The expressions, “Russian ideal,” “representative type of one
generation,” and other terms of this kind, which one must necessarily
use to mark the connection between Turgénief’s different works, must
not be allowed to give a false idea of the nature of his talent and of
his methods in fiction.
He has himself defined his talent. He has explained his methods so
far as they were essential. We have, therefore, only to turn to these
precious directions. “I will tell you in a few words that I am, so far
as preference goes, a realist; and that I am interested, more than all
else, in the living truth of the human physiognomy.” He says elsewhere,
that at no moment of his career has he ever taken for his point of
departure in a new creation an abstract idea, but that he has always
started with the true image, the objective reality, the characteristic
personage observed and living.
Here is the very principle of his æsthetic, as he summed it up in his
letter to Mr. King, a novelist just beginning his career: “If the study
of the human physiognomy, and of the life of another, interests you
more than the promulgation of your own feelings and your own ideas; if,
for example, it is more agreeable for you to reproduce accurately the
external appearance not only of a man, but also of a simple object,
than to express with elegance and warmth what you feel in seeing this
object or this man,--then you are an objective writer, and you can
begin a story or a novel.”
Truth is not disagreeable to those who love it: it gives life to their
conceptions. Turgénief’s work, the political bearing of which we have
already tried to show our readers, is a little world where go and come
a thousand people with variously expressive characters and faces. The
creator of such living characters as these has been compared to a
great portrait-painter. The comparison is unjust to the novelist. Like
the great painters of portraits, he seizes a dominant feature, and
expresses it powerfully. It is thus that in a book, on the canvas,
the resemblance is caught. But the art of a Titian, of a Reynolds,
renders the aspect of the face, and reveals, if you like, something
more,--the temperament of the model. It goes scarcely beyond that. The
novelist expresses, besides, a whole order of hidden facts, a whole
internal spectacle, of which the brush scarcely gives us an inkling.
There is therefore a double field of studies to go over, a double power
of observation to put into use. It is necessary at one and the same
time to note the attitude, and interpret the disposition; to catch the
expression of the face, and to penetrate the meaning of the character.
Turgénief possessed this double talent to a very high degree. As a
general thing, he paints with broad touches; and his portrait, both
physically and morally, is finished in few words. Sometimes the detail
is more minute, but the accumulation of lines serves only to verify
the dominant impression. I refer the reader to the romance of “The
Abandoned One,” and to that admirable portrait of the old Russian
gentleman in the time of Catherine II. What a calling-back of the past
is given by this old man of lofty stature, perfumed with ambergris,
glacial in doublet of silk with its relief of stock and lace ruffles, a
suspicion of powder on his hair brought behind into a cue, and in his
hand a gold snuff-box ornamented with the empress’s cipher! He always
speaks French; he scarcely knows Russian. He reads perforce every
day Voltaire, Mably, Helvétius, the _Encyclopédistes_; he has whilom
improvised verses in Madame de Polignac’s _salon_; he has been among
the guests at Trianon; he has seen Mirabeau wearing coat-buttons of
extravagant size, and his opinion on our great orator is, that he was
“exaggerated in all respects; that, on the whole, he was a man of low
tone, in spite of his birth.”
It is seen by this example, that Turgénief’s portraits often represent
a class in an individual. They are the expression of an epoch. In
fact, though he studies nature closely, he takes pains not to content
himself, as our realists do, with the first model that comes to hand.
He carefully seeks for the character whose features are sufficiently
marked and original, so that in copying it he shall be sure to
reproduce the general type. Thus he discovered Bazarof, the hero of
“Fathers and Sons.” The idea was given him by the chance which brought
to his sick-bed in a small Russian city the “young doctor of the
district,” who served him for his model. I do not know whether all
the characters of “Virgin Soil,” without exception, passed under the
author’s eyes; but I have heard Turgénief tell how he knew, and was
able to study, the most characteristic personage of the story, the
Nihilist woman,--the upright, solemn, and rather absurd, but strong and
sublime Mashurina.
