Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - V
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race — justice, reason, supreme goodness, happiness —
are a matter of indifference to nature, and never assert
themselves by their own spiritual power. In “Senilia,”
he has represented Nature as a woman, sitting clad in
wide green kirtle, in the middle of a hall in the depths
of the earth, lost in meditation.
“‘Oh, our common mother!’ he asks, ‘what art thou
thinking of? Is it on the future fate of the human
race? Is it on the necessary conditions for its reaching
the highest possible perfection, the greatest possible
happiness?’
“The woman slowly turns her dark, piercing, dreadful
eyes towards me; her lips half opened and I heard a
voice which rang as when iron comes in contact with
iron.
“‘I am thinking how I can give the muscles of the
flea greater power so that it can more easily escape
from the persecutions of its enemies. There is no
equilibrium between the attack and defence: it must be
restored.’
“‘What!’ stammered I, ‘is it that you are thinking
of? But we, the human race, are we not your
children?’
“She wrinkled her eyebrows imperceptibly.
“‘All animals are my children,’ said she; ‘I care
equally for them all, and I exterminate them all in the
same manner.’”
Here you have his character of melancholy. When
Gogol is melancholy, it is because he is indignant; when
Dostoyevski is so, it depends upon the fact that he is
dissolved in sympathy with the ignorant and the obscure,
with the saint-like, noble, and pure of heart, and almost
even more with sinners both male and female; Tolstoï’s
melancholy has its root in his religious fatalism.
Turgenief alone is a philosopher.
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