Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

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* * * * *

SHORT-STORY
MASTERPIECES

VOLUME IV--RUSSIAN

DONE INTO ENGLISH
BY JOHN COURNOS

INTRODUCTIONS BY

J. BERG ESENWEIN
_Editor of Lippincott’s Magazine_

THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
Springfield, Massachusetts
1913

Copyright 1912 and 1913--J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Copyright 1913--THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL

CONTENTS
VOLUME IV

PAGE

Dostoevski, Apostle to the Lowly 5
Story: The Tree and the Wedding 17

Korolenko the Exile 33
Story: The Old Bell-Ringer 45

Garshin the Melancholiac 57
Story: Four Days 71

Chekhov, Recorder of Lost Illusions 95
Story: In Exile 113

Andreev: Apostle of the Terrible 131
Story: Silence 145

Gorki the Bitter 169
Story: Comrades 183

DOSTOEVSKI, APOSTLE TO THE LOWLY

It is really a hopeless task to view within small compass so prolific and so intense a novelist as Féodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. Indeed, I long questioned the fitness of including him in this series of brief studies, for his little fictions are few; but Russian literature knows no more vigorous novelist than this inartistic though colossal figure, and any compendious treatment of Russian writers would seem inadequate which did not include the author of “Crime and Punishment.” Apart from a few little stories, Dostoevski’s short fictional creations are chiefly episodes in his long and mostly rambling novels--powerful and compact little digressions often almost unrelated to the main thread of the story, but worthy of existence separately as pieces of impressionism.

* * * * *

No finer tribute could be paid to a man than to recognize him as the apostle of humble folk--unless it were to add that this apostolate was free from the taint of demagoguery and solely the vocation of a tender spirit. Fifty years ago, in the Russia of the sixties, Dostoevski came to the full enduement of his ministry for man. What Jean François Millet saw in the French peasant, that the great Russian novelist felt in the muzhik--the pathos of those who suffer under burdens, the heart-break of hopeless toil, the unexpected beauty gleaming in the midst of ugliness, honey hidden in the carcass of the lion.

No man ever lived a selfless life of service but his reward followed him--though often enough too late to cheer the rigors of his way. So too Dostoevski came to his own at last, but not till after a life of suffering, banishment, disease, disappointment, poverty, and debt; and he died just when his voice was heard most impressively, leaving his master-novel unfinished, and its author wept by forty thousand mourners who followed his bier as delegates, so to call them, of the uncounted millions whose cries he had voiced.

* * * * *

We are all agreed that the function of literature is to portray life, but when we have said that, we have not begun at the beginning. What motive must be back of the portrayal? Or must there be no motive at all save that of picturing life faithfully? Here is where opinions divide, as well as upon that other question: Is all life proper subject-matter for literary portrayal?

Russian literature especially furnishes ground for such questionings, and the work of Dostoevski in particular; but to me it illustrates the view which seems to be the true one. The literary portrayal of life _must_ have a motive beyond that of mere faithful delineation, for it is inevitable that the artist must foresee this truth: the effect which the contemplation of certain aspects of life had upon him will be the effect upon the reader after having read his transcription. So the desire to reproduce an effect--impressionism, they call it in art--is in itself a powerful motive, changing according to the greatness or littleness of the effect to be produced.

Thus we have the whole range of possible motives for the portrayal of life in literature--entertainment, teaching, arousement, propagandum, what-not. This variation of motive naturally leads us to the question: _Who_ should read? Certainly not every one should read everything; hence many books not bad in themselves become bad influences when placed in wrong hands. It is worth while remembering this in forming our judgments.

The second question--Is all life proper subject-matter for literary portrayal?--lies close beside the former. If we could assume that certain literary delineations would be held as material sacred to the pathologist of soul, of mind, of body, of society, we could unhesitatingly say “Yes” to this question. But when we consider that the inevitable destiny of great writing is its free distribution in periodical or book form, we are certain that not all books are for all readers.

In discussing the work of Gorki in this series this question is touched upon. Here we face it also--Dostoevski is too true, too terrible, at times too revolting, for every one to read. Let no one read him who dreads to look upon scenes sad, terrible, funereal; who fears to enter hospitals, prisons, charnel houses, and the place of knout and execution. The message of this precursor of Bourget was not one of lyric sweetness, he never dwelt in ecstasy upon the beauties of forest and stream--man, not nature, was his theme. With a wildly passionate understanding--perhaps a diseased and certainly an abnormal understanding--he showed the furies of crime, the viciousness of those whom society has thrust out, the dull brutality of the under dog, the aborted egoism of those who haunt every dark way--but in all he found goodness, for his eye was full of pity, always full of pity. To him crime was a misfortune more than a mark of sheer evil. A dangerous view? Yes--and a gentle one.

No man can persistently look upon his fellow men without awakening his own real self. Now, see how this doctrine of expression works itself out when we give due value to the personal equation. Here is a man who was born October 30, 1821, in a charity hospital in Warsaw, as the second of seven children. His father, a poor army surgeon, was of excellent birth, though his family lived in but two rooms. Féodor went to boarding-school when thirteen, was graduated with honors from the Military School of Engineering in St. Petersburg, received a good appointment, but soon resigned to give himself to literature.

