A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections Part 15

[22] p.r.o.nounced Aryol.

[23] This vehicle, which is also the best adapted as a convenient runabout for rough driving in the country, consists merely of a board, attached, without a trace of springs, to two pairs of wheels, identical in size.

[24] In the government of Orel (p.r.o.nounced Aryol) a solitary, surly man is called a wolf-_biriuk_.

[25] For a nursing-bottle, the Russian peasants use a cow's horn, with a cow's teat tied over the tip.

CHAPTER X

SEVENTH PERIOD: OSTRoVSKY, A. K. TOLSToY, POLoNSKY, NEKRaSOFF, SHEVTCHeNKO, AND OTHERS.

The new impulse imparted to all branches of literature in Russia during the '50's and the '60's could not fail to find a reflection in the fortunes of the drama also. Nowhere is the spirit of the period more clearly set forth than in the history of the Russian theater, by the creation of an independent Russian stage.

Russian comedy had existed from the days of Sumarokoff, as we have seen, and had included such great names as Von Vizin, Griboyedoff, and Gogol.

But great as were the works of these authors, they cannot be called its creators, in the true sense of the word, because their plays were like oases far apart, separated by great intervals of time, and left behind them no established school. Although Von Vizin's comedies contain much that is independent and original, they are fas.h.i.+oned after the models of the French stage, as is apparent at every step. "Woe from Wit" counts rather as a specimen of talented social satire than as a model comedy, and in its type, this comedy of Griboyedoff also bears the imprint of the French stage. Gogol's comedies, despite their great talent, left behind them no followers, and had no imitators. In the '30's and the '40's the repertory of the Russian theater consisted of plays which had nothing in common with "Woe from Wit," "The Inspector," or "Marriage,"

and the latter was rarely played. As a whole, the stage was given over to translations of sensational French melodramas and to patriotic tragedies.

The man who changed all this and created Russian drama, Alexander Nikolaevitch Ostrovsky (1823-1886), was born in Moscow, the son of a poor lawyer, whose business lay with the merchant cla.s.s of the Trans-Moscow River quarter, of the type which we meet with in Alexander Nikolaevitch's celebrated comedies. The future dramatist, who spent most of his life in Moscow, was most favorably placed to observe the varied characteristics of Russian life, and also Russian historical types; for Moscow, in the '30's and '40's of the nineteenth century, was the focus of all Russia, and contained within its walls all the historical and contemporary peculiarities of the nation. On leaving the University (where he did not finish the course), in 1843, Ostrovsky entered the civil service in the commercial court, where he enjoyed further opportunities of enlarging his observations on the life of the Trans-Moscow quarter. In 1847 he made his first appearance in literature, with "Scenes of Family Happiness in Moscow," which was printed in a Moscow newspaper. Soon afterwards he printed, in the same paper, several scenes from his comedy "Svoi liudi--sotchtyemsya," which may be freely translated, "It's All in the Family: We'll Settle It Among Ourselves." This gained him more reputation, and he resigned from the service to devote himself entirely to literature, as proof-reader, writer of short articles, and so forth, earning a miserably small salary. When the comedy just mentioned was printed, in 1847, it bore the t.i.tle of "The Bankrupt," and was renamed in deference to the objections of the censor. It made a tremendous commotion in Russian society, where it was read aloud almost daily, and one noted man remarked of it, "It was not written; it was born." But the Moscow merchants took umbrage at the play, made complaints in the proper quarter, and the author was placed under police supervision, while the newspapers were forbidden to mention the comedy. Naturally it was not acted. The following summary will not only indicate the reason therefor, and for the wrath of the merchants, but will also afford an idea of his style in the first comedy which was acted, his famous "Don't Seat Yourself in a Sledge Which is not Yours" ("Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last," is the English equivalent), produced in 1853, and in others:

IT'S ALL IN THE FAMILY: WE'LL SETTLE IT AMONG OURSELVES.

Samson Silitch Bolshoff (Samson, son of Strong Big), a Moscow merchant, has a daughter, Olympiada, otherwise known as Lipotchka.

Lipotchka has been "highly educated," according to the ideas of the merchant cla.s.s, considers herself a lady, and despises her parents and their "coa.r.s.e" ways. This remarkable education consists in a smattering of the customary feminine accomplishments, especial value being attached to a knowledge of French, which is one mark of the gentry in Russia.

Like all merchants' daughters who have been educated above their sphere, Lipotchka aspires to marry a n.o.ble, preferably a military man. The play opens with a soliloquy by Lipotchka, who meditates upon the pleasures of the dance.

