spent the next year in his native place. After that he was taken to Moscow by I. P. Turgénev, a friend of Nóvikov (see vol. i., pp. 32 and 327), and was brought by him under the educational influences of the Masonic Society, which, however, he never joined himself. He devoted himself to the study of the German language, from which he translated much, and acquainted himself with English literature. In 1789 he travelled extensively through Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, meeting wherever possible the famous men of letters. Upon his return he edited, among other periodicals, the _Moscow Journal_, in which had appeared his _Letters of a Russian Traveller_. These differ immensely in tone and literary execution from the similar compositions by Fon-Vízin (see vol. i., p. 355 _et seq._), and indicate the great stride made in the intellectual advancement of Russia in the short period of one decade. They created a sensation, not only on account of the pleasing and novel manner in which he treated serious subjects, but in a greater measure on account of the strong element of sentimental optimism that pervaded them. His sentimentalism is even more pronounced in his poems, and in his novels _Poor Líza_, _Natálya, the Boyár’s Daughter_, and _Burgomistress Márfa_.
In 1803 Karamzín was appointed historiographer, and he began to busy himself with Russian antiquity. After twelve years of labour appeared the first eight volumes of his _History of the Russian Empire_, in which he continued the sentimental idealisation of the Russian past. Though extolled by his contemporaries, and even later, as the first real history of Russia, it differs from those of his predecessors, the Russians Shcherbátov (see vol. i., p. 287) and Tatíshchev (_ib._, p. 218), and the German historians in Russia, not by any scientific method, but by its literary exposition, which served as a model for a generation of historical novelists. Karamzín’s greatest desert consists in having purified the Russian language from the dross of Church-Slavic words and constructions, by borrowing freely from the store of the spoken language, and by following the simpler constructions and the shorter sentences of the French and the English languages. This innovation involved him in a long controversy with the adherents of the old style, of which Admiral Shishkóv was the head, but he came out victorious, and for ever established the Russian literary norm.
There are several translations, or rather paraphrases, of Karamzín’s stories, and one of his Travels, in English: _Russian Tales_, ... translated into English by J. B. Elrington, London, 1803; _Julia_, translated from the Russ into French by M. du Boullier, and from the French into English by Ann P. H.[awkins], St. Petersburg, 1803; _Tales from the Russian of Nicolai Karamsin_ [translated by A. A. Feldborg], London, 1804; _Travels from Moscow, through Prussia, Germany, Switzerland, France, and England_ ... translated from the German [by A. A. Feldborg], 3 vols., London, 1803. A few of his poems are given in Sir John Bowring’s _Specimens of the Russian Poets_, Part I.: _The Song of Bornholm_, _The Churchyard_, _Autumn_, _Lilea_, _To Nicander_; and in Part II.: _Raïssa_, _The Haven_, _Song of the Good Tzar_, _To ----_, _To the Nightingale_. An epigram is translated by V. E. Marsden in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 9, and there is also a version of _The Churchyard_ by W. H. Dole (publication not ascertainable).
LETTERS OF A RUSSIAN TRAVELLER
TVER, May 18, 1789.
I have departed from you, my dear ones, I have departed! My heart is attached to you with all its tenderest feelings; and here I am getting farther and farther away from you!
O heart, heart! Who knows what you want? For how many years travel has been the fondest dream of my imagination! Did I not in rapture say to myself: “At last you will start”? Did I not awaken joyfully in the morning, did I not fall asleep with pleasure, thinking: “You are going to travel”? How long I could think of nothing else, busy myself with nothing else except the journey! And did I not count the days and hours? But when the desired hour arrived, I grew sorrowful, for I came to the first vivid realisation that I was about to part from the dearest people in the world, and from all that, so to say, entered into the composition of my moral existence.
Whatever I looked at, whether at the table upon which I had for years committed my unripe thoughts and feelings to paper; at the window under which I used to sit dolefully in my fits of melancholy, and where the rising sun found me so often; at the Gothic house, the favourite object of my eyes in the nocturnal hours,--in short, everything that came within my vision was for me a precious monument of the bygone years of my life, rich not in deeds, but in thoughts and feelings. I bade farewell to inanimate things as to friends; and while I was overcome and dispirited, my servants came, and began to weep and entreat me not to forget them and to take them back upon my return. Tears are contagious, my dear ones, especially in such circumstances.
