Recollections of Imperial Russia #230785

Ir seems useless and futile to attempt to write another book about Russia when so many hundreds have already been written and when, in spite of all their quantity and length, her secrets still remain unconquerable and unsolved. Radiant beauty and stark, hideous ugliness, gladness and sorrow, greatness and tragedy and brutal, savage cruelty — over them all she draws a veil of impenetrable mystery, smiling with soft, inscrutable eyes when people impatiently misjudge and condemn her. I myself cannot even attempt to understand, far less explain, her wayward inconsistence all that I can do is to try, very feebly and haltingly, to paint in words all those different pictures of her that I have known and loved and read of. Glowing and jewel — coloured the pageantries of her past, like the splendid golden mosaics in her glorious churches, and dark and sad and terrible the realities of her tragic present. Her history and legends are full of colour and romance and mysticism, mingled always with crime and unspeakable brutality. Her literature is great and wonderful, but almost morbid in its utter hopelessness her music, even in its turbulent gaiety, never loses its haunting sadness her climate is grim and desolating9 and depressing and always.