The great masters of Russian literature in the nineteenth century

Contents

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GOGOL 5

TURGENIEF 117

II

Dreaminess and banter are the two natural tendencies, the two favorite pleasures, of the Russian mind. They are also the two elements of Gogol's talent. At the beginning of his career as a writer, and during the sprightly years of his youth, it is dreaminess which prevails : the narrator penetrates with enthusiasm into the untrodden paths of the Malo-Russian legends. On the track of witches, of Rusalkas, he finds the unpublished poetry of the forests, the ponds, the wide stretches, and the sky of the steppes. These lovely days pass. With age, this restless spirit grows gloomy and melancholy. The observer's eyes turn from the pacifying spectacle of nature, and attempt only to notice the vexing absurdities of humanity.

The satirical spirit in Gogol is first expressed in verse. He is poetical only in prose ; but his prose is equal to the most beautiful verse. In truth, poetry is not rhyme, or metre, or even rhythm : it is the power of touching, of recording its impressions in vivid and genuine images. To feel emotion suitable for poetic expression, there is no need of picturing lofty heroes, or of spreading marvellous landscapes before the eyes. Properly speaking, a Malo- Russian peasant is like a hero in Corneille ; and the imagination of an author, and therefore of his reader, can just as well be stirred by the view of a bit of the flat and naked steppe, as by the sight of the Bay of Naples or a sunset on the ruins of the Coliseum.

Gogol understood this, and, what is far better, made it understood. Instead of preparing his imitation of Werther and his copy of Childe Harold in the fashion of so many others, he had the courage to go to Nature for his models. And in this Russian nature, the wild grace and strange flavor of which he was, so to speak, the first to feel, that which attracts him more than all else is its unostentatious aspect. His field of observation is the village. His heroes are unimportant people, half - barbarous peasants, true Cossack lads, hard drinkers, with circumscribed intellectual training, with superstitious imaginations ; in a word, very simple souls, whose artless passions are shown without any veil, but whose very ingenuousness is a deliriously restful contrast to our romantic or theatrical characters, so artificial in their labored mechanism, so insipid and perfunctory in the refinements of their conventionality.

Gogol places his characters in their natural surroundings. It is the hamlet bordering on the steppe, monotonous and infinite, deserted and mysterious. All this country appeals to the writer's imagination, as well as to that of those Malo-Russians, whose history, past and present, he will describe for us in turn. Each shrub inshrines a memory ; each winding valley veils a legend. In yonder stretch of water, beset with rushes and starred with nenuphars, the sceptic traveller in his indifference sees only a sort of marsh. The peasant who is here a poet, and the poet who remembers that he was once a peasant, know well who the Rusalka is who has been hiding there these many years. From its surface, on nights when the moon lights up the silvery mist, the queen of the drowned comes forth with her train of virgins, to find and drag into the depths of the water her stepmother, the witch whose evil deeds drove her to suicide.

But to move those whom she has brought forth, this land of the Ukrai'na has no need of being wrapped in mystery. Gogol has only to pronounce th.e name of the Dniepr to arouse a sort of passionate woe, whose expression, unhappily almost untranslatable, equals in beauty the accents of the noblest poetry.

'"Marvellous is the Dniepr in peaceful weather, when he rolls his wide waters in a free and reposeful course by forests and mountains. Not the slightest jar, not the slightest tumult. Thou beholdest, and thou canst not tell if his majestic breadth is moving or is stationary. It is almost like a sheet of molten glass. It might be compared to a road of blue ice, without measure in its breadth, without limit to its length, describing its wondrous curves in the emerald distance. How delightful for the burning sun to turn his gaze to earth, and to plunge his rays into the refreshing coolness of the

1 From A Terrible Vengeance.

glassy waves, and for the trees along the bank to see their reflections in this crystal mirror ! Oh the green-crowned trees ! They stand in groups with the flowers of the field by the water-side, and they bend over and gaze, and cannot weary of gazing. They cannot sufficiently admire their bright reflection, and they smile back to it, and greet it, waving their branches. They dare not look towards the middle of the Dniepr : none but the sun and the azure sky gaze at it. Some daring bird occasionally wings his way to the middle of the Dniepr. Oh the giant that he is ! There is not a river like him in the world !

