DEMYAN'S FISH-SOUP

"Neighbor, dear, my light! (1) Eat, I pray thee." (2) "Neighbor, dear, I'm full to the throat,"—"No matter. (1) Another little plateful; hearken: (2) This fish soup, I assure you, is gloriously cooked." (3) "Three platefuls have I eaten."—"O, stop that, why keep count, (4) If only you feel like it, (4) Why, eat and health be yours: eat to the bottom! (3) What fish-soup! and how rich in fat (3) As though with amber covered. (3) Enjoy yourself, dear friend! (5) Here's tender bream, pluck, a bit of sterlet here! Just another little spoonful! Come, urge him, wife!" In this wise did neighbor Demyan neighbor Foka entertain. And let him neither breathe nor rest; But sweat from Foka long had poured in streams. Yet still another plateful doth he take, Collects his final strength—and cleans up everything. "Now, that's the sort of friend I like!" Demyan did shout: "But I can't bear the stuck-up; come, eat another plateful, my dear fellow!" Thereupon, my poor Foka, Much as he loved fish-soup, yet from such a fate, In his arms seizing his girdle and his cap— Rushed madly, quickly home, And since that day, hath never more set foot in Demyan's house. Writer, thou art lucky if the real gift thou hast, But if thou dost not know enough to hold thy peace in time, And dost not spare thy neighbor's ears, Then must thou know, that both thy prose and verse, To all will prove more loathsome than Demyan's fish-soup.

Another good specimen is called:

THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB

When partners cannot agree, their affair will not work smoothly, And torment, not business, will be the outcome. Once on a time, the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike, Did undertake to haul a loaded cart, And all three hitched themselves thereto; They strained their every nerve, but still the cart budged not. And yet, the load seemed very light for them; But towards the clouds the Swan did soar, Backwards the Crab did march, While the Pike made for the stream. Which of them was wrong, which right, 'tis not our place to judge. Only, the cart doth stand there still.

We have seen that Lomonosoff began the task of rendering the modern Russian language adaptable to all the needs of prose and verse; and that the writers who followed him, notably Karamzin, contributed their share to this great undertaking. Pushkin practically completed it and molded the hitherto somewhat harsh and awkward forms into an exquisite medium for every requirement of literature. Alexander Sergyeevitch Pushkin (1799-1837), still holds the undisputed leadership for simplicity, realism, absolute fidelity to life, and he was the first worthy forerunner of the great men whose names are world-synonyms at the present day for those qualities. Almost every writer who preceded him had been more or less devoted to translations and servile copies of foreign literature. Against these, and the mock-classicism of the French pattern, which then ruled Europe, he waged relentless battle. He vitalized Russian literature by establishing its foundations firmly on Russian soil; by employing her native traditions, life, and sentiment as subjects and inspiration, in place of the worn-out conventionalities of foreign invention. The result is a product of the loftiest truth, as well as of the loftiest art.

His ancestors were nobles who occupied important posts under Peter the Great. His mother was a granddaughter of Hannibal, the negro of whom Pushkin wrote under the title of "Peter the Great's Arab." This Hannibal was a slave who had been brought from Africa to Constantinople, where the Russian ambassador purchased him, and sent him to Peter the Great. The latter took a great fancy to him, had him baptized, and would not allow his brothers to ransom him, but sent him, at the age of eighteen, abroad to be educated. On his return, Peter kept his favorite always beside him. Under the reign of the Empress Anna Ioannovna he was exiled to Siberia, in company with other court favorites of former reigns; and like them, returned to Russia, and was loaded with favors by Peter's daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. His son was a distinguished general of Katherine II.'s day. Pushkin, the poet, had blue eyes, and very fair skin and hair, but the whole cast of his countenance in his portraits is negro. His father was a typical society man, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, Pushkin was educated exclusively by French tutors at home, and his first writings (at the age of ten) were in French, and imitated from writers of that nation. When his father retired from the military service, he settled in Moscow, and the boy knew all the literary men of that day and town before he was twelve years of age, and there can be no doubt that this literary atmosphere had a great influence upon him. When, at the age of twelve, he was placed in the newly founded Lyceum,[10] at Tzarskoe Selo (sixteen miles from St. Petersburg), whence so many famous men were afterwards graduated, he and the other pupils amused themselves in their play hours by writing a little newspaper, and by other literary pursuits. Here the lad was compelled to learn Russian, and the first use he made of it was to write caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet Derzhavin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his "Memories of Tzarskoe Selo," he at once predicted his coming greatness. As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms. Karamzin and Zhukovsky were not long in adding their testimony to the lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his own poems to the young poet's judgment.

Pushkin was an omnivorous reader, but his parents had never been pleased with his progress in his studies, or regarded him as clever. The praise of competent judges now opened their eyes; but he had a good deal to endure from his father, later on, in spite of this. At this period, Pushkin imitated the most varied poetical forms with wonderful delicacy, and yielded to the most diverse poetical moods. But even then he was entering on a new path, whose influence on later Russian literature was destined to be incalculably great. While still a school-boy, he began to write his famous fantastic-romantic poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila" (which Glinka afterwards made the subject of a charming opera), and here, for the first time in Russian literary history, a thoroughly national theme was handled with a freedom and naturalness which dealt the death-blow to the prevailing inflated, rhetorical style. The subject of the poem was one of the folk-legends, of which he had been fond as a child; and when it was published, in 1820, the critics were dumb with amazement. The gay, even dissipated, society life which he took up on leaving the Lyceum came to a temporary end in consequence of some biting epigrams which he wrote. The Prefect of St. Petersburg called him to account for his attacks on prominent people, and transferred him from the ministry of foreign affairs to southern Russia—in fact, to polite exile—giving him a corresponding position in another department of the government.

For four years (1820-1824) he lived chiefly in southern Russia, including the Crimea and the Caucasus, and wrote, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Fountain of Baktchesarai," "The Gypsies," and a part of his famous "Evgeny Onyegin," being, at this period, strongly influenced by Byron, as the above-mentioned poems and the short lyrics of the same period show. Again his life and his poetry were changed radically by a caustic but witty and amusing epigram on his uncongenial official superior in Odessa; and on the latter's complaint to headquarters—the complaint being as neat as the epigram, in its way—Pushkin was ordered to reside on one of the paternal estates, in the government of Pskoff. Here, under the influence of his old nurse, Arina Rodionovna, and her folk-tales, he became thoroughly and definitively Russian, and entered at last on his real career—poetry which was truly national in spirit. His talents were now completely matured. His wonderfully developed harmony of versification has never been approached by any later poet, except, in places, by Lermontoff. Quite peculiar to himself, at that day—and even much later—are his vivid delineations of character, and his simple but startlingly lifelike and truthful pictures of every-day life. If his claim to immortality rested on no other foundation than these, it would still be incontestable, for all previous Russian writers had scorned such commonplaces.

In 1826 he returned to the capital, having been restored to favor, and resumed his gay life, which on the whole, had a deleterious influence on his talents. In 1831 he married a very beautiful and extravagant woman, after which he was constantly in financial distress, his own social ambitions and lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatcheff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gogol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was killed in a duel with Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, who had been persecuting his wife with unwelcome attentions, in January, 1837. Baron Hekkeren-Dantes died only a year or two ago.

As a school-boy he had instinctively turned into a new path, that of national Russian literature. For this national service, and because he was the first to realize the poetic ideal, his countrymen adored him. To the highest external elegance and the most exquisite beauty, he fitly wedded inward force and wealth of thought, in the most incomparable manner. His finest effort, "Evgeny Onyegin" (1822-1829), exhibits the poet in the process of development, from the Byronic stage to the vigorous independence of a purely national writer. The hero, Evgeny Onyegin, begins as a society young man of the period; that is to say, he was inevitably a Byronic character. His father's death calls him from the dissipations of the capital to the quiet life of a country estate. He regards his neighbors as his inferiors, both in culture and social standing, and for a long time will have nothing to do with them. At last, rather accidentally, he strikes up a friendship with Lensky, a congenial spirit, a young poet, who has had the advantage of foreign education, the son of one of the neighbors. Olga Larin, the young daughter of another neighbor, has long been betrothed to Lensky, and the latter naturally introduces Onyegin to her family. Olga's elder sister, Tatyana, promptly falls in love with Onyegin, and in a letter, which is always quoted as one of the finest passages in Russian literature, and the most perfect portrait of the noble Russian woman's soul, she declares her love for him. Onyegin politely snubs her, lecturing her in a fatherly way, and no one is informed of the occurrence, except Tatyana's old nurse, who, though stupid, is absolutely devoted to her, and does not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyana's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyegin is present, being urged thereto by Lensky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened between him and Tatyana, and innocently scheming to bring them together, place him opposite her at dinner. Angered by this, he revenges himself on the wholly innocent Lensky, by flirting outrageously with Olga (the wedding-day is only a fortnight distant), and Olga, being as vain and weak as she is pretty, does her share. The result is, that Lensky challenges Onyegin to a duel, and the seconds insist that it must be fought, though Onyegin would gladly apologize. He kills Lensky, unintentionally, and immediately departs on his travels. Olga speedily consoles herself, and marries a handsome officer. Tatyana, a girl of profound feelings, remains inconsolable, refuses all offers of marriage, and at last, yielding to the entreaties of her anxious relatives, consents to spend a season in Moscow. As a wall-flower, at her first ball, she captivates a wealthy prince, of very high standing in St. Petersburg, and is persuaded by her parents to marry him. When Onyegin returns to the capital he finds the little country girl, whose love he had scorned, one of the greatest ladies at the court and in society; and he falls madly in love with her. Her cold indifference galls him, and increases his love. He writes three letters, to which she does not reply. Then he forces himself into her boudoir and finds her reading one of his letters and weeping over it. She then confesses that she loves him still, but dismisses him with the assurance that she will remain true to her noble and loving husband. Tatyana is regarded as one of the finest, most vividly faithful portraits of the genuine Russian woman in all Russian literature; while Olga is considered fully her equal, as a type, and in popular sympathy; and the other characters are almost equally good in their various lines.

