People : Author : Peter Kropotkin Tags

1The great composer Glínka has made of this fairy tale a mostbeautiful opera (Rustán I Ludmíla), in whichRussian, Finnish, Turkish, and Oriental music are intermingled in orderto characterize the different heroes.
2For all translations, not otherwise mentioned, it is myself who isresponsible.
• Chapter 3 : Gógol

Ideals and Realities of Russian Literature

Peter Kropotkin

CHAPTER III GÓGOL LITTLE RUSSIA-Nights on a Farm near Dikónka, and Mírgorod-Village life and humor-How Iván Ivánovitch quarreled with Iván Nikíforytch-Historical novel, Tarás Búlba- The Cloak-Drama, The Inspector-General-Its influence- Dead Souls: main types-realism in the Russian novel.

     With Gógol begins a new period of Russian literature. which is called by Russian literary critics "the Gógol period," which lasts to the present date. Gógol was not a Great Russian. He was born in 1809, in a Little Russian or Ukraïnian nobleman's family. His father had already dispayed some literary talent and wrote a few comedies in Little Russian, but Gógol lost him at an early age. The boy was educatcd in a small provincial town, which he left, however, while still young, and when he was only nineteen he was already at St. Petersburg. At that time the dream of his life was to become an actor, but the manager of the St. Ptersburg Imperial theaters did not accept him, and Gógol had to look for another sphere of activity. The Civil Service, in which he obtained the position of a subordinate clerk, was evidently insufficient to interest him, and he soon entered upon his literary career.
    His debut was in 1829, with little novels taken form the village-life of Little Russia. Nights on a Farm near Dikánka, soon followed by another series of stories entitled Mírgorod, immediately won for him literary fame and introduced him into the circle of Zhukóvskiy and Púshkin. The two poets at once recognized Gógol's genius, and received him with open arms

    Little Russia differs considerably from the central parts of the empire, i.e., from the country around Moscow, which is known as Great Russia. It has a more southern position, and everything southern has always a certain attraction for northerner. The villages in Little Russia are not disposed in streets as they are in Great Russia, but the white washed houses are scattered, as in Western Europe, in separate little farms, each of which is surrounded by charming little gardens. The more genial climate, the warm nights, the musical language, the beauty of the race, which probably contains a mixture of South Slavonian with Turkish and Polish blood, the picturesque dress and the lyrical songs-all these render Little Russia especially attractive for the Great Russian. Besides, life in Little-Russian villages is more poetical than it is in the villages of Great Russia. There is more freedom in the relations between the young men and the young girls, who freely meet before marriage; the stamp of seclusion of the women which has been impressed by Bvzantine habits upon Moscow does not exist in Little Russia, where the influence of Poland was prevalent. Little Russians have also maintained numerous traditions and epic poems and songs from the times when they were free Cossacks and used to fight against the Poles in the north and the Turks in the south. Having had to defend the Greek orthodox religion against these two nations, they strictly adhere now to the Russian Church, and one does not find in their villages the same passion for scholastic discussions about the letter of the Holy Books which is often met with in Great Russia among the Non-conformists. Their religion has altogether a more poetical aspect.

    The Little-Russian language is certainly more melodious than the Great Russian, and there is now a movement of some importance for its literary development; but this evolution has yet to be accomplished, and Gógol very wisely wrote in Great Russian-that is, in the language of Zhukóvskiy Púshkin, and Lérmontoff. We have thus in Gógol a sort of union between the two nationalities.

    It would be impossible to give here an idea of the humor and wit contained in Gógol's novels from Little Russian life, without quoting whole pages. It is the good-hearted laughter of a young man who himself enjoys the fullness of life and himself laughs at the comical positions into which he has put his heroes: a village chanter, a wealthy peasant, a rural matron, or a village smith. He is full of happiness; no dark apprehension comes to disturb his joy of life. However, those whom he depicts are not rendered comical in obedience to the poet's whim: Gógol always remains scrupulously true to reality. Every peasant, every chanter, is taken from real life, and the truthfulness of Gógol to reality is almost ethnographical, without ever ceasing to be poetical. All the superstitions of a village life on a Christmas Eve or during a midsummer night, when the mischievous spirits and goblins get free till the cock crows, are brought before the reader, and at the same time we have all the wittiness which is inborn in the Little Russian. It was only later on that Gógol's comical vein became what can be truly described as "humor,"-that is, a sort of contrast between comical surroundings and a sad substratum of life, which made Púshkin say of Gógol's productions that "behind his laughter you feel the unseen tears."

