reader is full of happy expectation. One goes fartherand fares worse. After the first hundred pages, the book is aprolonged anti-climax, desperately dull. Altogether the best passagein the story is the description of the river in spring, impressive notmerely for its beauty and accuracy of language, but because the Volgais interpreted as a symbol of the spirit of the Russian people, withvast but unawakened possibilities. 

"Between them, in a magnificent sweep, flowed the broad-breastedVolga; triumphantly, without haste, flow her waters, conscious oftheir unconquerable power; the hill-shore was reflected in them like adark shadow, but on the left side she was adorned with gold andemerald velvet by the sandy borders of the reefs, and the broadmeadows. Now here, now there, on the hills, and in the meadows, appeared villages, the sun sparkled in the window-panes of thecottages, and upon the roofs of yellow straw; the crosses of thechurches gleamed through the foliage of the trees, the gray wings ofthe mills rotated lazily through the air, the smoke from the chimneysof a factory curled skyward in thick black wreaths. . . . On all sideswas the gleaming water, on all sides were space and freedom, cheerfully green meadows, and graciously clear blue sky; in the quietmotion of the water, restrained power could be felt; in the heavenabove it shone the beautiful sun, the air was saturated with thefragrance of evergreen trees, and the fresh scent of foliage. Theshores advanced in greeting, soothing the eye and the soul with theirbeauty, and new pictures were constantly unfolded upon them. 

"On everything round about rested the stamp of a certain sluggishness:everything--nature and people--lived awkwardly, lazily; but in thislaziness there was a certain peculiar grace, and it would seem thatbehind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerableforce, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created foritself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness inthis half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse ashade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation ofsomething new and more active was audible even in the call of thecuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over the river. "*

*Isabel Hapgood's translation. 

The novel Varenka Olessova is a tedious book of no importance. Thehero is, of course, the eternal Russian type, a man of good educationand no backbone: he lacks resolution, energy, will-power, and willnever accomplish anything. He has not even force enough to continuehis studies. Contrasted with him is the girl Varenka, a simple childof nature, who prefers silly romances to Russian novels, and whosevirgin naivete is a constant puzzle to the conceited ass who does notknow whether he is in love with her or not. Indeed, he asks himself ifhe is capable of love for any one. The only interesting pages in thisstupid story are concerned with a discussion on reading, betweenVarenka and the young man, where her denunciation of Russian fictionis, of course, meant to proclaim its true superiority. In response tothe question whether she reads Russian authors, the girl answers withconviction: "Oh, yes! But I don't like them! They are so tiresome, sotiresome! They always write about what I know already myself, and knowjust as well as they do. They can't create anything interesting; withthem almost everything is true. . . . Now with the French, theirheroes are real heroes, they talk and act unlike men in actual life. They are always brave, amorous, vivacious, while our heroes are simplelittle men, without any warm feelings, without any beauty, pitiable, just like ordinary men in real life. . . In Russian books, one cannotunderstand at all why the men continue to live. What's the use ofwriting books if the author has nothing remarkable to say?"

The long novel "Mother" is a good picture of life among theworking-people in a Russian factory, that is, life as seen throughGorki's eyes; all cheerfulness and laughter are, of course, absent, and we have presented a dull monotone of misery. The factory itself isthe villain of the story, and resembles some grotesque wild beast, that daily devours the blood, bone, and marrow of the throng ofvictims that enter its black jaws. The men, women, and children arerepresented as utterly brutalised by toil; in their rare moments ofleisure, they fight and beat each other unmercifully, and even thelittle children get dead drunk. Socialist and revolutionary propagandaare secretly circulated among these stupefied folk, and much of thenarrative is taken up with the difficulties of accomplishing thisdistribution; for the whole book itself is nothing but a revolutionarytract. The characters, including the pitiful Mother herself, are notvividly drawn, they are not alive, and one forgets them speedily; asfor plot, there is none, and the book closes with the brutal murder ofthe old woman. It is a tedious, inartistic novel, with none of therelief that would exist in actual life. Turgenev's poorest novel, "Virgin Soil, " which also gives us a picture of a factory, isimmensely superior from every point of view. 

But if "Mother" is a dull book, "The Spy" is impossible. It is full ofmeaningless and unutterably dreary jargon; its characters are soddenwith alcohol and bestial lusts. One abominable woman's fat bodyspreads out on an arm-chair "like sour dough. " And indeed, this novelbears about the same relation to a finished work of art that sourdough bears to a good loaf of bread. The characters are poorlyconceived, and the story is totally without movement. Not only is itvery badly written, it lacks even good material. The wretched boy, whose idiotic states of mind are described one after the other, andwhose eventual suicide is clear from the start, is a disgusting whelp, without any human interest. One longs for his death with murderousintensity, and when, on the last page, he throws himself under thetrain, the reader experiences a calm and sweet relief. 

Much of Gorki's work is like Swift's poetry, powerful not because ofits cerebration or spiritual force, but powerful only from thephysical point of view, from its capacity to disgust. It appeals tothe nose and the stomach rather than to the mind and the heart. Fromthe medicinal standpoint, it may have a certain value. Swift sent alady one of his poems, and immediately after reading it, she was takenviolently sick. Not every poet has sufficient force to produce sosudden an effect. 

One man, invariably before reading the works of a famous Frenchauthor, put on his overshoes. 

A distinguished American novelist has said that in Gorki "seems thebody without the soul of Russian fiction, and sodden with despair. Thesoul of Russian fiction is the great thing. " This is, indeed, the maindifference between his work and that of the giant Dostoevski. In thelatter's darkest scenes the spiritual flame is never extinct. 

Gorki lacks either the patient industry or else the knowledgenecessary to make a good novel. He is seen at his best in shortstories, for his power comes in flashes. In "Twenty-six Men and aGirl, " the hideous tale that gave him his reputation in America, oneis conscious of the streak of genius that he undoubtedly possesses. The helpless, impotent rage felt by the wretched men as they witnessthe debauching of a girl's body and the damnation of her soul, isclearly echoed in the reader's mind. Gorki's notes are always the mostthrilling when played below the range of the conventional instrumentof style. This is not low life, it is sub-life. 

He is, after all, a student of sensational effect; and the short storyis peculiarly adapted to his natural talent. He cannot developcharacters, he cannot manage a large group, or handle a progressiveseries of events. But in a lurid picture of the pit, in a flash-lightphotograph of an underground den, in a sudden vision of a heap ofgarbage with unspeakable creatures crawling over it, he is impressive. 

I shall never forget the performance of "The Night Asylum, Nachtasyl, "which I saw acted in Munich by one of the best stock companies in theworld, a combination of players from the "Neues" and "Kleines"theaters in Berlin. In reading this utterly formless and incoherentdrama, I had been only slightly affected; but when it was presented onthe stage by actors who intelligently incarnated every singlecharacter, the thing took on a terrible intensity. The persons areall, except old Luka, who talks like a man in one of Tolstoi's recentparables, dehumanised. The woman dying of consumption before our eyes, the Baron in an advanced stage of paresis who continually rollsimaginary cigarettes between his weak fingers, and the alcoholic actorwho has lost his memory are impossible to forget. I can hear thatactor now, as with stupid fascination he continually repeats thediagnosis a physician once made of his case: "Mein Organismus istdurch und durch mit Alcool vergiftet!"

Gorki, in spite of his zeal for the revolutionary cause, has no remedyfor the disease he calls Life. He is eaten up with rage at the worldin general, and tries to make us all share his disgust with it. But heteaches us nothing; he has little to say that we can transmute intoanything valuable. This is perhaps the reason why the world hastemporarily, at any rate, lost interest in him. He was a newsensation, he shocked us, and gave us strange thrills, after themanner of new and unexpected sensations. Gorki came up on the literaryhorizon like an evil storm, darkening the sky, casting an awful shadowacross the world's mirth and laughter, and making us shudder in thecold and gloom. . 

Gorki completely satisfied that strange but almost universal desire ofwell-fed and comfortable people to go slumming. In his books men andwomen in fortunate circumstances had their curiosity satisfied--allthe world went slumming, with no discomfort, no expense, and no fearof contagion. With no trouble at all, no personal inconvenience, welearned the worst of all possible worsts on this puzzling andinteresting planet. 

