Precisely at three o’clock they all gathered about the table. Mitya was placed there too; with him appeared a nurse in a cap of glazed brocade. Pavel Petrovitch took his seat between Katya and Fenitchka; the ‘husbands’ took their places beside their wives. Our friends had changed of late; they all seemed to have grown stronger and better looking; only Pavel Petrovitch was thinner, which gave even more of an elegant and ‘grand seigneur’ air to his expressive features.... And Fenitchka too was different. In a fresh silk gown, with a wide velvet head - dress on her hair, with a gold chain round her neck, she sat with deprecating immobility, respectful towards herself and everything surrounding her, and smiled as though she would say, ‘I beg your pardon; I’m not to blame.’ And not she alone — all the others smiled, and also seemed apologetic; they were all a little awkward, a little sorry, and in reality very happy. They all helped one another with humorous attentiveness, as though they had all agreed to rehearse a sort of artless farce. Katya was the most composed of all; she looked confidently about her, and it could be seen that Nikolai Petrovitch was already devotedly fond of her. At the end of dinner he got up, and, his glass in his hand, turned to Pavel Petrovitch.
‘You are leaving us ... you are leaving us, dear brother,’ he began; ‘not for long, to be sure; but still, I cannot help expressing what I ... what we ... how much I ... how much we.... There, the worst of it is, we don’t know how to make speeches. Arkady, you speak.’
‘No, daddy, I’ve not prepared anything.’
‘As though I were so well prepared! Well, brother, I will simply say, let us embrace you, wish you all good luck, and come back to us as quickly as you can!’
Pavel Petrovitch exchanged kisses with every one, of course not excluding Mitya; in Fenitchka’s case, he kissed also her hand, which she had not yet learned to offer properly, and drinking off the glass which had been filled again, he said with a deep sigh, ‘May you be happy, my friends! Farewell!’ This English finale passed unnoticed; but all were touched.
‘To the memory of Bazarov,’ Katya whispered in her husband’s ear, as she clinked glasses with him. Arkady pressed her hand warmly in response, but he did not venture to propose this toast aloud.
The end, would it seem? But perhaps some one of our readers would care to know what each of the characters we have introduced is doing in the present, the actual present. We are ready to satisfy him.
Anna Sergyevna has recently made a marriage, not of love but of good sense, with one of the future leaders of Russia, a very clever man, a lawyer, possessed of vigorous practical sense, a strong will, and remarkable fluency — still young, good - natured, and cold as ice. They live in the greatest harmony together, and will live perhaps to attain complete happiness ... perhaps love. The Princess K — — is dead, forgotten the day of her death. The Kirsanovs, father and son, live at Maryino; their fortunes are beginning to mend. Arkady has become zealous in the management of the estate, and the ‘farm’ now yields a fairly good income. Nikolai Petrovitch has been made one of the mediators appointed to carry out the emancipation reforms, and works with all his energies; he is for ever driving about over his district; delivers long speeches (he maintains the opinion that the peasants ought to be ‘brought to comprehend things,’ that is to say, they ought to be reduced to a state of quiescence by the constant repetition of the same words); and yet, to tell the truth, he does not give complete satisfaction either to the refined gentry, who talk with chic, or depression of the emancipation (pronouncing it as though it were French), nor of the uncultivated gentry, who unceremoniously curse ‘the damned ‘mancipation.’ He is too soft - hearted for both sets. Katerina Sergyevna has a son, little Nikolai, while Mitya runs about merrily and talks fluently. Fenitchka, Fedosya Nikolaevna, after her husband and Mitya, adores no one so much as her daughter - in - law, and when the latter is at the piano, she would gladly spend the whole day at her side.
A passing word of Piotr. He has grown perfectly rigid with stupidity and dignity, but he too is married, and received a respectable dowry with his bride, the daughter of a market - gardener of the town, who had refused two excellent suitors, only because they had no watch; while Piotr had not only a watch — he had a pair of kid shoes.
In the Brühl Terrace in Dresden, between two and four o’clock — the most fashionable time for walking — you may meet a man about fifty, quite grey, and looking as though he suffered from gout, but still handsome, elegantly dressed, and with that special stamp, which is only gained by moving a long time in the higher strata of society. That is Pavel Petrovitch. From Moscow he went abroad for the sake of his health, and has settled for good at Dresden, where he associates most with English and Russian visitors. With English people he behaves simply, almost modestly, but with dignity; they find him rather a bore, but respect him for being, as they say, ‘a perfect gentleman.’ With Russians he is more free and easy, gives vent to his spleen, and makes fun of himself and them, but that is done by him with great amiability, negligence, and propriety. He holds Slavophil views; it is well known that in the highest society this is regarded as très distingué! He reads nothing in Russian, but on his writing table there is a silver ashpan in the shape of a peasant’s plaited shoe. He is much run after by our tourists. Matvy Ilyitch Kolyazin, happening to be in temporary opposition, paid him a majestic visit; while the natives, with whom, however, he is very little seen, positively grovel before him. No one can so readily and quickly obtain a ticket for the court chapel, for the theatre, and such things as der Herr Baron von Kirsanoff. He does everything good - naturedly that he can; he still makes some little noise in the world; it is not for nothing that he was once a great society lion; — but life is a burden to him ... a heavier burden than he suspects himself. One need but glance at him in the Russian church, when, leaning against the wall on one side, he sinks into thought, and remains long without stirring, bitterly compressing his lips, then suddenly recollects himself, and begins almost imperceptibly crossing himself....