"What an agreeable occupation these dances are! Just think how fine! What can be more entrancing? You enter an a.s.sembly, or some one's wedding, you sit down; naturally, you are all decked with flowers, you are dressed up like a doll, or like a picture in a paper; suddenly a cavalier flies up, 'Will you grant me the happiness, madam?' Well, you see if he is a man with understanding, or an army officer, you half-close your eyes, and reply, 'With pleasure!' Ah! Cha-a-arming! It is simply beyond comprehension! I no longer like to dance with students or shop-clerks. 'Tis quite another thing to distinguish yourself with military men! Ah, how delightful! How enchanting!

And their mustaches, and their epaulets, and their uniforms, and some even have spurs with bells.... I am amazed that so many women should sit with their feet tucked up under them.

Really, it is not at all difficult to learn. Here am I, who was ashamed to take a teacher. I have learned everything, positively everything, in twenty lessons. Why should not one learn to dance? It is pure superst.i.tion! Here is mama, who used to get angry because the teacher was always clutching at my knees. That was because she is not cultured. Of what importance is it? He's only the dancing-master."

Lipotchka proceeds to picture to herself that she receives a proposal from an officer, and that he thinks she is uneducated because she gets confused. She has not danced for a year and a half, and decides to practice a little. As she is dancing, her mother enters, and bids her to stop--dancing is a sin.

Lipotchka refuses, and an acrimonious wrangle ensues between mother and daughter, about things in general. The mother reproaches Lipotchka for her ways, reminds her that her parents have educated her, and so forth. To this Lipotchka retorts that other people have taught her all she knows--and why have her parents refused that gentleman of good birth who has asked for her hand? Is he not a Cupid? (she p.r.o.nounces it "Capid.") There is no living with them, and so forth. The female match-maker comes to inform them how she is progressing in her search for a proper match for Lipotchka, and the latter declares stoutly, that she will never marry a merchant. The match-maker, a famous figure in old Russia life, and irresistibly comic on the stage, habitually addresses her clients as, "my silver ones," "my golden ones," "my emerald ones," "my brilliant (or diamond) ones," which she p.r.o.nounces "bralliant." Matters are nearly arranged for Lipotchka's marriage with a man of good birth.

Old Bolshoff, however, is represented as being in a financial position where he can take his choice between paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a n.o.ble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage being, naturally, the bride's dowry.

Old Bolshoff decides to defraud his creditors, with the aid of a pettifogging lawyer, and he makes over all his property to his clerk, Podkhaliuzin. The latter has long sighed for Lipotchka, but his personal repulsiveness, added to his merchant rank, has prevented his ever daring to hint at such a thing. Now, however, he sees his chance. He promises the legal shyster a round sum if he will arrange matters securely in his favor. He bribes the match-maker to get rid of the n.o.ble suitor, and to bring about his marriage with Lipotchka, promising her, in case of success, two thousand rubles and a sable-lined cloak.

Matters have gone so far that Lipotchka is gorgeously arrayed to receive her n.o.bly born suitor, and accept him. Her mother is feasting her eyes on her adored child, in one of the intervals of her grumbling and bickering with her "ungrateful offspring,"

and warning the dear idol not to come in contact with the door, and crush her finery. But the match-maker announces that the man has beaten a retreat; Lipotchka falls in a swoon. Her father declares that there is no occasion for that, as he has a suitable match at hand. He calls in Podkhaliuzin, whom Lipotchka despises, and presents him, commanding his daughter to wed. Lipotchka flatly refuses. But after a private interview with the ambitious clerk, in which the latter informs her that she no longer possesses a dowry wherewith to attract a n.o.ble suitor, and in which he promises that she shall have the greatest liberty and be indulged in any degree of extravagance, she consents.

The marriage takes place. But old Bolshoff has been put in prison by his enraged creditors, while the young couple have been fitting up a new house in gorgeous style on the old merchant's money. The pettifogging lawyer comes for his promised reward. Podkhaliuzin cheats him out of it. The match-maker comes for her two thousand rubles and sable-lined cloak and gets one hundred rubles and a cheap gown. As these people depart cursing, old Bolshoff is brought in by his guard.

He has come to entreat his wealthy son-in-law to pay the creditors twenty-five per cent and so release him from prison.

