Greek.
Realism fared better in Russia than romanticism, a fact which many nineteenth-century and especially Soviet critics never ceased to point out. They felt, furthermore, that with realism Russian literature finally achieved true independence and originality and established a firm foundation for lasting greatness. A difficult concept to use, the term realism has been applied to a variety of literary developments in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a sense, the writer of fables, Ivan Krylov, was its best practitioner. Krylov, who lived from 1768 to 1844, but began to write fables only in his late thirties after concentrating unsuccessfully on comedy, tragedy, and satire, achieved something like perfection in his new genre, rivaling such world masters of the fable as Aesop and La Fontaine. Krylov's approximately two hundred fables, which became best sellers as they appeared during the author's lifetime and have remained best sellers ever since, win the reader by the richness and raciness of their popular language, the vividness, precision, and impeccable wording of their succinct narrative, and their author's power of human observation and comment. While animals often act as protagonists, their foibles and predicaments serve as apt illustrations both of Krylov's Russia and of the human condition in general.
Alexander Griboedov's allegiance to realism seems less convincing than Krylov's. That brilliant writer, whose life began in 1795 and ended violently in 1829 when a Persian mob killed him in the Russian legation in Teheran, achieved immortality through one work only: the comedy Gore ot uma, translated into English as Woe from Wit or as The Misfortune of Being Clever. This masterpiece was finished in 1824, but.
because of its strong criticism of Russian high society, was put on the stage only in 1831 and then with numerous cuts. Gore ot uma is neoclassical in form and contains very little action, but it overflows with wit. It consists almost entirely of sparkling, grotesque, or caustic statements and observations by its many characters, from a saucy maid to the embittered hero Chatsky - all set in the milieu of Muscovite high society. Its sparkle is such that Griboedov's play possesses an eternal freshness and effervescence, while many of its characters' observations - like many lines from Krylov's fables - have become part of the everyday Russian language. Nor, of course, does a comic form exclude serious content. Gore ot uma has been praised as the outstanding critique of the leading circles of Russian society in the reign of Alexander I, as a perspicacious early treatment of the subject of the conflict of generations - a theme developed later by Turgenev and other Russian writers - and as providing in its main character, Chatsky, a prototype of the typical 'superfluous' hero of Russian literature, at odds with his environment.
Like Griboedov, Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian writer of the age, was born near the end of the eighteenth century and became famous in the last years of Alexander I's reign. Again like Griboedov, Pushkin had but a short life to live before meeting violent death. He was born in 1799 and was killed in a duel in 1837. Between 1820, which marked the completion of his first major poem, the whimsical and gently ironic Ruslan and Liudmila, and his death, Pushkin established himself permanently as, everything considered, the greatest Russian poet and one of the greatest Russian prose writers, as a master of the lyric, the epic, and the dramatic forms, and even as a literary critic, publicist, and something of a historian and ethnographer. Pushkin's early works, such as The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, magnificent in form, reflected a certain interest in the unusual and the exotic that was characteristic of the age. However, as early as Eugene Onegin, written in 1822-31, Pushkin turned to a penetrating and remarkably realistic treatment of Russian educated society and its problems. Onegin became one of the most effective and compelling figures in modern Russian literature, while both he and the heroine of the poem, Tatiana Larina, as well as their simple story, were to appear and reappear in different variations and guises in the works of Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, and many other writers. While Eugene Onegin was written in most elegant verse, Pushkin also contributed greatly to the development of Russian prose, especially by such tales as the celebrated A Captain's Daughter. In his prose even more than in his poetry Pushkin has been considered a founder of realism in Russia and thus an originator of the main current of modern Russian literature. Pushkin's deeply sensitive and versatile genius ranged from unsurpassed personal lyrics to historical themes - for example, in the tragedy
Boris Godunov and in the long poem, Poltava, glorifying his recurrent hero, Peter the Great - and from realistic evocations of the Russia of his day to marvelous fairy tales in verse. He was busily engaged in publishing a leading periodical, The Contemporary, and in historical studies when he was killed.
Pushkin's genius has often been described as 'classical.' Its outstanding characteristic consisted in an astounding sense of form, harmony, and measure, which resulted in perfect works of art. The writer's fundamental outlook reflected something of the same classical balance: it was humane, sane, and essentially affirmative and optimistic. Not that it excluded tragedy. A long poem, The Bronze Horseman, perhaps best expressed Pushkin's recognition of tragedy in the world. It depicted a disastrous conflict between an average little man, Eugene, and the bronze statue of the great founder of St. Petersburg, who built his new capital on virtually impassable terrain, where one of the recurrent floods killed Eugene's beloved: a conflict between an individual and the state, human desire and necessity, man and his fate. Yet - although a minority of specialists, including such important critics as Briusov and Lednicki, reject this reading of the poem - The Bronze Horseman, too, affirms Peter the Great's work, modern Russia, and life itself.
Pushkin's genius appeared in Russia at the right time. A century of labor since Peter the Great's reforms had fashioned a supple modern language, developed literary forms, and established Russia as a full participant in the intellectual life of Europe. Pushkin, who knew French almost as well as Russian, profited greatly by the riches of Western literature - from Shakespeare to Pushkin's contemporaries - as well as by Russian popular speech and folklore. Yet, while the stage had been set for Pushkin, it was not cluttered. The great writer could thus be the first to realize the potential of modern Russian verse as well as modern Russian prose, of lyric poetry as well as factual narrative, and set the standard. His sweeping influence extended beyond language and literature to the other arts in Russia, and especially to music - where composers, ranging in time from Glinka and Dargomyzhsky through Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, created more than twenty operas on the basis of his works. Indeed, he appeared to incarnate the entire glorious spring of Russian literature and culture. Another very great lyric poet, Theodore Tiutchev, expressed this best when he concluded a poem devoted to the tragedy of Pushkin's death: 'You, like first love, the heart of Russia will not forget.'
If Pushkin is generally regarded as the greatest Russian poet, Michael Lermontov, who also lived and wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century, has often been considered the second greatest. Born in 1814 and killed in a duel in 1841, Lermontov began writing at a very early age
and left behind him a literary legacy of considerable size. Very different in temperament and outlook from Pushkin, Lermontov came closest to being the leading romantic genius of Russian letters, the 'Russian Byron.' His life was a constant protest against his environment, a protest which found expression both in public gestures, such as his stunning poem condemning Russian high society for the death of Pushkin, and in private troubles which resulted in his own death. Lermontov often chose fantastic, exotic, and highly subjective themes, set in the grandeur of the Caucasus, where he spent some time in the army. Throughout most of his life he kept writing and rewriting a magnificent long poem called A Demon:
I am he, whose gaze destroys hope, As soon as hope blooms; I am he, whom nobody loves, And everything that lives curses.
Yet to describe Lermontov as a romantic poet, even a supreme romantic poet, does not do him full justice. For Lermontov's poetic genius had a broad range and kept developing - many critics think it developed toward realism. Also, through his prose writings, particularly his short novel A Hero of Our Times, he became one of the founders of the Russian realistic novel, in subject matter as well as in form. Such a discerning critic as Mirsky considers Lermontov's superbly powerful, succinct, and transparent prose superior even to Pushkin's. Lermontov, no doubt, could have done much else had he not been shot dead at the age of twenty-six.
While Pushkin and Lermontov were, in spite of their enormous contribution to Russian prose, primarily poets, Nicholas Gogol's early venture into poetry proved to be an unmitigated disaster. But as a prose writer Gogol had few equals and no superiors, in Russia or anywhere else. Gogol, who lived from 1809 to 1852, came from provincial
