Essays on Russian Novelists Part 3

It is one of the curious contradictions in human nature that Tolstoi, so aggressive an apostle of Christianity, was himself so lacking in the cardinal Christian virtues of meekness, humility, gentleness, and admiration for others; and that Turgenev, who was without religious belief of any kind, should have been so beautiful an example of the real kindly tolerance and unselfish modesty that should accompany a Christian faith. There is no better ill.u.s.tration in modern history of the grand old name of gentleman.

His pessimism was the true Slavonic pessimism, quiet, profound, and undemonstrative. I heard the late Professor Boyesen say that he had never personally known any man who suffered like Turgenev from mere Despair. His pessimism was temperamental, and he very early lost everything that resembled a definite religious belief. Seated in a garden, he was the solitary witness of a strife between a snake and a toad; this made him first doubt G.o.d's Providence.

He was far more helpful to Russia, living in Paris, than he could have been at home. Just as Ibsen found that he could best describe social conditions in Norway from the distance of Munich or Rome, just as the best time to describe a snowstorm is on a hot summer's day,--for poets, as Mrs. Browning said, are always most present with the distant,--so Turgenev's pictures of Russian character and life are nearer to the truth than if he had penned them in the hurly-burly of political excitement. Besides, it was through Turgenev that the French, and later the whole Western world, became acquainted with Russian literature; for a long time he was the only Russian novelist well known outside of his country. It was also owing largely to his personal efforts that Tolstoi's work first became known in France. He distributed copies to the leading writers and men of influence, and asked them to arouse the public. Turgenev had a veritable genius for admiration; he had recognised the greatness of his younger rival immediately, and without a twinge of jealousy. When he read "Sevastopol," he shouted "Hurrah!" and drank the author's health.

Their subsequent friendship was broken by a bitter and melancholy quarrel which lasted sixteen years. Then after Tolstoi had embraced Christianity, he considered it his duty to write to Turgenev, and suggest a renewal of their acquaintance. This was in 1878. Turgenev replied immediately, saying that all hostile feelings on his part had long since disappeared; that he remembered only his old friend, and the great writer whom he had had the good fortune to salute before others had discovered him. In the summer of that year they had a friendly meeting in Russia, but Turgenev could not appreciate the importance of Tolstoi's new religious views; and that very autumn Tolstoi wrote to Fet, "He is a very disagreeable man." At the same time Turgenev also wrote to Fet, expressing his great pleasure in the renewal of the old friendship, and saying that Tolstoi's "name is beginning to have a European reputation, and we others, we Russians, have known for a long time that he has no rival among us." In 1880, Turgenev returned to Russia to partic.i.p.ate in the Pushkin celebration, and was disappointed at Tolstoi's refusal to take part. The truth is, that Tolstoi always hated Turgenev during the latter's lifetime, while Turgenev always admired Tolstoi. On his death-bed, he wrote to him one of the most unselfish and beautiful letters that one great man ever sent to another.

"For a long time I have not written to you, because I was and I am on my death-bed. I cannot get well, it is not even to be thought of. I write to tell you how happy I am to have been your contemporary, and to send you one last pet.i.tion. My friend! resume your literary work!

It is your gift, which comes from whence comes everything else. Ah!

how happy I should be if I could only think that my words would have some influence on you! . . . I can neither eat nor sleep. But it is tiresome to talk about such things. My friend, great writer of our Russian land, listen to my request. Let me know if you get this bit of paper, and permit me once more to heartily embrace you and yours. I can write no more. I am exhausted."

Tolstoi cannot be blamed for paying no heed to this earnest appeal, because every man must follow his conscience, no matter whither it may lead. He felt that he could not even reply to it, as he had grown so far away from "literature" as he had previously understood it. But the letter is a final ill.u.s.tration of the modesty and greatness of Turgenev's spirit; also of his true Russian patriotism, his desire to see his country advanced in the eyes of the world. When we reflect that at the moment of his writing this letter, he himself was still regarded in Europe as Russia's foremost author, there is true n.o.bility in his remark, "How happy I am to have been your contemporary!" Edwin Booth said that a Christian was one who rejoiced in the superiority of a rival. If this be true, how few are they that shall enter into the kingdom of G.o.d.

