Nikolai Vassilievich Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, in Little Russia,in March, 1809. The year in which he appeared on the planet proved tobe the literary annus mirabilis of the century; for in that sametwelvemonth were born Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson, AbrahamLincoln, Poe, Gladstone, and Holmes. His father was a lover ofliterature, who wrote dramatic pieces for his own amusement, and whospent his time on the old family estates, not in managing the farms,but in wandering about the fields, and beholding the fowls of the air.The boy inherited much from his father; but, unlike Turgenev, he hadthe best of all private tutors, a good mother, of whom his biographersays, Elle demeure toujours sa plus intime amie.*
*For the facts in Gogol's life, I have relied chiefly on the doctor'sthesis by Raina Tyrneva, Aix, 1901.
At the age of twelve, Nikolai was sent away to the high school atNezhin, a town near Kiev. There he remained from 1821 to 1828. He wasan unpromising student, having no enthusiasm for his lessons, andshowing no distinction either in scholarship or deportment.Fortunately, however, the school had a little theatre of its own, andGogol, who hated mathematics, and cared little for the study of modernlanguages, here found an outlet for all his mental energy. He soonbecame the acknowledged leader of the school in matters dramatic, andunconsciously prepared himself for his future career. Like Schiller,he wrote a tragedy, and called it "The Robbers."
I think it is probable that Gogol's hatred for the school curriculuminspired a passage in "Taras Bulba," though here he ostensiblydescribed the pedagogy of the fifteenth century.
"The style of education in that age differed widely from the manner oflife. These scholastic, grammatical, rhetorical, and logicalsubtleties were decidedly out of consonance with the times, never hadany connection with and never were encountered in actual life. Thosewho studied them could not apply their knowledge to anything whatever,not even the least scholastic of them. The learned men of those dayswere even more incapable than the rest, because farther removed fromall experience."*
*Translated by Isabel Hapgood.
In December, 1828, Gogol took up his residence in St. Petersburg,bringing with him some manuscripts that he had written while atschool. He had the temerity to publish one, which was so brutallyridiculed by the critics, that the young genius, in despair, burnedall the unsold copies--an unwitting prophecy of a later and morelamentable conflagration. Then he vainly tried various means ofsubsistence. Suddenly he decided to seek his fortune in America, buthe was both homesick and seasick before the ship emerged from theBaltic, and from Lubeck he fled incontinently back to Petersburg. Thenhe tried to become an actor, but lacked the necessary strength ofvoice. For a short time he held a minor official position, and alittle later was professor of history, an occupation he did not enjoy,saying after his resignation, "Now I am a free Cossack again."Meanwhile his pen was steadily busy, and his sketches of farm life inthe Ukraine attracted considerable attention among literary circles inthe capital.
Gogol suffered from nostalgia all the time he lived at St. Petersburg;he did not care for that form of society, and the people, he said, didnot seem like real Russians. He was thoroughly homesick for hisbeloved Ukraine; and it is significant that his short stories of lifein Little Russia, truthfully depicting the country customs, werewritten far off in a strange and uncongenial environment.
In 1831 he had the good fortune to meet the poet Pushkin, and a fewmonths later in the same year he was presented to Madame Smirnova;these friends gave him the entree to the literary salons, and theyoung author, lonesome as he was, found the intellectual stimulationhe needed. It was Pushkin who suggested to him the subjects for two ofhis most famous works, "Revizor" and "Dead Souls." Another friend,Jukovski, exercised a powerful influence, and gave invaluable aid atseveral crises of his career. Jukovski had translated the "Iliad" andthe "Odyssey;" his enthusiasm for Hellenic poetry was contagious; andunder this inspiration Gogol proceeded to write the most Homericromance in Russian literature, "Taras Bulba." This story gave thefirst indubitable proof of its author's genius, and to-day in theworld's fiction it holds an unassailable place in the front rank. Thebook is so short that it can be read through in less than two hours;but it gives the same impression of vastness and immensity as the hugevolumes of Sienkiewicz.
