An Outline of Russian Literature. Baring Maurice
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in Europe.
The rulers of Kiev were at this time related to the Kings of France, Hungary, Norway, and even England. The Russian MSS. of the eleventh century equal the best MSS. of Western Europe of the same period. The city of Kiev was a home of wealth, learning, and art. Byzantine artists went to Kiev, and Kiev sent Russian painters to the West. There seemed at this time to be no barrier between East and West. Nothing could be more promising than such a beginning; but the course of Russian history was not destined to run smooth. In the middle of the eleventh century, the foundations of a durable barrier between Russia and Western Europe were laid. This was brought about by the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. The schism arose out of the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins, a rivalry which ever since then has continued to exist between Rome and Byzantium. The Slavs, whom the matter did not concern, and who were naturally tolerant, were the victims of a racial hatred and a rivalry wholly alien to them. It may seem unnecessary to dwell upon what some may regard as an ancient and trivial ecclesiastical dispute. But, in its effects and in its results, this “Querelle de Moine,” as Leo X said when he heard of Luther’s action, was as momentous for the East as the Reformation was for the West. Sir Charles Eliot says the schism of the Churches ranks in importance with the foundation of Constantinople and the Coronation of Charlemagne as one of the turning points in the relations of West and East. He says that for the East it was of doleful import, since it prevented the two great divisions from combining against the common enemy, the Turk. It was of still more doleful import for Russia, for the schism erected a barrier, which soon became formidable, between it and the civilizing influences of Western Europe.
But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the existence of this growing barrier was not yet perceptible. The eleventh and twelfth centuries in Russia were an age of Sagas and “Byliny,” already clearly stamped with the democratic character and ideal that is at the root of all Russian literature, and which offer so sharp a contrast to Greek and Western ideals. In the Russian Sagas, the most popular hero is the peasant’s son, who is despised and rejected, but at the critical moment displays superhuman strength and saves his country from the enemy; and in return for his services is allowed to drink his fill for three years in a tavern.
But by far the most interesting remains of the literature of Kiev which have reached posterity are the Chronicle of Kiev, often called the Chronicle of Nestor, finished at the beginning of the twelfth century, and the Story of the Raid of Prince Igor. The Chronicle of Kiev, written in a cloister, rich in that epic detail and democratic quality that characterize the Sagas, is the basis of all later chronicles dealing with the early history of Russia. The Story of the Raid of Prince Igor, which also belongs to the twelfth century, a prose epic, is not only one of the most remarkable memorials of the ancient written language of Russia; but by virtue of its originality, its historical truth, its vividness, it holds a unique place in the literary history of Europe, and offers an interesting contrast to the Chanson de Roland.
The Story of the Raid of Igor tells of an expedition made in the year 1185 against the Polovtsy, a tribe of nomads, by Igor the son of Sviatoslav, Prince of Novgorod, together with other Princes. The story tells how the Princes set out and raid the enemy’s country; how, successful at first, they are attacked by overwhelming numbers and defeated; how Igor is taken prisoner; and how in the end he escapes and returns home. The story is written in rhythmical prose, with passages where the rhythm has a more strongly accentuated quality as of unrhymed verse. All the incidents recorded in the epic agree in every respect with the narrative of the same events which is to be found in the Chronicle of Kiev. It is only the manner of presenting them which is different. What gives the epic a unique interest is that the author must indubitably have belonged to the militia of Sviatoslav, Grand Duke of Kiev; and, if he was not an eye-witness of the events he describes with such wealth of detail, his knowledge was at any rate first-hand and intimate.
But the epic is as remarkable for the quality of its style as it is for the historical interest of its subject-matter. It plunges, after a short introduction, in medias res, and the narrative is concentrated on the dramatic moments which give rise to the expression of lyrical feeling, pathos and description—such as the battle, the defeat, the ominous dream of the Grand Duke, and the lament of the wife of Igor on the walls of Putivl—
“I will fly”—she says—
“Like the cuckoo down the Don;
I will wet my beaver sleeve
In the river Kayala;
I will wash the bleeding wounds of the Prince,
The wounds of his strong body.”
· · · · · ·
“O Wind, little wind,
Why, Sir,
Why do you blow so fiercely?
Why, on your light wings
Do you blow the arrows of the robbers against my husband’s warriors?
Is it not enough for you to blow high beneath the clouds,
To rock the ships on the blue sea?
Why, Sir, have you scattered my joy on the grassy plain?”
Throughout the poem, Nature plays an active part in the events. When Igor is defeated, the grasses bend with pity and the trees are bowed to the earth with grief. When Igor escapes, he talks with the river Don as he fords it, and when the bandits follow him, the woodpeckers tell them the way with their tapping. The poem, which contains much lamentation over the quarrels of the Princes and the injury ensuing from them to the Russian people, ends in the major key. Igor is restored to his native soil, he goes to Kiev to give thanks in the Church, and the people acclaim the old Princes and then the young Princes with song.
A transcript of the poem, made probably at the end of the fourteenth century, was first discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin, and first published in 1800, when it made the same kind of impression as the publication of the Songs of Ossian. It was not, however, open to Dr. Johnson’s objection—“Show me the originals”—for the fourteenth century transcript of the original then existed and was inspected and considered unmistakably genuine by Karamzin and others, but was unfortunately burnt in the fire of Moscow.[1] The poem has been translated into English, French and German, and has given rise to a whole literature of commentaries.
Up to the twelfth century, Russian life was concentrated in the splendid and prosperous centre of Kiev; but in the thirteenth century came a crushing blow which was destined to set back the clock of Russian culture for three hundred years, namely, the Tartar invasion. Kiev was destroyed in 1240. After this, the South was abandoned; Lithuania and Poland became entirely separated from the East; the Eastern principalities centred round Moscow; the Metropolitan of Kiev transferred his see to Moscow in 1328; and by the fourteenth century Moscow had taken the place of Kiev, and had become the kernel of Russian life and culture. Russia under the dominion of the Tartar yoke was intellectually stagnant. The Church alone retained its independence, and when Constantinople fell, Moscow declared itself to be the third and last Rome: but the independence of the Church, although it kept national feeling alive under the Tartar yoke, made for stagnation rather than progress, and the barrier between Russia and the culture of the West was now solid and visible.
From the fourteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russian literature, instead of being a panorama of various and equally splendid periods of production, such as the Elizabethan epoch, the Jacobean epoch, and the Georgian epoch, or, as in France, the Renaissance, the Grand Siècle, and the philosophic era of the eighteenth century, has nothing to show at all to the outward world; for during all this time the soil from which it was to grow was merely being prepared, and gradually, with difficulty and delay, gaining access to such influences as would make any growth possible. All that is important, as far as literature is concerned, in this period, are those events and factors which had the effect of making breaches in the wall which shut Russia off from the rest of Europe; in letting in that light which was necessary for any literary plants to grow, and in removing those obstacles which prevented Russia from enjoying her rightful