Chapter XI: Part II: deals charmingly with the story of the last pomyèschick (1)

"A very old man
Wearing long white moustaches
(He seems to be all white);
His cap, broad and high-crowned,
Is white, with a peak,
In the front, of red satin.
His body is lean
As a hare's in the winter,
His nose like a hawk's beak.
His eyes--well, they differ:
The one, sharp and shining,
The other--the left eye--
Is sightless and blank,
Like a dull leaden farthing.
Some woolly white poodles
With tufts on their ankles
Are in the boat too."

This venerable barin Prince Yutiàtin believes that the old regime still exists and his serfs have agreed to humour him in order to keep him alive.

They agree to

"'Keep silent and act still
As if all this trouble
Had never existed:
Give way to him, bow to him
Just as in old days.'"

So the Prince has all his whims satisfied and peasants are beaten (voluntarily) at his pleasure. He orders his sons to dance and girls to sing.

"The golden-haired lady
Does not want to sing,
But the old man will have it.
The lady is singing
A song low and tender,
It sounds like the breeze
On a soft summer evening
In velvety grasses
Astray, like spring raindrops
That kiss the young leaves,
And it soothes the Pomyèschick,
The feeble old man:
He is falling asleep now ...
And gently they carry him
Down to the water,
And into the boat.
And he lies there, still sleeping.
Above him stands, holding
A big green umbrella,
The faithful old servant,
His other hand guarding
The sleeping Pomyèschick
From gnats and mosquitoes.
The oarsmen are silent,
The faint-sounding music
Can hardly be heard
As the boat moving gently
Glides on through the water...."

In Part III., having failed to elicit a satisfactory answer to their question from the men, they decide to try the women. They go to the woman Matròna

[Who] "Is tall, finely moulded,
Majestic in bearing,
And strikingly handsome.
Of thirty-eight years
She appears, and her black hair
Is mingled with grey.
Her complexion is swarthy,
Her eyes large and dark
And severe, with rich lashes."

They manage to prevail upon her to tell her life story:

"'My girl-hood was happy,
For we were a thrifty
And diligent household:
And I, the young maiden,
With father and mother
Knew nothing but joy.
My father got up
And went out before sunrise,
He woke me with kisses
And tender caresses:
My brother, while dressing,
Would sing little verses:
"Get up, little sister,
Get up, little sister,
In no little beds now
Are people delaying,
In all little churches
The peasants are praying;
Get up, now, get up,
It is time, little sister.
The shepherd has gone
To the field with the sheep,
And no little maidens
Are lying asleep,
They've gone to pick raspberries,
Merrily singing...."

I never ran after
The youths, and the forward
I checked very sharply.
To those who were gentle
And shy, I would whisper:
"My cheeks will grow hot,
And sharp eyes has my mother:
Be wise, now, and leave me
Alone" ... and they left me.'"

At last came the man to whom she was destined to give her heart:

"'And Philip was handsome,
Was rosy and lusty,
Was strong and broad-shouldered,
With fair curling hair,
With a voice low and tender....
Ah, well ... I was won....

* * * * *

"Don't fear, little pigeon,
We shall not regret it,"
Said Philip, but still
I was timid and doubtful.
Of course I was fairer
And sweeter and dearer
Than any that lived,
And his arms were about me....
Then all of a sudden
I made a sharp effort
To wrench myself free.
"How now? What's the matter?
You're strong, little pigeon!"
Said Philip, astonished,
But still held me tight.
"Ah, Philip, if you had
Not held me so firmly
You would not have won me:
I did it to try you,
To measure your strength:
You were strong and it pleased me."
We must have been happy
In those fleeting moments
When softly we whispered
And argued together:
I think that we never
Were happy again....'"

She marries Philip and joins his family.

"'A quarrelsome household
It was--that of Philip's
To which I belonged now:
And I from my girlhood
Stepped straight into Hell.
My husband departed
To work in the city,
And leaving, advised me
To work and be silent,
To yield and be patient:
"Don't splash the red iron
With cold water--it hisses."
With father and mother
And sisters-in-law he
Now left me alone:
Not a soul was among them
To love or to shield me,
But many to scold....
Well, you know yourselves, friends,
How quarrels arise
In the homes of the peasants.
A young married sister
Of Philip's one day
Came to visit her parents.
She found she had holes
In her boots, and it vexed her.
Then Philip said, "Wife,
Fetch some boots for my sister."
And I did not answer
At once: I was lifting
A large wooden tub,
So, of course, couldn't speak.
But Philip was angry
With me, and he waited
Until I had hoisted
The tub to the oven
Then struck me a blow
With his fist, on my temple....
Again Philip struck me ...
And again Philip struck me ...
Well, that is the story.
'Tis surely not fitting
For wives to sit counting
The blows of their husbands,
But then I had promised
To keep nothing back.'"

