Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (475 page)

If character, as I say, is what he gives us at every turn, I should speedily add that he offers it not in the least as a synonym, in our Western sense, of resolution and prosperity. It wears the form of the almost helpless detachment of the short - sighted individual soul; and the perfection of his exhibition of it is in truth too often but the intensity of what, for success, it just does not produce. What works in him most is the question of the will; and the most constant induction he suggests, bears upon the sad figure that principle seems mainly to make among his countrymen. He had seen -
 
- he suggests to us -
 
- its collapse in a thousand quarters; and the most general tragedy, to his view, is that of its desperate adventures and disasters, its inevitable abdication and defeat. But if the men, for the most part, let it go, it takes refuge in the other sex; many of the representatives of which, in his pages, are supremely strong -
 
- in wonderful addition, in various cases, to being otherwise admirable. This is true of such a number -
 
- the younger women, the girls, the ‘heroines’ in especial -
 
- that they form in themselves, on the ground of moral beauty, of the finest distinction of soul, one of the most striking groups the modern novel has given us. They are heroines to the letter, and of a heroism obscure and undecorated: it is almost they alone who have the energy to determine and to act. Elena, Lisa, Tatyana, Gemma, Marianna -
 
- we can write their names and call up their images, but I lack space to take them in turn. It is by a succession of the finest and tenderest touches that they live; and this, in all Turgenev’s work, is the process by which he persuades and succeeds.

It was his own view of his main danger that he sacrificed too much to detail; was wanting in composition, in the gift that conduces to unity of impression. But no novelist is closer and more cumulative; in none does distinction spring from a quality of truth more independent of everything but the subject, but the idea itself. This idea, this subject, moreover -
 
- a spark kindled by the innermost friction of things -
 
- is always as interesting as an unopened telegram. The genial freedom -
 
- with its exquisite delicacy -
 
- of his approach to this ‘innermost’ world, the world of our finer consciousness, has in short a side that I can only describe and commemorate as nobly disinterested; a side that makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us in comparison by violent means, and introduce us in comparison to vulgar things.

We know of several excellent critics who to the question, Who is the first novelist of the day? would reply, without hesitation, Ivan Turgenieff. Comparisons are odious, and we propose to make none that shall seem merely invidious. We quote our friends’ verdict as a motive for this brief record of our own impressions. These, too, are in the highest degree favourable; and yet we wish not to impose a conclusion, but to help well - disposed readers to a larger enjoyment. To many such Turgenieff is already vaguely known as an eminent Russian novelist. Twelve years ago he was little more than a name, even in France, where he perhaps now finds his most sympathetic readers. But all his tales, we believe without exception, have now been translated into French — several by the author himself; an excellent German version of the best is being published under his own supervision, and several very fair English versions have appeared in England and America. He enjoys what is called a European reputation, and it is constantly Spreading. The Russians, among whom fiction flourishes vigorously, deem him their greatest artist. His tales are not numerous, and many of them are very short. He gives us the impression of writing much more for love than for lucre. He is particularly a favourite with people of cultivated taste; and no thing, in our opinion, cultivates the taste more than to read him.

I.

He belongs to the limited class of very careful writers. It is to be admitted at the outset that he is a zealous genius, rather than an abundant one. His line is narrow observation. He has not the faculty of rapid, passionate, almost reckless improvisation — that of Walter Scott, of Dickens, of George Sand. This is an immense charm in a story - teller; on the whole, to our sense, the greatest. Turgenieff lacks it; he charms us in other ways. To describe him in the fewest terms, he is a story - teller who has taken notes. This must have been a life - long habit. His tales are a magazine of small facts, of anecdotes, of descriptive traits, taken, as the phrase is, from the life. If we are not mistaken, he notes down an idiosyncracy of character, a fragment of talk, an attitude, a feature, a gesture, and keeps it, if need be, for twenty years, till just the moment for using it comes, just the spot for placing it. “Stachoff spoke French tolerably, and as he led a quiet sort of life, passed for a philosopher. Even as an ensign, he was fond of disputing warmly whether, for instance, a man in his life might visit every point of the globe, or whether he might learn what goes on at the bottom of the sea, and was always of the opinion that it was impossible.” The writer of this description may sometimes be erratic, but he is never vague. He has a passion for distinctness, for bringing his characterization to a point, for giving you an example of his meaning. He often, indeed, strikes us as loving details for their own sake, as a bibliomaniac loves the books he never reads. His figures are all portraits; they have each something special, something peculiar, something that none of their neighbours have, and that rescues them from the limbo of the gracefully general. We remember, in one of his stories, a gentleman who makes a momentary appearance as host at a dinnerparty, and after being described as having such and such a face, clothes, and manners, has our impression of his personality completed by the statement that the soup at his table was filled with little paste figures, representing hearts, triangles, and trumpets. In the author’s conception, there is a secret affinity between the character of this worthy man and the contortions of his vermicelli. This habit of specializing people by vivid oddities was the gulf over which Dickens danced the tight - rope with such agility. But Dickens, as we say, was an improvisatore; the practice, for him, was a lawless revel of the imagination. Turgenieff, on the other hand, always proceeds by book. What could be more minutely appreciative, and at the same time less like Dickens, than the following portrait?