''Marvellous indeed is the Dniepr on a warm summer's night, when all things are asleep, — both man and beast and bird. God only from on high looks down majestically on sky and earth, and shakes with solemnity his chasuble, and from his priestly raiment scatters all the stars. The stars are kindled, they shine upon the world ; and all at the same instant also flash forth from the Dniepr. He holds them every one, the Dniepr, in his sombre bosom ; not one shall escape from him, unless, indeed, it perish

NIKOLAI GOGOL. lj

from the sky. The black forest, dotted with sleeping crows, and the mountains rent from immemorial time, strive, as they catch the light, to veil him with their mighty shadow. In vain ! There is naught on earth can veil the Dniepr ! Forever blue, he marches onward in his restful course by day and night. He can be seen as far as human sight can pierce. As he goes to rest voluptuously, and presses close unto the shore by reason of the nocturnal cold, he leaves behind him a silver trail, flashing like the blade of a Damascus sword, and then he yields to sleep again. Then also he is wonderful, the Dniepr, and there is no river like him in the world !

" But when the black clouds advance like mountains on the sky, the gloomy forest sways, the oaks clash, and the lightning, darting zigzag across the cloud, lights up suddenly the whole world, terrible then the Dniepr is ! The columns of water thunder down, dashing against the mountain, and then with shouts and groans draw far away, and weep, and break out into tears again in the distance. Thus some aged Cossack mother consumes away with grief, lb NIKOLAI GOGOL.

when she gets ready her son to take his departure for the army. With many airs, a genuine good-for-naught, he dashes up on his black steed, his hand on his hip, and his cap set jauntily awry ; and she, weeping at the top of her voice, runs after him, seizes him by the stirrup, strives to grasp the reins, and twists her arms, and breaks into a passion of scalding tears. Like dark stains in the midst of the struggling waves, emerge uncannily the stumps of charred trees and the rocks on the shelving shore. And the boats moored along the shore knock against each other as they rise and fall. What Cossack would dare embark in his canoe when the ancient Dniepr is angry ? Apparently yonder man knows not that his waves swallow men like flies. ,,

The same powerful and charming feeling is found in all the descriptions which are scattered throughout Gogol's work. One must read in "Taras Bulba" the celebrated description of the beauty of the steppe at different hours of the day. What a picture it is of this ocean of gilded verdure, where, amid the delicate dry stalks of the tall grass, shine patches of cornflower with their shades of blue, of violet, or of red ; the broom with its pyramid of yellow flowers ; the clover with its white tufts ; and in this luxuriant flora a corn-stalk, brought thither God knows how, lifting itself with the haughty vigor of a solitary fruit ! The warm atmosphere is vocal with the cries of unseen birds. A few hawks are seen hovering ; a flock of wild geese sweep by, and the prairie-gull mounts and swoops down again, now black and glistening in the sunbeam. Then it is the evening twilight, with its vapors descending denser and more dense, its perfumes rising more and more penetrating; the jerboas creep out from their hiding-places ; the crickets madly chirp in their holes ; and "one hears resounding, like a vibrating bell in the sleepy air, the cry of the solitary swan winging its way from some distant lake." 1

1 The passage referred to is as follows : " The steppe grew more and more beautiful. The whole South, all the region which includes the New Russia of the present day as far as the Black Sea, was a virgin desert of green. Never had the plough passed through the boundless waves of vegetation. Only a few horses, concealed in it as in a forest, trod it under their hoofs. Nothing in nature could be finer. All the surface of the earth was like a green golden ocean from which emerged millions of varied flowers. Amidst the delicate tall stalks of the grass gleamed azure, purple, violet blue-bonnets (voloshki) ; the yel-

What gives this picturesque and vivid prose a singularly penetrating accent, is the writer's emotion. His admiration has a truly passionate character, and this passion breaks out in cries of joy, even in expletives. "The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are ! " There is in this a flavor of savagery which takes hold of us like a novelty, and which must have been as agreeable to the Russian taste as the secretly preferable national dish after too long use of foreign insipidities.