But we soon had enough of it, and our experienced and professionalguide failed to perceive the fact. He showed us more of the samething, and then some more. Such sights and sounds--authentic visionsand echoes of hell--merely repeated, began to lose their uncannyfascination. The man who excited us became a bore. For the worst thingabout Gorki is his dull monotony, and vice is even more monotonousthan virtue, perhaps because it is more common. Open the pages ofalmost any of his tales, it is always the same thing, the samecriminals, the same horrors, the same broken ejaculations and brutishrage. Gorki has shown no capacity for development, no power of varietyand complexity. His passion for mere effect has reacted unfavourablyon himself. *

*His play "Die Letzten" was put on at the "Deutsches Theater, " Berlin, 6 September 1910. The press despatch says, "The father is a policeinspector, drunkard, gambler, briber, bribe-taker, adulterer, androbber. "

Is it possible that success robbed him of something? He became apopular author in conventional environment, surrounded by books andmodern luxuries, living in the pleasant climate of Italy, with noanxiety about his meals and bed. Is it possible that wealth, comfort, independence, and leisure have extinguished his original force? Has helost something of the picturesque attitude of Gorki the pennilesstramp? He is happily still a young man, and perhaps he may yet achievethe masterpiece that ten years ago we so confidently expected from hishands. 

He is certainly not a great teacher, but he has the power to askawkward questions so characteristic of Andreev, Artsybashev, andindeed of all Russian novelists. We cannot answer him with a shrug ofthe shoulders or a sceptical smile. He shakes the foundations of ourfancied security by boldly questioning what we had come to regard asaxioms. As the late M. De Vogue remarked, when little children sit onour knee and pelt us with questions that go to the roots of ourphilosophy, we get rid of the bother of it by telling the children togo away and play; but when a Tolstoi puts such questions, we cannotget rid of him so easily. Russian novelists are a thorn in the side ofcomplacent optimism. 

And yet surely, if life is not so good, as it conceivably might be, itis not so darkly bitter as the Bitter One would have us believe. In ashort article that he wrote about one of the playgrounds of America, he betrayed his own incurable jaundice. In the New York "Independent"for 8 August 1907, Gorki published a brilliant impressionistic sketchof Coney Island, and called it "Boredom. " Gorki at Coney Island islike Dante at a country fair. Thomas Carlyle was invited out to asocial dinner-party once upon a time, and when he came home he wrotesavagely in his diary of the flippant, light-hearted conversationamong the men and women about the festive board, saying, "to methrough those thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat glaring. " What acharming guest he must have been on that particular occasion!

Gorki speaks poetically in his article of the "fantastic city all offire" that one sees at night. But as he mingles with the throng, disgust fills his lonely heart. 

"The public looks at them silently. It breathes in the moist air, andfeeds its soul with dismal ennui, which extinguishes thought as a wet, dirty cloth extinguishes the fire of a smouldering coal. "

Describing the sensations of the crowd before the tiger's cage, hesays:--

"The man runs about the cage, shoots his pistol and cracks his whip, and shouts like a madman. His shouts are intended to hide his painfuldread of the animals. The crowd regards the capers of the man, andwaits in suspense for the fatal attack. They wait; unconsciously theprimitive instinct is awakened in them. They crave fight, they want tofeel the delicious shiver produced by the sight of two bodiesintertwining, the splutter of blood and pieces of torn, steaming humanflesh flying through the cage and falling on the floor. They want tohear the roar, the cries, the shrieks of agony. . . . Then the crowdbreaks into dark pieces, and disperses over the slimy marsh ofboredom. 

". . . You long to see a drunken man with a jovial face, who wouldpush and sing and bawl, happy because he is drunk, and sincerelywishing all good people the same. . . 

"In the glittering gossamer of its fantastic buildings, tens ofthousands of grey people, like patches on the ragged clothes of abeggar, creep along with weary faces and colourless eyes. . . . 

"But the precaution has been taken to blind the people, and they drinkin the vile poison with silent rapture. The poison contaminates theirsouls. Boredom whirls about in an idle dance, expiring in the agony ofits inanition. 

"One thing alone is good in the garish city: you can drink in hatredto your soul's content, hatred sufficient to last throughout life, hatred of the power of stupidity!"

This sketch is valuable not merely because of the impression of adistinguished foreign writer of one of the sights of America, butbecause it raises in our minds an obstinate doubt of his capacity totell the truth about life in general. Suppose a person who had neverseen Coney Island should read Gorki's vivid description of it, wouldhe really know anything about Coney Island? Of course not. The crowdsat Coney Island are as different from Gorki's description of them asanything could well be. Now then, we who know the dregs of Russianlife only through Gorki's pictures, can we be certain that hisrepresentations are accurate? Are they reliable history of fact, orare they the revelations of a heart that knoweth its own bitterness?

VII

CHEKHOV

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, like Pushkin, Lermontov, Bielinski, andGarshin, died young, and although he wrote a goodly number of playsand stories which gave him a high reputation in Russia, he did notlive to enjoy international fame. This is partly owing to the natureof his work, but more perhaps to the total eclipse of othercontemporary writers by Gorki. There are signs now that his delicateand unpretentious art will outlast the sensational flare of theother's reputation. Gorki himself has generously tried to help in theperpetuation of Chekhov's name, by publishing a volume of personalreminiscences of his dead friend. 

Like Gogol and Artsybashev, Chekhov was a man of the South, being bornat Taganrog, a seaport on a gulf of the Black Sea, near the mouth ofthe river Don. The date of his birth is the 17 January 1860. Hisfather was a clever serf, who, by good business foresight, bought hisfreedom early in life. Although the father never had much educationhimself, he gave his four children every possible advantage. Antonstudied in the Greek school, in his native city, and then entered theFaculty of Medicine at the University of Moscow. "I don't wellremember why I chose the medical faculty, " he remarked later, "but Inever regretted that choice. " He took his degree, but entered upon noregular practice. For a year he worked in a hospital in a small townnear Moscow, and in 1892 he freely offered his medical services duringan epidemic of cholera. His professional experiences were of immenseservice to him in analysing the characters of various patients whom hetreated, and his scientific training he always believed helped himgreatly in the writing of his stories and plays, which are allpsychological studies. 

He knew that he had not very long to live, for before he had reallybegun his literary career signs of tuberculosis had plainly becomemanifest. He died in Germany, the 2 July 1904, and his funeral atMoscow was a national event. 

Chekhov was a fine conversationalist, and fond of society; despite theterrible gloom of his stories, he had distinct gifts as a wit, and wasa great favourite at dinner-parties and social gatherings. He jokedfreely on his death-bed. He was warm-hearted and generous, and gavemoney gladly to poor students and overworked school-teachers. Hisinnate modesty and lack of self-assertion made him very slow atpersonal advertisement, and his dislike of Tolstoi's views preventedat first an acquaintance with the old sage. Later, however, Tolstoi, being deeply interested in him, sought him out, and the two writersbecame friends. At this time many Russians believed that Chekhov wasthe legitimate heir to Tolstoi's fame. 

In 1879, while still in the University of Moscow, Chekhov began towrite short stories, of a more or less humorous nature, which werepublished in reviews. His first book appeared in 1887. Some criticssounded a note of warning, which he heeded. They said "it was too badthat such a talented young man should spend all his time making peoplelaugh. " This indirect advice, coupled with maturity of years andincipient disease, changed the writer's point of view, and his bestknown work is typically Russian in its tragic intensity. 

In Russia he enjoyed an enormous vogue. Kropotkin says that his worksran through ten to fourteen editions, and that his publications, appearing as a supplement to a weekly magazine, had a circulation oftwo hundred thousand copies in one year. Toward the end of his lifehis stories captivated Germany, and one of the Berlin journalistscried out, as the Germans have so often of Oscar Wilde, "Chekhov undkein Ende!"

Chekhov, like Gorki and Andreev, was a dramatist as well as anovelist, though his plays are only beginning to be known outside ofhis native land. They resemble the dramatic work of Gorki, Andreev, and for that matter of practically all Russian playwrights, in beingformless and having no true movement; but they contain some of hisbest Russian portraits, and some of his most subtle interpretations ofRussian national life. Russian drama does not compare for an instantwith Russian fiction: I have never read a single well-constructedRussian play except "Revizor. " Most of them are dull to a foreignreader, and leave him cold and weary. Mr. Baring, in his book"Landmarks in Russian Literature, " has an excellent chapter on theplays of Chekhov, which partially explains the difficulties anoutsider has in studying Russian drama. But this chapter, like theother parts of his book, is marred by exaggeration. He says, "Chekhov's plays are as interesting to read as the work of anyfirst-rate novelist. " And a few sentences farther in the sameparagraph, he adds, "Chekhov's plays are a thousand times moreinteresting to see on the stage than they are to read. " Any one whobelieves Mr. Baring's statement, and starts to read Chekhov's dramaswith the faith that they are as interesting as "Anna Karenina, " willbe sadly disappointed. And if on the stage they are a thousand timesmore interesting to see than "Anna Karenina" is to read, they mustindeed be thrilling. It is, however, perfectly true that a foreignercannot judge the real value of Russian plays by reading them. We oughtto hear them performed by a Russian company. That wonderful actress, Madame Komisarzhevskaya, who was lately followed to her grave by animmense concourse of weeping Russians, gave a performance of "TheCherry Garden" which stirred the whole nation. Madame Nazimova hassaid that Chekhov is her favourite writer, but that his plays couldnot possibly succeed in America, unless every part, even the minorones, could be interpreted by a brilliant actor. 

