IV.
In this collection of “Evenings at the Farm” figures the heroic story of a great character, the life of the atamán Taras Bulba. Gogol afterwards turned this epopée into prose, but the after-touches did not change the character of the early composition. The hero of “Taras Bulba” is one of those Zaparog Cossacks who played such an important part in the history of Poland, and later in the history of Russia. After the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Zaporozhtsui, who formed a military republic, or, if the term is preferred, an association of cavalry bandits, became the terror of the neighboring peoples. They had on an island in the Dniépr a permanent camp, the Setch, where, even in times of peace, young Cossacks came to perfect themselves in the noble game of war. Women were rigorously excluded from the Setch. The men were quartered in divisions, or kurénui; each kurén had its chief, an atamán (hetman); the entire camp was commanded by a supreme chief, the atamán-kotchevóï.
The romance of “Taras Bulba” opens in the most original fashion.[14] The two sons of the Cossack Taras are just back from the divinity school, to which they will not return. The father, a vigorous Zaporozhets, who has grown gray in harness, receives them with sarcastic observations about their long robes. It is a sort of test like that which Don Diego gives his sons in the “Romancero.” The eldest of Bulba’s sons, Ostap (Eustace), behaves like Rodriguez. “Though thou art my father, I swear to thee, if thou continuest to laugh at me, I will give thee a drubbing.”
After an exchange of well-directed blows on either side, Taras kisses effusively his son whose courage and strength he has just experienced; he rudely rallies Andriï (Andrew), the younger, on his gentleness: “Thou art a puppy so far as I can judge. Don’t listen to they mother’s words: she is a woman; she knows naught. What need have ye of being coddled? A good prairie, a good horse, that’s all the delicacies that ye need. See this sabre: behold your mother, lads!”
The poor woman is not at the end of her trials. Taras announces his immediate departure with his sons: she protests amid tears and lamentations; the Cossack ill-uses her, and cuts short her complaints. The two sons spend in their father’s house just time enough to give the narrator a chance to describe this interior so characteristic and brilliantly colored. On the wall hang all the exquisite ornaments in which barbarous man delights,—sabres, whips, inlaid arms, reins worked in gold wire, silver-nailed clogs. On the dressers are the products of civilization brought from different corners of the world,—masterpieces of Florentine engravers, of Venetian glass-blowers, of Oriental goldsmiths; and in contrast with all this treasure, the fruit of pillage, piles of wood, the stove made of the enamelled bricks loved by the Ukraïne peasant, and the “holy images” in hieratic posture, these Lares indispensable at every Malo-Russian fireside.
The old Bulba has declared at table, before all the sotniks of his polk[15] who were present in the village, that he should be off next day. The mother spends the night in tears, crouching by her children’s bedside, gazing upon them with a look full of anguish like the swallow of the steppe on her nest. She still hopes that when he wakes, Bulba will have forgotten what he vowed in the exaltation of the bowl.
“The moon from the height of heaven had long been lighting up all the dvor filled with sleepers, the thick mass of willows, and the tall grass in which the palisade which encircled the dvor drowned. She sat all night by the heads of her beloved sons: not for a moment did she turn her eyes from them, and she had no thought of sleep. Already the horses, prescient of dawn, had all stretched themselves upon the grass, and ceased to feed. The topmost leaves of the willows began to whisper, and little by little a stream of incessant chattering descended through them to the very base. Still she sat in the selfsame place; she felt no fatigue at all, and she wished in her inmost heart that the night might last as long as possible. From the steppe resounded the sonorous whinnying of a foal. Ruddy streaks stretched across the sky. Bulba suddenly waked up, and leaped to his feet. He remembered very well all that he had determined upon the evening before.”
The preparations for the departure are described in detail with Homeric satisfaction. Bulba commands the mother to give her sons her blessing: “A mother’s blessing preserves from all danger on land and on water.” The farewell is heart-rending: the poor woman seizes the stirrup of her youngest, Andriï, clings to his saddle, and twice, in a paroxysm of maternal delirium, throws herself in front of the horses, until she is led away. Here we see the features of a painting rapidly sketched by Gogol in another novel. The elements of this scene would, moreover, be found elsewhere still. It goes back to the ancient dumas, the cantilenas of the Malo-Russian, the traces of which are constantly found in the epic of “Taras Bulba.”
