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Title: Landmarks in Russian literature

Author: Maurice Baring

Release date: July 24, 2022 [eBook #68597]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Methuen & Co., Ltd

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE ***

  LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN
  LITERATURE




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


  WITH THE RUSSIANS IN MANCHURIA
  A YEAR IN RUSSIA
  RUSSIAN ESSAYS AND STORIES




  LANDMARKS IN
  RUSSIAN LITERATURE

  BY
  MAURICE BARING


  SECOND EDITION


  METHUEN & CO. LTD.
  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
  LONDON




  _First Published_        _March 10th 1910_
  _Second Edition_                    _1910_




  DEDICATED

  TO

  ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON




PREFACE


The chapters in this book on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev, and those on
Chekov and Gogol have appeared before. That on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev
in _The Quarterly Review_; those on Chekov and Gogol in _The New
Quarterly_; my thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors concerned
for their kindness in allowing me to reprint these chapters here.

The chapter on Russian Characteristics appeared in _St. George’s
Magazine_; the rest of the book is new. In writing it I consulted,
besides many books and articles in the Russian language, the following:

 The Works of Turgeniev. Translated by Constance Garnett. Fifteen vols.
 London: Heinemann, 1906.

 The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy. Translated and edited by Leo
 Wiener. Twenty-four vols. London: Dent, 1904-5.

 Le Roman Russe. By the Vicomte E. M. de Vogüé. Paris: Plon, 1897.

 Tolstoy as Man and Artist: with an Essay on Dostoievski. By Dimitri
 Merejkowski. London: Constable, 1902.[1]

 Ivan Turgeniev: la Vie et l’Œuvre. By Émile Haumant. Paris: Armand
 Colin, 1906.

 The Life of Tolstoy. First Fifty Years. By Aylmer Maude. London:
 Constable, 1908.

 A Literary History of Russia. By Prof. A. Brückner. Edited by Ellis H.
 Minns. Translated by H. Havelock. London and Leipsic: Fisher Unwin,
 1908.

 Realities and Ideals of Russian Literature. By Prince Kropotkin.

 Russian Poetry and Progress. By Mrs. Newmarch. John Lane.

By far the best estimate of Tolstoy’s work I have come across in
England in the last few years was a brilliant article published in the
Literary Supplement of the _Times_, I think in 1907, which, it is to be
hoped, will be republished.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is an abridgment of a larger book by the author.




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                    PAGE

  I. RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS                  1

  II. REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE          17

  III. GOGOL AND THE CHEERFULNESS OF THE
  RUSSIAN PEOPLE                             39

  IV. TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV                 77

  V. THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV                116

  VI. DOSTOIEVSKY                           125

  VII. PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV               263




INTRODUCTION


A book dealing with the literature of a foreign country appeals to
a double audience: the narrow circle of people who are intimately
familiar with that literature in its original tongue, and the large
public which is imperfectly acquainted even with translations of some
of its books. One of these audiences must necessarily be sacrificed.
For if you address yourself exclusively to the specialists, the larger
public will be but faintly interested; while if you have the larger
public in view alone, the narrower circle of those who are familiar
with the language will hear nothing from you which they do not already
know too well. In the case of a literature such as Russian, it is
obvious which audience has the claim to the greater consideration;
but while this book is addressed to those who are interested in but
not intimately familiar with Russian literature, I entertain the hope
that these essays may not prove entirely uninteresting to the closer
students of Russian. I have tried to make a compromise, and while
especially addressing myself to the majority, not to lose sight of the
minority altogether.

The standpoint from which I approach Russian literature is less that
of the scholar than of an admiring and sympathetic friend. I have
tried to understand what the Russians themselves think about their own
literature, and in some manner to reflect their point of view as it
struck me either in their books or in conversation with many men and
women of many classes throughout several years.

It has always seemed to me that there are two ways of writing about
a foreign literature: from the outside and from the inside. Take a
language like French, for instance, and the study of French poetry
in particular. Many English students of French poetry seem to me to
start from the point of view that although much French verse has many
excellent qualities, those qualities which are peculiarly French and
which the French themselves admire most are not worth admiring. Thus it
is that we have had many excellent critics telling us that although the
French poetry of the Renaissance is admirable and the French Romantic
epoch produced men of astounding genius, yet the poets of another sort,
whom the French set up on a permanent pinnacle as models of classic
perfection, such as Racine or La Fontaine, are not poets at all. Some
critics have even gone further, and have maintained that admirable as
the French language is as an instrument for writing prose, it cannot
properly be used as a vehicle for writing poetry, and that French
poetry cannot be considered as being in the same category or on the
same footing as the verse of other nations. This is what I call the
outside view, and I am not only not persuaded of its truth, but I am
convinced that it is false, for two reasons:--

First, because I cannot help thinking that the natives of a country
must be the best judges of their own tongue and of its literature,
and that foreign critics, however acute, may fail to appreciate
certain shades of meaning and sound which particularly appeal to the
native--for instance, I am sure it is more difficult for a foreigner
to appreciate the music of Milton’s diction than for an Englishman.
Secondly, since I learnt French at the same time as I learnt English,
and became familiar with French verse long before I was introduced to
the works of English poets, from my childhood up to the present day
French poetry has seemed to me to be just as beautiful as the poetry
of any other country, and the verse of Racine as musical as that of
Milton. I have, moreover, sometimes suspected that the severe sentences
I have seen passed on the French classics by English critics were
perhaps due to imperfect familiarity with the language in question, and
that it even seemed possible that in condemning French verse they were
ignorant of the French laws of metre and scansion; such ignorance would
certainly prove a serious obstacle to proper appreciation.

This digression is to make clear what I mean when I say that I have
tried to approach my subject from the inside; that is to say, I
have tried to put myself into the skin of a Russian, and to look at
the literature of Russia with his eyes, and then to explain to my
fellow-countrymen as clearly as possible what I have seen. I do not
say I have succeeded, but I have been greatly encouraged in the task
by having received appreciative thanks for my former efforts in this
direction from Russians who are, in my opinion, the only critics
competent to judge whether what I have written about their people and
their books hits the mark or not.

One of the great difficulties in writing studies of various Russian
writers is the paradoxical thread that runs through the Russian
character. Russia is the land of paradoxes. The Russian character and
temperament are baffling, owing to the paradoxical elements which are
found united in them. It is for this reason that a series of studies
dealing with different aspects of the Russian character often have
the appearance of being a series of contradictory statements. I have
therefore in the first chapter of this book stated what I consider to
be the chief paradoxical elements of the Russian character. It is the
conflicting nature of these elements which accounts for the seemingly
contradictory qualities that we meet with in Russian literature. For
instance, there is a passive element in the Russian nature; there
is also something unbridled, a spirit which breaks all bounds of
self-control and runs riot; and there is also a stubborn element, a
tough obstinacy. The result is that at one moment one is pointing out
the matter-of-fact side of the Russian genius which clings to the earth
and abhors extravagance; and at another time one is discoursing on the
passion certain Russian novelists have for making their characters
wallow in abstract discussions; or, again, the cheerfulness of Gogol
has to be reconciled with the “inspissated gloom” of certain other
writers. All this makes it easy for a critic to bring the charge of
inconsistency against a student whose object is to provide certain
side-lights on certain striking examples, rather than a comprehensive
view of the whole, a task which is beyond the scope and powers of the
present writer.

The student of Russian literature who wishes for a comprehensive view
of the whole of Russian literature and of its historic significance
and development, cannot do better than read Professor Brückner’s
solid and brilliant _Literary History of Russia_, which is admirably
translated into English.

The object of my book is to interest the reader in Russia and Russian
literature, and to enable him to make up his mind as to whether he
wishes to seek after a more intimate knowledge of the subject.

The authors whose work forms the subject of this book belong to the
period which began in the fifties and ended before the Russo-Japanese
War. The work of Tchekov represents the close of that epoch which
began with Gogol. After Tchekov the dawn of a new era was marked by
the startling advent of Maxim Gorky into Russian literature. Then came
the war, and with it a torrent of new writers, of new thoughts, of new
schools, of new theories of art. The most remarkable of these writers
is no doubt Andreev; but in order to discuss his work as well as that
of other writers who followed in his train, it would be necessary to
write another book. The student of Russian literature will notice that
I have omitted many Russian authors who are well known in the epoch
which I have chosen. I have omitted them for reasons which I have
already stated at the beginning of this Introduction, namely, that
there is not in England a large enough circle of readers interested
in Russian literature to the extent of wishing to read about its less
well-known writers. I think the authors I have chosen are typical of
the generations they represent, and I hope that this book may have
the effect of leading readers from books _about_ Russia and Russian
literature, to the country itself and its books, so that they may be
able to see with their own eyes and to correct the impressions which
they have received secondhand.




LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE




CHAPTER I

RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS


The difficulty in explaining anything to do with Russia to an English
public is that confusion is likely to arise owing to the terms
used being misunderstood. For instance, if one describes a Russian
officer, a Russian bureaucrat, a Russian public servant, or a Russian
schoolmaster, the reader involuntarily makes a mental comparison with
corresponding people in his own country, or in other European countries
where he has travelled. He necessarily fails to remember that there
are certain vital differences between Russians and people of other
countries, which affect the whole question, and which make the Russian
totally different from the corresponding Englishman. I wish before
approaching the work of Russian writers, to sketch a few of the main
characteristics which lie at the root of the Russian temperament by
which Russian literature is profoundly affected.

The principal fact which has struck me with regard to the Russian
character, is a characteristic which was once summed up by Professor
Milioukov thus: “A Russian,” he said, “lacks the cement of hypocrisy.”
This cement, which plays so important a part in English public and
private life, is totally lacking in the Russian character. The Russian
character is plastic; the Russian can understand everything. You
can mould him any way you please. He is like wet clay, yielding and
malleable; he is passive; he bows his head and gives in before the
decrees of Fate and of Providence. At the same time, it would be a
mistake to say that this is altogether a sign of weakness. There is a
kind of toughness in the Russian character, an irreducible obstinacy
which makes for strength; otherwise the Russian Empire would not exist.
But where the want of the cement of hypocrisy is most noticeable, is
in the personal relations of Russians towards their fellow-creatures.
They do not in the least mind openly confessing things of which
people in other countries are ashamed; they do not mind admitting to
dishonesty, immorality, or cowardice, if they happen to feel that
they are saturated with these defects; and they feel that their
fellow-creatures will not think the worse of them on this account,
because they know that their fellow-creatures will understand. The
astounding indulgence of the Russians arises out of this infinite
capacity for understanding.

Another point: This absence of hypocrisy causes them to have an
impatience of cant and of convention. They will constantly say: “Why
not?” They will not recognise the necessity of drawing the line
somewhere, they will not accept as something binding the conventional
morality and the artificial rules of conduct which knit together our
society with a bond of steel. They may admit the expediency of social
laws, but they will never prate of the laws of any society being
divine; they will merely admit that they are convenient. Therefore,
if we go to the root of this matter, it comes to this: that the
Russians are more broadly and widely human than the people of other
European or Eastern countries, and, being more human, their capacity
of understanding is greater, for their extraordinary quickness of
apprehension comes from the heart rather than from the head. They are
the most humane and the most naturally kind of all the peoples of
Europe, or, to put it differently and perhaps more accurately, I should
say that there is more humanity and more kindness in Russia than in
any other European country. This may startle the reader; he may think
of the lurid accounts in the newspapers of massacres, brutal treatment
of prisoners, and various things of this kind, and be inclined to
doubt my statement. As long as the world exists there will always be
a certain amount of cruelty in the conduct of human beings. My point
is this: that there is less in Russia than in other countries, but the
trouble up to the last two years has been that all excesses of any kind
on the part of officials were unchecked and uncontrolled. Therefore, if
any man who had any authority over any other man happened to be brutal,
his brutality had a far wider scope and far richer opportunities than
that of a corresponding overseer in another country.

During the last three years Russia has been undergoing a violent
evolutionary process of change, what in other countries has been called
a revolution; but compared with similar phases in other countries,
and taking into consideration the size of the Russian Empire, and the
various nationalities which it contains, I maintain that the proportion
of excesses has been comparatively less. There are other factors in the
question which should also be borne in mind; firstly, that politically
Russia is about a century behind other European countries, and the
second is that Russians accept the fact that a man who does wrong
deserves punishment, with a kind of Oriental fatality, although the
pity which is inherent in them causes them to have a horror of capital
punishment.

Now, let us take the first question, and just imagine for a moment
what the treatment of the poor would be in England were there no such
thing as a _habeas corpus_. Imagine what the position of the police
would be, if it held a position of arbitrary dominion; if nobody were
responsible; if any policeman could do what he chose, with no further
responsibility than that towards his superior officers. I do not
hesitate to say that were such a state of things to exist in England,
the position of the poor would be intolerable. Now, the position of
the poor in Russia is not intolerable; it is bad, owing to the evils
inseparable from poverty, drink, and the want of control enjoyed by
public servants. But it is not intolerable. Were it intolerable, the
whole of the Russian poor, who number ninety millions, would have long
ago risen to a man. They have not done so because their position is
not intolerable; and the reason of this is, that the evils to which
I have alluded are to a certain extent mitigated by the good-nature
and kindness inherent in the Russian temperament, instead of being
aggravated by an innate brutality and cruelty such as we meet with in
Latin and other races.

Again, closely connected with any political system which is backward,
you will always find in any country a certain brutality in the matter
of punishments. Perhaps the cause of this--which is the reason why
torture was employed in the Middle Ages, and why it is employed
in China at the present day--is that only a small percentage of
the criminal classes are ever arrested; therefore when a criminal
is caught, his treatment is often unduly severe. If you read, for
instance, the sentences of corporal punishment, etc., which were
passed in England in the eighteenth century by county judges, or
of the punishments which were the rule in the Duke of Wellington’s
army in the Peninsular War, they will make your hair stand on end by
their incredible brutality; and England in the eighteenth century was
politically more advanced than Russia is at the present day.

With regard to the second point, the attitude of Russians towards the
question of punishments displays a curious blend of opinion. While
they are more indulgent than any other people when certain vices and
defects are concerned, they are ruthless in enforcing and accepting the
necessity of punishment in the case of certain other criminal offences.
For instance, they are completely indulgent with regard to any moral
delinquencies, but unswervingly stern in certain other matters; and
although they would often be inclined to let off a criminal, saying:
“Why should he be punished?” at the same time if he is punished,
and severely punished, they will accept the matter as a part of the
inevitable system that governs the world. On the other hand, they are
indulgent and tolerant where moral delinquencies which affect the man
himself and not the community are concerned; that is to say, they
will not mind how often or how violently a man gets drunk, because
the matter affects only himself; but they will bitterly resent a man
stealing horses, because thereby the whole community is affected.

This attitude of mind is reflected in the Russian Code of Laws. The
Russian Penal Code, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu points out in his classic
book on Russia, is the most lenient in Europe. But the trouble is,
as the Liberal members of the Duma are constantly repeating, not
that the laws in Russia are bad, but that they are overridden by the
arbitrary conduct of individual officials. However, I do not wish
in this article to dwell on the causes of political discontent in
Russia, or on the evils of the bureaucratic régime. My object is
simply to point out certain characteristics of the Russian race, and
one of these characteristics is the leniency of the punishment laid
down by law for offences which in other countries are dealt with
drastically and severely; murder, for instance. Capital punishment
was abolished in Russia as long ago as 1753 by the Empress Elizabeth;
corporal punishment subsisted only among the peasants, administered
by themselves (and not by a magistrate) according to their own local
administration, until it was abolished by the present Emperor in 1904.
So that until the revolutionary movement began, cases of capital
punishment, which only occurred in virtue of martial law, were rare,
and from 1866 to 1903 only 114 men suffered the penalty of death
throughout the whole of the Russian Empire, including the outlying
districts such as Caucasus, Transbaikalia, and Turkestan;[2] and even
at the present moment, when the country is still practically governed
by martial law, which was established in order to cope with the
revolutionary movement, you can in Russia kill a man and only receive
a few years’ imprisonment. It is the contrast of the lenient treatment
meted out to non-political prisoners with the severity exercised
towards political offenders which strikes the Russian politician
to-day, and it is of this contradiction that he so bitterly complains.
The fact, nevertheless, remains--in spite of the cases, however
numerous, which arose out of the extraordinary situation created by the
revolutionary movement, that the sentence of death, meted out by the
judicial court, is in itself abhorrent to the Russian character.

I will now give a few minor instances illustrating the indulgent
attitude of the Russian character towards certain moral delinquencies.
In a regiment which I came across in Manchuria during the war there
were two men; one was conscientious, brave to the verge of heroism,
self-sacrificing, punctilious in the performance of his duty, and
exacting in the demands he made on others as to the fulfilment of
theirs, untiringly energetic, competent in every way, but severe and
uncompromising. There was another man who was incurably lax in the
performance of his duty, not scrupulously honest where the Government
money was concerned, incompetent, but as kind as a human being can
be. I once heard a Russian doctor who was attached to this regiment
discussing and comparing the characters of the two men, and, after
weighing the pros and cons, he concluded that as a man the latter was
superior. Dishonesty in dealings with the public money seemed to him
an absolutely trifling fault. The unswerving performance of duty, and
all the great military qualities which he noted in the former, did not
seem to him to count in the balance against the great kindness of heart
possessed by the latter; and most of the officers agreed with him. It
never seemed to occur to these men that any one set of qualities, such
as efficiency, conscientiousness, or honesty, were more indispensable,
or in any way superior to any other set of qualities. They just noticed
the absence of them in others, or, as often happened, in themselves,
and thought they were amply compensated for by the presence of other
qualities, such as good-nature or amiability. And one notices in
Russian literature that authors such as Dostoievsky are not content
with showing us the redeeming points of a merely bad character, that
is to say, of a man fundamentally good, but who indulges in vice or in
crime; but they will take pleasure in showing you the redeeming points
of a character which at first sight appears to be radically mean and
utterly despicable. The aim of these authors seems to be to insist
that, just as nobody is indispensable, so nobody is superfluous. There
is no such thing as a superfluous man; and any man, however worthless,
miserable, despicable and mean he may seem to be, has just as much
right to be understood as any one else; and they show that, when he
is understood, he is not, taking him as a whole, any worse than his
fellow-creatures.

Another characteristic which strikes one in Russian literature, and
still more in Russian life, especially if one has mingled in the lower
classes, is the very deeply rooted sense of pity which the Russians
possess. An Englishman who is lame, and whom I met in Russia, told
me that he had experienced there a treatment such as he had never
met before in any other country. The people, and especially the poor,
noticed his lameness, and, guessing what would be difficult for him to
do, came to his aid and helped him.

In the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg you rarely see beggars beg
in vain; and I have observed, travelling third class in trains and in
steamers, that when the poor came to beg bread for food from the poor,
they were never sent empty away. During the war I always found the
soldiers ready to give me food, however little they had for themselves,
in circumstances when they would have been quite justified in sending
me about my business as a pestilential nuisance and camp-follower. It
is impossible for a man to starve in Russia. He is perfectly certain
to find some one who will give him food for the asking. In Siberia
the peasants in the villages put bread on their window-sills, in
case any fugitive prisoners should be passing by. This fundamental
goodness of heart is the most important fact in the Russian nature;
it, and the expression of it in their literature, is the greatest
contribution which they have made to the history of the world. It is
probably the cause of all their weakness. For the defects indispensable
to such qualities are slackness, and the impossibility of conceiving
self-discipline to be a necessity, or of recognising the conventional
rules and prejudices which make for solidity, and which are, as
Professor Milioukov said, as cement is to a building.

The result of the absence of this hard and binding cement of prejudice
and discipline is that it is very difficult to attain a standard of
efficiency in matters where efficiency is indispensable. For instance,
in war. In a regiment with which I lived for a time during the war
there was a young officer who absolutely insisted on the maintenance of
a high standard of efficiency. He insisted on his orders being carried
out to the letter; his fellow-officers thought he was rather mad. One
day we had arrived in a village, and one of the younger officers had
ordered the horses to be put up in the yard facing the house in which
we were to live. Presently the officer to whom I have alluded arrived,
and ordered the horses to be taken out and put into a separate yard,
as he considered the arrangement which he found on his arrival to be
insanitary--which it was. He went away, and the younger officer did not
dream of carrying out his order.

“What is the use?” he said, “the horses may just as well stay where
they are.”

They considered this man to be indulging in an unnecessary pose, but
he was not, according to our ideas, in the least a formalist or a
lover of red tape; he merely insisted on what he considered to be
an irreducible minimum of discipline, the result being that he was
a square peg in a round hole. Moreover, when people committed, or
commit (and this is true in any department of public life in Russia),
a glaring offence, or leave undone an important part of their duty, it
is very rare that they are dealt with drastically; they are generally
threatened with punishment which ends in platonic censure. And this
fact, combined with a bureaucratic system, has dangerous results, for
the official often steps beyond the limits of his duty and takes upon
himself to commit lawless acts, and to exercise unlawful and arbitrary
functions, knowing perfectly well that he can do so with impunity,
and that he will not be punished. And one of the proofs that a new
era is now beginning in Russia is a series of phenomena never before
witnessed, and which have occurred not long ago--namely, the punishment
and dismissal of guilty officials, such as, for instance, that of
Gurko, who was dismissed from his post in the Government for having
been responsible for certain dishonest dealings in the matter of the
Famine Relief.

Of course such indulgence, or rather the slackness resulting from it,
is not universal. Otherwise the whole country would go to pieces. And
yet so far from going to pieces, even through a revolution things
jogged on somehow or other. For against every square yard of slackness
there is generally a square inch of exceptional capacity, and a square
foot of dogged efficiency, and thus the balance is restored. The
incompetency of a Stoessel, and a host of others, is counterbalanced
not only by the brilliant energy of a Kondratenko, but by the hard
work of thousands of unknown men. And this is true throughout all
public life in Russia. At the same time, the happy-go-lucky element,
the feeling of “What does it matter?” of what they call _nichevo_, is
the preponderating quality; and it is only so far counterbalanced by
sterner qualities as to make the machine go on. This accounts also for
the apparent weakness of the revolutionary element in Russia. The ranks
of these people, which at one moment appear to be so formidable, at the
next moment seem to have scattered to the four winds of heaven. They
appear to give in and to accept, to submit and be resigned to fate.
But there is nevertheless an undying passive resistance; and at the
bottom of the Russian character, whether that character be employed
in revolutionary or in other channels, there is an obstinate grit of
resistance. Again, one is met in Russian history, from the days of
Peter the Great down to the present day, with isolated instances of
exceptional energy and of powers of organisation, such as Souvorov,
Skobelieff, Kondratenko, Kilkov, and, to take a less known instance,
Kroustalieff (who played a leading part in organising the working
classes during the great strike in 1905).

The way in which troops were poured into Manchuria during the war
across a single line, which was due to the brilliant organisation of
Prince Kilkov, is in itself a signal instance of organisation and
energy in the face of great material difficulties. The station at
Liaoyang was during the war under the command of a man whose name
I have forgotten, but who showed the same qualities of energy and
resource. On the day Liaoyang was evacuated, and while the station was
being shelled, he managed to get off every train safely, and to leave
nothing behind. There were many such instances which are at present
little known, to be set against the incompetence and mismanagement of
which one hears so much.

It is perhaps this blend of opposite qualities, this mixture of
softness and slackness and happy-go-lucky _insouciance_ (all of which
qualities make a thing as pliant as putty and as yielding as dough)
with infinite capacity for taking pains, and the inspiring energy and
undefeated patience in the face of seemingly insuperable obstacles,
which makes the Russian character difficult to understand. You have,
on the one hand, the man who bows his head before an obstacle and
says that it does not after all matter very much; and, on the other
hand, the man who with a few straws succeeds in making a great palace
of bricks. Peter the Great was just such a man, and Souvorov and
Kondratenko were the same in kind, although less in degree. And again,
you have the third type, the man who, though utterly defeated, and
apparently completely submissive, persists in resisting--the passive
resister whose obstinacy is unlimited, and whose influence in matters
such as the revolutionary propaganda is incalculable.

It has been constantly said that Russia is the land of paradoxes, and
there is perhaps no greater paradox than the mixture in the Russian
character of obstinacy and weakness, and the fact that the Russian is
sometimes inclined to throw up the sponge instantly, while at others
he becomes himself a tough sponge, which, although pulled this way and
that, is never pulled to pieces. He is undefeated and indefatigable in
spite of enormous odds, and thus we are confronted in Russian history
with men as energetic as Peter the Great, and as slack as Alexeieff the
Viceroy.

People talk of the waste of Providence in never making a ruby without
a flaw, but is it not rather the result of an admirable economy, which
never deals out a portion of coffee without a certain admixture of
chicory?


FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Tagantseff, _Russian Criminal Law_.




CHAPTER II

REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE


The moment a writer nowadays mentions the word “realism” he risks the
danger of being told that he is a disciple of a particular school,
and that he is bent on propagating a peculiar and exclusive theory of
art. If, however, Russian literature is to be discussed at all, the
word “realism” cannot be avoided. So it will be as well to explain
immediately and clearly what I mean when I assert that the main
feature of both Russian prose and Russian verse is its closeness to
nature, its love of reality, which for want of a better word one can
only call realism. When the word “realism” is employed with regard to
literature, it gives rise to two quite separate misunderstandings:
this is unavoidable, because the word has been used to denote special
schools and theories of art which have made a great deal of noise both
in France and England and elsewhere.

The first misunderstanding arises from the use of the word by a certain
French school of novelists who aimed at writing scientific novels
in which the reader should be given slices of raw life; and these
novelists strove by an accumulation of detail to produce the effect of
absolute reality. The best known writers of this French school did not
succeed in doing this, although they achieved striking results of a
different character. For instance, Emile Zola was entirely successful
when he wrote prose epics on subjects such as life in a mine, life
in a huge shop, or life during a great war; that is to say, he was
poetically successful when he painted with a broad brush and set great
crowds in motion. He produced matchless panoramas, but the effect of
them at their best was a poetic, romantic effect. When he tried to be
realistic, and scientifically realistic, when he endeavoured to say
everything by piling detail on detail, he merely succeeded in being
tedious and disgusting. And so far from telling the whole truth, he
produced an effect of distorted exaggeration such as one receives from
certain kinds of magnifying and distorting mirrors.

The second misunderstanding with regard to the word “realism” is this.
Certain people think that if you say an author strives to attain an
effect of truth and reality in his writings, you must necessarily mean
that he is without either the wish or the power to select, and that his
work is therefore chaotic. Not long ago, in a book of short sketches,
I included a very short and inadequate paper on certain aspects of the
Russian stage; and in mentioning Tchekov, the Russian dramatist, I made
the following statement: “The Russian stage simply aims at one thing:
to depict everyday life, not exclusively the brutality of everyday
life, nor the tremendous catastrophes befalling human beings, nor to
devise intricate problems and far-fetched cases of conscience in which
human beings might possibly be entangled. It simply aims at presenting
glimpses of human beings as they really are, and by means of such
glimpses it opens out avenues and vistas into their lives.” I added
further that I considered such plays would be successful in any country.

A reviewer, commenting on this in an interesting article, said that
these remarks revealed the depth of my error with regard to realism.
“As if the making of such plays,” wrote the reviewer, “were not the
perpetual aim of dramatists! But a dramatist would be putting chaos and
not real life on the stage if he presented imitations of unselected
people doing unselected things at unselected moments. The idea which
binds the drama together, an idea derived by reason from experience of
life at large, is the most real and lifelike part in it, if the drama
is a good one.”

Now I am as well aware as this reviewer, or as any one else, that it is
the perpetual aim of dramatists to make such plays. But it is an aim
which they often fail to achieve. For instance, we have had, during the
last thirty years in England and France, many successful and striking
plays in which the behaviour of the characters although effective from
a theatrical point of view, is totally unlike the behaviour of men
and women in real life. Again, when I wrote of the Russian stage, I
never for a moment suggested that the Russian dramatist did, or that
any dramatist should, present imitations of unselected people doing
unselected things at unselected moments. As my sketch was a short one,
I was not able to go into the question in full detail, but I should
have thought that if one said that a play was true to life, and at the
same time theatrically and dramatically successful, that is to say,
interesting to a large audience, an ordinary reader would have taken
for granted (as many of my readers did take for granted) that in the
work of such dramatists there must necessarily have been selection.

Later on in this book I shall deal at some length with the plays
of Anton Tchekov, and in discussing that writer, I hope to make it
clear that his work, so far from presenting imitations of unselected
people doing unselected things at unselected moments, are imitations
of selected but real people, doing selected but probable things at
selected but interesting moments. But the difference between Tchekov
and most English and French dramatists (save those of the quite modern
school) is, that the moments which Tchekov selects appear at first
sight to be trivial. His genius consists in the power of revealing the
dramatic significance of the seemingly trivial. It stands to reason,
as I shall try to point out later on, that the more realistic your
play, the more it is true to life; the less obvious action there is
in it, the greater must be the skill of the dramatist; the surer his
art, the more certain his power of construction, the nicer his power of
selection.

Mr. Max Beerbohm once pointed this out by an apt illustration. “The
dramatist,” he said, “who deals in heroes, villains, buffoons, queer
people who are either doing or suffering either tremendous or funny
things, has a very valuable advantage over the playwright who deals
merely in humdrum you and me. The dramatist has his material as a
springboard. The adramatist must leap as best he can on the hard high
road, the adramatist must be very much an athlete.”

That is just it: many of the modern (and ancient) Russian playwriters
are adramatists. But they are extremely athletic; and so far from their
work being chaotic, they sometimes give evidence, as in the case of
Tchekov, of a supreme mastery over the construction and architectonics
of drama, as well as of an unerring instinct for what will be telling
behind footlights, although at first sight their choice does not seem
to be obviously dramatic.

Therefore, everything I have said so far can be summed up in two
statements: Firstly, that Russian literature, because it deals with
realism, has nothing in common with the work of certain French
“Naturalists,” by whose work the word “realism” has achieved so wide
a notoriety; secondly, Russian literature, although it is realistic,
is not necessarily chaotic, and contains many supreme achievements
in the art of selection. But I wish to discuss the peculiar quality
of Russian realism, because it appears to me that it is this quality
which differentiates Russian literature from the literature of other
countries.

I have not dealt in this book with Russian poets, firstly, because the
number of readers who are familiar with Russian poetry in its original
tongue is limited; and, secondly, because it appears to me impossible
to discuss Russian poetry, if one is forced to deal in translations,
since no translation, however good, can give the reader an idea either
of the music, the atmosphere, or the charm of the original. But it
is in Russian poetry that the quality of Russian realism is perhaps
most clearly made manifest. Any reader familiar with German literature
will, I think, agree that if one compares French or English poetry
with German poetry, and French and English Romanticism with German
Romanticism, one is conscious, when one approaches the work of the
Germans, of entering into a more sober and more quiet dominion; one
leaves behind one the exuberance of England: “the purple patches” of
a Shakespeare, the glowing richness of a Keats, the soaring rainbow
fancies of a Shelley, the wizard horizons of a Coleridge. One also
leaves behind one the splendid sword-play and gleaming decision of the
French: the clarions of Corneille, the harps and flutes of Racine, the
great many-piped organ of Victor Hugo, the stormy pageants of Musset,
the gorgeous lyricism of Flaubert, the jewelled dreams of Gautier, and
all the colour and the pomp of the Parnassians. One leaves all these
things behind, and one steps into a world of quiet skies, rustling
leaves, peaceful meadows, and calm woods, where the birds twitter
cheerfully and are answered by the plaintive notes of pipe or reed, or
interrupted by the homely melody, sometimes cheerful and sometimes sad,
of the wandering fiddler.

In this country, it is true, we have visions and vistas of distant
hills and great brooding waters, of starlit nights and magical
twilights; in this country, it is also true that we hear the echoes
of magic horns, the footfall of the fairies, the tinkling hammers of
the sedulous Kobolds, and the champing and the neighing of the steeds
of Chivalry. But there is nothing wildly fantastic, nor portentously
exuberant, nor gorgeously dazzling; nothing tempestuous, unbridled,
or extreme. When the Germans have wished to express such things, they
have done so in their music; they certainly have not done so in their
poetry. What they have done in their poetry, and what they have done
better than any one else, is to express in the simplest of all words
the simplest of all thoughts and feelings. They have spoken of first
love, of spring and the flowers, the smiles and tears of children,
the dreams of youth and the musings of old age--with a simplicity, a
homeliness no writers of any other country have ever excelled. And when
they deal with the supernatural, with ghosts, fairies, legends, deeds
of prowess or phantom lovers, there is a quaint homeliness about the
recital of such things, as though they were being told by the fireside
in a cottage, or being sung on the village green to the accompaniment
of a hurdy-gurdy. To many Germans the phantasy of a Shelley or of a
Victor Hugo is essentially alien and unpalatable. They feel as though
they were listening to men who are talking too loud and too wildly,
and they merely wish to get away or to stop their ears. Again, poets
like Keats or Gautier often produce on them the impression that they
are listening to sensuous and meaningless echoes.

Now Russian poetry is a step farther on in this same direction. The
reader who enters the kingdom of Russian poetry, after having visited
those of France and England, experiences what he feels in entering the
German region, but still more so. The region of Russian poetry is still
more earthy. Even the mysticism of certain German Romantic writers is
alien to it. The German poetic country is quiet and sober, it is true;
but in its German forests you hear, as I have said, the noise of those
hoofs which are bearing riders to the unknown country. Also you have in
German literature, allegory and pantheistic dreams which are foreign to
the Russian poetic temperament, and therefore unreflected in Russian
poetry.

The Russian poetical temperament, and, consequently, Russian poetry,
does not only closely cling to the solid earth, but it is based on
and saturated with sound common sense, with a curious matter-of-fact
quality. And this common sense with which the greatest Russian poet,
Pushkin, is so thoroughly impregnated, is as foreign to German
_Schwärmerei_ as it is to French rhetoric, or the imaginative
exuberance of England. In Russian poetry of the early part of the
nineteenth century, in spite of the enthusiasm kindled in certain
Russian poets by the romantic scenery of the Caucasus, there is very
little feeling for nature. Nature, in the poetry of Pushkin, is more or
less conventional: almost the only flower mentioned is the rose, almost
the only bird the nightingale. And although certain Russian poets
adopted the paraphernalia and the machinery of Romanticism (largely
owing to the influence of Byron), their true nature, their fundamental
sense, keeps on breaking out. Moreover, there is an element in Russian
Romanticism of passive obedience, of submission to authority, which
arises partly from the passive quality in all Russians, and partly from
the atmosphere of the age and the political régime of the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Thus it is that no Russian Romantic poet would
have ever tried to reach the dim pinnacles of Shelley’s speculative
cities, and no Russian Romantic poet would have uttered a wild cry of
revolt such as Musset’s “Rolla.” But what the Russian poets did do,
and what they did in a manner which gives them an unique place in the
history of the world’s literature, was to extract poetry from the daily
life they saw round them, and to express it in forms of incomparable
beauty. Russian poetry, like the Russian nature, is plastic.
Plasticity, adaptability, comprehensiveness, are the great qualities
of Pushkin. His verse is “simple, sensuous and impassioned”; there is
nothing indistinct about it, no vague outline and no blurred detail; it
is perfectly balanced, and it is this sense of balance and proportion
blent with a rooted common sense, which reminds the reader when he
reads Pushkin of Greek art, and gives one the impression that the poet
is a classic, however much he may have employed the stock-in-trade of
Romanticism.

Meredith says somewhere that the poetry of mortals is their daily
prose. It is precisely this kind of poetry, the poetry arising
from the incidents of everyday life, which the Russian poets have
been successful in transmuting into verse. There is a quality of
matter-of-factness in Russian poetry which is unique; the same quality
exists in Russian folklore and fairy tales; even Russian ghosts, and
certainly the Russian devil, have an element of matter-of-factness
about them; and the most Romantic of all Russian poets, Lermontov, has
certain qualities which remind one more of Thackeray than of Byron or
Shelley, who undoubtedly influenced him.

I will quote as an example of this one of his most famous poems. It is
called “The Testament,” and it is the utterance of a man who has been
mortally wounded in battle.

  “I want to be alone with you,[3]
     A moment quite alone.
  The minutes left to me are few,
     They say I’ll soon be gone.
  And you’ll be going home on leave,
  Then tell ... but why? I do believe
  There’s not a soul, who’ll greatly care
  To hear about me over there.

  And yet if some one asks you, well,
     Let us suppose they do--
  A bullet hit me here, you’ll tell,--
     The chest,--and it went through.
  And say I died and for the Tsar,
  And say what fools the doctors are;--
  And that I shook you by the hand,
  And thought about my native land.

  My father and my mother, there!
     They may be dead by now;
  To tell the truth, I wouldn’t care
     To grieve them anyhow.
  If one of them is living, say
  I’m bad at writing home, and they
  Have sent us to the front, you see,--
  And that they needn’t wait for me.

  They’ve got a neighbour, as you know,
     And you remember I
  And she.... How very long ago
     It is we said good-bye!
  She won’t ask after me, nor care,
  But tell her ev’rything, don’t spare
  Her empty heart; and let her cry;--
  To her it doesn’t signify.”

The words of this poem are the words of familiar conversation; they are
exactly what the soldier would say in such circumstances. There is not
a single literary or poetical expression used. And yet the effect in
the original is one of poignant poetical feeling and consummate poetic
art. I know of no other language where the thing is possible; because
if you translate the Russian by the true literary equivalents, you
would have to say: “I would like a word alone with you, old fellow,” or
“old chap,”[4] or something of that kind; and I know of no English poet
who has ever been able to deal successfully (in poetry) with the speech
of everyday life without the help of slang or dialect. What is needed
for this are the Russian temperament and the Russian language.

I will give another instance of what I mean. There is a Russian poet
called Krilov, who wrote fables such as those of La Fontaine, based
for the greater part on those of Æsop. He wrote a version of what is
perhaps La Fontaine’s masterpiece, “Les Deux Pigeons,” which begins
thus:

  “Two pigeons, like two brothers, lived together.
  They shared their all in fair and wintry weather.
  Where the one was the other would be near,
  And every joy they shared and every tear.
  They noticed not Time’s flight. Sadness they knew;
  But weary of each other never grew.”

This last line, translated literally, runs: “They were sometimes
sad, they were never bored.” It is one of the most poetical in
the whole range of Russian literature; and yet how absolutely
untranslatable!--not only into English, but into any other language.
How can one convey the word “boring” so that it shall be poetical, in
English or in French? In Russian one can, simply from the fact that the
word which means boring, “skouchno,” is just as fit for poetic use as
the word “groustno,” which means sad. And this proves that it is easier
for Russians to make poetry out of the language of everyday than it is
for Englishmen.

The matter-of-fact quality of the Russian poetical temperament--its
dislike of exaggeration and extravagance--is likewise clearly visible
in the manner in which Russian poets write of nature. I have already
said that the poets of the early part of the nineteenth century reveal
(compared with their European contemporaries) only a mild sentiment for
the humbler aspects of nature; but let us take a poet of a later epoch,
Alexis Tolstoy, who wrote in the fifties, and who may not unfairly be
called a Russian Tennyson. In the work of Tolstoy the love of nature
reveals itself on almost every page. His work brings before our eyes
the landscape of the South of Russia, and expresses the charm and the
quality of that country in the same way as Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”
evokes for us the sight of England. Yet if one compares the two, the
work of the Russian poet is nearer to the earth, familiar and simple
in a fashion which is beyond the reach of other languages. Here, for
instance, is a rough translation of one of Alexis Tolstoy’s poems:

  “Through the slush and the ruts of the road,
  By the side of the dam of the stream;
  Where the wet fishing nets are spread,
  The carriage jogs on, and I muse.

  I muse and I look at the road,
  At the damp and the dull grey sky,
  At the shelving bank of the lake,
  And the far-off smoke of the villages.

  By the dam, with a cheerless face,
  Is walking a tattered old Jew.
  From the lake, with a splashing of foam,
  The waters rush through the weir.

  A little boy plays on a pipe,
  He has made it out of a reed.
  The startled wild-ducks have flown,
  And call as they sweep from the lake.

  Near the old crumbling mill
  Labourers sit on the grass.
  An old worn horse in a cart,
  Is lazily dragging some sacks.

  And I know it all, oh! so well,
  Although I have never been here;
  The roof of that house over there,
  And that boy, and the wood, and the weir,

  And the mournful voice of the mill,
  And the crumbling barn in the field--
  I have been here and seen it before,
  And forgotten it all long ago.

  This very same horse plodded on,
  It was dragging the very same sacks;
  And under the mouldering mill
  Labourers sat on the grass.

  And the Jew, with his beard, walked by,
  And the weir made just such a noise.
  All this has happened before,
  Only, I cannot tell when.”

I have said that Russian fairy tales and folk stories are full of the
same spirit of matter-of-factness. And so essential do I consider this
factor to be, so indispensable do I consider the comprehension of it by
the would-be student of Russian literature, that I will quote a short
folk-story at length, which reveals this quality in its essence. The
reader will only have to compare the following tale in his mind with a
French, English, or German fairy tale to see what I mean.


THE FOOL

Once upon a time in a certain kingdom there lived an old man, and he
had three sons. Two of them were clever, the third was a fool. The
father died, and the sons drew lots for his property: the clever sons
won every kind of useful thing; the fool only received an old ox, and
that was a lean and bony one.

The time of the fair came, and the clever brothers made themselves
ready to go and do a deal. The fool saw them doing this, and said:

“I also, brothers, shall take my ox to the market.”

And he led his ox by a rope tied to its horn, towards the town. On the
way to the town he went through a wood, and in the wood there stood an
old dried-up birch tree. The wind blew and the birch tree groaned.

“Why does the birch tree groan?” thought the fool. “Does it perhaps
wish to bargain for my ox? Now tell me, birch tree, if you wish to buy.
If that is so, buy. The price of the ox is twenty roubles: I cannot
take less. Show your money.”

But the birch tree answered nothing at all, and only groaned, and the
fool was astonished that the birch tree wished to receive the ox on
credit.

“If that is so, I will wait till to-morrow,” said the fool.

He tied the ox to the birch tree, said good-bye to it, and went home.

The clever brothers came to him and began to question him.

“Well, fool,” they said, “have you sold your ox?”

“I have sold it.”

“Did you sell it dear?”

“I sold it for twenty roubles.”

“And where is the money?”

“I have not yet got the money. I have been told I shall receive it
to-morrow.”

“Oh, you simpleton!” said the clever brothers.

On the next day, early in the morning, the fool got up, made himself
ready, and went to the birch tree for his money. He arrived at the
wood; the birch tree was there, swaying in the wind, but the ox was not
there any more,--the wolves had eaten him in the night.

“Now, countryman,” said the fool to the birch tree, “pay me the money.
You promised you would pay it to-day.”

The wind blew, the birch tree groaned, and the fool said:

“Well, you are an untrustworthy fellow! Yesterday you said, ‘I will pay
the money to-morrow,’ and to-day you are trying to get out of it. If
this is so I will wait yet another day, but after that I shall wait no
longer, for I shall need the money myself.”

The fool went home, and his clever brothers again asked him: “Well,
have you received your money?”

“No, brothers,” he answered, “I shall have to wait still another little
day.”

“Whom did you sell it to?”

“A dried old birch tree in the wood.”

“See what a fool!” said the brothers.

On the third day the fool took an axe and set out for the wood. He
arrived and demanded the money.

The birch tree groaned and groaned.

“No, countryman,” said the fool, “if you always put off everything till
the morrow, I shall never get anything from you at all. I do not like
joking, and I shall settle matters with you at once and for all.”

He took the axe and struck the tree, and the chips flew on all sides.

Now in the tree was a hollow, and in this hollow some robbers had
hidden a bag of gold. The tree was split into two parts, and the fool
saw a heap of red gold; and he gathered the gold together in a heap and
took some of it home and showed it to his brothers.

And his brothers said to him:

“Where did you get such a lot of money, fool?”

“A countryman of mine gave it to me for my ox,” he said, “and there is
still a great deal left. I could not bring half of it home. Let us go,
brothers, and get the rest of it.”

They went into the wood and found the money, and brought it home.

“Now look you, fool,” said the clever brothers, “do not tell any one
that we have so much money.”

“Of course not,” said the fool, “I will not tell any one, I promise
you.”

But soon after this they met a deacon.

“What are you bringing from the wood, children?” said the deacon.

“Mushrooms,” said the clever brothers.

But the fool interrupted and said: “They are not telling the truth--we
are bringing gold. Look at it if you will.”

The deacon gasped with astonishment, fell upon the gold, and took as
much as he could and stuffed his pockets full of it.

But the fool was annoyed at this, and struck him with an axe and beat
him till he was dead.

“Oh fool, what have you done?” said his brothers. “You will be ruined,
and ruin us also. What shall we do now with this dead body?”

They thought and they thought, and then they took it to an empty cellar
and threw it into the cellar.

Late in the evening the eldest brother said to the second: “This is a
bad business. As soon as they miss the deacon the fool is certain to
tell them all about it. Let us kill a goat and hide it in the cellar
and put the dead body in some other place.”

They waited until the night was dark; then they killed a goat, threw it
into the cellar, and took the body of the deacon to another place and
buried it in the earth.

A few days passed; people looked for the deacon everywhere, and asked
everybody they could about him. And the fool said to them:

“What do you want of him? I killed him with an axe, and my brothers
threw the body into the cellar.”

They at once seized the fool and said to him:

“Take us and show us.”

The fool climbed into the cellar, took out the head of the goat, and
said:

“Was your deacon black?”

“Yes,” they said.

“And had he got a beard?”

“Yes, he had a beard.”

“And had he got horns?”

“What sort of horns, you fool?”

“Well, look!” And he threw down the head.

The people looked and saw that it was a goat, and they spat at the fool
and went home.

       *       *       *       *       *

This story, more than pages of analysis and more than chapters of
argument, illustrates what I mean: namely, that if the Russian poet
and the Russian peasant, the one in his verse, the other in his folk
tales and fairy stories, are matter-of-fact, alien to flights of
exaggerated fancy, and above all things enamoured of the truth; if by
their closeness to nature, their gift of seeing things as they are, and
expressing these things in terms of the utmost simplicity, without
fuss, without affectation and without artificiality,--if, I say, all
this entitles us to call them realists, then this realism is not and
must never be thought of as being the fad of a special school, the
theory of a limited clique, or the watchword of a literary camp, but
it is rather the natural expression of the Russian temperament and the
Russian character.

I will try throughout this book to attempt to illustrate this character
and this temperament as best I can, by observing widely different
manifestations of it; but all these manifestations, however different
they may be, contain one great quality in common: that is, the quality
of reality of which I have been writing. And unless the student of
Russian literature realises this and appreciates what Russian realism
consists of, and what it really means, he will be unable to understand
either the men or the literature of Russia.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] This translation is in the metre of the original. It is literal;
but hopelessly inadequate.

[4] In the Russian, although every word of the poem is familiar, not a
word of slang is used.




CHAPTER III

GOGOL AND THE CHEERFULNESS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE


The first thing that strikes the English reader when he dips into
translations of Russian literature, is the unrelieved gloom, the
unmitigated pessimism of the characters and the circumstances
described. Everything is grey, everybody is depressed; the atmosphere
is one of hopeless melancholy. On the other hand, the first thing that
strikes the English traveller when he arrives in Russia for the first
time, is the cheerfulness of the Russian people. Nowhere have I seen
this better described than in an article, written by Mr. Charles Hands,
which appeared in the summer of 1905 in _The Daily Mail_. Mr. Hands
summed up his idea of the Russian people, which he had gathered after
living with them for two years, both in peace and in war, in a short
article. His final impression was the same as that which he received on
the day he arrived in Russia for the first time. That was in winter;
it was snowing; the cold was intense. The streets of St. Petersburg
were full of people, and in spite of the driving snow, the bitter wind,
and the cruel cold, everybody was smiling, everybody was making the
best of it. Nowhere did you hear people grumbling, or come across a
face stamped with a grievance.

I myself experienced an impression of the same kind, one evening in
July 1906. I was strolling about the streets of St. Petersburg. It was
the Sunday of the dissolution of the Duma; the dissolution had been
announced that very morning. The streets were crowded with people,
mostly poor people. I was walking with an Englishman who had spent some
years in Russia, and he said to me: “It is all very well to talk of
the calamities of this country. Have you ever in your life seen a more
cheerful Sunday crowd?” I certainly had not.

The Russian character has an element of happy consent and submission
to the inevitable; of adapting itself to any circumstance, however
disagreeable, which I have never come across in any other country. The
Russians have a faculty of making the best of things which I have never
seen developed in so high a degree. I remember once in Manchuria during
the war, some soldiers, who were under the command of a sergeant,
preparing early one morning, just before the battle of Ta-Shi-Chiao,
to make some tea. Suddenly a man in command said there would not be
time to have tea. The men simply said, “To-day no tea will be drunk,”
with a smile; it did not occur to any one to complain, and they put
away the kettle, which was just on the boil, and drove away in a cart.
I witnessed this kind of incident over and over again. I remember one
night at a place called Lonely Tree Hill. I was with a battery. We
had just arrived, and there were no quarters. We generally lived in
Chinese houses, but on this occasion there were none to be found. We
encamped on the side of a hill. There was no shelter, no food, and
no fire, and presently it began to rain. The Cossacks, of whom the
battery was composed, made a kind of shelter out of what straw and
millet they could find, and settled themselves down as comfortably and
as cheerfully as if they had been in barracks. They accomplished the
difficult task of making themselves comfortable out of nothing, and of
making me comfortable also.

Besides this power of making the best of things, the Russians have a
keen sense of humour. The clowns in their circuses are inimitable. A
type you frequently meet in Russia is the man who tells stories and
anecdotes which are distinguished by simplicity and by a knack of just
seizing on the ludicrous side of some trivial episode or conversation.
Their humour is not unlike English humour in kind, and this explains
the wide popularity of our humorous writers in Russia, beginning with
Dickens, including such essentially English writers as W. W. Jacobs
and the author of _The Diary of a Nobody_, and ending with Jerome K.
Jerome, whose complete works can be obtained at any Russian railway
station.[5]

All these elements are fully represented in Russian literature; but
the kind of Russian literature which is saturated with these qualities
either does not reach us at all, or reaches us in scarce and inadequate
translations.

The greatest humorist of Russian literature, the Russian Dickens,
is Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol. Translations of some of his stories
and of his longest work, _Dead Souls_, were published in 1887 by Mr.
Vizetelly. These translations are now out of print, and the work of
Gogol may be said to be totally unknown in England. In France some
of his stories have been translated by no less a writer than Prosper
Mérimée.

Gogol was a Little Russian, a Cossack by birth; he belonged to the
Ukraine, that is to say, the frontier country, the district which lies
between the north and the extreme south. It is a country of immense
plains, rich harvests, and smiling farms; of vines, laughter, and song.
He was born in 1809 near Poltava, in the heart of the Cossack country.
He was brought up by his grandfather, who had been the regimental
chronicler of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who live in the region
beyond the falls of the Dnieper. His childhood was nursed in the warlike
traditions of that race, and fed with the tales of a heroic epoch, the
wars against Poland and the deeds of the dwellers of the Steppes. Later
he was sent to school, and in 1829, when he was twenty years old, he
went to St. Petersburg, where after many disillusions and difficulties
he obtained a place in a Government office. The time that he spent
in this office gave him the material for one of his best stories.
He soon tired of office work, and tried to go on the stage, but no
manager would engage him. He became a tutor, but was not a particularly
successful one. At last some friends obtained for him the professorship
of History at the University, but he failed in this profession also,
and so he finally turned to literature. By the publication of his first
efforts in the St. Petersburg press, he made some friends, and through
these he obtained an introduction to Pushkin, the greatest of Russian
poets, who was at that time in the fullness of his fame.

Pushkin was a character devoid of envy and jealousy, overflowing with
generosity, and prodigal of praise. Gogol subsequently became his
favourite writer, and it was Pushkin who urged Gogol to write about
Russian history and popular Russian scenes. Gogol followed his advice
and wrote the _Evenings in a Farmhouse on the Dikanka_. These stories
are supposed to be told by an old beekeeper; and in them Gogol puts
all the memories of his childhood, the romantic traditions, the fairy
tales, the legends, the charming scenery, and the cheerful life of the
Little Russian country.

In these stories he revealed the twofold nature of his talent: a
fantasy, a love of the supernatural, and a power of making us feel it,
which reminds one of Edgar Allan Poe, of Hoffmann, and of Robert Louis
Stevenson; and side by side with this fantastic element, the keenest
power of observation, which is mixed with an infectious sense of humour
and a rich and delightful drollery. Together with these gifts, Gogol
possessed a third quality, which is a blend of his fantasy and his
realism, namely, the power of depicting landscape and places, with
their colour and their atmosphere, in warm and vivid language. It is
this latter gift with which I shall deal first. Here, for instance, is
a description of the river Dnieper:

 “Wonderful is the Dnieper when in calm weather, smooth and wilful,
 it drives its full waters through the woods and the hills; it does
 not whisper, it does not boom. One gazes and gazes without being able
 to tell whether its majestic spaces are moving or not: one wonders
 whether the river is not a sheet of glass, when like a road of crystal
 azure, measureless in its breadth and unending in its length, it
 rushes and swirls across the green world. It is then that the sun
 loves to look down from the sky and to plunge his rays into the cool
 limpid waters; and the woods which grow on the banks are sharply
 reflected in the river.

 “The green-tressed trees and the wild flowers crowd together at the
 water’s edge; they bend down and gaze at themselves; they are never
 tired of their own bright image, but smile to it and greet it, as
 they incline their boughs. They dare not look into the midst of the
 Dnieper; no one save the sun and the blue sky looks into that. It is
 rare that a bird flies as far as the midmost waters. Glorious river,
 there is none other like it in the world!

 “Wonderful is the Dnieper in the warm summer nights when all things
 are asleep: men and beasts and birds, and God alone in His majesty
 looks round on the heaven and the earth and royally spreads out His
 sacerdotal vestment and lets it tremble. And from this vestment the
 stars are scattered: the stars burn and shine over the world, and all
 are reflected in the Dnieper. The Dnieper receives them all into
 its dark bosom: not one escapes it. The dark wood with its sleeping
 ravens, and the old rugged mountains above them, try to hide the river
 with their long dark shadows, but it is in vain: there is nothing in
 all the world which could overshadow the Dnieper! Blue, infinitely
 blue, its smooth surface is always moving by night and by day, and is
 visible in the distance as far as mortal eye can see. It draws near
 and nestles in the banks in the cool of the night, and leaves behind
 it a silver trail, that gleams like the blade of a sword of Damascus.
 But the blue river is once more asleep. Wonderful is the Dnieper then,
 and there is nothing like it in the world!

 “But when the dark clouds gather in the sky, and the black wood is
 shaken to its roots, the oak trees tremble, and the lightnings,
 bursting in the clouds, light up the whole world again, terrible then
 is the Dnieper. The crests of the waters thunder, dashing themselves
 against the hills; fiery with lightning, and loud with many a moan,
 they retreat and dissolve and overflow in tears in the distance. Just
 in such a way does the aged mother of the Cossack weep when she goes
 to say good-bye to her son, who is off to the wars. He rides off,
 wanton, debonair, and full of spirit; he rides on his black horse with
 his elbows well out at the side, and he waves his cap. And his mother
 sobs and runs after him; she clutches hold of his stirrup, seizes the
 snaffle, throws her arms round her son, and weeps bitterly.”

Another characteristic description of Gogol’s is the picture he gives
us of the Steppes:

 “The farther they went, the more beautiful the Steppes became. At that
 time the whole of the country which is now Lower New Russia, reaching
 as far as the Black Sea, was a vast green wilderness. Never a plough
 had passed over its measureless waves of wild grass. Only the horses,
 which were hidden in it as though in a wood, trampled it down. Nothing
 in Nature could be more beautiful than this grass. The whole of the
 surface of the earth was like a gold and green sea, on which millions
 of flowers of different colours were sprinkled. Through the high and
 delicate stems of grass the cornflowers twinkled--light blue, dark
 blue, and lilac. The yellow broom pushed upward its pointed crests;
 the white milfoil, with its flowers like fairy umbrellas, dappled the
 surface of the grass; an ear of wheat, which had come Heaven knows
 whence, was ripening.

 “At the roots of the flowers and the grass, partridges were running
 about everywhere, thrusting out their necks. The air was full of a
 thousand different bird-notes. Hawks hovered motionless in the sky,
 spreading out their wings, and fixing their eyes on the grass. The cry
 of a flock of wild geese was echoed in I know not what far-off lake. A
 gull rose from the grass in measured flight, and bathed wantonly in
 the blue air; now she has vanished in the distance, and only a black
 spot twinkles; and now she wheels in the air and glistens in the sun.”

Of course, descriptions such as these lose all their beauty in
a translation, for Gogol’s language is rich and native; full of
diminutives and racial idiom, nervous and highly-coloured. To translate
it into English is like translating Rabelais into English. I have given
these two examples more to show the nature of the thing he describes
than the manner in which he describes it.

Throughout this first collection of stories there is a blend of broad
farce and poetical fancy; we are introduced to the humours of the fair,
the adventures of sacristans with the devil and other apparitions; to
the Russalka, a naiad, a kind of land-mermaid, or Loreley, which haunts
the woods and the lakes. And every one of these stories smells of the
South Russian soil, and is overflowing with sunshine, good-humour, and
a mellow charm. This side of Russian life is not only wholly unknown
in Europe, but it is not even suspected. The picture most people have
in their minds of Russia is a place of grey skies and bleak monotonous
landscape, weighed down by an implacable climate. These things exist,
but there is another side as well, and it is this other side that
Gogol tells of in his early stories. We are told much about the
Russian winter, but who ever thinks of the Russian spring? And there
is nothing more beautiful in the world, even in the north and centre
of Russia, than the abrupt and sudden invasion of springtime which
comes shortly after the melting snows, when the woods are carpeted with
lilies-of-the-valley, and the green of the birch trees almost hurts the
eye with its brilliance.

Nor are we told much about the Russian summer, with its wonderful warm
nights, nor of the pageant of the plains when they become a rippling
sea of golden corn. If the spring and the summer are striking in
northern and central Russia, much more is this so in the south, where
the whole character of the country is as cheerful and smiling as
that of Devonshire or Normandy. The farms are whitewashed and clean;
sometimes they are painted light blue or pink; vines grow on the walls;
there is an atmosphere of sunshine and laziness everywhere, accompanied
by much dancing and song.

Once when I was in St. Petersburg I was talking to a peasant member of
the Duma who came from the south. After he had declaimed for nearly
twenty minutes on the terrible condition of the peasants in the
country, their needs, their wants, their misery, their ignorance, he
added thoughtfully: “All the same we have great fun in our village;
you ought to come and stay there. There is no such life in the world!”
The sunshine and laughter of the south of Russia rise before us
from every page of these stories of Gogol. Here, for instance, is a
description of a summer’s day in Little Russia, the day of a fair:

 “How intoxicating, how rich, is a summer’s day in Little Russia! How
 overwhelmingly hot are those hours of noonday silence and haze! Like
 a boundless azure sea, the dome of the sky, bending as though with
 passion over the world, seems to have fallen asleep, all drowned in
 softness, and clasps and caresses the beautiful earth with a celestial
 embrace. There is no cloud in the sky; and the stream is silent.
 Everything is as if it were dead; only aloft in the deeps of the sky
 a lark quivers, and its silvery song echoes down the vault of heaven,
 and reaches the lovesick earth. And from time to time the cry of the
 seagull or the clear call of the quail is heard in the plain.

 “Lazily and thoughtlessly, as though they were idling vaguely,
 stand the shady oaks; and the blinding rays of the sun light up the
 picturesque masses of foliage, while the rest of the tree is in a
 shadow dark as night, and only when the wind rises, a flash of gold
 trembles across it.

 “Like emeralds, topazes and amethysts, the diaphanous insects flutter
 in the many-coloured fruit gardens, which are shaded by stately
 sun-flowers. Grey haycocks and golden sheaves of corn stand in rows
 along the field like hillocks on the immense expanse. Broad boughs
 bend under their load of cherries, plums, apples, and pears. The sky
 is the transparent mirror of the day, and so is the river, with its
 high green frame of trees.... How luscious and how soft is the summer
 in Little Russia!

 “It was just such a hot day in August 18--, when the road, ten versts
 from the little town of Sorochinetz, was seething with people hurrying
 from all the farms, far and near, to the fair. With the break of day
 an endless chain of waggons laboured along, carrying salt and fish.
 Mountains of pots wrapped in hay moved slowly on as if they were
 weary of being cut off from the sunshine. Only here and there some
 brightly-painted soup tureen or earthenware saucepan proudly emerged
 on the tilt of the high-heaped waggon, and attracted the eyes of
 lovers of finery; many passers-by looked with envy on the tall potter,
 the owner of all these treasures, who with slow steps walked beside
 his goods.”

Why are we never told of these azure Russian days, of these laden
fruit-trees and jewelled insects?

In 1832, Gogol published a continuation of this series, entitled
_Stories of Mirgorod_. This collection contains the masterpieces of
the romantic, and the fantastic side of Gogol’s genius. His highest
effort in the romantic province is the historical history of _Taras
Bulba_, which is a prose epic. It is the tale of an old Cossack
chieftain whose two sons, Ostap and Andrii, are brought up in the
Zaporozhian settlement of the Cossacks, and trained as warriors to
fight the Poles. They lay siege to the Polish city of Dubno, and starve
the city. Andrii, the younger son, discovers that a girl whom he had
loved at Kiev, before his Cossack training, is shut up in the city. The
girl’s servant leads him into Dubno by an underground passage. Andrii
meets his lady-love and abandons the Cossack cause, saying that his
fatherland and his country is there where his heart is.

In the meantime the Polish troops arrive, reinforce the beleagured
garrison; Andrii is for ever lost to Cossack chivalry, and his country
and his father’s house shall know him no more. News then comes that in
the absence of the Cossacks from their camp in the Ukraine, the Tartars
have plundered it. So they send half their army to defend it, while
half of it remains in front of the besieged city. The Poles attack the
Cossacks who are left.

There is a terrific battle, in which Andrii fights against the
Cossacks. He is taken prisoner by his own father, who bids him
dismount. He dismounts obediently, and his father addresses him thus:
“I begot you, and now I shall kill you.” And he shoots him dead.

Immediately after this incident Taras Bulba and his elder son, Ostap,
are attacked by the enemy. Ostap, after inflicting deadly losses on
the enemy, is separated from his father,--who falls in a swoon, and
owing to this escapes,--and taken prisoner. Ostap is taken to the city
and tortured to death. In the extremity of his torment, after having
endured the long agonies without a groan, he cries out: “Father, do you
hear me?” And from the crowd a terrible voice is heard answering: “I
hear!” Later, Taras raises an army of Cossacks to avenge the death of
his son, and lays waste the country; but at the end he is caught and
put to death by the Poles.

This story is told with epic breadth and simplicity; the figure of the
old warrior is Homeric, and Homeric also is the character of the young
traitor Andrii, who, although he betrays his own people, never loses
sympathy, so strong is the impression you receive of his brilliance,
his dash, and his courage.

In the domain of fantasy, Gogol’s masterpiece is to be found in this
same collection. It is called _Viy_. It is the story of a beautiful
lady who is a witch. She casts her spell on a student in theology, and
when she dies, her dying will is that he shall spend three nights
in reading prayers over her body, in the church where her coffin
lies. During his watch on the first night, the dead maiden rises from
her coffin, and watches him with glassy, opaque eyes. He hears the
flapping of the wings of innumerable birds, and in the morning is found
half dead from terror. He attempts to avoid the ordeal on the second
night, but the girl’s father, an old Cossack, forces him to carry out
his daughter’s behest, and three nights are spent by the student in
terrible conflict with the witch. On the third night he dies. The great
quality of this story is the atmosphere of overmastering terror that it
creates.

With these two stories, _Taras Bulba_ and _Viy_, Gogol took leave
of Romanticism and Fantasy, and started on the path of Realism. In
this province he was what the Germans call a _bahnbrecher_, and he
discovered a new kingdom. It may be noticed that Gogol, roughly
speaking, began where Dickens ended; that is to say, he wrote his
_Tale of Two Cities_ first, and his _Pickwick_ last. But already
in this collection of Mirgorod tales there are two stories in the
humorous realistic vein, which Gogol never excelled; one is called
_Old-fashioned Landowners_, and the other _How Ivan Ivanovitch
quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovitch_.

_Old-fashioned Landowners_ is a simple story. It is about an old
couple who lived in a low-roofed little house, with a verandah of
blackened tree-trunks, in the midst of a garden of dwarfed fruit-trees
covered with cherries and plums. The couple, Athanasii Ivanovitch and
his wife Pulcheria Ivanovna, are old. He is sixty, she is fifty-five.
It is the story of Philemon and Baucis. Nothing happens in it, except
that we are introduced to these charming, kind, and hospitable people;
that Pulcheria dies, and that after her death everything in the house
becomes untidy and slovenly, because Athanasii cannot live without
her; and after five years he follows her to the grave, and is buried
beside her. There is nothing in the story, and there is everything. It
is amusing, charming, and infinitely pathetic. Some of the touches of
description remind one strongly of Dickens. Here, for instance, is a
description of the doors of the house where the old couple lived:

 “The most remarkable thing about the house was the creaking of the
 doors. As soon as day broke, the singing of these doors was heard
 throughout the whole house. I cannot say why they made the noise:
 either it was the rusty hinges, or else the workman who made them
 hid some secret in them; but the remarkable thing was that each door
 had its own special note. The door going into the bedroom sang in a
 delicate treble; the door going into the dining-room had a hoarse
 bass note; but that which led into the front hall made a strange
 trembling, groaning noise, so that if you listened to it intently you
 heard it distinctly saying, ‘Batiushka, I am so cold!’”

The story of the two Ivans is irresistibly funny. The two Ivans were
neighbours; one of them was a widower and the other a bachelor. They
were the greatest friends. Never a day passed without their seeing each
other, and their greatest pleasure was to entertain each other at big,
Dickens-like meals. But one day they quarrelled about a gun, and Ivan
Nikiforovitch called Ivan Ivanovitch a goose. After this they would not
see each other, and their relations were broken off. Hitherto, Ivan
Nikiforovitch and Ivan Ivanovitch had sent every day to inquire about
each other’s health, had conversed together from their balconies, and
had said charming things to each other. On Sundays they had gone to
church arm in arm, and outdone each other in mutual civilities; but now
they would not look at each other.

At length the quarrel went so far that Ivan Ivanovitch lodged a
complaint against Ivan Nikiforovitch, saying that the latter had
inflicted a deadly insult on his personal honour, firstly by calling
him a goose, secondly by building a goose-shed opposite his porch,
and thirdly by cherishing a design to burn his house down. Ivan
Nikiforovitch lodged a similar petition against Ivan Ivanovitch.
As bad luck would have it, Ivan Ivanovitch’s brown sow ate Ivan
Nikiforovitch’s petition, and this, of course, made the quarrel worse.

At last a common friend of the pair attempts to bring about a
reconciliation, and asks the two enemies to dinner. After much
persuasion they consent to meet. They go to the dinner, where a large
company is assembled; both Ivans eat their meal without glancing at
each other, and as soon as the dinner is over they rise from their
seats and make ready to go. At this moment they are surrounded on all
sides, and are adjured by the company to forget their quarrel. Each
says that he was innocent of any evil design, and the reconciliation is
within an ace of being effected when, unfortunately, Ivan Nikiforovitch
says to Ivan Ivanovitch: “Permit me to observe, in a friendly manner,
that you took offence because I called you a goose.” As soon as the
fatal word “goose” is uttered, all reconciliation is out of the
question, and the quarrel continues to the end of their lives.

In 1835, Gogol retired definitely from the public service. At this
point of his career he wrote a number of stories and comedies, of a
varied nature, which he collected later in two volumes, _Arabesques_,
1834, and _Tales_, 1836. It was the dawn of his realistic phase,
although he still indulged from time to time in the fantastic, as in
the grotesque stories, _The Nose_--the tale of a nose which gets lost
and wanders about--and _The Coach_. But the most remarkable of these
stories is _The Overcoat_, which is the highest example of Gogol’s
pathos, and contains in embryo all the qualities of vivid realism which
he was to develop later. It is the story of a clerk who has a passion
for copying, and to whom caligraphy is a fine art. He is never warm
enough; he is always shivering. The ambition, the dream of his life, is
to have a warm overcoat. After years of privation he saves up the sum
necessary to realise his dream and buy a new overcoat; but on the first
day that he wears it, the coat is stolen from him.

The police, to whom he applies after the theft, laugh at him, and the
clerk falls into a black melancholy. He dies unnoticed and obscure, and
his ghost haunts the squalid streets where he was wont to walk.

Nearly half of modern Russian literature descends directly from this
story. The figure of this clerk and the way he is treated by the author
is the first portrait of an endless gallery of the failures of this
world, the flotsam and jetsam of a social system: grotesque figures,
comic, pathetic, with a touch of tragedy in them, which, since they
are handled by their creator with a kindly sympathy, and never with
cruelty or disdain, win our sympathy and live in our hearts and our
affections.

During this same period Gogol wrote several plays, among which the
masterpiece is _The Inspector_. This play, which is still immensely
popular in Russia, and draws crowded houses on Sundays and holidays,
is a good-humoured, scathing satire on the Russian Bureaucracy. As
a translation of this play is easily to be obtained, and as it has
been performed in London by the Stage Society, I need not dwell on
it here, except to mention for those who are unacquainted with it,
that the subject of the play is a misunderstanding which arises from
a traveller being mistaken for a government inspector who is expected
to arrive incognito in a provincial town. A European critic in reading
or seeing this play is sometimes surprised and unreasonably struck
by the universal dishonesty of almost every single character in the
play. For instance, one of the characters says to another: “You are
stealing above your rank.” One should remember, however, that in a
translation it is impossible not to lose something of the good-humour
and the comic spirit of which the play is full. It has often been a
matter of surprise that this play, at the time when Gogol wrote it,
should have been passed by the censorship. The reason of this is that
Gogol had for censor the Emperor of Russia himself, who read the play,
was extremely amused by it, commanded its immediate performance, was
present at the first night, and led the applause.

Hlestakov, the hero of _The Inspector_, is one of the most natural
and magnificent liars in literature. Gogol himself, in his stage
directions, describes him as a man “without a Tsar in his head,”--a man
who speaks and acts without the slightest reflection, and who is not
capable of consecutive thought, or of fixing his attention for more
than a moment on any single idea.

In 1836, Gogol left Russia and settled in Rome. He had been working for
some time at another book, which he intended should be his masterpiece,
a book in which he intended to say _everything_, and express the whole
of his message. Gogol was possessed by this idea. The book was to be
divided into three parts. The first part appeared in 1842, the second
part, which was never finished, Gogol threw in the fire in a fit of
despair. It was, however, subsequently printed from an incomplete
manuscript which had escaped his notice. The third part was never
written. As it is, the first fragment of Gogol’s great ambition remains
his masterpiece, and the book by which he is best known. It is called
_Dead Souls_. The hero of this book is a man called Chichikov. He has
hit on an idea by which he can make money by dishonest means. Like all
great ideas, it is simple. At the time at which the book was written
the serfs in Russia had not yet been emancipated. They were called
“souls,” and every landlord possessed so many “souls.” A revision of
the list of peasants took place every ten years, and the landlord had
to pay a poll-tax for the souls that had died during that period, that
is to say, for the men; women and children did not count. Between
the periods of revision nobody looked at the lists. If there was
any epidemic in the village the landlord lost heavily, as he had to
continue paying a tax for the “souls” who were dead.

Chichikov’s idea was to take these “dead souls” from the landlords,
and pay the poll-tax, for them. The landlord would be only too pleased
to get rid of a property which was fictitious, and a tax which was
only too real. Chichikov could then register his purchases with all
due formality, for it would never occur to a tribunal to think that he
was asking them to legalise a sale of dead men; he could thus take the
documents to a bank at St. Petersburg or at Moscow, and mortgage the
“souls,” which he represented as living in some desert place in the
Crimea, at one hundred roubles apiece, and then be rich enough to buy
living “souls” of his own.

Chichikov travelled all over Russia in search of “dead souls.” The book
tells us the adventures he met with; and the scheme is particularly
advantageous to the author, because it not only enables him to
introduce us to a variety of types, but the transaction itself, the
manner in which men behave when faced by the proposition, throws
a searchlight on their characters. Chichikov starts from a large
provincial town, which he makes his base, and thence explores the
country; the success or failure of his transactions forms the substance
of the book. Sometimes he is successful, sometimes the system breaks
down because the people in the country want to know the market value of
the “dead souls” in the town.

The travels of Chichikov, like those of Mr. Pickwick, form a kind of
Odyssey. The types he introduces us to are extraordinarily comic;
there are fools who give their “souls” for nothing, and misers who
demand an exorbitant price for them. But sometimes Chichikov meets
with people who are as clever as himself, and who outwit him. One of
the most amusing episodes is that where he comes across a suspicious
old woman called Korobotchka. Chichikov, after arriving at her house
late at night, and having spent the night there, begins his business
transactions cautiously and tentatively. The old woman at first thinks
he has come to sell her tea, or that he has come to buy honey. Then
Chichikov comes to the point, and asks her if any peasants have died
on her land. She says eighteen. He then asks her to sell them to him,
saying that he will give her money for them. She asks if he wishes to
dig them out of the ground. He explains that the transaction would only
take place upon paper. She asks him why he wants to do this. That, he
answers, is his own affair.

“But they are dead,” she says.

“Whoever said they were alive?” asked Chichikov. “It is a loss to you
that they are dead. You pay for them, and I will now save you the
trouble and the expense, and not only save you this, but give you
fifteen roubles into the bargain. Is it clear now?”

“I really can’t say,” the old woman replies. “You see I never before
sold _dead_ ‘souls.’” And she keeps on repeating: “What bothers me is
that they are _dead_.”

Chichikov again explains to her that she has to pay a tax on them just
as though they were alive.

“Don’t talk of it!” she says. “Only a week ago I had to pay one hundred
and fifty roubles.”

Chichikov again explains to her how advantageous it would be for her to
get them off her hands, upon which she answers that she has never had
occasion to sell dead souls; if they were alive, on the other hand, she
would have been delighted to do it.

“But I don’t want live ones! I want dead ones,” answers Chichikov.

“I am afraid,” she says, “that I might lose over the bargain--that you
may be deceiving me.”

Chichikov explains the whole thing over again, offering her fifteen
roubles, and showing her the money; upon which she says she would like
to wait a little, to find out what they are really worth.

“But who on earth will buy them from you?” asks Chichikov.

“They might be useful on the estate,” says the old woman.

“How can you use dead souls on the estate?” asks Chichikov.

Korobotchka suggests that she would rather sell him some hemp, and
Chichikov loses his temper.

Equally amusing are Chichikov’s adventures with the miser Plushkin,
Nozdref, a swaggering drunkard, and Manilov, who is simply a fool.
But when all is said and done, the most amusing person in the book is
Chichikov himself.

At the end of the first volume, Gogol makes a defence of his
hero. After having described the circumstances of his youth, his
surroundings, and all the influences which made him what he was, the
author asks: “Who is he?” And the answer he gives himself is: “Of
course a rascal: but why a rascal?” He continues:

 “Why should we be so severe on others? We have no rascals among us
 now, we have only well-thinking, pleasant people; we have, it is true,
 two or three men who have enjoyed the shame of being thrashed in
 public, and even these speak of virtue. It would be more just to call
 him a man who acquires; it is the passion for gain that is to blame
 for everything. This passion is the cause of deeds which the world
 characterises as ugly. It is true that in such a character there is
 perhaps something repulsive. But the same reader who in real life will
 be friends with such a man, who will dine with him, and pass the time
 pleasantly with him, will look askance at the same character should
 he meet with him as the hero of a book or of a poem. That man is wise
 who is not offended by any character, but is able to look within it,
 and to trace the development of nature to its first causes. Everything
 in man changes rapidly. You have scarcely time to look round, before
 inside the man’s heart a hateful worm has been born which absorbs
 the vital sap of his nature. And it often happens that not only a
 great passion, but some ridiculous whim for a trivial object, grows
 in a man who was destined to better deeds, and causes him to forget
 his high and sacred duty, and to mistake the most miserable trifle
 for what is most exalted and most holy. The passions of mankind are
 as countless as the sands of the sea, and each of them is different
 from the others; and all of them, mean or beautiful, start by being
 subject to man, and afterwards become his most inexorable master.
 Happy is the man who has chosen for himself a higher passion ... but
 there are passions which are not chosen by man: they are with him
 from the moment of his birth, and strength is not given him to free
 himself from them. These passions are ordered according to a high
 plan, and there is something in them which eternally and incessantly
 summons him, and which lasts as long as life lasts. They have a great
 work to accomplish; whether they be sombre or whether they be bright,
 their purpose is to work for an ultimate good which is beyond the ken
 of man. And perhaps in this same Chichikov the ruling passion which
 governs him is not of his choosing, and in his cold existence there
 may be something which will one day cause us to humble ourselves on
 our knees and in the dust before the Divine wisdom.”

I quote this passage at length because it not only explains the point
of view of Gogol towards his creation, but also that which nearly
all Russian authors and novelists hold with regard to mankind in
general. Gogol’s _Dead Souls_ is an extremely funny book; it is full
of delightful situations, comic characters and situations. At the
same time it has often struck people as being a sad book. When Gogol
read out to Pushkin the first chapter, Pushkin, who at other times
had always laughed when Gogol read his work to him, became sadder and
sadder, and said when Gogol had reached the end: “What a sad country
Russia is!”

It is true, as Gogol himself says at the end of the first volume of
_Dead Souls_, that there is probably not one of his readers who,
after an honest self-examination, will not wonder whether he has not
something of Chichikov in himself. And if at such a moment such a man
should meet an acquaintance in the street, whose rank is neither too
exalted for criticism nor too obscure for notice, he will nudge his
companion, and say with a chuckle: “There goes Chichikov!” Perhaps
every Russian feels that there is something of Chichikov in him, and
Chichikov is a rascal, and most of the other characters in _Dead Souls_
are rascals also; people who try to cheat their neighbours, and feel no
moral scruples or remorse after they have done so. But in spite of all
this, the impression that remains with one after reading the book is
not one of bitterness or of melancholy. For in all the characters there
is a vast amount of good-nature and of humanity. Also, as Gogol has
pointed out in the passage quoted above, the peculiar blend of faults
and qualities on which moralists may be severe, may be a special part
of the Divine scheme.

However this may be, what strikes the casual student most when he has
read _Dead Souls_, is that Gogol is the only Russian author who has
given us in literature the universal type of Russian; the Russian “man
in the street.” Tolstoy has depicted the upper classes. Dostoievsky
has reached the innermost depths of the Russian soul in its extremest
anguish and at its highest pitch. Tourgeniev has fixed on the canvas
several striking portraits, which suffer from the defect either
of being caricatures, or of being too deeply dyed in the writer’s
pessimism and self-consciousness. Gorky has painted in lurid colours
one side of the common people. Andreev has given us the nightmares
of the younger generation. Chekov has depicted the pessimism and the
ineffectiveness of the “intelligenzia.”[6] But nobody except Gogol
has given us the ordinary cheerful Russian man in the street, with
his crying faults, his attractive good qualities, and his overflowing
human nature. In fact, it is the work of Gogol that explains the
attraction which the Russian character and the Russian country exercise
over people who have come beneath their influence. At first sight
the thing seems inexplicable. The country seems ugly, dreary and
monotonous, without art, without beauty and without brilliance; the
climate is either fiercely cold and damp, or excruciatingly dry and
hot; the people are slow and heavy; there is a vast amount of dirt,
dust, disorder, untidiness, slovenliness, squalor, and sordidness
everywhere; and yet in spite of all this, even a foreigner who has
lived in Russia (not to speak of the Russians themselves), and who has
once come in contact with its people, can never be quite free from its
over-mastering charm, and the secret fascination of the country.

In another passage towards the end of _Dead Souls_, Gogol writes about
this very thing as follows:

 “Russia” (he writes), “I see you from the beautiful ‘far away’ where
 I am. Everything in you is miserable, disordered and inhospitable.
 There are no emphatic miracles of Nature to startle the eye, graced
 with equally startling miracles of art. There are no towns with high,
 many-windowed castles perched on the top of crags; there are no
 picturesque trees, no ivy-covered houses beside the ceaseless thunder
 and foam of waterfalls. One never strains one’s neck back to look at
 the piled-up rocky crags soaring endlessly into the sky. There never
 shines, through dark and broken arches overgrown with grapes, ivy,
 and a million wild roses,--there never shines, I say, from afar the
 eternal line of gleaming mountains standing out against transparent
 and silver skies. Everything in you is open and desert and level; like
 dots, your squatting towns lie almost unobserved in the midst of the
 plains. There is nothing to flatter or to charm the eye. What then is
 the secret and incomprehensible power which lies hidden in you? Why
 does your aching melancholy song, which wanders throughout the length
 and breadth of you, from sea to sea, sound and echo unceasingly in
 one’s ears? What is there in this song? What is there that calls and
 sobs and captures the heart? What are the sounds which hurt as they
 kiss, pierce my very inmost soul and flood my heart? Russia, what do
 you want of me? What inexplicable bond is there between you and me?”

Gogol does not answer the question, and if he cannot put his finger
on the secret it would be difficult for any one else to do so.
But although he does not answer the question directly, he does so
indirectly by his works. Any one who reads Gogol’s early stories, even
_Dead Souls_, will understand the inexplicable fascination hidden
in a country which seems at first sight so devoid of outward and
superficial attraction, and in a people whose defects are so obvious
and unconcealed. The charm of Russian life lies in its essential
goodness of heart, and in its absence of hypocrisy, and it is owing to
this absence of hypocrisy that the faults of the Russian character are
so easy to detect. It is for this reason that in Gogol’s realistic and
satirical work, as in _The Inspector_ and _Dead Souls_, the characters
startle the foreign observer by their frank and almost universal
dishonesty. The truth is that they do not take the trouble to conceal
their shortcomings; they are indulgent to the failings of others, and
not only expect but know that they will find their own faults treated
with similar indulgence. Faults, failings, and vices which in Western
Europe would be regarded with uncompromising censure and merciless
blame, meet in Russia either with pity or good-humoured indulgence.

