The Death of the Gods

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  Transcriber's Note:

  All obvious errors have been corrected.Archaic and alternate spellings have been retained.

  By DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI

  =THE DEATH OF THE GODS.= Authorized English Version by HERBERT TRENCH. 12^o

  =THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE FORERUNNER.= (The Resurrection of the Gods.) Authorized English Version from the Russian. 12^o. With 8 Illustrations

  ----Artist's Edition, with 64 illustrations. 2 vols., 8^o

  =PETER AND ALEXIS.= Authorized English Version from the Russian. 12^o

  =G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS= =New York= =London=

  +Christ and Antichrist+

  The Death of the Gods

  By

  Dmitri Merejkowski

  Translated by

  Herbert Trench

  Sometime Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

  _Authorised English Version_

  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press

  Copyright 1901 by G. P. Putnam's Sons

  Made in the United States of America

  The Knickerbocker Press, New York

  MEREJKOWSKI

  Dmitri Merejkowski is perhaps the most interesting and powerful of theyounger Russian novelists, the only writer that promises to carry onthe work of Tolstoi, Turgeniev, and Dostoievski. His books, which arealready numerous, are animated by a single master-idea, thePagano-Christian dualism of our human nature. What specially interestshim in the vast spectacle of human affairs is the everlasting contestbetween the idea of a God-Man and the idea of a Man-God; that is tosay, between the conception of a God incarnate for awhile (as inChrist) and the conception of Man as himself God--gradually evolvinghigher types of splendid and ruling character which draw after themthe generations.

  The novelist's own doctrine seems to be that both the Pagan and theChristian elements in our nature, although distinct elements, areequally legitimate and sacred. His teaching is that the soul and thesenses have an equal right to be respected; that hedonism and altruismare equals, and that the really full man, the perfect man, is he whocan ally in harmonious equilibrium the cult of Dionysus and the cultof Christ.

  Merejkowski conceives that European civilisation has been born of thetremendous conflict between these two main ideas. And he has embodiedthis conflict in a trilogy of novels,--three great historicalromances. The first is entitled _The Death of the Gods_, and dealswith the extraordinary career of the Roman Emperor. Julian theApostate, who in the fourth century A.D. sought to revive the worshipof the Olympians after Christianity had been adopted by Constantinethe Great as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

  The historical novel, pure and simple, exists no longer. Writers ofgenius who seem to write historical novels in reality are onlytransferring to the stage of the world a drama which is being playedin their own souls. They transfer thither that drama in order to showthat the struggle which is now going on in us is eternal. Merejkowskisees the question, which is of supreme interest to us, being asked bythe great spirits of a wealthy and imperial civilisation closelyresembling our own, in the fourth century. And, what is of moreinterest still, he not only sees the momentous problem and places itbefore us with remarkable lucidity, but he also seems, in his ownfashion, to arrive at a solution. Moreover, this novelist, thispsychologist, is also an artist and a poet, possessed by what hesomewhere calls the "Nostalgia of the Distant." With an ardour as ofFlaubert in _Salammbo_, and with perhaps more skill than Sienkiewiczin _Quo Vadis_, the author of _The Death of the Gods_ has succeeded inre-creating the wonderful rich scenes and characters of that remoteepoch. We see the racing stables of the Hippodrome of Constantinople,battles with wild German warriors round Strasburg, the interior of thebaths at Antioch, dinners of epicures and men of letters at Athens,pictures of a Roman Emperor at his toilet-table, or of a lovelornchild in the Temple of Aphrodite. Before writing this first of hisgreat romances Merejkowski himself travelled through Asia Minor andGreece, visited Constantinople and Syria, and gathered everywhereliving impressions to serve his art and his thought. He was besidesadmirably prepared to handle a subject which had attracted him fromyouth. A delicate Hellenist, his first appearance in literary life wasas a harmonious translator of AEschylus and Sophocles. Later, theGnostics, the Fathers of the Eastern Church, the Greek Sophists (whorepresented the last throes of expiring Paganism and already dreamedof reviving it), were the young poet's objects of study. Thus was bornthe romance of _The Death of the Gods_, which he has continued laterin _The Resurrection of the Gods_ (of which Leonardo da Vinci is thehero), and completed by _The Anti-Christ_, portraying the savagefigure of Peter the Great, the creator (despite all natural obstacles)of St. Petersburg and of modern Russia.

