Pushkin and His Successors

The Russian drama of the first third of the century, though often quite competent for production on the stage, possesses small literary significance. Quite apart from the common run of plays stands the one comedy of Alexander Griboyedov 1829) (q.v.), Gore of Uma (Woe from Wit, 1825), one of the major classics of Russian literature. Historically it forms a con necting link between the classical realistic tradition that culmi nated in Fonvizin and Krylov, and the social realism of the later 19th century.

Russian prose-fiction remained for a long time without much vigour or originality. The only early novelist worth mentioning except Karamzin is Vasili Narezhny (178o-1825), a robust realist in the tradition of Le Sage and Smollett. From the end of the '20S the writing of fiction became more intense, though remaining largely imitative. Romances of Russian history in the manner of Scott by Michael Zagoskin (1792-1853) and Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792-1869) were particularly popular. The "Byronic" romanti cism and smartness of Alexander Bestuzhev (pseud. Marlinsky, 1797-1837) also had a great success. The more refined forms of German romanticism were cultivated by Prince Vladimir Odoevsky (1804-69) and by Alexis Weltmann (180o-69), a gifted disciple of Jean-Paul. Pushkin himself, after 1830, began to pay more at tention to prose than to poetry, elaborating a prose style that avoided all unnecessary ornament, and a narrative technique that discarded all that was not strictly relevant to the story. Lermon tov's one masterpiece, A Hero of our Times (1840), links the Russian psychological novel to the French analytical novel, while one of the stories included in it contains, in nuce, all the short story technique of Chekhov.

The years 1832-45 are swayed by the genius of Gogol (1809 52) (q.v.). Much of his best work is distinctly romantic, and in a certain sense Gogol even marks the mark of romanti cism in Russia. But he was also a realist by his extraordinary power of visual convincingness, and in the way he opened to literature large regions of the vulgar and the ugly that had been taboo. Psy chologically, he was not a social satirist—the grotesquely lifelike creations of his imagination were exteriorizations of his own inner fauna. But the state of the nascent Russian intelligentsia in the later '3os was such that it could only accept Gogol's work as a satirical criticism of contemporary Russia. His comedy The In

spector-General (Revizor, 1836) and his comic "epic" The Dead Souls (1842) became the main landmarks in the awakening of Russian society from the political torpor it had been plunged into after the suppression of the Decembrist rebellion (1825).

The Intellectual Revolution.

The great intellectual revolu tion that led to the formation of the "intelligentsia," as we now understand the term, began outside the political sphere in an awakened interest in general and philosophical ideas. The genera tion of 1825-40 was intoxicated with the metaphysics of Schelling and Hegel. At the same time, in spite of a savage censorship, journalism began to aspire to the leadership of opinion. The Mos cow Telegraph, the organ of advanced romanticism edited from 1825 to 1834 by Nicolas Polevoy (1796-1846), is particularly noteworthy in this connection. Towards the end of the '3os the intellectual fermentation began to take on a political and social colouring and to express itself in a general disapproval of existing conditions. By 1840 the intellectuals had formed themselves into two camps: the Slavophils who criticized contemporary Russia for abandoning those of their ideals they discovered in Old Russia and in the religious traditions of the people ; and the Westernizers whose faith was in rational progress on European lines. The most notable of the former were Alexis Khomyakov (1804-6o), a man of brilliant gifts, a devotional and religious poet of talent, and the greatest theologian ever produced by Russia ; and the brothers Aksakov, Constantine (1817-61) and Ivan (1823-86). The in fluence of the Westernizers was stronger. Their chief leaders were the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811-48) and Alexander Herzen (or Gertsen, 1812-70, see HERZEN). The former started his career as a romantic and aesthetic idealist. After 1840 he began to place social problems foremost and to demand a social signifi cance of all literary work. His critiques became enormously influential, and he may be considered as the spiritual father of Russian Radicalism. The activity of Herzen, who emigrated in 1847, was chiefly political. In literature he owes his high standing to such work as From the Other Shore, a series of dialogues and essays in which he gave expression to his disillusionment in the revolution of '48, and My Past and Thoughts which is a great autobiography.