Book Read Free

A history of Russia

Page 49

by Riazanovsky


  Language and Literature

  The Russian language evolved further, and so did linguistic and literary studies. If the writings of Karamzin marked the victory of the new style over the old, those of Pushkin already represented the apogee of modern Russian language and literature and became their classic model. The simplicity, precision, grace, and flow of Pushkin's language testify to the enormous development of the Russian literary language since the time of Peter the Great. Such opponents of this process as the reactionary Admiral Alexander Shishkov, who served from 1824 to 1828 as minister of education, fought a losing battle. While writers developed the Russian language, scholars studied it. The first decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the work of the remarkable philologist Alexander Vostokov and the early studies of several other outstanding linguistic scholars. Literary criticism rose to a new prominence. The critics ranged from conservative university professors, typified by Stephen Shevyrev of the University of Moscow, who adhered to the doctrine of Official Nationality, to the radical firebrand Vissarion Belinsky. Indeed, we shall see that with Belinsky literary criticism in Russia acquired sweeping social, political, and generally ideological significance.

  Literature constituted the chief glory of Russian culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, owing to the genius of several writers. It remains the most highly prized legacy from the time of Alexander I and Nicholas I, whether in Russia, with a virtual cult of Pushkin, or in other countries where such works as Eugene Onegin and Dead Souls are read.

  Karamzin's sentimentalism, mentioned in an earlier chapter, which was popular at the end of the eighteenth and in the first years of the nineteenth century, gradually lost its appeal, while Karamzin himself turned, as we know, to history. New literary trends included what both pre-revolution-ary and Soviet scholars described as romanticism and realism in their various aspects. Romanticism produced no supreme literary figure in Russia except the poet Theodore Tiutchev, 1803-73, who spent much of

  his life in Germany and had little influence in his native land. It did, however, attract a number of gifted poets and writers and also contributed to the artistic growth of such giants as Lermontov, Pushkin, and Gogol. Of the Russian romanticists proper, Basil Zhukovsky deserves mention. Zhukovsky, who lived from 1783 to 1852, faithfully reflected in his poetry certain widespread romantic moods and traits: sensitivity and concern with subjective feelings, an interest in and idealization of the past, a penchant for the mysterious and the weird. On the whole the poet represented the humane, elegiac, and contemplative, rather than the "demonic" and active, aspects of romanticism. Zhukovsky's value for Russian literature lies in the novel lightness and music of his verse, in the variety of literary forms that he utilized successfully for his poetry, and in his numerous and generally splendid translations. In addition to translating superbly into Russian some works of such contemporary or near-contemporary Western writers as Schiller, Zhukovsky gave his readers an enduring Russian text of Homer's Odyssey, translated, characteristically enough, from the German. Incidentally, in 1829 Russians obtained Nicholas Gnedich's excellent translation of the Iliad from the Greek.

  Realism fared better in Russia than romanticism, a fact which many nineteenth-century and especially Soviet critics never ceased to point out. They felt, furthermore, that with realism Russian literature finally achieved true independence and originality and established a firm foundation for lasting greatness. A difficult concept to use, the term realism has been applied to a variety of literary developments in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a sense, the writer of fables, Ivan Krylov, was its best practitioner. Krylov, who lived from 1768 to 1844, but began to write fables only in his late thirties after concentrating unsuccessfully on comedy, tragedy, and satire, achieved something like perfection in his new genre, rivaling such world masters of the fable as Aesop and La Fontaine. Krylov's approximately two hundred fables, which became best sellers as they appeared during the author's lifetime and have remained best sellers ever since, win the reader by the richness and raciness of their popular language, the vividness, precision, and impeccable wording of their succinct narrative, and their author's power of human observation and comment. While animals often act as protagonists, their foibles and predicaments serve as apt illustrations both of Krylov's Russia and of the human condition in general.

