Works of Alexander Pushkin (114 page)

Some years previously, Gogol had already paid his tribute to the genius of Poushkin in these fervent words: “At the name of Poushkin we are impelled to cross ourselves, as it were, at the thought of our national poet; for no other Russian has an equal claim to his title. Poushkin is an extraordinary, perhaps a unique, phenomenon of the Russian spirit. He is a Russian in his final stage of development, as he may possibly appear two hundred years hence. In him the Russian soul, language, and temperament are reflected as clearly as a landscape is reproduced in the convex surface of a field-glass.”

It is, however, to Dostoievsky — speaking in Moscow on the occasion to which I have already referred — that we must look for the most impassioned vindication of Poushkin’s claim to the eternal veneration of his countrymen. Dostoievsky, with his penetrative insight into the human heart, his divination of intimate feeling and his inspired tenderness, saw further into Poushkin s genius than any one else; saw things hidden from the “wise and prudent” critics of the type of Do- brolioubov and Pissariev, and revealed them in language which must have seemed to them exaggerated and mystical. I can only condense some of his most striking observations. Poushkin, he says, created two types, Oniegin and Tatiana, who sum up the most intimate secrets of Russian psychology, who represent its past and present with all conceivable artistic skill, and indicate its future in features of inimitable beauty. In thus putting before us that type of Russian who is “an exile in his own land,” and divining his vast significance in the historical destiny of the nation, and in placing at his side the type of positive and indisputable moral beauty in the person of a Russian woman, Poushkin binds himself to his nationality by ties of kin and sympathy, as no writer ever did before, or has done since.

If to deliver a final judgment upon Poushkin has hitherto proved a task beyond the powers of the Russian critics, it would be presumptuous in a foreigner to attempt it. The most insuperable obstacle to a decisive opinion is to be found in the contradictions which lay at the root of the poet’s life and character. It seems impossible to bring into agreement both sides of Poushkin’s nature. On the one hand we see his aristocratic prejudices and his cosmopolitan outlook; on the other, his intimate acquaintance with many phases of Russian life and his love of the poetry of the people. Again, we see his generous aspirations towards freedom and enlightenment, coupled with an admiration for the Imperial system which certainly sprang from a deeper sentiment than mere “official” loyalty, assumed at the dictates of self-interest. How reconcile his rarefied idealism with his unconscious realism; his impulses of headstrong audacity with his moments of voluntary compromise; his phases of atheism with his hours of deep religious sentiment; his clear, sceptical intellect with the atmosphere of self- deception in which he could envelop himself at will? These inconsistencies must ever baffle and bewilder those who are not content to leave an absolute verdict in abeyance.

If to a more strenuous generation Poushkin appeared indifferent to the burning social questions of his day, it must be remembered that during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century Russian life was not the complex, heart-breaking tangle it has since become. Besides, is it not more than probable that Poushkin rendered a greater service to his country by being simply the great artist he was, than he would have done by subordinating his genius exclusively to social and political interests?

He embodied all that preceded him in Russian literature, while he also inaugurated a new period. He was the most perfect master of his material who had yet appeared in Russia, and never fails to impress us by the artistic skill with which he uses his native language as a tool which, though he had not actually forged it for himself, he learnt to temper and sharpen to the most delicate uses. Although he introduced the element of realism, he ignored its baser purposes. He ennobled everything he touched. He possessed an impeccable sense of form, an irresistible musical charm, and a felicity of expression and picturesqueness of vision which remain to this day his legacy to many Russian poets and novelists who followed him. Although his liberalism was not of the fervent, uncalculating kind which might have led him to share the fate of a Ryleiev or even of the exiled Tchernichevsky, it is an injustice to assert that he contributed nothing to the advancement of his time. Undoubtedly, in his own words, he “praised liberty and sang of mercy in an iron age.” Some lines from one of his latest poems seem to indicate that, had he been spared, his work in future would have been more “lovely and more temperate,” more fearless and serene: —

Be docile to God’s will, O Muse.

Fear no affront and crave no laurel crown;

Meet human praise and blame alike unmoved,

Nor turn from out thy path to strive with fools.

LECTURES ON RUSSIAN LITERATURE: PUSHKIN by Ivan Panin

1. I have stated in the first lecture that I should treat of Pushkin as the singer. Pushkin has indeed done much besides singing. He has written not only lyrics and ballads but also tales: tales in prose and tales in verse; he has written novels, a drama, and even a history. He has thus roamed far and wide, still he is only a singer. And even a cursory glance at his works is enough to show the place which belongs to him. I say belongs, because the place he holds has a prominence out of proportion to the merits of the writer. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and the one-eyed Pushkin — for the moral eye is totally lacking in this man — came when there as yet was no genuine song in Russia, but mere noise, reverberation of sounding brass; and Pushkin was hailed as the voice of voices, because amidst the universal din his was at least clear. Of his most ambitious works, “Boris Godunof” is not a drama, with a central idea struggling in the breast of the poet for embodiment in art, but merely a series of well-painted pictures, and painted not for the soul, but only for the eye. His “Eugene Onyegin” contains many fine verses, much wit, much biting satire, much bitter scorn, but no indignation burning out of the righteous heart. His satire makes you smile, but fails to rouse you to indignation. In his “Onyegin,” Pushkin often pleases you, but he never stirs you. Pushkin is in literature what the polished club-man is in society. In society the man who can repeat the most bon-mots, tell the most amusing anecdotes, and talk most fluently, holds the ear more closely than he that speaks from the heart. So Pushkin holds his place in literature because he is brilliant, because his verse is polished, his language chosen, his wit pointed, his prick stinging. But he has no aspiration, no hope; he has none of the elements which make the writings of the truly great helpful. Pushkin, in short, has nothing to give. Since to be able to give one must have, and Pushkin was a spiritual pauper.

