But to move those whom she has brought forth, this land of the Ukraïna has no need of being wrapped in mystery. Gogol has only to pronounce the name of the Dniépr to arouse a sort of passionate woe, whose expression, unhappily almost untranslatable, equals in beauty the accents of the noblest poetry.
[5]“Marvellous is the Dniépr in peaceful weather, when he rolls his wide waters in a free and reposeful course by forests and mountains. Not the slightest jar, not the slightest tumult. Thou beholdest, and thou canst not tell if his majestic breadth is moving or is stationary. It is almost like a sheet of molten glass. It might be compared to a road of blue ice, without measure in its breadth, without limit to its length, describing its wondrous curves in the emerald distance. How delightful for the burning sun to turn his gaze to earth, and to plunge his rays into the refreshing coolness of the glassy waves, and for the trees along the bank to see their reflections in this crystal mirror! Oh the green-crowned trees! They stand in groups with the flowers of the field by the water-side, and they bend over and gaze, and cannot weary of gazing. They cannot sufficiently admire their bright reflection, and they smile back to it, and greet it, waving their branches. They dare not look towards the middle of the Dniépr: none but the sun and the azure sky gaze at it. Some daring bird occasionally wings his way to the middle of the Dniépr. Oh the giant that he is! There is not a river like him in the world!
“Marvellous indeed is the Dniépr on a warm summer’s night, when all things are asleep,—both man and beast and bird. God only from on high looks down majestically on sky and earth, and shakes with solemnity his chasuble, and from his priestly raiment scatters all the stars. The stars are kindled, they shine upon the world; and all at the same instant also flash forth from the Dniépr. He holds them every one, the Dniépr, in his sombre bosom; not one shall escape from him, unless, indeed, it perish from the sky. The black forest, dotted with sleeping crows, and the mountains rent from immemorial time, strive, as they catch the light, to veil him with their mighty shadow. In vain! There is naught on earth can veil the Dniépr! Forever blue, he marches onward in his restful course by day and night. He can be seen as far as human sight can pierce. As he goes to rest voluptuously, and presses close unto the shore by reason of the nocturnal cold, he leaves behind him a silver trail, flashing like the blade of a Damascus sword, and then he yields to sleep again. Then also he is wonderful, the Dniépr, and there is no river like him in the world!
“But when the black clouds advance like mountains on the sky, the gloomy forest sways, the oaks clash, and the lightning, darting zigzag across the cloud, lights up suddenly the whole world, terrible then the Dniépr is! The columns of water thunder down, dashing against the mountain, and then with shouts and groans draw far away, and weep, and break out into tears again in the distance. Thus some aged Cossack mother consumes away with grief, when she gets ready her son to take his departure for the army. With many airs, a genuine good-for-naught, he dashes up on his black steed, his hand on his hip, and his cap set jauntily awry; and she, weeping at the top of her voice, runs after him, seizes him by the stirrup, strives to grasp the reins, and twists her arms, and breaks into a passion of scalding tears. Like dark stains in the midst of the struggling waves, emerge uncannily the stumps of charred trees and the rocks on the shelving shore. And the boats moored along the shore knock against each other as they rise and fall. What Cossack would dare embark in his canoe when the ancient Dniépr is angry? Apparently yonder man knows not that his waves swallow men like flies.”
The same powerful and charming feeling is found in all the descriptions which are scattered throughout Gogol’s work. One must read in “Taras Bulba” the celebrated description of the beauty of the steppe at different hours of the day. What a picture it is of this ocean of gilded verdure, where, amid the delicate dry stalks of the tall grass, shine patches of corn-flower with their shades of blue, of violet, or of red; the broom with its pyramid of yellow flowers; the clover with its white tufts; and in this luxuriant flora a corn-stalk, brought thither God knows how, lifting itself with the haughty vigor of a solitary fruit! The warm atmosphere is vocal with the cries of unseen birds. A few hawks are seen hovering; a flock of wild geese sweep by, and the prairie-gull mounts and swoops down again, now black and glistening in the sunbeam. Then it is the evening twilight, with its vapors descending denser and more dense, its perfumes rising more and more penetrating; the jerboas creep out from their hiding-places; the crickets madly chirp in their holes; and “one hears resounding, like a vibrating bell in the sleepy air, the cry of the solitary swan winging its way from some distant lake.”[6]
What gives this picturesque and vivid prose a singularly penetrating accent, is the writer’s emotion. His admiration has a truly passionate character, and this passion breaks out in cries of joy, even in expletives. “The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are!” There is in this a flavor of savagery which takes hold of us like a novelty, and which must have been as agreeable to the Russian taste as the secretly preferable national dish after too long use of foreign insipidities.
And even for many Russians, this nature which Gogol studied and described, or, more accurately speaking, sang with a sort of intoxication, was a sort of new world offering every attraction. Nothing is more peculiar than the little Russian landscape with its solitudes, its lakes, its vast rivers, the incomparable purity of its sky, icy and burning in turn. Here there is material to tempt the palette of colorist most enamoured of the untouched (épris d’inédit). But what painter’s palette has colors sufficiently powerful to express as Gogol has done the profound, ineffable poetry of the sounds and gleams of the night?
[7]“Do you know the Ukraïne night? Oh! you do not know the Ukraïne night. Gaze upon it with your eyes. From the midst of the sky the moon looks down. The immense vault of heaven unrolls wider and still more wide; more immense it has become; it glows; it breathes. The whole earth is in a silvery effulgence, and the marvellous air is both suffocating and fresh. It is full of tender caresses. It stirs into movement an ocean of perfumes.
“Night divine! enchanting night! silent, and as though full of life, the forests rise bristling with darkness; they cast an enormous shadow. Silent and motionless are the ponds: the coolness of their darkling waters is gloomily enshrined between the dark green walls of the gardens.
“The cherry-trees and wild plums stretch their roots with cautious timidity towards the icy water of the springs; and from their leaves only now and then are heard faint whisperings, as though they were angry, as though they were indignant, when the gay adventurer, the night wind, glides stealthily up to them and kisses them.