Russian poetry

“ Philosophy took the place of politics, and liberalism was diverted into the channel of romanticism; but out of this romantic movement came the springtide of Russian poetry, in which, for the first time, the soul of the Russian people found adequate expression. And the very fact that politics [Pg 45] were excluded from the movement proved, in one sense, a boon to literature: for it gave Russian men of genius the chance to be writers, artists and poets, and prevented them from exhausting their whole energy in being inefficient politicians or unsuccessful revolutionaries. ”

“ The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian art, music, literature and poetry was to create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the souls of the people. Their ideal was to create life from life. Though profound melancholy seems to be the dominant note in Russian music and art, yet along with the dramatic gloom go also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet. ”

“ I have not dealt in this book with Russian poets, firstly, because the number of readers who are familiar with Russian poetry in its original tongue is limited; and, secondly, because it appears to me impossible to discuss Russian poetry, if one is forced to deal in translations, since no translation, however good, can give the reader an idea either of the music, the atmosphere, or the charm of the original. But it is in Russian poetry that the quality of Russian realism is [Pg 23] perhaps most clearly made manifest. ”

“ Russian lovers are quite inexhaustible in their endearing expressions, and the abundance of diminutives which the language possesses is especially favorable to their affectionate mode of address. With this exquisite tenderness of the love-song is united a pensive feeling, which, indeed, pervades the whole popular poetry of Russia, and which may be characterized as melancholy musical, and in harmony with the Russian national music, the expressive sweetness of which has been the admiration of all foreign composers to whom it has been known. ”

“ Yet his place as a great poet and as the leader of Russian modernism is assured to him in the opinion of his compatriots. He brought to Russian literature a spontaneous lyricism and a didacticism of joy which, while emancipating poetry from its gloom and social bias, failed of intensity, imagery, and intellection. What impressed his public was his vociferous æstheticism and a prolific versatility in subject-matter. He has certainly contributed to the language by his rhythmic inventions. ”

“ He is not a dramatist, and as an epic writer, though he can mould a bas-relief and produce a noble fragment, he cannot set crowds in motion. He revealed to the Russians the beauty of their landscape and the poetry of their people ”

“ Modern Russian literature took its rise in the early nineteenth century. This was, more or less, the Russian counterpart of the Elizabethan Age. Energizing liberal influences were in the air; men's pulses were stirred by the Napoleonic drama; a national self-consciousness came into being; the winds of a new world were blowing from widened horizons. And there was the same coincidence of favorable environment with the accident of genius. Yet if the English Renaissance found its expression in drama, it is notable that nascent Russian literature blossomed in lyricism. ”

“ The crudity and naïveté of the workmen's poetry produced since the revolution is redeemed by a hard-handed grasp on reality. The return to realism is the promise of a new development in Russian poetry. Like all living things, poetry endures only through change. ”

“ When his talent became fully matured, form took possession of him rather than color. In his best poems, intellect presides over sentiment, and the soul of the artist is laid bare.
48 To attempt to quote, to translate his precious words, would be a hopeless task. He himself said: “In my opinion, there is nothing more difficult, I might say impossible, than to translate Russian poetry into French; concise as our language is, we can never be concise enough.” ”

“ Meredith says somewhere that the poetry of mortals is their daily prose. It is precisely this kind of poetry, the poetry arising from the incidents of everyday life, which the Russian poets have been successful in transmuting into verse. There is a quality of matter-of-factness in Russian poetry which is unique; the same quality exists in Russian folklore and fairy tales; even Russian ghosts, and certainly the Russian devil, have an element of matter-of-factness about them ”

“ Nevertheless, although he rendered great services in these directions, and is known as "the Father of Russian Literature," he was far more important as a scientific than as a literary man. It is true that precisely the opposite view of him was held during the period immediately succeeding him, and he became an authority and a pattern for many Russian writers, who imitated his pseudo-classical poetry, and even copied his language, as the acme of literary perfection. ”

“ A spirit dedicated to the creation of the greatest philosophical system which Russia has given to the world was fain to express itself also in poetry. His one slender volume of lyrics has the quality of soaring spirituality, and is generally engaged with a supersensuous reality, occasionally broken by irruptions of spasmodic comedy. It is largely centered about the concept of the Eternal Feminine, which also plays an important part in his grandiose religious system. ”

“ Yet not seldom a spark of real poetry shines through that melodious tissue of unmeaning words. What is most remarkable in these songs, which have now been more than a century the exclusive property of the common people, is the utter absence of coarseness and vulgarity, even in the wedding songs.
The Russian songs, like the Russian language, have a peculiar tenderness, and are full of caressing epithets. These are even frequently applied to inanimate objects. ”

“ They feel as though they were listening to men who are talking too loud and too wildly, and [Pg 25] they merely wish to get away or to stop their ears. Again, poets like Keats or Gautier often produce on them the impression that they are listening to sensuous and meaningless echoes.
Now Russian poetry is a step farther on in this same direction. The reader who enters the kingdom of Russian poetry, after having visited those of France and England, experiences what he feels in entering the German region, but still more so. The region of Russian poetry is still more earthy. ”

