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Updated: May 23, 2025
This book is broad enough in scope and content to serve as the foundation of Russian fiction, and to sustain the wonderful work of Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. All the subsequent great novels in Russia point back to "Dead Souls." No two books could possibly show a greater contrast than "Taras Bulba" and "Dead Souls."
And the farther, apparently, it is from life the more abstract, the more fiery is their thought, the deeper it enters into their lives. O strange young Russia!" Merezhkovski is talking of the heroes of Dostoevski; but his remark is applicable to the work of nearly all Russian novelists, and especially to Chekhov and Andreev.
He lacks the tremendous force of Tolstoi, the flawless perfection of Turgenev, and the mighty world-embracing sympathy of Great-heart Dostoevski. But he is a faithful interpreter of Russian life, and although his art was objective, one cannot help feeling the essential goodness of the man behind his work, and loving him for it.
It is largely autobiographical; the hero's epileptic fits are described as only an epileptic could describe them, more convincingly than even so able a writer as Mr. De Morgan diagnoses them in "An Affair of Dishonour." Dostoevski makes the convulsion come unexpectedly; Mr. De Morgan uses the fit as a kind of moral punctuation point.
He was surpassed by Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi, but had he lived, he would have rejoiced in their superior art, just as every great teacher delights in being outstripped by his pupils. He is the real leader of the giant three, and they made of his lonely path a magnificent highway for human thought.
The soul of Russian fiction is the great thing." This is, indeed, the main difference between his work and that of the giant Dostoevski. In the latter's darkest scenes the spiritual flame is never extinct. Gorki lacks either the patient industry or else the knowledge necessary to make a good novel. He is seen at his best in short stories, for his power comes in flashes.
As Merezhkovski puts it: "This victim of poverty dealt with money as if he held it not an evil, but utter rubbish. Dostoevski thinks he loves money, but money flees him. Tolstoi thinks he hates money, but money loves him, and accumulates about him. The one, dreaming all his life of wealth, lived, and but for his wife's business qualities would have died, a beggar.
His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judged by his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply from Tolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always the main thing.
That is why I am sometimes honestly amazed to meet in the provinces so few psychologists and so many imbeciles." Never again did Dostoevski write a book containing so little of himself, and so little of the native Russian element. Leaving out the exaggeration, it might apply to almost any village in any country, and instead of sympathy, it shows only scorn.
In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought to find all the prominent traits in the Russian character.
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