Iván Ivánovich Kozlóv. (1779-1840.)

After having served for some time in the army, Kozlóv in 1798 entered the Civil Service, living in Moscow and later in St. Petersburg. In 1818 he was struck by paralysis, which deprived him of the use of his legs, and three years later he became totally blind. Though he had long been on friendly terms with Zhukóvski, he never thought of devoting himself to literature. But the calamity that had overtaken him compelled him to concentrate himself, and the result was the evolution of his poetical genius. He had learned French and Italian before, and, though blind, acquired the German and English languages so perfectly that he could recite by heart whole pages from the great writers, whom he also translated into Russian. His first poetical efforts were some verses in praise of Zhukóvski and Byron, but he gained his great reputation by his _The Black Monk_, written in 1824, which enjoyed the same popularity among the sentimental souls of the twenties that _Poor Líza_ (see p. 27) had had in the beginning of the century. This was soon followed by _Princess Natálya Borísovna Dolgorúki_ (see vol. i., p. 233) and a large number of minor poems that are distinguished for their elegiac and deep religious tone.

In W. D. Lewis’s _The Bakchesarian Fountain_, Philadelphia, 1841, is given his _Solitude_; T. B. Shaw translated his _Kíev_ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844; in C. T. Wilson’s _Russian Lyrics_ are given _The Village Orphan_, _The Wreck_, _The Dream of the Betrothed_, and _Chernetz (The Black Monk)_; in the Library of the World’s Best Literature is N. H. Dole’s translation of _The Vesper Bells_.

SOLITUDE

Upon a hill, which rears itself midst plains extending wide, Fair flourishes a lofty oak in beauty’s blooming pride; This lofty oak in solitude its branches wide expands, All lonesome on the cheerless height like sentinel it stands. Whom can it lend its friendly shade, should Sol with fervour glow? And who can shelter it from harm, should tempests rudely blow? No bushes green, entwining close, here deck the neighbouring ground, No tufted pines beside it grow, no osiers thrive around. Sad e’en to trees their cheerless fate in solitude if grown, And bitter, bitter is the lot for youth to live alone! Though gold and silver much is his, how vain the selfish pride! Though crowned with glory’s laurelled wreath, with whom that crown divide? When I with an acquaintance meet he scarce a bow affords, And beauties, half saluting me, but grant some transient words. On some I look myself with dread, whilst others from me fly, But sadder still the uncherished soul when Fate’s dark hour draws nigh; Oh! where my aching heart relieve when griefs assail me sore? My friend, who sleeps in the cold earth, comes to my aid no more! No relatives, alas! of mine in this strange clime appear, No wife imparts love’s fond caress, sweet smile, or pitying tear; No father feels joy’s thrilling throb, as he our transport sees; No gay and sportive little ones come clambering on my knees;-- Take back all honours, wealth and fame, the heart they cannot move, And give instead the smiles of friends, the tender look of love!

--From W. D. Lewis’s _The Bakchesarian Fountain_.

KÍEV

O Kíev! where religion ever seemeth To light existence in our native land; Where o’er Pechérski’s dome the bright cross gleameth, Like some fair star, that still in heaven doth stand; Where, like a golden sheet, around thee streameth Thy plain, and meads that far away expand; And by thy hoary well, with ceaseless motion, Old Dnieper’s foaming swell sweeps on to ocean.

How oft to thee in spirit have I panted, O holy city, country of my heart! How oft, in vision, have I gazed enchanted On thy fair towers,--a sainted thing thou art!-- By Lávra’s[4] walls or Dnieper’s wave, nor wanted A spell to draw me from this life apart; In thee my country I behold, victorious, Holy and beautiful, and great and glorious.

The moon her soft ray on Pechérski poureth, Its domes are shining in the river’s wave; The soul the spirit of the past adoreth, Where sleeps beneath thee many a holy grave: Vladímir’s shade above thee calmly soareth, Thy towers speak of the sainted and the brave; Afar I gaze, and all in dreamy splendour Breathes of the past,--a spell sublime and tender.

There fought the warriors in the field of glory, Strong in the faith, against their country’s foe; And many a royal flower yon palace hoary, In virgin loveliness, hath seen to blow. And Boyán sang to them the noble story, And secret rapture in their breast did glow; Hark! midnight sounds,--that brazen voice is dying,-- A day to meet the vanished day is flying.

