TURGENEF.
I.
While the name of Gogol was temporarily lost in oblivion during
the years preceding the Crimean war, his spirit was shedding its
ripening influences upon the thinking minds of his country. I know of
no parallel example in the history of literature, of an impulse so
spontaneous and vigorous as this. Every author of note since 1840 has
belonged to the so-called “school of nature.” The poets of 1820 had
drawn their inspiration from their own personality. The novel-writers
of 1840 found theirs in the spirit of humanity, which might be called
social sympathy.
Before studying the great writers of this epoch, we must take note
of the elements which produced them, and glance for a moment at the
curious movement which ripened them.
Russia could not escape the general fermentation of 1848; although this
immense country seemed to be mute, like its frozen rivers, an intense
life was seething underneath. The rivers are seemingly motionless for
six months of the year; but under the solid ice is running water, and
the phenomena of ever-increasing life. So it was with the nation. On
the surface it seemed silent and inert under the iron rule of Nicholas.
But European ideas, creeping in, found their way under the great walls,
and books passed from hand to hand, into schools, literary circles, and
even into the army.
The Russian Universities were then very insufficient. Their best
scholars quitted them unsatisfied, and sought more substantial
nourishment in Germany. Besides, it being the fashion to do so, there
was also a firm conviction that this was really necessary. The young
men returned from Berlin or Göttingen crammed with humanitarian
philosophy and liberal notions; armed with ideas which found no
response in their own country, full, as it was, of malcontents and
fault-finders. These suspicious missionaries from western Europe were
handed over to the police, while others continued to study in the
self-same school. These young fellows, returning from Germany with
grapes from the promised land, too green as yet for their countrymen,
formed a favorite type with authors. Pushkin made use of it, and
Turgenef afterwards gave us some sketches from nature made during his
stay in Berlin. On their return, these students formed clubs, in which
they discussed the foreign theories in low and impassioned voices,
and initiated their companions who had remained at home. These young
thinkers embraced a transcendental philosophy, borrowed from Hegel,
Stein, and Feuerbach, as well as from Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon
in France. These metaphysics, of course, were a mask which covered more
concrete objects and more immediate interests. Two great intellectual
schools divided Russia, and took the place of political parties.
The _Slavophile_ party adhered to the views of Karamzin and protested
against the unpatriotic blasphemies of Tchadayef. For this party
nothing whatever existed outside of Russia, which was to be considered
the only depository of the true Christian spirit, and chosen to
regenerate the world.
In opposition to these Levites, the liberal school of the West
had appeared; a camp of Gentiles, which breathed only of reforms,
audacious arguments, and coming revolutions; liberalism developing
into radicalism. But, as all social and political discussions were
prohibited in Russia, these must be concealed under the disguise of
philosophy, and be expressed in its hieroglyphics. The metaphysical
subtleties in these literary debates did little to clear up the
obscurity of the ideas themselves, which are very difficult to unravel
and comprehend. In attempting to understand the controversies in Russia
at this time, you feel as if watching the movements of a complicated
figure in the ballet; where indistinct forms are seen moving behind a
veil of black gauze, intended to represent clouds, which half conceal
the dancers.
The liberals of 1848 carried on the ideas of the revolutionaries of
December, 1825; as the Jacobins developed those of the Girondists.
But the difference between the ideals of the two generations is very
marked, showing the march of time and of ideas. The revolutionists of
1825 were aristocrats, who coveted the elegant playthings fashionable
in London and Paris―a charter and a Parliament. They were ambitious
to place their enormous, unwieldy country under a new and fragile
government. They played the conspirator like children, but their game
ended tragically; for they were all exiled to Siberia or elsewhere.
When this spirit awoke twenty years after, it had dreamed new dreams.
This time it aimed at the entire remodelling of our poor old world. The
Russians now embraced the socialist and democratic ideas of Europe;
but, in accepting these international theories, they did not see how
inapplicable they were to Russia at this time. Penetrated as they
were with the rationalistic and irreligious spirit of the eighteenth
century, they have nothing in common with the grave sympathy of such
men as Dostoyevski and Tolstoï. These are realists that love humanity;
but the others were merely metaphysicians, whose love for humanity has
changed into hatred of society.
Every young writer of the “school of nature” produced his socialistic
romance, bitterly satirical, and showing the influence of George Sand
and Eugène Sue. But an unsuccessful conspiracy headed by Petrachevski
put an end temporarily to this effervescence of ideas. Russia became
calm again, while every sign of intellectual life was pitilessly
repressed, not to stir again until after the death of the Emperor
Nicholas. The most violent of the revolutionists had secured their
property in foreign lands; and all authors were either condemned or
exiled. Many of them followed Petrachevski to Siberia. Turgenef was
among the most fortunate, having been exiled to his own estates in the
country. The _Slavophile_ party itself did not wholly escape punishment
and exile. Even the long beards, which formed a part of their patriotic
programme, had no better fate than their writings. All were forbidden
to wear them. The government now suppressed all the scientific missions
and pilgrimages to the German Universities, which had produced such bad
results. While Peter the Great drove his subjects out of the Empire to
breathe the air of Europe, Nicholas forced his to remain within it.
Passports could only be obtained with great difficulty, and at the
exorbitant price of 500 roubles. In every University and seminary of
learning in the Empire, the teaching of philosophy was forbidden, as
well as the classics; and all historical publications were subject to
a severe control, which was almost equivalent to a prohibition. There
were now but seven small newspapers printed in all Russia, and these
were filled with the most insignificant facts. The wars in Hungary
and in the East were hardly alluded to. The first article of any
consequence appeared in 1857. The absurd severity exercised towards the
press furnished material for a long and amusing article in the leading
journal. The word _liberty_ was underscored wherever and in whatever
sense it occurred, as the word _King_ was, during the reign of Terror
in France.
These years of “terror” have since furnished much amusement for the
Russians; but those who passed through them, warmed by the enthusiasm
and illusions of youth, have always retained, together with the
disinclination to express themselves frankly, a vein of pathos
throughout their writings. Besides, the liberty granted to authors in
the reign of Alexander II. was only a relative one; which explains
why they returned instinctively to novel-writing as the only mode
of expression which permitted any undercurrent of meaning. In this
agreeable form we must seek for the ideas of that time on philosophy,
history, and politics; for which reason I have dwelt on the importance
of studying the Russian novelists attentively. In their romances, and
only in them, shall we find a true history of the last half-century of
their country, and form a just idea of the public for which the works
were written.
This people’s way of reasoning and their demands are peculiar to
themselves. In France, we expect of a romance what we expect of any
work of art, according to the degree of civilization we have reached;
something to afford us a refined amusement; a diversion from the
serious interests of life; merely a passing impression. We read books
as a passing pedestrian looks at a picture displayed in some shop
window, casually, on his way to his business. They regard the masters
of their language quite otherwise in Russia. What for us is a temporary
gratification is to them the soul’s daily bread; for they are passing
through the golden age of their literature. Their authors are the
guides of the race, almost the creators of their language; their poets
are such according to the ancient and full sense of the word―_vates_,
poet, prophet.
In Russia, the small educated class have perhaps surpassed us in
cultivation; but the lower classes are just beginning to read with
eagerness, faith, and hope; as we read Robinson Crusoe at twelve years
of age. Their sensitive imaginations are alive to the full effect these
works are calculated to produce. Journalism has not scattered their
ideas and lessened their power of attention. They draw no comparisons,
and therefore believe.
