Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/103

 Rh denied; later years have proved them. Though I do not attach the importance ascribed by most Russian, and even many foreign writers, to local folklore and rustic handicrafts, as proofs of a special vocation in this respect, I am willing to accept them as presumptive evidence. Yet a close consideration of this popular poetry and decoration, which many would fain have us take to be original, leads us to note that their chief characteristic is a complete absence of all originality and a perpetual imitation; they are poor, if not absolutely lacking, in subjects drawn from life or from surrounding nature. We see a handkerchief embroidered by a peasant woman from the neighbourhood of Tver. A delicate design, indeed, but the design has come from Persia. We see a wooden goblet of graceful form, but we read India in the bottom of it; and Monsieur Stassov, in spite of all his opponents (Messager de l'Europe, 1868), seems to me to have triumphantly proved the exotic descent of most of the bylines. Yet art has many degrees, and even imitation is an upward step. At the present day the signs of an absolutely spontaneous inspiration are discoverable in Sylvester's native country; but do any of them date from the sixteenth century or its predecessors?

The national architecture, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, presents two distinct types. Both proceed directly from Byzantium, but in one, that of the south, the Byzantine influence rules continuously and almost exclusively, while in the other, all over the north, from Novgorod to Vladimir and Souzdal, a Germanic or Lombardian current wars against it. And everywhere a confused medley of features, borrowed from every corner of the European and Asiatic horizon—from India and Persia chiefly, until the fifteenth century, from the Italian Renaissance, after it—are introduced into the details of these buildings, the general form and plan and construction of which are governed by these two component factors.

As to the nature and mode of propagation of these factors, the existence of which is uncontested, and their relative importance, opinions are much divided. The hypothesis of a direct importation of Oriental and Central Asiatic types has met with passionate opposition. Whether from the national or the religious point of view, the theory of an artistic initiation of Slav or Servo-Bulgarian origin has appeared far more palatable. Some German writers—Schnaase, among others, in his 'History of the Arts' (iii., p. 351)—have supported the theory of the Eastern connection, and regarded it as a sign of inferiority and almost of disgrace. One French writer, Viollet-le-Duc, has asserted it, and claimed it as a glory. The time, no doubt, is drawing near when it will be possible to discuss the problem without any regard to sentiment, but I fear it will continue