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+Project Gutenberg's Contemporary Russian Novelists, by Serge Persky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Contemporary Russian Novelists
+
+Author: Serge Persky
+
+Translator: Frederick Eisemann
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2010 [EBook #31503]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN NOVELISTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTEMPORARY
+  RUSSIAN NOVELISTS
+
+
+  Translated from the French of Serge Persky
+  By FREDERICK EISEMANN
+
+
+  JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON 1913
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1912_
+  BY C. DELAGRAVE
+
+  _Copyright, 1913_
+  BY L. E. BASSETT
+
+
+  To
+  THE MEMORY OF
+  F. N. S.
+
+  BY
+  THE TRANSLATOR
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The principal aim of this book is to give the reader a good general
+knowledge of Russian literature as it is to-day. The author, Serge
+Persky, has subordinated purely critical material, because he wants
+his readers to form their own judgments and criticize for
+themselves. The element of literary criticism is not, however, by
+any means entirely lacking.
+
+In the original text, there is a thorough and exhaustive treatment
+of the "great prophet" of Russian literature--Tolstoy--but the
+translator has deemed it wise to omit this essay, because so much
+has recently been written about this great man.
+
+As the title of the book is "Contemporary Russian Novelists," the
+essay on Anton Tchekoff, who is no longer living, does not rightly
+belong here, but Tchekoff is such an important figure in modern
+Russian literature and has attracted so little attention from
+English writers that it seems advisable to retain the essay that
+treats of his work.
+
+Finally, let me express my sincerest thanks to Dr. G. H. Maynadier
+of Harvard for his kind advice; to Miss Edna Wetzler for her
+unfailing and valuable help, and to Miss Carrie Harper, who has gone
+over this work with painstaking care.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+
+      I. A Brief Survey of Russian Literature              1
+
+     II. Anton Tchekoff                                   40
+
+    III. Vladimir Korolenko                               76
+
+     IV. Vikenty Veressayev                              108
+
+      V. Maxim Gorky                                     142
+
+     VI. Leonid Andreyev                                 199
+
+    VII. Dmitry Merezhkovsky                             246
+
+   VIII. Alexander Kuprin                                274
+
+     IX. Writers in Vogue                                289
+
+
+
+
+CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN NOVELISTS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A BRIEF SURVEY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
+
+
+In order to get a clear idea of modern Russian literature, a
+knowledge of its past is indispensable. This knowledge will help us
+in understanding that which distinguishes it from other European
+literatures, not only from the viewpoint of the art which it
+expresses, but also as the historical and sociological mirror of the
+nation's life in the course of centuries.
+
+The dominant trait of this literature is found in its very origins.
+Unlike the literatures of other European countries, which followed,
+in a more or less regular way, the development of life and
+civilization during historic times, Russian literature passed
+through none of these stages. Instead of being a product of the
+past, it is a protestation against it; instead of retracing the old
+successive stages, it appears, intermittently, like a light
+suddenly struck in the darkness. Its whole history is a long
+continual struggle against this darkness, which has gradually melted
+away beneath these rays of light, but has never entirely ceased to
+veil the general trend of Russian thought.
+
+As a result of the unfortunate circumstances which characterize her
+history, Russia was for a long time deprived of any relations with
+civilized Europe. The necessity of concentrating all her strength on
+fighting the Mongolians laid the corner-stone of a sort of
+semi-Asiatic political autocracy. Besides, the influence of the
+Byzantine clergy made the nation hostile to the ideas and science of
+the Occident, which were represented as heresies incompatible with
+the orthodox faith. However, when she finally threw off the
+Mongolian yoke, and when she found herself face to face with Europe,
+Russia was led to enter into diplomatic relations with the various
+Western powers. She then realized that European art and science were
+indispensable to her, if only to strengthen her in warfare against
+these States. For this reason a number of European ideas began to
+come into Russia during the reigns of the last Muscovite sovereigns.
+But they assumed a somewhat sacerdotal character in passing through
+the filter of Polish society, and took on, so to speak, a dogmatic
+air. In general, European influence was not accepted in Russia
+except with extreme repugnance and restless circumspection, until
+the accession of Peter I. This great monarch, blessed with unusual
+intelligence and a will of iron, decided to use all his autocratic
+power in impressing, to use the words of Pushkin, "a new direction
+upon the Russian vessel;"--Europe instead of Asia.
+
+Peter the Great had to contend against the partisans of ancient
+tradition, the "obscurists" and the adversaries of profane science;
+and this inevitable struggle determined the first character of
+Russian literature, where the satiric element, which in essence is
+an attack on the enemies of reform, predominates. In organizing
+grotesque processions, clownish masquerades, in which the
+long-skirted clothes and the streaming beards of the honorable
+champions of times gone by were ridiculed, Peter himself appeared as
+a pitiless destroyer of the ancient costumes and superannuated
+ideas.
+
+The example set by the practical irony of this man was followed,
+soon after the death of the Tsar, by Kantemir, the first Russian
+author who wrote satirical verses. These verses were very much
+appreciated in his time. In them, he mocks with considerable fervor
+the ignorant contemners of science, who taste happiness only in the
+gratification of their material appetites.
+
+At the same time that the Russian authors pursued the enemies of
+learning with sarcasm, they heaped up eulogies, which bordered on
+idolatry, on Peter I, and, after him, on his successors. In these
+praises, which were excessively hyperbolical, there was always some
+sincerity. Peter had, in fact, in his reign, paved the way for
+European civilization, and it seemed merely to be waiting for the
+sovereigns, Peter's successors, to go on with the work started by
+their illustrious ancestor. The most powerful leaders, and the first
+representatives of the new literature, strode ahead, then, hand in
+hand, but their paths before long diverged. Peter the Great wanted
+to use European science for practical purposes only: it was only to
+help the State, to make capable generals, to win wars, to help
+savants find means to develop the national wealth by industry and
+commerce; he--Peter--had no time to think of other things. But
+science throws her light into the most hidden corners, and when it
+brings social and political iniquities to light, then the government
+hastens to persecute that which, up to this time, it has encouraged.
+
+The protective, and later hostile, tendencies of the government in
+regard to authors manifested themselves with a special violence
+during the reign of Catherine II. This erudite woman, an admirer of
+Voltaire and of the French "encyclopedistes," was personally
+interested in writing. She wrote several plays in which she
+ridiculed the coarse manners and the ignorance of the society of her
+time. Under the influence of this new impulse, which had come from
+one in such a high station in life, a legion of satirical journals
+flooded the country. The talented and spiritual von Vizin wrote
+comedies, the most famous of which exposes the ignorance and cruelty
+of country gentlemen; in another, he shows the ridiculousness of
+people who take only the brilliant outside shell from European
+civilization. Shortly, Radishchev's "Voyage from Moscow to
+St. Petersburg" appeared. Here the author, with the fury of
+passionate resentment, and with sad bitterness, exposes the
+miserable condition of the people under the yoke of the high and
+mighty. It was then that the empress, Catherine the Great, so gentle
+to the world at large and so authoritative at home, perceiving that
+satire no longer spared the guardian principles necessary for the
+security of the State, any more than they did popular superstitions,
+manifested a strong displeasure against it. Consequently, the
+satirical journals disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Von
+Vizin, who, in his pleasing "Questions to Catherine" had touched on
+various subjects connected with court etiquette, and on the miseries
+of political life, had to content himself with silence. Radishchev
+was arrested, thrown into a fortress, and then sent to Siberia.
+They went so far as to accuse Derzhavin, the greatest poet of this
+time, the celebrated "chanter of Catherine," in his old age, of
+Jacobinism for having translated into verse one of the psalms of
+David; besides this, the energetic apostle of learning, Novikov, a
+journalist, a writer, and the founder of a remarkable society which
+devoted itself to the publication and circulation of useful books,
+was accused of having had relations with foreign secret societies.
+He was confined in the fortress at Schluesselburg after all his
+belongings had been confiscated. The critic and the satirist had had
+their wings clipped. But it was no longer possible to check this
+tendency, for, by force of circumstances, it had been planted in the
+very soul of every Russian who compared the conditions of life in
+his country with what European civilization had done for the
+neighboring countries.
+
+Excluded from journalism, this satiric tendency took refuge in
+literature, where the novel and the story trace the incidents of
+daily life. Since the writers could not touch the evil at its
+source, they showed its consequences for social life. They
+represented with eloquence the empty and deplorable banality of the
+existence forced upon most of them. By expressing in various ways
+general aspirations towards something better, they let literature
+continue its teaching, even in times particularly hostile to
+freedom of thought, like the reign of Nicholas I, the most typical
+and decided adversary of the freedom of the pen that Europe has ever
+seen. Literature was, then, considered as an inevitable evil, but
+one from which the world wanted to free itself; and every man of
+letters seemed to be under suspicion. During this reign, not only
+criticisms of the government, but also praises of it, were
+considered offensive and out of place. Thus, the chief of the secret
+police, when he found that a writer of that time, Bulgarine, whose
+name was synonymous with accuser and like evils, had taken the
+liberty to praise the government for some insignificant improvements
+made on a certain street, told him with severity: "You are not asked
+to praise the government, you must only praise men of letters."
+
+Nothing went to print without the authorization of the general
+censor, an authorization that had to be confirmed by the various
+parts of the complex machine, and, finally, by a superior committee
+which censored the censors. The latter were themselves so terrorized
+that they scented subversive ideas even in cook-books, in technical
+musical terms, and in punctuation marks. It would seem that under
+such conditions no kind of literature, and certainly no satire,
+could exist. Nevertheless, it was at this period that Gogol produced
+his best works. The two most important are, his comedy "The
+Revizor," where he stigmatizes the abuses of administration, and
+"Dead Souls," that classic work which de Voguee judges worthy of
+being given a place in universal literature, between "Don Quixote"
+and "Gil Blas," and which, in a series of immortal types,
+flagellates the moral emptiness and the mediocrity of life in high
+Russian society at that time.
+
+At the same time, Griboyedov's famous comedy, "Intelligence Comes to
+Grief," which the censorship forbade to be produced or even
+published, was being circulated in manuscript form. This comedy, a
+veritable masterpiece, has for its hero a man named Chatsky, who was
+condemned as a madman by the aristocratic society of Moscow on
+account of his independent spirit and patriotic sentiments. It is
+true that in all of these works the authors hardly attack important
+personages or the essential bases of political organization. The
+functionaries and proprietors of Gogol's works are "petites gens,"
+and the civic pathos of Chatsky aims at certain individuals and not
+at the national institutions. But these attacks, cleverly veiling
+the general conditions of Russian life, led the intelligent reader
+to meditate on certain questions, and it also permitted satire to
+live through the most painful periods. Later, with the coming of the
+reforms of Alexander II, satire manifested itself more openly in
+the works of Saltykov, who was not afraid to use all his talent in
+scourging, with his biting sarcasm, violence and arbitrariness.
+
+Another salient trait of Russian literature is its tendency toward
+realism, the germ of which can be seen even in the most
+old-fashioned works, when, following the precepts of the West, they
+were taken up first with pseudo-classicism, and then with the
+romantic spirit which followed.
+
+Pseudo-classicism had but few worthy representatives in Russia, if
+we omit the poet Derzhavin, whom Pushkin accused of having a poor
+knowledge of his mother tongue, and whose monotonous work shows
+signs of genius only here and there.
+
+As to romanticism! Here we find excellent translations of the German
+poets by Zhukovsky, and the poems of Lermontov and Pushkin, all
+impregnated with the spirit of Byron. But these two movements came
+quickly to an end. Soon realism, under the influence of Dickens and
+Balzac, installed itself as master of this literature, and, in spite
+of the repeated efforts of the symbolist schools, nothing has yet
+been able to wipe it out. Thus, the triumph of realism was not, as
+in the case of earlier tendencies, the simple result of the spirit
+of imitation which urges authors to choose models that are in
+vogue, but it was a response to a powerful instinct. The truth of
+this statement is very evident in view of the fact that realism
+appeared in Russian literature at a time when it was still a novelty
+in Europe. The need of representing naked reality, without any
+decorations, is, so to speak, innate in the Russian author, who
+cannot, for any length of time, be led away from this practice. This
+is the very reason why the Byronian influence, at the time of
+Pushkin and Lermontov, lasted such a short time. After having
+written several poems inspired by the English poet, Pushkin soon
+disdained this model, which was the sole object of European
+imitation. "Byron's characters," he says, "are not real people, but
+rather incarnations of the various moods of the poet," and he ends
+by saying that Byron is "great but monotonous." We find the same
+thing in Lermontov, who was fond of Byron, not only in a transient
+mood of snobbery, but because the very strong and sombre character
+of his imagination naturally led him to choose this kind of intense
+poetry. He was exerting himself to regard reality seriously and to
+reproduce it with exactitude, at the very time when he was killed in
+a duel at the youthful age of twenty-seven.
+
+Pushkin's best work, his novel in verse, "Evgeny Onyegin," although
+it came so early, was constructed according to realistic
+principles; and although we still distinguish romantic tints, it is
+a striking picture of Russian society at the beginning of the 19th
+century. We find the same tendency in Lermontov's prose novel, "A
+Hero of Our Times," in which the hero, Pechorin, has many traits in
+common with Evgeny Onyegin. This book immediately made a deep
+impression. It was really nothing more than a step taken in a new
+direction by its author. But it was a step that promised much. An
+absurd fatality destroyed this promise, and hindered the poet,
+according to the expression of an excellent critic of that time,
+from "rummaging with his eagle eye, among the recesses of the
+world."
+
+The works of writers of secondary rank, contemporaneous with the
+above mentioned, also reveal a realistic tendency. Then appeared, to
+declare it with a master's power, that genius of a realist, of whom
+we have already made mention, Gogol. There was general enthusiasm;
+Gogol absorbed almost the entire attention of the public and men of
+letters. The great critic and publicist Byelinsky, in particular,
+took it upon himself to elaborate in his works the theories of
+realism; he formulated the program about 1850 under the name of the
+"naturalistic school." Thus the germs of the past had expanded
+triumphantly in the work of Gogol, and the way was now clear for
+Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, and Pisemsky,
+who, while enlarging the range and perfecting the methods of the
+naturalistic school, conquered for their native literature the place
+which it has definitely assumed in the world.
+
+Although we may infer that Russian realism has its roots in a
+special spiritual predilection, we must not nevertheless forget the
+historical conditions which prepared the way for it and made its
+logical development easy. Russian literature, called on to struggle
+against tremendous obstacles, could hardly have gone astray in the
+domain of a nebulous idealism.
+
+The third distinctive trait of this literature is found in its
+democratic spirit. Most of the heroes are not titled personages;
+they are peasants, bourgeois, petty officials, students, and,
+finally, "intellectuals." This democratic taste is explained by the
+very constitution of Russian society.
+
+The spirit of the literature of a nation is usually a reflection of
+the social class which possesses the preponderant influence from a
+political or economic standpoint or which is marked by the strength
+of its numbers. The preponderance of the upper middle class in
+England has impressed on all the literature of that country the seal
+of morality belonging to that class; while in France, where
+aristocracy predominated, one still feels the influence of the
+aristocratic traditions which are so brilliantly manifested in the
+pseudo-classic period of its literature. But many reasons have
+hindered the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie from developing in
+Russia. The Russian bourgeois was, for a long time, nothing but a
+peasant who had grown rich, while the noble was distinguished more
+by the number of his serfs and his authority than by his moral
+superiority. Deprived of independence, these two classes blended and
+still blend with the immense number of peasants who surround them on
+all sides and submerge them irresistibly, however they may wish to
+free themselves.
+
+Very naturally, the first Russian authors came from the class of
+proprietors, rural lords, who were the most intelligent, not to say
+the only intelligent people. In general, the life of the lord was
+barely distinguishable from that of the peasant. As he was usually
+reared in the country, he passed his childhood among the village
+children; the people most dear to his heart, often more dear to him
+than his father or mother, were his nurse and the other
+servants,--simple people, who took care of him and gave him the
+pleasures of his youthful existence. Before he entered the local
+government school, he had been impregnated with goodness and popular
+poetry, drawn from stories, legends, and tales to which he had been
+an ardent listener. We find the great Pushkin dedicating his most
+pathetic verses to his old nurse, and we often see him inspired by
+the most humble people. In this way, to the theoretic democracy
+imported from Europe is united, in the case of the Russian author, a
+treasure of ardent personal recollections; democracy is not for him
+an abstract love of the people, but a real affection, a tenderness
+made up of lasting reminiscences which he feels deeply.
+
+This then was the mental state of the most intelligent part of this
+Russian nobility, which showed itself a pioneer of the ideas of
+progress in literature and life. There were even singular political
+manifestations produced. Rostopchin said: "In France the shoemakers
+want to become noble; while here, the nobles would like to turn
+shoemakers." But, in spite of all, the greater part of this caste,
+with its essential conservative instincts, was nothing more than an
+inert mass, without initiative, and incapable even of defending its
+own interests except by the aid of the government.
+
+Rostopchin did not suspect the profound truth of his capricious
+saying.
+
+This truth burst forth in all its strength about 1870, the time of
+the great reforms undertaken by Alexander II, when the interests of
+the people were, for the first time, the order of the day. It was
+at this period that a great deal of studying was being done with
+great enthusiasm and that a general infatuation for folklore and for
+a "union with the masses" was being shown. The desire to become
+"simplified," that is to say to have all people live the same kind
+of life, the appearance of a type, celebrated under the sarcastic
+name of "noble penitent" (meaning the titled man who is ashamed of
+his privileged position as if it were a humiliating and infamous
+thing), the politico-socialistic ideology of the first Slavophiles,
+still half conservative, but wholly democratic; all these things
+were the results of the manifestations which astonished Rostopchin
+and made the more intelligent class of Russians fraternize more with
+the masses. In our day, this tendency has been eloquently
+illustrated by the greatest Russian artist and thinker, Tolstoy, who
+was the very incarnation of the ideas named above, and who always
+appears to us as a highly cultured peasant. The hero of
+"Resurrection" sums up in a few words this sympathy for the people:
+"This is it, the big world, the true world!" he says, on seeing the
+crowd of peasants and workingmen packed into a third-class
+compartment.
+
+In the last half of the 19th century, Russian literature took a
+further step in the way of democracy. It passed from the hands of
+the nobility into the hands of the middle class, as the conditions
+under which it existed brought it closer to the people and made it
+therefore more accessible to their aspirations. It is no longer the
+great humanitarians of the privileged class who paint the miserable
+conditions among which people vegetate; it is the people themselves
+who are beginning to speak of their miseries and of their hopes for
+a better life. The result is a deep penetration of the popular mind,
+in conjunction with an acute, and sometimes sickly, nervousness,
+which is shown in the works of the great Uspensky, and, more
+recently still, in Tchekoff, Andreyev, and many others.
+
+None of these writers belong to the aristocracy, and two of
+them--Tchekoff and Gorky--have come up from the masses: the former
+was the son of a serf, and the latter the son of a workingman. Let
+me add that, among the women of letters, the one who is most
+distinguished by her talent in describing scenes from popular
+life--Mme. Dmitrieva--is the daughter of a peasant woman.
+
+Thus, as we have shown, the Russian writers alone, under the cover
+of imaginative works which became expressive symbols, could
+undertake a truly efficacious struggle against tyranny and
+arbitrariness. They found themselves in that way placed in a
+peculiar social position with corresponding duties. Men expected
+from them, naturally, a new gospel and also a plan of conduct
+necessary in order to escape from the circle of oppression. The best
+of the Russian writers have undertaken a difficult and perilous
+task; they have become the guides, and, so to speak, the "masters"
+of life. This tendency constitutes a new trait in Russian
+literature, one of its most characteristic; not that other
+literatures have neglected it, but no other literature in the world
+has proclaimed this mission with such a degree of energy and with
+such a spirit of sacrifice. Never, in any other country, have
+novelists or poets felt with such intensity the burden on their
+souls. At this point Gogol, first of all, became the victim of this
+state of things.
+
+The enthusiasm stirred up by his works and by the immense hopes that
+he had evoked suddenly elevated him to such a height in the minds of
+his contemporaries that he felt real anguish. Artist he was, and now
+he forced himself to become a moralist; he rushed into philosophical
+speculations which led him on to a nebulous mysticism, from which
+his talent suffered severely. When he realized what had happened,
+despair seized him, his ideas troubled him, and he died in terrible
+intellectual distress.
+
+We see also the great admirer of Gogol--Dostoyevsky--under different
+pretexts making known in almost all his novels and especially in
+his magazine articles, "Recollections of an Author," his opinions on
+the reforms about to be realized. He studies the problems of
+civilization which concern humanity in general, and particularly
+insists upon the mission of the Russian people, who are destined, he
+believes, to end all the conflicts of the world by virtue of a
+system based upon Christian love and pity.
+
+Turgenev, himself, although above all an artist, does not remain
+aloof from this educational work. In his "Annals of a Sportsman," he
+attacks bondage. And when it was abolished, and when in the very
+heart of Russian society, among the younger generation, the
+revolutionists appeared, Turgenev attempted to paint these "new
+men." Thus in his novel, "Fathers and Sons," he sketches in bold
+strokes the character of the nihilist Bazarov. This celebrated type
+cannot, however, be considered a true representative of the
+mentality of the "new men," for it gave only a few aspects of their
+character, which, besides, did not have Turgenev's sympathy.
+
+They are valued in an entirely different way by Chernyshevsky in his
+novel, "What Is To Be Done?" where the author, one of the most
+powerful representatives of the great movement toward freedom from
+1860 to 1870, carefully studied the bases of the new morals and the
+means to be used in struggling against the prejudices of the old
+society. Finally let us mention Tolstoy, whose entire literary
+activity was a constant search for truth, till the day when his mind
+found an answer to his doubts in the religion of love and harmony
+which he preached from then on.
+
+The earnestness which sees an apostle in a writer has not ceased to
+grow and has almost blinded the public.
+
+For example, Gorky needed only to write some stories in which he
+places before us beings belonging to the most miserable classes of
+society, to be suddenly, and perhaps against his own will, elevated
+to the role of prophet of a new gospel, of annunciator from whom
+they were waiting for the Word, although one could also find the
+Word in the anti-socialistic circles which he depicts. Another
+contemporaneous author, Tchekoff, once wrote a story about the
+precarious position of the workingman in the city; he showed how
+this man, after he had become old and had gone back to his native
+village, suffered even more misery than before instead of getting
+the rest he had hoped for. Immediately an ardent controversy took
+place between the two factions of the youth of that time, the
+Populists and the Marxists. The former, defending the rural
+population, accused the author of having exaggerated and of having
+only superficially considered the question, while the others
+triumphed, confident in the activity of the people of the city.
+
+The literary critic, however, in carefully studying the works of
+these authors, tried to get at the real meaning,--the idea between
+the lines. Gorky's philosophy has often been discussed; a great many
+men of letters have tried to unravel what there was of pessimism, of
+indifference or of mystic idealism in the soul of Tchekoff. This
+everlasting habit, not to say this mania, of analyzing the mind or
+soul of an author in order to get at his conception, his personal
+doctrine of life, often leads to partial and erroneous conclusions,
+especially when, as in most cases, the critic has only a very vague
+idea of the main current of thought which formed the genesis of the
+work.
+
+The hopes and emotions which are aroused by every original
+expression in literature, show more than ever what hopes are based
+upon its role, the mission which has devolved on it to serve life,
+by formulating the facts of the ideal to be realized.
+
+But what is this ideal? What are these ideal aspirations? Of what
+elements are they made up? What is the state of mind of the great
+majority of Russian "intellectuals" in the midst of the enmity which
+compromises and menaces them?
+
+Thanks to the window pierced by Peter the Great in the thick
+Muscovite wall, the Russian "intellectuals" have begun to have a
+general idea of European civilization. They have admired the beauty
+of this culture, and the greatness of European political and social
+institutions, guarantees of the dignity of human beings; they have
+endured mental suffering because they have found that in Russia such
+independence would be impossible, and, consequently, they have had a
+feeling of extreme bitterness, which has forced them either to deny
+or calumniate the moral forces of their country, or to formulate
+very strange theories about this situation. Thus at the end of the
+first twenty-five years of the century, Chadayev, one of the most
+original and brilliant thinkers of Russia, developed the following
+thesis in his "Philosophical Letters":--the fatal course of history
+having opposed the union of the Russian people with Catholicism,
+through which European civilization developed, Russia found herself
+reduced forever to the existence of an inert mass, deprived of all
+interior energy, as can be shown adequately by her history, her
+customs, and even the aspect of her national type with its
+ill-defined traits and apathetic expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the course of the terrible struggle which he waged against the
+censorship and against influential persons evilly disposed toward
+him, Pushkin cried out: "It was the idea of the devil himself that
+made me be born in Russia!" And in one of his letters, he says,
+"Naturally, I despise my country from east to west, but,
+nevertheless, I hate to hear a stranger speak of it with scorn."
+Lermontov, exiled to the Caucasus, ironically takes leave of his
+country, which he calls, "a squalid country of slaves and masters."
+And he salutes the Caucasian mountains as the immense screen which
+may hide him from the eyes of the Russian pachas. The Slavophiles
+themselves, the patriots who in their way idealized both Russian
+orthodoxy and autocracy, and who were wrongly considered the
+champions of the existing order of things, showed themselves no less
+hostile. One of their most celebrated representatives, Khomyakov,
+sees in Russia "a land stigmatized" by serfdom, where all is
+injustice, lies, morbid laziness and turpitude.
+
+Dostoyevsky, who shared some of the illusions of the Slavophiles,
+speaks of Europe as "a land of sacred miracles." Nevertheless,
+yielding to his desire to heighten the prestige of his country, he
+adds: "The Russian is not partially European, but essentially so, in
+the very largest sense of the word, because he watches, with an
+impartial love, the progress achieved by the various peoples of
+Europe, while each one of _them_ appreciates, above all, the
+progress of his own country, and often does not want to let the
+others share it."
+
+In spite of the seductive powers which European civilization
+exercised upon Russia, the Russians perceived its weak sides, which
+they studied by the light of the ideal which they promised
+themselves to attain in some indefinite future, a future which they
+nevertheless hoped was near at hand.
+
+To them, enthusiastic observers that they were, these defects became
+more apparent than to the Europeans themselves; as their critical
+sense was not deadened by the wear of constant use, they saw in a
+clear light the inconveniences of certain institutions, they
+perceived the sad consequences of the excessive triumph of
+individualism in its struggle for life, the enfranchisement of the
+proletariat, the satisfaction of the few at the cost of the many. At
+times the bases of this civilization seemed fragile to the Russians;
+they had a feeling that it was not finished; they also aspired more
+and more to the harmonious equilibrium of society which appealed to
+their ideal.
+
+In a word, that which has always been called socialism, has had an
+irresistible attraction for the more intelligent Russians; all of
+Russian literature is permeated with it, and it has developed all
+the more easily because it found a favorable basis in Russia's
+natural democracy.
+
+During the period when this literature was most persecuted--that is
+to say in the second half of the 19th century--its most influential
+representatives were ardent socialists. Among them should be
+mentioned the critic Byelinsky, the "Petracheviens,"--adepts in the
+doctrine of Fourier,--and that powerful agitator of ideas, Hertzen,
+who founded the Russian free press in London. Among Western writers,
+there were two well liked in Russia: George Sand and Charles
+Dickens. The former was a socialist, the latter was a democrat.
+Their influence was very great in Russia; their works were read with
+ardor, and gave rise to thoughts which escaped the severities of the
+censor, but betrayed themselves in private conversation, as well as
+in certain literary circles.
+
+All the celebrated writers of Europe who professed liberal
+tendencies met with a greater sympathy among the Russians of that
+time than in their own country. Dickens, received with great
+enthusiasm in Russia, was not appreciated by the English public. His
+excellent translator, Vedensky, tried hard to persuade him to come
+to Russia to live, where his talents would be valued at their true
+worth. We can then readily understand how Dostoyevsky, in his
+"Memoirs of an Author," had the right to say that the European
+socialistic-democrats had two countries, first their own, then
+Russia.
+
+The Russian writers who gave themselves up so passionately to this
+influence,--still so new even in Europe,--not able to support their
+political ideal, with a press, as it were, gagged by the censor,
+engaged in the struggle along the line of customs. They attacked the
+prejudices which clog the relations among men, and rose up against
+family despotism and the inferior position of women from a civil and
+economic point of view. But, between 1860 and 1870, when the
+enfranchisement of the serfs reduced the power of the censor, all
+that had been confined in the souls of the Russians burst forth.
+Chernishevsky wrote economic articles on capital and on the
+agricultural community; he studied the system of John Stuart Mill,
+from which he deduced his socialistic conclusions, and his
+reputation grew immediately at home and abroad. He became a leader
+of thought among the new generation.
+
+At the same time, the young critic Dobrolyubov, author of an
+analytical study of Russian customs, "The Kingdom of Shadows,"
+called the "intellectuals" to a struggle for the rights of the
+oppressed people, and was ready himself to "drain the bitter cup
+intended for those who have been sacrificed." Also at this time
+there appeared the poet Nekrasov and the satirist Saltykov. The
+former, a profound pessimist, described in his best verses the
+bitter fate of the lower classes; the latter with his sarcasm
+scathed bureaucratic arbitrariness, while from abroad was heard the
+free ringing of "The Bell,"--a paper founded by Hertzen,--which
+seemed to be announcing that freedom was coming. Two articles by the
+poet Mikhailov on the situation of women started a vast movement.
+The women soon filled the lecture-halls of the university, and the
+class-rooms, and organized a veritable campaign to defend their
+rights in the name of the principle of liberty. All the partisans of
+democracy or socialism applauded them. The agitation became general;
+it seemed as if they wanted to make up for lost time by this
+tremendous activity; everywhere Sunday schools were started and
+public libraries opened; workingmen's associations were formed on
+socialistic principles, and the ardent younger generation spoke to
+the ignorant masses and asked them to join them in the coming
+struggle.
+
+This epoch has been called "the moral springtime" of Russia, and in
+truth it was a spring with all of its real splendors and illusions.
+A sudden wave of life surged from one end of the empire to the
+other. Up above, the government was making reforms prudently, as if
+afraid of going too far; down below, a great transformation was
+taking place. It was at this time that certain bold projects were
+contemplated at which the government took fright. The "springtime"
+proved ephemeral. A triumphant reaction nipped in the bud this
+movement towards emancipation, with all its hopes. In 1877, after
+the Russo-Turkish war, it seemed as if the movement were going to
+start again. Less vast and less diverse, but more definite, it
+immediately put all of its strength into the popular propaganda and
+showed its activity by the assassination of the emperor and by
+several other crimes. It was a terrible struggle, till finally the
+leaders again succumbed under the mighty blows of their adversaries.
+The years that followed this defeat (1880-1905) were most
+inauspicious in Russian life. A profound apathy deadened society,
+and an atmosphere of anguish and disillusion--which have left
+visible traces in Russian literature--weighed it down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In short, it may be said that Russian thought has always been led
+away by the theories of certain European parties who are most
+opposed to political and social organization of the state.
+
+The vigor, the clearness, and the force of negation with which this
+characteristic manifests itself in the ideas and customs of the
+Russian radical-socialists have often distorted, in the eyes of
+other countries, opinions or doctrines which it is important to
+present in their true light.
+
+Thus, Bazarov, that nihilistic creation of Turgenev, appeared to the
+English, French, and German public as a mystical hero not viable in
+human society, while Pisarev, one of the sanest of Russian critics,
+considers him as a model of the really free man. As to Turgenev
+himself, he saw that the coming of this type would make concrete a
+rising force worthy of holding attention and also of commanding some
+respect.
+
+In practical life, this negative force has found its most extreme
+expression in what has already been pointed out, that is, in the
+revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin and in Tolstoy's recent theories
+of pacific anarchism, which are founded on the gospel. But, while
+very significant as great illustrations of certain sides of Russian
+mentality, neither the one nor the other of these anarchistic
+doctrines, so opposed in their substance, can be considered as an
+expression of the modern Russian socialistic movement. Having found
+a basis in the workingman movement of their country, the Russian
+socialistic theoreticians have become more practical, and their
+activity turns back to the realm of European socialism, which is to
+be found in the doctrines of Karl Marx.
+
+There was a time in Europe when they christened with the name
+"nihilism" this active negation of civilization and of bourgeois
+customs, so characteristic of the Russian "intellectuals." Taken in
+its literal sense, this word is inexact, since those to whom it was
+applied were inspired by a very high ideal. In a loose use of the
+word, nihilism has, on the contrary, a real significance, especially
+if one connects it with most of the Russian "intellectuals." The
+liberal tendencies which were brewing in the realistic literature of
+the period from 1840 to 1850, and which manifested themselves
+suddenly with particular strength during the tumultuous decade
+between 1860 and 1870, made the substance of the new theories and
+the base of Russian mentality. These theories were very bold in
+their negation, and it is for this reason that they have been called
+"nihilistic."
+
+If this intellectual "elite" should some day triumph in Russia, will
+it be true to its moral idea of justice and liberty? It probably
+will. We may then see the following phenomenon take place: the
+realization of the most advanced program of modern civilization in
+one of the most backward countries of Europe.
+
+However paradoxical such a prevision may seem at first, it has a
+fundamental element of truth. Two obstacles bar the way to
+civilization and the normal development of new ideas, which are the
+foundation of progress. First of all, there is the naive and boorish
+ignorance of the common people; then the resistance which every
+established society instinctively offers to ideas of reformation. Of
+these two conservative forces, Russia knows but one, pure and simple
+ignorance, while the second, which can have art and science as
+powerful allies, is completely lacking. But ignorance cannot last
+forever. It diminishes more and more; that is why the most advanced
+ideas of European civilization naturally go hand in hand with
+learning in Russia, and occupy all places which knowledge wins from
+ignorance. Since the Russian has had a taste of science he has
+become the champion of social and democratic ideas; the latter
+develop even with elementary instruction, as can easily be seen by
+observing the movements made among the workmen of the city, and also
+among the more advanced elements of the peasant population.
+
+These particulars had already attracted the attention of the
+brilliant peace advocate and profound thinker, Hertzen, who,
+distressed by the bloody reprisals of bourgeoise Europe, following
+the Revolution of 1848, fixed his attention on Russia, from which he
+expected great things,--among others, a new civilization freed from
+the prejudices and customs which held it back in other countries.
+
+Hertzen represented Russia as an immense plain where people were
+getting rid of old thatched cottages, and at the same time
+collecting the necessary materials for new habitations. He saw a
+world in which no one lived as yet, but where life as it should be
+was being prepared for. And this idea, which may seem exaggerated,
+has a good deal of sense in it. Does not every backward nation,
+which hastens to take her place in the circle of the more advanced
+peoples of Europe, resemble a vessel into which a new wine is to be
+poured?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If modern Russian literature has not deviated from its fundamental
+principles, realism, democracy, and socialism, on the other hand, a
+radical change has taken place in society which has necessarily had
+an influence on it. The populace is not the sombre, inert, and
+ignorant multitude that it has been heretofore. Learning is
+penetrating more and more; and as an advance-guard, it has the
+workingmen of the city and the people of the suburbs. A feeling of
+dignity, of human personality, and a love of liberty is awakening in
+the masses who have joined in the struggle which the "intellectuals"
+are conducting against the passive forces of autocracy.
+
+That is why the literature of this time--always excepting the period
+from 1905 to 1910--is preeminently a literature of fiercer and more
+active combat than ever before. As in times gone by, the heroes of
+this literature are common people. The writers choose them from
+among the students, schoolmasters, and school-mistresses of the
+village schools, who with complete disregard of self carry on the
+great work of popular education in the very heart of the country,
+without caring about the arbitrary power which menaces them, or the
+moral and material conditions of their lives. They also choose them
+from among the doctors of the districts who are worn out in
+despairing efforts to struggle against the terrible epidemics, and
+who are also trying to improve hygienic conditions among the
+peasants. In fine, among the heroes are included all who sacrifice
+their personal interests for the general good.
+
+The results of this terrible struggle against brute force are shown
+in the excessive nervousness of the combatants, who have become
+delirious with their aspirations towards liberty. Hatred of actual
+reality and distrust of those who have resigned themselves to it
+have made them accept sympathetically the most extreme and
+uncompromising measures, and one often thinks one sees a certain
+generosity among the people who are at war with society,--often, it
+is true, for egotistical reasons, far removed from the great ideal
+of reforms profitable to the masses. Such are the celebrated
+barefoot brigade, the eternal vagabonds, the "lumpen-proletariat" of
+Gorky's early works.
+
+Another favorite subject of the Russian authors is the antagonism
+which makes parents and children quarrel. But the children who were
+radicals of the former generation have now became fathers, and are
+often reproached by their sons for the practical impossibility of
+the ideal for which they vainly expended their strength, and, as a
+result of which, they are worn out and useless. Veressayev and
+Chirikov have written most on this point.
+
+However, in spite of repeated attacks, the resistance has grown in
+intensity and the general uneasiness has spread without any one's
+being able as yet to see any lasting or positive result. The
+pessimism of various writers faithfully reflects this crisis.
+Andreyev, for instance, possesses an extraordinary intuition of the
+element of tragic mysteriousness which envelops the slightest
+circumstances of daily life. Tchekoff, the prominent author who died
+a few years ago, has left us remarkably realistic sketches, where he
+obviously shows mental discouragement as a result of the struggle.
+Another contemporary writer, Korolenko, whose poetic talent recalls
+Turgenev to our minds, is distinguished, on the contrary, by the
+attempts he has made to set free the spark of life which exists in
+human beings who have broken down morally. All these writers have
+such a direct and powerful influence on contemporary youth that we
+are going to study them separately in this book, not excepting
+Tchekoff, whose influence is still enormous.
+
+Since the death of the prophet of Yasnaya-Polyana,[1] Russian
+literature cannot boast of any writers who compare with Turgenev,
+Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, or the dramatist Ostrovsky. The cause is to
+be traced rather to circumstances than to the authors themselves.
+For social life to furnish material suitable for the artist's
+description, it must first of all have types which show a certain
+consistency, a more or less determined attitude. But it is futile to
+look for either stability or precision in Russian life since Russia
+has been going through continual crises. It would be just as
+difficult for literature to record rapid changes of ideas, as for an
+artist to copy a model that cannot pose for him. Besides, most
+contemporary writers are struggling hard for the means of
+subsistence.
+
+ [1] Tolstoy.
+
+Sometimes their effort to get food has so sapped their strength that
+they have not had enough time to finish their studies, nor enough
+tranquillity of soul to apply their talents to an impartial view of
+life and to incorporating in their work the documents which they
+have collected. Even in the writing of the best Russian authors of
+to-day one often feels that there is something unfinished, or hasty,
+as if their thoughts had not matured.
+
+I do not think that it will be superfluous to add that all Russian
+literature for the past century has been able to express only a very
+small part of what it had to say. The Russian writer continually
+suffers from the constraint which forces him to check the flight of
+his inspiration in order to escape from the foolish and often stupid
+sternness of the pitiless censor. The poet Nekrasov shows us in one
+of his poems an old soldier who has become a printer, and who speaks
+in the following manner of Pushkin:
+
+"He was a good man, tipped very generously, but he never ceased to
+rage against the censor. When he saw his manuscripts marked with red
+crosses, he became furious. One day, in order to console him, I
+said:
+
+"'Bah! why torment yourself?'
+
+"'Why,' he cried, 'but it is blood that is flowing,--blood,--my
+blood!'"
+
+A great deal of blood was thus shed. And in order to accentuate the
+action of the censor the police dealt cruel blows to the authors.
+One day Pushkin was called to the head of the department. They
+believed that they had recognized in one of his satires a certain
+gentleman, named N. G., who demanded that Pushkin be severely
+punished. Unnerved by the cross-examination to which he was put, the
+poet cried:
+
+"But it isn't N. G. whom I have drawn!"
+
+"Who is it, then?"
+
+"It is you, yourself," replied the poet.
+
+"That is madness, sir," the high dignitary cried out with wrath.
+"You say that wood belonging to the state was stolen. And at the
+time when these thefts were committed I was away."
+
+"Then you do not recognize yourself in my satire?"
+
+"No, a thousand times no!"
+
+"And N. G. recognizes himself?"
+
+"Not exactly, but as he is in the service of the government...."
+
+"Well, is he its spokesman and champion? And why is it precisely he
+who asks to have me arrested?"
+
+"All right," replied the dignitary, suddenly becoming milder, "I
+shall inform His Majesty of our conversation."
+
+The affair ended without further complications. It should be noted
+that the Tsar himself protected Pushkin, for Pushkin had got into
+touch with him in order to influence him more successfully.
+Nevertheless, this acquaintance was only a new source of suffering
+to the poet. In the case of certain less known writers the
+malevolence of the higher authorities often took on a tragic turn.
+For a single poem in which the poet Polezhayev described a students'
+debauch, the author was reduced by Nicholas I to the rank of a
+common soldier. Sokolovsky, another writer of this time, not being
+able to get a footing in literature, abandoned the pen, and like
+many others, sought to forget his disappointment in drink. For
+several years Hertzen was transferred from one place of exile to
+another until he came to England. And how terrible was the fate of
+the talented poet of Little Russia, Shevchenko, who was exiled for
+many years to a corner of European Russia and forbidden to do any
+writing or even painting, a thing that he loved above all! And
+finally, who does not know the sad comedy of Dostoyevsky, who was
+made to go through all the preparations for his execution, but was
+finally sent to that prison which he has so wonderfully described in
+his recollections of "The Dead House"?
+
+The Damocles' sword of defiant authority was suspended over the head
+of every Russian writer. The vocation of literature was filled with
+danger and brought about actual tragedies in some families. Thus,
+Pushkin's father, fearing that the fury of the authorities would
+extend to him, began to hate all literature, and had serious
+quarrels with his son. Griboyedov's mother threw herself at her
+son's feet and begged him not to write any more but rather to enter
+the service of the State. In Griboyedov we have a sad example of a
+great talent virtually buried alive by the censor. His comedy,
+"Intelligence Comes to Grief," is a masterful work, sparkling with
+satiric warmth, the equal of which it would be hard to find
+anywhere. This first work, rich in promise, was never published nor
+produced. Discouraged, the author renounced literature, and on the
+advice of his mother, accepted a position as ambassador to Persia,
+where he was killed in a riot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not only does the censorship mutilate literary works, but it often
+suffocates the inspiration of the author. The Russian press has
+lately published a very interesting article on Nekrasov, explaining
+the frequent interruptions of his activity by a momentary paralysis
+of his inspiration. Often, he writes, the ideas and poetic forms
+which come to his mind are so strong that he need only take up his
+pen and write them down. But the thought that what he might write
+would be condemned by the censor, stops him. It was, then, a long
+struggle between the ideas which he wanted to express and the
+obstacles which hindered him. And when finally Nekrasov had
+smothered his inspiration, he was broken down and crushed by fatigue
+and disgust, and for a long time he stopped writing. His friends
+advised him to jot down his ideas in spite of all, in the hope that
+they would be recognized by future generations when happier days
+should dawn on literature. He was not successful, because in order
+to create his genius needed to feel a close bond between him and his
+readers. Thus the censor carried his brutal hand into the very
+laboratory of thought.
