Mikhaíl Vasílevich Lomonósov. (1711-1765.)
Lomonósov was born in the village of Denísovka, in the Government of Arkhángelsk, not far from the spot where, one hundred and fifty years before, the English had rediscovered Russia. In his letters to Shuválov, Lomonósov tells us of the difficulties with which he had to contend at home and at the School of the Redeemer at Moscow. His brilliant progress caused him to be chosen among the first men to be sent abroad at Government expense to study mining, and to get acquainted with mining methods in Holland, England and France. In spite of insufficient support from the Government and a roving life at German universities, Lomonósov made excellent progress in philosophy, under Christian Wolff at Marburg, and in the sciences at Freiburg. After marrying a German woman, wandering about and starving, Lomonósov returned to St. Petersburg. Before reaching home, he had sent to St. Petersburg his Ode on the Occasion of the Capture of Khotín. It was the first time the tonic versification was successfully applied to the language, and though the diction of the ode is turgid and the enthusiasm forced, yet it became the model for a vast family of odes and eulogies, generally written to order, until Derzhávin introduced a new style with his Felítsa.
Upon his return, Lomonósov became attached to the University, which was mainly filled with German professors. His own unamiable temper, combined with the not more amiable characters of German colleagues, was the cause of endless quarrels and exasperations. Under the most depressing difficulties, Lomonósov, the first learned Russian, developed a prodigious activity. He perfected the Russian literary language, lectured on rhetoric and the sciences and wrote text-books, odes and dramas. For a century he passed in Russia as a great poet, and his deserts in other directions were disregarded. But a more sober criticism sees now in Lomonósov a great scientist who has increased knowledge by several discoveries, and only a second-rate poet. Only where he described phenomena of nature or scientific facts, did he become really inspired, and write poems that have survived him. His services to the Russian language and literature are many. He did for them what Peter the Great did for the State: by his own mighty personality and example be put them on the road which they have never abandoned, and though lacking originality, the school of Lomonósov itself survived in Russian literature to the end of the eighteenth century.
But few of Lomonósov’s poems have been translated into English. Ode from Job, Morning Meditations, Evening Meditations, are given in Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.; the Evening Meditations, in another version, is also given by him in Part I.
Ode in Honour of the Empress Anna, in F. R. Grahame’s The Progress of Science, Art and Literature in Russia.
Morning Meditation, and part of the Ode on the Accession of Catherine II., in C. E. Turner’s Studies in Russian Literature, and, the same article, in Fraser’s Magazine, 1877.
A Chronological Abridgement of Russian History; translated from the original Russian ... and continued to the present by the translator (J. G. A. F.), London, 1767.
LETTERS TO I. I. SHUVÁLOV[134]
I
Dear Sir, Iván Ivánovich:—Your Excellency’s kind consideration in honouring me with a letter assures me, to my great joy, of your unchanged feelings to me, and this I have for many years regarded as one of my great fortunes. How could the august generosity of our incomparable Empress, which I enjoy through your fatherly intercession, divert me from my love and zeal to the sciences, when extreme poverty, which I have endured voluntarily for the sake of science, has not been able to distract me from it? Let not your Excellency think it self-praise in me, if I am bold to present to you my defence.
When I was studying in the School of the Redeemer, I was surrounded on all sides with powerful obstacles that made against science, and in those years the influence of these tendencies was almost insurmountable. On the one hand, my father, who had never had any other children but me, said that in leaving him I, being his only son, had left all his possessions (such as they were in those parts), which he had acquired for me in the sweat of his brow, and which strangers would carry away after his death. On the other hand, I was confronted with unspeakable poverty: as I received but three kopeks a day, all I dared spend a day for food was half a kopek for bread and half a kopek for kvas, while the rest went for paper, shoes and other necessities. In this way I passed five years, and did not abandon study. On the one hand, they wrote to me that, knowing the well-being of my father, well-to-do people of my village would give me their daughters in marriage, and in fact they proposed them to me, when I was there; on the other hand, the small schoolboys pointed their fingers at me, and cried: “Look at the clodhopper who has come to study Latin at the age of twenty!” Soon after that I was taken to St. Petersburg, and was sent abroad, receiving an allowance forty times as large as before. But that did not divert my attention from study, but proportionately increased my eagerness, though there is a limit to my strength. I most humbly beg your Excellency to feel sure that I will do all in my power to cause all those who ask me to be wary in my zeal to have no anxiety about me, and that those who judge me with malicious envy should be put to shame in their unjust opinion, and should learn that they must not measure others with their yardstick, and should also remember that the Muses love whom they list.
