A Herzen Reader

For a century, even a century and a half, the people had only sung the old songs, or some made-up monstrosities from the middle of Catherine II's reign. There were a few fairly successful imitations from the beginning of our century, but these artificial pieces lack truthfulness; they were capri­cious efforts. It was from these same depths of village Russia that new songs came. A herdsman driving his animals across the steppe was inspired to compose them. Koltsov was a genuine son of the people. Born in Voronezh, he studied in a parish school until he was ten, learning only to read and to write without spelling rules. His father, a cattle dealer, made him take up the trade. Koltsov took herds of cattle over hundreds of versts, and became used to a nomadic life, which is reflected in the majority of his lyrics. The young cattle dealer loved to read, and he continually reread one or another poet whom he took as his model, and his attempts at imitation warped his poetic instinct. His true talent finally broke through and he wrote popular songs, which, though few in number, were masterpieces. These were genu­ine songs of the Russian people. One found in them a melancholy that was their characteristic trait, a heartrending sadness, and an overflowing of life. Koltsov had shown how much poetry was hidden in the soul of the Russian people, and, that after a long and deep sleep, there was something stirring in its chest. We have other poets, statesmen, and artists who have come from the people, but they have emerged in the literal sense of the word, breaking all ties with them. Lomonosov was the son of a White Sea fisher­man. He fled the paternal home to study, entered a church school, and then went to Germany, where he ceased to be a man of the people. He had nothing in common with agricultural Russia, except for that which unites all people of the same race. Koltsov remained in the midst of the herds and the business of a father who detested him, and who, along with other rela­tives, made his life so hard that he died in 1842. Koltsov and Lermontov made their debut and died in the midst of the same era. After them, Rus­sian poetry went silent.

But in prose, activity accelerated and took a different direction.

Gogol, without being by origin a man of the people like Koltsov, was one by his tastes and his turn of mind. Gogol is completely independent of any foreign influence. He did not become familiar with any literature until he had already made his name. He was more in sympathy with the life of the people than with that of the court, which is natural on the part of a Little Russian.

The Little Russian, even when ennobled, does not break so thoroughly with the people as does a Russian. He loves his country, his dialect, the Cos­sack traditions and the hetmen. The independence of Ukraine, savage and warlike, but republican and democratic, was maintained through the cen­turies until Peter I. The Little Russians, pestered by the Poles, the Turks, and the Muscovites, and involved in an eternal war against the Crimean Tartars, had never succumbed. Little Russia, in a voluntary union with Great Russia, negotiated significant rights for itself. Tsar Alexey cursed the need to observe them. Peter I, using as a reason Mazeppa's betrayal, kept only a mere shadow of these privileges;¹⁹ Elizabeth and Catherine intro­duced serfdom. The poor country protested, but could it oppose this fatal avalanche that came down from the North to the Black Sea, and covered all that bore the Russian name with the same shroud of uniform and icy slavery? Ukraine suffered the fate of Novgorod and Pskov, but much later, and a single century of servitude has not been able to efface all that was in­dependent and poetic in this brave people. There is more individual devel­opment and more local color than with us; among us, the same miserable garment covers all folk life. People are born to bow down before an unjust fate and die without a trace, leaving their children to begin the same des­perate life. Our people do not know their own history, while every village in Little Russia has its own legend. The Russian people know only Pugachev and 1812.

The stories with which Gogol made his debut formed a series of genu­inely beautiful tableaux of the customs and landscapes of Little Russia, full of gaiety, grace, liveliness, and love. Stories like this are impossible in Great Russia for lack of a plot and a character. With us, popular scenes take on a somber and tragic appearance, which oppresses the reader; I say tragic, only in the meaning of Laocoon. It is the tragic of a fate to which man suc­cumbs without a fight. Suffering changes into rage and grief, laughter into bitter and spiteful irony. Who can read without shaking in indignation and shame the magnificent novel Anton Goremyka,²⁰ and Turgenev's master­piece Notes of a Hunter?