and subjectivity are all right, so long as there is plenty of life and
passion. But his subjectivity is full of pain, without life."
Turgenev, like most novelists, began his literary career with the
publication of verse. He never regarded his poems highly, however, nor
his plays, of which he wrote a considerable number. His reputation
began, as has been said, with the appearance of "A Sportsman's
Sketches," which are not primarily political or social in their
intention, but were written, like all his works, from the serene
standpoint of the artist. They are full of delicate character-analysis,
both of men and of dogs; they clearly revealed, even in their
melancholy humour, the actual condition of the serfs. But perhaps
they are chiefly remarkable for their exquisite descriptions of
nature. Russian fiction as a whole is not notable for nature-pictures;
the writers have either not been particularly sensitive to beauty of
sky and landscape, or like Browning, their interest in the human soul
has been so predominant that everything else must take a subordinate
place. Turgenev is the great exception, and in this field he stands
in Russian literature without a rival, even among the professional
poets.
Although "Sportsman's Sketches" and the many other short tales that
Turgenev wrote at intervals during his whole career are thoroughly
worth reading, his great reputation is based on his seven complete
novels, which should be read in the order of composition, even though
they do not form an ascending climax. All of them are short; compared
with the huge novels so much in vogue at this moment, they look like
tiny models of massive machinery. Turgenev's method was first to write
a story at great length, and then submit it to rigid and remorseless
compression, so that what he finally gave to the public was the
quintessence of his art. It is one of his most extraordinary powers
that he was able to depict so many characters and so many life
histories in so very few words. The reader has a sense of absolute
completeness.
It was in his first novel, "Rudin," that Turgenev made the first
full-length portrait of the typical educated Russian of the nineteenth
century. In doing this, he added an immortal character to the world's
literature. "Such and such a man is a Rudin," has been a common
expression for over fifty years, as we speak of the Tartuffes and the
Pecksniffs. The character was sharply individualised, but he stands as
the representative of an exceedingly familiar Slavonic type, and no
other novelist has succeeded so well, because no other novelist has
understood Rudin so clearly as his creator. It is an entire mistake to
speak of him, as so many do nowadays, as an obsolete or rather a
"transitional" type. The word "transitional" has been altogether
overworked in dealing with Turgenev. Rudins are as common in Russia
to-day as they were in 1850; for although Turgenev diagnosed the
disease in a masterly fashion, he was unable to suggest a remedy. So
late as 1894 Stepniak remarked, "it may be truly said that every
educated Russian of our time has a bit of Dmitri Rudin in him." If
Rudin is a transitional type, why does the same kind of character
appear in Tolstoi, in Dostoevski, in Gorki, in Artsybashev? Why has
Sienkiewicz described the racial temperament in two words,
improductivite slave? It is generally agreed that no man has succeeded
better than Chekhov in portraying the typical Russian of the last
twenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1894 some one sent to him
in writing this question, "What should a Russian desire at this
present time?" He replied, "Desire! he needs most of all desire--force
of character. We have enough of that whining shapelessness." Kropotkin
says of him: "He knew, and more than knew--he felt with every nerve of
his poetical mind--that, apart from a handful of stronger men and
women, the true curse of the Russian 'intellectual' is the weakness of
his will, the insufficient strength of his desires. Perhaps he felt it
in himself. . . . This absence of strong desire and weakness of will
he continually, over and over again, represented in his heroes. But
this predilection was not a mere accident of temperament and
character. It was a direct product of the times he lived in." If it
was, as Kropotkin says, a direct product of the times he lived in,
then Rudin is not a transitional type, for the direct product of the
forties and fifties, when compared with the direct product of the
eighties and nineties, is precisely the same. Turgenev's Rudin is far
from obsolete. He is the educated Slav of all time; he to a large
extent explains mapless Poland, and the political inefficiency of the
great empire of Russia. There is not a single person in any English or
American novel who can be said to represent his national type in the
manner of Rudin. When we remember the extreme brevity of the book, it
was an achievement of the highest genius.
Rudin, like the Duke in "The Statue and the Bust," is a splendid
sheath without a sword, "empty and fine like a swordless sheath." His
mind is covered with the decorations of art, music, philosophy, and
all the ornaments engraved on it by wide travel, sound culture, and
prolonged thought; but he can do no execution with it, because there
is no single, steady, informing purpose inside. The moment the girl's
resolution strikes against him, he gives forth a hollow sound. He is
like a stale athlete, who has great muscles and no vitality. To call
him a hypocrite would be to misjudge him entirely. He is more subtle
and complex than that. One of his acquaintances, hearing him spoken of
as Tartuffe, replies, "No, the point is, he is not a Tartuffe.
