It is sometimes maintained that this state of intellectual sadness is innate in the Russians; that their sanguinary and melancholy temperaments are a mixture of Don Quixote and Hamlet. Foreign critics have often traced this despair to the so-called mysticism peculiar to the Slavonic race.
What is there mystical in them? The consciousness of the nothingness, of the emptiness of human life, can be found deep down in the souls of nearly all mankind. It shows itself, among most people, only on rare tragic occasions, when general or particular catastrophes take place; at other times it is smothered by the immediate cares of life, by passions that grip us, and, finally, by religion. But none of these influences had any effect on Tchekoff. He was too noble to be completely absorbed by the mean details of life; his organism was too delicate to become the prey of an overwhelming passion; and his character too positive to give itself over to religious dogmas. "I lost my childhood faith a long time ago," he once wrote, "and I regard all intelligent belief with perplexity.... In reality, the 'intellectuals' only play at religion, chiefly because they have nothing else to do." Tchekoff, in his sober manner, has seen and recognized the two great aspects of life: first, the world of social and historical progress with its promise of future comforts; secondly, an aspect that is closely related to the above, the obscure world of the unknown man who feels the cold breath of death upon him. He was an absolute positivist; his positivism did not make him self-assertive nor peremptory; on the contrary, it oppressed him.
But why should this sad state of mind, which has been expressed by great men in all literatures, be so exceptionally prominent among the Russians, and particularly among the modern ones? The reason is, without a doubt, because the political and social organization of Russia has always been a prison for literature. Oppression had reached its height during Tchekoff's life. This period was the moment of suffocation before the storm. If Tchekoff were alive to-day, now that the tempest has burst forth, his sadness would be lessened, or it would at least have before it the screen which, according to Pascal, people wear before their eyes that they may not see the abyss, on the edge of which they pass their lives. Up to the present time, the Russians have lacked these screens.
III
VLADIMIR KOROLENKO
"A long time ago, on a dark autumn evening, I was being rowed down a rather uninteresting Siberian stream. Suddenly, at a bend in the river, I saw a bright fire burning ahead of us at the foot of some black mountains. It did not seem far away.
"'Thank Heaven,' I cried with joy, 'we have nearly reached our stopping-place!'
"The boatsman turned, looked at the fire over his shoulder, and again grasped the oars with an apathetic gesture:
"'That is still a long way off,' he murmured.