Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

The void which is every where observable, causes the public structures to appear too small for the places in which they stand; they seem lost in space. The column of Alexander passes for being higher than that of the Place Vendome, owing to the dimensions of its pedestal. The shaft consists of one single block of granite, the largest that has ever been shaped by the hand of man. Tliis immense column, raised between the winter palace and the crescent, which forms the other extremity of the square, when viewed from the palace, appears to the eye as nothing more than a pole, and the houses around might be taken for palisades. In the square a hundred thousand men

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can perform their manoeuvres, without its appearing filled or thickly peopled. It is enclosed by the winter palace, the facades of which are rebuilt on the model of the old palace of the Empress Elizabeth. Here is at least a relief to the eyes, after the poor and frigid imitations of the monuments of Athens and Rome. The style is that of the Regency, or Louis XIV. degenerated, but the scale is very large. The opposite side of the square is terminated by a semicircle or crescent of buildings, in which are established the bureaus of various ministers of state. These edifices are mostly constructed in the ancient Grecian style. Singular taste ! Temples erected to clerks! The buildings of the Admiralty are in the same square. Their small pillars and gilded turrets produce a picturesque effect. An avenue of trees ornaments the square opposite this spot, and renders it less monotonous. On the other side of the immense Russian Champ de Mars stands the church of Saint Isaac, with its colossal peristyle, and its brazen dome, still half concealed by the scaffolding of the architect. Further on is seen the palace of the senate, and other structures still in the form of pagan temples. Beyond, in an angle of this long square, at its extremity on the Neva, stands the statue of Peter the Great, which disappears in immensity like a pebble on the shore. These above-named edifices contain material enough

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to build an entire city, and yet they do not complete the sides of the great square of Petersburg: it is a plain, not of wheat, but of pillars. The Russians may do their best to imitate all that art has produced of beautiful in other times and other lands; they forget that nature is stronger than man. They never

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sufficiently consult her, and therefore she is constantly revenging herself by doing them mischief. Masterpieces have only been produced by men who have listened to, and felt the power of, nature. Nature is the conception of God; art is the relation between the conceptions of man and those of the power which has created, and which perpetuates the world. The artist repeats on earth what he has heard in heaven; he is but the translator of the works of the Deity ; those who woiud create by their own models produce only monsters.

Among the ancients the architects reared their structures in steep and confined spots, where the picturesque character of the site added to the effect of the works of man. The Russians, who flatter themselves they are reproducing the wonders of antiquity, and who, in reality, are only caricaturing them, raise their soi- disant Grecian and Roman structures in immense fields, where they are almost lost to the eye. The architecture proper for such a land would not be the colonnade of the Parthenon, but the tower of Pekin. It is for man to build mountains, when nature has not undulated the surface of the earth; but the Russians have raised their porticoes and pediments without thinking of this, and without recollecting that on a flat and naked expanse it is difficult to distinguish edifices with so small an elevation. We still recognise the steppes of Asia in cities where they have pretended to revive the Roman Forum.* Muscovy is more nearly allied to Asia

* These observations apply only to the buildings constructed from the time of Peter I. The Russians of the middle ages, ¦who built the Kremlin, better understood the architecture which belonged to their land and their genius.

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than to Europe. The genius of the East hovers over Russia. The semicircle of edifices opposite the imperial palace, if observed sideways, at a proper distance, has the effect of an incomplete ancient amphitheatre. If examined more nearly, we see only a series of decorations that have to be replastered every year, in order to repair the ravages of the winter. The ancients built with indestructible materials under a favourable sky; here, under a climate which destroys everything, they raise palaces of wood, houses of plank, and temples of plaster; and, consequently, the Russian workmen pass their lives in rebuilding, during the summer, what the winter has demolished. Nothing resists the effects of this climate; even the edifices that appear the most ancient have been reconstructed but yesterday; stone lasts here no better than lime and mortar elsewhere. That enormous piece of o·ranite, which forms the shaft of the column of Alexander, is already worn by the frost. In Petersburg it is necessary to use bronze in order to sup-port granite ; yet notwithstanding these warnings, they never tire of imitating the taste of southern lands. They people the solitudes of the pole with statues and historical bas-reliefs, without considering that in their country monuments are even more evanescent than memories. Petersburg is but the scaffolding of a structure — when the structure is finished, the scaffolding will be removed. This chef-d'?uvre, not of architecture but of policy, is the New Byzantium, which, in the deep and secret aspirations of the Russian, is to be the future capital of Russia and the world.

Facino· the palace, an immense arcade pierces the

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already noticed semicircular range of buildings, and leads into the Morslw'e street. Above this enormous vault is placed a car with six horses in bronze, guided by, I know not what kind of allegorical or historical figure. I doubt whether there could be elsewhere seen anything in such bad taste as this colossal gate opening under a house, and flanked on either side by ordinary dwellings, whose vicinity has nevertheless not prevented its being, under Eussian architects, converted into a triumphal arch. I question the merit of the workmanship of the car, statue, and horses; but were they ever so good, they are so ill placed that I should not admire them. In objects of art it is the harmony and keeping of the whole which invite to the examination of details; without merit in the conception, what avails a delicacy in the execution? But, indeed, both one and the other are equally wanting in the productions of Russian art. Hitherto this art has been confined to imitating, without choice or taste, the good or the evil of other lands. If the design be entertained of reviving ancient architecture, it can only be done by strictly copying, and by placing such copies in analogous sites. Every thing here is mean, although colossal; for in architecture it is not the dimensions of the walls which constitute excellence, but the purity of the style.

I cannot cease marvelling at the passion they have conceived here for light, aerial structures. In a climate where there is sometimes a difference of eighty degrees between the temperature of winter and of summer, what have the inhabitants to do with porticoes, arcades, colonnades, and peristyles? But the

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Russians are accustomed to view even nature as a slave. Obstinate imitators, they mistake their vanity for genius, and believe themselves destined to renew, on a scale yet larger than the original, all the wonders of the