Tartuffe at least knew what he was aiming at." A man of small
intelligence who knows exactly what he wants is more likely to get it
than a man of brilliant intelligence who doesn't know what he wants,
is to get anything, or anywhere.
Perhaps Turgenev, who was the greatest diagnostician among all
novelists, felt that by constantly depicting this manner of man Russia
would realise her cardinal weakness, and some remedy might be found
for it--just as the emancipation of the serfs had been partly brought
about by his dispassionate analysis of their condition. Perhaps he
repeated this character so often because he saw Rudin in his own
heart. At all events, he never wearied of showing Russians what they
were, and he took this means of showing it. In nearly all his novels,
and in many of his short tales, he has given us a whole gallery of
Rudins under various names. In "Acia," for example, we have a charming
picture of the young painter, Gagin.
"Gagin showed me all his canvases. In his sketches there was a good
deal of life and truth, a certain breadth and freedom; but not one of
them was finished, and the drawing struck me as careless and
incorrect. I gave candid expression to my opinion.
"'Yes, yes,' he assented, with a sigh, 'you're right; it's all very
poor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I ought
to have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better
of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one
fancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place--but when it
comes to doing anything, one's weak and weary directly."
The heroine of "Rudin," the young girl Natalya, is a faint sketch of
the future Lisa. Turgenev's girls never seem to have any fun; how
different they are from the twentieth century American novelist's
heroine, for whom the world is a garden of delight, with exceedingly
attractive young men as gardeners! These Russian young women are
grave, serious, modest, religious, who ask and expect little for
themselves, and who radiate feminine charm. They have indomitable
power of will, characters of rocklike steadfastness, enveloped in a
disposition of ineffable sweetness. Of course they at first fall an
easy prey to the men who have the gift of eloquence; for nothing
hypnotises a woman more speedily than noble sentiments in the mouth of
a man. Her whole being vibrates in mute adoration, like flowers to the
sunlight. The essential goodness of a woman's heart is fertile soil
for an orator, whether he speaks from the platform or in a
conservatory. Natalya is limed almost instantly by the honey of
Rudin's language, and her virgin soul expands at his declaration of
love. Despite the opposition of her mother, despite the iron bonds of
convention, she is ready to forsake all and follow him. To her
unspeakable amazement and dismay, she finds that the great orator is
vox, et praeterea nihil.
"'And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?'
"'What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you, I shall
trust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?'
"'My plans--Your mother certainly will turn me out of the house.'
"'Perhaps. She told me yesterday that she must break off all
acquaintance with you. But you do not answer my question.'
"'What question?'
"'What do you think we must do now?'
"'What we must do?' replied Rudin, 'of course submit.'
"'Submit?' repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white.
"'Submit to destiny,' continued Rudin 'What is to be done?'"
But, although the average Anglo-Saxon reader is very angry with Rudin,
he is not altogether contemptible If every man were of the Roosevelt
type, the world would become not a fair field, but a free fight. We
need Roosevelts and we need Rudins The Rudins allure to brighter
worlds, even if they do not lead the way. If the ideals they set
before us by their eloquence are true, their own failures do not
negate them. Whose fault is it if we do not reach them? Lezhnyov gives
the inefficient Rudin a splendid eulogy.
"Genius, very likely he has! but as for being natural. . . . That's
just his misfortune, that there's nothing natural in him. . . . I want
to speak of what is good; of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm;
and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most
precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably
reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and
thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! . . . He is not an
actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at
other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child. . . .
He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no
blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use? that
his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom
nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the
faculty of carrying out their own ideas? . . . I drink to the health
of Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth,
to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its purity, to all that
our hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing
better than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time,--to the
health of Rudin!"
It is plain that the speaker is something of a Rudin himself.
The next novel, "A House of Gentlefolk,"* is, with the possible
exception of "Fathers and Children," Turgenev's masterpiece. I know of
no novel which gives a richer return for repeated re-readings. As the
title implies, this book deals, not with an exciting narrative, but
with a group of characters; who can forget them? Like all of its
author's works, it is a love-story; this passion is the mainspring
of the chief personages, and their minds and hearts are revealed by
its power. It is commonly said that Turgenev lacked passion; one
might say with equal truth that Wordsworth lacked love of nature.
