they were right in advising me to go to the theatre in order to correct my impression that moscow was a thorough-going russian city. a hotel, for instance, proves nothing at all concerning the character of a town. it betrays at most the year of its erection, for to-day, the world over, building is done in the recognized "modern style."[12] even this or that elegant street indicates nothing. there the imitation of patterns seen elsewhere plays too great a r?le. but the theatre which is to survive must adapt itself to the ruling taste to such an extent that it can be considered really characteristic of it.
now the "artists' theatre"—or, as it is called because of the "secessionistic"[12] arrangement, the "decadent theatre"—of moscow is really unique, and by the preferences of the theatre public one can very well recognize the quality and quantity of the intelligence of a city. with respect to picturesqueness of staging, it is distinctly the superior[pg 271] of the meininger theatre; and, as far as scenery and purity of style are concerned, it can well compare with the most up-to-date stages. to be sure, inquiry should not be made into the distribution of the individual r?les; to some extent this is worse than mediocre. i saw "julius c?sar" played where the conspirators seemed to feel it necessary to yell out their plans in the night with all their might. but, in contrast to this, the palace of the emperor was represented with a fidelity which could not have been exceeded in rome itself; and the same with the forum, and with the generals' tent at philippi. the choruses were simply captivating in their execution.
but more interesting to me than the play was the audience. and the audience, composed entirely of the educated middle class, knew quite as well how to judge what was success and what failure in the performance as any of the better audiences of a vienna or a berlin theatre. and the foyer, very appealingly decorated by the simplest artistic means with scenes from the history of the russian drama and with many portraits of writers and actors, was visited and enjoyed by the audience in the intermission. if i had not continually heard about me the sounds of a strange speech, and had not seen here and there a russian student uniform, it never would have occurred to me that i was in the very heart of russia, so far as culture was concerned.
it was the same, too, in the families with which[pg 272] i spent my evenings. if anything, only the heartiness with which one is received is gratefully at variance with our habits of careful reserve towards strangers. but these hearty and hospitable people who at once lead us to the samovar are by no means backwoodsmen, but are most intimately in touch with all the advantages of the world, and they have uncommonly keen powers of observation. the visiting european who might think himself in a position to act among them would quickly become aware that the russian writers, who astonish us by their deep psychological insight, have not picked up their art by the wayside. it is hidden in the most charming little formalities, which in moscow, in particular, simply charmed me. nowhere the slightest cant, nowhere the slightest false display, nowhere the forced enthusiasm for culture which makes certain circles of our great cities so repulsive to us. naturalness is the pervading note in moscow social life. but literary and art interests are a matter of course in a society which is scarcely paralleled by the english in its demand for reviews. to-day, of course, every other interest is forced to the wall by politics. i have been present at gatherings in the best circles of people of culture at which even the young had scarcely any interest save in political questions. even little declamations with which the individual guests distinguished themselves were spiced with political allusions, and were enjoyed by young and old just because of this spice.
[pg 273]
yet moscowism has, in a sense, a bad reputation. it is held to be the embodiment of the russian reaction against every attempt of a civilizing nature which emanates from st. petersburg. of the lesser citizens, or the old-fashioned merchants at times, this may even to-day be true. the nobility in the moscow government, however, the university, and the members of the few professions such as medicine and the law, are much less circumspect and free-minded in their political criticism than their contemporaries in st. petersburg, for instance. such an opposition organ as the russkiya vyedomosti does not exist in st. petersburg. there is also, to be sure, a sharp contrast between the intelligence of moscow and that of official st. petersburg; but this contrast is anything but one between reaction and progress. it is worth while to examine it more closely.