A baby is born to her, and her life becomes more and more of a burden to her: one friend alone of Philip's relatives, an old man called Savyèli, has pity on her. Savyèli has been branded as a convict for burying a German alive. She relates now the story of his life and more particularly the account of his crime:

"'"He (the German) started to nag us,
Quite coolly and slowly,
Without heat or hurry;
For that was his way.
And we, tired and hungry,
Stood listening in silence.
He kicked the wet earth
With his boot while he scolded,
Not far from the edge
Of the pit. I stood near him,
And happened to give him
A push with my shoulder:
Then somehow a second
And third pushed him gently....
We spoke not a word,
Gave no sign to each other,
But silently, slowly,
Drew closer together,
And edging the German
Respectfully forward,
We brought him at last
To the brink of the hollow ...
He tumbled in headlong!
'A ladder,' he bellows:
Nine shovels reply.
'Heave-to'--the words fell
From my lips on the instant,
The word to which people
Work gaily in Russia:
'Heave-to,' and 'Heave-to,'
And we laboured so bravely
That soon not a trace
Of the pit was remaining,
The earth was as smooth
As before we had touched it:
And then we stopped short
And we looked at each other."'"

Matròna gets Savyèli to look after her infant Djòma, and while she is away the pigs attacked and killed him. The country police as the custom is in Russia threatened to hold an inquest unless they were bribed: this Matròna could not afford.

"'"My God, give me patience,
And let me not strangle
The wicked blasphemer!"
I looked at the doctor
And shuddered in terror;
Before him lay lancets,
Sharp scissors and knives.
I conquered myself,
For I knew why they lay there.
I answered him trembling,
"I loved little Djòma,
I would not have harmed him."
"And did you not poison him,
Give him some powder?"'"

They refuse to listen to her piteous cries:

"'They have lifted the napkin
Which covered my baby:
His little white body
With scissors and lancets
They worry and torture ...
The room has grown darker,
I'm struggling and screaming,
You butchers! You fiends!
Oh, hear me, just God!
May thy curse fall and strike them!
Ordain that their garments
May rot on their bodies!
Their eyes be struck blind,
And their brains scorch in madness!
Their wives be unfaithful,
Their children be crippled!...
The pope lit his pipe
And sat watching the doctor.
He said, 'You are rending
A heart with a knife.'
I started up wildly:
I knew that the doctor
Was piercing the heart
Of my little dead baby."

Her husband is taken for the army, and Matròna goes, although her time is on her to bring to birth another baby, to plead for him to the Governor's lady. Somewhat to our surprise she wins her cause and gets her husband back again, but the peasants are cured after hearing her story of imagining that any woman could be happy in Russia.

"'The Tsar, little Father,
But never a woman:
God knows, among women
Your search will be endless.'"

So they continue their wanderings, and having heard many grim stories of all sorts, they remain without a solution to their problem, and the only consolation suggested by the author comes in a subtle touch: a son of a psalm-singer, with a knowledge of, and deep sympathy for, all the down-trodden ones, finds exaltation in putting together songs about their pains and greatness:

"In his breast rose throbbingly powers unembraceable,
In his ears rang melody--henceforth undefaceable:
Words of azure radiance, noble in benignity.
Hailing coming happiness and the People's dignity."

Happiness, Nekrassov concludes, can only be won in doing creative work.

I have, I think, by my copious quotations from his most popular poem at any rate proved his claim to be considered "the Russian Crabbe," the uncompromising realist who can depict the sorrows of the poor with undeflected trueness of aim.

III

PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

It is habitual with critics, especially critics of Russian literature, to probe with a microscopic accuracy into the work of the subject they undertake to explain: they search for psychological phenomena untiringly, and are not content unless they can wrest a secret from the author which the author himself would certainly in many cases never have realised that he possessed. We see this in our own tongue in many of the critical essays on Shakespeare. We see it applied to Pushkin equally unnecessarily; for Pushkin needs no interpreter: he is delightfully human, clear, sincere, impulsive, vital and vivifying, as far removed as possible from any artfulness, the least of a digger in the depths of his own soul imaginable. He is the type of artist who sees Beauty in her naked blaze and straightway reincarnates her because he cannot help it. He is of the earth, earthy in the best sense of the word. The final word about him is that he accepted life open-heartedly and as a consequence requires in his readers an equal open-heartedness and nothing else.

He was brought up as a boy in an atmosphere of that sparkling elegance which we associate with the French, and himself wrote verses in that tongue, by the age of twelve acquiring a real taste in French literature. He revelled in Plutarch, Voltaire, Rousseau and Molière, imitated the French comedies and acted them before his sister. As was customary in Russia, he was, as a boy, allowed free access to the society of the literary and artistic people who frequented his father's house. Here he entered into that life of boundless hospitality, disorderliness, whimsical jollity, and revelry, of erotic and bacchanalian orgies, which were typical of the upper classes of his time.

From his nurse, a life-long friend, he learnt to love the world of Russian folklore.

For five years, from twelve to seventeen, he was at the Lyceum, just then opened at the Tsàrskoye Selò, which reflected among its youthful pupils the same passions of illicit amours, drink, and literature which characterised the parents. They became a sort of jovial anarchists. Like the Elizabethans, they were as often intoxicated with poetry as with wine. Pushkin early became the leader, as was only natural: he was already the best-read man in Russia; he was enthusiastic over the work of his younger contemporaries; he was an ideal companion. Like Milton and most other geniuses of a high order, he recognised his _métier_ very early in his life. He wrote in his teens:

"I am a poet too. My new and modest road
Is now bestrewn with flowers by goddesses of singing,
And gods have poured into my breast
The names, elating visions bringing...."