After the death of Turgenev, Tolstoi realised his greatness as he had never done before. He even consented to deliver a public address in honour of the dead man. In order to prepare himself for this, he began to re-read Turgenev's books, and wrote enthusiastically: "I am constantly thinking of Turgenev and I love him pa.s.sionately. I pity him and I keep on reading him. I live all the time with him. . . . I have just read "Enough." What an exquisite thing!"* The date was set for the public address. Intense public excitement was aroused. Then the government stepped in and prohibited it!

* In 1865, he wrote to Fet, "'Enough' does not please me. Personality and subjectivity are all right, so long as there is plenty of life and pa.s.sion. But his subjectivity is full of pain, without life."

Turgenev, like most novelists, began his literary career with the publication of verse. He never regarded his poems highly, however, nor his plays, of which he wrote a considerable number. His reputation began, as has been said, with the appearance of "A Sportsman's Sketches," which are not primarily political or social in their intention, but were written, like all his works, from the serene standpoint of the artist. They are full of delicate character-a.n.a.lysis, both of men and of dogs; they clearly revealed, even in their melancholy humour, the actual condition of the serfs. But perhaps they are chiefly remarkable for their exquisite descriptions of nature. Russian fiction as a whole is not notable for nature-pictures; the writers have either not been particularly sensitive to beauty of sky and landscape, or like Browning, their interest in the human soul has been so predominant that everything else must take a subordinate place. Turgenev is the great exception, and in this field he stands in Russian literature without a rival, even among the professional poets.

Although "Sportsman's Sketches" and the many other short tales that Turgenev wrote at intervals during his whole career are thoroughly worth reading, his great reputation is based on his seven complete novels, which should be read in the order of composition, even though they do not form an ascending climax. All of them are short; compared with the huge novels so much in vogue at this moment, they look like tiny models of ma.s.sive machinery. Turgenev's method was first to write a story at great length, and then submit it to rigid and remorseless compression, so that what he finally gave to the public was the quintessence of his art. It is one of his most extraordinary powers that he was able to depict so many characters and so many life histories in so very few words. The reader has a sense of absolute completeness.

It was in his first novel, "Rudin," that Turgenev made the first full-length portrait of the typical educated Russian of the nineteenth century. In doing this, he added an immortal character to the world's literature. "Such and such a man is a Rudin," has been a common expression for over fifty years, as we speak of the Tartuffes and the Pecksniffs. The character was sharply individualised, but he stands as the representative of an exceedingly familiar Slavonic type, and no other novelist has succeeded so well, because no other novelist has understood Rudin so clearly as his creator. It is an entire mistake to speak of him, as so many do nowadays, as an obsolete or rather a "transitional" type. The word "transitional" has been altogether overworked in dealing with Turgenev. Rudins are as common in Russia to-day as they were in 1850; for although Turgenev diagnosed the disease in a masterly fashion, he was unable to suggest a remedy. So late as 1894 Stepniak remarked, "it may be truly said that every educated Russian of our time has a bit of Dmitri Rudin in him." If Rudin is a transitional type, why does the same kind of character appear in Tolstoi, in Dostoevski, in Gorki, in Artsybashev? Why has Sienkiewicz described the racial temperament in two words, improductivite slave? It is generally agreed that no man has succeeded better than Chekhov in portraying the typical Russian of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1894 some one sent to him in writing this question, "What should a Russian desire at this present time?" He replied, "Desire! he needs most of all desire--force of character. We have enough of that whining shapelessness." Kropotkin says of him: "He knew, and more than knew--he felt with every nerve of his poetical mind--that, apart from a handful of stronger men and women, the true curse of the Russian 'intellectual' is the weakness of his will, the insufficient strength of his desires. Perhaps he felt it in himself. . . . This absence of strong desire and weakness of will he continually, over and over again, represented in his heroes. But this predilection was not a mere accident of temperament and character. It was a direct product of the times he lived in." If it was, as Kropotkin says, a direct product of the times he lived in, then Rudin is not a transitional type, for the direct product of the forties and fifties, when compared with the direct product of the eighties and nineties, is precisely the same. Turgenev's Rudin is far from obsolete. He is the educated Slav of all time; he to a large extent explains mapless Poland, and the political inefficiency of the great empire of Russia. There is not a single person in any English or American novel who can be said to represent his national type in the manner of Rudin. When we remember the extreme brevity of the book, it was an achievement of the highest genius.