Podkhaliuzin declares that this is impossible; the old man has given him his instructions to pay only ten per cent, and really, he cannot afford to pay more. The old man's darling Lipotchka joins in and supports her husband's plea that they positively cannot afford more. The old man is taken back to prison, preliminary to being sent to Siberia as a fraudulent bankrupt. The young couple take the matter quite coolly until the policeman comes to carry off Podkhaliuzin to prison, for collusion. Even then the rascally ex-clerk does not lose his coolness, and when informed by the policeman--in answer to his question as to what is to become of him--that he will probably be sent to Siberia, "Well, if it is to be Siberia, Siberia let it be! What of that! People live in Siberia also. Evidently there is no escape. I am ready."

Although "Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last," the central idea of which is that girls of the merchant cla.s.s will be much happier if they marry in their own cla.s.s than if they wed n.o.bles, who take them solely for their money (the usual reason for such alliances, even at the present day), had an immense success, both in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, Ostrovsky received not a penny from it. In the latter city, also, the censor took a hand, because "the n.o.bility was put to shame for the benefit of the merchant cla.s.s," and the theater management was greatly agitated when the Emperor and all the imperial family came to the first performance.

But the Emperor remarked, "There are very few plays which have given me so much pleasure; it is not a play, it is a lesson."

"The Poor Bride" (written in 1852) was then put on the stage, and the author received a small payment on the spot. In 1854 "Poverty is not a Vice" appeared, and confirmed the author's standing as a writer of the first cla.s.s. This play, a great favorite still, contains many presentations of old Russian customs. It was the first from which the author received a regular royalty, ranging from one-twentieth to two-thirds of the profits.

After many more comedies, all more or less noted, all more or less objected to by the censor, for various reasons, and hostility and bad treatment on the part of the theatrical authorities, Ostrovsky attained the zenith of his literary fame with his masterpiece, "Groza" ("The Thunderstorm"). It was not until 1856, in his comedy "A Drunken Headache from Another Man's Banquet" (meaning, "to bear another's trouble"), that Ostrovsky invented the words which have pa.s.sed into the language, _samodur_ and _samodurstvo_ (which mean, literally, "self-fool" and "the state of being a self-fool"). The original "self-fool" is "t.i.t t.i.titch Bruskoff" (provincially p.r.o.nounced "Kit Kit.i.tch" in the play), but no better example of the pig-headed, obstinate, self-complacent, vociferous, intolerable tyrant which const.i.tutes the "self-fool" can be desired than that offered in "The Thunderstorm" by Marfa Ignatievna Kabanoff, the rich merchant's widow. She rules her son, Tikhon, and his wife, Katerina, with a rod of iron. Her daughter, Varvara, gets along with her by consistent deceitfulness, and meets her lover, Kudryash, whenever she pleases. Tikhon goes off for a short time on business, and anxious to enjoy a little freedom, he persistently refuses to take his wife with him, despite her urgent entreaties. She makes the request because she feels that she is falling in love with Boris.

After his departure, Varvara takes charge of her fate and persuades her to indulge her affection and to see Boris. Katerina eventually yields to Varvara's representations. A half-mad old lady, who wanders about attended by a couple of lackeys, has previously frightened the sensitive Katerina (who was reared amid family affection, and cannot understand or endure the tyranny of her mother-in-law) by vague predictions and threats of h.e.l.l; and when a thunderstorm suddenly breaks over the a.s.sembled family, after her husband's return, and the weird old lady again makes her appearance, Katerina is fairly crazed. She thinks the terrible punishment for her wayward affections has arrived; she confesses to her husband and mother-in-law that she loves Boris. Spurned by the latter--though the husband is not inclined to attach overmuch importance to what she says, in her startled condition--she rushes off and drowns herself. The savage mother-in-law, who is to blame for the entire tragedy, sternly commands her son not to mourn for his dead wife, whom he has loved in the feeble way which such a tyrant has permitted.

This outline gives hardly an idea of the force of the play, and its value as a picture of Russian manners of the old school in general, and of the merchant cla.s.s (who retained them long after they were much ameliorated in other cla.s.ses of society) in particular.

