The Village

Autobiographical Note

Dear Publisher:—

You have asked me to furnish you with data concerning my life and literary activities. Permit me to repeat what I have already told my French publishers in answer to a similar request.

I am a descendant of an ancient noble family which has given to Russia a considerable number of prominent names, both in the field of statesmanship and in the realm of art. In the latter, two poets are especially well-known, Anna Petrovna Bunina and Vasili Zhookovski, one of the shining lights of Russian Literature, the son of Afanasi Bunin and a Turkish captive, Salma.

All my ancestors had always been connected with the people and with the land; they were landed proprietors. My parents were also landowners, who possessed estates in Central Asia, in the fertile fringe of the steppes, where the ancient Tsars of Moscow had created settlements of colonists from various Russian territories, to serve as protectors of their Kingdom against the incursions of the Southern Tartars. Thanks to this, it was here that the richest Russian language developed, and from here have come nearly all the greatest Russian writers, with Turgenev and Tolstoy at their head.

I was born in 1870, in the town of Voronezh, and passed my childhood and youth almost entirely in the country, on my father’s estates. As a boy, I was deeply affected by the death of my little sister, and passed through a violent religious crisis, which left, however, no morbid traces whatsoever in my soul.

I also had a passion for painting, which, I believe, has manifested itself in my literary works. I began to write both verse and prose rather early in my life. My first appearance in print was likewise at an early date.

When publishing my books, I nearly always made them up of prose and verse, both original and translated from the English. If classified according to their literary varieties, these books would constitute some four volumes of original poems, approximately two of translations, and six volumes or so of prose.

The attention of the critics was very quickly attracted to me. Later on my books were more than once granted the highest award within the gift of the Russian Academy of Sciences—the prize bearing Pushkin’s name. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of the twelve Honorary Academicians, who correspond to the French Immortals, and of whom Lyof Tolstoy was one at that time.

For a long time, however, I did not enjoy any wide popularity, owing to many reasons: for years, after my first stories had appeared in print, I wrote and published almost nothing but verse; I took no part in politics and, in my works, never touched upon questions connected with politics; I belonged to no particular literary school, called myself neither decadent, nor symbolist, nor romantic, nor naturalist, donned no mask of any kind, and hung out no flamboyant flag. Yet, during these last stormy decades in Russia, the fate of a Russian writer has frequently depended upon such questions as: Is he an opponent of the existing form of Government? Has he come from “the people”? Has he been in prison, in exile? Or, does he take part in the literary hubbub, in the “literary revolution,” which—merely in imitation of Western Europe—went on during those years in Russia, together with a rapid development of public life in the towns, of new critics and readers from among the young bourgeoisie and the youthful proletariat, who were as ignorant in the understanding of art as they were avid of imaginary novelties and all kinds of sensations. Besides, I mixed very little in literary society. I lived a great deal in the country, and traveled extensively both in Russia and abroad: in Italy, in Sicily, in Turkey, in the Balkans, in Greece, in Syria, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Algeria, in Tunisia, in the tropics. I strove “to view the face of the earth and leave thereon the impress of my soul,” to quote Saadi, and I have been interested in philosophic, religious, ethical and historical problems.

Twelve years ago I published my novel The Village. This was the first of a whole series of works which depicted the Russian character without adornment, the Russian soul, its peculiar complexity, its depths, both bright and dark, though almost invariably tragic. On the part of the Russian critics and among the Russian intellectuals, where “the people” had nearly always been idealized, owing to numerous Russian conditions sui generis, and, of late, merely because of the ignorance of the people, or for political reasons—these “merciless” works of mine called forth passionate controversies and, as a final result, brought me what is called success, success strengthened still further by my subsequent works.

During those years I felt my hand growing firmer every hour; I felt that the powers which had accumulated and matured in me, passionately and boldly, demanded an outlet. Just then the World War broke out and afterwards the Russian Revolution came. I was not among those who were taken unawares by these events, for whom their extent and beastliness were a complete surprise; yet the reality has surpassed all my expectations.

