Chapter 13

"Pashkov, a colonel of the Guards, who died in Paris at the beginning of 1902, started in the 'eighties' a movement in St. Petersburg, which was essentially evangelical, with a methodistical tinge, and which soon seized upon all the strata of the population in the capital. Substantially it was a religious revival from the dry-as-dust Greek church similar to that which in the sixteenth century turned against the Romish church in Germany and in Switzerland. The Gospel was to Pashkov himself new, good tidings, and as such he carried it into the distinguished circles which he assembled at his palace on the Neva, and as such he brought it amongst the crowds of cabmen, labourers, laundresses, etc., whom he called from the streets to hear the news. Pashkov's name was known by the last crossing-sweeper, and many thousands blessed him, some because they had been moved by the religious spirit which glowed in him, others because they knew of the many charitable institutions which he had founded with his own means and with the help of rich men and women friends. I myself shall never forget the few hours which I spent in conversation with this man, simple in spirit as in education, but so rich in religious feeling and in true humility. To me he could offer nothing new, for all that to him was new I, the son of Lutheran parents, had known from my childhood days. But what was new to me was the phenomenon of a man who had belonged for fifty years to a Christian Church and had only now discovered as something new what is familiar to every member of an evangelical community as the sum and substance of Christian teaching. To him the Gospel itself was something new, a revelation.

"This has been the case of many thousands in the Russian Empire when they opened the Bible for the first time. The spark flew from village to village and took fire, because the people were thirsting for a spiritual, religious life, because it brought comfort in their material misery, and food for their minds. Holy Vladimir, with his Byzantine priests, brought no living Christianity into the land, and the common Russian had not been brought into contact with it during the nine hundred years which have elapsed since. Wherever it penetrates to-day with the Bible, there its effect is apparent. It is such as the best Government could not accomplish by worldly means alone. But it is diametrically opposed to the State Church; it leads to secession from orthodoxy, and the State has entered upon a crusade against it."*

*"Russia of To-day," by Baron E. von der Bruggen. Translated by M. Sandwith, London, 1904. Pages 165-167.

In "The Power of Darkness, "Ivan Ilyich," and the "Kreuzer Sonata." Tolstoi has shown the way of Death. In "Resurrection" he has shown the way of Life. The most sensational of all his books is the "Kreuzer Sonata;" it was generally misunderstood, and from that time some of his friends walked no more with him. By a curious freak of the powers of this world, it was for a time taboo in the United States, and its passage by post was forbidden; then the matter was taken to the courts, and a certain upright judge declared that so far from the book being vicious, it condemned vice and immorality on every page. He not only removed the ban, but recommended its wider circulation. The circumstances that gave rise to its composition are described in an exceedingly interesting article in the New York "Sun" for 10 October 1909, "A Visit to Count Leo Tolstoi in 1887," by Madame Nadine Helbig. The whole article should be read for the charming picture it gives of the patriarchal happiness at Yasnaya Polyana, and while she saw clearly the real comfort enjoyed by Tolstoi, which aroused the fierce wrath of Merezhkovski, she proved also how much good was accomplished by the old novelist in the course of a single average day.

"Never shall I forget the evening when the young Polish violinist, whom I have already mentioned, asked me to play with him Beethoven's sonata for piano and violin, dedicated to Kreuzer, his favourite piece, which he had long been unable to play for want of a good piano player.

"Tolstoi listened with growing attention. He had the first movement played again, and after the last note of the sonata he went out quietly without saying, as usual, good night to his family and guests.

"That night was created the 'Kreuzer Sonata' in all its wild force. Shortly afterward he sent me in Rome the manuscript of it. Tolstoi was the best listener whom I have ever had the luck to play to. He forgot himself and his surroundings. His expression changed with the music. Tears ran down his cheeks at some beautiful adagio, and he would say, 'Tania, just give me a fresh handkerchief; I must have got a cold to-day.' I had to play generally Beethoven and Schumann to him. He did not approve of Bach, and on the other hand you could make him raving mad with Liszt, and still more with Wagner."

Many hundreds of amateur players have struggled through the music of the "Kreuzer Sonata," trying vainly to see in it what Tolstoi declared it means. Of course the significance attached to it by Tolstoi existed only in his vivid imagination, Beethoven being the healthiest of all great composers. If the novelist had really wished to describe sensual music, he would have made a much more felicitous choice of "Tristan und Isolde."