2. And what is true of his more sustained works, is equally true of his lesser works. They all bear the mark of having come from the surface, and not from the depths. His “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” his “Fountain of Bachtshisarai,” his “Gypsies,” are moreover weighted down with the additional load of having been written directly under the influence of Byron. And as health is sufficient unto itself and it is only disease which is contagious, Byron, who was sick at heart himself, could only impart disease and not health. Byron moreover had besides his gift of song the element of moral indignation against corrupt surroundings. Pushkin had not even this redeeming feature.

3. Pushkin therefore is not a poet, but only a singer; for he is not a maker, a creator. There is not a single idea any of his works can be said to stand for. His is merely a skill. No idea circulates in his blood giving him no rest until embodied in artistic form. His is merely a skill struggling for utterance because there is more of it than he can hold. Pushkin has thus nothing to give you to carry away. All he gives is pleasure, and the pleasure he gives is not that got by the hungry from a draught of nourishing milk, but that got by the satiated from a draught of intoxicating wine. He is the exponent of beauty solely, without reference to an ultimate end. Gogol uses his sense of beauty and creative impulse to protest against corruption, to give vent to his moral indignation; Turgenef uses his sense of beauty as a weapon with which to fight
his
mortal enemy, mankind’s deadly foe; and Tolstoy uses his sense of beauty to preach the ever-needed gospel of love. But Pushkin uses his sense of beauty merely to give it expression. He sings indeed like a siren, but he sings without purpose. Hence, though he is the greatest versifier of Russia, — not poet, observe! — he is among the least of its writers.

4. Towards the end of his early extinguished life he showed, indeed, signs of better things. In his “Captain’s Daughter” he depicts a heroic simplicity, the sight of which is truly refreshing, and here Pushkin becomes truly noble. As a thing of purity, as a thing of calmness, as a thing of beauty, in short, the “Captain’s Daughter” stands unsurpassed either in Russia or out of Russia. Only Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield,” Gogol’s “Taras Bulba,” and the Swiss clergyman’s “Broom Merchant,” can be worthily placed by its side. But this nobility is of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, though high enough on its own plane, is relatively low.

5. Mere singer then that Pushkin is, he is accordingly at his best only in his lyrics. But the essence of a lyric is music, and the essence of music is harmony, and the essence of harmony is form; hence in beauty of form Pushkin is unsurpassed, and among singers he is peerless. His soul is a veritable Æolian harp. No sooner does the wind begin to blow than his soul is filled with music. His grace is only equalled by that of Heine, his ease by that of Goethe, and his melody by that of Tennyson. I have already said that Pushkin is not an eagle soaring in the heavens, but he is a nightingale perched singing on the tree. But this very perfection of form makes his lyrics well-nigh untranslatable, and their highest beauty can only be felt by those who can read them in the original.

6. In endeavoring therefore to present Pushkin to you, I shall present to you not the nine tenths of his works which were written only by his hands, — his dramas, his tales, his romances, whether in prose or verse, — but the one tithe of his works which was writ from his heart. For Pushkin was essentially a lyric singer, and whatever comes from this side of his being is truly original; all else, engrafted upon him as it is from without, either from ambition or from imitation, cannot be called
his
writing, that which he alone and none others had to deliver himself of. What message Pushkin had to deliver at all to his fellow-men is therefore found in his lyrics.

7. Before proceeding, however, to look at this singer Pushkin, it is necessary to establish a standard by which his attainment is to be judged. And that we may ascertain how closely Pushkin approaches the highest, I venture to read to you the following poem, as the highest flight which the human soul is capable of taking heavenward on the wings of song.

HYMN TO FORCE.

I am eternal!
I throb through the ages;
I am the Master
Of each of Life’s stages.

I quicken the blood
Of the mate-craving lover;
The age-frozen heart
With daisies I cover.

Down through the ether
I hurl constellations;
Up from their earth-bed
I wake the carnations.

I laugh in the flame
As I kindle and fan it;
I crawl in the worm;
I leap in the planet.

Forth from its cradle
I pilot the river;
In lightning and earthquake
I flash and I quiver.

My breath is the wind;
My bosom the ocean;
My form’s undefined;
My essence is motion.

The braggarts of science
Would weigh and divide me;
Their wisdom evading,
I vanish and hide me.

My glances are rays
From stars emanating;
My voice through the spheres
Is sound, undulating.

I am the monarch
Uniting all matter:
The atoms I gather;
The atoms I scatter.

I pulse with the tides —
Now hither, now thither;
I grant the tree sap;
I bid the bud wither.

I always am present,
Yet nothing can bind me;
Like thought evanescent,
They lose me who find me.

8. I consider a poem of this kind (and I regret that there are very few such in any language) to stand at the very summit of poetic aspiration. For not only is it perfect in form, and is thus a thing of beauty made by the hands of man, but its subject is of the very highest, since it is a hymn, a praise of God, even though the name of the Most High be not there. For what is heaven? Heaven is a state where the fellowship of man with man is such as to leave no room for want to the one while there is abundance to the other. Heaven is a state where the wants of the individual are so cared for that he needs the help of none. But if there be no longer any need of toiling, neither for neighbor nor for self, what is there left for the soul to do but to praise God and glorify creation? A hymn like the above, then, is the outflow of a spirit which hath a heavenly peace. And this is precisely the occupation with which the imagination endows the angels; the highest flight of the soul is therefore that in which it is so divested of the interests of the earth as to be filled only with reverence and worship. And this hymn to Force seems to me to have come from a spirit which, at the time of its writing at least, attained such freedom from the earthly.