TURGENEV: ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS by William Lyon Phelps
Turgenev was born on the 28 October 1818, at Orel, in south central Russia, about half - way between Moscow and Kiev. Thus, although the temperament of Turgenev was entirely different from that of Gogol, he was born not far from the latter’s beloved Ukraine. He came honestly by the patrician quality that unconsciously animated all his books, for his family was both ancient and noble. His mother was wealthy, and in 1817 was married to a handsome, unprincipled military officer six years younger than herself. Their life together was an excellent example of the exact opposite of domestic bliss, and in treating the boy like a culprit, they transformed him - - as always happens in similar cases - - into a severe judge of their own conduct. The father’s unbridled sensuality and the mother’s unbridled tongue gave a succession of moving pictures of family discord to the inquisitive eyes of the future novelist. His childhood was anything but cheerful, and late in life he said he could distinctly remember the salt taste of the frequent tears that trickled into the corners of his mouth. Fortunately for all concerned, the father died while Turgenev was a boy, leaving him with only one - - even if the more formidable - - of his parents to contend with. His mother despised writers, especially those who wrote in Russian; she insisted that Ivan should make an advantageous marriage, and “have a career”; but the boy was determined never to marry, and he had not the slightest ambition for government favours. The two utterly failed to understand each other, and, weary of his mother’s capricious violence of temper, he became completely estranged. Years later, in her last illness, Turgenev made repeated attempts to see her, all of which she angrily repulsed. He endeavoured to see her at the very last, but she died before his arrival. He was then informed that on the evening of her death she had given orders to have an orchestra play dance - music in an adjoining chamber, to distract her mind during the final agony. And her last thought was an attempt to ruin Ivan and his brother by leaving orders to have everything sold at a wretched price, and to set fire to other parts of the property. His comment on his dead mother was “Enfin, il faut oublier.”
It is significant that Turgenev has nowhere in all his novels portrayed a mother who combined intelligence with goodness.
French, German, and English Turgenev learned as a child, first from governesses, and then from regular foreign tutors. The language of his own country, of which he was to become the greatest master that has ever lived, he was forced to learn from the house - servants. His father and mother conversed only in French; his mother even prayed in French. Later, he studied at the Universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. At Berlin he breathed for the first time the free air of intellectual Europe, and he was never able long to live out of that element again. One of his closest comrades at the University was Bakunin, a hot - headed young Radical, who subsequently became a Nihilist agitator. There is no doubt that his fiery harangues gave Turgenev much material for his later novels. It is characteristic, too, that while his student friends went wild at the theatre over Schiller, Turgenev immensely preferred Goethe, and could practically repeat the whole first part of “Faust” by heart. Turgenev, like Goethe, was a natural aristocrat in his manner and in his literary taste - - and had the same dislike for extremists of all kinds. With the exception of Turgenev’s quiet but profound pessimism, his temperament was very similar to that of the great German - - such a man will surely incur the hatred of the true Reformer type.
Turgenev was one of the best educated among modern men - of - letters; his knowledge was not superficial and fragmentary, it was solid and accurate. Of all modern novelists, he is the best exponent of genuine culture.
Turgenev often ridiculed in his novels the Russian Anglo - maniac; but in one respect he was more English than the English themselves. This is seen in his passion for shooting. Nearly all of his trips to Britain were made solely for this purpose, and most of the distinguished Englishmen that he met, like Tennyson, he met while visiting England for grouse. Shooting, to be sure, is common enough in Russia; it appears in Artsybashev’s “Sanin,” and there was a time when Tolstoi was devoted to this sport, though it later appeared on his long blacklist. But Turgenev had the passion for it characteristic only of the English race; and it is interesting to observe that this humane and peace - loving man entered literature with a gun in his hand. It was on his various shooting excursions in Russia that he obtained so intimate a knowledge of the peasants and of peasant life; and his first important book, “A Sportsman’s Sketches,” revealed to the world two things: the dawn of a new literary genius, and the wretched condition of the serfs. This book has often been called the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of Russia; no title could be more absurd. In the whole range of literary history, it would be difficult to find two personalities more unlike than that of Turgenev and Mrs. Stowe. The great Russian utterly lacked the temperament of the advocate; but his innate truthfulness, his wonderful art, and his very calmness made the picture of woe all the more clear. There is no doubt that the book became, without its author’s intention, a social document; there is no doubt that Turgenev, a sympathetic and highly civilised man, hated slavery, and that his picture of it helped in an indirect way to bring about the emancipation of the serfs. But its chief value is artistic rather than sociological. It is interesting that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “A Sportsman’s Sketches” should have appeared at about the same time, and that emancipation in each country should have followed at about the same interval; but the parallel is chronological rather than logical.*
· There is an interesting and amusing reference to Harriet Beecher
Stowe in the fourth chapter of “Smoke.”
