of Russian politics in the sixties, and remains forever an immortal
work of art. For the greatness of this book lies not in the use of the
word Nihilist, nor in the reproduction of ephemeral political
movements; its greatness consists in the fact that it faithfully
portrays not merely the Russian character, nor the nineteenth century,
but the very depths of the human heart as it has manifested itself in
all ages and among all nations.
The next novel, "Smoke," despite its extraordinary brilliancy, is in
many ways unworthy of Turgenev's genius. It was written at Baden,
while he was living with the Viardots, and I suspect that the
influence of Madame Viardot is stronger in this work than in anything
else Turgenev produced. Of course he had discussed again and again
with her the abuse that young Russia had poured on his head for
"Fathers and Children;" and I suspect she incited him to strike and
spare not. The smoke in this novel is meant to represent the idle
vapour of Russian political jargon; all the heated discussions on both
sides are smoke, purposeless, obscure, and transitory as a cloud. But
the smoke really rose from the flames of anger in his own heart,
fanned by a woman's breath, who delighted to see her mild giant for
once smite his enemies with all his force. If "Fathers and Children"
had been received in Russia with more intelligence or more sympathy,
it is certain that "Smoke" would never have appeared. This is the most
bitter and purely satirical of all the works of Turgenev; the
Slavophils, with their ignorance of the real culture of western
Europe, and their unwillingness to learn from good teachers, are hit
hard; but still harder hit are the Petersburg aristocrats, the "idle
rich" (legitimate conventional target for all novelists), who are here
represented as little better in intelligence than grinning apes, and
much worse in morals. No one ever seems to love his compatriots when
he observes them in foreign lands; if Americans complain that Henry
James has satirised them in his international novels, they ought to
read "Smoke," and see how Turgenev has treated his travelling
countrymen. They talk bad German, hum airs out of tune, insist on
speaking French instead of their own tongue, attract everybody's
attention at restaurants and railway-stations,--in short, behave
exactly as each American insists other Americans behave in Europe.
The book is filled with little portraits, made "peradventure with a
pen corroded." First comes the typical Russian gasbag, who talks and
then talks some more.
"He was no longer young, he had a flabby nose and soft cheeks, that
looked as if they had been boiled, dishevelled greasy locks, and a fat
squat person. Everlastingly short of cash, and everlastingly in
raptures over something, Rostislav Bambaev wandered, aimless but
exclamatory, over the face of our long-suffering mother-earth."
Dostoevski was so angry when he read this book that he said it ought
to be burnt by the common hangman. But he must have approved of the
picture of the Petersburg group, who under a thin veneer of polished
manners are utterly inane and cynically vicious. One of them had "an
expression of constant irritability on his face, as though he could
not forgive himself for his own appearance."
The portrait of the Pecksniffian Pishtchalkin: "In exterior, too, he
had begun to resemble a sage of antiquity; his hair had fallen off the
crown of his head, and his full face had completely set in a sort of
solemn jelly of positively blatant virtue."
None but a great master could have drawn such pictures; but it is not
certain that the master was employing his skill to good advantage. And
while representing his hatred of all the Russian bores who had made
his life weary, he selected an old, ruined man, Potugin, to express
his own sentiments--disgust with the present condition of Russia, and
admiration for the culture of Europe and the practical inventive power
of America. Potugin says that he had just visited the exposition at
the Crystal Palace in London, and that he reflected that "our dear
mother, Holy Russia, could go and hide herself in the lower regions,
without disarranging a single nail in the place." Not a single thing
in the whole vast exhibition had been invented by a Russian. Even the
Sandwich Islanders had contributed something to the show. At another
place in the story he declares that his father bought a Russian
threshing machine, which remained five years useless in the barn,
until replaced by an American one.
Such remarks enraged the Slavophils beyond measure, for they were
determined to keep out of Russia foreign inventions and foreign ideas.
