Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/332

318 Ellis's characterization of Russia as the barbarian country in Europe, just as lately he has labeled Spain the surviving savage country in Europe.

The commingling of such contrasting elements has made "the Russian in reality a well-tempered alloy of the two great racial stocks, the European longheads and Asiatic broadheads," and has given him the peculiar traits that have stood him in good stead in gaining his position among the nations.

The Russian's emotional expansiveness, the recklessness with which he expresses his feelings, as shown in the habit of kissing and embracing among men (on meeting after a long separation), in his tropical enthusiasm and tears at the theater, in the whole-heartedness with which he goes in for the work he chooses — that is what most strikes a foreigner.

And with this are combined a simplicity and frankness that seem brutal to a staid Anglo-Saxon or a courtly Latin. The "broad Russian nature," a "soul wide-open" (like a door ajar), are the current phrases among the Russians themselves. To confer the highest encomium upon a man in his private or public relations is to say that he is "a man with a soul," a "soulful man," a "soul of a man."

Such simple-heartedness and sincerity make a Russian fearfully zealous in his ideals. He accepts ideas no matter by whom propounded, and immediately makes them a part of himself. As Brandes says:—

Having once made an idea or ideal his own, a Russian will unfalteringly carry it to its bitter end. He will not yield even in the face of its reductio ad absurdum.