And even for many Russians, this nature which Gogol studied and described, or, more accurately speaking, sang with a sort of intoxi-

low broom lifted on high its pyramidal tower ; the white clover, with its umbrella-like bonnets, mottled the plain ; a wheat-stalk, brought from God knows where, was waxing full of seed. Under their slender roots the partridges were running about, thrusting out their necks. The air was full of a thousand different bird-notes. In the sky hung motionless a cloud of hawks, stretching wide their wings and fixing their eyes silently on the grass. The cry of the wild geese moving in clouds was heard from God knows what distant lake. From the grass arose with measured strokes the prairie-gull, and luxuriously bathed herself in the blue waves- of the air. Now she was lost in immensity, and was visible only as a lone black speck. Now she swept back on broad wings, and gleamed in the sun. The deuce take you, steppes, how beautiful you are 1 " ( Tchort vas vozmi, styepi, kak vui khoroslii ')

cation, was a sort of new world offering every attraction. Nothing is more peculiar than the little Russian landscape with its solitudes, its lakes, its vast rivers, the incomparable purity of its sky, icy and burning in turn. Here there is material to tempt the palette of colorist most enamoured of the untouched (epris cCinedit). But what painter's palette has colors sufficiently powerful to express as Gogol has done the profound, ineffable poetry of the sounds and gleams of the night ?

1 "Do you know the Ukraine night ? Oh ! you do not know the Ukraine night. Gaze upon it with your eyes. From the midst of the sky the moon looks down. The immense vault of heaven unrolls wider and still more wide ; more immense it has become; it glows ; it breathes. The whole earth is in a silvery effulgence, and the marvellous air is both suffocating and fresh. It is full of tender caresses. It stirs into movement an ocean of perfumes.

"Night divine! enchanting night! silent, and as though full of life, the forests rise bristling with darkness ; they cast an enormous shadow. Silent and motionless are the ponds : the coolness

1 From The May Night of their darkling waters is gloomily enshrined between the dark green walls of the gardens.

11 The cherry-trees and wild plums stretch their roots with cautious timidity towards the icy water of the springs ; and from their leaves only now and then are heard faint whisperings, as though they were angry, as though they were indignant, when the gay adventurer, the night wind, glides stealthily up to them and kisses them.

"All the landscape sleeps; and far above, all is breathing, all is marvellous, all is solemn. The soul cannot fathom it : it is sublime. An infinite number of silver visions arise like a harmony in the depths. Night divine ! enchanting night! And suddenly all is filled with life, — the forests, the ponds, the steppes. Majestically the thunder of the voice of the Ukraine nightingale rolls along; and it seems as though the moon drank her song from the bosom of the sky.

"A magic slumber holds the village yonder in repose. Still more brilliant in the moonlight the group of little houses stands out in relief ; still more blinding are their low walls in contrast with the shade. The songs have ceased; all is now still. The pious folk are already asleep. Here and there a narrow window shows a gleam of light ; on the doorstep of some cottage, a belated family are finishing their evening meal."

Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand aspects of the Ukraine landscape. He has sketches filled in with adorable detail ; and nothing is more curious than the contrast between the lyricism with which he celebrates the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the fine, discreet, restrained tone of so many familiar impressions. The feeling for nature finds in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in turn through every gradation.

Sometimes it is a vigorous sketch made with a few strokes, at once broad and accurate, dominated by a strange and grandiose theme : —

1 "In places the black sky was colored by the burning of dry rushes on the shore of some river or out-of-the-way lake; and a long line of swans flying to the north, struck suddenly by the silver rose-light of the flame, were like red handkerchiefs waving across the night."

