East-West Passage

A Study in Literary Relationships

Dorothy Brewster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000292510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

First published in 1954, East-West Passage is a detailed study of the literary relationship between Russia and the West.

Divided into two parts, the book focuses both on specific literary connections, as well as on broader social and political considerations. It traces the gradual increase in awareness of Russian literature in England and the United States through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and considers the material that emerged in response, such as doctoral dissertations and critical essays. The volume highlights changes in literary tastes over the years, and explores in detail Russia's influence on the West.

East-West Passage is ideal for those with an interest in the history of literature, as well as social and cultural history.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I
FROM LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST TO ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

i
Travellers’ Tales — Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

LONG BEFORE there were any translations into English of Russian literature, there were notions current about Russian culture, Russian traits, Russian history, Russian climate. Travellers and traders brought back information and misinformation, beginning with the picturesque contributions of the Elizabethans. The Russian Bear appeared upon the scene long before the Russian Soul. No reader of the translations that began to be published in considerable numbers after the middle of the nineteenth century could have been free of preconceptions about Russia and her people, which had been familiar for generations. What some of these preconceptions were can be suggested by going back to the Elizabethans, and picking up a few of the typical and recurrent notions, down through the decades and the centuries.

Russians appear masqued—a sinister touch?—in Love's Labour's Lost. Or more accurately, the King of Navarre and his courtiers disguise themselves as frozen 'Muscovits', looking pale, 'sea-sick, I think', says Rosaline, 'coming from Muscovy'. The date of the play is not later than 1591. The allusion is to an event in 1582, when the Russian ambassador came to arrange a treaty and to take back a wife for the Tsar from among Elizabeth's kinswomen. The lady selected was presented to the ambassador in the gardens of York House, with a ceremony that 'may have given a hint for the masque of the Muscovites in V. ii, 158 ff.—especially as the episode was long remembered as a joke'. (Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's Works, ed. W. A. Neilson.) Thomas Nashe, in Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596), contributes a Russian pun on his own name and a bit of information about a 'chiefe office in the Emperour of Russiaes court', known as the 'grand commander of silence'. Nashe threatens those who may curse and rail upon him with being compelled to fall down and worship him, 'crying upon their knees ponuloi nashe, which is in the Russian tongue, Have mercie upon us'.

There are many such examples of garbled Russian words in the works of Elizabethan poets and playwrights. Both Elizabeth and not a few of her subjects were interested in the Russian tongue. When Jerome Horsey in 1587 presented her with certain documents of privileges, granted to English subjects in Russia, the queen perused the 'lyminge and characters of the privilege, having some affinity with the Greek'; asked if such and such letters and asseverations had not this signification; said she, 'I could quickly learn it,' and prayed my lord of Essex to learn 'the famoust and most copius language in the world; after which commendation his honor did much affect and delight it, if he might attain thereunto without paiens-takinge and spending more time than he had to spare'. This 'if' has deterred many since his Honour; one cannot help wondering if Essex might not have kept his head on his shoulders, had he taken to the study of Russian instead of to more dangerous adventures.

The Russian Bear, real, not symbolic, since bear-baiting was a good Elizabethan sport, is used to point a retort in Henry V, when Orleans, answering Rambures, who has praised the island of England for breeding valiant creatures and mastiffs of unmatchable courage, says—'Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crushed like rotten apples.' And the rugged Russian bear joins the armed rhinoceros and the Hyrcan tiger as shapes Macbeth would prefer to meet, rather than the ghost of Banquo.

It is a task for the industry of graduate study to collect all the passing references in the literature of the period to Russia, its language and drinks and fauna. They prove, if nothing else, the currency of the travellers' tales. To put together anything like a summary of these narratives and comment upon them would make several books, and would take us into history, geography, trade relations, diplomacy and politics. It is not the accurate information and the historical documentation with which we are concerned here, but rather the picturesque episodes, the broad generalizations about a people and its culture, which pass into the common stock of English notions about Russia.