+
+Happily, since the movement toward reform between 1860 and 1870, the
+Russian censor has become more lenient and now no one says what was
+once said to the writer Bulgarin: "Your business is to describe
+public activities, popular holidays, the theatre. Do not look for
+other topics." The number of subjects open to the press has
+increased. But the desire to live a free life has developed in
+literature and in society alike, and as resistance to it has also
+strengthened, the pressure has remained relatively the same. The
+censor and the police continue to stifle the natural richness and
+the power of the Russian mind. To-day, as before, Russian literature
+is made up of just that small fraction of the whole which has
+escaped government inquisition.
+
+However, in spite of all the unheard-of constraints which weigh upon
+her, Russia has already given us such great authors, that we need
+not hesitate to say that on the day when she regains liberty of
+speech and of pen, her literature will take its place among the
+first in the world.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ANTON TCHEKOFF[2]
+
+ [2] This spelling has been adopted here, rather than Chekhov,
+ since it is more familiar to the public. In all other cases, the
+ _ch_ and _v_ have been retained.
+
+
+"There is a saying that man needs only six feet of ground, but that
+is for a corpse and not for a living man. It is not six feet of
+ground that man requires, not even an entire estate, but the whole
+terrestrial globe, nature in its fullness, so that all his faculties
+can expand freely."
+
+This is the proud profession of faith that Anton Tchekoff made on
+entering the literary world. He was born January 17, 1860, at
+Taganrog, where his father, a freed serf, lived. After attending
+school in his native town, he took up the study of medicine at
+Moscow. Once a doctor, rather than practise, he devoted most of his
+time to literature. His career as an author does not offer us any
+extraordinary situations. He owed his success, and later on his
+glory, to severe and prolonged work. His literary talent manifested
+itself while he was still a student. He began his career with
+humorous short stories which were published in various newspapers.
+They brought him enough for the bare necessities of life.
+
+These stories have been collected in two volumes. They are very
+short, almost miniatures. For the most part they are elegant
+trifles, worked out with painstaking care. One feels that the author
+had no definite goal in sight; he wrote them simply to amuse and
+entertain his readers. One would search in vain for any sort of
+philosophy. On the contrary, one finds there a rather significant
+spirit, a gaiety, care-free, loquacious and, at times, ironical.
+Unimportant people tell pleasant things about themselves or others.
+All these men are a trifle debauched, talky, futile, and their
+companions are flighty, intriguing little women who chatter
+incessantly. Everything begins and ends with a laugh. This recalls
+some of the early works of Gogol, but, we repeat, one finds no moral
+element in this laughter, and these tiny comedies are in reality no
+more than simple vaudeville sketches. Once in a while we find a sad
+note; less frequently, we find the sadness accentuated in order to
+present a terrible drama. Such, then, are the contents of the first
+two volumes which came from the pen of Tchekoff.
+
+However, this melancholy little note, met from time to time,
+gradually grew in intensity in the third volume, until later on it
+lost all trace of the old carelessness, and developed, on the
+contrary, into a profound sadness. Tchekoff unconsciously gave up
+the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his
+attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this
+time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last
+Russo-Turkish war. This war, which, at the cost of enormous
+sacrifices, ended in the liberation of the Bulgarian people,
+awakened among the Russians a hope of obtaining their own liberty,
+and provoked among the younger generation the most energetic efforts
+to obtain this liberty, no matter what the cost might be. Alas, this
+hope was frustrated! All efforts were in vain, a reaction followed,
+and the year 1880 brought the reaction to its height. From then on
+apathy followed in the steps of the great enthusiasm. All illusion
+fled. A kind of disenchantment filled all minds. Those who had hoped
+with such ardor, and had counted on their own strength, felt weak
+and powerless. Some confined themselves to moaning incessantly. A
+grey twilight enveloped Russian life and filled it with melancholy.
+These are the dreary aspects that Tchekoff describes, and none has
+excelled him in portraying the events of this hopeless reaction. His
+stories and dramas give us a long procession of people who succumb
+to the monotony, to the platitudes, to the desolation, of
+existence.
+
+It is in the following manner that one of his characters expresses
+his ideas on the subject of this moral crisis:
+
+"I was then not more than twenty-six years of age; nevertheless I
+was conscious not only that life was senseless, but that it was
+without any visible goal; that all was illusion and dupery; that, in
+its consequences and even in its very essence, the life of the
+exiled on the island of Sakhaline was very much the same as the life
+that was led at Nice; that the difference between the brain of Kant
+and the brain of a fly was very small; finally, that no one in this
+world was either right or wrong."
+
+This idea of the nothingness of life, with its extremes, monstrous
+and profitless, is often found in the work of Tchekoff. His story
+"The Kiss" is but a variation of this theme,--the absurdity of life.
+Lieutenant Riabovich, under the influence of a chance kiss, a kiss
+that was not meant for him, dreams of love for an entire summer; he
+waits impatiently for the return of the pretty stranger; but alas,
+his lovely dream cannot be realized, for the simple and cruel reason
+that no one is waiting for _him_, no one is interested in him. One
+day, on the banks of a stream, the young officer gives himself up to
+his reflections:
+
+"The water flows off; one knows not where nor why; it flowed in
+exactly the same way last May; from the stream it flows into the
+river, and then into the sea; then it evaporates, turns into rain,
+and perhaps the very same water again flows by before my eyes.... To
+what good? Why?" And all life appears to Riabovich an absurd
+mystification and seems thoroughly senseless.
+
+The hero of "The Bet" absolutely scorns humanity, with its petty and
+its great deeds, its little and its great ideas, because he feels
+that after all everything must disappear, be annihilated, and the
+earth itself will turn into a mass of ice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tchekoff has given us innumerable rough sketches typical of people
+belonging to the most diverse social classes. He seems to take his
+readers by the hand and to lead them wherever he can show them
+characteristic scenes of modern Russian society,--be it in the
+country, in the factory, in princely dwellings, at the post-office,
+or on the highway. He barely takes the time absolutely necessary to
+depict in a few, appropriate words a state of mind or the secret of
+a gesture. One would say that he hastens to express the totality of
+life with the variety of his detached manifestations of it. That is
+why his stories are short; often mere allusions stand in place of
+actual development. And whatever domains or corners of Russian life
+the reader, under the guiding hand of this perspicacious cicerone,
+may visit, he will almost always go away with one predominating
+impression: the lamentable isolation of Russia.
+
+"The Windswept Grain" shows the reader a religious establishment,
+where a young Jew, recently converted, has taken refuge. Here is a
+young man, very impressionable and eager to learn, who has fled from
+his home and his family, whose prejudices offended him. His family
+tries every means to bring him back and to punish his apostasy.
+
+In order to employ his energies effectively, the young proselyte,
+who has embraced the new religion only that he may follow progress,
+tries to get a position as a school-teacher. But the apostleship of
+learning cannot satisfy his versatile mind: he continues to flit
+from one thing to another, like a gypsophilia, driven by the wind
+across the entire stretch of the steppes of southern Russia.
+
+Then Tchekoff takes us to a postal station to show us another type
+of the "Windswept Grain." This man, like the young convert, is a
+dreamer, who puts heart and soul into any new idea that comes along.
+He also has spent his life in searching for an activity
+corresponding to his ideal. At present, being a widower, he is
+obliged to support both himself and his daughter, who, while loving
+him devotedly, never ceases to reproach him for the many
+inconveniences of their uncertain existence. In the evening, a young
+widow from a neighboring province gets off at the place where he and
+his daughter are living. When she sees the young girl pouting, she
+consoles her by caressing her with the tact peculiar to women. Then,
+at tea time, she starts talking to the father. The idealist tells of
+his life, and reveals to the young woman the plans that he has made.
+The true sympathy with which she listens, and the respectful and
+tender feeling that he has for her, inevitably makes the reader
+think that fate has not brought these two people together in vain,
+and that their lives will be united. This impression persists when
+on the next day we find the young woman entering her carriage
+assisted by her companion of the evening before. We wait for the
+word that will unite this couple. But neither of them pronounces the
+all-important phrase. The carriage leaves; the man remains for a
+long time motionless as a statue, watching with a mingled feeling of
+joy and suffering the distant road and his disappearing happiness,
+which, but a moment ago, he seemed to hold in his hand.
+
+After those who insist on always realizing their temporary ideals,
+let us take up characters of a new type, those whom destiny has
+irredeemably conquered, and who have finally resigned themselves to
+their fate.
+
+An example of this type is Sofia Lvovna in "Volodia the Great and
+Volodia the Small." Married to a rich colonel, she has no other end
+in life. The days pass, tiresome, monotonous, filled only with
+visits and driving; the nights are interminable and sad near this
+husband whom she does not love, and whom she married out of spite
+and for money. Love for a comrade of her youth, Volodia by name,
+fills her heart. But this young man, who has recently finished his
+studies, is just as commonplace and just as debauched as her husband
+and the society which surrounds her. Sofia Lvovna is not yet
+resigned to her fate. She speaks of her aspirations to her childhood
+friend, who, after getting from her what he desires, leaves her at
+the end of a week. And Sofia Lvovna becomes frightened at the
+thought that for the young girls and women of her station there is
+no other alternative than to go on riding in carriages, or to enter
+a convent and gain salvation.
+
+"The Attack" gives us an example of the terrible feeling of terror
+that suddenly enters the proud soul of a young man at his first
+contact with certain realities.
+
+The student Vassiliev, a young man of excessively nervous
+temperament, has visited a house of ill-fame, and since then, he
+cannot rid himself of his painful impressions. Sombre thoughts
+beset his mind: "Women, living women!" he repeats, his head between
+his hands. "If I broke this lamp you would say that it was too bad;
+but down there it is not lamps that they break, it is the existence
+of human creatures! Living women!..."
+
+He dreams of several ways of saving these unfortunates, and he
+decides childishly to stand on a street-corner, and say to each
+passer-by:
+
+"Where are you going? and why? Fear God."
+
+But this desire soon gives place to a general state of anguish and
+hatred of himself. The evil seems too great for him, and its
+vastness crushes him. In the meantime, the people about him do not
+suffer; they are indifferent or incredulous. The student feels that
+he is losing his mind. They confine him. Later on, when, cured, he
+leaves the alienist, "he blushes at his anxiety."... The general
+indifference has broken down his aspirations, smothered his vague
+dream.
+
+In "Peter the Bishop," we see a man, good and simple, the son of
+peasants. This man, thanks to his intelligence, has raised himself
+to the rank of bishop. During all his life he has suffocated in this
+high ecclesiastical position, the pompous tinsel of which troubles
+him to such an extent that the cordial and sincere relationship
+existing between him and his old mother, who is so full of respect
+for her son, is broken off. After his death he is quickly forgotten.
+The old mother, now childless, when she walks in the fields with the
+women of the village, still speaks of her children, of her
+grandchildren, and of her son, the bishop. But she speaks timidly of
+him, as if she feared that they would not believe her. And, in
+truth, no one puts any faith in what she says.
+
+It is among the people and the working classes that man is most
+completely rid of all traces of an artificial and untruthful
+exterior; the struggle against misery does not leave much room for
+other preoccupations; life is merciless, it crushes unrelentingly
+man's dreams of happiness, and often does not leave any one to share
+the burden of sorrows or even its simple cares. The short and very
+touching story of "The Coachman" gives us an excellent example of
+this loneliness. Yona, a poor coachman, has lost his son; he feels
+that he has not the strength to live through this sorrow alone; he
+feels the absolute need of speaking to some one. But he tries in
+vain to confide his sorrows to one or the other of his patrons. No
+one listens to him. Therefore, once his day's work is over, alone in
+the stable, he pours out his heart to his horse: "Yes, my little
+mare, he is dead, my beloved child.... Let us suppose that you had a
+colt, and that this colt should suddenly die, wouldn't that cause
+you sorrow?" The mare looks at him with shining eyes, and snuffles
+the hand of her master, who ends by telling her the entire story of
+the sickness and death of his son.
+
+In "The Dreams," a miserable vagabond, whom two constables are
+taking to the neighboring city, dreams aloud of the pleasant life he
+expects to lead in Siberia, whither he hopes to be deported. His
+gaolers listen to him not without a certain interest. They also
+begin to dream ... they dream of a free country, from which they are
+separated by an enormous stretch of land, a country that they can
+hardly conceive. One of them brusquely interrupts the dreams of the
+vagabond: "That's all right, brother, you'll never get to that
+enchanted land. How are you going to get there? You are going to
+travel 300 versts and then you'll give your soul up to God. You are
+already almost gone." And then, in the imagination of the vagabond,
+other scenes present themselves: the slowness of justice, the
+temporary jails, the prison, the forced marches and the weary halts,
+the hard winters, sickness, the death of comrades.... "A shudder
+passes through his whole body, his head trembles and his body
+contracts like a worm which has been trodden upon...."
+
+Let us now look at those numerous stories of Tchekoff which treat of
+peasant life: "The Peasants," "The Murder," "In the Ravine," and
+others.
+
+"The Peasants" is one of the most important of the stories which
+treat of the country, and was recently conspicuous for bringing up
+the question, violently discussed by the Marxists and the Populists,
+of the life of the people in the city and in the country.
+
+Nicholas Chigueldyev, a waiter in a Moscow hotel, falls sick and has
+to leave his work. All his savings go into the hands of the doctor
+and the druggist. As he does not seem to improve, he decides to
+return to his native village, where his family is still living. If
+the air of the country does not cure him, he will at least die at
+home. He had left the village at an early age, and had never gone
+back to visit. He goes home with his wife and his little daughter.
+There he finds his mother, his father, and his two brothers and
+their wives in the most abject misery. The whole family is entombed
+in a dark and filthy "isba" full of flies. Nicholas and his wife
+immediately see that it would have been better for them to have
+remained in Moscow. But it is too late. They haven't enough money to
+return; they must remain. A horrible life begins for the sick man
+and his family. There are endless quarrels, blows, abuses. They
+reproach one another for eating and even for living. They are angry
+at Nicholas and his wife for having come. The latter is soon tired
+of this existence. In the city Nicholas had broken himself of
+country manners. He wants to go back to Moscow. But where find the
+money for the trip?... His sickness becomes more acute. An old
+tailor, a former nurse, who has been called in, promises to cure
+him; he bleeds him several times and Nicholas dies. The widow and
+her little daughter spend the winter in the village. The young
+woman, who had watched during those long days of suffering, is now
+broken down. When spring comes, the mother and daughter go to the
+church, and, after praying at the grave of their dead, they go
+begging on the highway.
+
+In "The Murder" Tchekoff studies certain manifestations in the
+spiritual life of the peasants. Matvey Terekof belongs to a peasant
+family the members of which are all known for their piety; in the
+village they are called "the singing boys." Very orthodox, they hold
+themselves aloof and give themselves over to mysticism.
+
+Instead of playing with his little comrades, Matvey is constantly
+poring over the Gospel. His piety increases, he prays night and
+day, hardly eats anything, and experiences "a singular joy at
+feeling himself grow weaker through the fasting." One day he notices
+that the priest of the village is less pious than he. He enters a
+convent in the hopes of finding there true Christians. But even
+there his disillusionment comes soon. Finally, he decides to found a
+church of his own. He hires a little room which he transforms into a
+chapel. He finds disciples and soon gains a reputation as a
+thaumaturgical saint.
+
+A sect, of which he is to be the head, is in process of formation,
+when, one day, he finds that he is on the wrong track. He thinks he
+has committed a mortal sin. Pride has taken possession of him; it is
+the Devil and not God who now directs his moves. Conscious of his
+error, he returns to orthodoxy, and, in the hopes of expiating his
+wrong-doing, he humiliates himself everywhere and on every occasion.
+
+But his cousin Jacob, having become infected with his earlier ideas,
+practises them with the fanatic ardor of a neophyte. With his sister
+and several other religious people, he locks himself into his house
+to pray; he sings vespers and matins. In the meanwhile Matvey
+decides that he must read Jacob a sermon.
+
+"Be reasonable," he tells him repeatedly, "repent, cousin. You will
+lose, because you are the prey of the demon. Repent."
+
+Instead of repenting, Jacob and his sister vow an implacable hatred
+against Matvey; so extreme is their feeling, that one day, at the
+end of an altercation, Jacob, blinded by rage, kills his cousin.
+
+He is judged and condemned. He is sent to the island of Sakhaline.
+There, he languishes, suffers, and despairs. But, little by little,
+his mind grows peaceful, and he has consoling visions. In prison he
+is surrounded by pariahs and criminals, and the sight of all this
+human suffering turns him again towards God, towards the religion of
+Love, the religion of pity for mankind. And now he wants to return
+to the country to tell of the miracle that has taken place in him,
+and to save souls from ill and ignorance.
+
+In "The Ravine" evil and injustice triumph at times with revolting
+cynicism. Evil is in everything and everywhere: "in the great
+manufacturers who drive along the streets of the village, crushing
+men and beasts; in the bailiff and the recorder, who are such bad
+characters that their very faces betray their knavery;" and finally,
+in the central figure of the story, Axinia, the wife of Stepan, the
+youngest son of Tzibukine, a usurer and monopolist.
+
+The unhealthy ravine hides a village inhabited by factory workers.
+The best house belongs to Gregory Tzibukine, who traffics in
+everything: brandy, wheat, cattle, lumber, and usury, on the side.
+His eldest son, Anissme, is employed at the police station and
+seldom comes home; the second son, Stepan, is deaf and sickly; he
+helps his father both well and badly, and his wife, the pretty and
+coquettish Axinia, runs all day between the cellar and the shop. The
+father Tzibukine is also friendly to her and respects this young
+woman, for she is a very good worker and is most intelligent.
+Tzibukine, a widower, has married Varvara, an affable and pious soul
+who gives alms,--a strange thing in this family who cheat everybody.
+Anissme often sends home beautiful letters and presents. One day, he
+comes unexpectedly; he has an unquiet, and, at the same time,
+flippant air. His parents have decided to get him married, and,
+although he is a drunkard, ugly and vulgar, they have found him a
+pretty wife. The girl is Lipa, daughter of a poor widow, a laborer
+like her mother. Anissme whistles and looks at the ceiling, and
+shows no signs of pleasure at his coming marriage. He leaves the
+house in a strange manner, and appears again three days before the
+wedding, bringing to his parents, as gifts, some newly coined money.
+The wedding day has come. The clergy and the well-to-do of the
+neighborhood are present at the dinner, which is sumptuously served.
+Lipa seems petrified with fear, for she barely knows her husband.
+The festivities last a long time; at intervals the voices of women
+can be heard outside hurling curses at the usurer. Then Anissme,
+red, drunk, and sweating, is shoved into the room where Lipa has
+already disrobed. Five days later, Anissme comes to his mother and
+bids her good-bye. He confides in her that some one has given him
+advice, and that he has decided either to become rich or to perish.
+Now that her husband has departed, Lipa again becomes gay.
+
+Meanwhile, they have arrested a reaper accused of having circulated
+a bad piece of money which he says he received from Anissme the
+night of the wedding. Tzibukine goes home, examines the money that
+his son has given him, and decides that it is all counterfeit. He
+orders Axinia to throw every bit of it into the well. But, instead
+of obeying, she pays it out as wages to the workmen. A week passes;
+they find out that Anissme has been thrown into prison as a
+counterfeiter. Tzibukine despairs; he feels his strength
+diminishing. Varvara continues to pray and to watch, while Stepan
+and Axinia continue to ply their trade as before. When, later on,
+Anissme is sentenced to ten years at hard labor in Siberia, Varvara
+suggests to her husband that he should leave one of his houses to
+the child which has just been born to Lipa, so that no one will
+speak badly of him after his death. But, at this suggestion, Axinia
+flies into such a fury, that, in her homicidal rage, she throws a
+kettle of boiling water over the child, who dies later at the
+hospital. Finally, she drives the young woman out of the house. Lipa
+returns to her mother. Soon Axinia reigns as absolute mistress of
+the house. Tzibukine becomes distracted; he does not take care of
+his money any more, because he cannot tell the good from the bad.
+Rumor has it that his daughter-in-law is letting him die of hunger.
+Varvara still goes on with her good work. Anissme is forgotten. The
+old man, starving, and driven from home, lodges a complaint against
+the young woman. Coming back to the village, the old man, tottering
+along the street, meets Lipa and her mother, who are now doing tile
+work.
+
+"Both bow deeply to him, and he looks at them with tears in his
+eyes. Lipa offers him a piece of oatmeal cake, and the two women go
+on their way, crossing themselves several times...."
+
+The virtuous Varvara is an extremely characteristic type, with a
+subtle psychology, carefully worked out; her honesty and goodness
+form an indispensable contrast to the ambient horrors.
+
+The author himself explains the role of Varvara and her action in
+this system of evil. "Her alms seem to be something strange, joyous
+and free, like the red flowers and the lights that glow before the
+saintly images." On holidays, and on jubilees, which last three
+days, when coarse and rotten meat is sold to the peasants who come
+to pawn their scythes and hats, or their wives' shawls; when the
+workingmen lie in the gutter under the influence of bad brandy, then
+"one feels a bit relieved at the thought that down there, in that
+house, there is a good and quiet woman, always ready to help
+unfortunates."
+
+Lipa and her mother are good and timid souls who suffer in silence,
+and give to the poor the little that they possess:
+
+"It seemed to them that some one up on high, further up than the
+azure, there among the stars, saw what was going on in their
+village, and watched. Big as the evil is, in spite of it, the night
+is beautiful and calm; justice is and will be calm and beautiful on
+God's earth also; the universe awaits the moment when it can melt
+into this justice, as the light of the moon melts into the night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These, then, are Tchekoff's favorite themes, on which he has traced
+numerous variations, always breathing forth a profound melancholy.
+
+"The life of our industrial classes," he says, "is dark, and drags
+itself along in sort of a twilight; as to the life of our common
+people, workingmen and peasants, it is a black night, made up of
+ignorance, poverty, and all sorts of prejudices."
+
+But from this ocean of ignorance, of barbarity, of misery which
+makes up the life of a peasant, Tchekoff has taken out the things of
+most importance, things that always happen in the most solemn
+moments of their existence.
+
+"All," he says, in describing a religious procession in the country,
+"the old man, his wife and the others, all stretch forth their hands
+to the ikon of the holy Virgin, regard her ardently, and say through
+their tears: 'Protectress! Virgin protectress!' And all seem to have
+understood that the space between Heaven and Earth is not empty;
+that the rich and the mighty have not swallowed up everything; that
+there is protection against all wrongs, slavery, misery, the fatal
+brandy...."
+
+Besides, in a story entitled "My Life," Poloznev, speaking of the
+peasants, expresses himself in the following manner:
+
+"They were, for the most part, nervous and irritable people,
+ignorant, and improvident, who could think of nothing but the grey
+earth and black bread; a people who were crafty, but were stupid
+about it, like the birds, who, when they want to hide themselves,
+only hide their heads. They would not do the mowing for you for
+twenty rubles, but they would do it for six liters of brandy,
+notwithstanding the fact that with twenty rubles they can buy eight
+times as much. What vice and foolishness! Nevertheless, one feels
+that the life of the peasant has a great deal of depth. It makes no
+difference that he, behind his plough, resembles an awkward beast,
+or that he gets intoxicated. In spite of all, when you look at him
+closely, you feel that he possesses the essential thing, the
+sentiment of justice."
+
+This love of justice Tchekoff has had occasion to observe even among
+convicts. "The convict," he says, in his book on the prison of
+Sakhaline, of which he made a profound study during his stay on the
+island, "the prisoner, completely corrupted and unjust as he himself
+is, loves justice more than any one else does, and if he does not
+find it in his superiors, he becomes angry, and grows baser and more
+distrustful from year to year."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the last works of Tchekoff the pessimistic tendency grows greater
+and greater. It seems as if the writer had gone through a sort of
+moral crisis, brought on by the conflict of his old despair and his
+new hopes. At this time, Russian society itself began to shake off
+its apathy, and this awakening, sweeping like a vivifying wave into
+the soul of the sad artist, opened for him, at the same time,
+perspectives of new ideas.
+
+This second aspect of Tchekoff's talent is perceptible in the story
+called "The Student." A seminarist, Velikopolsky by name, tells the
+gardener Vassilissa and her daughter Lukeria about St. Peter's
+denial of Christ. As a result of the impression which this story
+makes on her Vassilissa suddenly breaks into tears; she weeps a long
+time and hides her face as if she were ashamed of crying. Lukeria,
+who has been watching the student fixedly, blushes and her face
+takes on the tender and sad expression which is characteristic of
+those whose life is made up of deep suffering. After taking leave of
+them, the student thinks that Vassilissa's tears and the emotion of
+her daughter come from sorrows connected with the things he has just
+told them.
+
+"If the old woman wept, it was not because he knew how to tell the
+story in a touching manner, but because Peter was near to her, and
+because she was interested, heart and soul, in what was going on in
+the mind of the apostle...."
+
+Joy suddenly fills his heart, and he stops a moment to take a long
+breath. "The past," he muses, "is bound to the present by an
+uninterrupted chain of events." "And it seems to him that he has
+just seen the two ends of this chain: he has touched one, and the
+other has vibrated...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an ironical manner and by using very personal material, Tchekoff
+paints more than anything else, life in its passive or negative
+manifestations. Nevertheless, it is not satire, at least not in its
+general trend, for in his work we find too much human tenderness for
+satire. He does not laugh at his characters, and does not nail them
+to the pillory in an outburst of indignation. In his writing, the
+fundamental idea is fused with the form; his talent is calm,
+thoughtful, observing; but it seems, at times, that this calmness,
+this seeming indifference, is only a mask. A critic, speaking of
+Tchekoff, has said: "He is a tender crayon." It would be hard to
+find a more suitable expression. The delicacy of tone, the softness
+of touch in the outlines, the polish of some of the details, the
+capricious incompleteness of others are, in fact, the mark of his
+talent.
+
+Tchekoff was such a voluminous author that it would require a
+veritable effort to remember the throng of characters which exists
+in his books; and it is more than difficult not to confuse their
+individual doings and achievements. This abundance is connected with
+a peculiarity in the author's talent. He does not exhaust his
+subject; the psychology of his characters is emphasized by two or
+three expressive traits only, and this epitome is enough to make the
+theme of a story, the simplicity and naturalness of which demand,
+nevertheless, a high degree of art. The author is not interested in
+outlining the details, but the picture that he has sparingly
+conjured up stands out lifelike; he is always in a hurry to observe
+and to tell. Therefore the brevity and quantity of his stories. His
+stories seldom exceed ten pages in length, while some do not exceed
+four. They constitute a series of sketches, of miniatures of rare
+value, among which can be found some real gems. One cannot say as
+much for his longer works, where certain parts are exaggerated, as
+in "The Valet de Chambre," "Ward No. 6," "The Steppe," and "The
+Duel."
+
+The characters of the latter novel are especially weak and bad.
+There is but one exception, the zoologist von Koren, a man of
+determination, who believes that the suppression of useless people
+and degenerates would be a meritorious piece of work. This idea is
+suggested to him by the sight of a functionary called Layevsky, an
+insignificant and lazy person, who has taken the wife of one of his
+friends and fled with her to the Caucasus.
+
+"The Valet de Chambre" is an equally unsatisfactory story. The
+principal character is a young man who is supposed to be a
+revolutionist. He enters the service of a Petersburg dandy in hopes
+of meeting there a minister whom he wants to kill. The employer of
+the pseudo-lackey, who is not aware of any of his projects, is a
+masterful presentation of a type which we know as the sybaritical
+citizen; the character of the valet is so fantastical that the
+account of his adventures belongs absolutely to the "genre" of the
+newspaper novel.[3]
+
+ [3] In many European papers there is always to be found a part
+ called the "feuilleton," which usually consists of a serial story,
+ continued from day to day.
+
+"Ward No. 6" is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful
+story that Tchekoff has written. It is an analysis of moral
+degeneration, leading progressively to insanity, in a doctor who is
+seized by the pervasive banality of the village in which he
+practises. Tchekoff, like many other Russian writers, has shown
+himself a master in the study of certain psychological anomalies.
+Certain conversations between the doctor, who himself is going mad,
+and a patient who has long since lost his reason, interesting as
+they are from a philosophical standpoint, leave the world of reality
+and run free according to the imagination of the author, who takes
+advantage of this to formulate some of his favorite theories.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tchekoff has also tried himself out on the drama, and he has there
+established himself in a peculiar manner. His plays, like his other
+literary productions, belong to two distinct periods.
+
+There are some amusing little trifles that do not amount to much.
+Among these are: "The Bear," "The Asking in Marriage," and others.
+Then come the more serious plays, where one feels for a moment the
+influence of Ibsen. We find here again the same heroes, each of whom
+talks about his own particular case, and acts only in starts. These
+are specimens of "failures" belonging to the most tiresome
+provincial society.
+
+In "Ivanov," the author studies the mentality of a "failure."
+Dominated by a sickly self-love, he has known nothing but losses. He
+continually complains of his real and his imaginary sufferings.
+After squandering all his fortune, he marries a young girl, whom he
+wants to have act as his nurse. This empty life ends in suicide.
+
+In "Uncle Vanya," we have Vanya, a man full of goodness, modesty,
+and self-abnegation contrasted with the celebrated professor
+Serebriakof, an egoist, unfeeling, scornful, and ungrateful. The
+latter, who has recently remarried, comes back to the estate which
+Uncle Vanya, the brother of his first wife, has managed for him. For
+several years Vanya has been working incessantly; he has saved in
+every possible way so that he can send as much money as possible to
+his brother-in-law, this professor, fondled and pampered by the
+whole family, who see in him their glorification. But Serebriakof
+soon gets tired of the country; besides, he thinks that the
+doctor--a friend of the family who is taking care of him--does not
+understand his sickness, and he begins to mistrust him. He wants to
+go away, to travel, in order to recover his health, and, in order to
+make money, he proposes to sell the estate, which legally belongs to
+Sonya, the daughter of his first wife.
+
+Up to this time Uncle Vanya and the other members of the family as
+well, had sacrificed themselves entirely to this celebrated man. But
+at this proposition Vanya realizes that their idol is nothing but an
+abominable egoist, and he begins to despise his brother-in-law. What
+is more, he secretly loves the young and beautiful wife of the
+professor, while she suffers from the everlasting complaints and
+caprices of her husband. However, a general reconciliation takes
+place. The professor and his wife leave for the city, and all goes
+on as before; Uncle Vanya and the family will sacrifice themselves
+for the glory of Serebriakof, to whom all the revenues of the estate
+are sent.
+
+The "Three Sisters," that is to say the sisters of Prozorov, live
+with their brother in a vulgar, tiresome town,--a town lacking in
+men of superior minds, a town where one person is like the next.
+
+The great desire of the three sisters is to go to Moscow, but their
+apathy keeps them in the country, and they continue to vegetate
+while philosophizing about everything that they see. However, at the
+arrival of a regiment, they become animated, and have sentimental
+intrigues with the officers till the very day of their departure.
+
+"They are going to leave; we shall be alone; the monotonous life is
+going to begin again," cries one of the sisters.
+
+"We must work; work alone consoles," says the second.
+
+And the youngest exclaims, embracing her two sisters, while the
+military band plays the farewell march:
+
+"Ah, my dear sisters, your life is not yet completed. We are going
+to live. The music is so gay! Just a little bit more, and I feel
+that we shall know why we live, why we suffer...."
+
+This certainly is the dominant note of Tchekoff's philosophy: the
+impotency of living mitigated by a vague hope of progress.
+
+The last, and perhaps the most important play of Tchekoff, is "The
+Cherry Garden."[4] Human beings, locked up in themselves, morally
+bounded, impotent and isolated, wander about in the old seignioral
+estate of the Cherry Garden. The house is several centuries old. In
+former times a happy life was led there; feasts were given, and
+generals and princes were the hosts. The Cherry Garden gave tone to
+the neighborhood, but many years have passed!... Now other houses
+have taken its place: the estate is mortgaged, the interest is not
+paid, and the only guests now are the postman or a railway official
+who lives close by. The occupants of the house do not think of doing
+anything about this state of things. For them the past is gone. All
+that is left is a dislike for work, carelessness, improvidence, and
+ignorance of the necessities of the present. Like all that dies,
+they evoke a certain pity, a certain fatality hangs over them. The
+inhabitants of the Cherry Garden set forth their ideas about one
+another; but in reality none of them see anything but themselves, in
+their small and very limited moral world, and they analyze with
+difficulty the embryos of thought that are left to them. Thus, they
+cannot grasp in full the evil that is falling on the old home, and
+they remain impassive when some one proposes to alleviate this evil
+by energetic means. People speak to them of the downfall to which
+they are doomed; a means of safety is proposed, but they turn a deaf
+ear and continue in their narrow and fruitless dream. Finally, when
+the estate is sold, they look upon this event as a fatal and
+unexpected blow. They say good-bye to the cradle of their family,
+weeping silently, and depart.
+
+ [4] For some reason, unknown to the translator, the author has
+ made no mention of Tchekoff's famous play, "The Sea-Gull." This
+ drama, which, when first produced, was a flat failure, scored a
+ tremendous success a short while afterwards. It is especially
+ interesting in that the author has made one of the characters,
+ Trigorin, largely autobiographical. To-day "The Sea-Gull" is one
+ of the most popular productions on the Russian stage.
+
+They are now thrown out into the world. The old existence has gone,
+as well as the seignioral estate. The Cherry Garden is to be torn
+down; the blinds are all lowered, and in the half-darkened rooms,
+the old servant, who is nearly a century old, wanders about among
+the disordered furniture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tchekoff is a true product of Russian literature, an autochthon
+plant, nourished by his natal sap. His humor is completely Russian;
+we hear Tolstoyan notes in his democracy; the "failures" of his
+stories are distantly related to the "superficial characters" of
+Turgenev; finally, the theory of the redemption of the past by
+suffering which he puts in the heart of the hero of the "Cherry
+Garden" makes us think of Dostoyevsky. The qualities which call to
+mind all these great names in Russian literature are found in the
+works of Tchekoff along with characteristics which show a very
+original talent. If one wishes to look for foreign influence, one
+can relate Tchekoff to de Maupassant and Ibsen, of whom he reminds
+one in snatches, although still in a very vague way. And that is
+indeed fortunate, for, in general, Scandinavian symbolism hardly
+goes hand in hand with the Russian spirit, which likes to make
+_direct_ answers to "cursed questions," and whose ideal, elaborated
+since 1840 in the realm of strict realism, is so definite that it
+does not necessitate going back to the circumlocutions of metaphors
+and allegories.
+
+While Tchekoff lived his literary aspect was enigmatical. Some
+judged him to be indifferent, because they did not find in his
+writings that revolutionary spirit which is felt in almost all
+modern writers. Others thought of him as a pessimist who saw nothing
+good in Russian life, because he described principally resigned
+suffering or useless striving for a better life. Since the death of
+Tchekoff, which made it necessary for the critics to study his works
+as a whole, and especially since the publication of his
+correspondence, his character has come to the fore, as it really is:
+he is a writer, who, by the very nature of his talent, was
+irresistibly forced to study the inner life of man impartially, and
+who, consequently, remains the enemy of all religious or
+philosophical dogmas which may hinder the task of the observer.
+
+The division of men into good and bad, according to the point of
+view of this or that doctrine, angered him:
+
+"I fear," he says in one of his letters, "those who look for hidden
+meanings between the lines, and those who look upon me as a
+liberator or as a guardian. I am neither a liberal nor a
+conservative, neither a monk nor an indifferent person. I despise
+lies and violence everywhere and under any form.... I only want to
+be an artist, and that's all."
+
+One realized that this unfettered artist, with his hatred of lies
+and violence, although he belonged to no political party, could be
+nothing but a liberal in the noblest and greatest sense of the word.
+One also realized that he was not the pessimist that he was once
+believed to be, but a writer who suffered for his ideal and who
+awakened by his works a desire to emerge from the twilight of life
+that he depicted.
+
+To some he even appeared as an enchanted admirer of the future
+progress of humanity. Did he not often say, while admiring his own
+little garden: "Do you know that in three or four hundred years the
+entire earth will be a flourishing garden? How wonderful it will be
+to live then!" And did he not pronounce these proud words: "Man must
+be conscious of being superior to the lions, tigers, stars, in
+short, to all nature. We are already superior and great people, and,
+when we come to know all the strength of human genius, we shall be
+comparable to the gods."
+
+These great hopes did not prevent him from painting with a vigorous
+brush the nothingness of mankind, not only at a certain given moment
+and under certain circumstances, but always and everywhere. Is this
+a paradox? No. If he did not doubt progress, he would be most
+pessimistic, if I may so express myself. He would suffer from that
+earthly pessimism, in face of which reason is weak; the pessimism
+which manifests itself by a hopeless sadness in face of the
+stupidity of life and the idea of death.
+
+"I, my friend, am afraid of life, and do not understand it," says
+one of Tchekoff's heroes. "When, lying on the grass, I examine a
+lady-bird, it seems to me that its life is nothing but a texture of
+horrors, and I see myself in it.... Everything frightens me because
+I understand neither the motive nor the end of things. I understand
+neither persons nor things. If you understand I congratulate you.
+
+"When one looks at the blue sky for a long time, one's thoughts and
+one's soul unite mysteriously in a feeling of solitude.... For a
+moment one feels the loneliness of the dead, and the enigma of
+hopeless and terrible life."
+
+This universal hopelessness; this sadness, provoked by the
+platitudes of existence compared with the unrelenting lessons of
+death, of which Tchekoff speaks with such a nervous terror, can be
+found in almost all the works of the best known Russian writers. We
+find it in Byronian Lermontov, who sees nothing in life but "une
+plaisanterie;" in Dostoyevsky, who has written so many striking
+pages of realism on the bitterness of a life without religious
+faith; and in the realist Turgenev, we find the same kind of thing.
+Turgenev even reaches a stage of hopeless nihilism, and one of his
+heroes, Bazarov,--in "Fathers and Sons,"--reflecting one day on the
+lot of the peasant, considering it better than his, says sadly, "He,
+at least, will have his little hut, while all I can hope for is a
+bed of thorns." Finally, all the tortuous quests of the ideal toward
+which Tolstoy strove, were suggested to him, as he himself says, by
+his insatiable desire to find "the meaning of life, destroyed by
+death."
+
+It is sometimes maintained that this state of intellectual sadness
+is innate in the Russians; that their sanguinary and melancholy
+temperaments are a mixture of Don Quixote and Hamlet. Foreign
+critics have often traced this despair to the so-called mysticism
+peculiar to the Slavonic race.
+
+What is there mystical in them? The consciousness of the
+nothingness, of the emptiness of human life, can be found deep down
+in the souls of nearly all mankind. It shows itself, among most
+people, only on rare tragic occasions, when general or particular
+catastrophes take place; at other times it is smothered by the
+immediate cares of life, by passions that grip us, and, finally, by
+religion. But none of these influences had any effect on Tchekoff.
+He was too noble to be completely absorbed by the mean details of
+life; his organism was too delicate to become the prey of an
+overwhelming passion; and his character too positive to give itself
+over to religious dogmas. "I lost my childhood faith a long time
+ago," he once wrote, "and I regard all intelligent belief with
+perplexity.... In reality, the 'intellectuals' only play at
+religion, chiefly because they have nothing else to do." Tchekoff,
+in his sober manner, has seen and recognized the two great aspects
+of life: first, the world of social and historical progress with its
+promise of future comforts; secondly, an aspect that is closely
+related to the above, the obscure world of the unknown man who feels
+the cold breath of death upon him. He was an absolute positivist;
+his positivism did not make him self-assertive nor peremptory; on
+the contrary, it oppressed him.
+
+But why should this sad state of mind, which has been expressed by
+great men in all literatures, be so exceptionally prominent among
+the Russians, and particularly among the modern ones? The reason is,
+without a doubt, because the political and social organization of
+Russia has always been a prison for literature. Oppression had
+reached its height during Tchekoff's life. This period was the
+moment of suffocation before the storm. If Tchekoff were alive
+to-day, now that the tempest has burst forth, his sadness would be
+lessened, or it would at least have before it the screen which,
+according to Pascal, people wear before their eyes that they may not
+see the abyss, on the edge of which they pass their lives. Up to the
+present time, the Russians have lacked these screens.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+VLADIMIR KOROLENKO
+
+
+"A long time ago, on a dark autumn evening, I was being rowed down a
+rather uninteresting Siberian stream. Suddenly, at a bend in the
+river, I saw a bright fire burning ahead of us at the foot of some
+black mountains. It did not seem far away.
+
+"'Thank Heaven,' I cried with joy, 'we have nearly reached our
+stopping-place!'
+
+"The boatsman turned, looked at the fire over his shoulder, and
+again grasped the oars with an apathetic gesture:
+
+"'That is still a long way off,' he murmured.
+
+"I did not believe him, for the fire seemed to stand out very clear
+against the infinite shadows. However, he was right; we were still
+far away.
+
+"Just so those fires, the conquerors of darkness, deceive us into
+thinking that they are near, while they only cast their distant,
+illusive rays into the night...."
+
+It is with this sober description in "Little Fires" that one of the
+last volumes of Korolenko's "Sketches and Stories" opens. This
+simple picture makes a warm and clear impression on one's very soul.
+It is itself a precious and welcome light.
+
+At times when life is sombre, and when shadows fill the heart, when,
+under the blows of despair and anguish, courage finally fails, the
+mere existence of some brave spirit suffices to give a new birth to
+hope and to rekindle the flame so that the distance is again lighted
+up, and we again put our shoulders to the wheel.
+
+Thus for more than thirty years in Russian literature Korolenko has
+played the part of one of these clear, alluring lights. He has not
+written a single book in which we do not find a fire that warms us
+with its caresses even from afar, not one in which we do not feel
+the vibration of a loving heart, which dreams of giving light and
+joy to all unfortunates, and is confident that if they have not yet
+had their equal share, they will surely have it some day.
+
+Korolenko was born in 1853 in Zhitomir, in Little Russia. On his
+father's side he is descended from an old Cossack family, and by his
+mother he is related to Polish nobility. This double origin, so to
+speak, is shown very clearly in his works, which are filled with the
+melancholy and dreamy poetry of the Little Russians, and also with
+the perennial hope so common among the Poles.