But Ostrovsky did not confine his dramas within narrow limits. On the contrary, they present a wonderfully broad panorama of Russian life, and attain to a universality which has been reached by no other Russian writer save Pushkin and Count L. N. Tolstoy. There are plays from prehistoric, mythical times, and historical plays, which deal with prominent epochs in the life of the nation. A great favorite, partly because of its pictures of old Russian customs, is "The Voevoda" or "The Dream on the Volga" (1865). "Vasilisa Melentieff" is popular for the same reasons (1868). Ostrovsky's nervous organization was broken down by the incessant toil necessary to support his family, and these historical plays were written, with others, to relieve the pressure. His dramas were given all over Russia, and he received more money from private than from the government theaters. But towards the end of his life comfort came, and during the last year of his life he was in charge of the Moscow (government) Theater. At last he was master of the Russian stage, and established a school of dramatic art on the lines laid down by himself. But the toil was too great for his shattered health, and he died in 1886. His plays are wonderfully rich as a portrait-gallery of contemporary types, as well as of historical types, and the language of his characters is one of the most surprising features of his work. It is far too little to say of it that it is natural, and fits the characters presented: in nationality, in figurativeness, in keen, unfeigned humor and wit it represents the richest treasure of the Russian speech. Only three writers are worthy of being ranked together in this respect: Pushkin, Kryloff, and Ostrovsky.

While, like all the writers of the '40's, Ostrovsky is the pupil of Gogol, he created his own school, and attained an independent position from his very first piece. His plays have only one thing in common with Gogol's--he draws his scenes from commonplace, every-day life in Russia, his characters are unimportant, every-day people. Gogol's comedies were such in the strict meaning of the word, and their object was to cast ridicule on the acting personages, to bring into prominence the absurd sides of their characters; and this aim accomplished, the heroes leave the stage without having undergone any change in their fates. With Ostrovsky's comedies it is entirely different. The author is not felt in them. The persons of the drama talk and act in defiance of him, so to speak, as they would talk and act in real life, and decided changes in their fate take place. But Ostrovsky accomplished far more than the creation of a Russian theater: he brought the stage to the highest pitch of ideal realism, and discarded all ancient traditions. The subjects of his plays are distinguished for their cla.s.sic simplicity; life itself flows slowly across the stage, as though the author had demolished a wall and were exhibiting the actual life within the house. His plays, like life, break off short, after the climax, with some insignificant scene, generally between personages of secondary rank, and he tries to convince the audience that in life there are no beginnings, no endings; that there is no moment after which one would venture to place a full period. Moreover, they are "plays of life" rather than either "comedies"

or "tragedies," as he chanced to label them; they are purely presentations of life. In their scope they include almost every phase of Russian life, except peasant and country life, which he had no chance to study.

For the sake of convenience we may group the other dramatic writers here. The conditions under which the Russian stage labored were so difficult that the best literary talent was turned into other channels, and the very few plays which were fitted to vie with Ostrovsky's came from the pens of men whose chief work belonged to other branches of literature. Thus Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgeneff, who wrote more for the stage than other contemporary writers, and whose plays fill one volume of his collected works, distinguished himself far more in other lines.

Yet several of these plays hold the first place after Ostrovsky's. "The Boarder" (1848), "Breakfast at the Marshal of n.o.bility's" (1849), "The Bachelor" (1849), "A Month in the Country" (1850), "The Woman from the Rural Districts" (1851) are still acted and enjoyed by the public.

Alexei Feofilaktovitch Pisemsky (best known for his "Thousand Souls" and his "Troubled Sea," romances of a depressing sort) contributed to the stage a play called "A Bitter Fate" (among others), wherein the Russian peasant appeared for the first time in natural guise without idealization or any decoration whatever.

Count Alexei Konstantinovitch Tolstoy (1817-1875) wrote a famous trilogy of historical plays: "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (1866), "Tzar Feodor Ivanovitch" (1868), and "Tzar Boris" (1870). The above are the dates of their publication. They appeared on the stage, the first in 1876, the other two in 1899, though they had been privately acted at the Hermitage Theater, in the Winter Palace, long before that date. They are fine reading plays, offering a profound study of history, but the epic element preponderates over the dramatic element, and the characters set forth their sentiments in extremely long monologues and conversations.

There have been many other dramatic writers, but none of great distinction.

Count A. K. Tolstoy stood at the head of the school of purely artistic poets who claimed that they alone were the faithful preservers of the Pushkin tradition. But in this they were mistaken. Pushkin drew his subjects from life; they shut themselves up in aesthetic contemplation of the beautiful forms of cla.s.sical art of ancient and modern times, and isolated themselves from life in general. The result was, that they composed poetry of an abstract, artistically dainty, elegantly rhetorical sort, whose chief defect lay in its lack of individuality, and the utter absence of all colors, sounds, and motives by which Russian nationality and life are conveyed. The poetry of this school contains no sharply cut features of spiritual physiognomy. All of them flow together into a featureless ma.s.s of elegantly stereotyped forms and sounds.

