by Will Durant
She was not kind to her first son; partly because Paul had been taken from her soon after birth, and had been brought up by Panin and others under Elizabeth’s supervision; partly because the conspiracies to unseat her sometimes proposed to make him emperor with a regency; partly because Paul long suspected his mother as Peter’s murderer; and also because Paul “was always brooding over the theft of his rights” to succeed his presumptive father on the throne. But Catherine took to her heart Paul’s charming sons Alexander and Constantine, personally attended to their education, tried to alienate them from their father, and schemed to have Alexander, not Paul, inherit her crown.89 Paul, happily mated with a second wife, looked with manifest disgust upon the concatenation of paramours that amused his mother and drained the revenues of the state.
Mentally Catherine surpassed all her favorites. She indulged their greed, but rarely allowed them to determine her policy. She absorbed French literature to a point where she could correspond with its leaders as ojie philosophe to another; indeed, her letters to Voltaire excelled his in good sense, and rivaled them in grace and wit. Her correspondence was almost as voluminous as Voltaire’s, though written in the interstices of court intrigues, domestic insurrections, critical diplomacy, and map-remaking wars. Her conversation kept Diderot on his toes, and moved Grimm to ecstasy: “One must have seen, at those moments, this singular head, composed of genius and grace, to form an idea of the fire that swayed her, the shafts that she let fly, the sallies that pressed … one upon another … Had it only been in my power to take down these conversations literally, the whole world would have possessed a precious and perhaps unique fragment in the history of the human mind.”90 There was, however, a hurried confusion and instability in the torrent of her ideas; she plunged too quickly into projects that she had not thought through, and she was sometimes defeated by the urgency of events and the multiplicity of her tasks. Even so, the result was immense.
It seems incredible that in a career of such political and military excitement Catherine found time to write poems, chronicles, memoirs, plays, opera librettos, magazine articles, fairy tales, a scientific treatise on Siberia, a history of the Roman emperors, and extensive Notes on Russian History . In 1769-70 she edited anonymously a satirical journal to which she was the chief contributor. One of her sketches described a religious hypocrite who attended Mass every day, lit candles before holy images, and mumbled prayers intermittently, but cheated tradesmen, maligned neighbors, beat servants, denounced current immorality, and mourned the good old days.91 Catherine’s fairy tale Prince Khlor told of a youth who went through perilous adventures to find a fabled rose without thorns, only to discover in the end that there was no such rose but virtue; this story became a classic in Russian literature, and was translated into many languages. Two of her plays were historical tragedies imitating Shakespeare; most of them were unpretentious comedies ridiculing charlatans, dupes, misers, mystics, spendthrifts, Cagliostro, Freemasons, religious fanatics; these pieces lacked subtlety but they pleased the audiences, though Catherine concealed her authorship. On the curtain of the theater that she built in the Hermitage she placed an inscription, Ridendo castigat mores —“He chastizes manners with laughter”; this well expressed the aim of her comedies. Oleg , the best of her dramas, was a remarkable succession of scenes from Russian history, enlivened by seven hundred performers in dances, ballets, and Olympic games. Most of Catherine’s literary work was revised by secretaries, for she never mastered Russian spelling or grammar, and she did not take herself too seriously as an authoress; but literature took courage from the imperial example, and gave a final and tarnished glory to her reign.
VIII. LITERATURE
Russia was becoming aware of its intellectual immaturity. A host of authors humbly copied foreign models, or translated works that had won fame in France, England, or Germany. Catherine allowed five thousand rubles from her privy purse to further this exotic flow; she herself translated Marmontel’s Bélisaire . With Russian enthusiasm for vast enterprises, Rachmaninov, a landowner in Tambov, translated the works of Voltaire, and Verevkin, director of the College of Kazan, turned into Russian the Encyclopédie of Diderot. Others translated the plays of Shakespeare, the Greek and Latin classics, the Gerusalemme liber ata of Tasso . . .