But you are the dearest to me, and I had to part from you. My heart was so full that I forgot to speak. But why should I tell you that? The moment when we bade each other good-bye was such that a thousand agreeable minutes of the future will scarcely repay me for it.
Dear Petróv accompanied me to the toll-gate. There we embraced each other, and for the first time I observed his tears; there I seated myself in the kibítka,[1] glanced at Moscow, where I left behind so much that was dear to me, and said: “Good-bye!” The bells jingled, the horses galloped away,--and your friend was orphaned in the world, and his soul was orphaned!
The whole past is a dream and a shadow! Oh! where are the hours when my heart was so at ease among you, my dear ones? If the future were suddenly revealed to the most fortunate man, his heart would congeal with terror, and his tongue would grow dumb the very moment in which he deemed himself the happiest of mortals.
Upon my whole journey not one cheering thought entered my mind. At the last station in Tver, my melancholy had so increased that, standing, in the village tavern, before the caricatures of the French Queen and the Roman Emperor, I felt, as Shakspere says, “my blood weeping from my heart.” All that I had left behind appeared to me in such a touching aspect. But enough, enough! I am again growing very sad. Good-bye! May God console you! Remember your friend, but without any grievous feeling!
[1] Native vehicle.
ON THE FRENCH TRAGEDY
In the so-called _French Theatre_ they play tragedies, dramas, and large comedies. I have not changed my opinion of the French Melpomene. She is noble, majestic, beautiful, but she never will touch and stir my heart as does the Muse of Shakspere and of a few (’t is true, a very few) Germans. The French poets have a delicate, refined taste, and may serve as models in the art of writing. Only in the matter of invention, warmth, and deep sentiment of Nature,--forgive me, sacred shades of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire!--they must concede the supremacy to the English and the Germans. Their tragedies are filled with artistic pictures in which the colours and shades are skilfully matched; but I generally admire them with a cold heart. There is everywhere a mixture of the natural with the romantic; everywhere “mes feux,” “ma foi”; everywhere Greeks and Romans _à la française_, who are dissolved in amatory raptures, who sometimes philosophise, express one thought in a variety of choice words, and, losing themselves in a maze of eloquence, forget to act. The public demands here of the author beautiful verses, “des vers à retenir”; these make a play famous, and, consequently, the versifiers use all their efforts to multiply their number, and are more concerned about them than about the importance of the plot and the new, extraordinary, yet natural situations, forgetting that character is revealed in these unusual occurrences and that the very words obtain their strength from them.
To be short, the creations of the French Melpomene are glorious, and will always be glorious, by the beauty of their diction and brilliant verses; but if a tragedy is deeply to stir our hearts or to terrify our souls, Voltaire’s countrymen have, probably, no more than two real tragedies, and D’Alembert very justly remarked that all their dramas have been composed for reading rather than for the theatre.
ON SHAKSPERE
In dramatic poetry the English have nothing remarkable, except the works of one author, but that author is Shakspere, and the English are rich!
It is easy to make light of him, not only with the mind of a Voltaire, but also with the most ordinary mind. I do not wish even to dispute with him who does not feel his great beauties. The amusing critics of Shakspere resemble those naughty urchins who in the street surround a strangely dressed man and cry out: “What a funny fellow! What a strange fellow!”
Every author is marked with the stamp of his age. Shakspere wished to please his contemporaries, knew their taste, and satisfied it. What seemed to be witty then is now wearisome and repulsive; this is the result of the evolution of the mind and taste, with which even the greatest genius cannot count. But every real talent creates for eternity, though paying the tribute to his age: the contemporary beauties disappear, and the common ones that are based on the human heart and on the nature of things preserve their strength, in Shakspere as in Homer. The grandeur and truthfulness of the characters, the attractiveness of the plot, the revelation of the human heart, and the great thoughts that are scattered in the dramas of the British genius will always keep their magic charm for people who are endowed with sentiment. I know no other poet who has such an all-embracing, fertile, inexhaustible imagination,--and you will find all kinds of poetry in Shakspere’s works. He is the favourite son of the goddess Fancy who surrendered to him her magic wand, and disporting in the luxuriant gardens of the imagination he creates miracles at each step.