Besides a host of beautiful lyric poems, Pushkin left several dramatic fragments: "The Rusalka" or "Water Nymph," on which Dargomyzhsky founded a beautiful opera, "The Stone Guest,"[11] "The Miserly Knight," and chief of all, and like "Evgeny Onyegin," epoch-making in its line, the historical dramatic fragment "Boris Godunoff." This founded a school in Russian dramatic writing. It is impossible to do justice in translation to the exquisite lyrics; but the following soliloquy, from "Boris Godunoff," will serve to show Pushkin's power in blank verse. Boris Godunoff, brother-in-law to the Tzar Feodor Mikhailovitch, has at last reached the goal of his ambition, and mounted the throne, at what cost his own speech shows: Scene: The Imperial Palace. The Tzar enters:

I've reached the height of power; 'Tis six years now that I have reigned in peace; But there's no happiness within my soul. Is it not thus—in youth we thirst and crave The joy of love; but once that we have quenched Our hungry heart with brief possession, We're tired, and cold, and weary on the instant! The sorcerers in vain predict long life; And promise days of undisturbed power. Nor power, nor life, nor aught can cheer my heart; My soul forebodeth heaven's wrath and woe. I am not happy. I did think to still With plenty and with fame my people here; To win for aye their love by bounties free. But vain are all my cares and empty toils: A living power is hated by the herd; They love the dead alone, only the dead. What fools we are, when popular applause, Or the loud shout of masses thrills our heart! God sent down famine on this land of ours; The people howled, gave up the ghost in torment; I threw the granaries open, and my gold I showered upon them; sought out work for them. Made mad by suffering, they turned and cursed me! By conflagrations were their homes destroyed; I built for them their dwellings fair and new; And they accused me—said I had set the fires! That's the Lord's judgment;—seek its love who will! Then dreamed I bliss in mine own home to find; I thought to make my daughter blest in wedlock: Death, like a whirlwind, snatched her betrothed away, And rumor craftily insinuates That I am author of my own child's widowhood:— I, I, unhappy father that I am! Let a man die—I am his secret slayer. I hastened on the death of Feodor; I gave my sister, the Tzaritza, poison; I poisoned her, the lovely nun,—still I! Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm, Amid the sorrows of this present world; Conscience alone, mayhap: Thus, when 'tis pure, it triumphs O'er bitter malice, o'er dark calumny; But if there be in it a single stain, One, only one, by accident contracted, Why then, all's done; as with foul plague The soul consumes, the heart is filled with gall, Reproaches beat, like hammers, in the ears, The man turns sick, his head whirls dizzily, And bloody children float before my eyes.[12] I'd gladly flee—yet whither? Horrible! Yea, sad his state, whose conscience is not clean.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How did the reign of Katherine II. mark a distinct advance in the development of Russian literature?

2. Describe the literary activities of Katherine II.

3. Who was Princess Dashkoff?

4. Describe the early life and character of Von Vizin.

5. What qualities did he show in his play "The Brigadier"?

6. How did the characters in his "The Hobbledehoy" compare with those in the plays of Katherine II.?

7. Give an account of this play.

8. Give the chief events in the life of Derzhavin.

9. Why is he especially worthy to be remembered?

10. What are some of the beautiful thoughts in the ode "God"?

11. How was Kheraskoff regarded in his own day?

12. What was the character of Bogdanovitch's poem, "Dushenka"?

13. What influence had the fables of Khemnitzer?

14. Give examples of them.

15. What incidents show the effect of his comedy "Calumny"?

16. Give an account of the life of Karamzin.

17. Give examples of the character of some of his sentimental tales.

18. What real services did he render to Russian literature?

19. What importance had Dmitrieff and Ozeroff?

20. How did the translations of German and French writers, made by Zhukovsky, affect the literary ideals of his time?

21. Give the chief facts in the life of Kryloff.

22. Give examples of his fables.

23. Describe the ancestry and early life of Pushkin.

24. What is his position in Russian literature?

25. How were his talents shown in Evgeny Onyegin?

26. What is the character of the soliloquy from Boris Godunoff?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Memoirs of the Empress Katherine II. Written by herself.

The Princess Dashkoff. Memoirs written by herself, and containing letters of the Empress Katherine II.

Original Fables. Kryloff. (The translation by Mr. Harrison, London, 1884, is regarded as the best of the twelve translations of Kryloff's works.)

Specimens from the Russian Poets. 2 volumes. By Sir John Bowring. Specimens of poetry from Lomonosoff through Zhukovsky.

Prose Tales. Alexander Pushkin. Translated by T. Keane.

Translations from Pushkin, in Memory of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Poet's Birthday. C. E. Turner.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I take this translation from Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," rather than attempt a metrical translation myself. It is reasonably close to the original—as close as most metrical translations are—and gives the spirit extremely well. Sir John Bowring adds the following footnote: "This is the poem of which Golovnin says in his narrative, that it has been rendered into Japanese, by order of the emperor, and hung up, embroidered in gold, in the Temple of Jeddo. I learn from the periodicals that an honor somewhat similar has been done in China to the same poem. It has been translated into the Chinese and Tartar languages, written on a piece of rich silk, and suspended in the imperial palace at Pekin." There are several editions of Sir John's book, the one here used being the second, 1821; but the author admits that in the first edition he stretched the poetic license further than he had a right to do, in this first verse. The book is now rare, but this statement will serve as a warning to those who may happen upon the first edition.

[6] Karamzin's youngest daughter, by his second marriage, was alive when I was in Russia,—a charming old lady. She gave me her own copy of her "favorite book," a volume (in French) by Khomyakoff, very rare and difficult to obtain; and in discussing literary matters, wound up thus: "They may say what they will about the new men, but no one ever wrote such a beautiful style as my dear papa!" I also knew some of Ozeroff's relatives.

[7] Pronounced Alyog.

[8] A translation of this—which is too long to quote here—may be found in Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets," Vol. II.

[9] These imperial favors and pensions were continued to his children. His son, an artist, regularly visited Russia as the guest of Alexander III. I met him on two occasions and was enabled to judge of his father's charms of mind and manner.

[10] This building still exists, with its garden alluded to in the "Memories." But though it still bears its name, it is connected by a glazed gallery with the old palace, famous chiefly as Katherine II.'s residence, across the street; and it is used for suites of apartments, allotted for summer residence to certain courtiers. The exact arrangement of the rooms in Pushkin's day is not now known.

[11] "The Stone Guest" is founded on the Don Juan legend, like the familiar opera "Don Giovanni." Musorgsky set it to music, in sonorous, Wagnerian recitative style (though the style was original with him, not copied from Wagner, who came later). It is rarely given in public, but I had the pleasure of hearing it rendered by famous artists, accompanied by the composer Balakireff, at the house of a noted art and musical critic in St. Petersburg.

[12] The reference is to Godunoff's presumptive share in the murder, at Uglitch, of Ivan the Terrible's infant heir, the Tzarevitch Dmitry.



CHAPTER VIII

SEVENTH PERIOD, FROM PUSHKIN TO THE WRITERS OF THE FORTIES.

Even Karamzin's vast influence on his contemporaries cannot be compared with that exercised by Pushkin on the literature of the '20's and '30's of the nineteenth century; and no Russian writer ever effected so mighty a change in literature as Pushkin. Among other things, his influence brought to life many powerful and original talents, which would not have ventured to enter the literary career without Pushkin's friendly support and encouragement. He was remarkably amiable in his relations with all contemporary writers (except certain journalists in St. Petersburg and Moscow), and treated with especial respect three poets of his day, Delvig, Baratynsky, and Yazykoff. He even exaggerated their merits, exalting the work of the last two above his own, and attributing great significance to Delvig's most insignificant poems and articles. Hence their names have become so closely connected with his, that it is almost impossible to mention him without mentioning them.

Baron Anton Antonovitch Delvig (1798-1831) the descendant of a Baltic Provinces noble, was one of Pushkin's comrades in the Lyceum, and published his first collection of poems in 1829.

Evgeny Abramovitch Baratynsky (1800-1844) came of a noble family of good standing. His poetry was founded on Byronism, like all European poetry of that day, and was also partly under the influence of the fantastic romanticism introduced by Zhukovsky. He never developed beyond a point which was reached by Pushkin in his early days in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Gypsies," "The Fountain of Baktchesarai," and the first chapters of "Evgeny Onyegin." He wrote one very fine poem, devoted to Finland.

Nikolai Mikhailovitch Yazykoff (1803-1846) was of noble birth, and published a number of early poems in 1819. One of his best and longest, published about 1836, was a dramatic tale of "The Fire Bird." Between 1837-1842 his "The Lighthouse," "Gastun," "Sea Bathing," "The Ship," "The Sea," and a whole series of elegies, are also very good. Yazykoff's poetry is weaker and paler in coloring than Delvig's or Baratynsky's, yet richer than all of theirs in really incomparable outward form of the verse, and in poetical expression of thought; in fact, he was "the poet of expression," and rendered great service by his boldness and originality of language, in that it taught men to write not as all others wrote, but as it lay in their individual power to write; in other words, he inculcated individuality in literature.