This happy-go-lucky element, the good-natured indulgence and scepticism
with which Russians regard many things which we consider of grave
import, are, no doubt, to a great extent the cause of the evils which
exist in the administrative system of the country--the cause of nearly
all the evils of which Russian reformers so bitterly complain. On the
other hand, it should not be forgotten that this same good-humour
and this same indulgence, the results of which in public life are
slackness, disorder, corruption, irresponsibility and arbitrariness,
in private life produce results of a different nature, such as pity,
charity, hospitality and unselfishness; for the good-humour and the
good-nature of the Russian proceed directly from goodness, and from
nothing else.

Gogol never finished _Dead Souls_. He went on working on the second
and third parts of it until the end of his life, in 1852; and he twice
threw the work, when it was completed, into the fire. All we possess is
an incomplete copy of a manuscript of the second part, which escaped
destruction. He had intended the second part to be more serious than
the first; his ambition was to work out the moral regeneration of
Chichikov, and in doing so to attain to a full and complete expression
of his ideals and his outlook on life. The ambition pursued and
persecuted him like a feverish dream, and not being able to realise
it, he turned back upon himself and was driven inward. His nature was
religious to the core, since it was based on a firm and unshaken belief
in Providence; and there came a time when he began to experience that
distaste of the world which ultimately leads to a man becoming an
ascetic and a recluse.

He lived in Rome, isolated from the world; he became consumed with
religious zeal; he preached to his friends and acquaintances the
Christian virtues of humility, resignation and charity; he urged them
not to resist authority, but to become contrite Christians. And in
order that the world should hear him, in 1847 he published passages
from a correspondence with friends. In these letters Gogol insisted on
the paramount necessity of spiritual life; but instead of attacking the
Church he defended it, and preached submission both to it and to the
Government.

The book created a sensation, and raised a storm of abuse. Some of
the prominent Liberals were displeased. It was, of course, easy for
them to attack Gogol; for here, they said, was the man who had, more
than any other, satirised and discredited the Russian Government and
Russian administration, coming forward as an apostle of orthodoxy
and officialdom. The intellectual world scorned him as a mystic,
and considered the matter settled; but if the word “mystic” had the
significance which these people seem to have attached to it, then
Gogol was not a mystic. There was nothing extravagant or uncommon in
his religion. He gave up writing, and devoted himself to religion and
good works; but this does not constitute what the intellectuals seem to
have meant by mysticism. Mysticism with them was equivalent to madness.
If, on the other hand, we mean by mysticism the transcendent common
sense which recognises a Divine order of things, and the reality of an
invisible world, then Gogol was a mystic. Therefore, when Gogol ceased
to write stories, he no more _became_ a mystic than did Pascal when he
ceased going into society, or than Racine did when he ceased to write
plays. In the other sense of the word he was a mystic all his life; so
was Racine.

At the age of thirty-three his creative faculties had dried up, and at
the age of forty-three, in February 1852, he died of typhoid fever.
The place of Gogol in Russian literature is a very high one. Prosper
Mérimée places him among the best _English_ humorists. Gogol’s European
reputation is less great than it should be, because his subject-matter
is more remote. But of all the Russian prose writers of the last
century, Gogol is perhaps the most national. His work smells of the
soil of Russia; there is nothing imitative or foreign about it. When he
published _The Inspector_, the motto which he appended to it was: “If
your mouth is crooked, don’t blame the looking-glass.” He was a great
humorist. He was also a great satirist. He was a penetrating but not
a pitiless observer; in his fun and his humour, there is often a note
of sadness, an accent of pathos, and a tinge of wistful melancholy.
His pathos and his laughter are closely allied one to another, but in
his sadness there is neither bitterness nor gloom; there is no shadow
of the powers of darkness, no breath of the icy terror which blows
through the works of Tolstoy; there is no hint of the emptiness and the
void, or of a fear of them. There is nothing akin to despair. For his
whole outlook on life is based on faith in Providence, and the whole of
his morality consists in Christian charity, and in submission to the
Divine.

In one of his lectures, Gogol, speaking of Pushkin, singles out, as
one of the qualities of Russian literature, the pity for all who are
unfortunate. This, he says, is a truly Russian characteristic.

“Think,” he writes, “of that touching spectacle which our people afford
when they visit the exiles who are starting for Siberia, when every man
brings something, either food or money, or a kind word. There is here
no hatred of the criminal; no quixotic wish to make him a hero, or to
ask for his autograph or his portrait, or to regard him as an object of
morbid curiosity, as often happens in more civilised Europe. Here there
is something more: it is not the desire to whitewash him, or to deliver
him from the hands of the law, but to comfort his broken spirit, and to
console him as a brother comforts a brother, or as Christ ordered us to
console each other.”

This sense of pity is the greatest gift that the Russian nation
possesses: it is likewise the cardinal factor of Russian literature,
as well as its most precious asset; the inestimable legacy and
contribution which Russian authors have made to the literature of the
world. It is a thing which the Russians and no other people have given
us. There is no better way of judging of this quality and of estimating
its results, than to study the works of Russia’s greatest humorist,
satirist, and realist. For if realism can be so vivid without being
cruel, if satire can be so cruel without being bitter, and a sense of
the ridiculous so broad and so strong without being ill-natured, the
soil of goodness out of which these things all grow must indeed be rich
and deep, and the streams of pity with which it is watered must indeed
be plentiful.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] I met a Russian doctor in Manchuria, who knew pages of a Russian
translation of _Three Men in a Boat_ by heart.

[6] The highly educated professional middle class.




CHAPTER IV

TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV


The eightieth birthday of Count Tolstoy, which was celebrated in
Russia on August 28 (old style), 1908, was closely followed by the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Tourgeniev, who died on
September 3, 1883, at the age of sixty-five. These two anniversaries
followed close upon the publication of a translation into English of
the complete works of Count Tolstoy by Professor Wiener; and it is
not long ago that a new edition of the complete works of Tourgeniev,
translated into English by Mrs. Garnett, appeared. Both these
translations have been made with great care, and are faithful and
accurate. Thirty years ago it is certain that European critics, and
probable that Russian critics, would have observed, in commenting on
the concurrence of these two events, that Tolstoy and Tourgeniev were
the two giants of modern Russian literature. Is the case the same
to-day? Is it still true that, in the opinion of Russia and of Europe,
the names of Tolstoy and Tourgeniev stand pre-eminently above all their
contemporaries?

With regard to Tolstoy the question can be answered without the
slightest hesitation. Time, which has inflicted such mournful damage
on so many great reputations in the last twenty-five years, has not
only left the fame of Tolstoy’s masterpieces unimpaired, but has
increased our sense of their greatness. The question arises, whose work
forms the complement to that of Tolstoy, and shares his undisputed
dominion of modern Russian literature? Is it Tourgeniev? In Russia at
the present day the answer would be “No,” it is not Tourgeniev. And
in Europe, students of Russian literature who are acquainted with the
Russian language--as we see in M. Emile Haumant’s study of Tourgeniev’s
life and work, and in Professor Brückner’s history of Russian
literature--would also answer in the negative, although their denial
would be less emphatic and not perhaps unqualified.

The other giant, the complement of Tolstoy, almost any Russian
critic of the present day without hesitation would pronounce to be
Dostoievsky; and the foreign critic who is thoroughly acquainted with
Dostoievsky’s work cannot but agree with him. I propose to go more
fully into the question of the merits and demerits of Dostoievsky later
on; but it is impossible not to mention him here, because the very
existence of his work powerfully affects our judgment when we come to
look at that of his contemporaries. We can no more ignore his presence
and his influence than we could ignore the presence of a colossal
fresco by Leonardo da Vinci in a room in which there were only two
other religious pictures, one by Rembrandt and one by Vandyck. For
any one who is familiar with Dostoievsky, and has felt his tremendous
influence, cannot look at the work of his contemporaries with the same
eyes as before. To such a one, the rising of Dostoievsky’s red and
troubled planet, while causing the rays of Tourgeniev’s serene star
to pale, leaves the rays of Tolstoy’s orb undiminished and undimmed.
Tolstoy and Dostoievsky shine in the firmament of Russian literature
like two planets, one of them as radiant as the planet Jupiter, the
other as ominous as the planet Mars. Beside either of these the light
of Tourgeniev twinkles, pure indeed, and full of pearly lustre, like
the moon faintly seen in the east at the end of an autumnal day.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is rash to make broad generalisations. They bring with them a
certain element of exaggeration which must be discounted. Nevertheless
I believe that I am stating a fundamental truth in saying that the
Russian character can, roughly speaking, be divided into two types, and
these two types dominate the whole of Russian literature. The first is
that which I shall call, for want of a better name, Lucifer, the fallen
angel. The second type is that of the hero of all Russian folk-tales,
Ivan Durak, Ivan the Fool, or the Little Fool. There are innumerable
folk-tales in Russian which tell the adventures of Ivan the Fool, who,
by his very simplicity and foolishness, outwits the wisdom of the
world. This type is characteristic of one Russian ideal. The simple
fool is venerated in Russia as something holy. It is acknowledged that
his childish innocence is more precious than the wisdom of the wise.
Ivan Durak may be said to be the hero of all Dostoievsky’s novels. He
is the aim and ideal of Dostoievsky’s life, an aim and ideal which he
fully achieves. He is also the aim and ideal of Tolstoy’s teaching, but
an aim and ideal which Tolstoy recommends to others and only partly
achieves himself.

The first type I have called, for want of a better name, since I can
find no concrete symbol of it in Russian folk-lore, Lucifer, the fallen
angel. This type is the embodiment of stubborn and obdurate pride, the
spirit which cannot bend; such is Milton’s Satan, with his

  “Courage never to submit or yield,
  And what is else not to be overcome.”

This type is also widely prevalent in Russia, although it cannot be
said to be a popular type, embodied, like Ivan the Fool, in a national
symbol. One of the most striking instances of this, the Lucifer
type, which I have come across, was a peasant called Nazarenko, who
was a member of the first Duma. He was a tall, powerfully built,
rugged-looking man, spare and rather thin, with clear-cut prominent
features, black penetrating eyes, and thick black tangled hair. He
looked as if he had stepped out of a sacred picture by Velasquez. This
man had the pride of Lucifer. There was at that time, in July 1905,
an Inter-parliamentary Congress sitting in London. Five delegates of
the Russian Duma were chosen to represent Russia. It was proposed that
Nazarenko should represent the peasants. I asked him once if he were
going. He answered:

“I shan’t go unless I am unanimously chosen by the others. I have
written down my name and asked, but I shall not ask twice. I never ask
twice for anything. When I say my prayers, I only ask God once for
a thing, and if it is not granted, I never ask again. So it is not
likely I would ask my fellow-men twice for anything. I am like that. I
leave out that passage in the prayers about being a miserable slave. I
am not a miserable slave, either of man or of Heaven.”

Such a man recognises no authority, human or divine. Indeed he not only
refuses to acknowledge authority, but it will be difficult for him to
admire or bow down to any of those men or ideas which the majority have
agreed to believe worthy of admiration, praise, or reverence.

Now, while Dostoievsky is the incarnation of the first type, of Ivan
the Fool, Tolstoy is the incarnation of the second. It is true that, at
a certain stage of his career, Tolstoy announced to the world that the
ideal of Ivan Durak was the only ideal worth following. He perceives
this aim with clearness, and, in preaching it, he has made a multitude
of disciples; the only thing he has never been able to do is to make
the supreme submission, the final surrender, and to become the type
himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

We know everything about Tolstoy, not only from the biographical
writings of Fet and Behrs, but from his own autobiography, his novels,
and his _Confession_. He gives us a panorama of events down to the
smallest detail of his long career, as well as of every phase of
feeling, and every shade and mood of his spiritual existence. The
English reader who wishes to be acquainted with all the important
facts of Tolstoy’s material and spiritual life cannot do better than
read Mr. Aylmer Maude’s _Life of Tolstoy_, which compresses into one
well-planned and admirably executed volume all that is of interest
during the first fifty years of Tolstoy’s career. In reading this
book a phrase of Tourgeniev’s occurs to one. “Man is the same, from
the cradle to the grave.” Tolstoy had been called inconsistent; but
the student of his life and work, far from finding inconsistency,
will rather be struck by the unvarying and obstinate consistency of
his ideas. Here, for instance, is an event recorded in Tolstoy’s
_Confession_ (p. 1):

 “I remember how, when I was about eleven, a boy, Vladimir Miliutin,
 long since dead, visited us one Sunday, and announced as the latest
 novelty a discovery made at his school. The discovery was that there
 is no God at all, and all we are taught about Him is a mere invention.
 I remember how interested my elder brothers were in this news. They
 called me to their council, and we all, I remember, became animated,
 and accepted the news as something very interesting and fully
 possible.”

There is already the germ of the man who was afterwards to look with
such independent eyes on the accepted beliefs and ideas of mankind,
to play havoc with preconceived opinions, and to establish to his own
satisfaction whether what was true for others was true for himself or
not. Later he says:

 “I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was
 taught it in childhood and all through my boyhood and youth. Before I
 left the university, in my second year, at the age of eighteen, I no
 longer believed anything I had been taught.”[7]

A Russian writer, M. Kurbski, describes how, when he first met Tolstoy,
he was overwhelmed by the look in Tolstoy’s eyes. They were more than
eyes, he said; they were like electric searchlights, which penetrated
into the depths of your mind, and, like a photographic lens, seized and
retained for ever a positive picture. In his _Childhood and Youth_,
Tolstoy gives us the most vivid, the most natural, the most sensitive
picture of childhood and youth that has ever been penned by the hand of
man. And yet, after reading it, one is left half-unconsciously with the
impression that the author feels there is something wrong, something
unsatisfactory behind it all.

Tolstoy then passes on to describe the life of a grown-up man, in _The
Morning of a Landowner_, in which he tells how he tried to work in his
own home, on his property, and to teach the peasants, and how nothing
came of his experiments. And again we have the feeling of something
unsatisfactory, and something wanting, something towards which the man
is straining, and which escapes him.

A little later, Tolstoy goes to the Caucasus, to the war, where life
is primitive and simple, where he is nearer to nature, and where man
himself is more natural. And then we have _The Cossacks_, in which
Tolstoy’s searchlights are thrown upon the primitive life of the old
huntsman, the Cossack, Yeroshka, who lives as the grass lives, without
care, without grief, and without reflection. Once more we feel that the
soul of the writer is dissatisfied, still searching for something he
has not found.

In 1854, Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War, which supplied him with
the stuff for what are perhaps the most truthful pictures of war that
have ever been written. But even here, we feel he has not yet found
his heart’s desire. Something is wrong. He was recommended for the St.
George’s Cross, but owing to his being without some necessary official
document at the time of his recommendation, he failed to receive it.
This incident is a symbol of the greater failure, the failure to
achieve the inward happiness that he is seeking--a solid ground to
tread on, a bridge to the infinite, a final place of peace. In his
private diary there is an entry made at the commencement of the war,
while he was at Silistria, which runs as follows:

 “I have no modesty; that is my great defect.... I am ugly, awkward,
 uncleanly, and lack society education. I am irritable, a bore to
 others, not modest; intolerant, and as shamefaced as a child.... I am
 almost an ignoramus. What I do know I have learnt anyhow, by myself,
 in snatches, without sequence, without a plan, and it amounts to very
 little. I am incontinent, undecided, inconstant, and stupidly vain
 and vehement, like all characterless people. I am not brave.... I am
 clever, but my cleverness has as yet not been thoroughly tested on
 anything.... I am honest; that is to say, I love goodness.... There
 is a thing I love more than goodness, and that is fame. I am so
 ambitious, and so little has this feeling been gratified, that, should
 I have to choose between fame and goodness, I fear I may often choose
 the former. Yes, I am not modest, and therefore I am proud at heart,
 shamefaced, and shy in society.”

At the time that Tolstoy wrote this he was a master, as Mr. Aylmer
Maude points out, of the French and German languages, besides having
some knowledge of English, Latin, Arabic, and Turco-Tartar. He had
published stories which had caused the editors of the best Russian
magazines to offer him the rate of pay accorded to the best-known
writers. Therefore his discontent with his position, both intellectual
and social, was in reality quite unfounded.

After the Crimean War, Tolstoy went abroad. He found nothing in Western
Europe to satisfy him. On his return he settled down at Yasnaya
Polyana, and married; and the great patriarchal phase of his life
began, during which every gift and every happiness that man can be
blessed with seemed to have fallen to his lot. It was then that he
wrote _War and Peace_, in which he describes the conflict between one
half of Europe and the other. He takes one of the largest canvases
ever attacked by man; and he writes a prose epic on a period full of
tremendous events. His piercing glance sees through all the fictions of
national prejudice and patriotic bias; and he gives us what we feel to
be the facts as they were, the very truth. No detail is too small for
him, no catastrophe too great. He traces the growth of the spreading
tree to its minute seed, the course of the great river to its tiny
source. He makes a whole vanished generation of public and private men
live before our eyes in such a way that it is difficult to believe that
these people are not a part of our actual experience; and that his
creations are not men and women we have seen with our own eyes, and
whose voices we have heard with our own ears.

But when we put down this wonderful book, unequalled as a prose
epic, as a panorama of a period and a gallery of a thousand finished
portraits, we are still left with the impression that the author
has not yet found what he is seeking. He is still asking why? and
wherefore? What does it all mean? why all these horrors, why these
sacrifices? Why all this conflict and suffering of nations? What do
these high deeds, this heroism, mean? What is the significance of
these State problems, and the patriotic self-sacrifice of nations? We
are aware that the soul of Tolstoy is alone in an awful solitude, and
that it is shivering on the heights, conscious that all round it is
emptiness, darkness and despair.

Again, in _War and Peace_ we are conscious that Tolstoy’s proud nature,
the “Lucifer” type in him, is searching for another ideal; and that in
the character of Pierre Bezuhov he is already setting up before us the
ideal of Ivan Durak as the model which we should seek to imitate. And
in Pierre Bezuhov we feel that there is something of Tolstoy himself.
Manners change, but man, faced by the problem of life, is the same
throughout all ages; and, whether consciously or unconsciously, Tolstoy
proves this in writing _Anna Karenina_. Here again, on a large canvas,
we see unrolled before us the contemporary life of the upper classes in
Russia, in St. Petersburg, and in the country, with the same sharpness
of vision, which seizes every outward detail, and reveals every recess
of the heart and mind. Nearly all characters in all fiction seem
bookish beside those of Tolstoy. His men and women are so real and so
true that, even if his psychological analysis of them may sometimes
err and go wrong from its oversubtlety and its desire to explain too
much, the characters themselves seem to correct this automatically, as
though they were independent of their creator. He creates a character
and gives it life. He may theorise on a character, just as he might
theorise on a person in real life; and he may theorise wrong, simply
because sometimes no theorising is necessary, and the very fact of
a theory being set down in words may give a false impression; but,
as soon as the character speaks and acts, it speaks and acts in the
manner which is true to itself, and corrects the false impression of
the theory, just as though it were an independent person over whom the
author had no control.

Nearly every critic, at least nearly every English critic,[8] in
dealing with _Anna Karenina_, has found fault with the author for the
character of Vronsky. Anna Karenina, they say, could never have fallen
in love with such an ordinary commonplace man. Vronsky, one critic
has said (in a brilliant article), is only a glorified “Steerforth.”
The answer to this is that if you go to St. Petersburg or to London,
or to any other town you like to mention, you will find that the men
with whom the Anna Kareninas of this world fall in love are precisely
the Vronskys, and no one else, for the simple reason that Vronsky is a
man. He is not a hero, and he is not a villain; he is not what people
call “interesting,” but a man, as masculine as Anna is feminine, with
many good qualities and many limitations, but above all things alive.
Nearly every novelist, with the exception of Fielding, ends, in spite
of himself, by placing his hero either above or beneath the standard
of real life. There are many Vronskys to-day in St. Petersburg, and
for the matter of that, _mutatis mutandis_, in London. But no novelist
except Tolstoy has ever had the power to put this simple thing, an
ordinary man, into a book. Put one of Meredith’s heroes next to
Vronsky, and Meredith’s hero will appear like a figure dressed up for
a fancy-dress ball. Put one of Bourget’s heroes next to him, with all
his psychological documents attached to him, and, in spite of all the
analysis in the world, side by side with Tolstoy’s human being he will
seem but a plaster-cast. Yet, all the time, in _Anna Karenina_ we
feel, as in _War and Peace_, that the author is still unsatisfied and
hungry, searching for something he has not yet found; and once again,
this time in still sharper outline and more living colours, he paints
an ideal of simplicity which is taking us towards Ivan Durak in the
character of Levin. Into this character, too, we feel that Tolstoy
has put a great deal of himself; and that Levin, if he is not Tolstoy
himself, is what Tolstoy would like to be. But the loneliness and the
void that are round Tolstoy’s mind are not yet filled; and in that
loneliness and in that void we are sharply conscious of the brooding
presence of despair, and the power of darkness.

We feel that Tolstoy is afraid of the dark; that to him there is
something wrong in the whole of human life, a radical mistake. He is
conscious that, with all his genius, he has only been able to record
the fact that all that he has found in life is not what he is looking
for, but something irrelevant and unessential; and, at the same time,
that he has not been able to determine the thing in life which is not a
mistake, nor where the true aim, the essential thing, is to be found,
nor in what it consists. It is at this moment that the crisis occurred
in Tolstoy’s life which divides it outwardly into two sections,
although it constitutes no break in his inward evolution. The fear of
the dark, of the abyss yawning in front of him, was so strong that he
felt he must rid himself of it at all costs.

 “I felt terror” (he writes) “of what was awaiting me, though I knew
 that this terror was more terrible than my position itself; I could
 not wait patiently for the end; my horror of the darkness was too
 great, and I felt I must rid myself of it as soon as possible by noose
 or bullet.”

This terror was not a physical fear of death, but an abstract fear,
arising from the consciousness that the cold mists of decay were rising
round him. By the realisation of the nothingness of everything, of
what Leopardi calls “l’infinita vanità del tutto,” he was brought to
the verge of suicide. And then came the change which he describes thus
in his _Confession_: “I grew to hate myself; and now all has become
clear to me.” This was the preliminary step of the development which
led him to believe that he had at last found the final and everlasting
truth. “A man has only got not to desire lands or money, in order to
enter into the kingdom of God.” Property, he came to believe, was
the source of all evil. “It is not a law of nature, the will of God,
or a historical necessity; rather a superstition, neither strong
nor terrible, but weak and contemptible.” To free oneself from this
superstition he thought was as easy as to stamp on a spider. He
desired literally to carry out the teaching of the Gospels, to give up
all he had and to become a beggar.

This ideal he was not able to carry out in practice. His family,
his wife, opposed him: and he was not strong enough to face the
uncompromising and terrible sayings which speak of a man’s foes being
those of his own household, of father being divided against son, and
household against household, of the dead being left to bury their dead.
He put before him the ideal of the Christian saints, and of the early
Russian martyrs who literally acted upon the saying of Christ: “Whoso
leaveth not house and lands and children for My sake, is not worthy
of Me.” Tolstoy, instead of crushing the spider of property, shut his
eyes to it. He refused to handle money, or to have anything to do with
it; but this does not alter the fact that it was handled for him, so
that he retained its advantages, and this without any of the harassment
which arises from the handling of property. His affairs were, and still
are, managed for him; and he continued to live as he had done before.
No sane person would think of blaming Tolstoy for this. He was not by
nature a St. Francis; he was not by nature a Russian martyr, but the
reverse. What one does resent is not that his practice is inconsistent
with his teaching, but that his teaching is inconsistent with the
ideal which it professes to embody. He takes the Christian teaching,
and tells the world that it is the only hope of salvation, the only key
to the riddle of life. At the same time he neglects the first truth
on which that teaching is based, namely, that man must be born again;
he must humble himself and become as a little child. It is just this
final and absolute surrender that Tolstoy has been unable to make.
Instead of loving God through himself, and loving himself for the God
in him, he hates himself, and refuses to recognise the gifts that God
has given him. It is for this reason that he talks of all his great
work, with the exception of a few stories written for children, as
being worthless. It is for this reason that he ceased writing novels,
and attempted to plough the fields. And the cause of all this is simply
spiritual pride, because he was unwilling “to do his duty in that state
of life to which it had pleased God to call him.” Providence had made
him a novelist and a writer, and not a tiller of the fields. Providence
had made him not only a novelist, but perhaps the greatest novelist
that has ever lived; yet he deliberately turns upon this gift, and
spurns it, and spits upon it, and says that it is worth nothing.

The question is, has a human being the right to do this, especially if,
for any reasons whatever, he is not able to make the full and complete
renunciation, and to cut himself off from the world altogether? The
answer is that if this be the foundation of Tolstoy’s teaching, people
have a right to complain of there being something wrong in it. If he
had left the world and become a pilgrim, like one of the early Russian
saints, not a word could have been said; or if he had remained in the
world, preaching the ideals of Christianity and carrying them out
as far as he could, not a word could have been said. But, while he
has not followed the first course, he has preached that the second
course is wrong. He has striven after the ideal of Ivan Durak, but has
been unable to find it, simply because he has been unable to humble
himself; he has re-written the Gospels to suit his own temperament.
The cry of his youth, “I have no modesty,” remains true of him after
his conversion. It is rather that he has no humility; and, instead of
acknowledging that every man is appointed to a definite task, and that
there is no such thing as a superfluous man or a superfluous task, he
has preached that all tasks are superfluous except what he himself
considers to be necessary; instead of preaching the love of the divine
“image of the King,” with which man is stamped like a coin, he has told
us to love the maker of the coin by hatred of His handiwork, quite
regardless of the image with which it is stamped.

This all arises from the dual personality in the man, the conflict
between the titanic “Lucifer” and the other element in him, for ever
searching for the ideal of Ivan Durak. The Titan is consumed with
desire to become Ivan Durak; he preaches to the whole world that they
should do so, but he cannot do it himself. Other proud and titanic
natures have done it; but Tolstoy cannot do what Dante did. Dante was
proud and a Titan, but Dante divested himself of his pride, and seeing
the truth, said: “In la sua volontade è nostra pace.” Nor can Tolstoy
attain to Goethe’s great cry of recognition of the “himmlische Mächte,”
“Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass.” He remains isolated in his high
and terrible solitude:

  “In the cold starlight where thou canst not climb.”

Tourgeniev said of Tolstoy, “He never loved any one but himself.”
Merejkowski, in his _Tolstoy as Man and Artist_, a creative work of
criticism, is nearer the truth when he says, He has never loved any
man, “_not even himself_!” But Merejkowski considers that the full
circle of Tolstoy’s spiritual life is not closed. He does not believe
he has found the truth which he has sought for all his life, nor that
he is, as yet, at rest.

 “I cannot refuse to believe him” (he writes) “when he speaks of
 himself as a pitiable fledgling fallen from the nest. Yes, however
 terrible, it is true. This Titan, with all his vigour, is lying on
 his back and wailing in the high grass, as you and I and all the rest
 of us. No, he has found nothing; no faith, no God. And his whole
 justification is solely in his hopeless prayer, this piercing and
 plaintive cry of boundless solitude and dread.... Will he at last
 understand that there is no higher or lower in the matter; that the
 two seemingly contradictory and equally true paths, leading to one
 and the same goal, are not two paths, but one path which merely seems
 to be two; and that it is not by going against what is earthly or
 fleeing from it, but only through what is earthly, that we can reach
 the Divine; that it is not by divesting ourselves of the flesh, but
 through the flesh, that we can reach that which is beyond the flesh?
 Shall we fear the flesh? we, the children of Him who said, ‘My blood
 is drink indeed, and My flesh is meat indeed’; we, whose God is that
 God whose Word was made flesh?”[9]

Yet, whatever the mistakes of Tolstoy’s teaching may be, they do not
detract from the moral authority of the man. All his life he has
searched for the truth, and all his life he has said exactly what
he thought; and though he has fearlessly attacked all constituted
authorities, nobody has dared to touch him. He is too great. This is
the first time independent thought has prevailed in Russia; and this
victory is the greatest service he has rendered to Russia _as a man_.

Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoievsky could endure Tourgeniev; their dislike
of him is interesting, and helps us to understand the nature of their
work and of their artistic ideals, and the nature of the distance that
separates the work of Tourgeniev from that of Tolstoy. “I despise the
man,” Tolstoy wrote of Tourgeniev to Fet. Dostoievsky, in his novel
_The Possessed_,[10] draws a scathing portrait of Tourgeniev, in which
every defect of the man is noted but grossly exaggerated. This portrait
is not uninstructive.

“I read his works in my childhood,” Dostoievsky writes, “I even
revelled in them. They were the delight of my boyhood and my youth.
Then I gradually grew to feel colder towards his writing.” He goes
on to say that Tourgeniev is one of those authors who powerfully
affect one generation, and are then put on the shelf, like the scene
of a theatre. The reason of this dislike, of the inability to admire
Tourgeniev’s work, which was shared by Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, is
perhaps that both these men, each in his own way, reached the absolute
truth of the life which was round them. Tolstoy painted the outer and
the inner life of those with whom he came in contact, in a manner such
as has never been seen before or since; and Dostoievsky painted the
inner life (however fantastic he made the outer machinery of his work)
with an insight that has never been attained before or since. Now
Tourgeniev painted people of the same epoch, the same generation; he
dealt with the same material; he dealt with it as an artist and as a
poet, as a great artist, and as a great poet. But his vision was weak
and narrow compared with that of Tolstoy, and his understanding was
cold and shallow compared with that of Dostoievsky. His characters,
beside those of Tolstoy, seem caricatures, and beside those of
Dostoievsky they are conventional.

In Europe no foreign writer has ever received more abundant praise from
the most eclectic judges than has Tourgeniev. Flaubert said of him:
“Quel gigantesque bonhomme que ce Scythe!” George Sand said: “Maître,
il nous faut tous aller à votre école.” Taine speaks of Tourgeniev’s
work as being the finest artistic production since Sophocles.
Twenty-five years have now passed since Tourgeniev’s death; and, as M.
Haumant points out in his book, the period of reaction and of doubt,
with regard to his work, has now set in even in Europe. People are
beginning to ask themselves whether Tourgeniev’s pictures are true,
whether the Russians that he describes ever existed, and whether the
praise which was bestowed upon him by his astonished contemporaries all
over Europe was not a gross exaggeration.

One reason of the abundant and perhaps excessive praise which was
showered on Tourgeniev by European critics is that it was chiefly
through Tourgeniev’s work that Europe discovered Russian literature,
and became aware that novels were being written in which dramatic
issues, as poignant and terrible as those of Greek tragedy, arose
simply out of the clash of certain characters in everyday life. The
simplicity of Russian literature, the naturalness of the characters
in Russian fiction, came like a revelation to Europe; and, as this
revelation came about partly through the work of Tourgeniev, it is
not difficult to understand that he received the praise not only due
to him as an artist, but the praise for all the qualities which are
inseparable from the work of any Russian.

Heine says somewhere that the man who first came to Germany was
astonished at the abundance of ideas there. “This man,” he says, “was
like the traveller who found a nugget of gold directly he arrived in
El Dorado; but his enthusiasm died down when he discovered that in El
Dorado there was nothing but nuggets of gold.” As it was with ideas
in Germany, according to Heine, so was it with the naturalness of
Tourgeniev. Compared with the work of Tolstoy and that of all other
Russian writers, Tourgeniev’s naturalness is less astonishing, because
he possesses the same qualities that they possess, only in a less
degree.

When all is said, Tourgeniev was a great poet. What time has not taken
away from him, and what time can never take away, is the beauty of
his language and the poetry in his work. Every Russian schoolboy has
read the works of Tourgeniev before he has left school; and every
Russian schoolboy will probably continue to do so, because Tourgeniev’s
prose remains a classic model of simple, beautiful, and harmonious
language, and as such it can hardly be excelled. Tourgeniev never
wrote anything better than the book which brought him fame, the
_Sportsman’s Sketches_. In this book nearly the whole of his talent
finds expression. One does not know which to admire more--the delicacy
of the art in choosing and recording his impressions, or the limpid
and musical utterance with which they are recorded. To the reader who
only knows his work through a translation, three-quarters of the beauty
are lost; yet so great is the truth, and so moving is the poetry of
these sketches, that even in translation they will strike a reader as
unrivalled.

There is, perhaps, nothing so difficult in the world to translate as
stories dealing with Russian peasants. The simplicity and directness
of their speech are the despair of the translator; and to translate
them properly would require literary talent at once as great and as
delicate as the author’s. Mrs. Garnett’s version of Tourgeniev’s work
is admirable; yet in reading the translation of the _Sportsman’s
Sketches_, and comparing it with the original, one feels that the
task is an almost impossible one. Some writers, Rudyard Kipling for
instance, succeed in conveying to us the impression which is made by
the conversation of men in exotic countries. When Rudyard Kipling gives
us the speech of an Indian, he translates it into simple and biblical
English. There is no doubt this is the right way to deal with the
matter; it is the method which was adopted with perfect success by the
great writers of the eighteenth century, the method of Fielding and
Smollett in dealing with the conversation of simple men. One cannot
help thinking that it is a mistake, in translating the speech of
people like Russian peasants, or Indians, or Greeks, however familiar
the speech may be, to try to render it by the equivalent colloquial
or slang English. For instance, Mrs. Garnett, in translating one of
Tourgeniev’s masterpieces, _The Singers_, turns the Russian words
“nie vryosh” (Art thou not lying?) by “Isn’t it your humbug?” In the
same story she translates the Russian word “molchat” by the slang
expression “shut up.” Now “shut up” might, in certain circumstances,
be the colloquial equivalent of “molchat”; but the expression conveyed
is utterly false, and it would be better to translate it simply “be
silent”; because to translate the talk of the Russian peasant into
English colloquialisms conveys precisely the same impression, to any
one familiar with the original, which he would receive were he to come
across the talk of a Scotch gillie translated into English cockney
slang.

This may seem a small point, but in reality it is the chief problem
of all translation, and especially of that translation which deals
with the talk and the ways of simple men. It is therefore of cardinal
importance, when the material in question happens to be the talk of
Russian peasants; and I have seen no translation in which this mistake
is not made. How great the beauty of the original must be is proved by
the fact that even in a translation of this kind one can still discern
it, and that one receives at least a shadow of the impression which
the author intended to convey. If the _Sportsman’s Sketches_ be the
masterpiece of Tourgeniev, he rose to the same heights once more at the
close of his career, when he wrote the incomparable _Poems in Prose_.
Here once more he touched the particular vibrating string which was
his special secret, and which thrills and echoes in the heart with so
lingering a sweetness.

So much for Tourgeniev as a poet. But Tourgeniev was a novelist, he
was famous as a novelist, and must be considered as such. His three
principal novels, _A House of Gentlefolk_, _Fathers and Sons_, and
_Virgin Soil_, laid the foundation of his European fame. Their merits
consist in the ideal character of the women described, the absence of
tricks of mechanism and melodrama, the naturalness of the sequence
of the events, the harmony and proportion of the whole, and the
vividness of the characters. No one can deny that the characters of
Tourgeniev live; they are intensely vivid. Whether they are true to
life is another question. The difference between the work of Tolstoy
and Tourgeniev is this: that Tourgeniev’s characters are as living
as any characters ever are in books, but they belong, comparatively
speaking, to bookland, and are thus conventional; whereas Tolstoy’s
characters belong to life. The fault which Russian critics find with
Tourgeniev’s characters is that they are exaggerated, that there is
an element of caricature in them; and that they are permeated by the
faults of the author’s own character, namely, his weakness, and, above
all, his self-consciousness. M. Haumant points out that the want of
backbone in all Tourgeniev’s characters does not prove that types of
this kind must necessarily be untrue or misleading pictures of the
Russian character, since Tourgeniev was not only a Russian, but an
exceptionally gifted and remarkable Russian. Tourgeniev himself divides
all humanity into two types, the Don Quixotes and the Hamlets. With but
one notable exception, he almost exclusively portrayed the Hamlets.
Feeble, nerveless people, full of ideas, enthusiastic in speech,
capable by their words of exciting enthusiasm and even of creating
belief in themselves, but incapable of action and devoid of will; they
lack both the sublime simplicity and the weakness of Ivan Durak, which
is not weakness but strength, because it proceeds from a profound
goodness.

To this there is one exception. In _Fathers and Sons_, Tourgeniev
drew a portrait of the “Lucifer” type, of an unbending and inflexible
will, namely, Bazarov. There is no character in the whole of his work
which is more alive; and nothing that he wrote ever aroused so much
controversy and censure as this figure. Tourgeniev invented the type
of the intellectual Nihilist in fiction. If he was not the first to
invent the word, he was the first to apply it and to give it currency.
The type remains, and will remain, of the man who believes in nothing,
bows to nothing, bends to nothing, and who retains his invincible pride
until death strikes him down. Here again, compared with the Nihilists
whom Dostoievsky has drawn in his _Possessed_, we feel that, so far
as the inner truth of this type is concerned, Tourgeniev’s Bazarov is
a book-character, extraordinarily vivid and living though he be; and
that Dostoievsky’s Nihilists, however outwardly fantastic they may
seem, are inwardly not only truer, but the very quintessence of truth.
Tourgeniev never actually saw the real thing as Tolstoy might have seen
it and described it; nor could he divine by intuition the real thing
as Dostoievsky divined it, whether he saw it or not. But Tourgeniev
evolved a type out of his artistic imagination, and made a living
figure which, to us at any rate, is extraordinarily striking. This
character has proved, however, highly irritating to those who knew the
prototype from which it was admittedly drawn, and considered him not
only a far more interesting character than Tourgeniev’s conception, but
quite different from it. But whatever fault may be found with Bazarov,
none can be found with the description of his death. Here Tourgeniev
reaches his high-water mark as a novelist, and strikes a note of manly
pathos which, by its reserve, suggests an infinity of things all the
more striking for being left unsaid. The death of Bazarov is one of the
great pages of the world’s fiction.

In _Virgin Soil_, Tourgeniev attempts to give a sketch of underground
life in Russia--the revolutionary movement, helpless in face of the
ignorance of the masses and the unpreparedness of the nation at large
for any such movement. Here, in the opinion of all Russian judges,
and of most latter-day critics who have knowledge of the subject, he
failed. In describing the official class, although he does this with
great skill and cleverness, he makes a gallery of caricatures; and the
revolutionaries whom he sets before us as types, however good they may
be as fiction, are not the real thing.[11] Nevertheless, in spite of
Tourgeniev’s limitations, these three books, _A House of Gentlefolk_,
_Fathers and Sons_, and _Virgin Soil_, must always have a permanent
value as reflecting the atmosphere of the generation which he paints,
even though his pictures be marred by caricatures, and feeble when
compared with those of his rivals.

Of his other novels, the most important are _On the Eve_, _Smoke_,
_Spring Waters_, and _Rudin_ (the most striking portrait in his gallery
of Hamlets). In _Spring Waters_, Tourgeniev’s poetry is allowed free
play; the result is therefore an entrancing masterpiece. With regard to
_On the Eve_, Tolstoy writes thus:[12]

 “These are excellent negative characters, the artist and the father.
 The rest are not types; even their conception, their position, is not
 typical, or they are quite insignificant. That, however, is always
 Tourgeniev’s mistake. The girl is hopelessly bad. ‘Ah, how I love
 thee!... Her eyelashes were long.’ In general it always surprises
 me that Tourgeniev, with his mental powers and poetic sensibility,
 should, even in his methods, not be able to refrain from banality.
 There is no humanity or sympathy for the characters, but the author
 exhibits monsters whom he scolds and does not pity.”

Again, in writing of _Smoke_, Tolstoy says:[13]

 “About _Smoke_, I think that the strength of poetry lies in love; and
 the direction of that strength depends on character. Without strength
 of love there is no poetry; but strength falsely directed--the result
 of the poet’s having an unpleasant, weak character--creates dislike.
 In _Smoke_ there is hardly any love of anything, and very little pity;
 there is only love of light and playful adultery; and therefore the
 poetry of that novel is repulsive.”

These criticisms, especially the latter, may be said to sum up the case
of the “Advocatus Diaboli” with regard to Tourgeniev. I have quoted
them because they represent what many educated Russians feel at the
present day about a great part of Tourgeniev’s work, however keenly
they appreciate his poetical sensibility and his gift of style. The
view deserves to be pointed out, because all that can be said in praise
of Tourgeniev has not only been expressed with admirable nicety and
discrimination by widely different critics of various nationalities,
but their praise is constantly being quoted; whereas the other side
of the question is seldom mentioned. Yet in the case of _On the Eve_,
Tolstoy’s criticism is manifestly unfair. Tolstoy was unable by his
nature to do full justice to Tourgeniev. Perhaps the most impartial
and acute criticism of Tourgeniev’s work that exists is to be found
in M. de Vogüé’s _Roman Russe_. M. de Vogüé is not indeed blind to
Tourgeniev’s defects; he recognises the superiority both of Tolstoy
and Dostoievsky, but he nevertheless gives Tourgeniev his full meed of
appreciation.

