Ideas and Realities in Russian Literature

Victor Robinson, Peter Kropotkin

Description

“Ideas and Realities in Russian Literature” is a 1906 work by Russian historian and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. Within it, Kropotkin presents a broad, general idea of the subject by examining modern literature and its most notable contributors. This volume will appeal to those with an interest in Russian literature and is not to be missed by collectors of Kropotkin's seminal work. Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921) was a Russian writer, activist, revolutionary, economist, scientist, sociologist, essayist, historian, researcher, political scientist, geographer, geographer, biologist, philosopher and advocate of anarcho-communism. He was a prolific writer, producing a large number of pamphlets and articles, the most notable being “The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops” and “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an excerpt from “Comrade Kropotkin” by Victor Robinson.

Sujets

• List of Russian philosophers
• List of Russian language writers
• Russian literature
• List of Russian language poets
• History of Russia

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528790130
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

IDEAS AND REALITIES OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
By
PETER KROPOTKIN
WITH AN EXCERPT FROM Comrade Kropotkin BY VICTOR ROBINSON

First published in 1906


This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library


Contents
In Later Life by Victor Robinson
The Man (1842-1921)
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER II PÚSHKIN — LÉRMONTOFF
CHAPTER III GÓGOL
CHAPTER IV TURGUÉNEFF-TOLSTÓY
CHAPTER V GONCHARÓFF-DOSTOYÉSKIY-NEKRASOFF
CHAPTER VI THE DRAMA
CHAPTER VII FOLK-NOVELISTS
CHAPTER VIII POLITICAL LITERATURE: SATIRE: ART CRITICISM: CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES



In Later Life
by Victor Robinson
"There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the Russian people, and those thoughts belong to mankind, - Leo Tolstory and Peter Kropotkin"
- Georg Brandes
Such are some of the scenes in the life of Peter Kropotkin- imprisoned by governments, pursued by police, followed by spies, hounded by agents of autocracy.
This peace-loving man whose name is synonym for kindness, this tender soul as modest as Newton, as gentle as Darwin, has been hunted from frontier to border-line. Against none of his persecutors does he utter a single invective. He is the epitome of mildness, the incarnation of humaneness.
Ask anyone who has seen Kropotkin for an hour or has known him for a generation, to describe his most characteristic trait, and the invariable answer will be: simplicity. His is a great spirit- it has cast out flam. "Kropotkin is one of the most sincere and frank of men," says Stepniak. "He always says the truth, pure and simple, without any regard for the amour propre of his hearers, or for any consideration whatever. This of his character. Every word he says may be absolutely believed. His sincerity is such, that sometimes in the ardour of discussion an entirely fresh consideration unexpectedly presents itself to his mind, and sets him thinking. He immediately stops, remains quite absorbed for a moment, and then begins to think aloud, speaking as tho he were an opponent. At other times he carries on this discussion mentally, and after moments of silence, turning to his astonished adversary, smilingly says, 'You are right.' This absolute sincerity renders him the best of friends, and gives especial weight to his praise and blame."
An Excerpt From Comrade Kropotkin The Man


The Man
(1842-1921)
Prince Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin , revolutionary and scientist, was descended from the old Russian nobility, but decided, at the age of thirty, to throw in his lot with the social rebels not only of his own country, but of the entire world. He became the intellectual leader of Anarchist-Communism; took part in the labor movement; wrote many books and pamphlets; established Le Révolté in Geneva and Freedom in London; contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica ; was twice imprisoned because of his radical activities; and twice visited America. After the Bolshevist revolution he returned to Russia, kept himself apart from Soviet activities, and died true to his ideals.



CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
One of the last messages which Turguéneff addressed to Russian writers from his death-bed was to implore them to keep in its purity "that precious inheritance of ours.-the Russian Language." He who knew in perfection most of the languages spoken in Western Europe had the highest opinion of Russian as an instrument for the expression of all possible shades of thought and feeling, and he had shown in his writings what depth and force of expression, and what melodiousness of prose, could be obtained in his native tongue. In his high appreciation of Russian, Turguéneff—as will often be seen in these pages—was perfectly right. The richness of the Russian language in words is astounding: many a word which stands alone for the expression of a given idea in the languages of Western Europe has in Russian three or our equivalents for the rendering of the various shades of the same idea. It is especially rich for rendering various shades of human feeling,—tenderness and love, sadness and merriment—as also various degrees of the same action. Its pliability for translation is such that in no other language do we find an equal number of most beautiful, correct, and truly poetical renderings of foreign authors. Poets of the most diverse character, such as Heine and Béranger, Longfellow and Schiller, Shelley and Goethe—to say nothing of that favourite with Russian translators, Shakespeare—are equally well turned into Russian. The sarcasm of Voltaire, the roIlicking humour of Dickens, the good-natured laughter of Cervantes are rendered with equal ease. Moreover, owing to the musical character of the Russian tongue, it is wonderfully adapted for rendering poetry in the same metres as those of the original. Longfellow's "Hiawatha" (in two different translations, both admirable), Heine's capricious lyrics, Schindler's ballads, the melodious folk-songs of different nationalities, and Béranger's playful chansonnettes , read in Russian with exactly the same rhythms as in the originals. The desperate vagueness of German metaphysics is quite as much at home in Russian as the matter-of-fact style of the eighteenth century philosophers; and the short, concrete and expressive, terse sentences of the best English writers offer no difficulty for the Russian translator.
Together with Czech and Polish, Moravian, Serbian and Bulgarian, as also several minor tongues, the Russian belongs to the great Slavonian family of languages which, in its turn—together with the Scandinavo—Saxon and the Latin families, as also the Lithuanian, the Persian, the Armenian, the Georgian-belongs to the great Indo-European, or Aryan branch. Some day—soon, let us hope: the sooner the better—the treasures of both the folk-songs possessed by the South Slavonians and the many centuries old literature of the Czechs and the Poles will be revealed to Western readers. But in this work I have to concern myseif only with the literature of the Eastern, i. e. , the Russtan, branch of the great Slavonian family; and in this branch I shall have to omit both the South-Russian or Ukraïnian literature and the White or West-Russian folk-lore and songs. I shall treat only of the literature of the Great-Russians; or, simply, the Russians. Of all the Slavonian languages theirs is the most widely spoken. It is the language of Púshkin and Lermontoff, Turguéneff and Tolstóy.
Like all other languages, the Russian has adopted many foreign words Scandinavian, Turkish, Mongolian and lately, Greek and Latin. But notwithstanding the assimilation of many nations and stems of the Ural-Altayan or Turanian stock which has been accomplished in the course of ages by the Russian nation, her language has remained remarkably pure. It is striking indeed to see how the translation of the bible which was made in the ninth century into the Ianguage currently spoken by the Moravians and the South Slavonians remains comprehensible, down to the present time, to the average Russian. Grammatical forms and the construction of sentences are indeed quite different now. But the roots, as well as a very considerable number of words remain the same as those which were used in current talk a thousand years ago. It must be said that the South-Slavonian had attained a high degree of perfection, even at that early time. Very few words of the Gospels had to be rendered in Greek and these are names of things unknown to the South Slavonians; while for none of the abstract words, and for none of the poeticaI images of the original, had the translators any difficulty in finding the proper expressions. Some of the words they used are, moreover, of a remarkable beauty, and this beauty has not been lost even to-day. Everyone remembers, for instance, the difficulty which the learned Dr. Faust, in Goethe's immortal tragedy, found in rendering thesentence: "In the beginning was the Word." "Word," in modern German seemed to Dr. Faust to be too shallow an expression for the idea of "the Word being God." In the old Slavonian translation we have "Slovo," which also means "Word," but has at the same time, even for the modern Russian, a far deeper meaning than that of das Wort . In old Slavonian "Slovo" included also the meaning of "Intellect"—German Vernunft; and consequently it conveyed to the reader an idea which was deep enough not to clash with the second part of the Biblical sentence.
I wish that I could give here an idea of the beauty of the structure of the Russian language, such as it was spoken early in the eleventh century in North Russia, a sample of which has been reserved in the sermon of a Nóvgorod bishop (1035). The short sentences of this sermon, calculated to be understood by a newly christened flock, are really beautiful; while the bishop's conceptions of Christianity, utterly devoid of Byzantine gnosticism, are most characteristic of the manner in which Christianity was and is still understood by the masses of the Russian folk. At the present time, the Russian language (the Great Russian) is remarkably free from patois . Litttle-Russian, or Ukra&#