Essays on Russian Novelists

by William Lyon Phelps

A literary dinner was arranged in honour of the distinguished guest, and inasmuch as all present were ignorant of the next day's catastrophe, the account given of this love-feast in the New York Sun is worth quoting. "Mark Twain and Gorki recognised each other before they were introduced, but neither being able to understand the language of the other, they simply grasped hands and held on more than a minute. . . . Gorki said he had read Mark Twain's stories when he was a boy, and that he had gotten much delight from them. Mark declared that he also had been a reader and admirer of Gorki. The smile of Gorki was broader and not so dry as the smile of Mark, but both smiles were distinctly those of fellow-humorists who understood each other. Gorki made a little speech which was translated by a Russian who knew English. Gorki said he was glad to meet Mark Twain, 'world famous and in Russia the best known of American writers, a man of tremendous force and convictions, who, when he hit, hit hard. I have come to America to get acquainted with the American people and ask their aid for my suffering countrymen who are fighting for liberty. The despotism must be overthrown now, and what is needed is money, money, money!' Mark said he was glad to meet Gorki, adding, 'If we can help to create the Russian republic, let us start in right away and do it. The fighting may have to be postponed awhile, but meanwhile we can keep our hearts on the matter and we can assist the Russians in being free.'"

A committee was formed to raise funds, and then came the explosion, striking evidence of the enormous difference between the American and the Continental point of view in morals. With characteristic Russian impracticability, Gorki had come to America with a woman whom he introduced as his wife; but it appeared that his legal wife was in Russia, and that his attractive and accomplished companion was somebody else. This fact, which honestly seemed to Gorki an incident of no importance, took on a prodigious shape. This single mistake cost the Russian revolutionary cause an enormous sum of money, and may have altered history. Gorki was expelled from his hotel, and refused admittance to others; unkindest cut of all, Mark Twain, whose absence of religious belief had made Gorki believe him to be altogether emancipated from prejudices, positively refused to have anything more to do with him. As Gorki had said, "When Mark Twain hit, he hit hard." Turn whither he would, every door was slammed in his face. I do not think he has ever recovered from the blank amazement caused by the American change of front. His golden opportunity was gone, and he departed for Italy, shaking the dust of America off his feet, and roundly cursing the nation that he had just declared to be the incarnation of progress. The affair unquestionably has its ludicrous side, but it was a terrible blow to the revolutionists. Many of them believed that the trap was sprung by the government party.

Gorki's full-length novels are far from successful works of art. They have all the incoherence and slipshod workmanship of Dostoevski, without the latter's glow of brotherly love. His first real novel, Foma Gordeev, an epic of the Volga, has many beautiful descriptive passages, really lyric and idyllic in tone, mingled with an incredible amount of drivel. The character who plays the title-role is a typical Russian windbag, irresolute and incapable, like so many Russian heroes; but whether drunk or sober, he is destitute of charm. He is both dreary and dirty. The opening chapters are written with great spirit, and the reader is full of happy expectation. One goes farther and fares worse. After the first hundred pages, the book is a prolonged anti-climax, desperately dull. Altogether the best passage in the story is the description of the river in spring, impressive not merely for its beauty and accuracy of language, but because the Volga is interpreted as a symbol of the spirit of the Russian people, with vast but unawakened possibilities.

"Between them, in a magnificent sweep, flowed the broad-breasted Volga; triumphantly, without haste, flow her waters, conscious of their unconquerable power; the hill-shore was reflected in them like a dark shadow, but on the left side she was adorned with gold and emerald velvet by the sandy borders of the reefs, and the broad meadows. Now here, now there, on the hills, and in the meadows, appeared villages, the sun sparkled in the window-panes of the cottages, and upon the roofs of yellow straw; the crosses of the churches gleamed through the foliage of the trees, the gray wings of the mills rotated lazily through the air, the smoke from the chimneys of a factory curled skyward in thick black wreaths. . . . On all sides was the gleaming water, on all sides were space and freedom, cheerfully green meadows, and graciously clear blue sky; in the quiet motion of the water, restrained power could be felt; in the heaven above it shone the beautiful sun, the air was saturated with the fragrance of evergreen trees, and the fresh scent of foliage. The shores advanced in greeting, soothing the eye and the soul with their beauty, and new pictures were constantly unfolded upon them.

