But this long residence in Rome was fatal to his mind and health, and
eventually extinguished the last sparks of genius.
eventually extinguished the last sparks of genius.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
thou outweighest
Every day which had else coldly from memory fled.
'Twas in that moment alone, the last, that upon me descended
Life such as deities grant, though thou perceivèdst it not.
Phœbus, in vain with thy rays dost thou clothe the ether in glory:
Thine all-brightening day hateful alone is to me.
Into myself I retreat for shelter, and there in the silence
Strive to recover the time when she appeared with each day.
Was it possible beauty like this to see, and not feel it?
Worked not those heavenly charms e'en on a mind dull as thine?
Blame not thyself, unhappy one! Oft doth the bard an enigma
Thus propose to the throng, skillfully hidden in words;
Each one enjoys the strange commingling of images graceful,
Yet still is wanting the word which will discover the sense.
When at length it is found, the heart of each hearer is gladdened,
And in the poem he sees meaning of twofold delight.
Wherefore so late didst thou remove the bandage, O Amor,
Which thou hadst placed o'er mine eyes, wherefore remove it so
late?
Long did the vessel, when laden, lie waiting for favoring breezes,
Till in kindness the wind blew from the land o'er the sea.
Vacant times of youth! and vacant dreams of the future!
Ye all vanish, and naught, saving the moment, remains.
Yes! it remains,-my joy still remains! I hold thee, my Dora,
And thine image alone, Dora, by hope is disclosed.
--
XI-404
## p. 6450 (#432) ###########################################
6450
GOETHE
Oft have I seen thee go, with modesty clad, to the temple,
While thy mother so dear solemnly went by thy side.
Eager and nimble thou wert, in bearing thy fruit to the market,
Boldly the pail from the well didst thou sustain on thy head.
Then was revealed thy neck, then seen thy shoulders so beauteous,
Then, before all things, the grace filling thy motions was seen.
Oft have I feared that the pitcher perchance was in danger of
falling,
Yet it ever remained firm on the circular cloth.
Thus, fair neighbor, yes, thus I oft was won to observe thee,
As on the stars I might gaze, as I might gaze on the moon;
Glad indeed at the sight, yet feeling within my calm bosom
Not the remotest desire ever to call them mine own.
Years thus fleeted away! Although our houses were only
Twenty paces apart, yet I thy threshold ne'er crossed.
Now by the fearful flood are we parted! Thou liest to Heaven,
Billow! thy beautiful blue seems to me dark as the night.
All were now in movement: a boy to the house of my father
Ran at full speed and exclaimed, "Hasten thee quick to the strand!
Hoisted the sail is already, e'en now in the wind it is fluttering,
While the anchor they weigh, heaving it up from the sand;
Come, Alexis, oh come! "- My worthy stout-hearted father
Pressed, with a blessing, his hand down on my curly-locked head,
While my mother carefully reached me a newly made bundle;
"Happy mayst thou return! " cried they-"both happy and rich! "
Then I sprang away, and under my arm held the bundle,
Running along by the wall. Standing I found thee hard by,
At the door of thy garden. Thou smilingly saidst then, "Alexis!
Say, are yon boisterous crew going thy comrades to be?
Foreign coasts wilt thou visit, and precious merchandise purchase,
Ornaments meet for the rich matrons who dwell in the town;
Bring me also, I pray thee, a light chain; gladly I'll pay thee,
Oft have I wished to possess some such a trinket as that. "
There I remained, and asked, as merchants are wont, with precision
After the form and the weight which thy commission should have.
Modest indeed was the price thou didst name! I meanwhile was
gazing
On thy neck, which deserved ornaments worn but by queens.
Loudly now rose the cry from the ship; then kindly thou spakest:-
"Take, I entreat thee, some fruit out of the garden, my friend!
Take the ripest oranges, figs of the whitest; the ocean
Beareth no fruit, and in truth, 'tis not produced by each land. "
So I entered in. Thou pluckedst the fruit from the branches,
And the burden of gold was in thine apron upheld.
-
## p. 6451 (#433) ###########################################
GOETHE
6451
Oft did I cry, Enough! But fairer fruits were still falling
Into thy hand as I spake, ever obeying thy touch.
Presently didst thou reach the arbor; there lay there a basket,
Sweet blooming myrtle-trees waved, as we drew nigh, o'er our
heads.
Then thou began'st to arrange the fruit with skill and in silence:
First the orange, which heavy as though 'twere of gold,
Then the yielding fig, by the slightest pressure disfigured,
And with myrtle, the gift soon was both covered and graced.
But I raised it not up. I stood. Our eyes met together,
And my eyesight grew dim, seeming obscured by a film.
Soon I felt thy bosom on mine! Mine arm was soon twining
Round thy beautiful form; thousand times kissed I thy neck.
On my shoulder sank thy head; thy fair arms, encircling,
Soon rendered perfect the ring knitting a rapturous pair.
Amor's hands I felt; he pressed us together with ardor,
And from the firmament clear, thrice did it thunder; then tears
Streamed from mine eyes in torrents, thou weptest, I wept, both
were weeping,
And 'mid our sorrow and bliss, even the world seemed to die.
Louder and louder they called from the strand; my feet would no
longer
Bear my weight, and I cried:- "Dora! and art thou not mine? »
"Thine forever! " thou gently didst say. Then the tears we were
shedding
Seemed to be wiped from our eyes, as by the breath of a god.
Nearer was heard the cry "Alexis! " The stripling who sought me
Suddenly peeped through the door. How he the basket snatched
up!
How he urged me away! how pressed I thy hand! Dost thou ask
me
How the vessel I reached? Drunken I seemed, well I know,
Drunken my shipmates believed me, and so had pity upon me;
And as the breeze drove us on, distance the town soon obscured.
"Thine forever! " thou, Dora, didst murmur; it fell on my senses
With the thunder of Zeus! while by the thunderer's throne
Stood his daughter, the goddess of Love; the Graces were standing
Close by her side! so the bond beareth an impress divine!
Oh then hasten, thou ship, with every favoring zephyr!
Onward, thou powerful keel, cleaving the waves as they foam!
Bring me unto the foreign harbor, so that the goldsmith
May in his workshop prepare straightway the heavenly pledge!
Ay, of a truth, the chain shall indeed be a chain, O my Dora!
Nine times encircling thy neck, loosely around it entwined.
## p. 6452 (#434) ###########################################
6452
GOETHE
Other and manifold trinkets I'll buy thee; gold-mounted bracelets,
Richly and skillfully wrought, also shall grace thy fair hand.
There shall the ruby and emerald vie, the sapphire so lovely
Be to the jacinth opposed, seeming its foil; while the gold
Holds all the jewels together, in beauteous union commingled.
Oh, how the bridegroom exults, when he adorns his betrothed!
Pearls if I see, of thee they remind me; each ring that is shown me
Brings to my mind thy fair hand's graceful and tapering form.
I will barter and buy; the fairest of all shalt thou choose thee;
Joyously would I devote all of the cargo to thee.
Yet not trinkets and jewels alone is thy loved one procuring;
With them he brings thee whate'er gives to a housewife delight:
Fine and woolen coverlets, wrought with an edging of purple,
Fit for a couch where we both, lovingly, gently may rest;
Costly pieces of linen. Thou sittest and sewest, and clothest
Me, and thyself, and perchance even a third with it too.
Visions of hope, deceive ye my heart! Ye kindly immortals,
Soften this fierce-raging flame, wildly pervading my breast!
Yet how I long to feel them again, those rapturous torments,
When in their stead, Care draws nigh, coldly and fearfully calm.
Neither the Furies' torch, nor the hounds of hell with their barking,
Awe the delinquent so much, down in the plains of despair,
As by the motionless spectre I'm awed, that shows me the fair one
Far away: of a truth, open the garden door stands!
And another one cometh! For him the fruit, too, is falling,
And for him also the fig strengthening honey doth yield!
Doth she entice him as well to the arbor? He follows? Oh, make
me
Blind, ye Immortals! efface visions like this from my mind!
Yes, she is but a maiden! And she who to one doth so quickly
Yield, to another erelong, doubtless, will turn herself round.
Smile not, Zeus, for this once, at an oath so cruelly broken!
Thunder more fearfully! Strike! Stay-thy fierce lightnings
withhold!
