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Title: Russia: Its People and Its Literature
Author: Emilia Pardo Bazán
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RUSSIA
ITS PEOPLE AND ITS LITERATURE
BY
EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN
Translated from the Spanish
By FANNY HALE GARDINER
CHICAGO
A.C. McCLURG & CO.
1901
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Emilia Pardo Bazán, the author of the following critical survey of Russian literature, is a Spanish woman of well-known literary attainments as well as wealth and position. Her life has been spent in association with men of mark, both during frequent sojourns at Madrid and at home in Galicia, "the Switzerland of Spain," from which province her father was a deputy to Cortes.
Books and libraries were almost her only pleasures in childhood, as she was allowed few companions, and she says she could never apply herself to music. By the time she was fourteen she had read widely in history, sciences, poetry, and fiction, excepting the works of the French romanticists, Dumas, George Sand, and Victor Hugo, which were forbidden fruit and were finally obtained and enjoyed as such. At sixteen she married and went to live in Madrid, where, amid the gayeties of the capital, her love for literature suffered a long eclipse.
Her father was obliged, for political reasons, to leave the country after the abdication of Amadeus, and she accompanied him in a long and to her profitable period of wandering, during which she learned French, English, and Italian, in order to read the literatures of those tongues. She also plunged deep into German philosophy, at first out of curiosity, because it was then in vogue; but she confesses a debt of gratitude to it nevertheless.
While she was thus absorbed in foreign tongues and literatures, she remained almost entirely ignorant of the new movement in her own land, led by Valera, Galdos, and Alarcon. The prostration which characterized the reign of Isabella II. had been followed by a rejuvenation born of the Revolution of 1868. When this new literature was at last brought to her notice, she read it with delighted surprise, and was immediately struck by something resembling the spirit of Cervantes, Hurtado, and other Spanish writers of old renown. Inspired by the possibility of this heredity, she resolved to try novel-writing herself,—a thought which had never occurred to her when her idea of the novel had been bounded by the romantic limitations of Victor Hugo and his suite. But if the novel might consist of descriptions of places and customs familiar to us, and studies of the people we see about us, then she would dare attempt it. As yet, however, no one talked of realism or naturalism in Spain; the tendency of Spanish writers was rather toward a restoration of elegant Castilian, and her own first novel followed this line, although evidently inspired by the breath of realism as far as she was then aware of it. The methods and objects of the French realists became fully manifest to her shortly afterward; for, being in poor health, she went to Vichy, where in hours of enforced leisure she read for the first time Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. The result led her to see the importance of their aims and the force of their art, to which she added the idea that each country should cultivate its own tradition while following the modern methods. These convictions she embodied first in a prologue to her second novel, "A Wedding Journey," and then in a series of articles published in the "Epoca" at Madrid, and afterward in Paris; these she avers were the first echoes in Spain of the French realist movement.
All of her novels have been influenced by the school of art to which she has devoted her attention and criticism, and her study of which has well qualified her for the essays contained in this volume. This work on Russian literature was published in 1887, but prior to its appearance in print the Señora de Bazán was invited to read selections from it before the Ateneo de Madrid,—an honor never before extended to a woman, I believe.
Few Spanish women are accustomed to speaking in public, and she thus describes her own first attempt in 1885, when, during the festivities attending the opening of the first railway between Madrid and Coruña, the capital of her native province, she was asked to address a large audience invited to honor the memory of a local poet:—
"Fearful of attempting so unusual a performance, as well as doubtful of the ability to make my voice heard in a large theatre, I took advantage of the presence of my friend Emilio Castelar to read to him my discourse and confide to him my fears. On the eve of the performance, Castelar, ensconced in an arm-chair in my library, puzzled his brains over the questions whether I should read standing or sitting, whether I should hold my papers in my hand or no, and having an artist's eye to the scenic effect, I think he would have liked to suggest that I pose before the mirror! But I was less troubled about my attitude than by the knowledge that Castelar was to speak also, and before me, which would hardly predispose my audience in my favor.... The theatre was crowded to suffocation, but I found that this rather animated than terrified me. I rose to read (for it was finally decided that I should stand), and I cannot tell how thin and hard and unsympathetic my voice sounded in the silence. My throat choked with emotion; but I was scarcely through the first paragraph when I heard at my right hand the voice of Castelar, low and earnest, saying over and over again, 'Very good, very good! That is the tone! So, so! 'I breathed more freely, speaking became easier to me; and my audience, far from becoming impatient, gave me an attention and applause doubly grateful to one whose only hope had been to avoid a fiasco. Castelar greeted me at the close with a warm hand-grasp and beaming eyes, saying, 'We ought to be well satisfied, Emilia; we have achieved a notable and brilliant success; let us be happy, then!'"
Probably the Señora de Bazán learned her lesson well, and had no need of the friendly admonitions of Castelar when she came to address the distinguished audience at the Ateneo, for she is said to have "looked very much at ease," and to have been very well received, but a good deal criticised afterward, being the first Spanish woman who ever dared to read in the Ateneo.
Turning from the authoress to the work, I will only add that I hope the American reader may find it to be what it seemed to me as I read it in Spanish,—an epitome of a vast and
F.H.G.
Chicago, March, 1890.
CONTENTS.
Book I.
THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA.
Book II.
RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE.
Book III.
RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL.
Book IV.
MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM.
Book I.
THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA.
I.
Scope And Purpose of the Present Essay.