But that Turgenev was right is shown in the twentieth century by an
acute German observer, Baron Von der Bruggen. In his interesting book,
"Russia of To-day," he says: "All civilisation is derived from the
West. . . . People are now beginning to understand this in Russia
after having lost considerable time with futile phantasies upon
original Slavonic civilisation. If Russia wishes to progress, her
Western doors must be opened wide in order to facilitate the influx of
European culture." The author of these words was not thinking of
Turgenev: but his language is a faithful echo of Potugin. They sound
like a part of his discourse. Still, the literary value of "Smoke"
does not lie in the fact that Turgenev was a true prophet, or that he
successfully attacked those who had attacked him. If this were all
that the book contained, it would certainly rank low as a work of art.
But this is not all. Turgenev has taken for his hero Litvinov, a young
Russian, thoroughly commonplace, but thoroughly practical and sincere,
the type of man whom Russia needed the most, and has placed him
between two women, who represent the eternal contrast between sacred
and profane love. This situation has all the elements of true drama,
as every one knows who has read or heard "Carmen;" it is needless to
say that Turgenev has developed it with consummate skill. Turgenev
regarded brilliantly wicked women with hatred and loathing, but also
with a kind of terror; and he has never failed to make them sinister
and terrible. Irina as a young girl nearly ruined the life of
Litvinov; and now we find him at Baden, his former passion apparently
conquered, and he himself engaged to Turgenev's ideal woman, Tanya,
not clever, but modest, sensible, and true-hearted, another Lisa. The
contrast between these two women, who instinctively understand each
other immediately and the struggle of each for the soul of the hero,
shows Turgenev at his best. It is remarkable, too, how clearly the
reader sees the heart of the man, so obscure to himself; and how
evident it is that in the very midst of his passion for Irina, his
love for Tanya remains. Irina is a firework, Tanya a star; and even
the biggest skyrockets, that illuminate all the firmament, do not for
long conceal the stars.
Turgenev thoroughly relieved his mind in "Smoke;" and in the novel
that followed it, "Torrents of Spring," he omitted politics and
"movements" altogether, and confined himself to human nature in its
eternal aspect. For this very reason the book attracted little
attention in Russia, and is usually dismissed in one sentence by the
critics. But it is a work of great power; it sings the requiem of lost
youth, a minor melody often played by Turgenev; it gives us a curious
picture of an Italian family living in Germany, and it contains the
portrait of an absolutely devilish but unforgettable woman. We have a
sincere and highly interesting analysis of the Russian, the German,
and the Italian temperament; not shown in their respective political
prejudices, but in the very heart of their emotional life. Once more
the Russian hero is placed between God and Satan; and this time Satan
conquers. Love, however, survives the burnt-out fires of passion; but
it survives only as a vain regret--it survives as youth survives, only
as an unspeakably precious memory. . . . The three most sinister women
that Turgenev has ever drawn are Varvara Pavlovna, in "A House of
Gentlefolk;" Irina, in "Smoke;" and Maria Nikolaevna, in "Torrents of
Spring." All three are wealthy and love luxury; all three are
professional wreckers of the lives of men. The evil that they do rises
from absolute selfishness, rather than from deliberate sensuality. Not
one of them could have been saved by any environment, or by any
husband. Varvara is frivolous, Irina is cold-hearted, and Maria is a
super-woman; she makes a bet with her husband that she can seduce any
man he brings to the house. To each of her lovers she gives an iron
ring, symbol of their slavery; and like Circe, she transforms men into
swine. After she has hypnotised Sanin, and taken away his allegiance
to the pure girl whom he loves, "her eyes, wide and clear, almost
white, expressed nothing but the ruthlessness and glutted joy of
conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a captured bird, has eyes like
that." Turgenev, whose ideal woman is all gentleness, modesty, and
calmness, must have seen many thoroughly corrupt ones, to have been so
deeply impressed with a woman's capacity for evil. In "Virgin Soil,"
when he introduces Mashurina to the reader, he says: "She was a single
woman . . . and a very chaste single woman. Nothing wonderful in that,
some sceptic will say, remembering what has been said of her exterior.