Chekhov is durch und durch echt russisch: no one but a Russian wouldever have conceived such characters, or reported such conversations. We often wonder that physical exercise and bodily recreation are soconspicuously absent from Russian books. But we should remember that aRussian conversation is one of the most violent forms of physicalexercise, as it is among the French and Italians. Although Chekhovbelongs to our day, and represents contemporary Russia, he stands inthe middle of the highway of Russian fiction, and in his method of artharks back to the great masters. He perhaps resembles Turgenev morethan any other of his predecessors, but he is only a faint echo. He islike Turgenev in the delicacy and in the aloofness of his art. He hasat times that combination of the absolutely real with the absolutelyfantastic that is so characteristic of Gogol: one of his best stories, "The Black Monk, " might have been written by the author of "The Cloak"and "The Portrait. " He is like Dostoevski in his uncompromisingdepiction of utter degradation; but he has little of Dostoevski'sglowing sympathy and heartpower. He resembles Tolstoi least of all. The two chief features of Tolstoi's work--self-revelation and moralteaching--must have been abhorrent to Chekhov, for his stories tell usalmost nothing about himself and his own opinions, and they teachnothing. His art is impersonal, and he is content with mere diagnosis. His only point of contact with Tolstoi is his grim fidelity to detail, the peculiar Russian realism common to every Russian novelist. Tolstoisaid that Chekhov resembled Guy de Maupassant. This is entirely wideof the mark. He resembles Guy de Maupassant merely in the fact that, like the Frenchman, he wrote short stories. 

Among recent writers Chekhov is at the farthest remove from his friendGorki, and most akin to Andreev. It is probable that Andreev learnedsomething from him. Unlike Turgenev, both Chekhov and Andreev studymental disease. Their best characters are abnormal; they have somefatal taint in the mind which turns this goodly frame, the earth, intoa sterile promontory; this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, into a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Neither Chekhov norAndreev have attempted to lift that black pall of despair that hangsover Russian fiction. 

Just as the austere, intellectual beauty of Greek drama forms strikingevidence of the extraordinarily high average of culture in Athenianlife, so the success of an author like Chekhov is abundant proof ofthe immense number of readers of truly cultivated taste that arescattered over Holy Russia. For Chekhov's stories are exclusivelyintellectual and subtle. They appeal only to the mind, not to thepassions nor to any love of sensation. In many of them he deliberatelyavoids climaxes and all varieties of artificial effect. He would besimply incomprehensible to the millions of Americans who delight inmusical comedy and in pseudo-historical romance. He wrote only for theelect, for those who have behind them years of culture and habits ofconsecutive thought. That such a man should have a vogue in Russiasuch as a cheap romancer enjoys in America, is in itself a significantand painful fact. 

Chekhov's position in the main line of Russian literature and hislikeness to Turgenev are both evident when we study his analysis ofthe Russian temperament. His verdict is exactly the same as that givenby Turgenev and Sienkiewicz--slave improductivite. A majority of hischief characters are Rudins. They suffer from internal injuries, caused by a diseased will. In his story called "On the Way" the heroremarks, "Nature has set in every Russian an enquiring mind, atendency to speculation, and extraordinary capacity for belief; butall these are broken into dust against our improvidence, indolence, and fantastic triviality. "*

*The citations from Chekhov are from the translations by Long. 

The novelist who wrote that sentence was a physician as well as a manof letters. It is a professional diagnosis of the national sickness ofmind, which produces sickness of heart. 

It is absurd to join in the chorus that calls Turgenev old-fashioned, when we find his words accurately, if faintly, echoed by a Russian whodied in 1904! Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and wisheshave always been the legitimate fathers of thoughts. My friend andcolleague, Mr. Mandell, the translator of "The Cherry Garden, "* saysthat the play indicates that the useless people are dying away, "andthus making room for the regenerated young generation which is full ofhope and strength to make a fruitful cherry garden of Russia for theRussian people . . . The prospects of realisation are now bright. Buthow soon will this become a practical reality? Let us hope in the nearfuture!" Yes, let us hope, as Russians hoped in 1870 and in 1900. Kropotkin says that Chekhov gave an "impressive parting word" to theold generation, and that we are now on the eve of the "new types whichalready are budding in life. " Gorki has violently protested againstthe irresolute Slav, and Artsybashev has given us in Jurii the Russianas he is (1903) and in Sanin the Russian as he ought to be. But adisease obstinately remains a disease until it is cured, and it cannotbe cured by hope or by protest. 

*Published at Yale University by the "Yale Courant. "

Chekhov was a physician and an invalid; he saw sickness without andsickness within. Small wonder that his stories deal with the unhealthyand the doomed. For just as Artsybashev's tuberculosis has made himcreate the modern Tamburlaine as a mental enjoyment of physicalactivity, so the less turbulent nature of Chekhov has made himreproduce in his creatures of the imagination his own sufferings andfears. I think he was afraid of mental as well as physical decay, forhe has studied insanity with the same assiduity as that displayed byAndreev in his nerve-wrecking story "A Dilemma. "

In "Ward No. 6, " which no one should read late at night, Chekhov hasgiven us a picture of an insane asylum, which, if the conditions theredepicted are true to life, would indicate that some parts of Russiahave not advanced one step since Gogol wrote "Revizor. " The patientsare beaten and hammered into insensibility by a brutal keeper; theylive amidst intolerable filth. The attending physician is a typicalRussian, who sees clearly the horror and abomination of the place, buthas not sufficient will-power to make a change. He is fascinated byone of the patients, with whom he talks for hours. His fondness forthis man leads his friends to believe that he is insane, and theybegin to treat him with that humouring condescension and pity whichwould be sufficient in itself to drive a man out of his mind. He isfinally invited by his younger colleague to visit the asylum toexamine a strange case; when he reaches the building, he himself isshoved into Ward No. 6, and realises that the doors are shut upon himforever. He is obliged to occupy a bed in the same filthy den where hehas so often visited the other patients, and his night-gown has aslimy smell of dried fish. In about twenty-four hours he dies, but inthose hours he goes through a hell of physical and mental torment. 

The fear of death, which to an intensely intellectual people like theRussians, is an obsession of terror, and shadows all their literature, --it appears all through Tolstoi's diary and novels, --is analysed inmany forms by Chekhov. In "Ward No. 6" Chekhov pays his respects toTolstoi's creed of self-denial, through the lips of the doctor'sfavourite madman. "A creed which teaches indifference to wealth, indifference to the conveniences of life, and contempt for sufferingis quite incomprehensible to the great majority who never knew eitherwealth or the conveniences of life, and to whom contempt for sufferingwould mean contempt for their own lives, which are made up of feelingsof hunger, cold, loss, insult, and a Hamlet-like terror of death. Alllife lies in these feelings, and life may be hated or wearied of, butnever despised. Yes, I repeat it, the teachings of the Stoics cannever have a future; from the beginning of time, life has consisted insensibility to pain and response to irritation. "

No better indictment has ever been made against those to whomself-denial and renunciation are merely a luxurious attitude of themind. 

Chekhov's sympathy with Imagination and his hatred for commonplacefolk who stupidly try to repress its manifestations are shown againand again in his tales. He loves especially the imagination ofchildren; and he shows them as infinitely wiser than their practicalparents. In the short sketch "An Event" the children are wild withdelight over the advent of three kittens, and cannot understand theirfather's disgust for the little beasts, and his cruel indifference totheir welfare. The cat is their mother, that they know; but who is thefather? The kittens must have a father, so the children drag out thewooden rocking-horse, and place him beside his wife and offspring. 

