Title | Russia's gift to the world |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Hodder and Stoughton |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1915 |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 48 pages; 22 cm. |
Original Item Location | DK32.7.M3 1915 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304497~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 18 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_1315132_017.jpg |
Transcript | 16 Russia's Gift to the World i and not only an artist and a prophet but a child, with the child's terrible simplicity and insight. In all these qualities he is unique, but yet characteristically Russian. All the three were alike in their passionate love of Russia, as well as in their power of interpreting Russia to mankind. But their love of Russia worked out differently. The patriotism of Turgenev reached out towards accepting and assimilating the influences of the West. That of Dostoyevsky rebelled against these influences ; it was more self-confined, but more intense. That of Tolstoy was not patriotism at all in the ordinary sense,; his love of Russia was an instinct, and he wrote of Russia because he found in it a symbol of the whole of humanity. And so he drew more and more from the life of the Russian peasantry (who are nine-tenths of the nation), because in them he found the nearest approach to practical Christianity, to the attitude of little children which is inculcated by the Gospel, and in which he discerned the secret of life. These three great writers tower up among a mass of others, who, by themselves, would make Russian literature remarkable. Most of them are hardly known in England except among Russian scholars, and it would be idle to give a long list of mere names, but a few of the more outstanding poets and prose authors may be mentioned. In prose we have to take special note of Gogol, the novelist and playwright, who has been called the Russian Dickens ; he was the founder of realism in Russian literature, and his work is full of fun and humour. These qualities are rather rare in Russian art, which is habitually serious—sometimes almost oppressively so to the Western mind. In them he is akin to English writers. The French critic, Prosper Merimee, put this in a pointed way when he called him " one of the best English humorists." With him may be named Belinsky, the creator of Russian literary i * *•* |