Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (482 page)

One of the very few criticisms from a truly artistic standpoint appeared in the “Russian Herald” during the year 1862, from which a brief quotation must suffice: -
 
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“Everything in this work bears witness to the ripened power of Turgenev’s wonderful talent; the clearness of ideas, the masterly skill in sketching types, the simplicity of plot and of movement of the action, and moderation and evenness of the work as a whole; the dramatic element which comes up naturally from the most ordinary situations; there is nothing superfluous, nothing retarding, nothing extraneous. But in addition to these general merits, we are also interested in Turgenev’s novel because in it is caught and held a current, fleeting moment of a passing phenomenon, and in which a momentary phase of our life is typically drawn and arrested not only for the time being but forever.”

These prophetically true words constitute a great exception to the prevailing contemporary criticism, which, as has been seen, was passionately unjust. Twenty years later, a Russian writer, Boorenin, was able to view the novel as we see it to - day: -
 
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“We can say with assurance that since the time of “Dead Souls” not a single Russian novel made such an impression as “Fathers and Children” has made. A deep mind, a no less deep observation, an incomparable ability for a bold and true analysis of the phenomena of life, and for their broadest relations to each other, -
 
- all these have shown themselves in the fundamental thought of this positively historical creation. Turgenev has explained with lifelike images of ‘fathers’ and ‘children’ the essence of that life struggle between the dying period of the nobility which found its strength in the possession of peasants and the new period of reforms whose essence made up the principal element of our ‘resurrection’ and for which, however, none had found a real, true (BRIGHT) definition. Turgenev not only gave such a definition, not only illumined the inner sense of the new movement in the life of that time, but he also has pointed out its principal characteristic sign -
 
- negation in the name of realism, as the opposition to the old ideally liberal conservatism. It is known that he found not only an unusually appropriate nickname for this negation, but a nickname which later became attached to a certain group of phenomena and types and as such was accepted not only by Russia alone but by the whole of Europe. The artist created in the image of Bazarov an exceedingly characteristic representative of the new formation of life, of the new movement, and christened it with a wonderfully fitting word, which made so much noise, which called forth so much condemnation and praise, sympathy and hatred, timid alarm and bold raving. We can point out but few instances in the history of literature of such a deep and lively stir called forth in our literary midst by an artistic creation and by a type of almost political significance. This novel even after twenty years appears the same deep, bright, and truthful reflection of life, as it was at the moment of its first appearance. Now its depth and truthfulness seem even more clear and arouse even more wonder and respect for the creative thought of the artist who wrote it. In our days, when the period of development pointed at by Turgenev in his celebrated novel is almost entirely lived through, we can only wonder at that deep insight with which the author had guessed the fundamental characteristic in that life movement which had celebrated that period. The struggle of two social streams, the anti - reform and post - reform stream, the struggle of two generations; the old brought up on aesthetical idealism for which the leisure of the nobility, made possible by their rights over the peasants, afforded such a fertile soil; and the young generation which was carried away by realism and negation, -
 
- this is what made up the essence of the movement of the epoch in the sixties. Turgenev with the instinct of genius saw through this fundamental movement in life and imaged it in living bright pictures with all its positive and negative, pathetic and humorous sides.

“In his novel Turgenev did not at all side with the ‘fathers’ as the unsympathetic progressive critics of that time insisted, he did not wish to in the least extol them above the ‘children’ in order to degrade the latter. Just so he had no intention of showing up in the character of the representative of the ‘children’ some kind of model of a ‘thinking realist’ to whom the young generation should have bowed and imitated, as the progressive critics who received the work sympathetically imagined. Such a one - sided view was foreign to the author; he sketched both the ‘fathers’ and the ‘children’ as far as possible impartially and analytically. He spared neither the ‘fathers’ nor the ‘children’ and pronounced a cold and severe judgment both on the ones and the others. He positively sings a requiem to the ‘fathers’ in the person of the Kirsanovs, and especially Paul Kirsanov, having shown up their aristocratic idealism, their sentimental aestheticism, almost in a comical light, ay almost in caricature, as he himself has justly pointed out. In the prominent representative of the ‘children,’ Bazarov, he recognized a certain moral force, the energy of character, which favourably contrasts this strong type of realist with the puny, characterless, weak - willed type of the former generation; but having recognised the positive side of the young type, he could not but show up their shortcomings to life and before the people, and thus take their laurels from them. And he did so. And now when time has sufficiently exposed the shortcomings of the type of the generation of that time, we see how right the author was, how deep and far he saw into life, how clearly he perceived the beginning and the end of its development. Turgenev in “Fathers and Children” gave us a sample of a real universal novel, notwithstanding the fact that its plot centres on the usual intimate relations of the principal characters. And with what wonderful skill the author solves this puzzling problem -
 
- to place in narrow, limited frames the broadest and newest themes (CONTENT). Hardly one of the novelists of our age, beginning with Dickens and ending with George Sand and Spielhagen, has succeeded in doing it so compactly and tersely, with such an absence of the DIDATIC element which is almost always present in the works of the above - mentioned authors, the now kings of western literatures, with such a full insight into the very heart of the life movement which is reflected in the novel. I repeat again, “Fathers and Children” is thought of highly by European critics, but years will pass and it will be thought of even more highly. It will be placed in a line with those weighty literary creations in which is reflected the basic movement of the time which created it.”

