Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/401

Rh Bělinskii's personality received due appreciation. Not infrequently, indeed, such praises were lavished upon the goodness of his heart that the prestige of his head might well suffer in comparison!

Bělinskii became political, social, and philosophic leader of the younger generation. His work, it is true, was that of literary critic, but for him criticism applied, not to books, but to the life which, as he said, was mirrored in literature. Ivan Aksakov relates that during an inspection tour made in 1856 he encountered large numbers of persons intimately acquainted with Bělinskii's Letter to Gogol, which many of them knew by heart. Bělinskii touched upon the most important and profoundest problems of his time. Half unconsciously, with the aid of his philosophy of religion, he preached the political and social revolution under the very eyes of Nicholas' censors. Bělinskii's youthful drama is his own life program.

This work could not have direct effects in Bělinskii's own day, for it was not published until eighty years after it had been written, but the thoughts which Bělinskii here conceived for the first time, recurred continuously in his later works, being reproduced with greater precision and in more intimate association with the interests of the day.

Kalinin the hero, son of a serf, loves his lord's daughter. They enter into a free union of hearts, hoping that the approval of the family may subsequently be secured. But the family desires to bestow the girl in marriage upon a prince. Kalinin thereupon arms for defence, has a quarrel with Sof'ja's brother, who apostrophises him contemptuously as "slave." Having killed the brother in this quarrel, Kalinin then kills Sof'ja at her own request, and subsequently makes away with himself, for he has learned that he is Sof'ja's half-brother, and that his suicide will merely put the crown upon the crimes of incest and murder.

Kalinin is thus at war with society and the social order, but his censures are chiefly directed against the all-powerful God who has arranged the world so ill and who has fore-ordained that man should be powerless. In the character of Surskii, Kalinin's friend, Bělinskii delineates the optimist, the believer in divine providence who accepts life and all that it brings, seeing in the world and in life a harmony that is perfect even if it be not fully understood.

This antithesis of the two characters reminds us of Schelling