Contemporary Russian Novelists

At all events, the interest and value of "Peter and Alexis" does not rest in its philosophic ideas and in the Nietzschean obsession, but rather in the art with which Merezhkovsky faithfully depicts the psychology of his heroes. The successive phases of this terrible tragedy lead up to a striking climax, and set off, one against the other, temperaments so entirely opposed that the reciprocal tenderness of the father and son is transformed finally into suspicion and hate, and the father resolves to sacrifice the life of his son to what appears to him to be the right of the State. The novel, although a little overburdened with details, is an excellent analysis of the customs of the Russia of former times.

The source of the struggle between Peter and Alexis was known. Peter represented the West and the new ideas, while Alexis represented the Russia of old, rebellious to innovations which she considered dangerous. The author thus symbolizes the eternal conflict between the past and the future. He has analyzed with consummate art the characters of his two heroes. Peter is a man full of contrasts; he is, like many Russians, "a brute and a child," by turns violent and gentle, knavish and simple, cruel and kind, practical and mystical, proud and modest. Possessed of a prodigious activity, he conceives tremendous projects which he immediately wants to put into execution, inspecting everything, verifying everything, finding no care beneath his dignity, talking to the workingmen as if he were one of them, not making long speeches, and fiercely, with cries of rage, fighting dishonest contractors and tradesmen.

Set over against this irascible father, endowed with herculean strength, the Tsarevich Alexis, thin, pale, and delicate, makes a sad figure. Most historians, following the example of Voltaire, have represented this prince as a narrow-minded person, a victim of the bigoted and intolerant education of the clergy. Merezhkovsky, a more discreet psychologist, does not rely on these superficial data, but shades the portrait admirably. He makes Alexis an intelligent man, not like his father, but a man with a comprehensive, subtle spirit. He probably was crushed by the powerful individuality of his father. As he is closely in touch with the people, and knows their aspirations, Alexis judges the work of his father with delicate insight: "My father hopes," he says, "to do everything in a great hurry. One, two, three, and the affair is settled. He does not realize that things done hastily do not last…"

While Peter is aware of his unpopularity, his son is loved by the townspeople, the peasants, and the clergy. They say that, "Alexis is a man who seeks God and who does not want to upset everything: he is the hope of the nation."

What the author has best shown in this novel is the degree to which the high society of this time was, under its exterior gorgeousness, barbarous and vulgar. A German girl, maid-of-honor to the wife of Alexis, defines it in the following way: "Brandy, blood, coarseness. It is hard to say which is most prominent, – perhaps it is coarseness." The boyards13 she describes as: "Impudent savages, baptized bears, who only make themselves more ridiculous when they try to ape the Europeans."

As is evident, these three works of Merezhkovsky belong to the "genre" of the historical and philosophical novel which demands, besides the power to call up past ages, a careful education and the gift of clear-sightedness. And the novelist completely fulfills these requirements. He knows his subject, he studies all the necessary documents with the greatest care and follows every story to its source; finally, before taking up his pen, he visits the countries and the cities in which the stories take place. Thus, in order better to understand Leonardo da Vinci, in order to live his life, the author of "The Resurrection of the Gods" traversed Italy and France from one end to the other, in the same way that he had traveled all over Greece so that he could give us a more life-like Julian. With the same care, he spent a long time reading Russian historical documents in order to present the reader with a better picture of the customs of the time of Peter the Great. The result is a series of historical pictures, almost perfect in their accuracy. If Merezhkovsky had no other merit than this faithful portrayal of the past, his novels even then would be read with interest and pleasure.

Some critics have remarked that the most glaring defect in his books lies in their construction. His novels often disregard the laws relating to this sort of literature, which demand the clever grouping of the characters and events around a principal hero. It is true that this unity and the sense of proportion absolutely necessary for any sort of harmony are not to be found in his works. The details predominate to the detriment of important facts; the people of secondary importance are sometimes drawn better than the heroes themselves, whose adventures are entirely unconnected. There is a series of jumps from one situation to another, with gaps and interruptions of considerable length, which break the chain of events. It is for this reason that, instead of seeing a historical fresco, we see a whole gallery of sketches, executed with subtle artistry, but insufficiently connected with the main action of the drama.

