26. The heavenly spark which gleamed within him could not, however, be put out. Letters proper he at last indeed forsook, but he now became profoundly religious; he gave up all his possessions to the poor, and when he needed moneys wherewith to make a pilgrimage to what was to him a veritably Holy Land, he had to publish some of his intimate correspondence.27. This work proved the bitterness of the rest of his days. It roused a clamor against the poor author altogether out of proportion to the slight merit of the work. Gogol was denounced on all sides as a renegade; the relentless accuser of autocracy in“The Revisor” could not be forgiven for the spirit of Christian humility and resignation to the will of God which breathed from these letters. It was in the forties. Those were the days when a Hegelian wave went over Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends declared him insane, and all manner of advice offered, which could not fail to make him truly insane. The already melancholy Gogol now became lonely, dejected, and sought consolation now more than ever in fasting and prayer. Poor Gogol had not yet learned that complete salvation is found not in praying, but in doing. While his ills therefore increased his devotion, his devotion likewise in turn increased his ills; his body became emaciated, his mind was wrecked,and early in 1852 he was found one morning starved to death, prostrated before the holy images, in front of which he had spent his last days.28. Next to Tolstoy, Gogol is perhaps the most lovable figure in Russian literature. I say lovable, because he was at bottom a hapless man,—a man who had fed on his own mighty heart. There is a Carlylesqueness about his woe that makes his life immeasurably pitiful. Pushkin's sorrow one finds it difficult to lament deeply, since it was mostly of his own making; but Gogol's was the sorrowful lot of all heaven-aspiring souls who have not yet attained the last, safest haven of rest in God,—that haven from which the soul no longer cries in agony of spirit, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” but rather, “Father, thou knowest wherefore all this is; thy will be done!” His soul in its loneliness and restlessness knew nor sympathy nor appreciation of what was to himhisdeepest life; and this the loving soul ever craves most hungeringly. When the great soul had departed, gone irrevocably,men readily enough recognized that the light of Israel had gone out; but the recognition came too late, the love came when it could no longer heal his wounded spirit.29. My friends, “Taras Bulba” will thrill your soul with inexpressible beauty. Gogol's “Revisor” will amuse you. His “Dead Souls” will instruct you; but his life, if you study it faithfully, should prove his greatest work unto you, for it should stir you,—stir you to tenderness, stir you to sympathy, stir you to compassion for those sufferers, the like of Gogol, who are never wanting, in whatever age, in whatever clime, in whatever walk of life. Would to God, my friends, you could carry away from Gogol's life with you this lesson: In your very midst, perhaps this very day, there doubtless walks among you some mighty spirit, some hungry soul. Seek him out, find him out, that not of ye at least shall be said those immeasurably sorrowful words which could be said of the countless friends of Gogol,—they came with their sympathy—too late!LECTURE IV.TURGENEF.1.Inthe history of Russian letters, Ivan Turgenef is the most complex figure. Nay, with the exception of Shakespeare he is perhaps the most complex figure in all literature. He is universal, he is provincial; he is pathetic, he is sneering; he is tender, he is merciless; he is sentimental, he is frigid. He can be as compact as Tacitus, and as prolix as Thackeray. He can be as sentimental as Werther, and as heartless as Napoleon. He can cry with the bird, grow with the grass, and hum with the bee; he can float with the spirits, and dream with the fevered. He is everywhere at home: in the novel, in the story, in the sketch, in the diary, in the epistle. Whatever form of composition hetouches, let once his genius be mature, and it turns to gold under his hands. On reading through his ten volumes you leave him with the feeling that you have just emerged from the virgin forests of South America; your head is full of monkeys frolicking about, with an occasional cocoanut shot at you, your head is full of the birds with their variegated plumage, of the fragrance of the flowers, of the dusk about you, and of the primeval stillness of the forest. And the collective impression of the writer, the man, left upon you is that of some invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinionby befriending an obnoxious exile, now he shrinks before it by disclaiming almost his acquaintance. Between the contending parties, poor Turgenef shared the fate of the child of the women who didnotcome to King Solomon for advice in their dispute about its mother. The poor child was pulled by each until disfigured for life. So Turgenef between the different parties, each claiming him as its own, remained homeless, almost friendless, to the end of his days, belonging to none; and though surrounded by all manner of society and companionship which fame, wealth, and position could give, he was yet at bottom solitary, for he went through the world a man who was misunderstood.2. His position in letters is therefore anomalous. Russians blame him, but read him; and Americans praise him, and read him not. Englishmen quote him, Frenchmen write essays on him, and Germans write books about him; but all agree in wondering at him, all agree in not comprehending him. And yet Turgenef's life and the purpose of his books is plain enough to him that comes to viewhim with eyes as yet uncovered by partisan glasses. Turgenef the realist, Turgenef the idealist, is enigmatic enough; but once understood that Turgenef was the literary warrior against what was to him a mortal enemy, and his whole life and all his important works at once become explicable, consistent.3. For man is something more than the mere sum of his abilities. Behind all the forces of the man, whether of body or of mind, there stands the soul, which uses them for purposes of its own, be they for better or for worse. And of these there is always one which in time becomes the absorbent of all its life, the essence of all its being; and such purpose is soon found in the life of every man who lives, and not merely exists; such purpose is soon found in the mightiest as well as in the frailest, in the loftiest as well as in the lowest. And till such purpose is understood, the life of the man is to beholders what the flower is to the eye when looked at through a microscope,—an expanse of mere tissue, rough, formless, confusing; but such purpose once understood, the soul is transformedto the beholder as if made of glass, transparent, uniform, simple.4. Such purpose runs like a woof through the whole being of Turgenef. He is a hunter, he is a clubman, he is a philanthropist, he is an artist; but he is first of all a warrior, because he is first of all a lover of his country, and a hater of what oppresses it. He does indeed much else besides fighting for the emancipation of the land of his birth; but he does it in the same spirit in which sensible folk go to dinners not for the sake of eating, to receptions not for the sake of being received, and wear kid gloves in summer not for the sake of keeping the hands warm; these things, meaningless in themselves, are only incidentals in the life of the spirit, which alone can be said to have any meaning.5. Turgenef, then, is the fighter. This accounts for what is otherwise a strange phenomenon in Turgenef's art. In his “Memoirs of a Sportsman,” in which he first aimed his blows consciously against serfdom, his muse busies itself not with life normal, but with life abnormal; not with every-day characters,but with such as are seen rarely; not with frequented places, but with unfrequented places. The “Memoirs of a Sportsman” is a collection of sketches which form a sort of variety museum of all manner of bizarre and even grotesque figures. Critics naturally marvelled at this; and as in the days of old, men explained the effects of morphine by saying that it contained the soporific principle, and the action of the pump by nature's abhorring a vacuum, so critics explained this fact, so strange in the healthy, clear-eyed, measure-loving Turgenef, by saying that he had a natural fondness for the fantastic and the strange. In truth, however, the choice of his subjects was part of his very art as a warrior. He wished to strike, to rouse; and here the extraordinary is ever more effective than the ordinary. It was the same design which made the otherwise generous, tender Wendell Phillips adopt a personal mode of warfare in his struggle against slavery with a bitterness almost Mephistophelian. And the same purpose made Turgenef, against the dictates of his muse, choose strange characters for hissketches. Both Phillips and Turgenef here sacrificed their feelings to their cause: the one sacrificed to his purpose even his love for his fellow-men; the other, even his love for his art.6. One other strange fact in the art of Turgenef is explained by this fighting essence of his being. There is no growth, development, visible in Turgenef. He lived to what is for Russian men of letters an advanced age: he died when over sixty years old; yet, beginning with his first great work of art, “Rudin,” and ending with his last great work of art, “Virgin Soil,” through all his masterpieces, he remains the same. His six great novels, “Rudin,” “A Nest of Noblemen,” “On the Eve,” “Fathers and Sons,” “Smoke,” and “Virgin Soil,” form indeed an ascending scale, but not as works of art; as such, they are all on the same highest plane. And it would be difficult to find any canon of art according to which one could be placed above the other. Only when viewed as different modes of warfare, do they represent the different stages of his soul's life; but thisonly in so far as they reflect at the same time the state of the enemy's forces, against whom he found it necessary to re-equip himself from time to time. As an artist, then, Turgenef is not progressive; when his art comes to him, it comes like Minerva from Jupiter's head,—fully made, fully armed; and had it even come undeveloped, it would have had, in his case, to remain thus. For growth, development, needs time, needs leisure, needs reflection, needs rest; and of all this, on the field of battle, there is none to be had. Onward or backward, conquer or perish, but stand still on the field of battle thou must not. And while it was not given to Turgenef to conquer, neither was it given to the enemy to conquer him. Turgenef, therefore, as he lived a fighter, so he died a fighter.7. Turgenef, then, had a life-long enemy; this enemy was Russian autocracy.8. Born in 1818, in the same year with the autocrat of Russia, who afterwards dreaded him as hisbête noir, he already in his childhood had the opportunity to learn the weight of the iron hand of Nicolas. Scarcely washe seven years old when the news came to his father's household that the family name so dear to them, and hitherto a synonym of honor both in and out of Russia, had been disgraced; that Nicolai Turgenef, one of the most faithful servants of the country under Alexander I., the younger of the two celebrated brothers, and a near relative of Ivan, had been sentenced to Siberian hard labor for life,—sentenced under circumstances which could not but shock the sense of justice not only of the trustful boy, but also of those whom maturer age had accustomed to the methods of the government. Nicolai Turgenef was condemned as one of the Decembrists, and the days of the youth of Ivan were the days when the Decembrists were looked up to as the first martyrs of Russian liberty. Pushkin, the friend of the leaders of the insurrection, and the singer of the “Ode to Liberty,” was then worshipped by the youth of Russia as poet was worshipped never before; to be related to the Decembrists was therefore a privilege, and to oppose autocracy in thought at least thus became a kind of familypride. Moreover, contrary to most Russian aristocrats, Sergei Turgenef conducted the early education of his gifted son himself; and the son of the conscientious father, when taken out into the world, could not but feel the discord between the peaceful life, rigid conduct, and high ideals of his home on the one hand, and the gloomy struggle for existence, lax morals of the officials, and the low standards of the world about him on the other. When Turgenef therefore was introduced into society, he was already saturated with revolutionary ideas, and it was not long before he found the atmosphere of his native land stifling; and already, at the age of nineteen, he had to face the question whether to stay and endure, or—to flee. The boy of nineteen cannot endure; go then from Russia he must, but go—whither? Fortunately, just beyond the western border there lay a country which had already proved the promised land of others equally defiant with Turgenef. Germany already harbored Stankevitch, Granofsky, Katkof, and Bakunin. The youth of Russia of those days had metaphoricallycried to the Germans what a thousand years before them the Slavs had cried literally to the Varangians: “Our land is wide, and overflowing with abundance; but of order in it there is none. Come ye, therefore; and rule over us, and restore order among us!” Germany thus became the land of milk and honey for the Russians hungry in spirit. Whatever had any ambition looked to a visit to Germany with the same longing with which a Mohammedan looks to the shrines of Mecca.9. Berlin was the first halting-station of the pilgrims; Böck was lecturing there on Greek literature, Zumpt on Roman antiquities, and Werder was expounding the philosophy of the man who boasted or complained of being understood by only one man, and that one misunderstood him. To these masters in the education of hair-splitting flocked almost all who became celebrated afterwards in Russia's public life, and even the government was sending students to Berlin at public expense. To these masters Turgenef also went, hearing Greek literature and Roman antiquitiesby day, and committing to memory the elements of Greek and Latin grammar by night. For in the Russian university, where Turgenef had hitherto spent two years, the professors were appointed not because of their knowledge of Latin and Greek, but because of their knowledge of military tactics.10. When after two years Turgenef returned to his native land, he brought back with him, indeed, a high knowledge of Latin grammar, but a total ignorance of the highest aims of life. He brought back with him a religious scepticism, and a metaphysical pessimism, which colored henceforth his whole life, and therefore his artistic works. For those were the days when men yet believed that the great problems of the soul in its relation to the gods and to men could be solved not so much by living and by doing, as by disputing and by talking; those were the days when the philosopher's stone, turning all things into gold, was sought not in a rule for the conduct of life, such as “Love thy neighbor,” or “Do unto others,” but rather in the barren, egg-dancing, acrobatically-balancedformula, “What is, is right.” Those were the days when Hegel was supreme in philosophy because of his obscurity, as Browning is now supreme in poetry because of his; the shrivelled, evaporated, dead grain of wheat was prized all the more because it had been searched out with painful toil from the heap of chaff. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of the deep study of Browning is an intimate knowledge of the use of English particles; and the fruit of the devoted study of Hegel was an intimate knowledge of metaphysical verbiage: being, substance, essence, and absolute. But of life-giving nourishment there was none to be had. The barrenness of all this, Turgenef indeed soon did perceive, but when the disenchantment came, his blood was already poisoned; his very being was eaten into by doubt, and almost to the very end of his days Turgenef remained a fatalistic sceptic, a godless pessimist; not till his old age did he espy the promised land. It was only when he witnessed with his own eyes the boundless self-sacrifice of the revolutionists, when the oldman was moved by the heroism of the young Sophie Bardine even to the kissing of the very sheet upon which the girl's burning words to her judges were printed,—then, indeed, he regained his faith. He now hoped for his country, and stood even ready to become the head of the revolutionary movement in Russia; but for his artistic career all this came too late. In fact, his faith in God he never regained, though his hope for man did come back at last in his old age with the glow of his younger days.11. This fundamental philosophic scepticism which had poisoned Turgenef's mind throughout the best years of his life accounts for a striking change which in time took place in the method of his art. Hitherto his art had been photographic of individuals. His “Memoirs of a Sportsman” is a gallery, not of ideals, not of types, but of actual men,—a gallery put on exhibition for the same end for which the rogues' gallery is exposed at the police headquarters. It is a means towards the welfare of the country. But after that book, when the scepticism had become partof his being, his method changes. For he now becomes convinced that the misrule of Russia is not so much due to the government as to the people themselves; that existence is in itself evil; that salvation, therefore, if it can come at all, must come not from without, but from within; that reform, therefore, was needed not so much for the institution, as for the men themselves. And to him men are diseased. He no longer therefore paints individual men, but henceforth he paints types; just as the physician first studies the disease not as affecting this patient or that, but as likely to affect all men, every man.12. For much of this scepticism before life and irreverence before God Turgenef had to thank the paternal government of his fatherland. There are indeed those to whom sorrow comes like a messenger from the skies above, and lifts them heavenward on its wings. Turgenef alas! was not one of these. His was one of those souls whom sorrow deprives not only of the joys of the present, but also of the hopes of the future; and the government saw to it that of sorrows poor Turgenefhave enough. Homelessness is an affliction to all sons of Adam, but to none is the sorrow of exile so intense as to the Russian. And to exile Turgenef was soon driven. Hid under glowing pictures of nature and fascinating figures of men, the real meaning of the “Memoirs of a Sportsman,” while they appeared in detached sketches, eluded readily enough the Argus-eyed censor. But when these sketches were gathered into a living book, then whatever had eye could behold, and whatever had ear could hear, their heavenly message. The book therefore creates a sensation, the censor is astir, hurried consultation takes place, his Majesty himself is roused; but all this too late; the living book can no longer be strangled. The government saw that the monster was hydra-headed, and resolved to let it alone rather than by cutting one of its heads to rouse twenty in its stead. The book then was spared, but the writer was henceforth doomed; and the occasion for the final blow is soon enough at hand. The great Gogol had at last departed. The enthusiastic Turgenef writes a letter aboutthe dead master, and calls him a great man. “In my land only he is great with whom I speak, and only while I am speaking with him,” had said Paul the father; and Nicolas proved a worthy son. “In Russia there