Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/96

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The literature of the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century was determined by a rare mingling of diverse forces. To begin with the social factors, we find that the structure of Russian society was based on one of those marked class-divisions which, in one form or another, have existed in all countries and in all ages. In this instance, it was the division between the land-owners and the serfs, the "people." The economic and environmental conditions that determine the literature are those of a land-owning class, on the one hand, and a land-working class on the other.

As we have seen, a desire for reconstruction was already beginning to manifest itself. Abolition of serfdom became the first concrete doctrine of the writings of this period. But the very men who were preaching this duty were themselves of the master-class. This fact gives us the keynote of the literature of this period. It is the record of a people who are conscious that their day is over, that for them, social dissolution is at hand, that a new era is dawning. It is the swan-song of the master-class. The gentry had had their day, and now the clear-seeing spirits among them were bidding a graceful and melancholy farewell to a moribund social order. There was nothing in the past of this landed gentry to furnish the seeds of renewed life,—no legacy of ideas of noblesse oblige, of honor, of growth and development. They had been, and were soon to be no more. And, in keeping with this premonition of social death, the literature of the time is, in a sense, an orchid growth. It is melancholy and dispirited. For the writers, the glory of life has departed, and the spirit of their works is one of sad heroism. They write beautifully, earnestly, sincerely, but their mood is that of hopelessness and gentle resignation.

These men needed a great belief to arouse the spirit, and a great inspiration to invigorate the mind and heart. For a