Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

by Astolphe De Custine

TO THE CONVENT OF THE TRANSFIGURATION. RUSSIAN PIETY.

  — BYZANTINE STYLE IN THE ARTS. — GREAT POINTS OF RELI

  GIOUS DISCUSSION IN RUSSIA. — THE ZACUSKA. THE STERLED.

  RUSSIAN DINNERS.FAMILY SOIREE. — MORAL SUPERIORITY OF

  THE FEMALE SEX IN RUSSIA. — JUSTIFICATION OF PROVIDENCE.

  A LOTTERY. FRENCH TON CHANGED BY POLITICS. —WANT

  OF A BENEFICENT ARISTOCRACY. THE REAL GOVERNORS OF

  RUSSIA. — BUREAUCRACYCHILDREN OF THE POPES. PRO-

  PAGANDISM OF NAPOLEON STILL OPERATES IN RUSSIA.THE

  TASK OF THE EMPEROR.

  The prediction made to me at Moscow is already accomplished, although I have yet scarcely completed a quarter of my journey. I have reached Yaroslaf in a carriage, not one part of which is undamaged. It is to be mended, but I doubt whether it will carry me through.

  Summer has now vanished*, not to return until the next year. A cold rain, which they here consider as proper to the season, has driven away the dog-days entirely. I am so accustomed to the incon-

  * Written 18th of August.

  COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE OF YAEOSLAF. 125

  veniences of the heat, to dust, flies, and muscµiitos, that I can scarcely realise the idea of my deliverance from these scourges.

  The city of Yaroslaf is an important entrepot for the interior commerce of Russia. By it, Petersburg comimmicates with Persia, the Caspian, and all Asia. The Volga, that great national and moving road, flows by the city, which is the central point of the interior navigation of the country — a navigation wisely directed, much boasted of by the subjects of the Czar, and one of the principal sources of their prosperity. It is with the Volga that the immense ramifications of canals are connected, that create the wealth of Russia.

  The city, like all the other provincial cities in the empire, is vast in extent, and appears empty. The streets are immensely broad, the squares very spacious, and the houses in general stand far apart. The same style of architecture reigns from one end of the country to the other. The following dialogue will show the value the Russians place on their pretended classic edifices.

  A man of intelligence said to me, at Moscow, that he had seen nothing in Italy which appeared new to him.

  " Do you speak seriously ? " I asked.

  " Quite seriously," he replied.

  " It seems to me impossible,'' I responded, " that any one could descend for the first time the southern side of the Alps, without the aspect of the land producing a revolution in his mind."

  " In what manner ? " said the Russian, with that G 3

  126A RUSSIAN'S OPINION OF

  disdainful tone and air which here too often pass for a proof of civilisation.

  " What!" I replied, " the novelty of those landscapes adorned by art, those hills and slopes, where palaces, convents, and villages stand surrounded with vines, mulberries, and olives, those long ranges of white pillars, which support festoons of vines, and which carry the wonders of architecture into the recesses of the steepest mountains,—all that magnificent scenery, which gives the idea of a park laid out by Lenôtre for the pleasure of princes, rather than of a land cultivated in order to yield the labourer his daily bread; all those creations of man applied to embellish the creations of God,— is it possible that they did not appear to you as something new ? Surely, elegantly designed churches, in the steeples of which we recognise a classic taste modified by feudal customs, with so many other stately and extraordinary buildings dispersed in that superb garden, must have caused you some surprise ! Roads carried over enormous passes, on arcades as solid as they appear light to the eye *, mountains serving as the base of convents, villages, and palaces,— all announce a land where nature owns art as her sovereign. Woe to him who could tread the soil of Italy, without recognising in the majesty of the sites, as in that of the edifices, the land that is the cradle of civilisation ! "

  " I congratulate myself," replied my opponent, ironically, " on having seen nothing of all tins, as my blindness will serve as an excuse for your eloquence."

  * Witness the town of Bergamo, the lakes Maggiore, Como, &c„ and all the southern valleys of the Alps.

  RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE.127

  " I shall not much care,"' I answered, coolly, " though my enthusiasm appears to you ridiculous, if I only succeed in awakening in you a sentiment of the beautiful. The choice of the sites alone of the edifices, villages, and towns of Italy, reveals to me the genius of a people born for the arts. In the localities where commerce has accumulated wealth, as at Genoa, Venice, and the feet of all the great passes of the Alps, what use have the inhabitants made of the treasures they amassed? They have bordered their seas, lakes, rivers, and precipices with enchanted palaces,— ramparts of marble raised by genii. It is not alone on the borders of the Brenta that these miracles are to be seen; every mountain has its prodigy. Towns and villages, churches, castles, convents, bridges, villas, hermitages, the retreats of penitence as well as the abodes of pleasure and luxury, all so strike the imagination of the traveller as to weave a spell over the mind as well as the eye. The grandeur of the masses, the harmony of the lines are new to the men of the north. Add to this the associations of history.— Greece herself, notwithstanding her sublime but too scarce relics, less astonishes the greater number of pilgrims; for the ages of barbarism have left Greece empty, and the land requires to be searched in order to be appreciated. Italy, on the contrary, needs only to be looked at —"

  " How," interrupted the impatient Russian,—¢¢ how can you expect us inhabitants of Petersburg and Moscow to be astonished, as you are, with Italian architecture ? Do you not see models of it at every step you take in even the smallest of our towns and cities ? »

  G <¿

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  DESCRIPTION ОГ

  This explosion of national vanity silenced me : I was at Moscow; an inclination to laugh was rising within me, but it would have been dangerous to have given way to it. The argument of my adversary was the same as though a person were to refuse to look upon the Apollo Belvidere because he had elsewhere seen plaster-of-Paris casts of it. The influence of the Mongols survives their conquests among the Russians. Was it, then, to imitate them that they drove them out ? Detractors make little progress, either in the arts or in general civilisation. The Russians observe with malevolence because they lack the perception of perfection: so long as they envy their models they will never equal them. Their empire is immense, but what of that: who would admire the colossus of an ape ?

  Such were the angry thoughts that rose in my mind, but of which I suppressed the outward expression, although I believe my disdainful opponent read them on my face, for he did not speak to me any more, unless it was to add, with a nonchalant air, that he had seen olives in the Crimea, and mulberry-trees at Kicw.

  For my own part, I congratulate myself that I am only come to Russia for a short time ; a long stay in this land might rob me not only of the courage, but of the desire, to say the truth, in answer to things that I hear and see. Despotism discourages and casts a spell of indifference even over minds that arc the most determined to struggle against its glaring abuses.

  Disdain for things that they do not know, appears to me a dominant trait in the character of the Russians.

  YAEOSLAF.

  129

  Instead of endeavouring to comprehend, they endeavour to ridicule. If they ever succeed in bringing to full light their real genius, the world will see, not without some surprise, that it is a genius for caricature. Since I have studied the Russian character, and travelled in this last of the states written in the great book of European history, I have discovered that the talent for ridicule possessed by the pitri`enu, may become the dowry of an entire nation.

  The painted and gilded towers, almost as numerous as the houses of Yaroslaf, shine at a distance like those of Moscow, but the city is less picturescµie than the old capital of the empire. It is protected on the banks of the Volga by a raised terrace, planted with trees; under it, as u
nder a bridge, the road passes, by which merchandise is carried to and from the river. Notwithstanding its commercial importance, the city is empty, dull, and silent. From the height of the terrace is to be seen the yet more empty, dull, and silent surrounding country, with the immense river, its hue a sombre iron-grey, its banks falling straight upon the water, and forming at their top a level with the leaden tinted plain, here and there dotted with forests of birch and pine. This soil is, however, as well cultivated as it is capable of being; it is boasted of by the Russians as being, with the exception of the Crimea, the richest and most smiling tract in their empire.

  Byzantine edifices ought to be the models of the national architecture in Russia. Cities full of structures adapted to their location should animate the banks of the Vol¤·a. The interior arrangements of the Russian habitations are rational; their exterior, G 5

  130 BOATMEN OF THE VOLGA.

  and the general plan of the towns, are not so. Ya-roslaf has its columns and its triumphal arches in imitation of Petersburg, all of which are in the worst taste, and contrast, in the oddest manner, with the style of the churches and steeples. The nearer I approached this city, the more was I struck with the beauty of the population. The villages are rich and well built: I have seen a few stone houses, though too limited a number to vary the monotony of the view.

  The Volga is the Loire of Russia; but instead of the gaily-smiling hills of Touraine, crowned with the fairest castles of the middle ages, we here find only flat, unvaried banks, with plains, where the small, gray, mean-looking houses, ranged in lines like tents, sadden rather than animate the landscape : such is the land that the Russians commend to our admiration.

  In walking along the borders of the Volga I had to struggle against the wind of the north, omnipotent in this country throughout the year; for three months of which it sweeps the dust before it, and for the remaining nine, the snow. This evening, in the intervals of the blast, the distant songs of the boatmen upon the river caught my ear. The nasal tones, that so much injure the effect of the national songs of the Russians, were lost in the distance, and I heard only a vague, plaintive strain, of which my heart could guess the words. Upon a long float of timber, which they guided skilfully, several men were descending the course of their native Volga. On reaching Yaro-slaf they wished to land: when I saw them moor their raft, I stopped. They passed close before me, without taking any notice of my foreign appear-

  RUSSIAN СПЛЕАСТЕН.131

  ance; without even speaking to each other. The Russian peasants are taciturn and devoid of curiosity ; I can understand why: what they know disgusts them with all of which they are ignorant.

  I admire their noble features and fine expression. With the exception of the Cahnue race, who have broken noses and liigli cheek bones, I again repeat, the Russians are perfectly beautiful.

  Another charm, natural to them, is the gentleness of their voice, which is always base, and whieh vibrates without effort. This voice renders euphonious a language, which, spoken by others, would sound harsh and hissing. It is the only one of the European languages which appears to me to lose anything in the mouth of refined and educated persons. My ear prefers the Russian of the streets to the Russian of the drawing-rooms : in the streets, it is a natural tongue : in the salons, and at court, it is a newly-imported language, which the policy of the master imposes upon the courtiers.

