Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

by Astolphe De Custine

  This evening a few streets were partially illuminated. It is difficult to understand the taste of the Russians for illuminations, when we recollect that during the short season, when they can alone enjoy this kind of spectacle, there is scarcely any night о 5

  298THE OBJECT OF CONSCIENCE.

  in the latitude of Moscow, and still less in that of Petersburg.

  On returning to my lodgings, I asked the cause of these moderate demonstrations of joy, and was informed that the illumination was in honour of the anniversaries of the births or baptisms of all the members of the imperial family. There are in Russia so many permanent fetes of this sort, that they pass almost unnoticed. This indifference proves to me that fear can be sometimes imprudent, that it does not always know how to flatter so well as it would wish to do. Love is the only really skilful flatterer, because its praises, even when most exaggerated, are sincere. This is a truth which conscience vainly preaches in the ear of despots.

  The incffîcacy of conscience in human affairs, in the greatest as in the least, is, to me, the most wonderful mystery in this world, for it proves to me the existence of another. God creates nothing without an object: since, then, he has given conscience to every individual, and since this internal light is so useless upon earth, it must have its ordained mission to fulfil elsewhere: the evil deeds of this world have for their excusers our passions; the justice of the next world will have for its advocate our conscience.

  I slowly followed the promenaders of the streets, and after having ascended and descended several declivities in the wake of a wave of idle loungers, whom I mechanically took for guides, I reached the centre of the city, a shapeless square, adjoining which was a garden, with alleys of trees brilliantly lighted, and under them could be heard the sound of distant music. Several open cafes tended further to

  DESCRIPTION OF THE FORTRESS.299

  remind me of Europe ; but I could not interest myself with these amusements: I was under the walls of the Kremlin, — that colossal mountain raised for tyranny by the hands of slaves. For the modern city a public promenade has been made, a species of garden planted in the English taste, round the walls of the ancient fortress of .Moscow. How am I to describe the walls of "the Kremlin ? The word walls gives an idea of quite too ordinary an object; it would deceive the reader: the walls of the Kremlin are a chain of mountains. This citadel, reared on the confines of Europe and Asia, is, as compared with ordinary ramparts, what the Alps are to our hills : the Kremlin is the Mont Blanc of fortresses. If the giant that is called the Russia Empire had a heart, I should say that the Kremlin was the heart of the monster; but, as it is, I would call it the head.

  I wish I could give an idea of this mighty pile of stones, reared step by step into the heavens; this asylum-of despotism, raised in the name of liberty : for the Kremlin was a barrier opposed to the Calnmcs by the Russians: its walls have equally aided the independence of the state and the tyranny of the sovereign. They are boldly carried over the deep sinuosities of the soil. When the declivities of the nillocks become too precipitous, the rampart is lowered by steps: these steps, rising between heaven and earth, are enormous; they are the ladder for the giants who make war against the gods.

  The line of this first girdle of structures is broken by fantastic towers, so elevated, strong, and grotesque in form, as to remind one of the peaks in Switzerland, with their many-shaped rocks, and their many-O 6

  300DESCRIPTION OF THE FORTRESS.

  coloured glaciers. The obscurity no doubt contributed to increase the size of objects, and to give them unusual forms and tints, — I say tints, for night, like engravings, has its colouring. To behold gentlemen and ladies, dressed à la parisienne, promenading at the feet of this fabulous palace, was to fancy myself in a dream. What would Ivan III., the restorer, or, it might be said, the founder of the Kremlin, have thought, could he have beheld at the foot of the sacred fortress, his old Muscovites, shaved, curled, in frock coats, white pantaloons, and yellow gloves, eating ices, seated before a brightly-lighted cafe ? He would have said, as I do, jt is impossible ! and yet this is now seen every summer evening in Moscow.

