Note on Turgenev's Life--His Character and Philosophy--
_Enough_--_Hamlet and Don Quixote_--The _Poems in
Prose_--Turgenev's last Illness and Death--His Epitaph.
If we have said nothing hitherto about the twenty years of Turgenev's
life (1855-1877), in which the six great novels were composed, it is
because his cosmopolitan activities, social, political, intellectual,
were too many to be chronicled in the compass of a short Study. They
may be here indicated in a few lines. Lengthy stays in France, and
visits to Germany, Italy, England, were alternated with residence every
year at Spasskoe. His attachment to Madame Viardot and her family
(which may be studied in _Lettres à Madame Viardot_, Paris, 1907, a
series unfortunately not published in its entirety) led to his joining
their household at Courtavenel and Paris, and later (1864) to settling
with them at Baden. His residence in France brought him into contact
with nearly all the celebrated French men of letters, Mérimeé, Taine,
Renan, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, etc., and later with the
chiefs of the young naturalistic school, as Zola, Daudet, Guy de
Maupassant. Turgenev's political outlook and Liberal creed are best
represented in his Correspondence with Hertzen, to whom he communicated
Russian news for _The Bell_: his relations and quarrel with Tolstoy,
and his enthusiastic appreciation of the latter's genius are recorded
in Biriukoff's _Life of Tolstoy_, and in Halperine-Kaminsky's
_Correspondence_. For his relations with Russian contemporary men of
letters, Fet, Grigorovitch, Nekrassov, Dostoevsky, Annenkov, Aksakov,
etc., there exists a mass of documents, letters and reminiscences
in the Russian. For a general sketch of Turgenev's life the English
reader can turn to E. Haumant's _Ivan Tourguénief_, Paris, 1906; for
an account of Turgenev's youth, his relations with the Nihilists, his
later life in Paris, etc., to Michel Delines' _Tourguénief Inconnu_,
and also to the much-abused but valuable volume, _Souvenirs sur
Tourguéneff_, by Isaac Pavlovsky.
All these sources reveal Turgenev in much the same light, a man of
boundless cosmopolitan interests, of a broad, sane, fertile mind, of
the most generous and tender heart. Some of his contemporaries touch
on certain weaknesses, his vacillating will, his fits of hypochondria,
his romantic affectation in youth, etc., but everybody bears witness
(as does his Correspondence) to his lovableness, and the extraordinary
altruism and sweetness of his nature. Thus Maupassant, a keen judge of
character, records:
"He was one of the most remarkable writers of this century, and at
the same time the most honest, straightforward, universally sincere
and affectionate man one could possibly meet. He was simplicity
itself, kind and honest to excess, more good-natured than any one in
the world, affectionate as men rarely are, and loyal to his friends
whether living or dead.
"No more cultivated, penetrating spirit, no more loyal, generous
heart than his ever existed."
Such a man's philosophy can in no sense be termed "pessimistic," since
the wells of his spirit are constantly fed by springs of understanding,
love and charity. The whole body of Turgenev's work appeals to our
faith in the ever-springing, renovating power of man's love of the
good and the beautiful, and to his spiritual struggle with evil. But,
faced by the threatening mass of wrong, of human stupidity and greed,
of men's pettiness and blindness, Turgenev's beauty of feeling often
recoils in a wave of melancholy and of sombre mournfulness. Thus
in _Enough_ (1864), a fragment inspired by the seas of acrimonious
misunderstanding raised by _Fathers and Children_, Turgenev has
concentrated in a prose poem of lyrical beauty, an access of profound
dejection. Here we see laid bare the roots of Turgenev's philosophic
melancholy,--man's insignificance in face of "the deaf, blind, dumb
force of nature ... which triumphs not even in her conquests but goes
onward, onward devouring all things.... She creates destroying, and
she cares not whether she creates or she destroys.... How can we stand
against those coarse and mighty waves, endlessly, unceasingly, moving
upward? How have faith in the value and dignity of the fleeting images,
that in the dark, on the edge of the abyss, we shape out of dust for
an instant?" After recording many exquisite memories of nature and of
love, Turgenev, then, compares human activities to those of gnats on
the forest edge on a frosty day when the sun gleams for a moment: "At
once the gnats swarm up on all sides; they sport in the warm rays,
bustle, flutter up and down, circle round one another.... The sun is
hidden--the gnats fall in a feeble shower, and there is the end of
their momentary life. And men are ever the same." "What is terrible
is that there is nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is
petty, uninteresting and degradingly inane."
