A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  Although “Sportsman’s Sketches” and the many other short tales that Turgenev wrote at intervals during his whole career are thoroughly worth reading, his great reputation is based on his seven complete novels, which should be read in the order of composition, even though they do not form an ascending climax. All of them are short; compared with the huge novels so much in vogue at this moment, they look like tiny models of massive machinery. Turgenev’s method was first to write a story at great length, and then submit it to rigid and remorseless compression, so that what he finally gave to the public was the quintessence of his art. It is one of his most extraordinary powers that he was able to depict so many characters and so many life histories in so very few words. The reader has a sense of absolute completeness.

  It was in his first novel, “Rudin,” that Turgenev made the first full - length portrait of the typical educated Russian of the nineteenth century. In doing this, he added an immortal character to the world’s literature. “Such and such a man is a Rudin,” has been a common expression for over fifty years, as we speak of the Tartuffes and the Pecksniffs. The character was sharply individualised, but he stands as the representative of an exceedingly familiar Slavonic type, and no other novelist has succeeded so well, because no other novelist has understood Rudin so clearly as his creator. It is an entire mistake to speak of him, as so many do nowadays, as an obsolete or rather a “transitional” type. The word “transitional” has been altogether overworked in dealing with Turgenev. Rudins are as common in Russia to - day as they were in 1850; for although Turgenev diagnosed the disease in a masterly fashion, he was unable to suggest a remedy. So late as 1894 Stepniak remarked, “it may be truly said that every educated Russian of our time has a bit of Dmitri Rudin in him.” If Rudin is a transitional type, why does the same kind of character appear in Tolstoi, in Dostoevski, in Gorki, in Artsybashev? Why has Sienkiewicz described the racial temperament in two words, improductivite slave? It is generally agreed that no man has succeeded better than Chekhov in portraying the typical Russian of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. In 1894 some one sent to him in writing this question, “What should a Russian desire at this present time?” He replied, “Desire! he needs most of all desire - - force of character. We have enough of that whining shapelessness.” Kropotkin says of him: “He knew, and more than knew - - he felt with every nerve of his poetical mind - - that, apart from a handful of stronger men and women, the true curse of the Russian ‘intellectual’ is the weakness of his will, the insufficient strength of his desires. Perhaps he felt it in himself. . . . This absence of strong desire and weakness of will he continually, over and over again, represented in his heroes. But this predilection was not a mere accident of temperament and character. It was a direct product of the times he lived in.” If it was, as Kropotkin says, a direct product of the times he lived in, then Rudin is not a transitional type, for the direct product of the forties and fifties, when compared with the direct product of the eighties and nineties, is precisely the same. Turgenev’s Rudin is far from obsolete. He is the educated Slav of all time; he to a large extent explains mapless Poland, and the political inefficiency of the great empire of Russia. There is not a single person in any English or American novel who can be said to represent his national type in the manner of Rudin. When we remember the extreme brevity of the book, it was an achievement of the highest genius.

  Rudin, like the Duke in “The Statue and the Bust,” is a splendid sheath without a sword, “empty and fine like a swordless sheath.” His mind is covered with the decorations of art, music, philosophy, and all the ornaments engraved on it by wide travel, sound culture, and prolonged thought; but he can do no execution with it, because there is no single, steady, informing purpose inside. The moment the girl’s resolution strikes against him, he gives forth a hollow sound. He is like a stale athlete, who has great muscles and no vitality. To call him a hypocrite would be to misjudge him entirely. He is more subtle and complex than that. One of his acquaintances, hearing him spoken of as Tartuffe, replies, “No, the point is, he is not a Tartuffe. Tartuffe at least knew what he was aiming at.” A man of small intelligence who knows exactly what he wants is more likely to get it than a man of brilliant intelligence who doesn’t know what he wants, is to get anything, or anywhere.

  Perhaps Turgenev, who was the greatest diagnostician among all novelists, felt that by constantly depicting this manner of man Russia would realise her cardinal weakness, and some remedy might be found for it - - just as the emancipation of the serfs had been partly brought about by his dispassionate analysis of their condition. Perhaps he repeated this character so often because he saw Rudin in his own heart. At all events, he never wearied of showing Russians what they were, and he took this means of showing it. In nearly all his novels, and in many of his short tales, he has given us a whole gallery of Rudins under various names. In “Acia,” for example, we have a charming picture of the young painter, Gagin.

  “Gagin showed me all his canvases. In his sketches there was a good deal of life and truth, a certain breadth and freedom; but not one of them was finished, and the drawing struck me as careless and incorrect. I gave candid expression to my opinion.

  “‘Yes, yes,’ he assented, with a sigh, ‘you’re right; it’s all very poor and crude; what’s to be done? I haven’t had the training I ought to have had; besides, one’s cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one fancies one’s going to shake the earth out of its place - - but when it comes to doing anything, one’s weak and weary directly.”

