LANDMARKS - IN 
 RUSSIAN-LITERATURE 
 
 MAURICE BARING 
 
Please 
 
 handle this volume 
 
 with care. 
 
 The University of Connecticut 
 Libraries, Storrs 
 
 III 
 
 3 9153 00200186 7 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN 
 LITERATURE 
 
LANDMARKS IN 
 RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE BARING 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 


 r 
 
 O 
 V9 
 
 DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE chapters in this book on Tolstoy and 
 Tourgeniev, and those on Chekov and 
 Gogol have appeared before. That on Tolstoy 
 and Tourgeniev in The Quarterly Review \ those 
 on Chekov and Gogol in The New Quarterly ; my 
 thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors 
 concerned for their kindness in allowing me to 
 reprint these chapters here. 
 
 The chapter on Russian Characteristics appeared 
 in St. George's Magazine \ the rest of the book is 
 new. In writing it I consulted, besides many 
 books and articles in the Russian language, the 
 following : 
 
 The Works of Turgeniev. Translated by Constance 
 
 Garnett. Fifteen vols. London : Heinemann, 1906. 
 The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy. Translated 
 
 and edited by Leo Wiener. Twenty-four vols. 
 
 London : Dent, 1904-5. 
 La Roman Russe. By the Vicomte E. M. de Vogiie. 
 
 Paris : Plon, 1897. 
 Tolstoy as Man and Artist : with an Essay on 
 
 Dostoievski. By Dimitri Merejkowski. London : 
 
 Constable, 1902. ^ 
 
 ^ This is an abridgment of a larger book by the author. 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Ivan Turgeniev : la Vie et I'CEuvre. By Emile 
 
 Haumant. Paris : Armand Colin, 1906. 
 The Life of Tolstoy. First Fifty Years. By Aylmer 
 
 Maude. London : Constable, 1908. 
 A Literary History of Russia. By Prof. A. Bruckner. 
 
 Edited by Ellis H. Minns. Translated by H. 
 
 Havelock. London and Leipsic : Fisher Unwin, 
 
 1908. 
 Realities and Ideals of Russian Literature. By Prince 
 
 Kropotkin. 
 Russian Poetry and Progress. By Mrs. Newmarch. 
 
 John Lane. 
 
 By far the best estimate of Tolstoy's work I 
 have come across in England in the last few years 
 was a brilliant article published in the Literary 
 Supplement of the Times, I think in 1907, which, 
 it is to be hoped, will be republished. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Russian Characteristics . . . i 
 
 II. Realism of Russian Literature . . 17 
 
 III. Gogol and the Cheerfulness of the 
 
 Russian People . . . -39 
 
 IV. Tolstoy and Tourgeniev . . . n 
 V. The Place of Tourgeniev . . .116 
 
 VI. Dostoievsky . . . . .125 
 
 VII. Plays of Anton Tchekov . . . 263- 
 
 4; 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A BOOK dealing with the literature of a 
 foreign country appeals to a double 
 audience : the narrow circle of people who are 
 intimately familiar with that literature in its 
 original tongue, and the large public which is 
 imperfectly acquainted even with translations of 
 some of its books. One of these audiences must 
 necessarily be sacrificed. For if you address 
 yourself exclusively to the specialists, the larger 
 public will be but faintly interested ; while if you 
 have the larger public in view alone, the narrower 
 circle of those who are familiar with the language 
 will hear nothing from you which they do not 
 already know too well. In the case of a literature 
 such as Russian, it is obvious which audience has the 
 claim to the greater consideration ; but while this 
 book is addressed to those who are interested in 
 but not intimately familiar with Russian literature, 
 I entertain the hope that these essays may not 
 prove entirely uninteresting to the closer students 
 of Russian. I have tried to make a compromise, 
 and while especially addressing myself to the 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 majority, not to lose sight of the minority 
 altogether. 
 
 The standpoint from which I approach Russian 
 literature is less that of the scholar than of an 
 admiring and sympathetic friend. I have tried to 
 understand what the Russians themselves think 
 about their own literature, and in some manner 
 to reflect their point of view as it struck me either 
 in their books or in conversation with many men 
 and women of many classes throughout several 
 years. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that there are 
 two ways of writing about a foreign literature : 
 from the outside and from the inside. Take a 
 language like French, for instance, and the study 
 of French poetry in particular. Many English 
 students of French poetry seem to me to start 
 from the point of view that although much 
 French verse has many excellent qualities, those 
 qualities which are peculiarly French and which 
 the French themselves admire most are not 
 worth admiring. Thus it is that we have had 
 many excellent critics telling us that although 
 the French poetry of the Renaissance is admir- 
 able and the French Romantic epoch produced 
 men of astounding genius, yet the poets of 
 another sort, whom the French set up on a per- 
 manent pinnacle as models of classic perfection, 
 such as Racine or La Fontaine, are not poets at 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 all. Some critics have even gone further, and have 
 maintained that admirable as the French language 
 is as an instrument for writing prose, it cannot 
 properly be used as a vehicle for writing poetry, and 
 that French poetry cannot be considered as being 
 in the same category or on the same footing as 
 the verse of other nations. This is what I call the 
 outside view, and I am not only not persuaded 
 of its truth, but I am convinced that it is false, 
 for two reasons : — 
 
 First, because I cannot help thinking that the 
 natives of a country must be the best judges of 
 their own tongue and of its literature, and that 
 foreign critics, however acute, may fail to ap- 
 preciate certain shades of meaning and sound 
 which particularly appeal to the native — for 
 instance, I am sure it is more difficult for a 
 foreigner to appreciate the music of Milton's 
 diction than for an Englishman. Secondly, since 
 I learnt French at the same time as I learnt 
 English, and became familiar with French verse 
 long before I was introduced to the works of 
 English poets, from my childhood up to the 
 present day French poetry has seemed to me to 
 be just as beautiful as the poetry of any other 
 country, and the verse of Racine as musical as 
 that of Milton. I have, moreover, sometimes 
 suspected that the severe sentences I have seen 
 passed on the French classics by English critics 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 were perhaps due to imperfect familiarity with 
 the language in question, and that it even seemed 
 possible that in condemning French verse they 
 were ignorant of the French laws of metre and 
 scansion ; such ignorance would certainly prove a 
 serious obstacle to proper appreciation. 
 
 This digression is to make clear what I mean 
 when I say that I have tried to approach my 
 subject from the inside ; that is to say, I have 
 tried to put myself into the skin of a Russian, 
 and to look at the literature of Russia with his 
 eyes, and then to explain to my fellow-country- 
 men as clearly as possible what I have seen. 
 I do not say I have succeeded, but I have 
 been greatly encouraged in the task by having 
 received appreciative thanks for my former efforts 
 in this direction from Russians who are, in my 
 opinion, the only critics competent to judge 
 whether what I have written about their people 
 and their books hits the mark or not. 
 
 One of the great difficulties in writing studies 
 of various Russian writers is the paradoxical thread 
 that runs through the Russian character. Russia 
 is the land of paradoxes. The Russian character 
 and temperament are baffling, owing to the para- 
 doxical elements which are found united in them. 
 It is for this reason that a series of studies deal- 
 ing with different aspects of the Russian character 
 often have the appearance of being a series of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 contradictory statements. I have therefore in the 
 first chapter of this book stated what I consider 
 to be the chief paradoxical elements of the 
 Russian character. It is the conflicting nature 
 of these elements which accounts for the seem- 
 ingly contradictory qualities that we meet with 
 in Russian literature. For instance, there is a 
 passive element in the Russian nature ; there 
 is also something unbridled, a spirit which breaks 
 all bounds of self-control and runs riot ; and there 
 is also a stubborn element, a tough obstinacy. 
 The result is that at one moment one is pointing 
 out the matter-of-fact side of the Russian genius 
 which clings to the earth and abhors extrava- 
 gance ; and at another time one is discoursing 
 on the passion certain Russian novelists have for 
 making their characters wallow in abstract dis- 
 cussions ; or, again, the cheerfulness of Gogol has 
 to be reconciled with the " inspissated gloom " of 
 certain other writers. All this makes it easy for a 
 critic to bring the charge of inconsistency against 
 a student whose object is to provide certain side- 
 lights on certain striking examples, rather than a 
 comprehensive view of the whole, a task which 
 is beyond the scope and powers of the present 
 writer. 
 
 The student of Russian literature who wishes 
 for a comprehensive view of the whole of Russian 
 literature and of its historic significance and 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 development, cannot do better than read Pro- 
 fessor Bruckner's solid and brilliant Literary 
 History of Russia, which is admirably translated 
 into English. 
 
 The object of my book is to interest the reader 
 in Russia and Russian literature, and to enable 
 him to make up his mind as to whether he wishes 
 to seek after a more intimate knowledge of the 
 subject. 
 
 The authors whose work forms the subject of 
 this book belong to the period which began in 
 the fifties and ended before the Russo-Japanese 
 War. The work of Tchekov represents the close 
 of that epoch which began with Gogol. After 
 Tchekov the dawn of a new era was marked by 
 the startling advent of Maxim Gorky into Russian 
 literature. Then came the war, and with it a 
 torrent of new writers, of new thoughts, of new 
 schools, of new theories of art. The most remark- 
 able of these writers is no doubt Andreev ; but 
 in order to discuss his work as well as that of 
 other writers who followed in his train, it would 
 be necessary to write another book. The student 
 of Russian literature will notice that I have 
 omitted many Russian authors who are well 
 known in the epoch which I have chosen. I 
 have omitted them for reasons which I have 
 already stated at the beginning of this Intro- 
 duction, namely, that there is not in England a 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 large enough circle of readers interested in Russian 
 literature to the extent of wishing to read about 
 its less well-known writers. I think the authors 
 I have chosen are typical of the generations they 
 represent, and I hope that this book may have 
 the effect of leading readers from books about 
 Russia and Russian literature, to the country 
 itself and its books, so that they may be able 
 to see with their own eyes and to correct the 
 impressions which they have received second- 
 hand. 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN 
 LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 THE difficulty in explaining anything to do 
 with Russia to an English public is that 
 confusion is likely to arise owing to the terms 
 used being misunderstood. For instance, if one 
 describes a Russian officer, a Russian bureaucrat, 
 a Russian public servant, or a Russian school- 
 master, the reader involuntarily makes a mental 
 comparison with corresponding people in his own 
 country, or in other European countries where he 
 has travelled. He necessarily fails to remember 
 that there are certain vital differences between 
 Russians and people of other countries, which 
 affect the whole question, and which make the 
 Russian totally different from the corresponding 
 Englishman. I wish before approaching the work 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 of Russian writers, to sketch a few of the main 
 characteristics which He at the root of the Russian 
 temperament by which Russian Hterature is pro- 
 foundly affected. 
 
 The principal fact which has struck me with 
 regard to the Russian character, is a characteristic 
 which was once summed up by Professor Milioukov 
 thus : " A Russian," he said, " lacks the cement of 
 hypocrisy." This cement, which plays so im- 
 portant a part in English public and private life, 
 is totally lacking in the Russian character. The 
 Russian character is plastic; the Russian can 
 understand everything. You can mould him any 
 way you please. He is like wet clay, yielding 
 and malleable ; he is passive ; he bows his head 
 and gives in before the decrees of Fate and of 
 Providence. At the same time, it would be a 
 mistake to say that this is altogether a sign of 
 weakness. There is a kind of toughness in the 
 Russian character, an irreducible obstinacy which 
 makes for strength ; otherwise the Russian 
 Empire would not exist. But where the want of 
 the cement of hypocrisy is most noticeable, is in 
 the personal relations of Russians towards their 
 fellow-creatures. They do not in the least mind 
 openly confessing things of which people in other 
 countries are ashamed ; they do not mind admit- 
 ting to dishonesty, immorality, or cowardice, if 
 they happen to feel that they are saturated with 
 
 2 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 these defects; and they feel that their fellow- 
 creatures will not think the worse of them on this 
 account, because they know that their fellow- 
 creatures will understand. The astounding in- 
 dulgence of the Russians arises out of this infinite 
 capacity for understanding. 
 
 Another point: This absence of hypocrisy 
 causes them to have an impatience of cant and 
 of convention. They will constantly say : " Why 
 not ? " They will not recognise the necessity 
 of drawing the line somewhere, they will not 
 accept as something binding the conventional 
 morality and the artificial rules of conduct which 
 knit together our society with a bond of steel. 
 They may admit the expediency of social laws, 
 but they will never prate of the laws of any society 
 being divine ; they will merely admit that they 
 are convenient. Therefore, if we go to the root 
 of this matter, it comes to this : that the Russians 
 are more broadly and widely human than the 
 people of other European or Eastern countries, 
 and, being more human, their capacity of under- 
 standing is greater, for their extraordinary quick- 
 ness of apprehension comes from the heart rather 
 than from the head. They are the most humane 
 and the most naturally kind of all the peoples of 
 Europe, or, to put it differently and perhaps more 
 accurately, I should say that there is more 
 humanity and more kindness in Russia than in 
 
 3 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 any other European country. This may startle 
 the reader; he may think of the lurid accounts 
 in the newspapers of massacres, brutal treatment 
 of prisoners, and various things of this kind, and 
 be inclined to doubt my statement. As long as 
 the world exists there will always be a certain 
 amount of cruelty in the conduct of human beings. 
 My point is this : that there is less in Russia 
 than in other countries, but the trouble up to 
 the last two years has been that all excesses 
 of any kind on the part of officials were un- 
 checked and uncontrolled. Therefore, if any man 
 who had any authority over any other man 
 happened to be brutal, his brutality had a far 
 wider scope and far richer opportunities than that 
 of a corresponding overseer in another country. 
 
 During the last three years Russia has been 
 undergoing a violent evolutionary process of 
 change, what in other countries has been called a 
 revolution ; but compared with similar phases in 
 other countries, and taking into consideration the 
 size of the Russian Empire, and the various 
 nationalities which it contains, I maintain that 
 the proportion of excesses has been comparatively 
 less. There are other factors in the question 
 which should also be borne in mind ; firstly, that 
 politically Russia is about a century behind other 
 European countries, and the second is that 
 Russians accept the fact that a man who does 
 
 4 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 wrong deserves punishment, with a kind of 
 Oriental fatality, although the pity which is in- 
 herent in them causes them to have a horror of 
 capital punishment. 
 
 Now, let us take the first question, and just 
 imagine for a moment what the treatment of the 
 poor would be in England were there no such 
 thing as a habeas corpus. Imagine what the 
 position of the police would be, if it held a 
 position of arbitrary dominion ; if nobody were 
 responsible ; if any policeman could do what he 
 chose, with no further responsibility than that 
 towards his superior officers. I do not hesitate 
 to say that were such a state of things to exist 
 in England, the position of the poor would be 
 intolerable. Now, the position of the poor in 
 Russia is not intolerable ; it is bad, owing to the 
 evils inseparable from poverty, drink, and the 
 want of control enjoyed by public servants. But 
 it is not intolerable. Were it intolerable, the 
 whole of the Russian poor, who number ninety 
 millions, would have long ago risen to a man. 
 They have not done so because their position is 
 not intolerable ; and the reason of this is, that the 
 evils to which I have alluded are to a certain 
 extent mitigated by the good-nature and kindness 
 inherent in the Russian temperament, instead of 
 being aggravated by an innate brutality and cruelty 
 such as we meet with in Latin and other races. 
 
 5 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Again, closely connected with any political 
 system which is backward, you will always find 
 in any country a certain brutality in the matter of 
 punishments. Perhaps the cause of this — which 
 is the reason why torture was employed in the 
 Middle Ages, and why it is employed in China 
 at the present day — is that only a small per- 
 centage of the criminal classes are ever arrested ; 
 therefore when a criminal is caught, his treatment 
 is often unduly severe. If you read, for instance, 
 the sentences of corporal punishment, etc., which 
 were passed in England in the eighteenth century 
 by county judges, or of the punishments which 
 were the rule in the Duke of Wellington's army 
 in the Peninsular War, they will make your hair 
 stand on end by their incredible brutality ; and 
 England in the eighteenth century was politic- 
 ally more advanced than Russia is at the present 
 day. 
 
 With regard to the second point, the attitude 
 of Russians towards the question of punishments 
 displays a curious blend of opinion. While they 
 are more indulgent than any other people when 
 certain vices and defects are concerned, they are 
 ruthless in enforcing and accepting the necessity 
 of punishment in the case of certain other criminal 
 offences. For instance, they are completely indul- 
 gent with regard to any moral delinquencies, but 
 unswervingly stern in certain other matters ; and 
 
 6 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 although they would often be inclined to let off a 
 criminal, saying : " Why should he be punished ? " 
 at the same time if he is punished, and severely 
 punished, they will accept the matter as a part 
 of the inevitable system that governs the world. 
 On the other hand, they are indulgent and 
 tolerant where moral delinquencies which affect 
 the man himself and not the community are 
 concerned ; that is to say, they will not mind 
 how often or how violently a man gets drunk, 
 because the matter affects only himself; but they 
 will bitterly resent a man stealing horses, because 
 thereby the whole community is affected. 
 
 This attitude of mind is reflected in the 
 Russian Code of Laws. The Russian Penal Code, 
 as M. Leroy-Beaulieu points out in his classic 
 book on Russia, is the most lenient in Europe. 
 But the trouble is, as the Liberal members of the 
 Duma are constantly repeating, not that the laws 
 in Russia are bad, but that they are overridden 
 by the arbitrary conduct of individual officials. 
 However, I do not wish in this article to dwell 
 on the causes of political discontent in Russia, 
 or on the evils of the bureaucratic regime. My 
 object is simply to point out certain character- 
 istics of the Russian race, and one of these 
 characteristics is the leniency of the punishment 
 laid down by law for offences which in other 
 countries are dealt with drastically and severely ; 
 
 7 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 murder, for instance. Capital punishment was 
 abolished in Russia as long ago as 1753 by the 
 Empress Elizabeth ; corporal punishment subsisted 
 only among the peasants, administered by them- 
 selves (and not by a magistrate) according to their 
 own local administration, until it was abolished 
 by the present Emperor in 1904. So that until 
 the revolutionary movement began, cases of capital 
 punishment, which only occurred in virtue of 
 martial law, were rare, and from 1866 to 1903 
 only 114 men suffered the penalty of death 
 throughout the whole of the Russian Empire, 
 including the outlying districts such as Caucasus, 
 Transbaikalia, and Turkestan ; ^ and even at the 
 present moment, when the country is still practi- 
 cally governed by martial law, which was 
 established in order to cope with the revolu- 
 tionary movement, you can in Russia kill a 
 man and only receive a few years' imprison- 
 ment. It is the contrast of the lenient treatment 
 meted out to non-political prisoners with the 
 severity exercised towards political offenders 
 which strikes the Russian politician to-day, and it 
 is of this contradiction that he so bitterly com- 
 plains. The fact, nevertheless, remains — in spite 
 of the cases, however numerous, which arose out 
 of the extraordinary situation created by the 
 revolutionary movement, that the sentence of 
 
 ^ See Tagantseff, Russian Criminal Law. 
 
 8 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 death, meted out by the judicial court, is in itself 
 abhorrent to the Russian character. 
 
 I will now give a few minor instances illus- 
 trating the indulgent attitude of the Russian 
 character towards certain moral delinquencies. 
 In a regiment which I came across in Manchuria 
 during the war there were two men ; one was 
 conscientious, brave to the verge of heroism, self- 
 sacrificing, punctilious in the performance of his 
 duty, and exacting in the demands he made on 
 others as to the fulfilment of theirs, untiringly 
 energetic, competent in every way, but severe and 
 uncompromising. There was another man who was 
 incurably lax in the performance of his duty, not 
 scrupulously honest where the Government money 
 was concerned, incompetent, but as kind as a human 
 being can be. I once heard a Russian doctor 
 who was attached to this regiment discussing and 
 comparing the characters of the two men, and, 
 after weighing the pros and cons, he concluded 
 that as a man the latter was superior. Dis- 
 honesty in dealings with the public money seemed 
 to him an absolutely trifling fault. The unswerv- 
 ing performance of duty, and all the great military 
 qualities which he noted in the former, did not 
 seem to him to count in the balance against the 
 great kindness of heart possessed by the latter ; 
 and most of the officers agreed with him. It 
 never seemed to occur to these men that any one 
 
 9 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 set of qualities, such as efficiency, conscientious- 
 ness, or honesty, were more indispensable, or in 
 any way superior to any other set of qualities. 
 They just noticed the absence of them in others, 
 or, as often happened, in themselves, and thought 
 they were amply compensated for by the presence 
 of other qualities, such as good-nature or amiability. 
 And one notices in Russian literature that authors 
 such as Dostoievsky are not content with showing 
 us the redeeming points of a merely bad character, 
 that is to say, of a man fundamentally good, but 
 who indulges in vice or in crime ; but they will 
 take pleasure in showing you the redeeming points 
 of a character which at first sight appears to be 
 radically mean and utterly despicable. The aim 
 of these authors seems to be to insist that, just as 
 nobody is indispensable, so nobody is superfluous. 
 There is no such thing as a superfluous man ; and 
 any man, however worthless, miserable, despicable 
 and mean he may seem to be, has just as much 
 right to be understood as any one else ; and they 
 show that, when he is understood, he is not, taking 
 him as a whole, any worse than his fellow-creatures. 
 Another characteristic which strikes one in 
 Russian literature, and still more in Russian life, 
 especially if one has mingled in the lower classes, 
 is the very deeply rooted sense of pity which the 
 Russians possess. An Englishman who is lame, 
 and whom I met in Russia, told me that he had 
 
 10 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 experienced there a treatment such as he had 
 never met before in any other country. The 
 people, and especially the poor, noticed his lame- 
 ness, and, guessing what would be difficult for him 
 to do, came to his aid and helped him. 
 
 In the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg 
 you rarely see beggars beg in vain ; and I have 
 observed, travelling third class in trains and 
 in steamers, that when the poor came to beg 
 bread for food off the poor, they were never sent 
 empty away. During the war I always found 
 the soldiers ready to give me food, however little 
 they had for themselves, in circumstances when 
 they would have been quite justified in sending 
 me about my business as a pestilential nuisance 
 and camp-follower. It is impossible for a man to 
 starve in Russia. He is perfectly certain to find 
 some one who will give him food for the asking. 
 In Siberia the peasants in the villages put bread 
 on their window-sills, in case any fugitive prisoners 
 should be passing by. This fundamental good- 
 ness of heart is the most important fact in the 
 Russian nature; it, and the expression of it in 
 their literature, is the greatest contribution which 
 they have made to the history of the world. 
 It is probably the cause of all their weak- 
 ness. For the defects indispensable to such 
 qualities are slackness, and the impossibility of 
 conceiving self-discipline to be a necessity, or 
 
 1 1 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 of recognising the conventional rules and pre- 
 judices which make for solidity, and which are, 
 as Professor Milioukov said, as cement is to a 
 building. 
 
 The result of the absence of this hard and 
 binding cement of prejudice and discipline is that 
 it is very difficult to attain a standard of efficiency 
 in matters where efficiency is indispensable. For 
 instance, in war. In a regiment with which I 
 lived for a time during the war there was a 
 young officer who absolutely insisted on the 
 maintenance of a high standard of efficiency. 
 He insisted on his orders being carried out to 
 the letter ; his fellow-officers thought he was 
 rather mad. One day we had arrived in a village, 
 and one of the younger officers had ordered the 
 horses to be put up in the yard facing the house 
 in which we were to live. Presently the officer 
 to whom I have alluded arrived, and ordered the 
 horses to be taken out and put into a separate 
 yard, as he considered the arrangement which he 
 found on his arrival to be insanitary — which it 
 was. He went away, and the younger officer did 
 not dream of carrying out his order. 
 
 " What is the use ? " he said, " the horses may 
 just as well stay where they are." 
 
 They considered this man to be indulging 
 in an unnecessary pose, but he was not, ac- 
 cording to our ideas, in the least a formalist 
 
 12 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 or a lover of red tape ; he merely insisted 
 on what he considered to be an irreducible 
 minimum of discipline, the result being that he 
 was a square peg in a round hole. Moreover, 
 when people committed, or commit (and this is 
 true in any department of public life in Russia), 
 a glaring offence, or leave undone an important 
 part of their duty, it is very rare that they 
 are dealt with drastically ; they are generally 
 threatened with punishment which ends in 
 platonic censure. And this fact, combined with 
 a bureaucratic system, has dangerous results, for 
 the official often steps beyond the limits of his 
 duty and takes upon himself to commit lawless 
 acts, and to exercise unlawful and arbitrary 
 functions, knowing perfectly well that he can do 
 so with impunity, and that he will not be punished. 
 And one of the proofs that a new era is now 
 beginning in Russia is a series of phenomena 
 never before witnessed, and which have occurred 
 not long ago — namely, the punishment and dis- 
 missal of guilty officials, such as, for instance, that 
 of Gurko, who was dismissed from his post in the 
 Government for having been responsible for certain 
 dishonest dealings in the matter of the Famine 
 Relief. 
 
 Of course such indulgence, or rather the slack- 
 ness resulting from it, is not universal. Otherwise 
 the whole country would go to pieces. And yet so 
 
 13 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 far from going to pieces, even through a revolution 
 things jogged on somehow or other. For against 
 every square yard of slackness there is generally a 
 square inch of exceptional capacity, and a square 
 foot of dogged efficiency, and thus the balance is 
 restored. The incompetency of a Stoessel, and a 
 host of others, is counterbalanced not only by the 
 brilliant energy of a Kondratenko, but by the 
 hard work of thousands of unknown men. And 
 this is true throughout all public life in Russia. 
 At the same time, the happy-go-lucky element, 
 the feeling of " What does it matter ? " of what 
 they call nichevo, is the preponderating quality; 
 and it is only so far counterbalanced by sterner 
 quaHties as to make the machine go on. This 
 accounts also for the apparent weakness of the 
 revolutionary element in Russia. The ranks of 
 these people, which at one moment appear to be 
 so formidable, at the next moment seem to have 
 scattered to the four winds of heaven. They 
 appear to give in and to accept, to submit and be 
 resigned to fate. But there is nevertheless an 
 undying passive resistance ; and at the bottom of 
 the Russian character, whether that character be 
 employed in revolutionary or in other channels, 
 there is an obstinate grit of resistance. Again, one 
 is met in Russian history, from the days of Peter 
 the Great down to the present day, with isolated 
 instances of exceptional energy and of powers of 
 
 14 
 
RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 organisation, such as Souvorov, Skobelieff, Tod- 
 teleben, Kondratenko, Kilkov, and, to take a less 
 known instance, Kroustalieff (who played a lead- 
 ing part in organising the working classes during 
 the great strike in 1905). 
 
 The way in which troops were poured into 
 Manchuria during the war across a single line, 
 which was due to the brilliant organisation of 
 Prince Kilkov, is in itself a signal instance of 
 organisation and energy in the face of great 
 material difficulties. The station at Liaoyang 
 was during the war under the command of a man 
 whose name I have forgotten, but who showed 
 the same qualities of energy and resource. On 
 the day Liaoyang was evacuated, and while the 
 station was being shelled, he managed to get off 
 every train safely, and to leave nothing behind. 
 There were many such instances which are at present 
 little know^n, to be set against the incompetence 
 and mismanagement of which one hears so much. 
 
 It is perhaps this blend of opposite qualities, 
 this mixture of softness and slackness and happy- 
 go-lucky insouciance (all of which qualities make 
 a thing as pliant as putty and as yielding as 
 dough) with the infinite capacity for taking pains, 
 and the inspiring energy and undefeated patience 
 in the face of seemingly insuperable obstacles, 
 which makes the Russian character difficult to 
 understand. You have, on the one hand, the man 
 
 15 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 who bows his head before an obstacle and says 
 that it does not after all matter very much ; and, 
 on the other hand, the man who with a few straws 
 succeeds in making a great palace of bricks. 
 Peter the Great was just such a man, and Souvorov 
 and Kondratenko were the same in kind, al- 
 though less in degree. And again, you have the 
 third type, the man who, though utterly defeated, 
 and apparently completely submissive, persists in 
 resisting — the passive resister whose obstinacy is 
 unlimited, and whose influence in matters such as 
 the revolutionary propaganda is incalculable. 
 
 It has been constantly said that Russia is the 
 land of paradoxes, and there is perhaps no greater 
 paradox than the mixture in the Russian character 
 of obstinacy and weakness, and the fact that the 
 Russian is sometimes inclined to throw up the 
 sponge instantly, while at others he becomes him- 
 self a tough sponge, which, although pulled this 
 way and that, is never pulled to pieces. He is 
 undefeated and indefatigable in spite of enormous 
 odds, and thus we are confronted in Russian 
 history with men as energetic as Peter the Great, 
 and as slack as Alexeieff the Viceroy. 
 
 People talk of the waste of Providence in never 
 making a ruby without a flaw, but is it not rather 
 the result of an admirable economy, which never 
 deals out a portion of coffee without a certain 
 admixture of chicory ? 
 
 i6 
 
CHAPTER II 
 REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 THE moment a writer nowadays mentions 
 the word " realism " he risks the danger of 
 being told that he is a disciple of a particular 
 school, and that he is bent on propagating a 
 peculiar and exclusive theory of art. If, however, 
 Russian literature is to be discussed at all, the 
 word " realism " cannot be avoided. So it will be 
 as well to explain immediately and clearly what I 
 mean when I assert that the main feature of both 
 Russian prose and Russian verse is its closeness 
 to nature, its love of reality, which for want of 
 a better word one can only call realism. When 
 the word " realism " is employed with regard to 
 literature, it gives rise to two quite separate mis- 
 understandings : this is unavoidable, because the 
 word has been used to denote special schools and 
 theories of art which have made a great deal of 
 noise both in France and England and elsewhere. 
 The first misunderstanding arises from the 
 use of the word by a certain French school of 
 novelists who aimed at writing scientific novels 
 B 17 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 in which the reader should be given slices 
 of raw life ; and these novelists strove by an 
 accumulation of detail to produce the effect of 
 absolute reality. The best known writers of this 
 French school did not succeed in doing this, 
 although they achieved striking results of a 
 different character. For instance, Emile Zola was 
 successful when he wrote epic panoramas on 
 subjects such as life in a mine, life in a huge 
 shop, or life during a great war ; that is to say, 
 he was poetically successful when he painted 
 with a broad brush and set great crowds in 
 motion. He produced striking pictures, but the 
 effect of them at their best was a poetic, romantic 
 effect. When he tried to be realistic, and scien- 
 tifically realistic, when he endeavoured to say 
 everything by piling detail on detail, he merely 
 succeeded in being tedious and disgusting. And 
 so far from telling the whole truth, he produced 
 an effect of distorted exaggeration such as one 
 receives from certain kinds of magnifying and 
 distorting mirrors. 
 
 The second misunderstanding with regard to 
 the word " realism " is this. Certain people think 
 that if you say an author strives to attain an 
 effect of truth and reality in his writings, you 
 must necessarily mean that he is without either 
 the wish or the power to select, and that his work 
 is therefore chaotic. Not long ago, in a book of 
 
 i8 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 short sketches, I included a very short and in- 
 adequate paper on certain aspects of the Russian 
 stage ; and in mentioning Tchekov, the Russian 
 dramatist, I made the following statement : " The 
 Russian stage simply aims at one thing : to depict 
 everyday life, not exclusively the brutality of 
 everyday life, nor the tremendous catastrophes 
 befalling human beings, nor to devise intricate 
 problems and far-fetched cases of conscience in 
 which human beings might possibly be entangled. 
 It simply aims at presenting glimpses of human 
 beings as they really are, and by means of such 
 glimpses it opens out avenues and vistas into 
 their lives." I added further that I considered 
 such plays would be successful in any country. 
 
 A reviewer, commenting on this in an interest- 
 ing article, said that these remarks revealed the 
 depth of my error with regard to realism. " As 
 if the making of such plays," wrote the reviewer, 
 " were not the perpetual aim of dramatists ! But 
 a dramatist would be putting chaos and not real 
 life on the stage if he presented imitations of 
 unselected people doing unselected things at un- 
 selected moments. The idea which binds the 
 drama together, an idea derived by reason from 
 experience of life at large, is the most real and 
 lifelike part in it, if the drama is a good one." 
 
 Now I am as well aware as this reviewer, or 
 as any one else, that it is the perpetual aim of 
 
 19 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 dramatists to make such plays. But it is an aim 
 which they often fail to achieve. For instance, 
 we have had, during the last thirty years in 
 England and France, many successful and striking 
 plays in which the behaviour of the characters 
 although effective from a theatrical point of view, 
 is totally unlike the behaviour of men and women 
 in real life. Again, when I wrote of the Russian 
 stage, I never for a moment suggested that the 
 Russian dramatist did, or that any dramatist 
 should, present imitations of unselected people 
 doing unselected things at unselected moments. 
 As my sketch was a short one, I was not able to 
 go into the question in full detail, but I should 
 have thought that if one said that a play was 
 true to life, and at the same time theatrically 
 and dramatically successful, that is to say, interest- 
 ing to a large audience, an ordinary reader would 
 have taken for granted (as many of my readers 
 did take for granted) that in the work of such 
 dramatists there must necessarily have been 
 selection. 
 
 Later on in this book I shall deal at some 
 length with the plays of Anton Tchekov, and in 
 discussing that writer, I hope to make it clear that 
 his work, so far from presenting imitations of 
 unselected people doing unselected things at 
 unselected moments, are imitations of selected 
 but real people, doing selected but probable things 
 
 20 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 at selected but interesting moments. But the 
 difference between Tchekov and most English and 
 French dramatists (save those of the quite modern 
 school) is, that the moments which Tchekov selects 
 appear at first sight to be trivial. His genius con- 
 sists in the power of revealing the dramatic signifi- 
 cance of the seemingly trivial. It stands to reason, 
 as I shall try to point out later on, that the more 
 realistic your play, the more it is true to life ; the 
 less obvious action there is in it, the greater must 
 be the skill of the dramatist ; the surer his art, the 
 more certain his power of construction, the nicer 
 his power of selection. 
 
 Mr. Max Beerbohm once pointed this out by 
 an apt illustration. " The dramatist," he said, 
 " who deals in heroes, villains, buffoons, queer 
 people who are either doing or suffering either 
 tremendous or funny things, has a very valuable 
 advantage over the playwright who deals merely 
 in humdrum you and me. The dramatist has 
 his material as a springboard. The adramatist 
 must leap as best he can on the hard high 
 road, the adramatist must be very much an 
 athlete." 
 
 That is just it : many of the modern (and 
 ancient) Russian playwriters are adramatists. But 
 they are extremely athletic ; and so far from 
 their work being chaotic, they sometimes give 
 evidence, as in the case of Tchekov, of a supreme 
 
 21 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 mastery over the construction and architectonics 
 of drama, as well as of an unerring instinct for 
 what will be telling behind footlights, although 
 at first sight their choice does not seem to be 
 obviously dramatic. 
 
 Therefore, everything I have said so far can 
 be summed up in two statements: Firstly, that 
 Russian literature, because it deals with realism, 
 has nothing in common with the work of certain 
 French " Naturalists," by whose work the word 
 " realism " has achieved so wide a notoriety 
 secondly, Russian literature, although it is real- 
 istic, is not necessarily chaotic, and contains 
 many supreme achievements in the art of 
 selection. But I wish to discuss the peculiar 
 quality of Russian realism, because it appears 
 to me that it is this quality which differentiates 
 Russian literature from the literature of other 
 countries. 
 
 I have not dealt in this book with Russian 
 poets, firstly, because the number of readers who 
 are familiar with Russian poetry in its original 
 tongue is limited ; and, secondly, because it appears 
 to me impossible to discuss Russian poetry, if one 
 is forced to deal in translations, since no trans- 
 lation, however good, can give the reader an idea 
 either of the music, the atmosphere, or the 
 charm of the original. But it is in Russian 
 poetry that the quality of Russian realism is 
 
 22 
 
REALISxM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 perhaps most clearly made manifest. Any reader 
 familiar with German literature will, I think, agree 
 that if one compares French or English poetry 
 with German poetry, and French and English 
 Romanticism with German Romanticism, one is 
 conscious, when one approaches the work of the 
 Germans, of entering into a more sober and more 
 quiet dominion ; one leaves behind one the ex- 
 uberance of England : " the purple patches " of a 
 Shakespeare, the glowing richness of a Keats, the 
 soaring rainbow fancies of a Shelley, the wizard 
 horizons of a Coleridge. One also leaves behind 
 one the splendid rhetoric and glitter of France : 
 the clarions of Corneille, the harps and flutes of 
 Racine, the great many-piped organ of Victor 
 Hugo, the stormy pageants of Musset, the gorgeous 
 lyricism of Flaubert, the jewelled dreams of 
 Gautier, and all the colour and the pomp of the 
 Parnassians. One leaves all these things behind, 
 and one steps into a world of quiet skies, rustling 
 leaves, peaceful meadows, and calm woods, where 
 the birds twitter cheerfully and are answered 
 by the plaintive notes of pipe or reed, or 
 interrupted by the homely melody, sometimes 
 cheerful and sometimes sad, of the wandering 
 fiddler. 
 
 In this country, it is true, we have visions and 
 vistas of distant hills and great brooding waters, 
 of starlit nights and magical twilights ; in this 
 
 23 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 country, it is also true that we hear the echoes of 
 magic horns, the footfall of the fairies, the tinkling 
 hammers of the sedulous Kobolds, and the champ- 
 ing and the neighing of the steeds of Chivalry. 
 But there is nothing wildly fantastic, nor por- 
 tentously exuberant, nor gorgeously dazzling; 
 nothing tempestuous, unbridled, or extreme. 
 When the Germans have wished to express such 
 things, they have done so in their music; they 
 certainly have not done so in their poetry. What 
 they have done in their poetry, and what they 
 have done better than any one else, is to express 
 in the simplest of all words the simplest of all 
 thoughts and feelings. They have spoken of 
 first love, of spring and the flowers, the smiles and 
 tears of children, the dreams of youth and the 
 musings of old age — with a simplicity, a homeli- 
 ness no writers of any other country have ever 
 excelled. And when they deal with the super- 
 natural, with ghosts, fairies, legends, deeds of 
 prowess or phantom lovers, there is a quaint 
 homeliness about the recital of such things, as 
 though they were being told by the fireside in a 
 cottage, or being sung on the village green to the 
 accompaniment of a hurdy-gurdy. To many 
 Germans the phantasy of a Shelley or of a 
 Victor Hugo is essentially alien and unpalatable. 
 They feel as though they were listening to men 
 who are talking too loud and too wildly, and 
 
 24 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 they merely wish to get away or to stop 
 their ears. Again, poets like Keats or Gautier 
 often produce on them the impression that 
 they are listening to sensuous and meaningless 
 echoes. 
 
 Now Russian poetry is a step farther on in 
 this same direction. The reader who enters the 
 kingdom of Russian poetry, after having visited 
 those of France and England, experiences what 
 he feels in entering the German region, but still 
 more so. The region of Russian poetry is still 
 more earthy. Even the mysticism of certain 
 German Romantic writers is alien to it. The 
 German poetic country is quiet and sober, it is 
 true ; but in its German forests you hear, as I have 
 said, the noise of those hoofs which are bearing 
 riders to the unknown country. Also you have 
 in German literature, allegory and pantheistic 
 dreams which are foreign to the Russian poetic 
 temperament, and therefore unreflected in Russian 
 poetry. 
 
 The Russian poetical temperament, and, conse- 
 quently, Russian poetry, does not only closely 
 cling to the solid earth, but it is based on and 
 saturated with sound common sense, with a curious 
 matter-of-fact quality. And this common sense 
 with which the greatest Russian poet, Pushkin, 
 is so thoroughly impregnated, is as foreign to 
 German Schwdrmerei as it is to French rhetoric, 
 
 25 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 or the imaginative exuberance of England. In 
 Russian poetry of the early part of the nineteenth 
 century, in spite of the enthusiasm kindled in cer- 
 tain Russian poets by the romantic scenery of the 
 Caucasus, there is very little feeling for nature. 
 Nature, in the poetry of Pushkin, is more or less 
 conventional : almost the only flower mentioned 
 is the rose, almost the only bird the nightingale. 
 And although certain Russian poets adopted the 
 paraphernalia and the machinery of Romanticism 
 (largely owing to the influence of Byron), their 
 true nature, their fundamental sense, keeps on 
 breaking out. Moreover, there is an element in 
 Russian Romanticism of passive obedience, of 
 submission to authority, which arises partly from 
 the passive quality in all Russians, and partly 
 from the atmosphere of the age and the poli- 
 tical regime of the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century. Thus it is that no Russian Romantic 
 poet would have ever tried to reach the dim 
 pinnacles of Shelley's speculative cities, and no 
 Russian Romantic poet would have uttered a wild 
 cry of revolt such as Musset's " Rolla." But 
 what the Russian poets did do, and what they did 
 in a manner which gives them an unique place 
 in the history of the world's literature, was to 
 extract poetry from the daily life they saw round 
 them, and to express it in forms of incomparable 
 beauty. Russian poetry, like the Russian nature, 
 
 26 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 is plastic. Plasticity, adaptability, comprehen- 
 siveness, are the great qualities of Pushkin. His 
 verse is " simple, sensuous and impassioned " ; 
 there is nothing indistinct about it, no vague 
 outline and no blurred detail ; it is perfectly 
 balanced, and it is this sense of balance and 
 proportion blent with a rooted common 
 sense, which reminds the reader when he reads 
 Pushkin of Greek art, and gives one the impres- 
 sion that the poet is a classic, however much 
 he may have employed the stock-in-trade of 
 Romanticism. 
 
 Meredith says somewhere that the poetry of 
 mortals is their daily prose. It is precisely 
 this kind of poetry, the poetry arising from the 
 incidents of everyday life, which the Russian 
 poets have been successful in transmuting into 
 verse. There is a quality of matter-of-factness 
 in Russian poetry which is unique ; the same 
 quality exists in Russian folklore and fairy tales ; 
 even Russian ghosts, and certainly the Russian 
 devil, have an element of matter-of-factness 
 about them ; and the most Romantic of all 
 Russian poets, Lermontov, has certain qualities 
 which remind one more of Thackeray than of 
 Byron or Shelley, who undoubtedly influenced 
 him. 
 
 I will quote as an example of this one of his 
 most famous poems. It is called " The Testa- 
 
 27 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ment," and it is the utterance of a man who has 
 been mortally wounded in battle. 
 
 "I want to be alone with you,^ 
 A moment quite alone. 
 The minutes left to me are few, 
 They say I'll soon be gone. 
 And you'll be going home on leave, 
 Then tell . . . but why? I do believe 
 There's not a soul, who'll greatly care 
 To hear about me over there. 
 
 And yet if some one asks you, well, 
 
 Let us suppose they do — 
 A bullet hit me here, you'll tell, — 
 
 The chest, — and it went through. 
 And say I died and for the Tsar, 
 And say what fools the doctors are ; — 
 And that I shook you by the hand, 
 And thought about my native land. 
 
 My father and my mother, there ! 
 
 They may be dead by now ; 
 To tell the truth, I wouldn't care 
 
 To grieve them anyhow. 
 If one of them is living, say 
 I'm bad at writing home, and they 
 Have sent us to the front, you see, — 
 And that they needn't wait for me. 
 
 They've got a neighbour, as you know. 
 
 And you remember I 
 And she . . . How very long ago 
 
 It is we said good-bye ! 
 She won't ask after me, nor care. 
 But tell her ev'rything, don't spare 
 Her empty heart ; and let her cry ; — 
 To her it doesn't signify." 
 
 ^ This translation is in the metre of the original. It is literal ; 
 but hopelessly inadequate. 
 
 28 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 The words of this poem are the words of 
 familiar conversation ; they are exactly what the 
 soldier would say in such circumstances. There is 
 not a single literary or poetical expression used. 
 And yet the effect in the original is one of 
 poignant poetical feeling and consummate poetic 
 art. I know of no other language where the 
 thing is possible ; because if you translate the 
 Russian by the true literary equivalents, you 
 would have to say : " I would like a word alone 
 with you, old fellow," or '' old chap," ^ or something 
 of that kind ; and I know of no English poet who 
 has ever been able to deal successfully (in poetry) 
 with the speech of everyday life without the help 
 of slang or dialect. What is needed for this are 
 the Russian temperament and the Russian language. 
 
 I will give another instance of what I mean. 
 There is a Russian poet called Krilov, who wrote 
 fables such as those of La Fontaine, based for the 
 greater part on those of ^sop. He wrote a 
 version of what is perhaps La Fontaine's master- 
 piece, " Les Deux Pigeons," which begins thus : 
 
 "Two pigeons, like two brothers, lived together. 
 They shared their all in fair and wintry weather. 
 Where the one was the other would be near, 
 And every joy they shared and every tear. 
 They noticed not Time's flight. Sadness they knew ; 
 But weary of each other never grew." 
 
 ^ In the Russian, although every word of the poem is familiar, 
 not a word of slang is used. 
 
 29 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 This last line, translated literally, runs : " They 
 were sometimes sad, they were never bored." It is 
 one of the most poetical in the whole range of 
 Russian literature ; and yet how absolutely un- 
 translatable ! — not only into English, but into any 
 other language. How can one convey the word 
 " boring " so that it shall be poetical, in English or 
 in French ? In Russian one can, simply from the 
 fact that the word which means boring, " skouchno," 
 is just as fit for poetic use as the word " groustno," 
 which means sad. And this proves that it is easier 
 for Russians to make poetry out of the language 
 of everyday than it is for Englishmen. 
 
 The matter-of-fact quality of the Russian 
 poetical temperament — its dislike of exaggeration 
 and extravagance- — is likewise clearly visible in 
 the manner in which Russian poets write of nature. 
 I have already said that the poets of the early 
 part of the nineteenth century reveal (compared 
 with their European contemporaries) only a 
 mild sentiment for the humbler aspects of 
 nature; but let us take a poet of a later 
 epoch, Alexis Tolstoy, who wrote in the fifties, 
 and who may not unfairly be called a Russian 
 Tennyson. In the work of Tolstoy the love of 
 nature reveals itself on almost every page. His 
 work brings before our eyes the landscape of the 
 South of Russia, and expresses the charm and 
 the quality of that country in the same way as 
 
 30 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Tennyson's " In Memoriam " evokes for us the 
 sight of England. Yet if one compares the two, 
 the work of the Russian poet is nearer to the 
 earth, familiar and simple in a fashion which is 
 beyond the reach of other languages. Here, for 
 instance, is a rough translation of one of Alexis 
 Tolstoy's poems : 
 
 "Through the slush and the ruts of the road, 
 By the side of the dam of the stream ; 
 Where the wet fishing nets are spread, 
 The carriage jogs on, and I muse. 
 
 I muse and I look at the road, 
 At the damp and the dull grey sky, 
 At the shelving bank of the lake. 
 And the far-off smoke of the villages. 
 
 By the dam, with a cheerless face, 
 
 Is walking a tattered old Jew. 
 
 From the lake, with a splashing of foam, 
 
 The waters rush through the weir. 
 
 A little boy plays on a pipe. 
 He has made it out of a reed. 
 The startled wild-ducks have flown, 
 And call as they sweep from the lake. 
 
 Near the old crumbling mill 
 Labourers sit on the grass. 
 An old worn horse in a cart, 
 Is lazily dragging some sacks. 
 
 And I know it all, oh ! so well, 
 
 Although I have never been here ; 
 
 The roof of that house over there, 
 
 And that boy, and the wood, and the weir, 
 
 And the mournful voice of the mill. 
 And the crumbling barn in the field — 
 I have been here and seen it before, 
 And forgotten it all long ago. 
 
 31 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 This very same horse plodded on, 
 It was dragging the very same sacks ; 
 And under the mouldering mill 
 Labourers sat on the grass. 
 
 And the Jew, with his beard, walked by, 
 And the weir made just such a noise. 
 All this has happened before, 
 Only, I cannot tell when." 
 
