26. The heavenly spark which gleamed within him could not, however, be put out. Letters proper he at last indeed forsook, but he now became profoundly religious; he gave up all his possessions to the poor, and when he needed moneys wherewith to make a pilgrimage to what was to him a veritably Holy Land, he had to publish some of his intimate correspondence.
27. This work proved the bitterness of the rest of his days. It roused a clamor against the poor author altogether out of proportion to the slight merit of the work. Gogol was denounced on all sides as a renegade; the relentless accuser of autocracy in “The Revisor” could not be forgiven for the spirit of Christian humility and resignation to the will of God which breathed from these letters. It was in the forties. Those were the days when a Hegelian wave went over Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends declared him insane, and all manner of advice offered, which could not fail to make him truly insane. The already melancholy Gogol now became lonely, dejected, and sought consolation now more than ever in fasting and prayer. Poor Gogol had not yet learned that complete salvation is found not in praying, but in doing. While his ills therefore increased his devotion, his devotion likewise in turn increased his ills; his body became emaciated, his mind was wrecked, and early in 1852 he was found one morning starved to death, prostrated before the holy images, in front of which he had spent his last days.
28. Next to Tolstoy, Gogol is perhaps the most lovable figure in Russian literature. I say lovable, because he was at bottom a hapless man,—a man who had fed on his own mighty heart. There is a Carlylesqueness about his woe that makes his life immeasurably pitiful. Pushkin's sorrow one finds it difficult to lament deeply, since it was mostly of his own making; but Gogol's was the sorrowful lot of all heaven-aspiring souls who have not yet attained the last, safest haven of rest in God,—that haven from which the soul no longer cries in agony of spirit, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” but rather, “Father, thou knowest wherefore all this is; thy will be done!” His soul in its loneliness and restlessness knew nor sympathy nor appreciation of what was to him his deepest life; and this the loving soul ever craves most hungeringly. When the great soul had departed, gone irrevocably, men readily enough recognized that the light of Israel had gone out; but the recognition came too late, the love came when it could no longer heal his wounded spirit.
29. My friends, “Taras Bulba” will thrill your soul with inexpressible beauty. Gogol's “Revisor” will amuse you. His “Dead Souls” will instruct you; but his life, if you study it faithfully, should prove his greatest work unto you, for it should stir you,—stir you to tenderness, stir you to sympathy, stir you to compassion for those sufferers, the like of Gogol, who are never wanting, in whatever age, in whatever clime, in whatever walk of life. Would to God, my friends, you could carry away from Gogol's life with you this lesson: In your very midst, perhaps this very day, there doubtless walks among you some mighty spirit, some hungry soul. Seek him out, find him out, that not of ye at least shall be said those immeasurably sorrowful words which could be said of the countless friends of Gogol,—they came with their sympathy—too late!
[LECTURE IV].
TURGENEF.
1. In the history of Russian letters, Ivan Turgenef is the most complex figure. Nay, with the exception of Shakespeare he is perhaps the most complex figure in all literature. He is universal, he is provincial; he is pathetic, he is sneering; he is tender, he is merciless; he is sentimental, he is frigid. He can be as compact as Tacitus, and as prolix as Thackeray. He can be as sentimental as Werther, and as heartless as Napoleon. He can cry with the bird, grow with the grass, and hum with the bee; he can float with the spirits, and dream with the fevered. He is everywhere at home: in the novel, in the story, in the sketch, in the diary, in the epistle. Whatever form of composition he touches, let once his genius be mature, and it turns to gold under his hands. On reading through his ten volumes you leave him with the feeling that you have just emerged from the virgin forests of South America; your head is full of monkeys frolicking about, with an occasional cocoanut shot at you, your head is full of the birds with their variegated plumage, of the fragrance of the flowers, of the dusk about you, and of the primeval stillness of the forest. And the collective impression of the writer, the man, left upon you is that of some invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinion by befriending an obnoxious exile, now he shrinks before it by disclaiming almost his acquaintance. Between the contending parties, poor Turgenef shared the fate of the child of the women who did not come to King Solomon for advice in their dispute about its mother. The poor child was pulled by each until disfigured for life. So Turgenef between the different parties, each claiming him as its own, remained homeless, almost friendless, to the end of his days, belonging to none; and though surrounded by all manner of society and companionship which fame, wealth, and position could give, he was yet at bottom solitary, for he went through the world a man who was misunderstood.
2. His position in letters is therefore anomalous. Russians blame him, but read him; and Americans praise him, and read him not. Englishmen quote him, Frenchmen write essays on him, and Germans write books about him; but all agree in wondering at him, all agree in not comprehending him. And yet Turgenef's life and the purpose of his books is plain enough to him that comes to view him with eyes as yet uncovered by partisan glasses. Turgenef the realist, Turgenef the idealist, is enigmatic enough; but once understood that Turgenef was the literary warrior against what was to him a mortal enemy, and his whole life and all his important works at once become explicable, consistent.