“All the landscape sleeps; and far above, all is breathing, all is marvellous, all is solemn. The soul cannot fathom it: it is sublime. An infinite number of silver visions arise like a harmony in the depths. Night divine! enchanting night! And suddenly all is filled with life,—the forests, the ponds, the steppes. Majestically the thunder of the voice of the Ukraïne nightingale rolls along; and it seems as though the moon drank her song from the bosom of the sky.
“A magic slumber holds the village yonder in repose. Still more brilliant in the moonlight the group of little houses stands out in relief; still more blinding are their low walls in contrast with the shade. The songs have ceased; all is now still. The pious folk are already asleep. Here and there a narrow window shows a gleam of light; on the doorstep of some cottage, a belated family are finishing their evening meal.”
Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand aspects of the Ukraïne landscape. He has sketches filled in with adorable detail; and nothing is more curious than the contrast between the lyricism with which he celebrates the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the fine, discreet, restrained tone of so many familiar impressions. The feeling for nature finds in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in turn through every gradation.
Sometimes it is a vigorous sketch made with a few strokes, at once broad and accurate, dominated by a strange and grandiose theme:—
[8]“In places the black sky was colored by the burning of dry rushes on the shore of some river or out-of-the-way lake; and a long line of swans flying to the north, struck suddenly by the silver rose-light of the flame, were like red handkerchiefs waving across the night.”
Sometimes it is a picture full of detail, whose motives have been strangely brought together and treated delicately, elaborately, as with a magnifying-glass:—
[9]“I see from here the little house, surrounded by a gallery supported by delicate, slender columns of darkened wood, and going entirely around the building, so that during thunder-showers or hail-storms the window-shutters can be closed without exposure to the rain; behind the house, mulberry-trees in bloom, then long rows of dwarf fruit-trees drowned in the bright scarlet of the cherries and in an amethystine sea of plums with leaden down; then a large old beech-tree, under the shade of which is spread a carpet for repose; before the house, a spacious court with short and verdant grass, with two little foot-paths trodden down by the steps of those who went from the barn to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the proprietor’s house. A long-necked goose drinking water from a puddle, surrounded by her soft and silky yellow goslings; a long hedge hung with strings of dried pears and apples, and rugs put out to air; a wagon loaded with melons near the barn; on one side an ox unyoked and chewing his cud, lazily lying down. All this has for me an inexpressible charm.”
Here we have a realism anterior to our own, and, if I may be allowed to say so, far superior. Here we do not find, as we do elsewhere, features collected and reproduced with the conscientiousness—or rather the lack of conscientiousness—of a photographic camera: a choice is shown, a soul-felt attention. The observer’s notice is that of a poet: the external world is no longer reflected in a glass lens, but is caught by a quivering retina; the image which is transferred to the book is no less alive, and what the writer has felt in this manner the reader feels in turn.
Just so far as purely descriptive description produces an impression of puerility, of unlikeness, and, when it is carried to extremes in the style of our realists, of fatigue and disgust, to the same degree does it here afford interest, picturesqueness, appropriateness. Who could fail to see, or who would refuse to admire, the pose of “yonder wooden cottages, leaning to one side, and buried in a thicket of willows, elders, and pear-trees”? They have something better than a physiognomy: they have a language.
“I could not tell why the doors sang in this way. Was it because the hinges were rusted? Or had the joiner who made them concealed in them some secret mechanism? I do not know; but the strangest thing was, that each door had its own individual voice. That of the sleeping-room had the most delicate soprano, that of the dining-room a sonorous bass. As to that which closed the ante-room, it gave forth a strange, tremulous, and plaintive sound, so that by listening attentively these words could be distinctly heard: ‘Batiushki! I am freezing.’ I know that many people do not like the squeaking of doors: for my part, I like it very much. And when I happen to hear in St. Petersburg a door crying, I suddenly perceive the scent of the country, together with the memory of a small, low room, lighted by a taper set in an ancient candlestick. Supper is already on the table, near the open window through which the lovely May night looks into the room. A nightingale fills the garden, the house, and the slope to the river gleaming in the gloomy distance, with the glory of his voice; the trees gently rustle. Bozhe moï! what a train of memories arise within me!”