It would have been well for Turgenev if he could have preserved an absolute silence under the terrific storm of abuse that his most powerful novel brought down on his head; it would have been well to let the book speak for itself, and trust to time to make the strong wine sweet. But this was asking almost too much of human nature. Stung by the outrageous attacks of the Radicals, and suffering as only a great artist can suffer under what he regards as a complete misrepresentation of his purpose, Turgenev wrote letters of explanation, confession, irony, letters that gained him no affection, that only increased the perplexity of the public, and which are much harder to understand than the work itself. The prime difficulty was that in this book Turgenev had told a number of profound truths about life; and nobody wanted the truth. The eternal quarrel between the old and the young generation, the eternal quarrel between conservative and liberal, was at that time in Russia in an acute stage; and everybody read “Fathers and Children” with a view to increasing their ammunition, not with the object of ascertaining the justice of their cause. The “fathers” were of course angry at Turgenev’s diagnosis of their weakness; the “sons” went into a veritable froth of rage at what they regarded as a ridiculous burlesque of their ideas. But that is the penalty that a wise man suffers at a time of strife; for if every one saw the truth clearly, we should never fight each other at all.

Turgenev’s subsequent statement, that so far from Bazarov being a burlesque, he was his “favourite child,” is hard to understand even to - day. The novelist said that with the exception of Bazarov’s views on art, he himself was in agreement with practically all of the ideas expressed by the great iconoclast. Turgenev probably thought he was, but really he was not. Authors are poor judges of their own works, and their statements about their characters are seldom to be trusted. Many writers have confessed that when they start to write a book, with a clear notion in their heads as to how the characters shall develop, the characters often insist on developing quite otherwise, and guide the pen of the author in a manner that constantly awakens his surprise at his own work. Turgenev surely intended originally that we should love Bazarov; as a matter of fact, nobody really loves him,* and no other character in the book loves him for long except his parents. We have a wholesome respect for him, as we respect any ruthless, terrible force; but the word “love” does not express our feeling toward him. It is possible that Turgenev, who keenly realised the need in Russia of men of strong will, and who always despised himself because he could not have steadily strong convictions, tried to incarnate in Bazarov all the uncompromising strength of character that he lacked himself; just as men who themselves lack self - assertion and cannot even look another man in the eye, secretly idolise the men of masterful qualities. It is like the sick man Stevenson writing stories of rugged out - door activity. I heard a student say once that he was sure Marlowe was a little, frail, weak man physically, and that he poured out all his longing for virility and power in heroes like Tamburlaine.

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I cannot believe that even Mr. Edward Garnett loves him, though in

his Introduction to Constance Garnett’s translation, he says, “we love him.”

Bazarov, as every one knows, was drawn from life. Turgenev had once met a Russian provincial doctor,* whose straightforward talk made a profound impression upon him. This man died soon after and had a glorious resurrection in Bazarov, speaking to thousands and thousands of people from his obscure and forgotten grave. It is rather interesting that Turgenev, who drew so many irresolute Russian characters, should have attained his widest fame by the depiction of a man who is simply Incarnate Will. If every other person in all Turgenev’s stories should be forgotten, it is safe to say that Bazarov will always dwell in the minds of those who have once made his acquaintance.

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It is difficult to find out much about the original of Bazarov.

Haumant says Turgenev met him while travelling by the Rhine in 1860; but Turgenev himself said that the young doctor had died not long before 1860, and that the idea of the novel first came to him in August, 1860, while he was bathing on the Isle of Wight. Almost every writer on Russian literature has his own set of dates and incidents.

And yet, Turgenev, with all his secret admiration for the Frankenstein he had created, did not hesitate at the last to crush him both in soul and body. The one real conviction of Turgenev’s life was pessimism, -
 
- the belief that the man of the noblest aspiration and the man of the most brutish character are treated by Nature with equal indifference. Bazarov is the strongest individual that the novelist could conceive; and it is safe to say that most of us live all our lives through without meeting his equal. But his powerful mind, in its colossal egotism and with its gigantic ambitions, is an easy prey to the one thing he despised most of all -
 
- sentiment; and his rugged body goes to the grave through a chance scratch on the finger. Thus the irony of this book -
 
- and I know of no novel in the world that displays such irony -
 
- is not the irony of intentional partisan burlesque. There is no attempt in the destruction of this proud character to prove that the “children” were wrong or mistaken; it is the far deeper irony of life itself, showing the absolute insignificance of the ego in the presence of eternal and unconscious nature. Thus Bazarov, who seems intended for a great hero of tragedy, is not permitted to fight for his cause, nor even to die for it. He is simply obliterated by chance, as an insect perishes under the foot of a passing traveller, who is entirely unaware that he has taken an individual life.

Nature herself could hardly be colder or more passive than the woman with whom it was Bazarov’s bad luck to fall in love. The gradual change wrought in his temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in the most subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable for only one thing; he had told this very woman that people were like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying an individual birch tree. Why, then, should this entirely unimportant individual woman change his whole nature, paralyse all his ambitions, ruin all the cheerful energy of his active mind? He fights against this obsession like a nervous patient struggling with a dreadful depression that comes over him like a flood. He fights like a man fighting with an enemy in the dark, whom he cannot see, but whose terrible blows rain on his face. When he first meets her, he remarks to the shocked Arkady, “What a magnificent body! Shouldn’t I like to see it on the dissecting table!” But he is unable long to admire her with such scientific aloofness. “His blood was on fire directly if he merely thought of her; he could easily have mastered his blood, but something else was taking root in him, something he had never admitted, at which he had always jeered, at which all his pride revolted.” It is this bewilderment at meeting the two things that are stronger than life -
 
- love and death -
 
- that both stupefy and torture this superman. It is the harsh amazement of one who, believing himself to be free, discovers that he is really a slave. Just before he dies, he murmurs: “You see what a hideous spectacle; the worm half - crushed, but writhing still. And, you see I thought too: I’d break down so many things, I wouldn’t die, why should I! there were problems to solve, and I was a giant! And now all the problem for the giant is how to die decently, though that makes no difference to any one either. . . . I was needed by Russia. . . . No, it’s clear, I wasn’t needed.”