ational
melancholy, borne of barren steppe and dreary waste, to which every
giant intellect that race has known, has sooner or later become a prey,
from the great Peter down to the littlest Romanoff; and from which more
than the first Alexander have actually died.

Ivan knew it young enough, and long. Moreover, it had now come upon him
at a critical time, just as he was emerging into broadened manhood. His
salvation probably lay in the fact that for his work, only, could he
throw off the black mantle; for much of the time he was wont to labor at
the white heat of what is called inspiration. His meditations, his
analyses, were those of a mature mind, replete with human knowledge of
evil and good. But because his belief in the power of evil had become
tainted with morbidness, and because he governed the kingdom of his own
soul with a rigid purity, the friction of the two forces produced in him
an abiding melancholy: a melancholy abstract, almost impersonal,
thoroughly Russian, and yet, because he was a type of the universal,
all-comprehensive. By unhappy degrees his whole life, his every act,
became leavened and tinctured with this melancholy, till it had risen to
the height of his soul's acropolis, and invaded and overflowed--his
work. Thus did it come about that the labors of the lonely soul given
into the keeping of a yearning, lonely woman one New Year's night of
long ago, came at last to reproduce for the world, in sound, the burden
of the world. For who will deny that Gregoriev's music cries out with
the dread cry of humanity in pain? It has come to be known as the
_Herzeleide_ of the Creation: the sorrow of the great, throbbing
world-soul. And technique and conception had worked well together; for
in this year both came to their fulness in him who used both
wonderfully, artistically, yet always with the restraint that can come
only through absolute self-mastery. It is the great reward of him who
has made complete sacrifice of all things else: the act without which
genius comes not into its own.

In the last week of August, the three artists left Vevey together:
Kashkine on his way to Germany, for a concert tour; Balakirev to Kiev,
the holy city of the Slavs, for inspiration; Ivan back to Moscow and the
Conservatoire.

Throughout the ensuing winter he taught all morning six days in the
week, reserving his composing for the hours of early morning and
evening. After his midday meal, he came into the habit of taking