    Not all the Little-Russian tales of Gógol are taken from peasant life. Some deal also with the upper class of the small towns; and one of them, How Iván Ivánovitch quarreled with Iván Nikíforytch, is one of the most humorous tales in existence. Iván Ivánovitch and Iván Nikíforytch were two neihbours who lived on excellent terms with each other; but the inevitableness of their quarreling some day appears from the very first lines of the novel. Iván Ivánovitch was a person of fine behavior. He would never offer snuff to an acquaintance without saying: "May I dare, Sir, to ask you to be so kind as to oblige yourself." He was a man of the most accurate habits; and when he had eaten a melon he used to wrap its seeds in a bit of paper, and to inscribe upon it: "This melon was eaten on such a date," and if there had been a friend at his table he would add: "In the presence of Mr. So and So." At the same time he was, after all, a miser, who appreciated very highly the comforts of his own life, but did not care to share them with others. His neighbor, Iván Nikíforytch, was quite the opposite. He was very stout and heavy, and fond of swearing. On a hot summer day he would take off all his clothes and sit in his garden, in the sunshine, warming his back. When he offered snuff to anyone, he would simply produce his snuff box saying: "Oblige yourself." He knew none of the refinements of his neighbor, and loudly expressed what he meant. It was inevitable that two men, so different, whose yards were only separated by a low fence, should one day come to a quarrel; and so it happened.

    One day the stout and rough Iván Nikíforytch, seeing that his friend owned an old useless musket, was seized with the desire to possess the weapon. He had not the slightest need of it, but all the more he longed to have it, and this craving led to a feud which lasted for years. Iván Ivánovitch remarked very reasonably to his neighbor that he had no need of a rifle. The neighbor, stung by this remark, replied that this was precisely the thing he needed, and offered, if Iván Ivánovitch was not disposed to accept money for his musket, to give him in exchange--a pig. . . . This was understood by Iván Ivánovitch as a terrible offense: "How could a musket, which is the symbol of hunting, of nobility, be exchanged by a gentleman for a pig!" Hard words followed, and the offended neighbor called Iván Ivánovitch a gander. . . . A mortal feud, full of the most comical incidents, resulted from these rash words. Their friends did everything to reestablish peace, and one day their efforts seemed to be crowned with success; the two enemies had been brought together-both pushed from behind by their friends; Iván Ivánovitch had already put his hand into his pocket to take out his snuff-box and to offer it to his enemy, when the latter made the unfortunate remark: "There was nothing particular in being called a gander; no need to be offended by that." ....All the efforts of the friends were brought to naught by these unfortunate words. The feud was renewed with even greater acrimony than before; and, tragedy always following in the steps of comedy, the two enemies, by taking the affair from one Court to another, arrived at old age totally ruined.

TÃRÃS BÚLBA--THE CLOAK

    The pearl of Gógol's Little-Russian novels is an historical novel, Tárás Búlba, which recalls to life one of the most interesting periods in the history of Little Russia--the fifteenth century. Constantinople had fallen into the hands of the Turks; and although a mighty Polish-Lithuanian State had grown in the West, the Turks, nevertheless, menaced both Eastern and Middle Europe. Then it was that the Little Russians rose for the defense of Russia and Europe. They lived in free communities of Cossacks, over whom the Poles were beginning to establish feudal power. In times of peace these Cossacks carried on agriculture in the prairies, and fishing in the beautiful rivers of Southwest Russia, reaching at times the Black Sea; but every one of them was armed, and the whole country was divided into regiments. As soon as there was a military alarm they all rose to meet an invasion of the Turks or a raid of the Tartars, returning to their fields and fisheries as soon as the war was over.

    The whole nation was thus ready to resist the invasions of the Mussulmans; but a special vanguard was kept in the lower course of the Dniéper, "beyond the rapids," on an island which soon became famous under the name of the S&eacaute;cha. Men of all conditions, including runaways from their landlords, outlaws, and adventurers of all sorts, could come and settle in the Sécha without being asked any questions but whether they went to church. "Well, then, make the sign of the cross," the hetman of the Sécha said, "and join the division you like." The Sécha consisted of about sixty divisions, which were very similar to independent republics, or rather to schools of boys, who cared for nothing and lived in common. None of them had anything of his own, excepting his arms. No women were admitted, and absolute democracy prevailed.

