Hugo Ganz

“ The city is in too strong a contrast to the forced founding of St. Petersburg. There the hand of man is all in evidence; nothing is refreshing. A great prison fortress of granite blocks surrounded by huts and barracks. Moscow is a product of nature, founded with enthusiasm by its dwellers in response to the open invitation of nature, and adored even with devotion. Even the stranger feels this, even though there is nothing to which he is unaccustomed except the devotion and tenderness of a people to whom he is bound by not a single tie of common association. ”

“ I cannot control myself, and cry out to my neighbor, "Make the poor girl keep still," and I point towards the police, but I am not understood. They have all been seized by a religious fanaticism that makes martyrdom bliss. How truly lovable they are, these educated people that still have an ideal and are strange to the base satiety that so sadly deforms our Western youth! And how the heart contracts at the thought that all this beautiful enthusiasm must vanish without result; that the longing and inspiration are helplessly shivered against the brutality of the Cossacks and gendarmes! ”

“ An empire of one hundred and thirty millions of prisoners and of one million jailers—such is Russia; and these jailers understand no joke. It is a terrible machinery, this despotism, with all its wheels working one within the other. It is relentless and keen in all its mechanism, henceforth no loud word shall be spoken. The official organs alone have a voice; private persons may speak only in low tones.
But how orderly, politely, and neatly do the officials and porters execute the examination and forwarding of our baggage when despotism wishes to reconcile people to its threatening silence. ”

“ For us the nihilist cycle is more interesting, more Russian. "Nihilist" is, by-the-way, an abominable name for those noble young men and women who, staking their lives, go out among the common people to redeem them from their greatest enemies—ignorance and immorality. The real nihilists in Russia are those of the government who are not held back even by murder when it is of service to the system, the cynics with the motto, "Après nous le déluge"; surely not these noble-hearted dreamers who throw down the gauntlet to the all-powerful Holy Synod and to the not less powerful holy knout. ”

“ Russian society is full of noble impulses; it is generous, warm-hearted, capable of inspiration, and free from odious prejudices. Our common oppressor, the danger to the world's peace as well as the author of this unhappy war, I repeat it again, is the Camorra of the officials, a thoroughly anarchistic class. I do not know, I must admit, when and how our release will come. I fear that we shall, ere that, pass through sad trials, and even more terrible misery of our flayed and hunger-enfeebled people, before Heaven shall take pity on us. ”

“ But where the master's own hand has worked it has given life to the imperishable. If a prize were to be awarded to any one of the forty-seven masterpieces it would surely belong to the portrait of Helene Fourment, on which the artist worked with undivided love. The roguish beauty is painted life-size. She is standing in a flower-bedecked meadow, and in the background heavy clouds pass over the landscape. But they serve only to bring out in greater relief the delicate lace collar around the bare neck of the woman in a low-necked gown. ”

“ He condemns anti-Semitism, however, in the most emphatic way. "Anti-Semitism," he said, "is not a misfortune for the Jews, for he who suffers wrong is not to be pitied, but he who does wrong. Anti-Semitism demoralizes society. It is the worst evil of our time, for it poisons whole generations. It makes them blind to right and wrong, and kills all moral feeling. It changes the soul into a place of desolation in which all goodness and nobility are swept away." ”

“ At the time of the daily excursions of the Virgin the governor-general, Prince Sergius, does not allow the Jews to remain on the streets. The Blessed Virgin may not see upon her way the traces of Jewish feet. Every one crosses himself before her. But most climb the few steps to her and cross themselves again, with deep bendings of the upper body; but some, men as well as women, throw themselves full length upon the ground and touch the earth with their foreheads. The candle trade flourishes; scarcely a soul enters who does not buy a candle and light it before some image. ”

“ Shall we find favor in the eyes of the almighty gendarme who enters our coupé with a polite bow, as we approach the station, and asks for our passport? May it not be that a secret police prohibition has preceded us, notwithstanding the regularity of our passport, and that it now precludes our entrance? Has not your pen sinned many a time against the knout and autocracy, and are you not, after all, if carefully examined, with all your scribbling, a thoroughly objectionable person in the eyes of the police—at least, when seen with Russian eyes? ”

“ If it is hard to make a successful stand even in constitutional states with parliament and press, in the rare enough cases of despotic justice, it is immensely harder where the protection of authority is the highest principle of government, and where no institution whatever exists for the protection of the subject. It should not be at all surprising, then, that the reign of terror from above tries to countermine the terror from below. Indeed, it is only a proof of the patience and gentleness of the Russian people that attempts upon official criminals are so rare. ”

“ It is the environment that influences princes, whether for good or for evil. But the injury to a few paintings, however expensive, is not the worst that rests on the conscience of the ring in the Czar's court, just as the Hermitage is not the most objectionable feature of St. Petersburg. When the Russian empire shall have overcome the phase of barbarian mistrust for strangers and of oppressive police management, when it shall have really opened its gates, the Hermitage will become a true centre of attraction with few equals in the universe. ”

“ And what modern state or system of national economy may, without the unimpeded circulation of the sap of culture, maintain itself at a level corresponding to the modern requirements of its internal and external productive capacity? Are the advantages of an all-controlling police system in any degree proportionate to its innumerable economic disadvantages? Is the occasional annoyance of a really objectionable intruder sufficient compensation for the evil reputation which this system attaches to the whole country? It is a sheer impossibility to watch daily and hourly a hundred million people. ”

“ An autocrat is hardly less interested in the credit of his system than a husband in the reputation of his wife. This system is apparently identical with his personality. He bears all the responsibility. He has reason for the most far-reaching suspicion of all who approach him, because he seldom sees any one who does not wish something of him. Who, then, has the courage, the credit, and the means to approach the Czar, and to tell him the truth concerning what goes on about him and is done in his name? ”

“ A long procession of folly, brutality, official darkness, ignorance; a chapter from the might of darkness; the crucifix misused as an aid to the knout, a symbol of the Russian régime that could not be held up to scorn more passionately by any demagogue; and yet only a street-scene which would hardly strike the Moscow merchant when strolling in the gallery of a Sunday, because of its freedom from any "tendency." ”

“ Ivan the Terrible holds in his arms the son he has just stricken to death with his heavy staff. It is a horrible scene from which one turns because of the almost unbearable misery depicted there, and yet you return to it again and again. So great is the conception, so wonderful the insight, so incomparable the technique. The madman, whom a nation of slaves endures as its master, is at last overtaken by Nemesis, and he is truly an object for pity as he crouches on the ground with the body of his dying son in his arms. ”

“ The problem of the artist to tell us what we cannot forget, to give us something of [Pg 48] his soul, his sentiments, his thoughts, is of first importance, just as geniuses of all ages cared less to be thought masters of technique than to win friends, fellow-thinkers, and comrades, to share their joys and feelings. From the purely technical stand-point, where is there a painting that presents in a more masterly manner the glimmer of sunlight on the surface of a broad stream—as in this case—and where, nevertheless, the landscape is treated merely as the background? ”

“ Petersburg a young man makes himself subject to the displeasure of the authorities if he does not take his part in the "diversions of youth." A lordly contempt for humanity is accordingly the prerequisite for every career in that Northern Paris. The pursuit of fortune has never a conscience, least of all where it appears in military form. There esprit de corps and dignity of position displace to a degree of absolute hostility all morality. Elegantly and fashionably clothed, one is always ready to wager one's life, or rather to throw it into the balance, for the most valueless stake. ”

“ The servile courtiers, the high officials, but above all, the entire system. Do not forget that we are being ruled by a Camorra of bureaucrats, that have no interest at all in the real welfare of the country, but have their primary interest in the uncurtailed maintenance of their power. If the Czar wished to hear, to-day, the truth about the condition and sentiments of the country, he would never succeed, because they do not expose one another in the Camorra; for there is only one god—the career with all its chances of legitimate and illegitimate gain. ”

“ You cannot emancipate yourself from politics in Poland. This is not a country like German Alsace, where, according to Moltke, a guard must be kept for fifty years, after which, like the German country it originally was, it will again become and remain German. Poland is a country forcibly subjected and conquered, and you feel it when walking the streets and in the fashionable hotel, where the national sorrow is generously moistened with champagne at the tables of the aristocracy even at the early breakfast hour. ”

“ Woe to the lover of justice who dares to fight for his rights or even for the public welfare! One of the special laws for the Jews is that any one may trample him and injure him unpunished. Of all the unfortunate subjects of the Czar, he is the most unfortunate. His intelligence, his sense of justice are offences against the sacred order of things, which demands stupidity and obedience. ”

“ Nowhere the slightest cant, nowhere the slightest false display, nowhere the forced enthusiasm for culture which makes certain circles of our great cities so repulsive to us. Naturalness is the pervading note in Moscow social life. But literary and art interests are a matter of course in a society which is scarcely paralleled by the English in its demand for reviews. To-day, of course, every other interest is forced to the wall by politics. I have been present at gatherings in the best circles of people of culture at which even the young had scarcely any interest save in political questions. ”

“ In that case it would be a warning intended for the Russian youth, revolutionary throughout, who would dare anything. This much is certain: the greatest Russian painter, and one of the greatest of contemporary painters, is on the side of these young people, and his heart is with them even though he may doubt, as many another, the success of the heroic self-sacrifice. The noble ideals of youth cannot conquer this sea of ignorance and slave-misery. Great and immeasurable as is the Russian nation, nothing can help the country. ”

“ The Jewish section is the "partie Hortense" of the beautiful Polish capital; the Jewish misery is a shameful stain on Polish rule and its Nemesis. All the five continents must have their misery and toil, and they need a firm, all-embracing humanity to relieve them of this contagious wretchedness, this residue of centuries of depravity. But for Poland and Russia the humane solution of the Jewish question is simply a life-question. ”

“ But who will not rejoice that the poet, who above all things was and is a passionate human creature, has saved himself from the despair of agnosticism by a bold leap to the rock of faith, which lies beyond all science, and can neither be supported nor shaken by it? How many of the proud agnostics do not secretly cast furtive glances at that rock, where they would like to reserve themselves a place against emergencies? While Tolstoï sincerely acknowledges that without this foundation under his feet he would no longer be able to live. ”

“ For Plehve passes for something far worse than a spendthrift or a wasteling. He is a rascal without scruples, a political Sadist, a bloodhound, an accomplished deceiver; at the same time, a cynic entirely without heart, a "va banque," [2] a swindler to whom a political career or the playing with human lives means nothing more than a pleasant nerve stimulant—in short, a tiger clothed in a human form. At the same time, he has the most charming manners, is delightful and entertaining, and possesses the most true-hearted face possible. ”

“ Imagine this office held by a man like Plehve, and you will understand what spirit rules under the pashas of sleepy villages down to the last provincial hamlet. Cæsarian madness, aspiration for higher positions, class interest, all work together to produce entirely conscienceless libertines and barbarians, against whom there is no protection whatever. In a land without a parliament or a free press every complaint has only the effect of a denunciation of the devil to his grandmother. ”

“ Petersburg was to bid defiance to the contemporary might of Sweden, and so forty thousand men had to work for years in the swamps of the Neva to build the mighty tyrant's castles, the Peter-and-Paul fortress, an immense stone block on the banks of the icy stream. Malarial fevers carried off most of them; but the Russian people supplied more men, for such was the will of the Czar. ”