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Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia?

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WHO CAN BE HAPPY AND FREE IN RUSSIA?

BY

NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV


Translated by Juliet M. Soskice

With an Introduction by Dr. David Soskice


1917



[Illustration: Nicholas Nekrassov]



NICHOLAS ALEXEIEVITCH NEKRASSOV

Born, near the town Vinitza, province of Podolia, November 22, 1821

Died, St. Petersburg, December 27, 1877.


_'Who can be Happy and Free in Russia?' was first published in Russia
in 1879. In 'The World's Classics' this translation was first published
in 1917._




CONTENTS:


NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE

PROLOGUE

PART I.

CHAP.

I. THE POPE
II. THE VILLAGE FAIR
III. THE DRUNKEN NIGHT
IV. THE HAPPY ONES
V. THE POMYÉSHCHICK

PART II.--THE LAST POMYÉSHCHICK

PROLOGUE
I. THE DIE-HARD
II. KLIM, THE ELDER

PART III.--THE PEASANT WOMAN

PROLOGUE
I. THE WEDDING
II. A SONG
III. SAVYÉLI
IV. DJÓMUSHKA
V. THE SHE-WOLF
VI. AN UNLUCKY YEAR
VII. THE GOVERNOR'S LADY
VIII. THE WOMAN'S LEGEND

PART IV.--A FEAST FOR THE WHOLE VILLAGE

PROLOGUE
I. BITTER TIMES--BITTER SONGS
II. PILGRIMS AND WANDERERS
III. OLD AND NEW

EPILOGUE




NICHOLAS NEKRASSOV: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE


Western Europe has only lately begun to explore the rich domain of
Russian literature, and is not yet acquainted with all even of its
greatest figures. Treasures of untold beauty and priceless value, which
for many decades have been enlarging and elevating the Russian mind,
still await discovery here. Who in England, for instance, has heard the
names of Saltykov, Uspensky, or Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest
of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of
the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's
sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the
minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the
sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin and
Lermontov.

Russia is a country still largely mysterious to the denizen
of Western Europe, and the Russian peasant, the _moujik_, an
impenetrable riddle to him. Of all the great Russian writers not one has
contributed more to the interpretation of the enigmatical soul of the
_moujik_ than Russia's great poet, Nekrassov, in his life-work the
national epic, _Who can be Happy in Russia?_

There are few literate persons in Russia who do not know whole pages of
this poem by heart. It will live as long as Russian literature exists;
and its artistic value as an instrument for the depiction of Russian
nature and the soul of the Russian people can be compared only with that
of the great epics of Homer with regard to the legendary life of
ancient Greece.

Nekrassov seemed destined to dwell from his birth amid such surroundings
as are necessary for the creation of a great national poet.

Nicholas Alexeievitch Nekrassov was the descendant of a noble family,
which in former years had been very wealthy, but subsequently had lost
the greater part of its estates. His father was an officer in the army,
and in the course of his peregrinations from one end of the country to
the other in the fulfilment of his military duties he became acquainted
with a young Polish girl, the daughter of a wealthy Polish aristocrat.
She was seventeen, a type of rare Polish beauty, and the handsome,
dashing Russian officer at once fell madly in love with her. The parents
of the girl, however, were horrified at the notion of marrying their
daughter to a "Muscovite savage," and her father threatened her with his
curse if ever again she held communication with her lover. So the matter
was secretly arranged between the two, and during a ball which the young
Polish beauty was attending she suddenly disappeared. Outside the house
the lover waited with his sledge. They sped away, and were married at
the first church they reached.

The bride, with her father's curse upon her, passed straight from her
sheltered existence in her luxurious home to all the unsparing rigours
of Russian camp-life. Bred in an atmosphere of maternal tenderness and
Polish refinement she had now to share the life of her rough, uncultured
Russian husband, to content herself with the shallow society of the
wives of the camp officers, and soon to be crushed by the knowledge that
the man for whom she had sacrificed everything was not even faithful
to her.

During their travels, in 1821, Nicholas Nekrassov the future poet was
born, and three years later his father left military service and settled
in his estate in the Yaroslav Province, on the banks of the great river
Volga, and close to the Vladimirsky highway, famous in Russian history
as the road along which, for centuries, chained convicts had been driven
from European Russia to the mines in Siberia. The old park of the manor,
with its seven rippling brooklets and mysterious shadowy linden avenues
more than a century old, filled with a dreamy murmur at the slightest
stir of the breeze, stretched down to the mighty Volga, along the banks
of which, during the long summer days, were heard the piteous, panting
songs of the _burlaki_, the barge-towers, who drag the heavy, loaded
barges up and down the river.