It was by his knowledge of the heart of women, and by the
thorough-going fascination of his heroines, that Turgénief left far
behind him his great predecessor Gogol. By an inexplicable peculiarity,
the author of “The _Revizor_,” of “Dead Souls,” cared only to paint
women who were not women at all, who are lifeless abstractions or
caricatures.[39] The most gossiping biographers are embarrassed to
explain the reason of this impotence. All that can be said is that
Gogol dreaded too much the approach of woman-kind, ever to have the
chance to study the sex. On the contrary, Turgénief’s heroines are so
life-like, that under each portrait his readers have tried to recognize
and name some model. All well-informed Russians would have told you
in what palace in Warsaw dwelt Iréna of “Smoke,” or at the first
official reception would have pointed you Mrs. Sipiagina of “Virgin
Soil.” It certainly seems that all these delicate creations have the
irresistible seduction of reality. There is not a romance, not a
story, by Turgénief, in which there does not shine forth some feminine
face, sometimes of a rather strange grace, but singularly lifelike and
touching. Natalia and her sister in “Dmitri Rudin,” Liza in “A Nest of
Noblemen,” Elena in “On the Eve,” Marian in “Virgin Soil,”--it would be
necessary to name them all.
What rather surprises the French reader is not to find them always
beautiful; at least, with that perfect and improbable beauty which our
novelists do not hesitate to give their expressionless dolls. One has
regular features, a pretty foot, but her hands are too large. Another,
at first sight, seems ugly: “She wore her thick chestnut hair short,
and she seemed to be fretful; but her whole person gave the impression
of something strong, passionate, and fiery. Her feet and her hands were
extremely dainty; her little body, robust and supple, reminded one of
the Florentine statuettes of the sixteenth century; her movements were
graceful and harmonious.” What idealized beauty would have this living
grace?
Another singularity, which shows us to what a degree the author takes
us from our own latitude: in him the women have less originality than
the young girls. The indecision and feebleness found in their lovers,
the Rudins and the Nedzhanofs, is paralleled by the resolute wisdom,
and--let us use the words “graceful virility,” in them. They somewhat
resemble the Roman girls, and we expect to hear them say in their way
the “_Non dolet_” of the illustrious Arria. But no; they have not
in the least these rather theatrical attitudes and words. It is the
Nedzhanofs who die like impatient Stoics, or perhaps like discouraged
Epicureans: Marian continues to live, and without bustle to prepare
for the freeing of the country which she loves.
Women raised by noble feeling to the scorn of death are found elsewhere
than in Russia. What is more rare, and almost impossible to find, are
these fanatical sacrifices, these renunciations worthy of the primitive
days of the Church, which associate lovely maidens of sixteen with
imbecile vagabonds eaten up by hideous ulcers. Turgénief might have
multiplied in his work description of pathological cases (“Strange
Stories”), but if his realism is too artistic to delay over what is
commonplace, he is too honest to devote himself to exceptions.
The form which best brings out this sincerity of expression is the
tale. Turgénief takes little stock in dramatic form, at least in
his own case. “I see a subject,” he used to say, “only when I have
the framework, the portrait, the dialogues, the wanderings, of a
narration.” In the drama he felt himself bothered by the necessity
of collecting, abridging, curtailing, filling in; and his psychology
seemed to him warped, when presented in miniature. It is in vain that
you brought up in opposition to this modest claim the form of such and
such of his stories, which from beginning to end is an uninterrupted
scene, a dramatic dialogue.
“That is not dramatic dialogue,” said he: he was and had to remain a
narrator.
To find finished narration, it is sufficient, indeed, to open at
hap-hazard “The Annals of a Huntsman.” Nothing is lacking; not
character-painting, or lively course of the story, or surprise in
circumstances, or development of the situation, or harmony of outline,
or feeling for nature, or grace of style, or value of coloring. But one
ought to have heard Turgénief, and to have seen him in his character
of story-teller, to imagine to what degree all these qualities in him
were spontaneous. It was especially in this that his conversation was
unlike any one else’s: it translated ideas into images, and, without
any attempt, created paintings which one would never forget.