What the Russian Revolution turned into very soon, none will comprehend who has not seen it. This spectacle was utterably unbearable to anyone who had not ceased to be a man in the image and likeness of God, and all who had a chance to flee, fled from Russia. Flight was sought by the vast majority of the most prominent Russian writers, primarily, because in Russia there awaited them either senseless death at the hands of the first chance miscreant, drunk with licentiousness and impunity, with rapine, with wine, with blood, with cocaine; or an ignominious existence as a slave in the darkness, teeming with lice, in rags, amid epidemic diseases, exposed to cold, to hunger, to the primitive torments of the stomach, and absorbed in that single, degrading concern, under the eternal threat of being thrown out of his mendicant’s den into the street, of being sent to the barracks to clean up the soldiers’ filth, of being—without any reason whatever—arrested, beaten, abused, of seeing one’s own mother, sister or wife violated—and yet having to preserve utter silence, for in Russia they cut out tongues for the slightest word of freedom.

I left Moscow in May, 1918, lived in the South of Russia (which passed back and forth from the hands of the “Whites” into those of the “Reds”) and then emigrated in February, 1919, after having drained to the dregs the cup of unspeakable suffering and vain hopes. For too long I had believed that the eyes of the Christian world would be opened, that it would be horrified at its own heartlessness, and would extend to us a helping hand in the name of God, of humanity and of its own safety.

Some critics have called me cruel and gloomy. I do not think that this definition is fair and accurate. But of course, I have derived much honey and still more bitterness from my wanderings throughout the world, and my observations of human life. I had felt a vague fear for the fate of Russia, when I was depicting her. Is it my fault that reality, the reality in which Russia has been living for more than five years now, has justified my apprehensions beyond all measure; that those pictures of mine which had once upon a time appeared black, and wide of the truth, even in the eyes of Russian people, have become prophetic, as some call them now? “Woe unto thee, Babylon!”—those terrible words of the Apocalypse kept persistently ringing in my soul when I wrote “The Brothers” and conceived “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” only a few months before the War, when I had a presentiment of all its horror, and of the abysses which have since been laid bare in our present-day civilization. Is it my fault, that here again my presentiments have not deceived me?

However, does it mean that my soul is filled only with darkness and despair? Not at all. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!”

Part I

I

The great-grandfather of the Krasoffs, known by the manor-house servants under the nickname of “The Gipsy,” was hunted with wolfhounds by Cavalry Captain Durnovo. The Gipsy had lured his lord-and-master’s mistress away from him. Durnovo gave orders that The Gipsy should be taken out into the fields and placed on a hillock. Then he himself went out there with a pack of hounds and shouted “Tallyho! Go for him!” The Gipsy, who was sitting there in a state of stupor, started to run. But there is no use in running away from wolfhounds.

The grandfather of the Krasoffs, for some reason or other, was given a letter of enfranchisement. He went off with his family to the town—and soon distinguished himself by becoming a famous thief. He hired a tiny hovel in the Black Suburb for his wife and set her to weaving lace for sale, while he, in company with a petty burgher named Byelokopytoff, roamed about the province robbing churches. At the end of a couple of years he was caught. But at his trial he bore himself in such fashion that his replies to the judges were current for a long time thereafter. He stood before them, it appears, in a velveteen kaftan, with a silver watch and goat-hide boots, making insolent play with his cheekbones and his eyes and, in the most respectful manner, confessing every one of his innumerable crimes, even the most insignificant: “Yes, sir. Just so, sir.”

The father of the Krasoffs was a petty huckster. He roved about the county, lived for a time in Durnovka, set up a pothouse and a little shop, failed, took to drink, returned to the town, and soon died. After serving for a while in shops his sons, Tikhon and Kuzma, who were almost of an age, also took to peddling. They drove about in a peasant cart which had a carved front and a roofed, shop-like arrangement in the middle, and shouted in doleful tones: “Wo‑omen, here’s merchandise! Wo‑omen, here’s merchandise!”

The merchandise consisted of small mirrors, cheap soap, rings, thread, kerchiefs, needles, cracknels—these in the covered shop. The open-body cart contained everything they gathered in: dead cats, eggs, heavy linen, crash, rags. But one day, after having thus travelled about for the space of several years, the brothers came near cutting each other’s throats—in a dispute over the division of the profits, rumour averred—and separated to avoid a catastrophe. Kuzma hired himself to a drover. Tikhon took over a small posting-house on the metalled highway of Vorgol, five versts1 from Durnovka, and opened a dram-shop and a tiny “popular” shop.—“I deal in small wears tea shugar tubako sigars and so furth.”