The rattling of the convicts' chains as they passed; the songs of the
_burlaki_; the pale, sorrowful face of his mother as she walked alone in
the linden avenues of the garden, often shedding tears over a letter she
read, which was headed by a coronet and written in a fine, delicate
hand; the spreading green fields, the broad mighty river, the deep blue
skies of Russia,--such were the reminiscences which Nekrassov retained
from his earliest childhood. He loved his sad young mother with a
childish passion, and in after years he was wont to relate how jealous
he had been of that letter[1] she read so often, which always seemed to
fill her with a sorrow he could not understand, making her at moments
even forget that he was near her.

The sight and knowledge of deep human suffering, framed in the soft
voluptuous beauty of nature in central Russia, could not fail to sow the
seed of future poetical powers in the soul of an emotional child. His
mother, who had been bred on Shakespeare, Milton, and the other great
poets and writers of the West, devoted her solitary life to the
development of higher intellectual tendencies in her gifted little son.
And from an early age he made attempts at verse. His mother has
preserved for the world his first little poem, which he presented to her
when he was seven years of age, with a little heading, roughly to the
following effect:

My darling Mother, look at this,
I did the best I could in it,
Please read it through and tell me if
You think there's any good in it.

The early life of the little Nekrassov was passed amid a series of
contrasting pictures. His father, when he had abandoned his military
calling and settled upon his estate, became the Chief of the district
police. He would take his son Nicholas with him in his trap as he drove
from village to village in the fulfilment of his new duties. The
continual change of scenery during their frequent journeys along country
roads, through forests and valleys, past meadows and rivers, the various
types of people they met with, broadened and developed the mind of
little Nekrassov, just as the mind of the child Ruskin was formed and
expanded during his journeys with his father. But Ruskin's education
lacked features with which young Nekrassov on his journeys soon became
familiar. While acquiring knowledge of life and accumulating impressions
of the beauties of nature, Nekrassov listened, perforce, to the brutal,
blustering speeches addressed by his father to the helpless, trembling
peasants, and witnessed the cruel, degrading corporal punishments he
inflicted upon them, while his eyes were speedily opened to his father's
addiction to drinking, gambling, and debauchery. These experiences would
most certainly have demoralised and depraved his childish mind had it
not been for the powerful influence the refined and cultured mother had
from the first exercised upon her son. The contrast between his parents
was so startling that it could not fail to awaken the better side of the
child's nature, and to imbue him with pure and healthy notions of the
truer and higher ideals of humanity. In his poetical works of later
years Nekrassov repeatedly returns to and dwells upon the memory of the
sorrowful, sweet image of his mother. The gentle, beautiful lady, with
her wealth of golden hair, with an expression of divine tenderness in
her blue eyes and of infinite suffering upon her sensitive lips,
remained for ever her son's ideal of womanhood. Later on, during years
of manhood, in moments of the deepest moral suffering and despondency,
it was always of her that he thought, her tenderness and spiritual
consolation he recalled and for which he craved.

When Nekrassov was eleven years of age his father one day drove him to
the town nearest their estate and placed him in the local
grammar-school. Here he remained for six years, gradually, though
without distinction, passing upwards from one class to another, devoting
a moderate amount of time to school studies and much energy to the
writing of poetry, mostly of a satirical nature, in which his teachers
figured with unfortunate conspicuity.

One day a copy-book containing the most biting of these productions fell
into the hands of the headmaster, and young Nekrassov was summarily
ejected from the school.

His angry father, deciding in his own mind that the boy was good for
nothing, despatched him to St. Petersburg to embark upon a military
career. The seventeen-year-old boy arrived in the capital with a
copy-book of his poems and a few roubles in his pocket, and with a
letter of introduction to an influential general. He was filled with
good intentions and fully prepared to obey his father's orders, but
before he had taken the final step of entering the nobleman's regiment
he met a young student, a former school-mate, who captivated his
imagination by glowing descriptions of the marvellous sciences to be
studied in the university, and the surpassing interest of student life.
The impressionable boy decided to abandon the idea of his military
career, and to prepare for his matriculation in the university. He wrote
to his father to this effect, and received the stern and laconic reply:

"If you disobey me, not another farthing shall you receive from me."