The idea of writing something about Russia, the Russian novel, and Russian social conditions (all of which bear an intimate relationship to one another), occurred to me during a sojourn in Paris, where I was struck with the popularity and success achieved by the Russian authors, and especially the novelists. I remember that it was in the month of March, 1885, that the Russian novel "Crime and Punishment," by Dostoiëwsky, fell into
My interest was quickened by all the reports I read of those who had done the same. They all declared that one branch of Russian literature, that which flourishes to-day in every part of Europe, namely, the novel, has no rival in any other nation, and that the so much discussed tendency to the pre-eminence of truth in art, variously called realism, naturalism, etc., has existed in the Russian novel ever since the Romantic period, a full quarter of a century earlier than in France. I saw also that the more refined and select portion of the Parisian public, that part which boasts an educated and exacting taste, bought and devoured the works of Turguenief, Tolstoï, and Dostoiëwsky with as much eagerness as those of Zola, Goncourt, and Daudet; and it was useless to ascribe this universal eagerness merely to a conspiracy intended to produce jealousy and humiliation among the masters and leaders of naturalism or realism in France, even though I may be aware that such a conspiracy tacitly exists, as well as a certain amount of involuntary jealousy, which, in fact, even the most illustrious artist is prone to display.
I do not ignore the objections that might be urged against going to foreign lands in search of novelties, and I should decline to face them if Russian literature were but one of the many caprices of the exhausted Parisian imagination. I know very well that the French capital is a city of novelties, hungry for extravagances which may entertain for a moment and appease its yawning weariness, and that to this necessity for diversion the decadent school (which has lately had such a revival, and claims the aberrations of the Spanish Gongora as its master), though aided by some talent and some technical skill, owes the favor it enjoys. Some years ago I attended a concert in Paris, where I heard an orchestra of Bohemians, or Zingaras, itinerant musicians from Hungary. I was asked my opinion of them at the close, and I frankly confessed that the orchestra sounded to me very like a jangling of mule-bells or a caterwauling; they were only a little more tolerable than a street band of my own country (Spain), and only because these were gypsies were their scrapings to be endured at all. Literary oddities are puffed and made much of by certain Parisian critics very much as the Bohemian musicians were, as, for example, the Japanese novel "The Loyal Ronins," and certain romantic sketches of North American origin.
It is but just, nevertheless, to acknowledge that in France the mania for the exotic has a laudable aim and obeys an instinct of equity. To know everything, to call nothing outlandish, to accord the highest right of human citizenship, the right of creating their own art and of sacrificing according to their own rites and customs on the altar sacred to Beauty, not only to the great nations, but to the decayed and obscure ones,—this surely is a generous act on the part of a people endowed with directive energies; the more so as, in order to do this, the French have to overcome a certain petulant vanity which naturally leads them to consider themselves not merely the first but the only people.
But confining myself now to Russia, I do not deny that to my curiosity there were added certain doubts as to the value of her literary treasures. During my investigations, however, I have discovered that, apart from the intrinsic merit of her famous authors, her literature must attract our attention because of its intimate connections with social, political, and historical problems which are occupying the mind of Europe to-day, and are outcomes of the great revolutionary movement, unless it would be more correct to say that they inspired and directed that movement.
I take this opportunity to confess frankly that I lack one almost indispensable qualification for my task,—the knowledge of the Russian language. It would have been easy for me, during my residence in Paris, to acquire a smattering of it perhaps, enough to conceal my ignorance and to enable me to read some selections in poetry and prose; but not so easy thus to learn thoroughly a language which for intricacy, splendid coloring, and marvellous flexibility and harmony can only be compared, in the opinion of philologists, to the ancient Greek. Of what use then a mere smattering, which would be insufficient to give to my studies a positive character and an indisputable authority? Two years would not have been too long to devote to such an accomplishment, and in that length of time new ideas, different lines of thought, and unexpected obstacles might perhaps arise; the opportunity would be gone and my plan would have lost interest.
Still, I mentioned my scruples on this head to certain competent persons, and they agreed that ignorance of the Russian language, though an ignorance scarcely uncommon, would be an insuperable difficulty if I proposed to write a didactic treatise upon Russian letters, instead of a rapid review or a mere sketch in the form of a modest essay or two. They added that the best Russian books were translated into French or German, and that in these languages, and also in English and Italian, had been published several able and clever works relative to Muscovite literature and institutions, solid enough foundations upon which to build my efforts.
It may be said, and with good reason, that if I could not learn the language I might at least have made a trip to Russia, and like Madame de Staël when she revealed to her countrymen the culture of a foreign land, see the places and people with my own eyes. But Russia is not just around the corner, and the women of my country, though not cowardly, are not accustomed to travel so intrepidly as for example the women of Great Britain. I have often envied the good fortune of that clever Scotchman, Mackenzie Wallace, who has explored the whole empire of Russia, ridden in sleighs over her frozen rivers, chatted with peasants and popes, slept beneath the tents of the nomadic tribes, and shared their offered refreshment of fermented mare's-milk, the only delicacy their patriarchal hospitality afforded. But I acknowledge my deficiencies, and can only hope that some one better qualified than I may take up and carry on this imperfect and tentative attempt.
I have tried to supply from other sources those things which I lacked. Not only have I read everything written upon Russia in every language with which I am acquainted, but I have associated myself with Russian writers and artists, and noted the opinions of well-informed persons (who often, however, be it said in parenthesis, only served to confuse me by their differences and opposition). A good part of the books (a list of which I give at the end) were hardly of use to me, and I read them merely from motives of literary honesty. To save continual references I prefer to speak at once and now of those which I used principally: Mackenzie Wallace's work entitled "Russia" abounds in practical insight and appreciation; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's "The Empire of the Czars" is a profound, exact, and finished study, so acknowledged even by the Russians themselves in their most just and calm judgments; Tikomirov's "Russia, Political and Social" is clear and comprehensible, though rather radical and passionate, as might be expected of the work of an exile; Melchior de Voguié's "The Russian Novel" is a critical study of incomparable delicacy, though I do not always acquiesce in his conclusions. From these four books, to which I would add the remarkable "History of Russia" by Rambaud, I have drawn copious draughts; and giving them this mention, I may dispense with further reference to them.
II.
The Russian Country.