In the story "At Home" the father's bewilderment at the creativeimagination and the curious caprices of his little boy's mind istenderly and beautifully described. The father knows he is notbringing him up wisely, but is utterly at a loss how to go at theproblem, having none of the intuitive sympathy of a woman. The boy isbusy with his pencil, and represents sounds by shapes, letters bycolours. For example, "the sound of an orchestra he drew as a round, smoky spot; whistling as a spiral thread. " In making letters, healways painted L yellow, M red, and A black. He draws a picture of ahouse with a soldier standing in front of it. The father rebukes himfor bad perspective, and tells him that the soldier in his picture istaller than the house. But the boy replies, "If you drew the soldiersmaller, you wouldn't be able to see his eyes. "

One of Chekhov's favourite pastimes was gardening. This, perhaps, accounts for his location of the scene in his comedy "The CherryGarden, " where a business-like man, who had once been a serf, justlike the dramatist's own father, has prospered sufficiently to buy theorchard from the improvident and highly educated owners; and for allthe details about fruit-gardening given in the powerful story "TheBlack Monk. " This story infallibly reminds one of Gogol. A man hasrepeatedly a vision of a black monk, who visits him through the air, with whom he carries on long conversations, and who inspires him withgreat thoughts and ideals. His wife and friends of course think he iscrazy, and instead of allowing him to continue his intercourse withthe familiar spirit, they persuade him he is ill, and make him takemedicine. The result is wholesale tragedy. His life is ruined, hiswife is separated from him; at last he dies. The idea seems to be thathe should not have been disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Imagination and inspiration are necessary to life; they are whatseparate man from the beasts that perish. The monk asks him, "How doyou know that the men of genius whom all the world trusts have notalso seen visions?"

Chekhov is eternally at war with the practical, with thenarrow-minded, with the commonplace. Where there is no vision, thepeople perish. 

Professor Bruckner has well said that Chekhov was by profession aphysician, but an artist by the grace of God. He was indeed anexquisite artist, and if his place in Russian literature is not large, it seems permanent. He does not rank among the greatest. He lacks thetremendous force of Tolstoi, the flawless perfection of Turgenev, andthe mighty world-embracing sympathy of Great-heart Dostoevski. But heis a faithful interpreter of Russian life, and although his art wasobjective, one cannot help feeling the essential goodness of the manbehind his work, and loving him for it. 

VIII

ARTSYBASHEV

Not the greatest, but the most sensational, novel published in Russiaduring the last five years is "Sanin, " by Artsybashev. It is notsensational in the incidents, though two men commit suicide, and twogirls are ruined; it is sensational in its ideas. To make a sensationin contemporary Russian literature is an achievement, where pathologyis now rampant. But Artsybashev accomplished it, and his novel made atremendous noise, the echoes of which quickly were heard all overcurious and eclectic Germany, and have even stirred Paris. Since thefailure of the Revolution, there has been a marked revolt in Russiaagainst three great ideas that have at different times dominatedRussian literature: the quiet pessimism of Turgenev, the Christiannon-resistance religion of Tolstoi, and the familiar Russian type ofwill-less philosophy. Even before the Revolution Gorki had expressedthe spirit of revolt; but his position, extreme as it appears to anAnglo-Saxon, has been left far behind by Artsybashev, who, with thegenuine Russian love of the reductio ad absurdum, has reached thefarthest limits of moral anarchy in the creation of his hero Sanin. 

In an admirable article in the "Westminster Gazette, " for 14 May 1910, by the accomplished scholar and critic, Mr. R. C. Long, called "TheLiterature of Self-assertion, " we obtain a strong smell of thehell-broth now boiling in Russian literature. "In the Spring of 1909, an exhibition was held in the Russian ministry of the Interior ofspecimen copies of all books and brochures issued in 1908, to thenumber of 70, 841, 000. How many different books were exhibited thewriter does not know, but he lately came upon an essay by the criticIsmailoff, in which it was said that there were on exhibition athousand different sensational novels, classed as 'Nat Pinkerton andSherlock Holmes literature, ' with such expressive titles as 'TheHanged, ' 'The Chokers, ' 'The Corpse Disinterred, ' and 'TheExpropriators. ' Ismailoff comments on this as sign and portent. Russiaalways had her literature of adventure, and Russian novels of mannersand of psychology became known to Westerners merely because they werethe best, and by no means because they were the only books thatappeared. The popular taste was formerly met with naive and outrageous'lubotchniya'-books. The new craze for 'Nat Pinkerton and SherlockHolmes' stories is something quite different. It foreshadows acomplete change in the psychosis of the Russian reader, the decay ofthe literature of passivity, and the rise of a new literature ofaction and physical revolt. The literature of passivity reached itsheight with the (sic) Chekhov. The best representative of thetransition from Chekhov to the new literature of self-assertion isMaxim Gorki's friend, Leonid Andreev. . . . 

"These have got clear away from the humble, ineffectual individual, 'crushed by life. ' Full of learned philosophies from Max Stirner andNietzsche, they preach, in Stirner's words, 'the absolute independenceof the individual, master of himself, and of all things. ' 'The deathof "Everyday-ism, "' the 'resurrection of myth, ' 'orgiasm, ' 'MysticalAnarchism, ' and 'universalist individualism' are some of theshibboleths of these new writers, who are mostly very young, veryclever, and profoundly convinced that they are even cleverer than theyare. 

"Anarchism, posing as self-assertion, is the note in most recentRussian literature, as, indeed, it is in Russian life. "

The most powerful among this school of writers, and the only one whocan perhaps be called a man of genius, is Michael Artsybashev. He camehonestly by his hot, impulsive temperament, being, like Gogol, a manof the South. He was born in 1878. He says of himself: "I am Tartar inname and in origin, but not a pure-blooded one. In my veins runsRussian, French, Georgian, and Polish blood. I am glad to name as oneof my ancestors the famous Pole, Kosciusko, who was my maternalgreat-grandfather. My father, a retired officer, was a landedproprietor with very little income. I was only three years old when mymother died. As a legacy, she bequeathed to me tuberculosis. . . . Iam now living in the Crimea and trying to get well, but with littlefaith in my recovery. "

"Sanin" appeared at the psychological moment, late in the year 1907. The Revolution was a failure, and it being impossible to fight thegovernment or to obtain political liberty, people in Russia of allclasses were ready for a revolt against moral law, the religion ofself-denial, and all the conventions established by society, education, and the church. At this moment of general desperation andsmouldering rage, appeared a work written with great power and greatart, deifying the natural instincts of man, incarnating the spirit ofliberty in a hero who despises all so-called morality as absurdtyranny. It was a bold attempt to marshal the animal instincts ofhumanity, terrifically strong as they are even in the best citizens, against every moral and prudential restraint. The effect of the bookwill probably not last very long, --already it has been called anephemeral sensation, --but it was immediate and tremendous. It wasespecially powerful among university students and high school boys andgirls--the "Sanin-morals" of undergraduates were alluded to in aspeech in the Duma. 

But although the book was published at the psychological moment, itwas written with no reference to any post-revolution spirit. ForArtsybashev composed his novel in 1903, when he was twenty-four yearsold. He tried in vain to induce publishers to print it, andfortunately for him, was obliged to wait until 1907, when the timehappened to be exactly ripe. 

The novel has been allowed to circulate in Russia, because it showsabsolutely no sympathy with the Revolution or with the spirit ofpolitical liberty. Men who waste their time in the discussion ofpolitical rights or in the endeavour to obtain them are ridiculed bySanin. The summum bonum is personal, individual happiness, thecomplete gratification of desire. Thus, those who are working for theenfranchisement of the Russian people, for relief from thebureaucracy, and for more political independence, not only have nosympathy with the book--they hate it, because it treats their effortswith contempt. Some of them have gone so far as to express the beliefthat the author is in a conspiracy with the government to bringridicule on their cause, and to defeat their ever living hopes ofbetter days. However this may be, Sanin is not in the least apolitically revolutionary book, and critics of that school see no realtalent or literary power in its pages. 

But, sinister and damnable as its tendency is, the novel is writtenwith extraordinary skill, and Artsybashev is a man to be reckonedwith. The style has that simplicity and directness so characteristicof Russian realism, and the characters are by no means sign-posts ofvarious opinions; they are living and breathing human beings. I amsorry that such a book as Sanin has ever been written; but it cannotbe black-balled from the republic of letters. 