They depart. As they ride along, their minds are filled with melancholy thoughts. Andriï reviews mentally a romantic adventure, the beginning of which dates from his life at the seminary. At Kief, in order to pay back a joke which had been played upon him, he made his way into the room of a wild Polish girl, the daughter of the voïevod of Kovno. The Polish girl made sport of him as though he were a savage; he put up with his dismissal, but fell in love with her. It is natural to conjecture that this love will have a decisive influence upon Andriï’s conduct, and that the beautiful girl will appear again. For the time being, the activity of the adventurous life just beginning drives away these recollections. The Cossacks cross the steppe, and the narrator makes us realize the wholly novel charm of this primitive existence, with its sensations no less strong than simple, in these immense spaces which under apparent monotony are so varied and marvellous.
They reach the Setch, and nothing equals the vigor, the color, the life, of the scenes which the story-teller’s imagination brings before our eyes. When they disembark from the ferry-boat, which after a three-hours’ passage has brought them to the island of Khortitsa, Taras Bulba and his sons reach the camp by an entrance echoing with the hammers of twenty-five smithies, and encumbered with the packs of pedlers. A huge Zaporozhets sleeping in the very middle of the road, with arms and legs stretched out, is the first spectacle which attracts their admiration. Farther, a young Cossack is dancing with frenzy, dripping with sweat in his winter sheepskin: he refuses to take it off, for it would quickly find its way into the pot-house. The merry fellow has already drunk up his cap, his belt, and his embroidered hilt. You feel that here is a young, exuberant, indomitable race. You have to go back to the Iliad to meet such men, and to Homer to find again this freshness of delineation. Other scenes awaken comparisons such as the author of “Taras Bulba” scarcely anticipated. His hero finds well-known faces, and he asks after his ancient companions in arms. They are questions of Philoktetes to Neoptolemos, and the same replies, followed by the same melancholy regrets: “And Taras Bulba heard only, as reply, that Borodavka had been hanged at Tolopan; that Koloper had been flayed alive near Kizikirmen; that Pidsuitok’s head had been salted in a cask, and sent to Tsar-grad (Constantinople) itself. The old Bulba hung his head, and after a long pause he said, ‘Good Kazaks were they.’”
I shall not dwell upon the scenes in which Gogol has described for us the customs of the Setch, such as the election of the new kotchevóï; and the wiles of these Zaporogs, in their longing for pillage, to take up the offensive without having the appearance of breaking treaties. From the Ukraïna, news is brought which arrives at the very nick of time. The Poles and the Jews have been heaping up deeds of infamy: the Cossack people is oppressed; religion is odiously persecuted. The whole camp breaks into enthusiastic fervor. They fling the Jew pedlers (kramari) into the water. One of them, Yankel, has recognized Taras: he throws himself on his knees groaning; he reminds him of a service which he had once done Bulba’s brother; finally he escapes punishment, thanks to this scornful and brutal protection. A few hours later, Taras finds him established under a tent, selling all sorts of provisions, powder, screws, gun-flints, at the risk of being caught again, and “killed like a sparrow.”
“Taras shrugged his shoulders to see what was the ruling power of the Jewish race.” We catch a glimpse here of that lively humor which is common in Gogol, and that keenness of observation which is always heightened by a satiric flavor.
The Zaporogs invade the Polish soil. They lay siege to Dubno. One night, Andriï sees rising before him a woman’s form. He recognizes an old Tartar servant of the voïevod’s daughter. She comes in her young mistress’s name to beg a little bread. The besieged town is a prey to all the torments of famine. Andriï is anxious instantly to make his way inside the walls. He is introduced by a subterranean passage by which the old woman reached the camp. Andriï sees once again the woman whom he loves, and it is all over with him. “He will never see again the Setch, nor his father’s village, nor the house of God. The Ukraïna will never behold again one of its bravest sons. The old Taras will tear his gray hair by handfuls, cursing the day and the hour when to his own shame he begot such a son.”