"But are there no great conceptions, no great words of consolation:
patriotism, right, freedom, humanity, art? Yes, those words there are
and many men live by them and for them. And yet it seems to me that
if Shakespeare could be born again he would have no cause to retract
his Hamlet, his Lear. His searching glance would discover nothing new
in human life: still the same motley picture--in reality so little
complex--would unroll beside him in its terrifying sameness. The same
credulity and the same cruelty, the same lust of blood, of gold, of
filth, the same vulgar pleasures, the same senseless sufferings in
the name ... why in the name of the very same shams that Aristophanes
jeered at two thousand years ago, the same coarse snares in which
the many-headed beast, the multitude, is caught so easily, the same
workings of power, the same traditions of slavishness, the same
innateness of falsehood--in a word, the same busy squirrel's turning
in the old, unchanged wheel...."
With this passage of weary disillusionment and disgust of life we may
compare one in _Phantoms_, written a year earlier: "These human flies,
a thousand times paltrier than flies; their dwellings glued together
with filth, the pitiful traces of their tiny, monotonous bustle, of
their comic struggle with the unchanging and inevitable, how revolting
it all suddenly was to me"; and one, no less significant, in the
opening pages of _The Torrents of Spring_:
"He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all
things human.... Everywhere the same everlasting pouring of water
into a sieve, the everlasting beating of the air, everywhere the
same self-deception--half in good faith, half conscious--any toy to
amuse the child, so long as it keeps him from crying. And then all of
a sudden old age drops down like snow on the head, and with it the
ever-growing, ever-growing and devouring dread of death ... and the
plunge into the abyss."
But to show these waves of pessimistic exhaustion in right relation
to the whole volume of Turgenev's work, one must contrast them with
many hundreds of passages where the struggle of love, faith and
courage, where the impulse of pity and beauty of conduct rank supreme
in all human endeavour. And in his illuminating essay on _Hamlet
and Don Quixote_ (1860), Turgenev holds the balance level between
humanity's blind faith in the power of the good (Don Quixote), and
the disillusionment of its knowledge (Hamlet). Here Turgenev shows
us that sincerity and force of conviction in the justice or goodness
of a cause (however wrong-headed or absurd the idealist's judgment
may be) is the prime basis for the pursuit of virtue, and that true
enthusiasm for goodness and beauty exacts self-sacrifice, disregard
of one's own interest, and forgetfulness of the "I." Hamlet by his
sceptical intelligence becomes so conscious of his own weakness, of
the worthlessness of the crowd, of the self-regarding motives of men,
that he is unable to love them. Hence his irony, his melancholy, his
despair in the triumph of the good, for which he, too, struggles,
while paralysed by his thoughts which sap his will and condemn him
to inactivity. "The Hamlets," says Turgenev, "find nothing, discover
nothing, and leave no trace in their passage through the world but the
memory of their personality: they have no spiritual legacy to bequeath.
They do not love: they do not believe. How, then, should they find?"
Love and faith in the good and beautiful--based on forgetfulness
of self--must therefore be set against and balance the rule of the
intelligence, and this is precisely the effect Turgenev's work makes
on us and the effect which his personality made on his acquaintances.
"This man was all good," says Vogüé. "I think one would have to search
the literary world for a long time before finding a writer capable
of such modesty and such effacement," says Halpérine-Kaminsky. "I am
always thinking about Turgenev. I love him terribly," says Tolstoy
naïvely, after his lifelong hostility to Turgenev's genius had been
removed by the latter's death. And all Turgenev's acquaintances agreed
that no one was so devoid of egoism, so generous in his enthusiasm
for the works of other men as he.[25] The guiding law of his being
was shown not only in his unmeasured desire to exalt the works of his
rivals,[26] but to find excellent, absorbing qualities in the works
of obscure, unsuccessful writers. This trait often appeared, to his
own circle, to be proof of mere uncritical misplaced enthusiasm, but
in fact Turgenev was a most severe and impartial critic.[27] There
is in even the humblest work of art, that is not false, a nucleus of
individual feeling, experience, insight which cannot be replaced.