Gogol followed this amazingly powerful romance by two other works,which seem to have all the marks of immortality--the comedy "Revizor,"and a long, unfinished novel, "Dead Souls." This latter book is thefirst of the great realistic novels of Russia, of which "Fathers andChildren, "Crime and Punishment," and "Anna Karenina" are suchsplendid examples.
From 1836 until his death in 1852, Gogol lived mainly abroad, andspent much time in travel. His favourite place of residence was Rome,to which city he repeatedly returned with increasing affection. In1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departedfrom the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact,toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic. Thelast years were shadowed by illness and--a common thing among Russianwriters--by intense nervous depression. He died at Moscow, 21 February1852. His last words were the old saying, "And I shall laugh with abitter laugh." These words were placed on his tomb.
Most Russian novels are steeped in pessimism, and their authors weremen of sorrows. Gogol, however, has the double distinction of beingthe only great comic writer in the language, and in particular ofbeing the author of the only Russian drama known all over the world,and still acted everywhere on the Continent. Although plays do notcome within the scope of this book, a word or two should be said aboutthis great comedy; for "Revizor" exhibits clearly the double nature ofthe author,--his genius for moral satire and his genius for pure fun.From the moral point of view, it is a terrible indictment against themost corrupt bureaucracy of modern times, from the comic point ofview, it is an uproarious farce.
The origin of the play is as follows: while travelling in Russia oneday, Pushkin stopped at Nizhni-Novgorod. Here he was mistaken for astate functionary on tour among the provinces for purposes ofgovernment inspection. This amused the poet so keenly that he narratedall the circumstances to Gogol and suggested that the latter make aplay with this experience as the basis of the plot. Gogol not onlyacted on the suggestion, but instead of a mere farce, he produced acomedy of manners. Toward the end of his life he wrote: "In "Revizor"I tried to gather in one heap all that was bad in Russia, as I thenunderstood it; I wished to turn it all into ridicule. The realimpression produced was that of fear. Through the laughter that I havenever laughed more loudly, the spectator feels my bitterness andsorrow." The drama was finished on the 4 December 1835, and of coursethe immediate difficulty was the censorship. How would it be possiblefor such a satire either to be printed or acted in Russia? Gogol'sfriend, Madame Smirnova, carried the manuscript to the Czar, NikolasI. It was read to him; he roared with laughter, and immediatelyordered that it be acted. We may note also that he became a warmfriend of Gogol, and sent sums of money to him, saying nobly, "Don'tlet him know the source of these gifts; for then he might feel obligedto write from the official point of view."
The first performance was on the 19 April 1836. The Czar attended inperson, and applauded vigorously. The success was immediate, and ithas never quitted the stage. Gogol wrote to a friend: "On the openingnight I felt uncomfortable from the very first as I sat in thetheatre. Anxiety for the approval of the audience did not trouble me.There was only one critic in the house--myself--that I feared. I heardclamorous objections within me which drowned all else. However, thepublic, as a whole, was satisfied. Half of the audience praised theplay, the other half condemned it, but not on artistic grounds."
"Revizor" is one of the best-constructed comedies in any language; fornot only has it a unified and well-ordered plot, but it does not stopwith the final fall of the curtain. Most plays by attempting to finishup the story with smooth edges, leave an impression of artificialityand unreality, for life is not done up in such neat parcels. Thegreatest dramas do not solve problems for us, they supply us withqu
estions. In "Revizor," at the last dumb scene, after all the mirth,the real trouble is about to begin; and the spectators depart, notmerely with the delightful memory of an evening's entertainment, butwith their imagination aflame. Furthermore, "Revizor" has thatcombination of the intensely local element with the universal, socharacteristic of works of genius. Its avowed attempt was to satiriselocal and temporal abuses; but it is impossible to imagine any stateof society in the near future where the play will not seem real. IfGogol had done nothing but write the best comedy in the Russianlanguage, he would have his place in literature secure.*
*The first production of "Revizor" in America (in English) was givenby the students of Yale University, 20 April, 1908. For all I know tothe contrary, it was the first English production in the world. It wasimmensely successful, caused subsequent performances elsewhere, bothamateur and professional, and attracted attention in Russia, where ajournal gave an illustrated account of the Yale representation.