  Melancholy, disguised by irony, is in this land the most ordinary humour of mind; in the saloons especially. There, more than elsewhere, it is necessary to dissimulate sadness; henee the sneering, sarcastic tone of lan
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  coup-d'œil on

  civilisation; not even their affectation can deprive them of this primitive advantage.

  They are, however, deficient in a much more essential quality — the faculty of loving. In ordinary affairs, the Russians want kind heartedness; in great affairs, good faith : a graceful egotism, a polite indifference, are the most conspicuous traits in their intercourse with others. This want of heart prevails among all classes, and betrays itself under various forms, according to the rank of the individuals; hut the principal is the same in all. The faculty of being easily affected and tenderly attached, so rare among the Russians, is a ruling characteristic of the Germans, who call it gem'ùth. We should call it expansive sensibility, or cordiality, if we had any need of defining a feeling which is scarcely more common among us than among the Russians. But the refined and ingenuous French plaisanterie is here replaced by a malignantly prying, a hostile, closely observing, caustic, satirical, and envious spirit, which appears to me infinitely more objectionable than our jesting frivolity. Here, the rigour of the climate, the severity of the government, and the habit of espionnao`e, render characters melancholy, and self-love distrustful. Somebody, or something, is always feared; and, what is worse, not without cause. This is not avowed, yet it cannot be concealed from a traveller accustomed to observe and compare different nations.

  To a certain point the want of a charitable disposition in the Russians towards strangers appears to me excusable. Before knowing us, they lavish their attentions upon us with apparent eagerness, because they are hospitable like the Orientals; but they are

  THE RUSSIAN CHARACTER.133

  also easily wearied like the Europeans. In welcoming us with a forwardness which has more ostentation than cordiality, they scrutinize our slightest words, they submit our most insignificant actions to a critical examination ; and as such work necessarily furnishes them with much subject for blame, they triumph internally, saying, " These, then, are the people who think themselves so superior to us !"

  This kind of study suits their quickly discerning, rather than sensitive nature. Such a disposition neither excludes a certain politeness nor a kind of grace, but it is the very opposite of true amability. Perhaps, with eare and time, one might succeed in inspiring them with some confidence; nevertheless, I doubt whether all my efforts could achieve this`; for the Russians are the most unimpressible, and, at the same time, the most impenetrable people in the world. What have they done to aid the march of human mind ? They have not hitherto produced either philosophers, moralists, legislators, or literati whose names belong to history; but, truly, they have never wanted, and never will want good diplomatists, clever, politic heads; and it is the same with their inferior classes, among whom there are no inventive mechanics, but abundance of excellent workmen.

  I am leading the reader into the labyrinth of contradictions, that is, I am showing the things of this world as they have appeared to me at the first and at the second view. I must leave to him the task of so reviewing and arranging my remarks as to be able to draw from them a general opinion. My ambition will be satisfied, if a comparing and selecting from this crowded collection of precipitate and carelessly

  134PRIMITIVE DROWSKAS.

  hazarded judgments will allow any solid, impartial, and ripe conclusions to be drawn. I have not attempted to draw them, because I prefer travelling to composing: an author is not independent, a traveller is. I therefore relate my impressions, and leave the reader to complete the book.

  The above reflections on the Eussian character have been suggested by several visits that I have made in Yaroslaf. I consider this central point as one of the most interesting in my journey.

  I will relate to-morrow the result of my visit to the chief personage of the place, the governor, for I have just sent him my letter. I have been told, or rather given to infer, much to his disparagement in the various houses that I have visited this morning.

  The primitive drowska is to be seen in
this city. It consists of a little board on four wheels, entirely concealed under the occupant, and looks as though the horse were fastened to his person ; two of the wheels are covered by his legs, and the other two are so low that they disappear under the rapid motion of the machine.

  The female peasants generally go barefoot. The men most frequently wear a species of sandal made of rushes, rudely platted, which resembles those of antiquity. The leg is clothed in a wide pantaloon, the folds of which, drawn together at the ancle by a little fillet, are covered with the shoe. This attire is precisely similar to the Scythian statues of the Roman sculptors.

  I am writing in a wretched inn; there are but two good ones in Eussia, and they are kept by foreigners : the English boarding-house at Saint Petersburg, and

  RUSSIAN BATHS.

  135

  that of Madame Howard, at Moscow, are those to which I refer. In the houses even of independent private people, I cannot seat myself without trembling.

  I have seen several public baths, both at Petersburg and Moscow. The people bathe in different ways : some enter chambers heated to a temperature that appears to me insupportable; the penetrating vapour of these stews is absolutely suffocating. In other chambers, naked men, standing upon heated floors, are soaped and washed by others also naked. The people of taste have their own baths, as in other places : but so many individuals resort to these public establishments ; the warm humidity there is so favourable to insect life, the clothes laid down in them are nurseries of so many vermin, that the visitor rarely departs without carrying with him some irrefragable proof of the sordid negligence of the lower orders.