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Russian literature

Chapter 40: FOOTNOTES:
By kniaz Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesRussian Literature

About This Book

A series of lectures surveys Russian literary development from folk songs and medieval chronicles through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, outlining how language, genres, and social conditions shaped poetic, prose, and dramatic forms. The author sketches early influences, then examines leading poets, novelists, dramatists, and critics—treating representative works and currents associated with figures such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. Themes include realism, the interplay of art and social and political ideas, the nation’s linguistic richness, and the influential role of criticism. Throughout, literature is presented as a primary medium for expressing collective aspirations and moral debates.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The only exception to be made is the scene with the two old people in Virgin Soil. It is useless and out of place. To have introduced it was simply “a literary whim.”

[15] Taken from the excellent translation by Mrs. Constance Garnett, in Heinemann’s edition of Turguéneff’s works.

[16] This has struck most critics. Thus, speaking of War and Peace, Písareff wrote: “The images he has created have their own life, independently of the intentions of the author; they enter into direct relations with the readers, speak for themselves, and unavoidably bring the reader to such thoughts and conclusions as the author never had in view and of which he, perhaps, would not approve.” (Works, VI. p. 420.)

[17] Introduction to the Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and to an Analysis of the Christian Teaching, or Confession; Vol. 1 of Tchertkoff’s edition of Works prohibited by the Russian Censorship (in Russian), Christchurch, 1902, p. 13.

[18] “That which some people told me, and of which I sometimes had tried to persuade myself—namely, that a man should desire happiness, not for himself only, but for others, his neighbours, and for all men as well: this did not satisfy me. Firstly, I could not sincerely desire happiness for others as much as for myself; secondly, and chiefly, others, in like manner as myself, were doomed to unhappiness and death, and therefore all my efforts for other people’s happiness were useless. I despaired.” The understanding that personal happiness is best found in the happiness of all did not appeal to him, and the very striving towards the happiness of all, and an advance towards it, he thus found insufficient as a purpose in life.

[19] See Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Münster, 1521-1536, by Richard Heath (Baptist Manuals, I, 1895).

[20] The Christian Teaching, Introduction, p. vi. In another similar passage he adds Marcus Aurelius and Lao-tse to the above-mentioned teachers.

[21] What is my Belief, ch. X, p. 145 of Tchertkoff’s edition of Works prohibited by Russian Censorship. On pp. 18 and 19 of the little work, What is Religion and What is its Substance. Tolstóy expresses himself even more severely about “Church Christianity.” He also gives us in this remarkable little work his ideas about the substance of religion altogether, from which one can deduct its desirable relations to science, to synthetic philosophy, and to philosophical ethics.