A national fusion was developed, as it usually is on the battle-fields, where the Russians fell side by side before the invader. This movement, however, was very gradual, and Russia was virtually divided into two distinct classes until the death of the Emperor Nicholas, when the necessity of a more orderly condition of affairs was universally felt, giving rise to a social revolution which resulted in the emancipation of the serfs.
For the last quarter of a century, every conscientious and strong-minded man has worked to perform his part towards the common object: the establishment of a solid and united country. But they met with terrible obstacles; for they must abolish the past, heal all differences, and conciliate all parties.
As a world travelling through space, drawn by opposite attractions, is divided, bursts asunder, one fragment rushing to join the distant star which calls it, while the greater portion of the planet continues to gravitate towards the nearer spheres; and as, in spite of all opposing forces, these two separated fragments of a world tend to re-unite, no matter what spaces divide them, or with what a shock they must meet, having acquired such increased velocity;—so was it with Russia, made up of so many dissimilar elements, attracted at different times by opposite poles; now tossed from Europe to Asia, and back again from Asia to Europe, and finally divided against itself.
This condition is what I called the Russian national malady, which has plunged this people into the deepest discouragement and confusion. To historical misfortunes, we may add the peculiarities of soil and climate in which the Russian drama has been enacted. The severe, interminable winter interrupts man’s work and depresses his spirit. In the southern part, the scanty vegetation does not incite him to wrestle with nature and vie with her in energy and devotion. Is it not true that man’s mind is modelled according to the nature of his abiding-place? Must not a country having a limited horizon, and forms strongly and sharply defined, tend to the development of individuality, to clearness of conception, and persevering effort? The larger portion of Russia has nothing analogous to this; only, as Tacitus says, a “monotonous alternation of wild wood and reeking marsh.” (“Aut silvis horrida, aut paludibus fœda”); endless plains with no distinct horizon, no decisive outlines, only a mirage of snow, marsh, or sand. Everywhere the infinite, which confuses the mind and attracts it hopelessly. Tolstoï has well described it as “that boundless horizon which appeals to me so strongly.”
The souls of this people must resemble those who sail on a long voyage; self-centered, resigned to their situation, with impulses of sudden, violent longing for the impossible. Their land is made for a tent-life, rather than for dwelling in houses; their ideas are nomadic, like themselves. As the winds bear the arctic cold over the plains from the White Sea to the Black, without meeting any resisting obstacle, so invasions, melancholy, famine, servitude, seize and fill these empty stretches rapidly and without hindrance. It is a land which is calculated to nourish the dim, hereditary, confused aspirations of the Russian heart, rather than those productions of the mind which give an impetus to literature and the arts.
Nevertheless, we shall see how the persistent seed will develop under this severe sky and amid such untoward influences, saved by the eternal spring which exists in all human hearts of every climate.
II.
The middle age of Russian literature, or the period ending with the accession of Peter the Great, produced first: ecclesiastical literature, comprising sermons, chronicles, moral and instructive treatises. Secondly: popular literature, consisting of epic poems, characteristic sonnets and legends. The former resembles that of western Europe, being in the same vein, only inferior to it.
Throughout Christendom, the Church was for a long time the only educator; monk and scholar being almost synonymous words; while outside the pale of the Church all was barbarism. At first, the writer was a mere mechanical laborer, or Chinese scribe, who laboriously copied the Gospels and the ancient Scriptures. He was respected as possessing one of the arcana of life, and as specially gifted through a miracle from on high. Many generations of monks passed away before the idea occurred to these humble copyists to utilize their art in recording their own personal impressions. At first there were homilies, mere imitations of those of the Byzantine fathers; then lives of saints; and the legendary lore of the monastery of Kiev, the great centre of prayer and holy travail of the whole Slavonic world. Here originated the first approach to romance of that time, its Golden Legend, the first effort of the imagination towards the ideal which is so seductive to every human soul. Then came the chronicles of wars, and of their attendant and consequent evils. Nestor, the father of Russian history, noted down his impressions of what he saw, in a style similar to that of Gregory of Tours.
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, these feeble germs of culture were nearly crushed out of existence by the Tartar invasion; and even the translation of the Bible into the Slavonic language was not accomplished until the year 1498.