In truth, Turgenev’s art at its highest may well be the despair of
artists who have sufficient insight to understand wherein he excels.
He is rich in all the gifts, so he penetrates into everything; but
it is the perfect harmony existing between his gifts that makes him
see everything in proportion. Thus he never caricatures; he is never
too forcible, and never too clever. He is a great realist, and his
realism carries along with it the natural breath of poetry. His art is
highly complex, but its expression is so pellucid, so simple, that we
can see only its body, never the mechanism of its body. His thought
and his emotion are blended in one; he interprets life, but always
preserves the atmosphere, the glamour, the mystery of the living thing
in his interpretation. His creative world arises spontaneously from his
own depths--the mark of the world’s great masters. Never thinking of
himself, he inspires his readers with a secret delight for the beauty
that he found everywhere in life. And he never shuts his eyes against
the true.