Part 27 (1/2)
”In thy commandment, Lord, I read My neighbours' goods I must not covet, But ask me not to rise above it When tender hopes for licence plead: I do not wish to harm my fellow, I never grudge him house or folk: Nor will his cattle e'er provoke My envy--though in hordes they bellow: His wife or ox I never seek, Of a.s.ses I am un.o.bservant: But if his youthfullest maid-servant Is pretty! Lord, there I am weak.”
He was not given to brooding over disappointment, nor was there any self-centredness about him. Only once, on his twenty-eighth birthday, does he show himself obsessed with the problems of existence:
”Casual present, gift so aimless, Life, why art thou given to me?
As by secret judgment nameless, Why is death-doom pa.s.sed on thee?
Who with hostile power inspired Called me out of nothingness, My poor heart with pa.s.sion fired, Doubt upon my mind did press?
Aimless is my whole existence, Vague my mind, emotions thin.
With monotonous persistence Life out-tires me with its din.”
He was, _par excellence_, the singer of _this_ world, reflecting it with a photographic exactness. Gogol called it _reality turned into a pearl of creation_, which is about the best and most concise definition we could require.
As a result of this Byronic obsession Pushkin was sent to Odessa to join the staff of the Governor. But the atmosphere of rect.i.tude and cold officialdom bored him: trying his best was no good here: he was sent into the depths of the country to do easy and interesting reconnaissance work, to investigate the causes and results of the locust plague. The following is his official report:--
”The locust was flitting and flitting: And sitting And sitting sat, ravage committing, At last the place quitting.”
About this time he wrote to a friend a letter which was intercepted. It ran as follows:--
”I am reading the Bible. The Holy Ghost sometimes soothes me, but I prefer Goethe and Shakespeare. There is an Englishman here, a clever atheist, who overturns the theory of immortality--I am having lessons from him....”
The reading public got to know of it and devoured it ... officially it led to his banishment to the estate of his parents. His father bullied him so that he begged to be sent to a fortress. Jukvski intervened and his parents left him to the care of his nurse, and he had two years of quiet, learning more and more of the old folklore. He wrote six long fairy tales of the school of _Ruslan and Ludmla_. He wrote the long historical poem _Poltava_, the novel in verse, _Evgeni Onyegin_, the historical drama in blank verse, _Bors G.o.dunv_, the story in verse, _The Bronze Hors.e.m.e.n_, and dozens of shorter poems. He abandoned Byron for Shakespeare.
”Shakespeare,” he wrote about this time--”what a man! I am overwhelmed.
What a nonent.i.ty Byron is with his travesty of tragedy, as compared to Shakespeare.” We can trace this influence in _Bors G.o.dunv_.
Shakespeare helped him to develop his power of realism: even his wonderland becomes a matter of course--Russia.
_Evgeni Onyegin_ swept the country off its feet. Society suddenly saw the greatness of the simple beauty of Russia, the dignified, lovable Russian woman: in the hero he reflects his own education, tastes and manners: it is the first work of a consciously psychological a.n.a.lysis in Russian literature.
The typical man of society is bored with life because he does not know what real life is: he ”hastened to live and hurried to feel” on too narrow a scale. His first blow is the realisation of the fact that the thoughtful girl of seventeen, whose love he neglected early in life, rejects his pa.s.sion when she, married, is s.h.i.+ning and dignified in society life. Then only, being honestly told by her that she still loves him, but is going to remain true to her husband, he flies from the capital, tortured by his first deep heart pain. Here the story ends. At the beginning he kills a romantic poet, Lensky, in a duel, a man of whom he is genuinely fond, but to whose _fiancee_, Olga, who is simple, fresh, blue-eyed, with a round face like the foolish moon, he pays court out of sheer devilry. The elder sister, Tatiana, shy and dreamy, and yet clean-cut in character and iron-willed, is the girl who has given her heart to Onyegin and afterwards rejects him. She is as real as Diana Middleton or Sophia Western, as sensible as Portia, as resolute as Juliet. She is the type of all that is best in the Russian woman, taken straight from life, the crowning glory of Russian life. Mr Baring puts her confession of love on a level with Romeo and Juliet's leave-taking as one of the absolutely perfect things in the literature of the world.
It is, he says, a piece of poetry as pure as a crystal, as spontaneous as a blackbird's song. It is Pushkin's most characteristic work. It is certainly the best-known and most popular. It is all--like _Hamlet_--quotations! Pushkin himself speaks as having seen the unfettered march of the novel in a magic prism. The scenes are clear, the nail is. .h.i.t on the head every time, all the labour escapes notice.
It arrests the attention as a story, it is amusing; it delights the intelligence. It is simply a story of everyday life executed perfectly by a master spirit.
”'Onyegin, I was younger then, and better-looking, I suppose; and I loved you....
For me, Onyegin, all that wealth, That showy tinsel of Court life, All my successes in the world, My well-appointed house and b.a.l.l.s ...
For me, are nought!--I gladly would Give up these rags, this masquerade, And all this brilliancy and din, For a few books, a garden wild, Our weather-beaten house, so poor-- Those very places where I met With you, Onyegin, that first time; And for the churchyard of our village, Where now a cross and shady trees Stand on the grave of my poor nurse.
And happiness was possible then!
It was so near!'”
The girl beseeches him to leave her.
”'I love you'” (she goes on): ”'Why should I hide the truth from you?
But I am given to another, And true to him I shall remain.'”