His first novel, “Poor People” (1846), won him the name of the “new Gogol,” but in 1849 he was unjustly arrested for inciting to insurrection, condemned to be shot, and reprieved after standing on the executioner’s platform for twenty minutes in freezing weather while almost naked. Four terrible years in a Siberian prison nearly completed the ruin which a sickly constitution, shattered nerves, and epileptic attacks had begun. Brückner puts it thus dramatically: “...for no single moment, or at most when he collapsed under his load of bricks, did he feel himself a man.” Yet, quite in the wonderful way that life often takes, this very prison era made the man and the novelist.

When at length he was released from prison, he served three years in the Siberian army, and finally was permitted to return home--to a period of struggle with his little magazine, its silly suppression by the censor, the ruin of his family, the death of his dear ones, the exhausting fight to bear the load of debt, the flight from the debtors’ prison into foreign countries, the ill-rewarded toil which forever harassed him, in short, to a cycle of suffering which might well have worn out the strongest. No wonder that he had the sensation of being flayed alive--that every breath of air held pains in store for him.

Now suppose that such a maddening plenitude of experience should clamor for expression, why should not the unfortunate epileptic indite with his pen the diseased, the abnormal, the despairing, sensations which piled upon him with terrific weight year after year? He saw all with sympathy, why should not his soul-cries rouse the world to pity for what he saw?

There is an immeasurable area lying between that morbid mind which loves to depict the purlieus of life and that brave heart which reaches down deep into the filthy and the sickening for the sake of dragging somewhat of value up to the light. Dostoevski conceived that Russia could never energize her arm for saving service without a wide knowledge of what existed in every place of nameless horror. As a great natural pathologist, he understood the vagaries of the diseased and the defective; in Siberia he perforce mingled with the lowest criminals--the results he embodied in a score of novels, four or five of them great novels, for those to read who dare look in the face the life of the shadowy alleys, for those to avoid who prefer the light and airy high-paths.

What is more, no pleasant bucolic pipe can rouse like a bugle-blast. Those who play the notes of beauty will exalt or pacify the soul, but those who would rouse the whole being must choose sturdy instruments and various. To shift the similitude, Russia needed no soothing unguents, her festering sores called for the heroic knife--first exact diagnosis, then the knife. And Dostoevski showed always the truth--the sordid, noisome, revolting, pitiful truth--and, as this serene prophet saw that she would, Russia herself is more and more bravely using the knife. Yet beauty and sweetness and upper air are in his stories, too, especially if one sees beneath the surface.

* * * * *

Russia’s greatest novelists are really three: Turgenev, the cosmopolitan, was an æsthete, an artist, a polished littérateur; Tolstoi, the mystic, was a brooding reformer, too self-centered to realize his humanitarian ideals, but a majestic figure in literature as in life; Dostoevski, the profoundly religious psychologist, was an unbalanced, fiery apostle, winging among the highest, stalking amidst the lowest, seeing visions not given to common men.

Dostoevski’s novels are great not by reason of their art, but from their artlessness, which is to say their explosive sincerity, like the incoherent violence of one who feels things too powerful for orderly utterance. In this they reflect his life only in that they reproduce what the seismograph of his spirit recorded. Outwardly, he was quiet, detached, even morose, his epileptic seizures doubtless sending him into the companionship of his own life; but his soul shook with the volcanic terrors which he perforce beheld, from his cradle in the charity hospital, through the turbulent years of Siberia, Russia, and the continent, down to the day of his too early taking-off at the age of fifty-nine.

Not all of his novels are worth general reading, even were they all available in English. He was too much preoccupied with his struggle with debt, his physical sufferings, his inner life, his passion of pity, his profound analyses of the characters about him, his tender religious faith, to allow him to study the graces of expression. In consequence, diffuseness and lack of compact, progressive plot--for he had no dramatic skill--characterize his work, and when he does rise to heights of beautiful utterance, which is not seldom, it is the outbursting of sheer feeling, the power of his theme, not the premeditated caperings of the self-conscious stylist. The man and his vehement message are far bigger than his technique.

Seven of his works must here be dismissed in as many paragraphs as they deserve chapters.

“Poor Folk,” strongly influenced by Gogol’s “The Cloak,” was written when Dostoevski was twenty-five. Though told in the handicapping form of letters, it made an immediate impression. Simplicity, human understanding, and compression--and the last was not one of his usual virtues--mark this spiritual history of two lives. It is an effective book, though not a great.

The years of Siberian torment yielded fruit in that remarkable example of criminal psychology, “Memories of a House of the Dead,” 1861-62. Not Dickens, and certainly not Oscar Wilde, approached this dispassionate record of a tremendously passionate and passion-inspiring theme, the inside of a terrible prison, which stirred Europe just when Hugo was issuing “Les Miserables.” “His calm account of their unblushing knavery is entirely free from either vindictive malice or superior contempt. He loved them because they were buried alive, he loved them because of their wretchedness, with a love as far removed from condescension as it was from secret admiration of their bold wickedness.” These words of Professor Phelps are singularly illuminating.

“Crime and Punishment,” the best known to English readers of the author’s works, is by many considered his masterpiece. Notwithstanding many waste places of digression, this book is a lofty peak. No one could picture in a few words the tremendous story of that other Eugene Aram--Raskolnikov--the philosophical student of crime, his double murder, his confession to the courtesan Sonia, her great-hearted reception of the news, her counsel that he confess his crime, their life in Siberia, and the gradual regeneration of both souls through the ministry of service.

