Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
has shaken off. The Russian satiety goes deeper than
the Polish, and at the same time leaves room for more
force. The Pole presents a weak side from his Polish
dilettante desire to distinguish himself in every
department; the Russian is of harder metal. The Polish ideal
is, and continues to be, grace; the Russian, force.
If we now place the two typical Russian characters
sketched here side by side, we shall notice that, however
different they are, they have this in common, that the
anticipation and struggles of their youth have been made
of no avail by circumstances, so that they have been
forced by necessity to be smaller men than they were
framed for, hardened, practical materialists, in no
situation to do anything profitable for others than themselves,
and entertaining their ideals as one cherishes a harmless
eccentricity.
The two currents in Russian intellectual life, which at
once strike every observer, the tendency towards
Western Europe, the disposition to acclimatize and further
develop the general European culture, and the tendency
inward, the national self-absorption, with a hostile
attitude towards “the Gentiles” in the west, are most
plainly personified in those Tsars of great historic
renown, Peter the Great and Nicholas, two fundamental
Russian types.
If you go still farther back, you find both these
characteristics united in the old Muscovite Tsars, Iván
III. and Iván IV. the Terrible, the latter being
especially important. He has well been characterized as a
combination of Louis XI. of France and Henry VIII.
of England: a mystical, bloody tyrant and prudent
monarch like the former, and having about as many
wives as the latter. It looks as if Peter the Great
broke with all the traditions from the old Muscovite
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
