# Russian Novelists (1887)/2

CHAPTER II.
ROMANTICISM.—PUSHKIN AND POETRY.
Russia—all Europe, in fact—was now enjoying a period of peace. A truce of twenty-five years lay between the great political wars and the important social struggles to come. During these years of romanticism, so short and yet so full, between 1815 and 1840 only, all intelligent minds in Russia seemed given up to thought, imagination, and poetry.
Everything in this country develops suddenly. Poets appear in numbers, just as the flowers of the field spring forth after the sun's hot rays have melted the snow. At this time poetry seemed to be the universal language of men. Only one of this multitude of poets, however, is truly admirable, absorbing all the rest in the lustrous rays of his genius,—the glorious Pushkin.
He was preceded by Zhukovski, who was born twenty years earlier, and who also survived him. No critic can deny that Zhukovski was the real originator of romanticism in Russian literature; or that he was the first one to introduce it from Germany. His works were numerous. Perfectly acquainted with the Greek language, his version ​of Homer is most admirable. He also wrote several poems in the style of Schiller, Goethe, and Uhland ; and many compositions, ballads, etc., all in the German style. He touched upon many Russian subjects, themes which Pushkin afterwards took up. In fact, he was to Pushkin what Perugino was to Raphael ; yet every Russian will declare that the new romanticism of that time dates from Pushkin, and is identified with him. Zhukovski was one of those timid spirits which are born to be satellites, even though they rise before the sun in the pale dawn ; but they only shine with reflected light, and their lustre becomes wholly absorbed in the rays of the rising luminary which replaces them.
I.
To realize the importance of the part the poets of this period were destined to play, we must remember what a very small part of the population of this vast country could be called the educated class. At the beginning of the century, the education of the Muscovite aristocracy was confided entirely to the Jesuits, who had been powerfully supported by the Emperor Paul. In 1811, Alexander I. replaced these foreign educators by native Russians, and founded the Lyceum of Tsarskoe-Selo, after the model of the Paris Lyceums.
​Students were admitted according to birth and merit only. Pushkin and Gortchakof were the two who most distinguished themselves. The course of study was rather superficial. The students were on intimate terms with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and quartered in the imperial palace with them. Politics, patriotism, poetry, all together fomented an agitation, which ended with the conspiracy of December, 1825.
Pushkin was at once recognized as a master in this wild throng, and was already famous as a poet. The old Derzhavin cast his own mantle upon Pushkin's shoulders and pronounced him his heir. Pushkin possessed the gift of pleasing; but to understand his genius, we must not lose sight of his origin. His maternal grandfather was an Abyssinian negro, who had been a slave in the Seraglio of Constantinople, was stolen and carried to Russia by a corsair, and adopted by Peter the Great, who made him a general, and gave him in marriage to a noble lady of the court. The poet inherited some of his grandfather's features; his thick lips, white teeth, and crisp curly hair. This drop of African blood, falling amid Arctic snows, may account for the strong contrasts and exaggerations of his poetic nature, which was a remarkable union of impetuosity and melancholy.
His youth was passed in a wild whirl of pleasure and excess. He incurred while still young the imperial anger, by having written some ​insolent verses, as well as by committing some foolish pranks with some of the saints' images; and was banished for a time to the borders of the Black Sea, where, enchanted by the delicious climate and scenery, his genius developed rapidly.
He returned not much the wiser, but with his genius fully matured at the age of twenty-five. For a few short years following his return, he produced his greatest masterpieces with astonishing rapidity, and died at thirty-seven in a duel, the victim of an obscure intrigue. He had married a very beautiful woman, who was the innocent cause of his death. Lending an ear to certain calumnies concerning her, he became furiously jealous, and fought the fatal duel with an officer of the Russian guard.
While we lament his sad fate, we can but reflect that the approach of age brings sadness with it, and most of all to a poet. He died young, in the prime of life and in the plenitude of his powers, giving promise of future possible masterpieces, with which we always credit such geniuses.
