Chapter 4
O happy the being whose life from afar Shall be lighted by such a lode star!
_From the Caucasian of Prince Oberlaine_.
WHISPERS AND THE TIMID BREATHING
Whispers and the timid breathing, Nightingale's long trill, Silver moonlight and the rocking Of the dreaming rill; Nightly light and nightly shadow, Shadow's endless lace-- Neath the moon's enchanted changes The Beloved's face. Blinking stars as flash of amber, Snowy clouds on-rush, Tears and happiness and kisses-- And the dawn's red blush!
FROM "FÊTE CHENCHINE."
_Fête Chenchine, so-called, has no rival in impressionistic effects. The above without a verb is a good instance of his peculiar caprice_.
THE TALES OF THE STARS
The stars of beauty, the stars of purity, Have whispered their wonderful tales to the flowers! The satiny petals have smiled as they heard, And trembled the emerald leaves 'mid their bowers. But infatuate flowers deep drunken of dew Repeated these tales to the light swaying breeze-- Rebellious winds listening swift caught them up And sang them o'er earth, o'er the mountains and seas! Now, as the earth under Springtime's caresses: With her verdant tissue is covered once more, All my madly passionate soul overflows With dreams of the stars and their radiant lore! And throughout these days of my sorrow and toil, Through these nights of my loneliness, darkness and rain-- Stars wondrous and radiant, I give back to you, Your ethereal fancies again!
FOFANOW.
ONE DEAREST PAIR OF EYES I LOVE
One dearest pair of eyes I love! Entranced my heart beneath their spell-- Clearer than clearest ray they are, But where they are--I will not tell!
Through silk of wondrous lashes soft, Their burning beams are flashing bright, Upon my knees, a slave I kneel-- Before those miracles of light.
The storm is growing in my soul, Tempest of pain and happiness-- I love one dearest pair of eyes, But whose they are--I'll not confess!
GIPSY SONG.
A GIPSY SONG
Pile of embers in the darkness, Sparks expire as they fly-- Night conceals us from the passing, On the bridge we'll say good-by!
At the parting, shawl of crimson Cross my shoulders thou shalt lace, At an end the days swift passing, Met within this shaded place.
In the morning, with first splendour, All my life compelled to rove-- I shall leave with other gipsies Seeking happiness and love.
How does fate foretell my future? Who, to-morrow by my side, O'er my heart will loose with kisses Knots by thy dear hand fast tied?
Flash of embers in the darkness, Sparks expire as they fly-- Night conceals us from the passing, On the bridge we'll kiss good-by!
POLONSKY.
AT LAST
No word,--not e'en a sigh, my darling! Together now the silence keeping; In truth as o'er some grave stone leaning The silent willows low are weeping, And drooping o'er it so are reading-- I read in thy tired heart at last, That days of happiness existed, And that this happiness is past.
PLESTCHEEFF.
BY AN OPEN WINDOW
So sultry is the hour I throw the casement wide, Fall on my knees beside it in the gloom, And cowering before me lies the balmy night, Wafted aloft the breath of lilac bloom. The nightingale her plaint from a near thicket sobs, I listen to the singer, share the woe-- With a longing for my home within me waking, The home I looked on last so long ago! And the nightingales of home with their familiar song! And lilacs in my childhood gardens fair! How the languors of the night possess my being, Restoring my lost youth on perfumed air!
THE GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE.
WITH THE GREATNESS OF GOD
With the greatness of God all my heart is on fire! Such a beauty to earth does He lend-- He created eternity for our desire, To our torment has given an end.
NADSON.
THE POET
Ne'er have I sung in idle hours of dreaming, With verse harmonious and sweet-voiced rhyme, I have sung only when in tempest raging My soul was shaken by a power sublime! For each thought I have suffered and been troubled, No dream creation painless from me torn, The blessed lot of Poet not seldom seeming A cross intolerable to be borne! Oft have I sworn to evermore keep silence, To mingle and be lost among the crowd, But when the winds once more their strings are sweeping-- Aeolian harps must ever cry aloud; And in the Spring the flooding streams on-rushing Must downward plunge into the vale below, When from the rocky peaks' high towering summits The sun's warm rays have melted off the snow.