Madame Kukshin, too, went abroad. She is in Heidelberg, and is now studying not natural science, but architecture, in which, according to her own account, she has discovered new laws. She still fraternises with students, especially with the young Russians studying natural science and chemistry, with whom Heidelberg is crowded, and who, astounding the naïve German professors at first by the soundness of their views of things, astound the same professors no less in the sequel by their complete inefficiency and absolute idleness. In company with two or three such young chemists, who don’t know oxygen from nitrogen, but are filled with scepticism and self - conceit, and, too, with the great Elisyevitch, Sitnikov roams about Petersburg, also getting ready to be great, and in his own conviction continues the ‘work’ of Bazarov. There is a story that some one recently gave him a beating; but he was avenged upon him; in an obscure little article, hidden in an obscure little journal, he has hinted that the man who beat him was a coward. He calls this irony. His father bullies him as before, while his wife regards him as a fool ... and a literary man.
There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia. Like almost all our graveyards, it presents a wretched appearance; the ditches surrounding it have long been overgrown; the grey wooden crosses lie fallen and rotting under their once painted gables; the stone slabs are all displaced, as though some one were pushing them up from behind; two or three bare trees give a scanty shade; the sheep wander unchecked among the tombs.... But among them is one untouched by man, untrampled by beast, only the birds perch upon it and sing at daybreak. An iron railing runs round it; two young fir - trees have been planted, one at each end. Yevgeny Bazarov is buried in this tomb. Often from the little village not far off, two quite feeble old people come to visit it — a husband and wife. Supporting one another, they move to it with heavy steps; they go up to the railing, fall down, and remain on their knees, and long and bitterly they weep, and yearn and intently gaze at the dumb stone, under which their son is lying; they exchange som
e brief word, wipe away the dust from the stone, set straight a branch of a fir - tree, and pray again, and cannot tear themselves from this place, where they seem to be nearer to their son, to their memories of him.... Can it be that their prayers, their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all - powerful? Oh, no! However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of ‘indifferent’ nature; tell us too of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.
SMOKE
Translated by Constance Garnett, 1896
This novel was first published in 1867 and was written when Turgenev was based in Baden, amongst resorts that were favoured by many Russians. The most cosmopolitan of all Turgenev’s works, Smoke sketches the intricacies of the aristocratic and Young Russia parties at a time when Russia was changing from the philosophical Nihilism of the 1860s to the more politically active Nihilism of the 1870s.
Pauline Viardot, a leading French mezzo - soprano, pedagogue and composer, with whom Turgenev had a lifelong affair
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
INTRODUCTION
WHEN Litvinov was torn loose from his “far from gay or complicated” life, caught up in a lurid passion in which he was never at home, and then abandoned, he fled upon the train. At first he was exhausted by the prodigious effort of will he had made; then a kind of composure came upon him. He “was hardened.” The train, the minutes, were carrying him away from the wreck of his life.
“He took to gazing out of the window. The day was gray and damp; there was no rain, but the fog held on, and low - lying clouds veiled the sky. The wind was blowing in the contrary direction to the course of the train; whitish clouds of steam, now alone, now mingled with other, darker clouds, of smoke, swept, in an endless series, past the window beside which Litvinov sat. He began to watch the steam, the smoke. Incessantly whirling, rising and falling, twisting and catching at the grass, at the bushes, playing pranks, as it were, lengthening and melting, puff followed puff, . . . they were constantly changing and yet remained the same . . . a monotonous, hurried, tiresome game! Sometimes the wind changed, the road made a turn - - the whole mass suddenly disappeared, and immediately became visible through the opposite window; then, once more, the hugh train flung itself over, and once more veiled from Litvinov the wide view of the Rhine Valley. He gazed and gazed, and a strange reflection occurred to him. . . . He was alone in the carriage; there was no one to interfere with him. ‘Smoke, smoke’ - - he repeated several times in succession; and suddenly everything appeared to him to be smoke - - everything, his own life, everything pertaining to men, especially everything Russian. Every thing is smoke and steam, he thought; - - everything seems to be constantly undergoing change; every where there are new forms, phenomenon follows phenomenon, but in reality everything is exactly alike; everything is hurrying, hastening somewhither - - and everything vanishes without leaving a trace, without having attained to any end whatever; another breeze has begun to blow - - and everything has been flung to the other side, and there, again, is the same incessant, agitated - - and useless game. He recalled many things which had taken place, with much sound and clatter, before his eyes the last few years . . ‘smoke,’ he murmured, - - ‘smoke.’“
“Smoke.” This is not only Litvinov’s reaction from experiences too terrible for his mind and heart to stand - - and also his consolation - - but it is Turgenev’s own reaction to life. The profound disillusion following the failure of the Revolutionary movement of ‘48, which swept over the intellectuals of Europe, had also its characteristic repercussion among the intellectual youth of Russia, and made a generation like the later generation so well portrayed by Tchekov - - the men of the ‘80s, and also like the Intelligentsia after the failure of the Revolution of 1905.
