Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/291

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Not since the death of Tolstoy has Russia sustained so great a loss as she did when Maxim Maximovich Kovalevsky ceased to be. Russia and the rest of Europe are passing now through a bloody period in their history, when human life seems to have lost all value, when men are swept away by thousands and even millions. The living have become accustomed to this elemental sway that death holds in the most intimate relations of their life. But all these millions of individual deaths are of more or less local concern; the report of each one of them carries the grim message of misfortune only to some one corner of the countries plunged into madness. The death of Kovalevsky, like the death of Tolstoy, is not of merely local concern. Deaths like these arouse the whole nation, from one end to the other, throughout all the social strata. And not the nation alone, but the whole world.

There was much in common between these two intellectual giants of Russia, no matter how different they were in so many respects. Each of them typified Russia in his own way. Each loved Russia with his whole heart; devoted to his native land every thought, every feeling. Each, through his achievements, rendered his country inestimable service by raising her higher amongst the nations of the world, higher in that most precious of all attainments: intellectual achievement. Each was widely known and generally loved. And the death of each was a blow that brought deep pain, poignant regret, a heavy sense of personal bereavement to millions of hearts.

Objectively, in their relations with others and with everything about them, they had much in common; but subjectively, they were different. Tolstoy represented the soul of Russia, the ever-seeking, ever-striving, never-contented soul, full of true mysticism, that seeks and yearns for the absolute solution of the world's problems, that reaches out for the ultimate, and, never attaining it, perishes in the quenchless flames of its mighty quest. Kovalevsky typified the intellect of Russia, the vast, the many-sided, interested in everything, eager to understand everything, projecting itself into the innermost secrets of nature, into her every realm, ever analyzing, ever striving to reach the great synthesis that would crown its quest, and also perishing in the mighty flames of its ceaseless activity.

Death overtook Tolstoy when he was just about to embark upon a new quest for spiritual truth; it stilled his quivering soul when it was just beginning to break the fetters of what he considered spiritual thralldom. Kovalevsky's mighty intellect ceased its tireless labors while still busily engaged in its marvelous