+
+His father was a judge and enjoyed a reputation for strict
+integrity. It was, in fact, often hard for him to ward off those who
+wanted to thank him for his services. One day he had to accept a
+gift. A merchant, whose case he had won, sent him a cart filled with
+various objects, among which was a beautiful large doll. The little
+daughter of the judge saw it, and at once took possession of it. The
+judge, when he found out what had happened, ordered the gifts to be
+returned immediately; but, because of the grief of the little girl,
+they had to give up all thoughts of returning the doll.
+
+The judge, who was a man of firm principles, maintained a severe
+discipline in his family. He made a special study of medicine and
+hygiene, and put his knowledge into practice by treating the sick of
+the neighborhood. His children, although always well dressed, had to
+go around barefoot. Their father was convinced that this was the
+best way to toughen them. Besides, they were compelled, every
+morning, summer and winter, to take a cold plunge bath. The children
+did not like this way of doing things. Early in the morning they
+used to run to the stable in their shirts, and there, cowering in a
+corner, trembling with cold, they would wait for their father to
+leave the house.
+
+Korolenko remembers well this Spartan-like education, which inured
+him to the severity of the seasons. Without this training he
+certainly would have perished in savage and freezing Siberia, where
+he lived in exile for several years.
+
+At the death of the father, the family with its six children was
+left without resources. The mother, a very good and kind woman,
+opened a boys' boarding-school, and Vladimir, then fifteen years of
+age, helped her as well as he could, and also earned money by giving
+lessons outside.
+
+In 1870, after having finished his studies in his native town,
+Korolenko entered the Technological Institute at St. Petersburg,
+where he spent two years in extreme poverty. He had to earn his
+living as well as he could, by giving lessons or doing copying. His
+mother could not help him at all, as she herself had to struggle
+against adversity. The following will show how sparingly he had to
+live in his youth: during his two years, he had a real substantial
+meal only about once in two months, and then in a restaurant run on
+philanthropic principles, where he paid only 30 copecks (about 30
+cents). His regular meals consisted of bread, tea, sausage and
+potatoes. But this was an epoch in which living was cheap: the wave
+of democracy was spreading, and the "intellectuals" were trying to
+get into closer touch with the people. The movement was so powerful
+that many of the younger generation who could have done other
+things took up this work; others, on principle, married humble
+peasants. In 1872 Korolenko left for Moscow, and there entered the
+Academy of Agriculture. He was expelled after two years and sent to
+Kronstadt for having taken part in student manifestations. Several
+years later, we find him again in St. Petersburg without a permanent
+position; he was employed as a reader in a publishing house, and was
+also attempting to do some writing. His first efforts took the form
+of a series of sketches, published under the title, "Episodes in the
+Life of a Seeker." He was at this time accused of being too much
+inspired by the scenes of sadness and injustice of which he had been
+a witness. In 1879 he was imprisoned and then deported to Viatka. He
+remained there a year. Thence he was sent to the miserable town of
+Kama, and a few months later to Tomsk, where he learned that they
+wanted to exile him to Siberia. In a letter, published by a
+newspaper, he eloquently protested against the persecutions of which
+he was the unhappy victim. His protestation was answered by his
+transfer to the frozen region of the province of Yakutsk in Eastern
+Siberia! He passed three years in the midst of the "taiga," the
+immense virgin forest which covers this country, in a village of
+nomads whose miserable huts, very low and smoky, were scattered
+along the shores of the Aldane. Here he wrote several stories, and
+the "Dream of Makar," which was published two years later, and
+greatly praised by the critics for its originality and its setting.
+The dreary country around Yakutsk and the life that is lived there
+made such a profound impression on the young man that even to-day he
+speaks of that time with real emotion.
+
+"My hut was at the extreme end of the town. During the short day one
+could see the small plain, the mountains which surrounded it, and
+the fires in the other huts, in which lived people who were either
+descended from Russian colonists or deported Tartars. But in the
+morning and evening a cold grey mist covered everything so thickly
+that one could not see a foot ahead.
+
+"My little hut was like a lost island in a boundless ocean. Not a
+sound about me.... The minutes, the hours passed, and insensibly the
+fatal moment approached when the 'cursed land' pierced me with the
+hostility of its freezing cold and its terrible shadows, when the
+high mountains covered with black forests rose menacingly before me,
+the endless steppes, all lying between me and my country and all
+that was dear to me.... Then came the terrible sadness ... which, in
+the depths of your heart, suddenly lifts up its sinister head, and
+in the terrible silence among the shadows murmurs these words: 'This
+is the end of you ... the very end ... you will remain in this tomb
+till you die....'
+
+"A low and caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was
+my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been
+placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he
+was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold
+weather, I did not have a fire.
+
+"Whenever I felt that I was going to be beaten in my struggle with
+silence and the shadows, I turned to this wholesome expedient,--a
+large fire."
+
+In 1885, Korolenko, having returned from Siberia, went to
+Nizhny-Novgorod, and in a relatively short space of time wrote a
+series of stories which, two years later, were collected in book
+form. Afterward, he became the editor of the celebrated St.
+Petersburg review, the "Russkoe Bogatsvo,"--a position which he
+still holds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In all of Korolenko's works we distinctly feel the living breath
+that inspires the artist, and the ardor of a fervent ideal. His god
+is man; his ideal, humanity; his "leitmotiv," the poetry of human
+suffering. This intimate connection with all that is human is to
+be found in his psychological analysis as well as in his
+descriptions of natural phenomena. Both God and nature are in turn
+spiritualized and humanized. Korolenko looks at life from a human
+standpoint; the world which he describes is made up wholly of men
+and exists for them only. He has a very clear philosophy, and a
+conscience aware of the duties it has to perform. If he has not
+opened up hitherto unknown paths, nor made new roads, he has
+himself nevertheless passed through terrible experiences; he has
+been a prey to profound sorrows and doubts, and in spite of all, he
+has kept his love for the people intact, and deeply pities their
+ignorance and abasement. His work constantly recalls to our minds
+the theory that the cultivated classes are in debt to the people
+for the education which they have received at the people's expense.
+This is the great moral principle which governs the conscience of
+the Russian "intellectuals." It is in this sense then, that
+Korolenko may be said to continue the literature of 1870, and to be
+the successor of Zlatovratsky and Uspensky. But he has reincarnated
+this past in new forms, which naturally result from the activity of
+his far-sighted, powerful intelligence. We do not find in his work
+either the nervousness, often sickly, which pervades the works of
+Uspensky, or the optimism of Zlatovratsky, which often excessively
+idealizes the life of the Russian peasant, who is the principal
+hero of all his works. Korolenko, because he puts a high value on
+human personality, perfectly appreciates the terrible struggle that
+man has to make in order to secure his rights. A desire for justice
+on the one hand, and a defence of man's dignity on the other, form
+the very essence of the talent of this author, and it is with these
+feelings that he observes the people on whom injustice weighs most
+heavily and who have merely remnants of human dignity left in their
+make-up,--for in general, these people are not those whom fate has
+overcome. Most of them lead a hard and gloomy life beset with
+misfortunes. Many of them are vagabonds, escaped convicts,
+drunkards, murderers, who are bowed down with misery, and have no
+wish except to escape the mortal dangers of the Siberian forests
+and marshes. On opening any of Korolenko's books we find ourselves,
+to use his own words, in "bad company." He does not flatter his
+heroes, he does not make gentlemen of them; they are not even men,
+but rather human rubbish.
+
+"Because I knew a lot about the world," he writes, "I knew that
+there were people who had lost every vestige of humanity. I knew
+that they were corroded with vice and sunk deep in debauchery, in
+which they lived contented. But when the recollection of these
+beings surged through my mind, enveloped in the mists of the past, I
+saw nothing but a terrible tragedy, and felt only an inexpressible
+sorrow...."
+
+This author does not give any judgment on life; he does not condemn
+it and does not nourish a preconceived spite against it, but his sad
+heart overflows with pity, and, if he approaches this life, it is
+with the balm of love, in order to try to dress its terrible wounds.
+
+For Korolenko, the sufferings of existence atone for its injustice;
+he does not perceive the iniquities that surround him except through
+the prism of sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the very beginning of his literary career, in his first book,
+"Episodes in the Life of a Seeker," Korolenko shows himself to be a
+seeker after truth. With him, the understanding of life, so ardently
+sought after, is never summed up in a single solution. He dreams of
+it constantly; at times, he seems to have found it, but he loses
+track of it again and starts all over.
+
+This groping about resulted in a moral crisis in which he looked
+forward to death with joy. Beset with the thought of suicide, he
+often prowled around railroad platforms and looked at the
+car-wheels.
+
+"I went there and came back again," he writes, "depressed by my
+realization of the stupidity of life. The snow was falling all
+around me, and shaping itself into a frozen carpet, the telegraph
+poles shivered as if they were cold through and through, and on the
+other side of the road, on a slope, shone the sad little light of
+the watchman's tower. There, in the darkness, lived a whole family.
+Through the shadows the little red fire seemed to be as desolate as
+the family. The children were scrofulous and suffered; the mother
+was thin and sickly. To procreate and to bury! Such was the life of
+the father, probably the most unfortunate of all, because the
+household depended wholly upon him, and he saw no gleam of hope
+anywhere. He bore this condition of things, because, in his
+simplicity, he believed in a superior will, and thought that his
+misery was inevitable. The resignation of this man, the terrible
+bareness of his obscure existence, oppressed me. If I could bear the
+sight of it, it was only because I hoped; I thought that we should
+soon find the road which makes life happier, more agreeable to every
+one. How, where, in what manner? What a mystery! But the future
+beauty of life was in the search for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The observations that Korolenko was able to make were many and
+diverse. By going all over Russia he gathered inexhaustible riches,
+in the form of anecdotes and actual experiences. This can be easily
+realized when we consider the sumptuous variety of his descriptions.
+Where do we not go, and whom do we not meet in his books? First, we
+are in a peaceful little town of the southwest, then in the thick
+woods of Poliyessye, in the snow-covered and frozen Siberian
+forests, or in the valleys of Sakhaline, inhabited by half-breed
+Russians and escaped convicts, not to mention the innumerable
+sectarians who fill the Siberian prisons. And Korolenko never
+repeats. Not even a detail occurs more than once. Each of his works
+is a little world in itself. The author, moreover, unlike other
+writers, is never satisfied with pale sketches; each character is
+shown in full relief, each picture is absolutely finished. This
+wholeness, this finish which does not hurt the harmony of the
+proportions, is a precious quality, very rare in our time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "Sketches of a Siberian Tourist," published in 1896, in which
+bandits of various odd types tell thrilling tales of nocturnal
+attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The
+postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of
+stature, audacious and clever, he exercises a mysterious influence
+over the brigands, whom he inspires with a superstitious terror.
+Most of them, thinking him invulnerable, do not dare attack the
+travelers whom he is driving.
+
+That same year another work of Korolenko's appeared, called: "In Bad
+Company,"--a sort of autobiography which added to his renown. The
+story, poetically simple, is laid in a provincial town. The hero is
+a little, seven-year-old boy called Volodya. He is the son of the
+local judge. The mother has been dead for a long time, and the
+father, in his sorrow, more or less loses track of his children, who
+roam about unwatched.
+
+The little town has its historic legends; it boasts of the ruins of
+a castle, which in times gone by was inhabited by rich Polish
+counts, whose descendants, having become poor, have long since left
+their manorial home. The castle has served as a refuge for a nomadic
+population. Expelled by the count's agent, this little band has
+taken up its abode in a dilapidated chapel in the crypts of a
+cemetery.
+
+The chief of this barefoot brigade is called Tibertius Droba. He has
+two children: Vanek, a large, dark-haired lad, whom one sees
+wandering about the village with a sullen look on his face, and
+Maroussya, a small and thin child, who is gradually fading away in
+the darkness of her cellar-like home.
+
+While strolling about one day, Volodya, impelled by his childish
+curiosity, decides, with two of his friends, to explore the chapel.
+He meets there Tibertius' children and they strike up a friendship.
+The description of the ruins and of the superstitious fear of the
+children gives an opportunity for some exquisite pages. If the
+little vagabonds are hungry, poor Volodya, who himself is without
+love or caresses, suffers still more, but every time that he brings
+the children some apples or cakes he feels that he is less unhappy,
+because these offerings are accepted with such an outpouring of
+gratitude. Gradually, the little lad gets to know all the
+inhabitants, and becomes especially intimate with Maroussya, whose
+eyes have an expression of precocious desolation.
+
+"Her smile," says Korolenko, "reminded me of my mother during the
+last few months of her life; so much so, that I almost used to weep
+when I watched this little girl."
+
+One day, Volodya brings her some apples, flowers, and a doll that
+his little sister has given him.
+
+"Why is she always so sad?" he asks Maroussya's brother.
+
+"It is on account of the grey stone," he replies.
+
+"Yes, the grey stone," repeated Maroussya, like a feeble echo.
+
+"What grey stone?"
+
+"The grey stone that has sucked the life out of her," explained
+Vanek, gazing at the sky. "Tibertius says so, and Tibertius knows
+everything."
+
+"I was very much puzzled, but the force with which Tibertius'
+omniscience was affirmed impressed me. I looked at the little girl,
+who was still playing with the flowers, but almost without moving.
+There were dark rings under her eyes and her face was pale. I did
+not exactly understand the meaning of Tibertius' words, but I felt
+dimly that they veiled some terrible reality. The grey stone was, in
+fact, sucking out the life of this frail child. But how could grey
+stones do it? How could this hard and formless thing worm itself
+into Maroussya's very soul, and make the ruddy glow disappear from
+her cheeks and the brilliancy from her eyes? These mysteries puzzled
+me more than the phantoms of the castle."
+
+Volodya's father is not aware that he is spending part of his days
+in the cemetery, and knows nothing of his son's new friends. But one
+day the secret is discovered, and a family storm follows. The judge
+demands a full confession. Volodya heroically remains silent.
+Finally, Tibertius himself pleads the child's cause so eloquently
+that Volodya is not scolded and the father allows him to go and say
+good-bye to his little friend, who has meanwhile died of privation.
+The day after the little girl's funeral the whole band disappears
+without leaving a trace behind them. "Later on," says Korolenko,
+"when we were about to leave our home, it was on the grave of our
+poor little friend that my sister and I, both of us full of life,
+faith, and hope, interchanged our vows of universal compassion...."
+
+Another short story, called "The Murmuring Forest," which was
+published in the same year, made as much of a success as "Bad
+Company."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is in "The Blind Musician" that Korolenko attains perfection.
+This masterly psychological study does not present a very
+complicated plot. From the very start the reader is captivated by a
+powerful poetic quality, free from all artifice, fresh, spontaneous,
+and breathing forth such moral purity, such tender pity, that one
+literally feels regenerated.
+
+Here is a brief outline of this exquisite story. One very dark
+night, a child of rich parents is born in the southwest of Russia.
+Peter--the child--is blind. His whole life is to be but a groping in
+the shadows toward the light. The mother adores the poor child and
+suffers more than he. But she has not enough moral strength to bring
+him up, and give him the necessary comfort and energy. His father,
+a countryman, thinks only of his business. Happily, there is on the
+mother's side an uncle called Maxim, one of the famous "thousand" of
+Garibaldi, who has a noble and generous disposition. It is he who
+brings up the child, with a tenderness just touched by severity.
+Peter's young mind is constantly enriched with new pictures. Thanks
+to the extreme acuteness of his hearing, he catches the very
+slightest sounds of nature. When barely five years of age the boy
+shows his love for music; he spends hours, motionless, listening to
+the playing of one of the servants who has made for himself a kind
+of flute. Soon Peter begins to study music, and especially the
+violin. His rapid progress astonishes his teachers. However, in
+spite of his love for music and the comfort that it gives him, the
+blind boy suffers from his infirmity. To distract his mind from his
+own suffering, his uncle takes him one day to a place where there
+are some blind beggars. Peter listens to their plaintive melody:
+"Alms, alms for a poor blind man ... for the love of Christ"; and as
+if he had heard the voice of some phantom, the child returns home,
+frightened, confused. From that day, he is transformed. Until then,
+he had thought only of himself, he had become grey with his own
+sorrow. Afterward, he suffers for others; his personal sorrow
+diminishes, and his life becomes an expression of the sorrows of
+his fellows in misery, an ardent and passionate prayer for others
+who also are deprived of sight.
+
+For several years he has been friends with a young girl of his
+neighborhood. They marry, and Evelyn, his wife, brings some
+happiness to the poor blind man. But soon there comes a time of
+indescribable anguish. Evelyn gives birth to a boy, and Peter is
+tortured by a presentiment of impending evil. Will the son be blind
+like his father? The few moments when the doctors are testing the
+infant's sight pass like so many centuries. Finally the physician
+says: "The pupil is contracting, the child is not blind." Peter,
+seated by the window, pale and motionless, rises quickly at these
+words. In a moment fear has disappeared and hope is transformed into
+certainty and fills the blind man's heart with joy. "The child is
+not blind." One might say that these few words of the doctor had
+burned a path in his brain.
+
+"His whole frame vibrated like a taut cord which had been snapped. A
+flash went through him, like lightning in a sunless sky, conjuring
+up in him strange phantasms. Whether they were sounds or sights he
+could not determine. But if they were sounds they were sounds which
+he could see. They sparkled like the vault of the sky, shone like
+the sun, waved like the rustling, whispering grass of the steppes.
+These were the sensations of a moment. What followed he was unable
+to recall. But he stubbornly affirmed that in this moment he had
+_seen_. What had he seen? How had he seen? Had he really seen? This
+always remained a mystery. People said that it was impossible. He,
+however, affirmed that in that moment he had seen the earth, his
+wife, his mother, his son, and Uncle Maxim.... He was standing up,
+and his face was so illumined and so strange that every one around
+him was silent.... Later on, there remained nothing but the
+remembrance of a sort of joyous satisfaction, and the absolute
+conviction that, at that moment, he had seen...."
+
+A year later, at Kiev, at a concert for charity, Peter made his
+debut. An enormous crowd gathered to hear the blind musician. From
+the very first the audience was captivated. Moved to its depths, the
+crowd became frantic. And Uncle Maxim heard something familiar in
+the playing of his nephew.
+
+He saw a large, crowded street, and a clear, gay wave of scolding
+and jesting humanity. Then, gradually, this picture faded into the
+background. A groaning was heard. It detached itself from the clamor
+of the crowd and passed through the hall in a sweet but powerful
+note, which sobbed and moved one's heart. Maxim knew it well, this
+sad melody: "Alms, alms for the poor blind man ... for the love of
+Christ."
+
+"He understands suffering," murmured the uncle. "He has had his
+share, and that is why he can change it into music for this happy
+audience."
+
+"And the head of the old warrior sank on his breast. His work was
+done. He had made a good man. He had not lived in vain. He had but
+to look at the crowd to be convinced of that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Korolenko belongs to the school of Turgenev. In all of his works he
+remains true to the principles which his master summed up in a
+letter: "One must penetrate the surroundings, and take life in all
+its manifestations; decipher the laws by which it is governed; get
+at the very essence of life, while remaining always within the
+boundaries of truth; and finally, one must not be contented with a
+superficial study."
+
+Korolenko lives up to all of these principles. Without tiring, he
+watches life in all of its phases. He uses a large canvas for his
+studies of inanimate nature, as well as of individuals in particular
+and the masses in general. That is why his work gives us such an
+exact reproduction of life.
+
+Like Turgenev, he describes nature admirably. His descriptions are
+not irrelevant ornaments, but they constitute an organic and
+integral part of the picture. In both Turgenev and Korolenko the
+surrounding country reflects the feelings and emotions of the
+heroes, and takes on a purely lyric character. One might almost say
+that these country scenes breathe, speak a human language, and
+whisper mysterious legends.
+
+Korolenko has given us several splendid landscapes. In some of these
+nature seems to be in a serene mood, like a good mother whose
+harmonious strength attracts man and shows him the need of reposing
+on her bosom. In others, nature is like a strong, free element which
+incites man to lead an independent life. Thus, in the beautiful
+prose poem, "The Moment," in which the action passes in Spain, it is
+the ocean beating against the prison walls that arouses Diatz from
+his torpor and makes him attempt to escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, in spite of the importance of the background in Korolenko's
+work, it is really in the conscience of his characters that the
+essential drama takes place. More than anything else, it is
+psychology that beguiles the artist; it is only through psychology
+that Korolenko depicts men and their mentalities. He studies the
+strong and the weak, the simple and the complex; exaltation,
+triumph, revolt, and downfall all interest him equally.
+
+A simple analysis of his story, "Makar's Dream," will show his
+psychological genius to greater advantage than could any critical
+essay.
+
+In the very heart of the dense woods of the "taiga," Makar, a poor
+little peasant, who has become half savage by association with the
+Yakutsk people, dreams of a better future.
+
+Makar does not dream, however, when he is normal; he hasn't time to,
+for he has to chop wood, plough, sow, and grind grain. He only
+dreams when he is drunk. As soon as he is under the influence of
+liquor, he weeps and says that he is going to leave everything and
+go to the "sacred mountain" to gain salvation for his soul. What is
+the name of this mountain? Where is it? He does not know exactly; he
+only knows that it is very far away. On Christmas eve, Makar extorts
+a ruble from two political refugees, and, instead of bringing them
+some wood for the money, he quickly buys some tobacco and brandy.
+After drinking and smoking a great deal, Makar goes to sleep and has
+a dream. He dreams that the frost has got the better of him in the
+woods, that he has died there, and that the priest Ivan, who has
+also been dead a long time, takes him to the great Tayon--the god of
+the woods--to be judged for his former deeds. Even there his
+natural knavery does not forsake him; he tries to fool Tayon. But
+the latter has everything that Makar has ever done, both good and
+bad, written down, and becoming angry, he says: "I see that you are
+a liar, a sluggard, and a drunkard."
+
+He orders Makar to be transformed into a post-horse, to be used by
+the police commissioner. And Makar, this Makar who never in his
+lifetime was known to say more than ten words at a time, suddenly
+finds that he has the faculty of speech. He begins by saying that he
+does not want to be a horse, not because he is afraid of work but
+because this decision is unfair. If one works geldings, one feeds
+them with oats; but people have imposed upon him and tortured him
+all his life and have never fed him, no, not even with oats.
+
+"Who imposed upon you and tortured you?" asks old Tayon, moved by
+compassion.
+
+"Everybody! The men who demanded taxes, the heat and the cold, rain
+and dryness, the pitiless earth, and the forest."
+
+The beam of the balance wavers; the wooden dish, filled with sins,
+rises, while the golden one sinks.
+
+Makar continues: "You have everything written down, have you? Well,
+look and see whether Makar has ever had any kindness shown to him.
+He is here before his judges, dirty, his hair disordered, and his
+clothes in rags. He is ashamed. However, he realizes that he was
+born just like the others, with clear eyes in which both heaven and
+earth were reflected, and with a heart ready to open and receive all
+the beauty of the world."
+
+Makar thus passes in review his miserable life. Old Tayon is moved.
+
+"Makar, you are no longer on earth, and you shall receive justice."
+
+Makar begins to weep, and Tayon weeps too.... And the young gods and
+the angels, they also shed tears.
+
+Again the balance moves. But this time it is in the opposite
+direction.
+
+Makar has received justice from the hands of Tayon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Korolenko does not try to reconcile us to reality, but to mankind.
+In all of the catastrophes in his books, in the most sombre
+descriptions, he comforts us with a consolation, an ideal, a "little
+fire" that burns in the distance and attracts us. But to get to that
+fire we have to fight against evil. And it is perhaps in answer to
+Tolstoy's doctrine of passive resistance that Korolenko wrote that
+beautiful story called, "The Legend of Florus," the subject of which
+was probably taken from "The War of the Jews," by Flavius Josephus.
+
+This work takes us back to the time when Judaea was bowed down under
+Roman rule. The Jews bear their lot without a murmur, and this
+resignation encourages Florus, the governor of Judaea, to oppress
+them more.
+
+Soon there are two parties formed: the "pacifics" want to rid
+themselves of Roman cruelty by humble submission, while the others
+advise opposing this cruelty to the utmost. The chief of the latter
+party is Menahem, the son of a famous warrior who has inherited from
+his father his generous passions and his hatred of oppression.
+Menahem's words inspire respect even in his enemies. But he does not
+succeed in making peace among his people. In vain he cries to them,
+as his father before him had cried: "It is disgraceful to bow down
+to sovereigns, especially since these sovereigns are men; no human
+being should bow down to any one excepting God, who created men that
+they might be free." With great trouble he finally succeeds in
+rousing a part of the people to rebellion. Then he leaves the city
+with his followers, resolved to defend his country. Menahem has no
+illusions as to the outcome; he knows that he will be conquered by
+the Romans. Nevertheless he is fearless, for his whole being is
+filled with a single thought,--the idea of justice, which imposes
+upon men certain obligations which they must not scorn.
+
+During his stay in Siberia Korolenko had a very good chance to
+observe the deported convicts. Most of them are thieves, forgers,
+and murderers. The others, urged on by a heroic desire to live their
+own true lives, have been sent to this "cursed land" because of
+"political offences."
+
+Korolenko is not resigned to the sadness of life, he is not an enemy
+to manly calls to active struggle, but he neither wants to, nor can
+he, break the ties that bind him to the real life of the present. He
+does not wish either to judge or to renounce this life. Nor does he
+try, by fighting, to perpetuate a conflict which is in itself
+eternal. If he struggles, it is rather in discontent than in
+despair. Not all is evil in his eyes, and reality is not always and
+entirely sad. His protestations hardly ever take the form of disdain
+or contempt; he does not rise to summits which are inaccessible to
+mankind. In fact, his ideal is close to earth; it is the ideal which
+comes from mankind, from tears and sufferings. If the thoughts and
+feelings of the author rise sometimes high above the earth, he never
+forgets the world and its interests. Korolenko loves humanity, and
+his ideals cannot separate themselves from it. He loves man and he
+believes that God lives in their souls.
+
+We find these theories in the sketch called "En Route." The
+vagabond, Panov, is one of a party of deported convicts. At one of
+the stops, an inspector arrives who remembers having seen Panov when
+a young man. The old man goes over the history of his life, which
+has been marked with constant success, with pleasure. He shows the
+vagabond his little son, and with cruel egotism boasts of his
+happiness. Standing before him, his back bent, and a sad light in
+his eyes, Panov listens to the story. He feels vaguely that he has
+not lived and that he lacks personality. There is nothing in store
+for him except the useless existence of prison life. The egotistical
+and debonair inspector, in his simplicity, does not understand the
+anguish of the homeless prisoner, and, by his amicable chatter,
+subjects him to horrible moral torture. It is too much for Panov.
+When the inspector leaves, Panov, gripping the edge of his hard cot
+in his convulsive hands, falls to the ground. He breathes heavily,
+his lips move, but he does not speak. "That night Panov got drunk."
+
+Two very different types appear in the novel called, "The Postillion
+of the Emperor." We have here the idealist Misheka and the sectarian
+Ostrovsky, a transported prisoner who is embittered by his hard lot,
+and by life in general.
+
+If Misheka protests against the complicated conditions of life to
+which he cannot entirely submit, it is rather by instinct than
+through reason. He is attracted by something invisible, something
+distant and strange, to the repugnant world which surrounds him. As
+a postillion of the State he has frequent communications with the
+distant world which glows vaguely on his mental horizon. Everything
+displeases him: both the savage country in which he has to live, and
+the world of stupid, degenerate, and miserable postillions whom he
+mercilessly criticizes. His random attempts to get away fail.
+Despairing, he becomes an accomplice in a crime so that he can leave
+this solitary place and go where his restless soul leads him.
+
+At the side of Misheka we have the tragic figure of Ostrovsky, who
+is the exasperated victim of the evil all around him.
+
+The author and the travelers, driven by Misheka, have seen the
+burning of Ostrovsky's house, which the latter burned himself so
+that no one could profit by it. This action strikes Misheka as
+wonderful.
+
+"He begins to tell the story of the fire. Several years before,
+Ostrovsky had been deported for having given up the orthodox faith.
+His young wife and child followed him. They had been given a plot of
+land in a broad and deep valley, between two walls of rock. The
+place seemed fertile. It was not hard to sell wheat to the miners
+and Ostrovsky worked diligently and steadily. But the inhabitants
+had kept something from him: although the wheat grew in the valley,
+it never ripened, because each year, without fail, in the month of
+July it was destroyed by the cold winds from the northeast."
+
+The first few years Ostrovsky attributed his failure to chance. He
+carefully cared for his crop in the hopes of a better season.
+
+Alas, his wife died of sorrow, and autumn brought him nothing but
+straw. Ostrovsky, without weeping, dug a grave in the frozen ground
+and buried his wife. Then he asked permission to go to the mines,
+and borrowed some money for the trip from his neighbors. The latter
+gladly loaned it to him, thinking thus to get rid of him and to get
+the profit of his house and goods. But Ostrovsky fooled them in
+their naive simplicity; he heaped up all of his possessions in his
+little cottage and then set fire to it. He no longer thought of
+justice; he was nothing but a despairing man.
+
+The patriarch of the village in which he had taken refuge tried to
+recall to him the faith for which he had been exiled:
+
+"Do you remember," answered Ostrovsky, "the first visit I paid you
+to ask for advice? Ah, so you have forgotten that and you speak of
+God.... You are nothing but a crafty dog! All of you are dogs! There
+is nothing here but woods and rocks, and you are all just as
+insensible as the very rocks that surround you.... And your cursed
+land, and your sky, and your stars...." "He wanted to say something
+more, but he did not dare blaspheme, and there was silence again in
+the little cottage...."
+
+This Ostrovsky is among the very best of Korolenko's heroes. The
+sight of this despairing and lonely man, who wanders about in the
+Siberian forests with his little daughter, calls louder for justice
+than all the speeches in the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the wealth of his talent and knowledge, Korolenko is of
+tremendous social value in three fields of work,--practical affairs,
+journalism, and art.
+
+Among the many services which he has rendered to humanity, let us
+first mention his brilliant defence of the half-savage Votiaks,
+accused of ritual murder in the famous Malmige case. Although he had
+just suffered great grief himself--he had lost two children--he
+traveled to a distant town in order to be at the trial. He took his
+seat on the bench of the defenders. He used all of his knowledge,
+and all the love in his heart to defend the unhappy Votiaks, whose
+acquittal he succeeded in securing.
+
+As a publicist, he has written some very valuable articles. Among
+them are observations on the famine year (he spent two months in one
+of the worst districts). In other articles he has analyzed a moral
+malady peculiar to our state of society:--honor. In the recent
+Russian duels he studied the perverse notions of honor and the moral
+changes produced by sickly egotism. He has studied the causes that
+bring about the complete loss of individuality. Finally, in 1910, he
+published under the title, "Present Customs (Notes of a Publicist
+under Sentence of Death)" a series of documents gathered here and
+there, which constitute an eloquent and passionate plea in favor of
+the abolitionist thesis.
+
+When the great Tolstoy read the preface of this work, he wrote to
+Korolenko, "I often sobbed and wept. Millions of copies of this work
+ought to be distributed; it ought to be read by every one who has a
+heart. No discourse, no novel or play, can produce the effect that
+your 'Notes' do."
+
+But above all, it is as the pure artist that Korolenko merits most
+attention. It is his talent that has already made him famous, and it
+is his talent that will make him immortal in Russian literature.
+
+Korolenko is at present one of the most popular writers among the
+educated classes. They have amply proved this to him, especially in
+1903 and 1908, when they celebrated his 50th birthday and the 30th
+anniversary of his literary activity. On the occasion of these
+celebrations, delegations from many cities and universities came to
+St. Petersburg to congratulate and to thank the author who, through
+so many trials, had never ceased to uphold the cause of truth and
+goodness, and to claim for each human being the right to work,
+happiness, and free thought.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+VIKENTY VERESSAYEV
+
+
+Veressayev is well known in France for his "Memoirs of a Physician,"
+a work that has been translated into almost every language. However,
+his reputation in Russia is not based on this book, which is
+considered his masterpiece, but rather on his stories and tales. Let
+us, however, first take a glance at the life of this author, a life
+so closely connected with the subjects of his works that it forms an
+indispensable commentary on them.
+
+Veressayev, whose real name is Vikenty Smidovich, was born in 1867,
+in Tula. His father was a Pole and his mother a Russian. His father,
+a very pious and strictly moral man, was a well known and well liked
+physician. In 1877, the boy entered the local school and received
+his degree there seven years later. In 1884, he left for the
+University of St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the department of
+historical sciences. Four years later, when he was twenty-four and a
+half, he received his degree of licentiate of letters.[5] Most of
+his class-mates became school-teachers, but he preferred to pursue
+his studies. Medicine tempted him. He left for Zhouriev (formerly
+Dorpat, already famous for its department of medicine) and entered
+the university, where, at the end of six years, he received his
+doctor's degree.
+
+ [5] On the continent of Europe, a university degree between that
+ of bachelor and of doctor.
+
+Two years before, in 1892, a cholera epidemic had broken out in
+Russia. Young Smidovich, then a fourth-year student, asked to be
+sent immediately to a province in the East, where the epidemic was
+spreading like wildfire. He remained there several months, in fact
+until the plague had gone. As a doctor's assistant in an infirmary
+organized in one of the mining districts of the government of
+Ekaterinoslav, he witnessed a peasant revolt in which several
+doctors were killed and others cruelly burned by the exasperated and
+ignorant mob. Veressayev has traced these sad events with tremendous
+power in his story, "Astray."
+
+His doctor's degree in his pocket, he went to Tula, where he
+practised for several months, but soon the position of house-surgeon
+was offered to him in the Botkin Hospital in St. Petersburg. He
+remained there seven years, till 1901, when, by order of the
+Minister of the Interior, who has charge of all hospital
+appointments, he was forced to retire from office and was expelled
+from St. Petersburg and forbidden to reside in either of the two
+capitals, Moscow or St. Petersburg. The reason for this was, that
+the name Veressayev appeared on the petition of the "intellectuals"
+which had been given to the Minister of the Interior, protesting
+against the brutal attitude of the police during a student
+manifestation in the Kazan cathedral on March 4, 1901. This petition
+brought severe punishment to almost all the people whose names were
+signed to it. Veressayev went abroad; he visited Italy, France,
+Germany and Switzerland.
+
+Gifted with poetic inspiration, he had begun writing at an early
+age. He was not more than fourteen when he translated some poems of
+Koerner and Goethe into Russian verse. Later, when at college, he
+wrote some short prose tales, which were published in various
+papers. But it was in 1896, when the "Russkoe Bogatsvo," the large
+St. Petersburg review, had published his two important stories,
+"Astray" and "The Contagion," that renown came to him. It came so
+suddenly that it troubled him and was almost a blow to his modesty,
+which is one of the sympathetic traits of his personality.
+
+In fact, there came a time when the attention of the literary world,
+especially among the younger generation, became so wrapped up in his
+works that Gorky and Tchekoff sank to a second level. This
+enthusiasm was caused by the fact that Veressayev's works answered a
+general need. They brought into the world of literature a series of
+characters who summed up the rising fermentation of new ideas and
+seemed to be spokesmen, around whom the Russian revolutionary forces
+gathered,--forces which, up to this time, had been scattered. An era
+of struggle for liberty began.
+
+It is rather important, I think, for the proper understanding of
+this period to say a few words concerning its history.
+
+The struggle of the younger generation against the autocracy began
+about 1860, at the time of the freeing of the serfs, a period known
+in Russia as the "epoch of great reforms." These ameliorations,
+which extended into almost every domain of Russian life, left intact
+the autocracy, which, under pretence of protecting itself, fought
+successfully against all activity and thus brought about, among the
+younger generation, a general movement towards freedom and
+socialism. But the autocracy found its best help in the ignorance of
+the people. Urban commerce, little developed at that time,
+practically interested only the peasants--which means nine-tenths of
+the population of Russia. It was natural, then, that the peasants
+should become the principal object of the revolutionary propaganda,
+and that tremendous efforts should be made on all sides in order to
+awaken them from their dangerous sleep.
+
+The peasant uprisings in the history of Russia, especially the two
+revolts directed by Stepan Razin in the 17th century, and Pugachev
+in the 18th, proved the fact that the masses could unite in a
+general insurrection. This time, the "intellectuals" joined. As they
+advocated a sort of communism, periodic redivisions of land
+according to the growth of the population, and as they harped on the
+tradition that land was a gift of God which no one had a right to
+own, we can easily see that the agricultural proletariat would
+welcome with open arms the socialistic ideas.
+
+Although this popular movement did not affect many people, it was
+attacked with such pitiless cruelty, that the revolutionists decided
+to have recourse to the red terror in order to fight the white
+terror which was cutting down their ranks. The secret goal of this
+movement was to replace the autocratic regime with political
+institutions emanating from the will of the people. In order to
+accomplish its reforms more quickly, this party, which called itself
+the "Popular Will," incited several attempts at murder; Russia then
+witnessed dynamite outrages against imperial trains and palaces, and
+finally, the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II. For a moment
+the autocratic regime seemed to totter under these sudden and fierce
+blows, but it soon recovered. The white terror proved to be
+stronger than the red. Many executions and banishments helped to
+crush the partisans of the "Popular Will;" then, when the movement
+had been checked, the authorities began to repress even the
+slightest desire for independence on the part of the press, the
+universities, or any other institutions which could do good to the
+people. Dejection and disillusion dominated this period from 1880 to
+1900, which has been so faithfully portrayed in the works of
+Tchekoff.
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that their ideals had come to
+nought, those of the red terror had not disappeared, and hope
+remained in their breasts.
+
+Tchekoff was still living when new symptoms of fermentation appeared
+in Russia, and he could have alluded to this in his later works. But
+he did not have a fighting nature, and, in his solitude, he looked
+at conditions with melancholy scepticism. There was need of a man, a
+writer--like Gorky several years later--born right in the midst of
+this movement, who would be the very product of it, and for whom its
+ideas would be a reason for existence.
+
+Veressayev was this man and writer, and it is as much by his
+political opinions as by his literary talents that he gained such a
+wide-spread reputation. If his works are not always irreproachable
+from a literary standpoint, they are always accurate in describing
+exactly what the author himself has seen and lived through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Veressayev, in three great stories, gives us the three phases of the
+movement between 1880 and 1900. These three stories, "Astray," "The
+Contagion" and "At the Turn," are of such extreme importance, that
+in the following pages there will be a detailed analysis of each of
+them.
+
+The two protagonists of the story, "Astray," are Dr. Chekanhov and
+his cousin Natasha. The former is at the end of his moral life, the
+latter is on the threshold, and both of them are "astray," because
+the one has not found the road on which to travel through life, and
+the other is just beginning to look for it. The entire existence of
+Chekanhov is dominated by the idea that it is _his duty to serve the
+people_, which was the basis of the activity of the "narodnikis."
+According to him, the "intellectuals," who represent a small and
+privileged fraction of the population, are the debtors of the people
+and ought to pay their debt by giving the people knowledge and
+comfort. This theory is burned into his very soul; it is the leading
+thought that directs all of his actions. At this epoch, few men
+showed such absolute devotion. From 1880 to 1890, after the cruel
+suppression of the movement of the "narodnikis," there was a stop in
+this revolutionary activity. Unaware of this pacification, Chekanhov
+makes great exertions; as a doctor, he combats disease and saves
+several people. But how exhaust the source of this evil, this
+misery, which is increased by a despotic social order? Chekanhov
+spends his energy in vain; where else shall he apply his strength?
+
+The famine of 1891! Dr. Chekanhov speaks only of his despair: "A
+terrible malady beats down on one after another of the inhabitants;
+it is an epidemic of typhoid caused by the privations which left us
+numb and weak." In 1892 an epidemic of cholera broke out. In spite
+of the prayers of his parents, the young man rushes off to the most
+infected district. One day, he penetrates into an infected hovel.
+The children are sprawling everywhere, the mother is foolish and
+stupid, and the father, weakened by prison labor, has come down with
+cholera. The wife forbids the doctor, whom she accuses of poisoning
+the sick, to approach her husband. Scorning the danger, in order to
+encourage the sick man, the doctor drinks out of the very cup which
+the invalid has used. Nothing counts with him as long as he can
+inspire confidence and save people from death.
+
+"What good is there in love between good and strong people," adds
+Chekanhov, after having noted down this cure in his "Journal,"
+"since it results only in miserable abortions? And why are the
+people held down to work which is so rough and unpleasant? What
+motive supports them in their painful labor? Is it the desire to
+preserve their infected hovels?"
+
+At the end of these reflections could not Chekanhov, absolutely in
+despair, have abandoned his task? No, he knew how to keep up his
+devotion. Sacrificing his life for others, Chekanhov begins to love
+life again. He says to himself: "Life is good ... but will it be for
+a long time?" We do not catch the answer.
+
+Furious voices are heard, and a savage and cruel mob calls him a
+poisoner and hurls itself upon him, beating and striking him.
+
+Exhausted by the blows and jeered at by those whom he had considered
+his brothers in need and for whom he had put himself in constant
+peril, he lies stretched out on his bed, suffering severely; but he
+nourishes no grudge against his tormentors; on the contrary, his
+apostle-like character is moved with pity at the thought of these
+uncultured and ignorant beings so unconscious of the evil that they
+are doing. And several days before his death he writes the following
+tragic words in his "Journal," almost terrifying in their
+simplicity:
+
+"They have beaten me! They have beaten me like a mad dog because I
+came to help them and because I used all my knowledge and strength,
+in one word, gave all that I had. I am not thinking now about how
+much I loved these people and how badly I feel at the way they have
+treated me. I simply did not succeed in gaining their confidence; I
+did succeed in making them believe in me for a while, but soon a
+mere trifle was enough to plunge them back among their dark shadows
+and to awaken in them an elemental, brutal instinct. And now I have
+to die. I am not afraid of death, but of a tarnished life full of
+empty remorse. Why have I struggled? In the name of what am I going
+to die? I am only a poor victim stripped of the strength of an ideal
+and cared for by no one.... It had to be so, for we were always
+strangers to them, beings belonging to another world; we scornfully
+avoid them, without trying to know them, and a terrible abyss
+separates us from them."
+
+It is interesting to note how Chekanhov is regarded by the new
+generation and especially by the woman he loves, his cousin Natasha.