If we consider the present state of European nations, we shall observe
France possesses at this moment that form of government for which she yearned so long and so convulsively; yet she has not found in it the sort of well-being she most desired,—that industrial and economical prosperity, that coveted satisfaction and compensation which should restore to the Cock of Brenus his glittering spurs and scarlet crest. She is at peace, but doubtful of herself, always fearful of having to behold again the vandalism of the Commune and the catastrophes of the Prussian invasion. Italy, united and restored, has not regained her place as a European power, nor, in rising again from her glorious ashes, can she reanimate the dust of the heroes, the great captains and the sublime artists, that lie beneath her monuments. And it is not only the Latin nations that stand in more or less anxious expectation of the future. If France has established her much desired republic, and Italy has accomplished her union, England also has tasted all the fruits of the parliamentary system, has imparted her vigor to magnificent colonies, has succeeded in impressing her political doctrines and her positive ideas of life upon the whole continent; while Germany has obtained the military supremacy and the amalgamation of the fatherland once dismembered by feudalism, as well as the fulfilment of the old Teutonic dream of Cæsarian power and an imperial throne,—a dream cherished since the Middle Ages. For the Saxon races the hour of change has sounded too; in a certain way they have fulfilled their destinies, they have accomplished their historic work, and I think I see them like actors on the stage declaiming the closing words of their rôles.
One plain symptom of what I have described seems to me to be the draining off of their creative forces in the domain of art. What proportion does the artistic energy of England and Germany bear to their political strength? None at all. No names nowadays cross the Channel to be put up beside—I will not say those of Shakspeare and Byron, but even those of Walter Scott and Dickens; there is no one to wear the mantle of the illustrious author of "Adam Bede," who was the incarnation of the moral sense and temperate realism of her country, and at the same time an eloquent witness to the extent and limit allowed by these two tendencies, both of puritanic origin, to the laws of æsthetics and poetry. On the other side of the Rhine the tree of Romance is dry, though its roots are buried in the mysterious sub-soil of legend, and beneath its branches pass and repass the heroes of the ballads of Bürger and Goethe, and within its foliage are crystallized the brilliant dialectics of Hegel. To put it plainly, Germany to-day produces nothing within herself, particularly if we compare this to-day with the not distant yesterday.
But I would be less general, and set forth my idea in a clearer manner. It is not my purpose to sacrifice on the altar of my theme the genius of all Europe. I recognize willingly that there are in every nation writers worthy of distinction and praise, and not only in nations of the first rank but in some also of second and third, as witness those of Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, modern Greece, Denmark, and even Roumania, which can boast a queenly authoress, extremely talented and sympathetic. I merely say—and to the intelligent reader I need give but few reasons why—that it is easy to distinguish the period in which a people, without being actually sterile, and even displaying relatively a certain fecundity which may deceive the superficial observer, yet ceases to produce anything virile and genuine, or to possess vital and creative powers.
To this general rule I consider France an exception, for she is really the only nation which, since the close of the Romantic period, has seen any spontaneous literary production great enough to traverse and influence all Europe,—a phenomenon which cannot be explained by the mere fact of the general use of the French tongue and customs. It will be understood that I refer to the rise and success of Realism, and that I speak of it in a large sense, not limiting my thoughts to the master minds, but considering it in its entirety, from its origin to its newest ramifications, from its antecedent encyclopedists to its latest echoes, the pessimists, decadents, and other fanatics. Looking at what are called French naturalists or realists in a group, as a unity which obliterates details, I cannot deny to France the glory of presenting to the world in the second half of this century a literary development, which, even if it carries within itself the germs of senility and decrepitude (namely, the very materialism which is its philosophic basis, its very extremes and exaggerations, and its erudite, and reflective character, a quality which however unapparent is nevertheless perfectly demonstrable), yet it shows also the vigor of a renaissance in its valiant affirmation of artistic truth, its zeal in maintaining this, in the faith with which it seeks this truth, and in the effectiveness of its occasional revelations thereof. When party feeling has somewhat subsided, French realism will receive due thanks for the impulse it has communicated to other peoples; not a lamentable impulse either, for nations endowed with robust national traditions always know how to give form and shape to whatever comes to them from without, and those only will accept a completed art who lack the true conditions of nationality, even though they figure as States on the map.
There are two great peoples in the world which are not in the same situation as the Latin and Saxon nations of Europe,—two peoples which have not yet placed their stones in the world's historic edifice. They are the great transatlantic republic and the colossal Sclavonic empire,—the United States and Russia.
What artistic future awaits the young North American nation? That land of material civilization, free, happy, with wise and practical institutions, with splendid natural resources, with flourishing commerce and industries, that people so young yet so vigorous, has acquired everything except the acclimatization in her vast and fertile territory of the flower of beauty in the arts and letters. Her literature, in which such names as Edgar Poe shine with a world-wide lustre, is yet a prolongation of the English literature, and no more. What would that country not give to see within herself the glorious promise of that spirit which produced a Murillo, a Cervantes, a Goethe, or a Meyerbeer, while she covers with gold the canvases of the mediocre painters of Europe!
But that art and literature of a national character may be spontaneous, a people must pass through two epochs,—one in which, by the process of time, the myths and heroes of earlier days assume a representative character, and the early creeds and aspirations, still undefined by reflection, take shape in popular poetry and legend; the other in which, after a period of learning, the people arises and shakes off the outer crust of artificiality, and begins to build conscientiously its own art upon the basis of its never-forgotten traditions.
But when a nation carries within itself this powerful and prolific seed, sooner or later this will sprout. A people may be silent for long years, for ages, but at the first rays of its dawning future it will sing like the sphinx of Egypt. Russia is a complete proof of this truth. Perhaps no other nation ever saw its æsthetic development unfold so unpromisingly, so cramped and so stunted. The stiff and unyielding garments of French classicism have compressed the spirit of its national literature almost to suffocation; German Romanticism, since the beginning of this century, has lorded it triumphantly there more than in any other land. But in spite of so many obstacles, the genius of Russia has made a way for itself, and to-day offers us a sight which other nations can only parallel in their past history; namely, the sudden revelation of a national literature.