Rudin, like the Duke in "The Statue and the Bust," is a splendid sheath without a sword, "empty and fine like a swordless sheath." His mind is covered with the decorations of art, music, philosophy, and all the ornaments engraved on it by wide travel, sound culture, and prolonged thought; but he can do no execution with it, because there is no single, steady, informing purpose inside. The moment the girl's resolution strikes against him, he gives forth a hollow sound. He is like a stale athlete, who has great muscles and no vitality. To call him a hypocrite would be to misjudge him entirely. He is more subtle and complex than that. One of his acquaintances, hearing him spoken of as Tartuffe, replies, "No, the point is, he is not a Tartuffe.

Tartuffe at least knew what he was aiming at." A man of small intelligence who knows exactly what he wants is more likely to get it than a man of brilliant intelligence who doesn't know what he wants, is to get anything, or anywhere.

Perhaps Turgenev, who was the greatest diagnostician among all novelists, felt that by constantly depicting this manner of man Russia would realise her cardinal weakness, and some remedy might be found for it--just as the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs had been partly brought about by his dispa.s.sionate a.n.a.lysis of their condition. Perhaps he repeated this character so often because he saw Rudin in his own heart. At all events, he never wearied of showing Russians what they were, and he took this means of showing it. In nearly all his novels, and in many of his short tales, he has given us a whole gallery of Rudins under various names. In "Acia," for example, we have a charming picture of the young painter, Gagin.

"Gagin showed me all his canvases. In his sketches there was a good deal of life and truth, a certain breadth and freedom; but not one of them was finished, and the drawing struck me as careless and incorrect. I gave candid expression to my opinion.

"'Yes, yes,' he a.s.sented, with a sigh, 'you're right; it's all very poor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I ought to have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one fancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place--but when it comes to doing anything, one's weak and weary directly."

The heroine of "Rudin," the young girl Natalya, is a faint sketch of the future Lisa. Turgenev's girls never seem to have any fun; how different they are from the twentieth century American novelist's heroine, for whom the world is a garden of delight, with exceedingly attractive young men as gardeners! These Russian young women are grave, serious, modest, religious, who ask and expect little for themselves, and who radiate feminine charm. They have indomitable power of will, characters of rocklike steadfastness, enveloped in a disposition of ineffable sweetness. Of course they at first fall an easy prey to the men who have the gift of eloquence; for nothing hypnotises a woman more speedily than n.o.ble sentiments in the mouth of a man. Her whole being vibrates in mute adoration, like flowers to the sunlight. The essential goodness of a woman's heart is fertile soil for an orator, whether he speaks from the platform or in a conservatory. Natalya is limed almost instantly by the honey of Rudin's language, and her virgin soul expands at his declaration of love. Despite the opposition of her mother, despite the iron bonds of convention, she is ready to forsake all and follow him. To her unspeakable amazement and dismay, she finds that the great orator is vox, et praeterea nihil.

"'And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?'

"'What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you, I shall trust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?'

"'My plans--Your mother certainly will turn me out of the house.'

"'Perhaps. She told me yesterday that she must break off all acquaintance with you. But you do not answer my question.'

"'What question?'

"'What do you think we must do now?'

"'What we must do?' replied Rudin, 'of course submit.'

"'Submit?' repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white.

"'Submit to destiny,' continued Rudin 'What is to be done?'"

But, although the average Anglo-Saxon reader is very angry with Rudin, he is not altogether contemptible If every man were of the Roosevelt type, the world would become not a fair field, but a free fight. We need Roosevelts and we need Rudins The Rudins allure to brighter worlds, even if they do not lead the way. If the ideals they set before us by their eloquence are true, their own failures do not negate them. Whose fault is it if we do not reach them? Lezhnyov gives the inefficient Rudin a splendid eulogy.

"Genius, very likely he has! but as for being natural. . . . That's just his misfortune, that there's nothing natural in him. . . . 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! . . . 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. . . .

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? . . . I drink to the health of Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth, to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its purity, to all that our hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing better than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time,--to the health of Rudin!"

It is plain that the speaker is something of a Rudin himself.

The next novel, "A House of Gentlefolk,"* is, with the possible exception of "Fathers and Children," Turgenev's masterpiece. I know of no novel which gives a richer return for repeated re-readings. As the t.i.tle implies, this book deals, not with an exciting narrative, but with a group of characters; who can forget them? Like all of its author's works, it is a love-story; this pa.s.sion is the mainspring of the chief personages, and their minds and hearts are revealed by its power. It is commonly said that Turgenev lacked pa.s.sion; one might say with equal truth that Wordsworth lacked love of nature.

