Part 5

“When the writer said that Tourgenieff was not for the general public, he meant, of course, the English or the French general public,” said Feodor Petrovitch. “In Russia his novels are read by every schoolboy; they are generally the first grown-up books to be read by young boys and girls at school. We have all read Tourgenieff in our youth, and we have all come under his spell as a writer. But to many of us, and certainly to me when I read him now, much of the glamour has gone. The beauty of style remains. And first and foremost, I consider Tourgenieff to be a poet. The books of his which give me the most pleasure are _The Poems in Prose_, _The Sportsmen’s Sketches_, and _Spring Waters_. These works seem to me incomparable for their harmony and many-sided beauty. Besides being a poet Tourgenieff was a chronicler of his time; but he has always seemed to be more a chronicler of the atmosphere of the epoch he deals with than a portrait painter of the human beings that crowded it--I mean a portrait painter like Velasquez and not a writer of _romans à clef_. Of course, his characters are living, but to me they are living as the characters in Trollope’s novels are living. They are people who existed in an imaginary world, and that imaginary world has the atmosphere of the Sixties. But with Tolstoi the case is different; he gives you the human beings who did actually exist. You know that what he described happened. I do not mean to say that he was a photographer, but an artist of the calibre of Velasquez; he recreated a world and made the human beings which he put into it breathe and live and speak as they actually did in real life. Tourgenieff’s novels at their best are novels. One knows quite well that _Smoke_ never happened. On the other hand, we know that the doings and sayings of Pierre, and Levin, and Natasha, and Dolly are as true as the doings of Dr. Johnson and Pepys, or as true as the sayings and doings of any of our acquaintances. For this reason, I don’t care a fig for Tourgenieff’s psychology.

“When my contemporaries and I,” Feodor Petrovitch added, “first read the novels of Tourgenieff we were carried off our feet by the skill and magic of a new and great artist. To us it was all new. When I read him now, I admire _Poems in Prose_ and _The Sportsmen’s Sketches_ as much as I used to do, and I am still enchanted by his incomparable style. But the matter seems hopelessly old-fashioned. Just that which seemed so new and so daring seems to me now like mahogany furniture, crinolines, Octave Feuillet, the Second Empire, and all that is what you call ‘Early Victorian.’ And nine-tenths of his characters seem to me to be _clichés_. We know all that. We have got beyond it. What we shall never get beyond is the poet in Tourgenieff, his apprehension of certain shades and values of beauty in nature and life, and his expression of it in matchless prose. In this respect he seems to me indeed superior to Flaubert and the French in that Tourgenieff is a poet; but on the other hand I find _Madame Bovary_ infinitely more interesting than _Virgin Soil_ or _Smoke_ on account of its relation to real life, which seems to me far closer; the Frenchman’s work is, I think, more vital, more real, and more true. _Virgin Soil_ is, I think, a collection of conventional characters, or rather caricatures who bear really no relation to the period represented. And hence I consider Dostoievski so infinitely superior to Tourgenieff. In his book called _Devils_ he gives you a picture of the same epoch; the surroundings he invents are as fantastic as a picture thrown on the screen by a magic lantern; but the human beings, the naked souls of which he lays bare to you, how poignantly and terribly real they are! Tolstoi shows you life as it is, Tourgenieff life as one can imagine it, only he imagines it with the genius and skill of an artist; but Dostoievski leads you, as Virgil leads Dante, through the smoky regions which lie between the real and the unreal, regions which we all know; and although he was not a stylist, not an artist like Tourgenieff, yet in laying bare the human soul and revealing all its darkness and all its light he was without an equal. Of course, as I said, it is absurd to generalise on such things, which are matters of taste, but I am sure you will find many Russians who think that Tourgenieff is old-fashioned as a novelist, though immortal as a poet, and very few who would place him above Tolstoi or Dostoievski.”

Then he went on to talk of other things.

III

THE BIRTH OF THE BELL

When I arrived at the village of A----, in the government of Tambov, after an endless journey in a train which went three miles an hour and stopped for an indeterminate period, never less than an hour and a half, at every station, I found a large crowd at the station gathered round a pillar of smoke and flame. One’s first impression was, of course, that a village fire was going on. Fires in Russian villages are common occurrences in the summer, and this is not surprising since the majority of the houses are thatched with straw. The houses are in close proximity one to another, and the ground is littered with straw. Moreover, to set fire to one’s neighbour’s house is a common form of paying off a score. But it was not a fire that was in progress. It was the casting of a bell which was to take place. The ceremony was fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon with due solemnity and with religious rites, and I was invited to be present.