Gavril Romanovich Derzhavin was the most successful poet of the reign. Born lowly in eastern Orenburg, with Tatar blood in his veins, he served for ten years in the Preobrazhensky Regiment, saw Catherine’s ride to power, took part as an officer in suppressing Pugachev’s revolt, and worked his way up to a seat in the Senate. Noting that the Empress had used the name Felitza for a benevolent princess in Prince Khlor , Derzhavin, in a famous ode (1782), gave the same name to “the godlike Queen of the Kirghiz-Kazakh horde,” and begged this sultana to “teach me how to find the rose without thorns, … how to live pleasantly but justly.”92 When the poet apostrophized Felitza as one “from whose pen flows bliss to all mortals,” he was obviously extolling Catherine. When he reproved himself for “sleeping till noon, smoking tobacco, drinking coffee, … and making the world tremble with my looks,” or indulging in “sumptuous feasts at a table sparkling with silver and gold,” all the court knew that this was a hit at Potemkin. Derzhavin rose to raptures in praising the “Empress” Felitza, who “creates light from darkness,” injures no one, treats small faults forgivingly, lets people speak freely, “writes fables for the instruction” of her people, and “teaches the alphabet to Khlor” (grandson Alexander). And the poet concluded: “I pray the great prophet that I may touch the dust of your feet, that I may enjoy the sweet stream of your words and your look. I entreat the heavenly powers to extend their sapphire wings and invisibly guard you, … that the renown of your deeds may shine in posterity like the stars in the sky.”93 Derzhavin protested that he wished no reward for bringing so much honey, but Catherine promoted him, and soon he was so close to her that he could see her faults; he wrote no more lauds. He turned to a higher throne and indited an “Ode to the Deity,” congratulating Him on being “three-in-one,” and on keeping the heavens in such good order. At times he descended to metaphysics, and echoed Descartes’ proof of God’s existence: “Surely I am, hence Thou too art.”94 This ode remained for half a century unrivaled in popularity until Pushkin came.
Denis Ivanovich von Visin startled the capital with two lively comedies: The Brigadier and The Minor . The success of the latter was so complete that Potemkin advised the author to “die now, or never write again”—i.e., anything further would dim his fame.95 Visin rejected the advice and saw its implied prophecy come true. In his later years he traveled in Western Europe and sent home some excellent letters, one of which contained a proud prediction: “We [the Russians] are beginning; they [the French] are ending.”96
The most interesting figure in the literature of Catherine’s reign was Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov. Dismissed from the University of Moscow for laziness and backwardness, he developed into a man of incessant intellectual activity. At the age of twenty-five (1769), in St. Petersburg, he edited a magazine, The Drone , impishly so called to counter Sumarokov’s periodical, The Industrious Bee . In lively style Novikov attacked the corruption prevalent in the government; he assailed the Voltairean irreligion of the upper classes as destructive of morals and character; he lauded by contrast what he supposed to have been the unquestioning faith and exemplary morals of the Russians before Peter the Great. “It is as if the old Russian rulers had foreseen that, through the introduction of arts and sciences, the most precious treasure of the Russians—their morality—would be irretrievably lost”;97 here too Rousseau was at war with Voltaire. Catherine gave The Drone some sour looks, and it ceased publication in 1770. In 1775 Novikov joined the Freemasons, who in Russia were turning to mysticism, Pietism, and Rosicru-cian fancies while their brothers in France were playing with revolution. In 1779 he moved to Moscow, took charge of the university press, and published more books in three years than had come from that press in twenty-four.
Financed by a friend, he acquired additional presses, formed a publishing house, opened bookstores throughout Russia, and scattered broadcast his gospel of religion and reform. He established schools, hospitals, and dispensaries, and model housing for workingmen.
When the French Revolution turned Catherine from an enlightened into a frightened despot, she feared that Novikov was subverting the existing order. She directed Platon, the Metropolitan of Moscow, to examine Novikov’s ideas. The prelate reported: “I implore the all-merciful God that there may be, not only in the flock entrusted to me by God and you but throughout the world, such Christians as Novikov.”98 Suspicious nevertheless, the Empress ordered Novikov’s imprisonment in the fortress of Schlüsselburg (1792). There he remained till Catherine’s death. Released by Paul I, he retired to his estate of Tikhvin, and passed his remaining years in works of piety and charity.