 I have said that Russian fairy tales and folk 
 stories are full of the same spirit of matter-of- 
 factness. And so essential do I consider this 
 factor to be, so indispensable do I consider the 
 comprehension of it by the would-be student of 
 Russian literature, that I will quote a short folk- 
 story at length, which reveals this quality in its 
 essence. The reader will only have to compare 
 the following tale in his mind with a French, 
 English, or German fairy tale to see what I mean. 
 
 The Fool 
 
 Once upon a time in a certain kingdom there 
 lived an old man, and he had three sons. Two 
 of them were clever, the third was a fool. The 
 father died, and the sons drew lots for his pro- 
 perty : the clever sons won every kind of useful 
 thing ; the fool only received an old ox, and that 
 was a lean and bony one. 
 
 The time of the fair came, and the clever 
 brothers made themselves ready to go and do 
 
 32 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 a deal. The fool saw them doing this, and 
 said : 
 
 " I also, brothers, shall take my ox to the 
 market." 
 
 And he led his ox by a rope tied to its horn, 
 towards the town. On the way to the town he 
 went through a wood, and in the wood there stood 
 an old dried-up birch tree. The wind blew and 
 the birch tree groaned. 
 
 " Why does the birch tree groan ? " thought the 
 fool. " Does it perhaps wish to bargain for my 
 ox ? Now tell me, birch tree, if you wish to 
 buy. If that is so, buy. The price of the ox is 
 twenty roubles : I cannot take less. Show your 
 money." 
 
 But the birch tree answered nothing at all, and 
 only groaned, and the fool was astonished that 
 the birch tree wished to receive the ox on credit. 
 
 "If that is so, I will wait till to-morrow," said 
 the fool. 
 
 He tied the ox to the birch tree, said good-bye 
 to it, and went home. 
 
 The clever brothers came to him and began to 
 question him. 
 
 " Well, fool," they said, "have you sold your ox?" 
 
 " I have sold it." 
 
 " Did you sell it dear ? " 
 
 " I sold it for twenty roubles." 
 
 " And where is the money ? " 
 c 33 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 " I have not yet got the money. I have been 
 told I shall receive it to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh, you simpleton 1 " said the clever brothers. 
 On the next day, early in the morning, the fool 
 got up, made himself ready, and went to the 
 birch tree for his money. He arrived at the 
 wood ; the birch tree was there, swaying in the 
 wind, but the ox was not there any more, — the 
 wolves had eaten him in the night. 
 
 " Now, countryman," said the fool to the birch 
 tree, " pay me the money. You promised you 
 would pay it to-day." 
 
 The wind blew, the birch tree groaned, and the 
 fool said : 
 
 " Well, you are an untrustworthy fellow ! 
 Yesterday you said, ' I will pay the money to- 
 morrow,' and to-day you are trying to get out of 
 it. If this is so I will wait yet another day, but 
 after that I shall wait no longer, for I shall need 
 the money myself." 
 
 The fool went home, and his clever brothers 
 again asked him : " Well, have you received your 
 money ? " 
 
 " No, brothers," he answered, " I shall have to 
 wait still another little day." 
 " Whom did you sell it to ? " 
 " A dried old birch tree in the wood." 
 " See what a fool ! " said the brothers. 
 On the third day the fool took an axe and set 
 34 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 out for the wood. He arrived and demanded the 
 money. 
 
 The birch tree groaned and groaned. 
 
 " No, countryman/' said the fool, " if you always 
 put off everything till the morrow, I shall never 
 get anything from you at all. I do not like 
 joking, and I shall settle matters with you at 
 once and for all." 
 
 He took the axe and struck the tree, and the 
 chips flew on all sides. 
 
 Now in the tree was a hollow, and in this 
 hollow some robbers had hidden a bag of gold. 
 The tree was split into two parts, and the fool 
 saw a heap of red gold ; and he gathered the gold 
 together in a heap and took some of it home and 
 showed it to his brothers. 
 
 And his brothers said to him : 
 
 " Where did you get such a lot of money, fool ? " 
 
 " A countryman of mine gave it to me for my 
 ox," he said, " and there is still a great deal left. 
 I could not bring half of it home. Let us go, 
 brothers, and get the rest of it." 
 
 They went into the wood and found the money, 
 and brought it home. 
 
 " Now look you, fool," said the clever brothers, 
 " do not tell any one that we have so much 
 money." 
 
 " Of course not," said the fool, " I will not tell 
 any one, I promise you." 
 
 35 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 But soon after this they met a deacon. 
 
 " What are you bringing from the wood, 
 children ? " said the deacon. 
 
 " Mushrooms," said the clever brothers. 
 
 But the fool interrupted and said : " They are 
 not telling the truth — we are bringing gold. 
 Look at it if you will." 
 
 The deacon gasped with astonishment, fell 
 upon the gold, and took as much as he could 
 and stuffed his pockets full of it. 
 
 But the fool was annoyed at this, and struck 
 him with an axe and beat him till he was dead. 
 
 " Oh fool, what have you done ? " said his 
 brothers. " You will be ruined, and ruin us also. 
 What shall we do now with this dead body ? " 
 
 They thought and they thought, and then they 
 took it to an empty cellar and threw it into the 
 cellar. 
 
 Late in the evening the eldest brother said to 
 the second : " This is a bad business. As soon as 
 they miss the deacon the fool is certain to tell them 
 all about it. Let us kill a goat and hide it in 
 the cellar and put the dead body in some other 
 place." 
 
 They waited until the night was dark ; then they 
 killed a goat, threw it into the cellar, and took 
 the body of the deacon to another place and 
 buried it in the earth. 
 
 A few days passed ; people looked for the 
 
 36 
 
REALISM OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 deacon everywhere, and asked everybody they 
 could about him. And the fool said to them : 
 
 " What do you want of him ? I killed him 
 with an axe, and my brothers threw the body 
 into the cellar." 
 
 They at once seized the fool and said to him : 
 
 " Take us and show us." 
 
 The fool climbed into the cellar, took out the 
 head of the goat, and said : 
 
 " Was your deacon black ? " 
 
 " Yes," they said. 
 
 " And had he got a beard ? " 
 
 " Yes, he had a beard." 
 
 " And had he got horns ? " 
 
 *' What sort of horns, you fool ? " 
 
 " Well, look ! " And he threw down the head. 
 
 The people looked and saw that it was a goat, 
 and they spat at the fool and went home. 
 
 This story, more than pages of analysis and 
 more than chapters of argument, illustrates what 
 I mean : namely, that if the Russian poet and 
 the Russian peasant, the one in his verse, the 
 other in his folk tales and fairy stories, are 
 matter-of-fact, alien to flights of exaggerated 
 fancy, and above all things enamoured of the 
 truth ; if by their closeness to nature, their gift of 
 seeing things as they are, and expressing these 
 things in terms of the utmost simplicity, without 
 
 37 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 fuss, without affectation and without artificiality, — 
 if, I say, all this entitles us to call them realists, 
 then this realism is not and must never be thought 
 of as being the fad of a special school, the theory 
 of a limited clique, or the watchword of a literary 
 camp, but it is rather the natural expression of 
 the Russian temperament and the Russian 
 character. 
 
 I will try throughout this book to attempt to 
 illustrate this character and this temperament 
 as best I can, by observing widely different 
 manifestations of it ; but all these manifesta- 
 tions, however different they may be, contain 
 one great quality in common : that is, the quality 
 of reality of which I have been writing. And 
 unless the student of Russian literature realises 
 this and appreciates what Russian realism consists 
 of, and what it really means, he will be unable to 
 understand either the men or the literature of 
 Russia. 
 
 38 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 GOGOL AND THE CHEERFULNESS OF 
 THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE 
 
 THE first thing that strikes the English 
 reader when he dips into translations of 
 Russian literature, is the unrelieved gloom, the 
 unmitigated pessimism of the characters and the 
 circumstances described. Everything is grey, 
 everybody is depressed ; the atmosphere is one 
 of hopeless melancholy. On the other hand, the 
 first thing that strikes the English traveller when 
 he arrives in Russia for the first time, is the 
 cheerfulness of the Russian people. Nowhere 
 have I seen this better described than in an 
 article, written by Mr. Charles Hands, which 
 appeared in the summer of 1905 in The Daily 
 Mail. Mr. Hands summed up his idea of the 
 Russian people, which he had gathered after 
 living with them for two years, both in peace and 
 in war, in a short article. His final impression 
 was the same as that which he received on the 
 
 39 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 day he arrived in Russia for the first time. 
 That was in winter ; it was snowing ; the cold 
 was intense. The streets of St. Petersburg 
 were full of people, and in spite of the driving 
 snow, the bitter wind, and the cruel cold, 
 everybody was smiling, everybody was making 
 the best of it. Nowhere did you hear people 
 grumbling, or come across a face stamped with a 
 grievance. 
 
 I myself experienced an impression of the same 
 kind, one evening in July 1906. I was strolling 
 about the streets of St. Petersburg. It was the 
 Sunday of the dissolution of the Duma ; the dis- 
 solution had been announced that very morning. 
 The streets were crowded with people, mostly 
 poor people. I was walking with an English- 
 man who had spent some years in Russia, and he 
 said to me : "It is all very well to talk of the 
 calamities of this country. Have you ever in 
 your life seen a more cheerful Sunday crowd ? " 
 I certainly had not. 
 
 The Russian character has an element of happy 
 consent and submission to the inevitable ; of 
 adapting itself to any circumstance, however dis- 
 agreeable, which I have never come across in any 
 other country. The Russians have a faculty of 
 making the best of things which I have never 
 seen developed in so high a degree. I remember 
 once in Manchuria during the war, some soldiers, 
 
 40 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 who were under the command of a sergeant, 
 preparing early one morning, just before the battle 
 of Ta-Shi-Chiao, to make some tea. Suddenly 
 a man in command said there would not be 
 time to have tea. The men simply said, " To- 
 day no tea will be drunk," with a smile ; it did 
 not occur to any one to complain, and they put 
 away the kettle, which was just on the boil, and 
 drove away in a cart. I witnessed this kind of 
 incident over and over again. I remember one 
 night at a place called Lonely Tree Hill. I was 
 with a battery. We had just arrived, and there 
 were no quarters. We generally lived in Chinese 
 houses, but on this occasion there were none to 
 be found. We encamped on the side of a hill. 
 There was no shelter, no food, and no fire, and 
 presently it began to rain. The Cossacks, of 
 whom the battery was composed, made a kind of 
 shelter out of what straw and millet they could 
 find, and settled themselves down as comfortably 
 and as cheerfully as if they had been in barracks. 
 They accomplished the difficult task of making 
 themselves comfortable out of nothing, and of 
 making me comfortable also. 
 
 Besides this power of making the best of things, 
 the Russians have a keen sense of humour. The 
 clowns in their circuses are inimitable. A type 
 you frequently meet in Russia is the man who 
 tells stories and anecdotes which are distin- 
 
 41 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 guished by simplicity and by a knack of just 
 seizing on the ludicrous side of some trivial 
 episode or conversation. Their humour is not 
 unlike English humour in kind, and this explains 
 the wide popularity of our humorous writers in 
 Russia, beginning with Dickens, including such 
 essentially English writers as W. W. Jacobs and 
 the author of The Diary of a Nobody^ and 
 ending with Jerome K. Jerome, whose complete 
 works can be obtained at any Russian railway 
 station.^ 
 
 All these elements are fully represented in 
 Russian literature ; but the kind of Russian litera- 
 ture which is saturated with these qualities either 
 does not reach us at all, or reaches us in scarce 
 and inadequate translations. 
 
 The greatest humorist of Russian literature, 
 the Russian Dickens, is Nikolai Vasilievitch 
 Gogol. Translations of some of his stories and 
 of his longest work, Dead Souls, were published 
 in 1887 by Mr. Vizetelly. These transla- 
 tions are now out of print, and the work of 
 Gogol may be said to be totally unknown in 
 England. In France some of his stories have 
 been translated by no less a writer than Prosper 
 Merimee. 
 
 Gogol was a Little Russian, a Cossack by birth ; 
 
 ^ I met a Russian doctor in Manchuria, who knew pages of a 
 Russian translation of Three Men in a Boat by heart. 
 
 42 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 he belonged to the Ukraine, that is to say, the 
 frontier country, the district which lies between 
 the north and the extreme south. It is a country 
 of immense plains, rich harvests, and smiling 
 farms ; of vines, laughter, and song. He was 
 born in 1809 near Poltava, in the heart of the 
 Cossack country. He was brought up by his 
 grandfather, who had been the regimental 
 chronicler of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who live 
 in the region beyond the falls of the Dnieper. 
 His childhood was nursed in the warlike traditions 
 of that race, and fed with the tales of a heroic 
 epoch, the wars against Poland and the deeds of 
 the dwellers of the Steppes. Later he was sent 
 to school, and in 1829, when he was twenty years 
 old, he went to St. Petersburg, where after many 
 disillusions and difficulties he obtained a place in 
 a Government office. The time that he spent in 
 this office gave him the material for one of his 
 best stories. He soon tired of office work, and 
 tried to go on the stage, but no manager would 
 engage him. He became a tutor, but was not a 
 particularly successful one. At last some friends 
 obtained for him the professorship of History at 
 the University, but he failed in this profession 
 also, and so he finally turned to literature. By 
 the publication of his first efforts in the St 
 Petersburg press, he made some friends, and 
 through these he obtained an introduction to 
 
 43 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Pushkin, the greatest of Russian poets, who was 
 at that time in the fullness of his fame. 
 
 Pushkin was a character devoid of envy and 
 jealousy, overflowing with generosity, and prodigal 
 of praise. Gogol subsequently became his 
 favourite writer, and it was Pushkin who urged 
 Gogol to write about Russian history and popular 
 Russian scenes. Gogol followed his advice and 
 wrote the Eve^iings in a Farmhouse on the Dikanka. 
 These stories are supposed to be told by an old 
 beekeeper ; and in them Gogol puts all the 
 memories of his childhood, the romantic traditions, 
 the fairy tales, the legends, the charming scenery, 
 and the cheerful life of the Little Russian country. 
 
 In these stories he revealed the twofold nature 
 of his talent : a fantasy, a love of the supernatural, 
 and a power of making us feel it, which reminds 
 one of Edgar Allan Poe, of Hoffmann, and of 
 Robert Louis Stevenson ; and side by side with 
 this fantastic element, the keenest power of 
 observation, which is mixed with an infectious 
 sense of humour and a rich and delightful drollery. 
 Together with these gifts, Gogol possessed a third 
 quality, which is a blend of his fantasy and his 
 realism, namely, the power of depicting landscape 
 and places, with their colour and their atmosphere, 
 in warm and vivid language. It is this latter 
 gift with which I shall deal first. Here, for 
 instance, is a description of the river Dnieper : 
 
 44 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 " Wonderful is the Dnieper when in calm weather, 
 smooth and wilful, it drives its full waters 
 through the woods and the hills ; it does not 
 whisper, it does not boom. One gazes and gazes 
 without being able to tell whether its majestic 
 spaces are moving or not : one wonders whether 
 the river is not a sheet of glass, when like a road 
 of crystal azure, measureless in its breadth and 
 unending in its length, it rushes and swirls across 
 the green world. It is then that the sun loves 
 to look down from the sky and to plunge his 
 rays into the cool limpid waters ; and the woods 
 which grow on the banks are sharply reflected in 
 the river. 
 
 " The green-tressed trees and the wild flowers 
 crowd together at the water's edge ; they bend 
 down and gaze at themselves ; they are never 
 tired of their own bright image, but smile to it 
 and greet it, as they incline their boughs. They 
 dare not look into the midst of the Dnieper ; no 
 one save the sun and the blue sky looks into that. 
 It is rare that a bird flies as far as the midmost 
 waters. Glorious river, there is none other like 
 it in the world ! 
 
 " Wonderful is the Dnieper in the warm summer 
 nights when all things are asleep : men and 
 beasts and birds, and God alone in His majesty 
 looks round on the heaven and the earth and 
 royally spreads out His sacerdotal vestment and 
 lets it tremble. And from this vestment the stars 
 are scattered : the stars burn and shine over the 
 world, and all are reflected in the Dnieper. The 
 
 45 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Dnieper receives them all into its dark bosom : 
 not one escapes it. The dark wood with its 
 sleeping ravens, and the old rugged mountains 
 above them, try to hide the river with their long 
 dark shadows, but it is in vain : there is nothing 
 in all the world which could overshadow the 
 Dnieper ! Blue, infinitely blue, its smooth surface 
 is always moving by night and by day, and is 
 visible in the distance as far as mortal eye can 
 see. It draws near and nestles in the banks 
 in the cool of the night, and leaves behind it 
 a silver trail, that gleams like the blade of 
 a sword of Damascus. But the blue river is 
 once more asleep. Wonderful is the Dnieper 
 then, and there is nothing like it in the 
 world ! 
 
 " But when the dark clouds gather in the sky, 
 and the black wood is shaken to its roots, the 
 oak trees tremble, and the lightnings, bursting 
 in the clouds, light up the whole world again, 
 terrible then is the Dnieper. The crests of the 
 waters thunder, dashing themselves against the 
 hills ; fiery with lightning, and loud with many 
 a moan, they retreat and dissolve and overflow 
 in tears in the distance. Just in such a way 
 does the aged mother of the Cossack weep when 
 she goes to say good-bye to her son, who is off 
 to the wars. He rides off, wanton, debonair, 
 and full of spirit ; he rides on his black horse 
 with his elbows well out at the side, and he waves 
 his cap. And his mother sobs and runs after 
 him ; she clutches hold of his stirrup, seizes the 
 
 46 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 snaffle, throws her arms round her son, and 
 weeps bitterly." 
 
 Another characteristic description of Gogol's is 
 the picture he gives us of the Steppes : 
 
 " The farther they went, the more beautiful the 
 Steppes became. At that time the whole of the 
 country which is now Lower New Russia, reach- 
 ing as far as the Black Sea, was a vast green 
 wilderness. Never a plough had passed over 
 its measureless waves of wild grass. Only the 
 horses, which were hidden in it as though in a 
 wood, trampled it down. Nothing in Nature 
 could be more beautiful than this grass. The 
 whole of the surface of the earth was like a gold 
 and green sea, on which millions of flowers of 
 different colours were sprinkled. Through the 
 high and delicate stems of grass the cornflowers 
 twinkled — light blue, dark blue, and lilac. The 
 yellow broom pushed upward its pointed crests ; 
 the white milfoil, with its flowers like fairy um- 
 brellas, dappled the surface of the grass ; an ear 
 of wheat, which had come Heaven knows whence, 
 was ripening. 
 
 " At the roots of the flowers and the grass, 
 partridges were running about everywhere, thrust- 
 ing out their necks. The air was full of a 
 thousand different bird - notes. Hawks hovered 
 motionless in the sky, spreading out their wings, 
 and fixing their eyes on the grass. The cry 
 of a flock of wild geese was echoed in I know 
 not what far-off lake. A gull rose from the 
 
 47 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 grass in measured flight, and bathed wantonly 
 in the blue air ; now she has vanished in the 
 distance, and only a black spot twinkles ; and 
 now she wheels in the air and glistens in the 
 sun." 
 
 Of course, descriptions such as these lose all 
 their beauty in a translation, for Gogol's language 
 is rich and native ; full of diminutives and racial 
 idiom, nervous and highly-coloured. To translate 
 it into English is like translating Rabelais into 
 English. I have given these two examples more 
 to show the nature of the thing he describes than 
 the manner in which he describes it. 
 
 Throughout this first collection of stories there 
 is a blend of broad farce and poetical fancy ; we 
 are introduced to the humours of the fair, the 
 adventures of sacristans with the devil and other 
 apparitions ; to the Russalka, a naiad, a kind of 
 land-mermaid, or Loreley, which haunts the woods 
 and the lakes. And every one of these stories 
 smells of the South Russian soil, and is over- 
 flowing with sunshine, good-humour, and a mellow 
 charm. This side of Russian life is not only 
 wholly unknown in Europe, but it is not even 
 suspected. The picture most people have in 
 their minds of Russia is a place of grey skies and 
 bleak monotonous landscape, weighed down by 
 an implacable climate. These things exist, but 
 there is another side as well, and it is this other 
 
 48 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 side that Gogol tells of in his early stories. We 
 are told much about the Russian winter, but who 
 ever thinks of the Russian spring ? And there is 
 nothing more beautiful in the world, even in the 
 north and centre of Russia, than the abrupt and 
 sudden invasion of springtime which comes shortly 
 after the melting snows, when the woods are 
 carpeted with lilies-of-the-valley, and the green 
 of the birch trees almost hurts the eye with its 
 brilliance. 
 
 Nor are we told much about the Russian 
 summer, with its wonderful warm nights, nor of 
 the pageant of the plains when they become a 
 rippling sea of golden corn. If the spring and 
 the summer are striking in northern and central 
 Russia, much more is this so in the south, 
 where the whole character of the country is as 
 cheerful and smiling as that of Devonshire or 
 Normandy. The farms are whitewashed and 
 clean ; sometimes they are painted light blue or 
 pink ; vines grow on the walls ; there is an atmo- 
 sphere of sunshine and laziness everywhere, accom- 
 panied by much dancing and song. 
 
 Once when I was in St. Petersburg I was 
 talking to a peasant member of the Duma who 
 came from the south. After he had declaimed 
 for nearly twenty minutes on the terrible condition 
 of the peasants in the country, their needs, their 
 wants, their misery, their ignorance, he added 
 D 49 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 thoughtfully : " All the same we have great fun 
 in our village ; you ought to come and stay there. 
 There is no such life in the world ! " The sun- 
 shine and laughter of the south of Russia rise 
 before us from every page of these stories of 
 Gogol. Here, for instance, is a description of a 
 summer's day in Little Russia, the day of a 
 fair : 
 
 " How intoxicating, how rich, is a summer's 
 day in Little Russia ! How overwhelmingly hot 
 are those hours of noonday silence and haze ! 
 Like a boundless azure sea, the dome of the sky, 
 bending as though with passion over the world, 
 seems to have fallen asleep, all drowned in soft- 
 ness, and clasps and caresses the beautiful earth 
 with a celestial embrace. There is no cloud in the 
 sky ; and the stream is silent. Everything is as 
 if it were dead ; only aloft in the deeps of the 
 sky a lark quivers, and its silvery song echoes 
 down the vault of heaven, and reaches the love- 
 sick earth. And from time to time the cry of 
 the seagull or the clear call of the quail is heard 
 in the plain. 
 
 " Lazily and thoughtlessly, as though they 
 were idling vaguely, stand the shady oaks ; 
 and the blinding rays of the sun light up 
 the picturesque masses of foliage, while the rest 
 of the tree is in a shadow dark as night, and 
 only when the wind rises, a flash of gold trembles 
 across it. 
 
 *' Like emeralds, topazes and amethysts, the 
 
 50 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 diaphanous insects flutter in the many-coloured 
 fruit gardens, which are shaded by stately 
 sun-flowers. Grey haycocks and golden sheaves 
 of corn stand in rows along the field like 
 hillocks on the immense expanse. Broad boughs 
 bend under their load of cherries, plums, apples, 
 and pears. The sky is the transparent mirror 
 of the day, and so is the river, with its high 
 green frame of trees. . . . How luscious and how 
 soft is the summer in Little Russia ! 
 
 " It was just such a hot day in August 
 1 8 — , when the road, ten versts from the little 
 town of Sorochinetz, was seething with people 
 hurrying from all the farms, far and near, to the 
 fair. With the break of day an endless chain ot 
 waggons laboured along, carrying salt and fish. 
 Mountains of pots wrapped in hay moved slowly 
 on as if they were weary of being cut off from 
 the sunshine. Only here and there some brightly- 
 painted soup tureen or earthenware saucepan 
 proudly emerged on the tilt of the high-heaped 
 waggon, and attracted the eyes of lovers of 
 finery ; many passers-by looked with envy on 
 the tall potter, the owner of all these treasures, 
 who with slow steps walked beside his goods." 
 
 Why are we never told of these azure Russian 
 days, of these laden fruit-trees and jewelled 
 insects ? 
 
 In 1832, Gogol published a continuation of 
 this series, entitled Stories of Mirgorod, This 
 collection contains the masterpieces of the roman- 
 
 51 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 tic, and the fantastic side of Gogol's genius. His 
 highest effort in the romantic province is the 
 historical history of Taras Bulba, which is a prose 
 epic. It is the tale of an old Cossack chieftain 
 whose two sons, Ostap and Andrii, are brought 
 up in the Zaporozhian settlement of the Cossacks, 
 and trained as warriors to fight the Poles. They 
 lay siege to the Polish city of Dubno, and starve 
 the city. Andrii, the younger son, discovers that 
 a girl whom he had loved at Kiev, before his 
 Cossack training, is shut up in the city. The 
 girl's servant leads him into Dubno by an under- 
 ground passage. Andrii meets his lady-love and 
 abandons the Cossack cause, saying that his 
 fatherland and his country is there where his 
 heart is. 
 
 In the meantime the Polish troops arrive, 
 reinforce the beleagured garrison ; Andrii is for 
 ever lost to Cossack chivalry, and his country 
 and his father's house shall know him no more. 
 News then comes that in the absence of the 
 Cossacks from their camp in the Ukraine, the 
 Tartars have plundered it. So they send half 
 their army to defend it, while half of it remains 
 in front of the besieged city. The Poles attack 
 the Cossacks who are left. 
 
 There is a terrific battle, in which Andrii fights 
 against the Cossacks. He is taken prisoner by 
 his own father, who bids him dismount. He 
 
 52 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 dismounts obediently, and his father addresses 
 him thus : " I begot you, and now I shall kill 
 you." And he shoots him dead. 
 
 Immediately after this incident Taras Bulba 
 and his elder son, Ostap, are attacked by the 
 enemy. Ostap, after inflicting deadly losses on the 
 enemy, is separated from his father, — who falls in 
 a swoon, and owing to this escapes, — and taken 
 prisoner. Ostap is taken to the city and tortured 
 to death. In the extremity of his torment, after 
 having endured the long agonies without a 
 groan, he cries out : *' Father, do you hear me ? " 
 And from the crowd a terrible voice is heard 
 answering : " I hear ! " Later, Taras raises an 
 army of Cossacks to avenge the death of his 
 son, and lays waste the country ; but at the end 
 he is caught and put to death by the Poles. 
 
 This story is told with epic breadth and sim- 
 plicity ; the figure of the old warrior is Homeric, 
 and Homeric also is the character of the young 
 traitor Andrii, who, although he betrays his own 
 people, never loses sympathy, so strong is the 
 impression you receive of his brilliance, his dash, 
 and his courage. 
 
 In the domain of fantasy, Gogol's masterpiece 
 is to be found in this same collection. It is 
 called Viy. It is the story of a beautiful lady 
 who is a witch. She casts her spell on a student 
 in theology, and when she dies, her dying will is 
 
 53 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 that he shall spend three nights in reading 
 prayers over her body, in the church where her 
 coffin lies. During his watch on the first night, 
 the dead maiden rises from her coffin, and watches 
 him with glassy, opaque eyes. He hears the 
 flapping of the wings of innumerable birds, and 
 in the morning is found half dead from terror. 
 He attempts to avoid the ordeal on the second 
 night, but the girl's father, an old Cossack, forces 
 him to carry out his daughter's behest, and three 
 nights are spent by the student in terrible conflict 
 with the witch. On the third night he dies. 
 The great quality of this story is the atmosphere 
 of overmastering terror that it creates. 
 
 With these two stories, Taras Btilba and Viy^ 
 Gogol took leave of Romanticism and Fantasy, 
 and started on the path of Realism. In this 
 province he was what the Germans call a bahn- 
 brecher^ and he discovered a new kingdom. It 
 may be noticed that Gogol, roughly speaking, 
 began where Dickens ended ; that is to say, he 
 wrote his Tale of Two Cities first, and his Pick- 
 wick last. But already in this collection of 
 Mirgorod tales there are two stories in the 
 humorous realistic vein, which Gogol never ex- 
 celled ; one is called Old-fashioned Landoivners^ 
 and the other Hozv Ivan Ivanovitch quarrelled 
 with Ivan Nikiforovitch. 
 
 Old-fashioned Landowners is a simple story. 
 54 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 It is about an old couple who lived in a low- 
 roofed little house, with a verandah of blackened 
 tree-trunks, in the midst of a garden of dwarfed 
 fruit-trees covered with cherries and plums. The 
 couple, Athanasii Ivanovitch and his wife Pulcheria 
 Ivanovna, are old. He is sixty, she is fifty-five. 
 It is the story of Philemon and Baucis. Nothing 
 happens in it, except that we are introduced to 
 these charming, kind, and hospitable people ; that 
 Pulcheria dies, and that after her death everything 
 in the house becomes untidy and slovenly, be- 
 cause Athanasii cannot live without her ; and 
 after five years he follows her to the grave, and 
 is buried beside her. There is nothing in the 
 story, and there is everything. It is amusing, 
 charming, and infinitely pathetic. Some of the 
 touches of description remind one strongly of 
 Dickens. Here, for instance, is a description of the 
 doors of the house where the old couple lived : 
 
 " The most remarkable thing about the house 
 was the creaking of the doors. As soon as day 
 broke, the singing of these doors was heard 
 throughout the whole house. I cannot say why 
 they made the noise : either it was the rusty 
 hinges, or else the workman who made them hid 
 some secret in them ; but the remarkable thing 
 was that each door had its own special note. 
 The door going into the bedroom sang in a 
 delicate treble ; the door going into the dining- 
 
 55 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 room had a hoarse bass note ; but that which led 
 into the front hall made a strange trembling, 
 groaning noise, so that if you listened to it in- 
 tently you heard it distinctly saying, ' Batiushka, 
 I am so cold ! ' " 
 
 The story of the two Ivans is irresistibly funny. 
 The two Ivans were neighbours ; one of them 
 was a widower and the other a bachelor. They 
 were the greatest friends. Never a day passed 
 without their seeing each other, and their greatest 
 pleasure was to entertain each other at big, 
 Dickens-like meals. But one day they quarrelled 
 about a gun, and Ivan Nikiforovitch called Ivan 
 Ivanovitch a goose. After this they would not 
 see each other, and their relations were broken 
 off. Hitherto, Ivan Nikiforovitch and Ivan 
 Ivanovitch had sent every day to inquire about 
 each other's health, had conversed together from 
 their balconies, and had said charming things 
 to each other. On Sundays they had gone to 
 church arm in arm, and outdone each other in 
 mutual civilities ; but now they would not look 
 at each other. 
 
 At length the quarrel went so far that Ivan 
 Ivanovitch lodged a complaint against Ivan 
 Nikiforovitch, saying that the latter had inflicted 
 a deadly insult on his personal honour, firstly 
 by calling him a goose, secondly by building a 
 goose-shed opposite his porch, and thirdly by 
 
 56 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 cherishing a design to burn his house down. 
 Ivan Nikiforovitch lodged a similar petition 
 against Ivan Ivanovitch. As bad luck would 
 have it, Ivan Ivanovitch's brown sow ate Ivan 
 Nikiforovitch's petition, and this, of course, made 
 the quarrel worse. 
 
 At last a common friend of the pair attempts 
 to bring about a reconciliation, and asks the two 
 enemies to dinner. After much persuasion they 
 consent to meet. They go to the dinner, where a 
 large company is assembled ; both Ivans eat 
 their meal without glancing at each other, and as 
 soon as the dinner is over they rise from their 
 seats and make ready to go. At this moment 
 they are surrounded on all sides, and are adjured 
 by the company to forget their quarrel. Each 
 says that he was innocent of any evil design, 
 and the reconciliation is within an ace of being 
 effected when, unfortunately, Ivan Nikiforovitch 
 says to Ivan Ivanovitch : " Permit me to observe, 
 in a friendly manner, that you took offence 
 because I called you a goose." As soon as the 
 fatal word " goose " is uttered, all reconciliation is 
 out of the question, and the quarrel continues to 
 the end of their lives. 
 
 In 1835, Gogol retired definitely from the 
 public service. At this point of his career he 
 wrote a number of stories and comedies, of a 
 varied nature, which he collected later in two 
 
 57 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 volumes, Arabesques^ 1834, and Tales^ 1836. It 
 was the dawn of his realistic phase, although he 
 still indulged from time to time in the fantastic, 
 as in the grotesque stories. The Nose — the tale of 
 a nose which gets lost and wanders about — and 
 The Coach. But the most remarkable of these 
 stories is The Overcoat, which is the highest 
 example of Gogol's pathos, and contains in 
 embryo all the qualities of vivid realism which he 
 was to develop later. It is the story of a clerk 
 who has a passion for copying, and to whom 
 caligraphy is a fine art. He is never warm 
 enough ; he is always shivering. The ambition, 
 the dream of his life, is to have a warm overcoat. 
 After years of privation he saves up the sum 
 necessary to realise his dream and buy a new 
 overcoat ; but on the first day that he wears it, the 
 coat is stolen from him. 
 
 The police, to whom he applies after the theft, 
 laugh at him, and the clerk falls into a black 
 melancholy. He dies unnoticed and'obscure, and 
 his ghost haunts the squalid streets where he was 
 wont to walk. 
 
 Nearly half of modern Russian literature 
 descends directly from this story. The figure of 
 this clerk and the way he is treated by the author is 
 the first portrait of an endless gallery of the failures 
 of this world, the flotsam and jetsam of a social 
 system : grotesque figures, comic, pathetic, with a 
 
 58 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 touch of tragedy in them, which, since they are 
 handled by their creator with a kindly sympathy, 
 and never with cruelty or disdain, win our sym- 
 pathy and live in our hearts and our affections. 
 
 During this same period Gogol wrote several 
 plays, among which the masterpiece is The 
 Inspector. This play, which is still immensely 
 popular in Russia, and draws crowded houses 
 on Sundays and holidays, is a good-humoured, 
 scathing satire on the Russian Bureaucracy. As 
 a translation of this play is easily to be obtained, 
 and as it has been performed in London by the 
 Stage Society, I need not dwell on it here, except 
 to mention for those who are unacquainted with 
 it, that the subject of the play is a misunderstand- 
 ing which arises from a traveller being mistaken 
 for a government inspector who is expected to 
 arrive incognito in a provincial town. A European 
 critic in reading or seeing this play is sometimes 
 surprised and unreasonably struck by the universal 
 dishonesty of almost every single character in the 
 play. For instance, one of the characters says to 
 another : " You are stealing above your rank." 
 One should remember, however, that in a transla- 
 tion it is impossible not to lose something of the 
 good-humour and the comic spirit of which the 
 play is full. It has often been a matter of sur- 
 prise that this play, at the time when Gogol wrote 
 it, should have been passed by the censorship. 
 
 59 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 The reason of this is that Gogol had for censor 
 the Emperor of Russia himself, who read the play, 
 was extremely amused by it, commanded its 
 immediate performance, was present at the first 
 night, and led the applause. 
 
 Hlestakov, the hero of The Inspector', is one of 
 the most natural and magnificent liars in literature. 
 Gogol himself, in his stage directions, describes 
 him as a man " without a Tsar in his head," — a 
 man who speaks and acts without the slightest 
 reflection, and who is not capable of consecutive 
 thought, or of fixing his attention for more than a 
 moment on any single idea. 
 
 In 1836, Gogol left Russia and settled in 
 Rome. He had been working for some time at 
 another book, which he intended should be his 
 masterpiece, a book in which he intended to say 
 everything, and express the whole of his message. 
 Gogol was possessed by this idea. The book was 
 to be divided into three parts. The first part 
 appeared in 1842, the second part, which was 
 never finished, Gogol threw in the fire in a fit of 
 despair. It was, however, subsequently printed 
 from an incomplete manuscript which had escaped 
 his notice. The third part was never written. 
 As it is, the first fragment of Gogol's great ambi- 
 tion remains his masterpiece, and the book by 
 which he is best known. It is called Dead Souls. 
 The hero of this book is a man called Chichikov. 
 
 60 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 He has hit on an idea by which he can make 
 money by dishonest means. Like all great ideas, 
 it is simple. At the time at which the book was 
 written the serfs in Russia had not yet been 
 emancipated. They were called " souls," and 
 every landlord possessed so many " souls." A 
 revision of the list of peasants took place every 
 ten years, and the landlord had to pay a poll- 
 tax for the souls that had died during that period, 
 that is to say, for the men ; women and children 
 did not count. Between the periods of revision 
 nobody looked at the lists. If there was any 
 epidemic in the village the landlord lost heavily, 
 as he had to continue paying a tax for the 
 " souls " who were dead. 
 
 Chichikov's idea was to take these " dead souls " 
 from the landlords, and pay the poll-tax, for them. 
 The landlord would be only too pleased to get 
 rid of a property which was fictitious, and a tax 
 which was only too real. Chichikov could then 
 register his purchases with all due formality, for 
 it would never occur to a tribunal to think that 
 he was asking them to legalise a sale of dead 
 men ; he could thus take the documents to a 
 bank at St. Petersburg or at Moscow, and mort- 
 gage the " souls," which he represented as living 
 in some desert place in the Crimea, at one hundred 
 roubles apiece, and then be rich enough to buy 
 living " souls " of his own. 
 
 6i 
 
LANDMARKS LN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Chichikov travelled all over Russia in search 
 of " dead souls." The book tells us the adven- 
 tures he met with ; and the scheme is particularly- 
 advantageous to the author, because it not only 
 enables him to introduce us to a variety of types, 
 but the transaction itself, the manner in which 
 men behave when faced by the proposition, throws 
 a searchlight on their characters. Chichikov starts 
 from a large provincial town, which he makes his 
 base, and thence explores the country ; the success 
 or failure of his transactions forms the substance 
 of the book. Sometimes he is successful, some- 
 times the system breaks down because the people 
 in the country want to know the market value of 
 the " dead souls " in the town. 
 
 The travels of Chichikov, like those of Mr. 
 Pickwick, form a kind of Odyssey. The types 
 he introduces us to are extraordinarily comic ; 
 there are fools who give their " souls " for nothing, 
 and misers who demand an exorbitant price for 
 them. But sometimes Chichikov meets with 
 people who are as clever as himself, and who 
 outwit him. One of the most amusing episodes 
 is that where he comes across a suspicious old 
 woman called Korobotchka. Chichikov, after 
 arriving at her house late at night, and having 
 spent the night there, begins his business transac- 
 tions cautiously and tentatively. The old woman 
 at first thinks he has come to sell her tea, or that 
 
 62 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 he has come to buy honey. Then Chichikov 
 comes to the point, and asks her if any peasants 
 have died on her land. She says eighteen. He 
 then asks her to sell them to him, saying that he 
 will give her money for them. She asks if he 
 wishes to dig them out of the ground. He 
 explains that the transaction would only take 
 place upon paper. She asks him why he 
 wants to do this. That, he answers, is his own 
 affair. 
 
 " But they are dead," she says. 
 
 " Whoever said they were alive ? " asked 
 Chichikov. " It is a loss to you that they are 
 dead. You pay for them, and I will now save 
 you the trouble and the expense, and not only 
 save you this, but give you fifteen roubles into the 
 bargain. Is it clear now ? " 
 
 " I really can't say," the old woman replies. 
 " You see I never before sold dead * souls.' " And 
 she keeps on repeating : " What bothers me is 
 that they are dead!' 
 
 Chichikov again explains to her that she has 
 to pay a tax on them just as though they were 
 alive. 
 
 "Don't talk of it!" she says. "Only a 
 week ago I had to pay one hundred and fifty 
 roubles." 
 
 Chichikov again explains to her how advan- 
 tageous it would be for her to get them off her 
 
 63 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 hands, upon which she answers that she has 
 never had occasion to sell dead souls ; if they 
 were alive, on the other hand, she would have 
 been delighted to do it. 
 
 " But I don't want live ones ! I want dead 
 ones," answers Chichikov. 
 
 " I am afraid," she says, " that I might lose 
 over the bargain — that you may be deceiving 
 me. 
 
 Chichikov explains the whole thing over again, 
 offering her fifteen roubles, and showing her the 
 money ; upon which she says she would like to 
 wait a little, to find out what they are really 
 worth. 
 
 " But who on earth will buy them from you ? " 
 asks Chichikov. 
 
 '^ They might be useful on the estate," says 
 the old woman. 
 
 " How can you use dead souls on the estate ? " 
 asks Chichikov. 
 
 Korobotchka suggests that she would rather 
 sell him some hemp, and Chichikov loses his 
 temper. 
 
 Equally amusing are Chichikov's adventures 
 with the miser Plushkin, Nozdref, a swaggering 
 drunkard, and Manilov, who is simply a fool. 
 But when all is said and done, the most amusing 
 person in the book is Chichikov himself. 
 
 At the end of the first volume, Gogol makes 
 
 64 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 a defence of his hero. After having described 
 the circumstances of his youth, his surroundings, 
 and all the influences which made him what he 
 was, the author asks : " Who is he ? " And the 
 answer he gives himself is : " Of course a rascal : 
 but why a rascal ? " He continues : 
 
 " Why should we be so severe on others ? We 
 have no rascals among us now, we have only 
 well-thinking, pleasant people ; we have, it is true, 
 two or three men \vho have enjoyed the shame of 
 being thrashed in public, and even these speak of 
 virtue. It would be more just to call him a man 
 who acquires ; it is the passion for gain that is 
 to blame for everything. This passion is the 
 cause of deeds which the world characterises as 
 ugly. It is true that in such a character there 
 is perhaps something repulsive. But the same 
 reader who in real Hfe will be friends with such 
 a man, who will dine with him, and pass the 
 time pleasantly with him, will look askance at 
 the same character should he meet with him 
 as the hero of a book or of a poem. That 
 man is wise who is not offended by any char- 
 acter, but is able to look within it, and to 
 trace the development of nature to its first 
 causes. Everything in man changes rapidly. 
 You have scarcely time to look round, before 
 inside the man's heart a hateful worm has been 
 born which absorbs the vital sap of his nature. 
 And it often happens that not only a great passion, 
 but some ridiculous whim for a trivial object, 
 
 E 65 
 
LANDMARKS L\ RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 grows in a man who was destined to better 
 deeds, and causes him to forget his high and 
 sacred duty, and to mistake the most miserable 
 trifle for what is most exalted and most holy. The 
 passions of mankind are as countless as the sands 
 of the sea, and each of them is different from the 
 others ; and all of them, mean or beautiful, start 
 by being subject to man, and afterwards become 
 his most inexorable master. Happy is the man 
 who has chosen for himself a higher passion . . . 
 but there are passions which are not chosen by 
 man : they are with him from the moment of his 
 birth, and strength is not given him to free himself 
 from them. These passions are ordered according 
 to a high plan, and there is something in them 
 which eternally and incessantly summons him, 
 and which lasts as long as life lasts. They have 
 a great work to accomplish ; whether they be 
 sombre or whether they be bright, their purpose 
 is to work for an ultimate good which is beyond 
 the ken of man. And perhaps in this same 
 Chichikov the ruling passion which governs him 
 is not of his choosing, and in his cold existence 
 there may be something which will one day cause 
 us to humble ourselves on our knees and in the 
 dust before the Divine wisdom." 
 
 I quote this passage at length because it not 
 only explains the point of view of Gogol towards 
 his creation, but also that which nearly all 
 Russian authors and novelists hold with regard 
 to mankind in general. Gogol's Dead Souls is an 
 
 66 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 extremely funny book ; it is full of delightful 
 situations, comic characters and situations. At 
 the same time it has often struck people as 
 being a sad book. When Gogol read out to 
 Pushkin the first chapter, Pushkin, who at other 
 times had always laughed when Gogol read his 
 work to him, became sadder and sadder, and said 
 when Gogol had reached the end : " What a sad 
 country Russia is ! " 
 
 It is true, as Gogol himself says at the end of 
 the first volume of Dead Souls, that there is prob- 
 ably not one of his readers who, after an honest 
 self-examination, will not wonder whether he has 
 not something of Chichikov in himself And if 
 at such a moment such a man should meet an 
 acquaintance in the street, whose rank is neither 
 too exalted for criticism nor too obscure for notice, 
 he will nudge his companion, and say with a 
 chuckle : " There goes Chichikov ! " Perhaps 
 every Russian feels that there is something of 
 Chichikov in him, and Chichikov is a rascal, and 
 most of the other characters in Dead Souls are 
 rascals also; people who try to cheat their neigh- 
 bours, and feel no moral scruples or remorse after 
 they have done so. But in spite of all this, the 
 impression that remains with one after reading 
 the book is not one of bitterness or of melancholy. 
 For in all the characters there is a vast amount 
 of good-nature and of humanity. Also, as Gogol 
 
 67 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 has pointed out in the passage quoted above, the 
 peculiar blend of faults and qualities on which 
 moralists may be severe, may be a special part of 
 the Divine scheme. 
 
 However this may be, what strikes the casual 
 student most when he has read Dead Souls, is that 
 Gogol is the only Russian author who has given 
 us in literature the universal type of Russian ; 
 the Russian " man in the street." Tolstoy 
 has depicted the upper classes. Dostoievsky has 
 reached the innermost depths of the Russian soul 
 in its extremest anguish and at its highest pitch. 
 Tourgeniev has fixed on the canvas several striking 
 portraits, which suffer from the defect either of 
 being caricatures, or of being too deeply dyed 
 in the writer's pessimism and self-consciousness. 
 Gorky has painted in lurid colours one side 
 of the common people. Andreev has given 
 us the nightmares of the younger genera- 
 tion. Chekov has depicted the pessimism and 
 the ineffectiveness of the " intelligenzia." ^ But 
 nobody except Gogol has given us the ordinary 
 cheerful Russian man in the street, with his crying 
 faults, his attractive good qualities, and his over- 
 flowing human nature. In fact, it is the work 
 of Gogol that explains the attraction which the 
 Russian character and the Russian country 
 exercise over people who have come beneath their 
 
 ^ The highly educated professional middle class. 
 
 6Z 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 influence. At first sight the thing seems 
 inexplicable. The country seems ugly, dreary 
 and monotonous, without art, without beauty and 
 without brilliance ; the climate is either fiercely 
 cold and damp, or excruciatingly dry and hot; 
 the people are slow and heavy ; there is a 
 vast amount of dirt, dust, disorder, untidiness, 
 slovenliness, squalor, and sordidness everywhere ; 
 and yet in spite of all this, even a foreigner who 
 has lived in Russia (not to speak of the Russians 
 themselves), and who has once come in contact 
 with its people, can never be quite free from its 
 over- mastering charm, and the secret fascination 
 of the country. 
 
 In another passage towards the end of Dead 
 SoulSj Gogol writes about this very thing as 
 follows : 
 
 " Russia " (he writes), " I see you from the 
 beautiful ' far away ' where I am. Everything in 
 you is miserable, disordered and inhospitable. 
 There are no emphatic miracles of Nature to 
 startle the eye, graced with equally startling 
 miracles of art. There are no towns with high, 
 many-windowed castles perched on the top of 
 crags ; there are no picturesque trees, no ivy- 
 covered houses beside the ceaseless thunder 
 and foam of waterfalls. One never strains 
 one's neck back to look at the piled-up rocky 
 crags soaring endlessly into the sky. There 
 never shines, through dark and broken arches 
 
 69 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 overgrown with grapes, ivy, and a million wild 
 roses, — there never shines, I say, from afar the 
 eternal line of gleaming mountains standing out 
 against transparent and silver skies. Every- 
 thing in you is open and desert and level ; 
 like dots, your squatting towns lie almost un- 
 observed in the midst of the plains. There is 
 nothing to flatter or to charm the eye. What then 
 is the secret and incomprehensible power which 
 lies hidden in you ? Why does your aching 
 melancholy song, which wanders throughout the 
 length and breadth of you, from sea to sea, sound 
 and echo unceasingly in one's ears ? What is there 
 in this song? What is there that calls and sobs 
 and captures the heart? What are the sounds 
 which hurt as they kiss, pierce my very inmost 
 soul and flood my heart? Russia, what do you 
 want of me? What inexplicable bond is there 
 between you and me ? " 
 
 Gogol does not answer the question, and if he 
 cannot put his finger on the secret it would be 
 difficult for any one else to do so. But although 
 he does not answer the question directly, he does 
 so indirectly by his works. Any one who reads 
 Gogol's early stories, even Dead Souls, will 
 •understand the inexplicable fascination hidden 
 in a country which seems at first sight so 
 devoid of outward and superficial attraction, and 
 in a people whose defects are so obvious and 
 unconcealed. The charm of Russian life lies in 
 
 70 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 its essential goodness of heart, and in its absence 
 of hypocrisy, and it is owing to this absence of 
 hypocrisy that the faults of the Russian character 
 are so easy to detect. It is for this reason that 
 in Gogol's realistic and satirical work, as in The 
 Inspector and Dead Sou/s, the characters startle the 
 foreign observer by their frank and almost uni- 
 versal dishonesty. The truth is that they do not 
 take the trouble to conceal their shortcomings ; 
 they are indulgent to the failings of others, and 
 not only expect but know that they will find their 
 own faults treated with similar indulgence. 
 Faults, failings, and vices which in Western 
 Europe would be regarded with uncompromis- 
 ing censure and merciless blame, meet in 
 Russia either with pity or good - humoured 
 indulgence. 
 
