After reading what has gone before, I trust that no one will be
inclined to see a mere paradox in this affirmation: Turgénief was above
all things interested in the question of politics and social order, and
of this interest were born all his great works. This was the reason
that Turgénief’s writings so stirred the public: hence the favor of his
readers at first was, enthusiastic; hence came notorious alienation,
irritation, almost calumnious fury, from the time when the public and
the author no longer advanced with equal steps towards progress. For,
here is the point to be noted: Turgénief never ceased to make progress;
but as long as he walked slowly, with regular steps, like a man who
holds aloof from the popular current, and is not dragged along against
his will by the rising tide of the throng, the masses of the nation--I
mean the majority of the educated classes--no longer regulated his
gait, and, seeing him each day a little farther behind them, imagined
that he was retrograding or was not following. Turgénief was advancing,
and he went to great lengths. Let us see how great was the distance
between “The Annals of a Sportsman” and “Virgin Soil.”
Turgénief somewhere expressed his sympathy and admiration for Don
Quixote. He contrasted him with the dreamer Hamlet, in whom he took
little stock. Did not he himself enter the career of letters like a
knight-errant (_campeador_) in the lists? From the very beginning,
when he had won all the glory of a victor, he gave his young talent
to the service of the right and of truth; he turned his pen, like a
sword, against egotism, against injustice, against prejudice,--in a
word, against the different forms of error. His maiden book, “The
Annals of a Sportsman,” was not merely a literary event: it brought
about a political revolution. This picture of the wretched condition of
the serfs contributed in large measure to call forth the _ukaz_ that
enfranchised Russia.
It was not the first time that fiction had attacked the social
question. Gogol had already struck the first blow against the enemy
which Turgénief had the honor of defeating. But the author of “Dead
Souls” had laid himself out especially to depict the faults and foibles
of the small Russian proprietors; and, while he made it sufficiently
evident how miserable was the condition of the serfs under their
grotesque or detestable tyranny, his book left the unfortunate _muzhik_
in the background. Turgénief’s originality consisted in placing this
pariah in full light. He dared to show not only his pity but his
affection for the Russian peasant, often narrow-minded, ignorant, or
brutal, but good at heart. He undertook to reveal to the Russians this
being which they scarcely knew.
In the very first pages of his book he showed him with his instinctive
qualities; and for this reason he took pains to place him in an
exceptional condition, that is to say, in that sort of relative
independence occasionally realized in spite of, or by favor of, the
law. Khor and Kalinuitch are accordingly almost freed from the actual
miseries of serfage,--the first by living in the midst of a swamp,
avoiding statute labor by paying a quit-rent (_obrok_); the second
by serving as whipper-in for his master, whom he passionately adores.
The former is a _muzhik_, who has the feeling of reality, “who is
settled in life;” the other is a dreamer, “who sticks to nothing, and
smiles at all things.” Khor the cautious has carefully observed men and
things, and his experiences are expressed with that humorous _naïveté_
which gives such a color to the conversation of the Russian peasant.
Kalinuitch the enthusiast has the inspired language of a poet. He is
largely endowed with mysterious powers. The bees obey him as though he
were an enchanter. Both of them are good. The one is devout and gentle;
the other, simply cordial and hospitable. There is profit in listening
to the former, and pleasure in holding intercourse with the latter.
Under these features Turgénief pictured the Russian of the country
districts. After showing him, so to speak, in his native state, he went
on to explain the deformities from which the type was liable to suffer
under the brutalizing influences of serfdom.
The first alteration of the character of the Russian _muzhik_ is a
sort of ferocious, even savage, humor, which takes the place of the
original reason or ingenuity. The huntsman Yermolaï offers us a curious
example of this reversion to barbarism, of this return of the _muzhik_
towards the savage state. Emancipated in the manner of an outlaw, of a
bandit, he lives in the woods or the marsh, sleeping on a roof, under
a bridge, in the crotch of a tree, hunted down by the peasants like
a hare, beaten sometimes like a dog, but, aside from these trials,
enjoying to the full this strange independence. He does not support
his wife or his dog, both of whom he beats with the same brutal
indifference. He has all the instincts of the beast of prey in scenting
game, in trapping birds, in catching fish. He already possesses the
shrewdness of the savage: he would easily acquire his cruelty. “I did
not like the expression which came over his face when he applied his
teeth to the bird he had just brought to earth.”
