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We have here the idealist Misheka and the sectarian Ostrovsky, a transported prisoner who is embittered by his hard lot, and by life in general. If Misheka protests against the complicated conditions of life to which he cannot entirely submit, it is rather by instinct than through reason.
And now, with the scenes of that trying march so vividly recalled, I would dedicate these chapters to my gigantic, old and ruggedly tried friend, the agronome, to my Russian fellow-travelers, and especially, to the sacred memory of those of our companions whose bodies lie cradled in the sleep among the mountains of Tibet Colonel Ostrovsky, Captains Zuboff and Turoff, Lieutenant Pisarjevsky, Cossack Vernigora and Tartar Mahomed Spirin.
She wrote an admirable paper and read it clearly and impressively at the Women's Club on "The Human Touch in Ostrovsky." Indeed, for one who had read so little of Ostrovsky it was a most creditable piece of work. It was in her estimate of the English character that she was, I venture to think, less successful, more narrow in fact. You see, she was naturally confused by two facts.
When he left the bedroom at last, Ivan felt that, in spite of himself, he should get some sleep; for Nicholas had assured him solemnly that, when "The Boyar" should be finished, and the libretto, to be provided by Ostrovsky, properly polished, he would himself arrange for its production during the ensuing winter season.
After their first visit to him five of his old friends, Laroche, Balakirev, Ostrovsky, Kashkine, and, inevitably, Nicholas, met together by common impulse to discuss their brilliant contemporary and the question of their relations with him. The five of them secretly admired, openly liked him, still. Two of them loved him, one confessedly.
Men and women live and love, trade and cheat in Ostróvsky as they do in the world around us. Now and then a murder or a suicide appears in his pages as it does in those of the daily papers, but hardly more frequently. In him we can study the life of Russia as he knew it, crude and coarse and at times cruel, yet full of homely virtue and aspiration.
Just as it would be interesting to know what French audiences enjoyed at the time of the French revolution, so I think it worth while to record the character of the entertainments at present popular in Moscow. Opera at the Great Theatre. "Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov and "Samson and Delilah" by Saint-Saens. Small State Theatre. "Besheny Dengi" by Ostrovsky and "Starik" by Gorky. Moscow Art Theatre.
In the left-hand stage-box were gathered a little group of his own, old circle, about the empty chair which had been reserved, in case faintly possible the erratic one should suddenly appear. Kashkine, Laroche, Ostrovsky, and Ivan's passionate young admirer Rimsky-Korsakow, sat there in silence, all of them thinking the same half-bitter, half-resentful thoughts.
At the side of Misheka we have the tragic figure of Ostrovsky, who is the exasperated victim of the evil all around him. The author and the travelers, driven by Misheka, have seen the burning of Ostrovsky's house, which the latter burned himself so that no one could profit by it. This action strikes Misheka as wonderful. "He begins to tell the story of the fire.
Thus the germs of the past had expanded triumphantly in the work of Gogol, and the way was now clear for Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, and Pisemsky, who, while enlarging the range and perfecting the methods of the naturalistic school, conquered for their native literature the place which it has definitely assumed in the world.
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