Russian culture

“ The mechanistic approach to art and culture and the idée fixe that nothing must express itself outside of the channels of the State have stultified the cultural and artistic expression of the Russian people. In poetry and literature, in drama, painting, and music not a single epic of the Revolution has been produced during five years. This is the more remarkable when one bears in mind how rich Russia was in works of art and how close her writers and poets were to the soul of the Russian people. ”

“ The number of languages spoken within the Russian empire is something over a hundred, and the number of languages spoken will give some idea of the very great variety of grades of culture and of civilisation there are within the empire. There are almost as many grades of culture and civilisation as there are grades of climate upon that great plain. If you take, for instance, the alphabets of the various newspapers published in the Russian empire, you will see what an extraordinary variety of forms of culture are intermingled there. ”

“ Broadly speaking, Russian art and literature may be described as springing from an ethical impulse and as having for their motive power and raison d'être the tendency toward socio-political reform, in contradistinction to the art and literature of Western culture, whose motives and aims are primarily of an æsthetic nature and seek in art the reconciliation of the dualism between spirit and matter. ”

“ The second Russia is that of the "Old Believers," of the fanatical haters of Europe's culture, civilization, and democracy. It is a truly mystic Russia, and its philosophy has never yet been adequately presented to the European or American reader.
There was a time, in the history of Russia's intellectual development, when some of the ablest exponents of Russian thought supported those conception of social and political inertness which usually go under the name of the Oriental philosophy of life. ”

“ Yet in the greatest upheaval in the world's history no one has come forward with pen or brush or lyre to give artistic expression to the miracle or to set to music the storm that carried the Russian people forward. Works of art, like new-born man, come in pain and travail. Verily the five years of Revolution should have proved very rich spiritually and creatively. For in those years the soul of Russia has gone through a thousand crucifixions. Yet in this regard Russia was never before so poor and desolate. ”

“ The new civilisation of the Letts and the Esthonians is partly of German origin and partly Russian, but the intercourse of both peoples with the Russians is growing closer, and they are subjected more and more to the influence of Russian civilisation and culture. ”

“ They know very well that they have insufficient culture, that they are in the main a nation of illiterates, that in general they are behind Europe. But in Russia there is a deep faith in ideals. It is genuinely believed that life is not worth living save for an ideal. You must have something high to live for. So of Russia herself it is genuinely believed that she too must have something high in the world to live and work for. ”

“ Every nationality in Russia has contributed to the intellectual wealth of the country, and it is in this blending of the whole country's thought that lies the glorious promise of a great Russia,—a promise that is bound to be fulfilled when the spirit of intellectual lethargy is conquered, and mystic Russia awakens from her slumber. ”

“ During the nineteenth century Russia became a very active participant in western civilisation, and there was an extraordinary development of civilisation in Russia, expressing itself in a very great variety of ways, in literature, in art, in economic and social life and in the development of political forms. ”

“ It is not to blue-books, or to newspaper leaders, but to its works of Art that one must go in Russia in order to understand the political, economical, and social ideals of the country—the aspirations of the history-making portions of Russian society. ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ And Russia is as heterogeneous in condition as it is in elements. It has accepted ready-made the methods of Greek, of Tatar, and of European; but has assimilated none of them; and Russian civilization, with its amazing quality, its bewildering variety of achievement in art, literature, diplomacy, and in every field, is not a natural development, but a monstrosity. The genius intended for a whole people seems to have been crowded into a few narrow channels. Where have men written with such tragic intensity? ”

“ From now all the world will listen to the majestic masterpieces of the Russian composers, see the infinite beauty of the Russian life and feel the greatness of the Russian soul. Not only has Russia her peculiar racial civilization, her unique art and literature, and national traditions, but she has riches of which the outside world knows little, riches that are still buried. ”

“ They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and backwoodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, into the Black Land, into the prairie. ”

“ Our best men felt that all the future development of Russia would be hampered by that ignorance, if it continued—and literature did its best to answer the great questions which besieged the thinking man at every step of his social and political activity. ”

“ Any editor of Slav folk-tales starts with great advantages. Russia is a country where artistic development began very late; where popular lore was conserved with little alteration owing to the immensities of the country, the primitiveness of the people, and the punctiliousness of the compilers. ”

“ If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them ”

“ They regard the masters of their language quite otherwise in Russia. What for us is a temporary gratification is to them the soul’s daily bread; for they are passing through the golden age of their literature. Their authors are the guides of the race, almost the creators of their language; their poets are such according to the ancient and full sense of the word—vates, poet, prophet.
In Russia, the small educated class have perhaps surpassed us in cultivation; but the lower classes are just beginning to read with eagerness, faith, and hope ”