If there is anyone who persists in the opinion that a learned man must be poor, I shall quote on his side Diogenes, who lived in a barrel with dogs, and left his countrymen a few witticisms for the increase of their pride; on the other side I shall mention Newton, the rich Lord Boyle, who had acquired all his glory in the sciences through the use of a large sum of money; Wolff, who with his lectures and presents had accumulated more than five hundred thousand, and had earned, besides, a baronetcy; Sloane, in England, who had left such a library that no private individual was able to purchase it, and for which Parliament gave twenty thousand pounds. I shall not fail to carry out your commands, and remain with deep respect your Excellency’s most humble servant, Mikháylo Lomonósov. St. Petersburg, May 10, 1753.
II
Dear Sir, Iván Ivánovich:—I received yesterday your Excellency’s letter of May 24th, in which I see an unchangeable token of your distinguished favour to me, and which has greatly pleased me, especially because you have deigned to express your assurance that I would never abandon the sciences. I do not at all wonder at the judgment of the others, for they really have had the example in certain people who, having barely opened for themselves the road to fortune, have at once set out on other paths and have sought out other means for their farther advancement than the sciences, which they have entirely abandoned; their patrons ask little or nothing of them, and are satisfied with their mere names, not like your Excellency who ask for my works in order to judge me. In these above-mentioned men, who in their fortune have abandoned science, all can easily perceive that all they know is what they have acquired in their infancy under the rod, and that they have added no new knowledge since they have had control of themselves. But it has been quite different with me (permit me, dear sir, to proclaim the truth not for the sake of vainglory, but in order to justify myself): my father was a good-hearted man, but he was brought up in extreme ignorance; my step-mother was an evil and envious woman, and she tried with all her might and main to rouse my father’s anger by representing to him that I eternally wasted my time with books; so I was frequently compelled to read and study anything that fell into my hands, in lonely and deserted places, and to suffer cold and hunger, until I went to the School of the Redeemer.
Now that I have, through your fatherly intercession, a complete sufficiency from her august Imperial Highness, and your approbation of my labours, and that of other experts and lovers of the sciences, and almost their universal delight in them, and finally no longer a childish reasoning of an imperfect age,—how could I in my manhood disgrace my early life? But I shall stop troubling your patience with these considerations, knowing your just opinion of me. So I shall report to your Excellency that which your praiseworthy zeal wishes to know of the sciences.
First, as to electricity: There have lately been made here two important experiments, one by Mr. Richmann by means of the apparatus, the other by me in the clouds. By the first it was proved that Musschenbroek’s experiment with a strong discharge can be transferred from place to place, separating it from the apparatus for a considerable distance, even as much as half a mile. The second experiment was made on my lightning apparatus, when, without any perceptible thunder or lightning, on the 25th of April, the thread was repelled from the iron rod and followed my hand; and on the 28th of the same month, during the passage of a rain-cloud without any perceptible thunder or lightning, there were loud discharges from the lightning apparatus, with bright sparks and a crackling that could be heard from a great distance. This has never been noticed before, and it agrees completely with my former theory of heat and my present one of the electric power, and this will serve me well at the next public lecture. This lecture I shall deliver in conjunction with Professor Richmann: he will present his experiments, and I shall illustrate the theory and usefulness arising from them; I am now preparing for this lecture.
As to the second part of the text-book on eloquence, it is well on its way, and I hope to have it printed by the end of October. I shall use all my endeavour to have it out soon; I do not send your Excellency any manuscript of it, as you have asked for printed sheets. As I have promised, I am also using all my endeavour in regard to the first volume of the Russian History, so as to have it ready in manuscript by the new year. From him who delivers lectures in his subject, who makes new experiments, delivers public lectures and dissertations, and besides composes all kinds of verses and projects for solemn expressions of joy; who writes out the rules of eloquence for his native language and a history of his country, which, at that, he has to furnish for a certain date,—I cannot demand anything more, and I am ready to be patient with him, provided something sensible will result in the end.
Having again and again convinced myself that your Excellency likes to converse about science, I eagerly await a pleasant meeting with you, in order to satisfy you with my latest endeavours, for it is not possible to communicate them all to you at a distance. I cannot see when I shall be able to arrange, as I had promised, the optical apparatus in your Excellency’s house, for there are no floors, nor ceilings, nor staircases in it yet, and I lately walked around in it with no small degree of danger to myself. The electric balls I shall send you, as you wish, without delay, as soon as possible. I must inform your Excellency that there is here a great scarcity in mechanics, so that I have not been able to get anywhere, not even at your estate, a joiner for any money, to build me an electric apparatus, so that up to the present I have been making use, instead of a terrestrial machine, of the clouds, to which I have had a pole erected from the roof. Whatever instruments your Excellency may need, I beg you to permit me to report in the office of the Academy in your name that the orders for them should be given to the mechanics, or else the business will be endlessly prolonged. In fine, I remain, with the expression of deep respect, your most humble and faithful servant, Mikháylo Lomonósov. St. Petersburg, May 31, 1753.