We have early poetic generalizations from the pen of Master George Turberville, in 'certaine letters in verse, written out of Moscovia'. Turberville went to Russia as secretary to Master Thomas Randolph, her Majesty's Ambassador to the Emperor, in 1568. Three letters appear in Hakluyt's Voyages, 1589, addressed to his especial friend, Master Edward Dancie, to Spenser and to Parker. He finds that the Russes drink too much:

A people passing rude, to vices vile inclinde,
Folke fit to be of Bacchus traine, so quaffing in their kinde.
Drinke is their whole desire, the pot is all their pride,
The sobrest head doth once a day stand needfull of a guide.

He describes kvas—

. . . whereby the Mousike lives,
Small ware and waterlike, but somewhat tart in taste.

Their beasts are like to the English, but the beef is not firm, like the English beef, and he thinks little of their cooking. They are given over to Idoles:

The house that hath no god or painted Saint within
Is not to be resorted to, that roofe is full of sinne.

He tells in quaint detail what both men and women look like and what they wear:

The Russie men are round of bodies, fully fac'd,
The greatest part with bellies bigge that overhang the waste.
Flat headed for the most, with faces nothing faire
But browne, by reason of the stove and closeness of the aire.

He describes their collars set with pearl, their long shirts, the furred shuba over all, notes the absence of the codpiece—that rich source of Elizabethan jest; observes that women, 'against our use', bestride the horse and is shocked by their excessive use of cosmetics, wondering what madness makes them paint when they 'keepe the stove' and are seldom seen abroad.

She pranks and paints her smoakie face, both brow, lip, cheeke
and chinne.
Yea, those that honest are, if any such there bee
Within the land, doe use the like.

Some lay it on too thickly,

But such as skilful are, and cunning Dames indeede,
By dayly practise doe it well, yea sure they doe exceede.

The cold deeply impressed him, a cold so severe that the dead had to be left unburied till spring because of the hard-frozen ground, but wood being very plentiful, everyone was assured of a coffin. The cattle—sheep, colts, cows—come right in and lodge fast by the Mowsike's bed, and 'weare the winter with the Mowsike and his wife'. He was not pleased with the beds, and couldn't understand why there were no bolsters, when plenty of down was available. He and Stafford 'lay upon a beare'—skin, one supposes.

In short, the country is too cold, the people are beastly, and he could tell a lot more, if he chose:

The colde is rare, the people rude, the prince is full of pride,
The Realme so stored with Monks and nonnes and priests on
every side.
The manners are so Turkie like, the men so full of guile,
The women wanton, Temples stuft with idols that defile
The Seats that sacred ought to be, the customes are so quaint
As if I would describe the whole, I feare my pen would faint.

In his final judgment he makes a comparison (which is also made by Edmund Spenser, in A View of the Present State of Ireland):

Wilde Irish are as civill as the Russies in their kinde,
Hard choice which is the best of both, ech bloody, rude and
blinde.

But the Russies are good chess players:

The common game is chesse, almost the simplest will
Both give a checke and eke a mate, by practise comes their skill.

Perhaps that was something not to forget, down through the changing centuries.

Trade and diplomacy are the important themes in the narratives of Jerome Horsey and of Giles Fletcher, father of the poets Phineas and Giles. Horsey was factor of the English Russia Company (founded in 1563), and had obtained large concessions for the English from the Protector, Boris Godunov. Fletcher, in the diplomatic service, was sent in 1588 to the court of the Tsar Theodore, to conclude an alliance between England and Russia, restore English trade, and obtain better conditions for the English Russia Company. The threat of the Spanish Armada made the diplomatic going tough, but the English victory cleared the skies, and Fletcher returned in the company of Horsey, having secured exclusive rights of trading on the Volga, and security of English traders from the infliction of torture. In 1591 Fletcher published Of the Russe Commonwealth, 'a comprehensive account of Russian geography, government, law, methods of warfare, Church and manners' (Encyclopaedia Britannica).¹ Horsey's narrative of his travels was published in Purchas His Pilgrimes, 1626. Many Russian translations were made of Fletcher's book. The Russian historian Karamzin frequently quotes from Horsey's narrative, never expressing distrust of it as an authority.²

Horsey had gone to Russia first in 1573 as clerk of the Russia Company. When selected in 1580 as messenger from the Tsar to Queen Elizabeth, he was familiar with the Russian language. 'Though but a plaine gramarian, and having som smake in the Greek, I ateyned by the affinitie therof in shortt tyme to the readie and famillier knowledge of their vulgar speach, the Sclavonian tonge, the most copius and elegent language in the world.' The more copious and elegant the language, the more credit to him for mastering it. Had his mastery been less, he might not have kept himself alive in that court, in the midst of intrigue and violence. Horsey's account begins with the wars of Ivan the Terrible about 1570, and the burning of Moscow by the Crimean Tartars in 1571. He describes a Tartar ambassador who 'chaffes with a hellish hollow voice, lokinge fearce and grimly'. He cuts short an account of tortures, forbearing 'to trouble the modest eyrs and Christian pacience of such as shall read it'. About 1576 he carried a letter from the Tsar to Queen Elizabeth, through countries at war with Russia, concealing it in the false side of a wooden bottle of brandy, hanging under the horse's mane. Arrived in England, he took the letter out and 'sweetened' it as well as he could, but the Queen had a good nose and smelt 'the savier of the aqua vita'.

Horsey's last visit to Russia, 1589-91, was troubled by jealousies and calumnies. The Protector, Boris Godunov, was his friend, and continued to assure him privately that he would not suffer a hair to fall from his head, but Horsey, with the scepticism of experience, called the assurance a 'phrace'. He had to answer complaints made against his Queen, and did so 'pithely'. But things happened: 'my water to dres my meat withal was poisoned; my drink and herbs and mush-millians sent, poisoned; my laundress hired to poison me, which she confessed, by whom, when, and how; still I had good intelligence. My cook, my butler died, both of poison'. One of his servants, the son of a Dantzig lord, 'burst out with 20 blaines and boyells and narrowly escaped. Boris sends me word I should not fear'. All this ended one night when he was roused by a messenger from the palace where the young prince, Demetrius, son of Ivan the Terrible, had just had his throat cut. The mother of Demetrius was stricken with poison, and Horsey, besought for a remedy, gave the messenger a specific against poison, which with great foresight he had brought from England.

Horsey returned to England in 1591 and settled down in a condition of some affluence. He served above thirty years in Parliament. He wrote that 'all the known nations and kingdoms of the world are not comparable for happiness to this thrice blessed nation, the angelical Kingdom of Cannan, our England'. Yet after all his years in the angelical kingdom, he wrote: 'The experience of this wicked world, both at home and abroad, makes me now the more willing to live in a better.'