+She believes in him, she expects a gospel of life from him; but
+Chekanhov cannot respond to her; he adheres to such vague
+expressions as: "work," "idea," "duty towards the people." He says
+to her: "You want an idea which will dominate you entirely and which
+will lead you to a definite goal; you want me to give you a
+standard and say: 'Fight and die for it.' I have read more than you,
+I have had more experience than you, but like you, _I Do Not Know_,
+and that is our torture." According to Chekanhov, all of his
+generation are in the same position: it is _Astray_, without a
+guiding star, it is perishing without realizing it.... Finally, in
+order to avoid the pressing questions of Natasha, who would like to
+work and sacrifice herself for the poor, he points out to her the
+salutary work of the village school-mistress. A few days later he
+dies, welcoming death with joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the people who were ending their existence and those who were
+beginning it were so carefully looking for a field of action, the
+uncultivated ground of Russian life was gradually being cleared by
+the slow evolution of an economic movement. Between 1895 and 1900,
+as a result of the natural development of national commerce, the
+number of city workingmen grew to vast proportions and they formed
+an important class, which, on account of its situation, was much
+more qualified than the peasants to interest itself in the ideas of
+socialism and liberty. So from the very midst of the people certain
+individuals appeared capable of adopting progressive ideas; Marxism
+awaited them, the theory which is the basis of European democratic
+socialism. This doctrine was nothing new in Russia. But formerly,
+the proletariat of the cities had been very little developed and the
+Marxian doctrines had been of theoretical interest only.
+
+"The Contagion" has for its heroine Natasha,--the Natasha that we
+have already met, but how transformed! She has at last found her
+bearings. If, in 1892, she was waiting for the right road to be
+shown to her, in 1896 she was enthusiastically following the new
+road opened by the doctrines of Marx.
+
+In Zharoshenko's famous picture, "The Student," Uspensky notes
+something new in this type of femininity. He calls it "the masculine
+trait"; it is the mark of thought. He sees there the harmonious
+fusion of a young girl and an adolescent boy, with an expression
+neither feminine nor masculine, but exceptionally human. And this
+transforms Zharoshenko's "Student" into a luminous personification,
+unknown up to this time, a type which synthesizes "le type humain."
+
+In the work of Veressayev this student is Natasha. Reflection has
+ripened her mind since her last talk with poor Chekanhov. She has
+become a regular "mannish woman," having seen and thought a great
+deal. She has traveled; she has lived in St. Petersburg and in the
+south of Russia. Full of courage and energy, she claims to be fully
+satisfied with her lot; she begs her companions to follow the road
+she has found, and when they refuse she becomes angry with them. In
+company with her comrade Dayev she vigorously attacks the
+convictions of the men of Kisselev, who see sufficient safety in the
+workingmen's associations; she rises up, in the name of Marxism,
+against the "narodnikis," whom she considers ingenuous idealists;
+she refuses to endorse the theories of the "intellectuals," who
+oppose the thought of any great work, since they believe that
+smaller deeds are more immediately realizable. When one of them, a
+doctor, Troitsky, ends his conversation with her with these words:
+"It is not necessary to wear one's brains out trying to solve
+difficult problems while there is so much immediate need and so few
+workers," she puts an end to the discussion. Shrugging her
+shoulders, in a trembling voice she answers: "How can you live and
+think as you do? New problems confront us, and you stand before them
+and do nothing, because you have lost confidence. I can't work any
+longer with you, because it would mean dedicating myself blindly to
+'spiritual death.'"
+
+Veressayev does not show us how she solves the problems of which she
+speaks. The adepts of this sort of social apostleship usually
+propagate their ideas among the workingmen, help them, and play a
+part in conspiracies. Natasha offers herself up. But the censorship
+has not allowed Veressayev to carry his subject on, and he has
+limited himself to showing us Natasha in company with her friends
+and disciples, giving herself up to oratorical tilts, discussing
+principles, and uttering long discourses full of passion, faith, and
+juvenile impatience,--discourses which unfortunately are mistaken in
+their reasoning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In realizing from the socialist ideal the logical and inevitable
+consequence of capitalism, which continues according to a law
+independent of human will, the Marxian doctrine dissipates the
+doubts and consolidates the faith of those who adopt it. According
+to this faith, the socialists do not have to create socialism, they
+only have to cooeperate in the historical process which will
+inevitably make socialism grow. In thus recognizing the supremity of
+the law of history, socialism, utopian up to this time, becomes
+scientific and, under its new form, it is no longer subject to the
+influence of personal opinions, no matter how full of genius they
+may be. But this "scientific socialism," which, on account of the
+backwardness of political economy, could be only a step ahead, was
+taken by the younger generation of Russia as the "dernier mot" of
+the science. The result was, that several narrow and exclusive
+dogmas were grafted on this doctrine. Thus, the theory of "class
+struggle" transformed itself into the absolute negation of all
+community interests between the diverse social strata. The
+"materialistic"--or rather "economic"--point of view, according to
+which the products of spiritual activity in the history of humanity
+lose all independence, being only the consequences of economic
+organization, generated scorn for all idealism; and the proletariat
+character of the socialistic movement impelled society to divide
+into two hostile and irreconcilable parts, one of which is made up
+of the proletariats, the other of the elements opposed to socialism.
+To this last party the enormous mass of half-starved peasants joined
+itself. The peasants, according to the Marxian doctrine, cannot
+understand socialism until they have become proletariats themselves,
+instead of becoming miserable landed proprietors. And this
+"proletariazation" of about 100,000,000 peasants, the fervent
+Marxists consider a fatal and desirable event in the near future.
+
+These theories, carried to excess, were sure to excite a reaction.
+It manifested itself by a neo-idealistic movement, which found the
+principal cause of social progress in the tendency of humanity to
+attain supreme development and perfection. Then there were the
+"narodnikis" who considered the "proletariazation" of the Russian
+peasant impossible and inopportune. There were also the various
+groups of Socialists who applauded the criticism that Bernstein made
+on the Marxian orthodoxy. So several deviations were made from the
+original theory; there were grave dissensions and interminable and
+bitter controversies. All this occupies a large part of "At the
+Turn," one of Veressayev's novels, in which these events are traced
+with almost stenographic exactitude.
+
+The characters are, Tanya, a fanatic Marxist; her brother, Tokarev,
+whose soul is a field for spiritual battles; and Varenka, a village
+school-mistress. There are several eccentric characters around them,
+such as Serge, a young apostle of a somewhat Nietzschean egoism,
+Antsov and others. Tanya is none other than Natasha of "Astray,"
+with this great difference, however, that Tanya has found truth
+already formulated for her, and does not have to grope about for it.
+Nevertheless, the essential characteristics of the two girls are the
+same. They both have the same joyous self-denial, the same love of
+life, the same courage in face of difficulties, and also the same
+faith in a better future. Tanya has lived during the whole winter
+with her comrades in a region devastated by the famine, and she has
+spent there all that she possesses. At Toliminsk, where she arrives
+after a long walk, she speaks of her meagre living and tells amusing
+stories without suspecting her wonderful heroism.
+
+But this young girl, full of the joy of life and ready for any
+sacrifices, is pitiless towards her theoretical adversaries and has
+absolutely no compassion for them. The passage in "Crime and
+Punishment," in which Dostoyevsky depicts one of his heroes in the
+following manner: "He was young, he had abstract ideas, and was,
+consequently, cruel," perfectly fits Tanya. Veressayev tells the
+following incident: "One day, when she was at the station, some
+peasants rushed down from the platform. A railroad guard struck one
+of the peasants. The peasant put his head down and ran off....
+Tanya, knitting her brows, said: 'That's good for him! Oh, these
+peasants!' And her eyes lighted up with scorn and hate...."
+
+Just as Tanya brings Natasha to our mind, so does Varenka make us
+think of Dr. Chekanhov; the same feeling of duty governs them both.
+But, while Chekanhov wanted to devote himself to the social problem,
+without ever succeeding in doing so, because he did not exactly see
+the principles, Varenka was able to devote herself to her work
+without mental reservation. However, she refuses to, because she has
+not enough enthusiasm for this sort of research. Her understanding,
+which is deeper and broader than Tanya's, sees the error, the
+narrowness of her doctrine; she cannot admit it, and, fired by a
+desire to devote herself body and soul to some useful work, she
+chooses the laborious profession of a school-mistress in the
+village. But this humble and unpleasant career does not satisfy her.
+Little by little ennui and anguish drive her to suicide.
+
+Between Tokarev, Tanya's brother, and Varenka, the contrast is
+complete. While still a student, he had accepted, with all the ardor
+of youth, the idea of duty, and he desired to give himself up to the
+cause of justice and truth; but, having encountered many obstacles,
+he felt, when he had reached his thirtieth year, that the sacred
+fire was going out.
+
+He now dreamed only of his personal happiness, and of poor theories
+that justified this egoism. An assured material existence, comfort,
+a happy domestic life, work without risks, without sacrifices, but
+useful enough in appearance to satisfy the conscience, attracted him
+irresistibly. He then went to work to tear out his former ideas,
+which had taken a pretty firm root. Urged on by his conscience,
+which protested, he forced himself at times to resurrect his
+youthful enthusiasm; he thought a great deal about morals, about
+duty, and he read many books treating this subject; he says: "I
+feel that something extremely necessary has left me. My feelings
+about humanity have disappeared and nothing can replace them. I read
+a great deal now, and I am directing my thoughts towards ethics. I
+try to give morality a solid basis and I try to make clearer to
+myself the various categories of duty.... And I blush to pronounce
+the word, 'Duty.'"
+
+Nevertheless, Tokarev tries, at times, to justify his inclinations
+towards peaceable bourgeois prosperity to the struggling youth who
+surround his sister Tanya. These cruel young people, however, answer
+him only with sarcastic remarks, and caustic arguments, and do not
+hesitate to express their doubts as to the sincerity of his
+opinions. To his conscience, they are like a living reproach from
+the past. Once he also was intolerant towards others as these people
+are towards him to-day. And that is why he suffers under their
+condemnation of him. He defends himself weakly, and after one of his
+oratorical tilts, he falls into such spiritual depression, that he
+almost thinks of suicide.
+
+These, then, are the three main characters of Veressayev's novel. In
+the background we have the secondary characters. We have the proud
+proprietor and his wife, both of them liberals; we have the
+pedagogue Osmerkov, who does not like talented people because they
+bother everybody; and then there are the respectable inhabitants of
+Gniezdelovka, Serge's father and mother, who are entirely absorbed
+with their household and with cards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Comrades" is a variation on this theme: old school friends, who
+formerly had been wrapped up in a great ideal, are now living a life
+of shabby prosperity, and they feel that they have deteriorated,
+although they do not dare to confess it to each other.
+
+And Veressayev profits by this to generalize on the causes of this
+fatal fall after the unselfish enthusiasms of youth. He sees them
+especially in a mysterious force: "The Invisible," already studied
+by Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Tchekoff, and especially by de Maupassant;
+and he sees them in the unhappy conditions of Russian history, which
+created a social and political organization favorable only to those
+who crawl along and not to those who plan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now analyze the stories in which Veressayev describes the
+life of the people.
+
+The story of "The Steppe" is as follows: One beautiful autumn
+evening two men meet on the steppe. One of them, the forger Nikita,
+is returning to his native land; he is wounded in the leg and it is
+hard for him to walk. He is looking for work. The other is a
+professional beggar.
+
+The beggar, who is never hungry because he has no scruples, offers
+Nikita something to eat. After resting a short while, the travelers
+continue on their way. In the first village that they come to, the
+pilgrim beggar makes a speech to the inhabitants and sells them
+certain "sacred properties" which he keeps in his bag. After
+pocketing gifts of money and various other things, the false pilgrim
+pursues his way, still accompanied by Nikita. On the road once more,
+he offers to share with his comrade the fruits of his "work," but
+the latter refuses.
+
+"What a fool!" cries the beggar, and bursts out laughing. But
+Nikita, indignant, gives him a heavy blow and leaves him for good.
+
+"For a Home" and "In Haste" gave Veressayev an opportunity to note
+one of the characteristic traits of the ambitious villagers: their
+strong desire to preserve their homes and to propagate the race.
+
+In the first of these stories, two old people, Athanasius and his
+wife, want to marry their daughter Dunka, but the "mir,"--the
+assembly of peasants,--egotistical and inflexible towards people who
+are growing weak, oppose them. "We have not enough land for our own
+children," is the answer of the "mir." Dunka remains unmarried, and
+dies at an early age. Her mother soon follows her. Old Athanasius
+lives alone in his freezing "isba," which is in a state of ruin,
+while the neighboring isbas, solid and austere, "spitefully watch
+him die."
+
+In the last story, we have a widower who is the father of five
+children, and is therefore looking everywhere for a woman with some
+bodily defect, because he knows that other women will not want to
+have anything to do with him.
+
+It is the same wish to preserve his home that makes a peasant go to
+the city to earn his living while he leaves his family in the
+country to take care of the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The peasant is, besides, entirely engrossed with the difficulties of
+existence. Necessity often urges him to desperate acts.... Some, who
+are almost starving, ingratiate themselves with the raftsmen. They
+force wages down by asking only 5 copecks (5 cents) a day.... If
+they are contented with this absurd pay, it is because they avoid
+seeing how their little children are suffering at home. "It's hard
+living at present; there is not enough space; ground is scarce and
+there are too many people." "Men haven't room enough," says a
+sad-looking man with prominent cheek-bones. "But," he goes on, "they
+tell me that sickness has struck our village, and that the men are
+losing blood! Is that true?" "Yes, it's true!" "So much the better!
+That will clean out the people; it will be easier to live then," he
+concludes, thoughtfully. (From "In the Cold Spell.")
+
+In almost all the work of Veressayev a voice proclaims that the
+Russian peasant is near his end; that he is not useful to any one.
+The poverty of the villages is painted in the most sombre colors.
+The people are unanimous in believing that the struggle for life has
+become terrible. "On what will you live?" one asks the other. "The
+earth does not nourish us. The holdings are small; in summer, one
+must cultivate, and in winter the cottages have to be closed while
+we look for work or charity. What is there to eat? Hay! Let us thank
+God that the cattle have enough of that. Oats? We have to give four
+hectoliters and two measures of our oats to the common granary....
+And taxes and clothes? coal-oil, matches, tea, sugar? Tell me, how
+can one live?"
+
+The unfortunates even go so far as to bless war and epidemics.
+"Everything went better then. Men lived peacefully in the fear of
+God, the Lord took care of every one. War, smallpox, famine came and
+cleaned out the populace; those that remained, after having got the
+coffins ready, lived easier. God pitied us. Now there is no more
+war; He leaves us to our own poor devices."
+
+Speeches like this abound in the works of Veressayev. A dull
+sadness, bordering on despair, breathes forth from the pages. It
+seems, at times, as if the Russian peasant could never awake from
+his torpor, because the author represents him as full of infinite
+egoism, without any spirit of solidarity, sacrificing everything for
+love of his sorry little house and his morsel of ground, which is
+insufficient to nourish him. But we must remember that the Marxian
+point of view, which the author takes, explains in part the horror
+of such pictures.
+
+According to Veressayev the poor peasants can better their position
+only by getting rid of their land, in order to become free
+proletarians. But if the peasant class is unfortunate, it is so, for
+the most part, because it is the most exploited and the most
+oppressed. It is not, then, the getting rid of their land that will
+bring the peasants salvation; on the contrary, they must fight for
+it against their oppressors. The peasants are beginning to
+understand the necessity of this struggle, and their late uprisings
+in several provinces have shown that they lack neither solidarity
+nor organization.
+
+In the story called, "The End of Andrey Ivanovich," which is about
+the working class of Russia, we see the transformation of a peasant
+into a "city man." In his new surroundings, it is true, the
+wine-shop plays an important role, but schools are organized there
+which inspire a taste for reading, and "thought" gradually awakens.
+
+Andrey has not yet rid himself of his rustic unsociability; however,
+he is beginning to become civilized, and is receiving city culture.
+He tries to free himself from his misery, from his degradation. He
+beats his wife when he is drunk, but, at the same time, he gets
+angry at a friend when he beats his mistress.... According to his
+own confession he reads many useless things, nevertheless he can
+become interested in a serious work. If he drinks to excess, it is
+to "drive away the thoughts" that torment him. He wants to analyze
+every question and find out what is at the bottom of it. He is the
+spiritual brother of Natasha, Chekanhov, and Tanya.
+
+The sequel to this story is "The Straight Road." This time we are
+transported into the world of factory workers, a world lamentable
+for its misery, despair, and crime. Andrey Ivanovich's wife,
+Alexandra Mikhailovna, being without resources after the death of
+her husband, with a little daughter in arms, enters a book-binding
+establishment, belonging to a man named Semidalov. But the foreman,
+a vicious and evil-minded man, reigns as despot. It is he who gives
+out the work. The young girls who listen to his advances are sure
+of being shown partiality; the others are badly treated. As
+Alexandra wants to live honestly, her work in the shop is made very
+hard. Her best friend, Tanya, who inadvertently spilled oil on some
+paper and could not pay for the damage, had to give herself to the
+foreman. Finally Tanya despairs and ends by drowning herself.
+Alexandra is saved, thanks to a "loveless" marriage with the
+locksmith, Lestmann. She accepts this union so that she will not
+have to starve and can remain "straight." Thus, the "straight road"
+which Alexandra wanted to follow has forced her finally to sell
+herself, to marry a man whom she does not love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Each page of Veressayev's work exists merely to throw light on this
+or that social question, considered from a well defined point of
+view. The secret of his success rests mostly in the frank, sincere
+manner in which he has approached certain problems. At the same
+time, all of his work breathes forth a deep and tender love for
+those who suffer. In reality, there is not a single book by
+Veressayev which might not be a confession; all that he writes he
+has already experienced himself, and his work vibrates with a
+delicate and personal emotion. It is only necessary to read "The
+Memoirs of a Physician," which is almost an autobiography, in order
+to perceive the moral relationship that exists between Veressayev
+and the heroes of his stories.
+
+This book is the confession of a physician from the time of his
+early studies. The young man is astonished at the number of maladies
+that exist and by the unbelievable variety of keen suffering that
+nature inflicts upon the human species, man. Soon he is obliged to
+make a discovery that stuns him: that medicine is incapable of
+curing many evils. It only gropes about, trying thousands of
+remedies before it arrives at a sure result. The scruples and
+anxiety of the student increase, especially after an autopsy on a
+woman in the amphitheatre, when the professor announces that the
+woman has succumbed because the surgeon, who was operating, swooned,
+and ends by saying: "In such difficult operations the very best
+surgeons are not safe from accidents of this kind." After this, the
+professor shook hands with his colleague and every one left. At that
+time, doubt entered the mind of the young man. And so, within a
+period of ten years, he passes from extreme optimism to the same
+degree of pessimism.
+
+We follow him in the hospitals, where he is scandalized by the
+brutality of the teaching, which makes use of the unwilling bodies
+of sick people. "Not being able to pay for their treatment in
+money, they have to pay with their bodies." Finally, the student
+becomes a doctor himself. Full of faith and knowledge, he starts
+practice in a small market-town of central Russia. But his work soon
+cools him down; in the clinic he had studied mostly exceptional
+cases; now he is disconcerted by simple and every-day sicknesses.
+His ignorance leads to the following tragic case:
+
+One day, a poor and widowed washerwoman brings him her sick child,
+whom she does not want to take to the hospital because her two
+oldest children died there. The child is a weak boy of eight years
+who has caught scarlet-fever. At first, the inside of the throat
+begins to swell, and, to prevent an abscess, the doctor orders
+rubbings with a mercurial ointment. The next day, he finds the boy
+all aquiver and covered with pimples. "There is no mistake," he
+says, "the rubbing has spread the infection into the neighboring
+organs and a general poisoning of the blood has taken place. The
+little boy is lost.... All that day and night I wandered about the
+streets. I could think of nothing, and I felt crushed by the horror
+of the thing. Only at times this thought came into my mind: 'I have
+killed a human being!'" The child lived ten days more. The night
+before his death Veressayev comes to see him. The poor mother is
+sobbing in a corner of the miserable room. She pulls herself
+together, however, and taking three rubles out of her pocket, offers
+them to the trembling doctor, who refuses them. Then this woman
+falls down on her knees and thanks him for having pitied her son.
+"I'll leave everything, I'll give up everything," sobs the
+doctor.... "I have decided to leave for St. Petersburg to-morrow in
+order to study some more even if I die of hunger!"
+
+Once the resolution was made to pursue his studies in a more
+practical manner, he becomes the house-surgeon of a hospital. But
+even there a mass of problems disturb him. He sees how dangerous the
+simplest operations are; he is frightened by the unrestraint of the
+doctors, who try new methods on the sick, methods the effects of
+which are not known, methods that result in the patient's being
+inoculated with more sickness. Medicine cannot progress without
+direct experimentation, and experience is gained at the expense of
+the more unfortunate. Nevertheless, Veressayev does not argue
+against this way of working; he shows the facts, and leaves it to
+the reader to decide. On the other hand, he does not hide his fear
+of the common ignorance of all doctors. Every individual differs
+from his neighbor. How distinguish their idiosyncrasies? Once the
+scope of a sickness is known, what remedy shall be used? Some say
+this, others, that. How shall one choose? Veressayev has felt all of
+this; he has tried to harden himself against the unreasonable
+ingratitude of some, the scepticism of others; he realizes that
+patience, resignation, and heroism are needed in order to struggle
+against and support the mortifications in the career of a doctor.
+How much easier it would be not to consider medicine as infallible;
+to study it as an art rather than as a science. But people prefer to
+believe that doctors know everything. They do not want to see the
+reality, and this is the reason why sad, and at times tragic
+conflicts arise between patient and physician.
+
+Finally, what could the most perfect medical science and the
+cleverest doctor do against the enormous mass of sickness and
+suffering that are the inevitable result of the social evils, of
+which poverty is the most conspicuous? How can one tell a man that
+his trade is running him down and that he does not get enough
+nourishment? How can one order a man to eat better food, to get more
+sleep and more pure air? First, and most important, is the necessity
+of curing the social organism.
+
+It is easy to see why this book made many enemies for its author.
+There is too much frankness and conscientiousness in these studies
+not to anger those who have their greatest interest in concealing
+the truth! The upright man who sees primarily in medicine a means to
+relieve human suffering, cannot realize without sadness the many
+abuses hidden under the name of this science.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In the War," recently published, is the story of Veressayev's
+campaign in Manchuria. In this work, the author has painted
+vividly the peregrinations of his moving hospital, and also the
+terrible sufferings of the Russian army. By the thousands, the
+starved children of the campaign, the Russian foot-soldiers,
+stoics and fatalists, sacrificing their lives for a strange and
+incomprehensible cause, pass before the eyes of the reader. And in
+the background, detaching themselves from the crowd, in their gold
+and silver embroidered uniforms, are "the heroes of the war, these
+vultures of the advance and rear-guard, who enrich themselves at
+the expense of the unfortunate soldiers." A number of these great
+chiefs, whose infamy was evident at the end of the war, since they
+had shown themselves incapable of dealing with the foreign enemy,
+had distinguished themselves by the ferocity they exhibited in
+quelling internal troubles. As to the military doctors, the
+greater number of them went into the campaign only for commercial
+gain. Among the nurses who accompanied them, aside from those who
+were real heroines of goodness and devotion, there were many who
+prostituted themselves shamefully.
+
+Corruption, carelessness, disorder, and cowardice are shown on every
+page of this story, as well as the terrible suffering endured by the
+wounded in the hospitals. The wounded were the real martyrs of this
+frightful campaign.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Veressayev, like all of his heroes and heroines, wants to help the
+people, and for this reason he gets in touch with the revolutionists
+who consecrate their work to political and social regeneration,
+under the various titles, "narodnikis," Marxists, Socialists,
+idealists and so on.... Which of these does he prefer? We do not
+know. We find the influence of Marx in his ideas, but we cannot
+affirm that he is an absolute Marxian. It seems as if Veressayev,
+troubled by the innumerable divergencies of opinion, asks himself
+secretly: "Will this war lead to the unity of opinion and program,
+so necessary for victory, or by its quarrels will it only retard the
+harmony so much sought after?"
+
+It is not discussion that will finally lead to unity, but rather
+life itself, with all its realities.
+
+It would be most interesting to read a sequel to the three famous
+novels of Veressayev--"Astray," "The Contagion," and "At the
+Turning"--in which he would give us the psychology of his former
+heroes under present conditions. To-day, the people are not
+"astray"; the field is big enough for every one to find the place
+that best suits his ideas, tastes, and temperament. Dr. Chekanhov,
+if he were living now, instead of being maltreated by the people,
+would certainly be their well beloved champion, and perhaps
+represent them in the Duma; the timid Tokarev, in spite of his
+aversion to the ideas of the revolutionists, could find a place in
+the liberal party of the Reforming Democrats, or at least among the
+Octobrists; the unfortunate Varenka would not be worn out by her
+work as school-mistress, for she would be supported by the peasants.
+The peasants themselves are not the miserable and resigned creatures
+of Veressayev's earlier stories. Certainly, liberty is not yet a
+legal thing in Russia, and the Duma is still an unstable
+institution, but the end of absolutism is near, for a great event
+has taken place in the empire of the Tsar, namely, this awakening of
+the feeling of human dignity, and the spirit of revolt among the
+lower strata of the Russian people, which in the past, by its
+unconsciousness, formed the granite pedestal of autocracy. The
+struggle is terrible, but confidence in final victory redoubles the
+energy of the strugglers. A certain Russian was right when he said:
+"Formerly, life was formidable, but now it is both formidable and
+gay."
+
+In reading the works of Veressayev, Tchekoff, and other painters of
+modern Russian society, it is easy to note that not one of them
+anticipated this sudden change of scenery on the Russian political
+stage, a change which, however, was being prepared in the souls of
+the peasants. But let us not reproach them! Russia will always
+remain an enigma.
+
+There is a very old story about the son of the peasant Ilya
+Murometz. After remaining lazily resting in his "isba" for thirty
+years, he suddenly arose, and began to walk with such fury that the
+earth trembled. How could these writers conceive the time when this
+lazy giant would make up his mind to walk? It is enough to have the
+assurance that now, no matter what happens, since he _has_ arisen,
+he will not lie down again.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+Maxim Gorky is the most original and, after Tolstoy, the most
+talented of modern Russian writers. He was born in 1868 or 1869--he
+does not know exactly when himself--in a dyer's back shop at Nizhny
+Novgorod. His mother, Barbara Kashirina, was the daughter of the
+aforementioned dyer; and his father, Maxim Pyeshkov, was an
+upholsterer. The child was christened Alexis. His real name, then,
+is Alexis Pyeshkov, and Maxim Gorky[6] is only his pseudonym. When
+he was four, he lost his father, and three years later, his mother.
+He was then taken by his grandfather, who had been a soldier under
+Nicholas I, a hard, authoritative, pitiless old man, before whom all
+trembled. And it was under his rude tutelage that the child first
+began to read. When he was nine, he was sent to work for a
+shoemaker, an evil sort of man who maltreated him.
+
+ [6] In Russian, Gorky means bitterness.
+
+"One day," Gorky tells us, "I was warming some water for him; the
+bowl fell, and I burned my hands badly. That evening I ran away, my
+grandfather having scolded me severely. I then became a painter's
+apprentice."
+
+He did not remain long in this position. From this time on, his
+unsatisfied soul was seized with the "wanderlust." First apprenticed
+to an engraver, and then as a gardener, he finally became a scullion
+on one of the boats that plies up and down the Volga. Here he felt
+more at ease.
+
+On board, in the person of the master-cook, named Smoury, he
+unexpectedly met a teacher. This cook, who had been a soldier, loved
+to read, and he gave the child all the books that he had in an old
+trunk. They consisted of the works of Gogol, Dumas' novels, the
+"Lives of the Saints," a manual of geography, and some popular
+novels. Surely, a queer collection!
+
+Smoury inspired his scullion, then sixteen years of age, "with an
+ardent curiosity for the printed word." A "furious" desire to learn
+seized the young fellow; he went to Kazan, a university city, in the
+hope of "learning gratuitously all sorts of beautiful things." Cruel
+deception! They explained to him that "this was not according to the
+established order." Discouraged, a few months later, he took a
+position with a baker. He who dreamed of the sun and the open air
+had to be imprisoned in a filthy and damp cellar. He remained there
+for two years, earning two dollars a month, board and lodging
+included; the food, however, was putrid, and his lodging consisted
+of an attic which he shared with five other men.
+
+"My life in that bakery," he has said, "left a bitter impression.
+Those two years were the hardest of my whole life." He has thus
+described his recollections in one of his stories:
+
+"We lived in a wooden box, under a low and heavy ceiling, all
+covered with cobwebs and permeated with fine soot. Night pressed us
+between the two walls, spattered with spots of mud and all mouldy.
+We got up at five in the morning and, stupid and indifferent, began
+work at six o'clock. We made bread out of the dough which our
+comrades had prepared while we slept. The whole day, from dawn till
+ten at night, some of us sat at the table rolling out the dough,
+and, to avoid becoming torpid, we would constantly rock ourselves to
+and fro while the others kneaded in the flour. The enormous oven,
+which resembled a fantastic beast, opened its large jaws, full of
+dazzling flames, and breathed forth upon us its hot breath, while
+its two black and enormous cavities watched our unending work....
+
+"Thus, from one day to the next, in the floury dust, in the mud that
+our feet brought in from the yard, in the suffocating and terrible
+heat, we rolled out the dough and made cracknels, moistening them
+with our sweat; we hated our work with an implacable hatred; we
+never ate what we made, preferring black bread to these odorous
+dainties."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this period of his life, he had occasion to study at first hand
+certain places where he received original information which he later
+used in writing "Konovalov" and "The Ex-Men," which have thus
+acquired an autobiographical value. In fact, he worked a long while
+with these "ex-men;" like them, he sawed wood, and carried heavy
+burdens. At the same time, he devoted all his spare time to reading
+and thinking about problems, which became more and more "cursed" and
+alarming. He had found an attentive listener and interlocutor in the
+person of his comrade, the baker Konovalov. These two men, while
+baking their bread, found time to read. And the walls of the cellar
+heard the reading of the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Karamzine, and
+others. Then they used to discuss the meaning of life. On holidays,
+Gorky and Konovalov had for the moment an opportunity to come out of
+the hole--this word does not exaggerate--in which they worked, to
+breathe the fresh air, to live a bit in nature's bosom, and to see
+their fellow men.
+
+"On holidays," Gorky tells us, "we went with Konovalov down to the
+river, into the fields; we took a little brandy and bread with us,
+and, from morning till evening, we were in the open air."
+
+They often went to an old, abandoned house which served as a refuge
+for a whole tribe of miserable and wandering people, who loved to
+tell of their wandering lives. Gorky and his companion were always
+well received on account of the provisions which they distributed so
+generously.
+
+"Each story spread out before our eyes like a piece of lace in which
+the black threads predominated--they represented the truth--and
+where there were threads of light color--they were the lies. These
+people loved us in their way, and were attentive listeners, because
+I often read a great deal to them."
+
+Often, these expeditions were not without their risks. One day, two
+of the baker's workmen happened to drown in a bog; another time,
+they were taken in a police raid and passed the night in the station
+house.
+
+It was also at this time that Gorky frequented the company of
+several students, not care-free and happy ones, but miserable young
+fellows like those whom Turgenev described as "nourished by physical
+privations and moral sufferings."
+
+On leaving the bakery, where his health, very much weakened by the
+lack of air and by bad food, did not permit him to remain any
+longer, he joined those vagabonds, those wanderers, whose
+melancholy companion he had been, and whose painter and poet he was
+to be. In their company, he traveled through Russia in every sense
+of the word, now as a longshoreman, now as a wood-chopper. Whenever
+he had a copeck in his pocket he bought books and newspapers and
+spent the night reading them. He suffered hunger and cold; he slept
+in the open air in summer, and, in winter, in some refuge or cellar.
+The feverish activity of so keen an intellect in an organism so
+crushed had, as its consequence, one of the attempts at suicide
+which are so frequent among the younger generation of the Russians.
+
+In 1889, at the age of twenty-one, Gorky shot himself in the chest,
+but he did not succeed in killing himself. Soon afterwards, he
+became gate-keeper for the winter at Tzaratzine; but the summer had
+hardly come before he began his vagabondage again, in the course of
+which he undertook a thousand little jobs in order to keep himself
+alive. On the road, he noticed those pariahs whom society does not
+want or who do not want society. And of these, in his short stories,
+he has created immortal types.
+
+Life was still very hard for him at this time. He has given us a
+moving sketch of it in his story entitled: "Once in Autumn." The
+hero, who is none other than the author himself, passes the night
+under an old, upturned boat, in the company of a prostitute who is
+just as poor and just as abandoned as himself. They have broken into
+a booth in order to steal enough bread to keep them from starving.
+Gorky is sad; he wants to weep; but the poor girl, miserable as she
+is, consoles him and covers him with kisses.
+
+"Those were the first kisses any woman ever gave me, and they were
+the best, for those that I received later always cost me a lot and
+never gave me any joy.... At this time, I was already preparing
+myself to be an active and powerful force in society; it seemed to
+me at times that I had in part accomplished my purpose.... I dreamed
+of political resolutions, of social reorganization; I used to read
+such deep and impenetrable authors that their thoughts did not seem
+to be a part of them--and now a prostitute warmed me with her body,
+and I was in debt to a miserable, shameful creature, banished by a
+society that did not want to accord her a place. The wind blew and
+groaned, the rain beat down upon the boat, the waves broke around
+us, and both of us, closely entwined, trembled from cold and hunger.
+And Natasha consoled me; she spoke to me in a sweet, caressing
+voice, as only a woman can. In listening to her tender and naive
+words, I wept, and those tears washed away from my heart many
+impurities, much bitterness, sadness and hatred, all of which had
+accumulated there before this night."
+
+At daybreak, they say good-bye to each other, and never see one
+another again.
+
+"For more than six months, I looked in all the dives and dens in the
+hope of seeing that dear little Natasha once more, but it was in
+vain...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We find him again at Nizhny Novgorod at the time of the call for
+military recruits. Gorky was reformed, for, he says, "They do not
+accept those who are fallen." Meanwhile, he became a kvass merchant
+and exercised this trade for several months. Finally, he became the
+secretary of a lawyer, named Lanine. The latter, who had a very good
+reputation, took a deep interest in the poor boy whom life had
+treated so ill. He became interested in his intellectual development
+and, according to Gorky himself, had a great influence on him. At
+Nizhny Novgorod, as at Kazan, Gorky felt himself attracted by the
+circle of young people who discussed the "cursed" questions, and he
+soon was noticed by his comrades. They spoke of him as "a live and
+energetic soul."
+
+Easy as life was for Gorky in this city, where he remained for a
+while, the "wanderlust" again seized him. "Not feeling at home
+among these intelligent people," he traveled. From Nizhny Novgorod,
+he went, in 1893, to Tzaratzine; then he traveled on foot through
+the entire province of the Don, the Ukraine, entered into
+Bessarabia, and from there descended by the coast of the Crimea as
+far as Kuban.
+
+In October, 1892, Gorky found himself at Tiflis, where he worked in
+the railroad shops. That same year, he published in a local paper
+his first story, "Makar Choudra," in which already a remarkable
+talent was evident.
+
+Leaving Tiflis after a short sojourn there, he came to the banks of
+the Volga, in his native country, and began to write stories for the
+local papers. A happy chance made him meet Korolenko, who took a
+great interest in the "debutante" writer. "In the year 1893-1894,"
+writes Gorky, "I made the acquaintance of Vladimir Korolenko, to
+whom I owe my introduction into 'great' literature. He has done a
+great deal for me in teaching me many things."
+
+The important influence of Korolenko on the literary development of
+Gorky can best be seen in one of the latter's letters to his
+biographer, Mr. Gorodetsky. "Write this," he says to his biographer,
+"write this without changing a single word: It is Korolenko who
+taught Gorky to write, and if Gorky has profited but little by the
+teaching of Korolenko, it is the fault of Gorky alone. Write:
+Gorky's first teacher was the soldier-cook Smoury; his second
+teacher was the lawyer Lanine; the third, Alexander Kalouzhny, an
+'ex-man;' the fourth, Korolenko...."
+
+From the day when he met Korolenko, Gorky's stories appeared mostly
+in the more important publications. In 1895, he published
+"Chelkashe" in the important Petersburg review, "Russkoe Bogatsvo;"
+a year later, other publications equally well known published,
+"Konovalov," "Malva," and "Anxiety." These works brought Gorky into
+the literary world, where he soon became one of the favorite
+writers. The critics, at first sceptical, soon joined their voices
+with the enthusiastic clamor of the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gorky's wandering life has given his works a peculiar and
+universally established form. He is, above all others, the poet of
+the "barefoot brigade," of the vagabonds who eternally wander from
+one end of Russia to the other, carelessly spending the few pennies
+that they have succeeded in earning, and who, like the birds of the
+sky, have no cares for the morrow.
+
+But this does not suffice to explain this author's popularity,
+especially among the younger generation. The "barefoot brigade" is
+not a novelty in Russian literature. We find it in the works of
+Reshetnikov, Uspensky, Mamine, Zhassinsky, and others. It is true
+that, up to this time, the vagabonds had been represented as the
+dregs of the people, as hopeless drunkards, thieves, and murderers.
+The writers who represented them were satisfied in rousing in their
+readers pity for the victims of this social disorder, victims so
+wounded by fate, that they have not even a realization of the
+injustice with which they are treated. And it is only in the works
+of the great dramatist Ostrovsky that we find any happy vagabonds,
+with a deep love of nature and beauty.
+
+Gorky's vagabonds have, like Ostrovsky's, exalted feelings for
+natural beauties, but they possess, besides, a full consciousness of
+themselves, and they declare open war against society. Gorky lives
+the lives of his heroes; he seems to sink himself into them, and, at
+the same time, he idealizes them, and often uses them as his
+spokesmen. Far from being crushed by fate, his vagabonds clothe
+themselves with a certain pride in their misery; for them, the ideal
+existence is the one they lead, because it is free; with numerous
+variations, they all exalt the irresistible seduction of
+vagabondage:
+
+"As for me, just listen! How many things I've seen in my fifty-eight
+years," says Makar Choudra. "In what country have I not been? That
+is the only way to live. Walk, walk, and you see everything. Don't
+stay long in one place: what is there out of the ordinary in that?
+Just as day and night eternally run after one another, thus you must
+run, avoiding daily life, so that you will not cease to love it...."
+
+"I, brother,"--says, in turn, Konovalov,--"I have decided to go all
+over the earth, in every sense of the word. You always see something
+new.... You think of nothing.... The wind blows, and you might say
+that it blows the dust out of your soul. You feel free and easy....
+You are not troubled by any one. If you are hungry, you stop, and
+work to earn a few pennies; if there is no work to be had, you ask
+for some bread and it is given to you. So you see many countries,
+and the most diverse beauties...."
+
+Likewise, in "Tedium," Kouzma Kossiyak thus clearly expresses
+himself:
+
+"I would not give up my liberty for any woman, nor for any
+fireplace. I was born in a shed, do you hear, and it is in a shed
+that I am going to die; that is my fate. I am going to wander
+everywhere until my hair turns grey.... I get bored when I stay in
+the same place."
+
+In their feeling of hostility to all authority, and all fixed
+things, including bourgeois happiness and economical principles,
+some of Gorky's characters resemble some of those superior heroes
+of Russian literature, like Pushkin's Evgeny Onyegin, Lermontov's
+Pechorine, and, finally, Turgenev's Rudin, who, in their way, are
+vagabonds, filled with the same independent spirit in their
+respective social, intellectual, or political circles.
+
+On the other hand, Gorky's wandering beggars are closely related to
+those "free men" to whom M. S. Maximov attributes a historic role
+which was favorable to the extension of the Russian empire.
+"Russia," he says, in his book, "Siberia and the Prison," "lived by
+vagabondage after she became a State; thanks to the vagabonds, she
+has extended her boundaries: for, it is they who, in order to
+maintain their independence, fought against the nomad tribes who
+attacked them from the south and the east...."
+
+There is a marked difference between these two classes: men of the
+former look for a place on this earth where they can establish
+themselves; while men of the other class, those who are out of work,
+drunkards, and lazy men, have no taste for a sedentary life.
+
+But if Gorky has not created the type of vagabond which is so
+familiar to those who know Russian literature, on the other hand, he
+has remodeled it with his original, energetic, and vibrantly
+realistic talent. His nomad "barefoot brigade," picturesquely
+encamped, is surrounded with a sort of terribly majestic halo in
+these vast stretches of country, a background against which their
+sombre silhouettes are set off. From the perfumed steppes to the
+roaring sea, they conjure up to the eye of their old co-mate the
+enchanting Slavic land of which they are the audacious offsprings.
+And Gorky also lovingly gives them a familiar setting, painted with
+bold strokes, of plains and mountains which border in the distance
+the glaucous stretch of the sea. The sea! With what fervor does
+Gorky depict the anger and the peace of the sea. It always inspires,
+like an adored mistress:
+
+"... The sea sleeps.
+
+"Immense, sighing lazily along the strand, it has gone to sleep,
+peaceful in its huge stretch, bathed in the moonlight. As soft as
+velvet, and black, it mingles with the dark southern sky and sleeps
+profoundly, while on its surface is reflected the transparent tissue
+of the flaky, immobile clouds, in which is incrusted the gilded
+design of the stars."
+
+Thus, like a "leitmotiv," the murmuring of the water interrupts the
+course of the story. And the steppe, this steppe "which has devoured
+so much human flesh and has drunk so much blood that it has become
+fat and fecund," surrounds with its immensity these miserable
+wandering beings and menaces them with its storm:
+
+"Suddenly, the entire steppe undulated, enveloped with a dazzling
+blue light which seemed to enlarge the horizon ... the shadows
+trembled and disappeared for a moment ... a crash of thunder burst
+forth, disturbing the sky, where many black clouds were flying
+past....
+
+"... At times the steppe stretched forth like an oscillating giant
+... the vast stretch of blue and cloudless sky poured light down
+upon us, and seemed like an immense cupola of sombre color."
+
+The wind passed "in large and regular waves, or blew with a sharp
+rattle, the leaves sighed and whispered among themselves, the waves
+of the river washed up on the banks, monotonous, despairing, as if
+they were telling something terribly sad and mournful," the entire
+country vibrated with a powerful life that harmonized with the souls
+of the people.
+
+In "Old Iserguile," Gorky writes: "I should have liked to transform
+myself into dust and be blown about by the wind; I should have liked
+to stretch myself out on the steppe like the warm waters of the
+river, or throw myself into the sea and rise into the sky in an opal
+mist; I should have liked to drink in this evening so wonderful and
+melancholy.... And, I know not why, I was suffering...."
+
+Gorky's stories, always short enough, have little or no plot, and
+the characters are barely sketched. But, in these simple frames, he
+has confined the power of an art which is prolific, supple and
+profoundly living. Let us take, for example, "The Friends." Dancing
+Foot and The One Who Hopes are ordinary thieves, the terror of the
+villagers whose gardens they rob. One day, when they are especially
+desperate, they steal a thin horse which is browsing at the edge of
+the woods. The One Who Hopes gets an incurable sickness, and it is
+perhaps on account of his approaching death that he feels scruples
+at this crime. Dancing Foot expresses the scorn that the weakness of
+his companion inspires him with, but he ends by giving in and
+returns the animal. One hour later, The One Who Hopes falls dead in
+front of Dancing Foot, who is tremendously upset in spite of his
+affected indifference.