The youth had made his mind up, however, and entered the university as
an unmatriculated student. And that was the beginning of his long
acquaintance with the hardships of poverty.

"For three years," said Nekrassov in after life, "I was hungry all day,
and every day. It was not only that I ate bad food and not enough of
that, but some days I did not eat at all. I often went to a certain
restaurant in the Morskaya, where one is allowed to read the paper
without ordering food. You can hold the paper in front of you and nibble
at a piece of bread behind it...."

While sunk in this state of poverty, however, Nekrassov got into touch
with some of the richest and most aristocratic families in St.
Petersburg; for at that time there existed a complete comradeship and
equality among the students, whether their budget consisted of a few
farthings or unlimited wealth. Thus here again Nekrassov was given the
opportunity of studying the contrasts of life.

For several years after his arrival in St. Petersburg the true gifts of
the poet were denied expression. The young man was confronted with a
terrible uphill fight to conquer the means of bare subsistence. He had
no time to devote to the working out of his poems, and it would not have
"paid" him. He was obliged to accept any literary job that was offered
him, and to execute it with a promptitude necessitated by the
requirements of his daily bill of fare. During the first years of his
literary career he wrote an amazing number of prose reviews, essays,
short stories, novels, comedies and tragedies, alphabets and children's
stories, which, put together, would fill thirty or forty volumes. He
also issued a volume of his early poems, but he was so ashamed of them
that he would not put his name upon the fly-leaf. Soon, however, his
poems, "On the Road" and "My Motherland," attracted the attention of
Byelinsky, when the young poet brought some of his work to show the
great critic. With tears in his eyes Byelinsky embraced Nekrassov and
said to him:

"Do you know that you are a poet, a true poet?"

This decree of Byelinsky brought fame to Nekrassov, for Byelinsky's word
was law in Russia then, and his judgement was never known to fail. His
approval gave Nekrassov the confidence he lacked, and he began to devote
most of his time to poetry.

The epoch in which Nekrassov began his literary career in St.
Petersburg, the early forties of last century, was one of a great
revival of idealism in Russia. The iron reaction of the then Emperor
Nicholas I. made independent political activity an impossibility. But
the horrible and degrading conditions of serfdom which existed at that
time, and which cast a blight upon the energy and dignity of the Russian
nation, nourished feelings of grief and indignation in the noblest minds
of the educated classes, and, unable to struggle for their principles in
the field of practical politics, they strove towards abstract idealism.
They devoted their energies to philosophy, literature, and art. It was
then that Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoyevsky embarked upon their
phenomenal careers in fiction. It was then that the impetuous essayist,
Byelinsky, with his fiery and eloquent pen, taught the true meaning and
objects of literature. Nekrassov soon joined the circles of literary
people dominated by the spirit of Byelinsky, and he too drank at the
fountain of idealism and imbibed the gospel of altruistic toil for his
country and its people, that gospel of perfect citizenship expounded by
Byelinsky, Granovsky, and their friends. It was at this period that his
poetry became impregnated with the sadness which, later on, was embodied
in the lines:

My verses! Living witnesses of tears Shed for the world, and born In
moments of the soul's dire agony, Unheeded and forlorn, Like waves that
beat against the rocks, You plead to hearts that scorn.

Nekrassov's material conditions meanwhile began to improve, and he
actually developed business capacities, and soon the greatest writers of
the time were contributing to the monthly review _Sovremenik_ (the
Contemporary) which Nekrassov bought in 1847. Turgenieff, Herzen,
Byelinsky, Dostoyevsky gladly sent their works to him, and Nekrassov
soon became the intellectual leader of his time. His influence became
enormous, but he had to cope with all the rigours of the censorship
which had become almost insupportable in Russia, as the effect of the
Tsar's fears aroused by the events of the French Revolution of 1848.

Byelinsky died in that year from consumption in the very presence of the
gendarmes who had come to arrest him for some literary offence.
Dostoyevsky was seized, condemned to death, and when already on the
scaffold, with the rope around his neck, reprieved and sent for life to
the Siberian mines. The rigours still increased during the Crimean War,
and it was only after the death of Nicholas I., the termination of the
war, and the accession of the liberal Tsar, Alexander II., that
Nekrassov and Russian literature in general began to breathe more
freely. The decade which followed upon 1855 was one of the bright
periods of Russian history. Serfdom was abolished and many great reforms
were passed. It was then that Nekrassov's activity was at its height.
His review _Sovremenik_ was a stupendous success, and brought him great
fame and wealth. During that year some of his finest poems appeared in
it: "The Peasant Children," "Orina, the Mother of a Soldier," "The
Gossips," "The Pedlars," "The Rail-way," and many others.