1 From Taras Bulba.

Sometimes it is a picture full of detail, whose motives have been strangely brought together and treated delicately, elaborately, as with a magnifying-glass : —

""I see from here the little house, surrounded by a gallery supported by delicate, slender columns of darkened wood, and going entirely around the building, so that during thundershowers or hail -storms the window -shutters can be closed without exposure to the rain ; behind the house, mulberry-trees in bloom, then long rows of dwarf fruit-trees drowned in the bright scarlet of the cherries and in an amethystine sea of plums with leaden down ; then a large old beech-tree, under the shade of which is spread a carpet for repose ; before the house, a spacious court with short and verdant grass, with two little foot-paths trodden down by the steps of those who went from the barn to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the proprietor's house. A long- necked goose drinking water from a puddle, surrounded by her soft and silky yellow goslings ; a long hedge hung with strings of dried pears and apples, and rugs put out to air ; a wagon loaded with melons

1 From Old-time Proprietors.

near the barn ; on one side an ox unyoked and chewing his cud, lazily lying down. All this has for me an inexpressible charm. "

Here we have a realism anterior to our own, and, if I may be allowed to say so, far superior. Here we do not find, as we do elsewhere, features collected and reproduced with the conscientiousness — or rather the lack of conscientiousness — of a photographic camera: a choice is shown, a soul -felt attention. The observer's notice is that of a poet : the external world is no longer reflected in a glass lens, but is caught by a quivering retina; the image which is transferred to the book is no less alive, and what the writer has felt in this manner the reader feels in turn.

Just so far as purely descriptive description produces an impression of puerility, of unlikeness, and, when it is carried to extremes in the style of our realists, of fatigue and disgust, to the same degree does it here afford interest, picturesqueness, appropriateness. Who could fail to see, or who would refuse to admire, the pose of " yonder wooden cottages, leaning to one side, and buried in a thicket of willows, elders, and pear-trees"? They have something better than a physiognomy : they have a language.

" I could not tell why the doors sang in this way. Was it because the hinges were rusted? Or had the joiner who made them concealed in them some secret mechanism ? I do not know ; but the strangest thing was, that each door had its own individual voice. That of the sleeping-room had the most delicate soprano, that of the dining-room a sonorous bass. As to that which closed the ante -room, it gave forth a strange, tremulous, and plaintive sound, so that by listening attentively these words could be distinctly heard: 'Batiushki! I am freezing/ I know that many people do not like the squeaking of doors : for my part, I like it very much. And when I happen to hear in St. Petersburg a door crying, I suddenly perceive the scent of the country, together with the memory of a small, low room, lighted by a taper set in an ancient candlestick. Supper is already on the table, near the open window through which the lovely May night looks into the room. A nightingale fills the garden, the

NIKOLAI GOGOL, 2j

house, and the slope to the river gleaming in the gloomy distance, with the glory of his voice; the trees gently rustle. BozJie mot! what a train of memories arise within me !"

We must draw attention to the exclamations which in Gogol serve for the passionate conclusion to his most accurate descriptions. They give us the key to his poetic realism. It is feeling which stored away the impression in the treasure-house of the memory ; it is feeling which calls it up again, and places it before the reader, kindled with all the fires of the imagination.

III

This power of resurrection which makes the poet a god, Gogol applies equally to facts and to ideas, to men and to things, to legends and to history. His whole work shows it, but nothing in his work shows it more clearly than his early writings. Here imagination plays the leading part. In the works of his riper years, it is observation which comes to get the mastery, forcing itself everywhere. The part played by poetry, by fancy, grows less and less. The author of "The Revizor? of " Dead Souls, " no longer takes pains, except rarely, to distinguish by his characteristic touch his models of coarseness, platitude, or ugliness.

The writer of the " Evenings at the Farm " is still content to vivify or revivify in his halfimaginary, half-biographical tales, artless lovers, full of passion and pathos, heroes of epic grandeur, good old folks of the vanished past, of odd exteriors, of ridiculous aspect, but charming by their glances, stirring by their smiles, as in the pale, faded pastels of a bygone age. Such are the figures which Gogol afterwards ceases to depict for us : it is these which we are going to endeavor to take out from his first collection, so as to examine them entirely at our ease.

This collection of "Evenings at the Farm" is divided into two parts, bearing, by way of sub-title, the town names, Didanka and Mirgorod.

