During this period the Besieda, a literary club representing the classical tendencies, was formed, and the romanticists, Jukovski, Dachkov, Ouvarov, Pushkin, Bludov, and Prince Viazemski founded the Arzamas. At St. Petersburg appeared the Northern Post, the St. Petersburg Messenger, the Northern Messenger, the Northern Mercury, the Messenger of Zion, the Beehive, and the Democrat, in which latter Kropotkov inveighed against French customs and ideas, and in the Funeral Orison of my Dog Balabas congratulated the worthy animal on never having studied in a university, or read Voltaire.
Literary activity was, as usual, greatest at Moscow, where Karamzine was editing the European Messenger, Makarov the Moscow Mercury, and Glinka the Russian Messenger. In his journal Glinka endeavoured to excite a national feeling by first putting the people on their guard against all foreign influence, but more particularly that of France, and then arming them against Napoleon, teaching them the doctrine of self-immolation, and letting loose the furies of the “patriotic war.” When the Russian Messenger went out of existence after the completion of its task, the Son of the Soil, edited by de Gretch, took up the same work and carried the war against Napoleon beyond the frontiers. “Taste in advance,” it cried to the conqueror, “the immortality that you deserve; learn now the curses that posterity will shower on your name! You sit on your throne in the midst of thunder and flame as Satan sits in hell surrounded by death, devastation, and fire!” The Russian Invalide was founded in 1813 for the benefit of wounded and infirm soldiers. Even after the war-fever had somewhat subsided, and considerations less hostile to France were occupying the public mind, the literary movement still continued.
Almost all the writers of the day took part in the crusade against Gallomania and the belief in Napoleon’s omnipotence. Some had fought in the war against France and their writings were deeply tinged with patriotic feeling. Krilov, whose fables rank him not far below La Fontaine, wrote comedies also. In the School for Young Ladies and the Milliner’s Shop he ridiculed the exaggerated taste for everything French. Besides his classical tragedies Ozerov wrote Dmitri Donskoi, in which he recalled the struggles of Russia against the Tatars, and in a measure foretold the approaching conflict with a new invader. In the tragedy named after Pojarski, the hero of 1812, Kriukovski made allusions of the same order. The poet Jukovski put in verse the exploits of the Russians against Napoleon in 1806 and 1812, and Rostoptchin did not await the great crisis before opening out on the French the vials of his wrath.
Viewed in general, the literature of Alexander’s period marked the passage from the imitation of ancient writers and French classicists to the imitation of French and English masterpieces. The Besieda and the Arzamas were the headquarters of two rival armies which carried on in Russia a war similar to that waged in Paris by romantic and classical schools. Schiller, Goethe, Byron, and Shakespeare were as much the fashion in Russia as in France, and created there as close an approach to a literary scandal. While Ozerov, Batiuchkov, and Derjavine upheld the traditions of the old school, Jukovski gave to Russia a translation of Schiller’s Joan of Arc and of Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon; and Pushkin published Ruslan and Liudmilla, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Eugene Oniegin, the poem Poltava, and the tragedy Boris Godunov.
As in France the romantic movement had been accompanied by a brilliant revival of historical studies, so in Russia a fresh impulse was given to letters, and dramatists and novelists were inspired with a taste for national subjects by Karamzin’s History of the Russian Empire, a work remarkable for eloquence and charm [as our various extracts testify] though deficient in critical insight. Schlötzer had recently edited Nestor, the old annalist of Kiev and father of Russian history.[f]
Alexander I as a Patron of Literature
Protection and encouragement were shown to literature by Alexander I. Storck[i] writes as follows: “Rarely has any ruler shown such encouragement to literature as Alexander I. The remarkable literary merits of persons in the government service are rewarded by rises in the official ranks, by orders and pensions, whilst writers who are not in the government service and whose literary productions come to the knowledge of the emperor not unfrequently receive presents of considerable value. Under the existing conditions of the book trade, Russian authors cannot always count on a fitting recompense for large scientific works, and in such cases the emperor, having regard to these circumstances, sometimes grants the authors large sums for the publication of their works. Many writers send their manuscripts to the emperor, and if only they have a useful tendency he orders them to be printed at the expense of the cabinet and then usually gives the whole edition to the author.”
In view of the desire manifested by Karamzin to devote his labours to the composition of a full history of the Russian Empire, the emperor by a ukase of the 31st of October, 1803, bestowed upon him the title of historiographer and a yearly pension of 2,000 rubles.
During the reign of the emperor Paul, Alexander, in a letter to Laharpe dated September 27th, 1797, expressed his conviction of the necessity of translating useful books into the Russian language, in order “to lay a foundation by spreading knowledge and enlightenment in the minds of the people.” When he came to the throne, Alexander did not delay in accomplishing the intention he had already formed when he was czarevitch, and actually during the epoch of reforms a multitude of translations of works appeared, which had the evident object of inspiring interest in social, economic, and political questions and of communicating to Russian society the latest word of western science upon such questions.