RUSSIAN LITERATURE
BY
P. KROPOTKIN
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMV
Copyright, 1905, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, April, 1905
[Pg v]
PREFACE
This book originated in a series of eight lectures onRussian Literature during the Nineteenth Centurywhich I delivered in March, 1901, at the LowellInstitute, in Boston.
In accepting the invitation to deliver this course, I fullyrealised the difficulties which stood in my way. It is by nomeans an easy task to speak or to write about the literature ofa country, when this literature is hardly known to the audienceor to the readers. Only three or four Russian writershave been properly and at all completely translated into English;so that very often I had to speak about a poem or anovel, when it could have been readily characterised bysimply reading a passage or two from it.
However, if the difficulties were great, the subject waswell worth an effort. Russian literature is a rich mine oforiginal poetic thought. It has a freshness and youthfulnesswhich is not found to the same extent in older literatures. Ithas, moreover, a sincerity and simplicity of expression whichrender it all the more attractive to the mind that has grownsick of literary artificiality. And it has this distinctive feature,that it brings within the domain of Art—the poem, the novel,the drama—nearly all those questions, social and political,which in Western Europe and America, at least in ourpresent generation, are discussed chiefly in the politicalwritings of the day, but seldom in literature.
In no other country does literature occupy so influential aposition as it does in Russia. Nowhere else does it exercise soprofound and so direct an influence upon the intellectualdevelopment of the younger generation. There are novels ofTurguéneff, and even of the less-known writers, which have[Pg vi]been real stepping stones in the development of Russianyouth within the last fifty years.
The reason why literature exercises such an influence inRussia is self-evident. There is no open political life, and withthe exception of a few years at the time of the abolition ofserfdom, the Russian people have never been called upon totake an active part in the framing of their country’s institutions.
The consequence has been that the best minds of the countryhave chosen the poem, the novel, the satire, or literarycriticism as the medium for expressing their aspirations,their conceptions of national life, or their ideals. It is not toblue-books, or to newspaper leaders, but to its works of Artthat one must go in Russia in order to understand the political,economical, and social ideals of the country—the aspirationsof the history-making portions of Russian society.
As it would have been impossible to exhaust so wide asubject as Russian Literature within the limits of this book,I have concentrated my chief attention upon the modernliterature. The early writers, down to Púshkin and Gógol—thefounders of the modern literature—are dealt with in ashort introductory sketch. The most representative writers inpoetry, the novel, the drama, political literature, and artcriticism, are consi