I do not mean to prophesy for others an irremediable sterility or decadence; I merely confine myself to noting one fact: Russia is at this moment the only young nation in Europe,—the last to arrive at the banquet. The rest live upon their past; this one sets out now impetuously to conquer the future. Over Russia are passing at present the hours of dawn, the golden days, the times that after a while will be called classic; some even of the men whom generations to come will call their glorious ancestors are living now. I insist upon this view in order to explain the curiosity which this empire of the North has aroused in Europe, and also to explain why so much thoughtful and serious study and attention is given to Russia by all foreigners; while every book or article on such a country as Spain, for instance, is full of so many careless and superficial errors. That elegant and subtle author, Voguié, in writing of Léon Tolstoï, says that this Russian novelist is so great that he seems to belong to the dead,—meaning to express in this wise the idea that the magnitude of Tolstoï's genius annuls the laws of temporal criticism by which we are accustomed to see the glory of our contemporaries less or more than the reality. I would apply Voguié's phrase to the Russian national literature as a whole. Though I see it arise before my very eyes, yet I view it amid the halo of prestige enjoyed only by things that have been.
There is indeed no parallel to it anywhere. The modern phenomenon of the resurrection of local literatures, and the reappearance of forgotten or amalgamated races, bears no analogy to this Russian movement; for apart from the fact that the former represents a protest by race individualism against dominant nationalities, and the latter, on the contrary, bears the seal of strong unity of sentiment (which distinguishes Russia), it must be borne in mind that local literatures are reactionary in themselves,—restorers of traditions more or less forgotten and lost sight of,—while Russian literature is an innovation, which accepts the past, not as its ideal, but as its root.
I have heard Émile Zola say, with his usual ingenuousness, that between his own spirit and that of the Russian novel there was something like a haze. This gray vapor may be the effect of the northern mist which is so asphyxiating to Latin brains, or it may be owing to the eccentricity which sometimes produces a work entirely independent of accepted social notions and historical factors. In order to dissipate this haze, this mist, I must devote a part of this essay to a study of the race, the natural conditions, the history, the institutions, the social and political state of Russia, especially to that revolutionary effervescence known as Nihilism. Without such a preliminary study I could scarcely give any idea of this literary phenomenon.
Let us, then, cross the Russian frontier and enter her colossal expanse, without being too much abashed by its size, which, says Humboldt, is greater than that of the disk of the full moon. Really, when we cast our eyes upon the map, fancy refuses to believe or to conceive that so large an extent of territory can form but one nation and obey but one man. We are amazed by its geographical bigness, and a sentiment of respect involuntarily enters the mind, together with the instinctive conviction that God has not modelled the body of this Titan without having in view for it some admirable historical destiny to be achieved by the fine diplomacy of Providence. Truly it is God's handiwork, as is proved by its solid unity,—geographical as well as ethnographical,—and its duration as an independent empire. Russia is no artificial conglomeration, nor a federation of States,—each with distinct internal life and traditions,—the result of conquest or of the necessity of resistance to a common enemy; for while the strife against the nomadic Asiatics may have contributed to solidify her union, it was Nature that predisposed her to a community of aspirations and political existence. There are islands like Sicily, peninsulas like Spain, whose territory, though so small, is far more easily subdivided than Russia, which is intersected by no mountain chains, and which is everywhere connected by rivers,—water-ways of communication. The vast surface of Russia is like a piece of cloth which unfolds everywhere alike, seamless and level. The northern regions, which produce lumber, cannot exist without the southern regions, which produce cereals; the two halves of Russia are complementary; there is nowhere any conception of the provincialisms which honeycomb the Spanish peninsula; and in spite of the imposing magnitude of the nation, which at first glance would seem necessarily divided into different if not inimical provinces, especially those most distant, the cohesion is so strong that all Russia considers herself, not so much a state as a family, subject to the law of a father; and Father they call, with tender familiarity, the Autocrat of all the Russias. Even to-day the name of the famous Mazeppa, who tried to separate Ukrania from Russia, is a term of insult in the Ukranian dialect, and his name is cursed in their temples. To this sublime sentiment Russia owes that national independence which the other Sclavonic peoples have lost.
III.
The Russian Race.
It is no hindrance to Muscovite unity that within it there are two completely opposing elements, namely, the Germanic and the Semitic. The influence of the Germans is about as irritating to the Russians as was that of the Flemings to the Spaniards under Charles V. They are petted and protected by the government, especially in the Baltic provinces, all the while that the Russians accuse them of having introduced two abominations,—bureaucracy and despotism. But even more aggravating to the Russian is the Jewish usurer, who since the Middle Ages has fastened himself like a leach upon producer and consumer, and who, if he does not borrow or lend, begs; and if he does not beg, carries on some suspicious business. A nation within a nation, the Jews are sometimes made the victims of popular hatred; the usually gentle Russians sometimes rise in sudden wrath, and the newspapers report to us dreadful accounts of an assault and murder of Hebrews.
Russian national unity is not founded, however, upon community of race; on the contrary, nowhere on the globe are the races and tribes more numerous than those that have spread over that illimitable territory like the waves of the sea; and as the high tide washes away the marks of every previous wave, and levels the sandy surface, these divers races have gone on stratifying, each forgetful of its distinct origin. Those who study Russian ethnography call it a chaos, and declare that at least twenty layers of human alluvium exist in European Russia alone, without counting the emigrations of prehistoric peoples whose names are lost in oblivion. And yet from these varied races and
When so many races spread themselves over one country, it becomes necessary and inevitable that one shall exercise sovereignty. In Russia this directive and dominant race was the Sclav, not because of numerical superiority, but from a higher character more adaptable to European civilization, and perhaps by virtue of its capability for expansion. Compare the ethnographical maps of Russia in the ninth and nineteenth centuries. In the ninth the Sclavs occupy a spot which is scarcely a fifth part of European Russia; in the nineteenth the spot has spread like oil, covering two thirds of the Russian map. And as the Sclavonic inundation advances, the inferior races recede toward the frozen pole or the deserts of Asia. When the monk Nestor wrote the first account of Russia, the Sclavs lived hedged in by Lithuanians, Turks, and Finns; to-day they number above sixty million souls.