And Turgenev, always searching for the good, instantly detected any
individual excellence and emphasized its value, without dwelling on
a work's mediocre elements. The world, and the generality of men, do
exactly the reverse; they take pleasure in pointing out and publishing
defects and weaknesses and in ignoring the points of strength.
[25] "On arriving at his rooms, Tourguéneff took from his writing-table
a roll of paper. I give what he said word for word.
"'Listen,' he said. 'Here is "copy" for your paper of an absolutely
first-rate kind. This means that I am not its author. The master--for
he is a _real_ master--is almost unknown in France, but I assure you,
on my soul and conscience, that I do not consider myself worthy to
unloose the latchet of his shoes.'
"Two days afterwards there appeared in the _Temps_, 'Les Souvenirs de
Sebastopol,' by Leòn Tolstoi."--_Tourguéneff and his French Circle_, p.
188.
[26] "From the letters to Zola ... we shall see with what devotion,
sparing neither time nor trouble, Tourguéneff endeavoured to make
his friend's books known in Russia. What he did for Zola, he had
already done for Gustave Flaubert; afterwards came Goncourt's turn
and that of Guy de Maupassant. Never did he take such minute pains
to safeguard his own interests, as those he took in the service
of his friends."--_Tourguéneff and his French Circle_, by E.
Halpérine-Kaminsky, p. 186.
[27] Flaubert writing to George Sand says, "What an auditor and what
a critic is Turgenev! He has dazzled me by the profundity of his
judgments. Ah! if all those who dabble in literary criticism could have
heard him, what a lesson! Nothing escapes him. At the end of a piece of
a hundred lines he remembers a feeble epithet."
The _Poems in Prose_ (1878-1882), this exquisite collection of
short, detached descriptions, scenes, memories, and dreams, yields a
complete synthesis in brief of the leading elements in Turgenev's own
temperament and philosophy. The _Poems in Prose_ are unique in Russian
literature, one may say unsurpassed for exquisite felicity of language,
and for haunting, rhythmical beauty. Turgenev's characteristic, _the
perfect fusion of idea and emotion_, takes shape here in æsthetic
contours which challenge the antique. As with all poetry of a high
order, the creative emotion cannot be separated from the imperishable
form in which it is cast, and ten lines of the original convey what a
lengthy commentary would fail to communicate. We therefore quote a
translation of three of the _Prose Poems_ from a version which, however
careful, must inevitably fall short of the original:
"NECESSITAS-VIS-LIBERTAS
"A BAS-RELIEF
"A tall bony old woman, with iron face and dull fixed look, moves
along with long strides, and, with an arm dry as a stick, pushes
before her another woman.
"This woman--of huge stature, powerful, thickset, with the muscles of
a Hercules, with a tiny head set on a bull neck, and blind--in her
turn pushes before her a small, thin girl.
"This girl alone has eyes that see; she resists, turns round, lifts
fair, delicate hands; her face full of life, shows impatience and
daring.... She wants not to obey, she wants not to go, where they are
driving her ... but, still, she has to yield and go.
"_Necessitas-vis-Libertas!_
"Who will, may translate."
* * * * *
"THE SPARROW
"I was returning from hunting, and walking along an avenue of the
garden, my dog running in front of me. Suddenly he took shorter
steps, and began to steal along as though tracking game.
"I looked along the avenue and saw a young sparrow, with yellow about
its beak and down on its head. It had fallen out of the nest (the
wind was violently shaking the birch-trees in the avenue) and sat
unable to move, helplessly fluffing its half-grown wings.
"My dog was slowly approaching it, when, suddenly darting down from
a tree close by, an old dark-throated sparrow fell like a stone right
before its nose, and all ruffled up, terrified, with despairing and
pitiful cheeps, it flung itself twice toward the open jaws of shining
teeth.
"It sprang to save; it cast itself before its nestling ... but
all its tiny body was shaking with terror; its note was harsh and
strange. Swooning with fear it offered itself up!
"What a huge monster must the dog have seemed to it! And yet it could
not stay on its high branch out of danger.... A force stronger than
its will flung it down.
