A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  In our first chapter we glanced at The Duellist, and in the same year (1846) appeared The Jew, a close study, based on a family anecdote, of Semitic double - dealing and family feeling: also Three Portraits, a more or less faithful ancestral chronicle. This latter tale, though the hero is of the proud, bad, “ Satanic “ order of the romantic school, is firmly objective, as is also Pyetushkov (1847), whose lively, instinctive realism is so bold and intimate as to contradict the compliment that the French have paid themselves — that Turgenev ever had need to dress his art by the aid of French mirrors.

  Although Pyetushkov shows us, by a certain open naiveti of style, that a youthful hand is at work, it is the hand of a young master carrying out Gogol’s satiric realism with finer point, to find a perfect equilibrium free from bias or caricature. The essential strength of the realistic method is developed in Pyetushkov to its just limits, and note it is the Russian realism carrying the warmth of life into the written page, which warmth, the French so often lose in clarifying their impressions and crystallizing them in art. Observe how the reader is transported bodily into Pyetnshkov’s stuffy room, how the Major fairly boils out of the two pages he lives in, and how Onisim and Vassilissa and the aunt walk and chatter around the stupid Pyetushkov, and laugh at him behind his back in a manner that exhales the vulgar warmth of these people’s lower - class world. One sees that the latter holds few secrets for Turgenev. Three years earlier had appeared Andrei Kolosov (1844), a sincere diagnosis of youth’s sentimental expectations, raptures and remorse, in presence of the other sex, in this case a girl who is eager for a suitor. The sketch is characteristically Russian in its analytic honesty, but Turgenev’s charm is here lessened by his over - literal exactitude. And passing to The Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850), we must remark that this famous study of a type of a petty provincial Hamlet reveals a streak of suffused sentimentalism in Turgenev’s nature, one which comes to the surface the more subjective is the handling of his theme, and the less his great technical skill in modelling his subject is called for. The last - named story belongs to a group with which we must place Faust (1853), Yakov Pasinkov (1855), A Correspondence (1855) and even the tender and charming Ada (1857), all of which stories, though rich in emotional shades and in beautiful descriptions, are lacking in fine chiselling. The melancholy yearning of the heroes and heroines through failure or misunderstanding, though no doubt true to life, seems to - day too imbued with emotional hues of the Byronic romanticism of the period, and in this small group of stories Turgenev’s art is seen definitely dated, even old - fashioned.

  In The Country Inn (1852), we are back on the firm ground of an objective study of village types, with clear, precise outlines, a detailed drawing from nature, strong yet subtle; as is also Mumu (1852), one based on a household episode that passed before Turgenev’s youthful eyes, in which the deaf - mute Gerassim, a house serf, is defrauded first of the girl he loves, and then of his little dog, Mumu, whom he is forced to drown, stifling his pent - up affection, at the caprice of his tyrannical old mistress. The story is a classic example of Turgenev’s tender insight and beauty of feeling. As delicate, but more varied in execution is The Backwater, with its fresh, charming picture of youth’s insouciance and readiness to take a wrong turning, a story which in its atmospheric freshness and emotional colouring may be compared with Tchehov’s studies of youth in The Seagull, a play in which the neurotic spiritual descendants of Marie and Nadejda, Veretieff and Steltchinsky, appear and pass into the shadows. This note of the fleetingness of youth and happiness reappears in A Tour of the Forest (1857), where Turgenev’s acute sense of man’s ephemeral life in face of the eternity of nature finds full expression. The description, here, of the vast, gloomy, murmuring pine forest, with its cold, dim solitudes, is finely contrasted with the passing outlook of the peasants, Yegor, Kondrat, and the wild Efrem. (See p. 16.)