+
+A dry outline cannot possibly convey the emotion contained in this
+little drama, where the low mentality of the characters is rendered
+with the mastery which Gorky usually shows in creating his elemental
+heroes. Among other works that should be noted are "Cain and
+Arteme," so poignantly ironical in its simplicity, "To Drive Away
+Tedium," "The Silver Clasps," "The Prisoner," and that little
+masterpiece, "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl," in which we see
+twenty-six bakers pouring out an ideal and mystical love on Tanya,
+the little embroiderer, who they believe, is as pure as an angel.
+One day, a brutal soldier comes to defy them, and boasts that he
+will conquer this young girl. He succeeds. Then the twenty-six
+insult their fallen idol; the tragedy is not so much in the insults
+that they hurl at her, as in the suffering they undergo through
+having lost the illusion that was so dear to them.
+
+Let us note, incidentally, the existence of a sort of comic spirit
+in these works which relieves the tragedy of the situations. In
+spite of their dark pessimism, the actors in these little dramas
+have an appearance of gaiety which deceives. It is by this popular
+humor that Gorky is the continuator of the work of Gogol; this is
+especially noticeable in "The Fair at Goltva."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In studying Gorky, one is often struck by the homogeneity of the
+types which he has described. Open any of his books, and you will
+always meet that "restless" type, dissatisfied with the banality of
+his existence, trying to get away from it, and leaning irresistibly
+towards absolute liberty, far removed from social and political
+obligations.
+
+Who are these "restless" people? Toward what end are they striving?
+What do they represent? First, they have an immense reserve force
+which they do not know what to do with; they have got out of the
+rut, the rut which they despise, but it is hard for them to create
+another sort of existence for themselves. Bourgeois happiness
+repulses them, while all sorts of duties are hateful to them. They
+consider the people who are contented with this sort of a life as
+slaves, unworthy of the name of man, and they show the same disdain
+for the peasants, for the leading classes, and for the workingmen.
+The simple farmer excites the scorn of the "barefoot brigade:"
+
+"As for me," says one of them, "I don't like any peasants.... They
+are all dogs! They have provincial States, and they do for them....
+They tremble, they are hypocrites, but they want to live; they have
+one protection: the soil.... However, we must tolerate the peasant,
+for he has a certain usefulness."
+
+"What is a peasant?" asks another. And he answers the question
+himself: "The peasant is for all men a matter of food, that is to
+say, an animal that can be eaten. The sun, the water, the air, and
+the peasant are indispensable to man's existence...."
+
+One might think that this hostility was the fruit of a feeling of
+envy provoked by the fact that the peasant seems to enjoy so many
+advantages. But, on the contrary, the "barefoot brigade" admits
+that the peasant subjugates his individuality for any sort of
+profit, and that he cannot feel the yoke which he has voluntarily
+taken in the hope of getting his daily bread.
+
+These workingmen "who pitifully dig in the soil" are unfortunate
+slaves. "They do nothing but construct, they work perpetually, their
+blood and sweat are the cement of all the edifices of the earth. And
+yet the remuneration which they receive, although they are crushed
+by their work, does not give them shelter or enough food really to
+live on."
+
+The enlightened classes are always characterized in Gorky's works by
+violent traits. The architect Shebouyev accords a sufficiently
+great, but scarcely honorable, place to the category of intelligent
+men to whom he belongs.
+
+"All of us," he says, "are nonentities, deprived of happiness. We
+are in such great numbers! And our numbers have been a power for so
+long a time! We are animated by so many desires, pure and honest....
+Why is there so much talk among us and so little action? And, all
+the while, the germs are there!... All these papers, novels,
+articles are germs ... just germs, and nothing else.... Some of us
+write, others read; after reading, we discuss; after discussing, we
+forget what we have read. For us, life is tedious, heavy, grey, and
+burdensome. We live our lives, but sigh from fatigue and complain
+of the heavy burdens we are carrying."
+
+The journalist Yezhov, in "Thomas Gordeyev," expresses himself in
+the same manner, but even more decisively:
+
+"I should like to say to the intelligent classes: 'You people are
+the best in my country! Your life is paid for by the blood and tears
+of ten Russian generations! How much you have cost your country! And
+what do you for her? What have you given to life? What have you
+done?...'"
+
+The absence of all independence, of any passion even a little
+sincere, the complete submission of heart and mind to the old
+prescribed morality, the constant effort to realize mere personal
+ambitions--all of these are the reproaches that Gorky addresses to
+cultivated man, whose moral disintegration he proves has been
+produced by routine and prejudice.
+
+In contrast to them, the vagabonds are the instinctive enemies of
+all slavery, in any form whatsoever. The complete independence of
+their personality means everything to them. And no material
+conditions, no matter how prosperous, will induce them to make the
+least compromise on this point. One of these "restless" types,
+Konovalov, tells how, after he had bound himself to the wife of a
+rich merchant, he could have lived in the greatest comfort, but he
+abandoned everything, the easy life, and even the woman, whom he
+loved well enough, in order to go out and look for the unknown. This
+is a common adventure on the part of Gorky's heroes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is the cause of this restlessness?
+
+"Well, you see," explains Konovalov, "I became weary. It was such
+weariness, I must tell you, little brother, that at moments I simply
+could not live. It seemed to me as if I were the only man on the
+whole earth, and, with the exception of myself, there was no living
+thing anywhere. And in those moments, everything was repugnant to
+me, everything in the world; I became a burden to myself, and if
+everybody were dead, I wouldn't even sigh! It must have been a
+disease with me, and the reason why I took to drink, for, before
+this time, I never drank."
+
+For the same reasons, in "Anguish," a workingman leaves his mistress
+and his employer, the miller. Where does this anguish come from?
+Perhaps it is the simple result of a psychological process which,
+Konovalov admits, is nothing other than a disease. It is very
+possible that, in impulsive acts, a psychiatrist would see something
+analogous to alcoholism, or the symptoms of some other anomaly.
+
+Turgenev had already analyzed a similar case in "The Madman." When
+Michael Poltev is asked what evil spirit led him to drink and to
+risk his life, he always refers to his anguish.
+
+"'Why this anguish?' asks his uncle.
+
+"'Why?... When the brain is free, one begins to think of poverty,
+injustice, Russia.... And that's the end! anguish hastens on.... One
+is ready to send a bullet through one's head! There's nothing left
+to do but get drunk!...'
+
+"'And why do you associate Russia with all of that? Why, you are
+nothing but a sluggard!'
+
+"'But I can do nothing, dear uncle!... Teach me what I ought to do,
+to what task I ought to consecrate my life. I will do it
+gladly!...'"
+
+Gorky's characters give the same explanation of their "ennui," and
+almost in identical terms. This disgust comes in great part from not
+knowing how to adapt oneself to life, nor how to become a "useful"
+man.
+
+"Take me, for instance," says Konovalov, "what am I? A vagabond ...
+a drunkard, a crack-brained sort of man. There is no reason for my
+life. Why do I live on earth, and to whom am I useful? I have no
+home, no wife, no children, and I don't feel as if I wanted any. I
+live and am bored.... What about? No one knows. I have no life
+within myself, do you understand? How shall I express it? There's a
+spark, or force lacking in my soul...."
+
+Another character, the shoemaker Orlov, in "Orlov and His Wife,"
+especially reflects this pessimistic disposition. In the same way as
+Konovalov, he is born with "restlessness in his heart."
+
+He is a shoemaker; and why?
+
+"As if there weren't enough of them already! What pleasure is there
+in this trade for me? I sit in a cellar and sew. Then I shall die.
+They say that the cholera is coming.... And after that? Gregory
+Orlov lived, made shoes--and died of the cholera. What does that
+signify? And why was it necessary that I should live, make shoes and
+die, tell me?"
+
+These creatures are under the impression that they are superfluous;
+therefore their pessimistic conclusions. All of them passionately
+want to be able to express the meaning of life in general, their
+life in particular, but the task is too much for them.
+
+Gorky's heroes consider themselves "useless beings," but they never
+humiliate themselves. Their restlessness of spirit does not permit
+them to resign themselves to the reigning banality or to take part
+in it without protesting. At the same time, some of them are gifted
+with sufficient personality to possess an unshaken faith in
+themselves, in their strength, which keeps them from letting the
+responsibility of their torments fall back upon society.
+
+Promtov, the hero of "The Strange Companion," makes these restless
+seekers the descendants of the Wandering Jew: "Their peculiarity,"
+he ironically says, "is, that whether rich or poor, they cannot find
+a suitable place for themselves on earth, and establish themselves
+in it. The greatest of them are satisfied with nothing: money,
+women, nor men."
+
+What, then, do these "greatest" want?
+
+Their desires evidently take a multitude of forms, and have the most
+diverse shades; but the greatest number of them are impatient for
+extraordinary happenings, eager for exploits. Some of them declare
+that they would be willing to throw themselves on a hundred knives
+if humanity could be relieved by their doing so. But simple daily
+activity, even if it is useful, does not satisfy them.
+
+The shoemaker Orlov leaves his cellar, as he calls it, and accepts a
+position in the hospital where they are taking care of cholera
+patients. His devotion makes him an "indispensable man;" he is
+reborn, and, according to his own words, he is "ripe for life." It
+seems as if his end were going to be attained. But not so.
+Restlessness seizes him again. Orlov questions the value of his
+work. He saves sick people from the cholera. Is he doing good? The
+greatest care is taken of these people, but how many people are
+there outside of the hospitals, one hundred times as many as there
+are inside, who are just as unfortunate, but, in spite of that fact,
+are not helped by any one?
+
+"While you live," he declares, "no one will refuse to give you a
+drink of water. And if you are near death, not only will they not
+allow you to die, but they will go to some expense to stop you. They
+organize hospitals.... They give you wine at 'six and a half rubles
+a bottle.' The sick man gets well, the doctors are happy, and Orlov
+would like to share their joy; but he cannot, for he knows that, on
+leaving the threshold of the hospital, a life 'worse than the
+convulsions of the cholera' awaits the convalescent...." And again
+he is seized by the desire to drink, and to be a vagabond, and by a
+wish to experience new sensations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These, then, are the vagabonds whom we can class in the category of
+the "restless." After these, come those whom the author terms the
+"ex-men," and whom he studies, under this title, in one of his
+longest stories. The ex-men are closely related to the "restless;"
+however, they differ from them in that they push their opinions to
+an extreme, for they are, more than the others, miserable and at bay
+against society.
+
+"What difference would it make if it all went to the devil," one of
+them philosophizes--"I should like to see the earth go to pieces
+suddenly, provided that I should perish the last, after having seen
+the others die.... I'm an ex-man, am I not? I am a pariah, then,
+estranged from all bonds and duties.... I can spit on everything!"
+
+Thomas Gordeyev's father develops another thesis; a rich and
+rational bourgeois, he tries to inculcate in his son from his
+infancy--a son who later augments the ranks of the "restless"--the
+most perfect spirit of egotism.
+
+"You must pity people," he says, "but do it with discernment. First,
+look at a man, see what good you can get out of him, and see what he
+is good for. If you think he is a strong man, capable of work, help
+him. But if you think him weak and little suited for work, abandon
+him without pity. Remember this: two boards have fallen into the
+mud, one of them is worm-eaten, the other is sound. What are you
+going to do? Pay no attention to the worm-eaten plank, but take out
+the sound one and dry it in the sun. It may be of service to you or
+to some one else...."
+
+The reader will note the absolute egotism in all of Gorky's types.
+The "restless" are interested only in their own misery, and they
+think that all men are like them; nor do they try to stop or bridle
+their passions.
+
+Strong passions are one of the most precious privileges of mankind.
+This truth is well shown in the story: "Once More About the
+Devil."[7] Here, the men have become shabby and insignificant since
+there has been propagated among them, with a new strength, the
+gospel of individual perfection. The demon stifles, in the heart of
+Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, all the passions that can agitate a human
+soul,--ambition, pity, evil, and anger; this operation makes Ivan an
+absolutely perfect being. On his face there appears that beatitude
+which words cannot express. The devil has crushed all "substance"
+out of him, and he is completely "empty."
+
+ [7] This was preceded by a story called "The Devil."
+
+One understands that Gorky's heroes cannot find what would be good
+for them, nor feel the least satisfaction in doing their fellow men
+a good service. They only dream of action; their sole desire is to
+affirm their individuality by "manifesting" themselves, little
+matter how. Old Iserguille is persuaded that "in life, there is room
+for mighty deeds" and, if a man likes them, he will find occasion to
+do them. Konovalov is most enthusiastic over Zhermak,[8] to whom he
+feels himself akin.
+
+ [8] A celebrated brigand in the time of Ivan the Terrible who, in
+ order to be pardoned, conquered Siberia in the name of the Tsar.
+
+"I'd like to reduce the whole earth to dust," dreams Orlov, "or get
+up a crowd of comrades and kill off all the Jews ... all, to the
+very last one! Or, in general, do something that would place me high
+above all men, so that I could spit on them from up there, and cry
+to them: 'Dogs! Why do you live? You're all hypocritical rascals and
+nothing more....'"
+
+These people demand a boundless liberty, but how obtain it? All of
+them dream of a certain organization which will let them feel
+relieved of all their duties, of all the thousands of petty things
+that make life hard, of all the small details, conventions, and
+obligations which hold such an important place in our society. But
+the time for heroic deeds has passed away, and the "restless" fight
+in vain against the millions of men who are determined to keep their
+habits and advantages.
+
+Thus they are obliged to shake the dust off their feet and to leave
+the ranks in which they are suffocating. No matter what they do or
+what they try to do, their motto is, "each one for himself."
+
+"Come," says a vagabond poetically to Thomas Gordeyev, "come with me
+on the open road, into the fields and steppes, across the plains,
+over the mountains, come out and look at the world in all its
+freedom. The thick forests begin to murmur; their sweet voice
+praises divine wisdom; God's birds sing its glory and the grass of
+the steppe burns with the incense of the Holy Virgin.
+
+"The soul is filled with an ardent yet calm joy, you desire nothing,
+you envy no one.... And it is then that it seems as if on the whole
+earth there is no one but God and you...."
+
+The material inconveniences of such an existence hardly affect
+Gorky's characters. Promtov, one of the prophets of individualism,
+says, in speaking of himself:
+
+"I have been 'on the road' for ten years, and I have not complained
+of my fate to God. I don't want to tell you anything of this period,
+because it is too tedious.... In general, it is the joyous life of a
+bird. Sometimes, grain is lacking, but one must not be too exacting
+and one must remember that kings themselves do not have pleasures
+only. In a life like ours, there are no duties--that is the first
+pleasure--and there are no laws, except those of nature--that is the
+second. Without a doubt, the gentlemen of the police force bother
+one at times ... but you find fleas even in the best hotels. As a
+set-off, one can go to the right, or to the left, or straight ahead,
+wherever your heart bids you go, and if you don't want to go
+anywhere, after having provided yourself with bread from the hut of
+some peasant, who will never refuse it, you can lie down until you
+care to resume your travels...."
+
+This is the final point at which all of the "restless" arrive,
+believing that there they will find what they have always lacked.
+Even the author himself shares their views up to a certain point:
+
+"You have to be born in civilized society," he says, speaking of
+himself, "in order to have the patience to live there all your life
+without having the desire to flee from this circle, where so many
+restrictions hinder you, restrictions sanctioned by the habit of
+little poisoned lies, this sickly center of self-love, in one word,
+all this vanity of vanities which chills the feelings and perverts
+the mind, and which is called in general, without any good reason
+and very falsely, civilization.
+
+"I was born and brought up outside of it, and I am glad of that
+fact. Because of it, I have never been able to absorb culture in
+large doses, without feeling, at the end of a certain time, the
+terrible need of stepping out of this frame.... It does one good to
+go into the dens of the cities, where everything is dirty, but
+simple and sincere; or even to rove in the fields or on the
+highroads; one sees curious things there. It refreshes the mind; and
+all you need in order to do it is a pair of sturdy legs...."
+
+What then is the teaching that we get out of Gorky's works? For,
+faithful to Russian tradition, he does not practise art for art's
+sake. His "barefoot brigade" and his "restless" men are generally
+considered as representative of his own ideals. The principle of "Do
+what seems to you to be good"--a principle which is expressed by a
+wandering and free life--ought to be justified, one thinks. Critics
+have risen up against this ideal, trying to prove how incompatible
+the kind of existence that he conceives is with a solid political
+organization, and how far from reality the men are whom he
+represents.
+
+Doubtless, in real life, people are not as original and not as
+heroic as Gorky represents them to be. And he himself agrees that
+their inventive faculties are very highly developed. He shows this
+in putting the following words into the mouth of Promtov:
+
+"I have very probably exaggerated, but that's not of much
+importance. For, if I have exaggerated what happened, my method of
+exposition has shown the true state of my soul. Perhaps, I have
+served you with an imaginary roast, but the sauce is made of the
+purest truth."
+
+The end that he is after, Gorky has shown us in his story, "The
+Lecturer," which contains his theories on literature. In the person
+of the lecturer, he addresses himself to the men who represent the
+majority of the Russian cultivated classes. He begins by analyzing
+himself carefully and discovers in himself many good feelings and
+honest desires, but he feels that he lacks clear and harmonious
+thought, a thing which keeps all the manifestations of life in
+equilibrium. Numerous doubts torment him, and his mind has been so
+moved with them, his heart so wounded, that, for a long time, he has
+lived "empty inside."
+
+"What have I to say to others?" he asks himself. "That which was
+told them long ago, that which has always been told them, none of
+which makes any one any better. But have I the right to teach these
+ideas and convictions, if I, who was brought up according to them,
+act so often in opposition to them?"
+
+With his usual sincerity, it is not to be wondered at that he
+answered this question in the negative, and, to cite the words of
+one of his characters, that he "refused to live in the chains which
+had already been forged for free thought, and to class himself under
+the label of an ism."
+
+He has not thought it profitable to hide his doubts and has not
+feared to declare openly that none of the existing philosophies suit
+him, and that he is trying to follow his own path. All of his work
+is but the absolute image of his own uncertainties, of his
+passionate researches, and of his constant "restlessness."
+
+At times people have believed that he was a disciple of Nietzsche.
+And, in truth, he has come under his influence, like so many other
+Russian authors. But he has gone on mostly by himself, aided by his
+acute sensibility, which has not, as yet, allowed him to adopt any
+one system to the exclusion of all others, or to formulate a system
+for his personal use.
+
+"I know one thing," he says, "it is not happiness that we should
+hope for. What should we do with it? The meaning of life does not
+lie in the search for happiness, and the satisfaction of the
+material appetites will never suffice to make a man fully contented
+with himself. It is in beauty that we must look for the meaning of
+life, and in the energy of the will! Every moment of our lives ought
+to be devoted to some better end...."
+
+However, he has very neatly set forth what he considers the task of
+the author. According to him, the man of to-day has lost courage; he
+interests himself too little in life, his desire to live with
+dignity has grown weaker, "an odor of putrefaction surrounds him,
+cowardice and slavery corrupt his heart, laziness binds his hands
+and his mind." But, at the same time, life grows in breadth and
+depth, and, from day to day, men are learning to question. And it
+is the writer who ought to answer their questions; but he should not
+content himself with straightening out the balance sheet of social
+deterioration, and in giving photographs of daily life. The writer
+must also awaken in the hearts of men a desire for liberty, and
+speak energetically, in order to infuse in man an ardent desire to
+create other forms of life.... "It seems to me," says Gorky, "that
+we desire new dreams, gracious inventions, unforeseen things,
+because the life which we have created is poor, dreary, and tedious.
+The reality which formerly we wanted so ardently, has frozen us and
+broken us down.... What is there to do? Let us try: perhaps
+invention and imagination will aid man in raising himself so that he
+may again glance for a moment at the place which he has lost on
+earth."
+
+All of Gorky's characters curse life, but without ceasing to love
+it, because they "have the taste for life." Their complaints are
+only a means by which the author hopes to raise up around him "that
+revengeful shame and the taste for life" of which he so often
+speaks. Here is the artful Mayakine, who, indignant at the
+debasement of the younger generation, is ready to take the most
+cruel means in order "to infuse fire into the veins" of his
+contemporaries. Varenka Olessova, the heroine of a story,
+incessantly repeats that people would be more interesting if they
+were more animated, if they laughed, played, sang more, if they were
+more audacious, stronger, and even more coarse and vulgar. Gorky
+admires also the beautiful type, vigorous, with a rudimentary
+mentality, which meets with his approval simply because he sees in
+it a nature which is complete, untouched, and filled with a love of
+life.
+
+Gorky suffers miseries inherent in the mere fact of existence, but
+he has found no remedy; he looks for consolations in the cult of
+beauty, in the strength of free individuality, in the flight towards
+a superior ideal. But he does not know where to find this superior
+ideal, which vivifies everything. This is perhaps the reason why
+people have thought they saw in his work the Nietzschean influence,
+which praises an insistence on individuality in defiance of current
+conventions, and gives us just as vague a solution as Gorky does.
+
+But this enthusiasm for an ideal, vague as it is, this passionate
+appeal for energy in the struggle, has awakened powerful echoes in
+the hearts of the Russians, especially the younger of them. Gorky
+suddenly became their favorite author, and it is to this warm
+reception that he owes a great part of his renown. He has carried
+the young along with him, and they have put their ideals in the
+place which he had left empty.
+
+If we now pass on to the first novels and dramas of Gorky, we shall
+be struck by the fact that, in spite of the talent shown in them,
+they are very inferior to his short stories. His former mastery is
+not found, except in his later novels, which we shall take occasion
+to mention presently.
+
+"Thomas Gordeyev" contains some very fine passages, but is not very
+successful as a whole. Thomas's father is a merchant on the banks of
+the Volga; he is an energetic man who carries out all his ideas.
+Whatever he is engaged on, whether business affairs, or a debauch,
+or repentance thereof, he gives himself entirely to the impression
+of the moment. Like other men of his class, moreover, he lives a
+life which is a singular mixture of refinement and savagery. He
+spends his time in drinking and working, as much for himself as for
+his only son, Thomas, whose mother died in giving birth to him. The
+child grows up under the care of his aunt and shows a serious
+disposition toward study. Gradually, he feels the motives that make
+men act, and he questions his father about them.
+
+Before dying, the latter says to his son: "Don't count on men, don't
+count on great events." In spite of the wealth which he inherits
+Thomas is not happy; he has no friends; his colleagues, the
+merchants, and especially his father's old friend, Mayakine, are
+repulsive to him on account of their cupidity and their
+unscrupulousness. Thomas does not love money and does not understand
+its power, two things that people cannot forgive him for. Besides,
+he does not know how to make use of the forces that are burning
+within him. After having vainly sought for moral relief in
+debauchery, he ends by proposing to strike a bargain with Mayakine
+so that he can be freed from responsibility and go out and look for
+happiness. He will give Mayakine his personal fortune if the latter
+will look after his business affairs. But the old roue, who hopes to
+get possession of the fortune in a surer way, refuses, and their
+conversation turns into a quarrel.
+
+As he does not work, Thomas indulges in many extravagances in
+company with a journalist of very advanced ideas. Finally, one day
+when he is at a fete at which are present all the wealthy members of
+the merchant class, the young man, disgusted with their vices, rises
+to apostrophize them in the most bitter terms. They throw themselves
+on him, and he is arrested as a madman and put into an asylum. He
+comes out, only to abandon himself to drink.
+
+In "The Three," Gorky tells us the life story of Ilya Lounyev, a
+poor creature, born in poverty, whose life is full of deceptions,
+misfortunes, even crimes. Several times, Ilya has tried to lead a
+decent life; but it is his sincerity that makes him lose his
+position with the merchant for whom he works. He has believed in
+beauty and in the purity of love, and he is deceived by the woman he
+loves. Gradually all the baseness of the world becomes clear to him.
+In a moment of jealousy he kills his mistress's lover, an old miser.
+Several months later he publicly confesses his crime, and, in order
+to escape from human justice, he commits suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his first two dramas, "The Smug Citizen," and "A Night's Refuge,"
+as in his short stories, Gorky shows us his usual characters.
+
+The Bessemenovs, comfortable, petty bourgeois, have given their
+children an education. Their daughter, Tatyana, becomes a
+school-teacher, but her profession does not please her. Peter, their
+son, has been expelled from the university, in spite of his
+indifference toward "new" ideas. The children are continually
+harassed by their father, who bemoans the fact that he has given
+them an education. Besides, another sadness troubles him: Nil, his
+adopted son, whom he has had taught the trade of a mechanician,--an
+alert and industrious fellow,--wants to marry Polya, a girl without
+a fortune. The father is beside himself, for, if Nil marries, he
+will never be in a condition to pay back the money that has been
+spent on him. But Nil protests: he is young, and, some day, he will
+repay his debt. He has not noticed that Tatyana is in love with him;
+and the young girl has not strength enough to live through the
+sorrow of seeing herself abandoned forever. She tries to commit
+suicide, but does not succeed. While Tatyana is bemoaning her fate,
+Peter has fallen in love with a young woman quite different from any
+of the members of his family. Helen understands how sad Peter's
+position is among these ignorant people, and she decides to marry
+him, for pity as much as for love. The father is no more satisfied
+with this match than he was with Nil's, and with death in his soul
+he is present at the dismemberment of his family. While Helen takes
+Peter, Nil goes off with Polya. The mother, a humble and kind woman,
+does not understand the cause of all this dissension and, while
+consoling the weeping Tatyana, she asks her husband: "Why are our
+children punishing us so? Why do they make us suffer?" This play is
+not dramatically effective and has never had a great success on the
+stage.
+
+On the other hand, Gorky's second attempt, "A Night's Refuge," has
+been enormously successful. Here, the author takes us into the world
+of the barefoot brigade. Vasska Pepel, Vassilissa's lover, the
+proprietor of the night refuge in which he sleeps, loves the sister
+of his mistress, Natasha by name, a timid and dreamy young girl,
+who blooms like a lily in this mire. The old vagabond, Luke, advises
+the young girl to run off with Vasska, who wants to begin a new
+life. But Vassilissa, jealous and evil as she is, has noticed the
+coldness which her lover shows towards her. She avenges herself by
+striking her younger sister whenever she can. Her plan was, with the
+aid of Vasska, to kill her husband, Kostylev, and then to live
+openly with her lover. But when she sees Vasska ready to leave with
+Natasha, she starts a terrible scene, which ends in Vasska's killing
+Kostylev without meaning to. Vassilissa and her lover are arrested
+and Natasha disappears.
+
+Although the characters of this play are vagabonds, they differ from
+most of Gorky's creations, whose fiery and enthusiastic souls
+usually discover a real beauty in the life they have chosen.
+Alcoholism, prostitution, and misery have shut off these people who
+live in the cellar. They have fallen so low, that conscience is a
+useless luxury for them. It belongs to the rich only. One of them,
+who is asked if he has a conscience, replies with sincere
+astonishment: "What? Conscience?" And when the question is asked
+again, he answers, "What good is conscience? I'm not a rich man."
+The life of these people is worse than a nightmare: to-morrow they
+will be cold, hungry, and drunk, just as they were yesterday.
+Sometimes, perhaps, they feel like struggling against their evil
+lot, but no one stretches forth a helping hand to them. They do not
+dare think of the future, and they would like to forget the past.
+One of them expresses his fear of life thus:
+
+"At times, I'm afraid, brother; can you understand that?... I
+tremble.... For, what is there after this?" And this fear smothers
+all the energy in them. They are poor and scantily clothed, not only
+in the material sense of the word, but also in the moral sense.
+Money would not be necessary to save them, but a word of sympathy,
+of love, a word that would give them the courage really to live.
+
+And it is here that old Luke appears. He treats the men as if they
+were children, and gains their confidence. In his words there is
+manifested a real experience of things and people. As he says, "They
+moulded me a lot," and that is why he became "tender." He knows just
+the right word for every one. He assures the dying woman that:
+"Eternal rest means happiness. Die, and you will have rest, you will
+have no cares, and no one to fear. Silence will calm you! All you
+have to do is remain lying down! Death pacifies and is tender. You
+will appear before God, and He will say to you: 'Take her to
+Paradise so that she may rest. I know that her life has been hard;
+she is tired, give her peace.'" And the sick woman, who has dragged
+out her existence so long, is consoled.
+
+To the drunkard, a former actor who has fallen, Luke says: "Stop
+drinking, pull yourself together and be patient. You will be cured,
+and you will begin a new existence...." And he succeeds in awakening
+a hope of a better life in the soul of the poor comedian, while he
+himself, perhaps, hardly believes in the possible regeneration of
+his protege.
+
+After Luke's departure, the temporary dreams of these miserable
+people vanish. One evening, when they are all gathered around a
+bottle of brandy, they strike up a song. A friend, a baron by birth,
+rushes into the cellar and announces that the actor has hung
+himself, and that his corpse is hanging in the court. A deathlike
+silence follows these words. All look at each other in fright. "Ah,
+the fool!" finally murmurs a vagabond, "he spoiled our song...." The
+hope in a better life that Luke had awakened in the actor made him
+kill himself, when he saw that he had not enough strength to realize
+this hope.
+
+This drama is the quintessence of all that Gorky has, up to this
+time, written on the "ex-man," whom he has thoroughly "explored."
+And the figure of old Luke is one of his most original and lifelike
+creations.
+
+His third important play, which, however, has never enjoyed the
+popularity of "A Night's Refuge," is called: "The Children of the
+Sun." The "children of the sun" are the elect of heaven, richly
+endowed with talent and knowledge. They live in a world of noble
+dreams, of elevated thoughts, enveloped though they are in the
+greyness of life. There pass before them long processions of tired
+and oppressed people. The latter, also, have been generated by the
+strong sun; but the light has gone out for them, and they travel on
+life's highway without joy or faith, among those who are proud of
+their beauty or learning. The "children of the sun" are the
+aristocrats of the soul. They have but one end: to make life
+beautiful, good, and agreeable for all. They continually think of
+making it easier, of soothing suffering, and of preparing a better
+future. Their mission is a large one. They are not idle, but are men
+who have the most elevated ends in view.
+
+Between "the children of the sun" and "the children of the earth"
+there is a deep abyss. They do not understand each other. The
+"children of the sun" cannot admit the miseries and ugliness of
+daily life. They have compassion for the people who work below them.
+The "children of the earth" feel the superiority of the "children of
+the sun," but their narrow-mindedness, continually absorbed by the
+necessity of finding shelter and food, cannot rise to the
+preoccupations of so elevated an order. However, life brings these
+two worlds together in a common work; but their mere meeting on the
+ground of practical interests produces a collision.
+
+A third category constitutes the intermediary link. This is made up
+of the university people, the representatives of the liberal
+professions. As "intellectuals," they cannot equal the "children of
+the sun," but they can understand them. They conceive the grandeur
+of their moral activity. At the same time, these men are close to
+the people. They are often obliged to mingle in the life of the
+people, and more than the "children of the sun," they are capable of
+enlarging their minds and ennobling their duties. But, while they
+know and understand the duties of the people completely, they are
+not yet strong enough to help them. This, then, is the general
+meaning of the play.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although this play is cleverly constructed, with a last act which is
+pathetic and moving in its intensity, and produces a profound
+impression, on the whole, unfortunately, it has the general
+harshness of problem plays. Under its lyric vestments, its solid and
+massive character appears too often. Gorky, a born observer,
+inheritor of the realistic traditions of his country, could not help
+turning aside, one day, from this ideological art, visibly
+influenced by Tolstoy's dramas. The direct part that the romanticist
+has played in the political events of his country sufficiently
+proves that he has taken a different road from that taken by the
+apostle of Yasnaya Polyana. With maturity, he felt the need of
+hastening the denouement of the crisis in Russia, in actively
+participating in its emancipation. From that time on, he chose his
+heroes from a less singular environment. Instead of the philosophic
+vagabonds, the neurasthenic "restless" ones, and the ex-men, he
+chose the plebeian of the city and country, who is gradually
+awakening from a sleep of ignorance and slavery. A remarkable story,
+called "In Prison," all atremble with new sensations, inaugurates
+this new style. A victim himself of the intolerance of "over-men,"
+Gorky has incarnated his own revolts and hopes in the soul of his
+hero, Misha, a brother of the revolutionary students who do not
+hesitate to sacrifice their life or liberty for a principle or
+ideal.
+
+Written at the same time, the story called "The Soldiers" gives
+proof of an equally careful incorporation of the claims of the
+oppressed in a literary work.
+
+The school-mistress, Vera, has conceived the daring project of
+teaching the soldiers who are quartered in the village. She gets
+some of them together at the edge of the neighboring woods and
+there she tries to show them the ignominy of the roles they play in
+times of uprisings. Angered by this unexpected talk, the soldiers
+threaten the young girl. But her coolness and sincerity finally make
+them listen to her with a respect mingled with admiration.
+
+A third story, called "Slaves," in a masterful way retraces the
+catastrophes of the now historical journey of January 9, 1905, at
+the end of which, a crowd of 200,000 men, led by the famous pope
+Gapon, went to the Tsar's palace to present their demands to him,
+and were received with cannon shots.
+
+These stories were followed by three works of great merit: "Mother,"
+"A Confession," and "The Spy."
+
+The novel "Mother" takes us into the midst of revolutionary life.
+The heroes of this book belong, for the most part, to that
+workingman and agricultural proletariat whose role has lately been
+of such great importance in the Russian political tempests. With
+marvelous psychological analysis, Gorky shows how some of these
+simple creatures understand the new truth, and how it gradually
+penetrates their ardent souls.
+
+Pavel Vlassov, a young, intelligent workingman, is thirsty for
+knowledge, and is the apostle of the new ideal. He throws himself
+heart and soul into the dangerous struggle he has undertaken against
+ignorance and oppression. The Little Russian, Andrey, is all
+feeling and thought, and the peasant Rybine is inflamed by action.
+Sashenka is a young girl who sacrifices herself entirely to the
+Idea, and the coal-man Ignatius is driven by an obscure force to
+help in a cause which he does not understand. Finest of them all is
+Pelaguaya Vlassov, the principal character of the book, and Pavel's
+mother.
+
+Old and grey, Pelaguaya has passed her whole life in misery. She has
+never known anything but how to suffer in silence and endure without
+complaint; she has never dreamed that life could be different. One
+day her father had said to her:
+
+"It's useless to make faces! There is a fool who wants to marry
+you,--take him. All girls marry, all women have children; children
+are, for all parents, a sorrow. And are you, yes or no, a human
+being?"
+
+She then marries the workingman Michael Vlassov, who gets drunk
+every day, beats her cruelly and kicks her, and even on his
+death-bed, says: "Go to the devil.... Bitch! I'll die better alone."
+
+He dies, and his son Pavel begins to bring forbidden books into the
+house. Friends come and talk; a small group is formed. Pelaguaya
+listens to what is said, but understands nothing. Gradually,
+however, there begins to filter into her old breast, like a stream
+of joy, an understanding of something big, of something in which she
+can take part. She discovers that she too is a free creature, and,
+obscurely, there is formed in her mind the notion that every human
+being has a right to live. Then she speaks: "The earth is tired of
+carrying so much injustice and sadness, it trembles softly at the
+hope of seeing the new sun which is rising in the bosom of mankind."
+So the obscure and miserable woman gradually rises to the dignity of
+"The Mother of the Prophet." And when Pavel accepts, like the
+martyrdom of the cross, his banishment to Siberia, with a joyous
+heart she sacrifices her son to the Idea.
+
+Her soul opens wide to the new truth that is lighting it. With the
+most touching abnegation, she tries to carry on the work of the
+absent one. But the police are watching. One day, when she is about
+to take the train to a neighboring town to spread the "good word"
+there, she is recognized and apprehended. Seeing that she is lost,
+the Mother, whose personality at this moment grows absolutely
+symbolic, cries out to the crowd:
+
+"'Listen to me! They condemned my son and his friends because they
+were bringing the truth to everybody! We are dying from work, we are
+tormented by hunger and by cold, we are always in the mire, always
+in the wrong! Our life is a night, a black night!'
+
+"'Hurrah for the old woman!' cries some one in the crowd.
+
+"A policeman struck her in the chest; she tottered, and fell on the
+bench. But she still cried:
+
+"'All of you! get all your forces together under a single leader.'
+
+"The big red hand of the policeman struck her in the throat, and the
+nape of her neck hit against the wall.
+
+"'Shut up, you hag!' cried the officer in a sharp voice.
+
+"The Mother's eyes grew larger and shone brightly. Her jaw trembled.
+
+"'They won't kill a resurrected soul!'
+
+"'Bitch!'
+
+"With a short swing the policeman struck her full in the face.
+
+"Something red and black momentarily blinded the Mother; blood
+filled her mouth.
+
+"A voice from the crowd brought her to herself:
+
+"'You haven't the right to strike her!'
+
+"But the officers pushed her, and hit her on the head.
+
+"'... It's not blood that will drown what's right.'...
+
+"Dulled and weakened, the Mother tottered. But she saw many eyes
+about her, glowing with a bold fire, eyes that she knew well and
+that were dear to her.
+
+"'... They will never get at the truth, even under oceans of blood!'
+
+"The policeman seized her heavily by the throat.
+
+"There was a rattling in her throat:
+
+"... 'The unfortunates!'
+
+"Some one in the crowd answered her, with a deep sigh."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A Confession" is the story of a restless soul who untiringly
+searches for the God of truth and goodness. Found as a child in a
+village of central Russia, Matvey was first taken by a sacristan,
+and, after his death, by Titov, the inspector of the domain. In
+order to debase Matvey, whose superiority irritates him, Titov asks
+him to participate in his extortions. Having become the son-in-law
+of his adopted father, Matvey, on account of his love for his wife,
+accepts the shameful life. But the God in whom Matvey has placed his
+distracted confidence, seems to want to chastise him cruelly. After
+having lost, one after the other, his wife and child, he goes away
+at a venture. He enters a monastery where, among the dissolute
+monks, whose vices are most repugnant, his soul gradually shakes off
+the Christian dogma. On one of his pilgrimages, he gets to
+Damascus. Among the workingmen, where chance has taken him, he feels
+his heart opening to the truth, which he follows up with the
+determination of a real Gorkyan hero. The life of the people appears
+to him in its sublime simplicity. And it is in the midst of a
+dazzling apotheosis--which reminds one of the most grandiose pages
+of Zola's "Lourdes"--that he finally confesses the God of his ideal:
+it is the people.
+
+"People! you are my God, creator of all the gods that you have
+formed from the beauty of your soul, in your troubled and laborious
+search!
+
+"Let there be no other gods on the earth but yourself, for you are
+the only God, the creator of miracles!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Spy" is a study of the Russian police. The novel treats of the
+terrible Okhrana, whose mysterious affairs have become the
+laughing-stock of all the foreign papers.
+
+The principal character, about whom circle the police spies and
+secret agents, is a poor orphan, weak and timid, called Evsey
+Klimkov, whom his uncle, the forger Piotr, has taken into his house
+and brought up with his son, the strong and brutal James. Beaten by
+his schoolmates and by his cousin, the child lives in a perpetual
+trance. Life seems formidable to him, like a jungle in which men are
+the pitiless beasts. Everywhere, brute force or hypocrisy triumph;
+everywhere, the weak are oppressed, downtrodden, conquered. And in
+his feverish imagination, daily excited by facts which his terror
+distorts, Evsey delights in conceiving another existence, all made
+of love and goodness, an existence that he unceasingly opposes
+against the hard realities of daily life, with the stubborn fervor
+of a mystic.
+
+Having entered the service of the old bookseller Raspopov, the young
+man does his duty with the faithfulness of a beast of burden. His
+home no longer pleases him at all; there, things and people are
+still hostile to him; but his uncle Piotr seems enchanted with his
+new position. Evsey spends his days in arranging and classifying the
+books which his master has bought. A young woman, Raissa Petrovna,
+keeps house for the book-dealer, and as every one knows, they live
+like man and wife. In this queer environment, the faculties of the
+young man become sharpened, and serve him well. It does not take
+long for him to find out what they are hiding from him. A few words
+addressed by Raspopov to a certain Dorimedonte Loukhine reveal to
+Evsey the part that is being played by his patron. Raspopov, who is
+an agent of the secret police, gives Dorimedonte--who, by the way,
+is deceiving him with Raissa--the names of the buyers of the
+forbidden books in which he trades. And here it is that the tragedy
+suddenly breaks forth.
+
+Raissa, tired of being tormented by Raspopov, who accuses her of
+poisoning him, strangles the old man in a moment of cold anger,
+under the very eyes of Evsey. Thanks to Dorimedonte, this crime goes
+unpunished. Evsey, having become the lodger of the two lovers, now
+enters the Okhrana, at the advice of his new master. After a while,
+Raissa, haunted by remorse, commits suicide, and Dorimedonte is
+killed by some revolutionists.
+
+All the interest of the book, however, is centered in the picture of
+the police institutions. From the chief Philip Philipovich to the
+agent Solovyev, Gorky presents, with consummate art, the mass of
+corrupt and greedy agents who wearily accomplish their tasks.
+
+Among them, young Evsey leads a miserable and ridiculous existence.
+Bruised by an invincible power, he sees himself compelled to arrest
+an old man who has confided his revolutionary ideas to him; then a
+young girl with whom he is in love; finally, his own cousin, a
+revolutionary suspect.
+
+Gradually his eyes are opened. He realizes that he cannot extricate
+himself from the position in which he has placed himself. Tired of
+leading a life which his conscience disapproves of, he thinks of
+killing his superior, who has driven him to do so many infamous
+deeds. He will thus get justice. His project miscarries; maddened,
+he throws himself under a passing train.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These three remarkable works, riddled by the Russian censor, so that
+the complete version has appeared only abroad, have recently been
+followed by two important stories: "Among the People" and "Matvey
+Kozhemyakine."
+
+With his accustomed power, Gorky shows us, in the first of these
+stories, the spread of socialism among the agricultural proletariat.
+He depicts village life with its pettiness and ignominy. The village
+is for the most part a backward place, hostile to everything that
+makes a breach in tradition. The hatching of socialism goes on
+slowly. From day to day, new obstacles, helped on by the ignorance
+of the peasants, hinder those who are trying to carry out their
+belief. Even the village guard, Semyon, pursues them with his
+hatred.
+
+But Igor Petrovich, the propagator of these new ideas, finds, in a
+few old friends and in a village woman who becomes his mistress,
+some precious helpers. Thanks to them, he gradually gets up a little
+circle of firm believers who gather in a cave in the woods. Every
+evening, they read, discuss, and dream of a better organization,
+out there in the cave. All would have gone well, if some of them had
+not betrayed the leader to the police. While being led to the city
+prison, the leader spoke to the soldiers who were escorting him:
+
+"The soldiers trembled as they clicked their bayonets; they silently
+listened to the legend of the generous earth which loves those who
+work it. Again, their red faces were covered with drops of melted
+snow; the drops ran down their cheeks like bitter tears of
+humiliation; they breathed heavily, they snuffled, and I felt that
+they kept walking a little faster, as if they wanted this very day
+to arrive in that fairy land.