One must never forget in reading Gogol that he was a man of theSouth--"homme du Midi." In all countries of the world, there is amarked difference between the Northern and the Southern temperament.The southern sun seems to make human nature more mellow. Southernersare more warm-hearted, more emotional, more hospitable, and much morefree in the expression of their feelings. In the United States, everyone knows the contrast between the New Englander and the man from theGulf; in Europe, the difference between the Norman and the Gascon hasalways been apparent--how clear it is in the works of Flaubert and ofRostand! Likewise how interesting is the comparison between thePrussian and the Bavarian; we may have a wholesome respect for Berlin,but we love Munich, in some respects the most attractive town onearth. The parallel holds good in Russia, where the Little Russians,the men of the Ukraine, have ever shown characteristics that separatethem from the people of the North. The fiery passion, the boundlessaspiration of the Cossack, animates the stories of Gogol with averitable flame.
His first book, "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka (Veillees del'Ukraine)," appeared early in the thirties, and, with all its crudityand excrescences, was a literary sunrise. It attracted immediate andwide-spread attention, and the wits of Petersburg knew that Russia hadan original novelist. The work is a collection of short stories orsketches, introduced with a rollicking humorous preface, in which theauthor announces himself as Rudii Panko, raiser of bees. Into thisbook the exile in the city of the North poured out all his love forthe country and the village customs of his own Little Russia. He givesus great pictures of Nature, and little pictures of social life. Hedescribes with the utmost detail a country fair at the place of hisbirth, Sorotchinetz. His descriptions of the simple folk, the beasts,and the bargainings seem as true as those in "Madame Bovary"--thedifference is in the attitude of the author toward his work. Gogol hasnothing of the aloofness, nothing of the scorn of Flaubert; he himselfloves the revelry and the superstitions he pictures, loves above allthe people. Superstition plays a prominent role in these sketches; theunseen world of ghosts and apparitions has an enormous influence onthe daily life of the peasants. The love of fun is everywhere inevidence; these people cannot live without practical jokes, violentdances, and horse-play. Shadowy forms of amorous couples move silentin the warm summer night, and the stillness is broken by silverlaughter. Far away, in his room at St. Petersburg, shut in by the longwinter darkness, the homesick man dreamed of the vast landscape heloved, in the warm embrace of the sky at noon, or asleep in the palemoonlight. The first sentence of the book is a cry of longing. "Whatecstasy; what splendour has a summer day in Little Russia!" Pushkinused to say that the Northern summer was a caricature of the Southernwinter.
The "Evenings on a Farm" indicates the possession of great powerrather than consummate skill in the use of it. Full of charm as it is,it cannot by any stretch of language be called a masterpiece. Twoyears later, however, Gogol produced one of the great prose romancesof the world, "Taras Bulba." He had intended to write a history ofLittle Russia and a history of the Middle Ages, in eight or ninevolumes. In order to gather material, he read annals diligently, andcollected folk-lore, national songs, and local traditions. Fortunatelyout of this welter of matter emerged not a big history, but a shortnovel. Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the mannerof Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare.Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the moreevident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberatelyHomeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much tothis little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work canshow such colossal force. Force is its prime quality--physical,mental, religious. In this story the old Cossacks, centuries dead,have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in alltheir amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating anddrinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion totheir religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired bypassion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy.These Cossacks are the veritable children of the steppes, and theirvast passions, their Homeric laughter, their absolute recklessness inbattle, are simply an expression of the boundless range of the mightylandscape.
"The further they penetrated the steppe, the more beautiful it became.Then all the South, all that region which now constitutes New Russia,even to the Black Sea, was a green, virgin wilderness. No plough hadever passed over the immeasurable waves of wild growth; the horsesalone, hiding themselves in it as in a forest, trod it down. Nothingin nature could be finer. The whole surface of the earth presenteditself as a green-gold ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions ofdifferent flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peepedlight-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broomthrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of thefalse flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence,was filling out to ripening. About their slender roots ran partridgeswith out-stretched necks. The air was filled with the notes of athousand different birds. In the sky, immovable, hung the hawks, theirwings outspread, and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The criesof a cloud of wild ducks, moving up from one side, were echoed fromGod knows what distant lake. From the grass arose, with measuredsweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And nowshe has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she hasturned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes,how beautiful you are!"*
*Translated by Isabel Hapgood.
