THIS MORNING, at Lübeck, the landlord of the hotel, hearing that I was going to embark for Russia, entered my room with an air of compassion which made me laugh. This man is more clever and humorous than the sound of his voice, and his manner of pronouncing the French language, would at first lead one to suppose.
On hearing that I was traveling only for my pleasure, he began exhorting me, with the good-humored simplicity of a German, to give up my project.
“You are acquainted with Russia?” I said to him.
“No, sir; but I am with Russians; there are many who pass through Lübeck, and I judge of the country by the physiognomy of its people.”
“What do you find, then, in the expression of their countenance that should prevent my visiting them?”
“Sir, they have two faces. I do not speak of the valets, who have only one; but of the nobles. When they arrive in Europe they have a gay, easy, contented air, like horses set free, or birds let loose from their cages: men, women, the young and the old, are all as happy as schoolboys on a holiday. The same persons, when they return, have long faces and gloomy looks; their words are few and abrupt; their countenances full of care. I conclude from this, that a country which they left with so much joy, and to which they return with so much regret, is a bad country.”
“Perhaps you are right,” I replied; “but your remarks, at least, prove to me that the Russians are not such dissemblers as they have been represented.”
“They are so among themselves; but, they do not mistrust us honest Germans,” said the landlord, retiring, and smiling knowingly.
Here is a man who is afraid of being taken for a goodnatured simpleton, thought I: he must travel himself in order to know how greatly the description, which travelers (often superficial and careless in their observations) give of different nations, tends to influence these nations’ character. Each separate individual endeavors to establish a protest against the opinion generally entertained with respect to the people of his country.
Do not the women of Paris aspire to be simple and unaffected? It may be here observed, that nothing can be more opposite than the Russian and the German character.
My carriage is already in the packet boat: the Russians say it is one of the finest steamers in the world: they call it Nicholas I. This same vessel was burnt last year crossing from Petersburg to Travemünde: it was refitted, and has since made two voyages.
Some superstitious minds fear that misfortune will yet attach itself to the boat. I, who am no sailor, do not sympathize with this poetic fear; but I respect all kinds of inoffensive superstition, as resulting from the noble pleasures of believing and of fearing, which are the foundation of all piety, and of which, even the abuse classes man above all other beings in creation.
After a detailed account of the circumstances of the burning of the Nicholas I. had been made to the emperor, he cashiered the captain, who was a Russian, and who was quietly playing at cards in the cabin when the flames burst from the vessel. His friends, however, state in his excuse, or rather in his praise, that he was acquainted with the danger, and had given private orders to steer the vessel towards a sandbank on the Mecklenburg coast, his object being to avoid alarming the passengers until the moment of absolute necessity arrived. The flames burst out just as the vessel grounded; most of the passengers were saved, owing chiefly to the heroic efforts of a young and unknown Frenchman. The Russian captain has been replaced by a Dutchman; but he, it is said, does not possess authority over his crew. Foreign countries lend to Russia the men only whom they do not care to keep themselves. I shall know tomorrow what to think of the individual in question. No one can judge so well of a commander as a sailor or a passenger. The love of life, that love so passionately rational, is a guide by which we can unerringly appreciate the men upon whom our existence depends.
Our noble vessel draws too much water to get up to Petersburg; we therefore change ship at Kronstadt, whence the carriages will follow us, two days later, in a third vessel. This is tiresome, but curiosity triumphs over all: it is perhaps the chief requisite in a traveler.
I am writing at midnight, without any lights, on board the steamboat Nicholas I, in the Gulf of Finland. It is now the close of a day which has nearly the length of a month in these latitudes, beginning about the 8th of June, and ending towards the 4th of July. By degrees the nights will reappear; they are very short at first, but insensibly lengthen as they approach the autumnal equinox. They then increase with the same rapidity as do the days in spring, and soon involve in darkness the north of Russia and Sweden, and all within the vicinity of the Arctic Circle. To the countries actually within this circle, the year is divided into a day and a night, each of six months’ duration. The tempered darkness of winter continues as long as the dubious and melancholy summer light.
I cannot yet cease from admiring the phenomenon of a polar night, the clear beam of which almost equals that of the day. Nothing more interests me than the various degrees in which light is distributed to the various portions of the globe. At the end of the year, all the different parts of the earth have beheld the same sun during an equal number of hours; but what a difference between the days! what a diversity also of temperature and of hues! The sun, whose rays strike vertically upon the earth, and the sun whose beams fall obliquely, do not appear the same luminary, at least if we judge by effects.
As for myself, whose existence bears a sympathetic analogy to that of plants, I acknowledge a kind of fatality in climates, and, impelled by the influence the heavens have over my mind, willingly pay respect to the theory of Montesquieu. To such a degree are my temper and faculties subject to the action of the atmosphere, that I cannot doubt of its effects upon politics. But the genius of Montesquieu has exaggerated and carried too far the consequences of this belief. Obstinacy of opinion is the rock on which genius has too often made shipwreck. Powerful minds will only see what they wish to see: the world is within themselves; they understand everything but that which is told to them.
