Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/126

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108 RUSSIA [LITERATURE. Herzen. novels of England. Among the most conspicuous of these writers was the celebrated Alexander Herzen, author of a striking romance, Kto Vinovat ? (" Who is to Blame 1"), which he published under the assumed name of Iskander. The public career of Herzen is well known. The freedom of his opinions soon embroiled him with the authorities. He was exiled to Perm, and, seizing the first opportunity which offered itself of passing the Russian frontiers, he spent the remainder of his life chiefly in France and England, and died at Geneva in 1869. His celebrated journal Kolokol ("The Bell") had a great circulation. A novelist of repute was Goncharoff, his two chief works being A Common-place Story and Oblomo/. Grigorovich has written The Fisherman and The Emigrants. Pisemski, another novelist of the realistic type, is the author of Tlie Man of St Petersburg and Lieshi (" The Wood Demons"). Other novelists of celebrity are Saltikoff, who writes under the name of Stchedrin, and whose Provincial Sketches pub- lished a few years ago made a great sensation and have been followed by Letters to My Aunt and other works ; Dostoievski (d. 1881), author of Poor People, Letters from the House of the Dead (describing his impressions of Siberia, whither he was banished in consequence of a political offence), a powerful writer ; and Ostrovski. We may also add Ryeshetnikoff, who takes his characters from the humbler classes ; he died at the early age of thirty-nine. All these are disciples of the school of Dickens and Thackeray. Count A. Tolstoi, also celebrated as a dra- matist, has written an historical novel entitled Prince Sere- brianni. Count L. Tolstoi is author of a work of fiction describing the war of 1812, which has gained great cele- brity in Russia, Voina i Mir ("War and Peace"). Novelists of the French school are Krestovski, Stebnitzki, and Bobo- rikin. During 1885 a new writer of merit, Kozolenko, appeared, who describes Siberian life. Turgen- On September 4, 1883, died Ivan Turgenieff, aged sixty-four, the most eminent Russian novelist, and perhaps the only Russian man of letters universally known. His celebrity dates from his Memoirs of a Sportsman, in which he appears as the advocate of the Russian muzhik or pea- sant. He had witnessed in his youth many sad scenes at his own home, where his mother, a wealthy lady of the old school, treated her serfs with great cruelty. The poet devoted all his energies to procure their emancipation. This work was followed by a long array of tales, too well known to need recapitulation here, which have gained their author a European reputation, such as Dvorianskoe Gnezdo ("A Nest of Gentle People "), one of the most pathetic tales in any language, Nov ("Virgin Soil"), and others; nor can the minor tales of Turgenieff be forgotten, especially Mumu, a story based upon real life, for the dumb door- keeper was a serf of his mother's, and experienced her ill- treatment. His last two works were Poetry in Prose and Clara MUich. Belinski. In Belinski the Russians produced their best critic. For thirteen years (1834-1847) he was the Aristarchus of Russian literature and exercised a healthy influence. In his latter days he addressed a withering epistle to Gogol on the newly-adopted reactionary views of the latter. His- Since the time of Karamzin the study of Russian toriang. history has made great strides. He was followed by Polevoi. Nicholas Polevoi, who wrote what he called the History of the Russian People, but his work was not received with much favour and has now fallen into oblivion. Polevoi was a self-educated man, the son of a Siberian merchant ; besides editing a well-known Russian journal The Telegraph, he was also the author of many plays, among others a translation of Hamlet. Since his time, however, the English dramatist has been produced in a more perfect dress by Kroneberg, Druzhinin, and others. In the year 1879 died Sergius Solovieff, whose History o/Solovieff Russia had reached its twenty-eighth volume, and fragments of the twenty-ninth were published after his death. This stupendous labour lacks something of the critical faculty, and perhaps may be described rather as a quarry of materials for future historians of Russia than an actual history. During 1885 the Russians have had to mourn the loss of Kostomaroff, the writer of many valuable Kosto- monographs on the history of their country, of which those marotf - on Bogdan Khmelnitzki and the False Demetrius deserve special mention. From 1847 to 1854 Kostomaroff, who had become obnoxious to the Russian Government, wrote nothing, having been banished to Saratoff, and forbidden to teach or publish. But after this time his literary activity begins again, and, besides separate works, the leading Russian reviews, such as Old and New Russia, The His- torical Messenger, and The Messenger of Europe, contain many contributions from his pen of the highest value. In 1885 also died Constantine Ravelin, the author of many valuable works on Russian law, and Kalatcheff, who published a classical edition of the old Russian codes. Ilovaiski and Gedeonoff have attempted to upset the general belief that the founders of the Russian empire were Scandinavians. Their opinions have been alluded to above (p. 87). A good history of Russia was published by Ustrialoff (1855), but his most celebrated work was his Ustria- Tzarstvovanie Petra Velikago ("Reign of Peter the Great"); loff - in this many important documents first saw the light, and the circumstances of the death of the unfortunate Alexis were made clear. Russian writers of history have not generally occupied themselves with any other subject than that of their own country, but an exception may be found in the writings of Granovski, such as Abbe Suger (1849) and Four Historical Portraits (1850). So also Kudriav- tzoff, who died in 1850, wrote on "The Fortunes of Italy, from the Fall of the Roman Empire of the West till its Reconstruction by Charlemagne." He also wrote on " The Roman Women as described by Tacitus." We may add Kareyeff, now professor at Warsaw, who has written on the condition of the French peasantry before the Revolu- tion. Other writers on Russian history have been Pogo- dine, who compiled a History of Russia till the invasion of the Mongols, 1871, and especially Zabielin, who has written a History of Russian Life from the most Remote Times (1876), and the Private Lives of the Czarinas and Czars (1869 and 1872). Leshkoff has written a History of Rus- sian Law to the 18th Century, and Tchitcherin a History of Provincial Institutions in Russia in the 17th Century (1 856). To these must be added the work of Zagoskin, History of Law in the State of Muscovy (Kazan, 1877). Prof. Michael Kovalevski, of the university of Moscow, is now publish- ing an excellent work on Communal Land Tenure, in which he investigates the remains of this custom throughout the world. Of the valuable history of Russia by Prof. Bestuzheff-Riumin (1872) one volume only has appeared; the introductory chapters giving an account of the sources and authorities of Russian history are of the highest value. It is the most critical history of Russia which has yet appeared. In 1885 Dubrovin published an excellent his- tory of the revolt of Pugatcheff. The valuable work by Messrs Pipin and Spasovich, History of Slavonic Litera- tures, is the most complete account of the subject, and has been made more generally accessible to Western stu- dents by the German translation of Pech. The History of Slavonic Literature by Schafarik, published in 1826, has long been antiquated. Previous to this, a history of Russian literature by Paul Polevoi had appeared, which has gone through two editions. It is modelled upon Cham- bers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature. The account of