ODE IN HONOUR OF THE EMPRESS ANNA, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CAPTURE OF KHOTÍN FROM THE TURKS, BY THE RUSSIAN ARMIES, IN 1739
A sudden ecstasy has seized my soul; it transports me to the summit of a lofty mountain, where the wind has ceased to howl, and all is hushed in the deep valleys below. Silent are the listening streams, to which it is natural to murmur, or with loud rush to roll down the mountains; crowns of laurel are weaving; thither rumour is seen to hasten; afar off the blue smoke rises in the fields.
Is not Pindus beneath my feet? I hear the sweet music of the pure sisters. Parnassian fire burns within me. I hasten to the sacred band. They offer me to taste of the healing stream. “Drink, and forget thy troubles; bathe thine eyes in Castilian dew; stretch them forth over the deserts and hills, and fix them on the spot where the bright light of day is seen rising out of the dark shadows of night.”
As a ship, amidst the angry waves which seek to overwhelm her, sails on triumphantly, and appears to threaten should they dare to impede her course; grey froth foams around her, her track is imprinted in the deep; thus crowds of Tartars rush towards and surround the Russian forces, but in vain; powerless and breathless they fall.
The love of their country nerves the souls and arms of Russia’s sons; eager are all to shed their blood; the raging tumult but inspires them with fresh courage; as the lion, by the fearful glare of his eyes, drives before him whole herds of wolves, their sharp teeth vainly showing; the woods and shores tremble at his roar; with his tail he lashes the sand and dust; with his strength he beats down every opposing force.
Hear I not the deafening din of Ætna’s forges? Roars not the brass within, bubbling with boiling sulphur? Is not Hell striving to burst its chains, and ope its jaws? The posterity of the rejected deity have filled the mountain track with fire, and hurl down flame and liquid metal; but neither foe nor nature can withstand the burning ardour of our people.
Send away thy hordes, Stamboul, beyond these mountains, where the fiery elements vomit forth smoke, ashes, flame and death; beyond the Tigris, whose strong waves drag after them the huge stones from the shores, but the world holds no impediment to arrest the eagle in his flight. To him the waters, the woods, the mountains, the precipices and the silent deserts are but as level paths; wherever the wind can blow, thither he can wing his way.
Let the earth be all motion like the sea; let myriads oppose; let thickest smoke darken the universe; let the Moldavian mountains swim in blood; such cannot harm you, O Russians! whose safety Fate itself has decreed for the sake of the blessed Anna. Already in her course your zeal has led you in triumph against the Tartars, and wide is the prospect before you.
The parting ray of daylight falls gently into the waters, and leaves the fight to the night fires; Murza has fallen on his long shadow; in him the light and soul of the infidels pass from them. A wolf issues from the thick forest and rushes on the pale carcass, even in the Turkish camp. A dying Tartar, raising his eyes towards the evening star for the last time, “Hide,” he feebly cries, “thy purple light, and with it the shame of Mahomet; descend quickly with the sun into the sea.”
Why is my soul thus oppressed with terror? My veins grow stiff, my heart aches. Strange tones meet mine ear; a howling noise seems passing through the desert, the woods and the air. The wild beast has taken refuge in its cavern; the gates of heaven are opened; a cloud has spread itself over the army; suddenly a countenance of fire shines forth: a hero appears chasing his enemies before him, his sword all red with blood.
Is it not he who, near the rapid waters of the Don, destroyed the walls raised to check the Russians’ progress? And the Persians in their arid deserts, was it not by his arms they fell? Thus looked he on his foes when he approached the Gothic shores; thus lifted he his powerful arm; thus swiftly his proud horse galloped over those fields where we see the morning star arise.
Loud thunder rattles around him; the plains and the forests tremble at the approach of Peter, who by his side so sternly looks towards the south, girt round with dreadful thunder! Is it not the conqueror of Kazán? It is he, ye Caspian waters, who humbled the proud Selim, and strewed the desert with the dead bodies of his enemies.
Thus the heroes addressed each other: “Not in vain we toiled; not fruitless our united efforts, that the whole world should stand in awe of Russia. By the aid of our arms, our boundaries have been widened on the north, on the west, and on the east. Anna now triumphs in the south; she has crowned her troops with victory.” The cloud has passed, and the heroes within it: the eye no longer sees, the ear no longer hears them.
