Russia, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers

by Unknown

Of the Russian there are the following chief dialects—Great, Little, and White Russian. The Great Russian is the literary and official language of the Empire. In its structure it is highly synthetic, having three genders and seven cases, and the nouns and adjectives being fully inflected. Its great peculiarity (which it shares in common with all the Sclavonic languages), is the structure of the verbs, which are divided into so-called "aspects," which modify the meaning, just as the Latin terminations sco, urio, and ita, only the forms are developed into a more perfect system. The letters employed are the Cyrillian, held to have been invented by St. Cyril in the Ninth Century. They are on the whole well adapted to express the many sounds of the Russian alphabet, for which the Latin letters would be wholly inadequate, and must perforce be employed in some such uncouth combinations as those which communicate a grotesque appearance to Polish. It would be out of place here to discuss the Ecclesiastical Sclavonic employed in so many of the early writings composed in Russian. I shall proceed to speak of the literature in Russian properly so-called. The great epochs of this will be—

I. From the earliest times to the reign of Peter the Great.

II. From the reign of Peter the Great to our own time.

The Russians, like the rest of the Sclavonic peoples are very rich in national songs, many (as one may judge from the allusions found in them), going back to a remote antiquity. For a long time, and especially during the period of French influence, these productions were neglected. In the last twenty years, however, they have been assiduously collected by Bezsonov, Kirievski, Rîbnikov, Hilferding and others. The Russian legendary poems are called Bîlini (literally, tales of old time), and may be most conveniently divided into the following classes:—

1. That of the earlier heroes. 2. The Cycle of Vladimir. 3. The Royal, or Moscow Cycle.

The early heroes are of a half-mythical type, and perform prodigies of valour. To this class belong Volga Vseslavich, Mikoula Selianinovich and Sviatogor. The great glory of the Cycle of Vladimir is Ilya Murometz. The Bîlinas are filled with his magnificent exploits, either alone, or in the company of Sviatogor.

The national songs are carried on through the troublous times of Boris Godunov, and the false Dimitri, to the days of Peter the Great, when they seem to have acquired new vigour on account of the military achievements of the regenerator of his country. Nor are they extinct in our own time, for we find exploits of Napoleon, especially his disastrous expedition to Russia, made the subject of verse. The interest, however, of these legendary poems fades away as we advance into later days. The number of minstrels is rapidly diminishing; and Riabanin, and his companions among the Great Russians, and Ostap Veresai among the Malo-Russians, will probably be the last of these generations of rhapsodists, who have transmitted their traditional chants from father to son, from tutor to pupil. A great feature in Russian literature is the collection of chronicles, which begin with Nestor, monk of the Pestcherski Cloister at Kiev, who was born about A. D. 1056, and died about 1116.

During the time when Russia groaned under the yoke of the Mongols, the nation remained silent, except here and there, perhaps, in some legendary song, sung among peasants, and destined subsequently to be gathered from oral tradition by a Rîbnikov and a Hilferding. Such literature as was cultivated formed the recreation of the monks in their cells. A new era, however, was to come. Ivan III. established the autocracy and made Moscow the centre of the new government. The Russians naturally looked to Constantinople as the centre of their civilization; and even when the city was taken by the Turks its influence did not cease. Many learned Greeks fled to Russia, and found an hospitable reception in the dominions of the Grand Duke. During the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and his immediate successors, although the material progress of the country was considerably advanced, and a strong Government founded, yet little was done for learning. Simeon Polotzki (1628-80), tutor to the Tsar Feodor, son of Alexis, was an indefatigable writer of religious and educational books, but his productions can now only interest the antiquarian. The verses composed by him on the new palace built by the Tsar Alexis, at Kolomenski are deliciously quaint. Of a more important character is the sketch of the Russian government, and the habits of the people, written by one Koshikin (or Kotoshikin—for the name is found in both forms), a renegade diak or secretary, which, after having lain for a long time in manuscript in the library of Upsala, in Sweden, was edited in 1840, by the Russian historian Soloviev. Kotoshikin terminated a life of strange vicissitudes by perishing at the hands of the public executioner at Stockholm, about 1669.

With the reforms of Peter the Great commences an entirely new period in the history of Russian literature, which was now to be under Western influence. The epoch was inaugurated by Lomonosov, the son of a poor fisherman of Archangel, who forms one of the curious band of peasant authors—of very various merit, it must be confessed—who present such an unexpected phenomenon in Russian literature. Occasionally we have men of real genius, as in the cases of Koltzov, Nikitin, and Shevchenko, the great glory of southern Russia; sometimes, perhaps, a man whose abilities have been overrated as in the instance of Slepoushkin. Lemonosov is more praised than read by his countrymen. His turgid odes, stuffed with classical allusions, in praise of Anne and Elizabeth, are still committed to memory by pupils at educational establishments. His panegyrics are certainly fulsome, but probably no worse than those of Boileau in praise of Louis XIV., who grovelled without the excuse of the imperfectly educated Scythian. The reign of Catherine II. (1762-96), saw the rise of a whole generation of court poets. The great maxim, "Un Auguste peut aisément faire un Virgile," was seen in all its absurdity in semi-barbarous Russia. These wits were supported by the Empress and her immediate entourage, to whom their florid productions were ordinarily addressed.