It is impossible to judge of this man's works from a review of his character. Though his heart was torn by the stormiest passions, he possessed an intellect of the highest order, truly classic in the best sense of the word. When his talent became fully matured, form took possession of him rather than color. In his best poems, intellect presides over sentiment, and the soul of the artist is laid bare.
​To attempt to quote, to translate his precious words, would be a hopeless task. He himself said : " In my opinion, there is nothing more difficult, I might say impossible, than to translate Russian poetry into French; concise as our language is, we can never be concise enough."
In Latin one might possibly be able to express as many thoughts in as few words, and as beautifully. The charm vanishes with the translator's touch; besides, the principal object of this book is to show how the peculiar type of Russian character is manifested in the works of the Russian writers. Neither do I think that Pushkin could aid us much in this study ; although he was no servile imitator, like so many of his predecessors, it is none the less true that he drew his material from the great sources of European literature. He was educated from a child in French literature. His father knew Moliere by heart, and his uncle was a great admirer of Beranger. When he entered the Lyceum he could scarcely speak his mother-tongue, but he had been fed with Voltaire from early childhood. His very first verses were written in French, and his first Russian rhymes were madrigals on the same themes. In the "Prisoner of the Caucasus," written in 1824, we can feel the influence of Byron, whom he calls the "master of his thoughts." Gradually he acquired more originality, but it is quite certain that but for Byron some of the most impor​tant of his poems, such as " Onyegin," " The Bohemians," several of his oriental poems, and even his admirable "Poltava," would never have existed.
During the latter years of his life, he had a passion for history, when he studied the historical dramas of Shakespeare. This lie himself acknowledges in the preface to "Boris Godunof," which is a Shakespearian drama on a Muscovite subject. In certain prose works he shows unmistakable proofs of the influence of Voltaire, as they are written in a style wholly dissimilar to anything in Russian prose.
The Slavophile party like to imagine that Pushkin, in his "Songs of the Western Slavs," has evoked the ancient Russian spirit ; while he has merely translated some French verses into Russian. We must acknowledge the truth that his works, with the exception of "Onyegin," and a few others, do not exhibit any peculiar ethnical stamp. He is influenced at different times, as the case may be, by his contemporaries in Germany, England, and France. He expresses universal sentiments, and applies them to Russian themes ; but he looks from outside upon the national life, like all his contemporaries in letters, artistically free from any influence of his own race. Compare his descriptions of the Caucasus with those of Tolsto in "The Cossacks." The poet of 1820 looks upon nature and the Orientals with ​the eye of a Byron or a Lamartine ; while the observer of 1850 regards that spot of Asia as his ancestral mother-country, and feels that it partly belongs to him.
We shall find that Pushkin's successors possess none of his literary qualities. He is as concise as they are diffuse; as clear as they are involved. His style is as perfect, elegant, and correct as a Greek bronze ; in a word, he has style and good taste, which terms cannot be applied to any of his successors in Russian literature. Is it taking away anything from Pushkin to remove him from his race and give him to the world and humanity at large? Because he was born in Russia, there is nothing whatever to prove that his works were thereby modified. He would have sung in the self-same way for England, France, or Italy.
But, although he resembles his country so little, he served it well. He stirred its intellectual life more effectively than any other writer has done; and it is not too much to call him the Peter the Great of Russian literature. The nation gratefully recognizes this debt. To quote one of his own verses : — " The monument I have erected for myself is made by no mortal hand ; and the grass will not have time to grow in the path that leads to it."
II.
Among the group of poets contemporaries of Pushkin only two are really worthy of mention, viz.: Griboyedof and Lermontof ; but these two, although they died young, gave promise of great genius. The first of these left only one comedy, but that is the masterpiece of the Russian drama ("le Mai de Trop d'Esprit"). The author, unlike Pushkin, disdained all foreign literature, took pride in all the ancient Musco- vite customs, and was Russian to the backbone. He painted the people and the peculiarities of his own country only, and so wonderfully well that his sayings have become proverbs. The piece is similar to the " Revizor " of Gogol, but, in my opinion, superior to it, being broader in spirit and finer in sentiment. Moreover, its satire never will grow old, for it is as appropriate to the pres- ent day as to the time for which it was written.
