A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections

by Isabel Florence Hapgood

"Neighbor, dear, my light! (1)
Eat, I pray thee." (2)
"Neighbor, dear, I'm full to the throat,"—"No matter. (1)
Another little plateful; hearken: (2)
This fish soup, I assure you, is gloriously cooked." (3)
"Three platefuls have I eaten."—"O, stop that, why keep count, (4)
If only you feel like it, (4)
Why, eat and health be yours: eat to the bottom! (3)
What fish-soup! and how rich in fat (3)
As though with amber covered. (3)
Enjoy yourself, dear friend! (5)
Here's tender bream, pluck, a bit of sterlet here!
Just another little spoonful!
Come, urge him, wife!"
In this wise did neighbor Demyán neighbor Fóka entertain.
And let him neither breathe nor rest;
But sweat from Fóka long had poured in streams.
Yet still another plateful doth he take,
Collects his final strength—and cleans up everything.
"Now, that's the sort of friend I like!"
Demyán did shout: "But I can't bear the stuck-up; come, eat another plateful, my dear fellow!"
Thereupon, my poor Fóka,
Much as he loved fish-soup, yet from such a fate,
In his arms seizing his girdle and his cap—
Rushed madly, quickly home,
And since that day, hath never more set foot in Demyán's house.
Writer, thou art lucky if the real gift thou hast,
But if thou dost not know enough to hold thy peace in time,
And dost not spare thy neighbor's ears,
Then must thou know, that both thy prose and verse,
To all will prove more loathsome than Demyán's fish-soup.

Another good specimen is called:

THE SWAN, THE PIKE, AND THE CRAB

When partners cannot agree, their affair will not work smoothly,
And torment, not business, will be the outcome.
Once on a time, the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike,
Did undertake to haul a loaded cart,
And all three hitched themselves thereto;
They strained their every nerve, but still the cart budged not.
And yet, the load seemed very light for them;
But towards the clouds the Swan did soar,
Backwards the Crab did march,
While the Pike made for the stream.
Which of them was wrong, which right, 'tis not our place to judge.
Only, the cart doth stand there still.

We have seen that Lomonósoff began the task of rendering the modern Russian language adaptable to all the needs of prose and verse; and that the writers who followed him, notably Karamzín, contributed their share to this great undertaking. Púshkin practically completed it and molded the hitherto somewhat harsh and awkward forms into an exquisite medium for every requirement of literature. Alexánder Sergyéevitch Púshkin (1799-1837), still holds the undisputed leadership for simplicity, realism, absolute fidelity to life, and he was the first worthy forerunner of the great men whose names are world-synonyms at the present day for those qualities. Almost every writer who preceded him had been more or less devoted to translations and servile copies of foreign literature. Against these, and the mock-classicism of the French pattern, which then ruled Europe, he waged relentless battle. He vitalized Russian literature by establishing its foundations firmly on Russian soil; by employing her native traditions, life, and sentiment as subjects and inspiration, in place of the worn-out conventionalities of foreign invention. The result is a product of the loftiest truth, as well as of the loftiest art.

His ancestors were nobles who occupied important posts under Peter the Great. His mother was a granddaughter of Hannibal, the negro of whom Púshkin wrote under the title of "Peter the Great's Arab." This Hannibal was a slave who had been brought from Africa to Constantinople, where the Russian ambassador purchased him, and sent him to Peter the Great. The latter took a great fancy to him, had him baptized, and would not allow his brothers to ransom him, but sent him, at the age of eighteen, abroad to be educated. On his return, Peter kept his favorite always beside him. Under the reign of the Empress Anna Ioánnovna he was exiled to Siberia, in company with other court favorites of former reigns; and like them, returned to Russia, and was loaded with favors by Peter's daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. His son was a distinguished general of Katherine II.'s day. Púshkin, the poet, had blue eyes, and very fair skin and hair, but the whole cast of his countenance in his portraits is negro. His father was a typical society man, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, Púshkin was educated exclusively by French tutors at home, and his first writings (at the age of ten) were in French, and imitated from writers of that nation. When his father retired from the military service, he settled in Moscow, and the boy knew all the literary men of that day and town before he was twelve years of age, and there can be no doubt that this literary atmosphere had a great influence upon him. When, at the age of twelve, he was placed in the newly founded Lyceum,^[10] at Tzárskoe Seló (sixteen miles from St. Petersburg), whence so many famous men were afterwards graduated, he and the other pupils amused themselves in their play hours by writing a little newspaper, and by other literary pursuits. Here the lad was compelled to learn Russian, and the first use he made of it was to write caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet Derzhávin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his "Memories of Tzárskoe Seló," he at once predicted his coming greatness. As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms. Karamzín and Zhukóvsky were not long in adding their testimony to the lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his own poems to the young poet's judgment.