It is possible that it is a florescence not merely of the author'sgenius, but of his sickness. The glorification of Sanin's bodilystrength, of Karsavina's female voluptuousness, and the loud call tophysical joy which rings through the work may be an emanation oftuberculosis as well as that of healthy mental conviction. Shut outfrom active happiness, Artsybashev may have taken this method ofvicarious delight. 

The bitterness of his own enforced resignation of active happiness andthe terror inspired by his own disease are incarnated in a decidedlyinteresting character, Semionov, who, although still able to walkabout when we first see him, is dying of consumption. He has none ofthe hopefulness and cheerfulness so often symptomatic of that malady;he is peevish, irritable, and at times enraged by contact with hishealthy friends. After a frightful attack of coughing, he says: "Ioften think that soon I shall be lying in complete darkness. Youunderstand, with my nose fallen in and my limbs decayed. And above me, where you are on the earth, everything will go on, exactly as it doesnow, while I still am permitted to see it. You will be living then, you will look at this very moon, you will breathe, you will pass overmy grave; perhaps you will stop there a moment and despatch somenecessity. And I shall lie and become rotten. "

His death at the hospital in the night, with his friends looking on, is powerfully and minutely described. The fat, stupid priest goesthrough the last ceremonies, and is dully amazed at the contempt hereceives from Sanin. 

Sanin's beautiful sister Lyda is ruined by a worthless but entirelyconventional officer. Her remorse on finding that she is with child isperfectly natural, but is ridiculed by her brother, who saves her fromsuicide. He is not in the least ashamed of her conduct, and tells hershe has no reason for loss of pride; indeed, he does not think ofblaming the officer. He is ready to commit incest with his sister, whose physical charm appeals to him; but she is not sufficientlyemancipated for that, so he advises her to get married with a friendwho loves her, before the child is born. This is finallysatisfactorily arranged. Later, Sanin, not because he disapproves ofthe libertine officer's affair with his sister, but because he regardsthe officer as a blockhead, treats him with scant courtesy; and theofficer, hidebound by convention, sees no way out but a challenge to aduel. The scene when the two brother officers bring the formalchallenge to Sanin is the only scene in the novel marked by. Genuinehumour, and is also the only scene where we are in complete sympathywith the hero. One of the delegates has all the stiff courtesy andridiculous formality which he regards as entirely consistent with hiserrand; the other is a big, blundering fellow, who has previouslyannounced himself as a disciple of Tolstoi. To Sanin's philosophy oflife, duelling is as absurd as religion, morality, or any other stupidconventionality; and his cold, ruthless logic makes short work of thepolite phrases of the two ambassadors. Both are amazed at his positiverefusal to fight, and hardly know which way to turn; the disciple ofTolstoi splutters with rage because Sanin shows up his inconsistencywith his creed; both try to treat him like an outcast, but make verylittle progress. Sanin informs them that he will not fight a duel, because he does not wish to take the officer's life, and because hedoes not care to risk his own; but that if the officer attempts anyphysical attack upon him in the street, he will thrash him on thespot. Enraged and bewildered by Sanin's unconventional method ofdealing with the difficulty, the discomfited emissaries withdraw. Later, the challenger meets Sanin in the street, and goaded to frenzyby his calm and contemptuous stare, strikes him with a whip; heimmediately receives in the face a terrible blow from his adversary'sfist, delivered with all his colossal strength. A friend carries himto his lodgings, and there he commits suicide. From the conventionalpoint of view, this was the only course left to him. 

In direct contrast to most Russian novels, the man here is endowedwith limitless power of will, and the women characterised by weakness. The four women in the story, Sanin's sister Lyda, the prettyschool-teacher Karsavina, Jurii's sister, engaged to a youngscientist, who during the engagement cordially invites her brother toaccompany him to a house of ill-fame, and the mother of Sanin, are allthoroughly conventional, and are meant to be. They are living underwhat Sanin regards as the tyranny of social convention. He treats hismother's shocked amazement with brutal scorn; he ridicules Lyda'sshame at being enceinte; he seduces Karsavina, at the very time whenshe is in love with Jurii, and reasons with cold patience against hersubsequent remorse. It is clear that Artsybashev believes that forsome time to come women will not accept the gospel of uncompromisingegoism. 

The most interesting character in the book, apart from the hero, isJurii, who might easily have been a protagonist in one of Turgenev'stragedies. He is the typical Russian, the highly educated young manwith a diseased will. He is characterised by that indecision which hasbeen the bane of so many Russians. All through the book he seeks invain for some philosophy of life, some guiding principle. He hasabandoned faith in religion, his former enthusiasm for politicalfreedom has cooled, but he simply cannot live without some leadingIdea. He is an acute sufferer from that mental sickness diagnosed bynearly all writers of Russia. He envies and at the same time despisesSanin for his cheerful energy. Finally, unable to escape from theperplexities of his own thinking, he commits suicide. His friendsstand about his grave at the funeral, and one of them foolishly asksSanin to make some appropriate remarks. Sanin, who always says exactlywhat he thinks, and abhors all forms of hypocrisy, delivers thefollowing funeral oration--heartily endorsed by the reader--in onesentence: "The world has now one blockhead the less. " Thehorror-stricken consternation of his friends fills Sanin with suchscorn that he leaves the town, and we last see him in an open field inthe country, giving a glad shout of recognition to the dawn. 

The motto that Artsybashev has placed at the beginning of the novel istaken from Ecclesiastes vii. 29: "God hath made man upright: but theyhave sought out many inventions. " This same text was used by Kiplingas the title of one of his books, but used naturally in a quitedifferent way. The Devil has here cited Scripture for his purpose. Thehero of the novel is an absolutely sincere, frank, and courageousAdvocatus Diabou. He is invariably calm and collected; he never loseshis temper in an argument; he questions the most fundamental beliefsand principles with remorseless logic. Two of his friends are arguingabout Christianity; "at least, " says one, "you will not deny that itsinfluence has been good. " "I don't deny that, " says the other. ThenSanin remarks quietly, "But I deny it!" and he adds, with a calmnessprovoking to the two disputants, "Christianity has played anabominable role in history, and the name of Jesus Christ will for sometime yet oppress humanity like a curse. "

Sanin insists that it is not necessary to have any theory of life, orto be guided by any principle; that God may exist or He may not; Hedoes not at any rate bother about us. The real rational life of manshould be exactly like a bird. He should be controlled wholly by thedesire of the moment. The bird wishes to alight on a branch, and so healights; then he wishes to fly, so he flies. That is rational, declares Sanin; that is the way men and women should live, withoutprinciples, without plans, and without regrets. Drunkenness andadultery are nothing to be ashamed of, nor in any sense to be calleddegrading. Nothing that gives pleasure can ever be degrading. The loveof strong drink and the lust for woman are not sins; in fact, there isno such thing as sin. These passions are manly and natural, and whatis natural cannot be wrong. There is in Sanin's doctrine something ofNietzsche and more of Rousseau. 

Sanin himself is not at all a contemptible character. He is notargumentative except when dragged into an argument; he does notattempt to convert others to his views. He has the inner light whichwe more often associate with Christian faith. In the midst of histroubled and self-tortured comrades, Sanin stands like a pillar, calm, unshakable. He has found absolute peace, absolute harmony with life. He thinks, talks, and acts exactly as he chooses, without any regardwhatever to the convenience or happiness of any one else. There issomething refreshing about this perfectly healthy, clear-eyed, quiet, composed, resolute man--whose way of life is utterly unaffected bypublic opinion, who simply does not care a straw for anything oranybody but himself. Thus he recognises his natural foe inChristianity, in the person of Jesus Christ, and in His Russianinterpreter, Leo Tolstoi. For if Christianity teaches anything, itteaches that man must live contrary to his natural instincts. Theendeavour of all so-called "new religions" is rootless, because it isan attempt to adapt Christianity to modern human convenience. Muchbetter is Sanin's way: he sees clearly that no adaptation is possible, and logically fights Christianity as the implacable enemy of thenatural man. 

There are many indications that one of the great battle-grounds ofChristianity in the near future is to be the modern novel. For manyyears there have been plenty of attacks on the supernatural side ofChristianity, and on Christianity as a religion; nearly all itsopponents, however, have treated its ethics, its practical teachings, with respect. The novel "Sanin" is perhaps the boldest, but it is onlyone of many attacks that are now being made on Christianity as asystem of morals; as was the case with the Greeks and Romans, scepticism in morals follows hard on scepticism in religion. Those whobelieve in Christianity ought to rejoice in this open and fair fight;they ought to welcome it as a complete unmasking of the foe. If thelife according to "Sanin" is really practicable, if it is a goodsubstitute for the life according to the Christian Gospel, it isdesirable that it should be clearly set forth, and its workingcapacity demonstrated. For the real test of Christianity, and the onlyone given by its Founder, is its practical value as a way of life. Itcan never be successfully attacked by historical research or bydestructive criticism--all such attacks leave it precisely as theyfound it. Those who are determined to destroy Christianity, and amongits relentless foes have always been numbered men of great courage andgreat ability, must prove that its promises of peace and rest to thosewho really follow it are false, and that its influence on society andon the individual is bad. 