About an hour ago I beheld the sun sinking in the ocean between the NNW and N. He has left behind a long bright track which continues to light me at this midnight hour, and enables me to write upon deck while my fellow-passengers are sleeping. As I lay down my pen to look around, I perceive already, towards the NNE the first streaks of morning light. Yesterday is not ended, yet tomorrow is begun. The sublimity of this polar scene I feel as a compensation for all the toils of the journey. In these regions of the globe the day is one continued morning, which never performs the promises of its birth. This singular twilight precedes neither day nor night; for the things which bear those names in southern countries have in reality no existence here. The magic effects of color, the religious gloom of midnight, are forgotten; nature appears no longer a painting, but a sketch; and it is difficult to preserve belief in the wonders of those blessed climates where the sun reigns in his full power.
The sun of the north is an alabaster lamp, hung breast-high, and revolving between heaven and earth. This lamp, burning for weeks and months without interruption, sheds its melancholy rays over a vault which it scarcely lightens; nothing is bright, yet all things are visible. The face of nature, everywhere equally illuminated by this pale light, resembles that of a poet rapt in vision and hoary with years. It is Ossian who remembers his loves no more, and who listens only to the voices of the tombs.
The aspect of these unvaried surfaces—of distances without objects, horizons undefined, and lines half effaced—all this confusion of form and coloring, throws me into a gentle reverie, the peaceful awakening from which is as like death as life. The soul resembles the scene, and rests suspended between day and night—between waking and sleeping. It is no lively pleasure that it feels; the raptures of passion cease, but the inquietude of violent desires ceases also. If there is not exemption from ennui, there is from sorrow: a perpetual repose possesses both the mind and the body, the image of which is reflected by this indolent light, that spreads its mortal coldness equally over day and night, over the ocean and the land, blended into one by the icy hand of winter, and the overspreading mantle of the polar snows.
The light of these flat regions near the pole accords well with the blue eyes, the inexpressive features, the fair locks, and the timidly romantic imagination of the women of the North. Those women are forever dreaming of what others are enacting; of them more especially can it be said, that life is but the vision of a shadow.
In approaching these northerly regions you seem to be climbing the platform of a chain of glaciers; the nearer you advance, the more perfectly is the illusion realized. The globe itself seems to be the mountain you are ascending. The moment you attain the summit of this large Alp, you experience what is felt less vividly in ascending other Alps: the rocks sink, the precipices crumble away, population recedes, the earth is beneath your feet, you touch the pole. Viewed from such elevation, the earth appears diminished, but the sea rises and forms around you a vaguely defined circle; you continue as though mounting to the summit of a dome—a dome which is the world, and whose architect is God.
From thence the eye extends over frozen seas and crystal fields, in which imagination might picture the abodes of the blessed unchangeable inhabitants of an immutable heaven.
Such were the feelings I experienced in approaching the Gulf of Bothnia, whose northern limits extend to Torneo.
The coast of Finland, generally considered mountainous, appears to me but a succession of gentle, imperceptible hills; all is lost in the distance and indistinctness of the misty horizon. This untransparent atmosphere deprives objects of their lively colors; everything is dulled and dimmed beneath its heavens of mother-of-pearl. The vessels just visible in the horizon, quickly disappear again; for the glimmering of the perpetual twilight to which they here give the name of day scarcely lights up the waters; it has not power to gild the sails of a distant vessel. The canvas of a ship under full sail in northern seas, in place of shining as it does in other latitudes, is darkly figured against the gray curtain of heaven, which resembles a sheet spread out for the representation of Chinese figures. I am ashamed to confess it, but the view of nature in the north reminds me, in spite of myself, of an enormous magic lantern, whose lamp gives a bad light, and the figures on whose glasses are worn with use. I dislike comparisons which degrade the subject; but we must, at any rate, endeavor to describe our conceptions. It is easier to admire than to disparage; nevertheless, if we would describe with truth, the feeling that prompts both sentiments must be suffered to operate.
On entering these whitened deserts, a poetic terror takes possession of the soul: you pause, affrighted on the threshold of the palace of winter. As you advance amid abodes of cold illusions, of visions, brilliant, though with a silvered rather than a golden light, an indefinable species of sadness takes possession of the heart; the failing imagination ceases to create, or its feeble conceptions resemble only the undefined forms of the wanly glittering clouds that meet the eye.
When the mind reverts from the scenery to itself, it is to partake of the hitherto incomprehensible melancholy of the people of the North, and to feel, as they feel, the fascination of their monotonous poetry. This initiation into the pleasures of sadness is painful while it is pleasing; you follow with slow steps the chariot of Death, chanting hymns of lamentation, yet of hope; your sorrowing soul lends itself to the illusions around, and sympathizes with the objects that meet the sight: the air, the mist, the water, all produce a novel impression. There is, whether the impression be made through the organ of smell or of touch, something strange and unusual in the sensation: it announces to you that you are approaching the confines of the habitable world; the icy zone is before you, and the polar air pierces even to the heart. This is not agreeable, but it is novel and very strange.