that realism
appeared in Russian literature at a time when it was still a novelty
in Europe. The need of representing naked reality, without any
decorations, is, so to speak, innate in the Russian author, who
cannot, for any length of time, be led away from this practice. This
is the very reason why the Byronian influence, at the time of
Pushkin and Lermontov, lasted such a short time. After having
written several poems inspired by the English poet, Pushkin soon
disdained this model, which was the sole object of European
imitation. "Byron's characters," he says, "are not real people, but
rather incarnations of the various moods of the poet," and he ends
by saying that Byron is "great but monotonous." We find the same
thing in Lermontov, who was fond of Byron, not only in a transient
mood of snobbery, but because the very strong and sombre character
of his imagination naturally led him to choose this kind of intense
poetry. He was exerting himself to regard reality seriously and to
reproduce it with exactitude, at the very time when he was killed in
a duel at the youthful age of twenty-seven.

Pushkin's best work, his novel in verse, "Evgeny Onyegin," although
it came so early, was constructed according to realistic
principles; and although we still distinguish romantic tints, it is
a striking picture of Russian society at the beginning of the 19th
century. We find the same tendency in Lermontov's prose novel, "A
Hero of Our Times," in which the hero, Pechorin, has many traits in
common with Evgeny Onyegin. This book immediately made a deep
impression. It was really nothing more than a step taken in a new
direction by its author. But it was a step that promised much. An
absurd fatality destroyed this promise, and hindered the poet,
according to the expression of an excellent critic of that time,
from "rummaging with his eagle eye, among the recesses of the
world."

The works of writers of secondary rank, contemporaneous with the
above mentioned, also reveal a realistic tendency. Then appeared, to
declare it with a master's power, that genius of a realist, of whom
we have already made mention, Gogol. There was general enthusiasm;
Gogol absorbed almost the entire attention of the public and men of
letters. The great critic and publicist Byelinsky, in particular,
took it upon himself to elaborate in his works the theories of
realism; he formulated the program about 1850 under the name of the
"naturalistic school." Thus