These observations apply especially to the first attempt of the young author: "The Death of the Gods"; "The Resurrection of the Gods" and "Peter and Alexis" are more skilfully composed. They indicate a stronger tendency towards unity; one feels that an infinitely firmer and more experienced brush has been used; the colors are richer and they do not suffer from that monotony of effect and of color so noticeable in "The Death of the Gods," where the author too often uses the same devices. As to the characters of Leonardo da Vinci and Peter the Great, they are very carefully worked out, and the events in the lives of the Italian master and the Russian Tsar are narrated with magnificent psychological analysis, which forces the reader to sympathize with the heroes even more than he would naturally.

Merezhkovsky has also been accused of being over-educated. The innumerable documents presented do not bear closely enough upon the action, the result being that many of his pages read like mere annals. They interest the reader but do not move him. This is one reason why some critics, essentially different in spirit from Merezhkovsky, have believed themselves right in denying that he has any talent. But this accusation falls of itself in the face of the power of the inspiration which pervades his work, and the dramatic sense which he displays in setting forth the events and personages. It is impossible, for instance, to read without the deepest emotion the story of the last days of Leonardo da Vinci, where the author establishes the tragic contrast between the outward signs of glory, the superficial honors with which this genius is overwhelmed, and the moral solitude which afflicts him to the very end, which comes when he is among people who are strangers to his soul. All the childhood recollections of this same Da Vinci are full of charm. There is a veritable master spirit shown in the chapters in which the author portrays for us the enigmatic and seductive Mona Lisa. Finally, he has given us a relief of rare energy in the terrible struggle between Peter and Alexis, between the man of iron whom nothing can affect and his son, kind and timid, who, while having a mortal fear of his father, still loves him. As to certain pages, like those which describe the strange inner life of the Tsarina Marfa Matveyevna, "living by the light of candles, in an old house savouring of the oil of night-lamps, the dust and the putrification of centuries," these pages are a veritable tour de force if only because of the plasticity and richness of the author's vocabulary.

Finally, what tragic horror there is in the supreme struggle where the emperor, the assassin of his son, sees his isolation and feels his weakness, "like a large deer gnawed at by flies and lice until the blood runs!"

Besides his novels Merezhkovsky has published several essays, on Pushkin, Maykov, Korolenko, Calderon, the French neo-romanticists, Ibsen and others… The most important of all are: "The Causes of the Decadence of Modern Russian Literature" and "Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky." He reveals here a fine and penetrating power of observation, which, however, is often obscured because of his obsession by Nietzschean ideas. Moreover, he does not hide his antipathy to the people whose literary tastes and ideas differ from his. From this characteristic comes strange exaggerations and a somewhat limited appreciation of men and events. An example of this, for instance, is the impression that he gives in his study of the causes of the decadence of modern Russian literature, the subject of which imposes upon the author the double task of looking up the causes of this decadence and also proving that it exists. He has not succeeded. In fact, it appears that this idea of decadence exists only in the minds of the author and of a small circle of writers who have the same ideas about the mission of literature. Merezhkovsky is absolutely right in all that he says about the fact that Russian writers live solitary, deprived of that precious excitation which is felt when one is in contact with original and different temperaments; but if you add to this, as he has done, the statement that Russia does not possess a literature worthy of the name, you go too far. Without being a great scholar, it is easy to perceive that our contemporary Russian authors are legitimate sons of Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and grandsons of Gogol, who himself is closely related to Pushkin. A democratic and humanitarian realism – widely separated from the Nietzscheism of Merezhkovsky – strongly characterizes the Russian lineage.

In his book on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky he spends a long time in differentiating between the artistic intuition of these two great masters, who are, according to him, the most profound expression of the popular and higher element of Russian culture.

What strikes him first in Tolstoy is the insistence with which he describes "animal man." In a kind of "leitmotiv" Merezhkovsky has shown us the Tolstoyan characters individualized by very particular corporal signs. "Tolstoy," he says, "has, to the very highest degree, the gift of clairvoyance of the flesh; even when dead, the flesh has a tongue." He is the subtle painter of all sensations and he is a master in this domain. But his art diminishes singularly, and even disappears when he tries to analyze the soul within the flesh. Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, triumphs in his dialogue; one sees his characters because one shares all their sadness, their passions, their intelligence, and their sensibility. Dostoyevsky is the painter of the depths of the human soul, which he portrays with almost supernatural acuteness. And, as Tolstoy is "the seer of the flesh," so is Dostoyevsky "the seer of the soul."