 This happy-go-lucky element, the good-natured 
 indulgence and scepticism with which Russians 
 regard many things which we consider of grave 
 import, are, no doubt, to a great extent the cause 
 of the evils which exist in the administrative 
 system of the country — the cause of nearly all the 
 evils of which Russian reformers so bitterly com- 
 plain. On the other hand, it should not be 
 forgotten that this same good-humour and this 
 same indulgence, the results of which in public 
 life are slackness, disorder, corruption, irresponsi- 
 bility and arbitrariness, in private life produce 
 
 71 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 results of a different nature, such as pity, charity, 
 hospitality and unselfishness ; for the good- 
 humour and the good-nature of the Russian pro- 
 ceed directly from goodness, and from nothing else. 
 
 Gogol never finished Dead Souls, He went 
 on working on the second and third parts of it 
 until the end of his life, in 1852 ; and he twice 
 threw the work, when it was completed, into the 
 fire. All we possess is an incomplete copy of a 
 manuscript of the second part, which escaped 
 destruction. He had intended the second part to 
 be more serious than the first ; his ambition was 
 to work out the moral regeneration of Chichikov, 
 and in doing so to attain to a full and complete 
 expression of his ideals and his outlook on life. 
 The ambition pursued and persecuted him like a 
 feverish dream, and not being able to realise it, 
 he turned back upon himself and was driven 
 inward. His nature was religious to the core, 
 since it was based on a firm and unshaken belief 
 in Providence ; and there came a time when he 
 began to experience that distaste of the world 
 which ultimately leads to a man becoming an 
 ascetic and a recluse. 
 
 He lived in Rome, isolated from the world ; he 
 became consumed with religious zeal ; he preached 
 to his friends and acquaintances the Christian 
 virtues of humility, resignation and charity ; 
 he urged them not to resist authority, but 
 
 72 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 to become contrite Christians. And in order 
 that the world should hear him, in 1847 he 
 published passages from a correspondence with 
 friends. In these letters Gogol insisted on 
 the paramount necessity of spiritual life ; but 
 instead of attacking the Church he defended it, 
 and preached submission both to it and to the 
 Government. 
 
 The book created a sensation, and raised a storm 
 of abuse. Some of the prominent Liberals were 
 displeased. It was, of course, easy for them to 
 attack Gogol ; for here, they said, was the man 
 who had, more than any other, satirised and dis- 
 credited the Russian Government and Russian 
 administration, coming forward as an apostle 
 of orthodoxy and officialdom. The intellectual 
 world scorned him as a mystic, and considered 
 the matter settled ; but if the word " mystic " had 
 the significance which these people seem to have 
 attached to it, then Gogol was not a mystic. 
 There was nothing extravagant or uncommon 
 in his religion. He gave up writing, and devoted 
 himself to religion and good works ; but this does 
 not constitute what the intellectuals seem to have 
 meant by mysticism. Mysticism with them was 
 equivalent to madness. If, on the other hand, 
 we mean by mysticism the transcendent common 
 sense which recognises a Divine order of things, 
 and the reality of an invisible world, then Gogol 
 
 73 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 was a mystic. Therefore, when Gogol ceased to 
 write stories, he no more became a mystic than 
 did Pascal when he ceased going into society, or 
 than Racine did when he ceased to write plays. 
 In the other sense of the word he was a mystic all 
 his life ; so was Racine. 
 
 At the age of thirty-three his creative faculties 
 had dried up, and at the age of forty-three, in 
 February 1852, he died of typhoid fever. The 
 place of Gogol in Russian literature is a very high 
 one. Prosper Merim^e places him among the 
 best English humorists. Gogol's European repu- 
 tation is less great than it should be, because 
 his subject-matter is more remote. But of all 
 the Russian prose writers of the last century, 
 Gogol is perhaps the most national. His work 
 smells of the soil of Russia ; there is nothing 
 imitative or foreign about it. When he published 
 The Inspector, the motto which he appended to it 
 was : " If your mouth is crooked, don't blame the 
 looking-glass." He was a great humorist. He 
 was also a great satirist. He was a penetrating 
 but not a pitiless observer ; in his fun and his 
 humour, there is often a note of sadness, an accent 
 of pathos, and a tinge of wistful melancholy. 
 His pathos and his laughter are closely allied one 
 to another, but in his sadness there is neither 
 bitterness nor gloom ; there is no shadow of the 
 powers of darkness, no breath of the icy terror 
 
 74 
 
GOGOL AND CHEERFULNESS OF PEOPLE 
 
 which blows through the works of Tolstoy ; there 
 is no hint of the emptiness and the void, or of 
 a fear of them. There is nothing akin to despair. 
 For his whole outlook on life is based on faith in 
 Providence, and the whole of his morality consists 
 in Christian charity, and in submission to the 
 Divine. 
 
 In one of his lectures, Gogol, speaking of 
 Pushkin, singles out, as one of the qualities of 
 Russian literature, the pity for all who are 
 unfortunate. This, he says, is a truly Russian 
 characteristic. 
 
 " Think," he writes, " of that touching spectacle 
 which our people afford when they visit the exiles 
 who are starting for Siberia, when every man 
 brings something, either food or money, or a kind 
 word. There is here no hatred of the criminal ; 
 no quixotic wish to make him a hero, or to ask 
 for his autograph or his portrait, or to regard him 
 as an object of morbid curiosity, as often happens 
 in more civilised Europe. Here there is some- 
 thing more : it is not the desire to whitewash 
 him, or to deliver him from the hands of 
 the law, but to comfort his broken spirit, 
 and to console him as a brother comforts a 
 brother, or as Christ ordered us to console each 
 other." 
 
 This sense of pity is the greatest gift that the 
 Russian nation possesses : it is likewise the cardinal 
 
 75 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 factor of Russian literature, as well as its most 
 precious asset ; the inestimable legacy and contribu- 
 tion which Russian authors have made to the litera- 
 ture of the world. It is a thing which the Russians 
 and no other people have given us. There is no 
 better way of judging of this quality and of 
 estimating its results, than to study the works of 
 Russia's greatest humorist, satirist, and realist. 
 For if realism can be so vivid without being cruel, 
 if satire can be so cruel without being bitter, and 
 a sense of the ridiculous so broad and so strong 
 without being ill-natured, the soil of goodness out 
 of which these things all grow must indeed be rich 
 and deep, and the streams of pity with which it 
 is watered must indeed be plentiful. 
 
 76 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 THE eightieth birthday of Count Tolstoy, 
 which was celebrated in Russia on August 
 28 (old style), 1908, was closely followed by 
 the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of 
 Tourgeniev, who died on September 3, 1883, at 
 the age of sixty-five. These two anniversaries 
 followed close upon the publication of a trans- 
 lation into English of the complete works of 
 Count Tolstoy by Professor Wiener; and it 
 is not long ago that a new edition of the 
 complete works of Tourgeniev, translated into 
 English by Mrs. Garnett, appeared. Both these 
 translations have been made with great care, and 
 are faithful and accurate. Thirty years ago it is 
 certain that European critics, and probable that 
 Russian critics, would have observed, in comment- 
 ing on the concurrence of these two events, that 
 Tolstoy and Tourgeniev were the two giants of 
 modern Russian literature. Is the case the same 
 
 77 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 to-day? Is it still true that, in the opinion of 
 Russia and of Europe, the names of Tolstoy and 
 Tourgeniev stand pre-eminently above all their 
 contemporaries ? 
 
 With regard to Tolstoy the question can be 
 answered without the slightest hesitation. Time, 
 which has inflicted such mournful damage on so 
 many great reputations in the last twenty-five 
 years, has not only left the fame of Tolstoy's 
 masterpieces unimpaired, but has increased our 
 sense of their greatness. The question arises, 
 whose work forms the complement to that of 
 Tolstoy, and shares his undisputed dominion 
 of modern Russian literature? Is it Tour- 
 geniev? In Russia at the present day the 
 answer would be " No," it is not Tourgeniev. 
 And in Europe, students of Russian literature 
 who are acquainted with the Russian language 
 — as we see in M. Emile Haumant's study of 
 Tourgeniev's life and work, and in Professor 
 Bruckner's history of Russian literature — would 
 also answer in the negative, although their 
 denial would be less emphatic and not perhaps 
 unqualified. 
 
 The other giant, the complement of Tolstoy, 
 almost any Russian critic of the present day 
 without hesitation would pronounce to be Dos- 
 toievsky ; and the foreign critic who is thoroughly 
 acquainted with Dostoievsky's work cannot but 
 
 78 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 agree with him. I propose to go more fully into 
 the question of the merits and demerits of Dos- 
 toievsky later on ; but it is impossible not to 
 mention him here, because the very existence of 
 his work powerfully affects our judgment when 
 we come to look at that of his contemporaries. 
 We can no more ignore his presence and his in- 
 fluence than we could ignore the presence of a 
 colossal fresco by Leonardo da Vinci in a room 
 in which there were only two other religious 
 pictures, one by Rembrandt and one by Vandyck. 
 For any one who is familiar with Dostoievsky, 
 and has felt his tremendous influence, cannot look 
 at the work of his contemporaries with the same 
 eyes as before. To such a one, the rising of 
 Dostoievsky's red and troubled planet, while 
 causing the rays of Tourgeniev's serene star 
 to pale, leaves the rays of Tolstoy's orb 
 undiminished and undimmed. Tolstoy and 
 Dostoievsky shine in the firmament of Rus- 
 sian literature like two planets, one of them 
 as radiant as the planet Jupiter, the other 
 as ominous as the planet Mars. Beside either 
 of these the light of Tourgeniev twinkles, pure 
 indeed, and full of pearly lustre, like the 
 moon faintly seen in the east at the end of an 
 autumnal day. 
 
 It is rash to make broad generalisations. 
 79 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 They bring with them a certain element of exag- 
 geration which must be discounted. Nevertheless 
 I believe that I am stating a fundamental truth 
 in saying that the Russian character can, roughly 
 speaking, be divided into two types, and these 
 two types dominate the whole of Russian litera- 
 ture. The first is that which I shall call, for 
 want of a better name, Lucifer, the fallen angel. 
 The second type is that of the hero of all Russian 
 folk-tales, Ivan Durak, Ivan the Fool, or the 
 Little Fool. There are innumerable folk-tales in 
 Russian which tell the adventures of Ivan the 
 Fool, who, by his very simplicity and foolishness, 
 outwits the wisdom of the world. This type 
 is characteristic of one Russian ideal. The 
 simple fool is venerated in Russia as some- 
 thing holy. It is acknowledged that his childish 
 innocence is more precious than the wisdom of 
 the wise. Ivan Durak may be said to be the 
 hero of all Dostoievsky's novels. He is the aim 
 and ideal of Dostoievsky's life, an aim and ideal 
 which he fully achieves. He is also the aim and 
 ideal of Tolstoy's teaching, but an aim and ideal 
 which Tolstoy recommends to others and only 
 partly achieves himself. 
 
 The first type I have called, for want of a 
 better name, since I can find no concrete symbol 
 of it in Russian folk-lore, Lucifer, the fallen angel. 
 This type is the embodiment of stubborn and 
 
 80 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 obdurate pride, the spirit which cannot bend ; 
 such is Milton's Satan, with his 
 
 'Courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome. 
 
 This type is also widely prevalent in Russia, 
 although it cannot be said to be a popular type, 
 embodied, like Ivan the Fool, in a national symbol. 
 One of the most striking instances of this, the 
 Lucifer type, which I have come across, was a 
 peasant called Nazarenko, who was a member of 
 the first Duma. He was a tall, powerfully built, 
 rugged-looking man, spare and rather thin, with 
 clear-cut prominent features, black penetrating 
 eyes, and thick black tangled hair. He looked 
 as if he had stepped out of a sacred picture by 
 Velasquez. This man had the pride of Lucifer. 
 There was at that time, in July 1905, an Inter- 
 parliamentary Congress sitting in London. Five 
 delegates of the Russian Duma were chosen to 
 represent Russia. It was proposed that Nazarenko 
 should represent the peasants. I asked him once 
 if he were going. He answered : 
 
 " I shan't go unless I am unanimously chosen 
 by the others. I have written down my name 
 and asked, but I shall not ask twice. I never 
 ask twice for anything. When I say my prayers, 
 I only ask God once for a thing, and if it is not 
 granted, I never ask again. So it is not likely 
 F 8l 
 
 '^\(oO?^ 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 I would ask my fellow-men twice for anything. 
 I am like that. I leave out that passage in the 
 prayers about being a miserable slave. I am not 
 a miserable slave, either of man or of Heaven." 
 
 Such a man recognises no authority, human 
 or divine. Indeed he not only refuses to ac- 
 knowledge authority, but it will be difficult for 
 him to admire or bow down to any of those 
 men or ideas which the majority have agreed 
 to believe worthy of admiration, praise, or 
 reverence. 
 
 Now, while Dostoievsky is the incarnation of 
 the first type, of Ivan the Fool, Tolstoy is the 
 incarnation of the second. It is true that, at a 
 certain stage of his career, Tolstoy announced 
 to the world that the ideal of Ivan Durak 
 was the only ideal worth following. He per- 
 ceives this aim with clearness, and, in preach- 
 ing it, he has made a multitude of disciples ; the 
 only thing he has never been able to do is to 
 make the supreme submission, the final surrender, 
 and to become the type himself. 
 
 We know everything about Tolstoy, not only 
 from the biographical writings of Fet and Behrs, 
 but from his own autobiography, his novels, and 
 his Confession. He gives us a panorama of 
 events down to the smallest detail of his long 
 career, as well as of every phase of feeling, and 
 
 82 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 every shade and mood of his spiritual existence. 
 The English reader who wishes to be acquainted 
 with all the important facts of Tolstoy's material 
 and spiritual life cannot do better than read Mr. 
 Aylmer Maude's Life of Tolstoy^ which com- 
 presses into one well-planned and admirably 
 executed volume all that is of interest during 
 the first fifty years of Tolstoy's career. In 
 reading this book a phrase of Tourgeniev's occurs 
 to one. " Man is the same, from the cradle 
 to the grave." Tolstoy had been called incon- 
 sistent; but the student of his life and work, far 
 from finding inconsistency, will rather be struck 
 by the unvarying and obstinate consistency of his 
 ideas. Here, for instance, is an event recorded in 
 Tolstoy's Confession (p. i ) : 
 
 " I remember how, when I was about eleven, a 
 boy, Vladimir Miliutin, long since dead, visited 
 us one Sunday, and announced as the latest 
 novelty a discovery made at his school. The 
 discovery was that there is no God at all, and all 
 we are taught about Him is a mere invention. I 
 remember how interested my elder brothers were 
 in this news. They called me to their council, 
 and we all, I remember, became animated, and 
 accepted the news as something very interesting 
 and fully possible." 
 
 There is already the germ of the man who was 
 afterwards to look with such independent eyes on 
 
 83 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the accepted beliefs and ideas of mankind, to 
 play havoc with preconceived opinions, and to 
 establish to his own satisfaction whether what 
 was true for others was true for himself or not. 
 Later he says : 
 
 " I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox 
 Christian faith. I was taught it in childhood 
 and all through my boyhood and youth. Before 
 I left the university, in my second year, at the 
 age of eighteen, I no longer believed anything I 
 had been taught." ^ 
 
 A Russian writer, M. Kurbski, describes how, 
 when he first met Tolstoy, he was overwhelmed 
 by the look in Tolstoy's eyes. They were more 
 than eyes, he said ; they were like electric search- 
 lights, which penetrated into the depths of your 
 mind, and, like a photographic lens, seized and 
 retained for ever a positive picture. In his 
 Childhood and Youth, Tolstoy gives us the most 
 vivid, the most natural, the most sensitive 
 picture of childhood and youth that has ever 
 been penned by the hand of man. And yet, 
 after reading it, one is left half-unconsciously 
 with the impression that the author feels there 
 is something wrong, something unsatisfactory 
 behind it all. 
 
 Tolstoy then passes on to describe the life of a 
 
 1 Life of Tolstoy, p. 38. 
 84 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 grown-up man, in The Morning of a Landowner, 
 in which he tells how he tried to work in his own 
 home, on his property, and to teach the peasants, 
 and how nothing came of his experiments. And 
 again we have the feeling of something unsatis- 
 factory, and something wanting, something towards 
 which the man is straining, and which escapes him. 
 
 A little later, Tolstoy goes to the Caucasus, to 
 the war, where life is primitive and simple, where 
 he is nearer to nature, and where man himself is 
 more natural. And then we have The Cossacks, 
 in which Tolstoy's searchlights are thrown upon 
 the primitive life of the old huntsman, the 
 Cossack, Yeroshka, who lives as the grass 
 lives, without care, without grief, and without 
 reflection. Once more we feel that the soul of 
 the writer is dissatisfied, still searching for some- 
 thing he has not found. 
 
 In 1854, Tolstoy took part in the Crimean 
 War, which supplied him with the stuff for 
 what are perhaps the most truthful pictures of 
 war that have ever been written. But even here, 
 we feel he has not yet found his heart's desire. 
 Something is wrong. He was recommended for 
 the St. George's Cross, but owing to his being 
 without some necessary official document at the 
 time of his recommendation, he failed to receive 
 it. This incident is a symbol of the greater 
 failure, the failure to achieve the inward happi- 
 
 85 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ness that he is seeking — a solid ground to tread 
 on, a bridge to the infinite, a final place of peace. 
 In his private diary there is an entry made at 
 the commencement of the war, while he was at 
 Silistria, which runs as follows : 
 
 " I have no modesty ; that is my great 
 defect. ... I am ugly, awkward, uncleanly, and 
 lack society education. I am irritable, a bore to 
 others, not modest ; intolerant, and as shamefaced 
 as a child. ... I am almost an ignoramus. What 
 I do know I have learnt anyhow, by myself, in 
 snatches, without sequence, without a plan, and 
 it amounts to very little. I am incontinent, 
 undecided, inconstant, and stupidly vain and 
 vehement, like all characterless people. I am 
 not brave. ... I am clever, but my cleverness 
 has as yet not been thoroughly tested on anything. 
 ... I am honest ; that is to say, I love good- 
 ness. . . . There is a thing I love more than 
 goodness, and that is fame. I am so ambitious, 
 and so little has this feeling been gratified, that, 
 should I have to choose between fame and goodness, 
 I fear I may often choose the former. Yes, I am 
 not modest, and therefore I am proud at heart, 
 shamefaced, and shy in society." 
 
 At the time that Tolstoy wrote this he was a 
 master, as Mr. Aylmer Maude points out, of the 
 French and German languages, besides having 
 some knowledge of English, Latin, Arabic, and 
 Turco-Tartar. He had published stories which 
 
 86 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 had caused the editors of the best Russian 
 magazines to offer him the rate of pay accorded 
 to the best-known writers. Therefore his dis- 
 content with his position, both intellectual and 
 social, was in reality quite unfounded. 
 
 After the Crimean War, Tolstoy went abroad. 
 He found nothing in Western Europe to satisfy 
 him. On his return he settled down at Yasnaya 
 Polyana, and married ; and the great patriarchal 
 phase of his life began, during which every gift 
 and every happiness that man can be blessed 
 with seemed to have fallen to his lot. It was 
 then that he wrote War and Peace, in which he 
 describes the conflict between one half of Europe 
 and the other. He takes one of the largest 
 canvases ever attacked by man ; and he writes 
 a prose epic on a period full of tremendous 
 events. His piercing glance sees through all 
 the fictions of national prejudice and patriotic 
 bias ; and he gives us what we feel to be the 
 facts as they were, the very truth. No detail 
 is too small for him, no catastrophe too great. 
 He traces the growth of the spreading tree to 
 its minute seed, the course of the great river 
 to its tiny source. He makes a whole vanished 
 generation of public and private men live before 
 our eyes in such a way that it is difficult to 
 believe that these people are not a part of 
 our actual experience; and that his creations 
 
 8; 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 are not men and women we have seen with our 
 own eyes, and whose voices we have heard with 
 our own ears. 
 
 But when we put down this wonderful book, 
 unequalled as a prose epic, as a panorama of a 
 period and a gallery of a thousand finished 
 portraits, we are still left with the impression 
 that the author has not yet found what he is 
 seeking. He is still asking why ? and wherefore ? 
 What does it all mean ? why all these horrors, 
 why these sacrifices ? Why all this conflict and 
 suffering of nations ? What do these high deeds, 
 this heroism, mean ? What is the significance of 
 these State problems, and the patriotic self- 
 sacrifice of nations ? We are aware that the 
 soul of Tolstoy is alone in an awful solitude, and 
 that it is shivering on the heights, conscious that 
 all round it is emptiness, darkness and despair. 
 
 Again, in War and Peace we are conscious 
 that Tolstoy's proud nature, the " Lucifer " type 
 in him, is searching for another ideal ; and that 
 in the character of Pierre Bezuhov he is already 
 setting up before us the ideal of Ivan Durak as 
 the model which we should seek to imitate. And 
 in Pierre Bezuhov we feel that there is something 
 of Tolstoy himself. Manners change, but man, 
 faced by the problem of life, is the same through- 
 out all ages ; and, whether consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, Tolstoy proves this in writing Anna 
 
 88 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 Karenina. Here again, on a large canvas, we see 
 unrolled before us the contemporary life of the 
 upper classes in Russia, in St. Petersburg, and 
 in the country, with the same sharpness of 
 vision, which seizes every outward detail, and 
 reveals every recess of the heart and mind. 
 Nearly all characters in all fiction seem bookish 
 beside those of Tolstoy. His men and women 
 are so real and so true that, even if his psycho- 
 logical analysis of them may sometimes err and 
 go wrong from its oversubtlety and its desire to 
 explain too much, the characters themselves seem 
 to correct this automatically, as though they were 
 independent of their creator. He creates a 
 character and gives it life. He may theorise on 
 a character, just as he might theorise on a person 
 in real life ; and he may theorise wrong, simply 
 because sometimes no theorising is necessary, and 
 the very fact of a theory being set down in words 
 may give a false impression ; but, as soon as the 
 character speaks and acts, it speaks and acts in 
 the manner which is true to itself, and corrects 
 the false impression of the theory, just as though 
 it were an independent person over whom the 
 author had no control. 
 
 Nearly every critic, at least nearly every English 
 critic,^ in dealing with Anna Karenina^ has found 
 fault with the author for the character of Vronsky. 
 
 ^ Matthew Arnold is a notable exception. 
 
 89 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Anna Karenina, they say, could never have fallen 
 in love with such an ordinary commonplace man. 
 Vronsky, one critic has said (in a brilliant article), 
 is only a glorified " Steerforth." The answer 
 to this is that if you go to St. Petersburg or 
 to London, or to any other town you like to 
 mention, you will find that the men with whom 
 the Anna Kareninas of this world fall in love are 
 precisely the Vronskys, and no one else, for the 
 simple reason that Vronsky is a man. He is not 
 a hero, and he is not a villain ; he is not what 
 people call " interesting," but a man, as masculine 
 as Anna is feminine, with many good qualities 
 and many limitations, but above all things alive. 
 Nearly every novelist, with the exception of 
 Fielding, ends, in spite of himself, by placing his 
 hero either above or beneath the standard of real 
 life. There are many Vronskys to-day in St. 
 Petersburg, and for the matter of that, ^nutatis 
 mutandis, in London. But no novelist except 
 Tolstoy has ever had the power to put this simple 
 thing, an ordinary man, into a book. Put one of 
 Meredith's heroes next to Vronsky, and Meredith's 
 hero will appear like a figure dressed up for a 
 fancy-dress ball. Put one of Bourget's heroes 
 next to him, with all his psychological documents 
 attached to him, and, in spite of all the analysis 
 in the world, side by side with Tolstoy's human 
 being he will seem but a plaster-cast. Yet, all 
 
 90 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 the time, in Anna Karenina we feel, as in War 
 and Peace^ that the author is still unsatisfied and 
 hungry, searching for something he has not yet 
 found ; and once again, this time in still sharper 
 outline and more living colours, he paints an ideal 
 of simplicity which is taking us towards Ivan 
 Durak in the character of Levin. Into this 
 character, too, we feel that Tolstoy has put a great 
 deal of himself; and that Levin, if he is not 
 Tolstoy himself, is what Tolstoy would like to be. 
 But the loneliness and the void that are round 
 Tolstoy's mind are not yet filled ; and in that 
 loneliness and in that void we are sharply conscious 
 of the brooding presence of despair, and the power 
 of darkness. 
 
 We feel that Tolstoy is afraid of the dark ; 
 that to him there is something wrong in the 
 whole of human life, a radical mistake. He is 
 conscious that, with all his genius, he has only 
 been able to record the fact that all that he has 
 found in life is not what he is looking for, but 
 something irrelevant and unessential ; and, at the 
 same time, that he has not been able to determine 
 the thing in life which is not a mistake, nor where 
 the true aim, the essential thing, is to be found, 
 nor in what it consists. It is at this moment that 
 the crisis occurred in Tolstoy's life which divides 
 it outwardly into two sections, although it con- 
 stitutes no break in his inward evolution. The 
 
 91 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 fear of the dark, of the abyss yawning in front of 
 him, was so strong that he felt he must rid 
 himself of it at all costs. 
 
 " I felt terror " (he writes) " of what was await- 
 ing me, though I knew that this terror was more 
 terrible than my position itself; I could not wait 
 patiently for the end ; my horror of the darkness 
 was too great, and I felt I must rid myself of it 
 as soon as possible by noose or bullet." 
 
 This terror was not a physical fear of death, but 
 an abstract fear, arising from the consciousness 
 that the cold mists of decay were rising round 
 him. By the realisation of the nothingness of 
 everything, of what Leopardi calls '* I'infinita 
 vanita del tutto," he was brought to the verge of 
 suicide. And then came the change which he 
 describes thus in his Confessmt : " I grew to 
 hate myself ; and now all has become clear to me." 
 This was the preliminary step of the development 
 which led him to believe that he had at last found 
 the final and everlasting truth. " A man has only 
 got not to desire lands or money, in order to enter 
 into the kingdom of God." Property, he came to 
 believe, was the source of all evil. " It is not a 
 law of nature, the will of God, or a historical 
 necessity ; rather a superstition, neither strong 
 nor terrible, but weak and contemptible." To 
 free oneself from this superstition he thought was 
 
 92 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 as easy as to stamp on a spider. He desired 
 literally to carry out the teaching of the Gospels, 
 to give up all he had and to become a beggar. 
 
 This ideal he was not able to carry out in 
 practice. His family, his wife, opposed him : and 
 he was not strong enough to face the uncom- 
 promising and terrible sayings which speak of a 
 man's foes being those of his own household, of 
 father being divided against son, and household 
 against household, of the dead being left to bury 
 theirMead. He put before him the ideal of the 
 Christian saints, and of the early Russian martyrs 
 who literally acted upon the saying of Christ : 
 " Whoso leaveth not house and lands and children 
 for My sake, is not worthy of Me." Tolstoy, in- 
 stead of crushing the spider of property, shut his 
 eyes to it. He refused to handle money, or to 
 have anything to do with it ; but this does not 
 alter the fact that it was handled for him, so that 
 he retained its advantages, and this without any 
 of the harassment which arises from the handling 
 of property. His affairs were, and still are, 
 managed for him ; and he continued to live as he 
 had done before. No sane person would think of 
 blaming Tolstoy for this. He was not by nature 
 a St. Francis ; he was not by nature a Russian 
 martyr, but the reverse. What one does resent 
 is not that his practice is inconsistent with his 
 teaching, but that his teaching is inconsistent with 
 
 93 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the ideal which it professes to embody. He 
 takes the Christian teaching, and tells the world 
 that it is the only hope of salvation, the only 
 key to the riddle of life. At the same time he 
 neglects the first truth on which that teaching is 
 based, namely, that man must be born again ; he 
 must humble himself and become as a little child. 
 It is just this final and absolute surrender that 
 Tolstoy has been unable to make. Instead of 
 loving God through himself, and loving himself 
 for the God in him, he hates himself, and refuses 
 to recognise the gifts that God has given him. 
 It is for this reason that he talks of all his great 
 work, with the exception of a few stories written 
 for children, as being worthless. It is for this 
 reason that he ceased writing novels, and at- 
 tempted to plough the fields. And the cause of 
 all this is simply spiritual pride, because he was 
 unwilling " to do his duty in that state of life to 
 which it had pleased God to call him." Provi- 
 dence had made him a novelist and a writer, and 
 not a tiller of the fields. Providence had made 
 him not only a novelist, but perhaps the greatest 
 novelist that has ever lived ; yet he deliberately 
 turns upon this gift, and spurns it, and spits upon 
 it, and says that it is worth nothing. 
 
 The question is, has a human being the right 
 to do this, especially if, for any reasons whatever, 
 he is not able to make the full and complete 
 
 94 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 renunciation, and to cut himself off from the world 
 altogether ? The answer is that if this be the 
 foundation of Tolstoy's teaching, people have a 
 right to complain of there being something wrong 
 in it. If he had left the world and become a 
 pilgrim, like one of the early Russian saints, not 
 a word could have been said ; or if he had 
 remained in the world, preaching the ideals of 
 Christianity and carrying them out as far as he 
 could, not a word could have been said. But, 
 while he has not followed the first course, he has 
 preached that the second course is wrong. He has 
 striven after the ideal of Ivan Durak, but has been 
 unable to find it, simply because he has been 
 unable to humble himself; he has re-written the 
 Gospels to suit his own temperament. The cry 
 of his youth, " I have no modesty," remains true 
 of him after his conversion. It is rather that he 
 has no humility ; and, instead of acknowledging 
 that every man is appointed to a definite task, 
 and that there is no such thing as a superfluous 
 man or a superfluous task, he has preached that 
 all tasks are superfluous except what he himself 
 considers to be necessary ; instead of preaching 
 the love of the divine " image of the King," with 
 which man is stamped like a coin, he has told us 
 to love the maker of the coin by hatred of His 
 handiwork, quite regardless of the image with 
 which it is stamped. 
 
 95 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 This all arises from the dual personality in the 
 man, the conflict between the titanic " Lucifer " 
 and the other element in him, for ever searching 
 for the ideal of Ivan Durak. The Titan is con- 
 sumed with desire to become Ivan Durak ; he 
 preaches to the whole world that they should do 
 so, but he cannot do it himself. Other proud and 
 titanic natures have done it ; but Tolstoy cannot 
 do what Dante did. Dante was proud and a Titan, 
 but Dante divested himself of his pride, and see- 
 ing the truth, said : " In la sua volontade e nostra 
 pace." Nor can Tolstoy attain to Goethe's great 
 cry of recognition of the " himmlische Machte," 
 " Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass." He 
 remains isolated in his high and terrible solitude : 
 
 "In the cold starlight where thou canst not cUmb." 
 
 Tourgeniev said of Tolstoy, " He never loved 
 any one but himself." Merejkowski, in his 
 Tolstoy as Man and Artist^ a creative work 
 of criticism, is nearer the truth when he says, 
 " He has never loved any man, not even 
 himself \ " But Merejkowski considers that the 
 full circle of Tolstoy's spiritual life is not closed. 
 He does not believe he has found the truth 
 which he has sought for all his life, nor that he 
 is, as yet, at rest. 
 
 " I cannot refuse to believe him " (he writes) 
 " when he speaks of himself as a pitiable fledgling 
 
 96 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 fallen from the nest. Yes, however terrible, it is 
 true. This Titan, with all his vigour, is lying on 
 his back and wailing in the high grass, as you 
 and I and all the rest of us. No, he has found 
 nothing ; no faith, no God. And his whole justi- 
 fication is solely in his hopeless prayer, this pierc- 
 ing and plaintive cry of boundless solitude and 
 dread. . . . Will he at last understand that 
 there is no higher or lower in the matter ; that 
 the two seemingly contradictory and equally true 
 paths, leading to one and the same goal, are not 
 two paths, but one path which merely seems to be 
 two ; and that it is not by going against what is 
 earthly or fleeing from it, but only through what 
 is earthly, that we can reach the Divine ; that it 
 is not by divesting ourselves of the flesh, but 
 through the flesh, that we can reach that which 
 is beyond the flesh ? Shall we fear the flesh ? we, 
 the children of Him who said, ' My blood is drink 
 indeed, and My flesh is meat indeed ' ; we, whose 
 God is that God whose Word was made flesh ? " ^ 
 
 Yet, whatever the mistakes of Tolstoy's teach- 
 ing may be, they do not detract from the moral 
 authority of the man. All his life he has searched 
 for the truth, and all his life he has said exactly 
 what he thought ; and though he has fearlessly at- 
 tacked all constituted authorities, nobody has dared 
 to touch him. He is too great. This is the first 
 
 ^ Tolstoy as Man and Artist^ pp. 93, 95. This passage is 
 translated from the Russian edition. 
 
 G 97 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 time independent thought has prevailed in Russia ; 
 and this victory is the greatest service he has 
 rendered to Russia as a man. 
 
 Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoievsky could endure 
 Tourgeniev ; their dislike of him is interesting, and 
 helps us to understand the nature of their work and 
 of their artistic ideals, and the nature of the distance 
 that separates the work of Tourgeniev from that 
 of Tolstoy. " I despise the man," Tolstoy wrote of 
 Tourgeniev to Fet. Dostoievsky, in his novel The 
 Possessed} draws a scathing portrait of Tourgeniev, 
 in which every defect of the man is noted but grossly 
 exaggerated. This portrait is not uninstructive. 
 
 " I read his works in my childhood," Dostoi- 
 evsky writes, " I even revelled in them. They 
 were the delight of my boyhood and my youth. 
 Then I gradually grew to feel colder towards his 
 writing." He goes on to say that Tourgeniev is 
 one of those authors who powerfully affect one 
 generation, and are then put on the shelf, like the 
 scene of a theatre. The reason of this dislike, of 
 the inability to admire Tourgeniev's work, which 
 was shared by Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, is per- 
 haps that both these men, each in his own way, 
 reached the absolute truth of the life which was 
 round them. Tolstoy painted the outer and 
 
 * It should be said that this portrait is so unfair, and 'yet con- 
 tains elements of truth so acutely observed, that for some people 
 it spoils the whole book. 
 
 98 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 the inner life of those with whom he came in 
 contact, in a manner such as has never been seen 
 before or since; and Dostoievsky painted the 
 inner life (however fantastic he made the outer 
 machinery of his work) with an insight that has 
 never been attained before or since. Now Tour- 
 geniev painted people of the same epoch, the same 
 generation ; he dealt with the same material; he 
 dealt with it as an artist and as a poet, as a great 
 artist, and as a great poet. But his vision was weak 
 and narrow compared with that of Tolstoy, and 
 his understanding was cold and shallow compared 
 with that of Dostoievsky. His characters, beside 
 those of Tolstoy, seem caricatures, and beside 
 those of Dostoievsky they are conventional. 
 
 In Europe no foreign writer has ever received 
 more abundant praise from the most eclectic 
 judges than has Tourgeniev. Flaubert said of 
 him : " Quel gigantesque bonhomme que ce 
 Scythe ! " George Sand said : " Maitre, il nous 
 faut tous aller a votre ecole." Taine speaks of 
 Tourgeniev's work as being the finest artistic pro- 
 duction since Sophocles. Twenty-five years have 
 now passed since Tourgeniev's death ; and, as 
 M. Haumant points out in his book, the period of 
 reaction and of doubt, with regard to his work, has 
 now set in even in Europe. People are beginning 
 to ask themselves whether Tourgeniev's pictures 
 are true, whether the Russians that he describes 
 
 99 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ever existed, and whether the praise which was 
 bestow^ed upon him by his astonished contempor- 
 aries all over Europe was not a gross exaggeration. 
 
 One reason of the abundant and perhaps 
 excessive praise which was showered on Tour- 
 geniev by European critics is that it was chiefly 
 through Tourgeniev's work that Europe discovered 
 Russian literature, and became aware that novels 
 were being written in which dramatic issues, as 
 poignant and terrible as those of Greek tragedy, 
 arose simply out of the clash of certain characters 
 in everyday life. The simplicity of Russian 
 literature, the naturalness of the characters in 
 Russian fiction, came like a revelation to Europe ; 
 and, as this revelation came about partly through 
 the work of Tourgeniev, it is not difficult to under- 
 stand that he received the praise not only due to 
 him as an artist, but the praise for all the qualities 
 which are inseparable from the work of any Russian. 
 
 Heine says somewhere that the man who first 
 came to Germany was astonished at the abund- 
 ance of ideas there. " This man," he says, " was 
 like the traveller who found a nugget of gold 
 directly he arrived in El Dorado ; but his enthu- 
 siasm died down when he discovered that in 
 El Dorado there was nothing but nuggets of gold." 
 As it was with ideas in Germany, according to 
 Heine, so was it with the naturalness of Tourgeniev. 
 Compared with the work of Tolstoy and that of all 
 
 100 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 other Russian writers, Tourgeniev's naturalness is 
 less astonishing, because he possesses the same 
 qualities that they possess, only in a less degree. 
 
 When all is said, Tourgeniev was a great 
 poet. What time has not taken away from him, 
 and what time can never take away, is the 
 beauty of his language and the poetry in his 
 work. Every Russian schoolboy has read the 
 works of Tourgeniev before he has left school ; 
 and every Russian schoolboy will probably con- 
 tinue to do so, because Tourgeniev's prose remains 
 a classic model of simple, beautiful, and har- 
 monious language, and as such it can hardly be 
 excelled. Tourgeniev never wrote anything better 
 than the book which brought him fame, the 
 Sportsman's Sketches. In this book nearly the 
 whole of his talent finds expression. One does 
 not know which to admire more — the delicacy 
 of the art in choosing and recording his im- 
 pressions, or the limpid and musical utterance 
 with which they are recorded. To the reader 
 who only knows his work through a transla- 
 tion, three-quarters of the beauty are lost; 
 yet so great is the truth, and so moving is the 
 poetry of these sketches, that even in translation 
 they will strike a reader as unrivalled. 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing so difficult in the 
 world to translate as stories dealing with Russian 
 peasants. The simplicity and directness of their 
 
 lOI 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 speech are the despair of the translator ; and to 
 translate them properly would require literary- 
 talent at once as great and as delicate as the 
 author's. Mrs. Garnett's version of Tourgeniev's 
 work is admirable ; yet in reading the translation 
 of the Sportsman' s Sketches, and comparing it 
 with the original, one feels that the task is an 
 almost impossible one. Some writers, Rudyard 
 Kipling for instance, succeed in conveying to us 
 the impression which is made by the conversation 
 of men in exotic countries. When Rudyard 
 Kipling gives us the speech of an Indian, he 
 translates it into simple and biblical English. 
 There is no doubt this is the right way to 
 deal with the matter ; it is the method which 
 was adopted with perfect success by the great 
 writers of the eighteenth century, the method 
 of Fielding and Smollett in dealing with the 
 conversation of simple men. One cannot help 
 thinking that it is a mistake, in translating 
 the speech of people like Russian peasants, or 
 Indians, or Greeks, however familiar the speech 
 may be, to try to render it by the equivalent 
 colloquial or slang English. For instance, Mrs. 
 Garnett, in translating one of Tourgeniev's 
 masterpieces. The Singers, turns the Russian 
 words " nie vryosh " (Art thou not lying ?) by 
 " Isn't it your humbug? " In the same story she 
 translates the Russian word " molchat " by the 
 
 102 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 slang expression " shut up." Now " shut up " 
 might, in certain circumstances, be the colloquial 
 equivalent of " molchat " ; but the expression 
 conveyed is utterly false, and it would be better 
 to translate it simply " be silent " ; because to 
 translate the talk of the Russian peasant into 
 English colloquialisms conveys precisely the same 
 impression, to any one familiar with the original, 
 which he would receive were he to come across 
 the talk of a Scotch gillie translated into English 
 cockney slang. 
 
 This may seem a small point, but in reality 
 it is the chief problem of all translation, and 
 especially of that translation which deals with 
 the talk and the ways of simple men. It is there- 
 fore of cardinal importance, when the material in 
 question happens to be the talk of Russian 
 peasants ; and I have seen no translation in 
 which this mistake is not made. How great the 
 beauty of the original must be is proved by the 
 fact that even in a translation of this kind one 
 can still discern it, and that one receives at least 
 a shadow of the impression which the author in- 
 tended to convey. If the Sportsman' s Sketches 
 be the masterpiece of Tourgeniev, he rose to the 
 same heights once more at the close of his 
 career, when he wrote the incomparable Poems 
 in Prose. Here once more he touched the 
 particular vibrating string which was his special 
 
 103 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 secret, and which thrills and echoes in the heart 
 with so lingering a sweetness. 
 
 So much for Tourgeniev as a poet. But Tour- 
 geniev was a novelist, he was famous as a 
 novelist, and must be considered as such. His 
 three principal novels, A House of Gentlefolk^ 
 Fathers and Sons, and Virgin Soil, laid the 
 foundation of his European fame. Their merits 
 consist in the ideal character of the women 
 described, the absence of tricks of mechanism and 
 melodrama, the naturalness of the sequence of 
 the events, the harmony and proportion of the 
 whole, and the vividness of the characters. No 
 one can deny that the characters of Tourgeniev 
 live ; they are intensely vivid. Whether they are 
 true to life is another question. The difference 
 between the work of Tolstoy and Tourgeniev is 
 this : that Tourgeniev's characters are as living as 
 any characters ever are in books, but they belong, 
 comparatively speaking, to bookland, and are thus 
 conventional ; whereas Tolstoy's characters belong 
 to life. The fault which Russian critics find with 
 Tourgeniev's characters is that they are exagger- 
 ated, that there is an element of caricature in them ; 
 and that they are permeated by the faults of the 
 author's own character, namely, his weakness, and, 
 above all, his self-consciousness. M. Haumant points 
 out that the want of backbone in all Tourgeniev's 
 characters does not prove that types of this kind 
 
 104 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 must necessarily be untrue or misleading pictures 
 of the Russian character, since Tourgeniev was not 
 only a Russian, but an exceptionally gifted and 
 remarkable Russian. Tourgeniev himself divides 
 all humanity into two types, the Don Quixotes 
 and the Hamlets. With but one notable ex- 
 ception, he almost exclusively portrayed the 
 Hamlets. Feeble, nerveless people, full of ideas, 
 enthusiastic in speech, capable by their words of 
 exciting enthusiasm and even of creating belief in 
 themselves, but incapable of action and devoid 
 of will ; they lack both the sublime simplicity and 
 the weakness of Ivan Durak, which is not weak- 
 ness but strength, because it proceeds from a 
 profound goodness. 
 
 To this there is one exception. In Fathers and 
 Sons, Tourgeniev drew a portrait of the " Lucifer " 
 type, of an unbending and inflexible will, namely, 
 Bazarov. There is no character in the whole of 
 his work which is more alive; and nothing that 
 he wrote ever aroused so much controversy and 
 censure as this figure, Tourgeniev invented the 
 type of the intellectual Nihilist in fiction. If he 
 was not the first to invent the word, he was the 
 first to apply it and to give it currency. The type 
 remains, and will remain, of the man who believes 
 in nothing, bows to nothing, bends to nothing, and 
 who retains his invincible pride until death strikes 
 him down. Here again, compared with the 
 105 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Nihilists whom Dostoievsky has drawn in his 
 Possessed^ we feel that, so far as the inner truth 
 of this type is concerned, Tourgeniev's Bazarov is 
 a book-character, extraordinarily vivid and living 
 though he be ; and that Dostoievsky's Nihilists, 
 however outwardly fantastic they may seem, are 
 inwardly not only truer, but the very quintessence 
 of truth. Tourgeniev never actually saw the real 
 thing as Tolstoy might have seen it and described 
 it ; nor could he divine by intuition the real 
 thing as Dostoievsky divined it, whether he saw 
 it or not. But Tourgeniev evolved a type out of 
 his artistic imagination, and made a living figure 
 which, to us at any rate, is extraordinarily strik- 
 ing. This character has proved, however, highly 
 irritating to those who knew the prototype from 
 which it was admittedly drawn, and considered 
 him not only a far more interesting character than 
 Tourgeniev's conception, but quite different from 
 it. But whatever fault may be found with 
 Bazarov, none can be found with the description 
 of his death. Here Tourgeniev reaches his high- 
 water mark as a novelist, and strikes a note of 
 manly pathos which, by its reserve, suggests an 
 infinity of things all the more striking for being 
 left unsaid. The death of Bazarov is one of the 
 great pages of the world's fiction. 
 
 In Virgin Soil, Tourgeniev attempts to give 
 a sketch of underground life in Russia — the 
 
 io6 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 revolutionary movement, helpless in face of the 
 ignorance of the masses and the unpreparedness of 
 the nation at large for any such movement. Here, 
 in the opinion of all Russian judges, and of most 
 latter-day critics who have knowledge of the subject, 
 he failed. In describing the official class, although 
 he does this with great skill and cleverness, he makes 
 a gallery of caricatures ; and the revolutionaries 
 whom he sets before us as types, however good 
 they may be as fiction, are not the real thing.^ 
 Nevertheless, in spite of Tourgeniev's limitations, 
 these three books, A House of Gentlefolk^ Fathers 
 and Sons, and Virgin Soil, must always have a 
 permanent value as reflecting the atmosphere of 
 the generation which he paints, even though his 
 pictures be marred by caricatures, and feeble 
 when compared with those of his rivals. 
 
 Of his other novels, the most important are 
 On the Eve, Smoke, Spring Waters, and Rudin 
 (the most striking portrait in his gallery of 
 Hamlets). In Spring Waters, Tourgeniev's poetry 
 is allowed free play; the result is therefore an 
 entrancing masterpiece. With regard to On the 
 Eve, Tolstoy writes thus : - 
 
 " These are excellent negative characters, the 
 artist and the father. The rest are not types ; 
 
 ^ With the exception of Marianna, one of his most beautiful and 
 noble characters. 
 2 Life, p. 189. 
 
 107 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 even their conception, their position, is not typical, 
 or they are quite insignificant. That, however, is 
 always Tourgeniev's mistake. The girl is hope- 
 lessly bad. ' Ah, how I love thee ! . . . Her 
 eyelashes were long.' In general it always sur- 
 prises me that Tourgeniev, with his mental powers 
 and poetic sensibility, should, even in his methods, 
 not be able to refrain from banality. There is 
 no humanity or sympathy for the characters, but 
 the author exhibits monsters whom he scolds and 
 does not pity." 
 
 Again, in writing of Smoke, Tolstoy says : ^ 
 
 " About Smoke, I think that the strength of 
 poetry Jies in love ; and the direction of that 
 strength depends on character. Without strength 
 of love there is no poetry; but strength falsely 
 directed — the result of the poet's having an un- 
 pleasant, weak character — creates dislike. In 
 Smoke there is hardly any love of anything, and 
 very little pity ; there is only love of light and 
 playful adultery ; and therefore the poetry of that 
 novel is repulsive." 
 