Hurl at me thy quivering bolt! In the darkness of midnight
Strike with hy lightning this mast, make it a pitiful wreck!
Scatter the planks all around, and give to the boisterous billows
All these wares, and let me be to the dolphins a prey! —
Now, ye Muses, enough! In vain would ye strive to depicture
How, in a love-laden breast, anguish alternates with bliss.
Ye cannot heal the wounds, it is true, that love hath inflicted;
Yet from you only proceeds, kindly ones, comfort and balm.
Translation of E. A. Bowring.
## p. 6453 (#435) ###########################################
GOETHE
6453
MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
From Maxims and Reflections of Goethe. > Translation of Bailey Saunders.
Copyright 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
I
T is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape: it is
enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces har-
mony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a
bell, grave and kindly.
I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which
lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by
the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always
living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for
it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day?
A good head could assuredly intercalate one or other of them.
They publish abroad everything that every one does, or is busy
with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged
into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime.
for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to
city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere
to the other,- all in post-haste.
During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both
great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the
world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as
the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the
web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps also the
addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates
determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submit-
ting itself.
There is nothing more odious than the majority: it consists
of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating ras-
cals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot
after them without in the least knowing their own mind.
Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises
of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an
irresistible longing for the original.
## p. 6454 (#436) ###########################################
6454
GOETHE
NATURE
We are surrounded her and locked in her
Npowerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to
her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the
whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary
and fall from her arms.
There is constant life in her, motion and development; and
yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor
for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing,
and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast;
her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.
She loves herself, and clings eternally to herself with eyes
and hearts innumerable. She has divided herself that she may
be her own delight. She is ever making new creatures spring
up to delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.
She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself
and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he fol-
lows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as it were
her child.
She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them
not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to
go their way: she knows the path.
Her crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near
her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to
be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw every-
thing together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she
repays for a life full of trouble.
She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself,
and in herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gen-
tle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty.
In her every-
Past or Future she knows not. The
thing is always present.
Present is her Eternity. She is kind. I praise her with all her
works. She is wise and still. No one can force her to explain
herself, or frighten her into a gift that she does not give will-
ingly. She is crafty, but for a good end; and it is best not to
notice her cunning.
## p. 6455 (#437) ###########################################
6455
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
(1809-1852)
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
OGOL has been called the "father of modern Russian realism,"
and he has been credited with the creation of all the types
which we meet in the great novelists who followed him.
This is in great measure true, especially so far as the male char-
acters are concerned. The germs at least, if not the condensed char-
acterization in full, are recognizable in Gogol's famous novel 'Dead
Souls, his Little-Russian stories Tales from a Farm-House near
Dikanka' and 'Mirgorod,' and his comedy 'The Inspector,' which
still holds the stage.
It was precisely because of his genius
in seizing the national types that the poet
Pushkin, one of Gogol's earliest and warm-
est admirers, gave to him the plans of
'Dead Souls' and 'The Inspector,' which
he had intended to make use of himself.
That he became the "father of Russian
realism" was due not only to his own gen-
ius, but to the epoch in which he lived,
though he solved the problem for himself
quite independently of the Continental lit-
eratures which were undergoing the same
process of transformation from romanticism
to realism. For, nearly a hundred years
before Gogol and his foreign contemporaries of the forties - the pio-
neers, in their respective countries, of the new literature won the
public, Europe had been living a sort of modern epic. In imitation
of the ancient epics, writers portrayed heroes of gigantic powers in
every direction, and set them in a framework of exceptional crises
which aroused their powerful emotions in the cause of right, or their
superhuman conflict with masterful persons or overwhelming woes.
But the daily experience of those who suffered from the manifold
miseries of battle and invasion in this modern epic epoch, made it
impossible for them to disregard longer the claim on their sympa-
thies of the common things and people of their world, though these
can very easily be ignored when one reads the ancient epics. Thus
did realism have its dawn in many lands when the era of peace gave
NIKOLAI GOGOL
—
## p. 6456 (#438) ###########################################
6456
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
men time to define their position, and when pseudo-classicism had
at last palled on their taste, which had begun to recognize its cold-
ness and inherent falsity.
<
Naturally, in this new quest of Truth, romanticism and realism
were mingled at first. This was the case with Gogol-Yanovsky, to
give him his full name. But he soon struck out in the right path.
He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorotchinsky, govern-
ment of Poltava. He was separated by only two generations from
the epoch of the Zaporozhian Kazak army, whose life he has recorded
in his famous historical novel Taras Bulba,' his grandfather having
been regimental scribe of the Kazaks, an office of honor. The spirit
of the Zaporozhian Kazaks still lingered over the land, which was
overflowing with legends, and with fervent, childlike piety of the
superstitious order. At least one half of the Little-Russian stories
which made Gogol's fame he owes to his grandfather, who appears
as Rudiy Panko the Bee-Farmer, in the 'Tales from a Farm-House
near Dikanka. ' His father, who represented the modern spirit, was
an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of this father
and grandfather rendered their house the social centre of a very
wide neighborhood.
At school Gogol did not distinguish himself in his studies, but
wrote a great deal, all of an imitative character, and got up school
plays in emulation of those which he had seen at his own home.
His lack of scholarship made it impossible for him to pursue the
learned career of professor of history, on which he embarked after
he had with labor obtained, and shortly renounced, the career of
copying-clerk in St. Petersburg. His vast but dimly defined ambition
to accomplish great things for his fatherland in some mysterious
way, and fame for himself, equally suffered shipwreck to his mind;
though if we consider the part which the realistic literature he
founded has played on the world's stage, we may count his apparent
defeat a solid victory. His brief career as professor of history at the
university was brought about by his ambition, and through the influ-
ence of the literary men whose friendship he had won by his first
'Little-Russian Tales. ' They recognized his genius, and at last he
himself recognized that the new style of writing which he had cre-
ated was his vocation, and devoted himself wholly to literature. At
the close of 1831 the first volume of 'Tales from a Farm-House
appeared, and had an immense success. The second volume, 'Mirgo-
rod,' followed, with equal success. It contained a new element: the
merriment of the first volume had been pure, unmixed; in the second
volume he had developed not only the realism but that special trait
of his genius, "laughter piercing through a mist of tears," of which
'Old-Fashioned Gentry' and 'How the Two Ivans Quarreled' offer
>
## p. 6457 (#439) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6457
celebrated examples. But success always flew to Gogol's head: he
immediately began to despise these products of his true vocation, and
to plan grandiose projects far beyond his powers of education and
entirely outside the range of his talent. Now, for instance, he under-
took a colossal work in nine volumes on the history of the Middle
Ages. Happily, he abandoned that, after his studies of Little-Russian
history incidental thereto had resulted in his epic of the highest art,
'Taras Bulba. '
The first outcome of his recognition that literary work was his
moral duty, not a mere pastime, was his great play The Inspector. >
It was produced in April, 1836. The authorities steadfastly opposed
its production; but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard of it, read it,
ordered it produced, and upheld Gogol in enthusiastic delight. Offi-
cials, merchants, police, literary people, everybody, attacked the
They had laughed at his pathos; now they raged at his
comedy, refused to recognize their own portraits, and still tried to
have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits were profoundly
affected by this unexpected enmity. He fled abroad, and returned to
Russia thereafter only at intervals for brief visits, and chiefly to Mos-
cow, where most of his faithful friends lived. He traveled much, but
spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him
always poor, even after the complete success of 'The Inspector' and
of the first part of Dead Souls' would have enabled him to exist in
comfort. He was accustomed to say that he could only see Russia
clearly when he was far from her, and in a measure he proved this
by his inimitable first volume of 'Dead Souls. ' Herein he justified
Pushkin's expectations in giving him that subject which would enable
him to paint, in types, the classes and localities of his fatherland.
But this long residence in Rome was fatal to his mind and health, and
eventually extinguished the last sparks of genius. The Russian mind.
is peculiarly inclined to mysticism, and Russian writers of eminence
seem to be even more susceptible in that direction than ordinary men.
Of the noted writers in this century, Pushkin and Lermontoff had
leaned decidedly in that direction towards the end of their careers,
brief as their lives were. Gogol was their intimate friend in Russia,
and after he went abroad he was the intimate friend of the aged
poet Zhukovsky, who became a mystic in his declining years.