Then, there are “The Gambler,” in which Dostoevski’s own passion for the green table is evidently recorded; and “The Idiot,” a prince whose unworldly sweetness is notable, even under the stress of epilepsy, and whose influence over the lives of all about him is a genuine creation; and “Possessed by Demons,” a portrayal of Nihilism, largely written as a fling at Turgenev, whom Dostoevski never loved; and finally that gigantic conception, “The Karamazov Brothers,” which he did not live to complete--a terrible yet sublime work that promised to be as soul-shaking as interminable.

The business of grown-up life is too serious to allow much space in Russian literature for that most really serious subject, child-life. Dostoevski is an exception. Though he has very few strong and beautiful women characters, his tender heart felt for every child, as witness the penetrating anecdotal sketch which here follows. Note its characteristic humor, tinged with satire; see the pity of it--a pity of situation, not of overwrought description; feel the essential right-mindedness of it, written at a period when the modern view of girlhood’s right to her own self was yet unpreached. This one powerful plea--without a word of homily, as it is--forms big enough foundation for the building of this man’s name for great-heartedness and ranks him in this respect with Charles Dickens, whom he loved.

THE TREE AND THE WEDDING
_By Féodor Dostoevski_

A few days ago I saw a wedding.... But no! I had better tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was fine in its way, and it pleased me immensely; but the other episode was more interesting. It is difficult to say why, at the sight of the wedding, I recalled the tree. This is how it happened.

Exactly five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I had been invited to a children’s party. The personage who invited me was a well-known man of affairs, with many connections, a wide acquaintance, involved in intrigue; so it was quite natural to suppose that this children’s party served as a mere pretext for the parents to crowd together and to discuss other interesting matters in what seemed like an innocent, accidental, and unpremeditated manner.

I was an outsider; I had little to talk about, and I therefore passed the evening quite independently. There was another gentleman present, who was apparently of no particular importance, and who, like myself, had stumbled upon this domestic happiness. He, above all others, attracted my attention. He was a tall, spare figure, quite serious in aspect and very neat in dress. But it was evident that he was beyond joyousness and domestic happiness. Once he betook himself to a corner, he immediately ceased to smile, but frowned with his dense, black brows. Except for the host, he was unacquainted with a single soul at the party. It was apparent that he was terribly bored, and that he sustained bravely until the end the rôle of a totally diverted and happy individual. I learned later that this gentleman was from the provinces, and had a very important head-splitting affair to settle in the capital; that he had a letter of recommendation to our host, who was not at all disposed to treat its bearer _con amore_, and had invited him to the children’s party merely out of politeness. He was not asked to join in a game of cards, nor to help himself to a cigar; and no one thought to enter into conversation with him. It was possible that the species of bird was recognized from a distance by its feathers. At any rate, our gentleman, at a loss what to do with his hands, found it necessary to stroke his side-whiskers. The side-whiskers were indeed very good ones, but he stroked them with such assiduity that to look at him it was quite natural to presume that the side-whiskers came into the world first, and that the gentleman was attached to them afterwards that he might stroke them.

Aside from this figure, participating after the manner described in the domestic happiness of the host--who had five well-fed boy youngsters--there was another gentleman who diverted me. He, however, was of a totally different character. In fact, a real personage. They called him Julian Mastakovich. The very first glance could have told you that he was a respected guest, and that his relation to the host was similar to the host’s relation to the man who stroked his side-whiskers. The host and the hostess showered compliments upon him, waited upon him, flattered him, conducted their guests into his presence for introduction, while him they did not conduct to any one else. I observed how a tear glistened in the host’s eyes when Julian Mastakovich said that seldom had he spent so pleasant an evening.

I experienced a disagreeable feeling before this person, and so after admiring the children I went into the small drawing-room, which was almost empty, and sat down in a kind of flowery arbor belonging to the hostess, and occupying almost half of the room.

The children were incredibly charming, and seemed determined not to resemble their elders, notwithstanding all the efforts of their mothers and governesses. In a twinkling they bared the tree to its last bonbon, and had managed to break half of the playthings before they knew for whom they were designated. Especially fine to look at was a dark-eyed, curly-haired lad, who aimed at me continuously with his wooden gun. But, above all, my attention was attracted by his sister, a girl of eleven years, as lovely as Cupid, quiet, pensive, pale, with large, musing eyes, slightly projecting out of their circles. The other children had somehow offended her; for that reason, she came into the very room where I sat, and, betaking herself into a corner, was soon occupied with her doll. The guests looked with great deference in the direction of her father, a wealthy proprietor, and some one mentioned in a half-whisper that a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles had already been laid aside for her.

I turned around to glance at those interested in this circumstance, and my gaze fell upon Julian Mastakovich, who, having thrust his hands behind him and inclined his head a trifle to the side, was listening with a marked intentness to the chatter of these folk.

Afterward I could not help but feel astonished at the sageness of the hosts in distributing the children’s gifts. The little girl who already had a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles received the most expensive doll. Then followed the other gifts, growing lower in value in proportion to the lower standing of the parents of these happy children. The last youngster, a boy of ten years, meagre, diminutive, freckled, and red-haired, received only a small volume of tales dealing with the bountifulness of nature, the joy of tears, and the like; the book contained no pictures, not even a decoration. He was the son of a poor widow, the governess of the host’s children, and had a haunted, suppressed look. He was dressed in a wretched cotton jacket. Having received his book, he hovered for a long time around the toys. He had the most intense longing to play with the other children, but dared not. It was evident that he already felt and understood his position.