Here the romance halts to make room for the epos. Help comes to the city almost immediately after Andriï’s defection. This news is brought by Yankel, who, true Jew that he is, has succeeded in penetrating the city, in making his escape, in seeing every thing, hearing every thing, and putting a good profit into his pocket. What consoles Taras for Andriï’s treason is Ostap’s bravery, who is made atamán on the battle-field. One must read the exploits of giants, where the cruelty of the carnage is relieved by the beauty of the coloring. Pictures of heroic grandeur light up these sinister scenes, and the magic of a sparkling palette makes poetical the strong touches of the boldest realism.
Suddenly the news reaches the camp of the Zaporogs, that the Setch has been plundered by the Tartars. The old Bovdug, the Nestor of this second Iliad, proposes a plan which divides the besieging army in such a way as to protect at once the interests and the honor of the Cossack nation. One part sets out in pursuit of the Tartars: the others remain under the walls of the city, with the old Taras as atamán. One would like to quote from beginning to end these lists of heroes, with their Malo-Russian names so nearly uniform in termination. One would like to reproduce these parentheses, these episodes devoted to the complaisant enumeration of the deeds of prowess of all these braves. The separation is marked by a melancholy full of grandeur. The feeling of the solidarity which has grouped all these men, of the brotherhood which unites all these sons of the Ukraïna, is expressed with rare power. Taras perceives that it is necessary to create some diversion for this profound melancholy. He gives his Cossacks the solace of precious wine, and the stimulus of a fortifying word. They drink to religion, the Setch, and glory. “Never will a splendid action perish; and the glory of the Cossacks shall not be lost like a grain of powder dropped from the pan, and fallen by chance.”
The battle begins anew; the cannon make wide gaps in the ranks, and many mothers will not see again their sons fallen this day. “Vainly the widow will stop the passers-by, and gaze into their eyes to see if among them is not found the man whom best she loves in all the world.” What an accent in all that, and how we discover in the labored arrangement of the writer, the native force of the primitive song, the depth of the feeling of the people! This arises in fact from the Malo-Russian folk-song; and so also do those challenges which recall those of the heroes of Argos or of Troy, and that sublime death-refrain which each hero murmurs as he dies, “Flourish the Russian soil!” and likewise those rhythmic questions alternating with replies like couplets, “Is there yet powder in the powder-flasks? Is not the Cossack power enfeebled? Do not the Cossacks now show signs of yielding?”—“There still is powder in the powder-flasks; the Cossack power is not enfeebled; the Cossacks do not yet begin to yield.”
At the height of the battle, Andriï, who is fighting like a lion at the head of the Poles, finds himself suddenly face to face with Taras Bulba. Here follows an admirable scene, and long admired, but admired in an imitation. Is not the conclusion of “Mateo Falcone” an invention stolen from Gogol? In the two tales, the father becomes the arbiter of the treason committed by the son; the details of this execution, the accompanying words, the calculated impression of coldness in the account, meant to add to the horror of the deed,—all the resemblances seem to form a literary theft, the traces of which Merimée would have done better not to hide; and we have almost the right to impute to him this intention when we see the part that he took in disparagement of “Taras Bulba.”
This tragedy is followed by a new drama still more painful. Ostap is taken prisoner, and carried to Warsaw for execution. Taras, left for dead, is picked up by his followers. He recovers, and, unable to survive his beloved son, goes to risk his life in the attempt to rescue him. Through Yankel’s craft he makes his way into Warsaw, but the assistance of the Polish Jews fails to get him within the prison walls. He arrives only in time to see the execution of the Cossacks. Ostap is broken on the wheel before his father’s eyes. In a moment of weakness the heroic lad utters the cry of the Crucified on Golgotha: “Father, where art thou? Dost thou hear this?”
“Yes, I hear,” replies a mighty voice from the midst of the throng. “A detachment of mounted soldiers hastened anxiously to scan the throng of people. Yankel turned pale as death, and when the horsemen had got a short distance from him, he turned round in terror to look for Taras: but Taras was no longer beside him; every trace of him was lost.” A little later on, and Taras has seized his arms, and is making a terrible “funeral mass” in honor of his son. At last he dies, pinned down like Prometheus, and burned alive; but from the midst of the flames he tastes the triumph which his last shout of command has just assured to his soldiers.