+
+"We are no longer prisoners and soldiers; we are simply seven
+Russians. I do not forget the prison, but when I remember all that I
+lived through that summer and before that, my heart fills with joy,
+and I feel like crying out:
+
+"Rejoice, beloved Russian people! Your resurrection is close at
+hand!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Matvey Kozhemyakine" very brilliantly returns to Gorky's early
+manner. In this book no symbolic character interprets the bold
+thoughts of the author. It is simply a novel of Russian provincial
+life. Its simplicity does not exclude vigor, and it reminds us at
+times of Balzac.
+
+Young Matvey is the son of an old workingman who has become rich,
+thanks to his energy and dishonesty. He has grown up in a large
+house, adjoining a rope-yard, with his father and several servants.
+His mother, whom he never knew, left home shortly after his birth,
+and entered a convent in order to escape the torments of life.
+Later, Matvey's father marries a young girl, in order to provide a
+mother for his son, whom he loves dearly. But his new mother is not
+long in finding out the dreary life which she has to lead with the
+old man. In order to escape from the tedium of it, she listens to
+the interesting experiences of the wandering life of the porter
+Sazanov, and gives her unfaithful love in exchange.
+
+Unexpected circumstances disclose this shameful adultery to Matvey.
+Instead of revealing it to his father, he generously guards the
+secret. He even goes so far as to protect her from the fury of a
+workingman, named Savka, whom Sazanov's success has rendered bold.
+Through gratitude, and later through love, in the absence of
+Kozhemyakine, she becomes the mistress of her step-son. On his
+return, the father, finding out about this "liaison," spares his
+son, but beats his wife to death, and himself, mad with fury, falls,
+struck with apoplexy.
+
+All the newspapers in the world have attacked Gorky's way of living.
+As he is forced to remain away from his beloved country, the great
+writer has made his home in the little island of Capri, the air of
+which is propitious to his failing health. Moreover, its impressive
+scenery inspires his restless genius.
+
+Drunk with liberty, taken up with beauty, always ready to help a man
+who is in political and social difficulties, Gorky, from the depths
+of his peaceful retreat, wanders out over the world of ideas in
+search of truth, as formerly he used to wander over the earth in
+search of bread.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LEONID ANDREYEV
+
+
+Leonid Andreyev was born of a humble bourgeoise family in Orel, in
+1871. "It was there that I began my studies," he says. "I was not a
+good pupil; in the seventh form I was last in my class for a whole
+year, and I had especially poor reports as to my deportment. The
+most agreeable part of my schooling, which I still remember with
+pleasure, was the intervals between the lessons, the 'recesses,' and
+the times, rare as they were, when the instructor sent me from the
+class-room for inattention or lack of respect. In the long deserted
+halls a sonorous silence reigned which vibrated at the solitary
+noise of my steps; on all sides the closed doors, shutting in rooms
+full of pupils; a sunbeam--a free beam--played with the dust which
+had been raised during recess and which had not yet had time to
+settle; all of it was mysterious, interesting, full of a particular
+and secret meaning."
+
+Andreyev's father, who was a geometrician, died while he was still
+at school, and the family was without resources. The young man did
+not hesitate, however, in setting out for St. Petersburg, where he
+entered the university, hoping to gain a livelihood by giving
+lessons. But it was hard to secure what he wanted. "I knew what
+terrible misery was," Andreyev tells us; "during my first years in
+St. Petersburg I was hungry more than once, and sometimes I did not
+eat for two days."
+
+His first literary productions date from this sombre epoch. Andreyev
+gives us remarkably graphic details of this misery. One day, he gave
+a daily paper a story about the tribulations of an ever-hungry
+student: his own life!
+
+"I wept like a child in writing these pages," he confesses. "I had
+put down all of my sufferings. I was still affected by my great
+sadness when I took the manuscript to the editor. I was told to come
+back in a few weeks to find out whether it had been accepted. I
+returned with a light heart, keeping down my anguish in expectation
+of the decision. It came to me in the form of a loud burst of
+laughter from the editor, who declared that my work was absolutely
+worthless...."
+
+Nevertheless, he energetically pursued his studies, which he
+completed at the University of Moscow. "There," he tells us, "life
+was, from a material standpoint, less unbearable; my friends and
+the aid society came to my assistance; but I recall my life at the
+University of St. Petersburg with genuine pleasure; the various
+classes of students are there more differentiated and an individual
+can more easily find a sympathetic surrounding among such distinct
+groups."
+
+Some time after that, Andreyev, disgusted with life, attempted
+suicide. "In January, 1894," he writes, "I tried to shoot myself,
+but without any appreciable result. I was punished by religious
+penance, imposed upon me by authority, and a sickness of the heart
+which, although not dangerous, was persistent. During this time I
+made one or two equally unsuccessful literary attempts, and I gave
+myself up with success to painting, which I have loved since
+childhood; I then painted portraits to order for from 5 to 10
+rubles....
+
+"In 1897, I received my counsellor's degree and I took up that
+profession in Moscow. For want of time I did not succeed in getting
+any sort of a 'clientele'; in all, I pleaded but one civil case,
+which, however, I lost completely, and several gratuitous criminal
+cases. However, I was actively working in reporting these cases for
+an important paper."
+
+Finally, two strangely impressionistic stories: "Silence," and "He
+Was...," published in an important Petersburg review, brought the
+author into prominence. From that time, he devoted himself entirely
+to literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Andreyev is considered, to-day, as one of the most brilliant
+representatives of the new constellation of Russian writers, in
+which he takes a place immediately next to Tchekoff, whom he
+resembles in the melancholy tone of his work. In him, as in
+Tchekoff, the number of people who suffer from life, either crushed
+or mutilated by it, by far exceed the number of happy ones;
+moreover, the best of his stories are short and sketchy like those
+of Tchekoff. Andreyev is then, so to speak, his spiritual son. But
+he is a sickly son, who carries the melancholy element to its
+farthest limit. The grey tones of Tchekoff have, in Andreyev, become
+black; his rather sad humor has been transformed into tragic irony;
+his subtle impressionability into morbid sensibility. The two
+writers have had the same visions of the anomalies and the horrors
+of existence; but, where Tchekoff has only a disenchanted smile,
+Andreyev has stopped, dismayed; the sensation of horror and
+suffering which springs from his stories has become an obsession
+with him; it does not penetrate merely the souls of his heroes, but,
+as in Poe, it penetrates even the descriptions of nature.
+
+Thus, the "near and terrible" disk of the moon hovers over the earth
+like the "gigantic menace of an approaching but unknown evil"; the
+river congeals in "mute terror," and silence is particularly
+menacing. Night always comes "black and bad," and fills human hearts
+with shadows. When it falls, the very branches of the trees
+"contract, filled with terror." Under the influence of the
+disturbing sounds of the tocsin, the high linden-trees "suddenly
+begin to talk, only to become quiet again immediately and lapse into
+a sullen silence." The tocsin itself is animated. "Its distinct
+tones spread with rapid intensity. Like a herald of evil who has not
+the time to look behind him, and whose eyes are large with fright,
+the tocsin desperately calls men to the fatal mire."[9]
+
+ [9] This passage is a sort of a variation on the theme that Poe
+ has developed in a masterful way in his poem, "The Bells."
+
+Most of Andreyev's characters, like those of Dostoyevsky, are
+abnormal, madmen and neurasthenics in whom are distinguishable
+marked traces of degeneration and psychic perversion. They are
+beings who have been fatally wounded in their life-struggle, whose
+minds now are completely or partially powerless. Too weak to fight
+against the cruel exigencies of reality, they turn their thoughts
+upon themselves and naturally arrive at the most desolate
+conclusions, and commit the most senseless acts. Some, a prey to the
+mania of pride, despairing because of their weakness and their
+"nothingness," look--as does Serge Petrovich--for relief in suicide.
+Others, who have resigned themselves to their sad lives, become
+passive observers, become transformed into living corpses whose sole
+desire is peace; such a one is the hero of "At the Window." Others
+still instinctively choke in themselves the best tendencies of their
+characters and are passionately fond of futile and senseless
+amusements, by means of which they enjoy themselves like children,
+until a catastrophe makes them "come back to themselves." This is
+the idea of the original story called "The Grand Slam." In "The Lie"
+Andreyev depicts the pathological process in the soul of a man who,
+crushed by the falsehood of his own solitary existence, becomes
+insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and
+that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The
+Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world--his own thought.
+Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it,
+while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an
+end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point
+where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself
+whether he is insane. In the long and pathetic story, "The Life of a
+Priest," we are shown the disturbance of the religious feelings of a
+country priest who, although he has an ardent and strong soul, is
+crushed by his moral isolation among the ignorant people of a
+miserable village. It is again this moral isolation that is
+analyzed in "Silence," in which story it is the cause of a domestic
+tragedy. The same cause provokes a rupture between a father and a
+son in "The Obscure Distance," and brings with it in some way the
+death of the neurasthenic student.
+
+ [10] In the English translation this book is called "A Dilemma."
+
+In general, the stories of Andreyev, after passing through various
+catastrophes, lead the reader back to this theme,--the moral
+isolation of a human being, who feels that the world has become
+deserted, and life a game of shadows. The abyss which separates
+Andreyev's heroes from other men makes them weak, numb, and
+miserable. It seems, in fact, that there is no greater misfortune
+than for a man to feel himself alone in the midst of his
+fellow-creatures.
+
+Finally, in "The Gulf," a somewhat imaginary thesis is developed,
+based on the terrible vitality which certain vile instincts keep
+even in the purest and most innocent minds, while the story "He
+Was..." shows us the inside of a clinic, in which there are two
+dying men whose illusions of life persist till the supreme moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If we carefully study a few of Andreyev's characters we can more
+easily understand his feelings and his style. Here is, for
+instance, Serge Petrovich, a student. Although he is not very
+intelligent, he is above the average. His mind is preoccupied with
+all sorts of questions; he reads Nietzsche, he ponders over many
+things, but he does not know how to think for himself. The fact that
+there are people who can find a way to express themselves appears to
+him as an inaccessible ideal; while mediocre minds have no
+attraction for him at all. It is from this feeling that all his
+sufferings come. So "a horse, carrying a heavy burden, breathes
+hard, falls to the ground, but is forced to rise and proceed by
+stinging lashes from a whip."
+
+These lashes are the vision of the superman, of the one who
+rightfully possesses strength, happiness, and liberty. At times a
+thick mist envelops the thoughts of Serge Petrovich, but the light
+of the superman dispels this, and he sees his road before him as if
+it had been drawn or told him by another.
+
+Before his eyes there is a being called Serge Petrovich for whom all
+that makes existence happy or bitter, deep and human, remains a
+closed book. Neither religion nor morality, neither science nor art,
+exists for him. Instead of a real and ardent faith, he feels in
+himself a motley array of feelings. His habitual veneration of
+religious rites mingles with mean superstitions. He is not
+courageous enough to deny God, not strong enough to believe in Him.
+He does not love his fellow-men, and cannot feel the intense
+happiness of devoting himself to his fellow-creatures and even dying
+for them. But neither does he experience that hate for others which
+gives a man a terrible joy in his struggle with his fellow-men. Not
+being capable of elevating himself high enough or falling low enough
+to reign over the lives of men, he lives or rather vegetates with a
+keen feeling of his mediocrity, which makes him despair. And the
+pitiless words of Zarathustra ring in his ears: "If your life is not
+successful, if a venomous worm is gnawing at your heart, know that
+death will succeed." And Serge Petrovich, desperate, commits
+suicide.
+
+The hero of "At the Window" is quite different. This man has
+succeeded in building for himself a sort of fortress, "in which he
+retires, sheltered from life." Like Serge Petrovich, although not as
+often, he is tormented by restless thoughts, and, from time to time,
+he is obliged to defend his "fortress." But usually he is contented
+with watching life, that is to say, that part which he can see from
+his window. Nothing troubles the tranquillity of his mind, not even
+the desire to live like other men. One day, he speaks of his
+theories to a simple, uneducated young girl whom he thinks of
+marrying. She is astonished and stupefied by them. She perceives
+that he leads an insipid and morose life. Andrey Nikolayevich does
+not take into account or understand the stupefaction of the young
+girl.
+
+"This then is your life?" she asks, incredulously.
+
+"This is it. What more could you want?"
+
+"But it must be terribly monotonous to live in that way, apart from
+the world."
+
+"What good does one find in mankind? Nothing but tedium. When I am
+alone, I am my own master, but among men you never know what
+attitude to take to please them. They drag you into drunkenness,
+into gambling; then they denounce you to your superiors. I, however,
+love calmness and frankness. Some of them accept bribes and allow
+themselves to become corrupt; I do not like that.... I adore
+tranquillity."
+
+Moreover, he does not marry the young girl. He gives her up because
+he is afraid of the incumbrances that housekeeping will bring.
+
+In "The Grand Slam" four provincial "intellectuals" are locked up in
+the same fortress, and, by playing cards, they escape the terrible
+problems of a life which is inimical to them. Their existence has
+been passed among these cards, which, by a mysterious phenomenon,
+have become real living creatures to them. One of the players has
+dreamed all through his life of getting a grand slam, when, one
+evening, he sees he has the necessary cards in his hand. He has but
+to take one more card, the ace of spades, and his dream will be
+realized. But at the very moment when he is stretching forth his
+hand to take it, he falls down dead. His partners are terrified. One
+of them, a timorous and exact old man, named Jacob Ivanovich, is
+particularly struck. A thought comes to him; he quickly rises, after
+making sure that it was the ace of spades that the dead man was
+going to take, and cries:
+
+"But he will never know that he was going to get the ace of spades
+and a grand slam! Never.... Never...."
+
+"Then it appeared to Jacob Ivanovich that, up to this moment, he had
+never understood what death was. Now he understood, and what he saw
+was senseless, horrible, and irreparable!... The dead man would
+never know!"
+
+The poignant irony of this story is not unusual with Andreyev.
+
+It is again found in the short and symbolic story "The Laugh." A
+student, profiting by the fact that it is carnival time, disguises
+himself as a Chinaman and goes to the house of the girl he loves.
+The mute, immobile, and stupidly calm mask, and the whole "get-up"
+are so funny, that the unfortunate man rouses irresistible laughter
+wherever he goes. The young girl cannot help herself, and, while
+listening to his very touching and sincere declaration, which, at
+any other time, would have brought tears to her eyes, she bursts out
+laughing and cannot again become serious, although she realizes that
+a living and unhappy being is hidden under this impassive and
+foolish Chinaman's mask.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In "The Lie" we see a man who, by isolating himself from life, has
+lost the feeling of reality, and all capacity of discerning the true
+from the false. He suffers terribly from the feeling that something
+unknown is happening around him. This man, who would be ready to
+sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to know truth, guesses
+the lie that comes between him and the person who is dearest to him.
+He falls into a despair that soon turns to fury. In order to recover
+his calm, he begs the girl he loves, whom he suspects of having
+deceived him, to reveal the whole truth to him. But he cannot
+believe her protestations of innocence. One word bursts from his
+being, breaks forth from the depths of his soul: "Lies! Lies! Lies
+everywhere!"
+
+"In looking at her beautiful pure forehead," he writes, "I dreamed
+that truth was there, on the other side of that thin barrier, and I
+felt a senseless desire to break that barrier and at least to see
+the truth. Lower down, beneath her white breast, I heard the beating
+of her heart, and I had a mad desire to open her breast so that I
+could read, at least once, what there was at the bottom of her
+heart."
+
+He ends by killing that which he loved, and thinks that he is
+satisfied: he believes he has killed the lie.
+
+In "The Thought" we see the gradual development of insanity during
+the period when it is doubtful, when the will is almost entirely
+annihilated and replaced by a fixed idea, and when conscience is not
+entirely abolished. Dr. Kerzhenzev kills his friend, obeying a
+mental suggestion, which now forbids him to do it, now urges him on.
+Then, like the "half-insane" or those sick people who feign madness
+in order more easily to attain their end, this man suggests to
+himself that he is in reality insane. This idea gets a hold on him
+after the murder and fills his soul with mortal terror, the exposure
+of which forms the most supremely pathetic part of the whole story.
+All this drama of a foundering intelligence, complicated by bizarre
+contradictions, is developed with a penetrating power of analysis.
+
+Andreyev tells us that on the day of judgment the alienists are
+divided as to the insanity of Kerzhenzev. The story ends at this
+place. But the principal interest of the story does not lie in this
+or that solution of the problem, which is not mysterious, for the
+doctor is doubtlessly abnormal, and it is only as to the degree of
+insanity that there can be any question. The main interest lies in
+another direction, in the subtle analysis of this special mental
+condition, which is done with consummate art.
+
+This story had the honor of occupying an entire meeting of the
+psychiatrists attached to the Academy of Medicine of St. Petersburg.
+According to the report of Dr. Ivanov, the assembly was almost
+unanimous in declaring the murderer insane. Another psychiatrist,
+who thought he saw proofs of an abnormal mentality in all the
+stories of Andreyev, pronounced the same verdict against Dr.
+Kerzhenzev, in a meeting of doctors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All of priest Vassily Fiveyisky's life was weighed down by a cruel
+and enigmatic fatality,"--it is thus that the story, "The Life of a
+Pope," opens. "As if struck by an unknown malediction, he had from
+his youth been made to carry a heavy burden of sorrows, sickness and
+misfortunes; he was solitary among men as a planet is among planets;
+a peculiar and malevolent atmosphere surrounded him. Son of an
+obscure, patient, and submissive village priest, he also was patient
+and submissive, and he was a long time in recognizing the
+particular rancour of destiny. He fell rapidly and arose slowly.
+Twig by twig he restored his nest. Having become a priest, the
+husband of a good woman, the father of a son and a daughter, he
+thought that all was going well with him, that all was solidly
+established, and that he would remain thus forever. And he blessed
+God."
+
+But fate was always on the watch for him. It had showed him
+happiness only to take it away again. After seven years of
+prosperity, his little son is drowned one summer's day in the river.
+Death and nameless misfortunes again invade the home of Vassily. One
+does not live there any more, one prowls around gropingly in a
+mournful stupor. From morning till evening, his wife comes and goes,
+silent and indifferent to everything, as if she were looking for
+some one or something.
+
+In losing his son, poor Vassily has also lost his wife, his helpmate
+and friend, for the unfortunate woman takes to drink. The faith of
+the priest holds in this terrible trial. But his misery increases
+immeasurably. The vice of his wife, his own sick weakness, excite
+the meanness of the people. Insults have to be borne in silence,
+tears hidden. At home, the priest's wife has no rest. She has the
+idea that she can have another son who will take the place of the
+dead one and be a balm to her broken heart. In her alcoholic desire,
+a prey to savage fury, she demands that her husband gratify her
+desire.
+
+"Give him to me, Vassily! Give him back to me, I tell you...."
+
+At last her desire is realized: a son is born to her; but the child,
+conceived in madness, is born half-witted. The mother takes to drink
+again, and the despair of Vassily increases. One day the unfortunate
+woman hangs herself. The pope comes in, however, in time to save
+her; but now another noose has tightened itself about the priest's
+heart. One question oppresses him:
+
+"Why these sufferings? If God exists, and if God is love, how is
+such misery possible?"
+
+Vassily's faith trembles. He decides to leave his cassock, to fly,
+to put his idiot son out to board and to start life over again. This
+resolution relieves him. His wife breathes easier. It seems to him
+that she also can begin a new life. But fate does not loosen its
+reins.
+
+One day, on coming back from the harvest, he finds his house burned.
+His wife, in a drunken stupor, had probably set fire to it. She is
+dying of her burns. Vassily can only sigh. This new misfortune does
+not put an end to the priest, but rather inspires him. His old faith
+comes back, he sees in this supreme test a predestination. He kneels
+down and cries:
+
+"I believe! I believe! I believe!"
+
+From that time on he devotes himself entirely to prayer and
+macerations. He lives in perpetual ecstasy. The people around him
+understand nothing of this change and are astounded. Every one of
+them is waiting for something unusual. And their waiting is not in
+vain. One day, when he is delivering the funeral oration of a
+workingman, who has been suddenly killed, Vassily abruptly
+interrupts the ceremony, approaches the corpse, which has begun to
+decay, and addresses it thus three times:
+
+"I tell you: arise!"
+
+But the dead man does not move. Then the priest looks at this inert
+and deformed corpse. He notices the fetid odor that arises from it,
+the odor of the slow but sure decomposition, and he has a sort of
+sudden revelation. The scepticism which, for a long time, has been
+brooding in his heart suddenly is transformed into absolute
+negation, and addressing himself to Him in whom he had believed,
+Vassily cries out:
+
+"Thou wishest to deceive me? Then why did I believe? Why hast Thou
+kept me in servitude, in captivity, all of my life? No free thought!
+No feeling! No hope! All with Thee! All for Thee! Thee alone! Well,
+appear! I am waiting! I am waiting!... Ah! Thou dost not want to?
+Very well...."
+
+He does not finish. In a burst of savage madness he rushes forth
+from the now empty church. He rushes straight ahead and finally
+falls in the middle of the road. Death has put an end to his
+miseries.
+
+"Silence" also shows us a priest, stubborn in his prejudices. This
+man, Father Ignatius by name, is a sort of rude and authoritative
+Hercules. All tremble before his stern air, except his daughter, who
+has decided to continue her studies in St. Petersburg, against the
+will of her father. Coming back to her home after a long absence,
+she wanders about, sad and silent. For days at a time she wanders
+about, pale and melancholy, speaking little, seeking solitude. She
+hides what oppresses her; she keeps her secret from all. One night,
+she throws herself under a train, taking her secret with her.
+
+Her grief-stricken mother gets a paralytic stroke which transforms
+her into a sort of living corpse. The father, crushed by these two
+catastrophes, which have destroyed all the joy of his life, becomes
+the prey of a singular mental state: his conscience revolts against
+the severe maxims and the pitiless prejudices that he has always
+defended. Tender love, which he has hitherto concealed under his
+pride, now softens him; he needs affection, and a vague feeling
+suggests to him that he himself is to blame for all of these
+misfortunes. His past life, his daughter, and his wife appear to
+him as so many enigmas which raise anguishing questions in his
+heart. He calls out, but no one answers. A death-like silence has
+invaded the presbytery, and this silence is especially dreadful near
+the paralyzed wife, who is dying without speaking. Even her eyes do
+not betray a single thought. Gradually, a terrible desire to know
+why his daughter committed suicide seizes him. At twilight, softly,
+in his bare feet, he goes up to the room of his dead daughter and
+speaks to her. He entreats her to tell him the truth, to confess to
+him why she was always so sad, why she has killed herself. Only the
+silence answers him. Then he rushes to the cemetery, where his
+daughter's tomb irresistibly attracts him; again he implores, begs,
+threatens. For a moment he thinks that a vague answer arises from
+the earth; he places his ear on the rough turf.
+
+"Vera, tell me!" he repeats in a loud and steady voice.
+
+"And now Father Ignatius feels with terror that something
+sepulchrally cold is penetrating his ear and congealing his brain;
+it is Vera, who is continually answering him with the same prolonged
+silence. This silence becomes more and more sinister and restless,
+and when Father Ignatius arises with an effort, his face is as livid
+as death."
+
+Crushed by the same blind destiny which annihilated the powerful
+personality of Father Ignatius, the piteous and tearful hero of "The
+Marseillaise" moves us even more than does the old priest. The poor
+fellow cannot grasp the reason for the ferocity of stupid fate,
+which unrelentingly preys upon him. Arrested by mistake as a
+revolutionist and condemned to deportation, he becomes an object of
+derision to his comrades. However, gradually, he finds the strength
+to share the severe privations of his companions who have sacrificed
+themselves to their ideal of justice and liberty. And, on his
+death-bed, he is elated by all that he has endured; he dreams of
+liberty, which, up to this time, had been indifferent to him, and
+asks them to sing the Marseillaise over his grave.
+
+"He died, and we sang the Marseillaise. Our young and powerful
+voices thundered forth this majestic song of liberty, accompanied by
+the noise of the ocean which carried on the crests of its waves
+towards 'dear France,' pale terror and blood-red hope.
+
+"It became our standard forever, the picture of this nonentity with
+the hare's body and the man's heart.
+
+"On your knees to the hero, friends and comrades!
+
+"We sang. The guns, with their creaking locks, were pointed
+menacingly at us; the steel points of the bayonets were pointed at
+our hearts. The song resounded louder and louder, with increasing
+joy. Held in the friendly hands of the 'strugglers,' the black
+coffin slowly sank into the earth.
+
+"We sang the Marseillaise!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two main characters of "The Gulf," a student and a school-girl,
+are walking and discussing rather deep things, such as immortality
+and the beauty of pure and noble love. They feel some sadness in
+speaking about these things, but love appears more and more luminous
+to them. It rises before their eyes, as large as the world, bursting
+forth like the sun and marvelously beautiful, and they know that
+there is nothing so powerful as love.
+
+"You could die for the woman you loved?" asked Zinochka.
+
+"Of course," replies Nemovetsky unhesitatingly, in a frank and
+sincere voice, "and you?"
+
+"I too!" She remains pensive a moment. "To die for the one you love,
+that is a great happiness! Would that that were to be my destiny!"
+
+Gradually night falls. Nemovetsky and his companion lose their way
+in the woods; they finally arrive in a clearing, where three
+filthy-looking men are seated about an empty bottle. These
+intoxicated men, whose wicked eyes light up with a brutal envy of
+enjoyment and love of destruction, try to quarrel with Nemovetsky,
+and one of them ends by striking him full in the face with his fist.
+Zinochka runs away. His heart full of terror, Nemovetsky can hear
+the shrieks of his friend, whom the vagabonds have caught. Then a
+feeling of emptiness comes over him, and he loses consciousness. Two
+of the men throw him into a ravine.
+
+An hour later, Nemovetsky regains consciousness; he gets up with
+great pain, for he is badly wounded. He remembers what has happened.
+Fright and despair seize him. He begins to run and call for help
+with all his strength, at the same time looking among all the
+bushes, when at his feet, he sees a dim, white form. It is his
+companion, who lies there motionless. He falls down on his knees and
+touches her. His hand encounters a nude body, damp and cold, but
+still living. It seems to grow warm at his touch. He pictures to
+himself with abominable clearness what the men have done. A feeling
+of strange strength circulates in his members. On his knees in front
+of the young girl, in the obscurity of the forest, he tries to bring
+her back to life, calling her sweet names, caressing her hair,
+rubbing her cold hands.
+
+"With infinite precautions, but also with deep tenderness, he tries
+to cover her with the shreds of her torn dress, and the double
+sensation of the cloth and the nude body are as keen as a sword and
+as inconceivable as madness. And now he cries for help, now he
+presses the sweet and supple body to his breast. His unconscious
+abandonment unchains the savageness of his passion. He whispers in a
+low voice, 'I love you, I love you.' And throwing himself violently
+upon her lips, he feels his teeth entering her flesh.
+
+"Then, in the sadness and impetuousness of the kiss, the last bit of
+his mind gives way. It seems to him that the lips of the young girl
+tremble. For an instant, a terrible terror fills his soul and he
+sees a horrible gulf yawning at his feet.... And he hurls himself
+into the mad throes of his insane passion."
+
+The account of the collegian, which forms the plot of the story "In
+the Fog," is even more daring in its realism. It actually oppresses
+the reader, not so much by certain details that provoke disgust, as
+by the analysis of the sufferings of an unfortunate young man, whose
+mind is pure, but who has let himself be dragged into excesses which
+are followed by a sickness of ill name. Severely reprimanded by his
+father, the poor young fellow, overcome with sorrow, the victim of
+an instinct which he could not conquer, ends his days in a most
+horrible way: one evening, he leaves home and goes out into the
+streets in an adventuresome spirit. A half-intoxicated prostitute
+touches him in passing; he follows her. As they go along, a
+conversation starts up, and the young man, although she is repugnant
+to him, goes home with her. Once in her room, a violent quarrel
+starts up and he kills her, and then commits suicide.
+
+These two stories, especially "The Gulf," caused many lively
+discussions on the part of the public, and then in the newspapers.
+Mr. Bourenine, the well-known critic of the "Novoye Vremya," says
+that he received from several correspondents a series of letters
+which blamed Andreyev vehemently and requested that this "skunk" of
+literature be called to order according to his deserts. These
+protestations were reenforced by an ardent letter from Countess
+Tolstoy, the wife of the great author, who reproached Andreyev for
+having so complacently painted such sombre pictures, with such low
+and violent scenes, all of which tended to pervert youth. The
+writers were not the only ones to take offence. Two important
+Russian newspapers organized a sort of inquiry, and they published
+many of the answers received from the young people of both sexes,
+but these were all favorable to Andreyev.
+
+In truth, all these judgments are too passionate. It is true that
+"most of the critics have understood Andreyev only in a superficial
+manner," as Tolstoy rightfully asserted. The double impression, for
+instance, produced by "The Gulf," is the result of a simple
+misunderstanding. Those who think that the adventure of young
+Nemovetsky is a slice of life and characterizes certain
+psychological states, have, without a doubt, the right to judge this
+story as an indiscretion, and to reproach the author with a
+deviation from morality; but Andreyev has not taken his hero from
+reality; he has not tried to give us a picture of manners, but has
+expressed an idea, born in his brain under the influence of the
+philosophy of Nietzsche. It illustrates the terrible power and the
+brutality of a dormant instinct lurking in the purest minds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Besides, "The Gulf" and "In the Fog" are compositions which are
+exceptional in the work of Andreyev. The idea that he mostly
+presents is not the power of bestial instincts, but rather the
+indestructible vitality of human feelings and aspirations towards a
+better existence, which sometimes comes to light among the most
+miserable and depraved people, and even among those who are in the
+most abject material condition.
+
+In the destiny of these beings, there are, however, rays of hope.
+The slightest incident serves to transform them; suddenly their
+hearts begin to beat happily, tears of tenderness moisten their
+eyes, they vaguely feel the existence of something luminous and
+good. A profound sensibility, an ardent love of life bursts forth
+in their souls. This sensibility, this attachment to existence, form
+the theme of four touching stories: "He Was," "Petka in the
+Country," "The Cellar," and "The Angel."
+
+The action of "He Was" takes place in a hospital, where a deacon, a
+foolishly debonair man, who is attached to his stunted existence,
+and a pessimistic merchant, thoroughly satiated, are at the point of
+death. The deacon has an incurable sickness, and his days are
+numbered. But he does not know it, and speaks with enthusiasm of the
+pilgrimage he is going to make after he is cured, and of the
+apple-tree in his garden, which he expects will bear a great deal of
+fruit. The fourth Friday of Lent he is taken into the amphitheatre.
+He comes back, very much moved and making the sign of the cross.
+
+"Ah! my brothers," he says, "I am all upset. The doctor made me sit
+down in a chair and said to the students: 'Here you see a sick man.'
+Ah! how painful it was to hear him add: 'He was a deacon!'"
+
+"The unfortunate man stopped, and continued in a choking voice: '"He
+was a deacon," the doctor told them. He told them the story of my
+whole life, he even spoke about my wife. It was terrible! One would
+have said that I was dead already, and that he was talking over my
+coffin.'
+
+"And as the deacon is thus speaking, all of the others see clearly
+that he is going to die. They see it as clearly as if death itself
+was standing there, at the foot of the bed...."
+
+The merchant is a very different sort of man: he does not believe in
+God; he has had enough of life and is not afraid of death. All of
+his strength he has spent unnecessarily, without any appreciable
+result, without joy. When he was young he had stolen meat and fruit
+from his master. Caught in the act, he had been beaten, and he
+detested those who had struck him. Later on, having become rich, he
+crushed the poor with his fortune and scorned those who, on falling
+into his hands, answered his hate with scorn. Finally, old age and
+sickness had come; people now began to steal from him, and he, in
+turn, beat those whom he caught terribly. And thus his life had been
+spent; it had been nothing but a series of transgressions and
+hatreds, where the flames of desire, in dying out, had left nothing
+but cold ashes in his soul. He refuses to believe that any one can
+love this existence, and he disdainfully looks at the sallow face of
+the deacon, and mutters: "Fool!" Then, he looks at the third man in
+the room, a young student who is asleep. This student never fails to
+embrace his fiancee, a pretty young girl, whenever she comes to see
+him. As he looks the merchant, more bitterly than before, repeats:
+"Fool!"
+
+But death approaches; and this man who thinks himself superior and
+who scorns the deacon because he dreams of light and the sun, now
+feels disturbed in his turn. In making up the balance-sheet of this
+existence which, up to this time, he believed he hated, he remembers
+a stream of warm light which, during the day, used to come in
+through the window and gild the ceiling; and he remembers how the
+sun used to shine on the banks of the Volga, near his home. With a
+terrible sob, beating his hands on his breast, he falls back on his
+bed, right against the deacon, whom he hears silently weeping.
+
+"And thus they wept together. They wept for the sun which they were
+never to see again, for the apple-tree with fruit which they were
+not going to eat, for the shadow that was to envelop them, for dear
+life and cruel death!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Petka--the hero of "Petka in the Country"--is, at ten years of age,
+a barber's apprentice. He does not yet smoke as does his thirteen
+year old friend Nicolka, whom he wants to equal in everything.
+Petka's principal occupation, in the rare moments when the shop is
+empty, is to look out of the window at the poorly dressed men and
+women who are sitting on the benches of the boulevard. In the
+meantime, Nicolka goes through the streets of ill fame, and comes
+back and tells Petka all his experiences. The precocious knowledge
+of Nicolka astonishes the child, whose one ambition is to be like
+his friend one of these days. While waiting, he dreams of a vague
+country, but he cannot guess its location nor its character. And no
+one comes to take him there. From morning till evening he always
+hears the same jerky cry: "Some water, boy!"
+
+But one morning his mother, the cook Nadezhda, tells the barber that
+her master and mistress have told her to take Petka to the country
+for a few days. Then begins for him an enchanted existence. He goes
+in bathing four times a day, fishes, goes on long walks, climbs
+trees, rolls in the grass. When, at the end of a week, the barber
+claims his apprentice, the child does not understand: he has
+completely forgotten the city and the dirty barber-shop; and the
+return is very sad. Again is heard the jerky cry: "Some water, boy!"
+followed by a menacing murmur of "Come! Come!" if the child spills
+any of the water, or has not understood the orders.
+
+"And, during the night, in the place where Petka and Nicolka sleep
+side by side, a weak little voice speaks of the country, of things
+that do not exist, of things that no one has ever heard of or
+seen!..."
+
+"The Cellar" is inhabited by absolutely fallen people. A baby has
+just been born there. With down-bent necks, their faces
+unconsciously lighted up by strangely happy smiles, a prostitute and
+a miserable drunkard look at the child. This little life, "weak as a
+fire in the steppe," calls to them vaguely, and it seems to promise
+them something beautiful, clear, and immortal. Among the inhabitants
+of this cellar, the most unfortunate of all, is a man named
+Kizhnakov; he is pale, sickly, worn by work, almost devoured by
+suffering and alcohol; death already lies in wait for him. The most
+terrible thing for this man is the necessity of having to begin to
+live again each day. He would like to lie down all day and think of
+suicide under the heap of rags that serve him as a covering. He
+would like best to have some one come up back of him, and shoot him.
+He fears his own voice and his own thoughts. And it is on him that
+the baby produces the deepest impression. Since the birth of the
+child Kizhnakov does not sleep any more; he tries to protect himself
+from the cold, and weeps softly, without sadness and without
+convulsions, like those who have pure and innocent hearts, like
+children.
+
+"'Why do I weep?' he asks himself.
+
+"Not finding a suitable answer, he replies: 'It is thus....'
+
+"And the meaning of his words is so deep that a new flood of tears
+come to the eyes of the man whose life is so sad and solitary."
+
+We find the same theme again in "The Angel." A child who also lives
+in a cellar comes back from a Christmas-tree; he brings with him a
+toy, and a pretty little wax angel, which he shows to his father.
+The latter has seen better days, but in the last few years he has
+been sick with consumption, and now he is awaiting death, silent and
+continually exasperated by the sight of social injustice. However,
+the delight of the child infects the father, and both of them have a
+feeling "of something that joins all hearts into one, and does away
+with the abyss which separates man from man, and makes him so
+solitary, unfortunate, and weak." The poor dying man seems to hear a
+voice from this better world, where he once lived and from which he
+had been sent forever.
+
+But these are only the dreams of a dying man, the last rays of light
+of the life which is being extinguished. The ray, penetrating this
+sick soul, is like the weak sunlight which passes through the dirty
+windows of a dark hovel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his two stories, "The Stranger" and "The Obscure Future,"
+Andreyev shows us two men of entirely different character, animated
+by generous feelings and a firm will. One of them, a young student,
+being disgusted with the miseries of Russian life and having decided
+to expatriate himself, suddenly changes his mind, as a result of the
+patriotism of one of his friends, a Servian, named Raiko. He makes
+it his duty never to leave his country, although life there is so
+terrible and hopeless. There is, in this new feeling, an immense joy
+and a terrible sadness. The other, the hero of the second story,
+having one day expressed to his father the hatred he has for the
+bourgeois life that he is leading, leaves his family, who love him,
+in order to penetrate the "obscure future."
+
+Evidently, these are people who are fitted to struggle. However,
+these strugglers, so infrequent in the work of Andreyev, have, in
+spite of all, something sickly and savage in them; instead of real
+fighting courage, they possess only extreme audaciousness, mystical
+rapture, or nervous exaltation. The "obscure future" toward which
+their eyes are turned is not lighted up by the rays of faith and
+hope.
+
+The question is whether Andreyev himself believes in the triumph of
+the elements of life over the elements of death, the horror of which
+he excels in portraying for us. It is in the following manner that
+he expresses himself in one of his essays entitled, "Impressions of
+the Theatre": "In denying everything, one arrives immediately at
+symbols. In refuting life, one is but an involuntary apologist. I
+never believe so much in life as when I am reading the father of
+pessimism, Schopenhauer! As a result, life is powerful and
+victorious!... It is truth that always triumphs, and not falsehood;
+it is truth which is at the basis of life, and justifies it. All
+that persists is useful; the noxious element must disappear sooner
+or later, will inevitably disappear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What, then, constitutes the essence of Andreyev's talent is an
+extreme impressionability, a daring in descriptions of the negative
+sides of reality, melancholy moods and the torments of existence. As
+he usually portrays general suffering and sickness rather than
+definite types, his heroes are mostly incarnations and symbols. The
+very titles of some of his stories indicate the abstract character
+of his work. Such are: "Silence," "The Thought," and "The Lie." In
+this respect he has carried on the work of Poe, whose influence on
+him is incontestable. These two writers have in common a refined and
+morbid sensibility, a predilection for the horrible and a passion
+for the study of the same kind of subjects,--solitude, silence,
+death. But the powerful fantasy of the American author, which does
+not come in touch with reality, wanders freely through the whole
+world and through all the centuries of history. His heroes take
+refuge in half-crumbled castles, they look at the reader from the
+top of craggy rocks, whither their love of solitude has led them;
+even death itself is not a repulsive skeleton, but rather a majestic
+form, full of grandiose mystery. Andreyev, on the other hand, but
+rarely breaks the bounds which unite him to reality. His heroes are
+living people, who act, and whose banal life ends with a banal
+death. This realism and this passionate love of truth make the
+strength and the beauty of all his work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A certain harmony between the imaginative and the real element is
+characteristic of the best of Andreyev's productions, especially his
+last stories: "The Red Laugh," "The Governor," "The Shadows," and
+"The Seven Who Were Hanged."
+
+"The Red Laugh" is the symbol, the incarnation, of the bloody and
+implacable cynicism of war. The psychologist of the mysterious has,
+in these pages, recorded the terrifying aspects of the Manchurian
+campaign, which one could not have foreseen in all of its horror. He
+has shown in a lasting manner the poor human creature torn from his
+home, debased to the role of a piece of mechanism. Not knowing where
+he is being led to, he goes, making murderous gestures, the meaning
+of which he does not know, without even having the illusory
+consolation of possible personal bravery, being killed by the shots
+of an invisible enemy, or, what is worse, being killed by the shots
+of his own comrades--and all of this, automatically, stupidly. The
+feeling of terror, the somewhat mystical intuition of events which,
+at times, seem to be paradoxes in the other works of Andreyev, are
+perfectly adapted to this terribly real representation of the
+effects of war.
+
+The inner drama which Andreyev analyzes in "The Governor" makes a
+bold contrast with the violent pages of "The Red Laugh," the savage
+powers of which attain the final limits of horror.
+
+The governor has during his whole life been a loyal and strict
+servant of the Tsar. On the day of an uprising he mercilessly beat
+the enemies of his master; he blindly accomplished what he thought
+was his duty. But, since that bloody day, a new and unceasing voice
+speaks in his conscience. The irreparable act has forever isolated
+him from his fellow-creatures, and even from his friends who
+congratulate him upon his fine conduct. A stranger to all that is
+happening around him, he is left alone to fight with his conscience,
+which soon crushes him with all the weight of remorse. He knows that
+he has been condemned by a revolutionary tribunal. A young girl who
+is a stranger to him writes him a compassionate letter: "You are
+going to be killed," she says, "and that will be justice; but I have
+great pity for you." This discerning and youthful sympathy
+penetrates his heart, which finally opens--alas, too late,--to
+justice and pity.
+
+This marks the beginning of a terrible agony. The governor makes no
+effort to escape from the fatal judgment. Always alone, he
+contemplates his terrible distress and awaits the coming of the
+judiciary. He feels that he has incurred universal blame, and at
+times he comes to wish for death, which surprises him suddenly as he
+is turning the corner of a street:
+
+"The whole thing was short and simple, like a scene from a
+moving-picture play. At a cross-ways, close by a muddy spot, a
+hesitating voice called to the governor:
+
+"'Your honor!'
+
+"'What?'
+
+"He stopped and turned his head: two men who had come from behind a
+wall were crossing the street, and were shuffling along in the mud
+towards him. One of them had in his left hand a piece of folded
+paper; his other hand was in his pocket.
+
+"And immediately, the governor knew that death had come; and they
+knew that the governor knew.
+
+"While keeping the paper in his left hand the unknown man took a
+revolver out of his pocket with difficulty.
+
+"The governor glanced about him; he saw a dirty and deserted square,
+with bits of grass growing in the mud, and a wall. But what did it
+matter, it was too late! He gave a short but deep sigh, and stood
+erect again, fearless, but without defiance.... He fell, with three
+shots in his body."