The whole book is dominated by the gigantic figure of old Taras Bulba,who loves food and drink, but who would rather fight than eat. Like somany Russian novels, it begins at the beginning, not at the second orthird chapter. The two sons of Taras, wild cubs of the wild old wolf,return from school, and are welcomed by their loving father, not withkisses and affectionate greeting, but with a joyous fist combat, whilethe anxious mother looks on with tears of dismayed surprise. After thesublime rage of fighting, which proves to the old man's satisfactionthat his sons are really worthy of him, comes the sublime joy ofbrandy, and a prodigious feast, which only the stomachs of fifteenthcentury Cossacks could survive. Then despite the anguish of themother--there was no place for the happiness of women in Cossacklife--comes the crushing announcement that on the morrow all threemales will away to the wars, from which not one of them will return.One of the most poignant scenes that Gogol has written is the pictureof the mother, watching the whole night long by her sleeping sons--whopass the few hours after the long separation and before the eternalparting, in deep, unconscious slumber.
The various noisy parliaments and bloody combats are pictured by a penalive with the subject; of the two sons, one is murdered by his fatherfor preferring the love of a Capulet to the success of the Montagues;the other, Ostap, is taken prisoner, and tortured to death. Taras, indisguise, watches the appalling sufferings of his son; just before hisdeath, Ostap, who had not uttered a word during the prolonged andawful agony, cries out to the hostile sky, like the bitter cry "MyGod, why hast thou forsaken me?" "
Father! where are you? do you hearall?" and to the amazement of the boy and his torturers, comes, like avoice from heaven, the shout, "I hear!"
Fearful is the vengeance that Taras Bulba takes on the enemy; fearfulis his own death, lashed to a tree, and burned alive by his foes. Hedies, merrily roaring defiant taunts at his tormentors. And Gogolhimself closes his hero's eyes with the question, "Can any fire,flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable of overpoweringRussian strength?"
In its particular class of fiction, "Taras Bulba" has no equal exceptthe Polish trilogy of Sienkiewicz; and Gogol produces the same effectin a small fraction of the space required by the other. This is ofcourse Romanticism rampant, which is one reason why it has not beenhighly appreciated by the French critics. And it is indeed as contraryto the spirit of Russian fiction as it is to the French spirit ofrestraint. It stands alone in Russian literature, apart from theregular stream, unique and unapproachable, not so much one of thegreat Russian novels as a soul-thrilling poem, commemorating theimmortal Cossack heart.
Gogol followed up the "Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka" with twoother volumes of stories and sketches, of which the immortal "TarasBulba" was included in one. These other tales show an astonishingadvance in power of conception and mastery of style. I do not sharethe general enthusiasm for the narrative of the comically grotesquequarrel between the two Ivans: but the three stories, "Old-fashionedFarmers," "The Portrait," and "The Cloak," show to a high degree thatmingling of Fantasy with Reality that is so characteristic of thisauthor. The obsolete old pair of lovers in "Old-fashioned Farmers" isone of the most charming and winsome things that Gogol wrote at thisperiod: it came straight from the depths of his immeasurabletenderness. It appealed to that Pity which, as every one has noticed,is a fundamental attribute of the national Russian character. In "ThePortrait," which is partly written in the minute manner of Balzac, andpartly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, wehave the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into thisstrange story he has also indicated two of the great guidingprinciples of his life: his intense democratic sympathies, and hisdevotion to the highest ideals in Art. When the young painter forsakespoverty and sincerity for wealth and popularity, he steadilydegenerates as an artist and eventually loses his soul. The ending ofthe story, with the disappearance of the portrait, is remarkablyclever. The brief tale called "The Cloak" or "The Overcoat" has greatsignificance in the history of Russian fiction, for all Russiannovelists have been more or less influenced by it. Its realism is soobviously and emphatically realistic that it becomes exaggeration, butthis does not lessen its tremendous power: then suddenly at the veryend, it leaves the ground, even the air, and soars away into the etherof Romance.