Something wonderful and rare, let us be permitted to say." It is
significant that in not one of Turgenev's seven novels is the villain
of the story a man. Women simply must play the leading role in his
books, for to them he has given the power of will; they lead men
upward, or they drag them downward, but they are always in front.
The virtuous heroine of "Torrents of Spring," Gemma, is unlike any
other girl that Turgenev has created. In fact, all of his good women
are individualised--the closest similarity is perhaps seen in Lisa and
Tanya, but even there the image of each girl is absolutely distinct in
the reader's mind. But Gemma falls into no group, nor is there any
other woman in Turgenev with whom one instinctively classifies or
compares her. Perhaps this is because she is Italian. It is a long
time before the reader can make up his mind whether he likes her or
not--a rare thing in Turgenev, for most of his good women capture us
in five minutes. Indeed, one does not know for some chapters whether
Gemma is sincere or not, and one is angry with Sanin for his moth-like
flitting about her radiance. She at once puzzles and charms the
reader, as she did the young Russian. Her family circle are sketched
with extraordinary skill, and her young brother is unique in
Turgenev's books. He has, as a rule, not paid much attention to
growing boys; but the sympathy and tenderness shown in the depiction
of this impulsive, affectionate, chivalrous, clean-hearted boy prove
that the novelist's powers of analysis were equal to every phase of
human nature. No complete estimate of Turgenev can be made without
reading "Torrents of Spring;" for the Italian menage, the character of
Gemma and her young brother, and the absurd duelling punctilio are not
to be found elsewhere. And Maria is the very Principle of Evil; one
feels that if Satan had spoken to her in the Garden of Eden, she could
easily have tempted him; at all events, he would not have been the
most subtle beast in the field.
In 1876 Turgenev wrote "Virgin Soil." Of the seven novels, this is the
last, the longest, and the least. But it did not deserve then, and
does not deserve now, the merciless condemnation of the critics;
though they still take up stones to stone it. Never was a book about a
revolutionary movement, written by one in sympathy with it, so
lukewarm. Naturally the public could not swallow it, for even God
cannot digest a Laodicean. But the lukewarmness in this instance
arose, not from lack of conviction, but rather from the conviction
that things can really happen only in the fulness of time. Everything
in the story from first to last emphasises this fact and might be
considered a discourse on the text add to knowledge, temperance: and
to temperance, patience. But these virtues have never been in high
favour with revolutionists, which explains why so many revolutions are
abortive, and so many ephemeral. It is commonly said that the leading
character in "Virgin Soil," Solomin, is a failure because he is not
exactly true to life, he is not typically Russian. That criticism
seems to me to miss the main point of the work. Of course he is not
true to life, of course he is not typically Russian. The typical
Russian in the book is Nezhdanov, who is entirely true to life in his
uncertainty and in his futility; he does not know whether or not he is
in love, and he does not know at the last what the "cause" really is.
He fails to understand the woman who accompanies him, he fails to
understand Solomin, and he fails to understand himself. So he finally
does what so many Russian dreamers have done--he places against his
own breast the pistol he had intended for a less dangerous enemy. But
he is a dead man long before that. In sharp contrast with him,
Turgenev has created the character Solomin, who is not at all
"typically Russian," but who must be if the revolutionary cause is to
triumph. He seems unreal because he is unreal; he is the ideal. He is
the man of practical worth, the man who is not passion's slave, and
Turgenev loved him for the same reason that Hamlet loved Horatio. Amid
all the vain babble of the other characters, Solomin stands out
salient, the man who will eventually save Russia without knowing it.
His power of will is in inverse proportion to his fluency of speech.
The typical Russian, as portrayed by Turgenev, says much, and does
little; Solomin lives a life of cheerful, reticent activity. As the
revolution is not at hand, the best thing to do in the interim is to
accomplish something useful. He has learned how to labour and to wait.