“ Then comes the era of the thick periodicals, and whatever is gifted in Russia, for a time speaks only through them; lastly comes realism with an intensity unparalleled elsewhere, and everybody writes in prose, and only one kind of prose at that,—fiction. Not a drama, not a history, not an essay, not a philosophical treatise has yet grown on Russian soil; all the energy of Russia has gone into fiction, and Russia is not the country to produce, when it does produce masters, only one at a time. ”

“ FOLK-LORE—SONGS—SAGAS
The early folk-literature of Russia, part of which is still preserved in the memories of the people alone, is wonderfully rich and full of the deepest interest. No nation of Western Europe possesses such an astonishing wealth of traditions, tales, and lyric folk-songs—some of them of the greatest beauty—and such a rich cycle of archaic epic songs, as Russia does. Of course, all European nations have had, once upon a time, an equally rich folk-literature ”

“ The villages in Little Russia are not disposed in streets as they are in Great Russia, but the white-washed houses are scattered, as in Western Europe, in separate little farms, each of which is surrounded by charming little gardens. The more genial climate, the warm nights, the musical language, the beauty of the race, which probably contains a mixture of South Slavonian with Turkish and Polish blood, the picturesque dress and the lyrical songs—all these render Little Russia especially attractive for the Great Russian. ”

“ We do not give our literary men certificates and titles, and yet a profoundly national literature has been created and developed in Russia. It should be the same with music.... Academic training and artistic progress are not synonymous terms.... ”

“ But apart from this, each nationality detached from Russia has its national literature, which we all admit does not perhaps possess great masterpieces like Russian literature, but has nevertheless its individual character, and consequently stands nearer and dearer to its people and is capable of greater influence on it than all the masterpieces of foreign art. ”

“ No one who lived in modern Russia could possibly realise his perfection except by pain. A few Russian artists have realised themselves in Art; in a fiction that is mediæval in character, hecauae its dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering. ”

“ A keen observer, he was fascinated by the genuineness of the Christian spirit as it exists in Russia, and by the profound contrasts and contradictions that thrive side by side, as though vast Russia were the veritable home of toleration in every walk of life. ”

“ This epic poetry of Russia strikes its roots in the most remote antiquity of Asia, from Hindu and Persian myths, as well as from those of the Occident. It resembles the race itself in its growth and mode of development, oscillating alternately between the east and the west. Thus has the Russian mind oscillated between the two poles of attraction. In this period of its growth, it remembers and imitates more than it creates; but the foreign images it receives and reflects assume larger contours and more melancholy colors; a tinge of plaintiveness, as well as of brotherly love and sympathy. ”

“ Of course, to know Russia means to learn something more about her than merely her economic life. In Russia's peculiar civilization there are numberless traits of extreme interest and highest fascination. ”

“ One is the Russia of the sturdy, enterprising classes, of the progressive elements in every walk of life, fully alive to the opportunities of modern civilization; the Russia of the "intellectuals," of the enthusiastic and productive Zemstvo-workers in the field of education and social amelioration, school reform, co-operative movements, workingmen's and peasants' organizations. This Russia is revealed to us through the her rapid industrial growth, through her whole political and social development. ”

“ Each nation has its fundamental idea, its mother idea, the idea of which all other characteristic ideas are children. As Dostoieffsky says: “No nation has ever been founded on science and reason; it has always grown about some central idea.”
It is a remarkable fact that, although Russia is a great composite empire with an enormous number of small nations and tribes under her rule, she is not a country of mixed ideas. Her literature, art, music, philosophy, religion, her theatre, her dancing, is something intrinsically Russian. No Poles, Finns, Jews, Armenians, Kirghiz, contribute to it. ”

“ There is about every thing Russian an air of orientalism which gives a peculiar character to their dress, their mansions, their manners, their feelings, their expressions, and their prejudices, which will probably long continue to distinguish Russian literature on that of the other nations of Europe, whose steps she has followed, perhaps too implicitly, in her attempts to overtake them in the race of civilization and intellectual improvement. ”

“ Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm. ”

“ But all these numerous intellectual shades of opinion were almost immediately recreated and incorporated into the peculiarly national psychology of the Russian, with its sober realism of manner and high idealism of thought. The history of Russian Literature is thus at the same time the history of Russian thought.
Thus the saying current in Russia, that "the Frenchman will hit upon an invention, the Englishman will manufacture it, the German will import it into Russia for sale, and the Russian will come and steal it," has been shown to be true in other fields than industry. ”

“ Therefore, if we go to the root of this matter, it comes to this: that the Russians are more broadly and widely human than the people of other European or Eastern countries, and, being more human, their capacity of understanding is greater, for their extraordinary quickness of apprehension comes from the heart rather than from the head. ”

“ The main channel through which political thought found its expression in Russia during the last fifty years was literary criticism, which consequently has reached with us a development and an importance that it has in no other country. ”