  I have, then, wandered in the public gardens planted on the glacis of the ancient citadel of the Czars; I have seen the towers, wall above wall, the platforms, terraee upon terrace, and my eyes have swept over an enchanted city. It would need the eloquence of youth, which every thing astonishes and surprises, to find words analogous to these prodigious things. Above a long vault, which I crossed, I per-eeived a raised viaduct, by which carriages and foot-passengers enter the holy city. The spectacle was bewildering; nothing but towers, gates, and terraces, raised one above the other, steep slopes, and piled arches, all serving to form the road by which the Moscow of the present day, the vulgar Moscow, is left for the Kremlin — the Moscow of miracle and of history. These aqueducts, without water, support other stories of more fantastic edifiees. I observed, raised upon one of the hanging passages, a low round tower, all bristling with battlements of spear-heads. The silver

  MODERN GRANDILOQUENCE.301

  brightness of this ornament contrasted singularly with the blood-red of the walls. The tower seemed like a crowned giant standing before the fortress of which he was the guardian. What is there that one could not see, by the light of the moon, wandering at the foot of the Kremlin ? There, every thing is supernatural; the mind believes in spectres in spite of itself. Who could approach without a religious terror this sacred bulwark, a stone of which, disturbed by Buonaparte, rebounded even to Saint Helena, to crush the conqueror in the bosom of the' ocean ! Pardon, reader, I am born in the age of grandiloquence.

  The newest of the new schools is endeavouring to banish it, and to simplify language upon the principle that people the most devoid of imagination that have ever existed, ought most carefully to shun venturing among the tortuous paths of a faculty which they do not possess. I can admire a puritanical style when it is employed by superior talents, talents capable of divesting it of all monotony, but I cannot imitate it.

  After having seen all that I have gazed at this evening, it would be wise to return straight to one's own country : the excitement of the journey is exhausted.

  302THE KREMLIX.

  CHAP. XXV.

  THE KREMLIN BY DAYLIGHT. CHARACTER OF ITS ARCHITECTURE.

  —SYMBOLIC IMAGERY. RELATION BETWEEN THE CHARACTER

  OF BUILDINGS AND BUILDERS. — IVAN IV. PATIENCE CRIMINAL.

  —INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF IVAN IV.REASONS FOR

  CREDITING KARAMSIN.,

  An attack of ophthalmia, which came on between Petersburg and Moscow, gives me much pain and annoyance. Notwithstanding this malady, I resumed to-day my promenade of yesterday evening, in order to compare the Kremlin by daylight with the fantastic Kremlin of the night. The shade increases and distorts every thing : the sun restores to objects their forms and their proportions.

  At this second view, the fortress of the Czars still surprises me. The moonlight magnified and threw out in strong relief certain masses of the fabric, but it concealed others ; and, while acknowledging that I had imaged to myself too many vaults, and galleries, hanging roads, and lofty portals, I found quite enough of all these objects to justify my enthusiasm. There is something of every thing at the Kremlin : it is a varied landscape of stones. The solidity of its ramparts exceeds that of the rocks on which they stand. The multitude and the. multiformity of its parts are a marvel. This labyrinth of palaces, museums, towers, churches and dungeons, is terrific as the architecture of Martin ; it is as great and more

  THE KREMLIN.

  303

  irregular than the compositions of that English painter. Mysterious sounds rise out of the depth of its subterranes ; such abodes must be haunted by spirits, they cannot belong to beings like ourselves. The citadel of Moscow is not merely a palace, a national sanctuary for the historical treasures of the empire; it is the bulwark of Russia, the revered asylum in which sleep the tutelary saints of the country; it is als
o the prison of spectres.

  This morning, still wandering without a guide, I penetrated even to the middle of the fortress, and found my way into the interior of some of the churches which ornament that pious city, as venerated by the Russians for its relics as for the worldly riches and the warlike trophies which it encloses. I am too excited now to describe these objects in detail, but hereafter I shall pay a methodical visit to the Treasury.