 These criticisms, especially the latter, may be 
 said to sum up the case of the " Advocatus 
 Diaboli " with regard to Tourgeniev. I have 
 quoted them because they represent what many 
 educated Russians feel at the present day about a 
 great part of Tourgeniev's work, however keenly 
 
 '^ Life, p. 312. 
 108 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 they appreciate his poetical sensibih'ty and his 
 gift of style. The view deserves to be pointed 
 out, because all that can be said in praise of 
 Tourgeniev has not only been expressed with 
 admirable nicety and discrimination by widely 
 different critics of various nationalities, but their 
 praise is constantly being quoted ; whereas the 
 other side of the question is seldom mentioned. 
 Yet in the case of On the Eve, Tolstoy's criticism 
 is manifestly unfair. Tolstoy was unable by his 
 nature to do full justice to Tourgeniev. Perhaps 
 the most impartial and acute criticism of 
 Tourgeniev's work that exists is to be found 
 in M. de Vogue's Roman Russe, M. de Voglie 
 is not indeed blind to Tourgeniev's defects ; he 
 recognises the superiority both of Tolstoy and 
 Dostoievsky, but he nevertheless gives Tourgeniev 
 his full meed of appreciation. 
 
 The lapse of years has only emphasised the 
 elements of banality and conventionality which 
 are to be found in Tourgeniev's work. He is 
 a masterly landscape painter ; but even here he 
 is not without convention. His landscapes are 
 always orthodox Russian landscapes, and are 
 seldom varied. He seems never to get face to 
 face with nature, after the manner of Wordsworth ; 
 he never gives us any elemental pictures of nature, 
 such as Gorky succeeds in doing in a phrase ; but 
 he rings the changes on delicate arrangements of 
 109 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 wood, cloud, mist and water, vague backgrounds 
 and diaphanous figures, after the manner ofCorot. 
 This does not detract from the beauty of his 
 pictures, and our admiration for them is not 
 lessened ; but all temptation to exaggerate its 
 merits vanishes when we turn from his work to 
 that of stronger masters. 
 
 To sum up, it may be said that the picture of 
 Russia obtained from the whole of Tourgeniev's 
 work has been incomplete, but it is not inaccurate ; 
 and such as it is, with all its faults, it is invaluable. 
 In 1847, Bielinski, in writing to Tourgeniev, said : 
 " It seems to me that you have little or no creative 
 genius. Your vocation is to depict reality." This 
 criticism remained true to the end of Tourgeniev's 
 career, but it omits his greatest gift, his poetry, 
 the magical echoes, the " unheard melodies," which 
 he sets vibrating in our hearts by the music of 
 his utterance. The last of Tourgeniev's poems in 
 prose is called " The Russian Language." It runs 
 as follows : 
 
 " In days of doubt, in the days of burdensome 
 musing over the fate of my country, thou alone 
 art my support and my mainstay, oh great, mighty, 
 truthful, and unfettered Russian language ! Were 
 it not for thee, how should I not fall into despair 
 at the sight of all that is being done at home? 
 But how can I believe that such a tongue was 
 given to any but a great people ? " 
 no 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 No greater praise can be given to Tourgeniev 
 than to say that he was worthy of his medium, 
 and that no Russian prose writer ever handled 
 the great instrument of his inheritance with a 
 more delicate touch or a surer execution. 
 
 When Tourgeniev was dying, he wrote to 
 Tolstoy and implored him to return to literature. 
 " That gift," he wrote, *' came whence all comes to 
 us. Return to your literary work, great writer 
 of our Russian land ! " 
 
 All through Tourgeniev's life, in spite of his 
 frequent quarrels with Tolstoy, he never ceased to 
 admire the works of his rival. Tourgeniev had 
 the gift of admiration. Tolstoy is absolutely 
 devoid of it. The " Lucifer " spirit in him refuses 
 to bow down before Shakespeare or Beethoven, 
 simply because it is incapable of bending at all. 
 To justify this want, this incapacity to admire the 
 great masterpieces of the world, Tolstoy wrote a 
 book called What is Aj-t ? in which he condemned 
 theories he had himself enunciated years before. 
 In this, and in a book on Shakespeare, he treats 
 all art, the very greatest, as if it were in the same 
 category with that of aesthetes who confine them- 
 selves to prattling of " Art for Art's sake." 
 Beethoven he brushes aside because, he says, such 
 music can only appeal to specialists. " What 
 proportion of the world's population," he asks, 
 " have ever heard the Ninth Symphony or seen 
 
 III 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 * King Lear ' ? And how many of them enjoyed 
 the one or the other?" If these things be the 
 highest art, and yet the bulk of men live without 
 them, and do not need them, then the highest art 
 lacks all claim to such respect as Tolstoy is ready 
 to accord to art. In commenting on this, Mr. 
 Aylmer Maude writes : " The case of the specialists, 
 when Tolstoy calls in question the merits of 
 ' King Lear ' or of the Ninth Symphony, is an 
 easy one." 
 
 But the fallacy does not lie here. The fallacy 
 lies in thinking the matter is a case for specialists 
 at all. It is not a case for specialists. Beethoven's 
 later quartettes may be a case for the specialist, 
 just as the obscurer passages in Shakespeare may 
 be a case for the specialist. This does not alter 
 the fact that the whole of the German nation, 
 and multitudes of people outside Germany, meet 
 together to hear Beethoven's symphonies played, 
 and enjoy them. It does not alter the fact that 
 Shakespeare's plays are translated into every 
 language and enjoyed, and, when they are per- 
 formed, are enjoyed by the simplest and the most 
 uneducated people. The highest receipts are 
 obtained at the Theatre Fran^ais on holidays 
 and feast days, when the plays of Moliere 
 are given. Tolstoy leaves out the fact that very 
 great art, such as that of Homer, Shakespeare, 
 Dante, Milton, Beethoven, Mozart, appeals at the 
 
 112 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 same time, and possibly for different reasons, to 
 the highly trained specialist and to the most 
 uncultivated ignoramus. This, Dr. Johnson points 
 out, is the great merit of Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress : the most cultivated man cannot find 
 anything to praise more highly, and a child knows 
 nothing more amusing. This is also true of 
 Paradise Lost, an appreciation of which is held in 
 England to be the highest criterion of scholarship. 
 And Paradise Lost, translated into simple prose, 
 is sold in cheap editions, with coloured pictures, 
 all over Russia,^ and greedily read by the 
 peasants, who have no idea that it is a poem, but 
 enjoy it as a tale of fantastic adventure and 
 miraculous events. It appeals at the same time 
 to their religious feeling and to their love of fairy 
 tales, and impresses them by a certain elevation 
 in the language (just as the chants in church 
 impress them) which they unconsciously feel does 
 them good. 
 
 It is this inability to admire which is the whole 
 defect of Tolstoy, and it arises from his indomit- 
 able pride, which is the strength of his character, 
 and causes him to tower like a giant over all his 
 contemporaries. Therefore, in reviewing his whole 
 work and his whole life, and in reviewing it in 
 
 ^ The popular edition of Paradise Lost in Russian prose, with 
 rough coloured pictures, is published by the Tipografia, T. D, Sitin, 
 Piatnitzkaia Oolitza, Moscow. 
 
 H 113 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 connection with that of his contemporaries, one 
 comes to this conclusion. If Tolstoy, being as 
 great as he is, has this great limitation, we can 
 only repeat the platitude that no genius, however 
 great, is without limitations ; no ruby without a 
 flaw. Were it otherwise — Had there been com- 
 bined with Tolstoy's power and directness of vision 
 and creative genius, the large love and the childlike 
 simplicity of Dostoievsky — we should have had, 
 united in one man, the complete expression of the 
 Russian race ; that is to say, we should have 
 had a complete man — which is impossible. 
 
 Tourgeniev, on the other hand, is full to the 
 brim of the power of admiration and appreciation 
 which Tolstoy lacks ; but then he also lacks 
 Tolstoy's strength and power. Dostoievsky has 
 a power different from Tolstoy's, but equal in 
 scale, and titanic. He has a power of admira- 
 tion, an appreciation wider and deeper than 
 Tourgeniev's, and the humility of a man who 
 has descended into hell, who has been face to 
 face with the sufferings and the agonies of 
 humanity and the vilest aspects of human 
 nature ; who, far from losing his faith in the 
 divine, has detected it in every human being, 
 however vile, and in every circumstance, how- 
 ever hideous ; and who in dust and ashes has 
 felt himself face to face with God. Yet, in spite 
 of aU this, Dostoievsky is far from being the 
 114 
 
TOLSTOY AND TOURGENIEV 
 
 complete expression of the Russian genius, or a 
 complete man. His limitations are as great as 
 Tolstoy's ; and no one was ever more conscious 
 of them than himself. They do not concern us 
 here. What does concern us is that in modern 
 Russian literature, in the literature of this cen- 
 tury, leaving the poets out of the question, the 
 two great figures, the two great columns which 
 support the temple of Russian literature, are 
 Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. Tourgeniev's place 
 is inside that temple ; there he has a shrine and 
 an altar which are his own, which no one can 
 dispute with him, and which are bathed in serene 
 radiance and visited by shy visions and voices of 
 haunting loveliness. But neither as a writer nor 
 as a man can he be called the great representa- 
 tive of even half the Russian genius ; for he 
 complements the genius of neither Tolstoy nor 
 Dostoievsky. He possesses in a minor degree 
 qualities which they both possessed ; and the 
 qualities which are his and his only, exquisite as 
 they are, are not of the kind which belong to 
 the greatest representatives of a nation or of a 
 race. 
 
 IIS 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV 
 
 IN the preceding I have tried very briefly to 
 point out the state of the barometer of public 
 opinion (the barometer of the average educated man 
 and not of any exclusive clique) with regard to 
 Tourgeniev's reputation in Russia at the present day. 
 That and no more. I have not devoted a 
 special chapter in this book to Tourgeniev for the 
 reasons I have already stated : namely, that his 
 work is better known in England than most other 
 Russian classics, and that admirable appreciations 
 of his work exist already, written by famous critics, 
 such as Mr. Henry James and M. Melchior de 
 Vogue. There is in England, among people who 
 care for literature and who study the literature of 
 Europe, a perfectly definite estimate of Tourgeniev. 
 It is for this reason that I confined myself to 
 trying to elucidate what the average Russian thinks 
 to-day about Tourgeniev compared with other 
 Russian writers, and to noticing any changes which 
 have come about with regard to the estimate of 
 his work in Russia and in Europe during the last 
 twenty years. I thought this was sufficient. 
 ii6 
 
THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV 
 
 But I now realise from several able criticisms 
 on my study of Tolstoy and Tourgeniev when it 
 appeared in the Quarterly Reviezv, that I had laid 
 myself open to be misunderstood. It was taken 
 for granted in several quarters not only that I 
 underrated Tourgeniev as a writer, but that I 
 wished to convey the impression that his reputa- 
 tion was a bubble that had burst. Nothing was 
 farther from my intention than this. And here 
 lies the great danger of trying to talk of any 
 foreign writer from the point of view of that 
 writer's country and not from that of your own 
 country. You are instantly misunderstood. For 
 instance, if you say Alfred de Musset is not so 
 much admired now in France as he used to be 
 in the sixties, the English reader, who may only 
 recently have discovered Alfred de Musset, and, 
 indeed, may be approaching French poetry as a 
 whole for the first time, at once retorts : " There 
 is a man who is depreciating one of France's 
 greatest writers ! " 
 
 Now what I wish to convey with regard to 
 Tourgeniev is simply this : 
 
 Firstly, that although he is and always will 
 remain a Russian classic, he is not, rightly or 
 wrongly, so enthusiastically admired as he used 
 to be : new writers have risen since his time (not 
 necessarily better ones, but men who have opened 
 windows on undreamed-of vistas) ; and not only this, 
 
 117 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 but one of his own contemporaries, Dostoievsky, 
 has been brought into a larger and clearer light of 
 fame than he enjoyed in his lifetime, owing to the 
 dissipation of the mists of political prejudices and 
 temporary and local polemics, differences, quarrels 
 and controversies. 
 
 But the English reader has, as a general rule, 
 never got farther than Tourgeniev. He is 
 generally quite unacquainted with the other 
 Russian classics ; and so when it is said that there 
 are others greater than he — Dostoievsky and 
 Gogol, for instance, — the English reader thinks an 
 attempt is being made to break a cherished and 
 holy image. And if he admires Tourgeniev, — 
 which, if he likes Russian literature at all he is 
 almost sure to do, — it makes him angry. 
 
 Secondly, I wish to say that owing to the 
 generally prevailing limited view of the educated 
 intellectual Englishman as to the field of Russian 
 literature as a whole, I do think he is inclined to 
 overrate the genius and position of Tourgeniev in 
 Russian literature, great as they are. There is, I 
 think, an exaggerated cult for Tourgeniev among 
 intellectual Englishmen.^ The case of Tennyson 
 seems to me to afford a very close parallel to that 
 of Tourgeniev. 
 
 Mr. Gosse pointed out not long ago in a subtle 
 
 ^ See, for instance, Mr. Frank Harris in his Shakespeai-e the Man : 
 His Tragedy. See footnote, p. 124. 
 
 118 
 
THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV 
 
 and masterly article that Tennyson, although we 
 were now celebrating his centenary, had not 
 reached that moment when a poet is rapturously 
 rediscovered by a far younger generation than his 
 own, but that he had reached that point when the 
 present generation felt no particular excitement 
 about his work. This seems to me the exact 
 truth about Tourgeniev's reputation in Russia at 
 the present day. Everybody has read him, and 
 everybody will always read him because he is a 
 classic and because he has written immortal things, 
 but now, in the year 1909, there is no particular 
 excitement about Fathers and Sons in Russia : 
 just as now there is no particular excitement about 
 the " Idylls of the King" or " In Memoriam " in 
 England to-day. Tourgeniev has not yet been 
 rediscovered. 
 
 Of course, there are some critics who in " the 
 fearless old fashion " say boldly that Tennyson's 
 reputation is dead ; that he exists no longer, and 
 that we need not trouble to mention him. I read 
 some such sweeping pronouncement not long 
 ago by an able journalist. There are doubtless 
 Russian critics who say the same about Tour- 
 geniev. As to whether they are right or wrong, 
 I will not bother myself or my readers, but I do 
 wish to make it as clear as daylight that I myself 
 hold no such opinion either with regard to 
 Tourgeniev or to Tennyson. 
 119 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 I believe Tennyson to have written a great 
 quantity of immortal and magnificently beautiful 
 verse. I believe that Tennyson possesses an en- 
 during throne in the Temple of English poets. 
 I believe Tourgeniev to have written a great 
 quantity of immortal and inexpressibly beautiful 
 prose, and I believe that he will hold an enduring 
 seat in the Temple of Russian literature. I think 
 this is clear. But supposing a Russian critic were 
 to write on the English literature and the English 
 taste of the present day, and supposing he were 
 to say, " Of course, as we Russians all feel, there 
 is only one English poet in the English literature 
 of the last hundred years, and that is Tennyson. 
 Tennyson is the great and only representative of 
 English art ; the only writer who has expressed 
 the English soul." We should then suspect he 
 had never studied the works of Wordsworth, 
 Shelley, Byron, Keats, Coleridge, Browning and 
 Swinburne. Well, this, it seems to me, is exactly 
 how Tourgeniev is treated in England. All I 
 wished to point out was that the point of view of 
 a Russian was necessarily different, owing to his 
 larger field of vision and to the greater extent and 
 depth of his knowledge, and to his closer com- 
 munion with the work of his national authors. 
 
 But, as I have said, it was taken for granted by 
 some people that I wished to show that Tourgeniev 
 was not a classic. I will therefore, at the risk of 
 
 120 
 
THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV 
 
 wearying my readers, repeat — with as much varia- 
 tion as I can muster — what 1 consider to be some 
 of Tourgeniev's special claims to enduring fame. 
 
 I have said he was a great poet ; but the words 
 seem bare and dead when one considers the 
 peculiar nature of the shy and entrancing poetry 
 that is in Tourgeniev's work. He has the magic 
 that water gives to the reflected images of trees, 
 hills and woods ; he touches the ugly facts of 
 life, softens and transfigures them so that they 
 lose none of their reality, but gain a majesty and 
 a mystery that comes from beyond the world, just 
 as the moonlight softens and transfigures the 
 wrinkled palaces and decaying porticoes of Venice, 
 hiding what is sordid, heightening the beauty of 
 line, and giving a quality of magic to every stately 
 building, to each delicate pillar and chiselled arch. 
 
 Then there is in his work a note of wistful 
 tenderness that steals into the heart and fills 
 it with an incommunicable pleasureable sadness, 
 as do the songs you hear in Russia on dark 
 summer nights in the villages, or, better still, on 
 the broad waters of some huge silent river, — songs 
 aching with an ecstasy of homesickness, songs 
 which are something half-way between the whining 
 sadness of Oriental music and the rippling plaintive- 
 ness of Irish and Scotch folk-song; songs that 
 are imperatively melodious, but strange to us in 
 their rhythm, constantly changing yet subordinated 
 
 121 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 to definite law, varying indeed with an invariable 
 law ; songs whose notes, without being definitely- 
 sharp or flat, seem a little bit higher, or a shade 
 lower than you expect, and in which certain notes 
 come over and over again with an insistent appeal, 
 a heartbreaking iteration, and an almost intolerable 
 pathos ; songs which end abruptly and suddenly, 
 so that you feel that they are meant to begin 
 again at once and to go on for ever. 
 
 This is how Tourgeniev's poetical quality — 
 as manifested in his Sportsman' s Sketches, his 
 Poems in Prose, and in many other of his works — 
 strikes me. But I doubt if any one unacquainted 
 with the Russian language would derive such 
 impressions, for it is above all things Tourgeniev's 
 language — the words he uses and the way in which 
 he uses them — that is magical. Every sentence 
 is a phrase of perfect melody ; limpid, simple 
 and sensuous. And all this must necessarily 
 half disappear in a translation, however good. 
 
 But then Tourgeniev is not only a poet. He 
 is a great novelist and something more than 
 a great novelist. He has recorded for all time 
 the atmosphere of a certain epoch. He has done 
 for Russia what Trollope did for England: he 
 has exactly conveyed the atmosphere and the 
 tone of the fifties. The characters of Trollope 
 and Tourgeniev are excelled by those of other 
 writers — and I do not mean to put Tourgeniev 
 
 122 
 
THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV 
 
 on the level of Trollope, because Tourgeniev is 
 an infinitely greater writer and an artist of an 
 altogether higher order — ; but for giving the 
 general picture and atmosphere of England during 
 the fifties, I do not believe any one has excelled 
 Trollope ; and for giving the general atmosphere of 
 the fifties in Russia, of a certain class, I do not 
 believe any one- — with the possible exception of 
 Aksakov, the Russian Trollope, — has excelled what 
 Tourgeniev did in his best known books, Fathers 
 and Sons, Virgin Soil, and ^ House of Gentlefolk. 
 Then, of course, Tourgeniev has gifts of shrewd 
 characterisation, the power of creating delightful 
 women, gifts of pathos and psychology, and artistic 
 gifts of observation and selection, the whole being 
 always illumined and refined by the essential 
 poetry of his temperament, and the magical 
 manner in which, like an inspired conductor 
 leading an orchestra of delicate wood and wind 
 instruments, he handles the Russian language. 
 But when it comes to judging who has interpreted 
 more truly Russian life as a whole, and who has 
 gazed deepest into the Russian soul and expressed 
 most truly and fully what is there, then I can 
 but repeat that I think he falls far short of 
 Tolstoy, in the one case, and of Dostoievsky, 
 in the other. Judged as a whole, I think he 
 is far excelled, for different reasons, by Tolstoy, 
 Dostoievsky, and by Gogol, who surpasses him 
 123 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 immeasurably alike in imagination, humour and 
 truth. I have endeavoured to explain why in 
 various portions of this book. I will not add 
 anything further here, and I only hope that I 
 have made it sufficiently clear that although I 
 admire other Russian writers more than Tour- 
 geniev, I am no image-breaker ; and that although 
 I worship more fervently at other altars, I never 
 for a moment intended either to deny or to 
 depreciate the authentic ray of divine light that 
 burns in Tourgeniev's work.^ 
 
 ^ The most striking instance I have come across lately of the cult 
 for Tourgeniev in England is in Mr. Frank Harris' remarkable 
 book on Shakespeare. He illustrates his thesis that Shakespeare 
 could not create a manly character, by saying that Shakespeare 
 could not have drawn a Bazarov or a Marianna. Leaving the 
 thesis out of the discussion, it is to me almost incredible that any 
 one could think Tourgeniev's characters manly, compared with 
 those of Shakespeare. Tourgeniev played a hundred variations on 
 the theme of the minor Hamlet. He painted a whole gallery 
 of little Hamlets. Baza^'ov attains his strength at the expense 
 of intellectual nihilism, but he is a neuropath compared with 
 Mercutio. And Bazarov is the only one of Tourgeniev's characters 
 (and Tourgeniev's acutest critics agree with this, — see Bruckner 
 and Vogue) that has strength. Tourgeniev could no more 
 have created a Falstafif than he could have flown. Where are 
 these manly characters of Tourgeniev? Who are they? Indeed 
 a Russian critic lately pointed out, a propos of Tchekov, that the 
 whole of Russian politics, literature, and art, during the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century, suffered from the misfortune of there being 
 so many such Hamlets and so few Fortinbrases. I am convinced 
 that had Mr. Harris been a Russian, or had Tourgeniev been an 
 Englishman, Mr. Harris would not have held these \aews. 
 
 124 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 ** In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions 
 of life ; and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are moved 
 when Levine labours in the field, when Andre sinks beyond emotion, 
 when Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river, 
 when Antony, not cowardly, puts off his helmet, when Kent has 
 infinite pity on the dying Lear, when in Dostoiefsky's Despised and 
 Rejected, the uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering and 
 virtue. These are notes which please the great heart of man." 
 
 R. L. Stevenson, Across the Plains 
 
 ' ' Raskolnikoff ( Crime and Punishment) is easily the greatest book 
 I have read in ten years. ... I divined ... the existence of a 
 certain impotence in many minds of to-day which prevents them 
 from living in a book or a character and keeps them afar off, 
 spectators of a puppet show. To such I [suppose the book may 
 seem empty in the centre ; to the others it is a room, a house of life, 
 into which they themselves enter, and are tortured and purified. . . . 
 
 "Another has been translated — Humilies et offenses. It is even 
 more incoherent than Le Crime et le Chdtiment, but breathes much 
 oi the same lovely goodness.^' '^ R. L. Stevenson, Letters 
 
 I 
 
 Introductory 
 
 IN the autumn of 1897 I was staying in the 
 South of Russia at the house of a gentleman 
 who has played no unimportant part in Russian 
 politics. We were sitting one evening at tea, a 
 
 1 These italics are mine. 
 125 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 party of nearly thirty people round the table, 
 consisting of country gentlemen, neighbours and 
 friends. The village doctor was present : he was 
 an ardent Tolstoyist, and not only an admirer of 
 Tolstoy's genius, but a disciple, and a believer in his 
 religious teaching. He had been talking on this 
 subject for some time, and expressing his hero- 
 worship in emphatic terms, when the son of my 
 host, a boy at school, only seventeen years of 
 age, yet familiar with the literature of seven 
 languages, a writer, moreover, of both English and 
 Russian verse, fired up and said : 
 
 " In fifty years' time we Russians shall blush 
 with shame to think that we gave Tolstoy such 
 fulsome admiration, when we had at the same 
 time a genius like Dostoievsky, the latchet of 
 whose shoes Tolstoy is not worthy to unloose." 
 
 A few months after this I read an article 
 on Dostoievsky in one of the literary weeklies 
 in England, in which the writer stated that 
 Dostoievsky was a mere fueilletonist, a concocter 
 of melodrama, to be ranked with Eugene Sue and 
 Xavier de Mont^pin. I was struck at the time 
 by the divergence between English and Russian 
 views on this subject. I was amazed by the view 
 of the English critic in itself; but the reason that 
 such a view could be expressed at all is not far 
 to seek, since there is at this moment no complete 
 translation of Dostoievsky's works in England, and 
 126 
 
 * 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 no literary translation of the same. Only one of 
 his books, Crime and Punishment^ is known at 
 all, and the rest of them are difficult even to 
 obtain in the English language. 
 
 However this may be, at the present time 
 Dostoievsky's fame in Russia is every day 
 becoming more universally and more emphatically 
 recognised. The present generation are inclined 
 to consider him the greatest of all their novelists ; 
 and although they as a rule, with the critic 
 Merejkowski, put him equal with Tolstoy as 
 one of the two great pillars which uphold the 
 Temple of Russian literature, they are for the 
 most part agreed in thinking that he was a 
 unique product, a more startling revelation and 
 embodiment of genius, a greater elemental force, 
 than Tolstoy or any other Russian writer of fiction. 
 In fact, they hold the same view about him that 
 we do with regard to Shelley in our poetical 
 literature. We may not think that Shelley is 
 a greater poet than Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge 
 or Byron, but he certainly is a more excep- 
 tional incarnation of poetical genius. We can 
 imagine poets like Keats arising again, — one nearly 
 akin to him and almost equally exquisite did 
 appear in the shape of Tennyson. We can 
 imagine there being other writers who would 
 attain to Wordsworth's simplicity and communion 
 with nature, but Shelley has as yet been without 
 127 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 kith or kindred, without mate or equal, in the 
 whole range of the world's literary history. He 
 does not appear to us like a plant that grows 
 among others, differing from them only in being 
 more beautiful and striking, which is true even 
 of poets like Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe, who 
 reveal in the highest degree qualities which other 
 poets possess in a lesser degree, and complete and 
 fulfil what the others aim at and only partially 
 achieve; but Shelley is altogether different in 
 kind : he aims at and achieves something which 
 is beyond the range and beyond the ken of other 
 poets. It is as though he were not a man at all, 
 but an embodiment of certain elemental forces. 
 
 So it is with Dostoievsky. And for this reason 
 those who admire him do so passionately and 
 extravagantly. It must not be thought that they 
 do not discern his faults, his incompleteness, 
 and his limitations, but the positive qualities 
 that he possesses seem to them matchless, and 
 so precious, so rare, so tremendous, that they 
 annihilate all petty criticism. The example of 
 Shelley may again serve us here. Only a pedant, 
 in the face of such flights of genius as " The Cloud," 
 the "Ode to the West Wind," "The Sensitive 
 Plant," or that high pageant of grief, fantasy, of 
 " thoughts that breathe and words that burn," — 
 " Adonais," — would apply a magnifying glass to 
 such poems and complain of the occasional lapses 
 128 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 of style or of the mistakes in grammar which may 
 be found in them. These poems may be full of 
 trivial lapses of this kind, but such matters are 
 of small account when a poet has evoked for 
 us a vision of what dwells beyond the veil of 
 the senses, and struck chords of a music which 
 has the power and the wonder of a miracle. 
 
 With Dostoievsky the case is somewhat but 
 not in all respects similar. He possesses a 
 certain quality w^hich is different in kind from 
 those of any other writer, a power of seeming to 
 get nearer to the unknown, to what lies beyond 
 the flesh, which is perhaps the secret of his 
 amazing strength ; and, besides this, he has 
 certain great qualities which other writers, and 
 notably other Russian writers, possess also ; 
 but he has them in so far higher a degree 
 that when seen with other writers he anni- 
 hilates them. The combination of this difference 
 in kind and this difference in degree makes 
 something so strong and so tremendous, that 
 it is not to be wondered at when we find many 
 critics saying that Dostoievsky is not only the 
 greatest of all Russian writers, but one of the 
 greatest writers that the world has ever seen. I 
 am not exaggerating when I say that such views 
 are held ; for instance. Professor Bruckner, a most 
 level-headed critic, in his learned and exhaustive 
 survey of Russian literature, says that it is not in 
 I 129 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Faust, but rather in Crime and Punishment, that 
 the whole grief of mankind takes hold of us. 
 
 Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of 
 his admirers, it is true to say that almost any- 
 Russian judge of literature at the present day 
 would place Dostoievsky as being equal to Tolstoy 
 and immeasurably above Tourgeniev ; in fact, the 
 ordinary Russian critic at the present day no more 
 dreams of comparing Tourgeniev with Dostoievsky, 
 than it would occur to an Englishman to compare 
 Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 Dostoievsky's fame came late, although his 
 first book, Poor Folk, made a considerable stir, 
 and the publication of his Crime and Punishment 
 ensured his popularity. But when I say " fame," 
 I mean the universal recognition of him by the 
 best and most competent judges. This recogni- 
 tion is now an accomplished fact in Russia and 
 also in Germany. The same cannot be said 
 positively of France, although his books are for 
 the most part well translated into French, and 
 have received the warmest and the most acute ap- 
 preciation at the hands of a French critic, namely, 
 M. de Vogud in Le Roman Russe. ^ In England, 
 Dostoievsky cannot be said to be known at all, 
 since the translations of his works are not only 
 inadequate, but scarce and difficult to obtain, and 
 
 ^ No finer estimate of Dostoievsky's genius exists than M. de 
 Vogue's introduction to La Mai son des Moris. 
 
 130 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 it is possible to come across the most amazing 
 judgments pronounced on them by critics whose 
 judgment on other subjects is excellent.^ The 
 reason of this tardy recognition of Dostoievsky 
 in his own country is that he was one of those 
 men whose innate sense of fairness and hatred of 
 cant prevent them from whole-heartedly joining 
 a political party and swallowing its tenets 
 indiscriminately, even when some of these tenets 
 are nonsensical and iniquitous. He was one of 
 those men who put truth and love higher than 
 any political cause, and can fight for such a 
 cause only when the leaders of it, in practice as 
 well as in theory, never deviate from the one 
 or the other. He was between two fires : the"^ 
 Government considered him a revolutionary, and 
 the revolutionaries thought him a retrograde ; 
 because he refused to be blind to the merits 
 of the Government, such as they were, and 
 equally refused to be blind to the defects of 
 the enemies of the Government. He therefore 
 attacked not only the Government, but the' 
 Government's enemies ; and when he attacked, it 
 was with thunderbolts. The Liberals never forgave 
 him this. Dostoievsky was unjustly condemned 
 to spend four years in penal servitude for a political 
 crime ; for having taken part in a revolutionary pro- 
 
 ^ This is, of course, not universal. See Mr. Gosse's Qtiestions 
 at Issue, 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 paganda. He returned from Siberia a Slavophil, 
 and, I will not say a Conservative, as the word is 
 misleading ; but a man convinced not only of the 
 futility of revolution, but also of the worthlessness 
 of a great part of the revolutionaries. Nor did the 
 Liberals ever forgive him this. They are only just 
 beginning to do so now. Moreover, in one of his 
 most powerful books, The Possessed, he draws a 
 scathing picture of all the flotsam and jetsam of 
 revolution, and not only of the worthless hangers- 
 on who are the parasites of any such movement, 
 but he reveals the decadence and worthlessness 
 of some of the men, who by their dominating 
 character played leading parts and were popular 
 heroes. Still less did the Liberals forgive him 
 this book ; and even ,now, few Liberal writers 
 are fair towards it. j Again, Dostoievsky was, as 
 I shall show later, by nature an antagonist of 
 Socialism and a hater of materialism ;\ and since 
 all the leading men among the Liberals of his 
 time were either one or the other, if not both, 
 Dostoievsky aroused the enmity of the whole 
 Liberal camp, by attacking not only its parasites 
 but its leaders, men of high principle such as 
 Bielinsky, who were obviously sincere and deserv- 
 ing of the highest consideration and respect. 
 One can imagine a similar situation in England 
 if at the present time there were an autocratic 
 government, a backward and ignorant peasantry, 
 132 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 and a small and Liberal movement carried on by 
 a minority of extremely intellectual men, headed, 
 let us say, by Mr. Bernard Shaw, Lord Morley, 
 Professor Raleigh, and Sir J. J. Thomson. I 
 purposely take men of widely different opinions, 
 because in a country where there is a fight going 
 on for a definite thing, such as a Constitution, 
 there is a moment when men, who under another 
 regime would be split up into Liberals and 
 Conservatives, are necessarily grouped together 
 in one big Liberal camp. Now, let us suppose 
 that the men who were carrying on this pro- 
 paganda for reform were undergoing great 
 sacrifices ; let us likewise suppose them to be 
 Socialists and materialists to the core. Then 
 suppose there should appear a novelist of con- 
 spicuous power, such as George Meredith or 
 Mr. Thomas Hardy or Mr. H. G. Wells, who 
 by some error was sent to Botany Bay for having 
 been supposed to be mixed up with a revolu- 
 tionary propaganda, and on his return announced 
 that he was an Anti-Revolutionary, violently 
 attacked Mr. Shaw, wrote a book in which he 
 caricatured him, and drew a scathing portrait 
 of all his disciples, — especially of the less in- 
 telligent among them. One can imagine how 
 unpopular such an author would be in Liberal 
 circles. This was the case of Dostoievsky in 
 Russia. It is only fair to add that his genius 
 133 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 has now obtained full recognition, even at the 
 hands of Liberals, though they still may not be 
 able to tolerate his book, The Possessed. But 
 considering the magnitude of his genius, this 
 recognition has been, on the whole, a tardy one. 
 For instance, even in so valuable a book as 
 Prince Kropotkin's Ideals and Realities in Russian 
 Literatm^e^ Dostoievsky receives inadequate treat- 
 ment and scanty appreciation. On the other 
 hand, in Merejkowsky's Tolstoy and Dostoievsky^ 
 Merejkowsky, who is also a Liberal, praises 
 Dostoievsky with complete comprehension and 
 with brilliance of thought and expression. 
 
 II 
 
 Dostoievsky's Life 
 
 Dostoievsky was the son of a staff-surgeon and 
 a tradesman's daughter. He was born in a 
 charity hospital, the " Maison de Dieu," at Moscow, 
 in 1 8 2 I . He was, as he said, a member of a stray 
 family. His father and five children lived in a 
 flat consisting of two rooms and a kitchen. The 
 nursery of the two boys, Michael and Fedor, con- 
 sisted of a small part of the entrance hall, which was 
 partitioned off. His family belonged to the lowest 
 ranks of the nobility, to that stratum of society 
 which supplied the bureaucracy with its minor 
 
 134 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 public servants. The poverty surrounding his 
 earliest years was to last until the day of his 
 death. 
 
 Some people are, as far as money is concerned, 
 like a negative pole — money seems to fly away 
 from them, or rather, when it comes to them, to 
 be unable to find any substance it can cleave to. 
 Dostoievsky was one of these people ; he never 
 knew how much money he had, and when he had 
 any, however little, he gave it away. He was 
 what the French call 2. pastier per c^ \ money went 
 through him as through a sieve. And however 
 much money he had, it was never he but his 
 friends who benefited by it. 
 
 He received his earliest education at a small 
 school in Moscow, where a schoolmaster who 
 taught Russian inspired him and his brother 
 with a love of literature, of Pushkin's poetry 
 and other writers, introduced him also to 
 the works of Walter Scott, and took him to 
 see a performance of Schiller's Robbers, When 
 his preliminary studies were ended, he was sent 
 with his brother to a school of military engineers 
 at St. Petersburg. Here his interest in literature, 
 which had been first aroused by coming into contact 
 with Walter Scott's works, was further developed 
 by his discovery of Balzac, George Sand, and 
 Homer. Dostoievsky developed a passionate love 
 of literature and poetry. His favourite author 
 135 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 was Gogol. He left this school in 1 843 at the age 
 of twenty-three, with the rank of sub-lieutenant. 
 
 His first success in literature was his novel, 
 Poor Folk (published in 1846), which he possibly 
 began to write while he was still at school He 
 sent this work to a review and awaited the result, 
 utterly hopeless of its being accepted. One 
 day, at four o'clock in the morning, just when 
 Dostoievsky was despairing of success and think- 
 ing of suicide, Nekrasov the poet, and Grigorovitch 
 the critic, came to him and said : " Do you 
 understand yourself what you have written ? To 
 have written such a book you must have possessed 
 the direct inspiration of an artist." 
 
 This, said Dostoievsky, was the happiest 
 moment of his life. The book was published in 
 Nekrasov's newspaper, and was highly praised on 
 all sides. He thus at once made a name in 
 literature. But as though Fate wished to lose no 
 time in proving to him that his life would be a 
 series of unending struggles, his second story, 
 The Double, was a failure, and his friends turned 
 from him, feeling that they had made a mistake. 
 From that time onward, his literary career was a 
 desperate battle, not only with poverty but also 
 with public opinion, and with political as well as 
 with literary critics. 
 
 Dostoievsky suffered all his life from epilepsy. 
 It has been said that this disease was brought on 
 136 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 by his imprisonment. This is not true : the 
 complaint began in his childhood, and one of his 
 biographers gives a hint of its origin : " It dates 
 back," he writes, " to his earliest youth, and is 
 connected with a tragic event in their family life." 
 This sentence affords us an ominous glimpse into 
 the early years of Dostoievsky, for it must indeed 
 have been a tragic event which caused him to 
 suffer from epileptic fits throughout his life. 
 
 In 1 849 came the most important event in 
 Dostoievsky's life. From 1840 to 1847 there 
 was in St. Petersburg a group of young men who 
 met together to read and discuss the Liberal 
 writers such as Fourier, Louis Blanc and Prudhon. 
 Towards 1847 these circles widened, and included 
 officers and journalists : they formed a club under 
 the leadership of Petrachevsky, a former student, 
 the author of a Dictionary of Foreign Terms. 
 The club consisted, on the one hand, of certain 
 men, followers of the Decembrists of 1825, who 
 aimed at the emancipation of the serfs and the 
 establishment of a Liberal Constitution ; and, 
 on the other hand, of men who were prede- 
 cessors of the Nihilists, and who looked forward 
 to a social revolution. The special function 
 of Dostoievsky in this club was to preach the 
 Slavophil doctrine, according to which Russia, 
 sociologically speaking, needed no Western models, 
 because in her workmen's guilds and her system 
 137 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 of mutual reciprocity for the payment of taxes, 
 she already possessed the means of realising a 
 superior form of social organisation. 
 
 The meetings of this club took place shortly 
 after the revolutionary movement which convulsed 
 Western Europe in 1848. The Emperor Nicholas, 
 who was a strong-minded and just man, imbued 
 with a religious conviction that he was appointed 
 by God to save the crumbling world, was dream- 
 ing of the emancipation of the serfs, and by a 
 fatal misunderstanding was led to strike at men 
 whose only crime was that they shared his own 
 aims and ideals. One evening at a meeting of this 
 club, Dostoievsky had declaimed Pushkin's Ode 
 on the Abolition of Serfdom, when some one 
 present expressed a doubt of the possibility of 
 obtaining this reform except by insurrectionary 
 means. Dostoievsky is said to have replied : 
 "Then insurrection let it be!" On the 23rd 
 of April 1 849, at five o'clock in the morning, 
 thirty-four suspected men were arrested. The 
 two brothers Dostoievsky were among them. 
 They were imprisoned in a citadel, where 
 they remained for eight months. On the 22nd 
 of December, Dostoievsky was conducted, with 
 twenty-one others, to the public square, where a 
 scaffold had been erected. The other prisoners 
 had been released. While they were taking their 
 places on the scaffold, Dostoievsky communicated 
 
 138 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 the idea of a book which he wished to write to 
 Prince Monbelli, one of his fellow-prisoners, who 
 related the incident later. There were, that day, 
 2 I degrees of frost (Reaumur) ; the prisoners were 
 stripped to their shirts, and had to listen to their 
 sentence ; the reading lasted over twenty minutes : 
 the sentence was that they were to be shot. 
 Dostoievsky could not believe in the reality of the 
 event. He said to one of his comrades : " Is it 
 possible that we are going to be executed ? " 
 The friend of whom he asked the question pointed 
 to a cart laden with objects which, under the 
 tarpaulin that covered them, looked like coffins. 
 The Registrar walked down from the scaffold ; 
 the Priest mounted it, taking the cross with him, 
 and bade the condemned men make their last 
 confession. Only one man, of the shopkeeper 
 class, did so : the others contented themselves 
 with kissing the cross. Dostoievsky thus relates 
 the close of the scene in a letter to his brother : 
 
 " They snapped swords above our heads, they 
 made us put on the long white shirts worn by 
 persons condemned to death. We were bound in 
 parties of three to stakes to suffer execution. Being 
 third in the row, I concluded that I had only a few 
 minutes to live. I thought of you and your dear 
 ones, and I managed to kiss PleshtcheevandDourov, 
 who were next to me, and to bid them farewell." 
 
 The officer in charge had already commanded 
 139 
 
LAxNDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 his firing party to load ; the soldiers were already 
 preparing to take aim, when a white handkerchief 
 was waved in front of them. They lowered their 
 guns, and Dostoievsky and the other twenty-one 
 learned that the Emperor had cancelled the sen- 
 tence of the military tribunal, and commuted the 
 sentence of death to one of hard labour for four 
 years. The carts really contained convict uniforms, 
 which the prisoners had to put on at once, and 
 they started then and there for Siberia. When 
 the prisoners were unbound, one of them, Grigoriev, 
 had lost his reason. Dostoievsky, on the other 
 hand, afterwards affirmed that this episode was 
 his salvation ; and never, either on account of this 
 or of his subsequent imprisonment, did he ever 
 feel or express anything save gratitude. " If this 
 catastrophe had not occurred," said Dostoievsky, 
 alluding to his sentence, his reprieve and his sub- 
 sequent imprisonment, " I should have gone mad." 
 The moments passed by him in the expectation 
 of immediate death had an ineffaceable effect 
 upon his entire after-life. They shifted his angle 
 of vision with regard to the whole world. He 
 knew something that no man could know who 
 had not been through such moments. He con- 
 stantly alludes to the episode in his novels, and 
 in The Idiot he describes it thus, through the 
 mouth of the principal character : 
 
 " I will tell you of my meeting last year with a 
 140 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 certain man ; this man was connected with a 
 strange circumstance, strange because it is a 
 very unusual one. He was once led, together 
 with others, on to the scaffold, and a sentence 
 was read out which told him that he was to 
 be shot for a political crime. He spent the 
 interval between the sentence and the reprieve, 
 which lasted twenty minutes, or at least a quarter 
 of an hour, with the certain conviction that in 
 a few minutes he should die. I was very 
 anxious to hear how he would recall his im- 
 pressions. He remembered everything with 
 extraordinary clearness, and said that he would 
 never forget a single one of those minutes. 
 Twenty paces from the scaffold round which the 
 crowd and the soldiers stood, three stakes were 
 driven into the ground, there being several 
 prisoners. The first three were led to the stakes 
 and bound, and the white dress of the condemned 
 was put on them. This consisted of a long white 
 shirt, and over their eyes white bandages were 
 bound so that they should not see the guns. 
 Then in front of each stake a firing party was 
 drawn up. My friend was No. 8, so he went to 
 the stake in the third batch. A priest carried the 
 cross to each of them. My friend calculated that 
 he had five minutes more to live, not more. He 
 said that these five minutes seemed to him an 
 endless period, infinitely precious. In these five 
 141 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 minutes it seemed to him that he would have so 
 many Hves to Hve that he need not yet begin to 
 think about his last moment, and in his mind 
 he made certain arrangements. He calculated 
 the time it would take him to say good-bye to 
 his comrades ; for this he allotted two minutes. He 
 assigned two more minutes to think one last time 
 of himself, and to look round for the last time. 
 He remembered distinctly that he made these 
 three plans, and that he divided his time in this 
 way. He was to die, aged twenty-seven, healthy 
 and strong, after having said good-bye to his 
 companions. He remembered that he asked one of 
 them a somewhat irrelevant question, and was much 
 interested in the answer. Then, after he had said 
 good-bye to his comrades, came the two minutes 
 which he had set aside for thinking of himself. 
 He knew beforehand of what he would think : he 
 wished to represent to himself as quickly and as 
 clearly as possible how this could be : that now he 
 was breathing and living, and that in three minutes 
 he would already be something else, some one or 
 something, but what? and where? All this he 
 felt he could decide in those two minutes. Not 
 far away was the church, and the cathedral with 
 its gilded dome was glittering in the sunshine. 
 He remembered that he looked at the dome 
 with terrible persistence, and on its glittering rays. 
 He could not tear his gaze away from the 
 142 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 rays. It seemed to him somehow that these rays 
 were his new nature, and that in three minutes 
 he would be made one with them. The uncer- 
 tainty and the horror of the unknown, which was 
 so near, were terrible. But he said that during 
 this time there was nothing w^orse than the un- 
 ceasing thought : * What if I do not die ? What if 
 life were restored to me now ? What an eternity ! 
 And all this would be mine. I would in that case 
 make every minute into a century, lose nothing, 
 calculate every moment, and not spend any atom 
 of the time fruitlessly.' He said that this thought 
 at last made him so angry that he wished that they 
 would shoot him at once." 
 
 Dostoievsky's sentence consisted of four years' 
 hard labour in the convict settlement in Siberia, 
 and this ordeal was doubtless the most precious 
 boon which Providence could have bestowed on 
 him. When he started for prison he said to 
 A. Milioukov, as he wished him good-bye : " The 
 convicts are not wild beasts, but men probably 
 better, and perhaps much worthier, than myself. 
 During these last months (the months of his 
 confinement in prison) I have gone through a 
 great deal, but I shall be able to write about 
 what I shall see and experience in the future." 
 It was during the time he spent in prison that 
 Dostoievsky really found himself. To share the 
 hard labour of the prisoners, to break up old 
 
 143 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ships, to carry loads of bricks, to sweep up heaps 
 of snow, strengthened him in body and calmed 
 his nerves, while the contact with murderers and 
 criminals and prisoners of all kinds, whose inmost 
 nature he was able to reach, gave him a priceless 
 opportunity of developing the qualities which 
 were especially his own both as a writer and as 
 a man. 
 
 With the criminals he was not in the position 
 of a teacher, but of a disciple ; he learnt from 
 them, and in his life with them he grew physically 
 stronger, and found faith, certitude and peace. 
 
 At the end of the four years (in 1853) he was 
 set free and returned to ordinary life, strengthened 
 in body and better balanced in mind. He had 
 still three years to serve in a regiment as a 
 private soldier, and after this period of service 
 three years more to spend in Siberia. In 1859 
 he crossed the frontier and came back to Russia, 
 and was allowed to live first at Tver and then 
 at St. Petersburg. He brought a wife with him, 
 the widow of one of his former colleagues in the 
 Petrachevsky conspiracy, whom he had loved and 
 married in Siberia. Until 1865 he worked at 
 journalism. 
 
 Dostoievsky's nature was alien to Socialism, 
 
 and he loathed the moral materialism of his 
 
 Socialistic contemporaries. Petrachevsky repelled 
 
 him because he was an atheist and laughed at 
 
 144 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 all belief; and the attitude of Bielinsky towards 
 religion, which was one of flippant contempt, 
 awoke in Dostoievsky a passion of hatred which 
 blazed up whenever he thought of the man. 
 Dostoievsky thus became a martyr, and was 
 within an ace of losing his life for the revolutionary 
 cause ; a movement in which he had never taken 
 part, and in which he disbelieved all his life. 
 
 Dostoievsky returned from prison just at the 
 time of the emancipation of the serfs, and the 
 trials which awaited him on his release were 
 severer than those which he endured during his 
 captivity. In January 1861 he started a news- 
 paper called the Vremya. The venture was a 
 success. But just as he thought that Fortune was 
 smiling upon him, and that freedom from want 
 was drawing near, the newspaper, by an extra- 
 ordinary misunderstanding, was prohibited by the 
 censorship for an article on Polish affairs. This 
 blow, like his condemnation to death, was due to 
 a casual blunder in the official machinery. After 
 considerable efforts, in 1864 he started another 
 newspaper called the Epocha. This newspaper 
 incurred the wrath, not of the Government censor- 
 ship, but of the Liberals ; and it was now that his 
 peculiar situation, namely, that of a man between 
 two fires, became evident. The Liberals abused 
 him in every kind of manner, went so far as to 
 hint that the Epocha and its staff were Govern- 
 
 K 145 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ment spies, and declared that Dostoievsky was 
 a scribbler with whom the police should deal. 
 At this same time his brother Michael, his best 
 friend Grigoriev, who was on the staff of his 
 newspaper, and his first wife, Marie, died one 
 after another. Dostoievsky was now left all 
 alone ; he felt that his whole life was broken, and 
 that he had nothing to live for. His brother's 
 family was left without resources of any kind. 
 He tried to support them by carrying on the 
 publication of the Epocha, and worked day and 
 night at this, being the sole editor, reading all the 
 proofs, dealing with the authors and the censor- 
 ship, revising articles, procuring money, sitting 
 up till six in the morning, and sleeping only five 
 out of the twenty-four hours. But this second 
 paper came to grief in 1865, and Dostoievsky 
 was forced to own himself temporarily insolvent. 
 He had incurred heavy liabilities, not only to the 
 subscribers of the newspaper, but in addition 
 a sum of £\\Q0 in bills and ;^700 in debts of 
 honour. He writes to a friend at this period : 
 " I would gladly go back to prison if only to 
 pay off my debts and to feel myself free once 
 more." 
 
