The most promising influence on Russian literature was the one which Addison and the English satirical journals began to exert on Catherine and on nearly all the writers of the day. The Spectator, the Guardian, and the Tatler had found a host of imitators in continental Europe, and satirical journals sprang up in astonishing abundance. It is not likely that Catherine became acquainted with the English originals. Her knowledge came rather through German and French translations; and the many passages from these English journals that found their way into Russia after the fifties were likewise generally derived at second hand. In any case, Addison and the satirical journals took deep root in Russian soil, and a long series of similar productions, from 1769 to 1774, had a very salutary effect on the drama and on those writings in which contemporary manners are held up to the scorn and ridicule of the people. Catherine herself, the founder of the first of these journals, had only the intention of practising this kind of literature for purposes of good-natured banter, and she was rather shocked when she discovered that her example had given Nóvikov and his adherents a weapon for attacking all the negative sides of contemporary civilisation. Without having wished it, Catherine gave into the hands of the disaffected a means of concentrating themselves around a name, a standard,—and public opinion became a factor in literature.
Patronage of the mighty was as much a goal towards which authors aimed in the days of Catherine as in the previous half-century, and the Empress regarded it as her privilege and duty to draw literary talent to the Court, by giving them government positions and lavish gifts. Derzhávin, Fon-Vízin, Bogdanóvich, Kostróv, Petróv, all were attracted to her as the central luminary. Felítsa was the keynote of what Derzhávin purported to be a new departure in the writing of odes, but it was in reality an old laudatory theme with an application of fashionable liberalism, and Felítsa remained the watchword of a generation of poets that gyrated around the throne. At the same time, Catherine made a seeming appeal to public opinion by her comedies and satires. If Nóvikov took her in earnest, and responded to her invitation by making a stand against her lukewarm satire by a systematic arraignment of vice in every form, he soon found it necessary in his next literary venture, the Painter, to appease her suspicion and anger by a fulsome praise of the Empress. Underneath this outward dependence upon the Court’s opinion, literary coteries were, however, beginning to come into existence, and the dramas of the day received their impulse from their writings, and in their turn were beginning to look to others than the Court for their approval.
These coteries were concentrated around the Masonic lodges, where, under the pledge of secrecy, an exchange of ideas could take place, and which, consequently, Catherine hated more and more. This Freemasonry was in itself under English influence, whence were taken the ceremonial and the organisation. It is said that Freemasonry first made its appearance in Russia under Peter the Great; later it came also under German influence, had its wide-spread connections in Europe, and, under the guise of mysterious practices, discussed the means of spreading popular education, doing unstinted charity, and ensuring freedom of thought. In the uncertain and superficial state of culture which then prevailed in Russia, much that these men did was unreal and irrelevant: they lost themselves in the mystical speculations of the Martinists and the Rosicrucians, and wasted their time in an unprofitable symbolism. But it is sufficient to read the biography of a Nóvikov to perceive that their efforts for the advancement of science and useful knowledge were more real than those of the cultivated and more materialistic Catherine. If Catherine had made the press free, she also persecuted those who had availed themselves of the privilege against her pleasure; if her mouth spoke fine sentiments, her heart was closed against their realisation. But Nóvikov, in the silence of his mysticism, made Russia’s past accessible to the scholar, founded the book trade, and took a practical interest in the common people by giving them useful books to read. This Nóvikov, and the unfortunate Radíshchev, whose book is even now prohibited in Russia, and Shcherbátov, who preferred the rough old times to the flighty manners of the day,—that is, the writers who were at outs with existing conditions,—were the carriers of a new spirit which, though not characteristically Russian, was akin to it in that it devoted itself with ardour to the treatment of burning questions from a native standpoint. Two of these writers, Shcherbátov and Nóvikov, were Slavophiles in the best sense of the word.
We shall now make the balance-sheet of the eighteenth-century literature in the separate departments, and see what residuum it bequeathed to the nineteenth century.
In the scholastic style of the Middle Ages it became a settled practice to dedicate books to powerful persons, and to address them with eulogies on all solemn occasions. Polish influence had made this kind of poetry popular at Kíev, and Simeón Pólotski introduced it in Moscow in time to sing the glory of the new-born Peter. Lomonósov’s activity began with an ode, and Tredyakóvski, Sumarókov, Petróv and a host of minor poets, if that name can be applied to writers of soulless rhymed adulation, proceeded in the beaten track of “ecstatic” poetry, until Dmítriev gave it the death-blow by his What Others Say. The only positive value lay in the odes of Lomonósov in which he described phenomena of nature, and those of Derzhávin, who, following his example, made similar use of them as, for example, in his Ode to the Deity. His Felítsa, which marked the disintegration of the “ecstatic ode,” left its effect in the lighter epistolary poetry of his contemporaries, like Kostróv, and may even be traced in the playful productions of the next generation.
