LOST IDEALS.1 ST. BRANDAN'S Isle in ocean lies Before the southern winds it flies, The sailor hails this phantom isle, And almost tastes the limpid springs He shades his eyes with tarry hand, And but the sea, the mounting sea, And many a salt has 'held the scene Ah! every soul of two-score year It hardeneth his smile. And when I see this dearth of joy In time-beat marineer, I laugh, "Ahoy! Look out, my boy! In easy hail, through calm and gale, 1 As lately as the time of Columbus, the marvelous phantom island of St. Brandan was located on the charts. They ride, those vistas of fair land, Yet but the salt with willing hand And ever, who work that work be done, Both on the land and sea, Shall see their early visions run Anew before them in the sun. So simple a thing yet smites the spring Of hope's rich alchemy. Charles H. Roberts. TOURGUENIEFF'S LETTERS. AN extremely interesting collection of the letters of Tourguenieff has recently been published in St. Petersburg. The letters have been collected by the Society for Assisting Impecunious Authors and Scholars, and edited by W. P. Gajeffsky, president of the society. The proceeds of the sale of the book are to form part of a perpetual memorial fund to Tourguenieff, of which the annual interest will be devoted to the purposes of the society. The letters extend over a period of more than forty years, from 1840 to Tourguenieff's death, August 22d, 1883, and form but a part of his correspondence, though they number four hundred and eighty-eight, and are written to fifty-five persons. The letters are contributed either by the persons to whom Tourguenieff wrote them, or by the heirs of such persons, and are printed from the manuscript. The collection has been translated into French and German, but has not yet appeared in English. The translations in the present article are from the Russian. It is characteristic of the country and the time that many starred breaks represent "passages which it has been found temporarily inexpedient to give to the public." The collection is of many-sided interest, the letters touching upon art, literature, and politics; ; many of them having a personal charVOL. VIII.-25. acter, and all bearing upon European as well as Russian interests. The tone of the letters is as varied as the subjects, according to the persons to whom they are written, and the matter under discussion. It is difficult to choose among them. Certainly, the following letters have as much interest for foreign as for Russian readers. The first is Tourguenieff's answer to a letter from Wengeroff, asking for some particulars for a biography of Tourguenieff. The others refer to Tourguenieff's greatest work, which at the time of publication was most diversely interpreted, and led to attacks upon the author from widely different quarters. The attacks to which Tourguenieff replied, and under which he most keenly suffered, were those of his literary friends, and of the Russian youth. The history of these attacks upon Tourguenieff, and of his suffering under them, is little known beyond the Russian borders. The book itself, "Fathers and Sons," his greatest work, is the most widely known of all his novels, and it is therefore the more interesting to observe how Tourguenieff himself regarded the book, and its hero Bazaroff, who was the author's favorite creation. The autobiographical scrap which follows gives a wonderfully graphic picture in the smallest compass: I "I received your letter this morning. shall answer your frank questions frankly. "My father died, not in 1836, but October 30th, 1834. I was then but sixteen years of age. The hatred of serfdom was awake in me even then, and this hatred was one reason among others why I, who had grown up in the midst of floggings and tyranny, never once soiled my hand by a blow. But the way to the Annals of a Huntsman1 was a long one. I was then simply a boy, almost a child. My father was a poor man. At his death he left only one hundred and thirty serfs, in such bad order that they realized nothing; and we were three brothers. My father's estate was consolidated with that of my mother, who was a self-willed and imperious woman. She alone supplied us with the means of subsistence, and often withheld everything from us. It never entered her mind or ours that this trifling estate, the paternal one, did not belong to her. I lived three years abroad, without ever receiving a kopeck from her, and it never occurred to me to demand my patrimony. Besides, this patrimony, minus my mother's widow's share, and the share of my two brothers, was very little more than nil. "When my mother died, in 1850, I freed the domestic servants at once, contributed to the success of the general liberation, renounced one-fifth of the price in cases of purchased freedom, and demanded nothing for all the land belonging to the family mansion on the principal estate, though it was worth a large sum of money. Perhaps another in my place might have done more, and have done it more quickly; but I promised to speak the truth, and I shall speak it, whatever it may be. There is nothing to boast of, but also nothing to be ashamed of, 3 "It is hardly worth while to tell you how greatly I have rejoiced over your mention of 'Fathers and Sons.' It is not a question that I have not missed my aim, that my laof gratified self-love, but of the assurance bor is not lost. This was the more important for me, because persons in whom I have great confidence advised me earnestly to burn my book, and between ourselves, within a very few days, Pissjemski has written me that the character of Bazaroff is a total failure. What is left me but rage or despair? It is difficult for the author to recognize at self, whether it is a true one, whether he has once how far his thought has embodied itmastered it. The author, in the midst of his own work, is as one in the forest. That you have doubtless experienced more than once, so I thank you the more. You have grasped so appreciatively and delicately what I wanted to express in Bazaroff, that I could only throw up my arms in surprise and pleasure. It is as if you had penetrated 2 Parascha (Pauline.) 3 Pissjemski, one of the leading Russian novelists. into my soul, and felt with me everything and say, 'Well done, we give you a mark.' which I did not think it necessary to write This comparison with a student who has out. God grant that it is not alone the fine passed his examination well, is much more perception of the artist that speaks in your fitting than yours with a triumphant conquerwords, but the simple understanding of the or. And comparing yourself with a dwarf is, reader—that is, God grant that all may pen- permit me to say, nonsense. You are a coletrate at least a part of what you have seen league, an artist who has held out his hand into. Now I am at peace as to the fate of to a colleague in brotherly fashion. And I my novel. I have accomplished what I have answer your embrace with my own, and with planned, and have nothing to repent. warmest greetings, and thankfulness for your greetings. You have truly brought me peace. Not in vain said Schiller, "There is a fresh proof how fully you have mastered this character. In the meeting of Arkadie with Bazaroff, in the place where you noticed that something is wanting, it is Bazaroff describing the duel, and jeering at the cavaliers, and Arkadie listening with secret horror. This I left out, and I am sorry for it now. I cut out and worked over much under the influence of adverse criticism, and the heaviness which you mention may per haps be attributable to the fact. "I have a good letter from Maykoff,' and shall answer it. I shall be greatly abused, but that must pass over like a summer rain. "PARIS, March 18th, 1862. "Dear Appalor Nikolaïevitch : "I say to you as the peasants say, 'God give you health for your good letter!' You have comforted me greatly. Concerning none of my works have I cherished such doubts as about this one. The judgments and criticisms of persons whom I am used to trusting were most unfavorable. But for Katkoff's insistent demands, 'Fathers and Sons' would never have appeared. Now, I am forced to say to myself, 'It is impossible that I have written utter nonesense,' when such men as you and Dostajewski pat my head "PARIS, April 14th, 1862. "I hasten to answer your letter, for which I am very thankful to you, dear Aslutschewski. The criticism of the young is of no slight value. In any case, I wish very much that no misapprehension as to my intentions should prevail. I answer point by point. "1. The first point reminds me of the complaints raised against Gogol and others : 'Why are no good people created beside the bad ones?' Now, Bazaroff outweighs all the other characters of the novel. The advantages bestowed upon him are no accidental ones. I meant to make him a tragic figure -no little tendernesses would answer here. He is upright, truthful, and democratic, to the tips of his toes-and they can not find a single good side in him! He recommends Büchner's Force and Matter as a popular, that is superficial, book. The duel with Faul Petrovitch Kirsanoff is there for an object lesson in the emptiness of the elegant, aristocratic cavalier class. And how could Bazaroff have refused the challenge? Paul Petrovitch would simply have thrashed him. To my mind, Bazaroff is always setting Paul Petrovitch right, and not vice versa; and when he is called 'Nihilist,' let the reader understand 'Revolutionist.' "2. What is said of Arkadie and of the rehabilitation of the Fathers only shows-forgive me for saying it—that I have not been understood. My whole novel is directed against the claim of the nobility as an advanced class. Look at the individual characters-Nicholas Petrovitch, Paul Petrovitch, Arkadie-weakness, withering up, or narrowness. The artist feeling forced me to take exactly the good representatives of the noblemen, to illustrate more clearly my propositions. "If the cream is bad, what must the milk be?" To draw officials, generals, robbers, etc., would have been blunt-le pont aux anes--and false. All the real irreconcilables that I have known, without exception, Bjelinski, Bakunin, Herzen, Dobroluboff, Apjeschnjeff and the others, all came of comparatively good and honorable parents, and that is very significant. It robs the active, the irreconcilable, of every shadow of personal bitterness, personal irritation. They go their own way purely because they are more responsive to the claims of the people, the people's life. Little Count S――s is wrong in asserting that men like Nikolai Petrovitch and Paul Petrovitch are our grandfathers. Nikolai Petrovitch is-myself, Ogarjeff, and a thousand others. Paul Petrowitch is-Atolipin, Tessakoff, Bosset, all contemporaries of ours. They are the best of the nobility, and I chose them precisely for that reason, to prove their insolvency. Bribe-takers on one side and an ideal youth on the other-that is a picture which others may paint! I wanted something larger. Bazaroff said in one place in the manuscript (I left it out because of the Government censor) to Arkadie-the same Arkadie in whom your Heidelberg colleagues perceive a 'successfully created type'-'Your father is A critic active about 1840. 2 Bakunin, father of the Anarchist movement. 3 Herzen, a superb publicistic power, one of the first who published periodicals beyond the Russian border (in London) opposing serfdom and the Imperial sys tem. 4 Dobroluboff, a keen and eminent critic of the period 1850-1860. A freedom-loving writer of poems for the people; a fellow-worker of Herzen on the periodicals published abroad and forbidden in Russia. an honorable fellow; but if he were a bribetaker through and through, you would not be any further from your aristocratic submission with occasional ebullitions.' "3. Good heavens! The Kukschina, the caricature, according to you, is the most successful attempt. For such an opinion there is no answer. The Odinzowa was as little in love with Arkadie as with Bazaroff. How can you help seeing that? She, too, is a representative of our do-nothing, enthusiastic, inquisitive, yet cold gentlewomenepicureans within the aristocracy. The Countess Saljas comprehended this person with perfect clearness. The Odinzowa would first stroke the wolf's (Bazaroff's) hair to keep him from biting, then stroke the lad's locks, and proceed as usual to repose in satin, after a luxurious bath. "Bazaroff's death, which Count S―s calls a heroic one and criticises for that reason, must, in my opinion, form the last stroke upon the tragic figure. And your young people regard this, too, as something accidental! "In closing, I assert that if in spite of all Bazaroff's want of polish, heartlessness, unmerciful dryness, the reader does not grow fond of him, I am to blame and, have failed to carry out my purpose. But turn sweet (to use one of his own expressions)! that I would not, although by so doing I should probably have had the young people on my side. I would not buy up popularity by that sort of compromise. It is better to lose the battle (and I believe I have lost it), than to win it by a trick. There hovered before me a great, impetuous, gloomy figure, half sprung from the earth, strong, scornful, upright, yet doomed to destruction because still standing in the vestibule of the future. There hovered before me some strange complement of Pugatschjeff, and my young contemporaries, shaking their heads say, 'Ah! Brother, thou hast placed thyself in a bad light and even insulted us. Arkadie has turned out better under thy hands. A pity that thou hast not 6 Pugatschjeff, a historical person, who played an important part in the conquest of Siberia. He was regarded in the earliest days of the Russian revolutionary movement as the first type of a revolutionist from among the people. |