The only one of the many poets of Pushkin's epoch in Russia who did not repeat and develop, in different keys, the themes of their master's poetry, was Alexander Sergyeevitch Griboyedoff (1795-1829). He alone was independent, original, and was related to the Pushkin period as Kryloff was to the Karamzin period—merely by the accident of time, not by the contents of his work. Griboyedoff was the first of a series of Russian poets who depicted life in absolutely faithful, but gloomy, colors; and it was quite in keeping with this view, that he did not live to see in print the comedy in which his well-earned fame rested, at the time, and which still keeps it fresh, by performances on the stage at the present day.

There was nothing very cheerful or bright about the social life of the '20's in the nineteenth century to make Russian poets take anything but a gloomy view of matters in general. Griboyedoff, as an unprejudiced man, endowed with great poetical gifts, and remarkable powers of observation, was able to give a faithful and wonderfully complete picture of high life in Moscow of that day, in his famous comedy "Woe from Wit" ("Gore ot Uma"), and introduce to the stage types which had never, hitherto, appeared in Russian comedy, because no one had looked deep enough into Russian hearts, or been capable of limning, impartially and with fidelity to nature, the emptiness and vanity of the characters and aims which preponderated in Russian society.

He was well born and very well educated. After serving in the army in 1812, like most patriotic young Russians of the day, he entered the foreign office, in 1817. There he probably made the acquaintance of Pushkin, but he never became intimate with him, as he belonged to a different literary circle, which included actors and dramatic writers. His first dramatic efforts were not very promising, though his first comedy, "The Young Married Pair," was acted in St. Petersburg in 1816. In 1819 he was offered the post of secretary of legation in Persia, which he accepted; and this took him away from the gay and rather wild society existence which he was leading, with bad results in many ways. In Persia, despite his multifarious occupations, and his necessary study of Oriental languages, Griboyedoff found time to plan his famous comedy in 1821, and in 1822 he wrote it in Georgia, whither he had been transferred. But he remodeled and rewrote portions of it, and it was finished only in 1823, when he spent a year in Moscow, his native city. When it was entirely ready for acting, he went to St. Petersburg, but neither his most strenuous efforts, nor his influence in high quarters, sufficed to secure the censor's permission for its performance on stage, or to get the requisite license for printing it. But it circulated in innumerable manuscript copies, and every one was in raptures over it. Even the glory of Pushkin's "Evgeny Onyegin," which appeared at about the same time, did not overshadow Griboyedoff's glory. Strange to say, Pushkin, who had magnified Delvig, Baratynsky, and Yazykoff far above their merits, and in general, was accustomed to overrate all talent, whether it belonged to his own friends or to strangers, was extremely severe on Griboyedoff's comedy, and detected many grave defects in it.

Griboyedoff was greatly irritated by his failure to obtain proper public recognition of his comedy. He expressed his feelings freely, became more embittered than ever against mankind in general, and went back to Georgia, in 1825, where he added to his previous poems, and took part in the campaign against Persia, in which he rendered great services to the commander-in-chief. As a reward, he was sent to St. Petersburg (1828), to present the treaty of peace to the Emperor. He was promptly appointed minister plenipotentiary to Persia, and on his way thither, in Tiflis, married a Georgian princess. His stern course of action and his disregard of certain rooted Oriental customs aroused the priesthood and the ignorant masses of Teheran against him, and a riot broke out. After a heroic defense of the legation, all the Russians, including Griboyedoff, were torn to pieces. His wife had been left behind in Tabreez and escaped. She buried his remains at a monastery near Tiflis, in accordance with a wish which he had previously expressed.

There is not much plot to "Woe from Wit." Moltchalin, Famusoff's secretary, a cold, calculating, fickle young man, has been making love to Famusoff's only child, an heiress, Sophia, an extremely sentimental young person. Famusoff rails against foreign books and fashions, "destroyers of our pockets and our hearth," and lauds Colonel Skalozub, an elderly pretender to Sophia's hand, explaining the general servile policy of obtaining rank and position by the Russian equivalent of "pull," which is called "connections." He compares his with Tchatsky, to the disadvantage of the latter, who had been brought up with Sophia, and had been in love with her before his departure on his travels three years previously, though he had never mentioned the fact. Tchatsky gives rise to this diatribe by returning from his travels at this juncture, asking for Sophia's hand, and trying to woo the girl herself with equal unsuccess. Tchatsky's arraignment of the imitation of foreign customs then everywhere prevalent, does not win favor from any one. Worse yet, he expresses his opinion of Moltchalin; and Sophia, in revenge, drops a hint that Tchatsky is crazy. The hint grows apace, and the cause is surmised to be a bullet-wound in the head, received during a recent campaign. Another "authority" contradicts this; it comes from drinking champagne by the gobletful—no, by the bottle—no, by the case. But Famusoff settles the matter by declaring that it comes from knowing too much. This takes place at an evening party at the Famusoffs, and Tchatsky returns to the room to meet with an amazing reception. Eventually, he discovers that he is supposed to be mad, and that he is indebted to Sophia for the origin of the lie; also, that she is making rendezvous with the low-minded, flippant Moltchalin. At last Sophia discovers that Moltchalin is making love to her maid through inclination, and to her only through calculation. She casts him off, and orders him out of the house. Tchatsky, cured of all illusions about her, renounces his suit for her hand, and declares that he will leave Moscow forever. Tchatsky, whose woe is due to his persistence in talking sense and truth to people who do not care to hear it, and to his manly independence all the way through, comes to grief through having too much wit; hence the title.

Not one of Pushkin's successors, talented as many of them were, was able to attain to the position of importance which the great poet had rendered obligatory for future aspirants. It is worth noting that Pushkin's best work, in his second, non-Byronic, purely national style, enjoyed less success among his contemporaries than his early, half-imitative efforts, where the characters were weak, lacking in independent creation, and where the whole tone was gloomy. This gloomy tone expressed the sentiments of all Russia of the period, and it was natural that Byronic heroes should be in consonance with the general taste. At this juncture, a highly talented poet arose, Mikhail Yurievitch Lermontoff (1814-1841), who, after first imitating Pushkin, speedily began to imitate Byron—and that with far more success than Pushkin had ever done—with great delicacy and artistic application to the local conditions. Thus, as a vivid, natural echo of this epoch in Russian life, the poet became dear to the heart of Russians; and in the '40's they regarded him as the equal of the writers they most loved.

Lermontoff, the son of a poor but noble family, was reared by his grandmother, as his mother died when he was a baby, and his father, an army officer, could not care for him. The grandmother did her utmost to give him the best education possible at that time, and to make him a brilliant society man. The early foreign influence over Pushkin was, as we have seen, French. That over Lermontoff was rather English, which was then becoming fashionable. But like many another young Russian of that day, Lermontoff wrote his first poems in French, imitating Pushkin's "The Fountain of Baktchesarai" and Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon." He finished the preparatory school with the first prize for composition and history, and entered the University, which he was soon compelled to leave, in company with a number of others, because of a foolish prank they had played on a professor. In those days, when every one was engrossed in thoughts of military service and a career, and when the few remaining paths which were open to a poor young man had thus been closed to him, but one thing was left for him to do—enter the army. Accordingly, in 1832, Lermontoff entered the Ensigns' School in St. Petersburg; but during his two years there he did not abandon verse-making, and here he first began to imitate Byron. A couple of poems, "Ismail Bey" (1832) and "Hadji Abrek" (1833) were published by a comrade, without Lermontoff's knowledge, at this time. In general, it may be said of Lermontoff at that period that he cared not in the least for literary fame, and made no haste to publish his writings, as to which he was very severe. Many were not published until five or six years after they were written.

Soon after leaving the military school Lermontoff wrote a drama, "The Masquerade" (1834), and the fine poem, "Boyarin Orsha," but his fame began only in 1837, with his splendid poem on the death of Pushkin, "The Death of the Poet," beginning, "The poet perished, the slave of honor," in which he expressed his entire sympathy with the poet in his untimely death, and poured out all his bitterness upon the circle which was incapable of appreciating and prizing the genius. This, in a multitude of manuscript copies, created a great sensation in St. Petersburg. Soon afterwards, on hearing contradictory rumors as to the duel and Pushkin's death, he added sixteen verses, beginning, "And you, ye arrogant descendants." One of the prominent persons therein attacked having had his attention called to the matter in public by an officious gossip (he had probably known all about it before, and deliberately ignored the matter), felt obliged to report Lermontoff. The result was that Lermontoff was transferred as ensign to a dragoon regiment which was serving in Georgia, and early in 1837 he set out for the Caucasus. Through his grandmother's efforts he was permitted to return from the Caucasus about eight months later, to a hussar regiment. By this time people were beginning to appreciate him; he had written his magnificent "Ballad of Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kalashnikoff," which every one hailed as an entirely new phenomenon in Russian literature, amazing in its highly artistic pictures, full of power and dignity, combined with an exterior like that of the inartistic productions of folk-poetry. This poem was productive of all the more astonishment, because his "The Demon,"[13] written much earlier (1825-1834), was little known. "The Demon" is poor in contents, but surprisingly rich in wealth and luxury of coloring, and in the endless variety of its pictures of Caucasian life and nature.