It is a favorite occupation of mine to observe children. It is highly interesting to mark in them certain early and free inclinations of their natures. I noted how the red-haired boy was tempted by the expensive playthings of the other children--and especially by a toy theatre, in which he showed a most eager desire to play some rôle--to such a degree that he adopted an ingratiating manner to attain his end. He smiled and joined the other children in their play, gave up his apple to one puffed-up youngster who already had a whole handkerchiefful of gifts tied to his body, and even offered to carry another boy on his back, if only they would not drive him away from the theatre. Soon, however, a bully in the party gave him a sound drubbing. The boy did not dare to cry out. Presently the governess, his mother, appeared, and ordered him not to interfere with the other children’s play. The boy came into the room where the little girl was. She permitted him to join her, and the two of them were at once absorbed very earnestly in the rich doll.

I had been sitting in the ivy bower a half-hour and had almost dozed off, while listening to the small chatter of the red-haired boy and the beauty with three hundred thousand rubles’ dowry, solicitous over the doll, when suddenly Julian Mastakovich walked into the room. He took advantage of a particularly disgraceful quarrel among the children to steal out of the reception-room. I had noticed that only a few moments before he was discussing very fervently with the father of the future rich bride, whose acquaintance he had only just made, the preëminence of one kind of service over another. At this instant he stood as if lost in thought, and seemed to be making a calculation of some sort upon his fingers.

“Three hundred ... three hundred,” he whispered. “Eleven ... twelve ... thirteen ... sixteen ... five years! Say, at four per cent--five times twelve equal sixty; at compound interest ... well, let us suppose in five years it ought to reach four hundred. Yes, that’s it.... But the rascal surely has it salted away at more than four per cent. Eight or ten is more likely. Well, let’s say five hundred--five hundred thousand at the very least; not counting a few extra for rags ... h’m ...”

Having ended his calculation, he sneezed vigorously and moved to leave the room, when suddenly, his eye alighting upon the little girl, he stopped. He did not see me behind the vases of flowers. He seemed to me to be violently agitated. Either his calculation had upset him, or something else; but he did not know what to do with his hands, and was unable to remain on one spot. His agitation increased--_ne plus ultra_--when he stopped and threw another determined glance at the future bride. He was about to move forward, but first looked around. Then he approached the child on his tiptoes, as if conscious of guilt. Smiling, he bent over her and kissed her head; while she, not expecting this onslaught, cried out from fright.

“What are you doing here, sweet child?” he asked in a whisper, glancing around him, and pinching the little girl’s cheek.

“We are playing....”

“Ah! With him?” Julian Mastakovich looked askew at the boy. “Go into the next room, like a nice little boy,” he said to him.

The boy was silent and gazed at him with perturbed eyes. Julian Mastakovich looked around once more and bent over the little girl.

“And what have you, sweet child, a doll?” he asked.

“Yes, a doll,” answered the little girl, frowning, and quailing visibly.

“A doll.... And do you know, sweet child, what the doll is made of?”

“I don’t know,” answered the little girl in a whisper, lowering her head.

“Of rags, my darling.... And you, my boy, you had better go into the other room to your fellows,” said Julian Mastakovich, as he looked severely at the youngster. The girl and the boy frowned and caught hold of each other. They did not wish to part.

“And do you know why they gave you this doll?” asked Julian Mastakovich, lowering his voice more and more.

“I don’t know.”

“Because you have been a lovely and well-behaved child the entire week.”

At this juncture, Julian Mastakovich, agitated to the utmost, looked round and, lowering his tone to a whisper, asked finally in an almost inaudible voice, dying away more and more from agitation and impatience:

“And will you love me, sweet girlie, when I shall come as a guest to your papa and mamma?”

Having said this, Julian Mastakovich made one more effort to kiss the lovely child; but the red-haired boy, quick to see that she was at the point of tears, seized her hands and, out of deep sympathy for her, began to whimper. Julian Mastakovich became quite angry.

“Begone, begone from here, begone!” he said to the boy. “Begone into the other room! Begone to your own fellows!”

“No, don’t go! Don’t go! _You_ had better go,” said the young girl, “but leave him alone, leave him alone!” She was almost in tears.

Presently there was a commotion just within the door. Julian Mastakovich immediately rose to his feet, somewhat frightened. The red-haired boy was even more frightened. He left his companion and stole out silently, with his hands brushing the wall, into the dining-room. To hide his confusion, Julian Mastakovich followed him. He was as red as a lobster, and when he looked in the glass he seemed appalled as his own image. Perhaps he was annoyed at his rage and impatience. Perhaps the calculation he made earlier on his fingers had so affected him, tempting and inflaming him, that, notwithstanding his position and dignity, he was impelled to act like a young boy to attain his object, despite the fact that the object in any case could be attained only five years hence. I followed the esteemed gentleman into the dining-room and witnessed a strange scene. Julian Mastakovich, his face all red from irritation and malice, was pursuing the red-haired boy, who, retreating farther and farther from him, did not know what to do with himself in his fright.

