Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who,
leaving the art galleries, wanders out among the trees and wild
flowers and birds that the pictures of the galleries have
sentimentalised. 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.
Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected
conception that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the
so-called upper classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his
profound pity and understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit;
of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment
of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a
"Behold how the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor,
as it were, from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical
effect upon the well-to-do. There is no insistence upon peculiar
virtues or vices. The poor are portrayed just as they are, as human
beings like the rest of us. A democratic spirit is reflected,
breathing a broad humanity, a true universality, an unstudied
generosity that proceed not from the intellectual conviction that
to understand all is to forgive all, but from an instinctive
feeling that no man has the right to set himself up as a judge over
another, that one can only observe and record.
In 1834 two short stories appeared, The Queen of Spades, by
Pushkin, and The Cloak, by Gogol. The first was a finishing-off of
the old, outgoing style of romanticism, the other was the beginning
of the new, the characteristically Russian style. We read Pushkin's
Queen of Spades, the first story in the volume, and the likelihood
is we shall enjoy it greatly. "But why is it Russian?" we ask. The
answer is, "It is not Russian." It might have been printed in an
American magazine over the name of John Brown. But, now, take the
very next story in the volume, The Cloak. "Ah," you exclaim, "a
genuine Russian story, Surely. You cannot palm it off on me over
the name of Jones or Smith." Why? Because The Cloak for the first
time strikes that truly Russian note of deep sympathy with the
disinherited. It is not yet wholly free from artificiality, and so
is not yet typical of the purely realistic fiction that reached its
perfected development in Turgenev and Tolstoy.
Though Pushkin heads the list of those writers who made the
literature of their country world-famous, he was still a
romanticist, in the universal literary fashion of his day. However,
he already gave strong indication of the peculiarly Russian genius
for naturalness or realism, and was a true Russian in his
simplicity of style. In no sense an innovator, but taking the cue
for his poetry from Byron and for his prose from the romanticism
current at that period, he was not in advance of his age. He had a
revolutionary streak in his nature, as his Ode to Liberty and other
bits of verse and his intimacy with the Decembrist rebels show. But
his youthful fire soon died down, and he found it possible to
accommodate himself to the life of a Russian high functionary and
courtier under the severe despot Nicholas I, though, to be sure, he
always hated that life. For all his flirting with revolutionarism,
he never displayed great originality or depth of thought. He was
simply an extraordinarily gifted author, a perfect versifier, a
wondrous lyrist, and a delicious raconteur, endowed with a grace,
ease and power of expression that delighted even the exacting
artistic sense of Turgenev. To him aptly applies the dictum of
Socrates: "Not by wisdom do the poets write poetry, but by a sort
of genius and inspiration." I do not mean to convey that as a
thinker Pushkin is to be despised. Nevertheless, it is true that he
would occupy a lower position in literature did his reputation
depend upon his contributions to thought and not upon his value as
an artist.
"We are all descended from Gogol's Cloak," said a Russian
writer. And Dostoyevsky's novel, Poor People, which appeared ten
years later, is, in a way, merely an extension of Gogol's shorter
tale. In Dostoyevsky, indeed, the passion for the common people and
the all-embracing, all-penetrating pity for suffering humanity
reach their climax. He was a profound psychologist and delved
deeply into the human soul, especially in its abnormal and diseased
aspects. Between scenes of heart-rending, abject poverty,
injustice, and wrong, and the torments of mental pathology, he
managed almost to exhaust the whole range of human woe. And he
analysed this misery with an intensity of feeling and a painstaking
regard for the most harrowing details that are quite upsetting to
normally constituted nerves. Yet all the horrors must be forgiven
him because of the motive inspiring them—an overpowering love and
the desire to induce an equal love in others. It is not horror for
horror's sake, not a literary tour de force, as in Poe, but horror
for a high purpose, for purification through suffering, which was
one of the articles of Dostoyevsky's faith.
Following as a corollary from the love and pity for mankind
that make a leading element in Russian literature, is a passionate
search for the means of improving the lot of humanity, a fervent
attachment to social ideas and ideals. A Russian author is more
ardently devoted to a cause than an American short-story writer to
a plot. This, in turn, is but a reflection of the spirit of the
Russian people, especially of the intellectuals. The Russians take
literature perhaps more seriously than any other nation. To them
books are not a mere diversion. They demand that fiction and poetry
be a true mirror of life and be of service to life. A Russian
author, to achieve the highest recognition, must be a thinker also.
