Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - II
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with firm faith that whatever the Tsar regarded as right
is right.
After Pushkin’s early death (1837), Zhukovski
occupied the position of Russia’s leading poet, distinguished
at the imperial court in every manner, even appointed
as the civil tutor of the Prince Imperial Alexander
(afterwards Alexander II.). If he is now remembered
with gratitude in Russia, it is, significantly enough,
more on account of the humane influence he exerted on
the young prince, who was admirably endowed by nature,
than on account of his literary services. He dared to
put in a word for many a political offender, whom a man
who was not in so good standing or less courageous would
never have dared to name, and he thereby accomplished
a great deal of good. We see from Alexander Herzen’s
“Reminiscences,” that he procured a considerable
diminution of the burdens of exile for this great man, who as
a youth was languishing in Viatka.[1] When Zhukovski,
after 1840, took up his residence in Germany, where at
the age of fifty-seven he married a girl of nineteen, who
worshipped his talent, he had the affliction of finding
out how the rule of his dear native country was hated
and despised by all thinking men in the foreign land.
The intellectual agitations of young Germany, and still
more the revolution of 1848, shook him fearfully, and
gave him the most melancholy pietism in all its force.
He lived in Frankfort for some time in company writh
Gogol, in whom the re-action had already been accomplished
which converted him from the wittiest and most
caustic mocker of the Russian situation to a poor, sick
admirer of absolute power and a mystic obscurantist,
who lay for whole days prostrate before shrines. The
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