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CHAPTER I

TOLSTOY'S CONTEMPORARIES

The most striking literary phenomenon of the nineteenth century is, undoubtedly, the rise into power and prominence of Russian authors.

Some fifty years ago Russian literature was practically unknown to Western Europe; by the majority of people its very existence seems to have been unsuspected; we find even so great an adventurer as Carlyle, himself guiding his countrymen to many new tracts of literary discovery, speaking of "the great silent Russians who are drilling a whole continent into obedience, but who have produced 'nothing articulate' as yet."In less than thirty years from the time when Carlyle penned that sentence Russian literature had become recognised as one of the most powerful and vital in Europe; its influence, already enormous, increases every day; it is great in France, in Germany, in Scandinavia, even in conservative England; hardly since the Renaissance has Europe beheld such a phenomenon—a literary advance at once so rapid and so great.

Heroes and Hero Worship.

The truth is that we have seen in Russia a growth very similar to that which occurred in Western Europe at the time of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Europe as a whole experienced the vivifying influence of two great literatures—Greek and Latin—and it had, at the same time, a mode of life to depict and ideas of life to express which differed widely from those of the classical nations: the great models showed them the fascination of poetry and art, and stimulated them to production; the different conditions of life, the varying ideals, prevented their production from becoming a mere imitation, and made it new, significant, and vital. Something very similar has occurred hi modern Russia. Russia has had the stimulus of Western Europe—especially of England and France—but, at the same time, the conditions of its life are so powerfully individual, so exceedingly unlike those of England and France, that its authors are hardly even tempted to produce work which is a mere imitation; as soon as they observe at all, the result of their observations is bound to be different. Their production is thus distinctive and individual, and, in its own turn, reacts upon the literatures which first inspired it.

The chief literary form in the later nineteenth century has been the psychological novel, and it is this which the Russians have taken up, developed, and almost recreated.

In psychology Russian writers are greatly helped by their own exceeding truthfulness and candour. France and England are lands of complex civilisations, of many social grades and many conventions, and the mental attitude of their writers is, almost inevitably, conventional, and thus, to a certain extent, insincere. Russian life has far fewer social grades and far fewer conventions; Russian writers are, beyond comparison, more candid with themselves and with others; they speak the exact truth with a naïveté almost resembling the naïveté of children, but with the far-reaching intelligence of maturity. This invaluable quality of sincerity is found in all the greatest Russians; Tolstoy and Dostoïevsky, in especial, hide nothing, but reproduce all they know with an absence of self-consciousness that amazes even while it fascinates.

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