However precarious and anxious this independent life may be, it appears
very enviable when compared to the torment and degradations of
slavery. The _muzhik_ Vlas walks all the way to Moscow, where he comes
to ask a reduction in his quit-rent; for his son who paid it for him is
dead, and he himself is old. The _barin_ slams the door in his face,
with the words, “How do you dare to come to me?” Vlas sadly returns to
his hut, where his wife is waiting for him, blowing in her fist from
starvation. “His lip is drawn, and in his little bloodshot eyes stands
a tear.” He suddenly bursts out into a laugh, thinking that they can’t
take any thing more from him than his life,--“a wretched pledge,”--and
that that damned German, the _prikashchik_ Quintilian Semenitch, “will
shuffle in vain:” that’s all he’ll get. That tear of anguish, and that
desperate laugh, are never to be forgotten.
Here are other impressions not less cruel. The serf Sutchok, now
employed at his trade of fisherman, tells how he began by working
as a cook; and how, in changing his profession, according as he
went from master to master, he found himself successively cook,
restaurant-keeper, actor, then back to his ovens again, then wearing
livery as sub-footman, then postilion, then huntsman, then cobbler,
then journeyman in a paper-mill. These caprices of the mastership which
weighs upon the _muzhik_ have not only their ridiculous side: there is
always something detestable about it. The last owner of this wretch,
whose life is only an irksome apprenticeship, is an old maid, who vents
her spleen at having been left in single-blessedness by forbidding all
her household to marry. This abasement of a human being, condemned by
his master to isolation, to barrenness, like a beast, is powerfully
shown in the little tale entitled “Yermolaï and the Miller Girl.”
But what seems still more painful than the slavery itself is to see
that it is endured with resignation, and sometimes even upheld,
excused, by those who have to submit to it. “How do you live?” is asked
of one of these victims of feudal despotism. “Do you get wages, a fixed
salary?”--“A salary! _Ekh!_ _barin_, we are given our victuals. Indeed,
that’s all we need, God knows! And may Heaven grant long life to our
_baruina_!” Another has just been tremendously flogged. He treats with
very bad grace the stranger who presumes to express commiseration;
he takes the part of the master who has so cruelly abused him for a
trifle; he is proud of belonging to a man who makes strict use of his
seignorial prerogatives. “No, no! there is not a _barin_ like to him in
the whole province!”
Turgénief does not confine himself to the expression of pity for the
_muzhiks_: he is unsparing of the nobles. With what irony he depicts
for us their false sentimentality, their detestable selfishness! How he
lays his finger on their absurdities! How he scourges their cruelty!
How he lays bare their hypocrisy! They all appear in the book, from
the narrow and cringing citizen, to the cynically brutal country
_pomyeshchik_, from the gentlemen of the steppe (_stepniaks_) up to the
vanished nobles, those legendary _vyelmozhui_, personified in Count
Alekséï Orlof, so handsome, so strong, so terrible, and at the same
time so beloved! “If you were not acquainted with him, you would feel
abashed; but after getting wonted to his presence, you felt warmed and
delighted as by a beautiful sunrise.” The author finds in this vanished
aristocracy the rather barbaric form of his own grandfather, and he
cannot refrain here from a sort of admiration. It is true, that small
men have a sympathy very differently marked for these ostentatious
giants of the olden days. Besides, is it not enough that the author
of “Annals of a Sportsman” makes no secret of the excesses committed
by those of his race? Has he not the right to remember that the form
of oppression has merely been changed, and that the serf is not less
abused from falling from the mighty hands of the tyrants, into the
hooked claws of tyrannical weaklings?
But the true tormentor of the serf was a man whose condition
brought him nearest to the _muzhik_; the one who, more often than
not, was himself only a _muzhik_ polished up,--in other words, the
representative of the proprietor, the superintendent (_prikashchik_),
the _burmistr_. This subaltern master pays the peasant’s quit-rent
until the latter, overwhelmed with debts, is absolutely in his power.
He becomes his slave, his drudge. Now and then will be found in the
woods the corpse of some wretch who has torn himself from this hell, by
suicide. But what is the use of complaining? The proprietor receives
his revenue, and is satisfied. And then the _prikashchik_ has a
thousand ways of getting hold of the fault-finder, and the wreaking of
his vengeance brings a groan.
Proprietors, _muzhiks_, _priskashchiks_, all these characters strike,
move, stir, by their fidelity to the truth. In a subject which lent
itself so easily to declamation, the author succeeded in refraining
from all excess of fine writing. This self-restraint in form gave
greater force to the satire, and added weight to the argument. Besides,
under the irony the bitterness was felt, and under the comic fervor was
occasionally heard the rumbling of a generous wrath. Turgénief himself
explained the feelings which animated him at this period of his life,
which I would rather compare to the morning of a battle. He had just
left Russia, the atmosphere of which seemed no longer fit to breathe.