NADSON.
TO THE MUSE
Take from thy brow the laurel--cast it forth! May it in dust lie 'neath thy feet; The blood-flecked thorn crown hurl away-- As witness of thy pain alone 'tis meet!
NADSON.
A FRAGMENT
Hark! The storm petrel shrieks! Reef the sail canvas fast! See, the Spirit of Storm with wildest commotion Has to heaven's arched vaulting his coronal pressed, While his heels dam the flood gates of ocean! Furious storm-cloud his undulent drapery, Girded round with the lightning wide flashing; O'er the sea's leaden billows from his threatening hand The thunderbolts are sent crashing!
NADSON.
IN MAY
To you,--you beggars in the forests proud,-- To pastures free, my hasting foot returns! The May is come! It smiles and laughs aloud-- For Love's desire, freedom's bliss, it yearns. Erased the marks of city slavery, Here where the sun gleams gold through azure hours-- Here wrests the spirit from all bondage free, The fields grown green and the syringa flowers!
Storms only, brought my youthful morning red, And night of soul and wilderness of pains-- All in my breast is hushed and numb and dead, The pulsing fever stopped within my veins; Yet here, where Nature winds a wreath for me, The arms stretch forth,--the weary glance devours-- And the arrested soul exults and sings, The fields grow green and the syringa flowers!
NADSON.
IN MEMORY OF N.M.D.
Slumber soft,--oh thou my heart's beloved! Death alone can bring eternal rest, And in death alone 'neath tearless lashes Shall thine eyes forever close be pressed; In thy grave, no more with fevered doubting Shall thy golden head tormented be, In thy grave alone, thou'lt never long for All that life so cruel robbed from thee.
Through the grass, white yet thy coffin shining-- O'er thy grave the cross is looming white, As in silent prayer unto the heavens Mournful gleaming through the cold blue night. Now with tears my eyes are overflowing, Hotter tears I ne'er before have wept-- All the bitter sorrows I have suffered In one sobbing cry together swept.
Spring across the fields will be returning With her silver nightingales, ere long-- Through the dusky nights of silence piercing E'en thy grave with her inspiring song, And the lindens whispering, will murmur-- Breathless die away, and sighing cease, But thou--slumber soft my heart's beloved, Death alone can bring eternal peace!
NADSON.
AT THE GRAVE OF N.M.D.
Forsaken am I now anew, Night's sombre wings o'er me descending, As tearless, meditating, dumb-- Above thy grave's low mound I'm bending. Naught offers recompense for thee, No hopes console or fears betray-- For whom now live I in this world? For whom on earth now shall I pray?
NADSON.
IN DREAMS
In my dreams I saw heavens bespangled, With silvery stars all adorned, And pale green sorrowing willows Drooping low o'er the pale blue pond. I saw in syringa embowered A cottage, and thou my heart's Dove-- And bowed was thy little curly head, My beautiful sad pale Love!
Thou wert weeping, the teardrops shining Were flowing from thy yearning gaze, For love the roses wept also, For joy sobbed the nightingale. And every tear found consoling-- A greeting from near and from far, The garden was lit by a glow worm, Enraptured the heavens a star!
NADSON.
THE OLD GREY HOUSE
Thou hospitable old grey house,--A greeting unto thee! With thy red ochre roofs,--vine trellised o'er; The gardens fair laid forth in blooming luxury, The fields in glinting beads of dew stretched endlessly, Beneath the sun's fresh kiss a gilded floor!
A silvery ribbon through the flowering green-- The icy billows of the river foam, Above her clay-white strand are verdant arbours seen, Spun o'er with leafage, through the waking land between, And where the azure river's currents roam.
Prattling, the river lisps of love and of repose-- And in the distance shimmers, faintly dies; A flower, secret listening as its message flows, A roguish kiss of gratitude in fragrance blows, While beckoning stars smile from the silent skies.