shall be no great men,” saith the Tsar; and Turgenef is arrested. High-stationed dame indeed intercedes for the gifted culprit. “But remember, madame,” she is told, “he called Gogol a great man.” “Ah,” high-stationed protectress replies, “I knew not that he committedthatcrime!” Which crime, accordingly, Turgenef expiates with one month's imprisonment in the dungeon, and two years' banishment to his estates. Only when the heir to the throne himself appeased his enraged sire was Turgenef allowed to go in peace. Once master over himself again, Turgenef hesitated no longer. He loved, indeed, his country much, but he loved freedom more; and like a bird fresh from the cage away flew Turgenef beyond the sea. The migrating bird returns, indeed, in the spring; but for Turgenef there was no longer any spring on Russian soil, and once abroad, he became an exile for life.13. I have said that the heroes of his six great novels are not photographs, but types. I venture to say that neither Turgenef himself nor any other Russian ever knewaBazarof,aPaul Kirsanof,aRudin,aNezhdanof. But as in the generic image of Francis Galton the traits of all the individuals are found whose faces entered into the production of the image, so in the traits of Turgenef's types every one can recognize some one ofhisacquaintance. And such is the life which the master breathes into his creations, that they become not only possible to the reader, but they actually gain flesh and blood in his very presence.14. And of these types, Turgenef, in harmony with the advance of his own warfare, has furnished a progressive series. Accordingly the earliest depicted under the impression of profound despair is the type of the superfluous man,—the man, who not onlydoesnothing, butcando nothing, struggle he never so hard. And the superfluous man not onlyisimpotent, but heknowshis impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body.This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, is the hero of phrases, the boaster; he promises marvels, he charms, he captivates; but it all ends in words, and Rudin perishes as needlessly as he lived needlessly. In “Fathers and Sons,” however, Bazarof is no longer a talker; he already rises to indignation and rebellion; helives outhis spirit, and stubbornly resists society, religion, institutions. From Bazarof Turgenef ascends still higher to Nezhdanof in “Virgin Soil,” whose aggressive attitude is already unmistakable. Nezhdanof no longer indulges in tirades against government, but he glumly organizes the revolutionary forces for actual battle. Lastly, Turgenef arrives at the highest type of the warrior, at Sophia Perofskya; and this his last type he paints in brief epilogue, just as his first type he had painted in brief prologue.What this his last type meant to Turgenef is best seen from the short prose-poem itself.THE THRESHOLD.I seea huge building; in its front wall a narrow door opens wide; behind the door gloomy darkness. At the high threshold stands a girl, a Russian girl.Frost waves from that impenetrable darkness, and with the icy breeze comes forth from the depth of the building a slow, hollow voice.“O thou, eager to step across this threshold, knowest thou what awaits thee?”“I know,” answers the girl.“Cold, hunger, hatred, ridicule, scorn, insolence, prison, illness, death itself!”“I know it.”“Complete isolation, loneliness.”“I know it.… But I am ready. I shall endure all the sorrows, all the blows.”“Not only at the hands of your enemies, but also at the hands of your family and friends.”“Yes, even at the hands of these.”“'Tis well.… Are you ready for the sacrifice?”“Yes.”“For nameless sacrifice? Thou shalt perish; and not one, not one even shall know whose memory to honor.”“I need no gratitude nor pity; I need no name.”“And art thou ready even for—crime?”The girl dropped her head.“Yes, even for crime am I ready.”The voice renewed not its questionings forthwith.“Knowest thou,” spake the voice for the last time, “that thou mayest be disenchanted in thy ideals, that thou yet mayest come to see that thou wert misguided, and that thy young life has been wasted in vain?”“This also I know, and yet I am ready to enter.”“Enter, then.”The girl stepped over the threshold, and the heavy curtain dropped behind her. “Fool!” some one muttered behind her. “Saint!” came from somewhere in reply.15. These, then, were the two leading traits of this man Turgenef. He had the fighting temperament of the warrior in his heart, and the doubting temperament of the philosopher in his head: to the first he owed the choice of his road; to the second, the manner of traversing it. His six great works of art areall tragedies. Rudin dies a needless death on a barricade; Insarof dies before he even reaches the land he is to liberate; Bazarof dies from accidental blood-poisoning and Nezhdanof dies by his own hand. Here again critics are at hand with an explanation which does not explain. Turgenef, the artist, the poet, the creator, does not know, they say, how to dispose of his heroes at the end of his stories, and he therefore kills them off. The truth, however, is that the sceptic, pessimistic Turgenef could not as an artist faithful to his belief do aught else with his heroes than to let them perish. For to him cruel fate, merciless destiny, was not mere figure of speech, but reality of realities. To Turgenef, life was at bottom a tragedy; and whatever the auspices under which he sent forth his heroes, he felt that sooner or later they must become victims of blind fate, brute force, of the relentlessly grinding, crushing mill of the gods.16. I have thus attempted to give you an interpretation of Turgenef which perhaps explains not only his life but also the peculiardirection of his works; not only the vices of his intellect, but also the virtues of his art.17. For the first great virtue of Turgenef's art is his matchless sense of form, as of a builder, a constructor, an architect. As works of architecture, of design, with porch and balcony, and central body, and roof, all in harmonious proportion, his six novels are unapproachable. There is a perfection of form in them which puts to shame the hopelessly groping attempts at beauty of harmonious form of even the greatest of English men of letters. As a work of architecture, for instance, “Virgin Soil” bears the same relation to the “Mill on the Floss” that the Capitol at Washington bears to the Capitol at Albany. The one is a rounded-out thing of beauty, the other an angular monstrosity. Walter Scott in England, and Mr. Howells in America, are the only English writers of fiction who possess that sense of form which makes Turgenef's art consummate; unfortunately, Walter Scott has long since been discarded as a literary model, and Mr. Howells is not yet even accepted.18. And the second great virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with that required by the English standard of three volumes for every novel. For what is to English and American society the greatest of social virtues was to Turgenef the greatest of artistic vices. As an artist, Turgenef detested above all cleverness,—that accomplishment which possesses to perfection the art of smuggling in a whole cartload of chaff under the blinding glare of a single phosphorescent thoughtlet; that cleverness which like all phosphorescent glows can only change into a sickly paleness at the slightest approach of God's true sunlight, of the soul's true force. Of this virtue of compactness his works offerexamples on almost every page; but nowhere are its flowers strewn in such abundance as in his “Diary of a Superfluous Man.”19. This work, though only covering some sixty pages, written as it was at the age of thirty-two, when Turgenef stood as yet at the threshold of his artistic career, is in fact, as it were, an epitome of all Turgenef's forces as an artist. While in power of impression it is the peer of Tolstoy's “Ivan Ilyitsh,” with which it has a striking family resemblance, it surpasses Tolstoy's sketch in the wealth of delicately shaded gems of workmanship, which glow throughout the worklet. (1) In the small provincial town, for instance, the lion from St. Petersburg, Prince N., captures the hearts of all. A ball is given in his honor, and the prince, says Turgenef, “was encircled by the host, yes, encircled as England is encircled by the sea.” My ball-giving, my lion-hunting friend,thouknowest the singular felicity of that one word here,—encircled! (2) The superfluous man's beloved is at last seduced by the lionized prince, and she becomes the talk of the town. A good-naturedlieutenant, now first introduced by Turgenef, calls on the wretched man to console him, and the unhappy lover writes in his Diary: “I feared lest he should mention Liza. But my good lieutenant was not a gossip, and, moreover, he despised all women, calling them, God knows why, salad.” This is all the description Turgenef devotes to this lieutenant; but this making him despise women under the appellation of half-sour, half-sweet conglomerate of egg-and-vegetable salad, describes the lieutenant in two lines more faithfully than pages of scientific, realistic photography. (3) Before the ruin of poor Liza becomes known, and while the prince, her seducer, is still on the height of lionization, he is challenged to a duel by Liza's faithful lover. The superfluous man wounds the prince's cheek; the prince, who deems his rival unworthy of even a shot, retaliates by firing into the air. Superfluous man is of course crushed, annihilated, and he describes his feelings thus:“Evidently this man was bound to crush me; with this magnanimity of his he slammed me in, just as the lid of the coffin is slammed down over the corpse.” (4) You think, then, that the sufferings of the despairing lover as he sees his beloved going to ruin, into the arms of the seducer, are indescribable? But not to Turgenef. Says again the superfluous man in his Diary: “When our sorrows reach a phase in which they force our whole inside to quake and to squeak like an overloaded cart, then they cease to be ridiculous.” Verily, only those who have been shaken to the very depths of their being can understand the marvellous fidelity of this image, the soul quaking and squeaking like an overloaded cart,—all the more faithful because of its very homeliness. Do not wonder, therefore, when the last, intensest grief, the consciousness of being crushed by his rival, finds in his Diary the following expression: (5) “And so I suffered,” says the superfluous man, “like a dog whose hind parts had been crushed in by the cart-wheel as it passed over him.” A more powerful description of agony, methinks, is not found even in Gogol's laughter through tears.20. And the third great virtue of Turgenef's art is his love of Nature; and here I know not where to look for the like of him, unless to another great master of Russian letters,—to Tolstoy. For Gogol is indeed also a painter, but only a landscape-painter, while Turgenef makes you feel even the breeze of a summer eve.21. So thrilled is his being with the love of Nature, that all her moods find a ready response in his sensitive soul. The joy of the sunshine, the melancholy of the sky shut down by huge cloud, the grandeur of the thunder, the quiver of the lightning, the glow of the dawn, the babble of the brook, and even the waving of the grass-blade,—all these he reproduces with the fidelity of one whoreveresNature. Turgenef has thus at least one element of the highest religiousness,—reverence towards the powers of Nature superior to man; a reverence the possession of which he himself would perhaps have been the first to deny, since consciously he was an irreverent agnostic. But his soul was wiser than his logic; and however dead his head might declarethe universe to be, his hand painted it as if alive. This, for instance, is how he describes a storm:—“Meanwhile, along with the evening was approaching a thunder-storm. Already ever since noon the air had been close, and from the distance there was coming a low grumbling. But now the broad cloud that had long been resting like a layer of lead on the very edge of the horizon began to grow, and to be visible from behind the trees: the stifling atmosphere began to tremble more visibly, shaken stronger and stronger by the approaching thunder; the wind rose, howled abruptly through the trees, became still, howled again protractedly, and now it whistled. A sombre darkness ran over the ground, chasing swiftly away the last glimmer of the dawn; the thick clouds breaking to pieces suddenly began to float, and drove through the sky; now, a slight shower began to sprinkle, the lightning flared up with a red flame, and the thunder growled angrily and heavily.”22. Observe here the felicity of the metaphor: the cloud rests, the air trembles and is soon shaken, the darknessrunsover the ground, and the thunder growls in anger.Only the eye which sees at bottom life in Nature's forces could see them in such vivifying images.23. Lastly, the fourth great virtue of Turgenef's art is his intense power of sympathy.24. In the universality of his sympathies he is equalled again only by Tolstoy. Like him he can depict the feelings of a dog, of a bird, with a self-attesting fidelity, as if his nature were at one with theirs; and the one child of creation which man has repeatedly been declared unable to paint truthfully, namely, woman, Turgenef has painted with a grace and faithfulness unapproached even by George Eliot or by George Sand. For Turgenef loved woman as no woman could love her, and his faith in her was unbounded. Hence, when in his “On the Eve” he wishes to give expression to his despair over themenof Russia, so that he has to seek the ideal of a patriot not in a Russian, but in a Bulgarian, he still rests the hope of the country on its women; and Helen, Turgenef's noblest conception among women, as Insarof is among men, is not like him a foreigner, but a Russian.And this is how Turgenef paints the noblest moment in the life of the noblest of his women.25. The poor, prospectless foreigner Insarof discovers that he loves the rich, high-stationed Helen. He does not know that he is loved in return, and he decides to depart without taking even leave of her. They meet, however, unexpectedly.“‘You come from our house, don't you?’ Helen asked.“‘No, … not from your house.’“‘No?’ repeated Helen, and tried to smile. ‘And is it thus you keep your promise? I have been expecting you all the morning.’“‘Helen Nikolayevna, I promised nothing yesterday.’“Helen tried to smile again, and passed her hand across her face. Both face and hand were very pale. ‘You intended, then, to depart without taking leave of us?’“‘Yes,’ he muttered, almost fiercely.“‘How, after our acquaintance, after our talks, after all … So, if I had not then met you here accidentally (her voice began to ring, and she stopped for a moment) … you would have gone off, and would not have even shaken my hand in parting; gone off without regret?’“Insarof turned away. ‘Helen Nikolayevna, please don't speak thus. I am, as it is, already not cheerful. Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort. If you knew …’“‘I don't wish to know why you depart,’ Helen interrupted him, frightened. ‘This is evidently necessary. We must evidently part. You would not grieve your friends without cause. But do friends part thus? We are of course friends, are not we?’“‘No,’ said Insarof.“‘How?’ muttered Helen, and her cheeks colored slightly.“‘Why, that is exactly why I go away, because we are not friends. Don't oblige me to say what I do not wish to tell, what I shall not tell.’“‘Formerly you used to be frank with me,’ Helen spoke up with a slight reproach. ‘Do you remember?’“‘Then I could be frank; then I had nothing to hide. But now—’“‘But now?’ asked Helen.“‘But now … But now I must go. Good-by!’“Had Insarof at this moment raised his eyes to Helen, he would have seen that her whole face shone,—shone the more, the more his face grew gloomy and dark; but his eyes were stubbornly fixed on the floor.“‘Well, good-by, Dimitry Nikanorovitch,’ she began. ‘But since we have met, give me now at least your hand.’“Insarof started to give her his hand. ‘No, I cannot even do that,’ he said, and again turned away.“‘You cannot?’“‘I cannot. Good-by!’ And he started to go out.“‘Just wait a moment,’ she said. ‘It seems you are afraid of me. Now, I am braver than you,’ she added, with a sudden slight tremor along her whole frame. ‘I can tell you … do you wish me to tell … why you found me here? Do you know where I was going?’“Insarof looked in surprise at Helen.“‘I was going to your house.’“‘To my house?’“Helen covered her face. ‘You wished to compel me to say that I love you,’ she whispered—‘there, I have said it.’“‘Helen!’ exclaimed Insarof.“She took his hands, looked at him, and fell upon his breast.“He embraced her firmly, and remained silent. There was no need of telling her that he loved her. From his one exclamation, from this instantaneous transformation of the whole man, from the manner in which rose and fell that breast to which she clung so trustfully, from themanner in which the tips of his fingers touched her hair, Helen could see that she was loved. He was silent, but she needed no words. ‘He is here, he loves; what more is there needed?’ The calm of blessedness, the quiet of the undisturbed haven, of the attained goal, that heavenly calm which lends a meaning and a beauty to death itself, filled her whole being with a godly wave. She wished nothing, because she possessed everything. ‘O my brother, my friend, my darling!’ her lips whispered; and she herself knew not whose heart it was, his or hers, which was so sweetly beating and melting away in her breast.“But he stood motionless, enclosing in his firm embrace the young life which had just given itself entire unto him; he felt on his breast this new, priceless burden; a feeling of tenderness, a feeling of gratitude inexpressible, shivered into dust his hard soul, and tears, hitherto unknown to him, came to his eyes.“But she wept not; she only kept repeating: ‘O my friend! O my brother!’“‘Then you will go with me everywhere,’ he said to her, some fifteen minutes later, as before enclosing and supporting her in his embrace.“‘Everywhere, to the end of the earth; wherever you are, there shall I be.’“‘And you are sure you do not deceive yourself?You know your parents will never consent to our marriage?’“‘I am not deceiving myself; I know it.’“‘You know I am poor, almost a beggar?’“‘I know it.’“‘That I am not a Russian, that I am fated to live beyond Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country and your family?’“‘I know it, I know it.’“‘You know also that I have devoted my life to a difficult, thankless task; that I … that we shall have to expose ourselves not only to dangers, but to deprivation, and to degradation perhaps?’“‘Iknow, I know it all … but I love you.’“‘That you will have to give up all your habits; that there alone, among strangers, you will perhaps have to toil?’“She put her hands on his lips. ‘I love you, darling.’“He began to kiss warmly her narrow, rosy hand. Helen did not take her hand from his lips, and with a kind of childish joy, with laughing curiosity, she watched him covering with kisses now her hand, now her fingers.“Suddenly she blushed, and hid her face on his breast.“He gently raised up her head and looked firmly into her eyes.“‘So God be with you,’ he said; ‘be thou my wife both before men and before God.’”26. These, then, were the numerous great virtues of Turgenef; and they have made him the most enjoyable of artists. But his one great vice, the vice of doubt, the vice of hopelessness, has made him, as a nourisher of the spirit, among the least profitable as a writer.27. For, O my friends, it cannot be stated too often that whatever puts new strength into the spirit is from the great God, the Good; and whatever takes strength from the spirit is from the great Devil, the Evil. And the things that have ever proved the inexhaustible sources of strength to the soul have been not doubt and despair, but faith and hope,—faith that the destinies of men are guided by love even though guided through the agony of sorrow; faith that behind this appearance of discord and blind fate and brute force there is after all to be found the substance of harmony, of wise forethought, of tender love; hope, that however terrible the present, the future will yet be one of joy,one of peace. If reason with its logic can strengthen this faith, this hope, then welcome reason, blessed be reason; but if reason with its logic can only make me doubt the presence of wisdom, the presence of love, then begone reason, cursed be reason. Verily, by their fruits ye shall know them!28. Turgenef therefore was incapable of creating a Levin, because he had not the faith which makes the Levins of Tolstoy possible. He was filled with the pessimistic woe oftheworld, believed at bottom that man, born in sorrow, must also live in sorrow. With the sublimity of a prophet, Turgenef cries: “From the inmost depths of the virgin forest, from the eternal depth of the waters, resounds the same cry of Nature to man: ‘I have naught to do with thee. I rule, but thou—look to thy life, O worm!’” While personally he indeed contributed what lay in his power to alleviate the present ills of men, he could do naught towards alleviating the future ills of men; for he could not inspire men with hope, since he had none himself. For hope comes from faith, and Turgenefwas devoid of faith. Turgenef, like another great master of fiction, George Eliot, was a veritable child of the immature age, not of science, of knowledge, but of nescience, of ignorance, of agnosticism; for it is only ignorance that doubts, and it is true science that believes.29. I cannot therefore ask you to take leave with me of Turgenef without at least urging you to profit by this one fact in his life. Turgenef failed to reach the highest, the height of Tolstoy, because he failed to free himself from that alone which must forever trammel the soul. He failed to free himself from that fundamental distrust of God which is at bottom of all despair. You, too, my friends, have that distrust. O ye in society who dread the consequences of having one kind word to say, or even one glance of recognition to cast at a brother because forsooth he has not been properly introduced to you, are not ye doubting your own God in your breasts, which acts not in fear of your fellow-men, but in trust of them? And, O ye who refuse to help a begging brother for fearlest he prove an impostor, are not ye likewise at bottom doubting the God within you which acts through pity to a brother, even though hedodeceive? Turgenef fell short of the highest because he did not cast off the scepticism of his intellect. Are not ye, my friends, likewise in danger of falling short of the highest because you too do not cast off the scepticism of the heart?LECTURE V.TOLSTOY THE ARTIST.1.I havestated in the first lecture that the soul of man ever strives onward and upward; that its goal is the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, which consists in reverence before God above, and in love towards man here below. I have stated that of this journey of the soul heavenward, literature is the record; that the various phases of literary development are only so many mile-posts on the road; that after the voices of the singer, of the protester, of the warrior, are hushed, there must be heard what must remain forever the loftiest voice in letters,—the voice of the preacher, the prophet, the inspirer. And I have stated that just as Pushkin is the singer, Gogol the protester, and Turgenef thefighter, so is Tolstoy in Russian literature the preacher, the inspirer.2. But just because he is the prophet, the uplifter, the proclaimer, Tolstoy is no longer themerelyRussian writer. Pushkin is theRussiansinger, Gogol is theRussianprotester, and Turgenef is theRussianfighter; but Tolstoy is not the inspirer of Russia alone, but of all mankind. Tolstoy has the least of the Russian in him, because he has the most of the man in him; he has the least of the son of the Slav in him, because he has the most of the Son of God in him. The voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of the nineteenth century, but of all centuries; the voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of one land, but of all lands; for the voice of Leo Tolstoy, in short, is the voice of God speaking through man.3. For, O my friends, thereisa God in heaven, even though the voices of pessimism and agnosticism be raised never so high against him. There is a God who ruleth over the heavens and over the earth; and he is boundless with space, and everlasting withtime; and he is sublime with the sky, and he twinkleth with the star; and he smileth with the sun, and he beameth with the moon; and he floateth with the cloud, and he saileth with the wind; he flasheth with the lightning, and resoundeth with the thunder, he heaveth with the sea, and he dasheth with the surf; he floweth with the river, and he rusheth with the torrent; he babbleth with the brook, and he sparkleth with the dew-drop; he reposeth with the landscape, and he laugheth with the meadow; he waveth with the tree, and he quivereth with the leaf; he singeth with the bird, and he buzzeth with the bee; he roareth with the lion, and he pranceth with the steed; he crawleth with the worm, and he soareth with the eagle; he darteth with the porpoise, and he diveth with the fish; he dwelleth with the loving, and he pleadeth with the hating; he shineth with the merciful, and he aspireth with the prayerful. He is ever nigh unto men,—he, the Prince of Light!4. And I say unto ye that the Lord God hath not hid himself from the hearts of men;he that spake unto Moses and the prophets, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake unto Jesus and the Apostles, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake to Mohammed and Luther, and through them,—he is still nigh. He recently spake through Carlyle and through Emerson, and their voices are not yet hushed. And he still speaketh, my friends, through Ruskin in England and through Tolstoy in Russia, as he ever shall speak through all earnest souls who love him with all their heart because they know him, who seek him with all their heart because they know him not. Think not therefore the Lord God hath ceased to speak unto men through men; verily, if men but see to it that there be enough inspired, God will see to it that there be enough inspirers.5. And of these Heaven-sent inspirers, Tolstoy is the latest. But do not believe that in saying that he is Heaven-sent I attempt to explain aught. The highest is ever inexplicable, and it is the bane of modern science that it is ever ready to explain what cannotbe explained. Before the highest we can only stand dumb; and this has been the feeling of the greatest, because of the humblest, of spirits. The Greek painter, therefore, when about to depict the highest grief of a father, gives up in despair, and veils the father's face; and Meyer von Bremen's grandmother, when confronted with the question from the children whence came that sweet babe in her arms, can only reply, “The storks brought it;” and so I can say to you only, Tolstoy is sent unto men from Heaven.6. I say he is Heaven-sent, because he came to proclaim not what is ephemeral and perishing, but what is permanent and everlasting. He came to proclaim not the latest theory of gravitation, of molecular vibration, of modes of heat and manners of cold, nor of struggle for existence, nor of supply and demand, nay, not even of scientific charity. He came to proclaim that which was as true in the days of Jesus as it is true in the days of Darwin,—that the life of man can have no meaning, unless when guided by obedience to God and love to man. Gravitation, struggle forexistence! The earth has been spinning round its parent for ages before man's brain-kin made the marvellous discovery that God's mysterious impulse which set the earth whirling through the abysses of space is explained in right scientific fashion by labelling it gravitation. This green earth has rolled on, this green earth will roll on, label or no label; and the mystery of God men knew not before gravitation, nor do they know it now with gravitation. Men have for ages been multiplying under the blessing of God, and loving one another, long before that marvellous discovery was made that man, sprung from a monkey, and bred in struggle for existence, is destined at last, under fine progress of species, to become brutalized with Malthusian law as a cannibal living on the flesh of his brother, with self-respect and scientific charity in most abundant supply and demand. Tolstoy came to proclaim not the new gospel of death, but the old gospel of life; not the new gospel of struggle for existence, but the old gospel of helpfulness for existence; not the new gospel of competition, but the oldgospel of brotherhood. Tolstoy came to proclaim the gospel of God, the gospel of man, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of Socrates, the gospel of Epictetus, of Aurelius, of Carlyle, of Emerson,—the gospel of reverence before God and love to man, which is indeed ever old, but which, alas! the sons of Darkness see to it that it remain forever new.7. These, then, are the men among whom Tolstoy belongs: which of these the greater, which of these the less? My friends, when we arrive at these, we are no longer among the measurable planets, but among the immeasurable fixed stars. Sirius flashes indeed with greater splendor than Vega, and Vega than Arcturus, and Arcturus than Capella, and Capella flashes with greater splendor than Aldebaran; but who shall undertake to say which of these suns is the greater, which is the less? The difference of splendor is not in the stars themselves, but in our eyes. And at this our immeasurable distance from these souls who are nighest unto the throne of the Most High, it is not for me, the worm, as I stand before you, to presume to measurewhich is the greater, which is the less. Rather than spending our time in profitless weighing and measuring, let me beseech you to bow your heads in awe and gratitude, praising God for the mercy which sendeth now and then unto men the living voice, the helping voice.8. Tolstoy, therefore, is one of those spirits whom I cannot approach with the dissecting-knife, as the critic does the author, in order to “account” for him. To do this, that total freedom from sentiment is required which was possessed by the enterprising reporter who on the death of a prominent citizen forthwith requested an interview with “corpse's uncle.” In an age when sentiment has become a byword of impotence, and the heart has become a mere force-pump for the blood; in an age when charity has to be put in swaddling-clothes lest it injure a brother by helping him; when the poor are preached to by their rich visiting friends, not to make a home for themselves when their love for a mate is born in the heart, but only when it is born in the purse,—in such an age that reporter's freedom from sentiment is indeed a most valuableacquisition; but I, alas! as yet possess it not! I shall therefore neither judge the preacher Tolstoy, nor measure him. I shall only point out to you to-day wherein he differs, as he must needs differ, from the rest of that noble band of the chosen messengers of God to which he belongs.9. And the first striking difference is that Tolstoy is a consummate artist, a creator, in addition to the great preacher. For Marcus Aurelius is no artist. He is merely a speaker; he delivers his message in plain tongue, unadorned, often even unpolished. Epictetus, equally simple, equally direct with Marcus Aurelius, comes, however, already adorned with a certain humor which now and then sparkles through his serious pages. Ruskin brings with him quite a respectable load of artistic baggage; he brings an incisiveness, a sarcasm, often a piquancy with him, which makes him entertaining besides inspiring. Emerson and Carlyle bring with them much that, as artistic work; might, under more favorable auspices, have been worth saving for its own sake: the one brings a grace, a sportiveness,and a brilliancy which fascinates, the other a fervor, an imagination, a grim-humor, a lightning-flashing, which dazzles. But none of these live in letters because of their art. Were they to depend on this alone, they would quickly perish. They live because of the spirit which worketh through them; so that were you to take the Jeremiah out of Carlyle, the John the Baptist out of Ruskin, and the Solomon out of Emerson, you would deprive them of their literary life. Tolstoy, however, even though the preacher be gone from him, still remains a mighty power in letters because of his art. For not only are his works filled with the highest purpose,—they are also created with the highest art. And I cannot show you this difference any better than by quoting two passages, one from Carlyle, the other from Tolstoy, both treating of the soul's well-nigh noblest emotion,—Repentance.“On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think, might know better.Who is called there ‘the man according to God's own heart’? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer, and ask, ‘Is this the man according to God's own heart?’ The sneer, I must say, seems to be but a shallow one.“What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man,repentancethe most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is ‘pure,’ as dead dry sand is pure.“David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore battled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that,—‘a succession of falls’? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his strugglebea faithful, unconquerable one; that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is.”10. Powerful as this passage is, I cannot help feeling that Tolstoy has treated the same subject more artistically than Carlyle, by embodying his lesson in objective shape, where Carlyle treats it subjectively. And now listen to Tolstoy:—THE REPENTING SINNER.Therelived in the world a man for seventy years, and all his life he lived in sin. And this man fell ill, and still he did not repent. But when death was nigh, at the last hour, he began to weep, and said, “Lord, as thou hast forgiven the thief on the cross, so do thou forgive me!” He had scarcely spoken, and away flew his soul. And the sinner's soul began to love God, and, trusting his mercy, came to the gates of heaven.And the sinner began to knock, and to ask admission into the kingdom of heaven.And from behind the door he heard a voice: “Who is this knocking for admission into the gates of heaven, and what are the deeds this man in his lifetime has done?”And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and recounted all the sinful deeds of this man; and of good deeds he named none.And the voice from behind the door answered: “Sinners cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Get thee hence!”Said the sinner: “Lord, I hear thy voice, but I see not thy countenance and know not thy name.”And the voice gave in reply: “I am Peter the Apostle.”Said the sinner: “Have mercy upon me, Apostle Peter; remember the weakness of man, and the mercy of God. Was it not you who was a disciple of Christ, and was it not you who heard from his own lips his teaching, and saw the example of his life? And now remember, when he was weary and sad in spirit, and thrice asked thee not to slumber, but to pray, you slept, because your eyes were heavy, and thrice he found you sleeping. The same of me.“And remember likewise how thou hast promised to him not to renounce him until thy dying day, and yet thou didst renounce himthrice when they led him away. The same of me.“And remember likewise how crowed the cock, and thou hast gone forth and wept bitterly. The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”And the voice from behind the gates of heaven was hushed.And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admittance into the kingdom of heaven.And from behind the doors there was heard another voice which spake: “Who is this, and how has he lived on earth?”And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and repeated all the evil deeds of the sinner; and of the good deeds he named none.And the voice from behind the door called: “Get thee hence. Sinners such as thou cannot live with us in Paradise.”Said the sinner: “Lord, thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”And the voice said unto him: “I am David, the king and the prophet.” But the sinner despaired not, nor went he away from the gates of heaven, but spake as follows: “Have mercy upon me, King David, and think of the weakness of man and the mercy of God. God loved thee and raised thee up before men. Thinewas all,—a kingdom, and glory, and riches, and wives, and children; yet when thou didst espy from thy roof the wife of a poor man, sin betook thee, and thou hast taken the wife of Uriah, and himself hast thou slain by the sword of the Ammonites. Thou, a rich man, hast taken his last lamb from the poor man, and hast slain the owner himself. The same of me!“And think further how thou hast repented, and said: ‘I confess my guilt, and repent of my sin.’ The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”And the voice behind the door was hushed.And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admission into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the doors was heard a third voice which spake: “Who is this, and how hath he lived on earth?”And for the third time the voice of the accuser recounted the evil deeds of the man, but of the good he named none.And the voice from behind the door gave in answer: “Get thee hence! The kingdom of heaven not by a sinner can be entered.”And replied the sinner: “Thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”Answered the voice: “I am John, the beloved disciple of Christ.”And rejoiced the sinner, and spake:“Now verily shall I be let in. Peter and David shall admit me because they know the weakness of man, and the grace of God; but thou shalt admit me because thou hast much love. For hast thou not writ in thy book, O John, that God is Love, and that whosoever knoweth not Love, knoweth not God? Wert not thou he that spake in his old age unto men only this one word: ‘Brethren, love ye one another’? How then shalt thou now hate me and drive me hence? Either renounce thine own words, or learn to love me, and admit me into the kingdom of heaven.”And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced the repenting sinner, and admitted him into the kingdom of heaven.11. Tolstoy, then, is the sole example among men of the harmonious combination of loftiest aspiration with highest artistic skill. Tolstoy sees in himself only the preacher, and therefore at the age of sixty he does not hesitate to repudiate all those works of his which are not those of the preacher, however great their value as works of art. Turgenef sees in him only the artist, and therefore beseeches from his death-bed his fellow-craftsman to give himself back to the forsaken art. Bothare here right, both are here wrong. For each sees only one side, while Tolstoy is neither the preacher alone nor the artist alone. Tolstoy, like Janus of old, is two-faced,—the artist, when his soul is in a state of war; the preacher, when his soul is in a state of peace. Turgenef looks only upon the face of the artist; Tolstoy looks out into the world with the face of the preacher.12. This noble combination of the preacher and the artist has accordingly determined the character of Tolstoy's art. For the first question Tolstoy asks of every event, of every phenomenon he has to depict, is, What effect has this on the soul of man; what bearing has this on the life of man; what, in short, is its moral meaning? Hence when Tolstoy paints, he paints not only objectively, but also subjectively. In the storm-scene, for instance, which I have read you at the first lecture, Tolstoy is not satisfied to give you merely the outward appearance of the storm, its appearance in Nature, he rests not until he has painted also its effect on the soul; and the progress of the terror inspired keeps pacewith the advance of the cloud. Hence the sudden introduction of the beggar from under the bridge, with his horrible stump of hand stretched out as he runs beside the carriage begging for alms. This incident is as much part of the storm, and as terrifying to the little Katenka and the little Lubotshka as the glare of the lightning and the crash of the thunder. Tolstoy the artist never sees Nature with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the spirit, he never sees matter without the underlying mind; he never sees the object without its complement, the subject. Tolstoy, therefore, is the first great artist (and if the one-eyed prophets of the merelyobjectiveart prevail, who now clamor so loudly, he promises, alas! to remain also the last) who has painted Nature entire. Tolstoy is the first great artist, therefore, into whose pictures enter not only the details visible, but also the details invisible. To Tolstoy, the vibration of the string is not described in completeness until he has also shown how its music has made to vibrate not only the air, but also the soul. Painter then of the inward universeas well as of the outward, of the spiritual as well as of the natural, of the things unseen as well as of those seen, Tolstoy has exhausted Nature. He has plunged into her nethermost depths, like Schiller's diver, and lo! forth he comes from the abyss with her swallowed-up treasure. Verily, here Tolstoy is unapproachable. Only one other man of letters hath here even distant fellowship with him, and this is Ralph Waldo Emerson.13. That an art which is born of such a union of the preacher with the worshipper of beauty as it exists in Tolstoy, can only be of the highest, and must be of the highest, I therefore no longer hesitate to affirm. Read, therefore, in this light the successive chapters in Book VII. of “Anna Karenina,” where is told the birth of a son of Kitty and Levin. Our modern apostles of the gospel of fidelity at all hazards, even though it be the fidelity of dirt, would have here made you look at the blood, at the towels, at the bowls, at the bottles, would have made you smell the odors,—they would have recounted to you all thosedetails which, however pathetic to those doomed to be by-standers in the sick-room, can only be nauseating to those out of the sick-room. Tolstoy the preacher is impressed with the immeasurable pain which attends the entrance into the world of a newly-born human soul,—agony unendurable, all the more unendurable because inexplicable, inscrutable. His great artistic soul rests not until it hath relieved itself with at least a cry over such sorrow. Paint it therefore he must; but he paints it, observe, not directly, by photographing the tortures of Kitty, but indirectly, by picturing the agony of Levin; for the one would have only nauseated, the other stirs the reader to his very depths. The husband suffers more than the wife, because he sees her not with the eyes of the head, but with the eyes of the heart; the groans of Kitty, which reach him from the neighboring chamber, can indeed be silenced by the physician's drug; but no drug can silence the groan of Levin, for it is pressed out by the agony, not of the body, but by the agony of the soul. And as love, sympathy, is ever aneye-opener, so here Tolstoy, the consummate artist, has reproduced the scene of the sick-room with the highest fidelity, because he has reproduced it not with the arts of cold mechanical photography, but with those of warm, sympathetic imagination. Tolstoy reproduces therefore with the highest faithfulness because he too sees not with the eye of the head, but with the eye of the heart.14. And for the highest example of such art I will venture to read to you the passage in which Tolstoy tells of Anna Karenina's fall. Until the reader comes to this passage, there is not a syllable to tell him that shehasfallen. Observe then Tolstoy's manner of telling it. I venture to think it far more faithful than any realistic art could have made it by furnishing details not necessarily more true because less delicate:—“That in which during almost a whole year consisted the one, exclusive longing of Vronsky's life, that which had supplanted all his former wishes, that which to Anna had been a dream of impossible, terrible, yet for this reason all the more fascinating happiness,—thiswish was at last gratified. Pale, with his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to quiet herself, not knowing himself how and what.“‘Anna, Anna,’ he spake with trembling voice. ‘Anna, for God's sake!’“But the louder he spake, the lower sank her head, once proud and glad, now abased; she now crouched, and was sinking from the sofa, where she had been sitting, to the floor, at his feet. She would have fallen on the carpet had he not supported her. ‘O my God, forgive me!’ she sobbed, and pressed his hands to her breast.“So criminal and so guilty she felt herself, that the only thing left her was to humiliate herself and to beg forgiveness. But now she had no one in life left her but him, and to him she turns with prayer for forgiveness. As she gazed at him she physically felt her degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also to him. But, in spite ofall the horror before the body of the slain, the body must be cut into pieces, must be hidden away, and use must be made of what the murderer had obtained by his murder.“And as the murderer with fierceness, almost with passion, throws himself upon the body and drags it and hacks it, so he too kept covering with kisses her face and her shoulders. She kept his hand and moved not. Yes, these kisses,—this it was which was bought with this her shame. ‘Yes, and this one hand which will always be mine is the hand of my—confederate.’ She raised this hand and kissed it. He dropped on his knees and wished to see her face, but she hid her face and said naught. At last, as if making an effort over herself, she rose and pushed him away. Her face was indeed as handsome as ever, but it was now pitiful all the more.“‘'Tis all ended,’ she said. ‘I have nothing left but thee. Remember this.’“‘I cannot help remembering what constitutes my life. For one minute of this blessedness …’“‘Blessedness!’ she uttered with terror and disgust, and her terror communicated itself to him. ‘For God's sake, not a word, not one word more!’“She quickly rose and turned away from him.“‘Not another word,’ she repeated; and withan expression strange to him, with an expression of cold despair on her face, she parted from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in words her feeling of shame, joy, and terror before this entrance into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself whatever was going on in her soul.“She said to herself, ‘No, I cannot think this out now; later, when I shall be more calm.’ But this calmness for her thoughts never came; whenever the thought came to her of what she had done, and of what was to become of her, and of what she must do, terror came upon her, and she drove away these thoughts.“‘Later, later,’ she repeated, ‘when I am more calm.’“But in sleep, when she had no control over her thoughts, her situation appeared to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream came to her almost nightly. She dreamed that both were her husbands, that both were spending upon her their caresses. Alexei Alexandrovitsh cried as he kissed her hands, and said, ‘Ah, how good this is!’ And Alexei Vronsky was there, andhe also was her husband. And she wondered why all this had hitherto seemed to her impossible, and explained to them laughingly how simple all this was, and that now they were both content and happy. But the dream oppressed her like an Alp, and she awoke every time in terror.”15. And of such unapproachable art the examples in Tolstoy are well-nigh innumerable. There is hardly a single work of Tolstoy in which he does not display that marvellous fidelity which has made Mr. Howells exclaim: “This is not a picture of life, but life itself!” And this fidelity Tolstoy attains not so much by depicting the event itself as by depicting its effect on the soul; just as the silent sight of the wounded on the field tells of the battle more loudly than the thunder of the cannon. I say this is the highest art, because its method is universal, where all others are only particular; for men may indeed differ in the language of the tongue, but they do not differ in the language of the spirit.16. Read in the same light, then, his unparalleledgallery of life-scenes in “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” Read in the same light the death-scene of Count Bezukhoi in “War and Peace;” read the war-scene on the bridge, the wounding of Balkonsky; read the skating-scene in “Anna Karenina,” the racing-scene, the meeting between Anna and her darling Seriozha. My friends, in the presence of such art words fail me; I can only cry to you, “Read, read, and read!” Read humbly, read admiringly. The reading of Tolstoy in this spirit shall in itself be unto you an education of your highest artistic sense. And when your souls have become able to be thrilled to their very depths by the unspeakable beauty of Tolstoy's art, you will then learn to be ashamed of thought that for years you sensible folk of Boston have been capable of allowing,—the Stevensons with their Hydes, and the Haggards with their Shes, and even the clumsy Wards with their ponderous Elsmeres, to steal away under the flag of literature your thoughtful moments. You will then learn to understand how it comes to pass that the artistically coldpassionless Mr. Howells even, the apostle of heartlessness in art,—however brave and full of heart the noble man be in actual life,—can be struck with awe before the mighty presence of Tolstoy, and how it is possible that the only words he can whisper is, “I cannot say aught!” The preface of Mr. Howells to Tolstoy's “Sebastopol” has been declared by wiseacres to be the symptom of his decadence. My friends, believe it not. This admiration of Mr. Howells for Tolstoy is verily not the symptom that he is beginning to fall, but rather that he is just beginning to rise.
26. The heavenly spark which gleamed within him could not, however, be put out. Letters proper he at last indeed forsook, but he now became profoundly religious; he gave up all his possessions to the poor, and when he needed moneys wherewith to make a pilgrimage to what was to him a veritably Holy Land, he had to publish some of his intimate correspondence.
27. This work proved the bitterness of the rest of his days. It roused a clamor against the poor author altogether out of proportion to the slight merit of the work. Gogol was denounced on all sides as a renegade; the relentless accuser of autocracy in“The Revisor” could not be forgiven for the spirit of Christian humility and resignation to the will of God which breathed from these letters. It was in the forties. Those were the days when a Hegelian wave went over Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends declared him insane, and all manner of advice offered, which could not fail to make him truly insane. The already melancholy Gogol now became lonely, dejected, and sought consolation now more than ever in fasting and prayer. Poor Gogol had not yet learned that complete salvation is found not in praying, but in doing. While his ills therefore increased his devotion, his devotion likewise in turn increased his ills; his body became emaciated, his mind was wrecked,and early in 1852 he was found one morning starved to death, prostrated before the holy images, in front of which he had spent his last days.
28. Next to Tolstoy, Gogol is perhaps the most lovable figure in Russian literature. I say lovable, because he was at bottom a hapless man,—a man who had fed on his own mighty heart. There is a Carlylesqueness about his woe that makes his life immeasurably pitiful. Pushkin's sorrow one finds it difficult to lament deeply, since it was mostly of his own making; but Gogol's was the sorrowful lot of all heaven-aspiring souls who have not yet attained the last, safest haven of rest in God,—that haven from which the soul no longer cries in agony of spirit, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” but rather, “Father, thou knowest wherefore all this is; thy will be done!” His soul in its loneliness and restlessness knew nor sympathy nor appreciation of what was to himhisdeepest life; and this the loving soul ever craves most hungeringly. When the great soul had departed, gone irrevocably,men readily enough recognized that the light of Israel had gone out; but the recognition came too late, the love came when it could no longer heal his wounded spirit.
29. My friends, “Taras Bulba” will thrill your soul with inexpressible beauty. Gogol's “Revisor” will amuse you. His “Dead Souls” will instruct you; but his life, if you study it faithfully, should prove his greatest work unto you, for it should stir you,—stir you to tenderness, stir you to sympathy, stir you to compassion for those sufferers, the like of Gogol, who are never wanting, in whatever age, in whatever clime, in whatever walk of life. Would to God, my friends, you could carry away from Gogol's life with you this lesson: In your very midst, perhaps this very day, there doubtless walks among you some mighty spirit, some hungry soul. Seek him out, find him out, that not of ye at least shall be said those immeasurably sorrowful words which could be said of the countless friends of Gogol,—they came with their sympathy—too late!
LECTURE IV.TURGENEF.
1.Inthe history of Russian letters, Ivan Turgenef is the most complex figure. Nay, with the exception of Shakespeare he is perhaps the most complex figure in all literature. He is universal, he is provincial; he is pathetic, he is sneering; he is tender, he is merciless; he is sentimental, he is frigid. He can be as compact as Tacitus, and as prolix as Thackeray. He can be as sentimental as Werther, and as heartless as Napoleon. He can cry with the bird, grow with the grass, and hum with the bee; he can float with the spirits, and dream with the fevered. He is everywhere at home: in the novel, in the story, in the sketch, in the diary, in the epistle. Whatever form of composition hetouches, let once his genius be mature, and it turns to gold under his hands. On reading through his ten volumes you leave him with the feeling that you have just emerged from the virgin forests of South America; your head is full of monkeys frolicking about, with an occasional cocoanut shot at you, your head is full of the birds with their variegated plumage, of the fragrance of the flowers, of the dusk about you, and of the primeval stillness of the forest. And the collective impression of the writer, the man, left upon you is that of some invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinionby befriending an obnoxious exile, now he shrinks before it by disclaiming almost his acquaintance. Between the contending parties, poor Turgenef shared the fate of the child of the women who didnotcome to King Solomon for advice in their dispute about its mother. The poor child was pulled by each until disfigured for life. So Turgenef between the different parties, each claiming him as its own, remained homeless, almost friendless, to the end of his days, belonging to none; and though surrounded by all manner of society and companionship which fame, wealth, and position could give, he was yet at bottom solitary, for he went through the world a man who was misunderstood.
2. His position in letters is therefore anomalous. Russians blame him, but read him; and Americans praise him, and read him not. Englishmen quote him, Frenchmen write essays on him, and Germans write books about him; but all agree in wondering at him, all agree in not comprehending him. And yet Turgenef's life and the purpose of his books is plain enough to him that comes to viewhim with eyes as yet uncovered by partisan glasses. Turgenef the realist, Turgenef the idealist, is enigmatic enough; but once understood that Turgenef was the literary warrior against what was to him a mortal enemy, and his whole life and all his important works at once become explicable, consistent.
3. For man is something more than the mere sum of his abilities. Behind all the forces of the man, whether of body or of mind, there stands the soul, which uses them for purposes of its own, be they for better or for worse. And of these there is always one which in time becomes the absorbent of all its life, the essence of all its being; and such purpose is soon found in the life of every man who lives, and not merely exists; such purpose is soon found in the mightiest as well as in the frailest, in the loftiest as well as in the lowest. And till such purpose is understood, the life of the man is to beholders what the flower is to the eye when looked at through a microscope,—an expanse of mere tissue, rough, formless, confusing; but such purpose once understood, the soul is transformedto the beholder as if made of glass, transparent, uniform, simple.
4. Such purpose runs like a woof through the whole being of Turgenef. He is a hunter, he is a clubman, he is a philanthropist, he is an artist; but he is first of all a warrior, because he is first of all a lover of his country, and a hater of what oppresses it. He does indeed much else besides fighting for the emancipation of the land of his birth; but he does it in the same spirit in which sensible folk go to dinners not for the sake of eating, to receptions not for the sake of being received, and wear kid gloves in summer not for the sake of keeping the hands warm; these things, meaningless in themselves, are only incidentals in the life of the spirit, which alone can be said to have any meaning.
5. Turgenef, then, is the fighter. This accounts for what is otherwise a strange phenomenon in Turgenef's art. In his “Memoirs of a Sportsman,” in which he first aimed his blows consciously against serfdom, his muse busies itself not with life normal, but with life abnormal; not with every-day characters,but with such as are seen rarely; not with frequented places, but with unfrequented places. The “Memoirs of a Sportsman” is a collection of sketches which form a sort of variety museum of all manner of bizarre and even grotesque figures. Critics naturally marvelled at this; and as in the days of old, men explained the effects of morphine by saying that it contained the soporific principle, and the action of the pump by nature's abhorring a vacuum, so critics explained this fact, so strange in the healthy, clear-eyed, measure-loving Turgenef, by saying that he had a natural fondness for the fantastic and the strange. In truth, however, the choice of his subjects was part of his very art as a warrior. He wished to strike, to rouse; and here the extraordinary is ever more effective than the ordinary. It was the same design which made the otherwise generous, tender Wendell Phillips adopt a personal mode of warfare in his struggle against slavery with a bitterness almost Mephistophelian. And the same purpose made Turgenef, against the dictates of his muse, choose strange characters for hissketches. Both Phillips and Turgenef here sacrificed their feelings to their cause: the one sacrificed to his purpose even his love for his fellow-men; the other, even his love for his art.
6. One other strange fact in the art of Turgenef is explained by this fighting essence of his being. There is no growth, development, visible in Turgenef. He lived to what is for Russian men of letters an advanced age: he died when over sixty years old; yet, beginning with his first great work of art, “Rudin,” and ending with his last great work of art, “Virgin Soil,” through all his masterpieces, he remains the same. His six great novels, “Rudin,” “A Nest of Noblemen,” “On the Eve,” “Fathers and Sons,” “Smoke,” and “Virgin Soil,” form indeed an ascending scale, but not as works of art; as such, they are all on the same highest plane. And it would be difficult to find any canon of art according to which one could be placed above the other. Only when viewed as different modes of warfare, do they represent the different stages of his soul's life; but thisonly in so far as they reflect at the same time the state of the enemy's forces, against whom he found it necessary to re-equip himself from time to time. As an artist, then, Turgenef is not progressive; when his art comes to him, it comes like Minerva from Jupiter's head,—fully made, fully armed; and had it even come undeveloped, it would have had, in his case, to remain thus. For growth, development, needs time, needs leisure, needs reflection, needs rest; and of all this, on the field of battle, there is none to be had. Onward or backward, conquer or perish, but stand still on the field of battle thou must not. And while it was not given to Turgenef to conquer, neither was it given to the enemy to conquer him. Turgenef, therefore, as he lived a fighter, so he died a fighter.
7. Turgenef, then, had a life-long enemy; this enemy was Russian autocracy.
8. Born in 1818, in the same year with the autocrat of Russia, who afterwards dreaded him as hisbête noir, he already in his childhood had the opportunity to learn the weight of the iron hand of Nicolas. Scarcely washe seven years old when the news came to his father's household that the family name so dear to them, and hitherto a synonym of honor both in and out of Russia, had been disgraced; that Nicolai Turgenef, one of the most faithful servants of the country under Alexander I., the younger of the two celebrated brothers, and a near relative of Ivan, had been sentenced to Siberian hard labor for life,—sentenced under circumstances which could not but shock the sense of justice not only of the trustful boy, but also of those whom maturer age had accustomed to the methods of the government. Nicolai Turgenef was condemned as one of the Decembrists, and the days of the youth of Ivan were the days when the Decembrists were looked up to as the first martyrs of Russian liberty. Pushkin, the friend of the leaders of the insurrection, and the singer of the “Ode to Liberty,” was then worshipped by the youth of Russia as poet was worshipped never before; to be related to the Decembrists was therefore a privilege, and to oppose autocracy in thought at least thus became a kind of familypride. Moreover, contrary to most Russian aristocrats, Sergei Turgenef conducted the early education of his gifted son himself; and the son of the conscientious father, when taken out into the world, could not but feel the discord between the peaceful life, rigid conduct, and high ideals of his home on the one hand, and the gloomy struggle for existence, lax morals of the officials, and the low standards of the world about him on the other. When Turgenef therefore was introduced into society, he was already saturated with revolutionary ideas, and it was not long before he found the atmosphere of his native land stifling; and already, at the age of nineteen, he had to face the question whether to stay and endure, or—to flee. The boy of nineteen cannot endure; go then from Russia he must, but go—whither? Fortunately, just beyond the western border there lay a country which had already proved the promised land of others equally defiant with Turgenef. Germany already harbored Stankevitch, Granofsky, Katkof, and Bakunin. The youth of Russia of those days had metaphoricallycried to the Germans what a thousand years before them the Slavs had cried literally to the Varangians: “Our land is wide, and overflowing with abundance; but of order in it there is none. Come ye, therefore; and rule over us, and restore order among us!” Germany thus became the land of milk and honey for the Russians hungry in spirit. Whatever had any ambition looked to a visit to Germany with the same longing with which a Mohammedan looks to the shrines of Mecca.
9. Berlin was the first halting-station of the pilgrims; Böck was lecturing there on Greek literature, Zumpt on Roman antiquities, and Werder was expounding the philosophy of the man who boasted or complained of being understood by only one man, and that one misunderstood him. To these masters in the education of hair-splitting flocked almost all who became celebrated afterwards in Russia's public life, and even the government was sending students to Berlin at public expense. To these masters Turgenef also went, hearing Greek literature and Roman antiquitiesby day, and committing to memory the elements of Greek and Latin grammar by night. For in the Russian university, where Turgenef had hitherto spent two years, the professors were appointed not because of their knowledge of Latin and Greek, but because of their knowledge of military tactics.
10. When after two years Turgenef returned to his native land, he brought back with him, indeed, a high knowledge of Latin grammar, but a total ignorance of the highest aims of life. He brought back with him a religious scepticism, and a metaphysical pessimism, which colored henceforth his whole life, and therefore his artistic works. For those were the days when men yet believed that the great problems of the soul in its relation to the gods and to men could be solved not so much by living and by doing, as by disputing and by talking; those were the days when the philosopher's stone, turning all things into gold, was sought not in a rule for the conduct of life, such as “Love thy neighbor,” or “Do unto others,” but rather in the barren, egg-dancing, acrobatically-balancedformula, “What is, is right.” Those were the days when Hegel was supreme in philosophy because of his obscurity, as Browning is now supreme in poetry because of his; the shrivelled, evaporated, dead grain of wheat was prized all the more because it had been searched out with painful toil from the heap of chaff. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of the deep study of Browning is an intimate knowledge of the use of English particles; and the fruit of the devoted study of Hegel was an intimate knowledge of metaphysical verbiage: being, substance, essence, and absolute. But of life-giving nourishment there was none to be had. The barrenness of all this, Turgenef indeed soon did perceive, but when the disenchantment came, his blood was already poisoned; his very being was eaten into by doubt, and almost to the very end of his days Turgenef remained a fatalistic sceptic, a godless pessimist; not till his old age did he espy the promised land. It was only when he witnessed with his own eyes the boundless self-sacrifice of the revolutionists, when the oldman was moved by the heroism of the young Sophie Bardine even to the kissing of the very sheet upon which the girl's burning words to her judges were printed,—then, indeed, he regained his faith. He now hoped for his country, and stood even ready to become the head of the revolutionary movement in Russia; but for his artistic career all this came too late. In fact, his faith in God he never regained, though his hope for man did come back at last in his old age with the glow of his younger days.
11. This fundamental philosophic scepticism which had poisoned Turgenef's mind throughout the best years of his life accounts for a striking change which in time took place in the method of his art. Hitherto his art had been photographic of individuals. His “Memoirs of a Sportsman” is a gallery, not of ideals, not of types, but of actual men,—a gallery put on exhibition for the same end for which the rogues' gallery is exposed at the police headquarters. It is a means towards the welfare of the country. But after that book, when the scepticism had become partof his being, his method changes. For he now becomes convinced that the misrule of Russia is not so much due to the government as to the people themselves; that existence is in itself evil; that salvation, therefore, if it can come at all, must come not from without, but from within; that reform, therefore, was needed not so much for the institution, as for the men themselves. And to him men are diseased. He no longer therefore paints individual men, but henceforth he paints types; just as the physician first studies the disease not as affecting this patient or that, but as likely to affect all men, every man.
12. For much of this scepticism before life and irreverence before God Turgenef had to thank the paternal government of his fatherland. There are indeed those to whom sorrow comes like a messenger from the skies above, and lifts them heavenward on its wings. Turgenef alas! was not one of these. His was one of those souls whom sorrow deprives not only of the joys of the present, but also of the hopes of the future; and the government saw to it that of sorrows poor Turgenefhave enough. Homelessness is an affliction to all sons of Adam, but to none is the sorrow of exile so intense as to the Russian. And to exile Turgenef was soon driven. Hid under glowing pictures of nature and fascinating figures of men, the real meaning of the “Memoirs of a Sportsman,” while they appeared in detached sketches, eluded readily enough the Argus-eyed censor. But when these sketches were gathered into a living book, then whatever had eye could behold, and whatever had ear could hear, their heavenly message. The book therefore creates a sensation, the censor is astir, hurried consultation takes place, his Majesty himself is roused; but all this too late; the living book can no longer be strangled. The government saw that the monster was hydra-headed, and resolved to let it alone rather than by cutting one of its heads to rouse twenty in its stead. The book then was spared, but the writer was henceforth doomed; and the occasion for the final blow is soon enough at hand. The great Gogol had at last departed. The enthusiastic Turgenef writes a letter aboutthe dead master, and calls him a great man. “In my land only he is great with whom I speak, and only while I am speaking with him,” had said Paul the father; and Nicolas proved a worthy son. “In Russia there shall be no great men,” saith the Tsar; and Turgenef is arrested. High-stationed dame indeed intercedes for the gifted culprit. “But remember, madame,” she is told, “he called Gogol a great man.” “Ah,” high-stationed protectress replies, “I knew not that he committedthatcrime!” Which crime, accordingly, Turgenef expiates with one month's imprisonment in the dungeon, and two years' banishment to his estates. Only when the heir to the throne himself appeased his enraged sire was Turgenef allowed to go in peace. Once master over himself again, Turgenef hesitated no longer. He loved, indeed, his country much, but he loved freedom more; and like a bird fresh from the cage away flew Turgenef beyond the sea. The migrating bird returns, indeed, in the spring; but for Turgenef there was no longer any spring on Russian soil, and once abroad, he became an exile for life.
13. I have said that the heroes of his six great novels are not photographs, but types. I venture to say that neither Turgenef himself nor any other Russian ever knewaBazarof,aPaul Kirsanof,aRudin,aNezhdanof. But as in the generic image of Francis Galton the traits of all the individuals are found whose faces entered into the production of the image, so in the traits of Turgenef's types every one can recognize some one ofhisacquaintance. And such is the life which the master breathes into his creations, that they become not only possible to the reader, but they actually gain flesh and blood in his very presence.
14. And of these types, Turgenef, in harmony with the advance of his own warfare, has furnished a progressive series. Accordingly the earliest depicted under the impression of profound despair is the type of the superfluous man,—the man, who not onlydoesnothing, butcando nothing, struggle he never so hard. And the superfluous man not onlyisimpotent, but heknowshis impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body.This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, is the hero of phrases, the boaster; he promises marvels, he charms, he captivates; but it all ends in words, and Rudin perishes as needlessly as he lived needlessly. In “Fathers and Sons,” however, Bazarof is no longer a talker; he already rises to indignation and rebellion; helives outhis spirit, and stubbornly resists society, religion, institutions. From Bazarof Turgenef ascends still higher to Nezhdanof in “Virgin Soil,” whose aggressive attitude is already unmistakable. Nezhdanof no longer indulges in tirades against government, but he glumly organizes the revolutionary forces for actual battle. Lastly, Turgenef arrives at the highest type of the warrior, at Sophia Perofskya; and this his last type he paints in brief epilogue, just as his first type he had painted in brief prologue.What this his last type meant to Turgenef is best seen from the short prose-poem itself.
THE THRESHOLD.I seea huge building; in its front wall a narrow door opens wide; behind the door gloomy darkness. At the high threshold stands a girl, a Russian girl.Frost waves from that impenetrable darkness, and with the icy breeze comes forth from the depth of the building a slow, hollow voice.“O thou, eager to step across this threshold, knowest thou what awaits thee?”“I know,” answers the girl.“Cold, hunger, hatred, ridicule, scorn, insolence, prison, illness, death itself!”“I know it.”“Complete isolation, loneliness.”“I know it.… But I am ready. I shall endure all the sorrows, all the blows.”“Not only at the hands of your enemies, but also at the hands of your family and friends.”“Yes, even at the hands of these.”“'Tis well.… Are you ready for the sacrifice?”“Yes.”“For nameless sacrifice? Thou shalt perish; and not one, not one even shall know whose memory to honor.”“I need no gratitude nor pity; I need no name.”“And art thou ready even for—crime?”The girl dropped her head.“Yes, even for crime am I ready.”The voice renewed not its questionings forthwith.“Knowest thou,” spake the voice for the last time, “that thou mayest be disenchanted in thy ideals, that thou yet mayest come to see that thou wert misguided, and that thy young life has been wasted in vain?”“This also I know, and yet I am ready to enter.”“Enter, then.”The girl stepped over the threshold, and the heavy curtain dropped behind her. “Fool!” some one muttered behind her. “Saint!” came from somewhere in reply.
THE THRESHOLD.
I seea huge building; in its front wall a narrow door opens wide; behind the door gloomy darkness. At the high threshold stands a girl, a Russian girl.
Frost waves from that impenetrable darkness, and with the icy breeze comes forth from the depth of the building a slow, hollow voice.
“O thou, eager to step across this threshold, knowest thou what awaits thee?”
“I know,” answers the girl.
“Cold, hunger, hatred, ridicule, scorn, insolence, prison, illness, death itself!”
“I know it.”
“Complete isolation, loneliness.”
“I know it.… But I am ready. I shall endure all the sorrows, all the blows.”
“Not only at the hands of your enemies, but also at the hands of your family and friends.”
“Yes, even at the hands of these.”
“'Tis well.… Are you ready for the sacrifice?”
“Yes.”
“For nameless sacrifice? Thou shalt perish; and not one, not one even shall know whose memory to honor.”
“I need no gratitude nor pity; I need no name.”
“And art thou ready even for—crime?”
The girl dropped her head.
“Yes, even for crime am I ready.”
The voice renewed not its questionings forthwith.
“Knowest thou,” spake the voice for the last time, “that thou mayest be disenchanted in thy ideals, that thou yet mayest come to see that thou wert misguided, and that thy young life has been wasted in vain?”
“This also I know, and yet I am ready to enter.”
“Enter, then.”
The girl stepped over the threshold, and the heavy curtain dropped behind her. “Fool!” some one muttered behind her. “Saint!” came from somewhere in reply.
15. These, then, were the two leading traits of this man Turgenef. He had the fighting temperament of the warrior in his heart, and the doubting temperament of the philosopher in his head: to the first he owed the choice of his road; to the second, the manner of traversing it. His six great works of art areall tragedies. Rudin dies a needless death on a barricade; Insarof dies before he even reaches the land he is to liberate; Bazarof dies from accidental blood-poisoning and Nezhdanof dies by his own hand. Here again critics are at hand with an explanation which does not explain. Turgenef, the artist, the poet, the creator, does not know, they say, how to dispose of his heroes at the end of his stories, and he therefore kills them off. The truth, however, is that the sceptic, pessimistic Turgenef could not as an artist faithful to his belief do aught else with his heroes than to let them perish. For to him cruel fate, merciless destiny, was not mere figure of speech, but reality of realities. To Turgenef, life was at bottom a tragedy; and whatever the auspices under which he sent forth his heroes, he felt that sooner or later they must become victims of blind fate, brute force, of the relentlessly grinding, crushing mill of the gods.
16. I have thus attempted to give you an interpretation of Turgenef which perhaps explains not only his life but also the peculiardirection of his works; not only the vices of his intellect, but also the virtues of his art.
17. For the first great virtue of Turgenef's art is his matchless sense of form, as of a builder, a constructor, an architect. As works of architecture, of design, with porch and balcony, and central body, and roof, all in harmonious proportion, his six novels are unapproachable. There is a perfection of form in them which puts to shame the hopelessly groping attempts at beauty of harmonious form of even the greatest of English men of letters. As a work of architecture, for instance, “Virgin Soil” bears the same relation to the “Mill on the Floss” that the Capitol at Washington bears to the Capitol at Albany. The one is a rounded-out thing of beauty, the other an angular monstrosity. Walter Scott in England, and Mr. Howells in America, are the only English writers of fiction who possess that sense of form which makes Turgenef's art consummate; unfortunately, Walter Scott has long since been discarded as a literary model, and Mr. Howells is not yet even accepted.
18. And the second great virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with that required by the English standard of three volumes for every novel. For what is to English and American society the greatest of social virtues was to Turgenef the greatest of artistic vices. As an artist, Turgenef detested above all cleverness,—that accomplishment which possesses to perfection the art of smuggling in a whole cartload of chaff under the blinding glare of a single phosphorescent thoughtlet; that cleverness which like all phosphorescent glows can only change into a sickly paleness at the slightest approach of God's true sunlight, of the soul's true force. Of this virtue of compactness his works offerexamples on almost every page; but nowhere are its flowers strewn in such abundance as in his “Diary of a Superfluous Man.”
19. This work, though only covering some sixty pages, written as it was at the age of thirty-two, when Turgenef stood as yet at the threshold of his artistic career, is in fact, as it were, an epitome of all Turgenef's forces as an artist. While in power of impression it is the peer of Tolstoy's “Ivan Ilyitsh,” with which it has a striking family resemblance, it surpasses Tolstoy's sketch in the wealth of delicately shaded gems of workmanship, which glow throughout the worklet. (1) In the small provincial town, for instance, the lion from St. Petersburg, Prince N., captures the hearts of all. A ball is given in his honor, and the prince, says Turgenef, “was encircled by the host, yes, encircled as England is encircled by the sea.” My ball-giving, my lion-hunting friend,thouknowest the singular felicity of that one word here,—encircled! (2) The superfluous man's beloved is at last seduced by the lionized prince, and she becomes the talk of the town. A good-naturedlieutenant, now first introduced by Turgenef, calls on the wretched man to console him, and the unhappy lover writes in his Diary: “I feared lest he should mention Liza. But my good lieutenant was not a gossip, and, moreover, he despised all women, calling them, God knows why, salad.” This is all the description Turgenef devotes to this lieutenant; but this making him despise women under the appellation of half-sour, half-sweet conglomerate of egg-and-vegetable salad, describes the lieutenant in two lines more faithfully than pages of scientific, realistic photography. (3) Before the ruin of poor Liza becomes known, and while the prince, her seducer, is still on the height of lionization, he is challenged to a duel by Liza's faithful lover. The superfluous man wounds the prince's cheek; the prince, who deems his rival unworthy of even a shot, retaliates by firing into the air. Superfluous man is of course crushed, annihilated, and he describes his feelings thus:“Evidently this man was bound to crush me; with this magnanimity of his he slammed me in, just as the lid of the coffin is slammed down over the corpse.” (4) You think, then, that the sufferings of the despairing lover as he sees his beloved going to ruin, into the arms of the seducer, are indescribable? But not to Turgenef. Says again the superfluous man in his Diary: “When our sorrows reach a phase in which they force our whole inside to quake and to squeak like an overloaded cart, then they cease to be ridiculous.” Verily, only those who have been shaken to the very depths of their being can understand the marvellous fidelity of this image, the soul quaking and squeaking like an overloaded cart,—all the more faithful because of its very homeliness. Do not wonder, therefore, when the last, intensest grief, the consciousness of being crushed by his rival, finds in his Diary the following expression: (5) “And so I suffered,” says the superfluous man, “like a dog whose hind parts had been crushed in by the cart-wheel as it passed over him.” A more powerful description of agony, methinks, is not found even in Gogol's laughter through tears.
20. And the third great virtue of Turgenef's art is his love of Nature; and here I know not where to look for the like of him, unless to another great master of Russian letters,—to Tolstoy. For Gogol is indeed also a painter, but only a landscape-painter, while Turgenef makes you feel even the breeze of a summer eve.
21. So thrilled is his being with the love of Nature, that all her moods find a ready response in his sensitive soul. The joy of the sunshine, the melancholy of the sky shut down by huge cloud, the grandeur of the thunder, the quiver of the lightning, the glow of the dawn, the babble of the brook, and even the waving of the grass-blade,—all these he reproduces with the fidelity of one whoreveresNature. Turgenef has thus at least one element of the highest religiousness,—reverence towards the powers of Nature superior to man; a reverence the possession of which he himself would perhaps have been the first to deny, since consciously he was an irreverent agnostic. But his soul was wiser than his logic; and however dead his head might declarethe universe to be, his hand painted it as if alive. This, for instance, is how he describes a storm:—
“Meanwhile, along with the evening was approaching a thunder-storm. Already ever since noon the air had been close, and from the distance there was coming a low grumbling. But now the broad cloud that had long been resting like a layer of lead on the very edge of the horizon began to grow, and to be visible from behind the trees: the stifling atmosphere began to tremble more visibly, shaken stronger and stronger by the approaching thunder; the wind rose, howled abruptly through the trees, became still, howled again protractedly, and now it whistled. A sombre darkness ran over the ground, chasing swiftly away the last glimmer of the dawn; the thick clouds breaking to pieces suddenly began to float, and drove through the sky; now, a slight shower began to sprinkle, the lightning flared up with a red flame, and the thunder growled angrily and heavily.”
“Meanwhile, along with the evening was approaching a thunder-storm. Already ever since noon the air had been close, and from the distance there was coming a low grumbling. But now the broad cloud that had long been resting like a layer of lead on the very edge of the horizon began to grow, and to be visible from behind the trees: the stifling atmosphere began to tremble more visibly, shaken stronger and stronger by the approaching thunder; the wind rose, howled abruptly through the trees, became still, howled again protractedly, and now it whistled. A sombre darkness ran over the ground, chasing swiftly away the last glimmer of the dawn; the thick clouds breaking to pieces suddenly began to float, and drove through the sky; now, a slight shower began to sprinkle, the lightning flared up with a red flame, and the thunder growled angrily and heavily.”
22. Observe here the felicity of the metaphor: the cloud rests, the air trembles and is soon shaken, the darknessrunsover the ground, and the thunder growls in anger.Only the eye which sees at bottom life in Nature's forces could see them in such vivifying images.
23. Lastly, the fourth great virtue of Turgenef's art is his intense power of sympathy.
24. In the universality of his sympathies he is equalled again only by Tolstoy. Like him he can depict the feelings of a dog, of a bird, with a self-attesting fidelity, as if his nature were at one with theirs; and the one child of creation which man has repeatedly been declared unable to paint truthfully, namely, woman, Turgenef has painted with a grace and faithfulness unapproached even by George Eliot or by George Sand. For Turgenef loved woman as no woman could love her, and his faith in her was unbounded. Hence, when in his “On the Eve” he wishes to give expression to his despair over themenof Russia, so that he has to seek the ideal of a patriot not in a Russian, but in a Bulgarian, he still rests the hope of the country on its women; and Helen, Turgenef's noblest conception among women, as Insarof is among men, is not like him a foreigner, but a Russian.And this is how Turgenef paints the noblest moment in the life of the noblest of his women.
25. The poor, prospectless foreigner Insarof discovers that he loves the rich, high-stationed Helen. He does not know that he is loved in return, and he decides to depart without taking even leave of her. They meet, however, unexpectedly.
“‘You come from our house, don't you?’ Helen asked.“‘No, … not from your house.’“‘No?’ repeated Helen, and tried to smile. ‘And is it thus you keep your promise? I have been expecting you all the morning.’“‘Helen Nikolayevna, I promised nothing yesterday.’“Helen tried to smile again, and passed her hand across her face. Both face and hand were very pale. ‘You intended, then, to depart without taking leave of us?’“‘Yes,’ he muttered, almost fiercely.“‘How, after our acquaintance, after our talks, after all … So, if I had not then met you here accidentally (her voice began to ring, and she stopped for a moment) … you would have gone off, and would not have even shaken my hand in parting; gone off without regret?’“Insarof turned away. ‘Helen Nikolayevna, please don't speak thus. I am, as it is, already not cheerful. Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort. If you knew …’“‘I don't wish to know why you depart,’ Helen interrupted him, frightened. ‘This is evidently necessary. We must evidently part. You would not grieve your friends without cause. But do friends part thus? We are of course friends, are not we?’“‘No,’ said Insarof.“‘How?’ muttered Helen, and her cheeks colored slightly.“‘Why, that is exactly why I go away, because we are not friends. Don't oblige me to say what I do not wish to tell, what I shall not tell.’“‘Formerly you used to be frank with me,’ Helen spoke up with a slight reproach. ‘Do you remember?’“‘Then I could be frank; then I had nothing to hide. But now—’“‘But now?’ asked Helen.“‘But now … But now I must go. Good-by!’“Had Insarof at this moment raised his eyes to Helen, he would have seen that her whole face shone,—shone the more, the more his face grew gloomy and dark; but his eyes were stubbornly fixed on the floor.“‘Well, good-by, Dimitry Nikanorovitch,’ she began. ‘But since we have met, give me now at least your hand.’“Insarof started to give her his hand. ‘No, I cannot even do that,’ he said, and again turned away.“‘You cannot?’“‘I cannot. Good-by!’ And he started to go out.“‘Just wait a moment,’ she said. ‘It seems you are afraid of me. Now, I am braver than you,’ she added, with a sudden slight tremor along her whole frame. ‘I can tell you … do you wish me to tell … why you found me here? Do you know where I was going?’“Insarof looked in surprise at Helen.“‘I was going to your house.’“‘To my house?’“Helen covered her face. ‘You wished to compel me to say that I love you,’ she whispered—‘there, I have said it.’“‘Helen!’ exclaimed Insarof.“She took his hands, looked at him, and fell upon his breast.“He embraced her firmly, and remained silent. There was no need of telling her that he loved her. From his one exclamation, from this instantaneous transformation of the whole man, from the manner in which rose and fell that breast to which she clung so trustfully, from themanner in which the tips of his fingers touched her hair, Helen could see that she was loved. He was silent, but she needed no words. ‘He is here, he loves; what more is there needed?’ The calm of blessedness, the quiet of the undisturbed haven, of the attained goal, that heavenly calm which lends a meaning and a beauty to death itself, filled her whole being with a godly wave. She wished nothing, because she possessed everything. ‘O my brother, my friend, my darling!’ her lips whispered; and she herself knew not whose heart it was, his or hers, which was so sweetly beating and melting away in her breast.“But he stood motionless, enclosing in his firm embrace the young life which had just given itself entire unto him; he felt on his breast this new, priceless burden; a feeling of tenderness, a feeling of gratitude inexpressible, shivered into dust his hard soul, and tears, hitherto unknown to him, came to his eyes.“But she wept not; she only kept repeating: ‘O my friend! O my brother!’“‘Then you will go with me everywhere,’ he said to her, some fifteen minutes later, as before enclosing and supporting her in his embrace.“‘Everywhere, to the end of the earth; wherever you are, there shall I be.’“‘And you are sure you do not deceive yourself?You know your parents will never consent to our marriage?’“‘I am not deceiving myself; I know it.’“‘You know I am poor, almost a beggar?’“‘I know it.’“‘That I am not a Russian, that I am fated to live beyond Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country and your family?’“‘I know it, I know it.’“‘You know also that I have devoted my life to a difficult, thankless task; that I … that we shall have to expose ourselves not only to dangers, but to deprivation, and to degradation perhaps?’“‘Iknow, I know it all … but I love you.’“‘That you will have to give up all your habits; that there alone, among strangers, you will perhaps have to toil?’“She put her hands on his lips. ‘I love you, darling.’“He began to kiss warmly her narrow, rosy hand. Helen did not take her hand from his lips, and with a kind of childish joy, with laughing curiosity, she watched him covering with kisses now her hand, now her fingers.“Suddenly she blushed, and hid her face on his breast.“He gently raised up her head and looked firmly into her eyes.“‘So God be with you,’ he said; ‘be thou my wife both before men and before God.’”
“‘You come from our house, don't you?’ Helen asked.
“‘No, … not from your house.’
“‘No?’ repeated Helen, and tried to smile. ‘And is it thus you keep your promise? I have been expecting you all the morning.’
“‘Helen Nikolayevna, I promised nothing yesterday.’
“Helen tried to smile again, and passed her hand across her face. Both face and hand were very pale. ‘You intended, then, to depart without taking leave of us?’
“‘Yes,’ he muttered, almost fiercely.
“‘How, after our acquaintance, after our talks, after all … So, if I had not then met you here accidentally (her voice began to ring, and she stopped for a moment) … you would have gone off, and would not have even shaken my hand in parting; gone off without regret?’
“Insarof turned away. ‘Helen Nikolayevna, please don't speak thus. I am, as it is, already not cheerful. Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort. If you knew …’
“‘I don't wish to know why you depart,’ Helen interrupted him, frightened. ‘This is evidently necessary. We must evidently part. You would not grieve your friends without cause. But do friends part thus? We are of course friends, are not we?’
“‘No,’ said Insarof.
“‘How?’ muttered Helen, and her cheeks colored slightly.
“‘Why, that is exactly why I go away, because we are not friends. Don't oblige me to say what I do not wish to tell, what I shall not tell.’
“‘Formerly you used to be frank with me,’ Helen spoke up with a slight reproach. ‘Do you remember?’
“‘Then I could be frank; then I had nothing to hide. But now—’
“‘But now?’ asked Helen.
“‘But now … But now I must go. Good-by!’
“Had Insarof at this moment raised his eyes to Helen, he would have seen that her whole face shone,—shone the more, the more his face grew gloomy and dark; but his eyes were stubbornly fixed on the floor.
“‘Well, good-by, Dimitry Nikanorovitch,’ she began. ‘But since we have met, give me now at least your hand.’
“Insarof started to give her his hand. ‘No, I cannot even do that,’ he said, and again turned away.
“‘You cannot?’
“‘I cannot. Good-by!’ And he started to go out.
“‘Just wait a moment,’ she said. ‘It seems you are afraid of me. Now, I am braver than you,’ she added, with a sudden slight tremor along her whole frame. ‘I can tell you … do you wish me to tell … why you found me here? Do you know where I was going?’
“Insarof looked in surprise at Helen.
“‘I was going to your house.’
“‘To my house?’
“Helen covered her face. ‘You wished to compel me to say that I love you,’ she whispered—‘there, I have said it.’
“‘Helen!’ exclaimed Insarof.
“She took his hands, looked at him, and fell upon his breast.
“He embraced her firmly, and remained silent. There was no need of telling her that he loved her. From his one exclamation, from this instantaneous transformation of the whole man, from the manner in which rose and fell that breast to which she clung so trustfully, from themanner in which the tips of his fingers touched her hair, Helen could see that she was loved. He was silent, but she needed no words. ‘He is here, he loves; what more is there needed?’ The calm of blessedness, the quiet of the undisturbed haven, of the attained goal, that heavenly calm which lends a meaning and a beauty to death itself, filled her whole being with a godly wave. She wished nothing, because she possessed everything. ‘O my brother, my friend, my darling!’ her lips whispered; and she herself knew not whose heart it was, his or hers, which was so sweetly beating and melting away in her breast.
“But he stood motionless, enclosing in his firm embrace the young life which had just given itself entire unto him; he felt on his breast this new, priceless burden; a feeling of tenderness, a feeling of gratitude inexpressible, shivered into dust his hard soul, and tears, hitherto unknown to him, came to his eyes.
“But she wept not; she only kept repeating: ‘O my friend! O my brother!’
“‘Then you will go with me everywhere,’ he said to her, some fifteen minutes later, as before enclosing and supporting her in his embrace.
“‘Everywhere, to the end of the earth; wherever you are, there shall I be.’
“‘And you are sure you do not deceive yourself?You know your parents will never consent to our marriage?’
“‘I am not deceiving myself; I know it.’
“‘You know I am poor, almost a beggar?’
“‘I know it.’
“‘That I am not a Russian, that I am fated to live beyond Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country and your family?’
“‘I know it, I know it.’
“‘You know also that I have devoted my life to a difficult, thankless task; that I … that we shall have to expose ourselves not only to dangers, but to deprivation, and to degradation perhaps?’
“‘Iknow, I know it all … but I love you.’
“‘That you will have to give up all your habits; that there alone, among strangers, you will perhaps have to toil?’