He went away to get a fresh start, so as to come back with a renewed
impetus against his enemy serfage. “I swore that I would fight it even
to the death; I vowed that I would never come to terms with it: that
was my Hannibal’s oath.”
From one end of his work to the other, Turgénief never did aught else
than thus reflect the feelings of the Russian people, express its
hopes, note carefully, proclaim sincerely, all the forward and backward
movements of opinion. In every one of his novels, there is to be found
one person whose appearance, conduct, and worth may vary, but whose
dominant characteristic holds throughout all changes. This personage,
however alive he may be, serves to express an abstraction. He is, so
to speak, the incarnation of the wishes, the fears, the claims, of
the Russian people. Now, in Russia, as elsewhere, and still more than
elsewhere, public opinion is undergoing constant modification: the
novelist has followed with careful eye, and copied with accurate hand,
all these rapid transformations.
In Dmitri Rudin, he depicts for us a lofty but inconsequential
generation, eloquent, but lacking in depth, eager for every
undertaking, but having no fixed purpose; as the youth of 1840 must
have been, who had the power of speech, but were prevented from
action.[36]
This was the epoch when there was a passion for words, and especially
for words of foreign origin. Hegel’s philosophy frothed and foamed
in these Russian brains, so little constituted for the digestion of
metaphysical nutriment. But the fashion was for cosmopolitanism: they
affected to scorn national habits; they dreamed only of going “beyond
Russia.” Rudin, who personifies this error, was its first victim. At
first he carries away, he rouses to enthusiasm, all whom he approaches;
then his friends, his disciples, ultimately, sooner or later, turn
against him. He succeeds in rousing only hatred, or exciting only
distrust. Useless and inactive amid his own people, he goes to perish
on a French barricade; and by a supreme but unconscious irony, the
insurgent who fights at his side pronounces his funeral oration in
these words: “Lo, they have killed our Pole!”
Is it true to say that the Rudins were of no advantage to their
country? The author gives us to understand, that their words may have
cast the germ of generous thoughts into more than one young soul to
whom nature will not refuse the advantage of a fruitful activity.
To this same unfortunate family of forerunners, and to this same
sacrificed but indispensable generation, belongs the character of
Lavretsky in the romance entitled “A Nest of Noblemen.” Unlike Rudin,
Lavretsky owes nothing to schooling. Scarcely does he have time for
applying his simple and ingenuous mind to the acquisition of knowledge
during the period between the moment when he escapes the durance of
paternal despotism, and that when he takes upon him the more pleasing
yoke of conjugal will. He therefore has remained Russian; he believes
in the future of the national genius. He is lavish of himself, and
of those of his age; but he admires the tendencies of the young, and
he praises their endeavors. Departing from his country, happy, or at
least under that delusion, he returns alone and crushed; but he has the
consolation of doing his duty, that is to say, cultivating his estate,
and improving the lot of his peasants. This unostentatious work of
Lavretsky’s, better than Rudin’s brilliant declamations, pointed out to
the rising generations what Russia henceforth expected from her sons:
“You must act, and the benediction of us old men will fall upon you.”
But this period of action which they seem to be approaching will be
postponed before the unanimous wishes of the novelist and the reader.
In the book “On the Eve,” translated into French under the title
“Hélène,”[37] the author’s aim is very evident. He contrasts two
Russians with a Bulgarian; and the brilliant or solid qualities of the
artist Shubin and the student Bersénief yield before the unique virtue
of Insarof, a more common nature. This virtue of the barbarian is to go
straight ahead; he does not delay for dreaming or discussion; there is
nothing of the Hamlet about him. However strange be his ideal, however
adventurous his lot, he carries with him Elena’s hesitating wisdom,
just as Don Quixote overcame Sancho’s rebellious good sense. It is this
decisiveness, this bold gait, this firm resolution not to fall back,
and resolutely to emerge from the beaten path, which the author of
“On the Eve” seems to hold up before the Russian people. But it might
be said that he despaired of finding in his own country the man of
action, destined to win the glory to come; and it was thus that the
Russian critics explained his significant choice of a Bulgarian for the
hero of his romance.
This ingenious explanation is not correct. Insarof and Elena have
experienced life. This beautiful young Russian girl, who is anxious to
devote herself to a noble cause, and who, not being able to die for her
own country, clings to the lot of the foreigner who shows her the path
of great sacrifices, was not a creature of Turgéniefs imagination. Not
only did Elena exist, but there was a throng of Elenas who asked only
for a chance to show themselves. This was seen as soon as the romance
was published. All feminine hearts throbbed. One might say that the
author had placed before the eyes of the virgins of Russia a mirror,
where, for the first time, they were allowed to see themselves, and
become conscious of their own existence. A few years later Elena would
have had a chance to offer herself to Russia. She would have acted like
Viéra Sasuluitch, or, not to go outside of fiction, like Marian in
“Virgin Soil.”