I greet thee, home and mother! Joys now charm anew That I believed but once to me were given; Thee I forsook,--and now my last expiring view Turns back from fruitless conflict to thy vision true, Love, no more mine, nor hope nor peace of heaven!
Mother and home, I greet thee! O caress thy child Whom weariness, regret, despair assail-- With sighing of thy groves in the soft wind beguiled, With sunbeams of thy Springtime smiling fair and mild, And with the liquid song of nightingales!
Let me once only weep in the assurance blest That I am not girt round with human scorn, Let me but sleep once more upon thy gentle breast, Forgetting in my childish, deeply-dreaming rest The loss and failure of my life forlorn!
NADSON.
CALL HIM NOT DEAD
Call him not dead,--he lives! Ah you forget Though the pyre lies in ruin the fires upward sweep, The string of the harp is broken but her chords still weep, The rose is cut but it is blooming yet!
NADSON.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
ALEXANDER SERGJEWITSCH PUSHKIN was born at Moscow, May 26, 1799. His first poetical influence came from his nurse who taught him Russian tales, legends and proverbs, and to whom, with loving recognition, he was grateful to the end of his life. His grandmother and this nurse taught him to read and write. In his seventh year he began the study of foreign languages; German, French,--which was as his mother tongue to him,--and mathematics, which he hated. At nine the passion of reading possessed him and he devoured his father's library, which included the French erotics, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists. His own first poetical work was indeed written in French. In 1811 he was sent to the school then just opened, at Tzarskoe Selo near Petersburg. Here, however, he learned little, the students being more interested in drinking bouts and platonic relations with barmaids and actresses; in spite of which the art of poetry was worshiped and Pushkin with others among his friends published a journal in manuscript that circulated their own contributions. He was later graduated from the Alexandrovsky Lyceum, the highest and most splendid civil school of that time, and entered the department of Foreign Affairs. Although he retained his entire sympathy with the poetic brotherhood, he now frequented the salons of the titled aristocracy and gave himself up to the vortex of luxurious society. Because of his political satires and too free opposition to the government, he was sent away from Petersburg in 1820, and attached to the Governor of the South Russian Colonies. Here he fell ill and went to the Caucas for recovery. It was in the Crimea that he learned to know and wonder over Byron. He remained three years in Kischinew,--in the service chiefly of wine, women and cards. In 1823 he went to Odessa as attaché of the General Governor Count Woronzow, whom he pursued with biting epigram,--until in 1824 the poet of "Russlan and Ludimilla" was removed from the service and banished to his mother's estates by order of the Tsar Alexander I.
These two years of unwilling retirement worked mightily upon the soul of Pushkin so filled with storm and stress. He struck off the chains of Byron and steeped himself in Shakespeare; writing at this period his drama of Boris Godunow. Nicholas First amnestied the poet and recalled him to Moscow, instituting himself censor of all future work; likewise placing Pushkin under the all-powerful Chief of Police Count Benkendorff, from whom Lermontoff later had also so much to suffer. In 1829 Pushkin went to the Caucas and with the Russian army to Erzum. In 1830 he inherited from his father the management of But Boldino, where he finished "Onegin," and three other dramas. In 1831 he was married at Moscow to Natalie Nikolajewa Gontsharowa, whose beauty had for three years held him in her toils. In the same year he was appointed to the foreign office again. In 1833 the poem was published that won him his fatal commission. Pushkin fell, as did Lermontoff later, a victim of the envy and hatred of high society. At this time many responsible positions were held in Russia by Frenchmen who had fled the terrors of the revolution. Such a French émigré was D'Anthes, who pursued the wife of Pushkin with his compromising attentions, until at a ball the poet was almost forced to challenge him. The pistol duel, that Count Benkendorff with cunning foresight did nothing to prevent, took place June 27, 1837. In two days the poet was free from his tormentors forever. He was buried in the Swatjatorgorische cloister and statues have been erected to his honor at Petersburg, Moscow and many other cities throughout Russia. His service to Russian literature can only be compared with that of Dante for Italy,--since there was practically no Russian poetry before Pushkin and he may be said to have created the Russian language as it is spoken to-day.