“People in St. Petersburg still remember the Princess R
              
.

She appeared there from time to time at the period of which we speak. Her husband was a well - bred man, but rather stupid, and she had no children. The Princess used to start suddenly on long journeys, and then return suddenly to Russia. Her conduct in all things was very strange. She was called light, and a coquette. She used to give herself up with ardour to all the pleasures of society: dance till she dropped with exhaustion, joke and laugh with the young men she received before dinner in her darkening drawing - room, and pass her nights praying and weeping, without finding a moment’s rest. She often remained till morning in her room stretching her arms in anguish; or else she remained bowed, pale and cold, oyer the leaves of a hymn - book. Day came, and she was transformed again into an elegant creature, paid visits, laughed, chattered, rushed to meet everything that could give her the smallest diversion. She was admirably shaped. Her hair, the colour of gold, and as heavy as gold, formed a tress that fell below her knees. And yet she was not spoken of as a beauty: she had nothing fine in her face except her eyes. This even, perhaps, is saying too much, for her eyes were grey and rather small; but their deep keen gaze, careless to audacity, and dreamy to desolation, was equally enigmatical and charming. Something extraordinary was reflected in them, even when the most futile speeches were passing from her lips. Her toilets were always too striking.”

These lines seem to carry a kind of historical weight.

It is the Princess R and no one else. We feel as if the author could show us documents and relics; as if he had her portrait, a dozen letters, some of her old trinkets. Or take the following few lines from the admirable tale called “The Wayside Inn”. “He belonged to the burgher class, and his name was Nahum Ivanoff. He had a thick short body, broad shoulders, a big round head, long waving hair already grizzled, though he was not yet forty. His face was full and fresh - coloured; his forehead low and white. His little eyes, of a clear blue, had a strange look, at once oblique and impudent. He kept his head always bent, his neck being too short; he walked fast, and never let his hands swing, keeping them always closed. When he smiled, and he smiled often, but without laughing and as if by stealth, his red lips parted disagreeably, showing a row of very white, very close teeth. He spoke quickly, with a snarling tone.” When fiction is written in this fashion, we believe as we read. The same vividly definite element is found in the author’s treatment of landscape. “The weather continued to stand at set - fair; little rounded white clouds moved through the air at a great height, and looked at themselves in the water; the reeds were stirred by movements and murmurs produced by no wind; the pond, looking in certain places like polished’ steel, absorbed the splendid sunshine.” There is an even greater reality, because it is touched with the fantastic, without being perverted by it, in this brief sketch of the Pontine Marshes, from the beautiful little storry of “Visions”.

“The cloud before my eyes divided itself. 1 became aware of a limitless plain beneath me. Already, from the warm soft air which fanned my cheeks, I had observed that I was no longer in Russia. This plain, moreover, was not like our Russian plains. It was an immense dusky level, overgrown, apparently, with no grass, and perfectly desolate. Here and there, over the whole expanse, glittered pools of standing water, like little fragments of looking - glass. In the distance, the silent, motionless sea was vaguely visible. In the intervals of the broad beautiful clouds glittered great stars. A murmur, thousand - voiced, unceasing, and yet not loud, resonnded from every spot; and strangely rang this penetrating, drowsy murmnr, this nightly voice of the desert. . . . ‘The Pontine Marshes,’ said Ellis. ‘Do you hear the frogs? Do you recognise the sulphur?’ “