Each part contains two groups of novels. In the "Evenings near Didanka," ' the first group contains " The Fair at Sorotchintsui," " St. John's Eve," "The May Night, or the Drowned Girl," and "The Missing Paper." The second group includes "Christmas Eve," "A Terrible Vengeance," " Ivan Feodorovitch Shponka and his Aunt," and "An Enchanted Spot."

The "Evenings near Mirgorod " contain four novels in two groups: in the one, "Old-time Proprietors" 2 and "Taras Bulba" (in its first form ; shortly afterwards the author recast it

1 Vetchera na Khutoi-yc bliz Dikcuiki. z Starosiyctskie Ponycshchiki, and developed it) ; in the other, "Vii'," which has been translated into French under the title "The King of the Gnomes," and "The Story of how Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch quarrelled." J

The novels of the first part have especially a fantastic character. The Devil, who holds such a place in the imagination of the Malo-Russian peasants, is the principal hero of some of the stories, " The Fair at Sorotchintsui " for example. Witches also play a preponderating part in his mysterious tales. But here the witch is not that wrinkled, toothless, unclean being, hiding herself like an abominable beast in some, illomened hovel. She is generally a beautiful girl, with eyes green as an Undine's, with skin of lily and rose, with long hair yellow as gold or black as ebony, with delicate level, haughty eye-brows. Sometimes, as in "Yi'f,"it is the proprietor's daughter, and those who are impudent enough to stare at her are lost: witness the groom Mikita.

This groom had no equal in the world. En-

chanted by the maiden, he becomes a little woman, a rag, the deuce knows what. Did she look at him ? The reins fell from his hand. He forgot the names of his dogs, and called one instead of the other. One day, while he was grooming a horse at the stable, the maiden came and asked him to let her rest her little foot upon him. He accepted with joy, foolish fellow ! but she compelled him to gallop like a horse, and struck him redoubled blows with her witch's stick. He came back half dead, and from that day he vanished from mortal sight. " Once when they went to the stable, they found instead of him only a handful of ashes by an empty pail. He had burned up, — entirely burned up by his own fire. Yet he had been a groom such as no more can be found in the world."

Artless but not silly sorcery. It is the timid homage, pathetic from its very timidity, which is offered by these barbarous souls to the eternal power of beauty and love.

These witches of Gogol, so bold and. novel in their conception, put me in mind of a painting of the Spanish school, attributed to Murillo.

This canvas, which I saw several years ago in a private gallery, is a Temptation of St. Anthony, interpreted in an unlooked-for way. A young man of thirty years, whose features are those of the painter himself, with sunburned face and passionate eyes, bends towards his mistress, a lovely girl with piquant charm, sal y pimienta, who is leaning on his shoulder, while her mouth is arched at the corners of the lips in a smile of irresistible seduction.

In these tales of Gogol, the marvellous abounds. But it abounds equally in the life of these Malo-Russians whom the author has wished to depict for us. The supernatural affrights and charms them. If the legends of the Ukrai'na are lugubrious, yet they never weary of hearing them told. The young girl who at the first sound of the serenade lifts the latch, steals out from the door, and joins the love-stricken bandiira-^X^y^x^ desires no other entertainment on the border of the pond which in the uncanny lights of the night reflects in its waters the willows and the maples : l "Tell me it, my handsome Cossack," she says, laying her cheek to his face and kissing him : " No ?

1 From The May Night.

Then it is plain that thou dost not love me, that thou hast some other young girl. Speak ! I shall not be afraid. My sleep will not be broken by it. On the contrary, I shall not be able to go to sleep at all if thou dost not tell me this story. I shall be thinking of something else. I shall believe — come, Lyevko, tell it." They are right who say that the Devil haunts the brain of young girls to keep their curiosity awake.

