kniaz Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

“ Once upon a time he had had his high ideals and he still speaks of them, and this is why Sásha, a girl, full of the better inspirations—one of those fine intellectual types in the representation of which Tchéhoff appears as a true heir of Turguéneff—falls in love with him. But Ivánoff knows himself that he is played out; that the girl loves in him what he is no more; that the sacred fire is with him a mere reminiscence of the better years, irretrievably past; and while the drama attains its culminating point, just when his marriage with Sásha is going to be celebrated, Ivánoff shoots himself. ”

“ The stratum of society from which Górkiy took the heroes of his first short stories—and in short stories he appears at his best—is that of the tramps of Southern Russia: men who have broken with regular society, who never accept the yoke of permanent work, labouring only as long as they want to, as “casuals” in the sea-ports on the Black Sea; who sleep in doss-houses or in ravines on the outskirts of the cities, and tramp in the summer from Odessa to the Crimea, and from the Crimea to the prairies of Northern Caucasia, where they are always welcome at harvest time. ”

“ In the fifties the intellectuals had at least full hope in their forces; now—they had lost even these hopes. It was during those very years that Tchéhoff began to write; and, being a true poet, who feels and responds to the moods of the moment, he became the painter of that breakdown—of that failure of the “intellectuals” which hung as a nightmare above the civilised portion of Russian society. And again, being a great poet, he depicted that all-invading philistine meanness in such features that his picture will live. How superficial, in comparison, is the philistinism described by Zola. ”

“ In Helen we have the true type of that Russian woman who a few years later joined heart and soul in all movements for Russian freedom: the woman who conquered her right to knowledge, totally reformed the education of children, fought for the liberation of the toiling masses, endured unbroken in the snows and gaols of Siberia, died if necessary on the scaffold, and at the present moment continues with unabated energy the same struggle. ”

“ The monks think that they have killed in him all human passions and longings; but the dream of his childhood is—be it only once, be it only for a moment—to see his native mountains where his sisters sang round his cradle, and to press his burning bosom against the heart of one who is not a stranger. One night, when a storm rages and the monks are praying in fear in their church, he escapes from the monastery, and wanders for three days in the woods. For once in his life he enjoys a few moments of liberty ”

“ In the description of that moment of life Turguéneff stands quite unrivalled. On the whole, love is the leading motive of all his novels; and the moment of its full development is the moment when his hero—he may be a political agitator or a modest squire—appears in full light. The great poet knew that a human type cannot be characterised by the daily work in which such a man is engaged—however important that work may be—and still less by a flow of words. ”

“ We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to anyone who will wake us up and warm us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sásha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The coldness is in his blood—that is not his fault—and not in his head. He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people’s expense, not like a swindler, but like a child.... ”

“ The real soul of a Russian monthly review is its art-critic. His article is a much greater event than the novel of a favourite writer which may appear in the same number. The critic of a leading review is the intellectual leader of the younger generation; and it so happened that throughout the last half-century we have had in Russia a succession of art-critics who have exercised upon the intellectual aspects of their own times a far greater, and especially a far more wide-spread influence than any novelist or any writer in any other domain. ”

“ He awakened the national consciousness and created a lasting interest in the history of the nation, in the making of the empire, in the evolution of national character and institutions. Karamzín’s History was reactionary in spirit. He was the historian of the Russian State, not of the Russian people; the poet of the virtues of monarchy and the wisdom of the rulers, but not an observer of the work that had been accomplished by the unknown masses of the nation. ”

“ This is probably why Turguéneff, and apparently other literary friends, too, told him: “Don’t put your ‘philosophy into your art.’ Trust to your artistic feeling, and you will create great things.” In fact, notwithstanding Tolstóy’s distrust of science, I must say that I always feel in reading his works that he is possessed of the most scientific insight I know of among artists. He may be wrong in his conclusions, but never is he wrong in his statement of data. True science and true art are not hostile to each other, but always work in harmony. ”

“ And yet, in the literature of all nations, including the short stories of Guy de Maupassant and Bret Harte, there are few things in which such a fine analysis of complicated and struggling human feelings is given, such interesting, original, and new characters are so well depicted, and human psychology is so admirably interwoven with a background of nature—a calm sea, menacing waves, or endless, sunburnt prairies. ”

“ But further on Górkiy makes a confession which explains perhaps why he has not yet succeeded in creating a longer character-novel: “I discovered in myself,” he says, “many good feelings and desires—a fair proportion of what is usually called good; but a feeling which could unify all this—a well-founded, clear thought, embracing all the phenomena of life—I did not find in myself.” And on reading this, one at once thinks of Turguéneff, who saw in such a “freedom,” in such a unified comprehension of the universe and its life, the first condition for being a great artist. ”

“ All Russian life, all Russian history, bears traces of the malady—that laziness of mind and heart, that right to laziness proclaimed as a virtue, that conservatism and inertia, that contempt of feverish activity, which characterise Oblómoff and were so much cultivated in serfdom times, even amongst the best men in Russia—and even among the malcontents. ”

“ His last production—a drama—contained such fine poetical touches, and such a mixture of poetical melancholy with strivings towards the joy of a well-filled life, that it would have seemed to open a new page in his creation if it were not known that consumption was rapidly undermining his life.
No one has ever succeeded, as Tchéhoff has, in representing the failures of human nature in our present civilisation, and especially the failure, the bankruptcy of the educated man in the face of the all-invading meanness of everyday life. ”

