INTRODUCTION
A book dealing with the literature of a foreign country appeals to a double audience: the narrow circle of people who are intimately familiar with that literature in its original tongue, and the large public which is imperfectly acquainted even with translations of some of its books. One of these audiences must necessarily be sacrificed. For if you address yourself exclusively to the specialists, the larger public will be but faintly interested; while if you have the larger public in view alone, the narrower circle of those who are familiar with the language will hear nothing from you which they do not already know too well. In the case of a literature such as Russian, it is obvious which audience has the claim to the greater consideration; but while this book is addressed to those who are interested in but not intimately familiar with Russian literature, I entertain the hope that these essays may not prove entirely uninteresting to the closer students of Russian. I have tried to make a compromise, and while especially addressing myself to themajority, not to lose sight of the minority altogether.
The standpoint from which I approach Russian literature is less that of the scholar than of an admiring and sympathetic friend. I have tried to understand what the Russians themselves think about their own literature, and in some manner to reflect their point of view as it struck me either in their books or in conversation with many men and women of many classes throughout several years.
It has always seemed to me that there are two ways of writing about a foreign literature: from the outside and from the inside. Take a language like French, for instance, and the study of French poetry in particular. Many English students of French poetry seem to me to start from the point of view that although much French verse has many excellent qualities, those qualities which are peculiarly French and which the French themselves admire most are not worth admiring. Thus it is that we have had many excellent critics telling us that although the French poetry of the Renaissance is admirable and the French Romantic epoch produced men of astounding genius, yet the poets of another sort, whom the French set up on a permanent pinnacle as models of classic perfection, such as Racine or La Fontaine, are not poets atall. Some critics have even gone further, and have maintained that admirable as the French language is as an instrument for writing prose, it cannot properly be used as a vehicle for writing poetry, and that French poetry cannot be considered as being in the same category or on the same footing as the verse of other nations. This is what I call the outside view, and I am not only not persuaded of its truth, but I am convinced that it is false, for two reasons:—
First, because I cannot help thinking that the natives of a country must be the best judges of their own tongue and of its literature, and that foreign critics, however acute, may fail to appreciate certain shades of meaning and sound which particularly appeal to the native—for instance, I am sure it is more difficult for a foreigner to appreciate the music of Milton’s diction than for an Englishman. Secondly, since I learnt French at the same time as I learnt English, and became familiar with French verse long before I was introduced to the works of English poets, from my childhood up to the present day French poetry has seemed to me to be just as beautiful as the poetry of any other country, and the verse of Racine as musical as that of Milton. I have, moreover, sometimes suspected that the severe sentences I have seen passed on the French classics by English criticswere perhaps due to imperfect familiarity with the language in question, and that it even seemed possible that in condemning French verse they were ignorant of the French laws of metre and scansion; such ignorance would certainly prove a serious obstacle to proper appreciation.
This digression is to make clear what I mean when I say that I have tried to approach my subject from the inside; that is to say, I have tried to put myself into the skin of a Russian, and to look at the literature of Russia with his eyes, and then to explain to my fellow-countrymen as clearly as possible what I have seen. I do not say I have succeeded, but I have been greatly encouraged in the task by having received appreciative thanks for my former efforts in this direction from Russians who are, in my opinion, the only critics competent to judge whether what I have written about their people and their books hits the mark or not.
One of the great difficulties in writing studies of various Russian writers is the paradoxical thread that runs through the Russian character. Russia is the land of paradoxes. The Russian character and temperament are baffling, owing to the paradoxical elements which are found united in them. It is for this reason that a series of studies dealing with different aspects of the Russian character often have the appearance of being a series ofcontradictory statements. I have therefore in the first chapter of this book stated what I consider to be the chief paradoxical elements of the Russian character. It is the conflicting nature of these elements which accounts for the seemingly contradictory qualities that we meet with in Russian literature. For instance, there is a passive element in the Russian nature; there is also something unbridled, a spirit which breaks all bounds of self-control and runs riot; and there is also a stubborn element, a tough obstinacy. The result is that at one moment one is pointing out the matter-of-fact side of the Russian genius which clings to the earth and abhors extravagance; and at another time one is discoursing on the passion certain Russian novelists have for making their characters wallow in abstract discussions; or, again, the cheerfulness of Gogol has to be reconciled with the “inspissated gloom” of certain other writers. All this makes it easy for a critic to bring the charge of inconsistency against a student whose object is to provide certain side-lights on certain striking examples, rather than a comprehensive view of the whole, a task which is beyond the scope and powers of the present writer.
The student of Russian literature who wishes for a comprehensive view of the whole of Russian literature and of its historic significance anddevelopment, cannot do better than read Professor Brückner’s solid and brilliantLiterary History of Russia, which is admirably translated into English.
The object of my book is to interest the reader in Russia and Russian literature, and to enable him to make up his mind as to whether he wishes to seek after a more intimate knowledge of the subject.
The authors whose work forms the subject of this book belong to the period which began in the fifties and ended before the Russo-Japanese War. The work of Tchekov represents the close of that epoch which began with Gogol. After Tchekov the dawn of a new era was marked by the startling advent of Maxim Gorky into Russian literature. Then came the war, and with it a torrent of new writers, of new thoughts, of new schools, of new theories of art. The most remarkable of these writers is no doubt Andreev; but in order to discuss his work as well as that of other writers who followed in his train, it would be necessary to write another book. The student of Russian literature will notice that I have omitted many Russian authors who are well known in the epoch which I have chosen. I have omitted them for reasons which I have already stated at the beginning of this Introduction, namely, that there is not in England alarge enough circle of readers interested in Russian literature to the extent of wishing to read about its less well-known writers. I think the authors I have chosen are typical of the generations they represent, and I hope that this book may have the effect of leading readers from booksaboutRussia and Russian literature, to the country itself and its books, so that they may be able to see with their own eyes and to correct the impressions which they have received secondhand.