# The Russian Review/Volume 1/May 1916/Aspects of Russian Literature III

Aspects of Russian Literature.
By Louis S. Friedland.
III.
In our attempt at tracing some of the philosophic aspects of Russian literature, we have come to the period of the "sixties." It was at this time that Nihilism developed its theories. We have seen that Nihilistic thinking begins with a denial of the past, specifically, of the patriarchal and master institutions. The Nihilists rejected the past as unreal and uncertain, for their attitude was one of skepticism toward all appearances and traditions. Their search, as we have seen, was for reality. But how was man to attain to a sense of reality, and a power over it? Only by the royal road of freedom. So that the cardinal doctrine of the Nihilists of the time may be summed up in the words: "It is freedom that liberates, for fredom is creative power. It is only in order to be able to create that we learn. The creative power is the panacea for our suffering, the relief for our burden." Hence, they felt the great necessity of liberating the individual. Freedom and power for the individual—this expresses the new reliance of the Nihilists. The title of Herzen's essay, Omnia mea mecum porto, well expresses the point. But they were not, bless the mark, "anarchists," for most of them saw the great need of civic organization in society, and demanded that each man perform civic duty for the common good. They wished to liberate individual energy for the benefit of all. Finally, they desired to rationalize life, to free it from everything mystical and contrary to reason, and to reconstruct life according to the logic of utility. In fact, utilitarianism early became their guiding principle, for the Nihilists were enamored of the natural sciences, and in their thinking the materialistic conception is very prominent. Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Darwin, were names to conjure with, and they studied the works of Bentham, the utilitarian, and of Buckle, the historian of civilization.
In the works of Chernyshevsky, some of the logical
​implications and relations of Nihilism are made evident. To begin with, the popularity of Mill's Essay on the Emancipation of Women led to the formulation of the so-called "free-love" ideas of the Nihilists: married life should continue only as long as love does,—otherwise, marriage is a bondage. It is, however, the new attitude to history that is of special interest to-day, for the Nihilistic conception of history is gaining unconscious adherents in our own universities. As we have seen, the starting-point of Nihilism is a denial of the past. This rejection involves a disbelief in continuity and development, in gradual evolution. The present no longer unfolds from the past. Chernyshevsky sums up the new attitude to history when he says, "Each new generation starts its life anew." In present-day philosophic speculation, this same conception is gaining ground, largely because of a natural reaction against the mechanical and uninspired interpretations of Darwinian evolution.
The notion of art that prevailed in the "sixties" is only the recurrent attempt to wed art to ethics and morality. The great critic of the time, Pisarev, expresses this view with all the impatient dogmatism of earnestness: "A poet must be either a Titan who shakes to the very foundations mountains of evil, or else a worm crawling in the dust. There is nothing between, except clowns to amuse fools."
Coming to the period of the "seventies," we are among a number of writers who have been called the Narodnichestvo, the "populists," (narod means the mass, the people). In the most important dogma of the "populists," we return to the basic idea of the Slavophile movement: Russian socialism should be agricultural. This again led to opposition to Western influence. In 1861, Mikhailov, a critic, and a disciple of Chernyshevsky, wrote against imitating England and the English economists, for he held that the economic organization of Russia is not that of the West.
In many of their ideas, the Narodnichestvo hark back to the theories of the "thirties" and "forties." The past comes again into its own, and the Nihilistic denial is negatived. In the writings of this period we hear much of the public good, the People are again idealized, and the effort is toward simplification in all things, and for a vigorous re-assertion of the absolute truths of life and morality. As a matter of fact, it may be said that the chief concern of many of the writers of the day is ethical and religious.
​Attempts were made to create a body of religious doctrine, to single out the essential values in human life and declare all others subordinate to them. And the intellectuals of the day did not have to go far afield for the discovery of the absolute values in life. They found them already expressed in the writings of the "thirties" and "forties": the happiness of the people, a morality of heroism and self-denial, the ideal of the "beautiful" life, in the sense of general peace, fraternity, and equality. But the rationalistic ideas of the Nihilists of the "sixties" could not be disregarded in the philosophic speculations of the men of the next decade, and thus we find several new combinations of thought in which some of the theories of the two periods are wedded. As an instance, we may take the manner in which the idealism of the "seventies" is combined with the utilitarian ethics of the preceding decade. The idea of the "beautiful" life is synthesized with the idea of the useful, and the outcome is the morality of "heroism." The new morality is utilitarian because it strives for the well being of the people. It is beautiful, because in it is expressed the power of the people and their greatness of spirit. Everything is thought of in terms of the whole people. And in the new heroism of self-sacrifice, individuality is surrendered and lost in mass-consciousness. One need hardly be reminded of how this philosophy drives Tolstoy to give up family and friends and to seek the extinction of his individuality in the communal life of the peasant-sects.
In the whole of our rapid survey of the chief aspects of nineteenth century Russian literature, we have sought to determine the underlying ideas, to set forth the basic principles as found in social, political, ethical, and even religious theories. We have not attempted a treatment of the literature per se. It is manifestly impossible to enter here upon an extended review of the great writers of Russia in order to note the influence upon them of the theories and doctrines we have summarized. But a few words on several of the most important writers may not be out of place. And first, Turgeniev. This great novelist has depicted for us a large number of Russian intellectuals, and has presented their ideas with an artistic insight and a fullness of philosophic and humanitarian understanding not easily surpassed. His studies of the Russian character, especially the will-less Hamlet type, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," are masterful portrayals. Turgeniev was an ardent Westernizer, a great, free spirit who had rid himself utterly of ​those things that narrow and confine the mind of man. Another writer who must be mentioned here is Gogol, who served primarily to introduce the social element into Russian literature. He was a realist, and his realism is characterized by a truly Russian quality: it is forever subservient to an idealistic aim. With Gogol, humor is not intended as an end in itself; his attempt is to arouse corrective laughter, social laughter in its higher sense.
