Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (493 page)

“‘I swear to you, Natalya Alexyevna — I assure you,’ maintained Rudin.

“But she did not listen to him.”

Natalya’s passionate answer: “I told my mother that I would die sooner than marry any other man. . . . And you say ‘ submit’! “ passes through Rudin’s self - esteem like a knife. He protests vainly again and again his love. But he has exposed his ambiguous emptiness too fully. And now he must leave Darya Mihailovna’s household, discredited in his own, in Natalya’s and in everybody’s eyes.

Remark in the passage quoted above how the conflicting currents of the girl’s passionate warmth and the man’s ambiguous reasoning — like hot and cold springs mingling — flow in a form beautiful by its grace of line. The scene is graven as lightly, yet as durably as an antique Greek gem. One must emphasize this union of soft warmth and grace in Turgenev’s work, for it is one of his special characteristics. While the beauty of his feeling declares itself by its purity of tone, all the mental shades of a scene or a conversation are unfolded with flowing, flexible grace. Even a piece of mental analysis, a synthesis of the internal life of character, and of pure thought, are stamped with the spontaneous gestures of life. And calm and mellow tenderness seems to emanate, as a secret essence, from his pictures. We cite a little passage, famous in Russian literature, where Turgenev sketches a portrait of Byelinsky, under the pseudonym of Pokorsky, Rudin’s friend:

“‘. . . He took pity on me, perhaps; anyway, he took me by the arm and led me away to his lodging.’

“‘Was that Rudin? ‘ asked Alexandra Pavlovna.

“‘No, it was not Rudin ... it was a man ... he is dead now ... he was an extraordinary man. His name was Pokorsky. To describe him in a few words is beyond my powers, but directly one begins to speak of him, one does not want to speak of any one else. He had a noble, pure heart, and an intelligence such as I have never met since. Pokorsky lived in a little, low - pitched room, in an attic of an old wooden house. He was very poor, and supported himself somehow by giving lessons. Sometimes he had not even a cup of tea to offer to his friends, and his only sofa was so shaky that it was like being on board ship. But in spite of these discomforts a great many people used to go and see him. Every one loved him; he drew all hearts to him. You would not believe what sweetness and happiness there’was in sitting in his poor little room! It was in his room I met Rudin. He had already parted from his prince before then.’

“‘What was there so exceptional in this Pokorsky? ‘ asked Alexandra Pavlovna.

“‘How can I tell you? Poetry and truth — that was what drew us all to him. For all his clear, broad intellect he was as sweet and simple as a child. . . . Pokorsky and Rudin were very unlike. There was more flash and brilliance about Rudin, more fluency, and perhaps more enthusiasm. He appeared far more gifted than Pokorsky, and yet all the while he was a poor creature by comparison. Rudin was excellent at developing any idea, he was capital in argument, but his ideas did not come from his own brain; he borrowed them from others, especially from Pokorsky : Pokorsky was quiet and soft — even weak in appearance — and he was fond of women to distraction, and fond of dissipation, and he would never take an insult from any one. Rudin seemed full of fire and courage and life, but at heart he was cold and almost a coward, until his vanity was touched, then he would not stop at anything. . . . And really when I recall our gatherings, upon my word there was much that was fine, even touching in them.... Ah, that was a glorious time, and I can’t bear to believe that it was altogether wasted! And it was not wasted — not even for those whose fives were sordid afterwards. How often have I chanced to come across such old college friends! You would think the man had sunk altogether to the brute, but one had only to utter Pokorsky’s name before him and every trace of noble feeling in him was stirred at once; it was like uncorking a forgotten phial of fragrance in some dark and dirty room.”

How perfect is the form of the novel! Rudin’s sudden appearance at Darya Mihailovna’s house, from the void, his brief, brilliant scintillation, his disappearance beyond the horizon like a falling star, while the little circle he has quitted returns to its quiet settled round, and is knitted closer, by and by, in two marriages. In the final chapters Turgenev gives a wonderful feeling of the stormy horizon of life in his glimpses of Rudin’s restless wanderings, of his pathetic series of failures, of his useless death in a hopeless cause on a Paris barricade. It is now the genius of Turgenev’s heart that speaks, the head in absolute unison with the heart. For Turgenev’s creative judgment, infinitely just, infinitely tender, is a court of appeal from all hard, worldly arraignments. All that has been shown us of Rudin’s Utopianism, of the “ something lacking “ in his character and outlook is true. But it is not the whole truth. In Lezhnyov’s final words, “ Rudin has faith, Rudin has honesty. He has enthusiasm, the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable and indifferent and slothful.” That is the point. The Rudins, the idealists of the “ ‘forties,” were the yeast in the dough of Russian fatalism and the nation’s stagnation. For one idealist there were a thousand lethargic, acquiescent minds, clinging to the rock of personal interest, staking nothing, but all subservient to the forces of official despotism or worldly power. In Rudin burned clear the light of humane, generous ideals, of the fire of the love of truth. Most of the intellectual seed he scattered fell by the wayside or was swallowed up in the morass of Russia’s social distress and mass impotence. But, in Lezhnyov’s words : “ I say again, that is not Rudin’s fault, and it is his fate — a cruel and unhappy fate — for which we cannot blame him.”

And when we survey the figures of that gloomy reign of Nicholas, when “ a merciless Imperialism repressed the least sign of intellectuality,” it was the Rudins who breathed on and passed on that living seed of fire to the younger generation.

It is to be remarked that not a line, not a detail in the social picture seems to have faded. The picture by its truth and art is timeless in its plastic grace, like a Tanagra group, or a Velasquez portrait. Nothing, indeed, can be added or taken away from the masterpiece.

CHAPTER V

“A HOUSE OF GENTLEFOLK”

In 1859, three years after Rudin, appeared A House of Gentlefolk, in popular estimation the most perfect of Turgenev’s works. This verdict, repeated by many critics, was gained no less by the pathos of Lavretsky’s love story than by the faultless character drawing, the gentle, earnest, religious Liza1 being balanced against the voluptuous, worldly coquette, Varvara Pavlovna. The story which chronicles how the latter, la belle Madame de Lavretsky, twists her honest, candid husband round her finger, how at length Lavretsky discovers her infidelities, and returns to Russia where he meets and falls in love with Liza, and how, on the false news of his wife’s death, they confess their mutual passion — when their dream is shattered by the dramatic reappearance of Varvara Pavlovna — is

1 Liza, “ the best impersonation possible of the average, thoroughly good and honest Russian girl of the times.” — Kropotkin.

characteristic of Turgenev’s underlying sad philosophy.

Both Turgenev’s temperamental melancholy and irony are seconded by, indeed are enrooted in, his calm, piercing perception of the ineffectual struggle of virtue in the vortex of worldly power. All the great literature of all the ages warns us that the world is mainly swayed by force and craft, twin children of human necessity and appetite. Virtue, beautiful in its disinterested impulse, as the love of truth, has always to reckon with the all - powerful law of life, self - interest, on which the whole fabric of society is reared. Goodness is but a frail defence against the designs of force and egoistic craft. We see magnanimity falling before unscrupulousness; while the stupidity of the mass of men is twisted adroitly by the worldly to their own advantage. While Turgenev’s philosophy reinforces the experience of the ages, his pictures of life are distinguished by the subtle spiritual light which plays upon the egoistic basis. In his vision “ the rack of this tough world “ triumphs, but his peculiarly subtle appeal to our sense of spiritual beauty registers the common earthiness of the triumph of force and evil. That triumph is everywhere; it is a fundamental law of nature that worldly craft and appetite shall prevail, whelming the finer forces, but Turgenev’s sadness and irony, by their beauty of feeling, strengthen those spiritual valuations which challenge the elemental law. His aesthetic method is so to place in juxtaposition the fine shades of human worldliness that we enjoy the spectacle of the varied strands composing a family or social pattern. In the sketch of Lavretsky’s ancestors, for two generations, the pattern is intricate, surprisingly varied, giving us the richest sense of all the heterogeneous elements that combine in a family stock. In the portraits of Varvara Pavlovna’s father and mother we recognize the lines of heredity :