Count A. K. Tolstoy, who enjoyed all the advantages of education and travel abroad (where he made acquaintance with Goethe), began to scribble verses at the age of six, he says in his autobiography. Born in 1817, he became Master of the Hounds at the imperial court in 1857, and died in 1875. He made his literary debut in 1842 with prose tales, and only in 1855 did he publish his lyric and epic verses in various newspapers. His best poetical efforts, beautiful as they are in external form, are characterless, and remind one of Zhukovsky's, in that they were influenced by foreign or Russian poets--Lermontoff, for instance.

But they have not a trace of genuine, unaffected feeling, of vivid, burning pa.s.sion, of inspiration. His best work is his prose historical romance, "Prince Serebryany," which gives a lively and faithful picture of Ivan the Terrible, his court, and life in his day. The dramas already mentioned are almost if not equally famous in Russia, though less known abroad. "Prince Serebryany," and "War and Peace" by the former author's more ill.u.s.trious cousin, Count L. N. Tolstoy, are the best historical novels in the Russian language.

Another poet of this period was Apollon Nikolaevitch Maikoff, born in 1821, the son of a well-known painter. During his first period he gave himself up to cla.s.sical, bloodless poems, of which one of the most noted is "Two Worlds," which depicts the clash of heathendom and Christianity at the epoch of the fall of Rome. This poem he continued to write all his life; the prologue, "Three Deaths," begun in 1841, was not finished until 1872. To this period, also, belong "Two Judgments," "Sketches of Rome," "Anacreon," "Alcibiades," and so forth. His second and best period began in 1855, when he abandoned his cold cla.s.sicism and wrote his best works: "Clermont Cathedral," "Savonarola," "Foolish Dunya,"

"The Last Heathens," "Polya," "The Little Picture," and a number of beautiful translations from Heine.

Still another poet was Afanasy Afanasievitch Shens.h.i.+n, who wrote under the name of Fet. Born in 1820, he began to write at the age of nineteen.

About that time, on entering the Moscow University, he experienced some difficulty in furnis.h.i.+ng the requisite doc.u.ments, whereupon he a.s.sumed the name of his mother during her first marriage--Fet. He reacquired his own name, Shens.h.i.+n, in 1875, by presenting the proper doc.u.ments, whereupon an imperial order restored it to him. From 1844 to 1855 he served in the army, continuing to write poetry the while. Before his death, in 1892, he published numerous volumes of poems, translations from the cla.s.sics, and so forth. Less talented than Count Alexei K.

Tolstoy, Apollon Maikoff, and other poets of that school, his name, in Russian criticism, has become a general appellation to designate a poet of pure art, for he was the most typical exponent of his school. Most of his poems are short, and present a picture of nature, or of some delicate, fleeting psychical emotion, but they are all filled with enchanting, artistic charm. His poetry is the quintessence of aesthetic voluptuousness, such as was evolved on the soil of the sybaritism of the landed gentry in the circles of the '40's of the nineteenth century.

The oldest of all these wors.h.i.+pers of pure art was Feodor Ivanovitch Tiutcheff (1803-1873). At the age of seventeen he made a remarkably fine translation of some of Horace's works. He rose to very fine positions in the diplomatic service and at court. Although his first poems were printed in 1826, he was not widely known until 1850-1854. His scope is not large, and he is rather wearisome in his faultless poems. The majority of them are rather difficult reading.

A poet who did not wholly belong to this school, but wrote in many styles, was Yakoff Petrovitch Polonsky (1820-1898).[26] Under different conditions he might have developed fire and originality, both in his poems and his prose romances. His best known poem is "The Gra.s.shopper-Musician" (1863). He derived his inspiration from various foreign poets, and also from many of his fellow-countrymen. Among others, those in the spirit of Koltzoff's national ballads are not only full of poetry and inspiration, art and artless simplicity, but some of them have been set to music, have made their way to the populace, and are sung all over Russia. Others, like "The Sun and the Moon" and "The Baby's Death" are to be found in every Russian literary compendium, and every child knows them by heart.