In 1838, while residing in St. Petersburg, Lermontoff wrote little at first, but in 1839 he wrote "Mtzyri," and a whole series of fine tales in prose, which eventually appeared under the general title of "A Hero of Our Times." This work, which has lost much of its vivid interest for people of the present day, must remain, nevertheless, one of the most important monuments of that period to which Lermontoff so completely belonged. In the person of the hero, Petchorin, he endeavored to present "a portrait composed of the vices of the generation of which he was a contemporary," and he "drew the man of the period as he understood him, and as, unfortunately, he was too often met with." Lermontoff admitted that in Petchorin he had tried to point out the "malady" which had attacked all Russian society of that day. All this he said in a preface to the second edition, after people had begun to declare that in the novel he had represented himself and his own experiences. Naturally Petchorin was drawn on Byronic lines, in keeping with the spirit of the '30's, when individuality loudly protested against the oppressive conditions of life. Naturally, also, all this now appears to be a caricature, true to the life of the highest Russian society as it was when it was written. Before he had quite completed this work, in February, 1840, Lermontoff fought a duel with the son of Baron de Barante, a well-known French historian, and was transferred, in consequence, to an infantry regiment in the Caucasus, whither he betook himself for the third time. A year later, after being permitted to make a brief stay in St. Petersburg, he returned to the Caucasus, and three months afterwards he was killed in a duel (on July 25, O. S., 1841) with a fellow officer, Martynoff, and was buried on the estate in the government of Penza, where he had been reared by his grandmother. The latest work of the poet, thus cut off almost before his prime, consisted of lyrics, which were full of power and perfection, and gave plain promise of the approaching maturity of the still young and not fully developed but immense talent.

His famous "Ballad of Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kalashnikoff" must be given in a summary and occasional quotations, as it is too long to reproduce in full. It lends itself better to dignified and adequate reproduction than do his lyrics, because it is not rhymed.[14] After a brief preface, the poet says: "We have composed a ballad in the ancient style, and have sung it to the sound of the dulcimer."

The red sun shineth not in the heaven, The blue clouds delight not in it; But at his banqueting board, in golden crown, Sitteth the Terrible Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch. Behind him stand the table-deckers, Opposite him all the boyars and the princes, At his side, all about, the lifeguardsmen; And the Tzar feasteth to the glory of God, To his own content and merriment.

The ballad goes on to relate how the Tzar then ordered the beakers to be filled with wine from beyond the seas, and how all drank and lauded the Tzar. One brave warrior, a gallant youth, did not dip his mustache in the golden cup, but dropped his eyes, drooped his head, and meditated. The Tzar frowned, rapped on the floor with his iron-tipped staff, and finding that the young man still paid no heed, called him to account. "Hey, there, our faithful servant Kiribyeevitch, art thou concealing some dishonorable thought? Or art thou envious of our glory? Or hath our honorable service wearied thee?" and he reproaches the youth. Then Kiribyeevitch answered him, bowing to his girdle, begging the Tzar not to reproach his unworthy servant, but if he has offended the Tzar, he begs that the latter will order his head to be cut off. "It oppresseth my heroic shoulders, and itself unto the damp earth doth incline." The Tzar inquires why the lifeguardsman is sad. "Has his kaftan of gold brocade grown threadbare? Has his cap of sables got shabby? Has he exhausted his treasure? Has his well-tempered saber got nicked? Or has some merchant's son from across the Moscow River overcome him in a boxing match?" The young lifeguardsman shakes his curly head, and says that all these things are as they should be, but that while he was riding his mettlesome steed in the Trans-Moscow River quarter of the town (the merchant's quarter), with his silken girdle drawn taut, his velvet cap rimmed jauntily with black sables, fair young maidens had stood at the board gates, gazing at him, admiring and whispering together; but one there was who gazed not, admired not, but covered her face with her striped veil, "and in all Holy Russia, our Mother, no such beauty is to be found or searched out. She walketh swimmingly, as though she were a young swan. She gazeth sweetly, as though she were a dove. When she uttereth a word, 'tis like a nightingale warbling. Her cheeks are aflame with roses, like unto the dawn in God's heaven. Her tresses of ruddy gold, intertwined with bright ribbons, flow rippling down her shoulders, and kiss her white bosom. She was born in a merchant's family. Her name is Alyona[15] Dmitrievna."

He describes how he has fallen in love with her at first sight, and cares no more for anything in all the world save her, and begs that he may be sent away to the steppes along the Volga, to live a free kazak life, where he may lay his "turbulent head" on a Mussulman's spear (in the fights with the Tatars of Kazan is what is meant), where the vultures may claw out his tearful eyes, and his gray bones be washed by the rain, and his wretched dust, without burial, may be scattered to the four quarters of the compass. Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch laughs, advises him to send gifts to his Alyona, and celebrate the wedding. The lifeguardsman then confesses that he has not told the whole truth; that the beauty is already the wife of a young merchant.

In Part II., the young merchant is represented as seated at his shop-board, a stately, dashing young fellow, Stepan Paramonovitch Kalashnikoff, spreading out his silken wares, beguiling his patrons (or "guests") with flattering speech, counting out gold and silver. But it is one of his bad days; the wealthy lords pass and do not so much as glance at his shop. "The bells of the holy churches have finished chiming for Vespers. The cloudy glow of evening burneth behind the Kremlin. Little clouds are flitting athwart the sky. The great Gostiny Dvor[16] is empty." And Stepan Paramonovitch locks the oaken door of his shop with a German (that is, a foreign) spring-lock, fastens the fierce, snarling dog to the iron chain, and goes thoughtfully home to his young housewife beyond the Moscow River. On arriving there he is surprised that his wife does not come to meet him, as is her wont. The oaken table is not set, the taper before the ikona (the holy picture) is almost burned out. He summons the old maid-servant and asks where his wife is at that late hour, and what has become of his children? The servant replies that his wife went to Vespers as usual, but the priest and his wife have already sat down to sup, yet the young housewife has not returned, and his little children are neither playing nor in bed, but weeping bitterly. As young Merchant Kalashnikoff then looks out into the gloomy street he sees that the night is very dark, snow is falling, covering up men's tracks, and he hears the outer door slam, then hasty footsteps approaching, turns round and beholds his young wife, pale, with hair uncovered (which is highly improper for a married woman), her chestnut locks unbraided, sprinkled with snow and hoarfrost, her eyes dull and wild, her lips muttering unintelligibly. The husband inquires where she has been, the reason for her condition, and threatens to lock her up behind an iron-bound oaken door, away from the light of day. She, weeping bitterly, begs her "lord, her fair little red sun," to slay her or to listen to her, and she explains, that as she was coming home from Vespers she heard the snow crunching behind her, glanced round, and beheld a man running. She covered herself with her veil, but the man seized her hands, bade her have no fear, and said that he was no robber, but the servant of the Terrible[17] Tzar, Kiribyeevitch, from the famous family of Maliuta, promised her her heart's desire—gold, pearls, bright gems, flowered brocades—if she would but love him, and grant him one embrace. Then he caressed and kissed her, so that her cheeks are still burning, while the neighbors looked on, laughed, and pointed their fingers at her in scorn. Tearing herself from his hands, she fled homewards, leaving in his hands her flowered kerchief (her husband's gift) and her Bokhara veil. She entreats her husband not to give her over to the scorn of their neighbors, she is an orphan, her elder brother is in a foreign land, her younger brother still a mere child.

Stepan Paramonovitch thereupon sends for his two younger brothers, but they send back a demand to know what has happened that he should require their presence on a dark, cold night. He informs them that Kiribyeevitch, the lifeguardsman, has dishonored their family; that such an insult the soul cannot brook, neither a brave man's heart endure. On the morrow there is to be a fight with fists in the presence of the Tzar himself, and it is his intention to go to it, and stand up against that lifeguardsman and fight him to the death until his strength is gone. He asks them, in case he is killed, to step forth for "Holy Mother right," and as they are younger than he, fresher in strength, and with fewer sins on their heads, perchance the Lord will show mercy upon them. And this reply his brethren spake: "Whither the breeze bloweth beneath the sky, thither hasten the dutiful little clouds. When the dark blue eagle summoneth with his voice to the bloody vale of slaughter, summoneth to celebrate the feast, to clear away the dead, to him do the little eaglets wing their flight. Thou art our elder brother, our second father, do what thou see'st fit, and deemest best, and we will not fail thee, our own blood and bone."