“Varvara
 
Pavlovna’s father, Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, a retired major - general, had spent his whole time on duty in Petersburg. He had had the reputation in his youth of a good dancer and driller. Through poverty he had served as adjutant to two or three generals of no distinction, and had married the daughter of one of them with a dowry of twenty - five thousand roubles. He mastered all the science of military discipline and manoeuvres to the minutest niceties, he went on in harness, till at last, after twenty - five years’ service, he received the rank of a general and the command of a regiment. Then he might have relaxed his efforts and quietly secured his pecuniary position. Indeed this was what he reckoned upon doing, but he managed things a little incautiously. He devised a new method of speculating with public funds — the method seemed an excellent one in itself — but he neglected to bribe in the right place and was consequently informed against, and a more than unpleasant, a disgraceful scandal followed ... he was advised to retire from active duty. . . . His bald head, with its tufts of dyed hair, and the soiled ribbon of the order of St. Anne, which he wore over a cravat of the colour of a raven’s wing, began to be familiar to all the pale and listless young men who hang morosely about the card - tables while dancing is going on. Pavel Petrovitch knew how to gain a footing in society; he spoke little, but from long habit, condescendingly — though of course not when he was talking to persons of a higher rank than his own. ... Of the general’s wife there is scarcely anything to be said. Kalliopa Karlovna, who was of German extraction, considered herself a woman of great sensibility. She was always in a state of nervous agitation, seemed as though she were ill - nourished, and wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and tarnished hollow bracelets.”

In this incisive little cameo Turgenev has told us everything about Varvara Pavlovna’s upbringing. It is typical of Turgenev’s method, of indicating with sparse, magic touches the couche sociale, so that we see working in the individual the forces that form him as a social type. Varvara Pavlovna, in her arts, is the worldly woman incarnate, sensual in her cold, polished being, in her luxurious elegance, in her inherently vulgar ambition. But Turgenev’s instinctive justesse is shown in the attractiveness of Varvara Pavlovna’s bodily beauty. Remark that the more Turgenev unmasks her coldness and falsity the more he renders tribute to her bodily charm, to the subtle intelligence in her dark, oval, lovely face, with its splendid eyes, which gazed softly and attentively from under her fine brows. She is a worldly syren, lovely and desirable in her sensual fascination. But she is not too discriminating in the choice of her male adorers. His remembrance of all her deceptions stings Lavretsky when in her manoeuvres to be reinstated in society she descends upon him suddenly at 0
       
:

“The first thing that struck him as he went into the entrance hall was a scent of patchouli, always distasteful to him; there were some high travelling - trunks standing there. The face of his groom, who ran out to meet him, seemed strange to him. Not stopping to analyse his impressions, he crossed the threshold of the drawing - room. ... On his entrance there rose from the sofa a lady in a black silk dress with flounces, who, raising a cambric handkerchief to her pale face, made a few paces forward, bent her carefully dressed, perfumed head, and fell at his feet. ‘. . . Then, only, he recognised her : this lady was his wife!

“He caught his breath. ... He leaned against the wall.

“‘TModore, do not repulse me! ‘ she said in French, and her voice cut to his heart like a knife.

“He looked at her senselessly, and yet he noticed involuntarily at once that she had grown both whiter and fatter.
           
» -
 
- a “ ‘ TModore! ‘ she went on, from time to time lifting her eyes and discreetly wringing her marvellously beautiful fingers with their rosy, polished nails. ‘ Thlodore, I have wronged you, deeply wronged you; I will say more, I have sinned; but hear me; I am tortured by remorse, I have grown hateful to myself, I could endure my position no longer; how many times have I thought of turning to you, but I feared your anger; I resolved to break every tie with the past. . . . Puis, j’ai HI si malade. ... I have been so ill,’ she added, and passed her hand over her brow and cheek. ‘ I took advantage of the widely - spread rumour of my death, I gave up everything; without resting day or night I hastened hither; I hesitated long to appear before you, my judge . . . paraitre devant vous, mon juge; but I resolved at last, remembering your constant goodness, to come to you; I found your address at Moscow. Believe me,’ she went on, slowly getting up from the floor and sitting on the very edge of an armchair. ‘ I have often thought of death, and I should have found courage to take my life ... ah! life is a burden unbearable for me now! . . . but the thought of my daughter, my little Ada, stopped me. She is here, she is asleep in the next room, the poor child! She is tired — you shall see her; she at least has done you no wrong, and I am so unhappy, so unhappy!’ cried Madame Lavretsky, and she melted into tears. . . .

“. . . ‘I have no commands to give you,” replied Lavretsky in the same colourless voice; ‘ you know, all is over between us . . . and now more than ever; you can live where you like; and if your allowance is too little
   
‘

“‘Ah, don’t say such dreadful things,’ Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him, ‘ spare me, if only ... if only for the sake of this angel.’ And as she uttered these words, Varvara Pavlovna ran impulsively into the next room, and returned at once with a small and very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms. Thick flaxen curls fell over her pretty rosy little face, and on to her large sleepy black eyes; she smiled, and blinked her eyes at the light and laid a chubby little hand on her mother’s neck.

