Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843

A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL LYCEUM OF TSARSKOË SELO.

THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental neighbours with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of no very recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem to possess us:

when the press groans with "Tours," "Trips," "Hand-books," "Journeys," "Visits."

In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England knows very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social condition, manners, and literature of one of the most powerful among her continental sisters.

The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in the reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that epoch, so auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by Chancellor in 1554, has never since been relaxed: the two nations have advanced, each at its own pace, and by its own paths, towards the sublime goal of improvement and civilization—have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle for the weal and liberty of mankind.

It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and Elizabeth is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter and of Catharine. The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be found in any indifference or want of curiosity on the part of English travellers. There is no lack of pilgrims annually leaving the bank of Thames,

armed duly with note-book and "patent Mordan," directing their wandering steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a very short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince a foreigner how defective, and often how false, is the information given by travellers respecting the social and national character of the Russians. These abundant and singular misrepresentations are not, of course, voluntary; and it may not be useless to point out their principal sources.

The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the language, and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten track—from St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny Nóvgorod, without any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may enjoy, during a visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which the higher classes are so justly celebrated; but his association with the nobility will be found an absolute obstacle to the making even a trifling progress in the Russian language; which, though now regaining a degree of attention from the elevated classes,1 too long denied to it by those with whom their native tongue was an unfashionable one—he would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very frequent opportunities of hearing.

But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a determination to study the noble and interesting language of the country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little relation to the other European tongues—it stands so much alone, and throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle was thrown into his way.

The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the same speech, offshoots from the same stock.

Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia. These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German translation.

Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of subject and character, at least directly from the original language.

The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of "Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded, at least exaggerated.

We are willing to believe, that the degree—if we are rightly informed, no slight one—of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme incompetency with which the translations they contained were executed.

It is always painful to find fault—more painful to criticise with severity—the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness2 exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their defects.

It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin, growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas, suddenly into light.

In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety, though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more fully the intellectual annals of Russia.

In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril3 and Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisláff, Sviatopólk, and Kótsel, then chiefs of the Moravians.

The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,4 to add a number of other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any necessity.

These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,5 and perhaps without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far, in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.

In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all; but that a kind of mezzo-termine was selected—or rather formed—for the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the Greek construction. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper classes—who are instructed in this dead language, precisely as an Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.

Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history, towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid, one colossal figure—that of Vladímir Sviatoslávitch; the first to surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet6 with the mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.

From the conversion to Christianity of Vladímir and his subjects—passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for about 250 years—we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century—the one the written or learned, the other the spoken language.

The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a long period. In this—or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success—were compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above classes7 were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.

The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.8

It is to the reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch, who united Little Russia to Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.

The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing—if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure impeding—forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national—that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production of originality in his own.

This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time

"A Babylonish dialect;"

the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms which might have been—have, indeed, since been—translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.

From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.

At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages—the Slavonic, to which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.

The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance, that the literature is—as we have stated—divisible into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonósoff as its founder. Mikháil Vassílievitch Lomonósoff, born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles he had fixed as a grammarian.

He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumarókoff and Kheráskoff, he laid the foundations of the Russian literature.

Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumarókoff was the first to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kheráskoff, the author of two epic poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."

The name of Emín comes next in historical, though not literary, importance: though the greater part of his productions consists of translations, particularly of those shorter pieces of prose fiction called by the Italians "novelle," he was the author of a few original pieces, now but little read; his style bears the marks, like that of Kheráskoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want of finish.

The reputation of Karamzín is too widely spread throughout Europe to render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by him to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he commenced a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first chapters.

Naréjniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia—or rather of the South or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of vivacity, but as they are deformed by defects both in style and taste, his reputation has become almost extinct. We cannot quit this division of our subject, which refers to romantic fiction anterior to the appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning the names of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished as having produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical event—Polevói and Bestónjeff—the latter of whom wrote, under the name of Marlínski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high and deserved reputation.

It is with Zagóskin that we may regard the regular historical novel—viewing that species of composition as exemplified in the works of Scott—as having commenced.

With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is so extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory allusion to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing which, we shall attend more exclusively to those productions of which the subject or treatment is purely national.

One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zagóskin, whose historical romance "Yoúriy Milosláffskiy," met with great and permanent success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most interesting crisis in the Russian history, when the valour of Mínin enabled his countrymen to shake off the hated yoke of Poland. His other work, "Roslavleóff," is less interesting: the period is 1812. We may also mention his "Iskonsítel"—"the Tempter"—a fantastic story, in which an imaginary being is represented as mingling with and influencing the affairs of real life.

Of Boulgárin, we may mention, besides his "Ivan Vuíjgin," a romance in the manner of "Gil Blas," the scenery and characters of which are entirely Russian, two historical novels of considerable importance. "The False Dimítri," and "Mazeppa,"—the hero of the latter being a real person, and not, as most readers are aware, a fictitious character invented by Byron.

Next comes the name of Lajétchnikoff, whose "Last Page" possesses a reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The action passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great, and Catharine plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Glück, becoming empress at the conclusion. The "House of Ice," by the same writer, is perhaps more generally known than the preceding work. The last-named romance depicts with great spirit the struggle between the Russian and foreign parties in the reign of Anna Ivánovna. But perhaps the most remarkable work of Lajétchnikoff is the romance entitled "Bassourmán," the scene of which is laid under Iván III., surnamed the Great.9 Another Polevói (Nikolái) produced a work of great merit:—"The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord," a very faithful picture of the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe to Polevói a wild story entitled "Abbaddon." Veltman produced, under the title of "Kostshéi the Deathless," a historical study of the manners of the twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust to omit the name of a lady, the Countess Shíshkin, who produced the historical novel "Mikháil Vassílievitch Skópin-Shúisky," which obtained great popularity.

The picturesque career of Lomonósoff gave materials for a romantic biography of that poet, the work of Xenophónt Polevói, resembling, in its mixture of truth and fiction, the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" of Goethe.

Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those exhibiting scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been neglected. Kaláshnikoff wrote "The Merchant Jáloboff's Daughter," and the "Kamtchadálka," both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia; the former painting various parts of that wild and interesting country, the latter confined more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtchátka. Besides Gógol, whose easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many humorous sketches of provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitchéff, whose "Khólmsky Family" possesses much interest; but the delineations of Gógol depend so much for their effect upon delicate shades of manner, &c., that it is not probable they can ever be effectively reproduced in another language.

Mentioning Peróffsky, whose "Monastírka" gives a picture of Russian interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation. His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of a very curious race—the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchérnaia Jénstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society, which was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.

The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the meagreness of the present notice.

He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any increasing desire on the part of his countrymen to become more accurately acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is convinced, of a very high degree of respect and admiration. How could that acquaintance be so delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the interchange of literature? The great works of English genius are read, studied, and admired, throughout the vast empire of Russia; the language of England is rapidly and steadily extending, and justice, no less than policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions respecting the social and domestic character, no less than the history, of Russia, should be dispelled by truth.

The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to specify one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the present romance, as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in England the literature of Russia.

It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the facts and characters are all strictly true;10 besides this, the author passed many years in the Caucasus, and made full use of the opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming familiar with the language, manners, and scenery of a region on which the attention of the English public has long been turned with peculiar interest.

The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it is hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public always "novitatis avida," and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with the "Bismillahs" and "Mashallahs" of the ordinary oriental novels, may find some piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life—that of the Caucasian Tartars.

The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon the method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian orthography, as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as zh, &c. &c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the correct pronunciation. Throughout these pages the vowels a, e, i, o, y, are supposed to be pronounced as in French, the diphthong ou as in the word you, the j always with the French sound.