Julian the Apostate

482 Pages·1899·9.12 MB·English

by  D.S. Mereshkovski

Julian the Apostate
By
D. S. Mereshovski
Translated by
Charles Johnston
Henry Altemus
Philadelphia
COPYRIGHT 1899,BYHENRYALTEMT
INTRODUCTION.
The present trend toward romantic fiction is
the sign of a healthy reaction in literature. It
sounds the death of the pseudo-realism so ram-
pantly self-assertive during the last decade.
Thatrealismdivideditselfinto two camps. The
pornographists, like Zola, engaged in accurate but
purely pathological studies of the hog that lies
couchant in all humanity, and even after twenty
centuries of Christianity is still rampant in many
of us. Theygave us a portion of the truth. Now
a portion can never be real. On the other side
were the photographers, like Henry James, and
W. D. Howells, who used their flashlights only
upon man and woman in full-dress, smiling pleas-
antly and with their company-manners assumed
for the occasion. Of the infinite capacities of the
human heart for good or for evil these writers
gave us but the vaguest intimations. Henc.e they,
also, saw but a portion of the truth. Hence they,
also, were essentially unreal.
But the advent of the new school of Stanley
Weyman, Anthony Hope, and, greatest of all,
Sienkiewicz and Mereshkovski, marks a return to
the ever-new and ever-old, the historical and
romantic fictionwhich pleased ourforefathersand
mayhap will continue to please our descendants
to the end. These novelists dare to take large
canvases and paint upon them stirring and splen-
did scenes,lit upbyhuman passion. They do not
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4 Introduction.
representmanasalldirt,norasadeity,butrender
him in hisaspect ashe livedandlives:
Halfdirt,halfdeity,untalike
Tosoarorsink.
They reproduce for us the actual heroes or vil-
lains, inhighplacesand inlow,who have stormed
across the past of the world, and they kin them
to the present byshowing us more or less directly
how they were actuated by the same mixture of
noble and ignoble motives that rule the human
breast ofto-day.
I have mentioned Mereshkovski in the same
breath with Sienkiewicz because he seems to me
equal in the power of reproducing the pagan or
semi-pagan past in its gorgeous decadence. His
portrait of Julian the Apostate is well worthy a
place besides the portrait of Nero in Quo Vadis,
and I am not sure that it was not the more diffi-
cult task. Julian, a much more complex char-
acter than Nero, required infinitely more delicacy
inthehigh-lights and inthe shading, more chiar-
oscuro, a finer technique, in short, on the partof
the artist. YetJulian in the one book stands out
asboldly and intelligibly as Nero in the other.
Julian the Apostate, in fact, is one of the most
interesting characters in history. Notwithstand-
inghis early death and the shortness of his reign
it is with a start we remind ourselves that he
Mras barely thirty when he died and had been
Emperor for only a year and a half he made a
mighty impress upon his time. Historians may
callhimareactionaryengagedinahopeless strug-
gle against destiny, sociologists an atavist, strug-