Thus it is once more demonstrated that to the Aryan race, naturally and without violence, is reserved the pre-eminence in modern civilization. A thousand years ago northern Russia was peopled by Finnish tribes; in still more recent times the Asiatic fisherman cast his nets where now stands the capital of Peter the Great; and yet without any war of extermination, without any emigration of masses, without persecutions, or the deprivation of legal privileges, the aboriginal Finns have subsided, have been absorbed,—have become Russianized, in a word.
This is not surprising, perhaps, to us who believe in the absolute superiority of the Indo-European race, noble, high-minded, capable of the loftiest and profoundest conceptions possible to the human intellect. I may say that the Russian ethnographical evolution may be compared with that of my own country, if we may trust recent and well-authenticated theories. The most remote peoples of Russia were, like those of Spain, of Turanian origin, with flattish faces, and high cheek-bones, speaking a soft-flowing language; and to this day, as in Spain also, one may see in some of the physiognomies clear traces of the old blood in spite of the predominance of the invading Aryan. In Spain, perhaps, the aboriginal Turanian bequeathed no proofs of intellectual keenness to posterity, and the famous Basque songs and legends of Lelo and Altobizkar may turn out to be merely clever modern tricks of imitation; but in Russia the Finnish element, whose influence is yet felt, shows great creative powers. One of the richest popular literatures known to the researches of folk-lore is the epic cycle of Finland called the Kalevala, which compares with the Sanscrit poems of old.
A Castilian writer of note, absent at present from his country, in writing to me privately his opinions on Russia, said that the civilization which we behold has been created, so far as concerns its good points, exclusively by the Mediterranean race dwelling around that sea of inspiration which stretches from the Pillars of Hercules to Tyre and Sidon; that sea which brought forth prophets, incarnate gods, great captains and navigators, arch-philosophers, and the geniuses of mankind. Recently the most celebrated of our orators has stirred up in Paris some Greco-Latin manifestations whose political opportuneness is not to the point just here, but whose ethnographical significance, seeking to divide Europe into northern barbarians and civilized Latin folk,—just as happened at the fall of the Roman Empire,—is of no benefit to me. Who would listen without protest nowadays to the famous saying that the North has given us only iron and barbarism, or read tranquilly Grenville Murray's exclamation in an access of Britannic patriotism, "Russia will fall into a thousand pieces, the common fate of barbarous States!" The intelligence of the hearers would be offended, for they would recall the part played in universal civilization by Germans and Saxons,—Germany, Holland, England; but confining myself to the subject in hand, I cannot credit those who taunt the Sclav with being a barbarian, when he is as much an Aryan, a descendant of Japhet, as the Latin, descended as much as he from the sacred sources beside which lay the cradle of humanity, and where it first received the revelation of the light. Knowing their origin, are we to judge the Sclav as the Greeks, the contemporaries of Herodotus, did the Scythian and the Sarmatian, relegating him forever to the cold eternal night of Cimmerian regions?
It is nothing remarkable that, in the varied fortunes of this great Indo-European family of races, if the Kelt came early to the front, the Sclav came correspondingly late. Who can explain the causes of this diversity of destiny between the two branches that most resemble each other on this great tree?
In the study of Russian writings I was ofttimes surprised at the resemblances in the character, customs, and modes of thought of the Russian mujik to those of the peasants of Gallicia (northern Spain), my native province. Then I read in various authors that the Sclav is more like the Kelt than like his other ancestors, which observation applied equally well to my own people. Perhaps the Kelt brought to Spain and France the first seeds of civilization; but the superiority of the Greek and the Latin obliterated the traces of that primitive culture which has left us no written monuments. More fortunate is the Sclav, the last to put his hand to the great work, for he is sure of leaving the marks of his footprints upon the sands of time.
It is undeniable that he has come late upon the world's stage, and after the ages of inspiration and of brilliant historic action have passed. It sometimes seems now as though the brain of the world had lost its freshness and plastic quality, as though every possible phase of civilization had been seen in Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and in the scientific and political development of our own day. But the backwardness of the Russian has been caused by no congenital inferiority of race; his quickness and aptitude are apparent, and sufficient to prove it is the rich treasure of popular poetry to be found among the peoples of Sclav blood,—Servians, Russians, and Poles. Such testimony is irrefutable, and is to groups of peoples what articulate speech is to the individual in the zoological scale. What the Romanceros are to the Spaniard, the Bilinas are to the Russian,—an immense collection of songs in which the people have immortalized the memory of persons and events indelibly engraved on their imagination; a copious spring, a living fountain, whither the future bards of Russia must return to drink of originality. What the poem of the Cid represents to Spain, and the Song of Roland to France, is symbolized for the Russian by the Song of the Tribe of Igor, the work of some anonymous Homer,—a pantheistic epic impregnated with the abounding and almost overwhelming sense of realism which seems to preponderate in the literary genius of Russia.
History—and I use this word in the broadest sense known to us to-day—thrusts some nations to the fore, as the Latins, for example; others, like the Sclavs, she holds back, restraining their instinctive efforts to make themselves heard. We are accustomed to say that Russia is an Asiatic country, and that the Russian is a Tartar with a thin coat of European polish. The Mongolian element must certainly be taken into account in a study of Muscovite ethnography, in spite of the supremacy of the Byzantine and Tartar influence, and in order to understand Russia. In the interior of European Russia the ugly Kalmuk is still to be seen, and who can say how many drops of Asiatic blood run in the veins of some of the most illustrious Russian families? Yet within this question of purity of race lies a scientific and social
Apart from the undeniable Asiatic influence, we must consider the extreme and cruel climate as among the causes of her backwardness. The young civilization flourishes under soft skies, beside blue seas whose soft waves lave the limbs of the new-born goddess. Where Nature ill-treats man he needs twice the time and labor to develop his vocation and tendencies. To us of a more temperate zone, the description of the rigorous and overpowering climate of Russia is as full of terrors as Dante's Inferno. The formation of the land only adds to the trying conditions of the atmosphere. Russia consists of a series of plains and table-lands without mountains, without seas or lakes worthy of the name,—for those that wash her coasts are considered scarcely navigable. The only fragments of a mountain system are known by the generic and expressive term ural, meaning a girdle; and in truth they serve only to engirdle the whole territory. To an inhabitant of the interior the sight of a mountainous country is entirely novel and surprising. Almost all the Russian poets and novelists exiled to the Caucasus have found an unexpected fountain of inspiration in the panorama which the mountains afforded to their view. The hero of Tolstoï's novel "The Cossacks," on arriving at the Caucasus for the first time, and finding himself face to face with a mountain, stands mute and amazed at its sublime beauty.