the present russian régime has preserved only the despotism of the enlightened despotism of peter; the enlightenment has vanished. the wisdom of the government consists solely in the obstruction of popular education. the means to this end is the police, with their relentless crusade against any intelligence of a trend not quite orthodox in its attitude towards the state and the ruling spirit of the old régime in the corruption of all the elements of the higher strata of society. demoralization is encouraged, so to say, by official circles. just as among the peasants a man caught reading his[pg 274] bible is held in suspicion, so in st. petersburg a young man makes himself subject to the displeasure of the authorities if he does not take his part in the "diversions of youth." a lordly contempt for humanity is accordingly the prerequisite for every career in that northern paris. the pursuit of fortune has never a conscience, least of all where it appears in military form. there esprit de corps and dignity of position displace to a degree of absolute hostility all morality. elegantly and fashionably clothed, one is always ready to wager one's life, or rather to throw it into the balance, for the most valueless stake. one is irreligious and anti-moral on principle, but of the strictest outward orthodoxy and monarchical to the very marrow.
it is to this anti-moral (anti-democratic) superficial superciliousness[13] that moscow forms a contrast in each and every particular. here one is benevolent, democratic, hearty, and intentionally modest in appearance. here, too, there appears to be less struggling. the kupetz (small merchant) is rich as can be, but he lingers in his little store with narrow entrances, and never has a thought of laying aside his caftan, the ancestral overcoat, or his high boots, into which are stuffed the ends of his trousers. but it is not exactly this merchant whom i should like to cite as an example of my point, for it is just he who has brought upon [pg 275]moscow the reputation for being hostile to progress. but there is probably some connection between the resistance which the nobility of moscow offers to st. petersburg customs and the obstinate self-sufficiency of the merchant with his old-fashioned views. just as this kupetz does not allow himself to be dazzled by the elegant-looking clerk of the st. petersburg merchant, but clings to his ancestral ways, so the moscow nobleman is not dazzled by the elegance of the dressy st. petersburg officer of the guards. people dress elegantly in moscow, too—yes, even in the parisian style. but the contemptible inhumanity of the struggling official of st. petersburg does not appeal to the moscowite as civilizational progress, but as a metropolitan degeneracy to be despised. and so among the bright people of moscow patriarchal heartiness is preserved. it was not a matter of pure chance that leo tolsto? spent so many winters in moscow society. in st. petersburg he would not have stayed.
the most beautiful creation of this conscious devotion to moscow is the donation of a simple merchant, the possession of which any city of the world might envy—the tretyakov gallery, the largest and most valuable private collection that exists anywhere. a knowledge of it is absolutely indispensable to the historian of modern russian painting. the alexander museum of st. petersburg has isolated magnificent pieces of ryepin, aiwasowsky,[pg 276] and the most beautiful sculptures of antokolski; but it cannot be compared with the two thousand pieces of the tretyakov gallery. the founder gave, besides this invaluable collection, a building for it, and a fund, from the interest of which, even after his death, the collection might be augmented. admission, of course, is free to all; even fees for coat checks may not be collected of its visitors.
in this gallery one realizes for the first time that russian painting is about at par with russian literature, that it also has its tolsto?s, turgenyevs, and dostoyevskys. above all, there is ilya ryepin with a whole collection of portraits and large genre pictures. i have tried to sketch some of those works of art elsewhere in a special article devoted to this greatest of russian artists, and will not repeat myself here. let me only mention the portraits of leo tolsto?, copies of which can now be found in the west. the poet is here depicted once behind the plough and again barefoot in his garden, his hands in his belt, his head thoughtfully sunk upon his breast. it is the best picture of tolsto? that exists. once, while i was walking up and down in conversation with the poet in his room at yasnaya polyana, i had to bite my tongue in order to suppress the remark, "now you look as if you had been cut from the canvas of ryepin." ryepin may be compared as a portrait-painter with the very foremost artists of all times. the strength of his characters is simply unequalled.