  Alexander Griboedov's allegiance to realism seems less convincing than Krylov's. That brilliant writer, whose life began in 1795 and ended violently in 1829 when a Persian mob killed him in the Russian legation in Teheran, achieved immortality through one work only: the comedy Gore ot uma, translated into English as Woe from Wit or as The Misfortune of Being Clever. This masterpiece was finished in 1824, but.

  because of its strong criticism of Russian high society, was put on the stage only in 1831 and then with numerous cuts. Gore ot uma is neoclassical in form and contains very little action, but it overflows with wit. It consists almost entirely of sparkling, grotesque, or caustic statements and observations by its many characters, from a saucy maid to the embittered hero Chatsky - all set in the milieu of Muscovite high society. Its sparkle is such that Griboedov's play possesses an eternal freshness and effervescence, while many of its characters' observations - like many lines from Krylov's fables - have become part of the everyday Russian language. Nor, of course, does a comic form exclude serious content. Gore ot uma has been praised as the outstanding critique of the leading circles of Russian society in the reign of Alexander I, as a perspicacious early treatment of the subject of the conflict of generations - a theme developed later by Turgenev and other Russian writers - and as providing in its main character, Chatsky, a prototype of the typical "superfluous" hero of Russian literature, at odds with his environment.

  Like Griboedov, Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian writer of the age, was born near the end of the eighteenth century and became famous in the last years of Alexander I's reign. Again like Griboedov, Pushkin had but a short life to live before meeting violent death. He was born in 1799 and was killed in a duel in 1837. Between 1820, which marked the completion of his first major poem, the whimsical and gently ironic Ruslan and Liudmila, and his death, Pushkin established himself permanently as, everything considered, the greatest Russian poet and one of the greatest Russian prose writers, as a master of the lyric, the epic, and the dramatic forms, and even as a literary critic, publicist, and something of a historian and ethnographer. Pushkin's early works, such as The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, magnificent in form, reflected a certain interest in the unusual and the exotic that was characteristic of the age. However, as early as Eugene Onegin, written in 1822-31, Pushkin turned to a penetrating and remarkably realistic treatment of Russian educated society and its problems. Onegin became one of the most effective and compelling figures in modern Russian literature, while both he and the heroine of the poem, Tatiana Larina, as well as their simple story, were to appear and reappear in different variations and guises in the works of Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, and many other writers. While Eugene Onegin was written in most elegant verse, Pushkin also contributed greatly to the development of Russian prose, especially by such tales as the celebrated A Captain's Daughter. In his prose even more than in his poetry Pushkin has been considered a founder of realism in Russia and thus an originator of the main current of modern Russian literature. Pushkin's deeply sensitive and versatile genius ranged from unsurpassed personal lyrics to historical themes - for example, in the tragedy

  Boris Godunov and in the long poem, Poltava, glorifying his recurrent hero, Peter the Great - and from realistic evocations of the Russia of his day to marvelous fairy tales in verse. He was busily engaged in publishing a leading periodical, The Contemporary, and in historical studies when he was killed.

  Pushkin's genius has often been described as "classical." Its outstanding characteristic consisted in an astounding sense of form, harmony, and measure, which resulted in perfect works of art. The wr
iter's fundamental outlook reflected something of the same classical balance: it was humane, sane, and essentially affirmative and optimistic. Not that it excluded tragedy. A long poem, The Bronze Horseman, perhaps best expressed Pushkin's recognition of tragedy in the world. It depicted a disastrous conflict between an average little man, Eugene, and the bronze statue of the great founder of St. Petersburg, who built his new capital on virtually impassable terrain, where one of the recurrent floods killed Eugene's beloved: a conflict between an individual and the state, human desire and necessity, man and his fate. Yet - although a minority of specialists, including such important critics as Briusov and Lednicki, reject this reading of the poem - The Bronze Horseman, too, affirms Peter the Great's work, modern Russia, and life itself.