“‘Ada, vois, c’est ton pkre,’ said Varvara Pavlovna, pushing the curls back from her eyes and kissing her vigorously, ‘ prie - le avec moi.’

“‘C’est $a, papa? ‘ stammered the little girl lisping.

“‘Oui, mon enfant, n’est - ce pas que tu I’aimes? ‘

“But this was more than Lavretsky could stand.

“In what melodrama is there a scene exactly like this? ‘ he muttered and went out of the room.

“Varvara Pavlovna stood still for some time in the same place, slightly shrugged her shoulders, carried the little girl off into the next room, undressed her and put her to bed. Then she took up a book and sat down near the lamp, and after staying up for an hour she went to bed herself.

“‘Eh Men, madame?’ queried her maid, a French woman whom she had brought from Paris, as she unlaced her corset.

“‘Eh bien, Justine,’ she replied, ‘ he is a good deal older, but I fancy he is just the same good - natured fellow. Give me my gloves for the night, and get out my grey, high - necked dress for to - morrow, and don’t forget the mutton cutlets for Ada. ... I daresay it will be difficult to get them here; but we must try.’

“‘A la guerre comme a la guerre’ replied Justine, as she put out the candle.”

The reader should contrast with the above satiric passage, the summer evening scene in the garden at Vassilyevskoe (chap, xxvi.), where Marya Dmitrievna’s party sit by the pond fishing. The soft tranquillity of the hour, the charm of this pure young girl, Liza, with “ her soft, glowing cheeks and g somewhat severe profile “ as “ she looked at the water, half frowning, to keep the sun out of her eyes, half smiling,” the tender evening atmosphere, all are faintly stirred, like the rippling surface of a stream, by a puff of wind, by Liza’s words upon her religious thoughts on death. In this delicate, glancing conversation, Turgenev while mirroring, as in a glass, the growing intimacy of feeling between Liza and Lavretsky, discloses almost imperceptibly the sunken rock on which his happiness is to strike and’suffer shipwreck — Liza’s profound instinct of self - abnegation and self - sacrifice. Her sweet seriousness, her slowness of brain, her very lack of words, all appear to Lavretsky enchanting. This scene in the garden, in its tender breathing tranquillity, holds suspended beneath the gentle, flowing stream of the lovers’ happiness, the faint, ambiguous menace of the days to come.

In depicting the contest between Varvara Pavlovna’s worldliness and Liza’s spirituality, how comes it that Turgenev’s parti pris for Liza has not impaired the aesthetic balance? It is because he shows us how Lavretsky’s mistake in marrying this syren has tied his hands. The forces of worldly convention when reinforced by Liza’s religious conviction that Varvara Pavlovna, odious as she is, is still Lavretsky’s wife, are bound to triumph. Accordingly the more the all - pervasive, all - conquering force of worldliness is done justice to, and the more its brilliant, polished appearances are displayed in all their deceptive colours, the greater is our reaction towards spiritual beauty. Therefore Turgenev, with his unerring instinct, intersperses Liza’s sad love story with scenes of the brilliant worldly comedy played between that comme - il - faut pair, Panshin, the brilliant young official from Petersburg, Liza’s suitor, and Varvara Pavlovna.

Turgenev sees through the pretences of his worldly types at a glance. All the inflexions of their engaging manners reflect as in a clear mirror the evasive shades of their worldly motives. He has a peculiar gift of so contrasting their tones of insincerity that the artificial pattern of their intercourse gleams and glistens in its polished falsity. As a social comedy of the purest water, how delightful are the scenes where the foolish Marya Dmi - trievna, the old counsellor Gedeonovsky, and Panshin with his diplomatic reserve, are fascinated by the seductive modesty of Varvara Pavlovna (chap, xxxix.). How natural in the interplay of ironic light and shade is the picture of Varvara Pavlovna’s conquest of her provincial audience. Note, moreover, how in art and literature and music, what always thrills these ladies and gentlemen is the polished, insipid, chic morceau. Their talk, their manner, their aspiration are all of the surface, facile, smooth polished, like their scented, white hands, and one listens to their correctly modulated voices exchanging compliments and social banalities, suavely, in the reception room, while beneath this correct surface is self, self and worldly advantage. That is the one reality. The world of beautiful feeling, of disinterested, generous impulse, is on quite another plane; it is as strange and alien to their minds as the peasant’s rough, harsh world of labour. Examine the exact relation Panshin bears to the world in which he is so successfully playing his part: