A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  “My dog was slowly approaching it, when, suddenly darting down from a tree close by, an old dark - throated sparrow fell like a stone right before its nose, and all ruffled up, terrified; with despairing and pitiful cheeps, it flung itself twice toward the open jaws of shining teeth.

  “It sprang to save; it cast itself before its nestling... but all its tiny body was shaking with terror; its note was harsh and strange. Swooning with fear it offered itself up!

  “What a huge monster must the dog have seemed to it! And yet it could not stay on its high branch out of danger. ... A force stronger than its will flung it down.

  “My Tresor stood still, drew back. . . . Clearly he, too, recognized this force.

  “I hastened to call off the disconcerted dog, and went away, full of reverence.

  “Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverence for that tiny, heroic bird, for its impulse of love.

  “Love, I thought, is stronger than death, or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.”

  The content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian earth, “ The Country “; the insignificance of man, “ A Conversation “; there is no escape from death, “ The Old Woman “; the tie between man and the animals, “ The Dog “; death reconciles old enemies, “ The Last Meeting “; Nature’s indifference to man, “ Nature”; the beauty of untroubled, innocent youth, “ How Fair and Fresh were the Roses “; the genius of poesy, “ A Visit”; the joy of giving and taking, “ Alms “; the rich misjudge the poor, “ Cabbage Soup”; we always pray for miracles, “ Prayer “; Christ is in all men, “ Christ”; the immortal hour of genius, “ Stay “; love and hunger, “ The Two Brothers”; such are a few of the subjects of the Poems in Prose. The permanent appeal of these exquisite little pieces lies in their soft, deep humanity and emotional freshness, while aesthetically they are marked by the broad warm touch in which Turgenev indicates the infinite lights and tones of living nature. Turgenev’s supremacy in style rests, indeed, precisely here, in this faculty of concentrating in a few broad sweeping touches, a wealth of tones which, producing an individual effect, makes a universal appeal to feeling. It is mysterious, this faculty of so massing and concentrating your effect that one detailed touch does the work of half a dozen. Turgenev alone among his contemporaries had mastered this secret of Greek art. It is the emotional breadth, imparted in ease, sureness, and flexibility of stroke, that distinguishes the Poems in Prose from all other examples of the genre. Fresh as the rain, soft as the petal of a flower, warm as the touch of love is “ The Rose,” so simple, yet so complete in its message.

  “THE ROSE

  “The last days of August. . . . Autumn was already at hand.

  “The sun was setting. A sudden downpour of rain, without thunder or lightning, had just passed rapidly over our wide plain.

  “The garden in front of the house glowed and steamed, all filled with the fire of the sunset and the deluge of rain.

  “She was sitting at a table in the drawing - room, and with persistent dreaminess, gazing through the half - open door into the garden.

  “I knew what was passing at that moment in her soul; I knew that, after a brief but agonising struggle, she was at that instant giving herself up to a feeling she could no longer master.

  “All at once she got up, went quickly out into the garden, and disappeared.

  “An hour passed ... a second; she had not returned.

  “Then I got up, and, going out of the house, I turned along the walk by which — of that I had no doubt — she had gone.

  “All was darkness about me; the night had already fallen. But on the damp sand of the path a roundish object could be discerned — bright red even through the mist.

  “I stooped down. It was a fresh, new - blown rose. Two hours before I had seen this very rose on her bosom.

  “I carefully picked up the flower that had fallen in the mud, and, going back to the drawing - room, laid it on the table before her chair.

  “And now at last she came back, and with light footsteps, crossing the whole room, sat down at the table.

  “Her face was both paler and more vivid; her downcast eyes, that looked somehow smaller, strayed rapidly in happy confusion from side to side.

  “She saw the rose, snatched it up, glanced at its crushed, muddy petals, glanced at me, and her eyes, brought suddenly to a standstill, were bright with tears.

  “‘What are you crying for?’ I asked.

  “‘Why, see this rose. Look what has happened to it.’

  “Then I thought fit to utter a profound remark.

  “‘Your tears will wash away the mud,’ I pronounced with a significant expression.

  “‘Tears do not wash, they burn,’ she answered. And turning to the hearth she flung the rose into the dying flame.

  “‘Fire burns even better than tears,’ she cried with spirit; and her lovely eyes, still bright with tears, laughed boldly and happily.

  “I saw that she, too, had been through the fire.”