Nekrassov became the idol of Russia. The literary evenings at which he
used to read his poems aloud were besieged by fervent devotees, and the
most brilliant orations were addressed to him on all possible occasions.
His greatest work, however, the national epic, _Who can be Happy in
Russia?_ was written towards the latter end of his life, between
1873 and 1877.

Here he suffered from the censor more cruelly than ever. Long extracts
from the poem were altogether forbidden, and only after his death it was
allowed, in 1879, to appear in print more or less in its entirety.

When gripped in the throes of his last painful illness, and practically
on his deathbed, he would still have found consolation in work, in the
dictation of his poems. But even then his sufferings were aggravated by
the harassing coercions of the censor. His last great poem was written
on his deathbed, and the censor peremptorily forbade its publication.
Nekrassov one day greeted his doctor with the following remark:

"Now you see what our profession, literature, means. When I wrote my
first lines they were hacked to pieces by the censor's scissors--that
was thirty-seven years ago; and now, when I am dying, and have written
my last lines, I am again confronted by the scissors."

For many months he lay in appalling suffering. His disease was the
outcome, he declared, of the privations he had suffered in his youth.
The whole of Russia seemed to be standing at his bedside, watching with
anguish his terrible struggle with death. Hundreds of letters and
telegrams arrived daily from every corner of the immense empire, and the
dying poet, profoundly touched by these tokens of love and sympathy,
said to the literary friends who visited him:

"You see! We wonder all our lives what our readers think of us, whether
they love us and are our friends. We learn in moments like this...."

It was a bright, frosty December day when Nekrassov's coffin was carried
to the grave on the shoulders of friends who had loved and admired him.
The orations delivered above it were full of passionate emotion called
forth by the knowledge that the speakers were expressing not only their
own sentiments, but those of a whole nation.

Nekrassov is dead. But all over Russia young and old repeat and love his
poetry, so full of tenderness and grief and pity for the Russian people
and their endless woe. Quotations from the works of Nekrassov are as
abundant and widely known in Russia as those from Shakespeare in
England, and no work of his is so familiar and so widely quoted as the
national epic, now presented to the English public, _Who can be Happy
in Russia?_

DAVID SOSKICE.




PROLOGUE

The year doesn't matter,
The land's not important,
But seven good peasants
Once met on a high-road.
From Province "Hard-Battered,"
From District "Most Wretched,"
From "Destitute" Parish,
From neighbouring hamlets--
"Patched," "Barefoot," and "Shabby,"
"Bleak," "Burnt-Out," and "Hungry,"
From "Harvestless" also, 11
They met and disputed
Of who can, in Russia,
Be happy and free?

Luká said, "The pope," [2]
And Román, "The Pomyéshchick," [3]
Demyán, "The official,"
"The round-bellied merchant,"
Said both brothers Goóbin,
Mitródor and Ívan. 20
Pakhóm, who'd been lost
In profoundest reflection,
Exclaimed, looking down
At the earth, "'Tis his Lordship,
His most mighty Highness,
The Tsar's Chief Adviser,"
And Prov said, "The Tsar."

Like bulls are the peasants:
Once folly is in them
You cannot dislodge it 30
Although you should beat them
With stout wooden cudgels:
They stick to their folly,
And nothing can move them.
They raised such a clamour
That those who were passing
Thought, "Surely the fellows
Have found a great treasure
And share it amongst them!"

They all had set out 40
On particular errands:
The one to the blacksmith's,
Another in haste
To fetch Father Prokóffy
To christen his baby.
Pakhóm had some honey
To sell in the market;
The two brothers Goóbin
Were seeking a horse
Which had strayed from their herd. 50

Long since should the peasants
Have turned their steps homewards,
But still in a row
They are hurrying onwards
As quickly as though
The grey wolf were behind them.
Still further, still faster
They hasten, contending.
Each shouts, nothing hearing,
And time does not wait. 60
In quarrel they mark not
The fiery-red sunset
Which blazes in Heaven
As evening is falling,
And all through the night
They would surely have wandered
If not for the woman,
The pox-pitted "Blank-wits,"
Who met them and cried:

"Heh, God-fearing peasants, 70
Pray, what is your mission?
What seek ye abroad
In the blackness of midnight?"

