Chapter XII: Part II: deals charmingly with the story of the last pomyèschick (2)

In 1909 Merejkòvski produced a little book on Lèrmontov as a counterblast to one by Solovyòv in which Martỳnov was hailed as "Heaven's weapon sent to punish blood-thirstiness and devilish lust." It is a blessing indeed that Solovyòv should have been led to attack Lèrmontov, for Merejkòvski was thus brought to criticise Lèrmontov with an amazingly accurate insight. He loved the poet and so his appreciation is the more perfect. "Something like Solovyòv's attitude towards Lèrmontov," he says, "must have been in the minds of the poet's contemporaries and successors. Even Dostoievski mentions him as the 'spirit of wrath.' Nicholas I. expressed grim pleasure at his death. He has been up till now the scapegoat of Russian literature. All Russian writers preach humility, even those who began by heading revolts--Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoievski, Tolstoi ... here is the one single man who never gave in and never submitted to his last breath ... he is the Cain of Russian literature and has been killed by Abel, the spirit of humility. Solovyòv's cry of 'Devilish superman' is only another proof of the fact that the struggle between superhumanism and deo-humanism is the eternal problem of life." Merejkòvski's idea is that Lèrmontov could remember the past of his eternity ... from the ordinary human mind this previous existence is excluded, we dwell on the eternity to come ... but Lèrmontov never did: his mind was concentrated on what he saw left behind him. From the very first his poetry attracts you uneasily: you may--Russian youths often are--be taught to hate him as a "spring of poison" ... he knew the harrowing threat of fruitless ages. Even as a boy he frequently said: "If only I could forget the unforgettable." His Demon is never permitted to forget the past. He lives by what is death to others.

Pechorin, in _The Hero of our Days_, speaks as Lèrmontov when he says: "I never forget anything--anything."

In one of his poems he laments that his despair is that no love lasts through eternity: he means _his_ eternity. He knows of a kind of existence which is neither this life, nor death as promised by Christianity. That existence is not deprived of love: his idea is that the less earthly, the deeper and greater the passion becomes. The difference between Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations_ and Lèrmontov's is that Wordsworth speaks of these intimations coming to him from outside this world and Lèrmontov speaks from the outside world himself, as one belonging to it, while realising his temporary existence in this world to which he does not belong. This attitude was a continual torment to him; it made him feel very much of a stranger.

"Usually," says Merejkòvski, "artists find their creation beautiful because nothing like it has existed before." Lèrmontov feels the beauty just where it had been always. That is why there is something so individual and inimitable in him when he speaks of Nature: 'For several moments spent among the wilderness of rocks where I played as a child I would give Paradise and Eternity.'

"He is in love with Nature. He longs to blend in an embrace with the storm and Shelley-like catches of lightnings with his hands. It is the only non-earthly love for earth to be found in poetry. Christianity is a movement from here--thither: Lèrmontov's poetry is from there--hither. He was not-quite-a-man encased in a man's shell. He tried to conceal this, because people do not forgive anyone for being unlike them. Hence his reticence, which people mistook for pride. They thought he was untruthful, posing ... while in reality it was his tragedy that he felt out of place here and tried to be like everyone else. This explains his escape into the sphere of dissipations, his cruel attitude towards the girl he deserted ... when he could feel that at last he was like his contemporaries.

"The fourth dimension seemed to be squeezed into the three for a while, and the icy horror of eternity and the inane temporarily forgotten in the warmth of human vulgarity."

This, Merejkòvski thinks, accounts for that amazing child-likeness in Lèrmontov which dwelt side by side with his pessimism, sadness, bitterness, flippancy and sarcasm. He could always play children's games to the state of self-forgetfulness and had no fear of death, because he _knew_ that there was no death.

"His Demon never laughs and never lies; he has something of the child-like in him. He is always genuine, as far removed as possible from Gogol's spirit of mischief or Dostoievsky's wicked, sneering Devil. Lèrmontov's Devil is beautiful, because he is not thought out, but suffered out by the poet himself; he is hardly a devil at all."

There is a legend that once there was a fight between God and Satan and some of the angels were undecided which side to take. In order to help them to make up their mind they were sent to be born on earth, where they should dwell for a little in a limited world: the soul of Lèrmontov had been in his past one of these. That is why his duality was always such a burden to him. This explains many queer things about Lèrmontov: his amazingly deep passion for a girl of nine when he was ten ("I did not know whence she came") and his having drawn a detailed picture of his death many times before his final duel: most strange of all is Merejkòvski's idea that Lèrmontov remembered the future of eternity. Pushkin is the day-luminary of Russian poetry and Lèrmontov is the night-luminary: "It is high time to rise after our final stage of humility and start on our last revolt, and remember that besides Pushkin we have Lèrmontov and his message to the world.... Because in the end Satan will make peace with God."

He owed nothing to his contemporaries, little to his predecessors and still less to foreign models.