  A few of the Poems in Prose, profoundly ironical, as “ The Fool,” “ A Contented Man,” “ The Egoist,” “ A Rule of Life,” “ Two Strangers,” “ The Workmen and the Man with the White Hands,” show the indignation of a large generous heart with human baseness, pettiness, stupidity, and envy. A minority of the poems are instinct with Turgenev’s morbid apprehension of death’s stealthy approach, and the final, unescap - able blotting out of life and love by his clutch. Turgenev’s dread of the malignant forces of decay and dissolution had found powerful expression nearly twenty years earlier in Phantoms, where a series of prose poems is enshrined in the setting of a story.

  “‘Do not utter her name, not her name,’ Alice faltered hurriedly. ‘ We must escape, or there will be an end to everything and for ever. . . . Look over there! ‘

  “I turned my head in the direction in which her trembling hand was pointing and discerned something . . . horrible indeed.

  “This something was the more horrible since it had no definite shape. Something bulky, dark, yellowish - black, spotted like a lizard’s belly, not a storm - cloud, and not smoke, was crawling with a snakehke motion over the earth. A wide rhythmic undulating movement from above downwards, and from below upwards, an undulation recalling the malignant sweep of the wings of a vulture seeking its prey; at times an indescribably revolting grovelling on the earth, as of a spider stooping over its captured fly. . . . Who are you, what are you, menacing mass? Under its influence I saw it, I felt it — all sank into nothingness, all was dumb. ... A putrefying, pestilential chill came from it. At this chill breath the heart turned sick and the eyes grew dim, and the hair stood up on the head. It was a power moving; that power which there is no resisting, to which all is subject, which, sightless, shapeless, senseless, sees all, knows all, and like a bird of prey, picks out its victims, stifles them and stabs them with its frozen sting.”

  This passage, by the intensity of horror it evokes, shows how deeply entwined in the roots of Turgenev’s joy in life was his loathing of death; and the same note is struck with cumulative force in “ The End of the World” and “ The Insect,” where the chill atmosphere of frozen terror and suffocating dread is enforced by the gloomy imagery. There can be no doubt that Turgenev’s premonitory obsession of death in his last years was one of the manifestations of the malignant disease of which he died — cancer of the spinal marrow — which cast the darkening shadow of melancholy over his vital energies and intensified his sensation of spiritual isolation. In the struggle between his healthy instincts and the weariness and dejection diffused by this creeping, malignant cancer, his latter days may be likened to those of an autumnal landscape at evening, with the valleys shivering in the shadows of approaching night, while the higher ground remains still flushed with warm light. But the Poems in Prose, his last work, declare how comparatively little the morbid processes at work within his frame had impaired his serene intelligence, his wide unflinching vision, his deep generous heart, and passion to h
elp others. This, although he had already written, “ I have grown old, all seems tarnished around me and within me. The light which rays from the heart, showing life in its colour, in relief, in movement, this light is nearly extinguished within me : it flickers under the crust of cinders which grows thicker and thicker.” But his cruel malady in the last two years, when Turgenev endured “ all that one can endure without dying,” did not embitter his character.1 Pavlovsky tells us : 1 Ossip LourU, p. 63.

  “After terrible sufferings, during which the sick man could neither sit nor remain standing nor lying down, his condition improved. He could work and read free from pain, except when he moved about. That gave him hope that with many precautions, he would live a few years longer. But very soon a fresh access arrived, followed with fresh prostration of spirit.

  “‘When my sufferings are unendurable,’ said Turgenev, ‘ I follow Schopenhauer’s advice. I analyse my sensations and my agony departs for a period. For example, if my sufferings are terrible I can easily tell myself of what kind they are. First there is a stinging pain which, in itself, is not insupportable. To this is added a burning feeling, and next a shooting pang; then a difficulty in breathing. Separately each one is endurable and when I analyse them thus, it is easy for me to endure them. One must always do this in life, if you analyse your sufferings you will not suffer so much.’

  “On another occasion he said to me :

  “‘I do not regret dying. I have had all the pleasures I could wish for. I have done much work. I have had success. I have loved people; and they have, also, loved me. I have reached old age. I have been as happy as one can be. Many have not had that. It is bad to die before the time comes, but for me it is time.’

  “One need not say that these words were those of a sick man wishing to console himself. Turgenev knew well that he could still create, and he did not wish to die.

