“The Emigrant” (Emigranta), by L. F. Dostoieffskaya, a daughter of Dostoieffsky the novelist, was published in 1913, and obtained considerable success in Russia. It is a study of the life of a Russian girl (or should we say woman? for she is not young) in Italy. It is a deeply interesting study of contemporary types. In truth, only two Russians take part in the story, the hero and heroine, Prince Gzhatsky and Irene. But the long struggle which is portrayed is a Russian struggle.

These Russians, however, are not the Russians of Dostoieffsky’s time. They are clearly of to-day.

Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready to[vi] fight for truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted. When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared war on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for having fallen victims to such madness! Her despair and suffering at the news of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near relations were at the war, but each of our losses, nevertheless, found its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with grief, she attached no importance either to the Russian revolution, or to the reforms that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound contempt for Russia.

And it is in contempt of Russia that the heroine finds consolation in Italy, and is even ready to throw over the Orthodox Church to which she belongs and enter a convent of s?urs mauves.

The chief interest in the book is the conflict between the influence of a certain Père Etienne and the influence of a compatriot of handsome looks and robust mind, Prince Gzhatsky. Irene is in a pension “teeming with old maids.” She is herself forty and unmarried.[vii] She is apparently without near of kin, and is lonely beyond words, but also selfish and extremely condemnatory in her outlook. But she is vivacious, spontaneous, engaging, and always asking pertinent questions.

The high demands she made of her ideal hero, the man she might marry, give one the idea that there is a certain amount of autobiography in this volume, for no doubt ideals ranged high in the home of Dostoieffsky. It is strange, however, that the question of selfishness and unselfishness does not arise in this enthralling study of an unsatisfied soul. Dostoieffsky himself was never tired of a certain Gospel sentence, the thought of which might have given calm to Irene: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” The whole book, however, has a haunting suggestion of Dostoieffsky—the ghost of the father is somewhere about.

This poor Russian woman has, however, lost herself in going to Rome. One sees[viii] how much happier she would have been if she had remained at home. It is common in Russians to go into ecstasy about Italy when they see it first.

“In Italy, amidst the brilliance and magnificence of Nature, in the magnificent chaos of cities buzzing with automobiles, humming with factories, you feel at least that Man is not losing himself; you feel he is the master, the centre. But in Moscow …” wrote Gorky, another unhappy exile; and it is a characteristic expression. The exile admires the West, but he must return to Russia.

A word should be said as to the discussion of the relative merits or demerits of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. It is not very competently handled by the authoress, but there is at least one most effective comment on ecclesiasticism as such:

“In your place I would go a little further still,” exclaimed Irene’s inner soul with malicious sarcasm. “I would destroy every New Testament in the world, except one—and that one I would put in a golden, jewel-studded[ix] box, and would bury it deep in the earth, forbidding its disinterment on pain of death. Over it, I would build a splendid golden shrine, and in this shrine I would celebrate night and day magnificent services with gorgeous processions. That would be entirely in accordance with the spirit of your Christianity.”

And she yearns for a Christianity freed from the prison walls of churches and forms.

Irene, however, thinks that if the Orthodox Russian Church elected a Patriarch it might recover its ancient power, and utter a “new word.” And there once more we see vaguely the ghost of Dostoieffsky. The great Russian, however, would not have spoken so kindly of the Roman Church (which he regarded as a sort of political conspiracy against Christianity).

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

London,
April, 1916.