Essays on Russian Novelists the Macmillan Company

5=== Presented to the LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TOROKTO by MSSEI COLLEGE ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO IVAN TURGENEV ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS M.A. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Yale) FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT HARVARD LAMPSON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1911 All rights reserved Copyright, 1911, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 191 1. J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Co VIRGINIA HUBBARD CURTIS " Strength and honour are her clothing : and she shall rejoice in time to come. " She openeth her mouth with wisdom : and in her tongue is the law of kindness." P(2r PREFACE Russian fiction is like German music — the best in the world. It is with the hope of persuading some American and EngHsh readers to substitute in their leisure hours first-class novels for fourth and fifth class that I have written this book. I am grateful to Mr. Mandell, Instructor in Rus- sian at Yale, and to Mr. Noyes, Professor of Rus- sian at the University of Cahfornia, for some information on the work of contemporary Rus- sians. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to Mr. Andrew Keogh, Reference Librarian of Yale, for his unselfish labour in preparing the List of Publi- cations. This is certain to be valuable, for it exists nowhere else. W. L. P. Yale University, Tuesday, 29 November 1 9 10. vi! CONTENTS PACK Russian National Character . i Gogol . 35 turgenev 62 Dostoevski 13° Tolstoi 170 Gorki 215 Chekhov 234 Artsybashev 248 Andreev 262 Kuprin's Picture of Garrison Life . • 278 List of Publications 285 ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTION The Japanese war pricked one of the biggest bubbles in history, and left Russia in a profoundly humiliating situation. Her navy was practically destroyed, her armies soundly beaten, her offensive power temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury exhausted, her pride laid in the dust. If the greatness of a nation consisted in the number and size of its battleships, in the capacity of its fighting men, or in its financial prosperity, Russia would be an object of pity. But in America it is wholesome to remember that the real greatness of a nation con- sists in none of these things, but rather in its intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it gives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and to all things that coimt in humanity's intellectual advance. When we Americans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we might profitably reflect for a moment ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS on the comparative value of America's and Russia's contributions to literature and music. At the start, we notice a rather curious fact, which sharply differentiates Russian literature from the literature of England, France, Spain, Italy, and even from that of Germany. Russia is old; her literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century ; Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in the nineteenth. Rus- sian literature and American literature are twins. But there is this strong contrast, caused partly by the difference in the age of the two nations. In the early years of the nineteenth century, American literature sounds hke a child learning to talk, and then aping its elders; Russian literature is the voice of a giant, waking from a long sleep, and be- coming articulate. It is as though the world had watched this giant's deep slumber for a long time, wondering what he would say when he awakened. And what he has said has been well worth the thou- sand years of waiting. To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language, twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; but the general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interested in only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists like Gorki, Artsy- RUSSIAN CHARACTER IN FICTION bashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedly attracting wide attention. The great five, whose place in the world's literature seems absolutely secure, are Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi. The man who killed Pushkin in a duel survived till 1895, and Tolstoi died in 1910. These figures show in how short a time Russian literature has had its origin, develop- ment, and full fruition. Pushkin, who was born in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence. He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never passed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of the great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold an- noimced in his Olympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."* It is always difficult fully to appreciate poetry in a foreign language, especially^when the language is so strange as Russian. It is certain that no modern European tongue has been able fairly to represent the beauty of Pushkin's verse, to make foreigners feel him as Russians feel him, in any such measure as the Ger- 1 Arnold told Sainte-Beuve that he did not think Lamartine was "important." Sainte-Beuve answered, "He is important for us." ;; ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS mans succeeded with Shakespeare, as Bayard Tay- lor with Goethe, as Ludwig Fulda with Rostand. The translations of Pushkin and of Lermontov have never impressed foreign readers in the superlative degree. The glory of English Hterature is its poetry the glory of Russian literature is its prose fiction. Pushkin was, for a time at any rate, a Romantic, largely influenced, as all the world was then, by Byron. He is full of sentiment, smiles and tears, and passionate enthusiasms. He therefore struck out in a path in which he has had no great followers for the big men in Russian Hterature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What is peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simpHcity, his naivete. Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his title as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He took Russia away from the arti- ficiality of the eighteenth century, and exhibited the possibilities of native material in the native tongue. The founder of the mighty school of Russian ReaUsm was Gogol. Filled with enthusiasm for Pushkin, he nevertheless took a different course, and became Russia's first great novelist. Furthermore, although a melancholy man, he is the only Rus- sian humorist who has made the world laugh out 4 RUSSIAN CHARACTER IN FICTION loud. Humour is not a salient quality in Russian fiction. Then came the brilliant follower of Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. In him Russian literary art reached its cHmax, and the art of the modern novel as well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style that Russia has ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown genius in Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown the impeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. George Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existed since antiquity?" Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years younger than Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist ; his chief interest was in the psychological processes of the unclassed. His foreign fame is constantly growing brighter, for his works have an extraordinary vitality. Finally appeared Leo Tolstoi, whose Hterary career ex- tended nearly sixty years. During the last twenty years of his Hfe, he was generally regarded as the world 's greatest Hving author ; his books enjoyed an enormous circulation, and he probably influenced more individuals by his pen than any other man of his time. In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought to find all the prominent traits in the Russian character. 5 ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS It is a rather curious thing, that Russia, which has never had a parliamentary government, and where pohtical history has been very little influenced by the spoken word, should have so much finer an instru- ment of expression than England, where matters of the greatest importance have been settled by open and public speech for nearly three hundred years. One would think that the constant use of the language in the national forum for purposes of argu- ment and persuasion would help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost total absence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity. In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust the testimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that the English language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkward dialect. Compared with Russian, the English language is decidedly weak in synonyms, and in the various shades of meaning that make for precision. Indeed, with the excep- tion of Pohsh, Russian is probably the greatest language in the world, in richness, variety, definite- ness, and elegance. It is also capable of saying much in little, and saying it with tremendous force.

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