As a schoolboy he imitated Byron, merely echoes these, however, of his reading. Shelley urged him as Byron urged Pushkin to emulation, not imitation. His pride and obstinacy if nothing else would have made him carve out his own path: he chose the narrow path of romance, the Turner method rather than the Constable in his depictions of landscape, as may be seen in _Mtsysi_, the story of a Circassian orphan educated in a convent, who has ungovernable longings for freedom: he escapes, loses his way in the forest and is brought back after three days, dying from exhaustion and starvation. The greater portion of the poem is given up to his confession: he then tells how insatiable were his desires to seek out his own home and people: he describes his wanderings, hearing the song of a girl ... seeing at nightfall the light of a dwelling-place twinkling like a fallen star, but afraid to seek it. He then kills a panther and in the morning finds a way out of the woods and lies exhausted in the grass under the blinding sun of noon. He then fancies in his delirium that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream; the fish sing to him in a voice so unearthly that he is enticed and allured as if the fish were the Erl-King's daughter.

In _The Testament_ he rises to an unadorned realism that is little short of magic in its poignancy:

"'I want to be alone with you,
A moment quite alone.
The minutes left to me are few,
They say I'll soon be gone.
And you'll be going home on leave,
Then say ... but why? I do believe
There's not a soul who'll greatly care
To hear about me over there.

And yet if someone asks you there,
Let us suppose they do--
Tell them a bullet hit me here,
The chest--and it went through.
And say I died, and for the Tsar,
And say what fools the doctors are:--
And that I shook you by the hand,
And thought about my native land.

My father and my mother, too!
They may be dead by now:
To tell the truth, it wouldn't do
To grieve them anyhow.
If one of them is living, say
I'm bad at writing home and they
Have sent me to the front, you see--
And that they needn't wait for me.

We had a neighbour, as you know,
And you remember, I
And she ... How very long ago
It is we said good-bye.
She won't ask after me, nor care,
But tell her everything, don't spare
Her empty heart; and let her cry:--
To her it doesn't signify.'"

It is such a poem that led Baring to apply to Lèrmontov what Arnold said about Byron and Wordsworth: "there are moments when Nature takes the pen from his hand and writes for him." When one passes in review the vast output of his short life, we are struck by the lyrical inspiration, the strength and intensity, the concentration of his power, the wealth of his imagination, his gorgeous colouring and maintained high level.

It is as though he combined the temperament of a Thackeray with the wings of a Shelley, so exquisitely blended is his romantic sense and stern realism. So simple and straightforward is he that his style escapes notice in its absolute appropriateness, as in _The Testament_. There is none of the misty vagueness of Keats or Coleridge; he never follows Shelley into the intense inane.

I propose to conclude this chapter with extracts from his masterpiece, _The Demon_, to illustrate, if I can, the amazing achievement of this Lucifer-spirit. He opens with a description of his hero-devil ruminating over his past:

"When, thirsting for eternal knowledge,
He keenly followed through the mist
The caravans of wandering planets
Thrown into vastness; when he list--
The happy first-born of creation--
To voice of Faith and Love, and knew
No doubt or hatred; and there was
No threat of ages fruitless, dreary,
Awaiting him in even rows ..."

Now an outcast:

"He planted sin without enjoyance;
His art has never met contest,
Has quickly lost its charm and zest,
And has become a mere annoyance."

We follow him in his exile over the world through the Caucasus to Gruzia:

"A blissful, brilliant nook of Earth!
'Mid stately ancient pillared ruins,
Relucent, gurgling rivulets run
And ripple over motley pebbles;
Between them, rose-trees where the birds
Sing love-songs, while the ivy girds
The stems, and crowns the foliage-temples
Of green chinàra; and the herds
Of timid red-deer seek the boon
Of mountain eaves in sultry noon;
And sparkling life, and rustling leaves,
And hum of voices hundred-toned,
The sweetly breathing thousand plants,
Voluptuous heat of skies sun-laden,
Caressive dew of gorgeous night,
And stars--as clear as eyes of maiden,
As glance of Grùzian maiden bright!
But all this brilliancy of Nature
Awoke not in the Demon's soul
A moment's joy, nor tender feeling."

We are now introduced to the heroine, Tamàra, whose wedding feast is being prepared:

"Amid her friends, the whole day long
Tamàra spent in play and song.
The sun, behind a far-off mountain,
Is half set in a sea of gold.
The maidens in a round are sitting
And, to a lilting tune they're singing
They clap in time. Tamàra takes
Her tambourine, and nimbly shakes
It o'er her head; with fleeting motion
Now trips it lighter than a bird,
Now holds a-sudden in her dance,
And casts a shining, roguish glance
From underneath the jealous lashes;
Her eyebrow curves in coy expression,
Her lithesome shape does swift incline,
And o'er the carpet slides and flashes
Her little foot of form divine....
The Demon did behold her.... Rapture
And awe possessed him: and at once
The silent desert of his spirit
Rang suddenly with joyful tones;
And once again the sacred grandeur
Of Love and Good and Beauty shone
Within his soul....
He felt a sadness strangely new--
As if the overwhelming shower
Of feelings rang with words he knew.
Was this a sign of renovation?
Gone were the words of dread temptation,
His mind no more in guile adept.
Will he forget his past?... But God
Would never grant him this relief,
Nor he forgetfulness accept."

Tamàra's bridegroom-elect is foully done to death on his way to the wedding. The bride, fallen on her bed, sobs with a lorn and piteous feeling until she suddenly hears a voice of magic sweetness urging her to cease.

