Russia: Its People and Its Literature

by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

"Among the rebels," answered the poet.

Far from being angry, the sovereign was pleased with his reply, and he embraced Puchkine, saying: "Your banishment is at an end; and do not let fear of the censors spoil your poetry, Alexander, son of Sergius, for I myself will be your censor."

This is not the only instance of this inflexible autocrat's warm-heartedness. More than once his imperial hand stayed the sentence of the censors and gave the wing to genius. Nicholas was not afraid of art, and was, besides, an intelligent amateur of literature. We shall see how he protected even the satire of Gogol. And so, with a royal suavity which softens the most selfish character, Nicholas gained to his side the first poet of Russia, and forever alienated him from the cause for which his friends suffered in gloomy fortresses and in exile, or perished on the scaffold. Puchkine had no other choice than to accept the situation or forfeit his freedom,—to make peace with the emperor or to go and vegetate in some village and bury his talent alive. He chose his vocation as poet, accepted the imperial favor, and returned to St. Petersburg, where he found a remnant of the Arzamas, but now languid and without creative fire. Being restored to his place in high society, he tasted the delights of living in a sphere with which his refined and aristocratic nature was in harmony. He was a poet; he enjoyed the privileges and immunities of a demi-god, the just tribute paid to the productive genius of beauty. And yet at times the pride and independence hushed within his soul stirred again, and he thought with horror upon the hypocrisy of his position as imperial oracle. But he found himself at the height of his glory, doing his best work, seldom annoyed by the censorial scissors, thanks to the Czar; and so, flattered by the throne, the court, and the public, he led to the altar his "brown-skinned virgin," his beautiful Natalia, with whom he was so deeply in love. Having satisfied every earthly desire, he must needs, like Polycrates, throw his ring into the sea.

All his happiness came to a sudden end, and not only his happiness, but his life, went to pay his debt to that high society which had received him with smiles and fair promises. Puchkine's end is as dramatic as any novel. A certain French Legitimist who had been well received by the nobility at St. Petersburg took advantage of the chivalrous customs then in vogue there, to pay court to the poet's beautiful wife, electing her as the lady of his thoughts without disguise. Society protected this little skirmish, and assisted the gallant to meet his lady at every entertainment and in every salon; and as Puchkine, though quite unsuspicious, showed plainly that he did not enjoy the game, they amused themselves with exciting and annoying him, ridiculing him, and making him the butt of epigrams and anonymous verses. The marriage of "Dante"—as the adorer of his wife was called—with his wife's sister, far from calming his nerves, only irritated him the more, and he believed it to be a stratagem on the lover's part, a means of approaching the nearer to his desires. Becoming desperate, he sought and obtained a challenge to a duel, and fell mortally wounded by a ball from his adversary. Two days later he died, having just received a letter from the emperor, saying:—

"Dear Alexander, Son of Sergius,—If it is the will of Providence that we should never meet again in this world, I counsel you to die like a Christian. Give yourself no anxiety for your wife and children; I will care for them."

Russia cried out with indignation at the news of his death, accusing polite society in round terms of having taken the part of the professional libertine against the husband,—of the French adventurer against their illustrious compatriot; and Lermontof voiced the national anger in some celebrated lines to this effect:—

"Thy last days were poisoned by the vicious ridicule of low detractors; thou hast died thirsting for vengeance, moaning bitterly to see thy most beautiful hopes vanished; none understood the deep emotion of thy last words, and the last sigh of thy dying lips was lost."

But I agree with those who, in spite of this fine elegy, do not regret the premature end of the romantic poet. His life, exuberant, brilliant, fecund, passionate, like that of Byron, could have no more appropriate termination than a pistol-shot. He died before the end of romanticism—his tragic history lent him a halo which lifts his figure above the mists of time. I have seen Victor Hugo and our own Zorilla in their old age, and I was not guilty of wishing them anything but long life and prosperity; but, æsthetically speaking, it seemed to me that both of them had lived forty years too long, and that Alfred de Musset, Espronceda, and Byron were well off in their glorious tombs.

Puchkine belongs undeniably to the great general currents of European literature; only now and then does he manifest the peculiar genius of his country which was so strongly marked in Gogol. But it would be unjust to consider him a mere imitator of foreign romanticists, and some even claim that he always had one foot upon the soil of classicism, taking the phrase in the Helenic sense, as particularly shown in his "Eugene Oneguine," and that, were he to live again, his talents would undergo a transformation and shine forth in the modern novel and the national theatre. Besides being a lyric poet of first rank, Puchkine must also be considered a superb prose writer, having learned from Voltaire a harmony of arrangement, a discreet selection of details, and a concise, clear, and rapid phrasing. His novel, "The Captain's Daughter," is extremely pretty and interesting, at times amusing, or again very touching, and in my opinion preferable in its simplicity to the interminable narratives of Walter Scott. But Puchkine has one remarkable peculiarity, which is, that while he had a keen sympathy with the popular poetry, and was fully sensible of the revelation of it by Gogol, which he applauded with all his heart, yet the author of "Boris Godonof" was so caught in the meshes of romanticism that he never could employ his faculties in poetry of a national character. Puchkine's works have no ethnical value at all. His melancholy is not the despairing sadness of the Russian, but the romantic morbidezza expressed often in much the same words by Byron, Espronceda, and de Musset. The phenomenon is common, and easily explained. It lies in the fact that romanticism was always and everywhere prejudicial to the manifestation of nationality, and made itself a nation apart, composed of half-a-dozen persons from every European country. Realism, with its principles—whether tacitly or explicitly accepted—of human verities, heredity, atavism, race and place influences, etc., became a necessity in order that writers might follow their natural instincts and speak in their own mother tongue.

Within the restricted circle of poets who hovered around Puchkine, one deserves especial mention, namely, Lermontof. He is the second lyric poet of Russia, and perhaps embodies the spirit of romanticism even more than Puchkine; he is the real Russian Byron. His life is singularly like that of Puchkine, he having also been banished to the Caucasus, and for the very reason of having written the elegy upon Puchkine's death; like him he was also killed in a duel, but still earlier in life, and before he had reached the plenitude of his powers.