“She put her hands on his lips. ‘I love you, darling.’
“He began to kiss warmly her narrow, rosy hand. Helen did not take her hand from his lips, and with a kind of childish joy, with laughing curiosity, she watched him covering with kisses now her hand, now her fingers.
“Suddenly she blushed, and hid her face on his breast.
“He gently raised up her head and looked firmly into her eyes.
“‘So God be with you,’ he said; ‘be thou my wife both before men and before God.’”
26. These, then, were the numerous great virtues of Turgenef; and they have made him the most enjoyable of artists. But his one great vice, the vice of doubt, the vice of hopelessness, has made him, as a nourisher of the spirit, among the least profitable as a writer.
27. For, O my friends, it cannot be stated too often that whatever puts new strength into the spirit is from the great God, the Good; and whatever takes strength from the spirit is from the great Devil, the Evil. And the things that have ever proved the inexhaustible sources of strength to the soul have been not doubt and despair, but faith and hope,—faith that the destinies of men are guided by love even though guided through the agony of sorrow; faith that behind this appearance of discord and blind fate and brute force there is after all to be found the substance of harmony, of wise forethought, of tender love; hope, that however terrible the present, the future will yet be one of joy,one of peace. If reason with its logic can strengthen this faith, this hope, then welcome reason, blessed be reason; but if reason with its logic can only make me doubt the presence of wisdom, the presence of love, then begone reason, cursed be reason. Verily, by their fruits ye shall know them!
28. Turgenef therefore was incapable of creating a Levin, because he had not the faith which makes the Levins of Tolstoy possible. He was filled with the pessimistic woe oftheworld, believed at bottom that man, born in sorrow, must also live in sorrow. With the sublimity of a prophet, Turgenef cries: “From the inmost depths of the virgin forest, from the eternal depth of the waters, resounds the same cry of Nature to man: ‘I have naught to do with thee. I rule, but thou—look to thy life, O worm!’” While personally he indeed contributed what lay in his power to alleviate the present ills of men, he could do naught towards alleviating the future ills of men; for he could not inspire men with hope, since he had none himself. For hope comes from faith, and Turgenefwas devoid of faith. Turgenef, like another great master of fiction, George Eliot, was a veritable child of the immature age, not of science, of knowledge, but of nescience, of ignorance, of agnosticism; for it is only ignorance that doubts, and it is true science that believes.
29. I cannot therefore ask you to take leave with me of Turgenef without at least urging you to profit by this one fact in his life. Turgenef failed to reach the highest, the height of Tolstoy, because he failed to free himself from that alone which must forever trammel the soul. He failed to free himself from that fundamental distrust of God which is at bottom of all despair. You, too, my friends, have that distrust. O ye in society who dread the consequences of having one kind word to say, or even one glance of recognition to cast at a brother because forsooth he has not been properly introduced to you, are not ye doubting your own God in your breasts, which acts not in fear of your fellow-men, but in trust of them? And, O ye who refuse to help a begging brother for fearlest he prove an impostor, are not ye likewise at bottom doubting the God within you which acts through pity to a brother, even though hedodeceive? Turgenef fell short of the highest because he did not cast off the scepticism of his intellect. Are not ye, my friends, likewise in danger of falling short of the highest because you too do not cast off the scepticism of the heart?
LECTURE V.TOLSTOY THE ARTIST.
1.I havestated in the first lecture that the soul of man ever strives onward and upward; that its goal is the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, which consists in reverence before God above, and in love towards man here below. I have stated that of this journey of the soul heavenward, literature is the record; that the various phases of literary development are only so many mile-posts on the road; that after the voices of the singer, of the protester, of the warrior, are hushed, there must be heard what must remain forever the loftiest voice in letters,—the voice of the preacher, the prophet, the inspirer. And I have stated that just as Pushkin is the singer, Gogol the protester, and Turgenef thefighter, so is Tolstoy in Russian literature the preacher, the inspirer.
2. But just because he is the prophet, the uplifter, the proclaimer, Tolstoy is no longer themerelyRussian writer. Pushkin is theRussiansinger, Gogol is theRussianprotester, and Turgenef is theRussianfighter; but Tolstoy is not the inspirer of Russia alone, but of all mankind. Tolstoy has the least of the Russian in him, because he has the most of the man in him; he has the least of the son of the Slav in him, because he has the most of the Son of God in him. The voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of the nineteenth century, but of all centuries; the voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of one land, but of all lands; for the voice of Leo Tolstoy, in short, is the voice of God speaking through man.
3. For, O my friends, thereisa God in heaven, even though the voices of pessimism and agnosticism be raised never so high against him. There is a God who ruleth over the heavens and over the earth; and he is boundless with space, and everlasting withtime; and he is sublime with the sky, and he twinkleth with the star; and he smileth with the sun, and he beameth with the moon; and he floateth with the cloud, and he saileth with the wind; he flasheth with the lightning, and resoundeth with the thunder, he heaveth with the sea, and he dasheth with the surf; he floweth with the river, and he rusheth with the torrent; he babbleth with the brook, and he sparkleth with the dew-drop; he reposeth with the landscape, and he laugheth with the meadow; he waveth with the tree, and he quivereth with the leaf; he singeth with the bird, and he buzzeth with the bee; he roareth with the lion, and he pranceth with the steed; he crawleth with the worm, and he soareth with the eagle; he darteth with the porpoise, and he diveth with the fish; he dwelleth with the loving, and he pleadeth with the hating; he shineth with the merciful, and he aspireth with the prayerful. He is ever nigh unto men,—he, the Prince of Light!
4. And I say unto ye that the Lord God hath not hid himself from the hearts of men;he that spake unto Moses and the prophets, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake unto Jesus and the Apostles, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake to Mohammed and Luther, and through them,—he is still nigh. He recently spake through Carlyle and through Emerson, and their voices are not yet hushed. And he still speaketh, my friends, through Ruskin in England and through Tolstoy in Russia, as he ever shall speak through all earnest souls who love him with all their heart because they know him, who seek him with all their heart because they know him not. Think not therefore the Lord God hath ceased to speak unto men through men; verily, if men but see to it that there be enough inspired, God will see to it that there be enough inspirers.
5. And of these Heaven-sent inspirers, Tolstoy is the latest. But do not believe that in saying that he is Heaven-sent I attempt to explain aught. The highest is ever inexplicable, and it is the bane of modern science that it is ever ready to explain what cannotbe explained. Before the highest we can only stand dumb; and this has been the feeling of the greatest, because of the humblest, of spirits. The Greek painter, therefore, when about to depict the highest grief of a father, gives up in despair, and veils the father's face; and Meyer von Bremen's grandmother, when confronted with the question from the children whence came that sweet babe in her arms, can only reply, “The storks brought it;” and so I can say to you only, Tolstoy is sent unto men from Heaven.
6. I say he is Heaven-sent, because he came to proclaim not what is ephemeral and perishing, but what is permanent and everlasting. He came to proclaim not the latest theory of gravitation, of molecular vibration, of modes of heat and manners of cold, nor of struggle for existence, nor of supply and demand, nay, not even of scientific charity. He came to proclaim that which was as true in the days of Jesus as it is true in the days of Darwin,—that the life of man can have no meaning, unless when guided by obedience to God and love to man. Gravitation, struggle forexistence! The earth has been spinning round its parent for ages before man's brain-kin made the marvellous discovery that God's mysterious impulse which set the earth whirling through the abysses of space is explained in right scientific fashion by labelling it gravitation. This green earth has rolled on, this green earth will roll on, label or no label; and the mystery of God men knew not before gravitation, nor do they know it now with gravitation. Men have for ages been multiplying under the blessing of God, and loving one another, long before that marvellous discovery was made that man, sprung from a monkey, and bred in struggle for existence, is destined at last, under fine progress of species, to become brutalized with Malthusian law as a cannibal living on the flesh of his brother, with self-respect and scientific charity in most abundant supply and demand. Tolstoy came to proclaim not the new gospel of death, but the old gospel of life; not the new gospel of struggle for existence, but the old gospel of helpfulness for existence; not the new gospel of competition, but the oldgospel of brotherhood. Tolstoy came to proclaim the gospel of God, the gospel of man, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of Socrates, the gospel of Epictetus, of Aurelius, of Carlyle, of Emerson,—the gospel of reverence before God and love to man, which is indeed ever old, but which, alas! the sons of Darkness see to it that it remain forever new.
7. These, then, are the men among whom Tolstoy belongs: which of these the greater, which of these the less? My friends, when we arrive at these, we are no longer among the measurable planets, but among the immeasurable fixed stars. Sirius flashes indeed with greater splendor than Vega, and Vega than Arcturus, and Arcturus than Capella, and Capella flashes with greater splendor than Aldebaran; but who shall undertake to say which of these suns is the greater, which is the less? The difference of splendor is not in the stars themselves, but in our eyes. And at this our immeasurable distance from these souls who are nighest unto the throne of the Most High, it is not for me, the worm, as I stand before you, to presume to measurewhich is the greater, which is the less. Rather than spending our time in profitless weighing and measuring, let me beseech you to bow your heads in awe and gratitude, praising God for the mercy which sendeth now and then unto men the living voice, the helping voice.
8. Tolstoy, therefore, is one of those spirits whom I cannot approach with the dissecting-knife, as the critic does the author, in order to “account” for him. To do this, that total freedom from sentiment is required which was possessed by the enterprising reporter who on the death of a prominent citizen forthwith requested an interview with “corpse's uncle.” In an age when sentiment has become a byword of impotence, and the heart has become a mere force-pump for the blood; in an age when charity has to be put in swaddling-clothes lest it injure a brother by helping him; when the poor are preached to by their rich visiting friends, not to make a home for themselves when their love for a mate is born in the heart, but only when it is born in the purse,—in such an age that reporter's freedom from sentiment is indeed a most valuableacquisition; but I, alas! as yet possess it not! I shall therefore neither judge the preacher Tolstoy, nor measure him. I shall only point out to you to-day wherein he differs, as he must needs differ, from the rest of that noble band of the chosen messengers of God to which he belongs.
9. And the first striking difference is that Tolstoy is a consummate artist, a creator, in addition to the great preacher. For Marcus Aurelius is no artist. He is merely a speaker; he delivers his message in plain tongue, unadorned, often even unpolished. Epictetus, equally simple, equally direct with Marcus Aurelius, comes, however, already adorned with a certain humor which now and then sparkles through his serious pages. Ruskin brings with him quite a respectable load of artistic baggage; he brings an incisiveness, a sarcasm, often a piquancy with him, which makes him entertaining besides inspiring. Emerson and Carlyle bring with them much that, as artistic work; might, under more favorable auspices, have been worth saving for its own sake: the one brings a grace, a sportiveness,and a brilliancy which fascinates, the other a fervor, an imagination, a grim-humor, a lightning-flashing, which dazzles. But none of these live in letters because of their art. Were they to depend on this alone, they would quickly perish. They live because of the spirit which worketh through them; so that were you to take the Jeremiah out of Carlyle, the John the Baptist out of Ruskin, and the Solomon out of Emerson, you would deprive them of their literary life. Tolstoy, however, even though the preacher be gone from him, still remains a mighty power in letters because of his art. For not only are his works filled with the highest purpose,—they are also created with the highest art. And I cannot show you this difference any better than by quoting two passages, one from Carlyle, the other from Tolstoy, both treating of the soul's well-nigh noblest emotion,—Repentance.
“On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think, might know better.Who is called there ‘the man according to God's own heart’? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer, and ask, ‘Is this the man according to God's own heart?’ The sneer, I must say, seems to be but a shallow one.“What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man,repentancethe most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is ‘pure,’ as dead dry sand is pure.“David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore battled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that,—‘a succession of falls’? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his strugglebea faithful, unconquerable one; that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is.”
“On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think, might know better.Who is called there ‘the man according to God's own heart’? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer, and ask, ‘Is this the man according to God's own heart?’ The sneer, I must say, seems to be but a shallow one.
“What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man,repentancethe most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is ‘pure,’ as dead dry sand is pure.
“David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore battled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that,—‘a succession of falls’? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his strugglebea faithful, unconquerable one; that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is.”
10. Powerful as this passage is, I cannot help feeling that Tolstoy has treated the same subject more artistically than Carlyle, by embodying his lesson in objective shape, where Carlyle treats it subjectively. And now listen to Tolstoy:—
THE REPENTING SINNER.Therelived in the world a man for seventy years, and all his life he lived in sin. And this man fell ill, and still he did not repent. But when death was nigh, at the last hour, he began to weep, and said, “Lord, as thou hast forgiven the thief on the cross, so do thou forgive me!” He had scarcely spoken, and away flew his soul. And the sinner's soul began to love God, and, trusting his mercy, came to the gates of heaven.And the sinner began to knock, and to ask admission into the kingdom of heaven.And from behind the door he heard a voice: “Who is this knocking for admission into the gates of heaven, and what are the deeds this man in his lifetime has done?”And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and recounted all the sinful deeds of this man; and of good deeds he named none.And the voice from behind the door answered: “Sinners cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Get thee hence!”Said the sinner: “Lord, I hear thy voice, but I see not thy countenance and know not thy name.”And the voice gave in reply: “I am Peter the Apostle.”Said the sinner: “Have mercy upon me, Apostle Peter; remember the weakness of man, and the mercy of God. Was it not you who was a disciple of Christ, and was it not you who heard from his own lips his teaching, and saw the example of his life? And now remember, when he was weary and sad in spirit, and thrice asked thee not to slumber, but to pray, you slept, because your eyes were heavy, and thrice he found you sleeping. The same of me.“And remember likewise how thou hast promised to him not to renounce him until thy dying day, and yet thou didst renounce himthrice when they led him away. The same of me.“And remember likewise how crowed the cock, and thou hast gone forth and wept bitterly. The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”And the voice from behind the gates of heaven was hushed.And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admittance into the kingdom of heaven.And from behind the doors there was heard another voice which spake: “Who is this, and how has he lived on earth?”And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and repeated all the evil deeds of the sinner; and of the good deeds he named none.And the voice from behind the door called: “Get thee hence. Sinners such as thou cannot live with us in Paradise.”Said the sinner: “Lord, thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”And the voice said unto him: “I am David, the king and the prophet.” But the sinner despaired not, nor went he away from the gates of heaven, but spake as follows: “Have mercy upon me, King David, and think of the weakness of man and the mercy of God. God loved thee and raised thee up before men. Thinewas all,—a kingdom, and glory, and riches, and wives, and children; yet when thou didst espy from thy roof the wife of a poor man, sin betook thee, and thou hast taken the wife of Uriah, and himself hast thou slain by the sword of the Ammonites. Thou, a rich man, hast taken his last lamb from the poor man, and hast slain the owner himself. The same of me!“And think further how thou hast repented, and said: ‘I confess my guilt, and repent of my sin.’ The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”And the voice behind the door was hushed.And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admission into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the doors was heard a third voice which spake: “Who is this, and how hath he lived on earth?”And for the third time the voice of the accuser recounted the evil deeds of the man, but of the good he named none.And the voice from behind the door gave in answer: “Get thee hence! The kingdom of heaven not by a sinner can be entered.”And replied the sinner: “Thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”Answered the voice: “I am John, the beloved disciple of Christ.”And rejoiced the sinner, and spake:“Now verily shall I be let in. Peter and David shall admit me because they know the weakness of man, and the grace of God; but thou shalt admit me because thou hast much love. For hast thou not writ in thy book, O John, that God is Love, and that whosoever knoweth not Love, knoweth not God? Wert not thou he that spake in his old age unto men only this one word: ‘Brethren, love ye one another’? How then shalt thou now hate me and drive me hence? Either renounce thine own words, or learn to love me, and admit me into the kingdom of heaven.”And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced the repenting sinner, and admitted him into the kingdom of heaven.
THE REPENTING SINNER.