"'Forsooth, the destiny of mortals,
Believe me, angel upon earth'" (sings the voice),
"'Is not--not for a single moment
Of thy dear child-like sorrow worth!'"

He beseeches her to listen to his pleas:

"'As soon as night throws silky veiling
O'er Caucasus, and all the world
Grows still and fairy-like, bewitched
By Nature's magic wand and word;
As soon as zephyrs flutter shyly
Across the faded grass, and gaily
Flies out of it the lurking bird;
As soon as under vine and maize
The flowers of night find dew, and raise
Unfolding petals with relief:
As soon as from behind the mountains
The golden crescent glides, and steals
A glance upon thee furtively--
I shall fly down each night to thee,
Shall guard till dawn thy virgin slumber,
And on thy lashes dreams of amber
I'll waft, to woo them prettily....'"

We are not surprised that fire began to flow along the maiden's veins as she listened to so exquisite a speech. She decides to enter a nunnery to avoid both marriage and the hellish spirit that assails her in dreams. The Devil follows:

"But, filled with fear of sanctity,
He dared not boldly force an entrance
And violate the sanctuary.
Then for a moment was he fain
To give up his hell-dark device."

He catches a glimpse of the glimmering lamplight in Tamàra's window and hears a song in the far distance, a song for earth in heaven born and nourished.

"Had, then, an angel flown in secret
To meet him as his friend of yore,
To sing the byegone joys they cherished,
And soothe the sufferings he bore?
Then first the Demon knew he loved;
Knew how he yearned and longed for love.
In sudden fear, he thought to fly ...
But in that first, heart-rending anguish
His wing was stayed--he had no power!
And, marvel! from his veilèd eye
There dropped a tear.... This very hour
There lieth by Tamàra's tower
A stone burnt through by flame-like tear--
Inhuman tear: a sign for aye!..."

As he entered he was met by the guardian angel of the fair sinner, who reproaches the Demon, and bids him begone.

"The Demon's face
Lit up with smile of proud derision,
His look flashed jealousy and scorn,
And in his soul again awakened
The former hatred's poisonous thorn."

The guardian angel departs and the Demon is left victor of the field to plead his cause. In answer to Tamàra's question, "'But who art thou? Who?... Answer me,'" he replies:

"'I'm he whose voice has made thee listen
Throughout the midnight's calm and rest;
Whose thoughts have reached thee like a whisper,
Whose vision through thy dreams would glisten,
Whose sadness thou hast dimly guessed....
I am the lord of understanding
And freedom: I am Nature's foe,
The world's despair, and Heaven's woe.
Yet at thy feet I worship thee!...
I love thee: I'm thy slave to-day....
What is eternity without thee?
My boundless realm, when I am lonely?'"

Tamàra then asks him why he loves her, to which he replies:

"'Why do I, fair? I do not know.
Since first the earthly world began,
In my mind's eye imprinted ever
Thine image seemed to fill the ether,
And through eternity it ran.
In Paradise the glorious years
Were lacking only thy creation.
Oh, if thou couldst but comprehend
The bitterness of my existence
Through dreary ages' dread consistence....
Oft through the rack and tempest raging,
I rushed at midnight levin-clad,
In fruitless hope of e'er assuaging
My aching heart's revolt and dread,
To kill the pain of mind's regret,
The ne'er forgotten to forget.'"

Tamàra is gradually won to listen to his passionate pleading.

"'Whoe'er thou art, my friend so mystic,
I list to thee against my will.
I know my peace is lost for ever;
But thou art suffering, and never
I could forget thee suffering still.
But if thy words are false and cunning,
But if thou plannest a deceit ...
Have mercy. What's to thee this conquest?
What counts my soul in thy conceit?
Oh, give thy oath, thy sacred vow:
Thou seest--I fail and suffer now--
Thou seest a woman's tender dreams!...
But fear grows less ... To me it seems
Thou understand'st and knowest all....
Swear on thy oath, give me a token
That sin and wrong thou wilt renounce.'"

The Demon vows fidelity:

"'I swear by dawn of the creation,
By the decay of earthly sooth,
By the disgrace of crime and evil,
And by the triumph of the truth.
I swear by flashing hopes of conquest,
I swear by bitter pains of fall,
I swear by having met with thee,
And by the threat of losing all; ...
I swear by Hell, I swear by Heaven,
I swear by sacredness, by thee,
Thy latest look my soul enslaving,
Thy first and guileless tear for me;
By breath from lips so pure and ireless,
Thy silky tresses' wave and shine,
I swear by suffering, elation,
And by my love for thee, divine....
But here's my offer; all my power
I bring to thee, my sanctuary!
I seek thy love, I need its blessing;
Thou wilt obtain eternity
For one short moment. Trust my greatness
In love, and wrath, and equity.
I, free and wilful Son of Ether,
Shall take thee high above the stars,
And thou shalt be the Queen of Nature,
My foremost love, eternal treasure,
Whom nothing equals or debars!...
Crowds of ethereal fairy-maidens
Will wait, thy every wish to meet.
The crown which Evening Star is wearing
I'll tear from her, and crown thy head;
I'll take the dew from evening flowers
To shine on it in diamonds' stead;
I'll take a sunset ray of scarlet,
And gird thee with its ribbon light;
I'll saturate the air around thee
With purest fragrance of the night.
A never-dying magic music
Will charm thine ears by fall and swell.
I'll build a palace out of turquoise
And pearls and gold for thee to dwell;
I'll search for thee the depth of ocean;
I'll get all riches from the stars;
I'll give thee every earthly treasure--
But love me ...'
Closely o'er her bending,
He gently touched Tamàra's trembling
Lips with his lips burning like fire,
Words overwhelming with temptation
Were to her pleading his reply....
The evil spirit was the victor ...
But poison of his touch inflicted
A fatal blow on child-like breast,
An agonising shriek, through rest
And silence of the hour, broke ..."