Even in his school days Gogol had shown, in his letters to his
mother, a marked tendency to religious exaltation. Now, under the
combined pressure of his personal inclinations, friendships, and the
clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and ascetic
of the most pronounced type. In this frame of mind, he looked upon
all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for; and yet
his immense self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success
## p. 6458 (#440) ###########################################
6458
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
of 'The Inspector' and of the first part of 'Dead Souls,' that he
began to regard himself as a kind of divinely commissioned prophet,
whose duty it was to exhort his fellow-men. The extract from these
hortatory letters to his friends which he published convinced his
countrymen that nothing more was to be expected from him. The
failure of this volume only helped to plunge him into deeper depths of
self-torture. In the few remaining lucid moments of his genius he
worked at the second part of 'Dead Souls,' but destroyed what he
had written in the moments of ecstatic remorse which followed.
Thus the greatest work of his mature genius remains uncompleted.
In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and returned through
Odessa to Moscow, where he lived until his death, growing constantly
more mystical, more ascetic. Sleepless nights spent in prayer, fast-
ing to the extent of trying to nourish himself (as it is affirmed that
practiced ascetics successfully can) for a week on one of the tiny
double loaves which are used in the Holy Communion, completed the
ravages of his long-endured maladies.
It was for publishing in a Moscow paper an enthusiastic obituary
of the dead genius, which he had been forbidden to publish in St.
Petersburg, that Turgénieff was sent into residence on his estate, and
enriched the world with the first work of the rising genius, The
Diary of a Sportsman. ' Acuteness of observation; natural, infectious,
genuine humor; vivid realism; and an inimitable power of depicting
national types, are Gogol's distinguishing characteristics: and these
in varying degrees are precisely the ingredients which have entered
into the works of his successors and rendered Russian literature
famous as a school.
In reviewing Gogol's work, we may set aside with but cursory
mention his youthful idyl, written while still in the gymnasium, pub-
lished anonymously and overwhelmed with ridicule, Hans Kuchel-
garten'; his 'Arabesques,' which are useful chiefly as a contribution
to the study of the man and his opinions, not as permanent additions
to literature; his 'Extracts from Correspondence with Friends,' which
belong to the sermonizing, clouded period of his life's close; and the
divers 'Fragments,' both of prose and dramatic writing, all of which
are conscientiously included in the complete editions of his writings.
The only complete play which he wrote except 'The Inspector'
is the comedy Marriage,' which is still acted, though very seldom.
It is full of naturalness and his own peculiar humor, but its subject
does not appeal to the universal public of all lands as nearly as does
the plan of The Inspector. ' The plot, in brief, is founded on a
young girl's meditations on marriage, and her actions which lead up
to and follow those meditations. The Heroine, desirous of marrying,
invokes the aid of the Match-maker, the old-time matrimonial agent
## p. 6459 (#441) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6459
in the Russian merchant and peasant classes by conventional eti-
quette. The Match-maker offers for her consideration several suitable
men, all strangers; the Heroine makes her choice, and is very well
content with her suitor. But she begins to meditate on the future,
becomes moved to tears by the thought of her daughter's possible
unhappiness in a hypothetical wretched marriage in the dim future,
and at last, unable to endure this painful prospect, she evades her
betrothed and breaks off the match. While the characteristic and
national touches are keen and true,-precursors of the vein which
Ostrovsky so happily developed later, the play must remain a mat-
ter of greater interest to Russians than to foreigners.
The interest of The Inspector,' on the other hand, is universal:
official negligence and corruption, bribery, masculine boastfulness and
vanity, and feminine qualities to correspond, are the private preroga-
tives of no one nation, of no one epoch. The comedy possesses all
the elements of social portraiture and satire without caricature: con-
centration of time, place, action, language, and a tremendous condens-
ation of character traits which are not only truly, typically national,
but which come within the ken of all fair-minded persons in other
countries.
-
The volume with which he scored his first success, and which
must remain a classic, is 'Evenings at a Farm-House near Dikanka. '
As the second volume, 'Mirgorod,' and his volume of 'St. Petersburg
Tales,' all combine essentially the same ingredients, though in vary-
ing measure, we may consider them together. All the tales in the
first two volumes are from his beloved birthplace, Little Russia.
Some of them are simply the artistic and literary rendering of popu-
lar legends, whose counterparts may be found in the folk literature
of other lands. Such are the story of the vampire, 'Vy,' 'St. John's
Eve,' and the exquisite 'A May Night,' where the famous poetical
spirit of the Ukraina is displayed in its full force and beauty. The
Lost Document,' 'Sorotchinsky Fair,' 'The Enchanted Spot,' and
others of like legendary but more exclusively national character, show
the same fertility of wit and skill of management, with close study
of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, which render them in-
valuable to both Russians and foreigners.
More important than these, however, are such stories as 'Old-
Fashioned Gentry' (or 'Farmers'), where keen but kindly wit, more
tempered than the mirth of youthful high spirits which had imbued.
the fantastic tales, is mingled with the purest, deepest pathos and
minute delineation of character and customs, in an inimitable work of
the highest art. To this category belong also 'How the Two Ivans
Quarreled' (the full title, 'How Ivan Ivan'itch and Ivan Nikifor'itch
Quarreled,' is rather unwieldy for the foreign ear), and 'The Cloak,'
## p. 6460 (#442) ###########################################
6460
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
from the volume of 'St. Petersburg Tales. ' We may also count 'The
Nevsky Prospekt' with these; while 'The Portrait' is semi-fantastic,
"The Nose and The Calash' are wholly so, though not legendary,
and 'The Diary of a Madman' is unexcelled as an amusing but touch-
ing study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom.
Gogol's capital work, however, is his 'Dead Souls. ' In it he car-
ried to its highest point his talent for accurate delineation of his
countrymen and the conditions of their life. There is less pathos
than in some of his short tales; but all the other elements are per-
fected. Pushkin's generosity and sound judgment were never better
shown than in the gift which he made to Gogol of the plan of this
book. He could not have executed it himself as well. The work
must forever rank as a Russian classic; it ought to rank as a univer-
sal classic. The types are as fresh, true, and vivid to one who knows
the Russia of to-day as they were when they were first introduced to
the enthusiastic public of 1842.
In the pre-Emancipation days, a soul meant a male serf. The
women were not counted in the periodical revisions, though the work-
ing unit, a tyaglo, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse-the
indispensable trinity to agricultural labor. In the interval between
the revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay for all the serfs
accredited to him on the official list, the births being reckoned for
convenience as an exact offset to the deaths. Another provision
of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land
to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An
ingenious fraud suggested by a combination of these two laws forms
the foundation of 'Dead Souls. ' The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official
who has struggled up ambitiously and shrewdly, through numerous
vicissitudes of bribe-taking, extortion, and ensuing discomfiture, to
a snug berth in the custom-house service, from which he is ejected
under circumstances which render further flights difficult if not im-
possible. In this strait he hits upon the idea of purchasing from
landed proprietors of mediocre probity the souls who are dead,
though still nominally alive, and on whom they are forced to pay
taxes. Land is being given away gratuitously, in the southern gov-
ernments of Kherson and Tauris, to any one who will settle upon it,
as every one knows. His plan is to buy one thousand non-existent
serfs ("dead souls"), at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece,
for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south, and
then, by mortgaging them to the loan bank for the nobility known
as the Council of Guardians, obtain a capital of two hundred thou-
sand rubles. In pursuance of this clever scheme he sets out on his
travels, visits provincial towns and the estates of landed gentry of
every shade of character, dishonesty, and financial standing, where
## p. 6461 (#443) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6461
he either buys for a song, or cajoles from them as a gift, large num-
bers of "dead souls. " It is unnecessary and impossible to do more
than reinforce the hint which this statement contains, by the assur-
ance that Gogol used to the uttermost the magnificent opportunity
thus afforded him of showing up Russian life and manners. Though
the scene of Tchitchikoff's wanderings does not include either capital,
the life there does not escape the author's notice in his asides and
illustrative arguments. It may also be said that while his talent lies
pre-eminently in the delineation of men, he does not fail in his por-
traits of women; though as a rule these are more general-in the
nature of a composite photograph-than particular. The day for mi-
nute analysis of feminine character had not arrived, and in all Gogol's
works there is, properly speaking, no such thing as the heroine play-
ing a first-class rôle, whether of the antique or the modern pattern.