He need not necessarily be a finished artist. Everything is
subordinated to two main requirements—humanitarian ideals and
fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvellous simplicity
of Russian-literary art. Before the supreme function of literature,
the Russian writer stands awed and humbled. He knows he cannot
cover up poverty of thought, poverty of spirit and lack of
sincerity by rhetorical tricks or verbal cleverness. And if he
possesses the two essential requirements, the simplest language
will suffice.
These qualities are exemplified at their best by Turgenev and
Tolstoy. They both had a strong social consciousness; they both
grappled with the problems of human welfare; they were both artists
in the larger sense, that is, in their truthful representation of
life, Turgenev was an artist also in the narrower sense—in a keen
appreciation Of form. Thoroughly Occidental in his tastes, he
sought the regeneration of Russia in radical progress along the
lines of European democracy. Tolstoy, on the other hand, sought the
salvation of mankind in a return to the primitive life and
primitive Christian religion.
The very first work of importance by Turgenev, A Sportsman's
Sketches, dealt with the question of serfdom, and it wielded
tremendous influence in bringing about its abolition. Almost every
succeeding book of his, from Rudin through Fathers and Sons to
Virgin Soil, presented vivid pictures of contemporary Russian
society, with its problems, the clash of ideas between the old and
the new generations, and the struggles, the aspirations and the
thoughts that engrossed the advanced youth of Russia; so that his
collected works form a remarkable literary record of the successive
movements of Russian society in a period of preparation, fraught
with epochal significance, which culminated in the overthrow of
Czarism and the inauguration of a new and true democracy, marking
the beginning, perhaps, of a radical transformation the world over.
"The greatest writer of Russia." That is Turgenev's estimate
of Tolstoy. "A second Shakespeare!" was Flaubert's enthusiastic
outburst. The Frenchman's comparison is not wholly illuminating.
The one point of resemblance between the two authors is simply in
the tremendous magnitude of their genius. Each is a Colossus. Each
creates a whole world of characters, from kings and princes and
ladies to servants and maids and peasants. But how vastly divergent
the angle of approach! Anna Karenina may have all the subtle
womanly charm of an Olivia or a Portia, but how different her
trials. Shakespeare could not have treated Anna's problems at all.
Anna could not have appeared in his pages except as a sinning
Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet. Shakespeare had all the prejudices
of his age. He accepted the world as it is with its absurd
moralities, its conventions and institutions and social classes. A
gravedigger is naturally inferior to a lord, and if he is to be
presented at all, he must come on as a clown. The people are always
a mob, the rabble. Tolstoy, is the revolutionist, the iconoclast.
He has the completest independence of mind. He utterly refuses to
accept established opinions just because they are established. He
probes into the right and wrong of things. His is a broad, generous
universal democracy, his is a comprehensive sympathy, his an
absolute incapacity to evaluate human beings according to station,
rank or profession, or any standard but that of spiritual worth. In
all this he was a complete contrast to Shakespeare. Each of the two
men was like a creature of a higher world, possessed of
supernatural endowments. Their omniscience of all things human,
their insight into the hiddenmost springs of men's actions appear
miraculous. But Shakespeare makes the impression of detachment from
his works. The works do not reveal the man; while in Tolstoy the
greatness of the man blends with the greatness of the genius.
Tolstoy was no mere oracle uttering profundities he wot not of. As
the social, religious and moral tracts that he wrote in the latter
period of his life are instinct with a literary beauty of which he
never could divest himself, and which gave an artistic value even
to his sermons, so his earlier novels show a profound concern for
the welfare of society, a broad, humanitarian spirit, a bigness of
soul that included prince and pauper alike.
Is this extravagant praise? Then let me echo William Dean
Howells: "I know very well that I do not speak of Tolstoy's books
in measured terms; I cannot."