Returning from Persia, where he had been sent as Russian minister to the Shah, he was mur- dered by a party of robbers, at the age of thirty four.
Lermontof was the poet of the Caucasus, which he made the scene of all his poems. His short life of twenty-six years was spent among those mountains ; and he was, like Pushkin, killed in a duel, just as he was beginning to be recognized ​as a worthy successor to him. Byron was also his favorite model, whom he, unhappily, strongly resembled in character. His most celebrated poem was "The Demon"; but he wrote many most picturesque and fascinating stanzas and short pieces, which are full of tenderness and melancholy. Though less harmonious and perfect than Pushkin's, his verses give out sometimes a sadder ring. His prose is equal to his poetry, and many of his short sketches, illustrative of Caucasian life, possess a subtle charm.
III.
Lermontof was the last and most extreme of the poets of the romantic period. The Byronic fever, now at its height, was destined soon to die out and disappear. Romanticism sought in history some more solid aliment than despair. A reaction set in ; and writers of elegies and ballads turned their attention to historical dramas and the picturesque side of human life. From Byron they turned back to Shakespeare, the universal Doctor. Pushkin, in his " Boris Godunof," and in the later poems of his mature period, devoted himself to this resurrection of the past ; and his disciples followed in his wake. The rhetoric of the new school, not wholly emancipated from romanticism, was naturally somewhat conven ​tional. But Pushkin became interested in journalism ; and polemics, social reforms, and many other new problems arising, helped to make romanticism a thing of the past. The young schools of philosophy found much food for thought and controversy. The question of the emancipation of the serfs, raised in the court of Alexander I., weighed heavily upon the national conscience. A suffering people cannot be fed upon rhetoric.
In 1836, Tchadayef published his famous "Lettre Philosophique." He was a man of the world, but a learned man and a philosopher. The fundamental idea of his paper was that Russia had hitherto been but a parasite, feeding upon the rest of Europe, and had contributed of itself nothing useful to civilization ; had established no religious reforms, nor allowed any scope for free thought upon the leading questions of modern society. He said : —
"We have in our blood a principle which is hostile to civilization."
These were strong sentiments coming from the mouth of a Russian ; but they afterwards found many echoing voices, which never before had put such crude truths into words. Tchadayef was claimed by the liberals as their legitimate father, his "Lettre Philosophique" was made a political pamphlet, and he himself was regarded as a revolutionary leader.
Just at this time, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel ​were translated, and a great many young Russians now studied rationalism at its fountainheads, in the different German universities. The preceding generation, which had become intoxicated with sentiment, was followed by a generation devoted to metaphysics. This new hobby was ridden with the enthusiasm peculiar to the Russians, and hairs which in Germany were split into four parts were subdivided in Moscow into eight.
A writer nourished on the new doctrines, and who soon became leader of the liberal school, appeared at this time, and exercised a strong influence upon literature. It was the critic Bielinski. He was, perhaps, the only critic of his country really worthy of the name. He left a voluminous work, a perfect encyclopædia of Russian literature ? rich in wisdom and in ideas, giving a fine historical account of the ancient literature, and defining with rare sagacity the tendencies of the new. He threw down many old idols, and ridiculed the absurd confidence in the writers of the classic period. In spite of his admiration for Pushkin, he points out many of the weak points of romanticism, and seems to fully realize the intellectual necessities of his time. The great novelists of modern Russia have been encouraged by his advice, and he has certainly shown himself to be a critic in advance of his own time, and the only one Russia has produced. The ​first sketches and tales of Gogol revealed to Bielinski the birth of this new art. He declared the age of lyric poetry was past forever, and that the reign of Russian prose romance had begun. Everything has justified this great writer's prophecy. Since the time of Pushkin, their literature has undergone wonderful developments. The novelists no longer draw from outside sources, but from the natal soil, and it is they who will show us what a rich verdure can be produced from under those Arctic snows.