A worse fate fell to Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev. Sent by Catherine to the University of Leipzig, he picked up some works of the philosophes , and was especially moved by Rousseau’s Social Contract and Raynal’s exposure of European brutality in colonial exploitation and the slave trade. He returned to St. Petersburg fired with social ideals. Put in charge of the customshouse, he learned English to deal with British merchants, took up English literature, and was especially influenced by Sterne’s Sentimental Journey . In 1790 he published one of the classics of Russian literature, Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow . It professed orthodoxy, but denounced the impositions of priests upon popular credulity; it accepted monarchy but justified revolt against a ruler who violated the “social contract” by overriding the law. It described the dismemberment of families by conscription, and the abuse of serfs by masters; at one place, said Radishchev, he had been told of a landlord who had violated sixty peasant maidens. He denounced censorship, and pleaded for freedom of the press. He did not advocate revolution, but he asked for a merciful understanding of its advocates. He appealed to the nobles and the government to end serfdom. “Let yourselves be softened, you hardhearted ones; break the fetters of your brethren, open the dungeons of slavery. The peasant who gives us health and life has a right to control the land which he tills.”99
Strange to say, the book was passed by the censor. But Catherine in 1790 was fearful that her people might imitate the French Revolution. She made note to punish the violator of sixty virgins, but she ordered Radishchev to be tried for treason. Passages were found in his book about the storming of fortresses and the uprising of soldiers against a cruel czar; and there were eulogies of the English for resisting an unjust king. The Senate condemned the author to death; the Empress commuted this to ten years in Siberia. Emperor Paul I allowed Radishchev to return from exile (1796); Alexander I invited him to St. Petersburg (1801). There, a year later, thinking, without reason, that he was to be banished again, he killed himself. His fate and that of Novikov are among the many blots on a brilliant reign.
IX. ART
Catherine did a little more for art than for literature, for art appealed only to the upper classes, and sounded no tocsin of revolt. Popular music, however, was unwittingly revolutionary, for nearly all of it consisted of sad songs, in a minor key and with plaintive accompaniment, telling not only of hearts broken in love but of lives worn out with toil. The nobles rarely heard those songs, but they enjoyed the Italian operas that were brought to St. Petersburg by Galuppi, Paisiello, Salieri, and Cimarosa, all paid by the state. Catherine herself did not care much for opera. “In music,” she said, “I can recognize no tones but those of my nine dogs, who in turn share the honor of being in my room, and whose individual voices I can recognize from a distance.”100
She confessed, too, that she had no understanding of art. She did what she could to develop such understanding in Russia. She provided the funds with which Betsky set into actual functioning (1764) the Academy of Arts that had been organized under Elizabeth (1757). She bought acknowledged masterpieces abroad, and displayed them in her galleries; so she gave 180,000 rubles for the collection of Count von Brühl in Dresden, £40,000 for the collection of Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, 440,000 francs for Choiseul’s collection, and 460,000 for Crozat’s. Without knowing it, she made fine bargains, for these gleanings included eleven hundred pieces by Raphael, Poussin, Vandyck, Rembrandt, and other perennials, whose value has grown with the advance of time and the retreat of currency. Through Grimm and Diderot (whose Salons she followed carefully) she gave commissions to French artists—Vernet, Chardin, Houdon. She had life-size copies made of Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican, and built a special gallery for them in the Hermitage.
She gave few commissions to native artists, for to her French taste there was little of lasting worth in the Russian art of her time. However, she provided funds for the education and support of students in the Academy of Arts, and sent several of them to study in Western Europe. From that Academy came the history painter Anton Losenko and the portrait painters Dmitri Levitsky and Vladimir Borovikovsky. After five years in Paris and three in Rome, Losenko returned to St. Petersburg (1769) to teach in the Academy. He made a stir with Vladimir before Rogneda , but—perhaps too burdened with academic duties—he failed to produce the masterpieces expected of him, and death took him at thirty-six (1773).—Catherine employed Levitsky to portray some of the young women who were studying at the Smolny Institute; the result is a testimony to their beauty. His portrait of Catherine concealed her amplitude under flowing robes. She sat also for Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, who was one of many French artists whom she invited to give Gallic grace to Russian art.