So shrilled the hag, mocking,
And shrieking with laughter
She slashed at her horses
And galloped away.

The peasants are startled,
Stand still, in confusion,
Since long night has fallen, 80
The numberless stars
Cluster bright in the heavens,
The moon gliding onwards.
Black shadows are spread
On the road stretched before
The impetuous walkers.
Oh, shadows, black shadows,
Say, who can outrun you,
Or who can escape you?
Yet no one can catch you, 90
Entice, or embrace you!

Pakhóm, the old fellow,
Gazed long at the wood,
At the sky, at the roadway,
Gazed, silently searching
His brain for some counsel,
And then spake in this wise:
"Well, well, the wood-devil
Has finely bewitched us!
We've wandered at least 100
Thirty versts from our homes.
We all are too weary
To think of returning
To-night; we must wait
Till the sun rise to-morrow."

Thus, blaming the devil,
The peasants make ready
To sleep by the roadside.
They light a large fire,
And collecting some farthings 110
Send two of their number
To buy them some vodka,
The rest cutting cups
From the bark of a birch-tree.
The vodka's provided,
Black bread, too, besides,
And they all begin feasting:
Each munches some bread
And drinks three cups of vodka--
But then comes the question 120
Of who can, in Russia,
Be happy and free?

Luká cries, "The pope!"
And Román, "The Pomyéshchick!"
And Prov shouts, "The Tsar!"
And Demyán, "The official!"
"The round-bellied merchant!"
Bawl both brothers Goóbin,
Mitródor and Ívan.
Pakhóm shrieks, "His Lordship, 130
His most mighty Highness,
The Tsar's Chief Adviser!"

The obstinate peasants
Grow more and more heated,
Cry louder and louder,
Swear hard at each other;
I really believe
They'll attack one another!
Look! now they are fighting!
Román and Pakhom close, 140
Demyán clouts Luká,
While the two brothers Goóbin
Are drubbing fat Prov,
And they all shout together.
Then wakes the clear echo,
Runs hither and thither,
Runs calling and mocking
As if to encourage
The wrath of the peasants.
The trees of the forest 150
Throw furious words back:

"The Tsar!" "The Pomyéshchick!"
"The pope!" "The official!"
Until the whole coppice
Awakes in confusion;
The birds and the insects,
The swift-footed beasts
And the low crawling reptiles
Are chattering and buzzing
And stirring all round. 160
The timid grey hare
Springing out of the bushes
Speeds startled away;
The hoarse little jackdaw
Flies off to the top
Of a birch-tree, and raises
A harsh, grating shriek,
A most horrible clamour.
A weak little peewit
Falls headlong in terror 170
From out of its nest,
And the mother comes flying
In search of her fledgeling.
She twitters in anguish.
Alas! she can't find it.
The crusty old cuckoo
Awakes and bethinks him
To call to a neighbour:
Ten times he commences
And gets out of tune, 180
But he won't give it up....

Call, call, little cuckoo,
For all the young cornfields
Will shoot into ear soon,
And then it will choke you--
The ripe golden grain,
And your day will be ended![4]

From out the dark forest
Fly seven brown owls,
And on seven tall pine-trees 190
They settle themselves
To enjoy the disturbance.
They laugh--birds of night--
And their huge yellow eyes gleam
Like fourteen wax candles.
The raven--the wise one--
Sits perched on a tree
In the light of the fire,
Praying hard to the devil
That one of the wranglers, 200
At least, should be beaten
To death in the tumult.
A cow with a bell
Which had strayed from its fellows
The evening before,
Upon hearing men's voices
Comes out of the forest
And into the firelight,
And fixing its eyes,
Large and sad, on the peasants, 210
Stands listening in silence
Some time to their raving,
And then begins mooing,
Most heartily moos.
The silly cow moos,
The jackdaw is screeching,
The turbulent peasants
Still shout, and the echo
Maliciously mocks them--
The impudent echo 220
Who cares but for mocking
And teasing good people,
For scaring old women
And innocent children:
Though no man has seen it
We've all of us heard it;
It lives--without body;
It speaks--without tongue.

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