"What is that?" he asked the driver of his cart.
"The mountain," is the indifferent reply.
"What a beautiful thing!" exclaims the traveller, filled with enthusiasm. "Nobody at home can imagine anything like it!" And he loses himself in the contemplation of the snow-covered crests rising abruptly above the surface of the steppes.
The oceans that lie upon the boundaries of Russia send no refreshing breezes over her vast continental expanse, for the White Sea, the Arctic, the Baltic, and sometimes the Caspian, are often ice-bound, while the waves of the Sea of Asof are turbid with the slime of marshes. Neither does Russia enjoy the mild influence of the Gulf Stream, whose last beneficent waves subside on the shores of Scandinavia. The winds from the Arctic region sweep over the whole surface unhindered all the winter long, while in the short summer the fiery breath of the central Asian deserts, rolling over the treeless steppes, bring an intolerable heat and a desolating drought. Beyond Astrakan the mercury freezes in winter and bursts in the summer sun. Under the rigid folds of her winter shroud Russia sleeps the sleep of death long months at a time, and upon her lifeless body slowly and pauselessly fall the "white feathers" of which Herodotus speaks; the earth becomes marble, the air a knife. A snow-covered country is a beautiful sight when viewed through a stereopticon, or from the comfortable depths of a fur-lined, swift-gliding sleigh; but snow is a terrible adversary to human activity. If its effects are not as dissipating as excessive heat, it none the less pinches the soul and paralyzes the body. In extreme climates man has a hard time of it, and Nature proves the saying of Goethe: "It envelops and governs us; we are incapable of combating it, and likewise incapable of eluding its tyrannical power." Formidable in its winter sleep, Nature appears even more despotic perhaps in its violent resurrection, when it breaks its icy bars and passes at once from lethargy to an almost fierce and frenzied life. In the spring-time Russia is an eruption, a surprise; the days lengthen with magic rapidity; the plants leaf out, and the fruits ripen as though by enchantment; night comes hardly at all, but instead a dusky twilight falls over the land; vegetation runs wild, as though with impatience, knowing that its season of happiness will be short. The great writer, Nicolaï Gogol, depicts the spring-time on the Russian steppes in the following words:
"No plough ever furrowed the boundless undulations of this wild vegetation. Only the unbridled herds have ever opened a path through this impenetrable wilderness. The face of earth is like a sea of golden verdure, broken into a thousand shades. Among the thin, dry branches of the taller shrubs climb the cornflowers,—blue, purple, and red; the broom lifts its pyramid of yellow flowers; tufts of white clover dot the dark earth, and beneath their poor shade glides the agile partridge with outstretched neck. The chattering of birds fills the air; the sparrow-hawk hangs motionless overhead, or beats the air with the tips of his wings, or swoops upon his prey with searching eyes. At a distance one hears the sharp cry of a flock of wild duck, hovering like a dark cloud over some lake lost or unseen in the immensity of the plain. The prairie-gull rises with a rhythmic movement, bathing his shining plumage in the blue air; now he is a mere speck in the distance, once more he glistens white and brilliant in the rays of the sun, and then disappears. When evening begins to fall, the steppes become quite still; their whole breadth burns under the last ardent beams; it darkens quickly, and the long shadows cover the ground like a dark pall of dull and equal green. Then the vapors thicken; each flower, each herb, exhales its aroma, and all the plain is steeped in perfume. The crickets chirp vigorously.... At night the stars look down upon the sleeping Cossack, who, if he opens his eyes, will see the steppes illuminated with sparks of light,—the fireflies. Sometimes the dark depths of the sky are lighted up by fires among the dry reeds that line the banks of the little streams and lakes, and long lines of swans, flying northward and disclosed to view by this weird light, seem like bands of red crossing the sky."
Do we not seem to see in this description the growth of this impetuous, ardent, spasmodic life, goaded on to quick maturity by the knowledge of its own brevity?
Without entirely accepting Montesquieu's theory as to climate, it is safe to allow that it contains a large share of truth. It is indubitable that the influence of climate is to put conditions to man's artistic development by forcing him to keep his gaze fixed upon the phenomena of Nature and the alternation and contrast of seasons, and helps to develop in him a fine pictorial sense of landscape, as in the case of the Russian writers. In our temperate zone we may live in relative independence of the outside world, and almost insensible to the transition from summer to winter. We do not have to battle with the atmosphere; we breathe it, we float in it. Perhaps for this reason good word-painters of landscape are few in our (Spanish) literature, and our descriptive poets content themselves with stale and regular phrases about the aurora and the sunset. But laying aside this parallel, which perhaps errs in being over-subtle, I will say that I agree with those who ascribe to the Russian climate a marked influence in the evolution of Russian character, institutions, and history.
