Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature by Pëtr Kropotkin & Pëtr Kropotkin

Author:Pëtr Kropotkin & Pëtr Kropotkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art, history
Published: 1915-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Precipice

At the time of the appearance of this novel “Oblómoffdom” became a current word to designate the state of Russia. All Russian life, all Russian history, bears traces of the malady — that laziness of mind and heart, that right to laziness proclaimed as a virtue, that conservatism and inertia, that contempt of feverish activity, which characterise Oblómoff and were so much cultivated in serfdom times, even amongst the best men in Russia — and even among the malcontents. “A sad result of serfdom” — it was said then. But, as we live further away from serfdom times, we begin to realise that Oblómoff is not dead amongst us: that serfdom is not the only thing which creates this type of men, but that the very conditions of wealthy life, the routine of civilised life, contribute to maintain it.

“A racial feature, distinctive of the Russian race,” others said; and they were right, too, to a great extent. The absence of a love for struggle; the “let me alone” attitude, the want of “aggressive” virtue; non-resistance and passive submission — these are to a great extent distinctive features of the Russian race. And this is probably why a Russian writer own work. As a result there is no wholeness, so to speak, in the main personages of the novel. The woman upon whom he has bestowed all his admiration, Vyéra, and whom he tries to represent as most sympathetic, is certainly interesting, but not sympathetic at all. One would say that Goncharóff’s mind was haunted by two women of two totally different types when he pictured his Vyéra — the one whom he tried — and failed — to picture in Sophie Byelovódova, and the other — the coming woman of the sixties, of whom he saw some features, and whom he admired, without fully understanding her. Vyéra’s cruelty towards her grandmother, and towards Ráisky, the hero, render her most unsympathetic, although you feel that the author quite adores her. As to the Nihilist, Vólokhoff, he is simply a caricature — taken perhaps from real life, — even seemingly from among the author’s personal acquaintances, — but obviously drawn with the desire of ventilating personal feelings of dislike. One feels a personal drama concealed behind the pages of the novel. Goncharóff’s first sketch of Vólokhoff was, as he wrote himself, some sort of Bohemian Radical of the forties who had retained in full the Don Juanesque features of the “Byronists” of the preceding generation. Gradually, however, Goncharóff, who had not yet finished his novel by the end of the fifties, transformed the figure into a Nihilist of the sixties — a revolutionist — and the result is that one has the sensation of the double origin of Vólokhoff, as one feels the double origin of Vyéra.

The only figure of the novel really true to life is the grandmother of Vyéra. This is an admirably painted figure of the simple, commonsense, independent woman of old Russia, while Martha, the sister of

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