Orientalism of Balakirew and Cui, none of
Rimsky-Korsakoff's soft felicity and lambency and light sensuousness. It
is rude and robust and male, full of angular movements and vigorous
blows and lusty, childlike laughter, and, at the same time, of a
singularly fine romantic fervor. It is almost the contrary of that of
the neurotic, sallow Tchaikowsky of the hysterical frenzies and
hysterical self-pity and the habits of morose delectation. If there is
any symphony that can be called pre-eminently virile and Russian, it is
assuredly Borodin's second, the great one in B-minor. And in "Prince
Igor" and the symphonic poem "On the Steppes," for the first time,
continental Asia, with its sharp beat of savage drums and its oceanic
wastes of grass, its strong Kurdish beverages and jerked steaks, comes
into modern music.

And was not this restatement of the national character Borodin's great
contribution to his age's life? For has not the most recent time of all
beheld a resurgence of the Russian spirit in the political field, an
attempted reconstitution of society in the light of the just and
fraternal and religious spirit with which this folk has ever been
endowed, and of which, in all its misery, it has ever been aware? If
there is any teacher who dominates Russian thought and Russian affairs
to-day, it is Tolstoy. And from whom did Tolstoy learn more than from
that conserver of the pristine and dominating Russian traits, the
moujik? And so men like Borodin who sought out the racial character and
reflected it in their music seem to us almost like outriders, like the
tribesmen who are sent on ahead of wandering folks to spy out the land,
to find the passes, and guide their fellows on. Their art is a summons
to individual life. Borodin in particular came upon the Russian people
at a moment when, like a tribe that has quit its fields in search of
better pasturage, and has wandered far and found itself in barren and
difficult and almost impassable ground, it was bewildered and
despondent, and felt itself lost and like to perish in the wilderness.
And while his folk lay prone, he had arisen and mounted the encircling
ridge. And with a joyous cry, and the flaunting of a banner, he called
them to the way they had to traverse, and told them the road was found.

His work is not large in bulk. In a comparatively long life, long at
least by the side of that of a Mozart or a Moussorgsky, he succeeded in
producing only a single opera, "Prin