_We_ consider “Fathers and Sons,” and “War and Peace” merely novels.
But to the merchant of Moscow, the son of the village priest, the
country proprietor, either of these works is almost like a national
Bible, which he places upon the shelf holding the few books which
represent to him an encyclopædia of the human mind. They have the
importance and signification for him that the story of Esther had for
the Jews, and the adventures of Ulysses for the Athenians.
Our readers will pardon these general considerations, which seemed
to us necessary before approaching the three most prominent figures
of this period, which we choose from among many others as the most
original of the two groups they divide into. Dostoyevski will represent
to us the opinions of the _Slavophile_ or national school; Turgenef
will show us how many can remain thoroughly Russian without breaking
off their connections with the rest of Europe; and how there can be
realists with a feeling for art and a longing to attain a lofty ideal.
He belonged to the liberal party, which claims him as its own; but this
great artist, gradually freeing himself from all bounds, soars far
above the petty bickerings of party strife.
II.
Turgenef’s talent, in the best of his productions, draws its
inspiration directly from his beloved father-land. We feel this in
every page we read. This is probably why his contemporaries long
preferred him to any of his rivals. In letters, as well as in politics,
the people instinctively follow the leaders whom they feel belong to
them; and whose spirit and qualities, even whose failings, they share
in common. Ivan Sergievitch Turgenef possessed the dominant qualities
of every true Russian: natural kindness of heart, simplicity, and
resignation. With a remarkably powerful brain, he had the heart of a
child. I never met him without realizing the true meaning of the gospel
words, ‘poor in spirit’; and that that quality can be the accompaniment
of a scientific mind and the soul of an artist. Devotion, generosity,
brotherly love, were perfectly natural to him. Into the midst of our
busy and complicated civilization he seemed to drop down as if from
some pastoral tribe of the mountains; and to carry out his ideas under
our sky as naturally as a shepherd guides his flocks in the steppe.
As to his personal appearance, he was tall, with a quiet dignity in
his manner, features somewhat coarse; and his finely formed head and
searching glance brought to mind some Russian patriarch of the peasant
class; only ennobled and transfigured by intellectual cultivation,
like those peasants of old who became monks and perhaps saints. He
gave me the impression of a person possessing the native frankness of
the peasant, while endowed with the inspiration of genius; and who had
reached a high intellectual elevation without having lost anything of
his natural simplicity and candor. Such a comparison could not, surely,
offend one who so loved his people!
Now, when the time has come to speak of his work, my heart fails me,
and I feel disposed to throw down my pen. I have spoken of his virtues;
why should we say more, or dwell upon the brilliant qualities of his
mind, adding greater eulogies? But those who know him well are few,
and they will soon die and be forgotten. We must then try to show to
others what that great heart has left of itself in the works of his
imagination. These are not few, and show much persevering labor. The
last complete edition of his works comprises not less than ten volumes:
romances, novels, critical and dramatic essays. The most notable of
these have been carefully translated into French, under the direction
of the author himself; and no foreigner’s work has ever been as much
read and appreciated in Paris as his.
The name of Turgenef was well known, and had acquired a literary
reputation in Paris, at the beginning of the present century; for a
cousin of the author’s, Nikolai Ivanovitch (Turgenef), after having
distinguished himself in the government service under Alexander I.,
was implicated in the conspiracy of December, 1825, and exiled by the
Emperor Nicholas. He spent the remainder of his life in Paris, where
he published his important work, “Russia and the Russians.” He was a
distinguished man and an honest thinker, if perhaps a little narrow,
and one of the most sincere of those who became liberals after 1812.
Faithful to his friends who were exiled to Siberia, he became their
advocate, and also warmly pleaded the cause of the emancipation of the
serfs; so that his young cousin continued a family tradition when he
gave the death-blow to slavery with his first book.
Turgenef was born in 1818, on the family estate in Orel, and his early
years were passed in this solitary place, in one of those “Nests of
Nobles” which are so often the scene of his novels. According to the
fashion of that time, he had both French and German tutors, which were
considered a necessary appendage in every nobleman’s household. His
mother-tongue was held in disrepute; so his first Russian verses were
read in secret, with the help of an old servant. Fortunately for him,
he acquired the best part of his education out on the heaths with the
huntsmen, whose tales were destined to become masterpieces, transformed
by the great author’s pen. Passing his time in the woods, and running
over the marshes in pursuit of quail, the poet laid in a rich stock
of imagery and picturesque scenes with which he afterwards clothed his
ideas. In the imagination of some children, while thought is still
sleeping, impressions accumulate, one by one, like the night-dew; but,
in the awakening dawn, the first ray of the morning sun will reveal
these glittering diamonds.
After going to school at Moscow, and through the University at St.
Petersburg, he went, as others did, to conclude his course of study in
Germany. In 1838, he was studying the philosophy of Kant and Hegel at
Berlin. He said of himself later in regard to this: “The impulse which
drew the young men of my time into a foreign land reminds me of the
ancient Slavs going to seek for chiefs from beyond the seas. Every one
felt that his native country, morally and intellectually considered,
was great and rich, but ill regulated.[F] For myself, I fully realized
that there were great disadvantages in being torn from one’s native
soil, where one had been brought up; but there was nothing else to be
done. This sort of life, especially in the sphere to which I belonged,
of landed proprietors and serfdom, offered me nothing attractive.
On the contrary, what I saw around me was revolting―in fact,
disgusting―to me. I could not hesitate long. I must either make up my
mind to submit, and walk on quietly in the beaten track; or tear myself
away, root and branch, even at the risk of losing many things dear to
my heart. This I decided to do. I became a cosmopolitan, which I have
always remained. I could not live face to face with what I abhorred;
perhaps I had not sufficient self-control or force of character for
that. At any rate, it seemed as if I must, at all hazards, withdraw
from my enemy, in order to be able to deal him surer blows from a
distance. This mortal enemy was, in my eyes, the institution of
serfdom, which I had resolved to combat to the last extremity, and with
which I had sworn never to make peace. It was in order to fulfil this
vow that I left my country….”
The writer will now become a European; he will uphold the method of
Peter the Great, against those patriots who have entrenched themselves
behind the great Chinese wall. Reason, good laws, and good literature
have no fixed country. Every one must seize his treasure wherever he
can find it, in the common soil of humanity, and develop it in his own
way. In reading the strong words of his own confession we are led to a
feeling of anxiety for the poet’s future. Will politics turn him from
his true course? Fortunately they did not. Turgenef had too literary
and contemplative a nature to throw himself into that vortex. But he
kept his vow of taking his aim―and a terrible one it was―at the
institution of serfdom. The contest was fierce, and the war was a holy
one.
Returning to Russia, Turgenef published some poems and dramatic
pieces; but he afterward excluded all these from the complete edition
of his works; and, leaving Russia again, he sent his first prose
work, “Annals of a Sportsman,” which was to contribute greatly to his
fame as a novelist, to a St. Petersburg review. He continued to send
various little bombshells, from 1847 to 1851, in the form of tales and
sketches, hiding their meaning under a veil of poetry. The influence
of Gogol was perceptible in his work at this time, especially in his
comprehension of nature. His scenes were always Russian, but the
artist’s interpretation was different from Gogol’s, having none of
his rough humor and enthusiasm, but more delicacy and ideality. His
language too is richer, more flowing, more picturesque and expressive
than any Russian author had yet attained to; and it perfectly
translates the most fugitive chords of the grand harmonious register
of nature. The author carries us with him into the very heart of his
native country.
The “Annals of a Sportsman” have charmed many French readers, much
as they must lose through the double veil of translation and our
ignorance of the country. Indeed we must have lived in the country
described by Turgenef to fully appreciate the way in which he presents
on every page the exact copy of one’s personal impressions; even
bringing to the senses every delicate odor breathed from the earth.
Some of his descriptions of nature have the harmonious perfection of a
fantastic symphony written in a minor key.
In the “Living Relics,” he wakes a more human, more interior chord. On
a hunting expedition, he enters by chance an abandoned shed, where he
finds a wretched human being, a woman, deformed, and unable to move. He
recognizes in her a former serving-maid of his mother’s, once a gay,
laughing girl, now paralyzed, stricken by some strange and terrible
disease. This poor creature, reduced to a skeleton, lying forgotten
in this miserable shed, has no longer any relations with the outside
world. No one takes care of her; kind people sometimes replenish her
jar with fresh water. She requires nothing else. The only sign of life,
if life it can be called, is in her eyes and her faint respiration. But
this hideous wreck of a body contains an immortal soul, purified by
suffering, utterly resigned, lifted above itself, this simple peasant
nature, into the realms of perfect self-renunciation.
Lukeria relates her misfortune; how she was seized with this illness
after a fall in the dark; how she had gone out one dark evening to
listen to the songs of the nightingales; how gradually every faculty
and every joy of life had forsaken her.
Her betrothed was so sorry; but, then, afterwards he married; what else
could he do? She hopes he is happy. For years her only diversion has
been to listen to the church-bells and the drowsy hum of the bees in
the hives of the apiary near by. Sometimes a swallow comes and flutters
about in the shed, which is a great event, and gives her something to
think about for several weeks. The people that bring water to her are
so kind, she is so grateful to them! And gradually, almost cheerfully,
she goes back with the young master to the memories of old days, and
reminds him how vain she was of being the leader in all the songs and
dances; at last, she even tries to hum one of those songs.
“I really dreaded to have this half-dead creature try to sing. Before
I could speak, she uttered a sound very faintly, but the note was
correct; then another, and she began to sing, ‘In the Fields’ … as she
sang there was no change of expression in her paralyzed face or in her
fixed eyes. This poor little forced voice sounded so pathetically, and
she made such an effort to express her whole soul, that my heart was
pierced with the deepest pity.”
Lukeria relates her terrible dreams, how Death has appeared before her;
not that she dreads his coming, but he always goes away and refuses
to deliver her. She refuses all offers of assistance from her young
master; she desires nothing, needs nothing, is perfectly content. As
her visitor is about to leave her, she calls him back for a last word.
She seems to be conscious (how feminine is this!) of the terrible
impression she must have made upon him, and says:―
“Do you remember, master, what beautiful hair I had? you know it
reached to my knees…. I hesitated a long time about cutting it off; but
what could I do with it as I am? So―I cut it off…. Adieu, master!”
All this cannot be analyzed any more than the down on a butterfly’s
wing; and yet it is such a simple tale, but how suggestive! There is no
exaggeration; it is only one of the accidents of life. The poor woman
feels that if one believes in God, there are things of more importance
than her little misfortune. The point which is most strongly brought
forward, however, in this tale, and in nearly all the others, is the
almost stoical resignation, peculiar to the Russian peasant, who seems
prepared to endure anything. This author’s talent lies in his keeping
the exquisite balance between the real and the ideal; every detail
is strikingly and painfully real, while the ideal shines through and
within every thought and fact. He has given us innumerable pictures of
master, overseer, and serf; clothing every repulsive fact with a grace
and charm, seemingly almost against his will, but which are born of his
own poetical nature.
It is not wholly correct to say that Turgenef _attacked_ slavery. The
Russian writers never attack openly; they neither argue nor declaim.
They describe, drawing no conclusions; but they appeal to our pity
more than to our anger. Fifteen years later Dostoyevski published his
“Recollections of a Dead-House.” He took the same method―without
expressing a word of indignation, without one drop of gall; he seems to
think what he describes quite natural, only somewhat pathetic. This is
a national trait.
Once I stopped for one night at an inn in Orel, our author’s native
place. Early in the morning, I was awakened by the beating of drums.
I looked down into the market-place, which was full of soldiers drawn
up in a square, and a crowd of people stood looking on. A pillory had
been erected in the square, a large, black, wooden pillar, with a
scaffolding underneath. Three poor fellows were tied to the pillar, and
had parchments on their backs, giving an account of their misdeeds.
These thieves seemed very docile, and almost unconscious of what was
being done to them. They made a picturesque group, with their handsome
Slavonic heads, and bound to this pillar. The exhibition lasted long;
the priests came to bless them; and when the cart came to carry them
back to prison, both soldiers and people rushed after them, loading
them with eatables, small coins, and words of sympathy.
The Russian writer who aims to bring about reforms, in like manner
displays his melancholy picture, with spasms of indulgent sympathy
for the evils he unveils. The public needs but a hint. This time it
understood. Russia looked upon serfdom in the mirror he showed her,
and shuddered. The author became celebrated, and his cause was half
gained. The censorship, always the last to become convinced, understood
too, at last. Serfdom was already condemned in the heart of the Emperor
Nicholas, but the censorship does not always agree with the Emperor; it
is always procrastinating; sometimes it is left far behind, perhaps for
a whole reign. It will not condemn the book, but keeps its eye upon the
author.
Gogol died at this time, and Turgenef wrote a strong article in praise
of the dead author. This article appears to-day entirely inoffensive,
but the author himself thus speaks of it:―
“In regard to my article on Gogol, I remember one day at St.
Petersburg, a lady in high position at court was criticizing the
punishment inflicted upon me, as unjust and undeserved, or, at least,
too severe. Some one replied: ‘Did you not know that he calls Gogol “a
great man” in that article?’ ‘That is not possible.’ ‘I assure you he
did.’ ‘Ah! in that case, I have no more to say; I am very sorry for
him, but now I understand their severity.’”
This praise, justly accorded to a great author, procured for Turgenef
a month of imprisonment and banishment to his own estates. But this
tyranny was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Thirty years before,
Pushkin had been torn from the dissipations of the gay capital, where
his genius would have been lost, and was exiled to the Orient, where
it developed into a rich bloom. If Turgenef had remained at this time
in St. Petersburg, he might have been drawn, in his hot-headed youth,
by compromising friendships, into some fruitless political broil;
but, exiled to the solitude of his native woods, he spent several
years there in literary work; studying the humble life around him, and
collecting materials for his first great novels.
III.
Turgenef always declared himself as no admirer of Balzac. This was, no
doubt, true; for they had no points of resemblance in common. Still I
cannot but think that that sworn disciple of Gogol and of the “school
of nature” must have received some suggestions from our great author.
Turgenef, like Balzac, gave us the comedy of human life in his native
country; but to this great work he gave more heart and faith, and less
patience, system, and method, than the French writer. But he possessed
the gift of style, and a racy eloquence, which are wanting in Balzac.