  The rich colour and perfume of Turgenev’s delineation of romantic passion are disclosed when we turn to First Love (1860), which details the fervent adoration of Woldemar, a boy of sixteen, for the fascinating Zinaida, an exquisite creation, who, by her mutability and caressing, mocking caprice keeps her bevy of eager suitors in suspense till at length she yields herself in her passion to Woldemar’s father. This study of the intoxication of adolescent love is, again, based on an episode of Turgenev’s youth, in which he and his father played the identical roles of Woldemar and his father. Here we tremble on the magic borderline between prose and poetry, and the fragrance of blossoming love instincts is felt pervading all the fluctuating impulses of grief, tenderness, pity and regret which combine in the tragic close. The profoundly haunting apostrophe to youth is indeed a pure lyric. Passing to Phantoms (1863), which we discuss with Prose Poems (see p. 200), the truth of Turgenev’s confession that spiritually and sensuously he was saturated with the love of woman and ever inspired by it, is confirmed. In his description of Alice, the winged phantom - woman, who gradually casts her spell over the sick hero, luring him to fly with her night after night over the vast expanse of earth, Turgenev has in a mysterious manner, all his own, concentrated the very essence of woman’s possessive love. Alice’s hungry yearning for self - completion, her pleading arts, her sad submissiveness, her rapture in her hesitating lover’s embrace, are artistically a sublimation of all the impressions and instincts by which woman fascinates, and fulfils her purpose of creation. The projection of this shadowy woman’s love - hunger on the mighty screen of the night earth, and the merging of her power in men’s restless energies, felt and divined through the sweeping tides of nature’s incalculable forces, is an inspiration which, in its lesser fashion, invites comparison with Shakespeare’s creative vision of nature and the supernatural.

  In his treatment of the supernatural Turgenev, however, sometimes missed his mark. The Dog (1866) is of a coarser and indeed of an ordinary texture. With the latter story may be classed The Dream (1876), curiously Byronic in imagery and atmosphere, and artistically not convincing. Far more sincere, psychologically, is Clara Militch (1882), a penetrating study of a passionate temperament, a story based on a tragedy of Parisian life. In our opinion The Song of Triumphant Love, though exquisite in its jewelled mediaeval details, has been overrated by the French, and Turgenev’s genius is here seen contorted and cramped by the genre.

  To return to the tales of the ‘sixties. Lieutenant Yergunov’s Story, though its strange atmosphere is cunningly painted, is not of the highest quality, comparing unfavourably with The Brigadier (1867), the story of the ruined nobleman, Vassily Guskov, with its tender, sub - ironical studies of odd characters, Narkiz and Cucumber. The Brigadier has a peculiarly fascinating poignancy, and must be prized as one of the rarest of Turgenev’s high achievements, even as the connoisseur prizes the original beauty of a fine Meryon etching. The tale is a microcosm of Turgenev’s own nature; his love of Nature, his sympathy with all humble, ragged, eccentric, despised human creatures, his unfaltering, keen gaze into character, his perfect eye for relative values in life, all mingle in The Brigadier to create for us a sense of the vicissitudes of life, of how a generation of human seed springs and flourishes awhile on earth and soon withers away under the menacing gaze of the advancing years.

  A complete contrast to The Brigadier is the sombre and savagely tragic piece of realism, An Unhappy Girl (1868). As a study of a coarse and rapacious nature the portrait of Mr. Ratsch, the Germanized Czech, is a revelation of the depths of human swinishness. Coarse malignancy is here “ the power of darkness “ which closes, as with a vice, round the figure of the proud, helpless, exquisite girl, Susanna. There is, alas, no exaggeration in this unrelenting, painful story. The scene of Susanna’s playing of the Beethoven sonata (chapter xiii.)

  demonstrates how there can be no truce between a vile animal nature and pure and beautiful instincts, and a faint suggestion symbolic of the national “ dark forces “ at work in Russian history deepens the impression. The worldly power of greed, lust and envy, ravaging, whether in war or
peace, which seize on the defenceless and innocent, as their prey, here triumphs over Susanna, the victim of Mr. Ratsch’s violence. The last chapter, the banquet scene, satirizes “the dark forest” of the heart when greed and baseness find their allies in the inertness, sloth or indifference of the ordinary man.