Lyevko, however, yields, and unfolds the old legend. It is the story of the daughter of the sotnik (captain of a hundred Cossacks). The sotnik had a daughter white as snow. He was old, and one day he brought home a second wife, young and handsome, white and rose ; but she looked at her stepdaughter in such a strange way that she cried out under her gaze. The young wife was a witch, as was seen immediately. The very night of the wedding, a black cat enters the young girl's room, and tries to choke her with his iron claws. She snatches a sabre down from the wall, she strikes at the animal, and cuts off his paw. He disappears with a yell. When the stepmother was seen again, her hand was covered with bandages. Five days later the father drove his daughter from the house, and in grief she drowned herself in the pond. Since then the drowned girl has been waiting for the sorceress, to beat her with the green rushes of the pond ; but up to the present time the stepmother has succeeded in escaping from all her traps. ( She is very wily/ says the poor Undine. ' I feel that she is here. I suffer from her presence. Because of her, I cannot swim freely like a fish. I go to the bottom like a key. Find her for me."

Lyevko the singer hears the drowned girl thus speaking to him in a dream. But this dream is a reality ; for when he wakes, Lyevko, who has tracked and caught the stepmother in the circle of the young shadows, finds in his hand the reward of the Queen of the Lake. It is a letter containing an order for the marriage between Lyevko and Hanna, his fiancee. The order is given by the district commissioner, to Hanna's father, who has hitherto shown himself recalcitrant. " I shall not tell any one the miracle which has been performed this night," murmurs the happy bridegroom. "To thee alone will I confide it, Hanna ; thou alone wilt believe me, and together we will pray for the soul of the poor drowned girl."

IV

In this collection of "Evenings at the Farm" figures the heroic story of a great character, the life of the ataman Taras Bulba. Gogol afterwards turned this epopee into prose, but the after-touches did not change the character of the early composition. The hero of " Taras Bulba M is one of those Zaporog Cossacks who played such an important part in the history of Poland, and later in the history of Russia. After the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Zaporozhtsui, who formed a military republic, or, if the term is preferred, an association of cavalry bandits, became the terror of the neighboring peoples. They had on an island in the Dniepr a permanent camp, the Setch, where, even in times of peace, young Cossacks came to perfect themselves in the noble game of war. Women were rigorously excluded from the SctcJi. The men were quartered in divisions, or kurenui ; each kuren had its chief, an ataman (hetman) ; the entire camp was commanded by a supreme chief, the atamdn-kotchevoi.

The romance of "Taras Bulba" opens in the most original fashion. 1 The two sons of the Cossack Taras are just back from the divinity school, to which they will not return. The father, a vigorous Zaporozhets, who has grown gray in harness, receives them with sarcastic observations about their long robes. It is a sort of test like that which Don Diego gives his sons in the "Romancero." The eldest of Bulba's sons, Ostap (Eustace), behaves like Rodriguez. "Though thou art my father, I swear to thee, if thou continuest to laugh at me, I will give thee a drubbing."

After an exchange of well-directed blows on either side, Taras kisses effusively his son whose courage and strength he has just experienced; he rudely rallies Andril (Andrew), the younger, on his gentleness : " Thou art a puppy so far as I can judge. Don't listen to thy mother's words : she is a woman ; she knows

1 For a translation of this portion, see Appendix.

3 8 NIKOLA'/ GOGOL.

naught. What need have ye of being coddled ? A good prairie, a good horse, that's all the delicacies that ye need. See this sabre : behold your mother, lads ! "

The poor woman is not at the end of her trials. Taras announces his immediate departure with his sons : she protests amid tears and lamentations ; the Cossack ill-uses her, and cuts short her complaints. The two sons spend in their father's house just time enough to give the narrator a chance to describe this interior so characteristic and brilliantly colored. On the wall hang all the exquisite ornaments in which barbarous man delights, — sabres, whips, inlaid arms, reins worked in gold wire, silvernailed clogs. On the dressers are the products of civilization brought from different corners of the world, — masterpieces of Florentine engravers, of Venetian glass-blowers, of Oriental goldsmiths ; and in contrast with all this treasure, the fruit of pillage, piles of wood, the stove made of the enamelled bricks loved by the Ukraine peasant, and the " holy images " in hieratic posture, these Lares indispensable at every Malo-Russian fireside.