Many of his novels and tales are tremulous with pa.s.sion, but they are never noisy with it. Like the true patrician that he was, he studied restraint and reserve. The garden scene between Lisa and Lavretsky is the very ecstasy of pa.s.sion, although, like the two characters, it is marked by a pure and chaste beauty of word and action, that seems to prove that Love is something divine. Only the truly virtuous really understand pa.s.sion--just as the sorrows of men are deeper than the sorrows of children, even though the latter be accompanied by more tears. Those who believe that the master pa.s.sion of love expresses itself by floods of words or by abominable imagery, will understand Turgenev as little as they understand life. In reading the few pages in which the lovers meet by night in the garden, one feels almost like an intruder--as one feels at the scene of reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia. It is the very essence of intimacy--the air is filled with something high and holy.

* In the original, "A n.o.bleman's Nest."

Lisa is the greatest of all Turgenev's great heroines. No one can help being better for knowing such a girl. She is not very beautiful, she is not very accomplished, not even very quick-witted; but she has eine schone Seele. There is nothing regal about her; she never tries to queen it in the drawing-room. She is not proud, high-spirited, and haughty; she does not constantly "draw herself up to her full height,"

a species of gymnastics in great favour with most fiction-heroines.

But she draws all men unto herself. She is beloved by the two opposite extremes of manhood--Panshin and Lavretsky. Lacking beauty, wit, and learning, she has an irrepressible and an irresistible virginal charm--the exceedingly rare charm of youth when it seeks not its own.

When she appears on the scene, the pages of the book seem illuminated, and her smile is a benediction. She is exactly the kind of woman to be loved by Lavretsky, and to be desired by a rake like Panshin. For a man like Lavretsky will love what is lovely, and a satiated rake will always eagerly long to defile what is beyond his reach.

It is contemptuously said by many critics--why is it that so many critics lose sensitiveness to beauty, and are afraid of their own feelings?--it is said that Lisa, like Rudin, is an obsolete type, the type of Russian girl of 1850, and that she is now interesting only as a fashion that has pa.s.sed away, and because of the enthusiasm she once awakened. We are informed, with a shade of cynicism, that all the Russian girls then tried to look like Lisa, and to imitate her manner.

Is her character really out of style and out of date? If this were true, it would be unfortunate; for the kind of girl that Lisa represents will become obsolete only when purity, modesty, and gentleness in women become unattractive. We have not yet progressed quite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of the Russian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of the Ewig-weibliche.

At the conclusion of the great garden-scene, Turgenev, by what seems the pure inspiration of genius, has expressed the ecstasy of love in old Lemm's wonderful music It is as though the pa.s.sion of the lovers had mounted to that pitch where language would be utterly inadequate; indeed, one feels in reading that scene that the next page must be an anti-climax. It would have been if the author had not carried us still higher, by means of an emotional expression far n.o.bler than words. The dead silence of the sleeping little town is broken by "strains of divine, triumphant music. . . . The music resounded in still greater magnificence; a mighty flood of melody--and all his bliss seemed speaking and singing in its strains. . . The sweet, pa.s.sionate melody went to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishing with inspiration, happiness, and beauty; it swelled and melted away; it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens."

Elena, the heroine of "On the Eve," resembles Lisa in the absolute integrity of her mind, and in her immovable sincerity; but in all other respects she is a quite different person. The difference is simply the difference between the pa.s.sive and the active voice. Lisa is static, Elena dynamic. The former's ideal is to be good, the latter's is to do good. Elena was strenuous even as a child, was made hotly angry by scenes of cruelty or injustice, and tried to help everything, from stray animals to suffering men and women. As Turgenev expresses it, "she thirsted for action." She is naturally incomprehensible to her conservative and ease-loving parents, who have a well-founded fear that she will eventually do something shocking.

Her father says of her, rather shrewdly: "Elena Nikolaevna I don't pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the last beetle or frog, everything in fact except her own father." In a word, Elena is unconventional, the first of the innumerable brood of the vigorous, untrammelled, defiant young women of modern fiction, who puzzle their parents by insisting on "living their own life." She is only a faint shadow, however, of the type so familiar to-day in the pages of Ibsen, Bjornson, and other writers. Their heroines would regard Elena as timid and conventional, for with all her self-a.s.sertion, she still believes in G.o.d and marriage, two ideas that to our contemporary emanc.i.p.ated females are the symbols of slavery.

