speaking
its last word.

In 1905 the revolutionary movement broke out, with its great hopes,
its disillusions, its period of anarchy on the one hand and
repression on the other; out of the chaos of events came a chaos of
writing rather than literature, and in its turn this produced, in
literature as well as in life, a reaction, or rather a series of
reactions, towards symbolism, aestheticism, mysticism on the one hand,
and towards materialism--not of theory but of practice--on the other.
But since these various reactions are now going on, and are vitally
affecting the present day, the revolutionary movement of 1905 seems
the right point to take leave of Russian literature. In 1905 a new era
began, and what that era will ultimately produce, it is too soon even
to hazard a guess.

Looking back over the record of Russian literature, the first thing
which must strike us, if we think of the literature of other
countries, is its comparatively short life. There is in Russian
literature no Middle Ages, no Villon, no Dante, no Chaucer, no
Renaissance, no _Grand Siecle_. Literature begins in the nineteenth
century. The second thing which will perhaps strike us is that, in
spite of its being the youngest of all the literatures, it seems to be
spiritually the oldest. In some respects it seems to have become
over-ripe before it reached maturity. But herein, perhaps, lies the
secret of its greatness, and this may be the value of its contribution
to the soul of mankind. It is--

"Old in grief and very wise in tears":

and its chief gift to mankind is an expression, made with a
naturalness and sincerity that are matchless, and a love of reality
which is unique,--for all Russian literature, whether in prose or
verse, is rooted in reality--of that grief and that wisdom; the grief
and wisdom which come from a great heart; a heart that is large enough
to embrace the world and to drown all the sorrows therein with the
immensity of its sympathy, its fraternity, its pity, its charity, and
its love.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1113. _The Chronicle of Nestor._

1692. First play produced in Russia, Gregory.
Simeon Polotsky's _The Prodigal Son_ acted.

1703. The first Russian newspaper, _The Russian News_, appears.

1725. Death of Peter the Great.
Foundation of the Academy of Science.

1744. Death of Kantemir.

1750. Death of Tatishchev.

1755. Uni