Thus for some time in Russia, as in Western Europe, "a terrible war raged on Parnassus." At first the Government frowned at the innovators, on account of certain revolutionary odes which one of their number had written; but when the Romantic Muse, having turned away from the present as essentially prosaic, went back into the distant past and soared into the region of sublime abstractions, the most keen-eyed Press Censors found no reason to condemn her worship, and the authorities placed almost no restrictions on free poetic inspiration. Romantic poetry acquired the protection of the Government and the patronage of the Court, and the names of Zhukofski, Pushkin, and Lermontof—the three chief representatives of the Russian Romantic school—became household words in all ranks of the educated classes.
These three great luminaries of the literary world were of course attended by a host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists created heroes of immaculate character and angelic purity, endowed with all the cardinal virtues in the superlative degree; and, as a contrast to these, terrible Satanic personages with savage passions, gleaming daggers, deadly poisons, and all manner of aimless melodramatic villainy. These stilted productions, interspersed with light satirical essays, historical sketches, literary criticism, and amusing anecdotes, formed the contents of the periodical literature, and completely satisfied the wants of the reading public. Almost no one at that time took any interest in public affairs or foreign politics. The acts of the Government which were watched most attentively were the promotions in the service and the conferring of decorations. The publication of a new tale by Zagoskin or Marlinski—two writers now well-nigh forgotten—seemed of much greater importance than any amount of legislation, and such events as the French Revolution of 1830 paled before the publication of a new poem by Pushkin.
The Transcendental philosophy, which in Germany went hand in hand with the Romantic literature, found likewise a faint reflection in Russia. A number of young professors and students in Moscow, who had become ardent admirers of German literature, passed from the works of Schiller, Goethe, and Hoffmann to the writing of Schelling and Hegel. Trained in the Romantic school, these young philosophers found at first a special charm in Schelling's mystical system, teeming with hazy poetical metaphors, and presenting a misty grandiose picture of the universe; but gradually they felt the want of some logical basis for their speculations, and Hegel became their favourite. Gallantly they struggled with the uncouth terminology and epigrammatic paradoxes of the great thinker, and strove to force their way through the intricate mazes of his logical formulae. With the ardour of neophytes they looked at every phenomenon—even the most trivial incident of common life—from the philosophical point of view, talked day and night about principles, ideas, subjectivity, Weltauffassung, and similar abstract entities, and habitually attacked the "hydra of unphilosophy" by analysing the phenomena presented and relegating the ingredient elements to the recognised categories. In ordinary life they were men of quiet, grave, contemplative demeanour, but their faces could flush and their blood boil when they discussed the all-important question, whether it is possible to pass logically from Pure Being through Nonentity to the conception of Development and Definite Existence!