Elena, with all her virtues, completely lacks the subtle charm of Lisa; for an aggressive, independent, determined woman will perhaps lose something of the charm that goes with mystery. There is no mystery about Elena, at all events; and she sees through her various adorers with eyes unblinded by sentiment. To an artist who makes love to her she says "I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes, and your tears too." Naturally there is no Russian fit to be the mate of this incarnation of Will. The hero of the novel, and the man who captures the proud heart of Elena, is a foreigner--a Bulgarian, who has only one idea, the liberation of his country. He is purposely drawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemen with whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual trait in a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by the laconic answer he makes to her question, "You love your country very dearly?" "That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country." Perhaps it is hypercritical to observe that in such a case others would have to say it for him.

He proves that he is a man of action in a humorous incident. At a picnic, the ladies are insulted by a colossal German, even as Gemma is insulted by a German in "Torrents of Spring." Insarov is not a conventional person, but he immediately performs an act that is exceedingly conventional in fiction, though rare enough in real life.

Although he is neither big, nor strong, nor in good health, he inflicts corporal chastis.e.m.e.nt on the brute before his lady's eyes--something that pleases women so keenly, and soothes man's vanity so enormously, that it is a great pity it usually happens only in books. He lifts the giant from the ground and pitches him into a pond.

This is one of the very few scenes in Turgenev that ring false, that belong to fiction-mongers rather than to fiction-masters. Nothing is more delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insulted the woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarely crowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisingly unwilling to play this complaisant role.

Finding himself falling in love with Elena, Insarov determines to go away like Lancelot, without saying farewell. Elena, however, meets him in a thunderstorm--not so sinister a storm as the Aeneas adventure in "Torrents of Spring"-and says "I am braver than you. I was going to you." She is actually forced into a declaration of love. This is an exceedingly difficult scene for a novelist, but not too difficult for Turgenev, who has made it beautiful and sweet. Love, which will ruin Bazarov, enn.o.bles and stimulates Insarov; for the strong man has found his mate. She will leave father and mother for his sake, and cleave unto him. And, notwithstanding the anger and disgust of her parents she leaves Russia forever with her husband.

All Turgenev's stories are tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by his own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and "Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny.

Insarov's splendid mind and n.o.ble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena, thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little Italian doctor, with wig and spectacles, quietly remarks, "Signora, the foreign gentleman is dead--of aneurism in combination with disease of the lungs."

This novel caused great excitement in Russia, and the t.i.tle, "On the Eve," was a subject for vehement discussion everywhere. What did Turgenev mean? On the eve of what? Turgenev made no answer; but over the troubled waters of his story moves the brooding spirit of creation. Russians must and will learn manhood from foreigners, from men who die only from bodily disease, who are not sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. At the very close of the book, one man asks another, "Will there ever be men among us?" And the other "flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance."

Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through a woman--through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many are the Russian women who have given their lives for their country.*

* See an article in the "Forum" for August, 1910.

The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of "A House of Gentlefolk," his masterpiece, is "Fathers and Children,"

which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by "On the Eve." The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has not yet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judges of Russian literature. Shut off from partic.i.p.ation in free, public, parliamentary political debate, the Russians of 1860 and of to-day are almost certain to judge the literary value of a work by what they regard as its political and social tendency. Political bias is absolutely blinding in an attempt to estimate the significance of any book by Turgenev; for although be took the deepest interest in the struggles of his unfortunate country, he was, from the beginning to the end of his career, simply a supreme artist. He saw life clearly in its various manifestations, and described it as he saw it, from the calm and lonely vantage-ground of genius. Naturally he was both claimed and despised by both parties. Here are some examples from contemporary Russian criticism* (1862):--

* To the best of my knowledge, these reviews have never before been translated. These translations were made for me by a Russian friend, Mr. William S. Gordon.

"This novel differs from others of the same sort in that it is chiefly philosophical. Turgenev hardly touches on any of the social questions of his day. His princ.i.p.al aim is to place side by side the philosophy of the fathers and the philosophy of the children and to show that the philosophy of the children is opposed to human nature and therefore cannot be accepted in life. The problem of the novel is, as you see, a serious one; to solve this problem the author ought to have conscientiously and impartially studied both systems of speculation and then only reach certain conclusions. But on its very first pages you see that the author is deficient in every mental preparation to accomplish the aim of his novel. He not only has not the slightest understanding of the new positive philosophy, but even of the old ideal systems his knowledge is merely superficial and puerile. You could laugh at the heroes of the novel alone as you read their silly and 'hashy' discussions on the young generation had not the novel as a whole been founded on these identical discussions."