Not only so, but--

"My pen revels in finding
In it the ends of lines.
Exactness of expressions
Through hallowed crystal shines."

Exactness of expression is as important to Pushkin as it was to Pope, just as fearless honesty was the keystone of his personality.

It was at the public examination of the Lyceists in Russian literature in 1815 that he first came before the public eye. Together with other competitors he had to read his work before the old ode-writer D'erjàvin, who was so thrilled by _The Reminiscences of the Tsàrskoye Selò_ that he wanted to rush forward and embrace the young poet.

Jukòvski, then at the height of his fame, would read his verses to Pushkin and rely on his judgment. When in return Pushkin read _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_, Jukòvski gave the boy his portrait with this inscription: "To the victorious pupil from his conquered teacher."

Such treatment might well be expected to turn the head of the youth, but Pushkin was then, as ever, modest and extremely critical of his own work. He was, as I have said, always searching for hidden genius in others: he it was who first discovered Gogol, and when that Dickens of Russia published _Dead Souls_ and _The Inspector-General_, the subjects in each case being suggested to him by Pushkin, the poet said delightedly: "The rascal robs me in such a bewitching way that it is impossible to be angry with him."

Pushkin's father declined to allow him to take a commission in the Hussars, and at eighteen the poet obtained a post in the Foreign Office, where he had much leisure, and plunged deeper than ever into the excesses common to his time, with the result that, though he swam, rode, fenced and walked to keep himself fit, twice in his nineteenth and twentieth years he nearly lost his health. Nor did his riotous living prevent him from working hard at his poetry.

In 1820 the long fairy tale _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_ appeared. The nearest approach to it in England is _Hero and Leander_--sensuous yet cold. Everywhere it was read, copied out and learnt by heart by tradesman and noble alike. The story was founded on the national folklore. A wicked, humped dwarf carries away the only daughter of Prince Vladimir of Kiev from her nuptial bed to his castle: Ruslàn, the bridegroom, and three disappointed lovers give chase. The adventures of the four warriors, Ludmìla's seclusion in the wizard's castle and Ruslàn's ultimate victory by hanging on to the long beard of the dwarf as he flies over seas and forests form the plot of the story.

The method of handling the story was fascinating, and quite new to Russia. It was vigorous, whimsical, absolutely natural and human: it was this last characteristic in particular which captivated the hearts of the whole race. Russia always loves the natural--but she did not yet recognise why it was that Pushkin especially appealed to her: there had been hitherto no realistic school.

No one realised, Pushkin least of all, that _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_ laid the foundation-stone of all future Russian literature.

The two schools then in existence, the pseudo-classical and the romantic, debated savagely as to which category Pushkin belonged. They were unable to grasp the significance of this bubbling over of human fun, this directness of detail; indignation at such ideas as "Ruslàn's tickling with his spear the nostrils of the giant's head," as bringing the national element into poetry at all, and so on, spread fast.

In the same year Pushkin threw himself heart and soul into the movement of young reformers, and joined the "Society of Welfare," which somewhat naturally roused the Government to action.

Alexander I. was for banishing him; Karamzin, however, pleaded for him with such effect that he was only sent to Bessarabia for a year. His banishment only accentuated his popularity. He took advantage of his retirement to write _The Prisoner of the Caucasus_ in eight hundred lines, the main feature of which is the first appearance in his work of _that grand reverence for women_ which is one of Pushkin's greatest charms.

A man in a Circassian village brings home one day as prisoner a young Russian, who has left his usual world to find freedom in the wilderness: being captured, he is put in irons and left to drag out his days in a cave. A young Circassian girl falls in love with him; he responds out of pity, being in love with another girl at home who did not, however, return his affection. The girl, struck with grief, yet understands, and gives up visiting him secretly, and while the tribe are away raiding she comes with a saw and dagger and gives him his freedom. They part with a kiss of great _human_ love. The young man, touched to the heart, looks back after he has swum the river, but the girl is nowhere to be seen and "only a circle widens on the face of the water, in the gentle shine of the moon." ... The public swallowed the poem greedily, the description of the manners of the Circassians especially attracting them. In another poem Pushkin uses a legend which he came across while visiting the ancient capital of the Crimean Tartars.

The young Tartar Khan, Givèy, captures in a raid on Poland a young Christian princess, Mary, and conceals her in his harem. Her purity and saintly beauty so work upon him that he remains in awe before her. Another beauty, Zarèma, once a favourite of Givèy, implores Mary to make her man come back to her: failing, of course, Zarèma kills her and is herself drowned. The Khan in despair leaves his harem and goes out to wage wars, and returns in the end to build a fountain in memory of Mary, over which he erects a crescent crowned with a cross.

It was at this time that Pushkin fell under the influence of Byron and learned English to do so: not that he imitated Byron, but he was braced up to do something equally good in another way. This was in Kishinòv, a hot-bed of noisy, passionate freethinking blended with Asiatic aboriginality. He fought three duels, one of them resulting from a quarrel at a ball as to whether a waltz or a mazurka should be next on the programme. He then fell in love with a gipsy and joined the camp to which the girl belonged. The result was another poem called _The Gipsies_.

The hero, a man of society, comes to join the free life of a gipsy tribe because he despises the degenerating effect of civilisation. He has had enough of people in cities.