This is a cold manner, many readers will say, and certainly it has a cold side; but when the character is one over which the author’s imagination really kindles, it is an admirable vehicle for touching effects. Few stories leave on the mind a more richly poetic impression than “Helene”; all the tenderness of our credulity goes forth to the heroine. Yet this exquisite image of idealized devotion swims before the author’s vision in no misty moonlight of romance; she is as solidly fair as a Greek statue; his dominant desire has been to understand her, and he retails small facts about her appearance and habits with the impartiality of a judicial, or even a medical, summing - up. The same may be said of his treatment of all his heroines, and said in evidence of the refinement of his art; for if there are no heroines we see more distinctly, there are none we love more ardently. It would be difficult to point, in the blooming fields of fiction, to a group of young girls more radiant with maidenly charm than M. TurgeniefPs Hel6ne, his Lisa, his Katia, his Tatiana and his Gemma. For the truth is that, taken as a whole, he regains on another side what he loses by his apparent want of joyous invention. If his manner is that of a searching realist, his temper is that of an earnestly attentive observer, and the result of this temper is to make him take a view of the great spectacle of human life more general, more impartial, more unreservedly intelligent, than that of any novelist we know. Even in this direction he proceeds with his characteristic precision of method; one thinks of him as having divided his subject - matter into categories, and as moving from one to the other — with none of the magniloquent pretensions of Balzac, indeed, to be the great showman of the human comedy — but with a deeply intellectual impulse toward universal appreciation. He seems to us to care for more things in life, to be solicited on more sides, than any novelist save George Eliot. Walter Scott cares for adventure and bravery and honour and ballad - figures and the humour of Scotch peasants; Dickens cares, in a very large and various way, for the incongruous, comic and pathetic; George Sand cares for love and mineralogy. But these writers care also, greatly, and indeed almost supremely, for their fable, for its twists and turns and surprises, for the work they have in hand of amusing the reader. Even George Eliot, who cares for so many other things besides, has a weakness for making a rounded plot, and often swells out her tales with mechanical episodes, in the midst of which their moral unity quite evaporates. The Bulstrode - Raffles episode in “Middlemarch,” and the whole fable of “Felix Holt,” are striking cases in point. M. Turgenieff lacks, as regards form, as we have said, this immense charm of absorbed inventiveness; but in the way of substance there is literally almost nothing he does not care for. Every class of society, every type of character, every degree of fortune, every phase of manners, passes through his hands; his imagination claims its property equally, in town and country, among rich and poor, among wise people and idiots, diletianti and peasants, the tragic and the joyous, the probable and the grotesque. He has an eye for all our passions, and a deeply sympathetic sense of the wonderful complexity of our souls. He relates in “Mumu” the history of a deaf - and - dumb serf and a lap - dog, and he portrays in “A Strange Story” an extraordinary case of religious fanaticism. He has a passion for shifting his point of view, but his object is constantly the same — that of finding an incident, a person, a situation, morally interesting. This is his great merit, and the underlying harmony of his apparently excessive attention to detail. He believes the intrinsic value of “subject” in art; he holds that there are trivial subjects and serious ones, that the latter are much the best, and that their superiority resides in their giving us absolutely a greater amount of information about the human mind. Deep into the mind he is always attempting to look, though he often applies his eye to very dusky apertures. There is perhaps no better evidence of his minutely psychological attitude than the considerable part played in his tales by simpletons and weak - minded persons. There are few novelists who have not been charmed by the quaintness and picturesqueness of mental invalids; but M. Turgenieff is attracted by something more — by the’ opportunity of watching the machinery of character, as it were, through a broken window - pane. One might collect from his various tales a perfect regiment of incapables, of the stragglers on life’s march. Almost always, in the background of his groups of well - to - do persons there lurks some grotesque, under - witted poor relation, who seems to hover about as a vague memento, in his scheme, of the instability both of fortune and of human cleverness. Such, for instance, is Uvar Ivanovitsch, who figures as a kind of inarticulate chorus in the tragedy of “Helfene.” He sits about, looking very wise and opening and closing his fingers, and in his person, in this attitude, the drama capriciously takes leave of us. Perhaps the most moving of all the author’s tales — moving, not in the sense that it makes us shed easy tears, but as reminding us vividly of the solidarity, as we may say, of all human weakness — has for its hero a person made imbecile by suffering. The admirable little story of “The Brigadier” can only be spoilt by an attempt to retail it; we warmly recommend it to the reader, in the French version. Never did Romance stoop over a lowlier case of moral decomposition, but never did she gather more of the perfume of human truth. To a person able to read but one of M. Turgenieff’s tales, we should perhaps offer this one as a supreme example of his peculiar power; for here the artist, as well as the analyst, is at his best. All rigid critical formulas are more or less unjust, and it is not a complete description of our authoi — it would be a complete description of no real master of fiction — to say that he is simply a searching observer. M. Turgenieff’s imagination is always lending a hand and doing work on its own account. Some of this work is exquisite; nothing could have more of the simple magic of picturesqueness than such tales as “The Dog,” “The Jew,” “Visions,” “The Adventure of Lieutenant Jergounoff,” “Three Meetings,” a dozen episodes in the “Memoirs of a Sportsman.” Imagination guides his hand and modulates his touch, and makes the artist worthy of the observer. In a word, he is universally sensitive. In susceptibility to the sensuous impressions of life — to colours and odours and forms, and the myriad ineffable refinements and enticements of beauty — he equals, and even surpasses, the most accomplished representatives of the French school of story - telling; and yet he has, on the other hand, an apprehension of man’s religious impulses, of the ascetic passion, the capacity of becoming dead to colours and odours and beauty, never dreamed of in the philosophy of Balzac and Flaubert, Octave Feuillet and Gustave Droz. He gives us Lisa in “A Nest of Noblemen,” and Madame Polosoff in “Spring - Torrents.” This marks his range. Let us add, in conclusion, that his merit of form is of the first order. He is remarkable for concision; few of his novels occupy the whole of a moderate volume, and some of his best performances are tales of thirty pages.