Enveloped in snow and beaten by the north wind, the Sclav wages an interminable battle; he builds him a light sleigh by whose aid he subjects the frozen rivers to his service; he strips the animals of their soft skins for his own covering; to accustom his body to the violent transitions and changes of temperature, he steams himself in hot vapors, showers himself with cold water, and then
The Sclav is the victim of his climate, which relaxes his fibres and clouds his spirit. The Sclav, say those who know him well, lacks tenacity, firmness; he is flexible and variable in his impressions; as easily enthusiastic as indifferent; fluctuating between opposite conclusions; quick to assimilate foreign ideas; as quick to rid himself of them; inclined to dreamy indolence and silent reveries; given to extremes of exaltation and abasement; in fact, much resembling the climate to which he has to adapt himself. It needs not be said that this description, and any other which pretends to sum up the characteristics of the whole people, must have numerous exceptions, not only in individual cases but in whole groups within the Russian nationality: the Southerner will be more lively and vivacious; the Muscovite (those properly answering to that name) more dignified and stable; the Finlander, serious and industrious, like the Swiss, to whose position his own is somewhat analogous. There is in every nation a psychical as well as physical type to which the rank and file more or less correspond, and it is only upon a close scrutiny that one notices differences. The influence of the Tropics upon the human race has never been denied; we are forced to admit the influence of the Pole also, which, while beneficial in those lands not too close upon it, invigorating both bodies and souls and producing those chaste and robust barbarians who were the regenerators of the effete Empire, yet too close, it destroys, it annihilates. Who can doubt the effect of the snow upon the Russian character when it is stated upon the authority of positive data and statistics that the vice of drunkenness increases in direct proportion to the degrees of latitude? There is a fine Russian novel, "Oblomof" (of which I shall speak again later), which is more instructive than a long dissertation. The apathy, the distinctively Russian enervation of the hero, puts the languor of the most indolent Creole quite in the shade, with the difference that in the case of the Sclav brain and imagination are at work, and his body, if well wrapped, is able to enjoy the air of a not unendurable temperature.
Not only the rigors of climate but the aspect of the outside world has a marked influence on character. Ovid in exile lamented having to live where the fields produced neither fruits nor sweet grapes; he might have added, had he lived in Russia, where the fields are all alike, where the eye encounters no variety to attract and please it. Castile is flat and monotonous like Russia, but there the sky compensates for the nakedness of the earth, and one cannot be sad beneath that canopy of turquoise blue. In Russia the dark firmament seems a leaden vault instead of a silken canopy, and oppresses the breast. The only things to diversify the immense expanse of earth are the great rivers and the broad belts or zones of the land, which may be divided into the northern, covered with forests; the black lands, which have been the granary of the empire from time immemorial; the arable steppes, so beautifully described by Gogol, like the American prairies, the land of the wild horses of the Russian heroic age; and lastly, the sandy steppes, sterile deserts only inhabited by the nomadic shepherds and their flocks. Throughout this vast body four large arteries convey the life-giving waters: the Dnieper which brought to Russia the culture of old Byzantium; the Neva, beside which sits the capital of its modern civilization; the Don, legendary and romantic; and the Volga, the great Mother Volga, the marvellous river, whose waters produce the most delicious fish in the world. Without the advantage of these rivers, whose abundance of waters is almost comparable to an ocean, the plains of Russia would be uninhabitable. Land, land everywhere, an ocean of land, a uniformity of soil, no rocks, no hills, so that stone is almost unknown in Russia. St. Petersburg was the first city not built entirely of wood, and it is an axiom, that Russian houses, as a rule, burn once in seven years. This dulness and desolation of Nature's aspect must of course influence brain and imagination, and consequently must be reflected in the literature, where melancholy predominates even in satire, and whence is derived a tendency to pessimism and a sort of religious devotion tinged with misery and sadness. Indolence, fatalism, inconstancy,—these are the defects of Russian character; resignation, patience, kindness, tolerance, humility, its better qualities. Its passive resignation may be readily transformed into heroism; and Count Léon Tolstoï, in his military narrative of the "Siege of Sevastopol," and his novel "War and Peace," studies and portrays in a wonderful way these traits of the national soul.
IV.
Russian History.
History has been for Russia as inclement and hostile as Nature. A cursory glance will suffice to show this, and it is foreign to my purpose to devote more than slight attention to it.
The Greeks, the civilizers of the world, brought their culture to Colchis and became acquainted with the very southernmost parts of Russia known as Sarmatia and Scythia. Herodotus has left us minute descriptions of the inhabitants of the Cimmerian plains, their ways, customs, religions, and superstitions, distinguishing between the industrious Scythians who produce and sell grain, and the nomadic Scythians, the Cossacks, who, depending on their pastures, neither sow nor work. The Sarmatian region was invaded and subjugated by the northern Sclavs, who in turn were conquered by the Goths, these by the Huns, and finally, upon the same field, Huns, Alans, and Bulgarians fought one another for the mastery. In this first confused period there is no historical outline of the Russia that was to be. Her real history begins in a, to us, strange event, whose authenticity historical criticism may question, but which is the basis of all tradition concerning the origin of Russian institutions; I mean the famous message sent by the Sclavs to those Norman or Scandinavian princes, those daring adventurers, the Vikings supposedly (but it matters not), saying to this effect, more or less: "Our land is broad and fertile, but there is neither law nor justice within it; come and possess it and govern it."
Upon the foundation provided by this strange proceeding many very original theories and philosophical conclusions have been built concerning Russian history; and the partisans of autocracy and the ancient order of things consider it a sure evidence that Russia was destined by Heaven to acknowledge an absolute power of foreign derivation, and to bow voluntarily to its saving yoke. Whether the
With the establishment of order and good government among the Sclavs, Rurik founded the nation, as certainly as he founded later the legendary city of Novgorod, and his brother and successor, Olaf, that of Kief, mother of all the Russian cities. It fell to Rurik's race also to give the signal for that secular resistance which even to-day Russia maintains toward her perpetual enemy, Constantinople; the Russian fleets descended the Dnieper to the Byzantine seas to perish again and again under the Greek fire. Russia received also from this same Byzantium, against which her arms are ever turned, the Christian religion, which was delivered to Olga by Constantine Porfirogenitus. Who shall say what a change there might have been over the face of the earth if the Oriental Sclavs had received their religion from Rome, like the Poles?