The lapse of years has only emphasised the elements of banality and
conventionality which are to be found in Tourgeniev’s work. He is a
masterly landscape painter; but even here he is not without convention.
His landscapes are always orthodox Russian landscapes, and are seldom
varied. He seems never to get face to face with nature, after the
manner of Wordsworth; he never gives us any elemental pictures of
nature, such as Gorky succeeds in doing in a phrase; but he rings the
changes on delicate arrangements of wood, cloud, mist and water, vague
backgrounds and diaphanous figures, after the manner of Corot. This
does not detract from the beauty of his pictures, and our admiration
for them is not lessened; but all temptation to exaggerate its merits
vanishes when we turn from his work to that of stronger masters.

To sum up, it may be said that the picture of Russia obtained from
the whole of Tourgeniev’s work has been incomplete, but it is not
inaccurate; and such as it is, with all its faults, it is invaluable.
In 1847, Bielinski, in writing to Tourgeniev, said: “It seems to me
that you have little or no creative genius. Your vocation is to depict
reality.” This criticism remained true to the end of Tourgeniev’s
career, but it omits his greatest gift, his poetry, the magical echoes,
the “unheard melodies,” which he sets vibrating in our hearts by the
music of his utterance. The last of Tourgeniev’s poems in prose is
called “The Russian Language.” It runs as follows:

 “In days of doubt, in the days of burdensome musing over the fate
 of my country, thou alone art my support and my mainstay, oh great,
 mighty, truthful, and unfettered Russian language! Were it not for
 thee, how should I not fall into despair at the sight of all that is
 being done at home? But how can I believe that such a tongue was given
 to any but a great people?”

No greater praise can be given to Tourgeniev than to say that he was
worthy of his medium, and that no Russian prose writer ever handled the
great instrument of his inheritance with a more delicate touch or a
surer execution.

When Tourgeniev was dying, he wrote to Tolstoy and implored him to
return to literature. “That gift,” he wrote, “came whence all comes to
us. Return to your literary work, great writer of our Russian land!”

All through Tourgeniev’s life, in spite of his frequent quarrels with
Tolstoy, he never ceased to admire the works of his rival. Tourgeniev
had the gift of admiration. Tolstoy is absolutely devoid of it.
The “Lucifer” spirit in him refuses to bow down before Shakespeare
or Beethoven, simply because it is incapable of bending at all. To
justify this want, this incapacity to admire the great masterpieces
of the world, Tolstoy wrote a book called _What is Art?_ in which he
condemned theories he had himself enunciated years before. In this,
and in a book on Shakespeare, he treats all art, the very greatest,
as if it were in the same category with that of æsthetes who confine
themselves to prattling of “Art for Art’s sake.” Beethoven he brushes
aside because, he says, such music can only appeal to specialists.
“What proportion of the world’s population,” he asks, “have ever heard
the Ninth Symphony or seen ‘King Lear’? And how many of them enjoyed
the one or the other?” If these things be the highest art, and yet the
bulk of men live without them, and do not need them, then the highest
art lacks all claim to such respect as Tolstoy is ready to accord to
art. In commenting on this, Mr. Aylmer Maude writes: “The case of the
specialists, when Tolstoy calls in question the merits of ‘King Lear’
or of the Ninth Symphony, is an easy one.”

But the fallacy does not lie here. The fallacy lies in thinking
the matter is a case for specialists at all. It is not a case for
specialists. Beethoven’s later quartettes may be a case for the
specialist, just as the obscurer passages in Shakespeare may be a
case for the specialist. This does not alter the fact that the whole
of the German nation, and multitudes of people outside Germany, meet
together to hear Beethoven’s symphonies played, and enjoy them. It does
not alter the fact that Shakespeare’s plays are translated into every
language and enjoyed, and, when they are performed, are enjoyed by
the simplest and the most uneducated people. The highest receipts are
obtained at the Théâtre Français on holidays and feast days, when the
plays of Molière are given. Tolstoy leaves out the fact that very great
art, such as that of Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Beethoven,
Mozart, appeals at the same time, and possibly for different reasons,
to the highly trained specialist and to the most uncultivated
ignoramus. This, Dr. Johnson points out, is the great merit of Bunyan’s
_Pilgrim’s Progress_: the most cultivated man cannot find anything
to praise more highly, and a child knows nothing more amusing. This
is also true of _Paradise Lost_, an appreciation of which is held in
England to be the highest criterion of scholarship. And _Paradise
Lost_, translated into simple prose, is sold in cheap editions, with
coloured pictures, all over Russia,[14] and greedily read by the
peasants, who have no idea that it is a poem, but enjoy it as a tale
of fantastic adventure and miraculous events. It appeals at the same
time to their religious feeling and to their love of fairy tales, and
impresses them by a certain elevation in the language (just as the
chants in church impress them) which they unconsciously feel does them
good.

It is this inability to admire which is the whole defect of Tolstoy,
and it arises from his indomitable pride, which is the strength
of his character, and causes him to tower like a giant over all
his contemporaries. Therefore, in reviewing his whole work and his
whole life, and in reviewing it in connection with that of his
contemporaries, one comes to this conclusion. If Tolstoy, being as
great as he is, has this great limitation, we can only repeat the
platitude that no genius, however great, is without limitations; no
ruby without a flaw. Were it otherwise--Had there been combined with
Tolstoy’s power and directness of vision and creative genius, the large
love and the childlike simplicity of Dostoievsky--we should have had,
united in one man, the complete expression of the Russian race; that is
to say, we should have had a complete man--which is impossible.

Tourgeniev, on the other hand, is full to the brim of the power of
admiration and appreciation which Tolstoy lacks; but then he also
lacks Tolstoy’s strength and power. Dostoievsky has a power different
from Tolstoy’s, but equal in scale, and titanic. He has a power of
admiration, an appreciation wider and deeper than Tourgeniev’s, and
the humility of a man who has descended into hell, who has been face
to face with the sufferings and the agonies of humanity and the vilest
aspects of human nature; who, far from losing his faith in the divine,
has detected it in every human being, however vile, and in every
circumstance, however hideous; and who in dust and ashes has felt
himself face to face with God. Yet, in spite of all this, Dostoievsky
is far from being the complete expression of the Russian genius, or
a complete man. His limitations are as great as Tolstoy’s; and no one
was ever more conscious of them than himself. They do not concern us
here. What does concern us is that in modern Russian literature, in the
literature of this century, leaving the poets out of the question, the
two great figures, the two great columns which support the temple of
Russian literature, are Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. Tourgeniev’s place is
inside that temple; there he has a shrine and an altar which are his
own, which no one can dispute with him, and which are bathed in serene
radiance and visited by shy visions and voices of haunting loveliness.
But neither as a writer nor as a man can he be called the great
representative of even half the Russian genius; for he complements the
genius of neither Tolstoy nor Dostoievsky. He possesses in a minor
degree qualities which they both possessed; and the qualities which
are his and his only, exquisite as they are, are not of the kind which
belong to the greatest representatives of a nation or of a race.


FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Life of Tolstoy_, p. 38.

[8] Matthew Arnold is a notable exception.

[9] _Tolstoy as Man and Artist_, pp. 93, 95. This passage is translated
from the Russian edition.

[10] It should be said that this portrait is so unfair, and yet
contains elements of truth so acutely observed, that for some people it
spoils the whole book.

[11] With the exception of Marianna, one of his most beautiful and
noble characters.

[12] _Life_, p. 189.

[13] _Life_, p. 312.

[14] The popular edition of _Paradise Lost_ in Russian prose, with
rough coloured pictures, is published by the Tipografia, T. D. Sitin,
Piatnitzkaia Oolitza, Moscow.




CHAPTER V

THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV


In the preceding I have tried very briefly to point out the state of
the barometer of public opinion (the barometer of the average educated
man and not of any exclusive clique) with regard to Tourgeniev’s
reputation in Russia at the present day.

That and no more. I have not devoted a special chapter in this book
to Tourgeniev for the reasons I have already stated: namely, that his
work is better known in England than most other Russian classics, and
that admirable appreciations of his work exist already, written by
famous critics, such as Mr. Henry James and M. Melchior de Vogüé. There
is in England, among people who care for literature and who study the
literature of Europe, a perfectly definite estimate of Tourgeniev. It
is for this reason that I confined myself to trying to elucidate what
the average Russian thinks to-day about Tourgeniev compared with other
Russian writers, and to noticing any changes which have come about with
regard to the estimate of his work in Russia and in Europe during the
last twenty years. I thought this was sufficient.

But I now realise from several able criticisms on my study of Tolstoy
and Tourgeniev when it appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, that I had
laid myself open to be misunderstood. It was taken for granted in
several quarters not only that I underrated Tourgeniev as a writer,
but that I wished to convey the impression that his reputation was a
bubble that had burst. Nothing was farther from my intention than this.
And here lies the great danger of trying to talk of any foreign writer
from the point of view of that writer’s country and not from that of
your own country. You are instantly misunderstood. For instance, if you
say Alfred de Musset is not so much admired now in France as he used
to be in the sixties, the English reader, who may only recently have
discovered Alfred de Musset, and, indeed, may be approaching French
poetry as a whole for the first time, at once retorts: “There is a man
who is depreciating one of France’s greatest writers!”

Now what I wish to convey with regard to Tourgeniev is simply this:

Firstly, that although he is and always will remain a Russian classic,
he is not, rightly or wrongly, so enthusiastically admired as he used
to be: new writers have risen since his time (not necessarily better
ones, but men who have opened windows on undreamed-of vistas); and
not only this, but one of his own contemporaries, Dostoievsky, has
been brought into a larger and clearer light of fame than he enjoyed
in his lifetime, owing to the dissipation of the mists of political
prejudices and temporary and local polemics, differences, quarrels and
controversies.

But the English reader has, as a general rule, never got farther than
Tourgeniev. He is generally quite unacquainted with the other Russian
classics; and so when it is said that there are others greater than
he--Dostoievsky and Gogol, for instance,--the English reader thinks an
attempt is being made to break a cherished and holy image. And if he
admires Tourgeniev,--which, if he likes Russian literature at all he is
almost sure to do,--it makes him angry.

Secondly, I wish to say that owing to the generally prevailing limited
view of the educated intellectual Englishman as to the field of
Russian literature as a whole, I do think he is inclined to overrate
the genius and position of Tourgeniev in Russian literature, great as
they are. There is, I think, an exaggerated cult for Tourgeniev among
intellectual Englishmen.[15] The case of Tennyson seems to me to afford
a very close parallel to that of Tourgeniev.

Mr. Gosse pointed out not long ago in a subtle and masterly article
that Tennyson, although we were now celebrating his centenary, had not
reached that moment when a poet is rapturously rediscovered by a far
younger generation than his own, but that he had reached that point
when the present generation felt no particular excitement about his
work. This seems to me the exact truth about Tourgeniev’s reputation
in Russia at the present day. Everybody has read him, and everybody
will always read him because he is a classic and because he has written
immortal things, but now, in the year 1909, there is no particular
excitement about _Fathers and Sons_ in Russia: just as now there is no
particular excitement about the “Idylls of the King” or “In Memoriam”
in England to-day. Tourgeniev has not yet been rediscovered.

Of course, there are some critics who in “the fearless old fashion” say
boldly that Tennyson’s reputation is dead; that he exists no longer,
and that we need not trouble to mention him. I read some such sweeping
pronouncement not long ago by an able journalist. There are doubtless
Russian critics who say the same about Tourgeniev. As to whether they
are right or wrong, I will not bother myself or my readers, but I do
wish to make it as clear as daylight that I myself hold no such opinion
either with regard to Tourgeniev or to Tennyson.

I believe Tennyson to have written a great quantity of immortal and
magnificently beautiful verse. I believe that Tennyson possesses an
enduring throne in the Temple of English poets. I believe Tourgeniev to
have written a great quantity of immortal and inexpressibly beautiful
prose, and I believe that he will hold an enduring seat in the Temple
of Russian literature. I think this is clear. But supposing a Russian
critic were to write on the English literature and the English taste
of the present day, and supposing he were to say, “Of course, as we
Russians all feel, there is only one English poet in the English
literature of the last hundred years, and that is Tennyson. Tennyson is
the great and only representative of English art; the only writer who
has expressed the English soul.” We should then suspect he had never
studied the works of Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Coleridge,
Browning and Swinburne. Well, this, it seems to me, is exactly how
Tourgeniev is treated in England. All I wished to point out was that
the point of view of a Russian was necessarily different, owing to
his larger field of vision and to the greater extent and depth of his
knowledge, and to his closer communion with the work of his national
authors.

But, as I have said, it was taken for granted by some people that I
wished to show that Tourgeniev was not a classic. I will therefore, at
the risk of wearying my readers, repeat--with as much variation as I
can muster--what I consider to be some of Tourgeniev’s special claims
to enduring fame.

I have said he was a great poet; but the words seem bare and dead when
one considers the peculiar nature of the shy and entrancing poetry
that is in Tourgeniev’s work. He has the magic that water gives to the
reflected images of trees, hills and woods; he touches the ugly facts
of life, softens and transfigures them so that they lose none of their
reality, but gain a majesty and a mystery that comes from beyond the
world, just as the moonlight softens and transfigures the wrinkled
palaces and decaying porticoes of Venice, hiding what is sordid,
heightening the beauty of line, and giving a quality of magic to every
stately building, to each delicate pillar and chiselled arch.

Then there is in his work a note of wistful tenderness that steals into
the heart and fills it with an incommunicable pleasureable sadness, as
do the songs you hear in Russia on dark summer nights in the villages,
or, better still, on the broad waters of some huge silent river,--songs
aching with an ecstasy of homesickness, songs which are something
half-way between the whining sadness of Oriental music and the
rippling plaintiveness of Irish and Scotch folk-song; songs that are
imperatively melodious, but strange to us in their rhythm, constantly
changing yet subordinated to definite law, varying indeed with an
invariable law; songs whose notes, without being definitely sharp or
flat, seem a little bit higher, or a shade lower than you expect, and
in which certain notes come over and over again with an insistent
appeal, a heartbreaking iteration, and an almost intolerable pathos;
songs which end abruptly and suddenly, so that you feel that they are
meant to begin again at once and to go on for ever.

This is how Tourgeniev’s poetical quality--as manifested in his
_Sportsman’s Sketches_, his _Poems in Prose_, and in many other of
his works--strikes me. But I doubt if any one unacquainted with the
Russian language would derive such impressions, for it is above all
things Tourgeniev’s language--the words he uses and the way in which
he uses them--that is magical. Every sentence is a phrase of perfect
melody; limpid, simple and sensuous. And all this must necessarily half
disappear in a translation, however good.

But then Tourgeniev is not only a poet. He is a great novelist and
something more than a great novelist. He has recorded for all time the
atmosphere of a certain epoch. He has done for Russia what Trollope
did for England: he has exactly conveyed the atmosphere and the tone
of the fifties. The characters of Trollope and Tourgeniev are excelled
by those of other writers--and I do not mean to put Tourgeniev on
the level of Trollope, because Tourgeniev is an infinitely greater
writer and an artist of an altogether higher order--; but for giving
the general picture and atmosphere of England during the fifties, I do
not believe any one has excelled Trollope; and for giving the general
atmosphere of the fifties in Russia, of a certain class, I do not
believe any one--with the possible exception of Aksakov, the Russian
Trollope,--has excelled what Tourgeniev did in his best known books,
_Fathers and Sons_, _Virgin Soil_, and _A House of Gentlefolk_.

Then, of course, Tourgeniev has gifts of shrewd characterisation, the
power of creating delightful women, gifts of pathos and psychology, and
artistic gifts of observation and selection, the whole being always
illumined and refined by the essential poetry of his temperament, and
the magical manner in which, like an inspired conductor leading an
orchestra of delicate wood and wind instruments, he handles the Russian
language. But when it comes to judging who has interpreted more truly
Russian life as a whole, and who has gazed deepest into the Russian
soul and expressed most truly and fully what is there, then I can but
repeat that I think he falls far short of Tolstoy, in the one case,
and of Dostoievsky, in the other. Judged as a whole, I think he is far
excelled, for different reasons, by Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, and by Gogol,
who surpasses him immeasurably alike in imagination, humour and truth.
I have endeavoured to explain why in various portions of this book. I
will not add anything further here, and I only hope that I have made it
sufficiently clear that although I admire other Russian writers more
than Tourgeniev, I am no image-breaker; and that although I worship
more fervently at other altars, I never for a moment intended either to
deny or to depreciate the authentic ray of divine light that burns in
Tourgeniev’s work.[16]


FOOTNOTES:

[15] See, for instance, Mr. Frank Harris in his _Shakespeare the Man:
His Tragedy_. See footnote, p. 124.

[16] The most striking instance I have come across lately of the cult
for Tourgeniev in England is in Mr. Frank Harris’ remarkable book on
Shakespeare. He illustrates his thesis that Shakespeare could not
create a manly character, by saying that Shakespeare could not have
drawn a _Bazarov_ or a _Marianna_. Leaving the thesis out of the
discussion, it is to me almost incredible that any one could think
Tourgeniev’s characters manly, compared with those of Shakespeare.
Tourgeniev played a hundred variations on the theme of the minor
Hamlet. He painted a whole gallery of little Hamlets. _Bazarov_ attains
his strength at the expense of intellectual nihilism, but he is a
neuropath compared with Mercutio. And _Bazarov_ is the only one of
Tourgeniev’s characters (and Tourgeniev’s acutest critics agree with
this,--see Brückner and Vogüé) that has strength. Tourgeniev could no
more have created a Falstaff than he could have flown. Where are these
manly characters of Tourgeniev? Who are they? Indeed a Russian critic
lately pointed out, _à propos_ of Tchekov, that the whole of Russian
politics, literature, and art, during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, suffered from the misfortune of there being so many such
Hamlets and so few Fortinbrases. I am convinced that had Mr. Harris
been a Russian, or had Tourgeniev been an Englishman, Mr. Harris would
not have held these views.




CHAPTER VI

DOSTOIEVSKY

 “In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of
 life; and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are moved when
 Levine labours in the field, when André sinks beyond emotion, when
 Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river, when
 Antony, not cowardly, puts off his helmet, when Kent has infinite pity
 on the dying Lear, when in Dostoiefsky’s _Despised and Rejected_, the
 uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These are
 notes which please the great heart of man.”

  R. L. STEVENSON, _Across the Plains_

 “Raskolnikoff (_Crime and Punishment_) is easily the greatest book I
 have read in ten years.... I divined ... the existence of a certain
 impotence in many minds of to-day which prevents them from living in
 a book or a character and keeps them afar off, spectators of a puppet
 show. To such I suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to
 the others it is a room, a house of life, into which they themselves
 enter, and are tortured and purified....

 “Another has been translated--_Humiliés et offensés_. It is even more
 incoherent than _Le Crime et le Châtiment_, but breathes much of _the
 same lovely goodness_.”[17]

  R. L. STEVENSON, _Letters_


I

INTRODUCTORY

In the autumn of 1897 I was staying in the South of Russia at the house
of a gentleman who has played no unimportant part in Russian politics.
We were sitting one evening at tea, a party of nearly thirty people
round the table, consisting of country gentlemen, neighbours and
friends. The village doctor was present: he was an ardent Tolstoyist,
and not only an admirer of Tolstoy’s genius, but a disciple, and a
believer in his religious teaching. He had been talking on this subject
for some time, and expressing his hero-worship in emphatic terms, when
the son of my host, a boy at school, only seventeen years of age, yet
familiar with the literature of seven languages, a writer, moreover, of
English and Russian verse, fired up and said:

“In fifty years’ time we Russians shall blush with shame to think that
we gave Tolstoy such fulsome admiration, when we had at the same time
a genius like Dostoievsky, the latchet of whose shoes Tolstoy is not
worthy to unloose.”

A few months after this I read an article on Dostoievsky in one of
the literary weeklies in England, in which the writer stated that
Dostoievsky was a mere _fueilletonist_, a concocter of melodrama, to be
ranked with Eugène Sue and Xavier de Montépin. I was struck at the time
by the divergence between English and Russian views on this subject. I
was amazed by the view of the English critic in itself; but the reason
that such a view could be expressed at all is not far to seek, since
there is at this moment no complete translation of Dostoievsky’s works
in England, and no literary translation of the same. Only one of his
books, _Crime and Punishment_, is known at all, and the rest of them
are difficult even to obtain in the English language.

However this may be, at the present time Dostoievsky’s fame in
Russia is every day becoming more universally and more emphatically
recognised. The present generation are inclined to consider him the
greatest of all their novelists; and although they as a rule, with the
critic Merejkowski, put him equal with Tolstoy as one of the two great
pillars which uphold the Temple of Russian literature, they are for
the most part agreed in thinking that he was a unique product, a more
startling revelation and embodiment of genius, a greater elemental
force, than Tolstoy or any other Russian writer of fiction. In fact,
they hold the same view about him that we do with regard to Shelley in
our poetical literature. We may not think that Shelley is a greater
poet than Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge or Byron, but he certainly is
a more exceptional incarnation of poetical genius. We can imagine
poets like Keats arising again,--one nearly akin to him and almost
equally exquisite did appear in the shape of Tennyson. We can imagine
there being other writers who would attain to Wordsworth’s simplicity
and communion with nature, but Shelley has as yet been without kith
or kindred, without mate or equal, in the whole range of the world’s
literary history. He does not appear to us like a plant that grows
among others, differing from them only in being more beautiful and
striking, which is true even of poets like Shakespeare, Dante and
Goethe, who reveal in the highest degree qualities which other poets
possess in a lesser degree, and complete and fulfil what the others aim
at and only partially achieve; but Shelley is altogether different in
kind: he aims at and achieves something which is beyond the range and
beyond the ken of other poets. It is as though he were not a man at
all, but an embodiment of certain elemental forces.

So it is with Dostoievsky. And for this reason those who admire him do
so passionately and extravagantly. It must not be thought that they
do not discern his faults, his incompleteness, and his limitations,
but the positive qualities that he possesses seem to them matchless,
and so precious, so rare, so tremendous, that they annihilate all
petty criticism. The example of Shelley may again serve us here.
Only a pedant, in the face of such flights of genius as “The Cloud,”
the “Ode to the West Wind,” “The Sensitive Plant,” or that high
pageant of grief, fantasy, of “thoughts that breathe and words that
burn,”--“Adonais,”--would apply a magnifying glass to such poems and
complain of the occasional lapses of style or of the mistakes in
grammar which may be found in them. These poems may be full of trivial
lapses of this kind, but such matters are of small account when a
poet has evoked for us a vision of what dwells beyond the veil of the
senses, and struck chords of a music which has the power and the wonder
of a miracle.

With Dostoievsky the case is somewhat but not in all respects similar.
He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from those of
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 his amazing
strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualities which
other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also; but he
has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with other writers
he annihilates them. The combination of this difference in kind and
this difference in degree makes something so strong and so tremendous,
that it is not to be wondered at when we find many critics saying
that Dostoievsky is not only the greatest of all Russian writers,
but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen. I am
not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; for instance,
Professor Brückner, a most level-headed critic, in his learned and
exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it is not in
_Faust_, but rather in _Crime and Punishment_, that the whole grief of
mankind takes hold of us.

Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is true
to say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present day
would place Dostoievsky as being equal to Tolstoy and immeasurably
above Tourgeniev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the present
day no more dreams of comparing Tourgeniev with Dostoievsky, than it
would occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte
Brontë.

Dostoievsky’s fame came late, although his first book, _Poor Folk_,
made a considerable stir, and the publication of his _Crime and
Punishment_ ensured his popularity. But when I say “fame,” I mean the
universal recognition of him by the best and most competent judges.
This recognition is now an accomplished fact in Russia and also in
Germany. The same cannot be said positively of France, although his
books are for the most part well translated into French, and have
received the warmest and the most acute appreciation at the hands of a
French critic, namely, M. de Vogüé in _Le Roman Russe_.[18] In England,
Dostoievsky cannot be said to be known at all, since the translations
of his works are not only inadequate, but scarce and difficult to
obtain, and it is possible to come across the most amazing judgments
pronounced on them by critics whose judgment on other subjects is
excellent.[19] The reason of this tardy recognition of Dostoievsky in
his own country is that he was one of those men whose innate sense of
fairness and hatred of cant prevent them from whole-heartedly joining
a political party and swallowing its tenets indiscriminately, even
when some of these tenets are nonsensical and iniquitous. He was one
of those men who put truth and love higher than any political cause,
and can fight for such a cause only when the leaders of it, in practice
as well as in theory, never deviate from the one or the other. He was
between two fires: the Government considered him a revolutionary, and
the revolutionaries thought him a retrograde; because he refused to be
blind to the merits of the Government, such as they were, and equally
refused to be blind to the defects of the enemies of the Government.
He therefore attacked not only the Government, but the Government’s
enemies; and when he attacked, it was with thunderbolts. The Liberals
never forgave him this. Dostoievsky was unjustly condemned to spend
four years in penal servitude for a political crime; for having
taken part in a revolutionary propaganda. He returned from Siberia
a Slavophil, and, I will not say a Conservative, as the word is
misleading; but a man convinced not only of the futility of revolution,
but also of the worthlessness of a great part of the revolutionaries.
Nor did the Liberals ever forgive him this. They are only just
beginning to do so now. Moreover, in one of his most powerful books,
_The Possessed_, he draws a scathing picture of all the flotsam and
jetsam of revolution, and not only of the worthless hangers-on who are
the parasites of any such movement, but he reveals the decadence and
worthlessness of some of the men, who by their dominating character
played leading parts and were popular heroes. Still less did the
Liberals forgive him this book; and even now, few Liberal writers
are fair towards it. Again, Dostoievsky was, as I shall show later,
by nature an antagonist of Socialism and a hater of materialism; and
since all the leading men among the Liberals of his time were either
one or the other, if not both, Dostoievsky aroused the enmity of
the whole Liberal camp, by attacking not only its parasites but its
leaders, men of high principle such as Bielinsky, who were obviously
sincere and deserving of the highest consideration and respect. One can
imagine a similar situation in England if at the present time there
were an autocratic government, a backward and ignorant peasantry, and
a small and Liberal movement carried on by a minority of extremely
intellectual men, headed, let us say, by Mr. Bernard Shaw, Lord
Morley, Professor Raleigh, and Sir J. J. Thomson. I purposely take
men of widely different opinions, because in a country where there is
a fight going on for a definite thing, such as a Constitution, there
is a moment when men, who under another régime would be split up into
Liberals and Conservatives, are necessarily grouped together in one
big Liberal camp. Now, let us suppose that the men who were carrying
on this propaganda for reform were undergoing great sacrifices; let us
likewise suppose them to be Socialists and materialists to the core.
Then suppose there should appear a novelist of conspicuous power,
such as George Meredith or Mr. Thomas Hardy or Mr. H. G. Wells, who
by some error was sent to Botany Bay for having been supposed to be
mixed up with a revolutionary propaganda, and on his return announced
that he was an Anti-Revolutionary, violently attacked Mr. Shaw, wrote
a book in which he caricatured him, and drew a scathing portrait of
all his disciples,--especially of the less intelligent among them. One
can imagine how unpopular such an author would be in Liberal circles.
This was the case of Dostoievsky in Russia. It is only fair to add
that his genius has now obtained full recognition, even at the hands
of Liberals, though they still may not be able to tolerate his book,
_The Possessed_. But considering the magnitude of his genius, this
recognition has been, on the whole, a tardy one. For instance, even
in so valuable a book as Prince Kropotkin’s _Ideals and Realities in
Russian Literature_, Dostoievsky receives inadequate treatment and
scanty appreciation. On the other hand, in Merejkowsky’s _Tolstoy and
Dostoievsky_, Merejkowsky, who is also a Liberal, praises Dostoievsky
with complete comprehension and with brilliance of thought and
expression.


II

DOSTOIEVSKY’S LIFE

Dostoievsky was the son of a staff-surgeon and a tradesman’s daughter.
He was born in a charity hospital, the “Maison de Dieu,” at Moscow, in
1821. He was, as he said, a member of a stray family. His father and
five children lived in a flat consisting of two rooms and a kitchen.
The nursery of the two boys, Michael and Fedor, consisted of a small
part of the entrance hall, which was partitioned off. His family
belonged to the lowest ranks of the nobility, to that stratum of
society which supplied the bureaucracy with its minor public servants.
The poverty surrounding his earliest years was to last until the day of
his death.

Some people are, as far as money is concerned, like a negative
pole--money seems to fly away from them, or rather, when it comes to
them, to be unable to find any substance it can cleave to. Dostoievsky
was one of these people; he never knew how much money he had, and when
he had any, however little, he gave it away. He was what the French
call a _panier percé_: money went through him as through a sieve.
And however much money he had, it was never he but his friends who
benefited by it.

He received his earliest education at a small school in Moscow,
where a schoolmaster who taught Russian inspired him and his brother
with a love of literature, of Pushkin’s poetry and other writers,
introduced him also to the works of Walter Scott, and took him to see a
performance of Schiller’s _Robbers_. When his preliminary studies were
ended, he was sent with his brother to a school of military engineers
at St. Petersburg. Here his interest in literature, which had been
first aroused by coming into contact with Walter Scott’s works, was
further developed by his discovery of Balzac, George Sand, and Homer.
Dostoievsky developed a passionate love of literature and poetry. His
favourite author was Gogol. He left this school in 1843 at the age of
twenty-three, with the rank of sub-lieutenant.

His first success in literature was his novel, _Poor Folk_ (published
in 1846), which he possibly began to write while he was still at
school. He sent this work to a review and awaited the result, utterly
hopeless of its being accepted. One day, at four o’clock in the
morning, just when Dostoievsky was despairing of success and thinking
of suicide, Nekrasov the poet, and Grigorovitch the critic, came to him
and said: “Do you understand yourself what you have written? To have
written such a book you must have possessed the direct inspiration of
an artist.”

This, said Dostoievsky, was the happiest moment of his life. The book
was published in Nekrasov’s newspaper, and was highly praised on all
sides. He thus at once made a name in literature. But as though Fate
wished to lose no time in proving to him that his life would be a
series of unending struggles, his second story, _The Double_, was a
failure, and his friends turned from him, feeling that they had made
a mistake. From that time onward, his literary career was a desperate
battle, not only with poverty but also with public opinion, and with
political as well as with literary critics.

Dostoievsky suffered all his life from epilepsy. It has been said that
this disease was brought on by his imprisonment. This is not true:
the complaint began in his childhood, and one of his biographers gives
a hint of its origin: “It dates back,” he writes, “to his earliest
youth, and is connected with a _tragic event_ in their family life.”
This sentence affords us an ominous glimpse into the early years of
Dostoievsky, for it must indeed have been a tragic event which caused
him to suffer from epileptic fits throughout his life.

In 1849 came the most important event in Dostoievsky’s life. From
1840 to 1847 there was in St. Petersburg a group of young men who met
together to read and discuss the Liberal writers such as Fourier, Louis
Blanc and Prudhon. Towards 1847 these circles widened, and included
officers and journalists: they formed a club under the leadership of
Petrachevsky, a former student, the author of a Dictionary of Foreign
Terms. The club consisted, on the one hand, of certain men, followers
of the Decembrists of 1825, who aimed at the emancipation of the serfs
and the establishment of a Liberal Constitution; and, on the other
hand, of men who were predecessors of the Nihilists, and who looked
forward to a social revolution. The special function of Dostoievsky
in this club was to preach the Slavophil doctrine, according to which
Russia, sociologically speaking, needed no Western models, because
in her workmen’s guilds and her system of mutual reciprocity for
the payment of taxes, she already possessed the means of realising a
superior form of social organisation.

The meetings of this club took place shortly after the revolutionary
movement which convulsed Western Europe in 1848. The Emperor Nicholas,
who was a strong-minded and a just although a hard man, imbued with a
religious conviction that he was appointed by God to save the crumbling
world, was dreaming of the emancipation of the serfs, and by a fatal
misunderstanding was led to strike at men whose only crime was that
they shared his own aims and ideals. One evening at a meeting of this
club, Dostoievsky had declaimed Pushkin’s Ode on the Abolition of
Serfdom, when some one present expressed a doubt of the possibility
of obtaining this reform except by insurrectionary means. Dostoievsky
is said to have replied: “Then insurrection let it be!” On the 23rd
of April 1849, at five o’clock in the morning, thirty-four suspected
men were arrested. The two brothers Dostoievsky were among them. They
were imprisoned in a citadel, where they remained for eight months.
On the 22nd of December, Dostoievsky was conducted, with twenty-one
others, to the public square, where a scaffold had been erected. The
other prisoners had been released. While they were taking their places
on the scaffold, Dostoievsky communicated the idea of a book which he
wished to write to Prince Monbelli, one of his fellow-prisoners, who
related the incident later. There were, that day, 21 degrees of frost
(Réaumur); the prisoners were stripped to their shirts, and had to
listen to their sentence; the reading lasted over twenty minutes: the
sentence was that they were to be shot. Dostoievsky could not believe
in the reality of the event. He said to one of his comrades: “Is it
possible that we are going to be executed?” The friend of whom he asked
the question pointed to a cart laden with objects which, under the
tarpaulin that covered them, looked like coffins. The Registrar walked
down from the scaffold; the Priest mounted it, taking the cross with
him, and bade the condemned men make their last confession. Only one
man, of the shopkeeper class, did so: the others contented themselves
with kissing the cross. Dostoievsky thus relates the close of the scene
in a letter to his brother:

“They snapped swords above our heads, they made us put on the long
white shirts worn by persons condemned to death. We were bound in
parties of three to stakes to suffer execution. Being third in the row,
I concluded that I had only a few minutes to live. I thought of you and
your dear ones, and I managed to kiss Pleshtcheev and Dourov, who were
next to me, and to bid them farewell.”

The officer in charge had already commanded his firing party to
load; the soldiers were already preparing to take aim, when a white
handkerchief was waved in front of them. They lowered their guns, and
Dostoievsky and the other twenty-one learned that the Emperor had
cancelled the sentence of the military tribunal, and commuted the
sentence of death to one of hard labour for four years. The carts
really contained convict uniforms, which the prisoners had to put on at
once, and they started then and there for Siberia. When the prisoners
were unbound, one of them, Grigoriev, had lost his reason. Dostoievsky,
on the other hand, afterwards affirmed that this episode was his
salvation; and never, either on account of this or of his subsequent
imprisonment, did he ever feel or express anything save gratitude. “If
this catastrophe had not occurred,” said Dostoievsky, alluding to his
sentence, his reprieve and his subsequent imprisonment, “I should have
gone mad.” The moments passed by him in the expectation of immediate
death had an ineffaceable effect upon his entire after-life. They
shifted his angle of vision with regard to the whole world. He knew
something that no man could know who had not been through such moments.
He constantly alludes to the episode in his novels, and in _The Idiot_
he describes it thus, through the mouth of the principal character:

“I will tell you of my meeting last year with a certain man; this
man was connected with a strange circumstance, strange because it is
a very unusual one. He was once led, together with others, on to the
scaffold, and a sentence was read out which told him that he was to be
shot for a political crime. He spent the interval between the sentence
and the reprieve, which lasted twenty minutes, or at least a quarter of
an hour, with the certain conviction that in a few minutes he should
die. I was very anxious to hear how he would recall his impressions.
He remembered everything with extraordinary clearness, and said that
he would never forget a single one of those minutes. Twenty paces from
the scaffold round which the crowd and the soldiers stood, three stakes
were driven into the ground, there being several prisoners. The first
three were led to the stakes and bound, and the white dress of the
condemned was put on them. This consisted of a long white shirt, and
over their eyes white bandages were bound so that they should not see
the guns. Then in front of each stake a firing party was drawn up. My
friend was No. 8, so he went to the stake in the third batch. A priest
carried the cross to each of them. My friend calculated that he had
five minutes more to live, not more. He said that these five minutes
seemed to him an endless period, infinitely precious. In these five
minutes it seemed to him that he would have so many lives to live that
he need not yet begin to think about his last moment, and in his mind
he made certain arrangements. He calculated the time it would take him
to say good-bye to his comrades; for this he allotted two minutes. He
assigned two more minutes to think one last time of himself, and to
look round for the last time. He remembered distinctly that he made
these three plans, and that he divided his time in this way. He was to
die, aged twenty-seven, healthy and strong, after having said good-bye
to his companions. He remembered that he asked one of them a somewhat
irrelevant question, and was much interested in the answer. Then, after
he had said good-bye to his comrades, came the two minutes which he had
set aside for thinking of himself. He knew beforehand of what he would
think: he wished to represent to himself as quickly and as clearly as
possible how this could be: that now he was breathing and living, and
that in three minutes he would already be something else, some one or
something, but what? and where? All this he felt he could decide in
those two minutes. Not far away was the church, and the cathedral with
its gilded dome was glittering in the sunshine. He remembered that he
looked at the dome with terrible persistence, and on its glittering
rays. He could not tear his gaze away from the rays. It seemed to him
somehow that these rays were his new nature, and that in three minutes
he would be made one with them. The uncertainty and the horror of the
unknown, which was so near, were terrible. But he said that during this
time there was nothing worse than the unceasing thought: ‘What if I do
not die? What if life were restored to me now? What an eternity! And
all this would be mine. I would in that case make every minute into a
century, lose nothing, calculate every moment, and not spend any atom
of the time fruitlessly.’ He said that this thought at last made him so
angry that he wished that they would shoot him at once.”

Dostoievsky’s sentence consisted of four years’ hard labour in the
convict settlement in Siberia, and this ordeal was doubtless the most
precious boon which Providence could have bestowed on him. When he
started for prison he said to A. Milioukov, as he wished him good-bye:
“The convicts are not wild beasts, but men probably better, and perhaps
much worthier, than myself. During these last months (the months of his
confinement in prison) I have gone through a great deal, but I shall
be able to write about what I shall see and experience in the future.”
It was during the time he spent in prison that Dostoievsky really
found himself. To share the hard labour of the prisoners, to break
up old ships, to carry loads of bricks, to sweep up heaps of snow,
strengthened him in body and calmed his nerves, while the contact with
murderers and criminals and prisoners of all kinds, whose inmost nature
he was able to reach, gave him a priceless opportunity of developing
the qualities which were especially his own both as a writer and as a
man.

With the criminals he was not in the position of a teacher, but of
a disciple; he learnt from them, and in his life with them he grew
physically stronger, and found faith, certitude and peace.

At the end of the four years (in 1853) he was set free and returned to
ordinary life, strengthened in body and better balanced in mind. He
had still three years to serve in a regiment as a private soldier, and
after this period of service three years more to spend in Siberia. In
1859 he crossed the frontier and came back to Russia, and was allowed
to live first at Tver and then at St. Petersburg. He brought a wife
with him, the widow of one of his former colleagues in the Petrachevsky
conspiracy, whom he had loved and married in Siberia. Until 1865 he
worked at journalism.

Dostoievsky’s nature was alien to Socialism, and he loathed the moral
materialism of his Socialistic contemporaries. Petrachevsky repelled
him because he was an atheist and laughed at all belief; and the
attitude of Bielinsky towards religion, which was one of flippant
contempt, awoke in Dostoievsky a passion of hatred which blazed up
whenever he thought of the man. Dostoievsky thus became a martyr, and
was within an ace of losing his life for the revolutionary cause; a
movement in which he had never taken part, and in which he disbelieved
all his life.

Dostoievsky returned from prison just at the time of the emancipation
of the serfs, and the trials which awaited him on his release were
severer than those which he endured during his captivity. In January
1861 he started a newspaper called the _Vremya_. The venture was a
success. But just as he thought that Fortune was smiling upon him,
and that freedom from want was drawing near, the newspaper, by an
extraordinary misunderstanding, was prohibited by the censorship for
an article on Polish affairs. This blow, like his condemnation to
death, was due to a casual blunder in the official machinery. After
considerable efforts, in 1864 he started another newspaper called the
_Epocha_. This newspaper incurred the wrath, not of the Government
censorship, but of the Liberals; and it was now that his peculiar
situation, namely, that of a man between two fires, became evident. The
Liberals abused him in every kind of manner, went so far as to hint
that the _Epocha_ and its staff were Government spies, and declared
that Dostoievsky was a scribbler with whom the police should deal. At
this same time his brother Michael, his best friend Grigoriev, who
was on the staff of his newspaper, and his first wife, Marie, died
one after another. Dostoievsky was now left all alone; he felt that
his whole life was broken, and that he had nothing to live for. His
brother’s family was left without resources of any kind. He tried
to support them by carrying on the publication of the _Epocha_, and
worked day and night at this, being the sole editor, reading all the
proofs, dealing with the authors and the censorship, revising articles,
procuring money, sitting up till six in the morning, and sleeping
only five out of the twenty-four hours. But this second paper came to
grief in 1865, and Dostoievsky was forced to own himself temporarily
insolvent. He had incurred heavy liabilities, not only to the
subscribers of the newspaper, but in addition a sum of £1400 in bills
and £700 in debts of honour. He writes to a friend at this period: “I
would gladly go back to prison if only to pay off my debts and to feel
myself free once more.”

