Essays on Russian Novelists

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etext by James Rusk (jrusk@mac-email.com)

ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS

By William Lyon Phelps

I

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTION

The Japanese war pricked one of the biggest bubbles in history, and
left Russia in a profoundly humiliating situation. Her navy was
practically destroyed, her armies soundly beaten, her offensive power
temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury exhausted, her pride laid in
the dust. If the greatness of a nation consisted in the number and
size of its battleships, in the capacity of its fighting men, or in
its financial prosperity, Russia would be an object of pity. But in
America it is wholesome to remember that the real greatness of a
nation consists in none of these things, but rather in its
intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it
gives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and to
all things that count in humanity's intellectual advance. When we
Americans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we might
profitably reflect for a moment on the comparative value of America's
and Russia's contributions to literature and music.

At the start, we notice a rather curious fact, which sharply
differentiates Russian literature from the literature of England,
France, Spain, Italy, and even from that of Germany. Russia is old;
her literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century;
Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in the
nineteenth. Russian literature and American literature are twins. But
there is this strong contrast, caused partly by the difference in the
age of the two nations. In the early years of the nineteenth century,
American literature sounds like a child learning to talk, and then
aping its elders; Russian literature is the voice of a giant, waking
from a long sleep, and becoming articulate. It is as though the world
had watched this giant's deep slumber for a long time, wondering what
he would say when he awakened. And what he has said has been well
worth the thousand years of waiting.

To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language,
twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; but
the general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interested
in only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists like
Gorki, Artsybashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedly
attracting wide attention. The great five, whose place in the world's
literature seems absolutely secure, are Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev,
Dostoevski, and Tolstoi. The man who killed Pushkin in a duel survived
till 1895, and Tolstoi died in 1910. These figures show in how short a
time Russian literature has had its origin, development, and full
fruition.

Pushkin, who was born in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of
Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence.
He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their
national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never
passed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of
the great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in his
Olympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."* It is
always difficult fully to appreciate poetry in a foreign language,
especially when the language is so strange as Russian. It is certain
that no modern European tongue has been able fairly to represent the
beauty of Pushkin's verse, to make foreigners feel him as Russians
feel him, in any such measure as the Germans succeeded with
Shakespeare, as Bayard Taylor with Goethe, as Ludwig Fulda with
Rostand. The translations of Pushkin and of Lermontov have never
impressed foreign readers in the superlative degree. The glory of
English literature is its poetry; the glory of Russian literature is
its prose fiction.

*Arnold told Sainte-Beuve that he did not think Lamartine was
"important." Sainte-Beuve answered, "He is important for us."

Pushkin was, for a time at any rate, a Romantic, largely influenced,
as all the world was then, by Byron. He is full of sentiment, smiles
and tears, and passionate enthusiasms. He therefore struck out in a
path in which he has had no great followers; for the big men in
Russian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the
spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What is
peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete.
Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is
shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his title
as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He took
Russia away from the artificiality of the eighteenth century, and
exhibited the possibilities of native material in the native tongue.

The founder of the mighty school of Russian Realism was Gogol. Filled
with enthusiasm for Pushkin, he nevertheless took a different course,
and became Russia's first great novelist. Furthermore, although a
melancholy man, he is the only Russian humorist who has made the world
laugh out loud. Humour is not a salient quality in Russian fiction.
Then came the brilliant follower of Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. In him
Russian literary art reached its climax, and the art of the modern
novel as well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style that
Russia has ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown genius
in Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown the
impeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. George
Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existed
since antiquity?"

Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years younger
than Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist; his chief
interest was in the psychological processes of the unclassed. His
foreign fame is constantly growing brighter, for his works have an
extraordinary vitality. Finally appeared Leo Tolstoi, whose literary
career extended nearly sixty years. During the last twenty years of
his life, he was generally regarded as the world's greatest living
author; his books enjoyed an enormous circulation, and he probably
influenced more individuals by his pen than any other man of his time.

In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought to
find all the prominent traits in the Russian character.