 A publishing bookseller, Stellovsky, a notorious 
 rascal, threatened to have him taken up for debt. 
 He had to choose between the debtors' prison and 
 flight : he chose the latter, and escaped abroad, 
 
 146 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 where he spent four years of inexpressible misery, 
 in the last extremity of want. 
 
 His Crime and Punishment was published in 
 1866, and this book brought him fame and 
 popularity ; yet in spite of this, on an occasion 
 in 1869, he was obliged to pawn his overcoat and 
 his last shirt in order with difficulty to obtain two 
 thalers. 
 
 During all this time his attacks of epilepsy 
 continued. He was constantly in trouble with 
 his publishers, and bound and hampered by all 
 sorts of contracts. He writes at this epoch : 
 "In spite of all this I feel as if I were only just 
 beginning to live. It is curious, isn't it ? I have 
 the vitality of a cat." And on another occasion 
 he talks of his stubborn and inexhaustible vitality. 
 He also says through the mouth of one of his 
 characters, Dimitri Karamazov, " I can bear any- 
 thing, any suffering, if I can only keep on saying 
 to myself: 'I live; I am in a thousand torments, 
 but I live ! I am on the pillory, but I exist ! 
 I see the sun, or I do not see the sun, but I know 
 that it is there. And to know that there is a 
 sun is enough.' " 
 
 It was during these four years, overwhelmed 
 by domestic calamity, perpetually harassed by 
 creditors, attacked by the authorities on the one 
 hand and the Liberals on the other, misunder- 
 stood by his readers, poor, almost starving, and 
 
 147 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 never well, that he composed his three great 
 masterpieces: Crime and Punishment in 1866, 
 The Idiot in 1868, and The Possessed in 1871-2 ; 
 besides planning The Brothers Karamazov. He 
 had married a second time, in 1867. He 
 returned to Russia in July 1871: his second 
 exile was over. His popularity had increased, 
 and the success of his books enabled him to free 
 himself from debt. He became a journalist once 
 more, and in 1873 edited Prince Meschtcherki's 
 newspaper. The Grazjda7iin. In 1876 he started 
 a monthly review called The Diary of a Writer^ 
 which sometimes appeared once a month and 
 sometimes less often. The appearance of the 
 last number coincided with his death. This 
 review was a kind of encyclopaedia, in which 
 Dostoievsky wrote all his social, literary and 
 political ideas, related any stray anecdotes, 
 recollections and experiences which occurred to 
 him, and commented on the political and literary 
 topics of the day. He never ceased fighting his 
 adversaries in this review ; and during this time 
 he began his last book. The Brothers Karamazov^ 
 which was never finished. In all his articles he 
 preached his Slavophil creed, and on one occasion 
 he made the whole of Russia listen to him and 
 applaud him as one man. This was on June 8, 
 1880, when he made a speech at Moscow in 
 memory of Pushkin, and aroused to frenzy the 
 148 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 enthusiasm even of those men whose political 
 ideals were the exact opposite of his own. He 
 made people forget they were " Slavophils " or 
 " Westernisers/' and remember only one thing — 
 that they were Russians. 
 
 In the latter half of 1880, when he was work- 
 ing on The Brothers Karamazov^ Strakhov records : 
 " He was unusually thin and exhausted ; his body 
 had become so frail that the first slight blow 
 might destroy it. His mental activity was un- 
 tiring, although work had grown very difficult 
 for him. In the beginning of 1881 he fell ill 
 with a severe attack of emphysema, the result 
 of catarrh in the lung. On January 28 he had 
 haemorrhage from the throat. Feeling the approach 
 of death, he wished to confess and to receive the 
 Blessed Sacrament. He gave the New Testament 
 used by him in prison to his wife to read aloud. 
 The first passage chanced to be Matthew iii. 14: 
 '' But John held Him back and said, * It is I that 
 should be baptized by Thee, and dost Thou come 
 to me ? ' And Jesus answered and said unto 
 him, ' Detain Me not ; for thus it behoves us to 
 fulfil a great truth.' " 
 
 When his wife had read this, Dostoievsky said : 
 " You hear : Do not detain me. That means that 
 I am to die." And he closed the book. A few 
 hours later he did actually die, instantaneously, 
 from the rupture of an artery in the lungs. 
 149 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 This was on the 28th of January 1881 ; on 
 the 30th he was buried in St. Petersburg. His 
 death and his funeral had about them an almost 
 mythical greatness, and his funeral is the most 
 striking comment on the nature of the feeling 
 which the Russian public had for him both as a 
 writer and as a man. On the day after his death, 
 St. Petersburg witnessed a most extraordinary 
 sight : the little house in which he had lived 
 suddenly became for the moment the moral 
 centre of Russia. Russia understood that with 
 the death of this struggling and disease-stricken 
 novelist, she had lost something inestimably 
 precious, rare and irreplaceable. Spontaneously, 
 and without any organised preparation, the most 
 imposing and triumphant funeral ceremony was 
 given to Dostoievsky's remains ; and this funeral 
 was not only the greatest and most inspiring 
 which had ever taken place in Russia, but as 
 far as its inward significance was concerned 
 there can hardly ever have been a greater one 
 in the world. Other great writers and other 
 great men have been buried with more gorgeous 
 pomp and with a braver show of outward dis- 
 play, but never, when such a man has been 
 followed to the grave by a mourning multitude, 
 have the trophies and tributes of grief been so 
 real ; for striking as they were by their quantity 
 and their nature, they seemed but a feeble and 
 
 150 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 slender evidence of the sorrow and the love to 
 which they bore witness. There were deputations 
 bearing countless wreaths, there were numerous 
 choirs singing religious chants, there were 
 thousands of people following in a slow stream 
 along the streets of St. Petersburg, there were 
 men and women of every class, but mostly poor 
 people, shabbily dressed, of the lower middle or 
 the lower classes. The dream of Dostoievsky, 
 that the whole of Russia should be united by a 
 bond of fraternity and brotherly love, seemed to 
 be realised when this crowd of men, composed of 
 such various and widely differing elements, met 
 together in common grief by his grave. Dos- 
 toievsky had lived the life of a pauper, and of a 
 man who had to fight with all his strength in 
 order to win his daily bread. He had been as- 
 sailed by disease and hunted by misfortune ; his 
 whole life seemed to have rushed by before he 
 had had time to sit down quietly and write the 
 great ideas which were seething in his mind. 
 Everything he had written seemed to have been 
 written by chance, haphazardly, to have been 
 jotted down against time, between wind and 
 water. But in spite of this, in his work, however 
 incomplete, however fragmentary and full of 
 faults it may have been, there was a voice speak- 
 ing, a particular message being delivered, which 
 was different from that of other writers, and at 
 
 151 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 times more precious. While it was there, the 
 public took it for granted, like the sun ; and it 
 was only when Dostoievsky died that the huge- 
 ness of the gap made by his death, caused them 
 to feel how great was the place he had occupied 
 both in their hearts and in their minds. It 
 was only when he died that they recognised 
 how great a man he was, and how warmly they 
 admired and loved him. Everybody felt this 
 from the highest to the lowest. Tolstoy, in 
 writing of Dostoievsky's death, says : " I never 
 saw the man, and never had any direct relations 
 with him, yet suddenly when he died I under- 
 stood that he was the nearest and dearest and 
 most necessary of men to me. Everything that 
 he did was of the kind that the more he did of it 
 the better I felt it was for men. And all at once 
 I read that he is dead, and a prop has fallen 
 from me." This is what the whole of Russia 
 felt, that a support had fallen from them ; and 
 this is what they expressed when they gave to 
 Dostoievsky a funeral such as no king nor 
 Captain has ever had, a funeral whose very 
 shabbiness was greater than any splendour, and 
 whose trophies and emblems were the grief of a 
 nation and the tears of thousands of hearts 
 united together in the admiration and love of 
 a man whom each one of them regarded as his 
 brother. 
 
 152 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 III 
 
 Dostoievsky's Character 
 
 Such, briefly, are the main facts of Dostoievsky's 
 crowded life. Unlike Tolstoy, who has himself 
 told us in every conceivable way everything down 
 to the most intimate detail which is to be known 
 about himself, Dostoievsky told us little of 
 himself, and all that we know about him is 
 gathered from other people or from his letters ; 
 and even now we know comparatively little 
 about his life. He disliked talking about him- 
 self; he could not bear to be pitied. He was 
 modest, and shielded his feelings with a lofty 
 shame. Strakhov writes about him thus : 
 
 •' In Dostoievsky you could never detect the 
 slightest bitterness or hardness resulting from the 
 sufferings he had undergone, and there was never 
 in him a hint of posing as a martyr. He behaved 
 as if there had been nothing extraordinary in his 
 past. He never represented himself as disillu- 
 sioned, or as not having an equable mind ; but, 
 on the contrary, he appeared cheerful and alert, 
 when his health allowed him to do so. I 
 remember that a lady coming for the first time 
 to Michael Dostoievsky's (his brother's) evenings 
 at the newspaper office, looked long at Dostoievsky, 
 and finally said : ' As I look at you it seems to 
 153 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 me that I see in your face the sufferings which 
 you have endured.' These words visibly annoyed 
 Dostoievsky. ' What sufferings ? ' he said, and 
 began to joke on indifferent matters." 
 
 Long after his imprisonment and exile, when 
 some friends of his tried to prove to him that 
 his exile had been a brutal act of injustice, he 
 said : " The Socialists are the result of the fol- 
 lowers of Petrachevsky. Petrachevsky's disciples 
 sowed many seeds." And when he was asked 
 whether such men deserved to be exiled, he 
 answered : " Our exile was just ; the people would 
 have condemned us." 
 
 The main characteristics of his nature were 
 generosity, catholicity, vehement passion, and a 
 *' sweet reasonableness." Once when he was 
 living with Riesenkampf, a German doctor, he 
 was found living on bread and milk ; and even 
 for that he was in debt at a little milk shop. 
 This same doctor says that Dostoievsky was 
 " one of those men to live with whom is good for 
 every one, but who are themselves in perpetual 
 want." He was mercilessly robbed, but he would 
 never blame any one who took advantage of his 
 kindness and his trustfulness. One of his bio- 
 graphers tells us that his life with Riesenkampf 
 proved expensive to him, because no poor man 
 who came to see the doctor went away without 
 having received something from Dostoievsky. 
 154 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 One cannot read a page of his books without 
 being aware of the " sweet reasonableness " of 
 his nature. This pervaded his writings with 
 fragrance like some precious balm, and is made 
 manifest to us in the touching simplicity of some 
 of his characters, such as the Idiot and Alexis 
 Karamazov, to read of whom is like being with 
 some warm and comforting influence, something 
 sweet and sensible and infinitely human. His 
 catholicity consists in an almost boundless 
 power of appreciation, an appreciation of things, 
 persons and books widely removed from himself 
 by accidents of time, space, class, nationality 
 and character. Dostoievsky is equally able to 
 appreciate the very essence of a performance 
 got up by convicts in his prison, and the inner- 
 most beauty of the plays of Racine. This last 
 point is singular and remarkable. He was 
 universal and cosmopolitan in his admiration of 
 the literature of foreign countries ; and he was 
 cosmopolitan, not because he wished to cut himself 
 away from Russian traditions and to become 
 European and Westernised, but because he was 
 profoundly Russian, and had the peculiarly 
 Russian plastic and receptive power of under- 
 standing and assimilating things widely different 
 from himself. 
 
 When he was a young man, Shakespeare and 
 Schiller were well known, and it was the fashion 
 155 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 to admire them. It was equally the fashion to 
 despise the French writers of the seventeenth 
 century. But Dostoievsky was just as enthusi- 
 astic in his admiration of Racine and Corneille 
 and all the great classics of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. Thus he writes : " But Phedre, brother ! 
 You will be the Lord knows what if you say this 
 is not the highest and purest nature and poetry ; 
 the outline of it is Shakespearian, but the statue 
 is in plaster, not in marble." And again of 
 Corneille: "Have you read The Cid} Read it, 
 you wretch, read it, and go down in the dust 
 before Corneille ! " 
 
 Dostoievsky was constantly " going down in 
 the dust " before the great masterpieces, not 
 only of his own, but of other countries, which 
 bears out the saying that " La valeur morale 
 de I'homme est en proportion de sa faculty 
 d'admirer." 
 
 Dostoievsky never theorised as to how alms 
 should be given, or as to how charity should be 
 organised. He gave what he had, simply and 
 naturally, to those who he saw had need of it ; 
 and he had a right to this knowledge, for he him- 
 self had received alms in prison. Neither did he 
 ever theorise as to whether a man should leave 
 the work which he was fitted by Providence to 
 do (such as writing books), in order to plough 
 fields and to cut down trees. He had prac- 
 
 156 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 tised hard labour, not as a theoretic amateur, but 
 as a constrained professional. He had carried 
 heavy loads of bricks and broken up ships and 
 swept up heaps of snow, not out of philosophy or 
 theory, but because he had been obliged to do so ; 
 because if he had not done so he would have been 
 severely punished. All that Tolstoy dreamed of 
 and aimed at, which was serious in theory but not 
 serious in practice, that is to say, giving up his 
 property, becoming one with the people, ploughing 
 the fields, was a reality to Dostoievsky when 
 he was in prison. He knew that hard labour is 
 only real when it is a necessity, when you cannot 
 leave off doing it when you want to ; he had 
 experienced this kind of hard labour for four 
 years, and during his whole life he had to work 
 for his daily bread. The result of this is that 
 he made no theories about what work a man 
 should do, but simply did as well as he could 
 the work he had to do. In the words of a 
 ballade written by Mr. Chesterton, he might 
 have said : 
 
 "We eat the cheese, — you scraped about the rind, 
 You lopped the tree — we eat the fruit instead. 
 You were benevolent, but we were kind, 
 You know the laws of food, but we were fed." 
 
 And this is the great difference between Dostoiev- 
 sky and Tolstoy. Tolstoy was benevolent, but 
 Dostoievsky was kind. Tolstoy theorised on the 
 157 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 distribution of food, but Dostoievsky was fed and 
 received alms like a beggar. Dostoievsky, so 
 far from despising the calling of an author, or 
 thinking that it was an occupation " thin sown 
 with aught of profit or delight" for the human 
 race, loved literature passionately. He was proud 
 of his profession : he was a great man of letters 
 as well as a great author. " I have never sold," 
 he wrote, " one of my books without getting the 
 price down beforehand. I am a literary pro- 
 letarian. If anybody wants my work he must 
 ensure me by prepayment." 
 
 There is something which resembles Dr. John- 
 son in the way he talks of his profession and his 
 attitude towards it. But there is, nevertheless, in 
 the phrase just quoted, something bitterly ironical 
 when one reflects that he was a poor man all his 
 life and incessantly harassed by creditors, and 
 that he derived almost nothing from the great 
 popularity and sale of his books. 
 
 " Dostoievsky," writes Strakov, " loved litera- 
 ture ; he took her as she was, with all her 
 conditions ; he never stood apart from literature, 
 and he never looked down upon her. This absence 
 of the least hint of literary snobbishness is in him 
 a beautiful and touching characteristic. Russian 
 literature was the one lodestar of Dostoievsky's 
 life, and he cherished for it a passionate love and 
 devotion. He knew very well that when he 
 IS8 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 entered the lists he would have to go into the 
 public market-place, and he was never ashamed 
 of his trade nor of his fellow-workers. On the 
 contrary, he was proud of his profession, and 
 considered it a great and sacred one." 
 
 He speaks of himself as a literary hack : he 
 writes at so much a line, three and a half printed 
 pages of a newspaper in two days and two nights. 
 " Often," he says, " it happened in my literary 
 career that the beginning of the chapter of a 
 novel or story was already set up, and the end 
 was still in my mind and had to be written by 
 the next day." Again : " Work from want 
 and for money has crushed and devoured me. 
 Will my poverty ever cease ? Ah, if I had 
 money, then I should be free ! " 
 
 I have said that one of the main elements of 
 Dostoievsky's character was vehement passion. 
 There was more than a vehement element of 
 passion in Dostoievsky ; he was not only passion- 
 ate in his loves and passionate in his hates, but 
 his passion was unbridled. In this he resembles 
 the people of the Renaissance. There were 
 perilous depths in his personality ; black pools of 
 passion ; a seething whirlpool that sent up every 
 now and then great eddies of boiling surge ; yet 
 this passion has nothing about it which is unde- 
 finably evil ; it never smells of the pit. The 
 reason of this is that although Dostoievsky's 
 159 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 soul descended into hell, it was purged by the 
 flames, and no poisonous fumes ever came from it. 
 There was something of St. Francis in him, and 
 something of Velasquez. Dostoievsky was a 
 violent hater. I have already told how he hated 
 Bielinsky, the Socialists and the materialists whom 
 he attacked all his life, but against Tourgeniev 
 he nourished a blind and causeless hatred. This 
 manifests itself as soon as he leaves prison, in 
 the following outburst : " I know very well," he 
 writes, " that I write worse than Tourgeniev, but 
 not so very much worse, and after all I hope one 
 day to write quite as well as he does. Why, with 
 my crying wants, do I receive only lOO roubles a 
 sheet, and Tourgeniev, who possesses two thousand 
 serfs, receives 400 roubles ? Owing to my poverty 
 I am obliged to hurry, to write for money, and 
 consequently to spoil my work." In a postscript 
 he says that he sends Katkov, the great Moscow 
 editor, fifteen sheets at 100 roubles a sheet, that 
 is, 1500 roubles in all. " I have had 500 roubles 
 from him, and besides, when I had sent three- 
 quarters of the novel, I asked him for 200 to help 
 me along, or 700 altogether. I shall reach Tver 
 without a farthing. But, on the other hand, I 
 shall shortly receive from Katkov seven or eight 
 hundred roubles." 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the whole nature 
 of Dostoievsky, both as man and artist, was pro- 
 
 160 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 foundly modified by the disease from which he 
 suffered all his life, his epilepsy. He had there- 
 fore two handicaps against him : disease and 
 poverty. But it is his epilepsy which was prob- 
 ably the cause of his dislikes, his hatreds and 
 his outbreaks of violent passion. The attacks 
 of epilepsy came upon him about once a month, 
 and sometimes, though not often, they were more 
 frequent. He once had two in a week. His 
 friend Strakov describes one of them thus : " I 
 once saw one of his ordinary attacks : it was, I 
 fancy, in 1863, just before Easter. Late in the 
 evening, about eleven o'clock, he came to see me, 
 and we had a very animated conversation. I 
 cannot remember the subject, but I know that it 
 was important and abstruse. He became excited, 
 and walked about the room while I sat at the 
 table. He said something fine and jubilant. 
 I confirmed his opinion by some remark, and 
 he turned to me a face which positively glowed 
 with the most transcendent inspiration. He 
 paused for a moment, as if searching for words, 
 and had already opened his lips to speak. I 
 looked at him all expectant for fresh revelation. 
 Suddenly from his open mouth issued a strange, 
 prolonged, and inarticulate moan. He sank 
 senseless on the floor in the middle of the 
 room." 
 
 The ancients called this " the sacred sickness." 
 L i6i 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Just before the attacks, Dostoievsky felt a kind of 
 rapture, something like what people say they feel 
 when they hear very great music, a perfect har- 
 mony between himself and the world, a sensation 
 as if he had reached the edge of a planet, and 
 were falling off it into infinite space. And this 
 feeling was such that for some seconds of the 
 rapture, he said, you might give ten years of 
 your life, or even the whole of it. But after the 
 attack his condition was dreadful, and he could 
 hardly sustain the state of low-spirited dreariness 
 and sensitiveness into which he was plunged. 
 He felt like a criminal, and fancied there 
 hung over him an invisible guilt, a great trans- 
 gression. He compares both sensations, suddenly 
 combined and blended in a flash, to the famous 
 falling pitcher of Mahomet, which had not time 
 to empty itself while the Prophet on Allah's 
 steed was girdling heaven and hell. It is no 
 doubt the presence of this disease and the fre- 
 quency of the attacks, which were responsible 
 for the want of balance in his nature and in his 
 artistic conceptions, just as his grinding poverty 
 and the merciless conditions of his existence are 
 responsible for the want of finish in his style. 
 But Dostoievsky had the qualities of his defects, 
 and it is perhaps owing to his very illness, and to 
 its extraordinary nature, that he was able so 
 deeply to penetrate into the human soul. It is 
 
 162 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 as if the veil of flesh and blood dividing the soul 
 from that which is behind all things, was finer 
 and more transparent in Dostoievsky than in 
 other men : by his very illness he may have 
 been able to discern what is invisible to others. 
 It is certainly owing to the combined poverty 
 and disease which made up his life, that he 
 had such an unexampled insight into the lives 
 and hearts of the humble, the rejected, the 
 despised, the afflicted, and the oppressed. He 
 sounded the utmost depths of human misery, he 
 lived face to face with the lowest representatives 
 of human misfortune and disgrace, and he was 
 neither dispirited nor dismayed. He came to the 
 conclusion that it was all for the best, and like 
 Job in dust and ashes consented to the eternal 
 scheme. And though all his life he was one of 
 the conquered, he never ceased fighting, and 
 never for one moment believed that life was not 
 worth living. On the contrary, he blessed life and 
 made others bless it. 
 
 His life was " a long disease," rendered harder 
 to bear and more difficult by exceptionally cruel 
 circumstances. In spite of this, Dostoievsky was 
 a happy man : he was happy and he was cheerful ; 
 and he was happy not because he was a saint, but 
 because, in spite of all his faults, he radiated 
 goodness ; because his immense heart overflowed 
 in kindness, and having suffered much himself, he 
 163 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 understood the sufferings of others ; thus although 
 his books are terrible, and deal with the darkest 
 clouds which can overshadow the human spirit, 
 the descent into hell of the human soul, yet the 
 main impression left by them is not one of gloom 
 but one of comfort. Dostoievsky is, above all 
 things, a healer and a comforter, and this is 
 because the whole of his teaching, his morality, 
 his art, his character, are based on the simple 
 foundation of what the Russians call " dolgoterp- 
 jenie," that is, forbearance, and " smirenie," that 
 is to say, resignation. In the whole history of the 
 world's literature there is no literary man's life 
 which was so arduous and so hard; but Dostoievsky 
 never complained, nor, we can be sure, would he 
 have wished his life to have been otherwise. His 
 life was a martyrdom, but he enjoyed it. Although 
 no one more nearly than he bears witness to 
 Heine's saying that " where a great spirit is, there 
 is Golgotha," yet we can say without hesitation 
 that Dostoievsky was a happy man, and he was 
 happy because he never thought about himself, and 
 because, consciously or unconsciously, he relieved 
 and comforted the sufferings of others. And his 
 books continued to do so long after he ceased to 
 live. 
 
 All this can be summed up in one word : the 
 value of Dostoievsky's life. And the whole reason 
 that his books, although they deal with the 
 
 164 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 tragedies of mankind, bring comfort to the reader 
 instead of gloom, hope instead of despair, is, firstly, 
 that Dostoievsky was an altruist, and that he 
 fulfilled the most difficult precept of Christianity — 
 to love others better than oneself; and, secondly, 
 that in leading us down in the lowest depths of 
 tragedy, he shows us that where man ends, God 
 takes up the tale. 
 
 IV 
 
 Poor Folk and the Letters from a 
 Dead House 
 
 In his first book. Poor Folk, which was pub- 
 lished in I 846, we have the germ of all Dostoievsky's 
 talent and genius. It is true that he accomplished 
 far greater things, but never anything more 
 characteristic. It is the story of a poor official, 
 a minor clerk in a Government office, already 
 aged and worn with cares, who battles against 
 material want. In his sombre and monotonous 
 life there is a ray of light : in another house as 
 poor and as squalid as his own, there lives a girl, 
 a distant relation of his, who is also in hard and 
 humble circumstances, and who has nothing in 
 the world save the affection and friendship of this 
 poor clerk. They write to each other daily. In 
 the man's letters a discreet unselfishness is revealed, 
 a rare delicacy of feeling, which is in sharp contrast 
 
 165 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 to the awkwardness of his everyday actions and 
 ideas, which verge on the grotesque. At the 
 office, he has to cringe and sacrifice his honour in 
 order not to forfeit the favour of his superiors. 
 He stints himself, and makes every kind of small 
 sacrifice, in order that this woman may be relieved 
 of her privations. He writes to her like a father 
 or brother ; but it is easy for us to see in his 
 simple phrases that he is in love with her, although 
 she does not realise it. The character of the 
 woman is equally clear to us : she is superior to 
 him in education and mind, and she is less 
 resigned to her fate than he is. In the course of 
 their correspondence we learn all that is to be 
 known about their past, their melancholy history 
 and the small incidents of their everyday life, the 
 struggle that is continually working in the mind 
 of the clerk between his material want and his 
 desire not to lose his personal honour. This 
 correspondence continues day by day until the 
 crisis comes, and the clerk loses the one joy of 
 his life, and learns that his friend is engaged 
 to be married. But she has not been caught 
 up or carried off in a brilliant adventure : she 
 marries a middle-aged man, very rich and slightly 
 discredited, and all her last letters are full of 
 commissions which she trusts to her devoted old 
 friend to accomplish. He is sent to the dress- 
 makers about her gowns, and to the jeweller about 
 i66 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 her rings ; and all this he accepts and does with 
 perfect self-sacrifice ; and his sacrifice seems quite 
 accidental, a matter of course : there is not the 
 slightest pose in it, nor any fuss, and only at the 
 end, in his very last letter, and even then only in 
 a veiled and discreet form, does he express any- 
 thing of the immense sorrow which the blow is 
 bringing to him. 
 
 The woman's character is as subtly drawn as 
 the man's ; she is more independent than he, and 
 less resigned ; she is kind and good, and it is from 
 no selfish motives that she grasps at the improve- 
 ment in her fortunes. But she is still young, and 
 her youth rises within her and imperatively claims 
 its natural desires. She is convinced that by ac- 
 cepting the proposal which is made to her she will 
 alleviate her friend's position as much as her own ; 
 moreover, she regards him as a faithful friend, and 
 nothing more. But we, the outsiders who read his 
 letters, see clearly that what he feels for her is more 
 than friendship : it is simply love and nothing else. 
 
 The second important book which Dostoievsky 
 wrote (for the stories he published immediately 
 after Poor Folk were not up to his mark) was the 
 Letters from a Dead House, which was published 
 on his return to Russia in 1861. This book may 
 not be his finest artistic achievement, but it is 
 certainly the most humanly interesting book 
 which he ever wrote, and one of the most interest- 
 167 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ing books which exist in the whole of the world's 
 literature. In this book he told his prison 
 experiences: they were put forward in the shape 
 of the posthumous records of a nobleman who 
 had committed murder out of jealousy, and was 
 condemned to spend some years in the convict 
 prison. The book is supposed to be the papers 
 which this nobleman left behind him. They 
 cover a period of four years, which was the term 
 of Dostoievsky's sentence. The most remark- 
 able characteristic of the book is the entire 
 absence of egotism in the author. Many authors 
 in similar circumstances would have written 
 volumes of self-analysis, and filled pages with their 
 lamentations and in diagnosing their sensations. 
 Very few men in such a situation could have 
 avoided a slight pose of martyrdom. In 
 Dostoievsky there is nothing of this. He faces 
 the horror of the situation, but he has no 
 grievance ; and the book is all about other people 
 and as little as possible about himself. And herein 
 lies its priceless value, for there is no other book 
 either of fiction or travel which throws such a 
 searching light on the character of the Russian 
 people, and especially on that of the Russian 
 peasants. Dostoievsky got nearer to the Russian 
 peasant than any one has ever done, and neces- 
 sarily so, because he lived with them on equal terms 
 as a convict. But this alone would not suffice 
 i68 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 to produce so valuable a book ; something else 
 was necessary, and the second indispensable 
 factor was supplied by Dostoievsky's peculiar 
 nature, his simplicity of mind, his kindness of 
 heart, his sympathy and understanding. In the 
 very first pages of this book we are led into the 
 heart of a convict's life : the milieu rises before us 
 in startling vividness. The first thing which 
 we are made aware of is that this prison life 
 has a peculiar character of its own. The 
 strange family or colony which was gathered 
 together in this Siberian prison consisted of 
 criminals of every grade and description, and in 
 which not only every class of Russian society, but 
 every shade and variety of the Russian people 
 was represented ; that is to say, there were here 
 assassins by profession, and men who had become 
 assassins by chance, robbers, brigands, tramps, 
 pick-pockets, smugglers, peasants, Armenians, 
 Jews, Poles, Mussulmans, soldiers who were there 
 for insubordination and even for murder ; officers, 
 gentlemen, and political prisoners, and men who 
 were there no one knew why. 
 
 Now Dostoievsky points out that at a first 
 glance you could detect one common character- 
 istic in this strange family. Even the most 
 sharply defined, the most eccentric and original 
 personalities, who stood out and towered 
 above their comrades, even these did their 
 169 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 best to adopt the manners and customs, the 
 unwritten code, the etiquette of the prison. In 
 general, he continues, these people with a very 
 few exceptions (innately cheerful people who met 
 with universal contempt) were surly, envious, 
 extraordinarily vain, boastful, touchy, and in the 
 highest degree punctilious and conventional. To 
 be astonished at nothing was considered the 
 highest quality ; and in all of them the one aim 
 and obsession was outward demeanour and the 
 wish to keep up appearances. There were men 
 who pretended to have either great moral or 
 great physical strength and boasted of it, who 
 were in reality cowards at heart, and whose 
 cowardice was revealed in a flash. There were 
 also men who possessed really strong characters ; 
 but the curious thing was, Dostoievsky tells us, 
 that these really strong characters were abnor- 
 mally vain. The main and universal character- 
 istic of the criminal was his vanity, his desire, as 
 the Italians say, to fare figura at all costs. I 
 have been told that this is true of English prisons, 
 where prisoners will exercise the most extra- 
 ordinary ingenuity in order to shave. The 
 greater part of these people were radically vicious, 
 and frightfully quarrelsome. The gossip, the 
 backbiting, the tale-bearing, and the repeating of 
 small calumnies were incessant ; yet in spite of 
 this not one man dared to stand up against the 
 170 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 public opinion of the prison, according to whose 
 etiquette and unwritten law a particular kind of 
 demeanour was observed. In other words, these 
 prisoners were exactly like private schoolboys 
 or public schoolboys. At a public school, boys 
 will create a certain etiquette, which has its un- 
 written law ; for instance, let us take Eton. At 
 Eton you may walk on one side of the street but 
 not on the other, unless you are a person of 
 sufficient importance. When you wear a great- 
 coat, you must always turn the collar up, unless 
 you are a person of a particular importance. 
 You must likewise never go about with an 
 umbrella unrolled ; and, far more important than 
 all these questions, there arrives a psychological 
 moment in the career of an Eton boy when, of 
 his own accord, he wears a stick-up collar instead 
 of a turned-down collar, by which act he proclaims 
 to the world that he is a person of considerable 
 importance. These rules are unwritten and 
 undefined. Nobody tells another boy not to 
 walk on the wrong side of the road ; no boy will 
 ever dream of turning down his collar, if he is not 
 important enough ; and in the third and more 
 special case, the boy who suddenly puts on a 
 stick-up collar must feel himself by instinct when 
 that psychological moment has arrived. It is not 
 done for any definite reason, it is merely the ex- 
 pression of a kind of atmosphere. He knows at 
 171 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 a given moment that he can or cannot go into 
 stick-ups. Some boys can go into stick-ups for 
 almost nothing, if they have in their personality 
 the necessary amount of imponderable prestige ; 
 others, though the possessors of many trophies and 
 colours, can only do so at the last possible minute. 
 But all must have some definite reason for going 
 into stick-ups : no boy can go into stick-ups merely 
 because he is clever and thinks a lot of himself, — 
 that would not only be impossible, but unthinkable. 
 Dostoievsky's account of the convicts reminds 
 me so strongly of the conduct of private and 
 public schoolboys in England, that, with a few 
 slight changes, his Letters from a Dead House 
 might be about an English school, as far as 
 the mere etiquette of the convicts is con- 
 cerned. Here, for instance, is a case in point : 
 Dostoievsky says that there lived in this prison 
 men of dynamic personalities, who feared neither 
 God nor man, and had never obeyed any 
 one in their lives ; and yet they at once fell 
 in with the standard of behaviour expected of 
 them. There came to the prison men who 
 had been the terror of their village and their 
 neighbourhood. Such a " new boy " looked 
 round, and at once understood that he had 
 arrived at a place where he could astonish no 
 one, and that the only thing to do was to be 
 quiet and fall in with the manners of the place, 
 172 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 and into what Dostoievsky calls the universal 
 etiquette, which he defines as follows : " This 
 etiquette," he says, " consisted outwardly of a kind 
 of peculiar dignity with which every inhabitant of 
 the prison was impregnated, as if the fact of being 
 a convict was, ipso facto^ a kind of rank, and a 
 respectable rank." This is exactly the point of 
 view of a schoolboy at a private school. A school- 
 boy prefers to be at home rather than at school. 
 He knows that he is obliged to be at school, he is 
 obliged to work against his will, and to do things 
 which are often disagreeable to him ; at the same 
 time his entire efforts are strained to one object, 
 towards preserving the dignity of his status. 
 That was the great ambition of the convicts, to 
 preserve the dignity of the status of a convict. 
 Throughout this book one receives the impression 
 that the convicts behaved in many ways like 
 schoolboys ; in fact, in one place Dostoievsky 
 says that in many respects they were exactly like 
 children. He quotes, for instance, their delight 
 in spending the little money they could get hold 
 of on a smart linen shirt and a belt, and walking 
 round the whole prison to show it off. They 
 did not keep such finery long, and nearly always 
 ended by selling it for almost nothing ; but their 
 delight while they possessed it was intense. 
 There was, however, one curious item in their 
 code of morals, which is singularly unlike that 
 173 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 of schoolboys in England, in Russia, or in any 
 other country : they had no horror of a man 
 who told tales to the authorities, who, in school- 
 boy language, was a sneak. " The Sneak " did 
 not expose himself to the very smallest loss of 
 caste. Indignation against him was an unthink- 
 able thing : nobody shunned him, people were 
 friends with him ; and if you had explained in the 
 prison the whole odiousness of his behaviour, they 
 would not have understood you at all. 
 
 " There was one of the gentlemen prisoners, a 
 vicious and mean fellow, with whom from the first 
 moment I would have nothing to do. He made 
 friends with the major's orderly, and became his 
 spy ; and this man told everything he heard 
 about the prisoners to the major. We all knew 
 this, and nobody ever once thought of punishing 
 or even of blaming the scoundrel." 
 
 This is the more remarkable from the fact that 
 in Russian schools, and especially in those schools 
 where military discipline prevails, sneaking is the 
 greatest possible crime. In speaking of another 
 man who constantly reported everything to the 
 authorities, Dostoievsky says that the other con- 
 victs despised him, not because he sneaked, but 
 because he did not know how to behave himself 
 properly. 
 
 The convicts, although they never showed the 
 slightest signs of remorse or regret for anything 
 
 174 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 they had done in the past, were allowed by their 
 etiquette to express, as it were officially, a kind 
 of outward resignation, a peaceful logic, such as, 
 " We are a fallen people. We could not live in 
 freedom, and now we must break stones. . . . We 
 could not obey father and mother, and now we 
 must obey the beating of the drum." The 
 criminals abused each other mercilessly ; they 
 were adepts in the art, more than adepts, artists. 
 Abuse in their hands became a science and a 
 fine art ; their object was to find not so much 
 the word that would give pain, as the offensive 
 thought, the spirit, the idea, as to who should 
 be most venomous, the most razor-like in his 
 abuse. 
 
 Another striking characteristic which also re- 
 minds one of schoolboys, was that the convict would 
 be, as a rule, obedient and submissive in the ex- 
 treme. But there were certain limits beyond which 
 his patience was exhausted, and when once this 
 limit was overstepped by his warders or the officer 
 in charge, he was ready to do anything, even to 
 commit murder, and feared no punishment. 
 
 Dostoievsky tells us that during all the time 
 he was in prison he never noticed among the 
 convicts the slightest sign of remorse, the slightest 
 burden of spirit with regard to the crimes they 
 had committed ; and the majority of them 
 in their hearts considered themselves perfectly 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 justified. But the one thing they could not 
 bear, not because it roused feelings of emotion in 
 them, but because it was against the etiquette 
 of the place, was that people should dwell 
 upon their past crimes. He quotes one instance 
 of a man who was drunk — the convicts could 
 get wine — beginning to relate how he had killed 
 a child of five years old. The whole prison, 
 which up till then had been laughing at his jokes, 
 cried out like a man, and the assassin was obliged 
 to be silent. They did not cry out from indigna- 
 tion, but because it was not the thing to speak 
 of that, because to speak of that was considered 
 to be violating the unwritten code of the prison. 
 The two things which Dostoievsky found to be 
 the hardest trials during his life as a convict were, 
 first, the absolute absence of privacy, since during 
 the whole four years he was in prison he was 
 never for one minute either by day or night alone ; 
 and, secondly, the bar which existed between 
 him and the majority of the convicts, owing to 
 the fact that he was a gentleman. The convicts 
 hated people of the upper class ; although such 
 men were on a footing of social equality with 
 them, the convicts never recognised them as 
 comrades. Quite unconsciously, even sincerely, 
 they regarded them as gentlemen, although they 
 liked teasing them about their change of circum- 
 stance. They despised them because they did 
 
 176 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 not know how to work properly, and Dostoievsky- 
 says that he was two years in prison before he 
 won over some of the convicts, though one can 
 see from his accounts of what they said to 
 him, how much they must have liked him, and 
 he admits that the majority of them recognised, 
 after a time, that he was a good fellow. He 
 points out how much harder such a sentence was 
 on one of his own class than on a peasant. 
 The peasant arrives from all ends of Russia, no 
 matter where it be, and finds in prison the milieu 
 he is accustomed to, and into which he falls at 
 once without difficulty. He is treated as a 
 brother and an equal by the people who are 
 there. With a gentleman it is different, and 
 especially, Dostoievsky tells us, with a political 
 offender, whom the majority of the convicts hate. 
 He never becomes an equal ; they may like him, 
 as they obviously did in Dostoievsky's case, but 
 they never regard him as being on a footing of 
 equality with themselves. They preferred even 
 foreigners, Germans for instance, to the Russian 
 gentlemen ; and the people they disliked most of 
 all were the gentlemen Poles, because they were 
 almost exaggeratedly polite towards the convicts, 
 and at the same time could not conceal their 
 innate hatred of them. With regard to the effect 
 of this difference of class, Dostoievsky, in the 
 course of the book, tells a striking story. Every 
 
 M 177 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 now and then, when the convicts had a grievance 
 about their food or their treatment, they would 
 go on strike, and assemble in the prison yard. 
 Dostoievsky relates that one day there was a 
 strike about the food. As all the convicts were 
 gathered together in the yard, he joined them, 
 whereupon he was immediately told that that 
 was not his place, that he had better go to the 
 kitchen, where the Poles and the other gentlemen 
 were. He was told this kindly by his friends, 
 and men who were less friendly to him made it 
 plain by shouting out sarcastic remarks to him. 
 Although he wished to stay, he was told that he 
 must go. Afterwards the strike was dispersed 
 and the strikers punished, and Dostoievsky asked 
 a friend of his, one of the convicts, whether they 
 were not angry with the gentlemen convicts. 
 
 " Why ? " asked this man. 
 
 " Why, because we did not join in the strike." 
 
 " Why should you have joined in the strike ? " 
 asked the convict, trying to understand, " You 
 buy your own food." 
 
 " Many of us eat the ordinary food," answered 
 Dostoievsky, " but I should have thought that 
 apart from this we ought to have joined, out of 
 fellowship, out of comradeship." 
 
 " But you are not our comrade," said the other 
 man quite simply ; and Dostoievsky saw that the 
 man did not even understand what he meant. 
 178 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 Dostoievsky realised that he could never be a real 
 comrade of these men ; he might be a convict for 
 a century, he might be the most experienced of 
 criminals, the most accomplished of assassins, the 
 barrier existing between the classes would never 
 disappear : to them he would always be a gentle- 
 man, it would always be a case of " You go your 
 way, we go ours." And this, he said, was the 
 saddest thing he experienced during the whole of 
 his prison life. 
 
 The thing which perhaps caused him the most 
 pleasure was the insight he gained into the kind- 
 ness shown to convicts by outsiders. Alluding to 
 the doctors in the prison hospital, he says : " It 
 is well known to prisoners all over Russia that 
 the men who sympathise with them the most are 
 the doctors : they never make the slightest differ- 
 ence in their treatment of prisoners, as nearly all 
 outsiders do, except perhaps the Russian poor. 
 The Russian poor man never blames the prisoner 
 for his crime, however terrible it may be ; he 
 forgives him everything for the punishment that 
 he is enduring, and for his misfortune in general. 
 It is not in vain that the whole of the Russian 
 people call crime a misfortune and criminals 
 ' unfortunates.' This definition has a deep 
 meaning ; it is all the more valuable in that it is 
 made unconsciously and instinctively." 
 
 It is an incident revealing this pity for the 
 179 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 unfortunate which gave Dostoievsky more pleasure 
 than anything during his stay in prison. It was 
 the first occasion on which he directly received 
 alms. He relates it thus : 
 
 "It was soon after my arrival in the prison : I 
 was coming back from my morning's work, accom- 
 panied only by the guard. There met me a 
 mother and her daughter. The little girl was ten 
 years old, as pretty as a cherub ; I had already 
 seen them once ; the mother was the wife of a 
 soldier, a widow ; her husband, a young soldier, 
 had been under arrest, and had died in the 
 hospital in the same ward in which I had lain 
 ill. The wife and the daughter had come to 
 say good-bye to him, and both had cried bitterly. 
 Seeing me, the little girl blushed, whispered some- 
 thing to her mother, and she immediately stopped 
 and took out of her bundle a quarter of a kopeck 
 and gave it to the little girl. The child ran after 
 me and called out, ' Unfortunate ! For the sake 
 of Christ, take this copper.' I took the piece of 
 money, and the little girl ran back to her mother 
 quite contented. I kept that little piece of money 
 for a very long time." 
 
 What is most remarkable about the book, are 
 the many and various discoveries which Dostoiev- 
 sky made with regard to human nature: his 
 power of getting behind the gloomy mask of the 
 criminal to the real man underneath, his success 
 
 1 80 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 in detecting the " soul of goodness " in the 
 criminals. Every single one of the characters 
 he describes stands out in startling relief; and 
 if one began to quote these one would never 
 end. Nevertheless I will quote a few instances. 
 
 There is Akim Akimitch, an officer who had 
 earned his sentence thus : He had served in the 
 Caucasus, and been made governor of some small 
 fortress. One night a neighbouring Caucasian 
 prince attacked his fortress and burnt it down, 
 but was defeated and driven back. Akim 
 Akimitch pretended not to know who the culprit 
 was. A month elapsed, and Akim Akimitch 
 asked the prince to come and pay him a visit. 
 He came without suspecting any evil. Akim 
 Akimitch marched out his troops, and in their 
 presence told him it was exceedingly wrong to 
 burn down fortresses ; and after giving him 
 minute directions as to what the behaviour of a 
 peaceful prince should be, shot him dead on the 
 spot, and reported the case to his superiors. He 
 was tried and condemned to death, but his 
 sentence was commuted to twelve years' hard 
 labour. Akim Akimitch had thus once in his 
 life acted according to his own judgment, and the 
 result had been penal servitude. He had not 
 common sense enough to see where he had been 
 guilty, but he came to the conclusion that he 
 never under any circumstances ought to judge for 
 
 i8i 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 himself. He thenceforth renounced all initiative 
 of any kind or sort, and made himself into 
 a machine. He was uneducated, extremely 
 accurate, and the soul of honesty ; very clever 
 with his fingers, he was by turn carpenter, boot- 
 maker, shoemaker, gilder, and there was no trade 
 which he could not learn. Akim Akimitch 
 arranged his life in so methodical a manner in 
 every detail, with such pedantic accuracy, that at 
 first he almost drove Dostoievsky mad, although 
 Akim Akimitch was kindness itself to him, and 
 helped him in every possible way during the first 
 days of his imprisonment. Akim Akimitch ap- 
 peared to be absolutely indifferent as to whether 
 he was in prison or not. He arranged everything 
 as though he were to stay there for the rest of his 
 life ; everything, from his pillow upwards, was 
 arranged as though no change could possibly 
 occur to him. At first Dostoievsky found the 
 ways of this automaton a severe trial, but he 
 afterwards became entirely reconciled to him. 
 
 Then there was Orlov, one of the more desper- 
 ate criminals. He was a soldier who had deserted. 
 He was of small stature and slight build, but he 
 was absolutely devoid of any sort of fear. 
 Dostoievsky says that never in his life had he 
 met with such a strong, such an iron character as 
 this man had. There was, in this man, a com- 
 plete triumph of the spirit over the flesh. He 
 
 183 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 could bear any amount of physical punishment 
 with supreme indifference. He was consumed 
 with boundless energy, a thirst for action, for 
 revenge, and for the accomplishment of the aim 
 which he set before him. He looked down on 
 everybody in prison. Dostoievsky says he doubts 
 whether there was any one in the world who could 
 have influenced this man by his authority. He 
 had a calm outlook on the world, as though there 
 existed nothing that could astonish him ; and 
 although he knew that the other convicts looked 
 up to him with respect, there was no trace of 
 swagger about him : he was not at all stupid, and 
 terribly frank, although not talkative. Dostoievsky 
 would ask him about his adventures. He did not 
 much like talking about them, but he always 
 answered frankly. When once he understood, 
 however, that Dostoievsky was trying to find out 
 whether he felt any pangs of conscience or 
 remorse for what he had done, he looked at him 
 with a lofty and utter contempt, as though he 
 suddenly had to deal with some stupid little boy 
 who could not reason like grown-up people. 
 There was even an expression of pity in his face, 
 and after a minute or two he burst out in the 
 simplest and heartiest laugh, without a trace of 
 irony, and Dostoievsky was convinced that when 
 left to himself he must have laughed again time 
 after time, so comic did the thought appear to him. 
 