  A Strange Story (1869) has special psychological interest for the English mind in that it gives “clues to some fundamental distinctions between the Russian and the Western soul. Sophie’s words, “ You spoke of the will — that’s what must be broken,” seems strange to English thought. To be lowly, to be suffering, despised, to be unworthy, this desire implies that the Slav character is apt to be lacking in will, that it finds it easier to resign itself than to make the effort to be triumphant or powerful. The Russian people’s attitude, historically, may, indeed, be compared to a bowl which catches and sustains what life brings it; and the Western people’s to a bowl inverted to ward off what fate drops from the impassive skies. The mental attitude of the Russian peasant indeed implies that in blood he is nearer akin to the Asiatics than the Russian ethnologists wish to allow. Certainly in the inner life, intellectually, morally and emotionally, the Russian is a half - way house between the Western and Eastern races, just as geographically he spreads over the two continents.

  Brilliant also is Knock - Knock - Knock (1870), a psychological study, of “ a man fated,” a Byronic type of hero, dear to the heart of the writers of the romantic period. Sub - Lieutenant Teglev, the melancholy, self - centred hero, whose prepossession of a tragic end nothing can shake, so that he ends by throwing himself into the arms of death, this portrait is most cunningly fortified by the wonderfully lifelike atmosphere of the river fog in which the suicide is consummated. Turgenev’s range of mood is disclosed in Punin and Baburin (1874), a leisurely reminiscence of his mother’s household; but the delicious blending of irony and kindness in the treatment of both Punin and Baburin atones for the lengthy conclusion. Of The Watch (1875), a story for boys, nothing here need be said, except that it is inferior to the delightful The Quail, a souvenir d’enfance written at the Countess Tolstoy’s request for an audience of children. In considering A Lear of the Steppes (1870), The Torrents of Spring (1871) and A Living Relic (1874), we shall sum up here our brief survey of Turgenev’s achievement in the field of the conte.

  In The Torrents of Spring the charm, the grace, the power of Turgenev’s vision are seen bathing his subject, revealing all its delicate lineaments in a light as fresh and tender as that of a day of April sunlight in Italy. Torrents of Spring, not Spring Floods, be it remarked, is the true significance of the Russian, telling of a moment of the year when, all the forces of Nature are leaping forth impetuously, the mounting sap, the hill streams, the mating birds, the blood in the veins of youth. The opening perhaps is a little over - leisurely, this description of the Italian confectioner’s family, and its fortunes in Frankfort, but how delightful is the contrast in racial spirit between the pedantic German shop - manager, Herr Kliiber and Pantaleone, and the lovely Gemma. But the long opening prelude serves as a foil to heighten the significant story of the seduction of the youthful Sanin by Maria Nikolaevna, that clear - eyed “ huntress of men “; one of the most triumphant feminine portraits in the whole range of fiction. The spectator feels that this woman in her ruthless charm is the incarnation of a cruel principle in Nature, while we watch her preparing to strike her talons into her fascinated, struggling prey. Her spirit’s essence, in all its hard, merciless joy of conquest, is disclosed by Turgenev in his rapid, yet exhaustive glances at her disdainful treatment of her many lovers, and of her cynical log of a husband. The extraordinarily clear light in the narrative, that of spring mountain air, waxes stronger towards the climax, and the artistic effort of the whole is that of some exquisite Greek cameo, with figures of centaurs and fleeing nymphs and youthful shepherds; though the postscript indeed is an excrescence which detracts from the main impression of pure, classic outlines.

  Not less perfect as art though far slighter in scope is the exquisite A Living Relic (1874), one of the last of A Sportsman’s Sketches. Along with the narrator we pass, in a step, from the clear sunlight and freshness of early morning, “ when the larks’ songs seemed steeped in dew,” into the “ little wattled shanty with its burden of a woman’s suffering,” poor Lukerya’s, who lies, summer after summer, resigned to her living death :

  “... I was walking away. . . .

  “‘Master, master! Piotr Petrovitch!’ I heard a voice, faint, slow, and hoarse, like the whispering of marsh rushes.

  “I stopped.

  “‘Piotr Petrovitch 1 Gome in, please I ‘ the voice repeated. It came from the corner where were the trestles I had noticed.

  “I drew near, and was struck dumb with amazement. Before me lay a living human being; but what sort of creature was it?

