And out of that hymn to the glory of the perishing house there
seems to come to us all the pathos of eternally passing things, all the
wistfulness of the last sunset, all the last greeting of a vanished
happiness. More sheerly than any other moment, more even than the
infinitely stern and simple prelude that ushers in the last scene of
"Boris" and seems to come out of a great distance and sum up all the
sadness and darkness and pitifulness of human existence, that scene
brings into view the great bleak monolith that the work of Moussorgsky
really is, the great consciousness it rears silently, accusingly against
the sky. As collieries rear themselves, grim and sinister, above mining
towns, so this music rears itself in its Russian snows, and stands,
awful and beautiful.
And, of late, the single shaft has out-topped the glamorous Wagnerian
halls. The operas of Moussorgsky have begun to achieve the eminence that
Wagner's once possessed. To a large degree, it is the change of times
that has advanced and appreciated the art of Moussorgsky. Although
"Boris" saw the light at the same time as "Die Goetterdaemmerung," and
although Moussorgsky lies chronologically very near the former age, he
is far closer to us in feeling than is Wagner. The other generation,
with its pride of material power, its sense of well-being, its surge
toward mastery of the terrestrial forces, its need of luxury, was unable
to comprehend one who felt life a grim, sorrowful thing, who felt
himself a child, a crone, a pauper, helpless in the terrible cold.
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