Many of his novels and tales are tremulous with passion, but they
are never noisy with it. Like the true patrician that he was, he
studied restraint and reserve. The garden scene between Lisa and
Lavretsky is the very ecstasy of passion, although, like the two
characters, it is marked by a pure and chaste beauty of word and
action, that seems to prove that Love is something divine. Only the
truly virtuous really understand passion--just as the sorrows of men
are deeper than the sorrows of children, even though the latter be
accompanied by more tears. Those who believe that the master passion
of love expresses itself by floods of words or by abominable imagery,
will understand Turgenev as little as they understand life. In reading
the few pages in which the lovers meet by night in the garden, one
feels almost like an intruder--as one feels at the scene of
reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia. It is the very essence of
intimacy--the air is filled with something high and holy.
* In the original, "A Nobleman's Nest."
Lisa is the greatest of all Turgenev's great heroines. No one can help
being better for knowing such a girl. She is not very beautiful, she
is not very accomplished, not even very quick-witted; but she has eine
schone Seele. There is nothing regal about her; she never tries to
queen it in the drawing-room. She is not proud, high-spirited, and
haughty; she does not constantly "draw herself up to her full height,"
a species of gymnastics in great favour with most fiction-heroines.
But she draws all men unto herself. She is beloved by the two opposite
extremes of manhood--Panshin and Lavretsky. Lacking beauty, wit, and
learning, she has an irrepressible and an irresistible virginal
charm--the exceedingly rare charm of youth when it seeks not its own.
When she appears on the scene, the pages of the book seem illuminated,
and her smile is a benediction. She is exactly the kind of woman to be
loved by Lavretsky, and to be desired by a rake like Panshin. For a
man like Lavretsky will love what is lovely, and a satiated rake will
always eagerly long to defile what is beyond his reach.
It is contemptuously said by many critics--why is it that so many
critics lose sensitiveness to beauty, and are afraid of their own
feelings?--it is said that Lisa, like Rudin, is an obsolete type, the
type of Russian girl of 1850, and that she is now interesting only as
a fashion that has passed away, and because of the enthusiasm she once
awakened. We are informed, with a shade of cynicism, that all the
Russian girls then tried to look like Lisa, and to imitate her manner.
Is her character really out of style and out of date? If this were
true, it would be unfortunate; for the kind of girl that Lisa
represents will become obsolete only when purity, modesty, and
gentleness in women become unattractive. We have not yet progressed
quite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of the
Russian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of the
Ewig-weibliche.
At the conclusion of the great garden-scene, Turgenev, by what seems
the pure inspiration of genius, has expressed the ecstasy of love in
old Lemm's wonderful music It is as though the passion of the lovers
had mounted to that pitch where language would be utterly inadequate;
indeed, one feels in reading that scene that the next page must be an
anti-climax. It would have been if the author had not carried us still
higher, by means of an emotional expression far nobler than words. The
dead silence of the sleeping little town is broken by "strains of
divine, triumphant music. . . . The music resounded in still greater
magnificence; a mighty flood of melody--and all his bliss seemed
speaking and singing in its strains. . . The sweet, passionate melody
went to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishing
with inspiration, happiness, and beauty; it swelled and melted away;
it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. It
breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens."
Elena, the heroine of "On the Eve," resembles Lisa in the absolute
integrity of her mind, and in her immovable sincerity; but in all
other respects she is a quite different person. The difference is
simply the difference between the passive and the active voice. Lisa
is static, Elena dynamic. The former's ideal is to be good, the
latter's is to do good. Elena was strenuous even as a child, was made
hotly angry by scenes of cruelty or injustice, and tried to help
everything, from stray animals to suffering men and women. As Turgenev
expresses it, "she thirsted for action." She is naturally
incomprehensible to her conservative and ease-loving parents, who have
a well-founded fear that she will eventually do something shocking.
Her father says of her, rather shrewdly: "Elena Nikolaevna I don't
pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is
so large that it embraces all nature down to the last beetle or frog,
everything in fact except her own father." In a word, Elena is
unconventional, the first of the innumerable brood of the vigorous,
untrammelled, defiant young women of modern fiction, who puzzle their
parents by insisting on "living their own life." She is only a faint
shadow, however, of the type so familiar to-day in the pages of Ibsen,
Bjornson, and other writers. Their heroines would regard Elena as
timid and conventional, for with all her self-assertion, she still
believes in God and marriage, two ideas that to our contemporary
emancipated females are the symbols of slavery.