Does narration in Turgénief gain by assuming the ampler proportions
of the novel? Our French taste is open to suspicion, and I hesitate
about replying. Our good novelists are such clever carpenters: they
construct so symmetrically works so ingeniously arranged for effect;
the interest is kept up with such skill; the action moves along with
such a certain step, towards a logical result feared or suspected from
the very first word! We find ourselves at first not quite so much at
our ease in these Russian novels, which are full of art, but are bare
of little artifices; where the developments are like the course of real
life; where the characters hesitate, and sometimes remain still; where
the action develops without haste; and where the author does not even
think it important to come to an end. It is sufficient for him to state
facts, and explain characters. This perfect naturalness, at first a
trifle dubious, finally comes to have a great charm. There is nothing
which is more able to make us reflect on the puerile stress which we
lay on the method, and on the often to-be-regretted emptiness of our
novels of industrious mechanism.
We should not have given Turgénief his just deserts if we forgot to
praise him as a poet worthy of all admiration. I mean, as a poet in
prose; for Turgénief was no more successful than Gogol in making good
verse. Both of them used a language that was picturesque, infinitely
expressive, full of images, and, in the case of Turgénief more than
Gogol, of perfect purity and the greatest variety. He feels all the
beauties of nature, and expresses them with powerful originality, or
a delicate charm which shines through even the rather thick veil of
translations. And yet what shadings escape us, what graces are lost for
us!
The Russian language has infinite resources. If it is less exact in
expressing the relations of action and of time, it brings out the most
imperceptible circumstances of action. It outlines with less clearness:
it paints with incredible richness of coloring. It is easy to
understand what effects a writer who can see and can express--a poet,
in a word--is able to make with it. Turgénief’s descriptions threw
Merimée into despair. One day, when he was trying to put into French
a passage where the author had represented the peculiar sound of the
rain falling on a sheet of water, the French words _grésillement froid_
(cold shrivelling), destined to translate this inexpressible noise,
caused the author of “Colomba” to hesitate. “Yet that is it,” said he,
thinking better of it; “and the thing must be said, or lose the bit
of observation, which is perfectly true to nature. The Devil take the
pedants! Let us leave the phrase.”
How far this poetic realism is from our flat and tiresome enumerations
of details heaped up without selection! But the parallel between
the Russian realists and the French realists, to which this subject
constantly attracts us, would carry us too far. It is sufficient to
point out the essential difference. Observation in our realists is
systematic and cold; in the Russians, and, above all, in Turgénief, it
is always natural, and generally passionate. There is not a novel by
Turgénief where the pathetic has not a large part; and sometimes this
pathos, by the simplest means, reaches heights neighboring upon the
sublime.
I shall only quote one example of it, taken from “Fathers and Sons;”
and I have no fear that the reader will charge me with bad taste in
cutting out this admirable scene from this novel, extended as it is:--
“Although Bazarof pronounced these last words with a rather resolute
expression, he could not bring himself to tell his father of his
departure until they were in the library, just as he was going to bid
him good-night. He said, with a forced yawn,--
“‘Wait a moment. I almost forgot to let you know. It will be necessary
to send our horses to Fyodot to-morrow for the relay.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch stood stupefied.
“‘Is Kirsánof going to leave us?’ he asked at last.
“‘Yes, and I am going with him.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch fell back stupefied.
“‘You are going to leave us!’
“‘Yes, I have business. Have the kindness to send the horses.’
“‘Very well,’ stammered the old man, ‘for the relay. Very
good,--only--only--is it possible?’
“‘I must go to Kirsánofs for a few days. I shall come right back.’
“‘Yes, for several days. Very well.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch took out his handkerchief, and blew his nose,
bending over till he almost touched the floor.
“‘Well, be it so. It shall be done. But I thought that you--longer.
Three days--after three years of absence. It isn’t--it isn’t very long,
Yevgéni.’