Although his own married life was until the last years happy as man could wish, Tolstoi introduced into the "Kreuzer Sonata" passages from his own existence. When Posdnichev is engaged, he gives his fiancee his memoirs, containing a truthful account of his various liaisons. She is in utter despair, and for a time thinks of breaking off the engagement. All this was literally true of the author himself. When a boy, the hero was led to a house of ill-fame by a friend of his brother, "a very gay student, one of those who are called good fellows." This reminds us of a precisely similar attempt described by Tolstoi in "Youth." Furthermore, Posdnichev's self-righteousness in the fact that although he had been dissipated, he determined to be faithful to his wife, was literally and psychologically true in Tolstoi's own life.

The "Kreuzer Sonata" shows no diminution of Tolstoi's realistic power: the opening scenes on the train, the analysis of the hero's mind during the early years of his married life, and especially the murder, all betray the familiar power of simplicity and fidelity to detail. The passage of the blade through the corset and then into something soft has that sensual realism so characteristic of all Tolstoi's descriptions of bodily sensations. The book is a work of art, and contains many reflections and bitter accusations against society that are founded on the truth.

The moral significance of the story is perfectly clear--that men who are constantly immoral before marriage need not expect happiness in married life. It is a great pity that Tolstoi did not let the powerful little novel speak for itself, and that he allowed himself to be goaded into an explanatory and defensive commentary by the thousands of enquiring letters from foolish readers. Much of the commentary contains sound advice, but it leads off into that reductio ad absurdum so characteristic of Russian thought.

Many of the tracts and parables that Tolstoi wrote are true works of art, with a Biblical directness and simplicity of style. Their effect outside of Russia is caused fully as much by their literary style as by their teaching. I remember an undergraduate, who, reading "Where Love is there God is Also," said that he was tremendously excited when the old shoemaker lost his spectacles, and had no peace of mind till he found them again. This is unconscious testimony to Tolstoi's power of making trivial events seem real.

The long novel, "Resurrection," is, as Mr. Maude, the English translator, shows, not merely a story, but a general summary of all the final conclusions about life reached by its author. The English volume actually has an "Index to Social Questions, Types," etc., giving the pages where the author's views on all such topics are expressed in the book. Apart from the great transformation wrought in the character of the hero, which is the motive of the work, there are countless passages which show the genius of the author, still burning brightly in his old age. The difference between the Easter kiss and the kiss of lust is one of the most powerful instances of analysis, and may be taken as a symbol of the whole work. And the depiction of the sportsman's feelings when he brings down a wounded bird, half shame and half rage, will startle and impress every man who has carried a gun.

"Resurrection" teaches directly what Tolstoi always taught--what he taught less directly, but with even greater art, in "Anna Karenina."

In reading this work of his old age, we cannot help thinking of what Carlyle said of the octogenarian Goethe: "See how in that great mind, beaming in mildest mellow splendour, beaming, if also trembling, like a great sun on the verge of the horizon, near now to its long farewell, all these things were illuminated and illustrated."

VI

GORKI

Gorki went up like the sky-rocket, and seems to have had the traditional descent. From 1900 to 1906 everybody was talking about him; since 1906 one scarcely hears mention of his name. He was ridiculously overpraised, but he ought not to be forgotten. As an artist, he will not bear a moment's comparison with Andreev; but some of his short stories and his play, "The Night Asylum," have the genuine Russian note of reality, and a rude strength much too great for its owner's control. He has never written a successful long novel, and his plays have no coherence; but, after all, the man has the real thing--vitality.

Just at the moment when Chekhov appeared to stand at the head of young Russian writers, Gorki appeared, and his fame swept from one end of the world to the other. In Russia, his public was second in numbers only to Tolstoi's; Kuprin and Andreev both dedicated books to him; in Germany, France, England, and America, he became literally a household word. It is probable that there were a thousand foreigners who knew his name, to one who had heard of Chekhov. Compared with Chekhov, he had more matter and less art.

His true name, which comparatively few have ever heard, is Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. "This name," said M. de Vogue, "will remain forever buried in the parish register." He chose to write under the name Gorki, which means "bitter," a happy appellation for this modern Ishmaelite. He was born in 1869, at Nizhni Novgorod, in a dyer's shop. He lost both father and mother when he was a child, but his real mother was the river Volga, on whose banks he was born, and on whose broad breast he has found the only repose he understands. The little boy was apprenticed to a shoemaker, but ran away, as he did from a subsequent employer. By a curious irony of fate, this atheist learned to read out of a prayer-book, and this iconoclast was for a time engaged in the manufacture of ikons, holy images. As the aristocrat Turgenev learned Russian from a house servant, Gorki obtained his love for literature from a cook. This happened on a steamer on the great river, where Gorki was employed as an assistant in the galley. The cook was a rough giant, who spent all his spare moments reading, having an old trunk full of books. It was a miscellaneous assortment, containing Lives of Saints, stories by Dumas pere, and fortunately some works by Gogol. This literature gave him a thirst for learning, and when he was sixteen he went to Kazan, a town on the Volga, where Tolstoi had studied at the University. He had the notion that literature and learning were there distributed free to the famished, like bread in times of famine. He was quickly undeceived; and instead of receiving intellectual food, he was forced to work in a baker's shop, for a miserable pittance. These were the darkest days of his life, and in one of his most powerful stories he has reflected the wretched daily and nightly toil in a bakery.