If one must read Balzac in France in order to retrace the lives of our
predecessors, this is all the more true of Turgenef in Russia.
This author sharply discerned the prevailing current of ideas which
were developed in that period of transition,―the reign of Nicholas and
the first few years of the reign of Alexander II. It required a keen
vision to apprehend and describe the shifting characters and scenes of
that period, vivid glimpses of which we obtain from his novels written
at that time.
His first one of this period is “Dimitri Roudine.” The hero of the
story is an eloquent idealist, but practically inefficient in action.
His liberal ideas are intoxicating, both to himself and others; but he
succumbs to every trial of life, through want of character. With the
best principles and no vices whatever, except, perhaps, an excess of
personal vanity, he commits deeds in which he is his own dupe. He is at
heart too honest to profit by offered opportunities, which would give
him advantage over others; and, with no courage either for good or evil
undertakings, he is always unsuccessful, and always in want of money.
He finally realizes his inefficiency, in old age, and dies in extreme
poverty.
The characters of the prosaic country life in which the hero’s career
is pictured are marvellously well drawn. These practical people, whose
ideas are nearly on a level with the earth which yields them their
livelihood, prosper in all things. They have comfortable incomes,
good wives, and congenial friends; while the enthusiastic idealist,
in spite of his intellectual superiority, falls even lower. It is the
triumph of prosaic fact over idealism. In this introductory work, the
author touched keenly upon one of the greatest defects of the Russian
character, and gave a useful lesson to his fellow-countrymen; showing
them that magnificent aspirations are not all-sufficient, but they must
be joined to practical common-sense, and applied to self-government.
“Dimitri Roudine” is a moral and philosophical study, inciting to
thought and interesting to the thinking mind. It was a question whether
the author would be as skilful in the region of sentiment, whether he
would succeed in moving the heart.
His “Nest of Nobles”[G] was his response; and it was, perhaps, his
greatest work, although not without defects. It is less interesting
than the other, as the development of the plot drags somewhat; but when
once started, and fully outlined, it is carried out with consummate
skill.
The “Nest of Nobles” is one of the old provincial, ancestral mansions
in which many generations have lived. In this house the young girl is
reared, who will serve as a prototype for the heroine of every Russian
novel. She is simple and straightforward, not strikingly beautiful or
gifted, but very charming, and endowed with an iron will,―a trait
which the author invariably refuses to men, but he bestows it upon
every young heroine of his imagination. This trait carries them through
every variety of experience and the most extreme crises, according as
they are driven by fate.
Liza, a girl of twenty, has been thus far wholly insensible to the
attractions of a handsome government official, whose attentions
her mother has encouraged. Finally, weary of resistance, the young
girl consents to an engagement with him, when Lavretski, a distant
relative, appears upon the scene. He is a married man, but has long
been separated from his wife, who is wholly unworthy of him. She
is an adventuress, who spends her time at the various Continental
watering-places. There is nothing whatever of the hero of romance about
him; he is a quiet, kind-hearted, and unhappy being, serious-minded
and no longer young. Altogether, a man such as is very often to be met
with in real life. He and the young heroine are drawn together by a
mysterious attraction; and, just as the man, with his deeper experience
of life, recognizes with terror the nature of their mutual feelings,
he learns of the death of his wife, through a newspaper article. He
is now free; and, that very evening, in the old garden, both hearts,
almost involuntarily, interchange vows of eternal affection. The
description of this scene is beautiful, true to nature, and exceedingly
refined. The happiness of the lovers lasts but a single hour; the news
was false, and the next day Lavretski’s wife herself appears most
unexpectedly upon the scene.
We can easily see what an opportunity the author here has for the
delineation of the inevitable revulsion and tumult of feeling called
forth; but with what delicacy he leads those two purest of souls
through such peril! The sacrifice is resolutely made by the young girl;
but only after a fearful struggle by the lover. The annoying and hated
wife disappears again, while the reader fondly hopes the author will
bring about her speedy death. Here again those who wish only happy
_dénouements_ must close the book. Mme. Lavretski does not die, but
continues the gayest kind of a life, while Liza, who has known of life
only the transient promise of a love, which lasted through the starry
hours of one short evening in May, carries her wounded heart to her
God, and buries herself in a convent.
So far, this is a virtuous and rather old-fashioned story, suitable
for young girls. But we must read the farther development of the tale,
to see with what exquisite art and love for truth the novelist has
treated his subject. There is not the slightest approach to insipid
sentimentality in this sad picture; no outbursts of passion; but, with
a chaste and gentle touch, a restrained and continually increasing
emotion is awakened, which rends the heart. The epilogue of this book,
only a few pages in length, is, and will always be, one of the gems of
Russian literature.
Eight years have passed in the course of the story; Lavretski returns
one morning in spring to the old mansion. It is now inhabited by a new
generation, for the children have become young men and women, with new
sentiments and interests. The new-comer, hardly recognized by them,
finds them in the midst of their games. The story opened in the same
way, and we seem to have gone back to the beginning of it. Lavretski
seats himself upon the same spot where he once pressed for a moment in
his the hand of the dear one, who ever since that blissful hour has
been counting the beads of her rosary in a cloister.
The young birds of the old nest can give no answer to the questions he
longs to ask, for they have quite forgotten the vanished one; and they
return to their game, in which they are quite absorbed. He reflects,
in his desolation, how the self-same words describe the same scene of
other days: nature’s smile is quite the same; the same joys are new to
other children; just as, in a sonata of Chopin’s, the original theme
of the melody recurs in the finale.
In this romance, the melancholy contrast between the perennity of
nature and the change and decay of man through the cruel and pitiless
work of time is very strikingly portrayed. We have become so attached
to the former characters painted by our author, that these children, in
the heyday of their lives, are almost hateful to us.
I am strongly tempted to quote these pages in full, but they would lose
too much in being separated from what precedes them; and, unwillingly
leaving the subject, I can only apply to Turgenef his own words in
regard to one of his heroes:―
“He possessed the great secret of that divine eloquence which is music;
for he knew a way to touch certain chords in the heart which would send
a vibrating thrill through all the others.”
The “Nest of Nobles” established the author’s renown. Such a strange
world is this that poets, conquerors, women also, gain the hearts of
men the more effectually by making them suffer and weep. All Russia
shed tears over this book; and the unhappy Liza became the model for
all the young girls. No romantic work since “Paul and Virginia” had
produced such an effect upon the people. The author seems to have
been haunted by this type of woman. His Ellen in “On the Eve” has the
same indomitable will. She has a serious, reserved, and obstinate
nature, has been reared in solitude; and, free from all outside
influences, and scorning all obstacles, she is capable of the most
complete self-renunciation. But in this instance the circumstances are
quite different. The beloved one is quite free, but cast out by his
family. As Liza fled to the cloister in spite of the supplications of
her friends, so Ellen joins her lover and devotes herself to him, not
suspecting for a moment her act to be in any way a criminal one; but it
is redeemed, in any case, by her devoted constancy through a life of
many trials. These studies of character show a keen observation of the
national temperament. The man is irresolute, the woman decided; she it
is who rules fate, knows what she wants to do, and does it. Everything
which, with our ideas, would seem in a young girl like boldness and
immodesty, is pictured by the artist with such simplicity and delicacy
that we are tempted to see in it only the freedom of a courageous,
undaunted spirit. These upright and passionate natures which he creates
seem capable of anything but fear, treachery, and deceit.