[pg 277]
but the russians appear to me particularly great in the field of realistic genre and of landscape painting, just as in their literature, which never leaves the firm ground of observation; and just for that reason it is perfectly unique in the catching of every little event, of every feeling and atmosphere peculiar to the landscape. among the painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century who already have worked under ryepin's influence, there is no longer any insidiousness of coloring. everything is seen clearly and strongly reproduced. no düsseldorferie and no anecdote painting. of course, they did not shun a subject useful in itself, and they by no means avoid a slight political tendency. but they are no less artists because they disdain to beg of the fanatics of "art for art's sake" the right to the name of artists by an exclusion of all but purely neutral subjects. on the contrary, in the na?veté in which they show themselves in their art as human beings of their time, they let it be known that the problem "art for art's sake" is for them without any meaning, since with them it is an axiom that they desire to influence only through the medium of their art; and yet they judge every work of art first of all in accordance with its artistic qualities. only they do not allow themselves by an apparently neutral, but in reality a reactionary, doctrine to be hindered from the expression of their sympathy for everything liberal, free, and human.
[pg 278]
there is, for instance, a picture there by doroschenko which bears the harmless title "everywhere is life." it might, yes, it ought really to hang in the gallery of the parisian, for it is a work of christian spirit. convicts are feeding doves from the railroad car which is carrying them into exile. as a painting it is excellent. the light falls full upon the whirring pigeons in the foreground and upon the convicts pressing their faces against the iron bars of the window of the car. one sees through the window, and notices on the far side of the car another barred window at which a man is standing and looking out. the interior of the car is almost dark. the group of convicts in the foreground consists of a young man, evidently the guilty one, and his wife, who is following him into exile with their year-old child on her bosom. for the sake of the child, and to please him, they are feeding the doves. a bearded old man looks on pleased, and a dark-bearded younger man, too, whom one might sooner believe guilty of some slight misdeed. but upon the face of all these exiles lies so childlike a brightness, so evident a sympathetic pleasure in the joy of the child, that one rather doubts their guilt than the fact that they are still capable of good-natured human feelings. and yet this picture of christian pity has not been bought for the parisian. for it is well understood, in spite of its harmless title, what its meaning is. "everywhere is life" should read, "everywhere is pity, everywhere humanity,[pg 279] except among the police, in the state, and in an autocracy." what guilt can these good little folk have committed—looking there so kindly at a child that cooingly feeds the doves—that they should be torn from their native hearth and be sent to the icy deserts of siberia? the young father—perhaps he went among the people teaching that a farmer was a man as well as the policeman (pristav). and one thinks with a shudder of the two thousand political convicts of the year before that were sent into the department of irkutsk....
such is the russian genre. it is full of references, but is never a mere illustration of some tendency or other. the painter does not make the solution of his problem easy, and does not speculate on the cooperative comprehension of the observer, who is satisfied if he finds his thoughts indicated. no, such a russian genre picture is perfect in the characteristic of the heads, in perspective, in the distribution of light and atmosphere. the purely picturesque, to be sure, is more evident in the landscape. and in this the russians do astonishing work. they have the eye of the child of nature for the peculiarities of the landscape—an eye which we in the west must train again. what west european writer could have been in a position to write nature studies like leo tolsto?'s cossacks, or like the "hay harvest" from anna karenina? and one might also ask, what west european has so studied the forest like schischkin, the sea like [pg 280]aiwasowsky, the river and the wind like levitan? there is a picture of schischkin's in the tretyakov gallery, "morning in the pine forest." a family of bears busy themselves about an enormous fallen, splintered pine. everything is alive; the comical little brown fellows are quite as true to nature as the moss in the foreground and the veil of mist before the trees in the background.
strange to say, schischkin is stronger in his etchings than in his oil-paintings, the colors of which are always a little too dry. but his etchings, which i could enjoy in their first prints, thanks to the goodness of the senator reutern in st. petersburg, are real treasures in sentiment and character. he is, if one may express it so, the psychologist of the trees. a tree on the dunes is a whole tragedy from the lives of the pines.
aiwasowsky, the virtuoso of the troubled sea, is more effective than the quiet schischkin. his storms at sea, with their transparent waves, actually drive terror into the onlooker. the black sea has been the favorite object of his pictures. there all the furies seem to be let loose in order to frighten fisher and sailor. and these floods shine and shimmer; they are as if covered with a transparent light. levitan, again, has understood the charm of the calm surface of a small body of water as no one else. his brush is dipped in feeling. the beauty of his pictures cannot be reproduced in words. he seems to have a special sense-organ for the shades of the[pg 281] atmosphere. it is a pity that he died so very young.