"On everything round about rested the stamp of a certain sluggishness: everything--nature and people--lived awkwardly, lazily; but in this laziness there was a certain peculiar grace, and it would seem that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over the river."*

* Isabel Hapgood's translation. The novel Varenka Olessova is a tedious book of no importance. The hero is, of course, the eternal Russian type, a man of good education and no backbone: he lacks resolution, energy, will-power, and will never accomplish anything. He has not even force enough to continue his studies. Contrasted with him is the girl Varenka, a simple child of nature, who prefers silly romances to Russian novels, and whose virgin naïveté is a constant puzzle to the conceited ass who does not know whether he is in love with her or not. Indeed, he asks himself if he is capable of love for any one. The only interesting pages in this stupid story are concerned with a discussion on reading, between Varenka and the young man, where her denunciation of Russian fiction is, of course, meant to proclaim its true superiority. In response to the question whether she reads Russian authors, the girl answers with conviction: "Oh, yes! But I don't like them! They are so tiresome, so tiresome! They always write about what I know already myself, and know just as well as they do. They can't create anything interesting; with them almost everything is true. . . . Now with the French, their heroes are real heroes, they talk and act unlike men in actual life. They are always brave, amorous, vivacious, while our heroes are simple little men, without any warm feelings, without any beauty, pitiable, just like ordinary men in real life. . . In Russian books, one cannot understand at all why the men continue to live. What's the use of writing books if the author has nothing remarkable to say?"

The long novel Mother is a good picture of life among the working-people in a Russian factory, that is, life as seen through Gorki's eyes; all cheerfulness and laughter are, of course, absent, and we have presented a dull monotone of misery. The factory itself is the villain of the story, and resembles some grotesque wild beast, that daily devours the blood, bone, and marrow of the throng of victims that enter its black jaws. The men, women, and children are represented as utterly brutalised by toil; in their rare moments of leisure, they fight and beat each other unmercifully, and even the little children get dead drunk. Socialist and revolutionary propaganda are secretly circulated among these stupefied folk, and much of the narrative is taken up with the difficulties of accomplishing this distribution; for the whole book itself is nothing but a revolutionary tract. The characters, including the pitiful Mother herself, are not vividly drawn, they are not alive, and one forgets them speedily; as for plot, there is none, and the book closes with the brutal murder of the old woman. It is a tedious, inartistic novel, with none of the relief that would exist in actual life. Turgenev's poorest novel, Virgin Soil, which also gives us a picture of a factory, is immensely superior from every point of view.

But if Mother is a dull book, The Spy is impossible. It is full of meaningless and unutterably dreary jargon; its characters are sodden with alcohol and bestial lusts. One abominable woman's fat body spreads out on an arm-chair "like sour dough." And indeed, this novel bears about the same relation to a finished work of art that sour dough bears to a good loaf of bread. The characters are poorly conceived, and the story is totally without movement. Not only is it very badly written, it lacks even good material. The wretched boy, whose idiotic states of mind are described one after the other, and whose eventual suicide is clear from the start, is a disgusting whelp, without any human interest. One longs for his death with murderous intensity, and when, on the last page, he throws himself under the train, the reader experiences a calm and sweet relief.

Much of Gorki's work is like Swift's poetry, powerful not because of its cerebration or spiritual force, but powerful only from the physical point of view, from its capacity to disgust. It appeals to the nose and the stomach rather than to the mind and the heart. From the medicinal standpoint, it may have a certain value. Swift sent a lady one of his poems, and immediately after reading it, she was taken violently sick. Not every poet has sufficient force to produce so sudden an effect.

One man, invariably before reading the works of a famous French author, put on his overshoes.