  “A head utterly withered, of a uniform coppery hue — like some very ancient and holy picture, yellow with age; a sharp nose like a keen - edged knife; the hps could barely be seen — only the teeth flashed white and the eyes; and from under the kerchief sometimes wisps of yellow hair struggled on to the forehead. At the chin, where the quilt was folded, two tiny hands of the same coppery hue were moving, the fingers slowly twitching like little sticks. I looked more intently; the face far from being ugly was positively beautiful, but strange and dreadful; and the face seemed more dreadful to me that on it — on its metallic cheeks — I saw struggling . . . struggling and unable to form itself — a smile.

  “‘You don’t recognize me, master?’ whispered the voice again; it seemed to be breathed from thefalmost unmoving lips! ‘ And, indeed, how should you? I’m Lukerya. ... Do you remember, who used to lead the dance at your mother’s, at Spasskoe? ... Do you remember, I used to be leader of the choir, too? ‘

  “‘Lukerya! ‘ I cried. ‘ Is it you? Can it be? ‘

  “‘Yes, it’s I, master — I, Lukerya.’

  “I did not know what to say, and gazed in stupdac - tion at the dark motionless face with the clear, deathlike eyes fastened upon me. Was it possible? This mummy Lukerya — the greatest beauty in all our household — that tall, plump, pink - and - white, singing, laughing, dancing creature! Lukerya, our smart Lukerya, whom all our lads were courting, for whom I heaved some secret sighs — I a boy of sixteen!”

  Lukerya tells her story. How one night she could not sleep, and, thinking of her lover, rose to listen to a nightingale in the garden; how half - dreaming she fell from the top stairs — and now she lives on, a little shrivelled mummy. Something is broken inside her body, and the doctors all shake their heads over her case. Her lover, Polyakov, has married another girl, a good sweet woman. “ He couldn’t stay a bachelor all his life, and they have children.”

  And Lukerya? All is not blackness in her wasted life. She is grateful for people’s kindness to her. . . . She can hear everything, see everything that comes near her shed — the nesting swallows, the bees, the doves cooing on the roof. Lying alone in the long hours she can smell every scent from the garden, the flowering buckwheat, the lime tree. The priest, the peasant girls, sometimes a pilgrim woman, come and talk to her, and a little girl, a pretty, fair little thing, waits on her. She has her religion, her strange dreams, and sometimes, in her poor, struggling little voice that wavers like a thread of smoke, she tries to sing, as of old. But she is waiting for merciful death — which now is nigh her.

  Infinitely tender in the depth of understanding is this gem of art, and A Living Relic’s perfection is determined by Turgenev’s scrutiny of the warp and woof of life, in which the impassive forces of Nature, indifferent alike to human pain or human happiness, pursue their implacable way, weaving unwittingly the mesh of joy, anguish, resignation, in the breast of all sentient creation. It is in the spiritual perspective of the picture, in the vision that sees the whole in the part, and the part in the whole, that Turgenev so far surpasses all his European rivals.

  To those critics, Russian and English, who naively slur
over the aesthetic qualities of a masterpiece, such as A Lear of the Steppes (1870), or fail to recognize all that aesthetic perfection implies, we address these concluding remarks. A Lear of the Steppes is great in art, because it is a living organic whole, springing from the deep roots of life itself; and the innumerable works of art that are fabricated and pasted together from an ingenious plan — works n that do not grow from the inevitability of things - appear at once insignificant or false in comparison.

  In examining the art, the artist will note Turgenev’s method of introducing his story. Harlov, the Lear of the story, is brought forward with such force on the threshold that all eyes resting on his figure cannot but follow his after - movements. And absolute conviction gained, all the artist’s artful after - devices and subtle presentations and sidelights on the story are not apparent under the straightforward ease and the seeming carelessness with which the narrator describes his boyish memories. Then the inmates of Harlov’s household, his two daughters, and a crowd of minor characters, are brought before us as persons in the tragedy, and we see that all these people are living each from the innate laws of his being, apparently independently of the author’s scheme. This conviction, that the author has no prearranged plan, convinces us that in the story we are living a piece of life : here we are verily plunging into life itself.