The guardian angel returns and banishes the Demon.

"Then at the spirit of Temptation
An austere glance the Angel bent:
The conquered Demon cursed his longings,
His maddening dreams where love had shone;
And once again he stood relentless,
In scornful arrogance, and dauntless,
Amidst the Universe--alone."

Comment on such a poem is needless. I have done my part if I have induced you by my brief extracts to go back to the original and read the whole of it for yourselves.

V

GOGOL (1809-1852)

Nicholas Gogol was born in 1809 near Poltàva and brought up in affluence by a Cossack grandmother: at school he did but little work, but devoted himself with enthusiasm to drawing and the theatre. In 1829 he obtained a Government office in Petrograd. He then tried the stage, schoolmastering, and obtained a Professorship of History; failing in all these, he turned to literature. His first fruits brought him to the notice of the famous literary men of his day, and he became a friend of Pushkin, who proved invaluable as critic and adviser.

For seven years he lived in Petrograd, and during this period began his sketches of Little Russian--that is, of South Russian--life in _Evenings on a Farm on the Dikanka_ and _Mirgorod_. Little Russia differs from Great Russia in having scattered whitewashed houses in place of the regular streets of the villages of Great Russia: separate little farms surrounded by charming little gardens. It is specially attractive in its more genial climate, warm nights, its musical language, the beauty of its people, their picturesque dress and its lyrical songs. There is, too, more freedom in the relations between young men and young girls; there is none of that seclusion of the women which we meet with in Great Russia. The Little Russians have also preserved numerous traditions and epic poems from the time when they were free Cossacks, fighting against the Poles in the north and the Turks in the south. In Gogol we see a merging of the Great and the Little, for though Little by birth and breeding, he yet wrote in the language of Pushkin and Lèrmontov. From his very first days we feel the richness of his laughter and the whimsical, Puck-like vein of wit which is characteristically Little Russian. It was only later that we feel the unseen tears behind the laughter.

In these we find that quality which we immediately associate with his name, a realism based upon meticulous observation, but merged into it and permeating his whole work is an eerie romanticism, a delight in the supernatural and a deep religious vein which afterwards dominated all the other qualities. His humour is rich and many-sided, ranging from the broad and farcical to a delicate and half melancholy, and later to an almost Swiftean irony.

Right from the beginning we plunge into an atmosphere that brings us at a bound into the very heart of Russia as no other writer has been able to do. In his first stories we hear of water-nymphs, the devil, witches, magicians; in the second, _Mirgorod_, we find him feeling his way towards realism. _The Quarrel of the Two Ivans_ is simply the story of two friends who quarrel over nothing and are just on the point of reconciliation, years after, when the mere mention of the word "goose," which was the prime cause of the quarrel, sets them off again, this time irrevocably. It is in this volume that we come across _Taras Bulba_, now published in the Everyman Edition, a short historical novel in which Cossack life is inimitably set down.

Later in _Arabesques_ and the _Tales_ he leaves the supernatural altogether, and we get such a story as _The Overcoat_, in which a minor public servant who is always shivering dreams of the day when he can achieve his ambition of owning a warm overcoat. After years of poverty and striving he manages to save enough money to buy one, and on the first day he wears it it is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his ghost haunts the streets. It sets one thinking at once of that host of failures which exercise so queer a fascination over all later Russian novelists, particularly Dostoievsky.

Interspersed between the stories came the plays. One has to remember in this connection the exceptionally severe censorship of the stage. It is a matter of no little surprise to us on reading _The Inspector-General_ to think that such a play should ever have been licensed in such a country. The plot was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. The officials of an obscure country town hear the startling news that a Government Inspector is arriving incognito to investigate their affairs. An ordinary traveller from Petrograd--an intrepid liar--is mistaken for the Inspector and plays up to his part until the arrival of the real one, when he manages to effect his escape.

As a satire on Russian bureaucracy the play has no rival: nearly every character is dishonest, and it is a delight to see them all taken in by the empty-headed hero with his fluent lying. Of all plays which can count on drawing big houses at holiday-time in Russia this stands easily first. It became a classic as soon as it was produced and it is as irresistible in its appeal now as it was when it was written.

Gogol now left Russia and settled in Rome, never to return to his native country.

It was here that he produced his masterpiece, _Dead Souls_, the great comic work of all Russia. Again it was Pushkin who gave him the idea. The hero of the book, Chichikov, conceives a brilliant idea. Every landlord possessed so many serfs, called "souls." Every ten years a revision took place and the landlord had to pay poll-tax on all the "souls" who had died in that period. Between the periods no one inspected the lists. Chichikov's idea was to take over the dead souls from the landlord, who would, of course, be delighted to get out of the tax by this means; Chichikov would then register his purchases and then mortgage the souls at the rate of three hundred roubles each at a bank in Petrograd or Moscow, representing that they were in some corner of the Crimea, and so make enough money to buy live "souls" of his own.