 183 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 One of the most sympathetic characters Dostoi- 
 evsky describes is a young Tartar called Alei, 
 who was not more than twenty-two years old. 
 He had an open, clever, and even beautiful face, 
 and a good-natured and naive expression which 
 won your heart at once. His smile was so con- 
 fiding, so childlike and simple, his big black eyes 
 so soft and kind, that it was a consolation merely 
 to look at him. He was in prison for having 
 taken part in an expedition made by his brothers 
 against a rich Armenian merchant whom they 
 had robbed. He retained his softness of heart 
 and simplicity and his strict honesty all the time 
 he was in prison ; he never quarrelled, although he 
 knew quite well how to stand up for himself, and 
 everybody liked him. " I consider Alei," writes 
 Dostoievsky, " as being far from an ordinary 
 personality, and I count my acquaintance with 
 him as one of the most valuable events of my 
 life. There are characters so beautiful by nature, 
 so near to God, that even the very thought that 
 they may some day change for the worse seems 
 impossible. As far as they are concerned you 
 feel absolutely secure, and I now feel secure for 
 Alei. Where is he now ? " 
 
 I cannot help quoting two incidents in Dostoi- 
 evsky's prison life which seem to me to throw 
 light on the characteristics of the people with whom 
 he mixed, and their manner of behaviour; the first 
 184 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 is a story of how a young soldier called Sirotkin 
 came to be a convict. Here is the story which 
 Dostoievsky gives us in the man's own words : 
 
 " My mother loved me very much. When I 
 became a recruit, I have since heard, she lay 
 down on her bed and never rose again. As a 
 recruit I found life bitter. The colonel did not 
 like me, and punished me for everything. And 
 what for ? I was obedient, orderly, I never 
 drank wine, I never borrowed, and that, Alexander 
 Petrovitch, is a bad business, when a man 
 borrows. All round me were such hard hearts, 
 there was no place where one could have a good 
 cry. Sometimes I would creep into a corner and 
 cry a little there. Once I was standing on guard 
 as a sentry ; it was night. The wind was blowing, 
 it was autumn, and so dark you could see nothing. 
 And I was so miserable, so miserable ! I took my 
 gun, unscrewed the bayonet, and laid it on the 
 ground ; then I pulled off my right boot, put 
 the muzzle of the barrel to my heart, leaned 
 heavily on it and pulled the trigger with my big 
 toe. It was a miss-fire. I examined the gun, 
 cleaned the barrel, put in another cartridge and 
 again pressed it to my breast. Again a miss-fire. 
 I put on my boot again, fixed the bayonet, 
 shouldered my gun, and walked up and down in 
 silence ; and I settled that whatever might happen '^ 
 I would get out of being a recruit. Half an hour 
 
 185 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 later the colonel rode by, at the head of the 
 patrol, right past me. 
 
 " 'Is that the way to stand on guard ? ' he said. 
 
 " I took the gun in my hand and speared him 
 with the bayonet right up to the muzzle of the 
 gun. I was severely flogged, and was sent here 
 for life." 
 
 The second story is about a man who " ex- 
 changed " his sentence. It happened thus : A 
 party of exiles were going to Siberia. Some 
 were going to prison, some were merely exiled ; 
 some were going to work in factories, but all 
 were going together. They stopped somewhere 
 on the way in the Government of Perm. Among 
 these exiles there was a man called Mikhailov, 
 who was condemned to a life sentence for murder. 
 He was a cunning fellow, and made up his mind 
 to exchange his sentence. He comes across a 
 simple fellow called Shushilov, who was merely 
 condemned to a few years' transportation, that is 
 to say, he had to live in Siberia and not in 
 European Russia for a few years. This latter 
 man was naive, ignorant, and, moreover, had no 
 money of his own. Mikhailov made friends 
 with him and finally made him drunk, and then 
 proposed to him an exchange of sentences. 
 Mikhailov said : " It is true that I am going to 
 prison, but I am going to some special depart- 
 ment" which he explained was a particular favour, 
 i86 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 as it was a kind of first class. Shushilov, under 
 the influence of drink, and being simple-minded, 
 was full of gratitude for the offer, and Mikhailov 
 taking advantage of his simplicity bought his 
 name from him for a red shirt and a silver rouble, 
 which he gave him on the spot, before witnesses. 
 On the following day Shushilov spent the silver 
 rouble and sold the red shirt for drink also, but 
 as soon as he became sober again he regretted 
 the bargain. Then Mikhailov said to him : " If 
 you regret the bargain give me back my money." 
 This he could not do ; it was impossible for him 
 to raise a rouble. At the next etape at which 
 they stopped, when their names were called and 
 the officer called out Mikhailov, Shushilov answered 
 and Mikhailov answered to Shushilov's name, and 
 the result was that when they left Tobolsk, 
 Mikhailov was sent somewhere to spend a few 
 years in exile, and Shushilov became a " lifer " ; 
 and the special department which the other man 
 talked of as a kind of superior class, turned out 
 to be the department reserved for the most 
 desperate criminals of all, those who had no 
 chance of ever leaving prison, and who were most 
 strictly watched and guarded. It was no good 
 complaining ; there was no means of rectifying 
 the mistake. There were no witnesses. Had 
 there been witnesses they would have perjured 
 themselves. And so Shushilov, who had done 
 187 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 nothing at all, received the severest sentence the 
 Russian Government had power to inflict, whereas 
 the other man, a desperate criminal, merely en- 
 joyed a few years' change of air in the country. 
 The most remarkable thing about this story is 
 this : Dostoievsky tells us that tlie convicts 
 despised Shushilov, not because he had exchanged 
 his sentence, but because he had made so bad a 
 bargain, and had only got a red shirt and a silver 
 rouble. Had he exchanged it for two or three 
 shirts and two or three roubles, they would have 
 thought it quite natural. 
 
 The whole book is crammed with such stories, 
 each one of which throws a flood of light on the 
 character of the Russian people. 
 
 These Letters from a Dead House are trans- 
 lated into French, and a good English translation 
 of them by Marie von Thilo was published by 
 Messrs. Longmans in 1881. But it is now, 
 I believe, out of print. Yet if there is one 
 foreign book in the whole world which deserves 
 to be well known, it is this one. Not only 
 because it throws more light on the Russian 
 people than any other book which has ever been 
 written, but also because it tells in the simplest 
 possible way illuminating things about prisoners 
 and prison life. It is a book which should be 
 read by all legislators ; it is true that the prison 
 life it describes is now obsolete. It deals with 
 188 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 convict life in the fifties, when everything was far 
 more antiquated, brutal and severe than it is now. 
 Yet although prisoners had to run the gauntlet 
 between a regiment of soldiers, and were some- 
 times beaten nearly to death, in spite of the 
 squalor of the prison and in spite of the dreari- 
 ness and anguish inseparable from their lives, the 
 life of the prisoners stands out in a positively 
 favourable contrast to that which is led by our 
 convicts in what Mr. Chesterton calls our " clean 
 and cruel prisons," where our prisoners pick 
 oakum to-day in solitary confinement. The proof 
 of this is that Dostoievsky was able to write one 
 of the most beautiful studies of human nature that 
 have ever been written out of his prison experi- 
 ence. In the first place, the prisoners enjoyed 
 human fellowship. They all had tobacco ; they 
 played cards ; they could receive alms, and, 
 though this was more difficult, they could get 
 wine. There were no rules forbidding them to 
 speak. Each prisoner had an occupation of his 
 own, a hobby, a trade, in which he occupied all 
 his leisure time. Had it not been for this, 
 Dostoievsky says, the prisoners would have gone 
 mad. One wonders what they would think of 
 an English prison, where the prisoners are not 
 even allowed to speak to each other. Such a 
 regime was and is and probably always will be 
 perfectly unthinkable to a Russian mind. Indeed 
 189 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 this point reminds me of a startling phrase of a 
 Russian revolutionary, who had experiences of 
 Russian prisons. He was a member of the second 
 Russian Duma ; he had spent many years in 
 prison in Russia. In the winter of 1906 there 
 was a socialistic conference in London which he 
 attended. When he returned to Russia he was 
 asked by his fellow-politicians to lecture on the 
 liberty of English institutions. He refused to do 
 so. " A Russian," he said, " is freer in prison 
 than an Englishman is at large." 
 
 The secret of the merit of this extraordinary 
 book is also the secret of the unique quality which 
 we find in all Dostoievsky's fiction. It is this : 
 Dostoievsky faces the truth ; he faces what is bad, 
 what is worst, what is most revolting in human 
 nature ; he does not put on blinkers and deny 
 the existence of evil, like many English writers, 
 and he does not, like Zola, indulge in filthy 
 analysis and erect out of his beastly investiga- 
 tions a pseudo-scientific theory based on the 
 belief that all human nature is wholly bad. 
 Dostoievsky analyses, not in order to experiment 
 on the patient and to satisfy his own curiosity, 
 but in order to cure and to comfort him. And 
 having faced the evil and recognised it, he pro- 
 ceeds to unearth the good from underneath it ; 
 and he accepts the whole because of the good, 
 and gives thanks for it. He finds God's image 
 190 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 in the worst of the criminals, and shows it to us, 
 and for that reason this book is one of the 
 most important books ever written. Terrible as 
 it is, and sad as it is, no one can read it without 
 feeling better and stronger and more hopeful. 
 For Dostoievsky proves to us — so far from 
 complaining of his lot — that life in the Dead 
 House is not only worth living, but full of 
 unsuspected and unexplored riches, rare pearls of 
 goodness, shining gems of kindness, and secret 
 springs of pity. He leaves prison with something 
 like regret, and he regards his four years' experi- 
 ence there as a special boon of Providence, the 
 captain jewel of his life. He goes out saved for 
 ever from despair, and full of that wisdom more 
 precious than rubies which is to be found in the 
 hearts of children. 
 
 V 
 
 Crime and Punishment 
 
 Crime and Punishment was published in 1866. 
 It is a book which brought Dostoievsky fame and 
 popularity, and by which, in Europe at any rate, 
 he is still best known. It is the greatest tragedy 
 about a murderer that has been written since 
 Macbeth, 
 
 In the chapter on Tolstoy and Tourgeniev, 
 I pointed out that the Russian character could 
 191 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 roughly be divided into two types, which 
 dominate the whole of Russian fiction, the 
 two types being Lucifer, the embodiment of 
 invincible pride, and Ivan DuraJc, the wise fool. 
 This is especially true with regard to Dostoievsky's 
 novels. Nearly all the most important characters 
 in his books represent one or other of these two 
 types. Raskolnikov, the hero of Crime and 
 Punishment, is the embodiment of the Lucifer 
 type, and the whole motive and mainspring of his 
 character is pride. 
 
 Raskolnikov is a Nihilist in the true sense of 
 the word, not a political Nihilist nor an intellectual 
 Nihilist like Tourgeniev's Bazarov, but a moral 
 Nihilist ; that is to say, a man who strives to 
 act without principle and to be unscrupulous, 
 who desires to put himself beyond and above 
 human moral conventions. His idea is that if 
 he can trample on human conventions, he will be 
 a sort of Napoleon. He goes to pawn a jewel 
 at an old woman pawnbroker's, and the idea 
 which is to affect his whole future vaguely takes 
 root in his mind, namely, that an intelligent 
 man, possessed of the fortune of this pawnbroker, 
 could do anything, and that the only necessary 
 step is to suppress this useless and positively 
 harmful old woman. He thus expresses the 
 idea later : 
 
 " I used to put myself this question : If 
 192 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 Napoleon had found himself in my position and had 
 not wherewith to begin his career, and there was 
 neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the passage of the 
 Alps, and if there were, instead of these splendid 
 and monumental episodes, simply some ridiculous 
 old woman, a usurer whom he would have to 
 kill in order to get her money, would he shrink 
 from doing this if there were no other alternative, 
 merely because it would not be a fine deed and 
 because it would be sinful ? Now I tell you that 
 I was possessed by this problem for a long time, 
 and that I felt deeply ashamed when I at last 
 guessed, suddenly as it were, that not only would 
 he not be frightened at the idea, but that the thought 
 that the thing was not important and grandiose 
 enough would not even enter into his head : he 
 would not even understand where the need for 
 hesitation lay ; and if there were no other way 
 open to him, he would kill the woman without 
 further reflection. Well, I ceased reflecting, and I 
 killed her, following the example of my authority." 
 Raskolnikov is obsessed by the idea, just as 
 Macbeth is obsessed by the prophecy of the 
 three witches, and circumstances seem to play 
 the part of Fate in a Greek tragedy, and to 
 lead him against his will to commit a horrible 
 crime. " He is mechanically forced," says 
 Professor Bruckner in his History of Russian 
 Literature^ " into performing the act, as if he had 
 N 193 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 gone too near machinery in motion, had been 
 caught by a bit of his clothing, and cut to 
 pieces." As soon as he has killed the old 
 woman, he is fatally led into committing another 
 crime immediately after the first crime is com- 
 mitted. He thinks that by committing this crime 
 he will have trampled on human conventions, 
 that he will be above and beyond morality, a 
 Napoleon, a Superman. The tragedy of the 
 book consists in his failure, and in his realising 
 that he has failed. Instead of becoming stronger 
 than mankind, he becomes weaker than mankind ; 
 instead of having conquered convention and 
 morality, he is himself vanquished by them. He 
 finds that as soon as the crime is committed the 
 whole of his relation towards the world is changed, 
 and his life becomes a long struggle with himself, 
 a revolt against the moral consequences of his act. 
 His instinct of self-preservation is in conflict with 
 the horror of what he has done and the need for 
 confession. Raskolnikov, as I have said, is the 
 embodiment of pride ; pride is the mainspring of 
 his character. He is proud enough to build 
 gigantic conceptions, to foster the ambition of 
 placing himself above and beyond humanity, but 
 his character is not strong enough to bear the 
 load of his ideas. He thinks he has the makings 
 of a great man in him., and in order to prove this 
 to himself he commits a crime that would put an 
 
 194 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 ordinary man beyond the pale of humanity, 
 because he thinks that being an extraordinary 
 man he will remain within the pale of humanity 
 and not suffer. His pride suffers a mortal blow 
 when he finds that he is weak, and that the moral 
 consequences of his act face him at every turn. 
 He fights against this, he strives not to recognise 
 it ; he deliberately seeks the company of detectives ; 
 he discusses murder and murderers with them 
 minutely, and with a recklessness which leads him 
 to the very brink of the precipice, when it would 
 need but a word more for him to betray himself. 
 The examining magistrate, indeed, guesses that 
 he has committed the crime, and plays with 
 him as a cat plays with a mouse, being perfectly 
 certain that in the long-run he will confess of his 
 own accoi'd. The chapters which consist of the 
 duel between these two men are the most poignant 
 in anguish which I have ever read. I have seen 
 two of these scenes acted on the stage, and 
 several people in the audience had hysterics 
 before they were over. At last the moment of 
 expiation comes, though that of regeneration is still 
 far distant. Raskolnikov loves a poor prostitute 
 named Sonia. His act, his murder, has affected 
 his love for Sonia, as it has affected the rest of his 
 life, and has charged it with a sullen despair. 
 Sonia, who loves him as the only man who 
 has never treated her with contempt, sees that he 
 
 195 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 has some great load on his mind, that he is 
 tortured by some hidden secret. She tries in 
 vain to get him to tell her what it is, but at last 
 he comes to her with the intention of telling her, 
 and she reads the speaking secret in his eyes. 
 As soon as she knows, she tells him that he must 
 kiss the earth which he has stained, and confess to 
 the whole world that he has committed murder. 
 Then, she says, God will send him a new life. At 
 first he refuses : he says tha^soci ety is wors e than 
 he, that greater crimes than his are committed 
 every day ; that those who commit them are highly 
 honoured. Sonia speaks of his suffering, and of the 
 torture he will undergo by keeping his dread secret, 
 but he will not yet give in, nor admit that he is 
 not a strong man, that he is really a louse — which 
 is the name he gives to all human beings who are 
 not " Supermen." Sonia says that they must go 
 to exile together, and that by suffering together 
 they will expiate his deed. This is one of 
 Dostoievsky's principal ideas, or rather it is the 
 interpretation and conception of Christianity 
 which you will most frequently meet with among 
 the Russian people, — ^that suffering is good in 
 itself, and especially suffefrng~^trr~«ef»*non with 
 some one else. 
 
 After Raskolnikov has confessed his crime to 
 Sonia, he still hovers round and round the police, 
 like a moth fatally attracted by a candle, and at 
 
 196 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 last he makes open confession, and is condemned 
 to seven years' penal servitude. But although 
 he has been defeated in the battle with his 
 idea, although he has not only failed, but failed 
 miserably, even after he has confessed his crime and 
 is paying the penalty for it in prison,^is pride still 
 survives. When he arrives in prison, it is not the 
 hardships of prison life, it is not the hard labour, 
 the coarse food, the shaven head, the convict's 
 dress, that weigh on his spirit ; nor does he feel 
 remorse for his crime. But here once more in 
 prison he begins to criticise and reflect on his 
 former actions, and finds them neither foolish nor 
 horrible as he did before. " In what," he thinks, 
 " was my conception stupider than many con- 
 ceptions and theories which are current in the 
 world ? One need only look at the matter from an 
 independent standpoint, and with a point-of-view 
 unbiased by conventional ideas, and the idea 
 will not seem so strange. And why does my 
 deed," he thought to himself, " appear so ugly ? In 
 what way was it an evil deed ? My conscience is 
 at rest. Naturally I committed a criminal offence, 
 I broke the letter of the law and I shed blood. 
 Well, take my head in return for the letter of the 
 law and make an end of it ! Of course, even 
 many of those men who have benefited mankind 
 and who were never satiated with power, after they 
 had seized it for themselves, ought to have been 
 197 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 executed as soon as they had taken their first 
 step, but these people succeeded in taking further 
 steps, and therefore they are justified : I did not 
 succeed, and therefore perhaps I had not the right 
 to take the first step." 
 
 Raskolnikov accordingly considered that his 
 crime consisted solely in this, that he was not 
 siion^enough to carry it through to the end, and 
 not strong enough not to confess it. He also tor- 
 tured himself witli another tliought : why did he 
 not kill himself as soon as he recognised the truth ? 
 Why did he prefer the weakness of confession ? 
 
 The other convicts in the prison disliked him, 
 distrusted him, and ended by hating him. 
 Dostoievsky's own experience of convict life 
 enables him in a short space to give us a striking 
 picture of Raskolnikov's relations with the other 
 convicts. He gradually becomes aware of the 
 vast gulf which there is between him and the 
 others. The class barrier which rises between 
 him and them, is more difficult to break down 
 than that caused by a difference in nation- 
 ality. At the same time, he noticed that in the 
 prison there were political prisoners, Poles, for 
 instance, and officers, who looked down on the 
 other convicts as though they were insects, 
 ciphers of ignorance, and despised them accord- 
 ingly. But he is unable to do this, he cannot 
 help seeing that these ' ciphers ' are far cleverer 
 198 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 in many cases than the men who look down on 
 them. On the other hand, he is astonished that 
 they all love Sonia, who has followed him to 
 the penal settlement where his prison is, and 
 lives in the town. The convicts rarely see her, 
 meeting her only from time to time at their work ; 
 and yet they adore her, because she has followed 
 Raskolnikov. The hatred of the other convicts 
 against him grows so strong that one day at 
 Easter, when he goes to church with them, they 
 turn on him and say : " You have no right to 
 go to church : you do not believe in God, you are 
 an atheist, you ought to be killed." He had 
 never spoken with them of God or of religion, 
 and yet they wished to kill him as an atheist. 
 He only narrowly escaped being killed by the 
 timely interference of a sentry. To the truth of 
 this incident I can testify by personal experience, 
 as I have heard Russian peasants and soldiers 
 say that such and such a man was religious and 
 that such and such a man was " godless," although 
 these men had never mentioned religion to them ; 
 and they were always right. 
 
 Then Raskolnikov fell ill and lay for some 
 time in delirium in the hospital. After his 
 recovery he learns that Sonia has fallen ill 
 herself, and has not been near the prison, 
 and a great sadness comes over him. At last 
 she recovers, and he meets her one day at his 
 199 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 work. Something melts in his heart, he knows 
 not how or why ; he falls at her feet and cries ; 
 and from that moment a new life begins for him. 
 His despair has rolled away like a cloud : his 
 heart has risen as though from the dead. 
 
 Crime and Punishnent, the best known of all 
 Dostoievsky's works, is certainly the most power- 
 ful. The anguish of mind which Raskolnikov 
 goes through tortures the reader. Dostoievsky 
 seems to have touched the extreme limit of 
 suffering which the human soul can experience 
 when it descends into hell. At the same time, he 
 never seems to be gloating over the suffering, but, 
 on the contrary, to be revealing the agonies of the 
 human spirit in order to pour balm upon them. 
 There is an episode earlier in the story, when 
 Raskolnikov kneels down before Sonia, and speaks 
 words which might be taken as the motto of this 
 book, and indeed of nearly all of Dostoievsky's 
 books : " It is not before you that I am kneeling, 
 but before all the suffering of mankind." 
 
 It is in this book more than in any of his other 
 books that one has the feeling that Dostoievsky 
 is kneeling down before the great agonies that 
 the human soul can endure : and in doing this, he 
 teaches us how to endure and how to hope. 
 Apart from the astounding analysis to be found 
 in the book, and the terrible network of details 
 of which the conflict between Raskolnikov and 
 
 200 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 his obsession consists : apart from the duel of 
 tongues between the examining magistrate, who is 
 determined that the criminal shall be condemned, 
 not on account of any circumstantial evidence, 
 but by his own confession, and who drives the 
 criminal to confession by playing upon his ob- 
 session : apart from all this main action, there is a 
 wealth of minor characters, episodes and scenes, 
 all of which are indispensable to the main thread 
 of tragedy which runs through the whole. The 
 book, as has been pointed out, did not receive 
 anything like its full recognition in 1866 when it 
 appeared, and now, in 1909, it stands higher in 
 the estimation of all those who are qualified to 
 judge it than it did then. This can be said of 
 very few books published in Europe in the 
 sixties. For all the so-called psychological and 
 analytical novels which have been published since 
 1 866 in France and in England not only seem pale 
 and lifeless compared with Dostoievsky's fierce 
 revelations, but not one of them has a drop of his 
 large humanity, or a breath of his fragrant good- 
 ness. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Idiot 
 
 Although Crime and Punishment is the most 
 powerful, and probably the most popular of 
 Dostoievsky's books, I do not think it is the most 
 201 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 characteristic ; that is to say, I do not think it 
 possesses in so high a degree those qualities 
 which are pecuHar to his genius. More char- 
 acteristic still is The Idiot, in the main character 
 of which the very soul and spirit of Dostoievsky 
 breathe and live. The hero of The Idiot, Prince 
 Mwishkin, is the type of Ivan Durak, the simple 
 fool who by his simplicity outwits the wisdom of 
 the wise. 
 
 We make his acquaintance in a third-class 
 railway carriage of the train which is arriving at 
 St. Petersburg from Warsaw. He is a young 
 man about twenty-six years old, with thick fair 
 hair, sloping shoulders, and a very slight fair 
 beard ; his eyes are large, light-blue, and pene- 
 trating ; in his expression there is something 
 tranquil but burdensome, something of that 
 strange look which enables physicians to recog- 
 nise at a first glance a victim of the falling 
 sickness. In his hand he is carrying a bundle 
 made of old foulaj'd, which is his whole luggage. 
 A fellow-traveller enters into conversation with 
 him. He answers with unusual alacrity. Being 
 asked whether he has been absent long, he says 
 that it is over four years since he was in Russia, 
 that he was sent abroad on account of his health 
 — on account of some strange nervous illness 
 like St. Vitus' dance. As he listens, his fellow- 
 traveller laughs several times, and especially 
 
 202 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 when to the question, " Did they cure you ? " the 
 fair-haired man answers, " No, they did not cure 
 me." The dark-haired man is Rogozhin, a 
 merchant. These two characters are the two 
 figures round which the drama of the book 
 centres and is played. 
 
 The purpose of Prince Mwishkin in coming to 
 St. Petersburg is to find a distant relation of his, 
 the wife of a General Epanchin. He has already 
 written to her from Switzerland, but has received 
 no answer. He presents himself at the general's 
 house with his bundle. A man in livery opens 
 the door and regards him with suspicion. At 
 last, after he has explained clearly and at some 
 length that he is Prince Mwishkin, and that 
 it is necessary for him to see the general on 
 important business, the servant leads him into 
 a small front-hall into which the anteroom 
 (where guests are received) of the general's 
 study opens. He delivers him into the hands 
 of another servant who is dressed in black. 
 This man tells the prince to wait in the ante- 
 room and to leave his bundle in the front- 
 hall. He sits down in his armchair and looks 
 with severe astonishment at the prince, who, 
 instead of taking the suggestion, sits down 
 beside him on a chair, with his bundle in his 
 hands. 
 
 " If you will allow me," said the prince, " I 
 203 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 would rather wait here with you. What should 
 I do there alone ? " 
 
 " The hall," answered the servant, " is not the 
 place for you, because you are a visitor, or in other 
 words, a guest. You wish to see the general him- 
 self?" The servant obviously could not reconcile 
 himself with the idea of showing in such a visitor, 
 and decided to question him further. 
 
 " Yes, I have come on business," began the 
 prince. 
 
 " I do not ask you what is your business. My 
 business is simply to announce you. But without 
 asking the secretary I said I would not announce 
 you." The suspicions of the servant contin- 
 ually seemed to increase. The prince was so 
 unlike the ordinary run of everyday visitors. 
 " . . . You are, so to speak, from abroad ? " asked 
 the servant at last, and hesitated as if he wished 
 to say, " You are really Prince Mwishkin ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have this moment come from the train. 
 I think that you wished to ask me whether I am 
 really Prince Mwishkin, and that you did not ask 
 me out of politeness." 
 
 " H'm 1 " murmured the astonished servant. 
 
 " I assure you that I was not telling lies, and 
 that you will not get into trouble on account of me. 
 That I am dressed as I am and carrying a bundle 
 like this is not astonishing, for at the present 
 moment my circumstances are not flourishing." 
 204 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 " H'm ! I am not afraid of that. You see I am 
 obliged to announce you, and the secretary will 
 come to see you unless ... the matter is like 
 this : You have not come to beg from the general, 
 may I be so bold as to ask ? " 
 
 " Oh no, you may rest assured of that. I have 
 come on other business." 
 
 " Pardon me. Please wait for the secretary ; 
 he is busy . . ." 
 
 "Very well. If I shall have to wait long I 
 should like to ask you whether I might smoke. 
 I have a pipe and some tobacco." 
 
 " Smoke ! " The servant looked at him with 
 contempt, as if he could not believe his ears. 
 " Smoke ? No, you cannot smoke here. And 
 what is more, you should be ashamed of thinking 
 of such a thing. Well, this is queer ! " 
 
 " I did not mean in this room, but I would go 
 somewhere if you would show me, because I am 
 accustomed to it, and I have not smoked now for 
 three hours. But as you like." 
 
 " Now, how shall I announce you ? " murmured 
 the servant as though almost unwillingly to 
 himself. " In the first place you ought not to be 
 here, but in the anteroom, because you are a 
 visitor, that is to say, a guest, and I am re- 
 sponsible. Have you come to live here ? " he 
 asked, looking again at the prince's bundle, which 
 evidently disturbed him. 
 
 20$ 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 " No, I don't think so ; even if they invited me, 
 I should not stay. I have simply come to make 
 acquaintance, nothing more." 
 
 " How do you mean, to make acquaintance ? " 
 the servant asked, with trebled suspicion and 
 astonishment. " You said at first that you had 
 come on business." 
 
 " Well, it's not exactly business ; that is to say, 
 if you like, it is business, — it is only to ask 
 advice. But the chief thing is that I have come 
 to introduce myself, because I and the general's 
 wife are both descendants from the Mwishkins, 
 and besides myself there are no Mwishkins 
 left." 
 
 " So, what's more you are a relation ! " said 
 the frightened servant. 
 
 " No, not exactly a relation, — that is to say, if 
 you go back far enough, we are, of course, relations ; 
 but so far back that it doesn't count ! I wrote to 
 the general's wife a letter from abroad, but she 
 did not answer me. All the same, I considered 
 it necessary to make her acquaintance as soon as 
 I arrived. I am explaining all this to you so 
 that you should not have any doubts, because I 
 see that you are disquieted. Announce that it is 
 Prince Mwishkin, and that will be enough to 
 explain the object of my visit. If they will see 
 me, all will be well. If they do not, very likely 
 all will be well too. But I don't think they 
 206 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 can help receiving me, because the general's wife 
 will naturally wish to see the oldest, indeed the only 
 representative of her family ; and she is most 
 particular about keeping up relations with her 
 family, as I have heard." 
 
 " The conversation of the prince seemed as 
 simple as possible, but the simpler it was, the 
 more absurd it became under the circumstances ; 
 and the experienced footman could not help feel- 
 ing something which was perfectly right between 
 man and man, and utterly wrong between man and 
 servant. Servants are generally far cleverer than 
 their masters think, and this one thought that 
 two things might be possible ; either the prince 
 had come to ask for money, or that he was simply 
 a fool without ambition, — because an ambitious 
 prince would not remain in the front-hall talking 
 of his affairs with a footman, and would he not 
 probably be responsible and to blame in either 
 the one case or the other ? " 
 
 I have quoted this episode, which occurs in 
 the second chapter of the book, in full, because 
 in it the whole character of the prince is revealed. 
 He is the wise fool. He suffers from epilepsy, 
 and this " sacred " illness which has fallen on him 
 has destroyed all those parts of the intellect out 
 of which our faults grow, such as irony, arrogance 
 and egoism. He is absolutely simple. He has 
 the brains of a man, the tenderness of a woman 
 207 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 and the heart of a child. He knows nothing of 
 any barriers, either of class or character. He is 
 the same and absolutely himself with every one 
 he meets. And yet his unsuspicious naivete, his 
 untarnished sincerity and simplicity, are combined 
 with penetrating intuition, so that he can read 
 other people's minds like a book. 
 
 The general receives him, and he is just as 
 frank and simple with the general as he has been 
 with the servant. He is entirely without means, 
 and has nothing in the world save his little bundle. 
 The general inquires whether his handwriting is 
 good, and resolves to get him some secretarial 
 work ; he gives him 2 5 roubles, and arranges 
 that the prince shall live in his secretary's house. 
 The general makes the prince stay for luncheon, 
 and introduces him to his family. The general's 
 wife is a charming, rather childish person, and 
 she has three daughters, Alexandra, Adelaide 
 and Aglaia. The prince astonishes them very 
 much by his simplicity. They cannot quite 
 understand at first whether he is a child or 
 a knave, but his simplicity conquers them. After 
 they have talked of various matters, his life in 
 Switzerland, the experiences of a man con- 
 demned to death, which had been related to him 
 and which I have already quoted, an execution 
 which he had witnessed, one of the girls asks 
 him if he was ever in love. 
 208 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 " No," he says, " I have never been in love . . , 
 I was happy otherwise." 
 
 " How was that ? " they ask. 
 
 Then he relates the following : " Where I was 
 living they were all children, and I spent all my 
 time with the children, and only with them. They 
 were the children of the village ; they all went to 
 school. I never taught them, there was a school- 
 master for that. ... I perhaps did teach them 
 too, in a way, for I was more with them, and all 
 the four years that I spent there went in this w^ay. 
 I had need of nothing else. I told them every- 
 thing, I kept nothing secret from them. Their 
 fathers and relations were angry with me because 
 at last the children could not do without me, and 
 always came round me in crowds, and the school- 
 master in the end became my greatest enemy. 
 1 made many enemies there, all on account of 
 the children. And what were they afraid of? 
 You can tell a child everything — everything. I 
 have always been struck by the thought of how 
 ignorant grown-up people are of children, how 
 ignorant even fathers and mothers are of their 
 own children. You should conceal nothing from 
 children under the pretext that they are small, 
 and that it is too soon for them to know. That 
 is a sad, an unhappy thought. And how well 
 children themselves understand that their fathers 
 are thinking they are too small and do not 
 o 209 
 
LANDxMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 understand anything — when they really under- 
 stand everything. Grown-up people do not 
 understand that a child even in the most diffi- 
 cult matter can give extremely important advice. 
 Heavens ! when one of these lovely little birds 
 looks up at you, confiding and happy, it is a 
 shame to deceive it. I call them birds because 
 there is nothing better than birds in the world. 
 To go on with my story, the people in the village 
 were most angry with me because of one thing : 
 the schoolmaster simply envied me. At first he 
 shook his head, and wondered how the children 
 understood everything I told them, and almost 
 nothing of what he told them. Then he began 
 to laugh at me when I said to him that we could 
 neither of us teach them anything, but that they 
 could teach us. And how could he envy me and 
 slander me when he himself lived with children ? 
 Children heal the soul." 
 
 Into the character of the hero of this book 
 Dostoievsky has put all the sweetness of his 
 nature, all his sympathy with the unfortunate, 
 all his pity for the sick, all his understanding 
 and love of children. The character of Prince 
 Mwishkin reflects all that is best in Dostoievsky. 
 He is a portrait not of what Dostoievsky was, 
 but of what the author would like to have been. 
 It must not for a moment be thought that he 
 magined that he fulfilled this ideal : he was well 
 
 2IO 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 aware of his faults : of the sudden outbursts and 
 the seething deeps of his passionate nature ; his 
 capacity for rage, hatred, jealousy and envy ; 
 none the less Dostoievsky could not possibly 
 have created the character of Prince Mwishkin, 
 the Idiot, had he not been made of nauch the 
 same substance himself. 
 
 All through Dostoievsky's books, whenever 
 children are mentioned or appear, the pages 
 breathe a kind of freshness and fragrance like 
 that of lilies-of-the-valley. Whatever he says 
 about children or whatever he makes them say, 
 has the rare accent of truth. The smile of 
 children lights up the dark pages of his books, 
 like spring flowers growing at the edge of a 
 dark abyss. 
 
 In strong contrast to the character of the 
 prince is the merchant Rogozhin. He is the 
 incarnation of the second type, that of the 
 obdurate spirit, which I have already said 
 dominates Dostoievsky's novels. He is, perhaps, 
 less proud than Raskolnikov, but he is far 
 stronger, more passionate and more vehement. 
 His imperious and unfettered nature is handi- 
 capped by no weakness of nerves, no sapping 
 self-analysis. He is undisciplined and centrifugal. 
 He is not " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
 thought," but it is his passions and not his ideas 
 which are too great for the vessel that contains 
 
 211 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 them. Rogozhin loves Nastasia, a hetaira, who 
 has likewise unbridled passions and impulses. 
 He loves her with all the strength of his violent 
 and undisciplined nature, and he is tormented by 
 jealousy because she does not love him, although 
 she cannot help submitting to the influence of 
 his imperious personality. The jealous poison 
 in him takes so complete a possession of his 
 body and soul that he ultimately kills Nastasia 
 almost immediately after she has married him 
 and given herself to him, because he feels that 
 she is never his own, least of all at the moment 
 when she abandons herself to him for ever. So 
 great is his passion, that this woman, even while 
 hating him, cannot resist going to him against 
 her will, knowing well that he will kill her. 
 
 The description of the night that follows this 
 murder, when Rogozhin talks all night with the 
 prince in front of the bed where Nastasia is lying 
 dead, is by its absence of melodrama and its 
 simplicity perhaps the most icily terrible piece of 
 writing that Dostoievsky ever penned. The reason 
 why Nastasia does not love Rogozhin is that she 
 loves Prince Mwishkin, the Idiot, and so does the 
 third daughter of the general, Aglaia, although he 
 gives them nothing but pity, and never makes love 
 to them. And here we come to the root-idea and 
 the kernel of the book, which is the influence 
 which the Idiot exercises on everybody with 
 
 212 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 whom he comes in contact. Dostoievsky places 
 him in a nest of rascals, scoundrels and 
 villains, a world of usurers, liars and thieves, 
 interested, worldly, ambitious and shady. He not 
 only passes unscathed through all this den of evil, 
 but the most deadly weapons of the wicked, their 
 astuteness, their cunning and their fraud, are 
 utterly powerless against his very simplicity, and 
 there is not one of these people, however crusted 
 with worldliness, however sordid or bad, who can 
 evade his magical influence. The women at first 
 laugh at him ; but in the end, as I have already 
 said, he becomes a cardinal factor in the life of 
 both Nastasia the unbridled and passionate woman, 
 and Aglaia the innocent and intelligent girl : so 
 much so that they end by joining in a battle of 
 wild jealousy over him, although he himself is 
 naively unconscious of the cause of their dispute. 
 
 This book, more than any other, reveals to us 
 the methods and the art of Dostoievsky. This 
 method and this art are not unlike those of 
 Charlotte Bronte. The setting of the picture, 
 the accessories, are fantastic, sometimes to the 
 verge of impossibility, and this no more matters 
 than the fantastic setting of Jmie Eyre matters. 
 All we see and all we feel is the white flame of 
 light that burns throughout the book. We no 
 more care whether a man like General Epanchin 
 could or could not have existed, or whether the 
 213 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 circumstances of his life are possible or impossible, 
 than we care whether the friends of Mr. Rochester 
 are possible or impossible. Such things seem 
 utterly trivial in this book, where at every moment 
 we are allowed to look deep down into the very 
 depths of human nature, to look as it were on the 
 spirit of man and woman naked and unashamed. 
 For though the setting may be fantastic if not 
 impossible, though we may never have seen such 
 people in our lives, they are truer than life in a 
 way : we seem to see right inside every one of 
 these characters as though they had been stripped 
 of everything which was false and artificial about 
 them, as though they were left with nothing but 
 their bared souls, as they will be at the Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 With regard to the artistic construction of the 
 book, the method is the same as that of most of 
 Dostoievsky's books. In nearly all his works the 
 book begins just before a catastrophe and occupies 
 the space of a few days. And yet the book is 
 very long. It is entirely taken up by conver- 
 sation and explanation of the conversation. There 
 are no descriptions of nature ; everything is in a 
 dialogue. Directly one character speaks we hear 
 the tone of his voice. There are no " stage direc- 
 tions." We are not told that so and so is such 
 and such a person, we feel it and recognise it 
 from the very first word he says. On the other 
 214 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 hand, there is a great deal of analysis, but it is 
 never of an unnecessary kind. Dostoievsky never 
 nudges our elbow, never points out to us things 
 which we know already, but he illuminates with 
 a strong searchlight the deeps of the sombre 
 and tortuous souls of his characters, by showing 
 us what they are themselves thinking, but not 
 what he thinks of them. His analysis resembles 
 the Greek chorus, and his books resemble Greek 
 tragedies in the making, rich ore mingled with 
 dark dross, granite and marble, the stuff out of 
 which ^schylus could have hewn another Aga- 
 memnon, or Shakespeare have written another 
 King Lear. 
 
 The Idiot may not be the most artistic of all 
 his books, in the sense that it is not centralised 
 and is often diffuse, which is not the case with 
 Crime and Punishment, but it is perhaps the most 
 characteristic, the most personal, for none but 
 Dostoievsky could have invented and caused to 
 live such a character as Prince Mwishkin, and 
 made him positively radiate goodness and love. 
 
 VII 
 
 The Possessed 
 
 The Possessed, or Devils, which is the literal 
 translation of the Russian title, is perhaps inferior 
 215 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 to Dostoievsky's other work as a whole, but in 
 one sense it is the most interesting book which 
 he ever wrote. There are two reasons for this : 
 in the first place, his qualities and his defects as a 
 writer are seen in this book intensified, under a 
 magnifying glass as it were, at their extremes, so 
 that it both gives you an idea of the furthest 
 range of his powers, and shows you most clearly 
 the limitations of his genius. Stevenson points 
 out somewhere that this is the case with Victor 
 Hugo's least successful novels. In the second 
 place, the book was far in advance of its time. 
 In it Dostoievsky shows that he possessed " a 
 prophetic soul." 
 
 The book deals with the Nihilists who played a 
 prominent part in the sixties. The explanation of 
 the title is to be found in a quotation from the 
 8th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 " And there was there an herd of many swine 
 feeding on the mountain ; and they besought Him 
 that He would suffer them to enter into them. 
 And He suffered them. Then went the devils out 
 of the man and entered into the swine : and the 
 herd ran violently down a steep place into the 
 lake and were choked. When they that fed them 
 saw what was done, they fled, and went and told 
 it in the city and in the country. 
 
 " Then they went out to see what was done ; 
 and came to Jesus, and found the man out of 
 216 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet 
 of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind ; and they 
 were afraid. They also which saw it, told them 
 by what means he that was possessed of the 
 devils, was healed." 
 
 The book, as I have said, undoubtedly reveals 
 Dostoievsky's powers at their highest pitch, in the 
 sense that nowhere in the whole range of his 
 work do we find such isolated scenes of power ; 
 scenes which are, so to speak, white hot with the 
 fire of his soul ; and characters in which he has 
 concentrated the whole daemonic force of his per- 
 sonality, and the whole blinding strength of his 
 insight. On the other hand, it shows us, as I 
 added, more clearly than any other of his 
 books, the nature and the extent of his limitations. 
 It is almost too full of characters and incidents ; 
 the incidents are crowded together in an incred- 
 ibly short space of time, the whole action of the 
 book, which is a remarkably long one, occupying 
 only the space of a few days, while to the descrip- 
 tion of one morning enough space is allotted to 
 make a bulky English novel. Again, the narrative 
 is somewhat disconnected. You can sometimes 
 scarcely see the wood for the trees. Of course, 
 these objections are in a sense hypercritical, 
 because, as far as my experience goes, any one 
 who takes up this book finds it impossible to put 
 it down until he has read it to the very end, so 
 217 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 enthralling is the mere interest of the story, so 
 powerful the grip of the characters. I therefore 
 only suggest these criticisms for those who wish 
 to form an idea of the net result of Dostoievsky's 
 artistic scope and achievement. 
 
 With regard to the further point, the " prophetic 
 soul " which speaks in this book is perhaps that 
 which is its most remarkable quality. The book 
 was some thirty years ahead of its time : ahead 
 of its time in the same way that Wagner's music 
 was ahead of its time, — and this was not only on 
 account of the characters and the state of things 
 which it divined and foreshadowed, but also on 
 account of the ideas and the flashes of philosophy 
 which abound in its pages. When the book was 
 published, it was treated as a gross caricature, and 
 even a few years ago, when Professor Bruckner 
 first published his History of Russian Litera- 
 tm'e^ he talked of this book as being a satire 
 not of Nihilism itself, but of the hangers-on, the 
 camp-followers which accompany every army. 
 " Dostoievsky," he says, " did not paint the heroes 
 but the Falstaffs, the silly adepts, the half and 
 wholly crazed adherents of Nihilism. He was 
 indeed fully within his rights. Of course there 
 were such Nihilists, particularly between 1862 
 and 1869, but there were not only such: even 
 Nechaev, the prototype of Petrushka, impressed 
 us by a steel-like energy and a hatred for the 
 218 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 upper classes which we wholly miss in the wind- 
 bag and intriguer Petrushka." 
 
 There is a certain amount of truth in this 
 criticism. It is true that Dostoievsky certainly 
 painted the Falstafifs and the half-crazy adherents 
 of Nihilism. But I am convinced that the reason 
 he did not paint the heroes was that he did not 
 believe in their existence : he did not believe that 
 the heroes of Nihilism were heroes ; this is plain 
 not only from this book, but from every line which 
 he wrote about the people who played a part in the 
 revolutionary movement in Russia ; and so far 
 from the leading personage in his book being 
 merely a wind-bag, I would say that one is 
 almost more impressed by the steel-like energy of 
 the character, as drawn in this book, than by the 
 sayings and doings of his prototype — or rather 
 his prototypes in real life. The amazing thing 
 is that even if a few years ago real life had not 
 furnished examples of revolutionaries as extreme 
 both in their energy and in their craziness as 
 Dostoievsky paints them, real life has done so in 
 the last four years. Therefore, Dostoievsky not 
 only saw with prophetic divination that should 
 circumstances in Russia ever lead to a general up- 
 heaval, such characters might arise and exercise 
 an influence, but his prophetic insight has actually 
 been justified by the facts. 
 
 As soon as such circumstances arose, as 
 219 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 they did after the Japanese War of 1 904, char- 
 acters such as Dostoievsky depicted immediately 
 came to the front and played a leading part. 
 When M. de Vogiie published his book, La Roman 
 Russe^ in speaking of The Possessed, he said that 
 he had assisted at several of the trials of 
 Anarchists in 1871, and he added that many of 
 the men who came up for trial, and many of the 
 crimes of which they were accused, were identical 
 reproductions of the men and the crimes imagined 
 by the novelist. If this was true when applied 
 to the revolutionaries of 187 i, it is a great deal 
 truer applied to those of 1904—1909. That 
 Dostoievsky believed that this would happen, I 
 think there can be no doubt. Witness the 
 following passage : 
 
 " Chigalev," says the leading character of The 
 Possessed, speaking of one of his revolutionary 
 disciples, a man with long ears, " is a man of 
 genius : a genius in the manner of Fourier, but 
 bolder and cleverer. He has invented ' equality.' 
 In his system, every member of society has an 
 eye on every one else. To tell tales is a duty. 
 The individual belongs to the community and the 
 community belongs to the individual. All are 
 slaves and equal in their bondage. Calumny and 
 assassination can be used in extreme cases, but 
 the most important thing is equality. The first 
 necessity is to lower the level of culture science 
 220 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 and talent. A high scientific level is only 
 accessible to superior intellects, and we don't want 
 superior intellects. Men gifted with high capaci- 
 ties have always seized upon power and become 
 despots. Highly gifted men cannot help being 
 despots, and have always done more harm than 
 good. They must be exiled or executed. 
 Cicero's tongue must be cut out, Copernicus' eyes 
 must be blinded, Shakespeare must be stoned. 
 That is Chigalevism. Slaves must be equal. 
 Without despotism, up to the present time, neither 
 liberty nor equality has existed, but in a herd, 
 equality should reign supreme, — and that is 
 Chigalevism. ... I am all for Chigalevism. 
 Down with instruction and science ! There is 
 enough of it, as it is, to last thousands of years, 
 but we must organise obedience : it is the only 
 thing which is wanting in the world. The desire 
 for culture is an aristocratic desire. As soon as 
 you admit the idea of the family or of love, you 
 will have the desire for personal property. We 
 will annihilate this desire : we will let loose 
 drunkenness, slander, tale-telling, and unheard-of 
 debauchery. We will strangle every genius in his 
 cradle. We will reduce everything to the same 
 denomination, complete equality. ' We have 
 learnt a trade, and we are honest men : we need 
 nothing else.' Such was the answer which some 
 English workman made the other day. The 
 
 221 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 indispensable alone is indispensable. Such will 
 thenceforth be the watchword of the world, but 
 we must have upheavals. We will see to that, 
 we the governing class. The slaves must have 
 leaders. Complete obedience, absolute imperson- 
 ality, but once every thirty years Chigalev will 
 bring about an upheaval, and men will begin to 
 devour each other : always up to a given point, so 
 that we may not be bored. Boredom is an 
 aristocratic sensation, and in Chigalevism there 
 will be no desires. We will reserve for ourselves 
 desire and suffering, and for the slaves there will 
 be Chigalevism. . . . We will begin by ferment- 
 ing disorder ; we will reach the people itself. Do 
 you know that we are already terribly strong ? 
 those who belong to us are not only the men who 
 murder and set fire, who commit injuries after the 
 approved fashion, and who bite : these people are 
 only in the way. I do not understand anything 
 unless there be discipline. I myself am a 
 scoundrel, but I am not a Socialist. Ha, ha ! 
 listen ! I have counted them all : the teacher 
 who laughs with the children whom he teaches, 
 at their God and at their cradle, belongs to us ; 
 the barrister who defends a well-educated assassin 
 by proving that he is more educated than his 
 victims, and that in order to get money he was 
 obliged to kill, belongs to us ; the schoolboy 
 who in order to experience a sharp sensation kills 
 
 222 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 a peasant, belongs to us ; the juries who systema- 
 tically acquit all criminals, belong to us ; the 
 judge who at the tribunal is afraid of not showing 
 himself to be sufficiently liberal, belongs to us ; 
 among the administrators, among the men of 
 letters, a great number belong to us, and they do 
 not know it themselves. On the other hand, 
 the obedience of schoolboys and fools has 
 reached its zenith. Everywhere you see an 
 immeasurable vanity, and bestial, unheard-of 
 appetites. Do you know how much we owe to 
 the theories in vogue at present alone? When I 
 left Russia, Littre's thesis, which likens crime to 
 madness, was the rage. I return, and crime is 
 already no longer considered even as madness : it 
 is considered as common sense itself, almost a duty, 
 at least a noble protest. * Why should not an 
 enlightened man kill if he has need of money ? ' 
 Such is the argument you hear. But that is 
 nothing. The Russian God has ceded his place 
 to drink. The people are drunk, the mothers are 
 drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are 
 empty. Oh, let this generation grow : it is a pity 
 we cannot wait. They would be drunk still. 
 Ah, what a pity that we have no proletariat ! 
 But it will come, it will come. The moment is 
 drawing near." 
 