Therelived in the world a man for seventy years, and all his life he lived in sin. And this man fell ill, and still he did not repent. But when death was nigh, at the last hour, he began to weep, and said, “Lord, as thou hast forgiven the thief on the cross, so do thou forgive me!” He had scarcely spoken, and away flew his soul. And the sinner's soul began to love God, and, trusting his mercy, came to the gates of heaven.
And the sinner began to knock, and to ask admission into the kingdom of heaven.
And from behind the door he heard a voice: “Who is this knocking for admission into the gates of heaven, and what are the deeds this man in his lifetime has done?”
And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and recounted all the sinful deeds of this man; and of good deeds he named none.
And the voice from behind the door answered: “Sinners cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Get thee hence!”
Said the sinner: “Lord, I hear thy voice, but I see not thy countenance and know not thy name.”
And the voice gave in reply: “I am Peter the Apostle.”
Said the sinner: “Have mercy upon me, Apostle Peter; remember the weakness of man, and the mercy of God. Was it not you who was a disciple of Christ, and was it not you who heard from his own lips his teaching, and saw the example of his life? And now remember, when he was weary and sad in spirit, and thrice asked thee not to slumber, but to pray, you slept, because your eyes were heavy, and thrice he found you sleeping. The same of me.
“And remember likewise how thou hast promised to him not to renounce him until thy dying day, and yet thou didst renounce himthrice when they led him away. The same of me.
“And remember likewise how crowed the cock, and thou hast gone forth and wept bitterly. The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”
And the voice from behind the gates of heaven was hushed.
And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admittance into the kingdom of heaven.
And from behind the doors there was heard another voice which spake: “Who is this, and how has he lived on earth?”
And the voice of the accuser gave answer, and repeated all the evil deeds of the sinner; and of the good deeds he named none.
And the voice from behind the door called: “Get thee hence. Sinners such as thou cannot live with us in Paradise.”
Said the sinner: “Lord, thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”
And the voice said unto him: “I am David, the king and the prophet.” But the sinner despaired not, nor went he away from the gates of heaven, but spake as follows: “Have mercy upon me, King David, and think of the weakness of man and the mercy of God. God loved thee and raised thee up before men. Thinewas all,—a kingdom, and glory, and riches, and wives, and children; yet when thou didst espy from thy roof the wife of a poor man, sin betook thee, and thou hast taken the wife of Uriah, and himself hast thou slain by the sword of the Ammonites. Thou, a rich man, hast taken his last lamb from the poor man, and hast slain the owner himself. The same of me!
“And think further how thou hast repented, and said: ‘I confess my guilt, and repent of my sin.’ The same of me. Not for thee 'tis to refuse me entrance.”
And the voice behind the door was hushed.
And after standing some time, again knocked the sinner, and asked admission into the kingdom of heaven. And from behind the doors was heard a third voice which spake: “Who is this, and how hath he lived on earth?”
And for the third time the voice of the accuser recounted the evil deeds of the man, but of the good he named none.
And the voice from behind the door gave in answer: “Get thee hence! The kingdom of heaven not by a sinner can be entered.”
And replied the sinner: “Thy voice I hear, but thy face I see not, and thy name I know not.”
Answered the voice: “I am John, the beloved disciple of Christ.”
And rejoiced the sinner, and spake:“Now verily shall I be let in. Peter and David shall admit me because they know the weakness of man, and the grace of God; but thou shalt admit me because thou hast much love. For hast thou not writ in thy book, O John, that God is Love, and that whosoever knoweth not Love, knoweth not God? Wert not thou he that spake in his old age unto men only this one word: ‘Brethren, love ye one another’? How then shalt thou now hate me and drive me hence? Either renounce thine own words, or learn to love me, and admit me into the kingdom of heaven.”
And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced the repenting sinner, and admitted him into the kingdom of heaven.
11. Tolstoy, then, is the sole example among men of the harmonious combination of loftiest aspiration with highest artistic skill. Tolstoy sees in himself only the preacher, and therefore at the age of sixty he does not hesitate to repudiate all those works of his which are not those of the preacher, however great their value as works of art. Turgenef sees in him only the artist, and therefore beseeches from his death-bed his fellow-craftsman to give himself back to the forsaken art. Bothare here right, both are here wrong. For each sees only one side, while Tolstoy is neither the preacher alone nor the artist alone. Tolstoy, like Janus of old, is two-faced,—the artist, when his soul is in a state of war; the preacher, when his soul is in a state of peace. Turgenef looks only upon the face of the artist; Tolstoy looks out into the world with the face of the preacher.
12. This noble combination of the preacher and the artist has accordingly determined the character of Tolstoy's art. For the first question Tolstoy asks of every event, of every phenomenon he has to depict, is, What effect has this on the soul of man; what bearing has this on the life of man; what, in short, is its moral meaning? Hence when Tolstoy paints, he paints not only objectively, but also subjectively. In the storm-scene, for instance, which I have read you at the first lecture, Tolstoy is not satisfied to give you merely the outward appearance of the storm, its appearance in Nature, he rests not until he has painted also its effect on the soul; and the progress of the terror inspired keeps pacewith the advance of the cloud. Hence the sudden introduction of the beggar from under the bridge, with his horrible stump of hand stretched out as he runs beside the carriage begging for alms. This incident is as much part of the storm, and as terrifying to the little Katenka and the little Lubotshka as the glare of the lightning and the crash of the thunder. Tolstoy the artist never sees Nature with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the spirit, he never sees matter without the underlying mind; he never sees the object without its complement, the subject. Tolstoy, therefore, is the first great artist (and if the one-eyed prophets of the merelyobjectiveart prevail, who now clamor so loudly, he promises, alas! to remain also the last) who has painted Nature entire. Tolstoy is the first great artist, therefore, into whose pictures enter not only the details visible, but also the details invisible. To Tolstoy, the vibration of the string is not described in completeness until he has also shown how its music has made to vibrate not only the air, but also the soul. Painter then of the inward universeas well as of the outward, of the spiritual as well as of the natural, of the things unseen as well as of those seen, Tolstoy has exhausted Nature. He has plunged into her nethermost depths, like Schiller's diver, and lo! forth he comes from the abyss with her swallowed-up treasure. Verily, here Tolstoy is unapproachable. Only one other man of letters hath here even distant fellowship with him, and this is Ralph Waldo Emerson.
13. That an art which is born of such a union of the preacher with the worshipper of beauty as it exists in Tolstoy, can only be of the highest, and must be of the highest, I therefore no longer hesitate to affirm. Read, therefore, in this light the successive chapters in Book VII. of “Anna Karenina,” where is told the birth of a son of Kitty and Levin. Our modern apostles of the gospel of fidelity at all hazards, even though it be the fidelity of dirt, would have here made you look at the blood, at the towels, at the bowls, at the bottles, would have made you smell the odors,—they would have recounted to you all thosedetails which, however pathetic to those doomed to be by-standers in the sick-room, can only be nauseating to those out of the sick-room. Tolstoy the preacher is impressed with the immeasurable pain which attends the entrance into the world of a newly-born human soul,—agony unendurable, all the more unendurable because inexplicable, inscrutable. His great artistic soul rests not until it hath relieved itself with at least a cry over such sorrow. Paint it therefore he must; but he paints it, observe, not directly, by photographing the tortures of Kitty, but indirectly, by picturing the agony of Levin; for the one would have only nauseated, the other stirs the reader to his very depths. The husband suffers more than the wife, because he sees her not with the eyes of the head, but with the eyes of the heart; the groans of Kitty, which reach him from the neighboring chamber, can indeed be silenced by the physician's drug; but no drug can silence the groan of Levin, for it is pressed out by the agony, not of the body, but by the agony of the soul. And as love, sympathy, is ever aneye-opener, so here Tolstoy, the consummate artist, has reproduced the scene of the sick-room with the highest fidelity, because he has reproduced it not with the arts of cold mechanical photography, but with those of warm, sympathetic imagination. Tolstoy reproduces therefore with the highest faithfulness because he too sees not with the eye of the head, but with the eye of the heart.
14. And for the highest example of such art I will venture to read to you the passage in which Tolstoy tells of Anna Karenina's fall. Until the reader comes to this passage, there is not a syllable to tell him that shehasfallen. Observe then Tolstoy's manner of telling it. I venture to think it far more faithful than any realistic art could have made it by furnishing details not necessarily more true because less delicate:—
“That in which during almost a whole year consisted the one, exclusive longing of Vronsky's life, that which had supplanted all his former wishes, that which to Anna had been a dream of impossible, terrible, yet for this reason all the more fascinating happiness,—thiswish was at last gratified. Pale, with his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to quiet herself, not knowing himself how and what.“‘Anna, Anna,’ he spake with trembling voice. ‘Anna, for God's sake!’“But the louder he spake, the lower sank her head, once proud and glad, now abased; she now crouched, and was sinking from the sofa, where she had been sitting, to the floor, at his feet. She would have fallen on the carpet had he not supported her. ‘O my God, forgive me!’ she sobbed, and pressed his hands to her breast.“So criminal and so guilty she felt herself, that the only thing left her was to humiliate herself and to beg forgiveness. But now she had no one in life left her but him, and to him she turns with prayer for forgiveness. As she gazed at him she physically felt her degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also to him. But, in spite ofall the horror before the body of the slain, the body must be cut into pieces, must be hidden away, and use must be made of what the murderer had obtained by his murder.“And as the murderer with fierceness, almost with passion, throws himself upon the body and drags it and hacks it, so he too kept covering with kisses her face and her shoulders. She kept his hand and moved not. Yes, these kisses,—this it was which was bought with this her shame. ‘Yes, and this one hand which will always be mine is the hand of my—confederate.’ She raised this hand and kissed it. He dropped on his knees and wished to see her face, but she hid her face and said naught. At last, as if making an effort over herself, she rose and pushed him away. Her face was indeed as handsome as ever, but it was now pitiful all the more.“‘'Tis all ended,’ she said. ‘I have nothing left but thee. Remember this.’“‘I cannot help remembering what constitutes my life. For one minute of this blessedness …’“‘Blessedness!’ she uttered with terror and disgust, and her terror communicated itself to him. ‘For God's sake, not a word, not one word more!’“She quickly rose and turned away from him.“‘Not another word,’ she repeated; and withan expression strange to him, with an expression of cold despair on her face, she parted from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in words her feeling of shame, joy, and terror before this entrance into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself whatever was going on in her soul.“She said to herself, ‘No, I cannot think this out now; later, when I shall be more calm.’ But this calmness for her thoughts never came; whenever the thought came to her of what she had done, and of what was to become of her, and of what she must do, terror came upon her, and she drove away these thoughts.“‘Later, later,’ she repeated, ‘when I am more calm.’“But in sleep, when she had no control over her thoughts, her situation appeared to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream came to her almost nightly. She dreamed that both were her husbands, that both were spending upon her their caresses. Alexei Alexandrovitsh cried as he kissed her hands, and said, ‘Ah, how good this is!’ And Alexei Vronsky was there, andhe also was her husband. And she wondered why all this had hitherto seemed to her impossible, and explained to them laughingly how simple all this was, and that now they were both content and happy. But the dream oppressed her like an Alp, and she awoke every time in terror.”
“That in which during almost a whole year consisted the one, exclusive longing of Vronsky's life, that which had supplanted all his former wishes, that which to Anna had been a dream of impossible, terrible, yet for this reason all the more fascinating happiness,—thiswish was at last gratified. Pale, with his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to quiet herself, not knowing himself how and what.
“‘Anna, Anna,’ he spake with trembling voice. ‘Anna, for God's sake!’
“But the louder he spake, the lower sank her head, once proud and glad, now abased; she now crouched, and was sinking from the sofa, where she had been sitting, to the floor, at his feet. She would have fallen on the carpet had he not supported her. ‘O my God, forgive me!’ she sobbed, and pressed his hands to her breast.
“So criminal and so guilty she felt herself, that the only thing left her was to humiliate herself and to beg forgiveness. But now she had no one in life left her but him, and to him she turns with prayer for forgiveness. As she gazed at him she physically felt her degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also to him. But, in spite ofall the horror before the body of the slain, the body must be cut into pieces, must be hidden away, and use must be made of what the murderer had obtained by his murder.
“And as the murderer with fierceness, almost with passion, throws himself upon the body and drags it and hacks it, so he too kept covering with kisses her face and her shoulders. She kept his hand and moved not. Yes, these kisses,—this it was which was bought with this her shame. ‘Yes, and this one hand which will always be mine is the hand of my—confederate.’ She raised this hand and kissed it. He dropped on his knees and wished to see her face, but she hid her face and said naught. At last, as if making an effort over herself, she rose and pushed him away. Her face was indeed as handsome as ever, but it was now pitiful all the more.
“‘'Tis all ended,’ she said. ‘I have nothing left but thee. Remember this.’
“‘I cannot help remembering what constitutes my life. For one minute of this blessedness …’
“‘Blessedness!’ she uttered with terror and disgust, and her terror communicated itself to him. ‘For God's sake, not a word, not one word more!’
“She quickly rose and turned away from him.
“‘Not another word,’ she repeated; and withan expression strange to him, with an expression of cold despair on her face, she parted from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in words her feeling of shame, joy, and terror before this entrance into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself whatever was going on in her soul.
“She said to herself, ‘No, I cannot think this out now; later, when I shall be more calm.’ But this calmness for her thoughts never came; whenever the thought came to her of what she had done, and of what was to become of her, and of what she must do, terror came upon her, and she drove away these thoughts.
“‘Later, later,’ she repeated, ‘when I am more calm.’
“But in sleep, when she had no control over her thoughts, her situation appeared to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream came to her almost nightly. She dreamed that both were her husbands, that both were spending upon her their caresses. Alexei Alexandrovitsh cried as he kissed her hands, and said, ‘Ah, how good this is!’ And Alexei Vronsky was there, andhe also was her husband. And she wondered why all this had hitherto seemed to her impossible, and explained to them laughingly how simple all this was, and that now they were both content and happy. But the dream oppressed her like an Alp, and she awoke every time in terror.”
15. And of such unapproachable art the examples in Tolstoy are well-nigh innumerable. There is hardly a single work of Tolstoy in which he does not display that marvellous fidelity which has made Mr. Howells exclaim: “This is not a picture of life, but life itself!” And this fidelity Tolstoy attains not so much by depicting the event itself as by depicting its effect on the soul; just as the silent sight of the wounded on the field tells of the battle more loudly than the thunder of the cannon. I say this is the highest art, because its method is universal, where all others are only particular; for men may indeed differ in the language of the tongue, but they do not differ in the language of the spirit.
16. Read in the same light, then, his unparalleledgallery of life-scenes in “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” Read in the same light the death-scene of Count Bezukhoi in “War and Peace;” read the war-scene on the bridge, the wounding of Balkonsky; read the skating-scene in “Anna Karenina,” the racing-scene, the meeting between Anna and her darling Seriozha. My friends, in the presence of such art words fail me; I can only cry to you, “Read, read, and read!” Read humbly, read admiringly. The reading of Tolstoy in this spirit shall in itself be unto you an education of your highest artistic sense. And when your souls have become able to be thrilled to their very depths by the unspeakable beauty of Tolstoy's art, you will then learn to be ashamed of thought that for years you sensible folk of Boston have been capable of allowing,—the Stevensons with their Hydes, and the Haggards with their Shes, and even the clumsy Wards with their ponderous Elsmeres, to steal away under the flag of literature your thoughtful moments. You will then learn to understand how it comes to pass that the artistically coldpassionless Mr. Howells even, the apostle of heartlessness in art,—however brave and full of heart the noble man be in actual life,—can be struck with awe before the mighty presence of Tolstoy, and how it is possible that the only words he can whisper is, “I cannot say aught!” The preface of Mr. Howells to Tolstoy's “Sebastopol” has been declared by wiseacres to be the symptom of his decadence. My friends, believe it not. This admiration of Mr. Howells for Tolstoy is verily not the symptom that he is beginning to fall, but rather that he is just beginning to rise.