The restless futility, self - searching, flabbiness of will so native to this type are incarnate in one of Turgenev’s greatest characters, Rudin. They persist in numerous characters in Smoke, and are not absent from the make - up of Litvinov himself - - nor of Turgenev, for that matter. The conception of the futility of effort, of revolution, of political ideas in general, the tranquillity attained only by seeing life from the standpoint of eternity, Turgenev had already enunciated in Fathers and Children. He wished to see life with Olympian calm; the irony of Basarov’s death is a key - note of his profound pessimism. But in Smoke there is bitter satire, showing that life to him was still a battle, an exasperation.
The claims so often made by critics that Turgenev, the natural aristocrat, was always consciously, above all, an artist, are disproved by his own autobiographical note prefaced to the complete edition of his works published in Moscow in 1880:
“I took a header into the German Ocean,” he says, speaking of his going to Berlin, to study in the University - - where, by the way, he was a fellow - student with Bakunin. “ . . . It was absolutely necessary for me to get clear of my enemy, the better to strike from a distance. To my eyes this enemy had a formidable appearance, and an ordinary name. My enemy was the ‘lawfulness’ of Serfdom.” This “enemy” Turgenev swore to conquer. “It was my ‘Hannibal oath,’ and in those days I was not the only one who took it. . . . I went to Germany to enable me to fulfill it. . .”
How well he kept this oath is evident in the effect of “Sportsmen’s Sketches,” his first important book, published about 1852, which, in the guise of mere description, depicted the wretchedness of the peasants in a way that roused Russian public opinion, more than any other one influence, to demand the Emancipation of the Serfs. This book is often called the Russian “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and appeared contemporaneously with it. The motive of Emancipation runs through almost all Turgenev’s work, and appears in Smoke, which was published after the freeing of the Serfs. (By the way, there is a humorous reference to Mrs. Stowe in Chapter IV.) For instance, when, bruised and broken, Litvinov returns to his estate in Russia, he was at first unable to change the old system:
“New ideas won their way badly, old ones had lost their force; the ignorant clashed with the dishonest; his whole deranged existence was in constant motion, like a quaking bog, and only the great word ‘Liberty’ moved, like the spirit of God, over the waters. . . .
“But a year passed, then a second, the third was beginning. The grand thought was gradually being realized, was being transformed into flesh and blood; a sprout was putting forth from the seed that had been sown; and its enemies, either open or secret, could no longer trample it under foot.”
The tremendous interest aroused by Turgenev’s books in Russia was partly due to the fact that they were all concerned with politics - - that, beside their delicate and restrained literary art, through them all ran a strain of propaganda - - that they dealt with the actual burning questions of the times. Smoke, in particular, was Turgenev’s contribution to the great controversy between the Slavophils and those who championed western ideals for Russia. There is no doubt that Turgenev’s own ideals are expressed by the ruined nobleman Potugin; and Litvinov himself, a rather quiet, ordinary young man, who has traveled over Europe studying technology and scientific farming, is the kind of man that Turgenev passionately believes Russia to need.
But at the same time the author has concentrated his most bitter
attack upon those Russian young men who have come to Europe and absorbed, with all their Slavic facility, a mass of undigested European ideas and theories. There is nothing in literature more stinging than the satire of the first six chapters of Smoke, which has a quality of Dickens about it. This is not hatred, however. While laughing bitterly at his young “intellectual” countrymen, Turgenev understands them; they, like himself, are creatures of environment and heredity. But he pours his contempt upon the “aristocrats” of St. Petersburg, who are only cruel and corrupt.
The life of Litvinov is, in its fundamentals, the life of Turgenev himself. Like Litvinov, the author was the “son of a retired petty official,” living on a country estate, with a mother who tried to live as a noble, on an insufficient income, ruining the estate in the process. As with Litvinov, nothing but French was spoken in Turgenev’s family. Turgenev himself had to learn Russian from the house servants - - the language of which he was afterwards to be the great master.
Like Litvinov, Turgenev also lived in Baden. Smoke was written there, and the episodes and characters are undoubtedly from life. He came to Baden to be near Madame Viardot, the opera singer, his most intimate, life - long friend. . . No doubt, also, Irina came from his own experience, at some time. She is one of a trio, passionate and beautiful, wreckers of men: Varvara Pavlovna, in A Nobleman’s Nest; Maria Nikolævna, in Torrents of Spring; and Irina. But she is by far the clearest and most human of the three. Many men have known such women - - women who live like panthers, taking what they want and moving through the world all baleful fire, fit mates only for the strong. And Litvinov was not strong - - nor was Turgenev.
A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1 Page 76