A Survey of Russian Literature, with SelectionsHapgood, Isabel Florence
History
A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections
Hapgood, Isabel Florence
Russian literature -- History and criticism
There is one point to be noted about Nekrasoff which was somewhat
neglected by the critics during his lifetime. No other Russian poet of
that day was so fond of calling attention to the bright sides of the
national life, or depicted so many positive, ideal, brilliant types with
such fervent, purely Schilleresque, enthusiasm as Nekrasoff. And most
significant of all, his positive types are not of an abstract, fantastic
character, clothed in flesh and blood of the period and environment,
filled with conflicting, concrete characteristics--not one of them
resembles any other. He sought and found them in all classes of society;
in "Russian Women" he depicts the devoted princesses in the highest
circle of the social hierarchy, with absolute truth, as faithful
representatives of Russian life and Russian aristocrats, capable of
abandoning their life of ease and pleasure, and with heroism worthy of
the ancient classic heroines, accompanying their exiled husbands to
Siberia, and there cheerfully sharing their hardships. His pictures of
peasant life are equally fine; that in "Red-Nosed Frost" (the Russian
equivalent of Jack Frost) is particularly famous, and the peasant
heroine, in her lowly sphere, yields nothing in grandeur to the ladies
of the court.
The theme of "Red-Nosed Frost" may be briefly stated in a couple of its
verses, in the original meter:
There are women in Russian hamlets
With a dignified calmness of face;
With a beautiful strength in their movements,
With mien and glance of an empress in grace.
A blind man alone could ignore them;
And he who can see them must say:
"She passes--'tis as though the sun shineth!
She looks--'tis giving rubles away!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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