It is in the key of Tolstoy, but the moral is startling. Not thus can you save your soul. Max Stirner is to the fore. Don't turn your other cheek if one has been smitten, but smite the smiter, and heartily. However, naught avails, you must die, and die like a dog, a star, or a flower. Better universal suicide. Success comes only to the unfortunate. And so we swing back to Eduard von Hartmann, who, in his philosophy of the unconscious, counsels the same thing. (A ferocious advocate of pessimism and a disciple of Arthur Schopenhauer, by name Mainlander, preached world destruction through race suicide.)
But all these pessimists seem well fed and happy when compared to the nihilists of Artzibashef. He portrays every stage of disillusionment with a glacial calmness. Not even annihilation is worth the trouble of a despairing gesture. Cui bono? Revolutionist or royalist—your career is, if you but dare break the conspiracy of silence—a burden or a sorrow. Happiness is only a word. Love a brief sensation. Death a certainty. For such nihilism we must go to the jungles of Asia, where in a lifelong silence, some fanatic fatidically stares at his navel, the circular symbol of eternity.
III
But if there is no philosophical balm in Gilead, there is the world of the five senses, and a glorious world it may prove if you have only the health, courage, and contempt for the Chinese wall with which man has surrounded his instincts. There are no laws, except to be broken, no conventions that cannot be shattered. There is the blue sky, brother, and the air on the heath, brother! Drop the impedimenta and lead a free, roving life. How the world would wag without work no one tells us. Not didactic, the novelist disdains to draw a moral.
There is much Stirner, some Nietzsche in Sanine, who is a handsome young chap, a giant, and a "blond barbarian." It is the story of the return of the native to his home in a small town. He finds his mother as he left her, older, but as narrow as ever, and his sister Lydia, one of the most charming girls in Russian fiction. Sanine is surprised to note her development. He admires her—too much so for our Western taste. However, there is something monstrous in the moral and mental make-up of this hero, who is no hero. He may be a type, but I don't believe in types; there are only humans. His motto might be: What's the difference? He is passive, not with the fatalism of Oblomov, Gontcharov's hero; not with the apathy of Charles Bovary, or the timid passivity of Frederic Moreau; he displays an indifference to the trivial things of life that makes him seem an idler on the scene.
When the time arrives for action he is no skulker. His sister has been ruined by a frivolous officer in garrison, and she attempts suicide. Her brother rescues her, not heroically, but philosophically, and shows her the folly of believing in words. Ruined! Very well, marry and forget! However, he drives the officer to suicide by publicly disgracing him. He refuses a duel, punches his head, and the silly soldier with his silly code of honour blows out his brains. A passive rôle is Sanine's in the composition of this elaborate canvas, the surface simplicity of which deceives us as to its polyphonic complexity. He remains in the background while about him play the little destinies of little souls. Yet he is always the fulcrum for a climax. I have not yet made up my mind whether Sanine is a great man or a thorough scoundrel. Perhaps both.
A temperamental and imaginative writer is Artzibashef. I first read him (1911) in French, the translation of Jacques Povolozky, and his style recalled, at times, that of Turgenev, possibly because of the language. In the German translation he is not so appealing; again perhaps of the difference in the tongues. As I can't read Russian, I am forced to fall back on translations, and they seldom give an idea of personal rhythm, unless it be a Turgenev translating into Russian the Three Tales of his friend Flaubert.
Nevertheless, through the veil of a foreign speech the genius of Artzibashef shines like a crimson sun in a mist. Of course, we miss the caressing cadence and rich sonorousness of the organ-toned Russian language: The English versions are excellent, though, naturally enough, occasionally chastened and abbreviated. I must protest here against the omission of a chapter in Breaking Point which is a key to the ending of the book. I mean the chapter in which is related the reason why the wealthy drunkard goes to the monastery, there to end his days. Years ago Mr. Howells said that we could never write of America as Dostoievsky did of Russia, and it was true enough at the time; nor, would we ever tolerate the nudities of certain Gallic novelists. Well, we have, and I am fain to believe that the tragic issues of American life should be given fuller expression, and with the same sincerity as Artzibashef's, whose strength is his sincerity, whose sincerity is a form of his genius.
The very air of America makes for optimism; our land of milk and honey may never produce such prophets of pessimism as Artzibashef, unless conditions change. But the lesson for our novelists is the courageous manner—and artistic, too—with which the Russian pursues the naked soul of mankind and dissects it. He notes, being a psychologist as well as a painter, the exquisite recoil of the cerebral cells upon themselves which we call consciousness. Profoundly human in his sympathies, without being, in the least sentimental, he paints full-length portraits of men and women with a flowing brush and a fine sense of character values. But he will never bend the bow of Balzac.