“ This volume heaps the anthological Pelion upon the Ossa of translation. It aims to present the lyrical poetry of Russia for the last hundred years by a selection of poems translated by the editors. Within the fences thus set up lay a wide foreign field to pick from: the old-fashioned garden overrun by the rank growth of exotic flowers, beautiful weeds outflanking the hothouse plants. The principle of selection was, so far as might be, æsthetic. Poems were chosen less for their representative quality than for their immediate worth and, of course, their ability to stand the test of translation. ”

“ In the '70's and '80's Russian society was seized with a mania for writing poetry, and a countless throng of young poets made their appearance. No book sold so rapidly as a volume of verses. But very few of these aspirants to fame possessed any originality or serious worth. Poetry had advanced not a single step since the days of Nekrásoff and Shevtchénko, so far as national independence was concerned. ”

“ The kazák songs, robber songs, soldiers' songs, and historical songs are all descendants or imitators of the ancient poetry of Russia. They are the remains of the third—the Moscow or imperial—cycle of the epic songs, which deals with really historical characters and events. The Moscow cycle is preceded by the cycles of Vladímir, or Kíeff, and of Nóvgorod. Still more ancient must be the foundations of the marriage songs, rooted in the customs of the ancient Slavonians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As it would have been impossible to exhaust so wide a subject as Russian Literature within the limits of this book, I have concentrated my chief attention upon the modern literature. The early writers, down to Púshkin and Gógol—the founders of the modern literature—are dealt with in a short introductory sketch. The most representative writers in poetry, the novel, the drama, political literature, and art criticism, are considered next, and round them I have grouped the less prominent writers, of whom the most important are mentioned in short notes. ”

“ It is conveniently near the dividing line of two centuries, and it coincides rather exactly with the moment when Russian Literature definitely ceased to be dominated by Realism and the Novel. In the two or three years that followed the death of Chekhov Russian Literature underwent a complete and drastic transformation. The principal feature of the new literature became the decisive preponderance of Poetry over Prose and of Manner over Matter—a state of things exactly opposite to that which prevailed during what we may conveniently call the Victorian age. ”

“ Besides, it does not seem to me that this romantic poetry expresses what is most typical of the Russian spirit. By giving poetry the first rank in their literature, their critics are influenced by the prestige of the past and the enthu- siasm of youth ; for the passage of time adds lustre to what is past, to the detriment of the present.
A foreigner can perhaps judge more truly in this case ; for distance equalizes all remote objects on the same plane. I believe that the great nov- elists of the past forty years will be of more ser- vice to Russia than her poets. ”

“ At his best he can move the reader with his stinging pity and his passionate self-scorn. He is perhaps chiefly remembered by his epic: "Who Lives Happily in Russia?", which holds in its vast frame the very essence of the misery and the thwarted vigor of the Russian peasant. ”

“ The pictures of nature, the portraits of the people, all the good and all the bad of the good and the bad old times pass before one with epic simplicity and the magic of a fairy-tale. One is spellbound by the charm, the dignity, the good-nature, the gentle, easy accent of the speaker, in whom one feels convinced not only that there was nothing common nor mean, but to whom nothing was common or mean, who was a gentleman by character as well as by lineage, one of God’s as well as one of Russia’s nobility. ”

“ Our eyes that would look elsewhere flinch and fail,
Yet not my will has power to undo you.
Once more I tremble, so once more you pale,
As the forebodings of old pain break through you.
The moments pour with noise of torrents streaming:
Above us passion's lifted blade is gleaming.
Whoever made us, lips and lit eyes drinking
Of lips and eyes, be it or God or Fate,
Is it not one? Within the circle shrinking
We stand to hear the spell reverberate!
We bend with happiness and fear,—and sinking,
We fall: two anchors on the sea-floor grate. ”

“ Of course, all the modern literary currents are found in the stream of present-day Russian literature: futurism, and symbolism, and acmeism. The writers who express these influences have no fixed body of doctrine, but their viewpoint is the reverse of the one so long accepted without question in Russia. They insist that art is concerned first and foremost with beauty, not with morality; they claim that its true function is its appeal to the imagination. It is no longer to be, say the modernists, a conveyor of moral ideas. ”

“ European critics have never detected the seam in the fabric of the Russian novel; they have accepted the masterpiece as the outcome of a single creative inspiration. Even though Russian realism comes nearer to life than that of any other literature, still it is more art than life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This extreme sensitiveness to impression is what has led the Russian literary genius into Realism; and it is what has produced the greatest Realists that the history of the novel has seen. The Russian mind is like a sensitive plate; it reproduces faithfully. It has no more partiality, no more prejudice than a camera film; it reflects everything that reaches its surface. A Russian novelist, with a pen in his hand, is the most truthful being on earth. ”

“ There is always lurking behind every Russian work of art a sort of mystic image, that of Russia which longs to express her soul, and the highest aim of all Russian literature is to redeem the national spirit from the silence to which it is doomed by the conditions of Russian life. ”