Landmarks in Russian literature

by Maurice Baring

At the end of the first volume, Gogol makes a defence of his hero. After having described the circumstances of his youth, his surroundings, and all the influences which made him what he was, the author asks: “Who is he?” And the answer he gives himself is: “Of course a rascal: but why a rascal?” He continues:

“Why should we be so severe on others? We have no rascals among us now, we have only well-thinking, pleasant people; we have, it is true, two or three men who have enjoyed the shame of being thrashed in public, and even these speak of virtue. It would be more just to call him a man who acquires; it is the passion for gain that is to blame for everything. This passion is the cause of deeds which the world characterises as ugly. It is true that in such a character there is perhaps something repulsive. But the same reader who in real life will be friends with such a man, who will dine with him, and pass the time pleasantly with him, will look askance at the same character should he meet with him as the hero of a book or of a poem. That man is wise who is not offended by any character, but is able to look within it, and to trace the development of nature to its first causes. Everything in man changes rapidly. You have scarcely time to look round, before inside the man’s heart a hateful worm has been born which absorbs the vital sap of his nature. And it often happens that not only a great passion, but some ridiculous whim for a trivial object, grows in a man who was destined to better deeds, and causes him to forget his high and sacred duty, and to mistake the most miserable trifle for what is most exalted and most holy. The passions of mankind are as countless as the sands of the sea, and each of them is different from the others; and all of them, mean or beautiful, start by being subject to man, and afterwards become his most inexorable master. Happy is the man who has chosen for himself a higher passion ... but there are passions which are not chosen by man: they are with him from the moment of his birth, and strength is not given him to free himself from them. These passions are ordered according to a high plan, and there is something in them which eternally and incessantly summons him, and which lasts as long as life lasts. They have a great work to accomplish; whether they be sombre or whether they be bright, their purpose is to work for an ultimate good which is beyond the ken of man. And perhaps in this same Chichikov the ruling passion which governs him is not of his choosing, and in his cold existence there may be something which will one day cause us to humble ourselves on our knees and in the dust before the Divine wisdom.”

I quote this passage at length because it not only explains the point of view of Gogol towards his creation, but also that which nearly all Russian authors and novelists hold with regard to mankind in general. Gogol’s Dead Souls is an extremely funny book; it is full of delightful situations, comic characters and situations. At the same time it has often struck people as being a sad book. When Gogol read out to Pushkin the first chapter, Pushkin, who at other times had always laughed when Gogol read his work to him, became sadder and sadder, and said when Gogol had reached the end: “What a sad country Russia is!”

It is true, as Gogol himself says at the end of the first volume of Dead Souls, that there is probably not one of his readers who, after an honest self-examination, will not wonder whether he has not something of Chichikov in himself. And if at such a moment such a man should meet an acquaintance in the street, whose rank is neither too exalted for criticism nor too obscure for notice, he will nudge his companion, and say with a chuckle: “There goes Chichikov!” Perhaps every Russian feels that there is something of Chichikov in him, and Chichikov is a rascal, and most of the other characters in Dead Souls are rascals also; people who try to cheat their neighbours, and feel no moral scruples or remorse after they have done so. But in spite of all this, the impression that remains with one after reading the book is not one of bitterness or of melancholy. For in all the characters there is a vast amount of good-nature and of humanity. Also, as Gogol has pointed out in the passage quoted above, the peculiar blend of faults and qualities on which moralists may be severe, may be a special part of the Divine scheme.

However this may be, what strikes the casual student most when he has read Dead Souls, is that Gogol is the only Russian author who has given us in literature the universal type of Russian; the Russian “man in the street.” Tolstoy has depicted the upper classes. Dostoievsky has reached the innermost depths of the Russian soul in its extremest anguish and at its highest pitch. Tourgeniev has fixed on the canvas several striking portraits, which suffer from the defect either of being caricatures, or of being too deeply dyed in the writer’s pessimism and self-consciousness. Gorky has painted in lurid colours one side of the common people. Andreev has given us the nightmares of the younger generation. Chekov has depicted the pessimism and the ineffectiveness of the “intelligenzia.”[6] But nobody except Gogol has given us the ordinary cheerful Russian man in the street, with his crying faults, his attractive good qualities, and his overflowing human nature. In fact, it is the work of Gogol that explains the attraction which the Russian character and the Russian country exercise over people who have come beneath their influence. At first sight the thing seems inexplicable. The country seems ugly, dreary and monotonous, without art, without beauty and without brilliance; the climate is either fiercely cold and damp, or excruciatingly dry and hot; the people are slow and heavy; there is a vast amount of dirt, dust, disorder, untidiness, slovenliness, squalor, and sordidness everywhere; and yet in spite of all this, even a foreigner who has lived in Russia (not to speak of the Russians themselves), and who has once come in contact with its people, can never be quite free from its over-mastering charm, and the secret fascination of the country.