Olga was the Saint Clotilde of Russia; in Vladimir we see her Clodovicus. He was a sensuous and sanguinary barbarian, though at times troubled with religious anxieties, who at the beginning of his reign upheld paganism and revived the worship of idols, at whose feet he sacrificed the Christians. But his darkened conscience was tortured nevertheless by aspirations toward a higher moral light, and he opened a discussion on the subject of the best religion known to mankind. He dismissed Mahometanism because it forbade the use of the red wine which rejoiceth the heart of man; Judaism because its adherents were wanderers over the face of the earth; Catholicism because it was not sufficiently splendid and imposing. His childish and primitive mind was taken with the Asiatic splendors of the church of Constantinople, and being already espoused to the sister of the Byzantine emperor, he returned to his own country bringing its priests with him, cast his old idols into the river, and compelled his astonished vassals to plunge into the same waters and receive baptism perforce, while the divinity he venerated but yesterday was beaten, smeared with blood, and buried ignominiously. Happy the people upon whom the gospel has not been forced by a cruel tyrant, at the point of the sword and under threats of torture, but to whom it has been preached by a humble apostle, the brother of innumerable martyrs and saintly confessors! In the twelfth century, when Christianity inspired us to reconquer our country, Russia, more than half pagan, wept for her idols, and seemed to see them rising from the depths of the river demanding adoration. From this corrupt Byzantine source Russia derived her second civilization, counting as the first that proceeding from the colonization and commerce of the Greeks, as related by Herodotus. The dream of Yaroslaus, the Russian Charlemagne, was to make his capital, Kief, a rival and imitator of Byzantium. From Byzantium came the arts, customs, and ideas; and it seemed the fate of the Sclav race to get the pattern for its intellectual life from abroad.
Some Russian thinkers deem it advantageous for their country to have received its Christianity from Byzantium, and consider it an element of greater independence that the national Church never arrogated to itself the supremacy and dominion over the State. Let such advantages be judged by the rule of autocracy and the nullity of the Greek Church. The Catholic nations, being educated in a more spiritual and exalted idea of liberty, have never allowed that the monarch could be lord of the human conscience, and have never known that monstrous confusion of attributes which makes the sovereign absolute dictator of souls. The Crusade, that fecund movement which was the work of Rome, never spread over Russia; and when the Sclavs fell under the Tartar yoke, the rest of Europe left her to her fate. Russia's choice of this branch of the Christian religion was fatal to her dominion over other kindred Sclavs; for it embittered her rivalry with the Poles, and raised an insurmountable barrier between Russia and European civilization which was inseparably intertwined with the Catholic faith even in such phenomena as the Renaissance, which seems at first glance laic and pagan.
Nevertheless, so much of Christianity as fell to Russia through the accepted channel sufficed to open to her the doors of the civilized world, and to rouse her from the torpid sleep of the Oriental. It gave her the rational and proper form of family life as indicated by monogamy, whose early adoption is one of the highest and most distinguishing marks of the Aryan race; and instead of the savage chieftain surrounded by his fierce vassals always ready for rebellion and bloodshedding, it gave the idea of a monarch who lives as God's vicar upon the earth, the living incarnation of law and order,—an idea which, in times of anarchy and confusion, served to constitute the State and establish it upon a firm basis. Lastly, Russia owes to Christianity her ecclesiastical literature, the fount and origin of literary culture throughout Europe.
In the thirteenth century—that bright and luminous age, the time of Saint Thomas, of Saint Francis of Assisi, of Dante, of Saint Ferdinand—Russia was suddenly invaded by the Mongols, and, like locusts in a corn-field, those hideous and demoniacal foes fell upon her and made all Christendom tremble, so that the French historian Joinville records it as a sign of the coming of Antichrist. "For our sins the unknown nations covered our land," say the Russian chroniclers. Genghis Khan, after subduing all Asia, drew around him an immense number of tribes, and fell upon Russia with irresistible force, sowing the land with skulls as the flower of the field sows it with seeds, and compelling the once free and wealthy native Boyars to bring grist to the mill and serve their conquerors as slaves. The Russian towns and princes performed miracles of heroism, but in vain. The Tartar hordes, let loose upon those vast plains where their horses found abundant pasture, rolled over the land like an inundation. In a more varied country, more densely populated and with better communication, the Tartars would have been beaten back, as they were from Moravia. Again Nature's hand was upon the destinies of Russia; the topographical conditions laid her under the power of the Golden Horde.
This great misfortune not only isolated Russia from the Occident and left her under Asiatic sway, but it also subjugated her to the growing autocracy of the Muscovite princes who were becoming formidable oppressors of their subjects, and they in turn were victims, tributaries, and vassals of the great Khans. So the invasion came to exercise a decisive influence upon the institutions of the future empire, pernicious in consequence of the abnormal development allowed to monarchical authority, and beneficent inasmuch as it aided forcibly in the formation of the nationality. At the time of the Mongol irruption Russia was composed of various independent principalities governed by the descendants of Rurik; the necessity of opposing the invader demonstrated the necessity also of uniting all under one sceptre.
Continually chafing at the bit, dissimulating and temporizing with the enemy by means of clever diplomatic envoys, the princes slowly cemented their power and prepared the land for a homogeneous state, until one day the chivalrous Donskoï, the victor at the battle of the Don, opened the era of reconquest, exclaiming in the exuberance of his first triumph over the Tartars, "Their day is past, and God is with us!" But Russia's evil star
At the meeting of the Council of Florence, when the Greek Emperor John Paleologos agreed to the reunion of the two churches, the prince of Moscow, Basil the Blind, showed himself blind of soul as well as of eye, in obstinately opposing such a union, thus cutting off Russia again from the Occident. When the Turks took Constantinople and consummated the fall of the Byzantine empire, Moscow became the capital of the Greek world, the last bulwark of the schismatic church, the asylum of the remains of a depraved and perishing organism, of the senile decadence of the last of the Cæsars.