"My Trésor stood still, drew back.... Clearly he, too, recognized
this force.
"I hastened to call off the disconcerted dog, and went away, full of
reverence.
"Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverence for that tiny, heroic bird, for
its impulse of love.
"Love, I thought, is stronger than death, or the fear of death. Only
by it, by love, life holds together and advances."
The content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian earth, "The Country";
the insignificance of man, "A Conversation"; there is no escape from
death, "The Old Woman"; the tie between man and the animals, "The Dog";
death reconciles old enemies, "The Last Meeting"; Nature's indifference
to man, "Nature"; the beauty of untroubled, innocent youth, "How Fair
and Fresh were the Roses"; the genius of poesy, "A Visit"; the joy
of giving and taking, "Alms"; the rich misjudge the poor, "Cabbage
Soup"; we always pray for miracles, "Prayer"; Christ is in all men,
"Christ"; the immortal hour of genius, "Stay"; love and hunger, "The
Two Brothers"; such are a few of the subjects of the _Poems in Prose_.
The permanent appeal of these exquisite little pieces lies in their
soft, deep humanity and emotional freshness, while æsthetically they
are marked by the broad warm touch in which Turgenev indicates the
infinite lights and tones of living nature. Turgenev's supremacy in
style rests, indeed, precisely here, in this faculty of concentrating
in a few broad sweeping touches, a wealth of tones which, producing
an individual effect, makes a universal appeal to feeling. It is
mysterious, this faculty of so massing and concentrating your effect
that one detailed touch does the work of half a dozen. Turgenev alone
among his contemporaries had mastered this secret of Greek art. It is
the emotional breadth, imparted in ease, sureness, and flexibility of
stroke, that distinguishes the _Poems in Prose_ from all other examples
of the genre. Fresh as the rain, soft as the petal of a flower, warm
as the touch of love is "The Rose," so simple, yet so complete in its
message.
"THE ROSE
"The last days of August.... Autumn was already at hand.
"The sun was setting. A sudden downpour of rain, without thunder or
lightning, had just passed rapidly over our wide plain.
"The garden in front of the house glowed and steamed, all filled with
the fire of the sunset and the deluge of rain.
"She was sitting at a table in the drawing-room, and with persistent
dreaminess, gazing through the half-open door into the garden.
"I knew what was passing at that moment in her soul; I knew that,
after a brief but agonising struggle, she was at that instant giving
herself up to a feeling she could no longer master.
"All at once she got up, went quickly out into the garden, and
disappeared.
"An hour passed ... a second; she had not returned.
"Then I got up, and, going out of the house, I turned along the walk
by which--of that I had no doubt--she had gone.
"All was darkness about me; the night had already fallen. But on the
damp sand of the path a roundish object could be discerned--bright
red even through the mist.
"I stooped down. It was a fresh, new-blown rose. Two hours before I
had seen this very rose on her bosom.
"I carefully picked up the flower that had fallen in the mud, and,
going back to the drawing-room, laid it on the table before her chair.
"And now at last she came back, and with light footsteps, crossing
the whole room, sat down at the table.
"Her face was both paler and more vivid; her downcast eyes, that
looked somehow smaller, strayed rapidly in happy confusion from side
to side.
"She saw the rose, snatched it up, glanced at its crushed,
muddy petals, glanced at me, and her eyes, brought suddenly to a
standstill, were bright with tears.
"'What are you crying for?' I asked.
"'Why, see this rose. Look what has happened to it.'
"Then I thought fit to utter a profound remark.
"'Your tears will wash away the mud,' I pronounced with a significant
expression.
"'Tears do not wash, they burn,' she answered. And turning to the
hearth she flung the rose into the dying flame.
"'Fire burns even better than tears,' she cried with spirit; and her
lovely eyes, still bright with tears, laughed boldly and happily.
"I saw that she, too, had been through the fire."