MICHAIL JURJEWITSCH LERMONTOFF was born October 14, 1814, at Moscow. From his father he inherited the love of brilliant society, from his mother the love of music and an unusually sensitive temperament. When he was but two and a half years old his mother died and he became the idol of his grandmother, by whom he was spoiled, until the wilfulness of youth became the arrogance and domineering quality so distinguishing his maturity. Being a delicate child, his grandmother took him at the age of ten to the Caucas,--which he deeply loved ever after. In 1827 he was placed in the Adelige Pension at Moscow, having been previously much influenced by a German nurse who inspired him with a love of German legend and poetry, and also by his tutor, an officer in the Napoleonic guard, who had taught him French. Up to 1831 he was under the German unfluence [Transcriber's note: sic] in literature, but then he came under the influence of Byron, and from this time he was never free of the impression of the poet so congenial to his own spirit and nature. In 1830 he was matriculated by the Moscow University as a student of moral and political science. In 1832 he went to what is now the Nicolai Military school in Petersburg, where he wrote his censurable and erotic poems that were passed about by thousands and won an immense popularity with the jeunesse doré of the time, but which were regarded as discreditable by the more serious and thoughtful society. In November, 1832, he was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Life Guard Hussar regiment, and the young poet now plunged into the vortex of society life as Pushkin had before him. In 1836 appeared his "Song of the Tsar Ivan Wassiljewitsch,"--a truly classical achievement in the record of literature. In 1837 came the poem on the death of Pushkin, that stirred the aristocratic world and caused his banishment to the Caucas by the Emperor Nicholas I. In April of the year 1840 he was again banished to the Caucas for his duel with the son of the historian de Barante, where he distinguished himself by his valor in conflict with the Tscherkes. In February of 1841 we find the poet again at Petersburg, where the second edition of his masterpiece, "A Hero of Our Own Time," was just appearing. Yet toward the end of April again he was obliged to leave,-- this time through the influence and hatred of the Countess Benkendorff. For the third time he went to the Caucas in exile. Here in Petigorsk he was forced into close relation with one Major Nikolai Solomonowitsch Martynow,--whom he did not spare from his well deserved scorn. Aroused by the local society that pursued the poet with hatred and envy, Martynow challenged him at a ball. The seconds, as also the entire city, expected a harmless outcome only, especially as Lermontoff, as was known to his adversary, had declared he should shoot in the air. He held his hand high with the pistol stretched aloft; Martynow approached, aimed, fired, and silently the poet fell dead. Thus his own lament for Pushkin came to be worthily written for himself--
"The murderer contemptuous gazing Did steadfastly his weapon aim--" etc., etc.
At the foot of the Machook mountains, July 27, 1841, in the twenty-seventh year of his age, the poet died. After a year the body was claimed by his grandmother, who lived at this time in the Pensa district, and his remains were removed to be fitly honored in the family village of Tarchany. In connection with the tragedy, it is pitiful to remember that his grandmother wept herself blind over the death of the poet.
COUNT ALEXIS CONSTANTINOWITSCH TOLSTOY was born at Petersburg on the 6th of September, 1817. At the age of six weeks he was taken away from the city to Little-Russia, by his mother and maternal uncle, who was distinguished in Russian literature under the pseudonym of Anton Perowskij. By this uncle he was brought up, enjoying a singularly happy and unclouded childhood. Being an only child he played much alone, living in his dreams and imagination and early developing a love for poetry. At the age of eight or nine years he was taken by his parents to Petersburg where he was presented to the heir to the throne, and allowed to play with his children. The good will shown him at that time he never lost throughout his entire life. The year following he was taken to Germany, and while in Weimar was permitted to visit Goethe, which made a lasting impression upon him. Up to the age of seventeen when he took his examinations for the University at Moscow, he lived both in Russia and abroad. After the death of his uncle, who made him his heir, he became attached, by the wish of his mother, to the Russian Mission at Frankfort. Later he returned to enter the Second Division of the Chancellery of His Majesty. At the time of the coronation of Alexander Second at Moscow, he was appointed to become His Majesty's aide de camp; an honor he declined, not caring for a military career. He was afterward made Chief Master of the Royal Hunt, a position he held until the day of his death. From the age of sixteen he had always written poetry, but not until 1855 did he begin to publish his lyrics and epics in the journals. His passion for poetry was extended toward all other forms of art. At thirteen years of age he made his first journey through Italy,--to Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples, and his soul grew large with enthusiasm for every manifestation of beauty, so that upon his return to Russia he was really homesick for Italy. He said himself that it was solely due to his passion for hunting that his poems were written in the major key,--while those of so many of his countrymen were written in the minor. Count Tolstoy died on the 28th of September, 1875, at his estates in the government of Tshernigow, where he lies buried.