Dostoyevsky is taken up with religious questions. He gives us a picture of the sufferings of nonbelief, the desire for faith, and the impossibility of believing. He is very catholic in his teachings. He preached humility for the proud, labor for the indolent, the Slavophile idea of Russian Messiahnism, God for the non-believers, and spiritual beauty for the peasant. But Dostoyevsky saw and portrayed the other side,—the new force of individuality that was stirring in the intellectual life of his country. It is in Dostoyevsky's ideas on individuality that Nietzsche found much of his inspiration. Human personality interested Dostoyevsky deeply, and it troubled him when it arose in protest, hurling down everything traditional and hereditary, denying the past, and sweeping away the faith based upon it. Dostoyevsky watched this uprising and assertion of the power of individuality, and he was drawn to it, and terrified by it at the same time. He was like Milton, who rejected Satan, and yet felt unaccountably attracted to the arch-rebel whose spirit meant Diabolonian revolt. To Dostoyevsky, the tremendous menace of individuality was apparent, and it seemed to him such an abyss of accumulated vengeance and insatiable wrath, that, like Savva in Andreyev's play, it seemed to be ready to wreck everything, to turn its hand against all creation. His mind pictured to itself all bonds rent asunder, all things holy cut down, such a thirst for blood and destruction, such disbelief, and such deep cynicism, that he was terrified, and in his great eagerness to stem the tide of vengeance, he wished to throw broadcast into life texts from the Scriptures and bits of Slavophile formulas, like a priest sprinkling holy water over a sinning multitude. In the dread consciousness of all this evil, Dostoyevsky called upon man to draw within himself, to develop spiritual power, and attain inner mastery.
Tolstoy carries still further Dostoyevsky's ideas, "Look within thy soul." His book, Confession, is the Everlasting Nay of Russian literature. In it he sounds the depths of despair, and ​the thought of death as a release, comes to him. But later, the road to salvation offers itself: "Back to the People," and the great Moralist calls upon us to abandon culture, which is a lie and a deception, and to renounce violence, and all other things that breed corruption. But his greatest renunciation came when he abandoned art, or wished to reduce it to the position of handmaid to ethics and morality, and place it at the service of the masses. Here was a social conscience that bade fair to slay in its youth the growing consciousness of individuality.
The last of the "seventies" saw the end of the golden age of Russian literature. The decline, if such it may be called, came with the political reaction that followed the assassination of Alexander II., a little more than a month after the death of Dostoyevsky. Many an intellectual of the time saw the significance for literature of this event, and one of them, Katkov, a noted publicist, expressed the situation allegorically when he said: "Gentlemen, rise, the government is coming back." And indeed, in the years immediately following, such was the severity of the government, that attention was turned from literature to purely political and social questions. Of course, the new teaching and example of Tolstoy may have helped to bring on the decline. "Anna Karenina," issued in 1876-77, was the last for many years, of his artistic works. His new views on art, which were practically tantamount to a negation of the artistic consciousness, helped to discourage the renewal of literary labors. And so, what with the exhaustion that comes after several decades of intense literary effort, and the increasing absorption of the nation's energies in the political struggle, the outlook for literature at the beginning of the "eighties" seemed bleak indeed. The period of the "eighties" is one of gray, unrelieved hopelessness. The time seemed like a great fallow field, strewn with dead hopes. The trust in the people had proved a dream and a failure, and the intellectuals took refuge in empty speculating on Buddhism and its Nirvana-ideas. The great writer of this age, and the one who best reflects the somber mood of the time, is Chekhov. His works form, as a Russian critic puts it, "one big poem,—the poem of rainy weather." To Chekhov it seemed vain to try to solve the riddle of life. He is an "inconclusive," who presents with wondrous artistic reverence and finesse, the bare facts of life. And if you wish to draw conclusions, you must do so for yourself.
On the more recent phases of Russian literature, a few ​words will have to suffice here. The great problems that undelie the literature of present-day Russia are those of Freedom and Necessity. Man strives for liberty, for the liberation of all his individual powers. He feels in himself an upward striving that may yet lead him to higher things and a greater perfection. Many of the thinkers and writers of the time swear allegiance to the doctrine of economic determinism, and are visibly influenced by Marxian socialism, on the one hand, and by Nietzschean individualism on the other. It is perhaps the last of these views that the "moderns" accentuate, in the spirit that is so well expressed in the words of Gorky: "The life of man may be consumed in one deed, but that deed must be beautiful, splendid, free!"
Of course, all the modern literary currents are found in the stream of present-day Russian literature: futurism, and symbolism, and acmeism. The writers who express these influences have no fixed body of doctrine, but their viewpoint is the reverse of the one so long accepted without question in Russia. They insist that art is concerned first and foremost with beauty, not with morality; they claim that its true function is its appeal to the imagination. It is no longer to be, say the modernists, a conveyor of moral ideas.
In these articles our purpose has not been an appreciation of Russian literature, or a discussion of its aesthetic merits. We have attempted a brief survey of the underlying and subtly moulding ideas of the literature. Its spirit would have to be expressed in another way. Perhaps Dostoyevsky did this for us when he used as the motto of his Brothers Karamazov, the words: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."