Púshkin was an omnivorous reader, but his parents had never been pleased with his progress in his studies, or regarded him as clever. The praise of competent judges now opened their eyes; but he had a good deal to endure from his father, later on, in spite of this. At this period, Púshkin imitated the most varied poetical forms with wonderful delicacy, and yielded to the most diverse poetical moods. But even then he was entering on a new path, whose influence on later Russian literature was destined to be incalculably great. While still a school-boy, he began to write his famous fantastic-romantic poem, "Ruslán and Liudmíla" (which Glínka afterwards made the subject of a charming opera), and here, for the first time in Russian literary history, a thoroughly national theme was handled with a freedom and naturalness which dealt the death-blow to the prevailing inflated, rhetorical style. The subject of the poem was one of the folk-legends, of which he had been fond as a child; and when it was published, in 1820, the critics were dumb with amazement. The gay, even dissipated, society life which he took up on leaving the Lyceum came to a temporary end in consequence of some biting epigrams which he wrote. The Prefect of St. Petersburg called him to account for his attacks on prominent people, and transferred him from the ministry of foreign affairs to southern Russia—in fact, to polite exile—giving him a corresponding position in another department of the government.

For four years (1820-1824) he lived chiefly in southern Russia, including the Crimea and the Caucasus, and wrote, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," "The Fountain of Baktchesarái," "The Gypsies," and a part of his famous "Evgény Onyégin," being, at this period, strongly influenced by Byron, as the above-mentioned poems and the short lyrics of the same period show. Again his life and his poetry were changed radically by a caustic but witty and amusing epigram on his uncongenial official superior in Odessa; and on the latter's complaint to headquarters—the complaint being as neat as the epigram, in its way—Púshkin was ordered to reside on one of the paternal estates, in the government of Pskoff. Here, under the influence of his old nurse, Arína Rodiónovna, and her folk-tales, he became thoroughly and definitively Russian, and entered at last on his real career—poetry which was truly national in spirit. His talents were now completely matured. His wonderfully developed harmony of versification has never been approached by any later poet, except, in places, by Lérmontoff. Quite peculiar to himself, at that day—and even much later—are his vivid delineations of character, and his simple but startlingly lifelike and truthful pictures of every-day life. If his claim to immortality rested on no other foundation than these, it would still be incontestable, for all previous Russian writers had scorned such commonplaces.

In 1826 he returned to the capital, having been restored to favor, and resumed his gay life, which on the whole, had a deleterious influence on his talents. In 1831 he married a very beautiful and extravagant woman, after which he was constantly in financial distress, his own social ambitions and lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatchéff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gógol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was killed in a duel with Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, who had been persecuting his wife with unwelcome attentions, in January, 1837. Baron Hekkeren-Dantes died only a year or two ago.

As a school-boy he had instinctively turned into a new path, that of national Russian literature. For this national service, and because he was the first to realize the poetic ideal, his countrymen adored him. To the highest external elegance and the most exquisite beauty, he fitly wedded inward force and wealth of thought, in the most incomparable manner. His finest effort, "Evgény Onyégin" (1822-1829), exhibits the poet in the process of development, from the Byronic stage to the vigorous independence of a purely national writer. The hero, Evgény Onyégin, begins as a society young man of the period; that is to say, he was inevitably a Byronic character. His father's death calls him from the dissipations of the capital to the quiet life of a country estate. He regards his neighbors as his inferiors, both in culture and social standing, and for a long time will have nothing to do with them. At last, rather accidentally, he strikes up a friendship with Lénsky, a congenial spirit, a young poet, who has had the advantage of foreign education, the son of one of the neighbors. Olga Lárin, the young daughter of another neighbor, has long been betrothed to Lénsky, and the latter naturally introduces Onyégin to her family. Olga's elder sister, Tatyána, promptly falls in love with Onyégin, and in a letter, which is always quoted as one of the finest passages in Russian literature, and the most perfect portrait of the noble Russian woman's soul, she declares her love for him. Onyégin politely snubs her, lecturing her in a fatherly way, and no one is informed of the occurrence, except Tatyána's old nurse, who, though stupid, is absolutely devoted to her, and does not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyána's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyégin is present, being urged thereto by Lénsky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened between him and Tatyána, and innocently scheming to bring them together, place him opposite her at dinner. Angered by this, he revenges himself on the wholly innocent Lénsky, by flirting outrageously with Olga (the wedding-day is only a fortnight distant), and Olga, being as vain and weak as she is pretty, does her share. The result is, that Lénsky challenges Onyégin to a duel, and the seconds insist that it must be fought, though Onyégin would gladly apologize. He kills Lénsky, unintentionally, and immediately departs on his travels. Olga speedily consoles herself, and marries a handsome officer. Tatyána, a girl of profound feelings, remains inconsolable, refuses all offers of marriage, and at last, yielding to the entreaties of her anxious relatives, consents to spend a season in Moscow. As a wall-flower, at her first ball, she captivates a wealthy prince, of very high standing in St. Petersburg, and is persuaded by her parents to marry him. When Onyégin returns to the capital he finds the little country girl, whose love he had scorned, one of the greatest ladies at the court and in society; and he falls madly in love with her. Her cold indifference galls him, and increases his love. He writes three letters, to which she does not reply. Then he forces himself into her boudoir and finds her reading one of his letters and weeping over it. She then confesses that she loves him still, but dismisses him with the assurance that she will remain true to her noble and loving husband. Tatyána is regarded as one of the finest, most vividly faithful portraits of the genuine Russian woman in all Russian literature; while Olga is considered fully her equal, as a type, and in popular sympathy; and the other characters are almost equally good in their various lines.