Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/333

 It is this devotion to ideals that has caused tens of thousands of the flower of Russian youth to leave their kindred and homes and "go to the people," live and work among and for the peasants, share their simple fare, their joys and their sorrows, and give their lives in the prisons, in Siberia and on the gallows, with a stoicism and martyr's exaltation, that have aroused the wonder of the civilized world. But it is also this same de- votion to ideals that makes the tender-hearted Russian un- hesitatingly shoot down men by the hundreds, when these men happen to be among those who misrule Russia. To the unthinking it may seem a cruelty incompatible with that almost feminine tenderness. But who would deny the tender love of Brutus for Cæsar and the logic of his arguments for killing Cæsar?

Altruism and a burning zeal combine into a well-defined sense of responsibility which becomes almost oppressive. It makes the Russian youth mature early and age too soon. On the one hand an ardent love for one's fellow-beings, on the other the iron hand of an autocratic government; the out- bursts of hopeful youth countered by the fury of merciless repression, — there is the environment which explains the apparently causeless oscillation between hopefulness and pessimism, unbridled merriment and fathomless grief, which lies in the make-up of every Russian. That master of Russian character, Pushkin, sang more than seventy years ago:—

"Something kindred, dear is sounded. In my coachman's songs unending: Now 'tis merriment unbounded, Then again 'tis grief heart-rending,"

and elsewhere:—

"How sadly sings the Russian Maiden, Like our Muse, a songstress sorrow-laden. . . . All our race, From coachman to the foremost poet,