Then he went on the road, and became a tramp, doing all kinds of odd jobs, from peddling to hard manual labour on wharves and railways. At the age of nineteen, weary of life, he shot himself, but recovered. Then he followed the Volga to the Black Sea, unconsciously collecting the material that in a very few years he was to give to the world. In 1892, when twenty-three years old, he succeeded in getting some of his sketches printed in newspapers. The next year he had the good fortune to meet at Nizhni Novgorod the famous Russian author Korolenko. Korolenko was greatly impressed by the young vagabond, believed in his powers, and gave timely and valuable help. With the older man's influence, Gorki succeeded in obtaining the entree to the St. Petersburg magazines; and while the Russian critics were at a loss how to regard the new genius, the public went wild. He visited the capital in 1899, and there was intense curiosity to see and to hear him. A great hall was engaged, and when he mounted the platform to read, the young people in the audience went into a frenzy.

Gorki has been repeatedly imprisoned for his revolutionary ideas and efforts; in 1906, at the very apex of his fame, he came to the United States to collect funds for the cause. The whole country was eager to receive and to give, and his advent in New York was a notable occasion. He insisted that he came, not as an anarchist, but as a socialist, that his mission in the world was not to destroy, but to fulfil. At first, he was full of enthusiasm about America and New York, and American writers; he was tremendously impressed by the sky-scrapers, by the intense activity of the people, and by the Hudson River, which, as he regarded from his hotel windows, reminded him of the Volga. He said America would be the first nation to give mankind a true government, and that its citizens were the incarnation of progress. He declared that Mark Twain was even more popular in Russia than in America, that it was "a part of the national Russian education" to read him, and that he himself had read every translation of his books.

Incidentally he spoke of his favourite world-authors. Shakespeare he put first of all, saying he was "staggering," an opinion quite different from that of Tolstoi. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were the philosophers he liked the best. Byron and Heine he read in preference to most other poets, for there is an invincible strain of lyric romanticism in this Russian tramp, as there was in his master Gogol. Flaubert, Goethe, and Dumas pere he read with delight.

A literary dinner was arranged in honour of the distinguished guest, and inasmuch as all present were ignorant of the next day's catastrophe, the account given of this love-feast in the New York "Sun" is worth quoting. "Mark Twain and Gorki recognised each other before they were introduced, but neither being able to understand the language of the other, they simply grasped hands and held on more than a minute. . . . Gorki said he had read Mark Twain's stories when he was a boy, and that he had gotten much delight from them. Mark declared that he also had been a reader and admirer of Gorki. The smile of Gorki was broader and not so dry as the smile of Mark, but both smiles were distinctly those of fellow-humorists who understood each other. Gorki made a little speech which was translated by a Russian who knew English. Gorki said he was glad to meet Mark Twain, 'world famous and in Russia the best known of American writers, a man of tremendous force and convictions, who, when he hit, hit hard. I have come to America to get acquainted with the American people and ask their aid for my suffering countrymen who are fighting for liberty. The despotism must be overthrown now, and what is needed is money, money, money!' Mark said he was glad to meet Gorki, adding, 'If we can help to create the Russian republic, let us start in right away and do it. The fighting may have to be postponed awhile, but meanwhile we can keep our hearts on the matter and we can assist the Russians in being free.'"

A committee was formed to raise funds, and then came the explosion, striking evidence of the enormous difference between the American and the Continental point of view in morals. With characteristic Russian impracticability, Gorki had come to America with a woman whom he introduced as his wife; but it appeared that his legal wife was in Russia, and that his attractive and accomplished companion was somebody else. This fact, which honestly seemed to Gorki an incident of no importance, took on a prodigious shape. This single mistake cost the Russian revolutionary cause an enormous sum of money, and may have altered history. Gorki was expelled from his hotel, and refused admittance to others; unkindest cut of all, Mark Twain, whose absence of religious belief had made Gorki believe him to be altogether emancipated from prejudices, positively refused to have anything more to do with him. As Gorki had said, "When Mark Twain hit, he hit hard." Turn whither he would, every door was slammed in his face. I do not think he has ever recovered from the blank amazement caused by the American change of front. His golden opportunity was gone, and he departed for Italy, shaking the dust of America off his feet, and roundly cursing the nation that he had just declared to be the incarnation of progress. The affair unquestionably has its ludicrous side, but it was a terrible blow to the revolutionists. Many of them believed that the trap was sprung by the government party.