Gogol's great historical novel, Taras Bulba,' which deals with the
famous Kazak republic of the Dniepr Falls (Zaporózhya), stands
equally with his other volumes of the first rank in poetry, dramatic
power, and truth to life. It possesses also a force of tragedy and
passion in love which are altogether lacking, or but faintly indi-
cated, in his other masterpieces.
Isabel 7. Hapgood
FROM THE INSPECTOR›
Scene: A room in the house of the Chief of Police. Present: Chief of
Police, Curator of Benevolent Institutions, Superintendent of Schools,
Judge, Commissary of Police, Doctor, two Policemen.
I have summoned you, gentlemen, in order to com-
municate to you an unpleasant piece of news:
spector is coming.
an In-
Judge-What! An Inspector?
Chief- An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito. And
with secret orders, to boot.
Judge-I thought so!
C
HIEF
-
Curator-If there's not trouble, then I'm mistaken!
Superintendent - Heavens! And with secret orders, too!
Chief I foresaw it: all last night I was dreaming of two
huge rats. I never saw such rats: they were black, and of
## p. 6462 (#444) ###########################################
6462
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
supernatural size!
They came, and smelled, and went away.
I will read you the letter I have received from Andrei Ivan'itch
Tchorikoff, whom you know, Artemiy Philip'itch. This is what
he writes: "Dear friend, gossip and benefactor! " [Mutters in
an undertone, as he runs his eye quickly over it. ] "I hasten to
inform you, among other things, that an official has arrived with
orders to inspect the entire government, and our district in par-
ticular. " [Raises his finger significantly. ] "I have heard this
from trustworthy people, although he represents himself as a
private individual. As I know that you are not quite free from
faults, since you are a sensible man, and do not like to let slip
what runs into your hands [Pauses. ] Well, here are some
remarks about his own affairs—“so I advise you to be on your
guard: for he may arrive at any moment, if he is not already
arrived and living somewhere incognito. Yesterday—" Well,
what follows is about family matters. "My sister Anna Kiri-
lovna has come with her husband; Ivan Kirilitch has grown
very fat, and still plays the violin -" and so forth, and so forth.
So there you have the whole matter.
Judge-Yes, the matter is so unusual, so remarkable; some-
thing unexpected.
Superintendent - And why? Anton Anton'itch, why is this?
Why is the Inspector coming hither?
Chief [sighs]- Why? Evidently, it is fate. [Sighs. ] Up to
this time, God be praised, they have attended to other towns;
now our turn has come.
-
men.
>>>
―――――
Judge-I think, Anton Anton'itch, that there is some fine
political cause at the bottom of this. This means something:
Russia-yes-Russia wants to go to war, and the minister, you
see, has sent an official to find out whether there is any treason.
Chief- What's got hold of him? A sensible man, truly!
Treason in a provincial town! Is it a border town—is it, now?
Why, you could ride away from here for three years and not
reach any other kingdom.
The gov
Judge - No, I tell you. You don't-you don't-
ernment has subtle reasons; no matter if it is out of the way,
they don't care for that.
Chief - Whether they care or not, I have warned you, gentle-
See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own
department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you,
Artemiy Philip'itch! Without doubt, this traveling official will
## p. 6463 (#445) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6463
wish first of all to inspect your institutions—and therefore you
must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps.
should be clean, and the sick people should not look like black-
smiths, as they usually do in private.
We can put clean night-
Curator Well, that's a mere trifle.
caps on them.
Chief - And then, you ought to have written up over the head
of each bed, in Latin or some other language- that's your busi-
ness the name of each disease: when each patient was taken
sick, the day and hour. It is not well that your sick people
should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every
time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there
were fewer of them: it will be set down at once to bad super-
vision or to lack of skill on the doctor's part.
Curator - Oh! so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christian
Ivan'itch and I have already taken measures: the nearer to nature
the better, we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a
simple creature: if he dies, why then he dies; if he gets well,
why then he gets well. And then, it would have been difficult
for Christian Ivan'itch to make them understand him he doesn't
know one word of Russian.
―
-
――
-
Chief — I should also advise you, Ammos Feodor'itch, to turn
your attention to court affairs. In the ante-room, where the
clients usually assemble, your janitor has got a lot of geese and
goslings, which waddle about under foot. Of course it is praise-
worthy to be thrifty in domestic affairs, and why should not the
janitor be so too? only, you know, it is not proper in that
place. I meant to mention it to you before, but always forgot it.
Judge I'll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very
day. Will you come and dine with me?
Chief-And moreover, it is not well that all sorts of stuff
should be put to dry in the court-room, and that over the very
desk, with the documents, there should be a hunting-whip. I
know that you are fond of hunting, but there is a proper time
for everything, and you can hang it up there again when the
Inspector takes his departure. And then your assistant—he's a
man of experience, but there's a smell about him as though he
had just come from a distillery—and that's not as it should
be. I meant to speak to you about it long ago, but something, I
don't recall now precisely what, put it out of my mind. There
is a remedy, if he really was born with the odor, as he asserts:
## p. 6464 (#446) ###########################################
6464
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
you might advise him to eat onions or garlic or something. In
that case, Christian Ivan'itch could assist you with some medica-
ments.
Judge-No, it's impossible to drive it out: he says that his
mother injured him when he was a child, and an odor of whisky
has emanated from him ever since.
Chief - Yes, I just remarked on it. As for internal arrange-
ments, and what Andrei Ivan'itch in his letter calls "faults," I
can say nothing. Yes, and strange to say, there is no man who
has not his faults. God himself arranged it so, and it is useless
for the freethinkers to maintain the contrary.
Judge - What do you mean by faults, Anton Anton'itch?
There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that
I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? greyhound pups. That's
quite another thing.
Chief-Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the
same.
Judge-Well, no, Anton Anton'itch. But for example, if some
one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a
shawl-
-
Chief-Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as
bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church.
I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every
Sunday. But you-oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about
the creation of the world, one's hair rises straight up on his head.
Judge-It came of itself, of its own accord.
Chief - Well, in some cases it is worse to have brains than
to be entirely without them. Besides, I only just mentioned the
district court: but to tell the truth, it is only very rarely that
any one ever looks in there; 'tis such an enviable place that God
himself protects it. And as for you, Luka Luk'itch, as superin-
tendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the
teachers. They are educated people, to be sure, and were reared
at divers academies, but they have very peculiar ways which
go naturally with that learned profession. One of them, for in-
stance, the fat-faced one,-I don't recall his name, - cannot get
along without making grimaces when he takes his seat; - like this
[makes a grimace]: and then he begins to smooth his beard out
from under his neckerchief, with his hand. In short, if he makes
such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said: it must
be necessary; I am no judge of that. But just consider - if he
## p. 6465 (#447) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6465
were to do that to a visitor it might be very unpleasant; the
Inspector or any one else might take it as personal. The Devil
knows what might come of it.
Superintendent -What am I to do with him? I have spoken
to him about it several times already. A few days ago, when
our chief went into the class-room, he made such a grimace as I
never beheld before. He made it out of good-will; but it is a
judgment on me, because freethinking is being inculcated in the
young people.
Chief- And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's
a wise man, that's plain, and has acquired a great mass of learn-
ing; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses
control of himself. I heard him once: well, so long as he was
talking about the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was all right;
but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe
to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by
heavens! He jumped from his seat and dashed his chair to the
floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no
doubt; but why smash the chairs? There will be a deficit in
the accounts, just as the result of that.
Superintendent - Yes, he is hasty! I have remarked on it to
him several times.
He says,
"What would you have? I would
sacrifice my life for science. "
Chief-Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of fate: a
learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that
would scare the very saints.
-
Superintendent — God forbid that he should inspect the educa-
tional institutions. Everybody meddles and tries to show every-
body else that he is a learned man.
Chief That would be nothing: that cursed incognito! All
of a sudden you hear-"Ah, here you are, my little dears! And
who," says he, "is the Judge here? "-"Lyapkin-Tyapkin. ”—
"And who is the Superintendent of the Hospital? "-"Zemlyan-
ika! " That's the worst of it!
ton'itch?
tle.
Enter Postmaster
Chief-Well, how do you feel, Ivan Kusmitch?