  The Kremlin, on its hill, gives me the idea of a city of princes, built in the midst of a city of people. This tyrannical castle, this proud heap of stones, looks down scornfully upon the abodes of common men ; and, contrary to what is the case in structures of ordinary dimensions, the nearer we approach the indestructible mass the more our wonder increases. Like the bones of certain gigantic animals, the Kremlin proves to us the history of a world of which we might doubt until after seeing the remains In this prodigious creation strength takes the place of beauty, caprice of elegance : it is like the dream of a tyrant, fearful but full of power; it has something about it that disowns the age; means of defence which are adapted to a system of war that exists no longer;

  304

  THE KREMLIN.

  an architecture that has no connection with the wants of modern civilisation: a heritage of the fabulous ages, a gaol, a palace, a sanctuary, a bulwark against the nation's foes, a bastille against the nation, a prop of tyrants, a prison of people, — such is the Kremlin. A kind of northern Acropolis, a Pantheon of barbarism, this national fabric may be called the Alcazar of the Slavonians.

  Such, then, was the chosen abode of the old Muscovite princes; and yet these formidable walls were not sufficient shelter for the terror of Ivan IV.

  The fear of a man possessing absolute power is the most dreadful thing upon earth; and with all the imagery of this fear visible in the Kremlin, it is still impossible to approach the fabric without a shudder.

  Towers of every form, round, square, and with pointed roofs, belfries, donjons, turrets, spires, sentry-boxes upon minarets, steeples of every height, style and colour, palaces, domes, watch-towers, walls, em-battlemented and pierced with loopholes, ramparts, fortifications of every species, whimsical inventions, incomprehensible devices, chiosks by the side of cathedrals— every thing announces violation and disorder, every thing betrays the continual surveillance necessary to the security of the singular beings who were condemned to live in this supernatural world. Yet these innumerable monuments of pride, caprice, voluptuousness, glory, and piety, notwithstanding their apparent variety, express one single idea which reigns here everywhere — war maintained by fear. The Kremlin is the work of a superhuman being, but that being is malevolent. Glory in slavery—such is the allegory figured by this satanic monument, as

  THE KREMLIN.

  305

  extraordinary in architecture as the visions of St. John are in poetry. It is a habitation which would suit some of the personages of the Apocalypse.

  In vain is each turret distinguished by its peculiar character and its particular use ; all have the same signification, — terror armed.

  Some resemble the caps of priests, others the mouth of a dragon, others swords, their points in the air, others the forms and even the colours of various exotic fruits; some again represent a head-dress of the czars, pointed, and adorned with jewels like that of the Doge of Venice; others are simple crowns: and all this multitude of towers of glazed tiles, of metallic cupolas, of enamelled, gilded, azured, and silvered domes, shine in the sun like the colossal stalactites of the salt-mines in the neighbourhood of Cracow. These enormous pillars, these towers and turrets of every shape, pointed, pyramidical, and circular, but always in some manner suggesting the idea of the human form, seem to reign over the city and the land. To see them from afar shining in the sky, one might fancy them an assembly of potentates, richly robed and decorated with the insignia of their dignity, a meeting of ancestral beings, a council of kings, each seated upon his tomb; spectres hovering over the pinnacles of a palace. To inhabit a place like the Kremlin is not to reside, it is to defend one's self. Oppression creates revolt, revolt obliges precautions, precautions increase dangers, and this long series of actions and reactions engenders a monster; that monster is despotism, which has built itself a house at Moscow. The giants of* the antediluvian world, were they

  306 RELATION BETWEEN THE CHARACTERS

  to return to earth to visit their degenerate successors, might still find a suitable habitation in the Kremlin.

  Every thing has a symbolical sense, whether purposely or not, in its architecture ; but the real, the abiding, that appears after you have divested yourself of your first emotions in the contemplation of these barbaric splendours, is, after all, only a congregation of dungeons pompously surnained palaces and cathedrals. The Russians may do their best, but they can never come out of the prison.

  The very climate is an accomplice of tyranny. The cold of the country does not permit the construction of vast churches, where the faithful would be frozen at prayer: here the soul is not lifted to heaven by the glories of religious architecture; in this zone man can only build to his God gloomy donjons. The sombre cathedrals of the Kremlin, with their narrow vaults and thick Avails, resemble caves ; they are painted prisons, just as the palaces are gilded gaols.

  As travellers say of the recesses of the Alps, so of the wonders of this architecture — they are horribly beautiful.