Gorki's full-length novels are far from successful works of art. They have all the incoherence and slipshod workmanship of Dostoevski, without the latter's glow of brotherly love. His first real novel, "Foma Gordeev," an epic of the Volga, has many beautiful descriptive passages, really lyric and idyllic in tone, mingled with an incredible amount of drivel. The character who plays the title-role is a typical Russian windbag, irresolute and incapable, like so many Russian heroes; but whether drunk or sober, he is destitute of charm. He is both dreary and dirty. The opening chapters are written with great spirit, and the reader is full of happy expectation. One goes farther and fares worse. After the first hundred pages, the book is a prolonged anti-climax, desperately dull. Altogether the best passage in the story is the description of the river in spring, impressive not merely for its beauty and accuracy of language, but because the Volga is interpreted as a symbol of the spirit of the Russian people, with vast but unawakened possibilities.

"Between them, in a magnificent sweep, flowed the broad-breasted Volga; triumphantly, without haste, flow her waters, conscious of their unconquerable power; the hill-shore was reflected in them like a dark shadow, but on the left side she was adorned with gold and emerald velvet by the sandy borders of the reefs, and the broad meadows. Now here, now there, on the hills, and in the meadows, appeared villages, the sun sparkled in the window-panes of the cottages, and upon the roofs of yellow straw; the crosses of the churches gleamed through the foliage of the trees, the gray wings of the mills rotated lazily through the air, the smoke from the chimneys of a factory curled skyward in thick black wreaths. . . . On all sides was the gleaming water, on all sides were space and freedom, cheerfully green meadows, and graciously clear blue sky; in the quiet motion of the water, restrained power could be felt; in the heaven above it shone the beautiful sun, the air was saturated with the fragrance of evergreen trees, and the fresh scent of foliage. The shores advanced in greeting, soothing the eye and the soul with their beauty, and new pictures were constantly unfolded upon them.

"On everything round about rested the stamp of a certain sluggishness: everything--nature and people--lived awkwardly, lazily; but in this laziness there was a certain peculiar grace, and it would seem that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over the river."*

*Isabel Hapgood's translation.

The novel Varenka Olessova is a tedious book of no importance. The hero is, of course, the eternal Russian type, a man of good education and no backbone: he lacks resolution, energy, will-power, and will never accomplish anything. He has not even force enough to continue his studies. Contrasted with him is the girl Varenka, a simple child of nature, who prefers silly romances to Russian novels, and whose virgin naivete is a constant puzzle to the conceited ass who does not know whether he is in love with her or not. Indeed, he asks himself if he is capable of love for any one. The only interesting pages in this stupid story are concerned with a discussion on reading, between Varenka and the young man, where her denunciation of Russian fiction is, of course, meant to proclaim its true superiority. In response to the question whether she reads Russian authors, the girl answers with conviction: "Oh, yes! But I don't like them! They are so tiresome, so tiresome! They always write about what I know already myself, and know just as well as they do. They can't create anything interesting; with them almost everything is true. . . . Now with the French, their heroes are real heroes, they talk and act unlike men in actual life. They are always brave, amorous, vivacious, while our heroes are simple little men, without any warm feelings, without any beauty, pitiable, just like ordinary men in real life. . . In Russian books, one cannot understand at all why the men continue to live. What's the use of writing books if the author has nothing remarkable to say?"

The long novel "Mother" is a good picture of life among the working-people in a Russian factory, that is, life as seen through Gorki's eyes; all cheerfulness and laughter are, of course, absent, and we have presented a dull monotone of misery. The factory itself is the villain of the story, and resembles some grotesque wild beast, that daily devours the blood, bone, and marrow of the throng of victims that enter its black jaws. The men, women, and children are represented as utterly brutalised by toil; in their rare moments of leisure, they fight and beat each other unmercifully, and even the little children get dead drunk. Socialist and revolutionary propaganda are secretly circulated among these stupefied folk, and much of the narrative is taken up with the difficulties of accomplishing this distribution; for the whole book itself is nothing but a revolutionary tract. The characters, including the pitiful Mother herself, are not vividly drawn, they are not alive, and one forgets them speedily; as for plot, there is none, and the book closes with the brutal murder of the old woman. It is a tedious, inartistic novel, with none of the relief that would exist in actual life. Turgenev's poorest novel, "Virgin Soil," which also gives us a picture of a factory, is immensely superior from every point of view.