Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/28

14 of the realities, political and racial, that moulded it. Instinctively, Russian writers know that the meaning of life is involved in life itself; and he who would comprehend their treatment of life's problems, must not separate the literature from the milieu in which it lives and has its being.

To a large extent, Russian literature has been moulded by the political conditions of the country. For a long time its inspiring motive was antagonism toward the official institutions. The writers had a definite reality to grapple with. For them, as for men everywhere, the fullest liberty was found only in the unreal realm of hidden thoughts and dreams and aspirations. But when the effort began to give these thoughts reality, it ushered in a time of tremendous struggle that absorbed all the energies of the nation. Here and there you hear voices counseling submission as the inevitable and natural solidifying power of the nation. But the greater number beat their heads in vain against that iron wall. It is this thought that a Russian poet expresses:

"The writer—if he is a wave Of the ocean which we call Russia, Can but awaken to rebellion When the ocean itself rebels. The writer — if he is a nerve Of that great body which is the people, Can but feel the wound When liberty is stricken."

What underlying motifs are we to expect of a literature so conditioned? First of all, we shall find a severe, often rigorous attitude toward the social problems of life. There is little "Art of Art's sake." This formula of a day comes into its own only in the most recent works, for in Russia the divorce of art from life can come about only as a temporary escape from the grimness of reality. In a literature fundamentally social, like that of Russia, man is viewed as a human being,—a being responsible to his own conscience for all his actions; so that the great writers of Russia see life as a moral problem, a problem of good and evil, whose ultimate solution lies in the triumph of the former. It is on a great spiritual search that the masters of the literature have embarked, and they are conscious of this. Hence, much of their writing is didactic. Thus the poet Nekrasov says of himself: "I have been inspired to sing thy sufferings, my people, so wondrous in thy patience! I have been called to cast at least a ray of light upon the path on which God leads