The poet seems to have poured the accumulated emotion of his whole
youth into the “Nest of Nobles” as a vent to the long repressed
sentiment of his inmost heart. He now set himself to study the social
conditions of the life around him; and in the midst of the great
intellectual movement of 1860, on the eve of the emancipation, he
wrote “Fathers and Sons.” This book marks a date in the history of the
Russian mind. The novelist had the rare good-fortune to recognize a new
growth of thought, and to give it a fixed form and name, which no other
had been able to do.
In “Fathers and Sons,” an old man of the past generation, discussing
his character of Bazarof, asked: “What is your opinion of
Bazarof?”―“What is he?―he is a _nihilist_,” replied a young disciple
of the terrible medical student.―“What do you say?”―“I say he is a
_nihilist_!”―“Nihilist?” repeated the old man. “Ah, yes! that comes
from the Latin word _nihil_, and our Russian word _nitchevo_; as
well as I can judge, that must be a man who will neither acknowledge
nor admit anything.”―“Say, rather,” added another, “who respects
nothing.”―“Who considers everything from a critical point of view,”
resumed the young man.―“That is just the same thing.”―“No, it is
not the same thing; a nihilist is a man who bows to no authority, and
will admit no principle as an article of faith, no matter how deeply
respected that principle may be.”
We must go back still farther than the Latin to find the root of the
word and the philosophy it expresses; to the old Aryan stock, of which
the Slavonic race is one of the main branches. Nihilism is the Hindu
_nirvâna_; the yielding of the primitive man before the power of matter
and the obscurity of the moral world; and the nirvâna necessarily
engenders a furious reaction in the conquered being, a blind effort to
destroy that universe which can crush and circumvent him. But I have
already touched upon this subject, which is too voluminous to dwell
upon here. So Nihilism, as we understand it, is only in its embryo
state in this famous book of Turgenef’s. I would merely call the
attention of the reader to another passage in this book which reveals a
finer understanding of the word than volumes written upon the subject.
It is in another discussion of Bazarof’s character, this time between
an intelligent young girl and a young disciple of Bazarof, who honestly
believes himself a nihilist. She says:―
“Your Bazarof you cannot understand, neither can he understand
you.”―“How so?”―“How can I explain it?… He is a wild animal, and we,
you and I, are tamed animals.”
This comparison shows clearly the shade of difference between Russian
Nihilism and the similar mental maladies from which human nature has
suffered from time immemorial down to the present day.
This hero of Turgenef’s has many traits in common with the Indian
heroes of Fenimore Cooper, who are armed with a tomahawk, instead of
a surgeon’s knife. Bazarof’s sons seem, at first sight, much like our
revolutionists; but examine them more closely, and you will discover
the distinction between the wild and the tamed beast. Our worst
revolutionists are savage dogs, but the Russian nihilist is a wolf; and
we now know that the wolf’s rage is the more dangerous of the two.
See how Bazarof dies! He has contracted blood-poison by dissecting the
body of a typhoid subject. He knows that he is lost. He endures his
agony in mute, haughty, stolid silence; it is the agony of the wild
beast with a ball in his body. The nihilist surpasses the stoic; he
does not try to complete his task before death; there is nothing that
is worth doing.
The novelist has exhausted his art to create a deplorable character,
which, however, is not really odious to us, excepting as regards
his inhumanity, his scorn for everything we venerate. These seem
intolerable to us. With the tamed animal, this would indicate
perversion, disregard of all rules; but in the wild beast it is
instinct, a resistance wholly natural. Our moral sense is ingeniously
disarmed by the author, before this victim of fate.
Turgenef’s creative power and minute observation of details in this
work have never been excelled by him at any period of his literary
career. It is very difficult, however, to quote passages of his,
because he never writes single pages or paragraphs for their individual
effect; but every detail is of value to the _ensemble_ of the work.
I will merely quote a passing sketch of a character, which seems to
me remarkably true to life; that of a man of his own country and his
own time; a high functionary of St. Petersburg; a future statesman,
who had gone into one of the provinces to examine the petty government
officials.
“Matthew Ilitch belonged to what were called the younger politicians.
Although hardly over forty years of age, he was already aiming to
obtain a high position in the Government, and wore two orders on his
breast. One of them, however, was a foreign, and quite an ordinary
one. He passed for one of the progressive party, as well as the
official whom he came to examine. He had a high opinion of himself;
his personal vanity was boundless, although he affected an air of
studied simplicity, gave you a look of encouragement, listened with
an indulgent patience. He laughed so good-naturedly that, at first,
you would take him for a ‘good sort of fellow.’ But, on certain
occasions, he knew how to throw dust in your eyes. ‘It is necessary
to be energetic,’ he used to say; ‘energy is the first quality of the
statesman.’ In spite of all, he was often duped; for any petty official
with a little experience could lead him by the nose at will.
“Matthew Ilitch often spoke of Guizot with admiration; he tried to have
every one understand that he did not belong to the category of those
who followed one routine; but that he was attentive to every phase and
possible requirement of social life. He kept himself familiar with all
contemporary literature, as he was accustomed to say, in an off-hand
way. He was a tricky and adroit courtier, nothing more; he really knew
nothing of public affairs, and his views were of no value whatever; but
he understood managing his own affairs admirably well; on this point he
could not be duped. Is not that, after all, the principal thing?”
In the intervals of these important works, Turgenef often wrote little
simple sketches, in the style of his “Annals of a Sportsman.” There
are more than twenty of these exquisitely delicate compositions. One
of them, entitled “Assia,”[H] of about sixty pages, is a perfect gem
in its way, and is a souvenir of his student-life in Germany, and of a
love-passage experienced there.
The young student loves a young Russian girl without being quite
conscious of his passion. His love being evidently reciprocated, the
young girl, wounded by his hesitation, suddenly disappears, and he
knows too late what he has lost. I will quote at hazard a few lines
of this poem in prose, which is only the prelude of this unconscious
passion.
The two young people are walking, one summer evening, on the banks of
the Rhine.
“I stood and looked upon her, bathed as she was in the bright rays of
the setting sun. Her face was calm and sweet. Everything around us was
beaming with intensity of light; earth, air, and water.
“‘How beautiful it is!’ I said, involuntarily lowering my voice.
“‘Yes,’ she said, in the same tone, without raising her eyes. ‘If we
were birds, you and I, would we not soar away and fly? … we should be
lost in those azure depths…. But―we are not birds.’
“‘Our wings may grow,’ I replied. ‘Only live on and you will see. There
are feelings which can raise us above this earth. Fear not; you will
have your wings.’
“‘And you,’ she said; ‘have you ever felt this?’
“‘It seems to me that I never did, until this moment,’ I said.
“Assia was silent, and seemed absorbed in thought. I drew nearer to
her. Suddenly she said:―
“‘Do you waltz?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, somewhat perplexed by this question.
“‘Come, then,’ she said; ‘I will ask my brother to play a waltz for us.
We will imagine we are flying, and that our wings have grown….’