Postmaster - How do I feel? How do you feel, Anton An-
Chief-How do I feel?
Every day which had else coldly from memory fled.
'Twas in that moment alone, the last, that upon me descended
Life such as deities grant, though thou perceivèdst it not.
Phœbus, in vain with thy rays dost thou clothe the ether in glory:
Thine all-brightening day hateful alone is to me.
Into myself I retreat for shelter, and there in the silence
Strive to recover the time when she appeared with each day.
Was it possible beauty like this to see, and not feel it?
Worked not those heavenly charms e'en on a mind dull as thine?
Blame not thyself, unhappy one! Oft doth the bard an enigma
Thus propose to the throng, skillfully hidden in words;
Each one enjoys the strange commingling of images graceful,
Yet still is wanting the word which will discover the sense.
When at length it is found, the heart of each hearer is gladdened,
And in the poem he sees meaning of twofold delight.
Wherefore so late didst thou remove the bandage, O Amor,
Which thou hadst placed o'er mine eyes, wherefore remove it so
late?
Long did the vessel, when laden, lie waiting for favoring breezes,
Till in kindness the wind blew from the land o'er the sea.
Vacant times of youth! and vacant dreams of the future!
Ye all vanish, and naught, saving the moment, remains.
Yes! it remains,-my joy still remains! I hold thee, my Dora,
And thine image alone, Dora, by hope is disclosed.
--
XI-404
## p. 6450 (#432) ###########################################
6450
GOETHE
Oft have I seen thee go, with modesty clad, to the temple,
While thy mother so dear solemnly went by thy side.
Eager and nimble thou wert, in bearing thy fruit to the market,
Boldly the pail from the well didst thou sustain on thy head.
Then was revealed thy neck, then seen thy shoulders so beauteous,
Then, before all things, the grace filling thy motions was seen.
Oft have I feared that the pitcher perchance was in danger of
falling,
Yet it ever remained firm on the circular cloth.
Thus, fair neighbor, yes, thus I oft was won to observe thee,
As on the stars I might gaze, as I might gaze on the moon;
Glad indeed at the sight, yet feeling within my calm bosom
Not the remotest desire ever to call them mine own.
Years thus fleeted away! Although our houses were only
Twenty paces apart, yet I thy threshold ne'er crossed.
Now by the fearful flood are we parted! Thou liest to Heaven,
Billow! thy beautiful blue seems to me dark as the night.
All were now in movement: a boy to the house of my father
Ran at full speed and exclaimed, "Hasten thee quick to the strand!
Hoisted the sail is already, e'en now in the wind it is fluttering,
While the anchor they weigh, heaving it up from the sand;
Come, Alexis, oh come! "- My worthy stout-hearted father
Pressed, with a blessing, his hand down on my curly-locked head,
While my mother carefully reached me a newly made bundle;
"Happy mayst thou return! " cried they-"both happy and rich! "
Then I sprang away, and under my arm held the bundle,
Running along by the wall. Standing I found thee hard by,
At the door of thy garden. Thou smilingly saidst then, "Alexis!
Say, are yon boisterous crew going thy comrades to be?
Foreign coasts wilt thou visit, and precious merchandise purchase,
Ornaments meet for the rich matrons who dwell in the town;
Bring me also, I pray thee, a light chain; gladly I'll pay thee,
Oft have I wished to possess some such a trinket as that. "
There I remained, and asked, as merchants are wont, with precision
After the form and the weight which thy commission should have.
Modest indeed was the price thou didst name! I meanwhile was
gazing
On thy neck, which deserved ornaments worn but by queens.
Loudly now rose the cry from the ship; then kindly thou spakest:-
"Take, I entreat thee, some fruit out of the garden, my friend!
Take the ripest oranges, figs of the whitest; the ocean
Beareth no fruit, and in truth, 'tis not produced by each land. "
So I entered in. Thou pluckedst the fruit from the branches,
And the burden of gold was in thine apron upheld.
-
## p. 6451 (#433) ###########################################
GOETHE
6451
Oft did I cry, Enough! But fairer fruits were still falling
Into thy hand as I spake, ever obeying thy touch.
Presently didst thou reach the arbor; there lay there a basket,
Sweet blooming myrtle-trees waved, as we drew nigh, o'er our
heads.
Then thou began'st to arrange the fruit with skill and in silence:
First the orange, which heavy as though 'twere of gold,
Then the yielding fig, by the slightest pressure disfigured,
And with myrtle, the gift soon was both covered and graced.
But I raised it not up. I stood. Our eyes met together,
And my eyesight grew dim, seeming obscured by a film.
Soon I felt thy bosom on mine! Mine arm was soon twining
Round thy beautiful form; thousand times kissed I thy neck.
On my shoulder sank thy head; thy fair arms, encircling,
Soon rendered perfect the ring knitting a rapturous pair.
Amor's hands I felt; he pressed us together with ardor,
And from the firmament clear, thrice did it thunder; then tears
Streamed from mine eyes in torrents, thou weptest, I wept, both
were weeping,
And 'mid our sorrow and bliss, even the world seemed to die.
Louder and louder they called from the strand; my feet would no
longer
Bear my weight, and I cried:- "Dora! and art thou not mine? »
"Thine forever! " thou gently didst say. Then the tears we were
shedding
Seemed to be wiped from our eyes, as by the breath of a god.
Nearer was heard the cry "Alexis! " The stripling who sought me
Suddenly peeped through the door. How he the basket snatched
up!
How he urged me away! how pressed I thy hand! Dost thou ask
me
How the vessel I reached? Drunken I seemed, well I know,
Drunken my shipmates believed me, and so had pity upon me;
And as the breeze drove us on, distance the town soon obscured.
"Thine forever! " thou, Dora, didst murmur; it fell on my senses
With the thunder of Zeus! while by the thunderer's throne
Stood his daughter, the goddess of Love; the Graces were standing
Close by her side! so the bond beareth an impress divine!
Oh then hasten, thou ship, with every favoring zephyr!
Onward, thou powerful keel, cleaving the waves as they foam!
Bring me unto the foreign harbor, so that the goldsmith
May in his workshop prepare straightway the heavenly pledge!
Ay, of a truth, the chain shall indeed be a chain, O my Dora!
Nine times encircling thy neck, loosely around it entwined.
## p. 6452 (#434) ###########################################
6452
GOETHE
Other and manifold trinkets I'll buy thee; gold-mounted bracelets,
Richly and skillfully wrought, also shall grace thy fair hand.
There shall the ruby and emerald vie, the sapphire so lovely
Be to the jacinth opposed, seeming its foil; while the gold
Holds all the jewels together, in beauteous union commingled.
Oh, how the bridegroom exults, when he adorns his betrothed!
Pearls if I see, of thee they remind me; each ring that is shown me
Brings to my mind thy fair hand's graceful and tapering form.
I will barter and buy; the fairest of all shalt thou choose thee;
Joyously would I devote all of the cargo to thee.
Yet not trinkets and jewels alone is thy loved one procuring;
With them he brings thee whate'er gives to a housewife delight:
Fine and woolen coverlets, wrought with an edging of purple,
Fit for a couch where we both, lovingly, gently may rest;
Costly pieces of linen. Thou sittest and sewest, and clothest
Me, and thyself, and perchance even a third with it too.
Visions of hope, deceive ye my heart! Ye kindly immortals,
Soften this fierce-raging flame, wildly pervading my breast!
Yet how I long to feel them again, those rapturous torments,
When in their stead, Care draws nigh, coldly and fearfully calm.
Neither the Furies' torch, nor the hounds of hell with their barking,
Awe the delinquent so much, down in the plains of despair,
As by the motionless spectre I'm awed, that shows me the fair one
Far away: of a truth, open the garden door stands!
And another one cometh! For him the fruit, too, is falling,
And for him also the fig strengthening honey doth yield!
Doth she entice him as well to the arbor? He follows? Oh, make
me
Blind, ye Immortals! efface visions like this from my mind!
Yes, she is but a maiden! And she who to one doth so quickly
Yield, to another erelong, doubtless, will turn herself round.
Smile not, Zeus, for this once, at an oath so cruelly broken!
Thunder more fearfully! Strike! Stay-thy fierce lightnings
withhold!
Hurl at me thy quivering bolt! In the darkness of midnight
Strike with hy lightning this mast, make it a pitiful wreck!