"Of love afraid, they cast off feeling
And thought, and barter their free will:
Before their idols blindly kneeling
They ask for chains and money still."

The gipsies admit him into their careless, free, happy life. Alèko, as they call him, falls in love with the only child of a very wise old man and is happy, just loving, lying about in the sun and taking round for show a tame bear.

Zemphìra, the girl, after bearing a son to Alèko, gets tired of him and falls in love with another gipsy. Alèko feels this very much and complains to her father, who tells him that he too in his youth lost his love in a similar way.

"'And thou didst not kill her lover?'" asks her lover. The old gipsy replies:

"'For what? Man's youth enjoys bird's licence.
Who is there that can love restrain?
In turn, joy brings to all sufficance.
What has been once comes ne'er again.'"

This does not satisfy Alèko, who kills Zemphìra and her lover, after which the old father implores him to leave their free, kind world and return to civilisation.

Pushkin next writes a _Mazeppa_ of his own, the epic of _Peter the Great_, but not idealised as Byron's was.... The heroine Marỳa leaves her lover and becomes insane when her father is executed.

This stern, objective fragment of an epic, falling into their sentimental world of keepsakes, ribbons, roses, and cupids, was like a bas-relief conceived by a Titan and executed by a god ... it is not surprising that it met with little or no appreciation. It is as if Tennyson had followed up his early poems in a style as concise as Pope's and as concentrated as Browning's dramatic lyrics. It revealed an entirely new phase in his style: hitherto it had seemed as shining and luscious fruit, now it became a concentrated, weighty tramp of ringing rhyme.

Pushkin has been accused (not by the Russians) of sentimentality ... a charge that can be confuted by quoting almost any of his lines at random.

Does this, for instance, reek of sentimentality?--

"To see you every hour that flies,
To follow where your footsteps wander--
Your lip's faint smile, your turn of eyes,
On these my thirsting love to squander,
To listen to your voice, to grasp
By man's soul woman's consummation,
To pine for you, wither and gasp,
This is a life's supreme elation."

Or this?--

"Just what I was before, the same I am to-day,
Light-hearted, ever prone to fall in love again."

Or this Tenth Commandment?--

"In thy commandment, Lord, I read
My neighbours' goods I must not covet,
But ask me not to rise above it
When tender hopes for licence plead:
I do not wish to harm my fellow,
I never grudge him house or folk:
Nor will his cattle e'er provoke
My envy--though in hordes they bellow:
His wife or ox I never seek,
Of asses I am unobservant:
But if his youthfullest maid-servant
Is pretty! Lord, there I am weak."

He was not given to brooding over disappointment, nor was there any self-centredness about him. Only once, on his twenty-eighth birthday, does he show himself obsessed with the problems of existence:

"Casual present, gift so aimless,
Life, why art thou given to me?
As by secret judgment nameless,
Why is death-doom passed on thee?

Who with hostile power inspired
Called me out of nothingness,
My poor heart with passion fired,
Doubt upon my mind did press?

Aimless is my whole existence,
Vague my mind, emotions thin.
With monotonous persistence
Life out-tires me with its din."

He was, _par excellence_, the singer of _this_ world, reflecting it with a photographic exactness. Gogol called it _reality turned into a pearl of creation_, which is about the best and most concise definition we could require.

As a result of this Byronic obsession Pushkin was sent to Odessa to join the staff of the Governor. But the atmosphere of rectitude and cold officialdom bored him: trying his best was no good here: he was sent into the depths of the country to do easy and interesting reconnaissance work, to investigate the causes and results of the locust plague. The following is his official report:--

"The locust was flitting and flitting:
And sitting
And sitting sat, ravage committing,
At last the place quitting."

About this time he wrote to a friend a letter which was intercepted. It ran as follows:--

"I am reading the Bible. The Holy Ghost sometimes soothes me, but I prefer Goethe and Shakespeare. There is an Englishman here, a clever atheist, who overturns the theory of immortality--I am having lessons from him...."

The reading public got to know of it and devoured it ... officially it led to his banishment to the estate of his parents. His father bullied him so that he begged to be sent to a fortress. Jukòvski intervened and his parents left him to the care of his nurse, and he had two years of quiet, learning more and more of the old folklore. He wrote six long fairy tales of the school of _Ruslàn and Ludmìla_. He wrote the long historical poem _Poltàva_, the novel in verse, _Evgèni Onyègin_, the historical drama in blank verse, _Borìs Godunòv_, the story in verse, _The Bronze Horsemen_, and dozens of shorter poems. He abandoned Byron for Shakespeare.

"Shakespeare," he wrote about this time--"what a man! I am overwhelmed. What a nonentity Byron is with his travesty of tragedy, as compared to Shakespeare." We can trace this influence in _Borìs Godunòv_.

Shakespeare helped him to develop his power of realism: even his wonderland becomes a matter of course--Russia.

_Evgèni Onyègin_ swept the country off its feet. Society suddenly saw the greatness of the simple beauty of Russia, the dignified, lovable Russian woman: in the hero he reflects his own education, tastes and manners: it is the first work of a consciously psychological analysis in Russian literature.