"This calm, heavy, not to say clumsy man was not only incapable of
lying or bragging; one might rely on him, like a stone wall." In every
scene, whether among the affected aristocrats or among the futile
revolutionists, Solomin appears to advantage. There is no worse
indictment of human intelligence than the great compliment we pay
certain persons when we call them sane. Solomin is sane, and seems
therefore untrue to life.
It is seldom that Turgenev reminds us of Dickens; but Sipyagin and his
wife might belong to the great Dickens gallery, though drawn with a
restraint unknown to the Englishman. Sipyagin himself is a miniature
Pecksniff, unctuous, polished, and hollow. The dinner-table scenes at
his house are pictured with a subdued but implacable irony. How the
natural-born aristocrat Turgenev hated the Russian aristocracy! When
Solomin appears in this household, he seems like a giant among
manikins, so truly do the simple human virtues tower above the
arrogance of affectation. The woman Marianna is a sister of Elena,
whom we learned to know in "On the Eve;" she has the purity, not of an
angel, but of a noble woman. She has that quiet, steadfast resolution
so characteristic of Russian heroines. As for Mariusha, she is a
specimen of Turgenev's extraordinary power of characterisation. She
appears only two or three times in the entire novel, and remains one
of its most vivid personages This is ever the final mystery of
Turgenev's art--the power of absolutely complete representation in a
few hundred words. In economy of material there has never been his
equal. The whole novel is worth reading, apart from its revolutionary
interest, apart from the proclamation of the Gospel according to
Solomin, for the picture of that anachronistic pair of old lovers,
Fomushka and Finushka.* "There are ponds in the steppes which never
get putrid, though there's no stream through them, because they are
fed by springs from the bottom. And my old dears have such springs too
in the bottom of their hearts, and pure as can be." Only one short
chapter is devoted to this aged couple, at whom we smile but never
laugh At first sight they may seem to be an unimportant episode in the
story, and a blemish on its constructive lines but a little reflection
reveals not only the humorous tenderness that inspired the novelist's
pen in their creation, but contrasts them in their absurd indifference
to time, with the turbulent and meaningless whirlpool where the modern
revolutionists revolve. For just as tranquillity may not signify
stagnation, so revolution is not necessarily progression. This
old-fashioned pair have learned nothing from nineteenth century
thought, least of all its unrest. They have, however, in their own
lives attained the positive end of all progress--happiness. They are
indeed a symbol of eternal peace, the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land. Turgenev, most cultivated of novelists, never fails to
rank simplicity of heart above the accomplishments of the mind.
* I cannot doubt that Turgenev got the hint for this chapter from
Gogol's tale, "Old-fashioned Farmers."
Turgenev's splendid education, his wealth which made him independent,
his protracted residence in Russia, in Germany, and in Paris, his
intimate knowledge of various languages, and his bachelor life gave to
his innate genius the most perfect equipment that perhaps any author
has ever enjoyed. Here was a man entirely without the ordinary
restraints and prejudices, whose mind was always hospitable to new
ideas, who knew life at first hand, and to whose width of experience
was united the unusual faculty of accurately minute observation. He
knew people much better than they knew themselves. He was at various
times claimed and hated by all parties, and belonged to none. His mind
was too spacious to be dominated by one idea. When we reflect that he
had at his command the finest medium of expression that the world has
ever possessed, and that his skill in the use of it has never been
equalled by a single one of his countrymen, it is not surprising that
his novels approach perfection.
His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judged
by his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply from
Tolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire
him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always
the main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with the
most painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced a
pot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousness
which Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration.
He had a gift for condensation, and a willingness to cultivate it,
such as no other novelist has shown. It is safe to say that his novels
tell more about human nature in less space than any other novels in
the world. Small as they are, they are inexhaustible, and always
reveal beauty unsuspected on the previous reading.