The Russian writers so far considered have made valuable
contributions to the short story; but, with the exception of
Pushkin, whose reputation rests chiefly upon his poetry, their best
work, generally, was in the field of the long novel. It was the
novel that gave Russian literature its pre-eminence. It could not
have been otherwise, since Russia is young as a literary nation,
and did not come of age until the period at which the novel was
almost the only form of literature that counted. If, therefore,
Russia was to gain distinction in the world of letters, it could be
only through the novel. Of the measure of her success there is
perhaps no better testimony than the words of Matthew Arnold, a
critic certainly not given to overstatement. "The Russian novel,"
he wrote in 1887, "has now the vogue, and deserves to have it… The
Russian novelist is master of a spell to which the secret of human
nature—both what is external and internal, gesture and manner no
less than thought and feeling—willingly make themselves known… In
that form of imaginative literature, which in our day is the most
popular and the most possible, the Russians at the present moment
seem to me to hold the field."
With the strict censorship imposed on Russian writers, many
of them who might perhaps have contented themselves with expressing
their opinions in essays, were driven to conceal their meaning
under the guise of satire or allegory; which gave rise to a
peculiar genre of literature, a sort of editorial or essay done
into fiction, in which the satirist Saltykov, a contemporary of
Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, who wrote under the pseudonym of
Shchedrin, achieved the greatest success and popularity.
It was not however, until the concluding quarter of the last
century that writers like Korolenko and Garshin arose, who devoted
themselves chiefly to the cultivation of the short story. With
Anton Chekhov the short story assumed a position of importance
alongside the larger works of the great Russian masters. Gorky and
Andreyev made the short story do the same service for the active
revolutionary period in the last decade of the nineteenth century
down to its temporary defeat in 1906 that Turgenev rendered in his
series of larger novels for the period of preparation. But very
different was the voice of Gorky, the man sprung from the people,
the embodiment of all the accumulated wrath and indignation of
centuries of social wrong and oppression, from the gentlemanly
tones of the cultured artist Turgenev. Like a mighty hammer his
blows fell upon the decaying fabric of the old society. His was no
longer a feeble, despairing protest. With the strength and
confidence of victory he made onslaught upon onslaught on the old
institutions until they shook and almost tumbled. And when reaction
celebrated its short-lived triumph and gloom settled again upon his
country and most of his co-fighters withdrew from the battle in
despair, some returning to the old-time Russian mood of
hopelessness, passivity and apathy, and some even backsliding into
wild orgies of literary debauchery, Gorky never wavered, never lost
his faith and hope, never for a moment was untrue to his
principles. Now, with the revolution victorious, he has come into
his right, one of the most respected, beloved and picturesque
figures in the Russian democracy.
Kuprin, the most facile and talented short-story writer next
to Chekhov, has, on the whole, kept well to the best literary
traditions of Russia, though he has frequently wandered off to
extravagant sex themes, for which he seems to display as great a
fondness as Artzybashev. Semyonov is a unique character in Russian
literature, a peasant who had scarcely mastered the most elementary
mechanics of writing when he penned his first story. But that story
pleased Tolstoy, who befriended and encouraged him. His tales deal
altogether with peasant life in country and city, and have a
lifelikeness, an artlessness, a simplicity striking even in a
Russian author.
There is a small group of writers detached from the main
current of
Russian literature who worship at the shrine of beauty and
mysticism.
Of these Sologub has attained the highest reputation.
Rich as Russia has become in the short story, Anton Chekhov
still stands out as the supreme master, one of the greatest
short-story writers of the world. He was born in Taganarok, in the
Ukraine, in 1860, the son of a peasant serf who succeeded in buying
his freedom. Anton Chekhov studied medicine, but devoted himself
largely to writing, in which, he acknowledged, his scientific
training was of great service. Though he lived only forty-four
years, dying of tuberculosis in 1904, his collected works consist
of sixteen fair-sized volumes of short stories, and several dramas
besides. A few volumes of his works have already appeared in
English translation.
Critics, among them Tolstoy, have often compared Chekhov to
Maupassant. I find it hard to discover the resemblance. Maupassant
holds a supreme position as a short-story writer; so does Chekhov.
But there, it seems to me, the likeness ends.
The chill wind that blows from the atmosphere created by the
Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with
the warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells
where his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess.
Chekhov does not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you
know all the same; you don't have to guess. And yet Chekhov is as
objective as Maupassant. In the chronicling of facts, conditions,
and situations, in the reproduction of characters, he is
scrupulously true, hard, and inexorable. But without obtruding his
personality, he somehow manages to let you know that he is always
present, always at hand. If you laugh, he is there to laugh with
you; if you cry, he is there to shed a tear with you; if you are
horrified, he is horrified, too. It is a subtle art by which he
contrives to make one feel the nearness of himself for all his
objectiveness, so subtle that it defies analysis. And yet it
constitutes one of the great charms of his tales.
Chekhov's works show an astounding resourcefulness and
versatility. There is no monotony, no repetition. Neither in
incident nor in character are any two stories alike. The range of
Chekhov's knowledge of men and things seems to be unlimited, and he
is extravagant in the use of it. Some great idea which many a
writer would consider sufficient to expand into a whole novel he
disposes of in a story of a few pages. Take, for example, Vanka,
apparently but a mere episode in the childhood of a nine-year-old
boy; while it is really the tragedy of a whole life in its tempting
glimpses into a past environment and ominous forebodings of the
future—all contracted into the space of four or five pages. Chekhov
is lavish with his inventiveness. Apparently, it cost him no effort
to invent.
I have used the word inventiveness for lack of a better name.
It expresses but lamely the peculiar faculty that distinguishes
Chekhov. Chekhov does not really invent. He reveals. He reveals
things that no author before him has revealed. It is as though he
possessed a special organ which enabled him to see, hear and feel
things of which we other mortals did not even dream the existence.
Yet when he lays them bare we know that they are not fictitious,
not invented, but as real as the ordinary familiar facts of life.
This faculty of his playing on all conceivable objects, all
conceivable emotions, no matter how microscopic, endows them with
life and a soul. By virtue of this power The Steppe, an uneventful
record of peasants travelling day after day through flat,
monotonous fields, becomes instinct with dramatic interest, and its
125 pages seem all too short. And by virtue of the same attribute
we follow with breathless suspense the minute description of the
declining days of a great scientist, who feels his physical and
mental faculties gradually ebbing away. A Tiresome Story, Chekhov
calls it; and so it would be without the vitality conjured into it
by the magic touch of this strange genius.
Divination is perhaps a better term than invention. Chekhov
divines the most secret impulses of the soul, scents out what is
buried in the subconscious, and brings it up to the surface. Most
writers are specialists. They know certain strata of society, and
when they venture beyond, their step becomes uncertain. Chekhov's
material is only delimited by humanity. He is equally at home
everywhere. The peasant, the labourer, the merchant, the priest,
the professional man, the scholar, the military officer, and the
government functionary, Gentile or Jew, man, woman, or
child—Chekhov is intimate with all of them. His characters are
sharply defined individuals, not types. In almost all his stories,
however short, the men and women and children who play a part in
them come out as clear, distinct personalities. Ariadne is as vivid
a character as Lilly, the heroine of Sudermann's Song of Songs; yet
Ariadne is but a single story in a volume of stories. Who that has
read The Darling can ever forget her—the woman who had no separate
existence of her own, but thought the thoughts, felt the feelings,
and spoke the words of the men she loved? And when there was no man
to love any more, she was utterly crushed until she found a child
to take care of and to love; and then she sank her personality in
the boy as she had sunk it before in her husbands and lover, became
a mere reflection of him, and was happy again.
In the compilation of this volume I have been guided by the
desire to give the largest possible representation to the prominent
authors of the Russian short story, and to present specimens
characteristic of each. At the same time the element of interest
has been kept in mind; and in a few instances, as in the case of
Korolenko, the selection of the story was made with a view to its
intrinsic merit and striking qualities rather than as typifying the
writer's art. It was, of course, impossible in the space of one
book to exhaust all that is best. But to my knowledge, the present
volume is the most comprehensive anthology of the Russian short
story in the English language, and gives a fair notion of the
achievement in that field. All who enjoy good reading, I have no
reason to doubt, will get pleasure from it, and if, in addition, it
will prove of assistance to American students of Russian
literature, I shall feel that the task has been doubly worth the
while.
Korolenko's Shades and Andreyev's Lazarus first appeared in
Current Opinion, and Artzybashev's The Revolutionist in the
Metropolitan Magazine. I take pleasure in thanking Mr. Edward J.
Wheeler, editor of Current Opinion, and Mr. Carl Hovey, editor of
the Metropolitan Magazine, for permission to reprint them.
[Signature: Thomas Seltzer]
"Everything is subordinated to two main
requirements—humanitarian ideals and fidelity to life. This is the
secret of the marvellous simplicity of Russian literary
art."—THOMAS SELTZER.