In another passage towards the end of Dead Souls, Gogol writes about this very thing as follows:

“Russia” (he writes), “I see you from the beautiful ‘far away’ where I am. Everything in you is miserable, disordered and inhospitable. There are no emphatic miracles of Nature to startle the eye, graced with equally startling miracles of art. There are no towns with high, many-windowed castles perched on the top of crags; there are no picturesque trees, no ivy-covered houses beside the ceaseless thunder and foam of waterfalls. One never strains one’s neck back to look at the piled-up rocky crags soaring endlessly into the sky. There never shines, through dark and broken arches overgrown with grapes, ivy, and a million wild roses,—there never shines, I say, from afar the eternal line of gleaming mountains standing out against transparent and silver skies. Everything in you is open and desert and level; like dots, your squatting towns lie almost unobserved in the midst of the plains. There is nothing to flatter or to charm the eye. What then is the secret and incomprehensible power which lies hidden in you? Why does your aching melancholy song, which wanders throughout the length and breadth of you, from sea to sea, sound and echo unceasingly in one’s ears? What is there in this song? What is there that calls and sobs and captures the heart? What are the sounds which hurt as they kiss, pierce my very inmost soul and flood my heart? Russia, what do you want of me? What inexplicable bond is there between you and me?”

Gogol does not answer the question, and if he cannot put his finger on the secret it would be difficult for any one else to do so. But although he does not answer the question directly, he does so indirectly by his works. Any one who reads Gogol’s early stories, even Dead Souls, will understand the inexplicable fascination hidden in a country which seems at first sight so devoid of outward and superficial attraction, and in a people whose defects are so obvious and unconcealed. The charm of Russian life lies in its essential goodness of heart, and in its absence of hypocrisy, and it is owing to this absence of hypocrisy that the faults of the Russian character are so easy to detect. It is for this reason that in Gogol’s realistic and satirical work, as in The Inspector and Dead Souls, the characters startle the foreign observer by their frank and almost universal dishonesty. The truth is that they do not take the trouble to conceal their shortcomings; they are indulgent to the failings of others, and not only expect but know that they will find their own faults treated with similar indulgence. Faults, failings, and vices which in Western Europe would be regarded with uncompromising censure and merciless blame, meet in Russia either with pity or good-humoured indulgence.

This happy-go-lucky element, the good-natured indulgence and scepticism with which Russians regard many things which we consider of grave import, are, no doubt, to a great extent the cause of the evils which exist in the administrative system of the country—the cause of nearly all the evils of which Russian reformers so bitterly complain. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that this same good-humour and this same indulgence, the results of which in public life are slackness, disorder, corruption, irresponsibility and arbitrariness, in private life produce results of a different nature, such as pity, charity, hospitality and unselfishness; for the good-humour and the good-nature of the Russian proceed directly from goodness, and from nothing else.

Gogol never finished Dead Souls. He went on working on the second and third parts of it until the end of his life, in 1852; and he twice threw the work, when it was completed, into the fire. All we possess is an incomplete copy of a manuscript of the second part, which escaped destruction. He had intended the second part to be more serious than the first; his ambition was to work out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, and in doing so to attain to a full and complete expression of his ideals and his outlook on life. The ambition pursued and persecuted him like a feverish dream, and not being able to realise it, he turned back upon himself and was driven inward. His nature was religious to the core, since it was based on a firm and unshaken belief in Providence; and there came a time when he began to experience that distaste of the world which ultimately leads to a man becoming an ascetic and a recluse.