  The heroine of “Rudin,” the young girl Natalya, is a faint sketch of the future Lisa. Turgenev’s girls never seem to have any fun; how different they are from the twentieth century American novelist’s heroine, for whom the world is a garden of delight, with exceedingly attractive young men as gardeners! These Russian young women are grave, serious, modest, religious, who ask and expect little for themselves, and who radiate feminine charm. They have indomitable power of will, characters of rocklike steadfastness, enveloped in a disposition of ineffable sweetness. Of course they at first fall an easy prey to the men who have the gift of eloquence; for nothing hypnotises a woman more speedily than noble sentiments in the mouth of a man. Her whole being vibrates in mute adoration, like flowers to the sunlight. The essential goodness of a woman’s heart is fertile soil for an orator, whether he speaks from the platform or in a conservatory. Natalya is limed almost instantly by the honey of Rudin’s language, and her virgin soul expands at his declaration of love. Despite the opposition of her mother, despite the iron bonds of convention, she is ready to forsake all and follow him. To her unspeakable amazement and dismay, she finds that the great orator is vox, et praeterea nihil.

  “‘And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?’

  “‘What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you, I shall trust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?’

  “‘My plans - - Your mother certainly will turn me out of the house.’

  “‘Perhaps. She told me yesterday that she must break off all acquaintance with you. But you do not answer my question.’

  “‘What question?’

  “‘What do you think we must do now?’

  “‘What we must do?’ replied Rudin, ‘of course submit.’

  “‘Submit?’ repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white.

  “‘Submit to destiny,’ continued Rudin ‘What is to be done?’“

  But, although the average Anglo - Saxon reader is very angry with Rudin, he is not altogether contemptible If every man were of the Roosevelt type, the world would become not a fair field, but a free fight. We need Roosevelts and we need Rudins The Rudins allure to brighter worlds, even if they do not lead the way. If the ideals they set before us by their eloquence are true, their own failures do not negate them. Whose fault is it if we do not reach them? Lezhnyov gives the inefficient Rudin a splendid eulogy.r />
  “Genius, very likely he has! but as for being natural. . . . That’s just his misfortune, that there’s nothing natural in him. . . . I want to speak of what is good; of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! . . . He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people’s expense, not like a swindler, but like a child. . . . He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use? that his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the faculty of carrying out their own ideas? . . . I drink to the health of Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth, to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its purity, to all that our hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing better than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time, - - to the health of Rudin!”

  It is plain that the speaker is something of a Rudin himself.

  The next novel, “A House of Gentlefolk,”* is, with the possible exception of “Fathers and Children,” Turgenev’s masterpiece. I know of no novel which gives a richer return for repeated re - readings. As the title implies, this book deals, not with an exciting narrative, but with a group of characters; who can forget them? Like all of its author’s works, it is a love - story; this passion is the mainspring of the chief personages, and their minds and hearts are revealed by its power. It is commonly said that Turgenev lacked passion; one might say with equal truth that Wordsworth lacked love of nature. Many of his novels and tales are tremulous with passion, but they are never noisy with it. Like the true patrician that he was, he studied restraint and reserve. The garden scene between Lisa and Lavretsky is the very ecstasy of passion, although, like the two characters, it is marked by a pure and chaste beauty of word and action, that seems to prove that Love is something divine. Only the truly virtuous really understand passion - - just as the sorrows of men are deeper than the sorrows of children, even though the latter be accompanied by more tears. Those who believe that the master passion of love expresses itself by floods of words or by abominable imagery, will understand Turgenev as little as they understand life. In reading the few pages in which the lovers meet by night in the garden, one feels almost like an intruder - - as one feels at the scene of reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia. It is the very essence of intimacy - - the air is filled with something high and holy.

  · In the original, “A Nobleman’s Nest.”

  Lisa is the greatest of all Turgenev’s great heroines. No one can help being better for knowing such a girl. She is not very beautiful, she is not very accomplished, not even very quick - witted; but she has eine schone Seele. There is nothing regal about her; she never tries to queen it in the drawing - room. She is not proud, high - spirited, and haughty; she does not constantly “draw herself up to her full height,” a species of gymnastics in great favour with most fiction - heroines. But she draws all men unto herself. She is beloved by the two opposite extremes of manhood - - Panshin and Lavretsky. Lacking beauty, wit, and learning, she has an irrepressible and an irresistible virginal charm - - the exceedingly rare charm of youth when it seeks not its own. When she appears on the scene, the pages of the book seem illuminated, and her smile is a benediction. She is exactly the kind of woman to be loved by Lavretsky, and to be desired by a rake like Panshin. For a man like Lavretsky will love what is lovely, and a satiated rake will always eagerly long to defile what is beyond his reach.