The greatest of her imported artists was Falconet. He came in 1766, and stayed twelve years. Catherine asked him to design, and cast in bronze, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great. He had brought with him a young woman, Marie-Anne Collot, who modeled the colossal head. Falconet dared the laws of physics by representing the horse as springing into the air, with only its hind feet touching terra firma—an immense boulder brought from Karelia to symbolize the massive resistance that Peter had overcome; to secure equilibrium Falconet showed a brass serpent—symbol of envy—biting the horse’s tail. This chef-d’oeuvre kept its poise while St. Petersburg changed into Petrograd and then into Leningrad. Falconet took longer with this work than Catherine had expected; she lost interest in it, and neglected the sculptor, who returned to Paris disappointed with her, Russia, and life.
In 1758 Nicolas-François Gillet came from France to teach sculpture at the Academy. Three of his pupils achieved excellence in Catherine’s reign: Chubin, Kozlovsky, and Shchedrin. Chubin was commissioned by Potemkin to carve a Catherine II for the rotunda of the Taurida Palace; experts called it “lifeless and cold”;101 so too seems the statue Chubin made of Potemkin. Kozlovsky achieved similar rigidity in his tomb for Marshal Suvorov, and even in his Cupid . Shchedrin’s main work was done under Alexander I: to 1812 belongs the Caryatids Holding Up the Celestial Sphere —woman bears the world. Ivan Petrovich Martos specialized in funerary monuments; cemeteries in St. Petersburg were peopled with his pleurants ; “he made marble weep.” Native sculpture lagged except in imitation of foreign styles. Orthodox churches excluded statuary, and the nobles were content with such artists as they found among their serfs.
But architecture flourished under Catherine, for she was resolved to leave her mark upon her capital. “Great buildings,” she said, “declare the greatness of a reign no less eloquently than great actions.”102 “You know,” she wrote in 1779, “that the mania for building is stronger with us than ever, and no earthquake ever demolished as many structures as we have set up. … This mania is an infernal thing; it runs away with money, and the more one builds, the more one wants to build; it is a disease, like drunkenness.”103 Though she told Falconet, “I can’t even draw,” she had her own mind in art, or a mind influenced by the Roman excavations at Herculaneum and the books of Caylus and Winckelmann. She turned her back upon the ornate baroque and flowery rococo that had reigned under Elizabeth, and cast her v
ote for the chaster neoclassic style. Some contemporaries credited her with providing explicit instructions and preliminary sketches for her architects.104
Finding no native artists who could realize her conceptions, she called to Western Europe for men who had inherited the classical tradition. So came Jean-Baptiste Vallin de La Mothe, who built for her on the Neva the Palace of the Academy of Arts (1765-72)—a Renaissance façade of coated bricks and classic portico, and, within, a majestic semicircular stairway leading to a rotunda under a dome. As an adjunct to the Winter Palace Vallin built the famous Hermitage, which Catherine thought of as a refuge from court etiquette, but which became her art gallery, and is now one of the principal museums of the world. Catherine described it to Grimm in 1790 as “my little retreat, so situated that to go there and back from my room is just three thousand paces. There I walk about amid a quantity of things that I love and delight in, and those winter walks are what keep me in health.”105
From France, too, came the Scot Charles Cameron, who had studied classic ornament there. Catherine was delighted with the brilliance and delicacy with which he adorned—with silver, lacquer, glass, jasper, agate, and polychrome marble—the private apartment that she reserved for herself, her lovers, and her dogs in the Grand Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. “I have never seen the equal of these newly decorated rooms,” she wrote; “during the last nine weeks I have never tired of contemplating them.”106 Around this palace she had a park designed in the “natural” and “English” style, which she described in a letter to Voltaire: “I now madly love the jardins à l’anglaise , the short lines, the curved lines, the gently graded slopes, the pools and lakes.... I have a profound aversion to straight lines; in a word, Anglomania dominates my plantomania.”107 For her son Paul and his lovely second wife Cameron built in Pavlovsk (another suburb of the capital) a palace in Italian villa style; here the Grand Duke and Maria Feodorovna housed the art collected in their West-European tours.