Travelling together is like living together. If the enforced intimacy fails to breed contempt, it makes travellers inordinately sensitive to each other's slightest fault. It was May, 1851, and the twenty-two year-old Leo Tolstoi was on his way to visit the Caucasus with his soldier-brother, who was stationed there. On the road Nikolai complained of his brother's cleanliness. Changing one's shirt “twelve times a day,” as he put it, seemed excessive. The fastidious Leo, on the other hand, admired nearly everything about his older brother, except “his dirtiness.”

Instead of taking the direct southern route to the Caucasus by way of Voronezh, Nikolai decided to head southeast for Saratov, in order to cover the long stretch from there to Astrakhan by boat down the Volga. A delightful prospect; and the additional attraction of a northern swing through Moscow and Kazan increased Leo's enthusiasm for the plan.

This paper studies the influence of Turgenev on Henry James through three main aspects. First, their relationship is traced from the earliest contact of young Henry with Turgenev's works through their residence together in Paris during James's “French Year” (1875–1876). The second section takes up at this point and discusses their basic agreement in aesthetic and theory of the novel. Many of their views were in the air at the time, and the relation of James to other writers has been treated competently elsewhere. This section is chiefly concerned with showing the peculiar organization of particular beliefs — the aesthetic — which James and Turgenev shared and which distinguished them from their contemporaries, particularly the Paris circle in which they lived. The final section illustrates the second by discussion of specific novels in which James borrowed from Turgenev and shows how he used Turgenev in developing his art.

The October 1917 hurricane meant a clean sweep of the old forms of Russian life. It is now a truism to state that the revolution not only transformed political, social, and economic relations, but profoundly affected religion, science, and art as well. The thoroughness and the speed with which the destruction of the old took place may not have been intentional. One may suppose that Lenin and his aides were prepared for the gradational tempo of an evolutionary process. What accelerated and deepened this process was the refusal of the old to give way to, or to merge with the new, and its sullen resistance, both passive and active. Military Communism, with all its drastic levelling, was the direct consequence of counter-revolutionary risings and foreign intervention. By the same token, the “sabotage of the intelligentsia,” as the Bolsheviks branded the refusal of sundry experts to cooperate with them, caused a swift change in the intellectual and artistic aspects of the country. The change was sharply felt in the plastic arts and in the arts of verbal expression — literature and the stage.

The Theoretical basis for the Third or Communist International was worked out by Lenin in Switzerland during the first two years of the World War. From the very outbreak of the war in August, 1914, which he at once denounced as “imperialist,” Lenin called for the establishment of a new International purged of “social-chauvinists” who, in his opinion, had betrayed the international labor movement. “Against the chauvinists” and “for the union of the international proletariat” became the chief slogans of the Bolsheviks amidst the general war hysteria which had overpowered many outstanding leaders of the Second International.

On November 1, 1914, Lenin wrote in Social-Demokrat, the Bolshevik Central-Organ, published in Switzerland, that whereas the Second International had done useful preparatory work “during the long ‘peaceful’ epoch of the most cruel capitalist slavery” it was the task of the Third International to organize the forces of the proletariat “for a revolutionary onslaught on the capitalist governments, for civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries, for political power, for the victory of Socialism.”

The Relations between the Allies and the North Russian government were unique in the history of Allied intervention since, unlike other regions, the situation at Archangel presented unusual aspects: in the first place, there were no Russian armed forces, to speak of, on whom the government could rest its authority; in the second place, the actual territory freed from the Bolsheviks was too small to warrant a government as formal as that which had been conceived for the administration of the whole Northern Region down to Petrograd and Vologda; and, finally, the presence at Archangel of the Allied Ambassadors side by side with the British Major-General Frederick C. Poole, Commander of All Armed Forces in North Russia, created a singularly complicated conflict of authority.

Since the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the withdrawal of Russia from the ranks of the belligerents, the Allies (especially France and Great Britain) had sought to help those elements in Russia that might bring the country once more into the war against Germany. The French Ambassador, Joseph Noulens, favored the socialist groups, particularly the “Union for the Regeneration of Russia, while the British, through their Naval Attache Captain Cromie, and their special agent Lockhart, preferred to deal with the more conservative elements among the officers of the Russian Army and Navy.

One of the most painful lessons mankind has learned since the rise of nationalism in the last hundred years is that language diversity fosters conflicts between states and among peoples living within one state but speaking different languages. Conversely, language uniformity makes for unity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most governments have strongly desired such uniformity. In some countries, as in America, assimilation into one language has been achieved by allowing national groups the free use of their native languages, and by relying upon the advance of education and of commercial and industrial development to break down the barriers those languages erect between various linguistic groups. In the period before the First World War, many governments sought language uniformity by forcibly repressing the languages of minorities, by Germanizing, Magyarizing, Russifying their national minority groups. Of no government was this more true than of that of the old Russian Empire, in which the “minorities” — that is, the groups other than the Great-Russians — constituted over half the population. But by attempting to suppress the languages of the Ukrainians, Georgians, Tatars and so on, the Tsarist régime did not achieve its goal of unity; rather, it aroused a host of nationalist movements which put language repression first on the bill of grievances against the government and which helped drive Tsarism to its death.

