vicomte de Eugène-Melchior Vogüé

“ In relating the course of a most ordinary journey from the country into Moscow, he counts 220 every turn of the wheels, notes every passing peasant, every guide-post. But this fastidious observance of details, applied to trivial facts, becomes a wonderful instrument when applied to human nature and to psychological researches. It throws light upon the man’s own inner conscience, without regard to his self-love; he sees himself as he is, and lays bare his soul with all its petty vanities, and the ingratitude and mistrust of an ill-humored child. ”

“ He draws water, works in the fields, and sometimes makes his own boots. He does not wish his novels alluded to. I have seen a picture of him in a peasant’s costume working with a shoemaker’s awl in his hand. Should not this creator of masterpieces feel that the pen is the only tool he should wield? If the inspiration of great thoughts is a gift we have received from Heaven as a consolation for our fellow-beings, it seems to me an act of impiety to throw away this talent. The human soul is the author’s field of action, which he is bound to cultivate and fertilize. ”

“ Our worst revolutionists are savage dogs, but the Russian nihilist is a wolf; and we now know that the wolf’s rage is the more dangerous of the two.
See how Bazarof dies! He has contracted blood-poison by dissecting the body of a typhoid subject. He knows that he is lost. He endures his agony in mute, haughty, stolid silence; it is the agony of the wild beast with a ball in his body. The nihilist surpasses the stoic; he does not try to complete his task before death; there is nothing that is worth doing. ”

“ In letters, as well as in politics, the people instinctively follow the leaders whom they feel belong to them; and whose spirit and qualities, even whose failings, they share in common. Ivan Sergievitch Turgenef possessed the dominant qualities of every true Russian: natural kindness of heart, simplicity, and resignation. With a remarkably powerful brain, he had the heart of a child. I never met him without realizing the true meaning of the gospel words, ‘poor in spirit’; and that that quality can be the accompaniment of a scientific mind and the soul of an artist. ”

“ The first was the desire to take his part of the self-sacrifice and universal suffering—a feeling which, at Borodino, had impelled him to throw himself into the thick of the battle, and which now drove him out of the house, away from the luxury and habitual refinements of his daily life, to sleep on the ground and eat the coarsest of 241 food. The second came from that indefinable, exclusively Russian sentiment of contempt for everything conventional and artificial, for all that the majority of mankind esteem most desirable in the world. ”

“ When we study the Russian drama, we can see why this form of art is more backward in that country than in any other. Poetry and romance have made more rapid strides, because they are taken up only by the cultivated class. There is virtually no middle class; and theatrical literature, the only diversion for the people, has remained in its infancy.
There is an element of coarseness in the drollery of even the two masterpieces: the comedy by Griboyedof, “Le Mal de Trop d’Esprit,” and the “Revizor” by Gogol. In their satire there is no medium between broad fun and bitterness. ”

“ As we go on, our curiosity changes into astonishment, astonishment into admiration, before this inexorable judge, who brings every human action before his tribunal, and forces from every heart its secrets. We feel as if drawn on with the current of a tranquil, never-ending stream, the stream of human life, carrying with it the hearts of men, with all their agitated and complicated movements and emotions.
War is one of the social phenomena which has strongly attracted our author and philosopher. ”

“ There is no exaggeration; it is only one of the accidents of life. The poor woman feels that if one believes in God, there are things of more importance than her little misfortune. The point which is most strongly brought forward, however, in this tale, and in nearly all the others, is the almost stoical resignation, peculiar to the Russian peasant, who seems prepared to endure anything. This author’s talent lies in his keeping the exquisite balance between the real and the ideal; every detail is strikingly and painfully real, while the ideal shines through and within every thought and fact. ”

“ It furnished a theme just suited to his plan; the adventures of a hero impelled to penetrate into every strange region and into every stratum of society; an ingenious excuse for presenting to the world in a series of pictures the magic lantern of humanity. Both works proceed from a satirical and meditative mind, the sadness of which is veiled under a smile, and both belong to a style unique in itself, entirely original. Gogol objected to his work being called a romance. ”

“ He is like a traveller who has seen the whole universe, and described what he has seen, but who has never travelled except by night. He is an incomparable psychologist when he studies souls either blackened by crime or wounded by sorrow; and as skilful a dramatist, but limited to scenes of terror and of misery. No one has carried realism to such an extreme point as he. He depicts real life, but soars above reality in a superhuman effort toward some new consummation of the Gospel. ”

“ Magnificent harvests from the fertile soil ensure an easy, joyous life; all trouble and sadness vanish with the melting snow, and spirits rise to general gayety and enthusiasm.
But the boundless spaces, the limitless horizons of these sunny plains overwhelm the spirit; one cannot long feel joyous in the presence of Infinity. 58 The habit of thought becomes like that of the eye; is lost in space, develops an inclination to revery, which causes the mind to fall back upon itself, and the imagination is, so to speak, thrown inward. ”

“ These people treat him as they would an idiot, but respect and venerate him; they feel his influence, and become better men. The women also laugh at the idiot at first, but they all end by falling desperately in love with him; while he responds to their adoration only by a tender pity, a compassionate love, the only sort that Dostoyevski permits his favorite characters to indulge in.
The writer constantly returns to his ruling idea, the supremacy of the suffering and poor in spirit. Why do all the Russian idealists, without exception, cry out against prosperity in life? ”

“ The only sign of life, if life it can be called, is in her eyes and her faint respiration. But this hideous wreck of a body contains an immortal soul, purified by suffering, utterly resigned, lifted above itself, this simple peasant nature, into the realms of perfect self-renunciation. ”