A publishing bookseller, Stellovsky, a notorious rascal, threatened
to have him taken up for debt. He had to choose between the debtors’
prison and flight: he chose the latter, and escaped abroad, where he
spent four years of inexpressible misery, in the last extremity of want.

His _Crime and Punishment_ was published in 1866, and this book brought
him fame and popularity; yet in spite of this, on an occasion in 1869,
he was obliged to pawn his overcoat and his last shirt in order with
difficulty to obtain two thalers.

During all this time his attacks of epilepsy continued. He was
constantly in trouble with his publishers, and bound and hampered by
all sorts of contracts. He writes at this epoch: “In spite of all this
I feel as if I were only just beginning to live. It is curious, isn’t
it? I have the vitality of a cat.” And on another occasion he talks of
his stubborn and inexhaustible vitality. He also says through the mouth
of one of his characters, Dimitri Karamazov, “I can bear anything, any
suffering, if I can only keep on saying to myself: ‘I live; I am in a
thousand torments, but I live! I am on the pillory, but I exist! I see
the sun, or I do not see the sun, but I know that it is there. And to
know that there _is_ a sun is enough.’”

It was during these four years, overwhelmed by domestic calamity,
perpetually harassed by creditors, attacked by the authorities on the
one hand and the Liberals on the other, misunderstood by his readers,
poor, almost starving, and never well, that he composed his three
great masterpieces: _Crime and Punishment_ in 1866, _The Idiot_ in
1868, and _The Possessed_ in 1871-2; besides planning _The Brothers
Karamazov_. He had married a second time, in 1867. He returned to
Russia in July 1871: his second exile was over. His popularity had
increased, and the success of his books enabled him to free himself
from debt. He became a journalist once more, and in 1873 edited
Prince Meschtcherki’s newspaper, _The Grazjdanin_. In 1876 he started
a monthly review called _The Diary of a Writer_, which sometimes
appeared once a month and sometimes less often. The appearance of
the last number coincided with his death. This review was a kind of
encyclopædia, in which Dostoievsky wrote all his social, literary
and political ideas, related any stray anecdotes, recollections and
experiences which occurred to him, and commented on the political and
literary topics of the day. He never ceased fighting his adversaries
in this review; and during this time he began his last book, _The
Brothers Karamazov_, which was never finished. In all his articles he
preached his Slavophil creed, and on one occasion he made the whole of
Russia listen to him and applaud him as one man. This was on June 8,
1880, when he made a speech at Moscow in memory of Pushkin, and aroused
to frenzy the enthusiasm even of those men whose political ideals
were the exact opposite of his own. He made people forget they were
“Slavophils” or “Westernisers,” and remember only one thing--that they
were Russians.

In the latter half of 1880, when he was working on _The Brothers
Karamazov_, Strakhov records: “He was unusually thin and exhausted;
his body had become so frail that the first slight blow might destroy
it. His mental activity was untiring, although work had grown very
difficult for him. In the beginning of 1881 he fell ill with a severe
attack of emphysema, the result of catarrh in the lung. On January 28
he had hæmorrhage from the throat. Feeling the approach of death, he
wished to confess and to receive the Blessed Sacrament. He gave the New
Testament used by him in prison to his wife to read aloud. The first
passage chanced to be Matthew iii. 14: “But John held Him back and
said, ‘It is I that should be baptized by Thee, and dost Thou come to
me?’ And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Detain Me not; for thus it
behoves us to fulfil a great truth.’”

When his wife had read this, Dostoievsky said: “You hear: Do not detain
me. That means that I am to die.” And he closed the book. A few hours
later he did actually die, instantaneously, from the rupture of an
artery in the lungs.

This was on the 28th of January 1881; on the 30th he was buried in
St. Petersburg. His death and his funeral had about them an almost
mythical greatness, and his funeral is the most striking comment on
the nature of the feeling which the Russian public had for him both
as a writer and as a man. On the day after his death, St. Petersburg
witnessed a most extraordinary sight: the little house in which he had
lived suddenly became for the moment the moral centre of Russia. Russia
understood that with the death of this struggling and disease-stricken
novelist, she had lost something inestimably precious, rare and
irreplaceable. Spontaneously, and without any organised preparation,
the most imposing and triumphant funeral ceremony was given to
Dostoievsky’s remains; and this funeral was not only the greatest and
most inspiring which had ever taken place in Russia, but as far as
its inward significance was concerned there can hardly ever have been
a greater one in the world. Other great writers and other great men
have been buried with more gorgeous pomp and with a braver show of
outward display, but never, when such a man has been followed to the
grave by a mourning multitude, have the trophies and tributes of grief
been so real; for striking as they were by their quantity and their
nature, they seemed but a feeble and slender evidence of the sorrow
and the love to which they bore witness. There were deputations bearing
countless wreaths, there were numerous choirs singing religious chants,
there were thousands of people following in a slow stream along the
streets of St. Petersburg, there were men and women of every class,
but mostly poor people, shabbily dressed, of the lower middle or the
lower classes. The dream of Dostoievsky, that the whole of Russia
should be united by a bond of fraternity and brotherly love, seemed
to be realised when this crowd of men, composed of such various and
widely differing elements, met together in common grief by his grave.
Dostoievsky had lived the life of a pauper, and of a man who had to
fight with all his strength in order to win his daily bread. He had
been assailed by disease and hunted by misfortune; his whole life
seemed to have rushed by before he had had time to sit down quietly and
write the great ideas which were seething in his mind. Everything he
had written seemed to have been written by chance, haphazardly, to have
been jotted down against time, between wind and water. But in spite of
this, in his work, however incomplete, however fragmentary and full
of faults it may have been, there was a voice speaking, a particular
message being delivered, which was different from that of other
writers, and at times more precious. While it was there, the public
took it for granted, like the sun; and it was only when Dostoievsky
died that the hugeness of the gap made by his death, caused them to
feel how great was the place he had occupied both in their hearts
and in their minds. It was only when he died that they recognised
how great a man he was, and how warmly they admired and loved him.
Everybody felt this from the highest to the lowest. Tolstoy, in writing
of Dostoievsky’s death, says: “I never saw the man, and never had any
direct relations with him, yet suddenly when he died I understood
that he was the nearest and dearest and most necessary of men to me.
Everything that he did was of the kind that the more he did of it the
better I felt it was for men. And all at once I read that he is dead,
and a prop has fallen from me.” This is what the whole of Russia felt,
that a support had fallen from them; and this is what they expressed
when they gave to Dostoievsky a funeral such as no king nor Captain
has ever had, a funeral whose very shabbiness was greater than any
splendour, and whose trophies and emblems were the grief of a nation
and the tears of thousands of hearts united together in the admiration
and love of a man whom each one of them regarded as his brother.


III

DOSTOIEVSKY’S CHARACTER

Such, briefly, are the main facts of Dostoievsky’s crowded life. Unlike
Tolstoy, who has himself told us in every conceivable way everything
down to the most intimate detail which is to be known about himself,
Dostoievsky told us little of himself, and all that we know about him
is gathered from other people or from his letters; and even now we
know comparatively little about his life. He disliked talking about
himself; he could not bear to be pitied. He was modest, and shielded
his feelings with a lofty shame. Strakhov writes about him thus:

“In Dostoievsky you could never detect the slightest bitterness or
hardness resulting from the sufferings he had undergone, and there was
never in him a hint of posing as a martyr. He behaved as if there had
been nothing extraordinary in his past. He never represented himself as
disillusioned, or as not having an equable mind; but, on the contrary,
he appeared cheerful and alert, when his health allowed him to do so. I
remember that a lady coming for the first time to Michael Dostoievsky’s
(his brother’s) evenings at the newspaper office, looked long at
Dostoievsky, and finally said: ‘As I look at you it seems to me that
I see in your face the sufferings which you have endured.’ These words
visibly annoyed Dostoievsky. ‘What sufferings?’ he said, and began to
joke on indifferent matters.”

Long after his imprisonment and exile, when some friends of his tried
to prove to him that his exile had been a brutal act of injustice, he
said: “The Socialists are the result of the followers of Petrachevsky.
Petrachevsky’s disciples sowed many seeds.” And when he was asked
whether such men deserved to be exiled, he answered: “Our exile was
just; the _people_ would have condemned us.”

The main characteristics of his nature were generosity, catholicity,
vehement passion, and a “sweet reasonableness.” Once when he was
living with Riesenkampf, a German doctor, he was found living on bread
and milk; and even for that he was in debt at a little milk shop.
This same doctor says that Dostoievsky was “one of those men to live
with whom is good for every one, but who are themselves in perpetual
want.” He was mercilessly robbed, but he would never blame any one
who took advantage of his kindness and his trustfulness. One of his
biographers tells us that his life with Riesenkampf proved expensive to
him, because no poor man who came to see the doctor went away without
having received something from Dostoievsky. One cannot read a page
of his books without being aware of the “sweet reasonableness” of his
nature. This pervaded his writings with fragrance like some precious
balm, and is made manifest to us in the touching simplicity of some
of his characters, such as the Idiot and Alexis Karamazov, to read of
whom is like being with some warm and comforting influence, something
sweet and sensible and infinitely human. His catholicity consists in
an almost boundless power of appreciation, an appreciation of things,
persons and books widely removed from himself by accidents of time,
space, class, nationality and character. Dostoievsky is equally able
to appreciate the very essence of a performance got up by convicts in
his prison, and the innermost beauty of the plays of Racine. This last
point is singular and remarkable. He was universal and cosmopolitan
in his admiration of the literature of foreign countries; and he was
cosmopolitan, not because he wished to cut himself away from Russian
traditions and to become European and Westernised, but because he
was profoundly Russian, and had the peculiarly Russian plastic and
receptive power of understanding and assimilating things widely
different from himself.

When he was a young man, Shakespeare and Schiller were well known,
and it was the fashion to admire them. It was equally the fashion to
despise the French writers of the seventeenth century. But Dostoievsky
was just as enthusiastic in his admiration of Racine and Corneille and
all the great classics of the seventeenth century. Thus he writes:
“But Phèdre, brother! You will be the Lord knows what if you say this
is not the highest and purest nature and poetry; the outline of it is
Shakespearian, but the statue is in plaster, not in marble.” And again
of Corneille: “Have you read _The Cid_? Read it, you wretch, read it,
and go down in the dust before Corneille!”

Dostoievsky was constantly “going down in the dust” before the great
masterpieces, not only of his own, but of other countries, which bears
out the saying that “La valeur morale de l’homme est en proportion de
sa faculté d’admirer.”

Dostoievsky never theorised as to how alms should be given, or as
to how charity should be organised. He gave what he had, simply and
naturally, to those who he saw had need of it; and he had a right to
this knowledge, for he himself had received alms in prison. Neither
did he ever theorise as to whether a man should leave the work which
he was fitted by Providence to do (such as writing books), in order to
plough fields and to cut down trees. He had practised hard labour,
not as a theoretic amateur, but as a constrained professional. He had
carried heavy loads of bricks and broken up ships and swept up heaps of
snow, not out of philosophy or theory, but because he had been obliged
to do so; because if he had not done so he would have been severely
punished. All that Tolstoy dreamed of and aimed at, which was serious
in theory but not serious in practice, that is to say, giving up his
property, becoming one with the people, ploughing the fields, was a
reality to Dostoievsky when he was in prison. He knew that hard labour
is only real when it is a necessity, when you cannot leave off doing it
when you want to; he had experienced this kind of hard labour for four
years, and during his whole life he had to work for his daily bread.
The result of this is that he made no theories about what work a man
_should_ do, but simply did as well as he could the work he _had_ to
do. In the words of a ballade written by Mr. Chesterton, he might have
said:

  “We eat the cheese,--you scraped about the rind,
  You lopped the tree--we eat the fruit instead.
  You were benevolent, but we were kind,
  You know the laws of food, but we were fed.”

And this is the great difference between Dostoievsky and Tolstoy.
Tolstoy was benevolent, but Dostoievsky was kind. Tolstoy theorised on
the distribution of food, but Dostoievsky was fed and received alms
like a beggar. Dostoievsky, so far from despising the calling of an
author, or thinking that it was an occupation “thin sown with aught of
profit or delight” for the human race, loved literature passionately.
He was proud of his profession: he was a great man of letters as well
as a great author. “I have never sold,” he wrote, “one of my books
without getting the price down beforehand. I am a literary proletarian.
If anybody wants my work he must ensure me by prepayment.”

There is something which resembles Dr. Johnson in the way he talks of
his profession and his attitude towards it. But there is, nevertheless,
in the phrase just quoted, something bitterly ironical when one
reflects that he was a poor man all his life and incessantly harassed
by creditors, and that he derived almost nothing from the great
popularity and sale of his books.

“Dostoievsky,” writes Strakov, “loved literature; he took her
as she was, with all her conditions; he never stood apart from
literature, and he never looked down upon her. This absence of
the least hint of literary snobbishness is in him a beautiful and
touching characteristic. Russian literature was the one lodestar of
Dostoievsky’s life, and he cherished for it a passionate love and
devotion. He knew very well that when he entered the lists he would
have to go into the public market-place, and he was never ashamed of
his trade nor of his fellow-workers. On the contrary, he was proud of
his profession, and considered it a great and sacred one.”

He speaks of himself as a literary hack: he writes at so much a line,
three and a half printed pages of a newspaper in two days and two
nights. “Often,” he says, “it happened in my literary career that the
beginning of the chapter of a novel or story was already set up, and
the end was still in my mind and had to be written by the next day.”
Again: “Work from want and for money has crushed and devoured me. Will
my poverty ever cease? Ah, if I had money, then I should be free!”

I have said that one of the main elements of Dostoievsky’s character
was vehement passion. There was more than a vehement element of passion
in Dostoievsky; he was not only passionate in his loves and passionate
in his hates, but his passion was unbridled. In this he resembles
the people of the Renaissance. There were perilous depths in his
personality; black pools of passion; a seething whirlpool that sent
up every now and then great eddies of boiling surge; yet this passion
has nothing about it which is undefinably evil; it never smells of the
pit. The reason of this is that although Dostoievsky’s soul descended
into hell, it was purged by the flames, and no poisonous fumes ever
came from it. There was something of St. Francis in him, and something
of Velasquez. Dostoievsky was a violent hater. I have already told
how he hated Bielinsky, the Socialists and the materialists whom he
attacked all his life, but against Tourgeniev he nourished a blind and
causeless hatred. This manifests itself as soon as he leaves prison, in
the following outburst: “I know very well,” he writes, “that I write
worse than Tourgeniev, but not so very much worse, and after all I hope
one day to write quite as well as he does. Why, with my crying wants,
do I receive only 100 roubles a sheet, and Tourgeniev, who possesses
two thousand serfs, receives 400 roubles? Owing to my poverty I am
_obliged_ to hurry, to write for money, and consequently to spoil my
work.” In a postscript he says that he sends Katkov, the great Moscow
editor, fifteen sheets at 100 roubles a sheet, that is, 1500 roubles
in all. “I have had 500 roubles from him, and besides, when I had sent
three-quarters of the novel, I asked him for 200 to help me along, or
700 altogether. I shall reach Tver without a farthing. But, on the
other hand, I shall shortly receive from Katkov seven or eight hundred
roubles.”

It must not be forgotten that the whole nature of Dostoievsky, both as
man and artist, was profoundly modified by the disease from which he
suffered all his life, his epilepsy. He had therefore two handicaps
against him: disease and poverty. But it is his epilepsy which was
probably the cause of his dislikes, his hatreds and his outbreaks of
violent passion. The attacks of epilepsy came upon him about once a
month, and sometimes, though not often, they were more frequent. He
once had two in a week. His friend Strakov describes one of them thus:
“I once saw one of his ordinary attacks: it was, I fancy, in 1863,
just before Easter. Late in the evening, about eleven o’clock, he came
to see me, and we had a very animated conversation. I cannot remember
the subject, but I know that it was important and abstruse. He became
excited, and walked about the room while I sat at the table. He said
something fine and jubilant. I confirmed his opinion by some remark,
and he turned to me a face which positively glowed with the most
transcendent inspiration. He paused for a moment, as if searching for
words, and had already opened his lips to speak. I looked at him all
expectant for fresh revelation. Suddenly from his open mouth issued a
strange, prolonged, and inarticulate moan. He sank senseless on the
floor in the middle of the room.”

The ancients called this “the sacred sickness.” Just before the
attacks, Dostoievsky felt a kind of rapture, something like what people
say they feel when they hear very great music, a perfect harmony
between himself and the world, a sensation as if he had reached the
edge of a planet, and were falling off it into infinite space. And this
feeling was such that for some seconds of the rapture, he said, you
might give ten years of your life, or even the whole of it. But after
the attack his condition was dreadful, and he could hardly sustain the
state of low-spirited dreariness and sensitiveness into which he was
plunged. He felt like a criminal, and fancied there hung over him an
invisible guilt, a great transgression. He compares both sensations,
suddenly combined and blended in a flash, to the famous falling pitcher
of Mahomet, which had not time to empty itself while the Prophet
on Allah’s steed was girdling heaven and hell. It is no doubt the
presence of this disease and the frequency of the attacks, which were
responsible for the want of balance in his nature and in his artistic
conceptions, just as his grinding poverty and the merciless conditions
of his existence are responsible for the want of finish in his style.
But Dostoievsky had the qualities of his defects, and it is perhaps
owing to his very illness, and to its extraordinary nature, that he
was able so deeply to penetrate into the human soul. It is as if the
veil of flesh and blood dividing the soul from that which is behind all
things, was finer and more transparent in Dostoievsky than in other
men: by his very illness he may have been able to discern what is
invisible to others. It is certainly owing to the combined poverty and
disease which made up his life, that he had such an unexampled insight
into the lives and hearts of the humble, the rejected, the despised,
the afflicted, and the oppressed. He sounded the utmost depths of human
misery, he lived face to face with the lowest representatives of human
misfortune and disgrace, and he was neither dispirited nor dismayed. He
came to the conclusion that it was all for the best, and like Job in
dust and ashes consented to the eternal scheme. And though all his life
he was one of the conquered, he never ceased fighting, and never for
one moment believed that life was not worth living. On the contrary, he
blessed life and made others bless it.

His life was “a long disease,” rendered harder to bear and more
difficult by exceptionally cruel circumstances. In spite of this,
Dostoievsky was a happy man: he was happy and he was cheerful; and he
was happy not because he was a saint, but because, in spite of all his
faults, he radiated goodness; because his immense heart overflowed
in kindness, and having suffered much himself, he understood the
sufferings of others; thus although his books are terrible, and deal
with the darkest clouds which can overshadow the human spirit, the
descent into hell of the human soul, yet the main impression left by
them is not one of gloom but one of comfort. Dostoievsky is, above all
things, a healer and a comforter, and this is because the whole of
his teaching, his morality, his art, his character, are based on the
simple foundation of what the Russians call “dolgoterpjenie,” that is,
forbearance, and “smirenie,” that is to say, resignation. In the whole
history of the world’s literature there is no literary man’s life which
was so arduous and so hard; but Dostoievsky never complained, nor, we
can be sure, would he have wished his life to have been otherwise. His
life was a martyrdom, but he enjoyed it. Although no one more nearly
than he bears witness to Heine’s saying that “where a great spirit is,
there is Golgotha,” yet we can say without hesitation that Dostoievsky
was a happy man, and he was happy because he never thought about
himself, and because, consciously or unconsciously, he relieved and
comforted the sufferings of others. And his books continued to do so
long after he ceased to live.

All this can be summed up in one word: the value of Dostoievsky’s life.
And the whole reason that his books, although they deal with the
tragedies of mankind, bring comfort to the reader instead of gloom,
hope instead of despair, is, firstly, that Dostoievsky was an altruist,
and that he fulfilled the most difficult precept of Christianity--to
love others better than oneself; and, secondly, that in leading us down
in the lowest depths of tragedy, he shows us that where man ends, God
takes up the tale.


IV

_POOR FOLK_ AND THE _LETTERS FROM A DEAD HOUSE_

In his first book, _Poor Folk_, which was published in 1846, we
have the germ of all Dostoievsky’s talent and genius. It is true
that he accomplished far greater things, but never anything more
characteristic. It is the story of a poor official, a minor clerk in
a Government office, already aged and worn with cares, who battles
against material want. In his sombre and monotonous life there is a ray
of light: in another house as poor and as squalid as his own, there
lives a girl, a distant relation of his, who is also in hard and humble
circumstances, and who has nothing in the world save the affection
and friendship of this poor clerk. They write to each other daily.
In the man’s letters a discreet unselfishness is revealed, a rare
delicacy of feeling, which is in sharp contrast to the awkwardness
of his everyday actions and ideas, which verge on the grotesque. At
the office, he has to cringe and sacrifice his honour in order not
to forfeit the favour of his superiors. He stints himself, and makes
every kind of small sacrifice, in order that this woman may be relieved
of her privations. He writes to her like a father or brother; but it
is easy for us to see in his simple phrases that he is in love with
her, although she does not realise it. The character of the woman is
equally clear to us: she is superior to him in education and mind, and
she is less resigned to her fate than he is. In the course of their
correspondence we learn all that is to be known about their past, their
melancholy history and the small incidents of their everyday life, the
struggle that is continually working in the mind of the clerk between
his material want and his desire not to lose his personal honour. This
correspondence continues day by day until the crisis comes, and the
clerk loses the one joy of his life, and learns that his friend is
engaged to be married. But she has not been caught up or carried off
in a brilliant adventure: she marries a middle-aged man, very rich and
slightly discredited, and all her last letters are full of commissions
which she trusts to her devoted old friend to accomplish. He is sent to
the dress-makers about her gowns, and to the jeweller about her rings;
and all this he accepts and does with perfect self-sacrifice; and his
sacrifice seems quite accidental, a matter of course: there is not the
slightest pose in it, nor any fuss, and only at the end, in his very
last letter, and even then only in a veiled and discreet form, does he
express anything of the immense sorrow which the blow is bringing to
him.

The woman’s character is as subtly drawn as the man’s; she is more
independent than he, and less resigned; she is kind and good, and it
is from no selfish motives that she grasps at the improvement in her
fortunes. But she is still young, and her youth rises within her and
imperatively claims its natural desires. She is convinced that by
accepting the proposal which is made to her she will alleviate her
friend’s position as much as her own; moreover, she regards him as
a faithful friend, and nothing more. But we, the outsiders who read
his letters, see clearly that what he feels for her is more than
friendship: it is simply love and nothing else.

The second important book which Dostoievsky wrote (for the stories he
published immediately after _Poor Folk_ were not up to his mark) was
the _Letters from a Dead House_, which was published on his return to
Russia in 1861. This book may not be his finest artistic achievement,
but it is certainly the most humanly interesting book which he ever
wrote, and one of the most interesting books which exist in the whole
of the world’s literature. In this book he told his prison experiences:
they were put forward in the shape of the posthumous records of a
nobleman who had committed murder out of jealousy, and was condemned
to spend some years in the convict prison. The book is supposed to be
the papers which this nobleman left behind him. They cover a period
of four years, which was the term of Dostoievsky’s sentence. The most
remarkable characteristic of the book is the entire absence of egotism
in the author. Many authors in similar circumstances would have written
volumes of self-analysis, and filled pages with their lamentations
and in diagnosing their sensations. Very few men in such a situation
could have avoided a slight pose of martyrdom. In Dostoievsky there
is nothing of this. He faces the horror of the situation, but he has
no grievance; and the book is all about other people and as little
as possible about himself. And herein lies its priceless value, for
there is no other book either of fiction or travel which throws such a
searching light on the character of the Russian people, and especially
on that of the Russian peasants. Dostoievsky got nearer to the Russian
peasant than any one has ever done, and necessarily so, because he
lived with them on equal terms as a convict. But this alone would not
suffice to produce so valuable a book; something else was necessary,
and the second indispensable factor was supplied by Dostoievsky’s
peculiar nature, his simplicity of mind, his kindness of heart, his
sympathy and understanding. In the very first pages of this book we
are led into the heart of a convict’s life: the _milieu_ rises before
us in startling vividness. The first thing which we are made aware
of is that this prison life has a peculiar character of its own. The
strange family or colony which was gathered together in this Siberian
prison consisted of criminals of every grade and description, and in
which not only every class of Russian society, but every shade and
variety of the Russian people was represented; that is to say, there
were here assassins by profession, and men who had become assassins by
chance, robbers, brigands, tramps, pick-pockets, smugglers, peasants,
Armenians, Jews, Poles, Mussulmans, soldiers who were there for
insubordination and even for murder; officers, gentlemen, and political
prisoners, and men who were there no one knew why.

Now Dostoievsky points out that at a first glance you could detect one
common characteristic in this strange family. Even the most sharply
defined, the most eccentric and original personalities, who stood
out and towered above their comrades, even these did their best to
adopt the manners and customs, the unwritten code, the etiquette of
the prison. In general, he continues, these people with a very few
exceptions (innately cheerful people who met with universal contempt)
were surly, envious, extraordinarily vain, boastful, touchy, and in
the highest degree punctilious and conventional. To be astonished at
nothing was considered the highest quality; and in all of them the
one aim and obsession was outward demeanour and the wish to keep up
appearances. There were men who pretended to have either great moral
or great physical strength and boasted of it, who were in reality
cowards at heart, and whose cowardice was revealed in a flash. There
were also men who possessed really strong characters; but the curious
thing was, Dostoievsky tells us, that these really strong characters
were abnormally vain. The main and universal characteristic of the
criminal was his vanity, his desire, as the Italians say, to _fare
figura_ at all costs. I have been told that this is true of English
prisons, where prisoners will exercise the most extraordinary ingenuity
in order to shave. The greater part of these people were radically
vicious, and frightfully quarrelsome. The gossip, the backbiting, the
tale-bearing, and the repeating of small calumnies were incessant; yet
in spite of this not one man dared to stand up against the public
opinion of the prison, according to whose etiquette and unwritten law
a particular kind of demeanour was observed. In other words, these
prisoners were exactly like private schoolboys or public schoolboys. At
a public school, boys will create a certain etiquette, which has its
unwritten law; for instance, let us take Eton. At Eton you may walk on
one side of the street but not on the other, unless you are a person
of sufficient importance. When you wear a great-coat, you must always
turn the collar up, unless you are a person of a particular importance.
You must likewise never go about with an umbrella unrolled; and, far
more important than all these questions, there arrives a psychological
moment in the career of an Eton boy when, of his own accord, he wears
a stick-up collar instead of a turned-down collar, by which act he
proclaims to the world that he is a person of considerable importance.
These rules are unwritten and undefined. Nobody tells another boy
not to walk on the wrong side of the road; no boy will ever dream of
turning down his collar, if he is not important enough; and in the
third and more special case, the boy who suddenly puts on a stick-up
collar must feel himself by instinct when that psychological moment
has arrived. It is not done for any definite reason, it is merely the
expression of a kind of atmosphere. He knows at a given moment that
he can or cannot go into stick-ups. Some boys can go into stick-ups
for almost nothing, if they have in their personality the necessary
amount of imponderable prestige; others, though the possessors of many
trophies and colours, can only do so at the last possible minute. But
all must have some definite reason for going into stick-ups: no boy
can go into stick-ups merely because he is clever and thinks a lot of
himself,--that would not only be impossible, but unthinkable.

Dostoievsky’s account of the convicts reminds me so strongly of the
conduct of private and public schoolboys in England, that, with a
few slight changes, his _Letters from a Dead House_ might be about
an English school, as far as the mere etiquette of the convicts is
concerned. Here, for instance, is a case in point: Dostoievsky says
that there lived in this prison men of dynamic personalities, who
feared neither God nor man, and had never obeyed any one in their
lives; and yet they at once fell in with the standard of behaviour
expected of them. There came to the prison men who had been the terror
of their village and their neighbourhood. Such a “new boy” looked
round, and at once understood that he had arrived at a place where he
could astonish no one, and that the only thing to do was to be quiet
and fall in with the manners of the place, and into what Dostoievsky
calls the universal etiquette, which he defines as follows: “This
etiquette,” he says, “consisted outwardly of a kind of peculiar dignity
with which every inhabitant of the prison was impregnated, as if the
fact of being a convict was, _ipso facto_, a kind of rank, and a
respectable rank.” This is exactly the point of view of a schoolboy
at a private school. A schoolboy prefers to be at home rather than at
school. He knows that he is obliged to be at school, he is obliged to
work against his will, and to do things which are often disagreeable to
him; at the same time his entire efforts are strained to one object,
towards preserving the dignity of his status. That was the great
ambition of the convicts, to preserve the dignity of the status of a
convict. Throughout this book one receives the impression that the
convicts behaved in many ways like schoolboys; in fact, in one place
Dostoievsky says that in many respects they were exactly like children.
He quotes, for instance, their delight in spending the little money
they could get hold of on a smart linen shirt and a belt, and walking
round the whole prison to show it off. They did not keep such finery
long, and nearly always ended by selling it for almost nothing; but
their delight while they possessed it was intense. There was, however,
one curious item in their code of morals, which is singularly unlike
that of schoolboys in England, in Russia, or in any other country:
they had no horror of a man who told tales to the authorities, who, in
schoolboy language, was a sneak. “The Sneak” did not expose himself
to the very smallest loss of caste. Indignation against him was an
unthinkable thing: nobody shunned him, people were friends with him;
and if you had explained in the prison the whole odiousness of his
behaviour, they would not have understood you at all.

“There was one of the gentlemen prisoners, a vicious and mean fellow,
with whom from the first moment I would have nothing to do. He made
friends with the major’s orderly, and became his spy; and this man
told everything he heard about the prisoners to the major. We all knew
this, and nobody ever once thought of punishing or even of blaming the
scoundrel.”

This is the more remarkable from the fact that in Russian schools,
and especially in those schools where military discipline prevails,
sneaking is the greatest possible crime. In speaking of another man
who constantly reported everything to the authorities, Dostoievsky
says that the other convicts despised him, not because he sneaked, but
because he did not know how to behave himself properly.

The convicts, although they never showed the slightest signs of remorse
or regret for anything they had done in the past, were allowed by
their etiquette to express, as it were officially, a kind of outward
resignation, a peaceful logic, such as, “We are a fallen people. We
could not live in freedom, and now we must break stones.... We could
not obey father and mother, and now we must obey the beating of the
drum.” The criminals abused each other mercilessly; they were adepts
in the art, more than adepts, artists. Abuse in their hands became a
science and a fine art; their object was to find not so much the word
that would give pain, as the offensive thought, the spirit, the idea,
as to who should be most venomous, the most razor-like in his abuse.

Another striking characteristic which also reminds one of schoolboys,
was that the convict would be, as a rule, obedient and submissive in
the extreme. But there were certain limits beyond which his patience
was exhausted, and when once this limit was overstepped by his warders
or the officer in charge, he was ready to do anything, even to commit
murder, and feared no punishment.

Dostoievsky tells us that during all the time he was in prison he never
noticed among the convicts the slightest sign of remorse, the slightest
burden of spirit with regard to the crimes they had committed; and
the majority of them in their hearts considered themselves perfectly
justified. But the one thing they could not bear, not because it roused
feelings of emotion in them, but because it was against the etiquette
of the place, was that people should dwell upon their past crimes. He
quotes one instance of a man who was drunk--the convicts could get
wine--beginning to relate how he had killed a child of five years old.
The whole prison, which up till then had been laughing at his jokes,
cried out like a man, and the assassin was obliged to be silent.
They did not cry out from indignation, but because it was not _the
thing_ to speak of _that_, because to speak of _that_ was considered
to be violating the unwritten code of the prison. The two things
which Dostoievsky found to be the hardest trials during his life as a
convict were, first, the absolute absence of privacy, since during the
whole four years he was in prison he was never for one minute either
by day or night alone; and, secondly, the bar which existed between
him and the majority of the convicts, owing to the fact that he was a
gentleman. The convicts hated people of the upper class; although such
men were on a footing of social equality with them, the convicts never
recognised them as comrades. Quite unconsciously, even sincerely, they
regarded them as gentlemen, although they liked teasing them about
their change of circumstance. They despised them because they did not
know how to work properly, and Dostoievsky says that he was two years
in prison before he won over some of the convicts, though one can see
from his accounts of what they said to him, how much they must have
liked him, and he admits that the majority of them recognised, after
a time, that he was a good fellow. He points out how much harder such
a sentence was on one of his own class than on a peasant. The peasant
arrives from all ends of Russia, no matter where it be, and finds in
prison the _milieu_ he is accustomed to, and into which he falls at
once without difficulty. He is treated as a brother and an equal by the
people who are there. With a gentleman it is different, and especially,
Dostoievsky tells us, with a political offender, whom the majority of
the convicts hate. He never becomes an equal; they may like him, as
they obviously did in Dostoievsky’s case, but they never regard him as
being on a footing of equality with themselves. They preferred even
foreigners, Germans for instance, to the Russian gentlemen; and the
people they disliked most of all were the gentlemen Poles, because they
were almost exaggeratedly polite towards the convicts, and at the same
time could not conceal their innate hatred of them. With regard to the
effect of this difference of class, Dostoievsky, in the course of the
book, tells a striking story. Every now and then, when the convicts
had a grievance about their food or their treatment, they would go
on strike, and assemble in the prison yard. Dostoievsky relates that
one day there was a strike about the food. As all the convicts were
gathered together in the yard, he joined them, whereupon he was
immediately told that that was not his place, that he had better go
to the kitchen, where the Poles and the other gentlemen were. He was
told this kindly by his friends, and men who were less friendly to him
made it plain by shouting out sarcastic remarks to him. Although he
wished to stay, he was told that he must go. Afterwards the strike was
dispersed and the strikers punished, and Dostoievsky asked a friend
of his, one of the convicts, whether they were not angry with the
gentlemen convicts.

“Why?” asked this man.

“Why, because we did not join in the strike.”

“Why should you have joined in the strike?” asked the convict, trying
to understand, “You buy your own food.”

“Many of us eat the ordinary food,” answered Dostoievsky, “but I should
have thought that apart from this we ought to have joined, out of
fellowship, out of comradeship.”

“But you are not our comrade,” said the other man quite simply; and
Dostoievsky saw that the man did not even understand what he meant.
Dostoievsky realised that he could never be a real comrade of these
men; he might be a convict for a century, he might be the most
experienced of criminals, the most accomplished of assassins, the
barrier existing between the classes would never disappear: to them
he would always be a gentleman, it would always be a case of “You go
your way, we go ours.” And this, he said, was the saddest thing he
experienced during the whole of his prison life.

The thing which perhaps caused him the most pleasure was the insight
he gained into the kindness shown to convicts by outsiders. Alluding
to the doctors in the prison hospital, he says: “It is well known to
prisoners all over Russia that the men who sympathise with them the
most are the doctors: they never make the slightest difference in their
treatment of prisoners, as nearly all outsiders do, except perhaps the
Russian poor. The Russian poor man never blames the prisoner for his
crime, however terrible it may be; he forgives him everything for the
punishment that he is enduring, and for his misfortune in general.
It is not in vain that the whole of the Russian people call crime a
misfortune and criminals ‘unfortunates.’ This definition has a deep
meaning; it is all the more valuable in that it is made unconsciously
and instinctively.”

It is an incident revealing this pity for the unfortunate which gave
Dostoievsky more pleasure than anything during his stay in prison. It
was the first occasion on which he directly received alms. He relates
it thus:

“It was soon after my arrival in the prison: I was coming back from my
morning’s work, accompanied only by the guard. There met me a mother
and her daughter. The little girl was ten years old, as pretty as a
cherub; I had already seen them once; the mother was the wife of a
soldier, a widow; her husband, a young soldier, had been under arrest,
and had died in the hospital in the same ward in which I had lain ill.
The wife and the daughter had come to say good-bye to him, and both had
cried bitterly. Seeing me, the little girl blushed, whispered something
to her mother, and she immediately stopped and took out of her bundle a
quarter of a kopeck and gave it to the little girl. The child ran after
me and called out, ‘Unfortunate! For the sake of Christ, take this
copper.’ I took the piece of money, and the little girl ran back to her
mother quite contented. I kept that little piece of money for a very
long time.”

What is most remarkable about the book, are the many and various
discoveries which Dostoievsky made with regard to human nature: his
power of getting behind the gloomy mask of the criminal to the real man
underneath, his success in detecting the “soul of goodness” in the
criminals. Every single one of the characters he describes stands out
in startling relief; and if one began to quote these one would never
end. Nevertheless I will quote a few instances.

There is Akim Akimitch, an officer who had earned his sentence thus:
He had served in the Caucasus, and been made governor of some small
fortress. One night a neighbouring Caucasian prince attacked his
fortress and burnt it down, but was defeated and driven back. Akim
Akimitch pretended not to know who the culprit was. A month elapsed,
and Akim Akimitch asked the prince to come and pay him a visit. He
came without suspecting any evil. Akim Akimitch marched out his
troops, and in their presence told him it was exceedingly wrong to
burn down fortresses; and after giving him minute directions as to
what the behaviour of a peaceful prince should be, shot him dead on
the spot, and reported the case to his superiors. He was tried and
condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to twelve years’
hard labour. Akim Akimitch had thus once in his life acted according
to his own judgment, and the result had been penal servitude. He had
not common sense enough to see where he had been guilty, but he came
to the conclusion that he never under any circumstances ought to judge
for himself. He thenceforth renounced all initiative of any kind or
sort, and made himself into a machine. He was uneducated, extremely
accurate, and the soul of honesty; very clever with his fingers, he
was by turn carpenter, bootmaker, shoemaker, gilder, and there was no
trade which he could not learn. Akim Akimitch arranged his life in
so methodical a manner in every detail, with such pedantic accuracy,
that at first he almost drove Dostoievsky mad, although Akim Akimitch
was kindness itself to him, and helped him in every possible way
during the first days of his imprisonment. Akim Akimitch appeared to
be absolutely indifferent as to whether he was in prison or not. He
arranged everything as though he were to stay there for the rest of his
life; everything, from his pillow upwards, was arranged as though no
change could possibly occur to him. At first Dostoievsky found the ways
of this automaton a severe trial, but he afterwards became entirely
reconciled to him.

Then there was Orlov, one of the more desperate criminals. He was a
soldier who had deserted. He was of small stature and slight build,
but he was absolutely devoid of any sort of fear. Dostoievsky says
that never in his life had he met with such a strong, such an iron
character as this man had. There was, in this man, a complete triumph
of the spirit over the flesh. He could bear any amount of physical
punishment with supreme indifference. He was consumed with boundless
energy, a thirst for action, for revenge, and for the accomplishment
of the aim which he set before him. He looked down on everybody in
prison. Dostoievsky says he doubts whether there was any one in the
world who could have influenced this man by his authority. He had a
calm outlook on the world, as though there existed nothing that could
astonish him; and although he knew that the other convicts looked up to
him with respect, there was no trace of swagger about him: he was not
at all stupid, and terribly frank, although not talkative. Dostoievsky
would ask him about his adventures. He did not much like talking about
them, but he always answered frankly. When once he understood, however,
that Dostoievsky was trying to find out whether he felt any pangs of
conscience or remorse for what he had done, he looked at him with a
lofty and utter contempt, as though he suddenly had to deal with some
stupid little boy who could not reason like grown-up people. There
was even an expression of pity in his face, and after a minute or two
he burst out in the simplest and heartiest laugh, without a trace of
irony, and Dostoievsky was convinced that when left to himself he must
have laughed again time after time, so comic did the thought appear to
him.

One of the most sympathetic characters Dostoievsky describes is a
young Tartar called Alei, who was not more than twenty-two years old.
He had an open, clever, and even beautiful face, and a good-natured
and naïve expression which won your heart at once. His smile was so
confiding, so childlike and simple, his big black eyes so soft and
kind, that it was a consolation merely to look at him. He was in prison
for having taken part in an expedition made by his brothers against a
rich Armenian merchant whom they had robbed. He retained his softness
of heart and simplicity and his strict honesty all the time he was in
prison; he never quarrelled, although he knew quite well how to stand
up for himself, and everybody liked him. “I consider Alei,” writes
Dostoievsky, “as being far from an ordinary personality, and I count my
acquaintance with him as one of the most valuable events of my life.
There are characters so beautiful by nature, so near to God, that even
the very thought that they may some day change for the worse seems
impossible. As far as they are concerned you feel absolutely secure,
and I now feel secure for Alei. Where is he now?”