Where are the valiant?--the resistless lances,-- The brands that were as lightning when they waved? Where are the beautiful, whose sunny glances Our fathers, with such potency, enslaved? Where is the bard, whose song no more entrances? Ah! that deep bell hath answered what I craved: And thou alone, by these grey walls, O river! Murmurest, Dnieper, still, and flow’st for ever.

--Transl. by T. B. Shaw, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844 (vol. lv).

[4] Name of certain monasteries.

FROM “THE BLACK MONK”

I.--THE MONASTERY

Beyond Kíev, where the broad Dnieper boils and booms between steep banks, near a grove, upon a high hill, stands the hermits’ abode. Around it is a crenelated wall, with four towers in the corners, and in the midst,--the temple of the Lord with gilded cupolas. A row of cells, a dark corridor, a chapel at the holy gates, with a miracle-working image, and nearby a spring of cool water, whose medicinal stream bubbles under the shade of a century linden tree.

The evening darkness is in the misty field; the twilight is dimming in the heavens; the song is not heard in the meadows; the flocks are not seen in the vales. The horn will not be blown in the forest,--no one will come; only at times the bell tinkles in the distance upon the highway; no fires are to be seen upon the fishermen’s boats on the Dnieper. The midnight moon has risen, and the bright stars are shining; the clearings, the woods, the waters are asleep. The fateful hour has struck upon the tower,--the hermitage is merged in sleep,--and all around is peace and quiet.

II.--THE CONFESSION OF THE BLACK MONK

“I left my deserted country. Alone, in despair, in tears, I wandered around with my orphaned soul in distant defiles and woods. Gloomy clefts and mountains heard my groan, my wail, my plaints with terror, for seven years. Sullen, melancholy, wild, I pined away, dreaming an old dream, and sobbed for what is not. The shades of night, the mountain torrent, the whistling of the storm and the howl of the wind secretly united with my murky thought, with my unquenchable yearning. And sorrow was a delight, a sacred relic of former days; it seemed to me that through my suffering I did not altogether part from it.

“Where the heart loves, where it suffers,--there is also our merciful God; He gives the cross, and He also sends us hope with the cross. In these seven hard, stormy years there has flashed for me a consoling light. Once, at evening tide, I sat gloomy near the river; the star-flaming vault of heaven, the quiet glimmer of the moon, the rustling of the leaves, the plashing of the waves silvered by the moon, involuntarily held my soul captive. Everything attracted me by its mysterious beauty to a world of bliss.

“My crushed spirit awoke: ‘Creator of all! My babe with my unforgettable mate dwell in Thy holy abode, and, perchance, I shall be with them, and they there for ever mine!’ Love understands miracles: my heart trembled hopefully in some mysterious expectation. I lifted my eyes to the skies, dared to implore them with tears,--and it seemed to me that for an answer was given me that calm ocean with its imperishable stars. Since then, my father, have I found consolation in my misery itself, and I have hoped by my heavy cross to earn my union with her. Though still, at times, I shed tears, yet hope assuages them, and quiet grief has taken place of bitter sorrow. Flaming with faith, I have forgotten my misfortune and the villain: she with her babe in heaven appeared to my heart in dreams of paradise. My soul rose to her, and my mind was full of this: I wished to be as pure as she, and I gladly bid life farewell. But I wanted to die in my native home. I began to pine away in mountains of other lands. I wanted to cast my last glance upon our woods and our dales, to see the country which was full of her, and our village house, and the garden, and the blue waves of the Dnieper, and the church upon the mound where in the shade of the birches sleeps their dust, and the glowing evening sky over their quiet grave.

“Ah, what happened to my soul when suddenly, in all its sacred beauty, before me lay the landscape of my native Kíev fields! As before they were green, the waves of the Dnieper boomed as formerly, the same forest lay dim in the distance, the same songs were sung in the fields, and everything was the same in my native land, but she alone was not there. Everywhere familiar valleys, brooks, mounds, and plains, in an enchanting quiet, appeared to me on all sides, and brought back my brighter years; but with a poisoned soul, a stranger in my own land, I greeted them with tears and disconsolate melancholy.

“I walked. The day was inclining to the evening, and suddenly a rustic temple of the Lord stood before my frightened eyes. Beside myself, I approached the grave where my son, my wife,--my whole life lay buried. I barely touched the ground with my feet, as if fearing to disturb their eternal slumber. I repressed a deep groan within my breast, that their rest be not broken. My saddened spirit dared not give vent to my impassioned agitation. It seemed to me that upon their grave I breathed a sacred air. A wondrous feeling came over me, and with an unearthly hope I softly bent my knees, and prayed, and wept, and loved.”

