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As a dramatist, Ostróvsky is above all else a realist; no more thoroughly natural dramas than his were ever composed. Yet as a master of realistic technique he must not be compared with Ibsen, or even with many less noted men among modern dramatists. His plays have not the neat, concise construction that we prize to-day.
'My friend, said the poet, 'the thinker in music is the man who writes your solos. His thoughts exist whether you play them or not and independently of your false notes. But you performers are all alike I have no doubt the leading man who plays my Hamlet will imagine his is the higher activity. But woe be to those fellows if they change a syllable! 'Your Hamlet? sneered Ostrovsky. 'Since when?
From his account Aratov learnt that Clara Militch's real name was Katerina Milovidov; that her father, now dead, had held the post of drawing-master in a school in Kazan, had painted bad portraits and holy pictures of the regulation type; that he had besides had the character of being a drunkard and a domestic tyrant; that he had left behind him, first a widow, of a shopkeeper's family, a quite stupid body, a character straight out of an Ostrovsky comedy; and secondly, a daughter much older than Clara and not like her a very clever girl, and enthusiastic, only sickly, a remarkable girl and very advanced in her ideas, my dear boy!
All these writers have such a direct and powerful influence on contemporary youth that we are going to study them separately in this book, not excepting Tchekoff, whose influence is still enormous. Since the death of the prophet of Yasnaya-Polyana, Russian literature cannot boast of any writers who compare with Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, or the dramatist Ostrovsky.
Gerhart Hauptmann and Robert Hichens; Voltaire and Henry Van Dyke; Flaubert and John Fox, Jr.; Balzac and John Kendrick Bangs; Ostrovsky and E. Phillips Oppenheim; Elinor Glyn and Théophile Gautier; Joseph Conrad and Robert W. Chambers; Zola and Zangwill!...
But Ostrovsky fooled them in their naïve simplicity; he heaped up all of his possessions in his little cottage and then set fire to it. He no longer thought of justice; he was nothing but a despairing man.
'I translated Shakespeare yes, but into modern terms. The Ghost vanished Hamlet's tragedy remained only the internal incapacity of the thinker for the lower activity of action. The men of action pricked up their ears. 'The higher activity, you mean, corrected Ostrovsky. 'Thought, said Benjamin Tuch, 'has no value till it is translated into action.
Hence both by his home life and by his professional training he was brought into contact with types such as Bolshóv and Rizpolozhensky in "It's a Family Affair We'll Settle It Ourselves." As a boy of seventeen Ostróvsky had already developed a passion for the theatre.
As a matter of fact, Ivan, after a railway journey of sixty hours, arrived in Moscow on the evening of one day, and remained at the Slaviansky Bazaar until the afternoon of the next. During this brief period, he was besieged by visitors of every description, from the barest acquaintances, to men like Balakirev and Ostrovsky; and, to the general chagrin, all were alike refused.
Ostróvsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostróvsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth.
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