“Heute muss die Glocke werden”

wrote Schiller in his famous poem, and here the words were appropriate. To-day the bell was to be. It was a blazing hot day. The air was dry, the ground was dry, everything was dry, and the great column of smoke mixed with flame issuing from the furnace added to the heat. The furnace had been made exactly opposite to the church. The church was a stone building with a Doric portico consisting of four red columns, a white pediment, a circular pale green roof, and a Byzantine minaret. The village consisted of wooden log-built cottages thatched with straw dotted over a rolling plain. The plain was variegated with woods--oak trees and birch being their principal trees--and stretched out infinitely into the blue distance. Before the bell was to be cast a Te Deum was to be sung.

It was Wednesday, the day of the bazaar. The bazaar in the village is the mart, where the buying and selling of meat, provisions, fruit, melons, fish, hardware, ironmongery, china, and books are conducted. This takes place once a week on Wednesdays, and peasants flock in from the neighbouring villages to buy their provisions. But this afternoon the bazaar was deserted. The whole population of the village was gathered together on the dry brown grassy square in front of the church to take part in the ceremony. At four o’clock two priests and a deacon, followed by a choir consisting of two men in their Sunday clothes, and by bearers of gilt banners, walked in procession out of the church. They were dressed in stiff robes of green and gold, and as they walked they intoned a plain song. An old card table with its stained green cloth was placed and opened on the ground opposite and not far from the church, and on this two lighted tapers were set together with a bowl of holy water. The peasants gathered round in a semicircle with bare heads and joined in the service, making countless genuflexions and signs of the cross, and joining in the song with their deep bass voices. When I said the peasants I should have said half of them. The other half were gathered in a dense crowd round the furnace, which was built of bricks and open on both sides to the east and to the west, and fed with wooden fuel. The men in charge of the proceeding stood on both sides of it and stirred the molten metal it contained with two enormous poles. On the southern side of the furnace was a channel through which the molten metal when released was to flow into the cast of the bell. The crowd which was assembled here was already struggling to have and to hold a good place for the spectacle of the release of the metal when the solemn moment should arrive. Three policemen were endeavouring to cope with the crowd; that is to say, one police officer, one police sergeant, and one common policeman. They were trying with all their might to keep back the crowd, so that when the metal was released a disaster should not happen; but their efforts were in vain, because the crowd was large, and when they pressed back a small portion of it they made a dent in it which caused the remaining part of it to bulge out; and it was the kind of crowd--so intensely typical of Russia--on which no words, whether of command, entreaty, or threat, made the smallest impression. The only way to keep it back was by pressing on it with the body and outstretched arms, and that only kept back a tiny portion of it. In the meantime the Te Deum went on and on; and many things and persons were prayed for besides the bell which was about to be born. At one moment I obtained a place from which I had a commanding view of the furnace, but I was soon oozed out of it by the ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and children.

The aspect of the whole thing was something between a sacred picture and a scene in a Wagner opera. The tall peasants with red shirts, long hair and beards, stirring the furnace with long poles, looked the persons in the epic of the Niebelungen as we see it performed on the stage to the strains of a complicated orchestration. There was Wotan in a blue shirt, with a spear; and Alberic, with a grimy face and a hammer, was meddling with the furnace, and Siegfried, in leather boots and sheepskin, was smoking a cigarette and waving an enormous hammer, while Mimi, whining and disagreeable as usual, was having his head smacked. On the other hand, the peasants who were listening and taking part in the Te Deum were like the figures of a sacred picture--women with red and white Eastern head-dresses, bearded men, listening as though a miracle were about to be performed, and barefooted children with straw-coloured hair and blue eyes running about everywhere. Towards six o’clock the Te Deum at last came to an end, and the whole crowd moved and swayed around the furnace. A Russian crowd is like a large tough sponge. Nothing seems to make any effect on it. It absorbs the newcomers who dive into it, and you can pull it this way and press it that way, but there it remains, indissoluble, passive, and obstinate. Perhaps the same is true of the Russian nation; I think it is certainly true of the Russian character, in which as fundamental qualities there are so much apparent weakness and softness, so much obvious elasticity and malleability, and so much hidden passive resistance.