A few of the _Poems in Prose_, profoundly ironical, as "The Fool,"
"A Contented Man," "The Egoist," "A Rule of Life," "Two Strangers,"
"The Workmen and the Man with the White Hands," show the indignation
of a large generous heart with human baseness, pettiness, stupidity,
and envy. A minority of the poems are instinct with Turgenev's morbid
apprehension of death's stealthy approach, and the final, unescapable
blotting out of life and love by his clutch. Turgenev's dread of the
malignant forces of decay and dissolution had found powerful expression
nearly twenty years earlier in _Phantoms_, where a series of prose
poems is enshrined in the setting of a story.
"'Do not utter her name, not her name,' Alice faltered hurriedly.
'We must escape, or there will be an end to everything and for
ever.... Look over there!'
"I turned my head in the direction in which her trembling hand was
pointing and discerned something ... horrible indeed.
"This something was the more horrible since it had no definite
shape. Something bulky, dark, yellowish-black, spotted like a
lizard's belly, not a storm-cloud, and not smoke, was crawling with a
snakelike motion over the earth. A wide rhythmic undulating movement
from above downwards, and from below upwards, an undulation recalling
the malignant sweep of the wings of a vulture seeking its prey; at
times an indescribably revolting grovelling on the earth, as of a
spider stooping over its captured fly.... Who are you, what are you,
menacing mass? Under its influence I saw it, I felt it--all sank into
nothingness, all was dumb.... A putrefying, pestilential chill came
from it. At this chill breath the heart turned sick and the eyes grew
dim, and the hair stood up on the head. It was a power moving; that
power which there is no resisting, to which all is subject, which,
sightless, shapeless, senseless, sees all, knows all, and like a bird
of prey, picks out its victims, stifles them and stabs them with its
frozen sting."
This passage, by the intensity of horror it evokes, shows how deeply
entwined in the roots of Turgenev's joy in life was his loathing of
death; and the same note is struck with cumulative force in "The End
of the World" and "The Insect," where the chill atmosphere of frozen
terror and suffocating dread is enforced by the gloomy imagery.
There can be no doubt that Turgenev's premonitory obsession of death
in his last years was one of the manifestations of the malignant
disease of which he died--cancer of the spinal marrow--which cast the
darkening shadow of melancholy over his vital energies and intensified
his sensation of spiritual isolation. In the struggle between his
healthy instincts and the weariness and dejection diffused by this
creeping, malignant cancer, his latter days may be likened to those of
an autumnal landscape at evening, with the valleys shivering in the
shadows of approaching night, while the higher ground remains still
flushed with warm light. But the _Poems in Prose_, his last work,
declare how comparatively little the morbid processes at work within
his frame had impaired his serene intelligence, his wide unflinching
vision, his deep generous heart, and passion to help others. This,
although he had already written, "I have grown old, all seems tarnished
around me and within me. The light which rays from the heart, showing
life in its colour, in relief, in movement, this light is nearly
extinguished within me: it flickers under the crust of cinders which
grows thicker and thicker." But his cruel malady in the last two years,
when Turgenev endured "all that one can endure without dying," did not
embitter his character.[28] Pavlovsky tells us:
"After terrible sufferings, during which the sick man could neither
sit nor remain standing nor lying down, his condition improved. He
could work and read free from pain, except when he moved about. That
gave him hope that with many precautions, he would live a few years
longer. But very soon a fresh access arrived, followed with fresh
prostration of spirit.
"'When my sufferings are unendurable,' said Turgenev, 'I follow
Schopenhauer's advice. I analyse my sensations and my agony departs
for a period. For example, if my sufferings are terrible I can easily
tell myself of what kind they are. First there is a stinging pain
which, in itself, is not insupportable. To this is added a burning
feeling, and next a shooting pang; then a difficulty in breathing.
Separately each one is endurable and when I analyse them thus, it is
easy for me to endure them. One must always do this in life, if you
analyse your sufferings you will not suffer so much.'
"On another occasion he said to me:
"'I do not regret dying. I have had all the pleasures I could wish
for. I have done much work. I have had success. I have loved people;
and they have, also, loved me. I have reached old age. I have been as
happy as one can be. Many have not had that. It is bad to die before
the time comes, but for me it is time.'
"One need not say that these words were those of a sick man wishing
to console himself. Turgenev knew well that he could still create,
and he did not wish to die.