  In the first romance of the three the new Christian spirit is seeninvading the soul of Julian himself, the last champion of expiringPaganism. It can even be seen in the little treatises, _The Sun King_and the _Mother of the Gods_, which Julian wrote in his feverishnights to defend his lost cause. Soon there remained to this singularman of all that first ardour but a feeling of impotent rage andunbridled pride--the Napoleonic lust of conquering the world. And sowe see him in this book, in the midst of the mad expedition againstPersia, where he was to meet his death, oversetting the altar of thegods who had betrayed him, and exclaiming: "_The gods are no more; orrather, the gods do not yet exist. They are not. But they will be. Weshall all be gods. We have but to dare!_" A few days later he falls,vanquished by the Galilean, whose image haunts his deathbed. But atthat last hour it is not the fierce God of the Arians (who educatedJulian the Emperor) that he sees. He whom delirium calls up isChristus Pastophorus,--the Good Shepherd,--the Spirit of gentlenessand love. It is that Spirit who has dethroned the Olympians.

  But the gods do not perish utterly. Centuries pass, and from the bosomof the waters, like Aphrodite, from the bosom of the earth, likeCybele, they come forth again, serene and impassive. Popes, kings,great nobles, simple Florentine merchants welcome them, brought bygalleys from the coasts of Hellas, or discovered by patient excavatorsof the antique soil. Their marble glory shines anew. The rays ofHelios penetrate the soul of artists. The fires of Dionysus kindle theblood of the young men and the young women. It is the dawn of the_Renaissance_. Has then the God-Man conquered the Man-God? No;because, see, Savonarola is defying the gods of Olympus and the godsof the earth. The latter destroy him, but the Christ has reappeared,and the problem of the two forms of wisdom continues to be set in aform more august and more painful than ever before.

  This is the subject of the _Renaissance of the Gods_, a romance ofwhich the distinguished critic in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, M.Theodore de Wyzewa, says that it "far surpasses the mass of theromances published in Russia during the last twenty-five years."

  And since then, as before then, as at all times, at every freshcrisis, at every renewal of the creative process taking place withinhuman consciousness, the two principles reappear. They struggle too inthe soul of the strongest. Look at Peter the Great, whom old believersused to call "The Anti-Christ." He will be the hero of the thirdromance of the trilogy. We shall see therein the tragedy of the gentleTsarevitch Alexis, servant of the Galilean and immolated victim of thenew god; victim, that is, of human will incarnate in the genius ofPeter, lifting itself above good and evil.

  The above notes are largely taken, and partly translated, from aninteresting paper on Merejkowski by M. Prozor in the _Mercure deFrance_.

  HERBERT TRENCH.<
br />
  ST. PETERSBOURG, _24 JUIN_, 1901.

  J'autorise par la presente Monsieur Herbert Trench a l'exclusion detout autre, a traduire du russe en anglais mon roman intitule _La Mortdes Dieux_, qui est la premiere partie de ma trilogie _Le Christ etl'Anti-Christ_.

  DMITRI DE MEREJKOWSKI.

  [I hereby grant to Mr. Herbert Trench the exclusive authorisation forthe English version of my romance entitled _The Death of the Gods_,this romance constituting the first division of the trilogy issuedunder the general title of _Christ and the Anti-Christ_.]

  A similar authorisation has been granted to Mr. Trench for the twosucceeding volumes of the trilogy, entitled, respectively, _TheResurrection of the Gods_ and _The Anti-Christ_.

  PART I