On December 22, 1840, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the author of these words stood in the Collège de France. Before him was a brilliant audience, which included the Polish poet Niemcewicz, a veteran both of Polish culture and of the struggle for independence, Prince Adam Czartoryski, the leading figure among the Polish emigrés, Charles Montalembert, the great politician and champion of the Polish cause, Faucher, the playwright and journalist, Nicholas Turgenev, author of La Russie el les Russes, Salvandy, former Minister of Education, Jean-Jacques Ampère, son of the great physicist and himself professor of French literature at the Collège de France, a scattering of German, Dalmatian, Montenegrin, and Russian listeners, and a crowd of French and Polish auditors. The hall was packed.

In four lines of the opening stanza of the Ode to Youth Mickiewicz describes in vivid images the world which he desired, as poet, to espouse. “O Youth!” he says,

Among the factors which impelled Mickiewicz to embrace this world, by no means least in importance was the northern ballad. How did the balladry of the north come to play so large a part in the poet's growth, in what manner did it present itself to his consciousness and how did it become a vital part of his experience? These are the questions which this study will endeavor to answer.

There was probably never a time in Polish literary history when the poet relied less on inner experience and so much on outward reality as the very time when Mickiewicz was born. Reason, not Feeling and the inner life, ruled: poetic models came from France, where the Romantic attitude had not yet become the vogue. Life in general was artificial, brittle, worldly, and there seemed no likelihood that there would shortly be a change of mood.

As all students know, there have been not a few cases in history where the ferment and heat of great events have found striking expression in literature, and may even be said to have given birth to that expression. The examples are fewer in which a distinct movement in thought and letters preceded events, being an undoubted preparation for them. To these belong what is known as “Young Poland,” of which the more precise dates might be said to be 1895–1903. The purpose of this paper is to sketch briefly some of the major features of this period of Polish creative achievement, as yet too little known in the English-speaking world.

In an Old Czech Fragment of a passion play, written toward the end of the fourteenth or at the beginning of the fifteenth century (the John Hus period, —1369–1415 —), published by K. J. Erben in Výbor z literatury české od počátku XV do konce XVI století (Prague, 1868), II, 30–38, under the title Úlomek hry divadelné na umučení Pánê, there is a scene where four Roman soldiers are casting dice for Christ's tunic.

This would be nearest to John, XIX, 23–24: “The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose shall it be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith,

For more than twenty years George of Poděbrady, the leader of the Hussites and king of Bohemia, strove for the pacification of his country and the restoration of diplomatic relations between Prague and other courts of Europe. In the early years of his career he met with opposition at home. A group of the Catholic nobility in Bohemia and Moravia, with the richest Bohemian magnate, Oldřich of Rožmberk, at their head, followed with unfriendly eyes the rise in power of the representative of the Hussite party and retarded his work by hostile actions or intrigues. Among the German-speaking Catholics of Silesia and of both Lusatias the opposition against George was fomented by the deep-rooted racial antagonism which had been accentuated during the Hussite period and hindered thereafter the collaboration of the incorporated provinces with Prague. By his tolerant policy George allayed to a great extent the fears and suspicions of his adversaries, and secured their support or, at least, acquiescence in his elevation to the royal throne in 1458.

The elements which I wish to discuss in the present paper are some of those which entered Serbo-Croat from, or at any rate through. Turkish, in the course of the centuries during which people of Serbo-Croat speech were under Turkish rule, or subject to the influence of neighbouring speakers of Turkish. I use the word “elements” because, as will appear, I am not concerned exclusively with integral words, but with suffixes and endings as well.

It is of course Turkish that provides the most important non-Slav foreign contribution to the Serbo-Croat vocabulary, and a very large and interesting contribution it is. For speakers of other Slavonic non-Balkan languages such as Polish it forms the principal stumbling-block to the acquisition of Serbo-Croat; and it might well be suggested that in the interest of inter-Slav intelligibility the total expulsion of these words from the language is to be desired.

Judging from the standard works on comparative philology, it seems to be generally assumed that the Primitive Indo-European period was followed by a Balto-Slavic period during which the ancestors of the Slavic and the Baltic peoples still spoke a common language. However, this theory has not remained unquestioned. The first to doubt the existence of a separate Balto-Slavic branch was Meillet, who in 1908 expressed his conviction that Baltic and Slavic must be regarded as two different groups which, after the disintegration of Primitive Indo-European, had each its own independent development. Meillet's statement provoked a lively discussion to which the most important contributions were made by Porzeziński, Rozwadowski, and Endzelin. In 1922 Endzelin recapitulated briefly his arguments in his Lettish Grammar. According to Endzelin, Slavic is the nearest relative of the Baltic languages. This relationship would, however, hardly allow the assumption of a common Primitive Balto-Slavic language; it would only suggest a period of intimate mutual relations. Endzelin's explanation received strong support from the Lithuanian scholar Casimir Būga who, unfortunately for Baltic studies, died in 1924. In various articles written in the Lithuanian language, Būga defended Endzelin's theory, strengthening it with new arguments drawn from his intimate knowledge of the languages in question.