Scatter the planks all around, and give to the boisterous billows
All these wares, and let me be to the dolphins a prey! —
Now, ye Muses, enough! In vain would ye strive to depicture
How, in a love-laden breast, anguish alternates with bliss.
Ye cannot heal the wounds, it is true, that love hath inflicted;
Yet from you only proceeds, kindly ones, comfort and balm.
Translation of E. A. Bowring.
## p. 6453 (#435) ###########################################
GOETHE
6453
MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
From Maxims and Reflections of Goethe. > Translation of Bailey Saunders.
Copyright 1892, by Macmillan & Co.
I
T is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape: it is
enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces har-
mony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a
bell, grave and kindly.
I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which
lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by
the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always
living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for
it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day?
A good head could assuredly intercalate one or other of them.
They publish abroad everything that every one does, or is busy
with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged
into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime.
for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to
city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere
to the other,- all in post-haste.
During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both
great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the
world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as
the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the
web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps also the
addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates
determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submit-
ting itself.
There is nothing more odious than the majority: it consists
of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating ras-
cals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot
after them without in the least knowing their own mind.
Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises
of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an
irresistible longing for the original.
## p. 6454 (#436) ###########################################
6454
GOETHE
NATURE
We are surrounded her and locked in her
Npowerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to
her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the
whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary
and fall from her arms.
There is constant life in her, motion and development; and
yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor
for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing,
and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast;
her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.
She loves herself, and clings eternally to herself with eyes
and hearts innumerable. She has divided herself that she may
be her own delight. She is ever making new creatures spring
up to delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.
She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself
and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he fol-
lows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as it were
her child.
She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them
not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to
go their way: she knows the path.
Her crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near
her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to
be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw every-
thing together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she
repays for a life full of trouble.
She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself,
and in herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gen-
tle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty.
In her every-
Past or Future she knows not. The
thing is always present.
Present is her Eternity. She is kind. I praise her with all her
works. She is wise and still. No one can force her to explain
herself, or frighten her into a gift that she does not give will-
ingly. She is crafty, but for a good end; and it is best not to
notice her cunning.
## p. 6455 (#437) ###########################################
6455
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
(1809-1852)
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
OGOL has been called the "father of modern Russian realism,"
and he has been credited with the creation of all the types
which we meet in the great novelists who followed him.
This is in great measure true, especially so far as the male char-
acters are concerned. The germs at least, if not the condensed char-
acterization in full, are recognizable in Gogol's famous novel 'Dead
Souls, his Little-Russian stories Tales from a Farm-House near
Dikanka' and 'Mirgorod,' and his comedy 'The Inspector,' which
still holds the stage.
It was precisely because of his genius
in seizing the national types that the poet
Pushkin, one of Gogol's earliest and warm-
est admirers, gave to him the plans of
'Dead Souls' and 'The Inspector,' which
he had intended to make use of himself.
That he became the "father of Russian
realism" was due not only to his own gen-
ius, but to the epoch in which he lived,
though he solved the problem for himself
quite independently of the Continental lit-
eratures which were undergoing the same
process of transformation from romanticism
to realism. For, nearly a hundred years
before Gogol and his foreign contemporaries of the forties - the pio-
neers, in their respective countries, of the new literature won the
public, Europe had been living a sort of modern epic. In imitation
of the ancient epics, writers portrayed heroes of gigantic powers in
every direction, and set them in a framework of exceptional crises
which aroused their powerful emotions in the cause of right, or their
superhuman conflict with masterful persons or overwhelming woes.
But the daily experience of those who suffered from the manifold
miseries of battle and invasion in this modern epic epoch, made it
impossible for them to disregard longer the claim on their sympa-
thies of the common things and people of their world, though these
can very easily be ignored when one reads the ancient epics. Thus
did realism have its dawn in many lands when the era of peace gave
NIKOLAI GOGOL
—
## p. 6456 (#438) ###########################################
6456
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
men time to define their position, and when pseudo-classicism had
at last palled on their taste, which had begun to recognize its cold-
ness and inherent falsity.
<
Naturally, in this new quest of Truth, romanticism and realism
were mingled at first. This was the case with Gogol-Yanovsky, to
give him his full name. But he soon struck out in the right path.
He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorotchinsky, govern-
ment of Poltava. He was separated by only two generations from
the epoch of the Zaporozhian Kazak army, whose life he has recorded
in his famous historical novel Taras Bulba,' his grandfather having
been regimental scribe of the Kazaks, an office of honor. The spirit
of the Zaporozhian Kazaks still lingered over the land, which was
overflowing with legends, and with fervent, childlike piety of the
superstitious order. At least one half of the Little-Russian stories
which made Gogol's fame he owes to his grandfather, who appears
as Rudiy Panko the Bee-Farmer, in the 'Tales from a Farm-House
near Dikanka. ' His father, who represented the modern spirit, was
an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of this father
and grandfather rendered their house the social centre of a very
wide neighborhood.
At school Gogol did not distinguish himself in his studies, but
wrote a great deal, all of an imitative character, and got up school
plays in emulation of those which he had seen at his own home.
His lack of scholarship made it impossible for him to pursue the
learned career of professor of history, on which he embarked after
he had with labor obtained, and shortly renounced, the career of
copying-clerk in St. Petersburg. His vast but dimly defined ambition
to accomplish great things for his fatherland in some mysterious
way, and fame for himself, equally suffered shipwreck to his mind;
though if we consider the part which the realistic literature he
founded has played on the world's stage, we may count his apparent
defeat a solid victory. His brief career as professor of history at the
university was brought about by his ambition, and through the influ-
ence of the literary men whose friendship he had won by his first
'Little-Russian Tales. ' They recognized his genius, and at last he
himself recognized that the new style of writing which he had cre-
ated was his vocation, and devoted himself wholly to literature. At
the close of 1831 the first volume of 'Tales from a Farm-House
appeared, and had an immense success. The second volume, 'Mirgo-
rod,' followed, with equal success. It contained a new element: the
merriment of the first volume had been pure, unmixed; in the second
volume he had developed not only the realism but that special trait
of his genius, "laughter piercing through a mist of tears," of which
'Old-Fashioned Gentry' and 'How the Two Ivans Quarreled' offer
>
## p. 6457 (#439) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
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celebrated examples. But success always flew to Gogol's head: he
immediately began to despise these products of his true vocation, and
to plan grandiose projects far beyond his powers of education and
entirely outside the range of his talent. Now, for instance, he under-
took a colossal work in nine volumes on the history of the Middle
Ages. Happily, he abandoned that, after his studies of Little-Russian
history incidental thereto had resulted in his epic of the highest art,
'Taras Bulba. '
The first outcome of his recognition that literary work was his
moral duty, not a mere pastime, was his great play The Inspector. >
It was produced in April, 1836. The authorities steadfastly opposed
its production; but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard of it, read it,
ordered it produced, and upheld Gogol in enthusiastic delight. Offi-
cials, merchants, police, literary people, everybody, attacked the
They had laughed at his pathos; now they raged at his
comedy, refused to recognize their own portraits, and still tried to
have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits were profoundly
affected by this unexpected enmity. He fled abroad, and returned to
Russia thereafter only at intervals for brief visits, and chiefly to Mos-
cow, where most of his faithful friends lived. He traveled much, but
spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him
always poor, even after the complete success of 'The Inspector' and
of the first part of Dead Souls' would have enabled him to exist in
comfort. He was accustomed to say that he could only see Russia
clearly when he was far from her, and in a measure he proved this
by his inimitable first volume of 'Dead Souls. ' Herein he justified
Pushkin's expectations in giving him that subject which would enable
him to paint, in types, the classes and localities of his fatherland.
But this long residence in Rome was fatal to his mind and health, and
eventually extinguished the last sparks of genius. The Russian mind.
is peculiarly inclined to mysticism, and Russian writers of eminence
seem to be even more susceptible in that direction than ordinary men.
Of the noted writers in this century, Pushkin and Lermontoff had
leaned decidedly in that direction towards the end of their careers,
brief as their lives were. Gogol was their intimate friend in Russia,
and after he went abroad he was the intimate friend of the aged
poet Zhukovsky, who became a mystic in his declining years.