“ Onyéghin produces upon her, from the first, a deep impression: she falls in love with him; but he, who has made so many conquests in the high circles of the capital, and now wears the mask of disgust of life, takes no notice of the naïve love of the poor country girl. She writes to him and tells him her love with great frankness and in most pathetic words; but the young snob finds nothing better to do than to lecture her about her rashness, and seems to take great pleasure in turning the knife in her wound. ”

“ The question of why and how all this wealth comes to him, and why all these people must work for him, never worries his mind. But—how many of those all over the world, who own factories, wheat fields and coal mines, or hold shares in them, ever think of mines, wheat fields and factories otherwise than in the way Oblómoff thought of his country seat—that is, in an idyllic contemplation of how others work, without the slightest intention of sharing their burdens? ”

“ Never does Turguéneff give himself up entirely to his feelings: he impresses by restraint; but no West European novelist is so sad as he is. The great melancholists of the Latin race, such as Leopardi and Flaubert, have hard, fast outlines in their style; the German sadness is of a caustic humour, or it is pathetic, or sentimental; but Turguéneff’s melancholy is, in its substance, the melancholy of the Slavonian races in its weakness and tragical aspect, it is a descendant in a straight line from the melancholy of the Slavonian folk-song.... When Gógol is melancholy, it is from despair. ”

“ The warm tone of the novel and the refined, deeply humane, poetical touches of which it is full—all these added immensely to the inner merits of The Great Bear. In Russia it has sown many a good idea, and there is no doubt that if it were known in Western Europe, it would be, here as well, a favourite with the thinking and well inspired young women and men. ”

“ And by the time he came to Russia, an emperor, now spoiled by the adulation of the courtiers of all Europe and the worship of the masses, who attributed to him what was attributable to the vast stir of minds produced by the Great Revolution, and consequently saw in him a half-god—by the time he came to Russia, the actor in him had got the upper hand over the man in whom there had been formerly incarnated the youthful energy of the suddenly-awakened French nation, in whom had appeared the expression of that awakening, and through whom its force had been the further increased. ”

“ You would fall asleep, deeper and deeper every day—is it not so? And I—you see what I am—I shall not grow old, I shall never be tired of life. We should live from day to day and year to year, looking forward to Christmas, and then to the Carnival; we should go to parties, dance, and think about nothing at all. We should lie down at night thanking God that one day has passed, and next morning we should wake up with the desire that to-day may be like yesterday; that would be our future, is it not so? But is that life? I should wither under it—I should die. And for what, Iliyá? ”

“ Still less could we understand realism as a description only of the lowest aspects of life, because, to limit one’s observations to the lowest aspects only, is not to be a realist. Real life has beside and within its lowest manifestations its highest ones as well. Degeneracy is not the sole nor dominant feature of modern society, if we look at it as a whole. Consequently, the artist who limits his observations to the lowest and most degenerate aspects only, and not for a special purpose, does not make us understand that he explores only one small corner of life. ”

“ Realism, in the sense which already has been indicated several times in these pages—that is, a realistic description of characters and events, subservient to ideal aims—is the distinctive feature of all Ostróvskiy’s dramas. As in the novels of Turguéneff, the simplicity of his plots is striking. But you see life—true life with all its pettinesses—developing before you, and out of these petty details grows insensibly the plot.
“One scene follows another, and all of them are so commonplace, such an everyday matter!—and yet, out of them, a terrible drama has quite imperceptibly grown into being. ”

“ Helen is not satisfied with the dull, trifling life in her own family, and she longs for a wider sphere of action. “To be good is not enough; to do good—yes; that is the great thing in life,” she writes in her diary. But whom does she meet in her surroundings? Shúbin, a talented artist, a spoiled child, “a butterfly which admires itself”; Berséneff, a future professor, a true Russian nature—an excellent man, most unselfish and modest, but wanting inspiration, totally lacking in vigour and initiative. ”

“ Thereupon comes Insároff, a Bulgarian patriot, entirely absorbed by one idea—the liberation of his mother-country; a man of steel, rude to the touch, who has cast away all melancholy philosophical dreaming, and marches straight forward, towards the aim of his life—and the choice of Helen is settled. The pages given to the awakening of her feeling and to its growth are among the best ever written by Turguéneff. When Insároff suddenly becomes aware of his own love for Helen, his first decision is to leave at once the suburb of Moscow, where they are all staying, and Russia as well. ”

“ Therefore, in whatever he wrote one felt the thoroughly moral and thoroughly reliable, slightly ascetic “rigourist” who judged all facts of life from the standard of—“What good will they bring to the toiling masses?” or, “How will they favour the creation of men whose eyes are directed that way?” His attitude towards professional æsthetics was most contemptuous, but he felt deeply himself and enjoyed the great works of art. He did not condemn Púshkin for his levity, or Gógol for his absence of ideals. ”

“ Yes, I distinctly see above our daily life in the village, somebody gliding—a little above the cross of our church, together with the light clouds—somebody light and soft of outline, having the mild and modest face of our prairie girls. ... Thus, after many years spent amidst the untold sufferings of my present existence, do I represent to myself the genius of country life.”
The charm of the boundless prairies of South Russia—the Steppes—is so admirably rendered by Levítoff that no Russian author has surpassed him in the poetical description of their nature, excepting Koltsóff in his poetry. ”

“ Union and harmony, and steady, relentless effort to promote them, which means not only all the work required for supporting one’s life, but work also for increasing universal welfare—these are, then, the two final accords in which all the discords, all the storms, which for more than twenty years had raged in the distraught mind of the great artist, all the religious ecstasies and the rationalistic doubts which had agitated his superior intelligence in its insistent search for truth finally found their solution. ”