Altogether, Púshkin’s force was not in his elevating or freedom-inspiring influence. His epicureanism, his education received from French emigrés, and his life amidst the high and frivolous classes of St. Petersburg society, prevented him from taking to heart the great problems which were already ripening in Russian life. This is why, towards the end of his short life, he was no longer in touch with those of his readers who felt that to glorify the military power of Russia, after the armies of Nicholas I. had crushed Poland, was not worthy of a poet; and that to describe the attractions of a St. Petersburg winter-season for a rich and idle gentleman was not to describe Russian life, in which the horrors of serfdom and absolutism were being felt more and more heavily.
Púshkin’s real force was in his having created in a few years the Russian literary language, and having freed literature from the theatrical, pompous style which was formerly considered necessary in whatever was printed in black and white. He was great in his stupendous powers of poetical creation: in his capacity of taking the commonest things of everyday life, or the commonest feelings of the most ordinary person, and of so relating them that the reader lived them through; and, on the other side, constructing out of the scantiest materials, and calling to life, a whole historical epoch—a power of creation which, of those coming after him, only Tolstóy has to the same extent. Púshkin’s power was next in his profound realism—that realism, understood in its best sense, which he was the first to introduce in Russia, and which, we shall see, became afterwards characteristic of the whole of Russian literature. And it is in the broadly humanitarian feelings with which his best writings are permeated, in his bright love of life, and his respect for women. As to beauty of form, his verses are so “easy” that one knows them by heart after having read them twice or thrice. Now that they have penetrated into the villages, they are the delight of millions of peasant children, after having been the delight of such refined and philosophical poets as Turguéneff.
Púshkin also tried his hand at the drama; and, so far as may be judged from his latest productions, Don Juan and The Miser-Knight, he surely would have achieved great results had he lived to continue them. His Mermaid (Rusálka) unfortunately remained unfinished, but its dramatic qualities can be judged from what Darmýzhsky has made of it in his opera. His historical drama, Boris Godunóff, taken from the times of the pretender Demetrius, is enlivened here and there by most beautiful scenes, some of them very amusing, and some of them containing a delicate analysis of the sentiments of love and ambition; but it remains rather a dramatic chronicle than a drama. As to The Miser-Knight, it shows an extraordinary power of mature talent, and contains passages undoubtedly worthy of Shakespeare; while Don Juan, imbued with a true Spanish atmosphere, gives a far better comprehension of the Don Juan type than any other representation of it in any literature, and has all the qualities of a first-rate drama.
Towards the end of his very short life a note of deeper comprehension of human affairs began to appear in Púshkin’s writings. He had had enough of the life of the higher classes; and, when he began to write a history of the great peasant uprising which took place under Pugatchóff during the reign of Catherine II., he began also to understand and to feel the inner springs of the life of the Russian peasant-class. National life appeared to him under a much broader aspect than before. But at this stage of the development of his genius his career came to a premature end. He was killed, as already stated, in a duel with a society man.
The most popular work of Púshkin is his novel in verse, Evghéniy Onyéghin. In its form it has much in common with Byron’s Childe Harold, but it is thoroughly Russian, and contains perhaps the best description of Russian life, both in the capitals and on the smaller estates of noblemen in the country, that has ever been written in Russian literature. Tchaykóvsky, the musician, has made of it an opera which enjoys a great success on the Russian stage. The hero of the novel, Onyéghin, is a typical representative of what society people were at that time. He has received a superficial education, partly from a French emigré, partly from a German teacher, and has learned “something and anyhow.” At the age of nineteen he is the owner of a great fortune—consisting, of course, of serfs, about whom he does not care in the least—and he is engulfed in the “high-life” of St. Petersburg. His day begins very late, with reading scores of invitations to tea-parties, evening parties, and fancy balls. He is, of course, a visitor at the theatre, in which he prefers ballet to the clumsy productions of the Russian dramatists; and he spends a good deal of his day in fashionable restaurants, while his nights are given to balls, where he plays the part of a disillusioned young man, who is tired of life, and wraps himself in the mantle of Byronism. For some reason or other he is compelled to spend a summer on his estate, where he has for a neighbour a young poet, educated in Germany and full of German romanticism. They become great friends, and they make acquaintance with a squire’s family in their neighbourhood. The head of the family—the old mother—is admirably described. Her two daughters, Tatiána and Olga, are very different in nature: Olga is a quite artless girl, full of the joy of living, who worries herself with no questions, and the young poet is madly in love with her; they are going to marry. As to Tatiána, she is a poetical girl, and Púshkin bestows on her all the wonderful powers of his talent, describing her as an ideal woman: intelligent, thoughtful, and inspired with vague aspirations towards something better than the prosaic life which she is compelled to live. Onyéghin produces upon her, from the first, a deep impression: she falls in love with him; but he, who has made so many conquests in the high circles of the capital, and now wears the mask of disgust of life, takes no notice of the naïve love of the poor country girl. She writes to him and tells him her love with great frankness and in most pathetic words; but the young snob finds nothing better to do than to lecture her about her rashness, and seems to take great pleasure in turning the knife in her wound. At the same time, at a small country ball Onyéghin, moved by some spirit of mischief, begins to flirt in the most provoking way with the other sister, Olga. The young girl seems to be delighted with the attention paid to her by the gloomy hero, and the result is that the poet provokes his friend to a duel. An old retired officer, a true duelist, is mixed up in the affair, and Onyéghin, who cares very much about what the country gentlemen, whom he pretends to despise, may say about him, accepts the provocation and fights the duel. He kills his poet friend and is compelled to leave the country. Several years pass. Tatiána, recovered from an illness, goes one day to the house where formerly Onyéghin stayed and, making friends with an old keeper, spends days and months reading in his library; but life has no attraction for her. After insistent supplication from her mother, she goes to Moscow, and there she marries an old general. This marriage brings her to St. Petersburg, where she plays a prominent part in the Court circles. In these surroundings Onyéghin meets her once more, and hardly recognises his Tánya in the worldly lady whom he sees now; he falls madly in love with her. She takes no notice of him, and his letters remain unanswered. At last one day he goes, at an unseemly hour, into her house. He finds her reading his letters, her eyes full of tears, and makes her a passionate declaration of his love. To this Tatiána replies by a monologue which is so beautiful that it ought to be quoted here, if there existed an English translation which rendered at least the touching simplicity of Tatiána’s words, and consequently the beauty of the verses. A whole generation of Russian women have cried over this monologue, as they were reading these lines:
“Onyéghin, I was younger then, and better looking, I suppose; and I loved you” ... but the love of a country girl offered nothing new to Onyéghin. He paid no attention to her.... “Why then does he follow her now at every step? Why such display of his attention? Is it because she is now rich and belongs to the high society, and is well received at Court?
“Because my fall, in such condition,
Would be well noted ev’rywhere,
And bring to you an envied reputation?”
And she continues: