OSTRÓVSKIY: “POVERTY—NO VICE”
Ostróvskiy was born at Moscow in the family of a poor clergyman, and, like the best of the younger generation of his time, he was from the age of seventeen an enthusiastic visitor of the Moscow theatre. At that age, we are told, his favourite talk with his comrades was the stage. He went to the University, but two years later he was compelled to leave, in consequence of a quarrel with a professor, and he became an under clerk in one of the old Commercial tribunals. There he had the very best opportunities for making acquaintance with the world of Moscow merchants—a quite separate class which remained in its isolation the keeper of the traditions of old Russia. It was from this class that Ostróvskiy took nearly all the types of his first and best dramas. Only later on did he begin to widen the circle of his observations, taking in various classes of educated society.
His first comedy, Pictures of Family Happiness, was written in 1847, and three years later appeared his first drama, We shall settle it among Ourselves, or The Bankrupt, which at once gave him the reputation of a great dramatic writer. It was printed in a review, and had a great vogue all over Russia (the actor Sadóvskiy read it widely in private houses at Moscow), but it was not allowed to be put on the stage. The Moscow merchants even lodged a complaint with Nicholas I. against the author, and Ostróvskiy was dismissed from the civil service and placed under police supervision as a suspect. Only many years later, four years after Alexander II. had succeeded his father—that is, in 1860—was the drama played at Moscow, and even then the censorship insisted upon introducing at the end of it a police officer to represent the triumph of justice over the wickedness of the bankrupt.
For the next five years Ostróvskiy published nothing, but then he brought out in close succession (1853 and 1854) two dramas of remarkable power—Don’t take a seat in other People’s Sledges, and Poverty—No Vice. The subject of the former was not new: a girl from a tradesman’s family runs away with a nobleman, who abandons and ill-treats her when he realises that she will get from her father neither pardon nor money. But this subject was treated with such freshness, and the characters were depicted in positions so well-chosen, that for its literary and stage-qualities the drama is one of the best Ostróvskiy has written. As to Poverty—No Vice, it produced a tremendous impression all over Russia. We see in it a family of the old type, the head of which is a rich merchant—a man who is wont to impose his will upon all his surroundings and has no other conception of life. He has, however, taken outwardly to “civilisation”—that is, to restaurant-civilisation: he dresses in the fashions of Western Europe and tries to follow Western customs in his house—at least in the presence of the acquaintances he makes in the fashionable restaurants. Nevertheless, his wife is his slave, and his household trembles at his voice. He has a daughter who loves, and is loved by, one of her father’s clerks, Mítya, a most timid but honest young man, and the mother would like her daughter to marry this clerk; but the father has made the acquaintance of a more or less wealthy aged man—a sort of Armenian money-lender, who dresses according to the latest fashion, drinks champagne instead of rye-whiskey, and therefore plays among Moscow merchants a certain rôle of authority in questions of fashion and rules of propriety. To this man the girl must be married. She is saved, however, by the interference of her uncle, Lubím Tortsóff. Lubím was once rich, like his brother, but he was not satisfied with the dull Philistine life of his surroundings, and seeing no way out of it and into a better social atmosphere, he took to drink—to unmitigated drunkenness, such as was to be seen in olden times at Moscow. His wealthy brother has helped him to get rid of his fortune, and now, in a ragged mantle, he goes about the lower class taverns, making of himself a sort of jester for a chance glass of gin. Penniless, dressed in his rags, cold and hungry, he comes to the young clerk’s room, asking permission to stay there over night.
The drama goes on at Christmas time, and this gives Ostróvskiy the opportunity for introducing all sorts of songs and Christmas masquerades, in true Russian style. In the midst of all this merriment, which has been going on in his absence, Tortsóff, the father, comes in with the bridegroom of his choice. All the “vulgar” pleasures must now come to an end, and the father, full of veneration for his fashionable friend, curtly orders his daughter to marry the man he has chosen for her. The tears of the girl and her mother are of no avail: the father’s orders must be obeyed. But there enters Lubím Tortsóff, in his rags and with his jester’s antics—terrible in his degradation, and yet a man. The father’s terror at such a sight can easily be imagined, and Lubím Tortsóff, who during his wanderings has heard all about the Armenian’s past, and who knows of his brother’s scheme, begins to tell before the guests what sort of man the would-be bridegroom is. The latter, holding himself insulted in his friend’s house, affects great anger and leaves the room, while Lubím Tortsóff tells his brother what a crime he is going to commit by giving his daughter to the old man. He is ordered to leave the room, but he persists and, standing in the rear of the crowd, he begins piteously to beg: “Brother, give your daughter to Mítya” (the young clerk): “he, at least, will give me a corner in his house. I have suffered enough from cold and hunger. My years are passing: it becomes hard for me to get my piece of bread by performing my antics in the bitter frost. Mítya will let me live honestly in my old age.” The mother and daughter join with the uncle, and finally the father, who resents the insults of his friend, exclaims: “Well, do you take me, then, for a wild beast? I won’t give my daughter to that man. Mítya, marry her!”
The drama has a happy end, but the audience feels that it might have been as well the other way. The father’s whim might have ended in the life-long misery and misfortune of the daughter, and this would probably have been the outcome in most such cases.
Like Griboyédoff’s comedy, like Gontcharóff’s Oblómoff, and many other good things in Russian literature, this drama is so typically Russian that one is apt to overlook its broadly human signification. It seems to be typically Moscovite; but, change names and customs, change a few details and rise a bit higher or sink a bit lower in the strata of society; put, instead of the drunkard Lubím Tortsóff, a poor relation or an honest friend who has retained his common sense—and the drama applies to any nation and to any class of society. It is deeply human. This is what caused its tremendous success and made it a favourite on every Russian stage for fifty years. I do not speak, of course, of the foolishly exaggerated enthusiasm with which it was received by the so-called nationalists, and especially the Slavophiles, who saw in Lubím Tortsóff the personification of the “good old times” of Russia. The more sensible of Russians did not go to such lengths; but they understood what wonderful material of observation, drawn from real life, this and the other dramas of Ostróvskiy were offering. The leading review of the time was The Contemporary, and its leading critic, Dobrolúboff, wrote two long articles to analyse Ostróvskiy’s dramas, under the significant title of The Kingdom of Darkness; and when he had passed in review all the darkness which then prevailed in Russian life as represented by Ostróvskiy, he produced something which has been one of the most powerful influences in the whole subsequent intellectual development of the Russian youth.