Part III. picturesquely and vividly describes the scene of the encounter; the challenge to the combatants to stand forth, by command of the Tzar, with a promise in the latter's name that the victors shall receive from him rewards. Then the redoubtable Lifeguardsman Kiribyeevitch steps forth. Thrice the challenge is repeated before any one responds. Then young Merchant Kalashnikoff comes forward, makes his reverence to the Tzar, and when Kiribyeevitch demands his name, he announces it, and adds that he was born of an honorable father and has always lived according to God's law; he has not cast his eyes on another man's wife, nor played the bandit on a dark night, nor hid from the light of heaven, and that he means to fight to the death. On hearing this, Kiribyeevitch "turned pale as snow in autumn, his bold eyes clouded over, a shiver ran through his mighty shoulders, on his parted lips the words fell dead." With one blow, the young merchant crushes in the lifeguardsman's breast, and the latter falls dead, the death being beautifully described in stately, picturesque language. At sight thereof, the Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch waxed wroth, stamped on the earth, scowled with his black brows; ordered that the young merchant be seized and hauled before him. He then demands whether Kalashnikoff has slain his faithful servant Kiribyeevitch "voluntarily, involuntarily, or against his will." Kalashnikoff boldly makes answer that he has done it with deliberate intent, and that the reason therefor he will not tell to the Tzar, but only to God alone. He tells the Tzar to order him to be executed, but not to deprive his little children or his young widow and his brothers of his favor. The Tzar replies that it is well Kalashnikoff has answered truthfully; he will give the young widow and the children a grant from his treasury, and give command that, from that day forth, his brothers may traffic throughout the wide Russian realm free of taxes. But Kalashnikoff must mount the scaffold, lay down his turbulent head, and the executioner shall be ordered to make his axe very sharp, and the great bell shall be tolled in order that all the men of Moscow may know that the Tzar has not deprived him of his favor. The execution and Kalashnikoff's farewell speeches to his brothers, with his last messages to his wife not to grieve so greatly, and his commands that she is not to tell his children how their father died, together with requests for prayers for his soul, are described in very touching and lofty terms, as are also the burial, and the scenes at the grave.

* * * * *

The influence of Schelling's philosophy on the society of Moscow (the literary center until half-way through the '30's of the nineteenth century) was very great. This philosophy held that every historical nation should express some idea or other; that a nation could be called historical only on condition of its being independent in this respect; and that its importance in the progress of general civilization is determined by its degree of independence. This set all thoughtful people to considering the place of Russia among the European nations; and all the problems suggested by this philosophy came up with special force in the Russian literature of the end of the '30's, and split society into two great camps—the Slavyanophils (slavophils)[18] and the Westerners. These camps had existed earlier, but had concerned themselves only with the purification of the Russian language, or with sentimental admiration for everything Russian, or for everything foreign, as the case might be. But now both parties undertook to solve the problems connected with the fate of the nation.

Schelling's philosophy also suggested new views as to the theory of art and the significance of literature in the life of a nation, and evolved the conclusion, that a nation's literature, even more than its civilization, should be entirely independent. This naturally led the Slavyanophils to reflect upon the indispensability of establishing Russian literature on a thoroughly national, independent basis. Naturally, also, this led to the Slavyanophils contesting the existence of a Russian literature in the proper sense of the term; since the whole of it, from Lomonosoff to Pushkin, had been merely a servile imitation of Western literature, and did not in the least express the spirit of the Russian people, and of the Schellingists. A number of the professors in the Moscow University belonged to this party. Naturally the students in their department—the philological faculty—came under their influence, and under this influence was reared the famous Russian critic, Vissarion Grigorievitch Byelinsky (1811-1848). His name is chiefly identified with the journal "The Annals of the Fatherland" (of St. Petersburg), where he published his brilliant critical articles on Griboyedoff, Gogol's "The Inspector," on Lermontoff's works, and on those of other writers; on French contemporary literature, and on current topics at home and abroad, among them articles condemning many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Pushkin constitutes a complete critical history of Russian literature, beginning with Lomonosoff and ending with Pushkin. By these Byelinsky's standing as an important factor in literature was thoroughly established, and all the young writers of the succeeding epoch, that of the '50's, gathered around him. Grigorovitch, Turgeneff, Gontcharoff, Nekrasoff, Apollon Maikoff, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the rest, may be said to have been reared on Byelinsky's criticism, inspired by it to creative activity, and indebted to it for much of their fame. Byelinsky, moreover, educated the minds of that whole generation, and prepared men for the social movement of the '60's, which was characterized by many reforms.

After 1846 Byelinsky was connected with the journal, "The Contemporary," published by the poet Nekrasoff, and I. I. Panaeff, to which the best writers of the day contributed. Here, during the brief period when his health permitted him to work, he expressed even bolder and more practical ideas, and became the advocate of the "natural school," of which he regarded Gogol as the founder, wherein poetry was treated as an integral part of every-day life. Turgeneff has declared, that Byelinsky indisputably possessed all the chief qualities of a great critic, and that no one before him, or better than he, ever expressed a correct judgment and an authoritative verdict, and that he was, emphatically, "the right man in the right place."

One author who deserves to be better known outside of Russia produced the really original and indescribably fascinating works on which his fame rests during the last ten or twelve years of his long life, late in the '40's and '50's, although he was much older than the authors we have recently studied, and began to write much earlier than many of them. His early writing, however, was in the classical style, and does not count in comparison with his original descriptions of nature, and of the life of the (comparatively) distant past. Sergyei Timofeevitch Aksakoff (1791-1859), the descendant of a very ancient noble family, was born in far-away eastern Russia, in Ufa, and was very well educated by his mother, at schools, and at Kazan University. His talents first revealed themselves in 1847, in his "Notes on Angling," and his "Diary of a Sportsman with a Gun," in the Orenburg Government (1852). Most famous of all, and most delightful, are the companion volumes, "A Family Chronicle and Souvenirs" (1856) and "The Childhood's Years of Bagroff's Grandson" (1858). In these Russian descriptive language made a great stride in advance, even after Pushkin and Gogol; and as a limner of landscape, he has no equal in Russian literature. The most noteworthy point about his work is that there is not a trace of creative fancy or invention; he describes reality, takes everything straight from life, and describes it with amazing faithfulness and artistic harmony. He was the first Russian writer to look on Russian life from a positive instead of from a negative point of view.[19]

Pushkin's period had been important, not only in rendering Russian literature national, but still more so in bringing literature into close connection with life and its interests. This had in turn led to a love of reading and of literature all over the country, and had developed latent talents. This love spread to classes hitherto unaffected by it; and among the talents it thus developed, none was more thoroughly independent than that of Alexei Vasilievitch Koltzoff (1809-1842), who was so original, so wholly unique in his genius, that he cannot rightly be assigned to any class, and still stands as an isolated phenomenon. He was the son of a merchant of Voronezh, who was possessed of considerable means, and he spent the greater part of his youth on the steppes, helping his father, a drover, who supplied tallow-factories. After being taught to read and write by a theological student, young Koltzoff was sent to the district school for four months, after which his education was regarded as finished, because he knew as much as the people about him, and because no more was required for business purposes. But the lad acquired a strong love of reading, and devoted himself to such literature as he could procure, popular fairy-tales, the "Thousand and One Nights," and so forth. He was sixteen years of age when Dmitrieff's works fell into his hands, and inspired him with a desire to imitate them, and to "make songs" himself. As yet he did not understand the difference between poetry and popular songs, and did not read verses, but sang them. The local book-seller was the first to recognize his poetical tendency, and in a degree, guided him on the right road with a "Russian Prosody," and other suitable books, such as the works of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, and other contemporary poets. A passion for writing poetry was in the air in the '20's. But although he yielded to this and to the promptings of his genius, it was a long time before he was able to clothe his thoughts in tolerable form. An unhappy love had a powerful influence on the development of his poetical talent, and his versified efforts suddenly became fervent songs of love and hate, of melancholy, soulful cries of grief and woe, full of melodious expressions of the world about him. One of Byelinsky's friends, whose family lived near Voronezh, made his acquaintance, read his poems and applauded much in them. Three years later, in 1833, at the request and expense of this new friend, Koltzoff published a small collection, containing eighteen poems selected by him, which showed that he possessed an original and really noteworthy poetical gift. In 1835 Koltzoff visited St. Petersburg and made acquaintance with Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and many other literary men, and between 1836 and 1838 his fame penetrated even to the knowledge of the citizens in his native town. He continued to aid his father in business, but his heart was elsewhere—he longed for the intellectual companionship of his friends in Moscow, and all this rendered him extremely unhappy. In 1840 he spent three months with Byelinsky in St. Petersburg, and after that he remained in Voronezh, had another unhappy love affair, and dreamed continually of the possibility of quitting the place for good. But his father would not give him a kopek for such a purpose. His health gave way, and he died in 1842, aged thirty-three.

His poems are few in number, and the best of them belong to an entirely peculiar style, which he alone in Russian literature possesses, to which he alone imparted significance—the ballad, the national ballad compact, powerful, rich in expression, and highly artistic. The charm of nationality is so great, as expressed in Koltzoff's songs, that it is almost impossible to read them; one wants to sing them as the author sang the verses of others in his boyhood. Even his peculiar measures, which are not at all adapted to popular songs, do not destroy the harmonious impression made by them, and such pieces as "The Forest," "The Ballads of Cabman Kudryavitch," "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," and others, not only belong to the most notable productions of Russian lyric poetry, but are also representatives of an important historical phenomenon, as the first attempt to combine in one organic whole Russian artistic literature and the inexhaustible vast inartistic poetry of the people. "The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," which is not rhymed in the original, runs as follows:

Hot in heaven the summer sun doth shine, But me, young though I be, it warmeth not! My heart is dead with cold Through the perfidy of my affianced bride.

Woe-sadness upon me hath fallen, Upon my sorrowful head; My soul by deadly anguish is tormented, And from my body my soul doth long to flee.

Unto men have I resorted for help— With a laugh have they turned away; To the grave of my father, my mother— But they rise not at my call.

The world grew dark before mine eyes, Upon the grass I swooned. At dead of night, in a dreadful storm, They lifted me from the grave.

At night, in the storm, I saddled my steed; I set out, caring not whither I went— To lead a wretched life, to console myself, With rancor to demand satisfaction from men.