    The hero of the novel is an old Cossack, Tarás Búlba, who has himself spent many years in Sécha, but is now peacefully settled inland on his farm. His two sons have been educated at the Academy of Kíeff and return home after several years of absence. Their first meeting with their father is very characteristic. As the father laughs at the sons' long clothes, which do not suit a Cossack, the elder son, Ostáp, challenges him to a good boxing fight. The father is delighted, and they fight until the old man, quite out of breath, exclaims: "By God, this is a good fighter; no need to test him further; he will be a good Cossack!-Now, son, be welcome; let us kiss each other." On the very next day after their arrival, without letting the mother enjoy the sight of her sons, Tarás takes them to the Sécha, which--as often happened in those times--was quickly drawn into war, in conscquence of the exactions which the Polish landlords made upon the Little Russians.

    The life of the free Cossacks in the republic "beyond the rapids" and their ways of conducting war are wonderfully described; but, paying a tribute to the then current romanticism, Gógol makes Tarás' younger son, a sentimentalist, fall in love with a noble Polish-lady, during the seige of a Polish town, and go over to the enemy; while the father and the elder son continue fighting the Poles. The war lasts for a year or so, with varying success, till at length, in one of the desperate sorties of the besieged Poles, the younger son of Tarás is taken prisoner, and the father himself kills him for his treason. The elder son is next taken prisoner by the Poles and carried away to Warsaw, where he perishes on the rack; while Tarás, returning to Little Russia, raises a formidable army and makes one of those invasions into Poland with which the history of the two countries was filled for two centuries. Taken prisoner himself, Tarás perishes at the stake, with a disregard of life and suffering which were characteristic of this strong, fighting race of men. Such is, in brief, the theme of this novel, which is replete with admirable separate scenes.
    Read in the light of modern requirements, Tarás Búlba certainly would not satisfy us. The influence of the Romantic school is too strongly felt. The younger son of Tarás is not a living being, and the Polish lady is entirely invented in order to answer the requirements of a novel, showing that Gógol never knew a single woman of that type. But the old Cossack and his son, as well as all the life of the Cossack camps, is quite real; it produces the illusion of real life. The reader is carried away in sympathy with old Tarás, while the ethnographer cannot but feel that he has before him a wonderful combination of an ethnographical document of the highest value, with a poetical reproduction--only the more real because it is poetical--of a bygone and most interesting epoch.

    The Little-Russian novels were followed by a few novels taken from the life of Great Russia, chiefly of St. Petersburg, and two of them, The Memoirs Of a Madman and The Cloak (Shinél) deserve a special mention. The psychology of the madman is strikingly drawn. As to The Cloak, it is in this novel that Gógol's laughter which conceals "unseen tears" shows at its best. The poor life of a small functionary, who discovers with a sense of horror that his old cloak is so worn out as to be unfit to stand further repairs; his hesitation before he ventures to speak to a tailor about a new one; his nervous excitement on the day that it is ready and that he tries it on for the first time; and finally his despair, amid general indifference, when night-robbers have robbed him of his cloak--every line of this work bears the stamp of one of the greatest artists. Sufficient to say that this novel produced at its appearance, and produces still, such an impression, that since the times of Gógol every Russian novel-writer has been aptly said to have re-written The Cloak.

THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL

    Gógol's prose-comedy, The Inspector-General (Revizór), has become, in its turn, a starting point for the Russian drama--a model which every dramatic writer after Gógol has always kept before his eyes. "Revizór," in Russian, means some important functionary who has been sent by the ministry to some provincial town to inquire into the conditions of the local administration--an Inspector-General; and the comedy takes place in a small town, from which "you may gallop for three years and yet arrive nowhere." The little spot--we learn it at the rising of the curtain--is going to be visited by an Inspector-General. The local head of the Police (in those times the head of the Police was also the head of the town)--the Gorodníchiy or Governor-has convoked the chief functionaries of the place to communicate to them an important news. He has had a bad dream; two rats came in, sniffed and then went away; there must he something in that dream, and so there is: he has just got this morning a letter from a friend at St. Petersburg, announcing that an inspector-general is coming, and--what is still worse--is coming incognito! Now, the honorable Governor advises the functionaries to put some order in their respective offices. The patients in the hospital walk about in linen so dirty that you might take them for chimney sweeps. The chief magistrate, who is a passionate lover of sport, has his hunting appareI hanging about inthe Court, and his attendants have made a poultry-yard of the entrance hall. In short, everything has to be put in order. The Governor feels very uncomfortable. Up to the present day he has freely levied tribute upon the merchants, pocketed the money destined for building a church, and within a fortnight he has flogged the wife of a noncommissioned officer, which he had no right to do; and now, there's the Inspector-General coming! He asks the postmaster "just to open a little" the letters which may be addressed from this town to St. Petersburg and, if he finds in them some reports about town matters, to keep them. The postmaster--a great student of human character--has always indulged, even without getting this advice, in the interesting pastime of reading the letters, and he falls in with the Governor's proposal.
    At that very moment enter Petr Iványch Dóbchinsky and Petr Iványch Bóbchinsky. Everyone knows them, you know them very well: they play the part of the town Gazette. They go about the town all day long, and as soon as they have learned something interesting they both hurry to spread the news, interrupting each other in telling it, and hurrying immediately to some other place to be the first to communicate the news to someone else. They have been at the only inn of the town, and there they saw a very suspicious person: a young man, "who has something, you know, extraordinary about his face." He is living there for a fortnight, never paying a penny, and does not journey any further. "What is his object in staying so long in town like ours?" And then, when they were taking their lunch he passed them by and looked so inquisitively in their plates--who may he be? Evidently, the Governor and all present conclude, he must be the Inspector-General who stays there incognito. . . . A general confusion results from the suspicion. The Governor starts immediately for the inn, to make the necessary inquiries. The womenfolk are in a tremendous excitement.