I asked a peasant who was sitting by a railing under the church when the ceremony would begin. “Ask them,” he answered, “they will tell you, but they won’t tell us.” With the help of the policeman I managed to squeeze a way through the mass of struggling humanity to a place in the first row. I was told that the critical moment was approaching, and was asked to throw a piece of silver into the furnace, so that the bell might have a tuneful sound. I threw a silver rouble into the furnace, and then the men who were in charge of the casting said that the critical moment had come. On each side of the small channel they fixed metal screens and placed a large screen facing it. Then the man in charge said in a loud matter-of-fact tone: “Now, let us pray to God.” The peasants all uncovered themselves and made a sign of the cross, and a moment was spent in silent prayer. This prayer was especially for the success of the operation which was to take place immediately, namely, the release of the molten metal, since two hours had already been spent in praying for the bell. At this moment the excitement of the crowd reached such a pitch that they pushed themselves right up to the channel, and the efforts of the policemen, who were pouring down with perspiration and stretching out in vain, like the ghosts in Virgil, their futile arms, were pathetic. One man, however, not a policeman, waved a big stick and threatened to beat everybody back if they did not make way. Then at last the culminating moment arrived, the metal was released, and it poured down the narrow channel which had been prepared for it, and over which two logs placed crosswise formed an arch, surmounted by a yachting cap for ornament. It caused a huge yellow sheet of flame to flare up for a moment in front of the iron screen facing the channel. The women in the crowd shrieked. Those who were in front made a desperate effort to get back, and those who were at the back made a desperate effort to get forward, and I was carried right through and beyond the crowd in the struggle.

And the bell was born. I hope the silver rouble which I threw into it, and which now forms a part of it, will sweeten its utterance, and that it may never have to sound the alarm which signifies battle, murder, and sudden death.

CONVERSATIONS WITH DIMITRI NIKOLAIEVITCH

I

ENGLISH LIBERALS IN RUSSIA

“While you were away,” said Dimitri Nikolaievitch A----, “I had several long conversations with a young Englishman who had come over here to have a glimpse of the Revolution and to express his sympathy with the oppressed. He was an ardent Liberal, and he had a fine _doctrinaire_ spirit, so that although he was considerably disappointed with what he saw, or, rather, with what he did not see, his theories on Russian politics were unshaken by the facts he observed. And he remained entrenched within them as in the walls of a strong fortress. He interested me greatly, first, because he proved to me that a pet theory of mine was wrong, that no Englishman is a Liberal, and, secondly, he showed me how difficult it must be for people living in England, and unacquainted with Russian life, to form a correct estimate of what is going on here.

“He talked with burning indignation of the Bureaucrats and with hope of the dawn of liberty in Russia, and the awakening giant and the ferociousness of Ministers, and when I said that the only difference between the Kadet reformers and the Bureaucrats was that the Bureaucrats formed part of the Civil Service and the Kadet reformers did not, although some of them have done so in the past, he did not understand what I meant. And yet the matter is one which any Englishman who can understand Bernard Shaw’s play, _John Bull’s Other Island_, ought to be able to grasp. In _John Bull’s Other Island_, Bernard Shaw has shown exactly how an English Liberal fails to understand the Irish question. Now, an English Liberal misunderstands the Russian question in exactly the same way as he misunderstands the Irish question. He comes to Russia bursting with indignation, and burning with enthusiasm for the cause of liberty, and he meets with polite sympathy from the Russians who, while they respect the trend and the violence of his opinions, inwardly smile at his misapprehension, his complete inability to comprehend the nature of the case. The Liberal then goes back to England and writes a book in which in lurid colours he paints the distress of the distressful country, and in which he confuses utterly the evils arising from a complicated, antiquated, and incompetent system of administration with those due to original sin.

“I mean that in his book he is capable of saying, ‘Russia is such a terrible country that if a convict fells a warder he is flogged.’ He talks of the bloodthirsty Bureaucrats and the iron-fisted Governors, and then of the Russian Liberals as if they belonged to an entirely different race of people, as if, for instance, they possessed the qualities, and those only, which are special to the admirable British middle-class. Now, just think of this question of Bureaucracy for a moment. To talk of the bloodthirsty race of Bureaucrats is absurd. Nine-tenths of educated Russians are Bureaucrats, and the majority of these Bureaucrats are probably Liberals and would vote for the Kadets unless it were too inconvenient. Some of the higher officials among these same Bureaucrats have often admittedly been excellent men; in any case there is no difference of kind between the Russian who is a high official or a small public servant and the Russian who is a doctor, a lawyer, a political agitator, a novelist, an actor, or an anarchist.