+
+This drama of conscience is set forth with admirable sureness of
+analysis, and the author has been able to represent with impressive
+intensity the mysterious fatality which demands the death of the
+guilty one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is this same fatality, under whose hand all men are equal, which
+makes the hero of "The Shadows," a young terrorist who has taken
+refuge in a house of ill-fame, obey the strange desire of his
+bed-companion.
+
+"Stay with me!" cries the young girl, in whom is incarnated his
+destiny, at the moment that he is going to leave the establishment
+in order to escape from the spies who are following him. "You are an
+honest man! And I've been waiting five years to meet an honest
+man.... Stay with me, because you belong to me."
+
+After a terrible internal combat the man yields to this unknown will
+which is oppressing him. A traitor to his party, he decides to
+become the companion of this painted girl, with whom he then gets
+drunk.
+
+"As long as I am in the shadows," he murmurs with the sombre
+resignation of an Andreyev hero, "I might as well remain there."
+
+At dawn, the police come to arrest him. And while his friend tries
+desperately to resist the agents of the force, he contemplates the
+brutal scene with an ironic smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Seven Who Were Hanged," written in 1908, right after the
+executions at Kherson and Warsaw, shows us pictures of terror and
+fright aptly described by the genius of Andreyev. This work has
+prodigious color and strength, and one experiences deep emotions on
+reading it. Five terrorists, captured at the very moment when they
+are going to assassinate a minister, and two criminals, are
+condemned to be hanged on the same day. The writer shows them to us
+tortured by the most horrible anguish, that which immediately
+precedes death. The word "madness" appears on every page: mystical
+madness of hallucination that hears music and voices, such is that
+of the young revolutionary Moussya; then there is the brutal madness
+of her comrades Kashirine and Golovine, who are ready to scream with
+terror; the madness of the victims, the frenzy of the executioners.
+
+The night before the execution the prisoners are visited by their
+relatives. The farewell which Serge Golovine takes of his family is
+rightly considered one of the most poignant and most cleverly
+constructed scenes that Andreyev has ever written.
+
+Followed by his mother, who totters along, Serge's father, a retired
+colonel, enters the room where visitors are received. Serge does not
+know that the colonel spent the whole night in preparing for this
+meeting. He has told his wife what to do: embrace her son, keep from
+crying, and say nothing. But the unhappy mother in the presence of
+her son cannot control her emotions; her eyes are strained and she
+breathes faster and faster.
+
+"Don't torture him!" commands the colonel.
+
+Several stupid and insignificant words are exchanged in order to
+hide the terrible suffering that they all are going through. The
+visit ends: the parents must bid their son good-bye forever. The
+mother gives her son a short kiss, then she shakes her head and
+murmurs, trembling:
+
+"'No, it is not that! It is not that!'
+
+"'Good-bye, Serge,' says his father.
+
+"They shake hands, and give each other a brief but hearty kiss.
+
+"'You...' begins Serge.
+
+"'What's that?' asks his father in a jerky voice.
+
+"'No, not like that. No, no! What was I going to say?' repeats his
+mother, shaking her head.
+
+"She was again seated, trembling.
+
+"'You...' continues Serge.
+
+"Suddenly, his face took on a pitiful expression, and he made a
+grimace like a child. The tears then came to his eyes.
+
+"'Father, you are a strong man!'
+
+"'What are you saying? What are you saying?' the colonel cries,
+frightened.
+
+"Then, as if he had been struck, the colonel's head sank down upon
+his son's shoulder. And they kissed each other, again and again, the
+one with white hair and the other with the prisoner's 'capote.'
+
+"'And I?' a hoarse voice brusquely asked.
+
+"They looked: the mother was standing, her head thrown back, and she
+was watching them with anger, almost hate.
+
+"'What is the matter, dear?' cried the colonel.
+
+"'And I?' she repeated. 'You two kiss each other, and I? You are
+men, aren't you? And I?'
+
+"'Mother!'
+
+"And Serge threw himself into his mother's arms....
+
+"The last words of the colonel were:
+
+"'I consecrate you to death, my boy! Die with courage, like a
+soldier!'"
+
+These few lines retrace one of the thousands of daily dramas which
+compose modern Russian history. The work of Andreyev brings to us a
+sad vibrant echo of the sobs which ring out in Russian dungeons. And
+this faithful portrayal of events, events so frequent that they no
+longer move us from our indifference, when we find the echo of them
+in the press, will raise in the conscience of Andreyev's readers a
+cry of horror and pity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is principally in the dramas which he has written in the last few
+years[11] that Andreyev has developed with most force and clearness
+his favorite themes: the fear of living and dying, the madness of
+believing in free-will, and the nonsense of life, the weakness and
+vanity of which he depicts for us.
+
+ [11] Mention should be made of some of Andreyev's other dramas:
+ "To the Stars," "Anfissa," "Gaudeamus," and "Sava," plays of
+ uneven value, but with a strength of observation and analysis
+ which is not inferior to that shown in some of his best stories.
+
+The first of these works to appear was "The Life of Man," which is a
+tragic illustration of this pessimism.
+
+When the curtain rises, "some one in grey," holding a torch, informs
+the audience that Man is about to be born. From this time on, his
+life, lighted like a lamp, will burn until death extinguishes it.
+And Man will live, docile and obedient to the orders that come to
+him from On-High, through the intermediary of this "some one," whom
+he does not know. Each act of the play represents a period in the
+life of Man. In the first act, Man has acquired riches and glory,
+and is found feasting with his friends in his sumptuous home. The
+guests are enchanted with their host, whom they envy. But happiness
+is a fugitive shadow; it soon betrays the man, who becomes poor,
+loses his son, falls into the most abject misery, and dies in a
+filthy and infected cellar, surrounded by vile beggars, while the
+torch, held by "some one in grey," begins to grow weaker, and then
+dies out. And the man, conscious of his powerlessness to conquer
+fate, and conscious of his weakness in face of the mysterious "some
+one in grey," confounds in the same malediction God, Satan,
+Fatality, and Life, who have united to annihilate him.
+
+The themes of the "King of Famine" and "Black Masks" offer a certain
+analogy to the theme of "The Life of Man."
+
+From the top of a belfry the "King of Famine," in company with
+"Time" and "Death," incites a workingmen's revolt. He inspires them
+with an absolute certainty of victory, although he can see that the
+revolt will be quelled and the rebels crushed. Events do not delay,
+in fact, to verify the prophecy of the monarch. Locked up, the
+leaders of the revolt are condemned to death. The scene of judgment
+in the last act is one of the finest in the play. On one side are
+seated the sad and dull judges; on the other, the elegant public,
+which, with a feeling of fear and disgust, gazes at the unfortunates
+whom the King of Famine has robbed of almost all human semblance.
+And in this play, also, Death reaps a bountiful harvest.
+
+"Black Masks" is the study of a pathological case which Andreyev has
+dramatized after the fashion of de Maupassant's "The Horla."
+
+The Duke Lorenzo, young, noble, and the owner of a magnificent
+palace, is getting ready to receive his guests, to whom he is
+giving, on this evening, a masked ball. The masks arrive: they are
+all black, and all look alike. They all crowd around Lorenzo, whom
+this funereal sort of masquerade bothers extremely. He cannot find
+his wife among the guests. In fact, he does not recognize any of
+them until, to cap the climax, he meets his double, fights with him
+and dies, without being able to discern who is the real Lorenzo.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At times, Andreyev tries to find the justification of life, and
+looks for it in mysticism. He then expounds a doctrine, according to
+which, truth is individual and perhaps conceived by each man,
+thanks to direct intuition. Such is the mystical truth which the
+author tries to affirm in "Anathema."
+
+The play opens with a scene between Anathema, the incarnation of
+Satan, and "He who guards the gates," behind which is the mystery of
+eternity. Anathema entreats the Guardian to give him access. But it
+is in vain that Anathema flatters and insults him; finally, Anathema
+declares that he will choose from among mankind a poor Jew, named
+David Leiser, will enrich him and, in order to prove the absolute
+nonsense of life, will make this man a living protestation against
+the work of Him who knows all. Disguised as the lawyer Nullius,
+Anathema comes down to earth and gives millions to David. The
+latter, the best of men, distributes his riches among the poor. But
+the beggars become more and more numerous, and soon David finds that
+he is as poor as he was before the visit of Anathema.
+
+In the meantime, the crowd of paupers, always increasing, ask more
+money from David; they demand miracles from this man, whose goodness
+has made him a saint, a superman, in their eyes. They bring him
+corpses and ask him to resuscitate them. David flees; the crowd
+follows and stones him to death. But, through his love for his
+fellow-men, David has acquired immortality, as "He who guards the
+gates" tells Anathema, when, in the last act, the evil archangel,
+beaten, returns to lie on the threshold of the inconceivable
+mysterious.
+
+This admirable play, born of a philosophical conception which
+relates it to Goethe's "Faust," has been received with particular
+interest. Andreyev, in writing it, has come very near to solving the
+question of the meaning of life, and its justification. And, to the
+person who ponders a while over this work, it will appear that it is
+not Anathema who entreats "Him who guards the gates" to reveal the
+mystery, but it is Andreyev himself, who, carried away by the force
+of his genius, has thrown himself, as if at an invincible wall,
+against this pitiless guardian, the guardian of the solution of the
+enigma of life.
+
+While "Anathema" is an abstract character, whose form resembles more
+an algebraic formula than a living process of human relations,
+another of Andreyev's plays, "The Love of the Student," written a
+short time before "Anathema," gives us a little picture of customs,
+alert and painted with the touch of a master.
+
+Gloukortzev, a young student, falls in love with a young girl whom
+her mother forces to become a prostitute. Gloukortzev, young and
+inexperienced, has not the slightest suspicion, till the young girl
+herself reveals to him the horrible truth. And, perhaps for the
+first time in his life, the gulf of necessity, toward which fate
+drives men, opens before him. He sees with horror that he cannot
+come to the rescue of the girl he loves, because he is poor himself.
+He cannot even buy her some food, when she tells him that she has
+eaten nothing since the night before. Placed before the absolute
+bare reality of life, Gloukortzev does not know what to do, and his
+comrades, good and upright fellows like himself, have not the means
+to help him.
+
+Several very successful scenes, in which the author blends the
+tragic with the comic, deserve, in this brief analysis, special
+attention. In the first act, there is a students' picnic at which
+Olga and Gloukortzev, still full of happiness, are present. The
+spectator is drawn by personal sympathy to the student Onoufry, a
+good fellow, always drunk, who makes fun of others and himself. We
+see him again in the second act, when Gloukortzev finds out about
+Olga's life. The poignant scene between the poor girl and her lover
+is heightened and softened by the arrival of the students, to whom
+Gloukortzev tells his sorrow. The last two acts take place in Olga's
+home. The mother brings her daughter a rich "client." And, in the
+next room, Gloukortzev suffers terribly, because he knows that his
+beloved is still leading an infamous life. In the same room, in the
+fourth act, we are present at an orgy, during which the student
+quarrels with an officer who has come to spend the night with Olga.
+But Onoufry, interfering in time, prevents an affray the issue of
+which would probably have been fatal. When the curtain falls,
+Gloukortzev, intoxicated, is weeping; at his side is Olga, also
+weeping, while Onoufry and the officer are singing: "The days of our
+lives are as short as the life of a wave."
+
+This drama, as well as most of Andreyev's plays, has been produced
+with great success in Russia and also in Europe.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+DMITRY MEREZHKOVSKY
+
+
+Unlike Gorky, Andreyev, and Tchekoff, Merezhkovsky was brought up in
+the midst of comfort and elegance; he received a correct and careful
+education; fate was solicitous for him, in that it allowed him to
+develop that spirit of objective observation and calm meditation
+which permits a man to look down on the spectacle of life, and
+indulge in philosophical speculations very often divorced from
+reality.
+
+The son of an official of the imperial court, Merezhkovsky was born
+in St. Petersburg in 1865. In this city he received his entire
+education, and here he gained the degree of bachelor of letters in
+1886.
+
+He began his literary career with some poems which won for him a
+certain renown. In 1888, he published his first collection, and then
+a second in 1892, "The Symbols." At the same time, he published
+several translations from Greek and Latin authors.
+
+As he was a friend of the unfortunate Nadson, and a pupil of the
+humanitarian Pleshcheyev, Merezhkovsky wrote at first under the
+influence of the liberal ideas of his early masters. His verses,
+always harmonious, and a little affected, soon belied this tendency
+and very frankly revealed his preferences. In the first collection
+of his poems, vibrant with generous ideas, he proclaimed that he
+wanted, above all, "the joy of life," and that a poet should not
+have any other cult than that of beauty.
+
+The poem called "Vera" was his first real success. The extreme
+simplicity of the plot--the unfortunate love of a young professor
+and of a young weakly girl who dies of consumption in the very
+flower of youth--and the very faithful reproduction of the
+intellectual life of Russia in 1880, give to this work the
+importance of a document in some ways almost historic.
+
+This poem is like a last tribute paid by the author to the
+humanitarian and realistic tendencies of Russian literature.
+Afterward, yielding to the inclinations of his nature and his taste
+for classical antiquity, Merezhkovsky insensibly changed. While
+acquiring, both in prose and in verse, an incontestable mastery, he
+could now look only for a cold and haughty beauty which was
+sufficient unto itself. The beginning was hard, but then all came
+easier. After critical articles on the trend of modern literature,
+he published "The Reprobate," a bold dithyrambic on ancient Greek
+philosophy. The poetry that followed was clearly Epicurean and in
+complete contradiction to the altruistic tendencies of the
+neo-Christian period, which found an arch enemy in Nietzsche, whose
+philosophy evidently influenced Merezhkovsky. However, this
+evolution did not have a very favorable effect on his poetry; it
+bordered on an art the clarity of which approached dryness, while at
+the same time its lack of tenderness reduced its symbolism to an
+artificial lyricism or to lifeless allegories.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Merezhkovsky works with untiring constancy to glorify antiquity. He
+has made excellent translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and of
+"Daphne and Chloe," that idyl of Longus that charmed both Goethe and
+Catherine II. He chooses the characters of his new poems from Greek
+and Latin mythology, and from themes inspired by an ardent love of
+paganism. He has written three prose works of considerable value:
+"The Death of the Gods," "The Resurrection of the Gods,"[12] and
+"Peter and Alexis." The general idea of all of these is the struggle
+between Greek polytheism and Christianity, between Christ and
+Antichrist, to use the author's expression, or, as Dostoyevsky used
+to say, between the "man-God" and the "God-man."
+
+ [12] Also called "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the
+ Forerunner."
+
+This struggle touches upon the gravest problem that can occupy the
+human mind, and continually puts before us this perplexing question:
+"Should the purpose of life be only the search for happiness and
+beauty, or must we admit, as a law of nature, the dogma of suffering
+and death?" The former of these conceptions found its supreme
+formula in Greek paganism. The ultimate expansion of the latter
+leads us, on the one hand, to faith,--to the religion of sacrifice,
+and, on the other hand, into the domain of philosophy,--to the
+destruction of the desire to live, as conceived by Schopenhauer. It
+is this struggle between the two principles of Hellenic philosophy
+and Christian faith that Merezhkovsky has tried to show us by
+fixing, in his novels, the historic moments when this struggle
+reached its greatest intensity; and by making appear in these
+periods the characters who, according to him, are most typical and
+representative. For this reason he has chosen to give his readers
+pictures of the three epochs which he considers as culminating:
+first, the last attempt made to restore the worship of the gods a
+short time after the Emperor Constantine had brought about their
+ruin; secondly, the Renaissance, which, in spite of triumphant
+Christianity, shows us a glorious renewal of the arts and sciences
+of antiquity; finally, the beginning of the 18th century, the reign
+of Peter the Great, who tried to make a place for the gods of
+antiquity in Russia, where they were regarded with horror by the
+orthodox clergy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his novel, "The Death of the Gods," Merezhkovsky has painted the
+first of these epochs, the different phases of which revolve about
+the principal hero, the emperor Julian the Apostate. In "The
+Resurrection of the Gods" he develops, in sumptuous frescoes, the
+age of the Renaissance, personified by Leonardo da Vinci, who best
+typifies the character and tendencies of that time. In "Peter and
+Alexis," he retraces Russian life in the beginning of the 18th
+century, when it was dominated by the extraordinary character of
+Peter the Great.
+
+Julian the Apostate was one of the last idolaters of expiring
+paganism. But he could do nothing against the infatuation of the
+masses who were embracing the new religion, and it was in vain that
+he employed both so much kindness and so much violence in order to
+suppress Christianity. The reign of the gods was irrevocably ended.
+His soul filled with rage when he saw that he was powerless to
+change the course of events. He ended by undertaking a foolhardy
+expedition into Persia, thinking that that was the only way in which
+to defeat Christ, triumph over the "cursed" religion, and bring
+back victoriously the altars of the dead gods. But the Olympians on
+whom he had counted were of no service to him. According to the
+Christian legend, it was then, at the moment of death, that he cried
+out: "Galilean, thou hast conquered!" They say that he added: "Let
+the Galileans conquer, for the victory will be ours, ... later. The
+gods will come back ... we shall all be gods."
+
+This scene is one of the finest in the book. Surrounded by some
+faithful friends, Julian speaks, with his last breath, the words
+which one of these friends, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, has
+recorded.
+
+"His voice was low but clear. His whole presence breathed forth
+intellectual triumph, and from his eyes there still gleamed
+invincible will. Ammianus's hand trembled as he wrote. But he knew
+that he was writing on the tables of history, and transmitting to
+future generations the words of a great emperor:
+
+"'Listen, friends; my hour is come, perhaps too soon. But you see
+that I, like an honest debtor, rejoice in giving back my life to
+Nature, and feel in my soul neither pain nor fear; nothing but
+cheerfulness, and a presentiment of eternal repose.... I have done
+my duty, and have nothing to repent. From the days when, like a
+hunted animal, I awaited death in the palace of Marcellum, in
+Cappadocia, up to the time when I assumed the purple of the Roman
+Caesars, I have tried to keep my soul spotless. If I have failed to
+do all that I desired, do not forget that our earthly deeds are in
+the hands of Fate. And now I thank the Eternal Ruler for having
+allowed me to die, not after a long sickness nor at the hands of an
+executioner, but on the battlefield, in full youth, with work ahead
+of me still to be done.... And, my dear friends, tell both my
+friends and my enemies, how the Hellenes, endowed with divine
+wisdom, can die....'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Revenge for the dying emperor was long in coming. But now, after
+eleven centuries, the prophecy of Julian is accomplished: heroic
+antiquity, everlastingly young, arises from the grave. On all sides
+the gods are resurrected. Their marble effigies, so long buried,
+reappear. Both the powerful and the humble receive them with
+enthusiasm and rejoice at seeing them. It is an irresistible
+outburst which carries with it all classes of the Italian people.
+Like a wind-blown flame, Greek genius inspires a new life in the
+world. But, while a sweeter and more humane moral feeling tries to
+liberalize the church, the sombre voice of Savonarola, hardened by
+the terrible corruption of manners, mounts ever more menacingly:
+
+"Oh, Italy! oh, Rome! I am going to deliver you up into the hands of
+a people who will efface you from among the nations. I see them, the
+enemies who descend like hungry tigers.... Florence, what have you
+done? Do you want me to tell you? Your iniquity has heaped up the
+measure; prepare for a terrible plague! Oh, Lord, thou art witness
+that I tried to keep off this crumbling ruin from my brothers; but I
+can do no more, my strength is failing me. Do not sleep, oh, Lord!
+Dost Thou not see that we are becoming a shame to the world? How
+many times we have called to Thee! How many tears we have shed!
+Where is Thy providence? Where is Thy goodness? Where is Thy
+fidelity? Stretch forth Thy helping hand to us!"
+
+And thus the antagonism between the "God-man" and the "man-God" of
+Hellenic paganism expresses itself more strongly than ever before.
+
+The picture of the Renaissance that Merezhkovsky paints for us is
+very full, very rich, at times even a little overburdened with
+episodes and people. One constantly rubs shoulders with Leonardo da
+Vinci, the duchess Beatrice of Este, regent of Milan, the favorite
+Lucrecia Crivelli, the mysterious Gioconda, Charles VIII, Louis XII
+and Francis I, kings of France, and also with Caesar Borgia; we find
+here the preaching of Savonarola, the death of the pope Alexander
+VI (Borgia), Marshal Trivulce, the triumphal entry of the French
+into Milan, the diplomacy of Niccolo Machiavelli. In fact, as has
+been said above, there are too many events and characters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two centuries go by and now we come to the third novel, "Peter and
+Alexis." The scene is in Russia, and the hero is Peter the Great,
+whom Merezhkovsky represents as a worshipper of things Olympian. He
+gives a magnificent description of the orgies held by the emperor in
+honor of Bacchus and Venus, especially the latter, whose statue he
+expressly ordered from Rome and installed in the Summer Garden at
+St. Petersburg.
+
+In a veritable fairyland of avenues, of yoke-elms and flower-beds in
+geometric designs, of enormous baskets filled with the choicest
+flowers, of straight canals, of ponds, of islets, of magnificent
+fountains, such a fairyland as Watteau would have dreamed of, there
+is a Venetian fete with all sorts of fire-works and illuminations;
+small crafts, adorned with flags, are filled with men in golden
+garments, girded with swords, and wearing three-cornered hats and
+buckled shoes; and the women are dressed in velvet and covered with
+jewels.
+
+The Tsar himself opens the case, and helps in placing the goddess on
+her pedestal. Again, as two hundred years before in Florence, the
+resurrected goddess, Aphrodite, emerges from the grave. The cords
+stretch, the pulleys creak; she rises higher and higher. Peter is
+almost of the same superhuman height as the statue. And his face,
+close to that of Aphrodite, remains noble: the man is worthy of the
+goddess....
+
+"The Immortal One--Aphrodite--was still the same that she was on the
+hillside in Florence; she had progressed further and further, from
+age to age, from people to people, halting nowhere, till in her
+victorious march she had reached the very ends of the earth, the
+Hyperborean Scythia, beyond which there is naught but darkness and
+death...."
+
+But what miseries this magnificent facade conceals! Not far off, on
+an island in the river, one can see people who are watching the fete
+and who think that they are present at one of the spectacles
+forerunning doomsday. Among the crowd are seen the "raskolnik"
+Cornelius, old Vitalya of the "runners," deserters, the merchant
+Ivanov, the clerk Dokounine ... and several others. In the few
+remarks that they exchange, we can see that, for them, Peter the
+Great is the Antichrist, "the beast announced by the Gospel."
+
+Such is the tie that binds Peter the Great, Julian, and Leonardo
+together. But this tie is weakened by the fact that Peter, an
+essentially practical and utilitarian genius, was not the man to
+become inspired with Hellenic poetry, and if the author introduces
+the Tsar into the society of Julian the Apostate and of Leonardo da
+Vinci, it is because Peter the Great was one of those indefatigable
+strugglers, who, to attain their ends, put themselves above the
+obligations of ordinary morality, one of those supermen, who
+hesitate at nothing in satisfying the instincts of their egoisms, of
+their dominating wills. In fact, the heroes of Merezhkovsky's novels
+all belong in the category of the Nietzschean type of superman,
+which explains their philosophical relationship and the sort of
+trilogy which these three novels form. Thus, Julian the Apostate,
+who tried in vain during his life to make history repeat itself, by
+transplanting pagan traditions into a plot which had become unfit to
+receive them, and who died in the effort to preserve a faith--does
+not this man, then, incarnate that implacable pursuit of the
+"integral personality" so extolled by Nietzsche? Leonardo da Vinci,
+that great universal and keen mind, who gave himself over to all the
+impulses of his creative genius, not caring whether the impulses are
+worthy or harmful, appears as a luminous manifestation of that state
+of the soul "beyond good and bad" which characterizes the superman.
+And is not Peter the Great also a veritable superman; a man who,
+through his iron will, upset all the ancient institutions of aged
+Russia, and who did not even prevent the assassination of his son
+Alexis, inasmuch as he thought that it was for the good of his
+country?
+
+At all events, the interest and value of "Peter and Alexis" does not
+rest in its philosophic ideas and in the Nietzschean obsession, but
+rather in the art with which Merezhkovsky faithfully depicts the
+psychology of his heroes. The successive phases of this terrible
+tragedy lead up to a striking climax, and set off, one against the
+other, temperaments so entirely opposed that the reciprocal
+tenderness of the father and son is transformed finally into
+suspicion and hate, and the father resolves to sacrifice the life of
+his son to what appears to him to be the right of the State. The
+novel, although a little overburdened with details, is an excellent
+analysis of the customs of the Russia of former times.
+
+The source of the struggle between Peter and Alexis was known. Peter
+represented the West and the new ideas, while Alexis represented the
+Russia of old, rebellious to innovations which she considered
+dangerous. The author thus symbolizes the eternal conflict between
+the past and the future. He has analyzed with consummate art the
+characters of his two heroes. Peter is a man full of contrasts; he
+is, like many Russians, "a brute and a child," by turns violent and
+gentle, knavish and simple, cruel and kind, practical and mystical,
+proud and modest. Possessed of a prodigious activity, he conceives
+tremendous projects which he immediately wants to put into
+execution, inspecting everything, verifying everything, finding no
+care beneath his dignity, talking to the workingmen as if he were
+one of them, not making long speeches, and fiercely, with cries of
+rage, fighting dishonest contractors and tradesmen.
+
+Set over against this irascible father, endowed with herculean
+strength, the Tsarevich Alexis, thin, pale, and delicate, makes a
+sad figure. Most historians, following the example of Voltaire, have
+represented this prince as a narrow-minded person, a victim of the
+bigoted and intolerant education of the clergy. Merezhkovsky, a more
+discreet psychologist, does not rely on these superficial data, but
+shades the portrait admirably. He makes Alexis an intelligent man,
+not like his father, but a man with a comprehensive, subtle spirit.
+He probably was crushed by the powerful individuality of his father.
+As he is closely in touch with the people, and knows their
+aspirations, Alexis judges the work of his father with delicate
+insight: "My father hopes," he says, "to do everything in a great
+hurry. One, two, three, and the affair is settled. He does not
+realize that things done hastily do not last...."
+
+While Peter is aware of his unpopularity, his son is loved by the
+townspeople, the peasants, and the clergy. They say that, "Alexis is
+a man who seeks God and who does not want to upset everything: he is
+the hope of the nation."
+
+What the author has best shown in this novel is the degree to which
+the high society of this time was, under its exterior gorgeousness,
+barbarous and vulgar. A German girl, maid-of-honor to the wife of
+Alexis, defines it in the following way: "Brandy, blood, coarseness.
+It is hard to say which is most prominent,--perhaps it is
+coarseness." The boyards[13] she describes as: "Impudent savages,
+baptized bears, who only make themselves more ridiculous when they
+try to ape the Europeans."
+
+ [13] Russian noblemen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As is evident, these three works of Merezhkovsky belong to the
+"genre" of the historical and philosophical novel which demands,
+besides the power to call up past ages, a careful education and the
+gift of clear-sightedness. And the novelist completely fulfills
+these requirements. He knows his subject, he studies all the
+necessary documents with the greatest care and follows every story
+to its source; finally, before taking up his pen, he visits the
+countries and the cities in which the stories take place. Thus, in
+order better to understand Leonardo da Vinci, in order to live his
+life, the author of "The Resurrection of the Gods" traversed Italy
+and France from one end to the other, in the same way that he had
+traveled all over Greece so that he could give us a more life-like
+Julian. With the same care, he spent a long time reading Russian
+historical documents in order to present the reader with a better
+picture of the customs of the time of Peter the Great. The result is
+a series of historical pictures, almost perfect in their accuracy.
+If Merezhkovsky had no other merit than this faithful portrayal of
+the past, his novels even then would be read with interest and
+pleasure.
+
+Some critics have remarked that the most glaring defect in his books
+lies in their construction. His novels often disregard the laws
+relating to this sort of literature, which demand the clever
+grouping of the characters and events around a principal hero. It is
+true that this unity and the sense of proportion absolutely
+necessary for any sort of harmony are not to be found in his works.
+The details predominate to the detriment of important facts; the
+people of secondary importance are sometimes drawn better than the
+heroes themselves, whose adventures are entirely unconnected. There
+is a series of jumps from one situation to another, with gaps and
+interruptions of considerable length, which break the chain of
+events. It is for this reason that, instead of seeing a historical
+fresco, we see a whole gallery of sketches, executed with subtle
+artistry, but insufficiently connected with the main action of the
+drama.
+
+These observations apply especially to the first attempt of the
+young author: "The Death of the Gods"; "The Resurrection of the
+Gods" and "Peter and Alexis" are more skilfully composed. They
+indicate a stronger tendency towards unity; one feels that an
+infinitely firmer and more experienced brush has been used; the
+colors are richer and they do not suffer from that monotony of
+effect and of color so noticeable in "The Death of the Gods," where
+the author too often uses the same devices. As to the characters of
+Leonardo da Vinci and Peter the Great, they are very carefully
+worked out, and the events in the lives of the Italian master and
+the Russian Tsar are narrated with magnificent psychological
+analysis, which forces the reader to sympathize with the heroes even
+more than he would naturally.
+
+Merezhkovsky has also been accused of being over-educated. The
+innumerable documents presented do not bear closely enough upon the
+action, the result being that many of his pages read like mere
+annals. They interest the reader but do not move him. This is one
+reason why some critics, essentially different in spirit from
+Merezhkovsky, have believed themselves right in denying that he has
+any talent. But this accusation falls of itself in the face of the
+power of the inspiration which pervades his work, and the dramatic
+sense which he displays in setting forth the events and personages.
+It is impossible, for instance, to read without the deepest emotion
+the story of the last days of Leonardo da Vinci, where the author
+establishes the tragic contrast between the outward signs of glory,
+the superficial honors with which this genius is overwhelmed, and
+the moral solitude which afflicts him to the very end, which comes
+when he is among people who are strangers to his soul. All the
+childhood recollections of this same Da Vinci are full of charm.
+There is a veritable master spirit shown in the chapters in which
+the author portrays for us the enigmatic and seductive Mona Lisa.
+Finally, he has given us a relief of rare energy in the terrible
+struggle between Peter and Alexis, between the man of iron whom
+nothing can affect and his son, kind and timid, who, while having a
+mortal fear of his father, still loves him. As to certain pages,
+like those which describe the strange inner life of the Tsarina
+Marfa Matveyevna, "living by the light of candles, in an old house
+savouring of the oil of night-lamps, the dust and the putrification
+of centuries," these pages are a veritable tour de force if only
+because of the plasticity and richness of the author's vocabulary.
+
+Finally, what tragic horror there is in the supreme struggle where
+the emperor, the assassin of his son, sees his isolation and feels
+his weakness, "like a large deer gnawed at by flies and lice until
+the blood runs!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Besides his novels Merezhkovsky has published several essays, on
+Pushkin, Maykov, Korolenko, Calderon, the French neo-romanticists,
+Ibsen and others.... The most important of all are: "The Causes of
+the Decadence of Modern Russian Literature" and "Tolstoy and
+Dostoyevsky." He reveals here a fine and penetrating power of
+observation, which, however, is often obscured because of his
+obsession by Nietzschean ideas. Moreover, he does not hide his
+antipathy to the people whose literary tastes and ideas differ from
+his. From this characteristic comes strange exaggerations and a
+somewhat limited appreciation of men and events. An example of
+this, for instance, is the impression that he gives in his study of
+the causes of the decadence of modern Russian literature, the
+subject of which imposes upon the author the double task of
+looking up the causes of this decadence and also proving that it
+exists. He has not succeeded. In fact, it appears that this idea of
+decadence exists only in the minds of the author and of a small
+circle of writers who have the same ideas about the mission of
+literature. Merezhkovsky is absolutely right in all that he says
+about the fact that Russian writers live solitary, deprived of that
+precious excitation which is felt when one is in contact with
+original and different temperaments; but if you add to this, as he
+has done, the statement that Russia does not possess a literature
+worthy of the name, you go too far. Without being a great scholar,
+it is easy to perceive that our contemporary Russian authors are
+legitimate sons of Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and grandsons
+of Gogol, who himself is closely related to Pushkin. A democratic
+and humanitarian realism--widely separated from the Nietzscheism of
+Merezhkovsky--strongly characterizes the Russian lineage.
+
+In his book on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky he spends a long time in
+differentiating between the artistic intuition of these two great
+masters, who are, according to him, the most profound expression of
+the popular and higher element of Russian culture.
+
+What strikes him first in Tolstoy is the insistence with which he
+describes "animal man." In a kind of "leitmotiv" Merezhkovsky has
+shown us the Tolstoyan characters individualized by very particular
+corporal signs. "Tolstoy," he says, "has, to the very highest
+degree, the gift of clairvoyance of the flesh; even when dead, the
+flesh has a tongue." He is the subtle painter of all sensations and
+he is a master in this domain. But his art diminishes singularly,
+and even disappears when he tries to analyze the soul within the
+flesh. Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, triumphs in his dialogue; one
+sees his characters because one shares all their sadness, their
+passions, their intelligence, and their sensibility. Dostoyevsky is
+the painter of the depths of the human soul, which he portrays with
+almost supernatural acuteness. And, as Tolstoy is "the seer of the
+flesh," so is Dostoyevsky "the seer of the soul."
+
+Having established this difference in principle, Merezhkovsky, by
+constant deduction, concludes, in consonance with his favorite idea,
+that Tolstoy personifies "the pagan spirit" at its height, while
+Dostoyevsky represents "the Christian spirit." There is a great deal
+of fine drawn reasoning in all of this, some very original ideas,
+but a great many paradoxes. Even the very personality of Tolstoy,
+the analysis of which occupies a large part of the book, is
+belittled in the hands of Merezhkovsky. Instead of a noble
+character, one sees a very vain person, preoccupied only with
+himself. It is in this simple way that Merezhkovsky explains the
+moral evolution which led Tolstoy to make those long and sad studies
+of a kind of life compatible with the true good of humanity, and
+forced him to them by "the anguish of the black mystery of death"
+which, having got possession of the author of "Anna Karenina" in his
+sixtieth year, in the midst of a life of prosperity, made him hate
+his fortune and his comfort, which formerly had been so dear to him.
+In the refusal of Tolstoy to "bow to the great authorities of the
+literary world, such as AEschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare," a refusal
+which is only the logical consequence of his ideas on the principle
+and purpose of art, Merezhkovsky can only see a lack of general
+culture. Finally, the sort of life he led toward the end of his days
+came only "from the desire to know and taste the pleasure of
+simplicity in all its subtleties." "The admirable Epicurus," says
+Merezhkovsky, "that joyous sage, who, in the very center of Athens,
+cultivated with his own hands a tiny garden, and taught men not to
+believe in any human or divine chimeras, but to be contented with
+the simple happiness that can be given by a single sunbeam, a
+flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time,
+would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one,
+perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American
+comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget
+the real purpose of life...."
+
+In writing these lines, Merezhkovsky must have forgotten that
+Tolstoy, in proclaiming his ideas on religion and humanity, prepared
+himself, not for Epicurean pleasures, but for seclusion in one of
+the terrible dungeons of a Russian monastery (now in disuse) under
+the persecutions of a temporal and secular authority, and it was not
+his fault that, by a sort of miracle, he escaped this fate.
+
+Dostoyevsky's life is the exact opposite of Tolstoy's. The story of
+Dostoyevsky's terrible existence is probably known. Born in an
+alms-house, he never ceased to suffer, and to love.... It is hard to
+think of two people more absolutely different than Tolstoy and
+Dostoyevsky. But Merezhkovsky loves violent contrasts; in the sharp
+difference between these two writers, he sees the permanent union of
+two controlling ideas of the Russian Renaissance and the imminence
+of a final sympathy, symbolic of a concluding harmony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have, by turns, studied Merezhkovsky as a poet, a novelist, and a
+critic. The greatest merit of his literary personality rests in the
+perfect art with which he calls up the past.
+
+But Merezhkovsky is not only an artist. As we have noted, his
+novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of
+human life,--the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the
+religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of
+Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in
+any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of
+humanity, the present situation of which seems to him desperate.
+The answer to this question can be found in his book, "Ham
+Triumphant."[14] Our study of Merezhkovsky's literary character
+would be incomplete if the ideas of this book were not set forth.
+
+ [14] In Russia, the name of the biblical Ham has become synonymous
+ with servility and moral baseness. Merezhkovsky employs this
+ scornful term to designate those people who are strangers to the
+ higher tendencies of the mind and are entirely taken up with
+ material interests. His "Ham Triumphant" is the Antichrist, whose
+ reign, as predicted by the Apocalypse, will begin with the final
+ victory of the bourgeoisie. In one chapter of this book,
+ Merezhkovsky proves that the writers of western Europe and Russia
+ (Byron and Lermontov) err in crowning this Antichrist with an
+ aureole of proud revolutionary majesty, for, since he is the enemy
+ of all that is divine in man, he can only be a character of shabby
+ mediocrity and human banality, that is to say, a veritable "Ham."
+
+According to Merezhkovsky, the present evil in the world consists
+entirely in the moral void which results from the disappearance of
+the Christian ideal from the soul. The loss of this ideal was
+inevitable, and even productive of good, because it had been so
+mutilated and deformed by the Church, that Christian religion became
+a symbol of the reaction, and its God synonymous with executioner.
+Humanity will rid itself of Christianity. But nothing will replace
+it, unless it be the philosophy of positivism, a sort of material
+religion of the appetites and the senses, which gives no answer to
+our anguish and our mystical instincts. This philosophy presided at
+the formation of a miserable society, an egotistical and mediocre
+bourgeoisie, who have no spiritual tendencies, and are incapable of
+sacrificing themselves to any ideal other than that of money.
+
+John Stuart Mill said that the bourgeoisie would transform Europe
+into a China; the Russian publicist Hertzen, frightened by the
+victories of socialism, in 1848, foresaw the end of European
+civilization, drowned in a wave of blood. Merezhkovsky affirms that
+the Chinese and the Japanese, being the most complete and the most
+persevering representatives of this "terrestrial" religion, will
+without fail conquer Europe, where positivism still bears some
+traces of Christian romanticism. "The Chinese," he says, "are
+perfect positivists, while the Europeans are not yet perfect
+Chinese, and, in this respect, the Americans are perfect Europeans."
+Where is one to look for safety against this heavy load on the
+understanding and this future humiliation? In socialism, one says.
+But socialism, if it is not yet bourgeois, is almost so. "The
+starved proletariat and the rejected bourgeois have different
+economic opinions," says Merezhkovsky, "but their ideal is the same,
+the pursuit of happiness." As it is but a step from the prudence of
+the bourgeois to the exasperated state of the starved proletariat,
+this pursuit can lead to nothing else but international atrocities
+of militarism and chauvinism. Progress having become the sole
+ambition of the cultivated barbarians, satiety became their
+religion, and the only hope of escaping from this barbarism was to
+adopt the religion of love, founded by Jesus. Jesus said to those
+who were treated with violence, and who, in turn, had used violence
+in trying to free themselves: "Truth (love) will set you free."
+These words, which identify truth with love, contain in themselves
+the profoundest social and personal morality. They inspired the
+first martyrs of Christianity; but in time they were forgotten by
+the Church. Succumbing to the "diabolical seduction of power,"
+religion itself became a power, an autocracy; people submitted to
+this power, and thus the Byzantine and Russian orthodoxy came into
+existence. In this manner, the morals of the government,
+antichristian in essence, became the doctrine of Christianity; and
+the particular morals of the latter became transformed into a
+mysterious gospel of life, relegating its aspirations to an
+existence beyond the tomb. Now there is nothing for Christianity to
+do but return to its first sources and develop the principles of
+universal religion found there. One should no longer be concerned
+with heavenly and personal advantage, but with earthly affairs and
+social conditions; instead of being conquered by the government one
+should conquer it, permeate it with one's spirit, and thus realize
+the prophecy in the Apocalypse of the millennium of the saints on
+earth, and destroy the forms of the power of the government, the
+laws, and the empire. Such a renewal of Christianity demands an
+energetic struggle, self-forgetfulness, and martyrs. But where is
+one to find the necessary forces? Merezhkovsky does not see them in
+the States of western Europe, because the "intellectuals" there are
+antichristians and are congealed in their bourgeois positivism.
+"Above these Christian states, above these old Gothic stores," says
+Merezhkovsky, "rises, here and there, a Protestant wooden cross,
+half rotted; or a Catholic one of iron, all rusted, and no one pays
+any attention to them." What purity and nobility remains can
+manifest itself only in certain scattered individuals, in such great
+hermits as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Flaubert, Goethe in his old age; they
+are like deep artesian wells which prove that, beneath the arid
+earth there is still some flowing water. There is nothing of this
+sort in Russia. Although backward from the point of view of progress
+and politics, this country produced the "intellectuals" who form
+something unique in our present civilization: in essence, they are
+anti-bourgeois. "The positivism which the Russian 'intellectuals'
+have adopted by way of imitation is rejected by their feelings,
+their conscience, and their will; it is an artificial monument that
+is set up in their minds only."
+
+Merezhkovsky, then, has reason for thinking that the social
+renovation of Christianity will be accomplished in Russia. And as
+this work is the especial concern of the clergy, Merezhkovsky, who
+several years ago was present at a meeting where the Russian priests
+affirmed their desire to free themselves from the yoke of their
+religious and secular chiefs, proposed to accomplish this great
+mission. "It is indispensable," he says, "for the Russian Church to
+untie the knots that bind it to the decayed forms of the autocracy,
+to unite itself to the 'intellectuals' and to take an active part in
+the struggle for the great political and social deliverance of
+Russia. The Church should not think of its own liberty at present,
+but of martyrdom."
+
+We will not criticize these, perhaps illusory, ideas and previsions
+of Merezhkovsky. Russian life has become an enigma; who knows to
+what moral crisis the social conscience may be led by the present
+political crisis? Merezhkovsky's Olympian aesthetics have made him a
+foreigner in Russian literature. Yet as soon as the tempest burst
+forth, certain familiar traits showed themselves, traits common to
+the best Russian writers and to the general spirit of Russian
+literature. In his absolute, and even exaggerated, distaste for
+"bourgeoisisme," and his desire for an ideal, he is a legitimate son
+of this literature. The nature of his ideas is in harmony with those
+we have already found in Tolstoy, with his gospel of Christian
+anarchism, in Dostoyevsky, with his ideas about the "omni-humanity"
+of the Russian spirit, in Vladimir Solovyev, with his idea of
+universal theocracy, and, finally, in Chadayev, one of the most
+remarkable thinkers of the first half of the last century, who,
+although now almost forgotten, was the real source of all these
+ideas.
