452 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1877. 



poet feels himself "out of his element," as a 

 resuscitated alchemist or astrologer might feel 

 at a meeting of the Royal Society. There re- 

 mains, however, one poet of the former gener- 

 ation, Nekrassof, and he is still listened to 

 with respect and admiration, because he has 

 contrived, while retaining the metrical form, 

 to imbibe the spirit and adopt the tone of the 

 new epoch. For thirty years he has depicted 

 the dark sides of Russian life, and given a voice 

 to the sorrows of the people, but he has never 

 been maudlin or lachrymose. In all his writ- 

 ings there is a ring of energetic protest, which 

 has sometimes brought him into contact with 

 the press censure. 



Of the numerous works of fiction in the 

 higher sense, the only ones likely to have more 

 than an ephemeral reputation are " Anna Ka- 

 r&una," by Count Tolstoy, and "Nov" ("Vir- 

 gin Soil "), by Turgeneff. It is now completed, 

 and will certainly be a lasting monument for 

 the author's reputation. It displays a wonder- 

 ful power of depicting human characters and 

 analyzing complex human motives. As a work 

 of art it is generally considered inferior to the 

 author's earlier efforts ; but it is seldom judged 

 from the purely aesthetic point of view. To 

 understand the reason of this, the reader must 

 know something of a curious episode of Rus- 

 sian literary history, which cannot be more 

 than briefly referred to here. Twenty years 

 ago Turgen3ff was one of the idols of the 

 young genaration. He had written his "Me- 

 moirs of a Sportsman," in which he had shown 

 warm sympathy with the oppressed serfs, and 

 he had been subjected to administrative annoy- 

 ance in consequence of his Liberal opinions. 

 During the first years of the present reign 

 (1856-'69) he wrote several works which were 

 thoroughly in harmony with the prevailing spir- 

 it, and his popularity consequently increased. 

 But in 1861 he published his famous "Fathers 

 and Children " (translated into English some 

 years ago by Mr. Schuyler), and was at once 

 condemned by the young generation as a man 

 behind the age. In vain he declared that his 

 aims and intentions had been misunderstood 

 and misinterpreted. Young Russia continued 

 to hold that he was an antiquated, aristocratic, 

 dilettante Liberal of the years 1840-'50, inca- 

 pable of understanding the new, serious, prac- 

 tical, genuinely democratic Liberalism. It was 

 apparently in order to disprove this accusation 

 that he wrote " Virgin Soil," in which he has 

 represented a little group of revolutionary Lib- 

 erals at work. That the picture is powerfully 

 drawn there can be no doubt. But is it true 

 to nature ? If it is true, why has the author 

 not explained the causes of the phenomena 

 which he describes? These are the questions 

 which have been discussed far more than the 

 question of literary merifc~~ 



Turning from fiction to fact, we meet with 

 several important historical works. First comes 

 Solovieff's yearly volume, which appears as 

 regularly as the almanacs. During the last 



twenty-six years he has laboriously and con- 

 scientiously traced the geographical, political, 

 and intellectual growth of the nation, and now, 

 in his twenty-seventh volume, he relates the 

 history of the years 1766-'68. More likely to 

 attract attention at the present moment is the 

 " History of the Crimean War," by Bogdano- 

 witch, who has had access to many valuable 

 sources unknown to his predecessors. Of 

 works on the history of literature two deserve 

 mention: Dashkevitch on the legend of the 

 Holy Grail, and Vesselovski's investigations 

 in the poetry of the Middle Ages. Messrs. 

 Py'pin and Spassovitch are preparing a new 

 and enlarged edition of their " History cf 

 Slavonic Literature," a work of great merit. 



As usual, we have this year several books 

 on land tenure, a subject which has especial 

 interest for Russians. The emancipation law 

 of 1861 gave to the village communes the 

 perpetual usufruct of the land which they 

 possessed, and thereby transformed the serfs 

 into communal landholders. The preservation 

 of the communal tenure is a curious experi- 

 ment, on the success of which depends, to a 

 great extent, the future prosperity of the 

 country. 



Those who prefer science without any theo- 

 logical alloy have their wants plentifully sup- 

 plied by native savants and by translations 

 from the works of foreign authors. The names 

 of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, and Herbert 

 Spencer, are as well known in St. Petersburg 

 as in London, and some of the native investi- 

 gators are making for themselves a European 

 reputation. 



The magazines have long played an impor- 

 tant part in Russian literature, and continue 

 to flourish as before. The most serious and 

 weighty is the Vestnik Evropy (European 

 Messenger), representing what in Russia is con- 

 sidered moderate Liberalism. The Otetchest- 

 venniya Zapiski (Memoirs of the Fatherland) 

 is of a more "advanced" hue, but often re- 

 frains from discussing important political and 

 social questions in consequence of the regula- 

 tions, or rather the unregulated action, of the 

 press censure. Dyelo takes as its specialty 

 sociology and natural science in the popular 

 form. In opposition to these the Russki Vest- 

 nik (Russian Messenger), published by Mr. 

 Katkoff, in Moscow, is regarded as the organ 

 of the Conservative or Retrograde party. To 

 these must be added the Sbornik Gosudarst- 

 tennikh Znanii (Collected Essays in Political 

 Science), published at irregular intervals by 

 Mr. Bezobrazof. and containing most valuable 

 papers intended for the more serious part of 

 the reading public. 



SPAIN. The intellectual life of Spain during 

 the present year is not unlike that of the pre- 

 ceding ones. The books which have appeared, 

 with some very few exceptions, are not first- 

 rate. The lyrical works of the present year 

 are only of an average merit, while the dra- 

 matic works are decidedly inferior ; and the 