I cannot help quoting two incidents in Dostoievsky’s prison life which
seem to me to throw light on the characteristics of the people with
whom he mixed, and their manner of behaviour; the first is a story of
how a young soldier called Sirotkin came to be a convict. Here is the
story which Dostoievsky gives us in the man’s own words:

“My mother loved me very much. When I became a recruit, I have since
heard, she lay down on her bed and never rose again. As a recruit I
found life bitter. The colonel did not like me, and punished me for
everything. And what for? I was obedient, orderly, I never drank wine,
I never borrowed, and that, Alexander Petrovitch, is a bad business,
when a man borrows. All round me were such hard hearts, there was no
place where one could have a good cry. Sometimes I would creep into
a corner and cry a little there. Once I was standing on guard as a
sentry; it was night. The wind was blowing, it was autumn, and so
dark you could see nothing. And I was so miserable, so miserable! I
took my gun, unscrewed the bayonet, and laid it on the ground; then I
pulled off my right boot, put the muzzle of the barrel to my heart,
leaned heavily on it and pulled the trigger with my big toe. It was
a miss-fire. I examined the gun, cleaned the barrel, put in another
cartridge and again pressed it to my breast. Again a miss-fire. I put
on my boot again, fixed the bayonet, shouldered my gun, and walked up
and down in silence; and I settled that whatever might happen I would
get out of being a recruit. Half an hour later the colonel rode by, at
the head of the patrol, right past me.

“‘Is that the way to stand on guard?’ he said.

“I took the gun in my hand and speared him with the bayonet right up to
the muzzle of the gun. I was severely flogged, and was sent here for
life.”

The second story is about a man who “exchanged” his sentence. It
happened thus: A party of exiles were going to Siberia. Some were
going to prison, some were merely exiled; some were going to work in
factories, but all were going together. They stopped somewhere on the
way in the Government of Perm. Among these exiles there was a man
called Mikhailov, who was condemned to a life sentence for murder. He
was a cunning fellow, and made up his mind to exchange his sentence. He
comes across a simple fellow called Shushilov, who was merely condemned
to a few years’ transportation, that is to say, he had to live in
Siberia and not in European Russia for a few years. This latter man
was naïve, ignorant, and, moreover, had no money of his own. Mikhailov
made friends with him and finally made him drunk, and then proposed to
him an exchange of sentences. Mikhailov said: “It is true that I am
going to prison, but I am going to some _special department_,” which he
explained was a particular favour, as it was a kind of first class.
Shushilov, under the influence of drink, and being simple-minded,
was full of gratitude for the offer, and Mikhailov taking advantage
of his simplicity bought his name from him for a red shirt and a
silver rouble, which he gave him on the spot, before witnesses. On
the following day Shushilov spent the silver rouble and sold the red
shirt for drink also, but as soon as he became sober again he regretted
the bargain. Then Mikhailov said to him: “If you regret the bargain
give me back my money.” This he could not do; it was impossible for
him to raise a rouble. At the next _étape_ at which they stopped,
when their names were called and the officer called out Mikhailov,
Shushilov answered and Mikhailov answered to Shushilov’s name, and the
result was that when they left Tobolsk, Mikhailov was sent somewhere
to spend a few years in exile, and Shushilov became a “lifer”; and the
special department which the other man talked of as a kind of superior
class, turned out to be the department reserved for the most desperate
criminals of all, those who had no chance of ever leaving prison, and
who were most strictly watched and guarded. It was no good complaining;
there was no means of rectifying the mistake. There were no witnesses.
Had there been witnesses they would have perjured themselves. And
so Shushilov, who had done nothing at all, received the severest
sentence the Russian Government had power to inflict, whereas the
other man, a desperate criminal, merely enjoyed a few years’ change
of air in the country. The most remarkable thing about this story is
this: Dostoievsky tells us that the convicts despised Shushilov, not
because he had exchanged his sentence, but because he had made so bad
a bargain, and had only got a red shirt and a silver rouble. Had he
exchanged it for two or three shirts and two or three roubles, they
would have thought it quite natural.

The whole book is crammed with such stories, each one of which throws a
flood of light on the character of the Russian people.

These _Letters from a Dead House_ are translated into French, and a
good English translation of them by Marie von Thilo was published by
Messrs. Longmans in 1881. But it is now, I believe, out of print. Yet
if there is one foreign book in the whole world which deserves to be
well known, it is this one. Not only because it throws more light on
the Russian people than any other book which has ever been written,
but also because it tells in the simplest possible way illuminating
things about prisoners and prison life. It is a book which should be
read by all legislators; it is true that the prison life it describes
is now obsolete. It deals with convict life in the fifties, when
everything was far more antiquated, brutal and severe than it is now.
Yet although prisoners had to run the gauntlet between a regiment
of soldiers, and were sometimes beaten nearly to death, in spite of
the squalor of the prison and in spite of the dreariness and anguish
inseparable from their lives, the life of the prisoners stands out in
a positively favourable contrast to that which is led by our convicts
in what Mr. Chesterton calls our “clean and cruel prisons,” where our
prisoners pick oakum to-day in “separate” confinement. The proof of
this is that Dostoievsky was able to write one of the most beautiful
studies of human nature that have ever been written out of his prison
experience. In the first place, the prisoners enjoyed human fellowship.
They all had tobacco; they played cards; they could receive alms, and,
though this was more difficult, they could get wine. There were no
rules forbidding them to speak. Each prisoner had an occupation of his
own, a hobby, a trade, in which he occupied all his leisure time. Had
it not been for this, Dostoievsky says, the prisoners would have gone
mad. One wonders what they would think of an English prison, where the
prisoners are not even allowed to speak to each other. Such a régime
was and is and probably always will be perfectly unthinkable to a
Russian mind. Indeed this point reminds me of a startling phrase of a
Russian revolutionary, who had experiences of Russian prisons. He was
a member of the second Russian Duma; he had spent many years in prison
in Russia. In the winter of 1906 there was a socialistic conference
in London which he attended. When he returned to Russia he was asked
by his fellow-politicians to lecture on the liberty of English
institutions. He refused to do so. “A Russian,” he said, “is freer in
prison than an Englishman is at large.”

The secret of the merit of this extraordinary book is also the secret
of the unique quality which we find in all Dostoievsky’s fiction. It
is this: Dostoievsky faces the truth; he faces what is bad, what is
worst, what is most revolting in human nature; he does not put on
blinkers and deny the existence of evil, like many English writers,
and he does not, like Zola, indulge in filthy analysis and erect out
of his beastly investigations a pseudo-scientific theory based on the
belief that all human nature is wholly bad. Dostoievsky analyses, not
in order to experiment on the patient and to satisfy his own curiosity,
but in order to cure and to comfort him. And having faced the evil and
recognised it, he proceeds to unearth the good from underneath it; and
he accepts the whole because of the good, and gives thanks for it.
He finds God’s image in the worst of the criminals, and shows it to
us, and for that reason this book is one of the most important books
ever written. Terrible as it is, and sad as it is, no one can read it
without feeling better and stronger and more hopeful. For Dostoievsky
proves to us--so far from complaining of his lot--that life in the Dead
House is not only worth living, but full of unsuspected and unexplored
riches, rare pearls of goodness, shining gems of kindness, and secret
springs of pity. He leaves prison with something like regret, and
he regards his four years’ experience there as a special boon of
Providence, the captain jewel of his life. He goes out saved for ever
from despair, and full of that wisdom more precious than rubies which
is to be found in the hearts of children.


V

_CRIME AND PUNISHMENT_

_Crime and Punishment_ was published in 1866. It is a book which
brought Dostoievsky fame and popularity, and by which, in Europe at
any rate, he is still best known. It is the greatest tragedy about a
murderer that has been written since _Macbeth_.

In the chapter on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev, I pointed out that the
Russian character could roughly be divided into two types, which
dominate the whole of Russian fiction, the two types being Lucifer, the
embodiment of invincible pride, and Ivan Durak, the wise fool. This is
especially true with regard to Dostoievsky’s novels. Nearly all the
most important characters in his books represent one or other of these
two types. Raskolnikov, the hero of _Crime and Punishment_, is the
embodiment of the Lucifer type, and the whole motive and mainspring of
his character is pride.

Raskolnikov is a Nihilist in the true sense of the word, not a
political Nihilist nor an intellectual Nihilist like Tourgeniev’s
Bazarov, but a moral Nihilist; that is to say, a man who strives to act
without principle and to be unscrupulous, who desires to put himself
beyond and above human moral conventions. His idea is that if he can
trample on human conventions, he will be a sort of Napoleon. He goes
to pawn a jewel at an old woman pawnbroker’s, and the idea which is to
affect his whole future vaguely takes root in his mind, namely, that an
intelligent man, possessed of the fortune of this pawnbroker, could do
anything, and that the only necessary step is to suppress this useless
and positively harmful old woman. He thus expresses the idea later:

“I used to put myself this question: If Napoleon had found himself
in my position and had not wherewith to begin his career, and there
was neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the passage of the Alps, and if
there were, instead of these splendid and monumental episodes, simply
some ridiculous old woman, a usurer whom he would have to kill in
order to get her money, would he shrink from doing this if there were
no other alternative, merely because it would not be a fine deed and
because it would be sinful? Now I tell you that I was possessed by this
problem for a long time, and that I felt deeply ashamed when I at last
guessed, suddenly as it were, that not only would he not be frightened
at the idea, but that the thought that the thing was not important
and grandiose enough would not even enter into his head: he would not
even understand where the need for hesitation lay; and if there were
no other way open to him, he would kill the woman without further
reflection. Well, I ceased reflecting, and I killed her, following the
example of my authority.”

Raskolnikov is obsessed by the idea, just as Macbeth is obsessed by the
prophecy of the three witches, and circumstances seem to play the part
of Fate in a Greek tragedy, and to lead him against his will to commit
a horrible crime. “He is mechanically forced,” says Professor Brückner
in his _History of Russian Literature_, “into performing the act, as
if he had gone too near machinery in motion, had been caught by a bit
of his clothing, and cut to pieces.” As soon as he has killed the old
woman, he is fatally led into committing another crime immediately
after the first crime is committed. He thinks that by committing
this crime he will have trampled on human conventions, that he will
be above and beyond morality, a Napoleon, a Superman. The tragedy of
the book consists in his failure, and in his realising that he has
failed. Instead of becoming stronger than mankind, he becomes weaker
than mankind; instead of having conquered convention and morality,
he is himself vanquished by them. He finds that as soon as the crime
is committed the whole of his relation towards the world is changed,
and his life becomes a long struggle with himself, a revolt against
the moral consequences of his act. His instinct of self-preservation
is in conflict with the horror of what he has done and the need for
confession. Raskolnikov, as I have said, is the embodiment of pride;
pride is the mainspring of his character. He is proud enough to build
gigantic conceptions, to foster the ambition of placing himself above
and beyond humanity, but his character is not strong enough to bear the
load of his ideas. He thinks he has the makings of a great man in him,
and in order to prove this to himself he commits a crime that would put
an ordinary man beyond the pale of humanity, because he thinks that
being an extraordinary man he will remain within the pale of humanity
and not suffer. His pride suffers a mortal blow when he finds that
he is weak, and that the moral consequences of his act face him at
every turn. He fights against this, he strives not to recognise it; he
deliberately seeks the company of detectives; he discusses murder and
murderers with them minutely, and with a recklessness which leads him
to the very brink of the precipice, when it would need but a word more
for him to betray himself. The examining magistrate, indeed, guesses
that he has committed the crime, and plays with him as a cat plays with
a mouse, being perfectly certain that in the long-run he will confess
of his own accord. The chapters which consist of the duel between these
two men are the most poignant in anguish which I have ever read. I have
seen two of these scenes acted on the stage, and several people in
the audience had hysterics before they were over. At last the moment
of expiation comes, though that of regeneration is still far distant.
Raskolnikov loves a poor prostitute named Sonia. His act, his murder,
has affected his love for Sonia, as it has affected the rest of his
life, and has charged it with a sullen despair. Sonia, who loves him
as the only man who has never treated her with contempt, sees that he
has some great load on his mind, that he is tortured by some hidden
secret. She tries in vain to get him to tell her what it is, but at
last he comes to her with the intention of telling her, and she reads
the speaking secret in his eyes. As soon as she knows, she tells him
that he must kiss the earth which he has stained, and confess to the
whole world that he has committed murder. Then, she says, God will send
him a new life. At first he refuses: he says that society is worse than
he, that greater crimes than his are committed every day; that those
who commit them are highly honoured. Sonia speaks of his suffering,
and of the torture he will undergo by keeping his dread secret, but he
will not yet give in, nor admit that he is not a strong man, that he is
really a _louse_--which is the name he gives to all human beings who
are not “Supermen.” Sonia says that they must go to exile together, and
that by suffering _together_ they will expiate his deed. This is one
of Dostoievsky’s principal ideas, or rather it is the interpretation
and conception of Christianity which you will most frequently meet
with among the Russian people,--that suffering is good in itself, and
especially suffering in common with some one else.

After Raskolnikov has confessed his crime to Sonia, he still hovers
round and round the police, like a moth fatally attracted by a candle,
and at last he makes open confession, and is condemned to seven years’
penal servitude. But although he has been defeated in the battle with
his idea, although he has not only failed, but failed miserably, even
after he has confessed his crime and is paying the penalty for it in
prison, his pride still survives. When he arrives in prison, it is not
the hardships of prison life, it is not the hard labour, the coarse
food, the shaven head, the convict’s dress, that weigh on his spirit;
nor does he feel remorse for his crime. But here once more in prison
he begins to criticise and reflect on his former actions, and finds
them neither foolish nor horrible as he did before. “In what,” he
thinks, “was my conception stupider than many conceptions and theories
which are current in the world? One need only look at the matter
from an independent standpoint, and with a point-of-view unbiased by
conventional ideas, and the idea will not seem so strange. And why does
my deed,” he thought to himself, “appear so ugly? In what way was it an
evil deed? My conscience is at rest. Naturally I committed a criminal
offence, I broke the letter of the law and I shed blood. Well, take
my head in return for the letter of the law and make an end of it! Of
course, even many of those men who have benefited mankind and who were
never satiated with power, after they had seized it for themselves,
ought to have been executed as soon as they had taken their first
step, but these people succeeded in taking further steps, and therefore
they are justified: I did not succeed, and therefore perhaps I had not
the right to take the first step.”

Raskolnikov accordingly considered that his crime consisted solely in
this, that he was not strong enough to carry it through to the end,
and not strong enough not to confess it. He also tortured himself with
another thought: why did he not kill himself as soon as he recognised
the truth? Why did he prefer the weakness of confession?

The other convicts in the prison disliked him, distrusted him,
and ended by hating him. Dostoievsky’s own experience of convict
life enables him in a short space to give us a striking picture of
Raskolnikov’s relations with the other convicts. He gradually becomes
aware of the vast gulf which there is between him and the others. The
class barrier which rises between him and them, is more difficult
to break down than that caused by a difference in nationality. At
the same time, he noticed that in the prison there were political
prisoners, Poles, for instance, and officers, who looked down on the
other convicts as though they were insects, ciphers of ignorance, and
despised them accordingly. But he is unable to do this, he cannot help
seeing that these ‘ciphers’ are far cleverer in many cases than the
men who look down on them. On the other hand, he is astonished that
they all love Sonia, who has followed him to the penal settlement
where his prison is, and lives in the town. The convicts rarely see
her, meeting her only from time to time at their work; and yet they
adore her, because she has followed Raskolnikov. The hatred of the
other convicts against him grows so strong that one day at Easter, when
he goes to church with them, they turn on him and say: “You have no
right to go to church: you do not believe in God, you are an atheist,
you ought to be killed.” He had never spoken with them of God or of
religion, and yet they wished to kill him as an atheist. He only
narrowly escaped being killed by the timely interference of a sentry.
To the truth of this incident I can testify by personal experience, as
I have heard Russian peasants and soldiers say that such and such a
man was religious and that such and such a man was “godless,” although
these men had never mentioned religion to them; and they were always
right.

Then Raskolnikov fell ill and lay for some time in delirium in the
hospital. After his recovery he learns that Sonia has fallen ill
herself, and has not been near the prison, and a great sadness comes
over him. At last she recovers, and he meets her one day at his work.
Something melts in his heart, he knows not how or why; he falls at her
feet and cries; and from that moment a new life begins for him. His
despair has rolled away like a cloud: his heart has risen as though
from the dead.

_Crime and Punishment_, the best known of all Dostoievsky’s works, is
certainly the most powerful. The anguish of mind which Raskolnikov
goes through tortures the reader. Dostoievsky seems to have touched
the extreme limit of suffering which the human soul can experience
when it descends into hell. At the same time, he never seems to be
gloating over the suffering, but, on the contrary, to be revealing the
agonies of the human spirit in order to pour balm upon them. There is
an episode earlier in the story, when Raskolnikov kneels down before
Sonia, and speaks words which might be taken as the motto of this book,
and indeed of nearly all of Dostoievsky’s books: “It is not before you
that I am kneeling, but before all the suffering of mankind.”

It is in this book more than in any of his other books that one has
the feeling that Dostoievsky is kneeling down before the great agonies
that the human soul can endure: and in doing this, he teaches us how to
endure and how to hope. Apart from the astounding analysis to be found
in the book, and the terrible network of details of which the conflict
between Raskolnikov and his obsession consists: apart from the duel
of tongues between the examining magistrate, who is determined that
the criminal shall be condemned, not on account of any circumstantial
evidence, but by his own confession, and who drives the criminal to
confession by playing upon his obsession: apart from all this main
action, there is a wealth of minor characters, episodes and scenes,
all of which are indispensable to the main thread of tragedy which
runs through the whole. The book, as has been pointed out, did not
receive anything like its full recognition in 1866 when it appeared,
and now, in 1909, it stands higher in the estimation of all those who
are qualified to judge it than it did then. This can be said of very
few books published in Europe in the sixties. For all the so-called
psychological and analytical novels which have been published since
1866 in France and in England not only seem pale and lifeless compared
with Dostoievsky’s fierce revelations, but not one of them has a drop
of his large humanity, or a breath of his fragrant goodness.


VI

_THE IDIOT_

Although _Crime and Punishment_ is the most powerful, and probably the
most popular of Dostoievsky’s books, I do not think it is the most
characteristic; that is to say, I do not think it possesses in so
high a degree those qualities which are peculiar to his genius. More
characteristic still is _The Idiot_, in the main character of which the
very soul and spirit of Dostoievsky breathe and live. The hero of _The
Idiot_, Prince Mwishkin, is the type of Ivan Durak, the simple fool who
by his simplicity outwits the wisdom of the wise.

We make his acquaintance in a third-class railway carriage of the train
which is arriving at St. Petersburg from Warsaw. He is a young man
about twenty-six years old, with thick fair hair, sloping shoulders,
and a very slight fair beard; his eyes are large, light-blue, and
penetrating; in his expression there is something tranquil but
burdensome, something of that strange look which enables physicians
to recognise at a first glance a victim of the falling sickness. In
his hand he is carrying a bundle made of old _foulard_, which is his
whole luggage. A fellow-traveller enters into conversation with him.
He answers with unusual alacrity. Being asked whether he has been
absent long, he says that it is over four years since he was in Russia,
that he was sent abroad on account of his health--on account of some
strange nervous illness like St. Vitus’ dance. As he listens, his
fellow-traveller laughs several times, and especially when to the
question, “Did they cure you?” the fair-haired man answers, “No, they
did not cure me.” The dark-haired man is Rogozhin, a merchant. These
two characters are the two figures round which the drama of the book
centres and is played.

The purpose of Prince Mwishkin in coming to St. Petersburg is to find
a distant relation of his, the wife of a General Epanchin. He has
already written to her from Switzerland, but has received no answer.
He presents himself at the general’s house with his bundle. A man in
livery opens the door and regards him with suspicion. At last, after he
has explained clearly and at some length that he is Prince Mwishkin,
and that it is necessary for him to see the general on important
business, the servant leads him into a small front-hall into which the
anteroom (where guests are received) of the general’s study opens.
He delivers him into the hands of another servant who is dressed in
black. This man tells the prince to wait in the anteroom and to leave
his bundle in the front-hall. He sits down in his armchair and looks
with severe astonishment at the prince, who, instead of taking the
suggestion, sits down beside him on a chair, with his bundle in his
hands.

“If you will allow me,” said the prince, “I would rather wait here
with you. What should I do there alone?”

“The hall,” answered the servant, “is not the place for you, because
you are a visitor, or in other words, a guest. You wish to see the
general himself?” The servant obviously could not reconcile himself
with the idea of showing in such a visitor, and decided to question him
further.

“Yes, I have come on business,” began the prince.

“I do not ask you what is your business. My business is simply to
announce you. But without asking the secretary I said I would not
announce you.” The suspicions of the servant continually seemed to
increase. The prince was so unlike the ordinary run of everyday
visitors. “... You are, so to speak, from abroad?” asked the servant
at last, and hesitated as if he wished to say, “You are really Prince
Mwishkin?”

“Yes, I have this moment come from the train. I think that you wished
to ask me whether I am really Prince Mwishkin, and that you did not ask
me out of politeness.”

“H’m!” murmured the astonished servant.

“I assure you that I was not telling lies, and that you will not get
into trouble on account of me. That I am dressed as I am and carrying
a bundle like this is not astonishing, for at the present moment my
circumstances are not flourishing.”

“H’m! I am not afraid of that. You see I am obliged to announce you,
and the secretary will come to see you unless ... the matter is like
this: You have not come to beg from the general, may I be so bold as to
ask?”

“Oh no, you may rest assured of that. I have come on other business.”

“Pardon me. Please wait for the secretary; he is busy....”

“Very well. If I shall have to wait long I should like to ask you
whether I might smoke. I have a pipe and some tobacco.”

“Smoke!” The servant looked at him with contempt, as if he could not
believe his ears. “Smoke? No, you cannot smoke here. And what is more,
you should be ashamed of thinking of such a thing. Well, this is queer!”

“I did not mean in this room, but I would go somewhere if you would
show me, because I am accustomed to it, and I have not smoked now for
three hours. But as you like.”

“Now, how shall I announce you?” murmured the servant as though almost
unwillingly to himself. “In the first place you ought not to be here,
but in the anteroom, because you are a visitor, that is to say, a
guest, and I am responsible. Have you come to live here?” he asked,
looking again at the prince’s bundle, which evidently disturbed him.

“No, I don’t think so; even if they invited me, I should not stay. I
have simply come to make acquaintance, nothing more.”

“How do you mean, to make acquaintance?” the servant asked, with
trebled suspicion and astonishment. “You said at first that you had
come on business.”

“Well, it’s not exactly business; that is to say, if you like, it _is_
business,--it is only to ask advice. But the chief thing is that I
have come to introduce myself, because I and the general’s wife are
both descendants from the Mwishkins, and besides myself there are no
Mwishkins left.”

“So, what’s more you are a relation!” said the frightened servant.

“No, not exactly a relation,--that is to say, if you go back far
enough, we are, of course, relations; but so far back that it doesn’t
count! I wrote to the general’s wife a letter from abroad, but she
did not answer me. All the same, I considered it necessary to make
her acquaintance as soon as I arrived. I am explaining all this to
you so that you should not have any doubts, because I see that you
are disquieted. Announce that it is Prince Mwishkin, and that will be
enough to explain the object of my visit. If they will see me, all will
be well. If they do not, very likely all will be well too. But I don’t
think they can help receiving me, because the general’s wife will
naturally wish to see the oldest, indeed the only representative of her
family; and she is most particular about keeping up relations with her
family, as I have heard.”

“The conversation of the prince seemed as simple as possible, but the
simpler it was, the more absurd it became under the circumstances; and
the experienced footman could not help feeling something which was
perfectly right between man and man, and utterly wrong between man
and servant. Servants are generally far cleverer than their masters
think, and this one thought that two things might be possible; either
the prince had come to ask for money, or that he was simply a fool
without ambition,--because an ambitious prince would not remain in the
front-hall talking of his affairs with a footman, and would he not
probably be responsible and to blame in either the one case or the
other?”

I have quoted this episode, which occurs in the second chapter of
the book, in full, because in it the whole character of the prince
is revealed. He is the wise fool. He suffers from epilepsy, and this
“sacred” illness which has fallen on him has destroyed all those parts
of the intellect out of which our faults grow, such as irony, arrogance
and egoism. He is absolutely simple. He has the brains of a man, the
tenderness of a woman and the heart of a child. He knows nothing
of any barriers, either of class or character. He is the same and
absolutely himself with every one he meets. And yet his unsuspicious
_naïveté_, his untarnished sincerity and simplicity, are combined with
penetrating intuition, so that he can read other people’s minds like a
book.

The general receives him, and he is just as frank and simple with
the general as he has been with the servant. He is entirely without
means, and has nothing in the world save his little bundle. The general
inquires whether his handwriting is good, and resolves to get him some
secretarial work; he gives him 25 roubles, and arranges that the prince
shall live in his secretary’s house. The general makes the prince stay
for luncheon, and introduces him to his family. The general’s wife
is a charming, rather childish person, and she has three daughters,
Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaia. The prince astonishes them very much
by his simplicity. They cannot quite understand at first whether he is
a child or a knave, but his simplicity conquers them. After they have
talked of various matters, his life in Switzerland, the experiences of
a man condemned to death, which had been related to him and which I
have already quoted, an execution which he had witnessed, one of the
girls asks him if he was ever in love.

“No,” he says, “I have never been in love ... I was happy otherwise.”

“How was that?” they ask.

Then he relates the following: “Where I was living they were all
children, and I spent all my time with the children, and only with
them. They were the children of the village; they all went to school. I
never taught them, there was a schoolmaster for that.... I perhaps did
teach them too, in a way, for I was more with them, and all the four
years that I spent there went in this way. I had need of nothing else.
I told them everything, I kept nothing secret from them. Their fathers
and relations were angry with me because at last the children could not
do without me, and always came round me in crowds, and the schoolmaster
in the end became my greatest enemy. I made many enemies there, all
on account of the children. And what were they afraid of? You can
tell a child everything--everything. I have always been struck by the
thought of how ignorant grown-up people are of children, how ignorant
even fathers and mothers are of their own children. You should conceal
nothing from children under the pretext that they are small, and that
it is too soon for them to know. That is a sad, an unhappy thought.
And how well children themselves understand that their fathers are
thinking they are too small and do not understand anything--when they
really understand everything. Grown-up people do not understand that a
child even in the most difficult matter can give extremely important
advice. Heavens! when one of these lovely little birds looks up at you,
confiding and happy, it is a shame to deceive it. I call them birds
because there is nothing better than birds in the world. To go on with
my story, the people in the village were most angry with me because of
one thing: the schoolmaster simply envied me. At first he shook his
head, and wondered how the children understood everything I told them,
and almost nothing of what he told them. Then he began to laugh at me
when I said to him that we could neither of us teach them anything, but
that they could teach us. And how could he envy me and slander me when
he himself lived with children? Children heal the soul.”

Into the character of the hero of this book Dostoievsky has put all the
sweetness of his nature, all his sympathy with the unfortunate, all
his pity for the sick, all his understanding and love of children. The
character of Prince Mwishkin reflects all that is best in Dostoievsky.
He is a portrait not of what Dostoievsky was, but of what the author
would like to have been. It must not for a moment be thought that
he imagined that he fulfilled this ideal: he was well aware of
his faults: of the sudden outbursts and the seething deeps of his
passionate nature; his capacity for rage, hatred, jealousy and envy;
none the less Dostoievsky could not possibly have created the character
of Prince Mwishkin, the Idiot, had he not been made of much the same
substance himself.

All through Dostoievsky’s books, whenever children are mentioned or
appear, the pages breathe a kind of freshness and fragrance like that
of lilies-of-the-valley. Whatever he says about children or whatever
he makes them say, has the rare accent of truth. The smile of children
lights up the dark pages of his books, like spring flowers growing at
the edge of a dark abyss.

In strong contrast to the character of the prince is the merchant
Rogozhin. He is the incarnation of the second type, that of the
obdurate spirit, which I have already said dominates Dostoievsky’s
novels. He is, perhaps, less proud than Raskolnikov, but he is far
stronger, more passionate and more vehement. His imperious and
unfettered nature is handicapped by no weakness of nerves, no sapping
self-analysis. He is undisciplined and centrifugal. He is not “sicklied
o’er with the pale cast of thought,” but it is his passions and not his
ideas which are too great for the vessel that contains them. Rogozhin
loves Nastasia, a _hetaira_, who has likewise unbridled passions
and impulses. He loves her with all the strength of his violent and
undisciplined nature, and he is tormented by jealousy because she does
not love him, although she cannot help submitting to the influence of
his imperious personality. The jealous poison in him takes so complete
a possession of his body and soul that he ultimately kills Nastasia
almost immediately after she has married him and given herself to him,
because he feels that she is never his own, least of all at the moment
when she abandons herself to him for ever. So great is his passion,
that this woman, even while hating him, cannot resist going to him
against her will, knowing well that he will kill her.

The description of the night that follows this murder, when Rogozhin
talks all night with the prince in front of the bed where Nastasia is
lying dead, is by its absence of melodrama and its simplicity perhaps
the most icily terrible piece of writing that Dostoievsky ever penned.
The reason why Nastasia does not love Rogozhin is that she loves Prince
Mwishkin, the Idiot, and so does the third daughter of the general,
Aglaia, although he gives them nothing but pity, and never makes love
to them. And here we come to the root-idea and the kernel of the book,
which is the influence which the Idiot exercises on everybody with
whom he comes in contact. Dostoievsky places him in a nest of rascals,
scoundrels and villains, a world of usurers, liars and thieves,
interested, worldly, ambitious and shady. He not only passes unscathed
through all this den of evil, but the most deadly weapons of the
wicked, their astuteness, their cunning and their fraud, are utterly
powerless against his very simplicity, and there is not one of these
people, however crusted with worldliness, however sordid or bad, who
can evade his magical influence. The women at first laugh at him; but
in the end, as I have already said, he becomes a cardinal factor in the
life of both Nastasia the unbridled and passionate woman, and Aglaia
the innocent and intelligent girl: so much so that they end by joining
in a battle of wild jealousy over him, although he himself is naïvely
unconscious of the cause of their dispute.

This book, more than any other, reveals to us the methods and the
art of Dostoievsky. This method and this art are not unlike those of
Charlotte Brontë. The setting of the picture, the accessories, are
fantastic, sometimes to the verge of impossibility, and this no more
matters than the fantastic setting of _Jane Eyre_ matters. All we see
and all we feel is the white flame of light that burns throughout
the book. We no more care whether a man like General Epanchin could
or could not have existed, or whether the circumstances of his life
are possible or impossible than we care whether the friends of Mr.
Rochester are possible or impossible. Such things seem utterly trivial
in this book, where at every moment we are allowed to look deep down
into the very depths of human nature, to look as it were on the spirit
of man and woman naked and unashamed. For though the setting may be
fantastic if not impossible, though we may never have seen such people
in our lives, they are truer than life in a way: we seem to see right
inside every one of these characters as though they had been stripped
of everything which was false and artificial about them, as though they
were left with nothing but their bared souls, as they will be at the
Day of Judgment.

With regard to the artistic construction of the book, the method is
the same as that of most of Dostoievsky’s books. In nearly all his
works the book begins just before a catastrophe and occupies the space
of a few days. And yet the book is very long. It is entirely taken
up by conversation and explanation of the conversation. There are no
descriptions of nature; everything is in a dialogue. Directly one
character speaks we hear the tone of his voice. There are no “stage
directions.” We are not told that so and so is such and such a person,
we feel it and recognise it from the very first word he says. On the
other hand, there is a great deal of analysis, but it is never of an
unnecessary kind. Dostoievsky never nudges our elbow, never points
out to us things which we know already, but he illuminates with a
strong searchlight the deeps of the sombre and tortuous souls of his
characters, by showing us what they are themselves thinking, but not
what he thinks of them. His analysis resembles the Greek chorus, and
his books resemble Greek tragedies in the making, rich ore mingled with
dark dross, granite and marble, the stuff out of which Æschylus could
have hewn another _Agamemnon_, or Shakespeare have written another
_King Lear_.

_The Idiot_ may not be the most artistic of all his books, in the sense
that it is not centralised and is often diffuse, which is not the case
with _Crime and Punishment_, but it is perhaps the most characteristic,
the most personal, for none but Dostoievsky could have invented and
caused to live such a character as Prince Mwishkin, and made him
positively radiate goodness and love.


VII

_THE POSSESSED_

_The Possessed_, or _Devils_, which is the literal translation of
the Russian title, is perhaps inferior to Dostoievsky’s other work
as a whole, but in one sense it is the most interesting book which
he ever wrote. There are two reasons for this: in the first place,
his qualities and his defects as a writer are seen in this book
intensified, under a magnifying glass as it were, at their extremes, so
that it both gives you an idea of the furthest range of his powers, and
shows you most clearly the limitations of his genius. Stevenson points
out somewhere that this is the case with Victor Hugo’s least successful
novels. In the second place, the book was far in advance of its time.
In it Dostoievsky shows that he possessed “a prophetic soul.”

The book deals with the Nihilists who played a prominent part in the
sixties. The explanation of the title is to be found in a quotation
from the 8th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.

 “And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain;
 and they besought Him that He would suffer them to enter into them.
 And He suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man and entered
 into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the
 lake and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they
 fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.

 “Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found
 the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of
 Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid. They also
 which saw it, told them by what means he that was possessed of the
 devils, was healed.”

The book, as I have said, undoubtedly reveals Dostoievsky’s powers at
their highest pitch, in the sense that nowhere in the whole range of
his work do we find such isolated scenes of power; scenes which are, so
to speak, white hot with the fire of his soul; and characters in which
he has concentrated the whole dæmonic force of his personality, and the
whole blinding strength of his insight. On the other hand, it shows us,
as I added, more clearly than any other of his books, the nature and
the extent of his limitations. It is almost too full of characters and
incidents; the incidents are crowded together in an incredibly short
space of time, the whole action of the book, which is a remarkably long
one, occupying only the space of a few days, while to the description
of one morning enough space is allotted to make a bulky English novel.
Again, the narrative is somewhat disconnected. You can sometimes
scarcely see the wood for the trees. Of course, these objections are in
a sense hypercritical, because, as far as my experience goes, any one
who takes up this book finds it impossible to put it down until he has
read it to the very end, so enthralling is the mere interest of the
story, so powerful the grip of the characters. I therefore only suggest
these criticisms for those who wish to form an idea of the net result
of Dostoievsky’s artistic scope and achievement.

With regard to the further point, the “prophetic soul” which speaks in
this book is perhaps that which is its most remarkable quality. The
book was some thirty years ahead of its time: ahead of its time in
the same way that Wagner’s music was ahead of its time,--and this was
not only on account of the characters and the state of things which
it divined and foreshadowed, but also on account of the ideas and the
flashes of philosophy which abound in its pages. When the book was
published, it was treated as a gross caricature, and even a few years
ago, when Professor Brückner first published his _History of Russian
Literature_, he talked of this book as being a satire not of Nihilism
itself, but of the hangers-on, the camp-followers which accompany
every army. “Dostoievsky,” he says, “did not paint the heroes but the
Falstaffs, the silly adepts, the half and wholly crazed adherents of
Nihilism. He was indeed fully within his rights. Of course there were
such Nihilists, particularly between 1862 and 1869, but there were not
only such: even Nechaev, the prototype of Petrushka, impressed us by a
steel-like energy and a hatred for the upper classes which we wholly
miss in the wind-bag and intriguer Petrushka.”

There is a certain amount of truth in this criticism. It is true
that Dostoievsky certainly painted the Falstaffs and the half-crazy
adherents of Nihilism. But I am convinced that the reason he did not
paint the heroes was that he did not believe in their existence: he
did not believe that the heroes of Nihilism were heroes; this is plain
not only from this book, but from every line which he wrote about the
people who played a part in the revolutionary movement in Russia; and
so far from the leading personage in his book being merely a wind-bag,
I would say that one is almost more impressed by the steel-like energy
of the character, as drawn in this book, than by the sayings and doings
of his prototype--or rather his prototypes in real life. The amazing
thing is that even if a few years ago real life had not furnished
examples of revolutionaries as extreme both in their energy and in
their craziness as Dostoievsky paints them, real life has done so in
the last four years. Therefore, Dostoievsky not only saw with prophetic
divination that should circumstances in Russia ever lead to a general
upheaval, such characters might arise and exercise an influence, but
his prophetic insight has actually been justified by the facts.

As soon as such circumstances arose, as they did after the Japanese
War of 1904, characters such as Dostoievsky depicted immediately came
to the front and played a leading part. When M. de Vogüé published
his book, _La Roman Russe_, in speaking of _The Possessed_, he said
that he had assisted at several of the trials of Anarchists in 1871,
and he added that many of the men who came up for trial, and many of
the crimes of which they were accused, were identical reproductions
of the men and the crimes imagined by the novelist. If this was true
when applied to the revolutionaries of 1871, it is a great deal truer
applied to those of 1904-1909. That Dostoievsky believed that this
would happen, I think there can be no doubt. Witness the following
passage:

“Chigalev,” says the leading character of _The Possessed_, speaking of
one of his revolutionary disciples, a man with long ears, “is a man of
genius: a genius in the manner of Fourier, but bolder and cleverer. He
has invented ‘equality.’ In his system, every member of society has an
eye on every one else. To tell tales is a duty. The individual belongs
to the community and the community belongs to the individual. All are
slaves and equal in their bondage. Calumny and assassination can be
used in extreme cases, but the most important thing is equality. The
first necessity is to lower the level of culture science and talent.
A high scientific level is only accessible to superior intellects, and
we don’t want superior intellects. Men gifted with high capacities
have always seized upon power and become despots. Highly gifted men
cannot help being despots, and have always done more harm than good.
They must be exiled or executed. Cicero’s tongue must be cut out,
Copernicus’ eyes must be blinded, Shakespeare must be stoned. That is
Chigalevism. Slaves must be equal. Without despotism, up to the present
time, neither liberty nor equality has existed, but in a herd, equality
should reign supreme,--and that is Chigalevism.... I am all for
Chigalevism. Down with instruction and science! There is enough of it,
as it is, to last thousands of years, but we must organise obedience:
it is the only thing which is wanting in the world. The desire for
culture is an aristocratic desire. As soon as you admit the idea of the
family or of love, you will have the desire for personal property. We
will annihilate this desire: we will let loose drunkenness, slander,
tale-telling, and unheard-of debauchery. We will strangle every genius
in his cradle. We will reduce everything to the same denomination,
complete equality. ‘We have learnt a trade, and we are honest men: we
need nothing else.’ Such was the answer which some English workman made
the other day. The indispensable alone is indispensable. Such will
thenceforth be the watchword of the world, but we must have upheavals.
We will see to that, we the governing class. The slaves must have
leaders. Complete obedience, absolute impersonality, but once every
thirty years Chigalev will bring about an upheaval, and men will begin
to devour each other: always up to a given point, so that we may not
be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation, and in Chigalevism
there will be no desires. We will reserve for ourselves desire and
suffering, and for the slaves there will be Chigalevism.... We will
begin by fermenting disorder; we will reach the people itself. Do you
know that we are already terribly strong? those who belong to us are
not only the men who murder and set fire, who commit injuries after
the approved fashion, and who bite: these people are only in the way.
I do not understand anything unless there be discipline. I myself am
a scoundrel, but I am not a Socialist. Ha, ha! listen! I have counted
them all: the teacher who laughs with the children whom he teaches, at
their God and at their cradle, belongs to us; the barrister who defends
a well-educated assassin by proving that he is more educated than his
victims, and that in order to get money he was obliged to kill, belongs
to us; the schoolboy who in order to experience a sharp sensation
kills a peasant, belongs to us; the juries who systematically acquit
all criminals, belong to us; the judge who at the tribunal is afraid of
not showing himself to be sufficiently liberal, belongs to us; among
the administrators, among the men of letters, a great number belong
to us, and they do not know it themselves. On the other hand, the
obedience of schoolboys and fools has reached its zenith. Everywhere
you see an immeasurable vanity, and bestial, unheard-of appetites. Do
you know how much we owe to the theories in vogue at present alone?
When I left Russia, Littré’s thesis, which likens crime to madness,
was the rage. I return, and crime is already no longer considered even
as madness: it is considered as common sense itself, almost a duty, at
least a noble protest. ‘Why should not an enlightened man kill if he
has need of money?’ Such is the argument you hear. But that is nothing.
The Russian God has ceded his place to drink. The people are drunk, the
mothers are drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are empty. Oh,
let this generation grow: it is a pity we cannot wait. They would be
drunk still. Ah, what a pity that we have no proletariat! But it will
come, it will come. The moment is drawing near.”

In this declaration of revolutionary faith, Dostoievsky has
concentrated the whole of an ideal on which thousands of ignorant men
in Russia have acted during the last three years. All of the so-called
Hooliganism which came about in Russia after the war, which although
it has greatly diminished has by no means yet been exterminated by a
wholesale system of military court-martials, proceeds from this, and
its adepts are conscious or unconscious disciples of this creed. For
the proletariat which Dostoievsky foresaw is now a living fact, and
a great part of it has been saturated with such ideas. Not all of
it, of course. I do not for a moment mean to say that every ordinary
Russian social-democrat fosters such ideas; but what I do mean to say
is that these ideas exist and that a great number of men have acted on
a similar creed which they have only half digested, and have sunk into
ruin, ruining others in doing so, and have ended by being hanged.