The blood of the Tartar has purpled the river; he dares not again venture to the fight; he seeks refuge in the desert; and, forgetful alike of the sword, the camp, his own shame, he pictures to himself his friends weltering in their blood; the waving of the light leaf startles him like whizzing balls as they fly through the air.
The shouts of the victors echo through the woods and valleys; but the wretch who abandons the fight dreads his own shadow. The moon, a witness to her children’s flight, shares in their shame, and, deeply reddening, hides her face in darkness. Fame flies through the gloom of the night; her trumpet proclaims to the universe the terrible might of Russia.
The Danube rushes into the sea, and, roaring in echo to the acclamations of the conquerors, dashes its furious waves against the Turk, who seeks to hide his shame behind its waters. To and fro he runs like a wild beast wounded, and, despairing, he thinks that for the last time he moves his steps; the earth disdains to support the wretch who could not guard her; darkness and fear confuse his path.
Where is now the boasting Stamboul?—thy courage, thy obstinacy in the fight, thy malice against the nations of the North, thy contempt of our strength? No sooner hadst thou commanded thy hordes to advance than thou thoughtest to conquer; cruelly thy janissary vented his rage; like a tiger he rushed upon the Muscovite troop. Soon the boaster fell; he weltered in his own blood.
Water with your tears, children of Hagar, the foot which has trampled you down! Kiss ye that hand whose bloody sword brought fear before your eyes. Anna’s stern glance is quick to grant relief to those who seek it; it shines forth, for the storm has passed away. She sees you prostrate before her; fervent in affection towards her own subjects, to her enemies she proffers punishment or pardon.
Already has the golden finger of the morning star withdrawn the starry curtain of night; a horse fleet as the wind, his rider Phœbus in the full blaze of his glory, issues from the east, his nostrils breathing sparks of radiant light. Phœbus shakes his fiery head, dwells in wonder on the glorious work and exclaims: “Few such victories have I witnessed, long as I have continued to give light to the world, long as the circle of ages has revolved.”
Like as the serpent rolls itself up, hissing and hiding its sting under a rock, when the eagle, soaring into those regions where the winds blow not, above lightnings, snow and tempests, looks down upon the beasts, the fishes and the reptiles beneath him, thus Khotín trembles before the eagle of Russia; thus its inhabitants crouch within its walls.
What led your Tartar race, Kalchák,[135] to bend so promptly beneath the Russian power? to deliver up the keys of your town in token of submission, evading thus disgrace more deep? The clemency of Anna, of her who is ever ready to raise the suppliant. Where flows the Vistula, and where the glorious Rhine, even there her olive-trees have flourished; there have the proud hearts of her defeated foes yielded up their lives.
Joyful are the lands which have thrown off the cruel yoke; the burden the Turks had laid on them is thrown back upon themselves! The barbarian hands which held them in restraint now wear their chains in captivity; and the feet are shackled which trampled down the field of the stranger, and drove away his flocks.
Not thus alone must thou be humbled; not all thy punishment this, O Turkey! A far greater hast thou merited, for thou didst refuse to let us live in peace. Still does the rage of your haughty souls forbid you to bend before Anna? Where would ye hide yourselves from her? Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo, shall flame! Crete shall be surrounded with her fleets; Euphrates shall be dyed with your blood.
A sudden and universal change! A dazzling vision passes before my eyes, and with heaven’s purest beams outshines the brightness of the day! The voices of heroes strike upon my ear. Anna’s joyous band, in glory clad, bear up eternity beyond the starry orbs, and Truth with her golden pen traces her glorious deeds in that book which is not reached by corruption.
Russia thrives like a young lily under Anna’s care; within China’s distant walls she is honoured, and every corner of the earth is filled with her subjects’ glory. Happy art thou, O my country, under the rule of thy Empress! Bright the laurels thou hast gained by this triumph. Fear not the ills of war; they fly from the land where Anna is glorified by her people. Malicious envy may pour forth her poison, she may gnaw her tongue in rage. Our joy heeds it not.
The robbers who, from beyond the Dniester, came to plunder the fields of the Cossacks, are driven back, scattered like dust; no longer dare they venture on that soil where the fruits of the earth and the blessings of peace together flourish. In safety the merchant pursues his traffic, and the mariner sees a boundary to the waves; no obstacles impede his course. The old and the young are happy; he who wished for the hour of death now prays for lengthened life; his heart is gladdened by his country’s triumphs.