  It is contemptuously said by many critics - - why is it that so many critics lose sensitiveness to beauty, and are afraid of their own feelings? - - it is said that Lisa, like Rudin, is an obsolete type, the type of Russian girl of 1850, and that she is now interesting only as a fashion that has passed away, and because of the enthusiasm she once awakened. We are informed, with a shade of cynicism, that all the Russian girls then tried to look like Lisa, and to imitate her manner. Is her character really out of style and out of date? If this were true, it would be unfortunate; for the kind of girl that Lisa represents will become obsolete only when purity, modesty, and gentleness in women become unattractive. We have not yet progressed quite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of the Russian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of the Ewig - weibliche.

  At the conclusion of the great garden - scene, Turgenev, by what seems the pure inspiration of genius, has expressed the ecstasy of love in old Lemm’s wonderful music It is as though the passion of the lovers had mounted to that pitch where language would be utterly inadequate; indeed, one feels in reading that scene that the next page must be an anti - climax. It would have been if the author had not carried us still higher, by means of an emotional expression far nobler than words. The dead silence of the sleeping little town is broken by “strains of divine, triumphant music. . . . The music resounded in still greater magnificence; a mighty flood of melody - - and all his bliss seemed speaking and singing in its strains. . . The sweet, passionate melody went to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishing with inspiration, happiness, and beauty; it swelled and melted away; it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens.”

  Elena, the heroine of “On the Eve,” resembles Lisa in the absolute integrity of her mind, and in her immovable sincerity; but in all other respects she is a quite different person. The difference is simply the difference between the passive and the active voice. Lisa is static, Elena dynamic. The former’s ideal is to be good, the latter’s is to do good. Elena was strenuous even as a child, was made hotly angry by scenes of cruelty or injustice, and tried to help everything, from stray animals to suffering men and women. As Turgenev expresses it, “she thirsted for action.” She is naturally incomprehensible to her conservative and ease - loving parents, who have a well - founded fear that she will eventually do something shocking. Her father says of her, rather shrewdly: “Elena Nikolaevna I don’t pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the last beetle or frog, everything in fact except her own father.” In a word, Elena is unconventional, the first of the innumerable brood of the vigorous, untrammelled, defiant young women of modern fiction, who puzzle their parents by insisting on “living their own life.” She is only a faint shadow, however, of the type so familiar to - day in the pages of Ibsen, Bjornson, and other writers. Their heroines would regard Elena as timid and conventional, for with all her self - assertion, she still believes in God and marriage, two ideas that to our contemporary emancipated females are the symbols of slavery.

  Elena, with all her virtues, completely lacks the subtle charm of Lisa; for an aggressive, independent, determined woman will perhaps lose something of the charm that goes with mystery. There is no mystery about Elena, at all events; and she sees through her various adorers with eyes unblinded by sentiment. To an artist who makes love to her she says “I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you - - yes, and your tears too.” Naturally there is no Russian fit to be the mate of this incarnation of Will. The hero of the novel, and the man who captures the proud heart of Elena, is a foreigner - - a Bulgarian, who has only one idea, the liberation of his country. He is purposely drawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemen with whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual trait in a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by the laconic answer he makes to her question, “You love your country very dearly?” “That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country.” Perhaps it is hypercritical to observe that in such a case others would have to sa
y it for him.

  He proves that he is a man of action in a humorous incident. At a picnic, the ladies are insulted by a colossal German, even as Gemma is insulted by a German in “Torrents of Spring.” Insarov is not a conventional person, but he immediately performs an act that is exceedingly conventional in fiction, though rare enough in real life. Although he is neither big, nor strong, nor in good health, he inflicts corporal chastisement on the brute before his lady’s eyes - - something that pleases women so keenly, and soothes man’s vanity so enormously, that it is a great pity it usually happens only in books. He lifts the giant from the ground and pitches him into a pond. This is one of the very few scenes in Turgenev that ring false, that belong to fiction - mongers rather than to fiction - masters. Nothing is more delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insulted the woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarely crowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisingly unwilling to play this complaisant role.

  Finding himself falling in love with Elena, Insarov determines to go away like Lancelot, without saying farewell. Elena, however, meets him in a thunderstorm - - not so sinister a storm as the Aeneas adventure in “Torrents of Spring” - and says “I am braver than you. I was going to you.” She is actually forced into a declaration of love. This is an exceedingly difficult scene for a novelist, but not too difficult for Turgenev, who has made it beautiful and sweet. Love, which will ruin Bazarov, ennobles and stimulates Insarov; for the strong man has found his mate. She will leave father and mother for his sake, and cleave unto him. And, notwithstanding the anger and disgust of her parents she leaves Russia forever with her husband.