In 1934 the bibliography of Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius filled a good sized volume of more than three hundred pages and comprised more than three thousand items, and by now several important publications may be added to this list. This interest in the activity of the Slavonic Apostles is not surprising inasmuch as Slavic religion and culture is due to a large extent to these two praeceptores Slavoniae: they meant for the Slavic world what Ulfilas and St Boniface combined meant for the Germanic. Nor can it be said that no further additions to the bibliography are to be expected and that all the problems raised by the story of Constantine and Methodius have been solved: it touches upon nearly all the aspects of medieval history and may be looked at with profit from various points of view.

During the last years or decades the chief interest has centered in a criticism of our sources, especially of the Pannonian Legends. May we believe, so most scholars asked themselves, the information contained in our sources? The farther they probed into the laconic, often puzzling statements of the Legends, the more they realized that apart from certain peculiarities of emphasis and presentation required by the edifying purpose of these writings the Legends preserved a tradition of historical reality.

Prince Vladimir of Kiev was baptized in A.D. 988, but it was not before fifty years later than the church of Kievan Russia assumed any definite shape. The first metropolitan of Russia, Theopemptus, a Greek by origin, was ordained by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1037, and it was in the same year that Prince Yaroslav, Vladimir's son, started building the cathedral of St Sophia at Kiev. There are discrepancies in the lists of the primates of the Russian church prior to Theopemptus's appointment. In some manuscripts Michael is mentioned as the first Russian “metropolitan,” and Leon as the second, while other manuscripts omit the name of Michael and start with Leon. Leon's successor was John, who officiated at the discovery of the relics of SS Boris and Gleb in 1026. His title was that of archbishop, not of metropolitan. There is no contemporary information about the location of the see of the primate. The Nikon Chronicle, compiled in the sixteenth century, states that prior to 1037 Pereyaslavl and not Kiev was the metropolis. As we shall see later on, this statement is subject to reservations.

Some years ago the American-Russian Institute organized in New York a series of symposia on various phases of Soviet life and civilization — among them a round-table discussion on the nature and tendencies of Soviet literature. This round-table was notable as a friendly meeting of various writers, critics, and scholars, of whom by no means all could have been called favorable to the Soviet system either politically or socially. Yet most of those present had at least some first-hand acquaintance with Soviet letters, and were amply qualified to express a reasoned opinion upon the aims and the spirit which they reflect.

At this conference, the discussion eventually narrowed down to an effort at denning the nature of socialist realism — a definition which, it must be admitted, proved singularly elusive. By one speaker, socialist realism was termed merely a method difficult of exact characterization. Maxim Gorki was quoted as having said that bourgeois realism is only partially critical, while socialist realism is critical throughout. Other speakers saw the essence of socialist realism in its positive or optimistic spirit, or alleged that, where bourgeois realism deals with the individual, the socialist brand is primarily concerned with the mass. In other words, a Soviet critic would hold that bourgeois realism is interested in isolated personages, while socialist realism portrays the individual in his relations to the society of which he is a part.

In the period of independence historians of the critical school had held dominant positions in Czechoslovak universities and institutions. They inherited from their beloved teacher, Jaroslav Goll, the subtle art of criticism of historical texts as well as a predilection for detailed studies. In their early careers they devoted most of their time to the elucidation of controversial points and substituted reliable solutions for romantic conceptions of the older generation. The iconoclastic campaign which had been inaugurated by T. G. Masaryk, Jaroslav Goll and the philologist Jan Gebauer in the ’eighties of the nineteenth century, was coming to its end shortly before the outbreak of the first World War. Concentration on large works became characteristic of Czechoslovak historiography after 1918.

An omnibus review of recent Tolstoi scholarship has some of the frightening aspects of an omnibus of contemporary crime literature — any selection in the extraordinary plenitude betrays a personal weakness for favorite themes and authors. As Russia's most famous literary figure, Tolstoi has naturally claimed a major share of attention in the extensive scholarly activity in the humanities in the Soviet Union. Lenin's series of articles on Tolstoi has imparted a certain dignity and official status to the subject; and his well-known pronouncement on “Lëv Tolstoi as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution” has acted as a safe green light for all succeeding Soviet investigators. Indeed, there has been a minimum of that off-centre indulgence in political rehabilitation and a marked concentration on the purely scholarly aspects of the subject. Finally, the existence of a huge amount of unpublished Tolstoi manuscripts has rendered the field an unusually rich one for fresh study.