John MacKail's Overview of the Golden and Silver Ages of Russian Culture [J. W. MacKail, Russia's Gift to the World (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915), pp. 4-48] - I am she whose hands are strong and her eyes blinded
And lips athirst,
Till upon the night of nations many-minded
One bright day burst. - SWINBURNE, A-Litany of Nations (1868).
- Poor and abundant,
Down-trodden and almighty,
Art thou, our Mother Russia. - NEKRASOV, Who is Happy in Russia? (1873)
RUSSIA'S GIFT TO THE WORLD Instances of the greatness of our ignorance are the common beliefs that the Russians are an Asiatic race, and that they speak a barbarous language. The facts are quite the contrary. The Slavs are,
like ourselves, pure Aryans ; they are cousins of the Latins and the Celts and the Germans, and have exactly the same claim as these other nations to be counted European. The countries occupied by them used at one time to extend all over Northern Germany as far west as the Elbe, and even now there are Slav peoples in large numbers in the heart of Central Europe. So, too, about their language. The Russian language, which is spoken (with some varieties of dialect) by more than 100,000,000 people, is one of the richest and noblest of human languages. It provides as valuable a mental discipline as any other modern language, perhaps even as Greek or Latin, and it is a language in which many great works of literature, as we shall see later, have been written.
Not only is there great ignorance of Russia in England, but, as always is the result of ignorance, great misunderstanding. The popular notions about Russia are not only imperfect but absurd. They are derived partly from a distorted legend of the Crimean War, partly from sympathy with nationalities or causes which the Russian Government has treated badly, and very largely from fiction. This last is not even Russian fiction, but the fiction of English or French writers who were wholly ignorant of Russia. The Russian nobleman, the Russian spy, the Russian conspirator, as they are popularly conceived, are figures of melodrama or of comic opera, not of actual life. To novel writers Russia has been a happy hunting ground, where they could lay on their colours as they chose and make scenes as fantastic as those of the Arabian Nights. | |
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