| <trailer><p> <Westralian Worker,> <22 February 1918> 
| <pb n="2"> </p></trailer> <headline><p> <Our Bookshelf.> 
| <Literary Midwives of New Russia.> 
| <(By "Vigilant.")></p></headline>
| <p> In the midst of the current journalistic piffle 
| about Russia and the Russians, it is refreshing to 
| pick up a volume like Maurice Baring's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Outline of Russian 
| Literature" </title> <mdash>-</mdash> a work from the 
| pen of a man who not only knows, but also loves, 
| Russia. </p>
| <p> The soul of a people is its literature. Without an 
| understanding of that its history, its race-genius, 
| its current politics are utterly unintelligible. 
| Imagine the English tongue without Shakespeare, or 
| the English Bible! Half the phrases of the language 
| would be meaningless, for their significance depends 
| entirely upon the associations of ideas they evoke. 
| And this is rendered no less true by the fact that 
| the majority of Englishmen read neither Shakespeare 
| nor the Bible. To take a more homely example: 
| Everyone knows what "Sour grapes" means. But if those 
| words were translated literally into the tongue of a 
| race that had never heard the story of 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "The Fox and the 
| Grapes," </title> they would become entirely 
| meaningless. </p>
| <p > Now let us glance at the reverse of the medal. In 
| Easter, 1916, some floating mines picked up in the 
| Black Sea were found to be labelled, "Christ has 
| risen." The kernel of the gibe lies in the old 
| Russian custom of the "Easter kiss." After leaving 
| Church on Easter Sunday, the members of the 
| congregation salute one another by kissing, and at 
| the same time remarking, "Christ has risen." The 
| cable-man referred to the incident as "German 
| blasphemy," but, in ignorance of the allusion, the 
| blasphemy must have appeared quite meaningless. </p>
| <p> The same unimaginative people read reports of 
| speeches by a Russian like, say, Lenin, and fail to 
| grasp the fact that the true significance of his 
| utterance resides in the allusions he makes to 
| literary classics, historical events, myths and 
| fables, etc., which every Russian understands, but 
| which are unknown to the average Englishman. How 
| dense our ignorance of Russia is may be gathered from 
| the following excerpt from Mr Baring"s work:~~ 
| <q> 
| </q> Russian criticism and philosophy, as 
| well as almost the whole of Russian poetry, is 
| completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge 
| of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit 
| of literature, consists in, is still a sealed book as 
| far as England is concerned. </p>
| <p> Russia's literary history is as bloody and 
| tear-smirched as her political chronicles. In 1790 the 
| publication of a simple and unexaggerated account of 
| the condition of the serfs, entitled 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> 
| "A Journey from St Petersburg to 
| Moscow," </title> sent its author, Radischev, on an 
| enforced journey to Eastern Siberia, from which he 
| returned only to commit suicide at the prospect of a 
| renewal of his exile. The Decembrist rising in 1825 
| had for object the establishment of a limited 
| monarchy on the English model. Its downfall cost 
| Russia the life of Ryleev, author of the magnificent 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> Vision of 
| Enslaved Russia" </title>; and Pushkin, the greatest 
| of Russian poets, only escaped by accident. Exile, 
| voluntary or compulsory, was the fate of scores; and 
| the terrible ordeal of Fedor Dostoyevsky in itself 
| was sufficient to tinge the literature of a whole 
| generation. He and a number of others, for no greater 
| offence than membership of what we would call an 
| economic class, were sentenced to death, and were 
| actually upon the scaffold when an order arrived 
| reducing the sentence to eight years' penal servitude 
| in Siberia. Dostoyevsky served his time; and later 
| became one of the world's greatest novelists. 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Crime and 
| Punishment," </title> his greatest work, was published 
| in 1866, and met with prodigious success, but the 
| author spent the greater part of his life on the 
| verge of starvation. Upon his death in 1881 he was 
| followed to the grave by 40,000 of his 
| countrymen. </p> 
| <p> This sketch, brief though it must be, of 
| Dostoyevsky's life, is typical of the lot of the 
| Russian author. Not all were equally poor <mdash>-</mdash>
| some were affluent <mdash>-</mdash> but the 
| tyranny of the Tsars <mdash>-</mdash> the great 
| sadness of Russia <mdash>-</mdash> pursued all 
| relentlessly. </p>
| <p>One personality, and one only, overbore all 
| opposition. It was that of Count Leo Tolstoy. None 
| dared touch him. His influence over men's minds was 
| so mighty that, had he chosen, the power lay in him 
| alone to create Free Russia. But he chose otherwise, 
| and died <mdash>-</mdash> as the world knows 
| <mdash>–</mdash> on the road to a monastery. </p>
| <p> Tyranny has uncalculated results. Mr Baring 
| ascribes the essential democracy of the real heart of 
| Russia to the reaction against autocracy. Whether we 
| turn to the work of Conservative or Liberal. Orthodox 
| of Materialist, we find that the literature of Russia 
| breathes a spirit of democracy, a breath of revolt, a 
| promise of revolution, unique in the world of 
| letters. </p>
| <p> Under whatever guise the writer appears, he cannot 
| escape it, even when he would. It moans in agony in 
| Radischev's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Journey." </title> It gleams prophetic in 
| Ryleev's vision of <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> 
| "Enslaved Russia," </title> in Chekhov's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Seagull." </title> In 
| Dostoyevsky's psychological novels it wears the 
| sackcloth of patient humility, in Tolstoy's essays 
| the gown of philosophy. But in all alike it lives, it 
| moves. Even the enervating, rosewater atmosphere of 
| Pushkin and Turgenev cannot drug it to sleep, nor can 
| the fire and sword of the Cossack destroy it. </p>
| <p> The same Sprit moves triumphant in the Revolution 
| today. A people suckled at the breasts of so mighty a 
| mother cannot be prevailed against for ever. Now that 
| the hour has struck, and Russia at last has raised 
| the cup of Freedom to her lips, 'twere vain hope that 
| she will fail to drain it to the dregs. </p>
| <p> We need be little concerned by obviously inspired 
| articles on Russia, which proceed from quarters where 
| the Social Revolution of the Bolsheviks inspires far 
| more, and more real dread than the military menace of 
| Germany. In fact, our precious papers go so far as to 
| barrack for the Ukraine despite their treasonable 
| betrayal of the democratic peace demand of the North. 
| People like that remind us of a certain Swiss 
| conference of Allied and enemy capitalists that 
| wasn't banned by the Allied Governments. </p>
| <p>No, Russia is at heart enlivened with a democracy 
| more true, more human, then her Western sisters can 
| even understand. Kropotkin, speaking shortly after 
| the 1905 Revolution, declared to an English Trade 
| Union Conference, the Free Russia would astound the 
| world. Kropotkin is a scholarly Russian <mdash>-</mdash>
| not a week-end tourist of the Fraser 
| type. </p>
| <p> Dostoyevsky's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Crime and Punishment" </title> affords us an 
| excellent example of this democracy of the soul. The 
| novel is a study of the tortured conscience of a 
| murdered, Raskolnikov. The scene may be said to be 
| laid inside the murderer’s mind. We wander through 
| the haunted corridors, seeking ever a way out, and 
| ever we come suddenly upon <mdash>-</mdash> the 
| corpse of the victim. Then Sonia, an unfortunate 
| child who is supporting a consumptive mother and 
| drunken father upon the proceeds of prostitution, 
| meets Raskolnikov, and persuades him to confess. He 
| kneels before her, and makes the confession, 
| declaring: <q> 
| </q> 
| says Mr Baring, <q> 
| </q> More, it is the attitude of 
| all the literature of Russia. Maxim Gorky makes one 
| of his characters reply to the question "What are 
| you?" with the words "A man." <q> 
| </q> says a reviewer, <q> 
| </q> Therein lies the key to the 
| democracy of Russia. </p>
| <p> Mr Baring's look is not written for all and 
| sundry. It is for the advanced student, and has a bad 
| habit of talking pages of French. Besides, the Perth 
| booksellers make a practice of limiting their stock 
| in such volumes to a single copy <mdash>-</mdash> a 
| shrewd commentary upon Senator Pearce's talk about 
| the superior intelligence of Western Australia! But 
| Dostoyevsky's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Crime and Punishment" </title> is published by 
| the "Everyman" Library (1/9 in Perth), and Tolstoy's 
| and Turgenev's works are generally available in cheap 
| editions. Andreev's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Red Laugh </title> (on war), and 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Sabine Women" </title> 
| (a satire), and Garshin's Crimean stories, are well 
| worth picking up, should a copy come the reader's 
| way.