The book is simply the odyssey of Chichikov all over Russia in his search for these souls: it gives infinite scope to the author, for he can bring in every type of man and woman that he knows. The book was to be divided into three parts, the first of which appeared in 1842: he went on working at the other two parts until 1852, when he died. He twice threw the second part of his work into the fire when it was finished, so we are left with a complete first part and an incomplete second. The third part was probably only sketched. In the second part he meant to show us the moral regeneration of Chichikov: apparently he could not bring himself to believe that he had done this adequately, and he came to be more and more of an ascetic and a recluse as the years passed.

So here once more we get that extraordinary "break" in mid-flight which is so peculiar a characteristic of all Russian writers.

The book made an immediate and lasting impression upon the country. It pleased some by its reality, its artistry and its social ideas; it pleased the Slavophils by its truth to life and its smell of Russia. When Gogol read the first chapter to his master, Pushkin, the latter remarked: "God! what a sad country Russia is!"--a queer comment, you may think, for the most humorous book that Russia has produced. But the truth is that, comic as the best chapters are, Gogol refuses to flatter either his country or the people who inhabit it, and in Chichikov, just as in Oblòmov, most readers find themselves wondering whether after all there is not a good deal of the character there portrayed in themselves, some such scoundrelly ideas, at any rate in embryo. But Chichikov is so shameless, so entertaining, so magnificent a liar, so plausible, so ingenious, in a word, so Falstaffian that he enchants us all. He is always human and the least of a hypocrite imaginable.

In fact Gogol goes further than most satirists in other countries and having laid bare his baseness, turns round and tells us that we have no cause to be angry with him: Chichikov is, after all, only the victim of circumstances, of the ruling passion of gain: like all his countrymen, he is indulgent and charitable: he cannot be brought to condemn. He sees the mean and the common, but he does not conclude from that that life is either of these. Rather does he infer the opposite. Chichikov is great just as Napoleon was great, the victim of a ruling passion and great by reason of it. Our minds immediately turn to Dostoievsky once more, to _Crime and Punishment_, where the chief character tries to be the victim of a ruling passion, not this time of rascality, but fails.

_Dead Souls_ is not unlike _Don Quixote_. It has the same depth: it makes boys laugh, young men think and old men weep.

Its influence was as great on its merits taken as a work of art as on its other sides of philosophy and ideas. Gogol for ever liberated fiction from the grand style. By writing a novel without any love interest, with such a rascal as Chichikov for hero, he created Russian realism. There is no exaggeration, no caricature; there is the instinctive economy, the sense of selection of the true artist.

Just as Pushkin showed his countrymen that there was such a thing as Russian landscape, so Gogol showed them what an inexhaustible mine of humour, absurdity, irony and quaintness lay in the ordinary life of ordinary people.

In 1847 _Passages from a Correspondence with a Friend_ was published, which changed the opinions of many of his followers from worship to disgust, for he there preached a lesson of abject humility and submission to the Government in matters both temporal and spiritual.

He had shown up the evils of Bureaucracy, his enemies said, therefore it was inconsistent in him not to resist the powers, but he had shown up the evils of misers, the obstinacy of old women, and many other things: he had never pretended to be a Liberal.

His bent lay in the direction of devotion: he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, spending all his money in charity and his time in religious study. There are those who lament that by reason of this we have lost much rich humour, but it may at least be open to question whether we should have possessed so rich a legacy as he has left us had it not been for that very intensity of feeling which caused him to renounce his art, an art which he looked upon as a torch-bearer indicating a higher ideal of living.

While others expended their energies in spreading political ideals in their novels, Gogol was content to give the social element in Russian its prominent and dominating position. He is the living proof, if proof were needed, that realism does not connote a mere anatomy of society, a dwelling upon revolting details, a love of defying convention by fluttering over cesspools and bringing to light, the hidden lower things of life. True Realism does not mean Zola, but Gogol--an all-round view of humanity as it is not seen through the smoked glasses of the romancer nor the microscope of the moral scientist.

VI

TURGENEV (1816-1883)

In Edward Garnett's admirable book on Turgenev Conrad lays his finger with unerring accuracy on the crux of the whole problem with regard to him when he says that we are apt to belittle a consummate artist who is quiet when we compare him with a Titanic, restless genius like Dostoievsky. It is like comparing Jane Austen with Victor Hugo. Incidentally Mr Garnett's book loses much of its value owing to his repeated endeavour to show Turgenev's superiority over Dostoievsky.

As a matter of fact, there is no comparison possible.

Turgenev came of noble birth and began by writing verse, but soon found his proper _métier_ in prose.