IX

ANDREEV

Leonid Andreev is at this moment regarded by many Russians as theforemost literary artist among the younger school of writers. He wasborn at Orel, the birthplace of Turgenev, in 1871, and is thus onlytwo years younger than Gorki. He began life as a lawyer at Moscow, butaccording to his own statement, he had only one case, and lost that. He very soon abandoned law for literature, as so many writers havedone, and his rise has been exceedingly rapid. He was appointedpolice-court reporter on the Moscow "Courier, " where he went throughthe daily drudgery without attracting any attention. But when hepublished in this newspaper a short story, Gorki sent a telegram tothe office, demanding to know the real name of the writer who signedhimself Leonid Andreev. He was informed that the signature was nopseudonym. This notice from Gorki gave the young man immediateprominence. Not long after, he published another story in the Russianperiodical "Life;" into the editor's rooms dashed the famous criticMerezhkovski, who enquired whether it was Chekhov or Gorki that hadselected this assumed name. 

Andreev himself says that he has learned much from Tolstoi, the greatTolstoi of the sixties and seventies, also from Nietzsche, whom hereads with enthusiasm, and whose most characteristic book, "AlsoSprach Zarathustra, " he translated into Russian. He has read Poe withprofit, but he testifies that his greatest teacher in composition isthe Bible. In a letter to a young admirer, he wrote: "I thank you foryour kind dedication. . . . I note that in one place you write aboutthe Bible. Yes, that is the best teacher of all--the Bible. "*

*Most of the biographical information in this paragraph I have takenfrom an interesting article in "The Independent" for 29 July 1909, byIvan Lavretski. 

Andreev has the gift of admiration, and loves to render homage wherehomage is due, having dedicated his first book to Gorki, and his storyof "The Seven Who Were Hanged" to Tolstoi. His style, while marked bythe typical yet always startling Russian simplicity, is neverthelessentirely his own, and all his tales and plays are stamped by powerfulindividuality. He is fast becoming an international celebrity. Histerrible picture of war, "The Red Laugh, " has been translated intoGerman, French, and English, two of his dramas, "Anathema" and "To theStars, " have been published in America, and other of his short storiesare known everywhere in Germany. 

The higher the scale in human intelligence, the more horrible and themore ridiculous does war appear. That men engaged in peaceful andintellectual pursuits should leave their families, their congenialwork, their pleasant associations, and go out to torture and murdermen of similar tastes and activities, and become themselvestransformed into hideous wild beasts, has a combination of horror andabsurdity that peculiarly impresses a people so highly sensitive, sothoroughly intellectual, and so kind-hearted as the Russians. AllRussian war-literature, and there is much of it, points back toTolstoi's "Sevastopol, " where the great novelist stripped warfare ofall its sentiment and patriotic glitter, and revealed its dull, sordidmisery as well as its hellish tragedies. What Tolstoi did for theCrimean War, Garshin did for the war with Turkey in the seventies. Ihave not seen it mentioned, but I suspect that Andreev owes much tothe reading of this brilliant author. Garshin was an unquestionablegenius; if he had lived, I think he might have become the realsuccessor to Tolstoi, a title that has been bestowed upon Chekhov, Gorki, and Andreev, and has not yet been earned by any man. But likenearly all Russian authors, he suffered from intense melancholia, andin 1888 committed suicide at the age of thirty-three. His short story"Four Days on the Field of Slaughter" first brought him into publicnotice. One cannot read Andreev's "Red Laugh" to-day without thinkingof it. 

"On the edge of the wood there was visible something red, floatinghere and there. Sidorov fell suddenly to the ground and stared at mein silence with great, terrified eyes. Out of his mouth poured astream of blood. Yes, I remember it very well. " This is the "redlaugh" of Andreev, though until the appearance of his book it lackedthe appropriate name. Garshin describes how a Russian soldier stabs aFellah to death with his bayonet, and then, too badly injured to move, lies for four days and nights, in shivering cold and fearful heat, beside the putrefying corpse of his dead antagonist. "I did that. Ihad no wish to do it. I wished no one evil, as I left home for thewar. The thought that I should kill a man did not enter my head. Ithought only of my own danger. And I went to him and did this. Well, and what happened? O fool, O idiot! This unfortunate Egyptian is stillless guilty. Before they packed them on a steamer like herrings in abox, and brought them to Constantinople, he had never heard of Russia, or of Bulgaria. They told him to go and he went. "

In the "Diary of Private lvanov, " Garshin gave more pictures of thehideous suffering of war, with a wonderful portrait of the commanderof the company, who is so harshly tyrannical that his men hate him, and resolve to slay him in the battle. But he survives both open andsecret foes, and at the end of the conflict they find him lyingprostrate, his whole body shaken with sobs, and saying brokenly, "Fifty-two! Fifty-two!" Fifty-two of his company had been killed, anddespite his cruelty to them, he had loved them all like children. 

Garshin wrote other tales, among them a poetically beautiful story ofa tree, "Attalea Princeps, " that reminds one somewhat of Bjornson. Buthis chief significance is as a truthful witness to the meaninglessmaiming and murder of war, and his attitude is precisely similar tothat of Andreev, and both follow Tolstoi. 

Andreev's "Red Laugh" ought to be read in America as a contrast to ournumerous war stories, where war is pictured as a delightful andexciting tournament. This book has not a single touch of patrioticsentiment, not a suggestion of "Hurrah for our side!" The soldiers areon the field because they were sent there, and the uninjured are tooutterly tired, too tormented with lack of sleep, too hungry andthirsty to let out a single whoop. The first sight of the "Red Laugh"reminds us of the picturesque story of Napoleon's soldier thatBrowning has immortalised in the "Incident of the French Camp. "Tolstoi mentions the same event in "Sevastopol, " and his version of itwould have pleased Owen Wister's Virginian more than Browning's. InAndreev there is no graceful gesture, no French pose, no "smilingjoy"; but there is the nerve-shattering red laugh. The officer whotells the story in the first half of the book narrates how a youngvolunteer came up to him and saluted. The appearance of his face wasso tensely white that the officer enquires, "Are you afraid?" Suddenlya stream of blood bursts from the young man's body, and his deadlypale face turns into something unspeakable, a toothless laugh--the redlaugh. 

In this gruesome tale of the realities of war, Andreev has givenshocking physical details of torn and bleeding bodies, but true to thetheme that animates all his books, he has concentrated the maininterest on the Mind. Soldiers suffer in the flesh, but infinitelymore in the mind. War points chiefly not to the grave, nor to thehospital, but to the madhouse. All forms of insanity are bred by thehorror and fatigue of the marches and battles: many shoot themselves, many become raging maniacs, many become gibbering idiots. Every manwho has studied warfare knows that the least of all perils is thebullet of the enemy, for only a small proportion are released by that. The innumerable and subtle forms of disease, bred by exposure andprivation, constitute the real danger. Andreev is the first to showthat the most common and awful form of disease among Russian soldiersis the disease of the brain. The camp becomes a vast madhouse, withthe peculiar feature that the madmen are at large. The hero of thestory loses both his legs, and apparently completely recovered inhealth otherwise, returns home to his family, and gazes wistfully athis bicycle. A sudden desire animates him to write out the story ofthe Japanese war; in the process he becomes insane and dies. Hisbrother then attempts to complete the narrative from the scattered, confused notes, but to his horror, whenever he approaches the desk, the phantom of the dead man is ever there, busily writing: he can hearthe pen squeak on the paper. 

No more terrible protest against war has ever been written thanAndreev's "Red Laugh. " It shows not merely the inexpressible horror ofthe battlefield and the dull, weary wretchedness of the men on themarch, but it follows out the farthest ramifications flowing from thecentral cause: the constant tragedies in the families, the lettersreceived after the telegraph has announced the death of the writer, the insane wretches who return to the homes they left in normalhealth, the whole accumulation of woe. 

The first two words of the book are "Madness and Horror!" and theymight serve as a text for Andreev's complete works. There seems to besome taint in his mind which forces him to dwell forever on theabnormal and diseased. He is not exactly decadent, but he is decidedlypathological. Professor Bruckner has said of Andreev's stories, "I donot recall a single one which would not get fearfully on a man'snerves. " He has deepened the universal gloom of Russian fiction, notby descending into the slums with Gorki, but by depicting life as seenthrough the strange light of a decaying mind. He has often beencompared, especially among the Germans, with Edgar Allan Poe. But heis really not in the least like Poe. Poe's horrors are nearly allunreal fantasies, that vaguely haunt our minds like the shadow of adream. Andreev is a realist, like his predecessors and contemporaries. His style is always concrete and definite, always filled with thesense of fact. There is almost something scientific in his collectionof incurables. 

The most cheerful thing he has written is perhaps "The Seven Who WereHanged. " This is horrible enough to bring out a cold sweat; but it isredeemed, as the work of Dostoevski is, by a vast pity and sympathyfor the condemned wretches. This is the book he dedicated to Tolstoi, in recognition of the constant efforts of the old writer to havecapital punishment abolished. No sentimental sympathy with murderersis shown here; he carries no flowers to the cells where each of theseven in solitude awaits his fate. Nor are the murderers in the leastdegree depicted as heroes--they are all different men and women, butnone of them resembles the Hero-Murderer of romance. 

The motive underlying this story is shown plainly by the author in aninteresting letter which he wrote to the American translator, andwhich is published at the beginning of the book. "The misfortune of usall is that we know so little, even nothing, about one another--neitherabout the soul, nor the life, the sufferings, the habits, the inclinations, the aspirations, of one another. Literature, which I have the honour toserve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itselfis that of wiping out boundaries and distances. " That is, the aim ofAndreev, like that of all prominent Russian novelists, is to study thesecret of secrets, the human heart. And like all specialists in humanity, like Browning, for example, he feels the impossibility of success. 

"About what's under lock and key, Man's soul!"

Farther on in his letter, we read: "My task was to point out thehorror and the iniquity of capital punishment under any circumstances. The horror of capital punishment is great when it falls to the lot ofcourageous and honest people whose only guilt is their excess of loveand the sense of righteousness--in such instances, conscience revolts. But the rope is still more horrible when it forms the noose around thenecks of weak and ignorant people. And however strange it may appear, I look with a lesser grief and suffering upon the execution of therevolutionists, such as Werner and Musya, than upon the strangling ofignorant murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like Yanson andTsiganok. " Spoken like Dostoevski!

These seven are an extraordinary group, ranging from calm, courageous, enlightened individuals to creatures of such dull stupidity that onewonders if they ever once were men. Each spends the intervening daysin his cell in a different manner. One goes through daily exercises ofphysical culture. One receives a visit from his father and mother, another from his old mother alone. There is not a false touch in thesentiment in these painful scenes. The midnight journey to the placeof execution is vividly portrayed, and the different sensations ofeach of the seven are strikingly indicated. At the last, Musya, who isa typical Russian heroine in her splendid resolution and boundlesstenderness, becomes the soul of the whole party, and tries to helpthem all by her gentle conduct and her words of love. The whole spiritof this book is profoundly Christian. One feels as if he were takenback in history, and were present at the execution of a group of earlyChristian martyrs. There are thousands of women in Russia like Musya, and they are now, as they were in the days of Turgenev, the one hopeof the country. 

In Merezhkovski's interesting work "Tolstoi as Man and Artist, " theauthor says: "We are accustomed to think that the more abstractthought is, the more cold and dispassionate it is. It is not so; or atleast it is not so with us. From the heroes of Dostoevski we may seehow abstract thought may be passionate, how metaphysical theories anddeductions are rooted, not only in cold reason, but in the heart, emotions, and will. There are thoughts which pour oil on the fire ofthe passions and inflame man's flesh and blood more powerfully thanthe most unrestrained license. There is a logic of the passions, butthere are also passions in logic. And these are essentially OUR newpassions, peculiar to us and alien to the men of former civilisations. . . . They feel deeply because they think deeply; they sufferendlessly because they are endlessly deliberate; they dare to willbecause they have dared to think. And the farther, apparently, it isfrom life--the more abstract, the more fiery is their thought, thedeeper it enters into their lives. O strange young Russia!"

Merezhkovski is talking of the heroes of Dostoevski; but his remark isapplicable to the work of nearly all Russian novelists, and especiallyto Chekhov and Andreev. It is a profound criticism that, if oncegrasped by the foreign reader, will enable him to understand much inRussian fiction that otherwise would be a sealed book. Every one musthave noticed how Russians are hag-ridden by an idea; but no one exceptMerezhkovski has observed the PASSION of abstract thought. In somecharacters, such as those Dostoevski has given us, it leads to deedsof wild absurdity; in Andreev, it usually leads to madness. 

One of Andreev's books is indeed a whole commentary on the remark ofMerezhkovski quoted above. The English title of the translation is "ADilemma, " but as the translator has explained, the name of the storyin the original is "Thought (Mysl). " The chief character is aphysician, Kerzhentsev, who reminds one constantly of Dostoevski'sRaskolnikov, but whose states of mind are even more subtly analysed. No one should read this story unless his nerves are firm, for theoutcome of the tale is such as to make almost any reader for a timedoubt his own sanity. It is a curious study of the border-line betweenreason and madness. The physician, who rejoices in his splendidhealth, bodily vigour, and absolute equilibrium of mind, quietlydetermines to murder his best friend--to murder him openly andviolently, and to go about it in such a way that he himself willescape punishment. He means to commit the murder to punish the man'swife because she had rejected him and married his friend, whom sheloves with all the strength of her powerful nature. His problem, therefore, is threefold: he must murder the man, the man's wife mustknow that he is the murderer, and he must escape punishment. Hetherefore begins by feigning madness, and acting so well that hismadness comes upon him only at long intervals; at a dinner-party hehas a violent fit; but he waits a whole month before having anotherattack. Everything is beautifully planned; he smashes a plate with hisfist, but no one observes that he has taken care previously to coverthe plate with his napkin, so that his hand will not be cut. Hisfriends are all too sorry for him to have any suspicion of a sinisterintention; and his friend Alexis is fatuously secure. Not so the wife;she has an instinctive fear of the coming murder. One evening, whenall three are together, the doctor picks up a heavy iron paper-weight, and Alexis says that with such an instrument a murderer might break aman's head. This is interesting. "It was precisely the head, andprecisely with that thing that I had planned to crush it, and now thatsame head was telling how it would all end. " Therefore he leads Alexisinto a dispute by insisting that the paper-weight is too light. Alexisbecomes angry, and actually makes the doctor take the object in hishand, and they rehearse his own murder. They are stopped by the wife, who, terror-stricken, says that she never likes such jokes. Both menburst into hearty laughter. 

A short time after, the doctor crushes the skull of Alexis in thepresence of his wife. In the midst of the horror and confusion of thehousehold, the murderer slips out, goes home, and is resting calmly, thinking with intense delight of the splendid success of the plan, andof the extraordinary skill he had shown in its conception andexecution; when, just as he was dropping off to sleep in deliciousdrowsiness, there "languidly" entered into his head this thought: itspeaks to his mind in the third person, as though somebody else hadactually said it: It is very possible that Dr. Kerzhentsev is reallyinsane. He thought that he simulated, but he is really insane--insaneat this very instant. 

After this poison has entered his soul, his condition can be easilyimagined. A terrible debate begins in his own mind, for he is fightingagainst himself for his own reason. Every argument that he can thinkof to persuade himself of his sanity he marshals; but there are plentyof arguments on the other side. The story is an excellent example ofwhat Merezhkovski must mean by the passion of thought. 

Another illustration of Andreev's uncanny power is seen in the shortstory "Silence. " A father does not understand his daughter's silence, and treats her nervous suffering with harsh practicality. She commitssuicide; the mother is stricken with paralysis; silence reigns in thehouse. Silence. The father beseeches his wife to speak to him; thereis no speculation in her wide-open eyes. He cries aloud to his deaddaughter. Silence. Nothing but silence, and the steady approach ofmadness. 