In the famous novel “Fathers and Sons,” the young generation for the
first time comes upon the scene. It is represented by the medical
student Bazarof. Better to bring out his hero by a fortunate contrast,
the author has put this brutal but thoroughly original plebeian face
to face with a gentleman in whom are united all the qualities and
the eccentricities of the conservative nobility. Again, it is German
education which has fashioned Bazarof. But Hegel’s theories have
given place to Schopenhauer’s; and Germanic pessimism, grafted on the
Russian mind, has brought forth very strange fruit. The young men of
whom Bazarof is a type are of the earth earthy, to the same degree as
that generation of which Rudin was the shining example showed itself
exalted. They have only one aim, action; they admit only one principle
of action, utility; they see only one form of utility at the present
time, absolute negation. “Yet isn’t it necessary to rebuild?--That does
not concern us. Before all things we must clear the ground.”
Here, clearly formulated, is the theory of Nihilism. This word,
invented by Turgénief, and spoken for the first time in “Fathers and
Sons,” has in short space gone all over the world. We know that all
Russian readers, young and old, blamed the author of the novel for
slandering them. The older generation could not forgive him for having
spurned their prejudices; the rising generation were angry with him
for not preaching their errors. What strikes us to-day is that at this
moment he was able to remain so clear-sighted and sincere; that he was
able to unite so much nobility with Pavel Kirsánofs narrow-sightedness,
and so much subtilty with Bazarof’s destructive scepticism.
But the character which Turgénief liked best in this romance of
“Fathers and Sons” was Bazarof,--in other words, that personage
representing the Russian soul with aspiration toward progress, no
longer ideal and vague, but violent, and brutal. “What! do _you_, do
you say that in Bazarof I desired to draw a caricature of our young
men? You repeat (excuse the freedom of the expression), you repeat
that stupid reproach? Bazarof! but he is my well-beloved son, who
caused me to break with Katkof, for whom I expended all the colors
on my palette. Bazarof, that quick spirit, that hero, a caricature!”
And he took delight in returning to the definition of this enigmatic
personage. He never wearies in commenting on “this harbinger type,”
this “grand figure,” surrounded by a genuine “magic spell,” and, as it
were, by some sort of “aureole.”
The conclusion of the book lies in the ironical and bitter advice
given by Bazarof to his friend Arkad: “Take thee a wife as soon as
thou canst, build thy nest well, and beget many children. They will
certainly be people of brains, because they will come in due time, and
not like thee and me.”
Thus is the solution of the social problem once more postponed. The
rock of Sisyphus falls back as heavily on the new-comers as on their
predecessors. The recoil is even so mighty that the observer feels
that he too is attacked by pessimism; and if he does not take pride in
absolute negation, like Bazarof or his young adepts, he just as surely
comes to deny their qualities, to see any sense in their conduct. The
romance “Smoke,” which is the expression of this new state of mind,
roused in Russia all the clamors by which a satire is received. What
was entirely overlooked was the feeling of painful compassion hidden
under the aggressive form. It was an act of enlightened patriotism,
to let daylight into the hollow declamations of the progressists, and
to lay the scourge on the stupid folly, the idiotic depravity, of a
nobility which had brought itself into discredit. Between Gubaref,
that solemn imbecile, and Ramirof, the complaisant husband of a
faithless wife, one must go to the hero of the story, Litvinof; that
is to say, to the idealized Russia, whose gloomy and painful destiny
we have followed across all Turgéniefs work, under the features of
Rudin, of Lavretsky, of Bazarof. Like Lavretsky twenty years before,
Litvinof returns to his country, overwhelmed with domestic troubles,
which exasperate all his other feelings, and change the mishaps of his
patriotism into despair. The vanity of love makes him find all things
vain. In the tumult of the recent years, in the agitation of divers
classes, in the words of others, in his own thoughts, he sees mere
nothingness, sham, smoke. The desolation of this conclusion was brought
up against the author of the book, by his compatriots, with a warmth
which almost disgusted him with the _rôle_ of political observer, and
almost deprived us likewise of a masterpiece in which Turgénief seems
to have reached his greatest height,--“Virgin Soil.”
