Chapter I: Front Matter

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RUSSIA

ITS PEOPLE AND ITS LITERATURE

BY

EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN

Translated from the Spanish

By FANNY HALE GARDINER

CHICAGO

A.C. McCLURG & CO.

1901

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Emilia Pardo Bazán, the author of the following critical survey of Russian literature, is a Spanish woman of well-known literary attainments as well as wealth and position. Her life has been spent in association with men of mark, both during frequent sojourns at Madrid and at home in Galicia, "the Switzerland of Spain," from which province her father was a deputy to Cortes.

Books and libraries were almost her only pleasures in childhood, as she was allowed few companions, and she says she could never apply herself to music. By the time she was fourteen she had read widely in history, sciences, poetry, and fiction, excepting the works of the French romanticists, Dumas, George Sand, and Victor Hugo, which were forbidden fruit and were finally obtained and enjoyed as such. At sixteen she married and went to live in Madrid, where, amid the gayeties of the capital, her love for literature suffered a long eclipse.

Her father was obliged, for political reasons, to leave the country after the abdication of Amadeus, and she accompanied him in a long and to her profitable period of wandering, during which she learned French, English, and Italian, in order to read the literatures of those tongues. She also plunged deep into German philosophy, at first out of curiosity, because it was then in vogue; but she confesses a debt of gratitude to it nevertheless.

While she was thus absorbed in foreign tongues and literatures, she remained almost entirely ignorant of the new movement in her own land, led by Valera, Galdos, and Alarcon. The prostration which characterized the reign of Isabella II. had been followed by a rejuvenation born of the Revolution of 1868. When this new literature was at last brought to her notice, she read it with delighted surprise, and was immediately struck by something resembling the spirit of Cervantes, Hurtado, and other Spanish writers of old renown. Inspired by the possibility of this heredity, she resolved to try novel-writing herself,--a thought which had never occurred to her when her idea of the novel had been bounded by the romantic limitations of Victor Hugo and his suite. But if the novel might consist of descriptions of places and customs familiar to us, and studies of the people we see about us, then she would dare attempt it. As yet, however, no one talked of realism or naturalism in Spain; the tendency of Spanish writers was rather toward a restoration of elegant Castilian, and her own first novel followed this line, although evidently inspired by the breath of realism as far as she was then aware of it. The methods and objects of the French realists became fully manifest to her shortly afterward; for, being in poor health, she went to Vichy, where in hours of enforced leisure she read for the first time Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. The result led her to see the importance of their aims and the force of their art, to which she added the idea that each country should cultivate its own tradition while following the modern methods. These convictions she embodied first in a prologue to her second novel, "A Wedding Journey," and then in a series of articles published in the "Epoca" at Madrid, and afterward in Paris; these she avers were the first echoes in Spain of the French realist movement.

All of her novels have been influenced by the school of art to which she has devoted her attention and criticism, and her study of which has well qualified her for the essays contained in this volume. This work on Russian literature was published in 1887, but prior to its appearance in print the Señora de Bazán was invited to read selections from it before the Ateneo de Madrid,--an honor never before extended to a woman, I believe.

Few Spanish women are accustomed to speaking in public, and she thus describes her own first attempt in 1885, when, during the festivities attending the opening of the first railway between Madrid and Coruña, the capital of her native province, she was asked to address a large audience invited to honor the memory of a local poet:--

"Fearful of attempting so unusual a performance, as well as
doubtful of the ability to make my voice heard in a large
theatre, I took advantage of the presence of my friend
Emilio Castelar to read to him my discourse and confide to
him my fears. On the eve of the performance, Castelar,
ensconced in an arm-chair in my library, puzzled his brains
over the questions whether I should read standing or
sitting, whether I should hold my papers in my hand or no,
and having an artist's eye to the scenic effect, I think he
would have liked to suggest that I pose before the mirror!
But I was less troubled about my attitude than by the
knowledge that Castelar was to speak also, and before me,
which would hardly predispose my audience in my favor....
The theatre was crowded to suffocation, but I found that
this rather animated than terrified me. I rose to read (for
it was finally decided that I should stand), and I cannot
tell how thin and hard and unsympathetic my voice sounded in
the silence. My throat choked with emotion; but I was
scarcely through the first paragraph when I heard at my
right hand the voice of Castelar, low and earnest, saying
over and over again, 'Very good, very good! That is the
tone! So, so! 'I breathed more freely, speaking became
easier to me; and my audience, far from becoming impatient,
gave me an attention and applause doubly grateful to one
whose only hope had been to avoid a fiasco. Castelar greeted
me at the close with a warm hand-grasp and beaming eyes,
saying, 'We ought to be well satisfied, Emilia; we have
achieved a notable and brilliant success; let us be happy,
then!'"

Probably the Señora de Bazán learned her lesson well, and had no need of the friendly admonitions of Castelar when she came to address the distinguished audience at the Ateneo, for she is said to have "looked very much at ease," and to have been very well received, but a good deal criticised afterward, being the first Spanish woman who ever dared to read in the Ateneo.

Turning from the authoress to the work, I will only add that I hope the American reader may find it to be what it seemed to me as I read it in Spanish,--an epitome of a vast and elaborate subject, and a guide to a clear path through this maze which without a guide can hardly be clear to any but a profound student of belles-lettres; for classicism, romanticism, and realism are technical terms, and the purpose of the modern novel is only just beginning to be understood by even fairly intelligent readers. In the belief that the interest awakened by Russian literature is not ephemeral, and that this great, young, and original people has come upon the world's stage with a work to perform before the world's eye, I have translated this careful, critical, synthetical study of the Russian people and literature for the benefit of my intelligent countrymen.

F.H.G.

Chicago, March, 1890.

CONTENTS.

Book I.

THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIA.

I. Scope and Purpose of the Present Essay
II. The Russian Country
III. The Russian Race
IV. Russian History
V. The Russian Autocracy
VI. The Agrarian Communes
VII. Social Classes in Russia
VIII. Russian Serfdom

Book II.

RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE.

I. The Word "Nihilism"
II. Origin of the Intellectual Revolution
III. Woman and the Family
IV. Going to the People
V. Herzen and the Nihilist Novel
VI. The Reign of Terror
VII. The Police and the Censor

Book III.

RISE OF THE RUSSIAN NOVEL.

I. The Beginnings of Russian Literature
II. Russian Romanticism.--The Lyric Poets
III. Russian Realism: Gogol, its Founder

Book IV.

MODERN RUSSIAN REALISM.

I. Turguenief, Poet and Artist
II. Gontcharof and Oblomovism
III. Dostoiëwsky, Psychologist and Visionary
IV. Tolstoï, Nihilist and Mystic
V. French Realism and Russian Realism