The typical man of society is bored with life because he does not know what real life is: he "hastened to live and hurried to feel" on too narrow a scale. His first blow is the realisation of the fact that the thoughtful girl of seventeen, whose love he neglected early in life, rejects his passion when she, married, is shining and dignified in society life. Then only, being honestly told by her that she still loves him, but is going to remain true to her husband, he flies from the capital, tortured by his first deep heart pain. Here the story ends. At the beginning he kills a romantic poet, Lensky, in a duel, a man of whom he is genuinely fond, but to whose _fiancée_, Olga, who is simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face like the foolish moon, he pays court out of sheer devilry. The elder sister, Tatiana, shy and dreamy, and yet clean-cut in character and iron-willed, is the girl who has given her heart to Onyégin and afterwards rejects him. She is as real as Diana Middleton or Sophia Western, as sensible as Portia, as resolute as Juliet. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman, taken straight from life, the crowning glory of Russian life. Mr Baring puts her confession of love on a level with Romeo and Juliet's leave-taking as one of the absolutely perfect things in the literature of the world. It is, he says, a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous as a blackbird's song. It is Pushkin's most characteristic work. It is certainly the best-known and most popular. It is all--like _Hamlet_--quotations! Pushkin himself speaks as having seen the unfettered march of the novel in a magic prism. The scenes are clear, the nail is hit on the head every time, all the labour escapes notice. It arrests the attention as a story, it is amusing; it delights the intelligence. It is simply a story of everyday life executed perfectly by a master spirit.

"'Onyegin, I was younger then, and better-looking, I suppose; and
I loved you....
For me, Onyegin, all that wealth,
That showy tinsel of Court life,
All my successes in the world,
My well-appointed house and balls ...
For me, are nought!--I gladly would
Give up these rags, this masquerade,
And all this brilliancy and din,
For a few books, a garden wild,
Our weather-beaten house, so poor--
Those very places where I met
With you, Onyegin, that first time;
And for the churchyard of our village,
Where now a cross and shady trees
Stand on the grave of my poor nurse.

* * * * *

And happiness was possible then!
It was so near!'"

The girl beseeches him to leave her.

"'I love you'" (she goes on):
"'Why should I hide the truth from you?
But I am given to another,
And true to him I shall remain.'"

Pushkin's own opinion of the work is shown in the dedication:

"Accept these motley chapters' run,
Pages half mirth, half sadness blending,
Idealistic, unpretending:
The casual fruit of leisure, fun,
Insomnia, light inspirations
In youthful and unripened years
My mind's dispassioned observations,
My heart's grave notes on human cares."

In form the novel is like _Childe Harold_. But the descriptions, the irony, and humour are truly Russian.

As an example of all three in one these may suffice:

"For forty years he nagged with his housekeeper, looked out of the window and squashed flies."

"Once upon a time the head of a secret team of gamblers, now he was a kind and simple father of a bachelor's numerous brood, living the life of a true philosopher: planting cabbages, breeding ducks and geese and teaching his youngsters the A B C."

All the characters use genuine everyday speech, and yet the realistic subjects are magically turned into poetry. "One can be a serious man and yet think of the beauty of one's nails."

An example of his descriptive power may be found in this stanza on Moscow:

"O'er the snow-humps the sleigh is dashing,
Alongside in the streets are flashing
Shops, convents, palaces, mean shacks,
Peasantry, country-wives, cozàcks,
Gardens of kitchen-stuff and flowers,
Street-boys, lamps, chemists, fashion-stores,
Churches, stone lions at house doors,
Sentries, sleighs, balconies, old towers,
Merchants, Tartars that sell old clo'
And on the crosses many a crow."

As you can see even from these few extracts, the realism in _Onyégin_ is the realism of Jane Austen--meticulous, correct, amazingly sketched in.

He imitated the Koran, blending sensuality with religious enthusiasm and even the element of nonsense in a way that is inimitably reminiscent of the Eastern Law.

Equally brilliant are his _Imitations of Dante_ ... the Divine Comedy lives again for us in Pushkin's rendering: again, in _The Journeying of Cæsar_, we seem to be reading the Latin classics themselves. But his prose-work as a whole is perhaps below his poetry, though Baring does not think so. Unfortunately in England it is on these very prose works that we have for the most part to rely, because so few of his poems are translated.

He was not born with a passion to reform the world: he was neither Liberal nor Conservative: he was a democrat in his love for the Russian people, a patriot in his love of his country.

There seem to have been in him, however, two distinct spirits, as in so many other Russians--the inspired priest of Apollo and the most frivolous of all the frivolous children of the world. The former characteristic predominated, but the people, his readers, preferred his latter mood; they like the dazzling colours, the sensuousness of his early poems--they could not appreciate the nobler, simpler and more majestic harmonies of _Borìs Godunòv_ and _Onyégin_.

It is this two-sidedness that makes for his all-embracing humanity--Dostoievsky called him [Greek: πανανδρωπος]--this capacity for understanding everybody which makes him so profoundly Russian. He set free the Russian language from the bondage of the conventional and, like Peter the Great, spent his whole life in apprenticeship and all his energies in craftsmanship. He is completely the artist and never the fighter, which explains the coldness of much of his work.