“It was late when I left her. On recrossing the Rhine, when midway
between the two shores, I asked the ferryman to let the boat drift with
the current. The old man raised the oars, and the royal stream bore
us on. I looked around me, listened, and reflected. I had a feeling
of unrest, and felt a sudden pang at my heart. I raised my eyes to
the heavens; but even there there was no tranquillity. Dotted with
glittering stars, the whole firmament was palpitating and quivering.
I leaned over the water; there were the same stars, trembling and
gleaming in its cold, gloomy depths. The agitation of nature all
around me only increased my own. I leaned my elbows upon the edge of
the boat; the night wind, murmuring in my ears, and the dull plashing
of the water against the rudder irritated my nerves, which the cool
exhalations from the water could not calm. A nightingale was singing
on the shore, and his song seemed to fill me with a delicious poison.
Tears filled my eyes, I knew not why. What I now felt was not that
aspiration toward the Infinite, that love for universal nature, with
which my whole being had been filled of late; but I was consumed by a
thirst, a longing for happiness,―I could not yet call it by its name,
but for a happiness beyond expression, even if it should annihilate me.
It was almost an agony of mingled joy and pain.
“The boat floated on, while the old boatman sat and slept, leaning
forward upon his oars.”
IV.
The emancipation of the serfs, the dream of Turgenef’s life, had become
an accomplished fact, and was, moreover, the inaugurator of other
great reforms. There was a general joyous awakening of secret forces
and of hopes long deferred. The years following 1860, which were so
momentous for Russia, wrought a change in the interior life of the
poet and author. Torn from his native land by the ties of a deathless
friendship, to which he unreservedly devoted the remainder of his life,
he left Russia, never to return except at very rare intervals. He
established himself first at Baden, afterwards settled permanently in
Paris. Every desire of his heart as man, author, and patriot had been
gratified. He had helped to bring about the emancipation. His literary
fame followed him, and his works were translated into many languages.
But, after some years of silence and repose, this poet’s soul, which
through youth had rejoiced in its dreams and anticipations, suffered
the change which must come to our poor human nature. He was not
destined in his old age to realize his ideals.
In 1868 his great novel “Smoke” appeared. It exhibited the same talent,
riper than ever with the maturity of age; but the old faith and candor
were wanting. Were we speaking of any other man, we should say that he
had become bitter; but that would be an exaggeration in speaking of
Turgenef, for there was no gall in his temperament. But there are the
pathetic touches of a disenchanted idealist, astonished to find that
his most cherished ideas, applied to men, cannot make them perfect.
This sort of disappointment sometimes carries an author to injustice;
his pencil shades certain characters too intensely, so that they are
less true to nature than those of his older works. The phase of society
described in “Smoke” exhibits a class of Russians living abroad, who
do not, perhaps, retain in their foreign home the best qualities of
their native soil: noble lords and questionable ladies, students and
conspirators. The scene is laid at Baden, where the author could study
society at his leisure. Of this confusing throng of army officers,
rusticating princesses, boastful Slavophiles, and travelling clerks,
he has given us many a vivid glimpse. But the book, as a whole, is an
exaggeration; and this impression is all the stronger as the author
evidently does not consider his characters of an exceptional type, but
intends to faithfully represent Russian society, both high and low.
Moreover, the artist has modified his style. He formerly presented his
array of ideas, and left his readers to judge of them for themselves;
but now he often puts himself in the reader’s place, and expresses his
own opinion very freely.
For the novelist or dramatist there are two ways of presenting moral
theses; with or without his personal intervention. We will take the
most familiar examples. In Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” there are
two conceptions of duty and virtue, which are perfectly antagonistic,
personified by Jean Valjean and Javert. They are so perfectly drawn
that we might almost hesitate between them; but the author throws
the whole weight of his eloquence on the one; he deifies one and
depreciates the other, so that he forces the verdict from us. But in
“Le Gendre de M. Poirier,” on the contrary, there are two conceptions
of honor; two sets of irreconcilable ideas; those of the Marquis de
Presle, and those of his father-in-law. The author keeps himself in the
background. He presents his two characters with the same clear analyses
of their merits and absurdities; and shows both the weak and the strong
points of their arguments. Even to the very end we hesitate to judge
between them; and it is this conflict of ideas which keeps up the
interest of the drama.
For myself, I prefer the second method. Besides being more artistic,
it seems to approach nearer to real life, in which we can never see
truth clearly, and in which good and evil are always so closely allied.
Turgenef embraced this method in all his first studies of social life,
and they were more just and true, in my opinion, than his later ones.
In the last two, “Smoke” and “Virgin Soil,” he interferes noticeably,
bringing forward his own opinions; but I acknowledge that these
books contain many passages overflowing with vivid fancy and strong
common-sense. He satirizes everything he disapproves, the _Slavophile_
party, all the national peculiarities, especially that mania for
declaring everything perfect that springs from Russian soil. His shafts
of wit, which he employs to illustrate this infatuation, are very keen;
for example, when he speaks of the “literature which is bound in Russia
leather”; and when he says, “in my country two and two make four, but
with more certainty than elsewhere.”
After emptying his quiver, the author describes a love intrigue, in
which he shows as ever his marvellous knowledge of the human heart.
But here again his style has changed. Formerly he wrote of youthful
affection, a loyal emotion, frank and courageous enough to brave the
whole world; and woman seemed to interest him only in her early youth.
But he depicts in “Smoke” and “Spring Floods” the most cruel passions,
with their agonies, deceptions, and bottomless abysses. The virtuous
young girl invariably comes in, but as if held in reserve to save
the repentant sinner at the end. Some may prefer these tempestuous
compositions to the delicious poetic harmonies of his first romances.
It is a matter of taste, and I would not decry the real merit of
“Smoke,” which is a masterpiece in its way. I only affirm that on
the approach of the evening of life the translucent soul of the poet
has given us glimpses of sombre clouds and stormy skies. At the end
of “Spring Floods,” after that wonderful scene, so true to life,
exhibiting the weakness of the man and the diabolical power of the
woman, there follow a few pages so full of rancor that you can but feel
pity for the writer who can express such bitterness.
In 1877, “Virgin Soil,” the last long important work, appeared:
first in French, in a Paris journal, as if to feel its way; then the
original could be risked in Russia with impunity, and had a free
circulation. What a marked change the march of ideas had produced since
the appearance of Turgenef’s article on Gogol! In this new work the
author traversed a road which once would have led directly to Siberia.
He had the ambition to describe the subterranean world which at that
time was beginning to threaten the peace of the Empire. Having studied
for twenty-five years every current of thought springing from Russian
soil, the student thought to perfect his task by showing us the natural
outgrowth of these currents. Since they disappeared under the earth,
they must be investigated and attacked with a bold front.
Turgenef was incited to the work partly from the appearance of a rival,
who had already preceded him in this line. We shall see that “Virgin
Soil” was an indirect response to “Les Possédés” of Dostoyevski. The
effort was not wholly successful; as Turgenef had been away from his
native land for fifteen years, he had not been able to watch narrowly
enough the incessant transformation of that hidden, almost inaccessible
world. Without the closest study from nature the artist’s work cannot
produce striking results. The novelist intended to present the still
unsettled tendencies of the nihilists in a characteristic and fixed
form; but he failed to give clearness and outline to the work; the
image refused to reflect its true form. This is why there is something
vague and indistinct about the first part of “Virgin Soil,” which
contrasts unfavorably with the clear-cut models of his early works.