Although these stories were translated into English by Miss Hapgoodover twenty years ago, they have never had any vogue amongEnglish-speaking people, and indeed they have produced very littleimpression anywhere outside of Russia. This is a misfortune for theworld, for Gogol was assuredly one of the great literary geniuses ofthe nineteenth century, and he richly repays attentive reading. InRussia he has been appreciated, immensely respected and admired, fromthe day that he published his first book; but his lack of reputationabroad is indicated by the remark of Mr. Baring in 1910, "the work ofGogol may be said to be totally unknown in England." This statement isaltogether too sweeping, but it counts as evidence.
Despite Gogol's undoubted claim to be regarded as the founder ofRussian fiction, it is worth remembering that of the three works onwhich rests his international fame, two cannot possibly be calledgerminal. The drama "Revizor" is the best comedy in the Russianlanguage; but, partly for that very reason, it produced no school. Theromance "Taras Bulba" has no successful follower in Russianliterature, and brought forth no fruit anywhere for fifty years, untilthe appearance of the powerful fiction-chronicles by Sienkiewicz. Ithas all the fiery ardour of a young genius; its very exaggeration, itsdelight in bloody battle, show a certain immaturity; it breathesindeed the spirit of youth. With the exception of "The Cloak," Gogolhad by 1840 written little to indicate the direction that the bestpart of Russian literature was to take. It was not until thepublication of "Dead Souls" that Russia had a genuine realistic novel.This book is broad enough in scope and content to serve as thefoundation of Russian fiction, and to sustain the wonderful work ofTurgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. All the subsequent great novels inRussia point back to "Dead Souls."
No two books could possibly show a greater contrast than "Taras Bulba"and "Dead Souls." One reveals an extraordinary power of condensation:the other an infinite expansion. One deals with heroes and mightyexploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and themost trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; theother a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the mostbrilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of theRomantic spirit--Aspiration; the other looks at life through anachromatic lens, and is a catalogue of Realities. To a certain extent,the difference is the difference between the bubbling energy of youthand the steady energy of middle age. For, although Gogol was stillyoung in years when he composed "Dead Souls," the decade thatseparated the two works was for the author a constant progress indisillusion. In the sixth chapter of the latter book, Gogol hashimself revealed the sad transformation that had taken place in hisown mind, and that made his genius express itself in so different amanner:--
"Once, long ago, in the years of my youth, in those beautiful yearsthat rolled so swiftly, I was full of joy, charmed when I arrived forthe first time in an unknown place; it might be a farm, a poor littledistrict town, a large village, a small settlement: my eager, childisheyes always found there many interesting objects. Every building,everything that showed an individual touch, enchanted my mind, andleft a vivid impression. . . . To-day I travel through all the obscurevillages with profound indifference, and I gaze coldly at their sadand wretched appearance: my eyes linger over no object, nothinggrotesque makes me smile: that which formerly made me burst out in aroar of spontaneous laughter, and filled my soul with cheerfulanimation, now passes before my eyes as though I saw it not, and mymouth, cold and rigid, finds no longer a word to say at the veryspectacle which formerly possessed the secret of filling my heart withecstasy. O my youth! O my fine simplicity!"
Gogol spent the last fifteen years of his life writing this book, andhe left it unfinished. Pushkin gave him the subject, as he had for"Revizor." One day, when the two men were alone together, Pushkin toldhim, merely as a brief anecdote, of an unscrupulous promoter, who wentabout buying up the names of dead serfs, thus enabling their owners toescape payment of the taxes which were still in force after the lastregistration. The names were made over to the new owner, with alllegal formalities, so that he apparently possessed a large fortune,measured in slaves; these names the promoter transferred to a remotedistrict, with the intention of obtaining a big cash loan from somebank, giving his fictitious property as security; but he was quicklycaught, and his audacious scheme came to nothing. The story stuck inGogol's mind, and he conceived the idea of a vast novel, in which thetravels of the collector of dead souls should serve as a panorama ofthe Russian people. Both Gogol and Pushkin thought of "Don Quixote,"the spirit of which is evident enough in this book. Not long aftertheir interview, Gogol wrote to Pushkin: "I have begun to write "DeadSouls." The subject expands into a very long novel, and I think itwill be amusing, but now I am only at the third chapter. . . . I wishto show, at least from one point of view, all Russia." Gogol declaredthat he did not write a single line of these early chapters withoutthinking how Pushkin would judge it, at what he would laugh, at whathe would applaud. When he read aloud from the manuscript, Pushkin,who had listened with growing seriousness, cried, "God! what a sadcountry is Russia!" and later be added, "Gogol invents nothing; it isthe simple truth, the terrible truth."