“ But Neshdanof is not fitted for the terrible 128 work; he is a weak character, and a dreamer and poet. Distracted with doubts, and wholly discouraged, he soon discovers that all is chaos within his soul. He does not love the cause to which he is sacrificing himself, and he knows not how best to serve it. Neither does he love the woman who has sacrificed herself for him, and he feels that he has lowered himself in her esteem. Weary of life, too proud to withdraw, and generous enough to wish to save his devoted companion before her reputation is lost, Neshdanof takes his life. ”

“ The twenty pages descriptive of the workings of passion in the heart of this man are written by the hand of a great master. Passion, in this strange nature, has developed to such intensity, and bestows upon the man such a gift of fascination, that the woman he loves accepts, in spite of herself, this savage whom she abhors, and moreover with the certainty that he will murder her. So he does; and, throughout an entire night, beside the bed where lies the body of his strangled victim, he calmly discusses philosophy with his friend. ”

“ To historical misfortunes, we may add the peculiarities of soil and climate in which the Russian drama has been enacted. The severe, interminable winter interrupts man’s work and depresses his spirit. In the southern part, the scanty vegetation does not incite him to wrestle with nature and vie with her in energy and devotion. Is it not true that man’s mind is modelled according to the nature of his abiding-place? Must not a country having a limited horizon, and forms strongly and sharply defined, tend to the development of individuality, to clearness of conception, and persevering effort? ”

“ What I now felt was not that aspiration toward the Infinite, that love for universal nature, with which my whole being had been filled of late; but I was consumed by a thirst, a longing for happiness,—I could not yet call it by its name, but for a happiness beyond expression, even if it should annihilate me. It was almost an agony of mingled joy and pain. ”

“ Turgenef discovered the evil, and studied it objectively; Tolstoï suffered from it from the first day of its appearance, without having, at first, a very clear consciousness of his condition; his tortured soul cries out on every page he has written, to express the agony which weighs down so many other souls of his own race. If the most interesting books are those which faithfully picture the existence of a fraction of humanity at a given moment of history, this age has produced nothing more remarkable, in regard to its literary quality, than his work. ”

“ The interminable series of episodes, portraits, and reflections which Tolstoï presents to us are introduced through a few fictitious characters; but the real hero of this epic is Russia herself, passing through her desperate struggle against the foreign invader. The real characters, Alexander, Napoleon, Kutuzof, Speranski, occupy nearly as much space as the imaginary ones; the simple and rather slack thread of romance serves to bind together the various chapters on history, politics, philosophy, heaped pell-mell into this polygraph of the Russian world. ”

“ Everything in this country develops suddenly. Poets appear in numbers, just as the flowers of the field spring forth after the sun’s hot rays have melted the snow. At this time poetry seemed to be the universal language of men. Only one of this multitude of poets, however, is truly admirable, absorbing all the rest in the lustrous rays of his genius,—the glorious Pushkin.
He was preceded by Zhukovski, who was born twenty years earlier, and who also survived him. No critic can deny that Zhukovski was the real originator of romanticism in Russian literature ”

“ Gogol introduces us to an untried world. I must warn the reader that he will at first find difficulties—the strangest customs; an array of characters not in any way connected; names as strange as the people who bear them. He must not expect the attractive style or class of subjects of Tolstoï and Dostoyevski. They show us results, not principles; they tell of what we can better apprehend; for what they have studied is more common to all Europe. Gogol wrote of more remote times, and, besides, he and his work are thoroughly and exclusively Russian. ”

“ The writer will now become a European; he will uphold the method of Peter the Great, against those patriots who have entrenched themselves behind the great Chinese wall. Reason, good laws, and good literature have no fixed country. Every one must seize his treasure wherever he can find it, in the common soil of humanity, and develop it in his own way. In reading the strong words of his own confession we are led to a feeling of anxiety for the poet’s future. Will politics turn him from his true course? ”

“ An inferior clerk in a court of chancery, worn with years and toil, is passing on toward the decline of life, in a continual struggle with poverty and the accompanying tortures of wounded self-love. This ignorant and honest clerk, the butt of his comrades’ ridicule, ordinary in conversation, of only medium intelligence, whose whole ambition is to be a good copyist, possesses, under an almost grotesque exterior, a heart as fresh, open, and affectionate as that of a little child ”

“ It was at that temporary prison that they were visited by the wives of the revolutionists of December. These brave women had set a noble example. Belonging to the upper class, and accustomed to a life of luxury, they had renounced everything to follow their exiled husbands into Siberia, and for twenty-five years had haunted the prison gates. Learning now of the arrival of another set of refugees, they came to visit them, warned these young men of what was in store for them, and counselled them how best to support their hardships, offering to each of them all that they had to give, the Gospel. ”

“ He is a stout man, of lymphatic temperament, absent-minded; a man who blushes and weeps easily, susceptible to love, sympathetic with all suffering. He is a type of the kind-hearted Russian noblemen, nervous, deficient in will, a constant prey to the ideas and influence of others; but under his gross exterior lives a soul so subtle, so mystic, that it might well be that of a Hindu monk. One day, after Pierre had given his word of honor to his friend André that he would not go to a midnight revel of some of his young friends, he hesitated when the hour of meeting came. ”

“ At the point where life begins, there do we cease to comprehend.
The realist is groping his way, trying his experiments in the creations of his brain, which breathe the spirit of truth, and speak with at least the accent of sincerity and sympathy. ”

“ He only occasionally betrays a hint of the terror which seizes him at the thought of the near separation; but finally, in the last letter, his wounded heart breaks; the unhappy man sees before him the blank desolation of his future life, solitary, empty; he is no longer conscious of what he writes; but, in spite of all, his utter distress is kept back; he himself seems hardly yet to realize the secret of his own agony. The drama ends with an agonizing wail of despair, when he is left standing alone, behind the departing train. ”