Russian

“ THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE In days of doubt, in days of painful meditations concerning the destinies of my fatherland, thou alone art my prop and my support, O great, mighty, just and free Russian language!—Were it not for thee, how could one fail to fall into despair at the sight of all that goes on at home?—But it is impossible to believe that such a language was not bestowed upon a great people! ”

“ The manners and customs of the people who speak Russian and of the peoples who speak English, their physical strength and their vitality, their ideals, social and political—all these things will be the decisive factors in the final combat. Whether Russian or English shall be the world-language of the future depends not on the language itself and its merits and demerits, but on the sturdiness of those who shall then speak it, on their strength of will, on their power of organization, on their readiness to sacrifice themselves for the common cause, and on their fidelity to their ideals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fear, suspicion, doubt, all the shades of inquietude dwell in the Russian, and are translated on his brow by a calm which nothing destroys, on his lips by a reserve which nothing dissipates. To converse it is necessary to be open; and to open one's self, one must possess his life, his goods, his honor, his liberty. ”

“ The beauties of travel in Russia begin to be seen even in the dark. We are in the station, in the midst of a crowd of people, who seem to be talking all the languages of Babel; such a jargon does the Russian, Polish, and German make, when all are spoken at the same time by an impatient multitude. ”

“ Out of this crampedness of Russian literature by government developed that virtue of its masters, which with their sincerity and simplicity, or moderation, forms a most beautiful trinity of graces; I mean their freedom. You will indeed hear full many a yard-stick critic as he goes about with his load of pigeon-holed boxes to take measure of each author, and label him, and duly relegate him to convenient pigeon-hole,—such critic you will hear discourse much about classicism, and romanticism, and realism, and of their prevalence at different times in Russian literature. ”

“ To the true Russian, Europe and the affairs of the great Aryan race, are as dear as the affairs of Russia herself and of his native country, because our affairs are the affairs of the whole world, and they are not to be obtained by the sword, but by the strength of fraternity and by our brotherly effort towards the universal union of mankind.... ”

“ Looking back over the record of Russian literature, the first thing which must strike us, if we think of the literature of other countries, is its comparatively short life. There is in Russian literature no Middle Ages, no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no Renaissance, no Grand Siècle. Literature begins in the nineteenth century. The second thing which will perhaps strike us is that, in spite of its being the youngest of all the literatures, it seems to be spiritually the oldest. ”

“ It is some such joy that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Russian language, which is, as far as I can judge, the richest of all the European family, seems admirably adapted to express the most delicate shades of thought. Possessed of a marvellous conciseness and clearness, it can with a single word call up several ideas, to express which in another tongue whole phrases would be necessary. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ever-changing manifestations of the spirit of unrest pervading the Russian people present a dreary spectacle, as monotonous in its general character as it is diversified in its special aspects. They are as evanescent as clouds flitting over a landscape; scarcely more persistent or more definite. Every important crisis, every national event, evokes a corresponding spiritual movement to satisfy the aspirations or emotions of the moment. ”

“ All the amusing things one hears said in this country, all that is characteristic and smells of the Russian land, all that is peculiarly Russian, is like everything which is peculiarly anything, peculiarly English, Irish, Italian, or Turkish, untranslatable, and loses all its savour and point in translation. ”

“ It always seems to me that the Russians pronounce their words with more syllabic distinctness than either the French or Germans. And that natural kindness and friendliness of the whole people, of which I have already written, makes them wish to be understood and to help those with whom they are speaking to grasp their meaning. ”

“ We now come, chronologically, to a writer who cannot be assigned either to the old sentimental school of Karamzín, or to the new romantic school of which Púshkin was the first and greatest exponent in Russian literature; to a man who stood apart, in a lofty place, all his own, both during his lifetime and in all Russian literary history; whose name is known to every Russian who can read and write, and whose work enjoys in Russia that popularity which the Odyssey did among the ancient Greeks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Russian character, because although between them they sum up all that is greatest, deepest, and all that is weakest in the Russian soul, there is perhaps one element of the Russian character, which, although they understood it well enough, their genius forbade them to possess. If you take as ingredients Peter the Great, Dostoyevsky’s Mwyshkin—the idiot, the pure fool who is wiser than the wise—and the hero of Gogol’s Revisor, Hlestyakov the liar and wind-bag, you can, I think, out of these elements, reconstitute any Russian who has ever lived. ”

“ In these Russian descriptive language made a great stride in advance, even after Púshkin and Gógol; and as a limner of landscape, he has no equal in Russian literature. The most noteworthy point about his work is that there is not a trace of creative fancy or invention; he describes reality, takes everything straight from life, and describes it with amazing faithfulness and artistic harmony. ”

“ And in the long-run I am convinced that we, that is to say, not we, but the future generations of the Russian people, shall every one of us, from the first to the last, understand that to be a real Russian must signify simply this: to strive towards bringing about a solution and an end to European conflicts; to show to Europe a way of escape from its anguish in the Russian soul, which is universal and all-embracing ”

“ The influence of the Russian element is felt everywhere, because of the activity of the Russians, because the administrative organisation is in their hands, because their language is spoken in all the ends of the Empire. It is the language of administration. It is the main language of trade, of intercourse between the various nationalities, and you will find that the Russian language influences very deeply the present-day languages of nearly all the nationalities of the Empire, just as English strongly influences present-day Welsh. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then again, Russian civilisation, while it has an assimilating effect, while it seems to mould the various peoples of the Empire after one type, has at the same time the effect of creating a new variety. First of all, you have an apparent assimilation. You find the old customs disappearing and people becoming simply modern. You find a dreary monotony in dress, in habits, in amusements. You see the cinematograph in all corners of the Empire, flashing out the same pictures that are shown in Paris, and London, and New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the languages of the empire represent an extraordinary variety of linguistic tendencies and of lines of linguistic evolution. Within this broad expanse of Russian territory men have elaborated various forms of speech, which mean various ways of thinking, various ways of looking at the world, various efforts to rise to a spiritual consciousness. ”

“ That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world. I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naive and hopeless cynicism. ”

“ When a Russian begins to write on a simple everyday subject, he likes to connect it with general principles, philosophy, or history, and begins, perhaps, by expounding his views on the intellectual and social developments of humanity in general and of Russia in particular. If he has sufficient space at his disposal he may even tell you something about the early period of Russian history previous to the Mongol invasion before he gets to the simple matter in hand. ”

“ In the sombre and mysterious recesses of the Russian mind, in the constantly active workings of popular thought, there is a strange admixture of the fantastic and monstrous heresies of the early and middle ages fermenting with modern progressive ideas, crudely conceived and partially understood; the grossest and most materialistic impostures of the past are revived in presence of vague and indefinite aspirations for a better knowledge of the truth, as seen in the clearer light of the present day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You shall find that it occur, over and over, that where in English is one word, in Russian is six or seven different, all synonyms, but all with most delicate individual shades of nuance .... the abstractive expression is there, as in all civilised European languages, but there is also in Russian the most immense variety of natural expressions, coming forth from the strong feeling of the Russian nature to all these surrounding influences; each word opens to a whole aperçu in this sort .... and what is most significant is, the great richness, in Russia, of the people-language ”

“ The Russians are also a sincerely religious people, and they, on the other hand, bring out most readily, spontaneously, and naturally, the things which mean most to them. We are unlike each other in temperament, yet absolutely like each other in our view of the deep things of God. ”

“ Science: Mendeleéff.
1. THE LANGUAGE.—In the Russian language three principal dialects are to be distinguished; but the Russian proper, as it is spoken in Moscow and all the central and northern parts of European Russia, is the literary language of the nation. It is distinguished by its immense copiousness, the consequence of its great flexibility in adopting foreign words, merely as roots, from which, by means of its own resources, stems and branches seem naturally to spring. Another excellence is the great freedom of construction which it allows, without any danger of becoming ambiguous. ”