 In this declaration of revolutionary faith, 
 Dostoievsky has concentrated the whole of an 
 223 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ideal on which thousands of ignorant men in 
 Russia have acted during the last three years. 
 All of the so-called Hooliganism which came 
 about in Russia after the war, which although 
 it has greatly diminished has by no means 
 yet been exterminated by a wholesale system of 
 military court-martials, proceeds from this, and 
 its adepts are conscious or unconscious disciples 
 of this creed. For the proletariat which Dostoi- 
 evsky foresaw is now a living fact, and a great 
 part of it has been saturated with such ideas. 
 Not all of it, of course. I do not for a mo- 
 ment mean to say that every ordinary Russian 
 social-democrat fosters such ideas ; but what 
 I do mean to say is that these ideas exist, and 
 that a great number of men have acted on a 
 similar creed which they have only half digested, 
 and have sunk into ruin, ruining others in doing 
 so, and have ended by being hanged. 
 
 Thus the book, Devils, which, when it 
 appeared in 1871, was thought a piece of gross 
 exaggeration, and which had not been out long 
 before events began to show that it was less 
 exaggerated than it appeared at first sight — has 
 in the last three years, and even in this year of 
 grace, received further justification by events such 
 as the role that Father Gapon played in the 
 revolutionary movement, and the revelations 
 which have been lately made with regard to 
 224 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 Azev and similar characters. Any one who finds 
 difficulty in believing a story such as that which 
 came to light through the Azev revelations, had 
 better read The Possessed. It will throw an 
 illuminating light on the motives that cause such 
 men to act as they do, and the circumstances 
 that produce such men. 
 
 The main idea of the book is to show that the 
 whole strength of what were then the Nihilists 
 and what are now the Revolutionaries, — let us say 
 the Maximalists, — lies, not in lofty dogmas and 
 theories held by a vast and splendidly organised 
 community, but simply in the strength of char- 
 acter of one or two men, and in the peculiar 
 weakness of the common herd. I say the peculiar 
 weakness with intention. It does not follow 
 that the common herd, to which the majority 
 of the revolutionary disciples belong, is neces- 
 sarily altogether weak, but that though the men 
 of whom it is composed may be strong and 
 clever in a thousand ways, they have one peculiar 
 weakness, which is, indeed, a common weakness 
 of the Russian character. But before going 
 into this question, it is advisable first to say 
 that what Dostoievsky shows in his book. The 
 Possessed, is that these Nihilists are almost 
 entirely devoid of ideas ; the organisations 
 round which so many legends gather, consist 
 in reality of only a few local clubs, — in this 
 P 225 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 particular case, of one local club. All the talk 
 of central committees, executive committees, and 
 so forth, existed only in the imagination of the 
 leaders. On the other hand, the character of 
 those few men who were the leaders and who 
 dominated their disciples, was as strong as steel 
 and as cold as ice. And what Dostoievsky 
 shows is how this peculiar strength of the leaders 
 exercised itself on the peculiar weakness of the 
 disciples. Let us now turn to the peculiar nature 
 of this weakness. Dostoievsky explains it at the 
 very beginning of the book. In describing one 
 of the characters, Chatov, who is an unwilling 
 disciple of the Nihilist leaders, he says : 
 
 " He is one of those Russian Idealists whom 
 any strong idea strikes all of a sudden, and on 
 the spot annihilates his will, sometimes for ever. 
 They are never able to react against the idea. 
 They believe in it passionately, and the rest of 
 their life passes as though they were writhing 
 under a stone which was crushing them." 
 
 The leading figure of the book is one Peter 
 Verkhovensky, a political agitator. He is un- 
 scrupulous, ingenious, and plausible in the highest 
 degree, as clever as a fiend, a complete egotist, 
 boundlessly ambitious, untroubled by conscience, 
 and as hard as steel. His prototype was Nachaef, 
 an actual Nihilist. The ambition of this man 
 is to create disorder, and disorder once created, 
 226 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 to seize the authority which must ultimately 
 arise out of any disorder. His means of effecting 
 this is as ingenious as Chichikov's method of 
 disposing of " dead souls " in Gogol's masterpiece. 
 By imagining a central committee, of which he is 
 the representative, he organises a small local 
 committee, consisting of five men called " the 
 Fiver " ; and he persuades his dupes that a net- 
 work of similar small committees exists all over 
 Russia. He aims at getting the local committee 
 entirely into his hands, and making the members 
 of it absolute slaves to his will. His ultimate 
 aim is to create similar committees -all over the 
 country, persuading people in every new place that 
 the network is ready everywhere else, and that they 
 are all working in complete harmony and in absolute 
 obedience to a central committee, which is some- 
 where abroad, and which in reality does not exist. 
 This once accomplished, his idea is to create dis- 
 order among the peasants or the masses, and in the 
 general upheaval to seize the power. It is possible 
 that I am defining his aim too closely, since in 
 the book one only sees his work, so far as one 
 local committee is concerned. But it is clear 
 from his character that he has some big idea 
 at the back of his head. He is not merely 
 dabbling with excitement in a small local sphere, 
 for all the other characters in the book, however 
 much they hate him, are agreed about one thing ; 
 227 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 that in his cold and self-seeking character there 
 lies an element of sheer enthusiasm. The manner 
 in which he creates disciples out of his immediate 
 surroundings, and obtains an unbounded influence 
 over them, is by playing on the peculiar weak- 
 ness which I have already quoted as being the 
 characteristic of Chigalevism. He plays on the 
 one-sidedness of the Russian character ; he plays 
 on the fact that directly one single idea takes 
 possession of the brain of a certain kind of 
 Russian idealist, as in the case of Chatov, or 
 Raskolnikov, for instance, he is no longer able to 
 control it. Peter works on this. He also works 
 on the vanity of his disciples, and on their fear of 
 not being thought advanced enough. 
 
 " The principal strength," he says on one 
 occasion, " the cement which binds everything, 
 is the fear of public opinion, the fear of having an 
 opinion of one's own. It is with just such people 
 that success is possible. I tell you they would 
 throw themselves into the fire if I told them to 
 do so, if I ordered it. I would only have to say 
 that they were bad Liberals. I have been blamed 
 for having deceived my associates here in speak- 
 ing of a central committee and of ' innumerable 
 ramifications.' But where is the deception ? The 
 central committee is you and me. As to the 
 ramifications, I can have as many as you 
 wish." 
 
 228 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 But as Peter's plans advance, this cement, con- 
 sisting of vanity and the fear of public opinion, 
 is not sufficient for him ; he wants a stronger 
 bond to bind his disciples together, and to keep 
 them under his own immediate and exclusive 
 control ; and such a bond must be one of blood. 
 He therefore persuades his committee that one of 
 their members, Chatov, to whom I have already 
 alluded, is a spy. This is easy, because Chatov is 
 a member of the organisation against his will. 
 He became involved in the business when he was 
 abroad, in Switzerland ; and on the first possible 
 occasion he says he will have nothing to do with 
 any Nihilist propaganda, since he is absolutely 
 opposed to it, being a convinced Slavophil and a 
 hater of all acts of violence. Peter lays a trap for 
 him. At a meeting of the committee he asks every 
 one of those present whether, should they be aware 
 that a political assassination were about to take 
 place, they would denounce the man who was to per- 
 form it. With one exception all answer no, that 
 they would denounce an ordinary assassin, but that 
 political assassination is not murder. When the 
 question is put to Chatov he refuses to answer. 
 Peter tells the others that this is the proof that 
 he is a spy, and that he must be made away with. 
 His object is that they should kill Chatov, and 
 thenceforth be bound to him by fear of each 
 other and of him. He has a further plan for 
 229 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 attributing the guilt of Chatov's murder to 
 another man. He has come across an engineer 
 named Kirilov. This man is also possessed by 
 one idea, in the same manner as Raskolnikov and 
 Chatov, only that, unlike them, his character is 
 strong. His idea is practically that enunciated 
 many years later by Nietzsche, that of the Super- 
 man. Kirilov is a maniac : the single idea which 
 in his case has taken possession of him is that of 
 suicide. There are two prejudices, he reasons, 
 which prevent man committing suicide. One of 
 them is insignificant, the other very serious, but 
 the insignificant reason is not without considerable 
 importance : it is the fear of pain. In exposing 
 his idea he argues that were a stone the size of 
 a six-storied house to be suspended over a man, 
 he would know that the fall of the stone would 
 cause him no pain, yet he would instinctively dread 
 its fall, as causing extreme pain. As long as that 
 stone remained suspended over him, he would be 
 in terror lest it should cause him pain by its fall, 
 and no one, not even the most scientific of men, 
 could escape this impression. Complete liberty 
 will come about only when it will be immaterial 
 to man whether he lives or not : that is the aim. 
 The second cause and the most serious one 
 that prevents men from committing suicide, is the 
 idea of another world. For the sake of clearness 
 I will here quote Kirilov's conversation on this 
 230 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 subject with the narrator of the story, which is 
 told in the first person : 
 
 "... That is to say, punishment ? " says his 
 interlocutor. 
 
 "No, that is nothing — simply the idea of 
 another world." 
 
 " Are there not atheists who already disbelieve 
 in another world ? " 
 
 Kirilov was silent. 
 
 " You perhaps judge by yourself." 
 
 " Every man can judge only by himself," said 
 Kirilov, blushing. " Complete liberty will come 
 about when it will be entirely immaterial to man 
 whether he lives or whether he dies : that is the 
 aim of everything." 
 
 " The aim ? Then nobody will be able or will 
 wish to live." 
 
 " Nobody," he answered. 
 
 " Man fears death, and therefore loves life," I 
 remarked. " That is how I understand the 
 matter, and thus has Nature ordained." 
 
 " That is a base idea, and therein lies the whole 
 imposture. Life is suffering, Hfe is fear, and man 
 is unhappy. Everything now is in pain and terror. 
 Man loves life now, because he loves pain and 
 terror. Thus has he been made. Man gives his 
 life now for pain and fear, and therein lies the 
 whole imposture. Man is not at present what he 
 ought to be. A new man will rise, happy and 
 231 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 proud, to whom it will be immaterial whether he 
 lives or dies. That will be the new man. He 
 who vanquishes pain and fear, he will be God, and 
 the other gods will no longer exist." 
 
 " Then, according to you, the other God does 
 exist ? " 
 
 " He exists without existing. In the stone 
 there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone there 
 is pain. God is the pain which arises from the 
 fear of death. He who vanquishes the pain and 
 the fear, he will be God. Then there will be a 
 new life, a new man, everything new. Then 
 history will be divided into two parts. From the 
 gorilla to the destruction of God, and from the 
 destruction of God to . . ." 
 
 " To the gorilla . . . ? " 
 
 " To the physical transformation of man and 
 of the world. Man will be God, and will be 
 transformed physically." 
 
 " How do you think man will be transformed 
 physically?" 
 
 " The transformation will take place in the 
 world, in thought, sentiments, and actions." 
 
 " If it will be immaterial to men whether they live 
 or die, then men will all kill each other. That 
 is perhaps the form the transformation will take ? " 
 
 " That is immaterial. The imposture will be 
 destroyed. He who desires to attain complete 
 freedom must not be afraid of killing himself. 
 232 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 He who dares to kill himself, has discovered where 
 the error lies. There is no greater liberty than 
 this : this is the end of all things, and you cannot 
 go further. He who dares to kill himself is God. 
 It is at present in every one's power to bring this 
 about : that God shall be no more, and that 
 nothing shall exist any more. But nobody has 
 yet done this." 
 
 " There have been millions of suicides," 
 "But they have never been inspired with this 
 idea. They have always killed themselves out of 
 fear, and never in order to kill fear. He who will 
 kill himself simply in order to kill fear, he will be 
 God." 
 
 In this last sentence we have the whole idea 
 and philosophy of Kirilov. He had made up 
 his mind to kill himself, in order to prove that he 
 was not afraid of death, and he was possessed 
 by that idea, and by that idea alone. In another 
 place he says that man is unhappy because he 
 does not know that he is happy : simply for this 
 reason : that is all. " He who knows that he is 
 happy will become happy at once, immediately." 
 And further on he says : " Men are not good, 
 simply because they do not know they are good. 
 When they realise this, they will no longer 
 commit crimes. They must learn that they are 
 good, and instantly they will become good, one 
 and all of them. He who will teach men that 
 233 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 they are good, will end the world." The man to 
 whom he is talking objects that He who taught 
 men that they were good was crucified. 
 
 " The man will come," Kirilov replies, " and 
 his name will be the Man-God." 
 
 " The God-Man ? " says his interlocutor. 
 " No, the Man-God, — there is a difference." 
 Here we have his idea of the Superman.^ 
 As soon as Peter discovers Kirilov's obsession, 
 he extracts from him a promise that, as he has 
 determined to commit suicide, and that as it is 
 quite indifferent to him how and when he does it, 
 he shall do it when it is useful to him, Peter. 
 Kirilov consents to this, although he feels himself 
 in no way bound to Peter, and although he sees 
 through him entirely and completely, and would 
 hate him were his contempt not too great for 
 hatred. But Peter's most ambitious plans do not 
 consist merely in binding five men to him by an 
 indissoluble bond of blood : that is only the 
 means to an end. The end, as I have already 
 said, is vaguely to get power ; and besides the five 
 men whom he intends to make his slaves for life, 
 Peter has another and far more important trump 
 card. This trump card consists of a man, Nicholas 
 Stavrogin, who is the hero of the book. He is the 
 only son of a widow with a landed estate, and after 
 
 ^ It is characteristic that Dostoievsky puts the idea of the '* Super- 
 man " into the mouth of a monomaniac. 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 being brought up by Peter's father, an old, harm- 
 less and kindly Radical, he is sent to school at 
 the age of sixteen, and later on goes into the 
 army, receiving a commission in one of the most 
 brilliant of the Guards regiments in St. Petersburg. 
 No sooner does he get to St. Petersburg, than he 
 distinguishes himself by savage eccentricities. He 
 is what the Russians call a skandalist. He is a 
 good-looking young man of Herculean strength, 
 and quiet, pleasant manners, who every now and 
 then gives way to the wildest caprices, the most 
 extravagant and astounding whims, when he seems 
 to lose all control over himself. For a time he 
 leads the kind of life led by Prince Harry with 
 Falstaff, and his extravagances are the subject of 
 much talk. He drives over people in his carriage, 
 and publicly insults a lady of high position. 
 Finally, he takes part in two duels. In both 
 cases he is the aggressor. One of his adversaries 
 is killed, and the other severely wounded. On 
 account of this he is court-martialled, degraded to 
 the ranks, and has to serve as a common soldier 
 in an infantry regiment. But in 1863 he has an 
 opportunity of distinguishing himself, and after a 
 time his military rank is given back to him. It 
 is then that he returns to the provincial town, 
 where the whole of the events told in the book 
 take place, and plays a part in Peter's organisation. 
 Peter regards him, as I have said, as his trump 
 235 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 card, because of the strength of his character. 
 He is one of those people who represent the 
 extreme Lucifer quality of the Russian nature. 
 He is proud and inflexible, without any trace of 
 weakness. There is nothing in the world he 
 is afraid of, and there is nothing he will not 
 do if he wishes to do it. He will commit 
 the wildest follies, the most outrageous extrava- 
 gances, but as it were deliberately^ and not as 
 if he were carried away by the impetuosity of 
 his temperament. On the contrary, he seems 
 throughout to be as cold as ice, and eternally 
 unruffled and cool ; and he is capable when he 
 chooses of showing a self-control as astonishing 
 and remarkable as his outbursts of violence. Peter 
 knows very well that he cannot hope to influence 
 such a man. Stavrogin sees through Peter and 
 despises him. At the same time, Peter hopes to 
 entangle him in his scheme, as he entangles the 
 others, and thinks that, this once done, a man 
 with Stavrogin's character cannot help being his 
 principal asset. It is on this very character, 
 however, that the whole of Peter's schemes break 
 down. Stavrogin has married a lame, half-witted 
 girl ; the marriage is kept secret, and he loves and 
 is loved by an extremely beautiful girl called Lisa. 
 Peter conceives the idea of getting a tramp, an 
 ex-convict who is capable of everything, to murder 
 Stavrogin's wife and the drunken brother with 
 236 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 whom she lives, and to set fire to a part of the 
 town and the house where the two are living. 
 He hopes that Stavrogin will marry Lisa, and 
 then not be able to withdraw from his organisa- 
 tion for fear of being held responsible for the 
 murder of his wife. 
 
 Stavrogin sees through the whole scheme. He 
 announces his marriage publicly ; but this act, 
 instead of alienating Lisa from him, increases her 
 passion. Nevertheless Stavrogin's wife and her 
 brother are murdered, and a large quarter of the 
 town is burned. When Lisa asks Stavrogin if he 
 is in any way connected with this murder, he 
 replies that he was opposed to it, but that he had 
 guessed that they would be murdered, and that he 
 had taken no steps to prevent it. Lisa herself is 
 killed, almost by accident, on the scene of the 
 murder of Stavrogin's wife. She is killed by an 
 excited man in the crowd, who holds her respon- 
 sible for the deed, and thinks that she has come 
 to gloat over her victims. After this Stavrogin 
 washes his hands of the whole business, and leaves 
 the town. It is then that Peter carries out the 
 rest of his plans. Chatov is murdered, and Peter 
 calls upon Kirilov to fulfil his promise and commit 
 suicide. He wishes him, before committing the 
 act, to write a paper in which he shall state that 
 he has disseminated revolutionary pamphlets and 
 proclamations, and that he has employed the 
 237 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 ex-convict who committed the murders. He is 
 also to add that he has killed Chatov on account 
 of his betrayal. But Kirilov has not known until 
 this moment that Chatov is dead, and he refuses 
 to say a word about him. Then begins a duel 
 between these two men in the night, which 
 is the most exciting chapter in the book, and 
 perhaps one of the most exciting and terrifying 
 things ever written. Peter is in terror lest Kirilov 
 should fail him, and Kirilov is determined not 
 to be a party to Peter's baseness. Peter plays 
 upon his vanity, and by subtle taunts excites to 
 a frenzy the man's monomania, till at last he 
 consents to sign the paper. Then snatching a 
 revolver he goes into the next room. Peter waits, 
 not knowing what is going to happen. Ten 
 minutes pass, and Peter, consumed by anxiety, 
 takes a candle and opens the door of the room in 
 which Kirilov has shut himself. He opens the 
 door, and somebody flies at him like a wild beast. 
 He shuts the door with all his might, and remains 
 listening. He hears nothing, and as he is now 
 convinced that Kirilov will not commit suicide, he 
 makes up his mind to kill Kirilov himself, now 
 that he has got the paper. He knows that in 
 a quarter of an hour his candle will be entirely 
 consumed ; he sees there is nothing else to be 
 done but to kill Kirilov, but at the same time he 
 does not wish to do it. 
 
 238 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 At last he takes the revolver in his right hand 
 and the candle in his left hand, and with his left 
 hand manages to open the door. The room is 
 apparently empty. At first he thinks that Kirilov 
 has fled ; then he becomes aware that against the 
 wall, between a window and a cupboard, Kirilov is 
 standing, stiff and motionless as a ghost. He 
 rushes toward him. Kirilov remains motionless, 
 but his eye is fixed on Peter, and a sardonic smile 
 is on his lips, as though he had guessed what was 
 in Peter's mind. Peter, losing all self-control, flies 
 at Kirilov, who knocks the candle out of Peter's 
 hand, and bites his little finger nearly in two. 
 Peter beats him on the head with the butt of 
 his revolver, and escapes from the room. As 
 he escapes, he hears terrifying screams of " At 
 once ! at once ! at once ! " Peter is running for 
 his life, and is already in the vestibule of the 
 house, when he hears a revolver shot. Then 
 he goes back and finds that Kirilov has killed 
 himself. 
 
 This is practically the end of the book. Peter 
 gets away to St. Petersburg, and all his machi- 
 nations are discovered. The corpse of Chatov is 
 found ; the declaration in Kirilov's handwriting 
 at first misleads the police, but the whole truth 
 soon comes out, since nearly all the conspirators 
 confess, each being overcome with remorse. Peter 
 escapes and goes abroad. Nicholas Stavrogin 
 239 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 returns to his home from St. Petersburg ; he is 
 not inculpated in any way in the plots, since the 
 conspirators bear witness that he had nothing to 
 do with them. But he hangs himself neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 As I have said before, the chief characters of 
 this book, Stavrogin, Peter, Chatov, and Kirilov, 
 who seemed such gross exaggerations when the 
 book was published, would surprise nobody who 
 has had any experience of contemporary Russia. 
 Indeed, Peter is less an imitation of Nechaev than 
 a prototype of Azev. As to Kirilov, there are 
 dozens of such men, possessed by one idea 
 and one idea only, in Russia. Stavrogin also 
 is a type which occurs throughout Russian 
 history. Stavrogin has something of Peter the 
 Great in him, Peter the Great run to seed, and 
 of such there are also many in Russia to-day. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Brothers Karamazov 
 
 The subject of The Brothers Karamazov^ had 
 occupied Dostoievsky's mind ever since 1870, 
 but he did not begin to write it until 1879, and 
 when he died in 1881, only half the book was 
 finished ; in fact, he never even reached what he 
 
 ^ The French translation of this book is an abridgment. It is 
 quite incomplete. 
 
 240 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 intended to be the real subject of the book. The 
 subject was to be the life of a great sinner, Alosha 
 Karamazov. But when Dostoievsky died, he had 
 only written the prelude, in itself an extremely 
 long book ; and in this prelude he told the story 
 of the bringing up of his hero, his surroundings 
 and his early life, and in so doing he tells us 
 all that is important about his hero's brothers 
 and father. The story of Alosha's two brothers, 
 and of their relations to their father, is in 
 itself so rich in incident and ideas that it 
 occupies the whole book, and Dostoievsky died 
 before he had reached the development of Alosha 
 himself 
 
 The father is a cynical sensualist, utterly 
 wanting in balance, vain, loquacious, and foolish. 
 His eldest son, Mitya, inherits his father's - sensu- 
 ality, but at the same time he has the energy 
 and strength of his mother, his father's first wife ; 
 Mitya is full of energy and strength. His nature 
 does not know discipline ; and since his passions 
 have neither curb nor limit, they drive him to 
 catastrophe. His nature is a mixture of fire 
 and dross, and the dross has to be purged by 
 intense suffering. Like Raskolnikov, Mitya has 
 to expiate a crime. Circumstantial evidence 
 seems to indicate that he has killed his father. 
 Everything points to it, so much so that when 
 one reads the book without knowing the story 
 
 Q 241 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 beforehand, one's mind shifts from doubt to 
 certainty, and from certainty to doubt, just as 
 though one were following some absorbing 
 criminal story in real life. After a long series 
 of legal proceedings, cross - examinations, and a 
 trial in which the lawyers perform miracles of 
 forensic art, Mitya is finally condemned. I will 
 not spoil the reader's pleasure by saying whether 
 Mitya is guilty or not, because there is something 
 more than idle curiosity excited by this problem 
 as one reads the book. The question seems 
 to test to the utmost one's power of judging 
 character, so abundant and so intensely vivid are 
 the psychological data which the author gives us. 
 Moreover, the question as to whether Mitya did 
 or did not kill his father is in reality only a side- 
 issue in the book ;^the main subjects of which are, 
 firstly, the character of the hero, which is made to 
 rise before us in its entirety, although we do not 
 get as far as the vicissitudes through which it is 
 to pass. > Secondly, the root-idea of the book is 
 an attack upon materialism, and the character of 
 Alosha forms a part of this attack. Materialism 
 is represented in the second of the brothers, Ivan 
 Karamazov, and a great part of the book is 
 devoted to the tragedy and the crisis of Ivan's 
 life. 
 
 Ivan's mind is, as he says himself, Euclidean 
 and quite material. It is impossible, he says, 
 242 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 to love men when they are near to you. You 
 can only love them at a distance. Men are hate- 
 ful, and there is sufficient proof of this in the 
 sufferings which children alone have to endure 
 upon earth. At the same time, his logical mind 
 finds nothing to wonder at in the universal suffer- 
 ings of mankind. Men, he says, are themselves 
 guilty : they were given Paradise, they wished for 
 freedom, and they stole fire from heaven, knowing 
 that they would thereby become unhappy ; there- 
 fore they are not to be pitied. He only knows 
 that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that 
 one thing follows from another perfectly simply, 
 that everything proceeds from something else, and 
 that everything works out as in an equation. 
 But this is not enough for him : it is not enough 
 for him to recognise that one thing proceeds 
 simply and directly from another. He wants 
 something else ; he must needs have compensation 
 and retribution, otherwise he would destroy him- 
 self; and he does not want to obtain this com- 
 pensation somewhere and some time, in infinity, 
 but here and now, on earth, so that he should see 
 it himself. He has not suffered, merely in order 
 that his very self should supply, by its evil deeds 
 and its passions, the manure out of which some far- 
 off future harmony may arise. He wishes to see 
 with his own eyes how the lion shall lie down with 
 the lamb. The great stumbling-block to him is 
 243 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the question of children : the sufferings of children. 
 If all men have to suffer, in order that by their 
 suffering they may build an eternal harmony, 
 what have children got to do with this ? It is 
 inexplicable that they should suffer, and that it 
 should be necessary for them to attain to an eternal 
 harmony by their sufferings. Why should they 
 fall into the material earth, and make manure for 
 some future harmony? He understands that 
 there can be solidarity in sin between men ; he 
 understands the idea of solidarity and retaliation, 
 but he cannot understand the idea of solidarity 
 with children in sin. The mocker will say, he 
 adds, that the child will grow up and have time 
 to sin ; but he is not yet grown up. He under- 
 stands, he says, what the universal vibration of 
 joy must be, when everything in heaven and on 
 earth joins in one shout of praise, and every living 
 thing cries aloud, " Thou art just, O Lord, for 
 Thou hast revealed Thy ways." And when the 
 mother shall embrace the man who tormented and 
 tore her child to bits, — when mother, child, and 
 tormentor shall all join in the cry, ''Lord, Thou 
 art just ! " then naturally the full revelation will 
 be accomplished and everything will be made 
 plain. Perhaps, he says, he would join in the 
 Hosanna himself, were that moment to come, but 
 he does not wish to do so ; while there is yet time, 
 he wishes to guard himself against so doing, and 
 244 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 therefore he entirely renounces any idea of the 
 higher harmony. '/Je does not consider it worth 
 the smallest tear of one^S-yffering child ; it is not 
 worth it, because he considers--that such tears are 
 irreparable,- 'and that no compensation can be 
 made for them ; and if they are not compensated 
 for, how can there be an eternal harmony ? But 
 for a child's tears, he says, there is no compensation, 
 for retribution — that is to say, the punishment of 
 those who caused the suffering — is not compensa- 
 tion. Finally, he does not think that the mother 
 ha;s the right to forgive the man who caused her 
 children to suffer ; she may forgive him for her 
 o\'vn sufferings, but she has not the right to 
 fci'rgive him the sufferings of her children. And 
 \'vithout such forgiveness there can be no harmony. 
 It is for love of mankind that he does not 
 desire this harmony: he prefers to remain with 
 his irreparable wrong, for which no compensation 
 Can be made. He prefers to remain with his 
 unavenged and unavengeable injuries and his 
 tireless indignation. Even if he is not right, 
 they have put too high a price, he says, on this 
 eternal harmony. " We cannot afford to pay so 
 much for i> ; we cannot afford to pay so much for 
 the ticket of d?d mission into it. Therefore I give 
 it back. And )f I am an honest man, I am 
 obliged to give^^t back as soon as possible. This 
 I do. It is /'not because I do not acknowledge 
 
 245 
 
./ 
 
 LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATVRE 
 
 God, only I must respectfully reAurn Him the 
 ticket." 
 
 The result of Ivan's philos^-^phy is logical 
 egotism and materialism. But his' whole theory 
 is upset, owing to its being pushed to 'its logical 
 conclusion by a half-brother of the Karamazovs, 
 a lackey, Smerdyakov, who puts into practic'^e the 
 theories of Ivan, and commits first a crime and 
 then suicide. This and a severe illness com'.bine 
 to shatter Ivan's theories. His physical bei'ng 
 may recover, but one sees that his epicurean 
 theories of life cannot subsist. 
 
 In sharp contrast to the two elder brothers is 
 the third brother, Alosha, the hero of the boof'c. 
 He is one of the finest and most sympathetic 
 characters that Dostoievsky created. He has the' 
 simplicity of " The Idiot," without his naivete, and 
 without the abnormality arising from epilepsy. 
 He is a normal man, perfectly sane and sensible^. 
 He is the very incarnation of " sweet reasonable- 
 ness." He is Ivan Durak, Ivan the Fool, but 
 without being a fool. Alosha, Dostoievsky s3-ys, 
 was in no way a fanatic ; he was not even 
 what most people call a mystic, but si'riiply a 
 lover of human beings; he loved humanity; all 
 his life he believed in men, and yet nobody would 
 have taken him for a fool or for a simple creature. 
 There was something in him which' convinced you 
 that he did not wish to be a judge V^f iiien, that 
 246 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 he did not wish to claim or exercise the right of 
 judging others. One remarkable fact about his 
 character, which is equally true of Dostoievsky's 
 own character, was that Alosha with this wide 
 tolerance never put on blinkers, or shut his eyes 
 to the wickedness of man, or to the ugliness of 
 life. No one could astonish or frighten him, 
 even when he was quite a child. Every one 
 loved him wherever he went. Nor did he ever 
 win the love of people by calculation, or cunning, 
 or by the craft of pleasing. But he possessed in 
 himself the gift of making people love him. It 
 was innate in him ; it acted immediately and 
 directly, and with perfect naturalness. The basis 
 of his character was that he was a Realist. When 
 he was in the monastery where he spent a part of 
 his youth, he believed in miracles ; but Dostoievsky 
 says, " Miracles never trouble a Realist ; it is not 
 miracles which incline a Realist to believe. A 
 true Realist, if he is not a believer, will always 
 find in himself sufficient strength and sufficient 
 capacity to disbelieve even in a miracle. And if 
 a miracle appears before him as an undeniable 
 fact, he will sooner disbelieve in his senses than 
 admit the fact of the miracle. If, on the other 
 hand, he admits it, he will admit it as a natural 
 fact, which up to the present he was unaware of. 
 The Realist does not believe in God because he 
 believes in miracles, but he believes in miracles 
 247 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 because he believes in God. If a Realist believes 
 in God, his realism will necessarily lead him to 
 admit the existence of miracles also." 
 
 Alosha's religion, therefore, was based on 
 common sense, and admitted of no compromise. 
 As soon as, after having thought about the matter, 
 he becomes convinced that God and the immortality 
 of the soul exist, he immediately says to himself 
 quite naturally : " I wish to live for the future life, 
 and to admit of no half-way house." And just 
 in the same way, had he been convinced that 
 God and the immortality of the soul do not 
 exist, he would have become an atheist and a 
 socialist. For Dostoievsky says that Socialism is 
 not only a social problem, but an atheistic 
 problem. It is the problem of the incarnation of 
 atheism, the problem of a Tower of Babel to 
 be made without God, not in order to reach 
 Heaven from earth, but to bring Heaven down 
 to earth. 
 
 Alosha wishes to spend his whole life in the 
 monastery, and to give himself up entirely to 
 religion, but he is not allowed to do so. In the 
 monastery, Alosha finds a spiritual father, Zosima. 
 This character, which is drawn with power and 
 vividness, strikes us as being a blend of saintliness, 
 solid sense, and warm humanity. He is an old 
 man, and he dies in the convent ; but before he 
 dies, he sees Alosha, and tells him that he must 
 248 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 leave the convent for ever ; he must go out into 
 the world, and live in the world, and suffer. " You 
 will have many adversaries," he says to him, " but 
 even your enemies will love you. Life will bring 
 you many misfortunes, but you will be happy on 
 account of them, and you will bless life and cause 
 others to bless it. That is the most important 
 thing of all." Alosha is to go into the world and 
 submit to many trials, for he is a Karamazov too, 
 and the microbe of lust which rages in the blood 
 of that family is in him also. He is to put into 
 practice Father Zosima's precepts : " Be no man's 
 judge ; humble love is a terrible power which 
 effects more than violence. Only active love can 
 bring out faith. Love men and do not be afraid 
 of their sins : love man in his sin ; love all the 
 creatures of God, and pray God to make you 
 cheerful. Be cheerful as children and as the 
 birds." These are the precepts which Alosha is 
 to carry out in the face of many trials. How he 
 does so we never see, for the book ends before 
 his trials begin, and all we see is the strength of 
 his influence, the effect of the sweetness of his 
 character in relation to the trials of his two 
 brothers, Mitya and Ivan. 
 
 That Dostoievsky should have died before 
 finishing this monumental work which would have 
 been his masterpiece, is a great calamity. Never- 
 theless the book is not incomplete in itself: it is 
 249 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 a large piece of life, and it contains the whole of 
 Dostoievsky's philosophy and ideas. Moreover, 
 considered merely as a novel, as a book to be 
 read from the point of view of being entertained, 
 and excited about what is going to happen next, it 
 is of enthralling interest. This book, therefore, 
 can be recommended to a hermit who wishes to 
 ponder over something deep, in a cell or on a 
 desert island, to a philosopher who wishes to 
 sharpen his thoughts against a hard whetstone, 
 to a man who is unhappy and wishes to find 
 some healing balm, or to a man who is going on 
 a railway journey and wishes for an exciting 
 story to while away the time. 
 
 IX 
 
 This study of Dostoievsky, or rather this 
 suggestion for a study of his work, cannot 
 help being sketchy and incomplete. I have not 
 only not dealt with his shorter stories, such as 
 White Nights, The Friend of the Family^ The 
 Gambler and The Double, but I have not even 
 mentioned two longer novels, The Hobbledehoy and 
 Despised and Rejected. The last named, though 
 it suffers from being somewhat melodramatic in 
 parts, contains as strong a note of pathos as is 
 to be found in any of Dostoievsky's books ; and 
 an incident of this book has been singled out by 
 250 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson as being — together with 
 the moment when Mark Antony takes off his helmet, 
 and the scene when Kent has pity on the dying Lear 
 — one of the most greatly moving episodes in the 
 whole of literature. The reason why I have not 
 dwelt on these minor works is that to the English 
 reader, unacquainted with Dostoievsky, an exact 
 and minute analysis of his works can only be 
 tedious. I have only dealt with the very broadest 
 outline of the case, so as to enable the reader to 
 make up his mind whether he wishes to become 
 acquainted with Dostoievsky's work at all. My 
 object has been merely to open the door, and not 
 to act as a guide and to show him over every part 
 of the house. If I have inspired him with a wish 
 to enter the house, I have succeeded in my task. 
 Should he wish for better-informed guides and 
 fuller guide-books, he will find them in plenty ; 
 but guides and guide-books are utterly useless to 
 people who do not wish to visit the country of 
 which they treat. And my sole object has been 
 to give in the broadest manner possible a rough 
 sketch of the nature of the country, so as to enable 
 the traveller to make up his mind whether he 
 thinks it worth while or not to buy a ticket and 
 to set forth on a voyage of exploration. Should 
 such an one decide that the exploration is to him 
 attractive and worth his while, I should advise 
 him to begin with The Letters from a Dead House, 
 251 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 and to go on with The Idiot, Crime and Punish- 
 ment, and The Brothers Karamazov ; and to read 
 The Possessed last of all. If he understands and 
 appreciates The Letters from a Dead House, he 
 will be able to understand and appreciate the 
 character of Dostoievsky and the main ideas which 
 lie at the root of all his books. If he is able to 
 understand and appreciate The Idiot, he will be 
 able to understand and appreciate the whole of 
 Dostoievsky's writings. But should he begin with 
 Crime and Punishment, or The Possessed, it is 
 possible that he might be put off, and relinquish 
 the attempt; just as it is possible that a man who 
 took up Shakespeare's plays for the first time and 
 began with King Lear, might make up his mind 
 not to persevere, but to choose some more cheerful 
 author. And by so doing he would probably lose 
 a great deal, since a man who is repelled by King 
 Lear might very well be able to appreciate not 
 only The Merchant of Venice, but Henry IV and 
 the Winter's Tale. If one were asked to sum up 
 briefly what was Dostoievsky's message to his 
 generation and to the world in general, one could do 
 so in two words : love and pity. The love which 
 is in Dostoievsky's work is so great, so bountiful, 
 so overflowing, that it is impossible to find a 
 parallel to it, either in ancient or in modern 
 literature. It is human, but more than human, 
 that is to say, divine. Supposing the Gospel of 
 252 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 St. John were to be annihilated and lost to us 
 for ever, although nothing could replace it, 
 Dostoievsky's work would go nearer to replacing 
 it than any other books written by any other man. 
 It is the love which faces everything and which 
 shrinks from nothing. It is the love which that 
 saint felt who sought out the starving and freez- 
 ing beggar, and warmed and embraced him, 
 although he was covered with sores, and who 
 was rewarded by the beggar turning into His 
 Lord and lifting him up into the infinite spaces 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Dostoievsky tells us that the most complete of 
 his characters, Alosha, is a Realist, and that was 
 what Dostoievsky was himself. He was a Realist 
 in the true sense of the word, and he was exactly 
 the contrary of those people who when they wrote 
 particularly filthy novels in which they singled out 
 and dwelt at length on certain revolting details 
 of life, called themselves Realists. He saw things 
 as they really are ; he never shut his eyes or 
 averted his gaze from anything which was either 
 cruel, hateful, ugly, bitter, diseased or obscene ; 
 but the more he looked at the ugly things, the 
 more firmly he became convinced of the goodness 
 that is in and behind everything : To put it 
 briefly, the more clearly he realised mortal misery 
 and sin, the more firmly he believed in God. 
 Therefore, as I have more than once said in this 
 253 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 study, although he sounds the lowest depths of 
 human gloom, mortal despair, and suffering, his 
 books are a cry of triumph, a clarion peal, a 
 hosanna to the idea of goodness and to the glory 
 of God. There is a great gulf between Dostoi- 
 evsky and such novelists as make of their art a 
 clinical laboratory, in which the vices and the 
 sores, and only the vices and the sores, are dis- 
 sected and observed, not under a microscope, but 
 under a magnifying-glass, so that a totally dis- 
 torted and exaggerated impression of life is the 
 result. And this all the more remarkable, 
 because a large part of his most important char- 
 acters are abnormal : monomaniacs, murderers, 
 or epileptics. But it is in dealing with such 
 characters that the secret of Dostoievsky's great- 
 ness is revealed. For in contradistinction to 
 many writers who show us what is insane in the 
 sanest men, who search for and find a spot of 
 disease in the healthiest body, a blemish in the 
 fairest flower, a flaw in the brightest ruby, 
 Dostoievsky seeks and finds the sanity of the 
 insane, a healthy spot in the sorest soul, a gleam 
 of gold in the darkest mine, a pearl in the filthiest 
 refuse heap, a spring in the most arid desert. In 
 depicting humanity at its lowest depth of misery and 
 the human soul at its highest pitch of anguish, he 
 is making a great act of faith, and an act of charity, 
 and conferring a huge benefit on mankind. For in 
 254 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 depicting the extremest pain of abnormal sufferers, 
 he persuades us of the good that exists even in 
 such men, and of the goodness that is in suffer- 
 ing itself; and by taking us in the darkest of 
 dungeons, he gives us a glimpse such as no one 
 else has given us of infinite light and love. 
 
 On the other hand, Dostoievsky is equally far 
 removed from such writers (of v/hich we have 
 plenty in England) who throw a cloak over all evil 
 things, and put on blinkers, and who, because the 
 existence of evil is distasteful to them, refuse 
 to admit and face it. Such an attitude is 
 the direct outcome of either conscious or un- 
 conscious hypocrisy. Dostoievsky has not a 
 grain of hypocrisy in his nature, and therefore 
 such an attitude is impossible to him. 
 
 Dostoievsky is a Realist, and he sees things 
 as they are all through life, from the most 
 important matters down to the most trivial. 
 He is free from cant, either moral or political, 
 and absolutely free from all prejudice of caste 
 or class. It is impossible for him to think 
 that because a man is a revolutionary he must 
 therefore be a braver man than his fellows, or 
 because a man is a Conservative he must there- 
 fore be a more cruel man than his fellows, just 
 as it is impossible for him to think the contrary, 
 and to believe that because a man is a Con- 
 servative he cannot help being honest, or because 
 255 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 a man is a Radical he must inevitably be a 
 scoundrel. He judges men and things as they 
 are, quite apart from the labels which they choose 
 to give to their political opinions. That is why 
 nobody who is by nature a doctrinaire^ can 
 appreciate or enjoy the works of Dostoievsky, 
 since any one who bases his conduct upon theory 
 cannot help at all costs being rudely shocked at 
 every moment by Dostoievsky's creed, which is 
 based on reality and on reality alone. Dostoi- 
 evsky sees and embraces everything as it really is. 
 The existence of evil, of ugliness and of suffering, 
 inspires him with only one thing, and this is 
 pity ; and his pity is like that which King Lear 
 felt on the Heath when he said : 
 
 " Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, 
 That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 
 How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 
 Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
 From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en 
 Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp ; 
 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 
 That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, 
 And show the heavens more just." 
 
 Dostoievsky has a right to say such things, 
 because throughout his life he not only exposed 
 himself, but was exposed, to feel what wretches 
 
 ^ By a doctrinaire I mean not a man who has strong principles and 
 convictions ; but a man who deliberately shuts his eyes to those 
 facts which contradict his theory, and will pursue it to the end even 
 when by so doing the practice resulting is the contrary of his aim. 
 
 256 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 feel ; because he might have said as King Lear 
 said to Cordeh'a: 
 
 " I am bound 
 Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears 
 Do scald like molten lead." 
 
 He knew what wretches feel, by experience and 
 not by theory, and all his life he was bound upon 
 a " wheel of fire." 
 
 With regard to Dostoievsky's political opinions, 
 he synthesised and expressed them all in the 
 speech which he made in June 1880, at Moscow, 
 in memory of Pushkin. " There was never," he 
 said, " a poet who possessed such universal re- 
 ceptivity as Pushkin. It was not only that he 
 was receptive, but this receptivity was so extra- 
 ordinarily deep, that he was able to embrace and 
 absorb in his soul the spirit of foreign nations. 
 No other poet has ever possessed such a gift ; 
 only Pushkin ; and Pushkin is in this sense a 
 unique and a prophetic apparition, since it 
 is owing to this gift, and by means of it, that 
 the strength of Pushkin — that in him which is 
 national and Russian — found expression. . . . 
 For what is the strength of the Russian national 
 spirit other than an aspiration towards a uni- 
 versal spirit, which shall embrace the whole world 
 and the whole of mankind ? And because Pushkin 
 expressed the national strength, he anticipated 
 and foretold its future meaning. Because of 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 this he was a prophet. For what did Peter the 
 Great's reforms mean to us ? I am not only 
 speaking of what they were to bring about in 
 the future, but of what they were when they were 
 carried out. These reforms were not merely 
 a matter of adopting European dress, habits, in- 
 struction and science. . . . But the men who 
 adopted them aspired towards the union and 
 the fraternity of the world. We in no hostile 
 fashion, as would seem to have been the 
 case, but in all friendliness and love, received 
 into our spirit the genius of foreign nations, 
 of all foreign nations, without any distinction 
 of race, and we were able by instinct and at 
 the first glance to distinguish, to eliminate con- 
 tradictions, to reconcile differences ; and by this 
 we expressed our readiness and our inclination, 
 we who had only just been united together and 
 had found expression, to bring about a universal 
 union of all the great Aryan race. The signi- 
 ficance of the Russian race is without doubt 
 European and universal. To be a real Russian 
 and to be wholly Russian means only this : to be 
 a brother of all men, to be universally human. 
 All this is called Slavophilism ; and what we 
 call ' Westernism ' is only a great, although a 
 historical and inevitable misunderstanding. To 
 the true Russian, Europe and the affairs of the 
 great Aryan race, are as dear as the affairs of 
 258 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 Russia herself and of his native country, because 
 our affairs are the affairs of the whole world, and 
 they are not to be obtained by the sword, but by 
 the strength of fraternity and by our brotherly 
 effort towards the universal union of mankind. 
 . . . And in the long-run I am convinced that 
 we, that is to say, not we, but the future genera- 
 tions of the Russian people, shall every one of us, 
 from the first to the last, understand that to be a 
 real Russian must signify simply this : to strive 
 towards bringing about a solution and an end to 
 European conflicts ; to show to Europe a way of 
 escape from its anguish in the Russian soul, which 
 is universal and all-embracing ; to instil into 
 her a brotherly love for all men's brothers, and 
 in the end perhaps to utter the great and final 
 word of universal harmony, the fraternal and 
 lasting concord of all peoples according to the 
 gospel of Christ." 
 
 So much for the characteristics of Dostoievsky's 
 moral and political ideals. There remains a third 
 aspect of the man to be dealt with : his signifi- 
 cance as a writer, as an artist, and as a maker of 
 books ; his place in Russian literature, and in the 
 literature of the world. This is, I think, not very 
 difficult to define. Dostoievsky, in spite of the 
 universality of his nature, in spite of his large 
 sympathy and his gift of understanding and assimi- 
 lation, was debarred, owing to the violence and the 
 259 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 want of balance of his temperament, which was 
 largely the result of disease, from seeing life 
 steadily and seeing it whole. The greatest fault 
 of his genius, his character, and his work, is a 
 want of proportion. His work is often shapeless, 
 and the incidents in his books are sometimes fan- 
 tastic and extravagant to the verge of insanity. 
 Nevertheless his vision, and his power of express- 
 ing that vision, make up for what they lose in 
 serenity and breadth, by their intensity, their 
 depth and their penetration. He could not look 
 upon the whole world with the calm of Sophocles 
 and of Shakespeare ; he could not paint a large 
 and luminous panorama of life unmarred by any 
 trace of exaggeration, as Tolstoy did. On the 
 other hand, he realised and perceived certain 
 heights and depths of the human soul which were 
 beyond the range of Tolstoy, and almost beyond 
 that of Shakespeare. His position with regard to 
 Tolstoy, Fielding, and other great novelists is like 
 that of Marlowe with regard to Shakespeare. 
 Marlowe's plays compared with those of Shake- 
 speare are like a series of tumultuous fugues, on 
 the same theme, played on an organ which 
 possesses but a few tremendous stops, compared 
 with the interpretation of music, infinitely various 
 in mood, by stringed instruments played in perfect 
 concord, and rendering the finest and most subtle 
 gradations and shades of musical phrase and 
 260 
 
DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 intention. But every now and then the organ- 
 fugue, with its thunderous bass notes and soar- 
 ing treble, attains to a pitch of intensity which 
 no delicacy of blended strings can rival : So, 
 every now and then, Marlowe, in the scenes, for 
 instance, when Helena appears to Faustus, when 
 Zenocrate speaks her passion, when Faustus 
 counts the minutes to midnight, awaiting in an 
 agony of terror the coming of Mephistopheles, or 
 when Edward II is face to face with his execu- 
 tioners, reaches a pitch of soaring rapture, of 
 tragic intensity which is not to be found even in 
 Shakespeare. So it is with Dostoievsky. His 
 genius soars higher and dives deeper than that 
 of any other novelist, Russian or European. 
 And what it thus gains in intensity it loses in 
 serenity, balance and steadiness. Therefore, 
 though Dostoievsky as a man possesses quali- 
 ties of universality, he is not a universal artist 
 such as Shakespeare, or even as Tolstoy, although 
 he has one eminently Shakespearian gift, and that 
 is the faculty for discerning the " soul of goodness 
 in things evil." Yet, as a writer, he reached and 
 expressed the ultimate extreme of the soul's 
 rapture, anguish and despair, and spoke the most 
 precious words of pity which have been heard in 
 the world since the Gospels were written. In 
 this man were mingled the love of St. John, 
 and the passion and the fury of a fiend ; but the 
 261 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 goodness in him was triumphant over the evil. 
 He was a martyr ; but bound though he was on a 
 fiery wheel, he maintained that life was good, and 
 he never ceased to cry " Hosanna to the Lord : 
 for He is just ! " For this reason Dostoievsky is 
 something more than a Russian writer : he is a 
 brother to all mankind, especially to those who 
 are desolate, afflicted and oppressed. He had 
 " great allies " : 
 
 "His friends were exaltations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 
 
 262 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 ANTON TCHEKOV is chiefly known in 
 Russia as a writer of short stories. ^ He is 
 a kind of Russian Guy de Maupassant, without 
 the bitter strength of the French writer, and with- 
 out the quality which the French call " cynisme/' 
 which does not mean cynicism, but ribaldry. 
 