Thus the book, _Devils_, which, when it appeared in 1871, was thought
a piece of gross exaggeration, and which had not been out long before
events began to show that it was less exaggerated than it appeared at
first sight--has in the last three years, and even in this year of
grace, received further justification by events such as the rôle that
Father Gapon played in the revolutionary movement, and the revelations
which have been lately made with regard to Azev and similar
characters. Any one who finds difficulty in believing a story such as
that which came to light through the Azev revelations, had better read
_The Possessed_. It will throw an illuminating light on the motives
that cause such men to act as they do, and the circumstances that
produce such men.

The main idea of the book is to show that the whole strength of what
were then the Nihilists and what are now the Revolutionaries,--let us
say the Maximalists,--lies, not in lofty dogmas and theories held by
a vast and splendidly organised community, but simply in the strength
of character of one or two men, and in the peculiar weakness of the
common herd. I say the peculiar weakness with intention. It does not
follow that the common herd, to which the majority of the revolutionary
disciples belong, is necessarily altogether weak, but that though the
men of whom it is composed may be strong and clever in a thousand ways,
they have one peculiar weakness, which is, indeed, a common weakness
of the Russian character. But before going into this question, it is
advisable first to say that what Dostoievsky shows in his book, _The
Possessed_, is that these Nihilists are almost entirely devoid of
ideas; the organisations round which so many legends gather, consist in
reality of only a few local clubs,--in this particular case, of one
local club. All the talk of central committees, executive committees,
and so forth, existed only in the imagination of the leaders. On the
other hand, the character of those few men who were the leaders and who
dominated their disciples, was as strong as steel and as cold as ice.
And what Dostoievsky shows is how this peculiar strength of the leaders
exercised itself on the peculiar weakness of the disciples. Let us now
turn to the peculiar nature of this weakness. Dostoievsky explains it
at the very beginning of the book. In describing one of the characters,
Chatov, who is an unwilling disciple of the Nihilist leaders, he says:

“He is one of those Russian Idealists whom any strong idea strikes
all of a sudden, and on the spot annihilates his will, sometimes for
ever. They are never able to react against the idea. They believe in
it passionately, and the rest of their life passes as though they were
writhing under a stone which was crushing them.”

The leading figure of the book is one Peter Verkhovensky, a political
agitator. He is unscrupulous, ingenious, and plausible in the highest
degree, as clever as a fiend, a complete egotist, boundlessly
ambitious, untroubled by conscience, and as hard as steel. His
prototype was Nachaef, an actual Nihilist. The ambition of this man is
to create disorder, and disorder once created, to seize the authority
which must ultimately arise out of any disorder. His means of effecting
this is as ingenious as Chichikov’s method of disposing of “dead
souls” in Gogol’s masterpiece. By imagining a central committee, of
which he is the representative, he organises a small local committee,
consisting of five men called “the Fiver”; and he persuades his dupes
that a network of similar small committees exists all over Russia. He
aims at getting the local committee entirely into his hands, and making
the members of it absolute slaves to his will. His ultimate aim is to
create similar committees all over the country, persuading people in
every new place that the network is ready everywhere else, and that
they are all working in complete harmony and in absolute obedience to
a central committee, which is somewhere abroad, and which in reality
does not exist. This once accomplished, his idea is to create disorder
among the peasants or the masses, and in the general upheaval to seize
the power. It is possible that I am defining his aim too closely, since
in the book one only sees his work, so far as one local committee is
concerned. But it is clear from his character that he has some big idea
at the back of his head. He is not merely dabbling with excitement in a
small local sphere, for all the other characters in the book, however
much they hate him, are agreed about one thing; that in his cold and
self-seeking character there lies an element of sheer enthusiasm.
The manner in which he creates disciples out of his immediate
surroundings, and obtains an unbounded influence over them, is by
playing on the peculiar weakness which I have already quoted as being
the characteristic of Chigalevism. He plays on the one-sidedness of the
Russian character; he plays on the fact that directly one single idea
takes possession of the brain of a certain kind of Russian idealist, as
in the case of Chatov, or Raskolnikov, for instance, he is no longer
able to control it. Peter works on this. He also works on the vanity of
his disciples, and on their fear of not being thought advanced enough.

“The principal strength,” he says on one occasion, “the cement which
binds everything, is the fear of public opinion, the fear of having
an opinion of one’s own. It is with just such people that success is
possible. I tell you they would throw themselves into the fire if I
told them to do so, if I ordered it. I would only have to say that
they were bad Liberals. I have been blamed for having deceived my
associates here in speaking of a central committee and of ‘innumerable
ramifications.’ But where is the deception? The central committee is
you and me. As to the ramifications, I can have as many as you wish.”

But as Peter’s plans advance, this cement, consisting of vanity and the
fear of public opinion, is not sufficient for him; he wants a stronger
bond to bind his disciples together, and to keep them under his own
immediate and exclusive control; and such a bond must be one of blood.
He therefore persuades his committee that one of their members, Chatov,
to whom I have already alluded, is a spy. This is easy, because Chatov
is a member of the organisation against his will. He became involved
in the business when he was abroad, in Switzerland; and on the first
possible occasion he says he will have nothing to do with any Nihilist
propaganda, since he is absolutely opposed to it, being a convinced
Slavophil and a hater of all acts of violence. Peter lays a trap for
him. At a meeting of the committee he asks every one of those present
whether, should they be aware that a political assassination were about
to take place, they would denounce the man who was to perform it. With
one exception all answer no, that they would denounce an ordinary
assassin, but that political assassination is not murder. When the
question is put to Chatov he refuses to answer. Peter tells the others
that this is the proof that he is a spy, and that he must be made away
with. His object is that they should kill Chatov, and thenceforth be
bound to him by fear of each other and of him. He has a further plan
for attributing the guilt of Chatov’s murder to another man. He has
come across an engineer named Kirilov. This man is also possessed by
one idea, in the same manner as Raskolnikov and Chatov, only that,
unlike them, his character is strong. His idea is practically that
enunciated many years later by Nietzsche, that of the Superman. Kirilov
is a maniac: the single idea which in his case has taken possession of
him is that of suicide. There are two prejudices, he reasons, which
prevent man committing suicide. One of them is insignificant, the other
very serious, but the insignificant reason is not without considerable
importance: it is the fear of pain. In exposing his idea he argues that
were a stone the size of a six-storied house to be suspended over a
man, he would know that the fall of the stone would cause him no pain,
yet he would instinctively dread its fall, as causing extreme pain. As
long as that stone remained suspended over him, he would be in terror
lest it should cause him pain by its fall, and no one, not even the
most scientific of men, could escape this impression. Complete liberty
will come about only when it will be immaterial to man whether he lives
or not: that is the aim.

The second cause and the most serious one that prevents men from
committing suicide, is the idea of another world. For the sake of
clearness I will here quote Kirilov’s conversation on this subject
with the narrator of the story, which is told in the first person:

“... That is to say, punishment?” says his interlocutor.

“No, that is nothing--simply the idea of another world.”

“Are there not atheists who already disbelieve in another world?”

Kirilov was silent.

“You perhaps judge by yourself.”

“Every man can judge only by himself,” said Kirilov, blushing.
“Complete liberty will come about when it will be entirely immaterial
to man whether he lives or whether he dies: that is the aim of
everything.”

“The aim? Then nobody will be able or will wish to live.”

“Nobody,” he answered.

“Man fears death, and therefore loves life,” I remarked. “That is how I
understand the matter, and thus has Nature ordained.”

“That is a base idea, and therein lies the whole imposture. Life is
suffering, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Everything now is in pain
and terror. Man loves life now, because he loves pain and terror. Thus
has he been made. Man gives his life now for pain and fear, and therein
lies the whole imposture. Man is not at present what he ought to be.
A new man will rise, happy and proud, to whom it will be immaterial
whether he lives or dies. That will be the new man. He who vanquishes
pain and fear, he will be God, and the other gods will no longer exist.”

“Then, according to you, the other God does exist?”

“He exists without existing. In the stone there is no pain, but in the
fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain which arises from the
fear of death. He who vanquishes the pain and the fear, he will be God.
Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything new. Then history
will be divided into two parts. From the gorilla to the destruction of
God, and from the destruction of God to....”

“To the gorilla...?”

“To the physical transformation of man and of the world. Man will be
God, and will be transformed physically.”

“How do you think man will be transformed physically?”

“The transformation will take place in the world, in thought,
sentiments, and actions.”

“If it will be immaterial to men whether they live or die, then men
will all kill each other. That is perhaps the form the transformation
will take?”

“That is immaterial. The imposture will be destroyed. He who desires
to attain complete freedom must not be afraid of killing himself. He
who dares to kill himself, has discovered where the error lies. There
is no greater liberty than this: this is the end of all things, and
you cannot go further. He who dares to kill himself is God. It is at
present in every one’s power to bring this about: that God shall be no
more, and that nothing shall exist any more. But nobody has yet done
this.”

“There have been millions of suicides.”

“But they have never been inspired with this idea. They have always
killed themselves out of fear, and never in order to kill fear. He who
will kill himself simply in order to kill fear, he will be God.”

In this last sentence we have the whole idea and philosophy of Kirilov.
He had made up his mind to kill himself, in order to prove that he was
not afraid of death, and he was possessed by that idea, and by that
idea alone. In another place he says that man is unhappy because he
does not know that he is happy: simply for this reason: that is all.
“He who knows that he is happy will become happy at once, immediately.”
And further on he says: “Men are not good, simply because they do not
know they are good. When they realise this, they will no longer commit
crimes. They must learn that they are good, and instantly they will
become good, one and all of them. He who will teach men that they are
good, will end the world.” The man to whom he is talking objects that
He who taught men that they were good was crucified.

“The man will come,” Kirilov replies, “and his name will be the
Man-God.”

“The God-Man?” says his interlocutor.

“No, the Man-God,--there is a difference.”

Here we have his idea of the Superman.[20]

As soon as Peter discovers Kirilov’s obsession, he extracts from him a
promise that, as he has determined to commit suicide, and that as it is
quite indifferent to him how and when he does it, he shall do it when
it is useful to him, Peter. Kirilov consents to this, although he feels
himself in no way bound to Peter, and although he sees through him
entirely and completely, and would hate him were his contempt not too
great for hatred. But Peter’s most ambitious plans do not consist merely
in binding five men to him by an indissoluble bond of blood: that is
only the means to an end. The end, as I have already said, is vaguely
to get power; and besides the five men whom he intends to make his
slaves for life, Peter has another and far more important trump card.
This trump card consists of a man, Nicholas Stavrogin, who is the hero
of the book. He is the only son of a widow with a landed estate, and
after being brought up by Peter’s father, an old, harmless and kindly
Radical, he is sent to school at the age of sixteen, and later on goes
into the army, receiving a commission in one of the most brilliant of
the Guards regiments in St. Petersburg. No sooner does he get to St.
Petersburg, than he distinguishes himself by savage eccentricities. He
is what the Russians call a _skandalist_. He is a good-looking young
man of Herculean strength, and quiet, pleasant manners, who every now
and then gives way to the wildest caprices, the most extravagant and
astounding whims, when he seems to lose all control over himself. For
a time he leads the kind of life led by Prince Harry with Falstaff,
and his extravagances are the subject of much talk. He drives over
people in his carriage, and publicly insults a lady of high position.
Finally, he takes part in two duels. In both cases he is the aggressor.
One of his adversaries is killed, and the other severely wounded. On
account of this he is court-martialled, degraded to the ranks, and
has to serve as a common soldier in an infantry regiment. But in 1863
he has an opportunity of distinguishing himself, and after a time his
military rank is given back to him. It is then that he returns to the
provincial town, where the whole of the events told in the book take
place, and plays a part in Peter’s organisation. Peter regards him,
as I have said, as his trump card, because of the strength of his
character. He is one of those people who represent the extreme Lucifer
quality of the Russian nature. He is proud and inflexible, without any
trace of weakness. There is nothing in the world he is afraid of, and
there is nothing he will not do if he wishes to do it. He will commit
the wildest follies, the most outrageous extravagances, but as it were
_deliberately_, and not as if he were carried away by the impetuosity
of his temperament. On the contrary, he seems throughout to be as cold
as ice, and eternally unruffled and cool; and he is capable when he
chooses of showing a self-control as astonishing and remarkable as
his outbursts of violence. Peter knows very well that he cannot hope
to influence such a man. Stavrogin sees through Peter and despises
him. At the same time, Peter hopes to entangle him in his scheme, as
he entangles the others, and thinks that, this once done, a man with
Stavrogin’s character cannot help being his principal asset. It is on
this very character, however, that the whole of Peter’s schemes break
down. Stavrogin has married a lame, half-witted girl; the marriage is
kept secret, and he loves and is loved by an extremely beautiful girl
called Lisa. Peter conceives the idea of getting a tramp, an ex-convict
who is capable of everything, to murder Stavrogin’s wife and the
drunken brother with whom she lives, and to set fire to a part of the
town and the house where the two are living. He hopes that Stavrogin
will marry Lisa, and then not be able to withdraw from his organisation
for fear of being held responsible for the murder of his wife.

Stavrogin sees through the whole scheme. He announces his marriage
publicly; but this act, instead of alienating Lisa from him, increases
her passion. Nevertheless Stavrogin’s wife and her brother are
murdered, and a large quarter of the town is burned. When Lisa asks
Stavrogin if he is in any way connected with this murder, he replies
that he was opposed to it, but that he had guessed that they would
be murdered, and that he had taken no steps to prevent it. Lisa
herself is killed, almost by accident, on the scene of the murder of
Stavrogin’s wife. She is killed by an excited man in the crowd, who
holds her responsible for the deed, and thinks that she has come to
gloat over her victims. After this Stavrogin washes his hands of the
whole business, and leaves the town. It is then that Peter carries
out the rest of his plans. Chatov is murdered, and Peter calls upon
Kirilov to fulfil his promise and commit suicide. He wishes him, before
committing the act, to write a paper in which he shall state that he
has disseminated revolutionary pamphlets and proclamations, and that he
has employed the ex-convict who committed the murders. He is also to
add that he has killed Chatov on account of his betrayal. But Kirilov
has not known until this moment that Chatov is dead, and he refuses to
say a word about him. Then begins a duel between these two men in the
night, which is the most exciting chapter in the book, and perhaps one
of the most exciting and terrifying things ever written. Peter is in
terror lest Kirilov should fail him, and Kirilov is determined not to
be a party to Peter’s baseness. Peter plays upon his vanity, and by
subtle taunts excites to a frenzy the man’s monomania, till at last
he consents to sign the paper. Then snatching a revolver he goes into
the next room. Peter waits, not knowing what is going to happen. Ten
minutes pass, and Peter, consumed by anxiety, takes a candle and opens
the door of the room in which Kirilov has shut himself. He opens the
door, and somebody flies at him like a wild beast. He shuts the door
with all his might, and remains listening. He hears nothing, and as he
is now convinced that Kirilov will not commit suicide, he makes up his
mind to kill Kirilov himself, now that he has got the paper. He knows
that in a quarter of an hour his candle will be entirely consumed; he
sees there is nothing else to be done but to kill Kirilov, but at the
same time he does not wish to do it.

At last he takes the revolver in his right hand and the candle in his
left hand, and with his left hand manages to open the door. The room
is apparently empty. At first he thinks that Kirilov has fled; then he
becomes aware that against the wall, between a window and a cupboard,
Kirilov is standing, stiff and motionless as a ghost. He rushes toward
him. Kirilov remains motionless, but his eye is fixed on Peter, and a
sardonic smile is on his lips, as though he had guessed what was in
Peter’s mind. Peter, losing all self-control, flies at Kirilov, who
knocks the candle out of Peter’s hand, and bites his little finger
nearly in two. Peter beats him on the head with the butt of his
revolver, and escapes from the room. As he escapes, he hears terrifying
screams of “At once! at once! at once!” Peter is running for his life,
and is already in the vestibule of the house, when he hears a revolver
shot. Then he goes back and finds that Kirilov has killed himself.

This is practically the end of the book. Peter gets away to St.
Petersburg, and all his machinations are discovered. The corpse of
Chatov is found; the declaration in Kirilov’s handwriting at first
misleads the police, but the whole truth soon comes out, since nearly
all the conspirators confess, each being overcome with remorse. Peter
escapes and goes abroad. Nicholas Stavrogin returns to his home from
St. Petersburg; he is not inculpated in any way in the plots, since the
conspirators bear witness that he had nothing to do with them. But he
hangs himself nevertheless.

As I have said before, the chief characters of this book, Stavrogin,
Peter, Chatov, and Kirilov, who seemed such gross exaggerations
when the book was published, would surprise nobody who has had any
experience of contemporary Russia. Indeed, Peter is less an imitation
of Nechaev than a prototype of Azev. As to Kirilov, there are dozens of
such men, possessed by one idea and one idea only, in Russia. Stavrogin
also is a type which occurs throughout Russian history. Stavrogin has
something of Peter the Great in him, Peter the Great run to seed, and
of such there are also many in Russia to-day.


VIII

_THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV_

The subject of _The Brothers Karamazov_[21] had occupied Dostoievsky’s
mind ever since 1870, but he did not begin to write it until 1879,
and when he died in 1881, only half the book was finished; in fact,
he never even reached what he intended to be the real subject of
the book. The subject was to be the life of a great sinner, Alosha
Karamazov. But when Dostoievsky died, he had only written the prelude,
in itself an extremely long book; and in this prelude he told the story
of the bringing up of his hero, his surroundings and his early life,
and in so doing he tells us all that is important about his hero’s
brothers and father. The story of Alosha’s two brothers, and of their
relations to their father, is in itself so rich in incident and ideas
that it occupies the whole book, and Dostoievsky died before he had
reached the development of Alosha himself.

The father is a cynical sensualist, utterly wanting in balance, vain,
loquacious, and foolish. His eldest son, Mitya, inherits his father’s
sensuality, but at the same time he has the energy and strength of
his mother, his father’s first wife; Mitya is full of energy and
strength. His nature does not know discipline; and since his passions
have neither curb nor limit, they drive him to catastrophe. His nature
is a mixture of fire and dross, and the dross has to be purged by
intense suffering. Like Raskolnikov, Mitya has to expiate a crime.
Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that he has killed his
father. Everything points to it, so much so that when one reads the
book without knowing the story beforehand, one’s mind shifts from
doubt to certainty, and from certainty to doubt, just as though one
were following some absorbing criminal story in real life. After a
long series of legal proceedings, cross-examinations, and a trial in
which the lawyers perform miracles of forensic art, Mitya is finally
condemned. I will not spoil the reader’s pleasure by saying whether
Mitya is guilty or not, because there is something more than idle
curiosity excited by this problem as one reads the book. The question
seems to test to the utmost one’s power of judging character, so
abundant and so intensely vivid are the psychological data which the
author gives us. Moreover, the question as to whether Mitya did or did
not kill his father is in reality only a side-issue in the book; the
main subjects of which are, firstly, the character of the hero, which
is made to rise before us in its entirety, although we do not get as
far as the vicissitudes through which it is to pass. Secondly, the
root-idea of the book is an attack upon materialism, and the character
of Alosha forms a part of this attack. Materialism is represented in
the second of the brothers, Ivan Karamazov, and a great part of the
book is devoted to the tragedy and the crisis of Ivan’s life.

Ivan’s mind is, as he says himself, Euclidean and quite material.
It is impossible, he says, to love men when they are near to you.
You can only love them at a distance. Men are hateful, and there is
sufficient proof of this in the sufferings which children alone have
to endure upon earth. At the same time, his logical mind finds nothing
to wonder at in the universal sufferings of mankind. Men, he says, are
themselves guilty: they were given Paradise, they wished for freedom,
and they stole fire from heaven, knowing that they would thereby
become unhappy; therefore they are not to be pitied. He only knows
that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that one thing follows
from another perfectly simply, that everything proceeds from something
else, and that everything works out as in an equation. But this is not
enough for him: it is not enough for him to recognise that one thing
proceeds simply and directly from another. He wants something else;
he must needs have compensation and retribution, otherwise he would
destroy himself; and he does not want to obtain this compensation
somewhere and some time, in infinity, but here and now, on earth, so
that he should see it himself. He has not suffered, merely in order
that his very self should supply, by its evil deeds and its passions,
the manure out of which some far-off future harmony may arise. He
wishes to see with his own eyes how the lion shall lie down with the
lamb. The great stumbling-block to him is the question of children:
the sufferings of children. If all men have to suffer, in order that by
their suffering they may build an eternal harmony, what have children
got to do with this? It is inexplicable that they should suffer, and
that it should be necessary for them to attain to an eternal harmony by
their sufferings. Why should _they_ fall into the material earth, and
make manure for some future harmony? He understands that there can be
solidarity in sin between men; he understands the idea of solidarity
and retaliation, but he cannot understand the idea of solidarity with
children in sin. The mocker will say, he adds, that the child will grow
up and have time to sin; but he is not yet grown up. He understands,
he says, what the universal vibration of joy must be, when everything
in heaven and on earth joins in one shout of praise, and every living
thing cries aloud, “Thou art just, O Lord, for Thou hast revealed Thy
ways.” And when the mother shall embrace the man who tormented and tore
her child to bits,--when mother, child, and tormentor shall all join in
the cry, “Lord, Thou art just!” then naturally the full revelation will
be accomplished and everything will be made plain. Perhaps, he says,
he would join in the Hosanna himself, were that moment to come, but he
does not wish to do so; while there is yet time, he wishes to guard
himself against so doing, and therefore he entirely renounces any idea
of the higher harmony. He does not consider it worth the smallest tear
of one suffering child; it is not worth it, because he considers that
such tears are irreparable, and that no compensation can be made for
them; and if they are not compensated for, how can there be an eternal
harmony? But for a child’s tears, he says, there is no compensation,
for retribution--that is to say, the punishment of those who caused
the suffering--is not compensation. Finally, he does not think that
the mother has the right to forgive the man who caused her children to
suffer; she may forgive him for her own sufferings, but she has not
the right to forgive him the sufferings of her children. And without
such forgiveness there can be no harmony. It is for love of mankind
that he does not desire this harmony: he prefers to remain with his
irreparable wrong, for which no compensation can be made. He prefers to
remain with his unavenged and unavengeable injuries and his tireless
indignation. Even if he is not right, they have put too high a price,
he says, on this eternal harmony. “We cannot afford to pay so much for
it; we cannot afford to pay so much for the ticket of admission into
it. Therefore I give it back. And if I am an honest man, I am obliged
to give it back as soon as possible. This I do. It is not because I do
not acknowledge God, only I must respectfully return Him the ticket.”

The result of Ivan’s philosophy is logical egotism and materialism. But
his whole theory is upset, owing to its being pushed to its logical
conclusion by a half-brother of the Karamazovs, a lackey, Smerdyakov,
who puts into practice the theories of Ivan, and commits first a
crime and then suicide. This and a severe illness combine to shatter
Ivan’s theories. His physical being may recover, but one sees that his
epicurean theories of life cannot subsist.

In sharp contrast to the two elder brothers is the third brother,
Alosha, the hero of the book. He is one of the finest and most
sympathetic characters that Dostoievsky created. He has the simplicity
of “The Idiot,” without his naïveté, and without the abnormality
arising from epilepsy. He is a normal man, perfectly sane and sensible.
He is the very incarnation of “sweet reasonableness.” He is _Ivan
Durak_, Ivan the Fool, but without being a fool. Alosha, Dostoievsky
says, was in no way a fanatic; he was not even what most people call
a mystic, but simply a lover of human beings; he loved humanity;
all his life he believed in men, and yet nobody would have taken
him for a fool or for a simple creature. There was something in him
which convinced you that he did not wish to be a judge of men, that
he did not wish to claim or exercise the right of judging others.
One remarkable fact about his character, which is equally true of
Dostoievsky’s own character, was that Alosha with this wide tolerance
never put on blinkers, or shut his eyes to the wickedness of man, or
to the ugliness of life. No one could astonish or frighten him, even
when he was quite a child. Every one loved him wherever he went. Nor
did he ever win the love of people by calculation, or cunning, or
by the craft of pleasing. But he possessed in himself the gift of
making people love him. It was innate in him; it acted immediately and
directly, and with perfect naturalness. The basis of his character was
that he was a _Realist_. When he was in the monastery where he spent
a part of his youth, he believed in miracles; but Dostoievsky says,
“Miracles never trouble a Realist; it is not miracles which incline
a Realist to believe. A true Realist, if he is not a believer, will
always find in himself sufficient strength and sufficient capacity to
disbelieve even in a miracle. And if a miracle appears before him as an
undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve in his senses than admit the
fact of the miracle. If, on the other hand, he admits it, he will admit
it as a natural fact, which up to the present he was unaware of. The
Realist does not believe in God because he believes in miracles, but he
believes in miracles because he believes in God. If a Realist believes
in God, his realism will necessarily lead him to admit the existence of
miracles also.”

Alosha’s religion, therefore, was based on common sense, and admitted
of no compromise. As soon as, after having thought about the matter,
he becomes convinced that God and the immortality of the soul exist,
he immediately says to himself quite naturally: “I wish to live for
the future life, and to admit of no half-way house.” And just in the
same way, had he been convinced that God and the immortality of the
soul do not exist, he would have become an atheist and a socialist. For
Dostoievsky says that Socialism is not only a social problem, but an
_atheistic_ problem. It is the problem of the incarnation of atheism,
the problem of a Tower of Babel to be made without God, not in order to
reach Heaven from earth, but to bring Heaven down to earth.

Alosha wishes to spend his whole life in the monastery, and to give
himself up entirely to religion, but he is not allowed to do so. In the
monastery, Alosha finds a spiritual father, Zosima. This character,
which is drawn with power and vividness, strikes us as being a blend
of saintliness, solid sense, and warm humanity. He is an old man, and
he dies in the convent; but before he dies, he sees Alosha, and tells
him that he must leave the convent for ever; he must go out into
the world, and live in the world, and suffer. “You will have many
adversaries,” he says to him, “but even your enemies will love you.
Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on account
of them, and you will bless life and cause others to bless it. That is
the most important thing of all.” Alosha is to go into the world and
submit to many trials, for he is a Karamazov too, and the microbe of
lust which rages in the blood of that family is in him also. He is to
put into practice Father Zosima’s precepts: “Be no man’s judge; humble
love is a terrible power which effects more than violence. Only active
love can bring out faith. Love men and do not be afraid of their sins:
love man in his sin; love all the creatures of God, and pray God to
make you cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the birds.” These are
the precepts which Alosha is to carry out in the face of many trials.
How he does so we never see, for the book ends before his trials
begin, and all we see is the strength of his influence, the effect of
the sweetness of his character in relation to the trials of his two
brothers, Mitya and Ivan.

That Dostoievsky should have died before finishing this monumental
work which would have been his masterpiece, is a great calamity.
Nevertheless the book is not incomplete in itself: it is a large piece
of life, and it contains the whole of Dostoievsky’s philosophy and
ideas. Moreover, considered merely as a novel, as a book to be read
from the point of view of being entertained, and excited about what
is going to happen next, it is of enthralling interest. This book,
therefore, can be recommended to a hermit who wishes to ponder over
something deep, in a cell or on a desert island, to a philosopher who
wishes to sharpen his thoughts against a hard whetstone, to a man who
is unhappy and wishes to find some healing balm, or to a man who is
going on a railway journey and wishes for an exciting story to while
away the time.


IX

This study of Dostoievsky, or rather this suggestion for a study of
his work, cannot help being sketchy and incomplete. I have not only
not dealt with his shorter stories, such as _White Nights_, _The
Friend of the Family_, _The Gambler_ and _The Double_, but I have not
even mentioned two longer novels, _The Hobbledehoy_ and _Despised
and Rejected_. The last named, though it suffers from being somewhat
melodramatic in parts, contains as strong a note of pathos as is to be
found in any of Dostoievsky’s books; and an incident of this book has
been singled out by Robert Louis Stevenson as being--together with the
moment when Mark Antony takes off his helmet, and the scene when Kent
has pity on the dying Lear--one of the most greatly moving episodes in
the whole of literature. The reason why I have not dwelt on these minor
works is that to the English reader, unacquainted with Dostoievsky,
an exact and minute analysis of his works can only be tedious. I have
only dealt with the very broadest outline of the case, so as to enable
the reader to make up his mind whether he wishes to become acquainted
with Dostoievsky’s work at all. My object has been merely to open the
door, and not to act as a guide and to show him over every part of
the house. If I have inspired him with a wish to enter the house, I
have succeeded in my task. Should he wish for better-informed guides
and fuller guide-books, he will find them in plenty; but guides and
guide-books are utterly useless to people who do not wish to visit the
country of which they treat. And my sole object has been to give in the
broadest manner possible a rough sketch of the nature of the country,
so as to enable the traveller to make up his mind whether he thinks
it worth while or not to buy a ticket and to set forth on a voyage of
exploration. Should such an one decide that the exploration is to him
attractive and worth his while, I should advise him to begin with _The
Letters from a Dead House_, and to go on with _The Idiot_, _Crime and
Punishment_, and _The Brothers Karamazov_; and to read _The Possessed_
last of all. If he understands and appreciates _The Letters from a Dead
House_, he will be able to understand and appreciate the character of
Dostoievsky and the main ideas which lie at the root of all his books.
If he is able to understand and appreciate _The Idiot_, he will be able
to understand and appreciate the whole of Dostoievsky’s writings. But
should he begin with _Crime and Punishment_, or _The Possessed_, it is
possible that he might be put off, and relinquish the attempt; just
as it is possible that a man who took up Shakespeare’s plays for the
first time and began with _King Lear_, might make up his mind not to
persevere, but to choose some more cheerful author. And by so doing he
would probably lose a great deal, since a man who is repelled by _King
Lear_ might very well be able to appreciate not only _The Merchant of
Venice_, but _Henry IV_ and the _Winter’s Tale_. If one were asked to
sum up briefly what was Dostoievsky’s message to his generation and
to the world in general, one could do so in two words: love and pity.
The love which is in Dostoievsky’s work is so great, so bountiful, so
overflowing, that it is impossible to find a parallel to it, either
in ancient or in modern literature. It is human, but more than human,
that is to say, divine. Supposing the Gospel of St. John were to be
annihilated and lost to us for ever, although nothing, of course,
could replace it, Dostoievsky’s work would go nearer to recalling the
spirit of it than any other books of any other European writer.[22]
It is the love which faces everything and which shrinks from nothing.
It is the love which that saint felt who sought out the starving and
freezing beggar, and warmed and embraced him, although he was covered
with sores, and who was rewarded by the beggar turning into His Lord
and lifting him up into the infinite spaces of Heaven.

Dostoievsky tells us that the most complete of his characters, Alosha,
is a Realist, and that was what Dostoievsky was himself. He was a
Realist in the true sense of the word, and he was exactly the contrary
of those people who when they wrote particularly filthy novels in which
they singled out and dwelt at length on certain revolting details of
life, called themselves Realists. He saw things as they really are;
he never shut his eyes or averted his gaze from anything which was
either cruel, hateful, ugly, bitter, diseased or obscene; but the more
he looked at the ugly things, the more firmly he became convinced of
the goodness that is in and behind everything: To put it briefly,
the more clearly he realised mortal misery and sin, the more firmly
he believed in God. Therefore, as I have more than once said in this
study, although he sounds the lowest depths of human gloom, mortal
despair, and suffering, his books are a cry of triumph, a clarion peal,
a hosanna to the idea of goodness and to the glory of God. There is
a great gulf between Dostoievsky and such novelists as make of their
art a clinical laboratory, in which the vices and the sores, and only
the vices and the sores, are dissected and observed, not under a
microscope, but under a magnifying-glass, so that a totally distorted
and exaggerated impression of life is the result. And this is all the
more remarkable, because a large part of his most important characters
are abnormal: monomaniacs, murderers, or epileptics. But it is in
dealing with such characters that the secret of Dostoievsky’s greatness
is revealed. For in contradistinction to many writers who show us what
is insane in the sanest men, who search for and find a spot of disease
in the healthiest body, a blemish in the fairest flower, a flaw in the
brightest ruby, Dostoievsky seeks and finds the sanity of the insane, a
healthy spot in the sorest soul, a gleam of gold in the darkest mine, a
pearl in the filthiest refuse heap, a spring in the most arid desert.
In depicting humanity at its lowest depth of misery and the human soul
at its highest pitch of anguish, he is making a great act of faith, and
an act of charity, and conferring a huge benefit on mankind. For in
depicting the extremest pain of abnormal sufferers, he persuades us of
the good that exists even in such men, and of the goodness that is in
suffering itself; and by taking us in the darkest of dungeons, he gives
us a glimpse such as no one else has given us of infinite light and
love.

On the other hand, Dostoievsky is equally far removed from such writers
(of which we have plenty in England) who throw a cloak over all evil
things, and put on blinkers, and who, because the existence of evil
is distasteful to them, refuse to admit and face it. Such an attitude
is the direct outcome of either conscious or unconscious hypocrisy.
Dostoievsky has not a grain of hypocrisy in his nature, and therefore
such an attitude is impossible to him.

Dostoievsky is a Realist, and he sees things as they are all through
life, from the most important matters down to the most trivial. He is
free from cant, either moral or political, and absolutely free from all
prejudice of caste or class. It is impossible for him to think that
because a man is a revolutionary he must therefore be a braver man than
his fellows, or because a man is a Conservative he must therefore be a
more cruel man than his fellows, just as it is impossible for him to
think the contrary, and to believe that because a man is a Conservative
he cannot help being honest, or because a man is a Radical he must
inevitably be a scoundrel. He judges men and things as they are, quite
apart from the labels which they choose to give to their political
opinions. That is why nobody who is by nature a doctrinaire[23] can
appreciate or enjoy the works of Dostoievsky, since any one who bases
his conduct upon theory cannot help at all costs being rudely shocked
at every moment by Dostoievsky’s creed, which is based on reality and
on reality alone. Dostoievsky sees and embraces everything as it really
is. The existence of evil, of ugliness and of suffering, inspires him
with only one thing, and this is pity; and his pity is like that which
King Lear felt on the Heath when he said:

  “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
  That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
  How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
  Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
  From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
  Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
  Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
  That thou may’st shake the superflux to them,
  And show the heavens more just.”

Dostoievsky has a right to say such things, because throughout his life
he not only exposed himself, but was exposed, to feel what wretches
feel; because he might have said as King Lear said to Cordelia:

                           “I am bound
  Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears
  Do scald like molten lead.”

He knew what wretches feel, by experience and not by theory, and all
his life he was bound upon a “wheel of fire.”

With regard to Dostoievsky’s political opinions, he synthesised and
expressed them all in the speech which he made in June 1880, at Moscow,
in memory of Pushkin. “There was never,” he said, “a poet who possessed
such universal receptivity as Pushkin. It was not only that he was
receptive, but this receptivity was so extraordinarily deep, that
he was able to embrace and absorb in his soul the spirit of foreign
nations. No other poet has ever possessed such a gift; only Pushkin;
and Pushkin is in this sense a unique and a prophetic apparition,
since it is owing to this gift, and by means of it, that the strength
of Pushkin--that in him which is national and Russian--found
expression.... For what is the strength of the Russian national spirit
other than an aspiration towards a universal spirit, which shall
embrace the whole world and the whole of mankind? And because Pushkin
expressed the national strength, he anticipated and foretold its
future meaning. Because of this he was a prophet. For what did Peter
the Great’s reforms mean to us? I am not only speaking of what they
were to bring about in the future, but of what they were when they
were carried out. These reforms were not merely a matter of adopting
European dress, habits, instruction and science.... But the men who
adopted them aspired towards the union and the fraternity of the
world. We in no hostile fashion, as would seem to have been the case,
but in all friendliness and love, received into our spirit the genius
of foreign nations, of all foreign nations, without any distinction
of race, and we were able by instinct and at the first glance to
distinguish, to eliminate contradictions, to reconcile differences;
and by this we expressed our readiness and our inclination, we who
had only just been united together and had found expression, to bring
about a universal union of all the great Aryan race. The significance
of the Russian race is without doubt European and universal. To be a
real Russian and to be wholly Russian means only this: to be a brother
of all men, to be universally human. All this is called Slavophilism;
and what we call ‘Westernism’ is only a great, although a historical
and inevitable misunderstanding. To the true Russian, Europe and the
affairs of the great Aryan race, are as dear as the affairs of Russia
herself and of his native country, because our affairs are the affairs
of the whole world, and they are not to be obtained by the sword, but
by the strength of fraternity and by our brotherly effort towards the
universal union of mankind.... And in the long-run I am convinced that
we, that is to say, not we, but the future generations of the Russian
people, shall every one of us, from the first to the last, understand
that to be a real Russian must signify simply this: to strive towards
bringing about a solution and an end to European conflicts; to show to
Europe a way of escape from its anguish in the Russian soul, which is
universal and all-embracing; to instil into her a brotherly love for
all men’s brothers, and in the end perhaps to utter the great and final
word of universal harmony, the fraternal and lasting concord of all
peoples according to the gospel of Christ.”

So much for the characteristics of Dostoievsky’s moral and political
ideals. There remains a third aspect of the man to be dealt with: his
significance as a writer, as an artist, and as a maker of books; his
place in Russian literature, and in the literature of the world. This
is, I think, not very difficult to define. Dostoievsky, in spite of
the universality of his nature, in spite of his large sympathy and
his gift of understanding and assimilation, was debarred, owing to
the violence and the want of balance of his temperament, which was
largely the result of disease, from seeing life steadily and seeing
it whole. The greatest fault of his genius, his character, and his
work, is a want of proportion. His work is often shapeless, and the
incidents in his books are sometimes fantastic and extravagant to the
verge of insanity. Nevertheless his vision, and his power of expressing
that vision, make up for what they lose in serenity and breadth, by
their intensity, their depth and their penetration. He could not look
upon the whole world with the calm of Sophocles and of Shakespeare;
he could not paint a large and luminous panorama of life unmarred
by any trace of exaggeration, as Tolstoy did. On the other hand, he
realised and perceived certain heights and depths of the human soul
which were beyond the range of Tolstoy, and almost beyond that of
Shakespeare. His position with regard to Tolstoy, Fielding, and other
great novelists is like that of Marlowe with regard to Shakespeare.
Marlowe’s plays compared with those of Shakespeare are like a series
of tumultuous fugues, on the same theme, played on an organ which
possesses but a few tremendous stops, compared with the interpretation
of music, infinitely various in mood, by stringed instruments played
in perfect concord, and rendering the finest and most subtle gradations
and shades of musical phrase and intention. But every now and then the
organ-fugue, with its thunderous bass notes and soaring treble, attains
to a pitch of intensity which no delicacy of blended strings can
rival: So, every now and then, Marlowe, in the scenes, for instance,
when Helena appears to Faustus, when Zenocrate speaks her passion,
when Faustus counts the minutes to midnight, awaiting in an agony of
terror the coming of Mephistopheles, or when Edward II is face to face
with his executioners, reaches a pitch of soaring rapture, of tragic
intensity which is not to be found even in Shakespeare. So it is with
Dostoievsky. His genius soars higher and dives deeper than that of
any other novelist, Russian or European. And what it thus gains in
intensity it loses in serenity, balance and steadiness. Therefore,
though Dostoievsky as a man possesses qualities of universality, he
is not a universal artist such as Shakespeare, or even as Tolstoy,
although he has one eminently Shakespearian gift, and that is the
faculty for discerning the “soul of goodness in things evil.” Yet, as
a writer, he reached and expressed the ultimate extreme of the soul’s
rapture, anguish and despair, and spoke the most precious words of pity
which have been heard in the world since the Gospels were written.
In this man were mingled the love of St. John, and the passion and
the fury of a fiend; but the goodness in him was triumphant over the
evil. He was a martyr; but bound though he was on a fiery wheel, he
maintained that life was good, and he never ceased to cry “Hosanna to
the Lord: for He is just!” For this reason Dostoievsky is something
more than a Russian writer: he is a brother to all mankind, especially
to those who are desolate, afflicted and oppressed. He had “great
allies”:

  “His friends were exaltations, agonies,
  And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”


FOOTNOTES:

[17] These italics are mine.

[18] No finer estimate of Dostoievsky’s genius exists than M. de
Vogüé’s introduction to _La Maison des Morts_.

[19] This is, of course, not universal. See Mr. Gosse’s _Questions at
Issue_.

[20] It is characteristic that Dostoievsky puts the idea of the
“Superman” into the mouth of a monomaniac.

[21] The French translation of this book is an abridgment. It is quite
incomplete.

[22] This sentence has been misunderstood by some of my readers and
critics. What I mean is that the Christian charity and love preached
in the Gospel of St. John are reflected more sharply and fully in
Dostoievsky’s books than in those of any other writer I know of.

[23] By a doctrinaire I mean not a man who has strong principles and
convictions; but a man who deliberately shuts his eyes to those facts
which contradict his theory, and will pursue it to the end even when by
so doing the practice resulting is the contrary of his aim.




CHAPTER VII

THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV


Anton Tchekov is chiefly known in Russia as a writer of short
stories.[24] He is a kind of Russian Guy de Maupassant, without the
bitter strength of the French writer, and without the quality which the
French call “cynisme,” which does not mean cynicism, but ribaldry.