Even in his school days Gogol had shown, in his letters to his
mother, a marked tendency to religious exaltation. Now, under the
combined pressure of his personal inclinations, friendships, and the
clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and ascetic
of the most pronounced type. In this frame of mind, he looked upon
all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for; and yet
his immense self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success
## p. 6458 (#440) ###########################################
6458
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
of 'The Inspector' and of the first part of 'Dead Souls,' that he
began to regard himself as a kind of divinely commissioned prophet,
whose duty it was to exhort his fellow-men. The extract from these
hortatory letters to his friends which he published convinced his
countrymen that nothing more was to be expected from him. The
failure of this volume only helped to plunge him into deeper depths of
self-torture. In the few remaining lucid moments of his genius he
worked at the second part of 'Dead Souls,' but destroyed what he
had written in the moments of ecstatic remorse which followed.
Thus the greatest work of his mature genius remains uncompleted.
In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and returned through
Odessa to Moscow, where he lived until his death, growing constantly
more mystical, more ascetic. Sleepless nights spent in prayer, fast-
ing to the extent of trying to nourish himself (as it is affirmed that
practiced ascetics successfully can) for a week on one of the tiny
double loaves which are used in the Holy Communion, completed the
ravages of his long-endured maladies.
It was for publishing in a Moscow paper an enthusiastic obituary
of the dead genius, which he had been forbidden to publish in St.
Petersburg, that Turgénieff was sent into residence on his estate, and
enriched the world with the first work of the rising genius, The
Diary of a Sportsman. ' Acuteness of observation; natural, infectious,
genuine humor; vivid realism; and an inimitable power of depicting
national types, are Gogol's distinguishing characteristics: and these
in varying degrees are precisely the ingredients which have entered
into the works of his successors and rendered Russian literature
famous as a school.
In reviewing Gogol's work, we may set aside with but cursory
mention his youthful idyl, written while still in the gymnasium, pub-
lished anonymously and overwhelmed with ridicule, Hans Kuchel-
garten'; his 'Arabesques,' which are useful chiefly as a contribution
to the study of the man and his opinions, not as permanent additions
to literature; his 'Extracts from Correspondence with Friends,' which
belong to the sermonizing, clouded period of his life's close; and the
divers 'Fragments,' both of prose and dramatic writing, all of which
are conscientiously included in the complete editions of his writings.
The only complete play which he wrote except 'The Inspector'
is the comedy Marriage,' which is still acted, though very seldom.
It is full of naturalness and his own peculiar humor, but its subject
does not appeal to the universal public of all lands as nearly as does
the plan of The Inspector. ' The plot, in brief, is founded on a
young girl's meditations on marriage, and her actions which lead up
to and follow those meditations. The Heroine, desirous of marrying,
invokes the aid of the Match-maker, the old-time matrimonial agent
## p. 6459 (#441) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6459
in the Russian merchant and peasant classes by conventional eti-
quette. The Match-maker offers for her consideration several suitable
men, all strangers; the Heroine makes her choice, and is very well
content with her suitor. But she begins to meditate on the future,
becomes moved to tears by the thought of her daughter's possible
unhappiness in a hypothetical wretched marriage in the dim future,
and at last, unable to endure this painful prospect, she evades her
betrothed and breaks off the match. While the characteristic and
national touches are keen and true,-precursors of the vein which
Ostrovsky so happily developed later, the play must remain a mat-
ter of greater interest to Russians than to foreigners.
The interest of The Inspector,' on the other hand, is universal:
official negligence and corruption, bribery, masculine boastfulness and
vanity, and feminine qualities to correspond, are the private preroga-
tives of no one nation, of no one epoch. The comedy possesses all
the elements of social portraiture and satire without caricature: con-
centration of time, place, action, language, and a tremendous condens-
ation of character traits which are not only truly, typically national,
but which come within the ken of all fair-minded persons in other
countries.
-
The volume with which he scored his first success, and which
must remain a classic, is 'Evenings at a Farm-House near Dikanka. '
As the second volume, 'Mirgorod,' and his volume of 'St. Petersburg
Tales,' all combine essentially the same ingredients, though in vary-
ing measure, we may consider them together. All the tales in the
first two volumes are from his beloved birthplace, Little Russia.
Some of them are simply the artistic and literary rendering of popu-
lar legends, whose counterparts may be found in the folk literature
of other lands. Such are the story of the vampire, 'Vy,' 'St. John's
Eve,' and the exquisite 'A May Night,' where the famous poetical
spirit of the Ukraina is displayed in its full force and beauty. The
Lost Document,' 'Sorotchinsky Fair,' 'The Enchanted Spot,' and
others of like legendary but more exclusively national character, show
the same fertility of wit and skill of management, with close study
of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, which render them in-
valuable to both Russians and foreigners.
More important than these, however, are such stories as 'Old-
Fashioned Gentry' (or 'Farmers'), where keen but kindly wit, more
tempered than the mirth of youthful high spirits which had imbued.
the fantastic tales, is mingled with the purest, deepest pathos and
minute delineation of character and customs, in an inimitable work of
the highest art. To this category belong also 'How the Two Ivans
Quarreled' (the full title, 'How Ivan Ivan'itch and Ivan Nikifor'itch
Quarreled,' is rather unwieldy for the foreign ear), and 'The Cloak,'
## p. 6460 (#442) ###########################################
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NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
from the volume of 'St. Petersburg Tales. ' We may also count 'The
Nevsky Prospekt' with these; while 'The Portrait' is semi-fantastic,
"The Nose and The Calash' are wholly so, though not legendary,
and 'The Diary of a Madman' is unexcelled as an amusing but touch-
ing study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom.
Gogol's capital work, however, is his 'Dead Souls. ' In it he car-
ried to its highest point his talent for accurate delineation of his
countrymen and the conditions of their life. There is less pathos
than in some of his short tales; but all the other elements are per-
fected. Pushkin's generosity and sound judgment were never better
shown than in the gift which he made to Gogol of the plan of this
book. He could not have executed it himself as well. The work
must forever rank as a Russian classic; it ought to rank as a univer-
sal classic. The types are as fresh, true, and vivid to one who knows
the Russia of to-day as they were when they were first introduced to
the enthusiastic public of 1842.
In the pre-Emancipation days, a soul meant a male serf. The
women were not counted in the periodical revisions, though the work-
ing unit, a tyaglo, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse-the
indispensable trinity to agricultural labor. In the interval between
the revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay for all the serfs
accredited to him on the official list, the births being reckoned for
convenience as an exact offset to the deaths. Another provision
of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land
to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An
ingenious fraud suggested by a combination of these two laws forms
the foundation of 'Dead Souls. ' The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official
who has struggled up ambitiously and shrewdly, through numerous
vicissitudes of bribe-taking, extortion, and ensuing discomfiture, to
a snug berth in the custom-house service, from which he is ejected
under circumstances which render further flights difficult if not im-
possible. In this strait he hits upon the idea of purchasing from
landed proprietors of mediocre probity the souls who are dead,
though still nominally alive, and on whom they are forced to pay
taxes. Land is being given away gratuitously, in the southern gov-
ernments of Kherson and Tauris, to any one who will settle upon it,
as every one knows. His plan is to buy one thousand non-existent
serfs ("dead souls"), at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece,
for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south, and
then, by mortgaging them to the loan bank for the nobility known
as the Council of Guardians, obtain a capital of two hundred thou-
sand rubles. In pursuance of this clever scheme he sets out on his
travels, visits provincial towns and the estates of landed gentry of
every shade of character, dishonesty, and financial standing, where
## p. 6461 (#443) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6461
he either buys for a song, or cajoles from them as a gift, large num-
bers of "dead souls. " It is unnecessary and impossible to do more
than reinforce the hint which this statement contains, by the assur-
ance that Gogol used to the uttermost the magnificent opportunity
thus afforded him of showing up Russian life and manners. Though
the scene of Tchitchikoff's wanderings does not include either capital,
the life there does not escape the author's notice in his asides and
illustrative arguments. It may also be said that while his talent lies
pre-eminently in the delineation of men, he does not fail in his por-
traits of women; though as a rule these are more general-in the
nature of a composite photograph-than particular. The day for mi-
nute analysis of feminine character had not arrived, and in all Gogol's
works there is, properly speaking, no such thing as the heroine play-
ing a first-class rôle, whether of the antique or the modern pattern.