Romanticism established, as its first principles, freedom of creation and nationality of poetry, and these principles survived romanticism itself. Now, while romanticism preached freedom of creation, it circumscribed this freedom by selecting as subjects for poetical compositions chiefly the extraordinary sides of life, its majestic moments. Its heroes were always choice, powerful natures, who suffered profoundly because of the lot of all mankind, and were capable of gigantic conflicts against the whole world. Classicism had bequeathed this habit of regarding as worthy of poetical treatment only heroes who stood out from the mass, and of depicting these heroes only at critical crises. All this depended, in a great degree, upon the political and social conditions which prevailed at that epoch—the beginning of the nineteenth century. But quieter, more peaceful times dawned, and with them men's tastes and habits of mind underwent a change. They grew tired of scorning and hating reality, because it did not conform to their cherished dreams, and they began coolly to study it. The titanic heroes, who had become tiresome and anti-pathetic to the last degree, made way for ordinary mortals in their everyday surroundings. Lyrical exaltation was superseded by calm observation, or disintegrating analysis of the different elements of life; pathetic misery made way for cold irony, or jeeringly melancholy humor; and at last poetry was succeeded by prose, and the ruling poetical forms of the new epoch became the romance and the novel. This change took place almost simultaneously in all the literatures of Europe.

We have seen that Pushkin, towards the end of his career, entered upon this new path, with his prose tales, "The Captain's Daughter," "Dubrovsky," and so forth, and throughout the '30's of the nineteenth century, the romance and novel came, more and more, to occupy the most prominent place in Russian literature. We may pass over the rather long list of second-class writers who adventured in this field (of whom Zagoskin and Marlinsky are most frequently referred to), and devote our attention to the man who has been repeatedly called "the father of modern Russian realism," Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol (1809-1852). He is credited with having created all the types which we encounter in the works of the great novelists who followed him, and this is almost literally true, at least so far as the male characters are concerned. In particular, this applies to his famous "Dead Souls," which contains if not the condensed characterization in full of these types, at least the readily recognized germs of them. But in this respect, his early Little Russian Stories, "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka," and the companion volume, "Mirgorod," as well as his famous comedy, "The Inspector," must not be forgotten, for they contributed their full quota. Pushkin was one of Gogol's earliest and most ardent admirers, and it was because he recognized the latter's phenomenal talent in seizing the national types that he gave to him the idea for "Dead Souls," which he had intended to use himself. Thanks to his own genius (as well as to the atmosphere of the epoch in which he lived), he solved for himself, quite independently of any foreign influence, the problem of bringing Russian literature down from the clouds to everyday real life. He realized that the world was no longer living in a sort of modern epic, as it had been during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic campaigns, and that literature must conform to the altered conditions. Naturally, in his new quest after truth, Gogol-Yanovsky (to give him his full name) mingled romanticism and realism at first. But he soon discovered the true path. He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorotchinsky, Government of Poltava, and was separated only by two generations from the famous epoch of the Zaporozhian kazaks, who lived (as their name implies) below the rapids of the Dniepr. He has depicted their life in his magnificent novel "Taras Bulba." His grandfather had been the regimental scribe—a post of honor—of that kazak army, and the spirit of the Zaporozhian kazaks still lingered over the land which was full of legends, fervent, superstitious piety, and poetry.

Gogol's grandfather, who figures as "Rudy Panko, the bee-farmer," in the two volumes of Little Russian stories which established his fame, narrated to him at least one-half of those stories. His father, also, who represented the modern spirit, was an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of father and grandfather rendered their house the popular center of a very extensive neighborhood.

At school Gogol did not distinguish himself, but he wrote a good deal, all of an imitative character. After leaving school, it was with difficulty that he secured a place as copying-clerk, at a wretched salary, in St. Petersburg. He promptly resigned this when fame came, and secured the appointment as professor of history. But he was a hopelessly incompetent professor of history, despite his soaring ambitions, both on account of his lack of scholarship and the natural bent of his mind. The literary men who had obtained the position for him had discerned his immense talent in a perfectly new style of writing; and after failure had convinced him that heavy, scientific work was not in his line, he recognized the fact himself, and decided to devote himself to the sort of work for which nature had intended him. The first volume of his "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka" appeared at the end of 1831, and had an immense success. The second volume, "Mirgorod," was equally successful, all the more so, as it introduced, together with the pure merriment which had characterized the earlier tales, and the realism which was his specialty, so to speak, a new element—pathos; "laughter piercing through a mist of tears." In this style "Old-fashioned Gentry"[20] and "How Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovitch" are famous examples. Success always turned Gogol's head, and he immediately aspired to some undertaking far beyond his powers. In this case, for instance, despising, as usual, what he could do best, he planned a huge work, in nine volumes, on the history of the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his preparatory studies in the history of Little Russia led him to write his splendid epic, which is a composition of the highest art, "Taras Bulba," and diverted him from his ill-digested project.

He began to recognize that literary work was not merely a pastime, but his moral duty; and the first result of this conviction was his great play "The Inspector," finished in April, 1836. The authorities refused to produce it, but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard about it, read it, and gave imperative orders that it should be put on the stage, upholding Gogol with rapturous delight. Everybody—officials, the police, literary people, merchants—attacked the author. They raged at this comedy, refused to recognize their too lifelike portraits, and still endeavored to have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits failed under this persecution, and he fled abroad, whence thereafter he returned to Russia only at long intervals and for brief visits, chiefly to Moscow, where most of his faithful friends resided. He traveled a great deal, but spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him perennially poor despite the eventual and complete success, both artistically and financially, of "The Inspector," and of Part I. of "Dead Souls," which would have enabled him to live in comfort. He was wont to say that he could see Russia plainly only when he was at a distance from her, and in a measure, he proved the truth of his contention in the first volume of "Dead Souls." Thereby he justified Pushkin's expectations in giving him the subject of that work, which he hoped would enable Gogol to depict the classes and localities of the fatherland in the concentrated form of types. But he lived too long in Rome. The Russian mind in general is much inclined to mysticism, and Little Russia, in Gogol's boyhood, was exceptionally permeated with exaggerated religious sentiment. Mysticism seems to be peculiarly fatal to Russian writers of eminence; we have seen how Von Vizin and Zhukovsky were affected toward the end of their lives; we have a typical and even more pronounced example of it in a somewhat different form at the present time in Count L. N. Tolstoy. Lermontoff had inclined in that direction. Hence, it is not surprising that the moral and physical atmosphere of Rome, during a too prolonged residence there, eventually ruined Gogol's mind and health, and extinguished the last sparks of his genius, especially as even in his school-days he had shown a marked tendency (in his letters to his mother) to religious exaltation. Now, under the pressure of his personal tendencies and friendships, and the clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and an ascetic of the most extreme type. He regarded all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for (precisely as Count L. N. Tolstoy regards his masterpieces at the present time); and nevertheless, his overweening self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success of "The Inspector" and the first part of "Dead Souls" that he began to regard himself as a sort of divinely commissioned prophet, on whom it was incumbent to preach to his fellow-men. It will be seen that the parallel holds good in this respect also. Extracts from his hortatory letters which he published proved to Russians that his day was over. His failure in his self-imposed mission plunged him into the extremes of self-torment, and his lucid moments grew more and more rare. He destroyed what he had written of the second part of "Dead Souls," in the attacks of ecstatic remorse at such profane work which followed. (By some authorities it is believed that he did this unintentionally, meaning to destroy an entirely different set of papers.) In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and went thence to Moscow, where he resided until his death, becoming more and more extreme in his mysticism and asceticism. He spent sleepless nights in prayer; he tried to carry fasting to the extent of living for a week on one of the tiny double loaves which are used for the Holy Communion in the Eastern Catholic Church, a feat which it is affirmed can be performed with success, and even to more exaggerated extent, by practiced ascetics. Gogol died. His observation was acute; his humor was genuine, natural, infectious; his realism was of the most vivid description; his power of limning types was unsurpassed, and it is these types which have entered, as to their essential ingredients, into the works of his successors, that have rendered the Russian realistic literary school famous. He wrote only one complete play besides "The Inspector," and it is still acted occasionally, but it is not of a sort to appeal to the universal public, as is his famous comedy. The fantastic but amusing plot of this lesser comedy, "Marriage," is founded upon a young girl's meditations on that theme, and the actions which lead up to and follow them. The wealthy heroine of the merchant class, being desirous of marrying, enlists the services of the professional match-maker, the old-time Russian matrimonial agent, in the merchant and peasant classes. This match-maker offers for her choice several eligible suitors (all strangers), and the girl makes her choice. She is well pleased with it, but suddenly begins to speculate on the future; is moved to tears by the prospect that her daughter may be unhappy in a hypothetical marriage, in the dim future; and at last, driven to despair by this painful picture of her fancy, she evades her betrothed and breaks off the match.

The interest of "The Inspector" is perennial and universal; official negligence, corruption, bribery, masculine vanity and boastfulness, and feminine failings to match, are the exclusive prerogatives of no one nation or epoch. The comedy is not a caricature, but it is a faithful society portrait and satire, with intense condensation of character, and traits which are not only truly and typically Russian, but come within the ken of all fair-minded persons of other lands. The scene opens in a room at the house of the Chief of Police in a provincial town. Those present are: The Chief himself, the Curator of the Board of Benevolent Institutions, the Superintendent of Schools, the Judge, the Commissioner of Police, the Doctor, and two policemen.