the collection of vereschtschagin has now obtained a particularly enhanced value because of the awful death of the master. the tretyakov gallery has, with the exception of the napoleonic pictures which ornament the alexander museum, almost the whole life-work of the artist. his work has only recently been universally appreciated. the power of the versatile man was astonishing; his philanthropic turn of mind and his epigrammatic spirit give spice to his pictures; but of him, first of all, perhaps, it might be said that he used his art for purposes foreign to it in spite of all artistic treatment. for it was seldom the artistic problem that charmed him. only his oriental color studies are to a certain extent free from ulterior purposes.
it is difficult to choose from this abundance of good masters, and particularly to name those whom one should know above the others. pictures cannot easily be made so accessible as books, and the contents of a picture does not permit of being told at all. and so i content myself with mentioning again the names of ryepin, schischkin, levitan, and aiwasowsky, and then those of the portrait-painter kramskoi, the landscape-painter gay, and the master of genre painting, makowski. and to any one whose path ever leads him to moscow, a visit to the tretyakov gallery is most urgently [pg 282]recommended. a people which produces such artists in every field as the russian has not only the right to the strongest self-consciousness, and to the general sympathy of people of culture, but, above all, it has the right to be respected by its rulers and not to be handled like a horde of slaves.
but, in spite of it all, light has not dawned upon those in power. you may resolve as often as you will in russia not to bother, for the space of a day, with the everlasting police, but, in spite of all, you will be continually coming into contact with them. our path from the tretyakov gallery to the hotel leads past a long, barrack-like building. we ask our companion its object. he at once tells us something of interest. first, the giant building is the manége, the drill-room for the soldiers in bad weather. its arched roof lies upon the walls without any interior support. the weight of the roof is so great that already the walls in many places have sagged and have had to be reinforced. architects had suggested alterations, which, however, would have cost countless thousands. such an expenditure could not be tolerated, and in the mean time the evil increased. already they were about to take a costly bite from the sour apple, when a small peasant appeared and promised for a hundred rubles to arrange matters in a single night. he simply bored, in the top of the leaden roof, a hole, through which the air could circulate, and immediately the roof lay like a feather upon the walls without [pg 283]endangering them any longer by its weight. such is the story of the moskvich. whether or not it is true, or is held to be so by people who know about such things, i do not venture to judge. but it seemed to me interesting enough to be told. but what interested me still more was the subsidiary use to which the building is put. it is near the university. now if a student disorder arises, they manage to surround the students by cossacks and drive them into this manége, where they are held behind lock and key, by thousands, until the worshipful officials have sought out those which may most to their purpose be called revolutionists. chance wills that generally the jews are held, since herr von plehve needs statistical proof for his theory of a purely jewish opposition.
his accusations may have served him among those above him, but not among those below him. i found that in moscow itself dealings between the intelligent christians and the few jews who are allowed upon the street were most hearty. the political bitterness, the desperate fight against the régime, unites them all; after the russian custom they exchange, embrace, and kiss at every meeting, jew or christian, provided they only be friends. it was for me, a westerner, an interesting and mortifying sight to see how young russian nobles with world-famous names kissed on the mouth and cheek in welcome and in farewell their jewish friends. with this impression i took my departure[pg 284] from moscow. terrible as the political pressure may be, the people have preserved one thing in this prison—their humanity. and thus they will one day attain happiness, just as they are in many things already happier than we, because they have remained human. for a well-known authoress, who begged me to write a few words in her album, i wrote the words which i shall here repeat, because they contain the sum of my russian impressions, particularly after the pleasing days in moscow: "russia is a sack, but it is inhabited by human beings. the west is free, but it knows almost none but business-men. i often almost believe that we ought to envy them...."
footnotes:
[12] referring to a modern independent art movement in europe.
[13] ubermenschenthum. cf. philosophy of nietzsche
