WHOSO WITNESSED THIS PROCESSION has seen all Russia in every shape or form. There were priests, a numerous body of clericals chanting their prayers; students from all the universities; the children of the primary schools; the girl medical students; the Nihilists, easily recognized by their peculiar dress, the men with a shawl over the shoulders, the women with hair cut short and wearing spectacles; deputations from all parts of the Empire; aged shopkeepers from Moscow; and peasants in their sheepskins, lacqueys and beggars. Waiting in the church to receive the body stood the high officials – the State Minister for Education and the young Princes of the Imperial Blood. A forest of banners and crucifixes spread over this army on the march.

The spectators of this procession could not help being struck by the different expressions on the faces of these facial fragments of “All the Russias” as they moved along with looks gentle or sullen, with their tears, or prayers, or sneers, with their periods of thoughtful silence or dumb shyness, and which caused their own impressions to undergo many changes in succession. All of them judged by what they witnessed at the moment; and they really believed they saw, as group after group passed by, the historical advent of newly created classes, the triumphant march of revolution in the Capital of Nicholas, the solemn celebration of the national genius and the sorrows of an entire nation. But they all judged imperfectly. What passed before them was but the result of this restless and formidable man’s doings – of his majestic eccentricities. First and foremost and by far the greater number, we see his special clients, the “poor folk,” the “humbled,” the “outraged,” even the “possessed”; the miserable wretches made happy in having this day the opportunity afforded them of honouring their advocate on his way to glory; yet with them and surrounding them were also all the uncertainty and the confusion of the national life as pictured by him, all the vague hopes he had roused within them. As said of former Tsars who “gathered together” the Russian soil, so this King of Spirits had to-day “gathered together” the Russian heart.

The crowd piled itself up in the small church of the Lavra, already encumbered with flowers, and in the shrines among the surrounding birch trees. The medley of interests, ideas and parties caused a babel of words. In front of the altar the Archimandrite spoke of God and Eternal Hope; others seized the body to lower it into the grave, there to speak of Fame. Officials, students, Slavophils, Liberals, professors, poets, one and all came to expound their ideas, and to claim for their own this spirit just passed away, and, as is usual in such cases, took the opportunity to flatter their own ambitions. – Whilst the February wind was blowing about their eloquence, in company with dried-up leaves and the dust of frozen snow stirred up by the spades, I endeavoured to form a fair judgment on the moral value of this man and all his deeds. I felt as perplexed as when called upon to form an opinion of the value of his literary work. He had spent himself for this people evoked in them feelings of pity, even of piety; but at the cost of how many extravagant ideas and moral disturbances! He had poured out his heart on the crowd – which is good, but without having first made them acquainted with that severe and necessary helpmate of the heart – reason.

It would have taken me some time to form a judgement had I not suddenly had a vision of that life, born in a hospital, brought up in misery, in sickness, in pain, to be continued in Siberian prisons, in the barracks; ever pursued by want and moral distress, always being crushed and yet ennobled by the work of a – Redeemer. Then I understood that this persecuted soul escaped all known standards, because it stood alone. I bowed to the judgment of Him who carries as many burdens as there are hearts and destinies. And when I bent low over this last earthly refuge he was so long in reaching, and when in my turn throwing handfuls of snow on the bower of laurel wreaths beneath, I could find no other words of farewell than those the student addressed to the young girl, words which summed up Dostoyevsky’s faith and now come back to him, “It is not before thee I kneel – I prostrate myself before the sufferings of all humanity.”

Note: This is part five of a five-part series. This text was first published as an extended chapter in an English-language translation by Col. Herbert Anthony Sawyer in The Russian Novel (Chapman & Hall, 1913). It has been manually transcribed exclusively for the New Series, with very minor edits to track usage.

Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé.

THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION of Le roman russe appeared in 1886 and was perhaps one of the most influential books of literary comment of the 19th century, bringing Russian fiction to the attention of French, then English, readers, most of whom were previously unaware of it. Le roman russe, wrote historian Owen Chadwick, “was so critical, and yet so constructive, so personal and yet so objective, so penetrating without being astringent, so prosaic and yet so haunting, that even after so many decades you cannot read it without wanting to go back to read the Russian novelists for themselves. If we say that Vogüé ‘popularized’ Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, that would be true. But the description is very inadequate both to explain what the book achieved and the way it achieved that effect.” Vogüé was an acquaintance of Maupassant’s and other contemporary literary celebrities, a contributor to the Revue des deux Mondes and a friend of Ferdinand Brunetiere’s.

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