CHIEF.—I have summoned you hither, gentlemen, in order to communicate to you an unpleasant piece of news. An Inspector is coming.

JUDGE.—What! An Inspector?

CHIEF.—An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito, and with secret orders, to boot.

JUDGE.—I thought so!

CURATOR.—If there's not trouble, I'm mistaken!

CHIEF.—I have warned you, gentlemen. See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artemy Philipp'itch! Without a doubt, this traveling official will wish, first of all, to inspect your institutions, and therefore, you must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps should be clean, and the sick people should not look like blacksmiths, as they usually do in private.

CURATOR.—Well, that is a mere trifle. We can put clean nightcaps on them.

CHIEF.—Moreover, you ought to have written up, over the head of each bed, in Latin or some other language—that's your affair—the name of each disease; when each patient was taken sick, the day and the hour. It is not well that your sick people should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there were fewer of them; it will be set down at once to bad supervision, or to lack of skill on the doctor's part.

CURATOR.—Oh, so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christian Ivan'itch and I have already taken measures; the nearer to nature, the better—we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a simple creature; if he dies, why then, he dies; if he gets well, why then, he gets well; and moreover, it would have been difficult for Christian Ivan'itch to make them understand him; he doesn't know one word of Russian.

CHIEF.—I should also advise you, Ammos Feodor'itch, to turn your attention to court affairs. In the anteroom, where the clients usually assemble, your janitor has got a lot of geese and goslings, which waddle about under foot. Of course it is praiseworthy to be thrifty in domestic affairs, and why should not the janitor be so, too? Only, you know, it is not proper in that place. I intended to mention it to you before, but always forgot it.

JUDGE.—I'll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very day. Will you dine with me?

CHIEF.—And moreover, it is not well that all sorts of stuff should be put to dry in the court-room, and that over the very desk with the documents, there should be a hunting-whip.... Yes, and strange to say, there is no man who has not his faults. God himself has arranged it so, and it is useless for free-thinkers to maintain the contrary.

JUDGE.—What do you mean by 'faults,' Anton Anton'itch? There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? Greyhound pups. That's quite another thing.

CHIEF.—Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the same.

JUDGE.—Well, no, Anton Anton'itch. But, for example, if some one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a shawl—

CHIEF.—Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church. I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every Sunday. But you—oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about the creation, one's hair rises straight up on his head.

JUDGE.—It came of itself, of its own accord.

CHIEF.—Well, in some cases, it is worse to have brains than to be entirely without them. As for you, Luka Luk'itch, as superintendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the teachers. One of them, for instance, the fat-faced one—I don't recall his name—cannot get along without making grimaces when he takes his seat—like this (makes a grimace); and then he begins to smooth his beard out from under his neckerchief with his hand. In short, if he makes such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said; it must be necessary; I am no judge as to that. But just consider—if he were to do that to a visitor, it might be very unpleasant; the Inspector, or anyone else, might take it as personal. The Devil knows what might come of it.... And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's a learned man, that's plain; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses control of himself. I heard him once; well, so long as he was talking about the Assyrians and the Babylonians, it was all right; but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by heavens! He jumped up from his seat, and dashed his chair down against the floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no doubt; but why smash the chairs?([21]) There will be a deficit in the accounts, just as the result of that.

SUPERINTENDENT.—Yes, he is hasty! I have spoken to him about it several times. He says: "What would you have? I would sacrifice my life for science."

CHIEF.—Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of Fate; a learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that would scare the very saints.

As the play proceeds in this lively vein, two men about town—in a humble way—the public busybodies, happen to discover at the Inn a traveler who has been living on credit for two weeks, and going nowhere. The landlord is on the point of putting the man in prison for debt, when the busybodies jump to the conclusion that he is the Inspector. The Prefect and the other officials accept their suggestion in spite of the traveler's plain statement as to his own identity as an uninfluential citizen. They set about making the town presentable, entertain him, bribe him against his will, and bow down before him. He enters into the spirit of the thing after a brief delay, accepts the hospitality, asks for loans, makes love to the Prefect's silly wife and daughter, betroths himself to the latter, receives the petitions and the bribes of the downtrodden townspeople, and goes off with the best post-horses the town can furnish, ostensibly to ask the blessing of a rich old uncle on his marriage. The Postmaster intercepts a cynically frank letter which the man has written to a friend, and in which he heaps ridicule on his credulous hosts. This opens their eyes at last, and at that moment, a gendarme appears and announces that the Inspector has arrived. Tableau.

Gogol's two volumes of Little Russian Tales, above-mentioned, must remain classics, and the volume of St. Petersburg Tales contains essentially the same ingredients, so that they may be considered as a whole. All the tales in the first two volumes are from his beloved native Little Russia. Some are merely poetical renderings of popular legends, counterparts of which are to be found in the folk-lore of many lands; such are "Vy," and "St. John's Eve's" and the exquisite "May Night," where the famous poetical spirit of the Ukraina (borderland) is displayed in its fullest force and beauty. "Know ye the night of the Ukraina?" he writes. "O, ye do not know the Ukraina night! Look upon it; from the midst of the sky gazes the moon; the illimitable vault of heaven has withdrawn into the far distance, has spread out still more immeasurably; it burns and breathes; the earth is all bathed in silvery light; and the air is wondrous, and cool, and perfumed, and full of tenderness, and an ocean of sweet odors is abroad. A night divine! An enchanting night! The forests stand motionless, inspired, full of darkness, and cast forth a vast shadow. Calm and quiet are the pools; the coldness and gloom of their waters is morosely hemmed in by the dark green walls of gardens. The virgin copses of wild bird-cherry and black cherry trees stretch forth their roots towards the coolness of the springs, and from time to time their leaves whisper as though in anger and indignation, when a lovely little breeze, and the wind of the night, creeping up for a moment, kisses them. All the landscape lies in slumber. But on high, everything is breathing with life, everything is marvelous, everything is solemnly triumphant. And in the soul there is something illimitable and wondrous, and throngs of silvery visions make their way into its depths. Night divine! Enchanting night! And all of a sudden, everything has become instinct with life; forests, pools, and steppes. The magnificent thunder of the Ukraina nightingale becomes audible, and one fancies that the moon, in the midst of the sky, has paused to listen to it.... As though enchanted, the hamlet dreams upon the heights. The mass of the cottages gleams still whiter, still more agreeably under the light of the moon; still more dazzlingly do their lowly walls stand out against the darkness. The songs have ceased. Everything is still. Pious people are all asleep. Only here and there are the small windows still a-glow. In front of the threshold of a few cottages only is a belated family eating its late supper."

Others of the tales are more exclusively national; such as "The Lost Document," "Sorotchinsky Fair," "The Enchanted Spot," and the like. But they display the same fertility of invention, combined with skill in management, and close study of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, all of which render them invaluable, both to Russians and to foreigners. More important are such stories as "Old-fashioned Gentry," "The Cloak" (from the volume of "St. Petersburg Tales"), wherein kindly wit is tempered with the purest, deepest pathos, while characters and customs are depicted with the greatest art and fidelity. "The Portrait," again, is semi-fantastic, although not legendary; and the "Diary of a Madman" is unexcelled as an amusing but affecting study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom, where the tedious, insignificant routine disperses what few wits the poor man was originally endowed with by nature.

In Gogol's greatest work, "Dead Souls," all his qualities are developed to the highest degree, though there is less pathos than in some of the short stories. This must forever rank as a Russian classic. The types are as vivid, as faithful, for those who know the Russia of to-day, as when they were first introduced to an enthusiastic Russian public, in 1847.

In the pre-emancipation days, a "soul" signified a male serf. Women were not taken account of in the periodical revisions; although the working unit, or tyaglo, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse—the indispensable trinity in agricultural labors. In the interval between revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay taxes on all the male serfs accredited to him on the official list, births being considered as an exact offset to deaths, for the sake of convenience. Another provision of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An ingenious fraud, suggested by a combination of these two laws, forms the basis of plot for "Dead Souls." The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official who has struggled up, cleverly but not too honestly, through the devious ways of bribe-taking, extortion, and not infrequent detection and disgrace, to a snug berth in the customs service, from which he has been ejected under conditions which render further upward flight quite out of the question. In this dilemma, he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors of mediocre probity all their "souls" which are dead, though still nominally alive, and are taxed as such. Land is being given away gratuitously in the southern governments of Kherson and Tauris to any one who will settle on it. This is a matter of public knowledge, and Tchitchikoff's plan consists in buying a thousand non-existent serfs—"dead souls"—at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece, for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south. He will then mortgage them to the loan bank of the nobility, known as the Council of Guardians, and obtain a capital. In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Pushkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the phenomenal opportunities which this plot of Tchitchikoff's wanderings offered for setting forth Russian manners, characters, customs, all Russian life, in town and country, as Gogol did. The author even contrives, in keen asides and allusions, to throw almost equal light on the life of the capital as well. His portraits of women are not exactly failures; they are more like composite photographs. His portraiture of men is supreme. In fact, there is no such thing in the whole of Gogol's work as a heroine, properly speaking, who plays a first-class part, or who is analyzed in modern fashion. The day was not come for that as yet.

"Taras Bulba," his great historical novel, offers a vivid picture of the famous kazak republic on the Dniepr, and equally with his other volumes, it stands in the first rank for its poetry, its dramatic force, its truth to life. It alone may be said to have a passionate love story.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What special gift as a writer had Yazykoff?