“Begone with you! What are you doing here? Begone, you good-for-nothing! Begone! Stealing fruit, are you? Stealing fruit? Begone, good-for-nothing! Begone, unclean one! Begone, begone to the likes of yourself!”

The frightened boy, driven to desperate measures, tried to get under the table. Then his pursuer, enraged to the last degree, drew out his long batiste handkerchief and lashed it out at the cowering boy.

It is necessary to mention that Julian Mastakovich was a trifle fat. He was a satiated, red-cheeked, stoutish person, large at the waist and with fat legs; he was as round as a nut. He began to perspire, to pant, and to grow fearfully red. His fury knew no bounds, so great was his feeling of malice and--who knows?--perhaps jealousy. I laughed out loud. Julian Mastakovich turned around, and in spite of his importance was covered with most abject confusion. At this instant the host entered by the opposite door. The boy climbed out from under the table and wiped his knees and elbows. Julian Mastakovich made haste to put his handkerchief, which he held by one corner, to his nose.

The host, not without perplexity, surveyed the three of us; but, like a man who understood life and looked at it with a serious eye, availed himself of the opportunity to speak to his guest alone.

“This is the youngster,” said he, pointing at the red-haired boy, “whom I had the pleasure of mentioning to you....”

“Ah?” answered Julian Mastakovich, not yet fully recovered from his discomfiture.

“He is the son of the governess of my children,” continued the host in an appealing voice. “She is a poor woman, a widow, the wife of an honest official; and it is for this reason that ... Julian Mastakovich, is it possible to....”

“Oh, no, no!” Julian Mastakovich made haste to exclaim. “No, Philip Alekseievich; I am sorry, but it is utterly impossible. There is no vacancy, and even if there were, there would be ten candidates for the place, each having a greater right to it than he.... It is a great pity, a great pity....”

“Yes, a pity,” repeated the host. “He is such a modest, quiet lad....”

“And quite a scamp, I should say,” added Julian Mastakovich, his mouth hysterically athwart. “Begone, boy! Why are you standing there? Go to your equals!”

At this point he could not restrain himself any longer, and looked at me with one eye. I too could not resist, and laughed straight in his face. Julian Mastakovich turned away immediately, and with sufficient distinctness for me to hear asked the host the identity of “that strange young man.” They exchanged whispers and left the room. I observed afterward how Julian Mastakovich, listening to the host, shook his head incredulously.

Having laughed to my heart’s content, I returned to the reception-room. There the great man, surrounded by the fathers and the mothers of families, the host and the hostess, was speaking with great warmth to a lady to whom he had just been introduced. The lady held by her hand the little girl with whom only ten minutes before he had made the scene. Now he was lavish in his praises and raptures over the beauty, talents, manners, and breeding of the lovely child. He was plainly playing the wheedler before the mother. She listened to him, almost with tears of joy in her eyes. The father’s lips smiled. The prevailing spirit of good-will rejoiced the heart of the host. Even all the guests lent a sympathetic hand, and made the children stop their games in order not to interfere with the conversation. The entire atmosphere was saturated with devotion. I heard later how the mother of the interesting little girl, touched to the very depths of her heart, begged Julian Mastakovich, in most effusive language, to do her the great honor of conferring on the house more often his precious presence; I heard with what undisguised joy Julian Mastakovich accepted the invitation, and how the guests, dispersing afterward in various directions as propriety demanded, exchanged with one another complimentary salutations regarding the host, the hostess, the little girl, and in particular Julian Mastakovich.

“Is this gentleman married?” I asked almost aloud of an acquaintance who stood nearest to Julian Mastakovich.

Julian Mastakovich threw at me a searching and malicious glance.

“No!” answered my acquaintance, mortified deeply at the awkwardness which I committed purposely....

* * * * *

Not long ago I was passing the---- Church, and I was astonished at the tremendous crowd that had gathered there. Every one talked about a wedding. It was a bleak day in late autumn. I made my way through the crowd and caught a glimpse of the bridegroom. He was a round, satiated, pot-bellied little person, very much adorned. He ran hither and thither, fussed, and gave orders. At last a murmur went through the crowd, announcing the arrival of the bride. I squeezed through the crowd and saw an astoundingly beautiful girl, who had hardly experienced the first bloom of spring. But the beautiful girl was pale and sad. She looked bewildered; and it seemed to me that her eyes were red from newly-shed tears. The classic rigidity of her features imparted to her beauty a kind of dignity and strength. But through all this rigidity and dignity, through all this sadness, there penetrated the first aspect of childhood’s innocence; it suggested something naïve, fragile, and juvenile to the last degree; and though the look bespoke resignation, it also seemed to utter a silent prayer for mercy.

It was said in the crowd that she had just passed her sixteenth birthday. An intent scrutiny of the bridegroom suddenly revealed him to me as Julian Mastakovich, whom I had not seen for exactly five years. I looked at her.... My God! I quickly made haste to leave the church. In the crowd they were telling each other how rich the bride was, that she had a dowry of five hundred thousand rubles ... and so much besides in rags....

“At any rate, his calculation was a good one!” I reflected, as I jostled my way into the street.

KOROLENKO THE EXILE

No intelligent outlander, I suppose, but marvels at the patience with which the Russian people endure the exile system that has so long brewed hell-broth for the nation to drink. When some violent offense is answered by such punishment, we do not demur, but when trivialities are magnified, and the police stupidly blunder, our blood boils with protest.