Gogol's great historical novel, Taras Bulba,' which deals with the
famous Kazak republic of the Dniepr Falls (Zaporózhya), stands
equally with his other volumes of the first rank in poetry, dramatic
power, and truth to life. It possesses also a force of tragedy and
passion in love which are altogether lacking, or but faintly indi-
cated, in his other masterpieces.
Isabel 7. Hapgood
FROM THE INSPECTOR›
Scene: A room in the house of the Chief of Police. Present: Chief of
Police, Curator of Benevolent Institutions, Superintendent of Schools,
Judge, Commissary of Police, Doctor, two Policemen.
I have summoned you, gentlemen, in order to com-
municate to you an unpleasant piece of news:
spector is coming.
an In-
Judge-What! An Inspector?
Chief- An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito. And
with secret orders, to boot.
Judge-I thought so!
C
HIEF
-
Curator-If there's not trouble, then I'm mistaken!
Superintendent - Heavens! And with secret orders, too!
Chief I foresaw it: all last night I was dreaming of two
huge rats. I never saw such rats: they were black, and of
## p. 6462 (#444) ###########################################
6462
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
supernatural size!
They came, and smelled, and went away.
I will read you the letter I have received from Andrei Ivan'itch
Tchorikoff, whom you know, Artemiy Philip'itch. This is what
he writes: "Dear friend, gossip and benefactor! " [Mutters in
an undertone, as he runs his eye quickly over it. ] "I hasten to
inform you, among other things, that an official has arrived with
orders to inspect the entire government, and our district in par-
ticular. " [Raises his finger significantly. ] "I have heard this
from trustworthy people, although he represents himself as a
private individual. As I know that you are not quite free from
faults, since you are a sensible man, and do not like to let slip
what runs into your hands [Pauses. ] Well, here are some
remarks about his own affairs—“so I advise you to be on your
guard: for he may arrive at any moment, if he is not already
arrived and living somewhere incognito. Yesterday—" Well,
what follows is about family matters. "My sister Anna Kiri-
lovna has come with her husband; Ivan Kirilitch has grown
very fat, and still plays the violin -" and so forth, and so forth.
So there you have the whole matter.
Judge-Yes, the matter is so unusual, so remarkable; some-
thing unexpected.
Superintendent - And why? Anton Anton'itch, why is this?
Why is the Inspector coming hither?
Chief [sighs]- Why? Evidently, it is fate. [Sighs. ] Up to
this time, God be praised, they have attended to other towns;
now our turn has come.
-
men.
>>>
―――――
Judge-I think, Anton Anton'itch, that there is some fine
political cause at the bottom of this. This means something:
Russia-yes-Russia wants to go to war, and the minister, you
see, has sent an official to find out whether there is any treason.
Chief- What's got hold of him? A sensible man, truly!
Treason in a provincial town! Is it a border town—is it, now?
Why, you could ride away from here for three years and not
reach any other kingdom.
The gov
Judge - No, I tell you. You don't-you don't-
ernment has subtle reasons; no matter if it is out of the way,
they don't care for that.
Chief - Whether they care or not, I have warned you, gentle-
See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own
department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you,
Artemiy Philip'itch! Without doubt, this traveling official will
## p. 6463 (#445) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6463
wish first of all to inspect your institutions—and therefore you
must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps.
should be clean, and the sick people should not look like black-
smiths, as they usually do in private.
We can put clean night-
Curator Well, that's a mere trifle.
caps on them.
Chief - And then, you ought to have written up over the head
of each bed, in Latin or some other language- that's your busi-
ness the name of each disease: when each patient was taken
sick, the day and hour. It is not well that your sick people
should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every
time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there
were fewer of them: it will be set down at once to bad super-
vision or to lack of skill on the doctor's part.
Curator - Oh! so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christian
Ivan'itch and I have already taken measures: the nearer to nature
the better, we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a
simple creature: if he dies, why then he dies; if he gets well,
why then he gets well. And then, it would have been difficult
for Christian Ivan'itch to make them understand him he doesn't
know one word of Russian.
―
-
――
-
Chief — I should also advise you, Ammos Feodor'itch, to turn
your attention to court affairs. In the ante-room, where the
clients usually assemble, your janitor has got a lot of geese and
goslings, which waddle about under foot. Of course it is praise-
worthy to be thrifty in domestic affairs, and why should not the
janitor be so too? only, you know, it is not proper in that
place. I meant to mention it to you before, but always forgot it.
Judge I'll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very
day. Will you come and dine with me?
Chief-And moreover, it is not well that all sorts of stuff
should be put to dry in the court-room, and that over the very
desk, with the documents, there should be a hunting-whip. I
know that you are fond of hunting, but there is a proper time
for everything, and you can hang it up there again when the
Inspector takes his departure. And then your assistant—he's a
man of experience, but there's a smell about him as though he
had just come from a distillery—and that's not as it should
be. I meant to speak to you about it long ago, but something, I
don't recall now precisely what, put it out of my mind. There
is a remedy, if he really was born with the odor, as he asserts:
## p. 6464 (#446) ###########################################
6464
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
you might advise him to eat onions or garlic or something. In
that case, Christian Ivan'itch could assist you with some medica-
ments.
Judge-No, it's impossible to drive it out: he says that his
mother injured him when he was a child, and an odor of whisky
has emanated from him ever since.
Chief - Yes, I just remarked on it. As for internal arrange-
ments, and what Andrei Ivan'itch in his letter calls "faults," I
can say nothing. Yes, and strange to say, there is no man who
has not his faults. God himself arranged it so, and it is useless
for the freethinkers to maintain the contrary.
Judge - What do you mean by faults, Anton Anton'itch?
There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that
I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? greyhound pups. That's
quite another thing.
Chief-Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the
same.
Judge-Well, no, Anton Anton'itch. But for example, if some
one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a
shawl-
-
Chief-Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as
bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church.
I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every
Sunday. But you-oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about
the creation of the world, one's hair rises straight up on his head.
Judge-It came of itself, of its own accord.
Chief - Well, in some cases it is worse to have brains than
to be entirely without them. Besides, I only just mentioned the
district court: but to tell the truth, it is only very rarely that
any one ever looks in there; 'tis such an enviable place that God
himself protects it. And as for you, Luka Luk'itch, as superin-
tendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the
teachers. They are educated people, to be sure, and were reared
at divers academies, but they have very peculiar ways which
go naturally with that learned profession. One of them, for in-
stance, the fat-faced one,-I don't recall his name, - cannot get
along without making grimaces when he takes his seat; - like this
[makes a grimace]: and then he begins to smooth his beard out
from under his neckerchief, with his hand. In short, if he makes
such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said: it must
be necessary; I am no judge of that. But just consider - if he
## p. 6465 (#447) ###########################################
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
6465
were to do that to a visitor it might be very unpleasant; the
Inspector or any one else might take it as personal. The Devil
knows what might come of it.
Superintendent -What am I to do with him? I have spoken
to him about it several times already. A few days ago, when
our chief went into the class-room, he made such a grimace as I
never beheld before. He made it out of good-will; but it is a
judgment on me, because freethinking is being inculcated in the
young people.
Chief- And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's
a wise man, that's plain, and has acquired a great mass of learn-
ing; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses
control of himself. I heard him once: well, so long as he was
talking about the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was all right;
but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe
to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by
heavens! He jumped from his seat and dashed his chair to the
floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no
doubt; but why smash the chairs? There will be a deficit in
the accounts, just as the result of that.
Superintendent - Yes, he is hasty! I have remarked on it to
him several times.
He says,
"What would you have? I would
sacrifice my life for science. "
Chief-Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of fate: a
learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that
would scare the very saints.
-
Superintendent — God forbid that he should inspect the educa-
tional institutions. Everybody meddles and tries to show every-
body else that he is a learned man.
Chief That would be nothing: that cursed incognito! All
of a sudden you hear-"Ah, here you are, my little dears! And
who," says he, "is the Judge here? "-"Lyapkin-Tyapkin. ”—
"And who is the Superintendent of the Hospital? "-"Zemlyan-
ika! " That's the worst of it!
ton'itch?
tle.
Enter Postmaster
Chief-Well, how do you feel, Ivan Kusmitch?
Postmaster - How do I feel? How do you feel, Anton An-
Chief-How do I feel?
