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Igor starts upon his unfortunate ride to the Don: the
sun is darkened, the night groans, the beasts howl in
anticipation of the impending danger. Both Yaroslávna
and Igor, on their part, address winds and streams as
if they were men; nay, give them titles and complimentary
words just as plainly as it is done in the Iliad
two thousand years before. And the river Donyets gives
Igor an answer. The living naturalism, the transfer of
human qualities and emotions to nature, is so prominent
here that it is noticed as the expressive personal naïveté
of the characteristic poet.
Finally, the patriotism of this epic and of its author is
characteristic in the highest degree. Patriotism
permeates and constitutes its motive; a love for the
Russian land, which breaks forth not only in mourning over
the triumph of the heathen Polovtsians, but even more
vehemently in wrath and laments on account of the
discord between the Russian princes who, at the close of
this pregnant period, rent the land asunder with civil war.
When the defeat is sustained, the singer exclaims: —
“The grass bowed down in pain. The crowns of the
trees bowed down to the earth in sorrow. For the
cheerless time was already come, brothers, when it was void
of power, when injustice spread itself in the ranks of
the descendants of Dazhbog [princely power]. Quiet,
like a young girl, it stole into our land, and, as if with
the wings of a swan, dabbled in the waters of the Don
and of the blue sea. It awakened the hours of disaster.
Then the contests of the princes against the heathen
were broken off; brother said to brother, ‘This is mine,
even this also is mine.’ And the princes began to say
about small things, ‘This is great.’ But the heathens
from all sides fell down upon the Russian land.”
The old poet is a skilful battle-painter. Like the
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