LONDON, September, 1790
There was a time, when I had hardly seen any Englishmen, when I went into ecstasy over them, and imagined England to be of all countries the most agreeable to my heart. With what delight, being a boarding pupil at Professor S’s, I used to read during the American war the reports of the victorious British admirals! Rodney, Howe, did not leave my tongue; I celebrated their victories and invited my young schoolmates to my room. It seemed to me that to be an Englishman was to be brave, also magnanimous, sentimental, and true. If I am not mistaken, novels were the chief foundation for this opinion. Now I see the English at close range, and I do them justice and praise them, but my praise is as cold as they themselves are.
Above all, I should not like to pass my life in England on account of its damp, gloomy, sombre climate. I know that one may be happy even in Siberia when the heart is satisfied and joyful, but a cheerful climate makes us more cheerful, and here one feels, in a fit of pining and melancholy, more than elsewhere like committing suicide. The groves, parks, fields, gardens,--all that is beautiful in England; but it is all covered with fogs, darkness, and coal smoke. The sun rarely peeps through, and then only for a short time; but without it life upon earth is not a pleasure. “Give my regards to the sun,” someone wrote from here to his friend in Naples; “I have not seen him for a long time.” The English winter is not so cold as ours; but we have at least beautiful days in winter, which are uncommon here even in summer. How, then, can an Englishman keep himself from looking like September?
In the second place, their cold natures do not please me in the least. “It is a snow-covered volcano,” a French emigrant said of them smilingly to me. But I stand, watch, see no flame, and meanwhile freeze. My Russian heart loves to bubble in a sincere, lively conversation, loves the play of the eyes, the rapid changes of the face, the expressive motion of the hands. The Englishman is reticent, indifferent, and speaks as he reads, without ever expressing those sudden mental convulsions that electrify our whole physical system. They say he is profounder than others. Is it not rather that he _seems_ profounder? Is it not because his thick blood moves more slowly in him, and gives him the aspect of being deep in thoughts, though he often has none? The example of a Bacon, Newton, Locke, Hobbes, proves nothing. Geniuses are born in all lands; the universe is their country, and, then, can it be said in justice that, for example, Locke is deeper than Descartes and Leibnitz?
THE CHURCHYARD
FIRST VOICE
How frightful the grave! How deserted and drear! With the howls of the storm-wind, the creaks of the bier, And the white bones all clattering together!
SECOND VOICE
How peaceful the grave! Its quiet how deep! Its zephyrs breathe calmly, and soft is its sleep, And flowerets perfume it with ether.
FIRST VOICE
There riots the blood-crested worm on the dead, And the yellow skull serves the foul toad for a bed, And snakes in its nettle-weeds hiss.
SECOND VOICE
How lovely, how lone the repose of the tomb! No tempests are there, but the nightingales come And sing their sweet chorus of bliss.
FIRST VOICE
The ravens of night flap their wings o’er the grave: ’T is the vulture’s abode; ’t is the wolf’s dreary cave, Where they tear up the earth with their fangs.
SECOND VOICE
There the coney at evening disports with his love, Or rests on the sod, while the turtles above Repose on the bough that o’erhangs.
FIRST VOICE
There darkness and dampness with poisonous breath And loathsome decay fill the dwelling of death, The trees are all barren and bare.
SECOND VOICE
Oh, soft are the breezes that play round the tomb, And sweet with the violet’s wafted perfume, With lilies and jessamine fair!
FIRST VOICE
The pilgrim who reaches this valley of tears Would fain hurry by, and with trembling and fears He is launched on the wreck-covered river.
SECOND VOICE
The traveller outworn with life’s pilgrimage dreary, Lays down his rude staff, like one that is weary, And sweetly reposes for ever.
--From Sir John Bowring’s _Specimens of the Russian Poets_, Part