Chapter IV: Turgenef (1)

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.