Andreev is an unflinching realist, with all the Russian power of theconcrete phrase. He would never say, in describing a battle, that theRussians "suffered a severe loss. " He would turn a magnifying glass oneach man. But, although he is a realist and above all a psychologist, he is also a poet. In the sketch "Silence" there is the very spirit ofpoetry. The most recent bit of writing by him that I have seen iscalled a Fantasy*--"Life is so Beautiful to the Resurrected. " This isa meditation in a graveyard, written in the manner of one ofTurgenev's "Poems in Prose, " though lacking something of that master'sexquisite beauty of style. It is, however, not sentimentallyconventional, but original. The poetic quality in Andreev animates allhis dramas, particularly "To the Stars. "

*Translated in "Current Literature, " New York, for September 1910. 

X

KUPRIN'S PICTURE OF GARRISON LIFE

As Tolstoi, Garshin, and Andreev have shown the horrors of war, soKuprin* has shown the utter degradation and sordid misery of garrisonlife. If Russian army posts in time of peace bear even a remoteresemblance to the picture given in Kuprin's powerful novel "InHonour's Name, "** one would think that the soldiers there entombedwould heartily rejoice at the outbreak of war--would indeed welcomeany catastrophe, provided it released them from such an Inferno. It isinteresting to compare stories of American garrisons, or such clevernovels as Mrs. Diver's trilogy of British army posts in India, withthe awful revelations made by Kuprin. Among these Russian officers andsoldiers there is not one gleam of patriotism to glorify the drudgery;there is positively no ideal, even dim-descried. The officers are acollection of hideously selfish, brutal, drunken, licentious beasts;their mental horizon is almost inconceivably narrow, far narrower thanthat of mediaeval monks in a monastery. The soldiers are in worseplight than prisoners, being absolutely at the mercy of the alcoholiccaprices of their superiors. A favourite device of the officer is tojam the trumpet against the trumpeter's mouth, when he is trying toobey orders by sounding the call; then they laugh at him derisively ashe spits out blood and broken teeth. The common soldiers are beatenand hammered unmercifully in the daily drill, so that they are allbewildered, being in such a state of terror that it is impossible forthem to perform correctly even the simplest manoeuvres. The onlyofficer in this story who treats his men with any consideration is alibertine, who seduces the peasants' daughters in the neighbourhood, and sends them back to their parents with cash payments for theirservices. 

*Kuprin was born in 1870, and was for a time an officer in the Russianarmy. 

**Translated by W. F. Harvey: the French translation is called "UnePetite Garnison Russe;" the German, "Das Duell, " after the originaltitle. 

If Kuprin's story be true, one does not need to look far for the utterfailure of the Russian troops in the Japanese war; the soldiers arehere represented as densely ignorant, drilling in abject terror oftheir officers' fists and boots, and knowing nothing whatever of trueformations in attack or defence. As for the officers, they are muchworse than the soldiers: their mess is nothing but an indescribablyfoul alcoholic den, where sodden drunkenness and filthy talk are thesteady routine. They are all gamblers and debauchees; as soon as a sumof money can be raised among them, they visit the brothel. Theexplanation of the beastly habits of these representatives of the Tsaris given in the novel in this wise: "Yes, they are all alike, even thebest and most tender-hearted among them. At home they are splendidfathers of families and excellent husbands; but as soon as theyapproach the barracks they become low-minded, cowardly, and idioticbarbarians. You ask me why this is, and I answer: Because nobody canfind a grain of sense in what is called military service. You know howall children like to play at war. Well, the human race has had itschildhood--a time of incessant and bloody war; but war was not thenone of the scourges of mankind, but a continued, savage, exultantnational feast to which daring bands of youths marched forth, meetingvictory or death with joy and pleasure. . . . Mankind, however, grewin age and wisdom; people got weary of the former rowdy, bloody games, and became more serious, thoughtful, and cautious. The old Vikings ofsong and saga were designated and treated as pirates. The soldier nolonger regarded war as a bloody but enjoyable occupation, and hadoften to be dragged to the enemy with a noose round his neck. Theformer terrifying, ruthless, adored atamens* have been changed intocowardly, cautious tschinovnih, ** who get along painfully enough onnever adequate pay. Their courage is of a new and quite moist kind, for it is invariably derived from the glass. Military discipline stillexists, but it is based on threats and dread, and undermined by adull, mutual hatred. . . . And all this abomination is carefullyhidden under a close veil of tinsel and finery, and foolish, emptyceremonies, in all ages the charlatan's conditio sine qua non. Is notthis comparison of mine between the priesthood and the military casteinteresting and logical? Here the riassa and the censer; there thegold-laced uniform and the clank of arms. Here bigotry, hypocriticalhumility, sighs and sugary, sanctimonious, unmeaning phrases; therethe same odious grimaces, although its method and means are of anotherkind--swaggering manners, bold and scornful looks--'God help the manwho dares to insult me!'--padded shoulders, cock-a-hoop defiance. Boththe former and the latter class live like parasites on society, andare profoundly conscious of that fact, but fear--especially for theirbellies' sake--to publish it. And both remind one of certain littleblood-sucking animals which eat their way most obstinately into thesurface of a foreign body in proportion as it is slippery and steep. "

*Officers. 

**Officials. 

Apart from the terrible indictment of army life and militaryorganisation that Kuprin has given, the novel "In Honour's Name" is aninteresting story with living characters. There is not a single goodwoman in the book: the officers' wives are licentious, unprincipled, and eaten up with social ambition. The chief female character is asubtle, clever, heartless, diabolical person, who plays on her lover'sdevotion in the most sinister manner, and eventually brings him to thegrave by a device that startles the reader by its cold-blooded, calculating cruelty. Surely no novelists outside of Russia have drawnsuch evil women. The hero, Romashov, is once more the typical Russianwhom we have met in every Russian novelist, a talker, a dreamer, withhigh ideals, harmlessly sympathetic, and without one grain ofresolution or will-power. He spends all his time in aspirations, sighs, and tears--and never by any chance accomplishes anything. Theauthor's mouthpiece in the story is the drunkard Nasanski, whoprophesies of the good time of the brotherhood of man far in thefuture. This is to be brought about, not by the teachings of Tolstoi, which he ridicules, but by self-assertion. This self-assertion pointsthe way to Artsybashev's "Sanin, " although in Kuprin it does not takeon the form of absolute selfishness. One of Nasanski's alcoholicspeeches seems to contain the doctrine of the whole book: "Yes, a new, glorious, and wonderful time is at hand. I venture to say this, for Imyself have lived a good deal in the world, read, seen, experienced, and suffered much. When I was a schoolboy, the old crows and jackdawscroaked into our ears: 'Love your neighbour as yourself, and know thatgentleness, obedience, and the fear of God are man's fairestadornments. ' Then came certain strong, honest, fanatical men who said:'Come and join us, and we'll throw ourselves into the abyss so thatthe coming race shall live in light and freedom. ' But I neverunderstood a word of this. Who do you suppose is going to show me, ina convincing way, in what manner I am linked to this 'neighbour' ofmine--damn him! who, you know, may be a miserable slave, a Hottentot, a leper, or an idiot? . . . Can any reasonable being tell me why Ishould crush my head so that the generation in the year 3200 mayattain a higher standard of happiness? . . . Love of humanity is burntout and has vanished from the heart of man. In its stead shall come anew creed, a new view of life that shall last to the world's end; andthis view of life consists in the individual's love for himself, forhis own powerful intelligence, and the infinite riches of his feelingsand perceptions. . . Ah, a time will come when the fixed belief inone's own Ego will cast its blessed beams over mankind as did once thefiery tongues of the Holy Ghost over the Apostles' heads. Then thereshall be no longer slaves and masters; no maimed or cripples; nomalice, no vices, no pity, no hate. Men shall be gods. How shall Idare to deceive, insult, or ill-treat another man, in whom I see andfeel my fellow, who, like myself, is a god? Then, and then only, shalllife be rich and beautiful. .. . Our daily life shall be a pleasurabletoil, an enfranchised science, a wonderful music, an everlastingmerrymaking. Love, free and sovereign, shall become the world'sreligion. "

In considering Russian novelists of to-day, and the promise for thefuture, Andreev seems to be the man best worth watching--he is themost gifted artist of them all. But it is clear that no new writer hasappeared in Russia since the death of Dostoevski in 1881 who cancompare for an instant with the author of "Anna Karenina, " and thatthe great names in Russian fiction are now, as they were forty yearsago, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. Very few long novelshave been published in Russia since "Resurrection" that, so far as wecan judge, have permanent value. Gorki's novels are worthless; hispower, like that of Chekhov and Andreev, is seen to best advantage inthe short story. Perhaps the younger school have made a mistake instudying so exclusively the abnormal.