    The stranger is simply a young man who is traveling to rejoin his father. On some post-station he met with a certain captain--a great master at cards--and lost all he had in his pocket. Now he cannot proceed any farther, and he cannot pay the landlord, who refuses to credit him with any more meals. The young man feels awfully hungry--no wonder he looked so inquisitively into the plates of the two gentlemen--and resorts to all sorts of tricks to induce the landlord to send him something for his dinner. Just as he is finishing some fossil-like cutlet enters the Gorodníchiy; and a most comic scene follows, the young man thinking that the Governor came to arrest him, and the Governor thinking that he is speaking to the Inspector-General who is trying to conceal his identity. The Governor offers to remove the young man to some more comfortable place. "No, thank you, I have no intent to go to a jail," sharply retorts the young man. . . . But it is to his own house that the Governor takes the supposed Inspector, and now an easy life begins for the adventurer. All the functionaries appear in turn to introduce themselves, and everyone is only too happy to give him a bribe of a hundred rubles or so. The merchants come to ask his protection from the Governor; the widow who was flogged comes to lodge a complaint....In the meantime the young man enters into a flirtation with both the wife and the daughter of the Governor; and, finally, being caught at a very pathetic moment when he is kneeling at the feet of the daughter, without further thought he makes a proposition of marriage. But, having gone so far, the young man, well-provided now with money, hastens to leave the town on the pretext of going to see an uncle; he will be back in a couple of days. . . .
    The delight of the Governor can easily be imagined. His Excellency, the Inspector-General, going to marry the Governor's daughter! He and his wife are already making all sorts of plans. They will remove to St. Petersburg, the Gorodníchiy will soon be a general, and you will see how he will keep the other Gorodníchies at his door! . . . The happy news spreads about the town, and all the functionaries and the society of the town hasten to offer their congratulations to the old man. There is a great gathering at his house-when the postmaster comes in. He has followed the advice of the Governor, and has opened a letter which the supposed Inspector-General had addressed to somebody at St. Petersburg. He now brings this letter. The young man is no inspector at all, and here is what he writes to a Bohemian friend of his about his adventures in the provincial town:*

    *There is a good English translation of The Inspector-General, from which, with slight fevision, I take the following passage.

    The Postmaster (reads) I hasten to inform you, my dear friend, of the wonderful things which have happened to me. On my way hither an infantry captain had cleared me out completely, so that the innkeeper here intended to send me to jail, when, all of a sudden, thanks to my St. Petersburg appearance and costume, all the town took me for a Governor-General. Now I am staying at the Gorodníchiy's! I have a splendid time, and flirt awfully with both his wife and his daughter. . . . Do you remember how hard up we were, taking our meals where we could get them, without paying for them, and how one day, in a tea-shop, the pastry-cook collared me for having eaten his pastry to the account of the king of England?* It is quite different now. They all lend me money, as much as I care for. They are an awful set of originals: you would split of laughter. I know you write sometimes for the papers--put them into your literature. To begin with, the Governor is as stupid as an old horse. . . .

[*This was in those times an expression which meant "without paying."]
    The Governor (interrupting): That cannot be there! There is no such thing in the letter.

    Postmaster (showing the letter) - Read it then, yourself.

    Governor (reads) An old horse"...impossible! You must have added that.