Elena, with all her virtues, completely lacks the subtle charm of
Lisa; for an aggressive, independent, determined woman will perhaps
lose something of the charm that goes with mystery. There is no
mystery about Elena, at all events; and she sees through her various
adorers with eyes unblinded by sentiment. To an artist who makes love
to her she says "I believe in your repentance and I believe in your
tears But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes,
and your tears too." Naturally there is no Russian fit to be the mate
of this incarnation of Will. The hero of the novel, and the man who
captures the proud heart of Elena, is a foreigner--a Bulgarian, who
has only one idea, the liberation of his country. He is purposely
drawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemen
with whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual trait
in a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by the
laconic answer he makes to her question, "You love your country very
dearly?" "That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, then
one can say he loved his country." Perhaps it is hypercritical to
observe that in such a case others would have to say it for him.
He proves that he is a man of action in a humorous incident. At a
picnic, the ladies are insulted by a colossal German, even as Gemma is
insulted by a German in "Torrents of Spring." Insarov is not a
conventional person, but he immediately performs an act that is
exceedingly conventional in fiction, though rare enough in real life.
Although he is neither big, nor strong, nor in good health, he
inflicts corporal chastisement on the brute before his lady's
eyes--something that pleases women so keenly, and soothes man's vanity
so enormously, that it is a great pity it usually happens only in
books. He lifts the giant from the ground and pitches him into a pond.
This is one of the very few scenes in Turgenev that ring false, that
belong to fiction-mongers rather than to fiction-masters. Nothing is
more delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insulted
the woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarely
crowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisingly
unwilling to play this complaisant role.
Finding himself falling in love with Elena, Insarov determines to go
away like Lancelot, without saying farewell. Elena, however, meets him
in a thunderstorm--not so sinister a storm as the Aeneas adventure in
"Torrents of Spring"-and says "I am braver than you. I was going to
you." She is actually forced into a declaration of love. This is an
exceedingly difficult scene for a novelist, but not too difficult for
Turgenev, who has made it beautiful and sweet. Love, which will ruin
Bazarov, ennobles and stimulates Insarov; for the strong man has found
his mate. She will leave father and mother for his sake, and cleave
unto him. And, notwithstanding the anger and disgust of her parents
she leaves Russia forever with her husband.
All Turgenev's stories are tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by
his own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and
"Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic
women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny.
Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing,
because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena,
thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little Italian
doctor, with wig and spectacles, quietly remarks, "Signora, the
foreign gentleman is dead--of aneurism in combination with disease of
the lungs."
This novel caused great excitement in Russia, and the title, "On the
Eve," was a subject for vehement discussion everywhere. What did
Turgenev mean? On the eve of what? Turgenev made no answer; but over
the troubled waters of his story moves the brooding spirit of
creation. Russians must and will learn manhood from foreigners, from
men who die only from bodily disease, who are not sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought. At the very close of the book, one man asks
another, "Will there ever be men among us?" And the other "flourished
his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance."
Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through a
woman--through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many are
the Russian women who have given their lives for their country.*
* See an article in the "Forum" for August, 1910.
The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of
"A House of Gentlefolk," his masterpiece, is "Fathers and Children,"
which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by "On
the Eve." The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has not
yet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judges
of Russian literature. Shut off from participation in free, public,
parliamentary political debate, the Russians of 1860 and of to-day are
almost certain to judge the literary value of a work by what they
regard as its political and social tendency. Political bias is
absolutely blinding in an attempt to estimate the significance of any
book by Turgenev; for although be took the deepest interest in the
struggles of his unfortunate country, he was, from the beginning to
the end of his career, simply a supreme artist. He saw life clearly in
its various manifestations, and described it as he saw it, from the
calm and lonely vantage-ground of genius. Naturally he was both
claimed and despised by both parties. Here are some examples from
contemporary Russian criticism* (1862):--
* To the best of my knowledge, these reviews have never before been
translated. These translations were made for me by a Russian friend,
Mr. William S. Gordon.
"This novel differs from others of the same sort in that it is chiefly
philosophical. Turgenev hardly touches on any of the social questions
of his day. His principal aim is to place side by side the philosophy
of the fathers and the philosophy of the children and to show that the
philosophy of the children is opposed to human nature and therefore
cannot be accepted in life. The problem of the novel is, as you see, a
serious one; to solve this problem the author ought to have
conscientiously and impartially studied both systems of speculation
and then only reach certain conclusions. But on its very first pages
you see that the author is deficient in every mental preparation to
accomplish the aim of his novel. He not only has not the slightest
understanding of the new positive philosophy, but even of the old
ideal systems his knowledge is merely superficial and puerile. You
could laugh at the heroes of the novel alone as you read their silly
and 'hashy' discussions on the young generation had not the novel as a
whole been founded on these identical discussions."
The radical critic Antonovich condemned the book in the following
terms:--