ellates the moral emptiness and the mediocrity of life in high
Russian society at that time.

At the same time, Griboyedov's famous comedy, "Intelligence Comes to
Grief," which the censorship forbade to be produced or even
published, was being circulated in manuscript form. This comedy, a
veritable masterpiece, has for its hero a man named Chatsky, who was
condemned as a madman by the aristocratic society of Moscow on
account of his independent spirit and patriotic sentiments. It is
true that in all of these works the authors hardly attack important
personages or the essential bases of political organization. The
functionaries and proprietors of Gogol's works are "petites gens,"
and the civic pathos of Chatsky aims at certain individuals and not
at the national institutions. But these attacks, cleverly veiling
the general conditions of Russian life, led the intelligent reader
to meditate on certain questions, and it also permitted satire to
live through the most painful periods. Later, with the coming of the
reforms of Alexander II, satire manifested itself more openly in
the works of Saltykov, who was not afraid to use all his talent in
scourging, with his biting sarcasm, violence and arbitrariness.

Another salient trait of Russian literature is its tendency toward
realism, the germ of which can be seen even in the most
old-fashioned works, when, following the precepts of the West, they
were taken up first with pseudo-classicism, and then with the
romantic spirit which followed.

Pseudo-classicism had but few worthy representatives in Russia, if
we omit the poet Derzhavin, whom Pushkin accused of having a poor
knowledge of his mother tongue, and whose monotonous work shows
signs of genius only here and there.

As to romanticism! Here we find excellent translations of the German
poets by Zhukovsky, and the poems of Lermontov and Pushkin, all
impregnated with the spirit of Byron. But these two movements came
quickly to an end. Soon realism, under the influence of Dickens and
Balzac, installed itself as master of this literature, and, in spite
of the repeated efforts of the symbolist schools, nothing has yet
been able to wipe it out. Thus, the triumph of realism was not, as
in the case of earlier tendencies, the simple result of the spirit
of imitation which urges authors to choose models that are in
vogue, but it was a response to a powerful instinct. The truth of
this statement is very evident in view of the fact