But while the poetry of this period could not boast of any such great figures as the preceding period, it had, nevertheless, another camp besides that of the "pure art" advocates whom we have just noticed. At the head of the second group, which clung to the aesthetic doctrine that regarded every-day life as the best source of inspiration and contained several very talented expositors, stood Nikolai Alexyeevitch Nekrasoff (1821-1877). Nekrasoff belonged to an impoverished n.o.ble family, which had once been very wealthy, and was still sufficiently well off to have educated him in comfort. But when his father sent him to St. Petersburg to enter a military school he was persuaded to abandon that career and take a course at the University. His father was so enraged at this step that he cast him off, and the lad of sixteen found himself thrown upon his own resources. He nearly starved to death and underwent such hards.h.i.+ps that his health was injured for life, but he did not manage to complete the University course. These very hards.h.i.+ps contributed greatly, no doubt, to the power of his poetry later on, even though they exerted a hardening effect upon his character, and aroused in him the firm resolve to acquire wealth at any cost. Successful as his journalistic enterprises were in later life, it is known that he could not have a.s.sured himself the comfortable fortune he enjoyed from that source alone, and he is said to have won most of it at the gambling-table. This fact and various other circ.u.mstances may have exercised some influence upon the judgment of a section of the public as to his literary work. There is hardly any other Russian writer over whose merits such heated discussions take place as over Nekrasoff, one party maintaining that he was a true poet, with genuine inspiration; the other, that he was as clever with his poetry in a business sense, as he was with financial operations, and that he possessed no feeling, inspiration, or poetry.[27] The truth would seem to lie between these two extremes. Like all the other writers of his day--like writers in general--he was unconsciously impressed by the spirit of the time, and changed his subjects and treatment as it changed; and like every other writer, some of his works are superior in feeling and truth to others.

The most important period of his life was that from 1841 to 1845, when his talent was forming and ripening. Little is known with definiteness regarding this period, but it is certain that while pursuing his literary labors, he moved in widely differing circles of society--fas.h.i.+onable, official, literary, theatrical, that of the students, and others--which contributed to the truth of his pictures from these different spheres in his poems. In 1847 he was able (in company with Panaeff) to buy "The Contemporary," of which, eventually, he became the sole proprietor and editor, and with which his name is indelibly connected. When this journal was dropped, in 1866, he became the head, in 1868, of "The Annals of the Fatherland," where he remained until his death. It was during these last ten years of his life that he wrote his famous poems, "Russian Women" and "Who in Russia Finds Life Good," with others of his best poems. He never lost his adoration of the critic Byelinsky, to whom he attributed his own success, as the result of judicious development of his powers.

One of the many conflicting opinions concerning him is, that he is merely a satirist, "The Russian Juvenal," which opinion is founded on his contributions to "The Whistle," a publication added, as a supplement, to "The Contemporary," about 1857. Yet his satirical verses form but an insignificant part of his writings. And although there does exist a certain monotony of gloomy depression in the tone of all his writings, yet they are so varied in form and contents that it is impossible to cla.s.sify them under any one heading without resorting to undue violence. He is not the poet of any one cla.s.s of society, of any one party or circle, but expresses in his poetry the thoughts of a whole cycle of his native land, the tears of all his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. This apparently would be set down to the credit of any other man, and regarded as a proof that he kept in intimate touch with the spirit and deepest sentiments of his time, instead of being reckoned a reproach, and a proof of commercialism. Moreover, he wrote things which were entirely peculiar to himself, unknown hitherto, and which had nothing in common with the purely reflective lyricism of the '40's of the nineteenth century. These serve to complete his significance as the universal bard of his people and his age, to which he is already ent.i.tled by his celebration of all ranks and elements of society, whose fermentation const.i.tutes the actual essence of that period.

There is one point to be noted about Nekrasoff which was somewhat neglected by the critics during his lifetime. No other Russian poet of that day was so fond of calling attention to the bright sides of the national life, or depicted so many positive, ideal, brilliant types with such fervent, purely Schilleresque, enthusiasm as Nekrasoff. And most significant of all, his positive types are not of an abstract, fantastic character, clothed in flesh and blood of the period and environment, filled with conflicting, concrete characteristics--not one of them resembles any other. He sought and found them in all cla.s.ses of society; in "Russian Women" he depicts the devoted princesses in the highest circle of the social hierarchy, with absolute truth, as faithful representatives of Russian life and Russian aristocrats, capable of abandoning their life of ease and pleasure, and with heroism worthy of the ancient cla.s.sic heroines, accompanying their exiled husbands to Siberia, and there cheerfully sharing their hards.h.i.+ps. His pictures of peasant life are equally fine; that in "Red-Nosed Frost" (the Russian equivalent of Jack Frost) is particularly famous, and the peasant heroine, in her lowly sphere, yields nothing in grandeur to the ladies of the court.

The theme of "Red-Nosed Frost" may be briefly stated in a couple of its verses, in the original meter: