Essays on Russian Novelists

by William Lyon Phelps

"These have got clear away from the humble, ineffectual individual, 'crushed by life.' Full of learned philosophies from Max Stirner and Nietzsche, they preach, in Stirner's words, 'the absolute independence of the individual, master of himself, and of all things.' 'The death of "Everyday-ism,"' the 'resurrection of myth,' 'orgiasm,' 'Mystical Anarchism,' and 'universalist individualism' are some of the shibboleths of these new writers, who are mostly very young, very clever, and profoundly convinced that they are even cleverer than they are.

"Anarchism, posing as self-assertion, is the note in most recent Russian literature, as, indeed, it is in Russian life."

The most powerful among this school of writers, and the only one who can perhaps be called a man of genius, is Michael Artsybashev. He came honestly by his hot, impulsive temperament, being, like Gogol, a man of the South. He was born in 1878. He says of himself: "I am Tartar in name and in origin, but not a pure-blooded one. In my veins runs Russian, French, Georgian, and Polish blood. I am glad to name as one of my ancestors the famous Pole, Kosciusko, who was my maternal great-grandfather. My father, a retired officer, was a landed proprietor with very little income. I was only three years old when my mother died. As a legacy, she bequeathed to me tuberculosis. . . . I am now living in the Crimea and trying to get well, but with little faith in my recovery."

Sanin appeared at the psychological moment, late in the year 1907. The Revolution was a failure, and it being impossible to fight the government or to obtain political liberty, people in Russia of all classes were ready for a revolt against moral law, the religion of self-denial, and all the conventions established by society, education, and the church. At this moment of general desperation and smouldering rage, appeared a work written with great power and great art, deifying the natural instincts of man, incarnating the spirit of liberty in a hero who despises all so-called morality as absurd tyranny. It was a bold attempt to marshal the animal instincts of humanity, terrifically strong as they are even in the best citizens, against every moral and prudential restraint. The effect of the book will probably not last very long, --already it has been called an ephemeral sensation, --but it was immediate and tremendous. It was especially powerful among university students and high school boys and girls--the "Sanin-morals" of undergraduates were alluded to in a speech in the Duma.

But although the book was published at the psychological moment, it was written with no reference to any post-revolution spirit. For Artsybashev composed his novel in 1903, when he was twenty-four years old. He tried in vain to induce publishers to print it, and fortunately for him, was obliged to wait until 1907, when the time happened to be exactly ripe.

The novel has been allowed to circulate in Russia, because it shows absolutely no sympathy with the Revolution or with the spirit of political liberty. Men who waste their time in the discussion of political rights or in the endeavour to obtain them are ridiculed by Sanin. The summum bonum is personal, individual happiness, the complete gratification of desire. Thus, those who are working for the enfranchisement of the Russian people, for relief from the bureaucracy, and for more political independence, not only have no sympathy with the book--they hate it, because it treats their efforts with contempt. Some of them have gone so far as to express the belief that the author is in a conspiracy with the government to bring ridicule on their cause, and to defeat their ever living hopes of better days. However this may be, Sanin is not in the least a politically revolutionary book, and critics of that school see no real talent or literary power in its pages.

But, sinister and damnable as its tendency is, the novel is written with extraordinary skill, and Artsybashev is a man to be reckoned with. The style has that simplicity and directness so characteristic of Russian realism, and the characters are by no means sign-posts of various opinions; they are living and breathing human beings. I am sorry that such a book as Sanin has ever been written; but it cannot be black-balled from the republic of letters.

It is possible that it is a florescence not merely of the author's genius, but of his sickness. The glorification of Sanin's bodily strength, of Karsavina's female voluptuousness, and the loud call to physical joy which rings through the work may be an emanation of tuberculosis as well as that of healthy mental conviction. Shut out from active happiness, Artsybashev may have taken this method of vicarious delight.

The bitterness of his own enforced resignation of active happiness and the terror inspired by his own disease are incarnated in a decidedly interesting character, Semionov, who, although still able to walk about when we first see him, is dying of consumption. He has none of the hopefulness and cheerfulness so often symptomatic of that malady; he is peevish, irritable, and at times enraged by contact with his healthy friends. After a frightful attack of coughing, he says: "I often think that soon I shall be lying in complete darkness. You understand, with my nose fallen in and my limbs decayed. And above me, where you are on the earth, everything will go on, exactly as it does now, while I still am permitted to see it. You will be living then, you will look at this very moon, you will breathe, you will pass over my grave; perhaps you will stop there a moment and despatch some necessity. And I shall lie and become rotten."

His death at the hospital in the night, with his friends looking on, is powerfully and minutely described. The fat, stupid priest goes through the last ceremonies, and is dully amazed at the contempt he receives from Sanin.