So many times has Vladimir Korolenko been banished, that exile must seem to him almost a normal condition, and freedom from police surveillance a happy freak of fortune. And yet, more than any other distinguished Russian writer, he is free from pessimism--his writings are filled with passages of lyric sweetness.

Sixty years ago--in July, 1853--Vladimir was born at Jitomir, in the government of Volynia. His father, of Cossack blood, was a district judge in the cities of Dubno and Rovno, having previously served as district attorney, and also as a minor judge. He was an honest man, since he forbore to enrich himself with bribes, but made his modest salary suffice. This course--eccentric in those days--left his wife in straitened circumstances when he died. Vladimir was about fifteen at the time, and still in the Gymnasium at Rovno, but his mother, the daughter of a Polish landed proprietor, was enabled to keep him in school and also maintain her other children, three boys and two girls.

The future author entered the Institute of Technology at St. Petersburg in due course, and for two years fought off the extremes of nakedness and hunger by coloring maps in the intervals of study, for he had come to the great capital with only seventeen rubles in his purse. The third year found him in Moscow, in the Petrovsk (St. Peter’s) Agricultural Academy, and here, in the third year of his new course (1875), he got his first taste of exile. His unforgivable crime was to participate in a joint address of the students to the Faculty! For this he was banished to the government of Vologda, but the sentence was not completely carried out, for some one relented and before he reached the place he was bidden to return to his home at Kronstadt. Here for one year he was kept under police surveillance.

At the end of the year he was allowed to remove with his family to St. Petersburg, where he worked in peace as a proof-reader, until February, 1879. But he was soon to learn that Government never forgets, for twice during that month was his home officially searched, and at length he, together with his brother, his brother-in-law, and his cousin, was banished to Glazof, in the government of Vyatka, and presently still further north, to Vyshne Volotsk, where he was confined in a political prison--and all without a trial, the reading of charges, or any semblance of human justice.

The whole term of his exile was spent without a single gleam of light to make clear his offense. But _after_ his release in 1880, he learned that his exile was due to his having attempted to break prison--an offense which was alleged against him before he had ever been in prison!

The circumstances of his release were fortunate. Prince Imeritinsky had been deputized to investigate the condition of the political prisons and to report on the causes of incarceration. Among other prisons, he visited that at Vyshne Volotsk, and Korolenko was already on the way to Yakutsk, Siberia, when the message came ordering his release--probably as a result of the investigation.

Even then entire freedom was not granted him, for he was “allowed” to settle at Perm; and here he began his active work as a writer, though he had written successfully as early as 1879.

In 1881 Alexander III became Emperor of Russia, and all his subjects were required to take oath of allegiance. But Korolenko refused, because in addition the government officers demanded that he betray his friends by giving details of any revolutionary enterprises in which he knew them to be engaged. Rather than become a party to such villainy, the young man chose further exile, and for the succeeding three years lived miserably in Yakutsk, in East Siberia. At length he returned to the ancient Tartar city of Nijni Novgorod, on the Volga, where he now lives with his family.

All this period of maddening oppression was aggravated by the fact that his mother needed his help. When in 1879 Korolenko began to contribute literary sketches to such Russian periodicals as _Russian Thought_, _The Northern Messenger_, and _Annals of the Fatherland_, the meagre honorariums were indeed a blessing to his loved ones.

* * * * *

The thing that “goes without saying” often needs to be said just the same. That a writer is likely to reproduce his life-experiences in his writings is one of these truisms, yet it will always remain an interesting occupation to trace connection between life and literary product in the work of an author of individuality.

Korolenko came from “Little Russia,” and began to find his subjects in the towns and villages of the west country in which he was born, but naturally he turned at length to depicting the life of the extreme Siberian east.

That Korolenko has been formed in opinion and moulded to iron fortitude of heart by his severe experiences in exile is shown by his remarkable story, “The Wondrous Maid,” in which the Nihilist is depicted as a simple gendarme, whose manhood transfigures his Nihilism and his work as an officer. Again, our author proved his independence in a letter to the St. Petersburg Academy, in which, as did Chekhov before him, he courteously declined membership because the Academy had struck the name of Gorki from its list of members.

It was in 1885, while in exile in Yakutsk, that he wrote his famous “Makár’s Dream.” It is an odd fantasy, this story of the Yakut who, having gotten half frozen in the wood, dreams that he is dragged before the tribunal of the great Lord Toyon--a nondescript judge who is neither of heaven nor of earth. Before a great scale, whose one end is a small golden platter and whose other a huge wooden bowl, the peasant is summoned to explain the acts of his life. At length, when his cheatings and stealings are found to have outweighed all of the deeds of service and faithfulness in his life, he suddenly breaks into an unwonted eloquence of protest. He is unwilling to bear the penalty of being turned into a beast of burden by becoming the horse of a church official, not because the horse is badly treated, for it is well fed--better fed, indeed, than he, the peasant, has ever been--but he protests because the penalty is unjust. This appeal to justice seems to move the great Toyon, and he ends by saying to the dejected Makár, “Have patience, poor soul, thou art no longer on earth: here will be found justice, even for thee!” And as he speaks the scales begin to tremble, and the wooden bowl, filled with his evil deeds, rises higher and higher, as though weighed down by his good acts.