For two years he was exiled to his country estate for his quite harmless defence of Gogol. After this term was over he left Russia for Baden and Paris, which accounts to some extent for his aloofness from the problems which perturbed his countrymen, and makes him more a Cosmopolitan than National, like Dostoievsky. His five great novels, _Rúdin_, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_, _On the Eve_, _Fathers and Sons_ and _Smoke_, all appeared in the eleven years between 1856 and 1867 and he was at once appraised by all European critics, who discovered in him Russia for the first time, and the Russian woman in particular. His popularity at home was impaired on the publication of _Fathers and Sons_, because the revolutionaries saw in Bazarov, the hero, only calumny and a libel, whereas the reactionary party looked on the book as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he fell between two stools. In Europe, however, he gained larger and larger audiences, until an admiration for his work became the hall-mark of good taste.

But to-day Turgenev holds his own even in his own country, for his exquisite style, the majesty of his poetry and the sureness of his characterisation. Baring finds a parallel to Turgenev in this country in Tennyson, in that they are both Mid-Victorian, both shut off from the world by the trees of old parks; but Major Baring, as it seems to me, is fair to neither genius.

For Turgenev has an amazing insight into men's motives and actions which we do not commonly associate with those who are shut off from the world.

Rúdin is a picture of a type that peculiarly appealed to Turgenev, the Hamlet type of man who can only unpack his heart with words, but breaks down when he is asked to translate his theories into action: he is passionately devoted to Liberty in his eloquent talk and makes Natasha, the daughter of the house in which he is staying, fall madly in love with him and persuade herself that she is ready to fly with him, but he, whose love is more that of the intellect than the heart, fails her and tells her to submit.

He is eventually killed in '48 on a barricade in Paris. In the epilogue we get his character beautifully unfolded to us.

"'I know him well,' continued Lézhneff, 'I am aware of his faults. They are the more conspicuous because he is not to be regarded on a small scale.'

"'His is a character of genius!' cried Bassístoff.

"'Genius very likely he has!' replied Lézhneff, 'but as for character ... That's just his misfortune: there's no force of character in him.... But I want to speak of what is good, of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and, believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sásha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The coldness is in his blood--that is not his fault--and not in his head. He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child.... Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that? He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use, that his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom Nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the faculty of carrying out their own ideas? Indeed, I myself, to begin with, have gained all that I have from him. Sásha knows what Rúdin did for me in my youth. I also maintained, I recollect, that Rúdin's words could not produce an effect on men; but I was speaking then of men like myself, at my present age, of men who have already lived and been broken in by life. One false note in a man's eloquence, and the whole harmony is spoiled for us; but a young man's ear, happily, is not so over-fine, not so trained. If the substance of what he hears seems fine to him, what does he care about the intonation? The intonation he will supply for himself!'

"'Bravo, bravo!' cried Bassístoff, 'that is justly spoken! And as regards Rúdin's influence, I swear to you, that man not only knows how to move you, he lifts you up; he does not let you stand still, he stirs you to the depths and sets you on fire!'"

In _A Nobleman's Retreat_ we find a man, Lavrètsiy by name, separated from his wife, who meets a good, honest girl, by name Liza: they fall in love with one another: for a moment they are led to believe that his wife is dead, but she reappears and Liza goes to a convent.

But it is in the next two novels, _On the Eve_ and _Fathers and Sons_, that we see Turgenev at his best.

_On the Eve_ is a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia of the fifties.

The central figure of the novel is Elena, who comes near to being the most completely successful heroine in all fiction. We know her through and through, and she is, as are all Turgenev's heroines, well worth knowing. "Her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her, all this is conveyed to us by the simplest and the most consummate art." Her confession (in her diary) of her discovery that she loved the Bulgarian Insarov is in itself an amazing revelation of the working of a young girl's heart. Every side of her nature is shown us. We see her from her father's point of view, which is contemptuous; from her mother's, which is that of affectionate bewilderment; from one of her lovers (Shubin's), which is petulantly critical; from another of her lovers (Bevsenyev's), which is halfhearted enthralment; from Insarov's, which recognises her greatness of soul and sincerity of purpose.

Turgenev's magnificent clear-sightedness never manifests itself so sustainedly as in this book. Not only does each of the characters breathe and move and live from the first page, but politically too the author precisely hits off with his pen the Russian temperament. Of all the great Russian writers he is the least diffuse, the most of an artist. He is, after all, as he himself confessed, not so much a Russian as a cosmopolitan, a citizen of Europe, and it is his mission to stand aloof and describe with absolute impartiality the various types that come before his eye without seeking to make his puppets conform to his own ideas or using them as a peg on which to hang a thesis of his own.

The foundation of his art lies in his portraits of women. Pure, virginal, heroic, self-sacrificing, boundless in their love and devotion to a man or cause, they form a gallery worthy to be set by the side of Shakespeare's and Meredith's heroines. They are very flesh and blood, very woman, and yet altogether fascinating, adorable, steadfast, superbly endowed with all the gifts that make for nobility of soul.

Over the creation of these Turgenev showed himself to be deeply sensitive, responsive to all that is best in the feminine mind, of shrewd insight, unfailingly generous, absolutely sane and level-headed. So perfect is his sense of balance, so consummate his artistry, that his work has been unduly depreciated by some critics: they do not easily forgive perfection of form, absolute harmony of style, a sense of proportion so exquisitely poised as his.

He reminds us again of Meredith in his highly intellectual conception as in his portraits of women. He became almost uncannily prophetic in his utterances about the educated classes and their ideals.