His most important works were a romance, a dramatic poem, Don Juan,--and the dramatic trilogy, The Death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fedor Ivanowitsch and Tsar Boris.
APOLLON NIKOLAJEWITSCH MAIKOW was born June 4, 1821, at Moscow. His father was a painter; his brothers had rendered important service to Russian literature in history and criticism. As a boy he was instructed in the literature of Russia by the afterward famous Gontscharow. At the age of fifteen he began to write verse. His original intention was to become a painter, but the weakness of his eyes and his increased devotion to poetry decided him otherwise.
He studied jurisprudence at the University of St. Petersburg for several years, and his final collection of poems was published in 1842, which was greeted with enthusiasm by the famous critic Belinsky. In the same year, using the gold he received from the Emperor Nicholas I, he went abroad. He spent nearly a year in Italy, heard lectures at the College de France and the Sorbonne during his stay in Paris, and spent some time in Prague. For a time he served in the Ministry of Finance and from 1852 in the Foreign Censorship office at Petersburg; being President of that office at the time of his death which occurred in March, 1897.
NIKOLAI ALEXAJEWITSCH NEKRASSOW was born in November, 1821, in a village of a Polish province. His father married the daughter of a Polish magnate against the opposition of her parents. The marriage turned out unhappily. There were fourteen children and the poet always thought of his mother as a saint and his father as a tyrant,--which appears in several of his lyric poems. His childhood was spent in Greschenewo where the family had inherited an estate. He was sent to the government school or gymnasium, only until the fifth class. At sixteen he went to Petersburg to pursue a military career by the will of his father. His desire for knowledge drove him toward the University, but his father refused his every request, and during his student years he went hungry very often. He wrote vaudevilles for the Alexander theatre under an assumed name, and not until 1840 published his first volume of verse. In his fortieth year he brought out an anthology of Russian poets that was sufficiently successful to give him a living. In his fiftieth year his health seemed failing, and he went abroad to Italy, where the disaster seemed happily averted. The journal with which he had been connected being now suppressed, he became connected with another for two years. In December, 1877, he died, widely mourned and called "the singer of Russian folk song."
IVAN SSAWITSCH NIKITIN was born October 3, 1824, at Woronesh. Though his life was poor in external circumstances, it was all the richer within. His best biography is his own work, "From the Diary of a Seminarist." His life opened under rather auspicious influences, for his father owned a candle factory and was so prosperous that his business amounted yearly to a hundred thousand roubles. A shoemaker taught the precocious boy to read, and he was put to school at first in the local school, but this was exchanged in 1841 for the Seminary. Both here and at home he was, however, more cudgelled than educated, and his soul was threatened with suffocation in scholastic confusion. Only one consolation was always his; literature and poetry. While here the first great misfortune befell. His father's business failed, the house was turned into an inn and Ivan, instead of attending the University, as he had expected, was obliged to sell candles, not only in his father's shop, but as that was soon taken from him, even in the market place. After a few months his mother died and his father sacrificed his last remaining possessions for drink. He insulted and even attacked his son, bidding him leave his house, and the poor boy was compelled to render the most menial service to all. For ten long years this condition lasted, yet Ivan remained a poet!