It is a rather curious thing, that Russia, which has never had a
parliamentary government, and where political history has been very
little influenced by the spoken word, should have so much finer an
instrument of expression than England, where matters of the greatest
importance have been settled by open and public speech for nearly
three hundred years. One would think that the constant use of the
language in the national forum for purposes of argument and persuasion
would help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost total
absence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity.
In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust the
testimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that the
English language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkward
dialect. Compared with Russian, the English language is decidedly weak
in synonyms, and in the various shades of meaning that make for
precision. Indeed, with the exception of Polish, Russian is probably
the greatest language in the world, in richness, variety,
definiteness, and elegance. It is also capable of saying much in
little, and saying it with tremendous force. In Turgenev's "Torrents
of Spring," where the reader hears constantly phrases in Italian,
French, and German, it will be remembered that the ladies ask Sanin to
sing something in his mother tongue. "The ladies praised his voice and
the music, but were more struck with the softness and sonorousness of
the Russian language." I remember being similarly affected years ago
when I heard "King Lear" read aloud in Russian. Baron von der Bruggen
says,* "there is the wonderful wealth of the language, which, as a
popular tongue, is more flexible, more expressive of thought than any
other living tongue I know of." No one has paid a better tribute than
Gogol:--

"The Russian people express themselves forcibly; and if they once
bestow an epithet upon a person, it will descend to his race and
posterity; he will bear it about with him, in service, in retreat, in
Petersburg, and to the ends of the earth; and use what cunning he
will, ennoble his career as he will thereafter, nothing is of the
slightest use; that nickname will caw of itself at the top of its
crow's voice, and will show clearly whence the bird has flown. A
pointed epithet once uttered is the same as though it were written
down, and an axe will not cut it out.

*"Russia of To-day," page 203.

"And how pointed is all that which has proceeded from the depths of
Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns, nor any other
strange tribes, but where all is purely aboriginal, where the bold and
lively Russian mind never dives into its pocket for a word, and never
broods over it like a sitting-hen: it sticks the word on at one blow,
like a passport, like your nose or lips on an eternal bearer, and
never adds anything afterwards. You are sketched from head to foot in
one stroke.

"Innumerable as is the multitude of churches, monasteries with
cupolas, towers, and crosses, which are scattered over holy, most
pious Russia, the multitude of tribes, races, and peoples who throng
and bustle and variegate the earth is just as innumerable. And every
people bearing within itself the pledge of strength, full of active
qualities of soul, of its own sharply defined peculiarities, and other
gifts of God, has characteristically distinguished itself by its own
special word, by which, while expressing any object whatever, it also
reflects in the expression its own share of its own distinctive
character. The word Briton echoes with knowledge of the heart, and
wise knowledge of life; the word French, which is not of ancient date,
glitters with a light foppery, and flits away; the sagely artistic
word German ingeniously discovers its meaning, which is not attainable
by every one; but there is no word which is so ready, so audacious,
which is torn from beneath the heart itself, which is so burning, so
full of life, as the aptly applied Russian word."*

*"Dead Souls," translated by Isabel Hapgood.

Prosper Merimee, who knew Russian well, and was an absolute master of
the French language, remarked:--

"La langue russe, qui est, autant que j 'en puis juger, le plus riche
des idiomes de l'Europe, semble faite pour exprimer les nuances les
plus delicates. Douee d'une merveilleuse concision qui s'allie a la
clarte, il lui suffit d'un mot pour associer plusieurs idees, qui,
dans une autre langue, exigeralent des phrases entieres."

And no people are more jealous on this very point than the French. In
the last of his wonderful "Poems in Prose," Turgenev cried out: "In
these days of doubt, in these days of painful brooding over the fate
of my country, thou alone art my rod and my staff, O great, mighty,
true and free Russian language! If it were not for thee, how could one
keep from despairing at the sight of what is going on at home? But it
is inconceivable that such a language should not belong to a great
people."

It is significant that Turgenev, who was so full of sympathy for the
ideas and civilization of Western Europe, and who was so often
regarded (unjustly) by his countrymen as a traitor to Russia, should
have written all his masterpieces, not in French, of which he had a
perfect command, but in his own beloved mother-tongue.

We see by the above extracts, that Russia has an instrument of
expression as near perfection as is possible in human speech. Perhaps
one reason for the supremacy of Russian fiction may be found here.

The immense size of the country produces an element of largeness in
Russian character that one feels not only in their novels, but almost
invariably in personal contact and conversation with a more or less
educated Russian. This is not imaginary and fantastic; it is a
definite sensation, and immediately apparent. Bigness in early
environment often produces a certain comfortable largeness of mental
vision. One has only to compare in this particular a man from Russia
with a man from Holland, or still better, a man from Texas with a man
from Connecticut. The difference is easy to see, and easier to feel.
It is possible that the man from the smaller district may be more
subtle, or he may have had better educational advantages; but he is
likely to be more narrow. A Texan told me once that it was eighteen
miles from his front door to his front gate; now I was born in a city
block, with no front yard at all. I had surely missed something.