 Tchekov's stories deal for the greater part with 
 the middle classes, the minor landed gentry, the 
 minor officials, and the professional classes. 
 Tolstoy is reported to have said that Tchekov 
 was a photographer, a very talented photographer, 
 it is true, but still only a photographer. But 
 Tchekov has one quality which is difficult to find 
 among photographers, and that is humour. His 
 stories are frequently deliciously droll. They are 
 also often full of pathos, and they invariably 
 possess the peculiarly Russian quality of simpli- 
 city and unaffectedness. He never underlines his 
 effects, he never nudges the reader's elbow. Yet 
 
 ^ Two volumes of selections from his stories have been admirably 
 translated by Mr. Long. 
 
 263 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 there is a certain amount of truth in Tolstoy's 
 criticism. Tchekov does not paint with the great 
 sweeping brush of a Velasquez, his stories have 
 not the great broad colouring of Maupassant, 
 they are like mezzotints ; and in some ways they 
 resemble the new triumphs of the latest develop- 
 ments of artistic photography in subtle effects of 
 light and shade, in delicate tones and half-tones, 
 in elusive play of atmosphere. 
 
 Apart from its artistic merits or defects, 
 Tchekov's work is historically important and 
 interesting. Tchekov represents the extreme 
 period of stagnation in Russian life and literature. 
 This epoch succeeded to a period of comparative 
 activity following after the Russo-Turkish war. 
 For in Russian history one will find that every 
 war has been followed by a movement, a renas- 
 cence in ideas, in political aspirations, and in 
 literature. Tchekov's work represents the re- 
 action of flatness subsequent to a transitory 
 ebullition of activity ; it deals with the very class 
 of men which naturally hankers for political 
 activity, but which in Tchekov's time was as 
 naturally debarred from it. 
 
 The result was that the aspirations of these 
 people beat their grey wings ineffectually in a 
 vacuum. The middle class being highly educated, 
 and, if anything, over-educated, aspiring towards 
 political freedom, and finding its aspirations to be 
 264 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 futile, did one of two things. It either moped, or 
 it made the best of it. The moping sometimes 
 expressed itself in political assassination ; making 
 the best of it meant, as a general rule, dismissing 
 the matter from the mind, and playing vindt. 
 Half the middle class in Russia, a man once said 
 to me, has run to seed in playing vindt. But 
 what else was there to do ? 
 
 Tchekov, more than any other writer, has 
 depicted for us the attitude of mind, the nature 
 and the feelings of the whole of this generation, 
 just as Tourgeniev depicted the preceding genera- 
 tion ; the aspirations and the life of the men who 
 lived in the sixties, during the tumultuous epoch 
 which culminated in the liberation of the serfs. 
 And nowhere can the quality of this frame of 
 mind, and the perfume, as it were, of this period 
 be better felt and apprehended than in the plays 
 of Anton Tchekov ; for in his plays we get not 
 only what is most original in his work as an 
 artist, but the quintessence of the atmosphere, the 
 attitude of mind, and the shadow of what the 
 Zeitgeist brought to the men of his generation. 
 
 Before analysing the dramatic work of Tche- 
 kov, it is necessary to say a few w^ords about the 
 Russian stage in general. The main fact about 
 the Russian stage that differentiates it from ours, 
 and from that of any other European country, 
 is the absence of the modern French tradition. 
 265 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 The tradition of the " well-made " French play, 
 invented by Scribe, does not, and never has 
 existed in Russia. 
 
 Secondly, reforniers and demolishers of this tradi- 
 tion do not exist either, for they have nothing to re- 
 form or demolish. In Russia it was never necessary 
 for naturalistic schools to rise with a great flourish 
 of trumpets, and to proclaim that they were about 
 to destroy the conventions and artificiality of the 
 stage, and to give to the public, instead of childish 
 sentimentalities and impossible Chinese puzzles of 
 intrigue, slices of real life. Had anybody behaved 
 thus in Russia he would simply have been beating 
 his hands against a door which was wide open. 
 For the Russian drama, like the Russian novel, 
 has, without making any fuss about it, never done 
 but one thing — to depict life as clearly as it saw 
 it, and as simply as it could. 
 
 That is why there has never been a naturalist 
 school in Russia. The Russians are born realists ; 
 they do not have to label themselves realists, 
 because realism is the very air which they breathe, 
 and the very blood in their veins. What was 
 labelled realism and naturalism in other countries 
 simply appeared to them to be a straining after 
 effect. Even Ibsen, whose great glory was that, 
 having learnt all the tricks of the stagecraft of 
 Scribe and his followers, he demolished the whole 
 system, and made Comedies and Tragedies just 
 266 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 as skilfully out of the tremendous issues of real 
 life — even Ibsen had no great influence in Russia, 
 because what interests Russian dramatists is not 
 so much the crashing catastrophes of life as life 
 itself, ordinary everyday life, just as we all 
 see it. " I go to the theatre," a Russian once 
 said, " to see what I see every day." And here 
 we have the fundamental difference between 
 the drama of Russia and that of any other 
 country. 
 
 Dramatists of other countries, be they English, 
 or French, or German, or Norwegian, whether 
 they belong to the school of Ibsen, or to that 
 which found its temple in the Theatre Antoine 
 at Paris, had one thing in common ; they were 
 either reacting or fighting against something — as 
 in the case of the Norwegian dramatists — or bent 
 on proving a thesis — as in the case of Alexandre 
 Dumas jils, the Theatre Antoine school, or Mr. 
 Shaw — ; that is to say, they were all actuated by 
 some definite purpose ; the stage was to them a 
 kind of pulpit. 
 
 On the English stage this was especially 
 noticeable, and what the English public has 
 specially delighted in during the last fifteen years 
 has been a sermon on the stage, with a dash of 
 impropriety in it. Now the Russian stage has 
 never gone in for sermons or theses : like the 
 Russian novel, it has been a looking-glass for 
 267 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the use of the public, and not a pulpit for the 
 use of the playwright. This fact is never more 
 strikingly illustrated than when the translation 
 of a foreign play is performed in Russia. For 
 instance, when Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, Mrs. 
 Warrens Profession, was performed last December 
 at the Imperial State-paid Theatre at St. Petersburg, 
 the attitude of the public and of the critics was 
 interesting in the extreme. In the first place, that 
 the play should be produced at the Imperial State- 
 paid Theatre is an interesting illustration of the 
 difference of the attitude of the two countries 
 towards the stage. In England, public perform- 
 ance of this play is forbidden ; in America it 
 was hounded off the stage by an outraged and 
 indignant populace ; in St. Petersburg it is pro- 
 duced at what, in Russia, is considered the temple 
 of respectability, the home of tradition, the citadel 
 of conservatism. In the audience were a quantity 
 of young, unmarried girls. The play was beauti- 
 fully acted, and well received,^ but it never occurred 
 to any one that it was either daring or dangerous 
 or startling; it was merely judged as a story of 
 English life, a picture of English manners. Some 
 people thought it was interesting, others that it 
 was uninteresting, but almost all were agreed in 
 considering it to be too stagey for the Russian 
 taste ; and as for considering it an epoch-making 
 
 ^ It proved a success. 
 268 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 work, that is to say, in the region of thought and 
 ideas, the very idea was scoffed at. 
 
 These opinions were reflected in the press. In 
 one of the newspapers, the leading Liberal organ, 
 edited by Professor Milioukov, the theatrical 
 critic said that Mr. Bernard Shaw was the typical 
 middle-class Englishman, and satirised the faults 
 and follies of his class, but that he himself 
 belonged to the class that he satirised, and shared 
 its limitations. " The play," they said, " is a 
 typical middle-class English play, and it suffers 
 from the faults inherent to this class of English 
 work : false sentiment and melodrama." 
 
 Another newspaper, the Rtiss, wrote as follows : 
 " Bernard Shaw is thought to be an enfant terrible 
 in England. In Russia we take him as a writer, 
 and as a writer only, who is not absolutely devoid 
 of advanced ideas. In our opinion, his play 
 belongs neither to the extreme right nor to the 
 extreme left of dramatic literature ; it is an 
 expression of the ideas of moderation which 
 belong to the centre, and the proof of this is the 
 production of it at our State-paid Theatre, which 
 in our eyes is the home and shelter of what is 
 retrograde and respectable." ^ 
 
 ^ The dramatic critics of these newspapers are not the Mr. 
 William Archers, the Mr. Walkleys, not the Faguets or the 
 Lemaitres of Russia, if any such exist. I have never come across 
 anything of interest in their articles ; on the other hand, they are 
 perhaps more representative of public opinion. 
 
 269 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Such was the opinion of the newspaper critic 
 on Mr. Bernard Shaw's play. It represented more 
 or less the opinion of the man in the street. For 
 nearly all European dramatic art,with the exception 
 of certain German and Norwegian work, strikes 
 the Russian public as stagey and artificial. If a 
 Russian had written Mrs. Waj^refz's Profession^ he 
 would never have introduced the scene between 
 Crofts and Vivy which occurs at the end of 
 Act III., because such a scene, to a Russian, 
 savours of melodrama. On the other hand, he 
 would have had no hesitation in putting on the 
 stage (at the Imperial State-paid Theatre) the 
 interior, with all its details, of one of the conti- 
 nental hotels from which Mrs. Warren derived 
 her income. But, as I have already said, what 
 interests the Russian dramatist most keenly is not 
 the huge catastrophes that stand out in lurid pre- 
 eminence, but the incidents, sometimes important, 
 sometimes trivial, and sometimes ludicrous, which 
 happen to every human being every day of his 
 life. And nowhere is this so clearly visible as in 
 the work of Tchekov ; for although the plays of 
 Tchekov — which have not yet been discovered in 
 England, and which will soon be old-fashioned in 
 Russia — are not a reflection of the actual state of 
 mind of the Russian people, yet as far as their 
 artistic aim is concerned, they are more intensely 
 typical, and more successful in the achievement 
 270 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 of their aim than the work of any other Russian 
 dramatist.^ 
 
 Tchekov has written in all eleven plays, out of 
 which six are farces in one act, and five are serious 
 dramas. The farces, though sometimes very funny, 
 are not important ; it is in his serious dramatic work 
 that Tchekov really found himself, and gave to 
 the world something new and entirely original. 
 The originality of Tchekov's plays is not that they 
 are realistic. Other dramatists — many French- 
 men, for instance — have written interesting and 
 dramatic plays dealing with poignant situations, 
 happening to real people in real life. Tchekov's 
 discovery is this, that real life, as we see it every 
 day, can be made just as interesting on the stage 
 as the catastrophes or the difficulties which are 
 more or less exceptional, but which are chosen by 
 dramatists as their material because they are 
 dramatic. Tchekov discovered that it is not 
 necessary for real life to be dramatic in order to 
 be interesting. Or rather that ordinary everyday 
 life is as dramatic on the stage, if by dramatic 
 one means interesting, as extraordinary life. He 
 perceived that things which happen to us every 
 day, which interest us, and affect us keenly, but 
 
 ^ Since this was written Mr. Shaw's genius has had greater justice 
 done to it in Russia. His Ccesar and Cleopatra has proved highly 
 successful. It was produced at the State Theatre of Moscow in the 
 autumn of 1909 and is still running as I write. Several intelli- 
 gent articles were written on it in the Moscow press, 
 
 271 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 which we would never dream of thinking or of 
 calling dramatic when they occur, may be made 
 as interesting on the stage as the most far-fetched 
 situations, or the most terrific crises. For in- 
 stance, it may affect us keenly to leave for ever 
 a house where we have lived for many years. It 
 may touch us to the quick to see certain friends 
 off at a railway station. But we do not call these 
 things dramatic. They are not dramatic, but 
 they are human. 
 
 Tchekov has realised this, and has put them on 
 the stage. He has managed to send over the 
 footlights certain feelings, moods, and sensations, 
 which we experience constantly, and out of which 
 our life is built. He has managed to make the 
 departure of certain people from a certain place, 
 and the staying on of certain others in the same 
 place, as interesting behind the footlights as the 
 tragic histories of CEdipus or Othello, and a 
 great deal more interesting than the complicated 
 struggles and problems in which the characters 
 of a certain school of modern dramatists are 
 enmeshed. Life as a whole never presents itself 
 to us as a definite mathematical problem, which 
 needs immediate solution, but is rather composed 
 of a thousand nothings, which together make 
 something vitally important. Tchekov has under- 
 stood this, and given us glimpses of these nothings, 
 and made whole plays out of these nothings. 
 272 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 At first sight one is tempted to say that there 
 is no action in the plays of Tchekov. But on 
 closer study one realises that the action is there, 
 but it is not the kind usually sought after and 
 employed by men who write for the stage. 
 Tchekov is, of course, not the first dramatic 
 writer who has realised that the action which 
 consisted in violent things happening to violent 
 people is not a whit more interesting, perhaps a 
 great deal less interesting, than the changes and 
 the vicissitudes which happen spiritually in the 
 soul of man. Moliere knew this, for Le Misanthrope 
 is a play in which nothing in the ordinary sense 
 happens. Rostand's L Aiglon is a play where 
 nothing in the ordinary sense happens.^ But in 
 these plays in the extraordinary sense everything 
 happens. A violent drama occurs in the soul of 
 the Misanthrope, and likewise in that of the Duke 
 of Reichstadt. So it is in Tchekov's plays. He 
 shows us the changes, the revolutions, the vicis- 
 situdes, the tragedies, the comedies, the struggles, 
 the conflicts, the catastrophes, that happen in the 
 souls of men, but he goes a step further than 
 other dramatists in the way in which he shows us 
 these things. He shows us these things as we 
 ourselves perceive or guess them in real life, 
 without the help of poetic soliloquies or mono- 
 
 ^ Not to mention many modern French comedies, such as those 
 of Lemaitre, Capus, etc. 
 
 73 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 logues, without the help of a Greek chorus or a 
 worldly raisonneur, and without the aid of startling 
 events which strip people of their masks. He 
 shows us bits of the everyday life of human beings 
 as we see it, and his pictures of ordinary human 
 beings, rooted in certain circumstances, and en- 
 gaged in certain avocations, reveal to us further 
 glimpses of the life that is going on inside these 
 people. The older dramatists, even when they 
 deal exclusively with the inner life of man, without 
 the aid of any outside action, allow their creations 
 to take off their masks and lay bare their very 
 inmost souls to us. 
 
 Tchekov's characters never, of their own accord, 
 take off their masks for the benefit of the audience, 
 but they retain them in exactly the same degree 
 as people retain them in real life ; that is to say, 
 we sometimes guess by a word, a phrase, a gesture, 
 the humming of a tune, or the smelling of a flower, 
 what is going on behind the mask ; at other times 
 we see the mask momentarily torn off by an out- 
 break of inward passion, but never by any pressure 
 of an outside and artificial machinery, never owing 
 to the necessity of a situation, the demands of a 
 plot, or the exigencies of a problem ; in fact, never 
 by any forces which are not those of life itself. 
 In Tchekov's plays, as in real life, to use 
 Meredith's phrase, " Passions spin the plot " ; he 
 shows us the delicate webs that reach from 
 274 
 
THE PLAYS OF AxNTON TCHEKOV 
 
 soul to soul across the trivial incidents of every 
 day. 
 
 I will now analyse in detail two of the plays 
 of Tchekov. The first is a drama called Chaika. 
 "Chaika" means "Sea-gull." It was the first 
 serious play of Tchekov that was performed ; and 
 it is interesting to note that when it was first 
 produced at the Imperial Theatre at St. Peters- 
 burg it met with no success, the reason being, no 
 doubt, that the actors did not quite enter into the 
 spirit of the play. As soon as it was played at 
 Moscow it was triumphantly successful. 
 
 The first act takes place in the park in the 
 estate belonging to Peter Nikolaievitch Sorin, the 
 brother of a celebrated actress, Irina Nikolaievna, 
 whose stage name is Arkadina. Preparations 
 have been made in the park for some private 
 theatricals. A small stage has been erected. 
 The play about to be represented has been written 
 by Constantine, the actress's son, who is a young 
 man, twenty-five years old. The chief part is to 
 be played by a young girl, Ina, the daughter 
 of a neighbouring landowner. These two young 
 people are in love with each other. Irina is a 
 successful actress of the more or less conventional 
 type. She has talent and brains. " She sobs 
 over a book," one of the characters says of her, 
 " and knows all Russian poetry by heart ; she looks 
 after the sick like an angel, but you must not 
 275 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 mention Eleanora Duse in her presence, you must 
 praise her only, and write about her and her 
 wonderful acting in La Dame aux Camelias. In 
 the country she is bored, and we all become her 
 enemies, we are all guilty. She is superstitious 
 and avaricious." Constantine, her son, is full of 
 ideals with regard to the reform of the stage ; he 
 finds the old forms conventional and tedious, he 
 is longing to pour new wine into the old skins, 
 or rather to invent new skins. 
 
 There is also staying in the house a well-known 
 writer, about forty years old, named Trigorin. 
 " He is talented and writes well," one of the other 
 characters says of him, " but after reading Tolstoy 
 you cannot read him at all." The remaining 
 characters are a middle-aged doctor, named 
 Dorn ; the agent of the estate, a retired officer, his 
 wife and daughter, and a schoolmaster. The 
 characters all assemble to witness Constantine's 
 play ; they sit down in front of the small extem- 
 porised stage, which has a curtain but no back 
 cloth, since this is provided by nature in the 
 ^ape of a distant lake enclosed by trees. The 
 sun has set, and it is twilight. Constantine begs 
 his guests to lend their attention. The curtain is 
 raised, revealing a view of the lake with the moon 
 shining above the horizon, and reflected in the 
 water. Ina is discovered seated on a large rock 
 dressed all in white. She begins to speak a kind 
 276 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 of prose poem, an address of the Spirit of the 
 Universe to the dead world on which there is 
 supposed to be no longer any living creature. 
 
 Arkadina (the actress) presently interrupts the 
 monologue by saying softly to her neighbour, 
 *' This is decadent stuff." The author, in a tone 
 of imploring reproach, says, " Mamma ! " The 
 monologue continues, the Spirit of the World 
 speaks of his obstinate struggle with the devil, 
 the origin of material force. There is a pause. 
 Far off on the lake two red dots appear. " Here," 
 says the Spirit of the World, " is my mighty 
 adversary, the devil. I see his terrible glowing 
 eyes." Arkadina once more interrupts, and the 
 following dialogue ensues : 
 
 Arkadina: It smells of sulphur; is that 
 necessary ? 
 
 Constantine : Yes. 
 
 Arkadina {laughing) : Yes, that is an effect. 
 
 Constantine : Mamma ! 
 
 Ina {continuing to recite) : He is lonely without 
 man. 
 
 Paulin {the wife of the agent) : ( To the doctor) : 
 You have taken off your hat. Put it on again, 
 you will catch cold. 
 
 Arkadina-. The doctor has taken off his 
 hat to the devil, the father of the material 
 universe. 
 
 Constantine {losing his temper) : The play's 
 over. Enough ! Curtain ! 
 277 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Arkadina : Why are you angry ? 
 
 Constantine : Enough ! Pull down the cur- 
 tain ! (The curtain is let down.) I am sorry I 
 forgot, it is only certain chosen people that may 
 write plays and act. I infringed the monopoly, I 
 . . . {He tries to say somethings but waves his 
 arm and goes out) 
 
 Arkadina: What is the matter with you ? 
 
 Soidn {Iter brother) : My dear, you should be 
 more gentle with the amour propre of the young. 
 
 Arkadina: What did I say to him? 
 
 Sorin : You offended him. 
 
 Arkadina : He said himself it was a joke, and 
 I took his play as a joke. 
 
 Sorin : All the same . . . 
 
 Arkadina: Now it appears he has written a 
 masterpiece ! A masterpiece, if you please ! So 
 he arranged this play, and made a smell of 
 sulphur, not as a joke, but as a manifesto ! He 
 wished to teach us how to write and how to act. 
 One gets tired of this in the long-run, — these in- 
 sinuations against me, these everlasting pin-pricks, 
 they are enough to tire any one. He is a 
 capricious and conceited boy ! 
 
 Sorin : He wished to give you pleasure. 
 
 Arkadina: Really? Then why did he not 
 choose some ordinary play, and why did he force 
 us to listen to this decadent rubbish ? If it is a 
 joke I do not mind listening to rubbish, but he 
 has the pretension to invent new forms, and tries 
 to inaugurate a new era in art; and I do not think 
 the form is new, it is simply bad. 
 278 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 Presently Ina appears ; they compliment her on 
 her performance. Arkadina tells her she ought 
 to go on to the stage, to which she answers that 
 that is her dream. She is introduced to Trigorin 
 the author : this makes her shy. She has read 
 his works, she is overcome at seeing the celebrity 
 face to face. " Wasn't it an odd play ? " she asks 
 Trigorin. " I did not understand it," he answers, 
 " but I looked on with pleasure — your acting was 
 so sincere, and the scenery was beautiful." Ina 
 says she must go home, and they all go into the 
 house except the doctor. Constantine appears 
 again, and the doctor tells him that he liked the 
 play, and congratulates him. The young man is 
 deeply touched. He is in a state of great nervous 
 excitement. As soon as he learns that Ina has 
 gone he says he must go after her at once. 
 The doctor is left alone. Masha, the daughter of 
 the agent, enters and makes him a confession : " I 
 don't love my father," she says, " but I have 
 confidence in you. Help me." " What is the 
 matter ? " he asks. " I am suffering," she answers, 
 " and nobody knows my suffering. I love 
 Constantine." " How nervous these people are," 
 says the doctor, '' nerves, all nerves ! and what a 
 quantity of love. Oh, enchanted lake ! But 
 what can I do for you, my child, what, what ? " 
 and the curtain comes down. 
 
 The second act is in the garden of the same 
 279 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 estate. It is a hot noon. Arkadina has decided 
 to travel to Moscow. The agent comes and tells 
 her that all the workmen are busy harvesting, and 
 that there are no horses to take her to the station. 
 She tells him to hire horses in the village, or else 
 she will walk. " In that case," the agent replies, 
 " I give notice, and you can get a new agent." 
 She goes out in a passion. Presently Constantlne 
 appears bearing a dead sea-gull ; he lays it at 
 Ina's feet. 
 
 Ina : What does this mean ? 
 
 Constantine : I shot this sea-gull to-day to my 
 shame. I throw it at your feet. 
 
 Ina : What is the matter with you ? 
 
 Constantine : I shall soon shoot myself in the 
 same way. 
 
 Ina : I do not recognise you. 
 
 Constantine : Yes, some time after I have 
 ceased to recognise you. You have changed 
 towards me, your look is cold, my presence makes 
 you uncomfortable. 
 
 Ifia : During these last days you have be- 
 come irritable, and speak in an unintelligible way, 
 in symbols. I suppose this sea-gull is a symbol. 
 Forgive me, I am too simple to understand you. 
 
 Constantine : It all began on that evening 
 when my play was such a failure. Women 
 cannot forgive failure. I burnt it all to the last 
 page. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am ! 
 Your coldness is terrifying, incredible ! It is just 
 as if I awoke, and suddenly saw that this lake 
 280 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 was dry, or had disappeared under the earth. 
 You have just said you were too simple to under- 
 stand me. Oh, what is there to understand ? 
 My play was a failure, you despise my work, you 
 already consider that I am a thing of no account, 
 like so many others ! How well I understand that, 
 how well I understand ! It is as if there were a 
 nail in my brain ; may it be cursed, together with 
 the amour propre which is sucking my blood, suck- 
 ing it like a snake ! {He sees Trigorin^ who enters 
 reading a book.) Here comes the real genius. 
 He walks towards us like a Hamlet, and with a 
 book too. " Words, words, words." This sun is 
 not yet come to you, and you are already smiling, 
 your looks have melted in its rays. I will not be 
 in your way. {He goes out rapidly') 
 
 There follows a conversation between Trigorin 
 and Ina, during which she says she would like to 
 know what it feels like to be a famous author. 
 She talks of his interesting life. 
 
 Trigorin : What is there so very wonderful 
 about it ? Like a monomaniac who, for instance, 
 is always thinking day and night of the moon, I 
 am pursued by one thought which I cannot get 
 rid of, I must write, I must write, I must ... I 
 have scarcely finished a story, when for some reason 
 or another I must write a second, and then a third, 
 and then a fourth. I write uninterruptedly, I 
 cannot do otherwise. What is there so wonderful 
 and splendid in this, I ask you ? Oh, it is a 
 cruel life ! Look, I get excited with you, and all 
 281 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the time I am remembering that an unfinished 
 story is waiting for me. I see a cloud which is 
 like a pianoforte, and I at once think that I must 
 remember to say somewhere in the story that 
 there is a cloud like a pianoforte. 
 
 Ina : But does not your inspiration and the pro- 
 cess of creation give you great and happy moments ? 
 
 Trigorin : Yes, when I write it is pleasant, and 
 it is nice to correct proofs ; but as soon as the 
 thing is published, I cannot bear it, and I already 
 see that it is not at all what I meant, that it is a 
 mistake, that I should not have written it at all, 
 and I am vexed and horribly depressed. The 
 public reads it, and says : " Yes, pretty, full of 
 talent, very nice, but how different from Tolstoy ! " 
 or, " Yes, a fine thing, but how far behind Fathers 
 and Sons ; Tourgeniev is better." And so, until I 
 die, it will always be " pretty and full of talent," 
 never anything more ; and when I die my friends 
 as they pass my grave will say : " Here lies 
 Trigorin, he was a good writer, but he did not 
 write as well as Tourgeniev." 
 
 Ina tells him that whatever he may appear to 
 himself, to others he appears great and wonderful. 
 For the joy of being a writer or an artist, she 
 says, she would bear the hate of her friends, want, 
 disappointment ; she would live in an attic and eat 
 dry crusts. " I would suffer from my own im- 
 perfections, but in return I should demand fame, 
 real noisy fame." Here the voice of Arka- 
 dina is heard calling Trigorin. He observes the 
 282 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 sea-gull ; she tells him that Constantine killed it. 
 Trigorin makes a note in his notebook. " What 
 are you writing?" she says. "An idea has 
 occurred to me," he answers, " an idea for a short 
 story : On the banks of a lake a young girl lives 
 from her infancy onwards. She loves the lake 
 like a sea-gull, she is happy and free like a sea-gull ; 
 but unexpectedly a man comes and sees her, and 
 out of mere idleness kills her, just like this sea- 
 gull." Here Arkadina again calls out that they 
 are not going to Moscow after all. This is the 
 end of the second act. 
 
 At the third act, Arkadina is about to leave the 
 country for Moscow. Things have come to a 
 crisis. Ina has fallen in love with the author, 
 and Constantine's jealousy and grief have reached 
 such a point that he has tried to kill himself and 
 failed, and now he has challenged Trigorin to a 
 duel. The latter has taken no notice of this, and 
 is about to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. 
 Ina begs him before he goes to say good-bye 
 to her. Arkadina discusses with her brother her 
 son's strange and violent behaviour. He points 
 out that the youth's position is intolerable. He 
 is a clever boy, full of talent, and he is obliged to 
 live in the country without any money, without a 
 situation. He is ashamed of this, and afraid of 
 his idleness. In any case, he tells his sister, she 
 ought to give him some money, he has not even 
 283 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 got an overcoat ; to which she answers that she 
 has not got any money. She is an artist, and 
 needs every penny for her own expenses. Her 
 brother scoffs at this, and she gets annoyed. A 
 scene follows between the mother and the son, 
 which begins by an exchange of loving and tender 
 words, and which finishes in a violent quarrel. 
 The mother is putting a new bandage on his 
 head, on the place where he had shot himself. 
 " During the last few days," says Constantine, " I 
 have loved you as tenderly as when I was a child ; 
 but why do you submit to the influence of that 
 man ? " — meaning Trigorin. And out of this the 
 quarrel arises. Constantine says, " You wish me 
 to consider him a genius. His works make me 
 sick." To which his mother answers, " That is 
 jealousy. People who have no talent and who 
 are pretentious, have nothing better to do than to 
 abuse those who have real talent." Here Con- 
 stantine flies into a passion, tears the bandage off 
 his head, and cries out, " You people only admit 
 and recognise what you do yourselves. You 
 trample and stifle everything else ! " Then his 
 rage dies out, he cries and asks forgiveness, and 
 says, " If you only knew, I have lost everything. 
 She no longer loves me ; I can no longer write ; 
 all my hopes are dead ! " They are once more 
 reconciled. Only Constantine begs that he may be 
 allowed to keep out of Trigorin's sight. Trigorin 
 284 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 comes to Arkadina, and proposes that they should 
 remain in the country. Arkadina says that she 
 knows why he wishes to remain ; he is in love 
 with Ina. He admits this, and asks to be set 
 free. 
 
 Up to this point in the play there had not 
 been a syllable to tell us what were the relations 
 between Arkadina and Trigorin, and yet the 
 spectator who sees this play guesses from the first 
 that he is her lover. She refuses to let him go, 
 and by a somewhat histrionic declaration of love 
 cleverly mixed with flattery and common sense 
 she easily brings him round, and he is like wax 
 in her fingers. He settles to go. They leave for 
 Moscow ; but before they leave, Trigorin has a 
 short interview with Ina, in which she tells him 
 that she has decided to leave her home to go on 
 the stage, and to follow him to Moscow. Trigorin 
 gives her his address in Moscow. Outside — the 
 whole of this act takes place in the dining-room — 
 we hear the noise and bustle of people going 
 away. Arkadina is already in the carriage. 
 Trigorin and Ina say good-bye to each other, he 
 gives her a long kiss. 
 
 Between the third and fourth acts two years 
 elapse. We are once more in the home of Arka- 
 dina's brother. Constantine has become a cele- 
 brated writer. Ina has gone on the stage and 
 proved a failure. She went to Moscow ; Trigorin 
 285 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 loved her for a while, and then ceased to love her. 
 A child was born. He returned to his former 
 love, and in his weakness, played a double game 
 on both sides. She is now in the town, but her 
 father will not receive her. Arkadina arrives with 
 Trigorin. She has been summoned from town 
 because her brother is ill. Everything is going 
 on as it was two years ago. Arkadina, the agent, 
 and the doctor sit down to a game of Lotto before 
 dinner. Arkadina tells of her triumphs in the 
 provincial theatres, of the ovations she received, 
 of the dresses she wore. The doctor asks her if 
 she is proud of her son being an author. " Just 
 fancy," she replies, " I have not yet read his books, 
 I have never had time ! " They go in to supper. 
 Constantine says he is not hungry, and is left 
 alone. Somebody knocks at the glass door 
 opening into the garden. Constantine opens it ; 
 it is Ina. Ina tells her story ; and now she has 
 got an engagement in some small provincial town, 
 and is starting on the following day. Constantine 
 declares vehemently that he loves her as much as 
 ever. He cursed her, he hated her, he tore up 
 her letters and photographs, but every moment 
 he was forced to admit to himself that he was 
 bound to her for ever. He could never cease to 
 love her. He begs her either to remain, or to let 
 him follow her. She takes up her hat, she must 
 go. She says she is a wandering sea-gull, and 
 286 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 that she is very tired. From the dining-room are 
 heard the voices of Arkadina and Trigorin. She 
 listens, rushes to the door, and looks through 
 the keyhole. " He is here, too," she says, " do not 
 tell him anything. I love him, I love him more 
 than ever." She goes out through the garden. 
 Constantine tears up all his MSS. and goes into 
 the next room. Arkadina and the others come 
 out of the dining-room, and sit down once more 
 to the card-table to play Lotto. The agent brings 
 to Trigorin the stuffed sea-gull which Constantine 
 had shot two years ago, and which had been the 
 starting-point of Trigorin's love episode with Ina. 
 He has forgotten all about it ; he does not even 
 remember that the sea-gull episode ever took place. 
 A noise like a pistol shot is heard outside. " What 
 is that ? " says Arkadina in fright. " It is nothing," 
 replies the doctor, " one of my medicine bottles 
 has probably burst." He goes into the next 
 room, and returns half a minute later. " It was 
 as I thought," he says, " my ether bottle has burst." 
 " It frightened me," says Arkadina, " it reminded 
 me of how . . ." The doctor turns over the 
 leaves of the newspaper. He then says to 
 Trigorin, " Two months ago there was an article 
 in this Review written from America. I wanted 
 to ask you . . ." He takes Trigorin aside, 
 and then whispers to him, " Take Irina Nikol- 
 aievna away as soon as possible. The fact of 
 287 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 the matter is that Constantine has shot him- 
 self." 
 
 Of all the plays of Tchekov, Chaika is the one 
 which most resembles ordinary plays, or the plays 
 of ordinary dramatists. It has, no doubt, many 
 of Tchekov's special characteristics, but it does 
 not show them developed to their full extent. 
 Besides which, the subject is more dramatic than 
 that of his other plays ; there is a conflict in it — 
 the conflict between the son and the mother, 
 between the older and the younger generation, 
 the older generation represented by Trigorin and 
 the actress, the younger generation by Constan- 
 tine. The character of the actress is drawn with 
 great subtlety. Her real love for her son is made 
 just as plain as her absolute inability to ap- 
 preciate his talent and his cleverness. She is a 
 mixture of kindness, common sense, avarice, 
 and vanity. Equally subtle is the character of 
 the author, with his utter want of wit ; his 
 absorption in the writing of short stories ; his 
 fundamental weakness ; his egoism, which pre- 
 vents him recognising the existence of any work 
 but his own, but which has no tinge of ill-nature 
 or malice in it. When he returns in the last act, 
 he compliments Constantine on his success, and 
 brings him a Review in which there is a story 
 by the young man. Constantine subsequently 
 notices that in the Review the only pages 
 288 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 which are cut contain a story by Trigorin 
 himself. 
 
 If Chaika is the most dramatically effective 
 of Tchekov's plays, the most characteristic is 
 perhaps The Cherry Garden. It is notably 
 characteristic in the symbolical and historical 
 sense, for it depicts for us the causes and signifi- 
 cance of the decline of the well-born, landed 
 gentry in Russia. 
 
 A slightly Bohemian lady belonging to this class, 
 Ranievskaia — I will call her Madame Ranievskaia 
 for the sake of convenience, since her Christian 
 name " Love " has no equivalent, as a name, in 
 English — is returning to her country estate with 
 her brother Leonidas after an absence of five years. 
 She has spent this time abroad in Nice and Paris. 
 Her affairs and those of her brother are in a 
 hopeless state. They are heavily in debt. This 
 country place has been the home of her child- 
 hood, and it possesses a magnificent cherry 
 orchard. It is in the south of Russia. 
 
 In the first act we see her return to the home 
 of her childhood — she and her brother, her 
 daughter, seventeen years old, and her adopted 
 daughter. It is the month of May. The cherry 
 orchard is in full blossom ; we see it through the 
 windows of the old nursery, which is the scene 
 of the first act. The train arrives at dawn, before 
 sunrise. A neighbour is there to meet them, 
 T 289 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 a rich merchant called Lopachin. They arrive 
 with their governess and their servant, and they 
 have been met at the station by another neigh- 
 bouring landowner. And here we see a thing 
 I have never seen on the stage before : a render- 
 ing of the exact atmosphere that hangs about 
 such an event as (a) the arrival of people from 
 a journey, and (d) the return of a family to its 
 home from which it has long been absent. We 
 see at a glance that Madame Ranievskaia and 
 her brother are in all practical matters like 
 children. They are hopelessly casual and vague. 
 They take everything lightly and carelessly, like 
 birds ; they are convinced that something will 
 turn up to extricate them from their difficulties. 
 
 The merchant, who is a nice, plain, careful, 
 practical, but rather vulgar kind of person, is a 
 millionaire, and, what is more, he is the son of 
 a peasant ; he was born in the village, and his 
 father was a serf. He puts the practical situation 
 very clearly before them. The estate is hopelessly 
 overloaded with debt, and unless these debts are 
 paid within six months, the estate will be sold by 
 auction. But there is, he points out, a solution 
 to the matter. " As you already know," he says 
 to them, "your cherry orchard will be sold to 
 pay your debts. The auction is fixed for the 
 22nd of August, but do not be alarmed, there is a 
 way out of the difficulty. . . . This is my plan. 
 290 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 Your estate is only i 5 miles from the town, the 
 railway is quite close, and if your cherry orchard 
 and the land by the river is cut up into villa 
 holdings, and let for villas, you will get at the 
 least 25,000 roubles (^2500) a year." To which 
 the brother replies, " What nonsense ! " " You 
 will get," the merchant repeats, " at the very 
 least twenty-five roubles a year a desiatin," — a 
 desiatin is about two acres and a half: much the 
 same as the French hectare, — *' and by the autumn, 
 if you make the announcement now, you will not 
 have a single particle of land left. In a word, 
 I congratulate you ; you are saved. The site 
 is splendid, only, of course, it wants several 
 improvements. For instance, all these old build- 
 ings must be destroyed, and this house, which is 
 no use at all, the old orchard must be cut 
 down." 
 
 Madame Ranievskaia : Cut down ? My dear 
 friend, forgive me, you do not understand any- 
 thing at all ! If in the whole district there is 
 anything interesting, not to say remarkable, it 
 is this orchard. 
 
 Lopachin : The orchard is remarkable simply 
 on account of its size. 
 
 Leonidas : The orchard is mentioned in the 
 Encyclopaedia. 
 
 Lopachin : If we do not think of a way out of 
 the matter and come to some plan, on the 22nd 
 of August the cherry orchard and the whole 
 291 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 property will be sold by auction. Make up your 
 minds ; there is no other way out, I promise you." 
 
 But it is no good his saying anything. They 
 merely reply, " What nonsense ! " They regard 
 the matter of splitting up their old home into 
 villas as a sheer impossibility. And this is the 
 whole subject of the play. The merchant con- 
 tinues during the second act to insist on the only 
 practical solution of their difficulties, and they 
 likewise persist in saying this solution is madness, 
 that it is absolutely impossible. They cannot 
 bring themselves to think of their old home being 
 turned into a collection of villas ; they keep on 
 saying that something will turn up, an old aunt 
 will die and leave them a legacy, or something 
 of that kind will happen. 
 
 In the third act, the day of the auction has 
 arrived, there is a dance going on in the house. 
 The impression is one of almost intolerable human 
 sadness, because we know that nothing has turned 
 up, we know that the whole estate will be sold. 
 The whole picture is one of the ending of a world. 
 At the dance there are only the people in the 
 village, the stationmaster, the post-office officials, 
 and so forth. The servant they have brought from 
 abroad gives notice. An old servant, who belongs 
 to the house, and is in the last stage of senile 
 decay, wanders about murmuring of old times and 
 292 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 past brilliance. The guests dance quadrilles 
 through all the rooms. Leonidas has gone to the 
 auction, and Madame Ranievskaia sits waiting in 
 hopeless suspense for the news of the result. 
 At last he comes back, pale and tired, and too 
 depressed to speak. The merchant also comes 
 triumphantly into the room ; he is slightly intoxi- 
 cated, and with a triumphant voice he announces 
 that he has bought the cherry garden. 
 
 In the last act, we see them leave their house 
 for ever, all the furniture has been packed up, all 
 the things which for them are so full of little 
 associations ; the pictures are off the walls, the bare 
 trees of the cherry garden — for it is now autumn — 
 are already being cut down, and they are starting 
 to begin a new life and to leave their old home 
 for ever. The old house, so charming, so full of 
 old-world dignity and simplicity, will be pulled 
 down, and make place for neat, surburban little 
 villas to be inhabited by the new class which has 
 arisen in Russia. Formerly there were only gen- 
 tlemen and peasants, now there is the self-made 
 man, who, being infinitely more practical, pushes 
 out the useless and unpractical gentleman to 
 make way for himself The pathos and natural- 
 ness of this last act are extraordinary. Every 
 incident that we know so well in these moments 
 of departure is noted and rendered. The old 
 servant, who belongs to the house, is supposed to 
 293 
 
LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 be in the hospital, and is not there to say good- 
 bye to them ; but when they are all gone, he 
 appears and closes the shutters, saying, " It is all 
 closed, they are gone, they forgot me ; it doesn't 
 matter, I will sit here. Leonidas Andreevitch 
 probably forgot his cloak, and only went in his 
 light overcoat, I wasn't there to see." And he 
 lies motionless in the darkened, shuttered room, 
 while from outside comes the sound of the felling 
 of the cherry orchard. 
 
 Of course, it is quite impossible in a short 
 analysis to give any idea of the real nature of 
 this play, which is a tissue of small details, every 
 one of which tells. Every character in it is living ; 
 Leonidas, the brother, who makes foolish speeches 
 and is constantly regretting them afterwards ; the 
 plain and practical merchant ; the good-natured 
 neighbour who borrows money and ultimately pays 
 it back ; the governess ; the clerk in the estate 
 office ; the servants, the young student who is 
 in love with the daughter, — we learn to knov/ 
 all these people as well as we know our own 
 friends and relations, and they reveal themselves 
 as people do in real life by means of a lifelike 
 representation of the conversation of human beings. 
 The play is historical and symbolical, because it 
 shows us why the landed gentry in Russia has 
 ceased to have any- importance, and how these 
 amiable, unpractical, casual people must necessarily 
 294 
 
THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 go under, when they are faced with a strong 
 energetic class of rich, self-made men who are the 
 sons of peasants. Technically the play is extra- 
 ordinarily interesting ; there is no conflict of wills 
 in it, nothing which one could properly call action 
 or drama, and yet it never ceases to be interesting ; 
 and the reason of this is that the conversation, 
 the casual remarks of the characters, which seem 
 to be about nothing, and to be put there anyhow, 
 have always a definite purpose. Every casual 
 remark serves to build up the architectonic edifice 
 which is the play. The structure is built, so to 
 speak, in air ; it is a thing of atmosphere, but it 
 is built nevertheless with extreme care, and the 
 result when interpreted, as it is interpreted at 
 Moscow by the actors of the artistic theatre, 
 is a stage triumph. 
 
 The three other most important plays of Tchekov 
 are Ivanoff^ Three Sisters, and Uncle Vania^ — the 
 latter play has been well translated into German. 
 
 Three Sisters is the most melancholy of all 
 Tchekov's plays. It represents the intense 
 monotony of provincial life, the grey life which is 
 suddenly relieved by a passing flash, and then 
 rendered doubly grey by the disappearance of that 
 flash. The action takes place in a provincial 
 town. A regiment of artillery is in garrison there. 
 One of the three sisters, Masha, has married a 
 schoolmaster ; the two others, Irina and Olga, are 
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LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 living in the house of their brother, who is a 
 budding professor. Their father is dead. Olga 
 teaches in a provincial school all day, and gives 
 private lessons in the evening. Irina is employed 
 in the telegraph office. They have both only one 
 dream and longing, and that is to get away from 
 the provincial corner in which they live, and to 
 settle in Moscow. They only stay on Masha's 
 account. Masha's husband is a kind and well- 
 meaning, but excessively tedious schoolmaster, 
 who is continually reciting Latin tags. When 
 Masha married him she was only eighteen, and 
 thought he was the cleverest man in the world. 
 She subsequently discovered that he was the 
 kindest, but not the cleverest man in the world. 
 The only thing which relieves the tedium of this 
 provincial life is the garrison. 
 
 When the play begins, we hear that a new 
 commander has been appointed to the battery, a 
 man of forty called Vershinin. He is married, 
 has two children, but his wife is half crazy. The 
 remaining officers in the battery are Baron 
 Tuzenbach, a lieutenant ; Soleny, a major ; and 
 two other lieutenants. Tuzenbach is in love 
 with Irina, and wishes to marry her ; she is willing 
 to marry him, but she is not in the least in love 
 with him, and tells him so. Masha falls passion- 
 ately in love with Vershinin. The major, Soleny, 
 is jealous of Tuzenbach. Then suddenly while 
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THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 these things are going on, the battery is transferred 
 from the town to the other end of Russia. On the 
 morning it leaves the town, Soleny challenges the 
 Baron to a duel, and kills him. The play ends 
 with the three sisters being left alone. Vershinin 
 says a passionate good-bye to Masha, who is in 
 floods of tears, and does not disguise her grief 
 from her husband. He, in the most pathetic way 
 conceivable, tries to console her, while the cheerful 
 music of the band is heard gradually getting 
 fainter and fainter in the distance. Irina has 
 been told of the death of the Baron, and the sad 
 thing about this is that she does not really care. 
 The three sisters are left to go on working, to 
 continue their humdrum existence in the little 
 provincial town, to teach the children in the school ; 
 the only thing which brought some relief to their 
 monotonous existence, and to one of the sisters 
 the passion of her life, is taken away from them, 
 and the departure is made manifest to them by 
 the strains of the cheerful military band. 
 
 I have never seen anything on the stage so 
 poignantly melancholy as this last scene. In 
 this play, as well as in others, Tchekov, by the 
 way he presents you certain fragments of people's 
 lives, manages to open a window on the whole of 
 their life. In this play of Three Sisters we get 
 four glimpses. A birthday party in the first act ; 
 an ordinary evening in the second act ; in the 
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LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE 
 
 third act a night of excitement owing to a fire in 
 the town, and it is on this night that the love 
 affair of Vershinin and Masha culminates in a 
 crisis ; and in the fourth act the departure of the 
 regiment. Yet these four fragments give us an 
 insight, and open a window on to the whole life 
 of these people, and, in fact, on to the lives of 
 many thousand people who have led this life in 
 Russia. 
 
 Tchekov's plays are as interesting to read as 
 the work of any first-rate novelist. But in 
 reading them, it is impossible to guess how 
 effective they are on the stage, the delicate suc- 
 cession of subtle shades and half-tones, of hints, 
 of which they are composed, the evocation of 
 certain moods and feelings which it is impossible 
 to define, — all this one would think would 
 disappear in the glare of the footlights, but 
 the result is exactly the reverse. Tchekov's 
 plays are a thousand times more interesting to 
 see on the stage than they are to read. A 
 thousand effects which the reader does not sus- 
 pect make themselves felt on the boards. The 
 reason of this is that Tchekov's plays realise 
 Goethe's definition of what plays should be. 
 " Everything in a play," Goethe said, " should be 
 symbolical, and should lead to something else." 
 By symbolical, of course, he meant morally sym- 
 bolical, — he did not mean that the play should be 
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THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 full of enigmatic puzzles, but that every event in 
 it should have a meaning and cast a shadow 
 larger than itself. 
 
 The atmosphere of Tchekov's plays is laden with 
 gloom, but it is a darkness of the last hour before 
 the dawn begins. His note is not in the least a 
 note of despair : it is a note of invincible trust 
 in the coming day. The burden of his work is 
 this — life is difficult, there is nothing to be done 
 but to work and to continue to work as cheerfully 
 as one can ; and his triumph as a playwright is 
 that for the first time he has shown in prose, — for 
 the great poets have done little else, — behind the 
 footlights, what it is that makes life difficult. 
 Life is too tremendous, too cheerful, and too sad 
 a thing to be condensed into an abstract problem 
 of lines and alphabetical symbols ; and those who 
 in writing for the stage attempt to do this, achieve 
 a result which is both artificial and tedious. 
 Tchekov disregarded all theories and all rules 
 which people have hitherto laid down as the 
 indispensable qualities of stage writing ; he put on 
 the stage the things which interested him because 
 they were human and true ; things great or 
 infinitesimally small ; as great as love and as 
 small as a discussion as to what are the best hors 
 doeuvres ; and they interest us for the same 
 reason. 
 
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