2. Give the chief events in the career of Griboyedoff.

3. What was the character of Russian social life at this time?

4. What was the plot of "Woe from Wit"?

5. Describe the influence of Lermontoff.

6. What is the story of his famous "Ballad of the Tzar, the Lifeguardsman, and the Merchant"? Supply full title.

7. What was Schelling's philosophy, and how did it affect Russian thinkers?

8. What important influence had Byelinsky?

9. What marked powers of description had Aksakoff?

10. How does Koltzoff's life illustrate the widening influence of Russian literature?

11. How did the change from poetry to prose writing come about?

12. Give an account of the chief events in the life of Gogol.

13. How was the Russian tendency to mysticism illustrated in his case?

14. Describe his famous play "The Inspector." What qualities does he show in this?

15. What are the characteristics of his "Tales"?

16. Why is "Dead Souls" regarded as his greatest work?

17. What is the character of "Taras Bulba"?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Hero of To-Day. M. Y. Lermontoff. (Several translations.)

Works of Gogol: The Inspector. (Translated by Arthur Sykes.) Taras Bulba. (Translated by I. F. Hapgood.)

Dead Souls, St. John's Eve, and Other Stories. (Selections from the two volumes of Little Russian and St. Petersburg Tales. Translated by I. F. Hapgood.)

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Rubinstein used this as a foundation for the libretto of his delightful opera, with the same title.

[14] Rubinstein used this as the libretto foundation for his opera of the same title, which was produced once, prohibited by the censor, produced once again after a lapse of eight or ten years, and again promptly prohibited. After another interval of years it was again permitted.

[15] An unaristocratic form of Elena—Helen.

[16] The "Guests' Court," that is, the bazaar.

[17] His Russian name, "Grozny," means, rather, "menacing, threatening," than "terrible," the customary translation, being derived from "groza," a thunderstorm.

[18] Most Russians prefer to have the world "Slavyane" translated Slavonians, rather than Slavs, as the latter is calculated to mislead.

[19] His "Family Chronicle" was the favorite book (during her girlhood) of Marya Alexandrovna, the daughter of Alexander II., afterwards Duchess of Edinburg, and now Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I made acquaintance with this fascinating work by reading aloud from her copy to a mutual friend, a Russian.

[20] Literally, "Old-fashioned Landed Proprietors," who would, as a matter of course, belong to the gentry, or "nobility," as the Russian term is. This title is often translated, "Old-fashioned Farmers."

[21] This expression has become proverbial in Russia, and is used to repress any one who becomes unduly excited.



CHAPTER IX

SEVENTH PERIOD: GONTCHAROFF. GRIGOROVITCH. TURGENEFF.

Under the direct influence of Byelinsky's criticism, and of the highly artistic types created by Gogol, a new generation of Russian writers sprang up, as has already been stated—the writers of the '40's: Grigorovitch, Gontcharoff, Turgeneff, Ostrovsky, Nekrasoff, Dostoevsky, Count L. N. Tolstoy, and many others. With several of these we can deal but briefly, for while they stand high in the esteem of Russians, they are not accessible in English translations.

Despite the numerous points which these writers of the '40's possessed in common, and which bound them together in one "school," this community of interests did not prevent each one of them having his own definite individuality; his own conception of the world, ideals, character, and creative processes; his own literary physiognomy, so to speak, which did not in the least resemble the physiognomy of his fellow-writers, but presented a complete opposition to them in some respects. Perhaps the one who stands most conspicuously apart from the rest in this way is Ivan Alexandrovitch Gontcharoff (1812-1890). He was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor in the southeastern government of Simbirsk, pictures of which district are reproduced in his most famous novel, "Oblomoff." This made its appearance in 1858. No one who did not live in Russia at that time can fully comprehend what an overwhelming sensation it created. It was like a bomb projected into the midst of cultivated society at the moment when every one was profoundly affected by the agitation which preceded the emancipation of the serfs (1861), when the literature of the day was engaged in preaching a crusade against slumberous inactivity, inertia, and stagnation. The special point about Gontcharoff's contribution to this crusade against the order of things, and in favor of progress, was that no one could regard "Oblomoff" from the objective point of view. Every one was compelled to treat it subjectively, apply the type of the hero to his own case, and admit that in greater or less degree he possessed some of Oblomoff's characteristics. In this romance the gift of generalization reached its highest point. Oblomoff not only represented the type of the landed proprietor, as developed by the institution of serfdom, but the racial type, which comprised the traits common to Russians in general, without regard to their social rank, class, or vocation. In fact, so typical was this character that it furnished a new word to the language, "oblomovshtchina,"—the state of being like Oblomoff. Oblomoff carried the national indolence—"khalatnost," or dressing-gown laziness, the Russians call it in general—to such a degree that he not only was unable to do anything, but he was not able even to enjoy himself. Added to this, he was afflicted with aristocratic enervation of his faculties, unhealthy timidity, incapacity to take the smallest energetic effort, dove-like gentleness, and tenderness of soul, rendering him utterly incapable of defending his own interests or happiness in the slightest degree. And these characteristics were recognized as appertaining to Russians in general, even to those who had never owned serfs, and thus the type presented by Oblomoff may be said to be not only racial, but to a certain extent universal—one of the immortal types, like Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet, and the like. The chief female character in the book, Olga, can hardly be called the heroine; she appears too briefly for that. But she is admitted to be a fine portrait of the Russian woman as she was about to become, not as she then existed. Gontcharoff's "An Every-day Story" is also celebrated; equally so is his "The Ravine," a very distressing picture of the unprincipled character of an anarchist. As the author changed his mind about the hero in part while writing the book, it is not convincing.

Another of the men who made his mark at this time was Dmitry Vasilievitch Grigorovitch (born in 1812), who wrote a number of brilliant books between 1847-1855. His chief merit is that he was the first to begin the difficult study of the common people; the first who talked in literature about the peasants, their needs, their virtues, their helplessness, their misfortunes, and their sufferings. Of his early short stories, "Anton Goremyka" (wretched fellow) is the best. In it he is free from the reproach which was leveled at his later and more ambitious long stories, "The Emigrants" and "The Fishermen." In the latter, for the sake of lengthening the tale, and of enlisting interest by making it conform to the general taste of readers, he made the interest center on a love-story, in which the emotions and procedure were described as being like those in the higher walks of life; and this did not agree with the facts of the case. But the remainder of the stories are founded on a genuine study of peasant ways and feelings. Grigorovitch had originally devoted himself to painting, and after 1855 he returned to that profession, but between 1884-1898 he again began to publish stories.

Among the writers who followed Grigorovitch in his studies of peasant life, was Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgeneff (1818-1883), who may be said not only to have produced the most artistic pictures of that sphere ever written by a Russian, but to have summed up in his longer novels devoted to the higher classes, in a manner not to be surpassed, and in a language and style as polished and brilliant as a collection of precious stones—a whole obscure period of changes and unrest. He was descended from an ancient noble family, and his father served in a cuirassier regiment. On the family estate in the government of Orel[22] (where, later in life, he laid the scene of his famous "Notes of a Sportsman"), he was well provided with teachers of various nationalities—Russian excepted. One of his mother's serfs, a man passionately fond of reading, and a great admirer of Kheraskoff, was the first to initiate the boy into Russian literature, with "The Rossiad." In 1834 Turgeneff entered the Moscow University, but soon went to St. Petersburg, and there completed his course in the philological department. Before he graduated, however, he had begun to write, and even to publish his literary efforts. After spending two years in Berlin, to finish his studies, he returned to Moscow, in 1841, and there made acquaintance with the Slavyanophils—the Aksakoffs, Khomyakoff (a military man, chiefly known by his theological writings), and others, the leaders of the new cult. But Turgeneff, thoroughly imbued with western ideas, did not embrace it. He entered the government service, although there was no necessity for his so doing, but soon left it to devote himself entirely to literature, Byelinsky having written an enthusiastic article about a poem which Turgeneff had published under another name. But poetry was not Turgeneff's strong point, any more than was the drama, though he wrote a number of plays later on, some of which have much merit, and are still acted occasionally. He found his true path in 1846, when the success of his first sketch from peasant life, "Khor and Kalinitch," encouraged him to follow it up with more of the same sort; the result being the famous collection "The Notes (or Diary) of a Sportsman." These, together with numerous other short stories, written between 1844-1850, won for him great and permanent literary fame.

The special strength of the "school of the '40's" consisted in its combining in one organic and harmonious whole several currents of literature which had hitherto flowed separately and suffered from one-sidedness. The two chief currents were, on the one hand, the objectivity of the Pushkin school, artistic contemplation of everything poetical in Russian life; and on the other hand, the negatively satirical current of naturalism, of the Gogol school, whose principal attention was directed to the imperfections of Russian life. To these were added, by the writers of the '40's, a social-moral movement, the fermentation of ideas, which is visible in the educated classes of Russian society in the '40's and '50's. As this movement was effected under the influence of the French literature of the '30's and '40's, of which Victor Hugo and Georges Sand were the leading exponents (whose ideas were expressed under the form of romanticism), these writers exercised the most influence on the Russian writers of the immediately succeeding period. But it must be stated that their influence was purely intellectual and moral, and not in the least artistic in character. The influence of the French romanticists on the Russian writers of the '40's consisted in the fact that the latter, imbued with the ideas of the former, engaged in the analysis of Russian life, which constitutes the strength and the merit of the Russian literature of that epoch.