Giles Fletcher dedicated his Russe Commonwealth to Queen Elizabeth—'a prince of subjectes, not of slaves, that are kept within duetie by love, not by feare'—quite otherwise than in the tyrannical state he is describing, 'without true knowledge of God, without written law, without common justice, save that which proceedeth from their speaking law, to wit the magistrate'. Fletcher was wrong about the law, as the editor of the 1856 Hakluyt Society edition points out, referring to the known fact that Ivan Grozny (or the Terrible) composed a body of law, founded on the code of Ivan III, highly esteemed and promulgated in 1550. In general, Fletcher lives up to his professed aim of noting things 'of more importance than delight, and rather true than strange'. He is sparing of comment and generalization. Under Cosmography, he tells of the breadth and length of the land, the soil, climate, rivers, chief cities, native commodities; under Policy, he explains the ordering of the State, judicial proceedings, warlike provisions, ecclesiastical system; and under Economic or Private Behaviour, he includes the emperor's domestic manners, his household and offices, and the manners and customs of the people. There are lively descriptions of the installation of a new emperor, marriage and baptismal ceremonies, the mustering and equipping of troops, the governing of colonies, and the infliction of torture. There are a few novelties in torture, but surely little to surprise Elizabethan citizens, who in 1594 had flocked to see Dr Lopez castrated, disembowelled and quartered. His characterization of the common people is rather favourable: they have 'natural wittes in the men and very children', but are kept from learning that they may be fitter for their servile condition; they have reasonable capacities, 'if they had those means that some other nations have to train up their wits in good nurture and learning'. Their tyrannous Government is to blame; they are kept from travelling, that they may learn nothing nor see the fashions of other countries abroad; nor are strangers suffered willingly to come into the realm, except for trading. All this falls familiarly upon a twentieth century ear. Cruelly treated, they in turn become cruel to others. As for their honesty, 'it may be saide truely (as they know best who have traded most with them) that from the great to the small (except some few that will scarcely be founde) the Russe neither beleeveth anything that an other man speaketh, nor speaketh anything himself worthie to be beleeved.'

The Russian soldier is thought to be better at his defence within some castle or town than he is abroad at a set pitched field. Fletcher speculates upon the possibility of overthrowing the tyrannical Government. But the common people are robbed, and unpractised in the use of arms, the nobility unable to make head, and the emperor well-supplied with his own special forces; and 'this desperate state of things at home maketh the people for the most part to wish for some forreine invasion, which they suppose to bee the onely means to rid them of the heavy yoke of this tyrannous Government'. Later centuries, one reflects, produced Napoleon and Hitler as foreign invaders, but their fate has not noticeably discouraged modern speculation on this theme.

The snow and the wolves are played up—as they continued to be by later travellers—snow so severe from November on 'that it would breede a frost in a man to looke abroad at that time and see the winter face of that countrie'; and wolves that issue in troops out of the woods in extreme winters and enter villages, tearing and ravening. But Fletcher sounds a note seldom heard about the 'sommer time', when 'you shall see such a new hew and face of a countrie, the woods (for the most part which are all of fir and birch) so fresh and sweet, the pastures and medowes so greene and well growen (and that upon the sudden), such varietie of flowres, such noyse of birdes (especially of nightingales, that seeme to be more lowde and of a more variable note than in other countries), that a man shall not lightly travell in a more pleasant countrie'. But it was the wolf and not the nightingale that continued to impress the popular imagination.

Fletcher, interestingly, does not present as an atrocity Ivan the Terrible's killing of his son: 'That he meant him no such mortal harm when he gave him the blow may appear by his mourning and passion after his son's death, which never left him till it brought him to the grave. Wherein may be marked the justice of God, that punished his delight in shedding of blood with this murder of his son by his own hand, and so ended his days and tyranny together with the murdering of himself by extreme grief, for this his unhappy and unnatural fate.'

There is an anecdote (mentioned by Bond in his introduction to the 1856 Hakluyt) that Fletcher was as thankful to return safe to England as Ulysses was to come out of the den of Polyphemus. Yet he did not have too secure a time after his return. Though in 1596 he was saved by Essex from imprisonment as surety for his brother's debts, he was actually imprisoned in 1601, 'apparently for attributing Essex's disgrace to Raleigh'. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

The travel books of Purchas, Hakluyt, Chancelor, Willoughy, and half a dozen other sources led Milton, at some period before he lost his sight, to compile his brief history entitled Muscovia, published in 1682. It is rather dry reading, with some nice touches, like the description of the Abbey of St Nicholas, far to the north—built of wood, 'wherein are twenty Monks; unlearned, as then they (the English voyagers) found them, and great Drunkards; their Church is fair, full of Images and Tapers'. One would have liked Milton's opinion on the marriage and divorce customs which he records in detail: 'When there is love between the two, the Man among other trifling Gifts, sends to the Wom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• FOREWORD
• CONTENTS
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX