CHAPTER XIII
THOUGHTS ON THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
I
IT is difficult to interest the educated Englishman in a subject so widely remote from his intellectual horizon as the study of the Russian language; and even the Oxford classical scholar, who, it is true, is prodigiously ignorant outside the narrow range of his professional studies, knows nearly as much about the dialects of the Bantu tribes of Central Africa, as about the language of Tolstoy. This dense ignorance and stupid insularity cannot continue for ever. Already the University of Liverpool, under the able leadership of Professor Pares, has done splendid work in promoting intellectual intercourse between Great Britain and Russia. Under the stimulus of the modern universities—more progressive than the older seats of learning—the coming generation will, sooner or later, awaken to the existence of a language which provides as valuable a mental discipline and gymnastic as any classical language, which possesses almost as creative and as original a literature as the Greek, and a much richer one than the Latin, and which has this further claim on our attention that it is the language of an imperial people which will sooner or later dominate the political world. Already Russian is the dominant language of 175,000,000 people. In ten years it will be spoken by 200,000,000 people. In 1950 it will be spoken by 300,000,000. Nor must we forget the important fact that Russian is the key to a dozen other Slavonic languages, and especially that it is closely allied to the Bulgarian language, and to the Serbian language, which itself is destined to become one day the language of an imperial federation, extending from Dalmatia and Croatia in the West to the Iron Gates in the North and Salonica in the South.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that Slavonic or ecclesiastical Russian is the common sacred language of all the Greek Orthodox Slav nations.
II
The Russian language is one of the most ancient of European languages. The structure and morphology of its grammar, as well as its vocabulary, bring us nearer than any other living tongue to the older Indo-European tongues, Sanscrit and Lithuanian. Yet, in another sense, Russian may also be said to be one of the most recent of modern languages. It is true that as a spoken language and as the language of poetry it has produced from the early Middle Ages an inexhaustible literature of epic and song. But as a written and literary language, as a vehicle of prose, the Russian tongue is almost of yesterday. I have always firmly believed that linguistic development is not an evolutionary, unconscious process, but a conscious activity, that it is not natural but artificial because artistic. The history of Russian as a literary language fully confirms my theory. It might almost be contended that as a literary medium it has not grown, but has been made, and that even as the Russian State itself, the Russian language has been built up deliberately by philologists and academicians, and that its grammatical laws have been codified almost as autocratically as its political laws, although less arbitrarily. It is strange that reforming Russian despots like Peter, and Catherine the Great, although German princes by origin, should have realized the importance of the Russian language as a great moral and political force, and that they should have encouraged its study at a time when even German rulers, like Frederick the Great, professed nothing but contempt for their national German tongue. In one sense it may be said that some of those foreign rulers had a clearer consciousness of the magnificent future which lay before the Russian language than even the Russian aristocracy. For the Russian aristocracy continued to sacrifice native culture to French culture. While they themselves spoke the language of Voltaire, they left the native tongue to the Muzhik. Readers of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" will remember how, in the salons of Moscow, the Muscovite magnates would use the French language even when cursing their French invaders, and how they would submit to the manners of Napoleonic France in the very act of repelling her political influence.
Keeping these historical facts in mind, it may, therefore, be asserted that Russian as a modern vehicle of national culture is barely one century old. The publication of the great "History of Karamzin" may be taken as marking the beginning of the linguistic and literary consciousness of the Russian people. It is all the more necessary to impress this fact upon our minds, if we want duly to appreciate the marvellous results which the Russian language has achieved in so incredibly short a time.
III
Having existed for ages mainly as an oral language, as the language of song and romance, and continuing a precarious and humble existence as the voice of the down-trodden and inarticulate serf, the Russian language would probably have been broken up into dialects innumerable, and the Russian nationality itself would have been submerged in the nationality of its hereditary enemies, the Poles, if the ancient speech had not been preserved in its essential forms in the language of the Church and the translation of the Bible. Church Slavonic has done for the Russian people what the translation of Ulfilas did for the Goths, what Luther's Bible has done for the Germans, what the Authorized Version has done for the English. It has supplied an ideal standard of speech, a testo de lingua, which makes the study of Slavonic indispensable for literary as well as for political purposes. But Slavonic has done a great deal more for the Russian people; it has welded together not only the Russian nation but the orthodox Slav peoples. It is, therefore, not too much to say that the translation of St. Cyril and St. Methodius and the apostolate of the two Slav brothers, has been one of the half-dozen decisive events of the history of the modern world, as decisive as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar or as the Empire of Charlemagne. For it is mainly through the creation of ecclesiastical Slavonic that the southern Slavs have been drawn into and maintained in the orbit of Great Russia, and it is as the result of the achievement of St. Cyril and St. Methodius that the Mosque of St. Sophia will be in future ages the metropolitan cathedral of all the orthodox Slavs of Eastern Christendom.
IV
It is deeply to be regretted that the academicians and philologists who, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had to fix the standard of the Russian language, and who had to perform the difficult task of cutting straight roads through the dense forest of the old Russian language, should not have cut down some of the rank undergrowth of the Russian grammar, and that they should not have taken their cue from their French teachers, those great masters of logic and simplicity. Unfortunately, even after the reforming labours of eighteenth-century grammarians, like Lomonosov, that giant among Russian pioneers, the Russian language remains the most complex of European languages, and the accentuation of its nouns and the flexions and aspects of its verbs are the despair of the bewildered student. It is also unfortunate that, largely under the influence of bad German novels, the Russian writers should favour the ponderous periodical style, and that they too frequently express in an involved participial clause what a French writer would express in a noun clause. I firmly believe that Russian writers would enormously improve if in ninety cases out of a hundred they followed the French analytical way rather than the synthetical German way. At the same time it must be admitted that even though many of the grammatical forms are an embarras de richesses and might be sacrificed to advantage, the majority contribute to the substantial wealth of the Russian speech, and enable it to express the subtlest shades of meaning, and to range over the whole gamut of human emotion. One preposition or prefix like po or za will enable the Russian to express the beginning or the continuation or the repetition of action. A few suffixes will enable the Russian to give free expression to every contradictory feeling. Whereas the English language—probably alone among European tongues—has sacrificed such means of expression as diminutives and augmentatives, the Russian language has treasured and multiplied this invaluable means of emotional expression, and is able to express merely by a slight modification in the ending of a word, every degree of affection and hatred, of familiarity or contempt.
To the uneducated there may be little difference between "ancient mariner" and "old sailor"; but for literary purposes there is a gulf between the Anglo-Saxon and the French-Norman words. Even so, to the uninitiated, the niceties of Russian grammar may be only a game of pedants, but to the artist that game of pedants gives full scope to all the resources of the literary craft; and, therefore, only the literary craftsman can appreciate all the possibilities of that wonderful instrument, the Russian language, and only he can realize its tremendous difficulty. I remember Maxim Gorky telling me once that, in his opinion, there were only three men in the whole history of Russian literature who had perfect control of their instrument, namely, Pushkin, Turgenev, and Chekhov. Of Turgenev it is certainly true to say that he is the one supreme master of prose whom Russian literature has produced. His intense appreciation of and his intimate familiarity with the French language only made him more keenly conscious of the superior beauty and of the wider possibilities of his native tongue. He admired it and loved it, as only a great artist could love the vehicle of his art. During the reign of Nicholas I, in the darkest hour of Russian reaction, when bureaucratic corruption, military despotism, and ecclesiastic obscurantism were supreme, one thought alone kept awake the faith of Turgenev in the future of the race. He only retained his belief for the apparently irrelevant reason that a race which had proved capable of creating such a wonderful language as Russian must indeed be called to a glorious destiny.
V
Still with all our admiration for the Russian tongue, the question forces itself upon us: Is not the very existence of this wonderful language an obstacle in the path of civilization? Will it not for ever prevent Western culture from gaining access to the Empire of the Tsars? Will it not for ever keep Russia isolated from Europe? It is strange that while Nature has established no physical barrier between Eastern and Western Europe, and has made one unbroken plain extending for thousands of miles, men should have erected this formidable intellectual barrier of language between the Latin, the Teuton, and the Slav.
But whether the existence of this formidable linguistic barrier is a blessing or a curse, whether we have cause to regret that, merely through the existence of the Russian language Russia can never be assimilated to Europe, or whether we have cause to rejoice that the existence of so difficult a language should maintain inviolate the originality and independence of the Russian people, one fact is certain, that the linguistic obstacle will be greater in the future than in the past. And the sooner we realize this and the consequences which it entails, the better it will be for the mutual relationship of European powers.
If the Latin, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Teuton are to be brought into close communion with the Slav, they will have to make this effort to meet him on his own linguistic ground. Hitherto, the educated Russian has taken the trouble to learn the European languages, but the time is coming when the European will be expected by the Russian to learn the Russian tongue. As Russian patriotism becomes more self-conscious and, therefore, more sensitive, as Russian culture becomes more self-supporting, there will be a complete change in the relative position of the languages of the world. For instance, the Russian, who neither loves nor admires the Teuton, must necessarily ask himself why he, possessing a more original and a more humane culture than that of the Teuton, should go out of his way to learn German and why he should not expect and compel the German to learn Russian!
And from his own point of view the Russian is quite right. There is no answer to his objections, and there is only one way out of the difficulty. If the coming generation wants to derive the fullest advantage of intellectual and moral intercourse with what promises to be the most original culture which the world has seen since the Renaissance, Europe will have to make the study of Russian a compulsory branch of the humanities. Pedants continue to wrangle whether they should preserve Latin or Greek or both in the education of the young. I am convinced that the near future will force upon us an unexpected solution of the "Battle of Tongues." Although to the pedagogue of to-day it may appear as the wildest of visions, I confidently prophesy that before the schoolboy of to-day will have attained to mature age, the study of Russian will take the place of Greek in the schools of Europe; the study of Vladimir Soloviov[1] will take the place of his master Plato; Karamzin and Pushkin will replace Livy and Virgil. Before the first half of the century has run its course, Slav culture will at last come into its inheritance, and will take its revenge for the unjust neglect of the West.
- ↑ A complete English version of "War, Progress and the End of History," Soloviov's best known work, has just been published by Alfred A. Knopf.