Russians are moulded on a large scale, and their novels are as wide in
interest as the world itself. There is a refreshing breadth of vision
in the Russian character, which is often as healthful to a foreigner
as the wind that sweeps across the vast prairies. This largeness of
character partly accounts for the impression of Vastness that their
books produce on Occidental eyes. I do not refer at all to the length
of the book--for a book may be very long, and yet produce an
impression of pettiness, like many English novels. No, it is something
that exhales from the pages, whether they be few or many. As
illustrations of this quality of vastness, one has only to recall two
Russian novels--one the longest, and the other very nearly the
shortest, in the whole range of Slavonic fiction. I refer to "War and
Peace," by Tolstoi, and to "Taras Bulba," by Gogol. Both of these
extraordinary works give us chiefly an impression of Immensity--we
feel the boundless steppes, the illimitable wastes of snow, and the
long winter night. It is particularly interesting to compare Taras
Bulba with the trilogy of the Polish genius, Sienkiewicz. The former
is tiny in size, the latter a leviathan; but the effect produced is
the same. It is what we feel in reading Homer, whose influence, by the
way, is as powerful in "Taras Bulba" as it is in "With Fire and
Sword."

The Cosmopolitanism of the Russian character is a striking feature.
Indeed, the educated Russian is perhaps the most complete Cosmopolitan
in the world. This is partly owing to the uncanny facility with which
he acquires foreign languages, and to the admirable custom in Russia
of giving children in more or less wealthy families, French, German,
and English governesses. John Stuart Mill studied Greek at the age of
three, which is the proper time to begin the study of any language
that one intends to master. Russian children think and dream in
foreign words, but it is seldom that a Russian shows any pride in his
linguistic accomplishments, or that he takes it otherwise than as a
matter of course. Stevenson, writing from Mentone to his mother, 7
January 1874, said: "We have two little Russian girls, with the
youngest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year-old, I had
the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day. . . . She said
something in Italian which made everybody laugh very much . . .; after
some examination, she announced emphatically to the whole table, in
German, that I was a machen.. . . This hasty conclusion as to my sex
she was led afterwards to revise . . . but her new opinion . . . was
announced in a language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. To
complete the scroll of her accomplishments, . . . she said good-bye to
me in very commendable English." Three days later, he added, "The
little Russian kid is only two and a half; she speaks six languages."
Nothing excites the envy of an American travelling in Europe more
sharply than to hear Russian men and women speaking European languages
fluently and idiomatically. When we learn to speak a foreign tongue,
we are always acutely conscious of the transition from English to
German, or from German to French, and our hearers are still more so.
We speak French as though it HURT, just as the average tenor sings. I
remember at a polyglot Parisian table, a Russian girl who spoke seven
languages with perfect ease; and she was not in the least a
blue-stocking.

Now every one knows that one of the indirect advantages that result
from the acquisition of a strange tongue is the immediate gain in the
extent of view. It is as though a near-sighted man had suddenly put on
glasses. It is something to be able to read French; but if one has
learned to speak French, the reading of a French book becomes
infinitely more vivid. With a French play in the hand, one can see
clearly the expressions on the faces of the personages, as one follows
the printed dialogue with the eye. Here is where a Russian understands
the American or the French point of view, much better than an American
or a Frenchman understands the Russian's. Indeed, the man from Paris
is nothing like so cosmopolitan as the man from Petersburg. One reason
is, that he is too well satisfied with Paris. The late M. Brunetiere
told me that he could neither read or speak English, and, what is
still more remarkable, he said that he had never been in England! That
a critic of his power and reputation, interested as he was in English
literature, should never have had sufficient intellectual curiosity to
cross the English Channel, struck me as nothing short of amazing.

The acquisition of any foreign language annihilates a considerable
number of prejudices. Henry James, who knew Turgenev intimately, and
who has written a brilliant and charming essay on his personality,
said that the mind of Turgenev contained not one pin-point of
prejudice. It is worth while to pause an instant and meditate on the
significance of such a remark. Think what it must mean to view the
world, the institutions of society, moral ideas, and human character
with an absolutely unprejudiced mind! We Americans are skinful of
prejudices. Of course we don't call them prejudices; we call them
principles. But they sometimes impress others as prejudices; and they
no doubt help to obscure our judgment, and to shorten or refract our
sight. What would be thought of a painter who had prejudices
concerning the colours of skies and fields?

The cosmopolitanism of the Russian novelist partly accounts for the
international effect and influence of his novels. His knowledge of
foreign languages makes his books appeal to foreign readers. When he
introduces German, French, English, and Italian characters into his
books, he not only understands these people, he can think in their
languages, and thus reproduce faithfully their characteristics not
merely by observation but by sympathetic intuition. Furthermore, the
very fact that Tolstoi, for example, writes in an inaccessible
language, makes foreign translations of his works absolutely
necessary. As at the day of Pentecost, every man hears him speak in
his own tongue. Now if an Englishman writes a successful book,
thousands of Russians, Germans, and others will read it in English;
the necessity of translation is not nearly so great. It is interesting
to compare the world-wide appeal made by the novels of Turgenev,
Dostoevski, and Tolstoi with that made by Thackeray and George Eliot,
not to mention Mr. Hardy or the late Mr. Meredith.