Surely, the great meed of injustice suffered by The Exile himself gave inspiration for the message of mercy at the end of this fantastic tale.

What may be called Korolenko’s Siberian era is further illustrated in his sketches of a Siberian tourist, nine of which cover about one hundred pages of ordinary size. All the sketches are remarkable for local color and fine understanding of character. The one unfortunate tendency is toward unfinished situation, for the sense of coming to an adequate close is inseparable from good story-telling. It is but fair to observe, however, that this trait of incompleteness is characteristic of the sketch as a fictional form.

Throughout this series I have frequently asserted the obvious fact that Russian themes have largely reflected the Russian temperament, as is shown by the realistically direct and often terrible pictures which fill the pages of their literature. Altogether apart from our interest in the literate expressions of a great and alien people, we must feel a sort of gruesome fascination as we are thrilled to the point of horror in reading these simple yet titanic records of gloom.

All this raises the question of what is the difference between fascination and charm--for charm, from the Anglo-American viewpoint, is almost an unknown element in Russian literature. Fascination they all possess; but charm is fascination plus delight. In Korolenko we do have a writer of charm; and, besides, a charm that is not the reflex of literatures other than his own--it evidently springs from the sweetness of a spirit which all of the bitterness of banishment could not defile. Here is a high and final test of native fineness.

As compared with the stories of Garshin, with their “terrible, incoherent cries of woe,” Korolenko’s tales are idyllic. A rhythmical, lyrical measure beats enchantingly in his nature passages, whose intimacy with the life of the woods inevitably recalls the French Theuriet. “The Forest Whispers,” one of his longer short-stories, is simply redolent of tree-fragrance. We feel the wandering airs of the glades; we hear the never-ceasing swish of majestic boughs; we stand rapt in the cathedral silences of the green-shadowy aisles. The peasant tale is the thread on which these pearls are strung, but the pearls hide the string.

Listen to this passage. What Loti has evoked from the inscrutable sea, Korolenko has charmed from the forest with his enchanter’s wand.

In the forest there was always a murmur, regular, continuous, like
the faint echo of a distant peal of bells; soft and indistinct,
like a song without words, or like the confused recollection of
bygone days. The murmur never ceased by day or night, for it was an
old dense forest of pines that had never been touched by woodman’s
saw or axe. Lofty pines, a hundred years old, with their red,
sturdy trunks, stood in close array, waving, in response to each
breath of wind, their high-tufted tops. Below, all was quiet; the
air was filled with an odor of tar; through the thick layer of
pine-cones, with which the ground was strewn, pushed gay ferns,
in all the luxury of their rich fringes, and standing motionless,
their leaves unstirred by the breeze. In damp nooks green grasses
rose up on their high stalks; and the white clover bent its heavy
head, overcome, as it were, with dreamy lassitude. And above flowed
the murmur of the forest, the mingling sighs of the old pine-wood.

Besides “The Forest Whispers,” two stories belong especially to Korolenko’s Little-Russian group--“Iom-Kipour” (the Jewish Day of Expiation) and “The Blind Musician.” The former relates how a Little-Russian miller, good Christian though he is, narrowly escapes being carried away by the Devil, in the place of the Jewish tavern-keeper Iankiel, because, like him, he has tried to make money out of the poor peasants--the same tendency to penetrate to the inner life which we discover in other of Korolenko’s work, for he rose above the realistic school, with its pathological records.

“The Blind Musician” is a remarkable psychological story--about forty thousand words in length--in which all the sensations of the blind are portrayed with sympathy and intelligence. The author has not attempted to build up a meretricious interest by surrounding his blind characters with the usual accompaniments to be found in fiction--poverty and physical distress. Disallowing all such devices, he wonderfully pictures the life of a child born blind in the home of a wealthy family, his advance to boyhood, his love-life, and finally his manhood’s experiences as a brilliant musician, “who attempts to reproduce the sensations of sight by means of sounds.”

The following passage is typical:

The boy imaged to himself depth in the form of the soft murmur of
the stream as it flowed at the foot of the precipice, or of the
frightened splash of pebbles thrown from its top. Distance sounded
in his ears like the confused notes of a dying song. At times, in
the sultry noonday, when over the whole of nature there reigns
a quiet so profound that we can only divine the uninterrupted
noiseless course of life, the face of the blind boy would light up
with a strange expression. It seemed as if, under the influence of
the silence that prevailed around, there rose from the depth of his
soul sounds audible only to himself, to which he was listening with
rapt attention. It was easy to believe that at such moments a vague
but productive train of thought was awakening in his soul, like to
the imperfectly caught melody of an unknown song.

Two prose poems, of harmonious diction and fine human feeling, I have space only to mention--“Easter Night,” and “The Old Bell-Ringer,” which Korolenko calls “A Spring Idyl.” The latter is reproduced herewith in a new translation for this series, and from it the tone of the former may well be inferred.

* * * * *

Though not a great novelist--if he can be classed as a novelist at all--Korolenko is the exponent of normality. He is more like Turgenev than is any other living writer, though comparison with the Greatest must not be taken to imply equality. The anarchistic, anti-Christian Artsybashev, whose big-fisted novel, “Sanin,” forms an iconoclastic type of its own, cannot approach Korolenko in lucid attractiveness. Tolstoi, Korolenko followed, but at a distance, for he was of the romantic school and little inclined to Tolstoi’s ultra-idealism, particularly that of the last period.