“Where, then, is the mischief? The mischief is in the system, and the misunderstanding arises from a misuse of words, which in its turn is caused by a disinclination to think clearly. When people say Bureaucracy they mean Autocracy. Russia is governed by the autocratic system, and an Autocracy, unless, as happens every now and then in the course of centuries, the autocrat is a man of genius like Peter the Great, Cromwell, or Napoleon, means this, that the country governed by an autocrat is governed in reality by a mass of officials, who claim that they are directly responsible to the monarch, and who are at the same time considered to be responsible to the monarch’s Ministers. They end by being responsible to nobody, since the people who are set beneath them can complain of them to those who are in authority over them, and therefore not one of them, from the lowest telegraph clerk to the Prime Minister, is sure of his position, because the Prime Minister can be sent away at a moment’s notice, according to the Sovereign’s whim. The result of this is that the individual counts for nothing, and the better the Bureaucrat the more hopeless his position, since there is no guarantee for the laws being enforced, and when a people sees that sometimes the laws are enforced, and at others they are not, according to circumstances, and according to the nature and rank of the persons they affect, they become less inclined to obey the laws. Therefore, what Russia is suffering from is not want of liberty, but want of law. In Russia we have the licence of the Press, and the power of suppressing newspapers. What we want is order. Now, lots of Russians argue that the autocratic system and its attendant lawlessness are simply the inevitable result of the Russian character, out of which it has grown. I should be more inclined to believe this if exactly the same system had not existed in France and been subsequently destroyed, and if the autocratic system in Russia were a very ancient instead of a comparatively modern institution borrowed from Germany by an eccentric man of genius who forced it on a backward and ignorant people. I mean Peter the Great.

“Again, many Russians argue thus: ‘In England, in spite of all their Habeas Corpus, Bills of Right, etc., officials do lawless things in Egypt, and innocent people are put in prison for mutilating horses.’ This argument seems to me fallacious. The point being not that the Habeas Corpus is an infallible guarantee against lawlessness in England, but that were there no Habeas Corpus in England things would be much worse than they are at present. There was once a French priest who, when he heard the Republic abused for all its vices and faults, answered: ‘Tout de même si les institutions libérales disparaissaient, nous les regrettrions.’ And I consider that if by any chance Liberal Institutions were established in Russia we should not groan beneath them. So you see I am not a Liberal but a radical. I am in favour of radical change. In spite of that, the sympathy of Liberals in other countries, even that of the Bishop of Hereford, fails either to move, to console, or to encourage me.

“At the beginning of the French Revolution the English Liberals felt much sympathy with the French Reformers, and a sword of honour was sent by the French tribunes to the ‘citoyens’ who were then Ministers in England; but when the French Revolution moved onwards towards its logical close, the disgust of the English Liberals knew no bounds, and Burke made his disapprobation immortal in burning prose. Therefore, when the revolutionaries here begin to get the upper hand I shall advise them to pause before sending a sword of honour to ‘Citoyen’ Hereford, ‘Citoyen’ Jaurès, and ‘Citoyen’ Keir Hardy, lest when all Russia is in flames and the rentes have sunk to nothing and the red flag flies from the Winter Palace, the Bishop from the pulpit, M. Jaurès in the Chamber of Deputies, and Mr. Keir Hardy in the House of Commons, rise to point out--safeguarding themselves with conjunctions as is the habit of political speakers--that although nobody sympathises more than they do with Liberal ideas, nevertheless, to repudiate foreign loans, and to cut off Professor Milioukov’s head, and to throw all the Kadets and the moderate Liberals and even the more moderate Socialists into the Neva, is going too far, and for such actions they cannot overstate their deprecation.”

II

BYRON

Last night I went to see my old friend Dimitri Nikolaievitch A----. I found him, as usual, in the little den which he shares with a bullfinch, a lizard, and a fox terrier on the sixth floor of a huge sordid barrack. As usual, he was smoking, and there was a lack of buttons on his coat.