The combination of the great age of Russia with its recent
intellectual birth produces a maturity of character, with a wonderful
freshness of consciousness. It is as though a strong, sensible man of
forty should suddenly develop a genius in art; his attitude would be
quite different from that of a growing boy, no matter how precocious
he might be. So, while the Russian character is marked by an extreme
sensitiveness to mental impressions, it is without the rawness and
immaturity of the American. The typical American has some strong
qualities that seem in the typical Russian conspicuously absent; but
his very practical energy, his pride and self-satisfaction, stand in
the way of his receptive power. Now a conspicuous trait of the Russian
is his humility; and his humility enables him to see clearly what is
going on, where an American would instantly interfere, and attempt to
change the course of events.* For, however inspiring a full-blooded
American may be, the most distinguishing feature of his character is
surely not Humility. And it is worth while to remember that whereas
since 1850, at least a dozen great realistic novels have been written
in Russian, not a single completely great realistic novel has ever
been written in the Western Hemisphere.

*It is possible that both the humility and the melancholy of the
Russian character are partly caused by the climate, and the vast
steppes and forests, which seem to indicate the insignificance of man.

This extreme sensitiveness to impression is what has led the Russian
literary genius into Realism; and it is what has produced the greatest
Realists that the history of the novel has seen. The Russian mind is
like a sensitive plate; it reproduces faithfully. It has no more
partiality, no more prejudice than a camera film; it reflects
everything that reaches its surface. A Russian novelist, with a pen in
his hand, is the most truthful being on earth.

To an Englishman or an American, perhaps the most striking trait in
the Russian character is his lack of practical force--the paralysis of
his power of will. The national character among the educated classes
is personified in fiction, in a type peculiarly Russian; and that may
be best defined by calling it the conventional Hamlet. I say the
conventional Hamlet, for I believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a man of
immense resolution and self-control. The Hamlet of the commentators is
as unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet as systematic theology is unlike the
Sermon on the Mount. The hero of the orthodox Russian novel is a
veritable "L'Aiglon." This national type must be clearly understood
before an American can understand Russian novels at all. In order to
show that it is not imaginary, but real, one has only to turn to
Sienkiewicz's powerful work, "Without Dogma," the very title
expressing the lack of conviction that destroys the hero.

"Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these
two words, 'l'improductivite slave.' I experienced the same relief as
does a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms
are common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease.
. . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He had
his wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There
is something in us,--an incapacity to give forth all that is in us.
One might say, God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the
power to string the bow and send the arrow straight to its aim. I
should like to discuss it with my father, but am afraid to touch a
sore point. Instead of this, I will discuss it with my diary. Perhaps
it will be just the thing to give it any value. Besides, what can be
more natural than to write about what interests me? Everybody carries
within him his tragedy. Mine is this same 'improductivite slave' of
the Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when romanticism flourished in hearts
and poetry, everybody carried his tragedy draped around him as a
picturesque cloak; now it is carried still, but as a jagervest next to
the skin. But with a diary it is different; with a diary one may be
sincere. . . . To begin with, I note down that my religious belief I
carried still intact with me from Metz did not withstand the study of
natural philosophy. It does not follow that I am an atheist. Oh, no!
this was good enough in former times, when he who did not believe in
spirit, said to himself, 'Matter,' and that settled for him the
question. Nowadays only provincial philosophers cling to that worn-out
creed. Philosophy of our times does not pronounce upon the matter; to
all such questions, it says, 'I do not know.' And that 'I do not know'
sinks into and permeates the mind. Nowadays psychology occupies itself
with close analysis and researches of spiritual manifestations; but
when questioned upon the immortality of the soul it says the same, 'I
do not know,' and truly it does not know, and it cannot know. And now
it will be easier to describe the state of my mind. It all lies in
these words: I do not know. In this--in the acknowledged impotence of
the human mind--lies the tragedy. Not to mention the fact that
humanity always has asked, and always will ask, for an answer, they
are truly questions of more importance than anything else in the
world. If there be something on the other side, and that something an
eternal life, then misfortunes and losses on this side are, as
nothing. 'I am content to die,' says Renan, 'but I should like to know
whether death will be of any use to me.' And philosophy replies, 'I do
not know.' And man beats against that blank wall, and like the
bedridden sufferer fancies, if he could lie on this or on that side,
he would feel easier. What is to be done?"*

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