By DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI
THE DEATH OF THE GODS. Authorized EnglishVersion by Herbert Trench. 12o
THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI:THE FORERUNNER. (The Resurrection ofthe Gods.) Authorized English Version from theRussian. 12o. With 8 Illustrations
—— Artist’s Edition, with 64 illustrations. 2 vols.,8o
PETER AND ALEXIS. Authorized English Versionfrom the Russian. 12o
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York London
The Romance of Peter the Great
BY
DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI
AUTHOR OF “THE DEATH OF THE GODS” (THE EMPEROR JULIAN)
AND “THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI”
Sole Authorised Translation from the Russian
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
This remarkable novel, the first by Merejkowski on apurely Russian theme, completes the already famoushistorical Trilogy, of which The Death of the Gods, andThe Forerunner, or Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, werethe two former instalments. For some account of theauthor, and of the main idea underlying the Trilogy, thereader is referred to the English preface to The Death ofthe Gods.
These novels, which may be read independently of eachother, have been very successfully translated into all the principalEuropean languages; and the exclusively authorizedEnglish translations of them, published in England byMessrs. Archibald Constable, and in the United States byMessrs. Putnam, are being again issued in new editionsrespectively in both countries.
The present translation, although it is feared much likeHeine’s “stuffed moonbeam,” has been made direct fromthe Russian original, and pains have not been spared torender it exact. Thanks are due to Mr. W. R. Morfill,Reader in Russian to the University of Oxford, for hiskind assistance on one or two difficult points.
A word of explanation is due to the English andAmerican public with regard to the purpose of thepresent work.
No one who knows Merejkowski personally, no one whoreads his story with a fair mind, will imagine for a momentthat it is written to please or to amuse the “young person.”It is intended for men and women. It is a simple andearnest psychological study of the most moving episode inthe life of the greatest of the Romanoff princes. It isa sketch, vivid and true, of classes and conditions,—ofcourt and society,—of peasants and wild religious[6]beliefs—in Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century.As regards the bulk of her population she hasnot materially changed.
Russia at that time lay in a position relative toEurope precisely analogous to that occupied by Japanthirty-five years ago. The vaster country, as the readerwill see, was beginning, through the person of its sovereign,humbly to learn of the civilised West, just as Japan beganto do so also through her sovereign’s efforts in 1868.
But in this book a strange additional feature of interestfor the present moment is a psychological feature. Thecharacter of the Romanoff family