The first part of his work, containing the first eleven chapters, or"songs," was published in May 1842. For the rest of his life, largelyspent abroad, Gogol wor
ked fitfully at the continuation of hismasterpiece. Ill health, nervous depression, and morbid asceticismpreyed upon his mind; in 1845 he burned all that he had written of thesecond volume. But he soon began to rewrite it, though he made slowand painful progress, having too much of improductive slave either tocomplete it or to be satisfied with it. At Moscow, a short time beforehis death, in a night of wakeful misery, he burned a whole mass of hismanuscripts. Among them was unfortunately the larger portion of therewritten second part of Dead Souls. Various reasons have beenassigned as the cause of the destruction of his book--some have said,it was religious remorse for having written the novel at all; others,rage at adverse criticism; others, his own despair at not havingreached ideal perfection. But it seems probable that its burning wassimply a mistake. Looking among his papers, a short time after theconflagration, he cried out, "My God! what have I done! that isn'twhat I meant to burn!" But whatever the reason, the preciousmanuscript was forever lost; and the second part of the work remainssadly incomplete, partly written up from rough notes left by theauthor, Partly supplied by another hand.
"Dead Souls" is surely a masterpiece, but a masterpiece of life ratherthan of art. Even apart from its unfinished shape, it is characterisedby that formlessness so distinctive of the great Russian novelists thesole exception being Turgenev. The story is so full of disgressions,of remarks in mock apology addressed to the reader, of comparisons ofthe Russian people with other nations, of general disquisitions onrealism, of glowing soliloquies in various moods, that the whole thingis a kind of colossal note-book. Gogol poured into it all hisobservations, reflections, and comments on life. It is not only apicture of Russia, it is a spiritual autobiography. It is withoutform, but not void. Gogol called his work a poem; and he could nothave found a less happy name. Despite lyrical interludes, it is as farremoved from the nature and form of Poetry as it is from Drama. It isa succession of pictures of life, given with the utmost detail, havingno connection with each other, and absolutely no crescendo, nomovement, no approach to a climax. The only thread that holds the worktogether is the person of the travelling promoter, Chichikov, whosevisits to various communities give the author the opportunity hedesired. After one has grasped the plan of the book, the purpose ofChichikov's mission, which one can do in two minutes, one may read thechapters in any haphazard order. Fortunately they are all interestingin their photographic reality.
The whole thing is conceived in the spirit of humour, and its authormust be ranked among the great humorists of all time. There is anabsurdity about the mission of the chief character, which gives riseto all sorts of ludicrous situations. It takes time for eachserf-owner to comprehend Chichikov's object, and he is naturallyregarded with suspicion. In one community it is whispered that he isNapoleon, escaped from St. Helena, and travelling in disguise. An oldwoman with whom he deals has an avaricious cunning worthy of a Normanpeasant. The dialogue between the two is a masterly commentary on theroot of all evil. But although all Russia is reflected in a comicmirror, which by its very distortion emphasises the defects of eachcharacter, Gogol was not primarily trying to write a funny book. Thevarious scenes at dinner parties and at the country inns arelaughable; but Gogol's laughter, like that of most great humorists, isa compound of irony, satire, pathos, tenderness, and moralindignation. The general wretchedness of the serfs, the indifferenceof their owners to their condition, the pettiness and utter meannessof village gossip, the ridiculous affectations of small-town society,the universal ignorance, stupidity, and dulness--all these areremorselessly revealed in the various bargains made by the hero. Andwhat a hero! A man neither utterly bad nor very good; shrewd ratherthan intelligent; limited in every way. He is a Russian, but auniversal type. No one can travel far in America without meetingscores of Chichikovs: indeed, he is an accurate portrait of theAmerican promoter, of the successful commercial traveller, whosesuccess depends entirely not on the real value and usefulness of hisstock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human nature and thepersuasive power of his tongue. Chichikov is all things to all men.