Having established this difference in principle, Merezhkovsky, by constant deduction, concludes, in consonance with his favorite idea, that Tolstoy personifies "the pagan spirit" at its height, while Dostoyevsky represents "the Christian spirit." There is a great deal of fine drawn reasoning in all of this, some very original ideas, but a great many paradoxes. Even the very personality of Tolstoy, the analysis of which occupies a large part of the book, is belittled in the hands of Merezhkovsky. Instead of a noble character, one sees a very vain person, preoccupied only with himself. It is in this simple way that Merezhkovsky explains the moral evolution which led Tolstoy to make those long and sad studies of a kind of life compatible with the true good of humanity, and forced him to them by "the anguish of the black mystery of death" which, having got possession of the author of "Anna " in his sixtieth year, in the midst of a life of prosperity, made him hate his fortune and his comfort, which formerly had been so dear to him. In the refusal of Tolstoy to "bow to the great authorities of the literary world, such as Æschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare," a refusal which is only the logical consequence of his ideas on the principle and purpose of art, Merezhkovsky can only see a lack of general culture. Finally, the sort of life he led toward the end of his days came only "from the desire to know and taste the pleasure of simplicity in all its subtleties." "The admirable Epicurus," says Merezhkovsky, "that joyous sage, who, in the very center of Athens, cultivated with his own hands a tiny garden, and taught men not to believe in any human or divine chimeras, but to be contented with the simple happiness that can be given by a single sunbeam, a flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time, would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one, perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget the real purpose of life…"

In writing these lines, Merezhkovsky must have forgotten that Tolstoy, in proclaiming his ideas on religion and humanity, prepared himself, not for Epicurean pleasures, but for seclusion in one of the terrible dungeons of a Russian monastery (now in disuse) under the persecutions of a temporal and secular authority, and it was not his fault that, by a sort of miracle, he escaped this fate.

Dostoyevsky's life is the exact opposite of Tolstoy's. The story of Dostoyevsky's terrible existence is probably known. Born in an alms-house, he never ceased to suffer, and to love… It is hard to think of two people more absolutely different than Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. But Merezhkovsky loves violent contrasts; in the sharp difference between these two writers, he sees the permanent union of two controlling ideas of the Russian Renaissance and the imminence of a final sympathy, symbolic of a concluding harmony.

We have, by turns, studied Merezhkovsky as a poet, a novelist, and a critic. The greatest merit of his literary personality rests in the perfect art with which he calls up the past.

But Merezhkovsky is not only an artist. As we have noted, his novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of human life, – the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of humanity, the present situation of which seems to him desperate. The answer to this question can be found in his book, "Ham Triumphant."14 Our study of Merezhkovsky's literary character would be incomplete if the ideas of this book were not set forth.

According to Merezhkovsky, the present evil in the world consists entirely in the moral void which results from the disappearance of the Christian ideal from the soul. The loss of this ideal was inevitable, and even productive of good, because it had been so mutilated and deformed by the Church, that Christian religion became a symbol of the reaction, and its God synonymous with executioner. Humanity will rid itself of Christianity. But nothing will replace it, unless it be the philosophy of positivism, a sort of material religion of the appetites and the senses, which gives no answer to our anguish and our mystical instincts. This philosophy presided at the formation of a miserable society, an egotistical and mediocre bourgeoisie, who have no spiritual tendencies, and are incapable of sacrificing themselves to any ideal other than that of money.

John Stuart Mill said that the bourgeoisie would transform Europe into a China; the Russian publicist Hertzen, frightened by the victories of socialism, in 1848, foresaw the end of European civilization, drowned in a wave of blood. Merezhkovsky affirms that the Chinese and the Japanese, being the most complete and the most persevering representatives of this "terrestrial" religion, will without fail conquer Europe, where positivism still bears some traces of Christian romanticism. "The Chinese," he says, "are perfect positivists, while the Europeans are not yet perfect Chinese, and, in this respect, the Americans are perfect Europeans." Where is one to look for safety against this heavy load on the understanding and this future humiliation? In socialism, one says. But socialism, if it is not yet bourgeois, is almost so. "The starved proletariat and the rejected bourgeois have different economic opinions," says Merezhkovsky, "but their ideal is the same, the pursuit of happiness." As it is but a step from the prudence of the bourgeois to the exasperated state of the starved proletariat, this pursuit can lead to nothing else but international atrocities of militarism and chauvinism. Progress having become the sole ambition of the cultivated barbarians, satiety became their religion, and the only hope of escaping from this barbarism was to adopt the religion of love, founded by Jesus. Jesus said to those who were treated with violence, and who, in turn, had used violence in trying to free themselves: "Truth (love) will set you free." These words, which identify truth with love, contain in themselves the profoundest social and personal morality. They inspired the first martyrs of Christianity; but in time they were forgotten by the Church. Succumbing to the "diabolical seduction of power," religion itself became a power, an autocracy; people submitted to this power, and thus the Byzantine and Russian orthodoxy came into existence. In this manner, the morals of the government, antichristian in essence, became the doctrine of Christianity; and the particular morals of the latter became transformed into a mysterious gospel of life, relegating its aspirations to an existence beyond the tomb. Now there is nothing for Christianity to do but return to its first sources and develop the principles of universal religion found there. One should no longer be concerned with heavenly and personal advantage, but with earthly affairs and social conditions; instead of being conquered by the government one should conquer it, permeate it with one's spirit, and thus realize the prophecy in the Apocalypse of the millennium of the saints on earth, and destroy the forms of the power of the government, the laws, and the empire. Such a renewal of Christianity demands an energetic struggle, self-forgetfulness, and martyrs. But where is one to find the necessary forces? Merezhkovsky does not see them in the States of western Europe, because the "intellectuals" there are antichristians and are congealed in their bourgeois positivism. "Above these Christian states, above these old Gothic stores," says Merezhkovsky, "rises, here and there, a Protestant wooden cross, half rotted; or a Catholic one of iron, all rusted, and no one pays any attention to them." What purity and nobility remains can manifest itself only in certain scattered individuals, in such great hermits as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Flaubert, Goethe in his old age; they are like deep artesian wells which prove that, beneath the arid earth there is still some flowing water. There is nothing of this sort in Russia. Although backward from the point of view of progress and politics, this country produced the "intellectuals" who form something unique in our present civilization: in essence, they are anti-bourgeois. "The positivism which the Russian 'intellectuals' have adopted by way of imitation is rejected by their feelings, their conscience, and their will; it is an artificial monument that is set up in their minds only."

Merezhkovsky, then, has reason for thinking that the social renovation of Christianity will be accomplished in Russia. And as this work is the especial concern of the clergy, Merezhkovsky, who several years ago was present at a meeting where the Russian priests affirmed their desire to free themselves from the yoke of their religious and secular chiefs, proposed to accomplish this great mission. "It is indispensable," he says, "for the Russian Church to untie the knots that bind it to the decayed forms of the autocracy, to unite itself to the 'intellectuals' and to take an active part in the struggle for the great political and social deliverance of Russia. The Church should not think of its own liberty at present, but of martyrdom."

We will not criticize these, perhaps illusory, ideas and previsions of Merezhkovsky. Russian life has become an enigma; who knows to what moral crisis the social conscience may be led by the present political crisis? Merezhkovsky's Olympian æsthetics have made him a foreigner in Russian literature. Yet as soon as the tempest burst forth, certain familiar traits showed themselves, traits common to the best Russian writers and to the general spirit of Russian literature. In his absolute, and even exaggerated, distaste for "bourgeoisisme," and his desire for an ideal, he is a legitimate son of this literature. The nature of his ideas is in harmony with those we have already found in Tolstoy, with his gospel of Christian anarchism, in Dostoyevsky, with his ideas about the "omni-humanity" of the Russian spirit, in Vladimir Solovyev, with his idea of universal theocracy, and, finally, in Chadayev, one of the most remarkable thinkers of the first half of the last century, who, although now almost forgotten, was the real source of all these ideas.

Thus in the conception of socialized Christianity Merezhkovsky seeks the end of the great antithesis between the "God-man" and the "man-God," between Christ and Bacchus, an antithesis which makes the generality of men often conduct themselves after the manner of that German petty kingdom, of which Heine speaks, where the people, while venerating Christ, do not forget to honor Bacchus by abundant libations. Merezhkovsky's idea ought to appear in the form of a synthetic fusion of the joyous religion of Greece and the religion of love, as taught by Jesus.15