Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/33

Rh To an Englishman or an American, perhaps the most striking trait in the Russian character is his lack of practical force--the paralysis of his power of will. The national character among the educated classes is personified in fiction, in a type peculiarly Russian; and that may be best defined by calling it the conventional Hamlet. I say the conventional Hamlet, for I believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a man of immense resolution and self-control. The Hamlet of the commentators is as unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet as systematic theology is unlike the Sermon on the Mount. The hero of the orthodox Russian novel is a veritable L'Aiglon. This national type must be clearly understood before an American can understand Russian novels at all. In order to show that it is not imaginary, but real, one has only to turn to Sienkiewicz's powerful work, Without Dogma, the very title expressing the lack of conviction that destroys the hero. "Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these two words, 'l'improductivité slave.' I experienced the same relief as does a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease.... I thought about that 'improductivité slave' all night. He had his wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There is something in us, --an