Not content with the constant interpolation of side remarks andcomments, queries of a politely ironical nature to the reader, in theregular approved fashion of English novels, Gogol added after thetenth chapter a defiant epilogue, in which he explained his reasonsfor dealing with fact rather than with fancy, of ordinary peoplerather than with heroes, of commonplace events rather than withmelodrama; and then suddenly he tried to jar the reader out of hisself-satisfaction, like Balzac in "Pere Goriot."
"Pleased with yourselves more than ever, you will smile slowly, andthen say with grave deliberation: 'It is true that in some of ourprovinces one meets very strange people, people absolutely ridiculous,and sometimes scoundrels too!'
"Ah, but who among you, serious readers, I address myself to those whohave the humility of the true Christian, who among you, being alone,in the silence of the evening, at the time when one communes withoneself, will look into the depths of his soul to ask in all sinceritythis question? 'Might there not be in me something of Chichikov?'"
This whole epilogue is a programme--the programme of theself-conscious founder of Russian Realism. It came from a man who haddeliberately turned his back on Romanticism, even on the romanticismof his friend and teacher, Pushkin, and who had decided to venture allalone on a new and untried path in Russian literature. He fullyrealised the difficulties of his task, and the opposition he was boundto encounter. He asks and answers the two familiar questionsinvariably put to the native realist. The first is, "I have enoughtrouble in my own life: I see enough misery and stupidity in theworld: what is the use of reading about it in novels?" The second is,"Why should a man who loves his country uncover her nakedness?"
Gogol's realism differs in two important aspects from the realism ofthe French school, whether represented by Balzac, Flaubert, Guy deMaupassant, or Zola. He had all the French love of veracity, and couldhave honestly said with the author of "Une Vie" that he painted'humble verite. But there are two ground qualities in his realisticmethod absent in the four Frenchmen: humour and moral force. Gogolcould not repress the fun that is so essential an element in humanlife, any more than he could stop the beating of his heart; he saw menand women with the eyes of a natural born humorist, to whom the utterabsurdity of humanity and human relations was enormously salient. Andhe could not help preaching, because he had boundless sympathy withthe weakness and suffering of his fellow-creatures, and because hebelieved with all the tremendous force of his character in theChristian religion. His main endeavour was to sharpen the sight of hisreaders, whether they looked without or within; for not even thegreatest physician can remedy an evil, unless he knows what the evilis.
Gogol is the great pioneer in Russian fiction. He had the essentialtemperament of all great pioneers, whether their goal is material orspiritual. He had vital energy, resolute courage, clear vision, and anabiding faith that he was travelling in the right direction. Such aman will have followers even greater than he, and he rightly shares intheir glory. He was surpassed by Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi,but had he lived, he would have rejoiced in their superior art, justas every great teacher delights in being outstripped by his pupils. Heis the real leader of the giant three, and they made of his lonelypath a magnificent highway for human thought. They all used himfreely: Tolstoi could hardly have written "The Cossacks" without theinspiration of Gogol, Turgenev must have taken the most beautifulchapter in "Virgin Soil" directly from "Old-fashioned Farmers," andDostoevski's first book, "Poor Folk," is in many places almost aslavish imitation of "The Cloak"--and he freely acknowledged the debtin the course of his story. The uncompromising attitude towardfidelity in Art which Gogol emphasised in "The Portrait" set thestandard for every Russian writer who has attained prominence sincehis day. No one can read Chekhov and Andreev without being consciousof the hovering spirit of the first master of Russian fiction. Hecould truthfully have adapted the words of Joseph Hall:--
I first adventure: follow me who list,And be the second Russ
ian Realist.
III
TURGENEV
Essays on Russian Novelists Page 2