  “In speaking of the condition of Viardot, who was also dying, Turgenev said to me :

  “‘A bad thing this death! One couldn’t complain if she killed one at a stroke; then it would be over; but she glides behind you like a robber, takes from man all his soul, his intelligence, his love of the beautiful; she attacks the essence of the human being. The envelope alone remains.’

  “And he added, after a moment’s silence, in a whisper, strangely passionate:

  “‘Yes, death is the lie!’. . .

  “A thing strange and most characteristic was that during his last illness Turgenev never ceased to occupy himself with the affairs of others. . . . Moreover, he did not wait to be solicited to render people services.”

  In his last days Turgenev addressed to Tolstoy the famous letter in which he adjured him to return to literature,1 and bequeathed to others as his creed and example his farewell words, “ Live and love others as I have always loved them.” After renewed cruel sufferings he sank into a delirium, and died at Bougival on September 3, 1883. Madame Viardot describes his end, thus :

  “He had lost consciousness since two days. He no longer suffered, his life slowly ebbed away, 1 “ Kind and dear Leo NikolAyevitch, — I have long not written to you, because, to tell the truth, I have been, and am, on my death - bed. I cannot recover : that is out of the question, I am writing to you specially to say how glad I am to be your contemporary, and to express my last and sincere request. My friend, return to literary activity 1 That gift came to you whence comes all the rest. Ah 1 how happy I should be if I could think my request would have an effect on you 1 ... I am played out — the doctors do not even know what to call my malady, ndvralgie stomacale goutteuse. I can neither walk, nor eat, nor sleep. It is wearisome even to repeat it all! My friend — ’ great writer of our Russian land — listen to my request! . . . I can write no more I am tired. (Unsigned), Bougival, 27 or 28 June 1883.” — Translated by A. Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, vol. ii. p. 182.

  and after two convulsions, he breathed his last. He looked as beautiful again as ever. On the first day after death, there was still a deep wrinkle, caused by the convulsions, between his eyebrows; the second day his habitual expression of goodness reappeared. One would have expected to see him smile.” 1

  The autopsy made by the French doctors revealed that the weight of Turgenev’s brain, 2012 grammes, surpassed by a third the normal weight, and, though Turgenev’s high stature partly accounted for this, the doctors were astonished by its volume, which much exceeded Cuvier’s, hitherto the largest brain known.

  Turgenev was buried, according to his wish, in the Volkov cemetery at Petersburg, by the side of his friend, the critic Byelinsky. A crowd of 100,000 people accompanied the funeral procession, including 285 deputations from all parts of Russia. The Russian Government declined to take part in it! 2 Renan, in France, pronounced

  the valedictory oration, and the passage we extract stands as Turgenev’s noble epitaph :

  1 For this and other details, see Haumant, p. no.

  2 On Turgenev’s death, Lavrov, the Russian refugee, stated that Turgenev had contributed 500 francs annually to the expenses of the revolutionary Zurich paper En Avant. The Russian Government hastened to manifest its displeasure accordingly.

  “Au - dessus de la race, en effect, il y a l’humanite, ou, si l’on veut, la raison. Tourgueneff fut d’une race par sa maniere de sentir et de peindre; il appartenait k l’humanite tout entire par une haute philosophie, envisageant d’un ceil ferme les conditions de l’existence humaine et cherchant sans parti pris k savoir la reality. Cette philosophie aboutissait chez lui k la douceur, a la joie de vivre, k la pitie pour les creatures, pour les victimes surtout. Cette pauvre humanity souvent aveugle assurement, mais si souvent aussi trahie par ses chefs, il 1’aimait ardemment. II applaudissait k son effort spontane vers le bien et le vrai. II ne gour - mandait pas ses illusions; il ne lui en voulait pas de se plaindre. La politique de fer qui raille ceux qui souffrent n’etait pas la sienne. Aucune deception ne l’arretait. Comme l’univers, il eut recommence mille fois l’ceuvre manquee; il savait que la justice peut attendre; on finira toujours par y revenir. II avait vraiment les paroles de la vie eternelle, les paroles de paix, de justice, d’amour et de liberty.”

  THE END

  Volkovskoye Memorial Cemetery, St Petersburg - Turgenev’s final resting place

  Turgenev’s grave, Volkovskoye Memorial Cemetery, Saint Petersburg