  My eye inflames more and more. I have been obliged to call in a sur2;e0n, who has condemned me to the application of a bandage, and an imprisonment of three days in my chamber. Fortunately, I have one eye left, so that I can still occupy myself with something.

  I intend to employ these three days of leisure on a work commenced at Petersburg, but interrupted

  OF BUILDINGS AND BUILDERS.307

  by the busy gaieties of that city. This work is a brief review of the reign of Ivan IV., the tyrant par excellence, and the soul of the Kremlin : not that he built that fortress, but he was born there, he died there, and his spirit still haunts the spot.

  Its plan was conceived and executed by his grand-sire Ivan III. I have done my best to give an idea of the place itself, and I will now endeavour to aid the description by painting the colossal figures of the men who were its habitants. If from the arrangements of a house we can form a judgment as to the character of its inhabitants, can we not also, by an analogous operation of mind, picture to ourselves the aspect of edifices by a study of the men for whom they were constructed ? Our passions, our habits, our genius, are powerful enough to engrave themselves indelibly on the very stones of our dwellings.

  Assuredly, if there be any building to which may be applied such a process of the imagination, it is the Kremlin. Europe and Asia are there seen united, under the influence of the genius of the Lower Empire.

  Whether the fortress be viewed under a purely historical, or a poetical and picturesque aspect, it is the most national monument in Russia, and consequently the most interesting both for Russians and for foreigners.

  This sanctuary of despotism was re-constructed in stone for Ivan III., in 1485, by two Italian architects, Marco and Pietro Antonio, who were invited to Moscow by the Great Prince *, when he wished to

  * The title then given to the grand dukes of Moscow.

  308INTRODUCTION TO THE

  again rear the ramparts, formerly wooden, of the fortress more anciently founded under Dmitri Donskoï. But if this palace was not built by Ivan IV., it was built for him. It was by a spirit of prophecy that the great king, his grandfather, constructed the palace of the tyrant. Italian architects may be found every where, but in no other place have they produced a work similar to that which they raised at Moscow. I may add that there have been elsewhere absolute, unjust, arbitrary, and capricious sovereigns, and yet, that the reign of none of these monsters has resembled that of Ivan IV. The same seed springing under different climates and in different soils, produces plants of the same species, but of many varieties. The earth will never se
e two masterpieces of despotism similar to the Kremlin, nor two nations as superstitiously patient as was the Muscovite nation under the monstrous reign of its greatest tyrant.

  The consequences of that reign are felt even in our days. Had the reader accompanied me in this journey, he would have discovered, as I have done, in the inner depths of the Russian character, the inevitable injuries produced by arbitrary power carried to its last excess; first, namely, a careless indifference to the sanctity of truth in speech, of candour in sentiment, and of justice in acts ; and afterwards, falsehood rampant in all its forms, fraud triumphant, and the moral sense, in fact, wholly destroyed.

  I could fancy I saw a procession of vices pouring forth from all the gates of the Kremlin to inundate Russia.

  Other nations have supported oppression, the Russian nation has loved it: it loves it still. Is not

  HISTORY OF IVAN IV.309

  such fanaticism of obedience characteristic ? It may not, however, be denied that this popular mania has here sometimes become the principle of sublime actions. In this inhuman land, if society has depraved the individual, it has not enervated him : he is not good, but he is also not contemptible. The same may be said of the Kremlin : it is not pleasant to behold, but it inspires awe. It is not beautiful, but it is terrible — terrible as the reign of Ivan IV.

  Such a reign blinds to the latest generations the minds of a nation which submitted to it patiently : the crime of treason against humanity attaints the blood of a people even in its most distant posterity. This crime consists not only in exercising injustice, but likewise in tolerating it; a nation whieh, under the pretext that obedience is the chief virtue, bequeaths tyranny to its children, both mistakes its interests and neglects its duty. Blind endurance, fidelity to insane masters, are contemptible virtues; submission is only praiseworthy, sovereignty is only venerable, when they become the means of insuring the rights of mankind. When kings forget the conditions on which a man is permitted to reign over his fellow-men, the citizens have to look to God, their eternal o·overnor, who absolves them from their oath of fidelity to their temporal master.