RACIAL ART


radiance: instead of idleness and of the
unhealthful, depressing effect of the long
winter without employment, now the entire
family-women, old men, children, around
the stove, beneath the evening lamp, fash-
ion charming things: embroideries, wooden
utensils, illuminations, pieces of sculpture,
or cabinet-making. The artisans offer a
wonderful picture in themselves, with their
crude types of faces, their small Slavonic
eyes, heavy with dreams and melancholy.
They are the originals of the Russian peas-
ants and workmen painted by the masters of
romance, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi and Gorki,
the author of "Quicksands." These strange
personalities, intense in type, in life and in
thought, are grouped and brought into
close relationship by the bond of happy
labor. - A young woman in a corner of the


cottage rocks the sleep of a baby, singing
softly a melancholy'song of which all the
others repeat the refrain. It is one of
those moujik or boat-songs, original and
striking, which have been sung by genera-
tions upon generations of human beings. It
may be the "Song of the Little Snow-ball,"
or the Lament of the boatmen of the Volga
which runs through Rechetnikoffs romance:
"Those of Podlipnaia." In this interior,
this genre picture, everything accords in
perfect harmony with the rhythm of the
song. The same soul is manifest, rejoices
and weeps in accents of the most touching
sincerity. It is the fair, ingenuous, pas-
sionate, childlike, grave, sorrowful soul of
the people which has never suffered the cor-
rupting touch of high civilization and the
fatal tyranny of money.


Balalaika (musical instrument): decoration by Mlle. Davydoff


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