Being anxious to know Kropotkin's exact attitude towards Art, I wrote to him asking categorically: "In your opinion, have exquisite poets like Keats and Pushkin—who never touched social questions, but celebrated only beauty—been of much benefit to mankind?"
He answered thus: "Not in a direct way, but perhaps very much in an indirect way: Pushkin by creating language,[42] and Keats by teaching love of nature. As to "exquisiteness," have we not had too much of those egotistic sweets?"
Closely analysed, and reduced to its ultimate elements, this answer shows that Kropotkin has no use for art per se. According to him Keats and Pushkin are benefactors not because of their beautiful verses, but because of other reasons. Exquisiteness he condemns altogether. He rejects the doctrine of Art for the sake of Art. He does not subscribe to the creed of Flaubert, Gautier, Bouilhet, Maupassant, Anatole France and Lafcadio Hearn.
I think Kropotkin is wrong, and I believe that because his work lacks artistic finish, much of it is doomed to perish.
Maxim Gorky, in speaking of a brief period when the Russian Censorship was somewhat suspended, said, "Books fell over the land like flakes of snow, but their effect was as sparks of fire!"
If Kropotkin wished to express the same idea, he would say it something like this: "Numerous books of all descriptions were published and distributed thruout Russia."
How fine Gorky's; how poor Kropotkin's. How vivid the former; how weak the latter. This is the difference between style and lack of it. Not in the entire range of Kropotkin's writings is there a single sentence in any way comparing with the above one of Gorky's; for he who writes without art holds a crippled pen. I may be mistaken, but in my opinion this single quotation from the Bitter One is worth all Kropotkin's Freedom Pamphlets. It is sublime in its similes and exquisite in its antitheses. There is a power in it which unchains enthusiasm and awakens intensity. "Books fell over the land like flakes of snow, but their effect was as sparks of fire." It is art. It is unforgettable, while to remember a phrase from Modern Science and Anarchism is impossible.
With this introduction, we may proceed to examine his work, much of which is necessary and valuable, tho none of it is of primal or epoch-making importance. Stepniak is right when he says, "He is not a mere manufacturer of books. Beyond his purely scientific labors, he has never written any work of much moment." And as Herzen said of Ogaryov, we may remark of Kropotkin: "His chief life-work was the working out of such an ideal personality as he is himself."
The majority of prominent periodicals in England and America to which Kropotkin has contributed, are listed in the Reader's Guide which can be found in any library, and those interested can look them up. Of course, many of these articles are first-class, but I can stop to mention only two. See Russia and the Student Riots (Outlook, April 6, 1901), which deals with the disturbances which caused the young revolutionist, Peter Karpowitch, to kill Bogolepov, Minister of Public Instruction. It shows with painful clearness the extreme and useless savagery of that cruel, repulsive, Stead-praised, arch-murderer, Nicholas II.
See also the Present Crisis in Russia, (North American Review, May 1901). In this excellent essay he refers to the Procurator of the Holy Synod in these words: "Pobedonostzeff, a narrow-minded fanatic of the state religion, who—if it were only in his power—would have burnt at the stake all protestants against Orthodoxy and Catholicism."[43]