One more refreshing characteristic of our author I venture to name--human sympathy. True, he does not always temper his pity for the “unfortunates” with the sound judgment of the moralist. Whether they suffer deservedly or not, he does not deeply inquire--it is enough for him that they suffer.

Well, I love him for that very trait of all-embracing sympathy. When a man lets his heart go unleashed by the eternal judgment as to whether the victim has sinned and may be suffering a righteous punishment, he rises to utmost humanity--which is to say, the divine spirit of the Great Master whose heart was Pity.

THE OLD BELL-RINGER
_By Vladimir Korolenko_

It had grown dark.

The tiny village, resting on the ledge of a remote stream, in a pine forest, had become enveloped in that twilight which is peculiar to starry spring nights, when the thin mist, rising from the earth, deepens the shadows of the woods and fills the open spaces with a silvery blue vapor.... How still was everything, and pensive and sad!

The village was quietly dreaming.

The dark outlines of the wretched huts were but vaguely visible; here and there lights were aglimmer; now and then you could hear a gate creak; a dog’s bark would start suddenly and die away; occasionally out of the dark woods the figure of a pedestrian would emerge, or that of a horseman; or a cart would pass by with a jolting noise. These were the inhabitants of lone forest settlements, gathering to their church to greet the great spring holiday.

The church stood on a little hill, in the very middle of the village. Its windows were all alight. Its belfry--an old, tall, and dark structure--pierced the blue sky.

The steps of the staircase creaked as the old bell-ringer ascended the belfry, and soon his little lantern looked like a star suddenly sprung into space.

* * * * *

It was hard for the old man to mount the steep staircase. His old legs had already served their time, and his eyesight had grown dim.... It was time an old man had rest, but God seemed slow in sending deliverance. The old bell-ringer had buried sons and grandsons; he had escorted both young and old to their final resting-place; but he himself was still alive. It was hard!... So many times had he greeted Easter that he had lost count--he could not even remember how many times he had awaited here his last hour. And now once more God had willed that he should be here.

Having reached the top, he leaned his elbow on the railing.

Below, around the church, he could discern the wretchedly kept graves of the village burial-place; as if to protect, old crosses stood over them with outstretched arms. Here and there a young birch-tree inclined over them its branches, as yet leafless.... The aromatic odor of young buds ascended from below towards Mikheyich, and with it came a feeling of the sad tranquillity of eternal sleep.

And what would he be doing a year hence? Would he once more climb this height, under this bronze bell, to arouse with a resounding peal the lightly-slumbering night, or would he be resting ... down there, in some dark corner of the graveyard, under a cross? God knows!... He was ready, but in the meantime the Lord called him once more to greet the holiday.

“All glory be to God!” whispered his lips, accustomed to the old formula. Mikheyich raised his eyes towards the sky, dense with millions of stars, and crossed himself.

* * * * *

“Mikheyich, Mikheyich!” a trembling voice, also that of an old man, suddenly called him from below. The aged sexton looked up towards the belfry, even fixed his palm over his blinking, tear-wet eyes, and still could not see Mikheyich.

“What do you want? I am here,” answered the bell-ringer, leaning out from the belfry. “Can’t you see me?”

“No, I can’t see. Isn’t it time to strike? What do you think?”

Both of them glanced at the stars. Thousands of God’s lights twinkled on high. The fiery “Wagoner” was already far above the horizon. Mikheyich pondered.

“No, not yet; wait just a little longer.... I know when to ...”

* * * * *

He knew. He had no need of a timepiece. God’s stars always told him when the time came. The earth and the sky, the white cloud floating silently across the expanse of blue, the indistinct murmur of dark pines below, and the rippling of the stream concealed by the dark--all were familiar to him, near to him.... Not in vain had he spent his life here.

For the moment his entire long past unrolled before him.... He recalled how he ascended the belfry with his father for the first time.... Good Lord! how long ago it was!--and what a short time it seemed!... He saw himself once more a fair-haired lad; his eyes were kindled; the wind--not the sort that raises the dust of the street, but rather a more rare wind, flapping, as it were, its noiseless wings high above the earth--played with his hair.... There below, so far, so far away, he saw some sort of little people; and the houses of the village also seemed small, and the forest receded into the distance, and the round-shaped meadow, upon which stood the village, seemed immense, almost boundless.

“Well, here it is, all here!” smiled the old man, glancing at the small spot of earth.

“So life, too, is like that,” he reflected. “When one is young, one sees neither its end nor its edge.” ... And yet here it was, as if in the palm of one’s hand, from the very beginning to the very grave he had just been contemplating in the corner of the burial-ground.... What of that? Glory be to the Lord!--It was time for rest. It was a hard road, and he had traversed it an honest man; and the damp earth was his mother.... Soon--if only soon!...

* * * * *

Well, the time had come. Mikheyich glanced once more at the stars, removed his cap, crossed himself, and began to gather up the ropes of the bells.... A few more moments, and the nocturnal air trembled from the resounding stroke.... Another, a third, a fourth ... one after the other, filling the lightly-slumbering pre-festal night with an outpouring of powerful, lingering, resonant, singing tones.

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