The author introduces us into the circle of conspirators at St.
Petersburg. One of the young men, Neshdanof, has been engaged as
a tutor in the house of a rich government official, in a distant
province. He there meets a young girl of noble family, who is treated
as a poor relation in the house. She is embittered by a long series
of humiliations, and is struck with admiration for the ideas of the
young apostle, more than for his personal attractions. They escape
together, and form a Platonic union, working together among the common
people, at the great cause of socialism. But Neshdanof is not fitted
for the terrible work; he is a weak character, and a dreamer and poet.
Distracted with doubts, and wholly discouraged, he soon discovers that
all is chaos within his soul. He does not love the cause to which he
is sacrificing himself, and he knows not how best to serve it. Neither
does he love the woman who has sacrificed herself for him, and he feels
that he has lowered himself in her esteem. Weary of life, too proud to
withdraw, and generous enough to wish to save his devoted companion
before her reputation is lost, Neshdanof takes his life. He has found
out that one of his friends, with more character than himself, has
a secret attachment for Marianne. Before dying he joins the hands
of those two enthusiastic beings. The romance ends with a fruitless
conspiracy, which shows the utter uselessness of attempting to stir the
people to revolution.
Other revolutionary characters dimly float before the reader’s vision,
who whisper unintelligible words. Those from among the higher classes
are treated even more harshly than in “Smoke.” They have the same
self-sufficiency, and are equally absurd without a single merit; and
you feel that they are presented in a false light. Hence the work is
abounding in caricatures, and shows a want of balance as a whole.
On the other hand, the apostles of the new faith are surrounded with a
halo of generosity and devotion. Between extreme egotism on one side,
and stern faith and utter self-abnegation on the other, the idealist’s
choice must fall. Naturally, the poet’s warm heart draws him to the
most disinterested party of the two. He invests these rude natures with
delicate sentiments, which clothe them with poetry; concealing from us,
and even from himself, the revolting contrasts they present, and their
brutal instincts. The wolfish, energetic Bazarof was of a type more
true to nature.
I think that Turgenef’s sensibility led him astray in his conception
of the nihilists; while his good-sense did justice to their ideas,
exhibited the puerility of their discourses and the uselessness of
their blind hopes. The most valuable part of the book is where the
writer demonstrates by facts the utter impossibility of uniting the
propagandists and the people. Abstract arguments make no impression
upon the peasant’s dull brain. Neshdanof attempts an harangue in an
ale-house; the peasants force him to drink. The second glass of _vodka_
intoxicates him completely, and he staggers away amid jeers and shouts.
Another man, who tries to stir a village to revolt, is bound and given
over to justice.
At times Turgenef strikes exactly at the root of the evil, shows
up the glaring faults of the revolutionary spirit, and exposes its
weakness. Assuming too much responsibility, the nihilists wish to raise
an ignorant populace at once to the intellectual heights they have
themselves reached; forgetting that time alone can accomplish such a
miracle. They have recourse to cabalistic formulas, but their efforts
are fruitless. The poet sees and explains all this; but, being a poet,
he allows himself to be seduced by the sentimental beauty of the
sacrifice, losing sight of the object; while the proved uselessness of
the sacrifice only redoubles his indulgence towards the victims.
This brings me to a point where I am obliged to touch upon a delicate
subject. Certain political claims, discussed over the author’s tomb,
have caused much anxiety in Russia; and bitter resentment threatened
to mingle with the national grief. The Moscow papers published several
severe articles about him before his death, in consequence of the
appearance of his “Memoirs of a Nihilist” in a French paper. This
autobiographical sketch is not a work of the imagination, for he
obtained the story from the lips of a fellow-countryman who had escaped
from a prison in Russia.
This curious essay has the ring of truth about it, and no attempt
at recrimination; giving an example of that strange psychological
peculiarity of the Russian, who studies so attentively the moral effect
of suffering upon his soul that he forgets to accuse the authors of his
suffering. The sketch recalls vividly certain pages of Dostoyevski’s.
But Turgenef’s ideas were not, at this time, well received by the
Russians. They resented the too indulgent tone of his writings, and
accused him of complicity with the enemies of the Empire. The radicals
wished to claim him for their own; and it was hinted that he subscribed
to support a seditious journal. This is, however, entirely improbable.
Turgenef was open-hearted and generous to a fault. He gave freely and
indiscriminately to any one that was suffering. His door and his purse
were open to any fellow-countryman without reserve, and kind words were
ever ready to flow from his lips. But, though always ready to help
others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer. Was
it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have
aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies? With
the liberal ideas he adopted during his university life in Germany, in
early youth, he was more inclined to cherish political dreams than to
put his liberalism into practice. In fact, it is only necessary to read
“Virgin Soil” attentively, to understand the position he proposed to
maintain.
But I am dwelling too long upon the political standing of a poet. This
man, who was honest and true in the highest degree in all relations of
life, must have been the same as to his politics. Those who questioned
the colors he bore could ill afford to criticise him.
About this time, Turgenef wrote five or six tales; one of which (“A
Lear of the Steppe”), for its intensity of feeling, recalls the most
beautiful parts of “The Annals of a Sportsman.” But I must not dwell
upon these, but give a little attention to the productions of our
author as a whole.
V.
Ivan Sergievitch (Turgenef) has given us a most complete picture of
Russian society. The same general types are always brought forward;
and, as later writers have presented exactly similar ones, with but
few modifications, we are forced to believe them true to life. First,
the peasant; meek, resigned, dull, pathetic in suffering, like a
child who does not know why he suffers; naturally sharp and tricky
when not stupefied by liquor; occasionally roused to violent passion.
Then, the intelligent middle class; the small landed proprietors of
two generations. The old proprietor is ignorant and good-natured, of
respectable family, but with coarse habits; hard, from long experience
of serfdom, servile himself, but admirable in all other relations of
life.
The young man of this class is of quite a different type. His
intellectual growth having been too rapid, he sometimes plunges into
Nihilism. He is often well educated, melancholy, rich in ideas but poor
in executive ability; always preparing and expecting to accomplish
something of importance, filled with vague and generous projects for
the public good. This is the chosen type of hero in all Russian novels.
Gogol introduced it, and Tolstoï prefers it above all others.
The favorite hero of young girls and romantic women is neither the
brilliant officer, the artist, nor rich lord, but almost universally
this provincial Hamlet, conscientious, cultivated, intelligent, but of
feeble will, who, returning from his studies in foreign lands, is full
of scientific theories about the improvement of mankind and the good of
the lower classes, and eager to apply these theories on his own estate.
It is quite necessary that he should have an estate of his own. He will
have the hearty sympathy of the reader in his efforts to improve the
condition of his dependents.
The Russians well understand the conditions of the future prosperity of
their country; but, as they themselves acknowledge, they know not how
to go to work to accomplish it.
In regard to the women of this class, Turgenef, strange to say, has
little to say of the mothers. This probably reveals the existence
of some old wound, some bitter experience of his own. Without a
single exception, all the mothers in his novels are either wicked or
grotesque. He reserves the treasures of his poetic fancy for the young
girls of his creation. To him the young girl of the country province
is the corner-stone of the fabric of society. Reared in the freedom
of country life, placed in the most healthy social conditions, she
is conscientious, frank, affectionate, without being romantic; less
intelligent than man, but more resolute. In each of his romances an
irresolute man is invariably guided by a woman of strong will.