+
+Thus in the conception of socialized Christianity Merezhkovsky seeks
+the end of the great antithesis between the "God-man" and the
+"man-God," between Christ and Bacchus, an antithesis which makes the
+generality of men often conduct themselves after the manner of that
+German petty kingdom, of which Heine speaks, where the people, while
+venerating Christ, do not forget to honor Bacchus by abundant
+libations. Merezhkovsky's idea ought to appear in the form of a
+synthetic fusion of the joyous religion of Greece and the religion
+of love, as taught by Jesus.[15]
+
+ [15] Merezhkovsky has also written a long historical drama, called
+ "The Death of Paul I." He traces there, with his accustomed
+ animation, the figure of the weak and criminal Tsar, now heaping
+ favors upon those who surround him, now persecuting them with the
+ most terrible cruelty. The savage scene of the assassination of
+ this tyrant is of remarkable beauty.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ALEXANDER KUPRIN
+
+
+The work of Kuprin contrasts strongly with the writings of his
+predecessors and of his contemporaries. It would be useless to try
+to connect him with Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Gorky. This does not
+mean that he came under foreign influence. As a matter of fact his
+work clearly shows the imprint of Slavic genius and receives its
+richness from qualities which have always appeared in Slavic
+literature,--sincerity and accuracy of observation, a passionate
+love for all manifestations of modern life, lyrical fullness, and
+power of suggestion. But Alexander Kuprin does not depict adepts of
+the "religion of pity," nor the psychology of the abnormal, the
+"pathological case," so curious and rare, and so dear to the author
+of "Crime and Punishment."[16] He does not reincarnate the sad
+genius of Korolenko. He is equally separated from Tolstoy and Gorky.
+He is himself. That is to say, he is an exquisite story-teller,
+profound and touching, who imposes neither thesis nor moral upon
+his reader, but paints life as it appears to him,--not seen through
+the medium of a temperament,--but in all sincerity, without too much
+ardor or too much indifference.
+
+ [16] Dostoyevsky.
+
+This author was born in 1870. After having attended the Cadet School
+and the Military School at Moscow, he entered military service as an
+active lieutenant in 1890, but resigned seven years later in order
+to devote his time to literature. Before this, he had published
+several stories.
+
+In spite of the undeniable talent which is found in his earlier
+writings, the public hesitated to praise him. Certain lucky
+circumstances, however, favored the beginning of his work. One of
+his relatives, at the start, offered him a position on a magazine
+which she was then editing. This was a wonderful opportunity for
+him, for usually at his age the more gifted writers are still
+groping around for light. But merit alone seldom suffices to form
+the basis of literary fame. Scandal is often necessary to
+consecrate, as one might say, a growing reputation. Kuprin, without
+seeking to start a scandal, did so, in spite of himself, when he
+published "The Duel," a study of military life, in which he showed
+the most absolute impartiality.
+
+To his great surprise, the public accepted this book as a new
+indictment of the army. It was because the Manchurian campaign was
+so recent. Every portrayal of military life passed as a violent
+satire on the corrupt and disgraced army. Kuprin in vain tried to
+change this unexpected judgment. As he was an ardent partisan of the
+theory of "art for art's sake," he could not allow a purpose to be
+attributed to his work. He had only faithfully portrayed what he had
+witnessed in the course of his brief career. But in order to
+strengthen his defence, he alleged reasons which could not be
+understood in an altruistic country. Besides, several of his
+stories, such as, "The Wedding," full of the dissolute life led by
+the officers in their garrisons, "The Inquest," where the author
+shows the violences to which the Russian soldiers are subjected,
+"The Night's Lodging," and "The Ensign of the Army," which
+stigmatize certain lace-bedecked "Lovelaces," only help to nullify
+his best arguments. In short, his fame spread rapidly and the young
+writer had to accept the renown that became his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that time on Kuprin's road was mapped out. According to the
+dictates of his fancy he depicts thousands of the ever-changing,
+different aspects of life. He is equally impelled to write about
+petty tradesmen, actors, acrobats, and sinners in the Crimea. To
+the accomplishment of his task, he brings an over-minute and cruel
+observation. With the genius that is his he dwells on certain
+important, carefully selected traits of people who live intensely.
+
+In "The Disciple," we see a young sharper on a boat on the Volga. He
+has the tired eyes of a precocious old man, stubby fingers, and the
+hands of a murderer alert to strike the fatal blow. He has just
+fleeced a party of travelers, and he discovers, in a savory
+conversation with an old cheat, who has found him out, that his soul
+is being consumed with insatiable desires. And as the old sharper
+admires the "savoir-faire" of his young friend, the latter observes,
+not without scorn, that they belong to two very different categories
+of sharpers. "Among you old fellows," he sneers, "there was
+romanticism. You loved beautiful women, champagne, music and the
+song of the tziganes.... We, however, we others are tired of
+everything. Fear and debauch are equally unknown to us...."
+
+After the sharper we have the spy in "Captain Rybnikov." He passes
+for a Siberian, and says that he has been wounded in the
+Russo-Japanese war. He goes out into society a great deal, and is
+most commonly seen in the military offices and in the best "salons"
+of St. Petersburg. One night, when he is asleep at a courtesan's
+house, he mutters the war-cry of Japan: "Banzai! Banzai!" The
+courtesan denounces him to a policeman who happens to be there, and
+the pseudo-captain, who is no other than a colonel in the Japanese
+army, is arrested.
+
+Before leaving the military world, let us analyze "The Delirium."
+Captain Markov has been ordered by the government to suppress the
+revolution in certain provinces. Disgusted with the duty of daily
+executioner, the officer frets himself into a high fever. A
+non-commissioned officer enters to ask him to decide the fate of
+three men who have been arrested the previous night, one of whom is
+an old man with a peaceful and strangely beautiful face. The
+sergeant knows that they ought to be shot, but these executions are
+so repulsive to him, that he is anxious to have the sentence of
+death confirmed by his chief, who seems to him to have the sole
+responsibility.
+
+"I don't want you ever again to ask me such a question," cries
+Markov, who has guessed the intention of his subordinate. "You know
+what you ought to do." And he dismisses him. But the soldier remains
+motionless.
+
+"What else do you want?" asks the captain.
+
+"The men," answers the stubborn soldier, "are anxious to know what
+to do with the ... old ... man...."
+
+"Get out of here!" the officer roars, exasperated. "Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Very well, captain. But as to-day is December 31, allow me to offer
+you my best wishes for a happy New Year."
+
+"Thank you, my friend," replies Markov in a voice which has suddenly
+become soft.
+
+During the night the captain begins to rave. The old man whom he has
+just condemned to death appears and speaks to him. He says that his
+name is Cain, and confesses the murder of his brother. Cursed by
+God, he wanders disconsolately through the centuries, followed by
+the groaning of his victim.
+
+Just before dawn the sergeant awakens Markov.
+
+"What about those three men?" asks the captain eagerly.
+
+"Shot, captain!"
+
+"And the old man? The old man?... what have you done with him?"
+
+"We shot him along with the others, captain."
+
+The next day Captain Markov asks for his discharge, having decided
+to leave the army for good.
+
+This story, which is one of the most powerful in Russian literature,
+would have been enough to bring the young writer renown, even if he
+had never written anything else. But his work, which is already
+imposing in amount, abounds in pages of great merit, and especially
+in well-constructed, brief, tragic stories.
+
+Under this class should be mentioned "Humble People," a short story,
+the scene of which is laid in the extreme north. It is the story of
+a close friendship between a nurse in a dispensary and a
+school-teacher.
+
+Snowed in by a terrible winter--a winter of seven months--these two
+friends find in their daily meetings the only pleasure that can make
+their enforced solitude easier for them. However, in spite of their
+mutual friendship, they often find their lot hard to endure. And
+they continually quarrel, only to become reconciled almost
+immediately. But now an unexpected event comes to break the monotony
+of their existence. They are invited to a dance, given by the priest
+of the neighboring village, and there they fall in love with two
+charming young girls, who, they are happy to find, are not
+indifferent to them. Once at home, they bestow lavish praises on
+their new friends. With the touching devotion of simple and starved
+hearts they speak about them as if the young girls already were
+theirs.
+
+"Mine has eyes of velvet," says the one.
+
+"And mine has hair of pure gold," replies the other.
+
+Gradually, however, their recollections grow weaker, and fade, just
+as flowers do. Their sad life would have begun again if the spring
+had not come, and with it brought deliverance. The two friends, full
+of new sprightliness, get up a fishing party one day. A foolish
+accident makes them both fall into the river, and they are drowned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The End of a Story," which we are about to analyze, deserves, as
+does "Humble People," a special place in the work of Kuprin. It is a
+little masterpiece of graceful emotion.
+
+Kotik, a child of seven, and the son of a celebrated painter, teases
+his father to tell him a story. The father racks his memory. He has
+told so many that his fount is almost dry.
+
+Suddenly an idea comes to him. Is not his own life a tender,
+melancholy, and charming story? It is not a long time, twelve years
+at the most, since he was a poor, obscure painter, neglected by his
+masters and tormented by the miseries of his life. Discouraged, he
+used continually to curse the hour in which he chose to devote
+himself to art. One day, a young girl, believing in his talent, gave
+him her hand and comforted him with her tenderness and angelic
+goodness. And love had triumphed.
+
+To-day his name is celebrated among the most famous, and his
+paintings adorn the galleries of kings and emperors. The plot of
+the story is ready.
+
+"Listen," says the father to his son. "There was once upon a time a
+king who, feeling that he was going to die, gathered his many
+children about him and said to them: 'I will leave my kingdom to
+that one of you who can enter a marble palace situated in a very
+dense forest, and there light his torch from the sacred fire which
+always burns there. The forest is full of wild beasts and venomous
+serpents. The palace is guarded by three lions: Envy, Poverty, and
+Doubt.'
+
+"The young people set out on the road. But, while the older ones
+search outside of the forest for a road that is not beset with
+dangers, the youngest courageously starts on the regular path. He
+there is exposed to many dangers and temptations. Already, his
+strength failing, he feels that he is almost on the point of
+succumbing, when a fairy appears and stretches forth her hand to
+him. The young man blesses this providential aid. The fairy brings
+back his courage and leads him to the palace."
+
+Near them on the terrace, concealed by some plants, there sat a
+young and beautiful woman who was eagerly listening to the story.
+She was Kotik's mother, the fairy of the story, and the favorite
+pupil of the painter. Some of her paintings had already made a
+sensation.
+
+The story ended, the father led the child to his room and with the
+help of his nurse undressed him and put him to bed.
+
+"He had started back towards the terrace, when suddenly two arms
+embraced his neck, while two sweet lips pressed against his.
+
+"The story was finished."
+
+With these words the story really ends.
+
+Kuprin shows the same grace and the same delicate emotion in his
+recent story, "The Garnet Necklace," a tale which is analogous to
+the legend of the troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, which has been made
+into a play by Rostand in his "Princesse Lointaine."
+
+Geltov, a Russian petty official, loves the beautiful Princess
+Sheine with a desperate love. After long hesitation he decides to
+send her a garnet necklace, with a tender and respectful note
+enclosed. Alas! his gift is returned to him and the husband of the
+princess angrily threatens the naive lover. The latter has not the
+strength to face the situation, and commits suicide. But before
+dying he writes to the princess:--
+
+"I saw you for the first time eight years ago in a theatre, and
+since that time I have loved you with boundless passion. It is not
+my fault, Princess, that God has sent this great happiness to me....
+My life for the last eight years has been bound up in one
+thought,--you. Believe what I say, believe me because I am going to
+die.... I am neither a sick man nor an enthusiast.... I consider my
+love for you as the greatest happiness that God could have given
+me.... This happiness I have enjoyed for eight years. May God give
+you happiness, and may nothing henceforth trouble you...."
+
+This naive and touching letter moves the princess. At the grave of
+her unhappy lover, she recalls the words of an old friend of her
+father's: "Perhaps he was an abnormal man or a maniac....
+Perhaps,--who knows?--your life was illumined by a love of which
+women often dream, a kind of love that one does not see nowadays."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One can judge by these summaries how little Kuprin "pads" his
+stories. Most of them are reduced to a commonplace anecdote, which
+the author is careful not to ornament in the least. He respects
+truth to such a degree that he offers it to his readers in its
+disconcerting bareness. He would think that he was failing in his
+duty as an observer if he disguised it by any literary mechanism.
+
+His work, stripped of all general ideas and of all subjective
+aspects, is of a rather curious impersonality. Nothing ever betrays
+his intimate thoughts or feelings. And it is in this respect that
+he differs so much from most of the writers of to-day, who give
+themselves up completely to their attractive heroes and vituperate
+their odious people. Kuprin's objective tendencies are best shown in
+his story called "Peaceful Life."
+
+A retired official, Nassedkine, who has been enriched by the
+gratuities which he has exacted from those who have had to do
+business with him, has made it his duty to play censor in his little
+town. He makes use of a very discreet and edifying method: to all of
+the citizens whose honor is in danger, he sends one or more
+anonymous letters telling them of the "extent of their misfortune."
+
+Nassedkine has just finished writing two laconic notes, one of which
+is to a young woman whom he tells to visit one of her friends on a
+certain day, when, he assures her, her husband is always to be found
+there. At this moment the church bells ring, and Nassedkine, who is
+religious, goes to vespers. On entering, he notices a fashionable
+lady, all dressed in black, in a dark corner of the church.
+Nassedkine, more than any one else, knows the heart-rending story of
+this woman. She had recently, against her will, married an
+excessively rich wood merchant who was almost forty years older than
+she. One day, when she thought that her husband had gone off on
+business, he returned unexpectedly and found her in the arms of one
+of his employees. He had been warned that same morning, by an
+anonymous letter, that his wife was deceiving him.
+
+"Beside himself with rage, the merchant threw his employee out of
+the house, and then satiated his brutal jealousy on his wife. He
+struck her with his big, hobnailed boots; then he called his
+coachman and valet, made her undress completely, and had each of
+them in turn lash her beautiful body until, covered with blood, she
+fainted away.
+
+"And as the priest at the altar was reciting: 'Lord, I offer Thee
+the tears of a woman who has sinned,' Nassedkine repeated this
+phrase with satisfaction. Then he left the church in order to post
+the two letters he had just written."
+
+This characteristic dryness does not come, as one is liable to
+think, from ill-disguised insensibility. Kuprin's soul, on the
+contrary, is of such exquisitely fine texture that all human
+emotions vibrate there. The few times when he has expressed himself
+are enough to convince the reader. He has often pitied women with a
+discreet, fraternal compassion. He has also devoted many pages to
+the sufferings of animals, be it the story of circus horses hurt by
+the rolling of the ship, or the story of a kitten mutilated by
+wolves. Only a few words are needed to make us tender and to bring
+tears to our eyes. And it is with the eyes of a poet or a child that
+he has viewed nature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one ever studies a Russian author without finally asking himself
+what the author's influence was on the political manifestations of
+society. The answer here is not hard to find: Kuprin, observer,
+artist, and painter of life, has had no influence. If we except one
+story, "The Toast," in which he shows his deep affection for the
+oppressed classes, nothing in his work betrays even slightly his
+opinions on this subject. Always, the thought of Kuprin deserts the
+social struggle to fly into more vast and serene surroundings than
+the theatre of wars and revolutions. And he is doubtless ready to
+exalt above this terrible struggle, the one thing that he judges
+eternal, the love of woman.
+
+"There have been kingdoms and kings," he says in his beautiful
+novel, "Sulamite," "and the only trace that is left of them is the
+wind in the desert. There have been long and pitiless wars, at the
+end of which the names of the leaders sparkled like stars: time has
+effaced all memory of them.
+
+"But the love of a poor girl of the vineyards and a great king[17]
+will never be effaced and will always live in the minds of men,
+because love is divinely beautiful, because every woman who loves is
+a queen, because love is stronger than death."
+
+ [17] Refers to Solomon.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+WRITERS IN VOGUE
+
+
+As we have already noted in the first chapter of this book, Russian
+literature from 1830 to 1905 is distinctly different from European
+literature: it is, above all, a literature of action and social
+propagandas which puts the popular cause in the place of prominence.
+
+This cause has been abandoned by several writers during the last
+few years. From 1905 to 1910, an evolution, accelerated by the
+most audacious hopes and the most lively beliefs, has transformed
+the story and the novel, and has brought to the front certain
+authors who, up to this time, had scarcely been known. It seems
+as if suddenly the ancient tradition of Russian literature had
+been broken. Contrary to the rule of their predecessors, whose
+thoughts were on justice and liberty, and whose works breathe
+forth a wholesome quality, a large number of the present writers
+have been gradually attracted by metaphysical questions, which
+fill their works with a veritable chaos of morbid conceptions and
+disenchantment. Some express with acuteness man's unconquerable
+fear of life or death; others treat of the divine or satanic
+principles in man; still others study, with a sickly passion, the
+problems of the flesh in all of its manifestations.[18]
+
+ [18] Happily, this literary crisis seems to have been ephemeral.
+ Since the beginning of 1910, according to a Russian critic, "the
+ salubrity of the atmosphere" has been accomplished. The "cursed
+ questions" are less prominent in recent works, and it seems that
+ the crisis which desolated Russian literature for several years
+ has come to an end, and that the writers are going back to the old
+ traditions of Russian literature.
+
+Among the latter, Michael Artzybashev is a writer of great breadth,
+whose erotic tendencies have spoiled some of his best traits. His
+novel, "Sanine," which recently caused so much talk, pretends to
+paint the youth of to-day in Russia. If we believed the author, we
+should conclude that the above-mentioned youth consisted of
+hysterical people in whom chastity was the least of virtues.
+
+The heroes of his novel are two representatives of the revolutionary
+youth, Sanine and Yuri Svagorich. Both of them have deserted "the
+cause," Sanine, through lassitude, and Yuri, who has met nothing but
+a despairing indifference among those whom he wanted to save from
+"the oppression of the shadows," through scorn. Yuri, "a man of the
+past," is an "intellectual" entirely impregnated with generous
+altruism, haunted by social and political preoccupations. But he is
+also a "failure" who falls from one deception into another, because
+he is thoroughly powerless to combat life.
+
+On the other hand, his friend, Vladimir Sanine, "the man of the
+future," is, without a doubt, capable of living. None is freer than
+he from all social and political preoccupations, and none is more
+than he resolved to obey only his lucid egotism, or the suggestions
+of his instincts.
+
+These two young fellows meet, one summer, in the country. Yuri lives
+with his father, a retired colonel; Sanine, with his mother.
+Sanine's sister, Lida, is in love with the officer Zaroudine, who
+abandons her later when she is with child. Lida wants to commit
+suicide, but Sanine stops her and proposes that she marry Dr.
+Novikov, who has been in love with her for a long time. Parallel to
+the history of Lida, the life story of Karsavina is presented. Yuri
+falls in love with this young and pretty school-teacher. But,
+although she returns Yuri's love, the young girl, in a moment of
+passion, gives herself to Sanine, whom she does not love. Disgusted
+with life, feeling himself weak, neurasthenic, and sick, Yuri, only
+twenty-six years of age, commits suicide. Karsavina, terribly
+affected by this act of despair, leaves Sanine. And the latter,
+after Yuri's funeral, disappears from the city....
+
+All the characters in the book, from Sanine to Karsavina, are
+continually preyed upon by carnal desires. Long passages of funereal
+scenes alternate with pictures of the transports of love and the
+descriptions of masculine and feminine bodies. "Your body proclaims
+the truth, your reason lies." This is the "leitmotiv" of all the
+theories that the characters in the book preach.
+
+Let us hasten to add to the praise of the Russian public, that the
+enormous success of "Sanine" was not justified by the extreme
+licentiousness of the book, but by the eloquence with which the
+author claims the right of free love for man and woman.
+
+Although its success was less than that of "Sanine," Artzybashev's
+second novel, "Morning Shadows," is more interesting and is more
+realistic than his first.
+
+Tired of their sometimes happy, sometimes monotonous existence, two
+young people from the provinces, Lisa and Dora, go to St. Petersburg
+to take some courses there and to join the revolutionary movement.
+They have read Nietzsche, and want to "live dangerously." In order
+to realize this project, Lisa has not hesitated to break off her
+engagement with the charming and naive Lieutenant Savinov. However,
+their existence in the capital is nothing but a long and bitter
+deception: Dora's literary ambitions disappointed! the love of Lisa,
+who has given herself to the student Korenyev, disappointed! In a
+fit of despair Lisa kills herself, and her friend, who has not had
+the courage to follow her example, falls victim to a terrorist
+outrage which the author describes with rare power.
+
+In his recent novel, "Before Expiration,"--which recalls "Sanine" to
+our minds again,--Artzybashev has found some ingenious variations on
+the old theme, "love and death." The story of the love affairs of
+the painter Mikhailov, a cynical and brutal Lovelace who abandons
+his mistresses when they are with child, is intermingled incessantly
+with gloomy episodes, such as the agonies of an old man or of a
+child. It is a book for "blase" people, a book which a reader with
+moral health will not read without a certain feeling of uneasiness.
+
+We are also indebted to Artzybashev for a series of highly colored
+stories. "Sub-Lieutenant Golobov," "Blood," "The Workingman
+Shevshrev," and "The Millions" are some of the most remarkable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like Artzybashev, but with less talent, Anatol Kamensky has written
+little stories happily enough conceived. Thus, "Laida"--the story of
+a worldly woman so taken up with liberty that she exhibits herself
+nude before her husband's guests. Another story called "Four," tells
+of four women taken from the most diverse social classes, ranging
+from a young school-girl to the wife of a clergyman, who give
+themselves to an officer at the end of a trip of twenty-four hours.
+Then there is also the story of a woman who proposes to an unknown
+man that he should play a game of cards with her companions, she
+being the prize. This story is called "The Game." Finally, there is
+the story of a young man whose agreeable profession consists in
+living among others gratuitously and in seducing women under the
+eyes of their husbands.
+
+These stories are sadly spoiled by a crude philosophy and by
+"anarchistic" protestations against present values.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain authors wander into far-away countries for their subjects:
+to Sodom and Lesbos. The best known is Michael Kouzmine. This
+writer, who happily began with stories of the Orient in the Middle
+Ages, has now acquired a rather sad renown for himself with his
+story called "The Wings," which appeared at the end of 1906. The
+scandalous success which this book won, encouraged the author to go
+on in the same manner. In poor verse, and especially in the story,
+"The Castle of Cards," Kouzmine has exalted the sin of Sodom as
+being the most supreme form of aesthetic emotions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Closely related to these writers, although surpassing them all in
+original talent, Feodor Sologoub is the most intellectual and subtle
+of the Russian modernists. His principal work consists in depicting
+the small provincial towns. His heroes are little bourgeois petty
+officials, school-teachers, and country proprietors.
+
+This chanter of birth and death, disgusted by the banality of
+existence, has given us, under the title, "The Little Demon," a
+pathetic picture of human baseness and sordidness, which cannot be
+read without emotion.
+
+The atmosphere of an arbitrary regime engenders almost always
+"demonomania." The insecurity of life, and the consecutive
+injustices in the cavils of the police administration, develop in
+society a reciprocal fear and distrust. From feeling themselves in
+danger of being denounced and menaced in their liberty, men rapidly
+become the prey of terror. And the terrible life, sooner or later,
+awakens demoniacal terror among the weak. But people of this sort
+are legion in Russia, and Peredonov, the hero of "The Little Demon,"
+represents this class so graphically that to-day Russian historians
+and authors designate the era from 1880 to 1905 by the name
+"peredonovchina." The following is a brief outline of the story:
+
+Peredonov is a school-teacher in a provincial town. His fondest
+dream is to be nominated primary inspector. He lives with his
+mistress, the old dressmaker, Varvara by name. One of his mistress's
+clients, a virtuous and philanthropic princess, makes him
+understand, one day, that she will have him nominated if he marries
+Varvara. Peredonov does not love his mistress; he simply lives with
+her from habit and because she bears, without complaining too much,
+his coarseness, his cavilling, and his bad humor. However, he will
+marry her if the princess can get him the position he desires. But
+will the princess keep her word? It is some time since she has let
+herself be heard from. What is to be done?
+
+"Marry," says his friend Routilov to him, when he is told the
+condition of things. "I have three sisters," he continues. "Choose
+the one you like best and marry her immediately. Thus Varvara will
+know nothing and cannot throw any obstacles in the way."
+
+"Done!" cries Peredonov, who has known the three sisters for a long
+time. He chooses the youngest, Valerie.
+
+"Go and tell her about it. I will wait for you in the hall and then
+we'll go to the priest's together."
+
+Alone, Peredonov again muses: "Doubtless, Valerie is pretty and I
+shall be happy to have her as my wife. But she is young,
+pretentious; she will demand lots of new clothes, she will want to
+go out a lot, in fact, so much that I'll not be able to lay anything
+aside. Moreover, she'll not look after the kitchen, I'll have poor
+food, and the cook will rob us." Anguish seizes him. He knocks at
+the window, calls his friend, and says:
+
+"I've changed my mind."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the other, horrified.
+
+"Yes, I have reflected, and I have decided that I prefer the second,
+Lyoudmila."
+
+Lyoudmila consents, for, besides his personal fortune, Peredonov
+occupies an enviable position, and the sisters are poor. She
+hurriedly gets dressed; in a quarter of an hour she will be ready to
+accompany him to the priest's.
+
+However, Peredonov reflects: "Lyoudmila is pretty and plump; she
+doubtless has a perfect body, but she is always jolly, she loves to
+laugh. She will laugh incessantly and will make her husband seem
+ridiculous." Full of fear, he knocks at the window: "I have
+reflected," he cries. "I prefer the oldest, Darya."
+
+"What an awful man!" cries his friend. "Hurry up, Darya, or he'll
+leave all of us in the lurch."
+
+Again Peredonov reflects: "Darya is nice, not young any more, and
+economical; she knows life. But ... she is decisive in her
+resolutions, and she has an energetic character. She is not the kind
+who would listen to my observations. She could make life hard for
+me, and use me ill. Frankly, do I have to marry any of the three
+sisters? What will the princess say when she hears of my marriage?
+And my position as inspector? How stupid it is to stand waiting in
+this court! Without a doubt, Routilov ensnared me. I've got to get
+out of this at any cost!"
+
+He spits on all sides to conjure up the spirits, then knocks at the
+window, and tells the amazed family:
+
+"I am going away.... I have thought it over. I don't want to get
+married."
+
+Meanwhile, his position in school becomes intolerable; complaints
+are registered against him; he is reproached with having ill-treated
+and even with having beaten the poor children, and with treating the
+noble and rich children with too much respect. His ridiculous and
+evil passions cause him to be detested by all. Luckily, he will soon
+be nominated inspector, and then he will say good-bye to all this
+riff-raff. In the meantime, Varvara writes a letter, filled with the
+most alluring promises, to which she signs the princess's name, and
+has it mailed from St. Petersburg. Peredonov is at the height of
+joy; but, being a prudent man, he does not want to marry before he
+has received the nomination. He waits and waits for it, and,
+meanwhile, he is not even sure of his position in the school. He
+discovers enemies everywhere, and believes there are always spies at
+his heels. In order to cajole the administration, he begins to
+frequent the church, and to pay visits to the city authorities. He
+assures the chief of police of his respect, and, in order to give a
+glaring proof of his devotion to the established institutions, he
+lodges information against a school-mistress of the locality. But
+still the nomination does not come, and he lives in a continual
+trance. The evil in him increases. He torments beasts and human
+beings. He whips his pupils, throws nettles at his cat, and
+maltreats his cook. He believes himself more and more in the power
+of the demon, and terrible visions follow him:
+
+"He saw running before him, a little, grey, noisy beast. It sneered,
+its head trembled, and it ran quickly around Peredonov. When he
+wanted to seize it, it escaped under the cupboard, only to reappear
+a moment later...."
+
+This strange book, written with rare perfection, had a great
+success. To several readers who thought that they recognized the
+author himself in the person of Peredonov (Sologoub had had the same
+position as his hero for several years) the author replied in the
+preface of a recent edition, by these malicious lines:
+
+"Men like to be loved. They adore noble and elevated descriptions
+and portrayals. They even search among the scum for a 'divine
+spark.' They also are surprised and offended when any one offers
+them a veracious and sombre picture. And most of them then do not
+fail to declare: 'The author has described himself in his work.'
+But no, my dear friends and readers, it is you, and only you, whom I
+have painted in my book, 'The Little Demon.'"
+
+In "The Charms of Navii" Sologoub happily blends fantasy and
+reality. Revolutionary meetings alternate with improbable hypnotic
+seances, and terrible corteges of corpses contrast violently with
+scenes of platonic and ethereal love.
+
+The plot of the story, "The Old Home," is not less distressing than
+the preceding one. A young revolutionary, condemned to death by
+court-martial, has been executed, but for his dear ones this death
+has never been a reality. His mother and sister, and even the old
+servant, have not the strength to admit his disappearance. They wait
+and wait for his return until their own death carries them off.
+
+Another story, "The Crowd," shows us a "fair" at which pewter
+goblets are being given away. These so excite the greediness of the
+crowd that a fray results, in which three children are seriously
+wounded. While dying, the unfortunates have terrible visions of life
+and humanity. "It seemed to them that ferocious demons were
+chuckling and sneering silently behind human faces. And this
+masquerade lasted so long that the poor little tots thought that it
+would never end...."
+
+Sologoub is, above all, a chanter of death. Almost all of his works
+unveil a murder, suicide, or madness. Moreover, the author, who
+shows only the injustices, evils, and infamy of life, and who
+affirms that the only happiness that he foresees for man is the
+possibility of "creating for himself a chimera" by turning away from
+reality, finds the clearest colors and the sweetest expressions in
+speaking of death.
+
+"There is not a surer and more tender friend on earth than death,"
+says one of his heroes. "And if men fear the name of death, it is
+because they do not know that it is the real life, eternal and
+invariable. Life deceives very often, death never. It is sweet to
+think of death, as it is to think of a dear friend, distant and yet
+always close at hand.... One forgets all in the arms of the
+consoling angel, the angel of death."
+
+The ever supremely correct and beautiful language of Sologoub shows
+the power of a master, and it is most regrettable that an artist of
+his merit should confine himself to so morbid an art.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These then are the principal authors--some of whom have enjoyed an
+immense popularity--who treat the "cursed questions:" the rights of
+the flesh, the problem of death, and other equally "cursed"
+problems.
+
+The other writers are principally occupied with social questions,
+and, without rigorously following in the steps of their
+predecessors, remain, however, most of the time, realists.
+
+Among these, Sergyev-Tzensky occupies a prominent place. The stories
+of this writer show us beings who seem strangers to what is going on
+around them. This peculiarity comes from the fact that Tzensky does
+not understand the physical facts in the same way that the
+naturalists do. For him, they are the manifestations of the will of
+a supernatural entity, incomprehensible, inconceivable, and, at the
+same time, clearly hostile to man.
+
+His story, "The Sadness of the Fields," testifies to this singular
+conception. A farmer and his wife, good and peaceful people, have
+for many years wished for a child. Up to this time, the six children
+which the mother has given birth to have died in their infancy. They
+are anxiously awaiting the seventh. Will this one live? Will not the
+sadness of the fields, which puts its imprint on everything, kill it
+as it has killed the others? Alas! the child is not viable, and the
+mother dies in child-birth. They are buried, and "the fields and the
+surrounding country forever keep their powerful and mysterious
+melancholy."
+
+"The Fluctuation" is one of the most curious and beautiful of all of
+Tzensky's stories. Anton Antonovich, a rich and enterprising
+merchant, of a very violent and unruly character, lives like a wolf
+in his domains, alone with his family, without seeing any of his
+neighbors. The peasants detest him. As his partners and helpers, he
+always engages nonentities, without power of initiative, who blindly
+follow his orders. Intellectual and energetic men cannot get along
+with him. Men, beasts, and nature in its entirety, are considered by
+this man as having been especially created for his service. The one
+end of his life is wealth and power. The only beings he loves are
+his wife and his three sons; but even they have to bow down to his
+will.
+
+One day, he buys some straw and insures it against fire. Sometime
+later, it burns. They accuse him of having been the incendiary.
+Ridiculous accusation! He is a millionaire and the straw barely cost
+a few hundred rubles. The old man makes fun of the whole affair; he
+insults the judge, his own lawyer, and even the jury. He feels the
+impending misfortune, but his inborn violence carries him away from
+prudence. He is condemned to hard labor and he succumbs to a
+sickness that he has been feeling coming on for a long time. He had
+made a pillager's nest for himself, and he died like a pillager,
+abandoned even by those who were dear to him.
+
+In Tzensky's short stories, "I Shall Soon Die," "Diphtheria,"
+"Tedium," and "The Masks," there is something mysterious, fatal, and
+terrible that constantly surrounds his people. As to his longer
+works, "The Swamp in the Forest," and "Lieutenant Babayev," they
+plunge the reader into the mad chaos of the often abnormal emotions
+felt by the characters. These characters imagine the divine side of
+human nature; they consider it as having existed before in the
+essence of things, but the reality does not harmonize with their
+dream. The authentication of this discord torments Tzensky's heroes
+and their souls protest passionately, but in vain, against these
+outrages.
+
+Sergyev-Tzensky's style, graphic and pure, often strange, has found
+imitators among the younger writers. Thus, Mouyzhel, who describes
+village life, is visibly influenced by his writings. According to
+him, the soul goes through life without understanding it, without
+being able to ascribe any meaning to it. And he is so sincere, that
+his works obtain the frankest sort of success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Mouyzhel studies peasant life, Simon Youshkevich, to the
+exclusion of all else, makes a study of the poor Russian Jews. Some
+of his stories have produced an overwhelming impression. They show
+us beings, heaped up, pell-mell in the ghettos of the cities of
+western and southern Russia, dirty and unwholesome ghettos, where
+consumption and all kinds of terrible sickness reign. These stories,
+often tragic, always sad, have given Youshkevich the name of
+"chanter of human suffering."
+
+In his earlier works--the best of which are "The Jews,"
+"Tavern-Keeper Heimann," "The Innocents," "The Prologue" and "The
+Assassin"--he devoted himself to portraying, not isolated persons,
+but the immense Russian Jewish proletariat, with its sad past, its
+bloody present, and its exalted faith in the future. Youshkevich has
+created this sphere; he considers the poor people of the cities not
+as a social class, but as a symbolic representation of an entire
+organization. If his work is at times infected with romanticism and
+some exaggeration the reader will gladly forget these imperfections
+when he recognizes the fact that they are necessary to enable this
+author to express the truth. What makes this writer unique, is that
+he cannot be confounded with any one else. He has never influenced
+any of his readers and, in turn, has never imitated any one. He made
+himself what he is.
+
+His last literary productions--with the exception of his very
+touching drama, "Misere"--have been inferior to his former work.
+But the abundance of the materials furnished by Jewish life would
+still give this author opportunity to give us more of the
+magnificently colored pictures that he gave us in his initial
+productions.
+
+Close to Youshkevich should be placed the two young writers, Sholom
+Ash and Izemann. Sholom Ash has principally depicted the Jewish
+world and its psychology. "The God of Vengeance" is a touching
+picture of the life of young Jewish girls who have been obliged to
+prostitute themselves for a living. "Sabbatai-Zevi,"[19] a
+philosophical poem, treats of the powerful personality of that
+Jewish prophet and of the surroundings in which he passed his life.
+
+ [19] A famous impostor of the 17th century: 1626-1676.
+
+Izemann, who has written quite a few tales and stories, is a very
+uneven author. His best work is "The Thorn Bush," a drama of the
+life of the Russian-Jewish revolutionists. Manousse, the son of a
+poor tinsmith, has been arrested, and then hanged for having taken
+part in a terrorist uprising. His sister, Dara, engaged to the son
+of a wealthy manufacturer, has, in her turn, been killed at a
+barricade. She is carried back to her home, and there, revolver in
+hand, the mother receives the soldiers. She falls mortally wounded
+at the side of her fourteen year old son. Thus, the entire family
+perishes. The last act of this sombre drama makes a tremendous
+impression on the stage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having been a country doctor for several years, Eugene
+Chirikov abandoned his practice in order to devote himself to
+literature. His drama, "The Jews," has aroused great interest and
+has been played with great success both in Russia and abroad. It is
+one of the most significant works of this writer. The story concerns
+itself with the children of a poor Jewish watchmaker, who are
+infatuated with ideas of progress. Their infatuation is such, that
+the daughter becomes engaged to a Gentile. A delirious mob invades
+the houses of the Jews. The store of the poor watchmaker is not
+spared, and the fiancee of the Gentile is ravished and then
+murdered. The rapid action of the play makes it a dramatic "slice of
+life."
+
+The other plays and stories of this author give us pictures both of
+the petty "bourgeois" and of the "intellectuals." Thus, "The
+Strangers" tells the story of a group of "intellectuals" who have
+strayed into a small market town in the provinces where all are
+hostile to them. Then there is "The Invalids," which gives the story
+of the life of an old man who, after having been exiled to Siberia
+for several years on account of "advanced" ideas, returns to Russia
+as confident as ever, ready to consecrate the rest of his life to
+the people. Finally, "At the Bottom of the Court," "The Mysteries of
+the Forest" and "Marya Ivanovna" are dramas from bourgeois life,
+while "The Sorceress" is a play, taken from a national epic.
+
+Not less well known than Chirikov, is Ossip Dymov. He forsook the
+"Imperial Institute of Foresters" in order to devote himself to
+literature. He has written numerous stories, among which "Vlass" is
+the most captivating. It is the childhood of Vlass told by himself.
+An observing little person, the child notices everything and
+everybody around him. His father had killed himself before the child
+was old enough to talk, and his mother, a very intelligent and stern
+woman, alone had to care for four children. Vlass has an older
+brother, Yuri, a sister, Olya, and a younger brother, Vladimir, a
+kind and inoffensive creature. Life runs along smoothly in the
+little country town. The days pass, one like the other, and the most
+insignificant event takes on grave importance in this monotonous
+life. One night, Vlass's young teacher is arrested and sent to
+Siberia. A year later, a friend of the family, who has been in exile
+a long time, comes back secretly and passes several days at the
+house. Later on, it is "the beautiful, good aunt" who comes
+unexpectedly; but she soon departs, leaving a mass of confused and
+restless thoughts in the child's mind. Vlass ends his story with a
+most pathetic account. Far away from the little town, in one of the
+prisons of St. Petersburg, they are going to hang Yuri. The entire
+family has broken down since they have heard the news, and they sit
+up the night before the execution, trying, in thought, to alleviate
+the torment of their cherished one.
+
+In his other stories, the author paints nature in an original and
+entirely personal manner. According to a Russian critic, the works
+of Dymov breathe forth "the fresh breeze and the quickening aroma of
+the forests."
+
+Dymov has also written some very well-liked plays, of which "Niyu"
+is the most original. Niyu, a young woman, abandons her husband and
+child in order to follow a poet, whose beautiful language and
+touching poetry have won her admiration and brought her under his
+spell. She hopes that her lover will create a new world, a higher
+and nobler world than the every-day one, because he is a poet, that
+is to say, one of the elect. The abandoned husband and the
+uncared-for child desperately call out for their wife and mother. In
+vain! However, the days that she passes with the poet are filled
+with disenchantment, disillusion, and bitterness. Despairing, she
+writes a letter to her old parents who live in a distant town, and
+then commits suicide. And hardly is Niyu buried, when the poet,
+although sadly affected by the premature loss of his companion,
+again begins to charm and entrance by his beautiful words other
+women, whose lives he ruins.
+
+"Niyu" has had a tremendous success, because it brings a really new
+formula into the theatrical world. Very little action, very few
+"situations;" no artificial procedure: life; dialogue imitated from
+reality; an atmosphere of despair and tedium in which three beings
+cruelly struggle; sincere evolution, very much pessimism, and
+happiness and love, constitute the traits that characterize this
+very human piece of writing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mention should also be made of Sayitzev, certain of whose stories
+are comparable to the aquarelles of a landscape painter. One of his
+best works is "Agrafena," a touching picture of the life of a
+peasant woman. During her lifetime, she was a domestic in the
+cities, and when finally, bent under years of labor, she comes back
+to her native village and her daughter, whom she has secretly
+brought up at great pains, it is only to find that she has committed
+suicide, having been abandoned by her lover.
+
+Among others, should be mentioned Gussev-Orenburgsky, who has
+written some very interesting stories about the Russian clergy;
+Skitaletz, whose "Rural Tribunal" has had a great success, and has
+been translated into several languages; Seraphimovich and Teleshov,
+who, like Chirikov, depict the life of the "intellectuals," and
+Olizhey, the psychologist of revolutionary spheres, known
+particularly by his "The Day of Judgment," which tells of an
+officer, a member of a council of war, who is forced to condemn his
+future brother-in-law to death. This story leaves an indescribable
+impression of terror and horror.
+
+Let us finally mention Count Alexis Tolstoy, the homonym of the
+great Russian thinker, to whom the critics predict a brilliant
+future. His first work appeared in 1909. He generally depicts landed
+proprietors. His recent stories, "The Asking in Marriage," and
+"Beyond the Volga," show signs of great strength and power of
+observation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the women, there are three who show real talent. In fact, Mme.
+Hippius-Merezhkovskaya is regarded as one of the founders of Russian
+modernism. We are indebted to her for some rather daring verses and
+some very good stories. The most recent of these, "The Creature," is
+the curious history of a love-sick prostitute; "The Devil's Doll" is
+an episode in the life of the Russian "intellectuals." Endowed with
+a caustic spirit, she excels all others in literary criticism.
+
+Then comes Mme. Verbitzkaya, who has declared herself a champion of
+women, who, she thinks, should throw off the often tyrannical yoke
+of their husbands. Her novels, "Vavochka," and "The Story of a
+Life," have given her just renown. In "The Spirit of the Time" she
+has tried, not without some success, to paint the immense picture of
+the revolution of 1905. Her recent novel, "The Keys of Happiness,"
+has had an enormous success.
+
+Finally, mention should be made of Mme. Shepkina-Koupernik, who has
+written some verses and charming stories, full of caressing
+tenderness and delicate psychology. Her stories, in which she shows
+us two old Italian masters, are very interesting. Thus, "Eternity in
+a Moment" is delicious. In a painter's studio, a young model by
+chance meets her old lover, who has also been reduced to posing in
+studios. Happy at heart, the woman rushes toward him, but he pushes
+her away: he is too miserable, he has fallen too low to dare to love
+her again. Repulsed by him, she stands as if petrified, with death
+in her soul, and her face changed by terrible despair. At this
+moment the master enters; he looks at the young woman and utters a
+cry of joy; finally he has found what he wants for his picture:
+human traits ravaged by suffering and despair!
+
+Russia is also indebted to this author for impeccable translations
+of Rostand's "Princesse Lointaine" and "Chantecler."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Contemporary Russian Novelists, by Serge Persky
+
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