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to show that Ilia’s feeling of duty is conclusively
significant in relation to the idea of community, which
is the Russian fundamental idea for the Slavophiles.
They see in Ilia’s indifference towards mere personality,
and his willingness to serve the common cause, a symbol
of the original tendency of the Russian spirit to
community in family, society, and state.[1]
Besides this popular epic poem, moreover, the
Russian literature possesses in “The Story of Igor’s
Campaign” an old epic of art of very high rank, corresponding
to what the “Song of Roland” is for the French, and
the Niebelungenlied for the Germans, but which,
nevertheless, has the fault, which would be very serious in
the eyes of the Germans, of being much shorter.
This was written a very short time after the event
which it describes: the campaign which Igor Sviatoslavitch,
one of the princes from Novgorod-Sieversk, in
1155, undertook against the pagan Polovtsians, a nomadic
tribe of Turco-Finnish descent, who lived on the banks
of the Don and were continually attacking the careless
Russians. Igor was a cousin of the Prince Imperial of
Kief, who the year before, with other princes, had
conducted a victorious expedition against the Polovtsians.
Now, for his own part, he wished to cover himself with
honor, and therefore sallied forth with his brother
Vsevolod, “the wild bull,” to whom he was greatly
attached, and his son Vladimir. But his expedition
was unfortunate; he was himself taken prisoner and
with great difficulty escaped from captivity by the aid of
a trusty esquire. We have the same incident related in
the old Russian chronicle of the monk Ipat, one of those
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