Russia, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers

by Unknown

In Gogol, who died in 1852, the Russians had to lament the loss of a keen and vigorous satirist. With a happy humour reminding us of Dickens in his best moods, he has sketched all classes of society in the Dead Souls, perhaps the cleverest of all Russian novels. No one, also has reproduced the scenery and habits of Little Russia, of which he was a native, more vigorously than Gogol, whether in the pictures of country life in his Old-Fashioned Household (if we may translate in so free a manner the title Starovetskie Pomestchiki), or in the wilder sketches of the struggles which took place between the Poles and Cossacks in Taras Boulba. In the Portrait and Memoirs of a Madman, Gogol shows a weird power, which may be compared with that of the fantastic American, Edgar Allan Poe. Besides his novels, he wrote a brilliant comedy called the Revisor, dealing with the evils of bureaucracy.

Towards the end of the year 1877, died Nicholas Nekrasov, the most remarkable poet produced by Russia since Lermontov. He has left six volumes of poetry, of a peculiarly realistic type, chiefly dwelling upon the misfortunes of the Russian peasantry, and putting before us most forcibly the dull grey tints of their monotonous and purposeless lives.

I have not space to enumerate here even the most prominent Russian novelists. No account, however, of their literature would be anything like complete which omitted the name of Ivan Tourgheniev, whose reputation is European. With the Russians the English novel of the realistic type is the fashionable model. In this branch of literature, French influences have hardly been felt at all. The historical novel—an echo of the great romances of Sir Walter Scott—had its cultivators in such writers as Zagoskin and Lazhechnikov; but at the present time, with the exception of the recent productions of Count Tolstoi, it is a form of literature as dead in Russia as in our own country. The novel of domestic life bids fair to swallow up all the rest, and it is to this that the Russians are devoting their attention.

Tourgheniev first made a name by his Memoirs of a Sportsman, a powerfully written work, in which harrowing descriptions are given of the miserable condition of the Russian serfs. Since the publication of this novel, or rather series of sketches, he has written a succession of able works of the same kind, in which all classes of Russian society have been reviewed. No more pathetic tale than the Gentleman's Retreat (Dvorianskoe Gnezdo) can be shown in the literature of any country. There are touches in it worthy of George Eliot. In Fathers and Children and Smoke, Tourgheniev has grappled with the nihilistic ideas which for a long time have been so current in Russia.

The study of Russian history, so well commenced by Karamzin, has been further developed by Oustrialov and Soloviev.

The Malo-Russian is very rich in skazki (national tales) and in songs. Peculiar to them is the douma, a kind of narrative poem, in which the metre is generally very irregular; but a sort of rhythm is preserved by the recurrence of accentuated syllables. The douma of the Little Russians corresponds to the bîlina of the Great Russians.

As might naturally be expected, most Malo-Russian authors of eminence, have preferred using the Great Russian, notably Gogol, who however is very fond of introducing provincial expressions which require a glossary. The foundation of the Malo-Russian cultivated literature was laid by the travisty of the Æneid, by Kotliarevski, which enjoys great popularity among his countrymen. A truly national poet appeared in Taras Shevchenko, born a serf in the Government of Kiev, at the village of Kirilovka.

Of the literature of the White Russians, but little need be said, as it is very scanty, amounting to a few collections of songs edited by Shein, Bezsonov and others.

[PRESENT CONDITIONS]

E. S.