  Pushkin's genius appeared in Russia at the right time. A century of labor since Peter the Great's reforms had fashioned a supple modern language, developed literary forms, and established Russia as a full participant in the intellectual life of Europe. Pushkin, who knew French almost as well as Russian, profited greatly by the riches of Western literature - from Shakespeare to Pushkin's contemporaries - as well as by Russian popular speech and folklore. Yet, while the stage had been set for Pushkin, it was not cluttered. The great writer could thus be the first to realize the potential of modern Russian verse as well as modern Russian prose, of lyric poetry as well as factual narrative, and set the standard. His sweeping influence extended beyond language and literature to the other arts in Russia, and especially to music - where composers, ranging in time from Glinka and Dargomyzhsky through Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, created more than twenty operas on the basis of his works. Indeed, he appeared to incarnate the entire glorious spring of Russian literature and culture. Another very great lyric poet, Theodore Tiutchev, expressed this best when he concluded a poem devoted to the tragedy of Pushkin's death: "You, like first love, the heart of Russia will not forget."

  If Pushkin is generally regarded as the greatest Russian poet, Michael Lermontov, who also lived and wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century, has often been considered the second greatest. Born in 1814 and killed in a duel in 1841, Lermontov began writing at a very early age

  and left behind him a literary legacy of considerable size. Very different in temperament and outlook from Pushkin, Lermontov came closest to being the leading romantic genius of Russian letters, the "Russian Byron." His life was a constant protest against his environment, a protest which found expression both in public gestures, such as his stunning poem condemning Russian high society for the death of Pushkin, and in private troubles which resulted in his own death. Lermontov often chose fantastic, exotic, and highly subjective themes, set in the grandeur of the Caucasus, where he spent some time in the army. Throughout most of his life he kept writing and rewriting a magnificent long poem called A Demon:

  I am he, whose gaze destroys hope, As soon as hope blooms; I am he, whom nobody loves, And everything that lives curses.

  Yet to describe Lermontov as a romantic poet, even a supreme romantic poet, does not do him full justice. For Lermontov's poetic genius had a broad range and kept developing - many critics think it developed toward realism. Also, through his prose writings, particularly his short novel A Hero of Our Times, he became one of the founders of the Russian realistic novel, in subject matter as well as in form. Such a discerning critic as Mirsky considers Lermontov's superbly powerful, succinct, and transparent prose superior even to Pushkin's. Lermontov, no doubt, could have done much else had he not been shot dead at the age of twenty-six.

  While Pushkin and Lermontov were, in spite of their enormous contribution to Russian prose, primarily poets, Nicholas Gogol's early venture into poetry proved to be an unmitigated disaster. But as a prose writer Gogol had few equals and no superiors, in Russia or anywhere else. Gogol, who lived from 1809 to 1852, came from provincial Ukrainian gentry, and the characteristic society of his stories and plays stood several rungs lower on the social ladder than the world of Chatsky and Onegin. Gogol's first collection of tales, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, which came out in 1831 and received immediate acclaim, sparkled with a generally gay humor and the bright colors of Ukrainian folklore. The gaiety and the folklore, as well as a certain majestic tone and grand manner - much admired by some critics, but considered affected by others - were to appear in Gogol's later works, for example, the famous cossack prose epic, Taras Bulba, which dealt with the struggle of the Ukrainians against the Poles. However, gradually, the real Gogol emerged in literature: the Gogol of the commonplace and the mildly grotesque, which he somehow shaped into an overwhelming psychological world all his own; the Gogol who wrote in an involved, irregular and apparently clumsy style, which

  proved utterly irresistible. Occasionally, for instance in the stories Notes of a Madman and A Nose, weird content paralleled these magical literary powers. More frequently, as in the celebrated play, The Inspector General, and in Gogol's masterpiece, the novel Dead Souls, the subject matter contained nothing out of the ordinary and the plot showed little development.