The year of the publication of Turgenev’s book (1852) saw the death of Gogol: and the new author quite naturally wrote a public letter of eulogy. In no other country would such a thing have excited anything but favourable comment; in Russia it raised a storm; the government - - always jealous of anything that makes for Russia’s real greatness - - became suspicious, and Turgenev was banished to his estates. Like one of his own dogs, he was told to “go home.” Home he went, and continued to write books. Freedom was granted him a few years later, and he left Russia never to return except as a visitor. He lived first in Germany, and finally in Paris, one of the literary lions of the literary capital of the world. There, on the 3 September 1883, he died. His body was taken to Russia, and with that cruel perversity that makes us speak evil of men while they are alive and sensitive, and good only when they are beyond the reach of our petty praise and blame, friends and foes united in one shout of praise whose echoes filled the whole world.
Turgenev, like Daniel Webster, looked the part. He was a great grey giant, with the Russian winter in his hair and beard. His face in repose had an expression of infinite refinement, infinite gentleness, and infinite sorrow. When the little son of Alphonse Daudet saw Turgenev and Flaubert come into the room, arm in arm, the boy cried out, “Why, papa, they are giants!” George Moore said that at a ball in Montmartre, he saw Turgenev come walking across the hall; he looked like a giant striding among pigmies. Turgenev had that peculiar gentle sweetness that so well accompanies great bodily size and strength. His modesty was the genuine humility of a truly great man. He was always surprised at the admiration his books received, and amazed when he heard of their success in America. Innumerable anecdotes are told illustrating the beauty of his character; the most recent to appear in print is from the late Mr. Conway, who said that Turgenev was “a grand man in every way, physically and mentally, intelligence and refinement in every feature. . . I found him modest almost to shyness, and in his conversation - - he spoke English - - never loud or doctrinaire. At the Walter Scott centennial he was present, - - the greatest man at the celebration, - - but did not make himself known. There was an excursion to Abbotsford, and carriages were provided for guests. One in which I was seated passed Turgenev on foot. I alighted and walked with him, at every step impressed by his greatness and his simplicity.”
We shall not know until the year 1920 how far Turgenev was influenced by Madame Viardot, nor exactly what were his relations with this extraordinary woman. Pauline Garcia was a great singer who made her first appearance in Petersburg in 1843. Turgenev was charmed with her, and they remained intimate friends until his death forty years later. After this event, she published some of his letters. She died in Paris in 1910, at the age of eighty - nine. It is reported that among her papers is a complete manuscript novel by Turgenev, which he gave to her some fifty years ago, on the distinct understanding that it should not be published until ten years after her death. We must accordingly wait for this book with what patience we can command. If this novel really exists, it is surely a strange sensation to know that there is a manuscript which, when published, is certain to be an addition to the world’s literature. It is infinitely more valuable on that account than for any light it may throw on the relations between the two individuals.
When Madame Viardot gave up the opera in 1864, and went to live at Baden, Turgenev followed the family thither, lived in a little house close to them, and saw them every day. He was on the most intimate terms with her, with her husband, and with her daughters, whom he loved devotedly. He was essentially a lonely man, and in this household found the only real home he ever knew. It is reported that he once said that he would gladly surrender all his literary fame if he had a hearth of his own, where there was a woman who cared whether he came home late or not. What direction the influence of Madame Viardot on Turgenev took no one knows. Perhaps she simply supplied him with music, which was one of the greatest passions and inspirations of his life. This alone would be sufficient to account for their intimacy. Perhaps she merely stimulated his literary activity, and kept him at his desk; for, like all authors except Anthony Trollope, he hated regular work. His definition of happiness is not only a self - revelation, it will appeal to many humble individuals who are not writers at all. Being asked for a definition of happiness, he gave it in two words - - “Remorseless Laziness.”
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 illustration 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 God’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 participate 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 petition. 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 illustration 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 nobility 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 God.
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 passionately. 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 passion. 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 - analysis, 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.
A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1 Page 383