He is so interested in characterisation that he needs no incidents to show the growth of his characters: indeed we are almost taken aback by such a dramatic situation as that of the drunken German being thrown into the lake by Insarov. We feel that the play of character upon character is enough, without fortuitous circumstances of this sort ... but there is never anything repulsively inartistic in his work.

He is melancholy, and there is a strain of sadness throughout all Turgenev's work, but he is restrained: he never gives way to his emotions. He loves mankind even though he is clear-sighted with regard to his failings. As a philosopher he sees no reason to trust in man nor to think much of him: particularly does he lament the absence of men in Russia.

"'O great philosopher of the Russian world!' says Shubin to Uvar Ivanovitch, 'every word of yours is worth its weight in gold, and it's not to me but to you a statue ought to be raised, and I would undertake it. There, as you are lying now, in that pose: one doesn't know which is uppermost in it, sloth or strength!...

"'We have no one yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere--either small fry, nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail and are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to themselves: "That's what I feel, that's what I think." A useful, rational occupation! When will our time be? When will men be born among us?'"

This is not the man to flatter where praise is not deserved. He rather realises than idealises, and that is why it is so exhilarating and refreshing to come into contact with his women, for we can be sure that he paints as he sees and not as he would wish to see. He believes in his women and makes us believe in them. Stranger still is the discovery that he always draws from life. "I ought to confess," he once wrote, "that I never attempted to create a type without having, not an idea, but a living person, on whom the various elements were harmonised together, to work from. I have always needed some groundwork on which I could tread firmly." To such purpose did he do this in _Fathers and Sons_ that he roused hostility of so savage a nature that he never afterwards became popular in Russia during his lifetime. On the other hand, "I received congratulations," he said, "almost caresses, from people of the opposite camp, from enemies. This confused me, wounded me; but my conscience did not reproach me. I knew very well I had carried out honestly the type I had sketched, carried it out not only without prejudice, but positively with sympathy."

The type which he here speaks of is, of course, the Nihilist, Bazarov. His readers were swayed by party passion and consequently were unable to accept the portrait as a work of art. The fast-increasing antipathy between the old and new made the reactionaries, who hailed in this novel the picture of the insidious revolutionary ideas current in young Russia, ironically congratulate the former champion of Liberalism on his penetration and honesty in unmasking the Nihilist: the younger generation saw only a caricature of itself. "The whole ground of the misunderstanding," wrote Turgenev, "lay in the fact that the type of Bazarov had not time to pass through the usual phases. At the very moment of his appearance the author attacked him. It was a new method as well as a new type I introduced.... The reader is easily thrown into perplexity when the author does not show clear sympathy or antipathy to his own child. The reader readily gets angry.... After all, books exist to entertain."

And what is Bazarov? Let us listen again to Turgenev: "I dreamed of a sombre, savage and great figure, only half emerged from barbarism, strong, méchant, and honest, and nevertheless doomed to perish because it is always in advance of the future."

Mr Garnett calls him the bare mind of Science first applied to politics. His watchword is not "Negation," as all his critics averred, but Reality.

His creator, whose first and last words to young writers was, "You need truth, remorseless truth, as regards your own sensations," was driven to confess that he shared all Bazarov's convictions except those on Art. He stands at the dividing-line between the religion of the Past which is Faith and that of the future which is Science. His savage egoism is necessary if he is to break away from all the old laws and customs that men held sacred. His aversion from Art and Poetry is simply due to his refusal to be hoodwinked by glamour. The Englishman sees in him merely the quintessence of bad form, bad taste, bad manners and colossal conceit, but in reality he stands for Humanity awakened from age-old superstitions, Aggression, destroyed in his destroying: he must needs stand alone, and delights in doing so. Despising honour, success, public opinion, he allows nothing, not even love, to come between him and his fixity of purpose.

He towers above all the other people in the novel. If there still remain any who have so far held out against the fascination and consummate mastery of Turgenev, I would ask them to turn again to the twenty-seventh chapter of _Fathers and Sons_ and read aloud the account of Bazarov's last hours. Anything more poignant, more simple and yet more effective than the last scene of the parents at the grave does not exist: there Turgenev in one stroke epitomises the infinite aspiration, the eternal insignificance of the life of man.

So quietly does the artist work that hasty readers fail to realise his greatness after the storm and stress of Dostoievsky or the titanic canvases of Tolstoy: he lacked exuberance: his men are, Hamlet-like, unable to make mouths at the invisible event, ineffectual, their native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought--it is left to his women to be independent, to know their own minds, to be courageous, pure, crystal-clear, simple, strong, no longer mere sexual incidents in a man's life, but helping companions. In his love of language and his power of making us breathe the air of his landscapes he affords an interesting parallel to Tennyson: we find an echo of him in Elena's diary: "To be good is not enough: to do good--yes, that is the great thing in life."

But where he is most himself and most a genius is in his wonderful capacity for making his characters all reveal themselves in the ordinary details of daily life.

VII

GONCHAROV (1812-1891)

Goncharov is important from the English point of view through one book alone. But this novel, _Oblòmov_, far transcends in value many far more famous books that we should do better to leave unread until we have appreciated this most Russian of the Russian works of art.