II

By the time Tikhon Hitch was about forty years of age his beard resembled silver with patterns of black enamel. But he was handsome and tall, with a fine figure, as before. He was austere and swarthy of face, slightly pockmarked, with broad, lean shoulders; authoritative and abrupt of speech, quick and supple in his movements. Only—his eyebrows had begun to come closer together and his eyes to flash more frequently and more sharply than before. Business demanded it!

Indefatigably he followed up the rural police on those dull autumnal days when taxes are collected and forced sale follows forced sale. Unweariedly he bought standing grain on the stalk from the landed proprietors and took land from them and from the peasants, in small parcels, not scorning even half a meadow. He lived for a long time with his dumb cook—“A dumb woman can’t betray anything with her chatter!”—and had by her one child, whom she overlay and crushed in her sleep, after which he married an elderly waiting-maid of old Princess Schakhovoy. And on marrying and receiving the dowry he “finished off” the last scion of the impoverished Durnovo family, a fat, affable young nobleman, bald at twenty-five, but possessed of a magnificent chestnut beard. And the peasants fairly grunted with pride when Tikhon took possession of the Durnovo estate—for almost the whole of Durnovka consisted of Krasoffs!

They sh-ed and oh-ed, also, over the way in which he had cunningly contrived not to ruin himself. He bargained and bought, went to the estate almost every day, kept watch with the eye of a vulture over every hand’s breadth of the land. They uttered admiring exclamations and said: “Yes, there’s nothing to be done with us devils by kindness, you know! There’s a master for you! You couldn’t have one more just!”

And Tikhon Ilitch dealt with them in the same spirit. When he was in an amiable mood he read them their lesson thus: “It’s all right to live—but not to squander. I shall pluck you if I get the chance! I shall bring you back. But I shall be just. I’m a Russian man, brother.” When in an evil mood, he would say curtly, with eyes blazing: “Pigs! There is not a juster man in the world than I am!” “Pigs, all right—but that’s not me,” the peasant would think, averting his eyes from that gaze. And he would mumble submissively: “Oh, Lord, don’t we know it?” “Yes, you know it, but you have forgotten. I don’t want your property gratis, but bear this in mind: I won’t give you a scrap of what’s mine! There’s that brother of mine: he’s a rascal, a toper, but I would help him if he came and implored me. I call God as my witness that I would help him! But coddle him—! No, take note of that: I do no coddling. I’m no brainless Little Russian, brother!”

And Nastasya Petrovna, who walked like a duck, with her toes turned inward, and waddled, thanks to her incessant pregnancies which always ended up with dead girl-babies—Nastasya Petrovna, a yellow, puffy woman with scanty whitish-blond hair, would groan and back him up: “Okh, you are a simpleton, in my opinion! Why do you bother with him, with that stupid man? Is he a fit associate for you? You just knock some sense into him; ’twill do him no harm. Look at the way he’s straddling with his legs—as if he were a bokhar of emir!”2 She was “terribly fond” of pigs and fowls, and Tikhon Ilitch began to fatten sucking pigs, turkey chicks, hens, and geese. But his ruling passion was amassing grain. In autumn, alongside his house, which stood with one side turned toward the highway and the other toward the posting-station, the creaking of wheels arose in a groan; the wagon trains turned in from above and below. And in the farmyard horse-traders, peddlers, chicken-vendors, cracknel peddlers, scythe-vendors, and pilgrims passed the night. Every moment a pulley was squeaking—now on the door of the dram-shop, where Nastasya Petrovna bustled about; now on the approach to the shop, a dark, dirty place, reeking of soap, herrings, rank tobacco, gingerbread flavoured with peppermint, horse-collars, and kerosene. And incessantly there rang out in the dram-shop:

“U‑ukh! Your vodka is strong, Petrovna! It has knocked me in the head, devil take it!”

“ ’Twill make your mouth water, my dear man!”

“Is there snuff in your vodka?”

“Well, now, you fool yourself!”

In the shop the crowd was even more dense.

“Ilitch, weigh me out a pound of ham.”

“This year, brother, I’m so well stocked with ham—so well stocked, thank God!”

“What’s the price?”

“ ’Tis cheap!”

“Hey, proprietor, have you good tar?”

“Better tar than your grandfather had at his wedding, my good man!”3

“What’s the price?”

And it seemed as if, at the Krasoffs’, there were never any other conversation than that about the prices of things: What’s the price of ham, what’s the price of boards, what’s the price of groats, what’s the price of tar?