Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/241

 Even in music this tendency can be traced: the representatives of Russian music, national but tinged with "orientalism,"—Glinka, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others—expressed their sympathy with some ideals and characteristic moral features of the Russian people. Besides the subjective mood of Chaikovsky and the deep lyric revelations of Scriabin, other states of mind can be traced in their productions; Balakirev, for instance, was to a certain degree imbued with original mystic sentiment; Rimsky-Korsakov manifested, particularly in his latest work, an inclination to "ethical pantheism."

This movement is even more conspicuous in Russian painting. Ivanov was imbued with mysticism (at least till 1848) and chose under its influence the subject of his great work, representing the appearance of Christ to the people; Kramskoi painted his Christ in the Wilderness "with his blood and tears"; Vasnetsov executed mystical pictures on the walls of the cathedral of St Vladimir; Gué manifested his sympathy with the moral doctrine taught by Tolstoi in his works; Ryepin often dealt with social and political subjects; Vereshchagin was an apostle of peace, and so on.

There is no need to speak in detail of modern Russian literature which flourished after Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Goncharov, and manifested, independently of the literary movement represented by Turguenev, the moral tendencies of the age; a mere mention of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoi will be enough, Tolstoi's religious and ethical views on the dependent rôle of art were and still are debated in Russia; but they are very characteristic of the moralising mood of