Tchekov’s stories deal for the greater part with the middle classes,
the minor landed gentry, the minor officials, and the professional
classes. Tolstoy is reported to have said that Tchekov was a
photographer, a very talented photographer, it is true, but still only
a photographer. But Tchekov has one quality which is difficult to find
among photographers, and that is humour. His stories are frequently
deliciously droll. They are also often full of pathos, and they
invariably possess the peculiarly Russian quality of simplicity and
unaffectedness. He never underlines his effects, he never nudges the
reader’s elbow. Yet there is a certain amount of truth in Tolstoy’s
criticism. Tchekov does not paint with the great sweeping brush
of a Velasquez, his stories have not the great broad colouring of
Maupassant, they are like mezzotints; and in some ways they resemble
the new triumphs of the latest developments of artistic photography in
subtle effects of light and shade, in delicate tones and half-tones, in
elusive play of atmosphere.

Apart from its artistic merits or defects, Tchekov’s work is
historically important and interesting. Tchekov represents the extreme
period of stagnation in Russian life and literature. This epoch
succeeded to a period of comparative activity following after the
Russo-Turkish war. For in Russian history one will find that every war
has been followed by a movement, a renascence in ideas, in political
aspirations, and in literature. Tchekov’s work represents the reaction
of flatness subsequent to a transitory ebullition of activity; it
deals with the very class of men which naturally hankers for political
activity, but which in Tchekov’s time was as naturally debarred from it.

The result was that the aspirations of these people beat their grey
wings ineffectually in a vacuum. The middle class being highly
educated, and, if anything, over-educated, aspiring towards political
freedom, and finding its aspirations to be futile, did one of two
things. It either moped, or it made the best of it. The moping
sometimes expressed itself in political assassination; making the best
of it meant, as a general rule, dismissing the matter from the mind,
and playing vindt. Half the middle class in Russia, a man once said to
me, has run to seed in playing vindt. But what else was there to do?

Tchekov, more than any other writer, has depicted for us the attitude
of mind, the nature and the feelings of the whole of this generation,
just as Tourgeniev depicted the preceding generation; the aspirations
and the life of the men who lived in the sixties, during the tumultuous
epoch which culminated in the liberation of the serfs. And nowhere can
the quality of this frame of mind, and the perfume, as it were, of
this period be better felt and apprehended than in the plays of Anton
Tchekov; for in his plays we get not only what is most original in his
work as an artist, but the quintessence of the atmosphere, the attitude
of mind, and the shadow of what the _Zeitgeist_ brought to the men of
his generation.

Before analysing the dramatic work of Tchekov, it is necessary to say a
few words about the Russian stage in general. The main fact about the
Russian stage that differentiates it from ours, and from that of any
other European country, is the absence of the modern French tradition.
The tradition of the “well-made” French play, invented by Scribe, does
not, and never has existed in Russia.

Secondly, reformers and demolishers of this tradition do not exist
either, for they have nothing to reform or demolish. In Russia it was
never necessary for naturalistic schools to rise with a great flourish
of trumpets, and to proclaim that they were about to destroy the
conventions and artificiality of the stage, and to give to the public,
instead of childish sentimentalities and impossible Chinese puzzles
of intrigue, slices of real life. Had anybody behaved thus in Russia
he would simply have been beating his hands against a door which was
wide open. For the Russian drama, like the Russian novel, has, without
making any fuss about it, never done but one thing--to depict life as
clearly as it saw it, and as simply as it could.

That is why there has never been a naturalist school in Russia. The
Russians are born realists; they do not have to label themselves
realists, because realism is the very air which they breathe, and the
very blood in their veins. What was labelled realism and naturalism in
other countries simply appeared to them to be a straining after effect.
Even Ibsen, whose great glory was that, having learnt all the tricks
of the stagecraft of Scribe and his followers, he demolished the whole
system, and made Comedies and Tragedies just as skilfully out of the
tremendous issues of real life--even Ibsen had no great influence in
Russia, because what interests Russian dramatists is not so much the
crashing catastrophes of life as life itself, ordinary everyday life,
just as we all see it. “I go to the theatre,” a Russian once said, “to
see what I see every day.” And here we have the fundamental difference
between the drama of Russia and that of any other country.

Dramatists of other countries, be they English, or French, or German,
or Norwegian, whether they belong to the school of Ibsen, or to that
which found its temple in the Théâtre Antoine at Paris, had one thing
in common; they were either reacting or fighting against something--as
in the case of the Norwegian dramatists--or bent on proving a
thesis--as in the case of Alexandre Dumas _fils_, the Théâtre Antoine
school, or Mr. Shaw--; that is to say, they were all actuated by some
definite purpose; the stage was to them a kind of pulpit.

On the English stage this was especially noticeable, and what the
English public has specially delighted in during the last fifteen years
has been a sermon on the stage, with a dash of impropriety in it. Now
the Russian stage has never gone in for sermons or theses: like the
Russian novel, it has been a looking-glass for the use of the public,
and not a pulpit for the use of the playwright. This fact is never more
strikingly illustrated than when the translation of a foreign play is
performed in Russia. For instance, when Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play, _Mrs.
Warren’s Profession_, was performed in December, 1907, at the Imperial
State-paid Theatre at St. Petersburg, the attitude of the public and
of the critics was interesting in the extreme. In the first place,
that the play should be produced at the Imperial State-paid Theatre
is an interesting illustration of the difference of the attitude of
the two countries towards the stage. In England, public performance
of this play is forbidden; in America it was hounded off the stage by
an outraged and indignant populace; in St. Petersburg it is produced
at what, in Russia, is considered the temple of respectability, the
home of tradition, the citadel of conservatism. In the audience were a
quantity of young, unmarried girls. The play was beautifully acted, and
well received,[25] but it never occurred to any one that it was either
daring or dangerous or startling; it was merely judged as a story of
English life, a picture of English manners. Some people thought it was
interesting, others that it was uninteresting, but almost all were
agreed in considering it to be too stagey for the Russian taste; and as
for considering it an epoch-making work, that is to say, in the region
of thought and ideas, the very idea was scoffed at.

These opinions were reflected in the press. In one of the newspapers,
the leading Liberal organ, edited by Professor Milioukov, the
theatrical critic said that Mr. Bernard Shaw was the typical
middle-class Englishman, and satirised the faults and follies of his
class, but that he himself belonged to the class that he satirised,
and shared its limitations. “The play,” they said, “is a typical
middle-class English play, and it suffers from the faults inherent to
this class of English work: false sentiment and melodrama.”

Another newspaper, the _Russ_, wrote as follows: “Bernard Shaw is
thought to be an _enfant terrible_ in England. In Russia we take
him as a writer, and as a writer only, who is not absolutely devoid
of advanced ideas. In our opinion, his play belongs neither to the
extreme right nor to the extreme left of dramatic literature; it is an
expression of the ideas of moderation which belong to the centre, and
the proof of this is the production of it at our State-paid Theatre,
which in our eyes is the home and shelter of what is retrograde and
respectable.”[26]

Such was the opinion of the newspaper critic on Mr. Bernard Shaw’s
play. It represented more or less the opinion of the man in the street.
For nearly all European dramatic art, with the exception of certain
German and Norwegian work, strikes the Russian public as stagey and
artificial. If a Russian had written _Mrs. Warren’s Profession_, he
would never have introduced the scene between Crofts and Vivy which
occurs at the end of Act III., because such a scene, to a Russian,
savours of melodrama. On the other hand, he would have had no
hesitation in putting on the stage (at the Imperial State-paid Theatre)
the interior, with all its details, of one of the continental hotels
from which Mrs. Warren derived her income. But, as I have already
said, what interests the Russian dramatist most keenly is not the huge
catastrophes that stand out in lurid pre-eminence, but the incidents,
sometimes important, sometimes trivial, and sometimes ludicrous, which
happen to every human being every day of his life. And nowhere is this
so clearly visible as in the work of Tchekov; for although the plays of
Tchekov--which have not yet been discovered in England, and which will
soon be old-fashioned in Russia--are not a reflection of the actual
state of mind of the Russian people, yet as far as their artistic aim
is concerned, they are more intensely typical, and more successful
in the achievement of their aim than the work of any other Russian
dramatist.[27]

Tchekov has written in all eleven plays, out of which six are farces
in one act, and five are serious dramas. The farces, though sometimes
very funny, are not important; it is in his serious dramatic work that
Tchekov really found himself, and gave to the world something new and
entirely original. The originality of Tchekov’s plays is not that they
are realistic. Other dramatists--many Frenchmen, for instance--have
written interesting and dramatic plays dealing with poignant
situations, happening to real people in real life. Tchekov’s discovery
is this, that real life, as we see it every day, can be made just as
interesting on the stage as the catastrophes or the difficulties which
are more or less exceptional, but which are chosen by dramatists as
their material because they are dramatic. Tchekov discovered that it is
not necessary for real life to be dramatic in order to be interesting.
Or rather that ordinary everyday life is as dramatic on the stage, if
by dramatic one means interesting, as extraordinary life. He perceived
that things which happen to us every day, which interest us, and affect
us keenly, but which we would never dream of thinking or of calling
dramatic when they occur, may be made as interesting on the stage as
the most far-fetched situations, or the most terrific crises. For
instance, it may affect us keenly to leave for ever a house where we
have lived for many years. It may touch us to the quick to see certain
friends off at a railway station. But we do not call these things
dramatic. They are not dramatic, but they are human.

Tchekov has realised this, and has put them on the stage. He has
managed to send over the footlights certain feelings, moods, and
sensations, which we experience constantly, and out of which our life
is built. He has managed to make the departure of certain people from a
certain place, and the staying on of certain others in the same place,
as interesting behind the footlights as the tragic histories of Œdipus
or Othello, and a great deal more interesting than the complicated
struggles and problems in which the characters of a certain school
of modern dramatists are enmeshed. Life as a whole never presents
itself to us as a definite mathematical problem, which needs immediate
solution, but is rather composed of a thousand nothings, which together
make something vitally important. Tchekov has understood this, and
given us glimpses of these nothings, and made whole plays out of these
nothings.

At first sight one is tempted to say that there is no action in the
plays of Tchekov. But on closer study one realises that the action is
there, but it is not the kind usually sought after and employed by men
who write for the stage. Tchekov is, of course, not the first dramatic
writer who has realised that the action which consisted in violent
things happening to violent people is not a whit more interesting,
perhaps a great deal less interesting, than the changes and the
vicissitudes which happen spiritually in the soul of man. Molière knew
this, for _Le Misanthrope_ is a play in which nothing in the ordinary
sense happens. Rostand’s _L’Aiglon_ is a play where nothing in the
ordinary sense happens.[28] But in these plays in the extraordinary
sense everything happens. A violent drama occurs in the soul of the
Misanthrope, and likewise in that of the Duke of Reichstadt. So it
is in Tchekov’s plays. He shows us the changes, the revolutions,
the vicissitudes, the tragedies, the comedies, the struggles, the
conflicts, the catastrophes, that happen in the souls of men, but he
goes a step further than other dramatists in the way in which he shows
us these things. He shows us these things as we ourselves perceive
or guess them in real life, without the help of poetic soliloquies
or monologues, without the help of a Greek chorus or a worldly
_raisonneur_, and without the aid of startling events which strip
people of their masks. He shows us bits of the everyday life of human
beings as we see it, and his pictures of ordinary human beings, rooted
in certain circumstances, and engaged in certain avocations, reveal
to us further glimpses of the life that is going on inside these
people. The older dramatists, even when they deal exclusively with the
inner life of man, without the aid of any outside action, allow their
creations to take off their masks and lay bare their very inmost souls
to us.

Tchekov’s characters never, of their own accord, take off their masks
for the benefit of the audience, but they retain them in exactly
the same degree as people retain them in real life; that is to say,
we sometimes guess by a word, a phrase, a gesture, the humming of a
tune, or the smelling of a flower, what is going on behind the mask;
at other times we see the mask momentarily torn off by an outbreak of
inward passion, but never by any pressure of an outside and artificial
machinery, never owing to the necessity of a situation, the demands of
a plot, or the exigencies of a problem; in fact, never by any forces
which are not those of life itself. In Tchekov’s plays, as in real
life, to use Meredith’s phrase, “Passions spin the plot”; he shows us
the delicate webs that reach from soul to soul across the trivial
incidents of every day.

I will now analyse in detail two of the plays of Tchekov. The first is
a drama called _Chaika_. “Chaika” means “Sea-gull.” It was the first
serious play of Tchekov that was performed; and it is interesting to
note that when it was first produced at the Imperial Theatre at St.
Petersburg it met with no success, the reason being, no doubt, that the
actors did not quite enter into the spirit of the play. As soon as it
was played at Moscow it was triumphantly successful.

The first act takes place in the park in the estate belonging to
Peter Nikolaievitch Sorin, the brother of a celebrated actress,
Irina Nikolaievna, whose stage name is Arkadina. Preparations have
been made in the park for some private theatricals. A small stage
has been erected. The play about to be represented has been written
by Constantine, the actress’s son, who is a young man, twenty-five
years old. The chief part is to be played by a young girl, Ina, the
daughter of a neighbouring landowner. These two young people are in
love with each other. Irina is a successful actress of the more or
less conventional type. She has talent and brains. “She sobs over a
book,” one of the characters says of her, “and knows all Russian poetry
by heart; she looks after the sick like an angel, but you must not
mention Eleanora Duse in her presence, you must praise her only, and
write about her and her wonderful acting in _La Dame aux Camélias_. In
the country she is bored, and we all become her enemies, we are all
guilty. She is superstitious and avaricious.” Constantine, her son, is
full of ideals with regard to the reform of the stage; he finds the old
forms conventional and tedious, he is longing to pour new wine into the
old skins, or rather to invent new skins.

There is also staying in the house a well-known writer, about forty
years old, named Trigorin. “He is talented and writes well,” one of the
other characters says of him, “but after reading Tolstoy you cannot
read him at all.” The remaining characters are a middle-aged doctor,
named Dorn; the agent of the estate, a retired officer, his wife and
daughter, and a schoolmaster. The characters all assemble to witness
Constantine’s play; they sit down in front of the small extemporised
stage, which has a curtain but no back cloth, since this is provided
by nature in the shape of a distant lake enclosed by trees. The sun
has set, and it is twilight. Constantine begs his guests to lend their
attention. The curtain is raised, revealing a view of the lake with
the moon shining above the horizon, and reflected in the water. Ina is
discovered seated on a large rock dressed all in white. She begins to
speak a kind of prose poem, an address of the Spirit of the Universe
to the dead world on which there is supposed to be no longer any living
creature.

Arkadina (the actress) presently interrupts the monologue by saying
softly to her neighbour, “This is decadent stuff.” The author, in a
tone of imploring reproach, says, “Mamma!” The monologue continues, the
Spirit of the World speaks of his obstinate struggle with the devil,
the origin of material force. There is a pause. Far off on the lake two
red dots appear. “Here,” says the Spirit of the World, “is my mighty
adversary, the devil. I see his terrible glowing eyes.” Arkadina once
more interrupts, and the following dialogue ensues:

 _Arkadina_: It smells of sulphur; is that necessary?

 _Constantine_: Yes.

 _Arkadina_ (_laughing_): Yes, that is an effect.

 _Constantine_: Mamma!

 _Ina_ (_continuing to recite_): He is lonely without man.

 _Paulin_ (_the wife of the agent_): (_To the doctor_): You have taken
 off your hat. Put it on again, you will catch cold.

 _Arkadina_: The doctor has taken off his hat to the devil, the father
 of the material universe.

 _Constantine_ (_losing his temper_): The play’s over. Enough! Curtain!

 _Arkadina_: Why are you angry?

 _Constantine_: Enough! Pull down the curtain! (_The curtain is let
 down._) I am sorry I forgot, it is only certain chosen people that may
 write plays and act. I infringed the monopoly, I ... (_He tries to say
 something, but waves his arm and goes out._)

 _Arkadina_: What is the matter with you?

 _Sorin_ (_her brother_): My dear, you should be more gentle with the
 _amour propre_ of the young.

 _Arkadina_: What did I say to him?

 _Sorin_: You offended him.

 _Arkadina_: He said himself it was a joke, and I took his play as a
 joke.

 _Sorin_: All the same ...

 _Arkadina_: Now it appears he has written a masterpiece! A
 masterpiece, if you please! So he arranged this play, and made a
 smell of sulphur, not as a joke, but as a manifesto! He wished to
 teach us how to write and how to act. One gets tired of this in
 the long-run,--these insinuations against me, these everlasting
 pin-pricks, they are enough to tire any one. He is a capricious and
 conceited boy!

 _Sorin_: He wished to give you pleasure.

 _Arkadina_: Really? Then why did he not choose some ordinary play, and
 why did he force us to listen to this decadent rubbish? If it is a
 joke I do not mind listening to rubbish, but he has the pretension to
 invent new forms, and tries to inaugurate a new era in art; and I do
 not think the form is new, it is simply bad.

Presently Ina appears; they compliment her on her performance.
Arkadina tells her she ought to go on to the stage, to which she
answers that that is her dream. She is introduced to Trigorin the
author: this makes her shy. She has read his works, she is overcome at
seeing the celebrity face to face. “Wasn’t it an odd play?” she asks
Trigorin. “I did not understand it,” he answers, “but I looked on with
pleasure--your acting was so sincere, and the scenery was beautiful.”
Ina says she must go home, and they all go into the house except the
doctor. Constantine appears again, and the doctor tells him that he
liked the play, and congratulates him. The young man is deeply touched.
He is in a state of great nervous excitement. As soon as he learns
that Ina has gone he says he must go after her at once. The doctor is
left alone. Masha, the daughter of the agent, enters and makes him a
confession: “I don’t love my father,” she says, “but I have confidence
in you. Help me.” “What is the matter?” he asks. “I am suffering,” she
answers, “and nobody knows my suffering. I love Constantine.” “How
nervous these people are,” says the doctor, “nerves, all nerves! and
what a quantity of love. Oh, enchanted lake! But what can I do for you,
my child, what, what?” and the curtain comes down.

The second act is in the garden of the same estate. It is a hot noon.
Arkadina has decided to travel to Moscow. The agent comes and tells
her that all the workmen are busy harvesting, and that there are no
horses to take her to the station. She tells him to hire horses in the
village, or else she will walk. “In that case,” the agent replies, “I
give notice, and you can get a new agent.” She goes out in a passion.
Presently Constantine appears bearing a dead sea-gull; he lays it at
Ina’s feet.

 _Ina_: What does this mean?

 _Constantine_: I shot this sea-gull to-day to my shame. I throw it at
 your feet.

 _Ina_: What is the matter with you?

 _Constantine_: I shall soon shoot myself in the same way.

 _Ina_: I do not recognise you.

 _Constantine_: Yes, some time after I have ceased to recognise you.
 You have changed towards me, your look is cold, my presence makes you
 uncomfortable.

 _Ina_: During these last days you have become irritable, and speak
 in an unintelligible way, in symbols. I suppose this sea-gull is a
 symbol. Forgive me, I am too simple to understand you.

 _Constantine_: It all began on that evening when my play was such
 a failure. Women cannot forgive failure. I burnt it all to the
 last page. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am! Your coldness is
 terrifying, incredible! It is just as if I awoke, and suddenly saw
 that this lake was dry, or had disappeared under the earth. You have
 just said you were too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to
 understand? My play was a failure, you despise my work, you already
 consider that I am a thing of no account, like so many others! How
 well I understand that, how well I understand! It is as if there
 were a nail in my brain; may it be cursed, together with the _amour
 propre_ which is sucking my blood, sucking it like a snake! (_He sees
 Trigorin, who enters reading a book._) Here comes the real genius. He
 walks towards us like a Hamlet, and with a book too. “Words, words,
 words.” This sun is not yet come to you, and you are already smiling,
 your looks have melted in its rays. I will not be in your way. (_He
 goes out rapidly._)

There follows a conversation between Trigorin and Ina, during which she
says she would like to know what it feels like to be a famous author.
She talks of his interesting life.

 _Trigorin_: What is there so very wonderful about it? Like a
 monomaniac who, for instance, is always thinking day and night of the
 moon, I am pursued by one thought which I cannot get rid of, I must
 write, I must write, I must ... I have scarcely finished a story, when
 for some reason or another I must write a second, and then a third,
 and then a fourth. I write uninterruptedly, I cannot do otherwise.
 What is there so wonderful and splendid in this, I ask you? Oh, it is
 a cruel life! Look, I get excited with you, and all the time I am
 remembering that an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud
 which is like a pianoforte, and I at once think that I must remember
 to say somewhere in the story that there is a cloud like a pianoforte.

 _Ina_: But does not your inspiration and the process of creation give
 you great and happy moments?

 _Trigorin_: Yes, when I write it is pleasant, and it is nice to
 correct proofs; but as soon as the thing is published, I cannot bear
 it, and I already see that it is not at all what I meant, that it is
 a mistake, that I should not have written it at all, and I am vexed
 and horribly depressed. The public reads it, and says: “Yes, pretty,
 full of talent, very nice, but how different from Tolstoy!” or, “Yes,
 a fine thing, but how far behind _Fathers and Sons_; Tourgeniev is
 better.” And so, until I die, it will always be “pretty and full of
 talent,” never anything more; and when I die my friends as they pass
 my grave will say: “Here lies Trigorin, he was a good writer, but he
 did not write as well as Tourgeniev.”

Ina tells him that whatever he may appear to himself, to others he
appears great and wonderful. For the joy of being a writer or an
artist, she says, she would bear the hate of her friends, want,
disappointment; she would live in an attic and eat dry crusts. “I would
suffer from my own imperfections, but in return I should demand fame,
real noisy fame.” Here the voice of Arkadina is heard calling Trigorin.
He observes the sea-gull; she tells him that Constantine killed it.
Trigorin makes a note in his notebook. “What are you writing?” she
says. “An idea has occurred to me,” he answers, “an idea for a short
story: On the banks of a lake a young girl lives from her infancy
onwards. She loves the lake like a sea-gull, she is happy and free like
a sea-gull; but unexpectedly a man comes and sees her, and out of mere
idleness kills her, just like this sea-gull.” Here Arkadina again calls
out that they are not going to Moscow after all. This is the end of the
second act.

At the third act, Arkadina is about to leave the country for Moscow.
Things have come to a crisis. Ina has fallen in love with the author,
and Constantine’s jealousy and grief have reached such a point that
he has tried to kill himself and failed, and now he has challenged
Trigorin to a duel. The latter has taken no notice of this, and is
about to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Ina begs him before he goes
to say good-bye to her. Arkadina discusses with her brother her son’s
strange and violent behaviour. He points out that the youth’s position
is intolerable. He is a clever boy, full of talent, and he is obliged
to live in the country without any money, without a situation. He is
ashamed of this, and afraid of his idleness. In any case, he tells
his sister, she ought to give him some money, he has not even got an
overcoat; to which she answers that she has not got any money. She is
an artist, and needs every penny for her own expenses. Her brother
scoffs at this, and she gets annoyed. A scene follows between the
mother and the son, which begins by an exchange of loving and tender
words, and which finishes in a violent quarrel. The mother is putting
a new bandage on his head, on the place where he had shot himself.
“During the last few days,” says Constantine, “I have loved you as
tenderly as when I was a child; but why do you submit to the influence
of that man?”--meaning Trigorin. And out of this the quarrel arises.
Constantine says, “You wish me to consider him a genius. His works
make me sick.” To which his mother answers, “That is jealousy. People
who have no talent and who are pretentious, have nothing better to
do than to abuse those who have real talent.” Here Constantine flies
into a passion, tears the bandage off his head, and cries out, “You
people only admit and recognise what you do yourselves. You trample
and stifle everything else!” Then his rage dies out, he cries and asks
forgiveness, and says, “If you only knew, I have lost everything. She
no longer loves me; I can no longer write; all my hopes are dead!” They
are once more reconciled. Only Constantine begs that he may be allowed
to keep out of Trigorin’s sight. Trigorin comes to Arkadina, and
proposes that they should remain in the country. Arkadina says that she
knows why he wishes to remain; he is in love with Ina. He admits this,
and asks to be set free.

Up to this point in the play there had not been a syllable to tell
us what were the relations between Arkadina and Trigorin, and yet
the spectator who sees this play guesses from the first that he is
her lover. She refuses to let him go, and by a somewhat histrionic
declaration of love cleverly mixed with flattery and common sense she
easily brings him round, and he is like wax in her fingers. He settles
to go. They leave for Moscow; but before they leave, Trigorin has a
short interview with Ina, in which she tells him that she has decided
to leave her home to go on the stage, and to follow him to Moscow.
Trigorin gives her his address in Moscow. Outside--the whole of this
act takes place in the dining-room--we hear the noise and bustle of
people going away. Arkadina is already in the carriage. Trigorin and
Ina say good-bye to each other, he gives her a long kiss.

Between the third and fourth acts two years elapse. We are once more
in the home of Arkadina’s brother. Constantine has become a celebrated
writer. Ina has gone on the stage and proved a failure. She went to
Moscow; Trigorin loved her for a while, and then ceased to love her.
A child was born. He returned to his former love, and in his weakness,
played a double game on both sides. She is now in the town, but her
father will not receive her. Arkadina arrives with Trigorin. She has
been summoned from town because her brother is ill. Everything is going
on as it was two years ago. Arkadina, the agent, and the doctor sit
down to a game of Lotto before dinner. Arkadina tells of her triumphs
in the provincial theatres, of the ovations she received, of the
dresses she wore. The doctor asks her if she is proud of her son being
an author. “Just fancy,” she replies, “I have not yet read his books, I
have never had time!” They go in to supper. Constantine says he is not
hungry, and is left alone. Somebody knocks at the glass door opening
into the garden. Constantine opens it; it is Ina. Ina tells her story;
and now she has got an engagement in some small provincial town, and
is starting on the following day. Constantine declares vehemently that
he loves her as much as ever. He cursed her, he hated her, he tore up
her letters and photographs, but every moment he was forced to admit
to himself that he was bound to her for ever. He could never cease to
love her. He begs her either to remain, or to let him follow her. She
takes up her hat, she must go. She says she is a wandering sea-gull,
and that she is very tired. From the dining-room are heard the voices
of Arkadina and Trigorin. She listens, rushes to the door, and looks
through the keyhole. “He is here, too,” she says, “do not tell him
anything. I love him, I love him more than ever.” She goes out through
the garden. Constantine tears up all his MSS. and goes into the next
room. Arkadina and the others come out of the dining-room, and sit
down once more to the card-table to play Lotto. The agent brings to
Trigorin the stuffed sea-gull which Constantine had shot two years ago,
and which had been the starting-point of Trigorin’s love episode with
Ina. He has forgotten all about it; he does not even remember that the
sea-gull episode ever took place. A noise like a pistol shot is heard
outside. “What is that?” says Arkadina in fright. “It is nothing,”
replies the doctor, “one of my medicine bottles has probably burst.”
He goes into the next room, and returns half a minute later. “It was
as I thought,” he says, “my ether bottle has burst.” “It frightened
me,” says Arkadina, “it reminded me of how....” The doctor turns over
the leaves of the newspaper. He then says to Trigorin, “Two months ago
there was an article in this Review written from America. I wanted to
ask you....” He takes Trigorin aside, and then whispers to him, “Take
Irina Nikolaievna away as soon as possible. The fact of the matter is
that Constantine has shot himself.”

Of all the plays of Tchekov, _Chaika_ is the one which most resembles
ordinary plays, or the plays of ordinary dramatists. It has, no doubt,
many of Tchekov’s special characteristics, but it does not show them
developed to their full extent. Besides which, the subject is more
dramatic than that of his other plays; there is a conflict in it--the
conflict between the son and the mother, between the older and the
younger generation, the older generation represented by Trigorin and
the actress, the younger generation by Constantine. The character of
the actress is drawn with great subtlety. Her real love for her son
is made just as plain as her absolute inability to appreciate his
talent and his cleverness. She is a mixture of kindness, common sense,
avarice, and vanity. Equally subtle is the character of the author,
with his utter want of wit; his absorption in the writing of short
stories; his fundamental weakness; his egoism, which prevents him
recognising the existence of any work but his own, but which has no
tinge of ill-nature or malice in it. When he returns in the last act,
he compliments Constantine on his success, and brings him a Review
in which there is a story by the young man. Constantine subsequently
notices that in the Review the only pages which are cut contain a
story by Trigorin himself.

If _Chaika_ is the most dramatically effective of Tchekov’s plays,
the most characteristic is perhaps _The Cherry Garden_. It is notably
characteristic in the symbolical and historical sense, for it depicts
for us the causes and significance of the decline of the well-born,
landed gentry in Russia.

A slightly Bohemian lady belonging to this class, Ranievskaia--I will
call her Madame Ranievskaia for the sake of convenience, since her
Christian name “Love” has no equivalent, as a name, in English--is
returning to her country estate with her brother Leonidas after an
absence of five years. She has spent this time abroad in Nice and
Paris. Her affairs and those of her brother are in a hopeless state.
They are heavily in debt. This country place has been the home of her
childhood, and it possesses a magnificent cherry orchard. It is in the
south of Russia.

In the first act we see her return to the home of her childhood--she
and her brother, her daughter, seventeen years old, and her adopted
daughter. It is the month of May. The cherry orchard is in full
blossom; we see it through the windows of the old nursery, which is
the scene of the first act. The train arrives at dawn, before sunrise.
A neighbour is there to meet them, a rich merchant called Lopachin.
They arrive with their governess and their servant, and they have been
met at the station by another neighbouring landowner. And here we see
a thing I have never seen on the stage before: a rendering of the
exact atmosphere that hangs about such an event as (_a_) the arrival
of people from a journey, and (_b_) the return of a family to its home
from which it has long been absent. We see at a glance that Madame
Ranievskaia and her brother are in all practical matters like children.
They are hopelessly casual and vague. They take everything lightly and
carelessly, like birds; they are convinced that something will turn up
to extricate them from their difficulties.

The merchant, who is a nice, plain, careful, practical, but rather
vulgar kind of person, is a millionaire, and, what is more, he is the
son of a peasant; he was born in the village, and his father was a
serf. He puts the practical situation very clearly before them. The
estate is hopelessly overloaded with debt, and unless these debts are
paid within six months, the estate will be sold by auction. But there
is, he points out, a solution to the matter. “As you already know,” he
says to them, “your cherry orchard will be sold to pay your debts. The
auction is fixed for the 22nd of August, but do not be alarmed, there
is a way out of the difficulty.... This is my plan. Your estate is
only 15 miles from the town, the railway is quite close, and if your
cherry orchard and the land by the river is cut up into villa holdings,
and let for villas, you will get at the least 25,000 roubles (£2500) a
year.” To which the brother replies, “What nonsense!” “You will get,”
the merchant repeats, “at the very least twenty-five roubles a year a
desiatin,”--a desiatin is about two acres and a half: much the same as
the French hectare,--“and by the autumn, if you make the announcement
now, you will not have a single particle of land left. In a word, I
congratulate you; you are saved. The site is splendid, only, of course,
it wants several improvements. For instance, all these old buildings
must be destroyed, and this house, which is no use at all, the old
orchard must be cut down.”

 _Madame Ranievskaia_: Cut down? My dear friend, forgive me, you do not
 understand anything at all! If in the whole district there is anything
 interesting, not to say remarkable, it is this orchard.

 _Lopachin_: The orchard is remarkable simply on account of its size.

 _Leonidas_: The orchard is mentioned in the Encyclopædia.

 _Lopachin_: If we do not think of a way out of the matter and come to
 some plan, on the 22nd of August the cherry orchard and the whole
 property will be sold by auction. Make up your minds; there is no
 other way out, I promise you.

But it is no good his saying anything. They merely reply, “What
nonsense!” They regard the matter of splitting up their old home into
villas as a sheer impossibility. And this is the whole subject of
the play. The merchant continues during the second act to insist on
the only practical solution of their difficulties, and they likewise
persist in saying this solution is madness, that it is absolutely
impossible. They cannot bring themselves to think of their old home
being turned into a collection of villas; they keep on saying that
something will turn up, an old aunt will die and leave them a legacy,
or something of that kind will happen.

In the third act, the day of the auction has arrived, there is a dance
going on in the house. The impression is one of almost intolerable
human sadness, because we know that nothing has turned up, we know that
the whole estate will be sold. The whole picture is one of the ending
of a world. At the dance there are only the people in the village, the
stationmaster, the post-office officials, and so forth. The servant
they have brought from abroad gives notice. An old servant, who belongs
to the house, and is in the last stage of senile decay, wanders
about murmuring of old times and past brilliance. The guests dance
quadrilles through all the rooms. Leonidas has gone to the auction, and
Madame Ranievskaia sits waiting in hopeless suspense for the news of
the result. At last he comes back, pale and tired, and too depressed
to speak. The merchant also comes triumphantly into the room; he is
slightly intoxicated, and with a triumphant voice he announces that he
has bought the cherry garden.

In the last act, we see them leave their house for ever, all the
furniture has been packed up, all the things which for them are so full
of little associations; the pictures are off the walls, the bare trees
of the cherry garden--for it is now autumn--are already being cut down,
and they are starting to begin a new life and to leave their old home
for ever. The old house, so charming, so full of old-world dignity and
simplicity, will be pulled down, and make place for neat, surburban
little villas to be inhabited by the new class which has arisen in
Russia. Formerly there were only gentlemen and peasants, now there is
the self-made man, who, being infinitely more practical, pushes out the
useless and unpractical gentleman to make way for himself. The pathos
and naturalness of this last act are extraordinary. Every incident that
we know so well in these moments of departure is noted and rendered.
The old servant, who belongs to the house, is supposed to be in the
hospital, and is not there to say good-bye to them; but when they
are all gone, he appears and closes the shutters, saying, “It is all
closed, they are gone, they forgot me; it doesn’t matter, I will sit
here. Leonidas Andreevitch probably forgot his cloak, and only went in
his light overcoat, I wasn’t there to see.” And he lies motionless in
the darkened, shuttered room, while from outside comes the sound of the
felling of the cherry orchard.

Of course, it is quite impossible in a short analysis to give any idea
of the real nature of this play, which is a tissue of small details,
every one of which tells. Every character in it is living; Leonidas,
the brother, who makes foolish speeches and is constantly regretting
them afterwards; the plain and practical merchant; the good-natured
neighbour who borrows money and ultimately pays it back; the governess;
the clerk in the estate office; the servants, the young student who is
in love with the daughter,--we learn to know all these people as well
as we know our own friends and relations, and they reveal themselves
as people do in real life by means of a lifelike representation of the
conversation of human beings. The play is historical and symbolical,
because it shows us why the landed gentry in Russia has ceased to have
any importance, and how these amiable, unpractical, casual people must
necessarily go under, when they are faced with a strong energetic
class of rich, self-made men who are the sons of peasants. Technically
the play is extraordinarily interesting; there is no conflict of wills
in it, nothing which one could properly call action or drama, and yet
it never ceases to be interesting; and the reason of this is that the
conversation, the casual remarks of the characters, which seem to be
about nothing, and to be put there anyhow, have always a definite
purpose. Every casual remark serves to build up the architectonic
edifice which is the play. The structure is built, so to speak, in air;
it is a thing of atmosphere, but it is built nevertheless with extreme
care, and the result when interpreted, as it is interpreted at Moscow
by the actors of the artistic theatre, is a stage triumph.

The three other most important plays of Tchekov are _Ivanoff_, _Three
Sisters_, and _Uncle Vania_,--the latter play has been well translated
into German.

_Three Sisters_ is the most melancholy of all Tchekov’s plays. It
represents the intense monotony of provincial life, the grey life which
is suddenly relieved by a passing flash, and then rendered doubly
grey by the disappearance of that flash. The action takes place in a
provincial town. A regiment of artillery is in garrison there. One of
the three sisters, Masha, has married a schoolmaster; the two others,
Irina and Olga, are living in the house of their brother, who is a
budding professor. Their father is dead. Olga teaches in a provincial
school all day, and gives private lessons in the evening. Irina is
employed in the telegraph office. They have both only one dream and
longing, and that is to get away from the provincial corner in which
they live, and to settle in Moscow. They only stay on Masha’s account.
Masha’s husband is a kind and well-meaning, but excessively tedious
schoolmaster, who is continually reciting Latin tags. When Masha
married him she was only eighteen, and thought he was the cleverest man
in the world. She subsequently discovered that he was the kindest, but
not the cleverest man in the world. The only thing which relieves the
tedium of this provincial life is the garrison.

When the play begins, we hear that a new commander has been appointed
to the battery, a man of forty called Vershinin. He is married, has
two children, but his wife is half crazy. The remaining officers in
the battery are Baron Tuzenbach, a lieutenant; Soleny, a major; and
two other lieutenants. Tuzenbach is in love with Irina, and wishes to
marry her; she is willing to marry him, but she is not in the least in
love with him, and tells him so. Masha falls passionately in love with
Vershinin. The major, Soleny, is jealous of Tuzenbach. Then suddenly
while these things are going on, the battery is transferred from the
town to the other end of Russia. On the morning it leaves the town,
Soleny challenges the Baron to a duel, and kills him. The play ends
with the three sisters being left alone. Vershinin says a passionate
good-bye to Masha, who is in floods of tears, and does not disguise her
grief from her husband. He, in the most pathetic way conceivable, tries
to console her, while the cheerful music of the band is heard gradually
getting fainter and fainter in the distance. Irina has been told of the
death of the Baron, and the sad thing about this is that she does not
really care. The three sisters are left to go on working, to continue
their humdrum existence in the little provincial town, to teach the
children in the school; the only thing which brought some relief to
their monotonous existence, and to one of the sisters the passion of
her life, is taken away from them, and the departure is made manifest
to them by the strains of the cheerful military band.

I have never seen anything on the stage so poignantly melancholy as
this last scene. In this play, as well as in others, Tchekov, by the
way he presents you certain fragments of people’s lives, manages to
open a window on the whole of their life. In this play of _Three
Sisters_ we get four glimpses. A birthday party in the first act;
an ordinary evening in the second act; in the third act a night of
excitement owing to a fire in the town, and it is on this night that
the love affair of Vershinin and Masha culminates in a crisis; and in
the fourth act the departure of the regiment. Yet these four fragments
give us an insight, and open a window on to the whole life of these
people, and, in fact, on to the lives of many thousand people who have
led this life in Russia.

Tchekov’s plays are as interesting to read as the work of any
first-rate novelist. But in reading them, it is impossible to guess
how effective they are on the stage, the delicate succession of
subtle shades and half-tones, of hints, of which they are composed,
the evocation of certain moods and feelings which it is impossible
to define,--all this one would think would disappear in the glare
of the footlights, but the result is exactly the reverse. Tchekov’s
plays are a thousand times more interesting to see on the stage
than they are to read. A thousand effects which the reader does not
suspect make themselves felt on the boards. The reason of this is that
Tchekov’s plays realise Goethe’s definition of what plays should be.
“Everything in a play,” Goethe said, “should be symbolical, and should
lead to something else.” By symbolical, of course, he meant morally
symbolical,--he did not mean that the play should be full of enigmatic
puzzles, but that every event in it should have a meaning and cast a
shadow larger than itself.

The atmosphere of Tchekov’s plays is laden with gloom, but it is a
darkness of the last hour before the dawn begins. His note is not in
the least a note of despair: it is a note of invincible trust in the
coming day. The burden of his work is this--life is difficult, there is
nothing to be done but to work and to continue to work as cheerfully as
one can; and his triumph as a playwright is that for the first time he
has shown in prose,--for the great poets have done little else,--behind
the footlights, what it is that makes life difficult. Life is too
tremendous, too cheerful, and too sad a thing to be condensed into
an abstract problem of lines and alphabetical symbols; and those who
in writing for the stage attempt to do this, achieve a result which
is both artificial and tedious. Tchekov disregarded all theories and
all rules which people have hitherto laid down as the indispensable
qualities of stage writing; he put on the stage the things which
interested him because they were human and true; things great or
infinitesimally small; as great as love and as small as a discussion as
to what are the best _hors d’œuvres_; and they interest us for the same
reason.


FOOTNOTES:

[24] Two volumes of selections from his stories have been admirably
translated by Mr. Long.

[25] It proved a success.

[26] The dramatic critics of these newspapers are not the Mr. William
Archers, the Mr. Walkleys, not the Faguets or the Lemaîtres of Russia,
if any such exist. I have never come across anything of interest in
their articles; on the other hand, they are perhaps more representative
of public opinion.

[27] Since this was written Mr. Shaw’s genius has had greater justice
done to it in Russia. His _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ has proved highly
successful. It was produced at the State Theatre of Moscow in the
autumn of 1909 and is still running as I write. Several intelligent
articles were written on it in the Moscow press.

[28] Not to mention many modern French comedies, such as those of
Lemaître, Capus, etc.


  _Printed by_
  MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
  _Edinburgh_




Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor omissions and inconsistencies in punctuation have been
fixed.

The chapter on Dostoievky was properly renumbered to VI instead of IV.



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