The epic is akin to the ode, in that it is a kind of rapturous eulogy on some momentous event in history. In the mad intoxication with foreign pseudo-classic ideals there could be no place for a proper understanding of native history; hence the flatulent epics of Kheráskov, admired though they were, could be of no lasting merit. The other epics dealt with foreign subjects. Tredyakóvski’s Telemachiad could only amuse as a piece of poetical ineptitude, and a pleasure-loving public of the times of Catherine II. was more inclined to go into raptures over Apuleius’s Golden Ass which, having passed through a French transformation, appeared as a species of mock-heroic in Bogdanóvich’s Psyche. Púshkin still took delight in it, and his earlier productions of this kind have something of Bogdanóvich’s manner. Máykov’s Eliséy, which is really superior to the Psyche, was not so well received because he introduced too freely the popular element, for which at that time there could be no appreciation.
Lyrics (in the narrower sense of poems expressing the individual emotion of the writer) can have a place only where the conditions are favourable to the formation of individual feelings, where well-defined conceptions of nature and man are common to a certain class of society or to the whole nation. Nothing of the kind could exist in Russia throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century, when everything was only external veneer, and no lyrics made their appearance until the last quarter, when, under the influence of a thorough acquaintance with Horace and the French lyricists, some fine verses were produced by Bogdanóvich, Kapníst, Derzhávin, Dmítriev, Neledínski-Melétski. Most of these poems only appeared in the nineteenth century, and all belong to that intermediate stage of literature which was represented by Karamzín and Dmítriev and which, in spirit, no longer continues the tradition of the days of Catherine.
Krylóv’s fables are justly celebrated as among the best literature that Russia evolved in the last century; but they are only the culmination of a series of fables, most of them adaptations from La Fontaine and Gellert, in which nearly all the poets tried their skill. By 1700, there had been current in Russia three translations of Esop’s Fables, and Pólotski had imitated a number of such as he knew. Here again we see the utter inability of the writers of the eighteenth century to make use of a popular motive. Nothing is more common in the oral literature of the people than fables, especially animal fables, yet they had to borrow their themes from abroad. Sumarókov’s fables make, with rare exceptions, unprofitable reading; Máykov struck a few times a proper note, and Khémnitser alone, though he followed Gellert closely, is still read with pleasure on account of the simplicity of his tales. Dmítriev, as before, belongs to another period.
Modern Russian poetry practically begins with the satires of Kantemír, and satires, with their adjunct, comedy, have remained down to our day the most prominent part of belles-lettres; only, whereas their usual purpose is to provoke laughter, in Russia tears are their more appropriate due. Under the systematic, though arbitrary and capricious, persecution of the censorship, writers have evolved the art of telling a bitter truth by means of satire which by its outward appearance generally escapes the scrutinising attention of the usually dull censor, but the esoteric meaning of which is quite comprehensible to the whole class of readers. In the days of Peter the Great, with his violent reforms, direct command was more effective than a satire which but few could unravel, and Kantemír’s Satires, in spite of their literary value, are mere exotics. Catherine thought this species of essays a good medium for a gentle reproof, but Nóvikov more correctly divined their office, and much later Gógol and Shchedrín brought them to great perfection along the path indicated by him.
The same causes which prevented the formation of a Russian epic and of lyric poetry throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century militated against the evolution of a native tragedy. Theatrical performances had been given ever since the days of Alexis, but these were mainly Mysteries and Moralities that had long been forgotten in the West, or crude plays and harlequinades by German, Italian and English travelling comedians. Thus, a taste had been formed for the drama when Sumarókov was ordered to organise the first Russian theatre, though there did not exist the elements for a native stage. Sumarókov furnished pseudo-classic tragedies as readily as he manufactured any other kind of poetry, and his conceit of being the Russian Racine indicates whence he took his models. Neither Knyazhnín’s nor Ózerov’s borrowing of incidents from Russian history could make their tragedies real: they were accessible only to those who were steeped in French culture. Not so comedy. Comedy stands in direct relation to satire, and it has taken firm root in Russian soil. Catherine herself wrote a number of dramatised satires, and Fon-Vízin’s Brigadier made its appearance just as satire began to occupy an important place in the public eye. Fon-Vízin, Griboyédov and Gógol are only the greatest of the long series of dramatists, who in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used comedy as a weapon for attacking the corruption of officials, superficiality in education and the brutality of the serf-owners. Here was an opportunity to introduce a native element, which becomes for the first time prominent in Ablesímov’s comic opera.