His stories are not stories of incident, but stories of character. The
extraordinary interest that they arouse is confined almost entirely to
our interest in his men and women; the plot, the narrative, the events
are always secondary; he imitated no other novelist, and no other can
imitate him. For this very reason, he can never enjoy the popularity
of Scott or Dumas; he will always be caviare to the general. Henry
James said of him, that he was particularly a favourite with people of
cultivated taste, and that nothing cultivates the taste better than
reading him. It is a surprising proof of the large number of readers
who have good taste, that his novels met with instant acclaim, and
that he enjoyed an enormous reputation during his whole career. After
the publication of his first book, "A Sportsman's Sketches," he was
generally regarded in Russia as her foremost writer, a position
maintained until his death; his novels were translated into French and
English very soon after their appearance, and a few days after his
death, the London "Athenaeum" remarked, "Europe has been unanimous in
according to Turgenev the first rank in contemporary literature." That
a man whose books never on any page show a single touch of melodrama
should have reached the hearts of so many readers, proves how
interesting is the truthful portrayal of human nature.
George Brandes has well said that the relation of Turgenev to his own
characters is in general the same relation to them held by the reader.
This may not be the secret of his power, but it is a partial
explanation of it. Brandes shows that not even men of genius have
invariably succeeded in making the reader take their own attitude to
the characters they have created. Thus, we are often bored by persons
that Balzac intended to be tremendously interesting; and we often
laugh at persons that Dickens intended to draw our tears. With the
single exception of Bazarov, no such mistake is possible in Turgenev's
work; and the misunderstanding in that case was caused principally by
the fact that Bazarov, with all his powerful individuality, stood for
a political principle. Turgenev's characters are never vague, shadowy,
or indistinct; they are always portraits, with every detail so subtly
added, that each one becomes like a familiar acquaintance in real
life. Perhaps his one fault lay in his fondness for dropping the story
midway, and going back over the previous existence or career of a
certain personage. This is the only notable blemish on his art. But
even by this method, which would be exceedingly irritating in a writer
of less skill, additional interest in the character is aroused. It is
as though Turgenev personally introduced his men and women to the
reader, accompanying each introduction with some biographical remarks
that let us know why the introduction was made, and stir our curiosity
to hear what the character will say. Then these introductions are
themselves so wonderfully vivid, are given with such brilliancy of
outline, that they are little works of art in themselves, like the
matchless pen portraits of Carlyle.
Another reason why Turgenev's characters are so interesting, is
because in each case he has given a remarkable combination of
individual and type. Here is where he completely overshadows
Sudermann, even Ibsen, for their most successful personages are
abnormal. Panshin, for example, is a familiar type in any Continental
city; he is merely the representative of the young society man. He is
accomplished, sings fairly well, sketches a little, rides horseback
finely, is a ready conversationalist; while underneath all these
superficial adornments he is shallow and vulgar. Ordinary
acquaintances might not suspect his inherent vulgarity--all Lisa knows
is that she does not like him; but the experienced woman of the world,
the wife of Lavretsky, understands him instantly, and has not the
slightest difficulty in bringing his vulgarity to the surface.
Familiar type as he is,--there are thousands of his ilk in all great
centres of civilisation,--Panshin is individual, and we hate him as
though he had shadowed our own lives. Again, Varvara herself is the
type of society woman whom Turgenev knew well, and whom he both hated
and feared; yet she is as distinct an individual as any that he has
given us. He did not scruple to create abnormal figures when he chose;
it is certainly to be hoped that Maria, in "Torrents of Spring," is
abnormal even among her class; but she is an engine of sin rather than
a real woman, and is not nearly so convincingly drawn as the simple
old mother of Bazarov.
Turgenev represents realism at its best, because he deals with souls
rather than with bodies. It is in this respect that his enormous
superiority over Zola is most clearly shown. When "L'Assommoir" was
published, George Moore asked Turgenev how he liked it, and he
replied: "What difference does it make to me whether a woman sweats in
the middle of her back or under her arm? I want to know how she
thinks, not how she feels." In that concrete illustration, Turgenev
diagnosed the weakness of naturalism. No one has ever analysed the
passion of love more successfully than he; but he is interested in the
growth of love in the mind, rather than in its carnal manifestations.