The shepherd drives his flocks into the meadow, and enters the forest without fear; there, with his friend who tends his sheep, he sings the song of joy, his theme the bravery of the soldier; he blesses the passing moments of his life, and implores endless peace on the spot where he sleeps in quiet. Thus, in the simple sincerity of his heart, he glorifies her who shields him from his enemies.
O thou great Empress! The love of Russia, the dread of thy foes, the heroine of the northern world, the hope, the joy, the goddess of the shores of seven wide seas, thou shinest in the cloudless lights of goodness and beneficence. Forgive thy slave that he has chosen thy glory for his lay, and that his rugged verse, in token of submission to thy rule, has thus dared to attempt to magnify thy power.—Given in F. R. Grahame’s The Progress of Science, Art and Literature in Russia.
MORNING MEDITATIONS
O’er the wide earth yon torch of heavenly light
Its splendour spreads and God’s proud works unveils;
My soul, enraptured at the marvellous sight,
Unwonted peace, and joy, and wonder feels,
And with uplifted thoughts of ecstasy
Exclaims, “How great must their Creator be!”
Or, if a mortal’s power could stretch so high—
If mortal sight could reach that glorious sun,
And look undazzled at its majesty,
’T would seem a fiery ocean burning on
From time’s first birth, whose ever-flaming ray
Could ne’er extinguished be by time’s decay.
There waves of fire ’gainst waves of fire are dashing,
And know no bounds; there hurricanes of flame,
As if in everlasting combat flashing,
Roar with a fury which no time can tame:
There molten mountains boil like ocean-waves,
And rain in burning streams the welkin laves.
But in Thy presence all is but a spark,
A little spark: that wondrous orb was lighted
By Thy own hand, the dreary and the dark
Pathway of man to cheer—of man benighted;
To guide the march of seasons in their way,
And place us in a paradise of day.
Dull Night her sceptre sways o’er plains and hills,
O’er the dark forest and the foaming sea;
Thy wondrous energy all nature fills,
And leads our thoughts, and leads our hopes to Thee.
“How great is God!” a million tongues repeat,
And million tongues re-echo, “God, how great!”
But now again the day star bursts the gloom,
Scattering its sunshine o’er the opening sky;
Thy eye, that pierces even through the tomb,
Has chased the clouds, has bid the vapours fly;
And smiles of light, descending from above,
Bathe all the universe with joy and love.
From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets.
EVENING MEDITATIONS
ON SEEING THE AURORA BOREALIS
The day retires, the mists of night are spread
Slowly o’er nature, darkening as they rise;
The gloomy clouds are gathering round our heads,
And twilight’s latest glimmering gently dies:
The stars awake in heaven’s abyss of blue;
Say, who can count them?—Who can sound it?—Who?
Even as a sand in the majestic sea,
A diamond-atom on a hill of snow,
A spark amidst a Hecla’s majesty,
An unseen mote where maddened whirlwinds blow,
And I midst scenes like these—the mighty thought
O’erwhelms me—I am nought, or less than nought.
And science tells me that each twinkling star
That smiles above us is a peopled sphere,
Or central sun, diffusing light afar;
A link of nature’s chain:—and there, even there,
The Godhead shines displayed—in love and light,
Creating wisdom—all-directing might.
Where are thy secret laws, O Nature, where?
In wintry realms thy dazzling torches blaze,
And from thy icebergs streams of glory there
Are poured, while other suns their splendent race
In glory run: from frozen seas what ray
Of brightness?—From yon realms of night what day?
Philosopher, whose penetrating eye
Reads nature’s deepest secrets, open now
This all-inexplicable mystery:
Why do earth’s darkest, coldest regions glow
With lights like these?—Oh, tell us, knowing one,
For thou dost count the stars, and weigh the sun!
Whence are these varied lamps all lighted round?—
Whence all the horizon’s glowing fire?—The heaven
Is splendent as with lightning—but no sound
Of thunder—all as calm as gentlest even;
And winter’s midnight is as bright, as gay,
As the fair noontide of a summer’s day.
What stores of fire are these, what magazine,
Whence God from grossest darkness light supplies?
What wondrous fabric which the mountains screen,
Whose bursting flames above those mountains rise;
Where rattling winds disturb the mighty ocean,
And the proud waves roll with eternal motion?
Vain is the inquiry—all is darkness, doubt:
This earth is one vast mystery to man.
First find the secrets of this planet out,
Then other planets, other systems scan!
Nature is veiled from thee, presuming clod!
And what canst thou conceive of Nature’s God?
—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets.
FOOTNOTES:
[134] To his patron, upon his having expressed his fear that Lomonósov would lose his zeal for the sciences when he received the gift of an estate from the Empress.
[135] Kalchák-pasha was the commander of Khotín.