He was no innovator of forms in his verse: he was content to follow the accepted types; nor did he ever fly too high ... he does not try to unlock the gates of the Unknown: the old iambic introduced by Lomonòsov was good enough for him. Only in _Borìs Godunòv_ does he break out into an imitation of Shakespearean form: the play is rather like _Henry VIII._ in its plan: it is a succession of isolated scenes, not a coherent drama; there is no definite beginning or end.

On the other hand his scenes, taken by themselves, tragic or comic, are as vivid as any in Shakespeare; the characters all live and are convincing.

As a chronicle it is completely successful. There are scenes so inspired as to be really in spirit Shakespearean, an absence of all conscious effort and visible artifice which only the greatest artists can attain to.

As there are no innovations, so are there no mannerisms: metaphors and similes are few and apt. Of Peter the Great we read:

" ... His eyes
Are shining: features awe-inspiring:
His movements swift: handsome, untiring,
He is like Heaven's thunderstorm."

Wholesome, breezy, clear-cut, genuine, free and honest--those are the adjectives to apply to his art. Unfortunately it is impossible to convey in English the ring and beauty of his original work.

While he was at home the Decembrists' revolt took place, 14th December 1824. He was absent from all his old friends and was naturally concerned about them. He petitioned the Government, signing a pledge never to join any secret society, to give him his liberty. One morning a field-yeger appeared, gave him time to put on his greatcoat and take his money, enter the sledge and dash to Petrograd. After travelling two hundred miles he was brought before the young Emperor and the following conversation took place:--

"Pushkin, I hope thou art pleased with thy return. Wouldst thou take part in the 14th December if thou wert here?"

"By all means, Sovereign. All my friends were in it. My absence alone has saved me."

"Well, thou hast played the fool sufficiently long. I hope thou wilt be sensible in the future, and we shall not quarrel. Send me all thy manuscripts. I shall be thy censor myself."

He was received everywhere with open arms. He joined the main current of social and literary life and speedily electrified society. He was for a little entirely happy, but he had overestimated the extent of his freedom. Gradually he realised that he was not allowed even to read aloud his writings without submitting them to his censor.

_Borìs Godunòv_ was refused on the plea that it would have been better if the author had rewritten it in prose, turning it into a historical novel like those of Sir Walter Scott. Consequently the drama did not appear till 1831, much polished and toned down.

In these last years Pushkin founded and edited a literary monthly called _The Contemporary_, which played a great part in the development of the literature of Russia later on.

The net of officialdom was meanwhile being drawn tighter and tighter round him: he had to attend compulsory meaningless ceremonies at the Court. The Government gave him 20,000 roubles for the publication of his works, and elected him member of the Academy. But they would not allow him to retire from the service. In 1829 he dashed away to the Caucasus without leave.

He joined the ranks and fought, but returned safely. He then married a society beauty whom he loved sincerely but who increased his expenses enormously. He continued to train his talents and wrote a series of brilliant epigrams which increased the number of his friends and foes. He had enemies in every camp.... Meanwhile a young officer, of French and Dutch extraction, by name Baron Dantes, began to press his attentions on Pushkin's wife. Pushkin received a series of anonymous letters ... he, however, trusted his wife completely. She urged him to retire with her to the country to get away from the impending doom, but he challenged the Baron, who had by that time married the sister of Pushkin's wife. Pushkin was fatally wounded in the duel and died mourned by a whole nation.... And what is his legacy? He must have been no mean poet who could induce Turgenev to say that he would burn all his works if he could but have written four lines of the conversation between the Bookseller and the Poet.

His legacy is that he stripped Reality from her daintily-coloured veil--not to show her possible hideousness, but to enjoy the beauty of her form. And beneath his hands nakedness rose like a piece of magic sculpture, warm and breathing of life. His variety and the width of his range are astonishing.

I have attempted to convey something of this. He can write an elegy as tender as Tennyson, a picture of a snowstorm in intoxicating rhythms which would have made Poe green with jealousy; his patriotic poems are lofty and inspired, his prayers humble, sincere and devout. His love poems are as playful as Heine's, as tender as Musset's; he can translate with equal spirit and exactness Byron and Horace, the Koran and Dante. Mr Baring selects two poems as examples of the greatness of his style and the force of his magic.

"As bitter as stale aftermath of wine
Is the remembrance of delirious days:
But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs
The past more sorely, as my days decline.
My path is dark. The future lies in wait,
A gathering ocean of anxiety.
But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create,
That is my prayer: to live and not to die!
I know that ecstasy shall still lie there
In sorrow and adversity and care.
Once more I shall be drunk on strains divine,
Be moved to tears by musings that are mine:
And haply when the last sad hour draws nigh
Love with a farewell smile shall light the sky."

The other and greater is _The Prophet_, which is Miltonic in conception and Dantesque in expression: it is, Mr Baring says, the Pillars of Hercules of the Russian language.

"My spirit was weary, and I was athirst, and I was astray in the dark wilderness. And the Seraphim with six wings appeared to me at the crossing of the ways: and he touched my eyelids, and his fingers were as soft as sleep; and like the eyes of an eagle that is frightened my prophetic eyes were awakened. He touched my ears and he filled them with noise and with sound: and I heard the Heavens shuddering and the flight of the angels in the height, and the moving of the beasts that are under the waters, and the noise of the growth of the branches in the valley. He bent down over me and he looked upon my lips; and he tore out my sinful tongue, and he took away that which is idle and that which is evil with his right hand, and his right hand was dabbled with blood; and he set there in its stead, between my perishing lips, the tongue of a wise serpent. And he clove my breast asunder with a sword, and he plucked out my trembling heart, and in my cloven breast he set a burning coal of fire. Like a corpse in the desert I lay, and the voice of God called and said unto me, 'Prophet, arise, and take heed, and hear; be filled with my will, and go forth over the sea and over the land and set light with my word to the hearts of the people.'"