The author of “Fathers and Sons” named and defined theoretic Nihilism:
in “Virgin Soil,” the same author shows us the Nihilists at the very
moment when, for the first time, they begin to act. Between the two
books a pretty long time elapsed, during which Turgénief kept silent.
There is lacking, therefore, among his works, a book which might let us
into the secrets of the dark development and mysterious spread of the
new theories. In regard to this Nihilist propaganda in its early years,
when it was only an attempt at self-instruction, we find, in “Virgin
Soil,” only hints, allusions. The very character, however, who is
going to bring about the crisis, at the risk of destroying every thing
along with himself, Markelof, still reads and propagates with naïve
assurance the “brochures” which are secretly sent him, and which he
passes on “under the mantle” to his other confederates. What subjects
were treated in these books so carefully hidden? Those which were worth
the trouble of reading were translations of foreign works on political
economy; writings attacking, with greater or less ability, the problems
of society. But this instruction, good or bad, could not have the least
influence on the great mass of the Russian population, which does not
read at all.
It was therefore necessary to find more efficacious means of action,
and to organize actual preaching. Then it was that a pretty large
number of people belonging to the educated classes, students like
Nedzhanof, women voluntarily deserting their own rank in life, like
Marian, undertook to go down among the people, to dress in their
style, to speak their dialect, to lead their rough lives, to gain
their confidence at the cost of this labor, to open their minds to the
ideas of liberty and progress, to rescue them from the double curse of
laziness and drunkenness, and, finally, to bring them into the path of
action. The trouble was that these people who preached action did not
themselves know where to begin the work. Each of them was waiting for
the word of command, which no one could give; for in this concert of
wills there was no one to direct, and the most violent efforts, from
lack of determined purpose, were obliged to remain without results.
Another insurmountable obstacle lay in the repugnance of the people
at emerging from their tremendous inertia. Nedzhanof compares Holy
Russia to a colossus, whose head touches the north pole and his feet
the Caucasus, and who, holding a jug of _vodka_ in his clutched
fingers, sleeps an endless sleep. Those who try to struggle against
this sleep lose their time and their labor. Discouragement takes hold
of them, and some of them, like Markelof, for having desired, having
tried by themselves alone, to perform a part which needs the efforts
of an army, go forth on the hopeless path by the gate that leads to
Siberia; others, like Nedzhanof, having lost faith in this work for the
regeneration and enfranchisement of a people to which they believed
themselves capable of offering their devotion, throw down violently
the double burden of their vain labor and their ridiculous lives. The
Russian Hamlet gets rid of his mission by suicide.
This beautiful novel of “Virgin Soil,” which must be read through,
appeared on the very eve of the great Nihilist suit against the One
Hundred and Ninety-three. At first the cry was raised, that the author
did not draw a true picture: the author was again slandering Russia.
A few days later the critics, dismayed at his power of divination,
accused Turgénief of having got into the confidence of the ruling
power, and of having had in his hands the entire brief of the
preparatory trial.[38] Some Nihilists were already dreaming of more
tragic performances. “I also,” said one of them, who at this time was a
refugee in Paris, “I also am a Nedzhanof; but I shall not kill myself
as he did: there is a better way of doing it.” This better way was
worse. It was assassination in the manner of Soloviéf, who, having
resolved to kill himself, and for the same reasons that influenced
Nedzhanof, will inaugurate suicide with a bloody preface.
Since “Virgin Soil,” the evolution of Nihilism has made new and
rapid strides. The mania of descending among the people, and “being
simplified” has given place to other fantastic notions, just as
useless, but less innocent. We have said that Turgénief died before
he had time to finish the romance in which he would have shown us the
agitations of to-day, and possibly pointed out the social reforms of
to-morrow.
Who knows what Russia is preparing for us? Hitherto the reforms have
been decreed by the throne; and the _ukazes_ have remained without
effect, because they have not had the support in the lever of the
people. The expenditure of energy, starting from above, did not make
the nation stir. But now suddenly the nation seems to be shaking off
its torpor. The peasants, hitherto deaf to all voices, and stubbornly
resistant of all progress, have perhaps found for themselves the way
of safety and redemption. They are assembling in their villages, and
they are organizing the league against drunkenness. This strike against
the wine-shop is terrifying to the Russian clergy: they see in it a new
form of heresy. In their eyes, these water-drinkers are _raskolniks_,
and the most dangerous kind. We know the Russian proverb versified by
Nekrásof: “The _muzhik_ has a head like a bull: when a folly finds
lodgement there, it is impossible to drive it out, even with heavy
blows of the goad.” It is this headstrong obstinacy which seemed to
postpone forever, and which may precipitate to-morrow, the settlement
of the social question.