Such are, generally speaking, the characters the author describes,
which bear so unmistakably the stamp of nature that one cannot refrain
from saying as he closes the book, “These must be portraits from life!”
which criticism is always the highest praise, the best sanction of
works of the imagination.
But something is wanting to fully complete the picture of Russian
life. Turgenef never has written of the highest class in society
except incidentally and in his later works, and then in his bitterest
vein. He was never drawn to this class, and was, besides, prejudiced
against it. The charming young girl, suddenly raised to a position in
this circle, becomes entirely perverted―is changed into a frivolous
woman, with most disagreeable peculiarities of mind and temperament.
The man, elevated to the new dignities of a high public position, adds
to his native irresolution ostentatious pride and folly. We are forced
to question these hasty and extreme statements. We must wait for Leo
Tolstoï before forming our opinions. He will give us precisely the
same types of the lower and middle classes as his predecessor; but he
will also give a most complete analysis of the statesman, the courtier,
and the noble dames of the court. He will finish the edifice, the
foundations of which Turgenef has so admirably laid. Not that we expect
of our author the complicated intrigues and extraordinary adventures of
the old French romances. He shows us life as it is, not through a magic
lantern. Facts interest him but little, for he only regards them as
to their influence on the human soul. He loved to study character and
sentiment, to seek the simplest personages of every-day life; and the
great secret of his power lies in his having felt such deep interest
in his models that his characters are never prosaic, while absolutely
true to life. He says of Neshdanof, in “Virgin Soil”: “He makes realism
poetic.” These, his own words, may be justly applied to himself. In
exquisite and good taste he has, in fact, no rival. On every page we
find a tender grace like the ineffable freshness of morning dew. A
phrase of George Eliot’s, in “Adam Bede,” may well apply to him: “Words
came to me as tears come when the heart is full and we cannot prevent
them.”
No writer ever had more sentiment or a greater horror of
sentimentality; none could better express in a single phrase such
crises, such remarkable situations. This reserve power makes his work
unique in Russian literature, which is always diffuse and elaborate. In
his most unimportant productions there is an artistic conciseness equal
to that of the great masters of the ancient classics. Such qualities,
made still more effective by a perfection of style and a diction always
correct and sometimes most exquisite, give to Turgenef a very high
position in contemporary literature. Taine considered him one of the
most perfect artists the world has produced since the classic period.
English criticism, generally considered somewhat cold, and not given to
exaggeration, places him among writers of the very first rank.
I subscribe to this opinion whenever I take up any of his works to read
once again; then I hesitate when I think of that marvellous Tolstoï,
who captivates my imagination and makes me suspend my judgment. We must
leave these questions of precedence for the future to decide.
After the appearance of “Virgin Soil,” although Turgenef’s talent
suffered no change, and his intelligence was as keen as ever, his mind
seemed to need repose, and to be groping for some hidden path, as is
often the case with young authors at the beginning of their career.
There were good reasons for this condition of discouragement. Turgenef
reaped many advantages, and some disadvantages, from his prolonged
sojourn in our midst. At first, the study of new masters and the
friendships and advice of Mérimée, were of great use to him. To this
literary intercourse may be attributed the rare culture, clearness,
and precision of his works, as distinguished from any other prose
writer of his country. Later on he became an enthusiastic admirer of
Flaubert, and made some excellent translations of his works. Then,
next to the pioneers of the “School of Nature,” he adhered to their
successors, fondly imagining himself to be one of them, giving ear
to their doctrines, and making frantic efforts to conciliate these
with his old ideals. Moreover, he felt himself more and more widely
separated from his native land, the true source of all his ideas. He
was sometimes reproached as a deserter. The tendencies of his last
novels had aroused recrimination and scandal. Whenever he occasionally
visited St. Petersburg or Moscow, he was received with ovations by the
young men, but with extreme coldness in some circles. He was destined
to live to see a part of his former adherents leave him and run to
worship new idols. On his last appearance in Russia for the fêtes in
honor of Pushkin, the Moscow students rushed to take him from his
carriage, and bear him in their arms; but I remember that one day at
St. Petersburg, returning from a visit to one of the nobility, Ivan
Sergievitch (Turgenef) said to us, in a jesting tone, not quite free
from bitterness: “Some one called me Ivan Nikolaievitch.”[I] This
little inadvertency would to us seem quite pardonable, for here we
are, fortunately, not obliged to know every one’s father’s name. But,
considering Russian customs, this oversight in the case of a national
celebrity was an offence, and showed that he was already beginning to
be forgotten.
About this time I had the good-fortune to pass an evening with Turgenef
and Skobelef. The young general spoke with his habitual eloquence and
warmth of his hopes for the future, and expressed many great thoughts.
The old author listened in silence, studying him meanwhile with that
pensive, concentrated expression of the artist when he wishes to
reproduce an image in form and color. The model was posing for the
painter, who meant to engraft this remarkable character into one of his
books; but Death did not permit the hero to live out his romance, nor
the poet to write it.
One day in the spring of 1883, the last time I had the honor of seeing
Ivan Sergievitch, we spoke of Skobelef. He said: “I shall soon follow
him.”
It was too true. He was suffering terribly from the mortal illness of
which he died soon after―a cancer in the spinal marrow. His eyes
rested upon a landscape of Rousseau, his favorite painter, which
represented an ancient oak, torn by the storms of many winters, now
shedding its last crimson leaves in a December gale. There was an
affinity between the noble old man and this picture which he enjoyed
looking upon, a secret and mutual understanding of the decrees of
Nature.
He published three tales after being attacked with this fatal
disease. It is an example of the irony of fate that the last of
these was entitled “Despair.” This was his last analysis of the
Russian character, which he had made his study for so many years, and
reproduced in all his works.
A few days before his death he took up his pen to write a touching
epistle to his friend, Leo Tolstoï. In this farewell the dying author
bequeathed the care and honor of Russian literature to his friend and
rival. I give the closing words of this letter:―
“My very dear Leo Nikolaievitch, I have not written to you for a long
time, for I have long been upon my death-bed. There is no chance for
recovery; it is not to be thought of. I write expressly to tell you how
very happy I am to have been a contemporary of yours; and to express a
last, urgent request.
“My friend, return to your literary labors. This gift has come to you
from whence come all our gifts. Oh! how happy I should be could I feel
that you will grant this request!…
“My dear friend, great author of our beloved Russia, let me entreat you
to grant me this request! Reply if this reaches you. I press you and
yours to my heart for the last time. I can write no more…. I am weary!…”
We can only hope that this exhortation will be obeyed by the only
author worthy to take up the pen dropped by those valiant hands.
Turgenef has left behind a rich legacy; for every page he ever wrote,
with but very few exceptions, breathes a noble spirit; and his works
will continue to elevate and warm the hearts of thousands.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] “Grande et riche, mais désordonnée.” This historical
phrase has become proverbial in Russia. It was used by
the deputies of the Slavs when they demanded foreign
chiefs to govern them.
[G] Published in English under the name of “Liza.”
[H] An English translation was published in 1884 under the
title “_Annouchka_,” a tale.
[I] (V)itch added to the father’s name (meaning son of) is
the masculine termination of proper names.