IV

LÈRMONTOV (1814-1841)

Lèrmontov was descended from a Scotsman, George Learmonth, who was present at the siege of a small Polish town in 1613.

He had always been connected with the army: his father was an officer, his mother a young girl, at the time of her marriage, of noble birth: she died at the age of twenty. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother, who only permitted him to visit his father on very rare occasions. He was in all respects very lonely, entirely without society or friendship, excellently educated by the very best tutors in noble tastes and refined manners, with such success that he knew French, German and English thoroughly before he was twelve. If ever he saw a serf being punished he would immediately give vent to his anger by attacking the torturer with a knife or stones.

He was, in spite of his fondness for other languages, tenacious of his own, and a great lover of Russia. "In the Russian folklore," he wrote when he was fifteen, "told from mouth to mouth there is probably more than in the whole of French literature."

But it was the Caucasus that first led him to creative art. He was ten when he first accompanied his grandmother to that land, whither she went in search of health. It is, I think, worth while to dwell on the beauties of this country in order to see quite what sort of scenery it was that so fascinated the child's mind.

In his fifteenth and sixteenth year Lèrmontov was educated at the University Pension at Moscow, and filled all his exercise-books with poetry, all of which betrayed a deeply impressionable, passionate, highly strung nature, permeated with views quite extraordinary in one so young.

The two years following saw him a member of the University proper, consciously isolating himself from his contemporaries in spite of adequate means; on the other hand, he launched into the sea of fashionable society life.

The influence of an unending round of balls, masquerades and supper-parties prompted him to write drinking songs and epigrams which could not be tolerated by the Press, while at the same time he showed an extraordinary power of detaching himself from vulgarity and giving himself up to his work. Always he would invest his productions with mockery and sarcasm.

During his second year he left Moscow on account of a row which he got into over an unpopular professor, and went to Petrograd, where he joined the fashionable Yunker's School, and learnt some of the joys of military life.

Half his time was occupied in revelling, the other half in seeking some remote class-room where he could work and satisfy his craving to write.

At the age of nineteen he was commissioned and gazetted in the Life Guard Hussars, already the author of _The Demon_, though that poem was still in manuscript. A satirical comedy was censored, and other poems began to appear in the reviews, so that not only the literary circles but Society looked with keen expectation for something good at his hands.

One of his poems in particular at this time attracted attention: it is the author's prayer in dedicating a girl to the Virgin. It was so sincere and simple in its religious tone that some of his critics declared that it was merely a pose of his. They failed to realise that his sanctuary was his supreme elation of love for a girl who answered his feelings by friendship. Lèrmontov loathed the idea of the marriage bond--real love was to him something far higher: his Vàrenka, who married another, was his kindred spirit. She it was whom he dedicated to the Virgin, and this relationship finds expression in several of his poems.

For five years he remained in his regiment, and during this time translated Byron, Heine and Goethe ... then in 1837 came the blow of Pushkin's death, which stung Lèrmontov to such a pitch of fury that he wrote his immortal ode, _On the Death of Pushkin_, which became at once known and repeated throughout the length and breadth of Russia by people who repeated it to, and copied it from, one another:

"And you, the proud and shameless progeny
Of fathers famous for their infamy,
You, who with servile heel have trampled down
The fragments of great names laid low by chance,
You, hungry crowd that swarms about the throne,
Butchers of freedom, and genius, and glory,
You hide behind the shelter of the law,
Before you, right and justice must be dumb!
But, parasites of vice, there's God's assize;
There is an awful court of law that waits.
You cannot reach it with the sound of gold;
It knows your thoughts beforehand and your deeds;
And vainly you shall call the lying witness;
That shall not help you any more;
And not with all the filth of all your gore
Shall you wash out the poet's righteous blood."

For this daring outburst he was arrested, tried and banished to the Caucasus, which again acted, as in his childhood, as a direct inspiration. New poems came flying to Petrograd full of human passions, and descriptions of a Nature prodigal and passionate as her devoted lover. No geography book could ever give such a vivid picture of the Caucasus as Lèrmontov's verse and prose. As the Arabs say: "They turn our hearing into seeing." Fame at last descended upon him. Then appeared the "_Song of the Tsar Ivàn Vasìlyevich, the young Opriknik, and the Brave Merchant Kalàshinkov_," in which the Opriknik insults the merchant's wife, and the merchant challenges him to fight with his fists, kills him and is executed for it. The poem is written as a folk-song, in the style of the _Byliny_: as an epic there is nothing in modern Russian literature to compare with it for simplicity, appropriateness of tone, vividness, truth to nature and terseness.

Every line begins with an anapæst, followed by some odd dactyls, and ends in a dactyl unrhymed. It has been translated by Madame Voynich admirably, and is published by Elkin Mathews.