  Dead Souls, published in 1842, demonstrates the scope and might of Gogol's genius and serves as the touchstone for different interpretations of Gogol. That simple story of a scoundrel, Chichikov, who proceeded to visit provincial landlords and buy up their dead serfs - serfs were called "souls" in Russia-to use them in business deals as if they were alive, has been hailed, and not at all unjustly, by critics all the way from Belinsky to Soviet and post-Soviet scholars as a devastating, realistic, satirical picture of rural Russia under Nicholas I. But there seems to be much more to Gogol's novel. The landlords of different psychological types whom Chichikov meets, as well as Chichikov himself, appear to grow in vitality with the years, regardless of the passing of that society which they are supposed to mirror faithfully, for, indeed, they are "much more real than life." Russian formalist critics and such writers as Merezhkovsky and Nabokov deserve credit for emphasizing these other "non-realistic" aspects and powers of Gogol. The great novelist himself, it might be added, did not know what he was doing. His withering satire, applauded by the opponents of the existing system in Russia, stemmed directly from his weird genius, not from any ideology of the Left. In fact, in the second volume of Dead Souls Gogol tried to reform his characters and save Russia. That project, of course, failed. Still trying to resurrect Russian society, Gogol published in 1847 his unbelievably naive and reactionary Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, which suggested, for example, that serfs should remain illiterate and shocked educated Russia. Gogol attempted also to find salvation for himself - and, by extension, for Russia - in religious experience, but to no avail. He died in 1852 after a shattering nervous breakdown when he burned much of the sequel to the first volume of Dead Souls.

  Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Krylov, Griboedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol were by no means the only Russian authors in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. While no extended discussion of the subject can be offered in a textbook, it should be realized, for instance, that Pushkin did not stand alone, but was the outstanding member of a brilliant generation of poets. Again, the prose writers included, in addition to those already mentioned, the magnificent narrator of provincial gentry life, Serge Aksakov, and other gifted authors. Moreover, pre-reform Russia saw much of the work of another supreme lyric poet who has already been

  mentioned, Theodore Tiutchev, as well as the first publications of such giants of Russian and world literature as Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. It was a golden age.

  Ideologies

  In spite of the reaction of the last part of Alexander's reign and the steady repression under Nicholas, the first half of the nineteenth century proved to be creative not only in literature but also in Russian political and social thought and in the building of ideologies in general. Herzen could well refer to it as an amazing period of outward political slavery and inward intellectual emancipation. Again Russia profited from its ass
ociation with the West and from the work performed throughout the eighteenth century in developing education and culture in the country. As we saw earlier, educated Russians shared in the Enlightenment, and indeed, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, produced the first Russian martyrs of the radical ideas of the Age of Reason, such as Novikov and especially Radishchev. Eighteenth-century liberalism or radicalism persisted in the nineteenth century in groups as different as Alexander I's Unofficial Committee and the Decembrists. But on the whole the intellectual scene began to change drastically. Romanticism and German idealistic philosophers replaced the Enlightenment and French philosophes as guides for much of European thought. The new intellectual Zeitgeist affirmed deep, comprehensive knowledge - often with mystical or religious elements - in opposition to mere rationalism, an organic view of the world as against a mechanistic view, and the historical approach to society in contrast to a utilitarian attitude with its vision limited to the present. It also emphasized such diverse doctrines as struggle and the essential separateness of the component parts of the universe in place of the Enlightenment ideals of harmony, unity, and cosmopolitanism. And it stressed the supreme value of art and culture. In the new world of romanticism such strange problems as the true nature of nations and the character of their missions in history came to the fore.

  Romanticism and idealistic philosophy penetrated Russia in a variety of ways. For example, a number of professors, typified by Michael Pavlov, who taught physics, mineralogy, and agronomy at the University of Moscow, presented novel German ideas in their lectures in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Educated Russians continued to read voraciously and were strongly influenced by Schiller and other brilliant Western romanticists. Of course, the subjects of the tsar were also Europeans and thus could not help but be part of European intellectual movements. While some Russians showed originality in developing different currents of Western thought, and while in general the Russian response tn romantic

 

‹ Prev