“‘I just told you that I would come right back. I must!’
“‘You must? Very well: before all things, one must do his duty. You
want me to send the horses? Very well; but we did not expect this,
Arina and I. She just went to ask a neighbor for some flowers to put in
your room.’
“Vasíli Ivanovitch did not add that every morning at daybreak, in bare
feet in his slippers, he went to find Timoféitch, handing him a torn
bill, which he picked out from the bottom of his pocket-book with
trembling fingers. This bill was designed for the purchase of different
provisions, principally food and red wine, great quantities of which
the young men consumed.
“‘There is nothing more precious than liberty; that’s my principle. It
is not well to hinder people. One should not’--
“Vasíli suddenly stopped, and started for the door.
“‘We shall see each other soon again, father, I promise you.’
“But Vasíli Ivanovitch did not return. He left the room, making a
gesture with his hand. Coming into his bed-chamber, he found his wife
already asleep; and he began to pray in a low voice, so as not to
disturb her slumber. However, she waked up.
“‘Is it you, Vasíli Ivanovitch?’ she asked.
“‘Yes, my dear.’
“‘You have just left Yeniushka? I am afraid that he is not comfortable
sleeping on the sofa. Yet I told Anfisushka to give him your
field-mattress and the two new cushions. I would have given him our
feather-bed too, but I think I remember that he does not like to sleep
too easy.’
“‘That’s no matter, my dear; don’t trouble yourself. He is
comfortable.--Lord, have pity on us sinners,’ he added, continuing
his prayer. Vasíli Ivanovitch did not talk long. He did not wish to
announce the tidings that would have broken his poor wife’s rest.
“The two young men took their departure the next morning. Every
thing in the house, from early that morning, assumed a sad aspect.
Anfisushka let fall the plate that she was carrying; Fyedka himself was
entirely upset, and finally left his boots. Vasíli Ivanovitch moved
about more than ever. He tried hard to hide his disappointment; he
spoke very loud, and walked noisily: but his face was hollow, and his
eyes seemed always to avoid his son. Arina Vlasievna wept silently. She
would have entirely lost her self-control if her husband had not given
her a long lecture in the morning. When Bazarof, after having repeated
again and again that he would come back before a month was over,
finally tore himself from the arms that held him back, and sat down in
the _tarantás_; when the horses started, and the jingling of the bells
was mingled with the rumbling of the wheels; when it was no use to
look any longer; when the dust was entirely settled, and Timoféitch,
bent double, had gone staggering back to his lodging; when the two old
people found themselves once more alone in their house, which seemed
also to have become smaller and older, ... Vasíli Ivanovitch, who but
a few moments before was waving his handkerchief so proudly from the
steps, threw himself into a chair, and hung his head on his breast. ‘He
has left us,’ he said with a trembling voice,--‘left us! He found it
lonesome with us. Now I am alone, alone,’ he repeated again and again,
lifting each time the forefinger of his right hand.[40] Arina Vlasievna
drew near him, and, leaning her white head on the old man’s white head,
she said, ‘What’s to be done about it, Vasíli? A son is like a shred
torn off. He is a young hawk: it pleases him to come, and he comes; it
pleases him to go, and he flies away. And you and I are like little
mushrooms in the hollow of a tree: placed beside each other, we stay
there always. I alone do not change for thee, just as thou dost not
change for thy old wife.’
“Vasíli lifted his face, which he had hidden in his hands, and embraced
his companion more tenderly than he had ever done, even in his youth.
She had consoled him in his disappointment.”
Were we not right in speaking here of the pathetic, and was it not
well that we drew the reader’s attention to this good old word? It
expresses an old idea, which, with no offence to the lovers of the
commonplace, is not yet ready to perish. It is the mistake of the
French realists,[41] to take coolness for strength, and they claim to
be considered very strong men. Turgénief’s great superiority consists
in his having no pretension, not even to be trivial and common. He does
not make it a matter of pride to stay on the hither side of the truth.