While in the Caucasus, his age being now twenty-three, Lèrmontov finished _The Demon_, on which he had been at work for so long.

The personality of this Demon, the Spirit of Exile, is quite different from the Satanic Mephistopheles or Lucifer. With all his contempt for Earth, Lèrmontov's Demon is fascinating in every way. He is always musing over his former days in Heaven, and vainly seeking some relief in the desert of time and space into which he is cast out _alone_; he is the embodiment of the idea of loneliness in a proud soul. His sudden love for the Grùzian girl Tamàra inflames him with the desire of abandoning his pride, of opening his heart to Good, of making peace with Heaven ... we are never allowed to forget that the Angel and the Demon had been brothers. Moved by his love, the Demon is on the verge of humility and of opening his heart to Goodness when his pride and hatred return upon him, due entirely to the tone of enmity which the Angel adopts on meeting him. The Angel is a good hater and thorough in his scornfulness. Being Tamàra's celestial guardian, he becomes quite human and understandable when he meets the Demon (whom he might have conquered by greeting him with Heavenly grace) with icy contempt and threats. Here we have a perfect delineation of the kinship between the spirits of good and evil.

The Demon's wooing of Tamàra is irresistibly bewitching, one of the most passionate love declarations ever written, in couplets of sonorous iambics that glow like jewels and tremble like the strings of a harp. Tamàra yields to him (what human girl could have done otherwise?) and forfeits her life, but her soul is borne off to Heaven by the Angel: by death she has expiated her offence, and the Demon is left as before desolate in a loveless universe.

Owing to his grandmother's persistence Lèrmontov was recalled before one of his five years' exile had elapsed, and we see him again in Petrograd with his old regiment, a tremendous source of interest to all society, half of whom hated, while half loved him.

In 1838 _Duma_ appeared, in which Lèrmontov gave to the world his view of his contemporaries: it was the severest indictment imaginable, far saner and truer than Byron's, not of the great Russian nation of course, but of the shallow side of that human nature to which he had allied himself. How clear he was of the shortcomings of that lot of people to which he himself, at least outwardly, belonged, and how deeply it hurt him is proved by the exquisite precision with which he exercised his lancet of lampoon.

It is in form a perfect example of his rhymed and scanned prose as it were--that is, not a single word would have to be altered or shifted if you wanted to write it out in prose. It is the work not of a superficial satirist, but of a deep and profound thinker, of a Shelley rather than a Byron.

In 1840 he was challenged to a duel by a son of the French ambassador, in which Lèrmontov fired his shot in the air and received himself a slight scratch. For this he was again arrested and banished as before to the Caucasus. This, the last year of his life, he spent at Patigorsk, a town forming the centre of a fashionable healing-springs district, at the foot of a mountain range. Here he wrote his only novel in prose, _The Hero of Our Times_, as great a piece of artistry as anything that he did in poetry. It is the first psychological novel in Russia. The hero, Pechorin by name, was undoubtedly Lèrmontov himself, although he said, and quite probably thought, that he was merely creating a type.

This Pechorin is an officer in the Caucasus, who analyses his own character, and lays bare his weaknesses, follies and faults with extreme candour and frankness. "I am incapable of friendship," he says. "Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although often neither of them will admit it: I cannot be a slave, and to be a master is a tiring business."

Or again: "I have an innate passion for contradiction ... the presence of enthusiasm turns me to ice, and intercourse with a phlegmatic temperament would turn me into a passionate dreamer."

On the eve of fighting a duel he writes:

"If I die it will not be a great loss to the world, and as for me, I am sufficiently tired of life. I am like a man yawning at a ball, who does not go home to bed because the carriage is not there, but as soon as the carriage is there, Good-bye! I review my past and I ask myself, Why have I lived? Why was I born? And I think there was a reason, and I think I was called to high things, for I feel in my soul the presence of vast powers: but I did not divine my high calling: I gave myself up to the allurement of shallow and ignoble passions: I emerged from their furnace as hard and as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have I played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of the Executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often without malice, always without pity. My love has never brought happiness, because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed myself for those whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own pleasure.... And if I die I shall not leave behind me one soul who understood me. Some think I am better, others that I am worse than I am. Some will say he was a good fellow: others he was a blackguard."

From this it may be easily seen that Lèrmontov must have been a most trying companion. He had an impossible temperament, proud, exasperated, filled with a savage amour-propre: he took a childish delight in annoying: he was envious of that which was least enviable in his contemporaries. When he could not make himself successful--that is, felt--by pleasant, he would choose unpleasant means, and yet in spite of all this he was warmhearted, thirsting for love and kindness and capable of giving himself up to love--if he chose.

During the course of this second banishment he took an active part in the fighting with the Circassian tribes, showing striking courage combined with perfect modesty.

This experience was the direct inspiration of _Valèrik_, one of the most beautiful of his long poems on the Caucasus.

After this came his second duel. On this occasion he somehow contrived to offend a somewhat posing officer called Major Martỳnov, who could not bear Lèrmontov's jokes in the presence of ladies. As before, Lèrmontov fired his pistol into the air, but Martỳnov aimed so long that the seconds began to remonstrate. He then fired and killed Lèrmontov immediately.

As a result Martỳnov only escaped the anger of the mob by being arrested.