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Updated: May 3, 2025
The theatres are empty, the weather is wretched, there are no frosts at all. Jean Shteheglov is captivated by the Tolstoyans. Merezhkovsky sits at home as of old, lost in a labyrinth of deep researches, and as of old is very nice; of Chekhov they say he has married the heiress Sibiryakov and got five millions dowry all Petersburg is talking of it.
Unlike Gorky, Andreyev, and Tchekoff, Merezhkovsky was brought up in the midst of comfort and elegance; he received a correct and careful education; fate was solicitous for him, in that it allowed him to develop that spirit of objective observation and calm meditation which permits a man to look down on the spectacle of life, and indulge in philosophical speculations very often divorced from reality.
"The positivism which the Russian 'intellectuals' have adopted by way of imitation is rejected by their feelings, their conscience, and their will; it is an artificial monument that is set up in their minds only." Merezhkovsky, then, has reason for thinking that the social renovation of Christianity will be accomplished in Russia.
"The starved proletariat and the rejected bourgeois have different economic opinions," says Merezhkovsky, "but their ideal is the same, the pursuit of happiness." As it is but a step from the prudence of the bourgeois to the exasperated state of the starved proletariat, this pursuit can lead to nothing else but international atrocities of militarism and chauvinism.
At the same time, he published several translations from Greek and Latin authors. As he was a friend of the unfortunate Nadson, and a pupil of the humanitarian Pleshcheyev, Merezhkovsky wrote at first under the influence of the liberal ideas of his early masters. His verses, always harmonious, and a little affected, soon belied this tendency and very frankly revealed his preferences.
Merezhkovsky writes smoothly and youthfully, but at every page he loses heart, makes reservations and concessions, and this means that he is not clear upon the subject. He calls me a poet, he styles my stories "novelli" and my heroes "failures" that is, he follows the beaten track. It is time to give up these "failures," superfluous people, etc., and to think of something original.
The innumerable documents presented do not bear closely enough upon the action, the result being that many of his pages read like mere annals. They interest the reader but do not move him. This is one reason why some critics, essentially different in spirit from Merezhkovsky, have believed themselves right in denying that he has any talent.
The picture of the Renaissance that Merezhkovsky paints for us is very full, very rich, at times even a little overburdened with episodes and people. In fact, as has been said above, there are too many events and characters. Two centuries go by and now we come to the third novel, "Peter and Alexis."
It is in this simple way that Merezhkovsky explains the moral evolution which led Tolstoy to make those long and sad studies of a kind of life compatible with the true good of humanity, and forced him to them by "the anguish of the black mystery of death" which, having got possession of the author of "Anna Karenina" in his sixtieth year, in the midst of a life of prosperity, made him hate his fortune and his comfort, which formerly had been so dear to him.
Second and third- rate writers, like Merezhkovsky, Andreyev, and Artsybashev, have found their way into England and are still supposed to be the best Russian twentieth century fiction can offer. The names of really significant writers, like Remizov and Andrey Bely, have not even been heard of.
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