"In speaking of the condition of Viardot, who was also dying,
Turgenev said to me:
"'A bad thing this death! One couldn't complain if she killed one
at a stroke; then it would be over; but she glides behind you like
a robber, takes from man all his soul, his intelligence, his love
of the beautiful; she attacks the essence of the human being. The
envelope alone remains.'
"And he added, after a moment's silence, in a whisper, strangely
passionate:
"'Yes, death is the lie!' ...
"A thing strange and most characteristic was that during his last
illness Turgenev never ceased to occupy himself with the affairs of
others.... Moreover, he did not wait to be solicited to render people
services."
[28] _Ossip Lourié_, p. 63.
In his last days Turgenev addressed to Tolstoy the famous letter in
which he adjured him to return to literature,[29] and bequeathed to
others as his creed and example his farewell words, "Live and love
others as I have always loved them." After renewed cruel sufferings he
sank into a delirium, and died at Bougival on September 3, 1883. Madame
Viardot describes his end, thus:
"He had lost consciousness since two days. He no longer suffered, his
life slowly ebbed away, and after two convulsions, he breathed his
last. He looked as beautiful again as ever. On the first day after
death, there was still a deep wrinkle, caused by the convulsions,
between his eyebrows; the second day his habitual expression of
goodness reappeared. One would have expected to see him smile."[30]
[29] "Kind and dear Leo Nikoláyevitch,--I have long not written to
you, because, to tell the truth, I have been, and am, on my deathbed.
I cannot recover: that is out of the question, I am writing to you
specially to say how glad I am to be your contemporary, and to express
my last and sincere request. My friend, return to literary activity!
That gift came to you whence comes all the rest. Ah! how happy I
should be if I could think my request would have an effect on you!...
I am played out--the doctors do not even know what to call my malady,
_névralgie stomacale goutteuse_. I can neither walk, nor eat, nor
sleep. It is wearisome even to repeat it all! My friend--great writer
of our Russian land--listen to my request!... I can write no more I am
tired. (Unsigned), Bougival, 27 or 28 June 1883."--Translated by A.
Maude, _The Life of Tolstoy_, vol. ii. p. 182.
[30] For this and other details, see Haumant, p. 110.
The autopsy made by the French doctors revealed that the weight of
Turgenev's brain, 2012 grammes, surpassed by a third the normal weight,
and, though Turgenev's high stature partly accounted for this, the
doctors were astonished by its volume, which much exceeded Cuvier's,
hitherto the largest brain known.
Turgenev was buried, according to his wish, in the Volkov cemetery at
Petersburg, by the side of his friend, the critic Byelinsky. A crowd
of 100,000 people accompanied the funeral procession, including 285
deputations from all parts of Russia. The Russian Government declined
to take part in it![31] Renan, in France, pronounced the valedictory
oration, and the passage we extract stands as Turgenev's noble epitaph:
"Au-dessus de la race, en effect, il y a l'humanité, ou, si l'on
veut, la raison. Tourguéneff fut d'une race par sa manière de sentir
et de peindre; il appartenait à l'humanité tout entière par une
haute philosophie, envisageant d'un œil ferme les conditions de
l'existence humaine et cherchant sans parti pris à savoir la réalité.
Cette philosophie aboutissait chez lui à la douceur, à la joie de
vivre, à la pitié pour les créatures, pour les victimes surtout.
Cette pauvre humanité souvent aveugle assurément, mais si souvent
aussi trahie par ses chefs, il l'aimait ardemment. Il applaudissait
à son effort spontané vers le bien et le vrai. Il ne gourmandait pas
ses illusions; il ne lui en voulait pas de se plaindre. La politique
de fer qui raille ceux qui souffrent n'était pas la sienne. Aucune
déception ne l'arrêtait. Comme l'univers, il eut recommencé mille
fois l'œuvre manquée; il savait que la justice peut attendre;
on finira toujours par y revenir. Il avait vraiment les paroles de
la vie éternelle, les paroles de paix, de justice, d'amour et de
liberté."
[31] On Turgenev's death, Lavrov, the Russian refugee, stated that
Turgenev had contributed 500 francs annually to the expenses of the
revolutionary Zurich paper _En Avant_. The Russian Government hastened
to manifest its displeasure accordingly.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
Transcriber's Notes
Inconsistent punctuation corrected.