Oblòmov, the hero of the novel, is a nobleman whose main characteristic is lack of initiative, due primarily to the indolence caused by riches.

"'From my earliest childhood,'" Oblòmov asks, "'have I myself ever put on my socks?'"

We see him first in his lodgings in Petrograd in bed: he is too lazy to get up. Not that he lacked interest in life.

"The joy of higher inspirations was accessible to him," Goncharov writes; "the miseries of mankind were not strange to him. Sometimes he cried bitterly in the depths of his heart about human sorrows. He felt unnamed, unknown sufferings and sadness, and a desire of going somewhere far away--probably into that world towards which his friend Stoltz had tried to take him in his younger days. Sweet tears would then flow upon his cheeks. It would also happen that he would himself feel hatred towards human vices, towards deceit, towards the evil which is spread all over the world; and he would then feel the desire to show mankind its diseases. Thoughts would then burn within him, rolling in his head like waves in the sea; they would grow into decisions which would make all his blood boil; his muscles would be ready to move, his sinews would be strained, intentions would be on the point of transforming themselves into decisions.... Moved by a moral force, he would rapidly change over and over again his position in his bed; with a fixed stare he would half lift himself from it, move his hand, look about with inspired eyes ... the inspiration would seem ready to realise itself, to transform itself into an act of heroism, and then, what miracles, what admirable results might one not expect from so great an effort! But--the morning would pass away, the shades of evening would take the place of the broad daylight, and with them the strained forces of Oblomoff would incline towards rest--the storms in his soul would subside--his head would shake off the worrying thoughts--his blood would circulate more slowly in his veins--and Oblomoff would slowly turn over, and recline on his back; looking sadly through his window upon the sky, following sadly with his eyes the sun which was setting gloriously behind the neighbouring house--and how many times had he thus followed with his eyes that sunset!"

His landlord wishes him to change his lodgings while his rooms are put into repair. He is terrified at the prospect of going through the trouble of moving.

Later he meets a young girl called Olga, in some ways curiously reminiscent of Turgenev's heroines. She devotes herself to the cause of curing Oblòmov, with whom she falls in love, of his laziness. She tries by every means in her power to rouse him to exert himself in art and literature. At first she seems to succeed: they are about to marry: but his slackness comes over him again; he cannot even take the first necessary steps.

He sinks back into his life of dressing gown and slippers in spite of Olga's splendid efforts to make a man of him. In the end she is compelled to give up the struggle to reform him, and in a parting scene which is as good as anything I know of its kind she describes the sort of life they would lead if she acquiesced in his desires.

"He fell to musing over the words: 'Now or never!' As he listened inwardly to this despairing appeal of reason and will-power, he consciously weighed the little will-power that was left to him, whither he would carry it, into what he would put that paltry remnant. After having pondered over it painfully, he seized the pen, dragged a book out of the corner, and in one hour wanted to read, write, and think all that he had neglected to read, write, and think in ten years. What was he to do now? To go ahead, or to remain? This Oblòmov question was of more import to him than Hamlet's. To go ahead--that would mean at once doffing his comfortable dressing gown, not only from the shoulders, but from the soul and mind; together with the cobweb on the walls to sweep away the cobweb from the eyes, and regain eyesight! What first step should be made for this? Where begin? 'I do not know--I cannot--no, I am begging the question, I do know, and---- And here is Stoltz by my side; he will tell me. What will he tell me? "In a week," he will say, "you must sketch a detailed instruction for your plenipotentiary and send him into the village. Get your Oblòmovka mortgaged, buy some more land, send a plan of new buildings, give up your house, procure a passport, and go abroad for six months, to get rid of your surplus fat, to throw off the weight, to refresh the soul with the atmosphere of which you have dreamed long ago with your friend, to live without a dressing gown, without Zakhar and Tarantev, to put on your own socks and take off your own boots, sleep only at night, travel where all travel, on railroads, steamboats, and then---- Then to settle in Oblòmovka, to find out what sowing and threshing is, why peasants are poor or well-to-do, walk over the fields, go to elections, to the factory, to the mill, the docks. At the same time you are to read newspapers, books, and become excited why the English have sent a warship to the East----" That's what he will say! That's what is meant by going ahead, and thus it is to be all my life! Farewell, poetical ideal of life! That is some kind of a blacksmith shop, not life! There is in it an eternal fire, hammering, heat, din---- But when is one to live? Would it not be better to stay? To stay means to put on a shirt over all, to hear the patter of Zakhar's feet as he jumps down from his couch, to dine with Tarantev, to think less about anything, never to finish the _Voyage to Africa_, to grow peacefully old in these chambers, at the house of Tarantev's lady friend.'

"'Now or never!' 'To be or not to be!' Oblòmov was about to rise from his chair, but his foot did not at once find its way into the slipper, and he sat down again."

The publication of this novel in 1859 produced an instantaneous effect: everyone in Russia who read it recognised something of himself in Oblòmov, and felt the disease of Oblòmovism in his veins.

It is to miss out quite one of the major characteristics of the nation to discount this inertia which pervades every side of life. It is universal in that it expresses ultra-conservative fights to preserve old customs: Oblòmov is remarkable for his inability to put up any sort of resistance to anything; he is frightened of everything, even of love: love is disquieting, restless.