Konstantín Nikoláevich Bátyushkov. (1787-1855.)

Bátyushkov received his education in the boarding-schools of St. Petersburg, from which he took away a good knowledge of French, German, and Italian, and little else, especially since all his schooling ended with his sixteenth year. He was then ushered into the circle of literary men by a relative of his, M. N. Muravév (see vol. i. p. 395), who also interested him in the ancient classics, among whom Bátyushkov admired most and imitated Horace and Tibullus. In 1806 he was seized by the prevailing patriotic enthusiasm, after the disaster of Austerlitz, and joined the army. He was seriously wounded, but in 1813 he again took part in the campaign against Napoleon. During his stay in Germany he became intimately acquainted with the German literature, which he began to prefer to the French and Latin. He returned to Russia over England and Sweden. In 1818 he received a diplomatic post at Naples, which gave him an opportunity of making himself familiar with the country of his beloved author, Tasso. He soon returned home, where he was up to his death, for a period of thirty-three years, lost to Russian letters, having, like his mother before him, become hopelessly insane. No other poet had given such promise as Bátyushkov, and even Púshkin regarded him as his teacher. His fame rests mainly on his _Dying Tasso_ and _The Friend’s Shadow_, the Anacreontic character of the other poems and the absence of a Russian motive having otherwise almost obliterated his fame.

In Sir John Bowring’s _Specimens of the Russian Poets_, Part I., there is a translation of his _To My Penates_, and in Part II., _To F. F. Kokoshkin_, _The Farewell_, _The Friend’s Shadow_, _Love in a Boat_, _The Prisoner_, _To the Rhine_. What purports to be a translation of his _Dying Tasso_ is given in The Foreign Quarterly Review, 1832.

THE FRIEND’S SHADOW

From Albion’s misty isle across the waves I sped me: It looked as if interred beneath a leaden sea, And gathering round our bark the halcyon’s music led me, While all the crew rejoiced in their sweet melody. The dancing surge, the evening breezes falling, And through the sails and shrouds those breezes whistling thrill, And to the watch the active helmsman calling, The watch, who, midst the roar, sleeps tranquilly and still. All seemed to rock itself to gentle thought; Like an enchanted one, I, from the mast, looked forth, And through the night and through the mist I sought, I sought the star beloved of my domestic north. Then into memory melted every feeling,-- My soul had sanctified my home of joy and peace, And the sea raging, and the zephyrs gently stealing, Covered my eyelids o’er with self-forgetfulness. Then dreams with other dreams were blended, And lo!--there stood, was it a dream?--the form Of that dear friend who his career had ended Nobly, amidst the thundering battle storm. He stood upon the mist, and smiled,--his face, Fresh as the morn and bloodless, shining Like the young spring in gaiety and grace, Even as an angel from high heaven declining:-- “Comrade of better time! and is it thou? And is it thou?” I cried, “thou hero bright! Did I not in the fury of the fight Attend thee, and when thou hadst fallen below Make thy new grave,--and on a neighbouring tree Write with my sword thy feats of bravery, And followed thy cold ashes to their bed, And hallowed it with prayers, and with tears waterèd? Speak, unforgotten one, speak! Was it a deceit? Is all that ’s past a dream, a cheating dream? A dream that corpse, a dream that grave, that sheet Wrapt round thee,--were they not? did they but seem? Oh, but one word! Let that tongue’s melody Yet sweetly fall on my transported ear: O unforgotten one! Stretch out to me Thy old right hand of friendship, stretch it here!” I sprung towards him,--Oh! the mists had dimmed my eye,-- He vanished like a shade, a lock of airy smoke,-- Dispersed in the wide azure of the sky, And I, arousing from my dream, awoke. Beneath the wing of stillness all was sleeping; The very winds, the very waves at rest; And scarce a breath upon the sea was creeping; The pale moon swam along upon the white cloud’s breast. But I was troubled, peace had left my soul,-- I stretched my hands tow’rds him, whom I no more could see,-- I called on him, whom I could not control,-- On thee, beloved one! best of friends, on thee!

--From Sir John Bowring’s _Specimens of the Russian Poets_, Part